August 18, 2025 • 49 mins
Pablo Larrain’s ‘Jackie’ stars Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the moments before, during, and after her husband’s assassination. The film landed Portman an Oscar nomination and jumpstarted Larrain’s trilogy of films about misunderstood 20th-century women. We’re joined by ‘Jackie’ superfan Hunter Harris to chat about the film’s depiction of grief, how Larrain subverts biopic tropes, and which actors’ Boston accents could have used a bit more work.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
What do you remember about the twenty sixteen film Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I just remember Natalie Portman being incredible, you know. I
guess I remembered all the conversation being around like how
many shooters there were whatever, But like the portrayal of
the actual moments afterward, I had never really been I
don't know privy to or read up on or whatever,
but like, you know, just him being rushed to this
(00:33):
hospital and Jackie being you know, kind of trying to
figure out how to stay in the conversation and do
you know what I mean, like make sure that she
wasn't being pushed out of her husband's like last moments.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm George Savers, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with
the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today, in our second Kennedy
movie episode, we're talking about Pablo Lorraine's twenty sixteen film Jackie,
(01:21):
starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the moments before, during,
and after her husband's assassination.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Originally conceived as a much more expansive HBO mini series,
spanning the four days between JFK's assassination and funeral, and
was ultimately rewritten as a feature film focused on just
Jackie's experience of that time.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
So it's framed around an interview Jackie does with an
unnamed journalist in Hyanna'sport, Massachusetts, and the story is told
in a series of dream like flashbacks, and the interview
itself is loosely based on Theodore H. White's extensive interview
with Jackie and Life magazine in November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
While doing press for the film, Natalie Portman talked a
lot about her in depth research into Jackie's life, as
well as her work with a vocal coach to get
Jackie's accent and voice just right.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Unfortunately, the same camp be said of Peter Starsgard, who
plays Bobby Kennedy in the movie, but more on that later.
Portman was nominated for an Oscar for the role, eventually
losing to Emma Stone for Lalloland, which did not sit
quite right with our guests today.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Our guest Hunter Harris was a staff writer at Vulture
at the time, and she wrote multiple appreciations of Jackie
for the website.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hunter now writes the wildly popular substack newsletter Hung Up,
and co hosts the podcast let me say this, Hunter,
Welcome to the United States of Kennedy.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We should say the reason you are here is because
I hosted about the podcast when it was announced, I said,
I'm so excited to be hosting a podcast about the Kennedy's,
and then you responded, you better do an episode about
Jackie parentheses twenty sixteen pabl lorraines at your film, and
so I know that there's a lot of lore with
you in this movie. You've written about it a bunch
(03:05):
of times. I actually wanted to come out and be like,
you've written about it four times, but then the Google
results kept coming and I actually wasn't sure how many times,
including the newsletter, you have written about it. You have
a lot of opinions about it that have become I
would say, almost like recurring bits. So I want to
just know what is your relationship with this movie.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
I saw it in a movie theater, Humble Beginnings, and
it just blew me away.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It truly.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
I was like, this is one of the most faculous
movies I've seen this year. And if you remember twenty sixteen,
that was like the Moonlight Year, the La La Land Year,
the twenty Century Women Year. There's so many good movies
that year. And I think probably a big part of
why I feel so much affections to this movie is
that it felt like no one was talking about it,
and truly it just Yeah. Even rewatching it to talk
about it today, I was like, Wow, that Natalie Portman
(03:55):
good actress.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It is.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
There is this recurring thing with Natalie porp and I
feel where she is always giving a really interesting, out
of the box performance during a year when she has
no chance. It's like Annihilation, vox Lux, Like there's just
all these movies where you're like, well, you know, maybe
in a different year, this could be a frontrunner, but
it's it's not gonna happen, right.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Maybe part of winning an Oscar so when you're pretty young.
Although she was like a child actress, so she just
has like ben I think culturally, I don't know, she
kind of feels like such a squarely millennial actress in
which there's like a Natalie Portman movie that coincides with
like every part of my adolescence early twenties now early thirties,
Like I can almost graft my own coming of age
onto like Natalie Portman performance or movie, whether it be
(04:37):
like the Mani Pixie Dreamgirls stuff or the Black Swan,
you know, more serious actressy stuff or like that which
made the jig Jillen Hall.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
To buyer movie Brothers. Yes, and it's like what the
fuck was that era? And then all the way down to.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
Jackie where I'm like, oh my gosh, really devastating that performance?
Do not get more attention?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Well, it's really funny also when you realize that it's
Nali Portman and Peter stars Guard and they were in
Garden State together, which is to me like the millennial foundational.
I don't know how I should feel about it now, honestly,
because when I tried to rewatch it as an adult,
it had lost all the magic for me. But I'm
(05:16):
mad at myself for saying that, because as a teenager,
I was so in love with it and it became
part of who I was because I was just so
blown away by it. And then it's so funny to
see them now being Jackie and Bobby.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, it really is sort of the reality bites of
our generation in any ways, in both good and bad ways.
I do want to get to Peter Star's guard because
I know you have strong opinions about him as well.
But before we do, what was your relationship to Jackie
the person before this movie? Are you someone who cares
about the Kennedys. Do you care about Jackie as like
(05:49):
a fashion icon is like a you know, wronged woman
in American history?
Speaker 7 (05:54):
No?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Not really, I wish it were different.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
I really had not thought very critically about Jackie Nassis
or like Kennedy family in any really rigorous way before
seeing this movie, and then it can I mean not
to say that it taught me something, but it did
make me think.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
It's just such a I think Jackie as.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
A movie that's so perceptive about like grief, obviously, media
and image making and like myth making. I just loved
the idea that like in every frame of this movie,
Natalie Portman is like screaming, crying, has like blood on
her body, and it's like, wait, can you guys like
pay give me a little bit of attention please? Sorry,
my husband just died. Does no one else feel any
(06:33):
of that? That is kind of like how grief feels
like it is the center of your life and you
think it would be the center of everyone else's life,
and at every opportunity someone's like, right, but my husband
didn't die, so I cannot share this moment with you.
And it is just being confronted with that again and again,
that sense of pure devastation and also rage.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I thought this was such a good movie for that.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I mean that moment when they're swearing Johnson in and
it's like everyone is holding back their smiles. Yeah, and
you can understand that they're not, you know, giving every.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Single person the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I mean, our last movie was JFK, which definitely would
have pointed fingers at a lot of those people. But
how could Leebird not be a bit proud that now
her husband is president. No matter how horrible the circumstances,
it still is like a monumental moment for them. And
that is one thing that I saw as a technical
(07:29):
inaccuracy that gets cited a lot about this movie, is
that the interpretation is that her relationship with the Johnson's
is really strained and negative or adversarial, even like in
this movie.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
But I watched it three times.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Lyra watched it three times in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
Is that like in a good way you watched it
three times, or like I watched it three times.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I watched it it a good.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Way, And I would argue that those moments are not
about their interpersonal relationships. It's about what you were just saying,
Like it's about her experiencing extreme grief and being alone
in it.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
No, I mean, and that's a really I'm glad you
brought up that scene because I do like the way
that it kind.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Of introduces this level of seething disgust at everything that's
happening on that scene. Like as she's watching, there's like
a moment where she.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
Watches someone address LBJ as mister president, and it's I
don't know, but I just got the sense upon rewatching
it this time that like it's like someone's like calling
another man by her husband's name. It's like it's really
upsetting to her, like how dare you pass this along
so quickly? Like that's my husband's title. And again in
that scene too, it's like she's almost just like dead
(08:47):
weight in the room and the way that everyone came
to kind of like walk around her or avoid her,
and obviously she's I mean, it's like I can't imagine
how traumatic it's like living through a nightmare.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Truly.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
She's like bowling on about like we need the bagpipes,
we need like the flutes, all this stuff, and no
one really knows how to handle her. And there's this
weird you know, when a straight man sees a woman
with any emotionality is just like, oh my gosh, like,
someone handle her, please, And I like that. Jackie and
Alie Portman like both I'm guessing Jackie in real life,
well not Alie Portman in this movie, are both really
(09:19):
defiant and like, no, we are all going to be
uncomfortable right now. Actually, it's like almost kind of housewivesy
in in the insistence to.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Be the center of attention, and I think greatly so.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
She is sort of like, at the same time the
most important person in the room and the least important
person in the room. And I think so much of
the drama comes out of that tension, because on the
one hand, she is of course the widow and literally
died in her lap, so obviously she is the one
whose opinion matters most, She's the one planning the funeral whatever.
But then on the other hand, you get the sense
that there are all these people that are in the
(09:54):
political context more important than her, and she's like a
thorn in their side that they just have to appease
in order to get through the day and keep things moving.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
Yeah, so she's like some type of formality. There's that
also line when one of the handlers is like, well,
we need to like take his body to the autopsy
and she's like, well, says who who?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Why do we do that?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
And it's like, well, the law and she's like, well,
tell me everything, like that little moment, And I think
later in the movie shows a line about how like
I should have been a shopkeeper, I should have married
like a fat, lazy, ugly man, all of this stuff,
And I think, George, to your point, like being formally
the most important woman in the room, to like being
the kind of freak show that everyone's like avoiding. That
instant loss of power is like another level of the
(10:34):
grief and the loss that's that play here, And I
think the movie keeps that like that power dynamic at
the center in a really deft way.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And according to the you know biography, the Jackie Pup
Private Secret, that's very accurate. She spoke to her family
about feeling the loss of power, that it wasn't something
that she had sought for most of her life, but
then once she had it, she really enjoyed it and
(11:16):
really wanted to do something with it, and then in
an instant is no longer personally.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, And also it's unclear where that power that she
had acquired gradually over the years, it's unclear where that stands.
And you get some peaks into her psyche in regards
to that as well, when she's talking about how, like
other presidential widows, ended up immediately losing everything or having
to like sell furniture in order to make it work.
(11:43):
And there's also a way in which this movie, honestly,
part of why I resisted it for so long was
because it sold as this like universal story of grief,
And honestly, a lot of the reviews talk about how
it is, you know, at its core, about grief, and
I'm just like, I mean, yes, and no, this is
such a particular thing that can only happen to such
a particular person that I can't imagine like relating to this.
(12:04):
And then when I finally saw it, I was like, oh,
I see, I think what it's doing is that it's
operating at such a like operatic level, Yeah, which is
in fact, just how grief feels to you. Yeah, when
you are losing someone, like, yeah, you because it is
when you lose the person that is the most important
to you. You might as well be the first lady
with blood on her dress on television because it feels
(12:26):
like everything is being destroyed around you.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
Yeah. No, And I entirely I think that level of
like there's so much stakes attached to like, he's the
president and this is like the first modern assassination, and
and you know, what do we do about the children?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
And I mean when she.
Speaker 6 (12:41):
Tells Kennedy's mom, well, president cannot be buried in brookline,
Let's be serious, please, all of that stuff feels at
once so heightened and like almost unrealistic.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And yeah, in the wake of losing.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Someone, I feel like you keep trying to prove this
is devastating. Why don't you understand how devastating this is.
That it's like kind of the argument that she's making
again and again and again. And I also like how
there is a lot of uncertainty to her how she
goes about it. Really seemed the movie does a really
good job of showing that like it wasn't some grand
Master scheme. She is kind of drunk, putting on her dresses,
(13:17):
walking around her home like she's a ghost already, because
they're basically making her move out and plan a funeral
and do all these things at once, and she's kind
of making it up, like how can I keep their
attention on my husband and establish his legacy, which is
really a way of like making a case for herself
as like we were important, and I was important, and
I'm kind of alone on this team, and I think
(13:38):
I like the way that like Bobby Kennedy is both
an accomplice in that effort, and then also she feels
betrayed by him obviously making it the legacy of the
priority and not so much like her kids herself, and
that kind of like back and forth again just knows
like how imperfect it is to really build a myth,
and how it wasn't foretold that they would become what
they became.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
And so much of the flashbacks to her giving the
who of the White House are so much about her
participating in this narrative building about America's history. These are
all objects that are important because they show us the
gravity of the White House and the gravity of American
history and all this stuff, and you see her after
the assassination almost doing that in real time with her
own husband. She's trying to build the myth and build
(14:19):
the narrative, and there's almost this race between the myth
making and the actual reality of what's happening. Is rushing
to build the myth that shows that she and her
husband were important before they run out of time and
are no longer in the history books.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I mean, that's yeah, that's the line that JFK says
when he enters at the end of the tour, something
along the lines of like, I think it's really important
what she's doing here because it shows us that real
men lived here, and it's like a real man lived here,
is I feel like was my takeaway even from watching
Jackie this time, because it's like we've done a lot
(14:54):
of reading on the Kennedys and on this specific time,
and you know, honestly, at a certain point, it's like
they just become names on a piece of paper because
it's hard to like consistently remember the humanity when they're
like larger than life figures and they're just icons and
that's like something we talked about here, But this movie
(15:15):
was so human. She was such a human. It was
like the exact opposite of the icon. It was like
seeing all of the underneath the background of the reality
that makes an icon.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I was pretty wiped out by it emotionally. I cried.
I love when people love it. I really do.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
There are so many things about it that, you know,
I think biopics in general like very hard and also
pretty controversial. Either you really like a biopic or you
just hate all biopics, which I understand. But I think
focusing in on these three specific moments, the assassination, the
immediate aftermath, and then also like the White House tour,
feels very like not to say that's the most interesting
(15:55):
part of one person's entire experience, but that that's like
a uniquely charge moment in which it's very revealing about her,
about the way power works in DC, and also about
the family at large in an interesting way. And also
I like how I mean, just practically, there are so
many little moments about humanity. Where she is walking across
(16:17):
on the National Cemetery and it's raining in like her
foot her heels keepetting stuck in the mud, and it's
like those things are just so like or when she's
like looking out of the window, she's looking at the
crowd and they're looking at her, and it just feels
like at once so lonely and so isolated, and yet
it's like what, you're surrounded by people who want to share.
I think she has that line, like the priest told
me they want to share my grief, so I let them,
(16:39):
And that feels at once so intimate and also like
completely impossible.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, the smallness of it. I mean, obviously it's a
very grand movie because it's obviously about the very major
event in American history. But the smallness of it in
the fact that it focuses on all these individual events
and the fact that most scenes are either just her
or her in one other person. Yeah, when there's a crowd,
it's more like symbolic of the idea of a crowd.
It's almost like less about any of the real specifics
(17:07):
and more about what they symbolize. Like I kept thinking,
now that I have all this knowledge about the Kennedy's,
I would have a different outlook on this movie. And
I didn't like the priest symbolizes religion. The journalist symbolizes
the media, the Bobby symbolizes the family, expectations and whatever.
Like there is certain things symbolize, like the mythology of America.
You basically can project anything onto it. Like it's kind
(17:29):
of beside the point that she even is playing Jackie Kennedy.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
Yeah, No, And I think that is kind of part
of it for me, that Natalie Portman who I mean,
at least when I first heard about this movie, but
like an unusual choice.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
They don't look very much alike.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
Not that I really I don't know how tall or
petite Jackie Kennedy actually was, but it's.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Like she's all seven five four five three. Yeah, Like
I looked it up because I was thinking.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
About it the whole time. No, that's funny because I do.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
It's like, I'm curious talking about this with you both,
because you're such experts in topic. But it gets at
such an emotional, raw truth that like kind of the politics,
like the specifics of a moment feel less important than
the fact that, like, I mean, what would you do
if your husband's head had just been shot and fallen
into your lap?
Speaker 4 (18:15):
There's no other way.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
It's magnificent that she was able to get on the
plane after that. But I feel like the Natalie Portman
of it all both makes it feel not exactly history
and maybe let's set the facade drop a little bit
less where it's like, this is a movie about a
woman whose husband just died, and not a movie but
the capitol k Kennedy's.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The thing is the development of this is that originally
it was going to be a mini series on HBO
about the four days following the assassination, and then it
changed into it being a movie that was going to
be directed by Darren Aronofsky starring Rachel Weiss, and then
(18:57):
when they got divorced, they said goodbye to the project.
And then once Natalie Portman signed on, which took like years,
like this this is over the course of like many years,
Pablo Lorraine went to the screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, and said,
cut any scene that Jackie's not in, and so they
(19:17):
took twenty pages out of the one hundred and twenty
page script. And it's amazing to me, like how much
stronger that made the movie because of this, because of
all like the intensity of it being so focused on her.
It's like that the Amy Winehouse documentary where every shot
is just her.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And then you know narration from the interviews and stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It's funny that it was it almost came about by
accident or by a series of sort of random events,
because then it kind of ushered in this era of
Pablo Lorraine movies that are all different versions of this,
because you know, this was the first of the three
that are like Jackie Spencer, Maria Hunter, what is your
relationship with Pablo Lorraine more broadly.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Saw Spencer, did not see Maria. You know, I did
not really care for Spencer. It almost felt like the
exact same movie, but just in a less intense, like
a watered down version of the same movie, basically because
like the sense of opulence and isolation and extreme inner
turmoil just did not connect. Maybe because the moment itself
(20:26):
did not feel as charged as like if you're looking
at Jackie HENI was one very specific moment to talk
about the assassination. But with Diana it felt like, I
don't know, maybe because she it feels like more recently,
there's so much more to talk about, like maybe it
could have been that same birdles could have been this day.
It just never And I'm also not really like a royalist,
So maybe that's why I didn't connect. I just don't
think it's as good of a movie, honestly. And I
wondered too how much because I think Dannernovski was the
(20:49):
EP of Jackie, but not of the others, and I
wonder how much like that plays apart. Also, maybe the
script feels a lot different. Also, Spielberg was also a
producer on Jackie.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Oh, I don't know. Yeah, it shows I.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Believe it was him who wanted Pablo Lorraine, and Pablo
Lorraine said, I've never made a movie with a female protagonist.
I don't think I can do it. And then it
like completely changed his career. Now he's simply addicted to women.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
No, I know.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
I was gonna say, the irony of him like making
like literally three women one, two, three and not defending
women interesting enough before that is pretty funny.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
But I don't know he was like, yeah, I think
he was afraid.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I think it was more that he was just like,
I don't know how to do that, but that's.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Hilarious, Like it's fun to imagine.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Him being like one of the men in the room
with Natalie Portman, like all the men who are truly
afraid of her and afraid of her like you know
how emotional she is and.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
How frightening her, like I don't know.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
Just on predictability is is very ironic.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I love that when she says to the interview,
are you afraid I'm gonna cry?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I wonder. One of the framing devices of this movie
is that it does the classic thing where you start
with an interview with a journalist and then there are flashbacks,
which you know is sort of a cliche at this point,
What did you think of that as a framing device
and how did you process that as literally a journalist
yourself who profiles famous people.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
As a framing device, it feels like the most kind
of conventional part of the movie, only because Billy Cruda
playing not a specific reporter, but like that story I
think did happen in some magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
It's like he's strangely just like.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
An everyman writer in a way that feels like for
me that is otherwise so specific, it feels extremely kind
of casual. I guess my instinct is to be like, Okay,
well she says she doesn't smoke, Well, guess who gets
to decide what goes in the final story?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I know I was thinking of that too. I think
the implication is that there's some conversation that you would
only agree to this with certain terms.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And yeah, I think the true stories that she called
him to collaborate on an article and a lot that
I think is not said in Jackie because of probably those.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Twenty pages that were cut.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
It may so that there are no introductions to people,
and that in itself is kind of hazy, making like
out of sorts, Like people just come in and out
and you're like, wait, I think I know who that is,
but they don't even say their names sometimes.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
But again, I like that.
Speaker 6 (23:18):
I like how it feels like a memory in the
sense that he don't know exactly what someone said or
who they were, but that's like you remember being told
this thing and feeling like the rage or sadness about that.
I think that is to the movie's benefit, and maybe
that's why the reporter part of it feels like the
most prescriptive I guess, and how you're supposed to read
(23:40):
her and read the situation, which makes the weakest in
my mind. But I do like that they have this
not exactly warm relationship. It's a little bit testy sometimes
which I think does confirm a casual viewer's bias against
this woman who seems kind of machiavellian and like her
either pursuit of power or like her narrative of it.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But you mentioned the cigarettes, and man, does she make
every single one of those cigarettes look really good?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (24:08):
Like this is like, as I was questioning, I was like,
this might be like top five movies to smoke too.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And I don't smoke, but like it's like she makes
them all look so good, and it's like because it
is kind of her, it's her secret.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I mean, it does symbolize her smoking, and then saying,
by the way I don't smoke is like, of course,
ultimately like emblematic of her relationship to the truth and
to her own image making. It's interesting, Like I totally
agree that it is a conventional framing device, but then
I think at its best, what it does is sort
(24:43):
of established that we can't really trust anything else we're
seeing because everything exists in this sort of like liminal
space between fact and memory.
Speaker 8 (24:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's definitely true.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Okay, so I want to get into slightly more fun stuff, flyer,
did you have any other questions about the meat of
(25:20):
the movie.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Oh well, I guess I guess it's more of an observation,
but also just that it's wild to meet that Lee,
her sister, and then know Nassas her future husband, who
were there this entire time. They're in every one of
those rooms in real life or not in real life
in this movie at all.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
They're not even characters in the movie.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I know, there's so much stuff like that that just
is ignored now that we know kind of what happened.
And I really do think that just isn't what he's
interested in. Like I really think, you know, it's almost
like putting on a play like the Nicole Scherzinger's Sonsible
of Our Words, just her on stage barefoot, Like he's
just doing as a little as possible to just convey
(26:02):
the general themes he wants to convey, Like there really
is very little interest in historical accuracy and everything. And
I also I've always been interested in him as a
non American making a movie about such an iconic American
moment in history.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
Kind of because I feel like the procession, do they
shoot that all like in Paris or something, or I
don't think it was shot in the US, which kind
of a rands is like Eyes White Shot, which feels
like such an iconic New York movie that's obviously shot
in London, And how you can get to like some
kind of almost.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
A reactive truth about all these places.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
When there could not be further from the reality of
like DC or New York City a way that I
like that it feels like kind of hazy.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
And also a lot.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
Of those shots are so tight and static, especially in
the first act. It's only when you get into the
White House, it's like only her alone in the center
of reframe that is a lot wider and bigger, and
so yeah, I think George to your point, it's like
there's so much happening outside of this that he is
just notious about at all, which I think is like
the right choice. But we do have a sense of
(27:03):
like there are other things, there are other people milling about,
like in the LBJ stuff, there's all this like kind
of Bobby comes in with reporting back like they want
you out of here at this day, they want this change.
And again it really keeps the pressure on her because
it makes her feel more alone because she really is
the only Cherecer.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
What is probably why.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
Honestly, I feel like Peter Sarsguard is just not a
very If he were like not in the movie so much,
his complete failure would not bother.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Me so much. But yeah, because he is, I just
like I see it, notice that all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, this is gonna be my next question. I think
you mentioned this in both of the New York macpiecet
you wrote about the film that that is the weakest
part of it. First of all, I agree, and I
think at first glance, one of the things that's weak
about it, even before he opens his mouth, is just
like it's such weird casting. Physically, he looks nothing like Bobby.
Bobby does have like a particular you know, face shape
(27:57):
and vibe and even just hair. I mean, yeah, which
it's interesting. Actually the actor who plays JFK is very
well cast.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yes, basically want to lookalike contest.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
Yeah, and I think we can suspend our disbelieve that,
like Natalie Porton is Jackie Kennedy when it's Jackie Kennedy,
but when you have an almost mirror image of JFK
and he's in the movie a fair amount, not a lot,
but a fair amount, and then you have Peter Sargo's
Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
It's like, wait, huh, even in the procession Teddy Kennedy
is I don't know if you noticed it. Yeah, it's
like they got clones for everyone else. So why is
he just wearing those teeth and that's it?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And what even are those teeth? Yeah? And like the accent,
I mean, the accent you know, really comes and goes.
But that's okay. I don't want to nitpick about accents.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
But in like the best version of this, what is
he supposed to like, you know, communicate here to us?
And it's not even really a sense of like, I
don't He's just he's so like, shoulders down, hunched over,
like so sad all the time in a way that
I'm like, Okay, well, Natalie Portman is acting her ass off,
and you can't just loom lurk around the back of
(29:03):
these scenes and act like that's a performer.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I mean, I do think the most compelling argument for
it that I can think of, which you sort of
allude to one of the things you wrote about it,
is like that she symbolizes, you know, for lack of
a better term, like a female gendered kind of grief,
and then he symbolizes a male gendered kind of grief.
It's like, you know, she's emoting and she's acting and
(29:27):
she's like crying, and then he comes in is just
like either completely emotionless or like throwing things around and
being and being racheful. And there's something just like inherently
unappealing about him as a screen presence in this particular movie.
I actually think he's a great actor and other things.
Speaker 6 (29:43):
Yes, no, I've never had a problem with him, but
what a shame about Bobby than Lake.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I will nitpick the accent because nowly Portman's voice
work is like insane. She has three different voices for
Jackie depending on where.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
She is and who she's talking to. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I would rather someone try too hard at emulating a
famous voice then to undersell it. And what I'm really tablish.
It's really the only time he gives us any kind
of accent. I would have liked more of that, I
will say, though I read that. I think Pablo Lorraine
(30:20):
said thirty percent of the movie is first takes, which
really just shows you how incredible Nolly Portman is. And
maybe Peter would have warmed up in a second or
third day.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
I feel like, Lyra, I just learned so much about you,
like did you love Lady Gaga in House of Gucci?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Like do you let an accent? Okay? And you know what?
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Actually because of the accent, because I was like, I
was so confused by it in the trailer and I
asked my friend who is Italian, I was like, is
this offensive? Like it doesn't feel like it's coming from
an earnest place. It feels like it's coming from like
this I don't know, campy place.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, well, I mean fits When that movie came out,
I had a period when I would do a perfect
impression of Lady Gaga in that movie. But now it's
been too long and I literally cannot attempt it. It's
a very specific, almost Russian tinge oh does what? It's
a very like. It really is something that only Stephanie
could have pulled off. And I would actually say, I
(31:23):
want to see Lady Gaga as Jackie when they remake
this incredible which public figure would Lady Gaga play? A
publo Lorraine made another movie about how women struggle. Sorry, Hillary,
Hillary Hilary, I actually think Lady Gaga as Hillary the
night of the twenty sixteen election, which is at the
(31:44):
Javit Center. The balloons are all getting ready to be
dropped and they have to pop them one by one,
and then it's just Lady Gaga dressed as Joe Calderon
in a pantsuit.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Honestly, you should write that as a short and have
John Early play Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Oh no, I think that either Gaga is Hillary Clinton
or iliald could be inspired. Yeah, okay, so my favorite thing.
Actually have two favorite things about this movie that are
not the movie. The first is that Natalie Portman before
every take would just whisper to herself, I love beauty,
(32:21):
like in her soft voice, because Jackie was touched in as
fat as. How do you say that word? Yeah, okay,
that's what I thought, But you know, we're in a
culture where people say, like, that's so aesthetic, and I don't.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
That's not what I meant.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
My second favorite thing is that in Rodan Pharaoh's book
Catch and Kill.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Do you know where I'm going with this? Yes?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I do. The writer there, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Hunter and Rodan Pharaoh's book Catching Kill, he talks about
no Oppenheim, who was this reminder of Jackie who at
the time was president of NBC News, and I'm the
those are kind of fuzzy, but basically his lion Stine
reporting Rodan Pharaohs was like going to run an NBC
and then Oppenheim kind of was like, you know, a
little bit, giving him notes, pushing back on some stuff,
(33:04):
like he was saying that the story wasn't ready yet,
and then Pharaoh Rodon Pharaoh took it to The New Yorker,
of course, And it's like at every opportunity Ronan Farrell
just like finds a moment to like quote someone else
saying that Jackie was not a good movie. And I
swear to go like a paragraph and maybe even a chapter,
but there's like a page that ends with David Remnick
(33:26):
saying that was not a good movie about It's like what,
it's so like him going out of his way to
be like and actually, I hate that guy's movie too.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
It's so I listen, I get it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
It's interesting because he wrote Mays Runner script, and he
wrote the Allegiance script, this agent the Divergence.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
That's what throws me off.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
And then he wrote Jackie. It's like, what how did that?
Speaker 6 (33:54):
I found the quote? And I have to read it.
This is Rononan Parao's book. He says, an NBC is
letting you walk away with all of this report. Rymnik
ast who was this person at NBC Oppenheim Oppenheim. I
confirmed he's a screenwriter. You say he wrote Jackie. I
replied that. Rymnik said Gravely was a bad movie.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
It's interesting, I mean to connect Jackie to larger political
stories like Ronan and Fairs reporting and the fact that
this guy randomly worked at NBC News. I expected it,
and actually one of the reasons I resisted it was
I expected it to be much more like propagandistic or something. Yeah,
Like I really because so much stuff and we run
into this lot. So much stuff about JFK is just
(34:36):
so propagandistic because for that time, he was, you know,
in the same way that Obama symbolized hope when he
became president, JFK was going to be like in New Leaf,
and it was going to be this emblem of American
progressive politics. And he was gone too soon, and he
was gonna I mean literally in JFK, the Oliver Stone movie,
which we watched the other week. The argument that they're
making is that He literally was so progressive that he
(34:58):
was going to withdraw from the Vietnam and that's why
the government conspired to kill him, because they were so
afraid of how amazingly liberal and progressive he would be.
So I really thought that this would be just like
more of that, And especially knowing that I don't know
this guy that didn't want to publish a Weinstein report
it wrote it, It's like I would expect it to
be so much more like can you believe that we
(35:19):
lost the one true hope we had for in the
twentieth century? So I got to say I have to
really separate the art from the artists in this one
instance and say, regardless of what this guy did in
the rest of his professional life, he absolutely ate with
this one.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
First of all, it's like Go was written by a man,
and this goes written by a suit like an executive
at a media company.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
No, I'm expecting to be lectured too.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
I'm expecting Aaron Sorkin walk into a room and read
me the monologue from the newsroom.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
And this could not be further from that.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And by the way, a lot of Publo Raine's previous films,
which I haven't seen in like decades, but are much
more explicitly political. And I mean, I'm trying to think
there was that guy. No, yeah, that was that Gala
Garcia Bernald. Of course when I google it, I get
the Megan Trainer song. I think he can be more political.
He can be more political when he wants. And the
(36:09):
other thing is, there's something about this trilogy of movies
that just screams gay guy to me and is not.
He's a straight man that made three movies in a
row about basically divas I did.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Also, I assumed he wooz gay.
Speaker 6 (36:22):
Whenever a man has any ounce of emotional intelligence or sensitivity,
I will assume that.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah. No, he is divorced from a woman named Antonia, and.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
I want her movie. I want Antonio.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Maybe that should be godas that should.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It seems like in this instance the director did a
lot of the forming of this movie, as opposed to
Oh yes, Oppenheim wrote the script for a different medium.
It got moved and moved and moved, and then it
got you know, I can't do the math. It's less
(36:56):
than twenty percent, but more than fifteen percent of this
griped getting cut before they shoot. It just seems like
it was saved by Poplo Lorraine.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I'm assuming I was actually saved by Natalie Portman.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
That's as many things are, truly.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I love your comparison of Jackie to Chris Jenner when
you you know, because honestly, I want a Chris Jenner movie.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Now that's a good gaga. Sorry, I'm running this bit.
That would be a great role.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
For gotting about.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I love when Benito Skinner plays Chris Jenner as the devil,
you know, and it's like, yeah.
Speaker 9 (37:32):
Also, she's often right, like you know, It's like if
the way that we look at complicated male figures, I
think that she's to me.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I find a very complicated figure. And a lot of
this is stemming from watching the O. J. Simpson American
Crime Story and some of Blair's portrayal of Chris Jenner.
Oh my god, it like changed the way I saw
her for the rest of my life. Like, initially, kind
I've had no opinion, but I was just like, that's
really shitty that you exploited your children. But then in
(38:06):
the American Crime Story, it was like the first time
I realized that her best friend was murdered, and then
all of their best friends kind of shrugged their shoulders
about it, and it's like similar to what we've been
talking about with Jackie when they turn off the TV
after seeing Oswald get shot and they all have so
many other things on their mind. Yeah, and this is
(38:28):
a moment where we're supposed to be having the families wake,
but she's alone in it.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I mean the scene where they like agree not to
tell her that Oswald has been shot is maybe, of
all the things that the various men do, probably the
most sexist. Like it's literally like she is a woman,
she can't handle the truth.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I do have to say, that is not how it happened.
She and Bobby were together in the autopsy room when
Oswald was shot. They found out together at the same
time afterwards. So that thing of Bobby lying to her
and doing that's also just a weird choice, I guess,
But it gives her the ability to yell at him
finally in that mot like she gets a great moment
(39:08):
and it's like, yeah, well, of.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
That scene, I mean, it's funny you bring up Christian
her now, because the point of that scene to me
is that she can see how she's been manipulated by
both sides.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
It's not just that, like, you know.
Speaker 6 (39:19):
The government is evil, the LBJ people are evil, And
it's not that the Kennedy's are great. It's that she
is truly alone and in the middle and has there's
no like rubric.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
To handle this.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
And I feel like maybe she says, you know, a
few times, like a president has just died, like and
everyone's acting like we need to push her aside and
move along, and she continues.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
To say, there's nothing. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
I'm just making up as they go along, And I
like that is a piece of that doesn't feel so
Christianer to me, where she at least like in that
one timeline, we really see her making it up, just
as we saw the kind of the real sense of
like insecurity and anxiety as she's doing the White House
broadcast in like, Okay, well, everyone thinks I've wasted their money,
everyone thinks I'm a dumb debutante, everyone thinks that we
(40:04):
are here for all the wrong reasons. But I want
to show the value in presenting something and like telling it,
making this into like a narrative, making us into a story,
and giving people something to be proud of, which is yeah,
a little bit more astute, like management narrative e anything
is pretty good. But but yeah, I oh my gosh,
I'm so happy. I love talking about this movie. I'm
happy when people love it. I like, I feel like
(40:26):
a proud mama Sita.
Speaker 9 (40:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I mean, well, the like real thought about christian Or
that I don't know why I left it off, was
that just in that moment, I feel like, if you
want to look at her with the kindest possible eyes,
that's the moment where she realized that if you're a woman,
if you don't have money and power, you have nothing.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
They can just kill you and forget about.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You, like you know, like it doesn't matter what your
relationship was with them beforehand.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
And I feel like we're doing a christian Or movie.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
That's when she decides to priority ties.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Money for her daughters.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Okay, so Lyra, your Pablo Irraine movie is Chris Jenner
Hunters is of course Hillary Clinton her favorite politician and mine,
I would say, I mean, this is such an obvious one,
but and this would have to be in twenty years.
But I'm like, I want a Courtney Love, like an
actual Courtney Love sort of Pablo Lorraine style biopic that's
like about a specific part of her life. Maybe it's
(41:41):
right after she has Francis Bean, maybe it's right after
Kurt Cobain died, and I wanted to actually grapple with
her incredible complexity as one of the great artists of
our time.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
But we can't get Noah Oppenheim to write it because
he loves wine seeing so much. Yeah, and Courtney Love
made the Weinstein joke on the Red Carpet.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
I do think that Jackie reminds me a lot of
Last Days, the Gus Fan Sant movie about Kurt Cobain.
Like similarly, it feels not telored to any specific cultural
conversation in more of a memory and a tone more
than like a specific I don't know thesis in the
way that I think is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah, so much of the Kennedy narrative is created in
the media, and you have these decontextualized images that you
think of when you think of the Kennedy's, whether it's
the debate with Nixon, whether it's the assassination, whatever, And
it almost replicates that feeling of being bombarded with images
by not following a coherent you know, A to B
two C narrative and just having this dreamscape of scenes
and people going in and out of rooms and not
(42:43):
really knowing if that this is something you imagined or
if it actually happened. And I actually think the quote
unquote factual inaccuracy is almost add to that feeling, because
it's kind of like someone's imagination of what could have
happened at that time.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Well, because honestly, the only other one only other one
is that she really wanted to leave the White House
as soon as possible, but she felt she had nowhere
to go. It wasn't like they pushed her out. They
wanted her to stay longer, but she didn't want to
be there anymore. But she had her kids and she
felt like she had nowhere to go with them, and
her father in law said, obviously, move in with us.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Come live with that.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
She'd spent a lot of time like at you know,
at the family home anyways, and her response was, will
mom move out? And I feel like that's something that
could have been in there and shows how alone she was.
She did not have even a relationship with her mother
where she wanted to be with her. After her husband died,
she was like, I'll go if she leaves jokingly, but
(43:43):
that's what their relationship was. No.
Speaker 6 (43:45):
I love that because there is very few moments where
she says a very mean, like cruel thing to someone,
usually to LBJ or Lady Bird Johnson.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
And it's just kind of funny.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
I want to laugh because what did she say to
LBJ oh when they're doing the funeral procession, like taking
the body to the rotunda, she says, what a terrible
way to start a presidency and keeps walking, and it's.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
Like those little moments of just icy bitchiness. I love.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
Yeah, I love because why would you not do that?
That's how it feels. She's furious, she.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Is, and this is also she knows she can get
away with a little bit of it, like she knows
people are giving her some slack because she, you know,
obviously just lost her husband. And also I think the
fact that she realizes she's not getting any respect means
that she's like, Okay, well, if you're not going to
respect me, then I can say something bitchy because you
sort of are not taking me seriously. Talking about how
she didn't have anyone, of course, made me realize there's
(44:40):
one character we have not touched on at all her
iconic galpal Greta Gerwig, who is like meant to be
her confidant, but it is such a sort of nothing
character at the end of the day.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
Well, I wonder if some of her stuff got cut,
because it does seem like such a small role. But
I forget that Greta Girg is in this movie. Every
time I know and whenever I see her, I'm like,
oh my gosh, look at you're here.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Look at you. Oh my goodness, that's my old friend.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
But I do think that she is so good as
the kind of straight face like I'm I'm patting on
your shoulders.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
I'm telling you you're doing a really good.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Job, almost like the anti Amy the Handler, except actually
willbooy your confidence in a very sweet way.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah, I kept I think you're totally right. I had
the feeling that surely something was cut because I kept
waiting for something to turn, either for Greta Gerwig to
do something incredibly supportive and prove that Jackie at least
had this one person on her side, or more likely,
I thought that like what it was building to was
(45:44):
in fact a betrayal from her. I thought that the
sort of lesson was going to be that even this
one person that she trusted at the end of the
day sold her out, Like I thought she was going
to go to the media with something or it turns
out that her and Bobby were keeping something from Jackie,
and it was sort of just like nothing. She was
just kind of set dressing.
Speaker 7 (46:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
It's always nice to see Greta Girwig, but I was like,
where is this going?
Speaker 6 (46:06):
Yeah, it feels like one little piece is missing, because
I feel like the most we get is them kind
of giggling together, like at the end when she's like
getting her dressed with a funeral and it's sweet, but
also not enough of a moment really for an actor
as good as Greta Gerwig.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Honestly.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, Yeah, in real life they were roommates and boarding
school and they're best friends until they died. Surely there's
more there than the pat on the shoulder.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
My brain is so broken. I was like, oh my god,
they were roommates.
Speaker 7 (46:37):
Well, what happens to me in this movie is when
they're driving away, it's Bobby and Jackie with the casket
and they hit a bump and then Bobby opens the
window to the driver.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
And he goes slow down and then in my head,
I just hear grab the Wall. That song is stuck
in my gas pedal is stuck in my head for
the next That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
This is like how Kirsten Gillibrand was roommates with Connie Britton. Wow,
And when Lady Gaga plays Kirsten Gillibrand in the pubblo
A movie, we can have Katy Perry play Connie Britton.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
She's busy and she has to go to space again.
She's going through doors.
Speaker 6 (47:16):
No, I hope, okay, space is like we don't want
her put her down.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
You know who went to space right after this movie,
Natalie Portman because one of the movies.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Don't Get Me started bebe Were. She didn't were the diaper.
Speaker 7 (47:30):
Me.
Speaker 6 (47:30):
In a serious way, she should have won the diaper
in that movie. And it's not like not in a
like sensational way.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
That is like the real trauma of the real story.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I so, I was a director's assistant and my job
was reading scripts. And I read that script and I
loved it. And in the original script she was way
more true to the character.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
They made her like sexy and cool. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:55):
I do kind of like the moments in Jackie where
you get the flashes of Jackie being very sexy, like
not sexually like very cool and like there's a scene
where she's on the Air Force one in the very
very beginning and they're about to go out, and she says,
I love crowds, and it's so I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
God, Diva.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
She goes, are those birds like hearing the noise of
the crowd like call it? And I yeah, I feel
like it's also so nice because you see that, like
she and jack they had a relationship and it was
not a like perfect lovey dovey romantic relationship, but they
were partners.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
But you can see like they understood each other. Yes,
were they connected on like.
Speaker 6 (48:36):
Very specific things like image making, like perception all that stuff.
And that's really because that's it's kind of like one
of the few moments we get of their relationship. It
really is all totally outwrapple. I just think is honestly
like to the movie's credit, But yeah, Hunter, thank you
so much, thank you so much for joining us. We
truly could not have asked for a better guest for
this film.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Any final thoughts on Jackie or on the Kennedys and
fill more broad well.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
I will say when I sent you that DM, I
was like, I hope they do an episode about Jackie
and I never thought I would be able to talk
about it, so I thrilled.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Maybe you should be the next Pubble ra Tubble are
my opinion.
Speaker 4 (49:14):
That's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Next week, we're talking about the Jackie Oh of pop music,
Taylor Swift and her short lived relationship with RFK junior
son Connor Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
So subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all
Things Kennedy every week
What do you remember about the twenty sixteen film Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I just remember Natalie Portman being incredible, you know. I
guess I remembered all the conversation being around like how
many shooters there were whatever, But like the portrayal of
the actual moments afterward, I had never really been I
don't know privy to or read up on or whatever,
but like, you know, just him being rushed to this
(00:33):
hospital and Jackie being you know, kind of trying to
figure out how to stay in the conversation and do
you know what I mean, like make sure that she
wasn't being pushed out of her husband's like last moments.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm George Savers, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with
the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today, in our second Kennedy
movie episode, we're talking about Pablo Lorraine's twenty sixteen film Jackie,
(01:21):
starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the moments before, during,
and after her husband's assassination.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Originally conceived as a much more expansive HBO mini series,
spanning the four days between JFK's assassination and funeral, and
was ultimately rewritten as a feature film focused on just
Jackie's experience of that time.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
So it's framed around an interview Jackie does with an
unnamed journalist in Hyanna'sport, Massachusetts, and the story is told
in a series of dream like flashbacks, and the interview
itself is loosely based on Theodore H. White's extensive interview
with Jackie and Life magazine in November nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
While doing press for the film, Natalie Portman talked a
lot about her in depth research into Jackie's life, as
well as her work with a vocal coach to get
Jackie's accent and voice just right.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Unfortunately, the same camp be said of Peter Starsgard, who
plays Bobby Kennedy in the movie, but more on that later.
Portman was nominated for an Oscar for the role, eventually
losing to Emma Stone for Lalloland, which did not sit
quite right with our guests today.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Our guest Hunter Harris was a staff writer at Vulture
at the time, and she wrote multiple appreciations of Jackie
for the website.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hunter now writes the wildly popular substack newsletter Hung Up,
and co hosts the podcast let me say this, Hunter,
Welcome to the United States of Kennedy.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We should say the reason you are here is because
I hosted about the podcast when it was announced, I said,
I'm so excited to be hosting a podcast about the Kennedy's,
and then you responded, you better do an episode about
Jackie parentheses twenty sixteen pabl lorraines at your film, and
so I know that there's a lot of lore with
you in this movie. You've written about it a bunch
(03:05):
of times. I actually wanted to come out and be like,
you've written about it four times, but then the Google
results kept coming and I actually wasn't sure how many times,
including the newsletter, you have written about it. You have
a lot of opinions about it that have become I
would say, almost like recurring bits. So I want to
just know what is your relationship with this movie.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
I saw it in a movie theater, Humble Beginnings, and
it just blew me away.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It truly.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
I was like, this is one of the most faculous
movies I've seen this year. And if you remember twenty sixteen,
that was like the Moonlight Year, the La La Land Year,
the twenty Century Women Year. There's so many good movies
that year. And I think probably a big part of
why I feel so much affections to this movie is
that it felt like no one was talking about it,
and truly it just Yeah. Even rewatching it to talk
about it today, I was like, Wow, that Natalie Portman
(03:55):
good actress.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It is.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
There is this recurring thing with Natalie porp and I
feel where she is always giving a really interesting, out
of the box performance during a year when she has
no chance. It's like Annihilation, vox Lux, Like there's just
all these movies where you're like, well, you know, maybe
in a different year, this could be a frontrunner, but
it's it's not gonna happen, right.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Maybe part of winning an Oscar so when you're pretty young.
Although she was like a child actress, so she just
has like ben I think culturally, I don't know, she
kind of feels like such a squarely millennial actress in
which there's like a Natalie Portman movie that coincides with
like every part of my adolescence early twenties now early thirties,
Like I can almost graft my own coming of age
onto like Natalie Portman performance or movie, whether it be
(04:37):
like the Mani Pixie Dreamgirls stuff or the Black Swan,
you know, more serious actressy stuff or like that which
made the jig Jillen Hall.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
To buyer movie Brothers. Yes, and it's like what the
fuck was that era? And then all the way down to.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
Jackie where I'm like, oh my gosh, really devastating that performance?
Do not get more attention?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Well, it's really funny also when you realize that it's
Nali Portman and Peter stars Guard and they were in
Garden State together, which is to me like the millennial foundational.
I don't know how I should feel about it now, honestly,
because when I tried to rewatch it as an adult,
it had lost all the magic for me. But I'm
(05:16):
mad at myself for saying that, because as a teenager,
I was so in love with it and it became
part of who I was because I was just so
blown away by it. And then it's so funny to
see them now being Jackie and Bobby.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, it really is sort of the reality bites of
our generation in any ways, in both good and bad ways.
I do want to get to Peter Star's guard because
I know you have strong opinions about him as well.
But before we do, what was your relationship to Jackie
the person before this movie? Are you someone who cares
about the Kennedys. Do you care about Jackie as like
(05:49):
a fashion icon is like a you know, wronged woman
in American history?
Speaker 7 (05:54):
No?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Not really, I wish it were different.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (05:57):
I really had not thought very critically about Jackie Nassis
or like Kennedy family in any really rigorous way before
seeing this movie, and then it can I mean not
to say that it taught me something, but it did
make me think.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
It's just such a I think Jackie as.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
A movie that's so perceptive about like grief, obviously, media
and image making and like myth making. I just loved
the idea that like in every frame of this movie,
Natalie Portman is like screaming, crying, has like blood on
her body, and it's like, wait, can you guys like
pay give me a little bit of attention please? Sorry,
my husband just died. Does no one else feel any
(06:33):
of that? That is kind of like how grief feels
like it is the center of your life and you
think it would be the center of everyone else's life,
and at every opportunity someone's like, right, but my husband
didn't die, so I cannot share this moment with you.
And it is just being confronted with that again and again,
that sense of pure devastation and also rage.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I thought this was such a good movie for that.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I mean that moment when they're swearing Johnson in and
it's like everyone is holding back their smiles. Yeah, and
you can understand that they're not, you know, giving every.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Single person the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I mean, our last movie was JFK, which definitely would
have pointed fingers at a lot of those people. But
how could Leebird not be a bit proud that now
her husband is president. No matter how horrible the circumstances,
it still is like a monumental moment for them. And
that is one thing that I saw as a technical
(07:29):
inaccuracy that gets cited a lot about this movie, is
that the interpretation is that her relationship with the Johnson's
is really strained and negative or adversarial, even like in
this movie.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
But I watched it three times.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Lyra watched it three times in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
Is that like in a good way you watched it
three times, or like I watched it three times.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I watched it it a good.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Way, And I would argue that those moments are not
about their interpersonal relationships. It's about what you were just saying,
Like it's about her experiencing extreme grief and being alone
in it.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
No, I mean, and that's a really I'm glad you
brought up that scene because I do like the way
that it kind.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Of introduces this level of seething disgust at everything that's
happening on that scene. Like as she's watching, there's like
a moment where she.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
Watches someone address LBJ as mister president, and it's I
don't know, but I just got the sense upon rewatching
it this time that like it's like someone's like calling
another man by her husband's name. It's like it's really
upsetting to her, like how dare you pass this along
so quickly? Like that's my husband's title. And again in
that scene too, it's like she's almost just like dead
(08:47):
weight in the room and the way that everyone came
to kind of like walk around her or avoid her,
and obviously she's I mean, it's like I can't imagine
how traumatic it's like living through a nightmare.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Truly.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
She's like bowling on about like we need the bagpipes,
we need like the flutes, all this stuff, and no
one really knows how to handle her. And there's this
weird you know, when a straight man sees a woman
with any emotionality is just like, oh my gosh, like,
someone handle her, please, And I like that. Jackie and
Alie Portman like both I'm guessing Jackie in real life,
well not Alie Portman in this movie, are both really
(09:19):
defiant and like, no, we are all going to be
uncomfortable right now. Actually, it's like almost kind of housewivesy
in in the insistence to.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Be the center of attention, and I think greatly so.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
She is sort of like, at the same time the
most important person in the room and the least important
person in the room. And I think so much of
the drama comes out of that tension, because on the
one hand, she is of course the widow and literally
died in her lap, so obviously she is the one
whose opinion matters most, She's the one planning the funeral whatever.
But then on the other hand, you get the sense
that there are all these people that are in the
(09:54):
political context more important than her, and she's like a
thorn in their side that they just have to appease
in order to get through the day and keep things moving.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
Yeah, so she's like some type of formality. There's that
also line when one of the handlers is like, well,
we need to like take his body to the autopsy
and she's like, well, says who who?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Why do we do that?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
And it's like, well, the law and she's like, well,
tell me everything, like that little moment, And I think
later in the movie shows a line about how like
I should have been a shopkeeper, I should have married
like a fat, lazy, ugly man, all of this stuff,
And I think, George, to your point, like being formally
the most important woman in the room, to like being
the kind of freak show that everyone's like avoiding. That
instant loss of power is like another level of the
(10:34):
grief and the loss that's that play here, And I
think the movie keeps that like that power dynamic at
the center in a really deft way.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And according to the you know biography, the Jackie Pup
Private Secret, that's very accurate. She spoke to her family
about feeling the loss of power, that it wasn't something
that she had sought for most of her life, but
then once she had it, she really enjoyed it and
(11:16):
really wanted to do something with it, and then in
an instant is no longer personally.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, And also it's unclear where that power that she
had acquired gradually over the years, it's unclear where that stands.
And you get some peaks into her psyche in regards
to that as well, when she's talking about how, like
other presidential widows, ended up immediately losing everything or having
to like sell furniture in order to make it work.
(11:43):
And there's also a way in which this movie, honestly,
part of why I resisted it for so long was
because it sold as this like universal story of grief,
And honestly, a lot of the reviews talk about how
it is, you know, at its core, about grief, and
I'm just like, I mean, yes, and no, this is
such a particular thing that can only happen to such
a particular person that I can't imagine like relating to this.
(12:04):
And then when I finally saw it, I was like, oh,
I see, I think what it's doing is that it's
operating at such a like operatic level, Yeah, which is
in fact, just how grief feels to you. Yeah, when
you are losing someone, like, yeah, you because it is
when you lose the person that is the most important
to you. You might as well be the first lady
with blood on her dress on television because it feels
(12:26):
like everything is being destroyed around you.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
Yeah. No, And I entirely I think that level of
like there's so much stakes attached to like, he's the
president and this is like the first modern assassination, and
and you know, what do we do about the children?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
And I mean when she.
Speaker 6 (12:41):
Tells Kennedy's mom, well, president cannot be buried in brookline,
Let's be serious, please, all of that stuff feels at
once so heightened and like almost unrealistic.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And yeah, in the wake of losing.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Someone, I feel like you keep trying to prove this
is devastating. Why don't you understand how devastating this is.
That it's like kind of the argument that she's making
again and again and again. And I also like how
there is a lot of uncertainty to her how she
goes about it. Really seemed the movie does a really
good job of showing that like it wasn't some grand
Master scheme. She is kind of drunk, putting on her dresses,
(13:17):
walking around her home like she's a ghost already, because
they're basically making her move out and plan a funeral
and do all these things at once, and she's kind
of making it up, like how can I keep their
attention on my husband and establish his legacy, which is
really a way of like making a case for herself
as like we were important, and I was important, and
I'm kind of alone on this team, and I think
(13:38):
I like the way that like Bobby Kennedy is both
an accomplice in that effort, and then also she feels
betrayed by him obviously making it the legacy of the
priority and not so much like her kids herself, and
that kind of like back and forth again just knows
like how imperfect it is to really build a myth,
and how it wasn't foretold that they would become what
they became.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
And so much of the flashbacks to her giving the
who of the White House are so much about her
participating in this narrative building about America's history. These are
all objects that are important because they show us the
gravity of the White House and the gravity of American
history and all this stuff, and you see her after
the assassination almost doing that in real time with her
own husband. She's trying to build the myth and build
(14:19):
the narrative, and there's almost this race between the myth
making and the actual reality of what's happening. Is rushing
to build the myth that shows that she and her
husband were important before they run out of time and
are no longer in the history books.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I mean, that's yeah, that's the line that JFK says
when he enters at the end of the tour, something
along the lines of like, I think it's really important
what she's doing here because it shows us that real
men lived here, and it's like a real man lived here,
is I feel like was my takeaway even from watching
Jackie this time, because it's like we've done a lot
(14:54):
of reading on the Kennedys and on this specific time,
and you know, honestly, at a certain point, it's like
they just become names on a piece of paper because
it's hard to like consistently remember the humanity when they're
like larger than life figures and they're just icons and
that's like something we talked about here, But this movie
(15:15):
was so human. She was such a human. It was
like the exact opposite of the icon. It was like
seeing all of the underneath the background of the reality
that makes an icon.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I was pretty wiped out by it emotionally. I cried.
I love when people love it. I really do.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
There are so many things about it that, you know,
I think biopics in general like very hard and also
pretty controversial. Either you really like a biopic or you
just hate all biopics, which I understand. But I think
focusing in on these three specific moments, the assassination, the
immediate aftermath, and then also like the White House tour,
feels very like not to say that's the most interesting
(15:55):
part of one person's entire experience, but that that's like
a uniquely charge moment in which it's very revealing about her,
about the way power works in DC, and also about
the family at large in an interesting way. And also
I like how I mean, just practically, there are so
many little moments about humanity. Where she is walking across
(16:17):
on the National Cemetery and it's raining in like her
foot her heels keepetting stuck in the mud, and it's
like those things are just so like or when she's
like looking out of the window, she's looking at the
crowd and they're looking at her, and it just feels
like at once so lonely and so isolated, and yet
it's like what, you're surrounded by people who want to share.
I think she has that line, like the priest told
me they want to share my grief, so I let them,
(16:39):
And that feels at once so intimate and also like
completely impossible.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, the smallness of it. I mean, obviously it's a
very grand movie because it's obviously about the very major
event in American history. But the smallness of it in
the fact that it focuses on all these individual events
and the fact that most scenes are either just her
or her in one other person. Yeah, when there's a crowd,
it's more like symbolic of the idea of a crowd.
It's almost like less about any of the real specifics
(17:07):
and more about what they symbolize. Like I kept thinking,
now that I have all this knowledge about the Kennedy's,
I would have a different outlook on this movie. And
I didn't like the priest symbolizes religion. The journalist symbolizes
the media, the Bobby symbolizes the family, expectations and whatever.
Like there is certain things symbolize, like the mythology of America.
You basically can project anything onto it. Like it's kind
(17:29):
of beside the point that she even is playing Jackie Kennedy.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
Yeah, No, And I think that is kind of part
of it for me, that Natalie Portman who I mean,
at least when I first heard about this movie, but
like an unusual choice.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
They don't look very much alike.
Speaker 6 (17:43):
Not that I really I don't know how tall or
petite Jackie Kennedy actually was, but it's.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Like she's all seven five four five three. Yeah, Like
I looked it up because I was thinking.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
About it the whole time. No, that's funny because I do.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
It's like, I'm curious talking about this with you both,
because you're such experts in topic. But it gets at
such an emotional, raw truth that like kind of the politics,
like the specifics of a moment feel less important than
the fact that, like, I mean, what would you do
if your husband's head had just been shot and fallen
into your lap?
Speaker 4 (18:15):
There's no other way.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
It's magnificent that she was able to get on the
plane after that. But I feel like the Natalie Portman
of it all both makes it feel not exactly history
and maybe let's set the facade drop a little bit
less where it's like, this is a movie about a
woman whose husband just died, and not a movie but
the capitol k Kennedy's.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
The thing is the development of this is that originally
it was going to be a mini series on HBO
about the four days following the assassination, and then it
changed into it being a movie that was going to
be directed by Darren Aronofsky starring Rachel Weiss, and then
(18:57):
when they got divorced, they said goodbye to the project.
And then once Natalie Portman signed on, which took like years,
like this this is over the course of like many years,
Pablo Lorraine went to the screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, and said,
cut any scene that Jackie's not in, and so they
(19:17):
took twenty pages out of the one hundred and twenty
page script. And it's amazing to me, like how much
stronger that made the movie because of this, because of
all like the intensity of it being so focused on her.
It's like that the Amy Winehouse documentary where every shot
is just her.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And then you know narration from the interviews and stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
It's funny that it was it almost came about by
accident or by a series of sort of random events,
because then it kind of ushered in this era of
Pablo Lorraine movies that are all different versions of this,
because you know, this was the first of the three
that are like Jackie Spencer, Maria Hunter, what is your
relationship with Pablo Lorraine more broadly.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Saw Spencer, did not see Maria. You know, I did
not really care for Spencer. It almost felt like the
exact same movie, but just in a less intense, like
a watered down version of the same movie, basically because
like the sense of opulence and isolation and extreme inner
turmoil just did not connect. Maybe because the moment itself
(20:26):
did not feel as charged as like if you're looking
at Jackie HENI was one very specific moment to talk
about the assassination. But with Diana it felt like, I
don't know, maybe because she it feels like more recently,
there's so much more to talk about, like maybe it
could have been that same birdles could have been this day.
It just never And I'm also not really like a royalist,
So maybe that's why I didn't connect. I just don't
think it's as good of a movie, honestly. And I
wondered too how much because I think Dannernovski was the
(20:49):
EP of Jackie, but not of the others, and I
wonder how much like that plays apart. Also, maybe the
script feels a lot different. Also, Spielberg was also a
producer on Jackie.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Oh, I don't know. Yeah, it shows I.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Believe it was him who wanted Pablo Lorraine, and Pablo
Lorraine said, I've never made a movie with a female protagonist.
I don't think I can do it. And then it
like completely changed his career. Now he's simply addicted to women.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
No, I know.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
I was gonna say, the irony of him like making
like literally three women one, two, three and not defending
women interesting enough before that is pretty funny.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
But I don't know he was like, yeah, I think
he was afraid.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
I think it was more that he was just like,
I don't know how to do that, but that's.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Hilarious, Like it's fun to imagine.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
Him being like one of the men in the room
with Natalie Portman, like all the men who are truly
afraid of her and afraid of her like you know
how emotional she is and.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
How frightening her, like I don't know.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
Just on predictability is is very ironic.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, I love that when she says to the interview,
are you afraid I'm gonna cry?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
I wonder. One of the framing devices of this movie
is that it does the classic thing where you start
with an interview with a journalist and then there are flashbacks,
which you know is sort of a cliche at this point,
What did you think of that as a framing device
and how did you process that as literally a journalist
yourself who profiles famous people.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
As a framing device, it feels like the most kind
of conventional part of the movie, only because Billy Cruda
playing not a specific reporter, but like that story I
think did happen in some magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
It's like he's strangely just like.
Speaker 6 (22:25):
An everyman writer in a way that feels like for
me that is otherwise so specific, it feels extremely kind
of casual. I guess my instinct is to be like, Okay,
well she says she doesn't smoke, Well, guess who gets
to decide what goes in the final story?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I know I was thinking of that too. I think
the implication is that there's some conversation that you would
only agree to this with certain terms.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And yeah, I think the true stories that she called
him to collaborate on an article and a lot that
I think is not said in Jackie because of probably those.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Twenty pages that were cut.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
It may so that there are no introductions to people,
and that in itself is kind of hazy, making like
out of sorts, Like people just come in and out
and you're like, wait, I think I know who that is,
but they don't even say their names sometimes.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
But again, I like that.
Speaker 6 (23:18):
I like how it feels like a memory in the
sense that he don't know exactly what someone said or
who they were, but that's like you remember being told
this thing and feeling like the rage or sadness about that.
I think that is to the movie's benefit, and maybe
that's why the reporter part of it feels like the
most prescriptive I guess, and how you're supposed to read
(23:40):
her and read the situation, which makes the weakest in
my mind. But I do like that they have this
not exactly warm relationship. It's a little bit testy sometimes
which I think does confirm a casual viewer's bias against
this woman who seems kind of machiavellian and like her
either pursuit of power or like her narrative of it.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
But you mentioned the cigarettes, and man, does she make
every single one of those cigarettes look really good?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (24:08):
Like this is like, as I was questioning, I was like,
this might be like top five movies to smoke too.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And I don't smoke, but like it's like she makes
them all look so good, and it's like because it
is kind of her, it's her secret.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I mean, it does symbolize her smoking, and then saying,
by the way I don't smoke is like, of course,
ultimately like emblematic of her relationship to the truth and
to her own image making. It's interesting, Like I totally
agree that it is a conventional framing device, but then
I think at its best, what it does is sort
(24:43):
of established that we can't really trust anything else we're
seeing because everything exists in this sort of like liminal
space between fact and memory.
Speaker 8 (24:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's definitely true.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Okay, so I want to get into slightly more fun stuff, flyer,
did you have any other questions about the meat of
(25:20):
the movie.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Oh well, I guess I guess it's more of an observation,
but also just that it's wild to meet that Lee,
her sister, and then know Nassas her future husband, who
were there this entire time. They're in every one of
those rooms in real life or not in real life
in this movie at all.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
They're not even characters in the movie.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I know, there's so much stuff like that that just
is ignored now that we know kind of what happened.
And I really do think that just isn't what he's
interested in. Like I really think, you know, it's almost
like putting on a play like the Nicole Scherzinger's Sonsible
of Our Words, just her on stage barefoot, Like he's
just doing as a little as possible to just convey
(26:02):
the general themes he wants to convey, Like there really
is very little interest in historical accuracy and everything. And
I also I've always been interested in him as a
non American making a movie about such an iconic American
moment in history.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
Kind of because I feel like the procession, do they
shoot that all like in Paris or something, or I
don't think it was shot in the US, which kind
of a rands is like Eyes White Shot, which feels
like such an iconic New York movie that's obviously shot
in London, And how you can get to like some
kind of almost.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
A reactive truth about all these places.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
When there could not be further from the reality of
like DC or New York City a way that I
like that it feels like kind of hazy.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
And also a lot.
Speaker 6 (26:43):
Of those shots are so tight and static, especially in
the first act. It's only when you get into the
White House, it's like only her alone in the center
of reframe that is a lot wider and bigger, and
so yeah, I think George to your point, it's like
there's so much happening outside of this that he is
just notious about at all, which I think is like
the right choice. But we do have a sense of
(27:03):
like there are other things, there are other people milling about,
like in the LBJ stuff, there's all this like kind
of Bobby comes in with reporting back like they want
you out of here at this day, they want this change.
And again it really keeps the pressure on her because
it makes her feel more alone because she really is
the only Cherecer.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
What is probably why.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
Honestly, I feel like Peter Sarsguard is just not a
very If he were like not in the movie so much,
his complete failure would not bother.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Me so much. But yeah, because he is, I just
like I see it, notice that all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, this is gonna be my next question. I think
you mentioned this in both of the New York macpiecet
you wrote about the film that that is the weakest
part of it. First of all, I agree, and I
think at first glance, one of the things that's weak
about it, even before he opens his mouth, is just
like it's such weird casting. Physically, he looks nothing like Bobby.
Bobby does have like a particular you know, face shape
(27:57):
and vibe and even just hair. I mean, yeah, which
it's interesting. Actually the actor who plays JFK is very
well cast.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yes, basically want to lookalike contest.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
Yeah, and I think we can suspend our disbelieve that,
like Natalie Porton is Jackie Kennedy when it's Jackie Kennedy,
but when you have an almost mirror image of JFK
and he's in the movie a fair amount, not a lot,
but a fair amount, and then you have Peter Sargo's
Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
It's like, wait, huh, even in the procession Teddy Kennedy
is I don't know if you noticed it. Yeah, it's
like they got clones for everyone else. So why is
he just wearing those teeth and that's it?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
And what even are those teeth? Yeah? And like the accent,
I mean, the accent you know, really comes and goes.
But that's okay. I don't want to nitpick about accents.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
But in like the best version of this, what is
he supposed to like, you know, communicate here to us?
And it's not even really a sense of like, I
don't He's just he's so like, shoulders down, hunched over,
like so sad all the time in a way that
I'm like, Okay, well, Natalie Portman is acting her ass off,
and you can't just loom lurk around the back of
(29:03):
these scenes and act like that's a performer.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I mean, I do think the most compelling argument for
it that I can think of, which you sort of
allude to one of the things you wrote about it,
is like that she symbolizes, you know, for lack of
a better term, like a female gendered kind of grief,
and then he symbolizes a male gendered kind of grief.
It's like, you know, she's emoting and she's acting and
(29:27):
she's like crying, and then he comes in is just
like either completely emotionless or like throwing things around and
being and being racheful. And there's something just like inherently
unappealing about him as a screen presence in this particular movie.
I actually think he's a great actor and other things.
Speaker 6 (29:43):
Yes, no, I've never had a problem with him, but
what a shame about Bobby than Lake.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I will nitpick the accent because nowly Portman's voice
work is like insane. She has three different voices for
Jackie depending on where.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
She is and who she's talking to. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I would rather someone try too hard at emulating a
famous voice then to undersell it. And what I'm really tablish.
It's really the only time he gives us any kind
of accent. I would have liked more of that, I
will say, though I read that. I think Pablo Lorraine
(30:20):
said thirty percent of the movie is first takes, which
really just shows you how incredible Nolly Portman is. And
maybe Peter would have warmed up in a second or
third day.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
I feel like, Lyra, I just learned so much about you,
like did you love Lady Gaga in House of Gucci?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Like do you let an accent? Okay? And you know what?
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Actually because of the accent, because I was like, I
was so confused by it in the trailer and I
asked my friend who is Italian, I was like, is
this offensive? Like it doesn't feel like it's coming from
an earnest place. It feels like it's coming from like
this I don't know, campy place.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, well, I mean fits When that movie came out,
I had a period when I would do a perfect
impression of Lady Gaga in that movie. But now it's
been too long and I literally cannot attempt it. It's
a very specific, almost Russian tinge oh does what? It's
a very like. It really is something that only Stephanie
could have pulled off. And I would actually say, I
(31:23):
want to see Lady Gaga as Jackie when they remake
this incredible which public figure would Lady Gaga play? A
publo Lorraine made another movie about how women struggle. Sorry, Hillary,
Hillary Hilary, I actually think Lady Gaga as Hillary the
night of the twenty sixteen election, which is at the
(31:44):
Javit Center. The balloons are all getting ready to be
dropped and they have to pop them one by one,
and then it's just Lady Gaga dressed as Joe Calderon
in a pantsuit.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Honestly, you should write that as a short and have
John Early play Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Oh no, I think that either Gaga is Hillary Clinton
or iliald could be inspired. Yeah, okay, so my favorite thing.
Actually have two favorite things about this movie that are
not the movie. The first is that Natalie Portman before
every take would just whisper to herself, I love beauty,
(32:21):
like in her soft voice, because Jackie was touched in as
fat as. How do you say that word? Yeah, okay,
that's what I thought, But you know, we're in a
culture where people say, like, that's so aesthetic, and I don't.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
That's not what I meant.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
My second favorite thing is that in Rodan Pharaoh's book
Catch and Kill.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Do you know where I'm going with this? Yes?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I do. The writer there, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Hunter and Rodan Pharaoh's book Catching Kill, he talks about
no Oppenheim, who was this reminder of Jackie who at
the time was president of NBC News, and I'm the
those are kind of fuzzy, but basically his lion Stine
reporting Rodan Pharaohs was like going to run an NBC
and then Oppenheim kind of was like, you know, a
little bit, giving him notes, pushing back on some stuff,
(33:04):
like he was saying that the story wasn't ready yet,
and then Pharaoh Rodon Pharaoh took it to The New Yorker,
of course, And it's like at every opportunity Ronan Farrell
just like finds a moment to like quote someone else
saying that Jackie was not a good movie. And I
swear to go like a paragraph and maybe even a chapter,
but there's like a page that ends with David Remnick
(33:26):
saying that was not a good movie about It's like what,
it's so like him going out of his way to
be like and actually, I hate that guy's movie too.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
It's so I listen, I get it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
It's interesting because he wrote Mays Runner script, and he
wrote the Allegiance script, this agent the Divergence.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
That's what throws me off.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
And then he wrote Jackie. It's like, what how did that?
Speaker 6 (33:54):
I found the quote? And I have to read it.
This is Rononan Parao's book. He says, an NBC is
letting you walk away with all of this report. Rymnik
ast who was this person at NBC Oppenheim Oppenheim. I
confirmed he's a screenwriter. You say he wrote Jackie. I
replied that. Rymnik said Gravely was a bad movie.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
It's interesting, I mean to connect Jackie to larger political
stories like Ronan and Fairs reporting and the fact that
this guy randomly worked at NBC News. I expected it,
and actually one of the reasons I resisted it was
I expected it to be much more like propagandistic or something. Yeah,
Like I really because so much stuff and we run
into this lot. So much stuff about JFK is just
(34:36):
so propagandistic because for that time, he was, you know,
in the same way that Obama symbolized hope when he
became president, JFK was going to be like in New Leaf,
and it was going to be this emblem of American
progressive politics. And he was gone too soon, and he
was gonna I mean literally in JFK, the Oliver Stone movie,
which we watched the other week. The argument that they're
making is that He literally was so progressive that he
(34:58):
was going to withdraw from the Vietnam and that's why
the government conspired to kill him, because they were so
afraid of how amazingly liberal and progressive he would be.
So I really thought that this would be just like
more of that, And especially knowing that I don't know
this guy that didn't want to publish a Weinstein report
it wrote it, It's like I would expect it to
be so much more like can you believe that we
(35:19):
lost the one true hope we had for in the
twentieth century? So I got to say I have to
really separate the art from the artists in this one
instance and say, regardless of what this guy did in
the rest of his professional life, he absolutely ate with
this one.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
First of all, it's like Go was written by a man,
and this goes written by a suit like an executive
at a media company.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
No, I'm expecting to be lectured too.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
I'm expecting Aaron Sorkin walk into a room and read
me the monologue from the newsroom.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
And this could not be further from that.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And by the way, a lot of Publo Raine's previous films,
which I haven't seen in like decades, but are much
more explicitly political. And I mean, I'm trying to think
there was that guy. No, yeah, that was that Gala
Garcia Bernald. Of course when I google it, I get
the Megan Trainer song. I think he can be more political.
He can be more political when he wants. And the
(36:09):
other thing is, there's something about this trilogy of movies
that just screams gay guy to me and is not.
He's a straight man that made three movies in a
row about basically divas I did.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Also, I assumed he wooz gay.
Speaker 6 (36:22):
Whenever a man has any ounce of emotional intelligence or sensitivity,
I will assume that.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah. No, he is divorced from a woman named Antonia, and.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
I want her movie. I want Antonio.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Maybe that should be godas that should.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
It seems like in this instance the director did a
lot of the forming of this movie, as opposed to
Oh yes, Oppenheim wrote the script for a different medium.
It got moved and moved and moved, and then it
got you know, I can't do the math. It's less
(36:56):
than twenty percent, but more than fifteen percent of this
griped getting cut before they shoot. It just seems like
it was saved by Poplo Lorraine.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I'm assuming I was actually saved by Natalie Portman.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
That's as many things are, truly.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I love your comparison of Jackie to Chris Jenner when
you you know, because honestly, I want a Chris Jenner movie.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Now that's a good gaga. Sorry, I'm running this bit.
That would be a great role.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
For gotting about.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I love when Benito Skinner plays Chris Jenner as the devil,
you know, and it's like, yeah.
Speaker 9 (37:32):
Also, she's often right, like you know, It's like if
the way that we look at complicated male figures, I
think that she's to me.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I find a very complicated figure. And a lot of
this is stemming from watching the O. J. Simpson American
Crime Story and some of Blair's portrayal of Chris Jenner.
Oh my god, it like changed the way I saw
her for the rest of my life. Like, initially, kind
I've had no opinion, but I was just like, that's
really shitty that you exploited your children. But then in
(38:06):
the American Crime Story, it was like the first time
I realized that her best friend was murdered, and then
all of their best friends kind of shrugged their shoulders
about it, and it's like similar to what we've been
talking about with Jackie when they turn off the TV
after seeing Oswald get shot and they all have so
many other things on their mind. Yeah, and this is
(38:28):
a moment where we're supposed to be having the families wake,
but she's alone in it.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I mean the scene where they like agree not to
tell her that Oswald has been shot is maybe, of
all the things that the various men do, probably the
most sexist. Like it's literally like she is a woman,
she can't handle the truth.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I do have to say, that is not how it happened.
She and Bobby were together in the autopsy room when
Oswald was shot. They found out together at the same
time afterwards. So that thing of Bobby lying to her
and doing that's also just a weird choice, I guess,
But it gives her the ability to yell at him
finally in that mot like she gets a great moment
(39:08):
and it's like, yeah, well, of.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
That scene, I mean, it's funny you bring up Christian
her now, because the point of that scene to me
is that she can see how she's been manipulated by
both sides.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
It's not just that, like, you know.
Speaker 6 (39:19):
The government is evil, the LBJ people are evil, And
it's not that the Kennedy's are great. It's that she
is truly alone and in the middle and has there's
no like rubric.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
To handle this.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
And I feel like maybe she says, you know, a
few times, like a president has just died, like and
everyone's acting like we need to push her aside and
move along, and she continues.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
To say, there's nothing. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
I'm just making up as they go along, And I
like that is a piece of that doesn't feel so
Christianer to me, where she at least like in that
one timeline, we really see her making it up, just
as we saw the kind of the real sense of
like insecurity and anxiety as she's doing the White House
broadcast in like, Okay, well, everyone thinks I've wasted their money,
everyone thinks I'm a dumb debutante, everyone thinks that we
(40:04):
are here for all the wrong reasons. But I want
to show the value in presenting something and like telling it,
making this into like a narrative, making us into a story,
and giving people something to be proud of, which is yeah,
a little bit more astute, like management narrative e anything
is pretty good. But but yeah, I oh my gosh,
I'm so happy. I love talking about this movie. I'm
happy when people love it. I like, I feel like
(40:26):
a proud mama Sita.
Speaker 9 (40:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I mean, well, the like real thought about christian Or
that I don't know why I left it off, was
that just in that moment, I feel like, if you
want to look at her with the kindest possible eyes,
that's the moment where she realized that if you're a woman,
if you don't have money and power, you have nothing.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
They can just kill you and forget about.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
You, like you know, like it doesn't matter what your
relationship was with them beforehand.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
And I feel like we're doing a christian Or movie.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
That's when she decides to priority ties.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Money for her daughters.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Okay, so Lyra, your Pablo Irraine movie is Chris Jenner
Hunters is of course Hillary Clinton her favorite politician and mine,
I would say, I mean, this is such an obvious one,
but and this would have to be in twenty years.
But I'm like, I want a Courtney Love, like an
actual Courtney Love sort of Pablo Lorraine style biopic that's
like about a specific part of her life. Maybe it's
(41:41):
right after she has Francis Bean, maybe it's right after
Kurt Cobain died, and I wanted to actually grapple with
her incredible complexity as one of the great artists of
our time.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
But we can't get Noah Oppenheim to write it because
he loves wine seeing so much. Yeah, and Courtney Love
made the Weinstein joke on the Red Carpet.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
I do think that Jackie reminds me a lot of
Last Days, the Gus Fan Sant movie about Kurt Cobain.
Like similarly, it feels not telored to any specific cultural
conversation in more of a memory and a tone more
than like a specific I don't know thesis in the
way that I think is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah, so much of the Kennedy narrative is created in
the media, and you have these decontextualized images that you
think of when you think of the Kennedy's, whether it's
the debate with Nixon, whether it's the assassination, whatever, And
it almost replicates that feeling of being bombarded with images
by not following a coherent you know, A to B
two C narrative and just having this dreamscape of scenes
and people going in and out of rooms and not
(42:43):
really knowing if that this is something you imagined or
if it actually happened. And I actually think the quote
unquote factual inaccuracy is almost add to that feeling, because
it's kind of like someone's imagination of what could have
happened at that time.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Well, because honestly, the only other one only other one
is that she really wanted to leave the White House
as soon as possible, but she felt she had nowhere
to go. It wasn't like they pushed her out. They
wanted her to stay longer, but she didn't want to
be there anymore. But she had her kids and she
felt like she had nowhere to go with them, and
her father in law said, obviously, move in with us.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Come live with that.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
She'd spent a lot of time like at you know,
at the family home anyways, and her response was, will
mom move out? And I feel like that's something that
could have been in there and shows how alone she was.
She did not have even a relationship with her mother
where she wanted to be with her. After her husband died,
she was like, I'll go if she leaves jokingly, but
(43:43):
that's what their relationship was. No.
Speaker 6 (43:45):
I love that because there is very few moments where
she says a very mean, like cruel thing to someone,
usually to LBJ or Lady Bird Johnson.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
And it's just kind of funny.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
I want to laugh because what did she say to
LBJ oh when they're doing the funeral procession, like taking
the body to the rotunda, she says, what a terrible
way to start a presidency and keeps walking, and it's.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
Like those little moments of just icy bitchiness. I love.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
Yeah, I love because why would you not do that?
That's how it feels. She's furious, she.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Is, and this is also she knows she can get
away with a little bit of it, like she knows
people are giving her some slack because she, you know,
obviously just lost her husband. And also I think the
fact that she realizes she's not getting any respect means
that she's like, Okay, well, if you're not going to
respect me, then I can say something bitchy because you
sort of are not taking me seriously. Talking about how
she didn't have anyone, of course, made me realize there's
(44:40):
one character we have not touched on at all her
iconic galpal Greta Gerwig, who is like meant to be
her confidant, but it is such a sort of nothing
character at the end of the day.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
Well, I wonder if some of her stuff got cut,
because it does seem like such a small role. But
I forget that Greta Girg is in this movie. Every
time I know and whenever I see her, I'm like,
oh my gosh, look at you're here.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Look at you. Oh my goodness, that's my old friend.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
But I do think that she is so good as
the kind of straight face like I'm I'm patting on
your shoulders.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
I'm telling you you're doing a really good.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Job, almost like the anti Amy the Handler, except actually
willbooy your confidence in a very sweet way.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah, I kept I think you're totally right. I had
the feeling that surely something was cut because I kept
waiting for something to turn, either for Greta Gerwig to
do something incredibly supportive and prove that Jackie at least
had this one person on her side, or more likely,
I thought that like what it was building to was
(45:44):
in fact a betrayal from her. I thought that the
sort of lesson was going to be that even this
one person that she trusted at the end of the
day sold her out, Like I thought she was going
to go to the media with something or it turns
out that her and Bobby were keeping something from Jackie,
and it was sort of just like nothing. She was
just kind of set dressing.
Speaker 7 (46:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
It's always nice to see Greta Girwig, but I was like,
where is this going?
Speaker 6 (46:06):
Yeah, it feels like one little piece is missing, because
I feel like the most we get is them kind
of giggling together, like at the end when she's like
getting her dressed with a funeral and it's sweet, but
also not enough of a moment really for an actor
as good as Greta Gerwig.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Honestly.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah, Yeah, in real life they were roommates and boarding
school and they're best friends until they died. Surely there's
more there than the pat on the shoulder.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
My brain is so broken. I was like, oh my god,
they were roommates.
Speaker 7 (46:37):
Well, what happens to me in this movie is when
they're driving away, it's Bobby and Jackie with the casket
and they hit a bump and then Bobby opens the
window to the driver.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
And he goes slow down and then in my head,
I just hear grab the Wall. That song is stuck
in my gas pedal is stuck in my head for
the next That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
This is like how Kirsten Gillibrand was roommates with Connie Britton. Wow,
And when Lady Gaga plays Kirsten Gillibrand in the pubblo
A movie, we can have Katy Perry play Connie Britton.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
She's busy and she has to go to space again.
She's going through doors.
Speaker 6 (47:16):
No, I hope, okay, space is like we don't want
her put her down.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
You know who went to space right after this movie,
Natalie Portman because one of the movies.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Don't Get Me started bebe Were. She didn't were the diaper.
Speaker 7 (47:30):
Me.
Speaker 6 (47:30):
In a serious way, she should have won the diaper
in that movie. And it's not like not in a
like sensational way.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
That is like the real trauma of the real story.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I so, I was a director's assistant and my job
was reading scripts. And I read that script and I
loved it. And in the original script she was way
more true to the character.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
They made her like sexy and cool. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:55):
I do kind of like the moments in Jackie where
you get the flashes of Jackie being very sexy, like
not sexually like very cool and like there's a scene
where she's on the Air Force one in the very
very beginning and they're about to go out, and she says,
I love crowds, and it's so I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
God, Diva.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
She goes, are those birds like hearing the noise of
the crowd like call it? And I yeah, I feel
like it's also so nice because you see that, like
she and jack they had a relationship and it was
not a like perfect lovey dovey romantic relationship, but they
were partners.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
But you can see like they understood each other. Yes,
were they connected on like.
Speaker 6 (48:36):
Very specific things like image making, like perception all that stuff.
And that's really because that's it's kind of like one
of the few moments we get of their relationship. It
really is all totally outwrapple. I just think is honestly
like to the movie's credit, But yeah, Hunter, thank you
so much, thank you so much for joining us. We
truly could not have asked for a better guest for
this film.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Any final thoughts on Jackie or on the Kennedys and
fill more broad well.
Speaker 6 (49:00):
I will say when I sent you that DM, I
was like, I hope they do an episode about Jackie
and I never thought I would be able to talk
about it, so I thrilled.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Maybe you should be the next Pubble ra Tubble are
my opinion.
Speaker 4 (49:14):
That's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Next week, we're talking about the Jackie Oh of pop music,
Taylor Swift and her short lived relationship with RFK junior
son Connor Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
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