Labyrinth with Juno Dawson

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0:32Did you guys ever used to play that game on long car journeys? And it was called, well, our version of it was called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And the whole idea was that like Kevin Bacon had been in so many movies that everybody on earth was like somehow connected to him, even if it was by six degrees of separation. and the more you play a game like that and you can like substitute basically any famous person who works a lot with Kevin Bacon you can do six degrees of Jeff Goldblum or six degrees of Taylor Swift but the point of the game isn't really about how famous these people are or how much they work it's actually about how connected we are in a world that seems so big but there are all these invisible connections that tether us together and actually bring us far closer than it seems.

1:24We might seem quite isolated. We might seem that we only live in our house and we know the kind of 200 people that we know, but actually the web is far more sprawling than that. And it's like one of these things that continues to bring me like so much joy, particularly as I, you know, go on podcast tours and I might meet someone at like a show in Edinburgh who happened to know someone who was at my show in Brisbane, which is at the other side of the world. And, you know, these connections can be so thrilling. But so I think sometimes that we forget that the connections kind of work the other way too.

1:58Like if you can be six degrees of separation from someone like Taylor Swift, then that must also mean that you could be three or four or five degrees of separation from somebody who is, for example, being murdered in a tent in Gaza. So I've decided that if I can talk for hundreds of hours on how I feel about Taylor Swift and Sex and the City and all these movies that I love talking about and all these little things I love obsessing about, if I can go on and on about my sort of emotional and spiritual connections to these pieces of media and these artists who make them, then I can also talk about the connections that go the other way.

2:36and today I want to talk about Abood. So Abood is 20 years old and he's Palestinian and he lives in Gaza and he reached out to me a couple of months ago after I donated to one of his fundraising pages and since then we've stayed in touch and we talk kind of once a week and I learn about what he's up to and what he's up to I'm sure won't surprise you at all is surviving. He lives with his parents he has six sisters and one brother Muhammad who is the baby of the family and who recently actually sustained a massive injury when he was playing in the street and some shrapnel from a nearby exploding building struck him in the head and he's had to have surgery.

3:24Now Abood has been responsible for essentially crowdfunding that surgery and crowdfunding the medicine that's come after it to help manage his brother's pain and manage his nutrition levels, infection risks, all of that, along with crowdfunding the food his family are eating every single day. Because as he said to me in one message that I haven't really forgotten, and that kind of broke my brain a little bit, he said, the places where I'm supposed to get help are too dangerous for me to go. And, you know, that line, that sentence, I was like, wow, I could write for 100 years and not write something that haunting, because this is experience.

4:11The UN has reported that up to 400 Palestinians have been killed just trying to get aid from Israeli managed sites. And I don't know what to do with my brain in that situation. I knew that this war had spiraled into genocide a long time ago but but this level of brutality this level of just blanket cruelty i don't know it it took my levels of sort of understanding of the world to like a new frontier i think um so i'm gonna include abud's crowdfunding link in the show notes here and maybe you want to donate to him but maybe you want to donate to other people as well maybe you see these kind of just giving links coming up in your Instagram stories all the time but you don't really know if you should donate to them because it feels more appropriate to donate to a larger charity and and for what I do that too you know like I've done a lot of crowdfunding for um war child through this podcast that I'm very proud of but when the aid isn't getting through and that the aid that is getting through comes with a side of butchery all you can really do at that point is sign petitions, go to protests and support individuals.

5:25Put£20 or£5 or whatever into any crowdfund that you see that speaks to you. And yeah, you might not see the difference today. You might never see the difference. You might never even find out whether the person who you donated to has lived or died. But you also don't know who that money is supporting and who that person is saving and who those people will save and how the butterfly effect of people helping people will eventually culminate and I have to believe in that and I have to otherwise I think I'd lose all hope. Anyway that's it for me this week, enjoy the podcast.

6:12Hello and welcome to Magical Garbage, the podcast miniseries where we talk about the enchanted trash that made us who we are. My name is Caroline and David Bowie's codpiece may seem bizarre, but it is in fact intentional. And joining me is just a crystal, nothing more. It's Juna Dawson. Hello. Hi. Thank you for having me. What a fantastic, fantastic choice. Oh my God. Well, this film, and I'm not here to take questions about it, it's the best film ever made. Like, if I had to narrow it down to five, that would be really easy, because there'd be Scream and Clueless and The Craft. But if I really did just have to pick one film, I think it would be Labyrinth.

6:50Really? And has that always been the case for you? Like, how did this movie come into your life? So my first knowledge of it is I remember being told that me and my dad were going to go see Labyrinth. Yeah. And then they had heard on The Great Van it was too scary. Okay. And I would have only been five. Right. So instead I had to go see Basil the Great Mouse Detective, which is fucking terrifying. So the scary bat thing in Basil the Great Mouse Detective is scarier than anything in Labyrinth. Is Basil the Great Mouse Detective, is that like a Sherlock Holmes-y for kids but mice kind of vibe? Correct, but he's a mouse.

7:23Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, this is, Basil's scarier than this. Oh, 100%, yeah. I wouldn't call this outrightly scary. I would say it is eerie, disturbing, and it leaves a kind of a stain on your soul, like a watermark or a grease mark on you because it's enchanting, but it's also kind of icky and gross and in ways that aren't like specific. The bug of eternal stench. The bug of eternal stench. You'll smell forever, yeah. But I think the monster design, with it being Jim Henson's Creature Workshop, it feels really real in a way that things now don't feel real. and you know I'm sure we'll talk about the ever-present possibility of a labyrinth 2 which is constantly talked about um but I kind of hope they don't because I don't think they would do it with real puppetry I don't I hope so as well I mean apparently the Dark Crystal remake they did for um Netflix was wonderful I didn't actually see it but I think not only would it be not as good from the point of view of like those professionals like aren't of course they still exist people who fabricate and make puppets and are puppeteers and stuff but we have so moved the industry over to um computer generation stuff that like we wouldn't be able to remake it on that level on like a textural sort of you can really see these puppets and you can see them operate and move but also on a story level i feel like we're asking for far more literalism these days that wouldn't allow for the strange murky kind of logistical nightmare that is the labyrinth do you what i mean yeah like it's it is storytelling that is kind of felt rather than understood like there are so many things with the labyrinth that make no sense at all but are just kind of vibes or visual set pieces are just they're about how they make you feel or how they feel to sarah and not about how they make linear sense or anything you know the the spine of the plot is very simple which is that she has is it 13 hours to rescue her brother yes from jareth the goblin king or he will become a goblin forever yeah um but then along the way like you said it's a series of set pieces involving creepy disembodied hands swamps dogs riding dogs it's all great dogs riding dog babies having babies and dogs having dogs what is the society coming through brook and britain um but like i i when i was re-watching it um it's an interesting thing when you're re-watching this movie as an adult and alone for a podcast because it's the kind of thing that should be sort of seen as a kind of a sleepover as a kid or seen as group viewing as an adult and it really struck me when I was re-watching it by myself last night I was like there's really a number of ways you can like take this movie if you want you can really go hell for leather and like um study what it's trying to say about adulthood and growing up and womanhood and desire or you can just be like, this is a bunch of fun bits.

10:20And like both of them are like as satisfying as the other. Yeah, I think that's why it endures. I think had it just been an adventure through a maze, we wouldn't be talking about it over 30 years later. I think Jim Henson and I, there is a beautiful companion book that goes with it that's like a making of. And obviously Jim Henson died a very long time ago, but there is some commentary from him. And it was intentional. the fact that they were very when they were casting the role of sarah they would they would determine that she would be on the cusp of womanhood yeah that this is a film about a young adult who has to make a choice between embracing adulthood and leaving children behind or remaining a child for one more day and that's kind of very deliberate and so i think that's why it's so beloved and i know as well for a lot of 80s kids like jareth was a sexual awakening yeah which was not for me really but just not my type okay i honestly fancy ludo more than i fancy jareth but um but i can see why again the older man probably talk about that as well but um these of the older man obsessed with an ordinary teenage girl and you know you can trace that all the way through to labberate no we're talking about labberate twilight it's the same plot yeah like an eternal supernatural figure obsessed with with you the reader the seemingly ordinary girl who's sort of chosen the chosen one yeah and the it's so interesting talking and and about jareth and sarah and this whole thing of like we open with sarah and like there's a very is we get so little of Sarah's like real world, except that she's sort of into fantasy, probably a bit too old to be as into fairy tales as she is.

12:12And the one kind of directive that we have from her, her stepmother and her father is that like, she should really be dating boys by now. I'd love it if you had a date. I'd love it if you had a date. You should be dating. You should be dating at your age. Brutal. She should have said, I'm gay. I'm gay. I'm gay. Gay, gay, gay But it's like It's like the one real thing we learn about her Like we see things through the camera Of like oh she obviously Her mother isn't in the scene anymore Her mother was an actor This is how she kind of relates to her mother Maybe her mother ran off with David Bowie himself We don't know It's kind of hinted at in the photographs around the room Which is like deep labyrinth lore But like Oh I thought she was just dead Yeah I don't know Oh I had her down as an orphan I also had a dad as orphan because it just feels more traditional fairy tale landscape but I don't know there are theories of course with any movie this vague and this beloved there are going to be many many theories but like there's something that like very real about like Jareth is sort of like the figure of her fantasies and he is it's really unclear what he wants because like he wants he's stolen the baby at her wishes at her specific wishes her wishes that woke up the goblins which I love did she say it yet?

13:34oh they're so good they're so good them as like the first little winkle of magic where you know you're like oh well I'm near my bar now and my play and then it's suddenly like she says the words and all the muppety goblins wake up and you're like oh we're ready for a party oh they're so cute it's the one that scurries across the floor as well they're so naughty sorry before I carry on I feel like I'm sorry we're all over we're very excited I'm so excited about the goblins. I'm so excited. Yeah. Let me park Jareth and sexuality for two seconds because that will be so much of this podcast. Right.

14:07First, I would like to ask you what your relationship is with Muppets, puppets, etc. Again, I'm deceptively elderly. I was born 1981. And so I did grow up on Doctor Who. Obviously, that's come full circle. Yes. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you very much. Dark Crystal. But weirdly, my ex from a long, long time ago I was very much a Dark Crystal person, whereas I was very much Team Labyrinth. And so I think there is a little bit of you had to choose your team. But I also grew up, you know, every Christmas, those 1970s Muppet movies would be on really heavy rotation. And as well, you know, the original Star Wars movies always take, I would always, always take those over the later CGI ones.

14:54like there was something about you know when princess leia is chained to jabba the hut in return of the jedi he's real and he looks disgusting and awful and you know really real and i do i think for me it was when i first saw the matrix in around 99 2000 that i realized something had gone forever and that we weren't going to go back to those real solid fabricated things and I was like this is a real shame it is a real shame and like you know and then the kind of the jump from the matrix to lord of the rings and then you write that that is a real moment of kind of losing things forever I guess Jurassic Park as well but the Jurassic Park had both Jurassic Park had animatronics and CGI because dinosaurs aren't real anymore they're not real dinosaurs Caroline I'm so sorry if that has ruined Christmas um but the 90s I guess were a transitional period from puppetry to CGI.

15:50But then, you know, having worked on Doctor Who when I was in Cardiff last year, you know, some of those monsters are still real. Yeah. There was a big, I believe they're called man traps. There was a man trap from season one just sort of sat in a lot. Oh my god, yes. Just waiting for its next outing, kind of. I love the idea that he's just sort of dormant, waiting for the next round. Yeah, right. Waiting for somebody else to put him in a new episode and cover him in lubricant. He was a drippy monster. Oh, oozing lubricant. But that whole thing, there's something I'm obsessed with and something I really want to get into in this series about the fact that the contract that we used to sign, the sort of imagination, moral contract that we would sign with magical things in the kind of 80s and 90s was far looser kind of thing.

16:37It really didn't take an awful lot for us to believe in something, whether that's sort of the puppetry work that you see in films like this or even something that doesn't have an enormous amount of anything really going on apart from costumes and script like the Princess Bride, right? That's just like the rodents of unusual size are like hilariously bad. Like they're not, no one's like trying to trick you that much. Or even like things like Conan the Barbarian, Xena Warrior Princess. Oh my God, yeah. Just sort of like breastplates in a dream. Do you know what I mean? See, since you mentioned Princess Bride, because I didn't see that till I was an adult.

17:11Oh, really? And the flip side of that is my now ex, I sat down and showed him Labyrinth for the first time as an adult and he was like, I can't believe you bought this as a child. And I was like, well, yeah, but that's because you're seeing it now as an adult. You weren't there in 1986 to see it as a child, kind of. And so I do think if you didn't see any of those things you mentioned as a kid. Yeah. And I wonder if it's a childishness. We are more prepared to believe in magic. We're more prepared to suspend disbelief and really go there. and I mean the ultimate one for me was I saw Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 10 and it traumatized me like I knew it was a horror film but I was scared of going to sleep because I was genuinely scared that I would have a nightmare about Freddy Krueger and whereas now I'm like bring it on it'd be quite interesting that would be keep me entertained of an evening wouldn't it but yeah it was I think um it's really hard to separate how I feel about Labyrinth now because of how I felt about it as a child.

18:11Yeah. It's magic in itself. And like this sort of thing that was, it was texture as well as story, right? Because it just had this, it's part of the grain of it almost feels like it's like this big soup of magical stuff and you're just getting the top skim of it. It's just because of the layers of creation that are going into it with the story, with the music, with the casting, with the puppets, with the scenery, with everything. it just feels like sort of so many hands have built this lore and this maze together and you're just getting the top of it and like there's all this stuff that might be going on when you're not watching and it makes you watch it even deeper because you're you think that you're going to catch something on the next view that you didn't catch the last time because you're so convinced on like a deep subconscious level that this world exists when you're not watching and you can only do that when something is like as intentionally made as this and like I think like I just I just have so much sorrow in my heart for like for things that don't feel like this anymore you know and I do think that we're gonna get it back I have a group this is partly what this sort of miniseries is about is that if you look at the kind of the dark fantasy boom of the 80s which very much came out of like like if you think of like Walt Disney died in 1966 right sorry to go all the way back here so Disney dies in 1966 and he was the person who was like heading up like the he owned fairy tales right and so Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and all these lush animated features where we received all of like the repackaging of the Brothers Grimm tales which are like these linear morality tales really about like how you should be as a child and what will happen to you if you're not and blah blah blah and then he dies and then like i was kind of looking at the history of this for a long time there's nothing basically like it's all about the kind of hyper realistic cinema of the 70s and at the end of the 70s we get star wars and then we suddenly get this kind of burst of everything like fantasy storytelling coming through again and it's like all the people who grew up on sleeping beauty with walt disney taking the fairy tale and sort of subverting it against itself and we've got Dungeons and Dragons happening at the same time we've got arcade games happening at the same time and it's like for the first time in the like late 70s and 80s people are coming together with their shared vision of like what a magical world might look like yeah so like people are sitting around and being like Dungeons and Dragons what do we think the layer looks like or even crowding it around an arcade game and being like we all know we're looking at space invaders that are tiny little white blocks on the screen but we're all sharing in our brains together a vision of what this looks like in our heads it's so interesting isn't it like the archetypes like if you if we were to go out on the street now and ask people to describe heaven yeah it'd be so interesting to see how many people mentioned clouds or angels or gates and i wonder sometimes where these archetypes come from like star wars was not the first science fiction obviously yeah so it's it's funny that we do share and that's but that's why fantasy is so lovely and it's why I love writing fantasy because it's like you're inviting people into your delusion yeah I enjoy that I'm like come and stay a while it's nice in here and there are like there are like tenants of shared delusion that you can build new delusion around so like you do like a lot with witches and witches are like a deep like there's a deep lore and deep sort of references that you can pull from but you're doing something like entirely new with HMRC or queen bee or whatever so it's like you're giving people enough tent poles to cling to so that they can like go on this huge journey with you you know it's like some will be familiar some will be new well it's like i remember when the show was previously being adapted um a couple of years back and the writer was not a big fantasy head and she was like let's talk about the flying because it kind of takes me out of it and i was like they're witches i was like name me a witch who does not fly.

22:10Like from Mildred Hubble to Scarlet Witch to Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. Witches fly. You know, you kind of have to give the audience what they want. As Rita Ora said, give the gays everything they want. Every time. This is the second time you've been on this podcast and the second time you've brought up Rita Ora. It's really. Unreal. Oh my God. The impact she's had on me. Who knew? The impact of that woman. Sorry, Rita. I was about to go on a deep dive about her Primark line then. But we shan't. We shan't. We shan't. We shan't. We simply will not. But coming back to archetypes, I think with Labyrinth, it's like, what's so fascinating about it, if you do want to like really get into the minutiae of this movie, is that like, it is about archetypes and it's about somebody who has spent their entire life clinging to fairy tale ideas and then being put into the world of the fairy tale idea and all of it is kind of working against her and everything, like everyone says to her throughout the movie like you're sort of assuming too much about this world like you're taking things for granted and she she sarah says a lot throughout like oh this is how it's supposed to go or how it's supposed to be or like a fairy bites her and she's like that's not how it's supposed to go you know and like i love i just love the idea of the idea just ideas turning against you i think is what this movie is about to me well that's again i think it's her again you wouldn't know this is a five-year-old but it's the horrible realization that adult life might not be what you thought it was gonna be yeah that you know it's time for her to stop seeing things as she wants them to be and start seeing them as they are um which is i guess ultimately you know in the end she re-embraces her stepbrother because like him or not he's part of her life so is her stepmom and again the wicked stepmother as she says herself she's determined to cast me as the wicked stepmother whatever I do so you know Sarah Sarah is I'd love it if you have a date you should be dating at your age I'm asexual um oh but can we talk briefly about how beautiful Jennifer Connelly is the most beautiful then and still the most beautiful woman in the world we just talked about her recently for the um he's just not that into you podcast she remains sensational I mean she is she's a Louis Vuitton brand ambassador and she was at the spring the autumn winter fashion show in milan yeah and she's still she's now 50 she is so beautiful very thin i hope she's eating all right but um yeah no she's and i think quite genuinely one of the most underrated actors yeah of a generation in that she kind of comes and goes she takes the job she wants to do yeah i don't think she's never really achieved that kind kind of Margot Robbie Scarlett Johansson uber fame.

25:00But I think she's all right with the level of fame she has. She's an Oscar winner. She won an Oscar for Beautiful Mind, I believe. Did she? Oh, she's certainly nominated. Huh. And she was in Requiem for Dream? Which is my other favourite. Yeah, she's as Marion Silver in Requiem for Dream, in which she is heartbreaking. She has very little dialogue, but her face is heartbreaking. Her face is truly heartbreaking. and I just love her. And we all, she just, who isn't obsessed with Jennifer Connelly in this movie? And the outfits. Oh, the outfit, I should say. The waistcoat, yeah. That little jacquard waistcoat over the shirt, like the brown, the brown brugs.

25:40Doesn't matter how old you are looking at that movie, you're like, can I make that work? Like, can I? Can I? Do you know what that came back? That is the mum jean, maybe not so much the waistcoat, but the blouse and the mum jeans and the shoes, you could have gotten away with quite recently. Waistcoats are back, but they're kind of more of a fitted waistcoat. It's kind of the loose men's, like kind of bad wedding waistcoat that I love. But it works. It's just on a hat. But I mean, for me, it was all about the hair. Just that glossy, shiny, raven hair. And the brows, which of course she became.

26:13Yeah, brow clean. She stubbornly left them during the 90s when everybody else had little tiny pencil brows. She was like, no, these brows are my money maker. And she kept them Brave She's kind of like Do you think part of the reason Why she's not as much Of a household name anymore Is that She's sort of this Between person of like You Whenever I see her I think I'm looking at Demi Moore Or at Brooke Shields And You know what I mean She's of that generation Are you her? Are you her? No you're her It's so funny isn't it The prestige brunettes Of the 80s And And now Such a thesis statement Yeah The prestige brunettes Of the 80s But it was Because I think as well and i've talked about this long and wide i think during the 80s the the leading lady was allowed to be kind of masculine in that you had daryl hannah and sigoni weaver jamie lee curtis and then end of the 80s boom winona rider comes along and from that point on we've had little baby dolls ever since and we've never really gone back to the kind of like we were talking a while ago me and my friends were talking about who should play lara croft right like who would have that sense of physicality yeah that she could you know climb a mountain and not die cannot fall over in the age of a zen pic kind of and there are so few there are so few god you're right actually yeah because like you just think of like these very disney looking kind of uh girl movie stars who are just very dollish looking you're right but yeah the 80s like they like like who where are the Sigourney Weavers now?

27:48There isn't a Sigourney Weaver now. I don't think there is. Tell me what was the most important part of this movie for you when you were a kid? How did you access this movie in a world pre-kind of on-demand streaming? Did you own it? How did you get to it? And when you went back to it, what were you looking for? I had it taped off the telly on a VHS tape that was watched and watched and watched to death. I think initially we used to borrow the vhs off someone because i used to love it so much i think there wasn't much in that space that was female-led yeah and as a small trans child i only was interested in the stories about girls yeah like i really wasn't interested in things about boys and a lot in that space if there was a girl she was often the damsel in distress she was the kind of the princess peach kind of figure um and so i really loved that sarah it was the main character and that she had real agency you know she was a woman on a mission i've got to save my brother i've brought this on myself and she's resourceful ish ish um i mean hoggle does often just rescue her from things but um for me it was about yeah i i could see myself in sarah and that was really important to me as a girl that everybody thought was a boy, kind of.

29:11Yeah. Like, the journey she goes on is so interesting to me because it's like, when she... At the beginning, when she's asked to babysit, it's like, ew, no, absolutely not. How dare you? When someone insinuates that she should go on a date, it's like, ew, no, how dare you? Which are very kind of like female-coded, sort of like these are the things that are expected of you. I was talking to a friend the other day who said that she was babysitting her baby brother when she was 12. And she said, I often wonder if I was a 12 year old boy, would they have let me alone with my baby brother? Absolutely not.

29:48No way. Yeah, right? Like it's just a presumed thing that girls look after babies and they go on dates. And she rejects these two things within the first sort of five minutes of screen time. And then she's asked to go on an adventure to save her baby brother. And like, oh, instantly. yeah absolutely 100 % and she's in this adventure world pretty quickly and she's making choices and and sort of striding forward pretty quickly really gets on with it as well yeah really gets on with it as an adult now if this film were being made it would be at least an hour longer and a lot of it would be setting up sarah's miserable home yeah and i don't think you'd get to the labyrinth in the first 20 minutes whereas i think she enters the labyrinth in about the 12th minute, I think.

30:29Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really quick. I remember thinking of it as well. I think it's probably because you and I are doing so much screenwriting at the moment. We really have that producer notes thing in our head of like, but what does Sarah want? Why now? Why now? Why the story and why now? Sorry, I just had a brief, I was briefly triggered about what work I should probably be doing. Sorry, yeah, no. But then, so she's walking around the labyrinth, she's sort of, you know, And it's very evident from very early on that it's like playing tricks on her and that this is not a game that's going to play fair with her.

31:02Because she meets the little caterpillar. The little worm. The worm. We should have just seen a hello around the worm. Hello. Hello. Come inside. Meet the missus. Come in for a cup of tea. Can you imagine if she'd gone that way? She'd have gone straight to the Goblin Castle. It's so important that the first person she meets is the worm. With a scarf. I love the worm. The worm is wearing a scarf. It is a naked worm, but he's wearing a scarf. The little eyes on stalks used to freak me out, though, on the moss. The moss that has eyes used to really freak me out. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I just can't move on from that worm because I love him so much.

31:39I only just recently found out today that the worm is gendered male, which is very upsetting to me because my mother-in-law, if she's listening, that's my mother-in-law. Oh, is she blue? She's got like a little purple hair And she sort of talks like that And she's like Hello Come in for a cup of tea Yeah Come inside Meet the missus But I love as well that like The worm is nice Yeah The worm is nice But the worm is tricky Well the worm doesn't No she's trying to get to the goblin castle I think I think the worm's a little dick Do you think? Oh no I think the worm is really helpful Because if the worm was a dick he would have just told her to keep on going down the straight, never turning.

32:23That's true. So I think he really was trying to help her, but was trying to spare her from Jareth. Yes. No, that's fair enough. I'll give the worm some quarter on that. The benefit of the worm. Thank you. I will not hear slander against worm. Against nameless worm. I remember hearing some, possibly some American podcasters when I was researching this, refer to her, because every kind of creature that Sarah meets, is British that like everyone has a kind of a very like Monty Python sort of Terry Jones because Terry Jones did write this movie so the kind of Monty Python DNA feels very common it's very Monty Python the Holy Grail kind of coded but like everyone kind of he's got that sort of Monty Python kind of yes well and it's like really this is a journey about an American girl going to England where the people are kind but they're not nice filmed in Pinewood Studios yeah Yeah, poor Jennifer Connelly was literally flown to London where she was interacting with nearly all English actors.

33:27Yeah, and it's that real thing where people are just like, these creatures are rude to her, but they are kind of helpful. They're not like outwardly mean. Some of them are scary, the fireys who want to pull her head off. Although again, they don't understand that. Some people's heads don't come off. They're like, what do you mean? There's a cultural difference. Of course it doesn't, Sarah says, which is when I say that all the time to my friends. Of course it doesn't. One of those fireys is Danny Jules John, the cat from Red Dwarf. Oh. And something I learned as well today is that her baby brother, Toby, do you know this already?

34:05Go on. So, okay. The baby brother, Toby, is played by Toby Frood. Oh, okay. And his father is Brian Froude, who is responsible for those kind of fairytale illustrations that all this is based on, the concept work. Oh, wow. Like those kind of fairy, the dark crystal fairies, all that kind of stuff. It's all Brian Froude. So he's kind of the art director of all this. And I'm going to go for it. Oh my God, it's literally a Nepo baby. It really is. It's quite literally a Nepo baby. An actual Nepo baby. But then Hoggle is Brian Henson, right? Or like Brian Henson is one of the roles anyway. so like whenever I'm kind of researching the Disney parks as well and like all the animators it's kind of amazing like how these are kind of family circuses these businesses and like how it's something that's very fascinating to me about the Henson thing in general because if you I'm sure you've watched documentaries on Jim Henson because there's a load of them and they're all very comforting but I'm always struck by like how there are layers of protection around the Henson sort of lore and the Henson estate because not only is everything Jim Henson made owned by Disney but it's also owned by his family who are all in the business so you can often see yourself sort of watching a documentary of William Henson and being like well where's the truth really because there's lots of like and we're moving on moments like the fact that Mrs.

35:20Henson his wife was the original puppeteer and was sort of phased out of the business really early on and I find the kind of Henson world a kind of labyrinth of itself of like kind of mysteries and like hang on we're moving on and like don't go that road goes straight to the castle don't turn that way yeah that way so i do sort of think a lot like is jim henson obviously was the the imagineer to end all imagineers but is there more to the story that we're not hearing everybody in hollywood can be difficult i think it'd be safe to say but i think they're right to be very very protective i think the fact that the henson family have protected kermit and piggy and their creations is really important because otherwise we'd have ended up with a right load of old shit all over.

36:07Just diminishing returns from people who have sold the rights. Like, I mean, look at what's happened to Winnie the Pooh, for example. It's just, yeah, a lot of just naff bedding and stuff. You are right. And like the kind of integrity around the characters is so interesting. Like I spoke to someone who interviewed Kermit the Frog for a podcast once. Nice. The real Kermit. I will not hear that he's not real the real Kermit exactly the real Kermit so it was Helena Hara who does the Empire podcast and she was like she was so excited all day that she was going to interview Kermit the Frog and then the actor sacrilege kids turn off the microphone the actor who plays Kermit came in and he was like listen I've had a really long day of press do you mind if I just sit Kermit up on the table and I'll just talk to you and I won't like animate Kermit and she was like that's fine I would have been so upset I know I'm like yeah of course like yeah it's very physically demanding for you to operate Kermit but also How hard can it be?

37:12That was me if you can't see this I was literally just doing making a little Kermit face with my hand That's some good Kermit ASMR there I like the audios So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays? Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready. What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs? My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is. But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one? We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way. Okay. What if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over?

37:47Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust, Wayfair delivers. There are two types of business owners. those who are busy and those who want to be busy toast is designed for both with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth that's how you turn busy into business toast built for busy um yeah i i love the i don't know i just i just fucking love puppets yeah i love how many of everybody loves a puppet everybody loves puppets and just even that kind of um when she when she solves the riddle of the two doors. Which I still haven't quite wrapped my head around.

38:29And I've had it explained to me so many times. I like that we're in a place where we can admit that we're glad that she solves the riddle, but that we ourselves could not solve the riddle. A group of friends once explained it to me at university when we were having just like a night in and watched Labyrinth. And for about three minutes, I got it. And then when I woke up the next morning, it had gone again. You need to be a little stoned, I think, to get it probably. That would probably help, yeah. But no, she's right. My husband, recently again ran me through it and yeah he he understood okay and again for a minute i was like oh yeah i see it's gone don't you ever feel like i'm i'm very sort of unsporting non-coordinated and so in the role of a fantasy story i should be the person who can therefore solve a riddle and the fact that i can't be sporty or solve a riddle is so upsetting it really is but then i don't understand because if she picked the right door then why does she fall down the hole with the helping hands?

39:26Because one leads to certain death and one leads to something else. So I think she would have It wasn't certain death. Ba-ba-ba. Just being groped several hundred times while you fall down. Did she say down? See, they're really freaky as well. The helping hands are really scary. But it's such a fucking amazing sequence. And it is kind of this reminder that like, oh yeah, puppetry is just hands. Have you ever seen how they did it? No. Oh my God, it's incredible. I've seen pictures. It was, she was on a harness, obviously. And they sort of moved her down a very high vertical tunnel, a bit like the wall from Gladiators, where they had dozens of actors putting their hands through.

40:04And then, yeah, they could just hoist her up and down this wall of hands, basically. It's so fucking cool. Just watching those little faces, the shapes of the hands and everything. We're the helping hands. So good. The fact that there are sort of four sets of hands who are like, you know, characters talking to her during that sequence. And they feel very like distinctive personalities even though they are, there's no like fake eyebrows on them or anything. It's just fingers. It's so clever. It's so clever and so scary. Why, when this film came out, I think it's really important to say it was absolutely savaged.

40:39Yes. Critically and also commercially was a real flop. And still only has about a 50 % in Rotten Tomatoes. What the fuck do people want from a fantasy film? We have talking hands. We have a statue from Yorkshire who says, oh, go on. It's been so long since I've said it. What more do you want? Like, what gubbins is it that you want to see on Netflix? Because I want to see more of that. Like, it really makes you so angry at 80s audiences being like, you were so spoiled. You didn't know what you had. Right? Like, I mean, granted, so it was up against a lot of other stuff. It was up against the Kernans and Dark Crystals and Star Wars, Return of the Jedi had only come out two years before Labyrinth, kind of.

41:22So I suppose it had a lot of fantasy competition. Yeah. And I think also, at the time, it is not what anybody wanted David Bowie to be doing. Yeah. So I honestly think the film was punished a little bit for David Bowie not being what they needed him to be, kind of. I think it was deemed that the ones, the coolest man in rock and roll was now doing kids' films. In a card piece. Yeah, we've got to slam this back down. Like, how dare he do something different, kind of. So tell me about, let's park ourselves in David Bowie for a second, because we've talked about the hands now. Yeah, I think, so it's tricky.

42:01So I did, and I did specifically ahead of coming in today, I looked up the various allegations that he did sleep with minors. Yeah. And it seems really likely that during his heyday, Bowie, in his 30s and 40s, while sleeping with girls who were very young or in fact children and the one who's written about it a lot is laurie maddox and now your dms are going to be full of people defending bowie and saying that laurie maddox made it all up and she's delusional because of course that's what hardcore david bowie fans say people are very insistent about preserving a very specific narrative about him yeah and i think if he was still here now to live through me too i think he would possibly say look i was so out of it i was not checking anybody's passport look at it that way yeah um and i think the lingering sense of it is two middle-aged men listening don't fuck teenage girls a really good way to protect yourself from accidental pedophilia is to just not fuck teenage girls date within your own bracket but then similarly bowie nixed a kiss between Jareth and Sarah, if we believe the legend.

43:12And I think Jennifer Connelly has confirmed that as well, that he knew it was, you know, I think at the time Connelly was 16 and he was 37. Right. And they, yeah, they cut a scripted kiss. Really? Interesting. Thank God. Thank God. I think there is something, obviously there's all that kind of shadow on it, which makes it that bit more uncomfortable. but I also think that you see a lot of reviews of this movie online like very good comedy reviews or whatever about like look at the the Godbees and it's so inappropriate and that kind of thing which is to which I say it is supposed to be inappropriate it is supposed to be weird it's supposed to make you uncomfortable because it's supposed to be reflective of like so much about yes it's a story about growing up and coming of age but I think it's very specifically as well as that thing with girls of like you are expected to go from dolls to boys in this sort of rudderless transition and about this in-between period where you romanticize romance, but you're not ready for what romance means kind of thing.

44:18And Bowie sort of like summing up, and he is perfect casting because he is everything that a teenage girl would have fantasized about at that time, especially if she's kind of alternative and like into sort of other stories about the world. And how scary that is. then like his dick is supposed to be scary right you know 100 and i think that's it she is terrified of him because she's terrified of becoming a woman yeah and and i think that's what he represents and also remember it was filmed in 1985 this is what people looked like somewhat men while wearing makeup granted they probably didn't do upside down eyebrows but yeah i i just like i i would I'm very curious as to whether we are able to tell stories about teenage desire for grown men which are real sticky, problematic more than these girls can either legally or mentally handle and yet real and I feel like when we deal with these stories it's told through the lens of the the inappropriate male desire for the young woman and rarely through the reverse desire, which is kind of confusing and hot and cold.

45:36My first crush, my first experience of what libido feels like as a bodied experience was for a teacher, a male teacher. And I suspect that's probably a very, very common occurrence. Now, we all like to hope that with teachers being professionals, that it's almost it's a it's a way for you to role play what libido feels like in quite a safe space and i think that's what um a character in a book or a film can be really good for all why so many teenage girls develop very real feelings about pop stars yeah you know i was not the right generation for one direction but those kids who were in love with a member of one direction i got it because this is the prototype this feeling this obsession this crush is going to be foundational the blueprint for the rest hopefully of your love life and then you you enjoy the fantasy of it and then when you're older you you enjoy the reality of it which is very different yeah it's always fascinating to me whenever you get these kind of um quote-unquote lolita cases or whatever like where some man has a relationship with an underage girl and the defense that is used is that she either seemed older or that she wanted it or that she pursued him or whatever.

47:01And then the counter to that argument is like, she's a child, how could she want him? The argument isn't whether or not a child is capable of wanting an adult. A child is capable of wanting an adult. they are just not capable of knowing what that means. Yeah. And that's why we have an age of consent. And that's why we have an age of consent. Because we have decided that there is an age at which we can trust a young person to make decisions about their love life. And the difficulty is if you have one, and why does rules change? For if both parties are underage, or if one party is over the age of consent, we have different laws about that.

47:38and that is because in that situation we expect the adult man to recognize the legal situation in a way that you can't expect a 14 year old girl to recognize the legal situation because she's a child whereas you were relying on the adult to recognize hang on we live in a country with laws so it kind of doesn't matter what you feel sometimes i might want to murder people but you know why i don't yeah because of the laws it's kind of crazy to me that i do feel like i know we probably sound like Captain Obvious to listeners but like these are like rhetorics that come up again and again and again.

48:12All the fucking time. And that sort of thing of like a child's inability to know what a man is actually like is the root of that kind of thing, you know. It is a deeply psychological understanding that we have in that law. It seems basic but it is layered and like fascinating but also in stone, you know, the law. But I really want to talk about what their relationship is in this movie and how it's sort of presented to us and how it changes. Because it's like, okay, he takes her brother away from her at her wishes. We are kind of unclear as to what Jareth even wants with her brother. Oh, I don't think he wants Turbie at all.

48:53Although he says that you'll make a very good goblin prince, I think. Yes, he wants to turn him into a goblin after a set amount of time. Do you think all the little goblins are previous siblings that have been stolen? See I would love a bit of that That's so dark though isn't it Yeah Like a thousand babysitters who failed That's really good It's very Princess Mambi in Return to Oz You have the heads Oh you'll be lovely one day Love that fucking movie That's another sort of 80s dark fantasy gem Which also flopped at the time Yeah yeah But has really stood the test of time Fucking great Feat him with an egg An early warning about egg intolerance I'm egg white intolerant So I needed that message That was the message I needed When I needed it Turned to Oz Taught you about egg white intolerance Or I'm the num king Again everybody killing The goblins and nums Yeah So sorry To go back to Jareth Oh yeah Jareth He So it kind of Quite obvious that like The Toby is a device Really But it's like Okay He wants Sarah's trying to get through The labyrinth in order to get Her baby back Her baby brother Her baby brother back Like, Jarrett is trying to prevent her from doing so, but he also wants to be with her.

50:09So, like, what do you think that's about? It's, like, a really interesting, it's very allegorical in art. I wonder if there was a script where he offered her a trade, like, if you stay, I'll let Herbie go or something. But then they had to, presumably everybody involved, although, again, we have very different sort of rules around sort of safeguarding. There's no way a film like Labyrinth could not get made now. or if you did, Jareth would have to be so much closer in age to Sarah for it to fly. There is no way you'd have a 16-year-old girl and 37-year-old man. It just wouldn't happen. But at the time in the 80s, though, so it's a children's film.

50:47We have music. We've got little goblins. We have lovely monsters. but then we know that Jim Henson was aware of the sort of the allegory of you know her being on the cusp of womanhood or maybe it was the director who said it was one of them um so they were aware that this was a film about a young woman leaving childhood behind but they must have also known there's a line there's only so much if jareth can't represent her burgeoning sex drive at least not on the page like a generation of viewers have interpreted that that jareth is meant to be her sexual awakening and i think jareth was a sexual awakening for a lot of people but i think there's something about him turning into an owl and the costume and bowie's performance where i wonder if he just represents the great unknown that you know she has to she has to move towards and then obviously much is made of her devastating final line you have no power over me yeah so is does he represent her mental illness does he represent um her fear of adulthood so in the end she renounces fear yeah like you have no power over me well how do you interpret the the sort of the ballroom scene and the she's going through with her friends Hoggle Ludo and the little night guy Zedidimus Zedidimus Zedidimus that's his name isn't it Zedidimus yeah Zedidimus yeah and Hoggle has been told to give her this like enchanted poison peach thing with Margaret's in it and she takes it and she sort of passes out and trips balls trips balls literally trips balls yes the balls are sent out the crystal balls are sent out from Jared's window which is still my favourite gift on the internet just sending out sending out the little crystal balls and she's in this ballroom where you know it's all very so good you know my wedding my wedding dress was based on that dress no way literally that was the reference I gave to the designer god she looks so fucking beautiful and Jennifer Connolly has seen the video of my first dance because we have a mutual yeah oh that's cool yeah oh um what's your like what's your take on it man well like princess leia in the gold bikini this is the scene where she becomes a woman like she's in basically in a wedding dress or something that could very easily be turned into a wedding dress she's in full glam more hair extensions than anybody has ever had just so How is she lifting her neck with that amount of hair on?

53:42Just stunning and while she still has a sense of childlike wonder, you know, she's at a masquerade ball, everyone is mocking her. It's very hard to interpret that scene as anything else other than him trying to make her fall in love with him. He's trying to bewitch her, I think. Yeah. And they dance. They do dance. And then there's this immediate thing. She's in it and it's so, it is kind of like the most memorable. like it's so strange in a movie that is so chock full of like visual memorable moments with puppetry and hands and props and everything really the bit that sort of feels like the centerpiece and the heart of the film is this odd ballroom scene where there are no puppets really present at all you know and then we go straight from that into this really haunting bit with the junk people or what are they called?

54:31Yes the junk woman the junk woman and she's just kind of walking around humbling around with all this Stuffing her back And like You remember What was the teddy bear called Lancelot Oh yeah the little bear You remember the Bring yourself nice Make yourself pretty And the slippers Yeah Can't leave those behind And there's something It's just It's incredibly like literal Right It's like These kind of being these Two Unfair choices Which is like Well you can't go back Because Like That's a regression And like you can't go back To being a child again And as much as you're gonna to try and cling on to these things of your youth you can't and you just be one of these people who fucking walk around with their trash the rest of their life which yeah these people do exist um and some adults i've just done a little trip to disneyland paris oh and there there is such a thing as a disney adult yes we just covered them for the podcast oh my god amazing yeah i was one of them a few weeks back i was one of them quite recently it's a great holiday to take into being it in the adult yeah i lived it for three days but i'm glad to have left it just outside paris because yeah you have to yeah but you're right sarah is given two choices you can either become a wife or you can stay in your room with all your toys if only there were a third way and and that's kind of the yeah the the the two options that the labyrinth presents to her is that like well both suck like both are scary like one is sort of like redundant and small and kind of claustrophobic and the other is too open and free and sexual and scary because when what is it Jareth says at the end he's like give yourself to me and I will be your slave kind of but there is still this notion that she has to give herself to him you know she has to submit yeah so that to me that whole speech is crazy so they kind of they storm the castle and like I will say that scene is very fucking long yes it really is actually that's the bit that didn't quite work for me as a kid as well when I was watching it this morning I was like making some tea and some toast or whatever I was like is this bit still on?

56:40still running through this very small set very very long just Jennifer Connelly running up and down the same little few stairs several many times and then she kind of has this moment of like I have to go in alone because that's the way things I've done and the kind of showdown and then she's going up and down the Escher printing. The Escher print, yeah. Which I think like is, it really brought me back. I'm more of a 90s kid, but something very twee to me about like how, you know, magic eye books and maze books and like all those things, like optical illusions on paper were such a thing. And like, oh, that's never coming back, is it?

57:16No, probably seems unlikely. I think they tried to bring up magic eye pictures a couple of years ago and it really didn't work. Really hard to sell an eight-year-old today on a magic eye painting. I know you've just got to look at it. Why? What happens? Well, you'll see a dolphin. Sure thing, mom. I'm in an incel chat room right now. Bye. Times have changed. It was a simpler time, more innocent time. A more innocent time when you could just look at a picture for long enough and a ship would arrive. You might see a butterfly. So then they have their final confrontation. And I'm so struck by that whole thing of like, he's like, I've done everything for you.

57:54I've bent time I've done whatever You wanted me to be fearful And you cowered And you were afraid And you were afraid I'm sorry that is fucking hot The whole thing is hot Someone sort of oddly gender bendy Sort of presenting a kind of a sexual trap Like it's fucking fit So I wanted to pitch for Labyrinth 2 a few years back Although it was already well underway And I did see there was a world that had Jared Leto as new Jareth. And it kind of would have been the same thing, although apparently he's also my... There's rumblings about him and young fans as well. And I didn't realize he's in his 50s as well, so actually, no, not okay.

58:37But there's always the acceptable alternative that men think cool and women think are hot. There's always one. Maybe it's Benson Boone at the moment or something. I don't know. There's always one. I guess what confuses me and what interests me is the idea that yes he's created all these like puzzles and obstacles for her but on some level it was because she wanted him to it's like you wanted me to be afraid you want to be afraid of me I've provided this villain narrative for you because you need it you know but then in the end she doesn't because he has no power over her and it's about I think yes she she has to

59:23choose between childhood and adulthood and in a way maybe jareth is trying to trap her there forever maybe this is the thing if she was to stay in the goblin castle because he does say stay with me doesn't he yeah and and she can't but then what's really nice is all the good things from her childhood yeah then say if you ever need us yeah if you ever need us Sarah and they're there so you can have and it's always there and I think that's why you know like some sort of mad Jerry Halliwell I'm always saying you know think about your inner child you know kind of like at the moment I've really gone hard with collecting my my little ponies because I've just got this new office and so I've got all these little ponies running around the shelf and that is for the inner child who was told that I wasn't allowed ponies because I was trans and so it's not like Sarah do it enjoy watching mean girls for the millionth time yes have angel delight i have angel about once a year and remember it's not very good but you know you've got to sometimes feed the past you who liked all those things and i think that's why when when all the little monsters pop out in her bedroom at the end and she has a party with them yeah it's because she has found she didn't need to choose she can become a grown-up while also celebrating the things from her childhood that made her who she is Yeah Aww Aww Lovely film What a lovely film Yeah And outside Jareth watches Yeah Yeah As an owl And then flies on To steal another baby Yeah I do love the idea That all the goblins Are stolen babies Mm-hmm That would be a note from me Yeah Is there any bits of the movie That we haven't spoken about That you're obsessed with?

1:01:02Ludo is lovely Ludo Poor Ludo And again the idea That things that look scary Are actually really lovely Have you seen that bit of footage with Diana and Charles meeting Luden? Yes, yeah, amazing, yeah I love that, I come from Bradford where there is a, I think it's called the National Media Museum now but when I was a child it was the National Museum for Film and Photography and they had a really long running exhibition about how the labyrinth was made including at the time the scene with the fireys with the colour screen overlay was really quite new and watching how the puppeteers danced around with all the, there were so many of them because obviously somebody had to be an arm and somebody had to be a leg and somebody was being a head kind of doing this.

1:01:48And so, yeah, watching, I mean, obviously that is like seeing slightly how the sausage gets made. But as a child, it was really fascinating. And to see, because Ludo is one man, one very uncomfortable man inside a costume, sort of wearing a huge sort of fiberglass frame. and it is it is amazing those those fireys make me so uncomfortable like for everything else in the movie I'm like god this is such an incredible thing and the artistry and whatever but the fireys I'm just like vomit put it away it does look I mean it does look crap now I think I thought it looks crap just that it scares me they need it's difficult isn't it it would be really cool to have like a special edition where they just clean up those little bits I'm not saying that I don't want them to do like what they did in the 90s with the Star Wars films where they put loads of shit cartoon characters over the top of everything.

1:02:44But it would be nice to get a version where the Fiery's didn't look quite so obviously added. We haven't talked very much about the Bog of Eternal Stench. Bog of Eternal Stench, which is the bit where my stepmom turned off because she just doesn't like fart humour. There's something very, I mean, it's very physical. it really you really do feel like you're looking at smell-o-vision yeah and like rectums in the water like it's like they're too flappy I feel like I'm looking at like a water bum hole you know what I mean it's like it's like I am I would have found this so funny as a kid but it makes me physically uncomfortable do you know what I would really love if someone is listening and just has a spare couple of million quid lying around like an immersive labyrinth experience I bet there has been one somewhere because they've done Crystal Maze if you come on if you've done Crystal Maze I want a labyrinth live experience Where you can see the cleaners And the bug of eternal stench And that little funny man With the Like goose on his head I love the man with the goose on his head You're so stimulating me in your head You're so stimulating me in your head With the little change box I fucking love those guys Hoggle, I'm afraid he's not my favourite I just find Hoggle quite irritating and he sucks yeah he's kind of a shit he just fully sucks like he betrays her again and again do you know toxic masculinity with Hoggle she keeps trusting him and she keeps just like nope sorry I told you I am a coward but then but she does see in him she sees to the truth of his character that actually he does want to help and he is good at his core and he does in the end he throws himself on the big robot thing there's something A bit like Male wish fulfilment character About Hoggle You know that sort of Bojack horsemanism Of being like I don't think there's such thing As deep down I think it's just what you do And who is who you are It's like Hoggle There's no such thing as You being good deep down You just suck But he does tell her He's horrible To be fair He kind of doesn't mislead her He is the Bojack horseman Of the Yeah but She has such lovely hair I think Hoggle loves her A little bit as well Yeah Because Jareth does say If she ever kisses you Hoggle I'll make you a prince The prince of a bog of eternal stench Which is then what happens When she does kiss him Yeah Well what do you think about the The sort of like The Wizard of Oz parallels here Like are they like for like In that You know Girl goes on a journey And finds three friends along the way Like are there like I think so yeah I think You forget sort of how Foundational Wizard of Oz was Yeah But then And obviously that came from a very old book, didn't it?

1:05:34But it's also the thing of like, it's like the kind of the Jareth thing makes a bit more sense because it's like she has the confrontation with Jareth and is like, oh, I realise that you kind of are not, you have no power over me. You have no power at all. You're not what I want. I kind of thought I wanted you, but actually I don't. Yeah. Turns out I can solve my own problems. Whereas the Wicked Witch, her motivation is so unclear that we have a whole prequel series where people have filled the gaps about the Wicked Witch of the West. So whereas Jareth is more thought out. Jareth is both the Wicked Witch and the Wizard at the same time, which is like an interesting duality.

1:06:17Yeah, and Dorothy is sexless as well. She's certainly not interested in the Wizard for anything other than his ability to get her home. It is amazing to me how like The Wizard of Oz as a movie just kind of comes apart in the last third. Like if you've watched it again, I watched it again recently after Wicked obviously. I'm about to watch it for my queer film night that I do once a month in Hove. It's called Is It Queer Though? Where we look at a film that is beloved by LGBTQ people and ask, but in what way is it queer? Why has it become such a queer favourite? And so we've done films like Showgirls, The Craft, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

1:06:55especially the next one out is The Wizard of Oz so it'll be interesting to see especially on the back of Wicked which is like some people are really obsessed with Wicked like really obsessed with Wicked have you ever done a movie for that where it's like you truly couldn't come up with an answer being like this is such a queer staple and yet what is queer about it or like what is the one that we deemed to be not queer was Death Becomes Her where we realised actually it's about two women fighting over a very weak man both of them have the only aim of being married to the shit man yeah or being eternally young and beautiful yeah and so beyond it being very very camp we as a group of film fans i think it's usually about 40 of us we couldn't find anything inherently queer about death becomes her huh interesting yeah because they're not like throwing off any narrative are they they're very much like grabbing the patriarchy by both hands and kissing yeah I mean the two female characters end up together in the end but it's still quite an antagonistic and it's not by choice It's just outsized and camp but it's not queer really.

1:08:03Well that's what we've realised all these films have in common that are incredibly camp but we have to be able to separate what is camp from what is queer. Usually where we have been generous and so we decided there is something quite inherently queer about the craft in that it's about these girls finding something within girls that boys cannot provide because the boys in the film are also terrible kind of and so we realized actually there is something quite queer for a teenage girl about realizing that your destiny lies with other women not with boys kind of yeah um and a lot of the films do have an element of found family yeah um so that is often the way to it with if we were to do labyrinth again i'm not sure i think we might struggle to find something inherently queer about it really maybe i mean possibly there is something in sarah's choice that she walks away from what jareth is offering which feels quite patriarchal um but i certainly think this is a film that has more to say about womanhood than it does identity.

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1:10:09I'm interested in how like how many how many sort of I know you've written a lot of novels but like how many of them would you class as being fantasy or uh at least three right yeah so I mean when I started with my YA I started out in sort of like a sort of like a teen horror space yeah um with elements there was one about witchcraft there was a ghost um but then I didn't go fully like fully fledged fantasy until I did How Majesty's Royal Coven which I started writing in the pandemic I'm interested in how this movie specifically has informed your approach to writing magic I think what I've learned is you have to stick to your own rules otherwise you can get yourself into trouble like if you have established that your characters can fly you know you have to kind of you divide how how are they flying you know how are they doing it kind of you do need to be mindful of that um i think what i'm always trying to do is is sort of create like i said at the very top that sort of shared space yeah like i find fantasy worlds the best ones are the ones which feel like you could move to like so i'm a really well put yeah I'm a really big fan of Lee Bardugo who wrote Shadow and Bone I think her world is kind of like sort of Tsarist Russian inspired that feels really like you could go there and I mean I know obviously she is evil but fucking Hogwarts was a really good example of a really well realised fantasy world which is why I think so many queer people are absolutely bereft now that J.K.

1:11:54Rowling is using her voice so dangerously kind of and so with her majesty's royal coven i wanted i wanted to do the same thing i wanted to do something like the labyrinth where you know you the reader could be transported to this secret world where just behind the curtain in manchester there is a government organization of witches because it felt and that's something i like as well i you know don't get me wrong i fucking loved game of thrones yeah but i love love love and it's very much more my jam where you have a normal girl or woman because again i don't want to really tell stories about men where you have a normal girl or woman who finds herself yeah in a heightened reality whether it's bluffing the vampire slayer or sarah in labyrinth um rose tyler in doctor who you know these characters human characters who are swept into a fantasy setting and i think that's why i don't see myself writing a high fantasy novel never say never but i don't think there's certainly not one on the horizon yeah urban fantasy is an interesting space obviously labyrinth isn't an urban fantasy it is kind of a high fantasy but i think what they have in common is that like i think a lot of the appeal of urban fantasy like hmrc is a bit like oh the satisfaction like i always knew something was wrong or different or about this world that I live in something doesn't add up or make sense and the answer is oh there's this kind of complex web of magic and magical systems that are holding it together that you don't even see and now you're peeking behind the curtain that's so delicious yeah because you've been letting on the secret join the secret and then I think what happens in Labyrinth even though it is in a kind of a very high fantasy world is the truth that they're getting at here is that like the thing about the adult world that Sarah is scared of is that like it's contradictory and makes no sense and that all the people she meets in the labyrinth are like it's full of riddles and like and sort of trying to trick her tricking her, lying to her and that is so much about what adulthood is is learning how to use your sort of cynicism and judgment and that's what she learns through the thing it isn't fair as she says many times yeah it's not fair fair tra la la yeah exactly and like I think that has that's sort of the I don't know I've heard that kind of links those two things maybe.

1:14:16Oh, it's so good. It's so good. And how lucky we are to do our job. I know. Like how lucky are we to do our job? Something I just think a lot about you is that I think you and I have the most similar careers. We really do. We have like, no one is talking about this. We have the same career. And do you know what it is? It's because we have worked and worked and worked our butts off and we've hustled on side hustles. Side hustles on side hustles. So for anyone who isn't keeping score, me and Juno are both fantasy authors. We both are Sex and the City podcasters and we both write TV. Is there anything else I'm missing?

1:14:51We're both gorgeous. But beautiful, really good, great laugh, great value on a panel. Excellent panel value as well. Yes, I feel like we've done most of our interactions. Panel value. But I just think a slightly forward-facing modern kind of author. I think I knew really early on that I could not be Donna Tartt because I would be financially ruined. The notion, there was never an option for me to write one book every 10 years. And I don't think we're alone. I think there's people like Catherine Doyle, Katie Webber, Louise O 'Neill, authors who are, you know, we're working really, really hard because we've chosen this as a career.

1:15:35We are full-time writers, whether or not we're writing content or novels, scripts. And in order to do that, we've said yes. we are writers who have said yes to opportunities that have come our way and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We're multi-hyphenates. I'm so glad that we're talking about this even though we're running low on time but like I'm so curious about this conversation specifically because I feel like it's a little bit of an elephant in the room, right? That like fantasy is like a protected genre. We're not doing it right somehow. Yeah, sort of, yeah. like that the proper way for us to do this is to sort of be mysterious and live in Utah or something and you know and like have this sort of very serious genre book kind of thing that exists in a series of 15 and you don't see us and when you do it's only at a convention and sometimes I feel like I love writing fantasy I love writing magic I love inventing things I love engaging with the readership or whatever, but by virtue of also being like a forward-facing person, it's like, can people's minds only contain so much for you that like, will they be able to believe that you can make up these huge worlds with magical systems if they also know what your dog looks like and your husband looks like and your opinions on Sex and the City?

1:16:57And every time I look at your career, I'm like, well, they're believing I'm due now, so they'll believe it on me as well. I mean, I hope so. I mean, like you said, I do, I also suffer with kind of imposter syndrome that like i again i should be that person sort of who does just write one book every six years and it's part of a long-running series and i'll teach in my spare time and i'll yeah i'll lecture or something i'll make my life smaller and whatever yeah so yeah i feel and as well there is potentially the argument i've confused my own brand by by dipping my toes into more than one thing i mean throwing that the fact i'm part of a cabaret troupe as well so you know so it is complicated but I like to think that my readers recognize that they can do a lot that they can contain multitudes as well that you don't just have to do one thing and the notion now in in 2025 that you would have one job for the the rest of your life is quite quaint I think yeah um I like I like being able to do it all but I mean I have realized now at my big age that what I love doing and what I'm good at is the writing.

1:18:06And I think actually I'm not looking for any more acting roles. I dipped my toe a little bit and didn't enjoy it. And yeah, I know what it is I want to do. And that is I'm happiest when I'm writing. So that's what I'll keep doing. But I think it's interesting watching what people know me for. And it's about 50-50. It can be destabilising, right? It can really throw you through a loop. It's nice when people know your name, but it's also, you know, the frustration thing of like people aren't running kind of a New York Times sort of obituary folder on you at all times. And they have every time you do something, they add it to the kind of the pile of news clippings.

1:18:45It's like it can be hard to be promoting one thing one year and then something completely different the next year and not expect people to have some kind of whiplash. But then you sort of do feel, I don't know, I feel intellectually insecure about it all the time. And it's really refreshing to talk to people who are on same boat. It's a funny one. And I think, I'll tell you, I think Holly Bond's in a similar situation as well. I think, and you'll notice all these people we've talked about are women. So it's almost like we're not being Margaret Atwood enough. We're just not being Margaret Atwood.

1:19:19And I wonder if it's, well, because I'm writing quite a commercial space as well. Although, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for when I have won awards. And we both wrote YA, which nobody respects YA in children's books at all. So I think we've kind of travelled on the same sort of Dorothy Gale tornado. Because I think I've realised as well that I can't give a shit anymore if people sort of respect my work. Yeah. As long as people enjoy it. As long as people enjoy it, I don't care. Do you know, I'm so glad that we've had this sort of bleeding of our sores a bit. I feel slightly more sane having had this conversation.

1:19:57Me too, because I feel like a fucking dummy all the time. I feel like a fraud all the time. And like, it's crazy that you would feel that intensely about like making up magical things. But I honestly do sometimes. But then I have to think about Labyrinth, right? Which is that like people wanted Jim Henson to make Sesame Street for the rest of his fucking life. Yeah. And he did so much fucking mental shit. And like, you look at all the, you look at the Dark Crystal, you look at Labyrinth, you look at all these things that he did, you know, in between the Muppets and all these projects. And everyone thought they were fucking mental.

1:20:28They were all panned. And then they all have like t-shirts, franchises, like people making video essays about them 30, 40 years later. And like I find that artistic bravery so inspiring and like such a lodestar, do you know what I mean? It's such a thing to point myself towards. And like it really makes me less mad. It's that thing, it's that Jerk in Friends, isn't it? Which is what does Rachel say her favourite film is? And what is her actual favourite film? And it's Weekend at Bernie's. and actually I hope you know the things that I love all those films I mentioned The Craft, Clueless, Labyrinth, Heathers you know these are not pieces of high art but these are things which made me who I am as a writer I owe as much to Kevin Williamson and Joss Whedon as I do you know to you know the fact that yeah I did you know study Shakespeare in school and inspect calls and those things are hugely influential as well but you know I hope and I think within genre within fantasy and horror you can create things that people really really love and I think that's that's I'm happy doing that and if somebody is still talking about something I've written in 40 years time even if they're sort of saying oh my god it looks naff or whatever or oh it's dated which yes we can all agree Labyrinth has dated but I really hope that something will endure in the same way that Labyrinth has me too, I hope that for us both thank you Gina Dolza thank you for having me anytime

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