“House Of Gucci” Is 158 Minutes Long, But It’s That 2-Minute Sex Scene We Can’t Stop Talking About
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On today's episode of BuzzFeed Daily, we broke down the top pop culture headlines AND discussed House of Gucci. You can listen below or scroll down to read more about the interview!
So let's dive right into it! Recently we talked to Fran Tirado and Rose Dommu, hosts of the Like a Virgin podcast, about the highs and lows of House of Gucci. Here's some of what we learned:
BuzzFeed Daily: So we wanted to have you both on specifically to talk about House of Gucci, the new movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, and Al Pacino. On a scale from "hot garbage" to "cultural touchstone," how would you rank this movie?
Rose Dommu: Oh, those are Lady Gaga's next two album titles.
Okay, so let me preface this all by saying that I am a Little Monster. So, anyone listening — I want everyone to know I am a Gaga stan. That is very important context for everything that I'm about to say. I think it is both. It is both hot garbage and a cultural touchstone. It is like a good movie that is also very bad, with good performances that are also terrible.
Fran Tirado: It's difficult to kind of grade it on that scale because so many elements of the film were enrapturing and Lady Gaga really is the best part of the movie. And Little Monster or not, I think that's really the thing that's coming through. She's so charismatic and enrapturing and I honestly didn't expect that. I kind of was expecting something bad and campy. And, obviously, she understood the assignment — she still gave us camp. But I think the film as a whole had an editing issue and focused on some of the least interesting parts of the true story, which is extremely juicy and a great premise for a film.
RD: I do think there's a better movie inside the movie, and one that stuck closer to Patrizia and the romance and the murder and less of the business stuff. But I agree with Fran — I think Gaga is really the shining star of this movie. Also, Salma Hayek and Al Pacino were great. But I don't know, after seeing A Star Is Born — like, A Star Is Born is kind of just Gaga playing a version of herself. And here we see her play an actual character and a real person, although she chose not to meet that person. So who knows how much of this is a realistic portrayal? But it is Gaga being a fully embodied character and a villain and chewing every ounce of scenery possible. And I think some of the dissonance comes from the fact that some of the actors feel like they're all in different movies, but Gaga is in the movie that I want to watch.
FT: Exactly. And the hour spent on the financial drama that Rose was talking about really just felt like a gorgeously staged and costumed episode of a crime thriller podcast. I was like, "These are not the parts that I want to be watching."
BuzzFeed Daily: To that point, I saw it over the weekend, and I truly feel like I aged several years when it was done. It was so long, and I read that they actually cut some of the beginning, so it was originally even longer. And I do feel like so many of the scenes were just like, "Do we need this? I don't know if this is the most interesting part." How do you guys feel about the time? It's like two hours and 40 minutes or something.
FT: It's extremely long. I will say that I was never bored — it just was long and could have been a lot shorter. And basically, I think they could have cut Jared Leto from the movie. He was a little Halloweentown: Kalabar's Revenge. I really felt that there's something about how Gaga falls in love that is just so watchable to me. If the whole movie was like the first 30 minutes, leading all the way up into the marriage, I would have been in it for the two-and-a-half hours
BuzzFeed Daily: Now we all remember back in March, when the first set photos from House of Gucci were released and the internet lost its mind because of how hot Lady Gaga and Adam Driver looked. So what did you think about their chemistry in the movie?
RD: Their chemistry was incendiary. As we've seen in all of her music videos, Gaga can have chemistry with anyone.
FT: I mean, she can have chemistry with inanimate objects, and has.
RD: And that really is the core of the movie. And one of the main reasons it works is because you believe their chemistry. I loved how it shows how much she schemed and engineered their meeting and his attraction to her in that first scene where they meet at the party and he calls her Elizabeth Taylor. I thought that was great. I guess talking about those first set photos, I think we were all expecting a movie that was going to just be a meme. And it was more than that.
FT: It really was. And I think that their pairing really drove it home for me. They were hot in those photos and they stayed hot, from the beginning to the end of the film, especially in that sex scene. If there was any question on the casting of Adam Driver — that doubt is eliminated at this moment when he is taking Gaga to Pound Town in the way that only Adam Driver knows how.
RD: Literally "pound," because of that sound editing... Someone tweeted it the other day and I quote-tweeted and said, "I hope they use this as her Oscar clip." I think it's really funny the way some of the late-night hosts were talking about it when they were interviewing them, saying, "This is one of the best sex scenes I've seen in years." And I wouldn't necessarily say that about it, but it was like a car crash that I couldn't look away from and didn't want to. And I will just say that Lena Dunham, somewhere, is shaking.
We also discussed Kanye West's Instagram video talking about how he wants to reunite his family and fix his marriage.
Plus, Benedict Cumberbatch recently shared his thoughts on toxic masculinity, a major theme in his new film The Power of the Dog.
He told Sky News: "You get this sort of rebellion aspect, this denial, this sort of childish defensive position of ‘not all men are bad.’ No, we just have to shut up and listen. We need to fix the behavior of men. You have to kind of lift the lid on the engine a little bit."
