It’s like Sputnik! Spherical, but quite pointy at parts!
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie unpacks the good, the bad, the poorly aged, and the likely-to-make-a-vegan-queasy about the underrated 1993 comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer. The sisters discuss how important changes in gender politics and expression over the last 30 years have made May’s handsiness and the character of Vicky cringey and they dive into the toxicity of 1990s expectation that men fear commitment.
On the plus side, Alan Arkin’s role as Tony’s police captain shows us consent done right!
Head! Earbuds! Now! You’ll be glad you listened.
Mentioned in this episode:
Stephen Hunter’s review of Axe Murderer
Roger Ebert’s review of Axe Murderer
Christian blogger’s take on commitment in Axe Murderer
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
It’s like Sputnik! Spherical, but quite pointy at parts!
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Tracie unpacks the good, the bad, the poorly aged, and the likely-to-make-a-vegan-queasy about the underrated 1993 comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer. The sisters discuss how important changes in gender politics and expression over the last 30 years have made May’s handsiness and the character of Vicky cringey and they dive into the toxicity of 1990s expectation that men fear commitment.
On the plus side, Alan Arkin’s role as Tony’s police captain shows us consent done right!
Head! Earbuds! Now! You’ll be glad you listened.
Mentioned in this episode:
Stephen Hunter’s review of Axe Murderer
Roger Ebert’s review of Axe Murderer
Christian blogger’s take on commitment in Axe Murderer
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
I'm Tracy Guy-Dekker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today, I'll be sharing my Deep Thoughts about the 1993 Mike Myers film. So I Married an Axe Murderer with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you, let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us, and, of course, share the show with your people. All right, em, I know you've seen this movie because we quote it to each other.
Speaker 2:Negatory good buddy.
Speaker 1:That's right, but late on me. Tell me what you remember about this movie.
Speaker 2:So first thing I remember about this movie and this is a very odd thing so Stephen Hunter, who was a local film critic in the Baltimore area, who knew our dad and who also wrote like manly fantasy novels, like like Tom Clancy type stuff, like spy type stuff, okay, he had a review where he like he did this whole thing about like I didn't murder this movie because of this and I didn't murder it because of that. No, I murdered it because the damn E in acts there you shouldn't have an E in acts. And I just remember, like because this game I was 14.
Speaker 1:It was 93.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so yeah, I was 14. You would have been 17. And I even at the time, kind of, and I knew like I don't think I've ever met Hunter personally, but I knew that he was a client of dads Our dad was a financial planner and I knew that dad knew him and liked him and I remember like oh wow, he's really got to be in his bond. So that's, that was the very first thing that I like associate with. It is like there are some people who have opinions about how to spell the word acts. I can kind of vaguely recall that you went to see it in the theater. You would have been driving at the time. I don't know when I saw it for the first time, but it was on regular rotation through high school and college. Because it is eminently quotable, I got me listening to the Bay City Rollers. It hasn't actually a really good soundtrack In addition to the Bay City Rollers. I mean it's like a lot of 90s royalty.
Speaker 1:There she goes by the laws, shows up multiple times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. I just remember it being charming and funny and a completely new character for Mike Myers, who was not in any way related to any of his Saturday Night Live characters, and so I just have always had a soft spot in my heart for this, this film, and you will find me saying things like how can you hate the Colonel Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it for nightly smart ass Things like that and you know I don't really do a Scottish accent, but I'll be like if a pipe down.
Speaker 2:So there's quite a bit in there that is just thumbs up in regular conversation, a lot more than you'd expect. He pants now things like that, yeah. So why are we talking about this artifact of our, of our teen years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm part, because it is an artifact that's like that's in there. You know, it's sort of the part of the furniture as we say. You know I like rewatching it so that we could talk about it. I realized that Mike Myers look not the personality of Charlie McKenzie, but the look in this movie is totally my type in those days, like like the floppy hair, and he actually looks a little like my college boyfriend.
Speaker 2:Oh, I can see that yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I want, you know, this is our project is to sort of go back and kind of take a look and see what's in our head. So I wanted to, you know, do that and unfortunately I'm feeling like maybe I can't go home again on this one, which is kind of sad for me, but but I'll get into it. So there's a few things I want to talk about gender we always talk about the back tail test. I want to talk about consent actually believe it or not and the strength of the romantic piece of this movie, and then see where our conversation goes. So, but before we get there, let me recap the plot line for our listeners. Okay, so the very first scene in this movie is a sort of like one shot, really cool through this crazy busy coffee shop with a giant cappuccino mug and you follow the mug. I've requested a large Right, exactly. So it's a cappuccino, you follow you. Are you gonna? Are you gonna quote the whole movie, because this is gonna be a long episode I haven't even seen.
Speaker 2:It's been years. I don't know when. The last time I saw it was. Go ahead, please.
Speaker 1:So you follow the mug from busboy, picks it up and it's on the tray and it goes and it goes through all of these people and it gets washed and then it gets refilled with a cappuccino and it gets taken to Mike Myers, who this is. Now. This is between the two Wayne's World movies, I believe. So it's, it's Wayne's World. Characters exist, the Saturday Live characters exist. He hasn't done Austin Powers yet At this stage in his career, so and he gets it and he's like Hello, and he does that line that you just said.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, I ordered a large because it's like a cup of soup. And so from the beginning you meet this Charlie, mike Myers. Charlie who's performing kind of at all times. He's performing for this waitress. He's performing for his friend Tony, who's dressed. He says like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch. He does. He's a under, a cop, undercover, trying to look hip, and they even had that conversation and Tony's like but I am a cop or cover, but Charlie, even from the first moment we see him, when he's just chilling with his friend, is performing. Then he literally performs. He does their out at this poetry shop which is on the corner of Jack Kerouac Way. So they set the stage that this is a beat poetry kind of a thing.
Speaker 2:And the film takes place in San Francisco.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1:And so Charlie does a beat style poem with sort of like William Shatner staccato delivery over top of like a jazz trio, right, like a snare drum, a bass and trumpet trumpet, that brass instrument, trumpet, or maybe it's a trombone, a brass instrument. Anyway, it's a poem about his now ex girlfriend who he claims, stole his cat, and we've had before the poem he and Tony have this conversation about how Charlie just comes up with these excuses whenever he gets close to a girl the one before this, one who stole the cat what was wrong with her? She smelled like soup. What she smelled like soup, tony, beef vegetable soup. Which may be why sometimes, when I'm like oh, I think I need some deodorant, I smell like soup, like maybe that's where that came from, I don't know, I don't know. So we meet Charlie. He's always performing whether or not he's performing, and he has a commitment, phobia. Okay, he goes to this meets of the world butcher shop to buy haggis for his Scottish parents and meets Nancy Travis's Harriet, who is the beautiful butcher shop attendant person she owns it.
Speaker 1:It's unclear, maybe, okay, maybe it's unclear. And then we meet Charlie's mom and dad. Charlie's dad, played by Mike Myers also his name is Stuart, and Charlie's mom, may, and they are like very Scottish, like that. It's like they have like a Scottish wall of fame and like, as you say, stuart is like singing the Bay City Rollers as he dusts his picture of Sean Connery and that piece of it actually is just hilarious. And in fact, as I was going back and rereading a lot of the like contemporaneous and even later reviews almost everybody's like I wish there'd been more of Stuart McKenzie, because he's way more interesting than Charlie McKenzie.
Speaker 2:I'm also thinking, like gosh, 1993 was too early for David Tennant to be on the Scottish wall of fame, which is a shame but he would have been like a early 20 something. Yeah, he would have been like 22, 21, 22 early, but he deserves a place on Stuart McKenzie's wall, okay.
Speaker 1:So at the McKenzie's home one important point happens and one very funny thing. Well, multiple funny things happen. The funny thing which you quote all the time is Charlie has a much younger brother named Will who has like big, like curly fro type hair that makes it look like he has a really big head. And Stuart makes fun of his son mercilessly about the size of his head. So he's like all of these like complex.
Speaker 1:So Tony, so Tony, the exactly Tony the cop friend is there and he's drinking with dad Stuart. And Stuart is like saying these horrible things that are really funny about young William's head, like it's like Sputnik, that's what you were quoting. It's like Sputnik, sputnik, spherical, but quite pointy in places. And Tony is like stop, you're going to give him a complex. But he, like Stuart, can't help himself and at one point he's I think maybe it's even the Sputnik comment he says all that one was off sides, wasn't it? He's going to cry himself to sleep tonight on his huge puller Total aside folks, but it's just too funny for me to not share. And you can't see my sister right now unless you're watching the video, but she is losing her mind in laughter.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going to get wet point in places. It's like the most nonspecific description that is so specific.
Speaker 1:I feel like you need to have the Sputnik piece, though, but anyway, anyway, okay, anyway, please go. But the plot point that comes up from the visit to mom and dad's house that's important is mom is disappointed that he's broken up with the girl who stole his cat, because when is he going to settle down? And then she says but maybe it's for the best, because marriage can be dangerous. Have you read the paper? The paper turns out to be the weekly world news, the tabloid, and the story is this story about so-called Mrs X, this serial killer, a black widow who marries men and then kills them, and there are three dead husbands. In the background, there's a lounge singer from Atlantic City, there is a Russian martial arts expert and there's a plumber named Ralph Elliott. And Charlie dismisses this idea from his mom and the paper, the weekly world news, but those three items become very significant throughout the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1:Okay, charlie courts Harriet. He drives past the meets of the world a couple of times where you're watching the screen and you're like he's gonna have an accident Look at the road, dude, but anyway. And then he shows up and the butcher shop is like a line out the door with people waiting for their orders. She's crazy busy and so he says you know, my dad was a butcher and I used to help him out at the shop. Would you like some help? So she says sure, and so he helps her in the shop. And there's this kind of significant like in terms of real estate that they give it scene of them like working to help these customers and like cutting up and goofing off the whole time.
Speaker 1:And part of the reason I personally can't go home again to this movie is that in the 30 years, 30 years since this movie was released, I have become Percivedetarian and now almost fully vegan, and so this scene where they are cutting up and like playing with meat is downright nauseating. I mean, it is just horrifying the way that they are like playing with meat and like. Even before I was like, oh, this is going to be hard for me. I was grossed out, which I think maybe I would have been even 20 years ago, because when she accepts this, how peri is slicing off a supposedly quarter inch thick New York strip steak which is actually more like three inches thick. I guess Nancy Travis doesn't it's?
Speaker 2:not like that. It's like three quarters of an inch.
Speaker 1:It is not. It is much bigger. It's big. Anyway, she's at the counter, she takes the order from the dude and then she goes straight to like meat. That's just sitting out on the butcher block and starts cutting it with like a bare hand, holding it down and like no hand washing, like no gloves, like where was the meat? It was just like it was just laying there this side of anyway, sorry, I'm getting distracted. Okay, so we see them making each other laugh with meat, because you know dead animal flesh is hilarious. So we're meant to see this burgeoning love. Awesome. Okay, cool, move on, tony. And oh, no, sorry.
Speaker 1:Later that night they go on their first date. It's sort of like just they close the butcher shop and they end up kind of walking through a park together and they're flirting. Some Russian sailors walk by and are like speaking in Russian, like sizing them up, and she replies to them in Russian. So, oh, first clue, remember one of the dead husbands was a Russian martial arts expert. Yeah, that's the word I was talking about. We end up back at her apartment, which is huge, like giant, it's weird, like I don't know, octagonal or maybe bigger space that has like columns around the edges and like a mezzanine where the bedrooms are, and like all of this art and whatever. And then we see he's.
Speaker 2:And what it needed was a giant poster of Atlantic City Right.
Speaker 1:Charlie says that, and then he turns around and there is one.
Speaker 2:He said that because there was one, yes, and that's one of the husbands was a lounging singer in Atlantic.
Speaker 1:City, from Atlantic City, right. And she comes in after he says, oh, look, you've got one. She says I used to live there. Then in the apartment he sees this like there's one of the round walls there's like this display of like martial arts swords and spears and like a uniform it's not a gi, because it's not Japanese and he says, what's this? And she says, oh, I had this friend who was a martial arts expert and I just thought this would look good on the wall. And he asked if she practiced and she does and whatever.
Speaker 1:They end up spending the night together in sort of cute romantic way, like he's goofy because that's Mike Myers. In the morning she's gone. He looks up and sees someone taking a shower through frosted glass that faces the doubts, makes no sense, and goes to see Harriet in the shower. But it's not Harriet, it's somebody else who turns out to be Rose, harriet's sister, who's real weird. We immediately see that Rose is weird. So she, after the shower, after she's dressed and everything she or they both are, she offers him breakfast and she's like. He's like no, no, I'm just going to go. And she's like what do you say to like silver dollar pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice and bacon and like whatever, like paints this beautiful picture and he's like I mean okay, and then you see her pouring fruit loops into a bowl for him and she's like, sorry, we didn't have those. And then she's like walks away from him saying like I'm not going to tell Harriet anything happened. And he's like, but nothing did happen. Anyway, so now we've met Rose. She's weird. Okay, I know I'm going into too much detail here, folks, but like I can't help it, I'm sorry. Bear with me Tony and Charlie. Tony the friend who's a cop, and Charlie are.
Speaker 1:They take a tour of Alcatraz where we see Phil Hartman as their tour guide who, in like very deadpan, straight lace, like wearing wearing the uniform of a corrections officer, says my name is whatever standard name I actually don't remember, but everyone around here calls me Vicky, totally deadpan. So Vicky is giving them the tour and they get to a certain part and he says the other tour guides won't tell you this, but right here, where we are right now is where machine gun Kelly was incarcerated and machine gun Kelly had what we in the business call a bitch. And then he talks about this horrible violence that Kelly perpetrated against this bitch, which is the way he refers to him. The whole refers to the person, the whole time. I mean it's, it's gruesome and it's played for laughs and maybe in 93, I found it funny, I don't know, it is not funny anymore. Anyway, that's actually just the backdrop for Tony and Charlie to be talking about Harriet, who Charlie's saying like no, this time I'm not going to, don't let me screw this one up. She's great, she's awesome, don't let me screw this one up.
Speaker 1:We get a falling in love montage, all right, adorable, whatever. And then Charlie's going to introduce her to his parents. So now we get to see Nancy Travis with dad, mike Myers and mom, and then Harriet almost takes Stuart McKenzie's arm off when he sneaks up on her with a martial arts move which, like freaks Charlie out a little bit. And then he has to use the bathroom and ends up seeing that weekly world news story again and is like recognizing some things from the Atlantic city thing and the Russian martial arts. Oh, and I forgot that first night that they slept together. While she's sleeping, harriet in her sleep yells the name Ralph, which was the plumber. The plumber's name was Ralph Elliott.
Speaker 2:And when Charlie kind of wakes, her is like, hey, he's everything. Okay, you're shouting Ralph's name and she goes oh yeah, she's my friend Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, charlie's like she's your friend. Okay, she's your friend, she's your friend. He says it over and over to American. Okay, so Charlie's freaking out now and like won't come out of the bathroom and like peeking through the crack at Harriet and it's like, oh my God, she's an ex murderer or whatever. She's a murderer, all right. So this goes back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. And then Charlie asks Tony to look into this case. They do, and they realize someone has been arrested, someone has turned themselves in for the death of Ralph Elliott the plumber. And so Charles is like, oh, thank goodness, I was doing it again, she's not. So Charlie plans this big anniversary party for his parents. It's their 30th anniversary. Harriet's there with him and like, with the like, excitement and sentimentality of the anniversary, and whatever he proposes to Harriet, marry me. No. She says, uh, please.
Speaker 2:I love that Please.
Speaker 1:So they end up getting married. They have a lovely wedding. Some things happen at the wedding. That, like the um shtick of the dead lounge singer, was that he could sing only you in six languages. At the wedding, harriet sings only you in French to Charlie. There's some other like Mon to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I took 10 years of French.
Speaker 1:I remember that part Some very funny bits with um. So Stuart is, stuart McKenzie is singing Rod Stewart if you think I'm sexy accompanied by the bagpipes, and then the Piper, um like passes out and that's the line that Emily mentioned before. We've got the Piper down, it's really funny. And meanwhile Charlie's mom is like super handsy with Tony, like it is uncomfortable, like he like pulls her hand off of his ass with her right hand and her left hand comes and replaces it. Like it's very uncomfortable. Ok, so then they are going to their honeymoon to a mountain hotel called Poets Corner. We see Harriet pull out of her loose powder a chain with three wedding rings on it and we're like, oh man, maybe she really is a murderer and she's acting really weird, really weird. Then we see, meanwhile, back in San Francisco, tony gets a call that the person sorry, not a call His boss, Alan Arkin, comes to tell him that the person who confessed to Ralph Elliott's murder has also confessed to the murder of Abraham Lincoln and a couple of other historical people, like the person's nuts. So Tony does some actual, more extensive detective work, sends a picture of Harriet to those who knew the three missing and or dead men and each of them is like, oh yeah, that's his sweetie, he was totally in love with her. So now she is the murderer. So Tony needs to go to warn Charlie and save him.
Speaker 1:Charlie and Harriet are at the dinner table at their Poets Corner and they bring over a phone for a call for Charlie and it's Tony saying it's her, she's Mrs X, you got it out of there. And there's a terrible storm happening right at that moment and the phone lines go dead and Charlie's freaking out. Meanwhile Harriet is also acting really weird. So all of the other guests like airy them, like horror style to their honeymoon suite and like dump them in. So they go in and like there's an ax in there for chopping wood because of course there is in a hotel room and Charlie manages to shove Harriet into a closet and lock her in there. And then he finds a note that says Harriet, I just couldn't take the commitment, I'm sorry, I love you, charlie. And he's like what is this? And then da, da, da, rose is there, the sister, and she says you are not supposed to see that, you are not supposed to be in this room.
Speaker 1:Once the note has been placed, harriet's not the murderer, rose is oh, ok, so now this really really long fight scene ensues with Rose and Charlie that ends up with them both on the roof. Meanwhile, tony has charted a plane from Stephen Wright that goes really poorly but doesn't kill him, and so he shows up. He gets to their bedroom, he knocks down the door after many, many, many attempts and finds Harriet locked in the closet, lets her out and puts handcuffs on her and she's like what are you doing? You need to go save Charlie. And he's like uh-uh, you can't fool me. So then they have this whole interrogation where you can hear Rose swinging an ax and Charlie yelling out, and Tony's like let's take a step back here.
Speaker 1:You're telling me it's ridiculous. Ok, so Charlie survives, rose survives, and the movie ends where it started, in that coffee shop with a new poem that instead of starting woman, woman, woman starts with Harriet's name. Yay, it's over. Ok, so there's stuff that I didn't include, even though I gave way too much detail, but it will come up if it comes up. So this movie was actually kind of a box office flop. I think the title confused people at the time and like it wasn't. Like Myers had some name recognition and success, but like this was, as you mentioned, like a departure from the characters that he was known for and it just didn't. It did not have much of a success. However, as it was on rotation for you, apparently it was for many, many people it has become one of those kind of cult classic type things that people really enjoy. So I looked up some contemporaneous reviews, as I mentioned, and it's the 30-year anniversary of this movie, and so we're not the only ones taking like a retrospective look back at it. So Roger Ebert basically said there are two movies in this movie. One is actually pretty good and the other one's really only so-so, and the good one is about this cranky Scottish immigrant named Stuart, and the bad one is this romantic, weird romantic comedy, murder mystery about Charlie. So, and Roger Ebert actually also noted the unnecessary E in Acts and in fact spelled it without the E throughout the article and then was like I know that the title has an E, but that's wrong. Even the people today, sort of looking back on it, what people are saying is like I wish there were more of the Scottish dad, because that's the best part of this movie. So that's an interesting thing to note. Ok, so some of the things I want to dig into with you.
Speaker 1:Let's start with Bechtel, because Alison has never let me down. It kind of sort of doesn't pass. There's definitely more than one named female character. There are several, but they don't exactly talk about it. But they don't exactly talk to one another about something other than men.
Speaker 1:So though Rose and Harriet, the sisters we see them together, and in the montage of the falling in love we definitely see them repeatedly we don't actually hear a conversation between the two of them. Harriet talks to Mae, charlie's mom, about Charlie. Tony has a date. At one point they double date. Her name is Susan, but Susan and Harriet don't speak to one another. I mean, all four of them talk. And then we do be Harriet's friend, ralph, who's a woman, but we don't actually see them talk at all. So it doesn't exactly pass Bechtel. And while we're talking about gender, like there's some weird assumptions about commitment that underlie it, which, in the person of Charlie, I find particularly problematic because we meet Stuart and Mae, charlie's parents, who are, you know, they grouse at one another and whatever. They're dysfunctional. I'm not saying they're like how I want my marriage to be after 30 years, but they're not abusive, right? They're not like. It's not a terrible role model for him to see that commitment can work.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's actually, there's this lovely moment during the anniversary dinner and that's when he decides to propose is Stuart, I mean, he's like 30 years ago we got married. Many of you were here, many of you are now dead, right, like this weird thing. But he's like but I do it all over again, something along those lines. It's really sweet. It's this really sweet moment when, like, all you see them is Bicker and her like hit on Tony, but like then, like she says to him I love you, like, and it's you can't even hear it, it's you can only see her mouth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, and it seems genuine Right and so very very lovely.
Speaker 2:It's a lovely moment in a really weird dynamic between them, the husband and wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and actually you're right, that is the moment when he decides to propose, and so I guess we do see him take that. But until that moment there's this huge fear of commitment in him that just I don't know. It feels like such a it's such currency, especially from the 90s, of like how men were supposed to like, with quotes around it, like engage with thinking about commitment. That I don't know. I find it in retrospect like unsavory, I guess.
Speaker 2:Kind of related to that, Something that I know kind of not bothered me, but so we don't really see Rose and Harriet interact, except for during the montage.
Speaker 2:There's this lovely scene where, like, Harriet puts her arm around Rose and Rose puts her head on Harriet's shoulder, and it really is this like very tiny moment where it's like they're very connected as sisters and, considering, like how close you and I have always been, I remember feeling like at the end, this isn't a happy ending, you know, Like okay, it's great that Charlie has not married someone who's going to murder him Fantastic, Rose needs help, she's going to get it. Fantastic. But they, these are two sisters who truly love each other and it's like the oh, it's okay, it's not the one you actually want to stick your dick in, it's like, and that that kind of always bothered me, because it's just like well, what's going to happen to Rose and what's going to happen to Harriet's relationship and how is that going to change? Because clearly they are close enough that they have moved around the country together and some of that is Rose is manipulating Harriet.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think they. I don't know that they have, because Rose says when Rose meets Charlie and Harriet's not present, charlie says this is your place and Rose says this is our place, mine and Harriet's. She goes sometimes but she always comes back here.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay, fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 1:But. But they are clearly very close and now it turns out that Rose has killed three people that Harriet loved. We do get a small nod in that direction, in that, at the like, kind of like real, like climax of this, the of the fight scene of the, the resolution of this, the story arc, when they're both on the roof and Rose sort of slips and is falling and Charlie is on the roof and and grabs her and is holding her and Tony leans out like an upper floor window and pulls Rose in and Harriet is watching from the ground and you see her with her heart and her throat, you know, and like the relief that she has when, when Rose gets pulled in, which I think is noteworthy in so far as I think the movie viewer might expect that we would just let her fall and die. That is the way we've handled villains in the past and they don't do that, and so I think that is a nod to the complication and the psychological dynamic that you're pointing to, but it's only a nod.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's. Honestly, it's more than you'd expect from a 1990s movie that leans so heavily into these gendered tropes. And you're right, it had had not occurred to me that most movies would just let her fall and die and that actually, like, I'll give the movie that like you know if you're gonna tell this story and you do make it that that's Harriet and Charlie can have a happy ending, which includes whatever the complications of her relationship with her sister are, but there is still love in history there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so okay, that's.
Speaker 2:It's not nearly as ugly as it could have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true yeah so one brief thing to say about additional brief thing to say about gender. Phil Hartman's Vicky line hits differently 30 years later and the fact that it was delivered the way that it was for laughs makes me uncomfortable now. I've already talked about how uncomfortable I was with the gruesomeness of the story about Machine Gun Kelly. I don't need to go back to that.
Speaker 2:But I do want to say, though, like the dichotomy of someone so deadpan in this, like uniform and, but people call me Vicky.
Speaker 1:What's uncomfortable about it is that Vicky is, is is like socialized as a feminine name, yeah, but I'm trying to think of like a diminutive name, like people call me Pepito or something that's if it had been like people call me Care Bear or, you know, people call me like Rainbow Sparkle, I think it would be less bothersome the way that it reads, as this clearly supposed to be funny line, because of the absurdity, is that a sign male at birth who are tall and masculine.
Speaker 1:Looking now with its voices with the is is absurd that they would have any trans femme tendencies. Absurd to the point of hilarity. That's what I find disturbing about it. Not that there would be this dichotomy, fine, yeah that's how humor works yeah diverting.
Speaker 1:Our expectation is how humor works, that that's the subversion and that that would be considered. You know, hope that it was hilarious. That's what feels uncomfortable to me, like if Phil Hartman had to live with that line. My name is Officer so-and-so, but everyone around here calls me Care Bear, and then you know, tony and Charlie were like. I love Care Bear. He's the best, that's funny even today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough so that's just.
Speaker 1:That's actually a very small moment. Well, it's interesting. In the course of the thing.
Speaker 2:Even in the film, the trip to Alcatraz always felt like Phil Hartman wants to be in this movie. Let's figure out a way to get a man like. It always felt extraneous and not like. Phil Hartman was a phenomenal comedian and the way that he delivers the lines is well done, even if the lines themselves are now like. So I don't want to say anything like negative about that. This is the writing. This is right, you know, yeah, um, but that scene always had me going like what is it that Charlie does for a living? That just in the middle of a work day? Yeah, and he lives in San Francisco. He's never been to Alcatraz, what? Anyway? It just felt like a random insert into the movie, and even more so now looking back yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in my research for our conversation, I learned a couple of things and a few things that some commentators were saying like I don't know, I want to throw out there and we can see if anything sticks. So one is that this originally was written for like a Woody Allen style main character and actually they brought it to Allen and it was supposed to be like a Jewish dude in New York and and somehow that fell through and Myers rewrote it to. Myers is not given writing credit on this, but apparently he did some significant rewrites to fit with his comedy, which makes sense. I have a hard time imagining this as a Woody Allen. Oh, and in the original, in the original um concept, she really was a murderer. So I don't know that I that was just like a weird tidbit that I thought that I would share.
Speaker 1:The other one that I read that like I'm still puzzling over is it's interesting because it's actually it was about commitment. This person, it was a. It was a guy, a blogger who's a, a Christian blogger who, like, looks at pop culture, so I guess, like our Christian counterpart maybe, I don't know anyway. Um, so, and he was saying he was talking about like what this movie says about marriage, and one of the things that I didn't even talk about in my in my wrap-up of the movie that was really significant to this dude was actually the relationship between Tony and his boss, alan Arkin, the um sergeant or whatever so which in that storyline, at one point, like Alan Arkin places like very like reasonable and pragmatic dude right, and at at one point, like he comes, tony's like uh, seems a little, I don't know, sad. And so Alan Arkin comes to him and is like you seem upset, what's wrong? And like the answer is being a cop is not, like it is on Starsky and Hutch, like I'm just doing paperwork. And so Alan Arkin's like oh, I get it, sometimes it can be. He's like, and that too, like you're too nice, I wish you would haul me into your office and tell me you're tired of defending my antics to the commissioner. And Arkin's like well, I don't actually answer to a commissioner.
Speaker 1:But so then we see a future interaction between the two of them and Arkin's character is like yelling at him and like calling him like racial slurs, but like not like really weird sort of like childish, uh slurs against the fact that he's Italian anyway, and then it's, and then so Tony walks away and then he comes back immediately and Arkin's like chewing on his fingernails, like how was that? Was that okay? Like oh, that was great, I love to tell you. So it's like, so this Christian logger was like like that's commitment to your friendship, your working relationship, to try and give your employee like what it is that he thinks that he needs, and and um, and talking about like the commitment between Tony and Charlie as friends, and it was a really it was a take I would not have come to on my own, but I appreciated it, especially because of my discomfort with the commitment phobia that just seems like an assumed truth at underlying sort of the. The writing of this film, yeah do you know it's?
Speaker 2:it's interesting because I was actually thinking about Alan Arkin's character before we started recording. You were talking about how uncomfortable it is that May is like consistently sexually harassing Tony, and that is really like that kind of thing was so often played for laughs when it's an older woman and a younger man. It's still only in the last few years have we started calling that out for what it is, which is predatory. But you were talking about that as like a consent thing. And yeah, I was thinking of like Alan Arkins' character and Tony. That is consent done right, in that Tony makes it clear this is something I really want from our relationship.
Speaker 2:And Alan Arkins' character is like, okay, I can do that, like I'm a little uncomfortable with it, but like we'll work it out, we'll workshop it.
Speaker 2:They talk it out ahead of time, they determine what's okay and then they check in with each other afterwards Like, was that? Okay, I'm a little uncomfortable with this, but I want to support you. You know this is your fantasy. I want to make sure that it works for you and I won't do anything that I'm not comfortable with. And I don't actually answer to a commission Wow, and there's just something adorable about it, about their interaction, their interplay and, like I have loved Alan Arkins in part because of this character, because he goes against what feels comfortable for him to make his employee more comfortable and in a way that makes it clear that like Tony like comes back and says that was great, you did, I didn't do too much, no, no, no, it was great. Like that's Alan Arkins not feeling pressured into this, he's doing it because he wants to. You know, like this is this is how you do consent folks, so funny.
Speaker 1:So another comment that I heard or that I read as I was looking at stuff, as people are looking at back on this movie for over the past 30 years and then we should probably wrap up, is that the title, which I think was confusing to some audiences at the time, is actually quintessentially 90s the use of the word so in the beginning, that sort of conversational like qualifying, like so I married, like not I married an ex murderer, so I married an ex murderer, and the movie itself as quintessentially 90s from the soundtrack to like the various things, which I thought was a really interesting take.
Speaker 2:You know, it's funny because I and actually that might make sense for it being quintessentially 90s, because who was a young adult in the 90s making movies? But it reminds me of so you Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Dwayne, which was a fantasy novel for like middle grade. But before they had middle grade fantasy novel from, I think, the late 80s, early 90s that she was basing on, there were a series of books about like so you want to be an engineer, so you want to be an airline pilot, and it would be like everything about that, and so I always thought of that so as being something that was kind of like 70s-ish, but then that would make sense, that that would be something that young adults in the 90s would be like. So I married an axe murderer because they grew up with these, you know, career manuals. They were like so you want to be a wizard, so that's very, very interesting to me. But I think it does. It feels very 90s, this film in so many ways.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, oh man, I didn't even talk about as Stuart, as Stuart McKenzie, at one point you quoted the bit where Charlie says how can you hate the Colonel? As in Colonel Sanders, and while he's drinking with Tony, stuart claims that there is a secret group of five people who control the world, the Pentaverate, which had like a limited, apparently not very good Netflix series, like 20 years later. Right now, in this moment of heightened anti-Semitism, I'm watching him like uh-oh, what is this Pentaverate that he's gonna mention? And there is. So the list was the Queen, the Vatican, the Getties, the Rothschilds and the Colonel and the Colonel before he went tits up.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it was gonna be in terms of, you know, like feeding into kind of juicers, disproportionately powerful anti-Semitic tropes, and I was like, mm. Yeah, I'm a little uncomfortable. I mean, mostly it's funny because it's the Colonel before he went tits up, but I'm a little bit uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Mike Meyers is not Jewish but he is married, or at least was married to I don't know if they're still together to a Jewish woman. So, linda Richmond, I'm all for clemt if you remember that character. Oh yeah, I remember that kind of Take a moment for yourself Coffee talk. Yeah, coffee talk with Linda.
Speaker 1:Richmond Coffee talk.
Speaker 2:It was based on his mother-in-law, and so that is one of those things where, like, I don't think that proximity to a marginalized group means that you are-.
Speaker 1:Immune for oppression, especially, not especially not systemic oppression.
Speaker 2:But that's one of those things where, like, when I found that out, it made me feel more comfortable with Linda Richmond as a character. Yeah, yeah, so, just because I was like okay, so this is coming from family in a way, that's, if he had no relationship whatsoever, it would be like oh Mike, what are you doing? What are you doing? Oh, you're making me nervous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. Well, we've been talking for a long minute now and I'm sure there are other things that we could say, but let me see if I can kind of recap some of the things that we talked about and you can fill in. So I think we need to start with the fact that this is just a very quotable movie. So, despite my misgivings and some of the things that like don't feel comfortable, there are a lot of really powerful one-liners that just like stick in your head like earworms. So I'm just gonna start there.
Speaker 1:I think there's some maybe understandable for the time but still kind of uncomfortable today gender stuff going around around assumptions about commitment and what commitment means and what the dangers I'm putting quotes around that word are. The dangers of commitment are to men. There's also some like off-handed jokes that, looking at them now, 30 years in, with some of the ways that we have grown to understand better consent, to understand better the way that the gender binary hurts us, just don't hold up Some of these jokes that were just like one-off things in 93, they're just not funny anymore. The whole meat courtship scene if you're vegan or squeamish bless.
Speaker 1:If you were beware, yeah, yeah, if you were beware, there's some possibly like interesting lessons. Despite the kind of almost throwaway expected jokes about consent around Tony and May which was funny because it subverts the expectation because it's the older woman who's going after the younger man Despite that kind of problematic dynamic, there's actually some interesting potential lessons about consent that you pointed out in the relationship between Tony and his boss, in terms of like there was some consensual abuse happening there.
Speaker 2:Yelling Abuse.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, All right. I mean at one point Arkin actually like grabs and by the lapels and pushes him against the wall. Okay, all right. We talked about the ways in which this movie was very much a product of its time, like quintessentially 90s coming out in 93. And we also talked about some of the ways in which one can view the ending as a happy ending if we're only thinking about Charlie and Charlie's wellbeing, but if we actually are thinking about Harriet's psychological wellbeing, it's not unqualified.
Speaker 2:Happy. It is more of a mixed bag.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what did I forget?
Speaker 2:It doesn't exactly pass the Bechdel test but it does have. The relationship between Harriet and Rose is actually more nuanced than you might expect, considering it is very common in both comedies and murder mysteries for an extrajudicial death be the happy ending for the murderer. So I'm gonna kind of give the film that, for I'm thinking also in particular. I did a big reread of a whole bunch of Agatha Christie novels last year and Christie really liked extrajudicial death as a solution to a murderer. That was like she really thought that was a great way of handling things fictionally anyway, but that seemed to her like that's justice. Whether or not seeing that so often in films is even clue, like that, the end of the real ending of Clue is Mr Green shooting Mr Body but Wadsworth as like all right, the end is done. Whether that comes from the influence of Christie because she has such a big influence on all murder mysteries written, or if that's just something cultural or whatever, the fact that we don't have that I think is worth noting in. So I Married and Next Murderer.
Speaker 1:All right, all right, so I don't remember. What are we gonna talk about next time?
Speaker 2:So next time. I'm very excited to welcome my friend, Kate Moody, who is going to be talking to us about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show, which.
Speaker 1:I have oh, is that next time, that's next time I happen to completely miss it, like I caught an episode or two, so I know because I like there was a I don't think there's a Portlandia episode like this, but like I did the same thing with Buffy that I did with a Battlestar actually before, obviously and like just lost a couple of weeks, my friend Hilary had it all on DVD and so I would like bring her two or three back and she'd give me two or three more to take home. Yeah, we worked together. Oh, look forward to it. See you then. Hey, podcast listener, yeah you.
Speaker 1:A number of folks have been reaching out to us privately with their own memories or deep thoughts about our deep thoughts. Erin told me that our brief conversation about poltergeist in the Ghostbusters episode brought back some scary childhood memories. Marion hi mom pointed out that Fred Savage's dad in the Princess Bride was probably at work and that we were maybe overthinking that idea. Jake pointed out to us that we had completely missed the negative and potentially harmful stereotypes of Roma people that underlie Robin Hood and Little John's cross-dressing as fortune tellers in Disney's Robin Hood. We wanna hear what you're thinking, but I bet other listeners do too. We have a forum feature on our website at guygirlsmediacom. Come join the conversation. I'll put the link in the show notes. Come on over, let us know. What did we miss? What surprised you? Did we inspire any deep thoughts for you? Be in touch. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember up. Culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?