October 14, 2024 • 51 mins
Please join me for the Third Course of my, "Cannibal Trilogy," started almost exactly one year ago. To round things out I take a stab at the 1982 German film Der Fan, starring Desiree Nosbusch and Bodo Steiger as a young fan and her Pop Star obsession, respectively.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Wake Up Heavy is a weirding Way media podcast, not.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The very much Rockets for Me Dog.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Welcome to Wake Up Heavy, the world's greatest horror movie podcast.
In this episode, my weird dad will be talking.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
About Hello and welcome to Wake Up Heavy. This is
(00:52):
Mark Begley, your host, and I am finally getting around
to the third course of my Cannibal movie trilogy that
was started oh just about a year ago when I
did a why Didn't I Rent This? On Motel Hell,
and then Christashu joined me for an episode on parents,
(01:15):
and amongst all that, I mentioned probably a number of
times that I was going to round it out with
der Fan or the Fan from nineteen eighty two, and
I'm finally getting to it, So here we go. There
are a couple of reasons it took me this long
to get back to this, and some of them I've
(01:35):
mentioned on the show in the past, just life stuff,
work stuff. But the other reason was that, actually, I
every time I thought about rewatching this film, I paused
and thought, do I really want to right now? And
the reason for that is at that time and for
(01:56):
the last oh gosh, four or five years or even longer,
I've had this thing about watching movies with unlikable protagonists,
and I'm kind of tired of it. And I had
it in my head that the lead in this, that
the main character was a lot more unlikable than is
(02:18):
actually true. I just kept thinking that, I think, oh,
I need to do the Derfan episode. Let's sit down
and watch it. I know I like the movie. I
talked about it a little bit on an episode like
four years ago, sometime during the pandemic when I actually
bought the Blu ray, and then it just kept coming
back to me that this girl is so unlikable and
(02:40):
she treats everybody so horribly, and she's so selfish and
entitled and blah blah blah, And there is that in
the character, but it's not nearly as bad as I
had been making it out in my own head. So anyway,
I saw a couple people post about this over the
last few months on Twitter and having watched it and
kind of hyping it up, and I thought, Okay, time
to get back to this. So I had a date
(03:02):
to myself here recently and thought, okay, let's throw it on,
take some notes, think about it, and see if we
really want to do this, and I did, and enjoyed
it a lot again and was happy to see, Okay,
she's not that awful. She's a teenager and has issues
with her parents and authority and blah blah blah. So
(03:24):
enjoyed it immensely again and am ready to get talking
about it. So, yes, this is about The Fan from
nineteen eighty two kind of commonly goes by its American
title in most things that I see online, not to
be confused with The Fan from nineteen eighty one, starring
Michael Bean and Lauren Bacall. And I'm pretty sure I've
(03:46):
mentioned watching that in the past. It is a sleazy
little number and it has this very eighties homophobic subtext
running throughout. It is an interesting film, though, and I
believe it's going to be on TCM this month this
October on the Creepy Cinema that Mario Cantone does with
(04:09):
Ben Maka Wits every year. I want to say. On
the promos there is an image of Lauren Baccall in distress,
and I'm thinking, did she do another early eighties movie
where she's in distress? I don't know, so I think
it'll be plain if you want to catch it. Also,
not to be confused with the nineteen ninety six film
The Fan directed by Tony Scott starring Robert Tanniro and
(04:31):
Wesley Snipes, and most certainly not to be confused with
The Fanatic starring John Travolta.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
House.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Ouse, Watch Out, Watch Out, Here's Moozy and directed by
Limp Biscuit. Of course, all four of these movies, amongst others,
deal with an obsessive fan, a fan who writes letters
(05:02):
or somehow else contacts this famous person that they're obsessed
with or in love with in this case, or think
they're in love with and stalks them and then finally
meets them, and so on and so on. They all
have that same very similar theme and plot, and it's
a thing that, of course, since the early to mid
(05:26):
eighties has been a real problem for people and has
become much more exposed and talked about. And we've had
numerous celebrities killed by their stalkers and so on. So
it's one of those things that's been around forever. I'm
going to talk about fandom in this because it is
(05:49):
and can be a very strange world, and in our
day with the Internet and Twitter and Instagram, it's even
uglier than in the past. The film was directed by
Eckhart Schmidt, and I am not familiar with any other
films of his. It stars a very young Desiree Nosebush,
(06:14):
probably mispronouncing her name, and Bodo Steiger, also probably mispronouncing
his name, as the a Fan and the Fans' Obsession, respectively.
I cannot, for the life of me think about where
I first heard about this film. I know it wasn't
(06:36):
back in the eighties when I was buying all these
movie books and reading them and noting movies on little
lists to try and look for, because as far as
I know or what I've read, this wasn't even released
in the States at any point up until the Mondo
Macabre Blu Ray. I could be wrong. There may have
(06:58):
been a version or a different title obviously edited. It
was released in the UK as Trance, heavily edited, but
like I said, everything I've read has stated it was
never released her. But when I saw it online, I'm
assuming sometime within the last ten years, it rang familiar
(07:20):
to me. And I don't know if it's just because
that idea of an obsessed fan stalking their obsession and
doing horrible things to them is a pretty common trope,
or if I don't know, the images of her on
the posters looked familiar, so I don't know how if
it came across my radar way back when or not,
(07:42):
or it's just one of those zeitgeist type things where
this is a familiar tale. Whenever I did first read
about it, it intrigued me enough to continue reading about it
looking for it, of course on streaming, which I don't
believe it ever has streamed anywhere here, probably won't and
we'll get to the controversy of the film later on
(08:05):
in the episode. And the only option was this Mondo
Micabro Blu Ray. And you' all know me, if you
know me in person, and if you listen to any
episode of the show, you know that I am a
cheap skate. I don't have a lot of Blu rays
and DVDs and VHS tapes from my past. But I
went out on a limb on this one and got
(08:26):
that Blu Ray. And I probably got it on Amazon
because I had Amazon gift card money. I don't believe
I ordered it directly from Mondo. I'm pretty sure I
didn't order it from them, and so it was probably
cheaper than buying it from them, and possibly free if
I have gift card money. Anyway, got it, watched it,
really enjoyed it. Like I said, talked about it. I
(08:49):
think early on in the pandemic is when I watched it,
maybe slightly before the pandemic started, and thought, Okay, well
that was a I'm going to be watching this again.
That was an Oak purchase. It's not a one and
done thing, like I I sit on my shelf and
never be watched again. And I believe even back then
I probably consider doing an episode on it. And back
(09:09):
to that unlikable character thing. A lot of the movies
that I watched in my teens and early twenties had
unlikable characters. A lot of Scorsese films, who I was
a big fan of his big films, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver,
even Goodfellas. They're unlikable people. They are not good people.
(09:32):
And this is particularly true of Raging Bull. And I
just can't watch that. It's such an amazing movie. It
is an impeccably made film, but I can't put myself
through two and a half hours of Jake Lamatta on screen,
and I just can't do it. I can't. He's such
an awful person. He's an abuser. He beats everyone in
(09:53):
his life literally and figuratively and emotionally and every other
way you can. And I can't do it. I just
can't put myself through that stuff anymore. I think about
Ferris Bueller and how I watched that movie so much
as a teenager, and it was on cable constantly. I
remember my dad would walk in and be like, oh,
he wouldn't say this exactly, but this fucking movie's on again.
(10:16):
And I loved it back then, and these days, I'm like,
this guy is such a prick. Why doesn't anybody knock
him down a few pigs? Yes, it's fun ditching school,
going out, having a great day, but he is an
asshole to everybody in his life. And I am like
team Jennifer Gray in that film anymore. A recent example
Scott Pilgrim from Scott Pilgrim Saves the World. Guy's a dick.
(10:38):
It's not fun for me to watch unless there's a
redemption aspect or arc to the story. I kind of
can't do it. So that's why, like I said, I
put this off for so long, and I was sort
of a mistake. On my part, because she's not that awful.
I mean, she's pretty awful, but it's not hard to watch.
It's not hard for me to get through. She's mainly
(11:00):
just a selfish, self absorbed teen she being Simone, a
German teen in um who is obsessed with R or Or,
a new wave singer. And Bodo Steiger, who plays R
in the film, was the lead singer and guitarist of
(11:24):
Rain Gold, a band, and this is one of the
aspects of the film that I know I talked about
on this past episode where I had a feeling that
this electronic music throughout the film was going to drive
me nuts, and it did exactly the opposite. I love it,
and you'll hear little bits and pieces of it throughout
this episode, but it is so hypnotic and it's not
(11:46):
played so much that it's annoying in the movie, thankfully,
but you do hear snippets of the same songs over
and over again. But it adds to this repetitive life
that we see Simone go through on a daily basis,
where we get mirrored shots throughout the film. She goes
(12:07):
through her daily actions at home and at school, and
so there is a repetition to it, and the music
definitely adds to that. I have to say that this
is a beautiful transfer. I have nothing to compare it
to since I haven't seen the film in any other
way before, but just in general, as far as movies
(12:30):
blu rays transfers go, it is crisp and clear. The
film opens with a wonderful title sequence of contrasting blacks
and reds black titles on a red card and vice versa,
and we hear this zooming of cars, and the opening
(12:52):
shot is a close up of Simone's eyes, and then
we start to get her voiceover, which is pretty consistent
and constant throughout the movie, and it's mainly her reading letters,
the letters that she's writing to R. During this close
up shot, we see what she's staring at, and it
(13:12):
is a mailman walking down the street, and once the
mailman catches her eye, his face just drops. So this
is an ongoing thing, we realize, and we'll continue through
the film. This is one of those repetitious motifs throughout
her confronting the mailman asking if she's gotten anything back
(13:32):
from R, and of course she never does, and in
her voiceover we get an idea of her mind. It
must be that our's secretary is throwing her letters away
because she's jealous. And if R were to get her letters,
you would realize, you know, she's the one. And again
(13:53):
that's consistent throughout a lot of her imaginings, her fantasies.
If he only got my letters, or if he could
only see me, or if he knew this, or if
he knew that about me, he would love me too.
The idea of these songs, Your songs are for me.
It's like you know me. Stuff like that. This stuff
(14:14):
with the mailman continues for a while. We see I
think at least three confrontations, and the last one gets
violent and she finds his bag on the street. He's
left it down there, and he comes out in an
apartment complex, and on this viewing I noticed that he
has lipstick smeared all over his mouth. So he's been
up prancing around with one of his customers during his workday,
(14:38):
and she effectively beats him and then throws all the
mail out of his bag. Prior to that, she steals
a letter from her school that he is going to
deliver to her parents. This becomes another aspect of her
routine where she's constantly ditching school and we see multiple
shots of her in class, and I love the This
(15:01):
is another good example of the mirroring in the film,
where the shots of her in class are set up
the same, The composition is the same, the movements are
the same. There's, you know, the droning teacher in the background,
which she is totally disinterested in. She's usually thinking thoughts
that we hear about are There's always a boy sitting
(15:21):
behind her that wears a scarf around or a bandana
around his neck, and we'll see him later on on
one of her ventures around town. This city, um that
she lives in is just gorgeous. That adds another aspect
to this film. Quaint, little medieval German town with a
(15:42):
big cathedral and this tower that she goes up on
and of course fantasizes. You know, if I were to
just throw myself off and have a last letter to
R in my pocket, then he would have to know
who I am and he would have to love me.
So the shots of her roaming around wonderful lot of
steady camwork. Her outfits. I have to say, I don't
(16:05):
pay much attention to that kind of stuff. In movies,
but early eighties new wave European and her choice of
clothes throughout the film is just incredible. Photos fashion leaves
a little bit to be desired, since he likes to
wear Nazi stuff. During the opening of the film, when
(16:27):
we get to Simone's house and there is a close
up of photos and paintings and pictures of our photo
Steiger's character, and then there's a big picture of a
German crowd doing the sighile and you hear Hyle's over
the soundtrack. This idea of this fandom is fascism, which
(16:51):
I find really intriguing, plays a big part in this.
That's what I was referring to earlier. Where I mean,
growing up up in the eighties with a lot of
new music coming out, and I knew a lot of
people who Oh well, I was into him. Then I
was into him before anybody else knew about him. Somebody,
some small band gets their big break and now they're
(17:13):
very popular. Oh well, I had their first. You know
that kind of crap, And it is so much worse
these days with the online culture, and you know, you
can't be a true fan of Taylor Swift if this
this and this the director gets into this a bit
in the interview that's included on the disc, and the
idea of this history of fascism in Germany, and did
(17:38):
Hitler somehow fill a need for the German people or
did he bring about the fascism fans? Do they create
these superstars or do the superstars come in and fill
that void. Ours logo is two lightning bolts side by side,
(17:58):
which very closely resemble the SS symbol. So you get
those bits and pieces throughout and I like that. The
director in this same interview says, you can look at
it with that lens or completely ignored. It doesn't matter
to the rest of the film, really. And so between
(18:34):
her skipping school and bothering the mailman, she's aware that
Our is going to be on TV. So in one
of the letters she writes, she's like, well, wink your
right eye and I'll know that that's a signal to me.
And so she gets all dressed up in a fancy
outfit to watch this, and her parents, of course are
disinterested in her, It seems disinterested in each other. When
(18:57):
they put the program on that Aura is on, he
stares dead eyed into the camera, so he doesn't even
blink let alone wink, which I just think is absolutely hysterical.
And of course you know that means that the secretary
through the letter away, etc. Etc. When Dad changes the channel,
she attacks him, much like she's attacked the mailman previously.
(19:21):
So we get this idea that there is some violence
in her, some physical violence. We get shots of all
the mail that our gets going through the post office there.
At some point she decides to circumvent the mailman and
gets basically a po box. So now instead of meeting
(19:42):
him on the street, she's going there every day and
asking the clerks if she's gotten anything. And we get
these great interstitials of day one all the way down
to I don't know at least day six, and nothing comes,
and by that point they're laughing at her. On one
of her ventures around town, the boy that sits behind
her in class with the bandana is following her. When
(20:05):
he finally catches up to her, he gives her a mixtape,
and there's some dialogue there where it implies that they
were dating. At some point. He says something like you
never come around, or you don't take my calls anymore,
or something to that effect. I like that it's subtle
like that, and we don't really know what their relationship is.
It just seems like maybe he's pestering her. But then
(20:27):
it feels more like she's gone so heavy into this
obsession that a normal relationship with just a guy in
her class is beneath her and she's not interested. She
has fantasies throughout, and they're always shot with a filtered lens,
and it's usually of ours secretary getting rid of her
(20:48):
letters or chasing her off at one point, and at
some point it appears that she has run away from home.
She's still wandering around the city, but she breaks into
a car to sleep. The next morning, an old man
finds her in there. We get an indication of some
pervinus there, which will creep back up in a little bit.
She does eventually take to the road to go to Munich,
(21:13):
where are is going to appear on Top Pop a
music show, So she catches a ride with an older man, who,
of course, at one point tries to rape her. She
escapes and wanders through the woods and finally ends up
at this TV station where other quote unquote celebrities keep
(21:35):
showing up and there's fans milling around and getting people's autographs,
and she's not interested in any of them because they're
not are. Once she's in Munich, she has another fantasy.
I believe, there's this raging storm and she's sitting in
the car and the car is rocking, very striking. And
then she wakes up the next day and he has
finally shown up, and she freezes, they make eye contact,
(22:00):
he walks over, and she passes out. So there's this point.
There's a couple of points in the film where you
could make the argument that we are in one of
her fantasies. The filmmaker has established a look for her
fantasies and these don't have that look. But I don't
think you have to adhere to that necessarily or it
(22:21):
would be too obvious. And again you can make the
argument both ways. No, this is not a fantasy, and
I think the strongest indication of that is why would
you fantasize this? And I'll explain that when we get
to the finale. But there are points where you wonder,
since she has an active imagination, since she has had
(22:43):
fantasies before that aren't always positive, and her whole life
is built around this imaginary relationship. So at this point,
when she wakes up, she is in the studio and
he is looming above her in silhouette, and you could
very easily say, okay, well, this isn't real. From this
point on, we're in Wizard of Oz territory. Nothing that
(23:06):
comes after is actually happening to her. He is very
nice to her. He's very friendly, not creepy at this point,
but seems to be legitimately concerned, and I guess that's
sort of where my mind is thinking, Yeah, this isn't real.
He gets her backstage. He basically keeps her there and
(23:27):
is constantly going back to her like a caring boyfriend.
Of course, he's got this show to do for top pop.
It's very eighties. There is a set with all these
mannequins that are bald. He wears a bald cap and
a strange brown shirt, kind of more of this national
(23:48):
socialism gear. She's in the audience, loving all of it,
clapping after everybody else to stop clapping. He seems to
be pushing everybody away from him and focusing solely on her.
Again makes me think this is her fantasy. He takes
her out to eat. There's some talk about the secretary,
like she's getting jealous and she's left, and he agrees
(24:10):
that she has most likely thrown her letters away because
he's never seen them. Blah blah blah. So we're starting
to get this turn of where instead of it feeling genuine,
it feels more like he is manipulating this young fan
because she is extremely attractive, very into him, and he's
going to be able to do whatever he feels like
(24:31):
with her. And that's my own argument against that this
is a fantasy, because the rest of this plays out
not well for her, and since she saw him get
out of the car earlier on, she has been very,
very shy, which to me is a stark contrast to
how she has acted throughout the film, being abusive to people,
(24:54):
showing a lot of force and strength. And it made
me think as I was watching it, what's that thing
that's going around the very demure, very demure, very mindful.
She seems almost overwhelmed. She's a young girl. She is
a teenager. We don't know. I don't think it's ever
explained what her exact age is in the movie, but
(25:18):
she is a teen girl. She is in high school
or whatever the German equivalent is, secondary school, that's British,
and she's not the cool character that she has come
across as uptil now ours entourage is ticked off at
him because he's kind of shrinking his responsibilities. He's got
these places to be, these things to do, and he's
(25:41):
all about Simone at this moment. He takes her after
this top pop performance to a friend's house nearby that
no one else knows about. She's very willing to go,
but she's still in that kind of shy, guarded mode,
and so you don't know how this is going to
(26:01):
play out. There's a great shot before they get into
the house of Simone in the car and the camera
slowly tracking into her mouth as it opens, which again
brings to mind for me, at least, we're entering another world.
(26:22):
This is a fantasy world from this point on. You
could say fantasy before they enter the house, or it's
just simply a little foreshadowing of what's to come. They
have shared a kiss already at this point at the studio,
but when they get to the house, it's still that awkward.
What's going to happen? They separate. She's exploring the house
(26:44):
looking at the artwork, a statue that's in the hallway
some of the other things in the house. She goes
to the bathroom, smashes her face up against the mirror,
and then finds him in a room that is draped
in like curtains hanging all very again, very very very eighties.
(27:04):
At this point they proceed to have sex, and as
you would expect, the second it's over, he cannot wait
to get the fuck out of there. So he makes
some excuse about having to do this business, these things
that his secretary and all his other entourage, his hangers
on were talking about earlier. Oh, now he's concerned about it. Hey,
(27:28):
you stay here, stay as long as you want. Just
lead the key under the mat. No big deal, and
thanks for the fuck I'm out of here. Goodbye, little girl.
I got what I wanted. I really don't care about you.
She tells him that she loves him, and his response
is me too. Not quite as bad as Han Solo,
(27:48):
but it's up there. I love you. He says something
like you made me very happy. She starts crying, and
I was kind of struck this time. It looked like
her tears were milky, and I was thinking, what the
hell is this all about? But I believe it's just
running into her makeup. But I thought, for a second,
Oh god, we're going into sci fi territory or something
(28:11):
like that. Excuse me. There's an interesting break here where
we have her screaming and then another shot, not an
exact shot of her screaming again, and it's like they
took two different takes and put them together. And again
my mind goes to this is a break in reality.
Is what happens next not real? So maybe up to
(28:33):
this point it's been real, because why would she fantasize
about him leaving immediately instead of a fantasy where they're together.
Now they're an actual couple. He expresses his love back
to her. I mean, we could have had that as
a fantasy, and then cut to him leaving and saying,
you know, I got shit to do. We don't, though,
(28:54):
so is this point after her scream now fantasy. She
takes the statue that she was admiring earlier, which is
a figure with an outstretched hand in a fist, and
nails him in the back of the head. There's this
really cool shot of him where he's just standing there
after this happens. He doesn't fall to the ground immediately.
(29:17):
And then of course she clubs him again and he
does go down. And it's interesting for a film that
is filled with in particular the music of Rhein Gold,
throughout this whole stretch is musicless, and it really puts
a point on what's happening here. So she drags his
lifeless body into the kitchen area. She notices a standalone
(29:41):
freezer in there, and she slowly begins to undress him.
She finds an electric knife and proceeds to dismember his body.
It's not graphic. There's one shot of her putting the
saw up against his shoulder and you can see it
(30:01):
go into blood. Isn't spraying everywhere. They take a very
clever route with the quote unquote special effects here during
the dismemberment scene where she is picking up individual limbs
or parts of his body, and it is just him
or maybe a stunt double or a body double, where
she picks up an arm and the arm and the
(30:24):
whole rest of his body is lifted up, but the
shot is cut off where his arm is. So they
didn't create fake limbs for any of this. They just
used somebody's real body and she stores them in the
freezer at some point, she's sitting at the table and
has the wonderful idea to cook him up. We proceed
(30:46):
to get shots of her making a stew, making things.
She goes so far as to grind his bones in
what looks to be a coffee grinder, and she heats
all of this up in the oven and basically turns
him into dust. And she takes that dust when she
(31:06):
leaves the house. So at some point we've got to
cut in here to the next morning. She has finally
gotten dressed. She's wearing the brown the brown shirt from
earlier that he wore at the Top Pop performance, and
the camera stays below her neck or a while here.
(31:26):
She gets her stuff together, she cleans up, she goes
to his car, his rolls that he had taken her therein,
puts the keys in there, gets something out of the trunk,
and then takes off and ends up back home. Well,
eventually we see she has shaved her head during this
(31:46):
time to look like what he looked like during that
Top Pop performance and is wearing his shirt. When she
gets home, her parents are like, oh, thank god you're home.
You know, we didn't bother to call the cops because
we didn't want to cause a fuss, and I'm thinking, ah, yeah,
you just don't give a shit, And then we immediately
go back into voiceover. She is still writing letters. We
(32:10):
find out that she is pregnant. We also see on
the news that are is missing. They haven't found anything,
any idea of what's happened to him, it's just that
he's missing. She's still writing her letters. She hasn't been
caught up to this point. And then at the very
end of the film, the doorbell rings and we cut
(32:34):
to credits. So who knows is that the cops have
they discovered something in this house? Did anybody even know
really where this house was? Are they going to find
any trace of him? Since she basically devoured and or
burned his body up and she ends up tossing his
dust on the street. At some point, I've made the
(32:55):
point of the fantasy aspect. I just kept thinking that
as I was watching the movie, Okay, well, at this point,
maybe it's fantasy. Maybe it's this point, maybe it's now.
Maybe she didn't really kill him, this is her fantasy
of revenge. And in that director interview, eckhart Schmidt mentions
that the censors made them tack on a dream ending
(33:20):
where she wakes up and it was all a dream,
and I kind of thought, oh, yeah, that makes sense,
you could get away with that. Now, I don't think
I would be happy with that. And then what they
ended up doing they pulled a Kubrick and they went
after all the prints had been released to theaters, they
went and cut that ending off, so they got it
to pass censorship, went around cut those out. He had
(33:43):
edited in so much as a way that it wouldn't
interfere with the rest of the film. And there you go.
So I think it's warranted to think at any certain
point in the film we're dealing with her fantasies. I
(34:15):
mentioned Taxi Driver, and there are definite similarities here. The
constant voiceover narration in Taxi Driver, it's Travis's journals that
we're hearing in this, it's her letters. Mainly. The shaved
head at the end is very reminiscent of the mohawk
(34:37):
that Travis Pickle sports before he goes on his rampage.
And then you have the aspect of the Jodi Foster character,
the twelve year old prostitute, which she played at twelve
years old. That was controversial at the time. There were
a lot of protections surrounding her during that filming. Her
(34:58):
sister doubled fur her in any of the more overtly
sexual scenes. She also doubled for her in The Little
Girl who Lives Down the Lane for that nude scene
in that and that blurring of that line brings up issues.
And there is a definite issue with this film. The
(35:19):
controversy of this movie, which I mentioned at the beginning,
that I would get into, isn't the subject matter, although
I'm assuming for some people a movie about cannibalism would
be controversial to begin with. It's the fact that Desiree
Noseboosh was a young girl. She was sixteen going on seventeen.
(35:44):
The film came out in June of eighty two. She
turned seventeen in January. Now, unless they had a super
fast turnaround, I'm assuming that some of this was filmed,
some of it at least was filmed while she was
still sixteen. I'm going to track a little bit. Desiree
Noseboush was actually pretty well known already at this time,
(36:06):
at least in her home country of Luxembourg, where she
had hosted a radio show At twelve and a TV
show by the time she was fourteen. And I guess
if you read the trivia about her, one of her
more famous bits of trivia is that she got kicked
(36:27):
off of hosting this TV show because she insulted a politician.
So to me, that raises this point of this precocious team.
The idea that a lot of people use as an
excuse to get in relationships with a very young person,
or in this case, have them star in a movie
(36:49):
that requires full nudity, that they are mature for their age.
We've all heard this, mainly in reference to young girls.
Of course, it goes against all we know about the brain.
Being precocious does not mean your mature. Our brains do
not mature until early to mid twenties. And so the
(37:11):
controversy really revolves around the fact that between the making
of the film and the release of the film, some stills,
nude stills of her sex scene with Bodo Steiger were
published in a magazine, and so I think she had
maybe a moment of self consciousness and tried to keep
(37:34):
the picture from being released, and there was a whole
court case. Now everything I've read before, it's the top
IMDb trivia note when you look up the movie and
it's in the Wikipedia page and everything else. She lost
the court case because she had signed a contract after
(37:55):
having seen the storyboards for this whole last act of
the film, which comprises of a good twenty or so
minutes where she is going to be this character Simone
is going to be naked for most of this time.
So I've read that a number of times and thought, okay, well, great,
she signed a contract during that interview that is on
(38:17):
the Blu ray. Towards the end of that, Schmidt says, well,
once we got to court, we realized she hadn't signed
the contract. Her manager, who was her boyfriend at the
time and much older than her. Here we go again,
hadn't signed a contract because he couldn't sign the contract,
and her parents hadn't signed the contract. So actually there
(38:41):
was no signed contract. I'm not sure how they ended
up winning the court case. I guess it eventually came
down to the producer saying, offer her some money and
get rid of the problem, which they did. So there
is this aspect of the film that's uncomfortable for me.
I mentioned this however, long ago. I did that episode
(39:01):
a watch List episode where I talked about having seen
this and if that's an issue for people, you know,
don't watch it. You have to track this thing down
to watch it in the first place, or buy the
Blu ray to begin with. So if you have an
issue with underage nudity, don't watch it. Is this the
first time it's happened. No, there are numerous instances I
can think of off the top of my head. Melanie
(39:24):
Griffith was in two movies I believe before she was
eighteen where she is nude. Jenny Agater in walk About
was sixteen when she did a full nude scene nis Jostic. Okay,
here we go with I'm gonna screw up her name.
Nastoshya Kinski, good god Mark is trying to say. Nostasia
(39:47):
Kinski was fourteen when she filmed the nude scene in
to the Devil a Daughter. So it does happen from
time to time, and I don't know the particulars of
each situation and who signed off on what. Those movies
are out there to be watched by people, And I
think for me that was one of the reasons I
(40:08):
halted doing this episode. And I'm thinking, are you being hypocritical.
Can you criticize this and watch it do an episode
on it knowing that there is this issue now? Supposedly,
according to Schmidt, they made up years later. They were
both living in LA and they met for lunch and
it was all water under the bridge. I've never heard
(40:30):
her side of it or read her side of it.
It's all been from him or these bits of trivia
that are probably mostly garnered from these interviews of Schmidt.
Is it just one of those things where you get
over it and move on. I've been seeing this post
the last couple of days or this past week on
(40:50):
Twitter about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Is it problematic?
Is it problematic and trans misogynistic? And the original poster
was like, you know, yes, but does that mean you
can't watch it? No, you can enjoy problematic art. You
can enjoy art from problematic people. That kind of stuff
(41:12):
I always think of as an individual choice. You guys
decide what you're going to do. I'm going to decide
what I'm going to do. The other part of me,
as a dad of a daughter who just turned seventeen
last week, can say, without a doubt there is absolutely
no way I would sign off on this. My daughter's
(41:33):
not an actress or anything like that, but it wouldn't happen.
Nude scenes. Sex scenes don't bother me. I'm not a prude.
I don't really enforce that on her so much. Except
for extremely We're not watching Blue Velvet anytime soon. That's
a very adult movie. That is a whole other discourse
where this current generation seems to think that all sex
(41:56):
scenes are unnecessary. Yeah, that is not where I stand.
The sex scene in this is not explicit or super graphic.
It's almost impressionistic in a way, not so much like
my own Private Idaho, where it's actually meant to look
like stills during the sex scenes. But it has a weird,
(42:17):
stilted quality to it. But she is completely naked. Could
they have done it with a body double? Of course?
Could they have done this with an older actress? My
wife watched Euphoria a couple of years back, like went
through the whole She didn't start watching it from the beginning,
but watched it and kind of binged it for a
(42:38):
few months. And it's extremely graphic. Obviously, even though they're
playing teenagers, all the actors and actresses in that are
over age. They're in their twenties. Could you do that
in Derfan? Of course you could. Could you, like I said,
use a body double. Yes, you could do all kinds
of things to where this young girl who's sixteen or
(43:00):
seventeen is not appearing completely naked in the film. What
does that mean for you as the audience member, whether
you have this information already or not. Some people may
watch this and have no idea that the lead actress
was at the very most seventeen years old when it
was filmed. So that's the individual question each person has
(43:20):
to ask. I think it's an interesting aspect of the
movie of its history. I really enjoy this movie, and
I think she in particular does an amazing job. Does
the controversy taint the film? Yeah, a little bit in
my head. I'm obviously going to watch it and have
watched it. Whatever that says about me, I don't know.
(43:43):
The wonderful thing is you all can decide what you
would do, whether you would watch it or not. With
that knowledge in mind. I'm certainly not going to tell
you not to watch it, and I'm not going to
tell you to watch it. I think it's a fascinating film.
It's a beautiful film has some great performances and an
interesting conceit. That idea of cannibalism, ingesting the thing that
(44:08):
you obsessed over, that you quote unquote loved. It's a
powerful theme in movies, and it I think goes back
to the whole idea of fandom. Isn't that what we
do to the people, the artists, the musicians, the actors
that we love, try to consume them. Okay, well, thank
you so much for tuning in. Hey, two episodes in
(44:31):
as many months. I guess the juices are flowing again.
Not a fan of that phrase. And I actually have
an idea for something completely different to do. I've thought about.
I've changed up the way I'm recording right now, and
I've thought, I don't know if anybody would be interested
in doing kind of a tech talk episode where I
(44:54):
explain how I put together the show, how I create
an episode of Wake Up Heavy or Cambridge and with
Sean or whatever else it might be that I'm working on.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
So I might do that.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I don't know, We'll see. I don't know if that
would be of interest to have an audio guide for that,
but maybe would be helpful for anybody out there. That's
got their own podcast and has questions. I don't know,
we'll see. I'm tossing that idea around and who knows,
it might be four or five months before that ever
happens or anything else comes out. You don't know anymore
(45:27):
with this show. But again, thank you all for being here,
Thanks for listening. Go watch der Fan if you're of
a mind too, or completely ignore it and never watch
it in your life. That is totally up to you.
Have a great day, a great month. It's October, it's
spooky season, watch good horror films, and don't forget anything
(45:51):
can happen when you wake up Heavy.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Sackets may be dogs.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Three Oliver go Forli follow you want to and you
(46:48):
did put over outside.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
For days and I will five.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Follow and snats can Clive.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
No a.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
N Stanners dealt him and his bats star says no
office Gars.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Star shunts and spas he starts, I can ask im.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
I'm anost.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Wake up Heavy. It is a weirdy way media podcast.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Wow, this has just been such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I'm such a lucky boy.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
I can't wait to go home.
Wake Up Heavy is a weirding Way media podcast, not.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The very much Rockets for Me Dog.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Welcome to Wake Up Heavy, the world's greatest horror movie podcast.
In this episode, my weird dad will be talking.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
About Hello and welcome to Wake Up Heavy. This is
(00:52):
Mark Begley, your host, and I am finally getting around
to the third course of my Cannibal movie trilogy that
was started oh just about a year ago when I
did a why Didn't I Rent This? On Motel Hell,
and then Christashu joined me for an episode on parents,
(01:15):
and amongst all that, I mentioned probably a number of
times that I was going to round it out with
der Fan or the Fan from nineteen eighty two, and
I'm finally getting to it, So here we go. There
are a couple of reasons it took me this long
to get back to this, and some of them I've
(01:35):
mentioned on the show in the past, just life stuff,
work stuff. But the other reason was that, actually, I
every time I thought about rewatching this film, I paused
and thought, do I really want to right now? And
the reason for that is at that time and for
(01:56):
the last oh gosh, four or five years or even longer,
I've had this thing about watching movies with unlikable protagonists,
and I'm kind of tired of it. And I had
it in my head that the lead in this, that
the main character was a lot more unlikable than is
(02:18):
actually true. I just kept thinking that, I think, oh,
I need to do the Derfan episode. Let's sit down
and watch it. I know I like the movie. I
talked about it a little bit on an episode like
four years ago, sometime during the pandemic when I actually
bought the Blu ray, and then it just kept coming
back to me that this girl is so unlikable and
(02:40):
she treats everybody so horribly, and she's so selfish and
entitled and blah blah blah, And there is that in
the character, but it's not nearly as bad as I
had been making it out in my own head. So anyway,
I saw a couple people post about this over the
last few months on Twitter and having watched it and
kind of hyping it up, and I thought, Okay, time
to get back to this. So I had a date
(03:02):
to myself here recently and thought, okay, let's throw it on,
take some notes, think about it, and see if we
really want to do this, and I did, and enjoyed
it a lot again and was happy to see, Okay,
she's not that awful. She's a teenager and has issues
with her parents and authority and blah blah blah. So
(03:24):
enjoyed it immensely again and am ready to get talking
about it. So, yes, this is about The Fan from
nineteen eighty two kind of commonly goes by its American
title in most things that I see online, not to
be confused with The Fan from nineteen eighty one, starring
Michael Bean and Lauren Bacall. And I'm pretty sure I've
(03:46):
mentioned watching that in the past. It is a sleazy
little number and it has this very eighties homophobic subtext
running throughout. It is an interesting film, though, and I
believe it's going to be on TCM this month this
October on the Creepy Cinema that Mario Cantone does with
(04:09):
Ben Maka Wits every year. I want to say. On
the promos there is an image of Lauren Baccall in distress,
and I'm thinking, did she do another early eighties movie
where she's in distress? I don't know, so I think
it'll be plain if you want to catch it. Also,
not to be confused with the nineteen ninety six film
The Fan directed by Tony Scott starring Robert Tanniro and
(04:31):
Wesley Snipes, and most certainly not to be confused with
The Fanatic starring John Travolta.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
House.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Ouse, Watch Out, Watch Out, Here's Moozy and directed by
Limp Biscuit. Of course, all four of these movies, amongst others,
deal with an obsessive fan, a fan who writes letters
(05:02):
or somehow else contacts this famous person that they're obsessed
with or in love with in this case, or think
they're in love with and stalks them and then finally
meets them, and so on and so on. They all
have that same very similar theme and plot, and it's
a thing that, of course, since the early to mid
(05:26):
eighties has been a real problem for people and has
become much more exposed and talked about. And we've had
numerous celebrities killed by their stalkers and so on. So
it's one of those things that's been around forever. I'm
going to talk about fandom in this because it is
(05:49):
and can be a very strange world, and in our
day with the Internet and Twitter and Instagram, it's even
uglier than in the past. The film was directed by
Eckhart Schmidt, and I am not familiar with any other
films of his. It stars a very young Desiree Nosebush,
(06:14):
probably mispronouncing her name, and Bodo Steiger, also probably mispronouncing
his name, as the a Fan and the Fans' Obsession, respectively.
I cannot, for the life of me think about where
I first heard about this film. I know it wasn't
(06:36):
back in the eighties when I was buying all these
movie books and reading them and noting movies on little
lists to try and look for, because as far as
I know or what I've read, this wasn't even released
in the States at any point up until the Mondo
Macabre Blu Ray. I could be wrong. There may have
(06:58):
been a version or a different title obviously edited. It
was released in the UK as Trance, heavily edited, but
like I said, everything I've read has stated it was
never released her. But when I saw it online, I'm
assuming sometime within the last ten years, it rang familiar
(07:20):
to me. And I don't know if it's just because
that idea of an obsessed fan stalking their obsession and
doing horrible things to them is a pretty common trope,
or if I don't know, the images of her on
the posters looked familiar, so I don't know how if
it came across my radar way back when or not,
(07:42):
or it's just one of those zeitgeist type things where
this is a familiar tale. Whenever I did first read
about it, it intrigued me enough to continue reading about it
looking for it, of course on streaming, which I don't
believe it ever has streamed anywhere here, probably won't and
we'll get to the controversy of the film later on
(08:05):
in the episode. And the only option was this Mondo
Micabro Blu Ray. And you' all know me, if you
know me in person, and if you listen to any
episode of the show, you know that I am a
cheap skate. I don't have a lot of Blu rays
and DVDs and VHS tapes from my past. But I
went out on a limb on this one and got
(08:26):
that Blu Ray. And I probably got it on Amazon
because I had Amazon gift card money. I don't believe
I ordered it directly from Mondo. I'm pretty sure I
didn't order it from them, and so it was probably
cheaper than buying it from them, and possibly free if
I have gift card money. Anyway, got it, watched it,
really enjoyed it. Like I said, talked about it. I
(08:49):
think early on in the pandemic is when I watched it,
maybe slightly before the pandemic started, and thought, Okay, well
that was a I'm going to be watching this again.
That was an Oak purchase. It's not a one and
done thing, like I I sit on my shelf and
never be watched again. And I believe even back then
I probably consider doing an episode on it. And back
(09:09):
to that unlikable character thing. A lot of the movies
that I watched in my teens and early twenties had
unlikable characters. A lot of Scorsese films, who I was
a big fan of his big films, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver,
even Goodfellas. They're unlikable people. They are not good people.
(09:32):
And this is particularly true of Raging Bull. And I
just can't watch that. It's such an amazing movie. It
is an impeccably made film, but I can't put myself
through two and a half hours of Jake Lamatta on screen,
and I just can't do it. I can't. He's such
an awful person. He's an abuser. He beats everyone in
(09:53):
his life literally and figuratively and emotionally and every other
way you can. And I can't do it. I just
can't put myself through that stuff anymore. I think about
Ferris Bueller and how I watched that movie so much
as a teenager, and it was on cable constantly. I
remember my dad would walk in and be like, oh,
he wouldn't say this exactly, but this fucking movie's on again.
(10:16):
And I loved it back then, and these days, I'm like,
this guy is such a prick. Why doesn't anybody knock
him down a few pigs? Yes, it's fun ditching school,
going out, having a great day, but he is an
asshole to everybody in his life. And I am like
team Jennifer Gray in that film anymore. A recent example
Scott Pilgrim from Scott Pilgrim Saves the World. Guy's a dick.
(10:38):
It's not fun for me to watch unless there's a
redemption aspect or arc to the story. I kind of
can't do it. So that's why, like I said, I
put this off for so long, and I was sort
of a mistake. On my part, because she's not that awful.
I mean, she's pretty awful, but it's not hard to watch.
It's not hard for me to get through. She's mainly
(11:00):
just a selfish, self absorbed teen she being Simone, a
German teen in um who is obsessed with R or Or,
a new wave singer. And Bodo Steiger, who plays R
in the film, was the lead singer and guitarist of
(11:24):
Rain Gold, a band, and this is one of the
aspects of the film that I know I talked about
on this past episode where I had a feeling that
this electronic music throughout the film was going to drive
me nuts, and it did exactly the opposite. I love it,
and you'll hear little bits and pieces of it throughout
this episode, but it is so hypnotic and it's not
(11:46):
played so much that it's annoying in the movie, thankfully,
but you do hear snippets of the same songs over
and over again. But it adds to this repetitive life
that we see Simone go through on a daily basis,
where we get mirrored shots throughout the film. She goes
(12:07):
through her daily actions at home and at school, and
so there is a repetition to it, and the music
definitely adds to that. I have to say that this
is a beautiful transfer. I have nothing to compare it
to since I haven't seen the film in any other
way before, but just in general, as far as movies
(12:30):
blu rays transfers go, it is crisp and clear. The
film opens with a wonderful title sequence of contrasting blacks
and reds black titles on a red card and vice versa,
and we hear this zooming of cars, and the opening
(12:52):
shot is a close up of Simone's eyes, and then
we start to get her voiceover, which is pretty consistent
and constant throughout the movie, and it's mainly her reading letters,
the letters that she's writing to R. During this close
up shot, we see what she's staring at, and it
(13:12):
is a mailman walking down the street, and once the
mailman catches her eye, his face just drops. So this
is an ongoing thing, we realize, and we'll continue through
the film. This is one of those repetitious motifs throughout
her confronting the mailman asking if she's gotten anything back
(13:32):
from R, and of course she never does, and in
her voiceover we get an idea of her mind. It
must be that our's secretary is throwing her letters away
because she's jealous. And if R were to get her letters,
you would realize, you know, she's the one. And again
(13:53):
that's consistent throughout a lot of her imaginings, her fantasies.
If he only got my letters, or if he could
only see me, or if he knew this, or if
he knew that about me, he would love me too.
The idea of these songs, Your songs are for me.
It's like you know me. Stuff like that. This stuff
(14:14):
with the mailman continues for a while. We see I
think at least three confrontations, and the last one gets
violent and she finds his bag on the street. He's
left it down there, and he comes out in an
apartment complex, and on this viewing I noticed that he
has lipstick smeared all over his mouth. So he's been
up prancing around with one of his customers during his workday,
(14:38):
and she effectively beats him and then throws all the
mail out of his bag. Prior to that, she steals
a letter from her school that he is going to
deliver to her parents. This becomes another aspect of her
routine where she's constantly ditching school and we see multiple
shots of her in class, and I love the This
(15:01):
is another good example of the mirroring in the film,
where the shots of her in class are set up
the same, The composition is the same, the movements are
the same. There's, you know, the droning teacher in the background,
which she is totally disinterested in. She's usually thinking thoughts
that we hear about are There's always a boy sitting
(15:21):
behind her that wears a scarf around or a bandana
around his neck, and we'll see him later on on
one of her ventures around town. This city, um that
she lives in is just gorgeous. That adds another aspect
to this film. Quaint, little medieval German town with a
(15:42):
big cathedral and this tower that she goes up on
and of course fantasizes. You know, if I were to
just throw myself off and have a last letter to
R in my pocket, then he would have to know
who I am and he would have to love me.
So the shots of her roaming around wonderful lot of
steady camwork. Her outfits. I have to say, I don't
(16:05):
pay much attention to that kind of stuff. In movies,
but early eighties new wave European and her choice of
clothes throughout the film is just incredible. Photos fashion leaves
a little bit to be desired, since he likes to
wear Nazi stuff. During the opening of the film, when
(16:27):
we get to Simone's house and there is a close
up of photos and paintings and pictures of our photo
Steiger's character, and then there's a big picture of a
German crowd doing the sighile and you hear Hyle's over
the soundtrack. This idea of this fandom is fascism, which
(16:51):
I find really intriguing, plays a big part in this.
That's what I was referring to earlier. Where I mean,
growing up up in the eighties with a lot of
new music coming out, and I knew a lot of
people who Oh well, I was into him. Then I
was into him before anybody else knew about him. Somebody,
some small band gets their big break and now they're
(17:13):
very popular. Oh well, I had their first. You know
that kind of crap, And it is so much worse
these days with the online culture, and you know, you
can't be a true fan of Taylor Swift if this
this and this the director gets into this a bit
in the interview that's included on the disc, and the
idea of this history of fascism in Germany, and did
(17:38):
Hitler somehow fill a need for the German people or
did he bring about the fascism fans? Do they create
these superstars or do the superstars come in and fill
that void. Ours logo is two lightning bolts side by side,
(17:58):
which very closely resemble the SS symbol. So you get
those bits and pieces throughout and I like that. The
director in this same interview says, you can look at
it with that lens or completely ignored. It doesn't matter
to the rest of the film, really. And so between
(18:34):
her skipping school and bothering the mailman, she's aware that
Our is going to be on TV. So in one
of the letters she writes, she's like, well, wink your
right eye and I'll know that that's a signal to me.
And so she gets all dressed up in a fancy
outfit to watch this, and her parents, of course are
disinterested in her, It seems disinterested in each other. When
(18:57):
they put the program on that Aura is on, he
stares dead eyed into the camera, so he doesn't even
blink let alone wink, which I just think is absolutely hysterical.
And of course you know that means that the secretary
through the letter away, etc. Etc. When Dad changes the channel,
she attacks him, much like she's attacked the mailman previously.
(19:21):
So we get this idea that there is some violence
in her, some physical violence. We get shots of all
the mail that our gets going through the post office there.
At some point she decides to circumvent the mailman and
gets basically a po box. So now instead of meeting
(19:42):
him on the street, she's going there every day and
asking the clerks if she's gotten anything. And we get
these great interstitials of day one all the way down
to I don't know at least day six, and nothing comes,
and by that point they're laughing at her. On one
of her ventures around town, the boy that sits behind
her in class with the bandana is following her. When
(20:05):
he finally catches up to her, he gives her a mixtape,
and there's some dialogue there where it implies that they
were dating. At some point. He says something like you
never come around, or you don't take my calls anymore,
or something to that effect. I like that it's subtle
like that, and we don't really know what their relationship is.
It just seems like maybe he's pestering her. But then
(20:27):
it feels more like she's gone so heavy into this
obsession that a normal relationship with just a guy in
her class is beneath her and she's not interested. She
has fantasies throughout, and they're always shot with a filtered lens,
and it's usually of ours secretary getting rid of her
(20:48):
letters or chasing her off at one point, and at
some point it appears that she has run away from home.
She's still wandering around the city, but she breaks into
a car to sleep. The next morning, an old man
finds her in there. We get an indication of some
pervinus there, which will creep back up in a little bit.
She does eventually take to the road to go to Munich,
(21:13):
where are is going to appear on Top Pop a
music show, So she catches a ride with an older man, who,
of course, at one point tries to rape her. She
escapes and wanders through the woods and finally ends up
at this TV station where other quote unquote celebrities keep
(21:35):
showing up and there's fans milling around and getting people's autographs,
and she's not interested in any of them because they're
not are. Once she's in Munich, she has another fantasy.
I believe, there's this raging storm and she's sitting in
the car and the car is rocking, very striking. And
then she wakes up the next day and he has
finally shown up, and she freezes, they make eye contact,
(22:00):
he walks over, and she passes out. So there's this point.
There's a couple of points in the film where you
could make the argument that we are in one of
her fantasies. The filmmaker has established a look for her
fantasies and these don't have that look. But I don't
think you have to adhere to that necessarily or it
(22:21):
would be too obvious. And again you can make the
argument both ways. No, this is not a fantasy, and
I think the strongest indication of that is why would
you fantasize this? And I'll explain that when we get
to the finale. But there are points where you wonder,
since she has an active imagination, since she has had
(22:43):
fantasies before that aren't always positive, and her whole life
is built around this imaginary relationship. So at this point,
when she wakes up, she is in the studio and
he is looming above her in silhouette, and you could
very easily say, okay, well, this isn't real. From this
point on, we're in Wizard of Oz territory. Nothing that
(23:06):
comes after is actually happening to her. He is very
nice to her. He's very friendly, not creepy at this point,
but seems to be legitimately concerned, and I guess that's
sort of where my mind is thinking, Yeah, this isn't real.
He gets her backstage. He basically keeps her there and
(23:27):
is constantly going back to her like a caring boyfriend.
Of course, he's got this show to do for top pop.
It's very eighties. There is a set with all these
mannequins that are bald. He wears a bald cap and
a strange brown shirt, kind of more of this national
(23:48):
socialism gear. She's in the audience, loving all of it,
clapping after everybody else to stop clapping. He seems to
be pushing everybody away from him and focusing solely on her.
Again makes me think this is her fantasy. He takes
her out to eat. There's some talk about the secretary,
like she's getting jealous and she's left, and he agrees
(24:10):
that she has most likely thrown her letters away because
he's never seen them. Blah blah blah. So we're starting
to get this turn of where instead of it feeling genuine,
it feels more like he is manipulating this young fan
because she is extremely attractive, very into him, and he's
going to be able to do whatever he feels like
(24:31):
with her. And that's my own argument against that this
is a fantasy, because the rest of this plays out
not well for her, and since she saw him get
out of the car earlier on, she has been very,
very shy, which to me is a stark contrast to
how she has acted throughout the film, being abusive to people,
(24:54):
showing a lot of force and strength. And it made
me think as I was watching it, what's that thing
that's going around the very demure, very demure, very mindful.
She seems almost overwhelmed. She's a young girl. She is
a teenager. We don't know. I don't think it's ever
explained what her exact age is in the movie, but
(25:18):
she is a teen girl. She is in high school
or whatever the German equivalent is, secondary school, that's British,
and she's not the cool character that she has come
across as uptil now ours entourage is ticked off at
him because he's kind of shrinking his responsibilities. He's got
these places to be, these things to do, and he's
(25:41):
all about Simone at this moment. He takes her after
this top pop performance to a friend's house nearby that
no one else knows about. She's very willing to go,
but she's still in that kind of shy, guarded mode,
and so you don't know how this is going to
(26:01):
play out. There's a great shot before they get into
the house of Simone in the car and the camera
slowly tracking into her mouth as it opens, which again
brings to mind for me, at least, we're entering another world.
(26:22):
This is a fantasy world from this point on. You
could say fantasy before they enter the house, or it's
just simply a little foreshadowing of what's to come. They
have shared a kiss already at this point at the studio,
but when they get to the house, it's still that awkward.
What's going to happen? They separate. She's exploring the house
(26:44):
looking at the artwork, a statue that's in the hallway
some of the other things in the house. She goes
to the bathroom, smashes her face up against the mirror,
and then finds him in a room that is draped
in like curtains hanging all very again, very very very eighties.
(27:04):
At this point they proceed to have sex, and as
you would expect, the second it's over, he cannot wait
to get the fuck out of there. So he makes
some excuse about having to do this business, these things
that his secretary and all his other entourage, his hangers
on were talking about earlier. Oh, now he's concerned about it. Hey,
(27:28):
you stay here, stay as long as you want. Just
lead the key under the mat. No big deal, and
thanks for the fuck I'm out of here. Goodbye, little girl.
I got what I wanted. I really don't care about you.
She tells him that she loves him, and his response
is me too. Not quite as bad as Han Solo,
(27:48):
but it's up there. I love you. He says something
like you made me very happy. She starts crying, and
I was kind of struck this time. It looked like
her tears were milky, and I was thinking, what the
hell is this all about? But I believe it's just
running into her makeup. But I thought, for a second,
Oh god, we're going into sci fi territory or something
(28:11):
like that. Excuse me. There's an interesting break here where
we have her screaming and then another shot, not an
exact shot of her screaming again, and it's like they
took two different takes and put them together. And again
my mind goes to this is a break in reality.
Is what happens next not real? So maybe up to
(28:33):
this point it's been real, because why would she fantasize
about him leaving immediately instead of a fantasy where they're together.
Now they're an actual couple. He expresses his love back
to her. I mean, we could have had that as
a fantasy, and then cut to him leaving and saying,
you know, I got shit to do. We don't, though,
(28:54):
so is this point after her scream now fantasy. She
takes the statue that she was admiring earlier, which is
a figure with an outstretched hand in a fist, and
nails him in the back of the head. There's this
really cool shot of him where he's just standing there
after this happens. He doesn't fall to the ground immediately.
(29:17):
And then of course she clubs him again and he
does go down. And it's interesting for a film that
is filled with in particular the music of Rhein Gold,
throughout this whole stretch is musicless, and it really puts
a point on what's happening here. So she drags his
lifeless body into the kitchen area. She notices a standalone
(29:41):
freezer in there, and she slowly begins to undress him.
She finds an electric knife and proceeds to dismember his body.
It's not graphic. There's one shot of her putting the
saw up against his shoulder and you can see it
(30:01):
go into blood. Isn't spraying everywhere. They take a very
clever route with the quote unquote special effects here during
the dismemberment scene where she is picking up individual limbs
or parts of his body, and it is just him
or maybe a stunt double or a body double, where
she picks up an arm and the arm and the
(30:24):
whole rest of his body is lifted up, but the
shot is cut off where his arm is. So they
didn't create fake limbs for any of this. They just
used somebody's real body and she stores them in the
freezer at some point, she's sitting at the table and
has the wonderful idea to cook him up. We proceed
(30:46):
to get shots of her making a stew, making things.
She goes so far as to grind his bones in
what looks to be a coffee grinder, and she heats
all of this up in the oven and basically turns
him into dust. And she takes that dust when she
(31:06):
leaves the house. So at some point we've got to
cut in here to the next morning. She has finally
gotten dressed. She's wearing the brown the brown shirt from
earlier that he wore at the Top Pop performance, and
the camera stays below her neck or a while here.
(31:26):
She gets her stuff together, she cleans up, she goes
to his car, his rolls that he had taken her therein,
puts the keys in there, gets something out of the trunk,
and then takes off and ends up back home. Well,
eventually we see she has shaved her head during this
(31:46):
time to look like what he looked like during that
Top Pop performance and is wearing his shirt. When she
gets home, her parents are like, oh, thank god you're home.
You know, we didn't bother to call the cops because
we didn't want to cause a fuss, and I'm thinking, ah, yeah,
you just don't give a shit, And then we immediately
go back into voiceover. She is still writing letters. We
(32:10):
find out that she is pregnant. We also see on
the news that are is missing. They haven't found anything,
any idea of what's happened to him, it's just that
he's missing. She's still writing her letters. She hasn't been
caught up to this point. And then at the very
end of the film, the doorbell rings and we cut
(32:34):
to credits. So who knows is that the cops have
they discovered something in this house? Did anybody even know
really where this house was? Are they going to find
any trace of him? Since she basically devoured and or
burned his body up and she ends up tossing his
dust on the street. At some point, I've made the
(32:55):
point of the fantasy aspect. I just kept thinking that
as I was watching the movie, Okay, well, at this point,
maybe it's fantasy. Maybe it's this point, maybe it's now.
Maybe she didn't really kill him, this is her fantasy
of revenge. And in that director interview, eckhart Schmidt mentions
that the censors made them tack on a dream ending
(33:20):
where she wakes up and it was all a dream,
and I kind of thought, oh, yeah, that makes sense,
you could get away with that. Now, I don't think
I would be happy with that. And then what they
ended up doing they pulled a Kubrick and they went
after all the prints had been released to theaters, they
went and cut that ending off, so they got it
to pass censorship, went around cut those out. He had
(33:43):
edited in so much as a way that it wouldn't
interfere with the rest of the film. And there you go.
So I think it's warranted to think at any certain
point in the film we're dealing with her fantasies. I
(34:15):
mentioned Taxi Driver, and there are definite similarities here. The
constant voiceover narration in Taxi Driver, it's Travis's journals that
we're hearing in this, it's her letters. Mainly. The shaved
head at the end is very reminiscent of the mohawk
(34:37):
that Travis Pickle sports before he goes on his rampage.
And then you have the aspect of the Jodi Foster character,
the twelve year old prostitute, which she played at twelve
years old. That was controversial at the time. There were
a lot of protections surrounding her during that filming. Her
(34:58):
sister doubled fur her in any of the more overtly
sexual scenes. She also doubled for her in The Little
Girl who Lives Down the Lane for that nude scene
in that and that blurring of that line brings up issues.
And there is a definite issue with this film. The
(35:19):
controversy of this movie, which I mentioned at the beginning,
that I would get into, isn't the subject matter, although
I'm assuming for some people a movie about cannibalism would
be controversial to begin with. It's the fact that Desiree
Noseboosh was a young girl. She was sixteen going on seventeen.
(35:44):
The film came out in June of eighty two. She
turned seventeen in January. Now, unless they had a super
fast turnaround, I'm assuming that some of this was filmed,
some of it at least was filmed while she was
still sixteen. I'm going to track a little bit. Desiree
Noseboush was actually pretty well known already at this time,
(36:06):
at least in her home country of Luxembourg, where she
had hosted a radio show At twelve and a TV
show by the time she was fourteen. And I guess
if you read the trivia about her, one of her
more famous bits of trivia is that she got kicked
(36:27):
off of hosting this TV show because she insulted a politician.
So to me, that raises this point of this precocious team.
The idea that a lot of people use as an
excuse to get in relationships with a very young person,
or in this case, have them star in a movie
(36:49):
that requires full nudity, that they are mature for their age.
We've all heard this, mainly in reference to young girls.
Of course, it goes against all we know about the brain.
Being precocious does not mean your mature. Our brains do
not mature until early to mid twenties. And so the
(37:11):
controversy really revolves around the fact that between the making
of the film and the release of the film, some stills,
nude stills of her sex scene with Bodo Steiger were
published in a magazine, and so I think she had
maybe a moment of self consciousness and tried to keep
(37:34):
the picture from being released, and there was a whole
court case. Now everything I've read before, it's the top
IMDb trivia note when you look up the movie and
it's in the Wikipedia page and everything else. She lost
the court case because she had signed a contract after
(37:55):
having seen the storyboards for this whole last act of
the film, which comprises of a good twenty or so
minutes where she is going to be this character Simone
is going to be naked for most of this time.
So I've read that a number of times and thought, okay, well, great,
she signed a contract during that interview that is on
(38:17):
the Blu ray. Towards the end of that, Schmidt says, well,
once we got to court, we realized she hadn't signed
the contract. Her manager, who was her boyfriend at the
time and much older than her. Here we go again,
hadn't signed a contract because he couldn't sign the contract,
and her parents hadn't signed the contract. So actually there
(38:41):
was no signed contract. I'm not sure how they ended
up winning the court case. I guess it eventually came
down to the producer saying, offer her some money and
get rid of the problem, which they did. So there
is this aspect of the film that's uncomfortable for me.
I mentioned this however, long ago. I did that episode
(39:01):
a watch List episode where I talked about having seen
this and if that's an issue for people, you know,
don't watch it. You have to track this thing down
to watch it in the first place, or buy the
Blu ray to begin with. So if you have an
issue with underage nudity, don't watch it. Is this the
first time it's happened. No, there are numerous instances I
can think of off the top of my head. Melanie
(39:24):
Griffith was in two movies I believe before she was
eighteen where she is nude. Jenny Agater in walk About
was sixteen when she did a full nude scene nis Jostic. Okay,
here we go with I'm gonna screw up her name.
Nastoshya Kinski, good god Mark is trying to say. Nostasia
(39:47):
Kinski was fourteen when she filmed the nude scene in
to the Devil a Daughter. So it does happen from
time to time, and I don't know the particulars of
each situation and who signed off on what. Those movies
are out there to be watched by people, And I
think for me that was one of the reasons I
(40:08):
halted doing this episode. And I'm thinking, are you being hypocritical.
Can you criticize this and watch it do an episode
on it knowing that there is this issue now? Supposedly,
according to Schmidt, they made up years later. They were
both living in LA and they met for lunch and
it was all water under the bridge. I've never heard
(40:30):
her side of it or read her side of it.
It's all been from him or these bits of trivia
that are probably mostly garnered from these interviews of Schmidt.
Is it just one of those things where you get
over it and move on. I've been seeing this post
the last couple of days or this past week on
(40:50):
Twitter about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Is it problematic?
Is it problematic and trans misogynistic? And the original poster
was like, you know, yes, but does that mean you
can't watch it? No, you can enjoy problematic art. You
can enjoy art from problematic people. That kind of stuff
(41:12):
I always think of as an individual choice. You guys
decide what you're going to do. I'm going to decide
what I'm going to do. The other part of me,
as a dad of a daughter who just turned seventeen
last week, can say, without a doubt there is absolutely
no way I would sign off on this. My daughter's
(41:33):
not an actress or anything like that, but it wouldn't happen.
Nude scenes. Sex scenes don't bother me. I'm not a prude.
I don't really enforce that on her so much. Except
for extremely We're not watching Blue Velvet anytime soon. That's
a very adult movie. That is a whole other discourse
where this current generation seems to think that all sex
(41:56):
scenes are unnecessary. Yeah, that is not where I stand.
The sex scene in this is not explicit or super graphic.
It's almost impressionistic in a way, not so much like
my own Private Idaho, where it's actually meant to look
like stills during the sex scenes. But it has a weird,
(42:17):
stilted quality to it. But she is completely naked. Could
they have done it with a body double? Of course?
Could they have done this with an older actress? My
wife watched Euphoria a couple of years back, like went
through the whole She didn't start watching it from the beginning,
but watched it and kind of binged it for a
(42:38):
few months. And it's extremely graphic. Obviously, even though they're
playing teenagers, all the actors and actresses in that are
over age. They're in their twenties. Could you do that
in Derfan? Of course you could. Could you, like I said,
use a body double. Yes, you could do all kinds
of things to where this young girl who's sixteen or
(43:00):
seventeen is not appearing completely naked in the film. What
does that mean for you as the audience member, whether
you have this information already or not. Some people may
watch this and have no idea that the lead actress
was at the very most seventeen years old when it
was filmed. So that's the individual question each person has
(43:20):
to ask. I think it's an interesting aspect of the
movie of its history. I really enjoy this movie, and
I think she in particular does an amazing job. Does
the controversy taint the film? Yeah, a little bit in
my head. I'm obviously going to watch it and have
watched it. Whatever that says about me, I don't know.
(43:43):
The wonderful thing is you all can decide what you
would do, whether you would watch it or not. With
that knowledge in mind. I'm certainly not going to tell
you not to watch it, and I'm not going to
tell you to watch it. I think it's a fascinating film.
It's a beautiful film has some great performances and an
interesting conceit. That idea of cannibalism, ingesting the thing that
(44:08):
you obsessed over, that you quote unquote loved. It's a
powerful theme in movies, and it I think goes back
to the whole idea of fandom. Isn't that what we
do to the people, the artists, the musicians, the actors
that we love, try to consume them. Okay, well, thank
you so much for tuning in. Hey, two episodes in
(44:31):
as many months. I guess the juices are flowing again.
Not a fan of that phrase. And I actually have
an idea for something completely different to do. I've thought about.
I've changed up the way I'm recording right now, and
I've thought, I don't know if anybody would be interested
in doing kind of a tech talk episode where I
(44:54):
explain how I put together the show, how I create
an episode of Wake Up Heavy or Cambridge and with
Sean or whatever else it might be that I'm working on.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
So I might do that.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I don't know, We'll see. I don't know if that
would be of interest to have an audio guide for that,
but maybe would be helpful for anybody out there. That's
got their own podcast and has questions. I don't know,
we'll see. I'm tossing that idea around and who knows,
it might be four or five months before that ever
happens or anything else comes out. You don't know anymore
(45:27):
with this show. But again, thank you all for being here,
Thanks for listening. Go watch der Fan if you're of
a mind too, or completely ignore it and never watch
it in your life. That is totally up to you.
Have a great day, a great month. It's October, it's
spooky season, watch good horror films, and don't forget anything
(45:51):
can happen when you wake up Heavy.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Sackets may be dogs.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Three Oliver go Forli follow you want to and you
(46:48):
did put over outside.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
For days and I will five.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Follow and snats can Clive.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
No a.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
N Stanners dealt him and his bats star says no
office Gars.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Star shunts and spas he starts, I can ask im.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
I'm anost.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Wake up Heavy. It is a weirdy way media podcast.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Wow, this has just been such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I'm such a lucky boy.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
I can't wait to go home.
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