751: Audience of One

I know so many people who have films that they've watched over and over and I have never really gotten that. I always feel like there are so many films that I haven't seen, like why would I watch one again? But we get to these conversations and there always comes a moment where I'm asked, well what is the film that you've seen the most? And then I have to admit, it's a Poseidon adventure.

Which I know is not a good film. It's this 70s movie about an ocean liner that gets hit by a tsunami, flips upside down, and passengers try to make their way to safety. It's part of an entire genre of films, disaster films that have never gotten any respect. Like nobody thinks of these films as art.

But I loved it at the time when I saw it. It felt big and it felt important and serious. And I remember it was very emotional. And the reason that I saw it so many times, this is the film that I saw more than any other, was not because I loved the film.

It was because of where I saw it. There was no vacation. We didn't take many vacations when I was a kid. But one of them, we stayed at this hotel in Florida where the rooms had this thing, they offered a couple movies all day long.

And this was so long ago. In the 1970s, my sister and I had never seen anything like that. Like even cable TV was rare back then. The Poseidon adventure was the film that they offered.

And my sister, Carrie and I, we ate it up. That was the movie we watched over and over again. Yeah. So this was like a very important movie.

With Karen and her son Zack, my nephew, who we tried to explain this to you recently. So we ended up watching it on TV like at night if our parents wanted to dinner or if it was a rainy day. Yeah, we loved it. The way that I remembered is that the hotel just had this movie on a loop.

And as soon as it would finish, it would start again. And the way I remembered is that every time we would come into the hotel room, you could turn on the TV and you'd be somewhere in the beside adventure. That sounds vaguely familiar to me. I don't totally remember that.

But that might be right. Yeah. And I remember having a lot of feeling. Do you remember having a lot of feeling?

What does that mean having a lot of feeling? Like I remember feeling a lot of emotions. Yeah, well, it's scary. And you know, you really invested in their journey to escape alive.

I don't think I'm getting anything by saying that. So are here at the radio show these last few weeks. We've been talking about the random films that people have strong attachments to. Thinking that might be a good episode to show.

And I started to think about the beside adventure. And I wondered what it would be like to see it again. Like, would it have any feeling? But any of it feel the way it did to me as a kid?

What if it had a way to Karen? So my sister and I we watched it and I invited Zack to since he's the age that we were when we watched it back in 70s. He's 13. I was 14 at the time.

Karen was 11. And I did. What is it? I did not expect Zack to like it.

Like he does not like a lot of films. And right away, very foreseen. Let us know the kind of film we were in for. A little boy visits the bridge of the SS beside him.

This ocean liner in the middle of a big storm. And the little boy is greeted by the captain who's played by a Newson who at this point had not made the career transition to parodying characters like this captain. Mr Shelby, you picked a particularly fascinating monitor except my condition. These waves don't bother you.

I served up to 18 feet. These look more like 30. Very fine to be exact. Wow.

Sir, it's brilliant. What's so my? What's so my? Those lines.

So cheesy. I didn't remember how wind-sead the acting got in some places. When Ernest Borgnine shows up, it's clear that the 1956 Oscar winner for Best Actor is not in one of his best roles. Linda, you hear me?

Why is he so angry? Borgnine does seem to shout nearly every one of his lines in the film. One thing I kind of stunned me and I did not expect seeing the film again was how much of the dialogue I remember from decades ago. And I was also surprised to realize and I do not know what this is about me.

The lines that I remember the most are like the little comic zingers. You know, like when a crew member is asked to be married, I know his corny response before he says it. No marriage for me, Mrs. Rosa.

I got a mistress. What? The sea. Something I did remember and remember liking from film was that this was an old-fashioned enough movie that producers tried to insert some big ideas into the adventure.

So it all means something. These big ideas are provided by Gene Hackman, who plays a rebellious young priest in a turtle-maker. His big theological idea is a very conveniently helpful one for people who are about to be capsized into the middle of the ocean. God doesn't want you to wait for miracles.

You have to take matters into your own hands. Don't trade to God to solve your problems. This is from a sermon he delivers early in the film. Have the guts to fight for yourself.

God wants brave souls. He wants winners, not winners. If you can't win, at least try to win. He comes back to this over and over through the film, rallying the passengers to fight on.

I love that as a teenager, that there was this idealistic guy with this principle that he's trying to live by and this idea about God that the film is testing. And I have to say, seeing it today, I still loved it. I have to put that in there. Anyway, soon enough, I've read at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.

The tsunami hits, the boat flips, the pot behind the tips. In the wreckage of the upside down New Year's party, Gene Hacklin convinces only eight passengers that they shouldn't stay and wait for God to send rescuers a climb to safety. Please, God said come with me. They creep from back to back, rarely escaping the rising waters they go.

The ceilings are the rooms where they walk on and the floors are the ceilings. There's a fiery upset on kitchen. They go up slippery ladders and inverted staircases. And by the time they start dying, one by one, for Karen and me, and even Zach, there's no joke.

We're in it. We care. You should just have a hard attack? Did you just have a hard attack?

Yes. Wow. That's pretty random hard attack. Not really.

Think about the fact that she just did all that swimming and she's out of shape. After Mrs. Rosen, they made you grandma and the film dies. Her husband discovers your dead body.

Oh, that guy is going to be so sad. I remember this moment so well. Do I remember this too, really? Well, this was very effective.

I've been really invested in this movie. It's sort of good. You do feel very invested? Yeah, it's like, I'm not sure what's going to happen next, unlike most other movies.

I wondered if Zach was going to feel the same big feelings that I felt for the film at his age. Until we did. Wow, she dies? No.

Oh, he dies too? No. They were so close. No.

By the time we get to Gene Hackman's big climactic speech to God, What are you wanting to wait? No, thanks to you. It was clear. The Poseidon Adventure, it does its job.

It gets to you. But thinking about the experience at Zach had watching the film and the one that I was having, it's so different, right? For me, it was like walking into a room from my childhood home and finding it intact, and exactly how I remembered it. Or we would get to a scene and I would remember things I didn't realize I remembered.

Is there even a name for that? When we're watching movie together, we think we're watching the same thing, but we are not. For me, it's like the inside of the adventure is a portal back to that vacation and being in that hotel room with Karen and knowing those movie stars from other things they made in just that whole time in my life. I can't just act that movie.

Well, from WBC Chicago, it's this American life. I'm out of glass today. We're in our program. We're at a point in the pandemic where so many of us are still not going out to movie theaters and we thought, here at our show, let's do a movie night.

Let's do a show about movies. In particular, we decided to get people who have watched the film over and over. You see something in it that most people do not see. Films for which they are an audience of one.

These are stories about how we connect the films sometimes very deeply, but sometimes in very strange and random ways. Say with us. At one, many of things she ought to understand. When our producers Diane Wu spent most of her life thinking that she did not have a unique and personal take on the film, The Sound of Music.

Sound of Music, after all, everybody loves it, what's there to say? And then she learned no. Her take is very different. I watched The Sound of Music all the time as a kid.

It was one of maybe six VHS tapes we had at home, along with Bambi and 101 Dalmatians. And a few years ago, I was talking with a friend about how much I loved the movie growing up. And he said, me too, though the Nazi scared me. And I said, what Nazis?

And that's when I learned I'd never seen the second half of the film. It turns out the movie came out in a two VHS box set. And I, for some reason, had only ever seen the first tape. My dad doesn't remember a second tape either.

And why would you need one? The first half makes perfect sense on its own. Here's the plot. It's a movie about a woman named Maria who was sent to the countryside to babysit a giant family of children with a mean dad, the Bontraps.

Maria shows up, bubbly, fun, and teaches them to sing and play and be kids, all against the wishes of their father. But the singing wins him over, they sing together as a family, and finally at a party, the kids sing a beautiful song for the guests. Farewell. And after that, Maria, having successfully fixed the family, leaves.

Just like Mary Poppins did, when she fixed that family. And that's the end of the movie. I had very clear fond memories of the goat herd puppet show and the scene in the gazebo where Liesl, the oldest daughter, secretly met with the male man she was in love with. And they sang and danced, and it was still romantic.

I had no further questions about any of the characters. So when I learned that there were 70 more minutes to the film, I didn't bother going to look for them. The sound of music was a full, complete, and wonderful artifact for my childhood. I didn't want to taint it with Nazis.

But when my co-worker, Lena, who's producing this week's show, and is a musical theater fan, which I most definitely am not. When she found out I still hadn't seen the whole thing, it seemed heretical to her. She couldn't let it stand. So we watched it together over the internet one Sunday afternoon.

And I prepared to have a childhood memory, either slightly enhanced or completely ruined. Before we started, she had me predict what was going to be in the second half. I want, and this is based on my childhood memory, and just what I would like to see is the second half is just focused on my favorite two characters, Liesl and the Hot Male Man. I want to see their courtship.

And then they get married, and that's the end of the movie. We hit play and started at the very beginning. Started with a part I know. And the first half was more or less the simple, sunny movie I remembered.

Seeing the kindly and dour nuns come on screen early on was like recognizing teachers I had in elementary school. My brother, she's a benny. I simply cannot find her. How do you?

There was that gazebo scene when the male man and Liesl sing to each other. I am 16, going on 17, I know that I'm naive. Then whirl around the gazebo, dancing. Oh my god, this still looks like so much fun.

Notting now though, I saw a lot of things that I had completely missed as a kid. Because as a child, I'd apparently ignored anything that adults who were not Maria said to each other. Literally none of that dialogue registered. It was like the mumbly grown-ups in Charlie Brown.

My kids self had edited full characters out of the film. I barely remembered the Baroness who wants to marry the dad. This really is exciting for me, Gayle. Being here with you.

Trees, legs, and mountains. You see what I should have all. That is not what I mean, and you know it. So any of their plot lines that were not resolved in the first half.

Moot. I also missed, of course, how Maria and the dad supposedly fall in love. And dad, by the way, was even meaner than I remembered. Just cruel to Maria.

Turn around please. What? Turn. Hat off.

It's the dress. I'll never put another one before you make the children. But Adam, have another one. And because of that, I still had a lot of trouble squaring the idea that anything between the two of them was remotely romantic.

He thinks he's in love with you. But that's not true. Oh, they really spell it out. Yeah, buddy, you must kind of laugh.

Well, surely, even notice the way he looks into your eyes. And you know, you blashed in his arms and you're dancing just now. The one romance that still sparkled was between Liesl and the Mailman. So, watching again, I have to say the Mailman was not as cute as I remembered.

It's the Mailman. Oh, he kind of looks like a Nazi. Ralph, the Mailman, comes back later in the first half to throw rocks on Liesl's window. That moment, I remember.

Again, so dreamy. But the one that followed was completely over my head as a kid. I didn't see. I mean, I didn't know you were.

Hylie Hitler. Oh. Hylie Hitler. Yeah.

Hylie Hitler. The hero of my version of the sound of music, who I'd hope the second half would center around. He was the Nazi. Also, not the Mailman.

Yes, he was wearing a uniform and delivering messages, but he was not employed by the Postal Service as my child self had understood. He was some kind of military messenger. The first half is peppered with a few more hints like this that things are going to take a turn, historically, in the second half of the movie. Uneasy talk about Austrian flags and something called an enchloose.

But all against the backdrop of a glamorous party. They're kind of easy to miss. If you're seven. The last thing I missed is a kid.

The big title card that says, Intermission, in yellow script, that comes on screen after Maria closes the door. He was on the second VHS. Lena and I fast forward through the music at Intermission, and the second half starts. Oh my god, Lena.

I can't believe it's more. That's like a second movie for you. This is really weird. You haven't seen any of this.

Five. Six. Seven. Except as the second half starts, I suddenly feel like I have seen all of this.

Watching my children play ball in their backyard felt strangely familiar. Six. I'd spent so much time already with them on traps at their home that this new scene just felt like part of my memories. This confusing deja vu sticks with me all the way through the scenes of Maria back at the abby.

Until the dad goes to meet Maria at the gazebo and declare his love for her. That I'm certain I have never seen this before. Do you know when I first started loving you at night at the dinner table when you sat on that ridiculous pine cone? What?

I knew the first time you blew that silly whistle. Oh my god. Oh my love. This is so gross.

They basically just stared at each other three times, and now Maria was letting this horrible man marry her? I could not believe it. Just as I'm settling into the newness of the second half, blocking Maria's wedding dress, everything in the movie shifts. The Nazis roll into town.

It's incredibly abrupt. A cut from literal wedding bells to a bell tolling over a giant swastika flag on the town square. Lines of soldiers march across the plaza ominously. The colors seem to drain out of the movie.

The children show up next in drab brown clothes against a stony backdrop instead of their perky curtain outfits from the first half. The characters, meanwhile, are dealing with their own whiplash. Ralph surprises Liesel as she's getting into a car. Liesel.

Liesel. Ralph. I'm basically as excited to see Ralph as Liesel is right here, because maybe this is when we get to the version of the second half I've been wanting to see. Ralph and Liesel's courtship.

Ralph, I'm so glad to see you. It's been such. Get up. You would take this please and deliver to your father as soon as he comes home.

Ouch. Ralph. He's standing in front of a Nazi flag. Liesel is clearly disoriented but still hopeful as she holds the telegram and Coiley asks.

Don't you want to come over tonight and deliver it yourself? I'm not occupied with the more important matters. And your father better be too if he knows what's good for him. But, Ralph.

Oh, Liesel, you chose a bad one. This was the only relationship in the movie that interested me at all as a child, and it's sobering to see the whole realistic arc of it. Because for the rest of the second half, it's predictable. You know their first escape isn't going to work out.

It's obvious when they're singing contest. Great songs from the first half are recycled in a weird way. The one moment that moves me, though, doesn't have anything to do with the characters I was attached to from the first half. It happens, surprisingly, when the dad starts singing a love song to his country on stage.

Little voice, little vice, every morning you greet me. He's doing it as an act of gentle defiance that makes the Nazi officials mustache twitch. And as the crowd joins in with him, I feel my throat catch a little. They remind me of people all around the world this summer.

In Hong Kong, Beirut, Belarus, here in America, who are longing to hold on to something as their own countries change, rapidly excruciatingly around them. The darkest moment of the movie is perhaps at the very end, when the family has almost escaped, but then Ralph finds them in the abbey. He raises a whistle to turn them in, but the dad stops and reasons with him. You don't really belong to them.

Stay where you are. Come away with us. What's too late? Ralph looks scared and boyish.

He really wishes his gun and leans over. Relieved. But then the dad takes it one step too far. You'll never be one of them.

Lieutenant! Ralph chooses to betray them. It's such a sinister and dissonant scene held up against the cotton candy first half. The family still makes it out in time, but in spite of him, not with his help.

And that's the actual end of the movie, as far as I know, today. So here's my conclusion, having seen it all. You don't need the second half. It's actually better without it.

The second half just takes one of my kid's favorite characters, Ralph, and makes him a villain. Lieutenant takes the worst character, the dad, and makes him a hero. There are barely any new songs. Maria disappears as a person.

Liesl just looks uncomfortable the whole time, trying to act like a child for another hour. Everything memorable and iconic about the movie. My favorite things, the kids singing good night, no a dear. That all happens in the first half.

But then I was at the beach this weekend with a friend, staring at the clouds and the kids throwing sand. And he said a thing that changed my feeling about the second half. He told me that lately, he can last about three minutes feeling like everything is normal, before he remembers it isn't. It made me understand the urge to include the dark end of the story and the movie about the singing family.

Because once everything in the world has changed, you can't really will it to stay outside the frame. Diane Wu is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, your ex-wife has a few thoughts about your marriage, and she makes a movie about that. That does not sound like that's going to be a good experience for you.

That's an amendment from Chicago Bubble Radio when our program continues. This American life and our class today on our program. At this point in the pandemic, where so many of us are still not going out to movie theaters we thought here at our program, let's do a movie night, a show about movies, a story about people who see something that most of us do not see in some film. Today's show is a rerun.

We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, putting the ease in disease. So back when the pandemic first took hold, a lot of people were watching or rewatching the movie contagion, which originally came out in 2011. Maybe you've seen this, it's about a deadly and fast spreading virus that is spread by respiratory droplets, goes around the world, governments fail to contain it. And I think when we watch films like that, or read books about the 1918 flu, because it just scratches this itch.

We want some way to think about what we are going through right now, and it's just nice to see somebody else go through some version of it. One of our producers, Sean Cole, has never seen contagion, but he found himself turning to this other movie, a movie about a virus that you've probably never heard of. It is a very different spin on the subject. Here's Sean.

You won't find this movie on Netflix, or YouTube, or anywhere like that, or at least I couldn't find it that way. I finally had to order a DVD from an online vintage movie store. It's clear my copy was pirated off cable, skips a lot. And like all of the contagion geeks, I was floored by some of the parallels to now, especially given that this movie came out in 1968, more than half a century ago.

For instance, in this movie, instead of a bat, the vector of the virus is a bird, a toucan, that's stowed away aboard a Greek freighter somewhere near Central America. Then the boat docks in New York Harbor for inspection, and the first mate alerts the military that a lot of the crew is sick. We'll have to hold the ship and quarantine in jeopardy. If it is a virus, my guess is a brand new one, some kind of a mutation.

So, telling how long it takes to identify it. The toucan is still on board, held in a makeshift chicken wire fence, but then it gets loose, flies straight into the city, and starts infecting people. Just a few at first. The mayor of New York, an empty suit motivated mostly by money and poll numbers, holds a press conference, speaking into a microphone labeled WNYC, with public radio station in New York where it used to work.

It was weird. There's absolutely no cause for alarm. Only 47 cases have been reported so far. However, the Commissioner of Health recommends that you wear a surgical mask and you are out public.

He holds up a mask exactly like the one I wear every day. After the reporters leave, though, there's deep concern in dread. The Health Commissioner, an older Anthony Fauci type, scolds the mayor. We're underplaying the threat everyone's facing.

True, we got a line on the 47 reported to doctors. But when you feel good, you don't go to a doctor. Or it knows how many more have it. So, he has a life of 10 days or so.

You said so yourself. Yes, but somebody who gets it on the 10th day, and has it for another 10 days. And we have to get it. He gives it to somebody else.

So I'm theoretically going for years. Soon, everyone is screwing around the city in a masked panic. Businesses suffer. A presidential envoy fast-tracks the development of a vaccine.

If it weren't for the 20-foot long cop cars and A-line mod dresses, it feels like some of these scenes could have been shot in Manhattan last weekend. Except, there's one major difference between this film and the Steven Soto-Bergie and Contagion-like reality we're all living in. Because in this movie, the virus is not fatal. It doesn't even cause a fever or cough.

Instead, the main and only symptom is absolute euphoria. That's it. Everyone, it infects, experiences unbridled happiness and elation. Its victims begin acting kindly to one another, deferential.

In just a couple days, the city is transformed from this to this. The movie is called What's So Bad About Feeling Good. It's a comedy, a rom-com, really. And it is not a good movie, which is why you likely haven't heard of it.

Whether the lead actors are George Bapard from Breakfast at Tiffany's in the 18th, and Mary Tyler Moore from Mary Tyler Moore. When they do a good job, pretty much everyone in the cast is really skilled. But the whole production is out landishly camping and characteristic. There are a few very awkward choices.

Cartoon word balloons emerge from the two cans' mouths when it squawks. So you know what it's thinking. Oh, and there's a Schmaltzy AM radio theme song. Kind of a knockoff of Birkback Rat.

What's So Wrong With That Happy Sensation? That Sense of Utter elation? What's So Bad About Feeling Good? That said, it's also a great movie, and the way that silly B movies can be so satisfying.

Especially the arcane ones that make you feel like a kid watching adults mess up for the first time. I have a greatest hits list of them in my head. Wild in the streets about age of tippies waging a coup against the US government, invasion of the B girls, about a race of murderous women, who are also Bs, both of which you can watch online for free. But since it's so hard to find a copy of this movie, let me just continue taking you through the plot in a kind of abbreviated, radio-ified, cliff-next version for your movie not going in enjoyment.

So, George Bapard and Mary Tyler Moore are Pete and Liz, two characters who are tailor-made for this particular plot, because they don't contain an ounce of euphoria. They're brooding existentialist RE types that have dropped out of society, living in the East Village. They'd be boyfriend and girlfriend if they believed in that sort of thing. For no discernible reason, or maybe because the script wasn't working in the head to fix it quickly, there's a lot of voiceover by these two.

A couple of years ago, I just liked the rest of your conformist. I was an advertising, name on the door, carpet on the floor, an officer, headaches, the whole bed. I wised up that phony world and came down here. So did Liz.

She was on the treadmill, too. I sure was. Up town, South of a club, singing schmaltzy songs to the drunks, biting to the top of the letter. He was in the front of the front and left.

And then, after some time, people were thinking about the concept of the concept of the act and somebody stepped on it. Pills to sleep, pills to stay awake. Honey, I asked myself. For what?

This was the answer. This, being the communal building they live in with a tribe of other unhappy nihilists collecting unemployment. They all look a little like cave people at a gallery opening. One of them spends every hour of every day completely enveloped inside of a sack.

They call her The Sack. Since the problems of life are insoluble, one should draw into complete isolation and life of total non-involvement with other people. And it has to be transmitted by respiration. All my bird has to do is get within breathing as if somebody on pop goes away.

Cue the toucan, who flies into Pete and lizzes window one morning while they're sleeping, lighters for a minute next to Pete's face, and leaves. Pete wakes up, early, and heads up to the roof. Liz climbs up after him, concerned. Come here!

In this cruddy, pilot junk, a flower. Pete, what's wrong? What the matter with you? I don't know, ever since I got up and being strange, kind of.

I took the guy's spider to you, but everything seems different. Hey, listen. What? The traffic?

Kids laughing. You know why they're laughing? But they're not old enough to read the newspaper. You take a look at the front page and then try laughing.

The world's a stinking, hopeless mess. Oh, Pete, you're sick. You know, sometimes a high fever can make you feel this way. I feel great.

That's what I mean. At this point, it's worth noting why someone might want to make a film about the need for euphoria in 1968. The front page Liz is talking about would include headlines like Martin Luther King as slain in Memphis, Robert Kennedy dead, police battle demonstrators in the streets, also Vietcong's storm U.S. Embassy.

We were a nation at war both abroad and with itself. It protests in riots and cities across the country. And a presidential candidate running on a platform of law and order, and also according segregationists. And given all that, you might ask, what is so bad about feeling good?

Which is what the mayor in the movie wanted to know. In one of the first crisis management meetings with his cabinet, they're running down the symptoms for him. Until the virus stops people from brooding. But it's worse than that.

Mr. Mayor, 82%, not only stop brooding. They stop smoking. 93% stop drinking.

What's wrong with that? In terms of dollars and cents, it's disastrous. Our city is facing a drastic loss in income from sales tax. That's ridiculous.

47 people? Drop in the bucket. But it just goes unchecked for a month by mathematical progression. Hands with New York will have the virus.

You know what that means? It means a loss in cigarette and liquor taxes. More than 180 million dollars. 180 million dollars.

Brady, what are you sitting there for? Get that bird. You're sure. Brady is the chief of police.

Capture the bird. They can extract its tissues, come up with a cure, and stave off an economic crisis. Because of course, what's the most important thing a politician thinks of in a potential pandemic? How to save the economy?

Meantime, Pete, much delicious horror, has shaved off his beard, cut his hair, and is talking about trying to get his old advertising job back. Which, quick digression, interests me, because it's the opposite of subversive. Once these nonconformists get infected, instead of dropping out, they drop in. Pete feels so good in fact that once he figures out what's quote unquote wrong with him, he wants to share it with everyone, starting with Liz.

In an age when all of us are actively avoiding each other's bodies, like the plague, because of the plague, it's wild to watch someone actively trying to spread a virus like this. One of the kids, and you'll have it too? I don't want it. Just one little kiss, do you like yourself with a money?

I like it. Oh, get married. A real married. Try to wait.

Chasing her around the way. I'm giving up all this. Eventually, in a completely unbelievable moment that would never have survived the Meantime movement, Pete disguises himself as a nihilist German philosopher and tries to pressure Liz into bed, finally settling for a kiss. He exposes the rest of the gang too.

They all shave, cut their hair, clear either apartments. The sack climbs out of her sack, and the toucan, remarkably, keeps coming back. He comes their pet. They call him Amigo.

At the same time, the mayor is bundled off to an emergency bunker so that he doesn't get sick. The TV reporter button holds him on the way in. Tell me, sir, is there any truth to the rumor that there's been a spread in the epidemic? Epidemic?

Oh, well, I'd, I'd actually call it an epidemic. After all, we only have 180 million, uh, 47 cases. Why, then, sir, are you visiting the fallout shelter? Just a routine inspection last Friday, every month.

But today is Saturday, sir. Well, better late than ever. You took me watching the scene a few times, trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar, and then I was like, oh, yeah. At the height of the protest outside the White House, President Trump was moved for a time to the bunker, something that hasn't happened since 9-11.

I was there for a tiny little short period of time, and there's much more for inspection. Anyway, there aren't only 47 cases for long, and that is largely due to the efforts of Pete and Liz and their friends. They wait to campaign to spread the virus intentionally by subterfuge. Liz and the SAC volunteered to hand out masks to their fellow citizens, breathing on them first.

While the SAC made sure that every mask was specially treated with the virus, I made sure that nobody got away without one. I was in charge of transportation assisted by Conrad. Our specialty was a subway at rush hour. With the biggest crowd we're breathing in, we were there, breathing out.

They breathe on peanuts and feed them to the pigeons. Liz and another friend get jobs as burlesque dancers, which dick is blowing soap bubbles into people's faces. And in just a couple of days, the number of cases explodes to about 2 million, about a quarter of the city's population. Caddies stop in the middle of the street to let pedestrians cross in front of them.

Marriage license applications flood city hall. Pete and Liz is among them. Barbershop lines are staggering. People literally dance in the streets with joy.

It's a disaster. Finally, the President's envoy is helicoptered into New York City to save the day, and frankly to save the movie. It's Dom De Loise. From blazing saddles, space balls, Robin Hood men and tights.

Dom De Loise. I love Dom De Loise. He looms so large in my childhood comedy pantheon. He's atomically funny, even in this very not good film.

His character, Jay Gartnerman Rowe, is way more confident and bossy than he is capable. He snaps his fingers at his aides, uses the word repeat, before repeating himself, like a military general. Anyway, he heads straight to the bunker and tells the mayor and everyone that if the two canons and caught before the tally reaches 3 million cases, he's putting plans CC-27 into effect. The bridges, tunnels, airports will be closed.

Repeat, close. That one single person will get in or out of New York. But Mr. Monroe, do you realize we have 52 conventions coming in next week?

Conventions. Do you realize what would happen if this got to Washington? Republicans agreeing with Democrats and vice versa? This bird could destroy our two-party system.

The very foundation of our great democracy. The tally board is at 2.2 million cases at this point. And this is really the final and maybe most alarming parallel between our story and real life. As Monroe watches the numbers tick upward, he shakes his head and disgust.

Does commie sure us sneaky? Oh, come on. You don't think for one moment that this thing is just an accident, do you? Do you?

Do you? Do you? Not Bird landed on that ship, his position was... Vantage to 82, latitude 24.

24. Not very far from Cuba, eh? Take my word for it. That bird is a hook-nose missile sent here by you know who.

You know who? D-Dilcastro. Look at the facts. When people get the bug, they suddenly love the world.

Now if you know who was getting ready to act up again, what would be better than to give Americans a sense of security? A full sense of security and euphoria. It's the Monroe. You're not suggesting this virus was artificially produced in a laboratory?

Yes. Virus, Purdue. Laboratory, yes. Medical impossibility just couldn't have happened.

That's what they said about the power failure here in New York in 65. And what about the Asian flu? That came straight. Believe you me from Red China.

Of course it's satire. And in that way it's cathartic. But when I got to that scene, it suddenly felt like every other part of the movie had been an escape from what's going on. It's funny that one of the most ludicrous pieces of dialogue is also practically a quote we've heard in the news in 2020.

And not as a joke. There's so much more to the story left, but just to a bridge. So they finally managed to isolate the virus. Amazingly, because it's a movie, they develop a vaccine like that day.

But they still have to test it out. So they spray it in Pete and Liz's nuptial bed in the hotel room with her spending their wedding night. And set up a hidden camera behind the air vent. Everybody in the bunker, the mayor, the Fauci character, J.Gardin Monroe, all of them sit and monitor the couple on a big screen as morning arrives.

Liz wakes up to Pete coming back from an errand. He's still wearing his suit, but he's disheveled. Messy here. Smoking.

Good morning, darling. I didn't hear you. Couldn't sleep. Copy and cigarettes.

The room services call the other one. What are you doing? I'm running. I'm the Pete really shooting something.

Don't bug me. J.Gardin Monroe, watching on the monitor from the bunker, is psyched. Well, he's back to normal. It worked out.

Not her. She doesn't seem to have changed a bit. And I don't know what this says about me, but of all the scenes in the movie, this is the one I remember the most clearly from the first time I saw it. I've actually kind of carried it around all of these years, because it's genuinely so sad.

Liz looks like her heart is breaking in real time. Don't ask me to go back. Remember what we have. Remember it cling to it.

You're kidding yourself. Talk about goodness and kindness. Read the front page and try and find some. I can't go back.

I couldn't live that kind of life ever again. Pete shrugs. Okay. Drink your poison and I'll drink mine.

Don't doubt about him. That was certainly a positive reaction. Positive. There's a happy ending.

Liz decides to leave New York and move home. But at the very last minute, she goes to say goodbye to Amigo, the bird, who's in a zoo now, and Pete's there too. They do that rom-com running thing. And just like that, they're back together.

The city spews the vaccine into the air via factory chimneys and exhaust pipes, and most of New York lives miserably ever after. But some people stay pleasant and uplifted, because major plot twist, 50% of the people who seem to be infected, actually never got the virus in the first place. The joy just rubbed off on them. And Liz was one of those people, which is why she didn't get quote unquote better in the hotel room.

Which is actually the moral of the movie, that happiness is a choice. But watching the movie during this pandemic, I drew another darker conclusion. Somehow that wiggly weird jolt of recognition I got over and over again. What it felt like was, this is how it goes.

When faced with a crisis like this, governments will minimize the severity of the danger. They'll value the wrong things, they'll focus on the economy over people's lives, and blame foreigners in an ugly, xenophobic way. I'm sure there's a version of America where all that might not happen, but we're not living in that America right now. And Pete and Liz weren't living in it either.

If it's possible for human beings to be the wrong thing, we'll figure it out away. We're resourceful like that. Sean Cole is one of producers of our show. Raise your stream, I danced with Mr.

Clean and gave the white knight a helping hand. Act 3, Director Scott. So our show today is about people who have a very particular take on some film. And the person in this next story finds himself in a situation that not many of us are ever going to be in.

His ex-wife decided to revisit the part of their lives as their marriage fell apart and make a movie about it. Or anyway, about a couple whose life seems very, very parallel to theirs in lots of ways. This fictional couple gets married really young, they're trying to make it in a way, the woman gets a big break, she leaves the husband at that point, so I'll happen in real life too. The guy's name is Will Weldon.

And on a baker, explains what happened next. Will heard about the movie from some friends. When his ex-wife started working on it. The very thought of it made him anxious.

His ex, Rebecca, eventually brought it up with him. She said the film was only loosely based on their marriage, which definitely did not help. He tried to put it out of his head. A year and a half later, he was swirling around online.

And I saw on Facebook people posting the trailer for the movie and being like, Hey, go see this movie if it's in a theater near you because it was made by Rebecca Atleman and she's great and so funny. And I saw those popping up. And then I just had this moment where I was like, oh, the moment is here. And that was when I was filled with the most red.

What were those thoughts? For me, I was the thing I was the most afraid of is that the movie would portray me accurately. Will's candid about his flaws. It was kind of a dud as a husband.

Will and Rebecca met when she was 23. He was just 19. They were together for eight years, married for almost five. During that time, he was mostly unemployed.

Though he eventually started doing part-time work, walking dogs and house-sitting. He did some stand-up, but not very often. Mostly he'd spend his time. Like refreshing gocker.

Or I was playing PlayStation or I was literally just sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something. I wasn't really, I had no actual goals and I wasn't striving for anything. That was like, I think the defining quality that like ended our marriage. Because she was the ambitious one.

And disciplined. She wanted to be a TV writer. She'd wake up early to work on strips. And when he watched the trailer, that was in it.

And she is the harder worker and like actually wants things. I got the job. But they hired me as a writer. Woo!

My life is as far as coming out. Look how hot she is. We're gonna be rich. Can I get Nintendo?

Seeing the trailer made it so much worse. Now we realize the film would probably return him to some very painful times he'd rather not really lose. Like the way their marriage ended. To me at the time it really felt like it came out of nowhere.

She got home from work. And she just had like a very strange, like you know that way people will start. Like they'll be like, so. And then she said me down and she was just telling me about how she was unhappy in the relationship.

And she had been for a long time. And then being like, I just, I don't know why this hasn't, why none of this has come up before. I just loved her and I really felt like we should try and give it another chance. And she was like, I don't know.

And at a certain point we were talking and I was like, who are we fooling here? It really seems like you're done. And this is done. And she was like, okay.

We'll move down after just a week. Started crashing on friends' couches. He was devastated, didn't understand why we're wrong. And there were other scenes from their lives that he'd hate to see in a movie.

I'm sure there will be conversations with like her mom or her sister and her friends. I don't know if they were like, come on girl, you gotta dump him. Those will probably be the toughest parts. Cause I imagine those will be things that will be very based in reality.

The film, which is called Paper Year, came out in early 2018. It's got 71% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics comment on how authentic the couples love coming undone feels. For a while, we'll couldn't bring himself to see it.

But a month ago, he suggested we watch it together. And I was into the idea. I'm going through a divorce right now. It's a very strange time of life.

I go on a lot of long walks. I stopped watching television for a year so I wouldn't avoid my feelings. All I read are self-help books. And when I go to parties, I corner divorce people and badger them for details about what this was like for them and how they got through it.

Divorces like my own personal disaster porn. So watching a movie about a divorce with the person who it happened to, it's all I want to do. And we'll thought it would make it easier for him to see it for the first time. Like, this is a better way to view it with other people and just like, it's three in the morning.

I'm alone. The lights are off. I've gotten up in secret. And I'm like, watching it in the middle of the night so I can just deny having ever seen it if I want to.

I met Wilbur. He was staying. He's dog sitting at a sleek Los Angeles home overlooking a canyon. Very throw pillows and openly out.

Pomegranate and lemon trees framing your view of the valley. All really expensive. Wil is on high alert. Anytime I move anything, he's careful to put it back.

Exactly where it had been. Okay. Are we ready? Sure.

That was such a, I'm in a flop. The movie opens with a couple, Dan and Franny, getting married in a courthouse. Which Wilbur Beck also did. Dan lifts Franny and carries her out.

The couple starts out really in love, having lots of sex, laughing, kissing in bed. Is your ass on? Yeah. Yeah.