She had multiple personalities

Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric. I'm here with my brother Torvald. Howdy. We've got a great show for you today. Yeah. Wow. Who would win in a fight? Binky from Wonderfalls or Hedy from Single White Female? No one's watched Wonderfalls. I'd have to say Hedy because Hedy kills people. Or does she? Well, yeah. No, she doesn't. Well, she kills dogs. No, she doesn't. What? Wait a minute. This sounds like a theory. Some sort of fan theory. Fan theories on my podcast. Okay, so today we're talking about Single White Female, a 1992 psychosexual thriller. I think it's what it would be categorized as. Is it sexual, though? It's not very sexual. A psychological thriller, then, I guess. But I think it's kind of in the vein of those psychosexual thrillers that came out in the early 90s. fatal attraction fatal attraction yeah yeah fatal attraction was the one that really popularized the genre which i just don't understand because it's a genre that feeds

off of like the danger and sexual tension between two characters and fatal attraction is starring michael douglas and glenn close who are not sexy at all ever like i just don't understand how that could be the movie that kind of like popularized this genre all right maybe we shouldn't go too hard on how ugly these two they're amazing actors i love going close i love michael douglas but yeah no michael douglas trying to watch that movie and take it seriously be like yeah oh this is exciting and sexy it's like no fatal attraction that's the movie where like he bangs a girl in an elevator and she gets pregnant and then him and his wife murder her and it's a happy ending like they play it off as if something good has happened but it's not you can find a lot of very odd things in 90s movies where clearly bad men are actually good men case in point single white female 1992 film directed by barbette schroeder and it was based

on a book written by John Lutz, and it was adapted into a screenplay by Don Ruse. So Allie is the main character. Played by Bridget Fonda. Hedy is sort of this creepy woman who comes into her life. Played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Dude, they're amazing, aren't they? They look exactly the same. How did they cast this? They did such a good job. Yeah, no, they did a good job. And I think Jennifer Jason Leigh especially, both of them are great, but Jennifer Jason Leigh is an amazing actor in this role. So my theory is that the two main characters, the protagonist and the antagonist, Allie and Hedy, are the same person. What? And also, no one was murdered in this film. Wait, no one was murdered? You're saying that Allie has multiple personalities and Hedy is one of her personalities. Yes. Okay, great. You're also saying that Hedy never killed anyone? Never. She didn't kill anyone. I don't understand, though.

Your theory works regardless. So why would you decide that that needs to be tacked on? It's not tacked on. It's part of this thing. I don't believe that she killed anyone. I don't think any of the supposed deaths in this movie make any sense whatsoever. But what about the dog? You checked it out the window. No, the dog was very clearly an accident because her scumbag boyfriend didn't fix the thing that he was supposed to be fixing. They provide an explanation in movie for the dog. No one ever even says that she murdered that dog. But the dog still died. No, the dog did still die. I'm not saying the dog didn't die. I'm saying no one was murdered. Well, this is going to be interesting. Let's figure this out. Give our listeners a synopsis of this movie so that they know what we're dealing with. Basically, a main character, Allie, she just moved to New York with her boyfriend. Things are looking great.

She started her own business. And then, oh no, her boyfriend cheats on her. So she kicks him out and now she has to get a roommate to be able to afford her apartment. Maybe. Sounds like she can afford it by herself. Oh, yeah, she absolutely can afford it. It seems like she can. No, she decides she needs a roommate. So she finds a single white female. The whole time watching this, I was like, is it OK to say that you only want a specific race as your roommate? I know that they use that phrase a lot in like personal ads where you're like you're trying to date someone. I guess that kind of makes sense because who you date does depend a lot on like physical appearance. I don't know. But just for a roommate, I don't know, dude, like that's kind of off-putting to me. But yeah, so she, she finds a single white female who looks eerily similar to her and they move in together and things are going great. But then her roommate named Hetty starts to act more

and more like her and dress more and more like her and look more and more like her until it all culminates in Hetty trying to kind of become her. Hetty almost kills Allie's best friend. Hetty kills Allie's dog. Hetty's killing everyone. And then Allie barely escapes and kills Hetty. Or does she? Depends on who you ask. Yeah, I think it's supposed to be that she kills Hetty at the end. She survives. Does Allie get arrested? Because Allie would definitely get arrested for all this. Like Hetty said, her fingerprints are all over and Hetty's fingerprints are not and it really just looks like ali went on a killing spree and killed everyone even eddie right like i mean the only one who could defend her and possibly get her out of this is her best friend graham but would he if in fact she was the real the real psychopath all along i don't know i don't know okay so you're gonna have to explain yourself in a few situations because i know

that Hedy interacts with characters who are not Allie several times in this movie, and I don't know how she could manage that. I am going to blow your mind again, and I'm going to tell you Allie is the imaginary one. Okay, so you think that Hedy was the dominant personality all along. Mm-hmm. There is one person. Her name is Ellen, Ellen Schwer. Okay. And she has two facets of her personality, Allie and Hedy. Hedy is the one who she actually is more. Allie is the one that she wishes she was. It's like her perfect life and her perfect self. Her perfect life and her perfect self seems awfully lacking in self-confidence and kind of breaking down and not being so perfect. She's got a good imagination, but it's not that good. I get it. So you're saying those are kind of the cracks in the plaster. She's not really that perfect, so she can't even in her imagination handle it. We're going to see how like these two facets of her personality share a lot of traits and

kind of start to meld together because she's the same person. Both of them are Ellen, which I got to say, how would you shorten Ellen? You'd shorten it to Ellie, which sounds a lot like Allie. Yeah, or Elle. So Allie is with her boyfriend, Sam. Everything is great until she finds out her boyfriend's cheating on her and she kicks him out. Does Sam exist? And if he exists, was he dating Allie or was he dating Hedy? He was dating Ellen. Okay. In Ellen's mind, he was dating the best version of herself, Allie, because right now she's imagining herself as Allie because she has her best life. She's going to get married to this guy who she really loves. At the beginning, they're talking about how many kids they'll have. Sam says the average is 1.2 kids. And Allie wants 2.2. Which, I mean, I think kind of interesting that they're both going with fractions of people here, you know, thematically related, perhaps. She is imagining herself as Allie,

her perfect self, who is a cool software developer who develops software that makes no sense. It's stupid. Her job is stupid because she clearly, Ellen, doesn't actually know anything about software development. She's just imagining herself as something other than a bookstore clerk, which is where Hedy works, which is what I believe Ellen actually does. The real main character is actually a bookstore clerk that was going to be my next question for you is does the software that she developed actually exist it sounds like the answer is no i posit that nothing at her job exists mitch doesn't even exist her her skeezy boss client dude and and her dumb software doesn't exist either well i don't know maybe in the 90s that was pretty cool software but it just dresses people up badly in clothes no the idea i think was that it could take the clothes that the person's wearing and change it to a different article of clothing

right like to show it looks like ms paint to me yeah it's like bad photoshop but anyway i mean for the 90s that was something there was no video toaster for the amiga but uh you're saying her perfect life that she was imagining kind of fell apart when the boyfriend left the picture and her real life started to creep back in her real crappy life where she's a bookstore cleric and goes dancing at crappy clubs every night. And funny that you say creeps in because that's exactly how Hedy enters her life. She creeps in. You're right. She creeps in exactly right when Allie is like at her weakest. Like Allie's specifically having a mental breakdown, like crying on the floor. Before this, she's talking to her gay best friend, Graham, who lives upstairs. And he can also hear everything she does through her vents. She says, I could get a roommate. And Graham says, you could always call him, Allie.

And she says, not if I had a roommate. Now, I'm going to ask you, Torwald, who do you think Graham is suggesting she call? Her boyfriend. Right. But why would Graham suggest that? That makes no sense. He know, he can hear everything that happened. He knows what her boyfriend did. Why would he, he cheated on her. He's a terrible sleazebag. Why would he suggest she get back together with him? Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So you're saying he wasn't telling her to call her boyfriend. I was thinking maybe call her dad. Ellen Schwer's dad sends her checks every month. And I'm thinking that Graham was suggesting she call, you could always call him, you know, get more money from him if you can't afford the apartment, which as it turns out, she can totally afford the apartment. I mean, maybe she couldn't on a bookkeeper salary, definitely on like a software developer salary. No, no, I mean with the checks that she's getting from her dad, she can afford the apartment,

Which I think is, you know, the only explanation for how she can afford this apartment because it's New York City. You make a really good point. It does sound like he's implying that she should call somebody to get money. And who gives money to this girl in the movie? Well, you know, Ellen's dad. Why would Graham suggest that she go back to her terrible boyfriend? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Good question. Does Graham know her as Allie or Hedy or Ellen? Any time anyone in this film calls any one of these characters by their name, either Hedy or Allie, they are probably pretty much always calling her Ellen. And she just hears whichever name that she wants to hear, depending on which personality she believes they're talking to. Does he know she has multiple personalities? I don't think that Graham knows that she has multiple personalities, but he does know that she's pretty messed up, as we'll see in a later scene in this movie.

great. He knows that she's living in New York. She's got issues and she's got a dad who gives her money, but you know, he's there for her. He supports her. Okay, cool. Not too long after this scene, once Hedy moves in and, you know, becomes her roommate and everything's going real great. They play in the busted pipes and have so much fun. Yeah. And also interesting, Allie names her Hedy. She comes in and says her name is Hedra, but Allie actually names this person Hedy. which I think is her picking a name for that facet of her personality. I think everyone's perfect version of themselves needs to be helped by the less perfect version of themselves. That makes perfect sense for the less perfect version to come in and fix everything. Well, when the less perfect version is doubting herself and breaking down and she's not perfect anymore, then it makes sense that the less perfect version shows up, right?

Because that's what she's falling toward, Falling into the arms of her less perfect self. Around this time, when Hedy's kind of getting settled in, there is a scene where Hedy interacts with Graham. Hedy is, I think, leaving the apartment, and Graham stops her in the hallway and calls out to her and says, Allie! But then he recognizes that she is not Allie and says, oh, I'm sorry, and lets her go. How does this play into your theory? Because if Hedy is, in fact, Allie, he shouldn't have thought she was someone else. And Graham, at one point, tell that scene you just described, he tells that to Allie. He says, I think I saw you the other day, but when I chased you down, you were someone else. So I think that was just a case of mistaken identity. And the reason that we see it happening as we saw it was because he told that story to Allie. So she's like, ah, okay, he must have chased down Hedy at that point.

Because Hedy is real, right? I imagine her to be real, so he must have seen Hedy. Oh, yeah, that's Hedy. Really, Graham probably just had a case of mistaken identity. Now that Hedy is all settled in and things are starting to look up, of course, everything can't continue to be so nice and she's going to have to take a turn for the worse again and her boyfriend shows up once again. So Allie comes home to find her boyfriend in her home with Hedy and her boyfriend, Sam, even interacts with Hedy. He refers to her, like he says, Hedy, let me in or something along those lines. Allie tries to blame Hedy for letting him in, but Sam says, don't blame Hedy. I kind of forced my way in here. I mean, Allie is blaming herself. She knows, like, or Ellen, whoever you want to call it. Ellen knows she shouldn't have let Sam in. And Sam knows that she's kind of blaming herself because that's kind of what she does. And he's like, hey, hey, hey, don't beat yourself up. I forced my way in because he can see that she's like questioning her judgment in letting her, you know, cheating ex-boyfriend back into her life.

So you're saying that she just went out and bought herself a dog one day. Yeah, no, because she's living alone. And we know that she is afraid of being alone. Yeah, she went and bought herself a dog one day. And she's kind of like beating herself up for it, right? She's like, well, you better return him tomorrow to Hedy. And Hedy's like, yeah, I will, I will. But knowing that she's going to fall in love with it, right? Like this is her thought process while she was going to buy a dog. She's like, no, you're not buying a dog. You're not buying a dog. We can't afford a dog. We don't want a dog. But I'm lonely. And, and, and, and I know I'm going to fall in love with it and I'm going to keep it around, you know? I get it. Hedy and Allie always do the same thing. They go clothes shopping together. They buy the same clothes. They both eat ice cream at the same time, the same flavor of ice cream.

Allie puts on Hedy's earrings. They wear the same perfume. Allie's client, Mitch. There's an entire scene. In fact, several scenes dedicated to her interactions with Mitch. I just want to ask what's going on here because you've already established that you think Mitch was all in her head. He's just a mental manifestation of her success. So why do we have these whole scenes set entirely in her imagination? What's going on here? What I know is that we see Hedy working at a bookstore around the point where Sam comes back and she's bad at her job. She's barely paying attention to the customers and she seems to be kind of lost in her own thoughts, making phone calls, doing whatever she wants to do at the time. I think she spends most of her time at that bookshop kind of imagining these scenes that maybe happen with her boss. But remember that Ali's success is an existential crisis too heady.

And so she imagines these scenes with Ali's job that don't even exist, where it just keeps getting worse and worse. She's sabotaging that idealized life because she knows it's not going to happen, even though the Ali aspect of her personality is kind of still hoping that it will. But then, I mean, I'd have to ask why the writers then didn't have Hedy in some way sabotaged those events. No, good question. But my counterpoint to that question would be, how come they don't ever show Ali doing anything that has to do with her job ever? Except for those scenes with Mitch, she doesn't even have a computer at home. How does she even do her job? I don't know. She doesn't have a computer. There is no aspect of this job that is actually in her life. Things are about to get a little grittier. Yeah, yeah. And it's around when Sam is coming back into her life. Hedy kind of starts doing evil things. I don't think that she got back together with Sam.

I think that she just wishes she got back together with Sam. I think he came over to help her with a few things, like fixing that window thing. And he came over to talk to her a few times because she was really depressed. and i think there is precedent for him doing that because we know that that's what he does that's what he did that's why he slept with his ex-wife was because she was really depressed on the anniversary of their divorce so he went over there to comfort her so like we know that he goes over to ex's houses to comfort them but i don't necessarily think that they're back together or that he's coming over every night that kind of messes with something i wanted to ask you at At some point, Hedy asks Sam about like how that pill she gave him was working out. And I think the implication is that like she gave him some Viagra so he could sleep with Allie or something. Oh, no. Oh, gosh, no.

Let's talk about this scene. So Sam fixes their window. And this is one of the times I actually do think that Sam came over to fix her window. Fix, in quotes, their window. Yeah. He fixes it badly because he's a scumbag and a cheating loser. and he doesn't really care about Ellen. Dog falls out the window, which I believe actually was an accident. And Hedy blames herself. The first thing she says is, it's all my fault. Allie blames Hedy. She's mad at Hedy, right? She's mad at herself for what happened. Yeah, she left the window open. But later on, we'll see that Hedy is actually like, it was Sam's fault. Like she realized, because Sam didn't fix our window. He said he did, and the dog just jumped out the window. And so they're both depressed, Hedy and Allie, at the same time. Hey, because they're the same person. And Allie is supposedly sleeping. She's sleeping because of a pill that Hedy gave her.

She never gave a pill to Sam. Okay. So, I mean, I think what happened here was this was just another time when she was depressed. She called Sam over and he's asking her how those pills are working out. Like, because there are people who have anxiety or depression problems. And one of the types of pills you can take rather than an antidepressant is just something that makes you sleep because you're less anxious and worried about things like your dog dying if you're sleepy. Then Hedy kisses Sam and he closes her in her room and leaves. And I kind of think that this is when Sam is being like, this isn't a thing, like we're broken up now. Okay, so he's like rejecting her. When Allie wakes up, she's late for work and she rushes around. And this is when in the movie she realizes, hey, wait, Hedy has the same clothes as me. I think what's happening here is she woke up, she's super drunk, she's running around looking for clothes.

She's like, what's going on here? I think she's just really confused here. These are all my clothes. Yeah, because they're all your clothes, lady. You're the only one who lives here. I just got to say about the creepy boss, bitch. My wife pointed out how ridiculous it is that he's acting like he thinks he's attractive when he clearly was cast to be like the least attractive, most disgusting person in the world. I know. I love his character because he's just so slimy and so skeezy and disgusting. And he plays it off like he's just the hottest thing in the world. Yeah, he's just a total hot shot. And I love that in the end of the movie, he turns out to be the hero and shows up to save her. It's like, what's going on? Why is he the hero? He's so disgusting. He's like the knight in shining armor. This disgusting, sexually assaulting. He's totally acting like a jerk while he does that. Well, yeah, but he's also acting like he's super cool.

He's like, oh, don't worry. I took care of her. He didn't do anything to her. He just pushed past her. That was all he did.

So while the boss is, like, sexually assaulting her, she kicks him and she gets out of there. And then when she comes home, she's like, it was like something inside me taking over. It was scary. And I think that's kind of her like realizing that she has like these different facets of her personality and sometimes they take over. And then right when she says that is when Hedy decides to call that person, whether he exists or not, it doesn't matter, and like threaten him. Hedy is the part of her that took over that's more aggressive. They get haircuts. This is when I believe they are merging into one person as evidenced by them getting the same haircut. Ellen is becoming Allie. Oh my God. This is going to be very hard, I think, for our listeners to follow because it's hard for me to follow. It is very hard to follow. The point is that this one single person who was kind of both Hedy and Allie is now trying to move more toward being Allie.

You didn't make it any less confusing, but okay. I'm sorry, listeners. And the reason she's becoming Allie is because she feels like she's losing her Allie-ness. Yeah, she's pushing back. She's like, no, I'm going to have that life. I'm going to get Sam. I'm going to have the life that I wanted. I'm going to be Allie. She's like, this is me. Around this point, Hedy takes a shower and Allie looks in her closet at some Polaroid photos. Who is the only character in this film who has a Polaroid camera? My guess would be Allie, since you seem to think it's damning information. It's actually introduced several times throughout this movie. She uses it to take a Polaroid photo of every single person who comes to look at the apartment. Oh, yeah. And she uses it to take a Polaroid photo of herself and Hedy and the dog all together on the bed. You're right. I remember that. Ali is the only character that we have any evidence has a Polaroid camera.

Now, I know they were popular at the time. Maybe. I was going to say, that doesn't mean no one else could have had one. But in the movie, we only ever see one. It is evidence for what I am going to posit next, which is that Ali is looking in her own closet at her own family photos. No, I mean, I actually like this. It's like a Chekhov's gun kind of thing where like, why would they put that in the movie if it was never going to be used, right? So I understand. Ali pretends like she is leaving because she's actually going to follow Hedy wherever Hedy goes that night. Hedy goes to the club. Yeah, like the world's most crappy club. Where she is specifically picking up people who look like Sam. She's like, you look just like my roommate's ex-boyfriend. Yeah, which is a weird thing to say when picking someone up. I was like, is he supposed to turn him on? At this point, I don't think that she actually is back together with Sam.

I think that she wishes that she was, and she's out trying to pick up, like she's trying to get that dream back. She's trying to find people who look like Sam. And obviously she's a little crazy, so she's kind of doing it in weird ways. Allie goes to Graham and talks about Hedy, and he says, get rid of her. What's his solution? He says, a psychiatrist. And then he says, she's a lunatic, Allie. I think maybe he's actually saying you're a lunatic, Al. See a psychiatrist, yeah. I think he's just trying to get her to see a psychiatrist, yeah. I love this part because I was thinking to myself, it sounds a lot less like he's telling her to get help for her friend and a lot more like he's telling her to get help for herself. Ali's response is, she's my problem, I'll handle it. She's me. And then I love that he immediately goes and calls a psychiatrist. When he goes and calls the psychiatrist, I think she's just hearing bits and pieces of his conversation and filling in the stuff that she can't hear because she's listening to him through the vent as she's taping it up.

He's saying things like, it's a lot more serious than I thought. And then he's like, if I call you from down there, will you talk to my friend? Which it doesn't sound like he's, you know, talking about the roommate. I mean, he's trying to get a psychiatrist for her. He wants the psychiatrist to talk to Allie. I thought that was interesting. I was like, yeah, this kind of supports your theory here. And then here is where Hedy attacks Graham. She just like hits Graham with like a little metal pole. I feel like Graham, who is a big guy, he's like bigger than Sam. I don't think he would go down like that and just be knocked out in a bathtub for days. Like that was the weirdest part of the movie was that he was knocked out, but he just stayed knocked out. Like, what was going on? I think what really happened is that Ellen heard her friend talking to a shrink about her and then she imagined herself going up there doing what she wanted to do, which is kill him.

You know, like you talk about me to a shrink. And then I think she didn't do that. But luckily the next day, Graham, as he told us earlier in the movie, was leaving the next day for several days. And so like Graham's just not there. He left. He was going on a trip. He was going to like his brother's wedding or something like that. And Ali was supposed to be cat sitting for him. So you think he was just gone. Yeah, I think he just left and she didn't actually go up there and start hitting him, but she sure wanted to. But after he left, she went up there because she was taking care of his cat. Why else have this scene where Ali is listening to him talking to a psychiatrist through the vents, right? Like if it wasn't about her, she could have just been in his apartment while he made that call, right? Yeah. Then Ali calls her own parents. Yes. Asks them who she is. Yep, and asks them who she is.

So, like, she is way off the deep end now. She's not only another personality, but she's a personality who doesn't know who she is. And as we'll find out later when Hedy, I think she's visiting the post office. Like, after this point, like, her dad apparently has started calling, like, the post office asking for Ellen. Probably because she just called him asking who she was. Yeah. All right, so this is the part where Hetty comes in covered in blood because supposedly she was just beating Graham nearly to death upstairs. She passes it off as, my period always comes. And I think that's what happened. She imagined she killed Graham and then her period came and she had to clean that up. Ew, all this blood from killing people.

So Sam calls. Sam says, tell her to surprise me. which is a weird thing to say yeah it's kind of and then when Hedy shows up not Ali at his apartment he is surprised which he shouldn't be because he said tell her to surprise me so this is where she's trying to seduce Sam while he's in bed she's not just or not seducing she's sexually assaulting Sam while he's in bed I was gonna say you're kind of phrasing this really lightly why you're trying to like protect her legally in one shot during the scene where hedy is trying to seduce sam she is actually played i'm taking this from imdb's trivia that's what it says keep calling it while hedy is sexually assaulting sam she is actually played in one shot by Bridget Fonda, the actor who plays Allie. Oh, that's cool. That's fun. Supposedly, that's because Jennifer Jason Leigh was still getting her makeup done and I guess Allie already was in her makeup.

But I think, you know, maybe the director, Barbette Schroeder, saw a perfect opportunity to hint at what he was really trying to say, which is that they're the same person. But no matter what, it is undeniable that in that scene they are the same person because they're played by the same person in one shot. And then when Sam finally kind of looks at her and sees her he says what is this hair and then he says you're too needy you're always clingy oh he didn't like the haircut right you know so like i mean she imagines that he's saying this to hetty but really he's just saying it to her he's like i don't like your new haircut you're needy you're clingy we're over like why are you here in the middle of the night at my house but he told her to surprise him yeah i think that was that was just you know that was in her mind yeah i would imagine he's inviting me over he loves me to come over that's that's why

he said something so ambiguous and weird because he didn't actually say that he didn't want her there and then hetty attacks sam with a stiletto heel oh she doesn't attack him she kills him right but the first thing when i was watching this with christine the first thing she shouted out was like you can't kill someone with a stiletto heel like her first thing she said was like i mean he would have some eye damage but i just really don't think that would reach his brain yeah definitely it doesn't quite it doesn't seem right to me but uh maybe like i've never tried it you just instantly die i don't know just like that you're dead like a bullet to the head so hetty thinks that she has killed sam she goes home and starts incinerating all her clothing and cleaning her apartment so there's like no sign of her there now what i think happened she came over she attacked him with a stiletto heel probably gave him some eye damage and then left and now she's realizing oh

i gotta go on the run but she's also kind of twisting it into like oh i killed a guy you know like oh it's really bad kind of thing okay but i don't think she actually killed him i just don't think that makes any sense that she murdered him with her shoe no i don't think she could have murdered him with issue. How do you explain the news reports? Because they definitely said he was dead. Well, I don't know about the news reports. Maybe she imagined those. All I know is that she calls the front desk and the front desk guy says, I'm sorry, there's been an accident. So you're saying maybe the accident was just the stabbing in the eye. Right. He got stabbed in the eye with a shoe. Yeah, it's a pretty bad accident. This is where Hedy sort of kidnaps Allie and like takes her up to graham's apartment and ties her up uh she turns up the music real loud for some reason i think it's just because she's crazy ali uses the internet at this point they're thinking about

using graham's cards to get first class tickets and i think this is because ali is in some trouble and she's cat sitting for graham and she's like hmm maybe i could use his cards no but then she ultimately decides i can't do that dude i love how they book these tickets by like creating a word document and filling it out this is totally how you book tickets if you're insane in your mind no i don't know maybe maybe some like booking agency has allowed you to do that back in the 90s i have no idea but it's very non-standard for today that is actually good evidence because there's that famous reddit story of that guy who had carbon monoxide poisoning in his house exactly and he just like created a folder on his desktop that he thought would link to his webcam yeah he was making comments on reddit being like i think there's someone in my house because like they're leaving notes for me missing and they're leaving notes for me and everyone was like well you should

get a security camera and he's like okay and he kept making posts saying all right i made i got the security camera i installed it on my computer and like there's just there's there's nothing someone deleted it from my computer like there's no video yes and they left a note on my computer telling me that my landlord won't let me talk to you or something like that yeah and then it turned out he had carbon monoxide poisoning and later once they got that fixed and he almost died he like had to go to the emergency room he was like oh yeah i had just bought a camera and put it on my shelf not even plugged it in and made it a created a folder on my desktop that was just called videos they were not connected in any way why isn't this getting videos it's empty someone deleted them yeah so like if your mind is compromised you know you might be booking tickets and in a strange way like that thinking that this word document is somehow going to

produce tickets and then mitch shows up and like my question is how did mitch get there so fast like he's there like right away this is a freaking superhero here he shows up and then like does like a bunch of detective work to figure out that this is where ally is and forces his way in there to save her like he takes actions that no human would reasonably take under these circumstances just to get in there and save her i thought it was kind of cool that like she built ransomware into her own program to basically hold her clients hostage if they didn't pay her i thought that was fun and you know cool that they predicted ransomware back in the 90s and it's true he has to like save his company because apparently his entire company is tied up in this software he just bought and then so mitch like breaks in he pushes hetty down yeah he takes care of her he saves ali he unties her or she's taped up and then he dies like an idiot well my question is did she kill

mitch with a shoe because it looks like she hits him on the back of the head with another stiletto wheel. I don't think that's what it was. I thought she shot him, dude. No, she only shoots Allie. The only, I don't think she actually has a gun because the only person she ever shoots with that gun is Allie. Well, but Mitch is in her mind anyway. No, it's true. Yeah, no, that's right. This is Hedy, the more real grounded version of what Ellen is really like trying to sort of take back her life and get rid of the dumb idealized version Allie. And what's happening? The idealized life is coming to save her the boss man that represents that job that she kind of wished she had shows up to be like i'll save the day even though she'd already tried to make it seem like a total scumbucket and she's like no i'm killing this guy get out of here no that's pretty fun i like that interpretation a lot i i like that better than just this skis ball mitch comes to

total hero yeah turning into just the world's greatest hero oh man mitch so then Then Hedy is dictating a suicide note to Allie. I don't want to be anything anymore. I don't need a reason to kill myself. I need a reason not to. And there isn't one. And then Allie is like, no one who knows me will believe that I wrote that. Hedy says, of course it's you who wrote this. I never met anyone so scared of being alone. Obviously, this is just her having an argument with herself about whether or not she should commit suicide, right? Yeah. Now, I just want to confirm, this entire time, her unconscious best friend is not unconscious and not in the building, according to you. No, he is on a trip. Because he's about to burst in and save her. Yes. So how does he burst in and save her? Does he come back from his trip? No, he doesn't show up. She just, like, remembers, oh, wait, I didn't kill that guy.

So maybe he could save me from myself, you know, in her moment of I'm about to commit suicide. So I could kind of buy a figment of her perfect imagination coming in to be heroic and make her world perfect again. I'm kind of confused by a real person becoming a figment of her imagination and coming in to save her. Well, you think Graham was laying in a bathtub with his very quiet, well-behaved cat for days? Yeah, dude. The cat loved him. No, I mean, I agree. It's pretty weird. But this is the first time a real person has been an imaginary person in the whole movie. Okay, but if you have believed my theory up to this point, then you must believe that the Graham in the tub with his cat was an imaginary person. Yes. Which means she can imagine him to get up and burst out and save her. Then, you know, she can do that. So now we're about to get into the big final showdown with Hedy and Allie.

Allie gets into the elevator and Hedy kind of follows her and they get down to the basement. Now, I wanted to ask you, this is another Chekhov's gun situation. where, by the way, Chekhov's gun, for anyone who doesn't know, it's like a literary term that's if you have a gun in the first act of your story, it will be fired by the third act. Right. It's just foreshadowing, essentially. But also, you don't introduce a gun out of nowhere without setting it up first, which I have to ask, did they introduce that Hedy had a gun earlier? No. Because she just straight up has a gun. Speaking of Chekhov's gun, they didn't do it right. They broke the rule of Chekhov's gun. I'm going to ask you about another Chekhov's gun that never got fired so i guess this would be a red herring near the beginning of the movie they're very careful to introduce the idea that this elevator gets stuck if you want to use this

elevator to open the door you have to use this screwdriver which you jam in the door to get it to actually open and close that never came into play in the movie it never mattered i was thinking that too i thought that was the weirdest thing i thought for sure someone was gonna get stuck in the elevator i mean i guess she fought with hetty in the elevator and tried to grab the screwdriver but then didn't because Hedy knocked her out all right so they make their way down to the basement Hedy thinks that Allie is unconscious for good turns out when you strangle someone unconscious they wake up a couple seconds later so Allie gets up and walks away it's at this point Allie hides in the vents Hedy goes and grabs a giant hook and I thought maybe this was her way of like hooking back into into ellie's life yeah i don't know what do you think maybe i she also destroys a mirror so you know she's trying to destroy herself that's telling

us something the end of the movie is that ali stabs hetty with the screwdriver is this the perfect personality winning out like is this a good thing i don't know if it's a good now going to be able to be a healthier person or is she living in delusion? I think she's living in delusion. Because like I said, I think Hedy is the one who is more closely aligned with reality. I think she is actually a bookstore clerk who's got issues. Okay, so now she's never going to come back to her job and she's going to think that she is a software developer. Yeah, no, I don't think this is a good ending. I think that this is kind of the wish fulfillment winning out. I mean, it's a good ending, but is it a happy ending? No, maybe not. I'm not sure. And the final shot of this movie is a shot of both of their pictures, for some reason, ripped apart with their faces shoved together. Hedy and Allie's faces are becoming one person.

And I'm like, why is that the final shot of the movie? Unless you're trying to say that they were one person all along. Because Hedy was trying to steal Allie's identity. Right, but she killed Hedy at this point. Like, I think that if that's the final shot of the movie, after Hedy's dead, what they're trying to tell us is they were one person all along. They merged. Okay, yeah. Maybe it's not that Allie survived and Hedy died. Maybe it's that Ellen is now Ellen. You know? Oh, but that's a good ending. That's a happy ending. Yeah, yeah, that's good. All right. Maybe our listeners listening can help me out here. I swear the first time I saw this movie, after that scene where it shows those two photos together, I swear there was a final scene where it flashed back to where it started at the beginning of this movie, which is Hetty and her twin as little kids. And it showed Hetty and her twin on the roof of her house

and Hetty pushes her twin off and her twin dies. And then she smiles about it. And it was showing that like Hetty was a total psycho all along and it wasn't that her twin died in an accident. She actually killed her twin. But that's not in this movie. Get pushed off the roof. She got pushed into like a river, according to the music article. Right, right. Well, whatever. Like I'm just telling you the scene that I remember. So if anyone hears this and knows what scene that movie is from, Please tell me because I thought it was from Single White Female and it's clearly not because it's not in this movie. Yeah. What do you think of Single White Female? Was it amazing? Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think it's an interesting movie for its time. And also, we have to mention that our first experience with Single White Female was from Wonder Falls. I guess we mentioned that at the beginning. For anyone not familiar with Wonder Falls, you can talk us through it.

Yeah, so Wonder Falls is probably the greatest show ever made. It's the greatest TV show ever made, yes. It was my favorite show of all time. There's nothing better. So good. It's such an amazing show. They only aired like four episodes on Fox before canceling it. But luckily they released the full first season on DVD because they shot it all, luckily. And it was just such an amazing show. And there is one episode that is a total parody of Single White Female. And it's a great episode. It's really good. Yeah, you might even call it a ripoff. No, it's definitely a parody because they straight up mentioned Single White Female several times. she's a single white female jay you're just like that girl from that movie who wanted to be that other girl so much that she tried to kill her grease no single white female but yeah if you ever get the chance any of our listeners to watch wonderfalls like watch

wonderfalls that is an amazing show and watch a single white female yeah i think in regards to theory fun theory definitely spices up the movie it's really interesting to try and look at it from that perspective of oh these are the same person anytime you can do that it's great so i mean the only thing that can make it better is if actually hetty did exist but she wasn't evil and all of this was some kind of scam oh dude we're good at those scamming ali everyone in her life was tricking her or what to get her software yes they all wanted her software that's exactly it because they knew it would delete itself check out our twitter at popcorn isn't real let us know what you think of the theory and of the movie itself remember to rate our podcast wherever you're listening give it a review if you want that would really help people to find us music for this episode was provided by christine and remember the popcorn isn't real

*crickets*