Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Black Widow" and What's Making Us Happy

Scarlet Johansson, David Harbor, and Florence Pugh take a walk in the woods. (Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios)

Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon and I have been on Pop Culture Happy Hour together on many occasions, but this is the first time since we started our own podcast. With host Linda Holmes and my fellow guest Vincent Schilling, we talked through our mixed responses to Black Widow, the Marvel movie that we all agree should’ve come out no later than in 2017, and which I wish had been more of a spy story than yet another Big Fight in the Sky. The casting of the the fabricated Russian spy “family” — Scarlet Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz — made the film worthwhile for me, albeit frustrating.

Omitted from our conversation was my mention of this Guardian profile of Black Widow director Cate Shortland, wherein she describes removing a cheesecake shot of Johansson from the film after a test audience objected to it. I brought it up because the piece describes the film as pointedly not objectifying its star the way Iron Man 2 and other Marvel entries have, when some members of the audience I saw the film with felt strongly that the movie had done that.

My own incomplete thoughts on the subject are that it’s good that a woman directed this movie, that more films at every budget level but especially massive investments like Black Widow should be directed by woman, and that I’m not sure it’s possible to film a movie star without objectifying them. Our ability to regard them as objects as well as people may well be the mysterious quality that makes them stars. Johnasson has demonstrated herself on many occasions to be a good actor, too, but that’s a different skill.

NPR has begun to adapt the What’s Making Me Happy segment of these Friday episodes into a text blog post. Already I’m 11 chapters into The Devil’s Candy, the 1991 Julie Salamon book Linda has recommended about how Brian De Palma’s 1990 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities went so wrong.

I’ve also made good on my promise to dive into The Criterion Channel’s July assortment of neo-noirs. I watched Arthur Penn’s Night Moves the other night and was shocked to realize near the end that the unrecognizable girl Gene Hackman’s 40-year-old football star-turned-private dick is enlisted to find was played by Melanie Griffith, who 15 years later would play a prominent role in The Bonfire of the Vanities.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode nineteen — Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling (the band, the filmmakers, the supertalented PRISONER superfans)

I have always thought The Prisoner is a show with a particular appeal to creative people, and I love to be proven right. 

Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling is a Prisoner-inspired punk duo comprised of filmmakers/musicians/writers/creators/etc. Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein. When we saw their video for "Arrival" — a meticulous, two-years-in-the making recreation of The Prisoner's opening title sequence — we knew we had to meet them. From this wildly ambitious and improbably successful short film, they graduated to making features, as they tell us in a conversation that reaches far beyond The Prisoner to address the joys and the confines of fandom.

Plus, I learned a new word.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode eighteen — Once Upon a Time

Shot in December 1966 under the title "Degree Absolute" and not broadcast until more than a year later when it became The Prisoner's penultimate — and, we agree, ultimate — episode, "Once Upon a Time" is the real thing. A bottle episode that locks GOAT Number Two Leo McKern and Number Six in the black-box "Embryo Room" and compels them to reenact the Seven Ages of Man that that glover's son from Stratford wrote about, shooting it almost killed McKern. And talking about it almost killed us! Our private, personal, by-hand, punchcard-driven discursive dissection of this epistemological epic is more tangent-tolerant than ever! Get comfortable, because Second Childishness & Mere Oblivion await!

"Once Upon a Time"

Written and directed by Patrick McGoohan 

Original airdate January 25, 1968

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode seventeen — ICE STATION ZEBRA

What If Jimmy Page played a session with Stillwater? Our podcastin' inspiration Matt Gourley joins us for a Cinerama epic of an episode that we didn't plan to release on Father's Day week, but the cookie just happened to crumble serendipitously. Because our subject is a genuine, certified, no-foolin’ Dad Movie, Ice Station Zebra, based on The Guns of Navarone author Alistair MacLean's novel Ice Station Zebra.

The moderately thrilling Cold War thriller that Patty McG cheated on The Prisoner with is an all-star affair featuring Rock “The Dwayne” Hudson, Ernest “Resistance is Futile” Borgnine, Jim “One Night in Miami” Brown and the dirty half-dozen himself, Patrick McGoohan! And this episode is, like Roger Ebert’s 1969 review of Ice Station Zebra, a one-star affair... the star being Mr. Gourley, who nails it like Harrison Ford in Witness when he hails Ice Station Zebra as “a Saturday lawnmow.”

Ice Station Zebra

Directed by John Sturges

Screenplay by Douglas Heyes

Screen Story by Harry Julian Fink

From the novel by Alistair MacLean

Released October 23, 1968

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode sixteen — The Girl Who Was Death

Number Six must elude the tender embrace of a lady who probably uses pseudonyms at least as often as he does in a late-in-the-run-but-lavish filler episode that sends up the spy genre circa ’67 & burns plenty of Sir Lew Grade’s money. (He refused to finance a floated 90-minute version.)

Justine Lord and Kenneth Griffiths are your magnificent guest stars, and Patty McG appears to be having a grand old time in the relatively few scenes where he's onscreen. Apparently he was called back to Los Angeles for a few more weeks of shooting on Ice Station Zebra late in 1967, resulting in an episode that relies heavily on doubles, particularly in the location footage shot at the Kursaal Fun Fair at Southend.

"The Girl Who Was Death"

Written by Vincent Feeley from an idea by David Tomblin

Directed by David Tomblin 

Original airdate January 18, 1968

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirteen — A Change of Mind

Number Six's Public Enemy Number Six act is getting tired — and what is alternately referred to within a single scene as The Committee, The Council, and The Commission will tolerate it for only so long before they decree that their prize captive must undergo Instant Social Conversion. It's a procedure so chilling that Number Eighty-Six (the marvelous Angela Browne) must narrate it step-by-step, and very, very slowly, so as not to induce panic. John Sharpe is our unctuous, openly misogynistic Number Two. Happily, we get to see Six's homebuilt crossfit gym in the woods once again.

"A Change of Mind"

Written by Roger Parkes

Directed by Joseph Serf (Patty McG)

Original airdate December 15, 1967

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode fourteen — Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling

It seems Patty McG had softened his "don't call it television because television cuts corners and we'll never ever do that" position by the time of The Prisoner's much-abbreviated second and final season, because for most of the production of this week's episode he decided his time would be better spent in Los Angeles co-starring in John Sturges' unmemorable 1968 thriller Ice Station Zebra with Rock Hudson, Ernest "Resistance Is Futile" Borgnine, and Jim Brown.

"Chimes of Big Ben" screenwriter Vincent Tilsey got the unenviable job of coming up with a Prisoner story that would require neither the show's star nor its key location, Portmerion in North Wales. He came up with a brain-swapping scenario that would allow hardworking actor Nigel Stock to play Number Six. Upon his return from the States, McGoohan demanded extensive changes to the show that had been made in his absence. But he did not demand that Stock un-kiss Six's left-behind fiancee Janet (Zena Walker), who was never mentioned prior to this episode and shall never be again. Also, the head of MI6 was going to be SIx's father-in-law, apparently. Script editor George Markstein was long gone by this point and no one was minding the store.

The mailbag overfloweth this week, so we moved the listener mail segment to the back half of the episode. Thank you for your correspondence.

"Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling"

Written by Vincent Tilsley

Directed by Pat Jackson

Original airdate December 22, 1967