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Carrie Fisher: Forever princess, space grandma, and hutt slayer. Sisters Claire Fisher and Katie Marinello watch and read everything she did through her short life and storied career.
Carried Far Far Away Episode 2: Et Tu, Shampoo?
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Katie Marinello: [00:00:00] Welcome to Carried Far, Far Away, a podcast project where we are going to watch and read everything that Carrie Fisher did during her short life and story career. My name is Katie Marinello.
Claire Fisher: And I'm Claire Fisher.
Katie Marinello: and today we are starting with her very first on screen debut. Shampoo, something that was recently called by both of us, definitely a movie.
Claire Fisher: Definitely a movie. In fact, the third highest grossing movie of 1975.
Katie Marinello: Amazing to me. Truly.
Claire Fisher: two movies, the two that beat it are much better remembered today. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's not like as popular as it once was, but
Katie Marinello: No, but it's known. Everybody knows it. Jaws.
Claire Fisher: I mean, Jaws literally.
Claire Fisher: Changed the whole movie industry, invented the concept of simultaneous release, and summer blockbusters. Mom wore the tights, right? With the sharks on them. I don't know anybody our age who'd even heard of Shampoo, unless they are Carrie Fisher [00:01:00] diehards. So this was an interesting dive for
Katie Marinello: Yes, indeed. I know. I finished the movie going, huh, well, I guess that was her first one and it must not have been very popular. And then I read about it and I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
Claire Fisher: This was a hit. This was a serious bona
Katie Marinello: It won an Academy Award.
Claire Fisher: Best supporting actress for Lee Grant, yes. I
Katie Marinello: I, okay, well, if they're ever, if we ever think, oh, the Oscars are so lame these days, no, no, they were never that great.
Claire Fisher: mean, we're gonna get into it, but I think that this really suited the mood of the times. It just hasn't
Katie Marinello: That's what I'm learning as well from my reading, but go ahead.
Claire Fisher: No, go ahead you take us on some of the background of what this movie is and how it got made.
Katie Marinello: Sure. Yeah. So this movie was written by Warren Beatty, who is also the star of the movie and his writing partner
Katie Marinello: Robert Towne. [00:02:00] Allegedly, he actually asked Robert Towne to write it, and then didn't like what he came up with, so then he wrote his own version, and then they decided they were better together, so this is what they came up with. Am I, am I, am I making it clear how I felt about this movie yet? The taglines, did you see these?
Claire Fisher: no, I didn't see these.
Katie Marinello: The taglines were your hairdresser does it better and in a town where anything goes, everything does in this funny bedroom farce, which in my opinion, if you have to say it's a funny bedroom farce.
Claire Fisher: bedroom farce is a phrase we could apply.
Katie Marinello: Yeah, that's a thing that happened. So tell me, what was going on in 1975? Neither of us was here, so
Claire Fisher: This movie was released March 13th, 1975, and if you know the game where instead of your horoscope, you define your personality by [00:03:00] the tagline of the movie that was number one the week you were born, I just want to say, Your hairdresser does it better, is a great horoscope. So if you were born March 13th of 1975, you could have that one.
Katie Marinello: Or, your life is a bunny bedroom farce, which, good for you.
Claire Fisher: All right, but it takes place on November 4th, 5th, and 6th of 1968. That's significant because it's actually, despite appearing to be a funny bedroom farce, it's actually about politics. There is some significant subtext there. In the film, you see archival footage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew that the characters see on a TV screen, because it's election night of 1968, but by March of 1975, both of those men had resigned in disgrace for unrelated reasons, actually, two separate scandals.
Claire Fisher: So, the people watching this in 1975 knew it was a period piece, but it was very recent [00:04:00] events that were still raw in people's minds, right? Now, if you look up what else was happening in March of 1975, Wikipedia first offers you a picture of the Shah of Iran. So that gives you an idea of how long ago this was.
Katie Marinello: Okay.
Claire Fisher: However, five days before this movie was released, the United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace was celebrated for the first time. It has since evolved into an annual International Women's Day. The day before this movie came out, the U.
Claire Fisher: S. held its seventh and last draft lottery for its conscription of 18 year old men into military service, but then they never actually drafted any of the people whose numbers came up in that lottery because the Vietnam War was over and, in fact, Saigon would fall just a few months later. And also in March of 1975, this I thought was interesting.
Claire Fisher: Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich of the U. S. Air Force became the first U. S. serviceman to challenge the ban on gay people in the military by outing himself [00:05:00] to his superiors.
Katie Marinello: Wow, he was only off by like, 30 years.
Claire Fisher: Well, they lifted the ban on homosexuals serving the military in 94, but they switched it out for Don't Ask, Don't Tell. So he was off by between 19 and
Katie Marinello: Was that 2000 2009? 2011 Oh my god.
Claire Fisher: When officially you could serve openly. So he was off by between 19 and 36 years. But we always respect the people who came before.
Claire Fisher: So it goes to show that in this milieu, things were happening with women's rights, things were happening with rights for gay people, that inform this funny bedroom farce about the hairdresser who's surprise, surprise, not gay.
Katie Marinello: Yep.
Claire Fisher: an important part of the plot. Another thing I want to note about the times is that this was the brief period between the invention of the pill and the discovery of HIV AIDS where funny bedroom farces did not have this undercurrent of danger, right that [00:06:00] they would have had in an earlier or a later era.
Claire Fisher: So.
Katie Marinello: Well, some undercurrent of danger, but mostly from husbands with dangerous friends.
Claire Fisher: Yes outraged husbands, more of a threat than either STDs or paternity suits at
Katie Marinello: Right.
Claire Fisher: for this brief window of time. It's set in 1968, it was made in 1975, even within a few years after that, it would no longer be quite as possible to make this movie.
Claire Fisher: At least not with the same tone it has.
Claire Fisher: Now do you want to take us through a little more background on the other actors who are not Carrie Fisher who were in
Katie Marinello: who are not Carrie Fisher. All
Claire Fisher: It is quite a cast.
Katie Marinello: Quite a cast. Yeah. So most importantly is obviously Warren Beatty who is the star and the writer, and I guess the reason this movie exists. Yeah. Producer
Claire Fisher: also was such a famous fuckboy in the 70s that folks are still talking about it,
Katie Marinello: so Warren Beatty is legendary for having [00:07:00] been prolific in his sexual encounters. He's linked with over a hundred women before his 1992 marriage. So he's actually only been married one time, which shocked me.
Katie Marinello: Looking at the director of this movie Hal Ashby, he was married like six times for like a year. Each Warren Beatty. He really waited. All right. And his wife is Annette Bening, who is like 20 years younger than him. So, you know, he had to sleep with all those women while he was waiting for his wife to be born
Claire Fisher: Yeah, and come of
Katie Marinello: and come of age.
Katie Marinello: Exactly. Well, come of age, he slept with Cher when she was 16. So.
Claire Fisher: Well, it is noted that he propositioned Carrie Fisher during the production of this movie, even though he was still with Julie Christie and also having an affair with Goldie Hawn
Katie Marinello: Yes,
Claire Fisher: And she was only 17 when they filmed, and he was 38.
Katie Marinello: So the main character George is based off of Warren Beatty himself and in fact all of the women that he sleeps with over the course of this movie are played by actresses [00:08:00] that he had some dalliance with at some point which definitely would have in the pop culture of that time \ been part of the appeal, right.
Katie Marinello: To kind of see this, like him playing kind of an outsized version of himself with these women who actually had at some point, had a thing with him. I guess it would be like Pete Davidson doing a movie with like Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande and insert other person who Pete Davidson has inexplicably fucked.
Claire Fisher: Okay, so we're off to a great start here
Katie Marinello: but let me finish. There were two other inspirations for the main character. And one of them was Jay Sabering, who was. Famously murdered with Sharon Tate. So he's one of the other three people who was in the house with her when they were murdered by the Manson family.
Katie Marinello: His innovations included shampooing men's hair before styling it, which apparently was not a thing prior to his opening his own salon in LA. [00:09:00] And he also used hairspray on men, which was like unheard of at the time. And among
Katie Marinello: The
Claire Fisher: 60s were a different
Katie Marinello: different time he was flown to Las Vegas every three weeks to cut the hair of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis.
Katie Marinello: Kirk Douglas made him the hairstylist on Spartacus. He also designed The Doors, Jim Morrison's free flowing style, kind of one of the most famous haircuts. Probably in music. And then the other guy was Jean Shekov. He, he was basically like the first celebrity hairdresser.
Katie Marinello: His obituary in the LA times literally says the Beverly Hills stylist who helped invent the celebrity hairdresser and was the inspiration for the movie Shampoo died Wednesday of a thoracic aneurysm. He was 72. He had spent nearly every weekend for 30 years at the Playboy mansion. Hugh Hefner held his repast.
Katie Marinello: So that gives you an idea of where we are in terms [00:10:00] of pop culture icons.
Claire Fisher: Okay how about the other people who are in the
Katie Marinello: Other people who are in the movie.
Katie Marinello: Tell me about Goldie Hawn.
Claire Fisher: co starring in this movie with the very young Carrie Fisher and the very excitable, Warren Beatty, were Goldie Hawn as Jill. Julie Christie as Jackie, Jack Warden as Lester, Lee Grant as Felicia, she's the one who won the Oscar, and Tony Bill as Johnny. People who have listened to this podcast network before have heard Goldie Hawn mentioned, because she is the long term partner of Kurt Russell, who's Interestingly, she did already know Kurt Russell at this point, but she had met him when he was 17.
Claire Fisher: So, Warren Beatty was waiting for Annette Bening to be born, she was waiting for Kurt Russell to come of age.
Katie Marinello: How old was she?
Claire Fisher: When she met Kurt Russell, she was 21 and he was 17.
Katie Marinello: Okay. Not that bad.
Claire Fisher: No, no, no. And then when they met [00:11:00] again, in the 80s and made Swing Shift together, then, they fell in love.
Katie Marinello: Oh, very sweet. I did note actually, speaking of future love affairs, that the music was written by Paul Simon, who eventually we know, married Carrie Fisher. I don't know if
Claire Fisher: divorce her and get back with her and break up with her. They had an on and off again. Yeah.
Katie Marinello: And so I, I doubt that this is where they met, but I thought that was an interesting connection. Cause I don't think that the composer would be on set and she was barely on set, let's be honest.
Claire Fisher: Julie Christie, she's famous for a number of things. The thing I recognized her from was Don't Look Now, a horror movie she made with Donald Sutherland set in Venice. Very atmospheric. The 70s were a mood. In addition to all of these other lovely people, there's one of the women at the Republican Donors Party they're at.
Claire Fisher: I recognized she is Joan [00:12:00] Mitchell, whom I know from a Star Trek episode, Court Martial. And this was her last film appearance. So, you know, first one for Carrie, last one for Joan. Hey,
Katie Marinello: Good for you. I couldn't even recognize the female leads when they were in the next scene. As far as I could tell, they all look the same. Especially after he makes one of them look exactly like the other one.
Claire Fisher: good point, good point. And he even, he even says that Lorna looks exactly like her mother. That's a plot point as well. I love that.
Katie Marinello: and then she gets really mad about it. Yes. So, okay.
Claire Fisher: like my mother! Alright,
Katie Marinello: So let's yeah, maybe we should talk a little bit about the plot before we.
Claire Fisher: you want to hear a 54 second plot summary? Alright, let's see if I can do this. George the hairdresser is dating Jill, but also sleeping with Felicia, whose husband Lester is keeping a mistress, Jackie, who happens to be George's ex. On election day of 1968, George is trying to get Lester to lend him money to open his own salon and ends up being coerced into being Jackie's date to a Republican donor's [00:13:00] party, which Jill also crashes with her backdoor man, Johnny Pope, from whom she's trying to get an acting job.
Claire Fisher: Along the way, George also sleeps with Lester and Felicia's daughter, Lorna. After Jackie makes a scene at the donor's party and a fire alarm goes off, George, Jackie, Jill, Johnny, and Lester all end up at a separate party, which is kind of a hippie orgy party. And Lester, who assumes George is gay and Johnny is George's boyfriend, doesn't realize George is banging all these women until Lester, Jill, and Johnny walk in on George and Jackie at the same time.
Claire Fisher: And by the next day, everyone has broken up except for Jackie and Lester, George comes to a realization that he's a fuck up who's missed his chance at happiness, and the audience realizes that all these self absorbed people let the country sleepwalk into the Nixon years. I'm sorry, that was 59 seconds. I better try again.
Katie Marinello: No, no, no, no, no. That was fine. That was 59. We will give you 59. Yeah. So that last part that you said about sleepwalking into the Nixon years, I did not really get that at all. Probably because I [00:14:00] forgot. Who won in 1968 and was trying to go in blind to the movie, but I did text you at the time, like, Oh my gosh, I didn't even realize this was a political movie.
Katie Marinello: It's takes place on election day or election night or election eve, I guess.
Claire Fisher: it takes place between election eve and the morning after the election.
Katie Marinello: Okay. Nobody is shown voting at any point during this film. So,
Claire Fisher: no. I believe it was Warren Beatty or may have been Robert Towne who said the juxtaposition between the Republican donors party and the hippie orgy is supposed to be that like the people who care to vote don't care what happens to the country and the people who should care what happens as a country don't care to vote. Everyone at the Republican Party is obviously older very conservative, only care about their bottom line financially to the point that, you know, Lester is refusing to leave his wife because he doesn't want an investigation into his finances to reveal what he does with his client's money. So, like, they're all too self absorbed.
Claire Fisher: to care about the fact that Nixon will be terrible for the [00:15:00] country. The people at the hippie party just don't care about politics at all, they don't even vote, and yet they're the ones who will be, they'll be the poor ones who get screwed, right? So the subtext here as we watch George running for back and forth across these parties in pursuit of various women.
Claire Fisher: The subtext is supposed to be that these people are all way too self absorbed to understand what's good for
Katie Marinello: Yes. And absolutely none of that comes across.
Claire Fisher: got it. I got it.
Katie Marinello: I mean, listen, the TV is on the entire movie, right? It's on in the background, the entire movie. Nobody really seems to watch it. Nobody really seems to notice it, but it's there. And obviously they make a point of saying it's election eve. So like, yes, that came through, but majority of the quote unquote plot points and the majority of the dialogue is very much.
Katie Marinello: About these little people with their little lives, right?
Claire Fisher: So
Claire Fisher: this was a [00:16:00] very 1975 style of movie, a way to tell this story, and made today it would probably fall into the subgenre called like mumblecore, where it's just a group of people talking the whole time, and of course, made today, it would be full of weaponized therapy speak, I mean, oh my god, they'd be talking about George's unresolved trauma, or his sex addiction, or his, you know, how he's gaslighting the women, no, no, no, in the 70s, it was just that he was the kind of guy who didn't know what was good for him.
Claire Fisher: He and everyone in the movie is completely blind to what would actually make them happy. And are pursuing these shallow relationships rather than trying to find any kind of meaning in life .
Katie Marinello: It's, I find, I find the women interesting because none of them are faithful to him, but they all seem to think he's faithful to them, but do they really think he's faithful to them? You know, like, is this an arrangement or is this. Is he really being a philanderer like, to me, it kind of seems [00:17:00] like that is who he is and they should kind of know that because they're sitting in his salon.
Katie Marinello: And if he's sleeping with you, because you were in his salon, you know?
Claire Fisher: are certain moments where you know some of the women know, like Felicia, I mean they're introduced, he's in bed with Felicia and he takes calls from two other women.
Katie Marinello: Oh
Claire Fisher: then he leaves Felicia in bed at his apartment and goes to Jill's apartment, right? So Felicia should know, she, he took two calls while he was in bed with you, right?
Claire Fisher: You know, Felicia should know there are other women. And later, Felicia knows, When she comes home and he's in her daughter's bathroom, she knows he's just slept with her daughter, and then she insists on sleeping with him with the door open. So that's obviously, there's an element, for Felicia at least, of competition with her daughter, and probably an element of competition for the daughter as well, because Lorna makes a point of asking if he's sleeping with her mother, or if he's gay, and he continues to dodge the question, then, you know, he tries to tell her she looks like her mother, she insists she's nothing like her mother, and then
Katie Marinello: like, [00:18:00] let's slow down. Let's talk about that scene because that is the scene, right? So we don't see Carrie until.
Claire Fisher: Almost halfway through the whole movie, yeah.
Katie Marinello: time I was like, huh, did I miss her? Like, I knew this was her debut. I knew she was young. It was like, maybe I didn't recognize her, but it's pretty clear when she does come on the scene.
Katie Marinello: Right.
Claire Fisher: the, the setup is that, George is supposed to do Felicia's hair for the party. To which he's bringing Jackie, who is Felicia's husband's mistress. So, he's just done Jackie's hair. In fact, he tried to do Jackie, as long as he was over at Jackie's place, but Lester walked in, right?
Katie Marinello: Yeah. He was there, you know,
Claire Fisher: now he's come over to, you know, Felicia's house, which is also Lester's house.
Claire Fisher: He was just at Lester Jackie's house. Now
Claire Fisher: he's come to do Felicia's hair, but she had to go out to get her dress. So her
Katie Marinello: She tells the maid that he needs to wait. And then suddenly it's his daughter who's telling,
Claire Fisher: maid says, but I have to run out and get the flowers. [00:19:00] So then when he gets there, her daughter Lorna, who's playing tennis in the backyard, is the one who lets him in and tells him you have to wait for my mother. And then they have a very weird exchange. Like she and
Katie Marinello: like if a 17 year old, or I don't know how old she's supposed to be in this movie, but if this woman started talking to you like this, how, like, why would you engage with it? You know, like, I don't think teenagers talk like this, but yeah, she basically goes up to him and says, are you sleeping with my mother?
Katie Marinello: Are you making it with my mother? Or have you made it with my mother and all this stuff. And then there's, he dodges that question and then there's a very politically incorrect exchange.
Claire Fisher: They use language that is no longer popular, but she's trying to ask, are you gay? But she's also saying, are you gay? Do you want an apple? Are you making it with my mother? Right. So like, she's got kind
Katie Marinello: of,
Katie Marinello: feeding him the whole time.
Claire Fisher: she's feeding him like appetizers, like either lox apple cheese. And have you ever made it with a guy?
Claire Fisher: [00:20:00] And of course he's deflecting all of these questions. He says, have you ever made it with a girl? And then She gets insulted because he says, I think you have your mother's eyes.
Katie Marinello: She does not want to be anything like her mother. Now, later he says that she hates her mother. I feel like she's a teenager, you know, whatever.
Claire Fisher: But I think that the reason she's demanding to know if he sleeps with her mother and then immediately says to him, wanna fuck, is because she does have this element of competition with her mother. Right?
Katie Marinello: right. I mean, that's mothers and daughters through time, right?
Claire Fisher: Keeping in mind that this scene was written by Warren Beatty, who probably has a pretty cynical view of women
Katie Marinello: right.
Claire Fisher: after dating a hundred different women
Katie Marinello: So actually I found it really interesting. His his mentor said, Elia Kazan, the director of his first role. He said that Beatty was bright as they come intrepid. And with that thing, all women secretly respect complete confidence in his sexual powers, [00:21:00] confidence so great that he never had to advertise himself even by hints.
Katie Marinello: So
Claire Fisher: This movie is an advertisement.
Katie Marinello: it's yes, but it's also like a reflection of what people already knew, right? By 1975, he'd already been with all, all the women in this film. But I wonder, if I didn't know it was Warren Beatty, I'd be like, this is a guy who's never spoken to a woman in his life, right? Because of the way the women speak in this movie.
Katie Marinello: But it seems like maybe this was what his life was like, or because it seems like, from that quote, I get that he wasn't like, a Weinstein, or even like a, you know, like somebody who was like, always a little lecherous, always a little like, dropping hints, or like, always hitting on his female co stars, but they seem to always fall in love with him anyways, so.
Claire Fisher: was never Warren Beatty's reputation. He wasn't known to be a creep. He was known to be a Casanova. Right.
Katie Marinello: right. So women are falling over him and in this [00:22:00] George for no discernible reason, like, I don't really see George as like smooth talking. He says the same thing over and over again. You're you're great. Believe me, you're great. And even when his girlfriend. Pushes him on it. Well, why am I great?
Katie Marinello: Right? What is it about me? That's great. And he's like, I don't know. You're just great. You're like, he doesn't have anything below that, right? Anything to back up his sexual prowess. I don't know if that's true of Warren Beatty, but certainly this character, there's not, there's nothing to him, which apparently makes him very interesting.
Claire Fisher: Apparently it's very loosely based on play from the 1670s. Did you read this part
Katie Marinello: Oh, tell
Claire Fisher: Okay. There's a a play called The Country Wife where the protagonist feigns impotence so that he'll be allowed in the company of married women.
Katie Marinello: Okay.
Claire Fisher: This is playing on that with the fact that people assume a male hairdresser
Katie Marinello: Is gay.
Claire Fisher: And so he's, George is the [00:23:00] safe guy, right? He even says, he and Lester have a pretty revealing conversation towards the end of the movie, after Lester has found out that George is sleeping with Lester's wife, Lester's girlfriend, and Lester's daughter. Where George says, like, do you ever actually listen to women, like George asks Lester that, and he says, I listen to women all day long.
Claire Fisher: I'm a hairdresser, right? And he says, all they do is complain about men and they hate us because we're always trying to screw them and they like it. They don't like it, but they like it, right? And so I, I do think that's interesting because, you know, nowadays the way to express it is heterosexual women are dating their main predator.
Claire Fisher: Well, George is the one who listens, right, and so he's getting a lot of attention from women who see him as a safe option
Katie Marinello: I liked that line, but I didn't feel like it was backed up by anything we'd seen over the course of the movie. Does he really listen to women? You know, like we don't, we see him actually do hair [00:24:00] for approximately 35 seconds of this entire movie. It's like shorter than the Clone Wars speech.
Katie Marinello: And, and when he is in the salon, it seems like he never gets through a single head of hair because somebody's always interrupting him trying to sleep with him. So
Katie Marinello: I appreciated the line, but I just was like, I don't feel like it was necessarily earned.
Claire Fisher: We see him try to be the smooth talker, and he doesn't always pull
Katie Marinello: No, he's not very good at it.
Claire Fisher: most infamous for me, when Jill walks in on him and Jackie, he says, Oh baby, where have you been? We've been looking everywhere while he's still inside the woman, cheating on her with, like he hasn't gotten up or pulled up his pants yet,
Katie Marinello: No, and he tries to like play it off, right? Yeah, it's, yeah.
Claire Fisher: And he also is telling Jill, like, I want us to have a normal life, I want to be able to, you know, support you and have a,
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Well, we haven't even gotten to the financial part of it, which is that he's trying to open his own salon and trying to go to the bank or he already went to [00:25:00] the bank or he's going back to the, it's very,
Claire Fisher: Yeah, so this is where I put this under, in my notes I put this under even more of a period piece than it was trying to be. Because it, although it was set seven years before it came out, it has things in it that now are completely unfathomable. For example, credit scores don't exist.
Claire Fisher: So the thing with him going to the bank is that the bank asked for references, and the only references he has are women whose hair he does, and women can't get credit. Because that's not legal till 1974. So, since all his references are women, he can't qualify for a loan.
Katie Marinello: Okay.
Claire Fisher: So, there's interesting things happening with gender when this movie comes out.
Claire Fisher: Like, that's one. He can't get a loan, because you can't get a loan if your references are women. Which is why Felicia says, well, why don't you ask my husband, Lester, for help. Also worth noting, you know, the conflict with Jackie, who is that Jackie is Lester's mistress in the old fashioned [00:26:00] sense.
Claire Fisher: She is a kept woman. She's living in a house where he pays the rent. She tells Jill that she left George because it's nice to wake up in the morning knowing your rent is paid. Nowadays, although there are obviously still , such things as side chicks, the concept of a kept woman is out, right?
Katie Marinello: guess I think that's still done. I mean, We just talked about Hugh Hefner and that was his whole thing was that these
Claire Fisher: yeah, but Hugh Hefner was sort of a throwback, you know?
Katie Marinello: yes, but until about 10 years before he died was, I mean, women moved in there because it was a place to live and.
Katie Marinello: It's not that they didn't care for him, but they saw it as a business transaction.
Claire Fisher: Still knowing that at this point, you know, in 1968 when the movie is set, these women couldn't have credit cards in their own name, they didn't qualify for mortgages in their own name,
Katie Marinello: working because working has become a thing for women, but they're not able to be financially independent necessarily.
Claire Fisher: nor sexually independent since Jill ends up [00:27:00] bringing Johnny in the movie. Home with her because Johnny's going to hire her for a job. Right. And when George finds out about it, what he says is, Oh, well, did you get a job out of it at least? Right. So he's obviously has some awareness that that's how this works. And Jackie's job is that Lester is keeping her. So her job is to take care of Lester. And when Lester refers to her as a whore, George says, well, no, you could call everybody a whore. She really likes you. It's not just for the rent. So, you know, this whole, like, the, the gender dynamics here with this undercurrent of needing the money, and even eventually when, in the scene where Felicia breaks up with her husband, she says, I hope you really love Jackie because she's going to be very expensive.
Claire Fisher: The idea of divorce as a way to financially punish a cheating husband, you know, was, that's what a divorce was in the
Katie Marinello: And that is still something that you hear from men today, which is interesting because obviously statistically. Women who get divorced end up [00:28:00] in poverty more often than men who get divorced. And, you know, this whole, oh, she's just after my money. My brother in Christ, none of us has money.
Katie Marinello: It's, it's 2024.
Claire Fisher: Well, that's why I say kept women are kind of out. I mean, even
Katie Marinello: Because nobody can afford one house. Sorry,
Claire Fisher: to keep a wife. Everybody's wife works. So there's no way you have a wife and a mistress.
Katie Marinello: Want me to pay rent and a mortgage? No, no,
Claire Fisher: no, no, no, no, no. This is no longer done. Right. But until women could have credit in their own names, that very much was a thing.
Claire Fisher: You needed a man in your life, whether it was a marriage or just an arrangement, right. to Provide some of that stability and and in this movie even like Jill has her own apartment where she's presumably paying the rent using her acting career, but Still kind of wants George to step up and be the provider because that was the expectation,
Katie Marinello: Right. How did it go at the bank? You still haven't told me how it went at the bank. How did it go at the bank? Yeah. Yeah.
Claire Fisher: then even at the very end when [00:29:00] George has a revelation believe it or not there's some character growth of this film. We're making this sound very You Very sad, right?
Katie Marinello: of development. Yes.
Claire Fisher: says, I can't imagine being with Jill when I'm 50. And I can't imagine not being with you. You being Jackie. Then he does try to go back to Jill. So it's not clear how
Katie Marinello: Very confusing. Very confusing. Yes.
Claire Fisher: There's an excellent juxtaposition of him running through the hippie orgy twice across a dance floor with strobe light. First because Jill just caught him with Jackie and he's trying to catch up to Jill, then because he realizes Jill's already left with Johnny and he wants to get back to Jackie in case there's still a chance to salvage that relationship.
Katie Marinello: Right.
Claire Fisher: But notwithstanding cockamamie way to decide you're ready to grow up, the next day he proposes marriage to Jackie. He goes to her house
Katie Marinello: Sorry. He chases her out the door.
Claire Fisher: She runs away from him, gets in the car and drives away. He hops on his [00:30:00] motorcycle and chases her till he has cornered
Katie Marinello: Yes. The most romantic of proposals is when you've had a low speed chase.
Claire Fisher: But when he corners her, his pitch to her is, I know I'm a fuck up, but I'll take care of you.
Claire Fisher: I'll make you happy. I swear I will. And she says it's too late because she's already accepted Lester's proposal. Because since Felicia left Lester last night, Lester's now decided to re marry Jackie. That's what she says, right?
Katie Marinello: Which is interesting to me because they're still going to have to do a deep dive of his finances. So listen, I understand that Felicia left him, but it was no fault divorce the thing yet.
Claire Fisher: No, so the implication is she would sue him for a divorce on the grounds that he was sleeping with Jackie. But California was already a community property state, so she would get half of everything, which is why they would have to look into his business accounts and figure out what his business was worth, which is why they could uncover secrets about his client.
Claire Fisher: Anyway, it's a,
Katie Marinello: that he could [00:31:00] probably drag it out for a very long time because it's not like she had any, Real power at that point,
Claire Fisher: And it's also unclear how serious Lester is about marrying Jackie, because before he At some point between catching Jackie sleeping with George at the party and proposing marriage to Jackie, he went to George's house with two goons ready to beat George up. And that's when they had the whole conversation about, oh, she's just a whore.
Claire Fisher: So, like, then he apparently left there and went and proposed marriage to her.
Katie Marinello: Yeah
Claire Fisher: George left there, went to work, then after work went to propose marriage to Jackie. Jackie's had a very busy day.
Katie Marinello: No wonder she won an Oscar for this.
Claire Fisher: No, no, no. Felicia won the
Katie Marinello: Oh Jesus. Literally I could, you can put these women in a lineup. I would have no idea which one was, which I think I would probably get Jill because she was like kind of younger and blonde,
Claire Fisher: And she's Goldie Hawn, so you'd recognize her.
Katie Marinello: honestly, I wouldn't, [00:32:00] wouldn't have been able to tell you that. She, now that I think about it, she does look Kate Hudson like, doesn't she?
Claire Fisher: Yeah, well, like mother like
Katie Marinello: Exactly.
Claire Fisher: So anyway, this is a movie that's kind of about politics, kind of about gender, kind of about money, and kind of just about a hairdresser who's also an absolute fuckboy.
Katie Marinello: I feel like our conversation makes it sound much more interesting than it actually was, though. Not a
Katie Marinello: Have I not made that clear?
Claire Fisher: thought it was interesting. I thought it was a snapshot of a time.
Katie Marinello: Interesting. Okay, so as I was reading more into it, I Definitely started to see it differently. I don't know how I would have felt if I had read the reviews first, and I don't know if maybe moving forward, that's something that I should do.
Claire Fisher: I'm still stuck on the part where Warren Beatty has been romantically linked to a hundred different women.
Katie Marinello: evidently. Yeah. Oh, actually
Claire Fisher: even know a hundred [00:33:00] people?
Katie Marinello: there's a great, list in. Okay. Actually, this is great. Let me read you this. And we, I put this. In a different part of the episode,
Claire Fisher: Yeah,
Katie Marinello: An entertainment weekly article from 1991, August 2nd, 1991,
Claire Fisher: was that just after he announced his engagement to Annette
Katie Marinello: not even engagement, pregnancy,
Claire Fisher: Okay,
Katie Marinello: right? So little in Hollywood has touched off more rumors or denials than the news that Warren Beatty, 54 would finally attempt parenthood courtesy of mom to be Annette Bening, 33. Did Warren want the baby? Beatty, his lawyer, and his sister, Shirley McLean, say yes. Would Julia Roberts replace the bulging Benning as Catwoman in the new Batman?
Katie Marinello: Michelle Pfeiffer eventually got the role. For three decades, Beatty made fooling around an art form. And the news that he's passing into papa land made the earth move in California. And so then they take his most famous girlfriends and they rate them on the basis of its heat, hype, and [00:34:00] headlines.
Katie Marinello: Do you want to know who got an A
Claire Fisher: tell meAnnette
Katie Marinello: Benning. Do you want to know who got an A?
Claire Fisher: tell me.
Katie Marinello: Joan Collins and Michelle Phillips. Because she left Jack Nicholson for Beatty. And then by her own admission, spent years in therapy getting over Beatty. And then there was one
Claire Fisher: guy?
Katie Marinello: I know! That's what I'm saying!
Claire Fisher: What does he do?
Katie Marinello: Cher slept with him in 1962, a pre Sunnyfling when she was still unknown.
Katie Marinello: I was only 16, she said later. Maybe I can get out of it with that. She also said that he's been with everyone she knows.
Claire Fisher: Who is this guy?
Katie Marinello: Madonna, got a B she said, if you have to give Warren Beatty safe sex lessons then what is the world coming to?
Claire Fisher: Well, like I said, the brief period between the invention of the pill, before the discovery of HIV AIDS, this was seen as a personal foible, not dangerous irresponsibility.
Katie Marinello: Oh, Mamie Van Duren got [00:35:00] the unusual distinction of making headlines by claiming that she didn't sleep with him, but she did say that they'd romanced and he was a wet kisser. That got a D plus from EW. So yeah, a hundred women.
Claire Fisher: Read an interview with Warren Beatty in Entertainment Weekly some 20 years after that, in which he defended himself against the accusation that he was a playboy by saying, well, but I've been with Annette for so long.
Katie Marinello: And, and I do have to say that that is Not inaccurate, right? Like of the people that we just mentioned, how many of them stayed married to one person?
Claire Fisher: Right, he is someone who eventually chose monogamy after a whole lot of sleeping around. Which does actually mirror what the guy in the movie is trying to do. George keeps saying he wants to settle down with Jackie, or maybe Jill. But, so, like, I mean, perhaps Warren Beatty this was 16 years before he got together with Annette Billing.[00:36:00]
Claire Fisher: Perhaps he was already trying to process something about, you know, himself. When he wrote that arc for George the Hairdresser.
Katie Marinello: It is worth mentioning that Annette Bening denied that they were involved until she got pregnant.
Claire Fisher: Why? Like, to whom did she have to deny it?
Katie Marinello: Well, they were working together on a movie. And so there were all these rumors because there's always rumors about him. And she said, Oh, we're just working together. And EW says some people have different definitions of work.
Claire Fisher: It does seem to be that Warren Beatty liked to have a fling with his co stars.
Katie Marinello: hmm.
Claire Fisher: It does seem that he was not overly particular about things like the age of consent in California.
Katie Marinello: Or whether he or anyone else was involved with somebody else
Claire Fisher: Not a one woman kind of guy until he got together with Annette Bening. Apparently he just needed the love of a good woman who was much, much younger
Katie Marinello: much, much younger than him. Yeah. Yeah, he is 87, now
Claire Fisher: and kicking. And how many kids with Annette [00:37:00] Bening? I think it's two. Four?
Katie Marinello: yeah, for, yeah. So he wanted that baby and they kept having babies.
Claire Fisher: Yeah.
Katie Marinello: So anyway, as we're recording this, it is October 16th. So let's talk about what it's like to watch this movie about election day.
Katie Marinello: 1968,
Katie Marinello: 18 days out from election day. , I got a mail in ballot. So I turned mine in actually the same day that I watched this movie. So, and I was writing, get out the vote letters while I was watching it, which might be why I didn't understand who any of the female co stars were. But yeah. So how did that strike you?
Claire Fisher: well, the seventies were a mood,
Claire Fisher: the sixties were a mood. Are people active in this election cycle who have. argued we should return to something similar to the system that we see portrayed in this [00:38:00] movie, where there should not be no fault divorce, where women should be financially dependent on men, where there should not be protections for employment for people who are LGBTQ or, you know, anything like that.
Claire Fisher: And, as a woman, I've had the occasion to reflect on how very much I don't want to live at the mercy of men. This is a movie where the women have agency, but are Ultimately looking for the men to be providers, be protectors, which now we hear a lot of like conversation, in the world now, rhetoric about how well women kind of want men to go back to that role, but this is a snapshot of how not every man's going to be good at that role and it's a mistake to say that every man needs to.
Katie Marinello: I agree. I also, so this one review I read said that they basically [00:39:00] sleepwalk into the Nixon era, right? Because they're so, like you said earlier, so caught up in their petty little differences and sexual dalliances and all this stuff. And we talked last episode about Carrie Fisher and how we associate her with 2016, because so much happened between November and December of 2016, and then going into the Trump years and seeing her at all the women's marches and all that stuff.
Katie Marinello: So I think about 2016 and how like, yeah, I was certainly worried, but I wasn't maybe putting my all into politics at the time. And this year I keep thinking, Oh my God, it's only 18 days away. Like, have I done enough
Claire Fisher: Yeah.
Katie Marinello: and. And then there's, you know, so much going on in the world I do wonder, I'm like, okay, so what is our Shampoo? What's distracting us right now? It's doom scrolling. It's
Claire Fisher: It's no longer George the Hairdresser, now it's, you know, your [00:40:00] OnlyFans subscriptions and your Twitch streamers and your
Katie Marinello: But it's also having to work for somebody who you think is, less than you it's being unable to get a loan, right? It's economic insecurity. It's not all that different than what they're talking about now. Yes. It's different in that we can have credit scores, but credit scores are.
Katie Marinello: Inherently problematic in and of themselves.
Claire Fisher: George, though, is, ultimately, he's not some working class hero. He's
Katie Marinello: No,
Claire Fisher: Super flighty. He says he's better than the guy
Katie Marinello: walks out of the, he walks out all the time. I agree.
Claire Fisher: Yeah.
Katie Marinello: I'm not really, I'm not really that empathetic to George. I'm thinking more of the women.
Claire Fisher: Jill calls him out and says, , You never sit still, but you never go anywhere, right?
Katie Marinello: I loved that line. I wrote that one down.
Claire Fisher: I'm sure there are people now who are just, you know, they are so focused on their own survival, their own [00:41:00] work their own day to day, that they aren't gonna make time to vote, I'm sure that's true. George just doesn't seem like he even really cares about anything beyond himself
Katie Marinello: not a single person on screen ever mentions voting, right? Like
Claire Fisher: No, nobody mentions, they mention donors,
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Donors, the party, the.
Claire Fisher: the stock market.
Katie Marinello: They never mentioned, Oh, I just came from the polls. Oh, I have to go to the nothing
Claire Fisher: There's even a senator at one of the parties, and like, he's doing some kind of like, tom tom dance. Like, even the politicians don't appear to care about politics in this
Katie Marinello: right. Right. And so, yeah, I do think that's interesting.
Claire Fisher: I don't know what Warren Beatty's political
Katie Marinello: Oh, I do.
Claire Fisher: is these days. Tell me.
Katie Marinello: So Warren Beatty is a huge donor to the democratic party. He was very, he and Shirley McClain we're both very involved with actually McGovern's campaign. But he was also really close friends with John [00:42:00] McCain and he was selected by John McCain to be one of his pallbearers,
Claire Fisher: Warren Beatty was John McCain's pallbearer?
Katie Marinello: I'm telling you, this man is like, you want to talk about six degrees of separation? Like isn't that crazy?
Claire Fisher: I guess if you have a friend in common biblically with every man on this, earth you'll eventually be a pallbearer.
Katie Marinello: I guess. Apparently he and John McCain worked together on, like, campaign finance reform or some shit.
Claire Fisher: So Warren Beatty does have a political interest, but this character obviously So this movie was political. The characters are not.
Katie Marinello: Right, the movie is apparently a satire, so I don't think Warren Beatty was saying that, George was a hero. And the fact that the TV is on the entire time, is supposed to mean something to us.
Claire Fisher: Well, nowadays it's not TV. It's, you know, it's Reddit or it's Facebook or, you know, like earlier tonight, you texted me that a celebrity had died. And I said this to Bryan [00:43:00] and then Bryan saw that I was texting you.
Claire Fisher: And he said, Oh, you're talking to her about this guy's death. And I was like, well, who do you think told me? And he said, I assumed you saw it on Reddit.
Katie Marinello: Yep.
Claire Fisher: So like, we were standing there making dinner and he assumed I was doomscrolling while we were making dinner. Not that I had gotten a text from my sister, right?
Katie Marinello: often on Reddit, but.
Claire Fisher: Well, okay. So that's what we have. We have distractions, right? Everybody has something that's a distraction. We have both had the benefit of extremely expensive liberal arts educations we could talk about how long and how intensely philosophy has debated why humans would rather be entertained than engaged, right?
Claire Fisher: We could go back to, you know, Pensees of Pascal saying, you know, you want to be distracted so you don't have to remember your own wretchedness so then you don't have to try to prepare your soul for death. We could talk about that. I know we have talked about that, but this is not the podcast for that,
Katie Marinello: Let's talk about Carrie Fisher.
Claire Fisher: Let's talk about Carrie Fisher because even [00:44:00] as we are trying to process that and make that point, we are viewing it through a medium of art, right? We all turn to art for everything in life, for moral lessons, for distraction, for edification, for examples. Just so we can figure out who Warren Beatty is sleeping with this week.
Claire Fisher: I mean, like there's lots of reasons to watch a movie. In our case, we're watching this one because it has Carrie Fisher in it for a few very memorable scenes,
Katie Marinello: few seconds. Yep. And she is dynamic and she is. It's captivating and she is edgy and, you know, the one review I read said she's one of his conquests or is he one of hers?
Katie Marinello: She's. Maybe the only one who actually says, would you like to fuck? Like
Claire Fisher: says wannafuck.
Katie Marinello: a fuck. Yeah.
Claire Fisher: casually says wannafuck, and we don't see Okay, so Felicia we see just like, tackle him, and like, he tries to get up to go close the door to the room, and she won't [00:45:00] let him. So he's a trophy for her. We see him try to put the moves on Jackie, and Jackie is actually saying no, though it's unclear if that's sort of a token resistance expected of a woman, a la Baby It's Cold Outside, right?
Claire Fisher: Or if, or if she genuinely is reluctant. The part where he whacks her head against the door to a steam room probably didn't improve the mood, either way, but like Lorna is the one who like, approaches him. And just asks. And then the next thing you see is him coming out of her bathroom, zipping his fly while she's fully dressed.
Claire Fisher: So it's unclear exactly how he answered that question, except that they obviously did something
Katie Marinello: Well, her mother says what he's in your bathroom. So there are plenty of other bathrooms for him to use. Right. So I think that's clear. Also, is this the first onscreen acknowledgement of the refractory period? Okay.
Claire Fisher: I don't think they fully acknowledged
Katie Marinello: I felt like, you know, he was definitely hesitating for Felicia for a [00:46:00] reason.
Claire Fisher: I think that reason is that her daughter was in the next room and he just slept with the daughter,
Katie Marinello: Right. Again, it's just, he's just not thinking because I think he knew what he was going over to Felicia's for.
Claire Fisher: Well, he's a guy who can't think things through, right? You know, and again, I said, you know, like if we made that movie today, it would be like, there'd be some reason why he is this way, but at the seventies, it was just like, no, that's just George.
Katie Marinello: get a tragic backstory where his mother was pushed off the cliff by a shampoo bottle or something.
Claire Fisher: Yeah. He's secretly had his heart broken or whatever.
Claire Fisher: All we get as a backstory from him is him saying that this is why he went to beauty school.
Katie Marinello: actually that, and that is a really interesting and actually I do want to talk about that because it, he does say that he went to beauty school because he wanted to meet women. That is something that was pulled from Hugh Hefner's friend. Hugh Hefner said that it. That's why
Claire Fisher: Yeah,
Katie Marinello: guy went to beauty school.
Katie Marinello: I can't remember his name. I apologize. And thinking about 2024 and how we, there's all these attacks on [00:47:00] trans women and how they're just men trying to get into women's spaces. When there's always been, it's always been men trying to get into women's spaces, right
Katie Marinello: cisgendered men.
Claire Fisher: This is what he says in that speech by the way this is his defense of himself to Jill Just caught him with Jackie, right? He says, let's face it, I fucked them all. That's what I always do. That's why I went to beauty school. And then he says it's because beautiful women make him feel like he's going to live forever, which makes him feel better about the fact that he hasn't. Accomplished what he should have accomplished by his age.
Claire Fisher: His age is, if we go by the age of the actor, he would have been like late 30s, right? So he knows he's getting too old to act this way. And he's using sex with beautiful women to make himself feel younger, and then he says, maybe that means I don't love him and being women. But nobody's gonna tell me I don't like him very much,
Katie Marinello: it's one of those if somebody said that to you in real life, you'd be like, did you practice that in the mirror? Cause it did not land the way you think it should.
Claire Fisher: what also doesn't [00:48:00] land the way you think it should, and, and this is, this is me reading modern sensibilities into it, is that he really dodges the question of whether he's also sleeping with men. And we see him with his gay co workers at the salon The implication is that if you were a man who went to beauty school, you have access to both men and women who would be willing to go to bed with you, right?
Claire Fisher: And it's not played that he's bisexual, but, you know, maybe if they made it again today, it would be that way, . But he doesn't give Lorna an answer on that, so it's left ambiguous
Katie Marinello: Okay. Anything else we need to talk about?
Claire Fisher: I guess we better rate Carrie Fisher's performance.
Katie Marinello: so we are going to be rating her characters, her performance from one to five Hutt Slayers. And we chose Hutt Slayers because we were going to go with gold bikinis, but we believe that the gold bikini is objectifying, but the Hutt Slaying is, you know, Empowering.
Claire Fisher: Which was Carrie Fisher's argument in real life, when someone [00:49:00] complained that the Princess Leia doll comes in a gold bikini. Someone said, this is like in, in 20 What am I supposed to tell my daughter about why she's wearing that? And Carrie Fisher said, tell her I got put in it. I didn't like that.
Claire Fisher: So I choked the hut to death.
Katie Marinello: Exactly. And I have a great, I have a great tank top that says Hutslayer on it. So one to five Hutslayers, five being the most badass she has ever been. One being I don't know, not.
Claire Fisher: I mean, this, because she's really not in this very much. She does have a memorable conversation with Warren Beatty, but I'd give this one Hutz layer as a, as a contribution to the movie.
Katie Marinello: Oh, I thought we were rating the badassness of the character though.
Claire Fisher: Oh, the bad assness of the character. Well, I don't know this character. She plays tennis and she fucks a man who's 20 years older than her. I don't know. I don't see it as much of a Hutz layer.
Katie Marinello: Yeah, I, I was gonna give it a three. Maybe I'll give it a two and a half, two and a half Hutt Slayers.
Claire Fisher: All right, we compromise on two.
Katie Marinello: Because I think it, she is very [00:50:00] captivating and like I said, she has some, some agency, and I don't love the language she uses, I don't love the fact that she seems to think that sleeping with her mother's side piece is, a way to get back at her mother. God, why can't we just slam doors but,
Claire Fisher: Electro complex? Yeah.
Katie Marinello: something like that. Yes, yes, yes. Heh heh.
Katie Marinello: and again, I'm not sure that whoever wrote that 17 year old girl, but that's okay. I'm giving her
Claire Fisher: I mean, if it was written by Warren Beatty, he has spoken to at least a few 17 year old women.
Katie Marinello: And then he raised some.
Claire Fisher: What do you think his daughters think?
Katie Marinello: It seems like they have a good relationship from what I can tell.
Claire Fisher: And he's on good terms with his sister, too, right? Like Yeah.
Claire Fisher: Obviously he's not like some kind of creepy, sexist, abusive guy. He just really got around for a long time.
Claire Fisher: I suppose it's a free country.
Katie Marinello: [00:51:00] 70s were a mood.
Claire Fisher: The 70s were a mood, yeah. So, next up,
Katie Marinello: Next up.
Claire Fisher: much more famous and much more exciting. Star Wars episode IV A New Hope, or as it was known on its release, regular old Star Wars.
Katie Marinello: Oh, I'm so excited. Wow. So that was her second movie ever. Okay. We're going to get right into it then.
Claire Fisher: Yeah, jump straight into her time as a household name, right? This is the movie that really as she put it in her one woman show gave us enough crazy anecdotes and a merry band of stalkers to last me the rest of my unnatural life.
Katie Marinello: Yes. Absolutely.
Claire Fisher: And certainly was our introduction to her. So this will be, of course we've watched all of the Star Wars movies many, many, many, many, MANY times. Though Return of the Jedi more than any of them, because you and I were
Katie Marinello: We discussed that. Yes.
Claire Fisher: So, I have to read my own [00:52:00] scrawl text though. I've reached an age where it's no longer appropriate for your sister to be reading you the scrawl text out loud.
Claire Fisher: Heh heh heh.
Katie Marinello: have one of those, you know, AI assist bots do it for you.
Claire Fisher: same. And, you know, but of course I will insist that later on you come over and throw me into a wall and give me a concussion,
Katie Marinello: Naturally. Yes. But that's, that's way down the line. Yeah. That's a long, that's years from now. We'll see if we make it that long.
Claire Fisher: And when we get there, I'll tell that story!
Katie Marinello: Oh, goody. A teaser for the people.
Claire Fisher: Alright, so do we have a sign off?
Katie Marinello: If my life weren't funny, it would just be true.
Claire Fisher: And that is unacceptable.
Katie Marinello: Thanks for listening to another episode of Carried Far, Far Away. This podcast is hosted, produced, edited, and re-edited obsessed over and loved by Katie Marinello and Claire Fisher. You can follow the show on Facebook and Instagram at carriedawaypod. You can email us [00:53:00] awaycarriedpod@gmail.com. You can follow Claire @deadfictionalgirlfriends and Katie @katiedaway. All clips used in this podcast are done so under the protection of fair use. Have a wonderful week and may the force be with you. And now our space, grandma wisdom of the week.
Interviewer: Daisy, did you get advice?
Daisy Ridley: Carrie, go on. What did you tell me?
Carrie Fisher: I said not to go through the crew. Like wildfire.