Episode 241: Very Bad Orgies (Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Do I jerk off? Yeah? Yeah, I jerk off, yeah. How many times a week? Like, three, four, for three or four times maybe? I'm gonna pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket. The Queen in Oz has spoken! I'm a very good man. Good.

[00:00:59] I have brains than you have. Anybody can have a brain? Very Bad Man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:21] Dave, we got a poor one out for Tony Surico, aka Polly Walnuts from the Sopranos. What's your favorite Polly Walnuts line? Oh, shit man. First of all, I didn't even know that he died. You didn't? No! Yeah, I was so busy preparing for this episode.

[00:01:43] Oh man, he disrespected the Bing. That's probably my... If he's the one who said it, something like that. It sounds like something you would say. You don't disrespect the Bing. My favorite, there's one where he sees Vito and Bobby Bacala at some event and he goes,

[00:02:03] oh look at that, it's like an ad for a weight loss center before and way before. I love the performance that he gives when he goes to the psychic and he's like really freaked out. That whole episode, he's just really shook about what's going on.

[00:02:24] Yeah, he has a very... he really has a kind of spiritual side and he really believes in a lot of that stuff. There's a great scene which I have for him and Tony talking about snakes and how they fuck themselves.

[00:02:37] And that's how the year such a snake comes from. Tony was like... I thought it was from Adam and Eve. He's like snakes are fucking themselves long before Adam and Eve came along. Don't. Don't, yeah or like tea. Yeah, tea, yeah.

[00:02:54] I just found one that I liked when someone's talking about their Korean boss. He goes, word to the wise, remember Pearl Harbor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It came across that way. The whole of Sopranos is filled with these great malapropisms of various... Errors, historical errors, misquotes.

[00:03:15] Prejudices wrapped up in just a misunderstanding or an ignorance. RIP. Yeah, RIP. He was great. And he made it to 80 almost. I think it was just a few weeks before 80s and not terrible. Like I might take that. So I will say that now. Yeah, I'm 79. Exactly.

[00:03:36] So coming up in the second segment, we're going to talk about Eyes Wide Shut Stanley Kubrick's last movie, the one that got him killed. I think based on what I can discern by the Yale Skull and Bone Society among other groups,

[00:03:52] but I think you're a member of the Yale, so maybe you can confirm or deny that. Yeah, I can neither. But they say that if the Skull and Bone's name comes up in conversation, if you're a member, you have to get up and walk out of the room.

[00:04:10] For the listeners, Dave has just got up and walked out of the room. And we're back. And we're back. Yeah, so we're going to talk about that maybe a little bit about secret sex cults.

[00:04:24] But in the first segment, there's a different kind of secret sex that we're going to talk about. Yes. Like the shameful... The dirty secret. And this was inspired by a quote from Ralph Deegan who posted a link with a quote from a new article.

[00:04:47] This is a recent article, brand new, hot off the presses about masturbation and sexual satisfaction. And the quote was, for both men, for both women and men, higher education predicted a high masturbation frequency. Which was enough to get.

[00:05:04] Which I thought was going to be what the article was about. It turns out not so much, but like I was hooked right there. I mean, high education, you know, like I knew it.

[00:05:14] Like you just have to get your book learning in and you'll know that you got a jacket as often as possible. That's right. The more books you read, the more potential jerk material you get exposed to. So it's almost an obvious finding. So yeah, no, the article isn't...

[00:05:31] Which means that Ralph Deegan put in some good curation work to make his tweet a high quality tweet. He found the thing that would get people like me to read. Yeah, like headline writers. Except for accurate.

[00:05:47] So this is a paper by Nantie Fisher and Bente Trein in the archives of sexual behavior, which is a good article about... You mean a good journal? A good journal, yeah. What did I say? A good article. A good article. It's a good journal.

[00:06:04] Called a seemingly paradoxical relationship between masturbation frequency and sexual satisfaction. So what they did was they gave questionnaires to over 4,000 Norwegians aged 18 through 89 years old. And they were looking at... I think they were interested primarily in sexual satisfaction.

[00:06:27] So like what predicts whether or not you'll say that you have a satisfying sexual life and the role that masturbation might play in it. But the problem they're trying to solve.

[00:06:38] Most people, I guess in the literature who study masturbation and sexual satisfaction just studied it sort of in this linear fashion. So you just ask a bunch of people how much do you jerk off? How sexually satisfied are you? But that might hide some interesting patterns.

[00:06:51] And those patterns is what they were looking for in this paper. So what they did was they looked at four different clusters. So like types of people. People who masturbate a lot versus people who don't masturbate a lot.

[00:07:07] People who report being high in sexual satisfaction and people who report being low in sexual satisfaction or high in dissatisfaction. And then they looked at men and women separately. And you know why it's so important to look at men and women separately? One of the reasons, Tamler.

[00:07:21] Uh-oh. Why? Well, it's because the scale... Dubstep time. Yes. Though it's just that what counts as high and low masturbation for men and women turned out to be pretty different. Yeah. So women on average reported that they masturbated two to three times a month.

[00:07:44] And men on average report masturbating two to three times a week. Yeah. So four times as often. I guess, like if you'd asked me to just off the top of my head to guess, I would have probably guessed something like that.

[00:07:57] Oh, I thought you were going to reveal. I thought you were going to give us your... No, I'm not going to contribute to them resolving the paradox. I'm still not sure what the paradox is. And you explain that? Psychologists...

[00:08:11] I'll explain that psychologists like to use the term paradox when all they mean is like puzzle or maybe like interesting question. Right. I think what they mean by the paradox was this particular finding that they have, which I think is pretty interesting,

[00:08:28] which is that if you look at women who have frequent sexual intercourse, masturbation actually makes them even higher in sexual satisfaction. Right. So if they're getting a lot and they masturbate, that's like additive. It's like complimentary. But men who get lots of sexual intercourse masturbate less. Norwegians.

[00:08:56] Norwegians, that's right. Are you saying they're not men? I'm saying that maybe like when you have like three hours of daylight in the winter, like who knows what the fuck you're going to do. All right. Norwegian listeners, please let us know. That's true.

[00:09:14] If you feel like your masturbation habits are influenced by living in Norway. And is the dark... I guess it's easier to hide your dirty secret in the dark. Even the angels have a harder time seeing that. And so they say it's compensatory in men.

[00:09:33] So it looks like men like Jack off because they're not getting sex and women Jack off when they're getting sex. I'm more likely to. Do you say Jack off for women? I don't think so. Jill off, would you prefer me to Jill off? That's good.

[00:09:50] I was trying to keep it adultery. So also men, this is shocking. Finding. Men who watch a lot of pornography also masturbate a lot. Paradoxically. But they were more likely to report being sexually dissatisfied.

[00:10:10] So really what's going on is that like for women, masturbation seems to have this property more often making them more satisfied with their sexual life. It's like the cherry on top of their sex life. Exactly. Cherry. Very good.

[00:10:26] And the more men jerk off, maybe the less happy they are. Yeah. Probably because... They're about to shoot up a club. That's sad but true. Not in countries like Norwegian ones where they have to just no guns. They can't just go and buy a semi-automatic, 8K, 47 or whatever.

[00:10:49] But it was true as Ralph Deegan tweeted, both men and women with higher education were more likely to report high masturbation. Also, more likely to report being sexually dissatisfied. Yeah, men and women. Yeah. Universal.

[00:11:06] You think that's because, and this could relate to the second segment, but that their minds have been broadened to like the possible of what their sex life could be like. And so maybe they think that there's this world of sexual gratification out there that they're not getting.

[00:11:30] But maybe less educated people don't have that perhaps false impression of what's going on in places that they aren't welcome or something, or that they don't frequent. Yeah, I don't know. So I like the hypothesis mainly because it's sort of the most charitable reading of what's going on.

[00:11:52] Our minds are so broad. It's not just that we get a lot less pussy. I think it's that both men and women with higher education jerk off more because grad school is a terrible place to meet other people.

[00:12:08] Whereas if you're out of high school, say you're 19 years old and you never went to college and you're just going to happy hour every Friday after work and then getting wasted Saturday night, Friday night and Saturday night and you're just clomping at left and right.

[00:12:26] Yeah, that's probably the truth. So go into leave academia. I don't know. Is there a way to repudiate your PhD? I think that's why the Matt Damon character in Good Will Hunting was so reluctant to pursue his intellectual ambitions.

[00:12:43] He knew that it would mean no shit faced happy hours to get some. Well, actually let me ask you one question before we talk about the implications. The sexual script theory, this is the thing that perked my curiosity about this field.

[00:12:59] So in the study you alluded to this, they write research on masturbation has been limited and only concentrated on linear processes linking masturbation with sexual satisfaction because there seems to be a lack of commonly shared instructions for masturbation.

[00:13:15] Kirschbaum in Peterson 2018, it is reasonable to assume that people may rather fall into different masturbation sexual satisfaction groupings and that there's not a linear relationship. So what does that mean that there's a lack of commonly shared instructions? And I think that's referring to the script, but...

[00:13:34] Yeah, I read that in the first puzzle because I thought they were making a methodological point about like how to instruct somebody to masturbate. There's no like, you know, canonical just text. What to expect when you're expecting for masturbation?

[00:13:53] I think what they might be referring to is that that maybe for men, even admitting to masturbating at a certain age, like probably going up to high school is taken as shameful that that you're... I know about less of a man, but you certainly can't get some.

[00:14:11] It is a feature of the failed sexuality that you are unable... Like masturbation is merely a crutch for people who can't have orgasms the real way. And I think that... I don't remember that being part of the sexual script of my high school years.

[00:14:33] I mean, because first of all, like none of us were really getting anything. At least if I'm a group of friends. So if somebody asked you in eighth grade, like do you jerk off? Would you just say yeah? Well, eighth grade is different.

[00:14:44] Like that's like young likes and we just didn't talk about that stuff. I didn't anyway, I'm sure eighth graders do. I saw the movie Kids, but... Yeah, I was not that kind of an eighth grader. Yeah. So somewhere in my experience,

[00:15:00] some somewhere in those years, you know, my my high school was religious. So we probably had more of this. But it wasn't until like college that I knew guys just freely admitting to masturbating. In high school, especially early high school, it was like,

[00:15:17] oh, you jerk off. Ha ha, you jerk off. And that might be like peak frequency is like 15, 16, you know? You're doing it all the time. You're doing it fucking in school. Like you're just like humping desks in school. Yeah, yeah, it really is. Back of my oceanography class.

[00:15:36] It's so dumb that any boy would deny it and that other boys wouldn't just all have an understanding that every single other guy is doing it like it. There was one guy in my group of friends who sat at a very late stage,

[00:15:50] maybe like 18 or something like that he had never really masturbated or like seven. Oh, I had a friend like that too. Yeah. Liar, I call him. I believed this friend, like it kind of fit with other aspects of his personality.

[00:16:04] And like it didn't last like, I remember that being just shocking. And like everybody else saying, like that's crazy. Right. I did have friends, though, who said like, I don't masturbate. I get some like you don't get something like you don't get any.

[00:16:17] But I think for women and women can let us know because obviously I don't have that experience, but I think that that's just less of a like there is more just general reluctance to talk about female sexuality broadly and that women

[00:16:31] who are masturbating are having orgasms in a way that women who aren't masturbating and who even are having sex at a young age aren't having at all. And so it's sort of serving a different function.

[00:16:44] Yeah. And also like, well, I don't think it was necessarily thought of as shameful, at least in the context where I grew up, it was always just hot when women like masturbated and it was like, oh, like there was something that made her

[00:16:58] more of like a sexual being, a sexual being. That's right. Yeah. I think that that young women just are like don't it's just not talked about like they're not. It's not like with men who are talking about their dicks since they're in like third grade.

[00:17:19] You know, there are some women who don't even look at their genitals in a mirror until they're like way old. So they might not even know how it worked. Like 80 years old. The man like and and there are women I think who never masturbate

[00:17:33] or more women who never masturbate and there are more women who never have orgasms and there are women who the first and only time that they get an orgasm is from masturbating. They don't get it from.

[00:17:45] It turns out, Tamler, that maybe 17 year old boys aren't the best at and sex and giving orgasms to. Well, we're just getting started then. Give us a couple of years. I was highly educated boys. I do wonder how much of this is culturally variable

[00:18:05] because there is what they're alluding to as different quote unquote scripts for masturbation being culturally determined. They're talking about the differences between male and female, especially. And they're saying that it's cultural. But could it just be that across that this is one of these

[00:18:25] biological sex differences that you would that you see this kind of thing across the board, whether you're a Norwegian woman or or I don't know, Sub-Saharan African woman or an Asian. I don't know that's a sub-stack territory right there.

[00:18:40] Do the Jews say anything about not that you're the expert on this? But is it? We turn to noted Jew expert Tamler. So rabbi Summers. Summers, it was once asked. Does it does the Lord frown upon masturbation? Well, there is that thing where somebody spills the seed.

[00:18:59] I forget who. Yeah, oh, none. So he was he was supposed to fulfill his his lever right duty to his brother died and his duty was to impregnate his brother's widow because she didn't have any kids.

[00:19:14] And so he took advantage of the he wasn't following the spirit of the law. He like is like actually had sex with her and then pulled out. And since that time, the term onanism has been used to refer to

[00:19:28] masturbation, but really his sin was that he didn't that he pulled out. Yeah. Yeah. The Christians, by the way, the Christians hate it. It's a weird like there's clearly there's like a million citations in this paper. It's clearly something a lot of people work on.

[00:19:43] Yeah, it's almost like neurotic and pathological, like how much they site people just to just like any kind of sentence. But but I was still trying to figure out just get it get my handle on like what it exactly is it contributing or exploring.

[00:19:59] And I never fully got it. I think this discussion helped. I guess it's just to, I don't know, flesh out the complexities of masturbating versus like how sexually satisfied you are apart from that. Yeah, I think maybe they're frustrated with the take home message

[00:20:17] that just in general, masturbation is related to sexual satisfaction in this way, when in reality it's related just depending. It's like it's one of those papers that's adding nuance. I think that they're onto something that women who are having frequent sex

[00:20:34] and are supplementing their sex with their own masturbation, that they might be the happiest. And that is interesting because then it's not, you know, it's just moving away from a more simplistic view of how sexuality works. But yeah, that and I and it makes sense

[00:20:51] that that would be the case. And then with men, we just want orgasms and the quality of orgasms, I think is is ranked with another human being is at the top. Yeah. And like, like alone with porn is like the next.

[00:21:09] Yeah. And then, yeah, like having like a like a shameful wet dream is something. Yeah. Somewhere in there, there's like the, you know, the Victoria's Secret in the bathroom. The Adam and Eve catalog. Enlightening.

[00:21:29] No, I've learned a lot about like other people's sex lives and maybe my own. If I had to like pursue this line of research, learn more about it, I would want to know more about these sexual scripts and like,

[00:21:41] because there is this line where they said there's one theory that says it's all socially constructed, like everything about sex and masturbation is socially constructed. And that's where all the scripts come from. And you really just have to look at the the norms of the group.

[00:21:58] Yeah, like when do you do it? And and even like, I think there are some people who view if you're in a relationship, say you're married, then you shouldn't be masturbating like on the side. That's not my sexual script. There will be no scripts on the night. Instructions.

[00:22:20] You know what you could use for the opening quote here is the thing from Matthew McConie and Wolf of Wall Street. He has this line where he asks Leo, like how often do you jerk off? And he's like, I don't know, like a few times a week.

[00:22:32] And he says too low. I jerk off at least three or four times a day. Yeah, all the time. Good. All right. Speaking of sexual dissatisfaction, sexual fantasies, insecurities, inadequacies, we'll be right back to talk about Eyes Wide Shut. Now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp.

[00:23:03] Here's a question. How well would you take care of your car if you had to keep the same one your entire life? I guess you'd take care of it pretty well, right? Take it for oil changes. Check the brakes, check the tire pressure, tune ups.

[00:23:16] All I need to do all of this stuff. Well, that's how our brains work. So why don't we treat them that way? Now, of course, it's complicated. And if you've listened to us for the last 10 years or so,

[00:23:26] you know that you can't really disentangle us and our brains in this way. But I think the point here that's being made is absolutely right. Our mental life, our minds are so fundamental, so basic to our experience that we take it for granted.

[00:23:43] We don't invest enough time and care into keeping them healthy, to developing good habits, successful ways to deal with all of life's problems. Now there are plenty of ways to support a healthy brain. I use meditation. People can learn a new language. You can take power naps.

[00:24:03] I mean, I can't, but some people can. You just get more sleep in general. And there's also better help online therapy. Look, I know so many people who have maybe been initially dubious about therapy, but who have tried it and it has turned their lives around.

[00:24:19] It helps them develop better habits. It helps them understand themselves better. Helps them understand what are some of the root causes of the things that make them unhappy. And it has worked wonders. Well, better help is online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat only

[00:24:37] therapy sessions. So you don't have to see anybody on camera if you don't want to. And therapy can be really expensive. If that's what's keeping you away, maybe try BetterHelp because it's so much more affordable than in-person therapy.

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[00:25:35] Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time in every episode where we like to take a moment and thank all of our listeners for all the different ways you interact with us, get in touch

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[00:30:28] We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much. All right, let's talk about Eyes Wide Shut. A conversation I've been looking forward to for a long time. So I hope we step it up for this.

[00:30:53] It's one of those where I'm nervous, you know, like about talking about it because it's like I don't want to miss this opportunity. You know, basically what you're saying is you don't want David to not bring his A game. No, no, no.

[00:31:04] I actually worry about myself in this too. So this is directed, of course, by Stanley Kubrick. It was his last movie. He died right before its release. They say peacefully in his sleep. But I mean, come on. It's starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

[00:31:22] I'm sure we'll talk about their performances. And also Sidney Pollock, who's great in it as Victor Ziegler. Based on a novella called Dream Story by the Austrian novelist Arthur Schnitzler, which takes place in early 20th century Vienna. But aside from updating it to like late 90s New York,

[00:31:43] it's very faithful to the source material. Like I looked at I didn't read the novel, but I looked at a synopsis of it. And it's he follows it pretty. Yeah, no, I did the same thing. Yeah, exactly.

[00:31:54] I was like, oh, this is it's you know, it's not like the shining. Like the odd word. That's what I was thinking. I must have pissed Stephen King off so much is that he stuck to this one. Dream. Oh, now. Now you can do it.

[00:32:08] It was released on July 16th, 1999, which is an anniversary of the Moon landing, which he also was responsible for. Of course. It got it had mixed reviews like pretty much all of his movies, like critics always get a little bit, I don't know, contemptuous of him.

[00:32:26] They they feel like every time they see a movie of his, they need to take out whatever grievances they have at against a certain kind of cinema. And then like a few years later, they they realized like, oh, wait, shit, this is like a masterpiece.

[00:32:40] But then like enough time, like he took so long between movies that they forget that that's the pattern, you know, right? I will say though that it's not entirely the fault of the critics. How do I say this? He makes movies that

[00:32:57] take time to sink into culture in a way, in a way that like I get it. Like I don't blame the critics for the first time they saw 2001 being like, what the fuck, dude? Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right.

[00:33:10] I read that Scorsese attributed the reaction to it as it's a it's a dream story and we can talk about that, but it doesn't announce itself as a dream story. That's why he said the critics, you know, like didn't get on its wavelength.

[00:33:26] And it really doesn't and not only did does the movie not announce itself of like that, that it was not marketed like that. It was marketed as this is going to be like the sexiest movie you've ever seen. And there's one thing this movie is not.

[00:33:38] It's the sexiest movie that probably anyone has ever seen. I think Goofric was good at sexy. I don't know that he tried, you know? And I certainly don't think he's trying to in this movie. But I think you're absolutely right.

[00:33:51] This is a movie that you need to see more than once. I don't think I appreciated it even remotely like I appreciate it now the first time I saw it. I for sure didn't because I was watching it when it came out.

[00:34:03] And the Nicole, Kim and Tom Cruise relationship was, you know, they were the fucking couple in Hollywood, like everybody was like talking about and I think that harmed that really harmed the way that it was marketed or at least perceived expectations. The expectations I have, I have.

[00:34:26] I think it was a casting choice that I would, if I were Stanley Kubrick, be second guessing, not that he said he guesses himself at all. But but yeah. It was a famously long shoot for a hundred days. That's crazy. Which is insane.

[00:34:45] And you know, you got to give Nicole, Kidman and Tom Cruise credit like they sacrificed their marriage to whatever extent it was a real marriage and just like absolutely burgeoning careers. Like, you know, Tom Cruise is in the middle of making like the second

[00:35:01] Mission Impossible movie, but he has to keep putting it off. Or maybe it's the first one I don't remember. But, you know, like that's that's pretty big deal to just take yourself out as a cast member for that long. Apparently Harvey Keitel was going to play.

[00:35:16] Have you heard the story? No, the the Sidney Pollack character Victor and he not only was going to they shot a bunch of scenes and then they did the famous scene where they showed

[00:35:25] Tom Cruise and Victor walking through the door in the scene at the end of the movie and he was just them walking through the door. He shot like a hundred takes of it. And then Harvey Keitel just walked off the set.

[00:35:36] He's like, you guys are fucking out of your mind. Like not doing this anymore. And then they replaced it with Sidney Pollack. I actually think Sidney Pollack is great in it. Yeah, no, he is great. I don't know. Like I watched it again.

[00:35:48] I've watched it a bunch of times and a bunch of times fairly recently for whatever reason crossed my mind is this my favorite Kubrick movie? And I don't know if that's true, but it's up there because there's just

[00:35:59] so much in it and there's so much to like toss around and and and think about. And you can take it in so many different directions. It's a real text in a way like I guess all of his movies are.

[00:36:12] But there's something about this one that invites, you know, depending on what interpretive mood you're in, you can really just let your imagination run pretty wild with it and and like it rewards that kind of viewing, I think. Yeah, definitely.

[00:36:29] There's a distinction that that I'm going to try to make that might explain why I don't feel like this is in my top Kubrick movies, my top three, even though I really like it a lot.

[00:36:44] And that is that thing that you just said about inviting lots of different interpretations, I feel like can be done in one of two ways. One is in making the story, like say a clockwork orange,

[00:36:58] the story is the story and we know what's going on and we know what. We kind of see what the critique of society is and what the sad tire is, what the target is, we can appreciate it on different levels. This one, I feel like he's potentially

[00:37:17] commenting on so many different things that it feels like that there's less focus in his, I don't know how to describe it. The target of his critique or satire or commentary seems broader than it does for even with something like 2001, which is all over the place.

[00:37:37] And because of that, like I feel like he took too much off. Yeah, I guess I can see that. So I would say it's definitely about dreams on some some level. I think it's kind of a fool's errand to try to locate with any precision

[00:37:51] what's a dream and what isn't. But I also think it's about a marriage and feelings of sexual inadequacy in a marriage and like dark desires and fear of what your part, the dark desires of your spouse. And it's a fear of being on the outside looking in.

[00:38:08] It's about like being in kind of upper middle class, but outside the circle of extreme wealth and it's definitely and what it feels like to be excluded. Right? I also think it's definitely a movie.

[00:38:19] This was on this viewing this stuck out so much about like dehumanization and like how women are objectified and looked at as pretty much like dolls or robots or prostitutes like and how the super wealthy elite views like the rest of the people

[00:38:39] really as these kinds of objects to manipulate with play with like you would play with dolls. Like so. And those are all different things like feelings of inadequacy within a marriage. It's also just you know, confusion about sex, masculinity, insecurity, masculinity. 100 percent. Yeah. So there is a lot.

[00:38:59] Well, let me add more to that. There is deeply Freudian themes about sex and its relationship with life and death on top of all that sociology that you mentioned about class and about bumping into being excluded from different class.

[00:39:20] The commentary about like arguably there's really only one woman in this whole movie. Yeah, you know. And and then finally, you have potentially some sort of commentary on the decadence of the rich in society. And possibly about pedophilia and like, you know, like a precursor to what we

[00:39:41] learned with all the abstain stuff, all that horrific stuff. There was definitely illusions to that. We'll talk about the final scene, which has been interpreted in ways that support that that's what that's what this movie is uncovering or at least gesturing at. So yeah.

[00:40:00] And I think and I think I guess I guess the difference between because I think you could interpret other Kubrick movies on maybe just as many levels. The difference is I feel like he really was trying to to say something on all these

[00:40:15] levels, like I think he actually was. This was like his last work and he spent so long thinking about this. He'd been wanting to make a movie based on that novella for so long for like 40 years or 30 years at least.

[00:40:29] Yeah. And I think one of the things that even today reviews and analyses like miss about it is that it is a comedy and that he thought of it as a comedy. And it doesn't it doesn't play like a comedy exactly, but he explicitly thought

[00:40:45] of it as a comedy when he first was thinking of doing it and thought of Steve Martin in the lead and also Woody Allen, which like imagine Woody Allen as the lead in this movie and some of the themes might crystallize.

[00:40:59] But I you know, and I think it's also autobiographical to to some extent. Like it's like Kubrick examining himself and his own kind of position in society and his own position in this world of like Hollywood

[00:41:12] wealth and also like Hollywood sex parties and all these things that maybe. So I mean, there's a lot of ways we can go with it, but like we should definitely go through scene by scene in terms of the plot. It's about a married couple, Dr.

[00:41:25] Bill Harford and his wife, Alice. You know that Bill is a doctor because he says so like 50 times in the movie. Right. These these are the comedy beats that you might miss because you're so into the like the mystery of the sex cult.

[00:41:40] You don't realize like that this is that he's a buffoon. He really is. And he has this thing he has this habit of repeating very slowly. The last thing that everyone says to him, you texted me that this was his most lynchian movie and there's one

[00:41:56] absolute parallel which is in the third season of Twin Peaks. There's this character called Dougie. You haven't seen this, but listeners who have will know what I'm talking about, where that's what he does. He just repeats the last thing that everybody says to him.

[00:42:07] But Dougie is like very complicated in terms of trying to figure out what the Dougie character is supposed to be. But he's not what he's definitely not supposed to be as like a normal person interacting with the world and whereas Tom Cruise is and he still

[00:42:19] does that. And I guess there's a lot of ways to interpret why he's doing that, but it's a vulnerable performance by Tom Cruise because like you say, he's a bit of a buffoon. It's like a lot of it is almost like the movie is making fun of him

[00:42:32] because I do think it's about fundamentally a lot of his insecurities, not Tom Cruise necessarily, although it certainly plays on some of the Tom Cruise persona, but like about the characters in securities. It's one of the reasons that it felt lynching into me is the dialogue.

[00:42:49] You know, Kubrick tells his stories visually and with this sometimes, I guess it doesn't matter so much what the characters are saying, so much so that that in some parts of his large portions of some movies don't

[00:43:02] have dialogue and or they have the most boring, the most boring in 2001. Like there's a lot of scenes where people are just what they're saying is so boring, you can't believe it's in the movie.

[00:43:14] If you thought that like the meeting at the space dock about like what was going to have anything to do with the plot like you'd be wrong. The time but here there's a lot of dialogue

[00:43:22] and it feels stilted to me in a way that is not necessarily bad, but in a way that Lynch you know much more about this than me. But like that kind of let me say things very clearly in a way that is almost absurd that you're saying it.

[00:43:41] It felt like that's what felt lynching to me or part of what did where like there's some absurd way in which they're communicating with the same things that are obvious, repeating themselves. But but then there's also this kind of what there isn't that

[00:43:58] it's not that there's not surrealism in this movie because there is. But there is it's it's played straighter than a lot of movies. Absolutely. That's what I think is confusing that you don't know what you're going into.

[00:44:10] You think it's going to be this if you thought it was going to be a straightforward movie about this couple who has to deal with jealousy. Then it's a failure as that movie. Yeah. Or at least like on that level,

[00:44:23] realistic depiction of a couple that is dealing with like possible but never actual infidelities, Nicole Kidman's performance is similarly weird. Like she's definitely one of the greatest lightweights in cinema history. She has like one glass of champagne or like like smokes like half of a joint

[00:44:40] of like the shittiest weed imaginable and she's just fucked up like just wasted. Yeah, there's the one long scene, the longest scene where they were talking to each other. I couldn't help but think not going to lie. This this is not good acting. See, I do. Yeah.

[00:45:00] Well, I think he got the performances that he wanted out of her and him in that it it it's maybe it did it. I mean, I was thinking a lot about it as I was watching it and I was like this bedroom scene seems stilted.

[00:45:14] It seems way more expositional. And maybe he wanted that. Like maybe he did, you know, he famously would have people do things like 100 times because he thought that when they were completely exhausted, their true humanity, their true performance, forgetting cameras would come out.

[00:45:32] And I just don't know if that worked on Nicole Kidman. I see, OK, we totally disagree about this, but we'll get to that scene when we get that. I actually think so when you said Lynch,

[00:45:44] I said Kafka that combination of what appears more straightforward, like in the trial. You know, there's a lot of seemingly realistic things that are going on and the way he talks isn't as obviously, I don't know, surreal or absurd.

[00:46:03] It's more just the combination of all the elements make it absurd and also about a kind of character that is on the outside. And there's all these secret things going on that the character doesn't have access to. I was thinking Kafka is a good

[00:46:18] analog for this movie and the dreaminess of it reminds me of the dreaminess of Kafka in that unlike Lynch, at least for me, they remind me of actual dreams. Just the way that every time he's like almost about to have sex with somebody,

[00:46:31] someone like it gets called away, you know, like. It reminds you of your dreams. It's like Deus Ex interrupts you fucking. And it's just like, I don't know, like, yeah, but we'll get through it. Let's let's let's go through it in more detail.

[00:46:51] Do you think that there is that there is an illusion being made to Alice and through the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland? Yeah, probably. Somebody just point out that that, you know, there's throughout throughout there's all these like trends, the transactional nature of society is deep.

[00:47:09] It's a deep theme and for him to be called Dr. Bill is clearly has to be on purpose. And the first line of the movie, honey, have you seen my wall? Yeah. Yeah. So like I think right off the bat, it announces itself as this is about money

[00:47:24] and wealth and the dream story, the novella that was based on Trump, the novella is deeply Freudian. And there's I'll have more to say about that, about the Freudian. So I think yeah, good Freudian. So yeah, so it starts out there getting ready to go to this party.

[00:47:42] It's it's Dr. Bill Harford, his wife, you know, this was a big deal at the time. We're going to see like Nicole Kidman naked and but it's it never fully gives you the thing that you're probably looking for if you're first

[00:47:56] going into it, you know, it's not that it doesn't show her like it does show her like bare ass and her breasts at certain points. But it's always in these like on the toilet bar in in a kind of dream sequences or the fantasy sequences.

[00:48:10] Yeah. So they're getting ready. She's asking him how she looks perhaps announcing that that's like the big that's her role is to look beautiful, you know, in the relationship. But and he's like you look great. Like he's very complacently like you look good, but he's not even looking

[00:48:25] at her and she notes that. Yeah, her comment that you're not even looking or you're not even paying attention or something is I took it as a good meta comment about what about how one should watch the movie. Right. You actually look at what's going on.

[00:48:41] And they have this nice upper west side apartment will learn that it's nothing like right. You think they're rich? You're like, well, they're rich. Yeah. But where they're about to go is at a different in a different stratosphere. Of wealth.

[00:48:56] And and I think the bathroom actually is a great example of that because you have this scene in the bathroom and they're kind of cramped in there, you know? Like it's it's just New York, so it's Manhattan. So they're on the like Central Park West.

[00:49:07] They're going to have like they're not going to have the biggest place. But when you that's like mirrored by the bathroom scene at the party where like the guy has like a couch in his bathroom.

[00:49:18] It took me like it took me a while to even realize that it was the bathroom that that scene was shot in. Exactly. Right. You just all of a sudden, like halfway through the scene, you know, there's a toilet in a bathtub.

[00:49:30] You know, maybe just say this right now, we read or we read a couple of things in common, one of which is introducing sociology with by Tim Crider, a very famous article. He was definitely someone who took the movie seriously when it first came out.

[00:49:44] And it's a great essay. I don't fully agree with all of it. But one of the things that the sort of thesis of it is that there are these kind of upper middle class strivers trying to get into this ultra elite

[00:49:58] circle of wealth and constantly kind of getting rebuffed or learning what their place really is. And I think there's a lot to that. The one thing I don't see in the movie like others have is that they are these

[00:50:10] strivers, that they're trying to move up the social ladder. Do you get that sense from them? It's certainly subtle if it is what they're doing. I don't get that sense. And I think that to the extent that we are shown that the differences in social

[00:50:30] classes, like the almost you're almost part of it is not because they want to be part of it, it's just because, well, there just is this different class. And so they happen to be in this situation as a couple where he is a

[00:50:46] friend of one of his patients who is rich enough to invite him. And it's and Nicole Kidman, Alice says, why do we get invited to these things again? And he says, you know, it's because it is what you get when you make house calls.

[00:50:59] So so they are being exposed to the next level up, but not because they're trying. Unless just the the fact that he's doing house calls and the fact that he goes to later in the movie to someone's house who's already dead.

[00:51:14] And it's not even clear why he's dead, except maybe to like talk to the family. And, you know, so unless that's that's the only aspect of they don't seem to climb, yeah, not in an obvious way, in any case. One thing in their apartment, they have a babysitter.

[00:51:33] The daughter asks if she can stay up and watch the nutcracker because this is a Christmas movie. Yeah, we didn't say that. But this is said Christmas. And there is not I don't know that there is a scene without a Christmas decoration or light. Well, there is one.

[00:51:49] The orgy. That's the only place that doesn't have a street. You don't have people in masks at your Christmas parties. It's the only scene where there's not like a Christmas tree and Christmas lights and stuff like that. It's its own it's its own thing.

[00:52:03] So Sidney Pollock and his wife, Victor, Victor, you know, like he's the winner at life. They greet them. They start dancing. They have that exchange that you talked about. Then he sees someone that he knows this piano player, Nick Nightingale, great name, Nick Nightingale.

[00:52:21] And the band is taking a break. So he talks to them. Nick Nightingale went to med school with him 10 years ago, dropped out or maybe finished, but didn't want to become a doctor and ended up being a jazz pianist that has a family in Seattle, I guess.

[00:52:37] And it's an interesting little scene because they're talking and at a certain point, Nick Nightingale gets called away because he's part of the band and they're like, all right, we need you. You got to come back.

[00:52:47] So like it's he's the help and that will later be be mirrored. Like the same thing will be true of Dr. Bill. In fact, Dr. Bill will soon get called in what I would say is a more respectful way.

[00:53:02] Slightly slightly, but nonetheless a reminder that this is why you're here to he is. He's also the help. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So while he's talking to Nick Nightingale, Alice goes to the bar. That's like just I don't know, like half a glass of champagne

[00:53:17] and then starts getting seduced by the slimyest Hungarian in history, which probably is saying something else. I made a note that I remember when I first saw the movie, I thought he was like this creepy old man and now it's like, actually, he's just a refined gentleman.

[00:53:37] Maybe he's talking a little too close to her, you know, but he drinks her champagne. She says, I think that's my champagne that you drink out of it. And he goes, I'm actually certain. I'm certain of it. And then he also says, I'm Hungarian. Yes, I'm Hungarian.

[00:53:54] What's his name? Sandoor Savost. Savost. Yeah. Already, like you have, I would say the acting up till this point hasn't raised any eyebrows, but then all of a sudden Nicole Kidman just seems like almost like drugged. She's so drunk all of a sudden.

[00:54:11] She wasn't drunk when they were dancing. She went over to get a glass of champagne. And now all of a sudden it's like either like he like roofied her or like there's something about him that's intoxicates her. Or I don't know. Or she was doing.

[00:54:26] Yeah, she did some benzos in the right before. I don't think you roofied her because he drinks most of her champagne. So maybe some there's something playing with time, very consistent with a dream time. Very consistent with a dream time and just their conversation.

[00:54:43] He is just hitting it hard like from the get go. Like why are you married? Like what is it? You could have any man in this place. And then he tells her that women used to just get married so they could

[00:54:55] fuck everybody. That's the only reason is so that they could lose their virginity. They let's one guy and then just fuck everybody else, which is also funny because later Dr. Bill will say the opposite that women don't want to have sex.

[00:55:06] You know, he is trying to seduce her by telling her that women are just full on sexual beings, full of just desire and lust. And right. Well, they had different scripts for female. Exactly. He says he says to her at some point,

[00:55:22] one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception and a necessity for both parties, and that again gets completely denied in the other conversation. Yeah. It's so funny because like it's such a like that he has so many lines like that.

[00:55:37] I'm familiar with the works of the poet of it. And he's great. Yeah. And he's like, you want to go see the Renaissance sculptures? But basically being like we could fuck up there. She is definitely playing along, but also putting the red light,

[00:55:52] you know, like tapping the brakes when it gets to when it gets too close. Meanwhile, Dr. Bill is approached by two very beautiful young young women, two models who just almost inexplicably just are just like oozing with I want to fuck you right now. Well, and that's

[00:56:12] I'm sure we'll talk about it. This is the first the first inkling we get that of this recurring theme that everybody wants to fuck Tom Cruise, which is very much wish fulfillment dream dream logic because these two astonishing young models are just voraciously

[00:56:32] like can't wait to get their hands on it. Yeah, they're trying to take them somewhere to where the rainbow ends, they say. And there's a lot of Wizard of Oz stuff in this movie. By the way, one of the models we know her name.

[00:56:45] She's introduced as Newala and you a LA and that that name rang a bell. And it's because in the Sandman comics, Newala is one of the fairy. She's just part of the the mythical creatures of the fairies.

[00:56:58] And so I looked it up and it turns out that that name is traditionally an Irish. It's the name of the wife of the king of the fairies. And so that that's sort of little Irish fairy illusion. Then with the go to the end of the rainbow,

[00:57:16] it's very like leprechauns. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a key line where they're talking about the fact that he's a doctor and they say, you know, you must be so knowledgeable. I've always found that doctors are very knowledgeable.

[00:57:28] But then one of them says, but, you know, all that work, just think of all they miss. And I think that's such a key line in the movie. I think he is worried about like, what is this world that I'm missing as a doctor

[00:57:42] that I look and it's right there that they're like, he's like, all right, where are we going? Like, I'm not going to miss this. And, you know, but he's also maybe, you know, tapping on the brakes. It's hard to tell exactly what his intentions are.

[00:57:55] But like in so many other future scenes in the movie, he gets interrupted and this time called away, as we said earlier, to Victor Ziegler's bathroom. And, you know, in much the same way, I would say that, yeah, you're right. He's a little more polite.

[00:58:12] He's treated a little more respectfully. But fundamentally, he is there for this purpose. He can't say no. This happened. Yeah, the test would be, can, you know, Nick for sure couldn't say no. Right. I don't get the sense that that Bill could say no either.

[00:58:27] Sandor Savaus could say no. Yeah, he could say fuck off. I don't know what his use would be. We need someone upstairs. We need you to try to seduce with classical illusions. So he goes up and there is a woman naked in Victor Ziegler's bathroom

[00:58:48] with Victor and she has Odead. I don't know when to talk about this, but but it's already relevant as we're watching the movie. There are, Kubrick uses these slow fades that really visually make it make it seem dreamy.

[00:59:05] There is we'll talk about maybe the cinematography later as well. But part of what I think makes the Christmas setting so ideal for giving this dream like feeling is that the lighting is. Yeah, it feels like it's always practical lighting.

[00:59:23] That is, the light is coming from the sources of the scene that you see as the audience member and the little bulbs of warm Christmas light in the blur of the background, the bouquet, they're always there.

[00:59:38] And it's actually, you know, if you want to give that cool sense of depth, you see this a lot in a lot of pictures and movies, you want to give a really, really good sense of artistic depth. You put some lights in the background,

[00:59:51] they blur into this cool little circular thing that's constantly throughout the movie, which to me makes it super dreamy. Totally. It's got that dreamy, like almost like fireplace glow to it. It's beautiful, gorgeous. It's gorgeous.

[01:00:07] It's so like, especially this opening scene or not the opening, but the first party scene, it just is so rich and lustrous and like full of just opulence. And and and just like the waltz that they're doing,

[01:00:21] they're playing Shostakovich's Jazz Suite to begin and then some waltz when she's dancing with the Hungarian, but it all contributes to that kind of low of like you're being seduced almost into this world of wealth and sex.

[01:00:38] But then it always jars you awake with, oh, here's a hooker that Odeed, a sex worker that Odeed and she will be called a hooker. But she Odeed in Victor Ziegler's bathroom.

[01:00:52] And then you see the kind of like both the kind of human cost of what's going on, but also just it just takes you out of the mode. And she already, even though she's not dead, he's able to wake her up by just looking in her eyes.

[01:01:06] But her eyes and eyes generally are just so glassy in it. They're like dolls eyes already. Her whole body looks like a wax figure. And this is, you know, it's interesting. It will be a recurring thing for sure. Bill, the doctor doesn't really do much doctoring.

[01:01:21] We see a montage of him working in his office where we presume that he's doing real doctoring, but here he's called like literally what he does is say, look at me, move your head, look at me, look at me. OK, you're fine. Keep her here for an hour.

[01:01:38] In another scene, he's called as you said to somebody who's already dead. So there's no real reason for it. And then later in the movie also, he looks at somebody who's dead. He just looks at these like doll or corpse like figures.

[01:01:51] There's one line in this where he says to her, you're a very lucky girl. And she kind of looks back at him like, am I? Yeah, I know. Why do you think that I'm like Odeying in this fucker's bathroom?

[01:02:03] You know, does that does that seem like I've had a lucky life? I know. I thought the same thing. It's a very condescending way of talking to her. Yeah. And Ziegler, meanwhile, is just like this is so annoying. Oh, and there's a great shot of him.

[01:02:19] Like he's like she's on the again, you realize later in the scene that they're in the bathroom and like he's looking at her and there's a shot of him above them and it's and it's shot like so that you see him kind

[01:02:33] of towering over both of them and he's just getting dressed. He has like his suspenders. So I was going to say like putting. Yeah. He's literally just fucked her, right? He was fucking her while she was passed out.

[01:02:44] And it's creepy because when Bill asks like how long has she been like this? And he's like five or six minutes. Meanwhile, he was literally pulling his pants up the moment he walked in. So it's like, whoa, like so did you just finished or something?

[01:02:57] You know, like exactly. And maybe while she was like unconscious. Yeah. The other thing about that scene, there is a shot. It might be the same shot that you're talking about. I don't remember, but there is a big piece of art behind Ziegler

[01:03:10] of a naked woman and his head is actually framed perfectly in between her legs, which just screamed Freudian to me like he's being bore. He's giving, you know, she is birthing Ziegler right there. This episode is brought to you by super specials at their back, David.

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[01:05:38] So for once again, sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. So then that breaks the spell of the whole party really. And we don't really see much like much more of it. I think we might get another

[01:05:50] like I don't remember, but maybe like she kind of tells the Hungarian guy. No, I'm not going upstairs to fuck you right now. And but again, in like that almost drugged way. Yeah. By the way, we learn there that Alice is an art dealer,

[01:06:06] but her business went under. She went broke and so she's no longer an art dealer and is just probably a stay at home mom. The other thing I want to say about that scene is I don't know how

[01:06:20] how universal this is, but when that woman was talking, Mindy is Mindy, the name of the sex work, Mandy, Mandy, when he's trying to get her to talk. Yeah. It feels to me like I feel when somebody is trying to wake me up from from sleep.

[01:06:38] And especially like if you've ever had sleep paralysis and you know, you know that you're trying to move, but you can't really. It's like this very frustrating and often you're having like this hypnagogic right like dreams where you think someone's talking to you.

[01:06:56] And so you're trying with all your might to move your body, but you're paralyzed. That's the feeling I got when he was asking her to move like she was trapped in a dream. Which is I think Tom Cruise or Bill and Alice talking often feels like that,

[01:07:11] where it just takes forever for them to say the thing that they're going to say. And everything just feels like it's moving in slow motion or molasses, you know, like just OK, OK, I'm busy too. The Russian costume that scene is

[01:07:28] like to people who don't think this movie is funny, like I don't see how you can not but we'll get to that. So it cuts to them home and clearly they're both horny from their little interactions with people, their unfulfilled interactions.

[01:07:43] So first of all, the music is very different here than it is for any other part of the movie. It's the Chris Isaac. Yeah, I did a bad, bad thing. Yeah, it's almost just feels anachronistic even though it's not.

[01:07:55] It's jarring within the movie and they're like you get the sense that they're hooking up. They don't really do much. She's naked. He's kind of like feeling her like breasts and like maybe kissing her like neck or something like that.

[01:08:09] But she's just looking at herself in the mirror. And that's the thing that clearly is turning her on. Yeah, well, throughout I don't know if you got this sense throughout female sexuality is dull like in the sense that you see naked perfect bodies.

[01:08:25] Yeah, but they're they don't feel that sexual to me. Like if what you're or that alive or that alive. And I think this is one of the things that that the author of that article that you shared with me points out what some of the criticism seemed like

[01:08:38] they were coming from like horny young men who thought they were going to get off watching this movie because there is a lot of sex, but it's not sexy. It's not like jerk off material. It's like wax doll visuals of women naked.

[01:08:54] But this is at a time where porn was not widely accessible. It's like I think people really did think this is going to be hot in the way that like basic instinct or something like that was hot. You know, like websites like Mr.

[01:09:06] Skin or whatever would like to be able to post naked. What would probably still exist? What movies was Nicole Kidman naked? And oh, we're going to get a new one. Right. Right. Yeah. And if you go in with that expectation, like you're going to have a bad time.

[01:09:20] So they have that scene. Then there was a little montage of them going about their day and he's at work. He's examining people like he said he never really does anything except like he'll have like some naked woman. He's like touching her boob. But touching her nurse present.

[01:09:34] Yeah. And but then also like some men like, you know, the boy who has like a swollen lymph nodes. Right. Meanwhile, she is and this is something that introducing sociology article points out like she's constantly like grooming the girl like and you can take that literally or metaphorically.

[01:09:52] But she's constantly brushing her hair. Like like they have a I don't know what is she like six years old? The daughter seven years old. Something like that. And what's her name? Helena, which I'm sure just like just brims with mythological and other.

[01:10:09] But so funny that Bill and Alice are like such plain names. Yeah. Then we get, I think the first just very funny. Like and I don't know if it's played to be funny exactly, although I do think he intended some dark comedy, but they come home.

[01:10:27] He's having a beer and she goes to the medicine cabinet and gets out of band aid box and inside that is just like weed that looks like the weed that I currently have, like in my cabinet, that's been sitting around. It is it's total shake.

[01:10:42] And like it's like because I started getting so into edibles, like I just kind of forgot about it and it's just been sitting there for like, but they take like a few hits and they are now. I don't know.

[01:10:54] Like I've seen people say this is people who have never been stoned like imagining like what being stoned was like, but it's a very strange scene that's about to come up also very famous and is the inciting incident of

[01:11:10] the film, but like it just the way they're interacting at first when they're supposed to be like, we're kind of horny and talking. And then when they start fighting, it's just so bizarre. Like you can't believe that this is what both they and Stanley Kubrick thought

[01:11:28] would realistically depict two people getting stoned and arguing. There's no way like, yeah, so things they're kind of almost hooking up. And then she mentions those two girls at the party who she just got a glance at him and his like shitting grin as they're talking to him.

[01:11:45] And well, she was with the Hungarian. Well, she was with the guy and she's like, did you by any chance happen to fuck them? And he and he's like, what are you talking about? And it's so awkward. And he's always like rubbing his head.

[01:12:03] But then he's like, she tells him about the Hungarian and he makes what I don't know, maybe you disagree. What I consider to be a fairly innocent remark about like, well, I'm not surprised that he wanted to fuck you because you're so beautiful. Yeah.

[01:12:15] No, and then she takes then she makes like a number of logical leaps, which is like somebody who has taken your intro to logic. It's just like, wait, what? You're like, that's what you're most offended by. Well, it is. Irrationality again.

[01:12:30] Like, is that what pot's supposed to do to her where she's like, he goes, I'm not surprised. You're very beautiful. Are you saying he only wanted to fuck me because I'm beautiful? And then like, are you saying that men always want to fuck beautiful women?

[01:12:43] So did you want to fuck those models? He's like, I'm an exception. Like he's like, what makes you an exception? And then he's like, I just happened to be in love with you because we're married and I wouldn't lie to you and hurt you.

[01:12:54] I'm looking at the screenplay right now. She says, do you realize what you're saying is that the only reason you wouldn't fuck those two models is out of consideration for me. Not because you really wouldn't want to. Which is not.

[01:13:04] You just said like, because I'm in love with you. Yeah. And then he says, and I love this line and let's just relax, Alice. This pot is making you aggressive. I have a joint of just the shittiest weed you've ever seen is making you aggressive. Yeah.

[01:13:19] And she is being impossible, like right off the bat. She's just so mad. So you could look at this if you want to do and interpret like what's going on here is like simmering resentments that have just come to like the pot can't hold them anymore. Yeah.

[01:13:33] She's clearly, even though she denies it, she is wanting to fight. Yes. And then, you know, she goes to say, haven't you ever been jealous about me? And and he's like, no, like why not? And then he says a couple of things.

[01:13:48] One of them is because you're the mother of my child or something like that. And she can't believe that he thinks yeah, that it's not in her to cheat like that. That by dint of being a woman, she's just incapable.

[01:14:02] Like she's not like man, men are the ones who are always trying to cheat. She accuses him of being all at Evo psych about. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. And like he takes the bait, you know, it's just like that was his mistake. Women don't.

[01:14:19] They basically just don't think like that. Millions of years of evolution. Right? Right? Men have to stick it in every place they can. But for women, women, it is just about security and commitment and whatever the fuck else. A little over simplified, Alice. But yes, something like that.

[01:14:43] If you men only knew. And don't do that. Don't take the the Evo. No, and it's a it's a very interesting, I think, an insightful like it was an unexpected piece of insight from a Kubrick film that like female sexuality is such a threat to men.

[01:15:04] That we even come up with like theories about why it doesn't really exist. Yeah. This G spot thing, that's crazy talk. So and I think this is an interesting, you know, central theme of this whole thing, which is that the view of female

[01:15:20] sexuality that is being proposed here. And how that threatens the man. It leading into this, there's a very funny thing that she says like she starts accusing him of like, you know, like when you're feeling up your

[01:15:35] patience and he's like, no, sex is the last thing on my mind because like I view them as patients. And then she says to transition into the woman. Now, when she's having her little titties, do you think she has any little fantasies about what handsome Dr.

[01:15:51] Bill's Dickie might be like? She's such a bizarre. And like, I don't know. I was thinking like over under what take that was. That's what I get. Performance like that's like that's after she.

[01:16:04] She can act and Tom Cruise can act like they know how to act a normal scene. Like I think that this was after they had been psychologically broken down. Like that's the takes that he used because Tom Cruise already looks and it is

[01:16:18] very exasperating how Alice is behaving, but like he just is so over the top, just frustrated and could barely get out the words. He can't even believe like why he's getting yelled at and like why he's being accused and Alice is just.

[01:16:33] She's escalating and yeah, she's escalating it every time. And in just the most bizarre way. In non sequitur ways where of course, if you're the recipient of that sort of escalation where you don't even understand how we got from point A to point B,

[01:16:48] let alone to like XYZ where Alice is at like she's turned it up to 11. He's exasperated. I maintain as far be it from me to tell Stanley Kubrick what are good performances or not. This scene just seemed bad to me.

[01:17:06] It seemed stilted and and the best that I could say about it was that Kubrick might have wanted it to be stilted in this particular way. I think he definitely did. Now, maybe you don't think it works.

[01:17:18] I think it works as a piece of comedy and also at expressing again in a very dreamlike way, how frustrating it can sometimes feel to argue with somebody that you don't feel like that will interpret everything that you say in the worst possible way.

[01:17:34] Like all he said was like, I'm not surprised that he tried to seduce you because you look hot, you're a beautiful woman and like it gets in its weird dreamy way like the frustration of that.

[01:17:46] And I think it gets for her just like this has been building for her for so long. Yeah. Like that just his complacency about their relationship and their sex life. And it ties back to him not even looking at her when she asked how she looked.

[01:18:01] It's like taking it granted. He's taking her for granted as this like Hungarian awoke something in her, some deep sexual something that she then remembers puts together with like that memory that's going to be the right, the sort of nailing off and the inciting event.

[01:18:19] It's not that I think that the structure of that conversation wasn't intended to be comedic and absurd and it's just that I think Nicole Kidman's performance of it was like reading lines. Like I just didn't buy her.

[01:18:33] I bought her as somebody trying to act mad, not as somebody who is mad, not as somebody who is being irrational, somebody who is reading the lines. That's what bothered me. Not it's funny because this was like when they are trying to give her best

[01:18:46] actress like her doing that dream monologue. It's a strange thing because really the dream was I saw this naval officer and I would have been ready to give up everything like you and Helena and my whole fucking future, just to spend like a week with him.

[01:19:03] Yeah, and those words are meant to hurt and they may be true, but they're the kind of true that doesn't need to be expressed. It's being expressed just to hurt. And it's a callback for me to the Hungarian

[01:19:19] saying one of the terms of marriage is that it makes deception and necessity for both parties. She's abandoning that necessity by laying bare that she had such fucked up thoughts. And you do think it's like, OK, well,

[01:19:34] like it's not that big a deal that you've sexually fantasized about guy ones and like I kind of you know, you would probably think at some point that somebody you were with for a long time might have had this like, you know,

[01:19:46] like, oh, that guy is kind of hot. But it's also like she is saying it in such a way that it's like the pot made aggressive down the pot made her aggressive, which is again, actually a way in which he condescends, right?

[01:20:02] He's he's saying like, well, you're not saying true things. The deep point that you're making that I've taken for granted you as a sexual being and our relationship being based on us sort of like expressing this commitment. I'm just saying it's really dismissive.

[01:20:20] The pot made your aggressive, right? Although, but at the same time also true. The shake there is the shake from 1992. Right. No, it's very big. I would believe that Tom Cruise has never once gotten stoned in his life.

[01:20:37] But she also says at the end, which is an interesting counterpoint to everything else she's been doing. She's she's saying like as I was having sex with you, I was thinking about this guy and how I would give everything up to be with him.

[01:20:51] But then she says, and yet it was weird because at the same time, you were dearer to me than ever. And in that moment, my love for you was both tender and sad. I guess it's almost I don't think she means it as worse,

[01:21:02] but it almost makes it worse. Like I think I was kind of pitying you at the same time that I was fantasizing about fucking this other guy while I was fucking you. I think I think that those words are specifically chosen for their emasculating

[01:21:15] property, you think? Yeah, I feel like I don't know. I don't know what it is about the way that she said that, but that I still love you, but it but I was sad. It seems to be really stripping him of power.

[01:21:30] Yeah. Do you think she means it that way? Or I think it just reads that way. I think the whole her response to him not taking it seriously, I think led to her actually meaning to say that and now his sexuality, his masculinity and his relationship

[01:21:47] is all threatened. Yeah. If she wanted to threaten his masculinity and sexuality like she did it. Like the rest of the movie is essentially just him trying to, I don't know, get revenge. Yeah. Like prove to himself, prove to the world. Yeah.

[01:22:03] With power, money and sex somehow like I am. I am like to be the sailor. Yeah. The naval officer. Officer. Yeah. And we should get through the movie because we're never going to get through the rest of the movie at this rate.

[01:22:18] No, right. But this was an important insight. This is an important scene. And I like I stand by it and just the way they're interacting, the way Tom cruises, he looks so I actually think this is a good part of his performance.

[01:22:31] He's so frustrated, but also clearly senses that what's happening is like a bad harbinger and like raising questions that he doesn't want to face. And I think I changed my mind about her performance every time I watch it.

[01:22:46] But I think she's actually good in the last time I watched it. Well, good. I'm glad somebody does. Anyway, phone call. Yeah. He has to go to, you know, this is going to start his wanderings into the night. And it's quite a night that he's about to have.

[01:23:00] Yeah. Old man, Nathanson has died and his daughter calls him to go to the apartment. And it's not so this was obviously a patient of his. So it's important. He says I have to go. I have to go make myself seen or whatever, which again, it's it's not.

[01:23:17] It's not clear why the doctor would have to go. You call the coroner if they're already dead. But you do get the sense that and maybe this is, Tamela, what you were saying about like, are they climbers?

[01:23:27] You get the sense that he has built his business around being the doctor to the to the rich. And so this is part of the duties of that role that he's taken on is to make an appearance in front of the family.

[01:23:42] What it means and like, if you know people that are like working for the very wealthy, like they've made this bargain, which is you are at the beck and call of them 24 hours a day. And so they really can call you in the middle

[01:23:56] of the night when your wife has just told you that she dreamed about fucking a naval officer. Like, you know, you still have to go, I guess it's very but what his role there is is mysterious, doesn't like do anything.

[01:24:10] It's not like he calls the coroner or nothing that we see anyway. No, no, he's there because the daughter wanted him to be there. And that's the role that he's playing like his checks maybe depend. You never hear the transactional like it's it's more polite.

[01:24:25] In the sense that, you know, when he's helping out the Odeed sex worker, when he's talk comforting the daughter of the dead rich guy, they're not writing him a check, but you get the sense that this is part. He's on retainer or something.

[01:24:39] He's getting paid a lot of money for that. This is his job is to just be at there. The super riches beck and call. OK, so he goes to the old man, Nathanson, couple of things.

[01:24:49] One, the room in which the dead man is and reminded me a lot of the 2001 room where the aliens or whatever have created what they think is a reproduction of a human where a human would live.

[01:25:06] It's this very sort of old, I don't know what kind of style of Victorian era may be furniture, green and green. Green comes up a lot here when death and life are involved. But it's a very death color in this movie.

[01:25:20] Yeah, and there's a lot of corpses, both literally and figuratively. Now he's comforting the what in more crass times would have been called the spinster daughter of this rich old man, but she's no longer a spinster because she's announcing proudly sort

[01:25:38] of that she's engaged to this somebody who's going to be here soon. And he says, oh, yeah, I think I do remember him, the teacher, the math professor, she says. Yes. And then she proceeds to essentially

[01:25:51] hit on Tom Cruise and declare her love and tell him I've been in love with you, like I'm in love with you. And he's puzzled because he barely knows her. But this is the most Dostoyevsky of scenes to me.

[01:26:04] Like this could be out of any one of those Karamazov scenes where there is a bit of like a neurotic female character expressing her love hysterically or whatever. I was thinking again of Kafka like in the trial, this is what happens to Joseph K.

[01:26:21] All the time is like a woman will all of a sudden just want to have sex with him. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And she's like attractive, but maybe older and he has clearly no interest.

[01:26:33] Like she's made to look sort of like she's been through a lot. You know, her dad just died and he's just like, no, no, thank you. Yeah, she's not unattractive, but she's weird looking a little bit. She has these like strange accent, which is very hard to place.

[01:26:49] What exactly her accent is and these nostrils that kind of flare really dramatically. And maybe that accent is what made me think Russian literature. Yeah, something was going on there. But it's yeah, it's like I don't it's not straightforwardly Russian. No, no, no.

[01:27:05] But yeah, Karl the math professor. Greg from Dharma and Greg. Do you remember that? Yeah, I mean, I didn't see the show, but I know that that he was that guy. Sort of weird to see like a sitcom star in a Kubrick movie.

[01:27:18] Well, it's weird to see Tom Cruise and Nicole Kagan in a Kubrick movie. This OK, this scene, Tamler, I think we can move beyond it. But why is it there in all of the reading that I was doing?

[01:27:29] You know, I've like you have watched this movie multiple times and I got like a few months ago, got into watching YouTube videos on on it. And today and yesterday I was reading about it. This scene doesn't come up very much like in people's.

[01:27:42] I think like it's another example, like we've talked about of him being at the Beckenkahl of the Super Rich. It is the first in a series. Well, I guess if you don't count the two girls at the party,

[01:27:54] the first in a series of women and also men that will throw themselves at Tom Cruise, but that he still won't actually able to consummate any kind of sexual activity with. Yeah, I don't know like what more than that?

[01:28:07] Like it's definitely a scene that I've thought less about. Yeah, me too. And I think that it is just yet another indication that this is dreamlike women who barely know you don't tend to declare that they've been in love with

[01:28:21] you for so long when he says I've only ever even talked to you about your dad's health like it seems, you know, wish fulfillment in the broad sense that women love me, not in the sense that he wanted her. Particularly.

[01:28:34] And we can talk about like how much of this is supposed to be like almost a literal dream, but I almost think that that's like I said earlier, a fool's errand. Like part of the point of the movie is that like they even say a dream is not

[01:28:47] just a dream and reality doesn't tell the whole truth. Yeah, so absolutely. I also thought this was funny though when you were saying that this like this this is a scene that I actually thought was funny.

[01:28:57] Her desperate in that Dostoevsky way and the Kafka way of like just the absurdity of this because, you know, you take one context, a grieving daughter and then but then all of a sudden it turns sexual in the same way that they're just getting stoned.

[01:29:11] But then it becomes like this huge fight. It's like totally unprovoked. And then the next scene is also it's a bizarre scene on the street of these. I get a kid now they seem like they're from Yale. They are all wearing Yale gear.

[01:29:27] So so watch what you say. And they and they just again, completely unprovoked like a lot that's happened so far all of a sudden just start calling like just calling Tom Cruise like a faggot and and like just gay bashing him. Just a lot of homophobic.

[01:29:43] Like he's just literally walking on the street. And like there's not there like he's wearing like a winter coat. Yeah, like it's very weird. And they and they are calling him short, you know, like little man. And saying like, don't you want to fuck me?

[01:30:00] Like like bending over and saying, I know you want this. It's it's very weird. And I finally figured out why it's because his last name is Harvard and it sounds like Harvard and so he needed Yale thugs. Not really.

[01:30:14] I think it's making it clear that the Skull and Bones Society maybe it's drawing attention that Harvard sounds like Harvard. Come on. Yeah. You know why he named him that though? No, it's because so the protagonist.

[01:30:28] The novel is Jewish and a lot of it is about that kind of Jewish insecurity. But then he decided he didn't want that and he wanted a more Harrison Ford like kind of every man and his and so the last name is Harvard, Harrison Ford.

[01:30:41] Like that's what something I read. It's interesting. So one of the things that I found really intriguing about this scene where he's getting, you know, unprovoked, gay bashing comments about his sexuality and about his size is that

[01:31:01] these are real insults that Tom Cruise has had to deal with. And it seemed like Kubrick knowing something about how Kubrick worked, that this is a scene meant to provoke Tom Cruise. Well, this is what is brilliant about the casting is that there are definitely

[01:31:19] people who thought that they had a kind of fake marriage to cover up the fact that Tom Cruise was gay, but it can't admit that he's gay and remain like this huge superstar. People have been saying this about him forever.

[01:31:31] And so to actually cast them and then to have this scene is really showing that he's kind of blurring the boundaries between Tom Cruise's character and Tom Cruise himself. And he's literally being physically assaulted. You know, and I could totally see Kubrick doing on purpose to

[01:31:48] disjure, to just rattle Cruz in a Shelley Duval kind of way. And it's a credit to him that he just still did it all because he just wanted to be in a Kubrick movie like that. That was like I like that both of them. Kytel fucked up. Yeah.

[01:32:03] Yeah. I mean, like I get like I'd probably be like like just day to day. Like it would be awesome. But like, you know, to put up with that, like if you're Harvey Kytel, you're not used to being treated probably like Kubrick treats these people.

[01:32:16] But they put up with it. It's a very strange scene. Also, we should talk about the sets of New York because it's a great example. Again, of the blurring of like artifice and reality, dream and reality, because it is a very in some sense realistic.

[01:32:30] Like he tried to get a lot of the details that you would have of like Greenwich Village, New York. But then it also it looks very much like a movie set. Like I thought this was obviously just to have ultimate control over every piece of the environment.

[01:32:45] Yeah. But I do think like he didn't try to make it seem like you think you're in they're filming in New York. It's uncanny. Yeah, it has an uncanniness to it. So he meets Domino, one of the nicest prostitutes. It's a very funny scene.

[01:33:00] This is also a very funny scene. Prostitutes have been mean to you. No, like they haven't actually. But I mean, I don't have they haven't been mean or not mean. So this one invites him up to her place.

[01:33:18] She has like a little small apartment, a brown stone and he does this thing and he's been doing it before. But like this is one of the first times when I realized it was a thing where she says, do you want to come inside with me?

[01:33:31] And he goes, come in the side with you. And it's like the, you know, not the first because he's done it in like the argument with Nicole Kidman. He's done it before, but it's very strange affectation that now starts becoming more prominent where he really just repeats

[01:33:46] what the people say and I don't know what to make of that. I mean, it makes the viewer feel it feels uncanny. Yeah, I don't know if it's a particular feature of dreams that we would talk like that. This is why it seemed risky to me

[01:34:01] to have Tom Cruise deliver what are by design stilted lines when Tom Cruise himself might be accused of by mistake delivering stilted lines. It's a real hard thing to assess the performance of somebody who has. Yeah, I mean, but although like I think he can be,

[01:34:19] he can give a normal performance, not a naturally naturalistic performance, but a kind of normal movie star performance. And it's definitely not that here. In any case, he goes up, she has a little Christmas tree and it's a very small little place which he calls cozy.

[01:34:37] And he's so uncomfortable with this. Like actually, like I think like having not gone up into some prostitutes house in New York like this, like I feel like I could maybe relate to some of the stuff. Of like, all right, so what do we do exactly?

[01:34:53] What are the rules? What's the script here? Yeah, yeah. And he went up there, I guess, because this is his night where he's dealing with having been threatened. Like I can fuck too. It's not just you like I can also I can do that.

[01:35:08] And it ends up being once again, a thwarted even though she's very sweet to him and they, you know, it seems as if they're getting along. This is again another common theme is the the prostitute with the heart of gold. Yeah, it's a very like

[01:35:29] common sort of male wish fulfillment. Yeah, we like that kind of thing for some reason. And she looks like Alice. They all they're all redheads. Every woman I think is like a redhead of a slim attractive redhead. And you're right, like I think he

[01:35:47] you know, he thought of his wife as more of a Madonna and now he's seeing the whore. But he still has to have her have a heart of gold because she's so nice to him. He's like so awkward. Like, he's like, should we talk about money?

[01:35:59] She's like, what do you want to do? And he says, what do you recommend? I love that. And she's like, I'll take his he gets like the omakase, you know, like I'll take care of it.

[01:36:11] But yes, as you say, it is thwarted at the last second by a call from Alice. And Alice is in this just icy blue cold light, which she has been actually since the fight. He's always in this warm Christmas like firelight that you were talking about before.

[01:36:28] But like she is just in the kitchen and she looks tired and it's blue. Just just like chilling her the scene. Yeah, there's the use of blue is all will come back also in the scene with Seagler. Yeah. And yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

[01:36:45] And and she says, do you have to go? And he says, do I have to go? Brilliant. It's like George Lucas wrote this script. Yeah. And so he lies, you know, once again, a reminder that he said that he's

[01:37:01] 100 percent honest with her like just a few minutes ago. And then he just blatantly lies and says, no, I'm still here with this weird woman. He says there are relatives that might come. And yeah, yeah, because my guess is he didn't want to say I walked up into

[01:37:15] the department of a sex worker and we're negotiating how much a hand job. She's going to just I don't even know what to expect. There's going to be six different courses. It's like a flight. Yeah, somehow it's a flight of sexual acts.

[01:37:29] See if your your naval officer does that in your family that you drunk one time. And so now I still have to be out till like five in the morning. But then he does leave though. Yeah, remind me why he leaves.

[01:37:44] I think he just it like broke the mood. Like a lot of these things. It's again, it's like this day is X like blue ballast. Blue ballast rate like it's and this happens a lot. And there's always just like it gets right up to the moment where

[01:37:58] like the sexual attention is is building and then it's the balloon pops. He pays her anyway, she doesn't want to take the money, but he's a good guy. He's a good guy. Yeah. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you once again by Ren.

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[01:40:28] And then he goes to have stumbles on Nick Nightingale's jazz set. Yeah, Nick Nightingale, the pianist from the party earlier who had gone to medical school with he catches the very end of the set.

[01:40:42] So he gets a table and Nick Nightingale comes to talk to him and says, sorry, I only got the end. He's like, oh, that's fine. The band sucked. But I got another gig tonight. It's one of these weird like you're not even going to believe it.

[01:40:55] Like they blindfold me and, you know, you could just tell Dr. Bill's little dick, he's like starts to move. You've got to tell me about this. I want to go this place. Come on. And he says he's like, no, like this.

[01:41:09] At this one time, like the blindfold wasn't on very good and I totally saw. And there's just like people fucking. Well, he just says I've seen a lot of things and I've seen a thing or two in my life, but this takes the cake.

[01:41:21] It's not even like I saw people fucking. And then yeah, Tom Cruise is just like, oh, now I'm going to get Alice back. This is the thing. You know, like I thought it was going to be having sex with the prostitute. No, it's like orgy.

[01:41:33] Yeah, or like weird sex orgy and and the Nick Nightingale tells him he has to get a costume though. Yeah. And so he has to find that in the middle of the night. It's like probably what is it now? Like one in the morning, something like that.

[01:41:46] Probably at least one in the morning. Yeah. Because he says these guys don't get started until two. Yeah. So so he has to get a costume and he he catches Nick Nightingale writing down what is the password that will allow him to get into the party.

[01:42:00] The password is Fidelio, which obviously. Well, it's the name of a Beethoven opera, but obviously referring to Fidelio. Like being faithful. Yeah. But I saw an analysis and I won't have time to get into this of the theme

[01:42:14] of dogs in this movie and basically faithfulness in that sense, like being good, a good servant. And even in that analysis that I read, they didn't put two and two together about Fidelio being Fido is basically like that. Yeah. And Tom Cruise is essentially like a dog.

[01:42:32] He's like a dog to the rich. Like he's there at their beck and call and he's also kind of a dog to his wife. So he goes to the car. This is a great scene. He wakes up this man who owns a costume shop called Under the Rainbow.

[01:42:46] So another Wizard of Oz reference. He said. And it's like it's like such a clear call back to the women saying like where the rainbow ends. Yeah. He gets in by saying he's a doctor, which he always says.

[01:42:59] Is like a bad noir, you know, like not a bad noir. It's like a it's like a version of a noir. You and I were talking about this where like he's investigating. He's like investigating, but he's trying to get his dick wet at the same time.

[01:43:09] Like that's part of his investigation. And rather than say I'm a private like I'm a PI like like Humphrey Bogovic would say. Yeah, he just pulls out his state license that he carries around with him. Yeah. And the whole time I'm thinking like,

[01:43:23] would that convince anyone, particularly any New Yorker to let you in the door? No, right. The fuck do I know what a medical license looks like? I think Roger Ebert said that he keeps saying he's a doctor in order to like remind himself that he exists.

[01:43:37] I think it's more for him that he's doing. And again, it's very dreamlike, but he does have to like bribe the guy. He has to give the guy 200 bucks above and beyond what the rental will cost. But he lets him in.

[01:43:49] Then you have what's I don't know, some sort of like dark slapstick scene. Almost a Doctor Strange, lovey scene with them in there. And well, I'm glad you say that because one of the things I want to talk to you about throughout is I feel like Kubrick

[01:44:05] might have known this was his last movie. And I feel like there are little illusions to his other films throughout. Yeah. And maybe this is like the Doctor Strange love scene. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

[01:44:17] And you know you pointed out and I think you're probably probably right about the 2001, my old man in the room. And yeah, it just has that energy with which the rest of the movie definitely doesn't have of it's almost like farce.

[01:44:31] You know, even though it's dealing with dark themes, like the guy goes into the back where the costumes are and finds his 15 year old daughter with two Japanese businessmen, Asian businessman of some kind. And he's like chasing them and yelling at them.

[01:44:45] And they're like trying to put on pants. They have like this weird makeup on. They're dressed as women. Right. I think. And so they were clearly doing some some role playing with his 15 year old daughter, which.

[01:44:57] But what were they doing is like, like it's just like a really good part. The fight exactly. Exactly. It is. Yeah. It has that kind of George C. Scott with his like secretary and Doctor Strange love and the girl is played as very sexual.

[01:45:15] And even though she is kind of running from her dad, who's calling her a whore and stuff like that, she clearly is also kidding on Dr. Bill. She also looks like somewhere between Alice and Helena.

[01:45:26] You know, like she's like I don't know if she's meant to look like Helena or meant to look like Alice or both. But I also got Lolita vibes hardcore. Definitely. And you know, he of course did the movie adaptation of Lolita. Yeah.

[01:45:43] Millich is the name of the Russian or whatever Eastern European. Right. And he's very funny. He's hilarious. The actor is great. It's a great performance. It's like funny and intentionally funny, unlike some of the stuff where you don't know what's intentional and what's not.

[01:45:58] But also dark and you know, there's this weird thing where the daughter whispers in Dr. Bill's ear and apparently what she says is get a cloak lined with ermine, which indicates maybe she knows like the kind of maybe she goes to the party that he's.

[01:46:13] Oh yeah. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, because I was wondering how he knew to get a cloak. Yeah. And yeah, she says that in ermine, you know, you can look up there's various throughout history.

[01:46:26] It's very it's been used as symbolic of various things. But one of the things that I read was that it was symbolic of it was associated with Mary Magdalene, the former prostitute who then became purified through her relationship with Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So great scene.

[01:46:47] He gets in a cab and goes to the address where this party is. His real mistake going in a cab. Yeah. That's that's one of the class distinct distinguisher right there and keeping the receipt of the rental. And because these guys, they buy their costumes.

[01:47:07] He also has like of all I mean, we're going to get to the scene, but he has the most doofus looking mask of anybody at the party. Yeah, I'd felt dumb if I came. He has like a New Orleans looking mask

[01:47:21] whereas everybody else has like their Amadeus looking masks. Yeah. And it looks like Tom Cruise to some extent, just that kind of blankness that he can sometimes have. So like I think it works on a lot of different levels. Yeah, he goes into the cab.

[01:47:35] He's like kind of bribing the cab driver to wait for him. And he says it could be a couple of hours, but it could be 20 minutes and like any. Yeah, yeah. That's like a annoying little power move. He's like tears $100 bill in half and says,

[01:47:50] if you wait here, keep the meter running, you get to keep the. Which is a funny thing because he doesn't do stuff like that in the rest of the movie. He's not an asshole. That's the one time that he's an asshole in the movie.

[01:48:02] Like he's only like that in that one scene. Because normally he never has the position of power. I guess that's the difference is he's always the person that is looking up and this time he senses that he has the power of.

[01:48:18] Yeah, also with Millich a little bit where he's like, I'll give you $200 over the year, like he's throwing that whole night. He's throwing his money around a little bit in a way that I think makes him feel powerful, but Millich doesn't.

[01:48:30] Millich feels like he has the upper hand in their interactions, like pretty much throughout. So he gives the password to these two shady looking people who have to drive to the gate. They have to drive him from the gate to the house.

[01:48:47] So we are in Rothschild's level wealth. And if you think this movie is about like the Illuminati or like Free Nations, you know, or like some Jeffrey Epstein ring, this is where you're going to get

[01:49:02] this idea, although what goes on in the orgy scene, if you can call it that, is something very different than I think people expected. Yeah, right. But I do like the level of rich is it's interesting. Like we were saying, you think that Dr.

[01:49:21] Bill is rich because he has a nice apartment in in Manhattan. And then you realize, oh, he's not rich. Ziggler is rich. He has and then you realize, holy shit, we thought we knew what rich was. This is a whole other level.

[01:49:35] This is still another like it's like they're just different worlds. Although Ziggler has access to this world. Ziggler is knocking on their door the way that Bill was knocking on Ziggler's door, probably and probably and maybe doing their bidding at the end. Like we could talk about that.

[01:49:51] Maybe Ziggler himself is at the beck and call of the people running whatever the fuck this is. Yeah. But if you went into the movie thinking, all right, like this is it. I'm going to get this awesome orgy scene to like jerk off to and be

[01:50:04] sexually satisfied or dissatisfied or what depending on whether you're a man or a woman, I think you were probably disappointed because it's not. It's just a very bizarre scene like from the music, which is like, I guess backwards playing. Yeah, like Orthodox liturgy.

[01:50:21] It's like, you know, it's it's an interesting choice for a soundtrack because it evokes sort of the satanic ritual Satanists backmask. The holy words or whatever. So it's very intentional. Ritualistic that naked women are presented to the leader or the leaders,

[01:50:43] the man in the red in the red robe and they're all sort of form a circle around him. Yeah. And and you see again, a bunch of beautiful female bodies, but not. It's not secure. It doesn't feel sexual. It feels weird. It just feels weird.

[01:51:03] It feels like necrophilia or something like it. Because when they're even when they're kissing, it's like they're putting plastic against plastic because they're kissing the masks. And like, you know, like if you thought, oh, there's going to be like hot girl on girl action.

[01:51:18] It's like, well, it's more a mask on mask action. And but you're right. They have these kind of perfect model bodies, I guess. But they look like like dolls. Like all the women look like dolls in this movie. They look like lifeless.

[01:51:31] And I think that's what keeps this whole scene from being sexy, like or being like in any way kind of erotic is that they people barely look alive in it. Yeah. And there are a lot of just, I don't know how orgies work, but there's a lot of

[01:51:48] people observing other people engaged in sexual acts. It sort of famously was was going to be given an NC 17 rating. And they added some stupid CG figures to block some of the more explicit scenes. But even the more explicit scenes are clinical.

[01:52:07] Yeah, they're like, yeah, we're going through an orgy right now. And like you say, very ritualistic, but not in a way. I don't know. It's not a turn on this scene. It's not animalistic. It's like going through the motions of having. Yeah. We shall have this body.

[01:52:27] It's robotic in a way. But it's not that that's not exactly the right word. Like the thing that evoked for me this time was like like a little girl playing with dolls and having them kiss each other. That's what it seemed like.

[01:52:38] And I think that's what this is about is the super rich people using women as dolls to play with. And there's a naked man here and there. Yeah, even two naked men dancing to each other again.

[01:52:49] Like if you see this as a projection of Tom of sorry, Dr. Bill's insecurity, you know, like there is, you know, you can make a lot out of those naked men, but also just the fact that there are all these people who know what to do.

[01:53:03] It's a little like when he was with Domino and he is just wandering around in it in like a kind of days of like, you know, but it's an expression list because he has this mask on. But you get the sense that underneath there,

[01:53:15] it's also like he doesn't know like how he's supposed to react to this. And you never get a sense of like what he's thinking. Super risky to go to what is a ritualistic performance, not knowing anything about how the ritual is supposed to be performed. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:53:32] Like ladies, don't tell your man that you've had a dream about fucking like a sailor because this is what they'll do to like. But in that sense, it's like it's like a dream in which you ever have

[01:53:42] dreams where you're supposed to be like in a play, but nobody bothered to tell you the lines. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And so one of the women goes up to him and is taking an interest in him and tells him to get the hell out of there.

[01:53:57] But then she gets kind of led away. So then like all those scenes of him just browsing or going from room to room, then she comes back and I don't know, you get the sense she might convince him to leave,

[01:54:11] but it's too late and he gets called away. And she's definitely warning him. She obviously had to recognize him in order to warn him. Right. And it seems like this couple who I think later we think is Ziggler,

[01:54:24] who's on a balcony during the ritualistic like magic circle thing, looks at him and they have a look and you get the sense. Like this is again very dreamlike. They all know who I am. They all and they do. Like it's discovered who he is.

[01:54:38] He has to take off his mask again. Like and then they tell him to take off his clothes. Like if you're trying to think, is this a dream or not? You know, like, oh, I'm now naked in front of all these people.

[01:54:48] Yeah. And then the woman does this kind of I take me instead. Like I don't know what they were planning to do to him. They were planning at the very least to do something to him while he was naked. Right. Some sort of some sort of

[01:55:03] maybe rave we never find out. We never find out. Yeah, we never find out. There's also another one of those cases of the interrupters of maybe him actually getting laid because one of the women there

[01:55:16] asks him if he wants to go somewhere more private and he says private. And that's right where he gets interrupted. The masks of all the people when he's getting interrupted are very like expressionistic and strange there.

[01:55:30] He has the doofus mask, but everybody else has these masks that I don't know. I wanted to. There is a mask within the crowd. There's a lot of people at this thing. Yeah. In in the crowd,

[01:55:42] there is a mask that I swear is an allusion to the killing, the clown masks that are used in the in the heist. That's yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Good. Yeah, you're right. This is late style Stanley Kubrick like all these illusions of all these other works.

[01:55:59] It's very funny like so the scene where she decides to sacrifice herself. This this woman who we later find out is Mandy from the opening party. And the parties are clearly meant to mirror each other. They're exactly the same length of time.

[01:56:12] Every time like something happens, like every beat, the crowd goes like like the South Park crowd, you know, like when someone's talking like she's like, take me instead and everyone's like the guy, the guy is like, you realize what this means?

[01:56:27] She says yes and every time I go to the party, I'm like, oh, my God. Which maybe adds gives a slight plausibility, but only the tiniest bit of plausibility to what Sidney Pog will say is really going. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:44] So because she says that she'll take take her instead and they say her fate is sealed, he's allowed to leave. Yeah. And and he goes home and the night still isn't over for him though. Like as fucked up and frustrating as this night has been like

[01:57:00] he gets home and puts the costume away, hides it away. And then Alice is laughing in the bed and like literally laughing as she's sleeping. Has has you seen the mask? Is this where he's no, no, no, no. That's after he comes home from Zeeglary.

[01:57:17] This is like we're halfway through the movie, which is a problem for us. But like we're just barely we're a little over halfway through the movie at this point, the the orgy scene is the exact center of the movie. And it had the movie has this symmetry.

[01:57:32] But she's laughing and he's like and then like wakes herself up laughing and then tells him this horrible dream where she is at like somewhere in a garden and in a garden, the sailor is there. Like I guess Eden illusion that that that naval officer is there.

[01:57:52] But then also these other people, she's like an all of a sudden I was fucking them. I was fucking all of them. She's like, I was fucking so many men. I don't know how many like right before that she says that he was there.

[01:58:04] But then he left and she said, as soon as you were gone, it felt wonderful. Which is just the coal heaping coals on his head. And that everybody was laughing at him again. This is so like insecure like projections of all your insecurities.

[01:58:19] Like everybody's laughing at it and she wanted to laugh. I wanted to make fun of you to laugh in your face. Yeah, I was fucking so many other men. It's a rough night for Dr.

[01:58:30] Bill, like, you know, because all this is the same night that Alice yelled at him about saying she looked beautiful and then she says she was became ashamed of her nakedness, which is just a straight up Garden of Eden illusion. Right? Yeah.

[01:58:45] Yeah. And by the way, the Garden of Eden is interpreted by some people like in I believe in some of the Gnostic traditions and even more modern as as a story of sexuality and the serpent being really just the temptation of sex

[01:59:01] outside the bounds of her relationship with Adam and being seduced. And and then the shame. And so it's clearly he's hitting these things. And they had to put on clothes for the first time because that's the first time they cover their self because they feel shame.

[01:59:19] That's right. Yeah. And that's like the masks, maybe it's like, you know, we have to. We have to adopt these personas now because of our like hidden psychological fantasies and the darkest desires that we won't be honest about with ourselves or with anybody else.

[01:59:34] There's a tension that builds when she's saying this dream because he walked in and she was laughing. And when she wakes up, she says, I was having a terrible dream. A nightmare. Been this so bad that I was fucking other men.

[01:59:43] But the whole time you know that he knows that she was laughing. Yeah. So so you're you're like, wait, is she just lying to him about this dream being terrible? Like and finally at the end, she says why, you know, but

[01:59:58] but it does create this tension of like, she like, why was she having a good time? Like, was she getting fucked and loving it? Like that's what it's like because that's when she wakes up. So even though she's describing it as a nightmare, she didn't seem like she

[02:00:11] should not seem like a nightmare. I was like, I'm a dick left and right, dick in my face, dick in my tits. And you know, like Kubrick has like this symmetry in his shots, but also in his movies.

[02:00:20] Like I remember when we talked about a Clockwork Orange, like there's the centerpiece and then just mirrored every scene that takes place before he's in prison and gets the the dive of the go kick or whatever the fuck technique.

[02:00:33] Every scene is kind of repeated, but it's now like afterwards. And the same thing in this movie, there's the orgy is the centerpiece of the movie and then what comes after is Bill repeating every single thing that he did around it.

[02:00:48] So like the thing that sent him out to the orgy was Alice saying something, describing something to him that makes him sexually jealous and also insecure. And then he comes home after the party and she does another one of those things.

[02:01:02] And then he goes out like he has, I guess, a normal day. But then he goes out and goes to every single place he went the night before. Oh yeah. Right. Like first he goes to try to find Nick Nightingale.

[02:01:14] He goes to the jazz club, but he's not playing there anymore. He finds out the hotel that he's staying at. He. Oh yeah, because he goes to the waitress and the waitress sort of like, I know Nick Nightingale. He doesn't want me to tell you the hotel.

[02:01:30] And she's like, it's OK. I'm a doctor. Here's my New York state license. Yeah. The bell hop at the hotel that is staying at. That's a great scene too. Alan Cummings is just great at like just he is undressing Tom Cruise with his eyes.

[02:01:49] Yes, absolutely the whole time it inexplicable people throwing themselves at him. But this time it's Alan Cummings. But again, his performance is like I would say what's the Russian guy's name? Milich. Milich yeah. So like that scene, like this scene has played almost more like.

[02:02:08] Like I mean on the joke. It was almost out of like four rooms. It was like like. If I've ever seen that, but this is definitely like the third or fourth time you've made that analogy forward.

[02:02:22] Can't be maybe the second time, but I'll be sure and tell you when you repeat yourself. So. I believe me. I know I do it so much. It's like, well, Bill, it's funny you should ask that question, Bill. But what comes out of it?

[02:02:38] He's such a flirt is that Nick Nightingale was taken out of his house at five in the morning and he looked like he'd been roughed up a little bit. And he had a bruise and, you know, we didn't mention this, but at the party, there's a funny orgy.

[02:02:55] There's a funny scene of him just blindfolded like playing the thing. Yeah, it's weird because the music that is playing like can't possibly be coming out of his instrument. It's very weird. Again, dreamy, very, very dreamy. So he goes to the costume shop and

[02:03:13] Milich has made up with the two Asian businessmen. And now it's just clear that he's like prostituting his own daughter. He's now like, OK, I'm pimping now. Yeah, exactly. And like says to him flat out like if you ever need anything, it doesn't need to be a costume.

[02:03:29] It can be like only very. His daughter is like underwear. Yeah, she's just like wearing underwear. Yeah, exactly. Just standing there and looking again. Like I think this is like she is sexualized. She's more sexualized than arguably anybody in the entire movie. Yep.

[02:03:46] So meanwhile, Spley Stan is and I think Tim Criter says this, Nicole Kidman is helping Hannah Helena with her math homework and saying like this person has, you know, like four dollars and this boy has like this.

[02:04:02] Essentially training her to figure out which guy has the most money. Yeah, yeah. The word problem was about about finding the man with the most money. Meanwhile, I don't know if we've said this, but like,

[02:04:15] like every once in a while, he just gets a fantasy of his of Alice and the sailor fucking I don't know why he's getting intrusive intrusive thoughts of jealousy. Yeah. And apparently like those scenes were filmed over seven days and Tom Cruise was not allowed on set.

[02:04:30] Oh, man. Yeah. He's like, so what are they broke up? He's getting that and he's tortured by that. He goes back to the mansion and he gets just these people driving up and giving him a note that says give up your inquiries, which are useless. Interesting phrasing there.

[02:04:48] You can look into this, but you're not going to do anything like you're too much of a like a tiny little speck of dust to be anything more than just an annoyance, but also like we will kill your family. Essentially. Yeah.

[02:05:02] Then he goes back to Domino's weird scene there. Very weird. Domino's not there. Her friend is and he starts flirting with her friend, even feeling her up a bit. And coming on strong for him strong.

[02:05:16] Like I feel like he now thinks like, OK, I've got like this is it? Like time's running out. I've got to fuck somebody for the first time almost as like she seems like she's responding well to it.

[02:05:26] But like for the first time, he's actually being aggressive about it. Yeah. Yeah. Not in an asshole way, but like he's he actually looks like he's not just a victim of other people trying to fuck him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He knows what to do.

[02:05:39] He's already been through the script once. That's right. That's what it is. He has the script now. And you know, things are going well. They're kind of it's very small kitchen that they're kind of moving past each other. But then she again, there's another interrupting thing.

[02:05:54] But this time it's her telling him that Domino tested positive for HIV for HIV. Yeah. And again, like maybe at a time where where HIV is was more considered a death sentence and so it is a little eerie that that I think he probably feels

[02:06:16] like he narrowly escaped death as well from a poor decision that he was about to make. So that obviously makes his penis soft. Yeah. And a lot seems to make his penis. There's there's also a lot of green here in this apartment, which I think again

[02:06:33] is is death, death color in this film particularly. And he walks out the nicest people in the whole movie, Domino and the roommate. Yeah. And it's it's like a sad moment. You actually care that Domino has been diagnosed. Exactly. You actually give a shit.

[02:06:52] Yeah, they are the most human interactions, even including his daughter and his wife. Like these are the most like normal people having normal interactions. Not some cruise in the Colkinman offset. Yeah. Um, yeah. And you know, there's Tom Cruise being more like Tom Cruise,

[02:07:11] the star movie actor, you know, like the mega star movie actor, you know, being confident. And like you said, he had the script. He still does repeat what she says. She may not even be coming back and he's like, she may not be coming back.

[02:07:28] It was like the scriptwriter had to meet a word, a particular word limit. I think I've read somewhere that somebody was saying this is another clue that this is all coming out of his own mind, you know, because like he that he was

[02:07:41] the one that thought up their lines. Yeah. OK, so at this point, Tom Cruise walks out on the street, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there is there's a part there that I wanted to to talk about because very clearly in the newsstand, if you look at the newspapers,

[02:07:56] yeah, the headline says Lucky to be alive. Yeah. And he got he buys that newspaper that says I guess it's the post or the daily news or something. Yeah. And which is again, we haven't talked too much about the theme of death being

[02:08:11] related to the themes of sex, but here I think is the most clear linkage of sex and death being that HIV positive was. That's right. Yeah. Exactly. So like it's lucky to be alive that you didn't have sex with Dom. No, not that they came that close, but

[02:08:29] for him when he tells the story, like, I almost hit that shit. But but but also lucky to be alive because he went to that party. And yeah. And I think just with the general Freudian themes of death, birth and life. Lucky to be alive in general.

[02:08:50] Yep. Yeah. And he goes to a cafe and the requiem in that is playing in that cafe, by the way. The minute he walks into the cafe, Mozart's requiem, which is, you know, that's right, March is playing. So and it's green. The cafe is very green as well.

[02:09:04] Yeah. And maybe another Amadeus illusion. It's a four. It's clearly a four rooms. The third of the four rooms. The one with Madonna in it. The one that was by the woman who directed gas food lodging. I didn't pick the worst one. Is that the worst one?

[02:09:25] I'm pretty sure I didn't see. Yeah. So so then he sees that someone Odead named Amanda and died. And I don't know, like I was asking the lies of this because we watched it this last

[02:09:39] time together, like is there any reason for him to think that that's the woman that sacrificed herself for him? Like he knows that her name is Mandy. And he might suspect that it's the same woman that was sacrificing herself

[02:09:52] because he's seen her naked body even though he couldn't see her face. Right. And interestingly, the sound is very good. Like the way that people talk coming out of the masks is very masked as well. Like it sounds like they're talking through a mask.

[02:10:06] So so yeah, he would only have her tits to as as Ziggler, which he claims to not look at or really care about when he's a doctor in any case, he does. And it's a very strange scene in the corner of his office.

[02:10:21] First of all, he does another one of these. I'm a doctor. It's like, so I can just examine this random dead body. And then he opens up the drawer that she's in and and then he just stares at her and kind of lowers his head over.

[02:10:37] Yeah, he is. That's right. He's not facing her in from from the direction of looking at pain. Yeah, he's like upside down, like sixty nineing her face. Exactly. And very slow like everything he does very slowly. Yeah.

[02:10:54] And like if you're the guy, it's like, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you here? What are you trying to figure out? Yeah. I feel like this might also be the only black guy in the. Yes, right. It's not.

[02:11:06] This is not trying to tackle like anything about race. This is not woke. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's like Michael Jordan is at the party at the word. So then he goes over to Ziggler's house.

[02:11:17] They're in this billiard room, which is very the colors of the room. I don't know. Like what do you think? Red felt with the green lights mean entire video essays exist about the color schemes

[02:11:32] in this movie, but obviously the red, the green, the blue are all playing a role. And the red is like, I think a very aggressive color. And the green, I think again, is death or life. I think that this is the moment where

[02:11:50] it's going to be determined what happens. You know, he's he does. Does he accept the explanation and stop his search? Yeah. Or is he like he's banging his he's banging those billiard balls on the table much like the orgy guy was banging the cane on the.

[02:12:09] And he says about the billiard balls, he says you feel like playing and Bill says, no, thanks. You go ahead. I'll watch. And I took that as a like he's always on the outside watching, you know, like he's never playing. He's not like he was at the orgy.

[02:12:22] He's he's watching and also that like Ziggler is just throwing around billiard balls, like playing with like life essentially, like he sets these billiard balls in motion and watches how they interact with each other. So and so Bill is he's there.

[02:12:40] He thinks almost to try to find answers himself. But what's really happening is Ziggler is telling him like, we will kill you if you keep pursuing this. I mean, so he came with a newspaper clipping and he's like,

[02:12:54] dude, this is the chick that saved me at that party. Like did you guys really kill her? And he's like, what? Her? Come on. She's going to die. She's a junkie. You know yourself. You know, you saw what she was like.

[02:13:08] You saw her almost die and he does this very dehumanizing thing again. He says, the one with the great tits woe in my bathroom. Yeah, you know, which is like she's not a real human. She's not one of them. And so Tom Cruise has to decide.

[02:13:23] And so so he spins this like as yeah, sorry. No, no, no, I was just going to say that like before we get to like the explanation, first he has to prove to him that he knows what Tom Cruise has

[02:13:33] been up to and he says, like, let's cut the bullshit. Yeah, it's so awkward. The whole scene is so awkward and Tom Cruise, every time he tries to say something, it's like every so often if I'm trying to take a piss, but I can't.

[02:13:45] And I'm just trying to like will it out? That's like every time he says something is like, but. What happened to Nick Knighting? You know, like, but he is finally saying, look, you didn't I was there. I know what you did. You fucked up with the password,

[02:14:05] the second password. And it's not because you didn't know it, but because there wasn't one, which I don't know like what the import of that is, but it sort of implies that he could have

[02:14:13] gotten away with it if he was a little sapphire, but he he wasn't savvy enough. And then what you're alluding to just the phrasing of what he says when he brings up Mandy because Bill says she offered to sacrifice herself for me. What am I supposed to think?

[02:14:29] And then Sidney Pollock says, suppose I said that all of it was staged. Suppose I said it was fake, fake. Yes, fake and that the whole thing was just our way of scaring you into like being silent about what was going on at the party.

[02:14:46] And I like it's a preposterous explanation, I think like the idea that these the richest people in the world are all going to participate because everybody was in like in on it just to scare this one guy that they also clearly

[02:15:03] think they could kill without even like a second thought, like without getting their hands dirty at all. But what he is giving him, I think, is an like an out, like a little like here's something for you to believe so you can go on living with yourself.

[02:15:16] Yeah, with a fairly unscathed conscience. Yeah, it's like here like that's the bargain. It's like a devil's bargain that he's offering him. I will give you. I'm not it's not I'm not even a bother. I'm not going to take the trouble to make it sound plausible.

[02:15:30] I'm going to say that like Henry Kissinger and like whoever fuck else was at that party. Oh, they all got together and like, all right, we got to do we got to do like number three to try because there's an infiltrator.

[02:15:41] And so they all stop fucking and like go into the big ballroom and go hard. But at the same time, there's so much artifice in that whole thing that who knows? I don't know. Yeah, I actually look, I think that that there's no answer here.

[02:15:58] Like they think the big bad of the secret society threatening him is a big bad. And I think that's why the last scene, you know, what the mask on the pillow is adding to the whole like threat possibly depending on how you interpret it.

[02:16:14] I do think though that it is very plausible that she died from being from an O.D. Because we saw that like it is true. It's very possible. And I do also think that it's very possible that these are just a bunch of rich

[02:16:28] fucks who every once a year have this party and they don't want to be found out. So so you get the sense it's more than once a year. But yeah, I don't get it. I honestly don't get a sense of how often.

[02:16:39] Well, just because what Nick Nightingale says, like it seems like. Yeah, but he might be going all over the country doing these. That's not true. Yeah. I here's the sense I get, especially when Sidney and Sidney Pollock is great in the scene.

[02:16:52] But like when he kind of like is finally just like he kind of loses his patience towards the end and he's like, all right, get the fuck out. Like essentially, like, you know, life goes on until it doesn't. But you know that bill.

[02:17:03] And he's like putting his hands on his shoulders from behind and just like, I've already wasted enough time. And actually something you said earlier makes me think that he's might be resenting doing like Aaron Dwork for like the secret society. You know, I got that feeling too.

[02:17:19] Like he likes Bill because he's kind of responsible. Like it's like in the mafia, you vouched for him and now he did this. Whatever it is, however serious the threat actually is, whether the killing,

[02:17:33] whether there was a killing of the girl or whether the girl who said that she'd sacrifice herself died for another reason. The threat is being made. In that moment with the like, you know, and Tom Cruise cringes when his when Sidney Pollock puts his hands on his shoulders.

[02:17:51] And I believe that there is an implicit threat. Yes. And I think this is where Tom Cruise realizes also, if I thought I could get into this world, I can't they have nothing but contempt for me.

[02:18:02] They see me as just like a like a like a servant, like a waiter, like anybody that they deal with or a prostitute. Like I am just a I am like the doctor version of a prostitute.

[02:18:13] Right. It hails to the days where like wealth and money were came from lineage and family and merchant class included things like doctors and pharmacists or whatever. Like that's not yeah, for us, like doctors seem like, oh, you're a doctor. One of the Rothschilds properties.

[02:18:32] I think so too. Yeah. And that the orgy was something like that. Yeah. So again, like Illuminati, like here and also what Ziegler says, like if you knew who was at that party and I'm not going to I'm not going to tell

[02:18:45] you who they were, but if you knew you wouldn't sleep so well at night. Right. Right. Definitely George W. Yeah. He was there because he was in Skull and Bones. Yeah. And George HW too. George HW. But he was just watching at that point.

[02:18:59] Yeah, maybe this is the late 90s. Like who's there? Yeah, I think these are supposed to be the movers and shakers of the world. Not the famous people. The masks might not be necessary because you might not recognize who's actually funding the arms sale like, you know.

[02:19:17] Yeah, exactly. They're not celebrities. It's not Michael Jordan. Yeah. Celebrities are also merchant class. Exactly. Exactly. Celebrities are a merchant class. That's a great way of putting it. So then he goes home as you say, like he's just ushered out. He's like Ziegler is done with him.

[02:19:32] He goes home, mask on the pillow, which we can talk about what that means. I will say, I think like so, like a couple of things it could be. Number one, the secret society saying we can get to you. We can get in your house.

[02:19:46] We'll kill you and your family. That's kind of the maybe the most obvious one you might think of. Also Alice finding the costume. Yeah, because he had put the costume away and didn't have the mask when he was returning it. Also, I've seen Alice was at the party.

[02:20:04] Now, if you think this whole thing is a dream, which you definitely could like, sure, Alice was at the party. I don't think it's hard to imagine her being at the party based on the reality

[02:20:13] of what we saw because she's got her teaching her how to pick the richer men. Well, not at two in the morning, but no, but she was. We did see her like not looking like she was getting dressed up to go to

[02:20:25] an allergy when she called to interrupt him with Domino. So then he says, I'll tell you like he breaks down when he sees that. Like what a wuss. He breaks down like those guys on the street.

[02:20:35] We're going to grab the mask and shoved it into the pilot cabinet with the lock and been like, what mask? I don't know what you're talking about. Well, she might not have ever seen the mask. We never know. Wait, did he grab the mask?

[02:20:48] Like when she wakes up and breaks down, I think the mask is still on the pillow, which is what makes me think that she put it there. Yeah, maybe we don't. It's a very ambiguous thing because he breaks down and says, I'll tell you

[02:20:58] everything, but we don't see what he tells her. Just cut to the next scene where she just looks like she's hurt a lot. But again, it's like in both cases, it's like neither of you did anything.

[02:21:12] No, I know this is and I think this is why that essay that you sent me, the interpretation is really trying to move away from any kind of psychological one about their relationship because it's really like not clear at all.

[02:21:28] Like she got mad and jealous, but like they're not giving us too much about their dynamic. Like they didn't they really didn't do anything. They got in an argument and he almost, you know, he inappropriately went up to a almost fuck. He almost fucked like seven women.

[02:21:42] Yeah, and Alan coming and but again, like the important thing to tell of that night, I would think is, holy shit, man, I think the secret society is like killed this woman that I like I went up to Ziggler's room at that party and she had O.D.

[02:21:58] And then she was there at this party the next night and like now she's dead. Yeah, we have to like move and maybe get in witness protection. But that's not they're just being like, OK, we told each other some dark

[02:22:08] sexual secrets, which again, I think it's very like I think the dream more interpretation of this is really just a projection of all this pent up. I don't know, sexual frustration, sexual insecurity, feelings of inadequacy,

[02:22:23] feelings again of being on the outside, like just imagining that there's this great orgy world of the super rich that you're just like almost able to attend. But you just don't know the script. Yeah, interestingly, her dream of seeing hundreds of people fucking

[02:22:41] and it adds some credence to the possibility that that was just his dream. Like they were both having jealousy and they both had parallel dreams. Right. His was just like more fancy masks. It does. Like you said, like every woman is essentially her even at the orgy.

[02:22:57] They all like we don't know necessarily, but they all kind of have that. Nicole Kidman, like really long limbs, thin model looks like a model kind of looks. And so it's like they were both having the dream.

[02:23:11] But she was like one of the women in the dream and laughing at him. Like probably the people at the party were. Right. And so so then they go to a store like as she's smoking a cigarette. She's like, wait, we got it.

[02:23:26] We got to take Helena to a Christmas shop. Christmas shop. She looks like she's together. She looks terrible. Like what he's told her is. But again, it's not like she seems scared of the people.

[02:23:38] It's more like, man, I can't believe you would do that to me after I just confessed to you like that. I desperately want to fuck this navy guy and leave you and Helena. I can't believe you let a bunch of Yale dudes. Intimidate you. Yeah, maybe really.

[02:23:59] You can't fuck up your Tom Cruise. You can't fuck up like a bunch of assholes from. So they're shopping at the whatever toy store. You know, there's some something there maybe to be said about the materialism. Definitely. And the teaching of the girl to buy whatever she wants.

[02:24:19] And also the fact that like that, like one of the big toys is the magic circle, which is a circle of the orgy and then the Barbie doll, which I think is like undeniably like an illusion to the orgy.

[02:24:32] And really most of the movie has like dolls in it. That's what she wants. And Nicole Kimman's like, yeah. And then there's this they start talking about what they're going to do right now. And there's interesting dialogue here that I think is also a clue about like

[02:24:45] the part where like reality doesn't tell the whole truth. And then he says, no dream is just a dream. Yeah. And you could look at that as like, oh, it's nice. They're both recognizing that they've been unfaithful kind of in different

[02:24:59] ways and they're validating it in each other. And on a serious Freudian, you know, on a serious Freudian take of it, the dream no dream is just a dream. So it says something to me that Kubrick might have approached this text

[02:25:16] that he based this movie around as the author of that text, which was in a Freudian way. The reality of dreams is just as real as the reality of waking life. And so we must take seriously there is serious emotional work that has

[02:25:32] to come from the fact that we had these dreams. That Tom Cruise may have had these waking experiences and that Nicole Kidman had them during a dream matters much less. What they need to do is work out how they're going to deal with what happened

[02:25:45] with them. What Alice says then is the important thing is that we're awake now and hopefully for a long time to come. But you just don't that like for someone who wants to read this optimistically, I just it doesn't seem like they're awake.

[02:25:59] Like it seems like they're still their eyes are wide shut. Yes, right. Like they still haven't fully come to grips with their position, their relationship, their status. Yeah, he says forever and she says forever. I don't like to use that word. It frightens me.

[02:26:21] Yeah. And then the last line of any Kubrick movie ever. She says there is something very important we need to do as soon as possible and Bill says, what's that? I'm surprised he didn't say very important we need to do as soon as possible. What's that?

[02:26:39] And she says, fuck. Edgy. That's edgy. It's so funny because like I swear to God, it also seems like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman have never said fuck before. I know the way they say that word, it's very much like not like how human beings say it. Yeah.

[02:26:57] There is also something uncanny added to Nicole Kidman when she tries to hide her Australian accent. It sounds a little weird to me. Yeah, yeah, it's almost like she's trying to do some regional American accent, but I can't place where it's supposed to be because it's not.

[02:27:12] But maybe Midwest or something like you get the sense maybe she could have been out of the Midwest plucked by somebody who lived in the Dr. Bill. Yeah. But then while they're having that last little conversation, the daughter is kidnapped by two people from the first party.

[02:27:29] And, you know, nobody wants to talk about that. But there is this weird scene where she is walking through them. And if you want to take the conspiracy child of sex like prisoner take on this

[02:27:44] movie, she walks in between them, keeps going down this aisle as they're about to have their final conversation. And there are two guys that come then in between her and the parents. And she looks back almost like giving one last look. That's the last we see of her.

[02:28:02] And then we just have this thing. I mean, it's so quick and you can you can run it back, which I have a few times and still not be sure that that's even supposed to be anything.

[02:28:11] But I guess it's very strange that those two guys who come in there were at the first party and somebody located online, like exactly where they were in the party. They were sitting by the staircase when Dr.

[02:28:22] Bill walks up and all of a sudden they're there at the at the F.A. Schwartz or whatever. So I'm looking at the scene right now. I mean, it is whatever it is. They're clearly not paying attention to their kid. And never really have no, no.

[02:28:41] There maybe they're just selling her off to be to just like a millage did but in a different way. I mean, that's what it that's the sort of that's that interpretation is that that everybody is just a whoring themselves out

[02:28:55] for the super rich in one way or another. You know, yeah. It is this is why it's hard for me at the end to say, OK, this was about that theme that you just said like whoring people because so

[02:29:11] much of the movie is spent trying to deal with these issues of jealousy and stuff where it's like then it's a distracted movie or a movie that's trying to hit so many things at the same time that it.

[02:29:25] Or a movie about like a guy that feels threatened by a female sexuality and his wife's the idea that there might be this like sexual paradise, like just the hottest things going on. But but you don't have because you don't have the knowledge and you

[02:29:43] don't have the script and there are all these like secret dark things going on with people's kids. And it's like so all of this one person's just uncertainties and dark passions and insecurities are put in one movie and they all relate to this idea that

[02:30:03] there's something going on that you're left out of. It's like a FOMO movie. It's like there's something going on that you just can't crack, whether it's women like your wife wanting to have sex or it's like an orgy

[02:30:15] or whatever it is, like you don't you don't get to participate in it. You know? Yeah. And the fear and anxiety that comes from maybe you aren't you aren't able to satisfy your wife. You're not able to be a man in the way that you say you are.

[02:30:30] And you're not able to to be in society where like you're missing out. You're missing out. Yeah. Like what did they say? Don't you what does she say about the doctors? Don't you worry about what you'll miss or something like that? Oh, yeah. The models.

[02:30:47] Yeah, the model just think of all they miss. She says about doctors. Yeah. Yeah, like like miss both in like you don't get to participate in it. And also you're not even aware of it like your wife wanting to fuck a man. Right. Right.

[02:31:02] Yeah. So at the end, like I was on this watch compelled by the thought that this is a movie about that's wrapping together these Freudian ideas of desire like strong, you know, for him everything has its every impulse comes from some

[02:31:20] sort of sexual desire, but also coming to terms with the female sexuality and the blending of dreams and reality. It all it seemed to be that the eyes wide shut meant like this movie, you're just barely glimpsing what the true nature of things is. You're almost there, buddy.

[02:31:44] You almost realize that like women want to fuck too, that you're being pimped out by the upper class, that you're training your daughter to be just like millages, like all of these things. You're almost there. Do you want it?

[02:31:59] Do you want to know it all or do you want to keep your eyes wide shut? Yeah. And when she says we're awake now, it's like, but are you? Yeah. You seem like you're accepting the bullshit that Ziggler was spinning and just

[02:32:12] offering you as a way of keeping yourself in a dream, in a fantasy. Right. And yeah. And that last scene is so ambiguous because at the same time, they are kind of connecting in a way that they hadn't earlier in the movie.

[02:32:24] But it still seems like this kind of stuff might pop up again. Yeah, back into these patterns. And is it the case that peering peeping through the veil and seeing some

[02:32:36] of what goes on, will that get you on the road to a better life or should you just close it right back up again? Exactly. Right. That's and we don't know. I don't know the answer to that.

[02:32:48] I don't even know because they were living a perfect like perfect life. Right. Yeah. In a sense. You get exactly in the sense that in the sense that they didn't realize until this movie was pretty. We didn't realize we were like not rich. We didn't realize we were.

[02:33:06] I didn't realize I was not sexually satisfying my wife. You know, like there's a lot of things, like you said, that they were, that they weren't aware of and that and now they have a glimpse of it.

[02:33:18] But the question is, like, should they just like close the book? OK, we're done. Or should they try to actualize or something? Yeah. And maybe in the way that we like this, this movie ends with a question and not an answer.

[02:33:34] Yeah. I mean, not literally because she does say that there's something they definitely need to do. I will admit that I just didn't like that performance of that delivery of that. I just didn't believe it. I didn't believe that they were going to go fuck.

[02:33:47] I didn't believe that she desired. I never believe that she desired Tom Cruise sexually. Yeah, I think that's running. That's a running issue, I think in a lot of his movies. I mean, Maverick and Goose. OK. Yeah. Oh my God.

[02:34:04] I think with it we could do a whole thing on that. That movie is hilarious in terms of just like it's not even thinly veiled. They're not trying to hide it yet. All right. Well, I can't. I just looked at the time. It's longer than the movie.

[02:34:21] How is I didn't realize I had no idea that we were talking this long. Of course, now that I look at the time. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.