The Slate Culture Gab Fest is brought to you by Warby Parker, an easy way to buy prescription glasses and sunglasses online.

Visit Warbyparker.com for the in-home try-on program, and when you purchase your glasses, get free two-day shipping with the promo code, cultural.

And buy 23 and Me. Get to know your DNA by ordering your personal genetic profile from 23 and

me. You'll get new knowledge to help you make more informed decisions about your health. Order your 23

and me DNA kit today at the new price of just $99 at 23andme.com slash slate. The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Volatial Kitch Edition.

It's Wednesday, May 29, 2013, and on today's show, we'll discuss before midnight, the third installment of Richard Linklater's now 18-year-old Chronicle of a fictional love affair, then behind the candelabra, HBO's new Liberace biopic. Is it a fitting way for director Steven Soderberg to enter his planned retirement? And finally, we'll ask, how important is it for characters in literature to be likable? Joining me is Slate's culture critic, June Thomas. Hello, June. Hey, Dana. And the editor of Slate's culture blog, Browbeat, David Hagland. Hi, David. Hi, Dana. Nice to have you here. Stephen couldn't make it down today, so it's the three of us. Happy to be here. So before midnight is the third installment in Richard Linklater's long running chronicle of a romance

starring Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, his first before sunrise that chronicled the two of them

meeting in Vienna over one crazy night. It came out in 1995. The second installment came out

nine years later in 2005, and now nine years later again, we revisit the couple again,

and we should warn that there may be a couple of light spoilers in here. David and I have already spoiled this movie. We taped a spoiler special podcast on it in which we got into all the nitty gritty. We'll try not to do that here. But if you want to know absolutely nothing about before midnight before you step in, then you should probably skip past this segment. So maybe we'll start off with listening to a clip from the movie. As we re-meet the couple, they're on vacation in Greece in the Peloponnese. As always, these movies take place in beautiful, enviable locations. So they sort of function as travelogues as well as romances. And in this scene, Celine and Jesse, Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, are walking along through a beautiful village in Greece down to a romantic hotel where some friends have reserved them a room for the night. Actually, one thing. If I could change one thing about you, it would be for you to stop trying to change me. You are a very skilled manipulator. Well, I'm on to you. I don't know how you work. You think? Yeah, I know everything about you. Here we go. Let's go through here. I don't think you do, actually. No? Well, I know you better than I know anybody else in the planet, but maybe that's not saying much. This is great. But sometimes I don't know. I feel like you're breathing helium and I'm breathing oxygen. What makes you say that? So one thing you'll notice about this clip is that it's all about talking, right? I mean, you do have a visual here that's quite lovely, the two of them walking through the village. But this is a very talky movie, as all three of them are. And I wanted to hear how the two of you responded to that. I know you're a fan, David. I have no idea of you and what you think of these movies. but I want to talk about not just this one, but all of them as a whole and the particular tone that they try to strike.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of talking movies in general, so I love these movies, but I also love, you know, all of with Stillman's movies and my dinner with Andre and so on and so on.

Eric Romer, who's clearly a big influence on these films as well.

And these conversations, part of what makes them so powerful is the... and so on and so on. Eric Romer, who's clearly a big influence on these films as well.

And these conversations, part of what makes them so powerful is the depth that they accumulate over time and over, you know, over the three movies.

So that now when Julie Delpy, when Celine is saying, you know, I think I know you, but I'm not sure, that has a weight that it wouldn't have because we've seen the first two.

So we've got a sense of who these characters are and we feel like we know them.

And so if they feel like they don't know each other, well, that means a huge amount to us already. Yeah.

I'm not crazy about these movies.

I've seen them all and I admire them, but I don't necessarily – I don't quite buy the couple's connection.

And I don't really like it when – I'm completely unconvinced, I should say, when they're laughing.

I never buy their joy.

...