Peter Bogdanovich, threshing machine

Platt roundup

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6961-credit-where-credit-s-due-polly-platt

Finally taking in the YMRT Platt series. Listened to the third ep (all about The Last Picture Show & Cybill) last night. What really makes it is all the extensive excerpts from her unfinished memoir, read by Maggie Siff. This installment two particularly amazing bits: the first about accidentally running into Pete & Cyb in restaurant during the TLPS shoot, and another about John Ford awkwardly reaching out to her after the split.

Whole series was great imo.

Yeah so much so that it kinda bugs me to talk about her in the Bog thread LOL

Yes, the best season since the Manson one.

Veg sorta otm, but it's a good place to point people toward the podcast: ten episodes, images and annotations for each of them here

Hmm yeah, I guess that is a good point.

Here’s a v good photo of her
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/566943d25a5668b614270ff9/1592347686586-5ZIM3PWZO56F8CJHHI1S/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kJx_HW5Cyl_w5KuXYPdt5NN7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqpeNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1UZXeA0ox5bIY2qfOI4T9vIThY_iQi_9OWIGcNPCPunptvdSfbxHJuolZmbE9-K_NDg/PollyPlatt.PhotoCourtesyofAntoniaBogdanovich.jpg

Karina Longworth’s stilted vocal mannerisms... oy

Direct reaction to listeners whining that she wasn't sufficiently clear-sounding in the early seasons. Can't win.

Yeah she knows her stuff but I just can't get past the weird enunciation. I think she could "win" if she just talked normally.

I heard a clip of her speaking in her regular voice, and it was totally fine!

Right, I saw her somewhere in Manhattan introducing a movie not long ago and no weird vocalisms then. Possibly she has some type of mike fright.

I saw her Criterion Closet video and she sounded totally normal. I made a note to check out the podcast but forgot, I checked it out... Jesus Christ...

Direct reaction to listeners whining that she wasn't sufficiently clear-sounding in the early seasons. Can't win.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, August 13, 2020 10:18 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I checked out a recent and an early episode and she sounds like a subway terminal announcer in both.

Daniel_Rf is correct though, at least wrt to her heavily enunciated Ts.

I've fully acclimated to her style and don't find it bothersome at all (plus she's moved away from my own personal dislike: attempting imitations), but another point in the Platt series favor is that in addition to Siff's readings, there are lots more interviews than normal, so you hear her voice less than usual.

Yes, the best season since the Manson one.

― Steppin' RZA (sic), Wednesday, August 12, 2020 11:22 PM (yesterday)

Interesting. I found that season too depressing and kind of tangential (admittedly I didn't even finish it). It's perhaps too long, but the Blacklist season remains a high point for me. I also thought the Song of the South one was very strong.

Karina's voice haters should check out the Make Me Over season where she turns the mic entirely over to guests--for me it confirmed that Longworth is good not bad actually, but the Vanessa Williams and Marie Dressler eps are good

Maggie Siff’s readings really are so well done & thoughtful

Honestly I was truly amazed by the amount of research & hours of recorded interviews that went into this - Longworth really showed this as a passion project and didn’t spare any effort to go deep. Plus having her daughters on the record really lends some special legitimacy to telling Polly’s story

I also loved the reveal over the course of the series that Larry McMurty always held a candle for her. ❤️

her daughters = polly’s daughters, i meant

otm -- she set the bar really high for whatever she does next season (at which point we should start a dedicated thread)

I enjoy Longworth's voice and presentation on You Must Remember This.

i'm working on slowing down and enunciating more in my own lectures.. i think at this point her style should be understood as a choice, not a mistake. some people can't stand it, some find it very soothing and absorbing and lets them focus on content. it's a tough balance to strike but it's hard to argue with her success and the quality of the research, and of the writing itself, is fantastic.

Yeah it doesnt bother me anymore - her content is always so engaging & interesting that I got past it pretty quick

Like seriously, there is so many fluff podcasts out there, or half-assed/wing-it/chat em ups that the ones that have depth like this are always a joy overall, regardless of quirks

I'm not the biggest fan of her delivery but I've also never had to do a solo podcast which must be **nerve wracking**

otm

I just like yesterday learned of the existence of YMRT when searching for info on the Warner Bros. doc of the same name. Was curious and now am curiouser after reading y'all's posi reviews. Will seek out.

Interesting. I found that season too depressing and kind of tangential (admittedly I didn't even finish it). It's perhaps too long, but the Blacklist season remains a high point for me. I also thought the Song of the South one was very strong.

Second both the blacklist and song of the south seasons, great stuff. The Dead Blondes season has a lot of interesting (and depressing) stuff too. Really don't get why ppl fixate on the Manson season.

I have a You Must Remember This t-shirt. Fella in Clissold Park shouted "great show!" at me, only popcult clothing related interaction I've ever had.

The Manson season was the first one that integrated such a variety of sources into a single narrative, while still retaining a discrete episodic focus that made each episode a focused piece of writing. Earlier seasons had been built on themes, but usually a loose one that linked various disparate stores (eg Dead Blondes, Star Wars); the Manson one wove lots of elements of disparate stories, as researched by earlier writers, into a coherent tale of a period with a distinct throughline.

The Polly Platt season is similarly a triumph of melding elements, but more so. Longworth takes Platt's unpublished text, her own new interviews with other first-person sources, and historical research by what is now a three-person team, and writes something that appears to be a richer expansion and improvement of Platt's unfinished memoir into a better tribute to her work, with a deeper appreciation of her as a person and artist/creative.

Very much so. It's a real triumph. (And I'm just fine with her voice.)

Manson also contexualises Los Angeles during that time, and takes time to explore everything feeding into what Manson was part of, showing how he didnt exist in a vacuum and that the envy of the Hollywood/LA way of life was something that fed Manson much more than a lot of books about him ever really acknowledge.

It’s not a story about Manson, it about Manson within the world as it existed at that time. It made for a much more interesting story imo

The only thing I’ve read that matches this series on Manson for depth & context it is the Jeff Guinn book.

Are there text transcripts of the show?

No, it's very much written for audio. Longworth's recent book on Howard Hughes is good though (& written in a different voice), if that's of interest.

also contexualises Los Angeles during that time

Yes, I meant to say "period and place"

I need to read that Hughes book

oh you'll love it

and you can watch this entire Max Ophuls movie as prep, on youtube

I popped into this thread a couple of days ago, I think because I heard an ad for or mention of the/a Peter Bogdanovich podcast/doc on an (old?) episode of a podcast I was listening to. Anyway, I don't listen to many podcasts mostly because there are too many podcasts, but also because the affectations (vocal delivery and audio cues, like incessant old time jazz tooting in the background; thanks, Woody Allen and This American Life) sometimes drive me nuts. So I see this thread pop up and pop in and read back a few posts, where I encounter commentary on Karina Longworth's vocal affectation. I file her and that conversation under "interesting things about someone I'm not really familiar with who sounds interesting talking about interesting things." Fast forward two days and a friend coincidentally recommends her You Must Remember This podcast, specifically the Song of the South season, and I think, huh, I was just reading about her o ILX and she sounded like something I would like. But, hmm, wasn't there some discussion about her vocal affectations? And indeed almost as soon as I start the thing up I think, wow, why is she talking like that? Why does she sometimes overemphasize certain letters or syllables, or elongate words that don't need that sort of emphasis, like "Hollywuuuuude." Strange though it may be - is she I guess essentially playing a character? - I don't think it will be a deal breaker, and in fact while it was distracting I immediately found a way to mentally correct: by pretending the podcast was actually narrated by Danny DeVito. Same script, just his voice. It was a very funny thing to imagine and made the episode that much more enjoyable.

I don't watch television shows because there are too many of them, and all of them are about Japanese people hurting themselves climbing on large wet obstacles.

Danny DeVito

an interesting choice given his role in the Polly Platt story

is longworth's delivery really an "affectation" though? fine line i guess, but it feels more like her "radio voice." like when i'm lecturing in class, it's definitely not in my natural voice because i'm consciously slowing down, enunciating more, and also i'm reading my stuff off a page. and there are probably a few things here and there that are affected, like i just sorta like certain words sounding a certain way. but overall the difference between that and my regular voice is more that i'm asking it to do this different job and not like i'm trying to sound a certain way to produce a certain effect or attain a certain status or w/e, which is what 'affectation' reads as to me.

It’s the pronunciation that gets me.

One episode she’s talking about Dorothy Stradden and the next episode it’s Dorothy Stratten.

As Daniel alluded to upthread, aiui posters on the podcast's own messageboard criticized her D-like Ts so much that she massively overcorrected. So it's actually the constant complaining about her voice that caused that particular problem

I did like the story about Orson Welles yelling WHO ATE ALL THE TAPIOCA PUDDING, especially since Cybill Shepard wrote about him doing the same but about fudgsicles.

that was amazing

also all the Ford stuff was uh...interesting. talk about opening the kimono *barf*

I listened to the Pretty Baby ep last night.

Christ, Brooke Shields' Mom...

yeah I had no idea about any of that

I too used to find her delivery offputting, but the podcast is consistently great, and this latest round her best yet. I really enjoyed it, too, as a corrective to the Bogdanovich podcast, which was a good listen, but while the presenter let Bogdanovich have enough rope a couple of times to reveal his innate pomposity and how he'd profited from an era that celebrated and indulged its white male creative heroes, it was clear throughout that it would err on the side of hagiography. Longworth's series went much deeper, never risked seeming like a puff-piece, and also did a great job of rescuing Platt from Bogdanovich's shadow and celebrating her as an artist in her own right, while also acknowledging her own feet of clay and exploring her as a well-rounded person, with her own flaws and motivating damage.

It's an accomplished work of biography, which the Bogdanovich podcast isn't.

innate pomposity

I believe you are talking about his ascotsity.

(I know it's a bandana, but he wears it like an ascot.)

I assume there are transcripts of the Longworth podcasts, because yeah, unfortunately her voice/presentation is not my favorite. My friend (who recommended the series to me) told me he listened to the Val Lewton one and had to grit his teeth every time she said his name. "Looden," apparently.

I assume there are transcripts

your reasoning does not follow

?

A lot of podcasters post transcripts for, at least, the hearing impaired, etc.