The Curious Case of Grey Gardens (with Watch What Crappens)
WHAT WENT WRONG
Sad Boom Media
4.8 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When the Maysles brothers showed up at Grey Gardens, they thought they were filming a quick piece on Jackie O’s quirky relatives. Instead, they uncovered Big and Little Edie Beale—an isolated mother-daughter duo living in shocking squalor, feeding raccoons in their attic, and completely frozen in time.
In the second episode of Out of Frame, Lizzie and Chris are joined by Watch What Crappens hosts Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam to unpack the wild behind-the-scenes story of the 1975 documentary ‘Grey Gardens’. Discover how the film survived production chaos, what became of the Beales afterward, and how two women behind the camera ultimately saved the entire project.
Each episode of Out of Frame investigates the darker, more obscure corners of Hollywood history and shines a light on the offscreen lives of some of our favorite onscreen stars.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to our second episode of Out of Frame. |
| 0:25.8 | This is a series where we will be exploring some of the more obscure corners of Hollywood and |
| 0:30.1 | filmmaking and discussing a little more of the off-camera lives of our favorite on-screen |
| 0:34.5 | subjects. And today, we're talking about big and little Edy Beal and the |
| 0:39.0 | making of one of my favorite documentaries of all time, Grey Gardens. And we are joined by probably |
| 0:44.3 | the two most perfect guests for this episode because they are reality TV and pop culture experts. |
| 0:51.0 | And as we'll discuss, I think the Real Housewives owes an awful lot to the Beals. |
| 0:55.5 | So welcome Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam from Watch What Crappins. Thank you so much for being here. |
| 1:01.4 | Hey, thanks so much for having us. What an honor. |
| 1:03.9 | Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? I am so I am obsessed. I'm obsessed with your show. |
| 1:08.6 | There are entire franchises of The Real Housewives that I watch exclusively because you recap them. So Bravo owes you a lot of me. Wow. Oh, I love that. Thank you. Thank you. And my husband and I also would like you to know that the only reason we watched House of the Dragon was for Winter's Crappening. Wow. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. I love House of the Dragon, though. |
| 1:28.1 | I'm one of the only ones I think he genuinely loves that show. Are you going to watch the new one? What is it called? The New Game of Thrones thing coming out. It's like supposed to be a wacky thing about. It's called A Night of the Seven Kingdom. Thank you. Night of the Seven Kingdoms. I would have been here 20 minutes going, you know, the one, there's a guy with a sword. |
| 1:46.2 | Yes, I will watch it, but only as long as you are covering it on winter's happening. I think it's like a Game of Thrones sitcom or something. It's short form and wacky. A game of throne sitcom. A multi-cam. Yeah. I guess Game of Thrones, but it's fun. |
| 2:01.6 | Wow. |
| 2:02.0 | Coming next on what went wrong. |
| 2:04.1 | We decided to do a Game of Thrones sitcom. |
| 2:06.8 | Mindy Cohen is the star. |
| 2:08.1 | The most popular format right now is those little 60-second microdramas. |
| 2:12.2 | Have you guys heard about these? |
| 2:13.3 | No. |
| 2:13.6 | Called Shorties? |
| 2:14.2 | No. |
... |
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