[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live and where we

[00:27] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines and

[00:32] Jessica: I do pop culture. And I have something I'd like to say. Meg, right at the top. I just want you to get all the snaps in the world, many snaps up for all of the work that you have done while I have been off doing the various things that I have needed to. But you have rocked the fucking house. So you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[00:52] Meg: Welcome. First of all, welcome back. It is absolutely lovely to have you back on the cast.

[01:01] Jessica: Lovely. It feels so British.

[01:03] Meg: I don't know, I'm a little punchy today. That is, while you have been working, I have also been very busy with things and squeezing this in. And it has been a labor of love. But I can't begin to tell you how you have been missed.

[01:21] Jessica: Well, I have felt it. And I also think you get kudos because I just saw your most recent production and the fact that you've been saddled with so very much and then turned out fabulous work. Well done, you.

[01:36] Meg: Thank you, Mutual Appreciation Society.

[01:39] Jessica: Yes.

[01:40] Meg: And our guests friggin killed it. They showed up with such interesting stories. They just like, swooped in and saved the day. And so I am so, so grateful for that.

[01:55] Jessica: Beyond gratitude, I think that we are extraordinarily lucky that through this podcast we've met. I was gonna say we've melt. So many good people. Yeah, great. We have met so many wonderful people who have become true friends and also true friends of the cast. So thank you to everybody and, yeah,

[02:15] Meg: it's a testament to the community that the podcast is fostering.

[02:20] Jessica: Indeed.

[02:21] Meg: Yay, podcast.

[02:22] Jessica: Go, cast, go.

[02:35] Meg: So today is a watch party. And when we spoke, we were like, okay, what is our watch party going to be? And you, I will say, insisted on this movie that I watched for the first time in my life.

[02:52] Jessica: And you're like. And the last.

[02:54] Meg: And the last Vampire's Kiss, starring the bizarro Nicolas Cage. And my engagement question for you before,

[03:02] Jessica: why the fuck did you tell.

[03:04] Meg: Did I tell you I rush into this watch party? I have two questions, two engagement questions.

[03:11] Jessica: The first one is, I don't think these are engagement questions. I think these are interrogations. And I'm ready for it.

[03:17] Meg: I mean, yeah, the big question of why.

[03:21] Jessica: Okay.

[03:22] Meg: And then the second question, do you have a sense of what genre this movie is.

[03:29] Jessica: Uh huh.

[03:30] Meg: All right.

[03:31] Jessica: Okay. So there are a couple of reasons why, in no particular order, we agreed that we were going to do something for Halloween and we wanted a horror movie. And this genre is it's a cult movie. It's a horror movie. And it is also a comedy. I know. A sten. No, no. It's billed that way. Whether you thought it was funny or not.

[03:54] Meg: It is. That is something I want to discuss. I don't know if you want to

[03:57] Jessica: discuss it now that it's billed as a comedy or that you don't think it's. No, no. I mean, if you go on Amazon prime, it is undercoming.

[04:05] Meg: No. And I would like to discuss.

[04:06] Jessica: Oh, yes, yes. Okay. Yes. There are a couple of other things on this podcast. We have talked about Peggy Sue Got Married and we talked about Nicolas Cage's very bizarre work on that film. And I thought, you know, this movie came out just a couple of years after Peggy sue, and it was shot about two years after Peggy Sue. And so there's a lot going on with Nick Cage in as an actor that was really bonker cuckoo. And do you know how old he was when he did this film?

[04:39] Meg: I'm gonna guess 27.

[04:40] Jessica: He's 24 years old.

[04:42] Meg: Whoa.

[04:42] Jessica: So he's really young. And if you think about it only six years earlier, he had his first ever role on Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which we also have talked about on this podcast. So there are a couple of, you know, intersecting things. Because it's a horror movie. We can talk about this in a moment. But I thought that the director was really interesting because he was clearly very obsessed with old vampire movies. And there are tons of references. Yes. And the Max Schreck stuff, the Nosferatu, and there's even an Easter egg in the first scene that I will talk about. But he's referencing vampire movies throughout. And once I started looking up, as I was watching it, I was like, oh, that's what that is. Oh, that's what that is. I thought the cinematography actually was really beautiful, so worth it.

[05:43] Meg: Okay, question.

[05:44] Jessica: And the final thing is, I'm sorry that the locations are fantastic and things that we have also talked about on the podcast.

[05:52] Meg: Yes.

[05:53] Jessica: And then finally, here's the last reason it's filled with pop culture references. But there's also a very unfortunate incident at the end, which I think is entirely like any of the murder stories that you have done on this podcast. So I felt like there was like this weird kind of like, I don't know, a reflection of some of the things that we talk about.

[06:20] Meg: Sure. Okay.

[06:21] Jessica: Yeah, that's.

[06:21] Meg: That's a very good response.

[06:23] Jessica: Okay.

[06:24] Meg: I.

[06:24] Jessica: You're like, I don't like any of it, but there it is.

[06:28] Meg: I mean, it will not shock you to hear that I responded poorly to the gratuitous nudity. Only of the women, of course. The gratuitous abuse of the women. The rape and murder of the women. Yeah, that. That was unfun.

[06:48] Jessica: A lot of.

[06:49] Meg: That's why I would say absolutely. Like, how is this a comedy? Except for the fact that Nic Cage's performance is so wackadoodle. You're laughing. You are laughing at him. I'm not sure that makes it a comedy that you're laughing at him, but that's, I guess it's, you know, point to be.

[07:08] Jessica: And in fact, there are so. Because it's a cult film, there are so many discussions about this online on, like, Reddit and Facebook and what have you.

[07:17] Meg: I found that when I read some of the things on Reddit that no one even mentioned the abuse of the women in any way, that's what actually made me go, whoa. That they were. Saw it as a. Or at least the ones that I read. Obviously I didn't read everything, but that they saw it as an allegory to what? Loneliness. Male loneliness.

[07:38] Jessica: Well, I thought that it was also a. And we should just say what the plot is really quickly. But I thought that it was very prescient about all of the conversations that we have now in our culture about problems that men have with women, about incels, about loneliness, about alienation and narcissism. And so the character. When you realize what's really going on, what the director's going with, that it's. It's not what happens in the first third of the film is a setup for, not what happens in the second two thirds of the movie. Like, you think it's going in one direction and then it goes. It takes a left turn at Albuquerque pretty quickly.

[08:20] Meg: Do you mean that he's not actually a vampire?

[08:22] Jessica: Well, it's setting it up to be like, this is a vampire movie and you're getting sucked in, and then you realize that this is a descent into madness. Okay, but anyway, so really quick.

[08:31] Meg: Do we know that because of the plastic tea?

[08:34] Jessica: We know that because of a bunch of things that we can talk about really quickly. The synopsis. Oh, and don't even get me started. There's so much that doesn't make any sense about the work environment. But he is the foreign rights salesperson at a literary agency in New York City. He lives in the West Village, West 19th street, specifically. And it's about this guy who is a womanizer. And you see him picking up women in bars and taking them home and whatever. And he is a therapist played by the inimitable Elizabeth Ashley. And her brooches, her brooches, her hair, her.

[09:20] Meg: Everything about Elizabeth Ashley brings more. Divine.

[09:23] Jessica: Divine. He's talking to his therapist about, you know, his loneliness and, you know, I want a woman and da, da, da. But we see him behaving very differently. And then one of the women he picks up is a vampire, end quote. Is a vampire and bites him. And we see him in quotes again, turning into a vampire. Oh, first there's a bat that goes.

[09:47] Meg: Yeah, the bat.

[09:48] Jessica: He's with a woman who's a separate. But the bat doesn't bite him. We only see that the bat comes through the window. And it's like the worst animatronic in the history of the universe.

[09:58] Meg: It's like the decorations that people put outside their window on Halloween. It doesn't look any better than that.

[10:05] Jessica: No, it.

[10:05] Meg: I thought he grabbed his neck.

[10:07] Jessica: No. And Jennifer Beals plays the vampire and

[10:11] Meg: gets to say, I think, five words in the film, Right?

[10:14] Jessica: This is. And this is. This is post Flashdance. So I was like, what is even happening?

[10:20] Meg: And then they have her all, like, naked and stuff. Like, huh.

[10:23] Jessica: You know what I noticed? That was a body double.

[10:26] Meg: Are you sure?

[10:27] Jessica: I am 100% sure.

[10:28] Meg: You know what? I noticed there were modesty patches.

[10:30] Jessica: Yes.

[10:31] Meg: The cinematography was not that great.

[10:34] Jessica: Well, whatever was required of. Because she was wearing a wig in the sex scenes where you only see her from behind. And some side boob, but.

[10:43] Meg: And the side boob. You could see the patch.

[10:45] Jessica: Yes, you could definitely see the patch. But he is bitten by this vampire and starts going through this transformation simultaneously. He is victimizing his secretary, played by Maria Conchita Alonso, because he can't find a contract. And again, I was like, this would never happen in a literary. Also, he would. No person who's in charge of foreign rights has that nice. In office. It's just like, what is even happening here?

[11:13] Meg: I wanna talk a little bit more about the abuse in the workplace.

[11:16] Jessica: So he's. But just quickly, for the synopsis. He's haranguing this woman about where's the contract? And he's screaming at her all the time. And as he becomes more and more of a vampire, he becomes more and more kooky. And deranged in the way that he's going after her. Then things start to happen where you see that he is reacting to things that aren't. And then you can see him in the mirror, but he's reacting as though you can't see him in the. He can't see himself in the mirror. And you start to recognize that this is a character who's just losing it. His connection to other people, as tenuous as it was, goes away and he begins only, like, talking to himself. And he's just unhinged. And you stop watching it as something with a plot. And it's really just Nick Cage chewing the scenery as he does whatever this lunatic thinks would happen if he were a vampire, including tearing. He tears his apartment apart, turns the couch upside down and makes that into the lid of a coffin and is sleeping underneath it. So it's just this madness. And he rapes Alva Maria Conchita Alonso.

[12:41] Meg: And before that, I was just gonna say about the abuse in the office, he's not just being a jerk and saying, like, find the contract. He's delighting in torturing her about this contract to the point where he's given her an impossible task and is yelling at her like, I mean, you would have this man arrested even in the 80s.

[13:04] Jessica: And telling her, you are shit. Like, there's no one lower than you at this place. I won't give you any help.

[13:11] Meg: And he calls the guy whose contract it is at one point, and we hear him on the phone saying, I don't give a shit about that. Don't worry about it at all. And Nic Cage hangs up the phone and goes, it's the most important thing in the world. So there's also lying and gaslighting and all that kind of beautiful stuff.

[13:29] Jessica: 100%. And there's a scene that I actually found even more chilling where, you know, he follows her into the ladies room and she has a gun and she's saying to him, don't make me use this gun. Get away from me. And then there's a scene where it's him and four other men in a conference room and they're laughing their asses off. And that the. The head of the agency, that he

[13:55] Meg: would follow her into the bathroom. They think that's so funny, right?

[13:59] Jessica: And that she then asked. She went to the head of the agency and asked for, you know, to work for someone else or, you know, a different job. And that they're like. As if the victimization of women is, you know, very severe.

[14:16] Meg: And she Lives in the Bronx.

[14:19] Jessica: Yeah. She takes the six train all the way to Pelham. We find that out. And then in his insanity. And this was actually. I thought this was very funny, that he goes to the novelty shop because in his. He's upset that he doesn't have his vampire teeth yet. They haven't come in. So he goes to a novelty shop and he selects the really good realistic vampire teeth. And they're too expensive, so he goes for the $1.89 plastic, you know, and he. He just looks crazy. And he's. He's walking around with these teeth. And he goes to the tunnel. And I was like, oh, my God, the tunnel. Jesus Christ. He goes to the tunnel. This is what made me think about some of the stories that you've done, that he goes up into the balcony area and there's this cute girl sitting there. And he bites her.

[15:14] Meg: He murders her.

[15:14] Jessica: And then. Yes. And you see her die. And he just sort of stumbles away. And he's then in the street and he's talking to his therapist. And then you realize he's not in the therapist's office. It's entirely a hallucination. He's talking to a banister. You know, like the newel post on a banister outside of a brownstone, as though it's the therapist. And the therapist in his fantasy is introducing him to the perfect woman who is the next patient after him. Normally, by the time he gets home with the fantasy woman, which is basically

[15:53] Meg: kind of trad wife adjacent.

[15:55] Jessica: Totally. She's totally trad wife. He's already screaming at her. Cause even his fantasy woman isn't good enough. And that's when the. I think the point about the misogyny really hits home. That it's like. I felt like in this movie there are a lot of moments where you're like, that's insane. That's like, what the fuck is that? And then there's this thing at the end where you're like, this is a statement. This film is a meditation on misogyny. Because this is an incel. This is. Except he does have some sex, but he's. The mentality is the same as that. That women are shit. You know, he hates them because he needs them. He desperately wants a woman. But there's something in him where he despises them. And the fact that even his own fantasy woman becomes a target for his hatred. I was like, okay, point well taken. Got it. Got it.

[16:55] Meg: And yes, a feel good film.

[16:58] Jessica: And then he dies. I don't even remember him dying at the end. So he's walking around with a flank. You did. He's walking around with a broken plank of wood that he pulls off. Like he's, like, threatening someone with it.

[17:13] Meg: And it's gonna be a stake in his heart.

[17:15] Jessica: Right. But you're kind of like, are you gonna try. Cause he tries to kill himself, Right. Like, he tries to put the gun in his mouth, but it only has blanks in it. And then at the very end, which,

[17:26] Meg: by the way, the way they filmed

[17:28] Jessica: that, Jon Eric Hexum, I was like, what the fuck are you doing?

[17:31] Meg: It is so unsafe, what he did in the film, the actor. That is not okay. Yeah. Don't ever shoot yourself in the head with a blank.

[17:39] Jessica: John Eric Hexum, again from this podcast. Don't do it. That is how he died. But at the very, very end, the brother of Maria Conchita Alonso, who is the normal man in the film. And I'm sure you got this. But on the whole vampire movie tip, she, unlike every woman in the movie, there are two things. She's wearing a cross, okay. And she's dressed like a virgin.

[18:06] Meg: True. Her outfits. Wow. What do you call those? Amish gunny sack dresses.

[18:13] Jessica: Yeah, they were even more. Yeah, like that really Holly Hobby kind of look. So she is. And she lives with her parents and her brother, even though she's an adult. And we see her in her virginal bed by herself. So she's the sacrificial creature who, like all vampire movies, there's a man who's like, the good guy who's going to avenge what's been done to her. And so he goes in, the brother does. The brother goes into Nicolas. He follows him, Nicolas Cage, into his apartment. And Nic Cage is lying on the floor with the stake lined up on his heart. And the brother thinks that he's going in to beat him to death with a tire iron, but he's got the stake there, and he just pushes it through his chest. And that's it.

[19:03] Meg: I have to say that at some point, I had to turn on subtitles because I couldn't understand what the hell Nick Cage was saying. I was like, it's probably important. What is this accent? It is not Southern California. It's not the Valley girl thing, you know, or the weird way that he talks.

[19:20] Jessica: I looked it up.

[19:21] Meg: Oh, tell me.

[19:23] Jessica: I looked it up, because I was like, what was like. Literally, the search was, what is Nic Cage doing with the accent in Vampire's Kiss? So I don't know if he was Trying to rewrite history or if this is real. But Nic Cage in some interview said that it was a choice, the character, he felt that the character who was so not okay with himself in so many ways. Cause like, we see him constantly smoothing his hair, like he's trying to be elegant with his suits and all of that stuff. But he lives in a studio. So I was like, hmm, like, what kind? Like, what's going on? Like, this is someone who's making an effort to look like more than he might be. And he said actually that he tried to make the character, Peter Lowe have an aspirational mid Atlantic accent that he wasn't even keeping properly. Cause halfway through the movie, I don't know if you noticed, the accent drops maybe 2/3 of the way in. The accent goes away completely. And I was like, there's got to be something here, because if it's this random, like, how could he have ever gotten another job? This is so crazy.

[20:34] Meg: It's so crazy. It's also crazy that anybody let him get away with it because it. It's not so.

[20:42] Jessica: Well, I mean, how about this? He was hired and did the crazy voice after Peggy Sue.

[20:49] Meg: So they knew he was gonna do this. Someone who would do this.

[20:52] Jessica: Yeah.

[20:52] Meg: And they didn't talk to him before they signed the contract. Hey, we actually do need to understand what the fuck you say in this movie, by the way, and it needs to make sense.

[21:00] Jessica: And maybe the director was enough of a kook that he was like, I love it. Bring the crazy question.

[21:07] Meg: So you're saying that in the interviews at the time, Nic Cage was saying, this is a movie about a man who hates women.

[21:18] Jessica: No, he wasn't saying any of that. He was just saying, I chose a mid Atlantic aspirational accent that Peter Lowe, the character could not really sustain because it's not who he really was.

[21:30] Meg: Right. But I guess my question is like, did he understand what the point of the movie was that he was in? Are we just putting something on it or is Reddit just putting something on it just to make sense of this, like, hot mess of a thing?

[21:43] Jessica: I think that Nic Cage is an actor who will probably never give a satisfactory answer in an interview. I put him in the same category as Sean Pen Fast Times. You know, that it's extraordinarily self involved, like whatever they do. I can't imagine that he's like, well, the director's vision was. It's entirely like, well, my choices as an actor.

[22:06] Meg: But the director did have a master

[22:07] Jessica: vision, I think, very clear, like Let me tell you what the Easter egg was. Why I knew this was the tip off. This was my tip off to look for. Cause I remembered seeing this when it came out, but viewing it again. This is the whole thing with our podcast, is it not? Like, what did you see when you were 18 or 19 and what are you seeing now? Right. So in the opening scene, he's. Or second. Second scene, he's in his office, and there's a photograph on the credenza in back of him. And I was like, wait a minute. And I paused it, and I got all the way up to the TV to look at it. It's a photograph of Richard Benjamin, actor, director Richard Benjamin. Do you know who that is?

[22:53] Meg: Yes.

[22:54] Jessica: Okay. He directed Love at First Bite.

[22:58] Meg: Okay. Love that movie. That would have been so much fun to rewatch.

[23:02] Jessica: And maybe that's our next watch, because

[23:05] Meg: we're not gonna do all the vampire movies.

[23:06] Jessica: But that is. I love that movie. It's one of the greatest movies ever.

[23:11] Meg: You saw. I saw that in the theaters.

[23:13] Jessica: That is pure fun, by the way. Filled with un PC stuff that would not fly. Now, there's a whole.

[23:22] Meg: Of course, I do not remember.

[23:23] Jessica: There's a whole scene where he turns into a bat and then goes to Spanish Harlem, which is where we are sitting now. Yeah. And there's like a whole thing with a Puerto Rican family that does not come out well this time around. So the fact that this Richard Benjamin photo was there, and I instantly was like, oh, my God, it's Love at First Bite. What are the other references? And so watching the movie, I was like, this is actually an incredibly intentional film and everything that this director did. So then I went back and I looked at sunsets and sunrises in vampire movies from 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. Every scene where you see a sunrise and a sunset and the way that the music is, they're all lifted directly from these movies, these old movies. Which by the way, also comes up in the 90s in Dracula, the Gary Oldman version. Because there's the scene where Gary Oldman's Dracula goes to the movies in London to see a sunrise for the first time in hundreds of years, you know, and the sunrise I think that they showed is from Nosferatu. So anyway, it's a whole intentional thing. So whatever the director did or didn't do, even if it was a terrible choice, I think it was intentional.

[24:51] Meg: I will say something that I thoroughly enjoyed about this movie.

[24:56] Jessica: Okay.

[24:57] Meg: The extras. The extras were so extra.

[25:02] Jessica: They were crazy. They were doing weird things.

[25:06] Meg: They Were looking straight into the camera. Yes.

[25:10] Jessica: Well, okay, now we're gonna go down this road. Who was the first notable extra that you saw? I didn't recognize David Hyde Pierce. I didn't notice that David Hyde Pierce was sitting with. I think it's Nic Cage's sister.

[25:27] Meg: Okay.

[25:28] Jessica: Someone. I think it's Nick Cage's sister. They're sitting, having, like, a discussion about art at a bar. And they're just extras, but you can hear their voices. They're amplified.

[25:38] Meg: Yeah. It's almost like. Yeah, you heard a lot of conversations from the extras. You would hear like. Which I guess doesn't really make them an extra, except that they were in the background. And you're kind of supposed to be looking at Nick Cage looking at his menu at the diner or whatever. Right. It's almost like the camera's focused on the extras. They always do something really notable, like they walk straight towards the camera or they. What about the mimes?

[26:06] Jessica: I'm gonna blow your mind. I'm gonna blow your mind.

[26:09] Meg: Are you ready? Why are there mimes in front of the police station, by the way?

[26:12] Jessica: It's not a police station.

[26:13] Meg: What was it?

[26:14] Jessica: That was an sro. And I thought it was super weird.

[26:17] Meg: I was like, why did I think it was a police station?

[26:19] Jessica: I don't know. He. He walks in. He walks in. So, okay, so I looked it up. Cause I was like, fucking mimes in front of the sro. What is it?

[26:28] Meg: And there are dances of them, Lots of shots of them.

[26:31] Jessica: So the first thing is they are billed as Apache dancers. So it's a man and a, quote, woman, but it's actually a man. They're two men, and they're doing these 1920s again era. They're like this very sexual tango adjacent dance. And they're both, you know, with white face. Do you know who one of them was? John Epperson, AKA Lipsynca.

[26:59] Meg: Oh, huh.

[27:00] Jessica: I know. So Epperson was just on the rise at that point, just beginning to do drag. And at the time was a rehearsal pianist at, I think, the Joffrey. He got cast to do that. So there are also, like, all kinds of people in the background who are actually people of note. And what I liked about it is that I got the sense that they were kind of just like, okay, who's local and doing something? Like, let's. Let's cast with the various, like, people of interest who are in the arts on the fringe here in Sydney.

[27:40] Meg: Right. And unlike most extras, who are usually just supposed to blend into the background, these extras were definitely standing out, like they were catching your attention. Do you remember the old lady in the bathroom who, like, yells at him?

[27:56] Jessica: She's like a famous actress and literally

[27:59] Meg: looks straight at the camera. I'm like, okay, what is happening here?

[28:03] Jessica: This is just bizarre. It. Well. And you pick that take. Well, I think. I think that there's a lot in this movie that's about. It's about skewed perception because his perception is gone. Like, he's absolutely on Planet Xenon. Right. And so I think that it was really good because it takes you. It gets you off kilter. You don't know, why is this happening. The other thing that I read, and I didn't look this up, but it came out of my research about him being the character, being alone. Except for Maria Conchita Alonso and the people in the office. Anytime that he's on the street or in a public space, everyone's in a couple.

[28:49] Meg: Yeah, I saw that on Reddit and

[28:51] Jessica: I thought that was fascinating. So, like, the Apache dancers are a couple. Two couples come out of the sro, he's surrounded by couples. And I was just like, oh, my God, fucking brilliant. And would that have been noticeable? So I went back and watched that again. But would that have been noticeable if the extras weren't directed to be kind of super extra.

[29:12] Meg: Right, Good point. Another thing I really loved was the very opening of the movie and how it just made New York look like Gothic with smokes and spires and all the Art deco. So that was kind of cool.

[29:29] Jessica: I agree.

[29:30] Meg: And you know that Elizabeth Ashley's office is right at 23rd Street.

[29:36] Jessica: Mm, I didn't know. I thought. Actually, I thought she was at Madison Square Park.

[29:41] Meg: Right, okay. So it's like looking off onto. No, It's. She's on 23rd street looking.

[29:45] Jessica: Looking at the north. Got it.

[29:47] Meg: She's on 23rd, looking north at the park.

[29:50] Jessica: And by the way, and she. Although there's no, like, again with this whole couplehood thing, when he calls her freaking out that he needs to have an appointment, she is a hot young guy in a towel come out of nowhere in her apartment like, hey, baby, come back to bed.

[30:07] Meg: She's like, she is not going into the office tonight. Nick Cage is on his own.

[30:14] Jessica: Yes. Because Elizabeth Ashley and her voice are. Are gonna get buset.

[30:20] Meg: So do you remember seeing it when you were younger?

[30:23] Jessica: Yes.

[30:23] Meg: Do you remember your impression of it?

[30:25] Jessica: Yes.

[30:25] Meg: Do you remember who you saw it with?

[30:28] Jessica: I probably saw it with my brother, Honestly, like, that's. That's the Memory. I don't know if I've concocted that, but I. This is the sort of thing I would have seen with John by the time I was at Kenyon, maybe like the following year. A friend of mine, Liam, was obsessed with this movie and would scream Alva. And I was like, it's creepy, but funny. I don't know how I feel about this. When I saw it the first time with absolutely no life experience at all, it. I was just giggling my head off because it was so bizarre, you know, when Nic Cage finally goes full on into actually, and I have to give him credit for this, there are many times, the way that he's shot where he looks like an entirely different person. There's so many shots where, because of the faces that he's making, like, in his despair or his insanity or his elation or his murderous intent, his fear face changes so radically with each of these shots that I was like, damn. At the time, I think I was just really entertained and just like, this is fucking nuts. Like, this is crazy. He ate a bug.

[31:47] Meg: I was about to say he actually ate a live cockroach.

[31:51] Jessica: Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

[31:54] Meg: A live cockarocha.

[31:57] Jessica: And the face he makes when he does it makes you believe it. So gross. And also because of our, you know, particular interests and sympathies, I know he didn't do it in real life, but he ate a pigeon raw. Not in real life, in the film.

[32:18] Meg: But they didn't. They didn't film that.

[32:20] Jessica: No, but you see the pigeon carcass and you see. Yes, and lots of feathers every place. I was like, wow, he's making his way through New York wildlife. Where's the rat? He's got. There's gotta be a rat. Why? No rat. No rat. You'd. You'd think.

[32:36] Meg: You'd think.

[32:37] Jessica: But, yeah, the.

[32:38] Meg: The triumvirate.

[32:40] Jessica: And the other thing about the cockroach, just as a quick vampire movie aside, so he's obsessed with Jennifer Beals, who, we later find out he hasn't even gone home. He never even took her home.

[32:53] Meg: Right.

[32:53] Jessica: She's just a girl that he saw at a club. He runs into her again at the tunnel, and she's like, who the fuck are you? Get away from me. But in his fantasy that she's the vampire and he has become her supplicant. That eating the roach moment is when he becomes Renfield. He's not the. Like he. And that's when you realize, for me, you realize through this whole thing, he's not the Vampire. He's Renfield. He's even lower. Like, he's in service to the vampire. And, you know, he keeps wearing the band aid over, like he's there for her in his mind for her to keep feeding. And he keeps thinking he's about to be a vampire, and he's like, halfway there. All of that is the Renfield character. So, again, like, there are all of these moments, if you are into vampire, you know, classic vampire shit, where you're like, oh, the perspective changed again. Oh, you're not. That. You're this. And then when you realize that all of it is in his head, the fact that he's choosing to be the subjected underling, that's how he sees himself.

[34:10] Meg: Or that his subconscious is doing that to him. His brain is doing that to him.

[34:15] Jessica: Exactly.

[34:16] Meg: He doesn't know that he's doing that to himself.

[34:18] Jessica: Let's hope not. That would be very, very, very sad,

[34:20] Meg: if even sadder, honestly, being like, he doesn't get pierced by someone else. He pierces himself.

[34:31] Jessica: Oh, girl. That was very sexual.

[34:36] Meg: Well, I have to say, I can't. If we're doing what did we ever decide if we were doing, like, stars or anything? We don't. We. We don't do stars. We did.

[34:45] Jessica: Well, we did, like, for the last one, like, we did five.

[34:49] Meg: Oh, I think we did. We do five pigeons or something.

[34:51] Jessica: Yeah, something.

[34:52] Meg: Cockroaches. Yeah. This one.

[34:54] Jessica: I know you give it half a cockroach.

[34:56] Meg: Don't speak for me.

[34:57] Jessica: I'm sorry. I'll take the cockroaches.

[35:00] Meg: Would you give it.

[35:01] Jessica: I give it. I give it three and a half. Cockroaches.

[35:06] Meg: I'm gonna give it two cockroaches, and I'll give it two and a half. Just because your adoration and respect for it. That'll bump it up a little bit. Because I have respect for you. So there must be something in it.

[35:21] Jessica: Don't go. Look, I might just be. I might just be loco. Like, don't go by me.

[35:26] Meg: But I cannot say the diagram. Recommend it. I would definitely recommend Love at First Bite, but I have not seen it since I was, like, 15 years old.

[35:34] Jessica: I think that Love at First bite. Like, let's just put all. As you know, I'm a fan of Take the artwork on its own terms from the time period. I'm not into rewriting and all of that. I just know that people need trigger warnings. So I'm just like, hey, this might not be for everybody, because. But I.

[35:55] Meg: You know what?

[35:56] Jessica: I did rewatch it Was hilarious.

[35:58] Meg: I rewatched recently. I can't remember under what circumstances, and I was trying to sell you on this for our Halloween. Oh, watch party. But it. You just didn't fight.

[36:10] Jessica: I had.

[36:10] Meg: Oh, creep show. Because you were like, I don't think it takes place in New York. It does. There's at least one story that take place. One in the Hamptons and one in a New York City apartment. Anyway, definitely a great rewatch. That was.

[36:30] Jessica: And I will rewatch that. I will. I just had a real bee in my. A bug in my bonnet. I had a roach in my bonnet. Because I just feel like there are so many touch points for all the things that. Like just the fact. The way that he killed the girl. I was like. Instantly. I was brought back to, like, boobs on the headboard. Boobs on the headboard. It's the same level of terrible. Oh, my God. What? I can't say boobs on the headboard. You did, but that was your story. I know. Look, I think. I don't know. I think it's. If you. If people. If there is someone listening who is really into old vampire movies and likes Nicolas Cage, this is the movie for you.

[37:21] Meg: Reddit was also comparing it to American Psycho.

[37:25] Jessica: I think it is. I think it's American Psycho Lite. And by the way, some of the locations that we didn't talk about, There's Bigelows on 6th Avenue, right? There's Bigelow's. And there's.

[37:38] Meg: I was trying to think of the name of Bigelow's the other day. Mondo Cafe. I looked that up. Oh, no, sorry. Mondo Cave. I looked that up. It was a blues bar.

[37:47] Jessica: That's where the opening scene, where they're at the.

[37:51] Meg: I'm not sure if it was in the opening. I'm not sure because it's kind of far down in my notes. So I think it's probably not the opening.

[37:58] Jessica: It's the. I think it's where they. You know, at the beginning, where he picks up the girl, who later is like, get the fuck away from me. I think that was the blues bar.

[38:08] Meg: Okay. There's definitely a blues bar. And it's. And it's Mondo Cave. We talked about 23rd street, the tunnel. We talked about that.

[38:16] Jessica: That was so weird to see. I was like, what? And by the way, how great is this? He gets into the tunnel by punching the bouncer in the stomach. I was like, well, that's definitely one way to get in.

[38:28] Meg: And am I remembering this correctly? Like, the Red Velvet in front of the tunnel. They were all fighting each other.

[38:36] Jessica: Yeah. That's so weird that they were fighting each other to get in that.

[38:41] Meg: It. Yeah, that. It was like a mosh pit of. Of aggression. The people that were the extras who were waiting to get into the tunnel, and he just powers through that group. But I'm like, why are they fighting with each other?

[38:54] Jessica: Oh, it. Well, I'm sure that it was amplified, but it reminds me. And you can. You can Find these on YouTube. Clips of people standing online to get into studio who are like, you know, doing the Pick me, pick me. And it's so, like, so many people deep. So that's sort of what it reminded me of, is, like, that kind of melee.

[39:15] Meg: Sure. But it had a completely different energy from Pick me. They were fighting each of them.

[39:21] Jessica: Yeah. I think everything in this film had an entirely different energy from anything that you've seen before. So the sro, by the way, it looked to me, and I could be wrong. Like the Jane Hotel before it was redone.

[39:38] Meg: Okay.

[39:39] Jessica: So I could be wrong, but that's what it looked like to me.

[39:42] Meg: I bet Alex could help us with that.

[39:44] Jessica: I guarantee you Alex knows everything about

[39:46] Meg: this one because he definitely knows a lot about Jane Hotel. He's been asking for a Jane Hotel story for a while.

[39:51] Jessica: I would love to. I've stayed at the Jane Hotel several times. I'll do a Jane Hotel.

[39:57] Meg: Excellent.

[39:58] Jessica: His building, did you say that was.

[40:01] Meg: It's West 19.

[40:03] Jessica: The exterior, did you find it weird as well? Cause it's like it's a brownstone building. And then he goes in and it's this, like, big lobby.

[40:12] Meg: Yeah.

[40:12] Jessica: And I was like, this is not.

[40:14] Meg: That doesn't quite work.

[40:15] Jessica: No.

[40:15] Meg: Because west night, it's like Gold Coast.

[40:18] Jessica: Yeah, exactly. It doesn't work.

[40:20] Meg: But it did have high ceilings.

[40:22] Jessica: It most certainly did. And there was also something that I never got back to which I want to see what it is because, like, everything has meaning in the movie. There's a poster for something that's hanging on the wall outside his door. And it looks like it's in German. It's a black and white.

[40:43] Meg: I can picture it.

[40:44] Jessica: Right. And I'm sure it's something, but I don't know.

[40:48] Meg: Something vampire related.

[40:49] Jessica: But I don't know what it is. I mean, what I do like about the look of it is that they really do have a lot of exterior shots, and a lot of it is moving around 1988 New York. So it's worth it for that vibe. And the cars the cars. Cars are good. A lot of Volvos, weirdly.

[41:19] Meg: So. One of the reasons we picked this movie. You picked this movie.

[41:23] Jessica: I take all responsibility. There's no problem with that.

[41:26] Meg: Is because of Halloween. And I just want to do just a big happy Halloween in New York City for those who celebrate, because Halloween in New York is a special vibe. If you are. We've talked about on the podcast, if you are in an apartment building going from floor to floor, buzzing your neighbors, or if you're out on the street going into bodegas and stores, or if you're. Where I grew up, when you're going townhouse to townhouse and they just go crazy with the decorations on the outside, it is an event. There's the parade in the West Village. New York loves Halloween, so celebrate safely.

[42:08] Jessica: And in fact, today I was walking on 78th street to see that there was, like. That is a block where, like, they have animatronics.

[42:16] Meg: Oh, yeah.

[42:16] Jessica: They've gone totally nutsy. And one of them is really unnerving. It's some clowns and, like, a big one and a little one who's in a cage and screams at you. And, like, all of these little Allen Stevenson boys are completely unaffected. And I'm like, kids, this is scary. The only thing I was gonna add is that we were talking about our dear friend Alex, who was very kind and looked after me. We went to see a punk show, and I just thought it would amuse you to know that I accidentally found myself in the mosh pit. And so you're talking this at the cbg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And that the. When you were saying, like, they were all surging forward at the velvet rope, and I was like, yeah, that's not a good feeling. That's a bad, bad moment.

[43:05] Meg: I actually saw somebody took a drone video of that mosh pit that went in a circle. And it is gorgeous. It was so beautifully shot.

[43:16] Jessica: Really?

[43:16] Meg: Yeah. It's on one of our stories. I'll try and repost.

[43:21] Jessica: Being in it was less lovely, I bet.

[43:25] Meg: I'm shocked, Jessica.

[43:27] Jessica: I took a sneaker to the head.

[43:28] Meg: You know what they're doing. You do not know that what you are doing?

[43:32] Jessica: No, I had to duck and run. Ducked down to get out of. I was just really near the stage. I wasn't going for the mosh pit. And then I looked around, and I realized, oh, my God, I'm in the mosh.

[43:46] Meg: I'm surprised to get out. One of those, like, Gen X guys didn't just, like, pick you up and toss you into safety. Safety.

[43:53] Jessica: Well, me too. Me too. Although there, you know, there were some Gen X guys who were very concerned about my height, and so they were. And that was part of the problem,

[44:05] Meg: because they were smothered.

[44:06] Jessica: Yes. But part of the problem is they were trying to be nice, and they kept pushing me forward so I could see. Oh, and then I was in the mosh pit. Yes. So that was. That was the issue. But it was a really good moment of, ah, the 80s. Very nice.

[44:24] Meg: Yeah.

[44:24] Jessica: Happy Halloween.