"I defy you to watch [Austin Powers] and not think, 'The entire history of cinema has led up to this moment.'"
An interview with Erin O'Brien
I first noticed writer and podcast Erin O’Brien’s singular attentiveness in her newsletter. For three and a half months in the latter half of 2019, O’Brien wrote about the band They Might Be Giants every week with a startling level of care. I’d never intentionally listened to their music, but by osmosis, the love she displayed in her letters gave me a fondness for the band.
Now, she’s applying her talents to Moody’s Pod, a fun podcast where her and co-host Nick Bihm go deep on The Amanda Show’s reoccurring teen soap parody sketch Moody’s Point. They break it down sketch by sketch, in a fashion just as entertaining and silly as the sketch series itself.
O’Brien’s talents aren’t solely in skillful observation, though. Whatever the subject, she always has a uniquely sharp opinion that she’s ready to thoroughly justify. There will always be cultural products that we float by, but O’Brien encourages readers to linger a little longer and take time to understand where one’s admiration sprouts from.
I talked to O’Brien about the TV shows and movies that she loves.
Is there any particular movie you watched over and over again as a kid? If so, do you think it says anything about your adult tastes?
The first movie I saw in theatres was The Lion King. My mom took me to see it 5 times. I had a lunchbox filled with cheese and strawberries to snack on. I don't know in which ways this influenced me, aside from watching The Lion King with my friends in high school "because it is Hamlet."
I will say that as an adult, I am a creature of habit. I love a rewatch. Maybe that's because I saw The Lion King 5 times in theatres.
Is there any TV show you wish you made?
I've been a huge fan of Search Party from the beginning. (I'm not caught up yet though! Don't tell me!) I admire it because it is a masterclass in tonal fluidity––it is at once a mystery and a perfect parody of millennial New York. I think about the "Margaret Wartime" joke early in season 2 all the time for this reason: it balances tension with humor well. My second choice is Barry, which also combines humor and high stakes masterfully. Bill Hader, call me!
What era of movies do you feel most drawn to?
I'm not sure this is an era, but I love a late-80s to 90s female protagonist coming-of-age movie. For a long, long time, this was my bread and butter. A post-Hughes world, but amped up angst and color pallete: your Heathers, your Ghost World (2001, but close!). I'd even say Jawbreaker or Welcome to the Dollhouse fit this as well.
Similarly, I love that 90s era of Todd Haynes, because watching his films have always felt like "oh, a movie can be THIS." For Safe, the story is simply a woman's mysterious illness shown through the visual language of horror; Velvet Goldmine, transforms its visual language a thousand times over, much like the Bowie-esque artist Christian Bale's character chronicles. Lately I've been getting into 70s/80s horror, because I am multifaceted. I appreciate the patience of the action (Halloween, Alien), and the horrifyingly tactile effects (Cronenberg, as a whole).
What do you think makes parody successful?
I think parody is very hard to do, because there's always the problem of mirroring the source material too closely. What Moody's Point does––and I think shows like Strangers with Candy or American Vandal do well too––is having the characters treat every situation extremely seriously. This works especially well for Moody's Point, where the heightened emotions and "world revolves around ME" behavior of teen soaps evolves into characters who treat like, being sprayed with water by a child as if its the end of the world.
If you had to pick one TV show to represent all of TV, what show would you pick?
I stared at this question for a good, long time before realizing my answer might be Freaks & Geeks. Canceled before its time, as many were, and full of heart and humor. I've read the show bible like a religious text: the specificity of each of the kids, down to shoes and music taste, really shows how much humanity the show has. When I think of shows I love like Enlightened, or Party Down, or even Malcolm In The Middle, or Silicon Valley, or the glut of "HBO comedies" of the 00s and 2010s––all roads lead back to Freaks & Geeks. They did it first! But my honest answer is Conner O'Malley doing an interpretive dance to the Frasier theme.
Same question but for movies!
I am sorry to say this, but Austin Powers. The franchise pays homage to tropes of 60s spy flicks of course, but later in the franchise, takes a stab at hammy action movies and, oh I don't know, the Umbrellas of fucking Cherbourg? In a meta way, Austin Powers is about the shifting tides of cinema as much as it is the shifting ideas of sexuality (*Liz Hurley voice* Welcome to the 90s). It's funny in a way that feels almost British to me: absurdity presented in a very straight-faced manner. I defy you to watch the Fembot "I Touch Myself" sequence and not think, "The entire history of cinema has led up to this moment."