#171 Crossing The Streams: The Unheard Tapes (Bonus Ep33) – Great TV binge watching suggestions!

CTS Announcer 0:01

Looking for your next TV show or movie to binge? Well buckle up, grab the remote and settle into your couch for this special edition of crossing the streams. We're here to help you tune in and get the most out of those 50 monthly streaming channels you're currently paying for. So without any further ado, here's your host of crossing the streams. Jeff Dwoskin

Jeff Dwoskin 0:29

Hey, oh wait, is it Jeff Dwoskin host of classic conversations bringing you this bonus episode from crossing the streams. That's right. We're feeding you some live segments from our weekly live show where we answer the universal question Why should I be binging next? I just watched something I got to watch something else. Well, you've come to the right place. All the bonus episodes on the classic conversations feed have many binge watching suggestions for you can also follow us on our YouTube channel where we have over 89 hours of TV and movie suggestions just sitting there waiting for you. This bonus episode pulls from Episode 2872 and 87. We're going to talk about mayor of Easttown hotel Walmart and mystery of Marilyn Monroe THE UNHEARD tapes. This episode has it all. Let's kick it off with regular friend of the show. Fred Carroll, host of apostrophes a writing series high gas. This segment comes from Episode 28. It's an O J segment. Mayor of East town. Take it away, Fred. Fred, let's go to Fred's. This is a show that everyone's talking about mayor of East town we Mayor mayor,

Fredd Carroll 1:43

I'll tell you for you know, I had talked to Jeff. And I mentioned that I wanted to do hacks originally. And he had mentioned he already did hacks. So the tie in with hacks to this is the woman that plays the lead role in hacks. What's her name? Jean smart. Yeah. Jean smart. Also plays in Mayor from Easttown. So I went to Mayor from Easttown. So I'll tell you this. First of all, it's HBO. So it's done very well. In my opinion, I think HBO does some of the best work on their stuff. The one thing that Jeff said is it ended season one, it actually ended. It's only seven episodes. And that's it. It's a one and done run. Because I'm assuming that Kate Winslet is not cheap, too. But it's an American crime. It's an American crime drama set in Pennsylvania. Okay, I go right to the writers, and it's Brad angles B. And he wrote this, and I'm a writer, so it's important for me to know who wrote these movies. So I know who's responsible for good or bad this guy also wrote Christian Bale's movie out of the furnace. I don't know if you saw that. That was very good. And it's a film I enjoyed. So this is Kate Winslet in this is far removed from allowing jack to drown when there clearly was ample space for him. On our floating headboard. She killed him. She murdered Jack SPOILER ALERT Jack dies, in case you didn't see Titanic 25 years ago. And

Jeff Dwoskin 3:10

easy. Next thing you know, he's gonna tell us what Rosebud is.

Fredd Carroll 3:13

Yeah. In this she plays a rundown detective investigating a suspicious murder of a teen mother all while dealing with her own broken life and failing. So she's phenomenal actors, like I told you to production is stellar. The acting specifically between Kate Winslet Jean smart who plays the wisecracking living mother in soci bacon, who is the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kara Sedgwick. She is phenomenal in this as a recovering heroin addict trying to regain the custody of her child from Kate Winslet character. Okay, everybody got that? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the accents in this can be a bit overdone. Okay. They're a bit overdone. So much that SNL already did a two and a half minute skit around bear from Easttown but they called it you murdered my director.

Unknown Speaker 4:13

Is it a lot of Pennsylvania yinz accent Yeah,

Fredd Carroll 4:16

a lot of murder your director and everybody's related. You know, that's my cousin and this is my sister's boyfriend, sister. A lot of that. So it is a little bit you could get past it but the accents just it's very considering it's Pennsylvania a lot of people don't realize a lot of Pennsylvania can be back hills and woodsy and stuff like that you think of Pennsylvania we think of either Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or the Amish. You know, you go in all those all those roles. So it is seven episodes. And I'll tell you this about this and here's what I loved about it. It's once you start watching, you're not going to stop watching because it just keeps going but you know they keep increasing the payoff. If I I asked you after Episode Six, who did it and gave you an opportunity to name 10 suspects 10 I could almost guarantee you'd be wrong. And I personally thought I knew. And then once they revealed it, I sat there and applauded the writer because he set me up this bastard set me up geniusly he knew I thought I knew. And then he flipped the script. He flipped it, it is, you will never guess who did this. And when he does come, you are going to be walking around going where's episode eight, but it's over? Well, so that's Mayor from Easttown without giving you too much good. You know, it's your typical typical crime scene type stuff. You know, we've all seen these show before. So it is the writing and the acting that makes this different. I'm not a fan of the town. Something about the word mayor. I don't like I don't like people that refer to women named Mary as mayor. It's lazy. It's lazy. I've always had that rule as well. Yeah, mare, Bear.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:09

I didn't even I didn't even realize it was short for Mary. I thought it was a horse.

Unknown Speaker 6:13

Yeah, it is that too.

Sal Demilio 6:16

He's He's a modern American, my least

Unknown Speaker 6:20

astir your your boy Ed Asner used to call Mary Tyler Moore didn't used to call her Mary. Mary. Yeah, he did.

Fredd Carroll 6:26

Yeah, a little different though. See? Now when people say mare, they make it as long as the two syllable marry they go mare. You know, they carry it out. They don't go mare. They don't shorten it for any reason. But to say Man, they're

Sal Demilio 6:40

married. Maryann is also short for mirror people that are called Marianne their friends called Mirror.

Fredd Carroll 6:45

Yeah, like see Jerry hates being called Jer.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:49

Right? Exactly. But yeah. Hey, we got Hey, two down to the Feltner jersey. What's up? Like I drink storytelling? Service up some killer emojis. That looks like Ronnie Dangerfield. Rodney was the other one. It's great emojis. Yeah, great emoji.

Bob Phillips 7:09

In the in the awful St. Alamos fire a subject that smell. And I have discussed several times on our movie. He loves it. I hate it. Love it.

Unknown Speaker 7:19

I love it there. Winningham Mayor Winningham Okay,

Bob Phillips 7:23

she was the only one in that movie that would not be part of the Brat Pack. Right? Because she wasn't you know, she wasn't Hollywood looking enough. She wasn't hot enough. She was kind of cute. But I always I always thought that name held her back mer.

Fredd Carroll 7:40

And I believe I believe she went with Mayor because somebody in her family already was Mary Winningham. In in, that's why they gotta change their name.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:55

All right, all the way from Live episode 28. Fred Carroll, Mayor of East town. It's a great series. Definitely check that out. Up next is a YouTube documentary hotel Walmart by Bob Phillips. And after that all those disappointed in the current movie blonde. Well, we've gotten a history of Marilyn Monroe, the unheard tapes for you to take in for all your Marilyn Monroe documentary needs. Alright, but right now hotel Walmart, Episode 87. Take it away, Bob. Think the review of hotel Walmart may be longer than the actual show.

Bob Phillips 8:31

It might be i i love this. I just ran across this. And I can't even remember how well one of these, you know, YouTube rabbit holes. This is the shortest documentary I've ever seen. It's less than 13 minutes long. And but it's a full documentary. It's not. It's not a joke. It's not meant to be flippant. It's not meant to be cursory. It just gets to the point. And I think it serves up a lesson for other documentary filmmakers that you don't have to it doesn't have to be nine shows an hour long. You can you can say what you need to say if you do it. These people did. I believe it was an Australian crew that produced this. And the central point to this the central bit of information that they reveal early on is that Walmart has a policy that states we will not scare off or a ban people from staying in our parking lots whether they're just you know staying the night because they're on a long trip or if they're homeless, whatever it happens to be. There are literally 1000s of people who are living in WalMart parking lots across the country. And like I said, some of them are transient they're just they're vacationers or they're just people that you know, they live the nomadic lifestyle, whatever it is, but but you have a lot of people who, who lived there, they've pitched their tent, literally and figured Roughly and that's where they live out their life. And this particular one is focused on Flagstaff, Arizona. And there are dozens of people living in this parking lot. And it's a colorful group of people as you would imagine. Some of them you you instantly like and root for this guy named Joe, who just, he's just one of these guys. He's, I think he said he was there for like, 12 years. It just came there, you know, and, and stayed, didn't have any prospects. And then you have, you have another couple that you don't like so much, because they have fled California, because Child Protective Services is looking for them, they've taken two of their children, and they, they escaped with their baby. And they you go, you know, the filmmakers go inside this, this mobile home with them. And there's there's fucking roosters living in this thing, along with this baby and puppies and just this weirdness. Now, these people, they, you know, they're not, I don't want to call them bad people. They're just just undereducated. They don't know what they don't know. And so you you have, you have a little bit of anger toward them at the same time you want them to figure their lives out, because these are not drunks. These are not drug users, these are just people that for one reason or another slid off into this. It's not a lifestyle into I don't know what you call it, just the fringes, right. So there is a there's a story that sort of takes place during this 13 minutes. And it may be the saddest story I've ever heard when it comes to a homeless person, this guy, Joe, he starts off, they start telling his story, he has this vehicle like a truck, and it serves him fine. He lives in the truck and, you know, gets around in his truck. And then there are casinos around Flagstaff, Arizona, as they are, you know, in every place in America now. And they these casinos are so disgusting and so ruthless, they prey on these people who literally have nothing, and they take what you know what little they have, they say, Hey, come on in, go to the casino and we're going to feed your we're going to give you comp chips, you $15 of free play. So this guy goes there. And then somebody at this casino convinces him, hey, you know what, you can buy this car, you can win this car, you can buy this car, and he puts up his truck. And then you know, takes these payments, that guy can't he doesn't have a dime. So you know, it's a couple months later, they're looking to take his truck, and you know what they're gonna do it, they're gonna resell it at a huge profit. So people are being preyed upon even in these in the most horrific, sensitive situations. That's the downside of this little documentary, The upside is that you do run across some people you run across the sheriff. I think, you know, it's the mayor of Flagstaff, actually, who says he was, you know, we looked at it and thought, you know, we don't want these people out on the road, you know, they have vehicles, we don't want them out in danger. Why not let them live here. It's not bothering anybody, they're not in the middle of the park, or that in the front. They're not taking up the handicapped spaces. They're just living their lives out quietly, and, you know, humbly and they're, you know, they're not bothering anybody. So I kept trying to think, what about what did I take away from this documentary? Well, I think it's this, it's the there is, you know, I forget who said it a long time. I wish I could remember the author, one of you guys is going to know, the phrase, the banality of evil, you know, which was used to describe I believe it was the Holocaust. And it's just the, the humdrum kind of feel, to what evil becomes, when it's just there, you, it's all around you, and you don't even see it until somebody puts a lens on it and says, look, what people are trying to do with these people who don't have anything to give, they're taking money they don't have, they're making their lives even worse than they could possibly be. But somehow, someway, these people find a way to live. And I never thought I would thank Walmart for anything. But it's a really cool thing that they do that they provide, because it becomes it becomes a safe haven for them. Because every local police department knows and understands that in these WalMart parking lots there are people living and they do the drive bys. They don't you know, they don't ignore them and so that there is some protection for these folks. It's a short documentary, but with a big message. So that's

Jeff Dwoskin 14:30

hotel lot. That's a lie. And you're right when Hannah Arnett broke up the banality of evil, scared like that, but they thank you. That's a lot for 30 minutes. So it's it's pretty intense. Thank you for that.

Ron Lippitt 14:47

So you may remember a couple months ago, I reviewed on Netflix for the Netflix show made which was a limited limited series it was I'm blanking on the actresses name, but anyway The show actually feature that Bob that made this it was about this homeless, single mother and her mother. She came from a homeless family. But her mother lived on the show lived in a Walmart parking lot in a sea of other homeless people in the parking lot. And it's interesting because they they didn't talk about it or even note it in the show. But it very clearly was Walmart.

Bob Phillips 15:23

Yeah. Walmart does not publicize it, but they don't deny it either.

Ron Lippitt 15:29

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:31

So Walmart All right, Bob Phillips always delivers and can you believe it? It wasn't even a boxing show or documentary. All right up next Sal. Jamelia is going to take us through mystery of Marilyn Monroe the on her tapes. Take it away. So I let's let's go with the mystery of Marilyn Monroe the on her tapes. This is breaking breaking news. Breaking news.

Sal Demilio 16:00

Well, if you you know, this just came out at midnight last night. So if you don't want to know about the ending, just mute me right now. You know, she does die. I just want to let everybody know

Jeff Dwoskin 16:13

why. At the end of the review, a sounds gonna awesome. Titanic hanging, by the

Sal Demilio 16:22

way, this came out at midnight last night, and I wanted to just see how it happens. So I like turned Netflix on at 11:58pm. And at midnight, it just appeared like one of those Star Trek people you know when they just appeared. That's all disappeared. Amazing creation. No, but it did. It just came out last night. I watched it early this morning. Alright, so here's the deal. Here's what I how I sat down and watch this. Because obviously we all know about Marilyn Monroe's life we know about all our husbands and all that stuff. But we don't know the deep deep down things that that this guy I'm about to tell you about? Found out. So what I said I was gonna do was go into it and think because I think she was I think she was murdered. That's what I thought before I started watching this. So I wanted to see if, if that changed at the end of this. And I'll tell you in a minute. Basically, there's a gentleman named Anthony Summers, who wrote a book called goddess and he wrote, basically a book about Marilyn Monroe, where he had he interviewed over 1000 people for this book. And what he did was he had all these unheard takes that nobody else had interviews from people throughout the years. And that's how we came up with this Netflix movie. I mean, his his book did very, very well too. But obviously, with Netflix call and he said, Hey, I'll do a documentary because he had so much footage, if you like this documentary, I think was an hour and 41 minutes long. Him pressing a cassette tape. And here in that winding thing that was literally about 1720 minutes of the of the documentary, I mean, you just every time he interviewed somebody who just saw this cassette tape that was it was just a for a fact, but it just I thought they did it way too much. That's this is my one beef about it. But so what happens is obviously she's murdered on Marilyn Monroe, virgin birth, and Marilyn Monroe died on August 4 1962, from a drug overdose, supposedly drug overdose. And in 1982, they reopened the case, they wanted to find out exactly what happened. I don't know why they didn't do that for 20 years, but 1982 they did. And this and they asked us, Arthur summers to go to LA for two weeks, they gave the guy like two weeks, or three weeks or something to find out what he could find out. Well, he ended up staying there for three years, and gathering up all these interviews and and what I just talked about. So that's kind of what the documentary is about. And what he does is, when he's interviewing his first people that he's interviewing, they're just being really quiet. These are these are people that were around when she was when she died, LA Times journalist, you know, just people like that, that really were there. And he wasn't getting anywhere. People weren't saying much to him. So he says in the documentary, I had to go back to the beginning. And that's when he starts talking about her whole life. She was born in 1946. And she was I didn't know and that's kind of what I thought was cool. I found out about Maryland and rose early life and I didn't know she was in over 10 orphanages, by the time she was 11 years old. She bounced around she she had a horrible childhood basically, that's probably what the drugs and all that came in and the attention and as far as footage goes, it's unbelievable. They show just great footage of that time that that she was around and just great footage of her obviously some we've seen some we've never seen So that part's pretty cool. And again, I mean not to just go over what her life is, but they show her marriage to her marriage to Arthur Miller, which I didn't know this when she was again this is little things that I found out watching it when she was married to Arthur Miller. Apparently our government thought he was a communist. So when she was married to Arthur Miller, they put the epi The AI and CIA on him because they thought he was communist. So they found out a lot about Marilyn Monroe a lot of tapes, a lot of conversations she had with him on the phone. So that was kind of us. I, again, didn't know that. She was obviously married to Joe DiMaggio,

Jeff Dwoskin 20:16

and vice versa. And so the other thing that she became Jewish to Oh, yeah,

Sal Demilio 20:21

yeah, you don't. They skip a lot of stuff. And it's documented. Obviously, there's so much stuff. But you're right, she did. And there was some other things they left out, too when I was reading the Wikipedia page on Maryland, just to see if they coincided with everything. But yeah, she did. She did. And she, you know, she was married to Joe DiMaggio, that wasn't very long. So they kind of talk about that. And then obviously, the Kennedys come in. And that's when it gets really interesting. Obviously, it was just kind of cool to see all the parties that she went to Peter Lawford. From the Rat Pack, he would have all these parties on a beach, they showed his house, they showed pictures of the house and then kind of standing around drinking and partying, some videos, a little bit of videos of that, but his house was kind of weird. It's kind of funny, but it reminded me not in a sick way, like the guy I'm about to say, but it kind of reminded me of the Epstein Island, in a way. It's like Peter Lockwood's house was where the elite went to prostitutes have, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff happened at that guy's house, which I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know. So anyway, that's where the Kennedys would go. And they could have obscure relationships there. And they could party and nobody, no, no press was there. No, nothing. So that's where obviously she she meets the Kennedys. And, you know, she actually slept with both of them. You know, I mean, she'd been Bobby and Jack, you know, so that so you see all that you hear about that you hear. And this is another cool thing. So he interviewed over 1000 people for this documentary for his book. So he has over six that some of them didn't take or whatever. So he had 650 hours of cassette tape interviews, and you hear interviews from her, made that lived with Marilyn Monroe, you CIA directors and journalists, and just really, really interesting people. Some say a lot, some say Don't say don't say much. But basically, it's, it was a very interesting documentary, it went by really, really fast. It really went by fast. And then at the end, you kind of find out some stuff that I didn't know again, she died on August 4 1962. She died at four o'clock in the morning. She had gone out the night before. If I'm remembering this correctly, she actually met with one of the Kennedys I forgot which one and they were basically breaking it off with her because all this stuff was coming down on the Kennedys how she was involved with it, stuff was leaking, and not like today were stuff leaks and a couple of days. And then obviously it just took a little while back then. But I think the Kennedys were starting to feel the pressure of Marilyn Monroe, kind of, I think she was starting to get into more drugs. And I think they were worried about her, you know, saying some stuff that nobody went and that's where the so called, you know, was she murdered? But she ended up you know, again, overdosing. They found her at 430 in the morning. Well, I didn't know this. I forgot which Kennedy now it was but one of the Kennedys left, they were in San Francisco they were playing at 3am That night, they left out of town. I was like, Well, why did the Kennedys leave? They would that they know something? You know? So it's kind of got that at the end? You really don't know you have to kind of decide for yourself if you think she was just drug overdose or do you think there was some funny play there in the bedroom that night where they found her so very interesting documentary. I really liked it. I think she was one of the most amazing just actresses with I mean, in today's day and age, she would be a normal actress. You'd be like Amber Heard with Johnny Depp right now you know, but she's just as the biggest sex symbol ever. Some of them they get into some of her movie contracts, they get into some of the movies that she made who she started with and that stuff was pretty cool. So it's just all in all just about her life and it was really cool. I thought it was a great documentary. I highly recommend it if you're into her life and you want to know a little bit deeper into what you know about her. I think it's a good watch.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:26

Jason has how many? Yeah, definitely. How many jars you given that so

Sal Demilio 24:31

I'm gonna give it four jars. I'm not gonna give it five because all the freaking cassette tapes they show you but I mean literally it's amazing how many they showed you just what just you don't know that for a fact they press that cassette player and they did that least 100 times in this thing. It's the only thing I didn't like about it but it was very good though. The footage is amazing. They talk all real quick. They talk about you know where she stands on the where the her dress comes up or whatever. So This was interesting. I'd like for you guys to see it because I thought movies you can't go on a movie set but when they filmed that scene, there was only like five people on the sidewalk but but but they had to dad to keep retaking that obviously like what they do with movies because the director wanted to get the perfect you know when thing with her dress. So by the time they did the last tape, there was literally 1000 people standing around that sidewalk watching that scene. And I'm like thinking if that was a real movie, you couldn't do that. Right? You can't just go I mean, right? You can't just go up film and Batman or one of these movies downtown Detroit you can't just go up and watch the actress do are seeing so I thought that was maybe back then they let people come up. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And when she came out and sang happy birthday to the President John F. Kennedy, that was kind of cool. They show the whole footage of that her singing it from start to finish. And so that was kind of interesting. That was an interesting scene to watch.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:56

The only thing I know about Marilyn Monroe is that she She lived her life like a candle ever knowing who to cling to when the rain said and I was like, what I was just a kid or candle burned. Legend day when did Elton John come on the show? I mean, I know.

Unknown Speaker 26:24

No. machi

Jeff Dwoskin 26:28

you had the grace to hold yourself. Wow. Those around you crawled all right. You're welcome.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:42

All right. How awesome was that? Sal delivering a really good Marilyn Monroe documentary. So if blind isn't your thing, check out mystery of Marilyn Monroe plus you got to hear me sing bonus. Also hotel Walmart and Mayor of Easttown. It's an oldie but a goodie. If you haven't gotten around to watching that yet. Definitely do it. Totally worth your time. All right. That's a lot a lot of homework for you. Go secure your favorite spot on the couch, grab your remote cross your own streams, and I'll see you next time.

CTS Announcer 27:17

Thanks for listening to this special edition of crossing the streams. Visit us on YouTube for full episodes and catch us live every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern time. Now turn this off and go watch some TV. And don't forget to tell your family yeah, I'll be busy for a while.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai