24. Lasagna With Teeth
2021Show notes
TRANSTOBER CONTINUES! We decided to release a previously pay-walled episode form a few years ago where we discuss one of our favorite horror films of all time, Jennifer's Body. Just so you know, this is a horror film so this episode doesn't just have spoilers, but there are mentions of rape, murder, and stupid asshole men.
Transcript
Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesAlexWelcome to Opposite Sides of the Couch. You're listening to this because you are a patron of Two Headed Girl. Thank you very much for your money. Thank you. This week, we're going to talk about a movie I've never seen.
MattieI've seen it five times.
AlexI didn't know that. Jennifer's Body, made in 2009, written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox.
MattieAnd Amanda Seyfried.
AlexAnd Amanda Seyfried. And it's the 10 year anniversary.
MattieThe movie takes place in this town called Devil's Kettle. And it's your typical like high school scary movie where the two main characters, Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, and Needy are unlikely friends in high school. Jennifer is like the perfect cheerleader, like hot girl type, and Needy is like nerdy, studious, book girl type. And they go out one night to see a band called Low Shoulder.
A lead singer is Adam Brody, play at the only bar in their town of Devil's Kettle, which is named after a waterfall that like leads to nowhere and is never ending, which is weird and creepy and never brought up again.
AlexThey make a point at the very beginning of the movie when Needy is sort of giving the welcome to my life speech, a shot of scientists pouring like bouncy balls down the hole. It's very strange.
MattieOh, yeah. To see if it has a bottom. But it does not.
AlexThen Adam Brody is gossiping with his bandmates about whether or not Megan Fox is a virgin. And then Amanda Seyfried is like, yes. Yes, she is. I guess, trying to protect her friend. And she tells this to Megan Fox. And she's like, what? I'm not even like a backdoor virgin anymore.
MattieYeah.
AlexIt's some anal sex joke that I thought was very funny. And suddenly a fire breaks out in the bar. Ah, it's not explained, much like the deep hole to nowhere. Amanda and Megan escape the fire along with Lo's shoulder. side side note from Diablo Cody they were actually supposed to be called Soft Shoulder which is a way better name in my opinion but there already was a band named that Megan is sort of lured into
the band's van and it's not super clear whether or not she wants to go she's in shock and in fact Adam Brody says oh oh she's in shock drink this and it's unclear whether or not it's just whiskey or if it's something else. But we see later on that she's totally out of it.
MattieShe's in the van with the band and she sees all of this occult stuff around her and asks them if they're rapists. And they all just kind of laugh and tell her not to worry about it. And Needy is back at her house freaking out about basically all their classmates It's like dying in the fire and calls her boyfriend Chip to explain what happened and how Jennifer just got in this van with a bunch of strangers, basically, or with the band.
And she's like losing her shit. And then she has to hang up because she hears something in her house.
AlexThe fridge is open and it's one of those very classic shots of there's something eating something in the fridge and it sounds like a beast. And oh, surprise, it's Jennifer. And she's screaming with sort of a venom like mouth, a typical poltergeist succubus type toothy CGI mouth and is like ripping apart a raw chicken. and goes at Amanda Seyfried slash Needy,
sniffs her, I think licks her, I don't know, and then is like, and runs away.
MattieNo, no, she vomits all this black.
AlexOh, I forgot, I forgot.
MattieShe vomits all this black ooze all over the floor, and then she runs away.
AlexYeah, yeah. Next day at school, Megan Fox is there, totally normal. Amanda is like, what the fuck, dude? except they don't say fuck very much in this movie because it was rated pg-13 however we did watch the unrated version uh because that's what was on itunes and amanda confronts jennifer about what
Mattiehappened the night before and she was just like i don't know nothing happened and um amanda is like yeah i have the proof i was scrubbing like that black tar goop off my floor all night and shows her her fingernails and the whole school is basically up in arms about how except one guy is basically up in arms about how their you know classmates died in this fire because their town is
really small and it was like 20 of them or something so there's an article about how the band rescued them and like took people out of the fire and amanda is like no that's bullshit like that didn't happen so now the band is looks like you know gods in the eyes of this small town
Alexand the song that they sing at the very beginning at the bar is over every speaker throughout the movie like every time there's diegetic sound it's this stupid pop song uh and after all of this amanda goes to the library and gets all hermione they have an occult section in the library and she reads all about succubus succubi i don't know figures out clearly megan fox succubus now
MattieAnd she goes to tell her boyfriend Chip.
AlexA pure narrative device.
MattieYeah. And he doesn't believe her. And then one of their football player bros from the school shows up dead in the woods. They say he looks like lasagna with teeth.
And again, Megan Fox is like, whatever. I mean, the basic plot of the movie is Megan Fox, who plays Jennifer, gets possessed by a demon, turns into a succubus and starts killing off the town.
AlexMm hmm. But all boys.
MattieYeah. Well, I think succubi only eat men, right?
AlexI actually don't know. Um, although this is fiction and they do sort of get into this because clearly Megan Fox has something for Amanda Seyfried. When Megan confides in Amanda about what happened to her that night in the van, she goes through the whole, yep, the band kidnapped me, took me to the waterfall with the endless pit type thing. and they murdered me, except I wasn't a virgin.
So the sacrifice they did didn't fully work. They're really popular and famous now, but also I'm still alive and I need to eat boys in order to stay pretty. Otherwise I start to look tired and sad. And then they kiss.
MattieThen they make out and almost have sex.
AlexI would say that was a brief makeup. and the cinematography we'll talk about the cinematography of this but it's super duper interesting the rest of the movie is sort of plays out the same way uh a lot of horror trope films do there's a dance Megan Fox is gonna go to this dance to feed on people and she traps Amanda
Seyfried's boyfriend, Chip. She kills Chip. Amanda kills Megan. Amanda goes to jail. In the credits, Amanda escapes from jail and then kills-
MattieWait, wait, wait. Amanda goes to jail and has ended up with demonic powers because Megan Fox bit her. Yeah, but she survived. It's very much like Twilight meets like a bad teen horror movie. That's the vibes I got from it. You got different vibes, though. You thought it was a lot like Juno.
AlexI love this movie. I adore it. I watched it a second time during work. I might have watched it during work. In the background, I sent 100 emails. It was okay.
MattieNow you see why I've watched it five times.
AlexAnd I've also read genuinely around 10 articles and interviews about this movie from when it came out and about the 10th anniversary from it.
MattieWell, it flopped when it came out.
AlexIt was a hard, fast, slapping belly flop. Most painful. and oh there is an amazing quote from Diablo Cody and she says I'm not surprised in the least that it flopped in fact I predicted that it would flop months in advance this movie was extensively focus grouped which is hell people hated it I still have one of the cards I'll keep it forever they screened this movie for young men of course and the question was what would you improve about
this movie and the guy wrote needs more boobs more is spelled m-o-a-r and boobs is spelled b-e-w-b-s that's what we were up against it makes me sad in retrospect and i should we should note that 10 years ago megan fox is i don't want to say at the height of her career but it was at the height of her uh like she had just come out as a breakout star from transformers one and two and in this i believe in the same week that jennifer's body came out she was uh supposedly not fired but quit
transformers 3 because she called michael bay hitler uh in his directing style which is a super bad thing to say she was also 21 years old but and being emotionally abused by what seems to be a terrible director but I mean rightfully so Steven Spielberg freaked out and was very upset uh he was the producer on it and there was all this pressure and so she quit I I know you really want to get
Mattieinto stuff but I feel like we're not focusing on the queer stuff I know you want to focus so much on other stuff from the movie I I got it but while I was watching it I was wondering is there even supposed to be a lesbian storyline like I feel like they're just really codependent I have a definitive answer to that I would love the definitive answer because before October we're doing all spooky gay stuff and this it popped up on the top 10 spooky gay movies you need to watch
AlexI would when I watched it before I get into the definitive answer that Diablo Cody gave in a recent interview um I read it as they were obsessed with each other I mean the characters
Mattieone of the characters names is literally needy um I read it as them just being bicurious like
Alexand experimenting well yeah but who isn't like no but I meant like I don't before you give us
Mattiethe definitive answer I don't think there was meant to be a lesbian relationship I think it was just like a really really fucked up friendship i don't think it was that fucked up i think it was
Alexvery well until the succubus part i think because i mean we see that megan fox is a little bit fucked up in terms of you know she's not not fucked up i don't want to slut shame her as i definitely did as an 18 year old who did not see this movie but thought it's a megan fox movie but she you know is is like the she is like the slutty high schooler who's sleeping with older guys and stuff and going out and doing sort of dangerous things with dangerous men whereas
needy has a boyfriend and like you said has this nerdy vibe to her they try to make her ugly with a pair of glasses it's very funny i didn't read that scene where they have a makeout as overtly sexual i also didn't feel like they were by curious because that in that moment it's right after she said oh hey by the way i'm a demon and it this is just the most intense moment of their
relationship it is the most it is the closest they've ever been in their relationship they just
Mattiedecided to stick their tongues in each other's mouths because they were feeling close in that
Alexintimate moment i think it was like an expression of we don't know what this is but it is closer than any other relationship we've had even uh amanda and good old chip who have an adorably
Mattiefunny sex scene that's just that is am i too big he asks her am i too big um oh oh because amanda seyfried has visions of megan killing these boys like torturing them and so she's crying during
Alexsex with chip and he's like was it because i was too big yeah the the movie isn't about look at how hot Megan Fox is, it's about the relationship between these two young girls. And that's why the marketing failed. Do you want the answer? I want the answer. Okay. This is from a Q&A. I watched this movie when I was 14 and it was kind of the first time that I was like, oh shit, I think I'm gay. So I just want to ask, do you think this is also like a movie
about sexuality and sexual exploration and i apologize this is from the director kusama it was so crucial that the reveal was that actually needy and jennifer had a sometimes intimate relationship and that is part of why it's so emotionally entangled it's not just bfs it's kind of more complex than that i felt like i got a lot of blowback for embracing the eroticism of that relationship, but for me, that was part of the film's identity. I always embraced the idea
of queerness, and I just felt like their relationship was not made more titillating for a young male audience. It was made more interesting for everyone and for the actors playing those characters because they had a somewhat secret but deeply close relationship.
MattieSo they were secretly gay? No. I'm trying to say, I was mostly joking.
AlexUh, well, well, let's go into Fox's answer to that question. I think for me at least, I knew this scene was not going to be taken for what it was intended to be going into shooting. So there was the pressure of almost anticipating the disappointment. I think I said this on the press tour or before that the entire trailer was probably going to be just the scene of me making out with Amanda and it would be clickbait like Megan Fox's first lesbian scene. So I think it made it hard to experience it the way I would have wanted to because I was preoccupied with what is this going to be turned into?
Which, of course, it was. It was completely misunderstood. From the test screenings, the bros were like, yeah, and broing out over it. and then Kusama. The irony is that I think the scene is both erotic and really scary, because at the point you see Jennifer's power, and so we're not sure where this is exactly going. Fox. Maybe, from Fox.
MattieMaybe that's where they thought there should be more boobs. I just think it's really interesting because it, on the surface, looks like, and yeah, from the trailer, looks like it's just going to be one of those scary movies where the girl is possessed and she murders all the boys in the high school and like dominates it and it's really so much more than just like a bad scary movie because it was meant to be something else and I just think audiences never read it as something else so then it kind of became a cult
Alexclassic i am shocked at how this movie was received and i'm not because of course teenage
Mattieboys went to see it for megan fox's boobs like they had just come right out of transformers because you know that was what all the males were watching and they were like yeah okay this is i
Alexthink the last quote slash this is the last quote I will share um I oh I oh god this interview um another reader I'm 19 so I didn't watch this movie when it first came out but when I first watch it I wanted to read some reviews and I was so shocked when I was nine apparently it was okay for professional reviewers to go if you want to look at Megan Fox's body there are better ways to do it and like did you just watch the same movie as me because you know there are so few things in
hollywood that are just strong women that are actually made by women i guess that's not really a question which by the way is the only time for q a that i've been like yeah i'm fine with you not asking a question uh and then kusama the director uh responds i hope that what the film is exploring is how misogyny and the power constructs of what we call the patriarchy warp everyone. It's not just men who become damaged in the system. Women become so damaged in that system.
If anything hurt about the process of releasing Jennifer's body, it was the rejection of critics who seemed to just sort of dismiss the movie and really just get on a train of humiliation speak. They just felt a power in belittling the film and the filmmaking. that's a critic's prerogative but I found it to be a really fascinating reflection of what the movie was actually about and I was like I was fucking fist pumping the shit out of this
because you're right that scene in where they're making out is very erotic I did not read it as like suddenly they're lesbians because the camera gets closer and closer to their faces where I agree, it is kind of scary looking and it's not hot. Like you do see them kissing like really intensely.
MattieRight, but you also wonder if she's gonna like attack and eat off Amanda's face. Yes, exactly, exactly. And then you have to talk about how like once the supernatural element is involved, you can tell that they were super close because literally Needy gets visions of what's going to happen to Megan before it even happens.
AlexI was so thrilled by everything in this movie. I adored the relationship. I adored how it explored.
MattieWe have to stop watching stuff that we both like. We're never going to argue. No, because you... I'm just, I'm kidding.
AlexBut you thought like when you saw this movie and maybe it's because you were you were like 18 when you saw this movie. Right. Yeah. So did you have a similar feeling as the one kid who asked the director? Did you mean it for it to be gay? Did you? Yeah, that was exactly my. Yeah. But because you were raised as a girl, I think you had you had that feeling in a much more intense way than a young man would feel.
MattieBecause I wasn't just checking out boobs.
AlexRight. Because more boobs, please. Like there's no wide shot of them fondling each other. There's actually very few gratuitous shots of Megan Fox. the gratuitous shots are like wide angle like hey here's the trope of a young high school girl with her boobs out and all of the like sex scenes aren't really there aren't any sex scenes except
Mattiethat one with chip that's really awkward and not meant to be yeah yeah exactly um and i i think
Alexif I were to see that I would have been like whoa whoa because both of us had close friendships when we were younger that we didn't know how what the feelings were like but they were definitely
Mattiethe gay feels yeah it's so funny because we can definitely well I for sure can definitely relate
Alexto the two main characters because that yeah 100 whereas watching it now as a 29 year old oh I'm I see it as a really scary and codependent relationship.
MattieSame, same.
AlexI'm stealing this from a lot of film critics, but most importantly, Lindsay Ellis, who is one of my favorite YouTubers, when she says the camera always speaks louder than the script. and that scene with the two of them kissing is the perfect example because I did not find it hot at
Mattieall like it was it just made me deeply uncomfortable but again we weren't going in to it or at least it being my fifth time seeing it I wasn't going in this time being like oh it's just going to be a scary movie with like tits and teenagers dying and stuff like that you know I didn't go into it
Alexlooking at that right because it was as we said before marketed to young men uh which is also
Mattiegross like yeah they're just using megan fox's body as a marketing tool which of course because
Alexbut to men older to her that's but uh like i went into this expecting sort of a cult hit but more of just like a campy thing and it is campy but it's Diablo it's Diablo Cody and people have feelings about Diablo Cody I really like her stuff I like Juno I love the United States of Terra and I thought this was a fucking hilarious movie I thought it was incredibly written
Mattieit was really funny it's really funny and dark and the pacing's good it's really good it's but
AlexBut the thing is, it's not marketed as a comedy. Not even in the way that, it kind of feels like the way Cabin in the Woods was marketed. Like, ooh, spooky, scary. And then once we all saw it, it was like, ah, we're picking up what you're putting down. I don't want to spoil anything about Cabin in the Woods.
MattieWe actually really wanted to do that, but it's not gay.
AlexThere's got to be some queerness in there. We're going to find. There's not any. There is a, see, I don't want to spoil it, but we might be able to work around it. But I expected this movie to be laced with shots that were in the Transformers movie of Megan Fox's butt and a ton of intense, like, bicurious moments of will they, won't they. No, no, not at all.
It was shockingly true to life other than the succubus hell mouth part.
MattieRight. Other than that.
AlexLike the fetishizing of a band, the intensity of relationships, the jealousy that's like, it's not quite jealousy, but it's kind of jealousy. Sorry, I'm referring to Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried and Chip.
MattieAnd poor Chip. Aw, Chip. and can we just talk about how there's also this social commentary going on in the background about how the tragedy in the town is like fodder for the news and it's raising the band's popularity because they did that demonic ritual and they're like we're gonna be as good as maroon five and then like they come into a free benefit and give the school like three percent of the profits meanwhile like it's their fault that are all these kids are dying in their town and it's just it's crazy because they're also
a social commentary in this fucking movie. It's so ahead of its time. It really is. And obviously, you know, men. Those men, they would not get any of that. They just wanted to see butt and boobs and murder.
AlexMay I read a couple more things?
MattieYeah, because yes. Yes, because.
AlexThis is from, well, the article starts out talking about Megan Fox, who I honestly mostly have forgotten about. I just was like, Transformers. And I didn't know this, but she did a run on New Girl when Zooey Deschanel had maternity leave or something.
MattieOh, really?
AlexYeah. And she talks about how Jennifer's body is her favorite performance along with the New Girl one. In this Variety piece, it actually says, had it been released a decade later, possibly through a streaming service, Cody told Variety that it would have definitely found its audience in the themes of queer representation and sexual assault would have been clear. and I had to think I was like sexual assaults and then I'm like oh duh the the whole van thing
and not because oh she gets into what looks like a rape van uh she is brutalized being murdered um and it's not I'm just going to keep harping on this there's so much that is ahead of its time especially the assault that Megan Fox faces because she gets into the rape fan and the demonic ritual is essentially these men gang raping her yeah it and it it's super
it's super fucked up um and Megan Fox even said about filming it I broke down at that point I felt so overexposed and I felt so haunted by media by tabloids. I felt so bullied also by just the world in general. The last thing I had was mine. The last bit of privacy that I had was my body and I didn't want to show it. I felt so violated even though I was wearing nude underwear and I had little nipple covers on. It was so much more than I ever wanted to give the world. I wanted to
keep that for myself and it was taken from me so I was really devastated. I broke down. I cried.
MattieWait, in that from filming that scene?
AlexBut so they didn't do it that way because they were like, this is too intense. We get our point across.
MattieYeah, I was like, she was definitely still wearing her shirt.
AlexYeah. Yeah. She was, in fact, I think, fully clothed.
MattieThis movie is not just a scary movie with queers, but a scary movie, a social commentary, a strong female lead and, you know, rape talks about rape.
AlexThe issue is many, if not most people, did not see her as a strong female lead.
MattieThat's so...
AlexAll right. This is one more thing. I'm sorry.
MattieOne more thing?
AlexOne more thing. In this, this is a different piece from not Variety, but Vulture. They were giving a lot of interviews because it's the 10th anniversary.
MattieWe really picked a good time to watch it.
Alexthe director brings up the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and you might say like be like wow that sure is conflating it but you know she even says all I can remember is these guys just laughing at me what Christine Blasey Ford said and I thought back to that scene and just Adam Brody and these band members laughing before they're about to brutally assault and murder this woman yeah
and this is the part of the interview that i broke down crying um uh the interviewer says and megan you said earlier this year in a new york times interview that you have your own stories um that you have your own me too stories but that you don't share them because you're not what a sympathetic victim looks like fox yes wow yeah but the interview goes on that's a really
fucked up weight to carry fox yeah and i'm working a lot on changing my own belief systems because that's what informs your reality but for me the experience i've had thus far in my life that i felt if i came forward during this sort of explosion of me too movement with the stories that I have, and I have a plenty, that that would be the one time it would be okay to victim blame. So I was sort of in that same prison of not being able to, it's a feminist movement, right?
This is the time. It's okay to be a woman. It's okay because we're feminists. But am I accepted by feminists? Because I never felt like I was. I was the one woman where it was okay to be a feminist and be like, yeah, but not her. She's stupid and she's selfish and she's a dumb cunt and we don't like her. She deserves that because she said this or did this. So yeah, it's a lot to carry. But again, it's my job to refrain. It's my job to reframe that experience for myself and create a different reality because it's easy to lean into it and be like, oh, I'm the victim and
here's why. That's been my experience so far, but I do feel like it's shifting in a good way, in a positive way but that was my relationship with the media and the public and with men
Mattieand people at that time holy shit yeah this this just got so much more deep than i even realized
Alexit would yeah and again we're not saying like it's okay that she compared michael bade hitler
Mattielike it's but oh this see and initially we didn't want to do this because because i had Well, yeah, but so has the world.
AlexI mean, I know, but I, Alexandra Cox in high school, thought Megan Fox was just a slutty bitch. Like, full on. I'm like, of course they have.
MattieI'm not like covering for you or anything, but that was literally what the media fed us.
AlexI know, but I would have liked to think that I was better than that. And in a way, you were better than that because you saw this movie and saw it for what it was. Like, sure, you had the gay feels, but at the time you were living life as a closeted gay girl. So, yeah.
MattieYeah, this actually made me, this movie specifically made me stop thinking she was a slut. Because unfortunately, that's how Transformers made me feel too. Because that's, ugh, wow. This has turned into a lot more than just watching a gay scary movie.
AlexAnd it's not because it's it's it's not it's it's a story about intense relationships and and possibly a needy independent relationship. Needy. I don't know how many of these quotes will be edited out. But just hearing Megan Fox be like, yeah, I can't talk about my Me Too experience because I was the slut and it was OK for people to call me a slut. Like, I remember in high school, I did, I tried to think about women and girls, including the girls in my class, who people saw as, quote, sluts because I went to a Catholic school.
Like, everyone chill, just chill. But no, I ate up the Megan Fox is a slut category. And I am ashamed. And I want Megan Fox, if you're listening. I am so sorry you were a you starred in an incredibly good movie as a very interesting character because you know what your best friend didn't want to murder you and in fact she broke out of jail to avenge avenge you we sort
of skipped over that part yeah we skipped the part
Mattiewhere Amanda breaks out of jail demonically possessed and murders the entire band over the
Alexcredits. Well, we mentioned this. She has the powers, but she's not possessed.
MattieRight. Okay. So she has demon powers, breaks out of jail, and then gets revenge by murdering
Alexthis whole band. And I was there for it, as the kids say.
MattieMan, this movie is something. Watch it and then watch it again.
AlexThat was my one thing, was ending it being like, okay, so both the female protagonists antagonists are punished i mean i guess yeah today that would read as like a social commentary of of course they try to do the right thing megan fox is trying to survive amanda saferead's trying to survive and but has to kill her best friend in the process uh but no nope she gets to break out of prison and kill the boys who assaulted her friend and are taking advantage of the patriarchy
and a young woman's life whose life was destroyed.
MattieJust to be famous like Maroon 5.
AlexAnything else you've got for this? I feel like I've definitely dominated this conversation.
MattieNo, that's totally fine. I think that's good. I'm so glad that I introduced you to this movie and you got so into it.
AlexI adore it. I love it. And I wish Diablo Cody and Megan Fox the best. Amanda Seafruit's doing pretty good. She's in all the Mamma Mia's.
MattieLove her. Yeah, she's fine. She doesn't need, I mean, we can give her the best, but she don't need it.
AlexI wish her well also, but I'm already wishing her well by buying all of her films. Multiple times. I think I have Mamma Mia on Blu-ray and... We do.
MattieWe do indeed.
Alexokay well uh thank you again for listening to this bonus episode opposite sides sides of the couch please keep giving us money we we thank you and tell your friends about Two Headed Girl and this show if you like it it's feels kind of weird for us to be talking about queer media once a week but We love it.
MattieI love it so much.
AlexAnd it's a great excuse to revisit and find new types of shows and movies. We're definitely going to do more, like books and shit. But all this month, we're going to be doing spooky gay movies.
MattieYes, because Halloween. Oh, man, I'm so ready for Christmas. You got to give me my Halloween first. You got to give it to me.