Karina Longworth isn’t that interested in modern Hollywood anymore. After 18 seasons of her “You Must Remember This” podcast, former film critic Longworth says she doesn’t pay much attention to the industry. She’s too busy digging up stories from old Hollywood, from gossip and feuds to controversies and murders.
The latest season, “The Bisexuals,” launches Tuesday. Across eight episodes, Longworth explores the history of entertainment industry bisexuals through the lives of Broadway torch singer Libby Holman and movie star Montgomery Clift. Longworth is taking films from “You Must Remember This” on tour this fall with stops in Houston, New York, Boston, Chicago and more.
Although Longworth prefers these classics over modern movies, her husband, filmmaker Rian Johnson, is behind a number of more recent Hollywood titles, including the “Knives Out” series and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Before the launch of “The Bisexuals,” Longworth spoke with Variety about the season and her upcoming fall tour. I just keep finding stories that I want to tell. I feel like the older I get, the less I’m interested in contemporary Hollywood.
I used to be somebody that would go to the movies two or three times a week, and I don’t do that anymore. I probably see 10 or 12 new movies a year, and I have replaced that by watching so much stuff from classical Hollywood. Every time that I read a new book, I get new ideas, and then I want to watch all the movies discussed in the book, and then that leads me down these rabbit holes.
I’ll keep doing the podcast until I either run out of ideas or nobody wants to listen to it anymore. The podcast season is more of a dual biography of Libby and Montgomery Clift, but it starts with Libby’s story because I like to tell stories chronologically. For a long time, I resisted doing a podcast even involving Libby — even though I was fascinated with her story — because of the fact she’s not a Hollywood creature at all.
She never starred in a movie; she never lived in Los Angeles for any long length of time. She was a New York torch singer, Broadway star, and then, after a massive scandal in the 1930s, she continued to try to have a career as a singer to mixed results. It was a hurdle I had to get over in terms of thinking of my podcast as being Hollywood stories and trying to figure out if there was enough Hollywood content here.
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