Elsie: You're listening to The Beautiful Mess Podcast.

This week we're doing a Comfort rewatch episode for a holiday movie.

We love The Family Stone.

From 2005, we're dedicating this episode to Diane Keaton.

Rest in Peace, our Queen, the Queen.

And I'm also sharing at the end an embarrassing story, Christmas themed.

That is actually pretty embarrassing.

It's so funny.

It's bad.

I had to ask permission to share this one.

So that's how, that's the level we're at.

It's very funny.

I obtained that permission though.

So for people who have never seen The Family Stone, this is an oldie but a goodie.

It's a little bit of, I would put it in the category of an emo Christmas movie, a Christmas movie that makes you cry.

Kind of along the lines of love, actually.

Same.

Different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a romantic comedy at its core, and it definitely has a lot of comedy, but it definitely has hits you with the feels here and there.

I cried.

I cried.

Oh yeah.

And we'll give also at the end, our husbands, were kind of roasting it.

Emma: I am going to kind of roast parts of it too.

Elsie: Yeah.

So would you prefer to read the premise or just wing it out of your mind?

Emma: I guess Wing it.

I don't know.

Elsie: Give it to us, Emma.

Emma: Okay.

So this is the love story.

It's a couple that I think is engaged.

No, they're preen engaged.

Okay.

Yeah, they're preg engaged.

And Everett Stone, and then Sarah Jessica Parker is Meredith Morton, and he's taking her home to his family to meet them for the first time.

She's met one sister.

He has a pretty big family, but she hasn't met anyone else.

And the sister already doesn't like her.

And so she's kind of telling the family, this lady's not cool.

We're not going to like her.

And his family is, I feel like what they were going for was that.

It's kind of what you're saying in your description where they're ultra liberal and very chill and really always in their pajamas, very cozy, bohemian kind of bohemian, which didn't totally play for me at times, but they're very mean.

There's parts where they're like, they're very mean.

They're just straight bullying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's something about it where maybe it aged weird or maybe it just didn't quite, it's like no one's that mean to someone bringing home someone for the first time a little bit.

The story is kind of fish out of water where she's just supposed to be very different from them.

She's much more closed off and formal and probably conservative.

She doesn't want to sleep in her boyfriend's bedroom.

She wants to have her own bedroom.

She feels that that's weird at his parents' house, even though they do, they have had sex.

They're adults in a relationship.

She kind of embarrasses herself at every turn to the point where she calls her sister to come because she just feels like she's kind of drowning, I think, socially.

And so her sister comes to help out, but then her boyfriend kind of falls for the sister, and she kind of falls for the brother.

And we find out the mom, this is a big spoiler buzz from there.

This is old movie.

The mom has cancer, and it's back.

It's her last Christmas.

It's her last Christmas.

And I feel like that's all the big things.

And then, yeah, I think that they both end up with those brothers.

They do.

They swap, they do all swap a roof.

Elsie: They have kind of an epilogue at the end, and they show the next Christmas a year later that they're, anyway, I will just say if we're starting out with a hot take, I would switch to Luke Wilson as well.

I true have loved Luke Wilson for as long as I've known him.

Yeah.

Luke Wilson plays one of the brothers, and he's very, Luke Wilson.

Jeremy was like, I see how they tried to make him look bad, but you cannot make him look bad.

Nice.

He's just such a beautiful person.

So yeah.

Emma: Oh yeah.

They tried to make him look kind of sloppy.

Sloppy, but you're like, nah, I can see right through.

He just wearing pajama pants.

It's not a big deal.

You just put on regular pants.

It's fine.

Elsie: Yep.

So should we do, let's start with, do you remember the first time you watched the film?

Emma: I don't.

I have the worst memory ever.

I know I've seen it I think a couple times, but I really don't remember.

I was trying to picture what living room I was in, but no, I don't remember.

So I don't even know how long it's been.

Elsie: This is my moment of transformation.

This is like, you know how in stories, they show a person how they see their home and then later on they show them going back to it and they see it different.

So that movie is that for me.

So when it came out in 2005, it was at the time when I was being a professional scrapbooker my first career, and I flew every weekend, and this is at a time, you guys are not going to believe this if you are a little bit younger than us, but this was during a time when they still had movies on every single flight, and they served full meals on every single flight.

It was the very end of it though.

They stopped doing it a few years after that.

But you could go on a flight, a short flight, and they would serve you a meal, and you would always, always have movies that were free.

It was just a different time for air travel, I think.

I don't know when it switched around 2010 or, anyway, if you're not on an international flight, you're not going to watch a movie.

So anyway, so I watched this movie 10 times in a row that year because I flew every weekend and it was on every flight for some reason.

So maybe it was 2006, I don't know.

And I didn't like it.

I thought it was so sad and such a downer.

And why'd you keep watching it?

I dunno.

I don't know.

I guess, I don't know.

I can't explain myself, but let's just say I was 25 or 24 or 23, and let's give her a free pass.

And I just had this love.

I guess I might've had a love hate for it.

I was watching it, but I definitely hated it.

And I was mad about how sad and what a downer it was.

And I think it's because a lot of movies from that time, this was the romantic comedy era, and a lot of movies from that time end really happy.

So maybe it was that.

But yeah, I just got kind of a little bit of a, was mad at it all the time, but I did like it.

I kept watching it, and then years later I rediscovered it when we started the podcast and we were talking about movie houses all the time, and I was like, oh yeah, that one house.

And it's mostly the snow exterior scenes.

Jeremy at one point he was like, Hey, that kind of looks like our house.

And I was like, you have never listened to our podcast.

Everyone knows that, Jeremy.

But anyway, I do love when my husband says something and I'm like, oh, you really don't listen to my podcast?

No way.

They don't.

Yeah, I already knew.

But it's just sometimes you're like, yeah, sure.

So anyway, I rewatched it, I think a couple of years ago when we were starting our cozy movie obsession.

And at that point I was like, oh, this is a beautiful story.

And I actually hate different things about it now, but the things about it that bugged me now is kind of the love story swap and stuff is the things that I thought were probably good back then.

So I think that's really interesting how you can watch movies at different times in your lives.

Please send us yours if you have, I know some of you're thinking of them right now and just see it so differently.

Completely different experience.

Emma: Yeah, I don't remember the first one.

I watched this, but I definitely think I liked it more before slash sell with the love story or I don't know, different elements.

And now I'm like, I don't know.

I still like it.

I like the movie.

There's definitely really sweet parts and parts that make you cry.

Elsie: I don't think it's romantic to fall in love in one day anymore.

I don't, no.

So I don't think that's cute.

I like it when she goes for Luke Wilson though, because I feel like they had a true moment of connection.

The other couple, I feel like they had no true moment of connection.

Emma: No, no, definitely not.

They're just trying to make that one work for the movie.

So you don't feel sorry for him.

Yeah.

But it's like, no, man, this does not work, the chemistry is off.

Okay.

So maybe we should talk about, before we roast the story anymore, which I'm sure we will, it'll come up.

But let's talk about cozy interiors.

We talked a little about exterior.

Elsie: Yeah, the exterior in the snow.

It is probably one of the reasons why I bought my house.

It kind of looks, it has, your house has a movie house that, look, I love those snow scenes, but I think the inside of the house, it has its highes and lows.

Emma: Yeah, it does.

Elsie: There's some really gorgeous scenes I really like.

There's the scene when she's in the bedroom, when you see this picture on her wall, see if anyone can catch this when you watch it where she is pushing a stroller and she has a bunch of kids behind her holding hands.

And it's sort of a silhouette photograph.

That's gorgeous.

I really like, obviously the front room with the Christmas tree.

I really like the entryway and all the wallpaper.

Emma: I like the kitchen.

You don't like it?

Elsie: No.

The kitchen too open.

No, it's so cluttered.

It makes me kind sick.

It gives me the feeling of one of our grandmas had a very cluttered house growing up, and it gives me this, it's not a bad feeling, but it's a little bit of a sick feeling for me.

I guess it's bad way.

Emma: It's a little overwhelming.

Elsie: Yeah, overwhelming.

I can see that it's cozy, but I also don't want to be there.

Emma: Yeah.

Yes.

And I agree.

I like the kitchen.

I like the way the hood is designed and the openness of it, and they're in there.

A lot of conversations and scenes happen in the kitchen.

The orange computer.

The orange computer is very, make me think of Zoolander.

Just it's that computer era.

Yes.

I think the set designers did a great job of making it feel like a lived-in home with an actual family.

And a lot of people, it is very cluttered and feels very real in that sense, but it is also a little bit overwhelming at times where there's a couple scenes where they open the fridge and I felt so overwhelmed.

I was like, we need to send the home edit in there immediately.

This fridge is freaking me out, and I'm not even a perfectly organized fridge person, but it's just so, I feel like they did a good job in that it felt like a real family's home and they're really having a bunch of family home for Christmas, and everyone's just crammed in.

Elsie: When they're up in the attic.

I'm like, that roof definitely leaks.

There's just a feeling of unsettledness in certain areas of the home.

It makes it feel very much like a real home.

Emma: Yeah, it does.

Elsie: But yeah, I mean, there are beautiful shots.

Do you remember the entryway with the wallpaper?

Emma: Yes.

Elsie: There's moments where you're like, this is a movie house.

But I like how they make it also a real house because real holiday houses are cluttered.

I love my house more.

I'm so proud of it, but it's so cluttered at Christmas time.

It just is.

You can't not make it cluttered.

The only way is to have a junk room, a graveyard junk room where you constantly take stuff to because it's just, there's so much stuff and people coming in and boots and coats and more presents.

And then when the kids open their presents, good luck with that.

You know what I mean?

So I think that you should portray a house at Christmas as a little bit chaotic, claustrophobic, because that's true in the kitchen.

It's like, yeah, you're prepping five meals at a time.

Emma: Yes.

And there's snacks and everyone brings things.

It just overflows very quickly, very easily.

Yeah.

Okay.

Favorite moments?

I have a lot of favorite moments from this movie.

Do you want to say yours?

Okay.

So my favorite storyline, there's quite a few love stories in, as we already mentioned, the brother swapping that whole thing.

But I really like the sister who doesn't like her initially, who's played by Rachel McAdams.

She has, in the very beginning, they're talking about this ex-boyfriend of hers who was her first time.

So the first person she ever had sex with.

And her mom's kind of roasting her about it a little bit, like you should call him up.

He's an EMT or a firefighter.

And he clearly got a taste of something he wants or some line like that.

And Rachel McAdams character's just like mom don't.

Anyway, they run into him in a bar and she invites him, not Rachel McAdams, but Meredith the sister that nobody likes, or the girlfriend that nobody likes.

So invites him to Christmas and he shows up and him and Rachel McAdams do end up getting together and it's really sweet.

And I just love that storyline.

I just love his character.

He's just like in the bar.

Oh.

And she's like, you should come.

I think she still holds a candle for you or whatever.

And he's like, really?

And he shows up with a present and kind of has to sit through this very chaotic scene.

And he just seemed like, I just love him and I just love his little love story there.

I think it's really charming.

So I love that.

Comedy wise.

I like when the sister has the engagement ring on her finger and can't get it off, and everyone keeps coming in the kitchen and trying to help get it off.

They put oil and butter.

I think it's still a very funny scene.

And it's just funny.

And if you've ever gotten a ring stuck on your finger before, the feeling of panic of like claustrophobia of, I can't get this thing off my body.

I hate that feeling.

And then everyone's trying to help you, and then it carries this level of emotional weirdness because it's your sister's engagement ring, and it's just this weird moment.

So I think comedy wise, that's pretty funny.

And I mean, the most emotional moment is, I think for me, at the end of the movie when Diane Keaton's character and the dad are in their bed at night talking, they have a number of scenes where they're in their bed at night talking kind of decompressing.

That's beautiful.

At the end of the day, which really resonates to me as someone who's in a long-term relationship.

And they show they're about to make love, I think, and they show her kind of unbuttoning, her shirt, and you see her scars from a mastectomy, how do you say it?

The surgery where they for breast cancer.

And we know that they've already told us in the movie that she has cancers back.

They didn't really say what kind, but from this scene, you know what kind.

And it's just this very sweet scene of them together and loving each other through the beginning of her death.

And yeah, it's just a really heartfelt, beautiful, beautiful scene that's hard to watch, but also you can't look away because it's beautiful.

And it was Diane Keaton.

We know Diane Keaton passed this past year, which is part of why we wanted to do this rewatch because we love Diane Keaton, all of her movies.

Elsie: But yeah, so yeah, everything Diane Keaton never did.

Starting from The Godfather all the way to, I guess, I don't know what the, I'm not sure what her very last movie was, recent movies would be, but for me it would be all the way to these movies like the Nancy Myers era and honestly the Justin Bieber music video.

I love that Justin Bieber's an icon music video.

I'm glad she did that.

I think she was a very cool person, a very interesting person.

And anyway, I would like to, yeah, I'm going to keep watching her movies for the rest of my life, but I'm glad we got to do this one.

Yeah, I did not know she was ill and I was not preparing myself for that, so it was a sad one.

Anyway.

Okay, so favorite moments from the movie?

I love the scene.

I love the scene in the bar when she gets drunk and is being herself for the first time.

And then the other, I don't know what the Luke Wilson character's name is, so I just keep calling him.

Luke Wilson.

Do you remember his?

It's okay.

No.

Okay.

We'll just call him Luke Wilson guy.

So Luke Wilson guy is like, he's really seeing her and accepting her as a full person.

That really worked for me.

And then when she falls asleep on his shoulder in the car, that worked for me, I got how they got together and I thought it was cute.

And it's like she actually needed, I relate with this because my husband is very, very, very opposite energy from me.

And sometimes people need someone who's just the absolute opposite of them, and that's what works for them as a couple.

And if you're a nervous person, you don't need another nervous person, you know what I mean?

You need someone who's just so chill.

And so that kind of works for me.

There's an opposites thing.

I really like how the opening scene Diane Keaton looking at the Christmas tree mirrors the ending scene with Amy at the Christmas tree, and she has the ring, and that is, I think, just really beautiful.

I really like, this isn't our trivia, but there's something interesting about the Judy Garland scene.

I really like the Judy Garland scene and I actually, its watching a movie.

Yeah, it's Meet Me in St.

Louis, and I watched it I think last year or the year before because of this movie.

I was like, I want to watch that whole movie.

And honestly, I feel like it's more meaningful for me to just watch.

It's just the song is really, I wasn't obsessed with the movie as much as that one song performance is definitely the moment, and then it just goes really well in this movie.

It's incredible.

And what else?

I like the part where she spills the eggs, the egg funny on the floor.

That's funny because that felt very real to me.

That disgusting looking casserole.

That is the Midwest and that is our ESA or something that's ours, our childhood.

It's like there's always going to be a casserole like that at our type of Christmases.

Yeah, I always make it.

Why are you?

Well, it looks disgusting when it's spills.

I'm sorry, but I mean, it's like a billion eggs in a casserole dish.

Yeah.

What's not to love?

I caught, I don't know.

I just know how that thing smells in the fridge.

I just do .

Emma: All right.

Elsie: But I love them.

I eat them.

It's fine.

They're good.

They're good when they're cooked.

Once they're cooked.

Emma: Can't see me, but I'm making the Muppet angry face right now.

I'm upset chest steam coming out of her ears.

Yeah, when you get a hate mail later from me.

Elsie: Okay.

Yeah.

I think that's all my favorite moments.

Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful, and then there's some very insufferable moments, and I do think that they take the family being insufferable a little bit too hard.

Some of the next one I had under this is Cringe Fest.

At what moment did you cringe the hardest?

There's definitely some cringing to be done in this plot.

Emma: Yeah.

I really feel like out of the gate pretty quickly.

I was like, oh, they're just going to be really mean to her.

They're just really mean to her.

They're never even pretending to be nice, fake nice.

Which I think it's setting, they're in Connecticut, but I'm like, go on Connecticut.

People email us.

You guys are nice too.

Right.

It's not just the Midwest that's fake.

Nice.

We are maybe the kings and queens of fake Nice.

I don't know, but we'll keep it going all night.

Yeah.

We'll never tell you.

It'll be decades before we're like, I really didn't care for it the first time I met you that you don't even know what we pressed Felix looked like till you come to the Midwest.

But anyway, yeah, they're really, really, really mean to her just over and over again.

But then she does quite a few things where you're like, girl, just help yourself out a little bit.

So yeah, she needs to take a minute several times and she doesn't.

And she doesn't.

Yeah.

I think the one that I found the most unbelievable, it wasn't necessarily the most cringey, but the most unbelievable, was when she doesn't know that her boyfriend's allergic to mushrooms.

And then she's picking the mushrooms out of the casserole, and I'm like, number one, that's not going to work.

You're going to miss one.

She's not a chef.

Everything's mixed chef.

It's not going to work, girl, you've missed it.

You've got to tell him not to eat that now if he's truly allergic to mushrooms.

But also, it's just unbelievable.

I was like, you guys have never eaten together because I can understand she doesn't cook.

She works.

Elsie: I actually like that detail.

I actually believe it because I believe they met that previous year before and they haven't been in this situation yet.

And this could be even their first Christmas together.

Emma: But they don't eat at restaurants together.

He's never in front of her been like, does that have mushrooms in it?

I'm actually allergic.

Elsie: You're probably right.

Emma: Cause mushrooms are in a lot of things.

So I just feel like if I something, I think it was trying to show you how new the relationship was and it was very new though.

Yeah.

But still, the reason it's called The Family Stone is because the whole time he's kind of asking his mother for her mom's engagement ring, the family stone.

He wants to give it to Meredith and the mom's like, no, maybe ask me tomorrow.

I dunno.

I don't think so.

Which again, I'm kind of like, wow, this is not against Thank King.

We just mentioned we love her, but this character, I'm like, I don't really know about that.

That feels, I think voicing if you don't want your kid to marry someone.

Yeah.

You got to be honest voicing that.

But to not give them the stone when it's like She does eventually though.

Yeah, she does.

Eventually she does come around to it and gives it to him, but he's already bought this other thing, so it's like, I don't know.

Anyway.

Okay.

What are your cringe best?

Elsie: No, for me, the part where I cringe the hardest is just I really don't like it when he goes for the sister.

He has known her for one day.

They show them walking downtown.

They're basically on their first conversation and they're falling in love.

And for me, that's a zero.

I feel nothing.

The conversation is kind of dumb too.

It's about some artist she heard about.

I don't even think she knows them, and they wanted to make a totem pole, and they do.

It's like some historical site you can go see, and he's like, oh, I want to go there.

And he is like, okay.

Yeah.

It's kind of weird story too.

It's like, all right.

I mean, no, give me getting drunk together over that.

I just didn't, I felt nothing, but I also, I believe you.

But it's fine.

But it's fine.

I mean, I like the moment where the bus pulls away.

I like the running towards each other as a shot, but I just think that they didn't, in the script, they didn't give you enough to, I think they could have given you three breadcrumbs of weird things they had in common, or just connecting points or she's like, oh, I don't like that, but my sister loves it before she gets there.

Things like that.

And then you would've been like, okay, it clicks.

Why didn't you just click those logos together a little bit better?

They didn't even try anyway.

They were just like, let's just shove it together right now.

But yeah, both of our husbands, that was kind of like the Can't Let it go was just the love swap was just too clean.

And it's also just weird for two people in the same day to swap partners and fall in love.

It's just too much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like, no, but I do love a weird affair within a family setting though.

Emma: Yeah.

That's cool.

When the dad opens Luke Wilson's door and she's in the bed and she rolls out, she's like, oh.

And he's just like, his eyebrow shoot up and then he doesn't say anything, but he just looks at her when she comes down the stairs.

You know what you did and you're going to need to say something, and it's very funny.

Elsie: Yep.

No, but yeah, we're roasting it a little bit, but I also think that that is the nature of this movie.

I hope you can see that we truly do love it.

I think it deserves its roasting, but I also think it is a beautiful, I mean, I cried.

I genuinely cry every single time.

Emma: Yeah, it's gorgeous.

Oh yeah, it's great.

And I think that getting that real family dynamic feeling with 10 actors is a lot, and they do achieve it throughout the movie.

It does feel like a family most of the time.

Yeah, it's really good.

Yeah, we haven't even mentioned it either.

And this will come up in the trivia, but one of the brothers is deaf, so a lot of times they're doing a SL or one person's kind of interpreting, And he also is gay and his husband's there, and that's really cute too.

His husband, by the way, is gorgeous.

Yeah, he's beautiful.

The whole movie, that's what my husband was hearing was I was like, boy, that guy's husband, I bet they weren't mean to him when he showed up.

I bet they were like, here's the family stone.

Get married to him right away.

Elsie: He's like, no, he says that Amy was mean to him, which I appreciated that.

I appreciated that one person was nice to Meredith and gave her an olive branch, and it was like another outsider person because maybe just coming into a family that is just not easy for anyone, and that's good.

Emma: I think big families can have a very hard to understand dynamic.

So it's like a lot to learn quickly.

And if you're not from a large family, then it's definitely even more because you're not used to that type of thing.

Elsie: Yeah.

Okay, so let's do trivia.

Emma: The director put the nine cast members playing the Stones through several weeks of rehearsals so that they would bond well enough off camera to convincingly portray a family.

Since the script called for a characters to use American Sign Language, A SL to communicate with or interpret for Thad's character, early rehearsals included a crash course and a SL, the cast members and some critics pointed out that their A SL use was subpar, but it was a realistic portrayal of a hearing family's use of a SL, which is often not great.

That makes sense to me.

Elsie: I like that.

I actually think that when people are really not an interpreter who's to the side of a stage, but when you see people professional in real life using ASL, they will be very fast and seem like they're not trying very hard.

It's two different things, and I think the way they acted it was probably true to life.

Emma: I don't know, American sign language, so I really have no, but a lot of times when I see people interpreting or if there's, it's almost like they feel like the non-hearing person can read lips and read American language.

So it's like they're doing kind of both.

And in a way it makes me think they're skipping words and just doing the main words in ASL.

But again, I don't speak American sign language.

I don't know it, so I wouldn't know.

That would be the thing I would be most nervous about.

If I had to be an actor in this movie though, I would be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get this wrong.

I'm going to do it slightly wrong, and it's going to mean something completely different.

I just learned this and it's how am I going to do it?

So yeah, that would be nerve wracking.

Elsie: During the film's Christmas Eve montage as Thad and Patrick Stroll hand in hand toward the end, Patrick signs in American Sign language that the evening sky looks beautiful, to which tha responds, know You are beautiful.

That's cute.

I'm glad they put that in.

Yeah, I would have mixed that completely.

Emma: That's romance for you.

Okay.

When Luke Wilson is telling Meredith about Everett's allergy.

Elsie: See they call him, Luke Wilson too.

Emma: They call Luke Wilson too.

Because Meredith is Sarah Jessica Parker, and then you say both.

Okay.

Alright.

When Luke Wilson is telling Meredith about Everett's allergy, Sarah Jessica Parker shouted, I didn't know.

In a one take as a joke, and you can tell as Luke Wilson genuinely laughs.

That's cute.

Yeah, that's funny.

Elsie: That's good.

That's good.

Yeah, you can tell there was definitely some like, what do you call it, Adlib, what actors call it?

Emma: Improv.

Elsie: Improv.

And I like that.

I like that kind of stuff.

That's cute.

I like to hear it later.

I mean, you can't always tell.

It's fun to know.

Emma: I did think Sarah Jessica Parker really did a great job in this movie too.

Oh yeah.

Because she seems very nervous and anxious, but also at times likable and at other times you're just cringing and she has a big arc.

Her character changes quite a bit and she does that great in my opinion.

So I feel like she really chews it up.

Elsie: She tries to get in the bed in the egg shirt, she goes there for this role.

I personally never watch Sex in the City, and obviously I know that she's from that, that's what she's best known for.

But I know her from this, so this is how she's famous to me.

Emma: I know her from her movies too.

I never watch sex.

It looks awesome.

I feel like I just missed it.

It's kind of like Gilmore Girls.

I'm like, I keep meaning to go back and watch it.

I know it's great, but I missed it the first time around.

And so it's just one of those things where you're like, wow, okay.

Elsie: Yeah, I don't think I can go back that far.

I dunno.

Maybe it becomes more retro over time.

I dunno.

Tell us if anyone has watched Sex in the City in the last couple of years for the first time, if you think it's doable or if you think it's too late.

I'm curious.

Okay.

Playing the glue that holds the family together.

Diane Keaton was the first actor approached to Star in the film.

Duh.

Keaton has stated that she was instantly drawn to her role as many layers of Sybil's personality allow her to explore so many often conflicting emotions.

Yeah, that's a beautiful part about it.

You can feel the love.

You can feel the grief and sorrow.

You can feel the petty bullsh*t.

Every layer is perfect.

Emma: She seems very real in the movie.

She definitely has moments where she's very warm and loving and easygoing, and there's other times she's kind of harsh or a little bit mean, but you do always believe her.

It does feel very real like a real person.

Okay.

The composer, Michael Giacchino rerecorded the Instrumental Track, have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as it appeared in Meet Me in St.

Louis from 1944, duplicating every note and matching every tempo of the original orchestra, which he then programmed simultaneously to enhance Judy Garland's vocals.

Both tracks appear on the film's soundtrack album, allowing the listener to appreciate how closely the new recording matches the vintage one.

Elsie: Interesting.

So are they saying that in the movie it's an acapella performance and then they kind of changed it for this movie?

Emma: I don't exactly know what this is saying.

I'm not musical enough, but it's making me think that if they had just taken the movie audio, it would've not sounded very good for the standards of this movie.

So he had to fix it up.

Yeah.

Well, it really is a moment in the film.

Elsie: I think they did it perfectly, and I love watching it every single time.

I love how she says it's my favorite part.

It feels like that feeling like she does this every year.

It's really special.

Okay.

Luke Wilson chipped a tooth while filming the movie and asked Diane Keaton to recommend a dentist.

Keaton decided to play a joke on him when he called the number she had given him, it was actually the number to a psychologist Emma: Okay.

That's funny.

All right.

She got him.

I wonder if he just went ahead and made an appointment for that too.

I'd be like, well, okay.

Rachel McAdams said that she felt drawn to the dramatic arc that Amy goes through, which eventually brings her full circle.

She sees herself as honest, not mean, and expresses that uncensored candor in her sardonic wit.

No, she's mean, she's mean.

She's definitely, she's mean for sure.

Mean she can be also honest.

And I also think she does come around, which to me matters more than if you're mean.

It's like if you're kind of mean and then you're willing to say sorry or take it back.

It's like, yeah, maybe be more thoughtful out of the gate, but I still think that's fine.

That's totally fine.

Someone who's mean and never backs down.

I'm like, eh.

Elsie: I think the scene where they're on the floor with the egg is the turning point in their relationship.

They're all laughing together and it's really sweet and it's disgusting and it's perfect.

And I believe that she gave her another chance after that.

And they don't even really have to tell you that.

You just know.

Emma: Yeah.

You feel it.

Elsie: But she's mean.

She is mean.

Let's get our facts straight.

Cast amid the final season of the HBO series, sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker, who had struggled to find a role that distinguished her from her TV show character, Carrie Bradshaw declared Meredith a breakaway from her previous roles.

She is controlling rigid and tightly round.

When she tries to dig herself out of awkward moments, she only makes them worse.

True.

I think that she did a great job of choosing this role and I mean, I'd never watched Sex in the City, but yeah, great move.

You did it.

Emma: Yep.

She was like, I got.

And we're like, yep.

Did great.

Patrick shows some sympathy to Meredith hinting that the Stones gave him a hard time as well.

So you talked about that.

No, he says Amy, she's the worst.

Amy gave him a hard time.

Yeah, you're the worst.

And they fall down with the eggs.

Yep.

Elsie: Yeah.

Rachel McAdams worked with both Wilson Brothers in two different movies at the same time.

This movie with Luke Wilson and also Wedding Crashers 2006 with Owen Wilson.

I've never seen Wedding Crashers.

Is that funny?

Is it cute?

Emma: I watched it a long time ago and I think I liked it.

I can't remember.

What's the tall guy?

Oh, Vince Vaughn.

Yeah.

Vince V, yep.

Has him in it as well.

Yeah, I think I thought it was funny in a long time.

Elsie: Cool.

Emma: It was released in the United States on December 16th, 2005, and was a commercial success with a worldwide gross of 92 million.

Whoa.

I don't know, movie money.

I don't know how good that is, but that sounds good for a movie like this probably.

I dunno if they spin on it, but it's sounding good.

Elsie: I feel like.

Okay.

I'm not a Hollywood expert, but let me give my hot take.

Why wouldn't you just do Christmas movies all the time?

Oh, yeah.

They come back every year and Halloween movies too.

Why?

If you have a chance to do any kind of movie, why wouldn't you do a Christmas and a Halloween movie?

Emma: And this is my beef with Why there's not enough Halloween songs.

What's up with that?

There are there so many Christmas songs and I love them.

I love them.

Where are the Halloween songs?

It comes back every year.

Yeah.

Wouldn't this be a good idea?

I don't know, but okay.

Yeah, you're right.

It's just a playlist.

This is really not the right time for this grievance, but yeah, it's not.

Elsie: Okay.

Diane Keaton also played The Matriarch in Love the Coopers 2015.

Okay.

My Eyelash Girl told me this is amazing.

Love the Coopers.

It has at homes in it, and it's a same similar type of movie, so we should probably watch that this year.

I've never seen that.

A Christmas movie about a very dysfunctional family.

Oh yeah, let's watch that.

Yeah, I looked up to IMDB earlier and it looked like it had a lot of cute people and yeah, let's watch it together.

That's our next movie.

Emma: Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Were both in the First Wives Club.

Cool.

My husband talks about that movie all the time.

I feel like it was one of his movies that he watched over and over as a kid.

Somehow he has a lot of movies like that.

Elsie: That's really funny.

I've never seen it.

And I don't know.

Emma: I feel like his family had cable and it really shows compared to our family where I'm like, we had four VHS tapes and they were great.

Elsie: Have you ever heard of the Never Ending Story?

Emma: Have you ever heard of Sister Act?

Sister Act two, Rookie of the Year, Little Giants.

Never heard of anything else.

No, I'm just kidding.

Elsie: Okay.

I guess it's time for my embarrassing story now.

Here we go.

With permission from my husband.

I do have to tell his perspective to make things fair because otherwise it might seem like I'm roasting him, but not, I think you're roasting yourself.

I think I'm roasting myself.

Emma: Yeah.

Okay.

That's who I view as at fault in this story.

Spoilers.

Elsie: Okay, so this is three years ago on Christmas night.

I'm not going to go into it, but let's just say that every year on Christmas night, I tend to be a little bit emotionally exhausted and how kids throw a fit.

Emma: Adults are like that too.

We get tired, we get hungry.

We've had too much stimulation.

We get it.

Yeah, it happens.

Elsie: I wasn't like this before I became a mom, but I have noticed that since I'm a mom and especially in these really intense Christmas magic years that I do kind of need to have a little breakdown after every Christmas the week after, I will say it comes at a really good time when it's that boring slow week when you can read day all day and you can watch movies and you can eat and you don't really have to do anything else.

I love that.

I love that for us, for all of us.

So anyway, this year after Christmas, I think it was the last year we were in the pink house, so it was probably three Christmases ago or so.

We came home, our kids were in bed, Christmas was over, and I was just talking to Jeremy.

We had just come home from his parents' Christmas celebration and I said this little comment about his, okay, so his dad makes Chex Mix and Chex Mix is a big deal in our whole family.

It's like, if you guys know, I've talked about my Chex mix a million times.

My father-in-law has Chex Mix too.

We all do, but we call it Texas Trash from Texas.

Interesting.

And that's what he calls it.

It can go by different names and everyone has their specific little variation.

So in mine, I have sesame sticks.

The Sesame sticks are a really big deal to me.

I love Sesame Sticks and I do, there's two things I hate in Chex Mix, and I put them in for my husband to be nice that he likes, but I don't like them.

You know what I mean?

And then I put in, there's two things that he doesn't like as much that I put in that I like.

You know what I mean?

And it's like whatever.

Everyone has their own perfect Chex Mix recipe, and they're all a little bit different.

So I make it every year.

I've been doing it since before we had kids.

So I would say 10 years.

And it is a big part of the holidays, and I also sometimes do it in our summertime celebration, but I do red, white and blue and m and try to be whatever, just way to try to fit in and be a good Larson and definitely comes from his side of the family.

So anyway, his dad was bragging to me about how he makes his checks mix in the microwave, and I was like, Ew, I don't like that.

I don't like the sound of it.

Emma: This classic Elsie, she does this response to me sometimes too.

Elsie: I don't like microwaves that much in general, which is fine.

I've gotten way better than I used to be.

Microwaves are, yeah.

I used to not even be able to handle it, and now I can even use a microwave, but I just would choose not to Most of the time.

Yeah, I'm the same.

It heats things kind of weird, tricky.

And we have one in our home.

I used to be like, no microwave allowed.

Now I'm like, whatever.

It's there.

If we need to melt some chocolate, that's pretty much, it's useful the time.

Emma: It's okay.

My mother-in-law's anti microwave too.

Elsie: Yeah, whatever.

So I was a little bit like we were home by ourselves.

And I know my in-laws or my mother-in-law's definitely going to hear this, but I'm fine.

I'm just going to, I think she'll like it.

Sorry Pat.

I was a little bit just roasting Jeremy's dad.

Can you believe he thinks that it's better because it's microwaved?

And Jeremy says, I do like my dad's checks mix better.

And then he adds, or maybe I might've said why demanding answers.

And then he says, yours is a little dry on Christmas night shots fired to a mom with young kids.

Our kids were still almost toddlers at this time, and I had already had at least one or two glasses of wine.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the problem right there.

So I was just immediately bawling and it actually was and is one of our biggest, but also funniest marriage fights.

I don't think we've had a bigger fight since then because I felt like he was trashing my hard work of Christmas.

And it is so much work for moms.

I think that one of the things hills I will die on is that dads will probably never understand unless they had to do a year without you, what it actually takes.

I don't think they really know.

They're basically little kids.

They don't really know what it takes to make all this.

You know what I mean?

Emma: Yeah.

It's like Thanksgiving dinner and you know who didn't cooked and you know who didn't cook.

Elsie: And you can say thank you and you can truly be thankful in your heart, but if you've never done it, you don't know.

So anyway, I was bawling and I think it was a combination of a tiny bit drunk also just being the end of a long, long, long, long season.

You were tired slash day.

And then also he just said the absolute wrongest thing you can ever say.

So now we have a lot of checks, mixed jokes, and this year I'm actually going to try to redeem in my textbooks.

I never give up.

Okay.

That's one thing about me is I never give up.

So I am going to redeem it and I'm just going to use three times as much butter.

That's what I decided.

Emma: That's what you need.

That's what my father-in-law does.

That's why his is so good.

Try my text mix on Thursday and tell me, you saw the amount of butter and I've made it with him a number of times now.

It's like you feel your heart stopping, but then it comes out of the oven and you're like, this is delicious.

I better eat a whole bag of it.

And that's how it goes.

Elsie: So anyway, now everyone who listens to our podcast knows never, never bring up how bad my text fix is.

And from Jeremy's perspective, how he defends himself from his version of the story, he says that I forced him to say it and that I pulled it out of him and that he was just saying he likes his dad's Chex mix.

And I was like, why?

And then he finally said, yours is a little dry, which was the main.

Emma: You want to hear my outsider's perspective?

Elsie: Yes.

Give it to me.

Emma: Here it is.

Jeremy should not have called your Chex Mix Dry.

That was a little bit rude.

And also you were being a little about something that doesn't matter.

Elsie: Right, right.

I can accept that for sure.

Actually I think it's really funny now.

It is really funny.

And I'm back now.

There was a couple years where I didn't make the Chex mix because I was so mad.

And I was like, you just have your microwaved Chex mix.

And that's fine with me, but now I'm back again with my ingredients my way.

I'll give it another shot.

I'm not going to give up.

Emma: Here's the thing.

I'll also say this, just my own little perspective.

I don't have Chex Mix like you do, but I have things where my husband prefers it, the way his dad made it growing up and the way his mom makes it.

Isn't there something with pancakes?

I don't really want to go into the specifics of what our things are, but I have a feeling every couple knows what we're talking about.

I didn't ask him, so I don't want to.

But I think the point is, here's the thing to keep in mind.

It's not about you.

It's about their childhood.

Right.

True.

And you should never make someone apologize for their childhood.

Just let 'em keep their childhood.

And if you don't like the way they make something or if they don't prefer your way, they like their mom or their dad's way more, whatever, just let it go.

Just know that it doesn't really matter.

And probably your kids are going to do this to their partners one day, and that's not ideal either, but it's just how it is.

It's more like the nostalgia of it probably than anything else.

Elsie: True.

Emma: And that's kind of sweet when you think about it.

Is it annoying?

Yes, it is annoying.

Especially if you are really proud of this thing you've made or it took a lot of work, then yeah, it's a little annoying, but it's just like, yeah, it means that they had a good childhood or they have a thing that they like from their family and it's like that's actually really healthy and good that they have that.

It's true's probably one of the things that makes them a good partner.

So it's like, you know what it, that's fine.

They can like their dad's pancakes more than mine.

That's fine.

Oh wait, I said it.

Elsie: That's fine.

It's out there.

You can't put that back in.

Emma: Oh, it doesn't matter.

I think Bill's pancakes are a plus and his Texas trash.

Elsie: Yeah, and I just want to say for the record, I do think his dad's Chex mix is good.

Emma: Oh, it's really good.

Elsie: That's not the problem.

I just think mine is good also.

Emma: Oh, I thought you were talking about my father-in-law.

Oh, my father-in-law's basic.

I've never had your father-in-law.

I'm sure it's good.

Elsie: Bring me some of Bill's checks mix in a little bag though.

Now I want to know.

Emma: It's really good.

Elsie: But yeah, no, everything.

It's all, yeah, and whatever, whatever, whatever.

Emma: No, I'm with you.

Microwave, get out of here.

Elsie: Life is beautiful.

That's who cares.

I guess story.

Emma: It's not a competition as I try to tell my oldest son all the time.

It's not a competition.

Elsie: You're right.

Emma: You don't have to win a check fix.

You could just let it be.

Elsie: I do though.

I do have it.

Eventually I will.

That's right.

Okay, we're going to pass it to a joke.

And in fact, with Nova.

Hey Nova, what do you have for us this week?

Nova: A joke, another Christmas one.

Elsie: Okay, I'm ready.

Nova: What did the gingerbread man put on his bed?

Elsie: What?

Nova: A cookie sheet.

Elsie: That's a good one.

Have a good week everyone.

Emma: You can email us anytime at podcast@abeautifulmess.com.

And you can also leave us a voicemail at 8 9 3 0 0 1 1.

We'll be back next week.

Elsie: Don't forget to leave us.

Your piping hot takes.

Emma: Oh yeah.

From last episode.

Elsie: Yeah.

Hot takes that don't matter.

This super hot takes that.

Don't matter.

Your personal Hilda.

Dion, we're going to do a special episode for those in January.