Spitgate vs Cleopatra, shit rom-coms and... Trisha Paytas?
I'm coming out swinging with this first newsletter
Hello! And welcome to the first instalment of my newsletter that has been aptly named ‘Billie’s Baby’. After a lot of thoughts and discussions (largely with myself) I have come to the realisation that I have a fair bit of knowledge and opinions on some useless bits of popular culture, so why not share them with the world?!
Like me, this baby is a work in progress, so thank you for stopping by and supporting me while I get on my feet.
This week I take a look at the delicious drama that has been the lead-up to the premiere of Don’t Worry Darling and how the chaos links back to some of the best bits of old Hollywood. I also vent about how I’m desperate for a good rom-com revival (none of this Netflix shite) and I couldn’t leave you without mentioning the bonkers Trisha Paytas story currently doing the rounds. I hope you enjoy!
Spitgate vs Cleopatra
If you haven’t heard about the dramatic lead up to the Don’t Worry Darling premiere at the Venice Film Festival, then I can only think that you have been living under a rock… or maybe you’re just not chronically online like I am. Good for you.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to delve into every single minutia of what happened as there are already so many great articles that have done the job. But for context, let me quickly share some of what’s gone down in case you’ve somehow managed to avoid it all.
There have been rumblings of affairs, upset cast members, people being fired due to their “combative energy”, leaked videos and texts and stars missing press conferences… just to touch on only a few of the details. But the pièce de résistance came at the end of the day on Monday when a video surfaced of what people thought was Harry Styles SPITTING on Chris Pine’s lap before the movie started at the Venice Film Festival.
While there was sadly no spit involved, I am living for the chaos as this is what Hollywood should be about: low-stakes drama that keeps us on our toes. The stars are finally doing what they’ve meant to be doing all along — and that’s entertain us.
What has unfolded over the last couple of months can’t help but remind me of what happened behind the scenes of 1963’s Cleopatra. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, filming was absolute chaos, in part to overspending and illness but also due to the passionate and scandalous affair between the two leads.
Like Don’t Worry Darling, there is so much to unpack when it comes to what happened on set, so let me just bring you some of the most important details.
Originally produced by Rouben Mamoulian, Elizabeth signed a record-breaking $1 million contract for Cleopatra alongside Peter Finch as Caesar and Stephen Boyd as Mark Antony. But after a variety of issues, production ground to a halt and Rouben resigned, leaving Fox with just ten minutes of footage and a loss of nearly $7 million.
Joe Mankiewicz was soon brought in to direct the film but after Liz was dramatically struck down with pneumonia, he was left with six months to figure out how to make the movie. He ditched existing footage and decided to move production from England to Italy, rewrite the script and recast the entire film (apart from Liz). Rex Harrison would now play Caesar and Richard Burton, Mark Antony.
The intense work schedule had taken such a toll on Joe’s health he could barely walk but he was finally about to prepare a rough-cut of the film which ran to five hours and 20 minutes. He was eventually fired by the studio but they rehired him when they realised no-one else knew how the story fitted together. While he protested against doing so, he was finally able to cut the film to a 248-minute run time.
On top of all of this, the fact that Liz and Richard were having an affair had become apparent to everyone while filming. The pair were so obvious that they completely ignored Joe yelling “Cut!” during a love scene in front of cast and crew. This was despite the fact that both Liz and Richard had partners waiting for them at home.
The press carried daily updates on the affair with paparazzi stalking their every move. A congresswoman from Georgia called on the attorney general to prevent the pair from re-entering the country and even the Catholic church publicly criticised them.
By the time it premiered, the public was in a frenzy to see the movie that brought these now legendary lovers together. This celebrity scandal was a huge part of global consciousness and was regularly on the front page of tabloids.
“It was probably the most chaotic time of my life. That hasn’t changed,” Taylor once said. “What with le scandale, the Vatican banning me, people making threats on my life, falling madly in love . . . It was fun and it was dark—oceans of tears, but some good times too.”
To this day, it remains one of the most expensive movies ever made; it was so lavish and ambitious that it almost brought the 20th Century Fox studio to its knees. It took $44 million (about $300 million today), two directors, two separate casts and two and a half years of filming in England, Italy, Egypt and Spain to bring Cleopatra to the big screen. The promotion circuit was also a disaster, almost nonexistent.
“It was the toughest three pictures I ever made,” director Joseph Mankiewicz said. “Conceived in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in a blind panic.”
I declare that we need one in every five movies to provide us with this level of entertainment. This is the juicy stuff that I live for.
I miss good rom-coms
Rom-coms are without a doubt one of my all-time favourite genres. They’re the perfect escapism and, when done well, they focus beautifully on human connections.
Frustratingly, rom-coms (as well as chick-lit… but that’s another topic for another day) are often seen as unintelligent, fluffy and unimportant, mainly because they tend to be geared toward a female audience. Films loved by women are often seen as less prestigious than those enjoyed by men and yet, rom-coms continue to endure, proving that audiences will always love them.
That being said, I refuse to acknowledge the poor job that Netflix is doing of trying to revive the genre. If you take a quick look through the streaming service’s latest rom-com additions, you will notice one bad attempt after another. And yes, I’m looking at you Partner Track and Love in the Villa… 🤮
Even the queen of rom-coms herself, Julia Roberts, has recently spoken out about how dire things are at the moment. She is returning to the genre for the first time in over 20 years with the upcoming Ticket for Paradise but this is after she revealed earlier this year that a lack of good scripts kept her away from the genre.
She hopes audiences will finally appreciate the hard work that goes into making feel-good cinema. The Oscar winner recently told The New York Times that she believes moviegoers didn’t appreciate the 90s rom-com boom enough and all the hard work that went into it.
“I think we didn’t appreciate the bumper crop of romantic comedies that we had then,” Roberts said. “You don’t see all the effort and puppet strings because it’s fun and sweet and people are laughing and kissing and being mischievous.”
She continued: “This is a genre that I love to participate in and watch, and I think they are hard to get right. There is a really simple math to it, but how do you make it special? How do you keep people interested when you can kind of predict what is coming?”
Now, how about a movie where Hugh Grant and Colin Firth playing enemies to lovers? I’d pay good money to see that.
Trisha Paytas’ baby is the future queen?
If you’ve somehow managed to go your whole life without knowing who Trisha Paytas is then I am incredibly jealous.
For the uninitiated, she is an American YouTuber who has accumulated roughly 5.15 million subscribers and 1 billion lifetime views. Her YouTube career has been marred by one controversy after another which is how she’s managed to stay relevant for more than a decade. I could do a whole dissertation on the impact that she’s had on pop culture but I will save us all from it.
Earlier this year Trisha announced she was pregnant with her first child and in the hours leading up to the Queen Elizabeth II's death on Thursday, Trisha had revealed she had gone into labor.
Of course this resulted in people coming up with the incredibly entertaining theory that the late sovereign will actually be reincarnated as Trisha’s child.
Look, there’s not really much that I can add to this but I had to share it with you all. Here are some related tweets that I found most amusing.
And that’s the week that was. Can’t wait to see what next week has in store for us all.