You Must Remember This

By Karina Longworth

TV & Film

What's You Must Remember This about?

You Must Remember This is a storytelling podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. It’s the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth (founder of Cinematical.com, former film critic for LA Weekly), who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode. It is a heavily-researched work of creative nonfiction: navigating through conflicting reports, mythology, and institutionalized spin, Karina tries to sort out what really happened behind the films, stars and scandals of the 20th century.

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1989: sex, lies and videota...

06.21.2022

American independent film is launched into the mainstream by Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, starring James Spader as an impotent man who gets off on filming women talking about sex. Videotape also plays a role in a Spader film ...

You Must Remember This episodes:

06.21.2022 1989: sex, lies and videotape: Rob Lowe and James Spader (Erotic 80s Part 12) American independent film is launched into the mainstream by Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, starring James Spader as an impotent man who gets off on filming women talking about sex. Videotape also plays a role in a Spader film ...
06.14.2022 1988: Kevin Costner, Sean Young, No Way Out & Bull Durham (Erotic 80s Part 11) The 1988 baseball blockbuster Bull Durham confirms Kevin Costner as the ultimate squeaky-clean, all-American heartthrob, building on a sexual persona sparked the year before with the neonoir No Way Out. Today we’ll talk about why Costner was the quintessential safe ...
06.07.2022 1987: Fatal Attraction and Dirty Dancing (Erotic 80s Part 10) The erotic thriller goes commercially mainstream with Fatal Attraction, a film which starts a national conversation about whether or not women can “have it all” – “it all” meaning both careers and marriage. Is Fatal Attraction an indictment of working ...
05.31.2022 1986: 9 ½ Weeks, Mickey Rourke & Zalman King (Erotic 80s Part 9) Billed as the hottest Hollywood film since Last Tango, 9 ½ Weeks was considered to have missed the mark by everyone who made it – including director Adrian Lyne, stars Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, producer/writer Zalman King and his ...
05.24.2022 1985: Fear Sex. Jagged Edge & AIDS (Erotic 80s Part 8) Just as the AIDS-related death of Rock Hudson was finally forcing straight people – and Hollywood – to acknowledge that epidemic, a film was released that transposed the new climate of sexual fear into a murder mystery. The sleeper hit ...
05.17.2022 1984: "Vioporn," Body Double and Crimes of Passion (Erotic 80s Part 7) In a time of bombastic blockbusters (and Reagan’s re-election), two auteurs defy the norms by releases violent films about sexual obsession, sparking a controversial mini-trend which one critic dubs “Vioporn.” Kathleen Turner, then also starring in a family-friendly blockbuster, plays ...
05.10.2022 1983: MTV Aesthetics, Flashdance and Risky Business (Erotic 80s Part 6) While the music video was still in its infancy as a cultural phenomenon, two films were released that were accused of aping the “MTV aesthetic”: Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance, and Risky Business, which turned Tom Cruise into a major star. Today ...
05.03.2022 1982: Teen Sexploitation, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's and The Blue Lagoon (Erotic 80s Part 5) 1982 saw the release of three hit high school-set comedies about sex: Porky’s, The Last American Virgin and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The only one to survive as a classic, Fast Times turned Phoebe Cates – who also appeared ...
04.26.2022 1981: Neonoir, Body Heat and Postman Always Rings Twice (Erotic 80s Part 4) The New Hollywood directors of the late 1960s and 70s were the first generation of Hollywood filmmakers to grow up studying Hollywood movies as art. In 1981-1982, a number of those directors made actual or virtual remakes of classic Hollywood ...
04.19.2022 1980: Richard Gere and American Gigolo (Erotic 80s Part 3) One of the most aesthetically influential movies of the ‘80s, Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo sets a template for much of what we’re going to discuss this season: it’s about sex as a conduit for wealth, masks and double lives, and ...
04.12.2022 1979: Bo Derek and 10 (Erotic 80s Part 2) The sleeper hit of late 1979 was Blake Edwards’s sex farce 10, a comedic vivisection of a male midlife crisis, which turned 23 year-old California girl Bo Derek into a controversial cultural phenomenon. Derek’s early fame was framed in the ...
04.05.2022 Porno Chic and The Brief Heyday of X Ratings (Erotic 80s Part 1) In 1968, the Production Code gave way to the ratings system, and the brief legitimacy of the X-rated movie. Today we’ll focus on two massive, X-rated hits released within a year of one another in 1972-1973: Deep Throat, the first ...
12.21.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 9: Is That All There Is? Desperate to be seen as cool and not a relic of an earlier age in 70s America, Sammy gets into porn and drugs. A Rat Pack reunion gives him renewed purpose, but causes Dean to alienate himself further. As their ...
12.14.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 8: Generation Gap In the mid-1960s, 47 year-old Dean Martin proves he's still got it by knocking the Beatles off the top of the pop charts, and by launching his long-running TV show, which brought a version of his nightclub act into America’s ...
12.07.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 7: Yes I Can Released in 1965, Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography became an instant classic, one of the most dynamic celebrity memoirs ever published and a testament to Davis’s barrier-breaking success as a black man in America. But the story behind the book, which ...
11.30.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 6: The Rat Pack In the early 40s, both Dean and Sammy idolized Frank Sinatra. 20 years later, they became Sinatra’s cohorts in the Rat Pack, and, through Vegas gigs and increasingly disposable movies, the trio set a standard for grown men behaving badly ...
11.23.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 5: A Serious Man After the breakup of Martin and Lewis, Dino has to figure out how to stand on his own as a solo act. He ends up developing an on-stage persona as a happy drunk, while at the same time, developing a ...
11.16.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 4: Mr. Wonderful Sammy tests the power of his new celebrity, on Broadway and in Hollywood, where he stars in the most controversial movie musical with an all-Black cast of all time -- a movie which is still being suppressed today. To learn ...
11.09.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 3: Nothing But a Dollar Sign In the first half of the 1950s, Martin and Lewis mint money as movie stars--and find unique ways to make their access to gangsters payoff--but stardom tears them apart. During this period, Sammy tries to prove himself to a Hollywood ...
11.02.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 2: Martin and Lewis, Sammy and Mickey and Frank Dean Martin meets and begins collaborating with Jerry Lewis. Martin and Lewis — an Italian and a Jew — become the most successful nightclub act in the country, and transition to Hollywood. Meanwhile, Sammy Davis Jr, determined to get the ...
10.26.2021 Sammy and Dino Episode 1: The Hustle Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin would become icons for how immigrants and people of color could access the American Dream in the 20th Century. Both grew up in marginalized communities where they learned an ethos of success based on ...
08.17.2021 Introducing Love is a Crime When Hollywood mogul Walter Wanger (Jon Hamm) shot an agent he suspected was having an affair with his actress wife, Joan Bennett (Zooey Deschanel) — one of the key femme fatales of 1940s film noir — Bennett was the one ...
06.29.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (The Queens Are Dead, Episode 9) The Hollywood studio system begins to crumble, and Louella and Hedda decline and fall, too. But just as a new generation of filmmakers rises from the ashes and reinvents the movie business, so too does gossip find new life in ...
06.22.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (Interracial Panic and Confidential, Episode 8) Appalled by rock n’ roll and its racial and sexual implications, Hedda and Louella find themselves in further danger of obsolescence when the gossip game is turned upside down by CONFIDENTIAL Magazine. To learn more about listener data and our ...
06.17.2021 Presenting: No Place Like Home Do you remember the first time you watched The Wizard of Oz? Those famous red ruby slippers are some of the most iconic objects in Hollywood history that still bring back nostalgic memories every time they’re seen. They became a ...
06.15.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (Sex and Shame in the 1950s, Episode 7) The 1950s were a decade of massive contradictions in terms of national and cultural attitudes towards sex. As Louella Parsons struggled to keep up with these rapid changes -- and to compete with her bolder, bitchier rival Hedda Hopper -- ...
06.08.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (Witch Hunt, Episode 6) During an era in which Hollywood and Washington are shakily aligned in the witch hunting of actual and reputed socialists, Louella struggles to maintain her position as cheerleader for the status quo, while Hedda grabs a torch and tries to ...
06.01.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (The Queer, Female Film Producer You’ve Never Heard Of, Episode 5) Louella’s daughter, Harriet Parsons, became a groundbreaking female film producer at a moment in history in which virtually all mainstream filmmakers were male. She was also a lesbian, at a time when being openly gay was unacceptable in Hollywood -- ...
05.25.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (War! Episode 4) World War II begins to reveal the gulf between Louella’s conservative but essentially business-minded politics, and Hedda Hopper’s virulent right-wing fervor. These differences — and the glee with which Hopper would destroy lives to shore up political power and further ...
05.18.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (The Feud, Episode 3) In 1938, washed-up actress Hedda Hopper is installed as a movie gossip columnist with the express purpose of puncturing the success of Louella and Hearst. But Hedda quickly establishes a voice of her own, revolutionary for its insistence on making ...
05.11.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper (The First Lady, Episode 2) In 1923, Louella Parsons signed a contract with William Randolph Hearst for nationwide syndication of the first major Hollywood gossip column. Parsons quickly built a brand based on protecting (and whitewashing) Hollywood’s interests, as well as Hearst’s, relentlessly promoting — ...
05.04.2021 Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper (Small Town Girl, Episode 1) Both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper worked for papers created by charismatic barons whose publications were nakedly corrupt, totally biased -- and absolutely mainstream. Once we get a feel for this media climate, we’ll trace Louella’s early years of struggle ...
10.19.2020 "Competition is idiots." Sneak Preview of David Fincher's MANK You Must Remember This presents an exclusive first listen of the audio trailer for Mank, a David Fincher film about the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, coming to Netflix on December 4. To learn more about listener data and our privacy ...
07.28.2020 How Did It End? (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 10) Polly Platt’s unfinished memoir ends abruptly in 1995. What were the remaining 16 years of her life like? Using interviews with those who knew her, we’ll explore how her career in Hollywood came to an end, and the tragic circumstances ...
07.21.2020 Bottle Rocket, I'll Do Anything and Polly Platt in '90s Hollywood (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 9) Polly Platt's collaboration with James L. Brooks hits choppy waters with I’ll Do Anything, which at one point was a musical with songs by Prince, but became one of the most notoriously misbegotten productions of the 1990s. Polly recaptures her ...
07.14.2020 Women of the 80’s (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 8) In the mid-to-late 80s, Polly Platt worked on a number of films that defined and reflected that decade’s ideas about female power. With an Oscar nomination under her belt, Polly starts trying in earnest to direct. She ends her career ...
07.07.2020 Terms of Endearment (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 7) Polly’s third marriage falls apart, and she enters more than one destructive affair. During these tumultuous times, Polly establishes a new collaboration with a male writer-director, James L. Brooks, and together the two turn another Larry McMurtry novel into a ...
06.30.2020 Pretty Baby and a Playmate Murder (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 6) In an attempt to save her family, Polly transitions to screenwriting and producing, basing the prostitution drama Pretty Baby, starring a pre-teen Brooke Shields, on her own daughter. Polly finds herself increasingly overcome by alcoholism, while dealing with Shields’s own ...
06.23.2020 A Star is Born (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 5) When Polly begins her own on-set affair, the double standard of what men can get away with in Hollywood versus what was expected for women would push her to a breaking point. With collaborating with her ex-husband no longer an ...
06.16.2020 Orson Welles, What’s Up Doc, Paper Moon (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 4) In the aftermath of The Last Picture Show — and the collapse of her second marriage — Polly finds an unlikely ally, and a new job, in Orson Welles. Anxious to build on her career momentum (and become the first ...
06.09.2020 Last Picture Show Love Triangle (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 3) At Polly’s urging, Peter decides to direct an adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel The Last Picture Show. Though credited only as the film’s “designer,” Polly is involved in every creative decision, including casting — and it’s with his pregnant-again wife’s ...
06.03.2020 Peter Bogdanovich and the Woman Behind the Auteur (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 2) After the death of her first husband and creative partner, Polly moves to New York, where she swiftly meets and falls in love with Peter Bogdanovich. Together Polly and Peter build a life around the obsessive consumption of Hollywood movies, ...
05.26.2020 “It wasn’t sexism, then” (Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 1) We’ll begin with a look at how Polly Platt’s legacy was appraised when she died in 2011. Then we’ll go back in time to tell Polly’s story from the start, beginning with her Revolutionary Road-esque childhood in Europe and America ...
05.19.2020 Sneak Peek: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman, Episode 1 Excited for the new season? We can hardly wait to share the untold story of Polly Platt, the secret weapon behind some of the most highly acclaimed films of the 1970s, '80s and '90s. This audio journey will feature interviews ...
05.05.2020 Season Trailer: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman Polly Platt -- producer, writer and Oscar-nominated production designer -- lived an epic Hollywood life. And yet, if you know Platt’s name today, it’s probably because in 1970 her husband and creative collaborator Peter Bogdanovich had an affair with Cybill ...
03.10.2020 159: Vanessa Williams, Whitney Houston and Hollywood’s Misogynoir Problem (Make Me Over, Episode 8) In 1983, Vanessa Williams became the first black woman to win Miss America. In 1984, a few weeks from the end of her reign, she was forced to step down when she found out Penthouse was going to publish unauthorized ...
03.03.2020 158: The Hemingway Curse? Mariel and Margaux (Make Me Over, Episode 7) A close look at the parallel lives of Margaux and Mariel Hemingway, sisters born with a world-famous last name that stood for both genius and self-destruction. Both rose to fame in the 1970s, Margaux as a supermodel and Mariel as ...
02.25.2020 157: Cass Elliot, Carnie Wilson and Fat-Shaming in Rock and Pop (Make Me Over, Episode 6) Cass Elliot didn’t die eating a ham sandwich. But the lasting power of that urban legend speaks to a far darker story. Elliot possessed one of the most influential voices of the 1960s. However, while her big break with The ...
02.18.2020 156: Esther Williams and the Birth of Waterproof Makeup (Make Me Over, Episode 5) Esther Williams single-handedly helped popularize the pastime of swimming — first as the star swimmer of the San Francisco production of Billy Rose's Aquacade, and then as the star of Hollywood films like Bathing Beauties and Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams’s ...
02.11.2020 155: Passing for White: Merle Oberon (Make Me Over, Episode 4) In 1935, Merle Oberon became the first biracial actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, an incredible achievement in then-segregated Hollywood -- except that nobody in Hollywood knew Oberon was biracial. Born in Bombay into abject poverty in ...

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