Vulgar History - Movie Discussion： Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

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00:00:11.660 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:00:31.680 My name is Anne Foster and this season we've been looking at people who are involved in the events

00:00:35.900 of the French Revolution. Today we're going to be looking at a movie that has to do with the

00:00:40.440 French Revolution, which is the 1988 American movie Dangerous Liaisons. And this is a movie

00:00:47.080 that's based on a play by Christopher Hampton. And Christopher Hampton wrote the screenplay for

00:00:52.020 this movie as well. It feels a lot like a play in a good way. But Christopher Hampton's play

00:00:57.200 was based on a 1782 French novel called Dangerous Liaisons, or Les Liaisons Dangereuses. And that

00:01:05.660 novel was such a huge hit of France in the 1780s and 1790s, the period of the French Revolution

00:01:11.940 that we've been talking about. And part of why it was such a hit is because it was a really

00:01:16.200 scandalous, sexy novel. Novels are still a pretty new thing, the concept that you could read a book

00:01:23.100 and it's about fake people living made up adventures. So part of where Dangerous Liaisons,

00:01:29.220 the novel became so popular in that time, what in the 1780s, was because people really assumed

00:01:36.420 that this was true, that you were reading these real letters. And it's one of those books like

00:01:40.700 Dracula, if you've read Dracula by Bram Stoker, the original novel is all in letters. It's just

00:01:45.820 a series of letters between different people. And through those letters, you get an understanding

00:01:49.900 of the events and what has happened to all of them and what the schemes are that they're all

00:01:53.660 up to. So that blends the lines too, even more, even if you are someone who's like, I get it,

00:01:58.620 I know what fiction means. You read this book that from the very introduction of it says,

00:02:03.660 like, these letters are real. These events really happened. And then you read the letters. And so

00:02:07.700 people in France at this time were just kind of thinking like, oh, I know somebody by that name.

00:02:11.880 Is this novel about that person? Or did they just change the names and it's actually about this

00:02:16.140 person? So it's interesting because the novel itself, which honestly is pretty readable if

00:02:20.220 you can get a copy of it, but then the play and then also this movie, they really give us a sense

00:02:25.720 of what life was like in the 1780s for very wealthy people living in France. And this movie,

00:02:33.340 the 1988 movie, it's exactly the same story as the novel. So the events that you see happening

00:02:39.640 in the movie are the same as in the book. And people in 1782 thought this book was true.

00:02:45.060 So it kind of gives us a sense of what was life really like for these incredibly wealthy,

00:02:50.920 privileged people living in France who would, by the 1790s, many of them fall victim to the

00:02:58.740 guillotine. So it's interesting from that point of view, just to watch this movie, to imagine what

00:03:03.540 life was like for these people. It's an iconic movie as well. So the movie stars Glenn Close

00:03:08.620 and John Malkovich. And Glenn Close has never been sexier or better than in this movie. She's

00:03:15.080 incredible in this. Baby Uma Thurman is in this movie. Baby Keanu Reeves is in this movie,

00:03:20.260 the cast is incredible. Michelle Pfeiffer, gorgeous, never more gorgeous than in this

00:03:25.200 movie. And if you're like, wow, this sounds interesting, you know, maybe I'll check out

00:03:28.700 this movie. The crucial thing you need to know is that this movie inspired a movie that you've

00:03:33.960 probably heard of, which is called Cruel Intentions. That's right. Cruel Intentions

00:03:39.400 is really a one-for-one update. The 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon movie just

00:03:46.060 took the movie and I guess the play and the novel, Dangerous Liaisons, and updated it to

00:03:53.000 take place in present day. So when we're talking about everything, when we're talking about

00:03:56.360 Glenn Close and what she's up to, picture that Sarah Michelle Gellar's character. When we're

00:04:00.280 talking about what John Malkovich is doing in this movie, that is Ryan Phillippe's character.

00:04:05.900 When we're talking about Michelle Pfeiffer, that's Reese Witherspoon. It's exactly the

00:04:09.700 same story, but just in olden times. And to talk about this movie, I'm really excited to have

00:04:15.740 been able to talk to the amazing guest we had, who is Amy Nicholson. So you might know her as

00:04:21.080 the co-host of the podcast, Unspooled, which is also here on the Realm Network, which is a network

00:04:25.820 that I'm on right now. Amy Nicholson is the film critic of the Los Angeles Times. She's a well-known

00:04:31.460 author and podcast host based in Los Angeles. And so she's coming in here with the movie behind

00:04:37.000 the scenes, knowledge, movie-making information, and really coming to it from the point of view

00:04:41.420 of a critic, which is not where I'm coming from. I'm coming to this from the point of view of a

00:04:45.720 history enthusiast, somebody who's been devouring everything I can find about this time period. So

00:04:51.480 I'm coming with the history and she's coming with the movie knowledge. And I had such a fun time

00:04:55.620 talking with her. And if you want to watch the movie Dangerous Liaisons, it's available to rent

00:05:02.540 in basically all the places you can think of where movies can be rented online. I would also

00:05:08.900 encourage you to go to check your local public library because a lot of libraries have streaming

00:05:14.120 services you can get like Canopy and Hoopla where you might be able to find this movie but also

00:05:18.800 libraries have DVDs and I guarantee your local public library almost definitely has a DVD of

00:05:23.660 Dangerous Liaisons. It is a classic for a reason. Anyway like we talk all about the movie if you

00:05:30.480 are a person who cares about spoilers like pause this podcast go watch the movie or honestly just

00:05:35.760 watch Cruel Intentions and then come back and then enjoy this conversation between myself and

00:05:40.680 Amy Nicholson from the Unspooled podcast. Amy Nicholson, welcome to Vulgar History. 0.87

00:05:50.380 Oh, I'm so excited to get vulgar with you. I'm really excited to talk to you about this movie.

00:05:55.780 And what we're going to talk about as well is just kind of like movies and like historical

00:06:00.300 movies and how that affects people's understanding of the past. And there is so much that's

00:06:04.480 interesting about this story in this movie. But first, I want to ask you because we kind

00:06:09.380 of connected because you're interested in history. Is there a historical movie you remember really

00:06:13.780 loving growing up? Oh my gosh. Well, my favorite movie of all time is an 80s movie telling a story

00:06:21.980 about the Great Depression. So it's that kind of layer of what one version of retro thinks of

00:06:27.160 another version of retro. It's called Pennies from Heaven. It's a Steve Martin movie about

00:06:31.160 a Chicago song salesman during the Great Depression who just wants life to work out and he wants life

00:06:37.380 to be a dream and he wants to believe in all the songs he's going around selling, you know,

00:06:40.580 life is like a bowl of cherries. And I love seeing one time period through another time period's

00:06:46.320 lens, but I just love the great depression in general. I love that era of Americana of like

00:06:52.860 looking at what this country is, looking at its flaws, looking at its problems and like

00:06:56.520 hunger and desperation. I don't know. I guess most of my images of the great depression

00:07:00.980 come straight from movies about it, but then the movies about it tend to reference them at the

00:07:05.800 same time showing, you know, Dorothea Lange types of pictures, bringing those into like the look of

00:07:11.260 the film. For me, that's just a touchstone I have to go with. That's really interesting to me. The

00:07:16.080 Great Depression is like such a, that's an unexpected time period for me to bring up,

00:07:20.860 for you to bring up to me. But that's fascinating because like 20th century history, of course,

00:07:25.560 like for me, I love The Sting, which I think is that time period as well. That's kind of more

00:07:31.200 20s 30s i love that as a historical sort of time period i also loved like i was of the generation

00:07:37.700 like titanic was huge like just kind of seeing um i don't know there's something so about knowing

00:07:45.140 like this well titanic this actually happened quote unquote um but just to know that like this

00:07:52.000 is maybe what it looked like this is kind of what people are dressed like like it's as close as we

00:07:55.860 can get to time travel i think watching a movie set in another time it is i mean if we want to

00:08:00.940 make this a Titanic podcast. I could talk about it all day. I love that movie. And I think it's

00:08:05.160 interesting. We're picking films that exist at a time when movies exist as well. That these are

00:08:11.460 stories that were captured in newsreel, captured like in camera. And I don't know that even at

00:08:17.200 those time, you're watching stories about people who are themselves dreaming about what the movies

00:08:21.080 are like. It's interesting because when I think about something like Titanic, for instance, and

00:08:25.480 we are going to talk about dangerous liaisons, but Titanic, for instance, like you said, like

00:08:29.840 movies were around in that time period. But it's like, if I watch like a film reel from like the

00:08:34.140 19 teens, I don't feel a connection to it. The same way I do as if I watch a modern movie set

00:08:40.620 in that time. And that's because I can more imagine myself in the modern movie somehow,

00:08:44.460 like it seems so arm's length to watch like an old film reel or something.

00:08:50.900 I agree. Even just that little thing, and it's going to sound so obvious when I say it,

00:08:54.300 of realizing that life was in color for them. That sounds so bizarre. But I mean, for most of

00:09:00.240 how I grew up, you almost think of the past as happening in black and white, because that's the

00:09:04.280 only way we ever saw it. Well, and this just makes me, and again, listeners, we are going to talk

00:09:07.860 about dangerous liaisons, but like sinners, like you just did an episode talking about that. And

00:09:12.100 like everyone's talking about this movie and that's brought this specific time and place of

00:09:16.320 the Mississippi Delta to life in this interesting way where it's like, oh, there was Chinese people

00:09:20.520 there like oh black people had a nice time sometimes like it wasn't just kind of this 0.97

00:09:25.620 sort of like sad depressed black and white situation it's just like oh no these people

00:09:31.460 are vivid and they feel alive and that really brought that time period to life in such a

00:09:35.240 such a way for so many people alive that's exactly it because one thing I'm obsessed

00:09:40.460 with is how movies from the 1950s and early 60s lied to us about what life was like and

00:09:46.940 what women were like and what relationships were like and made everything seem so clean and

00:09:51.880 sanitized. And I think it's fascinating to undo what the movies have taught us that was wrong.

00:09:57.580 And they were lying about it even at the time. I've always wondered how many people slept in

00:10:02.660 twin beds? How many married couples actually slept in twin beds? Or sometimes, because I love

00:10:08.260 historical research and I tend to do a lot of it. I was slow to realize that women of the 20s and 0.92

00:10:14.580 30s got divorced a lot. And it wasn't that weird. And I try to bring this up to people and they're

00:10:19.400 like, no way you weren't allowed. And I'm like, no, they did. They did. It's just like later

00:10:24.140 generations pretended it didn't happen. Well, and part of that is just like in my research that

00:10:28.620 I've done. And I like a similar moment where I like tell people and like, that sounds fake.

00:10:33.100 And when I was first told this, it felt fake to me as well. But so much of our understanding of

00:10:36.940 so much of the past comes from movies of like the 1940s, 50s, 60s that presented like this is what

00:10:42.080 medieval times looked like. This is what the French revolution looked like. This is what the

00:10:45.700 Victorian England looked like. This is what America looks like. And it was just this very 1.00

00:10:49.420 like nuclear family, white people sort of thing where it's like, no, that's what the movies wanted

00:10:55.700 you to think things were like, but things were never actually like that. But now we see those,

00:11:00.680 those representations of the past and we're like, oh, that's what it was like.

00:11:04.120 Like it's propaganda really. It is. Oh, we're coming in hot.

00:11:08.600 we're always coming in hot in vulgar history but yeah and especially like now if like sin is such 0.76

00:11:15.440 a good example where it's like oh there's chinese characters in this movie and it's like yeah because

00:11:19.040 there was this thriving chinese culture happening at the same time among the black people were there

00:11:25.160 and white people were there as well but it's like whenever any movie tries to put an unexpected race

00:11:30.980 in a historical movie like people are like oh it's woke or whatever like oh that's not true

00:11:35.160 there wasn't black people in Victorian England or whatever. It's like, no, there were. But the

00:11:39.280 movies you saw from the 1950s were made in a very racist time and they just only had white people in

00:11:44.580 them. That doesn't mean that's what the actual time period was like. Exactly. It was an editing

00:11:50.280 choice to leave them out. And it's a narrative choice to put them back in. And it's just so

00:11:57.500 interesting that that's what, to me, like as a history aficionado, like knowing, like every time

00:12:04.220 I read about somebody, like I've been talking about the season about the French Revolution,

00:12:07.520 for instance, but that dovetails with like the Haitian Revolution, what was happening with all

00:12:10.880 that. And it's like, there were black people in France at this time, like a lot of them.

00:12:17.380 People are going back and forth in the Caribbean a lot. And there was mixed race people.

00:12:21.400 But it's like, so many people don't know that because you just watch whatever you watch,

00:12:26.200 like a movie that was made in the 50s or 60s. And it's like, oh, it was just white people, 0.56

00:12:30.060 I guess, because that's what I see in this movie. Exactly. Oh, I'm so glad I'm getting 0.90

00:12:34.520 to talk about this kind of stuff with somebody who really, really, really loves and knows this

00:12:38.600 subject. And well, this is part of what my podcast does. It's just like, I love finding these

00:12:44.780 surprising things that people don't know, but so much of it, and this is why I'm so excited to talk

00:12:48.880 to you. It's like so much of history. A lot of people read historical fiction, a bit less people

00:12:54.000 read historical biographies, but the most exposure anyone has to history is watching movies on TV.

00:13:00.060 shows. And so that's what so many people's understanding of so many things are. And

00:13:04.280 that's where it's hard to like break what they think it was like.

00:13:08.320 I think that's so true. My school, when I was in high school, had a room full of VHS tapes

00:13:13.360 and we were allowed to say that we were getting like class lessons if we were in the movie room

00:13:18.940 watching old movies about history. Yeah. It was a very targeted selection. I mean,

00:13:23.300 I think I watched Last of the Mohicans 400 times, but like that it was considered,

00:13:28.820 this is how you will learn about that time period. And honestly, you do, you can learn a lot. You can

00:13:34.000 learn like dates and facts and names and stuff, but it's that sort of like subliminal stuff of 0.68

00:13:38.360 like, oh, medieval England, that was all white people. Like, no, it's just like Hollywood movies

00:13:44.260 in 1955 were all white people. And that's, that's the movie you saw. Exactly. I kind of love movies

00:13:50.740 where people curse and you're not expecting them to, or movies like I recently rewatched Monty 0.55

00:13:57.020 Python, the life of Brian, and you're going back to the time of Jesus, a time that has been done

00:14:02.140 to death in the 1950s with people very posh, standing upright. Oh, everybody's hair is perfect.

00:14:08.240 And just think about, no, it was muddy. It was dirty. People were hungry. People were cranky.

00:14:13.920 You could wake up in, you know, AD 33 and just be in a bad mood. You'd just be in a bad mood,

00:14:20.520 right? Like, and I feel like that stuff gets left out.

00:14:23.320 what i enjoy when i come across just on like instagram or whatever like there's some people

00:14:28.480 who go back and they restore like effectively home movies from like the 1900s and the 19-teens

00:14:34.300 and they because when you look at them there's this like the i don't know the film rate you

00:14:38.580 would know this terminology better than i would but it's sort of like the people aren't moving

00:14:41.880 smoothly like it's all kind of chopped up but then people go back and restore them so they're

00:14:45.780 moving like the people are actually moving and i saw this one video of just people like i don't

00:14:49.320 know 1907 having a snowball fight and it's just like these are just goofballs like they're walking

00:14:54.920 like I would walk now like they're moving even though they're dressed in these ways where I

00:14:58.280 imagine everyone's just posh and has perfect posture all the time like they're just being

00:15:01.620 silly it's like oh people are just people yeah there's something about empathizing you know

00:15:07.820 a with the people around us in life for real in our own time time stamp which I think is really

00:15:13.020 difficult you know realizing that everybody's just waking up and maybe they're a little bit

00:15:16.440 hungry today. I haven't had breakfast yet, need some coffee, like giving people a sense of grace,

00:15:21.380 but also empathizing with the past. I'm fascinated by the topic of just thinking

00:15:27.160 when I picture the people of the past, knowing what we know now, like, oh, why didn't you

00:15:32.520 leave that country? Didn't you know it was go downhill? Why did you come across America this

00:15:36.440 way? Oh, why'd you go like through the Donner Pass? You know, we just make all these judgments

00:15:40.240 because we know what happened. And I think it's really hard to get in the mindset of living at a

00:15:46.100 time period where it's brand new and you actually don't know what's going to happen and have empathy

00:15:50.300 for the way people make mistakes. Like don't do things right, get misled. It's the thing I think

00:15:55.360 about a lot now. Like when do you know when you're supposed to leave a place? When do you know that

00:15:59.760 things are really, really bad? And to realize that people in the past are just feeling exactly like

00:16:04.960 we do in the present makes me have humility about living my life and makes me respect them more.

00:16:13.000 Absolutely. And I mean, everything you're saying, and we don't need to get into this,

00:16:15.740 but just like, I've been doing a season

00:16:18.280 about the French Revolution for about a year now.

00:16:20.840 And I'm just like, oh, this will be interesting.

00:16:23.140 Maybe there'll be some parallels to modern times.

00:16:24.860 And I'm just like, this is too much.

00:16:26.220 This is too many parallels.

00:16:28.480 But it really does give me an understanding

00:16:30.760 of the people then where like some of these people in Paris,

00:16:33.140 it's like, leave Paris, like leave.

00:16:36.240 But it's like, people can't.

00:16:37.520 Cause it's like, if you leave, it's like,

00:16:38.940 well, you don't have a job and your family's there.

00:16:40.660 And like, you're seeing people right now

00:16:41.760 in various countries in the world, not to get into it,

00:16:44.260 talking about leaving various places. And it's like, it's not an easy decision to make,

00:16:48.660 but it's so easy to judge someone in the past based on what we know the result was going to

00:16:53.380 be. But when you think about them as a real person with a real life, it's like, well,

00:16:56.860 yeah, like someone could leave like the people in Dangerous Liaisons, a movie we are going to talk

00:17:00.840 about. Like if you're a wealthy person in Paris and the French Revolution is starting, it's like

00:17:05.840 if you leave, you couldn't take any of your money with you. Like you would go somewhere,

00:17:10.420 you don't have any skills to get a job. It's like, how could you leave? It's a complicated

00:17:14.720 situation. Yeah, it's exactly right. And if you want a really crazy head trip, I suggest

00:17:20.060 reading the Declaration of Independence. I recently reread it and everything they're

00:17:26.800 saying that they hate about King George, you're like, oh my God, it's all happening right now.

00:17:32.700 Wild. It's like, check, check, check, check, check, check, check.

00:17:36.620 No. So it also just makes me think like we think about people like the founding fathers,

00:17:40.280 for instance is just kind of these sort of like statue people who just like are like sort of a

00:17:45.940 level above regular people it's like no these are just guys figuring stuff out like if they my friend

00:17:50.600 lana always says like they would just be reddit answer guys like if the finding fathers were around

00:17:54.180 right now they would be like on twitter or whatever like they were not um they were just

00:17:59.740 people trying to figure it out and it's like they're not gods yeah i think it says something

00:18:04.020 about us and our simple way of thinking that we have to deify everybody into perfect people well

00:18:08.840 if George Washington was here, he would have all of the answers. He would know exactly what to do.

00:18:13.980 Like, really? I mean, I find actually that's endearing to think about people's flaws of the

00:18:20.440 past because then it makes what they did feel more attainable. Yeah. It's not just like these

00:18:25.440 are thinking about people talk about ancient Rome or something where it's like, oh, these people,

00:18:29.080 they were so, they were these geniuses. It's like, no, they were just people like writing some

00:18:33.120 theses, like just kind of figuring some stuff out. Like they didn't have it figured out. Rome fell

00:18:37.620 eventually that clearly didn't have it all figured out. Yeah. I think if anything, what we're seeing

00:18:42.820 is human nature is cyclical because we don't change. We're really just the same people that

00:18:48.940 we have always been. I don't know how far that even goes back to. Are we basically exactly the

00:18:54.000 same as we were 5,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago? Are we basically the same as cavemen? How

00:19:00.660 different are we really? Because it doesn't seem like we learn anything. I used to always wonder

00:19:05.420 how a dark age started. I was like, what's wrong with those people? How would you unlearn things

00:19:09.220 you know? I don't even get that. And then to see what I always imagined to be a slow process happen

00:19:14.160 in fast time, you're like, oh, right, right. This is just how people think. This is just how people

00:19:20.160 get when they're in a giant group. It's crazy. So Dangerous Liaisons, we are going to talk about.

00:19:26.020 I want to just like throw out some facts to you first, because I was watching this movie. So it's

00:19:29.700 from 1988 I believe yeah 1988 um directed by Stephen Frears is that how you say that do you

00:19:37.160 know this director uh yeah yeah he's great he did like the grifters he did the queen

00:19:41.140 Steve oh okay yeah so Stephen Frears so just like he's a guy who skilled director anyway he directed

00:19:47.280 this movie Dangerous Liaisons which is based on a play and the screenplay of the movie was written

00:19:51.640 by Christopher Hampton who wrote a play in 1985 the play was based on a book um Les Liaisons

00:19:57.440 Dangereuse by Pierre Chauderlois de Laclos, which was first published in 1782. So the fall of the

00:20:04.700 Bastille was 1789. So this book and this movie are set in the years leading up to the French

00:20:12.220 Revolution. And like the French Revolution, as we've been talking in this podcast, didn't just

00:20:15.420 happen one day. It was being built up to for quite a while. So like the world that the people live in

00:20:21.680 in this movie and in the play and in the book is the ancien regime like the world that the

00:20:27.760 revolutionaries were rallying against so i was watching this movie with my boyfriend and he was

00:20:32.780 i was explaining all the historical facts because i'm a delightful person to watch movies with

00:20:37.100 especially historical movies but i was like this is based so it's a movie from 1988 it's based on

00:20:43.540 this book from 1782 and he was like this is just bananas to be watching like in 2025 to be watching

00:20:49.540 a movie so like 1988 is a long time ago but then it's like based on this book from 1782 and like

00:20:54.780 this is a novel like it if i could talk about the novel for a minute it was the novel it was the

00:21:00.880 50 shades of gray of its time in the sense of like it was scandalizing and like everybody was

00:21:07.360 reading it marie antoinette had a copy of this in her personal library so this is what he was like

00:21:11.480 we're watching a movie based on a story they're like marie antoinette read like it feels like

00:21:16.880 time travel and it's very accurate to the novel so the novel itself is written in letters because

00:21:25.320 so many novels back then were just like a collection of letters like dracula is like this

00:21:29.560 it's a epistolary novel and the plot line is exactly the same basically the novel to the

00:21:35.680 play to the movie like this is the story that marie antonette enjoyed and read and what i am

00:21:41.360 obsessed with about the novel so i have a copy of the book here in front of me and i was like oh

00:21:46.160 just like skim through just to like before we record and I'm like oh this is amazing I read

00:21:51.200 this ages ago and I forgot that it starts off with a note from the publisher who is just like

00:21:56.960 it's like the the warning at the beginning of the movie the old Frankenstein movie where it's just

00:22:01.100 like hey heads up what you're about to read is disturbing so it starts off with this publisher's

00:22:08.160 note saying like we think it our duty to warn the public um so he's just saying like hey this

00:22:15.660 you might think that this is a real collection of letters, but it's not. This is a novel. It's

00:22:20.440 fictional. And then that's followed by the editor's preface that is like, this is a true story.

00:22:28.460 I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going to guess he wrote both of those and that he is

00:22:33.440 his own publisher and that he is his own editor and he's just adding to the hype of his book.

00:22:37.280 I have to assume it's, it's an amazing sequence of, of notations where it's just,

00:22:41.900 so and this was the thing because it was published like letters so there's the character names in

00:22:46.400 the movie are the same as the names in the book but there are several characters that's just like

00:22:49.640 madame dash dash dash dash so like i can't say whose name it is you know which makes it feel

00:22:54.320 like redacted so people in france at the time were just like oh this is true it was like a

00:23:00.160 blair witch project scenario where everyone's just like this is real because the end of it

00:23:07.260 I mean, so full spoilers for this movie and also this book that is from 1782, if you haven't read

00:23:12.860 it, like, oh, well, but the end of the movie in the book is that the letters are disseminated.

00:23:18.780 The letters are spread like the things that Glenn Close's character was up to, like they're bound

00:23:22.780 and they're shared. So this book is those letters. I love it. I mean, can you imagine

00:23:31.060 that people were just looking around the court being like, I bet that was you. I bet that was

00:23:36.320 you. I know some of your gossip. Like they must know gossip that was never written down. Like

00:23:40.680 I know what you could get up to. I mean, this is the same contemporary time period as like the

00:23:44.880 Marquis de Sade. Stuff is happening. No. And that's the thing. Like we were talking about,

00:23:49.180 like people in the past weren't just like sitting around, like you see a portrait of a person.

00:23:52.560 You're like, oh, that's like, they're sitting there. They like, they're posing. It's like,

00:23:55.080 no, these people, the French aristocrats were like debauched. Like that is what is happening.

00:24:00.900 I was reading about some of the founding fathers came and went from Paris. Thomas Jefferson was

00:24:06.240 there. Benjamin Franklin was there, like speaking of debauched. Governor Morris was another founding

00:24:11.180 father and he went over and he was just like, oh my God, these people, he's like, and he's Governor

00:24:17.900 Morris is a person who has lots of scandals attached to him as well, but in America, but he

00:24:22.740 went over to France and he was just like, ah, like this is, this is too much. Like everyone's having

00:24:26.980 affairs. Like you get married and it's entirely just like for the land or for the inheritance or

00:24:32.480 whatever but like women are having affairs men are having affairs he was just and this is his

00:24:36.960 letters this is like actually what he was seeing and he's like a pretty sexually adventurous

00:24:42.080 american person he's like this is a lot for even me so so the fact that people in france when this

00:24:48.940 book came out were like this is true it's like it probably was they probably knew someone who had

00:24:53.180 done something similar to this and so watching this movie and seeing the things they do and

00:24:57.000 knowing that people at the time were like, we believe this. It's like, okay,

00:25:01.480 this is what people were like, I guess. I love that. I mean, even like the name of

00:25:06.360 Glenn Close's character, you know, Madame de Montreal, that was a woman, you know, like that

00:25:11.940 name was a name that somebody had at the time. And it wasn't just like any random woman. She was

00:25:16.520 the Marquis de Sade's mother-in-law. Like the Glenn Close character has that same name as the

00:25:22.100 Marquis de Sade's mother-in-law, who was very involved with a lot of his attacks on women.

00:25:26.180 you know she had to protect the family all of that so he would bring a bunch of servants over 0.67

00:25:31.240 to the house rape them whip them beat them cut them do many horrible things to them and then 1.00

00:25:37.100 she would pay the women off get them arrested even to be like these women are the problem you 1.00

00:25:41.260 know like send them away do whatever she could to keep her family name clear until he kept just 1.00

00:25:47.100 taking women to her mansions and like disrespecting her daughter and she finally snapped and 0.98

00:25:50.740 like got him arrested then her daughter took him back all this all this other stuff happened 0.97

00:25:54.120 But like this Madame de Montréal was just way too up in everybody's business, way too involved in bribing witnesses and really showing in her case, like how much sex and power and money go together at this time. 0.99

00:26:06.900 And also I want to emphasize, and this has come up a lot in the episodes I've done so far, how much women were hated in France at this time. Like women were, like we see this with how Marie Antoinette became sort of the scapegoat for the entirety of the last like 300 years of French aristocracy. But like women were detested. Like Rousseau is the most popular philosopher and his whole thing was just like women should stay home. They shouldn't be educated. They should just bear children and that's it. 0.59

00:26:35.780 So it's like women were like people you see in this movie, like Glenn Close's character, like she's having a very adventurous sex life and she can because she's a widow, like because people don't really pay as much attention to her as they would to someone like in the movie, like Uma Thurman's character, Cecile, who's this young, marriageable age person. 0.95

00:26:55.760 but like people were having affairs with women like murky decided you're just saying like women

00:27:00.660 were involved in that but then they were always blamed so like that i think that this movie

00:27:04.680 demonstrates that culture very well well thank god we don't do that anymore i know right

00:27:09.260 that's one thing that's changed we really learned i mean i think even that publisher's note was like

00:27:14.140 these people are so awful it's impossible to imagine they could have ever lived in our age

00:27:17.940 you're like yeah uh-huh sure uh-huh but i think like lacklustre himself was and it's you know it's

00:27:24.860 hard to look back on anybody coming from any time period to be like, he was definitely a feminist,

00:27:29.440 but he, and as a counterpoint to Rosso, like he wrote pamphlets on like why women deserve an

00:27:34.520 education. He was like, he, one was even called, I think like on the education of women being like,

00:27:39.460 women deserve to have the door open to them in this kind of intellectual life that like,

00:27:45.140 he, he almost referred to marriage as a type of slavery. He said the only way out of slavery is

00:27:49.320 through a great revolution, which he meant get an education, learn things, like be able to take

00:27:54.680 some control over your life, because I guess as what he's writing about in this book, if you don't

00:27:59.660 feel like you have control over your personal life, you might just take that out on everybody's life.

00:28:05.500 Well, and I think I would, the speech that Glenn Close's character gives in this movie,

00:28:09.980 the very famous speech when she started, there's a part where John Malkovich is like,

00:28:14.640 tell me why you are the way you are. And I was like, I remember this part. And she just gives

00:28:19.560 this amazing speech it was like the america ferreira barbie speech of her time and it's also

00:28:24.960 because this is i people might know or people might not know like this is what inspired cruel

00:28:29.400 intentions the sarah michelle gellar movie she has a speech like that in that movie as well because

00:28:33.360 she's the glen close character but which glen close is saying like i was taught like i i had

00:28:38.160 to just sit there and be quiet and no one listened to me and she's like and that gave me the opportunity

00:28:42.400 to watch people and that's how i learned about people and then i realized this is how i want to

00:28:46.720 have my power. When she describes, she's like, I learned how to look pleasant while stabbing a

00:28:50.080 fork in the back of my hand under the table. Like, and that's a, that's like a letter from

00:28:55.800 the novel. Like Christopher Hampton basically took this novel that's all in letters, turn it into a

00:29:00.540 play, but so much of the text is the same. And that speech, I feel like Cholos de Laclos wrote

00:29:05.140 that. Like if you can write a character who writes like a woman who's like that, then like you're an 0.59

00:29:10.100 ally. You're on, you're on the side. He is. And I don't even think he was married yet at the time.

00:29:16.720 I think he wrote this when he was like a 41 year old bachelor.

00:29:21.120 Yeah.

00:29:21.600 I mean, so, I mean, I'm sure he knew women.

00:29:23.740 I'm sure he knew women in all sorts of like carnal senses, but this isn't even a case

00:29:28.040 of him having like a wife he really adored and was like writing in, in there, like her

00:29:32.700 confidences about like her own frustrations.

00:29:35.220 I don't know how he was so psychically attuned.

00:29:38.420 I'm always really impressed when a man can write a female character with such strength.

00:29:42.520 Maybe I shouldn't be.

00:29:43.240 Maybe that's a little sexist of me.

00:29:44.440 because I feel like women can write male characters like, yeah, I get it, get it.

00:29:47.860 But I find it really fascinating and like touching.

00:29:52.400 And I wonder where he got that from.

00:29:54.900 It's such a good, interesting, like that the letter in the book

00:29:58.600 and then her speech in this movie, like it's such a good, interesting speech.

00:30:02.180 And just in terms of like what women were like in this time period,

00:30:05.700 like most of the words from that are from this novel

00:30:08.780 that was written by a man at this time. 0.85

00:30:10.600 So like when we read about women who in this time period,

00:30:13.900 who were just going, oh, they just got buried and they just kind of like ran a household and

00:30:17.660 whatever. It's like, no, they had, they had dreams. They had goals. Like they, if what your

00:30:22.520 world is, is so constrained, it's like, all you can do is marry as best as you can, raise children,

00:30:27.920 have a household. It's like, well, I'm going to do that the best I can. Like I'm going to run it

00:30:31.380 like a CEO. Like there was women who were like that because that's what she is like. I mean, 1.00

00:30:36.320 she's also, I love this character. I think this is one of my favorite characters from all the film.

00:30:40.780 So Glenn Close in this movie, she's just so deliciously evil and she has so much fun doing it.

00:30:48.000 And I think that speech where she just sort of explains when he's like,

00:30:51.340 why are you this like psychopathic person?

00:30:55.820 And she's like, well, society made me that way. 0.52

00:30:58.200 And I'm like, relatable.

00:30:59.920 Yeah.

00:31:00.660 Yeah. 1.00

00:31:01.000 She's like, women are obliged to be more skillful than men.

00:31:04.020 You know, you could ruin us with a few words and they can't fight back is how she's saying it. 0.94

00:31:09.080 And she's right.

00:31:10.780 I have to admit, I know Cruel Intentions so much better than this movie.

00:31:15.760 Cruel Intentions is definitely a movie that I have seen like 7,000 times.

00:31:18.860 Have you seen Cruel Intentions?

00:31:19.740 Oh, yes.

00:31:20.680 It's so good.

00:31:21.700 So that to me is like my foundational, dangerous liaisons text.

00:31:26.620 And I love how well it fits into like 90s New York, because it just makes you think like

00:31:32.260 pretty much at any time period in history, we have rich people doing some decadent stuff

00:31:37.020 who we just assume are really awful and have nothing else to do with their time.

00:31:41.580 You know, that it just kind of like cycles through and through and through again.

00:31:44.220 Because when this movie comes out in the 80s, people are like,

00:31:46.780 oh, this is totally about the 80s New York Wall Street culture.

00:31:51.840 You know, the stuff that later on American Psycho would be like satirizing.

00:31:57.540 And now I'm thinking, oh, this makes me think of like all those free love people in the Bay

00:32:01.520 who are like, you know, inventing their types of like polygamous relationships

00:32:06.000 and telling everybody how to live and what men and women's like real roles in the household

00:32:09.860 should be. And it's just fascinating how we just imagine that the people at the top are telling us

00:32:15.880 how to live and that they've invented like a new system of what freedom feels like.

00:32:21.100 And they're just bored.

00:32:22.920 And they're just bored.

00:32:24.000 The main thing in this movie and also in Cruel Intentions, it's just like they're

00:32:27.060 bored. So all they can do is just mess up other people's lives because they have nothing like

00:32:32.840 the okay so cruel intentions not cruel intentions dangerous liaisons the movie it starts off with

00:32:37.200 this lengthy toilette sequence of glenn close's character and john malkovich's character who we

00:32:41.740 will talk about as well and just all the people around them and how they're like having their

00:32:46.020 hair powdered and they're having their makeup put on and like just and the toilette like i've read

00:32:50.880 about this was actually helpful to me watching this movie because i read about the toilette

00:32:54.040 of like marie antoinette and stuff and how it was such a thing and it was so public i'm like oh this

00:32:57.880 is what that would look like maybe but glenn close and john malkovich it's just like so you know

00:33:02.060 every day they wake up and then they have this, I don't know, 45 minute, three hour,

00:33:07.320 like getting ready for the day. It's just like, they don't have a phone. They can't scroll.

00:33:12.580 Like they're just like, all they can do is just think about who's around them and whose lives

00:33:16.760 can they ruin and who can they seduce. It's just like, you have nothing. Like you're so rich and

00:33:21.400 your life is just empty. And I think that like the movie sets it up right from the beginning

00:33:25.540 with that montage of them getting ready. I love that opening sequence because you really

00:33:30.480 become aware of how much work it takes to be them, which is the question I have in so many

00:33:35.740 historical things, especially like the Jane Austen books of the world that when they redo

00:33:40.320 those, it's like, how did you get your hair so perfect though? Like, why do you have all those

00:33:44.040 tiny little ringlets? How did that happen? And then a lot of movies leave that out, but I love

00:33:48.400 seeing the labor of like six male attendants surrounding John Malkovich, trying to make him

00:33:55.380 look good. And you start thinking like, oh, there's nothing natural about Glenn Close's

00:33:59.640 pretty privilege. Her pretty privilege is other people working on her every day to make her look 0.66

00:34:04.000 good. I did want to say, I was going to make a joke at the beginning of this episode where I was

00:34:08.540 like, this movie, it stars Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Glenn Close's cleavage, and some

00:34:14.080 other actors. Because her breasts in this movie look amazing. And it's the corset and it's the 0.97

00:34:21.180 dress and everything. But how many times do other characters just nestle themselves in her bosom?

00:34:26.360 It's constantly. It's fantastic. And other people are covering theirs up with a little

00:34:29.560 bit of gauze and she's like, no, here they are. And we should say this is a Glenn Close one year

00:34:35.020 post-fatal attraction, one year after she's been on the cover of magazines as like the face of

00:34:40.260 the modern dangerous woman who likes sex maybe a little too much. You know, so everybody is very

00:34:45.520 aware of her breasts and what power they bring. That context is so important too. Cause yeah,

00:34:50.840 Michelle Pfeiffer is in this as well. And we were like, when was this like in terms of her and Cat

00:34:55.800 Woman and stuff, we're just like, where's this in Michelle Pfeiffer when she appears? It's just like

00:34:59.520 no one has ever looked more beautiful. Like when she's, she's like in a garden and she's wearing

00:35:03.500 this sort of like gauzy covering her cleavage, but like this sort of like gauzy top of her dress.

00:35:08.960 It's just like, Oh, she is the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Like my God.

00:35:12.800 I know when Glenn Close makes fun of her clothes, I'm like, but I like her pastels. I think they

00:35:17.000 look so beautiful. And the makeup in here is unusual because you feel like you're just looking

00:35:22.880 at their faces with powder on and not like the full regimen of like shadows and darkenings and

00:35:29.600 like contouring. They look almost, almost not too, I would say they're absolute best, best,

00:35:37.040 best. Cause when you like look at them very close, the powder is a little bit too white,

00:35:41.100 you know, that they're a little bit too pallid when Glenn Close at the end is like wiping off

00:35:45.880 all of her makeup and you see the raw skin underneath it. I kept thinking like, oh,

00:35:50.240 they're poor skincare they're getting really taken care of but it's like rough and you just

00:35:53.860 imagine how drying everything is that they're doing to themselves but it's interesting too to

00:35:58.740 mention the makeup and i would also mention the hair as well in this because there's that opening

00:36:02.900 sequence where it's like the powder and everything but for the whole rest of the movie like everyone

00:36:06.800 they have even if it's in this elegant coiffure like swoozie kurtz is like she has red hair like

00:36:12.620 michelle fifuse she has like blonde hair like so they kind of set up like okay this is the time

00:36:17.180 period, but we're going to make them not. Because I think if they had powdered everyone's hair in 0.99

00:36:20.940 every scene, like we would feel that distance, they wouldn't feel like real people. And I think

00:36:24.480 if they'd put the full face of makeup on as well, it'd be like, oh, we're watching a costume drama.

00:36:28.640 And they really wanted to make this feel as natural as possible, clearly. And now for a

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00:37:18.920 your next move tomorrow. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders

00:37:27.180 and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken

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00:37:40.500 always wins this is old school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time

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00:38:51.740 and we're back i can see that now i'm curious what do you think about john malkovich's sex

00:39:02.420 appeal oh my god okay this is like oh my god i think he's so funny in this movie there's

00:39:11.140 when we were watching it i was like i forgot that it was parts of this are really funny like

00:39:14.600 slapstick and part of it is just like him and how he kind of like walks in the background sometimes

00:39:19.360 it's just like oh he's like it's it's fun to watch him i find him psychotically unpleasant in this

00:39:26.900 movie but everyone finds him so seductive and i'm like well that's you just gotta buy in that

00:39:32.680 michelle pfeiffer falls for him that uma thurman uh problematically um is won over by him as well

00:39:40.680 and it's just like well ever and glenn close is in love with him so i'm like okay like this movie

00:39:44.640 is about. Everyone can't resist this man who's like affectless, no facial expressions, like

00:39:51.580 seems like a serial killer. And I'm like, that's just the world we live in, I guess.

00:39:56.640 What do you think about John Malkovich in this movie?

00:39:59.560 Yeah. I mean, it's bizarre, right? Like I almost think if you had cast a more

00:40:03.360 stereotypically handsome man, like the Ryan Phillippe version, you know, the Cruel Intentions

00:40:07.800 Ryan Phillippe version, you would lose track of how manipulative he is. Like it's almost because

00:40:14.480 he's not going to be the hottest guy in any room unless he is the only guy in most of these rooms,

00:40:20.080 which he is. He seems like the only guy that they really have is like an option of entertainment

00:40:23.880 for the most part, besides Keanu Reeves, who's just poor. So he can't really be taken seriously.

00:40:28.960 Like you would think, oh, he's just hot. And all of these things happen to him. So I think like

00:40:33.360 it being John Malkovich and having to have that extra level of like, but I will manipulate you

00:40:39.060 into thinking I'm interesting. I will manipulate you into thinking I'm hot. This isn't just going

00:40:42.640 to be about me having Ryan Phillippe's beautiful pillow lips. It makes it more complicated. I mean,

00:40:48.660 the way that I think of all of these women falling for him is almost like it's a statement on how 0.76

00:40:55.680 repressed and small a woman's life is if she's not even sleeping around and having affairs,

00:41:01.140 because you just want to think that like Uma Thurman and Michelle Pfeiffer would know better, 0.93

00:41:06.460 right? But they don't. And they're so defenseless to his manipulations because they've never been

00:41:11.740 manipulated before because they haven't been around a lot of men is how I see it so his kind

00:41:16.520 of obvious like ways of being like oh but I love you but I love you but I love you I think us as

00:41:22.240 modern women who've you know dated been through the been through the been through the mill we're 0.70

00:41:27.520 like get away from him girl like that's a red flag but Michelle Pfeiffer has been living in a

00:41:31.820 convent and then she got married so she's like oh I think he means it right I just kept thinking of

00:41:36.820 like dodo birds who just do not know that there's a predator it's it was so that your explanation is

00:41:43.240 really helpful to me actually because it's like yeah like you're if he was do you know the other

00:41:47.720 version of this the milish foreman movie valmont yes it came out the year after right colin firth

00:41:53.560 plays this role like a young pre younger than pride and prejudice colin firth like at his most

00:41:59.720 like boyishly gorgeous and then annette benning is the other character and i think if velmont was

00:42:08.320 hot that would distract from the point of it which is that he's evil you're you're right like if he

00:42:13.820 was like you like anyway like we see this in so many movies like you can forget like um you the

00:42:19.340 netflix show with pen badgley it's like so many people can forgive what joe the main character

00:42:23.260 does because pen badgley is handsome if john malkovich played that part i think people there'd

00:42:28.300 still be fans, but not as many. Exactly. I think it almost has to be for us to understand what's

00:42:35.040 happening because otherwise we would be distracted, right? We would just be thinking, oh, but he is

00:42:39.840 so dreamy. And if he was like batting those eyes at me, even if he is essentially date raping me 0.93

00:42:46.240 against my will and like manipulating me to think like I have no control in my own life and he has

00:42:52.340 a key to my room and he can ruin my reputation. So I guess I have to sleep with him, which is just

00:42:56.260 such an awful scene, but also so pointed in how manipulation works. I mean, he uses his power

00:43:05.560 imbalance all the time in ways that I find horrifying, like barging in when he like timing

00:43:10.700 it with his man, you know, Peter Capaldi. Oh my God. Peter Capaldi in this. So good.

00:43:15.640 I was so excited to see him there. Yeah. Me too. I was like, Oh, there he is. There he is. There he

00:43:19.740 is. Like basically, I mean, talk about like using your workforce to do your dirty work. Like

00:43:25.440 making his his man his like servant sleep with michelle pfeiffer's servant so that he can get 1.00

00:43:31.540 gossip about michelle pfeiffer be like you have to have sex with this woman and now i'm going to 1.00

00:43:35.480 time when i can barge in on you having sex with this woman so i can blackmail her that power 0.99

00:43:39.840 imbalance of him like interrogating her maid while her maid is naked is just so chilling and the fact 0.99

00:43:45.400 that he was like yeah and he's like i want something from you and she assumes like she lays 0.97

00:43:50.620 back like okay like i guess it's time for you to rape me and he's like no it's not that and i'm 0.50

00:43:55.100 just like that's what this world is that's what that world is and oh it just says so much in the 0.94

00:44:00.340 way she leans back but like can we talk about the scene where this is where i was like i know that

00:44:07.960 there's been some newer versions of dangerous liaisons which i have not seen but the scene

00:44:13.280 with uma thurman and john malkovich where he assaults her is that's where i was like this

00:44:20.040 feels the most 1988 out of this whole movie to me because i just feel like you can have that plot

00:44:25.220 point in a contemporary version of this but you'd have to hit it differently somehow it was so

00:44:31.200 unpleasant to watch like her absolute fear of him was just like oh this movie's not fun now

00:44:38.620 no yeah it's it really it makes you so depressed and it double dresses depresses you when glenn

00:44:46.720 close shows up the other day and she, you know, yes, Queens are into thinking she wasn't assaulted

00:44:53.880 and that it's just better for her to go along with it. The way that, the way that a like John

00:44:58.580 Makovic changes goalposts in the room, you know, and he's saying, whatever you say, well, absolutely

00:45:03.520 whatever she says, doesn't matter to him in the slightest. The way he keeps using even phrases

00:45:07.940 like that throughout the whole movie, like you're in control. And I really, you know, whatever you

00:45:12.900 want Michelle Pfeiffer. The double speak of that is so terrifying. And then to have Glenn Close

00:45:17.480 come in and be like, Oh, he attacked you. Did he tie you up? Oh, he didn't tie you up. Well,

00:45:21.300 then I guess you're fine. Don't swivel. Yeah. She was like, did you say no? And she's like,

00:45:24.540 I said it all the time. And then she's like, but somehow that wasn't what my body was doing. And

00:45:28.280 I'm like, that's the, that's what sexual assault is. That's why it's so confusing to people because

00:45:33.380 like the sensations can be pleasant, but you don't want to be doing it. And that's where people get

00:45:37.860 so tied up. So I watched that scene. I asked my boyfriend, I'm like, is this grooming? Are we

00:45:41.580 watching grooming right now like is that what this is but the fact that if he was hot people

00:45:47.900 would be shipping these two together and because he's not you see it for what it is and that's

00:45:52.340 where i'm like oh this movie's not fun now exactly and and i mean i guess that's the point of it but

00:45:57.820 it like it it is so awful it is so awful and i wonder too you know we were just talking about

00:46:05.500 this is like a movie where the author is like astonishing and how he understands women he is

00:46:09.760 really not holding back about his understanding of men either. I mean, I wonder like in all of

00:46:15.320 his years where he was in the military, who are the men he knew who are like this? It's almost

00:46:19.660 like he's exposing what men are like, you know, like this is, this is a, he's just not that into

00:46:24.200 you for the, for the period pre-revolution. Like, no, no, no. When a, when a guy is like,

00:46:29.480 I love you so much. I can't sleep. I'll die. If I don't have you, he is probably lying to your face.

00:46:35.000 Well, that's what I wonder, like this book was so popular at the time and largely

00:46:39.020 it was because it was so scandalous and like, is this true or whatever? But also,

00:46:43.260 also maybe this is giving that cautionary tale. Like if you're a young woman who just left a

00:46:48.500 comment or you're in a convent, this book is just like, oh, this is how seduction,

00:46:52.700 how like a rake might approach you. And this is why you shouldn't give into it. And this is what

00:46:56.960 it looks like. It's almost like helping you out a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if maybe this

00:47:01.820 saved lives too. I don't know. I don't know. I do want to say in terms of, so when I was flipping

00:47:07.980 through the book I'm like how did this okay the ending of this movie is very similar to the ending

00:47:12.880 of Cruel Intentions except Cruel Intentions I would say is much funnier when everyone's just

00:47:17.260 like shaking their heads like oh no no and the slow motion the guy um he finds her her cross

00:47:24.080 necklace with the cocaine he's like oh yeah and I was just shaking their head at Sarah Michelle

00:47:28.060 when I first saw that when Cruel Intentions first came into the theater I was like this is such a

00:47:32.120 bad ending but now I enjoy the campiness of it yeah I guess it says like if all you have in this

00:47:37.880 world anyway is your reputation that's like the only thing they can take away from her yeah and

00:47:42.140 that's what we see in this movie which is she goes to the opera and everyone they're not shaking 0.82

00:47:47.060 their heads like but basically they are they're just like we know how shitty you are now so like

00:47:52.440 you're ostracized from all of society and then in the book what i read when i skimmed to the back

00:47:57.940 the very last letter is like oh yeah so what happened to her is that she got smallpox she

00:48:02.440 survived but she lost an eye and now she's grossly disfigured her soul is on her face is what it says

00:48:08.540 and I was like wait a minute I read that before and that was an interview with Glenn Close about

00:48:14.480 this movie where at the end of this movie is she's wiping off her makeup and she said the

00:48:18.160 director told her okay what I want you to do Glenn is your soul is on your face I want you to act

00:48:23.680 that not not with um having prosthetics and she's like oh I can do that and she does like yeah yeah

00:48:32.440 How has she never won her Oscar?

00:48:34.040 It's getting ridiculous at this point. 0.65

00:48:35.500 Oh my God.

00:48:36.340 It's like, how did she not win it for, I don't know.

00:48:38.200 I didn't look up, but like for this movie,

00:48:40.000 this performance is so good.

00:48:41.980 She's so good in this movie.

00:48:43.380 And just like the, okay.

00:48:45.020 So the final act of this,

00:48:47.060 and this is where I love it in Cruel Intentions as well.

00:48:49.760 And this is where I just feel like it's such a good story.

00:48:52.920 The Chodalus DeLaclos is put together where Velma doesn't,

00:48:56.660 he's so damaged as a person just from living this like debauched life.

00:49:01.360 he doesn't realize that he's in love with michelle pfeiffer but glenn close notices it and

00:49:09.080 understands it and so then she manipulates him into breaking up with her in the cruelest manner

00:49:13.500 possible but he doesn't i just find it so heartbreaking that he doesn't realize he's in

00:49:19.640 love but she does it's such a good twist where he's this awful character and he's so divorced

00:49:25.780 from his emotions. And Ryan Philby has the same thing in Cruel Intentions, where he's in love,

00:49:32.660 but he doesn't know that that's what this feeling is. And I find that really compelling.

00:49:36.340 It is. It's so sad, right? Because you get that the moral rot, it doesn't just hurt other people,

00:49:42.000 like how much it just goes all the way down inside your soul. And watching Glenn

00:49:47.280 cheapen his love around him, when she gets the first hint that he might even love her,

00:49:53.360 that you might even love, Michelle Pfeiffer, she calls it commonplace. And you just see his face

00:49:58.000 fall. It's funny, isn't it? How long it takes you to catch on to the fact that he's not just

00:50:03.860 the great manipulator, that he's being manipulated as well by her. It's so obvious we should know

00:50:09.120 this. She's not announcing anything that we don't know about her character already.

00:50:14.120 But you go on that journey with him. And it makes you just see the ways the aristocracy is,

00:50:19.440 you know, at this time, destroying itself, destroying each other.

00:50:22.820 Exactly. It's just, he thinks until the very end that he and she are on the same level,

00:50:28.280 but he's just another one of her toys. He's just another one of her puppets.

00:50:32.800 Yeah. And just like how, and this is what, so the book came out shortly before the French 0.58

00:50:37.920 Revolution. And then what I was reading is that people, when the French Revolution happened and

00:50:43.460 afterwards, like, oh, this book was a critique of the aristocracy. And this was sort of like

00:50:47.860 pretending the french revolution and stuff and i think it was more just like this is kind of what

00:50:52.240 i'm seeing this is kind of what society is like like let's dig into it and i think it's really

00:50:55.920 interesting then the book and this movie and so the stage play which i don't know if you've ever

00:51:01.680 seen or read the final stage direction is a giant silhouette of the guillotine comes on the stage

00:51:07.560 is how the play ends to imply like see all these crappy people well they all got killed

00:51:12.720 wow but i wonder if they did i mean do you i like it's kind of more creepy to imagine them just

00:51:20.460 skip skimming guys sorry it's kind of more creepy just imagine them you know manipulating their way

00:51:26.160 into survival which i mean he did like he was locked in prison i think for a while because he

00:51:30.360 had a lot of monarchist friends at least like he used to what i think like lacklustre himself was

00:51:36.160 the secretary to the duke de orleans so he was you know not considered part of the group but he

00:51:41.620 managed to talk himself out. I think he was actually locked in the same prison as the Marquis

00:51:45.080 Assad too. I wonder if they knew each other. I'm sure they did. I'm sure this book, I think he knew

00:51:51.560 what that guy was up to for sure. But yeah, in terms of the characters in the book, I was like,

00:51:55.580 what happens to the other ones? So Glenn Close's character in the book, she has smallpox, loses an

00:52:01.180 eye, becomes grossly disfigured, sells all her stuff and just leaves Paris in disgrace. She goes 0.70

00:52:06.380 to Holland, I think they said, which actually probably saved her life. And then Michelle

00:52:10.560 Pfeiffer's character like in the movie she basically dies of a broken heart which is

00:52:15.480 what happens to characters like this usually is that even possible like do you really think that

00:52:22.300 that is possible I think what it could be is somebody like her who she probably just stopped

00:52:28.880 eating or something she's probably just like so depressed she just decided to die in that way

00:52:33.420 or I don't know I don't know the whole movie they kept being like oh my you look pale you look sick

00:52:39.160 I don't think she ever was sick, but they kept saying she was.

00:52:42.240 That's true. He kept rushing her off to get air in the garden.

00:52:46.100 Yeah, pretending like she looked sick or something.

00:52:48.380 And then Uma Thurman's character, allegedly, in the book, she was just sent back to the convent in disgrace.

00:52:53.420 So she just was a nun for the rest of her life, I guess.

00:52:56.140 Which is too bad, because when I watch the end of the movie, I'm like, oh, I hope she and Keanu end up together. 0.98

00:53:01.400 I know, right? Wouldn't you just want them to do it?

00:53:04.260 They seem so sweet.

00:53:05.160 Isn't it funny to see Keanu pop in this movie? Because you know how some actors have historical

00:53:10.240 face and some actors just are Keanu Reeves and do not have historical face in the slightest?

00:53:15.240 Maybe that's just my own bias. It's hard for me to picture somebody who looks like Keanu Reeves

00:53:18.660 walking through 1780s France. I was excited to see Keanu Reeves. I forgot he was in this.

00:53:25.560 I feel like Keanu was in this. He was in Bram Stoker's Dracula. There's a couple of things,

00:53:32.500 like films that I think he's retroactively said like I probably shouldn't have agreed to be in

00:53:36.080 that film like I don't think that was for me but here he's his I thought he was just the perfect 0.62

00:53:40.000 like little golden retriever boyfriend he was just like so sweet and dumb and I'm like that's

00:53:44.300 what Keanu can play very well especially young Keanu he just has this affect of just like I'm 0.71

00:53:48.720 just nice and dumb and Uma Thurman like baby Uma Thurman I think it's her film debut I don't know

00:53:54.700 like she they're both so young and so sweet I'm just like I just want only good things for them 0.73

00:53:59.120 But unfortunately, they're in Dangerous Liaisons, which is a movie that no one gets out of unscathed.

00:54:06.260 Yeah, it's got dangerous in the title.

00:54:07.840 This isn't going to go well.

00:54:09.760 But you're right.

00:54:10.240 He just wants to play music.

00:54:11.440 He wants to teach her how to play the harp.

00:54:13.480 I mean, I guess what you really feel is the limits of what it even means to be in the aristocracy, too, that it's a trap.

00:54:20.980 This is something I was thinking about when I was watching Sinners, that Sinners is kind of commenting on even the trap that the white people in that film are in, that you can't do certain things, you can't marry who you want to marry, you can't go into this club because you come with your own sense of potential terror that you can hurt people.

00:54:40.720 and how any sort of privilege locks everybody in boxes. And you feel that here, if Uma Thurman

00:54:48.340 wasn't born rich, maybe she could have love. Did you have more freedom in a certain way to live

00:54:55.020 the life that you wanted, even if you were broke and starving and always at risk of being kicked

00:55:00.200 out of your poor little hovel, unless magically John Malkovich decided to walk by and bribe the

00:55:06.160 tax man so that he could get laid? It's really interesting. I, I did a history undergraduate

00:55:12.120 degree and that was at the same time that I was really into this movie. So I, one of my term

00:55:18.560 papers, I wrote about the role of women. It was a history degree. I want to emphasize, not an

00:55:21.800 English degree. I wrote a term paper about like the role of women in Dangerous Liaisons, the novel.

00:55:26.700 And my teacher was like, I'll allow it. I was like, I promise I'll make this tie into history. 0.61

00:55:31.740 All I want to do is talk about this story. But what I talked about in that was, yeah,

00:55:35.360 like the three women characters in this and how actually four, if you talk about Susie Kurtz's

00:55:39.080 character as well, it's just kind of like how they, none of them had a good option ahead of

00:55:44.280 them, except for maybe Glenn Close. Like when you're a widow, like you've been married and

00:55:48.600 now, and she had many, so she could kind of do what she wanted, but she was so bored. Right.

00:55:53.100 But everybody else is just like you, you're stuck in a box. And that's just what society was like,

00:55:57.160 whether you're a married woman, whether you're like a young woman in the convent, it's just

00:56:02.300 kind of like nothing. There's no good options for any of these people really. So that's why 0.94

00:56:05.840 they're all just having sex all the time, I guess. Yeah. I mean, and it's kind of chilling 0.98

00:56:11.700 even how I think like John Malkovich's, you know, aunt, the Madame de Rosemond, she has that line

00:56:16.900 that really kind of prickles down my spine. She said, the only thing that surprises me is how

00:56:22.240 little the world changes. Yes. I think I feel that so much in this film. I think that that's

00:56:28.100 just a level of wisdom that's kind of there in every historical movie, honestly. If we're really,

00:56:34.200 really honest about how we tell stories of people in the past, you realize that we're all just the

00:56:39.060 same. You're right. And that's such a good line too, because that character, I don't know how

00:56:43.400 old she's supposed to be in this movie, but that's like 70 or 80. So she was born in like the 1600s,

00:56:48.500 you know, like how much does she live through? And she's just like everything, you know, it's like

00:56:52.980 people started going, like going to the Caribbean and like the new world and like trading, but it's

00:56:57.880 just like you know what here for us for women it's just kind of like everything's still the same

00:57:01.920 like what could ever change and then the guillotine goes down to the end of this play

00:57:05.720 things change pretty substantially but then they pivot back to kind of this

00:57:09.720 same thing again pretty quickly after that too

00:57:12.320 well would you want to live in this time period

00:57:17.480 i would want to wear these outfits i'm grateful to live in a time period with antibiotics and a

00:57:25.840 lot of medical not like back then everything we see michelle pfeiffer being treated with i'm just

00:57:30.420 like oh okay leeches like bloodletting like glass cupping i'm just like no i'm glad i'm glad we have

00:57:37.880 medications now i'm glad i'm not there in this time no i would not want to live in this time

00:57:42.060 but i would like to visit this time um and hang out and see what it was like but no i think i'm

00:57:48.140 as like a single woman with no children who is like doing fine in my life i'm like no i don't

00:57:54.660 want to live in a place where I would have had to get married when I was 17 and raise a family and

00:57:59.240 no no thank you I always think about just how much I love indoor plumbing yes I just can't do it

00:58:06.720 without indoor plumbing I'm sorry everything and you know what air conditioning when you think about

00:58:11.700 those people and actually in this time period there was like all this weird climate change

00:58:15.320 stuff is happening just because of like volcanoes and stuff like there was such a hot summer and if

00:58:20.620 you see all the layers they're all wearing just like of course michelle pfeiffer is faint all the

00:58:24.860 time it would have been super hot and really unpleasant oh my gosh if you had to be tied up 1.00

00:58:29.600 in that corset by your six handlers and and you're wearing like corset on corset as we can see like

00:58:35.520 when he unbuttons a little bit of her top corset and then you have to walk around and like you 0.91

00:58:39.300 have nothing to do with gossip all day yeah and just the weight of those skirts and your wigs

00:58:43.980 and everything no i yeah i think we're both i'd like to visit but not stay there i'd like to

00:58:50.420 smell it, but I'd only like to smell it for about 10 seconds. I don't think we could handle this

00:58:55.300 smell. I just want to know what it was and then go back to my life and light a candle here.

00:59:01.840 Honestly, all the sex they were having and how dirty everybody was and how smelly it all was, 0.92

00:59:05.760 just like, I don't know. I don't know. I think about that too. I'm like, 0.79

00:59:10.240 but you didn't get to shower. So how was all of this working?

00:59:12.920 John Malkovich is just going from like bed to bed like oh my god what is on that man's body okay

00:59:20.860 now I'm getting really grossed out anyway Amy Nicholson tell tell everybody about your podcast

00:59:26.000 unspooled oh yeah hi um I co-host the podcast unspooled with uh Paul Scheer who does like

00:59:32.100 how did this get made and like a gazillion other things because he's the greatest uh we started as

00:59:36.100 a podcast that went through the first 100 films and the AFI top 100 list and then we checked off

00:59:41.660 all of those. And now we're just following different lists, charting our own curiosity.

00:59:46.320 We're doing a little bit of Letterboxd, a little bit of IMDb. We've been on a tiny little bit of a

00:59:50.360 sexual thriller kick recently. And I'm also in my daily life, the film critic for the Los Angeles

00:59:56.860 Times. So in terms of Unspooled, what I appreciate about those episodes is I relate sometimes more

01:00:03.500 to Paul because he's someone who hasn't seen some of these major, especially your first season,

01:00:07.260 the AFI movies. I was just like, I haven't seen this movie either. So it's interesting

01:00:10.660 when you hear about a movie that's like, everyone says it's so great. And just to hear you two talk

01:00:14.700 about it. When I was like 18 or something, I think, I forget if it was the AFI list or one

01:00:20.540 of the other ones. I was like, I want to get a film education. I'm going to watch all these

01:00:23.560 movies that are important. And I was like, ah, I hate them all. They're also boring. I was just

01:00:28.360 like, ah. There's a lot of Westerns, a lot of Westerns, man. Just a lot of men movies, men

01:00:34.680 having feelings and that's not a genre I like um like the godfather is not for me um just making

01:00:42.660 myself watch these movies and eventually I stop so I appreciate your honest discussions you have

01:00:46.260 like when there's movies that you don't like I'm like yes thank you Amy that movie is not good

01:00:50.520 I know I mean talk about like history shaping history shaping history it's the thing I think

01:00:54.600 about all the time these lists of greatest films were created by people of a certain time period

01:00:58.920 who were friends with a lot of people that they put on their lists and they're like me and my

01:01:02.340 buddies who worked in the 70s were the absolute greatest who ever was and then they shape the

01:01:07.220 film culture going forward they haven't made a new afi list in almost i think like 20 years

01:01:14.020 so like we're still dealing with like these guys and what they loved that makes so much sense

01:01:19.060 because there's so many movies from the 70s that i don't like that are all done by the same people

01:01:24.400 and they're all just about like men who are mad about stuff and i'm like i not my genre actually

01:01:30.120 i want to tell you amy before we let go speaking of historical films um i when you did gone with

01:01:37.360 the wind on unspooled that was back in the day when twitter was a website that people used and

01:01:43.520 including me and your podcast and i tweeted and then it was read on your podcast so that is our

01:01:47.600 connection before oh my goodness i was saying because gone with the wind is like a problematic

01:01:53.400 fave in terms of like historical watching a movie set in a time period that was filmed in time

01:01:59.380 period like the layers of like what was racism like in the 30s and how would they represent

01:02:03.640 racism from the civil war era but to me growing up like I love Scarlett O'Hara she was just such 1.00

01:02:08.760 a bitch and I loved it because women most of the movies I watched there wasn't a strong 1.00

01:02:14.100 like I'm gonna say Scarlett O'Hara is a strong female character she's like a problematic AF 1.00

01:02:18.860 character but I loved watching her and maybe that's where men like watching Taxi Driver or

01:02:24.040 whatever to watch this guy who's just messed up but like I love Scarlett O'Hara I thought that she

01:02:28.040 was such a nightmare person. I was excited about it. And then when you did your episode about it

01:02:33.520 and Paul was like, oh, I didn't really care for her. I thought she was unpleasant. I tweeted,

01:02:36.500 I was like, she's a great character. I feel exactly the same way. I feel so protective

01:02:43.880 of that movie while completely agreeing with so many of its flaws. That was one of the most

01:02:48.520 difficult episodes we ever did because that movie means a lot to me. And I feel exactly the same way

01:02:52.560 about Scarlett O'Hara. She's one of the best written female characters we ever had on screen

01:02:56.620 and the best played and the fact that that is the movie that we have chosen to sacrifice as our way

01:03:03.620 of saying classic hollywood dealt with racism bad we're sacrificing specifically that one the one

01:03:08.860 with like the powerful female character and not the hundreds of other movies that were just casually

01:03:13.880 racist in a hundred other ways that i find even more pernicious because they're not grappling with

01:03:18.480 it they're just like oh it is what it is like gun at the wind is a critique as much as it is a boy

01:03:24.140 oh boy, this was a great way to live. And the way that I try to get people to watch that film today

01:03:28.180 is to say, really pay attention to how this movie thinks about the soldiers in the Confederacy, 0.95

01:03:34.560 because it thinks they're all dummies and it doesn't agree with them. And it doesn't really 0.84

01:03:38.960 seem to support this as a way of life. It's just in there. It's in there that it doesn't think the

01:03:44.840 guys from the Confederacy are great. And so I think the movie is at least, I don't know, it's

01:03:51.500 hard. It's like you're grappling with so many things at once. Like on the one hand, you want

01:03:55.940 to say this movie is progressive for the 1930s. You want to honor that Hattie McDaniel was able

01:04:04.100 to convince them not to use the N-word and was able to kind of stick up for how she thought

01:04:09.660 her character should be played, Butterfly McQueen 2, fantastic trained actress, that this movie

01:04:14.780 gave them roles. But then, I don't know. It's like endlessly complicated because then the fans

01:04:21.380 who like it take it in a different direction and the fans are doing most of the work that i think

01:04:27.460 that movie is getting criticized for i would just everybody should listen to your episode about gone

01:04:31.920 with the wind because it was good and there's a part of the end where they say ann foster tweeted

01:04:35.120 to us and that's me sorry oh my gosh i could talk about gone with the wind for years yeah well and

01:04:43.500 i think i mean just to sort of like connect it all it's like glenn close's character in this is

01:04:47.340 like a nightmare horrible person and she's so compelling to watch on screen and the performance

01:04:51.040 is fantastic and I would never be like oh I want to be like her it's like no but I love watching

01:04:55.380 her be awful and I love watching Scarlett O'Hara and I love watching that performance and it's

01:05:00.240 like the world that Scarlett O'Hara is in it's like that's the world she was born in like what

01:05:05.540 what else can she do really and it's sort of similar to Glenn Close's character it's just

01:05:11.240 like well what other options does she have she's so smart she's so bright she's so bored it's like

01:05:17.500 she has nothing else to do but play with other people as her chess pieces. And so she does and 0.63

01:05:20.980 she does it really well. Right. And I feel like you can just see these films as like a critique

01:05:25.780 of the society that shaped that woman to not have anything else to do with her day. It's not that

01:05:30.400 hard to take it that one other twist and say like, this doesn't think it's great that she is forced

01:05:35.180 to do this. Yeah. The society made her like that. The society made Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman

01:05:40.260 these kind of like helpless people who are able to be easily manipulated because they were so 0.87

01:05:45.600 coddled and so protected. And that's how they wound up in that situation. It's no one's fault

01:05:50.760 except for the patriarchy. Exactly. I don't know. I'm looking forward to figuring out when and how

01:05:58.300 we'll come up with a framing that allows us to watch Gone with the Wind again as just a really

01:06:04.420 fascinating filmic text. That is a movie that you could talk about for thousands and thousands

01:06:10.340 and thousands of hours, and there's still different levels into it. And it needs to be

01:06:14.620 grappled with you know I'm looking forward to a time where we figure out how to show it again in

01:06:18.060 which we can say everything good and everything bad about it because that's what you got to do

01:06:21.940 yeah it's just there's so much talk but again everybody should listen to your episode about

01:06:26.280 that because you do get into a lot of issues and I really appreciate it the nuance of it because

01:06:29.920 it's such a complicated thing but I will say that one of the things that Scarlett O'Hara does in

01:06:35.820 that movie it's just like her life is like so much is going wrong and she's like tomorrow is another

01:06:39.580 day. And I think that's sometimes to myself to motivate myself. So. She's inspirational too.

01:06:46.160 She's racist AF and, and, and the character, there's a lot to say. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, 0.64

01:06:55.900 Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about this. This is such a fun

01:06:59.260 conversation. Oh, and I'm so glad. I'm so glad we got to do this. Oh, more difficult, weird,

01:07:04.980 strange, complicated women who destroy lives because boy, are they fascinating to talk about. 1.00

01:07:09.580 And you know what? That's what the Vulgar History Podcast is all about. 1.00

01:07:13.980 Thank you so much.

01:07:15.500 Thank you.

01:07:20.400 Honestly, it was a dream to talk to Amy Nicholson. I'm such a fan of Unspooled and her podcast,

01:07:24.900 and I really encourage you to listen to... It's a sort of fun podcast, Unspooled, because,

01:07:29.400 well, it's a great podcast, but what's fun to me about it when I'm trying to choose which

01:07:33.040 episode to listen to, sometimes I go through and I'm like, I want to see what they have to say

01:07:36.340 about a movie that I know really well, like Pretty Woman, or they just did an episode about

01:07:41.200 Basic Instinct. It's really interesting to see them. Amy Nicholson and her co-host Paul Scheer,

01:07:46.160 they take the movies seriously, which is what I try to do in this podcast with people from history,

01:07:51.880 where they look at a movie like Pretty Woman, which often is just kind of like dismissed or

01:07:55.860 just thought like, oh, that's kind of light and funny, but they take it seriously, like Basic

01:07:59.160 Instinct. They view it, they look at it from a scholarly sort of point of view, and I really

01:08:04.160 appreciate it. But also they have fun. It's a fun podcast. You should listen to it. Especially if

01:08:09.020 you listen to the Gone with the Wind episode where you hear them say my name because I wrote in about

01:08:13.520 that one. Anyway, my news, if you haven't heard yet, is that I have a book that I've written,

01:08:20.860 that I've edited, that is coming out next year. It's being published in February 2026 in Canada

01:08:27.020 and the US. TBD information about when and where and how it'll be published in other countries,

01:08:33.040 but rest assured, me and myself and the team and the editors, we're all working on figuring that

01:08:37.900 out for you. And I'll let you know when I have the information. And I'll also let you know when

01:08:41.400 I have information about the audio book, which I hope to be narrating myself, fingers crossed.

01:08:47.240 Anyway, my book is called Rebel of the Regency, the scandalous saga of Caroline of Brunswick,

01:08:51.980 Britain's uncrowned queen. It is a funny nonfiction biography about a woman who lived

01:08:58.040 during the exact same time period as Dangerous Liaisons.

01:09:00.800 It's during the French Revolution era.

01:09:03.880 And you can get information about the book,

01:09:06.080 including where to order it at rebeloftheregency.com,

01:09:10.040 which is a website that I made up to give you information.

01:09:13.400 And if you can pre-order it from all,

01:09:15.860 from your local independent bookstore

01:09:17.780 or from online vendors as well.

01:09:20.700 And if you do pre-order a copy of the book,

01:09:23.440 like, you know, you still have to wait nine months

01:09:25.240 to read the book, but you get a little treat.

01:09:26.980 and the treat that you can get. There's information about it at rebel of the regency.com,

01:09:32.120 but you can get a Carolina Brunswick paper doll drawn by Siobhan Gallagher, which is the cutest

01:09:36.920 thing I've maybe ever seen. And you can only see what it looks like when you buy the book and

01:09:41.360 share your receipt with me at rebel of the regency.com. Also there, I'm also offering

01:09:46.480 people a year's free membership to my Patreon and or to my sub stack. When you show me a picture of

01:09:53.360 your receipt, just like pre-order the book. I've been so excited to share this whole journey with

01:09:57.660 you. And I'm excited that now we're at a part where like you get to do stuff, which is to order

01:10:01.240 the book. Or if you prefer to read books from the library, start bothering your local public library,

01:10:06.160 bug them to order this book. You know who's ordered this book? Saskatoon Public Library.

01:10:10.460 Why? Because I live here and I work for the library and, and they're really nice there.

01:10:17.240 Anyway, so rebeltheragency.com, get all the information about my book that is coming out.

01:10:22.400 And the other thing I want to mention to you as well is that we do have a advertising brand partner who is Common Era Jewelry, which is a small woman-owned business that makes beautiful heirloom jewelry inspired by difficult women and from the past and from mythology.

01:10:40.000 i feel like glenn close's character her vibes dangerous liaisons are the vibes of a lot of the

01:10:45.520 people you can get on jewelry from common era i'm talking about livia from ancient rome agrippina

01:10:51.260 also from ancient rome they were both kind of they had a strong glenn close type vibe

01:10:56.820 i think and so common era makes beautiful jewelry both in solid gold as well as in gold vermeil

01:11:04.460 which is a bit more affordable and if you want to buy something from them including their recent

01:11:09.860 Zodiac collection. You can get 15% of your order from Common Era by using code VULGAR at checkout.

01:11:17.940 So go to commonera.com slash VULGAR or use code VULGAR at checkout. Next week, actually, I should

01:11:25.720 say, errata. I had previously said that this week we were going to be talking about an American 0.99

01:11:31.200 founding father in Paris and all of his sex scandals. We're actually going to be talking

01:11:36.220 about that in a bit. Today was a surprise other episode. Next week, I'm going to be talking with

01:11:42.820 another podcast host about a zillion, well, technically like 800 women from history. And

01:11:50.960 I'm really excited to tell you about that. And so we're going to be taking dangerous liaisons,

01:11:56.640 kind of like puts a cap on this chapter of the French revolution saga. We're going to do some

01:12:01.460 other people I've been dying to talk to and topics I want to talk about, especially we're

01:12:05.420 going to get into some pride content coming up in June, and then we're going to jump back into it

01:12:09.740 in July with some more French Revolution content. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to Vulgar

01:12:14.960 History, and keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, scripted, 1.00

01:12:23.720 and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. Editor is Christina Lumagi. Theme music is by The Severn Duo.

01:12:30.860 Transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malek.

01:12:34.920 You can get early ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as $1 a month at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter.

01:12:44.960 Vulgar History merchandise is available at vulgarhistory.com slash store for Americans and for everyone else at vulgarhistory.redbubble.com.

01:12:53.220 Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod and get in touch with me via email at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

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Vulgar History - May 28, 2025

Movie Discussion： Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

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