Gone Girl (2014)

Matt (00:00:21):

Yes, hello, and this is 1-Week Rental: A Movie Podcast. We spent the last week with Gone Girl and now we’re going to tell you everything that we have learned about it. My name is Matt Stokes.

Laci (00:00:31):

And I am Laci Roth. I’m still here.

Matt (00:00:33):

She’s still here. She’s still married to me.

Laci (00:00:35):

I’m not gone.

Matt (00:00:36):

Nope.

Laci (00:00:37):

Girl.

Matt (00:00:37):

You don’t want a gone girl. You want a “here girl.” We’ll tell you why. We’ll tell you why.

Laci (00:00:42):

Kill.

Matt (00:00:42):

Keep going.

Laci (00:00:43):

Girl.

Matt (00:00:43):

And you’ll learn all about that. Laci and I are married. We’ve been married a long time. And before you even ask, yes, Laci did figure death and it make me look like I committed her murder. And yes, it did save our marriage. What

Laci (00:00:54):

Else do you do for your third year anniversary?

Matt (00:00:57):

Exactly. And we’re doing better than ever. We’ve had a child just like the Dunns. Everything worked out great.

Laci (00:01:03):

The cat is fine.

Matt (00:01:05):

We love Gone Girl. Do you love Gone Girl? I mean, who wouldn’t like Gone Girl? Idiots.

Laci (00:01:09):

Fucking

Matt (00:01:10):

Idiots. I know. I’m mad at them. Idiots. I’m mad at them. Come as. I don’t even know if they exist. Exist us. But I was just thinking if somebody said they didn’t like Gone Girl, I would just be like, “Man, man, you need to examine your head.” Okay.

Laci (00:01:21):

There are very literal people who maybe just would overanalyze the situation.

Matt (00:01:26):

Yeah. And I say, “Go fly a kite.” That’s what I’d tell them to do. That’s

Laci (00:01:29):

A gone girl.

Matt (00:01:30):

This feels like a newish movie for us to be covering despite it being 12 years old. But we love Gone Girl. We watch Gone Girl all the time, seriously. At least once a year. We love it. We love David Fincher. This is my favorite David Fincher movie. Is it your favorite David Fincher movie, Laci?

Laci (00:01:43):

It’s my third favorite David

Matt (00:01:44):

Fincher movie. Wow.

Laci (00:01:45):

But that’s hard because he has so many that-

Matt (00:01:49):

Good director.

Laci (00:01:49):

They’re just really in me. They’re like, they’re like suppositories for my brain.

Matt (00:01:54):

That’s the perfect way to put it. They make my poop come

Laci (00:01:56):

Out my ears.

Matt (00:01:57):

That’s what you want. Yeah.

Laci (00:01:58):

Did you want to know my listing or what we do in that?

Matt (00:02:01):

Just tell me. Yeah.

Laci (00:02:02):

Oh my God. Okay. Well, so the first one has to be the girl with dragon tattoo. It’s a fucking journey. All of his movies are, but that one particularly-

Matt (00:02:12):

Yeah, I love that one.

Laci (00:02:13):

All right. Number two is seven. Number two is seven. Then Gone Girl, then Zodiac, then Social Network, then Fight Club, Panic Room, The Game, The Killer, and then I haven’t seen the other ones that he has directed.

Matt (00:02:27):

Yeah. Between Gone Girl and Zodiac for me, but there’s all, he’s directed a lot of great movies and we do plan on doing a social network episode later this year, maybe in September, maybe in November. Why am I telling you this? I don’t know. I think we’ve already said it on the podcast once that we’re doing the social network episode, but also this is if you are just joining us, if you haven’t been with us since at least last summer. What we do during the summer is we change things up a little bit on 1-Week Rental. I mean, we continue to spend the week with a movie and then tell you all about it. We watch it twice. We research it. If it’s based on a book like Gone Girl, I’ll end up reading the book. I’ve read it a bunch of times, but I did read Gone Girl again, very fun book to read and we research it, we read all the interviews and we tell you all about it.

(00:03:08):

But during the summer we focus in on one individual.

Laci (00:03:12):

We just make a meal out of it and we track the movies we watch with the career and life of said subject and it enriches.

Matt (00:03:23):

Right. Like how Italians like you finish your meal and you’re like time to go and they’re like, “Oh no, no, we got to get coffee.” And you’re like, “Okay, so some coffee.” They’re like, “No, that’ll be like another three, four hours here at this table.” That’s what we are like. In 2024, we did Steven Spielberg, the summer of Steven Spielberg. No, summer of Spielberg. That’s what we called it. Last summer we did the Rock Dwayne Johnson Summer of Rock and this summer we are doing

Laci (00:03:48):

Nolan Nolan.

Matt (00:03:49):

Christopher Nolan. Very original movie podcast is going to discuss Christopher Billy. The original. And hey, what a remarkable coincidence. He has a new movie coming out this summer, so he’ll be in the news. But Christopher Nolan is the subject of our miniseries. Everyone I’ve told that to has been very excited and said, “Can I be on the Batman episode?”

Laci (00:04:08):

I don’t want to do the Batman episode. Oh,

Matt (00:04:09):

Well, we’re doing three. I think we

Laci (00:04:10):

Just skip right over

Matt (00:04:11):

That. We’re doing three.

Laci (00:04:12):

We’re not doing it.

Matt (00:04:13):

That will start two weeks from today. One week from now we’re taking a week off.

Laci (00:04:18):

Yeah, suck it.

Matt (00:04:19):

And then June 12th, be back with an episode about memento.

Laci (00:04:21):

Unsuck it.

Matt (00:04:22):

June 19th, an episode about Batman begins June. Eat

Laci (00:04:25):

It.

Matt (00:04:25):

26th, an episode about the prestige. It’s my

Laci (00:04:27):

Birthday. Why would you not let me pick on my fucking birthday?

Matt (00:04:31):

We’re going in chronological … Okay, what do you want?

Laci (00:04:33):

What

Matt (00:04:33):

Do you want, Laci?

Laci (00:04:35):

Muriel’s wedding.

Matt (00:04:36):

Muriel’s wedding. That’s the most nolen thing of all is if you’re watching Christopher Nolan’s movies, all of a sudden this Australian wedding picture comes up.

Laci (00:04:44):

It’s not about a wedding.

Matt (00:04:46):

It’s not?

Laci (00:04:47):

No.

Matt (00:04:48):

You shouldn’t judge a movie by its title. Okay. Yeah.

Laci (00:04:50):

And you always do and I’m sick of it. I’m going to be gone.

Matt (00:04:53):

So that’s what’s going to happen during the summer. It’s kind of like our season finale or like our mid-season. I don’t know.

Laci (00:05:01):

It’s a moment.

Matt (00:05:02):

So we’re going out with a bang before our summer miniseries before the summer of Nolan starts with a bang. We wanted to treat ourselves to one of our favorite movies so we watched Gone Girl and we’re going to tell you all about it now starting with the history segment. History segment’s the only portion you’re going to get in video. If you’re watching this on YouTube, look in the description, you will see a link to listen to the complete spoiler filled discussion about Gone Girl.

Laci (00:05:25):

Do it. Do it. That’s where the fans go.

Matt (00:05:51):

So this all starts with Willian Flynn who wrote Gone Girl. You read Gone Girl?

Laci (00:05:56):

Yo fucking know better than to ask me s

Matt (00:05:58):

Second. I thought that Gong Girl was one of the books you read.

Laci (00:06:01):

Nope. I don’t read nonfiction hardly ever.

Matt (00:06:04):

It’s fiction. It’s not nonfiction.

Laci (00:06:06):

I don’t not read.

Matt (00:06:09):

That’s one of those words that they are making it too hard. Nonfiction should be fiction and vice versa.

Laci (00:06:16):

So I don’t read vice versa.

Matt (00:06:18):

And another thing they need to do is this whole thing where they say the 19th century is the 1800s. Fix that. We don’t need that anymore. Nobody needs to say the 17th century and like, “Oh, so that means the 1600s.” I shouldn’t have to do math. Let’s all agree. With

Laci (00:06:30):

Your English. I

Matt (00:06:31):

Shouldn’t have to. 16th century means 1600s from now on, okay?

Laci (00:06:34):

We fixed it.

Matt (00:06:35):

I thought you had read all of Gillian Flynn’s novels. I’ve read

Laci (00:06:38):

None of them.

Matt (00:06:39):

You should. They’re fun. Well, Gone Girls Great. The other two, they show promise. I swore you read Dark Places and we talked about it.

Laci (00:06:46):

I mean, I definitely probably did.

Matt (00:06:48):

You definitely probably did. Okay. I have no

Laci (00:06:50):

Memory of it. But if you look at my Audible history, that would tell you.

Matt (00:06:55):

Can

Laci (00:06:55):

You do an impression of the lady that reads the book and then I’ll tell you?

Matt (00:06:58):

No, I can’t. I’m sorry. Okay.

Laci (00:06:59):

Well, that’s the only way I know.

Matt (00:07:00):

But she started a Gillian Flynn did with that hard G. Gone Girl was such a fucking literary sensation that it started a genre or defined a genre and continues to define a genre of popular novel to this day.

Laci (00:07:16):

What’d you call that genre, a sad lady?

Matt (00:07:19):

Maybe we’d call it sad. You can’t sum it up with a few words. It has to be like, so these books are-

Laci (00:07:26):

Chick crime.

Matt (00:07:27):

Largely written for a female audience and consumed by a female audience, but we get the benefit of not having to present them as chick lit. And they’re basically middle brow books, but they have enough cultural commentary and sort of post modern flourishes that critics don’t have to feel like dumb dumbs for reading and enjoyable.

Laci (00:07:46):

Lady win and lose, I’d say are the themes of her books. Lady win and lose.

Matt (00:07:51):

Do you remember what Dark Places is about?

Laci (00:07:53):

No, I remember Sharp Objects.

Matt (00:07:55):

From the series? Yeah. Yeah. Gone Girl continues to define the genre to this day. Everybody’s like, “Where’s our Gone Girl? Bring us a Gone Girl. Bring us a new Gone Girl.” Well, no one has, including Gillian Flynn, who as of now has gone 14 years without writing another novel. I

Laci (00:08:11):

Don’t fucking blame her. I’d

Matt (00:08:12):

Be exhausted. She’s quietly the George R. Martin of women, of women writers. Get to work, Gillian, what are you doing? Oh,

Laci (00:08:19):

It sounds like a real nuisance. Try to walk down the street. I dare you.

Matt (00:08:24):

Where’s your book?

Laci (00:08:25):

Why are you got time to Walmart? You got time to write.

Matt (00:08:28):

That has been George R. Martin’s life. Everything he posts, people like, “Fuck you. Get inside. Get on that typewriter. What are you doing watching the New York Jets, seeing The Grateful Dead?”

Laci (00:08:37):

Do you know how old you are?

Matt (00:08:40):

It is funny. He’s a big old fat jolly man and he’s like, “It doesn’t feel good for everybody to tell me, please, please hurry up and write because you’re going to die. We know you’re going to die. You’re going to die really soon.” Anyway, that’s exactly what Gillian Flynn is like.

Laci (00:08:58):

Cool name though.

Matt (00:09:00):

From a 2018 New York Times profile of Gillian Flynn, quote, “To experience Flynn’s work is to submit yourself to a series of increasingly incredulous what? A deliberate first act of unsettling exposition and character development sets up a chain of wild twists in a second. The stories are propelled by female narrators who lay bare their nastiest impulses to the audience, but not crucially to the people in their lives, adding psychological depth and the sense of illicit confession to the cheap thrills of her high wire plots.” Again, when you read this kind of cultural criticism, this is where you realize the job of the cultural critic is take something that’s fun and just dress it up with as much highfalutin language as you can to make it be like-

Laci (00:09:44):

Literally said high wire.

Matt (00:09:45):

This is why it’s not just fun. It’s important, which I think it is. I think Gone Girl a novel. It’s unusual for me to like a novel and a movie as much as I do. I think that they’re- You

Laci (00:09:57):

Mean on the same level?

Matt (00:09:58):

Yes. I think that it’s a great book and a great movie and weirdly they reinforce each other and it’s because she wrote the screenplay for the movie. She was very involved. So it’s almost like they’re cannon with each other and reading the novel, I think enhances the enjoyment of the movie and vice versa.

Laci (00:10:14):

That’s good to know.

Matt (00:10:16):

But- Which

Laci (00:10:17):

Is all I will … No, because I won’t know the joys of the book because I won’t read it.

Matt (00:10:22):

Why not? Just do it.

Laci (00:10:24):

Kind of. I’m in the middle of other stuff.

Matt (00:10:26):

Just- Got a lot

Laci (00:10:27):

Going on.

Matt (00:10:28):

She grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. All her novels are set in Missouri and in Kansas.

Laci (00:10:33):

Thoughtful.

Matt (00:10:34):

And she has a very good sense of place of that specific part of the country. Not quite south, not quite Midwest, not quite west. And her dad was a film professor. He indoctrinated her with a love of horror movies from a very early age. And she worked as a feature and television critic for Entertainment Weekly from 1998 to 2008. During that time, she published her first novel, Sharp Objects in 2006. She wrote and sold her second novel, Dark Places. That would ultimately be published in 2009, but that she was laid off by Entertainment Weekly in 2008. During that time when she was laid off, she starts working on Gone Girl and it’s very, very influenced by the financial crisis and basically the decimation of the traditional media industry. The book makes a much bigger deal about their careers going away about the idea that you can’t do what you used to do anymore.

(00:11:26):

And I think that the movie’s very interested in this idea of just a world that is in terminal decline. Everything is in decay.

Laci (00:11:34):

What happens when everybody has idle hands?

Matt (00:11:37):

Yes. And we’re still trying to give the appearance that things are fine and we can still live the lives we always led.

Laci (00:11:43):

What would someone like Amy do in fucking Missouri without a job, without New York?

Matt (00:11:48):

Oh, going to this place where I think they say it in the movie that the mall closed, it was a big source of jobs. Now it’s where everybody does drugs, like the local factory or whatever clothes.

Laci (00:12:01):

That is a scene I forget every time is in that movie. That feels like it’s from a Better Call Salt or something.

Matt (00:12:07):

Yeah. But the movie is such a good eye for what these places look and feel like. And I think that we live in a place that feels like this, where you can go in these neighborhoods that have very nice houses and all the grass is way too high because all the houses are empty because no one lives in these houses. There’s something so, so creepy about that where it feels apocalyptic.

Laci (00:12:29):

Well, like Detroit. Detroit is definitely the most of that. I’d never experienced that except for Katrina until I went to Detroit.

Matt (00:12:37):

Yeah. That is how it feels in Detroit that the movie Barbarian does a good job showing that. Just

Laci (00:12:43):

Empty, empty, empty. With a person, occupant? Is there going to be electricity in this house? I don’t know. This could be a squatter, could be an owner. Empty, empty, empty.

Matt (00:12:52):

At least with Detroit, you get a sense of history. Stuff used to be here. With these big McMansions are just these tracks of suburban houses that are way too big for little families to live in. No one ever lived in them. Or if they did, it was very brief. It’s like they put them up and then the economy collapsed and no one could afford them anymore. And there’s something so creepy about that. And there’s something so creepy about seeing Ben Affleck and Rasman Pike in this giant house, just the two of them that’s just, you don’t belong. The sense, I kept thinking while I was reading the book, this is a book about people who died and don’t know they’re dead. It’s like the ghosts and the others, you’re lingering.

Laci (00:13:29):

Well, it’s like that location, location, location has never felt more true than this. You can be surrounded by lovely things and in a nice home, but they’re just things in a house. Right. Without friends, without family, without connection and you’re not even having good conversation with your husband anymore, it might as well be a prison.

Matt (00:13:50):

So Gillian did not plan out the novel. She didn’t know the twist. She said she just started writing. And then after she got started, she got pregnant. So she decided I’m taking a traditional maternity leave. Didn’t look at the book for three months. And then when she went back to it, she said, “What the fuck is this?

Laci (00:14:05):

“

Matt (00:14:05):

But it comes out and is a huge, just enormous hit. Back to that profile from the New York Times. “Flynn’s books fall into a category you might call anti-Middlebrow, packaged as thrillers written in the knowing pop cultural cadence of mid 2000s blogs and comprising a disorienting blend of genre influence. They avoid the striving pretensions of bad literary fiction despite also being fairly dense and containing sneakily many of the pleasures of a digressive social novel. “So Gone Girl comes out, becomes a huge phenomenon, but before the movie, for two years before the movie comes out, it’s number one on the best sellers back and forth with 50 Shades of Gray. They’re the two dominant novels of the time.

Laci (00:14:51):

Wow. It really shows the two sides of every lady. Kind of smart and kind of a slut.

Matt (00:14:57):

You’re kind of into BDSM, but you’re a baby about it. Christian. Yes, definitely a Christian or-

Laci (00:15:02):

Definitely a housewife, even if we’re sad.

Matt (00:15:05):

Yeah. Or you’re a sad housewife who’s a murderer and also a Christian.

Laci (00:15:09):

A murderer for her family.

Matt (00:15:12):

“People expect from Flynn at minimum a brooding goth, world weary and unpleasant. So when they encounter a chip or straight talker with a wholesome dependency on Cherry Coke Zero and a Midwestern accent, she pronounces Missouri Missouri, drops her inges to Eens and is so bad at cooking, she can’t boil an egg. They start to suspect something even more sinister, lurking beneath her crooked CVS reading glasses.

Laci (00:15:35):

Who is

Matt (00:15:36):

This?

Laci (00:15:37):

Who is this? The protagonist of which book?This

Matt (00:15:40):

Is Gillian Flynn. They’re like, ” The twisted mind of Gillian … You know how you know, you see Tim Burton movies and then you see Tim Burton and you think that makes sense. Yeah. Opposite with Gillian Flynn. Oh, hi there. Hey, Gillian. Oh yeah, nice to meet you. One

Laci (00:15:54):

Kid strapped her front, one kid strapped her back.

Matt (00:15:57):

There’s little nick on my old hip dare.

Laci (00:15:59):

Okay. Got a hip holder. A holster. I have an open carry baby.

Matt (00:16:05):

The book’s a huge hit, but with all this comes more attention and questions we need to talk about Gone Girl and the many problems with its sexual politics. What? Specifically as regards a woman making false sexual assault allegations, content warning for discussions of sexual assault. Okay. From a 2013 interview with Gillian Flynn in The Guardian, a profile of an interview with Gillian Flynn. “The most persistent charge against Flynn’s books concerns their sexual politics. Gone Girl’s Plot turns partly on one female character fabricating a charge of rape. A trope that exists because it’s powerful. Eva Weisman wrote in the observer, but that perpetuates an idea that can be complicated. Others have accused her of peddling misogynist caricatures and a deep animosity towards women. More generally, it’s true of all Flynn’s novels that her women can be reliably predicted to outdo the men and their capacity for moral depravity.

(00:17:02):

Flynn identifies herself as a feminist, but does she worry that she’s damaging that cause in the quest for narrative shocks? Flynn says, to me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is. Is it really only girl power and you go girl and empower yourself and be the best you can be? For me, it’s also the ability to have women who are bad characters. The one thing that really frustrates me is the idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissively bad, trampy, vampy, bitchy types, but there’s still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish. I don’t write psycho bitches. The psycho bitch is just crazy. She has no motive. And so she’s a dismissable person because of her psychobitchiness. End quote.

Laci (00:17:41):

Right. This is a false rape allegation made by a genius with a plan, with a five-year laid out thing that she’s going to achieve. This isn’t just someone trying to get attention. It’s also a comment on class because it’s amazing Amy who is saying this guy raped her. It has a big deal. There’s a trial. He’s on a sex offender list or whatever. It’s sexist to say that anyone that says that someone raped them would get the same outcome as if this is like some scourge. Well,

Matt (00:18:18):

Right and of course-This is an outcome

Laci (00:18:20):

Because she’s a beautiful, blonde, rich lady from New York.

Matt (00:18:24):

She does not stand in for all women. She is a very, very, very specific woman. Oh,

Laci (00:18:28):

Yes. I mean, you would be hard pressed to find the person who’s watching this movie and relating to her and not the sister or the cop.

Matt (00:18:35):

Right. And like you just said, she-

Laci (00:18:38):

I’m sorry. Or even the neighbor that ends up next to her in that little place she rents for a while while she’s hiding.

Matt (00:18:46):

Right. Because one of the things that’s great about Rasman’s Pike’s performance is that-

Laci (00:18:49):

She’s an alien.

Matt (00:18:50):

She’s an alien. She’s an alien. Everything about her seems like it’s not of this world. Right.

Laci (00:18:55):

When she’s not narrating herself, I’m surprised words are coming out of her mouth. She feels like she should only be narrated. Everything’s just so measured.

Matt (00:19:05):

The death of ever writing interesting characters though is the idea that I have a responsibility to only show virtuous characters.

Laci (00:19:12):

Yes. How boring would that be? I love that I don’t know if she’s a good mom or will be one or if they’re going to be happy. I love that Nic is attracted to how fucked up she is and kind of loves the faking of it all and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. I think he gets bored easy. I think he was only interested with the girl he was having an affair with because it was an affair.

Matt (00:19:36):

And I think that she likes him so much more than she’s telling us. She really, really, actually, really likes him.

Laci (00:19:45):

She fought-

Matt (00:19:45):

And needs to be able to justify.

Laci (00:19:48):

But they went into a relationship both being the coolest fucking high achieving versions of themselves and that was a gentleman’s agreement and he started showing how good old boy, regular American he is and he broke the agreement. I just liked that. No, no, no, no, no. We both signed up to pretend the rest of our lives, so get back on that.

Matt (00:20:10):

But he teaches her that the pretending, you certainly don’t want that because that’s Desi, that’s Neil Patrick Harris. She sits down at the table. “How could I ever do a board with who does you can quote proost in French. You don’t want this. That’s boring. And he fucking is obsessed with you and will do all the things you always complained about your husband not doing, but you hate him for it. So you don’t actually want those things.

Laci (00:20:33):

You win.

Matt (00:20:35):

It’s her having to come to terms with, ” I kind of like my himbo doofus husband.

Laci (00:20:39):

“I kind of like that I live in Missouri.

Matt (00:20:41):

Yeah. I kind of like eating food from the gas station.

Laci (00:20:44):

I definitely don’t like his sister.

Matt (00:20:45):

But obviously female false allegations of rape are exceptionally rare. I was reading another article, that article I just read from referenced a different article that I read that put it like the reason it ever makes the news is because it’s newsworthy that it happens because it’s so exceptional if it happens, but it is a wonderfully compelling plot device. You can disagree with me, but I think that is not the responsibility of an artist to portray and idealize society with that.

Laci (00:21:17):

Because would it be on her if her book wasn’t a success? How is she supposed to know that every book she writes going to be a fucking hit? You don’t know going into it that you don’t just have one really good book in you or even one at all. So why should you write with the intention of like, ” There will be a huge spotlight on me. I better really show up for the ladies. It’s not on you.

Matt (00:21:37):

“That I’m putting women in the best possible light. I mean, much more reasonable way to look at it is like people need to understand not to get their morality and worldview from fun novels that they want to do.

Laci (00:21:47):

And I’d say it’s anti-feminist to put all this on those shoulders of one writer.

Matt (00:21:51):

Quoting again from the New York Times,” Flynn’s response to these questions is refreshingly pragmatic. She wrote a character and she wanted to see what that character would do under certain conditions. Still, the fear upsets her. Though she has always been aware of feminism in general and identifies as a feminist, she says she could be better versed in feminist theory and was blindsided by the occasionally vitriolic accusations of misogyny she faced. No, most women don’t falsify rape claims, “she says, but most women also don’t frame their cheating husbands for their own murders. Flynn remembers one negative review in particular of the movie adaptation directed by David Fincher, which she paraphrased for me. “It ended by saying that Fincher and I had found in each other evil soul twins of death, that we were riding off into the sunset into hell and that on the back of our car it said just married.

(00:22:35):

Reading it made her wonder only half jokingly if she’d killed feminism.”

Laci (00:22:40):

Calm the fuck down everybody. Sorry you made an awesome … Man, people cannot take it when somebody’s got a vagina and did something real fun.

Matt (00:22:50):

There’s just this compulsion, especially if you’re in the cultural criticism industry. If you enjoy something, you have to find some way to like … This needs to take accountability for something.

Laci (00:23:00):

I mean, as a critic, I always think about that as being a food critic. There’s only five things to say about anything you’ve eaten, right? If you’re trying to … You need some other kind of hook if you want to prevent yourself from saying the same thing 50 times before you’ve had five years of your career into this sort of work. So why not bitch? Try to start a little controversy or something. At least you’d get views and clicks.

Matt (00:23:27):

And that’s how you can keep it going, how we can keep talking about this because it’s like, we all liked Gone Girl.

Laci (00:23:32):

Right. But then it just muddies everything and we’re all talking about something none of us actually fucking care about because you were just trying to get clicks. Don’t do that. You’re a critic. Be a critic.

Matt (00:23:41):

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Reese Witherspoon produced this movie and indeed was the original intended star to play amazing Amy.

Laci (00:23:48):

And Finder said, no. Well,

Matt (00:23:50):

Let’s tell that story now. She partners with 20th Century Fox. They pay one and a half million dollars for the rights to the movie, including Gillian Flynn getting to be the screenwriter and Brie Switherspoon will be the producer and the star. This was a time where the female centric IP coming from the world of novels like Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray was doing huge business in movies. So this made a lot of sense for 20th Century Fox. This was a very big fee for them to pay and very unusual to get the author to be able to become the screenwriter. We’ve talked about movies in the past where this has happened.

Laci (00:24:34):

And hit or miss. Usually miss.

Matt (00:24:35):

Usually miss. Not only just authors being involved and hurting the projects, but then literally getting to write the screenplays. Often when they’re credited as writing the screenplays, they usually were removed pretty early on. Michael Crighton is the official credited screenwriter of Jurassic Park, but by all accounts, he didn’t actually write the film.

Laci (00:24:56):

I will say though, it’s one of those things where when it works, it works exceptionally well because you just highlighted how it’s so rare for you to like a book and a movie as a package rather than having to pick one or the other. And that’s the symbiosis?

Matt (00:25:12):

Symbiosis.

Laci (00:25:13):

Symbiosis you can get when a story is already exactly what it needs to be, but there’s things you can do with a movie that you can’t do with words on a page and like having someone who equally sees the potential in that rather than, “Ah, but I think it’d be cool if we completely go off the script here.” I

Matt (00:25:32):

Think that a lot of that has to do with her partnership with David Fincher. He seems like he really liked her. That’s

Laci (00:25:36):

What I mean. There’s a respect for each, they trust each other.

Matt (00:25:41):

And I think it seems like a lot of that comes from she was a film buff. She wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly. She did a long profile of Peter Jackson in New Zealand when he was directing Lord of the Rings. She’s not precious about her status as a novelist. She also cares about movies even though she had never written a movie before and was like aware of other instances where an author got pissed off for having stuff changed from novel to movie but realized movies are different. And so there’s going to be things that I have to change as I adapt my own work. She told the Hollywood reporter in 2012, “Just recognizing that a movie is a very different thing than a book. There are certain things you might love in the book, like a dialogue exchange that just can’t translate to a movie.

(00:26:22):

I constantly have to remind myself that these are two very different mediums. It certainly was helpful having grown up with my dad as a film professor and I studied movies and worked at Entertainment Weekly. You see books that translate really well into film and some that don’t and you try to figure out what works. So Gillian Flynn, Gillian Flynn turns in the first screenplay to the first draft of the screenplay in 2012, but the project still didn’t have a director. Now she says she always wanted David Fincher. He was the obvious choice to do it. She said she told the Kansas City star, “I was back home in Casey for Christmas and on December 26th I got a call asking me to hop on a plane and meet David Fincher in Los Angeles.” It was David Fincher. So of course I did. It was a great meeting.

(00:27:04):

We really clicked and had a great conversation about the kind of film we’d like to make. Fincher has a, and then the writer of the article says, “Fincher has a reputation for being hard on actors demanding retake after retake. Apparently though he has a soft spot for writers.” Flynn said, “He gave me amazing notes. He really knew where and how the story worked.” In 2014, she told the Los Angeles Times, “Being someone who covered movies for a lot of years, I know how the story goes, which is the author gets to do a first draft and then the author is immediately fired and someone else is brought in. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for David Fincher to say, good job kid, but I just want one of my people in here for the sheer sense of comfort.” Fincher said he did have trepidation about working with a first time screenwriter adapting her own novel, but he said that you quickly found a rapport.

(00:27:46):

“She took to it really deftly, “said Fincher now collaborating with Flynn on a TV series for HBO titled Utopia. She’s a big movie buff. She watches more movies than I do, and she’s extremely articulate about what she wants as that popcorn munching girl in the second row craning her neck to see the whole screen at Cinerama Dome. It was an easy transition.

(00:28:05):

David Venture rewrites all his movies, but he rarely takes screenwriting credit. In Gone Girl, she’s the soul screenwriting. She gets the soul screenwriting credit that got her half million dollar bonus for that and that’s basically something that he gave to her. He didn’t demand that he get screenwriting credit. This is our first time covering a David Fincher movie on the show.

Laci (00:28:23):

There’s a lot to chew on. I mean, there are so few people who have this beautiful of a, ” Here’s the movies I’ve made. “Just proudly wear these as badges of honor. The only one I haven’t seen … Well, there’s a couple, but Benjamin Button just never looked good to me. Is it actually good?

Matt (00:28:43):

I haven’t seen it since I saw it in theaters when I hated it. Every time I sit down to try it again, because I’m sure it’s good.

Laci (00:28:52):

Okay. I always confuse it with me, Joe Black, Jim Black.

Matt (00:28:55):

No, me Joe Black, which I’m sure is terrible.

Laci (00:28:57):

So did they come out aroundt the same time or years and years apart. I lumped them in weird Brad Pitt movies.

Matt (00:29:03):

I loved Zodiac and then I saw that the next year and I hated it. And every time I try to give it another chance, I see the running time. It’s like three hours. And I remember Bad New Orleans accent, although Brad Pitt spends a lot of time in New Orleans, so maybe I don’t know. I’ll give it another shot one day. But as I said, we are going to do a social network episode later this year and we’ll probably go more into Fincher himself in that episode. I just wanted to go deeper on some of these other characters in this movie. Obviously he has the reputation for being very difficult, very expensive and demanding his actors do tons and tons of takes, but actors love working with him. And from Benjamin Button in 2008 to Mank in 2020, every actor or every one of these movies got a lead acting Oscar nomination.

(00:29:51):

So actors like working with him because he gets you Oscars. And Gone Girl was an enormous hit and did get major awards attention Rossman Pike got nominated for Best Actress, but it still took him six years to make another movie. The industry really, really, really emphasized IP and he-

Laci (00:30:13):

He’s IP.

Matt (00:30:14):

But he’s not IP. His movies don’t make as much money as Christopher Nolan movies make. And there’s no chance for them to become franchises. And so the only reason to do it in their eyes is to get Oscars. But Gone Girl didn’t win Best Picture or anything. Did she

Laci (00:30:33):

Get an O. Tour pass?

Matt (00:30:35):

Yeah, I don’t know. Just for having an eye. Whatever reason.

Laci (00:30:37):

For knowing how to tell

Matt (00:30:38):

A compelling

Laci (00:30:38):

Story.

Matt (00:30:39):

It did not make sense. It’s like, how can this guy not get a movie made? But it also seems like he was very selective and he had some projects that fell apart.

Laci (00:30:46):

When I look at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of the movies on the screen and then also include Gone Girl, they are all a journey through a book. I can feel us turning the page and the chapter. All of these movies have that in common and they’re so rewatchable because of they’re cohesive. But you can’t believe where you started when you see where you ended. Wow, what a fucking journey I went

Matt (00:31:14):

On. When Netflix made House of Cards, which David Fincher developed for them, they developed with him. They were using their viewer data both from their time when they sent people DVDs in the mail and then their early days of streaming. And they learned people really like to watch David Fincher movies. They watched them a lot. They

Laci (00:31:34):

Watched them a fun. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right, because it’s like the baby shark song or a band that knows two minute songs are the best. It’s just like just when you’ve gotten a good taste in your mouth for what you’re watching, it turns the page and you’re like, “What the fuck’s up with this

Matt (00:31:51):

Now?” Yeah, he’s like Baby Shark.

Laci (00:31:52):

Yeah, that’s all I’m saying.

Matt (00:31:53):

They also learned people really like that Kevin Spacey. So they built a show around the two of them.

Laci (00:31:59):

They love how he knocks.

Matt (00:32:01):

So who is going to play amazing Amy? Well, Reese Witherspoon, of course, she’s the producer and she’s like, “This is a vehicle for me. ” Now, were you thinking about that as you watched the movie last night?

Laci (00:32:11):

A little bit, but I mean, as soon as Rosamund Pikes on the screen, I can only look at her and I completely forgot that anyone ever else was going to even think about it until she was doing her super bad Nolans accent and everyone around her’s talking like a little bumpkin and I’m like, “Well, Reese would have really came out here, but it would have been too fitting. It would have totally taken me out of it. ” I’m like,

Matt (00:32:35):

“Oh yeah,

Laci (00:32:35):

Reese.”

Matt (00:32:35):

That’s so great hearing her talk like, “I’m playing an American because she’s British and now she’s playing this New Yorker who’s pretending to be from New Orleans and it sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before.” Way to

Laci (00:32:47):

Pick the hardest fucking accent.

Matt (00:32:49):

But when she’s doing, she has her calendars and her planners and stuff, that’s when you can really see the Reese Witherspoon is this is also how Reese Witherspoon would plan a murder.

Laci (00:32:58):

Sure, but you got to plan it. That’s the whole thing.

Matt (00:33:01):

So Reese is producing the movie, she hires David Fincher and then his first order of business is telling her, “You’re not going to be in the movie.” Reese Witherspoon told the Lost Culture Ristas podcast last year, “David sat me down.” And this is not on David, but David’s like, “You’re totally wrong for this part. I’m not putting you in it. ” I had all these conversations with the writer, Gillian Flynn, and she was like, “No, I’d really like you to do it. ” But Fincher was like, “You’re wrong.” This was first of all, an ego check for me. It was like, “No, you’re not right for everything.” And he was right. He was totally right. Vincer just killed it and Rosaman Pike is so diabolical and Ben Affleck is sort of the rube on the other side of it. It ended up with Rosam Pike.

(00:33:40):

Who is Rosamund Pike or Rosman Pike? I don’t know how to pronounce

Laci (00:33:43):

It.

Matt (00:33:45):

34-year-old British actress. Fincher told the independent in 2014, “It was their actual unknowability from the previous four or five movies that I had seen. That’s what I needed. I needed somebody who was inscrutable. I needed a bottomless well. Even if you have previous experience, you have no previous opinion of. “

Laci (00:34:04):

I think that’s sort of how I feel about Rooney Mario.

Matt (00:34:09):

Rooney Mara?

Laci (00:34:10):

I feel like each movie that I see her in, it’s just like a redo. I don’t feel like I’m watching one of her movies. I feel like it’s whatever she wants it to be right here. She just kind of resets for me. You know how some actors are just themselves and others are the story?

Matt (00:34:26):

Yeah. I think that she was that way when I saw her in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Now I have a feeling about Rudy Mara. And when I see her in movies, that’s kind of all I see.

Laci (00:34:39):

Okay.

Matt (00:34:40):

But I definitely felt that way at the time. I had seen her in stuff before, but seeing her in that movie was like a revelation.

Laci (00:34:46):

I’ll tell you, shaving eyebrows goes a long fucking way. It just does.

Matt (00:34:51):

So Rosamund Pike had been probably much better known to British audiences because she was in a bunch of British TV, but she had been in Hollywood stuff for a long time. She’s in the 2002 James Bond movie, Die Another Day where she fights with an ice sword and she’s in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice. She’s in the Tom Cruise Jack Reacher. But like Fincher said, what he said is kind of exactly how you would’ve felt about her of like, I’ve seen her in stuff. I have no opinion of her at all because she’d never gotten a chance to show what she can do, but obviously she is extremely talented, so let’s give her the opportunity. It’s so important that she has that voice, that’s so alien voice. Yeah, kind of- An

Laci (00:35:33):

Affected voice,

Matt (00:35:34):

Right? That affected voice that is not even the character Amy’s voice because there is no Amy. Amy doesn’t exist. Amy’s like a Christian Bale and American psycho.

Laci (00:35:44):

Yes. I was just going to say, she’s like a person wearing a mask. She’s wearing a skin suit and it’s beautiful, but it’s so still. Everything’s so measured and yeah, it’s like watching ballet on a face. This is also on point.

Matt (00:36:02):

The product of being, if I’m grown up in the spotlight with this insane situation where everybody’s read books based on your life, but based on who your parents wish you actually were, even though by all accounts you’re incredible and high achieving and very smart and talented in everything you try to do and then you’re incredibly good looking also, but everybody is just projecting onto you everything they want you to be. And so there is nothing at all underneath there that you don’t make up yourself. Other choices to play the role war Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman and Emily Blunt, but Fincher was always the champion of her.

Laci (00:36:39):

And I can see all of those, but they all carry with them their they- ness.

Matt (00:36:43):

Yeah.

Laci (00:36:44):

Especially Natalie Portman.

Matt (00:36:46):

And I think because on the other hand, you have Ben Affleck where so much of the … He’s great and he’s a great actor, but there is something so meta about his casting that you have to go the opposite direction for Amy. You have to be somebody who people don’t have baggage and a prior relationship with. Because for Ben Affleck, we’ve kind of lived with Ben Affleck so long the highs and lows, the comebacks and the regressions and the failed marriages and then the new marriages and then the wonderful new marriage falls apart. People are just used to it. But when I was super getting into movies as a teenager, Ben Affleck was a fucking joke.

Laci (00:37:27):

Right. He was just a bro.

Matt (00:37:28):

And I had missed the early part of his career where he was like a critical darling, where people loved him. With goodwill hunting, went in the Oscar for writing it with Matt Damon and for just being just this cool, charismatic young actor in all these indie movies. I didn’t have that with him. I just start paying attention when he is despised and everyone hates it. What

Laci (00:37:48):

Movie would that be?

Matt (00:37:49):

So 2003 is when it really … He has Daredevil and Jeely and Jeli is

Laci (00:37:55):

The one that gets all up. It’s the J.Lo era.You flew too close to the sun. You don’t get to be married to J.Lo and an actor and an actor with her in a movie.

Matt (00:38:06):

Yeah. And in every single movie and people don’t seem to like him. What they liked about him early in his career, he’s not doing in his movie star run in Pearl Harbor and in Daredevil. And then he tries to do this Jeely thing. It’s like predetermined that this will be a bomb and everybody’s going to hate it and that’s what happens. In 2004, GQ called him the world’s most overexposed actor. The article was like-

Laci (00:38:33):

Too close to the sun.

Matt (00:38:34):

Yeah.

Laci (00:38:35):

Literal overexposure.

Matt (00:38:36):

The article is called Building a New Ben. It’s like, all right, let’s start over, Ben F. How can we fix you? It said, “People are starting to not like you, Ben. You’re pulling lower than Dennis Kusinich. You’re too chatty, too tan, too everywhere. The other night we found you on Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, E, MTV, Animal Planet, and the Jakarta Cricket Channel. You’re so overexposed. You could walk into the White House with Iraqi WMDs under one arm and Osama bin Laden under the other.

Laci (00:39:02):

Okay. This guy’s

Matt (00:39:03):

Kind of

Laci (00:39:03):

Fucked out.

Matt (00:39:04):

And the public reaction would be- Is he

Laci (00:39:05):

Doing a set?

Matt (00:39:07):

This is Dennis Miller. Yeah. Oh,

Laci (00:39:08):

Okay.

Matt (00:39:08):

The public reaction would be not another fricking Ben Affleck story. By the way, the Mars Rover says they’re sick of you up there too. If you didn’t live through this time, maybe you don’t have the Ben Affleck baggage when you go into this movie. You

Laci (00:39:21):

Would have had to already be watching South Park to understand, because as soon as they are making fun of you, Mac damon. Then you’ve become a thing.

Matt (00:39:30):

Yeah. And the episode where he gives Cartman a hand job because he falls in love with … Or no, Cartman gives him a hand job because Jennifer Lopez lives on his fist. Yeah. But that’s the low point. So he’s always getting compared to Matt Damon. Matt Damon’s the smart one. You just rode Matt Damon’s coattails. You talk about wanting to be a director. Are you kidding me?

Laci (00:39:51):

Does

Matt (00:39:51):

He

Laci (00:39:51):

Come back with his directorial debut? Is that you’re about to tell me.

Matt (00:39:57):

2004 is the low point. He marries Jennifer Garner the next year. Needed

Laci (00:40:01):

A new Jennifer.

Matt (00:40:02):

Needed to reboot with a new Jennifer. He was co-starring with her in Daredevil. They get married and the movies aren’t working. Daredevil Geli, Jersey Girl Paycheck Surviving Christmas. Reading now from a 2014 profile of Ben Affleck in the New York Times by Cara Buckley. “They disliked me, then they liked me. They hated me and now they loved me. This line comes shortly before the final act of Gone Girl. Spoken sardonically by Ben Affleck’s character, Nick Dunn, the words could just as easily have come straight from Mr. Aflac himself. “Because 2014 was like the absolute height of the comeback, of the comeback arc that also was predetermined about him. We hated you in 2004. Ooh, you’re going to start directing movies that people are going to love and you’re going to win an Oscar. Oh yes, yes. It is just too perfect.

Laci (00:40:51):

Well, and you need Carrie Coon also because she’s also this … If Roseman Pike is extraterrestrial, Carrie Coon is grounded earth.

Matt (00:41:04):

She is Terra Firma.

Laci (00:41:06):

Literally

Matt (00:41:06):

Grounded.

Laci (00:41:06):

She is something so real and she can normalize anyone’s behavior because the way she is in the leftovers, her partner is saying batshit crazy stuff, but she’s just like, ” Okay, yeah. “She signs off on it. You like, ” Okay, we’re fine. “And he just plops down in the bar and he’s like, ” I might have killed my war. Let’s play this game. “And because she’s so chill, it’s like, okay, this is just normal, but he’s being normal.

Matt (00:41:37):

Yeah. Even though you don’t know-

Laci (00:41:39):

You don’t know.

Matt (00:41:39):

They’re playing with it. Carcoon’s a fucking freak too. That’s what’s great about Carrie Coon.

Laci (00:41:43):

Okay. Except for that she’s got morals and scruples and you can tell that right away. And if she’s signed off on it, you’re still going with it.

Matt (00:41:53):

Incredibly reasonable seeming, even as she’s not reasonable. Just in the leftovers, I’m saying. So Jennifer Garner is the Carrie Coon to the real Ben Affleck. She wishes. She makes him seem- No, I

Laci (00:42:06):

Hate Jennifer Garner.

Matt (00:42:07):

Really?

Laci (00:42:07):

Yeah. She’s another one that I just like, I wouldn’t like to talk to you.

Matt (00:42:11):

Okay. I’m

Laci (00:42:12):

Not going to go to the bar with that one. She’s good with her dimples and everything. I like her and catch me if you can, but only because she’s a hooker. Other than that, she’s just so precious. She’s an Ann Hathaway. She just can’t do anything wrong. I’ve got temples that could hide a fucking syringe inside of.

Matt (00:42:31):

Okay. Interesting. I’ve wanted to do 13 going on 30 on the podcast because I know that’s a huge movie for people.

Laci (00:42:36):

I don’t like misunderstanding movies, but fine.

Matt (00:42:38):

Is that a misunderstanding? I thought it was just- Isn’t it

Laci (00:42:39):

Freaky Friday? Isn’t it? I was 13 and now I’m big. It’s big.

Matt (00:42:43):

But I thought it was big. I didn’t think she takes someone else’s body. I think she just-

Laci (00:42:46):

There’s still a misunderstanding. She’s still walking around being an adult. People think she’s an adult.

Matt (00:42:50):

No, that’s fine.

Laci (00:42:50):

I don’t like that. You can’t tell me if I like that.

Matt (00:42:52):

The beginning of the comeback for Ben Affleck was the 2006 movie Hollywood Land where he played George Reeves, the actor who played Superman in the 1950s and was murdered. And a lot of the reviews were saying, wait a minute, Ben Affleck’s really good in this. And I saw that movie in theaters and I too thought, wait a minute, Ben Affleck can be good. I didn’t know. I wasn’t a Kevin Smith guy. I didn’t know Ben Affleck could be good in stuff. I had never liked him before. Poor guy. 2007, he makes his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, starring his brother Casey and it’s a critically praised movie.

Laci (00:43:24):

I remember it being good.

Matt (00:43:25):

Yeah. Three years later, The Town comes out. It’s a giant hit critically praise and now the line on him is he’s an okay actor, but he’s a great director. And so 2012 Argo, he directs Argo and it’s a big hit and gets a bunch of Oscar nominations, but the narrative was it was weird that he didn’t get nominated for best director. And everybody says, “That’s outrageous. Don’t you know we’re currently in the middle of the comeback for Ben Affleck’s story?” He needed to have gotten nominated for best picture. Kick fucking up our art. Our best director. Yes. And so it was almost like that narrative willed Argo, a pretty crappy movie to winning Best Picture. And so he got to go up on stage anyway and accept the trophy because he’s a producer on the movie. And do you remember this speech and what he said?

Laci (00:44:10):

Of course not.

Matt (00:44:10):

It was this thing, he thanked his wife and he said, “Marriage is a lot of hard work.” Whenever I thought about that, I remember being much more serious because people, I don’t know, that was kind of off putting to people. It’s a weird

Laci (00:44:24):

Way to start.

Matt (00:44:25):

But now this idea of like Ben Affleck in marriage, a very public marriage is just so identified with him. Let’s watch the acceptance speech. Oh

Laci (00:44:33):

God, man. You know how I feel about this. Oh, it’s adorable.

Matt (00:44:40):

Yeah, it was much better than in my memory.

Laci (00:44:44):

He’s precious.

Matt (00:44:45):

Yeah. But that’s part of it too, of like-

Laci (00:44:48):

No,

Matt (00:44:49):

No, it works

Laci (00:44:49):

For me. I’m into it.

Matt (00:44:52):

I forgot to mention the whole thing about Argo was it’s a movie, I mean it’s CIA propaganda about how we rescued our brave patriots in Iran. And so that’s why he called his wife Iran. In the public, Ben Affleck is just now very associated with the idea of marriage. So of course he has to play Nick Dunn.

Laci (00:45:09):

Because he’s so done.

Matt (00:45:11):

The other contender for the role apparently was John Ham.

Laci (00:45:14):

Ooh, that’s hot as shit. Too old.

Matt (00:45:17):

And I guess that makes sense because he’s from St. Louis. He’s one of those famous St. Illusions.

Laci (00:45:22):

The hard to read. I’m really handsome so I get away with a lot, but I’m really handsome so I’m also going to get in trouble and I just can’t help myself because I’m a little disconnected from everything, but I can also turn it on. There’s just something like, am I being marketed to by you? You handsome fuck?

Matt (00:45:41):

You can’t tell. He would have been good and it would have been huge for his career because his movie career never really-

Laci (00:45:45):

No, it didn’t.

Matt (00:45:46):

Did it … Should

Laci (00:45:48):

Have. He kind of just does jokey shit.

Matt (00:45:51):

Yeah. He’s too associated with Don Draper and he just seems like he’s from another time.

Laci (00:45:57):

He’s such a good dramatic actor and I feel like he didn’t get any drama roles. I feel like he’s just like this throwaway like, “Isn’t it funny he’s in here?”

Matt (00:46:04):

Yeah,

Laci (00:46:05):

No drama rules. And I’m thinking of bottoms.

Matt (00:46:07):

It’s the comedy roles and the Fletch movie was very good

(00:46:12):

From the New York Times in 2014. “There’s nothing really about this guy or character that I feel connected to personally, except that I’ve definitely felt as though I was looking at a version of my life that I didn’t recognize through the prism of the media. “In the same profile David Fincher said about Ben Fleck,” We had to have somebody who understood the lose/lose situation and somebody who knew what that meant and wasn’t angry about it. He actually has great wit about it. As it relates to this circumstance, he can see the humor in it even when he’s the punchline. “And then Gillian Flynn said about Ben Affleck,” The sense is, here’s this guy who may have killed his wife, but also I would love to grab a cheeseburger with him. And is that weird? There’s very few actors who have that aloofness, that little bit of arrogance and that inherent likability.

(00:46:56):

“I

Laci (00:46:56):

Got goosebumps from that one.

Matt (00:46:58):

And because he has the fucking stupid face with the dimple. You want a punch.

Laci (00:47:01):

Dimple

Matt (00:47:02):

In his

Laci (00:47:02):

Butt,

Matt (00:47:03):

His

Laci (00:47:03):

Butt chin.

Matt (00:47:04):

Is that not a dimple?

Laci (00:47:05):

I guess it’s a chin dimple. Sure. Yeah. But yet God, they nailed it. John Ham and him,

Matt (00:47:11):

You

Laci (00:47:11):

Did it, you done did it. Those are the two.

Matt (00:47:14):

And now this is the height of the Ben Afflecassance. He’ll go on to play Batman and then there’ll be a lot of weird ups and downs.

Laci (00:47:20):

And if Ryan Reynolds could just get out of his own fucking ass and do things that challenged him, he could have … He’s got that too. Not a good

Matt (00:47:27):

Actor though.

Laci (00:47:28):

If that’s not true, if you just let himself be that and be serious and not be a fucking goofy idiot the whole time.

Matt (00:47:35):

What movie has he given a real performance in?

Laci (00:47:38):

Isn’t there always that one people point to in the very beginning?

Matt (00:47:41):

Or where he’s buried?

Laci (00:47:41):

Yeah.

Matt (00:47:42):

Yeah, I’ve never seen it. I guess I got to see the Rhine Reynolds’ buried movie.

Laci (00:47:45):

Maybe he’s one of those people who when he goes to a dark place and he doesn’t make it … Maybe he wears it on his … He might not have the psyche for it.

Matt (00:47:53):

So he has to be like Adam Sandler and Paul Thomas Anderson.You need a real director to treat you like shit and to base yourself.

Laci (00:48:00):

I mean, he’s doing just fine making just enough money without torturing himself like that.

Matt (00:48:06):

So Adam Sandler is kind of the cautionary tale. He always wanted people to treat him seriously and he has made great movies. But for what end? Why put yourself through that when you could just go on vacation with your friends and make grownups three?

Laci (00:48:18):

Right, which he did.

Matt (00:48:21):

So Gone Girl, that’s Gone Girl. Giant hit, genre defining both like the book was and still it’s almost like this artifact from a different era because in 2014, despite it being a huge shit that everybody liked, despite getting all these Oscar nominations, the studio almost treated it like, who will fuck cares? There’s no Gone Girl two we’re going to get. So why do we even bother with this? No

Laci (00:48:47):

One’s wearing Gone Girl shirts.

Matt (00:48:48):

We should be getting movies like Gone Girl all the time. And the other thing that I wanted, I meant to bring this up earlier like before we recorded. No,

Laci (00:48:55):

No, it’s too late.

Matt (00:48:57):

You know that they must be so furious that they made it like three years too early to turn it into a streaming series that you could so easily see the 10 episode. Yeah,

Laci (00:49:08):

Because then you’ve got …

Matt (00:49:10):

Sharp objects. Yeah. And her other novel, Dark Places, which turned into a movie with Charlize Theron in 2015 that was a bomb and now it’s getting turned into a streaming series. But you can so easily … I was going to ask you like, Hey, tell me what happens in each of the eight episodes. And you can just see it and get mad in your head like, okay, episode three is going to be Amy as a kid. You’re not going to see any of the regular actors. Episode seven, you’re just going to follow Desi around. You know how all of this goes. They’re so mad that they didn’t get to do that. All we did was a stupid movie. Yo bought the ticket and you went home. How does that help us?

Laci (00:49:46):

Yeah, I could puke. I could be sick over that, what you just described. Don’t like it. If the fucking Desi episode kill me.

Matt (00:49:55):

Just let it be a movie. It’s just a movie. You turn it on and then it’s over and two hours and 20 minutes of the best, two hours, 20 minutes of your life go

Laci (00:50:02):

By. And you can’t wait for your goldfish brain to reset and you’d be like, “I don’t remember some of Gone Girl. Let’s watch it. ” And then you remember every part of it.

Matt (00:50:10):

Exactly. We’re going to talk about Gone Girl itself now. If you are watching on YouTube, just look in the description and you’ll get a link to listen to it on your favorite podcast platform.

Laci (00:50:19):

Yeah, your favorite.

Matt (00:50:20):

And if you’re watching, no, if you’re listening, you keep listening. Go ahead.

Laci (00:50:23):

Yeah. No.

Matt (00:50:25):

Go to iTunes though and give us a good review and that’s

Laci (00:50:27):

All. Yeah. I’ll have weird hamster hair after this and have gained 10 pounds and have no one’s accent because that’s there I’m in.

Matt (00:50:37):

You’ll hit yourself with a hammer and I always think she’s hitting that toothbrush into her throat, isn’t she? Nope. She just has her toothbrush sticking out of her mouth, decides now is the time. I’m brushing my teeth. I’m mid brush. I shan’t take the toothbrush from my mouth, rinse my mouth out. Now’s the perfect time to hit myself in the eye with a hammer. And so I always think she’s going to hit the toothbrush with the-

Laci (00:51:00):

But why would she do it?

Matt (00:51:01):

I don’t know to fucking impale herself. I don’t know, because she’s a twisted fuck. She’s crazy.

Laci (00:51:06):

All right.

Matt (00:51:07):

Hear all about this twisted fuck coming up next. You just sum up Gone Girl and what is Gone Girl about? What word? When you look at Gone Girl, what word comes to your head?

Laci (00:51:51):

The emptiness of housewifery.

Matt (00:51:55):

Emptiness.

Laci (00:51:56):

Going through the motions.

Matt (00:51:58):

Performance.

Laci (00:52:00):

Yeah. Well, if I had to pick one word. I

Matt (00:52:03):

Think that’s what it is, is performance

Laci (00:52:06):

Because

Matt (00:52:06):

It’s all over the movie. Every interaction in life is a performance. We’re all just performing things and it escalates throughout the whole movie ending with her having to get out of her situation by literally pantomiming these things that are happening to her for canvas. That aren’t

Laci (00:52:23):

Happening.

Matt (00:52:24):

Right.

Laci (00:52:24):

Right.

Matt (00:52:26):

And all of these people who inexplicably … What I love about Ben Affleck’s performance and what I really relate to is this feeling that everybody else in the world was briefed on how you’re supposed to act in situations and I wasn’t and it’s not fair. How do even her parents know how to handle the press conference and then-

Laci (00:52:41):

But I don’t think they handle it well either. They keep saying amazing Amy. It’s like they’re not even talking about their daughter. They’re talking about the product they made.

Matt (00:52:47):

That’s what you got to do. They know they know how the game’s played.

Laci (00:52:50):

I don’t think so. I think they come off as disingenuous and I think what he expresses is how people of a certain age are all completely drenched in the Nancy Grace’s coverage of different events and it’s just the juiciest piece of meat to chew on at the time and there’s not a lot to go around. So they’re going to bring in experts in body language and faces. He is a person who lived through the OJ trial and I think he knows going in, there’s not a right way to do this.

Matt (00:53:29):

Well, I don’t think he’s thinking that, he’s not consciously thinking that he’s just not clued in to that everybody’s going to be judging you. Everybody’s judging everything.

Laci (00:53:41):

I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think as soon as he takes a picture with that woman and he realizes he smiled, he’s asked for it back.

Matt (00:53:46):

But that’s after he has been told by his sister.

Laci (00:53:49):

That’s before he’s been watching the coverage and seeing how bad it played. He knew.

Matt (00:53:54):

Right. But she is like, when he does the first press conference, she’s right off stage just groaning with every single thing he does.

Laci (00:53:59):

Yes, I know. And I think that he knows he’s doing it wrong, but I think he’s also just trying to do what feels natural because at the end of the day, natural is the only thing he’s going to be able to sell. And every time he tries to go against his nature, he comes off really even worse. So no, I think from the beginning, I think when you’re in a situation like that, people think wife, husband, you should be sad. You should be distraught. And instead, I think he’s playing it pretty freaking right, which is like, this is weird, right?

Matt (00:54:31):

Yes.

Laci (00:54:32):

And just being kind of in disbelief that this could be an abduction for a while. Just because I called y’all, just because shit’s weird here doesn’t mean all of a sudden now it’s an abduction, not in my brain.

Matt (00:54:43):

Right. He’s even leading them through the house. They’ve already been talking a while and he’s like, “Should I be concerned?”

Laci (00:54:47):

Right. And he’s going through the motions of like, “Well, I mean, this is weird. I’ll call because this is weird.” But he hadn’t put it together that he should be scared. I mean, people break tables. He didn’t even notice the iron was left. They’re finding things he didn’t see and so he’s learning with them and all along he’s not acting like they’re expecting him to act, but they seem to be aware of something much bigger than he is aware of. And what happens if you don’t like your husband or wife and you’re kind of like, “This is kind of entertaining.” I mean, well, this is a little bit handicapped. Not

Matt (00:55:23):

What I was expecting today. So okay, yeah. I was going to have to tell her, “Hey, I want to get a divorce. Now I don’t have to. ” This is easier. But there’s a passage in the book, the book alternates between first person from both of them, from Nic and Amy. And there’s a part where Nick talks about how nobody in the world has any capacity to be surprised by anything because we’ve seen images of everything and the sad thing is the image is always better. A picture of the Grand Canyon’s always better than the Grand Canyon or whatever. And it’s like everybody is deformed so that we can’t actually act in a natural way. We act the way we’re accustomed to seeing people act in media, whether it be fictional or nonfictional media.

Laci (00:55:59):

Right. He has this innate feeling that if he were witnessing the scene of an abduction, he would have viscerally felt it. He’s in the presence of it, but the reality of it isn’t that. It’s just your house. And your house is weird and it’s weird that the door was open and why isn’t your wife answering her phone or whatever it is. But all those things don’t equal, I’m standing in an abduction scene. It’s like until they go up to the dad’s house and it’s covered in tape, don’t cross this line. He didn’t even know he was at the scene of a crime the day before.

Matt (00:56:32):

He’s

Laci (00:56:32):

Like, “Oh, this makes it look like the movies. Now I know bad happened here.”

Matt (00:56:39):

When he was pursuing Amy romantically, he’s performing for her. That’s when he’s in New York, a city full of phonies. But now he’s like back home and he almost feels like he’s regressed to this little kid state of other people are going to take care of everything for me.

Laci (00:56:51):

Well, that, and how can I put on airs when it’s so laid bare how I was raised, this is my mom, this is my mom as she’s dying, this is my sister. You don’t really like her. This is how I look in stuff you wear to the store in Missouri. This is how people talk. This is where I’m from. I can’t pretend anything. If you thought Missouri was at least some kind of fun thing in your head that you had, well, that’s gone now. Now it’s just this place that you don’t like. He’s left with no options to fake something.

Matt (00:57:22):

With a movie and a book that were written in the social media age, but in the beginning of the social media age, I think that this age is really well because it’s portending a future where we’re all just under constant surveillance from everyone else and we’re living kind of a key fab life. We’re simulating life for everyone else. Yes,

Laci (00:57:42):

Yes. And it’s before phones were overly useful to the point that the movie would have to be written completely different if you have phones now. Phones are a thing.

Matt (00:57:53):

Yeah. But he gets a call on his burner and you don’t know it’s a burner yet. You might clock like … That phone seems a little out of date for 2014, but maybe not. I don’t know. But that’s why Fincher has such a good eye for the detail of something that you’re going to notice but maybe not think that much about. But there’s a reason that it’s not an iPhone. But everything is great about this movie. I love this movie so much. The fucking score by Trent Resner and Atticus Ross is so incredible. I listen to it on Spotify all the time. And did you know Laci? Well, wait, you were very into Marilyn Manson. I never remembered. Did you like Nine Ish Nails?

Laci (00:58:31):

I waited for 13 hours outside of the mall for tickets and never got to go because I broke up with the boyfriend I bought the tickets with and he got the tickets.

Matt (00:58:38):

Oh

Laci (00:58:38):

Man. I paid for it. Fucking lost. I guess so. That transaction,

Matt (00:58:41):

That sucks. I know. I’ll take you. I want to take you.

Laci (00:58:44):

Take me.

Matt (00:58:45):

I’ll break some nine inch nails for news for you here, Laci. 10 year old nine inch nails news. My whole life, nine inch nails was like, it’s just one person. It’s just Trent Reznor. He has a live band, but in the studio, Nine Ish Nails is just Trent Reznor. As of 2016, Atticus Ross is also a member of Nine Inch Nails. How about that?

Laci (00:59:00):

You told me that before.

Matt (00:59:01):

Damn

Laci (00:59:01):

It. I remember thinking, good for Trent.

Matt (00:59:03):

I know he found a friend. Leave someone

Laci (00:59:04):

In. Yeah, he’s just an unpleasable person and either Atticus is a huge lover of being tormented or they actually work.

Matt (00:59:13):

Yeah, they work together. They make their nine inch nails and they make their movie scores.

Laci (00:59:16):

What’s the year that maybe he brought something a little different to the table? He must have. What’s the age difference?

Matt (00:59:23):

Let’s see.

Laci (00:59:24):

I just assume a person named Atticus is younger.

Matt (00:59:26):

Atticus.

Laci (00:59:28):

Or from the South. Where is Trent from?

Matt (00:59:30):

He’s from New Orleans, isn’t he?

Laci (00:59:32):

How the fuck are you?

Matt (00:59:32):

Or he lived in New Orleans. Oh, he was born in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. I

Laci (00:59:35):

Don’t know this man. He looks like he’s the same age as Trent. They look like the same

Matt (00:59:39):

Person. That’s Trent, 61. Atticus is 58.

Laci (00:59:44):

Okay. So they’re

Matt (00:59:44):

Best friends and- Best friends. And maybe lovers. That’s nice. I watched some live videos, just this other guy on stage with them playing guitar. So what did you want to say?

Laci (00:59:54):

Atticus, you son of a bitch. I watched the opening, it It can seem like a throwaway thing. And so I watched it twice and it’s just like, wow, you can read it three ways. This is just a normal morning and he’s just looking around his neighborhood and that’s just the look on his face because that’s what his face looks like. Or number two, he’s checking to see if anyone noticed he was gone and bloody and weird and moving things around because he killed someone.

Matt (01:00:21):

Oh yeah.

Laci (01:00:22):

Or number three, I’m about to go in there and today’s going to be different. I’m going to ask for a divorce. This is going to be a bad day. I’m looking around this neighborhood. It did it to us. I’m looking at my house. I want to go in there. Everything’s a nightmare right now. Fuck, I’ll just go back in the house now.

Matt (01:00:41):

And I’m a guy who has lived my life minimizing conflict wherever I can. And I hate how much I am like this. I will just not confront things. I will put off dealing with things because I don’t want to have to deal with that unpleasantness. It doesn’t find you anyway,

Laci (01:00:57):

Matt.

Matt (01:00:58):

Before we get to Ben Affleck, I mean Fincher has these shots. They’re like static, rapid cuts, but it’s just all of these things like the out of business liquor shop and then bam, close Coca-Cola plant, blam, bam, the downtown where every single shop is vacant. There’s a suburban house where there’s a deer in the front yard and it cuts really quickly, but you’re just seeing all this decay, all of this like God has abandoned this place.

Laci (01:01:22):

The deer’s there.

Matt (01:01:24):

But a deer should not be in someone’s front yard. That happens

Laci (01:01:27):

All the time in more rural places. But yeah, I

Matt (01:01:29):

Guess it’s not a place. But in a neighborhood like this, it’s like there’s so few people that the deer’s not even scared. It just went out there. And I know I pointed out in the history segment, but the neighborhoods where the grass is just too tall. The houses are nice, but the grass is too tall. No one lives there anymore. Yeah. New

Laci (01:01:43):

Orleans East.

Matt (01:01:44):

There’s also just something so- It’s so

Laci (01:01:46):

Gray.

Matt (01:01:46):

Strange about Ben Affleck, movie star Ben Affleck, standing in front of a house that looks normal. You don’t belong there. What are you doing?

Laci (01:01:53):

Well, you look bored. You look like John Hanwood look like. And you also look like what the guy from the actor from the Leftovers.

Matt (01:02:03):

Justin Thoreau. That

Laci (01:02:04):

Would be another, a person perfect at this like maybe I did something wrong or maybe I’m just bored with my life.

Matt (01:02:11):

He would be a good choice because the character that he plays in the leftovers is they’re like, “I’m not in control. I cannot own how in control of my life I am.”

Laci (01:02:19):

He is so much this character that I thought I was going to watch him pull a pack of cigarettes from underneath a mailbox,

Matt (01:02:25):

Want a

Laci (01:02:25):

Jog and then put them back. I’m just going through the motions. My wife wanted this big house. This isn’t really me living my dream. I’m depressed and maybe I don’t realize that’s what I’m doing here because mental health isn’t something boys are taught to reach out for.

Matt (01:02:41):

Some people don’t like David Fincher because he’s very cold and clinical and the way that he shoots this movie and all of his movies these days is very digital. This movie does look very digital. I think it enhances the movie that combined with the score. The

Laci (01:02:55):

People are warm. That’s why you have a Carrie Coon.

Matt (01:02:59):

Yeah.

Laci (01:02:59):

You’re wrong people.

Matt (01:03:00):

But this world is cold.

Laci (01:03:02):

He sees it right. Yeah. It reminds me of the killer.

Matt (01:03:06):

So this is North Carthage, Missouri. It’s a fictional town, but they filmed it in the real town of Cape Girarde and Gillian Flynn said, “That is the town I had in mind.” And then they just went and filmed there. I love the idea of them having meetings with the chamber of commerce. They’re like, “Your place looks like shit, can we film here? Can this giant production move into town and film everywhere?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” It’s July 5th. It’s the morning of they’ve got that post July 4th blues that we all get.

Laci (01:03:33):

Well, I love that their anniversary is just one day off from a celebratory day. Yeah, that’s true. Because mine was July 3rd and it’s like, that’s just because that’s when the Saturday was.

Matt (01:03:44):

With your old husband. Yeah. And my parents is July 4th. It’s July 4th,

Laci (01:03:49):

Right? Out of everybody.

Matt (01:03:50):

My three favorite couples. They got it right. Benefact drives to the bar with his cup of coffee. So many people are carrying around cups of coffee in this movie. I bet you could even do a video essay of what the different cups of coffee mean, but we won’t be doing that. No. He has his board game and he meets Carrie Coon as Go, his sister. Go, my name’s Go. The best

Laci (01:04:08):

Fucking shortening of a name I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life.

Matt (01:04:12):

And her shirt says protect your nuts. She’s funny. And she’s

Laci (01:04:16):

Protective.

Matt (01:04:17):

Yeah. She tells her brother to fuck the shit out of his wife and smack her face with his dick. That’s the kind of fun brother and sister they are. Do they say in the movies that they’re twins?

Laci (01:04:27):

A bunch of times.

Matt (01:04:27):

Okay.

Laci (01:04:28):

A bunch of

Matt (01:04:29):

Times. It’s weird to read the book and then watch the movie back to back and then get stuck in my head. Wait, was that just in the book or was that also in the movie?

Laci (01:04:38):

I relate very much to this brother and sister dynamic. This is me and Frankie. I mean, the way they talk to each other, the way they have each other’s back.

Matt (01:04:48):

Yes. Yes. I’ve not been shy ladies and gentlemen of saying that I find Carrie Coon very fetching and a lot of it is she reminds me of my wife. I’m a wife guy.

Laci (01:05:02):

Yeah, you are. You’re pretty fly for a wife guy.

Matt (01:05:05):

They say that. This is probably a lot of people’s introduction to her, but the same year she starts on the leftovers, my favorite TV performance ever. All right, his wife. It’s the morning of their anniversary and she’s like, “Hey, your fucking wife, huh?” And he’s like, “Yeah, she’s got me on this treasure hunt.”

Laci (01:05:23):

Has he gone on clue one isn’t even … Yeah,

Matt (01:05:25):

But he knows he knows that a treasure hunt is in the works or supposedly- I mean,

Laci (01:05:30):

When you think about it, he was intending on going in there and asking for a divorce, but she’s already gone. So now he has to go on a fucking treasure hunt knowing he’s going to ask for a divorce and he’s like, “Do I even go on this hunt?” Why?

Matt (01:05:44):

It was worth asking for the divorce just to not have to do the fucking treasure home. Right.

Laci (01:05:48):

It’s like this is so annoying now I have to … You’re away because it’s more fun if you can’t find me not finding things or you don’t see me looking.

Matt (01:05:57):

God, I’m so grateful that Laci is not-

Laci (01:06:00):

I don’t even remember our anniversary most times.

Matt (01:06:03):

We don’t buy each other Christmas gifts, which neither of us is big on ceremony

Laci (01:06:07):

And

Matt (01:06:08):

I’m so grateful for that.

Laci (01:06:09):

So performative. You can only fuck it up. I don’t like calling things date night. I don’t like calling things sex night. I mean, it ends up happening to both of those things. It happens. It ends up happening. But me and you are both aware of the stigma and the pressure and that relieves some of it. I don’t like the pomp and circles.

Matt (01:06:25):

Those are things that are actual things. It’s our anniversary. It’s Valentine’s Day. Where are we going? What have you gotten me for Valentine’s Day? It’s our seventh anniversary. That’s where you buy needles for each other.

Laci (01:06:36):

Trent, where are the nine inch nails? Pointy things anniversary.

Matt (01:06:41):

But Amy is giant on ceremony and gestures and has these treasure hunts that prove to me how much you’re paying attention to all of the things I say. And the thing is early in the relationship he was great at it. He remembered everything she said and then he stopped paying attention.

Laci (01:06:55):

God, if I’d known there was a test at the end of every year, I’d listen to you so much more. This will be on the quiz.

Matt (01:07:04):

No, eventually you’d realize this doesn’t matter. This is stupid. Did you ever feel like I was doing that to you?

Laci (01:07:09):

No, but I naturally was absorbing everything you were saying.

Matt (01:07:14):

I remember with my-

Laci (01:07:16):

I knew I needed to fix me because of you.

Matt (01:07:19):

They get a phone call at the bar from Nick’s neighbor. Nick, oh buddy, your front door’s open there. And he’s like, “I got to- ” Watch

Laci (01:07:26):

For Wally.

Matt (01:07:26):

Got to go home. Thanks, Wally.

Laci (01:07:28):

Another well observed thing,

Matt (01:07:30):

Especially in a

Laci (01:07:31):

Neighborhood that’s a little less occupied than it used to be.

Matt (01:07:35):

With a guy with nothing to do who just sits outside, “Oh, a door’s open. Great. I can make a phone call.” And

Laci (01:07:39):

It could be that he’s old and nosier. It could be he can’t afford cable

Matt (01:07:43):

Because

Laci (01:07:43):

He’s just in the house he paid for, but he can’t afford anything in it.

Matt (01:07:47):

Bill Doutree, when he finds out that Hank’s flight has been canceled on Thanksgiving, he’s like, “Fuck yeah, I can go to the airport and pick him up.” So yeah, now we’re flashing back. Amy, the first time we see Amy in the movie, we just hear her writing her diary entry and we meet, we see her meeting Ben Affleck for the first time. I met a boy, a great, sweet, cool ass guy and they do their rat-tat-tat flirting. That is extremely performative and showing how smart and cultured and-

Laci (01:08:13):

You got to wonder how many times he’s staked out the cool places to give a first kiss. He’s like, “Oh, I know there’s a sugar storm.”

Matt (01:08:19):

Right.

Laci (01:08:20):

There’s a sugar place. I got to show you this.

Matt (01:08:22):

Reagan, she’s built this into the load bearing fulcrum of her entire existence, but he could very well have done this with other girlfriends in the past or just saw it and thought one day I’ll take a lady there because that’d be fun.

Laci (01:08:34):

Walked through it, licked his lips and went, “Hmm.”

Matt (01:08:36):

Yeah,

Laci (01:08:37):

That’s it.

Matt (01:08:37):

Even says, “I got to show you this thing. He knows about this thing.” Yeah, that’s

Laci (01:08:40):

What I mean. And this is the first watching where I realized he already knew about it. Not like, “Hey, look at that over there.” It was like, “Got to show you this. We’re right on time for the fish market.” And a fish flies out her face. Even her pen is performative as

Matt (01:08:52):

She’s

Laci (01:08:52):

Writing in her fucking diary. And look at all the options of pins she’s got in front of her. She didn’t need that one. Oh, she’s got all these different colored pins because she’s trying to make the diary look like she wrote it at different times of her life.

Matt (01:09:03):

Yeah, and you can only notice that. This is seven minutes into the movie. Right.

Laci (01:09:08):

You’re like, “If you want to know this guys here, you could know. “

Matt (01:09:12):

Why are you laying out the pens like that? Oh, I got to have my pings arranged like this. She writes personality quizzes for a magazine, which is just an insane thing that that was ever a job. But these two both have jobs that are months away from being stamped out of existence. He writes for a men’s magazine. He writes

Laci (01:09:31):

For like a- Men are about to be totally gone. But

Matt (01:09:33):

He writes for Esquire or GQ and their whole thing is we tell men what to wear and what to think and what movies to see and what cool stuff to say to ladies at bars.

Laci (01:09:39):

Andrew Tate does that now. You are

Matt (01:09:42):

Excused. Esquire. And yeah, I get paid $400,000 a year to do that.

Laci (01:09:46):

Men used to do things to please the lady and now they’re told how to do things to just be like, “Fuck you lady, but still fuck me, lady.”

Matt (01:09:53):

But that job itself is, I’m telling people how to perform, how to put on a face. They’re like Harry and Sally. Their jobs are insane. Well,

Laci (01:10:03):

Okay, but it’s also like in the leftovers when he’s asked to pick out his outfit and then go be that thing when he’s in the other realm or whatever, she has a job of, “Well, take this quiz, find out what kind of lady you are and

Matt (01:10:19):

Then go do that. ” Yeah, you’re

Laci (01:10:20):

Right.

Matt (01:10:20):

She tells him you have a very untrustworthy face. It’s your chin. So he comes up with a thing, “Well, if I put my fingers over my chin, then you’ll know I’m sincere.” Dan,

Laci (01:10:27):

Did it need to be two fingers? Do you have to be finger fucking your own face to remind her that she’s going to get finger blasted soon? He

Matt (01:10:33):

Knows what he’s doing. And we

Laci (01:10:34):

See

Matt (01:10:35):

Him going down on her and her stopping him and saying, “I really like you. ” You

Laci (01:10:39):

Have a world class vagina. You think he means the shape or the taste? Both.

Matt (01:10:43):

All.

Laci (01:10:44):

Okay.

Matt (01:10:45):

None of this is-

Laci (01:10:46):

How do you feel about my- World

Matt (01:10:50):

Class.

Laci (01:10:51):

All right.

Matt (01:10:53):

The world this is when you’re dating, you’re putting on a show and eventually you can’t put on the show anymore. You run out of energy for all of that.

Laci (01:11:01):

Yes.

Matt (01:11:01):

And why I think this movie is a great romance is her realizing that she actually does like the sort of dumb guy. She just wants him to try a little harder, but the dumb guy that he was brought out things in her, made her realize-

Laci (01:11:17):

I don’t have to be so uptight.

Matt (01:11:18):

Yeah. In the book, she has a thing where she’s talking about … And yeah, there were things I liked about it. I sometimes enjoyed the reality TV, this, I, that, and in the middle of this list of things she said, “I stopped worrying.” Wow. So he cured my anxiety on top of everything else in the present. Amy’s not there, not anywhere in this enormous house. The coffee tail’s broken, the furniture is overturned, and then the police arrive.

Laci (01:11:40):

And interestingly, this is a professional of professional. I mean, this woman that comes that’s the lead detective, she could be from a big city for how professional and good she is at this job. And she has the most gosh darn it, bumpkin ass boy. It’s just interesting. Even the most professional people in this town sound like people you don’t take seriously.

Matt (01:12:03):

Kim Dickens as Rhonda Bowmey. I love

Laci (01:12:05):

Her.

Matt (01:12:05):

Detective Rhonda Belly. I love

Laci (01:12:06):

Her in everything she’s in.

Matt (01:12:07):

My favorite performance in the movie. It’s great. It’s so incredible because she’s not like Marge from Fargo where you’re like, “Ooh, I’ve underestimated this woman.” You can tell she’s a professional, but she is putting on a little bit of the charm. But from the beginning, she’s totally giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Laci (01:12:24):

And she’s going where the clues are leaving her. Yes. Yeah. And she’s fighting against a more scrappy guy that’s a little bit more traditional and like, “Nope, this fits the textbook.” Her partner would’ve had him in cuffs immediately and-

Matt (01:12:40):

Yeah, her partner is the one who, when Ben Affleck says, “I don’t need a lawyer.” He’s like, “Good job.” It tells him that. They

Laci (01:12:46):

Keep

Matt (01:12:46):

Kicking all the boxes. Whereas later Ben Affleck says, “I’m not talking to you anymore without a lawyer.” And Kim Dickens doesn’t say anything, just picks up her stuff and leave. She respects, “Okay, you don’t want to talk to me anymore. I’m leaving.” You have that right.

Laci (01:12:58):

When their case is solid as a rock, she’s still following the … I like that she’s looking at the diary and being like, “This is fucking weird.” I mean, she’s ready for the twists and the turns because life is gray.

Matt (01:13:10):

And what they always say about a murder case is if there’s nobody, anything can happen.

Laci (01:13:15):

Right. Yeah. The partner really is a little too hop to at all because at the end of the day, this trial would have never … I mean, I can’t even think of more than a handful of murders that have even been tried without a body.

Matt (01:13:31):

The assistant, or he’s not an assistant, Detective Gilpin is played by Patrick Fujit from Almost Famous. The guy who I used to be told I look a lot like. But Nick Benafleck is acting very suspicious because it’s not that he seems guilty. He just seems too-

Laci (01:13:47):

Chill. …

Matt (01:13:47):

Like Laci said. Just kind of like, it’s kind of interesting.

Laci (01:13:51):

He thinks his house has been a little bit burglarized and now he can’t find his wife to let her know who she would normally call the cops. Well, if my nosy neighbor knows something’s weird and the wife’s not here, I guess I should call the cops. He truly has no idea.

Matt (01:14:05):

I wouldn’t call the cops.

Laci (01:14:06):

He’s in a crime. He doesn’t know he’s in a crime scene. I’m just doing step B. I

Matt (01:14:11):

Know. It would take me 36 hours to call the cops. I’d call other people first and be like, “What do you think’s going on here?”

Laci (01:14:17):

Please call them sooner for me. Thank you so

Matt (01:14:19):

Much. What

Laci (01:14:20):

Am I going to do? When I’m not home within 15 minutes of when you think I should be, you’re like, “How’s it going? What’s going on over there?”

Matt (01:14:27):

Not

Laci (01:14:27):

In a bad way and you know I’m very regimented way.

Matt (01:14:30):

Well, yes, and we do do the Life360. So we always know where the other is.

Laci (01:14:34):

Oh, then why are you like, “Hey, how’s it going,

Matt (01:14:36):

Buddy?” If your Life360 went off, if suddenly you just didn’t have your phone, it would be like the apocalypses happened.

Laci (01:14:44):

The Life360 is just beep.

Matt (01:14:49):

She notices the amazing Amy. Your wife’s amazing, Amy. Yeah, let’s learn about

Laci (01:14:53):

Amazing.

Matt (01:14:54):

She quit the cello at age 10 and then amazing Amy kept going with the cello. It

Laci (01:14:58):

Really would be fucked up if you had … There was a whole book series not written by you where your parents tell you what they wish you were rather than just writing a book about how awesome you actually are.

Matt (01:15:12):

Here’s another detail from the novel that obviously the movie doesn’t have space for. Amy’s parents, they’re very old when they had her. They had eight children die during pregnancy. She was not expected to make it out. She’s

Laci (01:15:27):

A miracle baby.

Matt (01:15:28):

She’s their miracle and of course- She’s lucky. Yes, has to be perfect. And Ben Affleck says your parents literally plagiarized your childhood. No, no, no. They improved my childhood and sold it to the … But this is just the ancestor of family vloggers today.

Laci (01:15:45):

A whole family of writers. Little Nepo baby.

Matt (01:15:48):

It’s interesting that it’s both parents make the books. They both do it. It’s kind of sweet. It is sweet. Because they have a good marriage.

Laci (01:15:55):

Right. But because it’s like I was saying with drop dead Fred, there’s no such thing as one good parent and one bad parent. They’re either both bad together or one’s negligent. And then this is the situation where they’re both evil together.

Matt (01:16:09):

Amy’s

Laci (01:16:10):

Got no outlet, but she’s got happy parents.

Matt (01:16:13):

Amazing Amy. They’re having this party now for their latest amazing Amy book, Amazing Amy Get Married. Her mom

Laci (01:16:21):

Wanted her to wear a wedding dress. That’s

Matt (01:16:24):

Insane. And this is like we find out later the books aren’t doing well and the parents are in financial trouble. This is like a sort of desperate attempt. Can we bring back interest in amazing Amy? Our amazing Amy’s old and so it’s kind of hard. So okay, yeah, we’ll monetize her life or this vision of her life. And this party presumably is attended by all of their friends from the writing world and she’s sitting down being interviewed by all of them and then Ben Affleck comes and says a bunch of fucking screwball comedy nonsense.

Laci (01:16:54):

He proposed in the best fuck. That’s brilliant. I mean, to really like to the parents and save an embarrassing night actually put her on par

Matt (01:17:04):

With

Laci (01:17:05):

Amazing Amy for the first time.

Matt (01:17:06):

And suddenly the night wasn’t so bad. They’re fingerprinting Ben Affleck at the station and like taking his saliva and stuff and this is all routine. No, let’s just check all of this off the list. That way we’ve already done it. Okay. Yeah. And we’re going to hold a press conference tomorrow and he’s like, “Oh wow, I feel like I’m in law and order.” And he starts singing the Law and Order theme song.

Laci (01:17:27):

See, I would read this as like, yes, this reads totally, he seems like he has no idea what the fuck is going on here in the right way.

Matt (01:17:36):

No, that’s weird. Everyone knows what’s going on.

Laci (01:17:39):

He does it. I know.

Matt (01:17:40):

They’re not telling you. That’s why it’s not fair. And that’s why I also love the press conference because like- It’s

Laci (01:17:44):

Like a press conference.

Matt (01:17:45):

Yeah.

Laci (01:17:46):

Why are Amy’s parents like, “You haven’t called Amy’s parents. Why would I call them? We’ve been together all day, you and I were just figuring things out, right?”

Matt (01:17:55):

I know. And he says there’s no signal in this station. Yeah, I thought of that, but there’s no signal in the station. I can’t call. Well, call him Nick.

Laci (01:18:02):

Also, that really assumes the relationship with Amy and her parents are good. The relationship with him and her parents are good. There’s all kinds. It’s not that obvious. Ma’am.

Matt (01:18:13):

So what does Amy do all day?

Laci (01:18:16):

This is the most depressing part of the movie by far. This mixed with the fact that she had to pretend to be best friends or make that stupid fucking neighbor think they were best friends. The boredom she must have endured being around Gretchen was her fucking name?

Matt (01:18:34):

Noel.

Laci (01:18:35):

Noel Gretchen. Same.

Matt (01:18:36):

I now think of that a little differently. I think she actually liked it. I think she actually, she can’t admit it, but she realized, because all she does is pretend. I think she probably was happy being a suburban housewife friends with this lady and playing with her kids and stuff.

Laci (01:18:50):

But keeping it so laid back and at bay that she doesn’t surprise her with any pop-ins, it never spills over into her house or-

Matt (01:18:58):

Yeah, that’s a lot of work.

Laci (01:18:59):

That’s a lot of work. So she’s really having to pepper her with … Ben doesn’t like visitors. Is his name Ben? Nick. Fucking Ben and Gretchen. Nick, no, you really can’t pop. I wouldn’t want to upset him at dinner time. You can only imagine what she’s saying, but what the fuck does Amy do all day when he can’t come up with one

Matt (01:19:20):

Thing- Well, she’s a voracious reader.

Laci (01:19:22):

But she’s been reading on how to plan a murder.

Matt (01:19:25):

And they say, “Did you probably rub people the wrong way?” And he says, “Well, she’s from New York.” I think he

Laci (01:19:30):

Answers that right.

Matt (01:19:31):

She has high standards. Type A. Boy, that can make you crazy. Speaking of witch, what’s your wife’s blood type? Now this is my second favorite part of the movie and it’s second. My first favorite part of the movie is my favorite thing in any movie ever, maybe that’s later. You don’t know your wife’s blood type. Go call them up. Nick. And he steps out, the camera stays and Patrick Fuget’s like, “Should I know my wife’s blood type?” And Kim Dickenson’s like,

Laci (01:19:56):

“No.” No, I

Matt (01:19:57):

Love that. It’s so wonderful because everyone watching the movie’s like, “Wait, really? I’m supposed to know. ” I

Laci (01:20:02):

Can’t remember my own.

Matt (01:20:03):

I have no idea what my blood type is. I’m supposed to know yours? I don’t even know your eye color. Brown, right?

Laci (01:20:11):

It’s like the one color it’s not.

Matt (01:20:13):

Oh.

Laci (01:20:13):

Yeah. It’s all the other colors.

Matt (01:20:15):

Yes. Yeah. See? But it does sound like something you should know.

Laci (01:20:20):

Matt, what does your wife do all day? I don’t know. Sunroom.

Matt (01:20:24):

She’s a voracious sunroamer.

Laci (01:20:26):

She’s sons, I think.

Matt (01:20:27):

Call Amy’s parents and he suddenly hears his dad. He’s very angry dad.

Laci (01:20:34):

Well, but wait, he’s being cucked by every woman in his life. That’s true.

Matt (01:20:39):

Mom

Laci (01:20:40):

Immediately is like, “Put her on the phone.”

Matt (01:20:42):

I’m here with Detective Rhonda Boni. I’m

Laci (01:20:44):

Clearly not handling this right here. And then it’s like he’s got more going on than you know. He might just see … He’s also depressed. He’s also trying to figure out how to make this bar actually not be a huge burden on them since it was him that wanted it. And in the meantime, he’s taking care of his dad who was abusive growing up and he’s abusive now, but you still have to fucking take care of him when they wander away from the old folks home. And that lady’s yelling at him. Or the lady at the station’s like, “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I’m literally right. I didn’t do anything wrong people. “

Matt (01:21:18):

There’s no signal here. Well,

Laci (01:21:20):

Also why am I in trouble with every fucking person I talk to today?

Matt (01:21:25):

His dad is screaming misogynistic things, but he has dementia, so that he’s just a colorful grandpa.

Laci (01:21:32):

So you don’t know yet, is this an abusive dad or is this … Because we all understand dementia does this. Most people understand.

Matt (01:21:39):

And so he has to drive his dad back to the nursing home and I love how-

Laci (01:21:44):

Barely.

Matt (01:21:45):

He doesn’t even put the car in park. He gets out of it and walks his dad.

Laci (01:21:49):

Duck and

Matt (01:21:49):

Roll,

Laci (01:21:50):

Dad.

Matt (01:21:50):

It really does.

Laci (01:21:51):

But you can tell it’s happened more than once because the orderly’s already out there to meet him. Thanks for

Matt (01:21:57):

Making

Laci (01:21:57):

Up runaway, Frank.

Matt (01:21:59):

Yes. This is someone who we all hated before he has dementia. Now we hate him even more than he has dementia, but we got to fucking take care of him. He’s still alive

Laci (01:22:08):

Running around.

Matt (01:22:09):

Back in the past, Amy is writing in her diary. Everyone says marriage is a lot of work. In fact, the Oscar winning filmmaker behind Argo said that on stage. Marriage is a lot of work, but I’ve not found out to be the course. It’s two years in. We’re still have so much fun fucking at the bookstore buying the cockpit.

Laci (01:22:29):

Is it like the milk aisle? If you just go through the books, is there a fuck room?

Matt (01:22:33):

There’s like a fuck room in between the shelves. You got to be a voracious reader to know about it.

Laci (01:22:37):

Oh, with a world-class vagina.

Matt (01:22:39):

In the present, Nick is fiddling with his cell phone and we don’t yet know that it’s a burner. So he goes to Margo’s house, Carrie Coon. And she’s like, “What did you say to them?” “Oh, I told her Amy’s complicated. “Don’t say complicated. Everyone knows complicated means bitch.

Laci (01:22:54):

He was always going to marry Amy. Amy was always going to be Amy. He has been micromanaged and managed by his sister since they came out of the womb and they love their mom. They miss their mom. When something hard is happening, they’re both thinking about what if mom were here? So that just tells you he’s so used to this. All right, Margaret, what did I do wrong? But he loves it. It come from a place of love. He likes being led. It’s just when you get it maliciously from the malicious duo, Gong Girl happened.

Matt (01:23:28):

The book also makes a big deal about that and the thing that the detective keeps saying to him is, ” Oh, you must be the baby of the family. “And he’s like, ” I’m not the baby. I’m a twin. “But then she brings it up again,” Yeah, yeah, baby of the family. “This sort of folksy thing people will say about birth order, but like, ” Yeah, you’re just one of these people who expects things to be done for you. Okay.

Laci (01:23:47):

You just had a very proactive, helpful, maybe too helpful mom whose sister followed suit. What were you going to do? Also be in charge? We’ve all got this under control.

Matt (01:24:00):

“And then Margo says,” I love this. It’s so bizarre. It’s the kind of thing that would happen to me. “Yes, I

Laci (01:24:06):

Love that. Which is another reason why he’s affected from the very beginning in his reaction to this. It’s like, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve known to ever happen to my wife and she’s fucking fine.

Matt (01:24:20):

Or it is the craziest thing, but it’s not unrespectful. It’s

Laci (01:24:24):

Not the craziest thing yet. Right now she’s just fucking missing. It’s our anniversary. She could be doing all kinds of weird shit to me right now.

Matt (01:24:31):

This is what Felix Peterman keeps saying about Donald Trump is every weekend there’s a new assassination attempt and nobody pays attention to everybody’s like, ” Yeah, of course there is. “This is something that keeps happening to you.

Laci (01:24:42):

Yes. Or like Eric Adams fucking getting in trouble for flying to Turkey. Yeah, that’s just weird enough to make complete sense Eric Adams.

Matt (01:24:50):

She attracts this drama. So over at Nick’s house, the cops are looking over everything and we get our first look at Noelle Hawthorne who’s like, ” I’m Amy’s best friend. Won’t you talk to me? “Kim Dickens finds the first clue, marked first clue or clue won. We have our first clue and the next morning Carrie Coon wakes up her brother and he’s like, ” I’m going to go take a shower. “She said,” Don’t take a shower. No, you are supposed to have been up all night. You need to look like you’ve been up all night. “She’s

Laci (01:25:19):

Right. And the whole time I’m like, ” Yep, I would’ve said that to Frankie. Yep. I would’ve said the

Matt (01:25:23):

Frankie. Oh God.

Laci (01:25:24):

Well, because you know he’s … When you have a brother who is good looking and what he uses as his charm, but underneath it is someone that’s tired and has some depression and stuff and even just a litle bit further than that is like rage. Then you do have to make sure. I know your heart. I know you’re a nice guy. I need you to turn on this part of your personality and dial back this way because they’re so performative. Frankie’s so performed because he can get what he wants that way. He’s goddamn charming. But in a situation like this, you have to be measured.

Matt (01:26:01):

And I’m not performative enough. I need a shower. Oh, you

Laci (01:26:03):

Would be fucked Matt. You would be arrested day

Matt (01:26:06):

Half. Yeah. I need a shower so bad. Two showers a day is too many, but one shower day is not enough. So if you told me not to shower in the morning, I’d be like, I can’t do that. No one’s

Laci (01:26:16):

Going to know you showered. You’re not the same thing. He has a five o’clock shadow if he doesn’t shower. You have that

Matt (01:26:21):

All the time.That’s not the point. The point is- I’m

Laci (01:26:23):

Letting you

Matt (01:26:23):

Know no one’s going to tell you not to shower. If you told me, Matt, if you shower, you might get arrested. I’d be like, I got to think about this then. It would be so weird of me to go out into public without showering. It’s weird for me to …

Laci (01:26:38):

How many showers do I get in prison?

Matt (01:26:40):

I do think about that. And so you get deodorant. Well, how many of my prescriptions do I get? Nic goes to the police station and Amy’s parents are there.

Laci (01:26:47):

Good about that. Riddle me this. Who’s in charge of picking the picture? I always think of this. What shit ass picture is going to be the one that represents me because I stare at this poster. I’m doing it right now. That doesn’t look like Amy to me. It doesn’t look like the actress. What is this picture? Incorrect.

Matt (01:27:11):

And you do now wonder, wait, who did make this? Because the mom now, the parents then start all this stuff and we’ve established a tip line, but wouldn’t the cops have done the-

Laci (01:27:20):

No, no, no. They rely on you to give the picture because you want a recent picture that looks most like them right now and it’s like, that doesn’t look like fucking anyone I’ve met in this movie yet. And this mom and dad are so type A. All they’ve had time to do is travel to Missouri and they’ve already bought rights to something. They’ve set up a fucking vigil. They have dogs.

Matt (01:27:43):

But what I like is that the movie takes care to show you they have a real relationship with their son-in-law. They like him a lot and they don’t suspect him and they can fight with each other, but they do have some love and respect for each other. This isn’t like, “Oh, my fucking aunt lost.” Well, because

Laci (01:27:59):

They haven’t been suspicious of Nick ever and they see real love in him toward their daughter. And if anyone knows their daughter, they do. They know she’s performing. They know she’s a lot and he is down to earth and has made her a litle bit more down. I’m not sure. A little more palatable. Yeah.

Matt (01:28:15):

There’s a press conference. No one has prepped for him. He’s just like, “All right, Nick, go out there, get it done.” And he’s like, “My wife is gone, I guess.” And they’re like, “Louder, louder. My wife is gone. Okay.” But then the parents come up and they are so polished and they even have, well, they get a plugin for their books, but they have the mom. She’s like, “And we have established a website www.findamazingamy.com.” Does it have to be- How does she notice talk like that? But that’s how you got to do it. That’s how the game is done. And then they’re taking pictures and Ben Affleck stands next to the poster and you hear in the sound make someone go smile. So he smiles.

Laci (01:28:53):

Next to the Polynes into the poster, he’s with a cutout of his wife.

Matt (01:28:57):

Yep. That’s

Laci (01:28:58):

Miami.

Matt (01:28:58):

But the parents have the gravest expressions on their face.

Laci (01:29:02):

Those old fashioned farmer pictures of RKO died, take a picture.

Matt (01:29:07):

Yeah. And then Gary Koon’s just offstage just like, “Oh fuck you.

(01:29:11):

” And that is when I really feel the Laci of me when I interact with anyone and she has to watch. The parents are briefing the cops about Amy’s history with stalkers and unsavory characters like her old boyfriend, Desi Collings. We see a picture, “Oh, it’s Neil Patrick Harris. Hey, he’s going to be in this movie, I bet.” They dated in high school, but when she broke up with him, he attempted suicide in her bed and then he wouldn’t stop stalking her so they had to get a restraining order. And then there was this other guy, this man in New York named Tommy, and when Amy broke up with him, there were sexual assault charges. It’s very unclear. But yeah, it’s just things like this, people know Amy from the books, that’s what the parents are saying. They know Amy from the books, so they start stalking her, of

Laci (01:29:53):

Course. We make her irresistible with our books. Right. It’s not that you’ve taught your daughter to be the most performative father Fucking thing ever that she knows how to exactly tune herself to whatever guy she’s interacting with. And for certain kinds of guys, when you’ve tuned yourself to that frequency, you’re going to make them insane. And I’ve never known anyone like you because there’s no one like that that exists.

Matt (01:30:17):

When they find out when Ben Affleck hears about this guy, Tommy, he realizes that was just before I met her.

Laci (01:30:23):

And he didn’t know about that.

Matt (01:30:24):

And I didn’t know about this. That’s

Laci (01:30:26):

Fucking

Matt (01:30:26):

Weird. That’s pretty fucking weird. Yeah.

Laci (01:30:29):

I mean, I’m sure he’s had a red flag or two, but that’s when he’s really like, wait a fuck. Why leave this out Amy?

Matt (01:30:36):

Oh, because just a minute earlier they said, “Do you know about Desi Collins?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I know about Desi owns.”

Laci (01:30:40):

But for something like that to happen right before, it’s like, “Dear getting rid of a pattern of some kind for me here.”

Matt (01:30:47):

So they’re all walking out of the office and then Detective Rhonda Boney says, “Hey Nic, you got a minute,” which I just love. “Hey, you got a minute?

Laci (01:30:56):

“I guess. Sure. Yeah.

Matt (01:30:57):

Oh yeah, I’m fine. Yeah, yeah. Let’s go hang out. Shows him clue one, this clue that I found in your house. And he reads it, it’s a riddle and Benefit gets the stupidest smiley face and he says,” I know this one.

Laci (01:31:09):

“Okay, but also it’s like, oh my God, I have to answer a honeymooner’s game of like, do you know your wife in front of a cop who was trying to figure out if I killed my wife, I already don’t know that she has a best friend or what she does all day and I’m infamously bad at getting these clues and now I have to do it to either save my life or save Amy’s. What the fuck? This is like you playing Mario under the exact thing I just thought. Our son who just wears it all on his sleeve. I mean, is this an agony when you can’t do the thing he can’t do in Mario?

Matt (01:31:50):

He’s autistic. He will be screaming at me and it is life or death sticks. I need to meet this level in Mario and every mistake I make, the shrieking gets more kids louder. And yes, of course that is the first thing I thought when you just said that. Have to solve a love riddle. Clue too, it’s hidden at the junior college where he teaches part-time. I mean, things seem to be going pretty well for you, Ben Affleck in this town. You’re running a bar and you teach nobody … Yeah, you have two fucking jobs, but there’s a pair of red panties in your mailbox at work.

Laci (01:32:18):

And I love that no one’s quite sure. They could be Amy’s. I have the kind of life where these could be Amy’s or these could be, what’s her nose? What is her name?

Matt (01:32:28):

Andy.

Laci (01:32:29):

Andy’s. Amy and Andy.

Matt (01:32:31):

The clue says something about a brown house and Detective Kim Dickens says, “You know a bad brown house?” And he says, “No idea.” But he does. But it’s not a brown house. It’s a blue house. He’s like, “Nope,

Laci (01:32:43):

Still blue.”

Matt (01:32:44):

And the alarm is going off because the code apparently has been changed and then Kim Dickens shows right up, but we start to see he is hiding from the police and if he is not guilty of killing his wife, he’s at least still operating and like, “But I can still keep all my secrets from the police.”

Laci (01:33:04):

Well, I mean, he knows how it will look.That’s what I’m telling you. He’s aware the whole time. Someone having an affair with their very young student is not the person who should also be under investigation for a wife that’s missing. It’s bad. He knows it’s bad. That’s why he’s checking his phone constantly and trying to scrummage around and by now he’s like, “Oh no, this bitch is, this is a setup. I need to find these clues before the cops do.

Matt (01:33:29):

” Yes, but she shows up anyway and like, yeah, the house is … I thought maybe this would be the brown house. Nope, still blue. I’ll walk you out. Okay. All right.

Laci (01:33:40):

No, no, he’s more flipping than that. Nope, still blue. He’s such an ass. I love it.

Matt (01:33:45):

But there is a clue here, but he hides it. He puts it in his pocket and doesn’t tell the cop about it. Now in Amy’s diary, she recalls when the recession made both of them lose their jobs and also, “Hey, guess what? I had a million dollars in trust fund, but my parents took up almost everything. Sorry.” And he’s like, “You didn’t tell me about that? ” She’s like, “No, you send them everything. We can always be ever in. “

Laci (01:34:05):

She told him exactly when it happened, Matt. She didn’t ask him

Matt (01:34:09):

For

Laci (01:34:09):

Permission.

Matt (01:34:11):

She’s telling him right here.

Laci (01:34:12):

Yes, but she didn’t ask permission to share that money. That’s what he’s saying. She told him as soon as it was time to tell him.

Matt (01:34:18):

You didn’t ask me. That was all our money. No, it’s technically my parents’ money because they’re so deeply in debt, but we’ll get through this. Everything else is just background noise, but we cut ahead and see it’s not quite true. All he does is sit at home and play video games all day and buy expensive laptops and stuff. What the fuck?

Laci (01:34:34):

Nobody doesn’t need that laptop.

Matt (01:34:36):

He bought this new MacBook, but it’s still packaged in the box. Even if I didn’t need a MacBook, I’d still run home and open it and rub it and stuff.

Laci (01:34:44):

Yeah, but then you open and you’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s a Mac product. So there’s four things on it. Where’s the snake? Where’s mine bender? What’s it called?

Matt (01:34:54):

Mindsweeper?

Laci (01:34:55):

Yeah.

Matt (01:34:55):

No, you want to see that snake going through that apple. It’d be fun. Okay. Gets a call from his sister. Oh, bad news. Mom’s dying. Got to move. Got to move home to Missouri. And in the diary, Amy says, I was happy to do it. I just wish you’d know. Nic is happy to be home, but I don’t know if he’s happy. Stop using

Laci (01:35:11):

That, but why is Meryl Streep the voice?

Matt (01:35:14):

It’s kind of. She’s got this upper crust. I’m a British person trying to be American voice. They’re growing apart. He uses me for sex and I was starting to become somebody I didn’t even like nagging him about going out with the boys. And then she even suggests that they have a baby and he gets very angry. This is literally the worst time and then pushes her.

Laci (01:35:35):

Pushes are pretty bad because she hits a post.

Matt (01:35:38):

But as we later find out this is- That didnt happen.This didn’t happen.

Laci (01:35:42):

It’s not that he isn’t capable because then he pushes her damn

Matt (01:35:45):

Good.

Laci (01:35:46):

Yeah.

Matt (01:35:46):

In the voiceover, she says, What scared me the most is not that he pushed me, but seeing how much he wanted to hurt me more. I am frightened of my husband. In the present, Detective Bony goes to the abandoned mall and talks to a junkie. You see an amazing Amy? He’s like, oh my God, I did see this woman. She came in here asking about buying a gun.

Laci (01:36:05):

It’s funny too, because the reason why she goes to investigate the homeless situation and the drug situation is because of Nick saying she should.

Matt (01:36:12):

That’s true. They

Laci (01:36:13):

Wouldn’t have even found out about the gun if they …

Matt (01:36:15):

Yeah. We got a really serious homeless problem around here and they’re just like, we’ll look into that.

Laci (01:36:22):

Right. Okay, buddy.

Matt (01:36:23):

But they do.

Laci (01:36:24):

Yeah.

Matt (01:36:25):

Idiot. And in the diary, she says, “I just felt better if I had a gun.” But Nick can’t leave her. She thinks Nick will never leave me because he depends on me financially. I bought him the bar, the house is in my name and he just does not want to look like a bad guy. He’s waiting me out. He wants me to ask for a divorce. They’ve set up a headquarters at the hotel at the Drury Inn.

Laci (01:36:47):

I love that the mom can’t even pronounce it. She’s like

Matt (01:36:51):

Something. All these volunteers are assembling. Nick is hugging and shaking hands. He’s a politician, but everyone’s noticing. He seems like he’s having a little bit too much fun. And I think there’s a homeless guy who he gives donuts to in a bag. I’ve always wondered, why are they making a big deal about that? I guess that’s supposed to be a homeless man. And Nick is showing everybody, “Look, I’m still letting him have our

Laci (01:37:14):

Donuts.” I guess they think he’s … In this moment, they’re like, “You’re being too performative.”

Matt (01:37:18):

You’re

Laci (01:37:19):

Like the homecoming king. It’s like if you’re a six foot a million man that just lost … His girl

Matt (01:37:29):

Is gone. There’s

Laci (01:37:30):

Not kids to put this attention on. Who cares about the parents? It’s really that the parents are like, “We want the attention. We set up the hotline. We wore khaki. We got here right away. We actually want Amy. Why does he get all the attention?” They seem jealous. And that’s right because Go is like, “What’s her noses pissed?”

Matt (01:37:50):

And he goes and talks to her.

Laci (01:37:52):

You’re like the homecoming king.

Matt (01:37:53):

What

Laci (01:37:53):

Do you want me to do? I’m being nice to the people who are helping. Am I supposed to be like, “Thanks for helping, I guess.”

Matt (01:38:00):

And she says, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Laci (01:38:02):

Yeah.

Matt (01:38:02):

And a worse movie would have her be more of a just straightforward bad mother-in-law.

Laci (01:38:08):

Right.

Matt (01:38:09):

There’s that thing with the woman who comes up to Nick, the groupie. “Hi, Nick, are you getting a lot of food? You got to remember to eat and sleep welllier night. I’m making you my Frito pie.” And then she takes a picture with him and then he realizes like, “Oh fuck, that was a mistake. Can you delete that photo?”

Laci (01:38:23):

I will not. Don’t you touch me.

Matt (01:38:25):

No, what is wrong with you? That’s my

Laci (01:38:27):

Purse. Right.

Matt (01:38:28):

And there’s the thing, this Noelle Hawthorne is lurking in the background. She says she was your wife’s best friend. You sure you don’t know her? And he says that we wave hi to her and her husband. I don’t know. So that night goes to Margot’s house.

Laci (01:38:43):

All I see is giant come on me tits.

Matt (01:38:46):

When you look at Andy. Emily.

Laci (01:38:49):

Her boobs are amazing.

Matt (01:38:50):

Who very famous Instagram model, this is also sort of stunt casting is, how can we cast somebody who everyone will hate this guy so much for having sex with?

Laci (01:39:01):

Oh, all right. God spell. Where have you been? In rehearsal. You told me to get my own life. Yeah. I mean, there are exceptions Andy.

Matt (01:39:14):

What would you do if you were in this situation? Fucking insane situation.

Laci (01:39:19):

Right. You don’t need me around. Should I even be calling your fucking phone? I don’t know. I don’t want to get you in trouble. But it’s

Matt (01:39:24):

Still like I’m dating this guy. He’s all I think about and now I can’t even get in touch with him. And she’s like, “No, I miss you so much. I need you. I’ll fuck touch me. ” And he’s like, “No, who did you tell about us? Nobody. I didn’t tell anybody.” And he’s like, “Okay, I was going to get a divorce. Now I’m not going to get a divorce. Well, we’ll work all this out. ” And she says, “Let’s just have sex one time and then I’ll go. ” And he’s like leaning in to suck on her titties before she even finishes. And they fall asleep. And so he wakes up early and chews her out and just the great shot of Carrie Coon. Just not

Laci (01:39:55):

Chew her out. He’s really sweet.

Matt (01:39:56):

Chew her out.

Laci (01:39:57):

Oh.

Matt (01:39:58):

You came to my ghost house. No. You

Laci (01:40:01):

Fucking idiot. Yeah.

Matt (01:40:03):

You fuck. It’s so great. Yes. And she is so wounded that he just didn’t tell her about this.

Laci (01:40:10):

Well, that, yeah, right. And I am trying to help you so hard with the image thing and you just put us back behind the … She’s so scared he’s going to go to jail.That is her best friend and she finally got him back. He moved back. She’s living her best life at the bar with him and he’s about to go away again. This is breaking her heart. Yeah.

Matt (01:40:33):

And she keeps accepting how bad it is and then finding out it’s worse and can’t even be content in knowing that’s as bad as it’s going to get because he’s probably hiding more stuff from me. I don’t even know this guy. That’s

Laci (01:40:45):

Not true. I don’t think she thinks she doesn’t know him. She’s just scared.

Matt (01:40:49):

That he is hiding things. He might be hiding more things from me.

Laci (01:40:52):

What else did he hide, Matt? Just that he was having an affair.

Matt (01:40:55):

The revelation later about him wanting kids and the wife not wanting

Laci (01:41:01):

Kids. Okay. But that’s a very normal thing to not … When you already know your in- law or your sibling or whoever doesn’t like the person you’re with, if the person you’re with does a very unlikable thing, you leave that out of the conversation.

Matt (01:41:13):

Which is what he says to her. I know

Laci (01:41:14):

That.

Matt (01:41:15):

But that is when she says that basically, I just can’t trust you. I can’t-

Laci (01:41:20):

That’s not what she says. Yes,

Matt (01:41:21):

It is. And

Laci (01:41:22):

That’s not how she feels. She is scared and she wants to know that everything’s going to be okay. She never loses any love for her brother.

Matt (01:41:31):

I didn’t say she loses love for him. That’s also the moment where she is about to ask him, did you actually kill your wife? And I would not stop loving you if you killed your wife, but it is now something I’m starting to fathom. Maybe you did kill your wife. And then he says, “I didn’t tell you because if I told you you would have made me stop.” And she says, “God, she’s just so good.” “You’re like dad. “You get so much information just from her saying that. Now we get our first real look on the TV at Ellen Abbott, this Nancy Grace figure who’s talking on the TV to Tyler Perry as Tanner Bolt, the big lawyer who defends guilty men. And it’s so great that this movie has such an understanding of the way the real world media looks that you can look at these two images, these two people side by side.

(01:42:20):

I know exactly who each of these people are. I’m obsessed with murdered wives. I’m the guy who defends guilty husbands.

Laci (01:42:27):

It’s just like, and I love boosters where this in the background all the time are television or news and it’s just like concern neighbor. You don’t need real names.You’re like, ” Oh, I know what that guy’s supposed to be doing.

Matt (01:42:38):

“So it is kind of interesting that Tanner Bolt does end up being a real and good lawyer.

Laci (01:42:42):

Oh no, those are always real and good lawyers. The kind of lawyer that defends OJ Simpson is an amazing fucking lawyer.

Matt (01:42:50):

There’s usually the way it works is you got your TV personality and then your real lawyer who maybe works with them. Here they kind of simplify it. Yes it is. It’s

Laci (01:43:00):

Not true. Johnny Cochran was a really good lawyer. They would just

Matt (01:43:03):

Show- I know. He wasn’t the one on TV. He got very famous because of the trial, but they hire Robert Shapiro. He’s the guy who was always on TV. She’s looking at the picture of him smiling with Sean on, ” A picture’s worth a thousand words, y’all. Isn’t it? “And Margo says,” You need to hire Tanner Bolt.

Laci (01:43:19):

“He says,” I don’t deserve him. “And she says,” He’s exactly who you deserve. “I mean, he’s just getting beat up left, right and center. There’s no rest for this guy and now he’s got a fucking vigil he didn’t plan and now he’s got to go perform again. He’s got to say all the right things to all the different people who want him to say different things and he does pretty good. He says the right shit but he really pisses off Andy, but this is where Noelle’s like, ” You don’t tell him about your pregnant. “And that’s when the cops get their clue they should be looking into this.

Matt (01:43:54):

I’m Amy Dunn’s best friend. Where’d you put your wife, Nick? Your pregnant wife. Get pregnant

Speaker 3 (01:43:59):

Whack.

Matt (01:44:01):

I love this thing that he does though. He is trying his best and he’s doing a little better, but you can tell he’s kind of floundering. He says,” I may not always act for the cameras how they want me to act and they criticize me and that’s okay. Criticize me all you want, but don’t take it out on the people of this town. “And some people start clapping just because it’s like-

Laci (01:44:23):

Okay,

Matt (01:44:23):

Thank you. I don’t know. We just know that’s sort of how these things go. He says a thing we clap, but it doesn’t really make sense what he’s saying.

Laci (01:44:31):

I mean, what? There’s news vans in y’all’s way. It’s longer lines to get coffee. Is that what you’re taking out on this town? I don’t know.

Matt (01:44:39):

He reminds me of Chris Klein in election, like getting up in front of the assembly and just saying some nonsense, but everybody’s like, ” Yeah.

Laci (01:44:45):

Wow, football. “But then he kind of lets go of a person a little bit more on their toes, a little more understanding of how these things work might address what is being said by this neighbor. And so you can do it with your words and say like, ” I don’t know what you’re talking about. “Don’t just go, ” Okay, well, I guess we better wrap this up. “I was like, ” Okay, you look real fucking guilty right now pretending Noelle’s not screaming things.

Matt (01:45:09):

“Right. And he jogs away with the cop right by his side and the cop puts him in the back of the cop car like he’s arrested.

Laci (01:45:17):

No, like he’s helping him get the fuck out

Matt (01:45:19):

Of here. I know, but he is literally putting him in the back of a cop car. So the optics just make him look and feel more guilty and they take him to his house and now they have new information to share with him. This crime scene here, it looks very clearly like it was staged. Everything is just a little too perfect. Those photographs aren’t knocked down. Also, there’s gowns and gallons of blood in the kitchen that were cleaned up. Do you know anything about blood? No, I don’t know anything about blood. How about how you have $200,000 in credit card debt? And he’s like, ” What? Look at all these things you’ve bought. Stratickesters, giant televisions.

Laci (01:45:53):

“I like the robot dog.

Matt (01:45:56):

And I love it. He says,” This isn’t me. This is identity theft. You need to investigate this. “This is a

Laci (01:46:01):

Crime.

Matt (01:46:01):

This is just a perfect dumb guy thing to say, which I too would say probably.

Laci (01:46:05):

That would really baffle me. It would vary. I mean, but you’re giving him things to be honest about. He really doesn’t know about these things. I don’t know. He just strikes me as honest the whole time. I believe him every moment.

Matt (01:46:18):

What about this form here, Nick? Yo bumped up Amy’s insurance, life insurance call. She told

Laci (01:46:22):

Me to go it.

Matt (01:46:23):

She told me too. And the mail cop’s like, ” Oh, easy pile.

Laci (01:46:26):

“Whoa, whoa. And then, well, I just got the call. She was pregnant and then he just throws the glass on the ground, which is like, ” Oh, I knew it. You were so violent. “But she doesn’t overreact to it. She’s reading him as having normal human responses to things, even if she thinks he might have done something wrong.

Matt (01:46:43):

That’s what’s good about both that character and that performance by Kim Dickens is playing a very, very specific cop. I’m good at my job. I’m suspicious of what I need to be suspicious of. I’m understanding about other things. And he says,” I’m not talking to you anymore without a lawyer. Without another word, she just picks up her stuff and walks out. And then Margot comes in later and to show you she’s a good person, she picks up their cat and pets it. And that’s nice. Because I was like, is Margot a good person? I was wondering that. Of course she is. And Nick is talking on the phone to Amy’s parents. They’re upset with her.What’s up with the pregnancy thing? No. Look, the truth is she didn’t want to have kids. And then he tells his sister that she didn’t want to have kids, but he did.

(01:47:28):

But they were having trouble so they went to a fertility clinic and he jacked off a lot of times, got a seamens frozen.That might come back up later in the movie. Who knows? But Amy didn’t do her fertility stuff. Now when you watch it again, you realize all of this contradicts the scene where Amy tells him that she wants a baby, that now you realize one of them is lying.

Laci (01:47:49):

She wants a baby after. After all this happens.

Matt (01:47:52):

Now that this is the same time period. No.

Laci (01:47:55):

One of them is lying. Amy is lying.

Matt (01:47:58):

Yeah, I know. I’m saying what do you mean? When you watch the movie for the first time, you may not notice it, but he is contradicting the scene earlier that you watch. Of course

Laci (01:48:07):

You notice it. Okay. Yeah, you notice it. But I guess the whole time I’m just like that fucking lying, Amy. But it’s hard to take that part out of my brain.

Matt (01:48:16):

The detectives go over to the Brown house and they’re looking for the body because Patrick Fuget’s like, “Let’s just fucking arrest him. Ellen Abbot’s telling us to arrest him.” And she says, “No, it’s very hard to make a murder case without a body. Let’s look for the body. This is being cut with Ben Affleck going into the woodshed behind Margo’s house. She realized-

Laci (01:48:34):

And you don’t know these are two different places. He very much could be going back to where they are. That’s a good point. Because I don’t know it until he opens it. But yeah, he’s figured out something while they’re trying to figure out something.

Matt (01:48:48):

If you didn’t know what was going to happen, it is like a horror movie and you are like, what the fuck is he going to find in there? And truly, it’s just a bunch of purchased goods. All the stuff from the credit card statements. And the

Laci (01:49:01):

Punching Judy puppets, I’m like, oh, that’s a fucked up thing to get considering their story. But it just occurred to me they’re wood. Duh. I know that. I knew that, but it’s like you’re sticking to the fucking … It’s the blunt force object that is in the fireplace. It’s also the diary that’s in the fireplace and these are wooden pups. This bitch can stick to a theme.

Matt (01:49:23):

All of this is also being- She should have

Laci (01:49:24):

Given birth to a Pinocchio.

Matt (01:49:26):

And she’d find she would know how to do it. She’d know. All of this is also being intercut with her in her diary talking about sometimes I think my husband might kill me. Now you meet the real Amy.

Laci (01:49:39):

Yeah.

Matt (01:49:40):

Flashing back to the day she disappeared, driving on the highway, tourniquet or whatever on her arm, throwing pens out the window, walking us through her beautiful plant. Befriend a local idiot. Secretly create some money trouble purchase a getaway car. Americans love a pregnant woman. As if getting pregnant is so hard. You know what’s hard? Faking a pregnancy pregnancy.

Laci (01:50:03):

And so she gets her to ply dumb neighbor with lemonade, collect urine.

Matt (01:50:09):

I love that you don’t hear anything that they’re saying, but the woman embarrassed that she couldn’t flush her piss. And it’s like, that’s okay. Leave the piss. It’s fine, honey. What

Laci (01:50:17):

If it had been a poop? You really had a calculation.

Matt (01:50:20):

Well, you still get what you need. Hey, I’m at the doctor. Fuck

Laci (01:50:24):

Fecal matter in your pee

Matt (01:50:25):

Sample, ma’am. Yeah, that happens. I have to pee in a cup every three months. Sometimes I’m like, oh- Sometimes

Laci (01:50:29):

I shit in that cup.

Matt (01:50:31):

Got a litle shit in there. Just a little shit on that cup there.

Laci (01:50:35):

My pee and poo come out of the same hole. You too, right?

Matt (01:50:37):

And then the cool girl speech. It’s a very famous monologue.

Laci (01:50:42):

And two movies in a row where there’s an interim bad short haircut where drop dead Fred Lizzie gets her first makeover by the mom and the hair is to the shoulders and it looks kind of … And then there’s the short haircut that happens afterward and then both babes are like, wow. Now

Matt (01:50:59):

We’re cooking.

Laci (01:51:00):

We either need a lot longer or a lot shorter.

Matt (01:51:03):

Laci, as a former cool girl, what are your feelings about this?

Laci (01:51:07):

She’s nailing it. Everything she’s saying makes complete sense. I know exactly how it is to be that girl over and over and over again and different versions of her too, because every guy you meet likes different things. I learned completely new bands and records and catalogs of things just to be on the same page. Now that goes away. You’re the last person I did it for. And again, I did it for the same reasons, but I ended up really … I always end up liking a lot of the stuff I end up getting into, but I don’t ever bring my personality into anything. My personality comes out if you stick around long enough. This is just what it’s like to be a straight woman. Did you ever have to rise to somebody’s standard and be a cooler guy?

Matt (01:51:50):

I always felt that way. I always felt like I have fun, cool, interesting guy that I can be at the beginning of a relationship. And then I run out of ideas and I run out of funny things to say and I run out of fun things to do. And now the lady is starting to notice, you’re kind of boring. You don’t do anything. None

Laci (01:52:08):

Of that’s true.

Matt (01:52:09):

You’re quiet.

Laci (01:52:11):

You’re not. I’m talkative.

Matt (01:52:14):

And we’re a perfect match.

Laci (01:52:15):

Perfect.

Matt (01:52:17):

She really seems to have a problem with blow jobs though.

Laci (01:52:19):

She blew them.

Matt (01:52:21):

Semi-regularly. Something she had to endure.

Laci (01:52:23):

No, she endured Hooter’s wings or whatever.

Matt (01:52:26):

You like Hooters? I

Laci (01:52:28):

Do.

Matt (01:52:29):

Yeah.

Laci (01:52:29):

I’m not her.

Matt (01:52:30):

Here’s what I love.

Laci (01:52:31):

She blew him instead of fucking him. She did the chores blowing. You’re not that kind of person. You never just let me blow you and then that’s the end of it. That doesn’t happen with your dick. Every relationship I’ve ever been in before you, there’s the perfunctory every at least once a month, I need to give this guy a blowjob in the morning because he’s so proud of how big his dick is in the morning. Like he’s the first person to ever have morning wood.

Matt (01:52:57):

That isn’t tied to we then have sex? No. No,

Laci (01:53:02):

She is talking about the chores kind of blowjob. Well, this will take place of sex for today. Okay. All right. We have this understanding. Okay. Because she’s having sex where she doesn’t come. We already saw her.

Matt (01:53:16):

Okay. That’s

Laci (01:53:17):

Not me.

Matt (01:53:17):

All right. You’re right. You know what’s great is my mom texted me the other day and said, “Hey, we’re listening to your sweet home Alazam episode. It’s great.”

Laci (01:53:26):

Well, I need to relisten to it and find out what it said.

Matt (01:53:28):

Immediately pulled up the transcript and looked through it for things.

Laci (01:53:31):

Blowjob come, butt stuff.

Matt (01:53:34):

All that stuff I care way less about than.

Laci (01:53:36):

Because

Matt (01:53:37):

Later in that episode I said, “My mom revealed to me in therapy wants that. “

Laci (01:53:40):

Okay. Well, that says is that you went to therapy. She just happened to join you.

Matt (01:53:44):

Now we see she has her calendar full of sticky notes. She’s meticulously planned out when everything is supposed to happen, including multiple times where she might kill herself.

Laci (01:53:55):

Always on the same poetic day.

Matt (01:53:56):

Yeah, yeah. But you think, okay, this is why Reese Witherspoon read the script and said, “I want to play this character.” What I really like is that you think, wow, she is the fucking smartest and she is smart.

Laci (01:54:10):

Right, but

Matt (01:54:11):

There’s

Laci (01:54:11):

Cracks.

Matt (01:54:12):

Yes, everywhere. Yes. And they come about because she starts talking to people. She doesn’t realize, “Oh, I have this vulnerability, which is that I need to be around people and talk to people and be a normal human.”

Laci (01:54:24):

The vulnerability is that she’s obsessed with the story of herself and that she needs to see that and interact with that. And as soon as someone’s talking about it in a way she doesn’t like, she wants to push back. She can’t help but show her cards.

Matt (01:54:36):

Well, that’s true. So this character, Greta, played by Lola Kirk later reveals like, “Yeah, I can tell your hair has died and you never respond to your fake name, Nancy.” And these are just things that she’s noticing because she’s just hanging around.

Laci (01:54:50):

Also though, Greta’s pushed herself. I’m just saying if it were up to her, she wouldn’t be hanging out with Greta. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t end up enjoying put put golf, but at first she’s trying to just get, “Oh, I’ve got work to do. ” Doesn’t want to go get creamer at the Marina. She just goes and floats in the pool, lies to her. So at first it’s like she’s not going to want to interact.

Matt (01:55:10):

No, but I think the put putt scene shows that she actually does crave this. She wants a litle bit of a- Set that. Yeah.

Laci (01:55:16):

Yeah.

Matt (01:55:17):

So that’s her weakness. She does kind of just want to be a normal person and that’s how she’s going to get found out. And it’s fun to see how easily she can be taken down, which is she’s just in a world that she has no idea about.

Laci (01:55:31):

I mean, you can plan all you want and you can think you can know Nic really, really well and you can know how to do what looks like a typical missing person murder, but you don’t know people very well. You’re not a super adaptable person either and you’re book smart and then it stops there.

Matt (01:55:51):

So she’s spending some time floating in the pool, eating junk food, doing nothing. First time she’s allowed herself to do-

Laci (01:55:58):

I don’t know. It sounds like she did a whole lot of nothing as a housewife, don’t you think? But

Matt (01:56:01):

This is different. This is

Laci (01:56:02):

Different. This is

Matt (01:56:04):

For her.

Laci (01:56:05):

This is like farting like no one can smell it. Lounge in.

Matt (01:56:10):

And she starts to bond with this woman, Greta, over past boyfriends and tells her in this bizarre accent and one time Asahma Ax taken out this little thing who had no business being in a bar and recreating their sugar storm kiss outside a snowstorm in a bar. And this is when amazing Amy started to hatch her plot. “My husband is cheating on me. I shall get revenge. “And even that is like, it makes her seem small. Small. Yes. This is all just because you found out your husband cheated on you. So it’s like

Laci (01:56:42):

You only play games. You’re like, ” Well, if I can put on an appearance for my entire life to please my parents, I can use all of these skills to create a Mr. Murder movement and I can get away with it too as long as I end up dead. “It’s when she ends up not wanting to be dead that things get a litle tricky. But she figures it out.

Matt (01:56:58):

Yeah, she does. She does figure it out. And I like that the reason she decides she doesn’t want to be dead is just having too much fun.

Laci (01:57:04):

Well, that and my husband’s kind of hot again, y’all. He’s kind of doing exactly what I wanted him to do.

Matt (01:57:10):

And that’s fun. Nick, back in the Nick storyline finds all the stuff in the foodshed and brings Margot over. Look at all this stuff. See, you didn’t believe me, but I was telling the truth. And she’s like, ” I’m so sorry for not believing you. “Tinterpiece of all of this is a punch and Judy doll made of wood.

Laci (01:57:28):

Set of dolls.

Matt (01:57:30):

Set of-

Laci (01:57:30):

One is punch and one is Judy.

Matt (01:57:32):

Okay. I don’t know what

Laci (01:57:33):

These are. These are very … There’s the most famous puppets.

Matt (01:57:38):

So the guy’s name is Punch.

Laci (01:57:40):

And she’s Judy and he kills her and the baby, I think.

Matt (01:57:44):

That’s fun.

Laci (01:57:46):

I mean, it’s from ye old time.This is shit to do in the street. The storyline for her is so sad that she’s got a permanent frown. Look at her. She never even needs to smile.

Matt (01:57:58):

Yeah. Things were just different back then. We can’t judge them. Back when we had

Laci (01:58:02):

A king.

Matt (01:58:02):

Yeah. That’s how people did things though. He’s kill a

Laci (01:58:05):

Bitch.

Matt (01:58:07):

And in the letter it says, you’re going to be sent up the river, up the river to the death penalty penitentiary because Missouri has the death penalty. But Nick is like, ” I got to take some action. I got to go to New York City and hire Tanner Bolt, Tyler Perry.

Laci (01:58:22):

“He’s a breath of fresh air. As soon as he’s in the room, I feel like-

Matt (01:58:26):

Comforting. Everything’s

Laci (01:58:27):

Going to be fine.

Matt (01:58:28):

That’s what I wrote down. Such a sense of comfort here.

Laci (01:58:30):

He’s just got such an ease. He’s like, ” Go. “He takes things that Nick says and makes them like, ” That’s a cinch, no problem. “Where Go also does that when things are at lower stake.

Matt (01:58:44):

Yeah. And he also has that trademark cup of coffee that everyone has in this movie. And for some reason, them sitting down in the lobby of this building rather than taking him up to his office also makes it seem more comforting. Just chatting here. It’s funny.

Laci (01:58:56):

Right. I’m not here to lure you in or to trap you into anything. You came to see me and I’m saying yes.

Matt (01:59:03):

You came to see me, but also I’ve been expecting your call, been waiting. Why hasn’t he called me yet? And here you are, you son of a bitch. Hey, and I’ll even give you a special discount because your wife sounds crazy as fuck. The real work we have to do, Nick, is this is PR. People hate you. They like Amy. Let’s get them to not like Amy and like you more.

Laci (01:59:21):

She’s not just telling a good story. She’s telling a perfect story. So we have to tell a good story back. We have to undo her perfection in the eyes of the media.

Matt (01:59:31):

So we need to find those people from her past who don’t like her. Is there anyone? Well, I just found out about this guy who two weeks before I started dating her, had sexual assault charges. Let me go track him down. And he does, and this guy’s played by Scoot McNairy.

Laci (01:59:45):

Oh, I love.

Matt (01:59:46):

And he’s like, ” I didn’t do anything to her. She raised a false rape allegation against me. We went out and I found out she was very, very intense.

Laci (01:59:54):

“Well, and then she made him a project. She molded the exact same thing that she says about About him in her monologue, right? I forged the man of my dreams. That’s what she was trying to do with him too.

Matt (02:00:05):

She

Laci (02:00:05):

Took him on as an entire project and it just got exhausting.

Matt (02:00:09):

He says, “Girl’s like a fixer upper, but Amy, she annexed me. ” I love that. But it is funny. He’s a different version of Nick who’s just like, “Oh, I don’t like this. I don’t want to be your project.” And got out very, very early, but found you do not exit this. No, sir.

Laci (02:00:24):

Right. And he got away with being a predator for the rest of his life and Nick’s about to become a murderer.

Matt (02:00:30):

And he says-

Laci (02:00:30):

And Desi got out by surviving him killing himself.

Matt (02:00:35):

Right. Which he didn’t do. The movie doesn’t make clear, but in the book that’s a lie. Oh, that’s

Laci (02:00:41):

A made up story. Yeah. So all he had to endure was claims of him being pathetic and also having a mental illness. I mean, the stalking pathetic

Matt (02:00:51):

Part. Yeah, because I don’t know how many people she told that to. It seems like it may just be something she told her parents.

Laci (02:00:57):

And him

Matt (02:00:59):

And her

Laci (02:00:59):

Husband.

Matt (02:01:01):

The pin

Laci (02:01:02):

Pal stuff.

Matt (02:01:03):

Yeah. And that it wasn’t one sided. They did write back to each other. That’s in the book. I don’t remember if that’s spelled out.

Laci (02:01:11):

And maybe Desi is as close as she got until Nick and she realized, “Oh, I need someone

Matt (02:01:18):

Cool.” And Coop McNairy says, “But then I saw her on TV the other day and I thought there she is. She’s graduated from being raped to being murdered. Greta and Amy are watching the Ellen Abbott show and you get to see what maybe not everybody loves Amy because Greta, the first non-middle class person we see, says she seems like a spoiled rich bitch to me. ” And so Amy spits in her drink without knowing.

Laci (02:01:43):

Fucking nasty. And she takes the biggest sip of it and goes, “Yeah, that’s good.”

Matt (02:01:47):

I know. Hell yeah. Fucking love Gatorade.

Laci (02:01:50):

It’s like Gatorade. It’s Mountain Dew. Well, that’s a big difference. It is a class comment. Only white trash drink Mountain Dew. That’s the stereotype.

Matt (02:02:03):

At the airport, at the same time as Greta and Amy are watching, Nick is watching Ellen Abbott and so are other people in the airport lounge and they’re talking about Nick and his twin sister and you hear these guys say twins. You know what I mean?

Laci (02:02:15):

People just don’t have anything to talk about. What are you going to do? It’s all on twenty four seven. You got to just make little fucking comments.

Matt (02:02:23):

But Amy’s having a little fun. She’s getting to see what the world thinks of her and thinks of her stupid husband. And so she takes off the post-it notes from her calendar that say kill self. I think I’ll stick around a while longer. Back at home, Tanner Bolt arrives in Missouri and he and Nick and Margo go over their strategy, which is we got to solve Amy’s treasure hunt.

Laci (02:02:46):

Romcom and me just kept waiting for Margot and him to fall in love. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. It never happens. I wouldn’t make the movie better. I was just like, “You’ve got something.”

Matt (02:02:57):

On a streaming series, 10 episodes, you get there. They have a drunken night at a party. You spend 30 minutes just watching a comfort.

Laci (02:03:03):

And then he goes back to New York and she stays in Missouri and all of a sudden he’s having a cup of coffee and you just see gummy bears flying at his face. It’s Margo from across the room.

Matt (02:03:11):

Oh, hey, Tanner. Oh, and finally he chomps one in his mouth and that’s how you know. Amy, she’s Old Testament God. She’s a God of wrath, a God of punishment, a God of justice. This treasure hunt, what this treasure hunt is, see on the surface it looks like a history of our romance, but actually it’s every place that she knows I fucked this girl, Andy. And they’re like, “Boy, that’s gross.”

Laci (02:03:33):

Well, in the same way that this journey reveals Amy for being not as smart as you might think she is. And in fact, just being an expert of Nick, maybe not an expert of the world, this journey also shows how capable Nic is in that he’s got Tanner Bolt telling him what to do and he goes, “Okay, here I know better.” And he wants to still do that interview after that’s coming up and he fucking nails it because why? Because he had the confidence because he was only talking to one person. He wasn’t trying to make the world love him. He was just trying to reach Amy. He’s an Amy expert. So it’s like when they lean into their expertise, they both rise to the challenge.

Matt (02:04:14):

In fact, maybe shouldn’t have to pay all that $100,000 to Tanner, because what does Tanner even do?

Laci (02:04:19):

He did go to Missouri.

Matt (02:04:20):

He flew. That’s true.

Laci (02:04:21):

Air travel.

Matt (02:04:23):

The thing that they have to do is this whole thing with Andy and the affair. That’s going to go public and Ben Affleck’s like, “No, no, no. She’s not going to do that. She’s a good girl. She’s not going to do that. ” She’s a good person. So confident. No, no, no, no. I know how this works. This is going to come out. And I love that it’s just, yeah, that does indeed happen. She goes public because that’s the law of these things. She’s going to turn on you. And so they need to get ahead of it. And other than that, the best thing we can do is find Amy ourselves. So we have PIs on the case, otherwise we got to solve this treasure hunt. And also, hey, there’s this journalist who works for a TV broadcast network, Sharon Scheiber. She gets 10 million eyeballs on her.

(02:05:08):

Wow. She’s a credible journalist under like that. Paid Tanner

Laci (02:05:11):

Bolt for is that he knows how to work the media, the narrative. All it is is who’s got the better story. That’s all a jury trial is. So I mean, I think they owe him some money. He’s got connections.

Matt (02:05:22):

They owe him some money. And again, if it went to trial, yes, then you would get your money’s worth. Sharon Schreiber, if you reach her, all the eyeballs will be on you and he says, “I only need one eyeball on me, just one eyeball. She can have the other one closed.” So she’s made great friends with Greta and this guy played by Boyd Holbrook. I don’t remember the character’s name. They’re playing golf. She’s now doing normie things like playing putt putt golf and seems to be enjoying herself. “Oh, I went ahead and got the hole in one I did. Oh no, my money clip slipped out of my plague.

Laci (02:05:52):

“Her fanny pack, she revealed her stripper stash. And then this guy’s such a loser that he knows both places you would strip if you were really from New Orleans. The swamp room and the treasure chest, he’s like, ” Which one? Neither of those things are actually strip clubs. “But it’s like, what am I supposed to learn from this nasty man that he knows the names of all the strip clubs up and down the Mississippi?

Matt (02:06:17):

And Greta seems to be on his side and sort of, ” Yeah, honey but you got a whole lot of money there. We’re just tasing you.

Laci (02:06:26):

“Well yeah, because she’s not friends with her and she’s been sniffing her out from the beginning. She knows that this woman’s hiding something and this lady, she’s got to make ends meet. She’s looking for a mark.

Matt (02:06:40):

And they come by and rob her later. And I like that they tell her like, ” No, you’re lucky. We could be so much more evil.

Laci (02:06:47):

“Right. We’re just taking your money.

Matt (02:06:48):

We’re just taking your money. It’s fine.

Laci (02:06:50):

And you had it to begin with, so you’ll find more.

Matt (02:06:52):

Got your blessings. You’ll be okay. Fucking

Laci (02:06:53):

Right. She barely had to go through any trauma. All she had to do was need more money,

Matt (02:06:58):

Which

Laci (02:06:58):

By the way, you were always going to. In fact, they steered you into the right direction. You should be thanking them. They gave you your fucking way out of this shit.

Matt (02:07:07):

But she does spend like 24 hours truly a drift. She sleeps in her car and a security guy comes and flashes a light in her and she drives away immediately, but this is-

Laci (02:07:16):

If they take her fingerprint, she’s found out.

Matt (02:07:18):

Yeah. But this is truly the only time in her life where she’s actually been helpless. And so she does the only thing she can. She calls Desi, gross. Nic is getting prepped for the interview with Sharon. They throw gummy bears at him every time he’s being smug or a dick or not enough of a dick. But before they can get to the interview, the news breaks local slut having sex with Nic. Oh God. She’s like

Laci (02:07:44):

A fucking Mennonite. Where are her giant come on me tits now?

Matt (02:07:48):

Yep. Goes on stage dressed so wholesomely and Amy’s parents are standing behind her and then they take their turn at the podium. We love Nick like a son. That love ended today.

Laci (02:07:59):

Jesus. Fickle. That’s how you love your son.

Matt (02:08:03):

And so Tanner’s like, ” Well fuck, we can’t do this interview now. “And Ben Affleck’s like, ” No. “And

Laci (02:08:08):

That’s because everyone around them are playing the rule book. Well, here’s the rule book for whenever this looks like this and this looks like this. And then the young cop, this is the rule book. This looks like this, so this is this. There’s no playbook, baby. You don’t know Nick and Amy. Nick and Amy? No Nick and Amy.

Matt (02:08:28):

And we cut ahead and see how well. He knew it, how well it- I’m so glad we didn’t watch it. So fucking

Laci (02:08:33):

Good, Nick. I love the way they do it because you need relief. This movie knows when you need a … And then we get to see it at just the right time. We get to see it through her eyes. Unless her movie would’ve showed you it happening in real time and then Amy’s reaction and goes reaction over here and Tanner’s reaction all at the same time. But this is just like, we know it goes good and now we know to expect whatever it is he says, it’s good. I don’t even need to think about it. You’re right.

Matt (02:08:59):

Yeah. Tension alleviated. Yes. Okay, he nailed it. Right. Oh, I can’t wait to see it.

Laci (02:09:03):

Now I can fully focus on the interaction between Desi and Amy because that is what we’re meant to see. We’re meant to see how much all this is doing to her, which would’ve been very distracting if we were cutting between a lot of things. And Desi is highly in tune to him losing … He’s the easiest person to get one over, but he’s also super vigilant and noticing everything. Man, he’s good at putting me … I mean, just being a fucking boner killer. He’s got so much money. He’s got so much culture. He’s very good looking and he’s just a fucking twat immediately and so obsessed with the way she looks with her appearance with her. He wants the version of her he couldn’t have, not this new thing, not this real thing. I won amazing Amy.

Matt (02:09:49):

He’s doing the exact same thing. Yourself.

Laci (02:09:51):

Go back to yourself, right?

Matt (02:09:52):

And

Laci (02:09:53):

There’s the gym.

Matt (02:09:54):

Yeah. And you can use the gym that’s above the garage or whatever.

Laci (02:09:57):

The sooner you get back to being yourself the better. Bitch, you don’t know me. No one does. I’m hamsterhead.

Matt (02:10:07):

One more thing about the interview. It’s nice that this movie’s so rooted in the world of how media really works. You’re used to in seeing in a movie. They did the interview. This obviously will just go out live, but no, that’s not how it works. Right. Yeah. These things are pretaped and edited and stuff. Yeah. I love that they meet. She meets Desi at the Riverboat Casino. And what she tells him is-

Laci (02:10:28):

She’s got a little pile of quarters left.

Matt (02:10:30):

She’s

Laci (02:10:30):

Playing in them.

Matt (02:10:32):

I had to leave Nick because he said he’d kill me, so I had to fake my death. Or I told Nick I was going to leave him.He said, “If you leave me, I’ll kill you. ” So I faked my death and he says, “I’ll protect you Amy.” Freak me now. And she says, knowing you were out there was the only thing that kept me going the past few years.

Laci (02:10:48):

And this actress, she did do all these scenes with cotton balls in her mouth, right? Like The Godfather. I don’t know. That’s how they made her look like she’d gained weight. And that’s why she’s talking like this. She just got cotton balls back here.

Matt (02:10:59):

Okay. Yeah, I didn’t know. I mean,

Laci (02:11:01):

It makes a huge difference.

Matt (02:11:02):

Okay. The book makes a bigger deal about how she’s changed her appearance by gaining 10 pounds, but wearing baggy clothes so no one would notice. She didn’t let herself get her picture taken for months because she wanted the picture that got sent out to not look like her. So that tracks with what you said earlier. Although that picture that they have does not look like Rosamund Pike at all.

Laci (02:11:22):

It

Matt (02:11:22):

Looks

Laci (02:11:22):

Like a fucking pageant person.

Matt (02:11:24):

Yeah. All of that stuff is just the super fun, vicarious thrill of reading about the perfect crime. Of course, you’d gain weight, but not that much weight that way. Yeah. So they’re going to go to his lake house, which she gets into and turns out it’s a dungeon of surveillance.

Laci (02:11:41):

Oh, okay. But it’s got the best bed.

Matt (02:11:45):

Well, you’ll never have a better night’s sleep. But this does remind me of Stellen Scarsgard’s house at the end of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Laci (02:11:52):

Because of the big … Well, and in ex- machina, this idea of this entirely open, huge window into anyone can see into here and yet I’m completely secluded in the most fucked up things are going to happen to me. But you get this feeling of everyone can see it and no one cares.

Matt (02:12:09):

And there are parts of the lake house segments that feel so much that are shot like a horror movie, that are edited like a horror movie. And it was just interesting if you watch those two David Fincher movies back to back of stumbling upon a version of hell I wasn’t expecting. I was thinking I was escaping danger and I’ve entered so much more danger.

Laci (02:12:26):

That’s what he’s so brilliant at, right? Showing you the McMansion, the cookie cutter, suburban home in

Matt (02:12:35):

The

Laci (02:12:35):

Nice neighborhood and it’s a gloomy day. He’s in gray sweats. This is how the movie opens.You’re depressed. He has to go back into that beautiful house because just in that one shot, you understand it is not about that house. It’s about what you’re bringing into it. It’s about where you are in your brain while you’re there. And none of this matters unless other things are good. And they just show the uselessness of wealth and how fleeting it is and the uselessness of beauty if you don’t have a good personality or get along well. Two gorgeous people seem like they should be around or should be together and they fucking hate each other.

Matt (02:13:17):

It’s

Laci (02:13:18):

Just all artifice.

Matt (02:13:19):

Wealthy socialite who’s devoted 20 years of his life to obsessing over this woman.

Laci (02:13:23):

Right. For what? You run an amazingly successful company that I don’t understand, but you do go to work every day and you’ve got all these homes and you’re so young looking and you’ve done nothing. She’s gave you such an illusion, such an artifice, which is what you wanted, but she gave it to you perfectly tuned into what Desi likes. She’s kind of a monster. She creates the ideal woman for these three men because she’s just got this skill and makes them crazy for it. So either you have to ride it out and get sick of her and that’s the only way to get past it, or you become Desi and you’re stuck in it forever. And then when she turns the dial a little bit, because she hasn’t totally tuned it to your liking, the floor being heated and all that, then you’re like, “No, no, no, no, no.

(02:14:08):

I didn’t do all this and build this shrine of amazingness for you to look like that.

Matt (02:14:13):

” Sorry to keep bringing up the book, I really like this passage from the book when they reunites and she’s talking about how she had to sell her story to Desi. Here’s what she said. “My savior, my story would satisfy Desi’s craving for ruined women. I was now the most damaged of them all. Long ago back in boarding school, I told him about my father’s nightly visits to my bedroom, me and a roughly pink nightgown staring at the ceiling until he was done. Desi has loved me ever since the lie. I know he pictures making love to me, how gentle and reassuring he would be as he plunged into me, stroking my hair. I know he pictures me crying softly as I give myself to him.

Laci (02:14:56):

See? She’s just so in tune

Matt (02:14:58):

That he so badly wants a damaged woman who he can be good and gentle with.

Laci (02:15:04):

Right, because he’s got no ability to be like a burly, typical brooding man.

Matt (02:15:10):

And when she tries- He’s a

Laci (02:15:11):

Small man.

Matt (02:15:12):

And when she tries to be a litle aggressive with him. I mean, I know she’s about to kill him, but she’s the hottest anyone’s ever been in a movie and he’s like, ” Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there. Pancake.

Laci (02:15:21):

Butternut squash.

Matt (02:15:22):

Look, I’m sorry. I find her so sexy in the last part of the movie.

Laci (02:15:26):

Okay. Blake because she’s going to kill him?

Matt (02:15:30):

I like her haircut and I don’t know what it is. You like

Laci (02:15:35):

Her covered in blood.

Matt (02:15:36):

And I like her covered in blood. Well, I’m trying to grow

Laci (02:15:38):

My hair out long because this is a fucked up time to tell me you like her haircut.

Matt (02:15:42):

No, I really like your hair right now, the way it is. I’m cutting it. No longer than it is now though. So stop it. Freeze it right where it is. No, I’m kidding. No, we’re both big fans of your long hair.

Laci (02:15:50):

Okay. We’ll go way back.

Matt (02:15:52):

No, no. It’s not the hair. It’s when she’s like, “I’m the cunt you married.”

Laci (02:15:55):

Oh yeah. She’s totally in control. Oh, I mean, she takes the sexiest shower anyone’s ever taken. Yeah. When she’s telling him what to do and she’s telling him to get naked and she’s washing blood off herself and she’s like …

Matt (02:16:06):

Yeah. If you told me you need to see if I’m wearing a wire, I’ve just come right there. I don’t know why.

Laci (02:16:14):

Check me. It’s an anal wire.

Matt (02:16:16):

So everyone’s watching the interview at the same time, including Amy, watching with Desi. We’ll watch it together as we eat this cream fresh or whatever this is.

Laci (02:16:25):

And she’s eating a small amount of food, but because she’s eating and watching TV while Desi gives her side eye, you just know the mom must have given her her whole life. Are you sure you’re going to eat that? She’s never looked more pathetic and he’s never looked more sinister. It’s perfect. And he’s

Matt (02:16:41):

Leaning forward. Oh my God. Like

Laci (02:16:43):

A child. Every time she’s indulging herself in this narrative and what she’s created, she’s like a kid.

Matt (02:16:49):

Yeah. She’s eating Kit Kat bars and

Laci (02:16:52):

Powder

Matt (02:16:52):

Guns. She

Laci (02:16:52):

Literally goes out the house and clicks her heels together. She’s so happy.

Matt (02:16:57):

I’m always seeing kids do that.

Laci (02:16:59):

Well, it’s like, gee, gosh, she’s never got to be a normal kid. She’s

Matt (02:17:02):

Like, “I

Laci (02:17:03):

Think I’m doing kid things. Put put.”

Matt (02:17:05):

Nick says I was a-

Laci (02:17:09):

They’re just flirting on this putt-putt date and she’s like, “Does anyone keep it score?” She can’t help herself. She’s like, “I got to win at this though, right? I’m not supposed to have too good of a time.”

Matt (02:17:20):

Nick is on the TV and he’s like, “Look, I didn’t murder my wife, but I’m not a good guy. I’m kind of a bad

Laci (02:17:26):

Guy.” Oh,

Matt (02:17:27):

Fuck. I was a con artist. I was a mediocre guy who met a woman who dazzled me so I pretended to be better than I was, but I failed her. Instead of doing what was right, I did what was easy. And then he looks into the camera and he says, “Amy, if you’re out there, just know I’ve taken myself to the woodshed over this over the way I’ve treated you, puts his fingers on him.” I know

Laci (02:17:47):

The con you’re doing and I still want you back.

Matt (02:17:49):

And says, “I love you. “

Laci (02:17:51):

His

Matt (02:17:51):

Fingers over his little asshole chin. I

Laci (02:17:53):

Need to put little ham.

Matt (02:17:54):

And the public response is, “We love him. He’s doing great. We

Laci (02:17:58):

Love you.

Matt (02:17:59):

” Yes, because there’s a law to these things. These things have to go that way. We treat you like shit. We tear you down, then we want to see you come back up.

Laci (02:18:07):

Well, yeah, that’s how you keep the narrative going. What else are we going to put on TV?

Matt (02:18:10):

I remember when Tiger Woods first started to have his issues and then he did a big press conference where he was like, “I have failed in my marriage.”

Laci (02:18:17):

How sad is everybody that OJ never had his redemption heart?

Matt (02:18:21):

Oh my God. They were probably

Laci (02:18:22):

All waiting for

Matt (02:18:23):

That. They were working on it. Yeah. Yes,

Laci (02:18:24):

Yes. And he just couldn’t help himself. He just reveled in the fact that he got away with murder and he couldn’t stop reminding everybody, “We’re trying to give you your art OJ.”

Matt (02:18:33):

Hey, we’re trying. He’s really fun on Twitter. His videos are funny.

Laci (02:18:37):

Yes. And then he goes and does these weird fucking reality show things. You’re just good juiced. It’s so bizarre.

Matt (02:18:45):

But Tiger Woods is talking about, I failed in my marriage and the response was like, oh God. Oh, I didn’t want to hear that. Why did I think I wanted this?

Laci (02:18:55):

This and dumb and dumber. I didn’t want it.

Matt (02:18:58):

But as all of this is happening, the cops go to Margo’s house, server with a search warrant, find all this stuff in the woodshed. Bony is really mad at Ben Affleck. Nick, I have treated you more than fire. Every time you said something stupid, I told myself, “He’s just stupid.” But no, no.

Laci (02:19:15):

You’re even stupid.

Matt (02:19:17):

So Margo, you’re under arrest too. And back at the lake house, Desi is mad that Amy has eaten a second bowl of whatever this is. And tells her, “It’s time you move on. ” And she’s like, “Now

Laci (02:19:30):

We’ve watched the program touch it.

Matt (02:19:33):

Time for something else.” But

Laci (02:19:36):

I get mad at the movie for thinking it’s just a couple of days. It is a month. Time does go by. She is there

Matt (02:19:43):

Weeks. After this, it jumps ahead a few weeks.

Laci (02:19:46):

Yes. I’m like, how the fuck did you hit the gym once and looks like this? Who cut her hair? She expertly cut her hair twice and dyed it. I’ll have you know, you don’t get a box of hair dye and make it go blonde again. That’s not possible. It has to be bleached and treated and lifted. It has to slowly go back to blonde. Blonde is hardest fucking color to have. I bet he’s

Matt (02:20:05):

Great at that. Because it’s a lack

Laci (02:20:06):

Of color. No, she did it. She’s fucking amazing Amy with a goddamn box of blondes.

Matt (02:20:11):

Yeah, but he probably would be good at that. He’s kind of like a Tony Hale character. And not just because Neil Patrick Harris, the actor is gay, but that’s why this casting is inspired and because Neil Patrick Harris is good at playing unsettling people.

Laci (02:20:22):

Yes. Well, series of fortunate

Matt (02:20:24):

Events. So I love this performance. It’s time to move on. She’s like, “I just need some time to think. ” And he says, “That’s the last

Speaker 3 (02:20:31):

Thing.”

Matt (02:20:32):

At the station, they revealed to Ben Affleck, we found the murder weapon. It’s the other Punch and Judy thing. He’s like, “I don’t know about that. ” And they’re like, “No, no, no. You’re officially arrested.”

Laci (02:20:42):

I love how anti-climatic this is because this is so realistic. They’re there for a night or whatever and they get bailed out. And he’s like, “Well, what now?” Well, now you’re out on bail and now we get to fucking work toward figuring out what we’re going to say at trial. No, this isn’t fancy. This isn’t a big relief that you’re out. It’s just because you have money, you get to now work on your strategy at your home

Matt (02:21:04):

Instead of in

Laci (02:21:05):

Jail.

Matt (02:21:06):

The timeline suggests he was in jail for a few weeks because it’s now 21 days later and then he gets out of jail.

Laci (02:21:14):

How did he make bail?

Matt (02:21:17):

That Tanner must have spent that time trying to convince a judge to issue bail. It seems like it’s the next day in the editing. This is the only thing where the editing doesn’t feel like it makes

Laci (02:21:26):

Sense. No, you’re right, because he’s wearing jail stuff.

Matt (02:21:29):

No, he’s wearing his own clothes.

Laci (02:21:31):

When he comes out, which is normal, when you go in you’re wearing your own clothes, but when he’s on camera, you can see him in the jail cell, he is wearing court issued stuff and you only get that once you’re there for a couple nights.

Matt (02:21:44):

And Amy now, her hair is shorter and she’s been simulating a happy life with him doing the same thing she always does. And he’s like, “You’re not bored with me. ” And she says, “How could I be bored? You can talk about 18th century symphonies.” Nick’s idea of fun is a reality TV marathon with his hands down his pants. One

Laci (02:22:02):

Hand down those boxers. Bring it. That sounds fucking awesome.

Matt (02:22:06):

And so he’s about to leave for the day and she makes very clear to him, “When you return tonight, we’re going to bone town, baby.”

Laci (02:22:13):

She already bites him and he’s already thrown off by that, but that’s just brilliant. And then she just fucks up his hair and pulls out his shirt and he looks at her like she’s fucking insane. That’s how the kids are wearing it.

Matt (02:22:23):

Yeah. It’s hot. He can’t handle it. He cannot handle it.

Laci (02:22:26):

But she knows he’s going to go right in front of that camera and white blood off his lip and adjust his

Matt (02:22:32):

Outfit

Laci (02:22:33):

And look perplexed.

Matt (02:22:35):

And so now she has to pretend she spills some wine on her clothes and then cowers in front of the camera. And it’s good because you see it from the camera’s perspective. I think you see it from outside the door and then you cut inside and realize she’s not making any noises. She’s not even … Wouldn’t you at least scream? Yeah. She’s like, “I don’t even need to scream. I’ll just lip sync this. ” Her

Laci (02:22:54):

Crazy fucking monkey crawl to the door though. It’s so exorcist movie because she’s like, because she needs her hand prints right where they are and stuff. But they’re going to find these prints and these are wine. This is wine on the ground, Amy. You didn’t put any blood over here. I guess she could add it later, but I understand that just for the look, it’s okay because this is just a look.

Matt (02:23:15):

But

Laci (02:23:16):

They’re going to find that nightgown. It’s got wine on it. They’re going to se hand prints in real life unless you cleaned your own hand prints for some fucking reason.

Matt (02:23:26):

Yeah. The Unwanted Gone Girl season two is … Now we don’t have a book to go by. So we’ll deal with the aftermath of that of the investigation into Desi.

Laci (02:23:35):

It’s called Hey Girl.

Matt (02:23:36):

Hey girl. It’s

Laci (02:23:36):

Like welcome back, girl.

Matt (02:23:39):

Hey, with three why’s. She cuts his throat that night when they’re having sex.

Laci (02:23:44):

It’s the most confident throat sliding. He’s even confused. Well, of course he’d be confused, but she does it in such one motion and flings it. It lands under a pillow across the room. So she was totally sure she got all the way through. Didn’t need that anymore. And let him finish. She knew how long- She needed that. She knew how long it took him to climax so she just timed it. I’ll bet it was a great orgasm though. The best. Yes.

Matt (02:24:12):

No. What a

Laci (02:24:13):

Way to go.

Matt (02:24:13):

What a way to go. That’s why they say that expression. Oh, and we forgot she stuck a wine bottle up her ass. I

Laci (02:24:21):

Always thought it was in her badge because-

Matt (02:24:24):

One would think.

Laci (02:24:25):

But yeah, really got in there.

Matt (02:24:28):

But as we see when she interacts with the FBI, it’s almost like no one’s going to look at this crime because everyone thinks this is such a good story and we don’t need to leave

Laci (02:24:37):

This. Leave her in the blood until she gets home under … Because she’s a crime scene. But she can go home and wash it off. They need to put her in yellow

Matt (02:24:49):

Tape. No, at that point it’s no longer … It’s just like-

Laci (02:24:51):

They’ve already done the rape.

Matt (02:24:52):

We just like that it’s on you.

Laci (02:24:53):

Right. They’re like, let her go home and she likes it.

Matt (02:24:56):

It’s the thing about why do women wear lipstick because it makes them look …

Laci (02:25:00):