Ira and Louis discuss Scream VI and the franchise as a whole, Miley Cyrus’ new album Endless Summer Vacation, the sex scenes on Swarm, Brokeback Mountain as a stage play, and why we’re still obsessed with Ebert’s reviews. Plus, Jessica Williams joins to discuss her role on Shrinking, working with Harrison Ford and meeting Calista Flockhart, rewatching Lost, and more.

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Ira Madison III And we’re back with an all new episode of Keep It. I’m Ira Madison, The Third.

 

Louis Virtel I’m Louis Virtel and I, as of this taping and up on the hottest show on television. And you know what that is?

 

Ira Madison III Let me guess. Something old.

 

Louis Virtel You are correct. It is Siskel and Ebert. Guys, I don’t know how this happened to me. I think literally on Twitter now, more so than even like a year ago, people just say things like, I miss Ebert now more than ever. And I love Roger Ebert. Like, I love reading his old reviews. If I’m watching something that’s from 2012 or before, I always look up what he says, which is crazy because it means I care about, you know, a straight man’s opinion, which constitutionally is not my thing.

 

Ira Madison III I weirdly do the same. And I don’t I don’t know what it is. I mean, shout out to him for being, you know, immortal.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III In that way. But any old movie that I watched that I haven’t seen before, I’m always like, Well, what did Ebert say about it?

 

Louis Virtel This is what I’ve been thinking about. What is the thing that I have to know about his opinion when I watch and it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like he’s weirdly, like, not judgmental at all or has nothing to prove and is just coming in with a very casual understanding of characters that feels very opening and welcoming. And also it’s very strange to just watch him, first of all, debate with Siskel and Ebert, because our debate with Gene Siskel, because you forget that straight men can be bitches. Oh, my God. These cats go at it. But it’s interesting because when you when you watch them debate and I’ve been obsessed with watching their best ofs every year, they literally did a ten best of the year episode in movies going from like the seventies on through till Jean’s death in the late nineties. And it’s something like it’s the combination of Roger Ebert’s like fair but kind of like poetically sympathetic point of view. And then Gene Siskel, whose point of view I care about less. But he, he like, writes about movies like a reporter, like, he’s like at the it’s like at a courthouse meeting. He’s taking minutes of the movie and telling you exactly what happened and offering a little bit of perspective, but rarely getting kind of sappy or coming to an essayist conclusion, which is what Roger Ebert does. I don’t know. I’m just obsessed with it. I cannot stop watching it. I have a few more years to go.

 

Ira Madison III I remember seeing a tweet from someone, maybe it was even you. Maybe not. But someone described Ebert the way he would argue with people. They were like, I like to win arguments the way Ebert does by just talking over the person who’s responding to you and then saying, Time to move on.

 

Louis Virtel That’s me. Yes, that was my tweet.

 

Ira Madison III Oh yeah. Whatever he would have. Like, I guess because I specifically remember before he picked Roeper, he was having like a rotating cast of guests. And Joyce Coe Harwick was on.

 

Louis Virtel Yes, I know exactly what review, you are about to talk about. Yes.

 

Ira Madison III And she called it one of the greatest movies ever made. And he was like, Listen, bitch.

 

Louis Virtel He got up in her face. Also, that, I think, is one of the best things about that show. Literally the look in his eyes when he’s either disappointed in Gene or surprised by Gene is just it’s so content. It’s so like the in the light of the world is drained from his face and yet he is still talking emphatically. It’s like he’s holding back a tantrum and keeping it witty, which is, as far as I know, like the closest thing I will ever achieved to hero behavior like it felt. And I it’s just it’s just so fun to watch again. It’s like it’s it’s like how it goes from diplomatic to extremely petty, sometimes on a dime. I love that dynamic. And also, it’s like they’re talking about these movies only for, you know, a minute or two at a time. It’s not like they can achieve real depth. In fact, I’m surprised by the amount of times Gene Siskel just settles for calling something smart and then moves on. But they’d still do in fighting, even just for a second. Really make you need to see the movie. I can’t explain it.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. I mean, I feel like that was one of the benefits of what I would watch it as a kid, you know, It’s like it’s not just his opinion. When two people are arguing about something, you’re really you really sort of want to see it yourself to see if whose side you’re on.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III You know. And I feel like I, I need to revisit Gladiator because I did not like it when it first came out. But this, of course, is me. Like a freshman in high school. It felt like a very bro dumb movie, but I wonder if I would really like it now because it feels like everyone loves Gladiator.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah right.

 

Ira Madison III Or maybe they’re just excited for Gladiator two.

 

Louis Virtel And there’s also a contingent that considers Gladiator, you know, like a perfect best picture. You know, like everybody went to go see it. It’s a it’s a better than average blockbuster. Great performances there in, you know, not my thing at all necessarily. But I do support Paul Mescal culture, so maybe I will revisit it too.

 

Ira Madison III Paul Mescal. Barry Keoghan. And now Denzel Washington. What are we doing here?

 

Louis Virtel What?

 

Ira Madison III Yes.

 

Louis Virtel I had no idea he was added.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. This is out of the cast of Gladiator two. And this is like. There are certain times when Ridley Scott, like, really taps into like camp or like something that gays want to see. And I feel like the casting of Paul is part of that. It;s like Thelma and Louise, Ridley Scott, like old school Ridley Scott, where it was fun,  like Alien, you know, not his bad movies in the center.

 

Louis Virtel Are you suggesting there’s maybe a Lady Gaga movie that could qualify for this? I don’t know what you could be speaking about.

 

Ira Madison III House of Gucci.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, that is the one I was thinking of.

 

Ira Madison III Which was not as camp as it should have been.

 

Louis Virtel Right. That’s one of my least favorite things a movie can be when you assume you’re getting something, you know, Mildred Pierce level dramatic or whatever, Mahogany level crazy. And instead you get something that is staid and expected ultimately. But the characters all have that American Hustle wig shop look.

 

Ira Madison III I feel like All the Money in the World was more entertaining than House of Gucci. I just really like that movie.

 

Louis Virtel It was good.

 

Ira Madison III Michelle.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III Amazing. Mark Wahlberg, there.

 

Louis Virtel That’s usually the score. Again, we had not dragged him over the coals enough for calling the movie. Women are Talking. I’m not over it. It’s a two word title. And he messed it up. And why? Because it’s about women. That’s why he sucks that much. One of my least favorite celebrities who ever lived.

 

Ira Madison III That’s the sequel. Yeah. First, there’s Women Talking, now it’s Women are Talking. Actually, women are talking. Sounds like a movie title from like, 84.

 

Louis Virtel Oh. I mean, it sounds like a movie from, like, the thirties. You know, like, Oh, the flappers are all getting together. The women are talking.

 

Ira Madison III All right, well, speaking of women talking.

 

Louis Virtel Your Segway second to none. We got a Wallberger of a show for you.

 

Ira Madison III We are talking to the fantastic Jessica Williams this week about her amazing role in shrinking on Apple TV, which I am now obsessed with.

 

Louis Virtel I love this show, too. We had Michael Urie on before. And, you know, one day I believe we will tempt fate and be in Harrison Ford’s line of sight, and I think we will be melted. But until then, I look forward to being alive.

 

Ira Madison III As long as we don’t interview him on a plane.

 

Louis Virtel There was a joke on Kimmel recently where somebody said he crashes those planes on purpose, just like as I don’t know, for fun because he needs something to do.

 

Ira Madison III Its giving Final Destination. Okay.

 

Louis Virtel We need to not get him on a roller coaster.

 

Ira Madison III And also we are going to go deep on the hottest topics on gay Twitter this week. Miley Cyrus has a new album, Endless Summer Vacation.

 

Louis Virtel Her name is Ashley O, but I forgive you.

 

Ira Madison III And also, we’ll be having a full spoiler chat about Scream VI and the Scream franchise. So skip that section if you haven’t seen it yet.

 

Louis Virtel And franchise being a very operative word and one that pops up in the movie in a pretty fun way.

 

Ira Madison III So we will be right back with more. Keep it.

 

Louis Virtel Spring has sprung. And even though it is still raining in L.A., like right now, it is. So I can’t even say it’s like whimsically Seattle outside. It is effing Cleveland out there. I am livid. Take that Ohio. But if you ask Miley Cyrus, summer never ended. Endless Summer Vacation has been killing it on the charts. But where does it fall in the scope of her discography? Ira, do you care about this album? .

 

Ira Madison III You know what I think? It’s not giving summer vacation.

 

Speaker 1 Right? Okay.

 

Ira Madison III Ah. I think maybe it’s giving cute weekend. It’s giving weekend getaway.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. Where you spend one of the days in your hotel room a little sleepy.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. It’s not a great album for me. It’s not. I’m sorry, Diva. I’m just not feeling this one.

 

Louis Virtel Okay. There was a meme recently where somebody calls themselves Detective Fierce and they’re interviewing somebody, and they call the person diva. My friends and I cannot stop calling each other diva right now. It’s so funny. It’s like the extra noun in the English language.

 

Ira Madison III I love the people who use it unironically because we all have a friend who will be like, Hey, Diva. I’m like, Yes, yes, you should be on Joan Rivers or Straight Talk Panel with Billy Eichner and Andy Kohut.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, okay. We need to explain that quickly. Somebody posted on YouTube recently a failed pilot on Bravo with Joan Rivers, and she’s the host of like a View like Panel. And on the panel are four other gay men, two of whom I had never heard of before, which that’s crazy, but two of them are Andy Cohen. And that year would be the one when Real Housewives of Orange County premiered. So he’s on the ascent and Billy Eichner, who is still years away from Billy on the street becoming a thing. But while they would just sit there with Joan and yak it up.

 

Ira Madison III One of them is Preston Conrad, who is a celebrity stylist and still apparently, you know, like being on E!

 

Louis Virtel They have to go somewhere.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. And then the other one was L.Z. Granderson, who she describes as a black Republican. So I was immediately not interested in hearing anything he had to say.

 

Louis Virtel How how hard did they have to search for that? And he was also a sportswriter or something, if they can. They drew this person up.

 

Ira Madison III I don’t think he seems to be warm any more because I feel like, you know, it was probably very trendy to be a black Republican on TV like 2006.

 

Louis Virtel Right. Bush era. It seemed so quaint then, even though, of course, it was horrible.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, but I just love before we move back to Bradley, I just love Joan’s introduction of Andy Cohen. She was like, And he slept with everyone in New York. Andy Cohen.

 

Louis Virtel Vibes of David Letterman introducing Madonna on her famous 1994 appearance, where she said the F-word 13 times, he said. Our next guest has slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry. Ruff. But anyway, somebody who reminds me of Madonna in certain defiant ways. Miley Cyrus. Here’s my main complaint about the album, Even though I think there are pretty good songs and one song in particular negates what I’m about to say. Are we done with vibes yet? I think we are good on vibes. I am. I’m like drowning in. I’m like waterlogged with vibes at the moment. I just don’t I need, like a key change. I need like, inspired music. I need something that doesn’t just fit into a Spotify algorithm, which is how all music is sort of like it’s all funneling into the same, like, mushy electronic, moody, vibey sound.

 

Ira Madison III Mm hmm. I feel the same. Although my favorite song on the album is Hands Stand, which is nothing but vibes.

 

Louis Virtel My favorite is Island, which is nothing but vibes.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. It’s very sort of like electronic album, you know, It seems at times like, you know, you’re listening to Air or Dave Park or something, but like the latter half of an album, not a single. I loved flowers. You know, I thought Flowers is a really fun song, but the rest of the album is just sort of like not giving a lot to me. And it’s brought up the conversation with a lot of people. Online who are just wondering sort of like what is the definitive Miley album? You know, how does she have a perfect no skips album? I think she does, but it is not Bangers as much as I love that album.

 

Louis Virtel Well, Bangers to me feels like Madonna album in that you could have deleted seven tracks and then you would have had a cohesive, pretty perfect album. But instead there’s too many like moments of confusion on it. You really do think she has a perfect album? Which one is it?

 

Ira Madison III I think it’s Can’t Be Tamed.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, you do love that one. I love that video.

 

Ira Madison III I love that album. I love it. I think I, first of all, like Liberty Walk. You put that on a intro strut. Okay, I’m going to strut. You’re going to strut for freedom and little.

 

Louis Virtel Long Strut to Freedom. My favorite documentary.

 

Ira Madison III My Heart Beats for Love. Perfect Bones. My Heart Robot. These are songs. Okay.

 

Louis Virtel Singing. When you’re full of passion, you can’t help but break out into meme. Like, that’s it. That’s how you express yourself.

 

Ira Madison III You know, you’re like.

 

Louis Virtel A conduit for memes to exist.

 

Ira Madison III These are songs. I love that album, but, you know, because that’s that was sort of also when Miley, you know, was teetering between old Disney Miley and like, you know, current Miley her can’t be tamed era you know was every pop star has had that you know like you know it’s.

 

Louis Virtel Christina Aguilera stripped.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah you know it’s a Britney slave for you You know it’s and it she you know, she was in a cage in the video with these big wings. It’s so overdramatic and fun. But God damn it, I love that album. And I also want to say that I do enjoy Bangerz a lot, too, because I might well made it era and I think that I am also over the judging Miley for the hip hop era that she had or she was twerking on everybody. She was like a Dr. Seuss book. She wasn’t. She was talking on Pop. She was talking on Robin Thicke. She was talking over here, over there.

 

Louis Virtel On a train. On the plane.

 

Ira Madison III But I feel like I’m going to blame the men who were involved. Like Michael made it like Juicy J, like they were giving her, like this hip hop cred and bringing her out everywhere. You know, like, it’s not like she all of a sudden was like, you know what? I’m down with the people. I’m going to be black today. You know, she wasn’t like giving Iggy Azalea.

 

Louis Virtel And I just want to say that after the twerk heavy era, she did the thing you would expect, which is retract with a really Zen, you know, era like the Malibu song and stuff, which I don’t think anybody really looks back on all too fondly. Actually, I think there are some stands in that way, in the way that there are stands for that Lorde album nobody listens to.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. Listen, Younger Doubt is a even worse album than this one. It’s extremely boring. I love Malibu. I love the title track, and that’s about it.

 

Louis Virtel I do want to say, by the way, about Flowers on this album. This is her Can’t  Get You Out of my Head, because I think every artist once in their lifetime is do that hypnotic midtempo track. There’s something about exactly that speed where you just can’t forget it. If it were any faster or any slower, it would not have that magical quality. A song I always talk about in This way is Physical by Olivia Newton-John. There is something about the speed of that song that is so exactly right where it’s like you almost want it to be faster. And because of that, you find the beat even more propulsive. Like there’s an anxiousness to the speed the song picks. And I’d say.

 

Ira Madison III Goldilocks when it comes to EDM.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. That’s me eating porridge and Vegemite as I celebrate Olivia Newton-John.

 

Ira Madison III I would also say that I really enjoyed Plastic Hearts.

 

Louis Virtel Wait, that’s the one with the Benatar esque like.

 

Ira Madison III Yes, that was like her rock album. That was that one was fun. It felt upbeat. It felt very it felt very much the Miley that we get. In person. You know, every time you see Miley at a party like she’s got the sunglasses on, she’s got the ball like she did at the launch party for this album, you know, like Gucci, Austria, in Beverly Hills. But she’s like she always looks like she’s having the most fun at the party. Right. And I feel like plastic hearts exemplify that. I don’t know, like how you’re turning up to most of this album, you know?

 

Louis Virtel Right. Also, by the way, it just speaks to how great she has been at covering rock songs.

 

Ira Madison III She’s so fucking good at it. Her covers are amazing. Blondie.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, please. I mean, like, this is sort of a rock song, but like her Jolene cover when she was at the SNL anniversary and sang 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Just like these are songs that we would never pair with her instinctively. And the minute she sings them, it’s like, Oh, you’re like a a student, first of all, of old rock and roll music. But second of all, it’s just not contrived at all. It’s not it’s not vibey. It’s just pure talent emerging.

 

Ira Madison III I love her cover of The Cranberries Zombie.

 

Louis Virtel Perfect song for her.

 

Ira Madison III And that that is that reminds me of like, back it back when she was doing all these covers the most, right. I was sort of wondering if we would get a covers album from her, which would be thought, I don’t feel like people release them anymore unless you’re Kelly Clarkson.

 

Louis Virtel And it’s crazy that we still get a cover from her every day. And also, I always agree with the kind of boringly repetitive stance about her. I’m like, All right, yeah, she did cover Jasmine Sullivan. Well, well, who knew?

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. We don’t do enough with her either, by the way.

 

Louis Virtel We figure it out with Kelly Clarkson is a little bit of a puzzle for everybody because she is this combination of utterly dependable talent and then never like just south of Cool, but also just north of Square. So we don’t know what to do with her other than give her a talk show.

 

Ira Madison III And it’s this big bluesy voice and it’s like, what? You will you listen to her albums? Like there are so many songs that never become her singles to where she’s just like letting it out. But, you know, we sort of like, don’t do a lot with her. I feel like part of it is because, you know, like, you know, she’s always talked about this publicly, like she got married, she became a mom. You know, she’s not like a skinny blond pop star anymore, you know, which is what she first started out as. And if you like, that during her career as she got older, people were just sort of like, oh, well, we’re just going to stick around to adult contemporary world.

 

Louis Virtel Right. And I don’t feel like we have pop stars of the sort that we did in the early nineties where, you know, like Annie Lennox is on the charts and unavoidable or KD Lang or people like that. So it’s like, what zone is there for Kelly Clarkson to dominate other than her daytime slot where she can do a 92nd cover of something and entertain.

 

Ira Madison III The only adult contemporary pop star we have on the charts is Pink.

 

Louis Virtel Right. And she’s still you know what? Transform is a fine song. The video is okay. I just need her to evolve the esthetic a little bit.

 

Ira Madison III I’m a little tired of her right now, mostly because every time Pink sits at her interview chair, she is always dragging someone else.

 

Louis Virtel And you find that exhausting? No.

 

Ira Madison III Well, I thought it. I find it fun, but I just I want I want more of the like, you know, if you’re going to do that. Like I need to go a little bit harder.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, that’s true. Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, It was like, Oh, you know, like.

 

Louis Virtel Chaka Khan or the full Chaka Khan.

 

Ira Madison III You know? Yeah, That would just be like, Madonna’s a bitch.

 

Louis Virtel I was. Yeah, you’re right, because Pink has a long history of dragging Christina Aguilera. I guess she had a horrible time making the Lady Marmalade video, but she also recently talked about how she was supposed to are expected to get the song Beautiful from songwriter Linda Perry, who wrote Get the Party Started for Non Blonds Legend. And instead, of course, that went to Christina Aguilera and pink said and Christina killed it on that track and I wanted her to say. For Christina, you know.

 

Ira Madison III Right. On. It wasn’t good. Yeah. You’ll be like she was loud.

 

Louis Virtel But of course, beautiful, as you know, is secretly one of my least favorite songs. Because it’s a song for. That’s right. Ugly people. This is. This is my same theory about Dancing on My Own, a song for losers. I’m watching the person. I have a crush on dancing. That’s how my night is being spent. Go get a drink.

 

Ira Madison III Do you also hate Unpretty?

 

Louis Virtel Unpretty? I think it’s a better song. Like, I like the kind of R&B elements to it.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel But at least that’s owning it. Like, I feel ugly. I’m saying it, you know? Whereas I feel like. I feel like the Robin song is someone pretending it’s somehow noble for them to be standing there having a miserable time at up in the middle of a discotheque or whatever’s going on in that song.

 

Ira Madison III Hmm. That is why I always prefer call your girlfriend.

 

Louis Virtel That’s a sassy song.

 

Ira Madison III That song? Yeah. Yeah. That was like, okay, what are we doing here? Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III You know, you’re a bad bitch and call your girlfriend. But I would actually go back to Unpretty. You know what saves Unpretty? The video is high cam.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, Jesus Christ.

 

Ira Madison III The scene where she runs out of the plastic surgeons office not getting the breast implants out of his hand, that is beautiful.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. Telenovela shit.

 

Ira Madison III It really makes we miss. And we’ve longed for the TRL era for so long on this show before. But it really makes me miss the era where there’d be the charts, the ten different videos that you’re watching. Yeah. And it wasn’t an algorithm. It was like ten different random videos because you would go from that to like, Korn.

 

Louis Virtel Silverchair

 

Ira Madison III To Brittney grinding on the ground.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, right.

 

Ira Madison III It’s everything. It ran the. It ran the gamut.

 

Louis Virtel By the way, I just want to say, obviously, everyone who’s our age laments the loss of TRL in some ways, but it really is mysterious that we would just sit there and call in every day to see. I’m going to say about 30 seconds of. A girl having an eating disorder in the Anna Song video. Why? What were we doing? Why did I need to see that again? And after school. So shocking.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. At 30 seconds is right. Because at a certain point, they really start airing the videos and it just became a lot of content surrounding. We could see the slow decline of TRL because it really just became Carson interviewing people or segments with screaming fans. Like the actual videos themselves would be like, Well, here’s 10 seconds of this.

 

Louis Virtel Right. And then and now here’s Ananda Lewis getting eardrum damage from screaming people in the streets. She was great in that Woodstock 99 documentary, by the way.

 

Ira Madison III Hmm. What else is there to say about Miley? I really enjoy her. I enjoyed Bailey as a celebrity. It’s so interesting to me because I feel like she’s so exciting as a pop star, but the music has never really risen up to being iconic, legendary.

 

Louis Virtel I think you just put your finger on it, which is that she is a really cool person and cool person to keep track of because she is like she’s somebody who never wants to be bored, for example, and.

 

Ira Madison III And I’m never, I’m never bored by her. You know, sometimes the music is boring.

 

Louis Virtel I think the deal is she’s not a brilliant artist. She’s just somebody who is restless and willing to try things. And that’s still, for the most part, hasn’t landed any signature moments for her outside of, you know, like we do have Wrecking Ball. We do have twerking on Robin Thicke. But I’m still waiting beyond flowers for the definitive Miley as our artist moment.

 

Ira Madison III Who would you compare her to even? You know, because, I mean, like, there’s plenty of artists that we have, you know, who we remember for being artists. But do you really remember those specific albums or like iconic moments? Or maybe they just had one single?

 

Louis Virtel Well, I would compare her in a way. I mean, like, I guess she is technically a songwriter on all these songs. Like, I’m looking at the credits and she’s on them, but she still, to me feels more like a Ronstadt and that she has this extraordinary instrument and she wants to try a variety. She wants to never do the same thing twice. So you’re always going to get something different, even if it’s maybe not your personal style or what you would normally seek out. I do think Linda Ronstadt is maybe the Yale of this world and like is is more historically interesting so far. But I always look forward to what Miley Cyrus does next, even if I don’t like what she puts out.

 

Ira Madison III You know what? That’s that’s why I made a Spotify. I play what was called mini summer vacation, the four songs I like, and I kept it moving.

 

Louis Virtel So I like the Lavender song. That’s a pretty good song, too.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. Also Jaded. Jaded, I feel like a lot of people agree is like one of our other fantastic songs on the album. I liked that.

 

Louis Virtel Like it’s barely better to me than the Aerosmith song Jaded, which, by the way, also played on VH one’s Top 20 Countdown way too often, guys that wasn’t there.

 

Ira Madison III Honestly, she would have killed it. Aerosmith era.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. No, I again, rock covers. Let’s see. I’m sure she has sung Dream On at this point.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. Or Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, right. Give us that cover by like give us a song that samples that to be honest.

 

Louis Virtel Right. But then of course, Diane Warren haunts you for the rest of your days, so you have to watch out.

 

Ira Madison III Well, listen, she’s already the Phantom of the Academy, so.

 

Louis Virtel Ah, did I tell you I ran into her when I was backstage?

 

Ira Madison III Did you?

 

Louis Virtel We have a mutual friend, and I said something to her.

 

Ira Madison III Looking for Oscar’s hit. Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel You know it. And I was like, Oh, I can’t wait to see you perform. And she goes, I’m shitting myself. I’m sure I was like, You? All you do is perform chords. Yeah, yeah, right. We’ll see you next year when you’re nominated again.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, of. She’s got to be due a lifetime achievement award.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, no. They gave her one this year. She has an honorary Oscar. Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III Oh, yeah, I forgot. They don’t air those.

 

Louis Virtel No, it’s actually very strange.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, like, imagine not airing Samuel L Jackson. Right, Right. One of the most popular actors alive currently. Of, like, everybody loves him, you know, like, show it on TV. People will watch it. We could have got Tarentino up there, would have been fun.

 

Louis Virtel A friend of mine was just saying he was at some sort of screening. It was a comedy, an old comedy. And after everybody would laugh at the jokes, 10 seconds later, somebody else would let out a horse cackle. And it turned out to be Quentin Tarantino, which is so right, Like he’s on his own rhythm with these movies. Probably seen them all a hundred times too.

 

Ira Madison III Can’t wait for his Pauline Kael masterpiece.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, right. Oh, we’ve not even discussed that. We have a weird project. How do you make being a film reviewer cinematic? I don’t understand. I don’t know how he’s going to do it.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, but he has a new movie coming out. Supposedly his last movie called The Movie Critic, and it’s about a female critic of the seventies. And we can assume it’s going to be Pauline Kael who would play her, though?

 

Louis Virtel I don’t know. Especially since if it’s the seventies. So this is somebody who’s going to be in their forties, I guess. I saw, uh, I think Harriet Sansom Harris put up. I mean, she’d be a little old for the role, but like, we, we want to see more of her, obviously. But you know, it’s going to end up being someone. Jennifer Lawrence. Right. Like he’s going to put some like a sweetheart in the middle of the movie and then make her do. Be a complete asshole. I feel like that’s what appeals to him.

 

Ira Madison III I randomly started thinking like, what if it was just like a a curveball? And it was like, Oh, Lupita Nuong’o.

 

Louis Virtel Your lips to God’s ears. I’m waiting for her. What? Fourth film role. Come on now, guys. I saw Queen of Katwe, and none of you did, so whatever.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, I would just love to see her on that role. I just want more. I like the seventies is an era, you know? And I especially like black fashion from the era. And I don’t think we have enough of those movies.

 

Louis Virtel If half the movie is just people complaining about the way Faye Dunaway just treated them. Honey. Two Oscars.

 

Ira Madison III Endless. And as we talk about this, I already have River stuck in my head from Endless Summer Vacation, so maybe you win after all Miley. When we’re back, Jessica Williams joins us to talk about Shrinking.

 

Louis Virtel <AD>

 

Ira Madison III There’s no way you’re not already a fan of our guest today. From The Daily Show to Two Dope Queens to Intergalactic Love Life. So many things. And right now you can catch her on Shrinking as the lovable and captivating Gabby. Please welcome the Keep It, Jessica Williams.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. Lovable and captivating. I really appreciate that.

 

Ira Madison III Okay. But seriously, because first of all, we just had Michael Urie on the podcast a few weeks ago.

 

Jessica Williams As I live and die. What a funny, funny, funny man. He’s just so funny. I have this dream. I live in Eagle Rock now in L.A. and I he I think he’s like looking for a house. And I really want him to buy in this neighborhood. And I go on walks now. I just. I started walking a couple of months ago, and sometimes I just, like. It would be so great if Michael went over here. I think about it all the time, and I don’t think about that with a lot of people. Well, don’t you think he’d be like a great neighbor?

 

Ira Madison III He would be.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, God, yes.

 

Ira Madison III He would be. And that is I feel like what makes the show so fun because I started watching it because, you know, he was coming on the show. But now I’m obsessed with it and I feel like it’s it’s got that classic, you know, that Bill Lawrence thing, you know, like that Cougar Town vibe, like the people on this show, it’s like you. I want them to be my neighbors. I want them to come over and have wine with me. I want them to just show up at my job at random times and talk to me about whatever it is they want. Like the chemistry of everyone on the show is just really enjoyable to watch.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, that’s great. That’s a dream I have that I use to have that especially a lot with Springfield. I wish I could live in The Simpsons. Yeah, quite a bit. I’d be like, Oh, it’s so cozy here. I like all the colors. I love all these people. I wish I could live in Springfield so that that means a lot.

 

Louis Virtel So I have to ask the eternal question about this show, which is I just think there are only a few intimidating celebrities. I just want to say that Megan Fox is one of them and I am still afraid of her, and I just feel like I’m in a rut.

 

Jessica Williams Have you met her?

 

Louis Virtel Once, years ago. She was perfectly hilarious, by the way. Delightful.

 

Jessica Williams I know that would scare me. That would throw me off, too. It’s like all that beauty and the brains. Like, I just feel like. What’s going on? Like the sense of humor. Like, does it all scare me? I get afraid of. I get intimidated by people who are, like, five feet two small, because I’m VI feet tall. So if there’s, like, a woman who’s like, five, three, I get like, I’m like in ten and I’m like, I don’t want to hurt like you. I don’t want to. But I’m intimidated and it just becomes because I’m so tall, I just get a little intimidated. Are you talking about Harrison Ford?

 

Louis Virtel I am. I am talking about Harrison Ford. Yeah.

 

Jessica Williams I assume I kind of stop your transition.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah.

 

Louis Virtel But in talking to Michael Urie, he was talking about how he was immediately disarmed by how professional and rad Harrison Ford was. And I was wondering what your report was like with him on set.

 

Jessica Williams That’s funny. Yeah. I love Michael and Harrison together. I love all their scenes. And I think with me, I was a little I think it took me a couple of days to get used to it of like, Oh, that’s Harrison Ford. Oh, I was born in 1989. Oh, you know, Indiana Jones Last Crusade came out in 1989. I’ve known about him, you know, my whole life. And then he is. He’s disarmingly casual in a good way. And, you know, there’s a little bit of that. So I got used to him pretty quickly, like pretty instantly. And a lot of times, like the first scenes I filmed with Harrison was with Jason, And Jason is very, very casual. So I kind of had him as a buffer and to kind of lean on a little bit to ease Harrison’s face. And then all the scenes in the kitchen between Gabby and Paul and Jimmy, those scenes come naturally. And a lot of times, you know, Paul’s character is supposed to be this sort of, you know, big sort of looming mentor kind of before for Gabby and for Jimmy. And so I kind of use that to help that that kind of informs Gabby and Paul’s relationship to, you know, in my in the back of my mind like it is Harrison Ford. But then, you know, 85 to 90% of my brain doesn’t give a shit. And what’s fun about that and I think what’s fun about creating chemistry as an actor is every single relationship is funny. And it’s really important to me to try and figure out why each relationship is funny and to zoom in and attack things with specificity. And so I just use that stuff with Harrison, but I’m pretty used to it by now.

 

Ira Madison III Another thing I really enjoy about it too, is like you play a therapist in the show, but because you’re working with, you know, Harrison and also Jay-Z, you know, it it skips that whole annoying trope that’s been on TV lately where there’s always just like a black woman therapist helping white people. And I feel like you get to be like, such a three dimensional black woman who’s a therapist on the show.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah, I saw a really interesting discussion on Twitter about that a few weeks ago about the black the black woman therapist trope. And yeah, I think it’s really interesting. I think Gabby is, you know, a therapist in a group full of therapists. I think that she just kind of gets to live and breathe. And I think the show is really aware. It does a great job of being aware that she’s kind of a she does have that fixer type of caretaker, sort of part of her personality that I think I can definitely relate to. And that a lot of times, you know, a lot of people of color, you know, can have and and women. So I think that is part of a really kind of multidimensional character. And I got to improvise a lot on set. And a lot of times on the show, I really just kind of let me go, which was really fun. And they just kind of let me goof. And I think I keep saying, like I said that earlier this morning, for me it’s like 10:15 and that’s pretty early for me. But I’m out like attacking things with specificity, and I think it makes it a lot easier to sidestep tropes. If I can always try and be specific as possible whenever I’m playing Gabby. But I thought that that was a really interesting discussion about I’m on Twitter about like the black therapist trope.

 

Louis Virtel We should say, by the way, that the Jason in question is Jason Segel, who great to see on this show. The whole ensemble is fabulous.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah. Yeah, he’s amazing. Yeah, he’s awesome.

 

Louis Virtel This episode, we’re talking about Miley Cyrus and you actually have something in common with her that I think people forget about you, which come from her.

 

Jessica Williams I have a lot of thoughts.

 

Louis Virtel Okay. We’ll get to those. We’ll get to those. But

 

Jessica Williams I do I think about Miley Cyrus all the time. I have a lot of thoughts. I want to I wish I could hear the first part of what you guys said about Miley. But what were you going to say?

 

Louis Virtel You think the album is more vibes heavy than melody Heavy? So we left a little underwhelmed.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, that’s funny. Yeah, well, you know, the thing about Miley is I think she’s amazing and I think she’s really come, like, come through a lot of like, I don’t think it’s normal for anyone’s brain to be a famous person. Your brain is not designed for that. I don’t know what it’s like to be famous since you’re a pre-teen. I don’t like you know what I mean? That I think what’s beautiful about Miley is that she is she is very smart and she is very like authentic and going through phases. And I think it’s really cool that she made it out to a world where we can even just have a vibey album. Like, to me, that speaks to someone who like, she’s probably only like 28, 30. I don’t know. But it seems like, you know, even at the end of her career, in the middle of her career, she will have been incredibly prolific with all the vibes and stages that she’s gone through. And it’s really cool that she is so communicative and lets her fans and everyone into her world to see all of her phases. Like I’m always rooting for her and I’m always just like, Great, good for you because I. I feel like life’s probably pretty tough.

 

Louis Virtel No, I would say she’s this generation’s Carrie Fisher, sort of thrust into the spotlight. But then almost as as you would assume, she was like, overwhelmed with like how much fandom was heaped on her at a young age. Like, quickly this like, sardonic understanding of life in the business emerged, too. And it’s always a treat because she, in addition to being a very, you know, talented singer, is also very funny. But my the reason I was comparing her to you is that she came from kids television. You are a Nickelodeon veteran, and I feel like people forget that about you. And did did you gain anything from being a Nickelodeon star? I just feel like that is a we need the definitive telling of what those years are like for people.

 

Jessica Williams That’s really funny. First of all, I just want to apologize for jumping in sideways like, all the time. Like I said, do.

 

Louis Virtel But no really.

 

Jessica Williams I think about pop culture a lot. If I. If I could, when I was when I’m older, I would teach like a pop culture reality TV studies class at UCLA or something. So I think it’s super important. However, I just want a reason why I wanted to go to the show. But yeah, I you know, what’s funny is I just I remembered that I did that show. I grew up here in L.A., and I think I started acting. I was like 13. That’s a lot easier to do that when you when you grow up where I grew up. And I got the show and I was 15, that was a soccer show about four girls up in soccer. We did one season. We were immediately canceled. It was executive produced by Whoopie Goldberg. I think it came out like the same year as Hannah Montana. Maybe like or maybe I think it came out that same year. And it was a really interesting experience because I got to shoot at Universal Studios on the backlot, and that was a really big deal for me at the time because people were still doing backlot tours and the Around the Studios Backlot tour is like, I’m so nostalgic about it. I grew up going on it. I think it’s very special. And so it was really amazing to be able to be on a lot. But it was it was canceled. And so I went back to school, to high school. After shooting that season and really threw myself into my high school’s improv team. And so I started to do more comedy and improv. And so that just kind of gave me that comedic bent, but that that first time being on set at 15 and making some really good friends who were also fellow actresses and hanging out, that was that was a big part of my teenage years. And it was funny because I saw Brett I mean, let’s see Brett, I saw Brett Goldstein, like a couple of weeks ago. And I remembered as a little buzz that I remembered like, Oh my gosh, would you believe that I, too, was on a soccer show? Do you think that’s true? And literally, he was like, What are you talking about? I was like, Let me tell you this. It’s like, Yeah, I played a really good soccer player and we just laugh and laugh.

 

Ira Madison III I want to ask about working with Bret to, as you know, a writer creator of this show when he came on cable before, when we were just talking about Ted Lasso, but was also just so fascinated by how much he too, loves pop culture and like, loves movies and just like, cares about them so much. So I have to imagine, like, a conversation with him is just so much fun.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I had the pleasure of seeing him at a couple parties the last couple of months, and he is a really, really lovely person to be at parties with because he is very fun. He has like a really he’s just fine. He is very gentle, very sweet, and kind of like the opposite of Roy Katz in every way, which is really funny. And he knows a ton about pop culture. So he’s someone who you can have a really fun drink with and talk to, and you’re just like, Wow, that was really, really fun. What a nice man. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes you can’t just go and have a great time at parties with everyone. But he’s definitely someone that I was like, Oh, that’s a fun, fun person to be sitting next to at a party. He’s just delightful. It’s very delicious.

 

Louis Virtel Anybody who’s like, I’m sick of talking about ET. We’ve talked about ET too many times on my podcast. I have to respect.

 

Jessica Williams That’s my favorite movie. I know. And it’s like he really wants me to do his podcast and he’s like, he’s like, What’s that? The back of my head. I’m like, Well, it’s going to be like the Josie and the Pussycats movie, Blue Crush, or E.T., you know what I mean? Is this like what are you going to do?

 

Louis Virtel I’ve never heard those grouped as a trifecta before, and I’m glad to hear it now. Wow.

 

Jessica Williams You know, the power three. The power three.

 

Ira Madison III I got to call it the Metrograph. I want that. I want that three  right now. I know.

 

Jessica Williams I know. I’m trying to program. I’m trying to program. We have a new place called vineyards opening up here by way of I mean, it’s a little place, but I get to do some really cool programing for them, for some screenings and stuff. And my list is wild. It’s very audience heavy.

 

Ira Madison III Well, speaking of him, even asking you, you know, like to do his podcast to talk about movies and you love pop culture so much. Do you miss having like a show of your own when you were doing your podcasts? Like, it’s like you could share whatever was going on in your brain at any given time because I know we come on this show and we’re like, okay, the topics are Miley Cyrus and Scream VI this week, and then we end up talking about anything.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think that’s why I was messing up your Segway so much, is that I do. I love podcasting. I did a podcast, Pseudo Queens for like five years, and it culminated with us doing these really fun HBO specials. We did like eight and that was super fun. As a really big part of my life. We recorded live once a week in front of an audience.

 

Ira Madison III I went to two of them.

 

Jessica Williams You did it. Oh my God, Where did you go? There you go. The Bell House? Did you go.

 

Ira Madison III The L.A ones. I was in L.A. then.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, that’s probably The Terigram.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah.

 

Jessica Williams Or we did. I did an L.A.show with Naomi at Teragem, which ruled the A’s downtown, too, which is super fun, but yeah, so, and I love it because it was basically just like two black ladies just talking. And we can talk about anything like you guys are doing on this podcast, pop culture related. And I’m pretty obsessed with pop culture too, so I do miss it, but I am really excited about. Acting and doing that full time because that too is like a full time job for me. If I want to do it right and be super present, I can’t really have too much stuff going on. I just need to be able to focus on on the scene and so I’m able to pour into the scene. But yeah, I’m really like into acting. And the great thing is we start season two in May, which is really exciting. And so I have some time to nest and decent home renovating before we start. But I think it’s about balance.

 

Ira Madison III I feel like every other day. So we’re just talking about how they’re rewatching Girls online. Specifically. Have you experienced people like rewatching and then like remembering that you were in it and then wanting to talk to you about it?

 

Jessica Williams Yeah. You know, every now and then I’ll get, Oh, you’re from Girls. I’ll be like, Yeah, yeah.

 

Louis Virtel I’m from Girls, now that you mention it.

 

Jessica Williams But there are like some girls and there’s some Girls, there’s some, there’s some real Girl heads that know every single character that’s been on there. And so, yeah, sometimes randomly, I’ll be like, That’s the  girl from Girls. And I’ll be like, yes.

 

Jessica Williams Really funny. Yeah, it’s really funny.

 

Louis Virtel If you’re going to revisit an entire television show and watch an entire, like the entire VI season arc of some series, what would it be now?

 

Jessica Williams You can’t just say you should. You guys should have prepped me with that. Rewatched all the last VI seasons.

 

Ira Madison III I’m almost done with Sex and the City. The rewatch.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. I’ve got VI more episodes.

 

Jessica Williams Oh, my gosh. I did that two years ago, and LOL, I cannot believe where you are right now. It changes so drastically. Like at the point you’re you’re like at the point that I was at when I was like, I was like, What am I watching? What am I watching? It’s so different from those first few seasons. But I think for me, I would go Lost, probably Lost.

 

Louis Virtel I’ve never seen an episode that’s a true blind spot for me. I’ve got to get on that. Though I feel like you start watching it and then you get a few seasons and then the disappointment sets in. I don’t know. Yeah.

 

Jessica Williams No, no. Everyone is too tough on it. I’m on the,  I think. I think it’s so cozy. I think it’s so cozy. The music is incredible. Like, it’s like almost Pixar, but not but like, very sweeping. And then it’s like in the jungle. It’s in Hawaii. So you’re just like, What’s the vibe? Everyone’s beautiful and complicated. The acting is insane. I’ve seen the pilot for Lost so many times and like watching Matthew Fox just, like, run around the beach, like, he’s always, like, exasperated in every scene and like, it’s just everyone is giving it 100%. Like, it’s so good. And it’s fascinating to watch them try and figure out the show and like, even they’re still telling really interesting, compelling mini stories, which is sort of the format of Lost, even when they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to land this metaphorical huge plane by season VI. I just think I just think it’s incredible.

 

Ira Madison III I would rewatch Lost as I haven’t seen it since it aired, but I remember, I mean, week to week following week to week. I was obsessed.

 

Jessica Williams Me too.

 

Ira Madison III Even speaking of because I was I was telling a friend about Lost yesterday because my Sex and the City rewatch happened because a friend of mine, Carter, had never seen it. So we’ve been we’ve been watching it together and he, you know, got ahead of me and he’s about to start the movie soon. And I remembered the Sex and the City movie came out on the same day in college as the day that was that Locke’s body was like in the casket in the flash forward. And I just remember like.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah, I can’t believe that’s like actually an attack.

 

Ira Madison III We watched that episode drinking Cosmos and then went then went drunk to the theater and watched Sex and the City.

 

Jessica Williams I would have been right there with you. I would be right there with you.

 

Louis Virtel I honestly, like the vernacular of Lost, is so strange that you saying that I have no idea what you mean or what it could mean. And so you have to pick up a lot to even watch the show and understand like the plot descriptions are so.

 

Jessica Williams But that’s what I like about it. I think Lawrence really captures that. Sort of like J.J. Abrams talking about like building a mystery box like that. That mystery itch is something that I really love. And you combine that with the sci fi and then you combine that with the idea that these characters are all both good and bad and and in between, and you’re showing the complications within the people and they’re pretty hot and they’re all just like on an island. It’s like, you got to be kidding me with this guy. We came up with this. It just has everything. It just has everything.

 

Louis Virtel Jessica, thank you so much for being here.

 

Jessica Williams Thank you for having me. It was so fun to have to come back.

 

Louis Virtel You’re delightful as the TV show you’re currently on, which we are both obsessed with. And that rarely happens when we have a guest on the show.

 

Jessica Williams Oh.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah.

 

Jessica Williams But. Oh, thank God. Oh, my God. I can’t believe you said that. Like we guest on the show. It’s, like, so controversial.

 

Louis Virtel Like a little naughty.

 

Jessica Williams That was like, real. That was an insane thing to say, actually.

 

Ira Madison III It’s also good forever too, since I’ve tweeted out like, I’m really loving this new show and people have been responding like everyone is like, I love it, I love it. I feel like I had hurt. I feel like all of a sudden everyone’s talking about it right now. So excited for season two.

 

Jessica Williams I mean, that’s kind of the dream. A lot has to go right as an actor for you to finally be on a show that people really like. Like you just there’s so many good things I’ve done. I look back at so many terrible things that hopefully don’t make it, but a lot has to go right. And so I feel really, really lucky that I’m able to do this job and say like crazy shit to Harrison Ford. I mean, it doesn’t get better than that.

 

Ira Madison III You and you and Calista, okay? You both get to say crazy shit to Harrison

 

Jessica Williams Oh my god, Calista. Did I tell you guys, my Calista story that I got to be her a few weeks ago. I didn’t did I?

 

Ira Madison III No, please do.

 

Jessica Williams I got to meet Calista at a party. I got meet Calista at a party a few weeks ago. I never met her before. Huge Allie McBeal fan. Also just a fan of her. Right. And so we’re at this party, and like Harrison said to and. She comes up to me, she’s just like. Right. I was like, Hi. And I was like, First of all, I need to tell you that I wasn’t what I want to be a grown up. And I think you’re amazing. And I think you’re like a national treasure and, like, I will never forget, never forget. And I think you’re amazing. She was like, Thank you, Thank you. But she was like. I don’t watch this stuff normally. And I was like, cool. And she was like, Keep giving a shit. I love this and I love your character giving him shit. And she was like, Keep giving him shit. And I was like, I don’t like, I have like my jaw dropped. I was just like a big thing was like, she’s giving him shit. She’s like, I love it. And I was like, So she had like, but she had this really cool, like, raw casualness that that Harrison has in a really cool way. Like she was like, down. She was like, down. That’s that’s the best way I can describe it. She seemed like a real one.

 

Louis Virtel That sounds like someone who starred in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in LA for a couple of months. Yes, that’s. That’s some Martha shit.

 

Jessica Williams Yeah, yeah, yeah. That changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, I liked her a lot, but I keep giving him shit.

 

Ira Madison III Mm. I got to revisit Ally McBeal, too.

 

Jessica Williams I know. Oh, it’s so good.

 

Louis Virtel Peter MacNicol, we speak your name. Yes.

 

Jessica Williams Hashtag speak his name. Speak Peter’s name. You’re like, don’t use the hashtag for that.

 

Ira Madison III No, you’re so great, Jessica, this is really, really, really fun.

 

Jessica Williams Thank you. You too. I appreciate. This is really fun. I can’t wait to be back.

 

Louis Virtel <AD>.

 

Ira Madison III Heads up. This conversation about Scream VI will contain spoilers for the film and the franchise as a whole. So skip ahead 15 minutes if you have not seen the film or don’t want to be spoiled. The newest installment to the Scream franchise has dropped. But you know who’s really scared? Jenna Ortega’s PR team.

 

Louis Virtel First of all, she’s a writer first. I don;t know if you’ve heard

 

Ira Madison III Before we even talk about Scream, we need to talk about Jenna Ortega, who is an icon in the films and maybe kind of an icon in interviews. And I’m sorry. I know that this is bad for us as writers in the Writers Guild to be like, Oh my God, I’m loving this girl just being like I. I stopped into the Wednesday offices and I said, I’m going to make history. And that’s what this is.

 

Louis Virtel She basically claims she either rewrote or protested the way certain scenes were written and then kind of improvised as they filmed, which, you know, it’s a Tim Burton production that’s pretty set in stone on the page, I would imagine. So a lot of people are thinking. Did she have to do that? Is it her place to do that? And you are suggesting. Yes.

 

Ira Madison III I’m suggesting that I think it’s hilarious.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III That she’s talking about it.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III She does even did this because it seems like they also maybe the Wednesday writers hate her. But I know like the the all the team on Scream loves her. So I’m like, maybe they love her, too. Maybe they also realized that Wednesday was. A mess because let’s just say she was doing some rewriting. I don’t want to see the original writing.

 

Louis Virtel It is interesting that we’re not having a talk about how Jenna Ortega should contribute, because I feel like in Scream VI and in the Scream franchise, I think we learned this time that, all right, first of all, we don’t actually need Nev Campbell, which is something I insisted the last time we reviewed a Scream movie. I think she’s the heart and soul of the franchise, Her kind of her cynicism, her but weird optimism also like how she was going to get push through this and like, you know, be a survivor and literally survive getting stabbed three or four times every new installment. I’m happy we could go on without her. But at the same time, I still feel like a deficit of the series. Is that the chemistry in the relationship between the sisters, Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega is lacking, and they are kind of mumbling their way through a picture that should be more dynamic than it is.

 

Ira Madison III Hmm.

 

Louis Virtel That said, I do think this installment is a thumbs up, and I don’t believe I would say that about Scream V.

 

Ira Madison III Okay. Yes. You know, so listen, I think when we first talked about Scream V, I missed it so much, I was excited for something new.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III On rewatch, it goes way down, and it’s actually my least favorite of the franchise. But VI. So much fucking fun.

 

Louis Virtel Right. And by the way, I think it’s fun. Despite the fact that I don’t like certain set pieces in the movie, like Ghostface comes into a bodega and just slashes through the entire thing. It was getting messy the way the movie Halloween Kills did, where Michael Myers is just assaulting firefighters on the lawn like you. Okay, well, the cops would get him, okay? He’s just like. He’s just, like, clearing the entire squad right there.

 

Ira Madison III Right. Because, you know, he is black, but he has a white face, so maybe the cops would be arrested. I don’t know.

 

Louis Virtel I love your standup. Love your standup.

 

Ira Madison III What’s the deal with Ghostface? Yeah, that scene was a lot. It is funny how since the third movie, basically they’ve always gone on this whole thing with, like, the killer, a superhuman. You know, like, those are the rules of a franchise. And so Ghostface just gets to be superhuman, and it’s like, Okay, well, like, is he taking steroids? Right? What’s happening is Bane underneath this mask more so than that, especially in the last movie, this this current trilogy, this current iteration from the Radio Silence directors who did Ready or not. People are just getting sliced and diced and then hopping up and still doing gymnastics.

 

Louis Virtel Excuse me.

 

Ira Madison III Last installment when Gail got shot in the stomach, and then she’s back in the house for the final act. Fucking people up.

 

Louis Virtel No. Excuse me. People get like. Like carved up their abdomen. Like, fill your face, spells his name on them, and then in the final frame, they’re sitting on the back of an ambulance with, like, Starbucks being like, Can you believe it? We survived again.

 

Ira Madison III So here’s the thing about that, too. It’s fun to watch. But I will say it’s becoming a bit less dangerous or scary. You know, I mean, I was.

 

Louis Virtel I wasn’t scared. I was not scared. I will say that. Yes.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. Except for the ladder scene was very creepy to me. That scared me a bit. And Gail’s extended chase scene was like, very, like, thrilling. I was very tense during it, But I was rewatching the original films, Right. You know, And Randy Dying was so shocking in Scream II, you know, and it was like he was part of their core four as it was. Right? Right. And now you have a core four in this movie, you know, which includes Tara and Sam and Chad and Mindy. But. I sort of feel like none of them are going to die.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III So it feels like you’re watching a TV show almost, where all these characters are coming back each time. You know, like I was never actually afraid that any of them were going to die. I thought Chad was done for, really. I figured Mindy was going to live when she got stabbed on the subway, you know, because. Yeah, paramedics get there. But with Chad was like, you know, sliced up by two Ghostface. I’m like, two of you bitches couldn’t kill him?

 

Louis Virtel And Excuse me. They were going at jackhammer speed. There was a full minute when they weren’t doing anything but stabbing. I mean they’re.Launching at him, it makes. And he just was like frozen. The look on his face was, Here I am dying. Here comes the dying face we all put on in Scream when we’re dying. And lo and behold, he survived. I want to give a real shout out to Jasmin Savoy Brown in this movie, because she plays she’s related to Randy, who was killed in Scream II. But in this movie, she plays the movie expert. And you would kind of think at this point that they had done the movie within a movie. Are movies commenting on movies or a borrows enough times? I mean, they truly you would think of it as expired after the first movie, but she still really made it fun. I loved her describing the rules of movies becoming franchises as opposed to just sequels. And now and she gets into this how certain characters have to survive and certain legacy characters don’t have to survive anymore because they’re so old hat. You know, who cares that somebody from the 20th century would still be living on in these movies?

 

Ira Madison III She was so fucking funny in that scene.

 

Louis Virtel Yes.

 

Ira Madison III You know, if anything, I will say that I liked how, you know, Jack Hammer the movie was, you know, steal that word from you, you know, it felt very you know, when you try and think about horror movies that like it, installments like this are set in New York, I guess the only real comparison is like Jason takes Manhattan. Mm hmm. You know, and this obviously is much sleeker and makes more sense than that movie.

 

Louis Virtel Not a logical film. You know.

 

Ira Madison III Jason, movies aren’t very large.

 

Louis Virtel I don’t think it’s like a dramaturg on that, for example.

 

Ira Madison III But, you know, the movie is still follow the same sort of like format, pretty much I do enjoy. So the fact that we’re watching a whodunit, basically, I feel like they really took the slasher movie to the full whodunit level with the first scream. You know, you would have that before at a movie like a prom night or something, but you sort of know who the killer was or you’d like see them like as a kid. You’re like, okay, this person is about to be a killer. Like, who are they now? But I really enjoyed the opening for this film. Me too. And how they played with those expectations of, like, showing us who the killer was. And then they get killed by the real killer.

 

Louis Virtel Truly, I honestly, the opening of this movie, which stars Samara Weaving, who, by the way, is giving you the full Kylie Minogue accent the entire time, did not expect that she’s the opening actress. You can kind of guess what happens there. But then the first killer reveals himself and you kind of think you’re going to get an entirely different form of this movie. That’s not a whodunit at all. And it was intriguing because they just show this guy going about his day, basically. And honestly, I do think ultimately that would have been a cooler movie than what it turned into, which is a more conventional scream movie. And I think it’s a little bit of a deficit that they kind of teased something a little rather than what we got. But I will say something I love about this movie, One of The Killers, and by the way, spoilers, etc.. I’m sure we top out of the episode with spoiler alerts, but whatever. We can’t talk about the movie without talking about the killers. So here I go. Dermot Mulroney At the beginning of the movie, I would describe him as acting poorly and then by the end as the killer, he really comes into his own. And I kind of love seeing a killer who once unmasked becomes way, way, way more engaging. I mean, I guess you could kind of say the same thing for Laurie Metcalf, but of course, she’s a dynamite actress constantly.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. I mean, it’s so interesting because Laurie Metcalf and Dermot Mulroney are, you know, sort of like legacy actors who mean something to us as millennials, really. You know, like, I don’t know that any young kid watching this franchise is going to be like Dermot Mulroney, you know, at least like when we were kids watching Scream two, like we recognize Laurie Metcalf from Roseanne.

 

Louis Virtel Right. Yes. It’s fun stunt casting.

 

Ira Madison III Right. This should have been like, if you really want to tap into like Gen Z or something like this should have been like like David Schwimmer or something should have been the killer, you know, someone from my or like, you know, Neil Patrick Harris, you know, like, that would have been like, interesting and fun in the same Laurie Metcalf way. I would compare the killers in the sense that. I love Scream II. You know, it’s my favorite in the franchise.

 

Louis Virtel And I do like it, too. Not my favorite, but I like it.

 

Ira Madison III But when you really think about it on paper. Mrs. Loomis, as the killer is so whack because of there’s no way.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III You could guess who this bitch is. But she’s one of everyone’s favorite, Ghostface reveals. Because when that. Because, first of all, Debbie Saul is fun in the movie because she’s, like, having this whole feud with Gail the whole time. Yeah, she’s an.

 

Louis Virtel Erotic reporter who exists and terrorizes her in a kind of annoying way.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. And then when she pulls off the mask at the end, Laurie Metcalf is or is like, on another planet.

 

Louis Virtel No. Right. The Steppenwolf jumped out. This is some stage acting. Yeah. Gary Sinise. She got the notes from him on that.

 

Ira Madison III She is so fucking good once the mask comes off. And I was like, Dermot Mulroney, once the mask comes off is fantastic as well. Yeah, unfortunately his two kids, which who are also the killers and Richie’s siblings, are Richie, the first killer from Scream five. His siblings. They’re kind of losers.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. And also, like you absolutely know, one of them is the killer. They tease enough times ahead of time that, you know, a movie like Scream is going to make that person that they keep offering up as the like. There’s not going to ironically shy away from him that he is going to be the killer ultimately. Also, I will say it doesn’t make any sense that direct relatives of the last killer are just flagrantly getting away with this. I mean, like.

 

Ira Madison III The second time.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, right. We’ve been here.

 

Ira Madison III It’s like, Oh, he was a killer. Like what? What is the FBI even doing?

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. And by the way, they’re there. Hayden Panettiere is back. She was obviously great in Scream IV, and she is, um, not great here. I was wondering kind of what happened with her. She looked great, but I felt like the camera never even lingered on her for a second, more than it had to. We didn’t get any acting moments from her, barely any one liners from her. It felt.

 

Ira Madison III She had been acting.

 

Louis Virtel Right while it felt to me like they were cutting around her. So I was wondering what was happening there.

 

Ira Madison III But, you know, it was I never suspected Kirby was a killer anyway.

 

Louis Virtel But they had a fun curve ball at the end, thanks to Dermot Mulroney. I enjoyed that. And something I also loved about this movie is thanks to a monologue from Jasmin Savoy Brown. She talks about how this is a second version of Scream II, the sequel to the sequel. So she she teases that there will be comparisons to Scream II, and I kept thinking that meant the killer was going to be the on air reporter who was talking about the murders because that’s where Debbie Salt was. But no, it was a throwback to Scream II and that it was about the family of the last killer. So I just thought that was like a cool twist. And also the movie ends on a stage the way that Scream chiller ends on a stage that was really well done, even.

 

Ira Madison III Though final set piece was fantastic, by the way. I really love that. Like when they kill them too, they walk out and you think you’re getting the credits, but it’s the credits to Ritchie’s movie.

 

Louis Virtel Yes, right. A little bit Tar, if you will.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. Overall. I would put this one at least up there with Scream I and Scream II for me.

 

Louis Virtel Wow.

 

Ira Madison III In terms of in terms of like, fun, I would put it slightly over Scream III, which I just rewatched. I was just like, I need to rewatch Scream VI again to see how it all holds up. I think Scream III gets a lot of flack from people. I think it’s immensely rewatchable I think it’s so fucking funny. It leans into comedy more, but like at every moment it is just like it’s really fun and goofy. And Parker Posey carries that movie on her back, right?

 

Louis Virtel I think it’s I, II, IV, VI. III and V about tied for me.

 

Ira Madison III Mm hmm.

 

Louis Virtel I think something that I have trouble getting over is it does feel like it’s the sixth installment of a movie. Like, to me, it’s. It’s like we’re celebrating Christmas still in March. I love Christmas. It’s worse the more you do it, even if it’s good. You know what I’m saying? So it feels like we’re in this Jurassic World Minions seven version of Scream. Even though I think I like all the performances in it and I do look forward to it going on, I kind of look forward to them getting rid of a couple of these characters though, because I feel like they’ve had their time.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, I mean, listen, what the the big high point too, is that the directors of the film Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, you know, they did ready or not, and I like ready or not a bit more than you did, right? Yeah. But I would say from ready or not to scream five, just three and VI, they are obviously improving in their craft.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. I think this is better than Ready or Not. A movie that I thought was obsessed with telling you the fun murder mystery rules of the movie before knowing she would survive. Anyway. It was trying. It was trying to break convention while giving you convention, I thought.

 

Ira Madison III Right. And so this is definitely better. So I’m excited to see what they do with seven, which would wrap up maybe this trilogy or whatever, you know. So and I think that what’s really smart is, listen, they gave Gail the chase scene that she’s deserved since Scream two, which is still my favorite moment in the franchise ever.

 

Louis Virtel With the glass. Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III With the glass and running through, you know, like the building and that her seeing Dewey get stabbed, it’s fantastic. But I think that now Gail needs a rest. Nev needs a rest because, listen, the franchise, it’s a franchise. It’s not going to fucking die. So bring them back for like, you know, Scream ten, like a big legacy one in a few years, you know, where, like, they’re finally there and then you really get like, I don’t know, an end to it. Sydney burning down the fucking factory. That still makes these Ghostface masks or something. Okay, I can’t believe they still make these masks.

 

Louis Virtel But let’s nip this in the bud, yeah.

 

Ira Madison III I can’t believe they still make these masks.

 

Louis Virtel I do like that though. I like the idea that these people will kind of just rotate in and out and you don’t need them necessarily in any one particular chapter. I think that’s the smartest way to handle it.

 

Ira Madison III One thing I love, I’ve always wanted, one, where you see the killer doing it the entire time.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III But two, I just feel like now Sam is, like, sort of like a vigilante. She loves slicing and dicing people, which is great.

 

Louis Virtel And she’s got, she’s improved since the last movie, by the way. Melissa Berrera. Yes.

 

Ira Madison III I would say give us, like, a whole vigilante scream movie, You know, like, get these kids on Reddit in chat rooms, finding people who are like, Yeah, I want to commit some murders and then just show up at their house and stab the fuck out of them.

 

Louis Virtel Sort of what the TV show Swarm is, by the way.

 

Ira Madison III Anyway, really fun movie.

 

Louis Virtel Thumbs up for me. I wavered a couple of times, thumbs up for me.

 

Ira Madison III Thumbs up for me too. Look at us.

 

Louis Virtel Wow. We’re Siskel and Ebert. Dammit. There’s a monster at the end of this book. We are the monster. Anyway.

 

Ira Madison III All right, well, we’re back, Keep It. And we’re back with our favorite segment of the episode as usual. Louis, what’s your Keep It?

 

Louis Virtel This is a Keep It I’m mainly excited for. So it’s a micro Keep I,t about something I’m excited for. But we were just wondering what the hell happened to Lucas Hedges, who. I don’t. While he’s.

 

Ira Madison III Truly.

 

Louis Virtel Yes. While he’s out there avoiding his destiny of playing me in a biopic. Guys, there just aren’t that many people with closed eyes and a huge nose. I’m sorry. I need to protect my kind. We finally find out what he’s doing. He’s going to be starring in a London production of an adaptation of Brokeback Mountain with Mike faced from West Side Story.

 

Ira Madison III I’m so turned on by that man.

 

Louis Virtel Nobody has talked about that movie in the past year, and it was great. I loved almost everything about West Side Story. But anyway, on the poster for this adaptation, which by the way, of course won an Oscar for Diana, Roxana and Larry McMurtry, who adapted an April story. And he was still around. And I believe at the age of 87, this poster, I get that they are trying to reference the iconic outfits in the original movie, The Heath Ledger. Jake Gyllenhaal looks. It has to look a little bit like they belong in the 1960s. These outfits fit so well. First of all, you just have to be gay to get that fit, first of all. But second of all, the fit is so right that from the neck down, they look like Tegan and Sara. I mean, I don’t believe in the ruggedness of this. You’re right. You know what I mean? Like the masculinity stakes aren’t there for me right now.

 

Ira Madison III Well, it is theater, okay? I mean, the first time that they have sex on stage, they break out into a rendition of Closer.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, that’ll be nice.

 

Ira Madison III The Tegan and  Sarah version.

 

Louis Virtel Right. Yes. Nine Inch Nails.

 

Ira Madison III Or Neyo.

 

Louis Virtel Well, there’s lots of options there. Or The Movie with Natalie Portman.

 

Ira Madison III I love that we’re in this era of people being into cowboys fucking again. We had God’s own country recently, and now we’ve got My King Almodovar’s new short, which is star Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III And Manu Rios, which is a lot of movies coming out right now. That’s just going to be my full personality so far forward. That movie, The new Ah Michaela Call Anne Hathaway Movie with Music by Charlie Zaks. It’s just like it seems like this is this is my year.

 

Louis Virtel Finally, you’re going to get your shot, Thank God. I am curious how they will make Brokeback Mountain a stage show, though, because even though it feels like it just all takes place in this pastoral ideal, there’s a lot of locations in it, like there in the house there. It takes place in the future, in the past. So I’m curious how that will work out.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, not really giving you unity of stage and time, as it were.

 

Louis Virtel You don’t even have a theater degree, do you? I do.

 

Ira Madison III I do.

 

Louis Virtel I thought you were just film.

 

Ira Madison III No, I have a B.A. in theater from Loyola University.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, wow. It’s even less impressive when you spell it all out like that. Wow. Ira, what’s your Keep It this week?

 

Ira Madison III My Keep It goes to the reactions online to Chloe Bailey getting her back blown out in Swarm.

 

Louis Virtel But enlighten me. I know the scene in question.

 

Ira Madison III So Swarm is a new Amazon series. Shout out to our former co-host who wrote an episode of the series. But the show is about this beehive esque fandom. It’s basically Beyonce.

 

Louis Virtel Right.

 

Ira Madison III You know.

 

Louis Virtel It’s down to the number of Grammys the singer Naija has.

 

Ira Madison III Naija is a you know, a singer in the universe. And, you know, Dominique Fishback plays a fan of hers. And instead of the Beehive, the fandom is called The Swarm. And basically, you know, it’s about the dark sides of fandom. It’s about mental health in the black community as well. Basically, this girl is just she’s killing people. She’s getting away with murder. Annalise Keating has nothing on this bitch.

 

Louis Virtel Nowhere to be found.

 

Ira Madison III Of. But she’s roommates with Chloe Bailey, who is having sex with Damson Idris, and he’s from the series Snowfall. My interview with him in Bustle is out today, if you want to read that.

 

Louis Virtel Thank you, Tina Brown. All right.

 

Ira Madison III Shout Out. But there’s a scene where he’s fucking her in it, you know, and all of a sudden I knew this scene would go viral online, mostly because a friend of mine who works at Amazon had showed me a screener of it early on, and I was like, Oh, no, this scene is going to be the Internet’s going to be talking. Yeah, right. The streets are going to be talking.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah, it’s a pretty noisy scene, too.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, the streets are talking, but the streets are being misogynistic.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, well, they’ve been that way before. I’m not too surprised.

 

Ira Madison III Of course. Of course. The street, the streets have been the streets have been misogynistic since Diana was being dirty on them by Chloe. It’s just being called every name in the book. She’s been called a Jezebel since we’re called a whore. Mo’Nique. It’s it’s like Mo’Nique in Charm School. You know what she called Pumpkin The Whore of Charms School and then called her a flirtatious whore as well.

 

Louis Virtel It’s giving Suzical.

 

Ira Madison III It’s giving her a call. It’s wow, I know we’ve talked before about sex scenes in TV and film and, you know, like the peer teams are out there now. But now we shift it to this thing where people are tweeting like, you couldn’t pay me, you know, to like, you can pay me to get fucked, you know, every way from Sunday on, like a TV show like this. I’m like, Do you know what acting is anymore?

 

Louis Virtel And also, by the way, yes, you could. Yes. Enough money, you’d get up on the bed. Please

 

Ira Madison III But unless you were Jordan Firstman, when you’re not actually having sex on camera.

 

Louis Virtel Right. Right. I forget that we are getting that. It was at some Sundance movie or something.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah. You know, so come on.

 

Louis Virtel And by the way, the focus should be Dominique Fishback, one hell of an actress. She’s so fun.

 

Ira Madison III Oh, Iconic

 

Louis Virtel I do have to say about this show, I’ve seen the four episodes. And by the way, Billie Eilish appears, and I was wowed. I thought she was fabulous. So it’s such a good actress. I do feel like it has that, like, self-conscious edginess of a movie like promising young woman where it makes the product seem worse. Like, I don’t feel like it’s incredibly badass to watch somebody just kill somebody and move on. And I think you’re supposed to perpetually be thrilled by that. And I do think it gets a little boring, actually.

 

Ira Madison III Yeah, I mean, maybe a season two will happen and that will, you know, it’s from Donald Glover, and I really love Donald Glover’s work. And I think that like once you get into like some weird, surreal stuff, maybe it’ll have a bit more to say once it tells the story it initially wants to tell, you know, But I sort of agree. And also my one complaint, this is another Keep I, Naijah, I’m not stanning.

 

Louis Virtel I agree. Okay. The cast is all good enough. Yeah.

 

Ira Madison III There’s always a problem. It’s like it’s not hot enough for me to be spending money on plane tickets to Amsterdam, which is what I’m doing for the Renaissance tour. Okay, Like it? You know, an artist like that needs to be interesting, but also. Mainstream as well, you know, like it needs to be like really commanding of a cult. You know?

 

Louis Virtel Right, right, right.

 

Ira Madison III People that kill for Beyonce or people killing for Solange.

 

Louis Virtel Interesting. No. It reminds me of the movie Punch Line, where it’s like we need to believe that these are, you know, top tier stand up comedians or whatever. And unfortunately, they added the jokes last or something. And so it’s like, well, this is completely deflated. And Sally Field, I’m going to say it. You’re not Paula Poundstone.

 

Ira Madison III You love that movie. But I mean, bring up that movie.

 

Louis Virtel It’s just it’s a movie I can’t believe exists. And also it’s like right at the zenith of both Sally Field and Tom Hanks careers. And it’s exactly wrong. You know, it’s a movie like Aloha, all the right people in the right place, the right looking movie. It’s so bad.

 

Ira Madison III Mhm. Lions for Lambs.

 

Louis Virtel Yes.

 

Ira Madison III Or, Night and Day.

 

Louis Virtel This is, oh yes. This is why we pay you the big bucks for Lions for Lambs references right there.

 

Ira Madison III Oh God. Speaking of Night and Day, you know what movie is just reversed Night and Day?

 

Louis Virtel Go ahead.

 

Ira Madison III Ghosted that Ana de Armas, Chris Evans movie.

 

Louis Virtel Oh, right.

 

Ira Madison III You look at the trailer, you’re like, Oh, this is reversed Night and Day. I’m a lot more Tom Cruise movies.

 

Louis Virtel Yeah. Oh, I agree. Start with Valkyrie.

 

Ira Madison III With a sexy female racecar driver.

 

Louis Virtel Heart like a Wheel in the eighties with Bonnie Bedelia and Shirley Muldowney. Look it up.

 

Ira Madison III Is it good?

 

Louis Virtel I didn’t say that.

 

Ira Madison III Well, I like it.

 

Louis Virtel I think you’ll like the poster.

 

Ira Madison III Okay, well, that’s our episode. Thank you to Jessica Williams for joining us. And we will see you next week. Don’t forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to Keep It on YouTube for access to full episodes and other exclusive content. Plus, if you’re as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. Keep It is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Kendra James. Our producer is Chris Lord, and our associate producer is Malcolm Whitfield. Our executive producers are Ira Madison, the third. That’s me. And Louis Virtel. This episode was recorded and mixed by Evan Sutton. Thank you to our digital team, Matt deGroot, Nar Melkonian and Delon Villanueva for production support every week. And as always, Keep It is filmed in front of a live studio audience.

 

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