Episode 11: Evita

Rena and Sara confront the ghosts of their theater-kid selves while exploring the Madonna-starring Evita, the film version of hopelessly middlebrow composer Andrew Lloyd Webbers’s musical. Come for Sara’s appreciation of director Alan Parker’s oeuvre and Rena’s impassioned take-down of the least convincing pair of brown contact lenses ever used, stay to ponder “How much Madonna is too much Madonna?” and the impenetrable four-dimensional horseshoe of Argentine politics in particular and South American politics in general, and to think about the more interesting and macabre tale of Eva Peron’s corpse, which has had both a biopic and a prestige series of its very own.

Evita stars Madonna as Eva Peron, Antonio Banderas as Che Everyman-Possibly-Guevara, and Jonathan Pryce as Eva’s husband, the Nazi-harboring dictator Juan Peron, and future In The Heights abuela Olga Meridiz as one of Evita’s sisters. It was directed by Alan Parker from the concept album-turned musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and adapted to screenplay by Parker and repeat biopic offender Oliver Stone.

Featuring over 80 amazing wardrobe changes, a star ego trip by Madonna that excludes all other solo female voices, some exemplary production values, objectification of baby Antonio Banderas, the pre-Guiliani squeegee men who ruined pre-teen Rena’s birthday trip to see Miss Saigon, numerous tanks of embalming fluid, and some imaginary Mossad agents not hunting for Madonna’s missing Best Actress Oscar nomination.

 

Sources:

Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Evita Peron by John Barnes (Author)

Evita: the life of Eva Peron by Jill Hedges

 

A bunch of podcasts and articles that we found on the internet, including:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18616380

 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

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