Fatal Attraction Ep. 01 - Fatal Attraction / Presumed Innocent

We’ve flirted with you, gone out to dinner, and talked movies. But now, this podcast demands you face the consequences because it’s time to dive into the wave of “dangerous stranger” psychological thrillers launched by Adrian Lyne’s FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) starring very naughty boy Michael Douglas and the unignorable Glenn Close. We then examine the evidence in Alan J. Pakula’s legal thriller PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990) starring Harrison Ford, Bonnie Bedelia, and Greta Scacchi.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
you
In 1979, British filmmaker James Dearden made a short film entitled Diversion about aseemingly happily married man who engages in a one-night stand with a woman he barely

(00:22):
knows.
When the woman seeks a greater commitment, things quickly spiral out of control.
Several years later, Dearden adapted his short into a feature script.
The subsequent film, directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close,made such an impact upon its release in September of 1987 that by the end of that year,

(00:44):
the two stars were on the cover of Time Magazine and the film was the talk of marriedcouples across the country.
It also kicked off a wave of imitators explicitly sending the message to yuppie couplesthat letting strangers into your life was a dangerous proposition.
This is Get Me Another Fatal Attraction.

(01:21):
you
life.
And where's your wife?
Daddy!
Let me out!
here with a strange girl, being a naughty boy.
I don't think having dinner with anybody is a crime.
I've got to see you.
This is gonna stop.
No, it's not gonna stop.
It's gonna go on and on.
She keeps calling the apartment.
Hello?
Every time Beth answers the phone, she hangs up.

(01:45):
I'm scared, Jimmy.
Will you play fair with me?
Do you have an affair with her?
I'll play fair with you.
I don't want to lose my family.
If you ever come near my family again, I'll kill you, you understand?
Daddy!
I'm not gonna be ignored!

(02:06):
Alicia, where's Ellen?
She's gone.
Call the police!
Whatever resentment she's feeling, she's probably got it out of her.
What if she didn't get it out of her system, what then?
I guess you thought you'd get away with it, well...
You can't.

(02:32):
Hello and welcome to our brand new Get Me Another series exploring the cycle of films thatfollowed the 1987 erotic thriller Fatal Attraction.
My name is Chris Iannicone and with me are my co-host Rob Lemorgas.
Are you discreet, Chris?
I'd like to think so.
Are you?

(02:53):
me either.
Yeah, no.
And Justin Beam!
I'm not going to be ignored, Dan.
You
No, no, you will not.
For those that might not be familiar with our show, who might be listening for the firsttime, I just want to, just a little recap of what we do here.
We look at a watershed film, one with a significant impact on cinema and popular culture,and then we examine the films that came in its wake and tried in one way or another to

(03:23):
replicate its success.
And gentlemen, I have to say,
I'm very excited to be back starting another series.
We have some fantastic movies.
The nineties were replete with these kind of thrillers and we have some interesting daysahead.
But before we dive in, I want to mention both of you guys have some exciting news.
Justin, you have written a book and that is now available.

(03:45):
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah, the book is called Roadside Memories, Beloved and Bizarre Attractions from NorthAmerica's Past.
wow.
And it is a collection of the first 27 entries of my monthly column from TV Guide'smagazine.
They have an entertainment nostalgia magazine called Remind.
And I have a monthly column in there about shuttered amusement parks and roadside odditiesand things like that.

(04:11):
And I collected the first 27 entries from
those monthly columns into one volume here and expanded on each one of those stories withnew side stories, lots more images, new interviews and things that were not part of the
original magazine runs.
So it's an exciting thing.
Yeah, it just came out.
It's available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

(04:34):
mean, any bookseller can certainly order it for you.
And it's also on my site, JustinBeam.com.
Signing those and sending them off and Rob, yours is in the mail.
Thank you so much for ordering one.
good yes
gotta order one too, that sounds fantastic and I'm very excited to take a look at it.
Yeah, it's been a really fun project.

(04:54):
I love writing this column.
mean, the drive is really in sharing the stories of these people who, as I put it on theback cover, they insisted that their dreams should become reality.
It takes a very special kind of entrepreneur to want to not just create something, butoftentimes to create something very strange, completely out of the norm.

(05:21):
and all in effort to entertain people, give them some escapism, give them an experiencethey wouldn't have anywhere else.
And so I have real deep admiration for everybody who is behind all the attractions thatare featured.
I mean, some of them lasted year, like decades, and some of them lasted less than a year.
I mean, the stories are wide and some of them are incredibly tragic, but they're allabsolutely fascinating.

(05:44):
And I'm really pleasantly surprised by how the book's been doing.
Appreciate you bringing it up, Chris.
it sounds like pure Americana.
Like it just sounds like sort of that the classic American, cause we're such a roadcentric country.
This is something that is so, so particular to America.
These kind of roadside attractions.
It sounds great.

(06:04):
Absolutely, yeah.
And that's the main category that it's in is Americana.
And I was really shocked the day that it came out.
It came out at midnight.
And by 8 a.m.
my time central the next morning, it was number one in Americana.
I couldn't believe it on Amazon.
That's great.
Blown away.
It's fantastic.
It's been a tremendous reception.
And I'm very honored and grateful to my team at TV Guide and Remind for being so on boardwith this project from the beginning.

(06:33):
So yeah, thank you and everyone who picks one up, thank you in advance.
that's fantastic.
And Rob, you've been working on something that has just recently had its debut on NBC andPeacock.
You are on the writing staff of the television show Suits LA.
Yes, my writing partner, Marshall Knight and I have been on since August of 24, roughly.

(06:58):
Yeah, it just debuted here in the US.
No word yet on where you'd be able to watch it in Europe or elsewhere abroad, though Iwould imagine that will be coming.
I literally don't know.
And it takes place in the Suits universe.
Yeah, it's in the same world.
It is, you know, it's a different show, different characters, they're doing their ownthing.

(07:22):
And, but I can't say at this point, it's been so widely publicized.
This is not a spoiler.
will not get me in trouble with the bosses, but Gabriel mocked Harvey Specter himself willmake an appearance.
He's going to be on three separate episodes.
He will have some roles and those will be kind of, you know, building up.

(07:44):
And yeah, yeah, it's just very happy for people to see it.
It's done very well on peacock in week one.
just, you know, hey, you know, check it out.
And people loved that original Suits show that you were also on the writing staff for.
That kind of blew up on Netflix.
Totally did during the strike year, I believe.
It's gonna be, whole new cast of characters for you to fall in love with.

(08:07):
It should be fun.
that's
Yeah, I'm very excited to see it.
So yeah, both of those projects, very exciting guys.
And as are some of the movies that we're gonna be talking about on this series.
Now, Fatal Attraction was not the first erotic thriller, a genre that had been gainingsteam since the early 80s with films like American Gigolo, Dressed to Kill and Body Heat.

(08:29):
But Fatal Attraction took that genre to another level, both commercially and criticallywith a worldwide box office of $320 million,
and six Academy Award nominations.
And it would kick off the golden age of the erotic thriller, which had run through themid-90s.
And we'll be talking about quite a few of the films from that period.

(08:51):
But beyond that, it spurred countless bedroom conversations and its title, FatalAttraction, became part of our collective cultural lexicon.
All you need to do is say, oh, you know, that's a fatal attraction.
And everybody knows what that means.
Yeah, it's kind of rare that anything enters the general vocabulary like that and becomesshorthand for something.

(09:14):
then I was listening to this book the other day on Stephen King and it's happened with himseveral times.
Christine and Kujo are two examples of what you're talking about where it's universallyacknowledged exactly what that means no matter what you're referring to.
And this absolutely became shorthand for a doomed relationship.

(09:35):
Yeah, something where it's just, it's spiraling out of control and it's fast.
So as I mentioned, the movie was written by James Dearden based on his short filmDiversion.
Apparently he had an assist and it's uncredited by Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan directorNicholas Meyer, who helped him shape the short film into a feature.

(09:56):
And Dearden's short film is interesting.
I watched it this week.
I don't know if you guys had a chance to, but it's an interesting...
sort of acorn for the tree that would be fatal attraction.
It's very similar.
covers like kind of the first act of fatal attraction, but there's a couple ofdifferences.
Specifically, the man in the film, I think his name is Guy, he calls the woman, Erica, assoon as his wife is out of town.

(10:22):
Like he had apparently met her at a party a weeks earlier.
He asked for her number and it's much more, he is much more active in seeking out anaffair.
than Dan in Fatal Attraction, who kind of stumbles into it.
Not to say that Dan's not responsible for his actions, because he absolutely is, but ithappens by chance for Dan.

(10:44):
Whereas Guy in the short film is just, he is absolutely there.
That is his whole goal, the minute his wife is on the train and out of town.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I did not get a chance to see the short, but that's an interesting change for sure withthe main characters' motivation of sorts.
yeah, as you say, it definitely takes two to tango in Fatal Attraction.

(11:07):
for sure.
Yeah.
It definitely, you know, but, there's, there's a slightly more like, let me put it thisway in fatal attraction, you have every reason to believe this is the first time Dan has
been unfaithful to his wife.
Whereas you get the impression in the short film that this is something that the guy doesregularly.
So that's, it's a pretty significant difference.

(11:28):
And I think it's a smart change because if the ideas you want men to be able to identifywith Dan,
If you make this guy just kind of a walking sleaze bucket from the get-go, it's very easyfor someone to sort of look at that and say, well, that's not me.
I'm not going out looking for something.
It's much easier to kind of have that distance, whereas Dan just seems like an all rightguy.

(11:54):
And he finds himself in a situation.
And then, of course, he allows that situation to progress.
Yes.
I guess when we get into the movie, it's fun, some of the things that it takes to at leasttee up why Dan would have done this.
Yeah.
If, you know, not necessarily excusing it.

(12:15):
And then of course, the likability of Dan and what happens gets all wrapped up when we gettoward the end with the alternate original ending and the audience reaction to it.
But that's a story for a little later.
The alternate original ending is an interesting one and we'll talk about it when we getthere.
So Paramount Pictures, they bought the project, producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansingapproached quite a few directors for it.

(12:42):
Apparently at least 20 directors passed on it.
One of those was John Carpenter who turned it down because he felt it was too close to the1971 Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for me, which I...
I see that because Play Misty for me feels like a proto-fatal attraction.
I love Carpenter, but I think they wound up with the correct director for this particularproject for many reasons, which we'll talk about once we start getting into the movie.

(13:09):
There are things about this that make it very different even from all of the movies thatcome after it.
Yes.
Certain things that are so Adrian Lyne that they don't really get replicated.
Yeah, the directing job eventually went to Englishman Adrian Lyne, who had had a huge hitfor Paramount in 1983 with Flash Tance.

(13:31):
And then he directed the steamy and controversial erotic film Nine and a Half Weeks, whichit feels like some of the sex scenes in Fatal Attraction are like slightly dialed down
versions of stuff in Nine and a Half Weeks.
It's like, he's pulling back a little bit, but he had that base to work from.
back quite a bit.
Yeah.

(13:51):
Maybe it's just the absence of Mickey Rourke.
don't know.
Well, yes, there is.
Michael Douglas was attached fairly early to play Dan Gallagher, a New York attorney whocheats on his wife with Alex, a woman he meets through work.
And the role of Alex was apparently a bit more of a challenge to cast.
Actresses considered included Barbara Hershey, Isabella Ajoni, who was Adrienne Lyne'soriginal choice, Miranda Richardson, Ellen Barkin, Deborah Winger, Susan Sarandon, Judy

(14:21):
Davis, Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer,
Hersti Alley and Tracy Ullman, who declined due to the now famous scene with the bunny.
But Glenn Close pursued the role persistently.
And initially Jaffe and Lansing were concerned that she was not sexual enough.
But then she had a reading opposite Michael Douglas that was apparently just electric.

(14:45):
And Glenn Close won the part and she is.
Everybody is really, really good in this movie, but she is particularly good at acharacter that could be caricaturist if played without skill.
I mean, it's, we often talk about this with movies that start trends.
It is difficult for me to, all of the actresses you named are lovely and like powerhouseactors, like they all would have done a fine job.

(15:13):
It is difficult for me to imagine this movie without Glenn Close.
Absolutely.
Once you see this, it's one of those performances where you cannot imagine it with someoneelse or another way.
It would be a completely different movie.
Same with Michael Douglas, frankly.
No, that's absolutely true.

(15:33):
I have to, I have to, I know we're getting, I'm getting a little ahead with the awardstuff, but it's funny because when I, I was looking up this movie and I saw that, uh, what
both Anne Archer and I think Glenn Close were nominated for Academy awards for fatalattraction.
And I saw that Michael Douglas was not, and I got a little, uh, you know, online movieirate and I was like, what?

(15:54):
He didn't even get nominated for this movie.
I'm like, who even won that year?
What dumb and I looked up and of course,
Michael Douglas won for Wall Street.
I'm like, that's why they didn't nominate him for fatal.
Okay.
Wow, 1987 was a hell of a year for Michael Douglas.
I forgot that he had Wall Street in the same year.
Yeah, apparently so did I.

(16:15):
I'll say this, I saw one of those movies in the movie theater and it was not FatalAttraction.
I don't know why I was interested in seeing Wall Street at age 11, but like, yeah.
In addition to Michael Douglas, the film also stars Anne Archer as Dan's wife.
And I'm just going to get into it here because my first note, literally the first thing Iwrote down was, wow, Anne Archer looks great in this movie.

(16:39):
And it's true.
My God, her hair is amazing.
Like the opening scenes with Dan and Beth are getting ready to go out to a party, then wehave the party, then afterwards.
And she just looks so attractive in this movie.
And I think it's actually a really intentional and significant point.

(16:59):
Like Dan, is it cheating on his wife with someone hotter?
It's not, it's like, it's not, this isn't like Scarlett Johansson slips me a room key.
And how do I say no?
It's, it's, it's, it's not what you'd call a hall pass scenario.
Because those things are fantasies, this is something way more realistic.
Yes.
And, number one, I knew you were going to love her hair.

(17:23):
And 87.
So it's like that sweet spot of it's still very eighties, but it looks still, it doesn'tlook dated in the bad way, but, so kudos to makeup and hair on this movie.
But yeah, he is, it's funny.
And this is one of the things that I think line does and the production designer andlocations, all of that, they, they do very, very well, which is Dan's apartment.

(17:46):
the family apartment and the first time that we're really getting to see him there.
And the lens choice and the shot selection is such that I mean, this is one of the mostphysically suffocating locations you will see in any film ever, especially at the
beginning.

(18:07):
Dan's happy.
It's not that he is unhappy, but he's maybe harried and they are all on top of each other.
And you have,
all of these angles where you're shooting down the narrowest New York apartment hallway onfilm ever.
And it feels like the trash compactor in Star Wars somehow.
This is a man who's being squeezed by his very good life.

(18:30):
Right.
I love it.
I love it.
Right, like that apartment today would be millions of dollars.
And I wrote down that it's sort of like the chic Manhattan version of what I callSpielbergian domestic chaos.
Like it's, the, see it in a lot of movies in the 70s, 80s where everything like the houseis a little cluttered.
Everything's a little chaotic, but you know, there's, there's love there.

(18:51):
And it's like, that's, that's the way, you know, Spielberg had it in like Close Encountersof the Third Kind and, and, and ET.
And it's like, this is like the chic Manhattan version of that.
Like clearly they moved into this apartment when they were, when they first got married,you know, and it was perfectly comfortable for two of them, but then they had a child,
they haven't moved out of it yet.
And it's just, there's so much stuff.

(19:13):
Like it feels like everything is, is just, it's so full that apartment.
I thought him, him being, you know, kind of suffocated by that, by something, by anapartment that I would kill both of you guys for.
I'll be just straight up about it, you know, is, fascinating.
Not really.
And the color palette too works with this because you open up and you're panning acrossthat sexy dusky sky as it's all kind of like purples and reds as the sun's going down, And

(19:43):
that, that in the way that that sky can only look on eighties film.
And then once you go inside beyond the, the narrowness of everything, it is that off whitethat every landlord paints in apartments.
Yeah, that neutral thing.
And it's everywhere.

(20:04):
And then there's, have the clutter or whatever, but just that stark difference betweenyou're going from these like sexy natural colors outside and then inside it's, it's just
that white, that white dominates everything, which on the one hand is the purity of it.
But on the other hand feels very sexless compared to that city outside of Dan's internalworld.

(20:27):
man, man, it all, it all really combines.
Well, it's interesting that the first time we see him at home, you know, his hot wife isgetting ready to go out.
The kid is watching.
You can't do that on television.
And he's listening to music in headphones that kind of tune out the world around him.
And I think that's a particularly interesting, like those headphones are going to comeback later in the film.

(20:50):
They're going to disappear for a while and come back.
And I think they're, really significant as kind of a symbol of him kind of closing himselfoff.
to what is immediately around him.
So they're getting ready to go out of this party.
And I want to point out, by the way, Jane Krakowski as the babysitter who shows up.
I don't know if either of you guys noticed that, but a very young Jane Krakowski.

(21:13):
The party they're going to is for a client of Dan's law firm and as a publisher who isreleasing an exercise book based on samurai techniques, which is honestly guys, the most
80s thing ever.
Yeah, this is our Mickey Rooney and breakfast at Tiffany's moment and holy yeah, very.

(21:34):
It's well, you know, the eighties were, you know, that there was a whole Japaneseobsession with the eighties, you know, that, you know, the American obsession with
Japanese culture at that particular time.
it's, it's, it's honestly, it fits right in with the time of this movie.
It's, it's exactly.
yeah, yeah, this, party, this corporate party might be more eighties than the NakatomiPlaza.

(22:01):
and I am happy cause we're about to meet one of his good friends played by Stuart Pankin,which nothing is more eighties to me than Stuart Pankin.
Stuart Pankett from not necessarily the news around that time.
And Stuart Pankett's wife is played by Ellen Foley, who sang the female part in MeatLoaf's classic Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

(22:23):
She was also on Night Court before Markey Post.
They are the perfect eighties, like friend couple.
Like it's perfect.
It's fantastic.
And I want to mention the funniest thing is when they're getting into the party,
It's not, it's like kind of off camera.
Like you hear Beth ask Dan if her hair is okay.

(22:45):
And I'm just like, lady, your hair is fantastic.
Hahaha!
So it's at the party that Dan first meets Alex after she gives Jimmy Sturr-Pankett'scharacter a look that could kill.
But he has this very kind of surface conversation at the bar.
It's both innocuous and it's a little flirty, but it's not like there's nothing wrong.

(23:07):
No one has done anything wrong in this case.
It's just, it's people talking at a bar.
But the next day, Beth is going up to her parents in Westchester, parents' house inWestchester County with the daughter.
where she wants to look at a house for sale and Dan is staying in the city because he hasa Saturday meeting and this is where things are going to start to go wrong.
Yeah.
And I want to just rewind slightly to when they get home from the party, the shot when youget back home is I think my favorite in this whole movie.

(23:38):
And it doesn't contain a human being for quite a while.
It's a static, I believe it's on sticks shot inside the home and you don't see any of thepeople yet.
And I think it's from inside the bedroom and you've got like the white walls.
I think the bedroom you've got
bedroom door open, you've got a hallway door and you've got maybe like another, like thebathroom door off to the side.

(24:00):
So you have these three different doors with door knobs and in various states of open andclosed.
So there are these odd angles, right?
Cause some are swung open and are some not some are not, and you cannot really tell.
It just looks like this, these stacks of white walls and doors.
And it's very difficult.
It first blushed to know like, wait, what room are we in?

(24:23):
Where's the hallway?
is.
so disorienting and flat and awful.
And then eventually I believe, I think Anne Archer comes into the shop first and is comingback to the bedroom.
But it's just such a great, know, the first thing you see after that party is now theirhome is to me, disorienting and thrown off and you don't know where you are.

(24:46):
I feel like we kind of walked over the initial interaction.
We did.
was because it's not it's not it.
Yes.
Yes, we absolutely did.
So let's take a second and go back to that because there's there's some curious stuff inthere.
There is.
When you first see Glenn Close's character of Alex, she looks...
I mean, at this point in the film, I think she looks kind of remarkably different than shedoes throughout the rest of the movie.

(25:13):
In this first sequence when you see her...
the only scene where she doesn't have bangs.
Right, right.
And she, she almost looks ghoulish.
Her eyes are sunken and haunted and she enters the, she's not the most likely person forhim to necessarily be attracted to at this, at this party.
So it's not setting it up with heavy flirtation, as you said, it's really casual.

(25:37):
And when he hits the bar, this is such rich people stuff.
He goes, can I get a champagne please?
Yes.
In 99 % of movies, it would be like, I'll take a beer.
Right.
But, and then when his wife gives the nod, it's time to go.
He slams the champagne, by the way, champagne is disgusting and to have to slam it soundsabsolutely nightmarish.

(25:58):
I don't know if this is just what rich people do, but he literally pounds it like youwould finishing up a beer when you're leaving the bar with your friends or something like
that.
And he gets home, he doesn't want to walk the dog.
He's just wanting to go to bed and he gets back from walking the dog and the kid is on hisside of the bed in bed.
which is relatable to anyone who has kids and was ever in a relationship of any kind, likemarried or whatever.

(26:24):
So anyway, just to set this up that when Alex and Dan first meet, you don't sensechemistry there.
They both play it off very well as it being something very casual that neither of themwould have thought much about after the fact.
And I think that's a nice way to set up what is to come.
Yeah, no, and it's very different from the short where you, don't see the party, but youlearn that he was drunk and asked for her number and she gave it to him.

(26:49):
So it's, it's an interesting that the way this story has evolved to be more, to make Danmore relatable, even again, he is responsible for his choices to be absolutely clear, but
there's a, there's a big difference between sort of the, the idea of, of going out thereseeking something and just kind of like,

(27:10):
Again, nothing Dan does at the party is wrong or would even be considered, even slightlyskeevy.
It's just, was talking to the person next to him at the.
Life is right there.
not thinks he isn't thinking twice about it.
You know, and in the same way, none of us want, it's just, it's just making small talkwith someone at the bar who's at a work function where most of the people there are going

(27:30):
to be connected to whatever this is, you know, whether they work for the publisher or thelaw firm or the accounting firm or whatever, everybody's kind of there.
connected.
It's not even like a random bar in the city or something.
So the next day, Beth goes up to her parents' house and with the daughter, because shewants to look at a house that's for sale because they're thinking about moving out to the

(27:51):
suburbs because, you know, they've kind of outgrown that apartment.
I want to point out the Volvo station wagon, the preferred method of transportation forupper middle-class yuppies in the late eighties.
We had a Volvo station wagon my parents did for a while.
That's the car I learned to drive on.
And he goes to this meeting at his office and this is where he meets Alex again, who, whosmiles at him like a shark looking at Robert Shaw.

(28:18):
mean, it is, you know, she gives him a smile that is, my goodness.
But, know, so she already has some, I think thoughts on her mind right from that meeting,but then they get caught in the rain, it's pouring out and his umbrella malfunctions.
they kind of, they was like, Oh, do you want to go have dinner and wait this out?
And it's that evening at dinner where things take a turn for the flirtatious.

(28:44):
And how it's funny being a lawyer, you know, it's like being a doctor, but it's tellingyou their innermost secrets.
You have to be discreet.
yeah.
Are you?
You're my wife.
That's great.

(29:12):
Yes, I'm just great.
Me too.
Can I ask you something?
What?
Why don't you have a date tonight, Saturday night?
I did have a date.
I stood him up.
That was the phone call I made.

(29:36):
that make you feel good.
doesn't make me feel bad.
So where's your wife?
Where's my wife?
wife is in the country with her parents visiting her on the weekend.

(29:57):
And you're here with a strange girl being a naughty boy?
I don't think having dinner with anybody's a crime.
Not yet.
Will it be?
I don't know, what do you think?
I definitely think it's gonna be up to you.
This is such an interesting scene.
First of all, both Douglas and Close are so great.

(30:21):
Like, my God, like their interplay between, like it's just, you know, it walks a lot oflines.
It's a very subtly acted scene in a great.
way.
and Glenn Close plays regardless of what we might, I mean, it's never really, really madeclear whether she had intentions of moving on him.

(30:45):
It seems like it was happenstance for them both.
Yeah.
In a lot of different movies, and I'm sure we're going to get into some in this series,where one person had an angle from the start.
And for her, I think part of the mastery in her performance in this whole thing is how
you can be convinced at any point really, mean, until things go off the rails later on,you can be convinced that she is seeing an opportunity for something more than what she

(31:13):
has or has had.
And some of what she does in the first half of the film is relatively, I mean, it's likerelationship stuff.
She's wanting to connect with someone.
And this scene really plays that well.
And it's on both their fronts too, where neither one of them is
is really leaning into it too heavily.
feels very naturally flirtatious.

(31:35):
And the way she goes about it with the line that Rob said in the beginning here, are youdiscreet?
Yes, yes I am.
And that's kind of where things begin.
But it's not this moment of like leaning in and grabbing her by her collar and giving hera hard kiss or something.
It's just, he's tiptoeing into this at.
Well, yeah.

(31:56):
And he even, you know, when, when, when she asks, you know, she, she says, you know,something along the lines of it's going to, it's, do you think something's going to
happen?
And he goes, Oh, I definitely think that's going to be up to you.
Right.
Way to let yourself off the hook pal.
Like it's up to both of you, but you're kind of putting the ball in her court.
Like, well, if you want it to happen, it'll happen.

(32:17):
It's a little bit bullshit.
It's a little bit bullshit, Dan.
And she calls him on it eventually.
mean, later that becomes a mantra for her and a lot of her communication with him istalking about basically owning his responsibility in this, know, taking up, doing,
following up on what he is very much a part of initiating to.
Yeah.

(32:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, because in this early, I agree with you.
does, you know, I think that Alex has probably had affairs before and one night standsbefore.
I don't think that she is instantly obsessed with it.
And also she's single.
Like you never get the impression she's married.
I mean, it's,
No, I would argue that it's around the Madame Butterfly area that I think the relationshipturns for her.

(33:02):
Yeah.
That scene, which we'll, I'm sure get to, but like, I don't think she sabotaged Dan'sumbrella early for the rain so that she could get him under the umbrella and all of that.
But one of the things that I love about this movie that is very different, I think from alot of the movies that will follow, including the other, the next that we'll talk about is

(33:23):
that
I think the story itself is delightfully, it's not disjointed, but this movie, there's theold writing adage for screenwriting that you get into a scene as late as possible and get
out as early as possible.
And holy smokes, this movie takes that to a new extreme where you never get like early onat least, you don't get a three minute scene, like a big long, know, talky scene.

(33:52):
where they're really getting to know each other or whatever.
This isn't the beginning of the social network where you have a 10 minute conversation.
This is, mean, these all, all of these scenes are so short that it borders on montage, butit isn't.
It's just dropping you into these key moments.
And it's almost like as an audience member, like, I don't know that they did it for this,but it does feel like you're almost in Dan's POV where you go, wait, we're already here?

(34:22):
You know, you just like, there's this little flirtation and then, and then we have the,you know, the dinner and then, you know, and, re you know, the rain and I'm saying things
out of order.
And the next thing you know, you're at her place and it's like, how did we wind up here?
There's so much connective tissue that they just don't do to great effect.

(34:44):
Yeah, no, I agree.
And there are some real subtleties, a lot of them relating to touch throughout the wholefilm.
And you see Alex registering them.
And that's to Glenn Close's performance.
When they're out in the rain, the very first time it happens really is when they decide togo to get something to eat in the storm.

(35:06):
And he grabs her hand.
Yeah.
And they run under the umbrella together.
She puts the umbrella over his head.
Not initially.
When she first walks up and they're laughing about his blown out umbrella, she doesn't putit over his head right away, like, I've been waiting for this moment.
She kind of realizes, yeah, and she means it over the two of them.
But when he grabs her hand and they go running, there's like a brief second where she kindof looks for a second and acknowledges that there's this moment of touch.

(35:36):
And as we talk about the film, as we move through it, there's going to be a number ofthese that are pivotal.
to what I think is elevating her perception of what they have as the movie moves on.
And I just love the subtleties of those kinds of connection moments that aren't just basedon dialogue.
Absolutely.
I noticed, I did notice him take her hand when they took the umbrella.

(35:59):
And again, it's the sort of thing where it's not like I'm holding your hand in a kind ofdramatic way.
you know, in a movie about teenage romance, you'd have the person, I'm going on on a limbholding hands.
It's just, you know, Hey, we both have to be under the umbrella.
And that's, it's just kind of a natural thing, but it's the sort of thing where thesenatural things add up to, to messages, even unintended ones.

(36:24):
I also want to point out before we leave the restaurant scene, this scene is almost ishere in almost in its entirety in Dearden's original short, but it's a little different
because the line about being a naughty boy belongs to the guy.
He said, I'm be here being a naughty boy.
And he then says, I think that, you know, whether they're going to have sleep together ornot, I think that's up to you.

(36:46):
So it's a way more forward line in the original version of this.
than in the Fatal Attraction feature film.
the naughty boy line.
It's funny you bring it up as a little aside in and I'm not getting into the endingchange, but I did see an interview with Michael Douglas about that ending change.
I don't know some film festival or whatever from six years ago or at least both.

(37:09):
And he referenced, you know, you know, he was saying the audiences wanted a differentending, even though my character had been a naughty boy.
So I thought it was very fun that he, still got it locked in.
Still got it locked in.
So sure enough, Dan and Alex end up back in Alex's apartment and they're very eager to geton.
They start doing it in the kitchen over the sink.

(37:32):
They're there and you know, it's an Adrian Lyne movie.
So you know, they're going to perspire because you always perspire in an Adrian Lynemovie, but they're so horny.
They can't even wait to get sweaty.
They just start throwing water from the faucet on each other's face, which I thought was a
And again, Alex's apartment, comparing it to Dan's, this is the most wide open lockedspace you have ever seen.

(37:59):
It's a former warehouse, you know, probably lower Manhattan
Yeah, in a dangerous neighborhood of sort of these damn things.
So, but, uh, man, oh man, this is wide open and inviting, uh, aside from all of the dirtydishes piled up in that same.
yeah, no.
And he pulls and Dan pulls off quite a feat.
It's, it's an Olympic achievement, what he does while they're having sex and he is, he'spenetrating her.

(38:23):
He's inside of her.
They decide to change scenery.
And so they want to move over to the bed.
He picks her up, carries her while he's in her, gets his pants off with his feet.
The pants around his ankles, he nearly falls over.
But manages to keep them both upright and then he gets out of the pants, makes his waydown at least one step and then over to the bed.

(38:45):
I'm like, and what I put in my notes in all caps is bravo, man.
Apparently, I saw an interview with Adrian Lyne where he said he for sex scenes, he knowsthat sex scenes come with tension.
And obviously he's filmed quite a few of them.
So he wanted, he put in that moment with Dan sort of struggling to get his pants off whilehe's holding her up just to kind of be a tension breaker into the next bit.

(39:07):
That was an intentional choice, which I think it's a great.
And I think it keeps things clumsy.
mean, if you're first meeting somebody, if you're having an intense first encounter,you're functioning on instinct at that point.
And it's going to be clumsy and it's going to be messy and it's not necessarily going tobe the tidy kind of lay down in soft focus as the pink light glows in the background that

(39:28):
so many movies that fell on the wake of this one would embrace as their, as their mode ofpresentation.
And I just love how sort of found in quotes, the
the natural clumsiness and awkwardness around all this is.
And that goes from front to back in this film.
Yeah.
None of the moments are played out easily.

(39:48):
Things are arrived at in rough ways.
And the, I just think he did such an amazing job directing this thing and keeping itfeeling so real.
Yeah.
And the rough ways, I mean, is we're in this, you know, post the sex, where Alex saysessentially isn't done, but not with the sex parts.

(40:10):
She has learned the lesson that post romancing the stone, need a sweaty Michael Douglasdance scene, right?
But what's interesting is that, you know, they've jumped the gun, right?
It's disjointed.
They've went straight to sex.
So they're doing it backwards.
She wants the foreplay of the dance after the sex.

(40:32):
Yeah.
And he complies.
He's into it too.
And so you see by doing it the wrong way or out of order of how it would often morenormally progress that this is now not just a one night stand.
And I love the fact that the dance is used in that way.
And again, that's a very, very short scene.

(40:54):
It's not like
We don't get an awesome dance quite like in romancing the stone.
But it's, effective in showing that already that change is happening.
and the impulse of that first event of them hooking up, it happened so quickly afterthey're at this restaurant, let's go.
Like they're just the following instinct to get in there.
Then they go out, then they do the dance thing, which isn't a long sequence, but then theygo back to her apartment.

(41:19):
And this establishes a motif that I think is so fascinating about how Lyon approachedAlex's place, because this warehouse, like to get to her place, they walk by burning
barrels, hanging meat.
carcasses of like eviscerated animals.
Yeah, yeah, but her apartment is presented as kind of being in hell.

(41:42):
And when they get up there, they ascend up into this all white.
I mean, this, you know, her everything is painted white in her place and it's almostangelic in a way.
But to get there, you have to travel through hell.
And this happens just about every time he makes his, Dan makes his way back to Alex'sapartment throughout the film.

(42:03):
He goes through those same kind of flames to get in there.
And it's, I think it's just an interesting way to present this that initially we didn'tsee any of that when they first went there for their initial hookup.
We didn't see any of the exterior stuff around her apartment.
They were just suddenly in there.
And then now once they're both a little more comfortable with each other, now it's like,there's a choice to go back there.

(42:25):
That after the dancing, it's a choice to return to this.
And now you're in the inferno and that.
recurs throughout the picture.
It absolutely, absolutely does.
They have sex in the elevator, again, feels like a dialed, know, more kind of slightlydialed back version of some of the scenes from nine and a half weeks.

(42:45):
Well, she stops the elevator when they're in there.
Yeah.
But I think the fascinating thing about that is how are they presented being in there?
They're in a cage.
Yeah.
And there's this great shot from up above, above the elevator.
And you see it is a completely enclosed because it's a freight elevator in a warehouse,right?
So it's all this mesh and metal and bars and things.

(43:09):
And he's looking up at the sky as she's, as they're going at it in there and
That's when he starts trying to hit the button to move a little bit, but he's a cagedanimal at that point, which is another theme that this film is going to be presenting a
few times.
using the normal imagery in the Western world of if you are below the ground, you aresinking to hell, you know, and he's half in half out at this point.

(43:34):
Right.
Because he's kind of, or at least you can see the elevator is lower, but the angle of thecamera, you can see, you know, you get more than his head, you get some shoulders and a
little bit more, but you can't see any of the sexing down below.
No, right.
But he's not fully, he's not fully, you know,
entered the underworld yet.
Well, it's the first time she, I mentioned earlier, not to belabor these points, but shedoes such a great job of almost playing coy to a certain extent.

(44:04):
She isn't real forward with him.
the moment, the only real glimpse we get into her having any kind of like, enter her realstrength is when they first enter that elevator and she slams that door shut.
That's the only aggression that we see from her.

(44:25):
until much later in the film that we're gonna get to.
But it's this little glimpse in that one moment, she's shutting the door to the cage.
Yeah, she has what she wants and damn it, she's gonna hold on to it for however long.
That's the first indication we get that there might be anything.
It's nothing that they really lean into in the film necessarily, but they do give it adistinct moment of her very aggressively closing the door to that.

(44:51):
But it's there in the choices of the actors and choices of the director and thefilmmakers.
It's just, you know, this is, and this is true both of the movies today.
They're both really just well made.
They are professionals doing just a really, really good job making these films.
So the next day Dan gets home, he learns that his wife will be staying with their parentsanother day.

(45:14):
And then he gets a call from Alex, which frankly, right there should have been the end ofit.
Calling him at home.
She knows he's married.
That's, dude, that is, that's bad.
That is just bad.
But what does Dan do?
Dan doesn't just be like, Hey, listen, that was a nice night, but we can't do this.
And please don't call me at home.
No, he goes, he hems and haws.

(45:35):
And eventually he agrees to meet her in the park with the dog.
She says, I love animals.
I'm a great cook.
Those two things right back to back.
I love animals.
I'm a great cook.
Little foreshadowing there for folks who know the movie.
Yeah.
And with Douglas and that's the whole scene, the morning walk home.
all know that feeling of waking up after something incredibly intense, like a one nightstand or something that has occurred and you're walking home and Lyon gives it a beat for

(46:04):
him when he's walking down the street, walking away from her apartment and all of that.
The next thing we hear is his wife's voice on the answering machine.
And he has this moment of pause because he's returned back into his world.
Now we've existed in Alex's almost pretty much exclusively up until now in relation to thetwo of them.
Right now he's back at home and that sort of comfort place.

(46:26):
He hears his wife's voice right away and you can just feel there's tension on his sidewhen he and his wife end up on the phone and she's presented in nature.
She's on.
They're up in Westchester.
It's a greenhouse at the parents house.
Yeah.
wide open space outside behind her and the kids out there running around and grandmotherand all this stuff.

(46:51):
And then here he is into your point earlier about this confined apartment, having thisconversation and dealing with the internal process of starting to settle with what he has
done and how you just feel him being bound up in tents in that conversation.
think it's such a brilliant way to present the wife.

(47:13):
who's oblivious to this, just going about life, interacting with him like she normallywould, and him bringing in all this incredible weight because of what has just occurred
the night before.
And he hasn't even started to put the pieces together on how he's going to play this offto his family, to his wife or anything like that.
It's such a very real moment.
Yeah, absolutely.

(47:33):
Absolutely.
But he does go for day two.
And I think for me, looking at it, the second day is where things really like, the firstnight was largely sex.
Yes, they have sort of the dancing sort of interval between the two sexual sessions.

(48:01):
The second day, which is Sunday, the second day, it's like they're spending the dayplaying at a mini relationship.
They're throwing the ball in the, yeah.
It's more than just, listen, not going to own an infidelity.
That's not, you know, it's, like the second day, it's, there's something much, much deeperand, and worse in terms of like,

(48:29):
the infidelity of it.
It's like,
That's just- he's bringing his life into hers now because the dog- dog!
I mean, that's a family member.
You're essentially introducing her to a family member and running around the park androlling around in the grass and all of that.
And so you're casting caution to the wind about anybody seeing what you're doing.

(48:50):
But more notably, you've now brought a family into this really.
Yeah.
And then they have that little interplay where he fakes a heart attack and-
so weird.
That's such a weird moment.
It's so odd.
he's the first one to do it, just like he was the first one to grab her hand.
Yeah.
Turns out with a key bit of information that gets doled out then because to get back athim, she tells her story.

(49:15):
Yeah, that the father, her father died of a heart attack in front of her.
And then, and then of course she walks it back.
She says, no, he's alive at well and living in Phoenix.
So at this point, we don't know which is true.
Was she just, she was, just kind of getting back at him for the fake heart attack or wasthat a little bit of truth that came through?
to end to spoiler alert, jump the gun.

(49:36):
turns out that it was true.
Yeah.
Yes, it does.
which, you know, the amount that Dan has started to share.
I think that he, had shared the madam butterfly before this point, correct?
No, no that's
That's when they get to the apartment for dinner.
second after the...

(49:56):
They are.
So she gave this this true story and then walked it back because she didn't know it foryou know, a get back at him show she can play along.
But B, she didn't know if she could get that real that fast.
And then he winds up sharing something very intimate and real with her.
And I think at that point, because there is at a certain point.

(50:22):
Well, okay, this is getting a little like
Well, we're going to get into the Madame Butterfly thing next.
So we might as well.
So they go back to her apartment and she's making dinner and they're listening to MadameButterfly, which is an opera by Puccini in which an American naval officer marries a
Japanese girl and then leaves with no plans to return.
The girl has a child.
She waits for the American to come back.

(50:42):
And eventually at the end, which they talk about, spoilers for Madame Butterfly, commitsritual suicide.
And Madame Butterfly kind of acts as a touchstone for fatal attraction.
Dan talks about when his father, that was the first opera his father took him to see as akid and comforted him when he was upset about the ending.

(51:03):
And he says, that's one of the few times I can remember my father being kind to me.
So he's really opening up with the Madame Butterfly.
And I, you know, this is a bit of a spoiler for a plot point that's going to be coming up.
But at the same time, madam butterfly is a touchstone for this movie.
Do we think that this is where Alex gets the idea to pull the gold?

(51:28):
Yeah.
we watched it with my wife and she thought she immediately was like well This is where shegets the idea
Yeah.
Well, she does have that moment after he reveals that his father wasn't close to him as akid.
You see it wash over her.
Yeah.
And just as the music is hitting this high note, she started, I think that's a momentwhere she really plugs into, I don't know if it's the grand plan, but she definitely

(51:50):
feels, it feels like she's plugging into him in a unique way because now he's starting toreveal more and she's gotten him in 24 hours to completely open up to her.
So it feels like a relationship on a fast track.
But you see that registry right as the music hits that high note, this real intensemoment, she's arriving in the same place.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.

(52:10):
I mean, I could believe that, you know, maybe Alex just has not not used birth control inany of her relationships and just, you know, you know, such as they are.
Yeah.
But it to feel in the movie doesn't deal with that fact.
It does not.
And which is another interesting thing.
There are certain details that are just plot details, you know, or little interestingthings.

(52:34):
They're fun to think about.
This movie does not care about them at all, because what this movie cares about is theobsession between
two people.
Yeah.
And in the beginning it's kind of mutual.
Yeah.
Cause he is, he is extremely, I mean, if he were not married, I think they might, hemight've married Alex.
I'm not saying that it would've worked well, but

(52:55):
least they would have given a relationship a shot, you know?
like he very much genuinely likes her and I think it's about more than just the thephysical or the you know the glow of having someone like you he seems to genuinely like
her and which is confusing for for her

(53:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, she's being very forthright in their discussion about, says, why are all theinteresting guys married?
And he says, it's because you can't have them.
Yeah.
And she is being very forthright and really almost vulnerable during that discussion asthey're eating about, you know, he's saying that things probably can't work out and, but

(53:41):
it's something she seems to have heard before.
She's probably been engaged in this conversation before.
But it's really the moment where they are waking up and he's getting ready to go that I'msure you're about to talk about, And this is a huge transition in this entire saga.
this is where things start to really devolve.
Because he leaves, he's got, like, I gotta go, and that sort of thing, and she does notwant him to go.

(54:05):
And it starts to become, she says, don't pity me.
It goes south very, very quickly between the two of them.
Shit.
I gotta go.
said she wasn't coming back till tonight.
She's got things to do out here.

(54:31):
Yeah, I don't think I'd like this.
Like what?
The way you run away after every time we make love.
Well, Alex, what difference does it make whether I leave now or in the war?
The fact is I gotta go.
Well, you're not gonna leave, huh?
Oh, come on.
Oh, come on.
I mean it.
I mean it.
Hey, Alex, come on.

(54:55):
I'm sup-
problem.
I mean, just be reasonable.
Be reasonable.
What?
Thank you, goodbye, don't call me, I'll call you.
Look, you knew about me, all right?
I didn't hide anything.

(55:16):
I thought it was understood.
What was understood?
Opportunity was there and we took it.
Come on now, we are adults, aren't we?
What's that supposed to mean?
I thought we would have a good time.
No, you didn't.
You thought you would have a good time.
You didn't stop for a second to think about me.
That's crazy.
You knew the rules, Harry.
Rules.

(55:36):
Look, Alex.
I like you.
And if I wasn't with somebody else, then maybe I'd be with you.
But I am.
Please don't justify yourself as pathetic.
If you'd tell me to fuck off, I'd have more respect for you.
Then fuck off.

(55:57):
And you get out!
As he's getting ready to leave, she comes out into the living room with her hands behindher back.
That's never a good sign, guys.
It's not that she's got a present.
It's never a good sign.
And when she apologetically hugs Dan, the blood on her, like on from her wrist, sort ofyou see it against his face and just like he's, immediately starts to go try and treat it.

(56:26):
Like he doesn't want anything bad to happen to her.
You know, he,
you know, washes it out.
Honestly, she should probably just go to the doctor right there.
Like, let's be honest, like that's not a home treatment thing if something, if that's everhappened.
Just call, just call the EMTs right there.
Well, the real moment of a hard transition though was when they were, he was getting outof the bed saying he had to leave and he's sitting on the side of the bed, putting his

(56:51):
clothes on, putting his shirt on, buttoning it up and everything.
And she tries to stop him from leaving.
cause she's playful in the beginning, but then he's like, no, no, I really have to go.
And she grabbed out of nowhere.
She grabs him and rips his shirt.
Yeah.
And it becomes this little struggle that happens.
struggle.
And she's like, you know, and then they talk about it for a minute.

(57:13):
And then she goes, you know, I'd have more respect for you you just told me to fuck off.
And he goes, well, then fuck off.
And then she kicks him and screams, then you get out.
Yeah.
And then he is gathering his stuff, sort of clearing his head, getting ready to walk outthe apartment.
And that's when she emerges and says, let's be friends.
Yeah.
And then she starts to cry.
And that's when she reveals the risks that are all slashed up and everything like that.

(57:37):
And she essentially.
manipulates him into staying and it's raining outside.
He's cradling her on the floor of the bathroom and he stays.
Yeah.
And like I said, I watched this movie with my wife and I want to credit her with thisbecause this was her takeaway.
She's like, this was Dan's biggest mistake.
Aside from cheating on his wife in the first place, which is bad, but the moment he sawthe blood, he should have called an ambulance.

(58:04):
They would have seen the wounds.
They would have put her under some kind of psychiatric evaluation, but instead he doesn'twant her, you know, like he just, doesn't.
He wants to be a nice guy.
He doesn't want to make that clean break.
Don't try to be nice.
That was my wife's, that was my wife's take on it was that this was his, this is where,you know, and, it's, this is the break into two really, really the break in act two.

(58:30):
Like this is where he's, he doesn't realize it, but now this is, this is going to go on.
This is not ending this weekend.
Well, because this is a guy who, has a much different view of himself than his actions inthis movie show.
so he thinks of himself as a better person.

(58:53):
not that I am condemning him forever, know, made some bad choices and mistakes, but he isacting.
He wants to act like the version of himself he thinks he is.
But of course it's really after you've had the affair and all of that.
It really only makes things worse, which is what winds up happening.

(59:13):
And then as we will get Alex's reaction to him, quote unquote, saving her and coming backfor her, Dan is going to go to some pretty dark places and, and he's going to wind up.
I don't know if he embraces the flaw individual who is destructive that.

(59:34):
that lives inside of him, at the very least it is going to come out in kind of a lashingout reaction to some behavior that he's not gonna.
Yeah.
There's a great shot this next morning after they get up and he says, he has to go.
And she's understanding of that at this point.
There's a scene there in a shot where he is calling his wife from Alex's apartment.

(59:59):
Which is insane.
It obviously wouldn't happen in the cell phone era, but I was just like, my god, he'scalling her from a heart.
Doesn't it feel like the most reckless thing ever, right?
It does.
The way that they set this shot up is so beautiful.
And this is Howard Atherton, the cinematographer and Adrian Lyne director working togetheron this thing, where it pans from Dan on the phone in this sun drenched sort of kitchen

(01:00:25):
area talking to his wife.
It pans across to the right.
there's a wall in between that room where he's on the phone and the bedroom.
And it moves over to Alex in bed.
The whole room is just shrouded in darkness.
And she's wrapped up, bundled up, kind of contorted, laying in this bed in pain anddarkness.

(01:00:50):
And she's listening to his conversation.
And it couldn't be more stark about light and dark, the way that they present this.
And then it happens again.
in an upcoming scene, once he gets back home, kind of the opposite plays out where he's onthe dark side, which we'll talk about in a couple of minutes here.
But it's an interesting interplay there as Alex is hearing him and hearing him deal withhis regular life, I guess you could say.

(01:01:14):
And then he leaves.
And it's interesting to me that like after the affair, Dan, who when we first see him hasgot headphones and is very kind of unengaged with the immediate world around him, he
starts to reengage with his family.
Like after the affair, he takes more interest in his kid.
He notices his wife is a smoke show and he's willing to go look at that house inWestchester, which he didn't want to do because he didn't want to move out of the city.

(01:01:39):
So from Dan's point of view, whatever he needed from that affair, he seems to have gotten.
Yeah.
It's funny.
If you were feeling suffocated in your apartment, maybe you could have just gone to lookat the house that your wife with gray hair and wanted you to look at in the first place.
But yeah, but then we wouldn't have a movie.
When we see the Westchester house for the first time, I swear to God, my first thought wasall of that wallpaper needs to go.

(01:02:07):
And to the Gallagher's credit, that's exactly what they did.
The next scene after he leaves, he goes home to the apartment and there's that pan that Italked about a minute ago from Alex's apartment.
This starts with a shot in his daughter's room, his daughter's bedroom, which is all kindsof kids stuff and dolls and sweet things, artwork on the wall.

(01:02:30):
Five-year-old daughter, know, so it's a five-year-old girl, so she's got five-year-oldgirl stuff.
The ultimate in innocence, right?
I mean, it's purity in this room.
it pans across another wall that divides his bedroom from his daughter's bedroom.
And he's in there rolling around in the bed to make it look like it's been slept in.
Yeah.
So here's the purity and innocence of his daughter's room, another character oblivious tothe things that he's done.

(01:02:54):
And then here he is making his first active engagement in covering this thing up andtrying to cover his tracks, which is a pretty stark.
presentation of the two different universes he lives in.
absolutely, absolutely.
And exhibit a in the fact that he clearly never makes his bed.
Do that with this.

(01:03:16):
Not so great.
right.
That's great.
every day.
Oh, and it, you know, so he goes back to his life.
They look at the house in Westchester and it's not before it's not long before Alex showsup at Dan's office where, he's a lawyer and then, and you know, he's still trying to be
the nice guy.
He's like, oh, you know, she shows up and he's like, oh, I was going to call you today.

(01:03:38):
I'm like, yeah, right.
And, and I want to mention that Fred Gwinn shows up for one scene as Dan's boss, which wasapparently enough for him to get fourth billing in the movie.
hearing his voice was so exciting.
he's great.
And she wants to take him to see Madame Butterfly.
yeah, I mean, just, as soon as she's like, she's like, next Thursday, Madame Butterfly, apeace offering.

(01:04:01):
I mean, you just feel it in your stomach like, Alex.
no, don't do this.
This is bad.
Like, it's just, it's just bad.
Well, she shows up at his office, right?
His office.
He walks into work and there she is sitting there.
And that's the first time that we see her appear somewhere she shouldn't be.

(01:04:22):
Right.
And so that's her first move.
Like it's like chess, the whole movie back and forth between the two of them.
Absolutely.
That's her first real bold move.
And it's the first time we start to see his secretary, his coworkers kind of like craningover the edge of the door to see who this Who's this woman?
in his office with him.
Yeah.
Yeah, like dressed all in black and black leather.

(01:04:44):
And we get this stark contrast, you talk about the stark contrast, the stark contrast westart to get as we kind of now we're following Dan and Alex sort of separately.
So, he's bowling with his wife and friends and she's sitting alone in her apartment justclicking the lamp on and off in one of the more famous shots from this movie.

(01:05:07):
Light and dark again.
And at the end of that office scene just prior to this, this is another one of thosetouching moments and not touching, but communication through contact where they go to
leave to part ways and she extends her hand to shake his hand, but he embraces her and goback and look at her face when it cuts.

(01:05:34):
from his, you you're seeing the perspective now from his back, like over his shoulder, herface just, she looks so relieved and overjoyed that he made that move on her.
And that really further settles this thing in.
Like she is really buying into, this is probably something that she's been looking for.
It's such an incredibly powerful moment that happened so quickly.

(01:05:57):
And that's a hundred percent in the hands of Glenn, Glenn Close.
She's so good.
mean, this role, mean, as Rob said earlier, like it's hard to even envision this role ofthis movie without Glenn Close.
But like, she does such an amazing job because in lesser hands, this would have felt likea caricature's figure.
And instead, she's a three dimensional woman who evokes a degree of sympathy.

(01:06:20):
I mean, she's clearly lonely.
clearly, as time goes on, exhibits, you know, attributes of mental illness.
She doesn't channel her energy in positive ways, but I feel bad for this woman.
Yeah.
Well, and Alex in this movie, she is the Thanos of psycho sexual thrillers because when,you know, we're, we're going to be getting in when she's really going off, uh, you know,

(01:06:49):
on Dan later on, you know, 99 % of what she says is right.
Right, yeah
you touched on the you you you know, you've got to accept responsibility for what you didand a lot unique you can't just you know, have sex with me and throw me away all the stuff
she's gonna say.
And none of it is is necessarily wrong.
Now, her actions and the level at which that things are going, you know, are clearly not.

(01:07:14):
They go outside the bounds of norm.
But yeah, I believe she wants to snap the universe.
That's all.
Alex keeps trying to contact Dan.
There's kind of this threat in the background, always the threat in the background.
She doesn't explicitly say it until later that she could reveal the infidelity to Beth.
Eventually they meet again and this time she tells him that she is pregnant.

(01:07:38):
What I think is super telling about Dan is when she says that she's pregnant, his reactionis, and I quote, you don't use anything.
You.
don't use anything as if that is entirely her responsibility there.
That said, pregnancy seems like it was detected pretty fast.

(01:08:00):
Like later on, there's a scene in a party where Dan met, like they described the party asbeing a few weeks earlier.
So I'm like, know, pregnancies don't necessarily show up, you know, like it takes a whilefor them to be detected.
Like not necessarily like a couple of weeks.
I'm going to ask, was the pregnancy real or was that?
Do you think that was another manipulation on her part to try and pull him in?

(01:08:25):
I love that it's never explained.
We never learn it.
never learn it.
Dan changes his phone number to an unlisted number.
Although here's what we never learn about that.
How he explained that to his wife.
Cause I mean, I don't have a home phone cause it's all cell phones now, but if I changedour home number to one listed one, I feel like my wife would ask questions about

(01:08:47):
The phone becomes, it really instills in the audience a Pavlovian response.
And this is when that begins.
it's not, cause every time you hear a phone, which is frequently throughout the movie,you're assuming it's her.
Yes.
And oftentimes it's not, but it becomes this thing that when that rings, it's almost likethe death bell ringing, like something bad is about to happen.

(01:09:10):
And we become conditioned as an audience to expect that to be the case.
I think it's so great how they set that up early on to be.
her connective element with him and one of the great challenges that she immediately findsa way around in a very troubling way.
Yeah, and about the phone, the short film, doesn't go as far as the Deardens' originalshort, basically ends with him at home and she started to call him and he picks it up and

(01:09:37):
tells her don't call there anymore and then the phone rings again and again and the lastshot of the short is the wife picking up the phone and then you cut out and that's the end
of the short.
So the short is really, it's sort of a microcosm of the first part of this movie.
So then,
as a retaliation.
you describe, Justin, described this movie as a chess game.

(01:09:57):
So here's Alex's next move.
They're getting ready to move to Westchester, so they're selling the apartment and sheshows up as a prospective buyer.
And the look, Michael Douglas's face when he is shaking her hand and trying to be like,hi, how you doing?
You know, it's, it's amazing.
He walks in the apartment that day and immediately hears that voice.

(01:10:18):
Yep.
Yep.
And you see him pause and look and his eyes widen with this realization and the audienceis like, shit, because you know, as a viewer, this is not only giving her access to what
the new phone number would be, which was the whole point of the previous sequence, butalso she can mine all kinds of information out of his unknowing wife.

(01:10:39):
And that's exactly what's happening when he rounds the corner.
It's great.
it's amazing.
It is absolutely amazing.
He then goes to her apartment once again to have another conference.
This is the famous line, I'm not going to be ignored, Dan happens here when she's like,this is going to go.
Basically she says, I'm never going to stop.
am, this is, you've created this situation and I am never going to stop.

(01:11:04):
This would have been the place if they did a title drop in this movie.
This attraction is fatal.
They thank God do not do that.
And the Gallagher's, soon move out of the city to Westchester County.
obviously hoping that the distance will help him, you know, put some physical distancebetween him and Alex.

(01:11:29):
But as Dan is getting a bunny for their daughter and Beth is doing an absolutely terriblejob painting the ceiling of their new house, Alex is fucking up his car.
and sending him tapes threatening.
Guys, what exactly happened to the car?
Was it acid to the car?
Like I wasn't sure.
It was just like...

(01:11:51):
It did look like battery acid.
That would be my guess, because that's you could just you could get a battery, a carbattery and do.
It was really unclear.
I didn't know if it had burned or what, but then he says they kind of tidy that like put abow on that when he's on the phone and he tells whoever it is that there was an electrical
thing.
The electrical completely melted down, he says.

(01:12:13):
Well, he forces him to rent a car which allows her to follow him out to the suburbs.
She's following, she's got her little compact 80s economy car following him out to thesuburbs.
And at the same time, he's listening to this tape that she had sent to his office.
You know, again, that tape is gonna play a key role.

(01:12:34):
It plays a key role in the version of the movie as released, but an even more key role inthe original ending.
But I just think it's interesting because he gets home and he's listening to that tape.
on the headphones in his attic.
like, whereas Dan became more engaged with his family immediately after the fair, now thatAlex is pushing and doing these things, he's now becoming even more closed off than he was

(01:12:58):
when we first met him.
He's now up in the attic alone with those headphones on, listening to the tape.
And of course when his wife comes from behind him, know, he jumps, you know, cause he's...
You know, he knows he's guilty and he's clearly got, you know, he's got a, you know, he'sgot a thing about it.
one other thing I want to mention is that Dan goes to the police to see if they can help,but they tell them that basically there's nothing they can do without evidence.

(01:13:23):
I just, ineffective police, I think will be a continuing trope for some of the films inthis series.
Yeah, did, did, did move out to, Staten Island?
Detective Staten Island.
It's Westchester County and that might as well be as ineffective as the detectives onStaten Island.

(01:13:45):
for the record, we're talking about he knows you're alone.
So if you are, if you are an actual Staten Island detective, no need to arrest me.
That's what I'm Yes.
Staten Island.
What are you going to do?
You know, it's weird out there in Staten.
So Dan and Beth, they give the bunny to the daughter, which Alex watches this whole thinghappen.

(01:14:07):
She's followed him out to the suburbs.
She's watching through the window, which, and she has an interesting reaction to watchingthis domestic scene where she goes off into the bushes and throws up.
Like she's so upset by it.
She has a physical reaction.
And that leads, of course, to one of the most famous scenes in the film when the familycomes home to find the pet bunny boiling on the kitchen stove.

(01:14:32):
And this sequence where they come home, it's really incredibly well edited because thewife goes into the kitchen, Dan is outside and the daughter's outside, Amelia goes to like
the coop where they keep the bunny and sees that it's missing.
So she starts screaming while Beth is screaming in the kitchen because
Holy shit, there's a bunny on my stove.

(01:14:54):
My favorite part about this sequence, this little sequence is that you then get after the,the, the big, you know, soundtrack moments and running and the reveal of what's in the
pot, you know, boiling, you do get that quiet moment where the daughter's just crying inbed later and the mom's trying to comfort her.

(01:15:15):
And it's just like it, of all of the thing, you know, you had the, the, big moment, butthis is, you know, the moment of, of wrecked family.
But what Dan, what Dan has, what his actions have wrought is, you know, what he had fearedis, know, it's been coming along, but like it's, it's, it's, it's here.
He is hurt, you know, he's hurt people.

(01:15:38):
And that's when he makes the decision to lift the veil too.
Right, that leads to him confessing the infidelity to Beth.
And again, this scene between the two of them, both Douglas and Archer are fantastic here.
she okay?
She's asleep.

(01:16:01):
Did you call the police?
Not yet, no.
I think we gotta talk.
What is it?

(01:16:22):
I know who did this.
Who?
Remember the girl who came to the apartment?
The one I met in the Japanese restaurant.
The one with the blonde hair.

(01:16:49):
You're scaring me.
with her.
Yes.

(01:17:17):
Yes.
I'm so sorry.
last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you.
you

(01:17:40):
You
F*** her.
was one night.
It didn't mean anything.
does it got to do with you?

(01:18:04):
Thank
Jaws.
I don't know that's what she says.
I want you out of want you out of this house!

(01:18:25):
I want you out now!
could you do that?
you!
I don't want to hear it!
I don't want to hear it!
Please, just listen to me.
Please, please.
What does it matter with you?
You know, this movie has got some kind of like, you know, there's the bunny in the, inthe, in the pot is almost kind of like over the top, you know, kind of like it's, it's,

(01:18:50):
it's a very big thing, but then it's immediately followed by the girl crying, the daughtercrying in bed.
And then the scene between the two of them where, you know, they, the, you know, that,that, that essentially is their marriage is going to get wrecked.
mean,
They may not split up, but it will never be the same ever after this.

(01:19:14):
So with the affair out in the open, Alex, she kind of loses a leverage that she had.
They call her, like they together call.
He's like, I told my wife, and then he puts the wife on the phone and she's like, if youever come near my family again, I'll kill you.
And then Alex, like that is a moment where she snaps because I think she either throws thephone, hangs it up.

(01:19:35):
It's, it's, it's.
the leverage that she had is now gone.
So now things escalate to another level where she kidnaps their daughter.
Like she picks her up from schools, you know, they didn't have the same kind of, you know,regulations and that they do these days.

(01:19:55):
She picks up the daughter from school.
They go on a roller coaster and the little girl looks like she's scared to shit.
I think the school just had on record that the mom had great hair.
No other descriptors, no names.
They're just like, okay, this is the lady to give the kid to.
Sure.
a lady with great hair shows up for Ellen, that's who you get up to.

(01:20:17):
Beth arrives at school and she quickly realizes her daughter's not there.
In particular, thanks to the over dramatic line reading of one of Ellen's classmates,where she goes in and she asks the girl where Ellen is, she's gone.
Like she had been raptured up into the sky.

(01:20:38):
It's like,
Now, she was picked up by some, you don't know that it's a problem, like...
It's a little poltergeist-y.
Yeah.
And then Beth drives around looking for her daughter, which is probably not the mosteffective way to go about it, but she's panicking and that leads her to rear end another
car.
And then Alex drops Ellen off safely at home.
let's just, let's be honest guys, no matter how this thing turns out, that girl is goingto spend the nineties in therapy.

(01:21:04):
That poor girl, Ellen is, she's, she is going to have some, there's going to be someprofessional help that's necessary to repair some of what's going on.
Cause it's traumatic.
Yeah.
This is actually where the one false emotional note in the film for me is.
I'm sure it look in the real life, I'm sure someone could point to examples where thishappened, but in the film is constructed for me.

(01:21:32):
You know, Dan has messed things up so badly.
Revealed it to his wife.
Then their child is kidnapped by, you know, the woman he has had the affair with.
And then in freaking out and searching for that, their, their, their child, she gets in acar accident and gets pretty like pretty banged up.

(01:21:54):
And yet somehow this magically makes everything better with him and her.
Yeah, yeah, I see that.
Like, and I get it from just a pure like crescendo, like you've been whole, like from amovie emotion standpoint, it's like, there was all this tension, you know, building,
building, building, you get a release of sorts with his admission, but she's now shuttinghim out of the house cause she can't deal with him.

(01:22:19):
And then this external threat kind of prompts her back into, and you get, you know, adifferent kind of emotional, you know, crescendo and then falling back into old habits.
But it just doesn't feel I haven't.
haven't.
This is the one where the fact that this movie is more of a two-hander than athree-hander.

(01:22:41):
Yeah, it comes into play because they just don't have the time.
It's very late in the movie at this point.
I almost wish that they'd gotten to his marriage.
He'd gotten to that reveal a little earlier and they'd
You had time to deal with it.
Deal with the fall.
little bit more.
Anyway, it's it's honestly, I don't know that this will really bother most people in thismovie, like is a freight train at this point.

(01:23:05):
So it's you, you almost don't have that much time to think about it, which I think is whyit went the way that it did.
It's after the fact that you're going to think about that, because in the moment it's justlike going, going, going by this point.
The other thing that I noted at this point in the film is when he gets, gets to thehospital, he runs up and Ellen's there.

(01:23:26):
The kid is there.
It's never addressed who found her, how that was dealt with, how she ended up at thehospital.
All of a sudden she's just with mom and it doesn't ever come up again.
grandparents are there in the hospital as well.
see them kind of, can you get the impression they might've found Ellen, you know, at homeand then brought her to the hospital.

(01:23:48):
So I think it's just that, cause now they live near the grand, near her parents.
So, but then Dan, you know, after seeing all of this happen, he goes to confront Alex atthe apartment and then he, this time he just straight up attacks her.
Like she opens the door and he just slams it in.
And there is a pretty brutal fight between the two of them.

(01:24:11):
It is just, it is, it is brutal.
And he chokes her to near death.
Yeah.
And then he backs off.
Yeah, he's ch-
He's got on the floor, he's choking her, and then he stops, like he realizes what he'sdoing.
But that is when she grabs a kitchen knife that Michael Myers would find useful, and shegoes after Dan with the kitchen knife.
Like, that is a lethal instrument, so it's escalated even further.

(01:24:36):
And then Dan disarms her, but he leaves the knife on the counter with his prints veryclearly on the handle.
which is significant in the film's original ending, less significant in the ending thatthey went with.
Beth comes home from the hospital, things start to calm down a little bit.
They bought a gun, which the audience is helpfully shown when Dan opens a drawer.

(01:24:58):
And Beth is about to take a bath when Alex appears in the mirror behind her.
It's that classic person wipes the steamy mirror only to see someone is right behind thembit.
I'm not sure if this was the first movie to do it.
It has been done by many movies since.
It's certainly an early iteration of it.
And I want to give during this fight sequence in the bathroom, I want to give props forthe bathroom being filled with family photos somehow that are on the walls, right?

(01:25:30):
I, you know, yeah, but they do it so that during the fight, Alex can slam into everysingle
photo and knock it off the wall.
And we get our visual metaphor.
And I'm like, I don't even care that the humidity would destroy all of the photos and noone would do that.
hey, you know, sometimes you got a movie and it's it's I was very tickled pink.

(01:25:54):
I'm like, they're taking every single photo off this wall during this fight.
And I love it.
In that sense too, the water, you know, so they're fighting, they're having theirconfrontation.
The water from the tub starts to overflow and we see the water leaking from the ceiling,you know, downstairs through the ceiling.
I'm like, that would take a long time.

(01:26:16):
honestly, I think the thing to worry about once this is over is that their house mighthave some serious structural problems because that water, like it wasn't like, hours went
by and the
the place was filled with water and then it started to to the floor below.
It was like a couple of minutes tops.
I don't know what building inspector they hired when they were buying that house, but theyneed to go back to him and be like, hey, dude.

(01:26:42):
And Dan doesn't see the water, he doesn't notice it.
And then he doesn't hear the fight that's happening because he's got the tea kettle on thestove.
And as soon as he takes it off, he hears it and he rushes up and he joins the fight.
He grabs Alex, he pushes her down in the bathtub below the water, appearing to, know,appears like she drowns.

(01:27:03):
Like it's like that moment where she kind of goes to the bottom of the tub and it's like,you see a couple bubbles come out of her mouth.
And this is where Alex's hobby of cliff diving comes into play because she is not dead.
She is held her breath successfully for whole minute.
pops up one more time in classic slasher movie style only for Beth to shoot her and thenwe're out.

(01:27:28):
The underwater stuff was so well shot.
it's amazing.
It looks really
And that moment where her eyes kind of turn gray and roll into her head, it sells so welland it's incredibly intense.
This whole thing, all of it feels very reckless.
Yeah.
Because you're in the room in this tiny little bathroom with them and I can't imagine, Imean, it had to be on a set somewhere where they could pull walls or whatever, but it

(01:27:55):
feels so claustrophobic as all of this actions happening in there and everyone's slamminginto everything and.
There's water on the floor, adds this extra layer of intensity and all of that.
danger because you could slip on that water.
You know, that's always what I'm thinking about with water.
Can I fall down?
Hurt myself.
Especially in the bathroom, accidents happen in the home.

(01:28:16):
It's a great climax to the film.
really is.
It's a tremendous way for this to have ended.
And I think they went the right direction with what they did.
Yes, and that is what we're going to talk about a little bit because it is not the endingthey originally shot.
In the original ending, after the fight with Dan and Alex at her apartment, she killsherself by slicing her throat with the knife that Dan had touched.
We don't see that happen until the very end, but what we do see is that the cops arrive atDan's house and arrest him for Alex's murder because his fingerprints were on the knife.

(01:28:45):
And then shortly after that, Beth discovers the tape in which Alex actually says,
she'll kill herself if he abandons her.
So she rushes off to give the tape to the cops.
And then the last shot is a flashback to Alex cutting her throat while listening to Matterand Butterfly.
And apparently that original ending tested very poorly and Paramount wanted a new one.

(01:29:07):
Glenn Close, Ann Archer, and Adrienne Lyne were all against it, but did agree to reshootit.
So what ending do you guys prefer?
What do you think?
Well, the original ending, think while I like the idea of it, the execution of it is so,it wasn't satisfying because you're essentially, I know it's not the final shot, but Dan

(01:29:28):
gets carted away arrested.
And then, you know, Anne Archer winds up going upstairs to look for a lawyer's number.
She slowly finds the tape and then plays it.
And essentially the tape says,
you know, it's part of, of what she'd recorded.
Alex had recorded to Dan earlier that we didn't hear.

(01:29:50):
And essentially the tape is, you know, the most over the top dialogue.
It's essentially saying, I am your alibi.
I am your alibi.
I am your alibi.
And Ann Archer goes, yes.
And then she leaves and the camera just stays there.
And it, is literally in every way, extremely anticlimactic.

(01:30:10):
It doesn't feel like the rest of them.
Yeah.
get the the Madame Butterfly stuff and wanting to that this is the way Alex was going toget at him because up until this point, you you didn't have a big climactic fight.
And I also get not wanting to turn this movie into a very 80s American like, let's let'sget the street justice.

(01:30:34):
Let's Charles Bronson this lady that you totally, you know, let on and et cetera, etcetera.
And in any event, so
I'm not sure that I love the climactic fight for many reasons.
It also doesn't quite feel like the movie that we've had up to that point, where it feels,the movie up to this point, even with the bunny thing, it feels like a very heightened

(01:31:00):
version of real life.
And then at the end, feels like a movie.
so, you know, but I think that, you know, in some level,
at least the ending that happens is at least on whatever level emotionally satisfying,even if I dislike myself for feeling that emotion.

(01:31:20):
Okay.
My problem with the ending as originally shot is that I think that Beth finding the tapealmost immediately undercuts it.
Like if you wanted to end the movie with a sense, with in a sense, Alex winning by her,you know, killing herself and framing Dan for it and he's getting arrested.

(01:31:43):
I think that is undercut by the fact that she.
finds the tape immediately and literally the last line is off camera, you hear her sayingto the daughter, we're going to go get daddy.
So basically daddy ended up spending about an hour in the police station when all is saidand done, which doesn't feel like if you were going to have him arrested and go down for,

(01:32:03):
for a murder that he didn't commit.
And that is the ultimate end.
That feels more appropriate.
If you're going to do it, go all the way, but having her find the tape immediately to mejust undercuts that and,
it loses the punch that you were going for without the more emotionally cathartic endingthat they ultimately went with for the film.

(01:32:27):
Wouldn't he have listened to that whole tape?
Yeah.
Instead of go call my lawyer when he said, my alibi.
Yeah.
There's evidence to exonerate me on my desk.
it's just, yeah.
But Fatal Attraction was released in 1987.
was a huge, huge hit on its release.
It received six Oscar nominations and it's just...

(01:32:50):
not one for Michael Douglas.
Not one for Michael Douglas.
It's an absolutely beautiful, beautifully shot, well directed, the performances are great.
And as we'll see over the weeks to come, it would be one of the most influential film ofits time.
Now, our second film today, because we do have another film to talk about, has somestriking similarities with Fatal Attraction.

(01:33:13):
Although there are also some distinct differences.
Both feature an unfaithful husband who is a lawyer.
A mysterious woman with whom he has an affair and a very attractive wife with great hair.
From 1990, this is presumed in a s-

(01:33:45):
It's gonna be so good.
Llamas was murdered last night.
Some creep got into a place somehow and strangled her.
It looks like she was raped.
Rusty, want you to handle this case personally.
You're the only one around here I can trust.
Just catch me a bad guy.
You're in charge of this investigation?

(01:34:06):
There are 150 lawyers down there.
They couldn't find one who didn't sleep with her.
Find out which of the creeps she put away is out on parole.
She's dead.
And you're still obsessive.
You were in Carolyn's apartment the night she was killed.
We've got the fingerprint results.
There's a call from your house to hers that night.
This is absurd.
Go ahead, guy.

(01:34:27):
I know.
You killed her.
You're the guy.
Why didn't you tell me about you and Carolyn?
This is life.
still in love with her.

(01:34:52):
Presumed Innocent was based on the best-selling novel by Scott Turow, originally publishedin 1987.
It was released in the summer of 1990, so just a little over two years after FatalAttraction.
And it was one of the first movies post-Fatal Attraction to try and tap into that adultthriller market.
The book was a big success for the film rights.

(01:35:12):
Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer bid, David Brown and Richard Zanuck, John Peters andPeter Goober, Erwin Winkler, all were competing for the project.
Ultimately, Sidney Pollock and Mark Rosenberg won the rights.
The film was directed by Alan J.
Pakula and written by Pakula and Frank Pearson, both of whom were industry veterans atthat point.
Pakula is most famous for three films he made in the 1970s, informally known as theParanoia Trilogy, Clute, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men, which are all

(01:35:42):
fantastic movies and kind of were key in defining that 70s paranoid thriller.
model, was so distinct in that era.
And this won't be Pakula's last appearance in the series.
We'll be talking about another of his films next week.

(01:36:03):
So here's the thing about Presumed Innocent.
It's just a really well-made movie all around.
I mean, you're watching the opening credits and you're like, music by John Williams,cinematography by Gordon Willis.
And you have this casually incredible cast.
led by Harrison Ford along with Bonnie Bedelia, Brian Dennehy, Raoul Julia, Paul Winfield,Greta Sachi, and John Spencer and Bradley Whitford, whose name I didn't even see in the

(01:36:30):
opening credits.
That's right, West Wing fans, both Leo and Josh are in this film.
Before I talk about everything else about this movie with you all, I have to bring up themost important historical fact about Presumed Innocent.
People lost their goddamn minds with Harrison Ford's haircut in this movie.
It's kind of a Caesar-ish.

(01:36:52):
I it being described that way.
It's not though.
Harrison Ford's hair in Presumed Innocent walked so that George Clooney's could later run.
That is probably true.
Yes.
I cannot stress enough if you are younger or outside of the US, the amount of ink andentertainment tonight time that was spent on Harrison Ford getting this haircut was

(01:37:16):
mind-bogglingly dumb.
It's true.
Honestly, that was my next note was, and Harrison Ford has the worst haircut of his entirecareer, even though he gives a fantastic performance in this movie.
And that's how you know it's transitioning from the 80s into the 90s because the hair getsworse
God.

(01:37:37):
And apparently the haircut was Harrison Ford's idea.
I quote, there are many things I found I could express with that short haircut.
Simplest of all, I wanted to tell the audience to leave their baggage at the door, not toexpect the Harrison Ford they've seen before.
Which is true.
If you think about the roles you've been playing through the eighties, this is a departurefrom that.

(01:38:01):
Yeah, I have a frequent note throughout my notes watching through this is Harrison seemsbored.
I really, eventually he picks up.
I think as things get more intense, it picks up.
But in the first like half, at least the first maybe 33 % of the film, he just seems to bekind of sleepwalking through the whole thing.

(01:38:24):
And it was weird.
to see that.
And I don't know if part of that was his different look that had thrown me off orsomething like that.
I certainly wasn't expecting him to be swinging from vines or anything like that.
But it it just seemed it was so understated that it was almost at the point of somenovelism.
was like he was sleepwalking through this through this role through a lot of the film bymy estimation as I was watching it.

(01:38:49):
But then I have a note that, OK, things are picking up now.
He seems to have plugged in, especially once the courtroom stuff starts to play out.
It's a very internalized performance.
A lot of this movie is Harrison Ford learning a thing and playing it so close to the vest,you don't know what he's thinking.
Like is, is it just, you know, he has a fascinating way in this movie and this is, this issome of this is, is, is how he plays it.

(01:39:13):
So it was a script of not answering questions that are put to him.
know, like even at one point, like it's just a scene with him and his wife and their son.
They got a
son is in like middle school or whatever and the son asks if you ever copied anybody'shomework, you know, and he's like, you mean copied it and handed it in his, like he kind

(01:39:34):
of goes, is this, is there any reason you're asking this?
But what I thought about later was like, he didn't actually answer the question and thismovie is all Harrison Ford not answering questions directly.
Yeah.
It's very lawyerly in that way.
Yeah, and it's a film that it's full of reveals, right?
I mean, it starts off, it's overwhelming in the beginning.
I have a note that they're throwing so many names around of characters that we don't know.

(01:39:57):
And there's a lot that seems to already have happened.
And then it all reveals itself as the film plays out.
But you have to be very patient with that, because in the beginning, it's just going to bea barrage of names and places and cases and referencing other people and stuff.
And it's just, it's kind of blinding.
Eventually it all comes out in the wash.
But at the outset, it's like, man, they are setting up a hell of a lot to have to unfoldfor us.

(01:40:21):
And they eventually do.
But that just, I mean, it's opposite of the last film where in Fatal Attraction, themadness of Alex is unfurling throughout the film.
And you're seeing the breakdown of a family.
You're seeing a man dealing with his consequences and stuff.
We walk into Presumed Innocent with a man dealing with the consequences of what'shappened.

(01:40:43):
And we don't know it yet.
And so the reveals in this film are very different than the way they are handled in FatalAttraction.
Yeah.
Well, because to misuse Marshall McLuhan, like Fatal Attraction is a hot medium, right?
It is a very sexy movie.
It's all id and emotion and Presumed Innocent is very cold.

(01:41:07):
It is oddly sexless.
It is all about logic and argumentation.
And then on top of that, and I think this might go in with some of Ford's performance.
I didn't feel quite the same way that about it that you did Justin, but
This movie is wants us to.
It wants to keep open the possibility that, you know, what Savage that's think.

(01:41:34):
Rosette Rusty Sabbath.
Yeah.
So it wants to leave open that Rusty might've done it pretty much all the way until theend.
And I think that's where some of the holding back comes from.
In addition to the character just, you know, appears to not be a demonstrably affectionateman.
Even early on where he doesn't know the murders happened yet and he's at home with hiswife and kids.

(01:41:59):
he's, yeah, I mean, he's not, he's not unpleasant, but like, he's not, he's not superaffectionate.
I want to say right off the bat that one thing that separates this movie from the, fromthe previous one is that this is a murder mystery.
And I think for that reason, we should bring back a tried and true, get me anothertradition, the spoiler.

(01:42:21):
Yeah.
I've been drinking James Scott the whole time.
For net broncas for next week.
It's, now we should bring back the spoiler line.
Cause it's hard to talk about this movie that discussing the ending, but we don't want tospoil that, that, you know, just yet.
we were going to put in a spoiler line where we give people an opportunity.
We're not going to reveal the ending until that point.

(01:42:44):
We'll just talk about the things that are coming up to it.
But I watched this movie.
I also watched this movie with my wife.
I watched both of this week's movies with my wife.
And she had never seen this movie before.
And I can confirm that it absolutely still works.
100 % she had no idea.
And it was just, it was like a freight train.

(01:43:08):
So again, I want to talk about, first of all, there's a couple of things we shouldestablish that Rusty Savage is a prosecutor.
He's working for DA Raymond Horgan.
who is in a battle, a heated battle for reelection.
At first, I wasn't sure where this movie was set.

(01:43:28):
It's clearly, it was clearly somewhere in the Northeast or Midwest, but it wasn't New YorkCity, because I'd recognize that.
Eventually I saw on a document that it was Detroit, Michigan.
I'm like, okay, that works.
And we open with images that I think we'll see a lot of in this series.
We have this beautiful suburban home, a seemingly happy family living there.
It's not unlike some of the early scenes of Fatal Attraction, but this is sort of thesuburban model of that.

(01:43:54):
And it doesn't seem to have the the claustrophobia that we talked about with FatalAttraction.
Here, it's just kind of a big suburban house and everything seems okay.
And not the sexiness either.
Cause again, that first image of fatal attraction is the city skyline silhouette with likethat awesome sexy sunset.
And here it's what it's the jury box.

(01:44:15):
Yeah.
As voice.
at the beginning and end.
guess the book was written all in first person from Rusty's point of view.
And that was something that was a change.
Well, you know, that's a difficult thing to do unless you're going to just have wall towall narration.
And as I mentioned before, we have another attractive wife with great hair, this timeplayed by Bonnie Bedelia, who is fan-tastic in this movie.

(01:44:43):
And there's a couple of differences.
I want to talk about some of the differences because we see this early in, we've seen thisin a lot of series where we're kind of the second movie isn't necessarily copying the
first movie that that doesn't come until a little later, but it feels like it's in thesame sort of general vicinity.

(01:45:08):
And that's, think, true of
presumed innocent and fatal attraction, they have some things in common, but there's somealso some key differences.
So Rusty has had an affair, which we will learn about fairly soon, and that his wife knowsabout it.
she's a, you know, they've reconciled, but it's obviously a point of contention.
And secondly, the woman he had an affair with, a lawyer named Carolyn Palamas has beenmurdered.

(01:45:34):
And that is what we learned fairly early.
that she is the victim of a brutal assault where she was tied up, raped and murdered.
But even before that, Rusty gets into his office that morning and before he's even toldabout the murder, he gets a note on his desk, apparently from Carolyn reading, stop it, I
know it's you, and a note that he will keep secret and that he will later burn.

(01:45:58):
But so Rusty being the top prosecutor in the office is assigned the case despite that noone knows
Yeah, because no one knows in the office that he had an affair with Carolyn.
And again, this is where we get a lot of this movie is Rusty being told things andreacting in the most ambiguous way possible.
So, so Brian Dennehy plays his boss, the DA, and he's talking to him about, you know, the,the, murder.

(01:46:23):
He's talking about Carolyn Palmas and, and, and
and keeps calling him Tiger, which I thought was so weird.
I don't know if either of you guys like, hey Tiger.
I'm like, if my boss called me Tiger, I would run for the hills.
I'd be like, what, why?
That's so weird.
And we don't actually get a lot of Carolyn Palemas as a character because she's alreadydead when the movie starts, but there's some interesting flashback stuff.

(01:46:49):
And I want to talk about that because I think what is particularly interesting about thismovie is the way other people talk about
Carolyn Palamas.
Yeah, her character is revealed through the voices of others.
Yes.
It's not a character that reveals itself through actions or anything like that.
So everything you're being shown is somehow colored by someone's view of her or theirhistorical interactions with her or whatever it might be.

(01:47:13):
And you notice that those memories, flashbacks, however you want to describe it, they getlonger of her.
As the film goes on at the beginning, it's just little bits, little flashes of her justlaying in bed looking toward the camera.
And then it evolves into full-fledged sequences as we come to an understanding of whatRusty, what she and Rusty had and what Rusty had gone through.

(01:47:39):
It's also interesting that in this film, Rusty is the pursuer.
Yes.
Yes.
I get ahead of everything here, but that is revealed at a certain point that he was theone who was the heartbroken character in this and was hoping that things would be more
than what they were.
And she had to kind of push him back a little bit, which she tries gingerly when ithappens as we see, but then eventually has to get a little more strong arm about, no,

(01:48:05):
seriously, no.
And that's all wrapped up in kind of the central mystery.
And this won't, you know, this won't get into spoilers yet, but you know, it is insinuatedas these flashbacks unfold that she initiated going after Rusty because she thought he was
going places.
And that it was at least in part career motivated.

(01:48:29):
There's a key flashback sequence later on when it is clear that Rusty doesn't have thesame thirst
for moving up the ladder in power.
Rusty is a guy who at least professes to wanting to do things the right way and wait histurn.
And that's when she breaks it off with him and she moves on and he does not because forhim it was, you know, much more than, you know, it was, was more emotional than that.

(01:48:58):
And I don't think you get the impression that Carolyn was only using him, but that
Perhaps it wasn't only emotional for her.
Yeah, I actually wrote down the note because I want to say I saw this movie not in themovie theaters, but shortly after and then I hadn't seen it since.
So there things I remembered and things I've forgotten.

(01:49:20):
I actually wrote down the note.
Is Rusty the fatal attraction here?
Like I actually wrote that in giant letters on my bed.
Like Rusty is the fatal attract.
And that's not exactly true, but it leads you to think that it might be.
I mean, they're, they, they're playing with it.
They a hundred percent want that to be a possibility of, this guy a quiet psycho?

(01:49:41):
And you don't find out until the very end.
Really.
And it's interesting, like the way they talk about her, like, you know, the way the, thecharacter, the DA talks about it, it's like, she's beautiful, a sexy gal and a hell of a
lawyer.
I'm like, that's a weird, you know, like that's doesn't feel like the most appropriate wayto talk about you.
And of course it turns out that she was having an, she broke off her an affair with Rustyand started having an affair with the DA.

(01:50:05):
Cause I guess she thought he, you know, he might be able to help her with her career ifRusty didn't necessarily have the drive to do that.
So once assigned to the case, Rusty brings in a detective who he trusts, played by theWest Wing's John Spencer.
And again, he doesn't have much fondness for Carolyn either.
He tells Rusty that Palameis was bad news.

(01:50:26):
Rusty finds a case on Palameis' computer that was outside her usual purview, a briberycase without names or details.
And that becomes a component of the investigation.
But yeah, Carolyn Palameis is like, she's the mystery at the heart of the film, not justwho killed her, but like,
who she is.
And it feels like the men in this movie are operating through a misogynistic lens, eithersort of mildly or grossly.

(01:50:53):
Not that the film is misogynistic, but the characters.
That said, the film might be prejudiced against Italians because the two main adversaries,D.A.
It be.
Might be.
Marco De La Guardia and his ally, Tommy Molto are both Italian and they just seem like thebiggest assholes.

(01:51:14):
mean, Rob, can you believe it in this day and age?
Precious against Italians.
I know.
And, uh, and rusty's boss is very prejudiced against them as well.
And since says, you know, it states it.
like I find it funny that the two guys with Italian names are both opportunistic jerks.
Yeah.
And it's not long before we learn that of Rusty's affair that comes, not maybe 15, 20minutes of the movie.

(01:51:41):
And we learn that from from his wife, Barbara.
Missed the 835.
I tried to call you, but you weren't here.
Well, Matt had dinner at Josh's and I was at the university.
I tried to get in little extra time in the mainframe.
You think so?
my kidding.
I working on my dissertation at my age.

(01:52:02):
It's ridiculous.
Come on, kid.
You're the best mathematician in your class.
Second best just made full professor at MIT.
All I've made are beds.
Carolyn Fulamis, assistant prosecuting attorney and Kindle County prosecutor RaymondForgan's office was found brutally murdered this morning in her Southside apartment.

(01:52:23):
Police are about to release a statement concerning the circumstances of her death.
strongly suspect that this Fulamis...
thrilled to be messenger of the bad tidings.
Miss Palamas was seen only two Sundays ago on the newsmaker's portion of this program.
From top to bottom, we are riddled with cruelty.
We must expose and punish it, especially when it is inflicted upon the impotent and theignored.

(01:52:47):
You sound like a woman with a mission.
I am.
Ha!
Murder of Miss Palamas.
We have a suspect.
We have deadly shit.
So?
So, Dan Lopranza and Rusty Savage will work night and day for the next two weeks and catchRaymond a killer.

(01:53:11):
At least that's the strategy.
You're in charge of this investigation?
Raymond insisted I take it on.
There are 150 lawyers down there.
They couldn't find one I didn't fuck or put in charge.
Did you tell Raymond?

(01:53:32):
This is a conflict of interest, is that professional?
Barbara, I'm Raymond's chief deputy.
You are so predictable.
It's your way of reliving the whole thing.
She's dead, and you're still obsessing.
Bonnie Bedelia is just so terrific in this movie.

(01:53:54):
What I think these two movies have in common is this undercurrent of discontent.
Like with Fatal Attraction, it's centered mainly on Dan and Alex, but Dan is sort of, youknow, he's a successful guy that on the surface has an enviable life, but he's not
contented.

(01:54:15):
Here, both
Rusty and Barbara seem like there's discontent there.
Like Barbara's talking about how she's still working on her dissertation and how thesecond best mathematician in her class just got made a full professor at MIT while she's
just making bets, essentially that she gave up her career to raise a family.

(01:54:37):
And it's really interesting that suburban discontent, and I think that's gonna be a commontheme in this series.
So as the investigation into Carolyn's death continues, Rusty goes to see her ex-husband,who he didn't know even existed.
He's significantly older than Carolyn and she was like in college, he was a professor.
The pictures they have of young Carolyn are so different than the polished prosecutor thatat first I wondered if it was the same actress, but it is.

(01:55:05):
And the husband talks about how devastated he was when she left and how she looked at himwith shame because he was so weak.
And you could see that.
that has an effect on Rusty when they're having that conversation.
Yeah, because that will directly tie into that future in this movie flashback scene wherethat I referenced earlier.
Yeah.
Where she is trying to get Rusty to grab the brass ring and he declines.

(01:55:29):
Yeah, when she kind of ends the relationship, he seems just desperate to continue it.
So, I mean, it's just interesting that, again, it feels like you have some of the samepieces as in Fatal Attraction, but played very differently.
So Horrigan, Rusty's boss, played by Brian Dennehy, loses his bid for re-election.

(01:55:51):
And that means that Rusty may soon be losing his job as well.
But before that can happen,
He is told that physical evidence has been discovered implicating him in Carolyn's murder,a glass found in Carolyn's apartment with his prints on it.
And the blood that was, the blood type of the semen that was inside her also matches his.

(01:56:13):
And his phone records also indicate there were calls from his house to her apartment,including one the night she died.
And I want to mention the detail that the sperm inside her is all, they're all dead.
and the coroner first concludes that the man must be sterile, but then finds evidence ofspermicidal lubricant.
I hate doing this, but because it matters for the, you know, whether or not rusty isguilty, the matching of the semen isn't quite what you might think it is the same blood

(01:56:47):
type as rusty.
So that is the map.
It would be like having, you know, and I think it's a blood, you know, a positive orwhatever.
So it's not DNA evidence that puts rusty.
there and having sex.
is just, it is essentially a form of blood type.
So it is someone who would match his blood type.

(01:57:11):
So it's not, it's not as much of a slam dunk.
Right, and I don't think DNA evidence, this was 1990, so DNA evidence was just becoming athing?
Yeah, exactly.
So the fingerprint evidence is stronger for putting him specifically there.
The rest of it is just starts to hang off of it a little.
It's the sort of thing where like if the blood type had been different, it could wouldhave ruled him out.

(01:57:31):
Like it could have easily ruled him out.
Yeah.
Here it keeps him in the, in the mix, but it's not, it's not definitive.
No.
Because lots of people have that blood type.
So the movie kind of changes once Rusty is, you know, he gets arrested, you know, he'stried and he's forced to mount a defense when he's charged with murder.
He hires a very good and very expensive lawyer played by Raul Julia.

(01:57:54):
And this movie just reminded me how much.
Raoul Julia is so great and how much I miss seeing Raoul Julia in movies.
yeah, totally.
He was so good.
He's just terrific.
learn again, as the investigation continues, we learn that that Carolyn had broken it offwith Rusty and Harrison Ford, you know, this is where I thought I understand what Justin

(01:58:16):
said about Harrison Ford feels a little reserved, quiet, know, kind of sedated early inthe movie.
But I think that changes when he gives this terrific speech.
to his own attorney, to his own defense lawyer about how the prosecution would build acase.
Basically, what he would do if he were prosecuting this case.

(01:58:40):
Savage is obsessed with Polemus.
She ditches him for another man.
Savage becomes enraged.
He can't let go.
One night, knowing his wife will be going out, calls her up, begs her to see him again.
Carolyn finally agrees.
She rolls around with him for O'Lang's iron.

(01:59:02):
But then something goes wrong.
Savage is jealous.
He wants more than she's willing to give.
He blows it.
gives her what for with some heavy instrument, decides to make it look like rape.
Savage is a prosecutor this way.
He knows there'll be dozens of suspects.
So he ties her up, opens the latches to make it look like someone slipped in.

(01:59:26):
And this is the diabolical part.
Pulls out her diaphragm so it looks like rape.
But in his haste and confusion, he makes mistakes.
He forgets the glass he drank from.
He doesn't think the forensic chemist will be able to ID the spermicide.
But we know he did evil to this woman because he lied about his presence in her apartmenton the night she was killed.

(01:59:51):
His fingerprints on the glass, his blood type A identified from semen, fibers from thecarpets in his home tell us he was there.
Very convincing.
They later spend some time investigating the bribery case that Carolyn worked on andeventually learn that the person being bribed was the judge, is played by Paul Winfield,

(02:00:16):
who's terrific.
Again, it's such an unassumingly terrific cast.
But that all appears to be unconnected to her death.
And the prosecution hits a snag when the glass with Rusty's fingerprints goes missing.
And the coroner, we have this great scene on the witness stand where the coroner isconfronted with the fact that Carolyn had a tubal ligation, which I have to admit, I was

(02:00:40):
watching this film, they said that, I didn't know what it meant.
And I had to look over at my wife who knew instantly what it meant.
It's the process of getting a woman getting her tubes tied.
But that raises the question of why a woman who'd undergone that procedure would need touse a spermicide.
The missing glass, the questions about the spermicide and the apparent lack of motive leadthe just

(02:01:01):
judged to dismissing the case.
I want to point out this little detail because my wife noticed this.
When they're leaving the courtroom and they're swarmed by reporters, one of the reporterssticks like a tape recorder in Rusty's face, like one of the little handheld tape
recorders, but it's got no tape in it.
Oh, I missed that.

(02:01:23):
Just like rusty.
No, has a kid.
has a kid.
Rusty meets with John Spencer's detective character.
We learned that, that he had the missing glass all the time.
He didn't take it, but when De La Guardia took over the investigation, they never askedfor it back.
So again, they have the Italians are not only jerks, but they're incompetent.

(02:01:44):
Yes.
Honestly, what, what, what the hell?
Rusty takes that glass, he throws it in the river and that puts them in the clear and that
I is where we should put our spoiler line because we have to talk about the ending of thisfilm.
But if you have not seen it, pause it, check it out.
It's very, I thought this movie was very good.
It's not as sexy a movie as Fatal Attraction.

(02:02:06):
It's not sexy at all.
I'm just it's a good film, but this, could not be more different.
It's.
It's the least sexy movie we're probably going to have in this whole series.
it feels like the natural successor and it always gets talked about sort of in the samebreath.
So we wanted to have it in there.

(02:02:27):
And so here's our spoiler line.
And we still have our blank from hell.
Yes, we do.
We do.
So, if you haven't seen Presumed Innocent and are even remotely interested, go check itout.
Hit pause.
We won't be offended.
We won't even know.
But go check it out because I think it's a really good movie and then come back.

(02:02:50):
Spoilers after this.
So, a short while after the case ends, Rusty's working around the house and he picks up
There's a great moment where he's fixing a fence and the head comes off the hammer andhe's looking around for something else that could pull out the nail.
He has this hatchet that's got a little thing on the end where he's like, he could pullout the nail with that.

(02:03:13):
And he sees that the hatchet has blood and hair on it.
And he realizes his wife killed Carolyn Pellay.
But it doesn't play out that way, Chris, because you almost feel initially like becausehe's out hammering, he's trying to scrape some dead wood off of this post in the yard.

(02:03:38):
he happens and he looks at it and sees the blood and a little bit of hair and he touchesit and then he heads to the basement.
He doesn't go inside to ask questions because his wife is already gone, he thinks.
So he thinks he's alone.
he
He goes to wash it off.
Yes, he goes to the sink and starts to wash it.
So at this point, the audience is initially feeling tricked into, okay, he did it becausehe didn't even answer the question when he was directly asked it in the previous scene.

(02:04:06):
Did you kill her?
He just pats him on the shoulder and walks away.
So you're still don't know.
That's the point where he throws the glass in the water that you mentioned earlier, Chris.
And so here he's washing the, the hammer in the sink.
downstairs, is an effectively creepy basement.
that whole sequence reminded me of the end of Psycho, know, when they, yeah, yeah.

(02:04:32):
And then the wife emerges down the steps and then it washes over you as an audience, as aviewer going like, my God, I never expected this.
Definitely did not expect this.
And then it turns into Scooby Doo.
But in that moment,
That's it.
so effective at continuing to manipulate the audio.

(02:04:52):
See, I, again, I watched this movie with my wife, we'd never seen it.
And for her, it was, here's what happened.
I don't think she went to the idea that he might have done it.
I think she immediately jumped to it was the wife.
Okay.
And when that reveal came, I hear from the other side of the couch, no.

(02:05:16):
And I was like, cause the whole time I'm watching it, I'm like, I didn't remember a lot ofthe details of this movie, but I remembered the ending.
And I'm like, is it going to be obvious?
Is she going to watch it now and be like, yeah, I knew 10 minutes in, the wife had doneit.
And absolutely not.
She had no idea.
But as soon as she saw the hatchet, she went immediately to the wife.
And it was just, it was like, she had no idea.

(02:05:40):
Like it was just, it was complete.
It worked like she was watching it in the movie theater in 1990.
And it's funny that you had mentioned, you all mentioned psycho in relation to that creepybasement, because, and I actually quite like it.
You get Bonabedelia, you know, she's walking rusty through.

(02:06:03):
And it's less about the what she did, although that's in the words.
And you're getting more the feel for why she did it.
Yes.
feels to me, mean, and thus it is in some ways not dissimilar from the explanation by thepsychiatrist of Norman Bates at the end of Psycho.
But here, I think, whereas that is often derided as just kind of being kind of tacked onfor the audience and, you know, it's really feels like a 1950s educational film or

(02:06:33):
something, this is infused with so much emotion.
Bonnie Bedelia delivering this, it's so different from
the persona she has let out earlier in this movie.
And I quite like it.
It might go on just a tiny bit too long for me, but.

(02:06:53):
That's why I said Scooby Doo.
It's like when they the mask off and if it wasn't for you kids, meddling kids or whatever,and she just keeps going on on about, and then this was happening, and then this was
happening, and then it just, okay, we get it.
We get it.
she needs to give the deed.
I was like how she, she planted the glass.
She planted, she had, she had gotten his semen out of herself and frozen it and kept it.

(02:07:19):
And the longer it goes on, the more chilling it becomes because it's not like, Hey, thiswoman wrecked my marriage and in a, in a heat of, of fury, I, I hit her with a hatchet.
It's not that it's I planned.
for a long time to kill this woman who wrecked my marriage and to specifically lead cluesthat my husband who would get the case as a prosecutor would inevitably come to the

(02:07:51):
conclusion that I did it and she knew he would never bring her up on charges.
He would bury the whole thing as unsolved.
And it might've worked if the DA hadn't lost his reelection.
Yeah.
And her character is very different too, because throughout the movie, even though she isthe scorned wife, right?

(02:08:12):
She's the one who got cheated on.
She's reaching out to Rusty.
Yeah.
She's actively trying to engage him in compassionate moments, connective moments.
there's...
There's a moment where she comes on, she's got, she's got like a new, new negligee and.
Yeah.
So she's not just sitting there feeling like she was wronged.

(02:08:34):
When you hear all this at the end, it takes you back through the film and you think, shewas, this is maybe, this is clearly why she was so forward and okay with what had
happened.
Cause she had already dealt with the issue.
She knew she had dealt with the issue from the moment the film starts.
We didn't know that.
Yeah.
But, and I think it's a fascinating opportunity for a character in that role of the wifewho was cheated on.

(02:08:59):
to be presented this way, because I'm going to guess that as we move through these filmsin this series, that's probably going to be an anomaly.
Yeah.
think you're right.
I think this movie is a little bit of an anomaly in this series.
The way the film has Bonnie Bedelia, her presence is continual through this movie.
She's in a lot of it, but she's rarely the focus.

(02:09:19):
She's always kind of on the periphery of scenes.
Like they'll be meeting with the lawyer and she'll be there, but she's not the focus.
And there's occasionally moments where like the film, it cuts to her and I'm like, is ittipping its hand?
If someone like it feels like having known the ending, I was like, that's a moment wherethey're giving you like, they're talking about this and they cut to her.

(02:09:44):
And apparently again, I entirely judged based on my wife's reaction that it completelyworked for her.
She had no idea.
it was incredibly effective.
It's a, yeah, it's, I, I like both of these movies.
Again, I think fail attraction is the more, it's certainly the sexier movie and it's themovie that's going to
to kind of be the one that people will imitate in throughout this series that we're justembarking on, because we have so much stuff ahead.

(02:10:12):
But this one was worth mentioning because, again, it feels like it's one of those earlythings where you're not fully imitating it, but you're in the zone.
Yeah, it's a really interesting movie.
And again, I thought both of these movies this week were great.
I'm just so excited for some of the stuff we have ahead.

(02:10:34):
Like there are some crazy, crazy movies ahead.
yeah.
I miss 90s thrillers.
Like I didn't realize until we kind of put the list together how much I just miss those90s thrillers where it was like, this is just a good time at the movies, you know?
Our movie going habits have changed so much.

(02:10:56):
It feels like the 90s were the last time that like movies were like.
this thing it just kind of did casually.
Like, does that make any sense?
Like, I don't know how many movies I saw and God, I'd see anything.
Like, what, like now I buy my tickets like six months in advance for like this big thing.
And it was like, we just go to the mall and be like, what looks good?

(02:11:18):
You know?
It's so different and it allowed for so much stuff that I feel like we don't get now.
So.
I think that probably brings us to the end of today's episode.
Again, I think both of these movies are worth checking out.
Fatal Attraction is obviously the more influential one and is going to become thiscultural touchstone that we'll be talking about.

(02:11:39):
I'm excited for this journey.
As always, as I am at the beginning of a series, we'll see how I am when we get to episodeeight and nine and I'm like, I can't do another erotic thriller.
Yeah, like I'll be I'm sick of being sweaty, but not yet.
Still loving it right now.
Early.
man, early days.
And you know it's interesting because not all of the movies we'll talk about will beerotic thrills, a lot of them will.

(02:12:04):
But all of them have that element of the of the blank from hell and it takes all differentforms.
Yeah, because we may be talking about this later because there is one subset of movies,there is another trend that occurs in the middle of this trend.
Yes.
That is its own thing where the sex goes off the charts.
Yes.
Without Fatal Attraction, you wouldn't have Basic Instinct.

(02:12:26):
Now Basic Instinct is kind of its own thing because it's a different kind of movie and weare going to do down the road a Get Me Another Basic Instinct and we're going to talk
about sort of that trend as well.
And Rob, when we were putting this series together, I got to credit you because you saidit, know, Fatal Attraction is the Halloween, Basic Instinct is the Friday the 13th.

(02:12:46):
know, it's taken it to the next level.
So we'll be back next week looking at
two films about men who invite the wrong friend into their lives.
And these are going to be two interesting ones.
I have not seen either of them, so I'm looking forward to them.
The first is Curtis Hansen's 1990 film, Bad Influence, starring James Spader and Rob Lowe.

(02:13:09):
And the second is another Alan J.
Pakula film, Consenting Adults with Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, and Mary ElizabethMastrantonio, who I will say also has fantastic hair.
So join us then and in the weeks to come for some really fun episodes, some reallyfascinating movies.
And thank you so much for listening.
I want to give a special thank you to Jenny Sterner for helping us put together thisseries.

(02:13:33):
We really appreciate all your assistance.
And again, we are your hosts, Chris Iannacone, Rob Lemorgis, and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed our show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, threads, and Twitter at Get Me Another Pod.
In addition, check out the Justin Beam Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts and youcan find Justin's new book, Roadside Memories at JustinBeam.com or wherever books are

(02:13:57):
sold.
And you can find Suits LA on NBC or on Peacock and check that show out.
And if you liked our show, tell your friends about it, tell your enemies about it, tellthat mysterious woman you just met about it and then go home and tell your wife with great
hair about it as well.

(02:14:17):
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meanother.
you