APRIL 2020: Baby Mama + Knives Out
In these uncertain times, you can count on us to go long. Same deal as last month, if you’e reading this in gmail, at the very bottom you’ll see a note that says “[Message clipped] View entire message” and by clicking that link you’ll be able to see the whole thing, and you can also always access the newsletter on the Pop Culture Pen Pals Substack website by clicking on the title. Thanks for reading!
Dear Kelsey,
Greetings from day 46 of the Evans quarantine here in Waco! I left March feeling….a little too confident in my ability to quarantine, because in April I have fallen flat on my face. As I’m sure many of us are, by this point I’m starting to feel a little loopy with so little time out of the 2-mile radius around my apartment. I try to tamper the stir-crazies by going for daily walks, but even that can’t seem to keep me tethered to a sense of normalcy. The coming weeks will likely involve many difficult decisions made by our local and state leaders about whether or not the shelter-in-place mandates will continue or if we will attempt a transition back to some type of normal, and I for one do not envy the leaders making these incredibly difficult decisions.
For April we chose things we both unequivocally love: Baby Mama and Knives Out. As self-disclosure I feel obligated to preface all thoughts on both movies by saying that Knives Out is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time, so this letter will mostly contain gushing. You’ve been forewarned.
gif: Jamie Lee Curtis in Knives Out sitting in a chair in a pink suit and saying “I found it delightful”
The first time I saw Baby Mama was 2.5 years ago when I was living alone in Waco, starting grad school, and doing a semester of long-distance with Logan shortly before we got married. I knew it was the first movie Tina Fey and Amy Poehler starred in together as actors, not merely writing together, and I was curious. I’ve read Tina’s book Bossypants and Amy’s Yes Please, and I wanted to see them together in action. So imagine my shock when GREG KINNEAR showed up on screen! (My phone autocorrects GREG KINNEAR’s name into all caps every time I text Kelsey about him [yes, that has been a recurring conversation], and I thought it was so funny that I’ve decided to keep doing it on my laptop ironically. Because that’s the only way I ever say his full name! Loudly and with the enthusiasm of all caps!)
image: Greg Kinnear in Baby Mama wearing a smoothie store polo
(I would like to lodge a FORMAL COMPLAINT against the horrifying lack of Greg Kinnear gifs. All I could find from Baby Mama was this photo.)
Baby Mama is chaotic good—kind of all over the place, but a very sweet movie about infertility and class stratification and hot men who make smoothies. The most notable thing about this movie is the incredibly strong supporting cast that got pulled together: Steve Martin, Dax Shepherd, Sigourney Weaver, and of course, GREG KINNEAR.
gif: Greg Kinnear in Baby Mama saying, “I came here for you”
What is Greg Kinnear’s secret? Why do we adore him so much? He is handsome, yes, but there’s another quality Greg Kinnear possesses, some kind of indescribable affability, the sense that what you see is what you get, a tenderness that makes him tremendous in roles both as a love interest and as a father figure, often both at the same time. Greg Kinnear is absolutely good in bed and also will make you breakfast the next morning. Greg Kinnear doesn’t walk around announcing that he’s a “nice guy” or a “feminist”, he just acts like it and lets you decide for yourself. It’s a magical quality, to make acting look so effortless.
gif: Greg Kinnear shrugging
I digress. Baby Mama is about infertility, but it’s also about class. Tina Fey’s character is an upper-middle class single woman who gave up pursuing romantic relationships or becoming a parent during her younger years in favor of climbing the corporate ladder. In exchange, Amy Poehler’s character is young, jobless, self-proclaimed “white trash” who participates in a (probably highly exploitative) surrogacy program in order to make money. As a sociologist, I always find stories about paid surrogacy distracting because most literature agrees that paid surrogacy is fundamentally exploitative in nature (especially international surrogacy). The movie pretty much glosses over all of that in favor of a more lighthearted plot about Poehler not actually getting pregnant, but then getting pregnant from her boyfriend (Dax Shepherd) and pretending the baby is Fey’s. Naturally, shenanigans ensue.
gif: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama; Fey sitting on the ground, Poehler bouncing on an exercise ball and throwing up peace fingers
It’s a fun watch, but not a deep watch. I think it could have been both, but it sort of avoided all the potential deep themes. It is what it is. But they brought us more GREG KINNEAR, and for that I am grateful.
gif: Amy Poehler and Tina Fey in Baby Mama walking in slow motion in club outfits
I saved Knives Out for last, because I knew I was going to go OFF about how much I love this movie, and frankly I’m overwhelmed. Where to even begin about this movie?
gif: Chris Evans in Knives Out mouthing “Wow” and raising his eyebrows
I have always loved mysteries. Of my top three favorite books from my childhood, two of them are mysteries. The most popular of the two, The Westing Game, is about a man who dies and leaves his inheritance to whoever can win his game. A group of 10-ish (I don’t remember, don’t ask) people are named in his will to play the game.
So you can imagine why Knives Out would be exactly my cup of tea. A man dies, under mysterious circumstances. At first, the audience has no idea who murdered him. As we come to learn Marta’s (played by Ana de Armas, who was absolutely incredible) version of the evening’s events, the audience is lead to believe that he was NOT actually murdered; it was simply a tragic mistake that lead to his death as a coverup. And THEN, AFTER WE THINK THE WHOLE THING IS OVER, we learn after it all that he WAS, in fact, murdered!!!
I was GRINNING the entire movie. After 10 minutes I knew this was going to be one of my favorites. The cast is practically flawless: Ana de Armas’ debut was astounding, and to be surrounded by Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, and CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER? *Chef kiss* Honestly I could write essays about each of these actors, their inspirational performances in this movie, and how this movie was a step outside of their usual roles. Instead, I’m going to leave you some incredible gifs of each one, and then I’m going to talk about Rian Johnson and the portrayal of the “quintessential white liberal” that Johnson does so masterfully in this movie.
gif: camera going past knife chair to focus on Daniel Craig in Knives Out turning around
gif: Chris Evans in Knives Out smirking in a shadowy chair
gif: Jamie Lee Curtis in Knives Out wearing a pink suit and shrugging
gif: Toni Collette in Knives Out wearing white, sitting in a wingback chair, and looking away
gif: Christopher Plummer in Knives Out scribbling in a journal, then closing it, while a knife is stuck in the table in front of him
I had never heard of Rian Johnson before this movie. I was not yet quite on the movie scene in 2017 when Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released, and I remember the controversy, but I felt relatively neutral about the movie itself. I thought accusations that it was the worst Star Wars movie ever made, etc etc, were in bad faith and unfounded, given just how horrible the pre-trilogy was. That only solidified after Knives Out and I saw with my own eyes what Rian Johnson can do. Parodying wealthy white liberals in a mystery-comedy like this requires a delicate touch: too heavy-handed and the movie would feel like a sermon, too light and the audience might miss the self-aware irony. The carefulness required to bring all the pieces together to make it work is what makes this movie so well-done. (Not to mention that his Twitter account is incredibly funny and kind.) Can’t wait to be a Rian Johnson fan forever.
gif: Rian Johnson holding up a “knife” and pretending to stab a man on a cellphone
If you ever get murdered, I will be there faster than you can say “Benoit Blanc” to solve the crime.
Love,
Hannah
Dear Hannah,
Good day to you from day 37 of my Duolingo streak, which is a little shorter than I’ve been in quarantine for, but I’m not keeping specific track. To be honest, my feelings about quarantine are mostly….fine? Like there are specific places and people I miss, but the experience itself of staying inside so far feels mostly fine, except, of course, for the recurring panicked moments of certainty that I have been and am currently wasting large swaths of my youth, so there’s that. Also, I would really like to be kissing, but then that’s not really much of a change from the before-times, is it? (wait maybe I’m not actually doing that fine? hm.)
gif: Tina Fey and Greg Kinnear kissing on a bench in Baby Mama
(please)
Anyways, I’m delighted as always to have the beacon of this project with you, and to have such frequent outlets for my main skill in life, which is live-texting, which is my transition into our first topic...Baby Mama!
gif: Amy Poehler in Baby Mama pouring something into a bowl and saying on the phone: “This looks really weird and healthy. I don’t like it.”
(me trying to get myself to eat something nutritious in addition to my quarantine snacks)
I must begin this segment by saying that your description of Greg Kinnear’s appeal is so perfect that it should accompany a full-size portrait of him in the Louvre. I may or may not have spent last night creating a menagerie of “Greg Kinnear in Baby Mama” gifs, which can be accessed here.
gif: Greg Kinnear in Baby Mama saying “Is that a bad idea?”
As my secondary point, I agree that the movie avoids the depth it could have had. As you’ve mentioned, it was made in a very specific time in both Fey and Poehler’s careers, and as we both mentioned many times while [virtually] watching this movie together, a very specific time in what some might refer to as fashion.
gif: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler walking together in Baby Mama as Poehler says, “He waited a whole month before he touched my boobs.”
It also came out 5 months before the 2008 stock market crash, which is another extremely specific moment in time. I wasn’t old enough at the time (or plugged in enough to pop culture) to notice any sort of shift in movie or TV content or themes post September 2008, but from March 2020 it’s a little terrifying to watch these fictional people and know their lives are very likely to completely fall apart six months after the movie’s events. (Relatedly, I recently rewatched High School Musical 2, which came out in 2007, and two margaritas in got very emotional about these kids’ rapidly dwindling career options.)
There’s an assumption of upward mobility in the movie, a fresh-faced optimism and reliance on the “right” choices yielding the “right” outcomes. Of course, this hasn’t been the case for many people even before the 2008 crash, and the movie is generally uninterested in unpacking or even acknowledging how the whiteness of the two leads contributes to these assumptions. Even so, it’s fascinating to me to think about this movie existing on a precipice right before a time shift when suddenly everyone had to work within new parameters of reality and all media thereafter would need to acknowledge those parameters. It happened after 9/11 (no more simple running through an airport to meet someone at a gate scenes, for one thing), it happened after the 2016 presidential election, it’s happening right now as we all experience a global pandemic.
gif: Tina Fey in a flowery blouse saying, “Well…We are going to a nightclub.”
What I wish about the movie (which I really love and enjoy!) is that it had pushed back a little more on those optimistic assumptions of the measure of control we hold over our lives. It starts from a strong place — the movie begins with Tina Fey’s character close to panicked, having lived most of her life up to now assuming that if she focused on her career the rest (marriage, kids) would fall into place in a reasonable (to her) timeline. Throughout the movie Amy Poehler’s character calls out and helps her let go of some of her need for control in the details, but the movie never really confronts or finds a way through her fear about the uncertainty and unpredictability life often presents.
At the end of the movie she has exactly what she wanted at the beginning: a baby conceived “naturally” with a biological father she’s in a committed relationship with. And that’s not a bad thing! I think there’s also value in the fact that Fey and Poehler’s characters learn that they each (respectively) need to be a little less exacting and controlling, or a little more focused and responsible, for their friendship (and relationships with others) to flourish. I just wish the movie had engaged a little more thoroughly with the fear (and reality) that sometimes “self-improvement” is not enough for life to turn out the way you wanted.
gif: Greg Kinnear smiling in a black polo in front of a smoothie menu
(this gif however….this gif turned out exactly how I wanted)
Pivoting now to something that turned out exactly how I personally wanted it and even better...Knives Out!
gif: Chris Evans in Knives Out leaning forward in a white sweater and saying “Tell me what happened to my grandfather.”
I’d been tracking this movie long before its release, because I have a dark habit of checking Chris Evans’ IMDb page regularly “just to see what he’s up to.” As more and more actors were announced I grew more and more excited and also confused. A whodunnit??? Also starring Lakeith Stanfield??? And Daniel Craig??????? And TONI COLLETTE??? And Don Johnson?? And MOTHERFUCKING JAMIE LEE CURTIS???? (Which!!! I remembered just now we actually referred to in one of our earliest letters!!!!) (Also let’s give it up for Rian Johnson and his casting team they really know how to stack a cast with hotties, including Christopher Plummer, whose portrayal of Captain Von Trapp I am honestly a little nervous to revisit.) I was also excited and confused to see that Johnson was writing and directing, because outside of The Last Jedi I wasn’t really familiar with his work or how delightful a person he is. (As is his wife, Karina Longworth, the historian and writer who hosts the excellent You Must Remember This podcast.)
gif: Toni Collette in Knives Out blowing a kiss in a stairway
What I didn’t know then, and what I really love about him now, is how palpably he loves and how thoroughly he understands every genre he works in. So far every feature he’s made, from his first, Brick, which is a really interesting high school noir (starring a tiny baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt!!) to sci-fi-fantasy epic The Last Jedi, to this whodunnit (and sci-fi Looper and con movie The Brothers Bloom, both of which I haven’t seen yet), draws out and highlights the elements of the genre that work well and meaningfully critiques (and gently pokes fun at) the problems. Knives Out works so well because it’s not a parody of a whodunnit, it’s a genuine whodunnit, that as you’ve written splendidly about, critiques the wealth and privilege whodunnits often take for granted.
gif: Daniel Craig in Knives Out rolling up his sleeves in front of a knife chair
Similarly, I adored The Last Jedi, not just for its humor or stylistic genius (I can’t get over the moment in the theater when the sound went perfectly quiet right before the ships collided and I simply don’t intend to!!) but for the way it emphasized the ultimate emptiness of the “chosen one” narrative and the greater power that exists in a Force that’s accessible not by birthright or even skill but by openness and connection. (Of course J.J. Abrams, beneficiary and perpetuator of Hollywood nepotism, went and undid all of that but WHATEVER I’M NOT BITTER OR ANYTHING.)
gif: Toni Collette in Knives Out saying “You’re famous!”
All the serious stuff aside, this movie is so much FUN!! Though I wish it had been nominated (and won) more awards last year, I really hope the attention it got signals a pivot away from the assumption of “awards/critical recognition” = overwhelmingly heavy.
Also, and I think I should get an award for waiting this long to return to it, but……….CHRIS EVANS IN SWEATER!!!!!!!!!!!!
gif: Chris Evans in Knives Out blinking with his hand on his face in a white sweater
It affected me……….greatly on first viewing, on rewatch, and yet today. I’m quite happy that Chris Evans is done with Marvel and now has time for more fun/interesting stuff. May his beard flourish as well as his swears.
gif: Chris Evans in Knives Out pointing and saying “Eat shit.”
Wishing you and your swears the best as well,
Kelsey
p.s. and one more Greg Kinnear gif for the road!!
