Probably Unanswerable Questions
1999 as the anti-hero's birth; Marge or Sylvana; Dickie and Tom; rooting for Tom; being a Dickie or a Tom; the name Marge coming back
In the discussion (15)
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:49Read transcript
- Raised early from the Unanswerable Questions list: was 1999 the year the anti-hero was officially born, with Ripley, Tony Soprano and the Fight Club guys, followed by The Shield and The Wire?
- A counterpoint cites Dirty Harry in the 1970s; the hosts joke about whether Dirty Harry is a good cop and call that era the vigilante era of Death Wish and Dirty Harry, close to anti-heroes but protective.
- Would you rather be with Marge or the cute Italian girl? One participant is out on both and is called boring; another loves Sylvana; another wants Marge and mocks Sylvana's haircut.
- Dickie is said to have been on the right path, playing his options in the 1950s while knowing he would marry Marge, until the plan fell apart.
- Marge is picked because she can make a martini, has great style and is a writer; whether her novel was bad becomes a joke about writing about rich people in Italy, with a joke that she ends up on Mad Men involved with Don Draper.
- Another participant prefers Blanchett's character, wealthy but self-hating and vulnerable, recalling her lines about packing lightly and about only being comfortable around others who have money and despise it.
- Did Dickie ever think of hooking up with Tom? You are meant to think it crossed his mind, since he is a sensualist who wants to try everything.
- Do you root for Tom? Having seen it so often, one participant roots for no one, but compares rooting for bad people in Natural Born Killers; nearly everyone around Ripley except maybe Marge is not a good person, which partly justifies his choices to the audience.
- Have you ever been a Dickie or a Tom, someone looked up to aggressively or someone desperate to be another person, perhaps as a teenager?
- The My Brilliant Friend novels set in Naples (author transcribed 'Fronte') are cited as a female version of this obsessive friendship without the murder; that portrayal is rejected as not what female friendship is, while this film's unhealthy obsession is more relatable.
- One participant's Dickies would be Jude Law and people in movies, reflecting a fixation on famous and rich people; charismatic-tornado characters are the ones remembered.
- Jude Law presents the idealized mid-century American life of wealth, beauty and choosing to do nothing but sleep with beautiful women, listen to jazz and sail.
- Will the name Marge ever come back? The Simpsons pretty much ended it; Maud is floated, which Judd Apatow tried, and old 1920s-30s names may return after the Olivia and Ava generation.
- Margo is loved and already in rotation, and Paltrow's Tenenbaums character is a Margot; Jenny is pushed for a comeback since there are no Jennys under 15, drawing a Forrest Gump tease.
- A Dickie comeback is wanted, though names with obvious bullying potential are now avoided; a Richie at the Ringer has never been called Dickie.