Grab a bag of M&Ms and a jar of peanut butter, it's time for another edition of Your Favorite Movie, where we ask a friend what their favorite film of all time is, and force them to talk about it.
For today, we had our old friend Meri M******** talk about her favorite flick. Meri and I went to grade school together, and despite going to different high schools, we still hung out all the time, kept together by our mutual appreciation of underage drinking.
Which means that A Love Song for Bobby Long, featuring a drunk John Travolta, was an excellent movie for us to discuss. I fucking love having to watch movies for YFM that I had never heard of before, and this makes it two weeks in a row. You have probably never heard of this movie either. It's worth a try, if you enjoy drunk John Travolta.
Meri and I met at Bonk's to discuss over some beers, and our conversation is transcribed below with Meri's permission. It's edited slightly, because I was a hungover mess, and stumbled over my words even more so than usual (weekly reminder that this will never be a podcast). Enjoy!
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Meri: Yeah, because all the characters are alcoholics.
Joe: They drank gin and pickle juice, and then beer and tomato juice.
Meri: "Breakfast of champions... champion fuck up."
Joe: That's right, John Travolta does say that. What do we think of John Travolta? Is he a good actor?
Meri: I feel like this was... not my first Travolta movie...
Joe: Grease, maybe?
Meri: Probably. My mom really liked John Travolta, so we watched a lot of him growing up. This is him not as a matinee model. No hair—well, he has hair plugs now. And this is him completely shaved down, gray hair—not that patented black that everybody knows. Which kind of shocked me! I think part of the reason I wanted to see the movie originally... because you know whenever an actor changes their appearances, it's like, "Oh, this should be a pretty good movie." I remember that I picked it up at Blockbuster.
Joe: [laughter] Of course.
Meri: I would go to Blockbuster every other day, when I was a junior in high school. I would usually pick ones I knew I had to watch, like Citizen Kane, stuff like that. But this was one I just randomly stumbled upon. I saw it, the cover of Scarlett Johansson and John Travolta sitting on a run-down porch, and read the back of it, and was like, "Oh, this sounds interesting." I watched it right before the first time I took my SATs.
Joe: Was it a popular movie back then? Was it just one copy at Blockbuster, or did they cover an entire wall?
Meri: It was just one copy. It must've just come out... well, it came out in 2004, and I think I watched in 2006. And when I bought it for the first time—because you know, no one has money in high school—it was in the five-dollar bin at Walmart. [laughter]
Joe: Okay... so definitely not popular.
Meri: No.
Joe: Like I said, I had definitely never heard of it before you told me about it. Would you say that most people that you talk to about this movie have never heard of it?
Meri: No one has ever heard of it. Ever. [My twin sister] Ali liked it too, and we told our English teacher at Little Flower about it. He was super into it, because ya know, "crazy drunken English professors helping a high school dropout." But it seems like a movie people should have heard of. The three stars are all pretty big. Scarlett Johansson is the biggest actress, John Travolta is huge, and then Gabriel Macht wasn't that big then, but he's in that show Suits?
Joe: Is he?
Meri: He's pretty big now.
Joe: Is he "the suit"? Is he the star?
Meri: He's one of the stars. I've never watched it. There's the "smart guy" on Suits, and then there's his mentor, and he's the mentor.
Joe: I was not familiar with him at all. But he did really well in this movie. He was probably... the best actor out of the three? At least in this movie.
Meri: He definitely played it very cool.
Joe: But okay, so I don't know if you answered my question. Is John Travolta a good actor? I couldn't tell from watching A Love Song for Bobby Long.
Meri: I think the thing about Bobby is that he's so outrageous, that you have to play him that way.
Joe: Isn't that easier, to play a more outrageous character?
Meri: I think so. It's more fun.
Joe: There's no need for subtleties.
Meri: But I wouldn't say he's a bad actor. Though, I'm not good at judging who's a bad actor and who's a good actor. Most of it's from a director anyway.
Joe: Right. Neither of us are actors, so who the fuck are we to say?
Meri: Exactly.
Joe: Do you feel like, in your appreciation or non-appreciation for an actor in their role, does their personal life, or history, have anything to do with shaping your opinion?
Meri: Like with his Scientology?
Joe: Exactly. For Travolta specifically, but also in general.
Meri: No, because he wasn't as annoying as Tom Cruise. I can't watch Tom Cruise movies anymore, because he was so all about it. He ruined his image. John Travolta's never really done that, at least in anything that I've seen. I could say the same thing about Elizabeth Moss. She's a scientologist, but I'll literally watch anything that she's in.
Joe: I didn't know that about her.
Meri: Yeah, sorry if I ruined it.
Joe: Fuck Mad Men, I guess.
Meri: But yeah, no, that doesn't bother me, unless they are really outspoken about it.
Joe: And Travolta's not outspoken about it?
Meri: Not that I've seen. No interviews where he's tried to recruit people. He minds his business. Whatever. [Editor's note: I don't want to go too lightly on Scientology here. It's bad news, folks. But Meri's probably right, in that Travolta hasn't done too much brash recruiting for the religion, though Scientology definitely uses John Travolta for recruiting. Anyways, I don't want to get too off-track here...]
Joe: Okay, so it doesn't matter, personal life has nothing to do with it. He's done some bad movies recently? He was just in the movie with, um...
Meri: He just looks horrible right now, and that makes his performance ridiculous. Like American Crime Story, where he played the lawyer? He just looked ridiculous! His hair looks ridiculous.
Joe: He just looks very shiny.
Meri: Botox, facelifts. And that's why I think Bobby Long was such a good role for him, because he's just shaved-down. This is how you should look at 50!
Joe: Is that his "true self," I guess? The True Travolta?
Meri: I think. Hopefully.
Joe: What was the movie he was just in last year? It was directed by... fuck...
Meri: He's been doing so many action movies. I just don't watch those.
Joe: Oh, Fred Durst! He was the director.
Meri: The Limp Bizkit guy?
Joe: Yeah!
Meri: What?!
Joe: I only know this because AVClub said it was the worst movie of the year last year. [Editor's note: It's called The Fanatic, and you can read AVClub's list HERE. Just scroll to the bottom, past Joker's well-deserved spot at #20.]
Meri: That seems like a movie one should watch with their friends, drunk.
Joe: You're not watching that movie to appreciate John Travolta's acting.
Meri: Or, it is to appreciate... how bad it is.
Joe: "Here's him at his worst. Watch Bobby Long to see him at his best."
Meri: I don't think I've watched enough Travolta movies as an adult to have a definite opinion. I think once you watch a movie so much, and you go to it because it's become a sentimental thing for you, at that point you can't judge it at all. I can't say whether he was good or not.
Joe: So that was a good thing about this movie. What are some other things you liked about A Love Song for Bobby Long?
Meri: I think they really capture New Orleans well. I love New Orleans so much, so I try to watch movies that take place there.
Joe: It's the cliché of "New Orleans itself was a character."
Meri: And they did it right before Katrina, so you get to see how it was before it was ruined. I went—I've actually been to New Orleans four times. The last time I was there... so where they filmed this movie isn't actually in New Orleans. It was across the Mississippi River in Gretna, which looked like New Orleans then. So when I was there, we got bikes, we took the ferry across... when you take the ferry across at a certain point, it's still New Orleans. New Orleans West or something. And then just a little bit up, there was a bike path, a half a mile up to Gretna. So it's comparable to a movie taking place in Philly and being filmed in Jenkintown, something like that. But now, none of that is there.
Joe: Oh wow.
Meri: It doesn't even look like it... there are all new houses. All the vegetation that you see in the movie, the abandoned church across the street, none of it is there. It looks nothing like it does in the movie. It must've all just floated away, and then they rebuilt it all. It's completely unrecognizable. I didn't even want to take a picture there, because it doesn't even seem right.
Joe: That's kind of a bummer.
Meri: Yeah. I just love the southern decadence. The old, decrepit, charming buildings. None of that is there anymore. Obviously, the French Quarter got flooded out, but a lot of the smaller, charming neighborhoods got flooded out too. The dive bar that the characters go to a lot? That's actually in the Bywater, I stayed down the street from there one time, hoping that I could drink at that bar. Nope, completely redone and made over. It's a hipster bar, it's not a dive bar anymore. So this movie shows kind of the "old way" of New Orleans, before all the hipsters came in. It was lost people, who had nowhere else to go, who don't fit in anywhere else, and who were self-medicating with alcohol.
Joe: So you're romanticizing New Orleans.
Meri: And I think the characters even do that. There's one quote, "Why did you come to New Orleans?" "It seemed so romantic at the time." As a sixteen-year-old watching it, it made me romanticize New Orleans. I had always wanted to live there.
Joe: Did you ever seriously consider moving to New Orleans?
Meri: Yeah, but then I moved to L.A. instead, which I kind of regret. But New Orleans... I don't think it will ever be like it was again, now that millennials can just move wherever they want.
Joe: It's funny you think that way, as a millennial. But do you think this movie could've taken place in another city, or is New Orleans integral to the story?
Meri: It has to be New Orleans. New Orleans has a good literary history, and it's the most romantic city in America.
Joe: I'm definitely interested to hear about... I know you personally have a thing where you go to the grave sites of different authors.
Meri: Yeah. [Editor's note: Here are a couple examples of the #literarygravetour. I'm a big fan of projects like this, clearly.]
Joe: And they did mention that in this movie, when they were quizzing Scarlett Johansson about where certain authors died. Did you start doing that project before or after you watched this movie?
Meri: I didn't really get into books until Junior Year, which is around the same time that I saw this movie. And I was known as a "black sheep," always getting in trouble, because I was drinking. [laughter] But I was appreciating literature, stuff that my peers weren't reading yet, so I identified with those characters. I became obsessed with New Orleans, because it seemed like "my place," and "my people." The movie allowed me to build up a daydream in my head of eventually going there. I didn't end up going to New Orleans until 2014, so almost ten years later. But I always kept that New Orleans dream in my mind.
Joe: What grave sites did you visit?
Meri: All over the country, you mean?
Joe: In New Orleans.
Meri: Well, they don't really have many. Most of the time, I try to stay in central New Orleans, and I don't rent a car. They have John... the guy who wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. John Kennedy Toole, I think?
Joe: I'll take your word for it.
Meri: His grave isn't in New Orleans, it's in Metairie. You'd have to take a cab there. And then the only other one is Walker Percy, who wrote The Moviegoer, which I love, I've read that twice. He's in Covington, Louisiana. So the one time, I rented a car, and then it fucking snowed, for the first time in ten years in Louisiana. [laughter] You have to cross the Pontchartrain, which is a two-mile thing, it takes a half hour, you're on a bridge. And it's snowing, and no one in Louisiana knows how to drive in the snow. I'm trying to get to this grave, and it's green most of the year, so there's palm trees there, and the plants have all this snow on them, and they collapsed and knocked down all these cable wires. So I can't even go to the grave that I wanted to go to, the one I rented a car for, because all the streets were blocked off! It was horrible. Yeah... they don't really have many literary graves in New Orleans, but the big guys had all spent time there—Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Mark Twain probably spent some time there.
Joe: That was a big part of the movie, how they were quoting authors.
Meri: One of my favorite quotes from the movie is from the end, "Every idiot knows books are better than life, that's why they're books!"
Joe: Is that typical in film, that the drunks are also pretty legitimately smart? I feel like typically, being a drunk means you're an idiot, in movies.
Meri: The first time I watched it, I wasn't an alcoholic yet... [laughter] I mean, I don't think I am, but I'm definitely leaning there.
Joe: I do want to touch on that in a little bit.
Meri: But you see it in movies, definitely.
Joe: I went through your Instagram, because I was trying to see if there were any pictures of you at graves in New Orleans, so I was clicking on all those pictures. The one was when you went to see Jack Kerouac? And you said that On the Road was the reason you didn't want to go to college.
Meri: [laughter] Yeah. And I'm glad I didn't go to college. I remember I was finishing up that book at my senior year shore house. Everyone was at work—I didn't work, because I didn't feel like it. I just lived off my graduation money.
Joe: You weren't at Rising Sun Pizza yet.
Meri: [laughter] That was when I decided I didn't want to go to college, when I started working at Rising Sun Pizza.
Joe: Better than college!
Meri: I met all types of people there.
Joe: You weren't there during the shooting, right?
Meri: No. That would've been insane. I used to walk home from work every night, and I got paid under the table. I got shot with a paintball gun one night. I thought I was really shot.
Joe: Do you feel like Pursy missed out on such experiences because she was focused on going to college?
Meri: Focused on going to college?
Joe: You're right, I guess she wasn't.
Meri: She dropped out of high school, and they got her back into high school. She didn't think she could go to college, and they were like "No, you go to college if your teachers think you can go to college." So I think she thought a lot less of herself then they did.
Joe: Do you see any of yourself in Pursy?
Meri: No, not really. She's kind of... white trash. [laughter]
Joe: Yeah, "Do you eat peanut butter and M&Ms?"
Meri: Which, from that movie, I eat that all the time now. It's my favorite thing.
Joe: But like, obviously you have views about whether you need to go to college, and the movie made it seem like she needed to go to college.
Meri: I think they just used that as a way to say, "Look where she came from, and look how she's grown." The highest she could elevate herself was to go from high school dropout to college educated. I don't see that as a "she had to go to college," it was more of a plot conclusion, to show her growth.
Joe: Okay, so I'm doing something where I have the previous interviewee ask the next one a question. I last spoke with my friend Dionna about Life as a House. Familiar with that movie?
Meri: No.
Joe: Christian Haydensen [sic]—the Star Wars dude—and Kevin Kline, who has cancer, and they build a house together.
Meri: I vaguely remember it.
Joe: Christensen is very emo. His character is introduced with a belt around his neck, jerking off in a closet.
Meri: You know, my mom probably rented it from Blockbuster, and then that happened, and I didn't end up seeing it. [laughter]
Joe: Dionna asks, "What is one storyline you wish they could've delved into a bit more, and why?"
Meri: That's a good question. I guess I wish they would've done flashbacks of Pursy's mom.
Joe: I was surprised they didn't. I thought they were leading up to that.
Meri: I just want more backstory. She seemed interesting. It's funny, because when I would go to New Orleans, I would go to all the dives. And there was this one lady in a dive who was in her 40s, and that's how old Lorraine would've been. I was like, "this is probably who Lorraine was." That sounds weird, but she was that kind of woman—a bartender at 40, but has a lot of her youth left, and is sociable and whatnot. That's me trying to put a picture of Lorraine in my mind, and I have to rely on going to New Orleans and making it up. Like Pursy did!
Joe: Wasn't that on purpose though, the fact that they never flashed back?
Meri: I guess so. One of the most effective scenes, for me, was when Bobby and Pursy are talking, and he's like, "Do you remember anything about her?" and she says that she had to make up memories about her. But then it turned out that she didn't make up the memories, that a lot of them were true. She just thought she had made them up. Which was a good storytelling device. The people tell the stories for Lorraine. Maybe it was a choice, because the characters were so eloquent with their words, they wanted them to use words over showing visuals, in the movie. Even the scene where you learn why Bobby and Lawson are in New Orleans in the first place, they have to tell you the whole story, they can't show you it. Most movies would show you it... and it probably would've been more effective. People might've liked the movie more. It might've been better received it if it had more visuals. People don't like to listen to dialogue.
Joe: That's an actual thing—show, don't tell.
Meri: Yeah, and that's why maybe people don't like this. [whiny voice] "Oh my god, it's just talking the whole time." I love it, but everyone that I know hates it, and that's one of the main reasons, because they "talk the whole time." Maybe that's a reason why it's unpopular.
Joe: I could see that.
Meri: So I dunno, I wish they even talked about Lorraine more. Because it's all kind of vague.
Joe: I feel like they could've delved into the whole story of "who Pursy's dad is" a little more. It felt... I don't know if "tacked on" is the word... They kind of implied that that other dude was the dad at one point, right?
Meri: Yeah, that weird guy.
Joe: Earl? No, Junior.
Meri: Junior was the cougher.
Joe: Yeah, I thought they implied it was him.
Meri: No, they implied the fat guy... what's his name?
Joe: Oh, Cecil? Earl?
Meri: He's eating a hoagie and crying at the beginning.
Joe: [laughter] The guy who's pruning the flowers?
Meri: Yeah. They make it seem like he's the dad.
Joe: But didn't somebody—was it Pursy who said "The only thing my mom ever said was that he was a saxophonist in a band"? And then it's Junior playing the saxophone, and he gets all weird when...
Meri: I think they could've been more clear. They could've driven that home a little more.
Joe: Was the purpose of that to say that maybe Bobby Long is in fact not her father? Or was it definitive?
Meri: I think Lorraine was in love with him, and he was a bit of playboy, so he was like "fuck off." So maybe to get it out of her mind, she originally told Pursy it was "just some guy."
Joe: I guess it's maybe besides the point, who her father is. It's her chosen family that matters.
Meri: And they didn't even have to... so I read the book. I read it a while ago, so... in the book, these guys are complete degenerates. They weren't professors at Auburn, they were professors at some community college—not to say that's bad. But Bobby Long is not the dad in the book.
Joe: That's right, this is based on a book.
Meri: Yeah, it's called Off Magazine Street. They didn't need to make Bobby the dad. That was just a movie thing that they thought audiences would like. But it easily could've ended with the chosen family. It's not always family, it's friends who become family. Which I actually would've liked better. Scarlett did a great job in that last scene... I still cry when I watch it. So good.
Joe: What, at the grave sight?
Meri: No, when she figures out Bobby is her dad.
Joe: She did do a great job.
Meri: She got nominated for a Golden Globe. She was only eighteen or nineteen at the time.
Joe: That's right. She lost to Hilary Swank.
Meri: I love Hilary Swank!
Joe: In Million Dollar Baby.
Meri: That was a good movie. That's one of my favorites.
Joe: Never seen it.
Meri: I realized that if you go through all my favorite movies, all of them revolve around three characters, two guys and one girl. I don't know why.
Joe: That's how Million Dollar Baby is?
Meri: Yeah, it's Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, and Hilary Swank. Misfits—Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach, Clark Gable. Be Kind, Rewind—one of my favorite movies ever—
Joe: Yes!
Meri: —Jack Black, Mos Def, and Alma. Station Agent, which I love—Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, and Bobby Cannavale. It's all the same dynamic. Three people become friends. One person is kind of romantically involved, the other one is more of a buddy, and they become a little family. I don't know why I like those movies. I just realized that.
Joe: Do you have that in your life? Do you feel like you have a "chosen family"?
Meri: Yeah, definitely. I have [my friends] Kristi and Joey. They're my chosen family. I go over there for Christmas. They're my second family.
Joe: You don't go to your twin sister's house for Christmas? [laughter]
Meri: They don't have room for me! They have a big family already.
Joe: That's fair. Okay, so you mentioned this earlier, and I said I wanted to get back to it. The whole alcoholism aspect to this movie. Especially because of the fact that me and you started drinking together at sixteen. Is it okay to see some of yourself in Bobby and Lawson—and I'm speaking in general here, I'm not accusing you of being an alcoholic—but is it okay in general to see someone like Bobby, who is romanticizing the drinking... and clearly there's a problem. It's not like the movie is making it explicit that he has a problem... I dunno. Speak to that.
Meri: Well, they make it pretty explicit.
Joe: That's true, he's pissing blood.
Meri: When he gets out of bed in the morning, the first thing he's doing is holding out his hand for a cup of alcohol.
Joe: But his character isn't defined by his alcoholism, I would say. It was Pursy learning to appreciate him, despite his alcoholism.
Meri: But alcohol wrecked his life. That's why he's there.
Joe: That's true. And I'm definitely not trying to downplay it, because I feel like I have the same problems sometimes.
Meri: I think that starting drinking so early kind of makes me, to this day, ya know... nothing can be fun without drinking. I can't have fun. "No one's drinking?" Because we started drinking at fifteen, it's like, "I haven't had fun in fifteen years without drinking." And all your friends are used to it too, so it's hard to get out of. I don't have to wake up and have a drink every morning. I can go a week without drinking. But if I'm going out with friends, I need to have a drink.
Joe: I almost feel like sometimes we started drinking during a time in my life when personality was supposed to be cultivated. To cultivate it around the drinking aspect of it was detrimental, I'm thinking.
Meri: That's definitely true. And then, it's like, meeting new people is so much easier when you have a drink. Dating?! Oh my god. "How am I supposed to talk you?" [laughter] Eventually, I won't need a drink. But at first, it's a social lubricant. I'm gonna need it every time I go into an uncomfortable situation. Which... I'm kind of weening myself off of a little bit. With Bobby, they definitely romanticize alcoholism. I thought I could relate to that as a sixteen-year-old who drinks a lot.
Joe: Right, that was true.
Meri: I think I went through a little bit of a phase where I was drinking almost every night, by myself, drinking Jack—"This is how I write! I'm going to write so much better when I'm drinking my Jack!"
Joe: And a lot of your authors wrote drunk, right?
Meri: Exactly. Everyone I've ever respected in that field drank. So it was like, yeah, "If I want to write something good, I'll have to get my bottle of Jack and write at my computer." So that was probably my lowest point. And then I realized that I'm probably more productive if I'm not drinking, not hungover the next day. But I think that movie definitely didn't help. Romanticizing alcohol doesn't help, ever.
Joe: For sure.
Meri: I don't know if that'll ever stop happening.
Joe: It's definitely... I watched the scene where they split a bottle of wine and played chess by the river. That's fucking awesome! That's what I want to do! And I know... I know that I can't do that anymore. I know that's not... it seems like a good life, but...
Meri: Yeah, and they're all sitting around talking, and they all have their High Lifes out. Vegetation all around, just chilling and drinking and talking with your friends. That's what you want out of life. No frills, you don't want anything else. But they also probably... don't have working plumbing?
Joe: They are pretty miserable human beings, when you step back and look at it. Especially at the moment when Pursy comes into their lives.
Meri: Right, they don't have any money, no food in the fridge because they spend all the money on alcohol. But there's this romanticizing around it, still.
Joe: Do you feel like the romanticizing of it is, I dunno, a way of explaining... or like maybe a defense mechanism... okay, like if you know you have a problem, but then the response is, "But we're just having a really nice morning, drinking this bottle of wine."
Meri: "Think of all the people who are at work right now, miserable with their lives. Look at us!" Yeah, that could be it.
Joe: I mean... we're saying all this, drinking at noon on a Sunday. [laughter] And it's fucking great! I'm doing this project because I want excuses to do that! But...
Meri: I think there has to be a line, though. And sometimes I think that at this point, everyone knows that line except me. But now I'm learning that because most of my friends are married and have kids now, they don't really "know" the line, they just have responsibilities that draw the line for them.
Joe: Do you feel like you're the type of person that would push the line a little bit too? Or at least toe the line? Like, just your personality.
Meri: Yeah, probably.
Joe: Me too. Which is probably what lead us to start drinking at such an early age anyway. The friends that weren't with us—
Meri: [friend's name]
Joe: Yeah!
Meri: "Sticklers."
Joe: They didn't want to break the law and drink, or to risk what we were risking I guess.
Meri: It's not like they had a goal in mind, something like, "If I go out, I'm going to risk losing my 4.0." I don't think they were thinking that. I think they were just... afraid? Of their parents? I dunno. I don't really know why anyone does anything. Especially at that age. [laughter] Because I could've easily gotten caught, and been labeled a "bad kid"—
Joe: You were never caught?
Meri: Well, I mean by the cops. I was caught by my parents, eventually... it took them a long time. [laughter] I was drinking in their backyard!
Joe: In the garage, right?
Meri: Yeah!
Joe: "Why is Meri having a luau party?" [laughter]
Meri: "All those kids are back there, dancing and having fun!" [laughter]
Joe: Oh my god. Does parenting have something to do with it?
Meri: I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe if you have really really strict parents. My dad thought he was strict. Well... I think wanting to get one up on him was a goal of mine. He thought he knew everything. He was a police detective! And we were having parties in the backyard! [laughter]
Joe: I forgot your dad was a detective.
Meri: He thought he was so great. "Dad, you can't even see the beer cans back here?"
Joe: I dunno... my parents obviously didn't condone drinking at age seventeen, but they rarely confronted me about it.
Meri: You don't want your kids to drink. I don't want my kids to drink, because you see where it can lead. You're at a point where you're thirty and you can't have fun without getting drunk.
Joe: Right.
Meri: You can't just have a game night with your friends and not have a beer! Me and Kristi talk about this all the time. We just have to have a beer. If I didn't start at fifteen, I would have a lot more experiences without the drinking. Then again... if my kids were drinking, I'd want them to do it at my house. Just thinking of all the fucking crazy places I went to. I was in Fishtown before it was yuppie central, with people fucking doing coke and shit, and I'm fifteen, sixteen years old. A 23-year-old man's trying to make out with me when I'm sixteen!
Joe: Are you talking about Andy?
Meri: No, there was a guy in Fishtown. I used to go down to Fishtown a lot, because a lot of the Little Flower girls were from Fishtown. There were grown men trying to give us drugs, trying to roofie us, trying all this shit. Same with Bridesburg, we were in fucking crack houses!
Joe: I remember one of the kegs in Bridesburg.
Meri: We would always go down to Bridesburg. I would rather my kids not go there, and just drink in the basement, than get raped and murdered in a fucking crack house in North Philly.
Joe: It becomes the lesser of two evils, is what you're saying.
Meri: Yeah. But then you could get in trouble. Your whole life would be over—lose your house, lose your job, go to jail. You'd also rather not have your kid raped and murdered... so, I dunno.
Joe: You're definitely starting to sound like Bobby Long. "Pursy's going to drink anyway, might as well have her drink at the house!" [laughter]
Meri: [southern drawl] "She's gonna do it."
Joe: But that's probably what I got out of this movie the most. Just seeing my reflection in the dark mirror of Bobby Long's alcoholism. Which... is not good. That shouldn't be what I got out of this movie!
Meri: I think because I started watching this when I was younger, I don't see the alcoholism as much. I don't even know what I see in it. It's like The Office for me. When I need a distraction, I need to feel control in my life, I just put something on, put it out of your mind, self-therapeutic, just put on a movie.
Joe: A Love Song for Bobby Long is your chosen family.
Meri: Yes. But don't write anything that corny.
Joe: I'm transcribing this in full.
Meri: A lot of the prose with Lawson's narration voiceovers are kind of corny. "See the invisible people"—which I think is from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—
Joe: Have you read that one?
Meri: Yeah, I love that book. Did you read it?
Joe: No. Did you read it because of this movie?
Meri: Mhmm. At the time, I was just starting out getting into literature, so I took a lot of cues from this. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the biggest one because that's the book Pursy "came back for." You know the Philly Facts Instagram account I run—I just did a post where I went on Wikipedia and went through ever Oscar winner to see who was from Philly. I was shocked it was only 23. I thought it would be at least 50. You think, it's 90 years, and 40 people win every night. 23! But when I was going through each one, I would say 60% are from New York City.
Joe: Or just say that they're from New York.
Meri: It's kind of like an echo chamber, they're all just telling their own stories over and over again. It's upper middle class... there's not many stories about average people.
Joe: Your point being that A Love Song for Bobby Long is about average people.
Meri: Yeah! With Pursy, her main goal was to be a radiologist. You don't see that in movies, where someone wants to be a radiologist. It's always something higher, or they fall lower, like a prostitute. There's never a middle ground.
Joe: It almost felt like they were actively doing the opposite of "aspiring for better things." Bobby Long, the whole movie, was saying "Books will be written about me." And I guess it did come to fruition eventually, but the movie made it seem foolish that he thought that his life had a "higher meaning." Nah, your daughter is going to grow up to be a radiologist, and she'll live a fine, average fucking life. Is that... I appreciate that message, more so than "aspiring to be the best" or "you have to be famous"...
Meri: I like that too. I'm sick of movies that say you have to find love, or... this is a movie where the goal isn't love—I mean it is love, in that Pursy finds people who love her, but it's not romantic love. She's searching for a family. It's about finding your friends and family. You don't see that too often in movies. Not many movies prioritize that over romantic love. Or a career. That might be another reason it resonates with me. Finding romantic love has never really been my goal. I just do Tinder dates out of boredom. [laughter] I've never really wanted a career. I've always wanted to create my own thing. At this point, as long as I'm creating something, and using my own voice, I don't care about fame or whatever. Cultivating friendships and keeping friendships has always been important to me. And I think that might be why I like it so much.
Joe: You see yourself reflected in the movie in that way. That we're just a small part of the grand cosmos.
Meri: We all don't need to be famous.
Joe: Do you think Bobby Long became famous through that book?
Meri: No. [laughter] That book is as read as Off Magazine Street, the book this movie is based on, which I don't think anybody has read.
Joe: That book didn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Meri: The copy I have has Scarlett and Travolta on the front cover. I don't even know what the first printing was like. Before I forget—I didn't even realize until this year that this movie was directed by a female.
Joe: Oh yeah?
Meri: I never really thought about it. I'm like, oh yeah, there are female directors, but then everyone was freaking out this year because no female directors were nominated at the Oscars, again.
Joe: You said before the interview that you didn't like Greta Gerwig's direction in Little Women.
Meri: No, so I understand why she wasn't nominated. That's the thing. Playing those identity politics in culture, you end up just rewarding someone for being a minority or being a woman. It's not something that's merited. I'm progressive, I'm fucking going to vote for Bernie, but I don't like identity politics. I loved Warren up until she did that shit with Bernie. I'm just like, "You have no political instinct, you're going to get slammed by trump." So yeah, I guess I take for granted the idea of female directors, because I'm like, "Yeah, anyone can be a movie director," or whatever. But now I'm thinking that's why I like it even more, because it has a female perspective?
Joe: What was the female perspective? Via Pursy?
Meri: Yeah. I think females soften storylines. If you read the book, you'll see that it's harder, harsher. I don't think I would like it as much if it was by-the-book. I didn't really identify with the book that much. It's all white trash people, they aren't elevating themselves at all, they're drinking every day, and then it's old men, and they're lusting after a seventeen-year-old. The lust is there in the movie, but it's definitely not as prominent. And if Lawson didn't look like Lawson, if he looked like another old man from fucking Bridesburg [laughter], it would be just a disgusting movie that no one liked. But here, it's two attractive people, so you're like, "Okay, they should get together"... even though he's ten years older than her.
Joe: John Travolta's character was lusting after her a little bit, wasn't he?
Meri: He was, which is disgusting, because she's his daughter.
Joe: Maybe that's a storyline that we did not need more of.
Meri: But it's a movie, so everything is romanticized, everything is prettier than real life. Especially when Scarlett Johansson is in it.
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