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What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

TGTPTU Season 13’s 4x4 continues with the second half of its first Robert Aldrich pairing, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).

Like last week’s entry, WEH2BJ is another black-and-white film adaptation of a novel, this one truer to the source material, at least to cohost Thomas who read Henry Farrell’s 1960 novel of the same title (in other words no changing out a briefcase of drugs for a nuclear weapon or the star of your book series an unlikeable asshole as had happened in Aldrich’s adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly). Outside minor changes in date and storytelling, both novel and film follow the story of the two sisters in their autumn years: Jane Hudson, a child actress of stage fame whose star dimmed well before her sister Blanche Hudson’s movie career was on its meteoric (to keep with astronomical idioms) ascent until a car accident with a drunk Jane driving left Blanche in a wheelchair and in her sister’s care. While acrimonious, their relationship turns horrific when reruns of Blanche’s films lead to fan mail and her sottish sister Jane to exact a lifetime’s worth of revenge on her housebound sibling.

Yet the meta story of the film separates it inexorably from its source material as Aldrich casts, and to his credit completes a film, with both divas alive with both eyes, most their hair, and out of jail: Bette Davis as the nostalgic Jane and Joan Crawford as Blanche. TGTPTU hosts cover the Oscar shenanigans and personas of these two great ladies of early cinema. Speaking of, WEH2BJ was nominated for five Academy Awards. This was Davis’s tenth nom, and at the time she would have had the most Oscar wins for Best Actress if the picture had won her her third. Unfortunately, the film won only for an obsolete category (Best Costume Design, Black-and-White). And (strikethrough as appropriate one of the subsequent adverbs after listening to the discussion) deservedly/somehow garnered Victor Buono a nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Stans of the pod are forewarned that a Season 1-3 bit returns thanks to the evils of Davis’s character’s choice of dishes to feed her sister. Other listeners are forewarned that there will be much discussion of the can’t-believe-it-exists films Trog (1970) and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972).

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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Kiss Me Deadly

Welcome back to TGTPTU, and welcome back in Season 13 to both former cohost Jack and to the 4x4, the latter making its third season appearance! For TGTPTU stans reading this, able to recite the following explanation by heart, go ahead and save yourself half-a-minute and skip the rest of this paragraph. But for you sad majority of population Earth, a 4x4 is where the crew of TGTPTU covers four films (two pairings) by four different creatives. Simple. And with the return of Jack and the recent promotion of (although still provisional) cohost Ryan, for this season each host will be selecting one director to (strike as appropriate: introduce to / impose upon / reunite / endear) the other three hosts (to / with).

This third iteration of the 4x4 kicks off with Ken’s choice of director Robert Aldrich, pairing this episode’s KISS ME DEADLY (1955) with next week’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (whatever happened to our style guide? should I end this sentence with a second punctuation mark after the question mark? when did “what ever” become one word? Ken, cut all this out. Thanks, buddy. Editor of the Year.).

Liberally adapted from the Mike Hammer novel of identical title by A.I. Bezzerides (yes, AI was writing fiction before ChatGPT) that doesn’t even include a nuclear device, Aldrich’s version of KMD helped put the nail in the noir era’s coffin by giving the viewing public an unsympathetic protagonist driven by greed and the need to break things. This film relatively early in Aldrich’s career would earn the respect of, and help inspire, Aldrich’s contemporaries in the French New Wave, although the all-American, not-quite-nepo baby Aldrich would balk at their reasoning why the film he made was important.

Listen to this inaugural episode’s rough start as last season’s bits are retired, Thomas confronts Ryan on his pronunciation of “noir,” Ken remembers fondly when this talkie came out while Jack finishes watching the film during mic check, and Ryan lists off an impressive amount of homages to KMD before the foursome debate whether the “h” is silent.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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PAPRIKA

For the final episode of Season 12 Nolan Void, the TGTPTU gents get timey-wimy as they repeat last season finale with another film from anime director Satoshi Kon also allegedly plagiarized by the season’s director, this time Kon’s final flick PAPRIKA (2006) and Nolan’s Inception rather than Black Swan stealing from Perfect Blue (Kon’s first film, almost as if TGTPTU were considering a temporal pincer movement on the Japanese director who tragically died far too young after only four films).

This week, rookie host Ryan tries his hand at his first 60-second summary of this simple, straight-forward, extremely grounded plot of Paprika based on the 1993 novel of the same name. In short, the film takes place in an unexplained near future with technology that allows its cast of characters to share dreams and their experience therein blurs the waking world with a plot involving corporate espionage and a Japanese CEO, but in all the ways that Nolan’s Inception does not.

After their PAPRIKA discussion finding no merit in the accusations of Sir Chris ripping off Kon, TGTPTU roundtables to rank Nolan’s dozen flicks from folly to finest (although all four find all twelve quite good). Former host Jack returns from hammer murder accusations to join in the fun, counterbalancing fellow aspiring-Zoomer Thomas’s rankings with an alt take for their entire generation. Ken has the boys contemplate future Nolan franchises, Ryan offers an astute comparison between Miami Vice vs Heat for two of Nolan’s films, and we get the first mention of Mike, Thomas’s side piece. And if that weren’t enough, the “you may know us from other podcasts” bit gets officially retired.

Oh, and there’s more: Weird AI presents its original Oppenheimer composition two weeks past deadline and the next season of the pod is announced (which, if no one promises to listen, will cover Bryan Singer’s oeuvre; otherwise, we’ll return later in the summer for another 4x4).

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Buzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/
Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias