BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
A warning to listeners - this episode references sex and violence and contains language that may be offensive.
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LUSE: Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR - a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: One thing to know about me and movies - if it's an erotic thriller, I'm going to watch it. It's a perfect mash-up of genres that always promises to be sexy, suspenseful, and fun. So I am thrilled to report that a new erotic thriller titled "Love Lies Bleeding" absolutely delivers. Directed by Rose Glass, the movie is an '80s fantasia of big muscles, big guns and big hair, with tons of steamy scenes and thrilling twists to boot.
KATY O'BRIAN: I play an amateur bodybuilder named Jackie, who is heading out to Vegas to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional bodybuilder.
LUSE: That's Katy O'Brian. She's my guest today and one of the stars of "Love Lies Bleeding."
O'BRIAN: In the meantime, I kind of stop in a small town and run into Kristen Stewart's character Lou, who I fall instantly in love with. Her family kind of is awful, and I start to get involved and stir the pot. Yeah, then it just becomes a completely wild ride after that.
LUSE: Lou and Jackie - they've got what I like to call struggle love. That ride-or-die, kiss-and-fight kind of love that you know ain't going nowhere positive, but the chemistry is so strong you kind of don't care. But underneath the messy love and neon work outfits, Love Lies Bleeding is also a classic erotic thriller in that it's tuned into wider cultural anxieties, like the way "Fatal Attraction" unpacked the threat of the successful single woman, or how "Basic Instinct" played on America's bisexual panic. Well, "Love Lies Bleeding" is about women's capacity for rage, something that both scares us and awes us. I sat down with Katy O'Brian to talk all about strong women, and the fantasy of wielding the rage that lurks just under the surface.
Katy, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
O'BRIAN: Thanks for having me.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh, it is absolutely my pleasure. So first, you told the story a few times about how a fan sent you the casting call for this movie, and you were like, I have to get this part because you also were a queer bodybuilder from the Midwest. I'm also from the Midwest. So shout out to that.
O'BRIAN: Oh, nice.
LUSE: You even made a PowerPoint...
O'BRIAN: I did.
LUSE: ...To convince them to give you an audition. So I have to ask, what was on the PowerPoint?
O'BRIAN: I need to release it, I think, at this point. I had photos from previous competitions that I put on it, bodybuilding competitions. You - all dolled up, and you know, I got fake lashes. I got a tan. I got...
LUSE: Oh, right, the tan and, like, the oil and everything like that.
O'BRIAN: Yeah. And then it's also just to show, like, it's not an easy feat to do a competition. So it's like, OK, I've done it. Here's what I look like when I do it.
LUSE: So you had, like, PowerPoint-level feelings...
O'BRIAN: Yes.
LUSE: ...About wanting to convey something through this role. What aspects of your story or Jackie's story did you want people to see?
O'BRIAN: Originally I was given very little information, but the information that I had was what drew me to the project. And one of it was it's an A24 project, and they make excellent films.
LUSE: They do.
O'BRIAN: And I tend to be a franchise baby, or was. And I wanted to make something original. And what's more original than a story about a female bodybuilder in the '80s that's queer? '80s bodybuilding is the time for bodybuilding.
LUSE: Right? It feels like the height - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan, like, that was the mainstream sort of male ideal. And I imagine that the bodybuilding world must have been just going ham at that time.
O'BRIAN: It was. But it was also this - especially with women's bodybuilding, it was this interesting time period where they were kind of ironing out where they wanted it to go, because originally women's bodybuilding was kind of more of, like, a WWE ring girl, you know, just looking really cute and walking around. Like, they were kind of trying to figure out how much muscle they would allow or wanted women to have on stage, which was really interesting. It was a big turn in women's bodybuilding in particular, and we were starting to see the first visible usage of steroids in female bodybuilders also. So as like a time period to tackle that was incredible, and, you know, it was modern day, Jackie would probably be like an influencer or something.
LUSE: (Laughter) Yes.
O'BRIAN: And so it'd be, like, a totally different story.
LUSE: No, that's absolutely right. I mean, she probably would be an influencer today.
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: I feel like in the setting of the film in the '80s because there's not, like, this market or as robust of a market around bodies like hers, it made for a much more interesting story to see how she took up space, why she took up space. It became a lot more compelling.
O'BRIAN: Yeah, yeah. And it's - you know, I think CrossFit honestly has helped a lot in terms of normalizing musculature on women's bodies in the Midwest. But I - when I first started bodybuilding, people would come up off the street and touch my muscle. It was really weird.
LUSE: Whoa.
O'BRIAN: And you're just, like, you really shouldn't just touch people.
LUSE: No.
O'BRIAN: And even recently, that happened to me. I went to pick something up from a store, and the guy behind the counter just over and grab my shoulder to, like, touch it.
LUSE: What?
O'BRIAN: Yeah, I know.
LUSE: That's so wild because also, like, conjecture, but I feel like most people don't do that to, like, jacked dudes, just walk up and just grab their shoulder like, hey.
O'BRIAN: Maybe they do. I don't know, but it's weird.
LUSE: I don't know.
O'BRIAN: It was weird.
LUSE: I don't know. The movie really plays into how big and strong your character is, you know, even playing with perspectives on her size in some really interesting and creative ways. Like, I feel like there's something about the iconography of the 50-foot woman, you know, that is both terrifying to some but super hot to others and certainly hot to Lou in the movie. How do you think about the giantess as a symbol?
O'BRIAN: Rose was talking about when we're in the town, trying to make sure that a lot of people were either my height or smaller, so everyone kind of looked small compared to me - and then when I got to the competition, that I would feel kind of dwarfed compared to everybody else. When you feel big, when you feel larger than life, you have this confidence in this almost blind passion that you can accomplish anything. And then it's, like, a crashing down to reality situation. So she definitely played with sizes like a confidence factor. And bodybuilders are fetishized, too. And I'm sure there's, like, a fetish element of it. I remember...
LUSE: Yeah.
O'BRIAN: ...It was, like, before I even moved to Los Angeles, I was on backstage.com, which is, like, where you get some casting calls. But now I know it's not, like, one of the main ones. And I got one that was, like, this guy, oh, yeah, we're going to do this movie, and it's going to be a giant woman. And so for the audition, I need you to just pretend that you're stomping on things. And I'm like, that's weird. But I sent the audition in, and then he's like, OK, now I just need you to, like, look even bigger and stomp even more. And after a while, I was like, I think he's just...
LUSE: Yeah.
O'BRIAN: Yeah, I think that we're not...
LUSE: Yeah, trying to collect content.
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: Yeah, yeah.
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: I think something that her size awakened in some of the people, specifically the men that she encountered throughout the film, was that, like - I don't know - like, women are treated pretty bad in society a lot of the time. And when a disenfranchised person suddenly has life-threatening size and power, I think that there is a tension, whether it's right on the surface or well below that, like, oh, maybe this woman will be seeking revenge. I could also see if you have a partner like that, then that power, their power is on your side. It was interesting to see what felt like a lot of different layers to people's responses to somebody else's body that were explored in an interesting way in the film.
O'BRIAN: Yeah. But I will say I think I feel like Lou in the relationship has all of the power, even though Jackie is, like, physically stronger. Everything that Jackie really does is to keep herself in Lou's favor.
LUSE: And she's living with Lou. Like, Lou's...
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: Like, she moved into Lou's place, and Lou's cooking her breakfast.
O'BRIAN: She's her protector. Yeah.
LUSE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
O'BRIAN: Lou's taking out her egg whites.
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O'BRIAN: (As Jackie) This is delicious.
KRISTEN STEWART: (As Lou) Good.
O'BRIAN: (As Jackie) I mean, like, you know, next time you could take the yolks out, but...
STEWART: (As Lou) Oh, yeah?
O'BRIAN: (As Jackie) Mmm hmm.
She's giving her a house. She's cleaning up her messes. I always thought of Lou as the more dominant personality in it and the stronger person internally. And then Jackie's just externally stronger.
LUSE: Which makes them such an interesting fit together as a couple, I think, in the film.
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: Coming up, how "Love Lies Bleeding" refreshes the feminine revenge plot. Stick around.
Huge themes in this film are, like, muscles or guns or size, like, all symbols of power. But there's also a lot of rage. Your character - she takes steroids, and they kind of liberate her to go fully into her rage. What was the commentary there about rage or power?
O'BRIAN: Well, I think, you know, Jackie had it right away because even before the steroids, I punched this dude...
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KEITH JARDINE: (As Chester) You know Lou here is a grade A dyke, right?
O'BRIAN: (As Jackie) Is that so?
JARDINE: (As Chester) Come on.
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O'BRIAN: ...Who's, by the way, a professional MMA fighter, Keith Jardine.
LUSE: Oh, whoa, whoa.
O'BRIAN: Big dude. Yeah. So he let me punch him.
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O'BRIAN: But I think that you can see that it's already there. Like, we all have that. And especially as women, I don't know many women that haven't been at least harassed, you know, for their bodies or the way they look or at the gym or whatever. So I think there is a little bit of that internalized rage for a lot of us. And then, yeah, I think the steroids is just this drug of empowerment. So, yeah, she can finally start to let loose, and she sees it as a way to, like, fix problems, so that's what she does.
LUSE: Your co-star Kristen Stewart said in another interview, to quote her, "We are constantly watching movies about women triumphing over oppressive forces because we're somehow ethically or morally superior." And she basically said, you know, screw that. In this movie, I was rooting for both of y'all's characters. I was rooting for Lou and Jackie. But I also was like, dang, like, y'all did not make a single good decision this whole movie (laughter). What did you think about that?
O'BRIAN: I loved it. You know, there's a lot of discourse of, like, can queer people play villains? Like, are we there yet? And I think that, you know, I would like to see that because villains are the more interesting characters. It's not as fun to play, like, morally perfect characters because no one...
LUSE: Yeah.
O'BRIAN: ...Is perfect. It's just more interesting to see people make messes and get out of messes. We surrounded ourselves with people who are worse than us. So you just - you're like, I guess I have to pick someone to like.
LUSE: (Laughter) It's like, well, by the property of relativity or whatever, it's like, well, I can root for them.
O'BRIAN: Yeah, yeah.
LUSE: One of the things I felt watching the movie was not only do women not have to be morally superior to people who are messing with them or abusing them, they can relish in their revenge or relish in fighting back. It doesn't have to be this, it was all she could do.
O'BRIAN: Yeah.
LUSE: She had to fight back to survive.
O'BRIAN: Yeah. There's a weird message of hopelessness to that, too, like, this is all she could do. Or she was, like, you know, so downtrodden that she had to spend the next seven months trying to prepare to be able to fight back. There's...
LUSE: Yeah.
O'BRIAN: It kind of feels a little bit depressing so it is kind of fun to watch, I think, a movie where they're just fighting right away. Consequences be damned, I guess. And I also love that Rose chose the neo-noir genre to put this world in because noir is just notoriously messed up characters through and through.
LUSE: Oh, yeah. You're going to get an antihero at best. Yeah.
O'BRIAN: Yeah. There's so much that I love about...
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O'BRIAN: ...This movie, and I think Rose made so many really interesting, really great choices.
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LUSE: Thank you so much, Katy. This was great.
O'BRIAN: Thank you. I had a blast.
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LUSE: Thanks again to Katy O'Brian. "Love Lies Bleeding" is out now in theaters.
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LUSE: This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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