Culture Gabfest - Unreal World
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2021
⏱️ 57 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
This week Steve, Dana, and Julia discuss the film The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins. Next, the group is joined by Slate television critic Willa Paskin to talk about The Real World Homecoming: New York. Finally, the panel dives into the new secrets revealed by a Philip Roth biography.
In Slate Plus, Steve and Julia chat with Willa about the books, movies, or shows they've changed their minds about.
Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Rachael Allen.
Email the hosts at culturefest@slate.com
Endorsements
Dana: Bertrand Tavernier’s My Journey Through French Cinema
Julia: Her recent roadrunner sighting, the Atlantic podcast Floodlines, and I Capture the Castle
Steve: The Simpletons and Call My Agent!
Slate Plus members get a bonus segment in each episode of the Culture Gabfest and access to exclusive shows like Dana Stevens’ classic movies podcast Flashback. Sign up now to listen and support our work.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen Mekaff and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest Unreal World Edition. |
| 0:15.1 | It's Wednesday, March 31st, 2021. On today's show, The Father is the latest in our Oscar roundups. It's a best picture nominee. |
| 0:22.8 | It's about a man in his 80s losing his sense of himself and his world to dementia. It stars Anthony |
| 0:28.0 | Hopkins. And then the real world premiered back in 1992, and when it did, it was the first |
| 0:33.6 | true reality TV series. There's now a reunion show, same loft, the same seven |
| 0:38.5 | protagonists. We will discuss real-world homecoming with Slate's TV critic, Willa Paskin. |
| 0:44.1 | And finally, a new 800-page-plus biography of the novelist, Philip Roth, is making the rounds. |
| 0:49.8 | I've read it, I've reviewed it, so we will interview me about it. Joining me today is Julia Turner, |
| 0:55.2 | the deputy managing editor of the LA Times. Hey, Julia. Hello, hello. Hi. And of course, |
| 1:01.8 | Dana Stevens is the film critic for Slate. Hey, Dana. Hey, greetings. And Dana, I should say we're |
| 1:07.6 | going to have you for the first segment on the movie The Father. You're going to step out for the middle segment. We'll be joined by Willa Paskin to talk about the real world homecoming. And then you'll return to the show. That's right. Sounds good, Steve. |
| 1:20.5 | Anthony Hopkins plays Antony, an octogenarian who's become forgetful, willful, at points cruel, at other points somewhat less than coherent, |
| 1:28.5 | and he is moving, it turns out, from the ordinary trials of old age into dementia. |
| 1:33.1 | Olivia Coleman plays his daughter, or so were led to believe. There's no way really to |
| 1:38.5 | confidently describe the plot of this movie because we are in a nonlinear, it turns out, |
| 1:43.6 | anti-narrative, and in the end, |
| 1:45.0 | finally dying mind of Antony. The excruciating truth of old age is that we live in a world |
| 1:51.0 | made up entirely of touchstones, this apartment, this sofa, this window, this child of mine, |
| 1:57.7 | only to watch as they literally and figuratively slip away. |
| 2:02.6 | Over the course of the movie, Antony becomes totally unsure of the world he lives in. |
| 2:08.1 | In the clip, we're about to listen to Anthony Hopkins playing Anthony, |
| 2:11.5 | walks into a room only to not recognize the person sitting in his own apartment as his |
... |
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