Biopic: A Podcast Story

Episode 41: Harriet, Starring Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman

It’s our first episode in Black History Month, and we’re starting with a bang – the story of one Harriet Tubman. Ms. Tubman is among the historical figures whose life most closely resembles that of a Marvel hero, so her moment was long overdue. But if you have to wait, at least you get the superlative talents, brilliance, and star power of one Cynthia Erivo playing Harriet. 
While witnessing the unfathomable courage of Harriet Tubman, we consider issues like: how long should you wait to get remarried after your wife is presumed dead? Why are you here, Joe Alwyn? What’s the right color coat to wear when you are rescuing your entire family? Can we build an entire movie around the image of Janelle Monae teaching Cynthia Erivo to aim a pistol? 
We have a lot of uncomfortable questions with easy answers since we are living through the trash fire of the year of our Lord 2025: Why did it take so long for Harriet Tubman to get the proper big screen treatment? Why isn’t she on our $20 bills yet? Why isn’t anyone in the Clarke Peters business? 
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Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 40: A Complete Unknown, Starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan!

How DOES it feel to be a total genius? It’s a burden for our dear friend Bob Dylan. A Complete Unknown is a big hit and is nominated for a billionty-five Academy Awards, so we went to the theaters to experience what might be the most sincere, prestige-y portrait of a ridiculously talented douchebag in the history of filmmaking.
Sara and Rena mostly love this, because of America’s high school English teacher Pete Seeger and his sincere embrace of the composting toilet, the brilliant, no-nonsense Joan Baez, the music, and the sensible but elegant direction and writing. However, its Fail/Safe-level “Will he or won’t he go electric at the Newport Folk Festival” tension does elicit some mockery.
Also discussed: How many decades, exactly, have we been in this emotionally abusive relationship with the original negging pickup artist Bob Dylan? Who are the baby boomers and why hasn’t the media done a better job documenting their fascinating history? Could there be a more labored and nonsensical metaphor for Pete Seeger than his “buckets and seesaw” speech? Why doesn’t Toshi Seeger have her own movie? Was calling Bob Dylan “Judas” for plugging in his guitar an under-reaction?
 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 39: Trumbo, Starring Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo!

In honor of Sara’s natal day, we attempt to deconstruct her weird obsession with character actors as we enjoy this delightful film about the blacklist and one of its central heroes, Dalton Trumbo. Absent from the film are twin douchenozzles Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, but present are douchenozzles like real-life blacklisting masturbator Louis CK and a bowdlerized version of nightmare gossip hack Louella Parsons (she was even worse IRL!). 
Do we wrongly credit Kirk Douglas for breaking the blacklist when it should be Frank and Hymie King (ne Kozinsky) of The King Brothers Productions? Is John Wayne the worst? Is there anything more appealing than seeing a functional addict and workaholic have his Christmas ruined by Otto Preminger? Have fun with this far-too-timely movie about moral relativism and choosing between ideals and functioning in society! Happy January 2025, everyone! 
Trumbo was directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara and Bruce Cook, and stars Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo, Diane Lane as Cleo Trumbo, Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson, David James Elliott as John Wayne, Alan Tudyk as Ian McLellan Hunter, Roger Bart as Buddy Ross, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Virgil Brooks, Elle Fanning as Niki Trumbo, John Goodman as Frank King, and Stephen Root as Hymie King.  
Sources: 
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism by Jennifer Frost
Trumbo by Bruce Cook
Blacklisted: Hollywood, the Cold War, and the First Amendment by Larry Dane Brimner
You Must Remember This podcast, season 6, episodes about the blacklist
Behind the Bastards, series on John Wayne 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 38: Marie Antoinette with Special Guest Belle from Silhouettes: A Fashion History Podcast

How gorgeous is Sofia Coppola’s delicious, vibes-filled Marie Antoinette? So gorgeous that we brought on a special guest, Belle, the host of Silhouettes: The Fashion History Podcast, to discuss.
In addition to Belle’s deep expertise around the era, we discuss Kirsten Dunst’s perfection, the meta-level brilliance of Sofia’s cast (who better to play Louis XV than Rip Torn, a madcap actor with a secret family?), how Marie Antoinette created cottage-core, wigs, and the nightmarish ennui of the mid-aughts. Also, what is the appropriate way to correct the reproductive techniques of a king? 
Marie Antoinette was written and directed by Sofia Coppola, and stars Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette, Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI, Rip Torn as Louis XV, Steve Coogan as Ambassador Mercy, Judy Davis as Comtesse de Noailles, Asia Argento as Comtesse du Barry, Rose Byrne as Duchesse de Polignac, Marianne Faithfull as Empress Maria Theresa, Jamie Dornan as Count Axel Fersen, and a blink-and-you-miss-him baby Tom Hardy, who already exudes star power.
 
Sources: 
Silhouettes: A Fashion History Podcast: https://linktr.ee/silhouettespodcast?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=5495ec93-ea02-430a-b1d1-c54895893449 
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser.
Marie-Therese, Child of Terror by Susan Nagel.
Marie Antoinette's Head: The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution by Will Bashor.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 37: Radioactive, Starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie!

How do two astonishing gifted women—director Marjane Sartrapi and actor Rosamund Pike—make a movie together about 2x Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and have it come out this boring? Start by combining masterful visual style with dull, on-the-nose words, and then add weird, apocryphal character quirks (Marie Curie is afraid of hospitals for … reasons) and stick the most interesting elements of the story in the epilogue cards (Marie and Einstein were friends—where’s this movie?).
When Rena and Sara are not postulating theories and formulating equations, they are discussing the merits of child performers with hair darker than the actor they grow into, the hotness of various nuclear scientists on film throughout history, how Marie and Pierre were essentially X Men given their constant exposure to radiation like it was NBD, and the struggle of the meet-cute in the modern age.
Radiation was directed by Marjane Satrapi, and stars Rosemund Pike as Marie Curie, Sam Riley as Pierre Curie, Simon Russell Beale as Professor Lippman, Drew Jacoby as Loie Fuller, and Aneurin Barnard as Paul Langevin.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 36: Spartacus, the Movie that (Debatably) Broke the Blacklist!

We all are Spartacus this week. Sara and Rena watch this astonishing epic that masterfully Trojan-horses a bunch of crazy messages about communism, righteousness, and self-sacrifice in a movie that pretends to be about toxic masculinity and oiled-up, 1950s-fit men gladiating.  
Of course we love this movie: So much Peter Ustinov, so much Stanley Kubrick being forced to work within the rubric of the studio system, so much Dalton Trumbo getting to use his name after HUAC, so much Kirk Douglas with an anachronistic buzzcut that we don’t care about, so much Tony Curtis being the world’s most unskilled slave laborer, so much folklore about Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton hating each other's guts. 
Also: Are crucifixions ineffective? How did Sara ruin her chances to be recruited into the army? How many babies played Spartacus Jr.? How on earth did UK citizen Varinia become a slave in Rome? 
Spartacus was directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Dalton Trumbo, and stars Kirk Douglas as Spartacus, Laurence Olivier as Crassus, Jean Simmons as Varinia, Charles Laughton as Gracchus, Peter Ustinov as Batiatus, John Gavin as Julius Caesar, Woody Strode as Draba, and Tony Curtis as Antonius. 
Sources: Sources used in the episode include…
The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Mike Duncan.
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland.
Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by Brent D. Shaw.
Crassus: The First Tycoon by Peter Stothard.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 35: Bohemian Rhapsody! Happy Holidays, It's Our Most Requested Movie!

People wanted this, so we did it, and one of us is WAY happier about it than the other. Is Bohemian Rhapsody an efficient, joyful look at the life and genius of Freddie Mercury and his fellow geniuses in Queen, or is it a Wikipedia-skimming, nightmarishly-edited, lie-filled romp through fan-service hell? Things we can agree on: Adam Lambert is unconvincing as a truck driver, Bob Geldof’s fame is mystifying, and Mike Myers should not have been allowed in this movie. Things we can’t agree on: the offensiveness of the false teeth worn by our film’s star, Rami Malek, whether Freddie Mercury’s innate decency and Queen’s glorious gifts as a rock outfit are used as a shield against criticism of this film’s flaws, and whether this movie has any value given the liberties it takes with anything resembling reality. 
Other questions, resolved and unresolved: Is Freddie Mercury actually Santa Claus, given that his time-bending ability to visit every Jim Hutton in London on the morning of Life Aid and establish a healthy relationship is similar to Santa’s capacity for visiting a billion households in one night? Could you buy a wild animal at Biba? Which member of the cast of Game of Thrones is a more convincingly crappy John Reid?
Bohemian Rhapsody was “directed” by Bryan Singer and actually directed by Dexter Fletcher, and stars Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin, Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor, Joseph Mazzello as John Deacon, Aidan Gillen as John Reid, Allan Leech as Paul Prenter, and Tom Hollander as Jim Beach.  
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Sources include: 
Somebody to Love
Matt Richards
 
Is This the Real life?: The Untold Story of Queen
Mark Blake
 
Queen: The Ultimate Illustrated History of the Crown Kings of Rock
Phil Sutcliffe
 
https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/bohemian-rhapsody-fact-fiction-freddie-mercury-movie-accuracy.html
 
https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/what-happened-to-paul-prenter-the-bohemian-rhapsody-villain-had-a-more-complex-relationship-with-the-band-irl-13040678
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/movies/rami-malek-bohemian-rhapsody.html
 
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/11/freddie-mercury-true-story-relationships-mary-austin-jim-hutton?srsltid=AfmBOooRbDLOBmoF94EEP8M_dwYsmu-ipnFDN_UUrB4J3Nu-admbHKgw
 
https://www.mirror.co.uk/film/bohemian-rhapsody-brian-wanted-different-13730594
 
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/bohemian-rhapsody-bad-editing-video-essay-watch-1202051342/ 
 
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/10/bryan-singer-bohemian-rhapsody-behavior-report?srsltid=AfmBOorS9ytUWYPmvYNkl4hi6FCVNJtvTasBfzL9FIIvapan8hT9MSiB 
 
Where the Live Aid Money Went:
https://www.spin.com/2015/07/live-aid-the-terrible-truth-ethiopia-bob-geldof-feature/
 
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Episode 34: Maria, with Maria Callas Biographer Sophia Lambton

Maria is nominally about a profoundly gifted opera singer, but seems a bit more about how ponderous and remote character studies never fail to trap the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Two hours of visiting Paris (aka Budapest) as it would look if Jesus raptured the city and left behind only Satan and a few journalists, with some diversions to the shared cinematic universe of fellow sad gal Jackie Kennedy, left us exhausted.
Additionally, our brilliant guest, award-winning Callas biographer Sophia Lambton, points out that roughly four things in the movie are real:
 There was a woman named Maria Callas. 
She had dark hair. 
She was an opera singer.
Toward the end of her life, she resided in Paris, France.
Not going to recommend the movie but please do join us for another episode filled with characters’ codependent hijinks, adorable pets, and agonizing lip synching.
Sophia Lambton is the author of The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography, available at https://www.amazon.com/Callas-Imprint-Centennial-Biography-ebook/dp/B0BRYPL5WN
Her Substack is: https://sophialambton.substack.com/
You can find her on social media at:
https://www.instagram.com/thecrepuscularpress/
https://www.tiktok.com/@thecrepuscularpress
https://www.facebook.com/thecrepuscularpress
 
Maria is directed by Pablo Larrain and stars Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, Pierfrancesco Favino as Ferrucio, Alba Rohrwacher as Bruna, Haluk Bilginer as Aristotle Onassis, Stephen Ashfield as Jeffrey Tate, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Mandrax, Valeria Golino as Yakinthi Callas, and Caspar Phillipson as JFK.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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