115. Thanksgiving-ish Books and Films

KIM: Hey, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode! I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host, Amy Helmes.

AMY: So, fun fact for y’all… the first project Kim and I ever collaborated on was back when we were in our 20s. We had a blog that we wrote called “Romancing the Tome,” which was all about book-to-film literary adaptations and costume dramas.

KIM: Oh my god, we had so much fun working on that together. We actually kept it going for about a decade (from 2004-2013) and it’s fun to go back and look at it, although honestly, when I do, I can’t remember writing ANY of it actually!

AMY: I know! You have sent a few things to me recently like, “Remember this?” and I’m like, “No, I have no memory of this. Did I write that? What?” In fact, I saw that I had written a limerick about Tess of the D’Urbervilles which was brand new to me when I saw it again. 

KIM: I don’t remember that at all.

AMY: There must have been a PBS Tess of the D’Urbervilles movie at the time.

KIM: There was. Yeah.

AMY: Okay. So I wrote for the blog: 

There was a poor girl named Tess

Her life was a tragic hot mess.

Her "cuz" did assault her (Will Angel now fault her?)

Stay tuned, and bring Kleenex, I guess.

I mean, I think that’s pretty damn good!

KIM: It’s excellent.

AMY: I can only pat myself on the back because I don't have any memory of writing it. It's like some other disembodied me.

KIM: The burgeoning of our writing career. We were testing things out. I think it’s great. But anyway, while recently going back to re-read that old blog we found many forgotten and I’ll say I think hidden treasures (you’ll have to be the judge of that) including a post we did that seemed apropos for Thanksgiving, which we’re celebrating this week in the States.

AMY: Yeah, so on the blog we were kind of talking about literature and, you know, movies and TV shows that would be set in Colonial America. We thought it would be fun to share them again with you in honor of the holiday this week. Maybe you’ll want to curl up on the couch this year after gorging on turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and indulge in some Pilgrim-adjacent entertainment. It’s not really a time period that gets too much attention in Hollywood, is it, Kim?

KIM: No, and I wonder if it’s because the Pilgrims had no fashion sense. I think anybody would think that’s true. They don’t have fashion sense. I mean, there’s nothing fun or flashy about Puritans. In fact, it’s pretty bad.

AMY: It’s hard to imbue glamor into that era.

KIM: That’s not a flattering look for men or women.

AMY: Yeah, Hollywood is like, “No, thank you.” The fashion, though, reminds me. Did you always used to make those paper pilgrim hats in elementary school? 

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Boys would make the top hat-looking thing and the girls would make these white bonnet things out of tissue paper. I have so many memories of making those. My mom would always put me in a long, 70s dress and then I’d be wearing my paper Pilgrim bonnet.

KIM: If you can find (or your mom can find) a picture of that, we’ll have to post it on our Instagram account.

AMY: Yeah, I know we have one.  Okay. So anyway, getting back to our list for today, Kim, let's talk about our first suggestion.

KIM: Okay. So we've gotta start with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Right? Of course you've read it right?

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember when. I know it was for a class, so I think probably in high school, um, the story, to jog your memory, is set among the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was written in 1850 though. Uh, and it's kind of an amazingly feminist tale, even though it doesn't seem that way on the surface.

KIM: Yeah, that's true. It kind of is shockingly feminist in a way, and I actually, I have read that more than once. I really liked it. It might be time to read it again.

AMY: Have you seen any of the film adaptations?

KIM: Um, I don't know if I've seen it, but I'm remembering there was one with Demi Moore, right? And that one's popping into my head.

AMY: I think that's the most classic one, just because it is so bad that it's the one everyone remembers. And I have the funniest story about that. So in college, my roommate Meg (sometimes you hear me refer to Meg on the podcast) she and I were co-presidents of the English Club in college

KIM: I love it. 

AMY: And so we were responsible for planning events and stuff. And it was right when that Demi Moore, um, Gary Oldman was also in the movie. So she plays Hester Prynn, Gary Oldman plays Dimmesdale.

KIM: I can picture him in a pilgrim outfit.

AMY: Oh yeah, 

KIM: Anyway…

AMY: So it was 1995. I don't know what year I was in college, but we, as the English Club co-presidents were like, “Let's invite everybody in the club. We'll go to a screening of this, right?” So we put out the marketing for it. Whatever. “Come join us on this afternoon. We're all gonna caravan to the movie theater. We'll meet at this park bench on campus first.” So Meg and I meet at the park bench and the only person that turns up is one of our professors who is kind of awkward. He was like the Shakespeare professor. I think he was one of the faculty chairs of the English club. You had to have like the professor that sponsored it or whatever. No one else showed up. Like, literally no one else came to this event. And Meg and I were excited to go, but now it's suddenly me, you and this guy? What? And luckily he saw how awkward it probably was and he's like, "You guys just go ahead and go. I think I'll set this one out." Like, thank God. Because there was also, there was like the weird sex scene in the barn, but there was a ton of grain...

KIM: I feel like it's part of the exploitation of Demi Moore that was going on during that time. 

AMY: Yes. Yeah. And it had a really weird ending. I think they gave it a happy ending.

KIM: Oh God, how do you do that? You know what? I feel like that would make a really, I feel like it's time for that. I mean, you know, it kind of fits with like “The Handmaid's Tale” almost and stuff like that. Like I could see it really doing well right now.

AMY: Yeah. Well if you think about it, they did do a kind of nineties updated version, Easy A with Emma Stone?

KIM: Oh that's right. That's so great. So I have seen... in that way, I have seen an adaptation of it, because I love that movie. I haven't seen it in a while, but I did love that when it came out.

AMY: And there was a 1926 silent film version of this book starring Lillian Gish. The only reason I mention it, I highly, highly recommend that you go on YouTube and find a clip from this, because there's a scene where Hester Prynn is holding her baby while she's walking to the gallows and she nails the scene. I mean, silent films, they're hard to appreciate, you know what I mean? But in this, you see why she's a movie star, because she gives Dimmesdale the most perfectly cutting dagger eyes. And then on the flip side, the actor playing Dimmesdale, he looks like Will Ferrell and his acting is as buffoonish as Will Ferrell's. I mean, Will Ferrell would look like a serious contender for this role compared to the guy they actually cast. it's just such a weird mismatch. Cause she's nailing it and it's so intense and it's so poignant. And then you've got this like utter buffoon. But she is a full on badass in the scene. It's like, take three minutes outta your day and go find it. 

KIM: I'm gonna watch it. We'll link to it,

AMY: Yeah, exactly. So, all right, let's move on to our next Pilgrim-esque book. This one is actually kind of a stretch, but go ahead, Kim.

KIM: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, I could see where this made our list. Uh, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.

AMY: Who by the way, is the grand uncle of writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, who was one of our previous lost ladies. I don't think we even had time in that episode to mention her connection to James Fenimore Cooper. But they were related.

KIM: Right. And the film version of that one has Daniel Day Lewis. And basically what they did to make that hot is I think they took his shirt off a lot. He wore like, an open shirt… 

AMY: Yes. And the long hair, like the long, romance-novel hair. 

KIM: I picture that more than the book. Like I just picture that movie and him, like running in his, you know, romantic shirt with the long hair. 

AMY: Tomahawk in his hand. Yeah. Yeah. 

KIM: It's just like a famous cinematic... you know, it just, it comes to mind so easily. Yeah. He was the Mohican-reared Natty Bumpo. He's Nathaniel Poe in the movie, which is a nicer, I guess, sounding name.

AMY: I did see the movie. I don't know if I was in high school maybe. I don't think I've ever read any of those “Leatherstocking Tales” except for maybe an excerpt in English class at one point. And it didn't appeal to me at all.

KIM: Same. 

AMY: But Madeleine Stowe is also in that movie, and the reason I say it's a stretch is because this is set about a century after the first Thanksgiving. So in terms of our timeline, we're getting pretty loosey goosey here, but it still feels Thanksgiving-ish, right?

KIM: Oh, totally. I feel, yeah, it's definitely part of the theme, for sure. Yeah. 

AMY: And we're not done with Daniel Day Lewis just yet because he also starred in our third literary adaptation that we want to mention: The Crucible. Um, this is probably not the right time period, either.

KIM: It's of, generally. 

AMY: Yeah, it's like by give or take 500 years. Um, so that's the play of course by Arthur Miller. The film that I remember, uh, was from 1996. It stars Daniel Day Lewis as John Proctor, and then Winona Ryder as Williams. 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. Joan Allen's in it too.

AMY: Did you see that one?

KIM: Yeah, it's been a long time. I don't remember that as iconically as I remember The Last of Mohicans, and I love Daniel Day Lewis movies, but yeah, I did. I, I think I did see it. 

AMY: I remember Joan Allen in that movie, which makes me think she must have been really incredible in it. But really what I remember from the play and any version of that is just the hysterical teenage girls, you know? They always like really sell it. "I saw Goodie Proctor with the Devil!" How can you not love that? 

KIM: Yeah, if only the Beatles had come earlier, they could have focused all their hysteria on somebody else!

AMY: Oh my God. Somebody should do like a mash up of Beetle mania. Tie it all together somehow? Yeah, yeah. 

KIM: Um, the play was originally written during the Red Scare and McCarthyism, and it almost feels like it speaks to some of the hysteria we're seeing from people politically today, so.

AMY: Yeah, I could see, you know, you were talking about the Scarlet Letter remade. This one feels really ripe.

KIM: Yeah, I'd agree. I agree. Yeah, absolutely.

AMY: Okay. So all the films we mentioned so far are pretty angsty. This next one will be a bit lighter, I think. Um, it's from 2004, a TV series called "Colonial House." Now I am a huge fan of this whole series of shows. Yeah, so this is a reality show where the 25 contestants, which are a combination of adults and children, they attempt to live for five months as if it's the year 1628 in New England. You can still find it on Apple TV and Amazon Prime video. And I think if you have Paramount Plus it's there, too. Um, I always think I would want to go on one of these shows and to really live and you have like a historian talking you through it to like teach you how everything worked. And I think that would be so fun, but it really looked pretty hellish because this is not a fun era to live in. It's not comfortable at all. Grueling is how I would describe that lifestyle, but it's really fun to watch though. 

KIM: Yeah. Okay, so I want to suggest a novel that should make this list. It hasn't been adapted for film or TV yet, but maybe it should be. The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents. And I actually have a beautiful old hard back of this. It's gorgeous. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it. It spans two continents and it tells the story of a French Huguenot family's flight to the New World from the court of Louis XIV. Once they arrive, they must travel through hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness evading Native Americans as they flee a malevolent Jesuit priest. It's really good.

AMY: That does sound good. And it's Arthur Conan Doyle? 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: I just think of him as Sherlock Holmes. 

KIM: I know! I found it at a used bookstore. I'd never even heard of it. That happens sometimes, and I just loved it. Um, and I feel like it could be a really great mini series. 

AMY: The Refugees. Okay. 

KIM: Yeah. They, we wanna change the name. Maybe just A Tale of Two Continents. 

AMY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the last one I'm going to throw in is a more recent-ish movie. I mean, it's not too recent, but The Village, M. Night Shyamalan, however you say his last name. I know some people hated it, but I liked it. Bryce Dallas Howard is really good in it. Did you ever see it, Kim?

KIM: I did. Um, I, I don't remember. Isn't River... or not River, isn't what Joaquin Phoenix in it?

AMY: I think so, yeah, it's a bit scary. So if you're looking for those kind of vibes this Thanksgiving night, maybe that's an option.

KIM: Yeah. If you wanna have nightmares with your turkey.

AMY: Your tryptophan nightmares. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

KIM: You know what? All the talk that we did about, um, The Last of the Mohicans actually makes me think of a Colin Farrell movie that might work: The New World. Doesn't that also have the same Last of the Mohicans kind of feel?

AMY: Yeah. It's like the first explorers on the continent. That was one of those movies that was so hyped at the time and then it kind of fizzled a little bit when it came out. 

KIM: Colin Farrel was like...

AMY: BIg. Yeah, all right. So that's good. I mean, I think that's hard to come up with books in that vein. Listeners, if anybody else has other kind of colonial-era novels that you wanna suggest, give us a shout-out. Rosemary. I know you must know some. 

KIM: Yes, Rosemary, something. 

AMY: And Wendy-Marie.

KIM: Yeah, let us know.

AMY: Yeah. And other than that, we'll conclude this episode and see you back next week. So thank you everyone. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.