Sen2mental Garbage: Addams Family Values with Sarah Maria Griffin

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0:37Sentimental Garbage Host: Hello and welcome to Sen 2 Mental Garbage, a season of sequels, comebacks and second chances. My name is Caroline O'Donoghue and I'm just like any woman trying to have it all. Only, I wish I had more time to seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade. And joining me is a woman who can forgive almost anything except pastels. It's Sarah Maria Griffin.

0:57Sarah Maria Griffin: Hi Caroline. Hi! What a joy to be joining you in the great hot topic of the soul.

1:04Sentimental Garbage Host: The great hot topic of the soul, the Addams Family.

1:13Sentimental Garbage Host: So a little bit of background for the listeners who haven't really heard from me with any consistency for a while. Because, you know, this itself is a comeback. I have not put out episodes with any regularity since December of last year for our Friends miniseries.

1:28Sarah Maria Griffin: Was that a whole year?

1:29Sentimental Garbage Host: It's almost a whole year. I mean, yeah, we're coming into, this is going to be our Halloween episode that we're debuting back on. And we're quite literally raising the dead.

1:36Sarah Maria Griffin: Yeah, we're shaking them up out the grave and getting ready to go into a brand new era. How exciting.

1:42Sentimental Garbage Host: It's so exciting. And like, I really like doing these little mini series because I get to really, like one of my favourite things about running this podcast for as long as I have, and it's been like eight years now and I think you've been on every season. Isn't that sweet? And we met on a podcast, on your old podcast, Juvenalia.

1:58Sarah Maria Griffin: A whip fast episode about Frasier where Caroline and I met for the first time and spoke at a thousand miles an hour and increasing. It's a beautiful audio relic. It is.

2:10Sentimental Garbage Host: And it was my first ever podcast and I just got the bug for it ever since. But what I love about doing these mini series within Sentimental Garbage is that like I get to look back. it's like when I'm not doing the podcast the thing I miss the most more than like interaction and more than getting to be noticed in pubs sometimes by cool girls who overhear your

2:30Sarah Maria Griffin: voice like a siren call across the pints it's so class like this absolutely everything class that

2:37Sentimental Garbage Host: is you know that is running a podcast there's almost no downsides particularly because I don't film this but like the classist thing of all is like I have this scrapbook of conversations and And within that scrapbook are the ideas I was interested in at the time. I can go back to 2020 and find exactly what I was interested in that moment in time. And it becomes like a diary of ideas and a diary of friendships. And that's actually what I value the most about it. And right now I'm in this space in my life where I'm coming back with this podcast. I'm currently writing a sequel to my fantasy novel Skip Shock.

3:10Sentimental Garbage Host: And sequels are their own sort of literary thing that are hard to crack. and I'm also you know I just filmed season one of a tv show I'm trying to write a season two uh channel four if you want to give us the green light on that that'd be lovely and like I'm just kind of in this world of like doing things for a second time and feeling a bit reborn and renewed by things simultaneously to a cultural context where so much of all of our culture seems to be rehashes and so much of that is depressing to us like I would not touch that Practical Magic 2 movie with a fucking barge pole. It's from a distance haunted.

3:50Sarah Maria Griffin: Chilling. Not fun haunted. No, no, no. Chilling in a way that makes me feel like something has gone very badly wrong over the cauldron. And I think what's interesting about going, about these seasons of sentimental garbage, and especially about this season of sequels, is that it also acts as a syllabus. Because the things that you're writing and making at the moment are in this second part of a story space. So as you go through all of these films and other pop culture objects that are sequels, it's a study, right? You're meeting what the sequel is every time. You're looking at when it bangs, it really bangs because there are some amazing ones.

4:25Sarah Maria Griffin: Even though we live in the season of the dark reboot. My God, there were some great part twos. There really were.

4:31Sentimental Garbage Host: And like when you suggested The Adam's Family to me as a place to start this season of sequels and comebacks and everything, it is just the most perfect topic because not only do I adore these films and it had been a hot minute since I had looked at The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values they've been in the culture for far longer than any of us realise like Morticia Addams first was the first Addams to ever appear in print and she appeared in a 1938 New Yorker cartoon by the cartoonist Charles Addams and I could literally talk about this all day I've been having the best week just researching this like crazy lore and the first cartoon she didn't have a name yet but the first cartoon she appeared in she's looking stunning you know black hair rail thin in her massive Victorian house and she's speaking to a door to door vacuum salesman and she says nothing there's this long kind of bit of dialogue and he's like well Mrs Adams this is da da da this is like you know the Hoover-O-Matic 9000

5:30Sarah Maria Griffin: yeah it's all that kind of shit

5:31Sentimental Garbage Host: exactly exactly and her house is just Victorian and covered in cobwebs and she's just looking at him like who the fuck are you? And that was the birth of Morticia Adams. She was the first Adams and then like the whole cast of characters kind of emerged in decades through there.

5:48Sarah Maria Griffin: It's amazing that she's almost and kind of appropriate in her character that she's almost 100 years old. Yeah. Like that stoic snatched goth. She feels immortal and in a way she's approaching an immortality now in that 100 years of Morticia. Isn't that amazing?

6:05Sentimental Garbage Host: It is amazing And I find what's so amazing about it as well is that like, when you look into Charles Adams himself, there are so many people who have been like, oh, was he a crazy goth? Was he having picnics in graveyards or whatever? And he was for press. You got to sell the comic books somehow, man.

6:22Sarah Maria Griffin: You got to get some action around it. Build a mythos. Build your brand, Charles.

6:27Sentimental Garbage Host: Charles was building the brand. I can't wait to talk about him a bit more later because there's loads of fun stuff there. Like he just loved goths and ladies. And to him, it just kind of wasn't that deep. He was just like, I just sort of enjoyed this Halloween-y aesthetic, but everyone else found it that deep. And that's what I'm more interested in. Like these, like, you know, Alfred Hitchcock called to his house and unannounced and was just like, I had to meet you, you know. And like the thing of that, like, first impression that Morticia Adams vacuum cleaner moment, when the vacuum cleaner came along and when like modern technology, household technology came along, there was this idea that like it was supposed to make life easier for women Ah but we all know what happened there The standard for cleanliness just raised Yeah It's like when they introduced

7:12Sarah Maria Griffin: the electric whisk suddenly angel food cake Yes became deeply popular It's like this curse you know every time technology gets a little bit smarter the goals and the standards that you have to achieve just get worse and worse until Exactly until now wherever we live now Until now when we have Practical Magic 2

7:29Sentimental Garbage Host: and the cast of actresses who God love them can't move their fucking faces because we have raised the standard on beauty to a place where people can't move anymore.

7:36Sarah Maria Griffin: And they were beautiful then and the curiosity that I have is what maybe they would have looked like now had they just, had things not gone the way they are. But that's literally not how, it's not how the world works from the vacuum cleaner all the way up to whatever they're doing to those sweet ladies' faces. There is no technology that we won't beat with weird standards. More technology and more standards.

7:59Sentimental Garbage Host: The Addams family, therefore her in this you know massive house filled with cobwebs and everything looking at it and being like um no is kind of like what it as a franchise is all about it's a thesis statement yeah yeah it's kind of like just like we're going to be this thing that exists outside of that and we're going to expose how silly and fake and strange the quote-unquote normal world is by constantly pointing out how crazy it is by ourselves being crazier. Like to go to the end of the Addams Family values when the kids put on their play and like you're kind of made to see through Wednesday's monologue and Pugsley in a turkey costume saying, eat me.

8:43Sentimental Garbage Host: They're like, oh, the world we live in is gross. It is horrific. That's the point of the Addams Family. They're pointing out what about the world is already a fabrication and like a disgusting one.

8:53Sarah Maria Griffin: And they always have been. There's this if it's starting back in the 1930s and in the early 90s, if it's calling this stark, comical, bleak attention to the great lore of Thanksgiving, there is a an edge to the satire that actually it works every time because we're always on their side. We love them and they love each other. You know, that's what makes them so enjoyable to watch is that as a family unit, they speak this kind of conferred language to each other. They understand, they're at play with each other all the time. The fantasy and the magic and the cartoonishness that they live in is always undermined by or undercut by just tenderness.

9:33Sarah Maria Griffin: You know, they like each other. They love each other. And that's in some ways the great call out of the kind of American family ideals is, but do any of you like each other?

9:44Sentimental Garbage Host: Right, exactly.

9:46Sarah Maria Griffin: And Pugsley and Wednesday do spend an awful lot of time trying to exert violence onto each other. But in a way that feels very kind of measured and pleasant and enthusiastically participated in by both of them. You know, they're in a way their life is the dream life. They're a gorgeous, big, bountiful family who all like each other and love each other and have a great time. And somehow that's the opposite of what the rest of the world kind of does. In their great dark castle, they're calling attention to something.

10:13Sentimental Garbage Host: It's this inversion thing, right? It's like in the kind of the classic American family that was then kind of shown on 1960s sitcom, like a post-war sitcom era.

10:23Sarah Maria Griffin: I Love Lucy. Exactly.

10:25Sentimental Garbage Host: Of that kind of gentle, zany, but very conservative values.

10:29Sarah Maria Griffin: And even Bewitched, you know, which is also essentially a magical sitcom about a magical witch who marries into a family. there is a wholesomeness and a kind of a traditionality to it right whereas the Addams are actively subversive at all times

10:43Sentimental Garbage Host: and I was thinking about this a lot I was thinking about Bewitched as well because it would be that like her husband whoever the fuck would go off to work all day and she'd get into some kind of mayhem in trying to be a normal housewife but she couldn't she can't because she's a witch right but I think a huge part of what makes the Addams family click Gomez don't have no fucking job no

11:03Sarah Maria Griffin: Oh, no one here is working. No one here is working. There is unknown treasure and wealth, which is what the two kind of 90s films are about, is the Adam's fortune. But they just kind of moon around and go to auctions and give money away to charity. And maybe Morticia might throw a seance from time to time. I believe that's her family trade. But there's not a hunger or a capital. They're kind of just knocking around their house doing weird stuff together. They're not striving.

11:30Sentimental Garbage Host: No. They're not trying to be anything but themselves because they don't need to because they're wealthy. And it's like, oh, this is the dream of wealth, actually, is to be yourself. When so often we see any kind of wealthy character is like the striving is to some kind of impossible goal of more power and more money. They're good. Yeah.

11:49Sarah Maria Griffin: And that's really exciting. And really, again, more currently, a kind of a nice parable. It's like, but what if you did have all the money and then you just chilled out with your family and had a nice time with your kids and wife?

11:58Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah, and sort of pursued grotesque hobbies. And weird sex.

12:03Sarah Maria Griffin: And weird sex. What if you just got really into knife throwing because your wife thought it was hot? That's what you should do with your millions. You shouldn't go out and start farming for more. You should just, you know.

12:13Sentimental Garbage Host: Just squander your aristocratic inherited wealth. Glamorously.

12:17Sarah Maria Griffin: Glamorously. With your beautiful wife and loving children. And your staff. Like the Addams Family House is a really interesting and fabulous place. because it has all of these compartments and layers and there's a dungeon and there's a swamp. There are endless bedrooms. The wallpaper continues to change throughout Addams Family Values. All the time the wallpaper is changing. Oh, I didn't notice that. There's a real, everything we have is here. What would we want for impressing the neighbours? You know, we can piss them off sometimes, but we're not here to keep up with the Joneses. We're here to be the Addamses.

12:51Sarah Maria Griffin: Everything in our household is us. And I think really the kind of magic of it is that they have enough. They have more than enough. Obviously, they're comically wealthy. They have vaults and vaults of doubloons. But there is a kind of a satisfaction to how they live. And they're pleased with each other and they're pleased with themselves. And that's what makes them so inviting. That's what makes being in Adams such a thrilling thing. Because there's lots of them. It's not just the kind of central family that we see. There's all these cousins and various members of the squadron, all of whom are strange and different and unusual.

13:23Sarah Maria Griffin: but I think that while they are critiquing the great American family their family is enormous too but it's made up of all sorts of different people that all are kind of I wouldn't quite say being true to themselves but they're all outsiders in some way who belong together and that's what I think the glitter in it is really

13:44Sentimental Garbage Host: Right, because it kind of zoned out you can be like, okay, the Addams family they're like a bunch of goths and monsters and that's the thing, right? But actually, the reason why, like, from the moment these were created, they've never really been out of the consensus. Right. Because we go from the cartoons to the black and white sitcom of the 1960s. Then it becomes the movies again. There was a while when it was a musical. It's the best selling pinball machine of all time. It is.

14:10Sarah Maria Griffin: There's very few pinball machines in the world in terms of designs. But the Addams Family one is one you will see. It is one of the most popular ones. I've seen it many, many times. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a, because their aesthetic is so pleasing. And the thing is, I think if you, if you didn't look closely, you might think that these are Tim Burton movies, right? Because they have that sweeping Elfman-esque score. They're about goths. They're very un-Burton. They're very unlike a lot of those other kind of goth movies of the early 90s. Not that they're not stylized, but they. They're a lot funnier.

14:41Sarah Maria Griffin: They're a lot funnier. They're a lot sillier. Their tongue is always firmly in their cheek and they move along at a clip. You know, they're not kind of mooning around looking at horizons and kind of they're not atmospheric, I would say. They're kind of plotty nearly. They are. You know, and I think that that is probably another contributing factor to why they're so popular is that the stories bang on pretty fast. There's a lot happening. The scenes are very short. And then they reappear again. Yeah, the musical is still rolling and it's still a big thing.

15:09Sentimental Garbage Host: They were horrible cartoons a few years ago.

15:11Sarah Maria Griffin: Yeah, they were very. Ugly cartoons. Ugly, unpleasant sort of flash media looking ones. and then there were 3D ones as well and now there's Wednesday which Burton has finally gotten his little tendrils into. Which I shan't be looking at. Oh, I don't observe. I don't observe.

15:25Sentimental Garbage Host: None of my business.

15:26Sarah Maria Griffin: None of my business. No way. That would have gotten me like a bear trap when I was 18. That would have been exactly my cup of tea when I was literally 20 years younger but I'm glad that the next generation of baby gots are finding solace in Wednesday Addams. Delighted for them. You won't be hearing about it

15:44Sentimental Garbage Host: on this podcast. Certainly not.

15:45Sarah Maria Griffin: No, thank you.

15:46Sentimental Garbage Host: So that's a little bit of a slice of the eternal appeal of The Addams. What about The Addams Family Values makes it what you correctly pitched as the perfect sequel?

15:57Sarah Maria Griffin: You know, I think The Addams Family Values has been in the ether among millennials with a capital M for a minute because it is infinitely gifable. Specifically, Debbie Jalinski.

16:07Sentimental Garbage Host: Debbie Jalinski, best Joan Cusack has ever looked. Oh my God, let her be hot. Please, God. Fucking gorgeous.

16:13Sarah Maria Griffin: They never let her be hot. Ever. Everything she was in, she was always sort of stuffy and a little bit overrun and wearing glasses of some description. But my God, what a bombshell. They don't make them, they don't let them look like that anymore. You know, like she's so fabulous and her features are so huge. And there are these little vignettes that run through the Addams Family values. And a lot of the dialogue is also written in this sort of comic book style, right? That there are these one-liners, two-liners, quips. It's a very quippy script. But what that quippiness lends itself to is GIFs, is memes, is screenshots.

16:52Sentimental Garbage Host: So true.

16:53Sarah Maria Griffin: Right. And you have this polar visual difference between Joan Cusack and Angelica Houston, the goth and the Barbie. There's a way that that asymmetry can move through the internet that's really pleasing as well as nostalgic. So I think no one ever really forgot Debbie Jolinski. No one ever really forgot the Addams Family values. but when you go back into it my god it's rewarding it is such a banger of a film it really it goes and it goes and it goes

17:18Sentimental Garbage Host: So I've watched both of them both of the 90s movies as did you and I've been as you say absorbing them through clips and memes and whatever and I think the main ones that come up is like all of that I can forgive but Debbie Pastels

17:32Sarah Maria Griffin: or Debbie sitting in the car as the McMansion explodes in the background you know or the I wanted a a Malibu, or I wanted a ballerina Barbie and they get me what? Malibu Barbie. Malibu Barbie. Oh God, her voice is delicious, isn't it? So crispy. She's a real crispy voice. Crispy. So there's all these, yeah, infinitely shareable snippets that I think we've remembered it through. And I was a little bit afraid and I had watched it recently when I was living in San Francisco. I hand wrote a letter to my friend Helena while I was sitting down smoking a joint and watched all of the Addams Family Values and wrote it as I watched it.

18:08Sarah Maria Griffin: And I sent her this letter as a gift and it was As in you were down

18:11Sentimental Garbage Host: the dialogue?

18:11Sarah Maria Griffin: Yeah, no just with my observations of it Oh my god So you've recorded

18:15Sentimental Garbage Host: this podcast already but longhand

18:17Sarah Maria Griffin: Longhand 10 years ago and I really treasured that experience if that letter exists somewhere as some sort of a fun little relic but I have revisited it in the last 10 years but you do I do often feel very nervous going back watching things from the 90s they don't often age well however I can very warmly say The Addams Family Values was ahead of its time and remains incredible like through and through.

18:40Sentimental Garbage Host: And you know why I think that is actually is the like why you don't get that sour feeling because there's certainly like this is right up to the edge of decency in terms of family viewing. Like the Addams is blue. Yeah it's blue.

18:52Sarah Maria Griffin: It's a sex comedy right?

18:53Sentimental Garbage Host: Both of them are sex comedies because both of them are about Fester trying to fuck. God love him.

18:59Sarah Maria Griffin: Incredible face on Christopher Lloyd as well. My God what an actor. Like you do we do a lot of talking about Jim Carrey being the kind of face of the 90s and the face of freaks but my God Christopher Lloyd at Sunface, didn't he? He's cartoonish and he's appalling and he's a fantastic character but he's the least sexy person in that house. Oh my God. God help him.

19:18Sentimental Garbage Host: You cannot, like when you see him come out of the bathroom on his honeymoon night and you're like, Debbie Jalinski has failed to kill him because he's effectively the Rasputin of the Adams and can't be killed. And you just like, even though you know she's the evil character and we love Fester and he's our guy, you're like, oh God, love her.

19:35Sarah Maria Griffin: There's a moment where he like plonks his head into her lap and looks up at her and I, oh my god my god

19:41Sentimental Garbage Host: he's just like a kind of like a chubby Nosferatu yeah

19:44Sarah Maria Griffin: and he's I think it's part of his delivery his physicality he's and I think there's so much gorgeous practical effects in these films very little CGI probably a little bit around the edges but his costuming is great he's just horrendous the way it's built up his shoulders are past his ears yeah and his teeth all of their teeth are stained in a really interesting way but his teeth are really interesting and his eyes like they just they make him look as though he is from he has been killed a million times and he just keeps coming back you know he has a he has a real grotesquery to him and yeah the story of I guess both of them is what do we do with Uncle Fester and I think narratively that's really interesting because we have to introducing discord to the kind of BDSM paradise of Gomez and Morticia I don't want to know about, they don't have problems they love each other.

20:30Sentimental Garbage Host: They don't have problems. They love each other

20:31Sarah Maria Griffin: they can't simply, no and then Pugsley and Wednesday are working out their sibling rivalry. But you can't make those stakes too high.

20:40Sentimental Garbage Host: You can't have it like, oh, now Pugsley's in hospital with a broken tailbone. Like, no, don't want that. No, no, no.

20:46Sarah Maria Griffin: And so everyone, and then even Lurch and Nana, like they all exist in a particular safe realm. But Fester's this nice little wild card. Because while he's technically part of the Addams family, he also doesn't threaten the stability of the magic of Gomez and Morticia. You know, he's a really helpful problem to have. on a story level. You know, he can introduce chaos like Debbie and still remain part of the unit without threatening the ground that we stand on.

21:15Sentimental Garbage Host: Because all he wants in The Addams Family Values is he just wants what Gomez and Morticia have.

21:20Sarah Maria Griffin: Who doesn't? I mean, like, what an idealistic relationship. What a magical thing to be like. And this, I was actually looking this up specifically because I'm getting, I think we're all getting to that age now where we're kind of going, I am older than the parents in The Rugrats. Yeah. I tell you I'm not older than Morticia Adams

21:37Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh that feels great

21:39Sarah Maria Griffin: She's around our age It's delicious It's great Looking fantastic Looking like a person You know She does not look like a person I mean she looks more like a person Than the Gang of Practical Magic 2 By far I take whatever they were doing To Angelica Houston's face Over the other thing But She's 40 odd in the second one You know So Yeah their relationship is gorgeous And blossoming and changing They have a baby Yeah they're ticking over And of course Vester is like I want a slice of that you know

22:06Sentimental Garbage Host: the scene that I was like I cannot believe they just did that in a children's film was like he was like I'm going to try and do my best Christopher Lloyd as Vester impression but I've never debuted it before so I want everyone to be kind

22:16Sarah Maria Griffin: I'm with you in this space okay I will hold that

22:19Sentimental Garbage Host: because I was trying to I was looking at him so intently during these viewings of being like how did he come up with this performance because it's not preluded in the sitcoms or the cartoon like in the sitcoms he doesn't really have like this crazy voice he's kind of a bit fey but like he's not like super he's like he's sort of like it's like he's like having a panic attack while also like coming down off antibiotics or something. It's like crazy oh come on! There's a touch of the abominable snowman about him isn't there? Yeah it's fucking mad it's such a like how do you even maintain that performance across the several weeks and months it takes to make a film it's like it must be crazy things to your vocal cords.

23:01Sarah Maria Griffin: And it is so funny because it's so hard and stark against the kind of the Lothario sexual energy of fucking Gomez and the absolute stillness of Morticia. Yeah. He's like he's got sort of like a goblin. Yeah. And he kind of ambles around with his big shoulders.

23:20Sentimental Garbage Host: Every single consonant is just like overpronounced and forced with teeth. And he's like confessing to Gomez that he wants wants a partner or whatever and he thinks that it might be Debbie Jelinski obviously she's stunning and he's like I've seen what you and Morticia have through keyholes

23:42Sarah Maria Griffin: through keyholes and listen through the walls and he's like I want what you have

23:46Sentimental Garbage Host: and Gomez says oh old man you're finally growing up you know you're not alone you have thing and then Gomez then faster says that's not enough

23:57Sarah Maria Griffin: I mean it's not enough it's the implication that he's making ping toss him off absolutely it is I don't think that's an implication I don't think that's subtext that's text that's text man that's text Thing by the way is a disembodied hand I hope you're all on the same page he's just a happy little I love Thing I love Thing

24:14Sentimental Garbage Host: there's nothing that Thing does that doesn't make me laugh

24:16Sarah Maria Griffin: he's brilliant opening up on the roller skate giving it 90 the roller skate which is Schrodinger is it it's Chekhov's roller skate in Adam Savly Valley which comes in it comes back in the final scene the roller skate that we meet in the opening scene but yeah Thing is is just one of the kind of accoutrement of the Addams family but he's definitely he's definitely partied down with Gomez and Morticia who knows what his relationship is like to Lurch I'm assuming that thing is a he I feel like they're referring to things as he they refer to thing as a he in and around I think he's fucked every adult in that house absolutely he has why wouldn't you if I was a disembodied hand what do you think I'd be fucking doing do you know what I mean it's part of the part of the ghosty mystery I'm sure every monster in that house is fucked surely surely that's the except Grandma and Lerner Oh absolutely I'd say that's a lovely relationship actually Yeah I think that's really sweet Find yourself a nice tall man In your old age grandma My god

25:09Sentimental Garbage Host: Grandma and Lurch Are every woman and her boyfriend That you meet at a book and event It's like Some mental woman Who's read too much And her silent boyfriend

25:20Sarah Maria Griffin: And you kind of go Is he five foot Is he six foot six Yeah he's six foot six And do they speak at all No no not really not really and she's got 18 pounds I'm describing myself here she's got 18 pounds of hair and it's like dressed like Stevie Nicks like absolutely like this we know these people you know we are these people so yeah there is an there's an outsider in his defester because he's he can get down with thing but that's about that's about it only because thing is only a hand you know and there's a sort of a like I think it's said at one point I think Debbie says to Gomez it's like you kept him a child and I made him a man

26:02Sentimental Garbage Host: oh yeah and there's this

26:03Sarah Maria Griffin: dark sibling rivalry I mean it's they adore each other as it's established in the first Alamos family movie Gomez and Fester but there is definitely a kind of infantilisation there or something and this is a bit of a story essentially of of Fester blossoming into a disgusting flower you know like

26:22Sentimental Garbage Host: so he can finally be the man he needs to be when he meets dementia

26:25Sarah Maria Griffin: oh at the final at the final

26:28Sentimental Garbage Host: it means

26:29Sarah Maria Griffin: well it's a beautiful name it means to go insane he says I'm Fester it means to rot and I was like God we all have our half don't we it's actually very nice for every pot of lid every pot of lid a disgusting lid yeah and they match perfectly and I think that they're yeah so that's kind of the the how do you solve a problem like Uncle Fester is a really helpful kind of narrative device for them you know because it doesn't threaten the stability of the household now Debbie in some ways threatens the stability of the household because she kind of evacuates the children off to Camp Chippewa. And that's their kind of side, the B-plot side quest that they go off on and face the world.

27:03Sarah Maria Griffin: The children are almost not in the first film at all. Which I think is correct. Yeah. Like, they're accoutrements, you know?

27:12Sentimental Garbage Host: Like, even when I was a child watching The Animus Family, when I was Wednesday's age, I had no interest in her. It was all about Morticia for me. And Debbie. And Debbie.

27:22Sarah Maria Griffin: Yeah, yeah.

27:22Sentimental Garbage Host: Because what's so great about them, about setting her up as, like, the antagonist, is that she is Morticia. She's like an inverse of Morticia. And this is the other thing, sorry, to go back to a point I forgot to make earlier on when we talked about the humour in The Addams Family, dating or not dating, even though a lot of the material is really sexual. And you might, if you saw it on paper, question whether you'd show an eight-year-old it. Because it's like, oh, this is like... But first of all, they wouldn't get it. and second of all it never feels remember we were texting at night we were like is Gomez in the Epstein files like that scene where Fester's bachelor party and they accidentally cook the stripper me and Kerry

28:06Sarah Maria Griffin: sat there last night watching it and kind of going did they just they just kill a woman they just killed a woman in the cake and then all cheers and kept the party rolling

28:15Sentimental Garbage Host: the way it's so brilliantly done by Raoul Julia where he like opens the cake and genuine concern and like oh god he has a great face as well doesn't he he's amazing and he goes that poor girl closes the cake c 'est la vie

28:29Sarah Maria Griffin: c 'est la vie and that's how you operate with absurdity right

28:31Sentimental Garbage Host: see that's an Epstein level joke right that's like that shit was happening on the island but I will not put Gomez in the Epstein file because he is kind because he's kind and he's a family man he's a family man and he's kind as are indeed all the Adams their humour doesn't date because they're not nasty

28:48Sarah Maria Griffin: it's not cruel it's not pointed in a bad direction and it's I think because it's operating in this comic book space, right? You can't. And look, I was raised in the Tumblr minds. You know, I am a point shoe wearing Tumblrina. I can discourse you until the end of the earth and I will. However, I just think something like the Addams Family and Addams Family Values is operating in a really playful space. It's not reproducing discourses. It's playing, right? I mean, you could sit there and go, I can't believe they tried to guillotine the baby. I can't believe they dressed that baby up as Marie Antoinette and tried to guillotine him.

29:25Sarah Maria Griffin: You can take it to that place if you want to. But I feel like there is a lightness that all of it is handled with. And a comic book strip lightness that it's all handled with that absolves a lot of it. And I don't think you could do gags like that today. And I'm not sure what way they're doing the Addams Family now with the sort of... Sick comedy. I somewhat doubt it still is. But I think as a time capsule in 1993, I think it's really, really holds up. wouldn't change a frame of it.

29:53Sentimental Garbage Host: No, it's perfect. It's delicious. And I think as well, what's so delicious about it, what's been lovely for me this week is I was sort of spent all week, you know, in between things, just reading about like Charles Adams and looking at the various archival, I must have scrolled through 100 comics, you know, of things that have been lovingly scanned to the internet. And like there are hundreds more, but so much of that house and so much of the films are direct replicas of what was put. Like for example, the opening scene in the first Addams Family movie is Christmas carolers singing at the Addams Family home and then you pan up very slowly to the top of this Victorian mansion and they're pouring boiling oil on them.

30:31Sentimental Garbage Host: That is like an iconic cartoon strip. There's a scene in Pugsley's bedroom, in the kids' bedroom, where they have stolen stop signs. That's from the comic strips. Like it's all referenced and you can just imagine the art department for that movie just having a room plastered with that stuff and like, what can we take and what can we take because the like reference material is just so deep and you can tell how in love with its with its reference material it actually is like another fun part is that like in Adam's Family Values when they're talking about naming the baby and they're like we wanted a name that a child could really live with pubert and they didn't put that in the comic

31:09Sarah Maria Griffin: strips did they I was reading that they stopped short at including the baby called pubert in the comic strips because it was a bridge too far?

31:17Sentimental Garbage Host: No, well, so he didn't name any of the characters until they made the TV show in the 60s and they asked him for names of the family. And he said something like, I don't really think of them as a family. I just think of them as a bunch of freaks who live together. And I remember him saying famously, like, you know, Gomez and Morticia, if they're even married, I'm not sure why you think they are.

31:40Sarah Maria Griffin: Now, they do refer to their various honeymoons in the Bermuda Triangle. so we do have a little bit of concrete there. They're married. But also there's a reasonable world in which why would we get married? I don't believe they went to a courthouse. No, certainly not.

31:53Sentimental Garbage Host: But they said one of the kids' names was Wednesday and Pubert is the name for Pugsley. And this is the 60s and they're like, respectfully, Charles Adams, we love your work but we're not calling one of the characters of our family sitcom Pubert. And they went with Pugsley. But the fact that they referenced that with the baby is so cool to me.

32:14Sarah Maria Griffin: And I think you can tell that everything in it is made with texture and depth and love in that way. That when you see something that's an adaptation, that just is about its source. It's about it. And I think a little bit of that is the practical effects end of it, where everything is made. Yes. The art department is physically making the clock that goes off that has, you know, Pugsley ringing the bell and a midday mortician Gomez roll around the front for a smooch. like there's a real tenderness there and those ideas running through time and coming out of an original set of comic books I think it lends it a tone right you know and not a seriousness but like a kind of a reality almost every headstone has something different written on it you know in the family graveyard wife and psycho like incredible you know so there's texture to it and that makes you trust it and more willing to play in that absurdity with them I think because it feels established and old and like it's always been there.

33:10Sarah Maria Griffin: Because it has. It's been there since 1938

33:12Sentimental Garbage Host: and it's been making money since 1938. It's like the question of where does the Addams family money come from? The answer is the Addams family. Do you know what I mean? That thing has been making money. Oh my God, on that, I have an incredible story. So Charles Addams had his own Debbie Jalinski. I need to know who this woman was and how she found him. Okay. So he had a bunch of wives and liked to get around, like apparently dated Greta Garbo and rumored Jacqueline Kennedy. Wow. Rumored. Like he dated everybody, according to himself. So his first wife was called Barbara Day or Bobby. They were together for like six years and they were like a very happy, like very artsy kind of mid-twenties couple.

33:53Sentimental Garbage Host: And then they broke up and divorced because she wanted a kid and he didn't. Which in the 50s you're like, wow. Wow. Yeah. Go on, Bobby. Go on. And then he remarried a woman called Barbara Barb. First name Barbara, last name Barb. Barbara Barb, attorney at law. Attorney at law, yeah. They were married for a few years. She somehow managed to get him to sign over all of the rights to the Addams family, to her. She got everything. She made him take out life insurance. and eventually they divorced and then throughout his career like he never got away from Barbara Barb like she was always extorting him for money and every time he'd do something new or like there'd be new royalties for the TV show or like some new like there was like a ballet that was in development for a while and she was like I'm all over that but the weirdest part about it even though she was like a complete succubus to him financially they stayed friends because even though he hated her there was no one who was going to get him a better deal.

34:59Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh. Because she was so fucking money hungry. That she would steal. She would squeeze every studio. And like every studio and every publisher was just like, oh fucking hell, Barbara Barb's coming in, gird your loins. Like she was just the toughest fucking bitch going.

35:16Sarah Maria Griffin: In some ways you can kind of see that. Maybe that was his taste. Maybe he liked a mean lady. He just liked a mean lady. Like Morticia's the original mean lady. Maybe he was just trying to find more mean ladies to be to be mean to him financially. Wow. Charles Adams. I do think that there are some some men in the world who just really want a woman to be mean to them. And Gomez is a fabulous example of that, in that his masculinity rises to Morticia's cruelty rather than is cowed by it. Yeah. And perhaps that is something that Charles Adams had in his own life and sort of reverberated through time.

35:49Sarah Maria Griffin: but I think that that's what makes Gomez stand out so starkly from so many other romantic heroes whatever language it is him and Morticia speak to each other Italian French whatever but also their own secret language it involves her being very cruel and him being wild about it but also

36:05Sentimental Garbage Host: like very smoothly indifferent yet highly passionate at the same time the dynamic of like incredibly stoic wife and manic depressive man I think is when we do not see enough in television

36:19Sarah Maria Griffin: and what a balance you know what a balance that I feel like the the great mouth of the internet would say that it's black cat wife golden retriever husband but I think it's far stranger than that it's far more intense than that Gomez is so theatrical and maybe it's because of the world that we work in where we we do hang around with the gals who talk and the boys who are like you know more reserved yeah but it's lovely to see the man who talks but is also obsessed with

36:44Sentimental Garbage Host: his wife who's just like yes this is fine you know what i think gomez and morticia teaches us most of all and you and i have had first-hand experience of this men shouldn't have jobs no they should stay at home and raise the children i've just come off the back of my husband not having a job for a little while took a little career break there for a minute and because i was you know making a tv show and we had a little bit of money around he was able to like actually take a break and be like what do i want to do next and like have a few months off or whatever my life has never replicated Gomez and Morticia more

37:17Sarah Maria Griffin: you watch them become more themselves the more they're unshackled by the workplace similarly my husband's on a career break and is hanging out with my daughter and I come down from the office every day and the two of them are making dinner or reading and I can just see the colour coming back into him after years in this office it's amazing

37:36Sentimental Garbage Host: men shouldn't have jobs

37:37Sarah Maria Griffin: free them from the workplace let us go and do we'll be fine we'll be fine work is women's work yeah we're grand out here Let them come back to the truth of themselves out of these terrible open plan offices. Like let them live, you know.

37:51Sentimental Garbage Host: The dream is not to have it all. The dream is to be as well paid as you can so that you can have a husband who is unemployed. Stunemployed.

38:01Sarah Maria Griffin: Stunemployed. Yeah. And I kind of, in a way, I'm like, oh, this is maybe this is what the men have always felt, which is I have a beautiful wife at home. Yes. like my god that's a great feeling that i go to work and i come home and there is a beautiful person and my offspring reading the gruffalo's child together on the sofa delicious so happy for you girl long may it last long may it last long may it last keep these boys off work you know keep them off and that is and that is part of gomez and morticia's joy as well is that they're kind of unburdened by capital you know they all they have it already which is important but they have nothing to do all day but kind of moon around each other and that in that way you kind of you see the tenderness and the space they have to play and the space they have to kind of love each other and yeah work is poison work is poison is another lesson of the Adams

38:53Sentimental Garbage Host: family that scene where she goes in and like like just gives birth in the opening scene with no effort whatsoever

38:59Sarah Maria Griffin: and also in this really tender way right that Gomez is kind of like talking her through it a little bit. And the great mythological orgasmic birth is something that I used to read about before I had my C-section. And yeah, it's just, it's very calm, isn't it? It's very nice. She's having a lovely time. She's like, oh. She likes pain. She likes pain. This is fine. Here's my beautiful child. The way that she's lit, by the way, in both films, there's always a single panel of light that falls over her eyes and nose that's kind of contrasted against the rest of the light. Like there must have been somebody holding a light that just shone directly onto her face as she moved around.

39:37Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

39:38Sarah Maria Griffin: So she's shot in this beautiful way, lying in the kind of the blue glare of the hospital corridor. Just, I'm going to have a baby right now. Unbelievable. And she's 40. And she's 40, geriatric pregnancy. Yeah, and she's 40. Not a bother on her.

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41:41Sentimental Garbage Host: Wegovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, We go for clinical study information and restrictions. Visit ForHers.com. Can we speak briefly about the stacked fucking cast of this movie, including people who were a little bit famous then and people who would go on to be extremely famous? It's glittering. It's glittering.

42:07Sarah Maria Griffin: I nearly lost my life when I saw Christine Baranski. Like what a fantastic load of crack she is, you know, given it 90. And she wouldn't be even the most shocking. the Miranda Hobbs jump scare unbelievable

42:19Sentimental Garbage Host: Miranda Hobbs as the like nanny who's interviewing the hippie nanny incredible the Christine Baranski line that I was obsessed with was when she because she's the camp counsellor or whatever and she's like we're here to just have fun because that's what being privileged is all about

42:36Sarah Maria Griffin: you couldn't write it today you could only plant that little bomb in 1993 to go off now you know

42:41Sentimental Garbage Host: like seriously so funny Catherine O 'Hara just there just knocking around being perfect even like David Krumholtz who's Wednesday's love interest yeah the little boy who's like allergic to everything he is a real character actor he's in a load of stuff but the thing I know him the most for is he's in 10 Things I Hate About You he's like the real business like little friend of Joseph Gordon-Levitt ah

43:09Sarah Maria Griffin: there he goes and he's such a little baby he's such a little like 12 year old his little 12 year old face

43:14Sentimental Garbage Host: I actually I generally hate any kind of love story between child characters but I do think theirs was incredibly charming like when he's he's telling her all the things that he's allergic to and he's like and you know what happens when my mum uses fabric softener and she goes no what I die and she scooches

43:32Sarah Maria Griffin: across the bench to him it's not that moment where they're kind of sitting around and she just sort of scooches over ever so slightly it's very very sweet it feels very real or something like just two children who are kind of going oh and nothing more than that just mwah

43:48Sentimental Garbage Host: oh they have they have their sweet little kiss to the fence it's so wholesome

43:52Sarah Maria Griffin: you know the subplot of Wednesday and Pugsley at the summer camp is very much kind of revenge of the outsiders I personally would love to go to the happy hut that they are sent to to be radicalised into wholesomeness for being horrible little goths Wednesday and Pugsley are sent to a little hut in the forest and shown days and days of wholesome Disney movies and I did find myself self-thinking I wouldn't mind that now.

44:17Sentimental Garbage Host: It wouldn't mind that. Brain rinse. A little bit like watch Annie. Why not? Sign the music.

44:23Sarah Maria Griffin: I think this would have been one of the first films that I saw as a child that sort of had the summer camp in it.

44:27Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah this and the parent trap was the big ones for me and both of them used the idea of like a cabin that you're sent to to be punished and you just hang out there. Is that a thing you do?

44:38Sarah Maria Griffin: Did you ever go to the Gael Talk?

44:40Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah I did. See I didn't. Did they have something like that

44:42Sarah Maria Griffin: over there for people who spoke English? Did they have like a weird tea for yeah a weird

44:48Sentimental Garbage Host: like you go and watch VHS's by yourself for a while of like Muzzy or something

44:53Sarah Maria Griffin: Muzzy they're just playing Muzzy as well I'll get to you until you cough onto yourself I don't know

44:57Sentimental Garbage Host: not in my experience no but I would have loved it it seemed like a very picturesque punishment

45:02Sarah Maria Griffin: I was never I wasn't a Geltac kid at all so I didn't have any sort of summer camp experience so I always found these locations deeply romantic even though things that were happening I would not have survived a day in a summer camp like that. They would have eaten me for sport, you know.

45:17Sentimental Garbage Host: Archery with my dyspraxic ass? Absolutely not. Joel throwing the arrows like, yeah, that's me. I'm sorry. It's such a stupid joke with the bald eagle thing, Mamie Cack. It wasn't even the fact of it being a bald eagle or the line like, aren't they supposed to be extinct? They are now. It's just the puppet itself is so funny. It's some Jim Henson-ass shit. It's just like, plump. It's like back to like how joyful it is to see practical effects. It's like, they're not trying to make it look like a real bald eagle. It's just like plop.

45:46Sarah Maria Griffin: All the costumes being slightly shitted are really, really in the kind of actually that's another reason that the Adam's family values is in the mythos is because that pageant that they throw the Thanksgiving pageant is also infinitely memeable because it's on the bun. It's actually very searing and correct. But the costumes all the children wear are just made out of feathers and bits of cardboard. And they look like they were made at camp. They lay out by children probably.

46:12Sentimental Garbage Host: yeah and except for Puxley's costume which looks expensive and great

46:15Sarah Maria Griffin: it does but there's still a couple of little shy feathers hanging off it as well you know I'm pretty sure his beak is made of cardboard so I think that there is something about the handmade quality of it and the handmade quality of even like there are several fires but they're actually fires yeah you know and I think that yeah I don't know I always trust something more when I'm like oh I think there's something actually happening on that screen yeah yeah yeah instead of a bunch of layers of distance it feels like it was a lot of fun to be there like it really does

46:40Sentimental Garbage Host: it's really fascinating to me how like the adult storyline is as we said it's just like a like a fun sex comedy and it's so funny like that that whole bit where like they take Fester and Debbie on like a date to the what looks like a rockin' restaurant a cave a cave with a cool band yeah and like Gomez is like dancing Morticia into a tango and Fester just has two breadsticks up his nose

47:07Sarah Maria Griffin: there's a moment where he takes and Debbie just kind of looks at him and gives him a smile and then he takes him out and then when she goes to look at him again he remembers to put them back in really quickly. It's like, oh, she really likes that. There's also a great scene of him when they're on their honeymoon and he's in the tub and she's sort of about to throw the radio in on him. And he's just sort of in the bubbles. I know.

47:26Sentimental Garbage Host: It's just funny. He's so funny to just look at.

47:29Sarah Maria Griffin: The bubbles are just this slightly open to his mouth but he can still talk. And whatever way he's, whatever he's using his eyes.

47:37Sentimental Garbage Host: He's too in the bubbles.

47:38Sarah Maria Griffin: He loves, he's in his bubbles. He's so happy. but yeah whatever it is about that face bubble line the ratio you're right

47:47Sentimental Garbage Host: it's too much it's like it's like they made a decision it's like no we can never see his like bare chest and shoulders we must it must be all bubble

47:56Sarah Maria Griffin: he has to be enveloped you know and even his wig is great later on when she tries to ken him you know his terrible blonde wig is just oh it's so good don't touch it

48:06Sentimental Garbage Host: till the scab falls off

48:07Sarah Maria Griffin: it's so good

48:08Sentimental Garbage Host: you're a big

48:09Sarah Maria Griffin: dumb weird thing is one thing that Jebby says to him as well which is very funny. It's brutal.

48:18Sentimental Garbage Host: Do you know what another like tiny moment that made me piss myself as well? It's like, you know when the house explodes and Ping comes to rescue Fester and he drives him away in one of the big white Buicks and then Debbie sees and pursues him.

48:32Sarah Maria Griffin: In Debbie 2.

48:32Sentimental Garbage Host: Debbie 2 killed me. The license plate being Debbie 2. The fact that they have two huge white cars and they're both called Debbie. Debbie 1 and Debbie 2. It's very Barbara Barb.

48:41Sarah Maria Griffin: It is very Barbara Barb. The scene that I like, I think, the most out of it, it's one of those things that every so often you pick up on a moment from a childhood film that did you long-term damage. She's sitting in the bar with the sailors singing and smoking and they're singing Macho Macho Man. And it just looks like great crack. And the scene is about a minute long, but I remember seeing that going, I want that to be me someday.

49:02Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh, so good.

49:04Sarah Maria Griffin: That's what I want for my life. I want to sit on a bar and smoke and sing and drink. With sailors. and girl

49:10Sentimental Garbage Host: that has been you I think we've

49:13Sarah Maria Griffin: I feel as though we have both done this together comparatively recently you know it's an achievable goal it's a simple thing to want in this life you know it's a very manageable glamour and I think it's also because those sailors in their gas little costumes are giving it they're giving it loads no small parts

49:29Sentimental Garbage Host: there are no small parts in the Addams Family values no small parts

49:32Sarah Maria Griffin: everyone is giving it ham every time and again it always looks like they're having a great time you know even when they're being evil they're having a great time even Debbie in her kind of mad darkness is having a fucking blast like it's it's so delightful

49:46Sentimental Garbage Host: it's such a dream role and it really made me think that like what this what the Addams Family is and what children's what like family movies used to be is just like such an opportunity for like character actors to go like turn it up to 11 on character acting like I think one of the reasons people went so absolutely wild for Ryan Gosling as Ken which was like a lovely performance is we haven't seen that kind of character acting in quite a while because we're so about naturalism now and people being kind of quippy but not mental. The conception of Fester as a character is crazy.

50:21Sarah Maria Griffin: There's quotes that I have written down here. I don't know why I have. It's towards the end that somebody just says, Jesus, Fester, go back to your room. It's mad. Literally, it's full screwball. And I think the way Ryan Gosling played Ken was full screwball. Yeah And people were borderline

50:37Sentimental Garbage Host: Shocked by it They like They forgot that they It used to be a thing It used to be like this And I'm gonna say it

50:43Sarah Maria Griffin: Do you know whose fault it is? Christopher Nolan? Who? Tony Soprano

50:47Sentimental Garbage Host: You think it's Tony Soprano's fault?

50:49Sarah Maria Griffin: I think I think I look And look

50:52Sentimental Garbage Host: I mean I think We're blaming different people

50:54Sarah Maria Griffin: But for the same reason The same reason Yeah Right I think the Sopranosification Of everything

51:01Sentimental Garbage Host: Needs to stop Why do you blame Sopranos specifically?

51:05Sarah Maria Griffin: I think because it was a mafia show about therapy, many seasons of this crime syndicate adventure that was also about thinking and feeling. And that it set a precedent where excellence had to involve thinking and feeling instead of japes and capers.

51:21Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh, my God. I'm so with you. Yeah. I was suspicious, but like always, you've turned me around. That's exactly what it was.

51:29Sarah Maria Griffin: That dovetails right into Batman Begins. I don't care what he's doing up there, standing on that tower, having his emotions. I need him in a suit that I can see his nipples in facing off against Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Do you know? I need him.

51:42Sentimental Garbage Host: See, this is why okay, this is why Chicago is one of the best films of all time. Tell me more. So, cell block tango, right? All the women come out fucking drama, glamour, the red, the blacks, the silhouettes, the legs, the garters, the chairs. The little ribbons

51:57Sarah Maria Griffin: that they all pull out

51:58Sentimental Garbage Host: after the end of their soliloquies. Nuh-uh, not guilty. All of their motives, which are told from their own perspective are nothing. Their motives are they were correctly accused of cheating. Their motives are one of their guys has like was chewing gum too loudly. Do you know what I mean? Their motives are nothing. They killed these people because they're bonkers. Because they are murderers who do murder. Similarly, Debbie Jelinski, her motives are she wanted ballerina Barbie not Malibu Barbie. She was a ballerina. elegant and in her other slideshow the surgeon who who ignored her the senator or whatever who was like we can't have a wild Christmas because we need to set an example

52:47Sarah Maria Griffin: he wouldn't buy her a car he wouldn't buy her a car and he's like well we have to set a good example oh do we

52:52Sentimental Garbage Host: you know I think and the way that the Adams are all in the electric chair is just nodding and empathising active listening yeah you're right

53:00Sarah Maria Griffin: you're right Debbie

53:00Sentimental Garbage Host: and like

53:01Sarah Maria Griffin: and they're not like playing along they really do feel it. And this is the thing about Morticia and Debbie is this sort of like this diametrically opposed duo, right? Morticia's with Debbie on a lot of her choices, you know? She's like, yeah, you should do this but also stop... You would be allowed to do this if we could all just hang out together.

53:19Sentimental Garbage Host: That's so true. You have him in a sexual curse.

53:22Sarah Maria Griffin: I respect that. Yeah, but you can't stop him seeing his family. Like, please continue to do a sex curse on him. That's fine. But you can't break up the unit, you know? and I think that is actually where the line is for Morticia. She understands what Debbie's doing. Yeah. But it's the... She doesn't even mind the wig. I feel like she's annoyed by the pastels but she would tolerate them. Do you know what I mean? She'd bring her in. But she then has to deal with the tormented and broken hearted Gomez who's lost his brother. There's ripple effects for Morticia. Do you know what I mean? There are. If Debbie would just come on site it all could have been grand.

53:53Sarah Maria Griffin: But she's not here to do that. She's not here to assimilate. She's here to do murders and get money.

53:56Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah. Her motivations are paper thin and we like it that way because it makes her be even more mental and makes the world of the film even funnier.

54:05Sarah Maria Griffin: Even funnier and more. And that's part of it. You cannot Tony Soprano this. You cannot place any of these people meaningfully in a therapist chair. Although in the first one, there is ostensibly a therapist character who kind of knocks around or somebody posing as a therapist in the first film. This film does not take itself seriously and nor should we. And that's part of the bargain that you go into the Addams Family with is that you're at play. you know you're not at philosophy here

54:32Sentimental Garbage Host: but that's weird because like I do take their affection for each other very seriously

54:36Sarah Maria Griffin: yeah but there there are things to take about it seriously but it doesn't take itself seriously or something it's yeah it rides it in between space and that's part of why I would be more nervous about something like Wednesday because that's made in a post Christopher Nolan kind of Batman world like how

54:52Sentimental Garbage Host: and Tim Burton is like quite a humourless director in many ways yeah they're not funny

54:57Sarah Maria Griffin: some of them are lovely but they're not funny movies. They're not. They're all very... God, Edward Scissorhands is terribly sad. You know? Like there's a lot of pathos in Tim Burton's movies. So I don't know. Like there is something about it that this illusion of the Addams Family that you can't look too closely or something. You know what I mean? It holds you at this fun distance. Do you know what I mean? They're operating in this other realm. I just wish we could get back to that place. I don't know. And it's part of this oeuvre of films. It has cousins. and I do think like Batman Forever is a cousin of it I do think that I have a little list of cousins written here The Mask is a cousin of it Yes The Mask for sure I think Gremlins is a cousin of it a slightly more wholesome cousin maybe The Gremlins 2 is a cousin of it but there is a kind of a time of films like this is 1993 so the bangers of 1993 were like Jurassic Park you know there were some big cinema started to kind of change big time in 1993 but there are some zany screwball one-off or two-off films that just exist in their own little kind of bell jars and still hold their magic.

56:06Sentimental Garbage Host: This is what worries me so much in that like you're... I have so many friends who work in comedy and every year there are less and less budgets given over to comedy. And like, you know, we're living here in the UK and like it is the home of TV comedy in many ways. Like so much of the great comedic characters have started on UK television and like those budgets are winnowing down. There's never any comedy. Films and cinema, like forget about it. Like you might like get a quippy character who like, you know, Marvel will turn into a toy for you, you know, as long as it can be made into a toy.

56:40Sarah Maria Griffin: I guess that thing just happened.

56:42Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah, exactly. That kind of stuff. That's sort of very voiced by Ryan Reynolds type of character that you get. And like, it's just like, it's fine to exist by itself, but it cannot be the only thing to exist. We're treating comedy like it's this incredibly, niche art form like fucking calligraphy or something it's not when it used to be like comedy used to be pouring out the fucking walls yeah do you know what I mean like ads used to be funny remember when ads were fucking funny ads were really funny and really weird

57:09Sarah Maria Griffin: I think a little bit of it is risk that when you pitch something as funny you're inviting failure right to fail to make somebody laugh or to fail to be unfunny has a more powerful resonance these days I think than it used to I told you earlier on about writing that letter. I have a, there's a second half to that story about writing this letter about the Addams Family Values. I was a roadie for a minute many, many years ago and I was sitting in a hotel lobby and I had been writing on the trains and one of the people who were in the show asked me about the letter writing that I was doing and I told them my favourite letter I'd ever written was the entire plot of the Addams Family Values and a woman I was sharing a room with who didn't enjoy me.

57:53Sarah Maria Griffin: Who didn't enjoy me? To say the least. stood up from our table and said, The Addams Family Values is the only film I've ever walked out of. It is the worst film I've ever seen in my fucking life. And she got up and she left. And I sat there at the table feeling this, oh my God, maybe some people don't like that. Don't like the thing. You know, when you fail to make somebody laugh, when comedy like The Addams Family Values fails, it like appalls people, right? And the cost of cringe in 2026, is much higher than it was in 1993 because that cringe can be repeated and gift and memed into infinity, right?

58:33Sarah Maria Griffin: Whereas in 1993, it could kind of, if it was a flop, it was a flop and then everyone just kind of moved on. Where there's, I feel like the stakes are different in the failure of comedy now and the failure of zaniness. Yeah. Zaniness is not really, we're not living in a particularly zany season of the planet, you know, which is such a shame because it's so helpful and so fun.

58:52Sentimental Garbage Host: It's so helpful.

58:53Sarah Maria Griffin: But I do think the reason we don't see it is because of the risk of punishment if it fails. I really, really believe that. And I think that's a little bit from the outsider gleans I've had of Wednesday. It does seem a little bit pole faced.

59:05Sentimental Garbage Host: It does seem a little bit... I mean, I couldn't possibly comment. I haven't seen it. Maybe it's hysterical. But I do think there's like, to go back to your Tony Soprano point, I do think that things are frequently overproduced. We've all been at movies where we've, or TV shows where we've seen six production idents that we think is the beginning of the film, but actually it's just another production ident. It's like, Sunstar Idaho pictures in collaboration with Studio Wales, in collaboration with or whatever. Every time you see a production ident, that is generally another layer of person who is allowed to give notes.

59:43Sentimental Garbage Host: And often it's just people who want to protect their jobs by looking like they're saying something. And sometimes that can be incredibly useful notes about them not quite understanding a story turn and maybe that will reveal something that's a weakness in the script. And sometimes that will be like, I don't really get why he's so angry or I don't really get why they're so horny or I don't really get why.

1:00:03Sarah Maria Griffin: Are we sure we really want to do the knives again? Are we like, are they speaking Italian or French to each other? I really need some clarity on where these people are from. If his name is Gomez, is he not meant to be Castilian? Is he not meant to be Spanish? Like, why are they speaking all these different languages together? I feel like we're muddying their origin stories. This is going to confuse the viewer. Like, can you hear this? Oh my God, I can hear it. Can you see this? I don't even work in the telly and I know that people do this. People do it like, you know, that obsession with continuity and that obsession with waterproof lore and everything has to be provable and every emotion that's exhibited has to be rooted.

1:00:38Sarah Maria Griffin: There has to be a really granular reality instead of a kind of suspended disbelief.

1:00:44Sentimental Garbage Host: Do you know that? Do you know that line you see everywhere online now that I can't remember who came up with it where everyone is sexy and no one is horny? No one is horny.

1:00:51Sarah Maria Griffin: My God, that was an essay. I cannot think of the author's name but I think whoever and for my sins I would love to remember it but I believe that that is one of the most important things that has been said about contemporary television

1:01:01Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah Everything is sexy and nobody is horny and similarly everybody is smart and nobody is funny Do you know what I mean?

1:01:07Sarah Maria Griffin: Because horny is risky and funny is risky and we know those two things are best friends in this world

1:01:13Sentimental Garbage Host: In the Addams Family horny and funny Yeah

1:01:16Sarah Maria Griffin: and also in life

1:01:18Sentimental Garbage Host: In life You know There's nothing sexier

1:01:20Sarah Maria Griffin: There's nothing sexier than a funny person, you know. And I think that echoes for me always. Oh, my God. It goes right back to that Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Jessica Rabbit, where Bob Hoskins asked Jessica Rabbit, what do you see in him anyway? And she looks at him and she says, he makes me laugh. And like that is it's so gorgeous and it's so true, but it also invites a risk. because if every audience member doesn't laugh with you or if somebody recoils or if somebody doesn't like it, that can be enough to explode under the surface of a television show and kill it in the water. Yeah. So it's, I do think we live in a different time for risk in tone and it's a killer.

1:02:00Sarah Maria Griffin: But we do have, I do believe it'll come back. I do believe it's slightly to do with fascism and I'm so glad we have this stunning archive of 90s jewels. like there is the Addams Family Values there is the treasure trove is like all of these pieces of of media from a particular time when that kind of playfulness and zaniness was just everywhere you know we were rared on that yeah

1:02:24Sentimental Garbage Host: yeah oh god someone showed me a clip of Mr. Blobby the other day oh my god did I not show it to you then you might have when we were away like the there's a clip of Mr. Blobby walking into like a morning show with Philip Schofield this morning or whatever falling over the couch

1:02:40Sarah Maria Griffin: and he just like

1:02:41Sentimental Garbage Host: bursts through and as he bursts through he just walks through a table in chairs and then he drags the chair with him as he goes and it actually makes me piss myself because it's just so not heady at all it's just like it's a bit like Debbie too or like a bit from the Allen's family one that absolutely broke my whole laughing was the bit where they're getting evicted from the house because of the evil therapist lady and they all have their luggage or whatever they're leaving and Thing has a little wagon full of single gloves. And he's just sadly trailing it away. I was like, that is so funny to me.

1:03:20Sarah Maria Griffin: It comes in at you on the animal level, man. It comes in you somewhere. Animal funny. Mr. Blobby to me is peak animal funny. I showed my little girl the Blobby song recently. I was like, I want to see what you feel about this big man in your early... Loved it.

1:03:37Sentimental Garbage Host: Loved it.

1:03:37Sarah Maria Griffin: Blobbing along with him. I was like, you know, you know, this is good, man. You're new in this earth and you understand. You understand the blob. Animal funny. Animal funny is like, and it's different for everybody. And I know some people find Mr. Blobby very frightening. And for them, I say, I'm so sorry because I love him.

1:03:53Sentimental Garbage Host: I get it and I'm sorry.

1:03:54Sarah Maria Griffin: I'm so sorry. But I do think that in offering a joke, right, a joke is an offer, right? Yeah. You risk dropping it on the floor.

1:04:04Sentimental Garbage Host: And nothing sucks worse.

1:04:05Sarah Maria Griffin: But also you have to offer it in case the person catches it. And if every show and every film refuses to take that risk, then we have everyone is smart and nobody's funny. You know, and what a loss. Like roll the dice, you know, throw the knife.

1:04:21Sentimental Garbage Host: God, I have to say, I went recently to see Coyote vs. Acme with our mutual friend Tash Hodgson. And I fucking pissed myself. Was it good? I feel like I've said I've pissed myself about 7 ,000 times on this podcast. it is so funny I cannot remember the last time I went to a cinema and saw like stupid ass jokes like it is so dumb and it's very

1:04:42Sarah Maria Griffin: they tried to nail that down didn't they they tried to bin it yeah yeah

1:04:47Sentimental Garbage Host: but here it is here it is so I really recommend people seek it out it's just so fun I'm sorry I feel like an old man yelling at the oldest cloud but like why can't things be funny anymore I think things

1:04:59Sarah Maria Griffin: are funny anymore are funny they just are coming in at different angles maybe the way that that movies and TV is being made right now isn't. But there are still really, really funny people at work. There's still...

1:05:11Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh, there's no lack of it. Yeah.

1:05:13Sarah Maria Griffin: It just is coming at us in a different form, you know. And I think it will worm its way back in. It will get there, you know.

1:05:20Sentimental Garbage Host: But I think what's really crucial as well is, as you say, there's no shortage of funny people in the world. Like you can open your TikTok now and see some hilarious cunt in Wisconsin in their car doing something hilarious. But the thing about that, that's not as satisfying as like an Addams Family Values, which you can get on Amazon Prime and like everyone you know has seen it or going to the cinema to see something is that like it has to be shared. Yeah. Like I went through a real phase a few years ago of kind of serially going to silent movie screenings. Like, you know, the old Buster Keatons and the old Charlie Chaplains and like the BFI used to put on these things of like the forgotten female silent comedy queens.

1:05:55Sentimental Garbage Host: And like there used to be loads of them. And even now, like four years later, post-COVID or whatever, five years later, they're vanishing. because they're really hard to put on. And I promise you, I'm not saying this to sound like some kind of cultured snob or whatever. They're so fucking funny because what's happening when you watch a silent comedy is that because there's no dialogue to keep up with, you're only reacting to the animal funniness of like Buster Keaton falling backwards out of a briefcase that's also a window kind of thing. And everyone's like, that's mad at the same time. And the laugh is so big and it feels so good to share the laugh with people.

1:06:30Sentimental Garbage Host: And that's what it is. It's like, I mean, like the kind of theory of laughing is that like it's you know chimps showing their mouths kind of thing to show that they're friendly kind of thing or isn't that the thing right it's collaborative yeah it's collaborative it's like a community thing it's like a bonding thing and if we're

1:06:46Sarah Maria Griffin: just laughing into phone and and sending people phone videos then that's not it's not shared it's not in the same instance as kind of gathering together and showing your teeth at the same time

1:06:56Sentimental Garbage Host: your teeth at the same time a non-violent way and also if it goes back to the silent thing

1:07:00Sarah Maria Griffin: then that goes right back to Morticia standing in the doorway. Yeah. You know, sometimes everything you need to see is just there.

1:07:09Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah.

1:07:09Sarah Maria Griffin: You know, and they don't need to hang it full of dialogue. The joke is right in front of your eyes and you understand it together.

1:07:16Sentimental Garbage Host: Which makes it more global and more human or I don't know. I love it. The thing about those silent movies is like there's fewer screenings on than ever. And I always want to go to them. So if you hear of them, please tell me. and also it takes a lot of money to preserve those archives and so you run out of them which ones to watch very quickly because they can't be

1:07:35Sarah Maria Griffin: they can't be touched up and they can't be put to machines they've got to be preserved because they're the last ones

1:07:41Sentimental Garbage Host: I want us to finish off on our power rankings of the Addams Family who's your favourite to least favourite

1:07:48Sarah Maria Griffin: favourite is Ting followed by Lurch followed by Lurch is your second favourite?

1:07:56Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah

1:07:56Sarah Maria Griffin: why I was a nanny I've worked in I've been I've been Lurch you know I love I think silently hilarious just always in the background of the shot you know playing the organ just kind of creeping around he is the house you know I love Lurch it wouldn't be the Addams Family if Lurch wasn't knocking around it'd just be two people and their kids you need the thing the making of the Addams Family is thing and Lurch right little and large you know and then Gomez yeah and then Morticia and then Nana and then Fester because he's gross but and then the kids the kids don't really count I'm not really like we said I've never been that interested in the kids even when I was a kid I was like okay yeah it's fine Pugsley is kind of a bit like Bobby Hill in my mind's eye so true that's Bobby Hill so maybe he comes above Wednesday for me because of the Bobby Hill-ness of him in this but yeah for me it's the hand and every day the hand every day the hand every day

1:08:54Sentimental Garbage Host: I'm so glad that we feel the same way about the hand do you know what I want to give a little bit of momentum to as well? Cousin It

1:09:00Sarah Maria Griffin: oh Cousin It Margaret and Baby It Baby what? that's what makes it a true sequel as well is that in the kind of middle of it we see someone we saw in the first film who was introduced to the Addams family who was married in and had a tiny monster with a little pink soother

1:09:15Sentimental Garbage Host: oh my I just

1:09:16Sarah Maria Griffin: yeah Cousin It

1:09:17Sentimental Garbage Host: oh my god I was trying I can't wait to figure out is Cousin It a other species or is causing it a person covered in hair?

1:09:25Sarah Maria Griffin: I think they're another species. I think he's another species. I think he's something else.

1:09:28Sentimental Garbage Host: How are we fucking Margaret then?

1:09:30Sarah Maria Griffin: I'm sure with great enthusiasm I would imagine. I don't think he has anything to throw knives with.

1:09:34Sentimental Garbage Host: And Margaret's a great example of like the Aaron family are peculiar but they're not exclusionary. No they're not. They're like if you want to party with them they're going to party with you. They're very accepting.

1:09:42Sarah Maria Griffin: They wanted Debbie in. Do you know what I mean? The problem was that she was breaking the family apart. Not that she was kind of blonde or whatever. That wasn't the issue. But yeah so big Big moment for Cousin It and Baby Watt. How about you? Where's your power ranking at?

1:09:55Sentimental Garbage Host: Morticia's number one. Followed by Gomez. Followed by Thing. Followed by Fester. Fester power ranks higher to me because I just think that performance is extraordinary. It is. It's a crazy performance.

1:10:08Sarah Maria Griffin: It is. It is. Lurch then, but Nana doesn't rank for me very much. Nana feels very much like she's orbiting, you know? She's not utilized to her full potential. She's part of the ensemble. And she's Carole Kane, which is crazy. She's two different ladies She's a different actress In each one Is she? Yeah I can't think of the name

1:10:24Sentimental Garbage Host: Oh I feel less bad about myself For not realising it was Carole Kane Yeah she's under Under a wave of But it's just the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt performance It's the same thing

1:10:32Sarah Maria Griffin: She does a lot of great prop work I feel like she's always Handing people balls And skulls and things But she doesn't They don't do a lot with her But she's part She's part of the infrastructure Of the family Her best moment in this movie

1:10:43Sentimental Garbage Host: Is when she's sympathising With Debbie in the electric chair She's like But what about Debbie? And she's like What about Debbie?

1:10:48Sarah Maria Griffin: What about Debbie?

1:10:50Sentimental Garbage Host: And then Wednesday and Punkly, I don't care about them. Yeah, I don't care about them. I do think Wednesday's monologue is very good at the end of like, she's talking about the Thanksgiving thing of like, in the near future, your people will drink highballs and wear cardigans and my people will sell bracelets. And like your people, yeah. Drive Buicks or what else? Yeah, we will have degradation and you will have Buicks. It's stark. It's stark. It's great. It's great for 1993. It's great. It's strange that like in the first movie, the kids are barely a thing. but in the second movie the kids are handling the kind of political stakes of it and essentially kind of delivering the thesis statement of the Addams which is that there's the bit where like Christine Baranski and I can't remember his name but he was one of the lawyers He's an Animic Beale

1:11:29Sarah Maria Griffin: He was an Animic Beale!

1:11:30Sentimental Garbage Host: He was an Animic Beale and they're like oh, the pilgrims are all the kind of Aryan brotherhood of girls or whatever the incredibly blonde girls and then like but not everyone is quite as whatever and so they cast the Indians as being like basically all the kids who are like not white or disabled or whatever, or just like ungainly. And like, then they cast them all as the persecuted Indians. And then they kind of have this whole sort of Thanksgiving story. And Wednesday is like the leader of the persecuted then, which is actually, you know, a lot in common with the richest person getting to speak for the boys.

1:12:08Sentimental Garbage Host: Yeah, it's like, she's the Bernie Sanders of the camp.

1:12:11Sarah Maria Griffin: What's different about Wednesday? She has brown hair. She's brown hair and she's strange.

1:12:15Sentimental Garbage Host: That's about it. But it is the thesis of the Addams Family in terms of like, you know, by being countered this kind of bourgeoisie sort of perfected gleaming lie of American society that was such a post-war thing, but like has never gone away because the dream of it is so tantalizing. And if you were to believe advertisements, so affordable, you know.

1:12:38Sarah Maria Griffin: And what they give back with their time is actually huge. like there's a lovely scene in it where Gomez and Morticia are at it I'm actually not sure I think it's in the first one where they're at a charity auction and they're just kind of delightedly outbidding one another for their own stuff but they're giving away their own money and they're sort of like it's erotically charged you know the delight they have in passing away their wealth on their own terms there's the dream really using what you've got

1:13:03Sentimental Garbage Host: love them do we have any parting thoughts

1:13:05Sarah Maria Griffin: for the Addams family? I think we have we have traced the great spiral of the Addams family right to its disgusting centre I had a great time

1:13:12Sentimental Garbage Host: I never knew I loved them so much until I spent all week like writing and thinking about them. I will say Debbie's costumes

1:13:18Sarah Maria Griffin: are in every scene different and in every scene perfect. So if you are going back and watching them, just take an extra look at her costumes because my God, they're beautiful to look at. Like they are stunning. She is Malibu Barbie like the whole time. Truly underneath it all.

1:13:35Sentimental Garbage Host: Sarah Margaret Griffin, just like the Addams Family, you have a deep, strange lore of your own and the latest installment of your lore is in bookshops right now. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it?

1:13:44Sarah Maria Griffin: I do. My most recent novel is called Strangers of Light and it is about a sort of a, it's about a couple of dysfunctional families and a small group of friends and secrets they keep and that gets stolen from them over 30 years. Yeah, it's out in all bookshops now. It took me 10 years to write it. It is mostly a book about drinking cans with your friends, I think. It's sort of my, the dirtbag opus, you know. And it also definitely has a great spirit of being the freaks at the end of the street to it. you know, the little gang at the heart of this novel are not a million miles away from the Adams family themselves, I think.

1:14:17Sarah Maria Griffin: So, yeah, you can find us in all good bookshops now.

1:14:21Sentimental Garbage Host: All right, guys, this has been Send to Mental Garbage. And we're out of here.

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