It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living

we may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson here again with Keith Phipps.

Genevieve Kosky.

Scott Tobias.

On the first half of this episode, we discussed Gus Van Sants to Die for, a 1995 black comedy based on the real 1991 story of Pamela Smart, convicted of seducing a 15-year-old

high school student and persuading him to kill her husband. In this episode, we'll bring in I. Tanya,

Craig Gillespie's look at figure skater Tanya Harding, convicted of conspiracy in the attack on her

Olympic skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Like Pamela Smart, Harding was a tabloid fixture for a while in the 1990s, as the dawn of the 24-7 news cycle and the rise of tabloid TV series like hard copy, created an unending appetite for lurid stories of crime and punishment, regardless of the actual truth of those cases. I-Tanya, scripted by Stephen Rogers, and based on actual interviews with Harding, her husband, Jeff Galilee, and other players in the Tanya Harding case, is based around the idea that the tabloid truth wasn't the actual

truth, and that it doesn't do justice to Harding's real story. The media version of the story

had Harding as a kind of white trash thug violently lashing out against a more talented rival

because she couldn't compete against her on the ice. But Rogers and Gillespie present the story from Harding and Galooly's perspective through sympathetic performances by Margot

Robbie and Sebastian Stan. And their movie outright says that the Thug v. Princess narrative

started long before the attack on Carrigan, and that Harding's lower class origins had always

held her back, limiting her success in the eyes of snobby figure skating gatekeepers,

who would never admit her talent or give her an even shot at fame because they disapproved of her origins.

Is that the truth?

Gillespie and Rogers are very frank about the way that they're presenting conflicting stories from players with very different perspectives,

and that all of this may be self-serving. But like To Die For, I-Tanya takes a light, playful tone with a lot of ugly events,

and the film is enjoyable and accessible, even at its most painful.

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