(post)script: Post-Hall: Pimps, Pills, and Automobiles

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Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Annie Hall; Wes pines to revisit his many unwritten essays, including the one about love and nostalgia in Woody Allen films. We discuss whether Mike Nichols used crack, and the way Google’s algorithms mercilessly hunt Wes down to forcibly dose him with information about the director, all because of a few searches. Wes couldn’t get through Clue, but that may be due to the variability of his many movie moods, and in any case Erin’s Madeline Kahn impression captures a redeeming attitude. We discuss My Favorite Wife (my favorite life?). It’s great, but it bogs down halfway through. By contrast, Annie Hall‘s use of free association helps it navigate the precarious second act, and keeps it brisk (despite its exceptionally long shots, on average of 14 seconds). Erin is reading a new biography of LSD aficionado Cary Grant, called A Brilliant Disguise, according to which director Leo McCarey‘s car accident changed him forever. Also, McCarey apparently admitted on his deathbed that his greatest frustration in life was never sleeping with Irene Dunne. Probably a frustration for most of us, but fortunately we get to enjoy the eidetic romantico-comical pairing of Dunne and Grant. Throne of Blood is so much more than samurai yelling at each other: there’s the incredibly creepy and insidious Lady Macbeth character, who motivates her husband by stoking his paranoia in a way that involves more psychological realism than the original play. Not to mention the transplendant, sing-songy witch, which in turn reminds Wes of Beverly in Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh (played by Alison Steadman): wonderful, trippy, darkly comic, but ultimately indescribable. Erin recently watched Elevator to the Gallows to celebrate the birthday of Jeanne Moreau, and is reading Great Expectations (coming to (sub)Text as soon as Wes has the time to re-read it). But David Lean’s adaptation of the novel disappoints: Alec Guinness looks like a pimp, and a nightmare vaudevillian Miss Havisham looks like she’s on ludes. We humblebrag about two recent positive reviews, and post-game our first ad, wondering whether this was the first time a conversation about a poem was made possible by the selling of drugs. So support us on Patreon, and you’ll be doing your part to keep pills out of poetry and where they belong, in the medicine cabinets of Mike Nichols, Cary Grant, and Miss Havisham.

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