Episode 7: "Born in Corn"

*Happy Halloween week, everybody! For our spooky holiday special the Queerwolves and Producer Brennan break format for the very first time, each bringing to the table three horror movies that were integral to their queer development.*

*Everybody has a different story, but we all find common ground through horror, and this episode made our black hearts grow three sizes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s a regular after-school special up in here tonight!*

*Nay talks cornfield mischief, Mark gets frustrated that nobody has seen any of his movies, Michael goes incognito at the video rental counter, and Brennan teaches everyone about a physics trick that’s probably one hundred percent factually incorrect.*

*Plus, in Tea Time we sip on SEARCHING, HEREDITARY (twice), and AMERICAN HORROR STORY: APOCALYPSE. [1]*

## **Trivia**

Coming from inside the corpse of Liberace for this episode.

**Michael:** Everything's velvet

**Mark:** It's so sparkly

**Brennan:** There's no air conditioning

**Mark:** So many chandeliers

**Nay:** Really? That's the only thing I expected

**Michael:** I expected them. I just didn't expect them to have power. I don't know where they're plugged into

**Nay:** I know where that generator is

**Mark:** I just want to say you all look amazing in his furs

**Michael:** I think that kidney looks great on you

**Mark:** Oh, thank you Michael

**Nay:** I love an organ meat.

Recorded on the day the show went live on the internet. First-ever Halloween episode. Ernie the sound guy gets another shout-out this episode.

**Nay's three movies:** *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*, *Candyman*, *The Exorcist*

**Michael's three movies:** *Scream*/*Scream 2*, *Halloween* (1978), *The Brotherhood*/*Final Stab*

**Mark's three movies:** Brian De Palma's *Carrie* (1976), *Heavenly Creatures*, Todd Haynes's *Safe*

**Brennan's three movies:** *Scream 4*, *Rocky Horror Picture Show*, *Psycho Beach Party*

## **Tea Time**

**Michael:** *Searching*

**Nay:** *Hereditary*. Twice

**Nay:** I don't really know what I can talk about other than the fact that sometimes I need to watch something more than once to really know what the fuck's going on.

**Mark:** *Searching*; *After Life*

**Brennan:** premiere of *American Horror Story: Apocalypse*

## **Shady Summaries**

Since this is a special episode, Nay requests her fellow co-hosts do a Shady Summary of themselves

**Nay:** I was born in the corn, I left, and I'm never going back.

**Michael:** "Born in the corn" is like a t-shirt

**Mark:** "Born in the corn" is a country song

**Brennan:** No, that's our episode title, "Born in the Corn"

**Michael:** I think we need a t-shirt for you that just says, "Born in the corn".

**Nay:** Born in the corn, mm-hmm.

**Michael:** And a big buttery corncob on it.

**Nay:** I'm from Illinois, lots of corn. And I wasn't literally born in the corn obv. But you know, my mom did slip in the mud and break her water and have me two months early. So, y'know, I dunno, I just feel like that's an important fact right now. 'Coz you know, she slipped in the mud and it was kinda funny.

**Mark:** I wish you had kept us going. You were like, "No seriously, I was born in a cornfield." We would be like, "Oh my god, what?"

**Michael:** (as Nay) "I was born in a puddle."

**Nay:** I've done a lot of things in a cornfields, but I was not born in one. By a lot of things I mean like pee, or...

**Michael:** (as Nay) "Walk, breathe."

**Nay:** Yeah. Like, walk the rows

**Mark:** (as Nay) "Get lost"

**Nay:** De-silk the ears, that kind of thing

**Michael:** (as Nay) "Kill children"

**Michael:** I don't know what to say.

**Mark:** Do it, Michael!

**Michael:** "Born in the corn." How do you beat that?

**Mark:** This is for me, Mark. Hi.

**Michael:** (husky voice) Hi, Mark

**Mark:** I'm just a boy, standing in front of John Carpenter, asking him to love me. That's all I got, you guys.

**Michael:** Mine could be, a sensitive closeted boy in a big family to a sensitive out man in a big city

**Brennan:** I'd watch that show

**Mark:** I like the whole like, American tale kind of vibe to that

**Brennan:** Yeah. Took the bus, hopped into the city

**Michael:** Who do you think would play me? Matt Bomer, yeah.

**Mark:** Obviously. Obviously

**Nay:** (mockingly) "I don't really know what to say."

**Brennan:** Does it count as cheating if I use my Letterboxd profile as my Shady Summary?

**Nay:** I don't believe in cheating

**Brennan:** Okay. Thank you

**Michael:** I want Nay to lead every episode. We could release pent-up anxieties/fears

**Mark:** The confidence and the directness with which you stated that. I was just like, "Oh. Okay. Yeah."

**Michael:** Brennan actually shrunk five inches

**Brennan:** I'm a millennial and I know more about Eighties slasher movies than you do

**Nay:** If that ain't the truth. Brennan knows a lot more about a lot of things than I do.

**Mark:** Yeah

**Michael:** I always forget that Brennan's like, thirteen

**Nay:** Yeah, if you ever read our show summaries and you're like, "That was hilarious," Brennan writes those.

**Brennan:** I do, thank you

**Mark:** Brennan seriously brings some expertise week to week I gotta say

**Michael:** Yep, sure does

## **Quotes**

**Michael:** We were all talking last week before the show, that we're all synced up, when ladies tend to hang out.

**Nay:** Y'all are hanging out with ladies. I'm definitely not.

**Mark:** All my life

**Nay:** But y'all did sync up with my menses.

**Michael:** Yeah, that's what I mean

**Brennan:** Is that why I had that nosebleed this morning?

**Nay:** Yes!

**Mark:** While you were thinking about your menses, I wanna talk about my Menchie's. ...I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna go.

**Brennan:** We got three tweets and it's like, "Ugh, ivory tower, everyone," as we clink our LaCroixs together.

**Michael:** (sighs) They're not even cold

**Mark:** One of my favorite reactions that we got today as a result of the launch date was that my sister called me.

**Michael:** Oh, no

**Mark:** And she was like, "So listen. I'm listening to this at home right now with the baby and I'm loving it. You guys are all great, I'm really enjoying it, it's really funny. Your logo. I don't know if it's the white wine talking, but the Queerwolf is kind of sexy."

**Michael:** He's cute, right?

**Mark:** Yeah. And she was like, "I'm not gonna lie, I'm looking at him," and she's like, "Maybe it's the chardonnay but y'know."

**Brennan:** Remember that commercial where the hamsters that are promoting Kia are working out a lot? He's got that like Kia hamster steeze about him, where it's like, "Not normally, but I'd tap that."

**Michael:** I'd get him again right now

**Brennan:** Just our logo?

**Michael:** Our logo. We need to name him.

**Mark:** Were you guys ever sexually attracted to a cartoon?

**Michael:** Probably?

**Nay:** Jessica Rabbit

**Michael:** *Thundercats*

**Nay:** *Darkwing Duck*, excuse me. (Pause) I'm just kidding

**Mark:** And to be polite I was just looking at you going, "Of course, yeah. Darkwing Duck. i mean, who among us…"

**Nay:** "Don't yuck my yum."

**Mark:** *Thundercats*, yeah. *Thundercats* is basically Tom of Finland for young gay boys

**Michael:** That's a really good way to put it. Everyone probably expects you to say *He-Man*, but I'm like, eh, not for me.

**Mark:** Well, that too

**Michael:** Eh, not for me. That haircut.

**Mark:** Oh, no. I was like, "Bye mom, gotta watch *He-Man*!" I was like, "I'm so fascinated by their adventures," as if I could give a shit.

**Michael:** (as Mark's mom) "Honey, why do you always watch *He-Man* lying face down on the floor?"

**Brennan:** No, it's because he's taking his nun vows.

**Nay:** (as Mark) "No reason."

**Michael:** speaking of *The Nun*, why was she planking to get her vows done?

**Michael:** Was there a queer factor (to *Searching*) at all?

**Brennan:** That was my favorite game show from the early 2000s

**Michael and Brennan:** *Queer Factor*

**Michael:** Hosted by Joe Rogan

**Brennan:** No, it was Seth Rogen who hosted that one. Queer icon Seth Rogen

**Mark:** I mean, kind of of a bear icon, right? Like, low-key?

**Brennan:** And he's friends with Rose Byrne

**Mark:** Friend of the community

**Nay:** *Who's a low-key bear icon?*

**Mark:** Yeah, friend to the community. Straight ally

**Michael:** He sure is. Seth was an otter back in his day.

**Brennan:** Sorry to derail this conversation with my terrible pun. Continue

**Brennan:** You sound really centered describing *After Life*

**Michael:** You do. Your face.

**Brennan:** It's like you're on peyote or something.

**Mark:** *After Life* cleared my skin

**Michael:** He's like doing downward dog

**Mark:** It regulated my gut

**Nay:** Nice

**Brennan:** You're on *After Life* level twelve

**Michael:** "I flew a plane for the first time, you guys."

**Mark:** "I don't even know how I got there."

**Brennan:** (Evan Peters' role in *American Horror Story: Apocalypse* felt a little like gayface in a certain way. Except, Billy Eichner is also in it and he's doing straightface and it's maybe the campiest straight performance you'll ever see, and I loved it.

**Mark:** He's like leaning in?

**Brennan:** Yeah. His voice (does deep voice) is really growly and he's got stubble and (back to normal voice) he's really tall in this one

**Mark:** "Billy, what are you thinking about?" (Deep voice) He's like, "**Pussy**."

**Brennan:** Basically. Honestly, I was into it

**Mark:** (deep voice) "**Yeah! Can't get enough!"**

**Michael:** (deep voice) **"Yum!"**

**Mark:** My straight guy voice. (Fey voice) "Hey you guys!"

**Nay:** Well, since we all love each other so much, let's try and get to know each other a little better.

**Brennan:** I'm so ready

**Mark:** Get the lights

**Nay:** Since we're all so quiet and reserved

**Mark:** Michael, put your pants back on. Jesus.

**Michael:** (fey voice) I didn't bring 'em

**Nay:** Then whose pants are those?

**Michael:** I'm Winnie the Pooh-ing it today

**Nay:** Oh my god. Ideal outfit, right?

**Mark:** I heard of it as Donald Duck-ing

**Brennan:** I alternate between both, but I just moved in with my boyfriend for the first time about a month ago, and I do kind of Donald Duck it and it frightens him every time

**Nay:** Okay. Really getting to know each other. Isn't it a crop top and nothing else? That sounds bomb. Like, I, next week, "Here i come. Hope y'all are ready." These leather seats, though. I dunno. I'm gonna have to...

**Mark:** "Love your shirt." (as Nay) "Oh, this old thing?"

**Nay:** We're recording at Ernie's studio next week, right? So good luck with that.

**Michael:** Everyone's slap-happy today.

**Nay:** I know. I slapped the table a lot.

**Michael:** It's good

**Nay:** I know. The table likes it.

**Michael:** (sotto voce) Give me my pants.

**Nay:** The first one I'm gonna talk about, it's not your typical horror movie, but I will explain how it *is* a horror movie. The title is, *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*. As the title suggests, there are seven brothers. They all live up on the mountain.

**Brennan:** That's too many.

**Nay:** They're mountain men.

**Michael:** Are they?

**Nay:** They're up there alone like, "Shit, we don't know how to bathe correctly. We don't know how to clean our house, we don't know how to cook."

**Mark:** You have my attention

**Brennan:** The Seven Dwarves

**Nay:** Yes, the Seven Dwarves essentially. And you know, Adam, the oldest brother...

**Michael:** Of course his name is Adam

**Nay:** He's been down in town, he sees this fine little woman named Millie. She's been pushing men at the table like, "Sit the fuck down. You don't need no ketchup for my food." And he's like, "That's my bitch. You know what, Millie? Let's get married right now." So Millie, she's like, you know. "I could use a place to live. This is what women are supposed to do, we get married, I'm young, he complimented my cooking. Let's do it." Her family's like, "Are you sure girl? Like, this is real quick." And she's like, "No, that's my man." So her and Adam, they're heading back up the mountain, because he had come down to town for supplies. So they're going back up the mountain and she's like, "Oh my God it's beautiful." And he's like, "Oh girl, just wait until winter. There's going to be a huge avalanche, you're not even going to be able to get out of here." She starts singing this song, because it's a musical, right. Gets back to the cabin. Adam has seven brothers.

**Brennan:** Wait, so she did not know about the brothers?

**Nay:** She does not know about this

**Brennan:** Ohhh

**Nay:** She gets up there, but she meets them one by one and is like, "Fuck my life. Fuck my life fuck my life." 'Coz you know, their house is nasty, their house is dirty, they're like, "Cook for us! We don't know what to do!" So she's like, "Fuck my life. I'm already in this nightmare." And then...

**Michael:** Run!

**Mark:** Horror element is established

**Nay:** And then all the brothers are like, "You know what? I could really use one of these wives. Like, that sounds good. I could use someone to cook for me, get a family, blab blah blah." So, they're like, "Millie, our new sister-in-law, please teach us how to meet women." And she's like, you know, sings another song and they learn how they should dance next to one and how they should be polite. And she's like, "Let's go to town for the barn-raising. Y'all can meet some girls and this is how it's gonna go." They go to the barn-raising, but our mountain boys, they rowdy. They real rowdy, so they don't know how to act. They get in a fight, like they were dancing with these girls having a good time, and then the city boys are like, "Ugh, fuck these mountain boys they gotta--" Mark is crying!

**Mark:** No, it's just, this is a musical recap podcast from now on.

**Michael:** Mark literally has tears coming out of his eyes

**Mark:** This is my favorite pod we've ever done

**Nay:** All right, so the rowdy mountain boys, they get in a fight at the barn-raising. The barn doesn't get raised. People get their toes hammered.

**Michael and Mark:** Jesus Christ!

**Nay:** They're rowdy and they have to leave. But they don't have no girls. They're like, "Oh my god, what are we gonna do? We met those girls..."

**Michael:** (as the rowdy boys) "We didn't do anything wrong!"

**Nay:** "For an hour and like we danced together so obviously we should get married." So good. They have this old book up on the mountain on the farm, talking about the sabine [pronounced 'sah-been'] women, where, and that's how they pronounce it by the way, and they're like, "You know what? All we gotta do is go down to town, pick them up and bring 'em back up the mountain, cause an avalanche."

**Michael:** They can't leave

**Nay:** So that they can't leave!

**Mark:** And then rape of the sabine women?

**Nay:** Yes

**Mark:** Okay, just checking

**Nay:** So, after they perform their musical number about the rape of the sabine women, they go down to town, they kidnap the women in the middle of the night...

**Michael:** And this is all played for laughs I'm sure, right?

**Nay:** Yes, yes. One of the women is like like, "I'm putting a pie in the window to cool," and someone like rips her out and they gather them.

**Mark:** (gasps in disbelief)

**Brennan:** Like Freddy Krueger in the end of *Nightmare on Elm Street*?

**Nay:** Yes. "Oh I'm sweeping the floor." "No, you're going with me." So these women get kidnapped

**Michael:** Does he take the pie, too?

**Mark:** What about the pie?

**Nay:** No, no

**Michael:** That's too bad

**Brennan:** It's a reversal of the pie-windowsill paradigm

**Mark:** That's awful and lazy. Go on.

**Nay:** It's true.

**Michael:** Because he's got two hands

**Nay:** So they get back up the mountain, they're like, "Let's make some noise for the avalanche." Boom boom boom, they're stuck.

**Michael:** So the avalanche happens underneath their house?

**Nay:** Yes. So the town people can't get up the pass and the mountain people are just like, "Hey, haha, you can't get up here," right? So Adam walks back into Millie, thinking he's like, "You know what my girl, she gonna think this is so amazing." He gets in there and she's like, "Oh hell, nah. I can't believe you did this. Fuck you, get out in the barn, you and your boys. Me and the girls are in here." And all the girls are just sitting there crying and weeping. It's actually very horrible, right?

**Michael:** Yeah, it does sound like a horror movie. It sounds like a Saw movie.

**Mark:** I worked at Blockbuster and not to carbon date myself, but Jesus Christ, and this movie, I never watched it, but it was in the fucking Family section.

**Nay:** Yeah. I mean, I grew up watching it a lot. A lot a lot.

**Michael:** it's a Disney film, isn't it?

**Nay:** The whole point of this and I mean, oblong story short, eventually they're like, "Oh, Stockholm Syndrome I actually *am* in love with this man." And they all have a big group wedding after the pass clears and their dads are on the way with the rifles and shit

**Mark:** So a cult. They create a cult

**Nay:** (femme voice) "No dad, I want to get married."

**Michael:** (femme voice) "I love him."

**Nay:** And they all hear Adam and Millie, the original couple, they had a baby. And so when the dads with the rifles come up...

**Mark:** i thought it was like three days

**Nay:** No, it was all winter. They had to wait for the snow to melt because of the avalanche

**Mark:** Oh, right. My bad.

**Nay:** So when the dads with the rifles come up the pass to get their daughters, they hear a baby crying, they're like, "Oh shit. Who had the baby out of wedlock?" So basically they're like...

**Brennan:** It's only been three months

**Nay:** i didn't make this movie

**Brennan:** Right, sorry

**Nay:** So the dads are like, "Whose baby is this?" And all the girls at once say, "Mine!"

**Brennan:** So it's like a *Spartacus* situation?

**Nay:** So they all have to get married. So the point of this was that one of the girls was a very important person that you may recognize and literally… my mind is blanking right now

**Michael:** Melania?

**Nay:** No. Another guess.

**Mark:** Debra Messing

**Nay:** No no no. The goddess of all things in *To Wong Foo*, who is in the framed picture?

**Mark and Brennan:** Julie Newmar

**Nay:** Julie Newmar, she's one of the brides

**Mark:** What?!

**Nay:** And I was *obsessed* with her. This is how it comes back to me. I was obsessed with her, because I was basically obsessed with any woman that was tall when I was a kid. So she was a tall woman...

**Mark:** I met her once. At the Playboy Mansion of all places.

**Nay:** What the fuck. What happened?

**Mark:** i shook her hand

**Michael:** Cancel this episode, let's go to that one

**Mark:** She was all class, gorgeous. I don't know what else to say. It was very brief, but I was like, "Holy shit, that's Julie fucking Newmar."

**Michael:** I love this city

**Nay:** Well her name was Dorcas in the movie.

**Michael:** You're kidding

**Nay:** No I'm not. She was a bad bitch. So fine

**Michael:** First or last name?

**Nay:** First. She was so fine and I was obsessed with her.

**Mark:** We need to bring that name back

**Nay:** And often, when I'm an adult now, I think about different women that I was "obsessed" with when I was young, and i was like oh, you had a *CRUSH* on that person

**Mark:** I feel like Dorcas should be an alias for stuff like a bad (unintelligible)

**Michael:** It sounds like a bad character on *Saved by the Bell*

**Mark:** "This is Dorcas from Torrance. She's a transfer student."

**Michael:** (femme voice) "Dorcas from Valley High."

**Nay:** When did the whole Bloody Mary thing start? I was like, when I was a kid

**Mark and Michael:** It's eternal

**Brennan:** I think it started with *Urban Legend*'s Bloody Mary, so mid-90s?

**Mark:** No. No way.

**Michael:** It's in the first *Urban Legend*

**Brennan:** No, I know

**Mark:** Oh, I thought you were saying...

**Michael:** They're saying "Bloody Mary" to the dorm in the first one

**Mark:** I'm sorry, I'm triggered by anything that makes me feel old as fuck. Go on. Sorry.

**Nay:** Not my problem!

**Brennan:** I didn't ask for you to be triggered

**Nay:** A theme of everything is, "I am not supposed to watch this." But there had been a traveling evangelist at the church cult i grew up in and he specifically referenced (*Candyman*) and was like, "I want everyone to think about quiet woods and you hear kind of creepy-spooky music and then a big Black man pops out at you." And like, people in the church shrieked

**Brennan:** Were these white people?

**Nay:** Yes. I should say all of them were white people, except for myself. And I was just like, "One, that sounds kinda racist. I can't really explain *why* that feels racist to me, but it just feels racist."

**Mark:** Yeah. I can't imagine why

**Nay:** Of course, I was a baby, so i got gaslit

**Mark:** Was this church like Our Lady of Garbage People? What is this fucking church? Jesus.

**Nay:** Yes. But never Our Lady, because they don't worship women like that.

**Brennan:** Our Dude of Garbage. Actually that's just the cast of *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers*

**Nay:** True. I was like, "I have to see this movie." And then, when I saw it, I think one: as a young child I was really curious about the history of white women and Black men, being lovers or otherwise. But also, now I would call it generational trauma but I don't know what I thought it was back then, but I was obsessed with the idea that people before us and what they've gone through somehow affecting us. I mean, in the simplest terms, like when I was a kid. And I think that I didn't know at the time all of my different identities or how I was gonna choose to identify or who I was gonna be, but there was just a lot of heaviness with that and I found that part of the movie to be really, really scary even though that's not what I was being told was scary necessarily? It was about *Candyman* and it wasn't about the fact that like, as a slave this many generations ago this happened. But I always felt a lot of heaviness around that.

**Michael:** Maybe you did know, you just didn't recognize it as a kid

**Nay:** Yeah. Maybe I did

**Mark:** You weren't able to intellectually process it, but you felt it

**Nay:** I felt *something* and I think some of that was just...

**Michael:** You had a reaction to it other than him just being something other than a scary imposing figure for sure

**Nay:** Oh yeah. Yeah. I think at the time I was like, "Well, I do have Black ancestors so of course this is heavy." But that same kind of heaviness I feel if we talk to a generation of folks who survived the AIDS crisis or like, you know? So I think it had a lot to do with how I think about who people currently are and where they came from and who they came from.

**Brennan:** Wow

**Nay:** I was a weird little kid

**Mark:** I don't think that's weird at all

**Mark:** No wonder (*Candyman*) continues to resonate. Because there's so many layers to it and it's… you can feel what's haunted about it, right? Because it's not some bullshit Victorian child in a fucking house rolling some balls down the stairs, it's like, y'know

**Michael:** Well, it studies race, it studies class, it studies economics. So it would be interesting to watch it in today's lens.

**Brennan:** Even I, when I first watched (*Candyman*) as a little white asshole...

**Mark:** Can that be the episode title? "Little white asshole"?

**Michael:** You know how you watched *Hereditary* twice this week? I've watched (*The Exorcist*) four times in one day

**Nay:** I feel that

**Michael:** In a row. I was like, obsessed with it

**Mark:** Michael are you okay?

**Michael:** (fey voice on the verge.of breaking down) "I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's great!"

**Nay:** I feel like any movie that I managed to hear about by name had gone through like several sieves and if something was "evil" or "dark" enough for a fundamental independent evangelical Baptist pastor to preach against it. there was just so much around it for me and I had \*heard\* about *The Exorcist*. And my mom, who would never watch *The Exorcist* and never has, would like bring it up as a "devil movie". And like, "That's the devil."

**Mark:** I never understood that.

**Michael:** I never have either

**Mark:** Because it's like the Catholic church's greatest recruitment tool ever produced

**Nay:** Well, I came from Protestants and so they would be like, "Well those Catholics are evil too. The whole thing is evil!" And I was like, "How the fuck am I gonna see this movie?" Like, maybe an older cousin will watch it at some point, because that's how I got to see *Scream*. There was all kinds of things i got to see because of older cousins but I wanted to see it. And then, once I saw it, I was like, "Ooh, this is blasphemous. Is she stabbing herself with that crucifix?" It was so on the other end of every respectable behavior I had ever seen or heard about and I was *fascinated*. That someone could play that role in a movie and not immediately get struck by lightning. You know, when I was young l, I thought that when you did bad things, either you got killed for it or someone else.

**Mark:** That is some pretty heavy baggage for a kid to carry around

**Nay:** It is. For instance, when Princess Diana died, I was at my auntie's watching *Loveline* in the basement and I was not allowed to watch *Loveline*. Do y'all remember *Loveline*?

**Mark:** Yes

**Michael:** Uh-huh. Please don't tell me.

**Nay:** So when my mom came downstairs and was like, "Oh my God, Princess Di is dead." *I* thought it was 'cause I was watching *Loveline*.

**Mark:** Oh honey

**Nay:** I know, I *know*.

**Mark:** Oh my God. Like God was up there going like, "Mmm. I told Nay. I told her."

**Nay:** "You know what? That nine year old or however old, you're so fucking bad for wanting to know about sex. Imma kill this princess over here."

**Mark:** "Sorry, Di."

**Michael:** I'm like, laughing uncomfortably

**Nay:** So I'm just like wow, people could star in this movie, someone could write this movie, someone could watch this movie and not just die for their sins? I finally watched it, and first of all I was terrified because I still believed in demons at this point. I was just, I've always been attracted to who is the most irreverent one in the room. That's the person I want to talk to. And at the time I wouldn't have called it jealousy, but it was definitely jealousy and not that I want to be possessed by a demon and be puking all over my momma's house but I was just like, "I wanna be bad."

**Mark:** You want freedom

**Brennan:** Her inhibitions are gone

**Nay:** Yeah. I want to be bad and I want literally no one to be able to tell me not to

**Mark:** All transgression all the time

**Nay:** Yeah. And that was absolutely the opposite of what I was doing. I was tiptoeing around, trying not to get into trouble and whatnot. But I was like, you know what? I want to walk downstairs on my hands and feet and fucking spin my head around, puke green stuff all over people. And now when I watch it, I would never be scared, or be worried that I was going to hell for watching it.

**Michael:** Good!

**Nay:** (sarcastically) Great news! At the time, I was like, "Ooh, I'm a bad kid."

**Michael:** Isn't it crazy? I remember feeling that way watching stuff too and it's just like...

**Nay:** i was like, "I am a bad fucking kid."

**Michael:** It's such unneeded pressure on children. There's so many bigger things

**Nay:** It absolutely is

**Brennan:** That's such a beautiful epiphany for that movie specifically to give you. That's, you're just having a series of life-changing moments. You really took this assignment to heart.

**Michael:** To you *The Exorcist* is punk. It's like punk rock

**Nay:** Yes

**Michael:** Which is so cool

**Mark:** I think it totally is

**Nay:** Absolutely. So, you know, similarly to other things in my life, I think I said on our first episode that I'm always a late bloomer. And so, when i was watching *The Exorcist* as a child, I wasn't like, "Oh my god, you're gay and you feel bad about that." But I was, i didn't think I was gay. But I worried that I was gay. I remember like, praying to God everyday...

**Michael:** Oh girl, I do too

**Nay:** And being like, "Oh please don't make me gay. 'Coz I don't want to go to hell. Like please, I hope I'm not gay." And it had the same secretive nature of like holding this thing as like, "I watched *The Exorcist* and I'm just so fucking bad," like, "I'm so bad. I watched that movie and I liked it *and* I'm really scared that I'm gay."

**Michael:** I actually did the same thing when I was in junior high. Like, "Can I have one day tomorrow where I'm not called a faggot fifty times?" And like, leaving school faking sick and that kind of thing. And it's just like, again, actually watching *Eighth Grade*, like I actually broke down at (the part of the movie where the protagonist prays to God to get her tormentors to leave her alone at school), because I had forgotten about that part of my life. I had forgotten about physically praying every night. I must've just pushed it in the back of my mind. And I just remembered it in that moment and I got really mad. 'Cause I was like, "What kind of fucking God listens to an eleven, twelve, thirteen year old person every fucking day pray, 'Can I just go to school tomorrow? And not feel like complete hell.'"And it not coming true like 95 percent of the time.

**Brennan:** I think if we have t-shirts for the podcast it should say, "Your mother sucks cocks in hell."

**Michael:** It was junior high. My friends and I would go to a movie once a week, go grab food and stuff and they were like, "We're going to go see this movie. It's a comedy. And it's a rom-com, it's gonna be great! It's got Drew Barrymore in it! It's fine." And it's fucking *Scream*.

**Michael:** Within two minutes being like, "My mothetfucking friends, like, you fucking assholes." And then within three minutes later, being like, "Oh my God what is this feeling and why have I never felt this before?" By the time, spoiler alert, that Drew Barrymore gets killed, I was like, "I'm doing this for a living one day. Thank you Kevin, *so much*, and Wes.' So, for me, *Scream*, and some people know this about me, *Scream 2* I find even more part of my DNA, more a part of my identity in two ways...

**Nay:** I'm sorry but, when I texted y'all the other day and said that I was watching *Scream 2* and Michael was like, "I'm coming now." So yeah, you real serious about this movie.

**Michael:** So, I know we're supposed to do three movies but I'm doing these as one because they had such an effect on me as a closeted sixteen-seventeen year old closeted gay boy. Especially when I learned that Kevin himself, the writer, is a gay man. And being like, we can do that? But also being in my head like,"*They* can do that?" Like, y'know, fighting with myself internally. (mockingly) "I'm gonna go make out with my girlfriend." And then...

**Mark:** Michael's ex-girlfriend wherever you are

**Brennan:** She's a listener, she's a fan

**Michael:** Awww, that poor girl

**Mark:** We're sending you hugs

**Michael:** She's fine. She's fine, guys. It created a lot of things for me in the sense that it was the first time I really identified with the final girl. We have a mutual friend that says the final girl belongs to the gays, right? I think, in that moment I was realizing it without realizing it. That Sidney stood in for like, who I was. I remember looking at her and being like "Oh my God. I wish I was that badass bitch right now." Like, in high school the bullying wasn't as bad, but I went to an all-boys Catholic high school and y'know, when you're walking around as a sixteen year-old being like, "I'm not gay! Trying out for volleyball tomorrow!" It stays with you. I remember I had a teacher be like, "I heard you're light in the loafers." This is a fucking teacher saying this to me at a Catholic high school. So I remember carrying (Sidney's) arc in my mind a lot of the time being like, "She's a badass bitch. I wish I could be her." Like, I wanna be a final girl. With *Scream 2*... the kids are laughing at me.

**Nay:** No!

**Mark:** We laugh because we recognize

**Michael:** And then in *Scream 2*, I remember thinking, "Okay, it's Christmastime. I'm going to college soon. This movie connected with me in the sense that I'm gonna be leaving high school and that's what Sidney did in *Scream 2*, is now she's in college. Am I Sidney Prescott?" And just really identifying with her, like, now she's stronger.

**Brennan:** Yeah, or that scene where she has the caller ID and she calls out that guy who's prank calling her

**Michael:** Yeah. She's starting to like, in the first movie, she's a little bit inactive I would say in the first half of the movie, until she's kind of met with life or death decision. Even after her first attack in the second half of the movie, she's still kind of sitting back waiting for stuff to happen. And of course she rummages everything she needs to rummage and wins. But in *Scream 2*, I feel like, she's like you just said, she's ready to roll.

**Brennan:** Sturdy

**Michael:** I just remember being like, "Holy shit. I like, identify with this person so much 'coz I'm gonna go and do college next. And I hope when I get there I find the next path in my life." And sorry to say it took like another eight years to come out of the closet. But, I started recognizing myself a lot more, and I think that was around the time that like, internally I was accepting who I was, but i still didn't have the balls to like, or the strength, or... I even hate to say those words. I didn't have the resources to vocalize it. But yeah, those two movies really affected me in A.) Introducing me to the horror genre. Like, slashers are always my baby because of that, I think. Introducing me to kickass women. I have four sisters and they're tough and they're brash and I saw them in (Sidney) a little bit too. So I just identified with that character a lot. And the dialogue and the writing that Kevin puts forth is very queer in a lot of ways, too. So you identify with his sorority sisters and you identify with Tatum and you identify with Gale. I remember being like, "Oh my God, I wish I was Gale Weathers."

**Mark:** The whole act of putting these characters, what these characters are experiencing in life, in kind of giant air quotes, that's an incredibly queer slant

**Michael:** Yeah, tongue firmly planted in cheek. It's very queer

**Mark:** The entire (*Scream*) franchise is queer as fuck

**Michael:** Yeah. I think in a lot of ways I was actually thinking this on the way over here; do you remember Lois and Murphy? Portia de Rossi and Rebecca Gayheart from *Scream 2*? Lois and Murphy, love them.

**Brennan:** (as Lois or Murphy) "Hi."

**Mark:** Hell yeah I do!

**Nay:** I just watched it like two nights ago, remember?

**Michael:** Any other movie they would be, they're ancillary characters who are just kind of there. The way Wes directed the movie and the way Kevin wrote it is, they're both probably in the movie for about five, six, seven minutes but they both have a lasting impact in that they stand in for every college kid that isn't being physically attacked by a killer. They're like the audience in a lot of ways. And on the way here, I started realizing, "Holy shit. If it wasn't for those two, *Mean Girls* wouldn't exist." Because they were like the less mean mean girls. They were trying to get Sidney to join the sorority because it would bring them attention and all this stuff. So I was just like, "Holy shit even the characters who are probably listed thirteenth and fourteenth on the call sheet like had such an impact on that film."

**Brennan:** Yeah, you remember them

**Michael:** Yeah. You remember every single character in *Scream 2.* And then let's not forget the two queerest parts of *Scream* and *Scream 2*: Billy and Stu.

**Mark:** I mean

**Michael:** That's one part. And then the second part, Laurie Metcalf's performance at the end. Like, give me life. Everybody, it's like a breath of life

**Mark:** Debbie Salt

**Michael:** (as Debbie) "...doesn't exist."

**Mark:** Debbie fucking Salt

**Brennan:** Let's not dig *too* deep into that, because that's a whole episode in there

**Mark:** True, true, true

**Michael:** Oh god, Debbie Salt. Laurie Metcalf's fucking eyes.

**Michael:** Do you think Tommy Doyle will be in the new (*Halloween*)?

**Brennan:** I hope Paul Rudd Tommy Doyle's in the new one. Mmmm.

**Mark:** Brennan you just made like this whimper

**Michael:** (femme voice) He did a kegel

**Brennan:** It hurts me when a movie *doesn't* have (Paul Rudd) in it

**Mark:** (valley girl voice) Right?

**Michael:** I love that you have a crush on Paul Rudd

**Brennan:** I mean, come on. He's pretty good-looking

**Mark:** He's pretty standard. It sort of comes with a gay membership

**Brennan:** He was in a movie that came out this year called *Ideal Home* and he plays a gay character who has a relationship with Steve Coogan. And he has a beard in this movie and it's just the most beautiful thing

**Mark:** Oh Brennan, you had a whole moment just now. When you were talking about, 'And he had a beard and it's just--' (chuckles)

**Brennan:** The way you feel centered after *After Life*, just staring at Paul Rudd with a beard did that to me

**Michael:** Should we pause for a moment of reflection?

**Brennan:** No, keep going

**Mark:** A moment of silence for Paul Rudd's beard

**Michael:** After consuming *Scream*. I think I ended up seeing it three or four times in the theater and then I of course I started going out and renting everything I could get my hands on. And Nay, I was sixteen when I was doing what you were doing and I was hiding it from my parents because I wasn't allowed to watch that kind of stuff. And went back to *Halloween.* And the *only,* there's not a lot I can say about that as far as the queer factor. I'm just obsessed with the movie 'cause it's just so fucking good. It's so simple and everything about it is effective. The pacing, the dialogue, just everything. The direction, the music, the acting is just great. Because the acting goes from Jamie Lee Curtis who is at the top of her game and then you get Nancy Loomis, who's kind of playing camp, but she's not really doing it on purpose I don't think

**Mark:** (as Nancy) "Laurie…"

**Michael:** And they're like, so mean to her.

**Mark:** (as Nancy) "Now you're hearing a scene chewing."

**Michael:** (as Nancy) "I lost it."

**Mark:** She all but goes, (as Nancy) "You're a fucking loser." She literally bullies her

**Michael:** Why would she call her with food in her mouth?

**Mark:** But true to life

**Michael:** And PJ Soles is just over the top and it's great.

**Mark and Michael:** (as PJ Soles) "Totally!"

**Michael:** So maybe there is a big queer factor there, because those three girls walking down the street, if I saw them, as like, a teen girl, I'd fucking cross. They scare the shit out of me, those three walking. They're all pretty tall looking, they all look imposing

**Nay:** That's hot

**Mark:** Is it a hot take to say that *Halloween* is queer because it sees its female characters as people and not as meat.

**Michael:** (emphatically) Yes. Maybe.

**Nay:** I also think like, you watching it when you were, and I also watched *Halloween*, like sneaked and watched it, and I think that anytime we did something we weren't supposed to do, and that thing that we did isn't actually wrong, that helped form some kind of queer identity for young personhoods(?)

**Michael:** Absolutely

**Brennan:** That's so much of what being queer and coming out *is*. Like the first time you kiss someone of the same sex and you're like, "That actually felt *good*. That wasn't bad. Lightning didn't strike me. Hmm!" Like, "Maybe other things are lies, too."

**Michael:** Yeah

**Mark:** I take it back. I don't think that's my hot take just now. Because I feel like that erases Debra Hill's influence on the script

**Michael:** Well she's all over those female characters

**Mark:** She's the one who really made those characters. Like John Carpenter credited her with that. You know what? I take it back. I'll shut up now. Bye!

**Michael:** But you never know. Maybe she-- I don't know. I feel like, I don't know. I feel like it would be interesting if we could dig into some of her interviews in the past, because I feel like it may have been a stand-in for Debra Hill, because she was the cool, hip chick when she wrote that movie, and maybe she had a gaggle. Like, "These are my stand-ins." You never know. Let's hope, because I love Debra Hill… Going back to what (Nay) was saying, yeah, like you were hiding this thing and it goes along with, it's another closet. It's a different closet, but it's the same closet when you're doing that thing, so they do go hand-in-hand. Y'know, "Gay is bad, these horror movies are bad," when you're twelve and it's just like, "Put your hands together!" So that really shaped me, too in the sense that *Scream* was so monumental for me and then *Halloween* was just like, "Holy shit! How do they do these movies? I wanna do these movies so bad."

**Michael:** My final is very queer, very camp. And this was early-20s gay Michael knew he was gay, only out to some friends, still hiding it from the family, coming home at two o'clock in the morning because I was serving at the time.

**Brennan:** You're always serving, honey

**Mark:** You're always serving. I know, God. That was like, laid out there for us.

**Michael:** And popping in a nice David DeCoteau movie.

**Mark:** Oh my God

**Michael:** like *The Brotherhood*, *Final Stab*…

From the end of the clip from *The Brotherhood*: "I think you're better off in sweats."

**Michael:** (fey voice) "And I hope he meant no underwear"

**Brennan:** I think he did

**Mark:** This movie, it's not thirsty, it's *dehydrated*. It's like, it's jerky.

**Michael:** Yeah I was.

**Nay:** Yeah ya did

**Michael:** So I remember going to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and this was a very… this was the bridge to renting porn. But I would see these boxes and be like, "What is this?" It's in the horror section, it's at a major video store, too. It felt like, really naughty to be renting these movies and I'm like twenty-two.

**Mark and Michael:** An adult

**Michael:** And just watching them and just being like, "Can we get a dick? Can we get a dick?" Like for ninety minutes and not getting a dick. I don't think we'd get butt shots in these movies, we'd just get dudes in their underwear. Which was enough...

**Brennan:** That's his fortė

**Mark:** But yeah...

**Michael:** But I didn't know that

**Mark:** Like you said, gateway drug to porn

**Michael:** Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know who this guy was and I just kept renting these movies and like, thinking, "Next one will have it! *The Brotherhood II*, it'll go the way of the sequels and it'll have a dick," and it never did

**Mark:** DeCoteau is such a tease

**Brennan:** He really is

**Michael:** My favorite, the whole thing is just so queer, but the queerest thing to me was always that the bad guys wore black boxer briefs and the good guys always wore white

**Nay:** Wow

**Mark:** God, I love him

**Brennan:** Did George Lucas do the costume design on these films?

**Mark:** Can I just say, I’m just picturing you at Hollywood Video and like, going up to the counter and the guy’s like, "Hi, Michael." And you’re like...

**Michael:** "Six of ‘em."

**Mark:** And he’s like, "Oh. *The Brotherhood* again. Gosh, I guess you keep forgetting to finish this one, huh?"

**Michael:** (as the video store clerk) "You know, the last box came back a *little* sticky."

**Brennan:** (as the video store clerk) "That tie-adjusting scene is just really warped and faded now."

**Michael:** I mean, I would get, and of course I would always get like, the two like, "serious" movies

**Brennan:** *Citizen Kane*

**Mark:** *Schindler’s List*, *Reds*, The Brotherhood. (as Michael) "Just to throw them off the scent!"

**Michael:** Those were the days. Just watchin’ them. Volume at like three. But they were just so...

**Mark:** \*knocking at a door\* (as Michael’s mom) "Michael, what are you watching?"

**Michael:** "Nothing! Nothing! Just watching these like guys rush a frat!"

**Brennan:** Yeah!

**Michael:** Who was I talking to about Sean Faris recently. Was that you?

**Brennan:** No…

**Michael:** Maybe it was Michael Varatti

**Brennan and Mark:** That sounds like the truth

**Michael:** or maybe Sam Wineman?

**Mark:** That also sounds like it could be

**Michael:** Who also was in one of those movies and went on to do like bigger films

**Brennan:** Sam Wineman was?

**Mark and Michael:** No, Sean Faris

**Brennan:** Just kidding. I'm really funny

**Michael:** But, my god. And then *Final Stab*, I really loved because it was their, it was his version of like a *Scream*, meta slasher movie. But they actually had a gay couple in that, and that was a big deal

**Brennan:** Oh! That's unusual for him

**Michael:** it was a big part of the plot is that the main guy was dating a guy behind his girlfriend's back. And then do you remember Bradley Stryker? Who was like the \*NSync kind of blond-ish hair, but he was like super-ripped...

**Nay:** Don't look at me!

**Michael:** I was obsessed with this guy. He would always, this was like my first like, internet, like, image stalking. Like trying to find shirtless pictures of him and such.

**Brennan:** Done that today

**Michael:** But he would always be the stud in the movies and he never had clothes on, so.

**Mark:** Couldn't afford them, it's really sad

**Michael:** The wardrobe budget was just like, Hanes

**Brennan:** They're just low-budget movies

**Michael:** But yeah, thank you David

**Mark:** I guess I should go in chronological order. So the very first one I saw, on VHS, alone, in my parents' home, when they were out. And um, it is still one of the only movies I know of that truly takes me on such a rollercoaster, that manages still to achieve so many tones at the same time. It's kind of a magic trick. It's perfect. It's Brian De Palma's *Carrie*.

Piper Laurie in the trailer for *Carrie*: God made Eve from the riverbank and it was weak, and loosed the raven on the world. And the raven was called sin.

**Mark:** (as Piper Laurie) "And I liked it. I liked it!"

**Mark:** I remember watching *Carrie* having read in a book in the library that it was a classic and a must-see and I was like, "Okay." So, y'know, undercover I go to the video store. The one that's really shitty, where the stoners work where they would let me rent anything. And my parents didn't know. And so I would literally hide these contraband tapes; this is like a running theme, right? And I would wait until they were gone and I would watch them. I watched *Carrie* and the opening, it made me blush, because of the intimacy of it, the sort of strange paradise of it. It's so the elegy of how elegiac the music in that locker room scene is, and it's sexualized and yet not pervy. I don't know. I'm not really sure, I'm not very good at describing it clearly. But then it crash lands into the worst kind of body horror, and by "worst" I mean best. And the way she's brutalized by her peers was not something I was ready to experience, and I was *so* horrified by the movie that I turned it off and I cried my fucking eyes out.

**Michael:** Wow, really?

**Mark:** Yeah, it really, really upset me. Because this, the sheer unmitigated cruelty of it was just overwhelming and at twelve, and not being particularly hypermasculine or being totally unformed was, and seeing that brutally and seeing-- it was a manifestation of everything I was afraid of experiencing. And it just rocked me to my fucking core. And I didn't watch the rest of it for three days. Because I just couldn't. I was too scared of it. But what made me truly fall in love with it aside from the beautiful performances, aside from Pino Donaggio's amazing score, aside from Brian De Palma's like, incredible, like incredible, fucking, like a motherfucker, "I'm gonna use split-screen." Who the fuck uses split-screen? Brian De-fucking-Palma, that's who uses split-screen. The movie rockets between coming-of-age and melodrama and comedy and religious revival, and it's like, everything. And revenge tragedy. And it's like, it's such a meal. It's such a meal. And I became so completely obsessed with this movie and I read Roger Ebert's review of the movie. I mean, this is-- I didn't have friends. I went to the library and I sat and I just read books. And I remember just devouring anything I could about *Carrie*. And he said in his review, that "great horror is always heartbreaking." And to me, I've just never forgotten that. I've *enjoyed* other horror movies since. I just don't believe that horror without a bit of heartbreak is-- can ever truly achieve greatness. And I, whether that's true or not, I can't speak to...

**Michael:** It's true for you

**Mark:** Yeah, it's true for me. And yeah, there's just, the people in *Carrie* are both archetypes and real people because like, you know, like, actors like Edie McClurg or PJ Soles bring such a weird specificity to their character...

**Michael:** Even Travolta in his part

**Mark:** Even Travolta. He's so great. And so, yeah. *Carrie* was really just such a-- I don't need to go into the (fey voice) "Oh I'm gay and I have something secret inside me and if people find out, then I'll blow up…" you know what I mean? It's just like, yeah yeah yeah, sure.

**Nay:** Like me and Michael did

**Mark:** No!

**Michael:** (fey voice) "Nay, you ready?"

**Mark:** No, I'm not talking about the way you guys said...

**Michael:** We should have a purse on the table, just putting stuff in it.

**Mark:** Just dump it out and then just start rearranging it. Cleaning out a purse and then just like, "clunk, clunk". But I mean in the sense that, you know, so many people have picked apart *Carrie* that way before me, and are probably going to do it a lot more eloquently, so that's just speaking, I'm just trying to follow through on what you guys started. so fuck you both.

**Michael:** Fuck Nay

**Nay:** Please do

**Mark:** I'm just trying to speak from the heart about what that movie meant to me and it, I just, I'll never forget seeing that movie for the first time, because it's just….

**Michael:** it's really nice watching you talk about this because you have the same look on your face as you did when you were talking about (*After Life*). I can tell just by looking at you right now how important *Carrie* was to you, and still is.

**Mark:** Yeah, no, thank you. And it's...

**Michael:** It's great, I love it

**Mark:** Thank you. I, uh, it just really never goes away for me, that one

**Michael:** Don't you love it because *Scream* is like, my *Carrie*. They're both so different but it's like that high. I feel like I'm chasing that high from that movie twenty years later. And you find it here and there, but, (sighs), isn't it great? Like, it's like a child to me. The way I think about that movie, I think, I love that movie, like physically love that movie. I literally love that movie.

**Mark:** Yeah. I so understand.

**Michael:** I could literally tell how you feel about *Carrie* just by looking at you.

**Mark and Nay:** (exhale)

**Michael:** You guys, Mark is sobbing. He's in a ball….

**Brennan:** So what’s your next movie?

**Michael:** (fey voice as Mark) ‘*"The Rage: Carrie 2*".

**Brennan:** Just to stop Michael from talking about *Scream* again.

**Mark:** The next film, I saw in the theater. Technically it's a foreign film even though it's in English. And um, and it really rocked me to, and I saw it four times in the theater. Because I'd never seen anything like it, and it's, it managed to both enchant me and also really, really freak me out about who I knew I was. And it's *Heavenly Creatures*.

**Michael:** (after Mark has summarized *Heavenly Creatures*) "It sounds a lot like Slender Man."

**Mark:** Well, goodnight!

**Mark:** Watching *Heavenly Creatures* and watching a story about, and I had a similar sort of-- it was between this and a movie called *Swoon*, from 1992 that Tom Kalin did about Leopold and Loeb. Which was another true story: famous gay couples murderers. Famous teenage gay murderers, even though the real story with Leopold and Loeb is a lot more complicated l. But something about watching stories about what would happen if you fall in love, if you actually follow through on your queerness, what terrible things can possibly happen. And I know that's not, I *knew* even then that that wasn't sort of the outcome of what the movie was trying to communicate, but it still, I don't know. It's hard to describe because you guys haven't seen it. Actually, this movie deserves to have its own episode.

**Brennan:** Totally

**Mark:** Yeah, so I think I want to call it a day and move on, since you guys are looking at me like-- I feel like this is the equivalent of, "I went on vacation! These are slides. This is me at the beach. This is the car I rented. Isn't it cute?"

**Michael:** "This is us by a cactus."

**Mark and Michael:** "This is us by another cactus."

**Brennan:** It sounds really good. I watched that trailer to get the clip and it looked like a beautiful movie.

**Mark:** You haven't seen it either?

**Brennan:** (softly) no…

**Mark:** Oh god, I'm a thousand years old. Fucking hell.

**Michael:** you look great.

**Mark:** (chuckling) I just want to die

**Mark:** Last but not least, and I feel like maybe some people haven't seen this one either is a movie that is beyond horror movie, it is existential horror, it is incredibly queer and its sort of lens and the way it views the world and it's Todd Haynes's *Safe*.

**Nay:** We're all just nodding "no" at Mark because none of us have seen this one either.

**Michael:** Mark has really good taste

**Nay:** Yeah

**Mark:** No, I'm just older! I'm older!

**Michael:** Mark, we're like a year and a half apart

**Brennan:** Yeah, we're like a year and a half apart, Mark. Wow, that was not how you say that.

**Nay:** Pfft, okay Brennan

**Mark:** Brennan, we are not a year and a half apart.

**Brennan:** Okay, you're right. You got me, I was lying.

**Mark:** Todd Haynes sort of made (*Safe*) not just as an allegory for pollution and what we are unwittingly absorbing, you know, just existing in day to day life in the United states. But also as an allegory for AIDS, as a sort of silent killer that people know exists but don't talk about. But watching this movie and seeing this movie in a theater, the Lefont Theater in friggin' Atlanta, Georgia. Watching this movie, the movie has a pronounced sense of sustained dread that I've never ever seen replicated ever. Julianne Moore plays a character who never speaks above a whisper. She's such an incredibly passive sort of retiring person, Carol White (the character) is, and um, I don't know how to put why this movie informed how I felt as a queer person growing up. I guess I was sixteen when I saw it? But the movie is positing that you're not crazy, there's something completely wrong with everything going on. And then, I mean, that's half-true, because the movie also invites you to wonder, is Carol hysterical? Is she simply breaking down. Is she unequipped to exist in today's world or is this hypersensitivity that she's experiencing a sign of her actually connecting deeper with her own humanity?

**Michael:** Like she has a gift

**Mark:** Right. And her own personhood. And the movie is never willing to answer that question for you. The movie forces you to exist with the question that if you start listening to your own inner voice and your own point of view, it may be what leads you to truly love yourself, but wholly fuck what you might have to sacrifice in exchange for that. And it is one of the quietest horror movies that you will ever see. No blood, no scares

**Michael:** No violence

**Mark:** No violence that I can recall at the moment. But it is probably the most disquieting horror movie that I can think of

**Michael:** It sounds scary just because your thoughts can be the scariest thing. It sounds like just a giant thought

**Mark:** I would really love for us to cover *Safe* and I would love for you guys to see it.

**Mark:** Josh told me once, "I can't watch *Safe* again." I was like, "What do you mean?" And he was like, "I saw it once in the theater and I was… so shaken and affected for like, a month. I thought I was allergic to things, I thought I was really…" it's really intense.

**Mark:** The Criterion Collection released a Blu-ray of it like two years ago. It includes, and I say this because it's so worth the twenty bucks, but it includes (Julianne Moore's) screen test. And it is… if you want to see a ninja at work, young Julianne Moore doing, she's just like, "Hey. Okay. Yeah." And just drops in and it's like, holy fucking shit. It's like Henry Thomas's screen test of *E.T.* levels of "***What***".

**Michael:** And if you wanna be brought back down to reality, watch her performance on *30 Rock*

**Mark:** *Mean!*

**Brennan:** She's funny on that show

**Michael:** She's great. That accent, though, is amazingly bad.

**Brennan:** That show is a cartoon

**Mark:** Yeah

**Michael:** Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and her all said they recognized it, so it was on purpose. I'm just being an asshole

**Mark:** She sounds just like Andy Capp on purpose, kind of. Or how I picture Andy Capp to sound.

Brennan's quick bio on how he got to Queerwolf: Since college I've been writing and doing podcast-y things. I originally started out writing for The Backlot, which is a gay entertainment site, like AfterElton. I did their *Looking* season two recaps. I didn't love season two, so I did not get great comments. (Whispers) But, I gotta be honest. (Regular voice) I've written for Arrow in the Head, Blumhouse.com, before it exploded. But now I'm writing for Dread Central and I'm doing this and I have my own podcast called Scream 101, check it out.

**Mark:** It's good, you guys should listen

**Brennan:** We actually did do an episode on *The Final Girls* back in the day.

**Mark:** Oh lord

**Brennan:** Don't listen to that. I love it, but don't listen.

**Mark:** Why??

**Brennan:** I'd be too uncomfortable

**Mark:** (as Brennan)."We trashed it."

**Brennan:** no, no, no. We both loved it, it would just feel weird. I'll send it to you on a CD, unmarked.

**Michael:** (as Tatum from *Scream*) "'I'll send you a copy.' Bam! Bitch went down. Syd, super-bitch!"

**Brennan:** I definitely had a different queer experience growing up, because as we have mentioned, with some derision, I am slightly younger than the three of you. I *did* grow up in Orange County, which is famously not a great place for progressive stuff

**Michael:** Yeah, I don't envy that

**Brennan:** but I honestly did not have too tough a time when I was coming out. I mean, I came out when I was sixteen.

**Michael:** I was just gonna ask you

**Brennan:** I was in like, the drama class and felt very supported. I had good, I did not have bullies. I had assholes who would like say things. But a lot of the students at my school, it was like a weird divide between the lowland kids and the kids who lived up in the hills. So like, most of the kids who were mean were the sons of rich parents who were too lazy to do anything. My favorite bully I ever had, this is one moment. I was holding hands with my boyfriend. They were like, "Oh, are you gay? Do you like, wanna have sex with me?" And I was like, "No, I don't."

**Mark:** (as Brennan) "I'll try to control myself."

**Michael:** (as Brennan) "Dreamboat."

**Brennan:** Yeah, it was so weird. But yeah, no, I had a slightly different experience. And I had a relatively smooth coming out, but no coming out is ever good. Or like, easy, I mean.

**Michael:** Because yeah, you worry. Regardless if it's like, "Oh cool," you still worry.

**Brennan:** Yeah. And I do remember when Nay and Michael were talking about certain things. You turned to prayer. I've never really had religion in my life, but this is the lamest thing. I had this book of optical illusions and tricks and there was this thing where if you tied a ring on a string between two fingers, the way that it spun was supposed to tell you, it was like a primitive lie detector thing. So the way it spins is like, "This is true. This is false." It was supposed to be like micro-motions in your fingers or something. And I like, I know, it's super-weird and super made-up.

**Michael:** I saw that on a sitcom once

**Mark:** This is totally news to me. I've never heard of it

**Brennan:** Don't try it, it's nothing. But I did it and I was just with myself and I was asking myself like, "Are you gay?" And I made the string say "No." Like you know, like a ouija board. "No, I'm good! I'm great! We don't have to think about this."

**Mark:** Well, if the string says so….

**Michael:** (femme voice) "I'm calling Karen then."

**Brennan:** Yeah, so. I definitely had my own personal turmoils with it. But, where this comes in, is my coming out process was really tied to my coming out process. 'Cause I thought I was too scared of horror movies to watch them?

**Michael:** That's how I felt myself, too.

**Brennan:** Yeah. Which is really weird, because I read horror books by the pound. But just the movies, I had this weird hurdle, and I had convinced myself that I wasn't ready for them. But the movie that was my gateway was *Scream 4*.

**Brennan:** Honestly, I mean, this is kind of elliptical, I guess, because I didn't start with *Scream 4*, I didn't watch *Scream 4*. But I saw the trailer before *Source Code* or something and I was like, "This movie looks great."

**Michael:** Had you seen the other *Scream*s?

**Brennan:** No. I had basically seen *no* horror movies before this. I saw and heard Ghostface on the phone and I was like, "This sounds like someone I could be into." So I had...

**Mark:** (as Brennan) "He sounds hot."

**Brennan:** Yeah!

**Michael:** (fey voice) "The killer's hot."

**Brennan:** So you know, the trailer was hearkening back to the original *Scream*, like trying to remind people, "Remember how it was great?" And I was like, "I *don't* remember, but it sounds great." So I had Netflix DVD mail service. I got *Scream* 1, 2 and 3 to prepare for the new one, I watched them all and I was like, "Okay. I can do this. I can watch these movies, they're fun." I mean, I had a similar experience to Michael. *Scream* really brought me in...

**Michael:** It's a really good gateway movie.

**Brennan:** Yeah. And I was like, "Well, I also need to watch all the *Nightmare on Elm Streets* and *Friday the 13th* and *Halloween* because they're talking about these," and that was my summer before junior year and now I'm here. It's just like, I think the horror movie breakthrough and the gay breakthrough, they kind of came simultaneously in my life. I shared that whole experience with my first boyfriend, who, y'know, suffered through it, whatever, it's fine.

**Michael:** Did *Scream 4* live up to your expectations? I think it's a fun movie.

**Brennan:** I like *Scream 4.* It's not, y'know, it's not a masterpiece. But I'm glad that Wes Craven went out on that one. I think it's a good curtain call for him. I enjoy it.

**Michael:** Yeah. Better that than *My Soul to Take.*

**Brennan:** That movie for me was like, it was the same experience as like said earlier, like kissing a boy for the first time. You finally find an in-road into something you've been kind of pushing away and afraid of.

**Michael:** But also titillated by?

**Brennan:** Yeah! What I used to do as a kid is I would always hear these tales of scary movies. Like my friend in elementary school, he watched *The Grudge* and he wasn't supposed to. And he told me the story.

**Michael:** (whispers) You were so young

**Brennan:** I know. So, these movies I was interested in, I would read the plots on Wikipedia, because I was too afraid to watch them. So yeah, that's the movie that kind of helped me break through.

**Mark:** If you're gonna break through, break through with a *Scream*.

**Brennan:** It's such an easy keg tap? I don't know, it just bursts everywhere.

**Michael:** Tastes delicious

**Brennan:** The *Rocky Horror Picture Show* from 1975. It's a camp cult classic that I think is important to a lot of people's development. And to cinema, and to queerness and to whatever.

**Mark:** Not mine

**Brennan:** Sure

**Nay:** (sarcastically) Have you ever seen it, Mark?

**Michael:** Mark's sitting on his microphone now

**Brennan:** That movie obviously is so transgressive

**Mark:** Sorry, Ernie!

**Michael:** (Ernie)'s just sitting on his phone

**Nay:** Y'all know who Ernie is?

**Michael:** Ernie's our wonderful technician sound person

**Mark:** Our wildly patient...

**Nay:** Who puts up with all our shit. Ooowee

**Michael:** (fey voice) "Um, the mic's going to be a little stinky."

**Brennan:** The thing that was so interesting to me was that by the time I got to it, *The Rocky Horror Picture Show* was a really huge, like kind of generally welcomed cult movie. Like the cult had existed for decades. And so everyone knew about it. It was something that kind if everyone was comfortable with. And I was like, "This movie is so transgressive to be such a cornerstone of culture like that." And, you know, Frank N. Furter sleeps with like, every character in the movie. Male or female, whatever. It's the movie that introduced me to genderfuckery. It's like, "What's even happening here?" It also introduced me to camp, and the difference between camp and trash. Because people were like, "Oh, this is the worst movie of all time!" It would be on those lists of bad movies you have to watch. And I'm like, "This isn't bad-goof. This is good-goof. This is good good and you don't get it."

**Mark:** Yeah, sorry you're basic

**Brennan:** Obviously there are low budget scenes to the movie. But Richard O'Brien is a genius. The guy who wrote the screenplay and the music. I think he's better at songwriting than he is at plots, probably? 'Cause the plot is pretty incoherent

**Mark:** Wrong. The plot is perfect.

**Brennan:** But it's such a beautiful pastiche

**Nay:** Wow. Wow.

**Brennan:** What?

**Nay:** Vocab

**Brennan:** Oh, thank you

**Michael:** Wow, looking at a test here. Like, "Pastiche. What does that mean?"

**Mark:** (straight guy voice) "Pastiche. I didn't know we were podcasting in France."

**Brennan:** Pfft. Whatever, French-Canadian boy. (as Marie from High Tension) "I don't know if I can do this French accent any more!" That movie I actually watched the night before I started dating my first boyfriend, too. We were together, it was...

**Nay:** I masturbated to that movie so much as a kid. Is that a lot of?

**Michael:** *Girl*

**Mark:** Was there a particular (musical) number?

**Nay:** Was there one that wasn't? For real, like the whole movie.

**Mark:** Wow

**Nay:** Yeah

**Mark:** Even when the Professor's like, "It's just a jump to the left!" And you're like, "Aw, yeah."

**Nay:** Yup, just a little further

**Brennan:** Yeah, Charles Gray? Yeah

**Michael:** Leg up

**Mark:** (femme voice) "They don't call it the 'Time Warp' for nothing."

**Nay:** *Okay?*

**Brennan:** My last movie is from 2000, and it's called *Psycho Beach Party*.

**Michael:** Many fap moments with that movie for me

**Brennan:** Oh yeah, sure.

**Michael:** (fey voice) Sorry, Brennan

**Brennan:** I came to that movie because of *Buffy* actually, because Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander was in *Psycho Beach Party*. And *Buffy* would be on this list, if it wasn't a TV show. *Psycho Beach Party* is another one of those movies where it's very campy and I don't think I truly understood what *Gidget* was or what those movies were at the time, but I still loved it. And the thing that that movie introduced to me, is that I was watching it with a friend of mine. We actually came out around the same time. We both were, we were, we started talking about that sort of thing during a time when I identified as bisexual, which was not true and I now realize is problematic and is a crutch that a lot of people use that contributes to bi-erasure because people are like, "Oh you're gay, you're not bi. It's just a stepping stone." And I did do that, because I was afraid of identifying as gay and what that would mean for me. Much later I realized, "That's not good." When you step into the world and learn about bisexuality and about how bi people have been treated historically by the gay community. I was like, "Mmm, well. Wish I knew that. Didn't." But I think that's, you know, we all do shitty things when we're teens. And especially before you enter the gay community, you understand a thing about it. So, I apologize. To everyone out there. That friend stayed bisexual. I did not. So, we were watching *Psycho Beach Party* together...

**Michael:** There's such a lot of hot guys in this movie

**Brennan:** There so are. There's these two guys... Provoloney and the other guy, I don't remember.

**Mark:** I remember Provoloney

**Brennan:** Mmm-hmm

**Michael:** That's the material

**Mark:** is it true that Lauren Ambrose has kind of like, disavowed this movie?

**Brennan:** I don't know

**Michael:** I forgot Amy Adams was in it

**Mark:** She didn't play Marvel Ann. Who was Amy Adams?

**Brennan:** I don't remember. And Beth Broderick from *Sabrina the Teenage Witch*.

**Michael:** So many people in this movie. Thomas Gibson, Matt Keeslar from *Scream 3*, (Amy Adams) was Marvel-Ann was her name, yeah.

**Brennan:** Oh, okay. *Psycho Beach Party.* Are you familiar with the term "shipping"? It's a tumblr term, where like there are these two characters and you want them to be in a relationship together and you make fan art or whatever.

**Michael:** "I ship them."

**Brennan:** So these two characters, Provoloney and that guy, they had moments. 'Cause they were like these dude surfer guys and they had moments of like, talking into each other's faces like straight dudes do. My friend and I were like, "They gotta kiss. They gotta kiss." And this movie made that happen. They *do* kiss in that movie. The movie is super queer.

**Michael:** It's so great

**Brennan:** That was the movie that exposed to me that what I want to happen that is queer in a movie *can* happen. Like queer stuff is allowed to exist and doesn't just exist in my mind that I'm transposing onto a movie? And that was just a really mindblowing moment for me. And it was kind of like Michael's thing where he was like, "Kevin Williamson is gay. Gay people get to make these things." And I was like, "Gay people get to exist in these worlds that I'm watching," because I'd never seen that befor

**Michael:** I love that you put it that way, because the guys in the movie have the same reaction you did.

**Brennan:** Yeah.

**Michael:** Like they literally kiss and then they're like, "Wait a minute. That was great!" And we're like, "Yeah. Do it again, Provoloney!"

**Brennan:** Yeah. And that was just like a really important formative experience for me. Where I was like, literally it's representation. Representation matters. I felt *seen* for the first time in a movie. I think before that the only gay character in a movie I'd seen was Kieran Culkin's character in *Scott Pilgrim vs. The World*.

**Mark:** And he was from the school of like, "I'm not gonna do anything. We're just gonna say that I'm gay," which is disconcertingly popular as a choice, but nevermind. Go on.

**Brennan:** Yeah, I hadn't been exposed to like, any sort of physical reality of gayness and that just hit me like a bucket of water

**Michael:** Well it was in a movie tied to the slasher genre in a way, too.

**Brennan:** Yup. And that's important to me as well. I mean, we both grew up on *Scream.* It's where we entered the world.

**Michael:** Mmm, about fifteen years apart, but… (chuckles)

**Brennan:** It is what it is

**Mark:** I kind of feel like, "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds should be playing at the end of this episode

**Michael:** (fey voice) "Just the jock"

**Brennan:** A queen, another queen, the jock, which is Brennan, obviously

**Michael:** "A queen and a basket case, a queen and a basket case, a queen and a basket case."

**Mark:** The End

**Brennan:** And a queen. Nay's just The Queen.

**Mark:** Exactly

**Michael:** His fingers when he does that thing in the movie, the principal, when he's like, "I got my eyes on you." He's got the longest fingers you've ever seen

**Brennan:** Such a turn-on, right?

**Mark:** (as the principal) "Don't mess with the bull, son. You'll get the horns."

**Brennan:** I think that wraps up our very special Halloween episode

**Nay:** Long fingers *are* a turn-on.

The origins of Brennan's Instagram name: It's born from the fact that no one can spell my name. My name is Brennan, which is Irish. And everyone says "Brandon" or "Brianna" or "Brad".

**Michael:** "Sharon"

**Brennan:** Starbucks is really rough for me, but one time I was checking in for a tour at a campus I was touring after high school and I said my name was Brennan Klein and they literally wrote down "Burning Clem". Like, that sounds like an STD

**Nay:** Yeah, burning clam

**Mark:** "Symptoms of burning clam include… itchy watery eye." (Cracking up) I'm sorry. We're not allowed to do podcasts anymore

**Brennan:** That's it, that's the episode, right?

## **Next Episode**

Episode 8: "Varratapedia" (w/ Michael Varrati!)