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Ep. 20: 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' Weaves Webs Between Books & Movies
12 Plays5 months ago
In this episode of Adaptation: the Book to Movie Podcast, Nate and Chris discuss 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' written by Manuel Puig, as well as its 1985 film adaptation directed by Hector Babenco and the 2025 screen adaptation of the Broadway musical, directed by Bill Condon and starring Jennifer Lopez.
Expect conversations about the intricate connection between literature and film, the potent power of storytelling and the stark lack of Lantino representation in mainstream media.
Check out Nate's full review of 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' (2025).
Follow us on social media:
Nate's Letterboxd (@professor_n8)
Chris's Letterboxd (@cjanderson878)
Hosts: Nate Day, Chris Anderson
Producer: Nate Day
"Adaptation Theme"
- Written by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow
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Transcript
The Annoyance of Ads
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Introducing 'Adaptation' Podcast
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Speaker
Welcome to Adaptation, the book-to-movie podcast.
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm Nate.
00:00:47
Speaker
And I'm Chris.
00:00:49
Speaker
And today we are discussing The Kiss of the Spider-Woman, which I think will be a very sort of metatextual story to talk about, especially once we get to the movie side.
00:00:59
Speaker
There's a movie within a movie and they have the same title and
00:01:04
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It'll be a crazy one.
Chris's Rugby Game Experience
00:01:05
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But before we jump in, Chris, international traveler, how are you?
00:01:10
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Very good.
00:01:11
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Very good.
00:01:11
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Went and saw a fun rugby game yesterday.
00:01:14
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Yeah.
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The Quinns.
00:01:16
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Yeah, Denver's big brothers, the real Harlequins.
00:01:19
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That's fun.
00:01:20
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And they won, right?
00:01:21
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Yes.
00:01:22
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Yes.
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And it was a bit of a nail-biter.
00:01:23
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It was the London Derby because they're both technically London teams, the Harlequins and the Saracens.
00:01:30
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Super fun.
00:01:31
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Okay.
00:01:32
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And it was Quinn's Day, so at least here in Denver, Colorado, USA.
00:01:38
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Yes.
00:01:39
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I thought it lined up.
00:01:40
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I mean, I suppose, well, no, the game started here at 3.
00:01:43
Speaker
So it was, well, the boys were probably still at the bar after Quinn's Day.
00:01:46
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Yeah, I'm sure they were.
00:01:48
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Game was probably over.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, I thought about that while we were there.
00:01:51
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What have you been up to?
Nate's Reflection on 'Cured' by Jeff Rediger
00:01:54
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I've just been getting unpacked and making up for a lost time at the movie theater.
00:01:58
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You know, last time we recorded, I hadn't been to the theater in a while.
00:02:02
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But I saw a bunch of movies.
00:02:04
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But I also read a book, Chris.
00:02:07
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What?
00:02:08
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I did.
00:02:09
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I have to look up what it's called because I didn't even write it.
00:02:12
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I do this so rarely.
00:02:13
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I didn't even write it down.
00:02:15
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Okay.
00:02:15
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It's called Cured Strengthen Your Immune System and Heal Your Life by Jeff Rediger.
00:02:20
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And it's about people that experienced spontaneous healing from chronic illness.
00:02:27
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And it was recommended to me by a friend that also has a chronic illness and gave me some interesting ideas to sort of maybe try and manage mine.
00:02:37
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just a little bit better.
00:02:38
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So if you're out there struggling with any kind of chronic anything, and I mean, it was really interesting because a lot of the people featured in his book, like healed themselves from like cancer.
00:02:49
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Wow.
00:02:49
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And yeah.
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And the doctor, their doctors are like, I don't know what happened.
00:02:56
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And they're like, I just started like eating better and meditating.
00:02:58
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And of course they are like rich people that could like quit their jobs.
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So they have no stress in their lives, which is not an option for me.
00:03:06
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But, uh,
00:03:07
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some some real strong ideas there.
00:03:11
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So that was kind of an interesting read.
00:03:13
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That's very cool.
00:03:14
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That's very exciting.
00:03:16
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Yeah.
Nate's Movie-Going Experience
00:03:17
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If only you would put it on Goodreads so I could have seen it and marked it for myself.
00:03:23
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Oh, I did read it.
00:03:24
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I just finished it this morning.
00:03:26
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Oh, OK.
00:03:26
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OK.
00:03:27
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So I just haven't seen it.
00:03:27
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All right.
00:03:28
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Never mind.
00:03:29
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I will see it.
00:03:30
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Pull your jets.
00:03:33
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But I've been to the theater a lot, too.
00:03:34
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This place I moved into is
00:03:37
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right down the street from a movie theater, which is like a dream come true for me.
00:03:42
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Fantastic.
00:03:43
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Yeah.
00:03:44
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So I saw one battle after another, which is the movie of the year.
00:03:48
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It was so fucking good.
00:03:50
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And I just loved it.
00:03:53
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It's like part action road chase, part stoner comedy, part political commentary, part espionage thriller.
00:04:03
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It's so covering that in like six weeks.
00:04:07
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Yes, that one is loosely based on Vineland.
00:04:10
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Yes, that's right.
00:04:11
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Pinch on.
00:04:11
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Yeah.
00:04:12
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Yep.
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And we're going to cover that.
00:04:15
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It's going to win every Oscar under the sun, I'm sure.
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So we'll cover it when Oscar season comes around.
00:04:21
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Yeah.
00:04:21
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Yeah.
00:04:22
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It's a pretty, pretty fantastic movie.
00:04:24
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Oh, that's exciting.
00:04:26
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I saw The Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson, which I loved.
00:04:29
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There's a post on our brand new
Launch of New Blog
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blog, by the way.
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We launched a blog on our website link in the bio of our
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social media and down below in the episode description.
00:04:40
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Smashing Machine was great.
00:04:41
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I thought kind of a weird movie, but still really good.
00:04:44
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And it turns out Dwayne Johnson's a great actor.
00:04:47
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Fantastic.
00:04:49
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Yeah.
00:04:49
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I saw Roof Man, the real story of a guy that escaped jail and hid in a Toys R Us for a couple months.
00:04:58
Speaker
What?
00:04:59
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Yeah, it's pretty wacky.
00:05:01
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It's fun.
00:05:01
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It's like a rom-com too, because he, of course, meets a
00:05:05
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Lovely local lady.
00:05:06
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No, no, no, no, no.
00:05:09
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That is entirely inappropriate, of course.
00:05:13
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No, no.
00:05:13
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An escaped convict who lives in a Toys R Us for a couple months does not obviously meet a lovely lady and develop a spontaneous romance.
00:05:23
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Yeah, she works at Toys R Us.
00:05:27
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And you said this is a real story?
Discussion of 'Roof Man' & 'The Lost Bus'
00:05:29
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Yeah, it's a true story.
00:05:31
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And she figured out who he was and gave him up to the cops.
00:05:35
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what well yeah i mean he was he was a wanted criminal and she was a family family lady her mom wow not the turn that i was expecting goodness gracious and then a couple streaming movies steve which is a netflix drama about a reform school in england that loses its funding pretty decent and the lost bus which is on apple
00:06:01
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And that's another true story about a bus driver who drove through the California wildfires of 2018, I believe it was, with a bus full of kids.
00:06:12
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Because those fires kind of started out of nowhere and became chaotic very quickly in a very populated area.
00:06:17
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So he had to rescue a bunch of kids.
00:06:20
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So lots of movies.
00:06:22
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All of them are good.
00:06:23
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Oh, my gosh.
00:06:24
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So I'm a happy cinephile.
00:06:25
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Yeah.
00:06:25
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Yeah.
00:06:28
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That's such a crazy menagerie.
00:06:31
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Yes.
00:06:31
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Sorry.
00:06:32
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I was thinking about the connection between them and there's none.
00:06:36
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No, not at all.
00:06:37
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It's award season.
00:06:38
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So it's like really, you know, or award movie season, I should say.
00:06:43
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So everything's kind of really ramping up.
00:06:45
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Releases are ramping up.
Chris's Take on 'Shadow Force'
00:06:47
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Okay.
00:06:47
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What about you?
00:06:48
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What have you been reading?
00:06:50
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I actually also watched a movie on the plane ride from New York to Madrid.
00:06:56
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I marked it on Letterboxd.
00:06:59
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Shadow Force, maybe?
00:07:02
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Oh, I saw that you marked that one.
00:07:03
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Yeah.
00:07:04
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It's the guy from the essentially French Sherlock Holmes series.
00:07:10
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Omar Sy or Sy.
00:07:13
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Absolutely incredible.
00:07:14
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And then his wife and the mother of his child is Olivia Pope from Scandal.
00:07:21
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Yes.
00:07:21
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Kerry Washington.
00:07:22
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Yeah.
00:07:25
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As far as plot goes, pretty thin.
00:07:30
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Absolute blast of a movie.
00:07:32
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So much fun.
00:07:33
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Good.
00:07:34
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Could not care less.
00:07:34
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You get halfway through and you're like, plot who?
00:07:37
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I don't know her.
00:07:38
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I don't care.
00:07:38
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Yeah.
00:07:39
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You just got cool people shooting guns.
00:07:42
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Action, romance, assassins, a bad guy with a private island, an adorable kid.
00:07:49
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Love it.
00:07:49
Speaker
Five out of five.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:51
Speaker
Great.
00:07:52
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:07:53
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Uh, reading.
00:07:53
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I actually got another rare five out of five today for my book club.
Chris's Book Club: 'Kafka on the Shore'
00:07:59
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We read Kafka on the shore.
00:08:03
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:08:04
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It's Haruki.
00:08:07
Speaker
Oh gosh.
00:08:07
Speaker
I'm going to, I'm going to butcher the name.
00:08:12
Speaker
Uh, I literally finished it on the bus back out here to the Airbnb.
00:08:15
Speaker
Um,
00:08:17
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Haruki Murakami.
00:08:20
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Very, very well-known, huge book.
00:08:24
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Came out just under 25 years ago.
00:08:26
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People love it.
00:08:27
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Incredible reviews.
00:08:30
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And it is a wild ride.
00:08:32
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It's been on my list forever, so I was glad my buddy Michael recommended it for the book club.
00:08:38
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And it was outstanding.
00:08:40
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Probably about 75% of the way in, I already knew this was a 5 out of 5.
00:08:46
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I will be coming back to it.
00:08:47
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Not soon, but at some point.
00:08:50
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Almost as much because actually it'll really tie into today's discussion.
00:08:56
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It's almost as much out of curiosity and knowing that I could take more away from the text.
00:09:05
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But unlike the book we're talking about for this episode, also just fascinating, hilarious.
00:09:11
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It's a type of writing I think that I'm more drawn to.
00:09:15
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:16
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But highly recommend it.
00:09:17
Speaker
Great.
Challenges Accessing 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'
00:09:19
Speaker
Well, on that note, let's talk about Kiss of the Spider Woman.
00:09:22
Speaker
Why don't you tell me a little bit about Manuel Puig's novel?
00:09:27
Speaker
Okay, and I did look this up today.
00:09:29
Speaker
Puig.
00:09:31
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:09:32
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Manuel Puig.
00:09:33
Speaker
Puig.
00:09:34
Speaker
Okay, that probably tracks.
00:09:36
Speaker
I looked it up because I felt so embarrassed listening back to Clockwork Orange and realizing I did not even pronounce the author's name the same way throughout the episode, much less you and I.
00:09:47
Speaker
You didn't?
00:09:48
Speaker
Oh.
00:09:50
Speaker
I think I pronounced it three different ways.
00:09:52
Speaker
I said like Burgess or Burgess or Burgwa.
00:09:55
Speaker
I didn't say that, but.
00:09:57
Speaker
Well, at least you covered all your bases, right?
00:09:59
Speaker
Like you nailed it at some point.
00:10:01
Speaker
One of them was correct.
00:10:03
Speaker
But because of that, yes, I looked this one up.
00:10:05
Speaker
Manuel Puig.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, first, as I had mentioned it to you, but I think valuable information, or you suggested it was probably valuable information for our listeners, and I agree.
00:10:20
Speaker
Terribly difficult to get a hold of this text.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, the movie, the original movie is not easy to get a hold of.
00:10:28
Speaker
I mean, now it's streaming, but...
00:10:32
Speaker
It's historically been tough to find before.
00:10:34
Speaker
And it's one of the only, I should say we chose this partly because we want to celebrate its Latino heritage month, at least as of recording.
00:10:41
Speaker
I think this will come out the day after it ends.
00:10:45
Speaker
But in all of my sort of exploration of cinema, I found that there are not very many classics about Latinos.
00:10:55
Speaker
The representation is just not there.
00:10:57
Speaker
So we really wanted to, or at least positive representation.
00:11:01
Speaker
So we wanted to really be sure and sort of shine a spotlight on that.
00:11:07
Speaker
But yeah, like I said, it's tough to find those.
00:11:10
Speaker
And this is one of the only ones I could find.
00:11:12
Speaker
Well, we, I mean, we nearly had to scrap this episode.
00:11:16
Speaker
I almost couldn't find a copy.
00:11:17
Speaker
Right.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
A long, long journey.
00:11:21
Speaker
First through the classic avenues.
00:11:23
Speaker
Libby is my go-to.
00:11:25
Speaker
I mean, we were in... Yeah, we love Libby.
00:11:27
Speaker
We love Libby.
00:11:28
Speaker
We love Libby.
00:11:29
Speaker
And even...
00:11:31
Speaker
in Manhattan looking for millions of books available between the New York Public Library system.
00:11:39
Speaker
Nothing online, nothing on the other channels where I find books, Spotify audiobooks, Audible.
00:11:49
Speaker
Sometimes you'll find PDFs or texts online.
00:11:51
Speaker
And there was one online library, but they had some pretty specific stipulations
00:11:59
Speaker
for why you as a reader needed that text compared to finding it elsewhere, which I did not meet, so I couldn't get that.
00:12:06
Speaker
Ended up going out of the country and seeking access through another country to find a copy and reading the entire thing page by page on my iPhone, which is unpleasant.
00:12:16
Speaker
That's dedication.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:19
Speaker
But yeah, it's wild to now know...
00:12:23
Speaker
I mean, I'm curious about the movie, because even in my exploration of Puig himself, which we'll discuss next, I can't tell how ubiquitous this text is, even amongst people for whom this is a genre, an area that they live.
00:12:42
Speaker
You know, I would be curious to ask someone that lives in Argentina, how familiar are you?
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:12:48
Speaker
But yeah, let's actually, yeah, let's discuss that because that really gets into it quickly in terms of his life and the writing of this book.
Puig's Life & Cinematic Aspirations
00:12:56
Speaker
So Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig, when you first sent it to me, I absolutely thought it would be part of the Spider-Man universe.
00:13:05
Speaker
Not the case.
00:13:07
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:13:08
Speaker
That's hysterical.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
Puig was born in, I'm almost certainly going to mispronounce this, I would guess General Villegas, a city outside Buenos Aires, in 1932.
00:13:22
Speaker
But his family early on sent him into Buenos Aires because his town was so small they didn't have a secondary school.
00:13:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:31
Speaker
So pretty early on went in there.
00:13:32
Speaker
Also pretty early on knew he wanted to be a film director, enjoyed, I guess, what was this?
00:13:41
Speaker
mid forties and fifties.
00:13:42
Speaker
I have no concept of where that falls on Hollywood's timeline, but he was enamored with the movies coming out from America.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:50
Speaker
That tracks golden age movies and particularly musicals.
00:13:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:54
Speaker
Um, which is curious because, uh, so he goes to school, he specified, I know it was Marilyn Monroe and one other actress who he felt stayed true to what he loved about films and filmmaking.
00:14:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:09
Speaker
And the rest of American actors and actresses, by the time he was going to school and looking for work himself, he had really become disenchanted with.
00:14:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:19
Speaker
And I don't know.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting.
00:14:22
Speaker
This fact, I also wanted to check with you because I'd never seen it anywhere, but I also see a few facts about film.
00:14:29
Speaker
He went to college first in Argentina and then eventually on a scholarship to Italy.
00:14:34
Speaker
to pursue filmmaking as a career.
00:14:37
Speaker
Also, as like a sidetrack stopped off to learn German, French and Italian because they were considered quote unquote, the new languages of cinema.
00:14:47
Speaker
This would be like 47 to 50.
00:14:49
Speaker
Have you ever heard anything along these lines?
00:14:52
Speaker
Not in such terms, but those are nations that have had sort of a major presence in the art of cinema for
00:15:03
Speaker
generations so i i had that tracks i guess i mean if he was that dedicated i wouldn't do that but okay fair enough so i don't i thought that was great i mean yeah insane dedication right yeah um we see this curious timeline here where it really goes off the tracks and this is why i tied it into i'm curious
00:15:26
Speaker
for whom this would be, you know, core, central to their canon, so to speak.
00:15:36
Speaker
He wrote for a relatively short amount of time, at least in comparison to other writers we've discussed.
00:15:43
Speaker
So his first novel, La Tracion de Rita Hayworth, published in 68, and he died very young.
00:15:52
Speaker
57 years old, I believe, in 1990.
00:15:54
Speaker
So altogether, only publishing for about 20 years there.
00:15:59
Speaker
Not a lot in the last two years either, right?
00:16:01
Speaker
Sure.
00:16:02
Speaker
So a fairly short timeline.
00:16:04
Speaker
And additionally, so he goes to school to become a filmmaker.
00:16:08
Speaker
In 53, goes back to Argentina to do his compulsory military service.
00:16:13
Speaker
And somewhere in here very quickly senses that it is not a nation that's going to be very friendly to his left-leaning views.
00:16:20
Speaker
Brief recap of these two decades in this South American nation.
00:16:24
Speaker
66, they see their first military coup.
00:16:27
Speaker
Another one in 70.
00:16:29
Speaker
Perón comes back.
00:16:30
Speaker
He's elected as president for his third time in 73, dies in 74.
00:16:36
Speaker
His wife takes over.
00:16:38
Speaker
More things, but culminating in the
00:16:41
Speaker
Dirty war starting in 76, continuing for a long time, a period of very nasty business on the part of the administration and national government at large.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker
So he left.
00:16:54
Speaker
Good choice on his part.
00:16:55
Speaker
Went to Mexico.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:57
Speaker
And spent the vast majority of his writing career in exile from Argentina.
00:17:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:04
Speaker
Which is, again, why I stopped myself.
00:17:06
Speaker
As I said, I'd be curious to ask an Argentine, what's your perspective of Puig?
00:17:11
Speaker
Because he didn't, once he started publishing, both his screenplays and novels didn't stay there for good reason.
00:17:17
Speaker
Ultimately, when he did pass in 1990, he was living in Mexico, and immediately the public assumed that he died of AIDS, even though no evidence has ever been brought forth suggesting that he had HIV.
00:17:30
Speaker
Oh.
00:17:33
Speaker
but this gives a very clear picture of what the public thought of him.
00:17:37
Speaker
Right.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:38
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, especially after this book in particular.
00:17:42
Speaker
Exactly.
00:17:43
Speaker
Exactly.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
Right.
00:17:44
Speaker
But I mean, lunacy, right?
00:17:47
Speaker
I would hope someone would look back now and say, oh, because the writer was gay, he passes away and you assume it was eight.
00:17:54
Speaker
That's nuts.
00:17:55
Speaker
Right.
00:17:56
Speaker
Right.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, it is pretty wild.
00:17:58
Speaker
So the book, Kiss of the Spider-Wolves.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:01
Speaker
I've seen a little bit of back and forth, but the majority of sources that I looked at did agree that this was his most famous publication.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's the only one.
00:18:10
Speaker
I've not heard of the other ones.
00:18:13
Speaker
I mean, me neither, but I also hadn't heard of this, so I don't know where the barometer is.
00:18:18
Speaker
I am curious, and I assume you'll at least touch on, for all of this fairly unawarded author, someone that I had not heard of, how this ended up becoming, I believe they've adapted it twice, right?
00:18:32
Speaker
Yep.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, so how did this become?
00:18:33
Speaker
And we have seen this previously, authors that maybe would not have become as big
00:18:38
Speaker
Due to the fact that they are screenwriters themselves, you know, kind of.
00:18:42
Speaker
Right.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:43
Speaker
Where if his interest had only been writing, you know, would we have ever heard of this?
00:18:47
Speaker
Would it ever have become a movie?
00:18:48
Speaker
Right.
00:18:49
Speaker
But yeah, let's talk about the book.
Narrative Style of 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'
00:18:51
Speaker
This was a tough read, predominantly because of how Puig designed the narrative form.
00:18:57
Speaker
The overall story was predominantly dialogue, which is difficult to begin with.
00:19:02
Speaker
Predominantly dialogue between only two characters in one jail cell.
00:19:06
Speaker
Notoriously difficult to pull off.
00:19:09
Speaker
in in literature and still have a good story which he did do very very clearly an astonishing author it doesn't there's there's no he said she said within the text it's just two people talking back and forth and the only thing that distinguishes someone else is talking now is a little m dash at the beginning of the line oh interesting i wonder if that's you know argentinian style or if he just kind of wrote it like a manuscript or a like
00:19:37
Speaker
I wonder what that... why?
00:19:39
Speaker
He himself discussed the difficulty in getting across the tone that he wanted.
00:19:47
Speaker
The original was obviously written in Spanish.
00:19:49
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:19:50
Speaker
Both the process of translating to English and French, he said it was very difficult to obtain the same tonal quality.
00:20:02
Speaker
Especially for Molina.
00:20:04
Speaker
The entire thing began as an exercise he gave himself
00:20:07
Speaker
of writing a romantic female lead.
00:20:10
Speaker
And that's where the character of Molina came from.
00:20:14
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait.
00:20:15
Speaker
Then say that again.
00:20:16
Speaker
He wrote Molina because he was trying to write a romantic woman?
00:20:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:21
Speaker
And according to Molina and how he talks about himself, that's what we got.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
But from a narrative, from a reader's perspective, it took, once I got into the rhythm,
00:20:36
Speaker
It totally made sense by the end of the book.
00:20:38
Speaker
I didn't notice anymore.
00:20:39
Speaker
But the first 50, 60 pages, it was very difficult to track who's speaking now, which character is which.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I, yeah, I couldn't tell if this was, I would have been fascinated, would still be fascinated to see a copy in the original Spanish and see if it's treated the exact same way.
00:20:58
Speaker
So like if this was a deliberate literary device that was carried over or if this was his way of making it
00:21:04
Speaker
Because it does make some immediate tonal changes as the reader.
00:21:07
Speaker
This familiarity, the stream of consciousness dialogue.
00:21:14
Speaker
There's an aspect that it does, as opposed to inviting you into the conversation, sort of puts a firm hand on your shoulder and pushes you down into the chair in that cell and says, you got to focus.
00:21:30
Speaker
You got to pay attention.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:31
Speaker
You know?
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
which is interesting.
00:21:34
Speaker
I mean, it's a cool idea.
00:21:35
Speaker
I don't know.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how I feel about it.
00:21:38
Speaker
It was annoying at first and understandable later on.
00:21:43
Speaker
I still don't know where I fall, where my final verdict is on how effective it was.
00:21:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:52
Speaker
That is not because this on its own would necessarily be super distracting.
00:21:56
Speaker
It is because there are sort of
00:21:59
Speaker
Three separate unorthodox literary devices being used here.
00:22:03
Speaker
Okay?
00:22:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:06
Speaker
So we have the somewhat difficult to follow dialogue.
00:22:09
Speaker
Then we have, over the course of the tale, we have just these two characters talking to each other.
00:22:15
Speaker
So that helps us a little bit.
00:22:17
Speaker
Right.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yep.
00:22:17
Speaker
They're both inmates in an Argentine prison, right?
00:22:21
Speaker
Yep.
00:22:22
Speaker
In the meantime, throughout the story, narrative-wise, there are these footnotes throughout that are very lengthy.
00:22:30
Speaker
They are nearly as long as the chapters themselves, some of them.
00:22:33
Speaker
They only happen for about the first half of the book.
00:22:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:36
Speaker
And each footnote is a kind of quote-unquote scientific discussion of homosexuality in society.
00:22:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:43
Speaker
And now again, this was published 40, 60 years ago, and it seemed like a lot of information even from before his time.
00:22:51
Speaker
So it certainly would have become antiquated either way.
00:22:54
Speaker
But one, chooses scientists whose findings are certainly in part accepted as shaky now because science continues, right?
00:23:05
Speaker
And two, even went as far as making up scientists and studies to add in here.
00:23:10
Speaker
And...
00:23:12
Speaker
Manuel, come on, dude.
00:23:14
Speaker
Well, I couldn't tell.
00:23:15
Speaker
I mean, deliberately so.
00:23:16
Speaker
It's not to deceive.
00:23:18
Speaker
But it's sort of this almost poking fun at, hey, this is my lifestyle.
00:23:24
Speaker
Why are you putting it under a microscope like an animal to be studied?
00:23:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:29
Speaker
And bringing light to look how we as a subset of society are being viewed.
00:23:35
Speaker
Right?
00:23:36
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:37
Speaker
Got it.
00:23:38
Speaker
So he's creating a fictional world sort of the same way he creates these fictional movies.
Molina's Fictional Movie Recounts
00:23:43
Speaker
Exactly.
00:23:43
Speaker
Exactly.
00:23:44
Speaker
Exactly.
00:23:44
Speaker
To drive his point.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:46
Speaker
Got it.
00:23:47
Speaker
So as a literary device, frankly brilliant, combined with the rest of the story, a lot of clutter, right?
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:56
Speaker
The third...
00:23:58
Speaker
again, would be not that surprising on its own device going on here.
00:24:02
Speaker
Subplot, perhaps, is they're in their cell.
00:24:06
Speaker
Melina is recalling movies, telling them to Valentin as a way to pass the time, right?
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:14
Speaker
There are five of them throughout, wildly disparate in content.
00:24:19
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:24:20
Speaker
Wow.
00:24:21
Speaker
Considerable analysis online of the plots and what they mean, what we are to take away from each of the movies.
00:24:27
Speaker
And the choice of each one.
00:24:29
Speaker
I have elected to skip past that because that's just.
00:24:32
Speaker
That's a whole different.
00:24:34
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:34
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:35
Speaker
Five.
00:24:35
Speaker
That's crazy because each movie, we'll get to this, but each movie only focuses on one fictional movie.
00:24:41
Speaker
Oh, wait, what do you mean?
00:24:42
Speaker
Each version, there's two versions of Kiss of the Spider Woman.
00:24:46
Speaker
And in each of them, there's only, Molina only recounts one movie.
00:24:49
Speaker
Really?
00:24:50
Speaker
There's not five movies.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's like the majority of the book.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:55
Speaker
This is interesting.
00:24:56
Speaker
This is very curious.
00:24:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:59
Speaker
So again, the mixture of these three things are really what make it kind of difficult to track.
00:25:08
Speaker
Just from a reader's perspective.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, no kidding.
00:25:11
Speaker
But undeniably brilliant.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:25:14
Speaker
Finally, near the end, and we discussed this a little, I will deliberately be leaving off the ending so that anyone who wants to go enjoy this, I wouldn't call it the biggest twist that we've...
00:25:28
Speaker
engaged with, but we don't need to reveal it to discuss in depth.
00:25:32
Speaker
Agreed.
00:25:33
Speaker
So I'll let you guys go find the ending for yourselves.
00:25:36
Speaker
But a big part of it is that it's revealed Molina has been placed in this cell.
00:25:41
Speaker
So Molina, this part I didn't understand if it was innuendo on the part of the state or if this genuinely happened, but Molina is ostensibly in prison for indecent sexual exposure with a minor.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:59
Speaker
And it's not, it felt like it was implied throughout the book that this was just the government's way of saying homosexuality is not accepted or if he actually committed an act with a minor.
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:11
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:13
Speaker
I'm glad that's similar.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I don't know if that's my impression or if that was the intention.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:18
Speaker
And in fact, the new movie changes it so that there's no mention of a minor whatsoever.
00:26:23
Speaker
I think he's caught having sex with a man in public, like in a bathroom.
00:26:27
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:26:28
Speaker
And they don't even mention anything about a minor.
00:26:31
Speaker
So I think it very much is just a reference to being jailed for being gay.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:36
Speaker
That was my take as well.
00:26:38
Speaker
So he is in jail for that, but it's revealed that he was placed intentionally in a cell with Valentin, who is a political prisoner.
00:26:51
Speaker
Right.
00:26:52
Speaker
in order to try to get information about these dissidents, right?
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yep.
00:26:57
Speaker
Throughout these many days discussions, again, a lot of interesting plot bumps and twists that we won't get into.
00:27:06
Speaker
They, they develop a more romantic relationship.
00:27:10
Speaker
It's fairly complex in terms of what is implied versus stated explicitly and, and what he leaves you to fill in for yourself.
00:27:22
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:27:22
Speaker
Because they don't... I don't know.
00:27:25
Speaker
It was very much implication, especially that it's purely dialogue-driven, right?
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, people sitting in rooms talking.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yes, and a sex scene that's only including what people are saying during.
00:27:38
Speaker
There were a lot of ellipses.
00:27:40
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:41
Speaker
Interesting.
00:27:41
Speaker
That would be kind of a crazy read.
00:27:43
Speaker
It is explicitly stated that they do eventually have sex.
00:27:47
Speaker
It is explicitly stated that Molina...
00:27:50
Speaker
Very romantically asks, nearly begging Valentin to kiss him once.
00:27:57
Speaker
Right.
00:27:58
Speaker
You don't know if they ever kiss more than once.
00:28:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's not the case in the movies.
Romantic Development in the Narrative
00:28:03
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:28:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:04
Speaker
Well, and at least one of the movies.
00:28:05
Speaker
And then upon upon leaving, Valentin is still super excited to go see this girlfriend that he's been, you know, pining after throughout.
00:28:16
Speaker
So it's that's, that's why I say it's really a lot of implied versus stated explicitly.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:22
Speaker
As the audience, in my opinion, you are very drawn to Melina.
00:28:26
Speaker
I don't know how others feel about Valentin.
00:28:29
Speaker
I don't know if this is from, you know, I've exclusively seen tons and tons of stories about political rebels being jailed, being tortured for information, whatever.
00:28:40
Speaker
I don't know.
00:28:41
Speaker
Or just that I'm not super familiar with the political climate of Argentina in the 1970s.
00:28:45
Speaker
You know, that would make you far more inherently involved in his part of the story.
00:28:51
Speaker
But I don't care about him.
00:28:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:52
Speaker
I don't know.
00:28:53
Speaker
He's a throwaway.
00:28:54
Speaker
Not a throwaway to me, obviously.
00:28:55
Speaker
He's practically half the book.
00:28:58
Speaker
But Molina is really the centerpiece.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
He displays this deep complexity, and you very much feel sympathetic for him.
00:29:06
Speaker
And it's, oh, yes, this is where it came in about the translation.
00:29:10
Speaker
It is a literary marvel that Puig achieved this depth of character in a translation.
00:29:18
Speaker
which makes me even more curious what the original Spanish is.
00:29:21
Speaker
It has to be a masterpiece.
00:29:22
Speaker
Sure, because you read an English version.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:25
Speaker
I mean, the word choice, not just of pivotal moments, but throughout, has to be so specific and deliberate to achieve such a character.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's so brilliant.
00:29:40
Speaker
It's so brilliant.
00:29:42
Speaker
The way that he writes Molina, the way that you feel about him throughout,
00:29:46
Speaker
I don't know.
00:29:47
Speaker
I like the metaphor that I presented you before.
00:29:50
Speaker
The writing is such that you are kind of forced down into a chair in this cell with these two and watching this.
00:29:59
Speaker
You can just picture it.
00:29:59
Speaker
You can picture in my head, I had sort of the Casablanca era filming going on.
00:30:07
Speaker
The whole scene was in black and white.
00:30:09
Speaker
I'm in the corner watching these two in these shabby bunks.
00:30:13
Speaker
They had to get people to bring them food from outside because they were served this slop and had nothing to do but chat for hours on end.
00:30:22
Speaker
I don't know.
00:30:22
Speaker
I enjoyed that part tremendously.
00:30:25
Speaker
Great.
00:30:25
Speaker
How was it received?
00:30:27
Speaker
At first, it was only allowed to be published in Spain.
00:30:32
Speaker
Not even one of the countries we've been talking about.
00:30:33
Speaker
Nope.
00:30:34
Speaker
It was immediately banned in Argentina and remained banned there for a long, long time.
00:30:39
Speaker
I guess that tracks.
00:30:41
Speaker
Even after he translated and got some of these published elsewhere.
00:30:45
Speaker
The only example I saw for certain was the French version, but I have to imagine it happened in other languages.
00:30:50
Speaker
It was allowed to be released, but with some content removed, like the sex scenes.
00:30:55
Speaker
And I would be very curious to know.
00:30:58
Speaker
So I guess the...
00:31:00
Speaker
By the time the translations are coming out, we're probably talking mid-70s.
00:31:05
Speaker
Even at that point, I mean, I know very little about French literature, but if it was a heterosexual sex scene, would it have been censored?
00:31:13
Speaker
I would be very curious to know.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yeah, I would too.
00:31:18
Speaker
Extraordinarily difficult.
00:31:19
Speaker
Once again, I do believe this has happened three times now, perhaps back-to-back.
00:31:24
Speaker
A book I'd never heard of and you sent me.
00:31:27
Speaker
the first one third or so I was not into.
00:31:32
Speaker
And by the end, I was absolutely in love with it.
00:31:36
Speaker
See, you just gotta, you just gotta trust my instincts here.
00:31:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yes, I do.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yes, I do.
Recommendation for Complex Narratives
00:31:43
Speaker
But yeah, I hope that's, there's really a lot of depth here that I've deliberately skipped one because it'd be so far outside the scope of us discussing both parts.
00:31:51
Speaker
And two, I really, it is, well, I'll get into it in my review.
00:31:55
Speaker
I'll get into it in my, uh,
00:31:57
Speaker
Recap at the end.
00:31:59
Speaker
Sure.
00:32:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:01
Speaker
Great.
00:32:02
Speaker
Well, let's take a quick ad break.
00:32:04
Speaker
And when we come back, we'll talk about the multiple movies.
00:32:08
Speaker
Perfect.
00:32:11
Speaker
Welcome back to Adaptation, our discussion of Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig.
00:32:21
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:32:21
Speaker
He probably would have loved, Lin-Manuel would have loved to turn this into a musical.
00:32:25
Speaker
Somebody else did.
00:32:26
Speaker
And we'll get to that.
00:32:28
Speaker
Oh, it's a musical as well.
00:32:29
Speaker
There are two versions of this movie.
00:32:31
Speaker
One is not a musical.
00:32:33
Speaker
One is a musical.
00:32:34
Speaker
It's actually got a very similar track to The Color Purple.
00:32:38
Speaker
It was written as a novel, separately developed into a stage production that went on to Broadway and starred very famous Broadway people.
00:32:46
Speaker
And then most recently, that was adapted to film, the Broadway musical.
00:32:51
Speaker
Okay.
Adaptations of 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'
00:32:52
Speaker
The first movie came out in 1985.
00:32:53
Speaker
This is the non-musical version.
00:32:57
Speaker
I wasn't really able to find information about how this book that has, at least at this point, become somewhat obscure, came across the desks of people in Hollywood.
00:33:07
Speaker
But there were several people from what I'm reading that were
00:33:12
Speaker
interested in developing it at some point.
00:33:14
Speaker
I think this story of political revolution probably just was very intriguing to these people.
00:33:20
Speaker
And how it compares to art was probably just very appealing to filmmakers and storytellers, right?
00:33:26
Speaker
If Puig sort of had that desire to make movies and then wrote a book about how great movies are,
00:33:32
Speaker
how transcendent movies are, I can see how that would appeal to that crowd.
00:33:36
Speaker
I do see in partial answer to your question that he published his own screenplay of the book in 83.
00:33:45
Speaker
In 83?
00:33:46
Speaker
Okay, so then it was rewritten, apparently, by Leonard Schrader, who was nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay.
00:33:55
Speaker
Interesting.
00:33:55
Speaker
Interesting.
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder what exactly publishing a screenplay gets you when there's not a movie attached to it.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, yep.
00:34:04
Speaker
I feel like you're kind of just opening yourself.
00:34:06
Speaker
I mean, it's very common for a movie to be rewritten a handful of times until they like find the right version.
00:34:13
Speaker
So I don't, I didn't see that Puig was directly involved in the sort of evolution of this Oscar nominated script.
00:34:21
Speaker
But I, you know,
00:34:22
Speaker
like I said, sometimes it changes hands so many times that it's just not well recorded.
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
I mean, that's, it, I, it makes me wonder if, if he wanted it to become a film, if he knew this was what it took both doing this.
00:34:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:34:38
Speaker
And then, and then relinquishing rights and saying, you guys want to rewrite it.
00:34:42
Speaker
That's fine with me.
00:34:43
Speaker
You know, I wonder.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker
And that's often part of the deal too.
00:34:46
Speaker
And you, when you, you know, sell the rights, um,
00:34:53
Speaker
Often it's an argument who gets more like narrative, creative control, the studio or the original author.
00:35:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:02
Speaker
So interesting background too.
00:35:06
Speaker
But yeah, Leonard Schrader was Oscar nominated for a screenplay and the director, Hector Babenko was Oscar nominated for his direction.
William Hurt's Role & Challenges
00:35:14
Speaker
And this movie ended up being nominated for a
00:35:17
Speaker
Best Picture as well.
00:35:18
Speaker
So again, just really strange that it has sort of faded into obscurity.
00:35:23
Speaker
The movie starred William Hurt as Molina, who actually won an Oscar for his portrayal, despite being a white man.
00:35:32
Speaker
Goodness gracious.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, super problematic.
00:35:36
Speaker
I read that Babenko courted white movie stars for this role because he needed somebody that was going to sell tickets.
00:35:42
Speaker
Like the movie was not going to get made if they didn't get a big name attached.
00:35:45
Speaker
And it was sort of
00:35:47
Speaker
something he had to sacrifice.
00:35:50
Speaker
And I should note too, that this is the first time a straight actor, or probably any actor, won for playing an openly gay character, which I think is part of what the sort of cultural appeal at the time was.
00:36:02
Speaker
I think it felt very progressive to give him that award.
00:36:06
Speaker
And that's probably why it's sort of drifted away from the public consciousness now, because it's a little bit of a blight to be like, yeah, we gave this white, straight white guy
00:36:16
Speaker
The biggest award you can give for playing a gay Latino man.
00:36:21
Speaker
Goodness gracious.
00:36:22
Speaker
What a strange intersection.
00:36:24
Speaker
I know.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
Really weird history here.
00:36:26
Speaker
Raul Julia as Valentin and Sonia Braga as multiple characters.
00:36:32
Speaker
The movies, it sounds like are a little bit more condensed than the book in that they follow Valentin and Molina and
00:36:40
Speaker
Molina recounting one film starring this sort of silver screen diva that he really loves.
00:36:48
Speaker
And in the 1985 version, that diva is played by Sonia Braga, who's a Brazilian actress.
00:36:54
Speaker
Now, what do you mean as the spider woman?
00:36:58
Speaker
So in my notes here that listeners can't see, I have written that Sonia Braga starred as the Spider Woman.
00:37:03
Speaker
One of the movies that Molina recounts, and actually it's pretty weak in the 1985 version, it's much stronger in the 25 version, is the story of, it's this Casablanca style romance, and one of the character's
00:37:20
Speaker
is the spider woman who is this like forest spirit who kills men by kissing them.
00:37:28
Speaker
Like she's got a poisonous kiss.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:31
Speaker
That's a fictional, this is what I meant when I said metatextual.
00:37:34
Speaker
It's so hard to talk about a fictional movie in a real movie.
00:37:37
Speaker
And that's a character played by an actress in a movie that they're recounting is the spider woman.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:37:45
Speaker
Okay, no, no, that's in the book.
00:37:47
Speaker
It's just one of five.
00:37:49
Speaker
Okay, continue, continue.
00:37:50
Speaker
So a little complex here.
00:37:52
Speaker
Technically, the pretty much only woman in the cast of the movie plays, kind of plays multiple roles because she's playing an actress who's in several movies, right?
00:38:02
Speaker
And in some of the movies plays dual roles.
00:38:06
Speaker
I don't even know how to talk.
00:38:07
Speaker
Am I making any sense?
00:38:08
Speaker
No.
00:38:08
Speaker
Well, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me, but in some of the movies, this fictional actress plays two roles.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:16
Speaker
This is what I mean.
00:38:17
Speaker
I was doing my notes.
00:38:18
Speaker
I was like, I don't even know how to talk about this.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:22
Speaker
But anyway, in the 1985 version, William Hurt took direction from an assistant director because Babenko didn't speak much English and Hurt didn't speak much Spanish, which I thought was just kind of interesting.
00:38:34
Speaker
Hurt does not have a good reputation.
00:38:36
Speaker
He's sort of known for being difficult to work with, and he was accused of abuse by his ex-wife, so really not a great guy.
00:38:46
Speaker
But I throw all that in just to say that it was sort of a troubled production because of these language barriers and attitude problems.
00:38:53
Speaker
But the movie comes out really great.
00:38:55
Speaker
It's nominated for Best Picture and is the first ever indie movie to be nominated for Best Picture.
00:39:01
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:39:01
Speaker
Again, it's fascinating that it's not always easy to find.
00:39:05
Speaker
Nobody's heard of it.
00:39:06
Speaker
I mean, it's a this movie is a really big deal in the history of Hollywood and the sort of ecosystem of movies.
00:39:13
Speaker
And it's just not any more part of the public discourse.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:17
Speaker
And now this one, this is the one that is a musical also are there musical numbers during this or this is a just a film film?
00:39:25
Speaker
No, that 1985 one is just a film that film and they changed the setting to Brazil rather than Argentina because there was political turmoil in Brazil in the 80s.
00:39:36
Speaker
And so they thought it would, you know, resonate a little bit stronger.
00:39:40
Speaker
Interesting.
00:39:41
Speaker
Right.
00:39:42
Speaker
And the one movie that Molina recounts throughout their time in prison in this 1985 movie is a Nazi propaganda film.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:39:51
Speaker
Which stars Sonia Braga as a fictional actress.
00:39:56
Speaker
And, you know, propaganda films were known for like lavish productions.
00:40:00
Speaker
So it's very much he was drawn to this sweeping romance, despite the fact that he was a trans Latino individual who liked Nazi movies, I guess.
00:40:10
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no.
00:40:13
Speaker
That is a gross misdemeanor, what you've just committed.
00:40:17
Speaker
Valentin makes that point.
00:40:20
Speaker
How can you like this rubbish?
00:40:21
Speaker
It's Nazi propaganda.
00:40:23
Speaker
And he's like, yes, but the love, the story, you can respect this thing for being beautiful.
00:40:30
Speaker
Even this underlying current is happening.
00:40:32
Speaker
That's obviously not great.
00:40:35
Speaker
Right, right.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, you're right.
00:40:37
Speaker
And it performed very well.
00:40:38
Speaker
The budget of the movie was only 1.5 million, like I said, an indie film, and it earned 17 million at the box office.
00:40:45
Speaker
So really exceeded expectations as well.
00:40:49
Speaker
It was a big deal in 85.
00:40:51
Speaker
And then developed into a stage musical, and that stage musical picks up traction when Bill Condon, who's sort of the master of
00:41:01
Speaker
or one of the masters of movie musicals writes a screenplay and Bill Condon just for context, he wrote Chicago and the greatest showman the movie version of these shows.
00:41:13
Speaker
He directed dream girls and the beauty and the beast live action remake.
00:41:19
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
00:41:20
Speaker
So very well versed in musicals.
00:41:22
Speaker
He writes the screenplay.
00:41:23
Speaker
It's an adaptation of the stage musical written by Terrence McNally with songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb.
00:41:30
Speaker
I don't know if you've played in the pit of any of their shows, but they are most famous for writing the music for Chicago as well and Cabaret.
00:41:40
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
No, this actually makes it make more sense.
00:41:45
Speaker
One part of my weird trail trying to find the book.
00:41:49
Speaker
The score for the musical was available everywhere.
00:41:53
Speaker
I could have gotten a hold of 40 copies of the musical score before I could find the book itself.
00:42:00
Speaker
That's fascinating because one of the things, one of my complaints about this movie is that I don't love the music, but I was thinking several times throughout it that you would probably like to play it.
00:42:10
Speaker
because it's very orchestral and high energy and it's beautiful.
00:42:13
Speaker
It's just not really in line with my, at least the songs themselves.
00:42:17
Speaker
The score is great.
00:42:18
Speaker
The songs, the musical numbers that we'll get to in a second are not aligned with my personal taste.
00:42:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:24
Speaker
This movie stars a young man named Tonatiya as Molina.
00:42:28
Speaker
Diego Luna plays Valentin, which is a sort of interesting, you know, we've talked about casting as an art before and he played Andor in, in,
00:42:38
Speaker
the Star Wars franchise, which is a story about rebels.
00:42:41
Speaker
So when you said that you didn't care so much about his character, I was sort of wondering if that casting was influencing the fact that I do like Valentin because Diego Luna was their first and only choice for this role, which tells me that they really wanted him portraying this revolutionary again, that they were really tapping into the fact that in the culture he's seen as a, you know, a sort of politically charged actor, you know?
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker
If he stars in a Che Guevara biopic in three years, we'll know he's just, this is the only thing he can do now.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, maybe.
00:43:13
Speaker
I mean, he's really damn good.
00:43:15
Speaker
So I hope he does.
2025 Adaptation & Its Challenges
00:43:17
Speaker
And then Jennifer Lopez stars as the character's name is Ingrid Luna in this version, the fake actress.
00:43:25
Speaker
And this one, like I said, is a musical.
00:43:28
Speaker
And Molina, the movie he's recounting is a classic golden age of Hollywood era musical, which would have come from the 40s and 50s.
00:43:36
Speaker
which was sort of the period that Puig fell in love with.
00:43:40
Speaker
So the musical numbers all take place for the most part.
00:43:43
Speaker
There's one that takes place kind of in real life in the prison.
00:43:47
Speaker
And even that one's a hallucination.
00:43:48
Speaker
The rest of them are numbers in the fictional movie.
00:43:51
Speaker
He's recounting a musical.
00:43:53
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay.
00:43:54
Speaker
But one throughout the entire movie, he's only recounting one movie.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:59
Speaker
Strange.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:01
Speaker
I think that there's one number where he's maybe...
00:44:05
Speaker
remembering a different movie just because he hangs up several movie posters starring Ingrid Luna in his jail cell.
00:44:12
Speaker
And right before they cut to this number, there's a shot of this other poster.
00:44:18
Speaker
So I think there's maybe a reference to a second movie, but it's really not.
00:44:23
Speaker
We're really listening to Molina recount this fictional movie that's also called The Kiss of the Spider Woman.
00:44:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:33
Speaker
which is this sweeping Casablanca-style romance scene
00:44:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:39
Speaker
Where a woman has to choose between letting the spider woman kiss the man that she loves and kill the man that she loves or letting him live and letting this sort of curse of the spider woman remain on this town that she lives in.
00:44:54
Speaker
Jennifer Lopez plays both the spider woman and the fictional woman.
00:44:59
Speaker
So she has a lot of songs and she filmed them in one take like over and over.
00:45:04
Speaker
It's not they're not one long take.
00:45:06
Speaker
in the movie but she would do them from top to bottom over and over again and they're all very elaborate dance numbers and they're shot like a classic musical which means you're in the frame head to toe so you're singing and dancing and everybody can see everything that's going on wow so really impressive really impressive that she pulled this off as well as she did and she's very strong in the movie too
00:45:28
Speaker
This sort of musical in their mind or within their story that they're recounting is a method that Condon used for Chicago.
00:45:36
Speaker
If you've ever seen the movie version of Chicago,
00:45:39
Speaker
Every time a song starts, the sort of setting melts away and suddenly they're on a stage in the bedazzled dress.
00:45:45
Speaker
So the musical is sort of in their mind.
00:45:47
Speaker
And it works really well for a lot of people.
00:45:50
Speaker
Their complaint about musicals is that nobody bursts into song in real life.
00:45:54
Speaker
And that, you know, I guess is a valid enough point.
00:45:56
Speaker
But it's sort of a way around that complaint.
00:46:00
Speaker
So if musicals aren't your thing, maybe this one.
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, interesting.
00:46:03
Speaker
I thought it was very interesting that this version of the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, which is mostly a festival for independent films and documentaries.
00:46:14
Speaker
And this is technically an independent film.
00:46:16
Speaker
It's just got a much higher budget.
00:46:17
Speaker
It costs like $30 million instead of one and a half.
00:46:21
Speaker
But it's sort of only got lukewarm reviews.
00:46:24
Speaker
And I think part of that comes from the fact that Sundance is probably just not the place to put like a lavish...
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:46:47
Speaker
Unfortunately, the movie tanked and only made $1 million this weekend.
00:46:51
Speaker
It didn't even debut in the top 10 performing movies.
00:46:55
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:46:56
Speaker
That's shocking.
00:46:57
Speaker
It is.
00:46:58
Speaker
The marketing was very weak.
00:46:59
Speaker
They didn't do a ton of marketing.
00:47:02
Speaker
And of course, J-Lo's had a bad few years publicity-wise, canceling a tour and divorcing Ben Affleck.
00:47:07
Speaker
And I think people are a little bit tired of her maybe.
00:47:10
Speaker
So...
00:47:11
Speaker
I don't think that Oscar nomination is coming, but she's good.
00:47:14
Speaker
She does sort of potentially deserve it for this movie.
00:47:16
Speaker
I mean, I haven't seen it yet, as you know, but famously killer singer and dancer.
00:47:24
Speaker
Like, I have to imagine she crushed those numbers.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah, especially the dance.
00:47:29
Speaker
I mean, she's not the strongest vocalist in the world, you know, of all the people that have been in Bill Condon musicals.
00:47:35
Speaker
I wouldn't, she probably wouldn't crack the top 10 even.
00:47:38
Speaker
But, you know, that list also includes Beyonce.
00:47:41
Speaker
So what can you do?
00:47:44
Speaker
But yeah, the dancing is great.
00:47:45
Speaker
The title track.
00:47:47
Speaker
Kiss of the Spider Woman is a really, really strong song.
00:47:50
Speaker
And there's two or three others that are like have made their way into my playlist for the for the year.
00:47:56
Speaker
And they're all JLo numbers.
00:47:58
Speaker
The guys sing a little bit, but their songs are just kind of not that exciting.
00:48:02
Speaker
But that's that's pretty much it.
00:48:03
Speaker
I know I was a little bit all over the place, but it's tough to talk about movies about movies, especially ones that are so prominent.
00:48:10
Speaker
Half the movie is
00:48:12
Speaker
of both film versions, half the movie is a movie that doesn't really exist.
00:48:17
Speaker
And you're following characters that are fictional in this universe that's, you know, based in real life, but fictional characters.
00:48:23
Speaker
And it's tough.
00:48:25
Speaker
So I hope that that was clear enough.
00:48:29
Speaker
No, I absolutely understand.
00:48:31
Speaker
Based on the text, even though it's such a departure in some ways.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, very different.
00:48:38
Speaker
Meta doesn't begin to describe what point did he ask.
00:48:42
Speaker
Like macro meta?
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:48:44
Speaker
Ultra.
00:48:46
Speaker
And especially when I realized that the fictional movie was also called Kiss of the Spider Woman, I was just like, fuck.
00:48:53
Speaker
You couldn't give me something else to some other title to track here.
00:48:57
Speaker
Anyway, let's dive into discussion questions.
00:49:01
Speaker
Why don't you hit me with one?
00:49:02
Speaker
So we... Both of these, as I... There were immediate questions in my mind about how they'd be treated in the movie.
00:49:09
Speaker
And I knew it would be a mix of...
00:49:12
Speaker
you were bound to discuss them in some capacity in your description of the movies, but I still thought they were worth asking explicitly.
00:49:18
Speaker
Um, so the dialogue, I presented you with how, how you receive it in written form in the book, the way Puig wanted us to consume this, I guess.
00:49:33
Speaker
Did any of that come through in the film or was it standard dialogue, two dudes sitting in a jail cell?
00:49:40
Speaker
It's actually really interesting.
00:49:41
Speaker
I was glad to hear you say that one of the biggest critiques people have had about this 2025 version is that the tonal shifts between the again, I don't know how to say this, the actual movie and the fictional movie, the tonal shift between the jail scenes and the cinematic musical scenes.
00:49:59
Speaker
People said that it gave them a lot of sort of like tonal whiplash.
00:50:03
Speaker
I think that's totally the point of what's happening.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:06
Speaker
The musical scenes are like shot in Technicolor and on sound stages so that it looks like a 1950s musical.
00:50:12
Speaker
So when you said that the book sort of forced you into a chair to watch these scenes unfold, that's what sort of resonated for me.
00:50:21
Speaker
I think that's how they got that change across was by half the movie being in this drab gray prison with these abused men and the other half being very lush and lavish.
00:50:33
Speaker
The dialogue was standard for a movie if we're talking about specific dialogue.
00:50:37
Speaker
But as we talk about tonal changes and how the movie...
00:50:41
Speaker
It really asks you to dial in on one narrative and then the standard dialogue, two dudes sitting in a jail cell.
00:50:48
Speaker
It's actually really interesting.
00:50:49
Speaker
I was glad to hear you say that.
00:50:51
Speaker
One of the biggest critiques people have had about this 2025 version is that the tonal shifts between the, again, I don't know how to say this, the actual movie and the fictional movie, the tonal shift between the jail scenes and the cinematic musical scenes.
00:51:07
Speaker
People said that it gave them a lot of sort of like tonal whiplash.
00:51:11
Speaker
I think that's totally the point of what's happening.
00:51:14
Speaker
The musical scenes are like shot in Technicolor and on sound stages so that it looks like a 1950s musical.
00:51:20
Speaker
So when you said that the book sort of forced you into a chair to watch these scenes unfold, that's what sort of resonated for me.
00:51:29
Speaker
I think that's how they got that change across was by half the movie being in this drab gray prison with these abused men.
00:51:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:51:38
Speaker
And the other half being very lush and lavish.
00:51:41
Speaker
The dialogue was standard for a movie, if we're talking about specific dialogue.
00:51:45
Speaker
But as we talk about tonal changes and how the movie really asks you to dial in on one narrative and then the other.
00:51:53
Speaker
That's sort of where I see the similarities.
Dual Narrative Structure & Comparison to 'Bel Canto'
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's actually very true to form.
00:51:58
Speaker
I totally forgot to mention that that was part of the brilliance of the writing to me.
00:52:02
Speaker
These fake little bits of movies that he included throughout the book, which again, were many more apparently than in the movie movie.
00:52:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:10
Speaker
were genuinely very interesting to read.
00:52:12
Speaker
Like you would forget what the original plot was because you'd get real sucked into this movie Molina's describing.
00:52:18
Speaker
And then suddenly you jerked back into the jail cell.
00:52:21
Speaker
That's exactly what I, when I got in the car, I was like, can you just straighten it out for me?
00:52:25
Speaker
Like, what did you catch and that I didn't catch?
00:52:27
Speaker
Because it's so, you get so sucked in and you just want to kind of stay in that lane for both stories.
00:52:32
Speaker
You know, like anytime it would switch, I found myself being like, well, wait, what?
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:36
Speaker
What happens in the other one?
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
Which I think is a testament to good interwoven story selling.
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:52:43
Speaker
But I could also very much see, you know, especially if you're unfamiliar with the text, it would feel very stilted, perhaps.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:52
Speaker
Huh.
00:52:52
Speaker
Well, I mean, okay.
00:52:53
Speaker
So they stuck with that?
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:55
Speaker
I think it was intentional.
00:52:56
Speaker
Interesting.
00:52:58
Speaker
I wanted to ask about the fictional films because, like I said, I had seen the 1985 version and then I went and saw the 2025 version.
00:53:08
Speaker
And it surprised me how different the fictional movies were.
00:53:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:12
Speaker
Like I said, in 1985, Molina's recounting this Nazi propaganda, which is a sweeping romance.
00:53:18
Speaker
They both are these very romantic films.
00:53:20
Speaker
But in the 2025 version, it's sort of...
00:53:23
Speaker
They lean into the Spider Woman myth a little bit more.
00:53:26
Speaker
So it's sort of a fantasy romance.
00:53:28
Speaker
So I was just hoping that you could share with me whether those were both in the book.
00:53:32
Speaker
It sounds like they were.
00:53:33
Speaker
And what the other three fictional movies were.
00:53:36
Speaker
You've referenced that there were five.
00:53:38
Speaker
Goodness gracious.
00:53:39
Speaker
Okay, I've been saying it wrong the whole time.
00:53:40
Speaker
There were six of them.
00:53:41
Speaker
The Panther Woman, I remember quite clearly.
00:53:44
Speaker
And according to the internet, was actually based on a real movie that came out in 42 called Cat People.
00:53:52
Speaker
And I think that's what they turn into the Spider-Woman.
00:53:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:57
Speaker
This is probably the biggest and craziest difference to me.
00:54:02
Speaker
The Kiss of the Spider Woman is such a brilliant title because it's based exclusively in the book on a comment that Valentin makes.
00:54:10
Speaker
It is not part of any of the movies, except that the very first one he tells way before they actually kiss or anything is about a woman who, if she kisses someone, she turns into a panther.
00:54:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:25
Speaker
Very, it's, yeah, similar.
00:54:27
Speaker
So along those lines, the Nazi propaganda film, there's one of a cottage and two people who, this is such a, again, I said I would not go into them in detail.
00:54:40
Speaker
This is a very succinct, two people who are like incredibly ugly to the rest of the world and then meet each other and fall in love.
00:54:50
Speaker
And like the magic of the cottage is that now they're beautiful, but like only to each other or something.
00:54:57
Speaker
Really a lot going on in that one.
00:54:58
Speaker
And then this zombie one, this horror film where this woman goes to an island and they're, I mean, these, these were not short movies in the book.
00:55:10
Speaker
He really gave very lengthy descriptions and it's crazy again now seeing that it wasn't even five, it was six of them that they cut it down to two for the movie.
00:55:23
Speaker
Right.
00:55:24
Speaker
Which I suppose it would have been a seven hour movie if they actually gave this full description.
00:55:28
Speaker
But again, I've seen theories because obviously we can't prove any of this, but theories about which part of each of these six is supposed to be signifying what regarding the two main characters that we're actually seeing, you know?
00:55:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:47
Speaker
Yeah, like I totally see the cabin one making sense for their situation.
00:55:54
Speaker
Well, each of them really does throughout.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:58
Speaker
You definitely see the strong mirroring or parallels that Puig wanted you to, particularly to Melina as a character, I think.
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:56:10
Speaker
So there are six of them.
00:56:12
Speaker
So you said just the Nazi one and then kind of an amalgamation into a Spider Woman one.
00:56:17
Speaker
Yeah, like the follow up to this would be, what of those six movies do you think resonated the most with Molina and Valentin's story?
00:56:28
Speaker
I, yeah, hearing the question in this way, I actually do feel I see why they chose those two.
00:56:35
Speaker
They encompass the most.
00:56:37
Speaker
And for an already jarring scenario, I think those two are the most palatable.
00:56:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:45
Speaker
Like the zombie one.
00:56:46
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:56:47
Speaker
Audiences would have walked out of the theater.
00:56:49
Speaker
They would have been like, what and why and stop.
00:56:54
Speaker
That's insane to me.
00:56:55
Speaker
When you said zombie, I was like, what the hell?
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah, it really gets out there.
00:57:00
Speaker
Which again, in the book continues to paint this picture of they're so bored in these miserable conditions in prison.
00:57:07
Speaker
This is how they entertain themselves.
00:57:08
Speaker
You do not question it.
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:57:12
Speaker
You don't really question it here either.
00:57:14
Speaker
But I could also very much see them translating poorly to screen.
00:57:18
Speaker
Now that you ask it this way, I absolutely feel like I see why they chose just the two.
00:57:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:25
Speaker
Wow.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:26
Speaker
Fascinating question.
00:57:27
Speaker
This is another one, again, I do very much feel like you've answered now, but it was so confusing to me.
00:57:33
Speaker
When I first saw the ads for the movie, obviously a massive, massive name for this lead actress, Jennifer Lopez, right?
00:57:41
Speaker
Jennifer Lopez.
00:57:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:42
Speaker
And I think I even asked you, and you kind of said, wait till we record.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yep.
00:57:46
Speaker
How this could be a focus of a book that was entirely, to me, almost exclusively,
00:57:53
Speaker
These two male characters.
00:57:54
Speaker
Again, there is Valentin keeps making reference to this girlfriend he misses.
00:58:00
Speaker
Molina's mother is like a loose plot device.
00:58:05
Speaker
But there's, I mean, all you care about in the book is Molina and then kind of Valentin.
00:58:11
Speaker
So what was the, I don't know, percentage of screen time?
00:58:14
Speaker
amount that you as the audience cared about these individuals?
00:58:18
Speaker
Oh, percentage wise, I was pretty split between between everybody evenly.
00:58:23
Speaker
I mean, I thought everybody was so good.
00:58:26
Speaker
Everybody gave these really strong performances.
00:58:28
Speaker
So you're really drawn to everybody.
00:58:30
Speaker
Okay, kind of what I'm saying.
00:58:31
Speaker
Okay, yeah, yeah.
00:58:32
Speaker
But to your point about how how did this attract JLo?
00:58:36
Speaker
Like I said earlier, it was an Oscar play.
00:58:39
Speaker
Okay, you know, is an Oscar play.
00:58:40
Speaker
She really wants an Oscar nomination.
00:58:42
Speaker
And
00:58:42
Speaker
She tends to be best when she leans into her strengths as like a dancer.
00:58:46
Speaker
This and Hustlers is probably the other time she got close to an Oscar nomination.
00:58:50
Speaker
And she was a dancer in that movie as well.
00:58:52
Speaker
No nomination for Made in Manhattan, huh?
00:58:56
Speaker
No, unfortunately.
00:58:57
Speaker
Top 10 films ever made.
00:58:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's a goodie.
00:59:00
Speaker
The woman that played this role on Broadway, like I said, won a Tony.
00:59:04
Speaker
Her name is Chita Rivera.
00:59:05
Speaker
And she actually just died not that long ago.
00:59:08
Speaker
I believe she passed last year.
00:59:10
Speaker
She was a big deal for Latino representation.
00:59:12
Speaker
And I'm going to try and scroll through her work here because I think Jennifer Lopez has followed her career footsteps before.
00:59:20
Speaker
I think she's a big Chica Rivera fan.
00:59:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:25
Speaker
She was in the musical Nine, which I believe J-Lo has talked about.
00:59:29
Speaker
Part of her campaign has been talking about how this is the role she was born to play.
00:59:33
Speaker
And she auditioned for all of these other musicals throughout the years, including...
00:59:38
Speaker
nine and evita and ultimately lost the roles to other people oh and chicago as well i think she's mentioned which chita rivera was in i'm looking at her internet broadway database page she also was in bye bye birdie which at one point jennifer lopez tried to do remember when they were doing like once a year those live musicals on tv they did like greece and the whiz she was supposed to do bye bye birdie live at one point but i think scheduling it just
01:00:09
Speaker
I don't really know why it fell through, but it never happened.
01:00:12
Speaker
So she's really clearly an admirer of the woman that originated this role and won big awards for it.
01:00:19
Speaker
So I think that's a huge part of what drew J-Lo to this.
01:00:22
Speaker
This also weirdly is J-Lo's first true blue musical.
01:00:27
Speaker
She's played a singer before, like a career singer, but she's never done like a first-end-a-song musical, which is really kind of strange for a pop star.
01:00:36
Speaker
You know, even Lady Gaga's done one, and she's been in three movies.
01:00:41
Speaker
You know, it's really strange that she hadn't done one yet.
01:00:45
Speaker
So I think that there was just kind of a lot in this box that really appealed to J.Lo.
01:00:50
Speaker
And unfortunately, it's just not...
01:00:53
Speaker
panning out.
01:00:54
Speaker
I mean, the movie's good, which is ultimately what matters, but it's just not going to get her the attention that she is looking for.
01:01:01
Speaker
Box office or awards.
01:01:02
Speaker
Her and old Timmy can commiserate.
01:01:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:08
Speaker
Although I'm pretty sure he's
01:01:09
Speaker
like going to have an Oscar sooner rather than later.
01:01:12
Speaker
But yeah, they do both want one.
01:01:15
Speaker
Cool.
01:01:15
Speaker
OK, so we sort of touched on this to my next question.
01:01:19
Speaker
Was the shift between the fake movie scenes and the jail scenes tough or jarring at all?
01:01:26
Speaker
Like I said, I did find a little bit of whiplash, but kind of for different reasons in each the 1985 and 2025.
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, so that I, it's actually fascinating that you have this as a separate question.
01:01:38
Speaker
This is a stark contrast to all of the other questions.
01:01:41
Speaker
We did talk about it.
01:01:42
Speaker
But in the book, it actually had the opposite effect.
01:01:45
Speaker
Oh, it was much smoother.
01:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, this was like the one part of the writing that did not feel jarring and made it feel more accessible and like you were just watching two people have a conversation.
01:01:58
Speaker
Because each time he described the movies, it would be Valentin going, okay, I'm done reading for the day.
01:02:07
Speaker
I'm ready to, you know, get ready for bed.
01:02:10
Speaker
do you want to tell me another movie?
01:02:12
Speaker
And they would interrupt each other, and he'd get halfway through it and go... Valentin would go, oh, I'm tired, I'm going to sleep, that's enough for tonight.
01:02:19
Speaker
Or, oh, I want to go read or something.
01:02:21
Speaker
And Melina would go, okay, do you want to hear this one?
01:02:24
Speaker
Do you want to hear this one?
01:02:26
Speaker
I like it.
01:02:26
Speaker
Do you like... It actually...
01:02:29
Speaker
The transitions from the movie you were watching to the movies Molina was describing really aided the otherwise kind of difficult to follow dialogue.
01:02:40
Speaker
Wow, that's really cool.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:02:43
Speaker
And I hadn't thought about it that way at all because I can absolutely see why it would be confusing on screen.
01:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, I understand the criticism, but the more I think about it, particularly the 2025 version, the whiplash was just because I wanted to...
01:02:58
Speaker
see both movies.
01:02:59
Speaker
I didn't want to divert the narrative at all.
01:03:01
Speaker
In the 1985 version, I a little bit like I don't really want to watch a Nazi propaganda movie.
01:03:06
Speaker
So I was sort of bored by those portions of the movie.
01:03:12
Speaker
So that one was a little bit different.
01:03:13
Speaker
But that's the discussion questions I had.
01:03:15
Speaker
Why don't you tell me who you would recommend this to?
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:03:19
Speaker
I gave this a lot of thought even before I went to write this out.
01:03:23
Speaker
Because initially, again, I don't know, the first
01:03:27
Speaker
We'll call it 20% of the book.
01:03:29
Speaker
I was like, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
01:03:31
Speaker
I still don't have a straight answer for you, which is not very satisfying, but I will take a page from your book.
01:03:40
Speaker
I'm not laughing.
01:03:42
Speaker
Come on.
01:03:43
Speaker
Come on.
01:03:43
Speaker
That's good.
01:03:44
Speaker
That's good.
01:03:44
Speaker
It's funny.
01:03:46
Speaker
And the way I'll present this recommendation is some books that I felt were similar.
01:03:51
Speaker
And so if you, dear listener, liked these books, I think you'll enjoy reading Kiss of the Spider Woman.
01:03:59
Speaker
So first and foremost, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
01:04:02
Speaker
Another one.
01:04:03
Speaker
Guerrilla Fighters taking a bunch of people captive.
01:04:07
Speaker
Absolutely luscious, heartwarming love story.
01:04:12
Speaker
characters you really feel for, and a very similar, the literary acrobatics of presenting an entire story in essentially one
01:04:23
Speaker
scene, one location for the whole book.
01:04:25
Speaker
A chamber piece.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:27
Speaker
And yeah, both very much along the same vein.
01:04:30
Speaker
And then the other comparison that kept popping to mind for me was the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this sort of magical realism.
01:04:40
Speaker
So two of his books I adore are A Hundred Years of Solitude and The General in His Labyrinth.
01:04:47
Speaker
Again, along the realm of you have to flip back pages.
01:04:51
Speaker
Sometimes you're not sure what's real and what's fake.
01:04:54
Speaker
You're really immersing yourself in the tone of the piece and not always certain where you are.
01:05:01
Speaker
And so I think if those are attributes of a piece of literature you enjoy, you would definitely get something out of Kiss of the Spider Woman.
01:05:10
Speaker
Cool.
01:05:11
Speaker
But I think those parts are very different than the movies.
01:05:13
Speaker
Right.
01:05:14
Speaker
Who would you recommend these movies?
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:16
Speaker
It's funny that you had a hard time because I've also had a hard time.
01:05:20
Speaker
It's just in a lot of ways, it's not really like other movies that I've seen.
01:05:25
Speaker
And that's partly because of the metatextual...
01:05:28
Speaker
nests of it all it's partly because it's a chamber piece with latino and lgbt themes and it's partly because of like the narrative switching there's just so much kind of going on here that i was like i don't even know what direction to to point in to to make recommendations for this so it took me a while to come up with this list particularly for the 2025 version which you can see in my notes is very long um
01:05:56
Speaker
But the 1985 version, it's a bit darker and spookier.
01:06:00
Speaker
I thought about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a little bit because it's kind of a chamber piece.
01:06:06
Speaker
They're technically not in prison in that movie.
01:06:08
Speaker
And obviously the narrative is very different there, but it's still about these guys trying to get through, right?
01:06:14
Speaker
Get through being stuck in one place.
01:06:18
Speaker
Undoubtedly a shared version.
01:06:20
Speaker
overwhelming melancholy.
01:06:22
Speaker
Right?
01:06:23
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
01:06:24
Speaker
It is this 85 version is very melancholic.
01:06:28
Speaker
Sunset Boulevard popped in my mind a little bit too.
01:06:31
Speaker
Obviously, that's sort of known as as sort of one of the films capital F films, but it's sort of got that same spooky like vibe.
01:06:39
Speaker
Not that's not a horror movie, but you're like, what is there's some weird stuff going on here.
01:06:44
Speaker
Cool Hand Luke is another prison film that kind of fits into that vein to
01:06:49
Speaker
And then the 2025 version, I broke it out into sort of separate categories.
01:06:54
Speaker
Fans of musicals will like it, particularly Chicago.
01:06:58
Speaker
And then, of course, Golden Age musicals like Singing in the Rain and The Bandwagon.
01:07:02
Speaker
That's a really wide net that I just cast.
01:07:06
Speaker
So I guess if you like musicals, then go for it.
01:07:09
Speaker
As far as the prison drama goes, it's impossible not to think of Shawshank Redemption when you think of prison dramas.
01:07:17
Speaker
That movie is obviously a lot more uplifting and sort of it's
01:07:19
Speaker
kind of a comedy and at times so you feel way better at the end of shawshank redemption than you do at the end of this yes you do sing sing is another prison drama that's about the power of art and performance it's about a theater troupe in sing sing prison and it's it's also very politically apt this movie is because it's about a nation struggling politics so if you're interested in politics at all you'd you'd
01:07:44
Speaker
maybe like this and think of it as more of a political drama.
01:07:47
Speaker
And then the LGBT themes are very strong in the 2025 version, much more so, I think, than the 85 version.
01:07:54
Speaker
So I mentioned Brokeback Mountain, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Moonlight, and Carol.
01:07:59
Speaker
If you like any of those, I would go into one of these movies with a grain of salt, because like I said, I just couldn't really find a strong singular equivalent.
01:08:10
Speaker
Yep, yep, I understand completely.
01:08:12
Speaker
And I think that we have offered some odd recommendations on this one.
01:08:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:17
Speaker
What did you rate the book on?
01:08:19
Speaker
Goodreads?
01:08:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:21
Speaker
It was absolutely a three in my mind for a long time.
01:08:25
Speaker
It kind of felt like these things were quirks.
01:08:28
Speaker
Okay.
01:08:30
Speaker
And it took getting to that maybe 60, 70% mark and realizing...
01:08:35
Speaker
no, there's a method to this madness.
01:08:38
Speaker
These are deliberate and are certainly a cohesive set of tools in the end.
01:08:48
Speaker
So firmly a four for me.
01:08:50
Speaker
Really enjoyed it once I kind of sunk my teeth in, but almost certainly will not reread in the future.
01:08:58
Speaker
Sure.
01:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it sounds as great as it sounds.
01:09:01
Speaker
It sounds exhausting.
01:09:02
Speaker
Also, it was a wrestling match.
01:09:05
Speaker
It was a wrestling match.
01:09:06
Speaker
Not to mention a wrestling match to find it.
01:09:09
Speaker
Yes, yes, exactly.
01:09:10
Speaker
After all of that work, and then it was truly a labor to get into the rhythm of the dialogue.
01:09:17
Speaker
I was like, what is going on here?
01:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, very much so.
01:09:20
Speaker
Interesting.
01:09:22
Speaker
Okay, well, I had two films to rate.
01:09:24
Speaker
I gave the 1985 one a three, three and a half stars.
01:09:28
Speaker
I really liked the sort of relationship between Valentin and Molina, but I felt that the connection between the fictional film and what was happening in the prison to be pretty weak.
01:09:41
Speaker
Partially, the politics was just too hard for me to grasp that this revolutionary and gay man, both of them are men of color, would want to spend their time listening to a Nazi propaganda film while they're in prison for politics, essentially.
01:09:57
Speaker
And especially once they added in Valentin's girlfriend back home, she gets sort of inserted into the narrative more strongly in the 85 version than ever in the 25th.
01:10:08
Speaker
it really sort of lost me and that's when i started to be like i just can't like care about all of these wheels that are spinning um in that 85 version plus you know there's some problematic casting and things like that that hard to get past i mean so much of that contextually you know we're now 40 years on from this film where right we lived through both this political turmoil in his home country
01:10:32
Speaker
And World War II.
01:10:34
Speaker
I mean, we don't forget.
01:10:35
Speaker
We just didn't touch on it much.
01:10:36
Speaker
He lived through World War II.
01:10:37
Speaker
Because I totally agree.
01:10:39
Speaker
The Nazi propaganda film thing now in 2025 was like, what?
01:10:45
Speaker
Right.
01:10:45
Speaker
And we talk about that a lot a little bit.
01:10:47
Speaker
A lot a little bit.
01:10:49
Speaker
We've talked about it a handful of times on this podcast that 2025ism kind of makes it hard to read certain things or consume certain stories.
01:10:59
Speaker
And that very much is one of them.
01:11:01
Speaker
All of those things would have made so much more sense to an audience when this was published in 68, you know?
01:11:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:08
Speaker
The 2025 version, I gave four stars and a heart on Letterboxd, too.
01:11:12
Speaker
Okay.
01:11:13
Speaker
Ultimately, it's a musical about how great musicals are.
01:11:16
Speaker
And so there was like no way I was not going to find a way to love this.
01:11:20
Speaker
The songs are really strong, even if, or the numbers, I should say, are really strong because they're in this bright Technicolor and J-Lo's like dancing her butt off.
01:11:31
Speaker
Even if the songs themselves kind of leave something to be desired, it's still kind of a cinematic spectacle.
01:11:37
Speaker
And then those three lead performances are really strong.
01:11:40
Speaker
Tonatiya, Diego Luna, and J-Lo all do a great job.
01:11:44
Speaker
And I felt that this movie did a really good job of tying the fictional film
01:11:50
Speaker
to the prison narrative, it made a lot more sense to me than the Nazi propaganda one did.
01:11:54
Speaker
And then on top of that, it's just a beautiful movie to look at.
01:11:57
Speaker
Obviously, the costumes and hair and makeup are really strong because we're heavily referencing Golden Age movies throughout the cinematography.
01:12:05
Speaker
So,