Episode 4: "The Best Flu Ever!" (w/ Don Mancini!)

*This week on Attack of the Queerwolf, the queers are joined by Don Mancini (Child’s Play franchise, Hannibal, Channel Zero) to discuss the 1983 vampire flick/perfume commercial THE HUNGER! In this episode, Nay has a problem with pool rules, Michael thinks cigarettes are cool again, and Mark knows a lot of facts. For some reason, because of this he is compared to both Miranda Priestly and an Olsen twin, but you’ll have to listen to find out which twin! Plus, in Tea Time we sip on SHARP OBJECTS, CASTLE ROCK, LA CASA DE LAS FLORES, and half of SHARKNADO! [1]*

### Trivia

Recorded in the secret attic at Blumhouse headquarters, "where we keep all our former lovers."

**Michael:** It's a really big room.

Brennan gets introduced as producer/jailer at the start of this episode. Very first special guest of the show, Don "friggin'" Mancini. Don picked a personal favorite, *The Hunger.* Brennan gets to participate in Tea Time for the first time. Mark adds Catherine Deneuve to his imitations. Michael coins the term "queerview mirror" for looking back on a piece of media from a modern queer perspective. Shady Summaries aren’t dropped until the end of the episode.

## **Tea Time**

**Don:** *Sharp Objects*; *The Wife*

**Nay:** started *Sharknado*; reading her mom and aunt (and they read her back)

**Mark:** So instead of watching *Sharp Objects*, you just went home and lived it.

**Michael:** watching *Castle Rock* season one; The Wife, 'which is kind of a horror movie to me.'

**Mark:** started Carmen Maria Machado's collection of short stories, which is horror adjacent. It's called *Her Body and Other Parties*.

**Brennan:** marathoning the *Children of the Corn* movies; *La Casa de las Flores/House of Flowers* season 1 (as is Nay)

**Brennan:** Drama is the international language. anyone can understand what’s happening in any drama from any country.

## **Shady Summaries**

**Don:** Catherine Deneueve and Susan Sarandon eat each other while David Bowie watches and grows old.

**Michael:** Excess is sexy and gay.

## **Brennan's Game**

**Mark:** Should we move on to our lesbian vampire-related games?

**Nay:** That answer is yes. Always yes.

**Mark:** Nay is like, "I am always ready for lesbian vampire games!"

**Brennan:** Okaaaay, so is everyone ready for, just pulling ideas out of the top of my head, let's call these The Hunger Games?

**Mark:** We all volunteer as tribute. ...I'll see myself out.

Brennan has two games. ‘If we’re talking about homoerotic vampire films, we’re looking at *The Hunger* with Susan Sarandon. We’re also looking at *Fright Night* with Chris Sarandon. What I’m gonna do is describe a character to you and you have to tell me whether or not it’s Susan Sarandon or Chris Sarandon who played that part. I’m going to be describing it in gender-neutral terms.’ He wants a group consensus on answers this time.

**Don:** Are these actual characters, that were actually played by…?

**Brennan:** These are actual movies.

**Don:** You’re gonna say, like, "A Chicago cop who gets mired in the adventures of a killer doll".

**Brennan:** See, that one I thought would be too easy.

**Michael:** *Annabelle*?

**Don:** That was NOT Susan Sarandon.

**Brennan:** Could you imagine if it was Susan Sarandon though?

**Brennan:**The librarian who has a copy of *Don Quixote* stolen by an old man and a robot

Consensus: Chris Sarandon (wrong)

Correct answer: Susan Sarandon in 2012’s *Robot and Frank*

**Brennan:** AND frank, not ANNE frank.

**Mark:** Did you say "robot Anne Frank"?

**Nay:** I was like, "Yes, bad bitch! Yes!"

**Mark:** Because… whoa.

**Don** (robotically): "The nazis are coming. The nazis are coming."

**Brennan:**The spouse of one of the film’s protagonists, and this protagonist just happens to be recently reunited with an old flame, so the spouse is conveniently murdered by a Cuban rebel

Consensus: Chris Sarandon (correct)

*Cuba* (with Sean Connery)

**Don:** With Sean Connery \*and\* the girl from (1970s) *Invasion of the Bodysnatchers*.

**Brennan:** Literal, actual Jesus Christ. The character is Jesus Christ.

**Michael:** I hope it was Susan, but I’m gonna go with Chris.

Consensus: Chris Sarandon (correct)

*The Day Christ Died*

**Brennan:** Jim Caviezel was trying to steal his thunder.

**Michael:** These movies. I don’t know about you guys, but I am going to run out and see all of ‘em.

**Brennan:** Who *doesn’t* want to watch Chris Sarandon as Jesus?

**Michael:** That’s true

**Brennan:** I would convert.

**Brennan:** An absentee parent who surprise visits their grown daughter on Christmas with an ulterior motive.

Consensus: Susan Sarandon (correct)

Michael also guesses the movie correctly. *A Bad Moms Christmas*.

A detective who is skeptical of a young girl who is attempting to solve a mystery with her dog.

Consensus: Susan Sarandon (correct)

*Ace the Case*

**Don:** These actors are way too prolific.

**Nay:** Yeah, I’m like unless you describe Little Women… I’m not gonna get it.

**Michael:** where’s Thelma?

**Mark:** If it’s not Marmee.

**Brennan:** I didn’t want this to be easy.

**Don:** This is what happens for like, actors past sixty. They’re making these movies that only Brennan has heard of.

**Michael:** Where’s Sister Helen Prejean?

**Brennan:** I’m not gonna be like, "Someone who has sex with Tim Curry in a musical…"

-A stodgy parent who disagrees with their sassy daughter’s relationship with Jesse Bradford.

Consensus: Chris Sarandon (correct)

*My Sassy Girl*

**Michael:** Oh, I thought it was *Swimfan.*

**Brennan:** I wish *both* Sarandons were in *Swimfan*

Second game is Mark’s idea. Brennan will give them the name of a person or character, and they have to say whether they’re a lesbian, vampire, or both.

-Willow from *Buffy*

**Don:** Vampire and lesbian

**Mark:** Lesbian

**Michael:** Lesbian

**Nay:** (did not watch the show; she watched the movie)

Correct answer is lesbian (and witch); alternate universe version is a vampire

**Nay:** Also no one please take my gay card for not watching *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*

Carmilla the vampire

**Brennan** (after no one answers): ...should I just stop doing games?

**Michael:** I was waiting for them to answer, because aren’t we going in order?

**Mark:** Answer him, Don!

**Don:** I’m the first guest and it’s like, "This show doesn’t work and we’re canceling the show."

Brennan decrees they’re switching to consensus for answers again.

Consensus: Vampire

Correct answer is both. She’s like the first Lesbian Vampire

Rosie O’Donnell

**Don:** Neither

**Michael:** What the fuck?

**Mark:** I’m gonna go out on a limb and say lesbian

**Michael:** Lesbian

**Nay:** I should hope so.

Consensus: Lesbian

Correct answer is Lesbian

The girl who walked home alone at night (from *A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night*)

**Don:** Merely a vampire.

**Mark:** You know, your garden variety vampire.

Consensus: Vampire

Correct answer is Vampire

**Brennan:** Don is right, the show has been un-canceled.

Kate McKinnon

**Mark:** The dreamiest lesbian ever

**Michael:** I mean, she’s a lesbian vampire if I’ve ever seen one, but I’m gonna go with lesbian

**Don:** Certainly a lesbian. I’m trying to mentally scan her ouevre, like has she played a vampire before?

**Mark:** I’d let her bite me

**Nay:** Same

Correct answer: Lesbian

**Brennan:** Just a lesbian, which is still a great thing to be

**Michael:** We know too much about actors anymore. So we can never, it’s hard to fall in love with a character because it’s like, I know you were like, drinking a frappe three days ago at the Starbucks just up the street from my house.

**Mark:** I am glad *The Happytime Murders* exists, in terms of the reach, of what it’s going for. It’s a very, despite the movie being not entirely successful, I did feel on some level that it was weirdly transgressive and exciting to be watching an extremely crude mixed human/puppet, like sort of detective story on a big screen.

**Don:** Did you not see *Seed of Chucky*? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

**Mark:** as Don takes off his headphones and stomps out

**Don** (pretending to be angry): Dammit, I did puppet raunch a long time ago!

**Michael:** That you did, my friend.

**Brennan:** The thing is, I believe so fully in the reality of Chucky, I just think he’s real and not a puppet.

**Nay:** I’d read something about (Don) when I googled, and something about Cabbage Patch Dolls and like that being part of your inspiration. Can you say anything about that? because I think they’re really creepy, so.

**Don:** They were. And are. Yeah. I mean, it was in the mid-80s and that was when Cabbage Patch Dolls were really popular and it was very disturbing. I mean, people would line up, literally—

**Michael:** Around the block, right?

**Don:** And there was reports of violence and people, you know…

**Michael:** The first Black Friday mayhem?

**Don:** It was this kind of satirical look at that, you know? It’s like, what marketing can do, how that can fuck up kids. These dolls are not to be trusted.

**Nay:** I want y’all to look at this picture of these creepy Cabbage Patch Dolls staring at baby!me.

**Don:** Were they your friends?

**Nay:** And this was 1985 in this picture.

**Michael:** Oh my fuck! Those are terrifying.

**Nay:** Ever since I read that, I thought of this picture and I was like, yeah, absolutely. My baby cousin’s over here chillin’ with Teddy Ruxpin, but then there’s this \*doll\* looking at me!

**Don:** And your cousin is like, "I have no part in this."

*As mentioned on this episode, here's Nay's childhood picture with her totally normal, not creepy at all dolls!*

Back to the game…

Ellen DeGeneres

**Michael:** Lesbian

**Nay:** Lez

**Brennan:** She’s actually both. That’s not all Cover Girl.

**Mark:** Bullshit. Vampire. Vampire all the way!

**Brennan:** Yeah

**Mark:** Ellen, I am on to you. Portia, get out of the house!

**Michael:** Run, Portia, run!

**Brennan:** She’s a vampire who’s also lying.

**Don:** She’s merely a vampire

Jodie Foster

**Mark:** Miriam Blaylock all the way

**Michael:** She’s Alice. What are you talking about?

**Mark:** That’s true.

**Michael** (as Jodie): "Yes, sir, I wanna play the piano."

**Mark** (as Jodie): "My mother’s quaaludes."

**Brennan:** The correct answer is you already know, so there you are.

**Don:** She was the little girl who lived down the lane, so she was a murderess. Has she been a murderess aside from that movie?

**Brennan:** Candleshoe

**Michael:** *The Brave One*, but she was a vigilante. Is that the same thing?

**Mark:** Yeah, Jodie get your gun. I sincerely wish though that Jodie had been young enough to play Alice Cavender in The Hunger. (as Jodie) "Miriam, what’s the matter with John today?"

**Michael** (as Jodie): "I guess I’ll play for you."

**Mark** (as Jodie): "I have my mother’s quaaludes, sir."

**Michael** (as Jodie): "You have the same eyes."

**Mark** (as Jodie): "You see a lot, Mrs. Blaylock."

**Don:** Doing Clarice Starling never gets old

**Mark** (as Jodie): "Were you John’s father?"

**Michael** (as Jodie): "You have the same eyes."

**Don** (as Jodie): "Are you strong enough to turn that high-powered perception on yourself?"

**Mark** (as Jodie): "Mrs. Blaylock?"

**Michael:** "Is Mrs. Blaylock home?"

**Don:** (as Jodie): "She’s afraid of getting old."

Amanda Bearse played Marcy Darcy on Married… with Children

**Don:** Fright Night. Big, big mouth vampire.

**Mark:** Real-life lesbian, *reel*-life vampire.

**Brennan:** So that’s a both and everybody wins.

**Michael:** We've discussed about how Amanda really was the first one to open the door and doesn’t get a lot of credit for it. Of being out and proud as a lesbian.

**Don:** Oh, I thought you meant as an out vampire. "She was the first vampire!" Really?

**Brennan:** So that was Games. Um, I’m having an existential crisis...

**Michael:** You should play a really cool theme song right there.

**Brennan:** I’m just gonna imagine the rest of the podcast in Jodie Foster’s voice. I’m sorry for getting aggressive, I’m very defensive about my games.

**Michael and Mark**: They were great games.

**Don:** You just needed a smarter group.

**Mark:** Well, on that note!

**Michael:** Don is back next week, everybody!

**Mark:** Everybody, this is Don’s farewell appearance on the pod!

## **Pride Float**

Does The Hunger get a Pride Float and what does it look like?

**Michael:** It gets a Pride Float

**Mark:** I believe it gets a Pride Float

**Michael:** What is on this Pride Float? You’re really good at describing pride floats, Nay. Obviously a big-ass bed.

**Nay:** Well, first I wanna say, there is one single piece of glitter on your cheek that is winking at me and is so cute. Anyway, so the Pride Float, I was thinking it’s like, you know, a 20x10 marble slab rolling down the parade. Covered in erect nipples, with just sheer white fabric blowing all over these hard nipples with some kind of opera aria screaming out.

**Michael:** With a bunch of sexy sick people?

**Nay:** Mmmm, yeah.

**Michael:** Just gyrating on the marble?

**Nay:** I mean, the nipples are the most important part.

**Mark:** Doves. Doves flying

**Don:** Doves, oh yeah.

**Mark:** Doves are a must. And then in the center…

**Nay:** Is this my float or your float?

**Mark:** I thought this was a group effort

**Michael:** This is a collective float.

**Don:** You should have a wire mesh thing and like a Bauhaus guy doing pantomime.

**Michael:** And obviously blood squirting with the ankh.

**Brennan:** What would it cost to get that many pounds of curtain, though?

**Nay:** Feel like the marble’s gonna cost the most

**Mark:** The marble’s kinda, you’re blowing a lot of your float budget, yeah.

**Michael:** And Alice needs to be on the float

**Brennan:** This is a big float

**Michael:** But Alice is—

**Don:** I know, we’ve really constructed this giant—

**Mark:** First of all, it’s a giant 20x18 slab of marble. Which, I don’t even know how the fuck you make that thing move.

**Michael:** Do you put that on a Fiat? Like, how do you move that thing? Let’s find out.

**Mark:** And then you cast Katya as Miriam. And that’s the cherry on top.

## **Quotes**

**Brennan:** I'm not good at roleplay.

**Don:** You said you're not good at roleplay?

**Brennan:** No I'm not.

**Don:** What kind of a gay are you?

**Brennan:** The failed kind, mostly.

**Don:** (after Mark's introduction) Living legend equals old, but thanks.

**Don:** (on *Sharp Objects*) There's a lot of child killing involved, which is terrible.

**Michael:** I'm in.

**Brennan:** We love child killing on this podcast.

**Michael:** Give me child killing. That always makes me happy.

**Don:** (to Nay) Are you from the south?

**Nay:** No, I'm from the midwest, which is where like, everyone from the south migrates from the south to there. So like, post-southern midwest.

**Michael:** I'm from the midwest, too so I get what you're saying. Lot of tight sphincters.

**Nay:** Not a lot of room up there for that stick, know what I mean?

**Brennan:** Thank you so much for letting me out of my cage so I could talk for a bit.

**Mark:** Back in, back in!

**Don:** (The vampires) feed one day in seven?

**Mark:** That’s a glamorous diet.

**Don:** But they don’t make that explicit in this movie.

**Brennan:** Nothing’s explicit in this movie.

**Mark:** It’s explicit in the Strieber novel.

**Narrator in the trailer for *The Hunger***: Mysterious. Sensual. Strange. Perverse. Riveting.

**Mark:** Actually I think we just found our ad copy for the podcast.

**Don:** Perfect!

**Mark:** (pretending to host an episode) "Sensual. Strange. Perverse. Hey you guys, welcome!"

**Don:** (The Hunger) is extremely… what’s the word?

**Mark:** Low-key homophobic?

**Mark:** The style is the subject, it's the substance. I love *The Hunger* because it feels like one of the most honest movies about vampirism in the sense that these people have nothing but style and the act of curating their lives because there's literally nothing else.

**Don:** Style and youth and beauty, which is what the values that the movie and the characters espouse to their detriment. That they value, Miriam Blaylock, she values beauty and style above all else.

**Mark:** Shoulder pads.

**Don:** Right. It's just such a weird indictment of her values of, or I shouldn't say the values of the era, but the assumed values of that subculture. Where you go through relationships like Kleenex. When you're tired of them or if they're now too old, what do you?

**Michael:** Recycle.

**Don:** Put 'em in a box, put 'em in the attic and move on to the next. And she does so without a lot of angst. She has her one moment where I think she squeezes out literally a single tear, which I love, as she's playing the piano. I find that movie really disturbing.

**Michael:** (*The Hunger*) was so ahead of it's time in the sense that they were obsessed with certain things that we're obsessed with today still, like as far as fame and fortune and the look and style and all that stuff and I kept imagining (Miriam) doing that today and what that movie would look like today and really the only difference is she'd have social media. It was really cool to watch it that way, though.

**Don:** It would make their lives more boring, though, because in a way, I think that even dating apps like Scruff and Grindr they're really convenient and can be kind of fun. But I remember back in the day when you had to go to Santa Monica Boulevard and go to Rage in order to get with somebody. So it's like they wouldn't have gone to that great club at the beginning of the movie.

**Michael:** Yeah, the movie would have taken place in like, her bathroom.

**Don:** Yeah, they're just like, "Oh, I found some people. They're on their way over."

**Mark:** She'd be wearing a veil and there'd be like billowing curtains but she'd be literally refreshing.

**Michael:** But the curtains wouldn't be billowing because they'd have central air and like, there would be no wind blowing through the windows.

**Don:** And the doves would have been exterminated.

**Don:** Another thing about the movie is that I think it really gets at one of the horror genre's fundamental concerns, which is fear of aging and death. Because it is just the most horrifying thing to see one of the era's most beautiful men, David Bowie. We watch him within the space of a minute go from virile young man to doddering nonagenarian or whatever.

**Mark:** Nay, this was the first time you’d seen the movie, right?

**Nay:** Yes.

**Mark:** What was your first thought?

**Michael:** Besides wanting Susan Sarandon to say stuff to you

**Nay:** Yeah, okay. Don’t snarl at me, evil little bitch.

**Nay:** So there’s two really horrific parts to me, after the aging, 'coz aging is scary. It’s your lover not being into you anymore, but that’s not mutual, which is heartbreaking and horrible. And, in very gay fashion, you get stuck in the same room with all their exes for eternity.

**Michael:** That’s like the worst night at The Abbey ever.

**Nay:** And you’re cognizant of all of that and I was just thinking about the times in my life when I’ve felt that horrible feeling of, like, this person I’m into is into someone else now.

**Michael:** Being put aside?

**Nay:** Yeah. And what if I had had to dwell in that space for eternity. As a vegetable, in a coffin, with all of her other exes up in the attic.

**Michael:** It's tough because you look at the movie and I’m watching it and I’m considered “other” and then in the group of others, you’re the \*other\*.

**Don:** There's also something really disturbing about the lie that Miriam tells her lovers throughout eternity.

**Michael:** How long they'll last?

**Don:** She promises them, "You're gonna have eternal life. But what I didn't tell you is you're not gonna have eternal youth and you can never die." And that's something that's so disturbing. It gets into it a little more in the novel as well, where they get into um, when Susan Sarandon's character, what is her character's name?

**Mark:** Sara Roberts

**Don:** When Sara Roberts, spoilers spoilers

**Michael:** It's okay, you can spoil.

**Mark:** Listen, it's 1983. Anyone who tweets at us about spoilers…

**Don:** Hurry and watch this 40 year old movie. In the book, and of course the book doesn't have the crucial flip that the movie has and Sara just ends up in the attic for all eternity. But the notion of rotting in a box, it reminds me a little of that moment from *Return of the Living Dead*, you know, when they get that half-woman corpse. Which is one of the most simultaneously hilarious yet disturbing things where they go, "Why do you eat brains?" And it says, "To ease the pain of being dead. I can feel myself rot." And lemme tell you, you guys are all young, but that sentiment becomes, um, important.

**Don:** I remember reading (the novel) and thinking, "(Sara's) a much better person than I am." I would not be lying there for eternity thinking, "Oh I'm gonna be okay because just knowing that I'm a good person."

**Nay:** Hell no. It's not enough.

**Don:** It's like, "Fuck! Did I make the right decision?"

**Michael:** (as Sara) "That one memory is great."

**Don:** "I could be going out to clubs with Catherine Deneuve right now."

**Michael:** I love that Susan Sarandon was wet like she was in Flashdance for like half the movie.

**Nay:** Well…

**Nay:** I just wanna be sitting on a marble slab, listening to opera, next to some calla lilies, wearing a wet t shirt with hard nipples.

**Mark:** I don't think that everything from the past should be looked at with a hardcore today lens. It's like some things are just of their time and you can take what you like and leave the rest, right?  and that's all fine and dandy. But is there something you know? Is there a revisionist view of this movie where we go, because it's like you said, describing, Don, you said, describing in a sense, it's an allegory for a "queer life" of like, disposable lovers. Dispose of them when they're no longer appropriate, or aging or something. is there something about it that's a little bit sour underneath all the candy you get up front?

**Don:** I think when they made the movie at the time, I'm sure they weren't thinking of it as specifically an indictment of the gay lifestyle. If anything, I think they were probably thinking sweepingly of a shallowness that was happening before the AIDS era.

**Mark:** That was about the decade more than just the-?

**Don:** Yeah.

**Michael:** It was like the yuppie era more to me when it was being made.

**Don:** You know, it was the Seventies and early Eighties. it was a time of, y'know, rampant sexual play.

**Michael:** And spending.

**Don:** Yeah.

**Mark:** Curtains.

**Don:** The movie just has a kind of jaundiced view of that. but it always makes you wonder, do the filmmakers really hold that perspective or are they just making a movie about it because it's something to make a movie about?

**Mark:** The question is what makes it enduringly (unintelligible)?

**Don:** When they made the movie they didn't know AIDS was coming.

**Michael:** When you look at vampirism in general to me, there's always some sort of raw sexuality to it. And I personally just assume any vampire in a movie is bisexual.

**Nay:** Absolutely.

**Michael:** Because of the sexual magnetism that's part of being a vampire apparently. So I don't think it was intended to be any allegory on sexuality and defining themselves in any way. To me, it was more just a study on excessiveness. Excessiveness in every single way possible. And I think the bisexuality/queerness is just kind of like--

**Mark:** More more more?

**Michael:** Yeah, it's just part of it. Like, "We're gonna go to excess, let's have her go to excess with a woman, let's have her go to excess with a man, let's have her go excess in every single way. Plus the sex scene is just bomb."

**Don:** It's so interesting at the end, because Susan Sarandon wins because she has the moral high ground. She rejects what Miriam is selling and in rejecting it, she triumphs. Which is interesting, but then you see it in the coda at the end, and I have an interesting little bit of trivia about that in a minute, but what are we to think about how is Susan Sarandon operating now?

**Mark:** It's a very cynical ending.

**Don:** Because she has Miriam in a box, in her own attic. I think she's in Rome?

**Mark and Michael:** I believe it's London.

**Don:** You're probably right, it's London. It's clearly a European city, that beautiful last shot as you hear, (wailing), which I find incredibly haunting. The scream haunted me. I guess we're to assume that now Susan Sarandon is operating by those rules, which means she doesn't have the moral high ground any more.

**Michael:** Right, she kind of became what she defeated.

**Mark:** Very cynical ending.

**Don:** So what happens?

**Michael:** She became what she defeated. correct me if I'm wrong. Was there a younger woman and a man in that place that she was with?

**Mark:** Yes.

**Michael:** Okay, so there was just a lot to read into at the end there.

**Don:** It's very decadent. So my main piece of trivia was, and you probably know this because you seem to know everything about the movie, ***Mark***. Do you know the young actress who plays her lover in that scene?

**Michael:** At the very end?

**Don:** Yeah.

**Mark:** Oh God, almost. It's on the tip of my tongue.

**Don:** Her name is Sophie Ward and the only reason I know this is because she played the young love interest in the movie *Young Sherlock Holmes* that came out a couple of years later. And I worked with Nicholas Rowe, who played young Sherlock Holmes and he was in *Seed of Chucky*, and he had just come from Sophie Ward's wedding to a woman.

**Michael:** How 'bout that? Queer.

**Mark:** *The Hunger* indeed.

**Mark:** I have another bit of trivia about this movie.

**Michael:** You wrote it.

**Mark:** i AM Whitley Strieber! Aliens took me years ago! He wrote another book, *Communion*. Which is about alien abductions. It's a long story. Anyway.

**Nay:** Tell me more facts

**Michael:** Tell me about communion, mark?

**Mark:** Uh, that's another episode. The bit of trivia I had is that Richard Shepherd, the producer of *The Hunger*-- it's nice to literally be laughed at.

**Nay:** I was just thinking about how I was calling you Mary-Kate earlier and…

**Michael:** He's Ashley.

**Mark:** Okay, first of all, before I talk about this trivia, why is it that when you guys gang up on me, I'm either one or the other of the Olsen twins?

**Michael:** I personally think you're Ashley.

**Mark:** Okay, is it because I'm rich and have fabulous style?

**Michael:** And huge sunglasses?

**Mark:** And huge sunglasses

**Don:** And you're wasting away

**Mark:** Slowly wasting away. No? What is it? Nay is sipping her tea in front of me, refusing to answer.

**Michael:** Rocking back and forth.

**Mark:** Fine.

**Michael:** What a weird sidebar

**Nay:** Sorry.

**Mark:** I'm not rich, I don't have great style, but I am wasting away!

**Michael:** He's got big sunglasses.

**Mark:** My bit of trivia was that the producer of this movie, originally wanted another favorite director, Alan Parker, to direct this.

**Don:** I didn't know that.

**Mark:** Yeah, he wanted Alan Parker to direct this. Angel Heart is one of my all-time faves and I think we should talk about it on the pod.

**Michael:** Absolutely.

**Mark:** I think it's absolutely worth discussing, but Parker's the one who convinced Shepard to hire Tony Scott, because Tony Scott had made some incredible commercials.

**Michael:** Oh, so the director they wanted got Tony Scott the job, essentially.

**Mark:** And I have always wondered, what would an Alan Parker version of *The Hunger* look like?

**Don:** Exactly the same. No, I'm kidding. Well, his is a similar style. They both have that kind of early 80s Helmut Newton fashion magazine aesthetic.

**Mark:** Grainy Michael Seresin. No one shot the 80s like--

**Don:** Alan Parker?

**Mark:** Adrian Lyne.

**Don:** Weren't they all, didn't they all have a company together? I think so. (Mark) would know. I feel like Miranda (Priestly), 'You know everything, right?'

**Michael:** (Tom's) freakout at dinner seemed to come out of nowhere.

**Mark** (as Tom): "You spent three hours with a woman? What the fuck were you talking about?!" It's like Tom, all right, relax.

**Don:** What's that scene where adjacent to the steakhouse is this public pool, where there's this beautiful young girl cavorting and Susan Sarandon just can't keep looking...

**Mark:** She can't get enough.

**Nay:** Mmmm, steakhouse next to a pool?

**Michael:** I just assumed this pool was part of the steakhouse. Like Fred's Steakhouse and Pool?

**Nay:** Bomb.

**Don:** You eat and then you swim it off.

**Michael:** Swim and die.

**Mark:** They make you wait thirty minutes and then you get in.

**Michael:** And wash off all the steak juice.

**Mark:** And when you're done, you're a lesbian vampire.

**Nay:** What's with all those signs by California pools that say you can't get in the pool if you've had diarrhea in the last fourteen days? 'Cause I'm like, I've always had diarrhea in the last fourteen days. Like, I'm an anxious bitch. There is no two week period of my life that I have not had diarrhea, so.

**Don:** And does one have to bring credentials? Just like from your doctor, they test you?

**Mark:** Stool sample?

**Michael:** "I have a note from my doctor. he said I haven't gone poop wrong in two weeks. Can i get in the pool now? I don't have diarrhea but I took one really hard one up there."

**Nay:** Wow, Michael.

**Mark:** When you see warning labels on pills or things that you just go, "How in the hell?" It's because somebody tried it. You know there's someone who like...

**Michael:** *Squirt.*

**Mark:** It was like, "I'm fine now, I swear." You know that's the reason. And that's The Hunger, you guys!

**Michael:** I was at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs once and someone pooped in it.

**Mark:** Well, I'm sure that their ad buy on our pod was gonna be--

**Michael:** Adult diapers should be advertised here.

## **Previous Episode**

Episode 3: "Men are Trash and I Gotta Go"

## **Next Episode**

Episode 5: "My Favorite Time of Day is Night"