Episode 181 – Porco Rosso (1992)/Newsletter #85

A man in a military uniform sits next to a man with a pig nose, or maybe an actual pig head. Say it with me: I haven't seen it. The pig man wears a tan trenchcoat, fedora, and sunglasses. They are in a dark movie theater. Caption reads, I'd rather be a pig than a fascist.

A pig-headed pilot takes on air pirates and fascists while regaining his humanity in this adventure from Hayao Miyazaki. Set in 1929, it’s a story of love, honor, pacifism, and resistance.

For this, we watched the English dub from 2005; I know, I know, subs over dubs, but so it goes.

Starring (in the dub) Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, and Brad Garrett. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

Mary Versus the Movies Newsletter #85: Episode 181 – Porco Rosso (1992)

Welcome to the Mary Versus the Movies newsletter! Finally, pigs get to fly

This week: 4/3/2025

EPISODE 181 – PORCO ROSSO (1992)

A pig-headed pilot takes on air pirates and fascists while regaining his humanity in this adventure from Hayao Miyazaki. Set in 1929, it’s a story of love, honor, pacifism, and resistance.

For this, we watched the English dub from 2005; I know, I know, subs over dubs, but so it goes.

Starring (in the dub) Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, and Brad Garrett. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazakil.

What else are we up to this week?

Mary: I think you can tell from how short and shapeless the newsletter is lately that we’re both pretty burned out right now–no small part of this is tied up with everything happening in the United States right now. It’s hard to focus on being creative, or even just watching tv, when you’re waiting to see if the FDA is shut down entirely, and now you’re suddenly out of what had been an incredibly stable job. And if it’s not being rendered unemployed thanks to DOGE, maybe it’ll be from our employer deciding an A.I. chatbot can take our place talking to clients, and an LLM can do all the document conversions instead of us. Things feel precarious, and it’s getting harder to do something that feels as inconsequential as a podcast, much less the newsletter for the podcast. But we keep doing it anyway, because even if it’s not a life raft, maybe it’s a buoy to cling to.

Anyway, I’ve watched a couple of episodes of The Studio on Apple+, the comedy starring Seth Rogen that’s intended as a successor (if not outright unofficial and unauthorized sequel) to Altman’s The Player. I don’t know if it’ll ever get as vicious as that movie, but my hopes are up. Jokes about “oners” and Jonestown? Debates about whether Steve Buscemi is famous and how to pronounce his name? Sign me up.

Dennis/Pizza: We saw the Magnetic Field’s 69 Love Songs show at the Keswick in Glenside PA. My dad grew up in Glenside, and I’ve lived near it most of my life. I once cleaned the Keswick, filling in for someone while I was going to Tyler nearby, I think I made maybe 20 bucks. It’s a nice little town. I remember getting Buster Brown shoes in Glenside as a kid. In my 20s I worked at a place called Country Workshop there for a while that made fake antique banks, like that Uncle Sam bank on the back cover of Beck’s Mellow Gold album. We’d get the iron toy banks from China or wherever, and I’d spray rustoleum on it to make it, then wipe it off, to make it look rusted. This was in a spray booth and I wore a mask, but it probably was not the healthiest job I ever had. But I had my own room to work in and could listen to WPRB on the radio as loud as I wanted so that was fun.

Anyway, before the Magnetic Fields show we met up with some friends at Trios pizza. Our friends are vegetarian so we went full veggie this time, getting Mediterranean, Tricolori, and I think the Palermo pies. They were all kind of similar to each other (I think they all had broccoli), but the Mediterranean (Mozzarella | feta | artichoke | kalamata olives | roasted red pepper) was best. Crust was just ok, but it was a good amount of cheese for each. Toppings were piled high, which was a bit messy, but it was still tasty. 3.5 out of 5 or something like that. One of our friends, Clay, was a toddler back when 69 Love Songs was first out, and around the age of 3 or so he knew all the words to the song “Reno Dakota”. He also kept singing Kool And The Gang’s “Celebration” as “sell a playground” which I still sing to myself in my head to this day. We met a lot of different friends at the show, and had a great time.

NEXT EPISODE: In light of Val Kilmer’s recent death, we’re watching his film debut, the comedy Top Secret!

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