The Devil's Advocate (1997) with Sarah Marshall

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and Beast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Behold, Jamie, I send you out as sheep amidst the wolves. Well, I'm the devil and your duddy.

00:00:25
Speaker 3: Me when I'm Keanu and from Florida. Well that's wild, that's you're my father the devil, like sir, Come on, come on. I like the choice. Every choice in this movie is a choice.

00:00:41
Speaker 2: It certainly is.

00:00:42
Speaker 3: The choices are taking place four thousand times a second. I thought you were gonna say my favorite sin Is podcast, you turn into al Pacino and then say my favorite cit Is podcast. Also, can this movie pass the Bechdel test? If everyone is secretly al Pacino? If al Pacino is lurking beneath the skin of we are to believe like seventy percent of the characters on screen, can it pass? Right?

00:01:12
Speaker 1: Well?

00:01:12
Speaker 2: Is it that?

00:01:12
Speaker 3: Can Jackie? And unless she's al Pacino?

00:01:16
Speaker 2: Well, I was like, okay, is it al Pacino infiltrating everyone's bodies? Or are they just like I don't know little minor demons. Literally, they've sold their soul to him.

00:01:28
Speaker 3: Who knows, who knows, you know, who might know? Andrew Niederman, the writer who brought you Pin What Yes? Pin, Yes, exactly. Yeah, And he's still alive. He's eighty four. He's in Palm Springs. We could get in the car right now and be like, wow, is everyone al Pacino? He also, I mean, I think according to his scholarly journal Wikipedia page, The Devil's Advocate is his most famous novel that got adapted. But he also wrote Child's Play.

00:01:59
Speaker 2: Oh that it's more famous than The Devil's Advocate.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: Unless he wrote a book called Child's Play that's not Child's Play, in which case I redact and he shouldn't have done that. He also wrote a book in two thousand and three called The Baby Squad. I had fun on his on his sicopedia page. Oh goodness, Andrew Niederman's The Baby Squad. Anyways.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: Well, then we also have Tony Gilroy, yes of and or Fame, Indoor Fame, writing the screenplay.

00:02:25
Speaker 3: I mean, I hope they cut him a big old check for this. We love the Gilroy bros. On this podcast indeed. Okay, okay, we got to get our guests in here. Just one of the greatest of all time who brought us one of the movies of all time?

00:02:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, should we introduce ourselves first?

00:02:47
Speaker 3: Or I guess so? I guess so. Sorry, we haven't recorded in two weeks, so I forget how to do my job. So welcome to the Bexel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftis.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Jonte. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist leanne, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. What is it though?

00:03:04
Speaker 3: The Bechtel test is what a woman talks to al Pacino. Alison Bechdel came up with the Bechdel test back in the eighties for her comic collection Texs to Watch Out For. Originally a queer metric that was sort of written as a one off joke, has since been applied more broadly in the mainstream and does not at any point address what if someone's secretly al Pacino? True. However, there is a lot to talk about with this movie in general, and I was actually like, I can't say, pleasantly surprised in good faith here, but I could say I was surprised at how how much there is to talk about with regards to gender.

00:03:48
Speaker 2: I agree.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: So let's get our returning guest. I'm like, is it her fifth time? Do we have to send her a jacket? Unclear?

00:03:55
Speaker 2: Perhaps you know her. She's the host of You're Wrong About You Are Good and the podcast The Devil. You know it's Sarah Marshall.

00:04:04
Speaker 4: Hello, I would love a jacket or any piece of maybe a goblet.

00:04:09
Speaker 3: Oh my god, putting that out there. Do you not have any goblets? I feel like you have to own a goblet. I feel like it's pink and opal lighte. Yeah, I do.

00:04:19
Speaker 4: You're right you've had putting out of one of those probably, yeah, but I need a bigger one that's engraved.

00:04:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:04:27
Speaker 4: And this certainly is a movie.

00:04:30
Speaker 3: I just am so excited to talk. But first, before we talk about the movie, we want to hear about the podcast. I'm so excited it's finally coming out, and obviously it is in conversation with this documentary we're covering today.

00:04:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. It is a documentary, this biopic, Yes, this pick of the Devil.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, So tell us about the devil.

00:04:54
Speaker 4: You know, well, I'm so happy to be here talking about it with you and bringing it out into the world like my very own al Pacino spawn. But this is a show that I've been Jamie, We've been talking about for a long time. I've been working on for a long time with amazing producer Mary Stephan Hagen, and it's a close up look at the Satanic Panic. It's coming out from CBC Podcasts, and it's the kind of thing that I've been wanting to do for such a long time where you get to kind of not just try and tell the story of how the Satanic Panic worked structurally and how it kind of spread across North America and then you know, to beyond, but also to tell that story by zooming in and having conversations by individual people who were affected by it and who were caught up in it. And so our first episode opens with the story of a woman who had the gall to go to small town Kentucky to try and teach photography to teenagers and was quite literally chased out of town based on allegations that she was looking for blue eyed, blonde children to sacrifice. And boy, does that feel like a story that could be happening this week in America.

00:06:11
Speaker 2: Very true.

00:06:12
Speaker 3: Yes, unfortunately. I was like, so, I mean, because I've learned, I mean really, everything I know about the Satanic Panic has been from you and from your work before we knew each other over the years, and I'm just I'm so, I'm so excited. It's an opus of sorts and it's weird. If like, in the five years that I've been learning about the Satanic Panic from you, it felt like, wow, well we've moved on as a society. Yeah, since then, but now it's back. It's very much back.

00:06:46
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's back. Like penny Wise, our pin one could say our pin one could say pin a book, which there is an ad for in one of the mass market paperback editions of Michelle Remembers. Yeah, a book whose kind of backstory we get into on this show too. And yeah, I feel like it we you know, look at how it's moving into the present day. But I feel like one of the things I love about studying history and that shaming I think is such a big part of your work too, is that by learning about kind of the things that people have gone through before and also what people have survived before, it's more thinkable to try and get a grasp on how to proceed and how to be helpful in the raging moral panics of today.

00:07:35
Speaker 2: It's true, Absolutely, it's true.

00:07:37
Speaker 3: Well, we're so excited to start listening. I know that our listeners and your listeners. It's kind of just a circle. Yeah, and so everyone's a big pot luck exactly. So if you haven't started listening already, now is the time. And if you haven't seen The Devil's Advocate, well, now is the time to pirate it on one, two, three movies, which is what I did for this episode.

00:08:01
Speaker 4: Same, or to watch the TV edit on YouTube, which is we'll take you right back to watching it on TNT in two thousand.

00:08:08
Speaker 3: And three, knowing me way Yeah, okay, So to get into The Devil's Advocate in nineteen ninety seven by Taylor Hackford, Titanic.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: Year, the Year of Titanic.

00:08:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, he also directed An Officer and a Gentleman and Ray kind of a random assortment of movies from the sky. Yeah, and he's got style. He's got style. Apparently he's got beef with al Pacino as well. I saw that, But in any case, nineteen ninety seven movie Sarah what is your history with this movie?

00:08:43
Speaker 4: Well, I mean watching this did take me back to a seeing bits of it on TNT after school in like two thousand and three, and then I remember watching this in full the only other time I've done this when I was living in Madison, so it would have been twenty six and at the time, I was like, I'm going to be a lawyer, and I was watching a lot of just lawyer movies, and I feel like this was just like one of my list of lawyer movies to watch, the same way that I watched like The Firm that week and The Verdict, etc. Yeah, it's always it's a lot of the something you know. The another movie I watched during this period, which I fail very nostalgic for is Primal Fear, which is such a fun, ridiculous experience, and both that movie and this movie, interestingly, in a post Ojay world, are about criminal defense attorneys who are shocked, shocked when they realized that their clients are guilty.

00:09:45
Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, what is like wha.

00:09:52
Speaker 4: Lawyers generally have some suspicion that maybe they're defending a guilty person. They're not like this surprise, I wouldn't.

00:10:00
Speaker 3: Say someone who's considered to be a law prodigy. I was like, you don't get right that far in you know, non public defense law with the idea that everyone you defend it like it just it just doesn't make sense.

00:10:16
Speaker 4: Unless there's a cut scene where the senior partners are like handsome boy, but it sure is stupid, which I would buy for this character, right, And so yeah, I remember watching it and finding it like really over the top and odd and revealing to me this interesting idea that to defend someone's constitutional rights is evil, which I think is a very interesting sort of like nineties tough on crime throughout an American pop culture. But what I also remember is that towards the end, you're like, what is happening? And I was so delighted to return to it for this show and have the same reaction, which is that in the last half hour or so, you're like, I feel like I'm having a stroke, but in the best way possible, at least for me.

00:11:02
Speaker 2: I mean, no, I had the same experience.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like, I don't know, Kaitlyn, what's your history with this movie?

00:11:11
Speaker 2: I had never seen it, nor did I really know anything about it. It was not really on my radar. I thought it was that movie The Devil's Own which also came out in ninety seven.

00:11:21
Speaker 3: What is that? I thought it was Meet Joe Black.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so we're confusing it for different confused Brad Pitt movies.

00:11:29
Speaker 4: Wagest America had themes in nineteen ninety seven.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: It's true. But yeah, so I was like, oh, yeah, it's that Brad Pitt Harrison Ford movie. Wait, no, it's not.

00:11:39
Speaker 3: And I it was the Brad Pitt Anthony Hopkins movie, right, And Brad Pitt was almost in this movie.

00:11:45
Speaker 4: If you hear about the Devil, you just feel like it's gotta be Brad Pitt. Yeah, he probably would have had an easier time with the accent.

00:11:51
Speaker 2: Yes, because he's from Oklahoma. I think I wonder if one of the reasons he didn't do it is because he was just in seven a couple of years prime. And it also has very like doubly like sin vibes who knows.

00:12:07
Speaker 3: But yeah, vanity got to cut your own face off?

00:12:11
Speaker 2: Yes, my favorite sin.

00:12:14
Speaker 3: But yeah.

00:12:15
Speaker 2: So I didn't really know anything about this movie. And then I was like, oh, okay, the Devil's Advocate that really sounds like one of those stories where the writer came up with the title first and then reverse engineered a story around it.

00:12:30
Speaker 3: And then was incredibly literal. In fact, yes, I was shocked at how literal the title end being. I was like, Wow, this movie is engaging with its title in an unprecedented way.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: I feel like the only way it would have been more literal is if he was defending the devil himself, but in this case, he just works for the devil.

00:12:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that's true. I mean, look, if you've already written the perfect novel, which is start phoning it in, why not. I'm not mad about it. You know.

00:13:06
Speaker 4: This movie also feels very similar in tone to the Rosemary's Baby sequel Son of Rosemary, which I encourage everyone to read, which just kind of like this starts off like kind of a bad thriller that you know where it's going, and then at the end is like, I don't know, It's like mister Toad's Wild's Ride. You're like, oh, we're literally going to hell. That's like, I like it. I didn't expect it.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: This this movie. Look, I thought I knew what was going to happen, and I was only right sometimes.

00:13:39
Speaker 2: Well, tell us, Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie?

00:13:43
Speaker 3: I thought it was me Joe Black. I thought I had seen it, and then I start to moment one. Once I saw the poster, I was like, I have not seen it. It's not me Joe Black. Who I think that's it. That's Brad Pitt is Death, not the Devil. I've never seen it.

00:13:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I haven't seen it. It was on planes for a while.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: We I don't know why we like owned it. We owned it. I remember because it had two video cassettes and oh I had two Titanic vibes. Again, that Titanic, right, Although this movie could have had two cassettes because it is simply too too long. Oh my god, it is. It's unforgivably long.

00:14:22
Speaker 4: This movie is as long as Good Fellas, yeah, which takes place over like fifteen years.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: Good Fellas, which iconically does not feel long. But that said, so I did not have any experience with this movie, you know, in terms of what our show is, why we come to this place. It fairs very badly.

00:14:42
Speaker 2: Oh yes, But.

00:14:43
Speaker 3: Did I enjoy myself? I sure did. I want to say, though, this is like we need to like put a this is the third Jeffrey Jones jump scare of this fiscal quarter on the Bechdel Cast. He really he.

00:15:00
Speaker 4: Worked his way into the nap of the eighties and nineties.

00:15:02
Speaker 3: You know, it's really vile. I mean it's like satisfying to see him die a horrible death, yes, But outside of that, I was like three times unbelievable because we recently covered Amadis and Sleepy Hollow. Yeah huh. In any case, did I like this fuckast movie? I did? I did? I It is not pro women? What is it saying? Kind of not very much, but it's hard to know.

00:15:32
Speaker 4: It's saying, would you like to watch al Pacino do a monologue for twelve minutes?

00:15:37
Speaker 3: And it's the answer.

00:15:38
Speaker 2: And just sam it up the entire time.

00:15:41
Speaker 3: That was the wild thing too, where it's like, I do think that al Pacino is Like, it's so weird to say that a performance that is like al Pacino shouting mostly is like him phoning it in, But it is. And that's so funny that there is someone who when he phones it in, he's screaming the whole time.

00:15:58
Speaker 4: It also reminds me of like the famous story about doctor strange love that. Kubrick was like, okays, Scott, just do one take where you're really over the top, just to warm up. We won't even use it. And then he was like, Hey, we're gonna use it.

00:16:12
Speaker 3: Really.

00:16:12
Speaker 4: The nice thing about al Pacino is that he doesn't need to be tricked. Tells you that performance on purpose.

00:16:18
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, He's like, that's what I can't also that, I mean, I just all the behind the scenes with this movie are is very funny and bizarre, and just like we're just glad that Keanu found his way to the matrix. Indeed eventually, but the stories around this movie are very funny.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: He turned down Speed two to be in.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: This, to do this, He turned down eleven million dollars in Speed two to do this, and he took a pay cut so he could work with al Pacino. And then he did that accent and you're like, this is wild. Yeah, but I'm not this is not a Keanu slander podcast. But also critically, and then I'll stop, I think that this is also not a Keanu Reeves coddling podcast. That is a very I feel like we have over corrected. We have over corrected, all right, He's pretty good in this movie, he's pretty good. Well, it's okay to be pretty good at your job. I'm so sick of like adults infantilizing other wealthy adults. I'm like, what the fuck, Like, Okay, it's a fine performance. Charlie Starron is awesome. Her haircut is awful. I love that Keani's character, who is iconically named Kevin the Devil's Son, is named Kevin. That's a minion. That's not a guy, but but in the nineties, it's not an adult.

00:17:41
Speaker 4: It's a kid in a baseball cap who gets to adopted air but absolutely absolutely.

00:17:46
Speaker 3: But yeah, an adult Kevin who is just too much. But this feels ultimately like a like put together, Like I don't know. This movie is both completely off the rails and feels like very calibrated. I mean, that's why I'm excited to talk about like the context that this movie came out in with you, Sarah, because it feels very like pulling from multiple trends in nineties media, where it's like it's got the erotic thriller elements, it's got the legal thing, it's got the satanic panic thing. Like there's just a lot happening and they're like, what if we put it all in one movie.

00:18:22
Speaker 4: It's like the Trifle and Friends, where the recipe pige has got stuck together and you have like peas and jam and the same thing. And actually, I do want to tell you because after I watched this, I did what I frequently do, which is run to see what ROGERI Bert said about it. Okay, because he's my favorite killjoy. I just love him so much, And he said.

00:18:43
Speaker 3: I hope people say that about us too.

00:18:47
Speaker 4: He said the John Grisham stuff clashed with the Exorcist stuff. Still, I enjoyed Picturino, which is basically like I mean, yeah.

00:18:57
Speaker 3: Pretty pretty solid review. Overall, I enjoyed.

00:19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, this movie made me want to rewatch Constantine, Oh, which is that Keanu Reeves movie where he I actually don't remember what it's about, but there's also something about It's like he's like a demon Holly or something.

00:19:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got to kill It's one of those movies that if hear me a boy makes you watch in two thousand and seven.

00:19:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes or tn T this movie is I didn't think this until you said it, Sarah, but this movie is very t and T coded. Oh yeah, yeah.

00:19:32
Speaker 4: Well, and also because this was during the time when TNT was playing Law and Order for like four hours every afternoon, and I know because I was watching it whenever it was on, and so it was weird when they would be playing this because they're literally, I think, in one of the same courtrooms that Law an Order uses with the beautiful mural and then it's about the devil. And the nineties were like secu heyday for just like legal thrillers all have the same color palette, and they frequently did I mean, at least in like A Time to Kill, you have Charlie's there and being like, please don't defend the defendant in the wildly rigged racist case. Honey, we're getting snubbed at the country club or whatever, you know. And so I just like having this thing that felt like you kind of feel And that's kind of it's both what does and doesn't work about it for me that you kind of feel like you know where it's going and it does feel grishay and then it's.

00:20:30
Speaker 3: The devil, but then it's the devil, and yeah, Kevin is the Devil's sun and misses like my God does. Every character is just everyone's doing way too much, but I love it. I love it When Keanu I think that it's like either the line is misspoken, I miswatched it, or it was just a clunkily written line. Any of these things are possible. But when Charlie's Terarren's character gets the hair cut, she goes from curly like fun blonde like bouncy curls. She looks like Elizabeth Berkeley, and then yeah does and then al Pacino says, get a brown bob, Like You're like, what do you mean? Like I did not understand the motivation behind the brown boss.

00:21:17
Speaker 4: Like get your hair off your neck. The neck is the borderland and seduction, and it's like like stop and there's You're like, you know, whether he's the devil or a man who tells random women what to do with their hair at parties, he represents the same threat level.

00:21:31
Speaker 3: You know, yes, I will say he is great. I mean it's also whatever, al Pacino. There's plans to talk about with al Pacino too, but.

00:21:38
Speaker 4: So I might have been thinking of actually Jad but whatever.

00:21:42
Speaker 3: I think it stands. The point stands. The point stands. Yeah, But in any case, this line cracked me up because she's like, you.

00:21:49
Speaker 5: Don't like the haircut, Kevin, You don't like my haircut, Kevin, And then and then he goes, no, it's fine, and then the next line is it's traumatic.

00:22:00
Speaker 3: He's talking about something else, but it sounds like he's calling.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: Her haircut traumatic.

00:22:04
Speaker 3: Yes, I know, maybe laugh so much, but he is changing the subject, but the way Keanu is reading it makes it sound like he's still talking about the haircut. Yes, he cracked me up.

00:22:13
Speaker 4: Also, you feel like this was like the nineties were I feel like the nineties were so much worse in terms of an actor doing an accent for a role and then deciding scene by scene whether he was going to do it or possibly I don't know. I don't want to coddle Kanu too much, but you wonder if like the director is like, just just don't worry about it anymore, and then they edit it together so that it comes in and out like that.

00:22:40
Speaker 3: Right. Oh yes, Well when this is like not even the most famous example of Kano doing that, because wouldn't that be Dracula? Yes, yeah, like that's I think his most iconically like not so great well was I mean, I don't know if you've ever like acted in something, particularly like a film project, where you're like, you know not, you know whatever. It's kind of on you to keep the accent consistent. It's not an easy thing to do, but also you should do it.

00:23:14
Speaker 2: Yes, And on that note, let's take a quick break and then come back for the recap. Okay, we're back, and we will place a trigger warning here for many things kind of what, yes, you name it, child sexual abuse, rape, incest, suicide. This movie kind of runs the whole gambit.

00:23:45
Speaker 3: Of animal sacrifice.

00:23:47
Speaker 2: Yes, lots of violence and upsetting things.

00:23:52
Speaker 3: Kevinnvin.

00:23:56
Speaker 2: We open in a courtroom in Gainesville, Florida, where defense attorney Kevin Lomax not to be confused with Kevin le Mignon, thank you for saying that, Yes, played by Keanu Reeves, is defending a teacher who is on trial for sexually abusing his students.

00:24:18
Speaker 3: Heather Modarazzo too, Yes, and.

00:24:21
Speaker 2: This teacher seems very guilty, but Kevin, despite having some misgivings about his client, manages to turn things around and tries to expose the student who is testifying as a liar who made up this story about her teacher. And it seems like it's going to work and that he has won the case, and so he goes out to celebrate with his wife.

00:24:48
Speaker 4: Mary Anne, his fun, curly wife who does shots.

00:24:51
Speaker 3: Yes, she's still got curly hair. But the devil makes you get a bob.

00:24:59
Speaker 2: This is Charlie Sterren's character, of course. And while they're at the bar, Kevin is approached by an attorney from a law firm in New York City. Ever heard of it? That's Babylon, that's the Devil's playground, city of sin. And this firm is impressed with Kevin because he's never lost a case and they want his help with a jury selection. Now, Kevin's mother, Alice, doesn't think this is a good idea. She's super religious and she thinks that New York is full of godless heathens. But Kevin and his wife Mary Anne go to New York anyway, and he does a good job with the jury selection. So John Milton, Okay, Paradise Lost mud very subtle played by al Pacino.

00:25:57
Speaker 3: Can I be vulnerable and say I've never read Paradise Lost? Oh no, oh god, how many people have? You know?

00:26:05
Speaker 4: I'm very proud of anyone who's managed it.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: But okay, yeah, no, I've never read that. I have never read Dante's Inferno.

00:26:15
Speaker 3: Everything I know about Dante's Inferno is from Lemony Snicket books.

00:26:20
Speaker 4: That's pretty good, you know what you want to know? What I just learned is that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, his wife died when her dress caught fire and she burned to a crisp, which happened to a lot of women in the mid nineteenth century because the fashion was for women to wear very very flammable clothing, and so they did because you know, it feels like a trick. That feels like a trick, like no, no, just wear layer is a very very flammable cotton in the air, it'll be great. And so after that he didn't really write much or any new poetry, and he devoted much of the rest of his life life to translating the Divine Comedy, which I just think is like, ohh such a relatable grief thing to do. You're like, nobody talk to me. I'm translating the Divine Comedy from Italian. It's going to take a while. I'm fine, everything's fine in here.

00:27:14
Speaker 3: I kind of like, yeah, that's both obviously, like that is such a traumatic thing. And also it's kind of dramatic of him to be like, oh, no, leave me alone. You know I love it. Yeah, we should. We should really bring back more dramatic grieving of that nature.

00:27:33
Speaker 4: We should have PSAs about how increasingly young men are translating epic Italian poems to deal with their emotions, and that's why we need to increase mental health access.

00:27:44
Speaker 3: It's the male it's the male translation epidemic. Everyone's talking about it. It's really bad.

00:27:50
Speaker 4: If they think everyone else is doing it, they're going to start translating poems. I swear to God it's true. This is how this is. This is our attempt to reverse the narrative. Yeah, they don't want you to translate classic Italian poems. Boys, It's the last thing they want you to do. The final rebellion.

00:28:11
Speaker 3: In any case.

00:28:12
Speaker 2: Anyway, John Milton played by al Pacino, is one of the senior partners at this law firm and definitely not.

00:28:21
Speaker 4: Like John Milton or Tanio.

00:28:27
Speaker 2: And he hires Kevin to work at the firm.

00:28:31
Speaker 3: Okay, this does actually now that we're talking about Kevin the Minion, this does follow Minion logic because Kevin does Minion rules. Minion serves the most evil master. What is Kevin doing? Wow, this is kind of like a Kevin thing. It is a minions. He is a minion and that's why his accent is so inconsistent. Yeah.

00:28:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, his first language is minionise.

00:28:56
Speaker 3: That which means he's he can speak just as many languages as the devil Well and Christabella Andreoli iconic Connie Nielsen character. Christabella Andreoli, do you like it on top? You're like, shut up everyone. Every time someone speaks in this movie, my reaction is shut up anyways.

00:29:22
Speaker 2: Uh So, John Milton gives Kevin a job as well as this like huge beautiful apartment in Manhattan. Then Kevin meets his colleagues, including this guy named Eddie Barzoon This is the Jeffrey Jones character. And Christabella Andreoli that's the Connie Nielsen character.

00:29:46
Speaker 3: Perfect and like many women professional women characters of the late twentieth century, we know she's really good at her job, but don't expect to see her doing it and not expected to become plot relevant. She's there to be naked eventually.

00:30:02
Speaker 2: Yes, because every time Kevin looks at her, he goes hubba hubba a wooga.

00:30:09
Speaker 4: It's true it's true, and then his heart bursts out of his chest.

00:30:13
Speaker 3: And yeah, he goes full wolf es. God, we're gonna when we get to the scene where she do you like it? On top of your profession? I mean you're like, oh oh oh lord, Yeah, Tony Gilroy, how are you doing, sir?

00:30:32
Speaker 2: Okay. So, Kevin's first assignment is the Moyes case, where this guy named Philippe Moyez played by Delroy Lindo.

00:30:41
Speaker 3: Yes, one of my favorite Chrea directors ever.

00:30:44
Speaker 2: Indeed, he is arrested for killing a goat in his basement and it seems like there's no way to win this case, but Kevin manages to win by saying that Moyees killed a goat as a religious practice, which he has the constitutional right to observe.

00:31:02
Speaker 3: Okay, here's my question with the whole Delroy Lindo thing, because this movie does extremely poorly on race, as we'll talk about. Yes, but I was like, genuinely, I was like, okay, So, once you find out al Pacino's the devil, are we to believe that Keanu Reeves should not have fought that religious freedom case? I was very confused.

00:31:24
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it later because I like I want to get into it with that plotline that could have been absolutely cut from the movie, and perhaps should have been, because it was cut like twenty minutes out of the runtime, which is desperately needed for this movie.

00:31:41
Speaker 3: Yes, ultimately it's like I'm always happy to see Delroy Lindo. But that was one of the many baffling moments in the truly yeah.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: But the point is that Kevin wins this unwinnable case, and so John Milton is like, Wow, Kevin, good job, you rock and you now. Meanwhile, at home, Marianne has been hanging out with her neighbor Jackie, played by Tamara Tooney, who's also married to one of the lawyers at the firm. I think that guy's name is Lehman.

00:32:14
Speaker 3: It is played by Reuben Santiago Hudson, who is an actor and a writer. He wrote the adaptation of ma Rainie's Black Bottom. Oh not kidding. Wow, he's just a very yeah, he's a very versatile guy anyways, which I think my friend Patrick was in as an extra really yeah, as a racist Irish man in Oh Pittsburgh. Mary got that track, Uh, well, shot up Patrick.

00:32:41
Speaker 2: But so Marianne is hanging out with Jackie, who is helping marian decorate her new apartment because women be doing woman things like decorating. And then Kevin and Marianne go to this big party in the building and this is where Marianne meets John Milton and he's like, Wow, you're beautiful, but your hair, well it looks like shit and you should change everything about it.

00:33:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole the whole neck thing.

00:33:11
Speaker 2: Right exactly. Meanwhile, Kevin is flirting with Christabella.

00:33:18
Speaker 3: And she's flirting right back. Bouschemy tests this you can't you care? Oh my god? Do you like it on top? Kevin?

00:33:27
Speaker 2: Like, and then he's like, excuse me?

00:33:29
Speaker 3: Is your wife a Jedi's woman? Kevin? I better get out of here. You're like just the most written by man woman ever. Yeah, but it felt like it for me, it transcended and became camp. Do you like it on top? Kevin?

00:33:45
Speaker 2: This is an extremely campy movie. It's taking itself very seriously. But the camp is that I'm qualifiers true.

00:33:53
Speaker 4: I mean that's the thing about The Devil, right, is that, like, you can't really be dead serious about Devil stuff.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: The Devil is camp.

00:34:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a campy, little guy.

00:34:03
Speaker 4: I'm just look at that outfit for a start, what is that pitchwork for. It's for poking people in the butt. It's true, he's a kinky little guy. This movie made me think of Angel Heart, which is, like, I don't know, to me, a similarly campy devil movie where it's like supposed to be a twist that it's the devil, but you're like, this has clearly been the devil the entire time, and like, you know, with like great style. Is directed by Ellen Parker, but where like if you had to come up with the point of it, you would have no idea what to say. Yeah, And they both have like over the top dramatic endings at opposite ends of the twelve year old boy spectrum, which I'm excited to talk about when we get there.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, because ultimately the I mean as close it's trying to say something about free will, but I think it is making a very simple and should be you know, followed moral, which is do not legally defend and a super criminals, yeah, like a child's sex abuser. And you're like, well, all right, got it.

00:35:08
Speaker 4: I agree, And you know, for most people who don't have that job in the audience. You're like, already not doing that.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, that's true. You're like, I did it.

00:35:18
Speaker 4: And then if that is your job, I have to get out a postcard and write to whatever studio made this.

00:35:24
Speaker 2: It's true. Okay. So they're at this party and then eventually Milton summons Kevin and then a couple of the other attorneys to his penthouse apartment, which is just this like big room. There's no bedroom, there's no bed, there's a kitchen.

00:35:41
Speaker 4: He's an anti Samantha Jones. She's all bedroom, he's no bedroom.

00:35:46
Speaker 3: I think this is a later scene in the same space, but that whole like where does he sleep? We don't know where does he fuck everywhere?

00:35:54
Speaker 2: You're like, no, that is the scene.

00:35:56
Speaker 3: Oh it is okay, that is Yeah, it's awesome.

00:36:01
Speaker 4: Also Edward Collen coated except Edward Collin fucts nowhere famously.

00:36:05
Speaker 3: The thing is, I want that same line read from Robert Patt's no way.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: Oh that's kind of the accent he's doing in Mickey seventeen. So I feel like he could pull it out.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: It is, Yeah, he can do it.

00:36:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:36:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:36:24
Speaker 2: In any case, Milton gives Kevin a new case to work on this big time real estate developer named Alexander Cullen. Okay, Collin, speak.

00:36:36
Speaker 3: Of the devil, Alexander Cullen. Unfortunately, the Alexander Collin penthouse is Donald Trump's penthouse in New York.

00:36:43
Speaker 4: Really is, Yeah, except it's like what if Donald Trump was the dad from Poultergeist? And you're like, at this point, I'll take it.

00:36:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:36:51
Speaker 2: Also, Donald Trump's name is invoked in this movie at some point where they're at a party and someone says Donald Trump was supposed to be here, but he had a business emergency, and you're like, oh.

00:37:00
Speaker 3: My god, I mean I'm sure that that was like the condition for using the apartment or something like you need to bring me up in a way that makes just any.

00:37:10
Speaker 4: Reply that I have business emergencies and not going to sex offender Island emergencies.

00:37:16
Speaker 3: Yes, somehow, our fascist president does weasele his way into this movie that at least has the decency to be about the devil.

00:37:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, not take up ahead of ourselves, but this this movie does imply something about the craigten Nelson character that you kind of feel like people in the know probably knew about Trump in the nineties too interesting.

00:37:36
Speaker 2: Perhaps, yeah, I believe it. We'll clarify that shortly. But what we know about Alexander Cullen now is that he has been charged with murdering three people, including his wife, and it's going to be this big, very public case. But Kevin is up to the challenge.

00:37:56
Speaker 3: Go Kevin, lead counsel. Kevin, I feel fine, just honestly, you need to change your name like I am. You could be the best layer in the world. I'm not working with Kevin. Come on, not for a murder trial, right My life is on the line. Leave Kevin out of it.

00:38:16
Speaker 2: So then Kevin meets with this Alexander Cullen played by Craig t Nelson, And what's his thing again? I know that he has like horrible politics. I know that he's like not a good person. I like it's hard to keep tracked t Nelson. I know very little about me too.

00:38:35
Speaker 4: I miss Craig tel.

00:38:37
Speaker 2: I think we might have brought him up on the podcast before. I don't remember it, but any I think he's he's not a great guy anyway. He's not thrilled with Kevin taking the case, but he doesn't have much of a choice. Meanwhile, mary Anne, who now has a completely different haircut and hair color, goes shopping with her friend Jackie, and then this weird thing happens where Jackie's like, look at my titties. Are they fake? Are they real? Touch them, feel them? And then Marianne sees Jackie's face and body briefly transform into something that looks demonic.

00:39:15
Speaker 3: Looks like bad cgi.

00:39:17
Speaker 4: There's nothing more satanic than girls touching each other's boobs famously.

00:39:22
Speaker 3: Like right away, you're like, got it, got I see the go.

00:39:27
Speaker 4: Ask Alice school of Satanism.

00:39:29
Speaker 3: Chraigtie Nelson, from what I can tell, is your sort of garden variety, like right leaning libertarian, dork ass loser, but I do this. His Wikipedia page is fascinating because I've noticed this as like an editorial thing. I'm like, I'm sure it's like his reps doing it or something. But in the personal life section, whenever someone is truly like a piece of shit, people will edit it to end it on something innocuous in the hopes that you're scanning. Because it's like he endorsed John McCain, He was a regular guest on and Beck and then it ends on Nelson is also a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan, and you're like, you can't fool me. Yeah, I saw Glenn Beck like whatever, But.

00:40:11
Speaker 4: You're supposed to go about your day and the rest of your life thinking Craig T. Nelson, go pack go Yeah exactly.

00:40:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay. So then after mary Anne witnesses this really bizarre thing with her friend Jackie, she keeping is stressfulling and yes, I also turned into a demon when I shop. Yeah, if a three way mirror is present, absolutely indeed.

00:40:37
Speaker 3: And my hot friends are undressing in front of me, and I'm feeling insecure about my bob. Come on.

00:40:44
Speaker 2: So she freaks out and she tells Kevin that things are weird and that actually she hates this apartment and she doesn't like that he's never home anymore because he's so busy working all the time. And Kevin does not take this well. He's furious. He's screaming at her, but then she starts crying, so he consoles her and it gets horny. Let's yeah, the line read there is hilarious. They start fucking on the floor, but as they're having sex, he keeps seeing Christabella instead of mary Anne, and Marianne can tell something is wrong and that he's not fully present. Then we cut away. Kevin's mother, Alice comes into town for a visit and they run into Milton in the elevator, and she seems very uncomfortable around Milton. Is it because he's the devil? I don't know, or is it.

00:41:45
Speaker 3: Because they had a thing back in the day.

00:41:48
Speaker 2: We'll find out. But another weird thing happens on the subway where Milton and Kevin are riding the subway for some reason. I don't no, they have so much money, why aren't they taking like private cars?

00:42:03
Speaker 4: Because he's the devil and he likes to be underground.

00:42:07
Speaker 3: Yes, well that is I read in the there was a Joel Schumacher version of this movie which was supposed to happen, which actually, my god, I can't believe it didn't. Right, there's already a lot of nipples in this movie. But here's the thing. There could have been more. There could have been more, but in the Joel Schumacher version, I think that that's probably left over. Because the Joel Schumacher version is it's like Dante's six Circles of Hell are going deeper and deeper into the subway system, which is so cute, which is a cool like visual idea, but I think that like what happened that didn't happen. And then there's just a random scene where these like wealthy characters who are classist are on the subway.

00:42:46
Speaker 4: For some reason, I wonder how much of Joel Schumacher's The Devil's Advocate ended up in Batman and Robin oh Never now.

00:42:54
Speaker 3: Makes you think rp to the Weirdest Man effort.

00:43:00
Speaker 2: But anyway, this strange thing happens on the subway where Milton tells this man that his girlfriend is currently cheating on him, and he seems to know a bunch of details, almost as if Milton is omniscient, almost like he's the devil.

00:43:19
Speaker 4: That's why America's Southern lawyer should learn Spanish. Gave him time on this one.

00:43:24
Speaker 2: Yes, also okay, and I can't claim to be an expert or even proficient in Spanish, but I know enough to know that al Pacino was not doing a very good job and he's it seems like he's speaking Spanish with an Italian accent, because I think al Pacino does know Italian.

00:43:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the degree to which he is phoning it in at volume one thousand. Is that's interesting because I was I was going to ask you. I was like, is it even close?

00:43:55
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty rough and it's clear because it keeps cutting away from him so you're not actually see him. So I think it's a lot of it is a dr and I think lines were probably like said to him one sentence at a time, and he's still blowing it.

00:44:09
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of there's a lot of ADR in this movie. My favorite ADR comes from it's misogynous ADR. It's when they move into the three bedroom apartment and they add the line three bedrooms. You know what that means a.

00:44:26
Speaker 6: Baby, Like you don't see her, you don't see her mug move that whole time. I was like, they absolutely added that, Like they're like, oh no, we never established that this character's only goal in life is to have Kyanta Reeve's baby, no matter how much he hates her.

00:44:44
Speaker 3: You know what that means?

00:44:45
Speaker 4: A baby seamless, no perfect, And then more weird things continue to happen at home.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: Marianne sees and speaking of babies, she sees a random baby in the apartment.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: And takes it in stride, takes it really in stride. She says, Hi, baby, the.

00:45:08
Speaker 2: Baby, where's your mummy. You're like, oh, she is cool as a cucumber about it until she sees what the baby is playing with, which are entrails, and then she's like, oh no, And then it seems like maybe Marianne is having a miscarriage. We don't know if it was a dream or if it was real. Marianne feels like she's losing her grip on reality. And again, Kevin is not handling this well. He's not listening to her. He is dismissing her, He's constantly gaslighting her.

00:45:35
Speaker 4: He's doing about as well as any husband named Kevin anyway.

00:45:40
Speaker 3: And it's a weird Keano performance. So the in my opinion, the like the reactions feel weird and outsized even for what he's doing, where it's like you're like, too loud, too loud, what's going on?

00:45:54
Speaker 2: Yes, I love this, boovie.

00:45:55
Speaker 3: It sucks.

00:45:56
Speaker 4: I keep imagining him saying to Charlie Is at some point like, honey, let's let's go to Los Angeles and I can infiltrate surf crime communities.

00:46:08
Speaker 3: Yeah was it?

00:46:08
Speaker 2: I guess this was this was after point break, right.

00:46:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know it's all a big soup in my head.

00:46:14
Speaker 1: Sure.

00:46:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, like his like post Speed but pre Matrix era. Yeah, a couple of rough ones. Yeah, because he is.

00:46:22
Speaker 4: The kind of actor where you feel like people were trying to figure out what roles he made sense in and this like I don't know if I feel like Tom Cruise would make more sense total role. I realized that, Yeah, recommending more Tom Cruise movies is a loaded thing to say. But I mean, but no, he's not the right Catholic intensity.

00:46:40
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, Like I love Keanu, but I think he is more often than not horribly miscast. He's definitely almost never put in the right role, and you know, I'm not unhappy to see it necessarily, but.

00:46:56
Speaker 3: Especially in like the nineties, where it's like they just hadn't quite figured out where he because he's he's great in the right role, right in the wrong role. And he always fully commits too, which I feel like, unfortunately like kind of works against him sometimes because he's fully committing to like a weird choice, right, because you're like.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: You can tell how hard he's trying, but is maybe not doing a very good job sometimes. Allah his performance in Dracula, I didn't think.

00:47:22
Speaker 3: That he was because I was reading there like this is a bad key out of performance. I'm like, I didn't think it was like bad. It just didn't think it was good. It's not right.

00:47:30
Speaker 2: It's just not right for him.

00:47:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also like it feels like it's not a protagonist role that you really have that much to do with, because like, isn't he gets mostly reacting to Steph.

00:47:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, I mean like al Pacino has like I mean, al Pacino is not miscast in this role, even though apparently he turned down this role three three different times because he was like it's too like trite, which he's right about, but I just I guess the he's he was like this is too and too trite, which makes sense because he is a really good actor, and that is true. But I guess they just said the right number, and he's like, all right, I'll do it. The theme of the movie everywhere goodness. Okay.

00:48:15
Speaker 2: So Kevin meanwhile, is working on this murder case with that Cullen guy who says he has an alibi, which is that he's been having an affair with his assistant and he was with her the night the murders happened, but Milton is considering taking Kevin off of this case because he sees how it's affecting Kevin and Marianne's marriage. But Kevin is like, no, I can have it all.

00:48:44
Speaker 3: It's a test. It's a test, and he passes.

00:48:46
Speaker 2: And he passes and he fails.

00:48:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's well for mary Anne, he feels. But I guess I interpreted that as like the Devil's like giving him a chance to do the right thing. And then he's like, no, I won't. Yeah, yeah, it's the whole free will Yeah, semi theme. Got is it a theme or is it guess something people mention a lot. It's I don't know that the free will thing towards the end. Yeah again. One of the many like weirdly executed, kind of iconic, campy things this movie does is like state the intended theme at the very end of the movie so loudly, how do you like them free wills?

00:49:26
Speaker 7: You're like, oh, I always like that, Yeah, it is fun. You're like, okay, so this movie is also insecure about what it's doing for sure.

00:49:38
Speaker 2: Then something happens with the Eddie Barzoon character, where what a name you know, yeah, he thinks Kevin is trying to take his job, and he's been doing some shady stuff and shredding a lot of doc in redding.

00:49:53
Speaker 3: Yes, not point break kind of shredding.

00:49:56
Speaker 4: Unfortunately he's getting Yeah, he's getting the shreddings. It feels like he's got a lot of refice to get through.

00:50:03
Speaker 2: Yes, And because of all of that question Mark Milton seems to send out some demons to kill Eddie Barzoon.

00:50:13
Speaker 4: This guy is cleverly as joggers, which you know, what's the difference Franklin.

00:50:17
Speaker 2: First as joggers, but then they kind of transform.

00:50:21
Speaker 3: In a way that's both like the lesson behind that one.

00:50:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we can talk more about that, but either way, Barzoon dies, which Marianne sees from her window and she has a breakdown. So Kevin rushes to be with her, but not before he wins the Cullen case. Don't you worry, because he never loses. And he goes to be with Marianne, who tells Kevin that Milton came into their home and raped her, and Kevin's like, I don't believe you. That's impossible because I was with him all day. So Kevin takes Marianne to the hospital for like psychiatric intervention. He basically like has her committed, because are the.

00:51:08
Speaker 4: Full Virginia Manson and Candy Man treatment where you get strapped to a table and they wheel you away. I'm your useless husband is like, goodbye.

00:51:15
Speaker 3: Honey, I'm gonna give you a little kiss. Okay, goodbye.

00:51:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she's saying, we have blood money on our hands. All the times that you one cases defending guilty clients, we are reaping the consequences of that now. And Kevin eventually realizes she's right, But it also he has to see a whole bunch of other things to fully believe it, such as and I was unclear exactly what was happening here, but I think the implication is that he sees Culin with Cullen's stepdaughter, who he has been sexually abusing.

00:51:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, yeah, I missed that.

00:51:59
Speaker 2: It's super unclear. Oh, because we don't really see we don't get like a good look really at any point of the stepdaughter.

00:52:06
Speaker 4: But then they're together at Jeffrey Jones's funeral, which is like the ideal place for plot development. And yeah, because there's this whole thing where craigten Nelson has been making this big show about like I just care about my stepdaughter. I'm not allowed to see my stepdaughter anymore, and these murder charges are bogus and my big secret is that I was having an affair with another consenting adult.

00:52:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the ticket.

00:52:31
Speaker 4: And I think it's that thing again of like Canna Reeves being like, wow, maybe I am defending an innocent client at this murder trial, which again is like, you're not going to make a living in criminal defense if you insist on having innocent clients, right you can. I feel like it makes more sense to focus on the sense of betrayal of like, oh, I thought I had a good understanding of who this person was morally and then it turns out that I completely mischecked them, and I feel like an idiot and like I didn't understand the terms of the bargain that I was making. Because then he gets acquitted and we see him like inappropriately touching his stepdaughter's back at Jeffrey Jones's funeral appropriately just right.

00:53:18
Speaker 3: Just can't even get into it. Yeah, that hadn't even really like connected for you, but you're totally right of like this character is not convincingly competent, like you don't believe he's the best lawyer, and it got.

00:53:32
Speaker 4: The football scholarship to law school, just like in Point Break.

00:53:36
Speaker 3: Well, it's like it helps his character development of like becoming a bad person if he knows and doesn't care, right, And it's not like the movie. The way that the movie wants him to be likable is like executed so weirdly because clearly the movie doesn't care if we think he's a good partner or not. He's never not screaming at Charlie's, so you're just like it's just weird.

00:54:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, it feels like they wrote all the other characters and then just had him sort of do what he had to do to make the scenes make sense. Right. Yeah, It's like he has to start off as someone who has no idea how to do his job properly in order to continue to be surprised, you know, because like, Yeah.

00:54:20
Speaker 3: Another Kanu line read that's going to be rattling around my head for years is when he was again his character who's a piece of shit, one might say the whole movie, Yeah, it is yelling at critinals and Secretary says, you've been polishing his knob for months and you don't know if he has foreskin. I was like, I don't don't yell foreskin at a lady. I'll say that even if you're prepping.

00:54:48
Speaker 4: A witness, write it on an index card and slide it across the table like it's a really high salary or something.

00:54:55
Speaker 3: That was just like such an unpleasant line.

00:54:58
Speaker 2: To hear, know, old writing choices.

00:55:02
Speaker 3: I also think that.

00:55:05
Speaker 4: In the supernatural vein this movie and Liar Liar, I think are both inspired by the O. J. Simpson Trial. It's one of my analyses, right because like we have this moment of like America feeling like a bit scandalized at criminal law and sort of what is maybe legally permissible but not morally permissible when you're mounting a defense, and that this movie and Liar Liar and Primal Fear, as I've mentioned before, but Liar Liar is a more fun comparison or about like what if you were a really good defense lawyer but then something supernatural happened, And it's also about appreciating your partner more. I guess, yeah, wow, I've never seen Liar Liar. Somehow, it's very fun it's Jim Carrey is a lawyer. He's having fun. I like, I like Jim Carrey. I realized that not everyone can handle I think I would like uncut Carrie.

00:56:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's fun. It's also got like I know.

00:56:06
Speaker 4: I've made this joke somewhere before, but who cares. It's like one of those like light nineties comedies that just revealing what the economy was like back then. Has like a beautiful orchestral score that makes me imacgin like a coronette player in the bathroom, like honey, honey, I'm learning my part for a liar. Liar Honey.

00:56:29
Speaker 2: I've seen that movie probably twenty times between the ages of like eleven and twelve and then never again.

00:56:36
Speaker 4: So I bet you could recite it like a massa.

00:56:39
Speaker 3: I bet.

00:56:40
Speaker 2: I bet.

00:56:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do. We should do like a maybe that's a Patreon theme or something like a lawyer brewery because it is interesting, like what whatever I mean? I know, Sarah, that's like so much of what your show is about, but like what our you know, pop culture perception of justice is depending on the given moment, and yeah, like this it feels almost like weird and Pollyanna ish for what this movie suggests, which is that the devil would have to intervene for a lawyer to act in bad faith, which is like.

00:57:12
Speaker 4: Great, yeah, And it's also it's interesting because it's like there are so many moments where it flirts with coherence, right, and like like this firm reminds me of like Wolfram and Heart from Angel, where they're like a law firm that very unsubtly, like we learn, is you know, up to all kinds of like shady, very high level international stuff that's all about like perpetuating wars and you know, keeping the working class down and doing like the real big corporate evil that I think is very different than just like being any defense lawyer protecting the rights of individuals in a trial setting. But it's like, but everyone hates successful criminal defense lawyers so much in nineteen ninety seven that the two kind of get like steamrolled together at a certain point.

00:57:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:57:58
Speaker 2: Right, Well, because on Kevin's journey of realizing, not that maybe journey maybe Ken, we have to talk about Kevin or whatever that movie's called.

00:58:14
Speaker 3: We literally have to talk about Kevin. Wow, wow, wow, oh no, it's come to this.

00:58:19
Speaker 2: He's seeing all of this evidence that maybe the law firm he works for is demonic, because then some like I don't know if this is like an attorney general or something. But he goes up to Kevin and he's like, by the way, your law firm is tied up in arms dealing and chemical weapons and money laundering and all this stuff. And so rather than Kevin, you know, just listening to his wife and believing her, he's like, well, now I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe where I work is evil.

00:58:51
Speaker 4: A guy from the Justice Department or whatever came and bothered me. So yeah, he set me straight, and so now I believe it.

00:58:57
Speaker 3: Which I do think is how a lot of men behave. But it makes it harder to believe the character has grown and changed because of how late in the movie that happened.

00:59:11
Speaker 2: Because he never actually believes his wife. No, you just know he gets the information elsewhere.

00:59:17
Speaker 3: And he also iconically barely reacts when he's like no, I mean he reacts when she dies, but then it sort of is like for two seconds anyway, and then anyways, WHOA.

00:59:26
Speaker 4: That was weird, Like, well, I gotta be back in court in twenty so I'll react.

00:59:31
Speaker 3: Later in some ways it ends up working out for my schedule.

00:59:35
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, well, okay, So what happens next is that at the hospital, Marianne takes her own life, and while that's happening, Kevin's mother, who's back in town, reveals this big secret that she has met John Milton many years before and actually he's Kevin's father.

00:59:59
Speaker 3: That twist was for still added. That twist is not in the original and the source of material, like most of the ending, is added for the movie. But I also it's interesting as as goofy as it is. I was sort of like, wait, Kevin's mom is fucking.

01:00:12
Speaker 2: And she's fucking the devil.

01:00:15
Speaker 3: Kevin's mom had sex when the Devil.

01:00:18
Speaker 4: I feel like we're speeding past that part.

01:00:20
Speaker 3: Like I want I wanted to cut away. I wanted to cut away with the Marvelettes playing in the background.

01:00:26
Speaker 2: Well, it's also not super clear how consensual that interaction might have been.

01:00:33
Speaker 4: For my own sanity, I would like to think that it was. But yeah, it's a very.

01:00:38
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna for also for the sake of my own brain, to say that it was consensual, because then it can still be funny but also, I mean that is like how and again you're like, okay, he's the devil, but how freely sexual assault and rape is just like tossed around as a plot point in this movie.

01:00:56
Speaker 4: You're just like yeah, yeah, And it's like the nineties model of ladies Man, where it's like, well, he was constantly surrounded by a vulnerable young woman who he was taking advantage of, so ladies man, and it's like that's right. It's like the opposite of that. It's like a man who's the enemy of all ladies, right.

01:01:14
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I'm like Keanu Reeves, who is a real ladies man.

01:01:18
Speaker 2: The ladies love him.

01:01:20
Speaker 4: It's true, lady, Yeah, he's a fine wine.

01:01:22
Speaker 3: It's true.

01:01:24
Speaker 2: So Kevin learns that John Milton is his father. He's also piecing together that Milton is the devil, so he goes to confront Milton.

01:01:36
Speaker 3: It's going through a lot again, a very funny reaction from Keanu where he's like oh what, like he seems like kind of like more annoyed than shocked, where he's like, stop, don't tell me this today on the day of my wife's tragic passing. Stop, Like he's so weird.

01:01:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he goes to Milton, and his suspicions that Milton is the Devil are confirmed, which means that Kevin is half devil or something like Spock. Yeah yeah, and now Kevin has to reconcile his past choices and behavior because Kevin has acted of his own free will. Milton explains that as the devil, he simply sets the stage, but he doesn't make anyone do anything. So Kevin making a shitload of money defending sex criminals and murderers, and Kevin neglecting his wife, all of that was his own doing, and Kevin has to like sort through.

01:02:44
Speaker 3: That, which I think is in some ways you could view that as the twist of the movie, being that men are accountable for their actions. And he's like, what not, Yeah, that is like pretty good. I think that's as coherent as this thing gets. I do like that. Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

01:03:03
Speaker 2: And then Christabella shows up. She is Kevin's half sister because Milton is also her father.

01:03:10
Speaker 3: They also added this for the movie, and you're like, was that necessary?

01:03:15
Speaker 4: But like, we haven't had enough non assault related nudity, so.

01:03:19
Speaker 3: Let's and let's just throw incest into the conversation. While we're at it precisely.

01:03:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the point where if you're editing it down for TNT, I do not feel jealous of your job.

01:03:30
Speaker 3: Right now, the movie just abruptly stops, like we don't know what to do.

01:03:34
Speaker 4: We don't know what to do, but it's not found right.

01:03:37
Speaker 2: Because after Cristabella shows up, Milton wants Kevin to in gregnate her so as to conceive the Antichrist.

01:03:48
Speaker 4: But also as like the children of the Devil, aren't they the Antichrist? And do they come together to make a whole Antichrist? Or is it an anti Antichrist? Is it an antipasto? It's very confusing.

01:03:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, do they cancel each other out? If they have sex and have a baby. Is it just the second coming of Christ?

01:04:04
Speaker 3: Yeah?

01:04:04
Speaker 4: What if they accidentally make Jesus?

01:04:07
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was also a little unclear on why it was so urgent to do it right at that moment, not that that is like the biggest even in the top ten issues going on in this scene, but I was like, okay, okay, so it is all of these disgusting, horrible things, but couldn't it be next week?

01:04:25
Speaker 4: Like it's all tied with the political situation in Hong Kong.

01:04:29
Speaker 3: You know it's well he also I the just whatever, the ham fistedness of the end, which is I like, it is super campy and goofy. But when he's like the twentieth century that never was on fire in the twentieth century, You're like, yeah, whatever.

01:04:45
Speaker 4: Okay, great, sure, I would like I think you should do a Patreon feature. That's just you reciting Alpachino's monologues from the end of this movie.

01:04:56
Speaker 7: He talks so much in this last scene he will not shut up.

01:05:00
Speaker 3: I like it, really he needs a power point. Really, he kind of is giving a ted talk at the end about the devil's behavior throughout the twentieth century. You're like, what, and which brings me to my conclusion. You have to have sex with your sister right now to conceive the Antichrist.

01:05:19
Speaker 2: And Kevin is acting like he's about to do that, but instead he shoots.

01:05:26
Speaker 4: Himself because the devil is omniscient but not telepathic evidently, or maybe it doesn't work on your own kids. If they had made this into a show, we would have gotten more lore. It would have been fun.

01:05:36
Speaker 3: But oh well, and the very flimsy because it's like, it feels like the movie just has to end at this point because there's been too many plot points introduced. They're like, we gotta stop, we gotta stop. But Keanu, being like justifying willingly participating in ancestual assault, He's like, well, that's where a crush on you. No, but it for he's about to do it because he had a crush are at work.

01:06:01
Speaker 2: You're just like, yeah, yeah, but he's But he stops and he shoots himself, which makes Milton burst into flames, and which makes Cristabella shrivel.

01:06:12
Speaker 3: Up and die.

01:06:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, she turns into a piece of drift. What I think that's pretty fun.

01:06:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what happens to women who aren't having sex with Keanu Reeves in this movie.

01:06:22
Speaker 4: That actually happens if he stopped being sexually active for a full twenty minutes, he can start desiccating.

01:06:28
Speaker 2: Yes, so they seem to die, or at least Crystabella does, but Kevin doesn't die despite the gunshot wound to his head. Instead, he's transported back to the scene at the beginning of the movie where he's defending that teacher who abuses his students, and he he's like, oh my god, I have a second chance. I can redeem myself. So he quits the case mid trial, which you're not supposed to do.

01:06:56
Speaker 3: You're not supposed to do that and all. No, but the optics of if this was some weird like fantasy he had at the urinal or whatever, like, it sort of feels like that. But then he goes back into this very serious trial, this trial where a child has been assaulted, and he starts making out with his wife. I was like, oh, yeah, god, Kevin, it's a very.

01:07:20
Speaker 4: Good point, and also like what's gonna happen? Like is it going to be a mistrial? And then your you know, child plaintiff has to go through all this again, like use your head, piano. I realize you can't as this character. But yeah, but isn't it just wonderful that the ending of this movie is it was all a dreamer? Was it is?

01:07:41
Speaker 3: It's the only thing this movie hasn't done at this point that you're like sure, like, oh, okay, we're doing it. And then al Pacino is, uh, the vanity is my favorite. Shit, You're like, what.

01:07:56
Speaker 4: He's playing a journalist, the other most evil profession according to the nineties.

01:08:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.

01:08:02
Speaker 2: That's true because the way the movie ends is this minor journalist character who we've seen before, but only at the very beginning. At the very end, he transforms into al Pacino, looks directly at the camera says, ah, yeah, vanity my favorite sin, and then he like winks and then cut to black.

01:08:24
Speaker 3: I love it, And then I think, honestly, this movie that has no restraint. I was really impressed that they had the restraint to spend a million dollars on painted black instead of sympathy for the devil. I thought that that was probably really hard for them to not use sympathy for the devil in this movie every single time al Pacino was on screen. And also sympathy for the devil had just been used in Legion or whatever the Denzel Washington Oh movie is, so maybe it was feeling like overplayed. So it does end kind of Judy Dungeon cat style at the end, you have just.

01:09:01
Speaker 6: A tale of cats, Like that's sort of the vibe of Alba.

01:09:07
Speaker 3: It is like that I.

01:09:08
Speaker 4: Would watch I'm actually watching this on a double bill with cats, like you would emerge no longer able to do math, you know, you.

01:09:15
Speaker 3: Would really be like I can't read. I don't remember where I'm from.

01:09:23
Speaker 4: Fallen is the Denzel Washington movie I'm thinking of when that came out in nineteen ninety eight, So that could be your Demonic Rolling Stones double feature as well.

01:09:31
Speaker 3: I did not. No, I also feel like Scorsese uses a needle drop with that song in like four hundred of his movies.

01:09:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody loves the Rolling Stones like Scorsese loves the Rolling Stones. I'm convinced that's true, and that's why he is Father Cannon And spoilers for the ending of Angel Heart, where by the way, de Niro is playing playing the devil but doing a Scorsese impression in order to play the devil. But it's like, what if Scorsese had long nail and it was always eating eggs. It's like, yeah, what if?

01:10:03
Speaker 3: What if? I'm in?

01:10:05
Speaker 4: And then it ends spoilers for Angel Heart, which is a very strange movie.

01:10:09
Speaker 3: I heard of it. Well.

01:10:11
Speaker 4: It ends with Mickey Rourke realizing that he's been had and that he just hasked to go to hell now, and he just goes to Hell and that's the end, and you're like, wow, I don't I mean, I didn't really like that character, but I don't really feel like.

01:10:24
Speaker 3: He deserves to go to hell.

01:10:25
Speaker 4: No, we're ending in hell. Okay, that's the end of the movie. And there's just like there's something to me that's so revealing about like these two endings where it's like you tangle with the devil, you don't really get the chance to make choices. He does a lot of speeches, and then at the end you either suffer all consequences or no consequences. Yeah, because it feels like it was never really about what you did. It's just about the sort of like feeling and masculinity of being damned.

01:10:51
Speaker 2: I don't know, right, Well, I guess if you're looking at the movie like it was all a dream, a vision of what his life could have been had he you know, sold out.

01:11:01
Speaker 3: He continue to do the job he does, right.

01:11:05
Speaker 2: Or is it that all of those events did happen and then he just gets like the biggest magic chance at redemption ever, which like he did not deserve. What has he done to earn any kind of redemption? Absolutely nothing.

01:11:22
Speaker 3: The moral of.

01:11:22
Speaker 4: This movie is if you die of suicide, you get a do over, which is not really what we needed to be telling people, And also he transforms into Jesus for a second.

01:11:35
Speaker 2: God, I keep missing Jesus, but with wings so like an angel.

01:11:39
Speaker 4: You can't take your eyes off this movie for a second. It's like a toddler.

01:11:43
Speaker 3: Some shit's gonna happen. It's very bizarre.

01:11:49
Speaker 2: Well, let's take a quick break and then we will come back to discuss.

01:12:03
Speaker 3: And we're back, Sarah. I would love to, if you're down, start this discussion with a little understanding of like the historical context that this movie was coming out into. What was the I know we've sort of been like talking around this for much of the episode, but like, what was the state of Satanic media in the late nineties.

01:12:28
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Yeah, I mean I feel like we had stuff and we can see it in this movie, kind of referencing the millennium approaching and asking this question of like what kind of a millennium are we going to have? Which is very interesting to try and think back to in a pre nine to eleven context, because it turned out that the kind of millennium the United States was going to have, at least so far, would have the tone set for us by turning an act of terrorism and tragedy into an opportunity to destabilize an entire region while searching for profit and claiming to be getting revenge while actually doing something unrelated and relying on the average Americans' misunderstandings about geography in order to you know, make a lot of money for Halliburton. So it feels like, interestingly, the kind of millennium that we started off with with our decision to start a war in the Middle East was one where we got to do anything we wanted by playing the victim. And I think that that's there's kind of an interesting It's just interesting to see this movie, I think partly because it feels like a combination of like these ideas that we had that I think America has historically used about Satan, where I think Satan is kind of the great American scapegoat, where like, if you're claiming to eradicate Satan, you can behave pretty horribly, but if you're claiming to be on the right side of a holy war, then whatever you do is pretty much justified, including genocide if you're talking about the way that North America was colonized. And then the very like robust nineties genre of the courtroom drama, which I think feels itself to be this very rational, academic kind of mode of storytelling that helps make people feel smarter for consuming, or at least I think that's part of the basis for the appeal, but really is able to tell these highly emotional stories that allow Americans to feel that the Constitution is often this annoying thing that gets in the way of punishing defendants a little bit too freely because it's politically popular and it's fun to be vindictive.

01:14:41
Speaker 3: Fuck, okay, Sarah, Sarah, you're so smart.

01:14:45
Speaker 4: And also we you know, Starbucks has like upholstered chairs. At this time, it's just like a wild time to be alive. I guess I want to impress you guys.

01:14:56
Speaker 3: You're so smart. No, I mean, yes, that's like so much to think about, but I agree, like because I what I was struggling with, I guess was not really putting myself in the audience for this, but like trying to understand what did the movie want you to walk away thinking, which I think is it's hard to know, mostly a craft issue that we don't know. But I'm curious. I just I'm like, I was really kind of racking my brain, and that's why I was looking at like adaptation changes and stuff like that to be like, huh, what did this very successful movie want us to leave thinking about? And I guess what? I could not figure it out.

01:15:47
Speaker 2: I still don't know. I have similar questions not only regarding the movie overall, the overall narrative and themes, but also as they relate to how we're supposed to view Mary Anne as a character, how we are supposed to be perceiving her, and whether or not we were supposed to be empathizing with her or what.

01:16:11
Speaker 3: Exactly My view was that will leving because I feel like I don't know. She's not a well written character, right, but she's better written than I thought she would be in that at least for a good chunk of the movie. The things she does have narrative consequence, which most movie wives that is just not the case. I felt like we started by empathizing with her and then we end by pitying her, which is, like I thought, like a very unpleasant turn of events.

01:16:41
Speaker 2: That plus I well, because like she starts out, especially upon them moving to New York and Kevin accepting this job and they move into this big, beautiful apartment and now she's tasked because she's the his wife who has given up her job. I think her job in Florida was she was selling repossessed cars.

01:17:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was like she was doing something alone shark related.

01:17:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she was also doing both kind of dirt bags, but like you know, she had a she was a career dirt bag, and he took that from her.

01:17:14
Speaker 4: Get a cell phone and a little suit, and she was like doing business on the side of a highway, which is just such a nineties feminism girl boss thing to show.

01:17:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like when Julia Robberts knows how to fix a car and you're supposed to be like and you're like, they really do do something there.

01:17:30
Speaker 2: She moved to New York and she starts. The two things we know about her at that point are that she wants desperately to have a baby and she doesn't know how to decorate her apartment. And we're like, okay, can we get maybe a third thing?

01:17:50
Speaker 3: Like what see? I felt like the apartments of it's super clunky. Like I do feel what they're trying to do there is like she's a society wife now and there's like class tension between her and everyone's surrounded by and it does pay off on that, but like for her again, like I just I don't know, Like there were things that I'm like, Okay, it's being done badly, but I think I get what they're trying to do, But this I don't know, Like just like the same thing with Jackie, who at first I was like, Okay, is this going to be a super prescriptive black best friend character that we saw so much throughout the nineties, And the answer is yes and also opposite, like I don't know, and also she's a demon, so yeah, I just don't think Jackie should have been either al Pacino nor a demon, because it does end up feeling like Mariann almost has someone to talk to, and I feel like it would have been a more interesting and cohesive choice to write Jackie an actual character and have them like going through this together or like, I don't know, like it just felt so clunky the way that like there were elements introduced about mary Anne that like didn't pay off or like went away because they're like she's going mad kind of thing.

01:19:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Oh my gosh, I've there's so much to unpack here. There's a scene where Marianne and Jackie are talking and mary Anne is trying to adjust to this new life she had been accustomed to working. She says something like, this is the first time since I was thirteen years old where I haven't had at least one job. She liked to be out in the workforce, and she liked to be occupied with something that wasn't just like domestic tasks and decorating her house. So she's like lamenting about this to Jackie. Jackie's just like, what are you complaining about. Our husbands are rich and just enjoy the money. Let's go shopping and drink chardonnay all day.

01:19:55
Speaker 3: And you're like, wait, she's being written so poorly. And then later it's like, no, we rude her mad on purpose. She's the consumption demon. You're like, what.

01:20:04
Speaker 2: Right, And it's evil to get any sort of cosmetic surgery, And but she's written to be this like very you know, vapid, vein, like spending money frivolously kind of person.

01:20:19
Speaker 3: Well, it's just like the very like gendered way that like sin is presented to where it's like everyone it's not like the women are worse than the it's but it's like they're they're quote aqut bad in these very stereotypical ways where it's like their sins are vanity and their sins are like consumption, and then men's sins are like greed and artisty like, and there's really no overlap except for the character of Pam. Pam is the only woman who has a career, and I do feel like we are allowed to well, I guess that, so does what's her name, missus the devil Crystabella, Yeah, Chris Stabella and pasta or whatever.

01:21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, oh yeah, when you're here, your family at the the Devil's Garden, So that's kind of a separate thing. And then as Marianne is observing all of these sinful women and trying to confide in Kevin to be like, things are really weird, things are very wrong. I don't like our new lives. It feels like we're doing something wrong and I'm seeing demons and blah blah blah, and he is, you know, again, constantly dismissing her and gaslighting her and all of that. What I can't really figure out is if the again, if the movie wants us to empathize with her, or if it wants us to think that she's being hysterical and getting in the way of Kevin's success or a little bit of both. It almost feels to me like, yeah, we're supposed to empathize with her a bit, But also it felt as though, and I haven't read anything to this effect, so I can't confirm this, but it almost felt as though the director was like, Hey, really ramp up the hysterics here, Charlie's so that we feel like she's almost a foil to Kevin. Because there's that scene where she's she's in the church and she's crying and she's wrapped in a blanket and then she like throws it off of her and she's naked and crying and screaming. Yeah, And I'm like.

01:22:39
Speaker 3: What my like feeling on her is that like we are supposed to think she's telling the truth, because we are given every indication that she's telling the truth. Like if we thought we were supposed to not find her credible, we wouldn't see what she sees, right, And so like, I don't think that we're supposed to not believe her or I don't know. I guess I didn't see it as like we're not supposed to hear as a foil. It just felt like she was this kind of like stand in for virtue in a virtueless world. It's like her and the mom that they're like, I don't know, like they're the only virtuous way to live is to move back to Florida and go to church for like twenty hours a day.

01:23:18
Speaker 4: Right, and it quite your original profession that you were going to use to improve your family's financial situation and become a peanut farmer or whatever.

01:23:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Yeah, I don't.

01:23:30
Speaker 2: Know if it's because we're also in the middle of prepping for an episode on Don't Worry Darling, which is also a movie about and.

01:23:39
Speaker 3: Also very Rosemary's Baby coated.

01:23:42
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, but similar to Devil's Advocate. Don't Worry Darling is a movie about a woman who starts to suspect something is very wrong with her husband's job and her husband's boss, and she tries to speak up about it. But that movie. Not to say that that movie is like awesome and perfect or anything like that, but at least it's told from the woman's point of view.

01:24:06
Speaker 4: So mag Fenf's eighty percent of Don't Worry Darling was from the perspective of Harry Styles, I would not have made it right.

01:24:14
Speaker 2: But I guess my point is, I just it felt to me like we are supposed to empathize and or pity the Marian character. But also I feel like the movie is reveling in and exploiting the idea of a woman's hysteria, for sure, And that's part of the the like spookiness of this movie and the tension of this movie.

01:24:43
Speaker 4: When it feels very down in Betty Draper, you know, and it feels like kind of that also, like to the extent that there is a coherent theme happening. And I may be too generous and seeing this in it, but it feels like it's you know, kind of you can I feel the echoes at least of media about the kind of long lineage of men who have signed on to value their relationships with scary mentoring men at work over what it's doing to their families, and the kind of like I don't know, parable of the New York professional class.

01:25:22
Speaker 3: Yeah that's true. Yeah, I've like, I don't know, it's so incoherent that it's hard Like I feel like she is I mean, ultimately, she is defined and happening in reaction to his narrative, right, So it's it's weird because there are like technically a lot of scenes that we see from her point of view, but it's never like, I mean, her whole story is happening in reaction to his by design, And so it's like, I don't know it's true, and I feel bad because it's like Shirley's is doing her best with what she's given, but it's but it's again, it's like it almost felt like a fake out that they gave her women to talk to, but like actually they didn't. Yeah, and so I don't know, like there's a cooler version of that character who it's like in the same way that you see Keiani's character get more and more depraved, even though he also starts that way, So you're like, what is the progression here? Like you also see her become more and more like helpless in a way that I don't know what they're trying to say.

01:26:33
Speaker 4: And like really quickly in kind of a Victorian femininity approach where it's like, you know, most women are four or five bad dreams away from snapping, and it's like we mental health science has come really quite far in the past one hundred years, not as far as it could, but you know, or.

01:26:50
Speaker 3: Like you're saying, Kaitlin like the hysteric woman trope, where like it's just it's so like inconsistent and weird because I did, like, you know whatever, I didn't like like her character like wow, so compelling, but but like going back to like the beginning where there is a clear element of like how she feels about stuff and like she feels out of place, and like that is interesting, Like she's a total fish out of water, and we know why you can almost understand like why she ends up like being kind of charmed by the al Pacino character, because first of all, he's the devil that's kind of his trademark, but also that like she specifically tells Kevin going into the party, please don't leave me alone and uncomfortable. He leaves her alone immediately, and we do see that bear through. She has an Alexander Petrowski well it's like and she's super mad at him. Afterwards, she makes him sleep on the couch and she ends up talking with al Pacino, who is like the only person at the party who isn't making her uncomfortable and it's like, that's wild because if he's doing she'll be making her so uncomfortable. Well, because he's.

01:27:54
Speaker 2: Like, your hair like shit. He's like nagging her, your hair looks like shit. But he's like doing it sensually, question mark, And I guess she's.

01:28:05
Speaker 3: Like just doing the devil thing.

01:28:07
Speaker 4: And like heures how annoying lawyers are at parties. You know that if the devil starts snagging you, you're like, oh, thank god.

01:28:14
Speaker 3: Right, You're like, this is the most tolerable person here. Yeah, I don't know, Like I Marianne, I think is an interesting character, which is like what makes it such a shame that they sort of reduce her to this very tropy thing, for sure, and the end that the fact that, and it's like I appreciate that whatever. It's like, when are we going to have kids? Are we going to have kids? Is a big narrative in a lot of people's marriage, but it also feels very like trite to be like, and all she wants to do is have a baby, But don't worry. It's the nineties and we know that we have to do a little bit of feminism. So she used to have a job and she misses it, so you're like, cool, it does feel yeah, Calen.

01:29:02
Speaker 4: The more I think about it, it feels like the kind of Victorian hysterical woman where she also is like the implication is kind of that she's becoming mentally ill because of all the evil around her. Oh yeah, you know, and this idea of like the Victorian woman as like both weaker and more virtuous than men, and therefore, like, you know, if you're doing something, if you work for the devil, your wife's gonna get sick, right.

01:29:27
Speaker 2: Well. Then it's also if I was observing something that I thought was wrong or that seemed evil, and I was trying to tell my partner about it, and he was constantly dismissing me, it, ignoring me and gaslighting me, I would grow increasingly frustrated, and I would also start yelling and screaming and crying. Yeah, and so her behavior is not unjustified. It's just that the movie is like, and oh, but she she's so But I don't even know what the movie is trying to say.

01:30:01
Speaker 8: I don't know because it's like that I don't think like the movie like the movie can't have it's trying to have it always too because they're also styling her like a woman who's gone mad, where it like looks like she's two black eyes from crying at all times and shit like that, and like right.

01:30:15
Speaker 4: But we also know what she's saying is true, right, and that these are like correct visions. There aren't visions exactly, they're like she's seeing correctly what's going on. But then she paints their apartment to look like a global village cafe, so that implies that she's losing it.

01:30:33
Speaker 3: She has she has virtue vision, I think is like ultimately, she's she has virtuous goggles on in all times, and Keanu does not have virtuous goggles on, and it kills her question mark like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I wish that she had gone home with his mother.

01:30:53
Speaker 4: That would be nice, That's what I wish it had happened. Yeah, And that's a nice performance from Ju to th Ivy as his tent revival type mom. I feel like, ultimately the only character who this movie really cares about is the devil, and yeah, that's you know, it's a fun devil. They did get with the devil.

01:31:12
Speaker 3: I do think, yeah, use that would be a fun I don't know enough. Do you have a favorite portrayal of the devil? Sarah as kind of a devilhead yourself, So yeah, I put this in the series.

01:31:25
Speaker 4: One of my all time favorite devil portrayals is a Saturday Night Live sketch that's a parody of the People's Court where John Lovett's is the devil and he's trying to get damages from the plaintiffs.

01:31:39
Speaker 3: I are.

01:31:41
Speaker 4: One of them is Rosanna Arcat, who must have been hosting that week because she sold her soul in exchange for like three professional hairdryers and stuff, and so it's the devil trying to get the People's Court to side with him for like, you know, the three thousand dollars that he invested in her hair business and exchanged for her soul that she then wasn't able to make work. And I feel like that's it, Like it feels like, you know, the devil. I really like depictions where you have kind of like a funny, low stakes devil who's having a hard time on daytime TV, because I feel like, in actual execution, it all seems a bit low rent. You know that you have to like go soul by soul trying to get people to sign bad contracts, and of course the association of the devil with contract laws relatively modern, but I mean I really like that we've taken it and like, you know that the devil and lawyers do go together and it's about you know, being pressured into signing a bad contract and a lot of our modern depictions. I also like, I saw a bit dazzled at a young age, and we'll always have a soft spot for that one. For the Elizabeth Hurley Devil.

01:32:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a fan of the Elizabeth Hurley Devil. I mean just one styling alone, exactly. Yeah, So I feel like, I like, I always love a comedy devil. And then if I'm watching a horror movie where it's like, actually the villain is the devil, I'm like, whatever, you know, because I feel like the things that like I saw I was watching I don't know, like some TikTok about Hereditary the other day where I saw a position I like, surprisingly don't see people state that often, but which I really agree with where somebody was like, you know, if only they hadn't had spoilers for Hereditary, if only they hadn't had the whole like Satan worshiping aspect uncovered in Hereditary because like, yeah, we thought that as well, right, because like the extreme bleakness of just the interpersonal stuff and the depiction of like a family being really horrible to each other while grieving is so scary.

01:33:51
Speaker 4: And then you bring in the devil and you're like, ugh, whatever, you know's a cop out.

01:33:57
Speaker 3: The Devil's usually a cop out.

01:33:58
Speaker 4: I feel like, yeah, I feel like the devil usually makes things less scary. So I love a good comedy devil. I mean, I think Flanders as the Devil, and tree House of Horror is also pretty iconic. Do either of you have favorite devil depictions?

01:34:15
Speaker 2: I'd have to know.

01:34:16
Speaker 3: I didn't. I feel like I didn't see the Dazzled until I watch it for this show. I don't know. I think the only devil depiction, oh, you know what, the Cow and Chicken devil, the little cartoon devil that bounces on his own.

01:34:29
Speaker 4: But I don't think I remember I remember cowing Chicken. I don't remember that devil. I got to check that out.

01:34:35
Speaker 3: They had a devil. Yeah, the cartoon network devil is probably my favorite devil. But there you go. But enough about the devil. Let's talk about how race is depicted in this movie. Oh yeah, it was the nineties, so you know, I'm sure they did a good job. This is a movie that has non white characters. It is again like an overwhelmingly white view of New York, but the non white characters who we see are overwhelmingly these broad racist stereotypes. I think really with the exception of the two wealthy black characters Jackie and Lee lu.

01:35:19
Speaker 2: And they've they've been corrupted by greed.

01:35:22
Speaker 3: They're actually al Pacino or something. So it's like, but even they are like severely underwritten, you know, in comparison to the other characters in this world. I mean, I guess Jackie is sort of like the only quote unquote friend at any point to Maryanne. But again, she's whatever they're to either be like I'm gonna teach you how to be a society wife, or like its just everything she does is in reaction to Maryanne or al Pacino, Like she doesn't really exist independently. And then they make that canon, which is a choice, right.

01:36:01
Speaker 2: And then with her husband Lehman, he's barely a character, but he he's the guy who approaches Keanu in Florida to be like, hey, come up to Yeah, he says something. He thinks that he's being pranked. He's like, oh hah, I can put you up to this. You being black is a part of the Joe right, And I'm like, what are you talking about?

01:36:28
Speaker 4: Like what was going on in Florida law firms in nineteen ninety seven.

01:36:32
Speaker 3: I mean, I was like, I guess that that is a realistic depiction of a random white guy at a bar in Florida. Is that he's true weird and racist, But like, yeah, that so there's like a lot of offhand comments about that most black and brown characters appear as antagonists or just like, I mean, I'm thinking about the guys on the train are portrayed in this very stereotypical way. One of the two unhoused people who kills Jeffrey Jones is a black cacharacter that I didn't even want to like rehash the specific stereotypes there, because you know what they are. But it's just like, yeah, it is very nineties in its portrayal of race. The Delroy Lindo character.

01:37:15
Speaker 2: Yes, so I think you were alluding to this toward the top of the episode, Sarah, But the question of because Kevin defends his character in court saying that he was simply carrying out a religious practice, which he has the constitutional right to do.

01:37:34
Speaker 3: At darn constitution.

01:37:38
Speaker 2: But he's making the argument like we might think that killing a goat at home is weird in our Western Christian world, but is it any weirder than eating veal or getting circumcised or other cultural practices that we deemed to be normal. And it's like, yeah, fair point. But it feels like the movie is presenting all of this as like we are still supposed to think that Filipe Moyees is like weird and what he's doing is really fucked up.

01:38:11
Speaker 3: Because he had to hire the devil to defend him, like that tells you everything you need to know about it.

01:38:16
Speaker 4: And he's got too many candles, like he's either shooting a Celine Dion music video or he's worshiping the devil. As the implication I feel like.

01:38:24
Speaker 3: And now, if Joel Schumacher had been staging the Candle set, Oh Boy, based on what we know about his Phantom of the Opera sets, it would have just it felt a little slap dash. There's a better director to have a room full of candles.

01:38:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that felt all over the place and racist in the way that that character is portrayed.

01:38:44
Speaker 4: And the idea is that right that, like Hannah Reeves is making sort of a classic nineties liberal argument of like multiculturalism is good and it's like too much culture equals devil.

01:38:57
Speaker 3: Right.

01:38:57
Speaker 4: I think Law and Order was also pointing out a time it's like, don't be too tolerant. You could be tolerating the devil.

01:39:04
Speaker 3: Devil.

01:39:05
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's a mess.

01:39:10
Speaker 3: He's just a mess. This movie's just a weird mess, like mess see and yet weirdly well executed.

01:39:15
Speaker 4: Like the art design is fantastic, it looks great, it looks the editing I think is done very well. And then in terms of theme, you're like, what.

01:39:24
Speaker 3: You have to imagine that they were editing around a lot.

01:39:28
Speaker 4: But including al Pacino speaking Spanish sort of.

01:39:32
Speaker 3: But the just a little more about the production. I mean, we've talked about a lot of it. Some of it's just funny, which is that al Pacino hated Taylor Hackford, the director, and would always show up late and was like, I hate this guy. He allegedly did not like Keanu and thought Keanu was doing a bad job, which is mean to say, but is it incorrect to say we don't know? Oh, and that speaking to your earlier points, Sarah that this movie was sort of languishing in production for a while, but then got a real shot to the arm when the O. J. Simpson case happened. They were like, oh, this is now's the time to do this, and now we've got.

01:40:11
Speaker 4: A green light, these evil lawyer movie.

01:40:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:40:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might even say this movie was in development.

01:40:18
Speaker 3: Hell, that's where the Devil lives. Albacina's keeping the movie inside of the inside of his room two ears, big fuck rough that he lives in everywhere.

01:40:32
Speaker 4: So it's like, you don't ever want to just lie down, really, even if you don't, even if you don't.

01:40:38
Speaker 2: Need to sleep, it's nice to lie down.

01:40:41
Speaker 3: It's so nice to lie down.

01:40:42
Speaker 2: It's my favorite thing to do.

01:40:43
Speaker 3: Colin, you don't want to lie down? The Devil doesn't need floor time? Am I really to believe that? But yeah, I'm like I think that. That's Oh. The last thing I wanted to say was about Pam, uh.

01:40:56
Speaker 2: Because I left her out of the recap altogether because I was like, who who even is Pam? But Louise, please continue.

01:41:04
Speaker 3: I like Pam. Also, Pam is played by an actor named Deborah Monk, who had never heard of but she has a tony and emmy.

01:41:10
Speaker 2: So wow, she's halfway to egotting.

01:41:13
Speaker 4: Now that you know Deborah Monk's face, you're going to see her in everything. I feel like she's kind of the cherry of this firm.

01:41:20
Speaker 3: Perhaps I whatever the character is random, but I did feel like it just brought up another nineties Ish trope where there's two women that work at this law firm. One is the daughter of the devil. We know that she is multilingual, but we don't really know what she does because she's there to be hot, which is not saying anything about the actor as saying that's how this part was written for Connie Nielsen. But Pam is allowed to just be good at her job, and I think the reason that is is because she is in her forties and is not rail Finn, which is the like in the nineties.

01:41:57
Speaker 4: I think you're allowed to be good at your job as a woman and actually depicted doing it occasionally if you're like menopausal and are wearing a top with big buttons on it.

01:42:07
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, well, it's just like the another example of like you just can't win no matter who you are. Of like, sure if we are if we are telling you that this character is not sexually desirable, then we will be okay with her being just canonically good at her job. You're like, now, what the fuck?

01:42:23
Speaker 2: What the fuck?

01:42:24
Speaker 3: I guess she's on The Gilded Age, which is a show that I watch, So there you go.

01:42:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, anyways, I cap meaning to watch that. I like to see Cynthia Nixon do something else.

01:42:35
Speaker 3: You'd love, you'd love the damn Gilded Age. But my mom, I love a big over the top house. It's a show to watch with your mom. It's good.

01:42:43
Speaker 2: Is Christine Baranski in it? Or remind me?

01:42:45
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, she and Cynthia Nix and our sisters, which genius, oh genius casting. Yeah.

01:42:51
Speaker 4: I do think my mom would get bored very quickly if there's not like one murder per episode, because she's very like that's what she expects out of TV.

01:43:00
Speaker 3: Point.

01:43:01
Speaker 4: But you know, we can always I can always edit something, and you could.

01:43:04
Speaker 3: Just edit a random murder into everything, yeah, and then I'll be like, there you go, someone's dead.

01:43:09
Speaker 4: I just feel like I cut from unsolved mysteries, and then I'll be like, Okay, this is all about the murder. It may not be clear right now, but they're investigating the murder by having sex in this nice bed but can't to que and cover.

01:43:22
Speaker 3: I really liked the story.

01:43:23
Speaker 4: That they got in legal trouble with like this sort of statue, the big like art piece behind al Pacino's desk in his big Devil office because an artist who had made a very similar sculpture sued and they were gonna maybe not be able to release it on time for home video if they and so they had to like go back and kind of incredibly at this point in time digitally alter the footage of this art piece so that it, whoa basically wasn't too similar to the the artist's previous piece, which apparently they were emulating pretty closely, and so we're only had like human figures trapped in this kind of mailstorm mailstrom, mailstrom, that's probably the word. So they like had to it's definitely not male storm, that would just be a lot of male and a cyclone. But so they had to smooth the human figures out of this piece until the kind of big final monologue scene when they're allowed to be there again. But it's I guess you think about the people who had to do that job.

01:44:26
Speaker 3: That's so funny to me because like, no matter which way, no matter what way you hack it, it looks like shit. Like yeah, so that also. Yeah, I also saw that they used Pacino's like Godfather Too face to digitally edit in for.

01:44:42
Speaker 4: When He's which no one will notice.

01:44:46
Speaker 3: That movie is only twenty years old at this time. That movie is an obscure little film.

01:44:51
Speaker 2: No one's ever seen that.

01:44:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that was everything I had. This movie was very successful, but I do feel like, and let me know if I'm just if this is like an I've missed the boat thing. But I do think this movie has sort of been lost to time. It didn't really have staying power.

01:45:07
Speaker 4: I agree, right, It's one of those movies that did really well at the time, but like, who's ever like, come on, Sonny Boy or fourteen, time to watch The Devil's Advocate. You're gonna learn so much about life.

01:45:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be fun, though this is this has been lost to time to the point where I barely knew what this movie was and I thought I.

01:45:25
Speaker 3: Thought it was completely differentime. I was thought it was Met Joe Black, and you thought it was The Devil's The Devil's own none of my business.

01:45:33
Speaker 4: This movie would play well in a double feature with The Devil Wears Prada, which is also about having a demanding boss and a partner who doesn't like it.

01:45:43
Speaker 3: Wow, and I would like to see that.

01:45:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:45:45
Speaker 3: Does this movie pass the backdel test? I think if we're to believe that everyone in the cast is not secretly al Pacino.

01:45:53
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, because Marion talks to women like Jackie and Pam and maybe a third woman.

01:46:05
Speaker 4: A mother in law reads the Bible to her, which says about stuff.

01:46:10
Speaker 2: Alice her mother in law.

01:46:11
Speaker 3: There is a random third woman who appears for just the one scene to be in her undoor and be like, sin is amazing. You're like, who the fuck are you?

01:46:20
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure she's the wife of the Jeffrey Jones character.

01:46:24
Speaker 3: I think that's bomber for her in general.

01:46:27
Speaker 2: Yes, but yeah, they're talking about chardonnay and boobs. I mean what passes the more than two women talking about boobs.

01:46:38
Speaker 3: You ever talked with your girlies about boobies? At Yeah? I mean I have talked about boobies with my friends at the store. But there's so much more to me than that. I also talk about butts with my friends at the store.

01:46:51
Speaker 2: That is equally important those two things.

01:46:53
Speaker 3: That's seen as a documentary. Yeah, it does technically past against and I think it actually does credibly pass the Bechdel test. But with it i'm usual caveat. But as we've been saying for ten years now, that doesn't mean it's a feminist movie.

01:47:09
Speaker 2: So let's get to the actual metric, the metric that does mean shit, which is the Bechdel cast nipple scale, where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. And well, I think this is a half nipple shrug for reasons I can't even articulate. I don't even know why I would give it as many as one half nipple, but I guess because we like do cut back to Mary Anne pretty frequently and like check in with her and what she's going through, which is a very relatable experience for many women. So because a lot of women are married to men who maybe not literally work for the devil, but they're doing very evil work in their lives.

01:48:09
Speaker 3: So my friend's husband works at Meta.

01:48:11
Speaker 2: Oh yikes. So yeah, I'll give this a half nipple. And I guess i'll give it to Charlie's there, and I don't know, she's doing her best. She's doing her best.

01:48:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna I don't for some reason. I'm gonna give it one. I'm gonna give it one because and it's and I give the nipple to Fun conceptually.

01:48:37
Speaker 4: I love Fun and.

01:48:40
Speaker 3: This movie is it true? No, this movie is not feminist. It is it does poorly in terms of it mentions gender roles, and then proceeds to really do nothing with it, and then have the male protagonist who's the literal son of the devil maybe or maybe not, The ends with him experiencing no consequence.

01:49:03
Speaker 2: So don't worry. This is another story about a male redemption arc maybe but not.

01:49:09
Speaker 3: But they don't even bother to redeem him. He just I guess he shoots himself with that, like he gets to learn nothing, which is ideal. Yeah, so it is a very comfortable movie for bad men to watch. I don't know. The al Pacino performance is so funny to me everywhere. Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna give it one nipple. For some reason, I cannot be held accountable for this writing, and I'm gonna give it to the line read everywhere nice yepes Sarah.

01:49:38
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna give a nipple to the line read I'm a fan of Man, which I've always loved.

01:49:45
Speaker 3: I don't know.

01:49:46
Speaker 4: That last speech by the Devil like almost makes some good points, and then it's like, have sex with your sister, and you're like, all right, never mind, mind.

01:49:53
Speaker 3: It is wild that it lands there because he's just been talking for I know it's not actually twenty minutes, but at least ten minutes. He is like talking in circles and he's like, so, as I was saying have sex with your sister, You're like, how did we land there? How is that where that speech ends?

01:50:10
Speaker 2: At one point he stops and then starts again.

01:50:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it's fantastic. It's sort of like my favorite kind of bad movie climax where it's just happening in a room but there's really not any actions and right, so he's just walking in a circle for like ten minutes.

01:50:26
Speaker 4: It is a big room, so he does have space for that. But he's the Yeah, he's the devil. He's got a big old room. I mean, if not for al Pacino, no one would have watched this thing. You know, imagine if they got like Gene Hackman, it would just it would have been a whole other deal.

01:50:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. I mean maybe it would have been okay, But like, would I have seen al Pacino as the devil? Like? That's it just makes sense that puts butts in seats. That's one hundred million dollars at the box office.

01:50:53
Speaker 4: Like, I kind of the thing is, I kind of do believe that he could be the devil, like and I do believe this depiction of the devil because he's like just fundamentally annoying, which I think is like biblically accurate.

01:51:05
Speaker 3: And I also I like, just not in a.

01:51:08
Speaker 4: Particularly well considered way, but from my heart, I want to give part of that nipple to Charlie's there and just for like be putting up sample wall treatments while she's got an entire fried piece of chicken in her mouth from Popeyes. I just think that's very iconic behavior, and it was inspiring to me in some obscure way.

01:51:29
Speaker 2: She's also putting what I think are some of the ugliest colors to paint on your wall.

01:51:35
Speaker 4: I know, that's like not even on design sense or whatever that horrifying show was. Were they doing that?

01:51:42
Speaker 2: One is like a Shrek green one that.

01:51:45
Speaker 3: Was my childhood bedroom color. I think I think ultimately I liked I was like, just let her make her apartment tacky. Come on, the tacky is awesome and fun. It really is the jab. But Jackie said no TACKI no tacky for.

01:52:02
Speaker 2: Jackie, no TALKI for Jackie.

01:52:04
Speaker 3: So Charlie's is just shit out of luck because Jackie said no tacky. We got it. Well, we gotta end. No episode, Sarah, where can we find the new show? When does it come out? Tell us everything?

01:52:18
Speaker 4: So the new show, it's an eight part mini series. It's called The Devil.

01:52:21
Speaker 3: You know.

01:52:22
Speaker 4: I think by the time you're hearing this, new episodes will already be coming out premieres or has premiered October twentieth. We're going to be putting episodes out through mid December. There are bonus episodes if you want to hear them, or we get more interviews for context, including getting to talk to a galer fan theory scholar. Wow, and so you can hear it wherever Fine Podcasts are distributed, and you can also catch the first episode on the feet of my own every two weeks show You're Wrong About, which is about misremembered history and Jamie, you and I have a bonus episode this very month of October when I'm talking to you about bimbos.

01:53:05
Speaker 3: Who would have thought? And I'm so happy to be putting that one out too. I love that you're too. I mean, you have many areas of expertise, but in the easily the top five are bimbos and the Devil.

01:53:18
Speaker 4: But really, yeah, because what do we hate? What's more evil than like the Prince of Darkness? It's a woman who wears a lip color that we don't like.

01:53:26
Speaker 3: It's true, and that's why the Elizabeth Hurley performance of the Devil is the definitive one. Oh my god, listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode that's not quite as long as the Devil's Advocate, but closer than you think. Please illegally pirate this movie. Don't give them any money, but like it is a fun movie to watch with friends.

01:53:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Devil wants you to steal, so do it.

01:53:46
Speaker 3: The Devil loves when you use one, two, three movies dot ru and it breaks your computer. I like doing that. I was like, I think it has reduced the whatever we're bringing back pirrating. And you can follow us in all the normal places, that being mainly Instagram, And you can join our Patreon aka Matreon, where every month we do two original episodes on a theme of ours or you are choosing always something weird like Lawyer Bewery, question Mark. If you want that, maybe five bucks a month gets you that and access to our hundreds of episodes in our back catalog.

01:54:22
Speaker 2: Indeed, and with that, shall we go shopping and undress in the middle of the store while we're drinking chardonay and touch each other's boobs.

01:54:34
Speaker 3: Sure, but I might secretly be out, but you know, I hope you are. That's a king for some people, all right, Bye bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me Jamie Loftus.

01:54:53
Speaker 2: And Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann and.

01:54:58
Speaker 3: Edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of them?

01:55:01
Speaker 2: That's me and our logo and merch and all of our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus ever heard of her?

01:55:08
Speaker 3: Oh My God, and our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan.

01:55:13
Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

01:55:16
Speaker 3: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.

01:55:21
Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Spectelcast