Culture Gabfest - Look What You Made Richard Dreyfuss Do Edition
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2017
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the 40th anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whether Taylor Swift represents Trump-era art with critic Jody Rosen, and fan fiction with Laura Miller.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains explicit language. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Stephen McHaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gapfest. |
| 0:15.7 | Look what you made Richard Dreyfus' due edition. |
| 0:18.0 | It's Wednesday, September 6th, 2017. On today's show, the Spielberg |
| 0:22.7 | classic. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is now 40 years old, Paris and Thought. We |
| 0:27.8 | discussed its re-release. And then Taylor Swift has dropped a new song and an accompanying video, |
| 0:34.3 | which means every pop exeget must weigh in. We invited Jody Rosen to have a, no doubt, docile anodyne, completely vituporation-free |
| 0:42.6 | conversation about the various controversies surrounding the release. |
| 0:46.6 | And finally, we talk fanfic with Slate's own Laura Miller. |
| 0:50.7 | Joining me today is Slate's editor of Julia Turner. |
| 0:53.0 | Hello, Julia. |
| 0:53.8 | Hi, Steve. And Slate's film critic, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And Slate's |
| 0:55.9 | film critic, Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hey, Stephen. All right. Close encounters of the third |
| 1:00.6 | kind came out in 1977, which is when I first saw it in the movie theaters. That's how old I am. I will |
| 1:06.0 | now say, I will hereby announce. It was the single most transformative cinematic experience |
| 1:10.7 | of my life. |
| 1:11.8 | It returns to theaters now on its 40th anniversary as an acknowledged masterpiece, but it's hard to |
| 1:16.8 | remember that back then Spielberg was very young. He was a wonderkind. He had one hit to his name, |
| 1:22.1 | and people were ready a little bit to pounce. They were ready for him to fail. Furthermore, his own |
| 1:26.0 | friend, George Lucas, had come out with Star Wars that very same year. It's incredible to think. Both films are masterpieces, |
| 1:32.7 | but they are very different from one another. Close encounters is long, strange, lucidogenic, |
| 1:37.3 | and also a highly, highly personal film. It tells the story of Roy and every man who works for |
... |
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