Glass Onion (Queer Mystery)

Queer Movie Podcast

The new Knives Out movie is a bit gay, apparently... well, we'll be the judge of that!

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This is a queer movie watch party for your ears, hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join us as we take a look at the queer film canon, one genre at a time. From rom-coms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema to comedy classics - Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things queer on the silver screen!

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Production

- Hosts: Rowan Ellis and Jazza John

- Editor: Julia Schifini

- Executive Producer: Multitude

- Artwork: Jessica E. Boyd

ROWAN: Before we get into this episode, we just wanted to say a massive thank you once again to Jennifer and Toby who support us on Patreon at the rainbow parent level. So incredible. Thank you so much for all of your support. If you would like to check out our Patreon which has a bunch of different perks, including queer watch alongs our Discord that's exclusive to patrons, and a bunch of other stuff besides then check us [e-mail]/thequeermoviepodcast. Okay on with the show.

[theme]

JAZZA: Welcome to the Queer Movie Podcast celebrating the best—

ROWAN: —and worst—

JAZZA: In LGBTQ plus cinema. One glorious genre at a time.

ROWAN: I'm Rowan Ellis.

JAZZA: And I am Jazza John.

ROWAN: Each episode we discuss a movie from a different genre of cinema.

JAZZA: This episode genre is—

JAZZA AND ROWAN: Queer mystery?

JAZZA: I love we made that a question.

ROWAN: Very coordinated.

JAZZA: Today we are going to be talking about Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. This is the latest in the Knives Out Series of Films that it is the second. It's still a series that accounts and it's starring Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc and Hugh Grant as his housekeeper.

ROWAN: But before we done our mesh facemasks, Jazza, what's the gayest thing you've done since the last episode?

JAZZA: What a great question that I actually hadn't thought about until you just asked me now.

ROWAN: You did give me a short Christmasy candle anecdote earlier, which I think is a very good option.

JAZZA: Excellent. Thank you so much for knowing me better than I know myself. So as you know, I have now moved to New York. Hello, I'm Jazza, and I live in New York.

ROWAN: Incredible.

JAZZA: And I on my first weekend attended, it was the one after Christmas and attended a lesbian candle white elephant where—

ROWAN: Stunning.

JAZZA: I went to the Union Square Christmas market and asked one of the people on the market stand to give me their gayest candle because it was for lesbians. And I asked what did the lesbians want? And she went sage.

ROWAN: And she was right.

JAZZA: And she was right. They veritably fought over

ROWAN: Notorious, notorious for the sage.

JAZZA: How about you Rowan?

ROWAN: Well, I accidentally got a wolf cut in my hair.

JAZZA: And

ROWAN: I—basically I just was like, oh, can I get slightly shorter layers than I did before? And then she really went hard on the like, the front of my head with the short layers. And then just continued until the back was like a bit struggling. So I was like, oh, wow—

JAZZA: Oh no.

ROWAN: And she was like, uh-huh, let's take a wolf cut. And I was like, it is one. Not what I asked for, but I was like, I guess it makes me more you know, Gen Z gay, so.

JAZZA: Oh, yeah because the blue hair wasn't enough.

ROWAN: Yeah. No.

JAZZA: Sure.

ROWAN: So they are looking at me slightly closer, because I've been wearing my hair

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: So he hasn't…

JAZZA: I haven't been oh my god, the reveal.

ROWAN: I mean it's slightly greasy. So it's—

JAZZA: Oh, my go—

ROWAN: And my hair is just a bit of a mess.

JAZZA: I would—you look great—

ROWAN: I'm gay.

JAZZA: But it does increase your lesbian.

ROWAN: Yeah, it really does.

JAZZA: Yeah, yeah.

ROWAN: So I think I need to figure out how to like style it and work with it and get over the panic and stress of having a haircut. I didn't think I was gonna have. I was like, yeah, keep the length, that it happened. But it just made me more gay. So that's my gayest thing from this month.

[theme]

JAZZA: We will first be chatting about the gay of this film. How they marketed it as such, and also the inherent queerness of the mystery genre.

ROWAN: We will then be reviewing the plot and splitting the film into three acts. Of course, as usual. Obviously, we will be spoiling all of this movie, you know, feel free to watch and come back to us when you've seen it. I would recommend that, I like this movie. Spoiler alert. But also, it is a murder mystery. So like if you—if you—some movies, you could listen to our explanation and then go watch and be like, wow, I feel like I've had an entirely whole experience. But we will be giving away who did the murder. So it feels like maybe watch it before we give that away to you.

JAZZA: Excellent. And so without further ado, let's get online and play a quick game of Among Us with Angela Lansbury and review Glass Onion.

[theme]

JAZZA: So we have had it confirmed by directors, cast members, the gossiping classes of the movie elite, that this film is indeed about Benoit Blanc who is confirmed as a gay.

ROWAN: Homosexual.

JAZZA: Veritable homosexual. So we found this out just before it was released in the run-up to Christmas this year, through a load of the media PR interviews that were happening around the movie with—I first found out about it listening to radio four in the morning, because I'm just really engaged with politics, where Daniel Craig was being interviewed and they just had a quick conversation about oh, yeah, it was—it was just really obvious that Blanc was gay because he's uh—

ROWAN: some neckties.

JAZZA: Wears—

ROWAN: Neckerchief.

JAZZA: Neckerchiefs. Loves the neckerchiefs, and is a bit eccentric. And it has been described and talked about by the cast members and Rian Johnson, the director as when they thought about showing a little bit of Benoit Blanc's homelife. It was “obvious” quote-unquote, to them that this would be how they were going to code the character, and that it fit really, really well. I was first excited and then worried. Because this feels like a narrative, a trope, a way of discussing the queerness of a movie that we have seen with many, many films in the past. When, if you blink, maybe you miss it. But it's very important to the marketing of the movie that everybody knows that this is now queer, or has a queer character in it.

ROWAN: This is indeed a term that I coined for a long-ass video essay that I made a couple years ago. Queer Catching.

JAZZA: Queer Catching. And—

ROWAN: They really did it.

JAZZA: Hey, they caught this—

ROWAN: Textbook.

JAZZA: —they caught this queer.

ROWAN: They call you. I mean I was gonna watch it anyway but—

JAZZA: Yeah, of course. And I would have anyway as well. I am very conscious that when especially Rian Johnson has done interviews around the home life of Benoit Blanc, he wants it to be kind of like a pogo, where you never really the—the personal life of the detective of the main character in a mystery is never a focal point of the story or the narrative. They are the vessel through which you experience the unfolding of the story. And that makes sense for this genre. But I feel like the—I feel like the problem here is that if there is—this is like a queer coded character made for a Chinese audience, where unless you know that, that scene, and it is one scene where Hugh Grant opens the door for Daniel Craig, they aren't even in the same scene together. You would not know that they are a gay couple.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: And I feel like we were—we've been conned a little bit. What do you think?

ROWAN: I kind of agree with you. I think that especially within this genre, right? And I'm going to talk a little bit in my context section about the like, queerness of the detective genre. But I don't think it's a coincidence that so many people that I've seen online, who didn't see the interviews that were done beforehand that I think we're done, partly in order for people to like get that this was a thing from the beginning and there—for there to be like no doubt when they go into the cinemas. People hadn't seen these interviews, and all those discussions beforehand, fully thinking it was a Holmes and Watson situation.

JAZZA: Hmm.

ROWAN: Right.

JAZZA: My parents who had seen none of the—I watched this the first time with my parents, they had no idea. They didn't clock that as a—as a quick outro at all.

ROWAN: Yeah. And so yeah, I—I would agree with you. I think also, it's interesting because I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with like, I've seen interviews where they essentially ask like, oh, did you know that he was gay when you first like auditioned or during the first movie? And Daniel Craig was like, no, because he clearly wasn't. And it was something that came between movies, when they found out they were getting a sequel or maybe multiple sequels, and that Rian Johnson was like, okay, I guess I gotta figure out who this character is outside of these like, elements of it. Potentially, he had that thought in his head, but he clearly never said it to the actors. And I think that—I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with deciding to flesh out a character who you thought was only going to be a one movie or one season and then being like, ah, actually, I feel like I've realized something about them, that I can include. I really thought about their backstory or their personal life, but now it's making sense to me. But I think that then only giving us this like one ambiguous scene is a bit strange to me. And I think that—that thing that you said about okay, this has to, you know, the detective's personal life can't be the focal point and everything. You can have that and also have made it explicit that they will get—like he—his character, Hugh Grant's character calls Benoit Blanc, Blanc, like his by his surname.

JAZZA: Yeah. Yeah.

ROWAN: It doesn't even like— I— the smallest detail if he'd have just said, instead of being like, there's someone at the door for yo Benny, or even like, to be honest, I would have preferred like an actual term of endearment, because —he's very British. Darling is a classic British one. If you'd have just been like, there's someone at the door for you, darling. Yeah, that would have made no difference in the scene. It would have given you know, more or less information, but it would actually have confirmed it.

JAZZA: And the problem that I have with the scene as well, is it feels sandwiched in and kept in just for the sake of queer coding. There's the concept in western film storytelling where everything in the movie is meant to move the plot forward. This does nothing to move the plot forward. And there it—isn't even that Hugh Grant's character is a minor character that doesn't really do anything because there are other minor characters and secondary characters that we see in very brief scenes. I'm thinking about Dave Bautista's mother for example, who's literally in just like one funny scene but tells us something about um, Bautista's character, moves the plot forward—

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: —and like he's actually has a function. Hugh Grant's character has no function in this movie whatsoever. And so it feels like something that is just dropped in. And it's literally two seconds—

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: —Of the movie that we— you lit—I would the first time I watched this, I was tired and falling asleep. And I literally missed it because I—I nodded off for like 30 seconds—

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: —and missed the scene.

ROWAN: Yes, agreed.

JAZZA: One of the things I've really enjoyed is all of the other queer-coded stuff about Benoit Blanc that people have found and then turned into memes. His fabulous like Grecian flag—

ROWAN: Yeah. Romper?

JAZZA: Romper. Yeah. Beautiful when they get this medicine shot into the back of their neck. And he is the only one that doesn't have a gag reflex.

ROWAN: Yeah. Classic.

JAZZA: All brilliant, brilliant moments. Do—how did the gay, the gays in the mysteries, and the detectives? How what and when?

ROWAN: Thank you for that incredible segue into my bit of context, Jazza, so I think that we can talk about the sort of detective genre, and you know, men co-habiting without talking about Sherlock like I've already mentioned it. And that's, you know, Sherlock notoriously of the BBC version is like one of the most prolific fandoms on the internet. For something that only had like two episodes.

JAZZA: Sure.

ROWAN: Like, it's—because it had this like tension. And because it was clearly being like played around with and like, some people might argue queerbaiting was involved with the show, where you have this kind of very close, very caring, loving relationship between these two characters. But then the potential of them being romantically linked is referenced in text quite a lot, for them to just like, awkwardly deny it, or to get flustered about it, or you know anything like that. And so I think that it's not unusual for people to be able to see this subtext of like two men who are very intensely involved in the work and in their personal lives, who kind of complete each other in terms of, it's never just that one of them is able to solve it on their own. There's always like a some element that this other person brings, whether it is to in the case of Sherlock and John, to give them some kind of like grounding element, to give them appreciation where they have had scorn before from—from outsiders, which again, is quite queer coded. And so I think that it's not a sort of surprise to me, that a lot of people who already see the career potential in Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, for example, read this as being very queer. But then the other side of the coin is that it doesn't surprise me that the people who don't see Sherlock Holmes and John Watson is queer coded. Don't see these two as a couple. Because it is so—like he literally opens the door having in the middle of cooking after like, sort of slightly nagging Benoit—

JAZZA: Are you in the bath again? Yeah.

ROWAN: Like it's—it's very much that kind of energy that could be a—a spouse or it could just be, you know, a classic British butler scenario and—

JAZZA: Uh really grea— yeah, yeah.

ROWAN: Still friends, especially because it's clearly during lockdown. So it's like, well, people will cohabitate

JAZZA: all over the place.

ROWAN: They loved apart. And so yeah, I think that it's—I— I don't think that it's completely like the first time we've seen this kind of potential queerness crop up, but it's the first time that we've had other than some indie projects. So there's a—a short film, a short Sherlock film, which is like, specifically queer which is on YouTube, which I can recommend to people. Search that out. But in terms of the big retellings like it's not really—so it's often actors will talk about like, not often, but sometimes actors will kind of hint at the subtext, or they'll do like a nudge and wink element to it. But it's not necessarily been explicit. And I just wish that this had actually done more to have it be completely unambiguous because I think that with Rian Johnson's idea of oh, we just wanted a tiny hint of his backstory is really good cover for not having to make this explicit.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Because people can hear that and very reasonably be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, you know, a lot of these, you don't know a lot about their backstories although I would argue that, because I think they are—

JAZZA: I think it's just a load of rubbish

ROWAN: There are a lot of facts that come in. Because Sherlock, even Pyro, like we've had backstories about Pyro absolutely, especially in the more recent movies and his kind of history as a soldier. And so it frustrates me that they don't necessarily see that there is a very particular way that you need to deal with queer stories, that cannot if you want them to be genuine representations deal with ambiguity, because of the history of queer coding, of queerbaiting and the queer catching. You cannot deal with that ambiguity, and for me be seen as like authentically trying to do representation as opposed to smattering it in a way that can be removed or can be like missed by people.

JAZZA: I have a theory why—because I think that that is especially around the There's definitely kind of like a big queer following to that.

ROWAN: Oh, yeah.

JAZZA: And Sherlock is like another example of that as well. And I have a theory that it celebrates the outsider.

ROWAN: Oh absolutely.

JAZZA: It could be all of these series, the detective that or the investigator is brought in as the outsider who then is celebrated because of their outside their status.

ROWAN: Okay, I agree with you and I'm going to add to two different detectives like kinds of couples who should have engaged together.

JAZZA: Oh. Excellent.

ROWAN: One is an—written the original script. We're partners. Hot Fuzz.

JAZZA: Oh. Ooh.

ROWAN: Well originally—

JAZZA: I didn't know that.

ROWAN: So originally they weren't partners, but there was a love interest for the Simon Pegg's character, and they were given to Nick Frost.

JAZZA: Good.

ROWAN: And so there is this—this idea of like, that is a love story, like these two—this is so easily a romance story if you had just pushed it slightly, and also Rosemary & Thyme.

JAZZA: Oh my god, Rosemary & Thyme—

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: I didn't even thought about them.

ROWAN: Those two lesbians, they need a—

JAZZA: Definitely.Their obituary says she stayed, she lived with her longtime friend.

ROWAN: Yeah, exactly.

JAZZA: they own three cats.

ROWAN: Yup. Solved garden related crimes

JAZZA: Oh my god, I haven't even—I need to go back and watch Rosemary & Thyme now.

ROWAN: Anyone who's not British will have no clue what is.

JAZZA: No idea.

ROWAN: But basically it's just two—two women, ones like an ex-police detective and her gardener friend, and for some reason, they're always solving garden-related murders.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: That's so many murders.

JAZZA: It's always like the or the hoe or a plow which is the murder.

ROWAN: They—they were like doing the gardening for some big manor house and like a statue fell on someone.

JAZZA: And—and like the knowledge that the gardener has of like particular herbs in, like plowing techniques—

ROWAN: So gay.

JAZZA: —always comes into it.

ROWAN: All the sage,

ROWAN AND JAZZA: The sage.

ROWAN: So I do think—I think obviously right. I think that outside of status that like it's us two against the world, the idea of you having this like particular knowledge other people don't have, there's like loads of little bits that really lend themselves to queerness. I just wish that it was like explicitly made part of it, so that it could be literally kind of sick for two seconds and missed over.

JAZZA: Which is literally again, literally what happened. We might get that in future—

ROWAN: I hope so.

JAZZA: —iterations. It sounds like this is going to be—they're going to continue making these I guess they're called Knives Out Mysteries now.

ROWAN: Benoit Blanc mysteries. I will not rest until Daniel Craig has been in enough of these to eclipse James Bond. I want people to refer to like his big, they'll be like, Daniel Craig Nova, his big franchise working Knives Out. Like that's what I want. That's my dream.

JAZZA: Oh for me it's—I'm sorry, It's for me, he's always the love interest in Tomb Raider.

ROWAN: Okay, you know what, that's also fair.

JAZZA: Thank you so much. He—he really was a clear awakening for me in his own little way.

ROWAN: Like a boy.

JAZZA: Shall we go with in and actually talk about this movie?

ROWAN: Let's do it.

[theme]

JAZZA: So we are introduced—should we do like a breakdown of the suite of characters in this

ROWAN: Oh, there was so many of them. Yeah, we'll do a very quick rundown.

JAZZA: So we have—we don't really need to do an introduction to Benoit Blanc.

ROWAN: He needs no introduction, Jazza.

JAZZA: Literally. So Kate Hudson plays a successful fashion model who has now become an influencer, who has a sweatpants business that blew up during lockdown. Then we have Claire who is played by Kathryn Hahn, who is—was Angela All Along, that actress.

ROWAN: Uh, Agatha.

JAZZA: Agatha All Along.

ROWAN:

JAZZA: It was—that was the overarching twist of the military who plays a congresswoman or Senate—

ROWAN: Politician.

JAZZA: Uh, politician person.

ROWAN: politician person.

JAZZA: Dave Bautista who plays a men's rights activist Twitch streamer. Hit too close to home there. Thank you very much. We have—

ROWAN: And then Madelyn Cline plays his girlfriend's question mark. Like stuck on that feminist, like own candy, Whiskey.

JAZZA: Yeah. Which is what I want to call a child that I have at some point.

ROWAN: Okay, we need to stop you procreating.

JAZZA: Maybe. We have Lionel who is a clever science person.

ROWAN: Clever science.

JAZZA: Yeah. Clever science.

ROWAN: Leslie Odom Jr. plays, who I know.

JAZZA: Janelle Monae then plays Andy/Helen.

ROWAN: We'll come to that later.

JAZZA: We'll come to that twist.

ROWAN: And then finally Jessica Henwick is Peg, who is Birdie's sort of long-suffering assistant, loyal assistant. I think she was described as in all of the

JAZZA: Who's leaned in too—too hard to Birdie's, to Birdie's career. And then finally the man who's trying to bring them all together, played by Edward Norton is a guy called Miles Bron. Miles Bron is the Elon Musk of this movie.

ROWAN: Yeah. I mean, he's just Elon Musk. Yeah.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And I—I people have commented on this, but I also love the fact that Rian Johnson must have been seeing all of this shit with Elon Musk pop off and being like—

JAZZA: Excellent.

ROWAN: I cannot believe that I made this movie at such a specific time that is being released just after all this Twitter nonsense has happened. But essentially, Miles is this like billionaire genius founder of this tech company Alpha. That's incredible. This movie is set during COVID. Specifically, May 2020.

JAZZA: Which I love.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: Actually, because I don't—I think many productions that happened during lockdown have gone tried to maintain continuity and make it—and make stuff that doesn't happened, the fact that it was made in locked down. I really liked that we have kind of like—I guess this will be—this will eventually be a period piece.

ROWAN: Well, what's—what's particularly interesting to me? So this is like a classic setup of a murder mystery, right? It's like mysterious invitation, everyone gets this invitation to come to this private island, like, absolutely classic. And this invitation is this series of puzzles in this invitation box. And all of these people do know each other. Oftentimes, when—when people are invited, it's all strangers.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: But in this one, they know each other. So they will just call each other and they're like crowdsourcing, the—the solving of this puzzle. And eventually, they get to this invitation, and they all decide to show up. And it's—what's really interesting is that you get a little hint at all of their characters. You see them in their everyday life when they get these puzzles, and how they choose to solve it, or whether or not they have like, sort of intellectual smarts, or social smarts, or not, as the case may be in a lot of cases. And then we get almost like a microcosm of that exact rundown again when they arrive, and you see what kind of masks they're wearing.

JAZZA: Yeah. I really enjoyed that.

ROWAN: Which I adored. So it was like Benoit Blanc is wearing this very fashionable mask, which matches his outfit, very cute and—

JAZZA: It matches his neckerchief, made of the same material—

ROWAN: Exactly.

JAZZA: But actually, probably not very—it wasn't like the right level of mask for—

ROWAN: Exactly. Although it was in May. So at that point, it's like I guess that's what we use. Whereas Lionel the scientist is using the actual proper—

JAZZA: Yes, medical mask.

ROWAN: —Medical mask and it fits properly. Claire, the politician is wearing a mask that does have ways of adjusting it, but she simply hasn't. And so she's constantly having to pull it up.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And it gave me like the ick because I was like, Oh, I—I've seen so many people do that like that is a thing that I have witnessed of people, essentially wearing a useless mask because it's constantly falling down and then—

JAZZA: Yeah, yeah.

ROWAN: Sort of make like a slight effort to pull it back up again. And you've got Peg who has a disposable medical mask, which considering that she's flown in with Birdie who is wearing—

JAZZA: Who's literally wearing like a fishnet on her face.

ROWAN: Which—

JAZZA: A bejeweled golden fishnet. I love this as like you learn everything about the character. We've also had a nod to this when they're on the phone to one another. And Birdie is solving the mystery— the mystery box it like in the middle of a party, and somebody goes, are you at a party at this locked down? And Birdie goes, oh, yeah, but they're all in my pod. And there's like hundreds of people around. Very, very good.

ROWAN: Which I love. But I—but I think like people have pointed out the fact that there's—so this question mark is obviously a reference to Lana Del Rey

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Identical map.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: But Peg having a medical mask, a lot of people suggested like she was at the party as well, and wasn't wearing masks. So it looks like the kind of mask that you'll be given if you hadn't got one, and someone in like the airport or like, was like you need to wear this and she was like—

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Okay, I guess. So she puts it on, it works fine. But Kate Hudson's like, don't worry, I already have one. And I think that this is all like really, just so and then obviously, like, Dave Bautista's character, and like Whiskey are wearing no masks.

JAZZA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. to this.

ROWAN: Incredible. Also, Andi turns up isn't wearing a mask, which I think is interesting, because I don't necessarily think that, that is a comment on her, like COVID awareness or interest because she is also a scientist. I think it's more the idea that she wants this entrance and to everyone see her face.

JAZZA: Sure.

ROWAN: Which makes even more sense when you know about like the twist afterward, that this big sort of like, It's me moment happens because we do see earlier on that character is wearing a mask when she goes to and all this stuff. So it's clearly like a thing that she does normally. So yeah, that's our rundown of characters and—and them getting to this dock where they get met by Ethan Hawke, who was playing Miles's assistant in one scene, just to spray them in the throat and be like, don't worry about COVID, It's fine. No masks needed. Implying that there is this, you know, billionaires figured out.

JAZZA: Yeah, there's this throat shot vaccine thing

ROWAN: Yeah, and he's like, I'm just gonna keep this to myself.

JAZZA: I remember what was it at the time, it was like hot water. You were meant to drink lots of tea, and that would kill the COVID.

ROWAN: Oh yeah, that would kill the COVID.

JAZZA: Good time. I have called this First Act, by the way. Don't worry, They're in my pod.

ROWAN: Oh God. That it was just enough COVID. the island it's like—

JAZZA: Yeah, yeah.

ROWAN: It's a—we figured—

JAZZA: They're literally are in the pod.

ROWAN: We—we did this. It's fine. You're not a part of that. I did—I really love that. And one of the other things we get at this point is we see Benoit in his home life.

JAZZA: Oh.

ROWAN: For a scene—

JAZZA: Uh-huh.

ROWAN: We flashback to the scene and find out more about it. But we see him playing Among Us. Again, just aggressively pandemic vibes with some celebrity guests. I'm obsessed. So Angela, Angela Lansbury, because why not.

ROWAN: The gay— the gay clues are really

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Which is fun because it's also like connections between them, as well as to like just Benoit knowing all these famous people because they are playing themselves. They don't seem like characters. So like Angela Lansbury was Mrs. Lovett in 2012, for example, I'm very gay, so I knew that. And also who was going to be in Rian Johnson's next project, which is a detective show. So she herself is like playing a detective.

JAZZA: I can't wait.

ROWAN: I love her so much. she's straight what a—

JAZZA: I know, what a waste.

ROWAN: And so we see him like in the bath, he's clearly kind of odds with himself because he can't—he clearly like at this point, there's no mysteries to solve. Everyone's inside—

JAZZA: There's just the mystery of the

ROWAN: And he's going slowly crazy co— a copy of Kane's jaw bone is on the floor.

JAZZA: Of cou—I knew that you were going to notice a fucking book reference. Of course.

ROWAN: Which is so funny that he's like solving Kane's Jawbone, because he's like, so bored. And he's got his like laptop in the bath, and he's got little fares on. And he's just the absolute classic picture of like the detective—

JAZZA: You know that he's a prune from the belly button down.

ROWAN: Oh, truly.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: I need—he's like I need a case. Like, again, a classic start-to-work detective, like story. And so he also has gotten one of these boxes. And so we get to the island. And what we think is a classic story of everyone's been invited by Miles to play this murder mystery, to solve his murderer.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Has a little twist in it, because we find out that Benoit was not actually invited. So he has got this box.

JAZZA: Just rocked up. World's most famous detective.

ROWAN: World's most famous detective. So if someone has given him this mysterious box, who is it? We—who wo—we maybe— we'll never find out, we will find out. And so the detecting begins as they all get onto this island and

JAZZA: Well—well, is very excited about the—the happy accident that Benoit has arrived because what he has planned later on the island with all of his guests, is a murder mystery party.

ROWAN: Well, this is it to solve his murder.

JAZZA: It almost looks like it's—it's deliberate that he's invited the most famous detective in the world to come to his—to his party. But we soon find out

ROWAN: See if he can solve this, this crazy mystery written by Gillian Flynn, which was—

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: I laughed so hard at that

JAZZA: Let's just say it is not fatal.

ROWAN: But there is also another wrench in the plan. What's a metaphor?

JAZZA: Another— Well, now I—

ROWAN: Another brick in the wall.

JAZZA: Another—another kick in the teeth.

ROWAN: Oh, kick in the teeth. But there's another thing that's a little bit off, which is that Andi Cassandra brand.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Andy she's known, also has turned up, which, I guess people didn't expect to happen because she—there's been recently been a court case it turns out.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Where that Miles is one, where he has proven that he is the rightful CEO and owner of this big company Alpha and that he came up with the idea for it. And that Andy in fact has kind of been ousted as the kind of ex-CEO. And so they definitely didn't think she was going to turn up at this fun little island. They were like why—why is she here? This is awkward. We all used to be friends but she—

JAZZA: And every—and everyone's kind of like doing little jabs at her being like

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: Calm and all of that.

ROWAN: Like this is very weird. And I think also we get the scene that we've seen her in, everyone else when we said everyone had been solving the mystery together of this puzzle box, the only two people we kind of don't see really doing that are Benoit, we don't see him opening this box at all. And Andy who we see in like a just smash it up, just smashed this box to hell and to get invite out of it, which I very much enjoyed and it turns out that towel in the hair, I was like very specific choice to have. As like what does this mean, towel in the hair? It's actually very relevant later on.

JAZZA: Is it?

ROWAN: Yeah, because she's—because her hair, you can't see whose hair is. Because you don't—need to now know which

JAZZA: Oh that is clever. Okay. So they go up to this Glass Onion, after which this is named like a bit it.

ROWAN: It's literally—

JAZZA: A Glass Onion.

ROWAN: A Glass Onion.

JAZZA: Literally

ROWAN: And figuratively.

JAZZA: Yeah. And they're getting ready for dinner. Before that, we see a couple of conflicts that are seeded. We start to think as a viewer could they, but we know a merge is gonna happen. Could they want to murder Miles? So Peg the assistant of Birdie is really worried about a PR statement about this, the sweatpants that is going to be released. We don't know too much about that yet. And we also see that Whiskey. The girlfriend—supposed girlfriend, flirty person of—

ROWAN: Of Duke.

JAZZA: —of Duke, played by Dave Bautista, the men's rights activist, is doing some big flirting with Miles, oh dear. So maybe there's some kind of like—

ROWAN: Jealousy, all active passion.

JAZZA: Jealous happening there. So as they're sitting down for dinner, we—yeah, I have of course, a nice long monologue from Miles where he shows off the fact that he has rented the Mona Lisa for a couple of weeks.

ROWAN: Yeah, no one's in the Louvre, that's shut down.

JAZZA: Yeah, literally no way

ROWAN: Get over to my place and private island.

JAZZA: And we are shown that it has a really sensitive safety mechanism so that even when somebody's phone goes off, it all shuts down. But Miles has managed to convince them to build in a safety release, to just turn the safety glass off.

ROWAN: I wonder if checkov’s Mona Lisa, or

JAZZA: Checks off Mona Lisa.

ROWAN: We'll be coming back soon.

JAZZA: And he also reveals this, there's—there's too much—too many layers to this film. But I guess that's kind of the whole point.

ROWAN: It's an Onion.

JAZZA: And you just can't see the center. There's this new technology that he has called Klear, which is going to provide limitless energy, apparently, but it has hydrogen. The science guy and the politician lady are worried about it.

ROWAN: Yeah, no, shit. Hey, what if the fuel was made of hydrogen? That seems safe.

JAZZA: And they keep on saying, Hindenburg. Cause obviously hydrogen is very flammable. This is where we go into Act Two for me.

ROWAN: Yeah.

[theme]

ROWAN: So dear listener, you may have been thinking, while you've been consuming this podcast, well, this seems like fun. They're just joking around about a film that they enjoyed. I would love to do that too. But you're not entirely sure how to get into podcasting, you're not entirely sure what goes into it, what you need, what are the typical, like pitfalls that you have to avoid? Well, Multitude is offering classes for podcasters by podcasters for people like you. You'll learn from weekly instruction, hands-on homework, and lots of valuable feedback from your instructor and classmates in our online classroom. We are starting out this first round of classes with three different classes that you can take. They all have very fancy titles. So here they are, number one, Sustainable Podcasting, Refining Structure, and Workflow, So Your Show Works with you, by the wonderful Eric Silver. We also have Podcasts Mixing and Mastering for non-engineers by Brandon Grugle. And How to Make A Living As A Digital Creator by Amanda McLoughlin. Truly something for everyone. You've got your structural work processes, you've got your technical audio stuff, and you've got you're making a living, like getting rid of the bullshit financial stuff as well. So maybe your New Years' resolution wants to you know, try new things, this might be a great way for you to kick off 2023 by working on a new project, or will be a great gift for an aspiring podcaster that you know. You can learn more about the dates, curriculum, and technical details, or just go and register today by going to multitude.productions/classes, or checking out the posts on the Multitude social media feeds. And just before we get back into the episode, we want to say a massive thank you to our sponsor yet again, Squarespace. Amazing returning sponsor to the podcast. If you're looking to build a website for yourself or your business, Squarespace is like all in one place. Everything is there, it's the only thing you'll need to do just that. You can use it to build the site, obviously. But you can also do things like set up an online shop or connect with your audience. We use Squarespace to make the Queer Movie Podcast website. I used it to make my own personal website. So I'm a loyal Squarespace user for a number of reasons. One, I have things constantly going on, overload of projects that I need to link to in the site and to talk about on the website, including all my social media platforms. And Squarespace lets you not only link to your social media but also connect it so you can display posts from your profiles on the site directly. There are also analytics and insights because sometimes it's great to dig into a bit of data, you know what I mean? So if you're someone who wants to, like grow your brand, if you're wanting to build a website for a business, then it can figure out, you know, where are you getting your site visits from? Where are sales coming from? What keywords are being used to find you? And all of that stuff is so useful. And they also have really exciting features like a donation function. So you can encourage donations on your site for a cause that you care about. As much as I might wish to be an artist, I'm simply am not. And so the designer function is an absolute lifesaver, which means that you have like templates that you can follow. It's very easy, the people who are actually good at design have done the work for you. You just have to slot in all of the stuff that you need for your website, including making sure that the website doesn't look like rubbish on mobile that is taken care of for you automatically, which is very useful. So if that sounds like something that's up your alley, then check out squarespace.com/queermovie for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code Queer Movie to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, back to the show and the Glass Onion.

[theme]

ROWAN: That also is where I'm going into Act Two. We've kind of got this set up in Act One, we know all of the players, were signed to get some of the conflicts, and it's time for the murder mystery.

JAZZA: And it's solved in about 20 seconds—

ROWAN: Yes.

JAZZA: —by Benoit Blanc.

ROWAN: I was really excited for this because I was like when a scene like that happens, and a character is being smart, you know, it's either gonna go really well or really badly for them. And I was like, I didn't know whether the kicker was going to be that he's saying all this—Ben was saying all this stuff, and then he's wrong, or that Ben was saying all this stuff, and then he's right. And I think that this is where we get a sense of like how Rian Johnson and like, wants you to feel about Benoit. Because I think that in the first movie, in Knives Out, he has this element of cluelessness because we—not to—I'm gonna spoil anything for Knives Out. But we as an audience are not following him as a detective—

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: —In that movie. We are following a different character. And so we see how that character is messing with his investigation, and how many things he misses. And he does eventually figure out the end. But I feel like coming out of that movie, I was like, well, it wasn't his movie, so we don't know how we're meant to necessarily feel about him when we—whether we are meant to believe he's very competent because he does seem to have solved all this stuff, that we've just seen him need a lot of help to solve it.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Or whether we're meant to think that he like needs other people, and he's a bit full of himself, and he has that arrogant detective element to him. And so I thought this was a really interesting way of being like, no, he's just some—he's just some guy who really likes mysteries. Like he's really excited about the fact that he's solving. He's not necessarily trying to show off, but it's like, here's this thing, he's excited

JAZZA: But also we've had that built up over, he's just like looking for any kind of detective mystery stimulation.

ROWAN: Yeah. And he—and he's so excited. He's like, thanking Miles for how like exciting this was like, oh my gosh, like yes, this is amazing. I found all your clues, like thank you so much. This is to him is like really exciting. This was not the energy that Miles was hoping that that would happen at this particular murder mystery. He kind of thought was going to take all weekend to solve, and then even then maybe they wouldn't. And he manages to solve actually before Miles is fake killed, which is incredible. Truly a triumph. We—we love that.

JAZZA: Yeah. And Miles stands there with the—a look of a man completely defeated. And then the mechanism in his chest that is meant to show the the fake blood come out, splats all over the table. The moment that I really, really enjoyed.

ROWAN: And his face is just blank the entire time with outrage.

JAZZA: A Blanc, if you will.

ROWAN: Wow.

JAZZA: Yep. So there's a big fight around and each anemones character. People have really pissed off that she's there. It all comes to a head and we see her storm off into the other parts of the visual that there I guess. Then suddenly, Duke who is the men's rights activist, he collapses after taking a sip of his glass. Everybody starts to kind of like point the finger at Andi. They find out that Duke's pistol is missing. He's been carrying around this pistol shooting off because he's a men's rights activist. And then suddenly, because Miles thought it would be a good thing when they were doing the murder mystery. All of the power goes off while there's absolute chaos. Blanc goes outside to find Andi to tell her kind of like what has happened because—

ROWAN: She's missed all of it.

JAZZA: She's missed all of the drama. Yeah, the— the death of Duke. And then somebody shoots Andi.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: She collapses to the floor, and then—

ROWAN: And she dies.

JAZZA: Sure.

ROWAN: She died.

JAZZA: In quotations, she

ROWAN: As far as we're concerned as this point, she's dead.

JAZZA: She's dead. And then we go into a really long, extended flashback sequence.

ROWAN: Yeah. Blanc's like, I know who killed Andi. And you're like, oh, okay, he's doing it again. this is real.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Or is it? Yeah, so this is really interesting. But there's also like, again, these little scenes that come up where we're just learning a little bit more about the characters. So for example, Miles mix everyone there's special drinks with like glasses, which have their name engraved on it apart from Peg, aka, like the worker who gets a red solo cup too. And then Peg writes her own name on it in Sharpie later on. We're like, oh Peg, which is just this idea of like, the kind of contempt that he has for people who are like, below him, I guess?

JAZZA: Yeah. It just reinforces asshole state.

ROWAN: Yes, truly. We also have this scene where he makes this speech about being a disrupter.

JAZZA: Oh, my God. Yeah.

ROWAN: Because they know—

JAZZA: I know too many of these people, who an ironically make those speeches.

ROWAN: Disgusting. Because they talk about being disruptors. And again—

JAZZA: What's the thing that links us all together? What are the

ROWAN: So he says about the idea of like, you know, it's okay to you know, maybe someone will be brave enough to break a small thing. And then it like, you know, people will get behind it, because they want to see that thing broken and then you break more things but are you going to be the person that breaks the biggest thing that people are going to hate you for? It's almost like so the finale of this movie is going to be that exact thing. And that potentially, Andi/Helen is going to be revealed as the actual disrupter. Who did break the small thing, and then it—we'll get to that later. But yeah, we have these little bits that might be foreshadowing, and we also see a little bit of walking around, and snoopy, snoopy snooping that might be happening with Benoit.

JAZZA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

ROWAN: And then yeah, it's just to say we get back into a flashback to reveal what the hell actually happened.

JAZZA: So Andi's dead.

ROWAN: Yes. Spoil that, spoil that. Not—not on the step.

JAZZA: Not on the step.

ROWAN: He actually died a while ago.

JAZZA: Yeah, she's been dead a while. Everybody said it was suicide, and it happened about a week before the trip. But of course, she has a twin sister.

ROWAN: Helen.

JAZZA: So the twin sister then goes to Benoit Blanc, because he's a world-famous detective with one of these mystery boxes in order to get hire him to investigate her sister's death. We then get a flashback and a flashback as Helen. Oh, my brain,

ROWAN: Andi.

JAZZA: No, no, no. So Helen tells Benoit, Andi's origin story with this group of disruptors.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: So Andy had this group of people that were all down on their luck, all in their 30s a little bit washed up, but close to home. Alright, so let's calm down everyone. And then she introduces Miles to the group. And then everything starts to like slowly turn around. And as things start to turn around, Andi then comes up with the principles of this company Alpha that she lost the rights to in this court case, and that Miles is now the CEO of. Do you know what is on this napkin?

ROWAN: No. So I was like, I know that I could pause it and try and read it. But people much cleverer than me will have done that, and actually, be able to explain whatever weird science shits on the napkin.

JAZZA: May it's just a buzzword.

ROWAN: I love it. It's like synergy.

JAZZA: So it says, free app, code, delivery, exponential growth, worldwide accessibility diversification—

ROWAN: Oh my God.

JAZZA: —And then crypto scalability.

ROWAN: Incredible.

JAZZA: Crypto management, accessibility, scalability, development, timestamp, I don't know. And then manpower.

ROWAN: Incredible.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And that's what this entire thing has been about.

JAZZA: I just love the

ROWAN: I just love they chose to show the napkin because they didn't have to show what was on the napkin.

JAZZA: No, they didn't at all.

ROWAN: At all. Incredible. And so essentially not only has she like Miles outed her as the CEO but the—all of the people who are at this—

JAZZA: They all testified.

ROWAN: Like all the friends, they did perj—they did a perjury.

JAZZA: They purged her.

ROWAN: They purged her and they did a perjury in the court. They like

JAZZA: Oh, oh, they poked it. Got it.

ROWAN: Yes.

JAZZA: Is that perjury?

ROWAN: I don't know how to do firms. So they—

JAZZA: They committed perjury.

ROWAN: They committed perjury. They did a perjury. And we're essentially in court, they said that Miles had been the one that came up with the ideas for Alpha, that they all saw him in this bar, the Glass Onion that they frequented together writing on this napkin, and it was all Miles, Miles, Miles Miles, because he clearly had power over all of them, whether that was – Bankrolling them.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: He'd helped them. And he also had the power to destroy them. So basically, their greed kind of was definitely an influence in this.

JAZZA: The problem was and the reason that Andi wasn't able to claim her rights over this company, is because she didn't have the napkin. Or so she thought because after she lost the rights of the company, she ended up finding it in a bookcase. No, in one of—

ROWAN: Maybe—

JAZZA: —In one of her diaries.

ROWAN: Yeah. Maybe she should like flick, had a flick through them.

JAZZA: Yeah, she should have looked through some of her previous works. And she ends up finding it. Doesn't take a photo of the napkin. Oh, no, as evidence that would have been useful. She puts the napkin in an envelope, then takes a selfie with the envelope, not the napkin, and then sends that email to all of the people saying, hey, guess what? I've got you all fucked now. And because of that, we—that is why she's dead. A mess.

ROWAN: Yeah, it was—it was said to be suicide, but essentially someone put her in her car and turned like blocked off the exhaust, and so free and kind of like staged it as a suicide. But Helen, her sister like convinced, knowing that she had like almost one that she could turn all this around. What—why would she do that? It doesn't make sense. She must have been killed.

JAZZA: Benoit ends up convincing Helen to go to this private island, dressed and disguised as her sister—

ROWAN: Because at this point—

JAZZA: Despite the fact he says, they're probably going to try and kill you. I can't be held responsible.

ROWAN: Because nobody knows her sister's dead at this point, other than—

JAZZA: Yes.

ROWAN: —the killer who will know as Benoit points out.

JAZZA: Of course.

ROWAN: As soon as she turns up, it's going to be like this person is going to know that you are not this, but because they know that they've killed you.

JAZZA: And then we then see the first half of the movie from Helen's perspective. So she's going around finding motives and objectives for each of the people they're on the island, and find legitimate like motifs for everybody who is there. So everyone could have wanted to kill Andi.

ROWAN: And it's also very funny, because sometimes when we really see what's happened earlier in the movie, we just pan out slightly. And she's just been there the whole time.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: So when Benoit was snooping, she was snooping between the hundred different bush.

JAZZA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ROWAN: Which I really enjoyed. And also we've seen the—she makes a reference to the fact that like, you know, the motive means opportunity, like a little grid, and she says, oh, this is really like, clue you must be really good at Clue. And Ben was like, I hate that game. It's—I'm so bad at dumb things. Like I—like running around, like checking boxes. And that's like exactly what they end up doing during this. And that she really helps with, and I think that again, this is a pattern that happens within like Knives Out. And this one where he's sort of helped by this woman who almost is like, more competent than him in a lot of ways, or like seems to like catch connections or like, but he's not trying to take credit for those actions. He's like, if he solves it himself like he does with the original Gillian Flynn murder mystery. He's excited that he managed to do it. But if he needs to rely on someone else, it's not like a Holmes, Watson situation, where Holmes is just like, I'm so much smarter than you and go fuck yourself.

JAZZA: Yeah. He's like, you're actually quite good at it.

ROWAN: It's like, yes, yes, it's worked together. So like, the fact that he immediately ran when the lights went out to try and find Andi/Helen, is this idea of like, he does have this genuine sort of care. And he does actually care about like, he's not going to lie to her about it being dangerous. He's going to—like all of these things to me, I'm really like the move away from the sort of either hard-boiled detective or the like, emotionless genius or like all this stuff. I like the idea that he's allowed to be like caring. And just like a nice dude.

JAZZA: Hearing you say that reminds me of the Doctor Who, doctor-companion relationship that often happens. And I quite like—

ROWAN: You're right.

JAZZA: —that he's getting—

ROWAN: That is the energy.

JAZZA: Yeah. And I think that this is what seems to be developing. When Benoit Blanc has like a character, and hopefully we get to see that as that con—as this continues. Where he has an assistant that kind of like cycles in, and they all—they've all so far, about something that he lacks.

ROWAN: Yes.

JAZZA: And like, compliment him. And that's something that you see very often with the Doctor Who kind of like energy as well.

ROWAN: Oh shit. Now you've cracked it, you've cracked the code.

JAZZA: I've cracked the code. So we get to the point where Helen, as we know now has been shot. We thought that she's dead. But no, of course, a pocketbook stopped the bullet.

ROWAN: Classic.

JAZZA: What the fuck was that pocketbook made out of?

ROWAN: You know, Andi's diary, they hold many secrets Napkins. I thought for a second she just bought a bulletproof vest because she was like the people will kill me on this island. Why would I not bring a bulletproof vest, I'm not an idiot. But instead, she was like, don't worry, my dead sis would protect me. And so we realized like that they discovered the motives and the little flick book.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And all of them seem to have had a motive to kill Andi, to get rid of Andi. So like Klear this energy source.

JAZZA: The hydrogen

ROWAN: Hydrogen energy source like it needs to work because, Lionel, for example, the scientist has sort of backed it within his work for the company, Claire, the politician has agreed to like build a factory for it within her constituent area. We have this PR statement that we heard about earlier from Birdie is about the use of sweatshops within the company, which leads to the incredible exchange between Birdie and Peg, where Peg like wait, do you think sweatshops are where they make sweatpants? And Birdie looks at like, yes? And Peg's like, oh my god.

JAZZA: To be fair If you didn't know?

ROWAN: That might be what you assume you're like, oh, yeah, they said that they were going to use sweatshops. It just made sense to me. And so there is you know, Miles has put money into this company, and is making Birdie take the fall by doing this PR statement. Duke is like seeing that Miles'sTwitch is getting—

JAZZA: His YouTube channel—his YouTube channel is dying. He needs to be taken off. He needs to be basically be put on Alpha news.

ROWAN: Yes. He wants to get in—get into the news network.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And Whiskey is like trying to persuade Miles for that to happen, but he doesn't like if you know, if he crosses Miles, then it's not going to happen. He needs to try and prove himself. So all of them have this motive to like prove themselves to Miles by taking out Andi who's going to be this really big threat because she's about to expose the napkin for real. And so yeah, all just it—it's all looking and not—not like an easy solve if if we're looking for one motive from one person.

JAZZA: Yeah, exactly. This is where I ended the Second Act.

ROWAN: Yes.

JAZZA: And I don't think we named the Second Act, but just in case you didn't get, it was the party and its aftermath.

ROWAN: Yes. I mean longtime listeners to the podcast will know, this is always an act. New-time listeners. Every gay movie that you ever watch will have a party and its aftermath. We will find one—one of them has had every single

JAZZA: And then I actually—when you think about it isn't life just one big party and its aftermath?

ROWAN: Sure.

JAZZA: Think about it. Think about it.

ROWAN: Yeah.

[theme]

JAZZA: My final act, I've called the reveal, because this is the classic. Yeah.

ROWAN: That is very inventive of you.

JAZZA: I—I thank you so much. Hey, I—did really well on the first one. So Helen is not dead. They fake her death. So she puts hot sauce on her chest—

ROWAN: Yes.

JAZZA: —where the bullet wound would be.

ROWAN: Where blood would be.

JAZZA: Everyone's like, oh my god.

ROWAN: Another Check offs, hot sauce again.

JAZZA: Checkov’s hot sauce.

ROWAN: There's a lot of little of little thing—

JAZZA: Checkov’s was everywhere in this movie.

ROWAN: Yeah, truly. There's a lot of just little random things that crop up as like a little joke that you're like, okay, this is gonna be relevant later. But it's interesting to just find out how. It's like, oh, of course, the hot sauce is blood. Why not?

JAZZA: And everybody goes back into the Glass Onion. And the—

ROWAN: Snooping in the office.

JAZZA: Snooping in the office. Oh, yeah.

ROWAN: While Blanc is like, let me reveal everything to you people.

JAZZA: Blanc starts unpacking everything, and reveals that dun dun dun, it was miles all along.

ROWAN: For both bloody murders.

JAZZA: For both of them. For both the murder of Andy and Duke, who I'm sure you've forgotten about because I had at this point. So he's the men's rights—

ROWAN: Activists, every single time. I think that we remember that Duke is the men's rights activist at this point.

JAZZA: No, I wouldn't want to assume.

ROWAN: So Miles knew that Andi had the napkin because it turns out he uses fax. Again, checkov’s, fax machine. And his fax shown simultaneously to every fax machine that he owns all over the world. And he got the email, fax over to him. So he's like, okay, well, yeah. And that's again—the Glass Onion, it's so obvious. There seems like there's layers, but it's completely transparent. Yeah, obviously the one he was going to kill it. Not some second person who was trying to do it for Miles. Miles just did it. That was just Miles's thing. And again, Chekhov's blue car, isn't like, which means that the reason why he called Duke, is because Duke saw miles leaving—

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: —Andi's. And at the time, obviously, they don't know Andi's dead, so Miles wouldn't necessarily have thought anything of it, but tells Miles at the party just before he dies. Oh my god, there's a news article on his phone.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Says, oh, shit, Andi's dead. And Miles knows it's just a matter of time

JAZZA: Google notifications.

ROWAN: Truly, again. Oh, everything always come in full circle And so Miles is like think quick. I gotta get rid of this guy who's the witness to seeing me drive away from this house. The only person who saw me in my extremely ostentatious car and put some—put some little pineapple in his drink.

JAZZA: And Duke doesn't fuck with pineapple.

ROWAN: He doesn't fuck with pineapple.

JAZZA: And literally dies

ROWAN: Definitely allergic to pineapple. I don't fuck with pineapple, but it just makes my mouth feel weird. You know what I mean? Wouldn't kill me if I had said I don't fuck—

JAZZA: What would kill you just for future reference?

ROWAN: A knife. A knife. for future reference. But you know well, yeah, I'll deal with it when that time comes. And also Duke at this point, tries to use it to his advantage and be like, hey, how about that Alpha News? Am I right? Remember how I saw you driving away from a crime scene? And so Miles poisons him with pineapple, takes Duke's gun, uses it to shoot Helen. He's like well done me, double murder. No— now I'm very rich. No one will ever catch me.

JAZZA: Yeah. So at this point, Helen has been upstairs and has found the the red envelope with a napkin which was like hidden in Miles's office books.

ROWAN: Because he's an idiot.

JAZZA: Because he's an idiot, which we find out later.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: Helen walks down, takes out the napkin, and shows it to everybody. Has she taken a photo of the napkin? No.

ROWAN: No.

JAZZA: Has anybody—

ROWAN: Why would anyone take a photo

JAZZA: No. But she goes haha. Look the napkin that proves that my dead sister came up with everything. And then Miles goes up to her with like one of those blowtorch things and completely destroys it with—

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: —with fire.

ROWAN: Yeah. This napkin that as we have—as you have mentioned, has some very important could never be thought of by anyone else.

JAZZA: Scalable crypto.

ROWAN: Scale that crypto. So essentially the evidence has gone against Miles. And it's a very ransom from Knives Out moment. Again not to spoil that maybe, but I just have. So what do you have, a burned-up napkin?

JAZZA: Yeah, and that's it. And everybody seems to be on Miles's side, they don't want to fuck with this. However Helen then start, it looks like she's just having a little bit of a— she's having a moment. She goes around, start smashing all of the glass. I don't—I still don't really understand why she's—she's throwing all the glass?

ROWAN: Well, if you remember the disruptor's speech from earlier.

JAZZA: Okay.

ROWAN: It's like first of all, you destroy a little thing. And everyone gets behind you. Hence why everyone suddenly is like— Yeah. Fuck Miles. But when they—and then they smashed they just smart start smashing more and more

JAZZA: Right.

ROWAN: And everyone else is like laughing because they're like this is fun. We're just destroying stuff for no reason other than it being fun. Whereas Andi, they're like, /Helen, the actual disrupter is like that bit in his speech where he says, and then you destroy the one thing, the big thing that no one wants you to destroy, and they'll hate you for it.

JAZZA: And it's the Mona Lisa.

ROWAN: The Mona Lisa.

JAZZA: Yeah, so with all of the Chekov's release mechanism, Helen starts building a bonfire from all of the stuff that she's destroyed.

ROWAN: Of course she does.

JAZZA: And that obviously triggers the Mona Lisa's security mechanism. So she throws some of the Klear, which is the hydrogen stuff into the bonfire, which then gets sucked up into the vents and creates a big explosion, everything explodes, everything breaks. And then it's not really a fire, the scene looks like it's three flame throwers kind of like blowing either side of the Mona Lisa. And then Helen runs towards the release mechanism, shoves Miles out of the way, releases the mechanism, and then burns the Mona Lisa, and the Mona Lisa is now dead.

ROWAN: I really like so—so the—the bit that we missed out slightly which is interesting because again, it's like a Benoit Blanc Knives Out mystery. And we were like, we just brush over the bit where he sort of like gave her the Klear in order to

JAZZA: Oh, yes, yeah.

ROWAN: But I think that's interesting, right? That it wasn't like his triumphant ending where he's like, and he—and I solved the mystery and that's the end. The ending is her getting this like vengeance. And so he gives her the Klear, like, puts in her hand, and at first, you don't see what he's given her. Although immediately, I was like, pointing at the screen. And my family were like, what—what are you doing, and I'm like, in my head, I was like Chekov's Klear. It's Chekov's Klear because earlier on shown and given a nugget, and he'd never given it, we've never seen him give it back.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: And so I was like it's Chekov's fucking Klear. Benoit gives her Andi's the glass with Andi engraved on it, and says, all I can do I—there's nothing I can do, like, basically implying you—evidence destroyed, and also, this man is so powerful that he would get away with it. Like, so he gives her the glass and says, all I can give you is courage with alcohol. And that gives us something else, the Klear and like, and a reminder of why your sister walked away in the first place. And then she obviously decides what she's going to do. And this again, is really interesting, because these movies are like—there was not a detective who solves it and then gives it to the police like haha, police, you're not smart enough for this. He's like, the police won't do shit. He's like, the justice system is fucked, like the police can kind of hang around. But ultimately, like revenge and justice is a moral justice rather than like a justice system justice.

JAZZA: And a poetic justice.

ROWAN: And a poetic justice. And so he's like, I'm gonna give you the tools for you to be able to create your own justice to the like, well, the two women that he's kind of helped Martha and Helen. And this is exactly the same as kind of the energy where he's like, essentially, I'm going to leave now. I'm telling you, from my point of view, as a detective, like, I believe you, but we don't have the evidence and there's nothing like this man is too powerful. Here's some tools that you might use to destroy him in another way, which essentially is like, there is almost nothing that will take this man down. But like, the reputation of his big discovery, that he is like, killed this woman over, destroys one of the most famous paintings in the entire world, and his own house, like that, 's gonna fuck his company. Like that's gonna destroy everything that he has killed for. And I liked that poetic justice element of this, but it's not just the end doesn't just like look how clever Benoit is.

JAZZA: And most has been saying like one of the things he says as he's introduced earlier is, I want to create something that will be mentioned in the same breath as the Mona Lisa and his name is— life goal.

ROWAN: And then they just smoke cigars on the beach. And then the final shot is of Andi posed like the Mona Lisa on the beach with a like red kind of blood stain looking out with this look that again, is that classic Mona Lisa thing of like, is she smiling, is she serious, is she sad

She's kind of like all of the oh so well. And that is the movie. That's—

JAZZA: Doo doo doo.

ROWAN: That's the Glass Onion. There are so many things like we need to stop now. Because otherwise, we'll go over time. There was so many little—there are so many little details that people have talked about in this movie that like some of them I noticed, and some of them I didn't. So there's like paintings on the wall that foreshadow what's going on. There's a Rothko, which has been hung upside down because Miles is a fucking idiot. And like, he's not even hung these like rich like, it's essentially just like Rian Johnson hates billionaires is the thesis of this movie. He just hates rich people in general. And I love that for him. There's also the fact that Andi, Cassandra, and Helen are like two characters within the story of the Trojan War. And like their story, the Trojan war mirrors what happens in the movie. So like, Cassandra is this seer who is—has a gift of prophecy, but his curse, but no one's ever believed her? And I'm like, yeah, that's literally Andi.

JAZZA: Yeah.

ROWAN: Being like, can you all not see that this man is an idiot who's going to destroy everything, and everyone's like, no, we love him. He's giving us money. And then Helen is—she starts the Trojan War by deserting her husband for the Trojan causing the fall of Troy, essentially bringing down an empire in the same way as her bringing down this like financial and tech empire of Miles Bron. And I just really like, just these little weird details that are almost like little nuggets of they don't mean anything to the story, like you don't need to know them to figure it out or to like, to—

JAZZA: For the depth.

ROWAN: To look out for the depth that it has. It's really interesting to me.

[theme]

ROWAN: So, I think with—we're at the point of which we can—

JAZZA: We're at rainbow flag.

ROWAN: We're at rainbow flags. We are at the point that we are deciding how many stripes of the six-stripe rainbow flag we're gonna give it, and which colors. Jazza, what are you doing? What it—where are you going with this? What did you think at this movie?

JAZZA: So I feel like my duty as a co-host of this podcast, is to think about this as a queer movie.

ROWAN: Yes, I'm happy for you to do that.

JAZZA: This is the Queer Movie Podcast.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: And—

ROWAN: I guess.

JAZZA: —And on that criteria, it is—it is a great movie.

ROWAN: Yeah.

JAZZA: I'm—I'm not as into kind of like this genre as you are. But I really appreciated this movie, it is a fun watch. I don't think it's as good as Knives Out. But I have a bitter taste in my mouth around the queer catching. And so I'm only going to give it two, and I'm going to give it some healing. Because that is supposedly, that's kind of what happened with Helen when she comes back from the dead, but not. And I'm gonna give it some nature because it's got an onion.

ROWAN: That—I feel you're gonna go with a beautiful private island setting, but the onion also is nature.

JAZZA: So those two colors are orange for healing and green for nature.

ROWAN: Stunning. I would agree with you. If we're— judging it as a queer movie., it really is lacking. We decided to do it because of the conversation around it. And because I am hoping that in future Knives Out mystery.

JAZZA: We see more Benoit.

ROWAN: This will be like made explicit, and we'll be able to look back at this and be like, okay, cool. This was like the first time we got introduced to like his husband, and you know, it got continued onwards. And it's—it is actually clear. So I would—I would agree with you that like it—it's very few black, very few stripes in that way. I, however, I'm gonna give this like a four or five for just enjoyment levels for me. I feel like the ADHD for these movies, like it really vibes because it's like, hey, it's fast-paced, there's not a moment where something isn't happening, like, let's go, let's go. And I love that. But I also think I was saying to you that I also didn't enjoy it as much as Knives Out as a standalone like mystery movie. However, I think as a next installment in a series, where we are getting an exploration of these themes and ideas that Rian Johnson seems to be having within these mysteries. And we are learning more about this detective who is like competent, but caring, who is wanting to empower the people who've—are on the side of injustice, like all of these elements without making it about him. Like that, to me is fascinating. And so I think as a continuation of a series that might have more installments, this was great, there's really feel like it furthers that mission rather than being necessarily as strong of a standalone movie as Knives Out was which I think is like stunning. So yeah, I'm gonna say, or the ones I'm gonna give it, sunlight it was on an island. Nature, there's an onion.

JAZZA: There's a yellow and green.

ROWAN: Yes, yellow and green. We're gonna go healing because of yeah, the whole Helen healing thing. We're gonna do Spirit because it's got that cap. It's got that cap. And then if I'm giving like a I'm gonna like four and a half to five. Let's go with harmony simply because people do die in this. So I feel like giving it like—

JAZZA: You're giving it everything but that.

ROWAN: Yeah, everything but bright life, because I feel like she died.

JAZZA: That's really easy.

ROWAN: Yeah, that's all I need to do.

JAZZA: Perfect. Awesome.

JAZZA: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy these episodes, we ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon. As a patron, you can join our queer movie club where we do watch along in our Discord every month, but that is the bare minimum. At higher levels, you can also get our movie recommendations and a monthly newsletter with the curation of all of the gay shit that we find on the internet.

ROWAN: Thank you once again to Jennifer and Toby for supporting us on the highest Patreon tier. you are rainbow parents, and we are so happy to have your support. Thank you so, so much.

JAZZA: Thank , and please make sure that you follow and subscribe to the podcast so that you are notified when our next episode comes out. We have been Jazza John and Rowan Ellis. Were edited by Julia Schifini and are part of Multitude. Find more amazing stuff at multitude.productions. Thank you so much my darling.

ROWAN: Thank you pod.

JAZZA: Thanks pod. You've be in our pod.

ROWAN: Wow. Byee.

JAZZA: Byee.