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- [00:10]
Jolie Hunt
Hello.
- [00:12]
Felix Salmon
Welcome to the Working Girl episode of Slate. Money goes to the movies. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Anna Shymansky.
- [00:23]
Anna Shymansky
Hello.
- [00:24]
Felix Salmon
We have the inimitable and unique Jolie Hunt from Hunt and Gather. Jolie, introduce yourself and tell us what is this movie that we are going to be talking about?
- [00:38]
Jolie Hunt
Well, Felix, today's special is Working Girl, a classic, in my very humble opinion, film from the late 80s that was really about someone trying to make it, in this case, Wall street, but really just trying to make it in the business world and getting there through a whole host of sexual harassment, ide poaching. The fashion statements were remarkable. And really, I think it's a movie about rooting for the underdog and what you can achieve if the fairytale chips fall in your favor, so to speak.
- [01:11]
Felix Salmon
And it's your life, right? This is basically the Jolie Hunt look.
- [01:16]
Jolie Hunt
I mean, there's definitely aspects of this movie, you know, without getting out my Stradivarius. I mean, you know, I had a parent who grew up in New York City and a parent who grew up in the sticks and. And always dreamed of working in that tall building in Manhattan and living the big life. And so I do think that for my younger self and my current self, it's a good reminder of why you have to hustle to get wherever it is that you're going.
- [01:43]
Felix Salmon
Jolie Han is nothing if not a hustler. So we will join you on the other side talking about Working Girl. Okay, Jolie, Working Girl, where were you when you first saw this movie? How old were you?
- [02:00]
Jolie Hunt
I was 10. 1988 was a seminal year in my life, and I watched such classics like Cocktail and Beetlejuice and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But for me, Rain man, it was a big year for movies. If you really look at it, it.
- [02:17]
Felix Salmon
Was a big year for movies.
- [02:18]
Jolie Hunt
Die Hard. It was the great outdoors, which I still love. I know that's a different podcast, but I was 10 and in upstate New York, and promptly after this movie came out, I started researching how old you had to be to get a job. Back in the day, you had to be 11 to have a work permit. And let me tell you, pre Internet, I had to really canvas the streets to get this kind of information. But I promptly got employment in 1989. I think hot off the back of Tess McGill, on the basis of this.
- [02:53]
Felix Salmon
Was clearly the way to riches and success in the world was to get a job.
- [02:58]
Jolie Hunt
100%.
- [02:59]
Anna Shymansky
Yes.
- [02:59]
Felix Salmon
That was the lesson that you Learned at age 10 from watching the movie.
- [03:03]
Jolie Hunt
It is. And, you know, I think growing up with parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds, it was a fascinating look at. If you try hard enough, if you work hard enough, if you gussy up a little bit, you too. If you have half a brain on you, you too can be a success story. So I think so of this movie is about the American dream and what is possible. This is.
- [03:27]
Felix Salmon
You're taking this at, like, face value. American dream. This is like the woman who works her way up from secretary into person with secretary, and it's like, I don't know, a duckling flowering into a swan.
- [03:42]
Jolie Hunt
That was my journey, literally. I mean, my first job out of college working for Putnam Investments was sitting outside of all the male executives. There was a row of secretaries, assistants, we were graduated to being called. And no women were in senior roles. So, weirdly, it's. And I don't know that I knew this at 10. In fact, I'm near certain I didn't. But it really was life imitating art, if you think about it. I mean, it was hard to break through, and not everybody does. And so, yeah, I'm sure you're gonna yell at me for being as cliche as that sounds.
- [04:18]
Felix Salmon
You were 10. Surely we're not gonna yell at you for that.
- [04:22]
Anna Shymansky
Yeah, but I was.
- [04:23]
Jolie Hunt
I mean, look, I don't remember how I felt exactly at 10 years old about this movie, but watching it 30 years later, it gave me the same kinds of feels. And, you know, I mean, even her changing her sneakers and her socks into heels, I feel like even some of the examples I took with me through every job in life. And so, yeah, I do think at 10, it was a beautiful display of how do you get ahead? And being smart is not the only way. You do have to be a bit cunning. And I'd like to think I did some of that.
- [05:00]
Anna Shymansky
I also loved this movie when I was little. I don't know what age I was, but it was probably similar to 10. Although I would have seen it on a VHS. I would have been 6 when this came out. So I definitely did not see it in the theaters. And I do think it's a somewhat unique example of a film where the ending is the women getting a corporate job, and that is the best thing that can happen. That's not a standard trajectory in film. But I will say it was interesting watching it again because I have not seen it in a very long time. And although I do feel like I know every single line of this movie, whenever you watched it, that it is definitely a fairy tale. And I think it is very clearly depicted as a fairy tale. Even the way the music kind of fits in at certain points. And it's a fairy tale about class, about moving class. And one of the things I did think was interesting too was that one of the lessons that I got watching at this time was they were saying the American Dream is only possible if you actually break rules. That the idea of pulling yourself up on your own is impossible. That's what she realizes that she can't possibly do that. She has to a literally, like, lie and pretend she's someone else. But then she also needs the help of wealthy people who can actually bring her up. That is how that actually works. Which is probably one of the more realistic aspects of the film.
- [06:17]
Felix Salmon
Which is also the, you know, the Trading Places trajectory. Right. It's the thing of we're gonna do something which is kind of basically illegal or immoral or something. But it's in the surface of a greater good. And then it'll all come fine in the end.
- [06:31]
Anna Shymansky
But it creates this idea of maybe in. I don't know if in the late 80s or mid, early to late 80s, this was this idea that it's a little bit of the game is rigged. Because the way the game is originally structured for Tess, it doesn't matter that she's going to night school. It doesn't matter that she's very smart. She cannot get ahead. Similar to in Trading Places, like the Eddie Murphy character. Not that he was going to night school and attempting to get ahead, but he clearly was very smart. But it took these amazing outside forces in order for that change to happen. Which, if you kind of think about it, is a. Is almost actually a little bit of a critique of the American Dream at the same time that it's celebrating it.
- [07:10]
Felix Salmon
The real critique of the dream. To fast forward to the final shot of the movie is like she achieves her dream, she gets a secretary of her own. And then you do that long helicopter pan out from the Chase Manhattan Building and she's just revealed to be a cubicle drone in the middle of 157 other identical cubicles. And suddenly you realize that she's just a cog in the machine, right? There's this darkness to the final shot. Which kind of makes you look at the whole movie a little bit differently, maybe.
- [07:43]
Anna Shymansky
Although I also think that was perhaps to also suggest that there are lots of different stories. Like, I understand your reading and I think it is a perfectly valid reading. But one of the things that also jumped out at me at that scene is that throughout the film, you constantly have lateral movement. Because she's going on the ferry back and forth between, like, her old life and her new life. But she is only going. Going back and forth. It's lateral. And it's that point when she goes.
- [08:04]
Jolie Hunt
Up, like, oh, that's an interesting one.
- [08:07]
Anna Shymansky
So that was the other thing that kind of jumped out at me.
- [08:09]
Felix Salmon
I like that. I like the moving from the horizontal to the vertical. There's a lot of stuff happens at the end of the movie in elevators.
- [08:16]
Anna Shymansky
That's true. Yes.
- [08:17]
Felix Salmon
Elevators are a key part of the final bit of the movie in the way that they haven't really appeared anywhere else in the movie up until that point. Like the big meetings that she's having at Trask Industries and stuff. They all seem to be on the ground floor, just around the corner from the entrance.
- [08:34]
Jolie Hunt
Yeah. One flight of stairs.
- [08:36]
Felix Salmon
One flight of stairs where you can have a quick emergency meeting. Before going into the big meeting. I was reading an early version of the script, actually. And it turns out that Petty Marsh, which is the bank that she works for, is named in the script as the world's largest brokerage house. Although she winds up working for Trask. Right. She doesn't wind up working for Betty Marsh in the end. I think I would like to do a quick detour into the mechanics of this movie which are extremely confusing because there's the company she winds up working for, which is this big company which has late offices and secretaries. And she winds up living happily ever after in that. There's the company she was working for up until that point, which is the world's largest brokerage house. There's the company which is run by Colonel Sanders, which is the one they're trying to buy. And then there's Jack Traynor, who works for another company entirely.
- [09:31]
Jolie Hunt
Dewey Stone. Dewey Stone.
- [09:33]
Anna Shymansky
Dewey Stone.
- [09:33]
Felix Salmon
Dewey Stone. So does anyone understand, like, what Dewey Stone has to do with anything and how he's necessary to anything?
- [09:42]
Anna Shymansky
Well, it's interesting because he asks in the film, he says, why are you bringing me in?
- [09:47]
Felix Salmon
Right.
- [09:48]
Anna Shymansky
It suggested, I would say that the Katherine Parker character, the Sigourney Weaver character apparently didn't feel that her team had a sufficient ability to put this deal through. So she went to him also. He's her love interest. So that probably also has something to do with it. But that was, I think, the idea.
- [10:06]
Jolie Hunt
Yeah, but also she was stealing the idea. So she also had to, by the nature of the theft of the idea she had to go somewhere else. But I agree with you. It was not clear why we needed all these companies and elevators and staircases and briefcases.
- [10:23]
Felix Salmon
The briefcase.
- [10:24]
Jolie Hunt
A lot of leather. It took a lot of leather to make this movie.
- [10:27]
Felix Salmon
Jolie, as the connoisseur of luxury goods in this conversation, can you tell us about the semiotics of the briefcase that Jack gives Tess?
- [10:37]
Jolie Hunt
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a seminal moment. And I think even before that, the line to me when they met at the cocktail party, that she wasn't really meant to be. And she puts on that $6,000 dress.
- [10:50]
Felix Salmon
And it's not even leather.
- [10:52]
Jolie Hunt
It's not even leather. Not even leather. And I thought it was so telling that Jack Traynor, AKA Harrison Ford, who, by the way, is a babe in this movie. I mean, I. I was always too young for Harrison Ford. And I was like, oh, I really get it now. I appreciate him. In my early 40s. He gives her a complime that you're the first woman that dresses like a woman at these things, not like how a woman thinks a man would dress if he were a woman.
- [11:22]
Jack Traynor
I've been looking for you.
- [11:25]
Tess McGill
Why? Do you know me?
- [11:26]
Jack Traynor
No, no. But I promised myself that when I saw you, I would get to know you. You're the first woman I've seen in one of these damn things that dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman.
- [11:39]
Jolie Hunt
Thank you.
- [11:40]
Jack Traynor
What are you doing here?
- [11:43]
Tess McGill
Actually, I'm looking for someone myself. His name is Jack Traynor. He works at Dewey Stone. Do you know if he's here?
- [11:50]
Jack Traynor
Why are you looking for him?
- [11:53]
Tess McGill
Well, because I have a meeting with him tomorrow and I thought it might be nice to say hello and get a head start, you know?
- [12:00]
Felix Salmon
Well, he.
- [12:03]
Jack Traynor
Just left.
- [12:05]
Jolie Hunt
And I do think that leads into the briefcase scene because to me, I felt like it was him assisting her. And to Anna's earlier point, you need someone to pull you up in these situations, right? And actually, Catherine gives her that guidance as well when she tells her to change her jewelry. So there's all these subtle cues on. You're almost there. You need to cut your hair if you want to be taken seriously. You can't wear six pounds of blue eye makeup. I mean, by the way, I do on occasion, and I think it has its place. I'd like the record to show. But I think he gives her the briefcase because it's clear she doesn't have one. And, you know, she takes that rubber band off of her satchel in the meeting with him and, you know, I was wondering how he got the briefcase so quickly. But, you know, I guess that's Hollywood for you.
- [12:54]
Felix Salmon
This is kind of, I think, the comic highlight of his career. He turns out to be an amazing Cary Grant figure. Basically. This is the classic Cary Grant role. And Cary Grant was a great comic actor. And I've never seen Harrison Ford be so just like glamorously funny. And you kind of feel like this movie, it feels like a Hitchcock movie in that sense.
- [13:17]
Anna Shymansky
I agree. And one of the things that jumped out at me too, and kind of going back to also that line about a woman dressing like a man thinks a woman would dress if they were a man. The way that gender worked in this film. Because the Harrison Ford character is almost kind of feminized at certain points. Like the way that these women are kind of ogling his body. He's being objectified. The way that the Catherine Parker character at one point is basically trying to sexually assault him. I mean, he plays a very interesting role. And at the same time, there's that scene when they're gonna sleep together for the first time and they're both taking off their button down shirts, which is also this just. I feel like the film is doing something actually kind of interesting of gender.
- [13:56]
Felix Salmon
And the way that he gets all vulnerable with her, right? When he's like, I really need this deal, and he almost like breaks into tears.
- [14:02]
Jolie Hunt
Well, but it's such a counterpoint to the Alec Baldwin character, right? I do feel like all of these examples are. It's like point and counterpoint. It's like he's a pig who, you know, thinks she went to traffic court because she looked good that day.
- [14:17]
Jack Traynor
No, I just meant the hair and the duds and the briefcase. What's going on?
- [14:21]
Tess McGill
Make fun of you?
- [14:22]
Jack Traynor
No, no, you look good, classy. What'd you have to go to traffic court or something?
- [14:32]
Tess McGill
No, I just got off work. I sort of got a promotion.
- [14:36]
Jolie Hunt
Whereas here's, you know, it's the classic kind of Prince Charming. Of course he's gonna show up with a briefcase. Of course he's gonna carry her up a flight of stairs after meeting her, you know, an hour prior and put her into bed and, you know, not take naked selfies with her. So it's. I think that's why so many women love this movie too, right? It's the fantasy of it all.
- [14:59]
Anna Shymansky
One of the things too, though, that kind of reminds me of the Alec Baldwin character. Because, like, when I remember this as a kid and when I Watch it now. I'm like, I don't know if I should have been watching this as like an 8 year old, but I felt that way too. I remember the Alec Baldwin character as just like totally just being a pig. That was it. But I watched it this time. I thought it was interesting because there's a scene when she's like dancing with him and there's a scene at the end at the wedding where it's almost like, to me, it's like he represented a past in a world that she has to leave in order to have her new identity. And there was also almost like a little bit of sadness, like a little bit of loss. It wasn't simply that he was horrible and everything else was great.
- [15:34]
Jolie Hunt
Right? And I think her best friend and Joan Cusack, AKA Sin, represented that too. Because Tess graduated out of that life. And even if you look at the fashion choices where they put her in that powder blue hideous bridesmaid dress with the banana clips and the. I mean, it's so bad. It's good. They made such a point of putting her in muted tones and muted makeup when she was in a successful context and making her a bit cartoonish in the Staten island crowd of. This is, you know, she's working her way out of that. And I agree. I mean, he was, I think, in the same way that they made Harrison Ford or Jack Traynor such a babe and feminized and, you know, so decent and polite. They took the opposite with Mick and Alec Baldwin, you know, to have him screwing the friend, you know, when she comes home from night school.
- [16:30]
Anna Shymansky
Her emerging markets seminar.
- [16:32]
Felix Salmon
Yes, Emerging Market. What's that wonderful line? Emerging markets can emerge on your birthday without.
- [16:39]
Jolie Hunt
All right, I'll pick you up at 5.
- [16:41]
Anna Shymansky
We'll ride back together.
- [16:42]
Jolie Hunt
I can't.
- [16:42]
Tess McGill
I got Emerging market seminar at 5:30.
- [16:45]
Jolie Hunt
Jeez, it's your birthday.
- [16:47]
Tess McGill
Can't they emerge without you just this once?
- [16:50]
Felix Salmon
It's got a relatively sophisticated understanding of finance. Not that it's really necessary, but, you know, I mean, there was one line which jumped out at me like, this is 1988. This is really quite ahead of its time in. You're going to love this, Anna. At one point, she suggests the Trask Industries uses the leftover cash on its balance sheet to do a stock. Stock buyback.
- [17:11]
Anna Shymansky
Buyback next year. Exactly, exactly.
- [17:13]
Felix Salmon
And you're like, nowadays, stock buyback? Well, of course you do that. You wouldn't. But in 1988, those things were new and weird and like, wow, that's kind of bold.
- [17:20]
Anna Shymansky
No, agree and there's also a line that jumped out at me because I feel like you would never have a heroine say this in a film today when she's dancing with Trask and she says, you are the one who, like, put in Japanese management principles when everyone else was kowtowing to the unions.
- [17:38]
Jolie Hunt
If I had a nickel for every time I said that at a wedding.
- [17:42]
Felix Salmon
So, Jolie, tell me, like, again, when it comes to the fairy tale, is there a sense in which it goes the other way? Right. That she has to give up who she is like the original Tess with the big hair. That the Joan Cusack kind of lifestyle is her authentic self. And that all of that has to get jettisoned in order for her to be able to just climb a rung on the corporate ladder?
- [18:04]
Jolie Hunt
I don't think so. Because the first call that she made when she got that office was to sin Right to her connection to her old life. And I do think that you have to evolve and change. But it was clear from the opening scene when she, on her birthday, was going to night school and taking all these seminars that she was desperate for that path. That she had been working on that evolution for a long while. And that's why we see so many transitions in her and all of the smucky scenes with her from Bob and Arbitrage and her colleagues. Because I think that, as an audience member, they wanted us to understand her plight. And that if you look at how the movie starts and ends, it's that path that she was making for herself the whole time.
- [18:53]
Anna Shymansky
Yeah. It's almost like she was always this diamond in the rough. And then circumstances allowed her to reveal that.
- [19:02]
Jolie Hunt
Yep. I totally agree with that.
- [19:03]
Anna Shymansky
But I would say there's still. And maybe I was reading too much into it, but I did feel that there was a little bit of sense of loss, though, that even though I agree with you that that last scene, which is a pretty wonderful scene where she calls sin, like, there's still a sense of, like, she's shifted roles. It's not like you're seeing her. You don't expect her to do, like, code switching where she's going to be going back and forth between, you know, like, she has now moved into a different world. And that does result in, you know, probably losing connection with where she came from.
- [19:32]
Felix Salmon
And there is. You know, the code switching is explicit. Right. When she changes accents and she does the.
- [19:39]
Anna Shymansky
Quite literally.
- [19:40]
Jolie Hunt
Yeah.
- [19:40]
Felix Salmon
And it's clearly part of the subterfuge that she needs to get ahead, which I guess I don't know. There's nothing. Charlie, you don't read that as a tragic thing. You just read that as a sort of having a career thing.
- [19:54]
Jolie Hunt
Perhaps, because I relate to it not as drastically, but I grew up in a very small town where many people stayed, and it was totally and is totally acceptable to work in the local firehouse, work in the local school, work in the local bakery. And from a very early age, I did not want that. And I didn't even know why I didn't want that. I just wanted something bigger. And I still have links to that place and to people from that part of my life. But this is more who I always was meant to be, if that makes sense. And so I'm sure I'm projecting myself unto test.
- [20:29]
Felix Salmon
I will say for the benefit of the crowd who are listening to this podcast and have never met the force of nature that is Jolly Hunt. You are basically the Kathleen Parker of public relations. You swan into any room and dominate it with impeccable fashion. Which we do need to talk about the Sigourney Weaver costume design, which is.
- [20:50]
Jolie Hunt
Oh, please. And she's Catherine Parker.
- [20:53]
Felix Salmon
Yes, sorry, Catherine Parker. My bad. Just like she steals everything that she's in. She. I don't know. Clearly the costume designer was on top form with Catherine and then like just the John Cusack. The sin costumes were just, like, glorious and fun. But surely you're the expert on women's professional clothing.
- [21:15]
Jolie Hunt
I take all my cues from you, Felix. I mean, look, the obvious symbolism is that she's wearing red in all of the power scenes. Everything is red. The boots for skiing are red. The dress at her coming out party is red. Her jacket when she's, you know, banging down the door and to Trask, is red. It's very clearly a power color. And meant to say I am in charge. Even at the cocktail party, it's a sea of gray suits and Catherine holding court in a beautifully attired red dress. And none of those things were an accident. Even, I think, down to the point. One of the songs that someone was dancing to was lady in Red. So they wanted you to know, in a relatively cliched way, red is the power color, Right? It's the Hillary Clinton pantsuit of its time. And there was no mistaking who you were supposed to know was in charge and the brains of the operation. And I also think they made her very glamorous. Ironically, I found her to be a bit, which I guess is the point, but cold and masculine. I mean, she was not a sexy character. If you look At Tess. Tess was sexy, right? The voice was sexy. The, you know, the lingerie was sexy. And the way that she turned it on, I mean, the fashion was incredible. And I do think that it was a time, and I remember this from early days of my corporate career very vividly. Having a boss tell me, you cannot paint your nails a color. They have to be clear or white. I expect you to wear a suit, but not with pants. A skirt every day, and nothing dangly. No earrings, no bracelets. And that was only 10 years after this movie was made. It just wasn't done to have a bold statement as a woman in the workplace like that. So I loved the fashion and I loved the bad fashion just as much as I loved the wedding dress. Ugh. I mean, the 80s hair and makeup deserves its own podcast.
- [23:17]
Anna Shymansky
It really does.
- [23:18]
Jolie Hunt
It's just the volume alone of like even just thinking about sharing an elevator with some of the assistants. There must be three feet wide of hairspray in each scene. So look, I also think Catherine's character was so clearly from money. If you looked at the picture on her desk with her parents and staying in her parents house and the Warhols on the wall and, you know, the Cristal just, you know, in her small fridge next to her bedroom, you know, I'm sure she was skiing in Stadt. I mean, they didn't tell us exactly where she was going, but it was so clearly the archetype of someone that is moneyed, that went the perfect schools, that speaks perfect German and not perfect.
- [24:00]
Felix Salmon
I have to say her German was.
- [24:04]
Jolie Hunt
Better than mine. Helmut, here is Catherine Parker. Wunderschen danke und sie verster rukin gut unto Marlene.
- [24:18]
Anna Shymansky
Is this Merkle becoming.
- [24:23]
Jolie Hunt
Feelin? Feelin dung zie sint mein Zeusa.
- [24:26]
Anna Shymansky
It's interesting because I know critiques, I've heard of the film where people will say, oh, it's sexist because of her character and how she is depicted. And I don't know if I really buy that, to be perfectly honest, because while you could say, well, she's coded as being like a powerful woman, and thus a powerful woman has to be the bad guy, but then I also kind of feel like, well, she's coded as being a person in power who happens to be a woman. And I think it would be a little silly to just assume that every woman in power is gonna behave no differently than a man in power would behave, especially at a time when not that many women were in power. It probably makes perfect sense that a lot of women would behave very similar to the men that were around them. And it also makes that moment when she steals Tess's idea so much more hurtful in a way, because it is coming from a woman. So I think it was useful to have her character be a female. But I don't know if I buy the idea that it's necessarily sexist that she is this kind of dragon lady.
- [25:21]
Jolie Hunt
I agree. And I also think if you look at the example of even the feedback in Tess's first job where she didn't get the promotion that she was up for because it went to someone from an Ivy League school, I do think it's more an indictment on class than it is on the typical. What we think of as sexist. I think it's really that you were on the wrong side of the tracks. I was on the right side of the tracks. Therefore, I have different opportunities, different wardrobes, and I don't have to. People will believe me. I think that's what's implied.
- [25:48]
Anna Shymansky
It is interesting, like how clearly they make this idea of class as being performative, as this idea that you literally put on the clothing, you literally put on the voice and you as a person have not actually fundamentally changed, but it's performance in the same way people sometimes talk about gender as being a performance that's just so explicit in this film.
- [26:09]
Felix Salmon
We should mention too, within the world of Petty Marshall, this was the classic. I mean, never in the movies has the distinction between the bankers and the traders been clearer than in Working Girl, where the whole initial scenes where you have Bob the cokehead and Oliver Platt and the sexists and the brash traders, and then she gets moved into the M and A and it's suddenly smooth and it's Sigourney Weaver and everything's elegant and there's probably even more money, but they're just much less flashy about it and much more under. And this was pre Grammleach Bliley, right? So, like, this was back when banks and the bankers and traders couldn't actually work for the same company. Now I'm suddenly realizing that none of this was possible, but that distinction, like, it would make much more sense for her to rise up the ladder in her initial job on the trading floor. And she, when we first meet her, is quite good at, like, reading the stock ticker and knowing which stocks are going to go up and down and that kind of stuff. And that would be the natural progression. And then if did really well in that she would wind up as some kind of like, Gary Cohn. Figure some kind of rash working class trader, you know, running the bank, but instead she has to pretend to be someone else because she goes over to the banking side and the advisory side.
- [27:31]
Anna Shymansky
Well, and I think it was also to maybe show a little bit that, you know, because this movie is all about appearances. And what is underneath those appearances. You know, she goes to this brokerage firm and as you said, everything does look so much nicer. She know, she says, oh, it's so much better to work for this female boss. You know, I really think I have a chance. And then it turns out it is essentially exactly the same as where she was previously, despite how elegant everything appears.
- [27:54]
Jolie Hunt
I agree with that.
- [27:55]
Felix Salmon
And she has to leave the bank. She winds up working for Trask instead.
- [27:58]
Jolie Hunt
Right. And I read it too, as she traded harassment for theft. Right, right. So it's pick your poison for the moment. And it was much less harried, clearly. But I also thought the psychological impact of ca, you know, saying who makes it happen? And all these quasi bullshitty terms to her, you know, we're a team. And really belittling her right from the jump, you know, get my coffee. And so pretending to be a friend and someone who's gonna support her, but actually being exactly the same. And you could argue, is it better to have that be so overt or veiled in kindness, who knows?
- [28:41]
Felix Salmon
It's also a very 80s movie. I mean, not just in terms of the fashion, but also in terms of the Reagan revolution and the careerism and the idea that you can sort of come up, rise up through the ranks in the bank and become successful. Like, that's all really there in that kind of. It's in that first wave of Yuppies Are Good. Really. Like, it's like, hey, we can achieve this.
- [29:06]
Anna Shymansky
But, you know, I like that actually. Kind of, that's one of the reasons, I think I like this film, because it's not the. The standard business is always bad that. You know, I was thinking a little bit about the movie Baby Boom, which I think came out right around the same time about Diane Keaton, who, like, inherits a child. It's a very strange film. And part of the whole thing is that she realizes that actually she needs to be out of this rat race. And, you know, her maternal side, she has a baby food company. But this film, I don't know, there's something I kind of like about it that it basically said, no, like, these women are ambitious in this system too, and they can achieve success in this system too. And yes, of course, it is a fairytale. But it's not just the kind of simplistic critique of business that you often get in films.
- [29:48]
Felix Salmon
And there are goodies and baddies as well. The other movie it reminds me of a bit is Wall street where you have a competitive takeover situation and the white knight comes in to save the company. And that's actually what's happening here, right? Is that Trask is the white knight coming in to save the family owned company from this competitor who's got the company in a bear hug.
- [30:12]
Anna Shymansky
I love that hug.
- [30:14]
Felix Salmon
Exactly. Bear hugs were in succession as well, right? Like the bear hugs are coming everywhere.
- [30:20]
Jolie Hunt
What's old is new. I think, Anna, your point is dead, right? In that Tess is scrappy, right? I think you want to root for someone who's doing the work, right? She's reading W magazine to get the hot tip on dumplings. And you know, she's paying attention to what so clearly looks like page six and piecing it all together. And I do think that it's hard not to root for someone like that because it's so clear that she's putting in the work and effort to try to try to make it happen. And you can see in the earlier scenes where they just don't listen to her stock advice. And she says no one's gonna listen to a secretary and that she has the, you know, the page tears to prove it. I mean, and at the end of the day that saved her, right?
- [31:02]
Felix Salmon
Although her page tears are all like page six and gossip about DJs and then she really does rely on Harrison Ford to do like the cap table stuff and the nitty gritty of Don't We All.
- [31:15]
Anna Shymansky
To be fair, there's a scene where she's like whatever, the 80s version of downloading like an income statement. And she's looking at it herself and like they're going through the financial statements together at the table and discussing the sources and uses.
- [31:29]
Jolie Hunt
I remember that in lingerie. In lingerie, let's. I mean casually.
- [31:35]
Felix Salmon
So the other thing which I was wondering about is you are unambiguously of the opinion, Jolie, that Melanie Griffiths is much sexier in this movie than Sigourney Weaver. Without question, Anna's nodding.
- [31:49]
Jolie Hunt
Sigourney Weaver is the anti sexy in this movie. I mean, she can't even get a kiss from the guy she thought was proposing to her two weeks prior, you know, half naked on a bed. So.
- [32:00]
Anna Shymansky
And she's referred to as Boney.
- [32:02]
Jolie Hunt
Oh, bony ass.
- [32:03]
Felix Salmon
Her bony ass comes up twice.
- [32:05]
Anna Shymansky
There is the Scene when she's like, she's broke her leg and she's at the hospital and she's wearing like a negligee with all the doctors and people around. But it's almost goofy, like she actually isn't that sexy in the same sense that when, as you're saying in that scene when Jack Traynor is coming over and she's trying to make herself look sexy. But it like isn't working. Even though she's a very attractive woman. But it just doesn't work well.
- [32:28]
Jolie Hunt
But it's even how she talks about saying she's, you know, let's merge and she's, she's open to an offer. I think she says, you know, it's just, it's so put on. Right. And I think the, the interesting thing about Tess is like, she gradually evolves with the hair and the makeup and the shoulder pads remained the shoulder pads. You gotta love the 80s in so many ways. But I also think that's why they put all the buttons in the sex scene between Jack and Tess to show that she wasn't in a negligee. She was, you know, she was in a button down blouse.
- [33:04]
Anna Shymansky
That makes me think too, a little bit of this idea of like someone who is just naturally good at something and someone who's to a certain extent, like, was born into it. The Sigourney Weaver character, it's clear she's good at her job like that. They never suggest that she's stupid, but it's like, okay, she went to the right school, she's from a wealthy family. Like, she got into it. Whereas the Tess character clearly has this like, innate thing in her that the Sigourney Weaver character can never have those types of ideas because she just doesn't have it.
- [33:29]
Jolie Hunt
Yes. And it's, it goes back to the scrappiness and the hustle, right. She has to work so hard, she has to read everything, she has to pay attention. Whereas, you know, people just assume someone with the right upbringing and the right station can come in and claim the idea. I mean, the fact that Catherine storms into a boardroom on a deal, she knows nothing about the day she gets back from her miserable skiing trip where she didn't get proposed to and she broke some sort of limb. I mean, the gumption. I mean, that's the word that Trask uses for Tess at the end. But I really think if you look at Catherine as a tryhard, it's so obvious that she's resting on her station.
- [34:08]
Felix Salmon
Versus, you know, although if there's One indelible image from the movie. It's that one right where she bursts in through the door and she's in the doorway in her red power suit and she's just, you know, screaming at her secretary. Like, that is the single best like, like single frame of the movie.
- [34:26]
Jolie Hunt
And when she feigns, you know, being lightheaded, when she doesn't know the answer to something and, oh, you know, and everyone has to give her a seat and fawn all over her. And it's a savage move if you think about it. It totally changed the tempo of everything in that meeting. And the fact that Tess didn't fight is so interesting that she just got up and left because that's what she thought she had to do.
- [34:49]
Anna Shymansky
There's always that part of her that feels like she's a fraud. And then in that moment, someone literally is telling her, you are a fraud, and she's exposed. The only thing she can do is flee. Even though obviously in reality, like she's not a fraud in terms of it being her idea.
- [35:01]
Felix Salmon
I do think Melanie Griffiths is the only person who actually acted in this movie. Like everyone else was kind of just doing the standard, you know, comic roles that they were cast as. You know, you get, you know, Oliver Platt or Harrison Ford doing Cary Grant or Sigourney Weaver doing her whole comic thing, which, you know, she can. We've seen her in like Galaxy Quest, she's awesome at that kind of stuff.
- [35:26]
Jolie Hunt
But don't forget Kevin Spacey.
- [35:28]
Felix Salmon
And Kevin Spacey, yeah, just completely hamming it up to like turning the dial to 14 and doing the cokehead of the Arbitrage. And then Melanie Griffiths is playing a really fleshed out, conflicted, internally conflicted character who's being pulled in a bunch of different directions, doesn't really understand what she's getting herself into, is never that particularly sure of herself, knows that she wants to try but doesn't know how to get where she's going. And she often feels, or felt to me like she was in a different movie from the rest of them. She wasn't in the comedy that the rest of them were in and she was in some kind of like kitchen sink tragedy or, you know, verite movie. And I don't know how deliberate that was on Mike Nichols part, but it definitely stood out.
- [36:18]
Jolie Hunt
Well, the interesting thing there is that this movie came out the year that Mike Nichols married Diane Sawyer. And obviously my 10 year old self didn't know this. My current self does. And I don't know I was reaching, but I was like, here he is, married to such a strong woman coming up in a business that was known for cronkite and all sorts of interesting men. I mean, men posted the evening news. It was never a woman. So I think that for Ted, showing her between those two worlds, that, to me, was the tension of all of it. It's like you have to be one person when you're in Staten Island. You have to put on that you are another person in Manhattan. But I agree. I think they made it so apparently a challenge for her that she's the only one really doing the work that everybody else just sort of fell upon it.
- [37:08]
Felix Salmon
On which note, Jolie Hunt. Thank you. Thank you for coming on Slate. Money goes to the movies. It was a pleasure to to rent this thing on my Apple tv. Thank you for forcing me to do so. It was a good choice, I have to say. And we all love the movie. And it's a good movie, right? Like, this is definitely one we can recommend.
- [37:28]
Jolie Hunt
Love, Love, Love, Love, Love. Sam.