Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Vampire Academy listener polls and preview Rosemary's baby.
Hello and welcome back to another prequel episode of this film is late, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We got quite a bit to get to, so we'll just get to it with our patron shoutouts.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: That's why no new patrons. But we do have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are Nicole Goebbel, Eric Harpo rat. I understand and agree with what you are saying, but on the other hand, I do kind of want to guillotine some CEO's parenthetical. Nathan Vic Apocalypse Mathilde Steve from Arizona it draft Theresa Schwartz ian from wine country, Kelly Napier Gratch. Just gratch. Shelby says if Batman and Catwoman can be in game in the comics, so can spidey and Deadpool, you cowards. That darn Skag v. Frank and Alina Starkov, thank you all very much for your continued support. We really appreciate it. Katie, it's time to see what the people had to say about Vampire Academy.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man. On Patreon, we had one vote for the book, one for the movie, and two listeners who couldn't decide. Shelby said, I didn't read or watch, so I'm not familiar with the character you were talking about. I do know you haven't covered Aragon yet. I only bring it up because I'm absolutely certain that the creators of Once Upon a Time saw Robert Carlisle in that movie and said, we want exactly that for Rumpelstiltskin. Maybe the reason they couldn't get him to play their version of that character in Vampire Academy is because Aragon got him first.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Could be, yeah. I mean, Aragon was 2006, so quite a bit before both of them. I haven't seen.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: I've never read nor seen that.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: I'm sure we'll do it eventually. Obviously, it's a very derided film adaptation.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: It's one of those that generally regarded as poo poo. Our other, our next comment was from Kelly Napier, who said, when I finished the book, I thought to myself, this is probably the worst piece of media I've ever consumed.
Then the movie said, hold my beer.
The only thing the movie did right was, as Katie said, bringing the strigoi in early instead of just leaving them as a hidden threat. The book was awful. Truly, truly awful. But the movie was worse. So the book wins. But did any of us really win because we still had to bear witness.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: That's true. I don't think I'd put it among the worst things I've ever watched, but it's not good. It's.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: I mean, in the arena of, like, worst things you've ever watched, you're kind of an outlier.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: That's fair. That's fair. But also, I would even say among non good bad or bad bad movies, I still don't think I'd even put it.
It's, like, a mess and confusing, but it has some fun moments, and I didn't hate watching it. I guess I found it kind of frustrating to watch and confusing, but I didn't find it morally reprehensible in any way. So that's always a positive.
Obviously, there are different ways things can be bad, but that is one of the main ones for me, that if something is, I find deeply morally irreprehensible, or if it's, like, terrible, terrible. And this was neither. It was just, like, bad.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm splitting hairs here. It was not good.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Kevin Smith, parenthetical. Not that one.
I'm so glad I never wasted my time with either the book or the movie, but thank you for taking one. Or is that two for the team?
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Katie? They had to take two for the.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: I did two for the show.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Just had to watch the movie, so I lucked out.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Next comment was from Steve from Arizona, who said, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Nothing makes me laugh more than confusing ya world building and love triangles and whatnot. There actually was not a love triangle.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: In this one, was there not? Well, there's not, like, a love triangle, but there's a lot of, like, sorted, right?
[00:04:39] Speaker B: There's a lot of, like, sorted. Who likes who kind of stuff. I just, like. I, like. Just realized that upon reading Steve's comment out loud that there was not, like, yes, there's not a main character in.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: This, but there is kind of. Again, Mia and whatever the princess's name is, and then that boy, again, they're not main characters, but there are love triangles.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: There just isn't the main.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: There isn't a feature. It's not one that's a feature of property.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Count, I already forgot their names, the two main characters.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Look how quickly you wiped that from your mind. Good job, Rose. Yes.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: And Lila.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Close.
Lisa, closer.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Was it not Lisa?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: It was Lissa.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Lissa, that's right. Rose and Lissa. If you count Rose and Lyssa.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Then you get a love triangle. Well, again, it's more of a love v. But that's every love triangle. Usually, like, even in twilight, like the famous love triangle, it's not really a love triangle, it's a love v. V. But sure.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Oh. Steve went on to say, it's hilarious they placed this in Montana, considering the locals probably would have revolted against them and made it their lives to run them out of the state. Montanans are very provincial and hate out of staters. I don't know any Montanans that doesn't.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: I mean, that whole part of the country, pretty much. Yeah. It doesn't seem. Don't think they would take too kindly to a weird vampire. Again, I assume the idea is that they're unaware that this thing exists.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: That that is the idea.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: It's kind of like a hidden.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And that kind of like Hogwarts. Like they can't find it.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah. For whatever reason. Some sort of magic or something. Yeah.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: I was hoping it would be another slapstick episode referencing slapstick of another kind, but clearly it wasn't that awful.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: See, that's a good example in comparison. Slapstick of another kind, way worse, in.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: My opinion, than this one, made me actively angry.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And skip another point. Yeah. Just bafflingly. Just nothing. Whereas this one, I'm like, I get what you're doing. It's not good. But, like, I don't know, there's a couple lines that made me laugh and whatnot. Like, whatever.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Either way, glad you had some fun. We did have some fun. I had fun recording the episode. I don't know how much fun I had with any of the rest of it.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, the recording's easily. Yeah.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: And our last comment on Patreon was from Nathaniel, the patron who requested this episode, and Nathan said, you're welcome, and I'm sorry for this pic. I will say that I really enjoyed the podcast picking through this mess. So if it was painful to do, and it sounded like it very much was, I'm sorry. But I do think something fun to consume came out of it, and that's fine.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that happens.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't need to apologize.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: You don't need to apologize for that.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: I had a thought as I was reflecting on these stories that they seem to have a very right wing and thus unempathetic perspective when he says these stories.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: I guess we'll get into it. But is he talking about the series?
[00:07:46] Speaker B: I assume so, yeah.
I think that is a large part of why this doesn't work. First, at the very top level, this should be a queer romance. Spoiler alert. For future books that no one listening will ever read, but it never becomes one. Okay, womp womp. In fact, it seems actively committed to running away from it. It makes the decision to pair a 17 year old rose with a 24 year old Dimitri, because apparently that is more acceptable. Second, the book actually stumbles upon an interesting sexual dynamics in the idea that dampier women have to accept perpetual mistress status in order to continue their bloodline. The book doesn't deal with this directly, but it sets up Mia as a parallel. She loved Andre and he abandoned her. Just like the moroi with the dump here. The books make no. The book.
The book makes no attempt to empathize with Mia or maybe Andre for his actions, but instead uses this backstory to make her an irredeemable bitch character and red herring main bad guy. Mia acted like an immature and hurt child, and we were supposed to believe she might be the main villainous. I kept expecting Rose to empathize with Mia when Lyssa has turned everyone against her, but it is just treated as justice.
This really feels exactly like those folks who opposed the me too movement and victim blame.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: I would have to have read. I think I would have to have read the book to get. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: No, I definitely can see what.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: I don't know, the dynamics of the dampier enough and them having to be perpetual mistresses. I would need to know more about.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: That to see how it applies. Get into it a lot in the episode because it doesn't come up in the movie.
They just don't talk about it.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Not mentioned about it.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: But in the book, there's all this background information about how, like, gampir women, like I mentioned, that they can't reproduce amongst themselves.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: You did say something like that. Yeah, that they had. That's part of the potential reason between the maroy and the dampier is that the dampier have to.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So they, like, if they want to have a baby, they have to have a baby with the Maroi.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: But then the dampir are, like, second class citizens, basically.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: No, don't you mean the Maroi? No, wait, I'm confusing. Which are which now?
[00:10:12] Speaker B: The Maroi are the magic user royal.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: The vampires.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: I guess they're all vampires.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Right?
[00:10:17] Speaker A: But the dampier. It's confusing because damp here sounds more like vampire, but they're not the, like, actual vampires. They're more of, like, the. The slayer. They're not slayers, but they're. They. You know, they're like.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: They're like, technically half vampires.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: I know they are vampires, but, yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: They'Re more like humans with, like, slightly elevated staff.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't drink blood, seemingly. So that's why I got. I keep getting confused which one are dampire and which one are maroi? Because I'm like, no, dampier should be the vampire ones, but it's. Whatever. Again, it's bad. Confusing world building.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So the. So. But the dampier are basically, like, second class citizens, and then the females are even lower within that because a lot of them end up being blood whores, and they get used for blood and sex.
So there's a lot of sordid political.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: You get hints of that with the blood whore thing in the movie.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yeah, you get hints of it, but the movie really doesn't.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: All it does is just give Lyssa the speech at the end to be like, hey, we should. Let's not call each other whores anymore at the end.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So I definitely see how.
Yeah, if we look at Mia as, like, kind of.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: I can't remember, is Mia a dampier or a moroi? She's a moroi, which is the vampire ones.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: But if we look at her situation with Andre, it's kind of similar in the sense her situation with Andre, the.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Terrible sequel to my dinner with Andre. Anyway, sorry.
I'm sorry.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: I don't even know if this is worth trying to talk.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: No, it is. I'm interested. I'm interested.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: I can't remember a single thing.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: I am. I do. I just. Sorry. You said my situation with Andre, and it just. I couldn't not make me think of my dinner. Yeah. Anyway, sorry.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: So my point is that the text definitely treats her unfairly because she is literally a child.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: She's, like, 17 at the most in this book.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: They all are.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: They all are teachers and stuff.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: And she's a 17 year old who has been incredibly hurt by this person that she trusted. And the text is very uncharitable towards her in a similar way that it is kind of uncharitable towards.
Not that the text is uncharitable towards stampier women, but the world that the text has built is. And there's attempted commentary on that. But then we don't care about Mia. Cause she's a bitch.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Right. Okay, I see.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Okay. Where did I leave off?
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Only there's the matter of the striggle.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Okay. So Nathan went on to say, finally, there is the matter of the strigoi. Like Katie, I assumed that there was going to be a twist that they werent all bad misses. Karp seemed obviously destined to come back as strigoi, but good because she is a good person. This just makes narrative sense, but apparently now shes hiding and waiting to invade with her unwashed mass of outsiders. This sort of black line othering reminds me of our modern day immigration debate and trumps vile rhetoric talking about how all members of the groups coming here are bad.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: I mean, it definitely falls in line with just a lot of, I think a lot of ya and kids media that for sure that just does kind of simple good and bad groups.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: And you know, there's places where it works better and works worse and it's, you know, I, that was always an issue I had with, with Harry Potter and we discussed it in the episodes back in the day is like, you know, the book goes out of, the books go out of their way at times to talk about how actually, well, you know, not all Slytherin are evil or whatever, but like they seem to be basically other than slughorn essentially. Like every other Slytherin basically that you ever interact with in the book series is evil. And, you know, so it is. And I'm sure I'm forgetting them. I don't care. But point being that, like, it's that same kind of thing where it's just like, sure, you know, and yeah, it's just a thing that's very, a trope that's very common in young adult and children's fiction. That I do think, honestly, is probably is a bad thing, is a hurtful thing that encourages black and white thinking that is not ideal for creating complex and upstanding moral participants in our society. I would say, yeah, that being said, obviously plenty of people who read that kind of stuff grow. I would like to think I'm one of those people. But plenty of people who read those kind of stories are able to then sus, or figure out that the world is not that simple eventually.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and then, like you said, there are instances where that works a little better than other instances. And I definitely don't think I read enough of this series to figure out, like, how well it works in this instance. Yeah, I would be inclined to say that it doesn't because I did. And it sounds like Nathan felt the same very much get the impression that that was not the message we were going with until suddenly it was.
But yeah, Nathan went on to say, I think these all show a very conservative mindset behind the way the book is told. And I think it warps the storytelling of the book. The natural story beats would be to have Mia be a complex character which we could dislike but empathize with. Misses carp to be a tragic figure who has to embrace desperate means to achieve a better end and rose and Lyssa to be friends who discover something more. But this story is not open to those options due to its inherent conservatism.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I could see that.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: I don't think that stuff comes across in the movie very well. I think the movie maybe has too much going on and you don't have enough time with Mia and some of these other things to, like, I guess I didn't leave the movie going, wow, that there's kind of a deep seated conservatism behind this story in the same way I did with, like, Twilight. Yeah, it is. I can see it being there.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Behind that still, especially, I assume the book would be. It sounds like a lot of these details come more from the book than the film.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: They definitely do. I mean, I would almost say that the book also has too much going on to leave it and immediately be like, oh, I can see this. This and that are, like, deeply conservative elements within the text.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: But I imagine Nathan has probably read this a couple times.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: It sounds like it had thought about.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: It more than just reading it once.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I, you know, sometimes we do try to dig a little bit into the author's like, yeah.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Kind of see what their deal is.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Just kind of try to figure out what their deal is. And we didn't. We did not do that for Rochelle Meade. So I have no idea if maybe she is very conservative or maybe this is a case of, you know, I would wager to say that most Americans have a lot of internalized conservatism.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: This is a lot of.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: This is a deeply conservative place.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
Because a lot of these things. And it kind of comes across that way. From what Nathan said, here is more of stuff that expresses because of internalized misogyny and internalized conservatism and sort of a protestant, like, you know, traditional christian values.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Very pure.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Even if the person, like, writing the story would describe themselves maybe politically left or whatever, it's very common for as an american, I think a lot of us still are trying to find and peel back those layers within us that were created growing up in a deeply conservative culture. I say deeply. A pretty conservative culture. Even in the more progressive areas, there's a lot of, again, everything's intersectional. There's lots of different layers to all this. And, yeah, even people that I think might view themselves as progressive or liberal or whatever, can write stories that have shitty kind of internalized conservative messaging. We talked about that a little bit with the Forrest Gump movie that everybody involved in that seems to be progressive people or at least some flavor of on the left side of the aisle and probably would not describe. Did not think they were writing a conservative movie or, you know what I mean? But that's just kind of the nature of the type of story and some of the internalized conservative ideals that all of us as Americans have to grapple with.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Nathan, had some other random thoughts here.
I'm totally with Brian on the atheist with a gun comment I wrote in my notes. Well, if we have nothing else, at least we have this. Not sure what category this fits, but I want it as a segment draw.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: That could be good. If we ever have episode like moments where I go off on my religion side rants and get to talk about that sort of thing, that could be a good moment for this.
I'm not sure where else it would fit. It wouldn't fit with any of our current segments. I don't think have to think about it, but oh, you know, it'd be great. Well, no, I think about it more, but like I said, totally great if we have an episode where I know I'm gonna rant about religion for a while or something.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Rose's comment about learning to fight not run is a reference to a line from the book which does make it to the movie, but is much less central. Early on, Dimitri and Rose are discussing what she would have done if they had encountered a strigoi while they were outside of the academy. And he says her best strategy would be to run. Then for their extra practice, he mostly has her run laps. Shes referencing that and indicating she wants to get serious in her preparation for fighting strigoi so she can fight them instead of just running away.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Right. I actually do remember that line now about like, oh, if you encounter one, just run. Thats also from another series. There's a popular, it's a movie or a tv. There's some other something where they're like. And it's probably in lots of things. I think it's just like a classic clip. Oh, the Matrix. In the matrix. Like what do you do if you encounter an agent? Run or whatever? It's like don't try to fight an agent, you just run away from them because you can't fight them. Same kind of idea.
I still think it's weird because whatever, at least in the movie. Like, even with that line earlier and setting that up, like, I guess they don't. To me, they don't do a good enough job establishing why he's training her specifically and that it's separate from the classes, and that because, again, we just get explained that the classes are there to teach them how to fight, and then she's like, I don't want to learn to run. I want to fight. It's like, okay, but isn't that most of what you're doing seems actually like he probably should have you running laps, because most of the other stuff, seemingly, it would be fighting. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Truly, truly does not.
While I do think that vampire Academy is committed to Ostegoy are bad, I don't think that Natalie is the example of this. I think that she was supposed to be always bad with a twist reveal, not somehow warped by becoming a strigoi. The book makes it clear that she was directly involved in murdering the animals that Lissa finds. That's fair.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess I assumed she was always bad. I don't. Yeah, I assume in the movie, at least, I assumed that she was always on, you know, evil, or, for lack of a better term, and helping her dad even before she became strigoi. So I don't remember what this is in reference to. In our conversation.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: The word fornicate didn't stick out to me because my church friends used it in high school. It's a Bible word, and we thought we were being. Being clever and transgressive.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Okay, that makes me think that then that this maybe Rochelle Meade.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Maybe, but I don't remember that being in the.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. You said. You said.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know, maybe it is, and I just don't remember.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. It's just very strange to me. People don't say that word normally. Okay, again, it's like a word you might use occasionally for, like, as a joke. Yeah, but they just use it multiple times in a way that feels strange in the movie to me, but maybe I'm wrong.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Anyway, Nathan's last comment here was in the pan out at the end. We clearly see that vampire academy has a baseball field, so I assume they have a bitter rivalry with the team from Forks.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: I would imagine. I mean, that would be.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: I'm sad that I missed that. That's the crossover we need.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't notice that either. That's fascinating.
And, yeah, that. That's the. That's what we need. That's the fun no for real crossover event of the millennia.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: I say that would have been the crossover event of 2007.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: All right. We had a couple platforms where we had some votes, but no comments.
So we had on Facebook one vote for the book and one for the movie. Twitter, we had one vote for the book and zero for the movie. On Instagram, we had three votes for the book and zero for the movie. The movie really did not do well in this little contest here.
And then finally on Goodreads, we had one vote for the book and zero for the movie. And Miko said, I'm actually a bit surprised how much cady seemed to hate the book. To me, it read like any other ya fantasy I've been exposed to.
In fact, it impressed me more than most by dodging tropes. The story doesn't revolve around a romance, let alone a love triangle. The cast system at least feels consistent. The school teaches stuff like calculus, and the main character isnt even the special one. Its more like her best friend is.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Hmm. Okay, continue. Im thinking.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Sorry, continue.
Maybe I care more about world building than characters or just have grown numb to exposition dumps reading Sci-Fi I think that might be it, Miko. But actually, I thought the book drip fed information well throughout, and vampires with magic powers feel more like the rule than the exception nowadays, so that didn't bother me either. I also thought having Rose not fight and giving us only a glimpse of the strigoi showed more restraint than most book series.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Okay, so, I mean, I didn't read it, but I can't. It's interesting you say maybe I care more about world building because to me, in the movie, the thing that seemed the most terrible was, in fact, the world building.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Well, I don't think they're saying necessarily that the world building was, like, really, really good. It sounds to me more like Miko is saying that they didn't have trouble following the world building, which is not necessarily the same thing as the world building is good.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: That's fair. I will also say that I don't care about those tropes. So you said, like, dodging, like, in fact, it impressed me more by dodging some of the common ya tropes of, you know, not having a love triangle, not having the, like, a chosen one narrative with the main character being the chosen one. I don't. It's ya, man if I'm reading ya. I don't care if it has those tropes in it. Yeah, that's kind of why you're reading ya in that moment. I think you can do interesting things by subverting that or not doing those things. Like there are there's plenty of ya that doesn't do that stuff that I think can be good. But for me, whether or not it has those tropes in it is kind of irrelevant to my enjoyment. To me, it's about yeah, the world building holds up and feels well done and are the characters interesting and do I care about them at all? And to me in the movie, at least, neither of those things were true, whether or not it was, you know, overused cliches or nothing.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: I think all of these are good points.
I don't personally agree, but I think they're all valid points.
I do think I suspect that this may be the only book in the series that doesn't revolve around a romance. Yeah, because it sounds like and based on because I skimmed the synopses of some of the other books to try to figure out mostly the question about the strigoi and the mountain at the end of the movie if that was gonna come back around.
And it sounds like the other books kind of do revolve around Rose and Dimitri, so womp womp on that one, I guess.
Mika went on to say, however, I didn't really care about the school drama that interrupted the investigative work every other chapter. Go back to the library and stop worrying about who likes who.
But oh boy, is the movie bad. Every problem of the book is dialed to eleven and sometimes the editing is so jarring. Despite the movie following the plot of the book very closely, tonally it's so off. The movie never shuts up and it shies away from stuff like Lyssa cutting herself to distract herself from her mental pains.
Bonus points for the book as she actually gets medicated in the end and isn't just miraculously cured by positive thinking.
Also, is Dimitri actually Tommy Wiseau from the version of the room where Johnny is a vampire?
[00:28:31] Speaker A: So I know now Miko doesn't watch good bad or bad bad because the character I referenced in the episode of him reminding me of the guy from the Incubus is because the guy in the Incubus is very specifically Tommy Wiseau.
In that episode. We compared him to Tommy Wiseau because he sounds and acts like Tommy Wiseau in the room. And so I was actually doing the same thing by proxy by comparing this character to the dude in the Incubus, I was actually comparing him to Tommy Wiseau.
So we got there in the end. But yeah, it's interesting.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Okay. Is the incubus.
Is that the one, that movie. Okay, so that's with money.
No money.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: No money. Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the one with Marnie and.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Then the evil uncle who's like really southern for some reason.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Money.
What did I tell you? Yeah, that one.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: That's a good episode of Good Bad.
If you don't watch a good bad or bad bad, I recommend.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: And if you're listening to this episode, it's right in line with Vampire Academy. It is a bad ya fantasy romance.
Very written by a redhead.
So it's like the exact same and.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Very clearly like within the twilight oeuvre.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Taking Twilight, putting a little spin on it.
My favorite little detail. And this is a deep cut for fans that I was gonna mention this at some point on good matter bad. Nah, probably not. That's probably not the right place to mention it. So mention it here. The woman who wrote. I don't know if this is still the case. Every now and then I check in on some of the cast of characters from good bad or bad bad to see what they're up to these days, mainly to see if they've made anything else.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: And so I check in on. I can't remember her name and I won't say it anyways, but the woman who wrote the Incubus, it was a book, I think, first, and then they made a movie off of it, a self published book, whatever. I think maybe it was just a movie, but whatever, the woman who wrote that, she's the main star in it.
She writes like fantasy books and stuff. She. On her instagram, I think, like a year ago or so, I stumbled across across her instagram again, and she was in a relationship with a guy who. Who legitimately thinks he's a vampire.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: No.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yes. She did it. She did it. Katie, I thought we had talked about this.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: I don't think you told me that.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: But she. She found a vampire. Like a real life vampire. She's literally in a relationship. Yes. She's with a guy who's like, I am a. I am a day walker. Yeah, like, literally. And he looks like. He looks like. He looks like Vladimir in this movie or Dimitri in this movie. It's like this giant, dark haired, long haired guy who. And they go. And they do romantic getaways to castles together. I'm like, good. You know what?
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Good for her.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Good for her.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Good for her.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: No, absolutely. It's fantastic. I don't know if they're still together. This was like a year ago, but all right.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: And Miko closed out his comment here by saying, I can't say that I even liked the book, but the movie is just so bad that this is an easy win for the book. That's pretty much how I felt.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: It seems like most people was in line with that.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: So our winner this week was the book with seven votes to the movie's two.
And nobody really came out to defend the movie.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Who would?
[00:32:07] Speaker B: People voted for it?
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Well, sure.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Plus two listeners who couldn't decide.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. Thank you all for that feedback. Appreciate it so much. So we are not going to do a learning things segment this week and get right into our book facts. Learn a little bit about Rosemary's baby. The book.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Hey, let's Make Love, Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 horror novel by american writer Ira Levin, who also wrote the Stepford Wives, which we covered very early.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: In tfil history. That was like within our first year doing 20 episodes.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yeah, or something like that.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: We were at the apartment still when we covered that.
But Rosemary's baby was the best selling horror novel of the 1960s. It sold over 4 million copies, and the high popularity of it was a catalyst for a horror boom. And horror fiction would achieve enormous commercial success in its wake. And literally.
Stephen King probably owes the fact that his stuff was as successful as it was to Rosemary's baby.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Timing.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: The story includes elements of Satanism and other occultisms. In 2002, Levin expressed regret over that kind of stating, quote, I feel guilty that Rosemary's baby led to the Exorcist, the omen. A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan.
I don't believe in Satan. And I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn't been so many of these books. Of course, I didn't send back any of the royalty checks.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Okay, I get what he's saying there. It was kind of worded a little clumsily.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it was worded a little odd.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, getting at the point of like, I kind of regret or basically saying he kind of regrets, you know, being part of this boom of media that revolves around Satan as a villain and became very popular and led directly into the satanic panic of the eighties and the nineties.
We had the sixties and seventies where people enjoying and taking part in these stories that dabbled with the occult and satanism and all that sort of stuff. And then, yeah, we had the backlash to that in the eighties and nineties where, I mean, just google satanic panic. There's a whole article just read about it. It was very bad. And obviously I could see feeling somewhat responsible because of the popularity of Rosemary's baby and other stories like the exorcists and stuff, especially as somebody who sounds like maybe not or very doesn't like, because then that satanic panic also helped burgeon out of the Reagan era and.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: The rise of evangelical fundamentalism.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Evangelical fundamentalism in the republican party and on the right and all of that. It's not directly relational to the exorcist.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: But it all gets in there and mingles around together.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: And I can understand looking at that and being like, woof. Hope I didn't help make that all happen. Yeah.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Rosemary's baby was published in spanish translation during the francoist dictatorship in Spain, and it actually censors cut passages in this translation, claiming that they glorified Satan. Speaking of Satan.
And according to Wikipedia, as of 2019, the spanish language of editions of the book actually still retain those cuts. So I don't know what's going on there.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Yeah, get that updated.
That was like World War one, wasn't it?
The Spanish Civil war was like. Yeah, the early 19 hundreds. I don't know the exact years.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: I don't know enough about the history of Spain. Sorry, Spain.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: All I know, the extent of my knowledge about it, unfortunately, comes from pants labyrinth, which was during. When Franco took over, I believe.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: In 1997. So 30 years after Rosemary's Baby was published, Levin actually published a sequel titled Son of Rosemary, which he dedicated to Mia Farrow.
The novel retroactively dismissed the events of the first novel as a dream, and it was not well received.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not usually a great way to get the audience on your side to be like, actually, that whole first book didn't happen.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: It was pretty widely panned from my understanding of it.
And aside from the 1968 film that we will be discussing, the novel has also been adapted as an NBC television miniseries in 2014. And Paramount produced a prequel film in 2024 titled Apartment seven a.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Is it out yet?
[00:37:32] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Never heard of it.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: I'd never heard of it either.
I mean, 2024 is almost over.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's out. It's not got great reviews.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think the miniseries was super well received either, was the impression that I got.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: All right, that is it for a little preview of Rosemary's Baby, the book. Now we're going to learn about Rosemary's Baby, the film Rosemarys Baby is a 1968 film written and directed by Roman Polanski, known for Chinatown, the tenant, the ghostwriter. And just for context, in 1977, Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. He pled guilty to lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for probation only sentence. I'm just reading this from Wikipedia. Just so everybody's on the same page here about who Roman Polanski is. And we don't have to. When we're alluding to things, people will just know what we're talking about. The night before his sentencing hearing in 1978, he learned that a judge was going to reject his plea bargain, and so he fledged to Europe, where he has remained to this day and remains a fugitive of the US. Further allegations of abuse have been made by other women in the intervening years. So that's Roman Polanski. The film stars Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmore, Maurice Evans, and Ralph Bellamy. Has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 96 on Metacritic, which I think may be the highest Metacritic score I've ever seen.
Even when films on Rotten Tomatoes have, like, high nineties, usually on Metacritic, they're in like, the eighties. I've never seen a 96 on Metacritic. I don't know exactly how Metacritic's algorithm works. It's a little different than rotten tomatoes, from my understanding. Like, it may be a more straightforward, like, averaging of critics scores. I don't. I don't know how it works, but. And it has an eight out of ten on IMDb. The film made 33.4 million against a budget of 3.2 million, and won the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role for Ruth Gordon, and was also nominated for best adapted screenplay. So filmmaker William Castle brought the galley proofs of the script or of the book to Paramount executive Robert Evans, one of the most famed producer executive producers of the 20th century. Godfather, among other things, but just huge in the industry for decades. I think he's dead now. And asked the studio to purchase the film rights before the book had even been finished. Because he liked this book so much. The studio agreed, but on the condition that Castle would only produce and not direct. Because up until that point in his career, he had pretty much only done low budget horror, and they wanted a more respectable director.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Oh, poor guy.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: He got to still get cut in. He got to Purdue. This means he got to do very little work. I say that I'm kidding, but potentially do very little work and still get paid for the movie. So who knows?
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Still.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Francois Truffaut apparently has claimed that Hitchcock was offered the director seat for this film, but turned it down.
Robert Evans apparently wanted to get Polanski to come direct in the US and have this be his first us film, because he had primarily been in Europe up until this point, and he wanted this to be his big first american film. And so he sent him the script for Rosemary's baby, or, like, I guess the book.
Well, at least some version of a script. I don't know. Cause Polanski ended up writing the actual script, but he sent him the Rosemary's baby script and a script for a film called Downhill Racer because he knew that Polanski liked skiing and thought that the ski movie might help entice him to come work with them. He's like, look, we want you to direct these movies. He knows he likes to ski, so he includes a movie about skiing. Like, maybe that'll get him to come.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Okay, yeah.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: But Polanski didn't care about the skiing movie, apparently, and became obsessed with Rosemary's baby, and they hired him on to write and direct it, apparently. His script follows the book incredibly closely and incorporates tons of dialogue directly from the text. We'll see.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: I'll be the judge of that.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: And because of this, his first script for the film was 272 pages long, which is just absurdly long. It's approximately four and a half hours. And I think I read also on a note that the first cut of the movie was in the ballpark of four. Four and a half hours. I think the final cut is, like two and a half hours. So. But, yeah, that's an insanely long script just for.
Just for people who don't know. Rough, usually. Generally speaking, one page of a script is about a minute in a film.
That's very rough. Guide. That's a very loose rule, but that is generally, when you're looking at a script, that's how you time it out.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: I was looking what the actual runtime of the movie is. It's 2 hours and 18 minutes.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: So originally, the actress that Polanski wanted for the titular role of Rosemary was an actress I've never heard of called Tuesday Weld, which is such a sixties name. Wild name. Also considered his own fiance for the role. Sharon Tate. Yes. Polanski was married to her when she was murdered. The Tate murders, obviously. Yeah. Also considered for the role were Jane Fonda, Patty Duke, and Goldie Hawn.
So some other big names. Ultimately, they landed on Mia Farrow. And apparently when Mia Farrow got the part, her husband, Frank Sinatra, was super mad because he had demanded, when they got married, that she stop working color me shots. Yeah. He also publicly served her divorce papers on set, which interrupted filming for a while. Sinatra, famously an asshole.
Robert Redford was the first choice for Guy Woodhouse, who I assume is the male lead in the film. I don't actually know, but he turned the role down. And Jack Nicholson also was considered for the role, but did not end up landing it before it. Finally they got to Jim Cassavetes.
According to Mia Farrow, there's a scene, and these are IMDb trivia facts here.
According to Mia Farrow, there's a scene where she walks out in traffic, and this was apparently genuine. Like, she just walks into traffic in New York. And apparently Polanski is reported to have said, quote, nobody will hit a pregnant woman because they had her looking pregnant for the scene. She had a fake stomach or whatever. And they shot the scene successfully by her walking into real traffic in New York and Polanski following her with a camera, operating the camera by himself because he was the only one who would do it. Nobody else wanted to.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Yes. Dumb and stupid that you can just.
It's. Yeah, movies don't work that way anymore, but. Or real movies don't work. Studio movies don't work that way anymore.
Small movies still do shit like that all the time. But Ira Levin, the author, has said, quote, that this is the single most faithful adaptation of a novel to ever come out of Hollywood.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: End quote.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: So he was like, yep, that's my book on the screen. And then finally getting to some reviews. These are all contemporary reviews from when the film came out. Writing for the New York Times, Renate Adler said, quote, the movie, although it is pleasant, doesn't seem to work on any of its own dark or powerful terms. I think this is because it is almost too extremely plausible. The quality of the young people's lives seems, the quality of lives that one knows even to the point of finding old people next door to avoid and lean on. One gets very annoyed that they don't catch on sooner.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
Stanley Eichelbaum was writing for the San Francisco examiner, and he called the film, quote, a delightful witch's brew. A bit overlong for my taste, but nearly always absorbing, suspenseful and easier to swallow than Ira Levin's book. It's suggestions of deviltry in a musty and still respectable old apartment house on Manhattan's Upper west side are more gracefully and appealingly related than in the novel, which I found awfully silly when it wasn't downright noxious. The very idea of a contemporary case of witchcraft, in which an innocent young housewife is impregnated by the devil, is, to say the least, unnerving, particularly when the pregnancy is marked by all degrees of mental and physical pain. End quote.
In Variety, and it doesn't say who wrote this, but for Variety, the review said, quote, several exhilarating milestones are achieved in Rosemary's Baby, an excellent film version of Ira Levin's diabolical chiller novel, writer director Roman Polanski has triumphed in his first us made pick. The film holds attention without explicit violence or gore. Farrow's performance is outstanding, end quote. And then for the monthly Film Bulletin, there's no name there either, said, quote, after the miscalculation of cul de sac and the Dance of the Vampires, which were, I guess, Polanski's previous two films, Polanski has returned to the rich vein of repulsion, which is one of his earlier films. The review noted, quote, Polanski shows an increasing ability to evoke menace and sheer terror in familiar routines, cooking and telephoning, particularly. And Polanski has shown, quote, his transformation of a cleverly calculated thriller into a serious work of art, end quote.
Also, I saw a thing that this is one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films. And finally, Roger Ebert. I had to go find this on his website because it wasn't on Wikipedia. Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, saying, quote, roman Polanski's Rosemary's baby is a brooding, macabre film filled with the sense of unthinkable danger. Strangely enough, it also has an eerie sense of humor almost until the end. It is a creepy film and a crawly film and a film filled with things that go bump in the night. It is very good going on. The best thing that can be said about the film, I think, is that it works. Polanski has taken a most difficult situation and made it believable right up to the end. In this sense, he even outdoes Hitchcock.
And he goes on in that. I cut it off there, but he's comparing. Hitchcock apparently did a similar, like, baby possession demon movie or something and said that Hitchcock's version of this story was not as effective. Basically, gotcha one. So there you go. As always, you can head over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, goodreads, threads, all those places interact. We'd love to hear from you. Drop us reviews on all the places you listen to our podcast, and head over to patreon.com. thisfilm is lit. Supporters get access to bonus content if you pay $5 a month. You get a bonus episode every single month where you talk about just random stuff. We just put out our October Halloween episode where we cover both the Addams Family and Addams Family values. The 1991 and 1993 film discussed with both of us watched those for the first time over the past week. And yeah, you can see what we thought of them over on Patreon. Katie, where can people watch Rosemary's baby?
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or if you still have a local video rental store, check with them. You can stream this with a subscription to Paramount plus AMCA. AMC. Those were listed as two different things. I don't know. Or the Criterion channel. Or you can rent it for around $4 from Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango, at home spectrum or Amazon.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: There you go. I'm interested to watch this one so I can check it off my list of famous movies I've never seen. It's like the Godfather. It's one of those ones where I'm like, thank God I can finally have seen Rosemary's baby.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Finally don't have to deal with film bros being like we've never seen one.
[00:49:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure it'll be good. I will say I've only ever seen one other Polanski film I've seen. Chinatown. Chinatown.
Great. Just there's a reason. I mean, Chinatown is often considered one of the best movies ever made. And I don't know if I'd say that, but it's a very, very, very good movie. I saw it years ago at this point, but I remember kind of being blown away the first time I saw it. So I'm interested to see Rosemary's baby because it's a very, Chinatown's like a crime thriller. Like detective y story for like, it's more complicated than that. But then roughly, it's not a horror movie, I guess. So I'm interested to see this. This because I don't know anything about it at all. Yeah, like, I don't even know, other than something to do with like demons and baby devil, whatever. Satan. I know nothing about the plot or like what is going on or anything. So I'm in interested to see how it plays out and if it's any good, sweet.
Come back in one week's time. We're talking about Rosemary's baby. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals, and everybody else keep reading books, watching movies, and keep being awesome.
