Happy Valentine's Day, folks! In today's episode, we dive into the wild world of Hollywood through the lens of *Inside Daisy Clover*, a film that showcases the harsh realities of fame and the studio system. We explore how Daisy, played by the iconic Natalie Wood, navigates her tumultuous rise to stardom while grappling with the pressures and manipulations of the industry. From the laughs to the cringes, we dissect the bizarre characters, like her unstable mother and the charming yet duplicitous co-star, Wade Lewis, portrayed by Robert Redford. The film’s take on celebrity culture is as relevant today as it was back in 1965, reminding us that the glitz and glam often come with a hefty price. So grab a snack, sit back, and let’s unravel the tangled tale of Daisy Clover together!

Takeaways:

1. The podcast dives into the hilariously chaotic world of Valentine's Day, discussing the strange couples that come into the video store and the unexpected movies they rent during this romantic holiday.
2. It highlights Daisy Clover's journey from an obscure, struggling teen to a manufactured Hollywood star, showcasing the dark side of fame and the industry's exploitative nature.
3. The hosts cheekily explore the significance of Cooter Jack's antics, using humor to touch on deeper themes about personal identity and societal norms in the context of 1965.
4. Listeners are treated to a playful analysis of the film 'Inside Daisy Clover', with discussions about the lack of agency the character has, paralleling real-life stories of young stars in Hollywood.
5. The episode humorously addresses the film's message about the cost of fame, emphasizing that even with success, personal struggles and loneliness can persist.
6. The duo wraps up with a light-hearted but insightful recommendation of similar films, encouraging listeners to reflect on the realities of fame and the entertainment industry.

Oh, happy VD did you get cured off of that at the free clinic?

Oh, honey, I. I am the free clinic.

I have a special discount.

And we need to get that door fixed.

Yeah, well, how else would we know that Cooter Jack is coming upstairs?

I mean, usually you can't smell that.

That's how we know he's coming up.

Okay, I was gonna say if.

If you're a bachelor, you usually want someone comes to your door so you could put on pants or whatever, but when Cooper Jack comes up the stairs, there's a whole other reason to hide.

Oh, yeah, because he don't have no pants on.

And why.

So, yeah, he.

He.

He done got himself cured off something else.

And, well, I don't know if it was the Wild Turkey or.

I don't think he's been cured from that.

But Cooter Jack is the reason why you wear flip flops if you end up having to take a shower at the truck stop bathroom.

Yeah, but it is the day of Cupid's aim, and so some of you might be celebrating and having time with a special loved one while the rest of us, poor salt Assad's, we're stuck here in a video store.

And, well, we're just shocked at some of the people that come in together because you just don't want to picture them together.

No, but, okay, we.

I. I would expect that around this time, we're gonna be writing out, like, Body Heat and, like, I don't know, beautiful Valentine's Day movies, like you've got Mail or something like that.

And.

And how many.

How many, like, she devils have we rented out?

Like, I don't know, there's something seriously wrong in this world right now.

And some of those true crime, I mean, that tells you who you don't want to be sharing dinner with.

Well, in this town, pretty much nobody.

Because I am not a fan of roadkill.

Oh, and I. I shudder to think what Valentine's Day is like at little Mace place.

I think you have to get in line because everybody's got a score to settle.

But those darn kids there in the back

still trying to play that game.

No, I won't give you more change for the machine anyway.

They're just gonna hotwire it anyway.

It doesn't matter.

I mean, well, Hector steals the change.

You do know that, right?

The good thing about having children that come from a difficult home life is that they are.

They're actually handy when it comes to fixing a broken fuse.

That's true.

Or when you need to hotwire the car.

I mean, he was eight and he knew how to do it.

I'm just saying.

Yes, but it's criminal what he did to his grandmother's motor scooter.

That's all I'm gonna say.

Well, she kind of had it coming.

But we don't talk about her anymore, do we?

Right.

And speaking of having it coming,

Play this.

Oh, okay.

We got another tape for the VCR run, so I guess we at least ought to figure out what year we're going to be talking about.

No, but I could.

I could go for, like, EP or something.

Yeah, I mean, he did have candy.

At least.

That glowing finger was creepy.

Although it probably came in handy in certain situations.

Okay, we'll go ahead and hit play.

Whoa.

Hey, Ed Rush, you're rocking that Woodstock.

There are those bell bottoms there, sir.

Oh, my God.

There's a reason these went out of fashion twice.

Oh, and there's that lady at the laundromat there.

She's got her hair up there way high.

I.

She's.

She shouldn't be smoking that cigarette.

The higher the hair, the higher to God.

Well, I would guess that this is possibly.

I'm gonna say we're probably somewhere around Woodstock, if not earlier.

But let's let the mysterious man in the box tell us.

All right?

Good afternoon, time travelers.

At the same time, the Vietnam War escalated dramatically as US Ground troops were deployed in large numbers.

Humanity also looked to the skies when NASA's Gemini 4 mission featured the first American spacewalk.

The year brought profound losses, with the assassinations of Malcolm X and the death of British statesman Winston Churchill.

Wow.

Well, I mean, we are confined to the four walls of the store.

Otherwise, I'd be a little worried because I wasn't even a twinkle in mom and Dad's eyes.

All.

Although my big sister, she was out in the world, so there's something to be said for that.

But it was the early days for our.

Our kin in the haystack there, that's for sure.

And actually, I think that across the pond, Doctor who actually had just premiered not long ago, so they were in the early days of that.

But way back here, in 65, they didn't have the Internet.

They didn't even have HBO, Matt.

So people actually had to change their clothes.

Like, they weren't going to the store in their pajamas, yet they got dressed up sometimes.

I mean, even traveling, they considered that to be an occasion to get dressed up for.

People used to wear suits and ties on the airplanes.

But what were the folks doing when they went out in the town?

Oh, you mean like going and seeing a movie?

Yeah, buttered popcorn.

And back when the refreshment stands didn't cost as much as the parking and

we got to see those lovely commercials.

Let's go after the lobby.

Okay.

Well, I mean, I say we.

I wasn't around in 65 yet, so I'll let you tell us about it.

Anyway.

Well, what was playing was the Sound of Music with Julie Andrews and Christopher plummer, and then Dr. Zhivago with Omer Sharif, and Julie Christie never made it through that one.

We also have Goldfinger with Sean Connery.

Oh, yes.

That was a 007 story.

Yeah.

And then we have My Fair lady with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

And then we have Thunderball with Sean Connery.

Oh, also, but Sean Connery.

Yeah.

Interesting.

About My Fair Lady, I'm not sure if this Julie.

I do.

Oh, yeah, What.

What do you know about Julie Andrews and My Fair Lady?

Julie Andrews said, I don't want to do that.

That's.

That's stupid.

And they said, well, we'll get Audrey Hepburn to do it.

They're like, we'll get her to do it.

It's going to be a big flop anyway.

And.

And then Audrey.

And then it wasn't.

So what's really kind of interesting, though, is so you have Goldfinger and Thunderbolt, both Sean Connerys.

Right, Right.

Then you have.

Then you have the Sound of Music, which has Christopher Plummer, which I. I think might be relevant to something we're talking about today.

And then there was.

Here they were.

They, they.

They had a lot of the same people and same directors and stuff, like.

So apparently there wasn't many pickings is all I'm saying.

I, I go ahead.

I say, I think more importantly, this was a time frame that was considered the end of the quote, unquote studio system.

You had talents like Julie Anders and Sean Connery that were signed to Warner Brothers or MGM or whatever, and the studio had a list of scripts for the films they were going to be making that year.

They were under contract to turn this into a film.

So if you worked for MGM or if you worked for the one of the other studios, chances are you were going to be in something that they made that year because you didn't want to say no, or else you weren't going to get work anymore.

Right.

And a lot of them had to do multiple movies every.

Every year too.

I mean, so.

Yep.

Yep.

Did you watch, did you watch in these old 007 movies like Sean Connery and stuff?

I've seen some of them.

I mean, by the time you and I were on the surface, the role had passed on to Roger Moore.

I think I.

Maybe for you, girl.

I remember when Roger Mar took over because Tina Turner was like singing the songs.

So thanks for that.

I did go back and watch a couple of the Sean Connery 007 movies just to see how the series started.

I mean, so slowly.

Oh my gosh.

They were so.

I'm like, it's an Italian sports car.

10 minutes driving up a driveway.

Enough already.

All I, I'll.

All I know about Sean Connery is 007 is what I've heard of impressions or impersonations of him.

And it's like, I want you, I want you to undo that bow so I could get to know you better.

Money, Penny.

Hello, Sandra.

Party.

I'm Sean Connery.

Let's get naked and run on a

beach in a red jock strap.

Oh, that wasn't 007.

Did not know some of the girls.

I mean, the names alone were things that we wouldn't even say on our podcast.

Right.

And then of course, thank goodness for the more modern spoofs that were done 20 some years ago.

Now, some people only learned of 007 because of Austin Powers and Mike Myers.

Right?

Well, I.

The new.

The new ones are really good.

Yeah.

In my opinion.

The old ones, nope, too slow.

But I wonder what we're watching today.

Oh, well, the vcr.

It is a Blinken, so we know that only means one thing.

Let's find out.

Today you're watching a film about a teen tomboy named Daisy Clover, played by Natalie Wood, who dreams of fame and gets her wish when big time movie producer Raymond Swan, played by Christopher Plummer, comes calling.

Alone and distrustful, the young actress searches for a happy ending with a fellow rising star.

Wade Lewis, played By Robert Redford.

Okay.

Wow.

1964.

5.

A lady who had some bad luck on a boat.

I hear later in life and a few other folks.

I do hear that rock and roll guitar.

So let's get into this.

Rewind through time into movie night blockbusters

in these in black and white.

From 80s thrills to silver screen dreams.

Trapped in the past by a time machine.

Each times the door for DJ and time to explore the.

The past is present and you're gonna want more.

Hector, put back those stickers.

I told you those are not for you.

They were left by that creepy guy who never rewinds his tapes.

Well, okay.

They're also.

That's acid, girl.

Yeah.

Let him lick it.

Let him eat it.

I don't care.

In an hour he'll be somebody else's problem.

At least for a day.

Yeah, exactly.

Queen for a day.

Oh, that was a.

That was a like.

I don't know if it was a reality show, but it was sort of like a game show back in the day.

I'm sure you can look that up, folks.

So Inside Daisy Clover.

All right.

Someplace I'd never want to be.

Exactly.

Inside Daisy Clover.

This is a movie.

Back in 65.

And as anything that goes to a studio to be made into a movie, it was a script, it was a play.

Because the.

The folks at the studio had to say yes or no.

We're going to spend money on this.

So the setup, the problem.

Inside Daisy Clover.

No.

And that with a name like that, she's not a drag queen.

This follows Daisy, a tough, independent teenage girl living in poverty with her unstable mother near the beaches of Santa Monica.

It's a made up place.

They call it Angel Beach.

And Daisy dreams of escape and finds it when a Hollywood studio discovers her raw singing talent suddenly thrust into fame.

She's groomed into a marketable star, forced to conform to the studio's rigid image and demands.

And there were demands.

The central problem emerges as Daisy struggles to maintain her identity and emotional stability while navigating exploitation, loneliness and manipulation within the ruthless studio system, realizing that success comes at the cost of authenticity, personal freedom and genuine human condition.

really glad that you read that because otherwise I would have no idea what this movie was about.

Exactly.

We.

We finally found, finally took our employers to court and said, this is not ethical.

In those days, it hadn't been Heard of as much so.

Oh, no, you just, you got away with whatever you got away with there wasn't.

They.

They didn't even have social media back then.

I mean, how did they live?

I mean, because if you were, if you became a problem, you were never going to work in this town again.

So that set up and.

Well, there's.

There's some problems and we're gonna talk about them.

All right, so go ahead with that first one.

Matt, hit me with your best shot.

Okay.

How did you.

Okay.

So how did you feel watching Inside Daisy Clover about the way that the Hollywood studio system treated poor, sweet Daisy as a product rather than a person?

Well, for one, I have to say that with a name like Inside Daisy Clover, I am relieved that this was not a documentary about biology.

I thought it was going to be an adult movie.

I was like, wow, we're getting blue here.

So.

Right.

So let's see.

Hollywood studio system and how they treated Daisy.

Well, I mean, she didn't realize how good she had life.

And we'll talk about that in a bit.

She was kind of miserable living off the pier with her mom and her dad's nowhere to be seen.

And then of course, she's faking.

She's faking autographs for a living off of star photos in a booth.

Yeah.

So we start off the story with her on her 15th birthday and she's smoking a cigarette, sitting on some trash cans in an alley.

And there's this wall that's got all sorts of writing on it, some graffiti.

You think that she lives in a questionable neighborhood.

Then you quietly come to the realization that the writing on the wall literally is probably all of her own doing because, oh my gosh, she bad mouths her sister.

Mostly for a 15 year old who is down and out, as they say.

She actually didn't have things too bad.

Bad.

Which is, is part of the discussion that we're going to get into here.

How did I feel about the way the studio treated her?

I think they tried, as with anything, you, you.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So the, the, the studio people probably meant well.

This wasn't their first rodeo.

And the road gets.

The road gets bumpier the longer you go without fixing the potholes.

So we'll just leave it there.

How did you feel about Daisy's struggle between achieving fame and losing her sense of identity and control?

Well, I felt that I didn't see any of it.

And that's, that's the thing.

Okay, so let's.

If you don't mind.

Let's.

Let's take a moment to kind of talk about the opening and the dissection and stuff.

A little.

Little off script here.

Let's.

This.

This film doesn't fit our formula that well, in my opinion.

Okay, so as.

As you talked about.

So Daisy's 15.

She's a tomboy lesbian.

She's a tomboy.

She's.

She is a wild child, basically.

She.

She acts like she wants to be a ruffian.

She wants to be a rebel, has no cause, so.

And then she lives with her crazy mother, played by the amazing actress Ruth Gordon.

Oh, yes.

And her mother is portrayed as someone who's pretty much just mentally gone.

Still does her the razor cards and is getting all sorts of bad cards telling her bad shit's about to happen.

Oh, stuff is about to happen.

Sorry.

Something's about to go down.

Right.

And so she records herself in a booth singing, sends it off to this.

I guess.

I don't know whether it was.

I think it was a contest.

Yeah.

Sends it off to the contest and then gets picked, says the great voice.

And then her.

Then what.

What was it?

Then they want her.

Then they send her sister because she needs that.

She needs an adult to, like, kind of co. Sign for.

I don't.

I don't understand how they figured out that her mother was too wacko so that they brought her sister in.

I think that it goes along the lines of that old saying of people who have friends in low places.

So if you kick the dirt around enough corners, you're gonna find Gloria the.

The.

The older sister who, quote, unquote, got out.

Maybe she only got out because she didn't fit in.

And maybe she got out because she was.

Had 20 years head start because she was.

She was a little long in the.

She looked as old as the mother did, frankly, just not as much of a mess.

And when she arrives, then like, the.

And then so Daisy and the studio person and the sister are all like, yak, yak, yak.

Y.

And all of a sudden, the.

The trailer with her mother inside of it sleeping catches on fire.

And they're all like, no, don't go in there like, oh, my mother's dead.

And then the mother comes out like.

And, well, there you go.

And then they put her in a mental institution and say, okay, Daisy, you're.

We're kidnapping you.

And so basically the reason I wanted to kind of talk about that setup is because.

So that.

That's where it goes.

And then from there she goes to the studio, they Lock up the mom.

They say you can't see her anymore.

Don't talk to.

Don't talk about her.

She's basically dead to you.

Okay.

Which as crazy as the old bat was or old man is, I guess what they.

What she referred to, old chap.

There you go.

So Daisy still loved her, and then Daisy, go ahead.

You can't help love your parent when it's first Gordon.

Well, yeah, as crazy as she is.

Yeah.

Then she gets taken to the studio, they clean her up.

She still looks a mess, frankly.

They should have put her in a wig or something with that hair.

Was just.

And then they turn her into this little superstar.

Okay.

We as the viewer don't.

We're told this.

We're told, okay, here's her debut performance.

Then suddenly she's a superstar.

Then she's supposed to go to the Oscars and all that.

But we're not.

We're seeing snippets, but we're not getting the.

The growth.

We don't know that she's super popular other than somebody saying, oh, she's super popular.

Well, okay, we're not seeing it.

We're not seeing it reflected in her.

We're not seeing her struggle with any of the demands or anything behind the scene.

So when asking, how do you feel about the struggle between her achieving fame and losing the sense of identity and control?

They never really gave us that.

The only thing that we do kind of see is that it must have had a low budget because she was always just locked in a room.

They never had her, like, around people.

It was always just like, oh, look, Davies.

Even like her debut performance, where it was the big screen and people were applauding for her and everything, we didn't really see the people.

Well, and then I was also given the impression that the studio executives that she lived with, that.

That screening room that they had her premiere on was.

Was in their house, so she never had to really public.

Right.

That's what I thought too.

I didn't.

I.

And I guess maybe it wasn't.

Maybe it was.

Maybe it was the studio.

I'm like, I don't.

I didn't get that at all.

I think that something they should have done to have given more depth to the struggle of the character.

It would have been a simple on screen device.

And by that, I mean in older films, you always see transitions in the.

Where they call it the.

The acts of the play or the acts of the film, the passage of time, for lack of a better phrase, by showing you time passing.

So Right.

Having somebody write letters to each other or maybe showing a calendar with the pages flying off.

Right.

Or even, even the growth of the character.

Because like we never saw any of her training.

We never saw them try to teach her acting or her resisted.

We never saw like her go through wardrobe or like it.

There was no growth.

It was just like here, give her a bath, stick her in a dress.

And we don't.

We're not going to show like the whole.

Because there should have been like a scene where she's struggling with her first filming and getting frustrated with it.

Like also they're trying, they didn't.

They never did anything to try to turn her into a, a nice young lady starlet and feminine or anything.

She just walked through the entire movie like this like floppy old dyke.

And I say that with love.

There's no malice there.

You know, I mean she was just like.

And they never tried to do anything to like give her the angst that her character would need to rebel.

Rebel.

She just was always in a state of rebel.

I mean she went outside and basically wrote some nasty graffiti on the outside of the fee of the.

The thing before she disappeared with Robert Redford.

And like.

And, and nobody said anything.

I mean, come on.

She said mother something else, not mother killer.

Anyway, I mean her graffiti skills were not.

She didn't have that much of a vocabulary growing up.

Right.

Well, to put things in perspective a little bit, the story that Daisy Clover is based upon is it.

It was a book before this was a movie.

It is based upon the lives of other actors that have fallen in these footsteps.

The likes of people like Judy Garland.

And historically many people have said that Judy Garland, although she was like 17 or whatever in the wizard of Oz, was older than the character that was in the book books that she played so laughably inside Daisy Clover.

And we haven't quite gotten to the cast.

The actress who plays her was in fact in real world 27 playing 15.

So the only way that they could really make it believable that she was a juvenile was they put makeup freckles

on her face and gave her a really bad bob.

Like it wasn't even a bob, it was like a boys bowl cut haircut.

I want to say that she, the, the style of the character was probably fired by the likes of Petula Clark.

The, the, the women who were not necessarily stereotypically feminine and were comfortable in pantsuits and would wear like the train conductor style hats because we're in the 60s moving towards the 70s so we have less Gender specific clothing, right?

Yeah.

So Daisy Clover is supposed to be 15 and she goes through all this traumatic experience.

They don't do a very good job of explaining the ringer that she was put through of the Hollywood machine.

Right.

And, and I think that's the thing that was missing is because we know, because we have, you know, were friends of Dorothy.

We know about the, the Judy's and the, the things that they put people through in the old studio days was just like rigorous churning out stuff for a machine and treating people like commodities.

And it was really bad, especially for kids.

We didn't, we didn't get that.

So we're, we're looking at inside Davy Clover with Girl.

You went from living on a dock with your crazy mom to like living in the lap of luxury and doing acting like walking.

What are you complaining about?

But you're always rebelling.

And it's something that also would have done the movie a favor.

Would have been.

And, and Matt and I sometimes talk before the red light goes on.

For the record, it would have done the movie a favor if they had shown the girl being tutored on set because that's something that the studios are required to do, or at least in more modern days they were.

Yeah, maybe they weren't as much back then.

You, you get child protection laws for actors.

Like the actor who I want to say played Pugsley, or maybe it was Uncle Fester on Adam's Family, Jackie Coogan, he was historically taken advantage of by his family and his manager.

So they created laws and it was actually something, I think it was called Coogan's Law that affects the young people in acting to this day, where you are supposed to be tutored while you're on set.

You're only allowed to work so many hours a day.

Right.

That sort of thing there.

So I think the last question is yours, right?

Or okay, well, how many.

Well, how did you feel about the emotional loneliness Davy Daisy experiences despite her success and public admiration?

Well, the loneliness.

I felt a general loneliness for the character because she, she was presented as somebody who didn't have many friends.

Her life was just going home to mom in that little, as the Brits would say, caravan or trailer.

And the rest of the time she would be out on the boardwalk or the pier or whatever it is, trying, trying to peddle her fake autograph.

So the only person that probably was close to a friend besides mother was possibly the fortune teller because that's where her mom always was when she wasn't home playing cards or whatever.

So I, I, I did feel the loneliness when she was taken away from her mother.

I think that that was supposed to be the most vivid aspect.

Right.

You know, because they, they literally, they locked her mother away.

Her mother even stopped speaking, really.

I mean, her mother was very quirky and she just talked about reading the cards.

And in fact, it's a very sort of typical Ruth Gordon type character moment toward the beginning of the film because a policeman is called to the scene to investigate the disappearance of her husband.

How long has her husband been missing that?

Oh, good, 14, 13 years, something like that wasn't,

was, it was like seven years.

She, when the officer asked her about why she waited so long to report him, she said she didn't start missing them until recently.

Right, exactly.

I can identify, honestly, I think that that is the one thing that they did actually do decent job of is the emotional loneliness part of it.

Because they basically, I mean, through the, almost the entire film, whatever she was in, she was almost always just in a room alone or with like one other person.

She, they never really had her, like, standing in front of a big audience or any of that.

She was just always kind of alone, except when she was with, with Robert Redford and she might as well have been alone at that point.

So.

Yeah.

And then in, in a moment between performances, she's all dressed up to like join a choir or something.

Yeah, the, the studio head's wife, who we only know as Mrs. Swan, is in the room and she's talking to her.

And mind you, if this girl is like 15 or 16 and she's got a moment to herself, maybe she would want to listen to some records of some pop music or have some time with her friends.

But no, what does she say to her?

She's like, oh, you've got an hour before the show or whatever, you want to go down and lay down and take a nap.

Yeah, well, that's what she says.

Then later on it's all like, hey, you want a pill?

You need a pill, girl.

That's how you get through life in the city.

You get a pill.

Like, oh, my goodness.

Because there's no, there's no such thing as natural functions.

When you're being forced in the Hollywood machine at a young age.

You have to take a pill to be awake and you have to take a pill to go to bed because your body's not allowed to tell you when it needs it.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's what happened with Judy.

I mean, people are like, oh, she was a feral drug addict.

Well, what started her on that.

Taking uppers and downers that were given to her as, as from the, from the studio.

They wouldn't have even called them that.

They would have called them probably vitamins at the time.

Yeah, they were like.

It was, it was very.

One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small.

And it's like no Judy, go to sleep.

So I guess Matt, to tilt us in the right direction here, there was a person behind the camera and they were in charge of presenting Dory the director and well let's hear a little bit about the person that was.

Who was responsible for this.

It was the Mulligan man.

It was Robert Mulligan and I, I don't entirely blame him.

Oh anyway.

He was of course best known for basically what they would characterize as sensitive character driven dramas.

Maybe after this one Born in the Bronx.

So I mean, I mean he got an Academy Award for Best Director.

He crack collaborated with Alan J. Pakula quite a bit, I hope I'm saying that.

Right.

And he was known for basically drawing strong performances from his actors and and I will say that for whatever shortcomings film may have had, the performances were not bad anyway.

His most notable films of course is still Inside Daisy Clover.

So.

Yeah.

So I mean obviously he, he was very talented.

I mean he did some amazing films.

And then Inside Daisy Clover still I, I will say that the elements to have a great film was there.

I think there was just some stuff lacking and you, you can't even say that maybe it wasn't there.

But then they edited it like it.

Some stuff was on the editing on the floor.

Editing room floor or whatever.

Yeah.

Matt and I were in agreement before, before we started here that there's a couple of things that would have improved this.

And we'll talk more about that in a minute.

I think certainly if perhaps Ruth Gordon maybe had twice as much screen time, it might have been a more enjoyable film.

Right.

Yeah.

Her character, her character was insane.

Reminded me of my own grandmother.

Was still fun.

Maybe if she put up a fight for her daughter, that, that of course they're, they have to adapt a book.

So maybe that's not how it was in the book.

Sometimes that happens.

The star is the focus of the studio and anybody else who's in their life is just a hindrance.

So let's lock them up, get them out, get them out of the influence there.

So.

All right, well, so we've learned about the director and the leading lady that played Miss Daisy Clover was Hollywood, well, legend because she started off on the silver screen as a little guile.

She was in everybody's favorite Christmas movie, the miracle on 34th Street.

Of course that was many years before this.

The Sound of Music, Mr. Christopher Plummer.

We'll also talk about a little bit here.

So Natalie Wood, getting back to the point.

Natalie Wood, yes, she, she would if she could.

Later on, she couldn't anymore.

She was an acclaimed American actress who rose from child stardom to become one of Hollywood's most celebrated leading woman women.

Born Natalia Nicole Vina Zahara in San Francisco, she gained early fame and Miracle on 34th Street.

Now of course she had to change her name because I'm lucky I pronounced that possibly right.

In 47 we were talking about Miracle on 34th Street.

Now as an adult, she earned three of those not chocolate filled golden statues.

The oscars for Rebel 5 and Splendor in the Grass in 61 and in 63, just a couple years before Daisy Clover in love with the proper stranger.

Now that sounds like a proposition to me.

I mean it's like an instruction manual practically.

I don't judge.

I, I'm actually curious to see it because it kind of sounds like something Jane Fonda would have done.

She also starred in beloved classics and including west side Story and Inside Daisy Clover.

West side story.

Being in 61 now.

Wood's career blended vulnerability and strength making her one of the most enduring screen icons of her era.

Natalie Wood sadly passed away in November of 81 at the age of 43.

It was during a boating trip near Santa Catalina Island, California.

She had been aboard the yacht Splendor with her husband Robert Wagner and co star Christopher Walken.

Oh, the creepy guy.

While filming Brainstorm during the night, Wood disappeared and her body was later found floating in the water and short distance from the boat.

Huh.

I Wonder if this has something in common with Daisy Clover, if maybe the men that she was involved with could have.

They could have been bumping uglies.

Anyways, she was found a short distance from the boat.

The original coroner's report declared it was an accidental drowning, noting alcohol in her system as the possibility she fell while trying to board a small dinghy.

And by a small dinghy, they didn't mean Christopher Walken.

So, AKA potentially foul play, meaning investigators could not conclusively determine exactly what happened.

So people with money probably paid to keep them keep their mouths shut.

Natalie.

Natalie Wood had four, at least four dozen films.

48 in fact, west side Story in 61.

The film itself won 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, Rebel Without a Cause, as we mentioned, in 55, that gave her an Oscar nomination at the tender age of 17.

Splendor in the grass in 61, and it got her best Oscar or best actress nomination.

And Miracle on 34th street, she got nomination for Susan Walker.

And then, of course, Inside Daisy Clover won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

Yeah.

So really quick, before we do our scorecard here, you had asked, how do you go from being the little girl in Miracle on 34th street to inside Jamie's Clover, which is a big jump, right?

Also, don't forget that in the middle of that, actually smack in the middle of that pretty much was Rebel Without a Cause, where she was still pretty young.

I mean, she was 17.

And that was a film that really, I mean, had a lot of themes that were important for the day for teenagers.

We would have been like, oh, no.

Parents weren't so fond of it.

Let's just say that anyway.

Hey, so what's your scorecard, dude?

All right, so we're going to take out our nerd lunch boxes and compare our cards and how many.

This is gonna sound dirty.

How many Natalie woods do you have?

Well, I never got a wood over Natalie.

You were never inside Daisy Clover.

I'm sure that that was probably a joke back in the day.

I bet it was.

So, surprisingly enough, Inside Disney Clover was not the first film I'd seen with Ms. Natalie Wood.

Now, of course, one could conclude that automatically everybody's first exposure.

Honk to Natalie Wood is Miracle on 34th street, because whether or not you wanted to see it, it was being rerun during the holidays and tv.

And when you have awkward family moments, it's Easier to watch the movie on tv.

So I, I've seen three now inside Daisy Clover.

I was my second miracle in 34th Street.

I've also seen this kind of strange, sort of a disaster movie that was made in the 70s.

And I watched it mostly because the cast was just laughable ahead.

Natalie Wood and it had Sean Connery and how often are you going to have that pair together?

And it was called Meteor and it was ahead of its time because in the 90s we had Armageddon and Deep Impact that were spelling out the end of the world.

In the 70s we had meteor and there was going to be a big rock hitting the earth and Natalie Wood played a Russian scientist in that movie.

And oh my gosh, talk about borderline racist.

She.

It, it was fun and of course we, we bought it just to see on our big screen at home.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

I, I don't.

I haven't seen that one.

Let's see.

So.

So you prefer Daisy Clover?

Maybe.

What was your favorite there?

Well, of the, of the films of those three, I've actually think that she had most screen time on Daisy Clover as far as performance wise.

That's.

It's.

Yeah.

Daisy Clover because she, she was an adult.

Yeah.

You don't have much say in your performance when you're a child.

You just are told like in the family portrait.

Here, hold the teddy bear and smile.

Oh, I thought she did pretty good in as Miracle for Three.

Oh, no, Mother.

Anyway, I've seen.

Actually I, I was surprised.

I've seen six of her films.

My favorites are Miracle on 32nd Street, 34th street, whatever it is, and Rebel Without a Cause.

Just people talk about that and it to the point that it becomes cliche.

It is a part of our movie culture even today for a reason.

It is a really outstanding film.

I mean Sal Mineo and James Dean.

I mean those performances alone bite two wonderful gay guys.

When you have James Dean going, you're terribly apart.

It was like, wow, dude, that's crazy.

Those are my favorite films that she, she was in.

Yeah.

So six all together.

Six.

Okay.

All right.

So as we get into the story, as we Progress Further on, Ms. Daisy Clover has been snatched up by the studio.

And of course it's all her own doing because she sent off that.

Darn that, that audition to them and they decide, oh yeah, we'll take you.

You will make you the next top model.

So the conflict and the rising action is kind of like setting out your, your bread dough and letting it rise.

So after Rising from poverty to sudden fame, Daisy is treated as a commodity rather than a person.

The studio dictates her appearances, behavior, relationships and career choices, isolating her from genuine support at the time.

At the same time, she must cope with her fragile home life, her mother's instability, and the painful realization that even her marriage is part of a studio publicity strategy.

Now, ultimately, the conflict is Daisy fights both the industry's manipulation and her own growing disillusionment with fame.

Okay, now before we get to the questions here, I'm gonna bring something up here which is obvious because we've just told you that there's a marriage involved.

Now, it's part of the trivia really, because, well, we don't get to talk about him much because we pick the leading man and the leading lady or the co stars to talk about.

Robert Redford's in this movie, and it's one of his early films.

We don't talk about him more because we've talked about Bobby Blue Eyes more in the past with other shows we've done, including last year.

Robert Redford played a man who is supposed to be gay.

In the original story, they negotiated to make him bisexual.

The studio was hesitant to actually say the words.

So Daisy basically stumbles across him while traipsing through the giant ginormous estate or studio or whatever, something, and she.

She finds herself in this bedroom and the guy's just having a drink on the bed.

Okay, in the end, in the end, that part of the story, they decide that this is a happy accident because now this young girl who's found herself with Wade Lewis, the.

The male star played by Robert Redford, and his name, he was manipulated too.

His name was changed.

They just.

They just flipped it for the studio's purposes.

This.

This young man who has a questionable home life.

Well, not home life.

He's a.

A dark horse, I guess they might say.

Is he?

He finds himself with strange bedfellows, to put it mildly.

Fellows is the operative word.

They decide that Daisy is a.

Is a band aid to that problem because she might be a minor.

Now, the studio could make them a legitimate couple.

Right?

So.

Okay, so let's take just a quick moment to pick that apart a little bit.

Yeah, let's start with the facts.

So she finds him in a bedroom.

He's drunkish.

Well, had a few drinks, shall we say at least one.

And goes into.

And I, I think he offers her a drink.

And then he goes into this weird poem that he's apparently recited to many people many, many times.

And does this little act, and that makes no sense at all.

And somehow woos her by basically, I think they were.

I got the impression that they were becoming friends.

I didn't get any romantic overtones out of any of it up until the time that, like, he was like, well, maybe they were on the boat then.

Maybe they.

I don't know.

But I still didn't get that they actually did anything.

I still also didn't get the fact any.

Any inclination that he was gay or bi or anything else.

There was none of that.

There was.

And then he's supposed to be.

I don't know how old he is.

He was 27 in the movie.

I mean, in real Life, he was 27.

I don't know how old he was in the movie.

He looked like he was 30.

Right.

Well, Robert Redford in real life himself was only a couple of years older than Natalie Wood.

So we are at about the halfway mark in our show.

We're gonna take a break, a brief break for some ads, some jingles, some nostalgia from days gone by.

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Let's ask one, Dave.

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and Peggy, Joel,

Sandy, Beth and Jennifer.

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Me?

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Okay, we are back, right?

He was 29.

29.

That's what it was.

I don't know how old his character was supposed to be in the movie.

She's 15.

She's 15.

16.

Yep.

And they're like, oh, and, oh, we'll solve the fact that you just nailed jail bait, apparently, by getting married.

And, like, that's supposed to solve your problems.

Oh, yes.

It's a wonderful.

And they had the big studio wedding and everything.

And it's like, I think she was maybe 17.

They said she was 17 at that time.

They, like, made a point of it.

And it's like, she's still underage, dude.

Come on.

And yet that's going to make him a big megastar.

And maybe it's because we're looking at it from here.

After we've been through all the me toos and the other stuff that is in our world, maybe we're looking at it differently than they would have back then.

It's still like, girl, really, this is what you're going with?

And then all of a sudden he disappears on their.

Their wedding night.

Oh, yeah.

And.

And we should get to that because that's a whole nother.

Right.

Maybe to introduce the questions.

And we'll come right back to that.

So what did you feel about the way Daisy was treated as a product by the Hollywood studio rather than as a young person with emotions and needs?

So maybe as a person, how did you feel about them treating her as on their payroll rather than as a human being?

Well, that's kind of hard for me to answer because on one hand, obviously, it would be better if they were able to.

You realize that she was a young person with emotions and needs and all that stuff.

I mean, and granted, she was basically raised.

She basically probably raised herself because her mother was not really mentally there.

So she pretty much looked after herself, did her own thing.

And.

And she behaved atrociously.

That would have been great if somebody had been there, like even the wife had been there more to offer her a pill, to actually mentor her into how to be a young woman if that's what they wanted of her, given the studio system back then, given what her dreams of stardom and being a Singer and everything were.

That was just the way it was.

Yeah.

So I can't say.

I mean, so, yeah, I feel sorry for her that she didn't have that individuality.

We also know what the system of The.

Of the studios were back there, so that's what was expected.

And yet, at the same time, we never got to see that, so we don't.

We didn't know it from the movie

anyway, so your turn to ask the question.

Oh, all right, girl.

So much pressure.

All right.

What did you feel about Daisy's struggle to hold on to her identity while everyone around her tried to control her image and choices?

Well, they.

They were trying to make her their star, so she really didn't have much of an identity other than being old chap's daughter and Gloria's sister.

So maybe she was eager to become someone else, and that's why she sent off the audition.

At the same time, she wasn't an adult yet, so she didn't realize what the consequences of getting what you asked for are.

Right.

So.

So, yeah, no, go ahead.

Sorry.

That's okay.

So she didn't have much of an identity other than being the.

I guess you'd say, latchkey kid living off the pier.

They.

They did control.

They tried to control her image.

And that's where the part of the discussion you and I were saying was they saw a problem in her being a minor hanging out with their male star, who was more than a handful of years older than her, certainly legal age.

They've concocted a solution that they force upon them, basically, also.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

I was just making sure.

Okay.

So the thing.

And you said this.

You touched on this.

The.

The struggle to hold onto her identity.

She.

They never gave an arc.

They never.

They never tried, other than putting her in a dress and trying to make her show up to things.

They never showed you any sort of arc in her identity or her trying to change or them telling her to change.

She just.

She walked through things like a bulldozer.

She was always a headstrong little lesbian type.

Like it.

She.

There was.

There was no identity of.

Or.

Or like, anyone really trying to force her not to be a certain way.

We never saw that.

Yeah.

And so when.

When they.

When the question is, well, she's trying to hold on to who she is when she's trying to be controlled and everything, We.

We don't see that.

We just see her going, blah, blah, blah, through everything and making dumb choices,

and it's mostly because the mom was locked up.

If she had had a positive influence.

If she had had a quote, unquote, more functional parent of better moral and ethic code, then she would have some sort of a bar to measure herself to.

I think they could have even done that by having her writing to.

And a friend writing to a friend that lived off the pier that they went to school with or something.

Just having some sort of a frame of reference for what's normal.

Well, yeah.

And they never.

What am I trying to say?

We don't see her.

We don't.

We don't see them trying to make her anything else.

And so when we don't see that, we aren't getting a sense of trying to control her or make her different.

There was.

Okay, this was.

Was very.

This was basically America's Liza Doolittle, only she just thought she'd go in there and sing and become a star.

There'd be.

No.

She didn't have to change herself.

And anyway, that's the price question.

Next question.

So what did you feel about the loneliness Daisy experiences even after achieving fame and success?

This is where I'm gonna basically spoiler, folks.

The.

The woman ends up putting her head in the oven.

Woman.

She was still 17.

That's the end of the movie.

Young girl.

Yeah, but I love that.

I love.

Actually, I thought that was hilarious at the end where she's trying to put her head in the oven to kill herself because she's just so over.

After she has this massive breakdown and everyone placates to her for days at a time, she decides she's gonna kill herself.

And she keeps trying to put her head in the oven.

And then the phone rings, and then the nurse comes back, and then the.

And she keeps getting interrupted.

And I was like, that is so funny.

And then comes the end of the movie, which, I don't know.

Maybe we'll save that for the next bit.

Well.

Oh, my God.

Leading.

Leading up to that.

Okay, so speaking from the perspective of being in the 21st century now, how tragic and chauvinist is it that they have this young girl who's in the process of becoming a woman, having her whole world fall apart when she finds out the man that she fake married isn't only into women.

That's just supposed to make her whole reality come crashing down.

She's not the one.

Well.

Well, yeah, not only that.

I never.

I never got the sense that they were really.

That she was really in love with him.

It was like more like, wait, he likes guys.

Oh, maybe that explains why I like girls.

Because let's face it, the whole time they keep using this.

She's a tomboy.

And I'm like, yeah.

Not to mention, remember the start of the movie where, like, that guy was like, like, just getting up on her.

I'm like, what the hell?

And she wasn't having any of that.

Oh, hell no.

That.

That guy wanted up in her groceries, and she didn't.

She was.

She was like, I ain't begging these.

A friend said that that guy looked like a young Walter Math out.

I had to set him straight.

I'm like, no, it was somebody else.

Yeah.

So bringing us back to the studio people, it's like, now they decide we have a problem.

We've got a miner on our hands.

And then we also have this guy who jumps into both sexes as beds, and.

And now we can play doctor or matchmaker here and solve the studio's problem.

They're gonna get married, right?

And they do go ahead on the top of that.

The re.

The reason why they know that he plays for both teams, or at least that he fools around, is because what.

What happened to the studio head's marriage

there, man, I. I know that they were not happy.

It was hinted that Mrs. Swan, the studio wife.

Yes.

Had been thrown for a loop because she.

She hitched her star to his wagon.

And then the reality came crashing down that he's too hot for teacher.

And that's the thing, is that I. I thought that the whole.

That the.

The head.

The studio head's wife, I thought she had the whole meltdown because she was, like, madly in love with Robert Redford or something.

And now I think she was just like, nope, I'm just nuts.

Especially after.

Spoiler alert.

After, when.

When poor Pollyanna.

What's her name.

Daisy is like having, like this, like, oh, my God, I've been left.

Okay.

Robert Redford.

I don't even think they had sex.

I think they just.

He just, like, left her.

Took her to the desert in this really horrible hotel and left her there on their honeymoon to go to London to have sex with a man.

Right.

And she.

And then she had to, like, find her own Uber home and stuff, and she finally got back to the.

The.

The house, and Christopher Plummet is like, oh, yes.

Well, that's what happens.

He's.

He finds these boys and just has sex with them.

And then once Mrs. Mrs.

Studio Head is.

Is like, went in the house to go get another pill.

Christopher Plummer kisses Daisy Clover.

Yeah.

He basically has this moment where he says to her, come here, little girl.

Let Me tell you about this thing in the future, called me too.

I'm going to invent it.

And yes.

Then he, like, gives her this kiss, and she's just like, what the hell?

And then.

And.

And I was at that point, I'm like, I don't know what is going on.

I don't.

I.

This is not right.

But it's.

It's.

It's.

It's twisted because as the.

As the layers unravel in this story and you don't know who's sane and who's moral or ethical or what have you.

Mrs. Swan, the studio head's wife, is having that breakdown as soon as Daisy is left by her new newlywed husband.

Yeah.

And she says to her, as you said, have a pill.

It's like, she's the Wicked Witch of the West.

And she's like, oh, my pretty.

Here, have a pill.

Yeah.

Do you want a blue one or a red one?

As they're walking inside and she's asked for her to escort her to her bedroom, she's like, do you like to cut yourself?

Oh, my God.

It's like she's asking her if she likes cream in her coffee.

She's like, do you like to cut yourself?

I like to cut myself.

Let's cut ourselves together.

Oh, my gosh.

It was, like, so crazy because without the context of every.

Of what was really going on in the studios, which we really didn't get to see, we don't understand why she's nuts.

And.

And yet, I mean, because you would think that when.

When she's got her.

Her stuff together and she's just like.

She's just like the most delightful woman.

You're like, oh, she'd be a really good friend.

And then, like, the second you go behind the scenes, you're like, oh, my God.

Run, run.

So, yeah, you know what?

There's somebody else that shared the screen with Natalie Wood.

I guess we should probably talk about them.

Matt, tell us about the leading man in Miss Daisy Clover, who was also in Sound of music in 65.

This guy had two paychecks coming in.

He did.

And he.

I think when I was looking up his.

His roster, he was actually, I think, in another film that year, too.

He was very busy man, believe it or not.

So.

And we've talked about him before.

2021.

He's actually a Canadian actor, and he has a very distinguished voice known for, I mean, versatility.

Across long stage and film and television.

I mean, he just did everything.

He was born in Toronto and raised in Montreal.

Like Corey Hart, he gained international film fame portraying Captain Von Trapp in the Sound of Music, which was again, like you said, in the same year, he's actually a classically trained Shakespearean performer, leading figure in like the Stafford Festival and been on Broadway and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for.

You think it's going to be like one of the films that we've talked about?

Right.

Like, wow.

He also became the oldest acting Oscar winner at age 82.

For beginners.

Like.

Right.

Anyway, his most notable films, of course include all the Money in the World.

Never heard of it, the Insider.

Kind of heard of it.

And A Beautiful Mind.

So, I mean, he was very active and he did over 100 films after

watching Inside Daisy Clover.

I need something like A Beautiful Mind.

Well, yeah, exactly.

And the thing was, is like, even, even with this horrible film, the performances were not bad.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I want to know how many of this man's films have you seen?

Well, I have in fact seen eight, so that's more than Natalie Woods.

Then again, I would Christopher Plummer if there was less of an age gap and he was still living.

Of course, my favorites of course include his performance in Star Trek 6 because while he was in prosthetics, because he played a Klingon, he also got to show off his skills as a Shakespearean trained actor.

His character was all about quoting Shakespeare, Cry Havoc and let's Slip the Dogs of war.

Right.

91.

Because of course you haven't experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingons.

Right.

It was a film that was being made when.

Oh, it's not.

I'm forgetting the actor's name now.

That was in one of the more recent Batman movies as the Joker.

He passed away.

Heath Ledger.

And after the passing of Heath Ledger, they actually tasked A couple of different actors, I think Robert Downey Jr. And I'm forgetting the other one, they ended up doing a fundraiser.

The cast actually gave money to Heath Ledger's estate for his daughter to live on for a while.

One of my other favorite Christopher Palmer movies before, Besides Star Trek 6, is the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

And he plays this really great sort of gypsy type character who pulls around in a stage coach, and it's kind of got, like, TARDIS technology where it's bigger on the inside of the stagecoach.

And his character has this daughter who is the apple of his eye.

So, of course, he goes through life trying to protect his daughter from the evils of the world.

It's just a great film.

The imaginarian of Dr. Parnassus is one of my two favorite Christopher Plummer movies.

Wow.

Well, I guess.

Okay, I've seen 15, which surprise, surprised me.

Right.

Yeah, I.

You've got great favorites there.

For me, it was Sound of Music and Knives Out.

Okay.

And those may be very basic, but, I mean, he really.

Those are the ones that were.

Well, Sound of Music is very meaningful to me as a kid, and he was very meaningful to me as a kid because he was in it.

So anyway.

So, yeah, those were my faves.

I mean, Sound Music stands the test of time because.

Because it's a.

It's about joy.

Yeah.

Well, and fighting Nazis, which is very important.

All right.

In today.

So, yeah.

So the climax, the resolution as we get.

As we ride over the hill of the roller coaster, and, boy, was this one.

We eventually get to the dead end, because I think this roller coaster lands us back at Santa Monica Pier.

Oh, did I say Santa Monica Pier?

It was supposed to be angel beach, but that's where they filmed it.

So.

The climax of Inside Daisy Clover occurs when Daisy, overwhelmed by the pressures of fame, emotional betrayal and isolation, suffers a breakdown.

She discovers that her marriage to actor Wade Lewis, played by Robert Redford, was essentially a studio arrangement and that he cannot return her love.

Does not compute.

Feeling trapped and used, Daisy reaches a breaking point and rebels against the studio's control, refusing to continue playing the manufactured role they created for her.

And the resolution comes when Daisy ultimately walks away from Hollywood, rejecting the artificial life of stardom.

Although this is sort of implied because the last scene of the movie is her walking away from the beach.

Yeah.

But she chooses personal freedom and on this into authenticity over fame, leaving the studio system behind to reclaim her independence and sense of self.

Now, as we were saying.

No.

She stuck her head in the oven.

What I find interesting is this is to take a.

A line out of one of my favorite Robin Williams movies.

It's called what Dreams?

It was to Drive by fruiting.

Oh, no.

What.

What Dreams May Come.

It has quite a bit to do with the afterlife, and it had Cuba Gooding Jr.

In it.

So that's another reason you need to see it.

In what Dreams May Come, you find out that there are certain things that happen in your life or certain routines that you have.

And his character's wife has been institutionalized.

She's been basically traumatized because she lost her children and she tries to take her own life.

Well, the irony in the story with that was that she has taught herself to smoke.

And they called that affirmation of life because you're doing something, taking risks.

So in this, Daisy is going to end her own life by sticking her head in the oven.

And what snaps her back to reality when she touches the stove burner by accident and yells, ouch.

Now.

Now she suddenly wants to live because she's experienced pain.

Yeah, like, okay, don't touch the hot stuff, girl.

Before that, like I said before, she keeps getting interrupted.

Like, she keeps trying to kill herself, and she's, like, breathing in the gas.

And then like, here comes the nurse.

Or the phone rings, just all this stuff.

I'm like, oh, my God, this is so.

This is.

I. I thought that part was funny.

Then I was like, okay, now she's gonna snap out of it and she's gonna, like, go be a big star and tell the.

Go to a different studio or whatever.

Like, that's one of the things, too, is back then, if you became a big enough star, sometimes you could walk away and kind of write your own contracts.

They actually gave her two contracts, too.

And the second one was much more, like, in favor of her.

So anyway, here's the thing again.

She leaves the studio system behind to reclaim her independence and her sense of self.

She never lost her sense of self.

Even.

Even.

Even when she had her breakdown.

Like, she just screamed having a breakdown back in 65 as you scream for a little bit.

And then you sit in a bed and stare into space while people placate to your every whim.

Even when she did that, she had that meltdown.

It was implied at the end of it from Christopher Plummer that it was fake, that she wasn't really melting down.

She was just like, when was she not ever herself in the film?

Well, and you.

You also touched on a good point there, because towards the end of the film, where she's going through this crisis of faith and she is questioning what's going on in her life.

She basically has a scene that's like a fever dream where Bobby Blue Eyes, Wade Lewis, her husband that basically ditched her after the altar, shows up and visits her bedside with flowers.

And you're left to wonder whether or not this really happened.

So these are.

These were all things that made her question what was going on and maybe whether or not she needed to stick it out.

Soldier on, whatever we call it.

And this.

And this also.

This is right after her mother died.

And they never.

They didn't.

And they didn't.

They were just like, okay, well, she's gone.

Bye, bye.

And like, not giving her any grace for that too.

Again, that's more implied than it is

actually shown to a modern audience, though that, in reality, is the turning point.

Screw everything else that's happened.

The most important person in her life has just died.

Right?

Was just when things were starting to get better.

She had just gotten this cute slash beautiful little house on the shore, and she and her mother were living there.

And it's like her mother had her life back because her daughter was involved again, as soon as they give it to her, they take it right away because she.

She dies playing cards in her bed, and the.

She comes home from a date or whatever, and the windows on the house have been left open.

So.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it just.

I. I don't know.

And then the.

The way that she apparently claims her independence.

Okay, that's the thing is.

Is at the end of this.

Spoiler alert, people.

She's like, no, I want to live.

I'm a real boy.

And she.

She, like, turns on the gas, turns on the burner, and then walks out of the house and, like, I don't know, 300, like, 100 yards from the house, and then the entire thing blows up.

And then some guy walks by and says, or guy, girl, I don't know, and says, do you want to happen?

And she's like, I just declared war.

War on what girl?

Like, I mean, perhaps the reality is that the studio thought she died because maybe Daisy just disappeared after that and started going by another name or whatever.

Because we don't know.

It's implied.

I think that if the.

The most positive influence in my life was my mother, and if she was taken away from me only to be given before she dies, I Wouldn't want to have anything to do with that beautiful beach house because the, the, the whole experience has been ruined.

The only, the only happiness I had that part of my life was because my mother was there with me.

I'm gonna go and be somewhere else now because this place reminds me of her.

Right.

And I, I.

And that if they had made that more of a point, I totally could have been on board with it.

She did it like, she was declaring, what, war on, like, the studio and, and, or.

Or the Christopher Plummer, basically.

I was just like, okay, who owned the beach house?

Didn't you own the beach house?

You blew up your own house to, like, tell them F you and, like.

And then she's declaring war.

Well, what does that mean?

Because if you're just going to disappear, you're not going to say, I'm declaring war.

Like, it, like the whole thing just didn't.

Like, if she had, I don't know, gone and signed with a different studio or, I don't know, something to make it more, like, make sense.

Because it's just like, what, we're gonna have a script that doesn't really make that much sense, and then at the end of it, we're gonna blow up a house?

Oh, that sounds fun.

I mean, there's no point.

There was no point in it, right?

I mean, yes, this had to be adapted from the book.

So assuming this is how the story went in the book, from the perspective of good storytelling, I think it would have made more sense if the house at the beach where she spent her last days with her mother was like, her childhood home.

Yes.

Yeah, that would have made much more sense too.

It would have been like, okay, I'm blowing this up to leave this part of my world behind.

I don't.

I don't know, girl.

But that's.

That's not what happened.

So I just asked you.

I just asked you.

Google AI there.

Why did.

Why did Daisy blow up the house?

And it said it was done.

Her beach house was symbolic act of rebellion and liberation.

After a nervous breakdown caused by her mother's death and immense pressure from the Hollywood studio system, she destroys the house to sever ties with her past, leaving behind the manufactured life and declaring war on those who tried to control her.

Okay, that's.

Really.

Somebody told it that because.

No, because, I mean, that would make perfect sense.

We don't get that just by watching the movie.

I mean, it's basically her taking her bra all through her sleeve.

Right?

Exactly.

It's like, I am going to set My.

It's like, okay.

It's like, I'm going to set my bra on fire and start women's liberation.

And the lighter doesn't light.

I mean, it's like, okay, girl.

And then she just tears it up.

She's like, I can't light it on fire.

I'm just gonna rip it in half and throw it away.