[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: I am Jessica. Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:29] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do Ripped from the Headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do Pop Culture.

[00:34] Meg: And I'm so eager to tell you my story today. Jessica, I just want to dive right in. Is that okay?

[00:39] Jessica: Absolutely. This is very exciting. Wait, do I need a trigger alert?

[00:44] Meg: I don't know.

[00:45] Jessica: You're like, my entire life is a trigger alert. Just suck it up. Get in your safe space. Hug a pillow.

[00:54] Meg: I think that's better advice.

[00:55] Jessica: All right.

[01:06] Meg: So, Jessica, I had the great joy of watching Something Wild.

[01:08] Jessica: Oh, I love that movie.

[01:10] Meg: Very recently. Do you remember the last time you saw it?

[01:17] Jessica: It was a really long time ago, but I have to admit, I remember seeing it the first time.

[01:24] Meg: Like, in a theater.

[01:26] Jessica: Like in a theater. And I remember and this is probably a harbinger of my wilder days to come, but I was like, yeah, these are my people.

[01:45] Meg: Who in particular?

[01:46] Jessica: Melanie Griffith in the earlier part of the film as Lulu.

[01:48] Meg: And she's going by Lulu.

[01:50] Jessica: Yeah, the way she dressed, like she was so perfect, downtown 80s club chick and that she was unpredictable and she was just seemingly doing her own thing, and she was a little dangerous. I was just like this looks like so much fun.

[02:15] Meg: And Jeff Daniels.

[02:17] Jessica: He was so cute. A

[02:18] Meg: And he was also fun.

[02:20] Jessica: Oh, adorable.

[02:21] Meg: Like, he was supposed to be uptight, but really he had a wild streak.

[02:24] Jessica: Well, he he needed the access.

[02:29] Meg: We will talk more about Something Wild, coming up.

[02:32] Jessica: Okay.

[02:33] Meg: My sources are New York Times, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, Something Wild, and an interview with Jonathan Demi. In 1985, Ray Leota was cast in his first film role. He was 30 and had been in LA for five years. At first quote, and this is a quote from Ray Leota, pretty much nothing happened, but I would go to this acting class that Melanie Griffith took who was in Something Wild. I went home for Christmas, and my parents were saying, well, Melanie's in it. Why don't you call her up and ask? But I said, no, I'm not going to get started like that, having her do it. In the acting class, all the actors were saying, all the guys that I studied with were saying, did you go up for Something Wild? You should go up for Something Wild. You're right for it. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I called my agent. My agent couldn't get me in. Finally I called Melanie up, finally got the nerve to do that, and she said, yeah, of course I will, Ray. And it turned out that she had had a bad experience with the guy that was playing her husband. So she asked Jonathan Demi, I want some say in it. He said, yeah, of course. So I went in and met him on a Monday. Thursday, I get a call, come in and read with Jeff Daniels, who's also in the movie. So I'm watching Johnny Carson that night, and Jeff Daniels comes on and he was talking about Woody and Jack because he had just done The Purple Rose of Cairo, and he had just done Terms of Endearment, two great movies, and he was great in them. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to read with this guy tomorrow. So I'm doing push ups and looking at my lines again. And I went and read with him, but because I guess from studying with Harry, I was just ready and wanting it. And then I got a call and he told me. That was the first one.

[04:31] Jessica: I love Ray. R-I-P Ray.

[04:34] Meg: Yeah. So the marvelous and beautiful and by all accounts lovely man Ray Leota played the psychopath husband.

[04:45] Jessica: He was scary as hell. He was so scary.

[04:51] Meg: And in fact, I also saw this interview with Jonathan Demi and he was like, I knew I had to cast someone who scared the shit out of me. Ray Leota scared the shit out of me. I mean, that's what I remember from seeing the movie, too, like oh my God, that is the scaries fucking man I've ever seen in my life.

[05:07] Jessica: Like, there are very few people who I think of in movies as being genuinely scary. And I don't mean horror movies, I mean, like, bad people. And there's always an awareness like, this is an actor playing a part to some degree, and I think not being a known entity and that ferocity that he had. I just remember everyone who saw that movie at the time was like, I don't know about that guy. That guy's not right.

[05:46] Meg: And as it turns out, he was lovely.

[05:50] Jessica: Just, oh, I don't know, a really good actor.

[05:53] Meg: Really good actor. So, like I said, he played the psychopath husband of Melanie Griffith's character, Audrey. And in the second half of the film, Ray kidnaps and threatens and abuses Audrey. It's extremely violent. The movie is actually listed as an action comedy. Interesting. Which got me to thinking. At the time, when I saw it, I didn't notice that Audrey was terrified. And I remember thinking that maybe she was used to raise raging, that she was part of that world of violence, so that she wasn't scared about it. The way that Jeff Daniel's character was clearly freaked out. She was just very quiet in those scenes. But on the rewatch this month, she's obviously doing whatever she can possibly think of to do to keep Ray from killing Jeff Daniels and most probably her. And it's an absolutely wrenching performance in this action comedy.

[06:58] Jessica: So this is now officially a rewatch.

[07:02] Meg: Oh, absolutely. Okay, so this is now a huge preview to my actual story.

[07:11] Jessica: I love this. You rarely do massive detours like this. I feel like come to the dark side, Meg.

[07:23] Meg: You have influenced associations. Okay, so a year before something wild was filmed, on December 20, 1984, Mario Liberta became the first man in New York state to be convicted of raping his wife.

[07:37] Jessica: Ah, excellent.

[07:39] Meg: Mario and Denise dated in high school and married in 1978, but they'd only lived together for two years. After Denise had their son in October 1978, Mario began to beat her regularly. And in 1980, she was able to get a temporary order of protection from family court, which required Mario to move out of the house and stay away from both the house and Denise. He was allowed to visit his son once every weekend. According to court papers, quote, and this is going to sound weird because it's court papers, but I didn't correct the grammar.

[08:18] Jessica: Okay. Noted.

[08:20] Meg: On the weekend of March 21, 1981, defendant did not visit his son. On Tuesday of the following week, he called to request visitation. Denise agreed, so long as he picked up the son and her and took them to the motel he was staying at under the understanding that a friend of his would be with them at all times, the defendant and his friend picked the two up and drove to the hotel. Upon arrival, the friend left. Shortly thereafter, defendant attacked Denise, threatened to kill her, and forced her to perform fallatio and engage in sexual intercourse with him. He also forced Denise to tell their son to watch. Denise testified that Mario threatened at least twice to kill her and at least once to kill her son if she did not stop screaming during the rape. Mario himself admitted that when Denise entered his motel room, he immediately grabbed her by her hair and slapped her several times.

[09:19] Jessica: Instructed his son to watch. Okay.

[09:26] Meg: At the time, in 1981, the New York state penal code described the crime of rape as, quote, sexual intercourse with a female by forcible compulsion. The problem the prosecutors had in Denise's case was that female was defined as any female person who is not married to the actor. So because they were married, Mario had broken no law.

[09:53] Jessica: It's so rare–

[09:56] Meg: 1981. Not 1781, not 1681.

[10:00] Jessica: That happened exactly a week before my 11th birthday. And what's chilling about it is that it's not that it somehow creates a loophole where you can interpret that you can rape a woman who's married, a rapist can rape his wife. Is that it specifically says that you can rape your wife.

[10:29] Meg: Oh, yeah. Hold on. There's more. Back in 17th century England, the jurist Lord Matthew Hale had written this is a quote from Lord Matthew Hale, quote, the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife. For by their mutual matrimonial, consent and contract, the wife hath given herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.

[10:57] Jessica: That is not surprising for the 17th century. When women are chattel and purchased essentially at marriage. Argh!

[11:09] Meg: The marital rape exemption clause, which basically used Hale's writings as inspiration when this country was founded, we just carried over the same laws right? Was still used in New York state in 1981. The jury found Mario guilty after deliberating for 45 minutes and sentenced him to... guess how long.

[11:32] Jessica: Six months.

[11:34] Meg: Oh, better than that. Two to eight years.

[11:36] Jessica: Really? Well, that's far better than I would have expected for the first person convicted of this.

[11:43] Meg: Basically, they decided, no, this is actually a rape. So he got sentenced to what a stranger rape would have gotten sentenced to. They just put it in the rape category. So two to eight years is what rapists get, which I think, kidnapping-rape not enough, but anyway, you know what I'm saying?

[12:01] Jessica: I fully understand what you're saying.

[12:03] Meg: It did set a new precedent that would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the exemption. Yea, and a lot of mythbusting. Some prevalent myths: women in intimate relationships are in a state of perpetual consent. Wives are the property of their husband and can be raped without punishment. Being raped by one's husband is, quote, less severe than being raped by a stranger. Marital rape allegations are, quote, vengeful women crying rape, and women are, quote, prone to fabrication.

[12:37] Jessica: That's my favorite so far.

[12:39] Meg: Mario's lawyer Bertel Petterson was shocked. Quote, it was a miscarriage of justice. I'm surprised at the verdict, and I'm doubly surprised that they arrived at it so fast. Outraged!

[12:56] Jessica: Do we have any information about this particular attorney?

[13:00] Meg: No, because it was kind of common, what he was saying. That's kind of what I'm getting at here. This was not an outlier. I mean, the fact that he made the sun watch was what upset the police and the prosecutor so very much.

[13:18] Jessica: And how old was the son at this?

[13:20] Meg: 2 and a half.

[13:21] Jessica: Oh, my God. Well, write him off. Poor thing.

[13:24] Meg: Oh, I hope not. Thank god she lived, honestly. Mario appealed, and thankfully the court shot him down. According to Judge Saul Wachtler.

[13:37] Jessica: Wachtler.

[13:38] Meg: Oh, good. You know him!

[13:42] Jessica: Well yes, but also I know how you pronounce that name.

[13:47] Meg: I like him.

[13:49] Jessica: He's wonderful. He has been a featured player in several high profile New York cases. Okay. But Wachtler. And in fact, I think he wound up being a nutball. I think he did something bad, if memory serves.

[14:06] Meg: Well, he did something good in this case.

[14:08] Jessica: Okay. But it is Wachtler.

[14:09] Meg: Okay. Excellent. Quote, a married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman. Other traditional justifications that a woman was the property of her husband have long been rejected by the state. A marriage license should not be viewed as a license for a husband to forcibly rape his wife with impunity. If a husband feels aggrieved by his wife's refusal to engage in sexual intercourse he should seek relief in the courts governing domestic relations, like get a divorce, not in violent or forceful self help. I thought that was very interesting.

[14:47] Jessica: That is a very interesting turn of phrase. Violent self help. We're going to have to look that up during the break.

[14:59] Meg: And seems pretty logical, if not obvious, but it really wasn't so obvious before this 1981 case. Elizabeth Holtzman, who was at the time, she was the Brooklyn District District Attorney, declared, quote, very little attention was paid to this problem before because it wasn't considered a crime. So imagine you're a policeman or a prosecutor and you are made aware of a marital rape. You're like, Sorry, lady, nothing I can do. It's not a crime. So no one even knows that all this stuff is going on, but fortunately they did studies.

[15:40] Jessica: Yeah. But do you know who does know what's going on?

[15:42] Meg: The women.

[15:43] Jessica: Women. Yes. Yeah.

[15:44] Meg: So in a 1981 study, they estimated that 15% of married women would experience marital rape and few would report it. 15%?

[15:59] Jessica: Not insubstantial. Unsubstantial.

[16:02] Meg: In the wake of all this, some men were up in arms when they found out it was illegal for men to rape their wives.

[16:12] Jessica: What kind of sociopath says I should be entitled to violently violate my wife?

[16:22] Meg: I will give you a couple of quotes. This is from Ross. Who's 38, divorced, college educated, businessman.

[16:30] Jessica: This is in 1981.

[16:33] Meg: Yeah. I can see a lot of women taking advantage of marital rape laws. I think too many women use sex as a weapon already. Why give them another round for their arsenal? It's the ultimate weapon. Since a woman's ultimate weapon is sex, a man's ultimate weapon has to be his strength.

[16:51] Jessica: I think Ross has got to learn to be better in the sack.

[17:00] Meg: Oh, my God. Jessica!

[17:02] Jessica: I'm kidding!

[17:03] Meg: And then this quote, okay, the idea that marriage implies or requires perpetual consent under all circumstances to sex is grotesque.

[17:14] Jessica: Grotesque.

[17:16] Meg: But it is a grave business when the law empowers one partner to charge the other with a felony punishable by 20 years in prison. So, again, it's like men are victims somehow by this law, which is what?

[17:30] Jessica: You know what's so interesting about it is that for eons, the word of a man had been always believed. Right? So these guys, their reaction is it implies that they feel that the woman will then instantly be believed if she makes the allegation.

[18:03] meg: Which of course she won't be. She has to have all this evidence and all this proof and everything.

[18:02] Jessica: Exactly.

[18:02] Meg: And by the way, before we lose that quote in our heads, guess who said that? George Will.

[18:10] Jessica: No.

[18:11] Meg: Yes. Who I see on TV regularly now because he's around and respected and talks a lot and people think he's very wise.

[18:22] Jessica: I wonder if he ever retracted any of that.

[18:27] Meg: I don't.

[18:29] Jessica: You think? I mean, he's super conservative. I understand that. I mean, it's just so grotesque, to use his own terminology, right?

[18:33] Meg: Right. And Michael Liberta, the father of Mario Liberta, said, all the wife has to do is go outdoors and scream rape, and the poor man goes to jail like a fool. This law disgraced my family, and it will disgrace thousands of other good families all over New York State.

[18:55] Jessica: I don't think that she ran outside and screamed rape.

[19:00] Meg: She couldn't run outside. That was kind of the problem.

[19:04] Jessica: The panic. I think that's really what strikes me is that it instills or incites panic in these guys, as though their entire worlds will fall apart if one pillar of their–

[19:22] Meg: Well, they're acting like someone's taking something away from them that's sort.

[19:24] Jessica: Their world will fall apart if one of these pillars is knocked out.

[19:28] Meg: Why do you think you have the right to do this? None of them are actually addressing.

[19:34] Jessica: Because I bring home the money and your job is to have sex with me if I'm bringing home the pay. So our contract has been broken.

[19:43] Meg: Crazy. Crazy. But in spite of, not all men, but some men protesting, by 1993, that wasn't that long ago, marital rape was a crime finally in all 50 states, but it took until 1993.

[20:05] Jessica: You know what this reminds me of? I mean, there are even books about this that are like gift books. These are not legal books that are like, you know, crazy laws that are still on the books in certain states. In Massachusetts, you can't serve your workers lobster more than X number of days, which is a holdover from when lobster was the cheapest thing that you could serve people. So, okay, there are these innocuous ones. But think about the number of laws. I mean, that at the time that I forgot, what's Mario's last name? Liberta. When he raped his wife in 1981. That had been legal for 400 years.

[20:53] Meg: And it wasn't like women weren't complaining about it.

[20:55] Jessica: For 400 years.

[20:59] Meg: It was just everyone was like, sorry, there's literally nothing we can do. You're married. Wha?

[21:06] Jessica: I always love it's the law as the answer that it's like, well, that's not a statute. Okay, well, you know, the case law can overturn that, you dumb dumbs.

[21:18] Meg: And actually, there are still a lot of loopholes in some states that protect married men from being accused of rape.

[21:28] Jessica: And do we know what states these are?

[21:30] Meg: No, but you can Wikipedia it. It's gets so minute, all the minutiae. I was like, I don't even understand what that loophole means. So I didn't feel like I needed to bring it if I don't even understand it. But they're there.

[21:45] Jessica: But they're there.

[21:48] Meg: Is the point. And a quick side note. Do you remember in 2017 when Michael Cohen, who was Trump's attorney at the time, came forward and said that Donald Trump hadn't raped Devona because they were of the marital rape exemption law because he thought that it had still been in effect in 1989, but it wasn't still in effect in 1989, Michael Cohen, and also gross on you. What the frigg?

[22:19] Jessica: Well, everything about Michael Cohen is gross.

[22:22] Meg: Yeah, and he was also wrong. But he wasn't that off. He was just like a few years off.

[22:29] Jessica: Yeah, but I mean, practicing attorney should know these things.

[22:35] Meg: But he also said it out loud. It's not rape because you can't rape your wife. He said that out loud.

[22:41] Jessica: Yeah. In 2017.

[22:42] Meg: Yeah.

[22:44] Jessica: Okay. Gross. Sleaze bag. He is nasty.

[22:52] Meg: Do you want to hear some fun things about Something Wild?

[22:54] Jessica: Yes.

[22:55] Meg: Unless you want to keep talking about.

[22:56] Jessica: How I don't want to talk about Michael Cohen anymore. I'm finished with him.

[22:60] Meg: Okay. All right. I told you that Ray Leota scared the hell out of Jonathan Demi because that's so much fun. It's really an amazing movie. You know what? I'm just going to say that and my little brush with fame with it is that a lot of it, even though it takes place when it's not in New York City, they go to Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, supposedly, but it was in fact filmed in Quincy, Florida where my grandmother grew up and where many of my relatives live and where I still visit frequently.

[23:36] Jessica: Yes. That is amazing.

[23:37] Meg: Yeah. The soundtrack. Oh, this is a cool thing.

[23:40] Jessica: The soundtrack to Something Wild was amazing.

[23:44] Meg: Okay, you want to hear something super cool?

[23:46] Jessica: Yes.

[23:47] Meg: Jonathan Demi's and the sound designer. I'm sorry, I don't remember. I'll post it or I'll talk about it after the break because I should know her name. They decided that they wanted the soundtrack to actually be music that they have on the car radio or the guy with the boom box who's walking by.

[24:07] Jessica: Right. What is it? It's not– over dubbed? Is that the right word? Incidental! It's happening.

[24:13] Meg: Yeah, that it's in the scene, which is really cool. So they had all these incredible musicians who just happened to be there, like at the prom scene. The Feelies are the band at the prom. Sister Carol sings at the end. Her version of Wild Thing.

[24:38] Jessica: Yes. And she's also in Jonathan Demi's film Married to the Mob.

[24:43] Meg: Oh, my God. That's the next one. I loved Married to the Mob.

[24:46] Jessica: Such a great movie. She plays the owner of the hair salon that Michelle Pfeiffer winds up working in.

[24:55] Meg: You are so correct. Oh, my God. Now I have to watch Married to the Mob.

[24:57] Jessica: I've seen that more recently and it never disappoints. It is also a totally feminist movie and hilarious.

[25:07] Meg: So excited. I'm so excited to see that movie.

[25:10] Jessica: Didn't Jonathan Demi direct a whole lot of music videos, or was that his brother? I have a feeling that there is some to be looked up over the break.

[25:18] Meg: I don't know. But one more thing about the soundtrack. So there were two scenes that he felt it couldn't be incidental music. And one was the really violent scene, and one was the really romantic scene. So he asked Lori Anderson, his friend, if she would do the romantic music, and he asked John Kale, his friend, to do the violent music.

[25:43] Jessica: I love John Kale so much that it's not even human.

[25:45] Meg: And neither of them, it just wasn't working. And they were just like, oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't really come up with what you wanted, but for some reason, this music is hitting me right now. And as it turns out, Laurie Anderson's was really violent and John Kale's was really sweet. So he just flipped their assignments. Isn't that wild? And they're such amazing people.

[26:10] Jessica: Yes. Just as a side note yes. About a year ago, maybe a little over a year, I think it was during the pandemic. I don't know how it ever escaped my notice before. And it's a source of great embarrassment to me as a pop culture vulture that I did not know this album, but John Kale's album 1919 came to my attention and I could not stop listening to it. And I am still mesmerized and in heavy rotation, and it's so up my alley. This is sort of wacky. You know, my dear, darling, good friend Anthony Jones, former husband, he randomly called me during the Pandemic and was like, have you ever heard this album? It's really you. I think you'll really like it. I was like, oh, my God. You would go be great. But John Kayle, to me is just the best. And of course, Lori Anderson is Lori Anderson. But Jonathan Demi's use of music in all of his movies is impeccable. I'm just saying, any Jonathan Demi movie, look at the soundtrack because it's always fantastic.

[27:27] Meg: Very good tip. So, Jessica, one thing that I forgot to talk about before was I was talking about this topic with Joe, my husband, when we went away for the weekend.

[27:49] Jessica: You're married?

[27:50] Meg: I am married. To Hudson for a couple of days. Did we talk about on the podcast? It was blissful.

[27:57] Jessica: No, we didn't talk about it on the podcast. I'm so glad you guys had a good time. Hi, Joe.

[28:00] Meg: Anyway, so I was like, does this make sense for a story? Trying to make the connection and all this stuff? And then he said, when did the burning bed come out?

[28:12] Jessica: Good one, Joe.

[28:13] Meg: Good one, Joe. Looked it up. 1984, TV movie, Vera Fawcett, she's raped by her husband and she sets them on fire. The burning bed. And it was based on a real story. And then there was this whole court thing. Was she allowed to set him on fire? Anyway, that's a whole other subject. The point is.

[28:32] Jessica: Allowed to set him on fire is my favorite. That reminds me of, I don't know if I ever told you this, so you know how I had that really atypical for me boyfriend for quite some time during my rock phase.

[28:49] Meg: Which one? Oh, okay, yeah.

[28:51] Jessica: He told me, I think, after we had stopped dating, because I was very anxious during that time, so I wouldn't eat much and I would get up in the middle of the night and sort of rummage around in the refrigerator, because every time he went out to dinner, I was like, I don't want it. And then he'd bring it and put it in the fridge.

[29:14] Meg: Okay.

[29:14] Jessica: So I would get up in the middle of the night and rummage around in the refrigerator. And he told me later, because he really behaved very badly during our relationship, that he was convinced I was getting up to get lighter fluid, which he kept for his Zippo, to burn him in the bed. Like, this says so much more about you than it does about me. But I love, what it says to me, is that the burning bed was such a big deal, and it really set the standard for what does a woman who has had enough look like? Yeah, it looks like a woman holding a match. That's what it looks like.

[29:58] Meg: We shouldn't laugh, but yeah, you're right. I mean, I remember being like, oh my God, that's nuts.

[30:03] Jessica: Until Lorena Bobbitt came bob bob bobbing along.

[30:09] Meg: We're laughing about this. Anyway.

[30:11] Jessica: Look, I know if you don't laugh, you cry. You have to find the humor.

[30:17] Meg: And I also wanted to say, because I said I was going to look it up, the music supervisor, Jonathan Demi's music supervisor for Something Wild, was Sharon Doyle.

[30:29] Jessica: Okay. All right, noted. Sharon Doyle.

[30:31] Meg: Yes. What do you have for me? I've had a lot of coffee, too.

[30:37] Jessica: Yes. As have I. So we are uncharacteristically perky for this time of night. We're perky. We're never sleeping! Well, as you know, I have a great fondness for all that is outré. Everything that is not quite acceptable by societal standards is really my sweet spot. And that covers a wide range of topics: people, places, things, activities, practices, you name it. Things to ingest and imbibe, you name it. I was thinking, as I always do, I don't know what's happened to me, but I get most of my good ideas for the entire day in the half hour between waking and actually getting out of bed. So it's become this weird practice. I don't know if it's a form of meditation. Maybe someone will write in and explain what the hell is going on in my head to me. But I wake up and for half an hour, my brain churns. I answer all of my questions about things like, what should I talk about on the podcast? Or how can I solve this business problem with grace or whatever it is? And everything comes up. And in fact, some of my writing, like my best bulmo, come up during that time as well. So I was lying there as I do, and I was thinking about, there's a type of person who really just doesn't exist anymore. And I think you and I were talking about this, actually. I was talking about how gay men in New York really changed quite a bit. It must have been on this podcast because the activism of the '80s and the '70s is really over. I think it was on this podcast. Also, we talked about leather men. Yeah. And how that's like a breed that no longer exists.

[32:46] Meg: They very well may.

[32:48] Jessica: Yes, it's more of a subterranean situation. There's another variety, which is the defiant flamboyant man. I realized that there is someone who embodied this more than anybody.

[33:03] Meg: Okay.

[33:03] Jessica: And then I was like, oh, my God, he's perfect for the podcast because he moved to New York in 1981 and became a New Yorker, and it's one of my all time favorite characters, Quentin Crisp. Didn't see that coming out, did you?

[33:26] Meg: I mean, it was a pretty broad category. But, yes, I get it.

[33:28] Jessica: Okay. When he moved to New York in 1981, for those of you who don't know who he was, Quentin Crisp, actually, you might have heard of him without knowing that you had. Sting had a big song in 1987 called An Englishman in New York, which was his song written specifically about and for Quentin Crisp.

[33:51] Meg: I did not know that.

[33:52] Jessica: Yes. Who he was in a movie with. The movie was one of the eight bajillion adaptations of Frankenstein that have existed. This is 1987. Sting played Dr. Frankenstein, and I forgot who Quentin Crisp played, but he was in it. Quentin Crisp, not his real name, was born in England in 1908 to a solicitor and I think a nurse practitioner or a nurse. And so from a solidly middle class family, and he knew from a very early age that he was not like the other boys at the time. The wide spectrum of sexuality that we currently understand to exist was not understood. And one of the reasons I've always been fascinated by Quentin Crisp is that he was so flamboyant and so over the top, and it was spoken about, and he made a career out of it.

[34:57] Meg: Did you say 1908?

[34:59] Jessica: Yes. He lived a very long time.

[35:02] Meg: Okay, I just want to make sure.

[35:05] Jessica: He lived to be 91. He died in 1999.

[35:10] Meg: Wow.

[35:11] Jessica: His expression of his sexuality or his orientation or his identity was very similar to that of some of the famed bright young people of London in the 1920s who were celebrated for being beautiful and fabulous. Most notably, Steven Tennant. Also interestingly ancestor of famous model Stella Tennant, not related to David Tennant.

[35:40] Meg: Okay, that's what I thought you were going to say.

[35:41] Jessica: No, but old, aristocratic, big time family who in the 20s, during the bright young people era, was considered the most beautiful boy in London. And he would put Vaseline on his eyelids and wore gold glitter in his hair, and he was just sort of given a pass, whereas middle class, soon to be Quentin Crisp was not. And he was pretty much ejected from his family when he started to dress and express himself as he truly was, which was in the 20s. So same time when the aristocrats got away with whatever. He was really smart. He went to prep school, he got a scholarship to the equivalent of a very fancy high school and then wound up studying journalism at King's College. He was consorting with all of the other gay young men in Chelsea and Soho where they would gather. And the others who gathered there were not as educated as he was and they were not in the same social class, but they too had been ejected from their homes. Now, this is going to be a theme for Quentin Crisp. Ejection from his home. Need to leave. He learned from them how to do things like henna his hair, put on makeup, he wore nail polish on his fingernails and his toenails, and would wear sandals so that his toenails could always be on view. And he became a rent boy for six months. So he became a prostitute. He said. I think the famous quote is that he actually did it, he was looking for love and only found degradation. He was an art student and eventually became an artist's model at one of the big London art schools. And that experience became the basis, or at least the basis, for the title of his incredibly famous groundbreaking autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant, which was made into a film with John Hurt of Alien fame. He's the one whose stomach explodes. For those who don't know John Hurt, very famous actor, he did the most amazing job and his performance as Quentin Crisp rocketed him to fame. And rocketed Quentin Crisp to fame.

[38:15] Meg: Cool.

[38:16] Jessica: So that's how he became someone in the public eye. It was not just that his book was published, but it was made into, I think, a multi episode film by BBC.

[38:30] Meg: OK.

[38:31] Jessica: He famously would live in whatever his flat was for a very, very long period of time. He lived in the same flat in London from 1940 to 1981. Wow. And he never cleaned, ever. And he said his famous quote, and he did the same thing when he lived in New York. The quote was, after four years, the dirt doesn't get any worse.

[38:58] Meg: Oh, gosh.

[38:59] Jessica: Creeperama.

[39:00] Meg: I can't even imagine 40 years.

[39:02] Jessica: Well, the two of us also are, like, deeply, deeply in need of having clean and tidy homes. So could you imagine if we went in, we would self immolate, like, the minute that we got in? Or just.

[39:18] Meg: Was he also a hoarder? Was it like Hoarders?

[39:19] Jessica: It was a bit hoardery.

[39:21] Meg: Have you seen the show Hoarders. That's about filth, too.

[39:25] Jessica: Right. I've seen documentaries of him in his home and it was just more like squalor.

[39:34] Meg: Yeah, okay, I got it.

[39:36] Jessica: Yeah.

[39:36] Meg: All right then.

[39:37] Jessica: But he was very fastidious about the image that he created.

[39:43] Meg: Well, if you watch Hoarders, sometimes they are.

[39:46] Jessica: That is fascinating.

[39:48] Meg: Very.

[39:49] Jessica: Quentin Crisp. By the time he was in New York, his hair was purple. He had long, long hair.

[39:54] Meg: So when is he coming into New York? 1981. Okay.

[39:59] Jessica: And he has very long hair that he sort of piles up on top of his head. It's purple. He wears a black rakishly tipped women's fedora.

[40:11] Meg: And his profession is actor.

[40:13] Jessica: His profession is raconteur. He writes a lot of books, and he starts to basically sing for his supper. He became a fixture on the social scene. He famously said, you can live perfectly well by being a good cocktail party guest if you can subsist on champagne and peanuts.

[40:40] Meg: Oh, my God. Jessica, no spoilers, but my next story. Oh, my God. It's like our brains are just in sync. It's so weird. Anyway.

[40:51] Jessica: Is it weird? I don't know. Maybe if someone was doing a diagram or graph. Right. Yeah. Inexorably drawn to the same. What would the final subject be? That would be, like, the ultimate culmination of both of our interests.

[41:14] Meg: So interesting. Anyway. Don't think too much of that, because I want to surprise you.

[41:19] Jessica: No, I shan't. Okay. So, anyway and although self identifying as gay, of course, a bit self loathing, as frequently happened with men of that era, and he was well known for not supporting the gay liberation movement.

[41:40] Meg: All right. See?

[41:41] Jessica: Anyway, so he was known for being just this unbelievable raconteur. Eventually, it was suggested that he make his books and short stories and essays into a stage play. So he did. And it started in London in 1978 and eventually in New York, opening on July 14, 1983, at the Actors Playhouse, he brought his one man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp, to New York City. Who knew that he would be even more of a sensation? But he was, because what he did was he gave the story of his life in an hour and then opened up the floor to questions. And he would have people write questions down on an index card. He'd pull them at random and answer in his inimitable, witty, dry, bitchy, dismissive, yet completely searingly honest style. He, I think, quite deservedly, was frequently referred to as a modern Oscar Wilde, although he was born only seven years after Oscar Wilde died in Paris. Yes. So, I mean, think about what he.

[43:06] Meg: What he saw in his lifetime. Oh, my God.

[43:09] Jessica: Yeah.

[43:10] Meg: I mean, he was the 20th century.

[43:12] Jessica: He was the 20th century. And I think that he's a very disturbing character for a lot of people in the gay community, because he did not toe the line. He did not support what he was supposed to support. And I think in a lot of ways, he's really fascinating, not only because his style, his look, his approach was he never really got past that 1920s, bright young people look, which is why I was always drawn to it, that period between the wars with like, I'm not drawn to aristocrats qua-aristocracy. I'm drawn to them because they had absolutely no rules. There was nothing hemming them in. So what do you do when you're young? You've watched a generation of people die, so you've decided to live like there's no tomorrow. That's going to be some mayhem.

[44:09] Meg: And I'm sorry that's in the '20s.

[44:12] Jessica: And so he really kept that in many ways as his persona because in the same way that we are looking at the '80s, his youth was during that time. He is an amazing person and character to know about because as you said, he is the human embodiment of the modern gay world of the United States and the UK.

[44:44] Meg: I can't wait to post all kinds of pictures.

[44:47] Jessica: There's so much. There is so much. And he's worth reading. When he first got to New York, this is a great thing to my mind. He moved to the Chelsea Hotel and almost immediately upon his arrival at the Chelsea, Nancy Spongeon was killed in the hotel. Yeah. He's like, welcome to the squalor of New York. I'm going to fit right in and this is perfect. And yeah. And then found kind of horrible apartment without any of the mod cons and lived there until his death.

[45:25] Meg: So he must have moved here in the late '70s then.

[45:27] Jessica: He moved here in 1981, but.

[45:29] Meg: She died earlier than that.

[45:31] Jessica: Then he must have come. And then, you know what? Then there's an inconsistency in the research. So we're going to straighten that out. Anyway, his fame and his role in modern culture, the creation of pop culture and modern culture was really understood and latched onto in the '90s and one of my favorite Quentin Crisp unexpected appearances is in I think it's 1993 or 94, Sally Potter's movie Orlando. So interestingly, just a quick throwback. Orlando written by Virginia Woolf, part of the Bloomsbury crowd, who was absolutely writing and herself having lesbian affairs during this time period when between the wars, when all hell was breaking loose, major aristocratic family, she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. And she wrote a love letter in the form of this book, Orlando, to her lover, Vita Sackville West. And so when Sally Potter did the film, Quentin Crisp in drag played Queen Elizabeth. And earlier in my description of what we were going to be gearing up to, I said that he identified as, in his words, a homosexual.

[47:04] Meg: Okay.

[47:05] Jessica: And at the end of his life, and I think this is one of the only ways in which I can think of him being affected by modern culture rather than creating it or affecting it himself. He said almost upon his death that he realized, although he had identified as gay his whole life, that he was really a trans person. So that's one of my all time favorite people. He is wonderful, he is terrible. He is right, he's wrong, he's brilliant and one of the most amazing people who never agreed to live within society's bounds. There are just two other things about Quentin Crisp, that I have to bring to your attention. And the reason is because it's back to my absolute love of people who live outside of what is acceptable. Part of it is that they will say whatever the bloody hell they want to. And the other part is that they are so outside of any category that they can be identified with by absolutely anybody.

[48:33] Meg: Yeah, I like that idea.

[48:35] Jessica: So the first thing is here's something that he said that was completely unacceptable to people, but he's also a little bit right. How do we know that? Because look, think for a moment about Harry and Meghan right now. Crisp was a very stern, very nasty critic of Princess Diana. And of her specifically her attempts to gain public sympathy by talking about her divorce from Prince Charles. And he said, get ready, I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana and she knew the racket. So I'm just saying, think of what Quentin would have to say about Harry at the moment. Yeah. Harsh.

[49:31] Meg: Yeah, very harsh.

[49:32] Jessica: On the other hand, so throughout this whole thing, I've been talking about his proximity to all things aristocratic and British, and the translation of that into New York City or the removal of it into New York and people's reception. But I'm reading directly from Wikipedia, but you can find this in multiple articles as well as the book I'm about to reference. In his 2020 autobiography, Confess, Rob Halford of Judas Priest identifies Crisp as having been a hero of his when the then closeted Halford had first seen the Naked Civil Servant in 1975. He'd been impressed by the film and by Crisp. Rob Halford came out in an MTV interview on the 4 February 1998. Do you know who this is?

[50:29] Meg: Yeah.

[50:29] Jessica: Okay. In 1999, Halford attended San Diego Pride with his partner, Thomas. While there, Halford met Crisp, got a book signed to him: To Rob from Quentin. Not that personal. And according to Halford, he continues to treasure the signed book. Halford views himself as a rock version of Quentin Crisp and refers to himself as the, quote, stately homo of heavy metal. Isn't that wonderful? Anyway, so, yes, I absolutely adore all of that and thank you for listening to my wide ranging exegesis on an English man in New York.

[51:16] Meg: What is our tie in today?

[51:18] Jessica: That's a good one. Oh, I've got it. Ridiculous laws.

[51:24] Meg: Okay.

[51:26] Jessica: Marital rape is fine and homosexuality was not. And that was why Quentin Crisp was making sure that he had to stay out of prison quite a bit as he was running around Soho and Chelsea as a gay man. Bad laws. Yes.

[51:41] Meg: Bad.

[51:42] Jessica: Bad.