STREEPS OF FIRE: STREEPEAT

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BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY & ADAPTATION - STREEPEAT

A first for our podcast! Join us as we rewatch two movies we originally talked about during seasons focussed on Clint Eastwood and Nicolas Cage (boo, patriarchy!) but wisely shift our focus to Meryl Streep. We are joined by Shannon this week to discuss the books both movies were based on!

1995's BRIDGE'S OF MADISON COUNTY co-stars and was directed by Clint Eastwood, covered at length in S1-S3. This was during Eastwood's 1990s streak of great movies and Bridges is up there with his best. Streep, at 45, was deemed too old by the studio to play romantic lead with Eastwood, WHO WAS 65 at the time (boo, patriarchy!!). Luckily Eastwood was able to get her on board and, together, make one of the quietest, devastating romances of the time. Eastwood wisely cut out a lot of his big moments and lets the film, and viewers, fall in love with Streep's character and the low key easy rhythms of an isolated farm house in the 1960s. Streep owns the movie and you can feel Eastwood, the director, being 100% okay with it. 

In 2002's ADAPTATION (originally covered in our S4 premiere of Cage Uncaged) Streep plays real-life author Susan Orlean, whose article-then-book THE ORCHID THIEF is given to screenwriter Charlie Kauffman to adapt. Meta antics ensue. It's hard not to focus on Cage playing identical twins or Chris Cooper in an even showier role, but Streep grounds the movie in a way it might not succeed had Orlean been played by an actress with less finesse. We all get a ton of background on what in the book was not used and, what, surprisingly, was in the book, by Shannon.   

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Ken: Ken Koral
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