Minute 86: I'm Just Looking For A Room At The Moment

Minute 87: A Skirmish of Jens

Minute 88: A Three-Dimensional Downfall

Minute 89: A Divorce Quote-Off

Minute 90: A Tenured Fancyperson

Jen with Woody Woodmansey

Minute 81: Glittery Leopards Are Real

Minute 82: A Complete Metaphor Flush

Minute 83: No Robot Voices

Minute 84: The Biggest Pile of Coke Ever

In Minute 90 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny are joined by Jen Melchert who is now a fully vested and tenured fancyperson thanks to her week on the podcast! In this minute, we cover Mandy’s abortive flounce out of Brian’s office, Shannon and Brian’s cruel mocking laughter at her, and we go deep into the inspiration for Shannon’s character, Bowie’s longtime PA (and platonic life partner?) Coco Schwab. We also Tony Visconti and Woody Woodmansey with Jen, who had a close encounter with the longtime Bowie collaborators at one of the shows on their Holy Holy tour.

Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.

In Minute 89 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny are yet again joined by extra-fancy, Maleficent-hoodie-wearing guest host Jen Melchert, and after a brief detour into talking about late ‘90s/early ‘00s Hot Topic hate, we go straight into the Mandy vs. Brian RPG battle using quotes and references: Mandy’s opening volley of a combined Rolling Stones/Aleister Crowley quote, then Brian’s return to good old Oscar Wilde’s post-prison period with a quote about “suffering at the birth of a child as at the birth of a star,” Mandy’s riposte with Brian’s living in terror of not being misunderstood, and then Brian’s shockingly misogynist (or perhaps not?) use of a quote from Dorian Gray, and then Mandy’s eventual capitulation and disillusionment with the time and energy she gave to Brian. Then we talk a little about the rise of Dark Shannon and her new look copped from Jerry and from… the future? And finally we wrap up with Jen’s decision to pick such a dark five minutes of the movie for her week.

In Minute 88 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny are joined by fancy guest Jen Melchert to discuss: the beginning of Brian and Mandy’s final argument and the Mystery Moose hovering over this scene, about how in Britain if you run out of tea, you are obligated to offer your guests cocaine, Brian’s decision to stage his downfall at the office and not his own home, how this scene with Mandy serving Brian papers is based on a specific incident from Angie and David Bowie’s tumultuous marriage, and how Mandy and Brian’s split highlights some of the decadence of the late ‘70s. And then Jen talks a little about how she discovered the movie, how it intersects with her own early 20s, her Bowie fandom, and her love of fandom and fanfic in general.

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In Minute 87 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny are yet again joined by fancy guest host Jen Melchert, and we discuss: Mandy’s being misled to believe Brian was actually dead after his assassination on stage, what Mandy would’ve worn to the funeral, how Courtney Love fits into Jenny’s “maiden-mother-crone” formulation of rock and roll women, Mandy’s being utterly alone and isolated in Brian’s circle, and then we turn to Brian’s fall into cocaine paranoia and how it echoes Bowie’s own cocaine period, and how Bowie’s flirtation with the occult came at the very same time, look at how Aleister Crowley’s (and the Nazi Party’s) opinion of cocaine and amphetamines jibes with occult fascist Bowie, the strange career and life bookends of Bowie’s wearing the Station to Station striped suit in the videos for the Blackstar album, Mandy being the only adult in the room who was capable of ending it, our unexpected realization that Velvet Goldmine and Interview With The Vampire are the same exact movie, and Jenny’s obsession with the costumes from Velvet Goldmine and where they ended up.

Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.

In Minute 86 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny kick off a week of being joined by FANCY guest host Jen Melchert! Jen joins Jenny and Mike to discuss: Arthur’s lovely down-to-earth response to the barrage of witty epigrams from the Flaming Creatures, the Flaming Creatures perhaps having read a book or two on fascism (last week’s Big Brother reference) and Situationism, and whether Arthur’s nonplussed reaction to their dimestore philosophy is a meta-commentary on the wilderness of queer theory, Mandy’s mysterious appearance in the middle of a black void and how the movie overall poses people in situations like album covers, the silliness of Bryan Ferry’s video for “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” how the Flaming Creatures are not just a goth-glam tribute but also a tribute to the punk and postpunk artists who wanted to tear Bowie’s legacy down in the late ‘70s, Brian’s late-night recording session, his single melodramatic tear running down his cheek, and how it might be a tribute to Sinead O’Connor’s iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U” video. We then pivot through Prince and the future Paisley Park Museum to talk about Jen’s visit to the Bowie exhibit a couple of years ago and our SEETHING jealousy.

In Minute 85 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at Curt in Berlin and him in an alley full of hustlers, Jack Fairy’s arrival in Berlin to help Curt Wild, how this interacts with our theory that Brian Slade is Jack Fairy, our own nights of iniquity in clubs where people end up topless by the end of the night and/or drinking Bailey’s from a shoe, our close-up look at the Flaming Creatures’ makeup and how it reminds Jenny of the New Romantic movement, our plans for Decadent Spiral Chips and/or Breakfast Cereal, the Flaming Creatures’ predicting the arrival of Big Brother, how great works of art and societal advances come out of awful periods in history, and how we as oldsters won’t see the good art when it happens.

Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.

In Minute 84 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at Arthur’s abashedness at meeting the Flaming Creatures and being blown a kiss, the proto-goth aesthetic at the Flaming Creatures show, the beginnings of the prehistory of goth in Jim Morrison and the Velvet Underground and the ‘90s resurgence of a glam-goth look, and then we look at Brian Slade’s fans’ rebellion against his assassination hoax with the burning of his albums and memorabilia, the burning of records throughout rock history and how it’s reflected in Disco Demolition Night, Brian’s post-assassination downfall surrounded by groupies, drugs, and bad hairstyles, and Brian’s being an early adopter of home video technology, and our own memories of how video recorders and home video entered our lives.

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In Minute 83 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at what we’ve lost in terms of emotional revelation in movies and in real life now that there are no phone receivers to hang up or slam down anymore, Curt’s retreat to Berlin and how it’s a reference to Bowie’s Berlin period and trilogy and to other German retreats like the Beatles in Hamburg, the differences between Brian Slade and David Bowie, especially in how each of them were treated by their managers, the cultural history of the doner kebab in Germany, Britain, and the U.S., Jenny’s inability to tell European countries apart, Brian’s Berlin doppelgänger, and then back to Bowie and his paranoia and how he escaped his cocaine period in Berlin, how Bowie used the Berlin trilogy to recap his career up to this point, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Jenny’s disappointment with Neil Patrick Harris’s performance of Hedwig, a short detour in “straightwashing” queer classics like Rocky Horror, and then back to London where Arthur’s having his own montage, Brian seeing the Flaming Creatures (played by Placebo) for the first time, Placebo’s own history, their flouting of the Velvet Goldmine curse, and Jenny’s anger that they are considered a one-hit wonder in the States, Placebo’s connection to Bowie, Brian Malko’s acting experience and how actors and non-actors in music movies provide some new and weird energy, and the goofy look on Arthur’s face as he finds his people in London.

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In Minute 82 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at the end of the goodbye scene between Curt and Brian, Curt’s frantic smoking of a cigarette, and all the “cigarette business” actors could get up to in movies during the smoking era, Brian’s cubey electric-blue jacket and how it hearkens back to Brian and Curt’s first business breakfast, Jenny’s love of overly literal music videos, Brian’s flashbacks to Brian and Curt’s “much-needed” getaway and how it reminded Jenny of the 1991 film The Hours and Times about John Lennon and Brian Epstein, Curt’s trip to Heathrow and the sequence immediately following which gives Mike a chance to discuss the Kuleshov Effect, Brian’s desire to finish the tour not as Maxwell Demon and its connection to the green jewel, Todd Haynes objectifying Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the manner of the filmic male gaze and film noir, and how Brian’s objection to finishing the tour leads directly to the endgame for Maxwell Demon.

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In Minute 81 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike talk about the aftermath of the recording studio blow-up, including Mandy’s gradual drift away from Brian (and her fashion choices and hair for hanging around the studio), Mandy’s bubble perm as a tribute to Angie Bowie, the changing hairstyles of the main characters and the famous hairstylists of Swinging London, Jenny and Mike’s visit to the V&A for their “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970” exhibit, the Fall of the Fripperies and Brian’s cruelty to Curt in the face of Brian having been his caretaker, and the introduction of “Bitter-Sweet” by Roxy Music, the women on the cover of Roxy’s Country Life and their jobs as models/German translators, and two scenes from a balcony: the night of Brian and Curt’s fight and the morning after.

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Minute 76: Brief Holiday, Much Needed

Minute 77: Sweaty Greasy Goths Flirt

Minute 78: I Wanna Tear It Down

Minute 79: Capital-A Acting

Minute 80: You're Just A Big Nerd

In Minute 80 of The Whole Shebang, we continue the uncomfortable time looking at Curt, Brian, and Jerry’s conflict in the recording studio, the idea of studio polish vs. raw energy, where Brian’s energies are best directed and how Bowie used his time in inadvisable ways early in his career, Curt’s insults cutting to the core of Brian’s puffed-up space-age persona and coterie of yes-men, and then we look at this behavior through the lens of the fact that these rock stars (and actors) are really young when they’re behaving badly, Brian’s milquetoast suggestion of having a bit of a break, and the whys and wherefores of an artist’s vitality fading.

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In Minute 79 of The Whole Shebang, Mike and Jenny take a good long detailed look at the scene where Curt and Brian have their “creative differences,” take a detour into talking about how hard it is to be honestly critical of the person you love, siding with the suits rather than the dungarees, and then look at the fantastic acting on the part of Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Eddie Izzard in this scene. We then look at studio argument outtakes from commercials (Orson Welles), music history (Buddy Rich), and movies (Christian Bale), and then take some time with Brian’s bulge and how it echoes the cover of Sticky Fingers and David Bowie’s famed package in Labyrinth.

Find us on the web at thewholeshebangpodcast.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon at wholeshebangpod.