Girls Gone Wilder
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On today’s show, Lady P is joined by screenwriter, author, and film historian Professor Joseph McBride to discuss Billy Wilder’s 1959 film, SOME LIKE IT HOT. SOME LIKE IT HOT is the rare comedy that manages to be both uproariously funny and also critically acclaimed. McBride and Lady P talk about how this gangster-genre parody snuck past film snobs’ humor filters and nabbed the 43rd spot on the Sight and Sound Greatest of All Time List. They also delve into the film’s subversive gender dynamics, and marvel at how a sex farce from the Hays Code Era still manages to shock and delight contemporary audiences.
After the Wilder discussion, McBride gives listeners an update on some of his recent book projects. First up, there’s his recently published memoir, THE BROKEN PLACES, which chronicles a period in his late-adolescence when he had a mental breakdown, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and subsequently fell in love with a fellow patient named Kathy Wolf. McBride tells listeners why he felt he needed to investigate his troubled childhood, and describes what it was like to revisit memories of this difficult time.
Finally, they close things out with an update on McBride’s upcoming critical study of the famed German filmmaker, Billy Wilder’s mentor, Ernst Lubitsch.
This is an exemplary broadcast discussing film intelligently unlike the drivel inflicted on us by most PBS stations, Beth Accomondo excepted. The moderator was no corporate bimbo either. This is how Film should be treated – with respect.