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the-rewatch-rewind · 7 months

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Here we go again, we're changing the scene.

Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number six on my list: Shipwrecked Comedy and American Black Market’s 2017 film noir parody The Case of the Gilded Lily, directed by William J. Stribling, written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud, and starring Sean Persaud, Sinéad Persaud, Sarah Grace Hart, and Mary Kate Wiles.

It's 1939 in Los Angeles. Hardboiled private eye Ford Phillips (Sean Persaud) doesn’t touch Hollywood cases, until junior ace reporter Fig Wineshine (Sinéad Persaud) convinces him to help her childhood friend, starlet Wilhelmina Vanderjetski (Sarah Grace Hart) find out who is blackmailing her.

In my episode about Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, which was number 13 on this list, I discussed how I found and fell in love with the work of Shipwrecked Comedy. If you haven’t listened to or don’t remember that episode, to summarize, I had incredibly high expectations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, aka Poe Party, that were exceeded in every possible way, and in joining this small but enthusiastic fandom, I finally felt that I had found my people. I was very excited to learn what Shipwrecked’s next project would be, and I didn’t have long to wait. On May 30, 2017, just under seven months after the Poe Party finale, they shared a teaser poster for The Case of the Gilded Lily, which showed silhouettes of the Core Four (Sarah Grace Hart, Sinéad Persaud, Sean Persaud, and Mary Kate Wiles) in a style consistent with film noir. Since one of my favorite things about Poe Party had been the way it reminded me of classic movies, I was ecstatic to see them leaning even more directly into Old Hollywood.

The Kickstarter campaign launched a week later. Unlike Poe Party, which was an 11-episode series, Gilded Lily would be a short film, and they were only asking for $25,000. It didn’t even occur to me to be disappointed that this was going to be so much smaller; I was just excited that Shipwrecked was making another project so soon. In some ways, this Kickstarter experience was similar to the Poe Party one – the fun livestreams with backers’ names on the wall, the character reveals when milestones were reached – but in others, it was very different. For one thing, I had by this point met Shipwrecked and gotten to know many of their other fans, so instead of interacting with a bunch of pleasant strangers, these livestreams felt more like hanging out with friends. And for another, they reached their goal in less than a week, whereas Poe Party had taken almost a month, so it felt a lot less stressful, at least from a will-this-get-to-exist? perspective. They set a few stretch goals and ended up raising just over $43,000 by the time the campaign ended on June 25. I pledged a bit more to this project than I had to Poe Party, partly because I felt like I owed them for how much Poe Party had already changed my life, but also of course because of how thrilled I was that they were making something else that was related to my interests.

The main reason they were making Gilded Lily right then was because they had been invited to premiere a new project at Buffer Festival in Toronto, where they had screened all of Poe Party the year before when only the first 9 episodes were up on YouTube. I would have loved to have gone, both to see Poe Party and to see Gilded Lily, but it didn’t work out. However, Kickstarter backers at the $25 level and up would get access to watch The Case of the Gilded Lily soon after Buffer, before it was posted publicly, and that was good enough for me. Buffer Festival was only about three months after the Kickstarter ended, so Shipwrecked had a ridiculously short period of time to complete this video that they had originally intended to be about 20 minutes long but ended up with a runtime nearly twice that. I still don’t understand how they did it. I know, from talking to members of Shipwrecked at the time and from behind-the-scenes content they’ve released, that they were incredibly stressed about things like finding and locking locations, a cast member having to drop out last minute, and, of course, the budget, but still, they managed it. They successfully premiered their 38-minute long “short” film at Buffer Festival 2017 and emailed a link to backers a couple weeks later, on October 12.

I had a lot of trouble setting my expectations for The Case of the Gilded Lily. This group had just made Poe Party, so I knew they were capable of greatness, but I also knew I had no right to expect this to be on the same level as that, since it was always intended to be a much smaller project. I was sure I was going to enjoy it, but I was very curious to see how much. The first thing that struck me after I clicked the early access link was the music. The soundtrack was composed by Dylan Glatthorn, who had also composed the Poe Party soundtrack, which I absolutely should have mentioned in that episode because it is incredible. But the Gilded Lily soundtrack is somehow even better. Shipwrecked had released a video of a song from the short called “A Change of Scene” in September, written by Glatthorn and performed by Mary Kate Wiles as lounge singer Vivian Nightingale (a name that had been mentioned in Poe Party), so I already knew that was a bop, but it didn’t prepare me for how hard the opening credits music would slap. The theme is so delightfully jazzy that even after nearly six years, I can’t sit still when I hear it. That music over the black and white shots of the Hollywoodland sign and palm trees was the perfect way to set the scene. And then the opening credits finished and the film itself began.

So here’s the thing about film noir. In general, I enjoy it: I think it’s a fascinating filmmaking style and a very effective technique to tell a certain type of story, and two of my other top 40 most frequently rewatched films – Notorious and Gaslight – are fairly noir-esque, but also, film noir can get very dark. Every November, along with many film lovers on the internet, I celebrate Noirvember, a time to watch and appreciate film noir. In 2015, I actually managed to watch 30 noirs in Noirvember, and by the end of the month I noticed that it was really getting to me. I was starting to feel a constant vague sense of unease, dread, and despair. So in every November since then I’ve forced myself to consume noirs somewhat more moderately. I must have known that Gilded Lily was going to be more of a parody and not like one of the darker noirs. The group was called Shipwrecked Comedy, after all. But even Poe Party had had some pretty dark moments. I’m sure I expected jokes in The Case of the Gilded Lily, but I was utterly floored by just how laugh-out-loud funny the whole darn film was. It wasn’t dark at all, at least compared to most noirs or even to Poe Party. There wasn’t even any murder! The first time I watched it, I must have missed at least half the jokes because I was still laughing at prior gags. The plot was just as complicated and twisty as most noirs, but that first time I was barely paying attention because, again, too much laughing. Therefore, once I finished it, I naturally had to immediately rewatch it several times to pick up on the jokes and plot points I’d missed, and I was delighted but not at all surprised to find that it held up very well. I don’t recall exactly how many times I’d seen it before the link was made public on December 11, but by the end of 2017 I’d watched it nine times. I then watched it four times in 2018, six times in 2019, five times in 2020, three times in 2021, and four times in 2022. And I still think the jokes are funny. So if you haven’t watched it, you absolutely should, it’s still available for free on YouTube (link in the show notes) and it’s like the length of one episode of a TV show.

There are so many different types of humor in this film, and all of them are great. There’s the whole playing with and making fun of noir tropes aspect, including several instances of characters interrupting each other’s voiceovers, a camera rotation into a Dutch angle causing Ford to fall over, and Wilhelmina trying to smoke and drink to fit in but not quite understanding the concept. That last one serves the dual purpose of making fun of the excessive smoking and drinking common in noirs and further developing one of my favorite types of character: the confidently clueless. The Case of the Gilded Lily has two of these: Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, the starlet who’s being blackmailed, played by Sarah Grace Hart, and Dash Gunfire, Ford’s rival private eye, played by Joey Richter. Wilhelmina’s cluelessness mostly makes her happy and charming, whereas Dash’s makes him frustrated and annoying, and it’s very entertaining to see two such similar yet very different characters in the same project. Basically everything either of them says or does makes me laugh. There’s also some great physical comedy, mainly from Clayton Farris as the disgruntled Buster Keaton. Similarly, there’s humor with the set and props, like when Cliff Calloway (played by Tom DeTrinis) switches between smoking a cigar and a cigarette in the same scene depending on who he’s talking to, and when Officer Claudette Knickerbocker (played by Joanna Sotomura) is talking to Ford on the phone about how hot she finds Cliff, and it cuts away to Ford putting down the phone and pouring himself a drink and when we see Claudette again her office is in complete disarray. And then there are all the hilarious running gags. Like how whenever someone brings up that Wilhelmina’s real name is Lily THomas, Ford has to argue that it should be pronounced Thomas. And how every time the scene changes after Vivian sings “A Change of Scene” the first time, there’s a little reprise of her singing about how we’re changing the scene. And the way Fig is obsessed with cookies and keeps getting them – I am truly in awe of Sinéad Persaud’s brilliance in writing a character for herself that required her to eat lots of cookies. What an iconic move. And then there’s the running bit where Ford will pause and stare into the distance dramatically before mentioning The War, much to Fig’s confusion, until it’s finally revealed that The War was a movie he and Claudette acted in when they were children. Another running bit is the bartender Bixby Crane (played by Dante Swain) repeatedly saying his own name unnecessarily, and taking things very literally in unexpected ways. This bit was particularly funny to me because my high school band director’s name was Parker Bixby, and when we marched in the Tournament of Roses parade, one of the announcers commented, “I want to change my name to Parker Bixby.” Later somebody put that on t-shirts and Mr. Bixby ended up with one. So seeing a character named Bixby who was obsessed with his own name made me laugh even harder than it would have if they’d picked any other name for that character.

Like in Poe Party, the actors in The Case of the Gilded Lily were encouraged to play around, at least as much as their limited production time would allow, which once again resulted in an excellent blooper reel, and also some great moments in the film. One of the best is when Wilhelmina’s husband, producer Roger Haircremé, played by Gabe Greenspan, comes into the lobby from the Sufferin’ Safari premiere and says, “Sweetheart, it’s nearly giraffe time!” which was improvised. Also, major shout out to the Persauds for their incredible character names, and also to Gabe Greenspan, who filled in last minute when the original Roger had to drop out of the project. It’s kind of mind boggling that this was the first time Gabe worked with Shipwrecked and that he almost wasn’t even in this, since it’s hard to imagine their more recent projects without him. Another unscripted moment that I love is when Vivian is telling Fig about an underground gambling ring and says that they meet on Wednesday nights, adding, “Tonight. And next Wednesday. And the Wednesday after that…” That last part wasn’t in the script, but they brought it back again when Fig passes this information on to Claudette, saying, “Vivian only knew they meet tonight. And then next week. And the week after that. Basically, it’s a weekly thing.” And Joanna, not really knowing how to respond to that, just had Claudette go, “Oh, okay” and move on with her lines, and for some reason that just really tickles me.

I think the thing I appreciated the most about The Case of the Gilded Lily, once I stopped laughing long enough to analyze it, was that it felt like a typical Shipwrecked project while also feeling completely different from what they’d done before. The sense of humor felt the same as Poe Party, even though the Gilded Lily gags tended to be on the sillier side. The story was just as well thought out as Poe Party’s, but while Poe Party was being released I was constantly trying to figure out who the murderer was, whereas with Gilded Lily I didn’t even attempt to guess who the blackmailer was, I was too busy laughing. Also, being a short film rather than a series released over 11 weeks, there was much less time for speculation. Of course, the overlapping cast made the projects feel similar, and I particularly enjoyed seeing Ryan W. Garcia, who had played Eddie in Poe Party, show up as an extra in about half the Gilded Lily scenes. This ultimately inspired me to write a rather long and intense fan fiction tying a bunch of Shipwrecked projects together with the time traveling ghost of Eddie. Tom DeTrinis’s Cliff Calloway seemed about what you’d expect if Oscar Wilde was trying to pretend to be a straight film star. Joey Richter’s Dash Gunfire was similar to his Ernest Hemingway in that both were rivals with Sean’s character, although Dash is way sillier.

And then there’s the Core Four. Sean and Sinéad’s characters and dynamic were very similar in A Tell-Tale Vlog, Poe Party, and Gilded Lily: both Poe and Ford are loners who secretly desire friends, and both Lenore and Fig are outgoing and talkative and enjoy winding up Sean’s character, who begrudgingly appreciates them despite his best efforts to abhor them. But of course, they are unquestionably different characters, and I think they both did an excellent job of adjusting their mannerisms to make them feel distinct. Mary Kate and Sarah’s characters, on the other hand, are essentially the complete opposite of what they played in Poe Party. Annabel was sweet and naïve and wanted everyone to be happy, whereas Vivian is bitter and jaded and having affairs with four different men in five different states (another great line) and doesn’t seem to care about anyone besides herself. Going straight from an ingenue to a femme fatale and absolutely nailing both was an excellent way for Mary Kate Wiles to demonstrate her incredible acting range. I’d already been a huge fan of her work for over five years at that point, and I was still blown away. Vivian doesn’t even get that much screentime, but gah, what MK does with her voice, like, just, close your eyes and listen to Annabel and then listen to Vivian, you can’t even tell they’re the same person. I feel like this also helps distinguish Edgar and Ford from each other. It’s a running theme in most Shipwrecked projects that Sean’s character is super into Mary Kate’s character, although they rarely end up together, and I can’t really explain why, but I don’t feel like Poe would be particularly into Vivian, nor would Ford be interested in Annabel. But I could be wrong about that, I don’t really understand how sexual or romantic attraction works. Anyway, all that being said, if I had to pick one single favorite aspect of The Case of the Gilded Lily, it would have to be Sarah Grace Hart as Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, mostly because she is absolutely hilarious, but also because she is so different from Emily Dickinson in Poe Party. Emily is forgotten by everyone the second after she introduces herself, whereas Wilhelmina is one of the most famous stars in Hollywood. Emily seems to know what’s going on, and I have a theory that she could have figured out the whole thing if people would have just listened to her, whereas Wilhelmina, bless her, is paying blackmail while also telling everyone what she’s being blackmailed for. Also it’s literally just… having a stage name. Not really something worth paying $20,000 per week to keep secret, especially if you’re just going to tell everyone anyway. But Sarah commits to this character so hard that you never once doubt that Willie would absolutely fall prey to this ridiculous scheme. She’s so earnestly oblivious in the most endearing and hilarious way that she’s probably my favorite Shipwrecked character, and possibly my favorite character in anything ever.

What I didn’t know at the time was that originally, Shipwrecked had planned to follow Poe Party with a whole series featuring these characters, but when they got invited to Buffer they knew they wouldn’t have time for all that, so they made The Case of the Gilded Lily as kind of a pilot for the Fig and Ford series. They did make it clear that they had at least some intentions of continuing the story, with a question mark appearing after “The End” and a quick post-credits scene with Vivian bursting into Fig and Ford’s office and saying, “Mr. Phillips, something terrible has happened!” After years with no word of what this could be leading to, I had almost given up hope of more from this world, and then, in 2022, Shipwrecked launched a Kickstarter for an audio narrative called The Case of the Greater Gatsby, currently coming out weekly on all major podcast platforms, and we’re finally getting more, and it is so delightful. Once again, I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job of trying to figure out what’s going on, but I am living for the jokes.

Classic film noir tended to be relatively sexually explicit for its time – at least, as much as it was allowed to be under production codes. In particular, the male protagonist was often led astray by his attraction to the sexy but dangerous femme fatale. The Persauds had said that they were inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, another noir parody, which turns these sexy expectations around with a femme fatale type character who is, if not overtly asexual, certainly ace-coded – she’s married to a rabbit, and when asked what the attraction is, she says, and I quote, “He makes me laugh.” The Case of the Gilded Lily finds a different way to put a twist on the femme fatale trope with Vivian Nightingale, who is certainly not ace-coded, but also doesn’t seem to be particularly dangerous – at least in the Gilded Lily plot, I don’t know where Greater Gatsby is going yet. Vivian is a possible suspect, and Ford is very attracted to her, but she’s innocent and nothing bad really comes of her involvement in this story. She has an attitude of, “I have no clue how I got mixed up with you clowns, but I’ll be fabulous while I’m here" that you have to admire. Really the only romance in The Case of the Gilded Lily is the one between Wilhelmina Vanderjetski and Roger Haircremé, and that one is… questionable, to put it mildly. For one thing, Willie lied to Roger about her background to get him to marry her. For another, Roger saw through her ridiculous story but pretended not to, instead blackmailing her to pay off his gambling debts. When Fig and Ford uncover this, instead of being furious with her husband, Wilhelmina is delighted that the blackmailer was just her kind, loving husband who’d never do anything to hurt her. Typically I’m very much in favor of forgiveness, but in this case I really don’t think Roger deserves it. In a way, this could be seen as illustrating the harms of amatonormativity, showing that Wilhelmina thinks staying with a blackmailer is preferable to having no husband, but it definitely comes across as her genuinely believing that Roger has done nothing wrong. It’s weird, but I love the way this shifts the noir trope of sexy-romance-gone-wrong to be about a couple who was married at the start and has no intention of getting divorced at the end, and involves a woman who bears zero resemblance to a typical femme fatale.

Like pretty much every other Shipwrecked project (besides Kissing in the Rain), The Case of the Gilded Lily is way more focused on platonic relationships than romantic or sexual ones. Even though the crime is related to Roger and Wilhelmina’s relationship, it’s solved mainly because of Fig’s friendship with Wilhelmina, Fig’s attempts to befriend Ford, and Ford’s friendship with Claudette. I didn’t know I was aroace when this came out, but I certainly appreciated all the non-romantic storylines. And I would argue that Gilded Lily does have at least one ace-coded character, although it’s not the one who reminds us of Jessica Rabbit: it’s Fig Wineshine. She wants to be friends with everyone but doesn’t show any signs of attraction to any of them. And she has this great line in Greater Gatsby when she’s describing how Cliff Calloway is a Hollywood heartthrob: “He didn't really do it for me. But then again he wasn't circular with crispy edges and a gooey middle.” She’s saying that her type is a literal cookie. There’s no allosexual explanation for that.

My main takeaway from The Case of the Gilded Lily back in 2017 was that Poe Party was not a fluke. I had truly stumbled upon an underappreciated group of talented, hardworking geniuses when I found Shipwrecked Comedy, and I was going to keep following and supporting their work from then on no matter what. And I have never regretted doing that for a second. Most of the projects they’ve made in the years since The Case of the Gilded Lily have been too short to count as movies, but they have all been incredibly delightful. I would highly recommend everything on their YouTube channel, in addition to the Greater Gatsby podcast they’re currently releasing, especially if you enjoy Old Hollywood; I am thoroughly enjoying all the references to actual movies and actors that I love by the fictional characters from the world of Fig and Ford that I also love. Shipwrecked keeps telling the exact stories I want to see and hear, and I cannot even begin to adequately express how much joy they have brought to my life. I truly hope everyone out there has found or will find a group of artists whose work means as much to them as Shipwrecked’s does to me.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. Next week I will enter my top 5 with the oldest movie on this list, which I also watched 31 times. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Always remember that the truth has never hurt any man! …And anyway, if it does, I’ll go to the hospital with you.”

#the case of the gilded lily #fig and ford #shipwrecked comedy #the rewatch rewind #please watch this short

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man-down-in-hatchet-town · 7 months

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Everything You Want

If you ever needed proof that I really love Shipwrecked, here it is: I tore myself away from Hatchetfield on NPMD RELEASE DAY (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to put down some thoughts on Greater Gatsby, episode 7. As always, spoilers below the cut.

(Before we jump into that, though, MASSIVE shout out to Curt Mega for this podcast, Nerdy Prudes, and Pulp Musicals. He's worked on almost everything that's keeping me going right now. Man of the Season. Thank you for your service, sir.)

Okay, I got to say it. Ford suggesting that Peter Lorre, an ethnically Jewish guy who had to flee Nazi Germany, isn't used to hate mail was... a choice on his part. But the running gag of celebrities taking threats as complements is genuinely one of the best gags in the series so far.

So the writer of the letters is going after adaptions. The further we get into this, the more I start to wonder if these letters are really just an old-timey viral advertising campaign. If you build up this whole, buzzy, real-world-intrigue story about beloved actors being threatened for appearing in adaptions, you know what will happen when such adaptions come out? Ticket sails will soar. People will want to be part of the narrative, to see the movie Jimmy Stewart or Wilhelmina Vanderjetski put their life on the line to make. And someone in the business threatening other people's lives just to increase profits is thematically just the sort of thing that would exist alongside Ford Phillips and his hatred of the cynical, exploitative Hollywood system.

But the problem there is, what would that have to do with F. Scott's murder? There's got to be a reason both these cases are part of the same story. Perhaps Fitzgerald somehow found out in his deep-dive into Hollywood secrets, and the letter writer killed him to keep him quiet. It's not a worthy motive, but most aren't, and the greed at the top of the ladder knows no bounds. Or maybe the letters are being sent out by someone connected to the movie but unrelated to the murderer in order to specifically market a rewritten Greater Gatsby and further capitalize on Fitzy's death--make it seem like he died for the art. But then again, the public doesn't know he was even murdered in the first place...

Or maybe I'm flat-out wrong about the whole marketing angle. Really, the most obvious answer is that Greater Gatsby was basically an adaption, and the writer of the letters genuinely hates such movies. They threatened Fitzy, then simply followed through. But that falls apart if you look a little deeper. Beyond "hatred of adaptions" being the silliest reason to kill someone, such events would imply a pattern of the writer murdering a victim before moving onto the next and that hasn't held up. So maybe F. Scott was being threatened to stop work on his film by someone who had a secret to protect. The situation spun out of control, our threatener killed Fitzgerald, and is now writing all of those threats as a distraction. That way, if the threats he/she ever sent to Fitzgerald were found, investigators wouldn't see through to the real motive behind them.

Meanwhile, all of the celebrity cameos were very fun and silly, but didn't tell us much other than give the slightest glimpse into why Ford hates Jimmy Stewart so much (still perfect character lore). We got another mention of Eugene from the Punchwhistle twins, definitely making him feel less like flavor and more like set-up. And do we think Rex's perfect recall is going to come back, or was just a device for this one scene? In Ford's personal orbit, it sounds like Bixby's quest to fix his financial issues has gotten him into real trouble. There's clearly something clandestine about the group he's renting the backroom out to, and their potential relevance to Mo, one of the few people to see Fitzy's body, is another point in favor of that group connecting back to our murdered author. I still think they're working on remaking Greater Gatsby in secret.

Speaking of secrets, we don't know where Barnaby was the night of Fitzgerald's murder, or why he's lying about it. He could be the murderer, he could have also been having an affair as well... I gotta tell you guys, Barnaby might be one of my favorites but I wouldn't trust him with a moldy piece of bread. The way he stabbed Ford in the back and then instantly came to him for help because someone else was untrustworthy? What a guy. (He's right about the cops, though. Don't trust the fuzz.)

Regardless, it looks like Fig and Ford are setting their sights on Darby. I doubt she's the one behind the letters but I'm hoping we'll start to get answers about her "book club" and whatever the hell Bixby's gotten himself into...

#also sorry I think this one is the longest yet #but I got the fandom brain rot sooooo #Fig and Ford #shipwrecked comedy #the case of the greater gatsby #ford phillips #Barnaby Nightingale #Bixby

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