I'm Stephen McCaffin. This is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Mother Troubles edition. It's Wednesday, April 22nd, 2006. On today's show, Mother Mary is the new feature from writer-director David Lowry.

It's a two-hander starring Anne Hathaway as a mega-famous pop diva and Michaela Cole as her

former friend and collaborator whom she now approaches to design her address by way of hopefully

a creative and spiritual renewal. It takes place mostly in a barn. And then L. Fanning

stars in Margo's Got Money Troubles in which she plays a single mother who turns to only fans to

support her new baby. It also stars Michelle Pfeiffer as her mother and Nick Offerman is her professional

wrestling dad. I should say that's on Apple TV. And finally, the estimable Katie Weaver, I hope

she's a friend of the program, we think she is, of the Atlantic returns with her hotly anticipated,

one might say, aromatic, yeasty, warm piece about which restaurant in America has the best

free bread? First, joining me today is Julia Turner from Los Angeles. Founder. Is

Editor-in-Chief the correct title here?

Yeah. Let's spend a lot of time on my honor effects. I think that's good audio.

Of LA Material. Brief description of LA Material, please.

LA Material is a brand new media outlet for Los Angeles. It's smart and it's fun and you should subscribe. Yeah, it's got this great puckish energy. It's terrific. Every time I read it, I'm glad I'm reading it even though I am not an Angelino. So, congrats. And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic for Slate. Hey, Dana.

Hey, hey. Interesting topics. Let's begin, shall we?

Oh, I cannot wait to talk about David Lowry. What a curious filmmaker he is shaping up to be. Consider the slate of his films. Dana, you can help me out here. Pete's Dragon for Disney, I believe. Old Man in the Gun,

based on a New Yorker story written by my friend David Grant. It was also Robert Redford's last movie and the trippy, Middle Englishly, the Green Knight, which I think we talked about on

the show based on Sergoyan and the Green Night. So how about Anne Hathaway is a kind of Taylor Swift

Lady Gaga-type figure, super famous for her songs, her megatores, but also very much her look, which helped create her as a pop sort of world-conquering pop diva.

These were designed in her early part of a stage of her career by her dear friend and collaborator, here played by Michaela Cole, who when the movie opens,

she, Anne Hathaway, has ditched along the way to this pop deification. She is now suffering

from a crisis of confidence that may or may not have otherworldly dimensions or origins, and

...