December 15, 2023 • 17 mins
Did The Fall of the House of Usher meet the expectations of a real-life Poe expert? This week, we caught up with our very first guest this season, Chris Semtner, artist, author, and Curator at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, to hear his thoughts on the show.
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Join us next week for our final bonus episode of the season!
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Join us next week for our final bonus episode of the season!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Straw Media. Hi, I'm LindsayJones, I'm Stacy Ny and welcome to
a special super bonus edition of psychoanalyzingthe Fall of the House of Usher.
This is a short bonus episode becausewe just couldn't help ourselves. Frankly,
(00:22):
we were so excited about this.As you may remember, in episode one
of our podcast series, we interviewedChris Sempner, who is the curator of
the Home Museum in Richmond, Virginia, and during that conversation with him,
he hadn't seen any episodes of theshow yet because we interviewed him before it
was released, and now the entireshow is out, Chris has had an
(00:42):
entire opportunity to see the show,and we really wanted to hear more about
what he had to say. Andhere is the conversation we had. Hi,
Chris, how you doing about theusual about yourself? We're good,
We're good. We're super excited totalk to you because now we are at
(01:07):
the very end of our series andwe were recently sort of going back over
our original episodes and we realized thatwhen we talked to you originally we said,
Hey, tell us what you thinkafter you've had a chance to watch
it, so we thought we mightbe able to circle back and just check
in with you and see how wereyou able to watch the whole series?
Oh yeah, I been watched thewhole thing in two days. Nice.
(01:33):
That's perfect, Stark two days,Chris, No, that's just typical for
here at the Poe Museum. Okay, that's just another day at the office
for you. Yeah, that's Tuesdayat the Poe Museum. That's right.
This madness, melancholy, mystery andmurder, that's that's every other day here.
Okay, So what did you think? How'd you like it? I
took a little bit of time gettinginto it that first episode. Yeah,
(01:55):
But then when they poured the acidon all the party guests, I was
like, oh, I could watchthe rest of this, you know,
like I'm in the right place.Yeah, And I wasn't really sure how
it was going to fit in withthe fall of the House of Usher.
Other than that first episode they're stillin the childhood home. There's some premature
burial, You've got the characters namedafter Madeline and Roder Usher. But then
(02:20):
when you wait all the way tothe end, you get that framework story
that fits together, just like posestory the Fall of the House of Usher,
right, because Poe actually structured itwith a poem and a story within
the story. And that's how thisis, its stories within the story and
it just all comes back together atthe end. M h. I mean,
like, obviously it is a completelyoriginal event unto itself. No one
(02:45):
will look at this and say,I, yes, this is the perfect
representation of the fall of the Houseof Usher. But do you feel like
it stayed true to Poe or doyou feel like it sort of wandered away
from Hoe? No? I thinkit tried to capture the sentral themes of
post story is the obsession, theguilt you saw on the Telltale Heart,
her guilt eating away at her,even if she couldn't remember having murdered her
(03:07):
wife. But you see, andthey made a lot of nods to pose
throughout, but they tried to staytrue to the stories, except for maybe
the gold bug episode, because thegold Bug is a treasure hunt mystery,
and here on they just sort ofnamed the pill the gold bug and the
ending with the stards of Glasses moreof William Wilson, sort of ending William
(03:29):
Wilson's want to pose other stories aboutdoubles and the Doppelgangers, and of course
the other sides of the dark sideof our own nature, which I guess
you could make the point that Tamberlainehas those two sides of her nature,
the public face she goes on stageshe wants to present, and then the
darker side she hides. You couldsay that Tamberlaine might be a little bit
(03:49):
of William Wilson, but you shouldjust name the episode William Wilson. Well,
and they talked about that in fact, episode five or episode six,
which is out while you while we'retalking right now of our show, of
our show, we interview Rebecca Klingel, and she tells us all about that,
how it's a combination of both ofthose kind of stories, and how
(04:13):
because she wrote that episode, thedoppelganger episode. So, yeah, you're
exactly right, you're exactly right.Apparently that the episode was originally titled William
Wilson, and then they went backand retitled it Goldbug because they felt that
gold Bug fet the sort of physicalfitness life package thing that they were working
(04:33):
on, but that during the actualepisode writing they had modeled it much more
after William Wilson. I guess andI'd like the different references to post stories
throughout. And at the very beginning, the minister who's reading the sermon,
he's actually a Poe guy. He'dbeen in a Poe film. He was
(04:55):
in the Death of Poe, actuallyplayed Poe in that film, really,
and here he was the minister recitingPoe's poetry. So I thought, almost
a nice little touch there. Andhe's a Baltimore guy who apparently went to
high school with Mike Flanagan. Sothings come full circle there. Yes,
Wow, how cool is that?So to pay attention to that minister who's
(05:15):
reading the eulogy and to go backand watch it. Do you remember the
last time I was here? Ithink I mentioned my favorite post story from
the beginning was never bet the Devilyour Head. Yes, So I really
liked how Camille would just brate herassistance and one of them was named Toby,
and she would say, damn it, Toby, Toby dammit, And
(05:36):
I thought, oh, that's TobyDammit is the name of the character.
Yes, So it feels like,oh, that's a nod for the three
of us who liked that story.See, this is this is exactly why
I wanted to talk to you,Liz is literally it because I was like,
this guy's going to know all thePoe deep cuts, right, all
the b sides of Poe that otherwisewe wouldn't catch. You're gonna you're gonna
(05:59):
get And so I'm so glad thatyou're able to point these things out because
in passing I was like, Hey, that sounds familiar, But I'm not
sure are there any other like eastereggs or little references that you're like,
hah, that's pretty slick now theyput that in there. Maybe some of
them are just too obvious, likeall the characters you know are named after
characters and post stories, and yeah, you can see each episode reference different
(06:23):
post stories. So I didn't thinka lot of them are too subtle.
I think there's maybe a reference inMark Hamill's character Arthur Gordon Pim. They
talk about how you voyage around theworld and there's some cannibalism, and I
thought, well, that's from thisnovel, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim
and and that story Pim has facedwith the choice there's a few survivors left
(06:46):
on this raft, and they said, we got to eat somebody. So
they draw straws and decide who theyhave to eat, and just a fun
fact, it's the cabin boy RichardParker. Ah, that's not the fun
part. The fun part is Poewrote the story in eighteen thirty eight,
and like eighteen eighty four, itactually happened. There were four survivors in
a lifeboat and then they made thesame choice and guess who they ate,
(07:10):
the cabin boy Richard Parker. No, wow, that's crazy. So that
proves it pose a time traveler.Yeah, I mean it's interesting that he
picked that that is the place totravel to. But okay, yeah,
that's pretty impressive. Yeah, he'snot a good time traveler. He picked
the worst time to go to.How did you like some of the readings,
you know, the poems, thesoliloquies that the characters did, you
(07:34):
know, like straight you know Poepoems. Well, I like seeing them
just get worked into the story herethere. The eulogy was perfect because that
was a great opportunity to work thosein there. Sometimes the quote seemed a
little bit forced because they were justthrowing Poe quotes left and right, and
I wondered how that would read tosomebody who might not know this is a
(07:57):
Poe quote. They might just think, why are they speaking in this antiquated
language? How does that fit in? But if you know it's a Poe
quote, you're like, oh,yeah, there's another one. There's another
one, right, It's pretty rapidfire with the Poe references. You'll look
in the background of scenes. Oh, there's a picture of Raven there in
the background. And I don't wantto put words in your mouth, but
to me, the most successful useof the poems was Annabell Lee. It
(08:18):
seemed to be the one that weavedthrough the plot the most and also sort
of had the most payoff in termsof like what we learn about her story
and also really about how she sortof represents a lost love. She's kind
of like the Rosebud of this storybasically in terms of you know, what
(08:39):
could have been, what another lifewould have been for this? Yes,
And I'm just curious, did youfeel like the Annabel Lee thing helped you
or did you feel like it wasdistracting to you? No, I was
like a good Annabell Lee reference,And in the poem, of course,
she's dead, so you think thatthey could have gone with that direction where
he's just obsessed with her and she'sdead and gone forever. And this Sarah
(09:03):
took a different path that she doeslike in the poem, represent his lost
innocence. She was a child andI was a child in this kingdom by
the sea. We loved with thelove. There was more than love.
I and my Anna Bella Lee.So this is what he could have been
if he hadn't made that fateful decision. Yeah, to go the other direction.
So he had that choice and hestepped over the line. Yeah,
(09:26):
it seems like that's a common themethroughout the show, is that everyone is
given a choice, and it's clearlyillustrated, like you can take this more
honorable path, or you can takethis really terrible path. And literally every
single person in the show is like, I'll take the terrible. Please.
Then Frederick, he just keeps takingworse and worse paths. You know,
I'm gonna take my wife home,but I'm not just gonna do that.
(09:50):
I'm gonna go all putting pictures ofher all over the walls. And that's
not enough. Now I'm going torip out her teeth. And that was
another good Poe reference. That's fromBaron Nicy, Poe's first published horror story
is about a guy who's so obsessedwith his wife's teeth that after she's buried,
he digs her up in yanks outof her teeth. Oh God.
Then the twist was she was buriedalive the whole time, and she wasn't
(10:13):
too happy about having her teeth extractedlike that. So I was like,
oh, look, there's very nicyreference there. Only in the eighteen hundreds,
says somebody think, you know whatI'm gonna do for my first novel,
I'm gonna just go all out andpull out my death. Well it's
a different time. You know.You couldn't just have your dentures made of
nice, pretty dental porcelain. Andwhen you wanted the best dentures you had
(10:37):
to get them out of corpses.They fit perfectly and good occlusion. Wow,
this show has really given me alot to think about, I have
to say. In fact, Poehad read a news article about the time
about some dental students who got caughtstealing teeth from corpses. Man, I
guess it's that's one way to getahead in the in the world. Well,
(10:58):
because of the gold fillings. Isthat why they were stealing no,
to make dentures out of the teeth, just regular teeth. Yeah, that's
what they use. They use that, either that or ivory. And okay,
I'm glad I didn't get into thatbusiness. But okay, I have
one big question, which is obviouslywe didn't even know this when we talked
to you, but it turns outthe show's a massive hit. It's like
been number one on Netflix for likethree four weeks in a row. Now,
(11:22):
it's been a huge sensation. Hasthe Poe Museums sort of seen any
rise and interest? Have you noticedmore people coming around or is it how's
it going? Well, the problemis it came out in October, so
we were already slam packed for October. Anyway, you guys wouldn't know.
Yeah, we had it's like ourChristmas time here. Oh man. So
we had tons of people coming andthe bust upone in the garden has more
(11:48):
lipstick on it than ever. Ihave to go clean all the kisses off
it tomorrow morning. Oh my god. Well it's a living I guess.
Yeah. References of pulling out deadpeople's teeth and then when you're not busy
cleaning the kisses off the gravest Ohyeah, oh yeah, they leave everything
on the po bus. There's presenceout there. I saw a long poem
so of me ridden out there forhim this evening, and we saved the
(12:11):
good stuff. But all the coins, you know, we give them to
the gift shop. Absolutely, andany other favorite parts. Chris, Well,
I always like the Black Cat justbecause I like cats. Okay,
I'm sure the cats here probably didn'tlike that very much because it didn't go
well for that first Black Cat.And of course anybody who reads a lot
of Poe and knows about Rufus Griswoldswould probably be glad to see that Rufus
(12:35):
Griswold got his come upance there.Yes, but definitely that episode is not
like, oh, I can't waitto own a cat, you know what
I mean? Like it doesn't reallyYeah, it's not the most pet friendly
episode. No, no, no, I'm changing the subject. I'm done
talking about cats. Go right ahead, knock yourself out. Okay. So,
(12:56):
Chris, did you know when Roderickwas always in the basement staring at
the brick wall? Did you knowthe significance of that all along? No?
But I hope there was something backthere Okay, Yeah, I just
think this would be a missed opportunityif nobody's back there, right, because
you know how Poe like putting peoplebehind walls. Yeah. This is the
(13:16):
difference, I think, Chris,between you and Stacey and I is that
we're watching the show being like,ah, boy, I wonder what that
sound means or I wonder what's goingon there, and you're like, boy,
I sure hope there's somebody dead backthere. This is gonna be great.
Well, you don't just naturally assumethere's somebody behind the wall, yeah,
fair enough, or under the floorboards. There's always going to be somebody
hidden back there. Yeah, thisis why you're the expert, I think.
(13:41):
I also liked the episode about theTailtale Heart without heart mesh. That
was a different way of addressing thisyear the Tailtale Heart. It was sort
of electronic heart beat, but itstill had the same impact on the guilty
party. Yeah. The ending ofthat episode is particularly gruesome. I mean,
not that they're all not gruesome,certainly, but this one seemed more
(14:01):
gruesome than most. Do you feellike that amount of gruesomeness is still within
the Poe cannon? I mean,I always wonder like the Poe go far
enough and describing how horrible the endsof their fates were, or do we
think illustrating it actually takes away fromthat no and the telltale heart the original
story, he does describe cutting thebody into pieces and using a tub to
(14:26):
catch all the blood. And barand Icy there's a whole good passage about
the bloody teeth coming out of hislittle box. And there's actually four paragraphs
that Poe cut out of the originalbar and Icy about smelling the stench of
death. He goes to see thebody and he can be just almost knocked
over by the stink of it.Throughout his stories you get a lot of
the stench, the foulness of theair, the death in the air.
(14:50):
And so he pushed as far ashe could back then. So I think
he might have pushed a little bitfar, but he does it strategically.
It's not gory throughout. He likesto have that exclamation point, and at
thinks that's what they did with alot of these episodes. You have that
exclamation point. The chimpanzee, whoin post story would have been Orangutang,
kills Camille and or he got prospergetting ascid poured on him these good exclamation
(15:16):
points into the story, and thepit in the pendulum with Frederick getting you
know, killed by that thing likethat was pretty amazing. Oh yeah,
because I was wondering, how's thisgoing to work out? Because we don't
have a lot of giant pendulum bladesaround here these days. No, it's
true, but they improvised. Yes, they did. They did. They
managed to find one, yeah,and then slowly severed the Manhattan. Well,
(15:41):
Chris, we are so grateful tohaving you there. I have to
say, throughout my time of watchingthis show, I totally kept reflecting back
on our time with you and allthe information you gave us in the grounding
for that. So I just wantto say thank you so much. It
really kind of enriched my whole experienceof watching this show. So I'm really
grateful to you, and I wantto encourage anybody who's listening to this to
(16:03):
please come check out the Poe Museumand learn more about it, because I
think it will only make the enjoymentof the show all that much better.
Yeah, for sure, thank you. It's my pleasure. Thanks Chris.
You take care of have a goodholiday, all right? To have a
melancholy weekend. Yeah. Thanks.Psychoanalyzing The Fall of the House of Usher
(16:25):
is a production of straw Hut Media. Your hosts are Stacey and I and
Lindsay Jones. Your producer is MaggieBowles. Editing and sound design by Daniel
Ferrera, Theme music by Adrian BreanGuer with additional music from Marco Martini and
Artie Son. Subscribe, rate andreview, and come back for new episodes
every Friday, and tell us whatshould we psychoanalyze next. Let us know
(16:48):
by emailing us at Psychoanalyzing at strawhutmedia dot com. See you next week.
Straw Media. Hi, I'm LindsayJones, I'm Stacy Ny and welcome to
a special super bonus edition of psychoanalyzingthe Fall of the House of Usher.
This is a short bonus episode becausewe just couldn't help ourselves. Frankly,
(00:22):
we were so excited about this.As you may remember, in episode one
of our podcast series, we interviewedChris Sempner, who is the curator of
the Home Museum in Richmond, Virginia, and during that conversation with him,
he hadn't seen any episodes of theshow yet because we interviewed him before it
was released, and now the entireshow is out, Chris has had an
(00:42):
entire opportunity to see the show,and we really wanted to hear more about
what he had to say. Andhere is the conversation we had. Hi,
Chris, how you doing about theusual about yourself? We're good,
We're good. We're super excited totalk to you because now we are at
(01:07):
the very end of our series andwe were recently sort of going back over
our original episodes and we realized thatwhen we talked to you originally we said,
Hey, tell us what you thinkafter you've had a chance to watch
it, so we thought we mightbe able to circle back and just check
in with you and see how wereyou able to watch the whole series?
Oh yeah, I been watched thewhole thing in two days. Nice.
(01:33):
That's perfect, Stark two days,Chris, No, that's just typical for
here at the Poe Museum. Okay, that's just another day at the office
for you. Yeah, that's Tuesdayat the Poe Museum. That's right.
This madness, melancholy, mystery andmurder, that's that's every other day here.
Okay, So what did you think? How'd you like it? I
took a little bit of time gettinginto it that first episode. Yeah,
(01:55):
But then when they poured the acidon all the party guests, I was
like, oh, I could watchthe rest of this, you know,
like I'm in the right place.Yeah, And I wasn't really sure how
it was going to fit in withthe fall of the House of Usher.
Other than that first episode they're stillin the childhood home. There's some premature
burial, You've got the characters namedafter Madeline and Roder Usher. But then
(02:20):
when you wait all the way tothe end, you get that framework story
that fits together, just like posestory the Fall of the House of Usher,
right, because Poe actually structured itwith a poem and a story within
the story. And that's how thisis, its stories within the story and
it just all comes back together atthe end. M h. I mean,
like, obviously it is a completelyoriginal event unto itself. No one
(02:45):
will look at this and say,I, yes, this is the perfect
representation of the fall of the Houseof Usher. But do you feel like
it stayed true to Poe or doyou feel like it sort of wandered away
from Hoe? No? I thinkit tried to capture the sentral themes of
post story is the obsession, theguilt you saw on the Telltale Heart,
her guilt eating away at her,even if she couldn't remember having murdered her
(03:07):
wife. But you see, andthey made a lot of nods to pose
throughout, but they tried to staytrue to the stories, except for maybe
the gold bug episode, because thegold Bug is a treasure hunt mystery,
and here on they just sort ofnamed the pill the gold bug and the
ending with the stards of Glasses moreof William Wilson, sort of ending William
(03:29):
Wilson's want to pose other stories aboutdoubles and the Doppelgangers, and of course
the other sides of the dark sideof our own nature, which I guess
you could make the point that Tamberlainehas those two sides of her nature,
the public face she goes on stageshe wants to present, and then the
darker side she hides. You couldsay that Tamberlaine might be a little bit
(03:49):
of William Wilson, but you shouldjust name the episode William Wilson. Well,
and they talked about that in fact, episode five or episode six,
which is out while you while we'retalking right now of our show, of
our show, we interview Rebecca Klingel, and she tells us all about that,
how it's a combination of both ofthose kind of stories, and how
(04:13):
because she wrote that episode, thedoppelganger episode. So, yeah, you're
exactly right, you're exactly right.Apparently that the episode was originally titled William
Wilson, and then they went backand retitled it Goldbug because they felt that
gold Bug fet the sort of physicalfitness life package thing that they were working
(04:33):
on, but that during the actualepisode writing they had modeled it much more
after William Wilson. I guess andI'd like the different references to post stories
throughout. And at the very beginning, the minister who's reading the sermon,
he's actually a Poe guy. He'dbeen in a Poe film. He was
(04:55):
in the Death of Poe, actuallyplayed Poe in that film, really,
and here he was the minister recitingPoe's poetry. So I thought, almost
a nice little touch there. Andhe's a Baltimore guy who apparently went to
high school with Mike Flanagan. Sothings come full circle there. Yes,
Wow, how cool is that?So to pay attention to that minister who's
(05:15):
reading the eulogy and to go backand watch it. Do you remember the
last time I was here? Ithink I mentioned my favorite post story from
the beginning was never bet the Devilyour Head. Yes, So I really
liked how Camille would just brate herassistance and one of them was named Toby,
and she would say, damn it, Toby, Toby dammit, And
(05:36):
I thought, oh, that's TobyDammit is the name of the character.
Yes, So it feels like,oh, that's a nod for the three
of us who liked that story.See, this is this is exactly why
I wanted to talk to you,Liz is literally it because I was like,
this guy's going to know all thePoe deep cuts, right, all
the b sides of Poe that otherwisewe wouldn't catch. You're gonna you're gonna
(05:59):
get And so I'm so glad thatyou're able to point these things out because
in passing I was like, Hey, that sounds familiar, But I'm not
sure are there any other like eastereggs or little references that you're like,
hah, that's pretty slick now theyput that in there. Maybe some of
them are just too obvious, likeall the characters you know are named after
characters and post stories, and yeah, you can see each episode reference different
(06:23):
post stories. So I didn't thinka lot of them are too subtle.
I think there's maybe a reference inMark Hamill's character Arthur Gordon Pim. They
talk about how you voyage around theworld and there's some cannibalism, and I
thought, well, that's from thisnovel, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim
and and that story Pim has facedwith the choice there's a few survivors left
(06:46):
on this raft, and they said, we got to eat somebody. So
they draw straws and decide who theyhave to eat, and just a fun
fact, it's the cabin boy RichardParker. Ah, that's not the fun
part. The fun part is Poewrote the story in eighteen thirty eight,
and like eighteen eighty four, itactually happened. There were four survivors in
a lifeboat and then they made thesame choice and guess who they ate,
(07:10):
the cabin boy Richard Parker. No, wow, that's crazy. So that
proves it pose a time traveler.Yeah, I mean it's interesting that he
picked that that is the place totravel to. But okay, yeah,
that's pretty impressive. Yeah, he'snot a good time traveler. He picked
the worst time to go to.How did you like some of the readings,
you know, the poems, thesoliloquies that the characters did, you
(07:34):
know, like straight you know Poepoems. Well, I like seeing them
just get worked into the story herethere. The eulogy was perfect because that
was a great opportunity to work thosein there. Sometimes the quote seemed a
little bit forced because they were justthrowing Poe quotes left and right, and
I wondered how that would read tosomebody who might not know this is a
(07:57):
Poe quote. They might just think, why are they speaking in this antiquated
language? How does that fit in? But if you know it's a Poe
quote, you're like, oh,yeah, there's another one. There's another
one, right, It's pretty rapidfire with the Poe references. You'll look
in the background of scenes. Oh, there's a picture of Raven there in
the background. And I don't wantto put words in your mouth, but
to me, the most successful useof the poems was Annabell Lee. It
(08:18):
seemed to be the one that weavedthrough the plot the most and also sort
of had the most payoff in termsof like what we learn about her story
and also really about how she sortof represents a lost love. She's kind
of like the Rosebud of this storybasically in terms of you know, what
(08:39):
could have been, what another lifewould have been for this? Yes,
And I'm just curious, did youfeel like the Annabel Lee thing helped you
or did you feel like it wasdistracting to you? No, I was
like a good Annabell Lee reference,And in the poem, of course,
she's dead, so you think thatthey could have gone with that direction where
he's just obsessed with her and she'sdead and gone forever. And this Sarah
(09:03):
took a different path that she doeslike in the poem, represent his lost
innocence. She was a child andI was a child in this kingdom by
the sea. We loved with thelove. There was more than love.
I and my Anna Bella Lee.So this is what he could have been
if he hadn't made that fateful decision. Yeah, to go the other direction.
So he had that choice and hestepped over the line. Yeah,
(09:26):
it seems like that's a common themethroughout the show, is that everyone is
given a choice, and it's clearlyillustrated, like you can take this more
honorable path, or you can takethis really terrible path. And literally every
single person in the show is like, I'll take the terrible. Please.
Then Frederick, he just keeps takingworse and worse paths. You know,
I'm gonna take my wife home,but I'm not just gonna do that.
(09:50):
I'm gonna go all putting pictures ofher all over the walls. And that's
not enough. Now I'm going torip out her teeth. And that was
another good Poe reference. That's fromBaron Nicy, Poe's first published horror story
is about a guy who's so obsessedwith his wife's teeth that after she's buried,
he digs her up in yanks outof her teeth. Oh God.
Then the twist was she was buriedalive the whole time, and she wasn't
(10:13):
too happy about having her teeth extractedlike that. So I was like,
oh, look, there's very nicyreference there. Only in the eighteen hundreds,
says somebody think, you know whatI'm gonna do for my first novel,
I'm gonna just go all out andpull out my death. Well it's
a different time. You know.You couldn't just have your dentures made of
nice, pretty dental porcelain. Andwhen you wanted the best dentures you had
(10:37):
to get them out of corpses.They fit perfectly and good occlusion. Wow,
this show has really given me alot to think about, I have
to say. In fact, Poehad read a news article about the time
about some dental students who got caughtstealing teeth from corpses. Man, I
guess it's that's one way to getahead in the in the world. Well,
(10:58):
because of the gold fillings. Isthat why they were stealing no,
to make dentures out of the teeth, just regular teeth. Yeah, that's
what they use. They use that, either that or ivory. And okay,
I'm glad I didn't get into thatbusiness. But okay, I have
one big question, which is obviouslywe didn't even know this when we talked
to you, but it turns outthe show's a massive hit. It's like
been number one on Netflix for likethree four weeks in a row. Now,
(11:22):
it's been a huge sensation. Hasthe Poe Museums sort of seen any
rise and interest? Have you noticedmore people coming around or is it how's
it going? Well, the problemis it came out in October, so
we were already slam packed for October. Anyway, you guys wouldn't know.
Yeah, we had it's like ourChristmas time here. Oh man. So
we had tons of people coming andthe bust upone in the garden has more
(11:48):
lipstick on it than ever. Ihave to go clean all the kisses off
it tomorrow morning. Oh my god. Well it's a living I guess.
Yeah. References of pulling out deadpeople's teeth and then when you're not busy
cleaning the kisses off the gravest Ohyeah, oh yeah, they leave everything
on the po bus. There's presenceout there. I saw a long poem
so of me ridden out there forhim this evening, and we saved the
(12:11):
good stuff. But all the coins, you know, we give them to
the gift shop. Absolutely, andany other favorite parts. Chris, Well,
I always like the Black Cat justbecause I like cats. Okay,
I'm sure the cats here probably didn'tlike that very much because it didn't go
well for that first Black Cat.And of course anybody who reads a lot
of Poe and knows about Rufus Griswoldswould probably be glad to see that Rufus
(12:35):
Griswold got his come upance there.Yes, but definitely that episode is not
like, oh, I can't waitto own a cat, you know what
I mean? Like it doesn't reallyYeah, it's not the most pet friendly
episode. No, no, no, I'm changing the subject. I'm done
talking about cats. Go right ahead, knock yourself out. Okay. So,
(12:56):
Chris, did you know when Roderickwas always in the basement staring at
the brick wall? Did you knowthe significance of that all along? No?
But I hope there was something backthere Okay, Yeah, I just
think this would be a missed opportunityif nobody's back there, right, because
you know how Poe like putting peoplebehind walls. Yeah. This is the
(13:16):
difference, I think, Chris,between you and Stacey and I is that
we're watching the show being like,ah, boy, I wonder what that
sound means or I wonder what's goingon there, and you're like, boy,
I sure hope there's somebody dead backthere. This is gonna be great.
Well, you don't just naturally assumethere's somebody behind the wall, yeah,
fair enough, or under the floorboards. There's always going to be somebody
hidden back there. Yeah, thisis why you're the expert, I think.
(13:41):
I also liked the episode about theTailtale Heart without heart mesh. That
was a different way of addressing thisyear the Tailtale Heart. It was sort
of electronic heart beat, but itstill had the same impact on the guilty
party. Yeah. The ending ofthat episode is particularly gruesome. I mean,
not that they're all not gruesome,certainly, but this one seemed more
(14:01):
gruesome than most. Do you feellike that amount of gruesomeness is still within
the Poe cannon? I mean,I always wonder like the Poe go far
enough and describing how horrible the endsof their fates were, or do we
think illustrating it actually takes away fromthat no and the telltale heart the original
story, he does describe cutting thebody into pieces and using a tub to
(14:26):
catch all the blood. And barand Icy there's a whole good passage about
the bloody teeth coming out of hislittle box. And there's actually four paragraphs
that Poe cut out of the originalbar and Icy about smelling the stench of
death. He goes to see thebody and he can be just almost knocked
over by the stink of it.Throughout his stories you get a lot of
the stench, the foulness of theair, the death in the air.
(14:50):
And so he pushed as far ashe could back then. So I think
he might have pushed a little bitfar, but he does it strategically.
It's not gory throughout. He likesto have that exclamation point, and at
thinks that's what they did with alot of these episodes. You have that
exclamation point. The chimpanzee, whoin post story would have been Orangutang,
kills Camille and or he got prospergetting ascid poured on him these good exclamation
(15:16):
points into the story, and thepit in the pendulum with Frederick getting you
know, killed by that thing likethat was pretty amazing. Oh yeah,
because I was wondering, how's thisgoing to work out? Because we don't
have a lot of giant pendulum bladesaround here these days. No, it's
true, but they improvised. Yes, they did. They did. They
managed to find one, yeah,and then slowly severed the Manhattan. Well,
(15:41):
Chris, we are so grateful tohaving you there. I have to
say, throughout my time of watchingthis show, I totally kept reflecting back
on our time with you and allthe information you gave us in the grounding
for that. So I just wantto say thank you so much. It
really kind of enriched my whole experienceof watching this show. So I'm really
grateful to you, and I wantto encourage anybody who's listening to this to
(16:03):
please come check out the Poe Museumand learn more about it, because I
think it will only make the enjoymentof the show all that much better.
Yeah, for sure, thank you. It's my pleasure. Thanks Chris.
You take care of have a goodholiday, all right? To have a
melancholy weekend. Yeah. Thanks.Psychoanalyzing The Fall of the House of Usher
(16:25):
is a production of straw Hut Media. Your hosts are Stacey and I and
Lindsay Jones. Your producer is MaggieBowles. Editing and sound design by Daniel
Ferrera, Theme music by Adrian BreanGuer with additional music from Marco Martini and
Artie Son. Subscribe, rate andreview, and come back for new episodes
every Friday, and tell us whatshould we psychoanalyze next. Let us know
(16:48):
by emailing us at Psychoanalyzing at strawhutmedia dot com. See you next week.
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