Halle and Alison kick off Pride month by figuring out what crows have to do with porn while ruining Knife+Heart.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[theme music] If scary movies give you dread, keep you up late night in bed. Here’s a podcast that will help you ease your mind. We’ll explain the plot real nicely. Then we’ll talk about what’s frightening so you never have to have a spooky time. It’s Ruined. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh, hello. Welcome to Ruined. I’m Halle. 

 

Alison Leiby: And I’m Alison. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And this is a podcast where we ruin a horror movie just for you. 

 

Alison Leiby: Just for you guys. And—

 

Halle Kiefer: Alison. 

 

Alison Leiby: Happy Pride Month. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Happy Pride. We’re doing it. We’re recording this Friday, May 26. So for you, it’s Pride. We’re in the past communicating through. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The ether, I suppose. 

 

Alison Leiby: Are we in the right yeah, we’re in the past. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We’re currently in the past. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh boy. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: Some might even call it the present. But yeah happy Pride Month. Boy. I’ll tell you, this is the week in case you, in case anything horrible has happened the last week, which seems incredibly possible. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean.

 

Halle Kiefer: We are we’re coming off the Target, pulling its Pride items. 

 

Alison Leiby: Jesus Christ. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Boy, I’ll tell you, as a queer person, you don’t like to see that. 

 

Alison Leiby: Nope. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Doesn’t seem good at all. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. To cave to the fucking psychotic, fascist, homophobic transphobic minority feels really bad and dangerous. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. So we thought the perfect time to introduce to you what Crooked Media, which is in case you are an older listener and you continued listening after we rejoined Crooked there’s they’re launching an initiative, this Pride, that will carry on through the rest of the year. And I guess as long as we need to have this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Seems like forever. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, but basically we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast. Obviously the right has launched a full on anti-trans onslaught. You know, in every red state, trans and queer people are under attack. And you know, like Alison said, they are the minority, but they are vocal and they are increasingly erratic. 

 

Alison Leiby: Wow. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So, you know, we’re all trying to figure out what could we do, especially as people in blue states, to help people. And because of the reality, there are more of us. And in fact, there’s never been more support for gay, trans and queer people, and especially gay trans and queer youth. Sorry I’m gonna cry, who have to deal with all of this and not the things weren’t haven’t been bad in the past, but it’s unfortunate, even the past year how, you know, volatile the situation has become. So it is up to us to who have any sort of power, any sort of platform to make it very clear how much we support queer and trans youth across America today and every day. 

 

Alison Leiby: And yeah, and we and obviously us, Halle and Alison, do so much. And that’s why also our friends at Vote Save America, which is the political action arm of our beloved daddies, Crooked Media and podcasts like Pod Save America and Lovett Or Leave It have created the Fuck Bans: Leave Queer Kids Alone fund by the end of Pride Month, they’re working to fund raise $50,000 to support organizations on the ground in states that are banning care and targeting trans families. I’m thinking that’s got to really include Florida, that horrific state, and they’re including organizations like Transgender Law Center, the Trans Justice Funding Project, and the Trans Youth Equality Foundation. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So if you would like to contribute or learn more about these organizations or just feel like you have some place to put, like, you know, your ambient terror and what’s going on, please head to VoteSaveAmerica.com/fuckbans you can help donate, help us hit our goal and in doing so hopefully you know show the GOP fuck you we don’t agree with this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we will push back as hard as we need to. So again that website is  VoteSaveAmerica.com/fuckbans and you know we appreciate you. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I as a queer person, I especially do I’m sorry I you know you know I wasn’t going get to this without crying. 

 

Alison Leiby: No of course not. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But we really do appreciate go check it out. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we’ll talk about it you know throughout Pride obviously you know if you’re coming to this late. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But yeah so I guess let us get started. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I’ve already cried. [laughter] Alison, how are you doing? How’s your life?

 

Alison Leiby: Fine. I had, like, stress dreams last night where. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh no. 

 

Alison Leiby: The things that were stressful were, like me being difficult. [laughter] And it was—

 

Halle Kiefer: Fascinating. You as your own nightmare. That’s really interesting— 

 

Alison Leiby: It was like me and two friends and I like. We were at a thing that we had paid for. And like, I got mad at somebody irrationally and made us all leave. And we, like, lost the money. Like it was like it was really funny. I was like, I’m having a nightmare, but like, I’m the villain. [laughs] And I woke up so unrested. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: That’s so fascinating. 

 

Alison Leiby: But then also as part of it had anthrax, too, that it was just some standard— 

 

Halle Kiefer: Wow. Yeah. That’s deep in there that’s what is sounds like.

 

Alison Leiby: Some old bosses of mine kind of, like, folded it into it and I don’t know. My dad was there. It was really bad. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh, boy. I was like, were you naked and your teeth were falling out?

 

Alison Leiby: No, that sounds like better than what was happening. [laughs]. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Someone was tweeting that like, I don’t believe that everyone has, like, teeth falling out dreams. They can’t be that common. I have had. 

 

Alison Leiby: I’ve had— 

 

Halle Kiefer: That dream dozens of times. [both speaking] I don’t know what that is. I think it might be because we’re all clenching our teeth like during that. Those dreams. So your body’s like—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah it’s like, physical? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, like thinking about it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Well, how are you? [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: I’m. I’m okay. Other than my, like, you know, my general emotional, you know, all over the place ness. I will say, Alison, and this is this can be a horror movie. There’s a smell in my apartment, and I [sigh] I haven’t located it. And I’m just going to spend the weekend—

 

Alison Leiby: Nothing. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Finding it. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s what kind of smell? What genre of smells?

 

Halle Kiefer: It smells, I would say, a food smell. 

 

Alison Leiby: Like it’s like when I had the sandwich smell. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. And where was the sandwich? Did we find out?

 

Alison Leiby: Never found anything. 

 

Halle Kiefer: No. 

 

Alison Leiby: And it is gone now. It’s gone now, so. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Boy. Yeah—

 

Alison Leiby: It’s probably just a ghost eating some pastrami in the corner of my apartment somewhere. Then he finished and left. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I’m unfortunately, at an age, nearly 40 year old woman where it very well could be that some kind of food fell somewhere. And I can’t—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —find it. That’s use of a piece. 

 

Alison Leiby: Absolutely. Oh god, that’s annoying. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So I’m just going to spend the long weekend relaxing and finding where the smell. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In my apartment fucking is coming from. 

 

Alison Leiby: Combing your apartment inch by inch, to find what food is causing the smell. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, well, so I’ll keep everybody posted. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Let us know if you find it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh, absolutely. Let’s kick things off on this Pride Month. And I wasn’t. You know, we weren’t. I want to approach Pride Month from a couple of different perspectives. Last year we did High Tension, and we got, I thought, a very fair email. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But it was about sort of like doing horror movies in which queer people get and trans people get murdered. Is that a celebration? 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Now, obviously I am biased because this is my favorite genre, so like. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But I understand, especially this year. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s like the the having that depiction I completely understand people having a problem with it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Totally. 

 

Halle Kiefer: That being said, I also thought I would like to do a movie up top where there is a lot of queer fucking. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I, I wanted there to be sex because there are of course obviously so many different queer horror movies, but a lot of the queerness is sort of like. 

 

Alison Leiby: Ambient. Yeah.

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, yeah like imbued in vampirism. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Or like, sort of, like, implied. And I wanted to be like, there is at least there are just people fucking on screen. You know what I mean. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yep. 

 

Halle Kiefer: How and whether or not that’s explicit. So the movie I picked is from 2018, it’s a French film called Knife. I guess Knife+Heart. It could be Knife and Heart, but it’s stylized with a little, you know, like cross sign. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And it is directed by Yann Gonzalez. And it stars Vanessa Paradis, who I’ve never seen in anything. And I thought she was great in this. 

 

Alison Leiby: I haven’t ever seen her in something that was like kind of exciting to be like, oh, I only know you from like red carpets. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And the it’s based on it’s a follows a a lesbian porn gay porn director in the late seventies in France and it is loosely based on it actual person Anne-Marie Tensi, who is a female producer who specializes in gay pornography, who worked in France in the seventies and eighties. So this this I was like, okay, loosely based on a real. 

 

Alison Leiby: Love. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Producer for gay porn. Super fun. Now this is in the giallo style, and if you’re familiar, with giallos. We need to do giallo January giallo January. [laughter] But we haven’t done it yet. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay we have to do that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But Alison just to like catch you up, it is, is an Italian sort of a subgenre of horror that is more of a murder mystery, but it’s also very gory and it is playing with a lot of themes of sex and gender typically. And it’s sort of like playing with what was in the culture, sort of like panic about those issues and about masculinity. And here we are back at it, I suppose. 

 

Alison Leiby: Well. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And so what better time to revisit those things? So this is sort of it homage or a reference to whether it’s the most successful of that, who’s to say? But I thought, let’s start it out here. And boy, there is a lot of mostly goofy, darkly comedic gay sex in this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Which again is an interesting way to approach things. But I don’t know, I kind of I vibed with it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So before we begin, we always like to have Alison watch the trailer. Alison, what do you think of the trailer for Knife+Heart? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, let’s say Knife+Heart. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: For this, because that’s how I read it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes, good. 

 

Alison Leiby: A Knife plus Heart feels like a rebus. This reminds like the style and kind of, like, feel like light camp to it. And, like, reminded me of, like, a Pedro Almodóvar film. Like—

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes okay I can see that. 

 

Alison Leiby: The bright colors, kind of the like, there was something about it that was just like and like, I mean, I studied him in college. I’m a huge fan of his work, so I was like, oh, I like this. I don’t know if I could watch this because I do feel it gets quite terrifying. [laughs] But I loved the vibe. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: And also it was scary. So I don’t know how to reconcile those two things in my brain. [laughs] 

 

Halle Kiefer: What was the most what was the image or moment in the trailer that sort of jumped out to you as like, okay, this is now we’re seeing something a little scary. 

 

Alison Leiby: Um, I don’t remember something that like, stuck out. Was there something in the trailer that would have, like, registered? 

 

Halle Kiefer: No, no, no. I just wanted to get your opinion. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Color for the listener. That was all.

 

Alison Leiby: I feel like, well. I don’t feel like, you know, it’s like I know they’re talking about like, a murderer or like somebody’s been, but also the birds being part of it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Alison, I just, I mean that’s what I was thinking, Alison there are so many [both speaking] God damn birds—

 

Alison Leiby: —hung up on the colors. But the birds and like, the finding, the feathers it reminded me of. And obviously, when we get through the plot, maybe it is or is not similar. But like when people talk about the true crime case, The Staircase and they’re like—

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes absolutely. 

 

Alison Leiby: —the owl did it, and it’s like, that’s not what happened. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: I love that. 

 

Alison Leiby: But boy I believe it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, people really push that and it’s like, well, guys, what’s the likelihood of that? Also, then you find out that the editor of the movie editor of sorry, the the docuseries. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm hmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Ended up dating the accused. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: For years like while they were making it and I was like that seems unethical. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then I want to see somebody I don’t want to say I don’t want to cast aspersions on another, but I believe there’s another prominent docuseries where you find out that somebody involved in production also dated. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Somebody in the case. I’m like, what is happening? 

 

Alison Leiby: I feel like, I remember hearing that about something. I don’t remember it being this, but maybe it was this. But anyway, the bird didn’t do it.

 

Halle Kiefer: Isn’t that bizarre? Yeah, the bird didn’t do it. 

 

Alison Leiby: The bird didn’t do it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You could. I was like, oh, it’s convince that it’s edited to make me think a bird fucking did it means where the person editing is fucking the person who’s accused of murder.

 

Alison Leiby: The person who’s accused of murder. Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Anyways that guy’s out of prison maybe he didn’t do it. We don’t know. We. We, we’re not a true crime podcast. Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. Nope.

 

Halle Kiefer: We can’t weigh in on this.

 

Alison Leiby: We just do fake crime. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We do fake crimes. And boy, there are a lot of them in this. 

 

Alison Leiby: There are so many. Yeah. The bird stuff I, I was unnerved, especially when you first catch like the bird that like is in the window and it’s like—

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh yeah. And there’s these birds are getting up to all sorts of mischief [both speaking] they’re actually a pretty pivotal part of the plot. Unfortunately for you. 

 

Alison Leiby: That sucks. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: And then we also, we always like to take a baseline scary to see where Alison is at with sort of like the entry level frights. Alison, how scary do you find the concept of queer trauma? 

 

Alison Leiby: The trauma part very scary. And especially, you know, living in America right now, not being a queer person myself, but certainly having all of the sympathy for everybody, like just to oof. Scary. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Any kind of othering that creates trauma, which is most is like so, like, it’s like an extra darkness then just kind of like the trauma of, like person to person violence or something like that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And I feel like especially like and again, it’s, it’s so I would say it’s so particular to the family, but it’s also like this is the success of queer, the queer movement is that like more families are more accepting. But this, of course, is set in Paris in 1979. So that of course will be an element where it’s just like and again, like they’re trying that’s what they’re trying to do with trans kids now is like, like, like break up families, you know, like drum up this like—

 

Alison Leiby: Legitimately actually breaking up families. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And—

 

Alison Leiby: Causing them to move. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And it’s yeah. So that’s sort of we’re getting we’re getting into. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay, okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: That’s not there’s a lot of other stuff going on in the movie. So we will unpack it as we get there. And what would you like to. Would you like to guess the twist in the movie Knife+Heart Alison?

 

[voice over]: Guess the twist. 

 

Alison Leiby: I’m going to guess that the murderer, who I don’t think is the producer, but maybe somebody that she’s close to, has trained the birds. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Ooh okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: To kill people. So it looks like birds killed them. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay, love this. 

 

Alison Leiby: But in reality, he directed them like he’s like the birds are, like, hit men? 

 

Halle Kiefer: I like that. I think that’s perfect. Birds as assassins. Let’s get into it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: All right. So we sort of we see a film reel and a projector and immediately see two young men clearly having sex in what is clearly a porno. So, you know, it’s sort of lit. It’s like golden sunlight natural. You know, again, it’s late seventies, so. 

 

Alison Leiby: Gorgeous. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You know, they’re fucking in a clearing. And then there’s a third guy watching and jerking off classic gay porn. We then see this one of the stars who is a young blond man his name is Karl. One of the stars of the porno is at, like, an S&M gay club in Paris. He’s dancing with some guys, and this is like, you know, balls to the wall. Fucking check your clothes at the door level shit, right? So, so when he looks over at a guy in a full leather mask rubbing his dick through his pants, he’s not immediately right if that was like at McDonald’s you’d be like, oh, okay, something’s going on. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right it’s about context. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. 

 

Alison Leiby: When it comes to you rubbing your dick in a leather mask. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Absolutely. So if you’re already at the club, it is unfortunately, like, harder to catch the the the subtle clues that this guy might be up to no good. And the band’s playing and everyone’s everyone has different masks on. So there’s a band playing. There’s like a shirtless guy who has, like an eagle head and there’s sort of like a green pigman and everyone’s in leather. There’s a guy just getting a blowjob in the middle of the dancefloor and just like, straight fucking. So again, this is the kind of place if you want to put on a leather mask and rub your dick, this is the place to do it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Yeah. If anywhere here. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So poor Karl, unfortunately sees this is like, I need to find out more about this guy and the mask guy sort of signals him to follow him out into the alley. Which is funny to me because there’s a guy get his knob slobbed literally two feet from you. You don’t have to go to the alley. But. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: They wanted a little bit of privacy, I suppose. 

 

Alison Leiby: Nothing good is going to happen in the alley when you’re already in the middle of what seems to be the throes of a great sex party. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I know, it seems like an orgy is about to break out. You’re like, no, no, no. You know, there’s too much distractions too much going on. So Karl follows the masked man out into the alley. Alison he’s immediately set upon by a black bird. A black bird immediately flies at Karl. I would have screamed and immediately run out of the S&M club, but he’s like, it’s okay. It’s just a bird. And then he and the masked man, you know, sort of started to engage. And we cut back and forth between the porno, which we’ve seen before, which is very brightly lit, natural, sort of like two men in the woods frolicking back to this sort of back alley stink fest. Right. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So but there is like the brightness in sort of the— 

 

Alison Leiby: The bird is there. 

 

Halle Kiefer: There and there’s a bird and there’s a bird ostensibly watching this. Right. So imagine that. I don’t know how you feel about that. 

 

Alison Leiby: I can’t. I can’t that bad, bad. I feel bad. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And while we’re watching this, Alison, we see a woman’s hands with bright red nails, cutting film, ostensibly editing the porno film, that is, we’re cutting, to. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But we’re seeing the person putting it together, the masked man and Karl make it to a second location. And we see the masked man has tied Karl face under the bed. And then the masked man sort of tears off Karl’s tighty whities, which absolutely would not work. You cannot. I do not believe—

 

Alison Leiby: No, they’re— 

 

Halle Kiefer: You can just rip them off. 

 

Alison Leiby: No, no, no, no, no, no. They’re not like tearaway pants. Like they’re they’re sturdy unless they’re very old. But then you would know. 

 

Halle Kiefer: They look brand new. I was I was thinking like you’d be hauling Karl off the fucking bed, like it would not come off. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But eventually he does rip off these undies and jam them in Karl’s mouth. So as far as Karl knows, things are going great. You know what I mean—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I’m, like, all right, things are really panning out for me. And unfortunately, the masked man reaches into his pants and pulls out a huge black black dildo. And again, not again. Karl’s like, all right, seems good. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. This is all what we kind of came here for. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But I didn’t. I didn’t, unfortunately, about the dildo a big thumbs up for the dildo, unfortunately, just as they’re about to get absolutely rotten, Alison. And you’re going to be completely shocked by this, I’m sure, the masked man clicks the dildo like the world’s least effective pen and a switchblade knife shoots out the end. Oh, you hate to see it, Alison. 

 

Alison Leiby: [sighs] You hate to see it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Because that’s also the movie Se7en. I hated it then, hate it now.

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Karl tries to scream, but you know, as we all know, it’s impossible to scream when you have tiny whiteys jammed in your mouth. 

 

Alison Leiby: Obviously. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And unfortunately and it’s shot in a way that I appreciated the discretion, the cutaway of it. We see the masked man bring the knife down and start stabbing Karl over and over again, and his screams start blending with the cawing of birds. Alison. And the, and we see that the man with the mask, it’s a leather like a brown leather mask with eyes and his mouth is cut open. But you can’t see his lips. You just see his teeth. And it looks like as he’s screaming—

 

Alison Leiby: Ooh why? 

 

Halle Kiefer: He’s, cawing, Alison, he’s making the sounds of birds as he screams. 

 

Alison Leiby: See. We should not be aligning with our avian enemies like they are not our friends. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, this guy’s definitely on their side. He’s too far gone. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah I don’t like that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I’m sorry. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, he’s on the side of the birds? That’s the wrong side. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It is. If you weren’t clear, like what side he was on when he was done murdering poor Karl, we see on the windowsill right behind the masked man is another blackbird. Just fucking watching it go down like the fucking pervert birds are Alison. Imagine you got murdered and a bird saw it. 

 

Alison Leiby: I’m imagining that if I get murdered, a bird will see it. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: The ultimate indignity, Alison. I can’t even imagine. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. Truly embarrassing. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We cut to a very distraught blonde. This is Vanessa Paradis. She is in a it’s a shiny like forest green, like vinyl trench coat or shiny leather. She looks incredible. 

 

Alison Leiby: Cool. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In platinum bob, a blonde bob running through a darkened underpass. And it says on the screen, Paris 1979. And that is, as far as I know, is the only way to get around Paris is just frantically crying and running—

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —in a fabulous trench coat. 

 

Alison Leiby: In a coat, yes.

 

Halle Kiefer: She runs through a telephone booth and she calls the woman whose hands we saw cutting the red nails. It turns out it is her name is Lois. And we see Lois. I’m sorry, Loïs. Her name is Loïs. They spell it Loïs and I have to remind myself, it is Loïs. Loïs answers the phone, and the blonde woman says, Loïs, are you there? And you could tell from the way Loïs sighs that they are exes. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It is like, perfectly. She’s like, oh, my God. Are you calling at work again? 

 

Alison Leiby: [sighs] This bitch? Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Loïs tells the blonde, whose name is Anne, she says, it’s five in the morning. I am still at work trying to finish another porno. Please, you can’t keep doing this. And Anne’s sobbing. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She’s also clearly tanked. She’s like I woke up alone. Please, I need you. Also she was clearly out at the bars like she wasn’t asleep. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Loïs says, you’re totally loaded. I can’t keep doing this with you. And, you know. Please. And she’s, Anne’s begging Loïs like caress you with your voice. Hold my hand. Come get me. And Loïs says, Anne, we have to stop. We agreed we would only ever see each other at work. Alison, they both work in the gay porn industry. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s got to be a small world in Paris in the seventies. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And they’re, you’re both lesbians. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like, if you’re the only two lesbians, of course you’re going to end up together at some point. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And, you know, Loïs is like, we fought and we broke up in anger. You told me no more booze, but it’s just we’re just going. It’s this is why we have to get out of the cycle. I’m sorry. You know, and but Anne’s like, no, it’ll be different this time. Why don’t you come pick me up, we could go drinking all night like we used to it? And Loïs, is like, did you just hear what I said to you? We can’t do this. Also, it’s sort of like the idea of. Like they’ve been together ten years, they were together ten years and have broken up. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So, like, this is obviously, like, really painful for both of them, but, like, Loïs is trying to maybe move out to have more of an adult life because they’re like, clearly in their forties and, and Anne is just stuck, Anne is just there, you know what I mean? She’s just she’s an alcoholic, you know? 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Loïs tells her you need to go home and sober up and Anne freaks out. She’s like, what if I was dying? Like, you wouldn’t care if I was dying. 

 

[clip of Vanessa Paradis]: [speaking French]

 

Halle Kiefer: Let me come over and smell your skin one last time. And Loïs is like again—

 

Alison Leiby: You’re not making a case for yourself as like a reasonable visitor at this hour. Like. No.

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. Call me at 9 p.m. not drunk, and maybe we could talk about it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: This is the problem, right? And Loïs says it’s, like, devastating. And she says it’s over. My heart has gone dry. Oh, the knife from the heart. Indeed. And Loïs hangs up and. And Anne slumps to the bottom of the phone booth, which you always want to do after a breakup call. Is just be phone booth slumping. 

 

Alison Leiby: Any time I have a call that doesn’t end in good news [laughter] I would like to just kind of, like, slowly slump over in a phone booth or kind of like, you know, slide down a doorframe. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. So people know how you’re feeling. 

 

Alison Leiby: Exactly. Telegraph that to the world. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The next day we’re on set and it’s a very again, it’s 1979. So it is three guys in like colored briefs just making out sort of, you know, just having a good time. But we see Archibald, who’s Anne’s best friend and he’s directing them and he’s like, good job, Thierry. Far out, yellow briefs, just encouraging them. 

 

Alison Leiby: Love it. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Anne rolls up. She is stinking drunk and she storms up the stairs to the editing bay. And we see Archibald. He calls the scene and says, when we come back, we’re going to take a break. And I want you all stiffer than President Giscard and I don’t know anything about the president, but I’m assuming he was stiff. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So these guys get at it. Meanwhile, Alison, we see Anne go up to the editing bay. Instead of going to talk to Loïs, she goes as she stares through a hole in the wall at Loïs. It’s like again, this is why Loïs—

 

Alison Leiby: No. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —doesn’t want to be with you, girl. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. You’re not making a good case for yourself for a reunion of any kind. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Also, you see it from the other side, you absolutely could see a human eyeball. Like.

 

Alison Leiby: Yes, of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Because when you put your head there, the light goes away. She knows that you’re—

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —doing this, dude. But a man stops by. I do not know. This was like, hard to identify what the character names were because a lot of the IMDB people don’t have photos. So I’m going to say this person is the assistant director. So the AD. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah that’s fine. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He stops by with the dailies. So that’s how much porn they’re fucking cranking out. We got the dailies. 

 

Alison Leiby: They do dailies? Wow.

 

Halle Kiefer: And Loïs is there till five in the morning. So, I mean, I guess to be fair, this is probably like the time where you actually could be making money in porn. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like in this way so, they’re like, we got to get this smut out there. And Loïs says, oh, every day it’s the same old shit, you know, and this is going to get in Anne’s head like, what can I do to sort of reinvent the wheel to impress my ex-girlfriend, who has made it very clear she doesn’t want to be with me. [laughter]  Meanwhile, we see Archibald directing the three men. They’re sort of getting ready to go to Pound Town. And finally, Anne, even though she’s hung over and has her own stuff, she steps up as director. But her method of directing is just screaming at these men [laughter] which I’ve never been in a porn or been to a porn set, but I just gotta imagine that’s the least. The last thing you need if you’re trying to have sex. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And they start being like come on, loosen up out there.

 

Alison Leiby: Kills the. Yeah. Nothing kills the mood like getting yelled at. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And she yells at—

 

Alison Leiby: In that way.

 

Halle Kiefer: I I’m gonna say I’m, know I’m pronouncing this wrong, but the person’s name is t h i e r r y. I’m going to say Thierry, It might be Thierry. 

 

Alison Leiby: Thierry. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Thierry. Think it’s Thierry? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah it’s a whole. It’s like it’s. Yeah.

 

Halle Kiefer: I’m gonna say Thierry then and hope it’s close enough. And if your name is Thierry, I really am trying. And she screams at one of the three guys cause he well he can’t get hard, she screams, lay off the heroin. You’re barely hard. It’s like, my God, woman, like give them, like five minutes here. 

 

Alison Leiby: We’re at work. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: And one of the other guys says, it’s not the dope, it’s his paycheck. And it’s like, okay, so this is the kind of porno we’re headed towards now where it’s we’re shooting a porn and the actors are having sex, while having labor arguments with management. That seems like where we’re headed. 

 

Alison Leiby: That’s a deeply French thing. I feel. [laughs] 

 

Halle Kiefer: Absolutely. 

 

Alison Leiby: To be like, very caught up in, like, fair wages and socialism, which is like what that country is all about. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Right. We’re going to picket this fucking porn set bitch. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like, you can not scream. And she’s like, If you’re not happy, you can leave. I’ve got boys lined up around the fucking block to replace you, and she storms off to have a cigarette. And this all feels very French to me. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes deeply. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Archibald calls their fluffer and the fluffer does not have a human name. They call him the Mouth of Gold. And because he could get anybody hard. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, good for him. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Good for him. And he’s living the dream. It seems like he’s having a great time. And so he comes out any sort of like an older, fatter man who has has honed his skill and he gets to work on Thierry so they could get to shooting. Anne meanwhile, she’s smoking. She’s smoking and she’s like, we wasted so much time. It’s like well you screamed at them so much. It’s going to take even more time. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then she looks up and Loïs is on the upper balcony, also smoking. And they’re like smoking and, looking at each other. 

 

Alison Leiby: Hot. But. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: You know. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I said again, the only lesbians working in gay porn at the time, of course, this is what’s going to be happening. You know what I mean.

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Archibald after the shoot, drives Anne to his house again, she’s clearly, like, so fucked up from the break up. She’s, like, barely hanging on. She dozes off in his car, and we then see the first time she keeps having different dreams, Alison. So we see a forest and it’s overexposed. So when you see a bird, it’s not the jet black birds you’ve been seeing. It’s a white bird. Which is even scarier. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. I agree that that is scarier. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You hate to see it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Upsetting. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Not as much as you hate to see a dildo knife, but. 

 

Alison Leiby: You know, dildo knife is worse than bird, but only marginally. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Dildo knife number one. Bird, number two. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We see a bird land on a hand in the dream, and then a knife swinging down and a burning barn and. And a young man with curly hair who we realize must be the masked killer. Or we’re supposed to think it’s the masked killer because the mask it was covers his face, but he has this incredible mop of hair, which I think if you’re a killer with great hair, you should do. It’s not like a ski mask. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s like, cut off so you can see his hair. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean. You want to show off your assets, but it will make you much more identifiable in the world. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes, exactly. 

 

Alison Leiby: As a killer. So, you know. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Take your pick of, you know, priorities here. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She wakes up—

 

Alison Leiby: I would go hair. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She wakes up and she pulls, she goes, Archibald, pull over quick. Next. You know, she is walking through a quarry and she finds a young man who looks like the man of her dreams. His name is Nans. And we see he has a beautiful mop of curly brown hair. And she, he’s a gorgeous young man. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she’s like, I will give you $2,000 for five days of work, because that’s how much he said he made per month. She said it’s $500 a scene. And, you know, he’s like, well, what’s the catch? She’s like, well, it is boys on boys. It’s like, I’m no fairy, thank you very much. And she’s like, hey, what’s the worst that could happen? You have a little pleasure. And also that no one’s gonna find out because we all who watch these videos are other gay people. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Who’s going see it? So she writes her number. She gives him like, some bill. Let’s say $100 bill, writes her number on it and tucks it in his pants and she’s like, you give me a call. She gets back to the car. She tells Archibald, I just found a gem. He’s a fawn amongst wolves. And he looks exactly like and I’m going to try to pronounce his name f o u a d. Fouad? 

 

Alison Leiby: F o u a d? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: I don’t. [laughs] Food? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Food. Fouad. Fouad. 

 

Alison Leiby: Fouad. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I would say Fouad. 

 

Alison Leiby: Fouad. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Fouad who is their former leading man. And Archibald it like oh, Fouad was incredible. But I think he joined the Foreign Legion so we don’t have access to him any more. She’s like. 

 

Alison Leiby: Sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Well, this guy he’s going to take Fouad’s place. And our whole thing is, you know, like these regular porn actors, they can’t even get hard while I scream   and berate them. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like we got to find common people like this who got character. Like it’ll make our films more realistic and real to life if it’s based in real life. So that’s sort of—

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —her new angle. And she even said, oh, it’s going to blow Loïs away. And Archibald gives her a sign of like, girl, honey, that’s not going to get her back. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s over. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Worth a shot, though. So they go back to Archibald’s house, Anne passes out immediately on the couch, and Archibald reads a magazine. He gets a phone call. It’s Inspector Morcini, and he’s trying to reach one Miss Anne  Parèze. And apparently it’s about Jean Marine, sorry. Jean-Marie Duvernet.

 

Alison Leiby: Jean Marine needs to be a person though. [laughs] 

 

Halle Kiefer: Jean Marine. Right a Jean-Marie versus a Jean Marine. That’s a buddy comedy. 

 

Alison Leiby: I need It. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Starring Annie Potts and I don’t like Timothée Chalamet? [laughter] So. And Archibald says Jean-Marie Duvernet, you mean Karl? And I love that Karl’s porno name’s Karl, because it’s like—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah that’s great. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —you don’t want to be Jean-Marie? But I, you gotta have a porn name. 

 

Alison Leiby: I’m not in France. I don’t know what the you know context is there. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So Anne heads  down to the police station because she worked with him and she was like, yes, Karl was one of my favorite leading men. He had just done his seventh or eighth film. And it kind of seems like he was maybe done. And Morcini says, what kind of films are they? She’s like, you know what kind? You wouldn’t be asking me if you didn’t fucking know. And she said, unless it just arouses you to hear it from a woman’s lips. And the other younger cop goes ooh, and he says, well, I regret to tell you that Karl was stabbed multiple times in the rectum. [sighs] Alison, damn near killed him. It actually did kill him. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Then in the police station and opens her purse and just opens up. What is the smallest volume of liquor? Is it a pint? 

 

Alison Leiby: A fifth? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Where you could like hold it in your hand? A fifth. Opens up a fifth and just starts drinking from it, which, again, seems very French. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean. Very French. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she says, what was, and Morcini says, well, just tell me about Karl. What was he like? And she’s like, well, I only know of the context of him being a fucking insanely good pornstar. And it’s like he was insatiable. Last month we shot an orgy. It was five men on Karl. And Karl had this ability which most people didn’t have, which is like to give himself entirely to actually be free on film. And like in this intense sexual situation and her art, her, like, deep admiration is like that is a form of love. Like he gave himself to the film. And the police are like, okay, what’s probably not going to help us [laughs] find him, but thank you for telling us we meant more like how tall he was, but okay, sure you know—

 

Alison Leiby: —texture, but not the most helpful. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Like what gay S&M clubs do you hang out at? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I think I’ve told this story before, but I always feel so bad that one time I saw like, a missing cat poster and it had the cat’s likes on it and it was like, likes being in the sun and playing in the yard. And I was like, oh my God, okay, I got to find your cat. I’m going to yell and be like hey do you like the sun?

 

Alison Leiby: Go to a yarn store. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: And then I turn around literally, there’s a person holding more of the fliers and a roll of tape, and they had just put it up. And I was just making fun of it in front of them. And I was like, oh, no, but I’ll still look. But I just felt terrible. But also I was right. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh that’s—

 

Halle Kiefer: You know what I mean? I was like, I can’t. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, you need a last scene. You need a scared of people. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Photo. 

 

Alison Leiby: Or comfortable, like you need actual information, not just like interests. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But I mean, that person was frantic, so maybe they’re like, I’ll just put everything down and people can sort it out. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. He like the sun, if you see him outside, it’s him. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And don’t chase it down. So, Alison, we cut to the porn set and what Anne is staging is she is now making a porno out of her own police interrogation. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So Archibald is in sort of a light drag. He has her forest green, incredible trench on. He’s playing her in drag. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then we have the two other porn stars, the two other gentlemen. One of them is Valentin, and the other one is. Oh, God. What is his name? José El Hombre. And they’re playing the cops. And of course, in reality, the cops are very professional. These cops are significantly less professional Alison.

 

Alison Leiby: Yes, I would imagine. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And of course, you know, they’re sort of saying like, oh, you came down here. We know what kind of filthy movies you make. And she’s like, excuse me, I’m not some sort of slut. I am a murder witness. And one of the cops starts to, like, runs his foot up a porno Anne’s leg, and he’s wearing like an old gym sock with a hole where his toe is sticking out [laughter] which I thought was such a funny, like, that’s the you look down and someone’s foot is coming up your leg. That’s the last thing you want to fucking see. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. That’s the worst foot. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The worst foot in the world. But then starts giving again Archibald as Anne starts giving him a foot job and sort of being like, tell us what you know and tell us, like, what was your relationship with Karl? We know that you were fucking him and then porno Anne’s like, it’s true. He he was banging me like mid day he was banging me every fortnight he was making me explode. And then so. So there’s a foot job under the table. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I guess because they didn’t want this to be, they should have just fucking shot this as if it was a porno. Because. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In order to sort of shoot around the fact that like everyone is fully clothed, some little silly things have to happen. For example, Valentin, the other cop just stands up and clearly is rock hard and just starts fucking like a typewriter through his jeans. Like just humping a typewriter. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay? 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I was like Anne is reinventing the form I suppose like that is for somebody. 

 

Alison Leiby: Creativity yes, exactly. Somebody is going to be like interested in watching that and turned on. But it is a—

 

Halle Kiefer: How many people? 

 

Alison Leiby: A left turn. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: Right, because you have to have somebody not only is into somebody having sex with their jeans fully on, but also having sex with a typewriter. 

 

Alison Leiby: With a typewriter. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I just kind of feel like you’re that’s a very niche audience. But I imagine they’re very grateful for the material if they exist. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Anne is thrilled by this scene. She yells cut and she applauds wildly. And when she’s like, when we get back from break, we’ll shoot the porno shots, which I’m assuming means that we’re going to shoot where you actually have sex with each other. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: For my new film. And the new film is called Anal Fury, which is so vague. 

 

Alison Leiby: Wow. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But I suppose if there’s no other porno yet with the name Anal Fury, you got to take it. 

 

Alison Leiby: I think also, like, just like at that point, like when you think of how much porn is produced now versus—

 

Halle Kiefer: Oh yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: —before digitized film, before the internet, it’s like. I think anal is enough to set it apart from the 30 other films that got made that year as opposed to now, where it’s like there are literally millions of videos that you can access [laughs] at any time. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Right with any possible name. Again, there probably is a lot more people having sex with typewriters with their jeans on than we even fathom, right? 

 

Alison Leiby: Absolutely. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So she [?] us off. She’s thrilled what she’s doing. And Archibald sees the Mouth of Gold sobbing in the corner of the set. He goes over to comfort him. He’s like, what’s wrong Mouth of Gold? And Mouth of Gold says, how? Why is she doing this? This is Karl’s murder. Like, why would you why would she turn this into a porno? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah I mean. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like we knew Karl. 

 

Alison Leiby: Very valid concern. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And that’s going to be a theme in the movie is like Anne is sort of like just so committed to her art that she just doesn’t see the problem with this and you know Mouth of Gold saying like, I knew Karl. He told me all the sordid details of his life. And Archibald says, well, do you think you might know who could have done this? And Mouth of Gold said, no, I don’t think so, because if I did, I would tell the police, I have no concept of who could have done this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And he starts crying and he’s like, I’ll be honest. Like, I loved him, you know? And I, he was beautiful. And then they go, hey, Mouth of Gold on set. This knob isn’t going to slob itself. [laughter] And he’s like excuse me. And then he goes and—

 

Alison Leiby: Duty calls. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Which I think is at least a nice distraction. You know what I mean? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In this in these, in these trying times at least being able to suck one of the three dicks. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Seems seems like a nice treat, you know? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Thierry. Oh I’m sorry. Thierry was one who played the typewriter fucking cop. I will say there are a lot of white French gentlemen in this movie [laughs] who look very similar so please bear with me. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, I, yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So it was actually Thierry who played the typewriter fucking cop. And he demands his paycheck from Anne. She says, well I don’t have the money today, tomorrow I’ll pay you. It’s like you can’t you can’t yell at them and also not pay them. This is France people. They will riot. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. They will riot. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He will burn this shit down. And he’s like, you need me and you need my hard cock to finish this fucking day. And she says, you’ll never work for me again. But then she does pay him because she does need his hard cock to for the shoot. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She’s like, I can’t argue with that. 

 

Alison Leiby: We’re at work. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And the AD walks back in and is like the dailies are ready, and she snatches it for him and runs it takes it up to Loïs herself to sort of be like, look, I’m doing something different Loïs, maybe no you’ll love me. It’s like, girl, that’s go to AA. They had that back then, I think. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, something. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And the, the Mouth of God. Jose is getting, you know, a blowjob from Mouth of God. And he says to Mouth of God like, by the way, how much do you get paid for this? And Mouth of God says, oh, I don’t need to be paid. I live with my mom. And I was like, living the dream Mouth of God. 

 

Alison Leiby: Wow. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like, you really figured this out. Also—

 

Alison Leiby: Just. Free rent.

 

Halle Kiefer: What does your mom think you do every day? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Where are you telling her you’re you’re off to? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Where does she think you’re going to? And upstairs we see Anne, she’s about to go to the edit bay and she stops and we just here her go Loïs. Like even the even. She’s like, I can’t face Loïs with my new porno. I love her so much. Unfortunately. Alison that night we follow Thierry and he does go buy heroin and he sort of nods off in an abandoned convertible, very French. And I did say, this is what I think Paris is. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes 100%. 

 

Alison Leiby: Where there’s just an abandoned beautiful convertible. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, you can just hop in. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we see Loïs. She’s going out tonight, she’s going to a lesbian bar and Anne follows her. So Anne is maybe stalking Loïs a little bit at this point. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Well, that’s not a surprise. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And inside this dance, like where they go to this, like this incredible queer dance off where, like, everyone’s dancing in their own little group where like, everyone, it’s like three people who have matching outfits are dancing their own way, which I do think is fun. 

 

Alison Leiby: Very into that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And it’s very Studio 54 on a very tight budget and Anne goes to the mezzanine and she watches this beautiful Black woman in like silver shorts very like seventies dancing alone. And all of a sudden a throng of people surround her and start dancing with her. And I just took it to be like Anne is like, so stuck in her own world she can’t even enjoy, like, what should be a space of like, all right, well, I have to move on. You know, It’s like, no, I’m here to, like, follow my ex-girlfriend and I all this queer happiness or like, beauty. I can’t internalize any of it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Alison, back in the convertible, Thierry wakes up to find a black bird perched on the seat behind him. Alison. At that point, if you were him, what would you do? 

 

[voice over]: What would you do? 

 

Alison Leiby: I’m killing the bird, even though I don’t know what else the bird you know has already witnessed. 

 

Halle Kiefer: What do you think the bird is going to be is maybe harbiging? Harbinging? Harbinging.

 

Alison Leiby: Harbingerging harbinging? 

 

Halle Kiefer: If you, if you were to guess when that bird shows up what do you think is going to happen to Thierry.

 

Alison Leiby: He’s going to die. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He gonna die. 

 

Alison Leiby: He is going to die. That guy is going to show up in the mask. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah he is.

 

Alison Leiby: And stab him with the dildo knife, I would assume, or some other clever, sexy weapon. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You know, Alison you’re dead on. [laughter] And another thing about this movie is like there are not a lot of moments for people to decide what to do because this motherfucker is everywhere. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And that is kind of a hallmark of the giallo, is the like the logic of it. And like, what happens is sort of arbitrary. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It really is about these, like, beautifully staged, garish, gory, sexy murders. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Which is less satisfying perhaps to the modern audience. But again, it’s all about like the staging and everything. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Halle Kiefer: So back in the club Anne sees like a very sexy, dressed up, Loïs dancing in the crowd and grinding with the women in silver. And we sort of have this moment like, is this really happening or is like an obsession. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Take over—

 

Halle Kiefer: Like Loïs is out here talking to other like, like having sex with other women. Like, I you know, it’s sort of driving her insane. Unfortunately, Thierry looks up to find the masked man standing over him, and the masked man shoves his dildo in Thierry’s mouth. And when he does, Alison [sighs] we look up and we see the masked man grinding his teeth and then sort of making a high pitched screaming noise, which does call to mind, call to mind birds. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But it also do you remember in Home Alone 2, when Marv touches the electrical, like, he gets electrocuted, he screams—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —and he turns to a skeleton. It’s kind of like, oh, there’s a lot of that. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: So just imagine that. Combined with birds screaming. So as you can imagine, it’s just if you were nodding off in a convertible—

 

Alison Leiby: It’s just a high pitched chaos. [laughs]

 

Halle Kiefer: Just about the worst shit you could wake up to. Is what I’m saying. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Not just a guy just a with a dildo in your mouth. A man, in a leather mask, screaming like a bird. And unfortunately, you know, this is where this is going. Alison, he flicks the hand of the dildo and the the knife dildo stabs the back of Thierry’s head. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Back at the edit bay. 

 

Alison Leiby: Tough. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We see Anne drive home, drive back to the porn set and then go into the edit bay and take some of the film, which is, again, like this is Loïs’s life’s work. And she starts scratching at some of the scenes. She’s carving things into the scenes, ostensibly to fuck with Loïs or like to get back at her. You know, in the morning we see Thierry’s butchered body is still in the car. 

 

Alison Leiby: That’s tough. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Back on set, we see Archibald is again playing porno Anne, and she’s the phone booth again, looking fabulous in the trench. But this time she’s calling the detective who played by Nans, the guy from the quarry. So he’s like, listen, I’m not gonna—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —not take $2,000 to get my dick sucked what am I insane? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So he’s now playing the detective. And since Thierry has got up to the big gang bang in the sky, they do need another hard cock and. 

 

Alison Leiby: R.I.P. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You know, Anne porno calls the detective and is like, how what do you how are you going to find the murderer? And the detective says I’m going to meet my informer. Who knows the identity of the killer at the sauna at midnight and porno Anne says, how steamy. Which is very Samantha from Sex and the City. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, that is giving. Yeah. I can hear a Kim Cattrall line read of that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Kim Cattrall in, like, a big giallo. Heaven. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, for all of the many issues with Sex and the City and all of the kind of like eyeroll about like how she. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Her acting made that all work. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s not supposed to be realistic. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like, she’s playing like she’s playing—

 

Alison Leiby: A heightened, like super sexual—

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah like a Marilyn Monroe. Practically. Like she’s playing. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. No, obviously, no woman is like that. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s supposed to be funny, you know? 

 

Alison Leiby: No, right. She’s playing to for comedy. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Like she’s a comedy act. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: She’s an incredible comedic actress and we will not hear anything against her. Okay. Also, my birthday was last week, and I kept saying all day, happy birthday to me. [laughter] To basically no one for no reason.

 

Alison Leiby: It’s so, it’s so easy to just fall into kind of her voice pattern for certain lines. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s so satisfying. So a porno Anne tells the detective, like, I appreciate all the hard work you’re putting in. And then they proceed to have phone sex. While, the detective was getting a blowjob from just some guy. 

 

Alison Leiby: Some guy. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then the scene ends with simultaneous porno Anne who again is being played by Archibald and the detective having perfectly simultaneous self facials from a standing position. [clip of moaning] And I was like, now that people would see a porno to see that because it is the timing—

 

Alison Leiby: Simultaneous self, they’re standing. 

 

Halle Kiefer: They’re standing and they’re jerking. Well, one of them is jerking off the other one is getting a blowjob. Coming up into their own faces. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, the standing is what makes that so shocking. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And at the exact same time, again, Loïs I mean Anne is, actually a— 

 

Alison Leiby: The choreography. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —pretty good director if you let her—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah for sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —follow her muse you know what I mean. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So we cut you, Loïs, who’s editing it, and she’s loving it. And she’s like, Anne, you’re every day. You’re crazier than the next. So it’s kind of like the lesson here is if you want to impress your lesbian ex, make the best gay porno the world has ever known. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Based on your former leading man’s still unsolved murder. Because she’s going to love it. 

 

Alison Leiby: That’s a rom-com. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we see Loïs like watching it. And at the end of the film, she’s cutting. We see Anne step in to call cut. And she’s so happy. And Loïs sees Anne smiling and like, clearly she’s there’s still feelings there. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s just that Anne’s a mess. You know what I mean? Unfortunately, as Loïs looks, she then gets to the specific cells were Anne scratched in a drunken rage and they’re pictures of Thierry as a cop and he’s getting head in this scene and she’s scratched into it. You have killed me. 

 

Alison Leiby: So that Loïs would see it? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Loïs as an editor and also someone who doesn’t know she’s in a horror movie, is shocked by this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes, of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s like girl. Two people have already been brutally murdered. Like, there’s going to be a lot of crazy things afoot, you know? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. You got to be prepared now. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, the AD comes through the door and tells Loïs they found Thierry, and he has been murdered. That night Anne, Archibald and then two guys, the cameraman, François, and then another guy from the crew, Rabah. They all go out to a bar and they start to hypothesize like, well, so what the fuck happened, you know? And Archibald’s insisting that it has nothing to do with the porno company. Both Thierry and Karl had debts. They were, you know, out here living life. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: They had enemies. Like, there’s really unfortunately, it seems like this one is preying on gay man. But it doesn’t mean it’s just. It’s about the company. 

 

Alison Leiby: Specific to the f— Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Halle Kiefer: And then Anne says. And she’s got a big smile, she’s like what if instead of Anal Fury we call it homicidal. Get it like homo cidal? And François, who did bring his camera to [laughs] the the bar. So I guess, you know, he’s the cameraman. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: François goes, do you not care at all like these are two people we fucking know dude. 

 

Alison Leiby: Two people you know—

 

Halle Kiefer: Like what are you doing?

 

Alison Leiby: —are dead. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But they’re interrupted with this woman who’s like, looks at François’s camera and is like are you in film? I’d love to be an actress. Too bad I look like such a slut. And it was like, oh my God [laughter] this couldn’t have been more fortuitous. 

 

Alison Leiby: You’re exactly what we need. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But Archibald’s not having it. Archibald’s like, don’t bother, honey. Every any woman that’s going to be in our movies is going to have a dick, so we’re not interested. But Rabah, who just wants to, like, get laid, says, actually, I think we could probably works like out and the he and the woman start making out and Anne starts laughing at François because I guess he’s in a relationship with Rabah and it’s like, oh all your boy toys end up being straight. And he’s like, we can both sleep whoever we want. It’s not a big deal. But of course he’s furious. That he’s making out in front of him. Just then, a group of transwomen enter, and Archibald recognizes one of them as a former star of their movies. And her. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She’s now she joins them and she’s going by I’m going to say it’s M i s i a, I’m going to say Misia, I don’t know how a French person—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —would pronounce it, this is what I have. And and she’s sort of saying like, oh, yes, I she was basically doing sex work with her friends and sort of like here’s sort of our niche that we’ve sort of caught onto. Patou she’s sort of like the social worker type. You know what I mean, she wants to calm client down, you know, like she’s great if you have an orgy. She’s super friendly. 

 

Alison Leiby: Sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Farida is like the Arabian princess, like she promises you one hundred and one nights, but you’re going to be coming in 30 seconds. So don’t worry. You’re you know, you get your money’s worth. And we have Dominique, who’s like this, like icy blonde sort of dominatrix bitch. She’s like, she’s the head bitch in charge. She’s high class, but don’t piss her off. 

 

Alison Leiby: All right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And I was like, I would like to see the Charlie’s Angels spin off of these ladies. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And. Anne says, okay, so if that’s their specialty. What is your specialty, Misia? And Misia says, I’m in search of mysteries. Very, this is what I think France is. This is exactly what I think France is.

 

Alison Leiby: This is what I think France is. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Me? I’m in search of mysteries. Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And so Anne’s like, okay, great. So you all have a thing. And she approaches the other women and says, do you want to be in pictures? $200 a scene? And they’re like, bitch, I can make that in an hour. Like, you better be giving me more money, $200 a scene? And we know that she’d offered Nans $500 a scene, so they’re like. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You better be offering us more money or we are not fucking doing this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But apparently she did, because they were cutting to sort of like, we’re back on set and it’s like this blue haze. It’s all these like white curtains billowing with a blue light. And we see a man going down on Misia, and then we see the person we’re the P.O.V. of like, the killer, right? 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we see the killer’s wearing a white sequined glove pulling her lover’s hair, forcing him to stand up. And I was like, bitch, if we have to deal with Michael Jackson showing up on set. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Because that is what is when you see a white, bedazzled glove. Like, that’s the only thing that comes to mind. 

 

Alison Leiby: It does predate the glove in the film timeline. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So maybe Michael Jackson saw this film and was inspired. That seems more plausible. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. Yes. Actually, it very much. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then the person like goes through the gauzy curtains and we see Valentin. He’s making out with his own reflection and the glove kind of grabs his face and pushes him away. And then finally the hand opens the curtain. We see Dominique and she’s flogging a man who’s down on all fours and the hand kind of just lets Dominique do her thing. [laughter]

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He is not going to get involved get in the middle of that. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, no, the hand has you know, boundaries. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, we reverse now on the gloved man and we see, of course, it’s the porno version of the masked killer. Now, nobody’s seen—

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —the masked killer, so it’s like, how would Anne know this? 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: How would she intuit it? And I think we’re suppose to think from the dreams that, like, she is like interpreting things that she doesn’t necessarily know that she knows. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Which is another part of giallo movies, is like sometimes there’s playing in supernatural stuff, but then it’s revealed not to be something it’s unresolved. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But we have the masked killer and we see him raise his knife and he’s gunned down by the detective and porno Anne. And porno Anne reaches down and takes off the killer’s mask to reveal the actual Anne. And porno Anne goes, it’s the far west box office girl. They show all my films there. And Dominique  says she came here all the time. She saw so many gay flicks, she thought she was a fag. And I’m like, all right, now things are getting interesting. 

 

Alison Leiby: This is definitely interesting. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Dominique says she was a mother during the day, a murderous at night, a sickness on the rise and Anne calls cut and they all applaud. It’s a wrap, Alison. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, that’s a movie. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Now that’s a movie. 

 

Alison Leiby: That’s a movie. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Michael Jackson gave it five [laughs] five stars. 

 

Alison Leiby: Five gloves. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He gave it five hee hees. [laughter] Archibald tells everyone, okay, someday we’re going to do a picnic wrap party. And I’m like, this sounds really fun. I know someone’s going to get murdered at it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But like a picnic for a wrap party. I don’t know. I just I was like, that’s really sweet. 

 

Alison Leiby: I like that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Anne goes—

 

Alison Leiby: I mean I don’t like what will definitely happen, but I like a picnic. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Anne goes to François was I good? I didn’t look too wilted, did I? And he goes, no, Loïs will love it. It’s like, oh, girl—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —don’t tell her that. You know?

 

Alison Leiby: No, no. Don’t feed that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Later we see Anne get fucking plastered at like, like a more traditional like bar, like, you know, like wooden bar with a little stage and a bunch of little tables. Not the dance bar we were at before. And a woman asked her to dance and. And Anne says, forget it, honey, I’m taken. But of course, the bartender knows that she’s not because she’s clearly in here every other fucking night and pours Anne another drink. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: On stage. We see sort of a comedic sexy vignette. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Of an older woman in a see through leotard with her titties out and then a woman in a bear costume and performs what I would say is the most lesbian French drag number one can imagine. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm hmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And the audience is like, oh, hurray, Yes, this is normal for us. This is what drag is here. And the bears like clawing at the woman and it’s sort of like a bear from the waist up and then, like sexy fishnet lady legs from the waist down. 

 

Alison Leiby: Very, very hot. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And very French. And the bear says—

 

Alison Leiby: Very French. 

 

Halle Kiefer: If you turn me on, I’ll devour you with my claws. And it’s all this thing where it’s like conflating, like sexuality with. Like being devoured. And it’s like pawing at this woman and finally, like, pretends to claw the woman and fake blood starts spraying all over the other woman’s body. And she says, the more I kill you, the more I love you. And that’s the thing. In France, they play this shit on PBS over there. Okay. For us—

 

Alison Leiby: Oh, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —this is a little scandalous. 

 

Alison Leiby: Children’s programing. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, exactly. On Sunday, the cast and crew all go to the picnic, and Nans kind of falls asleep on the blanket and Valentin and François, like, he looks exactly like that old leading man, Fouad. But he swears they’re not related. But the fact they’re bringing it up for a second time, like, okay, well, that’s going to come up later. You know.

 

Alison Leiby: Well, it’s not nothing. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And the trans gals show up with a bunch of like champagne bottles, hidden under their clothes, and Farida pretends to go into labor and start screaming, gives birth to a bottle of booze—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay that’s—

 

Halle Kiefer: —and everyone applauds. 

 

Alison Leiby: —so much fun. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: And Misia goes to sit with Anne tells her, like, you know, if I wasn’t a whore, I would be a palm reader. And Anne’s like, I don’t know if I believe in that, you know, I don’t know. 

 

Alison Leiby: Why can’t you do both? 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. And Misia takes Anne’s palm and tells her, you know, and also, I think this is exactly how real palm readers work, because she goes, you know, I could tell that you’re not moving on from the past. Okay. It seems like you’re stuck in the past. It’s like, yeah, bitch, you knew, you were in some of her films. Clearly.

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She’s stuck in it. And it’s like, you have to forget your old fears and follow the past of your dreams. Unfortunately Alison, then Loïs shows up, and even at that moment of Anne being like, yeah, maybe I should move on. Oh my God, Loïs is here. Like, there’s she has no. You know what I mean like.

 

Alison Leiby: Chaos.

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And so, and, Anne’s sort of sobbing like a little bit as she’s getting her palm read because she just, it’s like, you know, this all this is true. Like she can’t move on and Loïs sees it. It’s like, I know she’s crying about me because like, of how fucked up she is. We broke up. Alison a black bird lands on Loïs’s shoulder. And a storm rolls in and Loïs grabs Anne and everyone’s trying to rescue the picnic and it sort of scatters into the trees. And finally, after all the gay fucking and sucking, we get one lesbian kiss because Loïs and Anne are under a tree and Loïs kisses Anne. And I’m like, Loïs, what are you doing? 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm. This is not good. Not a good idea. She seems so—

 

Halle Kiefer: Girl. 

 

Alison Leiby: —in control and on top of the situation. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: For most of this movie so far. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But, you know, she tells Anne I shouldn’t have done that. But I love you. I will always love you. So, of course, Anne’s like, all right, this is my in and Anne tries to kiss her again. But Loïs resists since, like, we shouldn’t stand under a tree in the storm, we might catch on fire. It’s like, okay. And eventually she just leaves. She’s like, I have a train to catch. I have to go. And Anne says, I’ll drive you. It’s raining. She’s like, no, I have to leave. So of course— 

 

Alison Leiby: So French. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I know, like French lesbians. I could only imagine. 

 

Alison Leiby: Ooh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, during this, there’s like, it’s like a rain shower that stops. And Misia has gotten separated from the group because everyone’s kind of scattered under the trees and is calling for everyone. But is alone in a clearing and, of course, doesn’t see that a figure is approaching from behind her. And Alison, you’re not going to believe it. It’s the God damn killer. Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And as the rain starts to fall, the killer stabs Misia in the back and then kisses her as she dies before putting her body on the ground. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then we see the killer just fucking running through the forest as Anne drives home. She goes to the dance bar we saw before, which is called The Future. So I guess we’re supposed to be like, go to The Future. Move into The Future. 

 

Alison Leiby: Out of the past. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Of course, Anne is this fucking blackout drunk, she shows up just as Loïs is leaving. It’s torrentially raining and Anne starts screaming at her it’s like, I’ve loved you this hard for ten years, it’s driving me insane. You have to love me. You have to love me. And she grabs Loïs. Loïs tries to push her away and grabs Loïs by the throat and chokes her against the wall. Loïs is trying to fight her off, Anne grabs her breasts. And then between her legs and screams, this is mine. And she only stops when a blackbird sort of flies by and distracts her, and Loïs is able to run away. So she has fully sexually assaulted. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: This woman that she loves. Right. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Not that like it looks like they were going to get together, but now it’s like, oh, you have crossed the line that is—

 

Alison Leiby: This is. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: You don’t come back from this. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. So inside the bar, hours later, Anne is passed out in a booth, and one of the performers from the Bear drag show comes and shows her the morning’s paper. It’s a report on Misia’s murder. So that’s a third person who has worked for their company, who has been murdered by a killer. Right. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm hmm mm hmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she goes to the station, she starts screaming at Morcini like okay, this is obvious. Someone is targeting my fucking cast and my former cast members. This is on you. You have to fucking solve it. And Morcini it’s obviously the reason they’re not solving it is because of homophobia and transphobia. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And he says, you know, we’re working really hard. So in the meantime, why don’t you tell your little friends to stay home and stay inside? Because it’s just safer that way. So basically, fuck you, we don’t. We’re not trying that hard bitch. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Get out of my fucking station. You know. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Maybe don’t go outside anymore. And it’s like, ugh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I know. So Anne goes out to smoke, and she’s upset and the younger cop sneaks out and says, you know, I just wanna let you know. And I think the implication is that he is gay and so he’s more sympathetic and he’s like, on the first two bodies, they found bird feathers. And she’s like, well, clearly that’s like they should be using it to solve it. He’s like well, the case isn’t a priority. He doesn’t say why, but like, you all are queers, that’s why. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Halle Kiefer: But he says, I could give you one of them and he gives her one of the feathers. He’s like, I can’t do anything, but if you can find someone to identify it, maybe it’ll be help solve it, you know? Meanwhile, she’s at Archibald’s. Archibald’s like no one wants to work with us. We are hemorrhaging money because everyone keeps fucking publicly getting murdered. Right? So this is bad for business, baby. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she tells Archibald, get the phonebook and look up birds. He says, this is the phonebook it’s not an encyclopedia. She said, sorry, bird shops. We need someone to identify this feather. And luckily—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —they’re able to call somebody. And the this is again, if you’re calling someone in France, this is how you have to meet them. She goes to the middle of the woods in front of like a weird old church or obelisk of some sort. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh, of course. [both speaking] Meet me at the obelisk. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Meet me at the obelisk in the middle of the goddamn woods. I own—

 

Alison Leiby: What if we kissed under the obelisk in the woods? 

 

Halle Kiefer: I mean, pure romance. Unfortunately, we’re just here to identify bird feathers. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she meets a woman I’m not even gonna bother. Her name is L’oiselière. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah you got there. 

 

Halle Kiefer: That’s probably all wrong. And she’s a bird expert. Of course. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: She probably lives in the woods, and she has brought her handsome son, Pierre. And they take a look, and he’s like a bird expert. Right? And she hands him is like here’s a feather. It’s like they got and this is like every episode of SVU or like, Bones where luckily, it’s the exact most unusual bird feather that they could only come from one place. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Always.

 

Halle Kiefer: So Pierre looks at it, he’s like oh, it’s a Chaladre, Chaladre, Chaladre feather or a white eyed grackle. They’re all blind birds. 

 

Alison Leiby: A blind bird?

 

Halle Kiefer: Blind birds Alison.

 

Alison Leiby:  So they haven’t seen anything that’s actually happened. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly, I said this like, so they don’t know all the people that are getting fucking and sucking and getting murdered. [both speaking] Bring a little book, free little bird book, free little bird feet. How do you fly? I don’t know. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, Bats are blind and they fly around. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Well, they have echolocation. What do bird have. Don’t they have magnets? They could use the, they could follow the magnetic. [both speaking] They got magnets, yeah. Okay. So he tells them [laughter] oh we solved. The last sighting of these grackles was in the 18th century in the Chaladre forest. And they tell her it’s like there’s a there’s a story. They used to take dying people there and leave them there overnight. [laughter] Which.

 

Alison Leiby: Chill.

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay. 

 

Alison Leiby: I guess that’s a place. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The birds would observe, absorb their sickness. And so the person would survive and they would fly to the sun. But Alison they flew too close. That’s where they all went blind. And I wrote, this is what I think France is just that kind of stuff.

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Just that shit happening all the time. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Then the, my, the moment in this movie that maybe that was most pleasing to me, Pierre takes his left hand out of his jacket pocket. Alison, this motherfucker has a bird’s hand. 

 

Alison Leiby: What does that mean? A bird’s—

 

Halle Kiefer: It is a cross. It’s a human hand. But is a bird’s claw at the same time? 

 

Alison Leiby: No. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It has like it’s ridged, it has talons, like nails. 

 

Alison Leiby: But it’s still, like the size of a human hand. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. 

 

Alison Leiby: And has five fingers. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And he reaches out. He doesn’t even say anything. He just touches Anne on the face. And she looks like. Oh, okay. Like, she even she’s like, all right, this is a little too far here dude. 

 

Alison Leiby: Like, what, like in a way that it’s like he did that or like, that happened to him? 

 

Halle Kiefer: So his mother says, don’t be afraid Pierre has a rare—

 

Alison Leiby: Oh no I am afraid. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Don’t be, Pierre has a rare disorder. It starts with the hands. And then he begins to mutate. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. So we’ve left reality.

 

Halle Kiefer: I was gonna say if you think this is going to come back again, it has anything to do with the plot. It does not. We are moving on. [laughter]

 

Alison Leiby: What? 

 

Halle Kiefer: We now see it like we see Anne’s dreams. So we know she’s dreaming again. It looks like the killer, the curly mop killer, is kissing this young first I was like, is that Anne? But I think it’s just a young blond man. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And they’re kissing and sort of passionately in a bar. Anne wakes up as they announce the next train stop. Luckily, it’s the Chaladre forest. She gets off. It’s the middle of the goddamn night, she just has a suitcase and her trench. Trench. And she just, it’s dark. And in her bag. She finds a letter from Loïs that she didn’t know was there. And then the letter Loïs says, If you’re reading this, Archibald must have followed my instructions and put my letter here. I loved you for ten years. 

 

Alison Leiby: Wow. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But last night you destroyed that when you sexually assaulted me. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm hmm fair. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s like I would. I would it’s, I want to see you dead. I want to hurt you the way you the way you hurt me. But I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to cry and I’m going to move on. We have to. We have to be untied. We cannot do this. So she says, I can’t work with you anymore. I’m going to finish this movie. After I finish editing Homocidal, I’m going to leave. Do not contact me. Do not seek me out. And it’s like, what else is she supposed to do? Like, it’s like. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean. 

 

Halle Kiefer: That’s best case scenario. She says, don’t fucking talk to me ever again after what you did.

 

Alison Leiby: And she doesn’t. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. You know, Anne’s not going to abide by that because she’s deranged. But luckily, a man shows up and he’s like. Hi, I’m Mr. Vannier. Archibald reserved you a room in my inn and I thought I’d come collect you. It’s the middle of the goddamn night. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And he takes her home, introduces her to his daughter, Cathy, who’s clearly a dike. And I was like, I hope Cathy gets to live a life, but she seems like she stays at home. She’s forty years old. She’s like, I can’t leave because I’ve to take care of my dad. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But I can show you where the forest is. So in the morning they walk to the forest and Cathy is like, oh, I went to I went to Paris as a child. It was incredible. But I’ve never I’ve never left again. And Anne’s drinking. And she offers it to Cathy, says in the morning, well, okay, so they’re just getting drunk—

 

Alison Leiby: It is France. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Cathy says, it’s right over there and Anne says, could you stay behind? Cause I’m just going to walk in. I’m not exactly sure at this point what she thinks is going to happen. But. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Here we are. And Cathy says are you sure, it’s like really vast, like I wouldn’t want you to like get lost but Anne says, no, luckily Anne immediately stops to get drunk under a tree like you do. 

 

Alison Leiby: As you do. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And finds a cemetery nearby and there’s a woman in a gown. 

 

Alison Leiby: Great. Thank God. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Praying at a grave. 

 

Alison Leiby: Great. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And then leaves. And as and approaches the grave, it says, Guy, okay, his name is—

 

Alison Leiby: [laughter] You starting that and then stopping immediately is—

 

Halle Kiefer: Well, I realize— 

 

Alison Leiby: Guy, okay. [laughter]

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s Guy Favre,1948 to 1964. And I believe that means he is Brett Favre’s ancestor. Like I believe this is Brett Favre’s like—

 

Alison Leiby: Oh sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —great uncle. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah yeah yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we see, like in her dream, we see Guy and then what appears is it Nans, is it the killer? Like they’re clearly hired people who have multiple people with curly brown hair. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: To be like who is it? You know and Anne comes to and she’s it’s it’s nightfall she’s still at this grave. And the woman she saw earlier who is dressed like Blanche Devereaux going out to, like, get fucked, like you know what I mean where it’s like—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Halle Kiefer: —kind of like an eighties, like early, I guess late seventies, like sort of a nightgown with sequins on it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Sure. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she’s like, oh, you must have known my son Guy. You must be his friend. Where is he? You look like you’re from the city. Because here we dress like this. It’s like does that make any sense? I don’t know. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s like you must be from the city. Does does Guy live in Paris? Why else would you come out here unless you knew my son? And Anne says, I’m sorry, I’m drunk and I don’t know and runs back and is able to make it back to Cathy’s car. And Cathy drives her back and says, oh, yeah, that was Guy Favres, Mom. She went insane. She tells Anne and this is the story is that Guy Favre was a young gay man in their, in their town, and he was sort of having a love affair with his friend Hicham. And they died tragically in a fire 15 years ago after a barn mysteriously caught fire immediately after that Guy Favre’s mom went crazy. And Guy Favre’s dad died by suicide. And the strange thing is, Alison, Guy’s body was never found and his mother never really believed that he died. Alison, who will survive this film?

 

[voice over]: Who will survive? 

 

Alison Leiby: And I think Loïs will live because I think she hit the bricks. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Mm hmm. 

 

Alison Leiby: I think Anne is unfortunately going to die. And um.

 

Halle Kiefer: How about Archibald? 

 

Alison Leiby: Who’s Archibald again? 

 

Halle Kiefer: He’s the guy who’s been playing porno Anne, he’s like her right hand man, assistant. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. I think he will also. No, I think it’s him. And he’s trying to, like single white female her. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Ooh, okay, great. 

 

Alison Leiby: And then who else is left? 

 

Halle Kiefer: We got Nans. 

 

Alison Leiby: Nans. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The guy that she hired from the quarry. 

 

Alison Leiby: I think he’s going to die after we think he’s the killer. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay great. 

 

Alison Leiby: And then killed by the killer. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay, great. And then everyone else, I think. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s like all right. You know. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Halle Kiefer: So Cathy drops Anne off and was like, can I have one more liquor? Anyway, it must be nice to live in the big city with one other gay person. [laughter] Well, I have to take care of my dad. Goodbye. 

 

Alison Leiby: Bye. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Meanwhile, back in Paris, we see Loïs is up late, editing, trying to get the movie done, and the phone rings and she’s like, oh, she refuses to answer because it’s probably Anne. It is Anne. And we see Anne is at the inn, basically, like struggling. Loïs is not picking up and she she asks Mr. Vannier for a bottle of whiskey and he’s like, I’ll give you a bottle of whiskey if you promise not to lure Cathy away with your lesbian ways to the city because she wants to leave and let me die here but I need her to stay. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Anne to her credit, it’s like, bitch, I don’t want to know anything about this. I have so much going on. There’s nothing—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —else I can tell you. When Anne gets back to a room. Cathy has written her a card and left her dried flowers and two newspaper clippings and is also watching her from another window. And in the in the letter, it’s like, I just want to say thanks so much. It was really nice meeting. Just like one other lesbian. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It made me think about my life and here are these newspaper clippings about Guy Favre’s mysterious disappearance [laughter] after the barn fire. Hope it’s helpful. [laughter] Luckily, Alison, it gives Anne an idea for a film. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course, it does. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she calls Archibald and says I’m going to be back on set. Let’s set up some auditions. The idea is called Hex Rated and we see a scene of it—

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, a great title. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Absolutely. And it looks like Archibald is being whipped by two sort of like devilish priests in hell, like satanic priests. 

 

[clip from Knife+Heart]: [speaking in French]

 

Halle Kiefer: Everyone’s having a great time and we see Loïs up in the edit bay and she’s watching she’s editing the final scenes of Homocidal. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And with all the curtains and she sees a figure in the background and she realizes that must be the killer. The killer must have been stalking the set. 

 

Alison Leiby: In the film. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In the film. 

 

Alison Leiby: So she’s like oh shit. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Suddenly the lights go out. Alison. And we realize it’s just because they turn off the lights for Hex Rated, but then the lights are off in the rest of the building. So Loïs comes down, finds the fuse box, but the rats have eaten the wires and Hex Rated throws the lights back on. And Jose, one of the porn actors, has had his throat slashed. The killer is in the room. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh, my God. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Anne whirls around and the masked killer is there and he lunges for her. And as he does, Loïs steps in front of the knife to save Anne’s life. And he plunges his knife dildo into Loïs’s chest instead of Anne’s. And then he scampers away. 

 

Alison Leiby: Aw I didn’t want that to happen. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I know, Loïs, she did her best, she absolutely did her best. She— 

 

Alison Leiby: She drew boundaries— 

 

Halle Kiefer: An incredible artist. 

 

Alison Leiby: She’s good at her job. Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Anne sobs and says, why did you come here? I would have changed. I would have we could have had more time. Just stay alive. Stay with me. I’m gonna cry. It’s like stay with me and I’ll protect you for the rest of my life. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Girl, you know Loïs is dead. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Sometime later. Anne, whose entire life has falling apart obviously. 

 

Alison Leiby: Of course. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Goes to see a screening of Homocidal. And it’s the kind of thing where they’re playing at porno theaters. So guys are there, to like, hook up and jerk off, and she’s there, to like, get drunk and watch this and, like, sob, you know? And she sees she weeps when she—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —see’s Loïs’s name as like the editor. And Nans is there as well, because he wants because he’s seeing this film because he’s the star of it. And after the screening we see Anne like crush her cigarette, she just keeps watching films because they’re also playing her old stuff. Right. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mm hmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And, you know, a man approaches her and is like, oh are you Anne Parèze, you’re a genius. I love all your fucking films. And she says, It was all Loïs. She was the real genius. And the man says, Loïs, and Anne’s like, I can’t talk to you. I can’t give you a whole backstory. 

 

Alison Leiby: No. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Please. 

 

Alison Leiby: No, no. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So then there are guys, like, jerking off and, like, watching each other jerk off, but Anne is just in the front drinking by herself and occasionally the guys look are like, yikes, okay, like, we’re here with a purpose. Like, this is. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: This is sad, you know? And a guy sits next to Nans is like, oh my God. Actually, I’m sitting next to the famous Fouad. And Nans like, no, you wouldn’t be the first to confuse us, but I’m not him. The guy leaves and we see behind him clearly our killer, Alison, it is someone who is bundled up to the eyes and has a trucker hat on and it’s, his skin looks like he’s been, I don’t know, burned in a barn fire. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay.

 

Halle Kiefer: So obviously it’s Guy Favre. Okay. Anne watches the movie. But at the end of Homocidal, when they sort of take off the mask, it’s Loïs. So she sort of jerks around like she’s like, oh, my God. And she looks and everyone else in the theater is a corpse of all the murder victims. And she screams, of course she’s having a dream. 

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she sees Nans but he doesn’t reply. And Nans goes upstairs where there’s sort of like a sex room and you pay $3 and it’s like a sexy dark room and everyone gets a red flashlight. You just shine it on each other to find people to fuck. I was like, okay, fine. Mixing it up. 

 

Alison Leiby: All right. Something.

 

Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, Alison, another person follows him in, and pays $3. It’s the killer. Downstairs Anne is watching one of her earlier films, Spunk in the Land Alone. And we see that it follows the story of Guy and Hicham. And I don’t know if we’re supposed to think that she intuited this story, and that’s why she was drawn into this— 

 

Alison Leiby: Before she knew the real one? 

 

Halle Kiefer: That’s the only way I could sort of piece it together. Alternately, the movie itself is different, but Anne in her sort of fugue state, she’s seeing it. 

 

Alison Leiby: She’s seeing that. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So—

 

Alison Leiby: All right. Either one kind of works for me. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Unfortunately, we see the plot, and the plot is that Guy’s father found him with Hicham and they’re like, in love. Like, they are like, you know, 18 or whatever. They’re in love. They are having sex. But, like, it is clear, like a beautiful love affair. He attacks them, kills Hicham, and castrates his son. 

 

Alison Leiby: [gasps]

 

Halle Kiefer: But in the porno version, the dad drops the knife and instead of castrating the son, kisses his son. And then we see we see the barn on fire, and it’s in the porno version. The dad also is nude and is they’re all holding hands and running around the flames and nobody’s dead. So of course—

 

Alison Leiby: I mean I like that ending. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I know. 

 

Alison Leiby: Much more. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So we see that Karl is the star. Thierry is the farmhand, the Boy Scout is Misia. Before she transitioned and the dad is Jose. So everyone who has been killed was in this initial film which depicted—

 

Alison Leiby: Okay. This—

 

Halle Kiefer: The Guy story.

 

Alison Leiby: —true thing that we found out later. Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And it was Fouad’s first movie and Anne is sobbing. So I guess at this point we got to think this really is a movie that she made and she didn’t know. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: That she was telling the story. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And and she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Nans is upstairs smoking and trying to hook up in the red room. We hear someone sobbing and coming towards them. And the guy is like, oh, sorry, I think you like, mistake me for someone else. The killer’s trying to kill Nans because he looks so much like Fouad. 

 

Alison Leiby: Mmm. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Because the killer is Guy. So the, Guy has seen this movie and it’s like they made a movie out of, like, again, my torture and my lover’s murder. I’m going to kill everyone who thought you could use my real life story for entertainment. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes okay. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Luckily Anne realizes kind of what’s going on. And she runs up the stairs and busts in and says he’s the killer. The killer’s right there. So Guy we now know is the killer grabs a man and takes the man hostage and drags him down in the screening theater, which, by the way, is full of furious gay men who know all like who know that people have been being murdered. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And she said, that’s the killer. That’s who the person who’s been terrorizing, not just the our company, but the entire gay community of Paris. And luckily, the guy who the hostage is able to escape Guy’s clutches. But the rest of the crowd descend on Guy and he says, you get off on killing fags, huh? And then they beat up Guy, basically to a bloody pulp. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oof. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And Guy, he has a knife, of course. He drops it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And it’s picked up by Nans, and he stabs Guy as retribution for—

 

Alison Leiby: Nans stabs, okay.

 

Halle Kiefer: Nans stabs Guy to death for basically killing all these queer people. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And we get this epilogue flash as they all stand over his body. And of course, a black grackle lands on guys chest. [sighs] And we get this. I think we’re going to be like, you know, like he did do all this horrible stuff. But now—

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —we’re sympathetic and we sort of see his— 

 

Alison Leiby: Also traumatized yeah.  

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. Guy and Hicham’s romance. It’s like there’s was a sacred love a world oh, there’s was a secret love, a world of infinite sweetness. And we see his father catching them and it’s horrible. And then he set the dad set the fire to hide his crimes, and it’s like, bitch, that wasn’t going to work. So that’s why the dad dies by suicide. Guy survived, Alison, completely burned. But the God damn birds, like we heard from the legend took the sickness out of him. He doesn’t look great, but he survived, right? 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And because of the birds, he survived they let him live. Unfortunately, Alison, he did forget his past. And he had to relearn language from the birds, which I guess is why he was screaming like a bird, is that he didn’t have human language. So but yet he still knew enough to, like, find a dildo and install a knife in it. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He was able to get to the city. He was able to fight in the porno theater like‚

 

Alison Leiby: He purchased those things, allegedly. I mean like.

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. And we hear this story and it’s like. It’s like Guy went to the city and he entered a theater and we see Guy and Hicham some sort of embrace their last embrace. And then we see this last scene. And I think this is sort of I don’t want to immediately assume everything is about AIDS, but I think this probably is at this point, we see this scene where it’s a white space of the fountain and it’s sort of like all all these different men are in sort of different, like threes and twos, like having sex. And Archibald has satyr legs and it’s sort of like this like Greek scene. 

 

Alison Leiby: Uh huh. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And it’s the only scene where it’s actually shot like, it’s like beautiful and hot. And I think there’s the rest of it. It’s sort of like we’re it’s like behind the scenes, like we’re kind of joking while we’re doing this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Right. Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But this is like, it’s very beautiful. And like, all the men’s bodies are shot very beautifully. And you know, the Mouth of Gold is there. All of our friends. It’s kind of like the end of Wizard of Oz, sort of—

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —like all our friends are here. And Anne turns and sees Loïs and they kiss. And I think it’s sort of like this exists. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: This is what exists in Anne’s mind. And she, she puts it into a film because that’s all she has control over. She doesn’t have control of her life. The person, her love of her life she assaulted and, was murdered in front of her. So now it’s like the film is all we sort of have in order to, you know, like, have control. And then Loïs is sort of led away, I presume, to heaven in this scenario.

 

Alison Leiby: I guess. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And all the lights go on and all the gay porn actors look around and I think that we’re supposed to think this is the arrival of AIDS. But Archibald has tears in his eyes and he smiles at Anne and she smiles back, tears in her eyes. And there is this moment of like, we’re still here. Sorry I’m gonna cry. [sniffles] Oh, you think there was crying in other months, this month is going to be insane. 

 

Alison Leiby: [laughs] This is going to be a tough month. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Whew. But yeah, so that is the end. Alison, what are some fatal mistakes you think that anyone may have made in Knife and, in Knife+Heart? 

 

[voice over]: Fatal mistakes. 

 

Alison Leiby: I mean, I do think that like making the movies tied to the real murder going on. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Even though that’s not exactly what led to what was happening. Like, I do think that was a bad thing to do. [laughter] Like—

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah it seems grotesque. 

 

Alison Leiby: You have unsolved murders of people you know and you’re exploiting it for the art you make. Even if it’s making something like good. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: It ultimately feels like that’s not something you should do. And and is of course, you know why the murder, even though that wasn’t really what was happening because she wasn’t there and knowing that story at the time, like it is like it’s like just work from up here, start up in your head, work, start something new, use fantasy. Like maybe let’s not use trauma and horror to— 

 

Halle Kiefer: Get off. 

 

Alison Leiby: You know, depict, you know, fantasy. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes, I completely agree. And I think that it but it does feel like this is like that could happen where it’s like true crime, but porn. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Like you have The Staircase, but it is a porno. That doesn’t seem so impossible. 

 

Alison Leiby: No, not at all. And you know that there are those are already out there. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah remember when—

 

Alison Leiby: Somewhere. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —I feel like porn parodies were kind of big, I guess back when people were buying DVDs, like. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah—

 

Halle Kiefer: 15, 20 years ago. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. Late nineties, early 2000s. Feels like porn parody was at its height. And then the references to porn parody in comedy were like—

 

Halle Kiefer: Nonstop. 

 

Alison Leiby: Then kind of it was just a snake eating itself. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Exactly. 

 

Alison Leiby: And yeah, I guess that would be the big one for me. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, I think that makes sense because Anne again, like, she just had no grasp. Like the movies were her only method of control. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Because she had no control of her life whatsoever. And like everything she tried slipped through her fingers. I guess for me, the other fatal mistake is homophobia. 

 

Alison Leiby: Oh well obviously. Don’t do that.

 

Halle Kiefer: Don’t attack your son and his lover. 

 

Alison Leiby: Nope. 

 

Halle Kiefer: He will become a killer. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yep. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And because you’re already dead, he will take it out on other other queer people. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s a big one. 

 

Halle Kiefer: An important message for us all to remember. 

 

Alison Leiby: Always. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So where would you rate Knife+Heart on the spooky scale, Alison? 

 

[voice over]: A spooky scale. 

 

Alison Leiby: I think I found this, like, very fun and exciting and interesting. I think, like, even though there is a lot like it, it’s not a super high body count movie. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Mm hmm. 

 

Alison Leiby: Like it is, but it’s not in a way. I don’t know, like. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Like. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s the difference between, like, a murder mystery and a horror movie. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes, totally. Like, yeah, it did have flashes of, like, Scream 2. For some reason or like the Screams 2 and 3, where it’s like it’s a movie about a murder about a—

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: —like it’s like it’s like it’s the film within the film that like, we’re kind of also paying attention to. So I feel like

 

Halle Kiefer: Yes. 

 

Alison Leiby: That is very fun. I think this is a five. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Okay, good. I’m going to give this a three. I will say I found all the bird stuff very unnerving. 

 

Alison Leiby: Very. 

 

Halle Kiefer: We’ve talked about this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Very. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Grotesque. But other than that, I think that the giallo, as much as I love giallos or love, sort of like a more mystery horror, the the mystery element typically is less scary to me because you’re not in it like you’re not like experiencing it with the protagonist. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: You have these these beats where you know they’re safe, like they’re at a bar. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: It’s fine. Right. So you’re not getting the constant sort of frenetic terror, which is what I look for in a film. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. So I’m going to I’m going to say three. I enjoyed this. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yeah. 

 

Halle Kiefer: I didn’t know what it was. I hadn’t seen it before. So I think it was—

 

Alison Leiby: Great. 

 

Halle Kiefer: —a fun homage. I would say it’s a B-movie. But like, baby, who doesn’t love a B-movie?

 

Alison Leiby: That’s, great. Who doesn’t love B-movie?

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah. 

 

Alison Leiby: Well, here we are. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Well, here we are. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. We, of course, are thankful to you all, all months. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: But, you know, I just wanna say, I’m personally very thankful for you during Pride Month. I don’t know, man. You know, you know how things are. And we appreciate you listening. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: And hearing what we have to say. And you know that we know that you’re with us. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yes. 

 

Halle Kiefer: In this and yeah go to VoteSaveAmerica.com/fuckbans to donate your money get involved. They’re also like regional. If you’re someone who wants to get involved more broadly, you could look up your region and see like, you know, sort of different organizations if that’s something you’re interested in. But yeah. Yeah, I’m going to cry every episode. 

 

Alison Leiby: Yep. 

 

Halle Kiefer: So just get ready. 

 

Alison Leiby: It’s that kind of month. 

 

Halle Kiefer: Yeah, but until then, please. 

 

Alison Leiby: Keep it spooky. 

 

Halle Kiefer: The birds are blind, Alison. Don’t forget to follow us at Ruined podcast and Crooked Media for show updates. And if you’re as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Ruined is a Radio Point and Crooked Media production. We’re your writers and hosts Halle Kiefer and Alison Leiby. The show is executive produced by Alex Bach, Sabrina Fonfeder and Houston Snyder, and recorded and edited by Kat Iossa. From Crooked Media our executive producer is Kendra James with production and promotional support from Ari Schwartz, Kyle Seglin, Julia Beach, Caroline Dunphy and Ewa Okulate. [music plays]

 

 

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