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The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, filling in for Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest,

Sprang Break Forever edition.

It's Wednesday, March 27, 2013.

On today's show, David Mamet's HBO biopic of Phil Specter, starring Al Pacino,

Helen Mirren, and some amazing wigs.

Then Harmony Corrine's Spring Breakers.

Is it a postmodern satire of youth debauchery or a shameless wallowing insane?

And finally, we discussed the extraordinary life of Lou Wallace, a disgraced Civil War General, who was also the author of the Reconstruction-era bestseller, Ben Hur. Slate has just published a fascinating long read about Wallace by John Swansberg, our editorial director, who is here with us right now. Hi, John. Hi, Dana. And we're also joined by June Thomas' podcast goddess extraordinaire.

Well, thank you, Dana. So Phil Specter, David Mamet's biopic about the legendary music producer for HBO,

begins with a curious disclaimer that I'm going to read right now before we get into our discussion.

But right before the film starts, we see a legend come up that says, this is a work of fiction.

It is not based on a true story.

It is a drama inspired by actual persons in a trial,

but it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons nor to comment upon the trial or its outcome.

Now, that has to be the most bizarre, wishy-washy fiction, nonfiction disclaimer at the beginning of a fact-based film that I've

ever seen. And I read it because I think it sort of gets at the strangeness of this project

and what, to me, was so disastrously wrong about it, which was sort of David Mammett's mealy-mouthed

...