A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirty — BRAVEHEART with Alexandra Petri

Edward the Longshanks as embodied by the inimitable Patrick the McGoohan.

It's primae noctis for your ears because we can put it off no longer: The quintuple-Academy Award-winning a-historical epic Braveheart is the most widely seen and, your hosts agree, best latter-day expression of undiluted Patrick McGooted. The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri returns to discuss her journalist doppelganger, the New York Times' Alexandra Petri, and to share with Glen the virgin Braveheart experience. Freeeeeeeeeeeedommmmmmm!

Given the volume of Star Wars talk that seems to follow (the Post's) Petri around, it's a wonder we forgot to mention that Braveheart was produced by Alan "Laddie" Ladd, Jr., who 20 years earlier had been the guy preventing the board of 20th Century Fox from firing George Lucas off of the weird, expensive kiddie movie he was making and/or shutting the production down. 

Braveheart

Written by Randall Wallace

Directed by Mel Gibson

Released May 24, 1995

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode twenty-four — SCANNERS

Democracy dies in dorkiness this week as the brilliant Washington Post columnist, essayist, playwright and retired (?) Emo Sith Lord Alexandra Petri joins us to solve the riddle of David Cronenberg's 1981 swollen-headed cult classic Scanners, featuring 24 minutes of a possibly first-billed, maybe third-billed, but unequivocally box-named-on-the poster Patty McG as a, um, North American mad scientist named... Dr. Ruth. Glen is determined to spark an international incident by dismissing Steven Lack, the picture's aptly named lead player, as "Canadian hot" while assessing future Lion in Winter star Michael Ironside as "Philadelphia hot."

It's a ripe program, this one. Ripe indeed.

The Hateful Eighth: An Octoroon and To Tell My Story: A Hamlet Fanfic, reviewed.

Erika Rose and Kathryn Tkel in An Octoroon (Woolly Mammoth).

My review of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company remount of An Octoroon, the best show I saw in 2016, is here. I should've credited Gwydion Suilebhan (a Woolly staffer, though I've known him longer than he's been on payroll there) for the observation in paragraph four about police body cameras; I couldn't swear I would've thought of that if he hadn't mentioned it to me when we were chatting after the show. He's a playwright and a very smart guy, so if you're going to pilfer ideas, he's a good victim. Also, the 2016 cast isn't quite "fully intact" like I said in paragraph three; Felicia Curry is new to the remount.

I also reviewed To Tell My Story: A Hamlet Fanfic, the latest literary comedy from Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri.

FURTHER READING: My 2013 profile of An Octoroon playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.