Popcorn in the Pages - Episode 10: Erasure by Percival Everett

Summary

Popcorn in the Pages - Episode 10: Erasure by Percival Everett

Release Date: February 22, 2025

Introduction to the Episode

In Episode 10 of "Popcorn in the Pages," a spin-off series from the "Currently Reading" podcast, co-hosts Kaytee Cobb and Shad Cascone delve into the intricate relationship between Percival Everett's novel Erasure and its cinematic adaptation, American Fiction. This episode promises an in-depth exploration of what makes book-to-screen adaptations succeed or falter, enriched with the hosts' strong opinions and insightful commentary.

Overview of Erasure and American Fiction

Kaytee begins by providing a comprehensive synopsis of Erasure, introducing us to Thelonious Monk Ellison, a black writer grappling with the publishing industry's pigeonholing of his work. Frustrated by another black writer's meteoric rise with We's Lives in the Ghetto, Monk pens a satirical novel under a pseudonym to highlight the absurdities of racial stereotypes in literature. Unexpectedly, his subversive work becomes a success, forcing him to navigate the complexities of fame while maintaining his dual identity.

American Fiction, adapted by Cord Jefferson, mirrors this narrative and has garnered significant acclaim, including an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2024. The film features a stellar cast with Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Tracee Ellis Ross, achieving over 60 wins and 170 nominations worldwide.

Key Differences Between Book and Movie

The hosts meticulously dissect the variances between the book and its film counterpart, highlighting several pivotal changes:

1. Name Changes

   • Erasure retains the original character names, whereas American Fiction alters them (e.g., Thelonious to Yule, Juanita to Centaura). Shad questions the necessity of these alterations, stating, "Why was it necessary?" (14:01).

2. Setting Shifts

   • The novel is set in Washington D.C., a city with a rich black cultural backdrop, while the movie relocates the story to Boston. Katie speculates on production reasons: "Maybe it's cheaper to shoot in Boston" (14:33).

3. Plot Adjustments

   • Sister’s Death: In the book, Monk's sister dies at a clinic due to a protester, adding depth to her character and the sociopolitical context. The movie simplifies this by portraying her death as a stroke at a restaurant, which Katie feels "cheapens her death" (11:01).
   • Character Omissions: Subplots involving Monk’s half-sister Gretchen and nurse Fiona are entirely excluded from the film, stripping away layers that added depth to Monk's character.
   • Added Scenes: The movie introduces new interactions, such as Centaura being a judge on a literary panel, adding nuance but also serving as "spoon feeding" to the audience (23:53).

4. Character Development

   • The film condenses Monk’s multifaceted life, removing elements like woodworking and fishing, which Shad found tedious in the book.

Discussion on Characters

The hosts engage in a candid evaluation of both the book's and movie's characters:

• Best Character: Both agree that Monk is the standout character, with Shad awarding him his highest praise for his complex portrayal.

• Worst Characters: Linda Mallory, a character Monk repeatedly sleeps with, earns strong criticism for being insufferable and poorly developed (46:36).

Casting Choices and Opinions

Kaytee and Shad dissect the film’s casting decisions, offering alternative suggestions and expressing their preferences:

• Jeffrey Wright as Monk: Kaytee praises Wright's performance, likening it to his role in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, where he adeptly plays a "haughty intellectual."

• Tracee Ellis Ross as Lisa: While acknowledging Ross's talent, Kaytee feels the character lacked the necessary grit and suggests Regina King or Niecy Nash as preferable alternatives (32:10).

• Adam Brody as Wiley: Shad appreciates Brody’s portrayal but notes that his appearance as an "old dude" with a mullet felt off, suggesting Idris Elba as a more fitting choice (34:06).

Themes and Satire in Erasure

The discussion delves into the satirical elements of Erasure, emphasizing its critique of racial stereotypes in literature and the publishing industry's commodification of black voices. Kaytee articulates her discomfort with the book's extremity:

"There are two extremes of black life depicted here with very little in the middle... it feels like we needed more in the middle." (37:42)

Shad contemplates whether the satire shifts focus too heavily onto white characters, potentially undermining the novel's intended critique.

Awards and Reception

American Fiction has made a significant impact, securing an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and achieving high critical and audience ratings:

• Goodreads: 4.17 out of 5 stars
• StoryGraph: Kaytee rates it 4.25 out of 5
• Rotten Tomatoes: 93% critics score, 95% audience score
• IMDb: 7.5 out of 10 based on 107,000 ratings

Ratings and Final Thoughts

The hosts provide their personal ratings for both the book and the movie:

• Book:

  • Shad: 3.5/5 – Appreciates the satire but found many aspects tedious.
  • Kaytee: 4.25/5 – Enjoyed the written satire more than the audiobook version.

• Movie:

  • Shad: 7.5/10 – Found it well-adapted with an appreciated ending but not life-changing.
  • Kaytee: 8.5/10 – Enjoyed the film’s pacing and dialogue, despite missing certain book scenes.

Q&A Section

The hosts engage in a lighthearted Q&A, sharing personal fears and hypothetical scenarios related to the book:

• Shad’s Irrational Fear: Fear of garage doors falling and causing fatal injury (57:06).

• Katie’s Hypothetical Revelation: Concerns about unexpected children from her husband, reflecting the episode’s theme of hidden truths and dual lives (55:23).

Conclusion

Kaytee and Shad conclude the episode by expressing their appreciation for the discussion, teasing the next episode focused on The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. They invite listeners to join the "Currently Reading" podcast for more bookish content, ensuring fans that more engaging conversations are on the horizon.

Notable Quotes

• Shad Cascone on Name Changes:

  "Why was it necessary?" (14:01)

• Katie Cobb on Sister’s Death:

  "I feel like maybe they were trying to clean up the storylines. They were taking out things, weeding it down to just this central plot line." (11:01)

• Shad on Casting Jeffrey Wright:

  "I didn't know if that was maybe... [role] was just like a Harvey Weinstein type." (34:15)

• Katie on Satire's Extremes:

  "There are two extremes of black life depicted here with very little in the middle." (37:42)

This episode offers a thorough examination of Erasure and American Fiction, enriched by the hosts' thoughtful critiques and personal insights, making it a valuable listen for both fans of the book and movie enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of adaptation dynamics.

Transcript

[Shad Cascone]

Foreign.

[Katie Cobb]

Hey readers, welcome to Popcorn in the Pages. This is a spin off episode series from Currently Reading podcast and we will be exploring book to screen adaptations and what makes them great or awful.

[Shad Cascone]

In each episode we'll tackle the book, the adaptation and the way ways they complement each other. And as always, we love a strong opinion and we definitely have them.

[Katie Cobb]

I'm Katie Cobb, co host of the Currently Reading podcast and I will read nearly anything, but mostly keep my screen watching to sitcoms and book adaptations.

[Shad Cascone]

And I am Shad Cascone and I read basically whatever I'm told, although I do feel like I've had some input lately in some of our choices here and there. So not. Not exactly everything Katie tells me to, or at least not unsolicited. So getting better, right?

[Katie Cobb]

He's not being completely forced at gunpoints.

[Shad Cascone]

Correct.

[Katie Cobb]

That is true. Unlike our regular episodes, these ones are full of spoilers. If you want spoiler free conversation, go over to the big show here we will spill all the tea. So be warned if you have not read this book yet. This is episode number 10 of this series. But you can listen in any order. Today we are tackling Erasure by Percival Everett. Oh, Shad. Oh, Shad. I had big opinions about this book before we even chose it. So.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, well, this was a reread for you.

[Katie Cobb]

This was a reread and I did not like it the first time.

[Shad Cascone]

Really? Well, you didn't read, right? I mean, you listened.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, that's gonna. That's gonna play in here a little bit as we talk about this book. But let me give a little bit of setup for Erasure by Percival Everett. Here's the plot of both of these stories, the book and the movie. Thelonious Monk is his nickname. Ellison. Thelonious Ellison, nicknamed Monk, is a black writer who would prefer to find his books on the mythology shelves than the African American voices shelves at his local borders. When he receives another rejection for his latest manuscript, he is increasingly annoyed at the success of another writer, Juanita Mae Jenkins. Her debut novel, We's Lives in the Ghetto, is racking up awards and talk show appearances, drawing on the black experience. Even though she went to an exclusive college and visited some relatives in Harlem. Harlem once for a few days to lend it real life flavor. In a fit of rage. Yeah, super authentic. In a fit of rage and probably grief. As his mom deteriorates from Alzheimer's and he unexpectedly has to bury his sister, Monk pens a satirical take on the stereotypical black novel for his agent to send to publishers in hopes that they see how ridiculous the entire situation is. Instead, the novel takes off, and as he submitted it under a pen name, Monk has to figure out how to balance the success he doesn't want with the fame that no one knows is his.

[Shad Cascone]

I don't know if that was a setup so much as a full synopsis.

[Katie Cobb]

That's the story and I'm sticking to it.

[Shad Cascone]

That was very, very thorough. Very much appreciate that.

[Katie Cobb]

The question here that I did not yet reveal is can Monk balance two parts of his life? Right. Can he be this silver satirical black writer and also this brainiac hoity toity derpa doo derpidoo.

[Shad Cascone]

He's like the black Hannah Montana.

[Katie Cobb]

The black Hannah Montana. I've never watched that, so I don't know what that means.

[Shad Cascone]

I just know there's like Hannah Montana and there's Miley Cyrus. I don't know if that's her name in the show, but it's one person living two lives.

[Katie Cobb]

But Miley Cyrus is her real name?

[Shad Cascone]

I don't know.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, no.

[Shad Cascone]

I grew up in the 90s.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, well, that was a great reference. We're definitely keeping that in. Let's talk about the book. This book was Originally published in 2001 here in the States and is a mere 280 pages, including nearly 70 pages of the full novel within the book, which is 70 pages long.

[Shad Cascone]

If you guys couldn't tell us, there was complete air quotes around the full novel in that intonation.

[Katie Cobb]

Full novel. When I listened to it the first time, I thought that the full novel was like 87% of the book because I hated it so much. In fact, it's just under a quarter. It won the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for fiction in 2002 and just this year has been nominated in the humor category for an Audie Award based on the newer release. And that's for the narration.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, so they redid.

[Katie Cobb]

They redid the narration because it took off in the box office, I assume.

[Shad Cascone]

So was the. Is it still narrated by Percival?

[Katie Cobb]

It is not narrated by Percival Everett. It's narrated by Sam Somebody.

[Shad Cascone]

Both the version you listened to and the new one.

[Katie Cobb]

It was re released in 2023 right before the film was released. So that is the one that I listened to the first time that I listened to it.

[Shad Cascone]

Gotcha. Oh, yeah. Because this book is from the early aughts.

[Katie Cobb]

Sean Kristin.

[Shad Cascone]

Exactly.

[Katie Cobb]

The audiobook is narrated by Sean Kristin, and that is the same version that I listened to two years ago the first time I read it.

[Shad Cascone]

Which surprises me because I have Heard you say you will never listen to an audiobook that isn't done by the author. No, that's only for a autobiography.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, I'm so glad you walked that back. Yeah, that is only for memoir. I really love a memoir read by the author and prefer not to listen to even a professional narrator tell somebody else's story. That is not the case with fiction. There are plenty of fiction writers that do not need to be reading their own books on audio and the world is better for it. Okay, so that's what we've got for the book. Name and title, those, those few awards. That's it. It wasn't like this huge runaway success. However, it is now this film, American fiction, released to U.S. theaters in December of 2023 after being adapted to the screen by Cord Jefferson, who also directed it. He was a writer on the good place for 25 episodes, nine episodes of Watchmen, the series Station Eleven, Master of None. He is very well versed in screenwriting. He's very good at it and it shows. He won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 2024 for this work. I know.

[Shad Cascone]

I didn't know that.

[Katie Cobb]

Amazing. There were also various other Oscar noms for that year for best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Score and Best Picture. Overall, it has more than 60 wins and more than 170 nominations for various awards worldwide. The film grossed 23 million with a budget of 10 million. It's got a number of big named actors including Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown and Tracee Ellis Ross. Just really like. It was big, but it was going up against Barbie and Oppenheimer in best picture. So that's why we're not even remembering it.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, nobody even knew. So yeah, I was gonna say. Cause I didn't realize that it was that big. But I guess I mean, shit, those are, those are some big things. I mean an Oscar win.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, Oscar win for best adapted Screenplay. That's great. Okay, so that's like our. That's like our primer on these two pieces of work. Erasure by Percival Everett. American Fiction adapted by Cord Jefferson for the screen. Let's go to the cutting room. Let's tear it apart. What are we talking about here? Let's talk about some pivotal book scenes and how they translated to the screen. And this is stuff that was in the. And also in the movie and how that worked out for us. What's the first thing that came to mind for you, Shad?

[Shad Cascone]

For me it was definitely the book within the book. It was my pathology also known. Are we Allowed to say fuck? Are we allowed to say fuck?

[Katie Cobb]

I will mark this episode as explicit.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, we have to, right?

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. It's called fuck.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. And so for me, that was. It was really interesting. I wanted to know how they were going to put that in there. Right. If it was going to be someone else reading it or how it was going to be done. And I think they did a great job. I loved the two actors acting out the parts as he was writing it and, like, interacting with them. I thought that was so well done and very, very creative.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

Probably my favorite thing also, I felt.

[Katie Cobb]

Like it was the right ratio of fuck to American fiction because it was probably, what, maybe six minutes of the film.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. It was not a lot. 10. 10 would be.

[Katie Cobb]

I feel like 10 might be generous. Right. As opposed to, as we said already about a quarter of the book where you are dropped into the no novel. He writes the whole thing in a single go and then he sends it to his editor and you've read the entire thing and they're like, oh, we don't need any edits. That's it. That 70 pages is plenty. Great job. You.

[Shad Cascone]

This tiny novel, it was like. It was a not so short short story. It was. I would not know what you would call it.

[Katie Cobb]

A short story, for sure.

[Shad Cascone]

Yes.

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. And I also. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. I loved that he's like sitting there at his computer because it is 2023 in the movie, not 2001. And that actually was one of the things that I was reading about on IMDb and rotten tomatoes today, how Cord Jefferson, that scene was really important to him because he is aware of obviously, these other writer scenes in movies where the writer is sitting at a typewriter and he takes a shot of whiskey and then keeps writing. Right. And he wanted it to come to life more than that, because in the book, it comes to life more than that. We get to know these characters. We get to see Van Gogh's entire trajectory over the course of this, what, maybe two days in his life. It's a very quick novel, but I loved the way that they brought it to the screen and I hated it in the book. Like I said, it felt like 85% of the book to me because I hated it so much.

[Shad Cascone]

I didn't think it was that bad in the book. I wasn't really mad about it. Maybe the way that the actual book was set up, where I didn't like the three X's, where it Was these breaks. For some reason, that irked the crap, maybe because I, like. I take notes and I notate. And so every time that happened, I had to, like, put it in my notes. I don't know. That bothered me. I wasn't that mad about my pathology within when I was reading it. But I definitely think that you're very right. Like, when there is a writer writing something in a movie, it's very much like a voiceover of them. And you just see them. Like, it's like Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw, the way that she does it. And there's just this. This brought so much more life to it. It was great.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Having them acted out in front of him and. And even the actors interacting with him, like, oh, no, you gotta do something different there. And having him work that out on the page as these people are standing in front of him. Very cool.

[Shad Cascone]

What did you, like? What was your pivotal scene?

[Katie Cobb]

Well, I mean, that was the first one that I brought to mind as well. I feel like the other thing that is a pivotal book scene, even though it was a big change, is Lisa's death and the fact that the sister dies, it's a huge change in the movie in that she suffers a stroke at a restaurant instead of being shot by a protester at the clinic. I feel like maybe they were trying to clean up the storylines. They were taking out things, weeding it down to just this central plot line. Right. But it felt unfair to Lisa. Like, it cheapened her death.

[Shad Cascone]

Right. Well, do we. Are we gonna address the elephant in the room about how you hate.

[Katie Cobb]

No, we're gonna talk about that later. We're talking about that later.

[Shad Cascone]

No, I do agree, because there is the point with the protesters. It delves more into her as a character because of the doctor that she is and the community that she serves and, you know, the issues with that. And that's why there's the protester and ultimately the reason for her death. And I think you're very right in the fact that it might have been too distracting from the main point of the story, which is him and his double life in the book. But I do agree that it was a disservice to her, and especially because, like, it's Tracee Ellis Ross, you know, like, they got her in there to do it, and then it's. You know, she was in the movie five minutes.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Didn't feel very long, that's for sure.

[Shad Cascone]

Not at all. And it was also. There was no explanation for it either, because she wasn't. It Wasn't like, she was 80. She. She was 40s, you know, like, we never got a reason for, like, why it happened. An aneurysm.

[Katie Cobb]

There's the comment in the book where she is pretending to hold a cigarette because she has given up smoking. In the movie, she is actually smoking and has picked it back up again since her husband left her. And so I think that's the reason why they did that. Like, oh, she's smoking again. That's why she would end up having a stroke because, like, an anti smoking.

[Shad Cascone]

I don' I hate that even more now.

[Katie Cobb]

To me, it feels like she could have just been working at this clinic and not making enough money, and that would have been reason enough for him to need to write the book. Like, we didn't have to kill her.

[Shad Cascone]

But we did because she was dead in both the novel and.

[Katie Cobb]

But if they were gonna change it anyway, Cord Jefferson didn't have to kill her. He could have said, I don't like this. I'm taking it out. I'm putting in something else. They're all just po. Because she doesn't. Because she doesn't, you know, work for money. She's a doctor. That doesn't work for money. That's fine. Do that.

[Shad Cascone]

No, I think she had to. I think she had to be removed from the story because then it would have been him and her dealing with the brother who's now gay and is crazy and whatever. No, I think we had to remove her because of the way it was set up. Because I feel like if you'd left her in it would have created more differences down the line. It just came out of her. That's the way it was.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, my. How the tables have turned, my friend.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, I didn't do it. You're the one who picked the book. I'm just working with what I got here.

[Katie Cobb]

Let's talk about other changes from the book to the movie, because that is kind of where we're transitioning to from here, right? First, let's talk about everybody's freaking name.

[Shad Cascone]

Which this comes back, and you've heard me talk about this before, is like, these changes that are made for no reason. Why was it necessary? Especially with that name, who cares? And, like, build a cliff seems pretty much the same to me. Like, who cares? You know, Marilyn decorline. Okay. Like, it'd be one thing if they were trying to make it more something. Like, maybe this name's more black or. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Although it would make sense because he learned his whiteness from his father. And his father would have been the one that named the kids, I don't know, Yule to Arthur. Okay. I kind of get that. I mean, Yule's a weird name. Whatever.

[Katie Cobb]

Well, there's that one famous one, right. Yulprinter. I mean, that's the only one we got. Right?

[Shad Cascone]

Right. And then Juanita to Centaura. I don't. I don't. I don't know. And I. There's just. It was just. I don't know, I didn't like it.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, it was a lot of name changing and it was.

[Shad Cascone]

It wasn't just one.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. It felt like for no reason, for all of them.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, very. That. Also, the other big change that seemed like it was unnecessary was moving the setting from D.C. to Boston. Oh, why?

[Katie Cobb]

So true. Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

And I read something when I was doing some research and prep for the show was that it also kind of took away from the story because of the. The demographic of the two cities. D.C. is. It's a very black oriented city. There's a lot more ethnicity there than it is in Boston. So it was kind of like, why also would we have done that? I don't know if it's like a shooting thing. Maybe it's cheaper to shoot in Boston. I don't know if it was shot in Boston. I have no idea.

[Katie Cobb]

Production thing.

[Shad Cascone]

Right.

[Katie Cobb]

I was like, wow, a shooting thing, huh? We're going there. Interesting. Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

But yeah, it was also just seemed unnecessary, especially because it probably was all shot in California, so who actually cares?

[Katie Cobb]

Maybe there were a lot of gray skies. I feel like those beaches look like east Georgia.

[Shad Cascone]

Shot in Georgia, probably.

[Katie Cobb]

Georgia. That makes sense. One of the other big ones for me was this like conversation slash argument between Marilyn, Coraline and Monk and the book that's involved there. Right. In the book, Monk finds a copy of Whis Lives in the Ghetto on Marilyn's nightstand. And in the movie, he finds a copy of his book Fuck. Sitting on her kitchen counter and her name is Coraline instead. And he gets so mad that she likes this book that he wrote, which, by the way, looks like a totally normal sized book.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. There must have been very large font pictures.

[Katie Cobb]

Maybe they have 70 pages. What is happening?

[Shad Cascone]

I don't know. I mean, it was different and I don't know why it was needed, but it almost. For me, maybe it meant more in the movie because it's one thing for him not to like that she's reading Juanita, but it maybe was more personal for him because he knows the reason, like, Juanita did it, and if she was just a sellout for money because, you know, that's what she was doing. But for him, it meant something different because it was his book and the reason he wrote it, it was satire, but no one was getting the satire. And so it, like, she, like, failed him in that sense. So I didn't. I didn't necessarily dislike it, but it was just something else to change.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, these, like, arbitrarily, like, spaghetti at the wall. Let's just. Let's just make Adam Brody the younger guy. I mean, let's just throw spaghetti at the wall.

[Shad Cascone]

Some other things, like, little things. His brother Bill was very much. He lived in Scottsdale in the book, but in the movie he was from Tucson, which, if you're. If you know, Tucson, it definitely was a giant change. I feel like it was a. It was like a slap in the face almost. I thought that was funny. I also wrote just the timeline of events, so. And maybe that was just pacing for the movie, something that they just had to do. But there was definitely. It didn't follow the same. The big one for me was the deterioration of his mother and the wedding. Those kind of got flip flopped, where it was the wedding in the book and her locking herself in the bathroom, which was like the final straw that made him decide to put her in the home. When before or in the movie. It was. It was the other way around, where she was already in the home when the wedding happened. And a couple other things, too. But that was something like. I mean, you can explain that away when you're just adapting to a movie that might just be needed for pacing.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

[Shad Cascone]

And then the last one I have is, in the book, the character in Fuck. Van Gogh is not. He's arrested at the end of that story, but in the movie, they had him where he was actually killed at the end.

[Katie Cobb]

He was.

[Shad Cascone]

They mentioned it.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, okay.

[Shad Cascone]

In the movie, he dies.

[Katie Cobb]

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big change. I mean, the other big change is the ending. Although we will add some more to that when we talk about what was added to the movie.

[Shad Cascone]

Correct. Because these were things. These were changes. That's a lot. I have a things left out and a things added section also. So.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, let's get into what things were left out that should have been included. And I'm going to go first here with the half sister storyline.

[Shad Cascone]

Gretchen.

[Katie Cobb]

Everything with Gretchen and Fiona, the nurse that their father was involved with, is completely removed. Not only that, but Lisa, Bill, and the mom all know that their dad was fucking around on her, and Monk has no idea. Whereas because in the book, he's the one who discovers all this evidence in the gray box of stuff that she's burning, so.

[Shad Cascone]

Agreed. Yeah. So that was something that was left out. And I get. Maybe that was just an easier way to move the story along as well. Cause that would have been a couple extra characters, a whole side trip. But it was definitely something that I think was a bigger part of the book.

[Katie Cobb]

A big part of the book, definitely. Well, and it feels like to me, in the book, that added some dimension to Monk's character that we don't get in the movie much. Like the part that Shad hated the woodworking and fishing.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, my God. I wrote. So they took that out. Thank. I wrote thank Jeezy. Because I was just. I literally couldn't read them. I just skipped them. The stories, the story ideas. Those were great. Or the little stories that he would just throw in. Like, it was just like maybe the start of a novel. I don't know what they were. Oh, yeah, yeah. But when we were just talking about random woodworking, random fishing, I was just. I couldn't. When he read his paper. Oh, my God.

[Katie Cobb]

Reading the paper was terrible. What about the historical figures having conversations with each other? Artists and Hitler.

[Shad Cascone]

Skip those two. Skipped right over.

[Katie Cobb]

Did you even read this book?

[Shad Cascone]

I skimmed it. Okay, this is fine.

[Katie Cobb]

This is fine. There's also the entire game show section where Tom, the very learned and well spoken black man who is like a little bit shabby and rough around the edges, goes on this game show and just destroys this white guy. It does nothing in the story. So of course they took it out. But, like, why did it exist in the first place?

[Shad Cascone]

For me, it was just like he just has these interjections of stories or like these story ideas where there was the one about the guy who, like his second wife, had the same name as his first wife, who accused him of saying her name instead of hers instead of when they're having sex with.

[Katie Cobb]

It was the same name. Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

Right? Yeah. So, like, those ones I didn't mind because it was just like, okay, I get this. The rest of them, it was maybe. Maybe I am too dense to appreciate it, but I was happy it was not in the movie because I don't even know how they would even worked it in. Like.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, it would have had to be like a dream sequence. Nobody wants those.

[Shad Cascone]

No. And then the last thing I. Well, the other thing I have for things left out of the movie was just the extent to which his bat pathology was explored or, like, elaborated on. I mean, like you said, it was a very short excerpt where in the book we got the entire story.

[Katie Cobb]

And that's part of why I hate it so much, because Van Gogh is a character written in satire to show this, like, kowtowing of the publishing industry to black stories and thinking that that is an actual depiction of black culture. And he writes it on purpose like that. But the character, you know, he. The very first scene, he's stabbing his mother to death in a dream. And then he wakes up, and they just yell at each other all the time. And then he goes and rapes somebody. Like, it's just one thing after another. It's so hard to read. Even, like, I don't feel like I'm a very tender reader. I'm not like, oh, my heart, it hurts. But it's just so, like. It's like, awful upon awful upon awful upon awful. And then we turn the page, and something new awful is happening. Now he's being arrested on Maury Povich for the novel. Like, it's just this crazy. I didn't think it was so over the top.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, maybe because I read it as satire. And so it was just kind of.

[Katie Cobb]

Like, I hate satire.

[Shad Cascone]

It wasn't real.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. It's just so much.

[Shad Cascone]

Do you have anything else that you. That was left out that you wanted to note?

[Katie Cobb]

No, that. That was the majority of it. I just. With those things that we've taken out, the woodworking, the fishing, the exploration of the way that he presents his paper at the first conference, the half sister storyline where he goes and spends this time and finds her and then writes her a check for $100,000 and then walks away out of her life. It gives us a fuller picture of who is and what he's doing with his life. And then even, like, giving money to Lorraine for her wedding, all of that is removed as well. And it shows the way that he, like, wants to use this power that he feels he's garnered unfairly. And we don't get a lot of that in the movie. We're just like, okay, this is an author who, like, took a weird gamble and it paid off. And now he has to, like, deal with the ramifications of it, but we don't get this, like. And now I feel like I have to pay it back somehow.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. Like, the guilt from making the money from this thing that he didn't. He was just making fun of also. I think it takes away the the layers of him. Right. He's not as developed as a character because we don't have those different stories and things that he does.

[Katie Cobb]

Right, Definitely.

[Shad Cascone]

So I can see that, too.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Although he is kind of insufferable. Like that first paper about the different ways that you can interpret.

[Shad Cascone]

I didn't read it. I have no idea.

[Katie Cobb]

In a sentence. It's just. It is so awful and dry. And, yes, there are places that. That is interesting, but it surely was not the Nouveau Roman Society where he was giving this talk. All right, let's talk about what was added to the movie that wasn't in the book.

[Shad Cascone]

Okay. So we've already talked about the names, new names. I think the big one. There was two big ones for me. The first one we'll talk about. We'll talk about that one. Okay. The first one for me will be that Centaura was added to the book panel at the end, where he is selected to be a judge for a literary award, I think called the Literary Award. Literary Award.

[Katie Cobb]

And in the book. The book award.

[Shad Cascone]

The book award. Good. And in the book, he is one of just five people, the only black man, I believe, on the panel. And then in the movie, it is him. And there's also Sentara. So he gets to, like. I guess I don't want to say confront, but come face to face with her. They have an interaction, and you almost see him, in a way, liking her until, like, they have a little bit further conversation and they get a little bit more into it. And I thought that kind of added something to it. I don't know if it was necessary, but I wasn't mad that it was there.

[Katie Cobb]

I liked it. But I get what you're saying. I feel like it was a little bit of spoon feeding to the audience to say, well, why is he so mad at her? But then kind of copies what she does. And then to put them on the same panel where they have to talk about it together. And for her to, you know, have strong feelings about his book, but they're not the same ones that he has is. It adds more nuance to that conversation. And therefore, we need some spoon feeding. Right. He can't just be sitting there stewing because maybe we're not all gonna get it right.

[Shad Cascone]

The other one I have was, of course, the ending.

[Katie Cobb]

Yes.

[Shad Cascone]

So. So from what I read, what I read a little bit about, and I was doing some prep, was that you're supposed to. In the book. It's like the book is within the book itself. So it's like you're part of the story because the book is like writing about him writing a book. Right. So it's very meta in a movie. The way that this one ends was it ends with him talking to the producer, pitching endings for this story for a movie. So the way what I read was that it was still. It gave you that still, like, meta feeling, but because it was a movie, they just changed the format. Me, I appreciated it because I hated the way the book ended where it was just like, and we're done. And the movie did it too. And then it was like, oh, but this also could have was like clue, which I don't think you've ever seen, which is something in and of itself, but it gives you alternate endings and like, different things that could be. And I appreciated it. I was not mad about the ending and having different options.

[Katie Cobb]

I'm never mad to have more Adam Brody on screen. Even with a mullet.

[Shad Cascone]

With his mullet.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, I enjoyed that part of it. I thought it added a little bit of zippiness to it.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah.

[Katie Cobb]

It's still just this open ended. Like, we don't know what happens after the last page. We don't know what happens in the book after he says, e gads I'm on television because he's insufferable. And we don't know what actually happens in the movie because he calls Wily to say, get him back on the phone, I want to have a conversation about this movie. I want to do a different type of thing with it. And then they're pitching endings. But, like, what actually happened at the literary awards? We don't know because they're just throwing out these ideas.

[Shad Cascone]

Pretty sure he was not shot to death.

[Katie Cobb]

No. Because he's still standing there going out with a bang.

[Shad Cascone]

Right. Did he make up with Coraline? Did he not? You know, how did everyone take the fact that he wrote it? You know, was it a slap in the face? Was he allowed to win if he was on the judging panel and his book won even though he fought it the entire time? Yeah. There's just so many, like, what. What happened next? And it makes me mad. There should be a sequel. Let's write a sequel. Fan fiction sequel.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, it probably exists. Go look out on the Internet for it.

[Shad Cascone]

It's been like 23 years.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, for sure. I also thought it was interesting and this is kind of added to the movie, that final conversation with the book award panel where they're taking this vote and the two black judges are. Are voting against the fact that fuck should win this primary spot and for this literary award. And the other three white judges all say, nope, I think it should be number one. And they take a vote, and they're like, three against two. We win. Sometimes you just have to celebrate black voices. And they're like, black. White spleening.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, well, it's the irony of it, right? Like, we have to celebrate black voices but not listen.

[Katie Cobb]

But not listen to these ones in the room with us. Yeah. So lovely. So lovely. I also love the addition of the publisher and her lackey. Just really, like, orgasming over him on the phone. Those conversations where he's sitting there with his publisher and they're, like, putting the phone on mute and arguing with each other, and then they unmute and they talk to him, and we can see their faces, the woman and the man that are working at the publishing house, kind of going back and forth, and they're just so excited, and they're like, oh, I didn't want to say it, but you did. Oh, my God, this is so funny. Like, it just. That feels so true to life to me. Even though it's grossly like, I just. I love it. I love it so much. Yeah, all of those.

[Shad Cascone]

The other one that I have on my list is in the movie. They make Stag Arlie a wanted fugitive, which is the reason he couldn't go on tv, which was different. You know, that was something they added to it that wasn't part of the original story. He was still a convict. He was still. They alluded. I think they actually just said that he had murdered someone, I think with, like, a Swiss army knife, is what he said in the book.

[Katie Cobb]

In the book, he. He alludes to. He says they say I murdered somebody because he doesn't want to lie about it. And so I was waiting for that part in the movie, and Wiley says something like, well, was it murder? And he says, you said it, not me. So it's like. It's that same thing where he's like, I'm never gonna actually tell a lie about this, but I'm gonna skate real close to the truth and let other people lie for me. Yeah. The wanted fugitive. That whole thing was crazy.

[Shad Cascone]

When you were doing your prep, did you get the whole thing about who Stag R Lee is? Stagger Lee. It's like a play on Stagger Lee, which was a. What I read was a 20th century black pimp.

[Katie Cobb]

No.

[Shad Cascone]

Who earned white people's respect by developing a tough Persona. So even the name that he chose, Stag R. Lee, means something because he's like playing on this character, this person from like the 20th century.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh my gosh. No, I didn't notice that at all.

[Shad Cascone]

I didn't know he did that. When I was like, I said I was doing prep, I was reading stuff, I was like, oh, never would have known that.

[Katie Cobb]

Interesting.

[Shad Cascone]

Another little interested. Fun tidbit.

[Katie Cobb]

Tidbits. Tidbits with a popcorn. That's fun. Yeah. Okay. Should we move to casting?

[Shad Cascone]

We can move to casting. I got some casting. And I want to preface my casting here by saying, first off, there's a couple Easter eggs, which I'll probably just explain because I'm really excited for them. And secondly, I was not unhappy with any of the casting. I don't think anyone was miscast. I didn't think there was any like gross like casting here. So these are all just, you know, other people that I feel like could have played the role. First off, I was shamed. I just wanted every. I want to let everybody know that I was shamed when watching this because I did not know who Jeffrey Wright was. No idea. Never know. I couldn't know him from Adam. I had no idea. I've never seen anything he's ever been in. My mother shamed. Hi, Mom. Because she also knew who he was. No idea. I think he did a great job. But from other people I chose for the role. And he's kind of like, he's supposed to be this very nerdy white presenting black guy. So the first one I thought of and even when I was watching Jeffrey Wright play this role, I kept thinking of, I'm sure I'm gonna say his name Joffrey, just because his name's also it's. But it's with the G G E O F R U I Owens, who he played Elvin on the Cosby show, who was Sandra's husband. He's been kind of around lately because he was on social media recently because he was complaining about how like he had this role in the 80s and now he's broke. He was like, last time that people saw him, he was like a cashier at Trader Joe's. But if you know who he is, he kind of fit that vision for me. For I also chose Andre Brower, who was. If you know him, you probably know him from Brooklyn. 9 9. He played the captain. Well, I don't just like a very, like a very straight faced, just kind of like serious man. I like, I like those two for him. Next up, I went to Lisa, in which case, like we already talked about this. Role wasn't very big. Tracee Ellis Ross did a fine job, but when I read Lisa, she came off with a little bit more attitude. So I wanted someone with a little bit more grit to her for this role. Tracee Ellis Ross is fine, but she's. She's very. I don't. I don't get grit from her. So I said someone like Regina King would be great for this role. I also chose Niecy Nash because I love her. So those are two I picked for that for the mother. Leslie Uggams is great. I definitely appreciate her, but. Okay, first off, can we talk? Let's just have a conversation real fast. I talked to Katie about this, but when they first were talking about his mother, I assumed she was black. But when they described her more, I thought that she was white. So I was surprised when they cast her as black. I thought maybe she could play white. And I wanted someone with a little bit, like, more waspiness to her, a little more proper. Leslie Uggams is great, but I just don't see her.

[Katie Cobb]

So, like Audra McDonald's.

[Shad Cascone]

Exactly. Audra McDonald's is who I chose. I also said Phylicia Rashad.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

This film was 20. 20, 23. Somewhat like Cecily Tyson would have been great. I think she was dead by then, though, so probably not. Probably couldn't have done it. But just someone or, you know, like, you know, someone who was a little bit more white presenting. Because I just. I don't know. For some reason, she read as white to me. Maybe that's just me for Cliff or Bill, whoever you want to say. Was played by Sterling K. Brown, who I love. I think he's sex on a stick. And this. So this is one of my Easter eggs. I said that he could be Idris Elba because wasn't her. Because I'm pretty sure you can correct me if I'm wrong. The letter that he reads that she wrote for her funeral, didn't she say that she wanted to die under the thrusting heaves of Idris Elba, which I thought would have been great if that.

[Katie Cobb]

Was who played her brother in a less dignified manner under the thrusting heaves of Russell Crowe? Is what she said correct?

[Shad Cascone]

It was Idris Elba, though. Right. I thought this would be great if the actor played him.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, he is great.

[Shad Cascone]

Amazing. So I'd throw that one in there. Okay. For Coraline, who is Marilyn. This will be my last one. Oh, no. Because I have Sinatra too. Centaura too. Okay. Which, by the way, when I was typing out her name, it kept autocorrecting just Sinatra, which made me so mad. Coraline, played by Erica Alexander, who is a great actress. And I think if you know her, you know her from the 90s sitcom Living Single, which was like Black Friends essentially with Queen Latifah. So I thought it'd be funny if. If the other actors that could have played her were Kim Fields or Kim Coles, who were her co stars in Living Single. That's my three strike for you. So I don't know if we would have gotten that if I hadn't said it. So I would just kind of.

[Katie Cobb]

Well, I wouldn't have, but maybe somebody else.

[Shad Cascone]

Correct. And then I also said like I was also going to throw Queen Latifah in for Lysa, but I thought that'd be too much. Too much there.

[Katie Cobb]

Fair.

[Shad Cascone]

Okay. And then for Sentara is played by Issa Rae. And I also. So I wanted her to have. And maybe it's just because of the fact that she wrote We Lives in the Ghetto, I wanted her to have a little more ghetto ness to her. So I thought someone like Octavia Spencer would have been great for her.

[Katie Cobb]

But she specifically like, she went to Oberlin. She's specifically like. She's like super Wasp. What about Viola Davis?

[Shad Cascone]

I said Taraji P. Henson. I think, I thought, I thought about Viola Davis, but I thought she might have been too old.

[Katie Cobb]

Right. Fair.

[Shad Cascone]

So yeah. Although I did say Cecily Tyson and she's dead.

[Katie Cobb]

So I mean, it's our casting. We do what we want. Right?

[Shad Cascone]

We do. Okay. So there you go. There's some casting options for you.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay. The only casting note that I had, and I kind of mentioned it to you while we were watching it, is that Adam Brody as Wiley, we both felt that he presented as like an old dude in the movie or in.

[Shad Cascone]

The book or like a sleazy. Like I pictured him as kind of like a Harvey Weinstein type.

[Katie Cobb]

Mm. Yeah. Somebody that would get me to Ed for sure. And. Cause he has this like blonde bombshell dum dum with him during this dinner that is asking these ridiculous questions. And so to have Adam Brody with his mullet be the person playing that role felt off to me. But I wasn't mad about it.

[Shad Cascone]

Mad about it. He did. He did portray that like sleazy Hollywood type though, but it just wasn't the right age for us.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, he felt more like trust fund kid. Like he got left a production studio in the will and therefore now he gets to make these big calls. But not like Somebody who should be trusted to make $3 million screenwriting deals.

[Shad Cascone]

Nepo, baby.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Vibes, Definitely. Okay. Anything problematic, and it could be because it's old, because it is old, 25 years old, or because it's lacking something. Anything.

[Shad Cascone]

I don't. I think this story isn't old, though. I mean, 25 years, if you like it sounds. I mean, that's a long time ago, right? 25 years is a long time ago. But I think the story. It still rings true, and I think that's why the movie probably could be made now and did so well as it did, because the story is still relevant. So I got. I got a little deep. You ready for my deep? Because I didn't really see a whole lot of problematic stuff. And it's hard to point out problematic stuff because it is a satire. So anything that you want to point.

[Katie Cobb]

Out, it's like, that's where I was landing. Yep.

[Shad Cascone]

Okay. So I wrote with it being a satire about race, which is supposed to be about, like, this black guy story and, like, the way that he wants to present it and he's making fun of. Does it ultimately turn the focus too much on white people? Because the satire is, you know, like, these white people that don't get it. Like, is it. Does that make sense? Okay, so is that problematic, that. Because, you know, we're gonna look at it and say, oh, yeah, the white people didn't get it, or, you know, it focuses too much on the white people when it's supposed to be a race satire written by a black man about the issues with, you know.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, yeah, I can see that. I mean, I kind of landed similarly in that. It felt like because it's satire and everything is kind of sent to its extreme, there were two extremes of black life depicted here with very little in the middle. It felt like there are two sides to a coin, and one is the heads side. We'll say the head side, which is Thelonious Monk, who is almost white, presenting, very intellectual, doesn't want his books in the black studies section of Borders, doesn't want to be labeled as just one thing, and doesn't even talk like a black man, which is very, like, clearly delineated in the story. And then the other side of the coin is Van Gogh Jenkins, who is every single stereotype you've ever heard in your life to the extreme with the actions and the plotline around the novel. And it makes this juxtaposition that's so extreme that it feels like we needed more in the middle, which I guess is Cliff and Lisa and maybe even. What's the mom's name? Mrs. Ellison.

[Shad Cascone]

Agnes.

[Katie Cobb]

Agnes Ellison. And they're kind of, you know, we live in the middle. We're not either one of those extremes. But it felt like the only focus was on these two spotlights on the far end of either.

[Shad Cascone]

Isn't that the point?

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. Yes. But it felt like reinforcing it rather than poking fun at it as much as I wanted it to.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, I get that. Do you think it's due to its age or anything that. Can you attribute it to anything or you just think it's.

[Katie Cobb]

I mean, I think that was his goal. I think he wanted us to see it like that. And I think that's part of why I have such a hard time with satire in written form or in video form. And it's because I like nuance and I like subtlety in my books. And satire doesn't do that intentionally. But I'm just not that type of reader. So. I will also say that there is a little bit of. There's this gay storyline with Cliff Slash Bill. Right.

[Shad Cascone]

Where it was very stereotypical as well.

[Katie Cobb]

Right. It's only. Either he's married with a beard to his wife, or he's doing drugs and having sex with multiple men on the beach and so high he forgot that there's a wedding. Like, there's not. And then he lived a happy life as a regular ass gay man. Like, what? That doesn't exist in this storyline either.

[Shad Cascone]

So, I mean, I don't know how much that exists in real life, but that's a story for another day.

[Katie Cobb]

I'm in. I know one.

[Shad Cascone]

But yes, I would agree that it was a very stereotypical depiction of, like, a gay man and his lifestyle.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

Which also. Because I don't think there was satire there. Does that make Percival Everett part of the problem?

[Katie Cobb]

Right. Because that's not necessarily where his satire flashlight was thrown.

[Shad Cascone]

But to be fair with this book was written in 2001. I mean, you got to think, like, Will and Grace was still on the air. It was still, like, being gay was not as mainstream. So, I mean, could that be just due to its age? Probably. You know, that's when queers focus on. And that's how gay people were depicted.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

That's what they did. So maybe that could be. It could be rewritten and better. But it may have just been a product of its age.

[Katie Cobb]

But it wasn't rewritten for the movie to give more nuance to that depiction either.

[Shad Cascone]

Right. We can kill A sister with a heart attack. We can change the gay character and make him more well rounded. No, more normal.

[Katie Cobb]

Not alone. All we did was move him to Tucson.

[Shad Cascone]

Absolutely not. Right? Move him to Tucson. That's all he gets.

[Katie Cobb]

That's all he gets. All right, let's move to the award season section. So we're going to go highs and lows all throughout the book and the movie. Let's talk about the worst parts of the adaptation.

[Shad Cascone]

I wrote. So I wrote. So it's funny because I wrote the depiction of Cliff, but not for those reasons. And maybe. Maybe it is. Maybe it just wasn't as well thought out when I wrote it down. But I said just because in the book, we get Bill in very small doses. Most of it is like a phone conversation we don't get to see. Like, it's mostly inferred, like, oh, a different man's answering his phone or he refers to someone by a different name. The only real depiction we get of him when he's with Monk is when he goes to the house and stays out all night. And I said, in the movie, he was around all the time. So we got to see it more when it didn't feel like that was necessary. Like, it was more. It was more largely implied in the book than in the movie. What did you have for the worst part?

[Katie Cobb]

I wrote that there's so much less tension about the mom moving to the assisted living home. There's not the. What are we gonna do? We can't afford it. But maybe she's gonna be okay. Maybe. Let's go to the doctor. Oh, she has good days. She has bad days. Now she's pointing a gun at me. Like, all of those scenes leading up to. All right, we really need to do this for her own good. And now what are we gonna do about Lorraine? None of that happens. It's like, wow, this one thing where she, like, overflows the bathtub and we better get her in there quick.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, maybe. Because, like, we're gonna talk later about this. Will tie in later. Just remember, this will tie in later.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

Little foreshadowing.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, we like that. All right, let's talk about the best parts of the adaptation.

[Shad Cascone]

So obviously, we've already talked about how I loved the acting out of the Mad Pathology when he wrote it. But the other one I put down, it was the Saint in the bookstore when he's moving his books. Moving the books over from this section from the African American studies into the Mythology. Mythology section. I thought that was very well done. I laughed it was great with the guy who's like, I'm just gonna move him when you leave.

[Katie Cobb]

He's like, don't you?

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. I thought it was, like, some comic relief we needed, and I thought it was done really well. What did you have?

[Katie Cobb]

I wrote that it was very funny to me. There are multiple times that we laughed out loud while watching it. You, me, and your mom laughed out loud. And I think it had zippy dialogue that really moved along. It never stayed in one place for very long. It was good at, like, really continuing to move the story forward. We weren't sitting in my pathology for a quarter of the movie. Like, we just really kept moving things forward. And that did take away some of the nuance, some of the tension around the mom, especially around Lisa. But it did make it a fun watch and more propulsive than the book was a lot of times.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. Cause what was the runtime? Cause it didn't feel.

[Katie Cobb]

I think it was about short.

[Shad Cascone]

It didn't feel. Yeah, it didn't feel like it was short. It didn't feel like it was too long. But like you said, you missed the tension with his mom. Those scenes. Would it have slowed down the pacing? Would it have made it not as great? Because it wasn't, you know, what we were. It was the motivation, I guess, for writing the book, because it was the monetary motivation. He needed to do it. Right. He needed the money because he knew he had these finances and things. But, I mean, it would have slowed down because that's not what the movie was about.

[Katie Cobb]

I don't know. I really feel like an elderly woman with Alzheimer's pointing a loaded gun at her son through the window. I don't feel like that lacks tension.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, no. And I know that one of your favorite scenes was when she was out on the boat and he was trying to get on board and she was slapping him with the oar.

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. I love that scene so much in the book. And then how that ties back to Lisa's joke about it's a legal matter because it's Roe versus Wade.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

[Katie Cobb]

Get out to the book. It just. I loved. That's, like, the funniest scene in the book for me. I love it so much.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, I know. We talked about how you missed it, and that's.

[Katie Cobb]

All right. Let's go with. With actors. Now we're going to talk about worst actor.

[Shad Cascone]

First, my foreshadowing. I wrote Leslie Uggams, who played the mother, and I think it was just a matter of. It wasn't a very. Like, there was no meat on the bone for her role. Right. I mean, she was supposed to be playing a woman getting succumbing to Alzheimer's or dementia. And I mean, there's not really a whole lot you can do there without being too crazy. But, I mean, I just. I don't say that she was like the worst actor, but, I mean, it was just kind of the most blah performance.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

But I don't think it was attributed to Leslie Uggams. She's a national treasure.

[Katie Cobb]

Right. And I feel the same about my pick. I went with Coraline. Not that her acting is bad, but that the character in the movie is just kind of dishwater that everybody else is sitting in. She kind of slides into their lives. She's. All of a sudden she's like, slept with him once, and then she's moving his mom into the Alzheimer's. The memory care facility. And then she just dips back out again after they have an argument. And she just. She didn't add anything to the story. She didn't serve a purpose. So I was like, you know, honestly, we could have gotten rid of that storyline and put in something else that we actually cared more about.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. Mothers pointing guns at sons.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, put that scene, obviously. Or the boat. I love the boat scene. Okay, how about best actor?

[Shad Cascone]

I wrote Adam Brody. I do love Adam Brody. I don't know if that's fair, but I'm sticking with it.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay. I like that.

[Shad Cascone]

Give me some Adam Brody.

[Katie Cobb]

This is more shade at shad, but I think Jeffrey Wright is perfectly cast as a haughty intellectual who's play acting at toughness. And that is because, of course, I'm always so proud when I actually know an actor before the movie comes along. But I first got to know him in the Hunger Games Catching Fire, where he plays Bill Beaty. And he's a similar character there. He's super nerdy. He's in the Hunger Games for a second time as a grown ass man, and he's trying to be tough and form alliances, but he's also just like this super nerdy dude, and I think he plays that role really well. So I was happy to see him kind of reprise it here in.

[Shad Cascone]

So then, was he just typecast maybe?

[Katie Cobb]

I'm not against it. Sometimes typecasting is for a reason. I'm sure he plays other things elsewhere. It's just.

[Shad Cascone]

Does he. Because I don't know him from anyone, so.

[Katie Cobb]

From Adam Brody.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. Correct.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, how about back on Adam Brody, worst character in the Book.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, my God. Linda Mallory.

[Katie Cobb]

Oh, my God, I forgot about Linda. She's awful.

[Shad Cascone]

Awful. I mean, and like, no self respect. And I just can't with her. I can't believe he sleeps with her again. And it's just awful. She doesn't even get him off.

[Katie Cobb]

And we get more detail the second time where it's like. And then she asks about, like, what her face looks like when she orgasms.

[Shad Cascone]

Ew, she's gross.

[Katie Cobb]

She is yucky.

[Shad Cascone]

Disgusting. Okay, who did you put?

[Katie Cobb]

I mean, I didn't have Linda. I put Van Gogh Jenkins, but it's definitely Linda Mallory.

[Shad Cascone]

Is he a character in the book, though? Or is he a character within the book? Within the book.

[Katie Cobb]

His name is in the book. I'm calling him a character in the book.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, well, yes.

[Katie Cobb]

I just, like, I just hate that whole section. The dialogue is bad. The plot arcs are bad. His dreams about murdering his mom.

[Shad Cascone]

I mean, matricide sometimes.

[Katie Cobb]

What?

[Shad Cascone]

Matricide sometimes. Maybe it's necessary. His mom was not great to him.

[Katie Cobb]

Settle down, settle down. Okay. Best character in the book.

[Shad Cascone]

I wrote Monk because, like, there's not really a whole lot of other developed characters in the book. Let's be real here.

[Katie Cobb]

Truly.

[Shad Cascone]

There's not a whole lot there to go. Maybe Lorraine because she cared for his mother for all those years and then she got her happy ending. But no, it's Monk. Like, it has to be Monk.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay. I really like Yul. I like his agent and the way that he almost plays the reader in the book. Like, he's playing our role in the book because he's pushing back against him. He's like, are you crazy? I can't send this to a publisher. And then he's saying, like, well, you have to take this money. Do it. And he's playing all the parts that we wish we could say to Monk. So I feel like he makes a great foil for us as a reader. And then he's saying, like, okay, well, you know, white people be crazy. Like, what do you know?

[Shad Cascone]

I got that.

[Katie Cobb]

Surprise, surprise. Right? So I. I really like Yul and the way that he highlights Monks crazy and like, brings it to the surface and also plays the, like the capitalist. Gotta do what you gotta do. Let's make some money. Let's sell some books.

[Shad Cascone]

He's making 10% or whatever.

[Katie Cobb]

10%. Good for him. Way to negotiate, man. I love that.

[Shad Cascone]

Right?

[Katie Cobb]

All right, let's get into our book flick energy. Our final thoughts. We're going to give some scores here, which was better. We're Going to score them. Let's talk about the book.

[Shad Cascone]

The book.

[Katie Cobb]

I will tell you first that on Goodreads it has 4.17 out of 5 stars with 24,000 ratings, which is not the smallest number we've had and it's certainly not the biggest number we've had. But good ratings. Yeah, definitely.

[Shad Cascone]

I gave it a 3.5.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, great.

[Shad Cascone]

I thought it was well written. I got what it was doing and I thought it did exactly good job at doing that. But like, I just couldn't with the excerpts about the woodworking and the trout fishing and that stupid paper that he wrote. There was just too many things about it. Like I told you, I, I probably did not read a third of this book because it was all of that crap. That was just like, I skimmed it.

[Katie Cobb]

That's so much.

[Shad Cascone]

It was just like, I can't do this. I just can't. Okay, maybe this is it. Maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe I'm part of the problem. But like there's conversations where it was like two dead, like people talking. I was like, it didn't add to the story. Maybe, maybe that's, maybe I didn't get it. Maybe it did and that was a problem. I don't know. It was awful. I didn't like it. I, I. So it got a three and a half for me. What did you go?

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, first time I read it, I gave it a three and a half.

[Shad Cascone]

Hey, woohoo.

[Katie Cobb]

This time because Storygraph has quarter stars, I bumped it up to 4.25. And I think it's because. 4.25. I know. I think it's because I take in satire better on paper. And this is something I need to remember for next time I try to pick up anything that has the word satire anywhere close to the book. Because the writing to me had quite a bit more lightness to it than it did in the, in the audio version. And I think it's because I couldn't even like skip my eye down the page to see how long this dialogue was going to be between Hitler and whatever general he's talking about or skip forward and know exactly how long I was going to be in my pathology. So I knew how long I had to sit in that when I was listening to it on audio, it felt interminable.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, I could see that there was.

[Katie Cobb]

No point to anything. And I hated everything about my life when I was reading it on paper. It felt achievable and like it kept moving forward in a way that it didn't feel before. So I enjoyed it far more. Almost two years ago. Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

I'm surprised that you finished it if you hated it that much.

[Katie Cobb]

Well, on audio, it's like, I don't know, six hours.

[Shad Cascone]

I listen three times. Speed. Yeah.

[Katie Cobb]

And I listen at 3x speed. I'm sure I did it in one day.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Katie Cobb]

It felt interminable. No, it wasn't two years ago because I was already living in Arizona. So I think it was about a year ago when I listened to it because I was driving to get a birthday present for my mom.

[Shad Cascone]

Were you triggered by the movie coming out? Is that why you read it?

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. Although I did watch the movie after, so I think I watched the movie between when I read it and when it was up for an Oscar. It may have already been nominated, but it had not won for Best Screenplay yet. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's where that all happened. But that was December. January, about a year ago.

[Shad Cascone]

Okay.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah. Okay. And then let's rank the movie, and I'll tell you the public scores on this one before we get started on Rotten Tomatoes. 93% critics score.

[Shad Cascone]

What?

[Katie Cobb]

95% audience score. Shocked? I. Yeah, shocked. IMDb, we're not as cultured over there. 107,000 people have rated it, and they give it 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb.

[Shad Cascone]

It's funny because I also gave it a 7.5.

[Katie Cobb]

I gave it an 8.

[Shad Cascone]

I thought it was well adapted. It stuck to the source material, and I appreciated the ending. But, like, I don't know, it just. It didn't. I would. I mean, I don't think I'm ever gonna watch it again. It wasn't one of those where I'm just like, yes, this is it. This changed my life. It was fine.

[Katie Cobb]

The movie.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah.

[Katie Cobb]

As I was researching today, I got to see the COVID I guess the movie poster again for the first time. Again for the first time, like you say. And I love the COVID for the. For the movie.

[Shad Cascone]

Oh, where it's like him and his face penciled over.

[Katie Cobb]

Yes. I think it's so good, and I love the way that it made me think about the movie. But, yeah, I gave it an 8.5. I did really enjoy it. I found it zippy. I found it fun to watch. I have now seen it twice. This time was a different experience because I was very specifically trying to nitpick the things that were different between. But I think it really brings the message mainstream in an enjoyable way. I'm still mad about Lisa's storyline. And so that's really where my deductions come from.

[Shad Cascone]

No boat scene.

[Katie Cobb]

No boat scene. That. I mean, that's a big deduction. That's half a point right there. All right, let's move to that leftover Colonel section. This is our little Q and A. Something silly, something fun. Shad, what is your question?

[Shad Cascone]

So I didn't really come up with anything that pertained necessarily to the book. I mean, maybe a little bit. But the question I came up with is, do you have any irrational fears?

[Katie Cobb]

They don't feel irrational to me.

[Shad Cascone]

Something that would be commonly seen as irrational or fear. Something that's, I don't know, not normal. That's like irrational, irrational.

[Katie Cobb]

I mean, they all. They all feel rational to me. The one weird.

[Shad Cascone]

Do you have any weird fears?

[Katie Cobb]

That feels a little bit like maybe some other people don't think that is so normal. Is that if I, like, misstep or fall flashing through my brain, I have. That I will suffer a traumatic head injury and no longer be able to take care of my kids. And, like, every single time that either I'll die or be incapacitated by, like.

[Shad Cascone]

Like when you fell down the stairs?

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, when I fell down the stairs after Christmas this year, I was like, this is how I die, and my kids need me. Like, I can't die like this. And I don't know anybody that that has happened to. Like, there's no reason that that should be what flashes through my head. But that is what I'm terrified of.

[Shad Cascone]

Didn't your dad have a friend who, like, cracked his neck and went paralyzed? Wasn't that you? I thought that was you. Maybe I make things up.

[Katie Cobb]

When I was in college, my aunt. My dad's sister told me that he used to pop his neck like that, right? Moving his neck back and forth until it made cracking noises. And he. I don't. Severed his spine doing it or something. She was trying to creep me out, but. But that's not. I've never been like, oh, I should definitely not. That's not. When I have my life flash before my eyes.

[Shad Cascone]

I didn't know if that was maybe. Maybe where it came from.

[Katie Cobb]

I'm sure it came from becoming a mom and all of the emotions around having children, but. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Okay, here's my question. It's related to the book.

[Shad Cascone]

To the book.

[Katie Cobb]

If you were put on a Jerry Springer type show, what would be the most surprising thing they could reveal about you?

[Shad Cascone]

Like, what's my deepest, darkest Secret?

[Katie Cobb]

No, that's literally what you're asking me right now. I don't want that. But, like, what would be like, the weirdest or it could be if you were. If you were pulled on as a guest, what would you be most shocked to learn about somebody else in your life?

[Shad Cascone]

I don't know.

[Katie Cobb]

I don't know. It could be like that. That my sister had children I never knew about before she got gay married. I don't know. Like.

[Shad Cascone]

I love that we. I love that we clarified that.

[Katie Cobb]

Well, I mean, it would be very surprising. And it's more surprising because of that. Right.

[Shad Cascone]

Maybe something along the lines of if I had, like, estranged siblings, like, that would be weird for me. Which could very well be because.

[Katie Cobb]

Uh huh.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

I could say that would be something that would be. Although they could be fun if I had additional siblings just like out there in the universe, what have you. Ooh. Like a long lost twin. That would be great.

[Katie Cobb]

What?

[Shad Cascone]

I would love that. You can't shame me for, like, that.

[Katie Cobb]

Your mom had a second baby that she didn't take home from the hospital because she chose you.

[Shad Cascone]

Correct. Because why would you not choose me?

[Katie Cobb]

Okay. Amazing.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. If I had, like a straight twin brother, that'd be fine. See what my life could have been like from the other side of the coin. Yeah, exactly.

[Katie Cobb]

I like it.

[Shad Cascone]

I like this. Yeah, this is working for me.

[Katie Cobb]

All right.

[Shad Cascone]

What would you. What about you? What would you do? What would shock you? What would make you shock it?

[Katie Cobb]

I have like such a large family. Once you take into account all my, like, cousins and my parents. Cousins and stuff. Maybe, maybe that. I don't know, that Jason had children before he married me. That would be a thing. Where I'd be like, holy crap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. Your kids would have to split their inheritance. Terrible.

[Katie Cobb]

Who wants that? Nobody. Okay, well. Hey, did you tell me your weirdest fear?

[Shad Cascone]

No. Cause you didn't ask.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay, wait, well, let's circle back.

[Shad Cascone]

Okay. So I have this weird fear and I don't know where it stems from. Cause it's not like it's a thing. But whenever I walk under a garage door, I always. I'm always afraid that it's gonna fall and kill me. And I don't know why. Especially if it's like still in the process of going up and you like, have to like duck underneath it. I just. I just know that it's gonna fall on my neck and like break my neck and I'm gonna die right there. That's How I'm gonna die one day, I'm gonna die that way. And they were gonna be like, hey, I knew it.

[Katie Cobb]

He was always scared of that. Yeah.

[Shad Cascone]

I don't know why, but like, it's just this thing where it's just like. Cause it would crush you and you'd be dead. I mean, and I think about it.

[Katie Cobb]

Every time, but like, have you ever like pushed on a garage door and then it like starts going back up?

[Shad Cascone]

No. Well, yeah. Yeah, we're like, it like it definitely. That's what I'm saying. Does it have to like completely malfunction, Break so badly? Right. And fall?

[Katie Cobb]

I mean, it'd have to be a big garage door though. Because I feel like even a regular two car garage door, I don't think it could break your neck.

[Shad Cascone]

You don't think we'd kill a man.

[Katie Cobb]

Maybe if it were like a child that was weighing like a guillotine?

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Is that like.

[Katie Cobb]

So you fall and it malfunctions and it almost slices your head off.

[Shad Cascone]

No. So it's like when it's still going up and you have to like duck underneath it and you're like. You put your neck to the side or like down and then if it like fell on you.

[Katie Cobb]

So do you go out ass first to avoid it? Like, what?

[Shad Cascone]

No, no, I don't do anything to change the way I don't. I just go out. But it's something I think about every time I walk into a garage door, which is a lot.

[Katie Cobb]

Yeah, you do it at my house pretty frequently.

[Shad Cascone]

All the time. Yeah, my mom's house. Weird.

[Katie Cobb]

Okay.

[Shad Cascone]

That's my rational fear.

[Katie Cobb]

All right. I like it. That was our discussion of erasure.

[Shad Cascone]

All of it.

[Katie Cobb]

Both the book and the movie. American Fiction. We are so happy that you joined us for this. Our show is produced and edited by Megan Putabong Evans, who you can find on Instagram at most of Megan's reads.

[Shad Cascone]

So this was great. I hope you had as much fun as we always do. Our next. Next episode. Episode.

[Katie Cobb]

Really?

[Shad Cascone]

Episode. Our next. Our next episode.

[Katie Cobb]

What is that?

[Shad Cascone]

I don't even know. Our next episode. In about two months time. So we're looking probably at the end of April. We'll focus on the Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbotsky. The book was released in 1999. So long ago. 26 years. Insane. And the 2012 movie of the same name can be rented on Amazon Prime. I read this in high school, guys. High school.

[Katie Cobb]

I also read it in high school because it was like a new release.

[Shad Cascone]

Yeah. And it was like, oh, my God, I was so, like, angsty. And it changed my life. And it was the greatest thing ever. We'll see how that holds up.

[Katie Cobb]

You know what's gonna be interesting about this one is that the movie came out halfway between now and when it was written. So there's gonna be a lot of things, A lot of things happening there.

[Shad Cascone]

A lot of things.

[Katie Cobb]

If you want more bookish content, we'd love to have you join us every Monday for the Currently Reading podcast, where I am joined by Meredith Monday Schwartz, my co host, to talk about everything we've been reading lately. You can find the show at Currentlyreading podcast on Instagram. I'm Oates on Bookmarks and Meredith is at Meredith Monday Schwartz over there as well.

[Shad Cascone]

And you will find me here. Exactly right here, as well as in the Bookish friends group on Facebook.

[Katie Cobb]

Excellent. We cannot wait to chat with you next time on Popcorn in the Pages. Until then, may your popcorn be hot.

[Shad Cascone]

And salty, and may your book be better than the movie.

[Katie Cobb]

Happy reading, Shad.

[Shad Cascone]

Happy watching, Katie.