Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
AISHA HARRIS, HOST:
Sometimes, our favorite musical artists are too good to be true. They're the fictional bands sprung from the imaginations of Hollywood screenwriters.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, HOST:
But what makes a fake band great? Is it the songs, the personalities, that thing they do when the story reaches its third-act climax? I'm Stephen Thompson.
HARRIS: And I'm Aisha Harris. And today on NPR's POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR, we're debating what is the best fictional band. Joining me and Stephen today is our fellow co-host, Glen Weldon. Hey, Weldon.
GLEN WELDON, HOST:
Hey, friend.
HARRIS: Hey, Glen. (Laughter) I'm sorry.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: No, it's OK. I've been called Weldon before.
HARRIS: And also with us is Margaret H. Willison, faculty with Not Sorry Productions. Hi, Margaret.
MARGARET H WILLISON: Hi, Aisha. I'm so honored to be here today.
HARRIS: Oh, we are very, very, very honored to have you. So today, we're talking about what makes for a great fictional band, and we each brought in our own picks. Now, you know, even before we started recording this, there was some smack talk going on here...
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: The devil, you say.
HARRIS: ...So can't guarantee that we are going to see eye to eye on this, but we'll see. So, Glen, let's start with you.
WELDON: Normally, I - of course, I'd go with - me being me - Das Sound Machine, the German a cappella group, I should say, from "Pitch Perfect 2," that got robbed in what many are saying is the single greatest injustice in the history of human civilization.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: But I don't think I can get away with calling an a cappella group a band. You don't call it an a cappella band. You call it an a cappella group, I mean, even though their voices are their instruments, yada, yada, yada.
THOMPSON: Oh, absolutely.
HARRIS: OK.
WELDON: So the band I chose is not merely iconic. They are archetypal. And I mean that literally. They represent triunity - the three Fates, the Norns, the Weird Sisters...
WILLISON: (Laughter).
WELDON: ...The Graces. They are Maiden, Mother, Crone, the Triple Goddess. Such is their archetypal power that they require no instruments to perform, not because they're an a capella group, but because they are able to summon music from the very air itself, merely by feeling deeply. Can other fictional bands do that? Can Spinal Tap, the Oneders, the Be Sharps, the Silver Platters, Kaptain Kool, the Kongs? No, they can't do that.
Witness the power I'm speaking of here in this scene. The lead singer of this band is wandering through an empty pub. She's dejected. She's ruminating on a recent heartbreak, when simply through the power of her keenly felt emotions, the universe itself bends to her will and surrenders unto her some wonderfully cheesy synth pop.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN")
LILY JAMES: (As Donna Sheridan, singing) I don't know how, but I suddenly lose control. There's a fire within my soul. Just one look, and I can hear a bell ring. One more look and I forget everything. Whoa, mamma mia, here I go again...
WELDON: I'm speaking here, of course, of Donna and the Dynamos, the band featured in the jukebox musical, and musicals, "Mamma Mia!" and "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again." You've got Donna, played at different stages of life by Meryl Streep and Lily James. You've got Tanya, played by the great Christine Baranski and Jessica Keenan Wynn, and Rosie, played by Dame Julie Walters and Alexa Davies. Now, look...
HARRIS: Mm.
WELDON: ...I heard that mm, Aisha. Look...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
WELDON: ...These are basic movies.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: These are white Zinfandel movies.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: They are live, laugh, love movies. They are cinematic shiplap...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
WELDON: ...And I get that, but I love them still.
WILLISON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: I also like how this goes against your type, Glen, 'cause I feel like this is the...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: ...Complete opposite of what you would usually be going to bat for here, so.
WELDON: I have a weakness.
HARRIS: I'm into this.
WELDON: I have a weakness...
HARRIS: Yes.
WELDON: ...For this particular band, and I do call them the band. I do not know this ABBA of which people speak.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
WELDON: I don't know her.
THOMPSON: You're aware of their work.
WELDON: I'm aware of their work.
WILLISON: Would you say this band is your Waterloo?
WELDON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: Yes.
WELDON: Can I say something interesting about the lore of these movies? 'Cause there is...
WILLISON: Yes.
WELDON: ...A lore. You'll notice that when they are young, Donna and the Dynamos, they are still able to summon that music to turn the nondiegetic into the diegetic or the other way around...
WILLISON: (Laughter).
WELDON: ...I always get that confused. But as they reach middle age, as we meet them in the first film, this power largely leaves them. The scene in "Mamma Mia" where Donna and the Dynamos reunite to sing "Super Trouper," they require a boom box to provide the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAMMA MIA!")
CHRISTINE BARANSKI, JULIE WALTERS, MERYL STREEP: (As Donna and the Dynamos, singing) Super trouper lights are going to find me, but I won't feel blue like I always do 'cause somewhere in the crowd, there's you.
WELDON: So you're not just getting Meryl and Julie and Christine in ridiculously flared jumpsuits, though it would be enough.
HARRIS: Yes, yes, yes.
THOMPSON: Yeah.
WELDON: You're getting a sobering and, I think, bittersweet portrait of the passage of time, of mortality itself. You're getting a memento mori in platform heels. And I'll just leave you with these words that I think were originally said by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Dynamos, dynamite, sleep all day, and whoop all night.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: OK, OK. I mean, I think you touch on something really crucial here, at least I think, because yes, fictional bands, it is about the music. It's about, you know, the songs that can kind of stand on their own. Granted, this is - I mean, they stand on their own in part because they're real songs. But OK. I think what's also important is the story behind them. There has to be some sort of, like, backstory or some sort of thing that is drawing to - us to them besides the music because there has to be some sort of narrative there, so. All right, Margaret, let's move on to you now. What is your pick for the best or the greatest fictional band?
WILLISON: So in some ways, this decision was easy because there is only one fictional band I have ever traveled cross-country to see play.
THOMPSON: Wow.
WILLISON: I believe there's only one fictional band to which I own not one but two tribute T-shirts, and I would have felt dishonest not to represent them. But separate from my own personal attachment to this band, I also think I can make a really strong argument - stronger, possibly, than Glen's for Donna and the Dynamos - for why they are really the best possible example of a fictional band. The band I would like to make this argument for is Josie and the Pussycats...
WELDON: Here we go.
THOMPSON: This is the correct answer.
HARRIS: Yes.
WILLISON: Thank you.
HARRIS: Yeah, yeah.
THOMPSON: This is the correct answer.
WILLISON: ...Specifically from the 2001 adaptation of their story as portrayed by Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson, and, I would argue even more importantly, as produced by Babyface, as composed by Adam Schlesinger, but also Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows, and, most critically for me, as vocally performed by Kay Hanley...
WELDON: Yeah.
WILLISON: ...The singer for my favorite band when I was 14, Letters to Cleo.
HARRIS: Letters to Cleo, yes. I totally forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. They're a fun band.
WILLISON: They're amazing. But why do I think that they're so strong? For one thing, I do think that the cast of talent that we've named there is really indicative because both in those actresses, you have a degree of, like, sparkle and distinctness, but also unity that is so appealing to watch on screen. Also, then with the strength of the people behind the scenes, you have just, like, incredibly effective pop music. When in the plot of "Josie And The Pussycats," Josie has been given in - a livestreamed arena show one week into her career that she knows she's only gotten - spoiler for people who haven't seen one of the best movies of the last 25 years - she's only gotten because of subliminal messages being planted in her songs by a nefarious record company. And they have destroyed the machine. And she is just given the stage, and she has to play one of her songs and arguably win over this entire crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS")
KAY HANLEY: (As Josie McCoy, singing) One, two, three. Spin around. Come back home. You're running out on a line. Sometimes feel I'm going out of my mind. Stunned here, waiting for anyone to take the time. Spin around.
WILLISON: So you can hear. It is the platonic ideal of a power pop song. And I would argue that in addition to being fictionally, highly effective, I think you could say it shaped history, because what happened in 2001? "Josie And The Pussycats" was released.
WELDON: OK.
WILLISON: Who popped on the scene in 2002? Avril Lavigne.
WELDON: All right.
HARRIS: Yes, indeed.
WILLISON: So that's my argument. That's "Josie And The Pussycats" - my case.
HARRIS: I'm buying that. I don't know, what about you, Stephen and Glen? Glen looks skeptical.
WELDON: No, that's just my face, Aisha, I'm sorry. No, I'm not skeptical at all. I agree with this. And I think it's interesting, and we'll see if this bears out, but both of our choices slot into what you call power pop, what some people would call bubble gum. And I wonder if something about to be the greatest fictional band, you have to have a kind of four-quadrant appeal.
THOMPSON: I do want to point out a common thread in several of the greatest fictional bands of all time, including "Josie And The Pussycats," is the songwriting prowess of Adam Schlesinger...
WELDON: Sure.
HARRIS: Yes.
THOMPSON: ...Who Margaret...
HARRIS: Yes.
THOMPSON: ...Mentioned. Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne wrote songs for music and lyrics that are, like, pitch - not pitch perfect in...
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Not the - yeah, yeah let's...
THOMPSON: ...Das Sound Machine sense of the word, but pitch perfect, you know, kind of '80s pop songs. He wrote "That Thing You Do!" for The Oneders, one of the greatest fictional bands of all time. He had an incredible, incredible ear for writing music that was, like, perfect to the genre and era that he was going for. Sadly, he died in 2020, but I mean, he is on the Mount Rushmore of...
HARRIS: Yeah.
WILLISON: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Of great fictional-band songwriting. And so I'm really, really glad that Margaret picked this. I actually tried to pick this, and Margaret had already...
HARRIS: Ah.
THOMPSON: ...Scooped me.
WILLISON: Too bad, Stephen.
THOMPSON: So this is a perfect choice.
HARRIS: Yes. I agree. This is great. And it's making me want to go back and listen to that soundtrack...
WILLISON: It's...
HARRIS: ...'Cause it's...
WILLISON: Really holds up.
HARRIS: ...Again, it's so good.
AISHA HARRIS AND MARGARET H WILLISON: So good.
HARRIS: Yes. Thank you, Margaret. So that's "Josie And The Pussycats." So, Stephen, what are you doing here?
THOMPSON: Well, I was scooped on "Josie And The Pussycats." I considered another not massively box office, successful movie that has gained a cult following, "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"...
WELDON: Sure.
WILLISON: Strong.
HARRIS: Yes. I almost chose that.
THOMPSON: ...Which brought the world the Style Boyz. I decided to go for a kind of meta choice, a fictional band that is fictional in the fictional universe in which it exists. My favorite underappreciated sitcom of the 1980s was a short-lived show called "It's Your Move"...
WELDON: Ah, yes.
THOMPSON: ...Starring baby Jason Bateman as a early teen budding con man named Matt. But the fictional band that I'm talking about on this show is part of a two-part episode called "The Dregs Of Humanity." And the plot of this episode...
WILLISON: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: You can find this complete two-parter on YouTube. You can stream this show on Fubo. So the plot of the show - basically, Matt and his best friend, Eli, are put in charge of booking a band to play their school dance. And Eli, as was his tendency, manages to lose all the money. And they eventually - what they decide to do is dress up a bunch of skeletons from their school's bio lab and have them play the school dance with the aid of puppetry and smoke machines. They, like, borrow a tape from some friend's band, and they put on a school dance with the fictional band, the Dregs of Humanity.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "IT'S YOUR MOVE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, singing) Sweaty Betty, 'til my heart desires. Sweaty Betty, set my soul on fire. Sweaty Betty, and I'm not going to lie. Every time we kiss...
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Are they saying Sweaty Betty?
THOMPSON: I believe the song is called "Sweaty Betty."
WELDON: OK.
WILLISON: OK.
THOMPSON: The music of the Dregs of Humanity - not the point.
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: They hand-wave away the origin of this music. It's like, oh, did you get a tape from Manuel's (ph) band? That is just, like, never spoken of again.
HARRIS: OK.
THOMPSON: What ends up happening, of course, they create the '80s equivalent of a viral sensation. And this sort of sets into motion an ever-escalating menagerie of lawsuits and complications and kind of a bigger and bigger problem that needs to be solved. And I have to say, these episodes aired in January of 1985, when I was 12 years old. And this band and these episodes were very formative for me as, like, a budding music obsessive/cynic.
HARRIS: Yes.
THOMPSON: The show ended up kind of having a lot to say about artifice and hype. It's very funny and very silly and very '80s. I really would love more people to kind of go back and find this show, which really didn't get a chance to take off, but which was very, very important to me as a 12-year-old music nerd.
WELDON: I remember liking that show. I also remember not thinking about it since. So...
WILLISON: Yeah.
WELDON: ...I appreciated that.
WILLISON: You know, I'm pretty sure I remember not being alive when that show was on the air.
WELDON: Yes, you would.
HARRIS: Yeah, I don't even think my parents were married yet.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: OK, OK. That's...
HARRIS: But...
THOMPSON: Come on, man.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: But I do love this pick because, you know, this might be perhaps the most personal pick out of all of ours in terms of just how it really kind of imprinted in your brain. I still have random lyrics from shows I haven't watched since I was 12 stuck in my head, like, The Beets, like, "Killer Tofu" on "Doug."
WILLISON: Yeah, 100%.
HARRIS: I still sing it to myself every once in a while. Like, that's what it is.
WELDON: I do notice that in all three of our picks so far, we introduce our pick, and then we hurry to widen out to provide some kind of social context about it. So, yes, they stand on their own, but we also are couching things a bit. So I'm curious...
HARRIS: Yes.
WELDON: ...Aisha.
HARRIS: Yeah.
WELDON: Let's see. Let's hear from you.
HARRIS: So, I'm actually going to keep it in the '80s here, and that is Dragon Sound from the fantastically so-bad-it's-good martial arts movie, "Miami Connection." And actually, there's going to be sort of a overlap here, too, because we're going to stay in the electro-synth-pop band mode in a way. They are an electro-synth-pop band that consists of a multi-ethnic group of students who attend the University of Central Florida together. And they all may or may not be orphans. You have to watch the movie to get that.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: What I love about this, for one thing, is that you've got, like I said, a multi-ethnic group. You've got a Korean guitarist, an Irish American, an Israeli American, a Black/Korean American - although I don't actually think he's Korean American. It's just part of the plot.
WILLISON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: Again, this is a weird movie.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: And an Italian American who looks like John Oates.
WILLISON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: And they play in this nightclub, and they sing songs about promoting world peace and goodwill and being friends through eternity, loyalty and honesty.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MIAMI CONNECTION")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As Dragon Sound, singing) Friends through eternity, loyalty, honesty. We'll stay together through thick or thin. Friends forever, we'll be together. We're on top 'cause we play to win.
HARRIS: They are just, like, trying to spread the good joy here, man. But at the same time, as one villain in this movie warns another villain in this movie, they're all black belts in taekwondo, and they're pretty bad. And he means bad, as in MFs, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Bad in the "Shaft" way.
THOMPSON: Thank you for that crucial context.
WELDON: Yes.
HARRIS: Just had to say that. They obviously - they are not just a band. They are also taekwondo people. They can fight, and they have to face off against a rival band, a biker gang and drug-peddling motorcycle-riding ninjas.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
WELDON: Sure.
HARRIS: Does it make sense? No. But the songs are good. And the fact that they can do multiple things and that they are all about trying to promote peace while also fighting is what I love about this film. And I want to play one of the songs that ties in all of the themes that we're talking about here. It's called "Against The Ninja." Let's just listen to a little bit of that here.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MIAMI CONNECTION")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As Dragon Sound, singing) Against the ninja, we will fight to battle the sin. Taekwon, taekwon. Taekwon, taekwon.
HARRIS: Yes, so they were chanting, taekwon, taekwondo.
WELDON: OK. OK.
HARRIS: Some of the other lyrics include taekwondo is our way of life. We will stop the senseless killing. We will end this evil war. We will stop the senseless killing. We'll even up the score. They can do it all. They can fight. They can sing. Oh, I should also mention that there's, like, a whole cocaine subplot.
WILLISON: Sure.
WELDON: You didn't have to mention that.
WILLISON: Sure, yeah. I think you said Miami - we assumed.
THOMPSON: I feel like it was implied.
WELDON: That was implied.
WILLISON: Yeah.
HARRIS: At the heart of it all, even though this movie is really, really bad, I think the reason why this band and this, like, movie itself has endured is the fact that it is so earnest and it is so, like, made from the heart. And the acting is horrible. The taekwondo is, like, comical, in the way, like, really fun and great, you know, martial arts movies are. I myself have a T-shirt that is a Dragon Sound T-shirt. I'm not wearing it right now, but it is one of my prized possessions. And the soundtrack is on Spotify, so you can go listen to it. I just urge everyone, if you like electro synth-pop music with silly lyrics about taekwondo and fighting and being best friends for eternity through loyalty and honesty, Dragon Sound is the band for you.
WELDON: There you go.
THOMPSON: Well, what Margaret and Aisha have taught me here is that I need to get a Dregs of Humanity T-shirt.
WILLISON: Yeah.
WELDON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: Yes. Yes.
WELDON: We'll leave it to the listeners to decide which of these bands has left the biggest cultural footprint...
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: ...Which of these four bands.
HARRIS: Well, we should also leave it to the listeners to decide, you know, does a real band that actually already had songs established that weren't written for the movie - does that count...
THOMPSON: Yeah. I also...
HARRIS: ...As a best fictional band?
THOMPSON: I also want to point out that some of us were not trying to pick things that people already knew but were trying to steer people toward discoveries that they might enjoy. Notice that we didn't talk about Spinal Tap. We didn't talk about The Monkees. We - because people already know about them. They already know about ABBA, whereas some of us...
WELDON: I don't know this ABBA.
THOMPSON: ...Like Aisha...
WELDON: I don't know this ABBA...
THOMPSON: ...And me...
WELDON: ...You're talking about. I don't know her.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: Could have gone with Spinal Tap, could have gone with The Folksmen, Mitch & Mickey, The New Main Street Singers...
THOMPSON: Yes.
WELDON: ...Drive Shaft, The Bugaloos, The Archies, the Brady Kids, The Silver Platters...
WILLISON: There are so many options.
WELDON: ...Crucifictorious.
HARRIS: Clearly, we're trying to avoid people going into our mentions and being like, what about this band?
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: We could be here all day...
WELDON: We would.
HARRIS: ...Because clearly, there were plenty of examples to choose from. But, you know, tell us what you think is the best fictional band. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pchh. And up next, What Is Making Us Happy This Week?
And now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, What's Making Us Happy? Glen, let's start with you.
WELDON: OK. In 2023, Wes Anderson released four short films based on Roald Dahl's short stories and novellas directly to Netflix. They all feature the same company of actors - Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Rupert Friend. One of them, "The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar," won best live action short film Oscar in 2024. But of the four of them, that's the one that sticks with me the least because the other three are darker - Roald Dahl, go figure. And they all do represent what I think is a perfect mix of sensibilities here because Dahl and Anderson are both fabulists of a kind. They're both ironists. But Anderson's got maybe a skosh more belief in humanity.
WILLISON: (Laughter).
WELDON: Not much...
HARRIS: Yeah, I'd agree.
WELDON: ...But a bit more. There is something playful here. Like, the stylized way he always uses - he's using devices of theater here, flyaway sets and scrims and asides, in a very cinematic way. The one I keep coming back to is called "The Swan." It's about a young boy who loves birds who gets bullied by a pair of older kids. It's performed by Rupert Friend. It is just beautiful in a very bleak kind of way.
And the thing about Anderson's deadpan approach to this material in particular is that he's deliberately pushing down any strong emotions, keeping them below the surface. But they don't go away. They just kind of wait in stealth mode so they can kind of sneak up on you in the very end of each piece. These are four stories by Roald Dahl directed by Wes Anderson on Netflix, but especially "The Swan."
HARRIS: Thank you, Glen. Margaret, what is making you happy this week?
WILLISON: I figured that I would do something thematically aligned with my pick for this episode. And so I am recommending a band, and they are perfect female-fronted power pop with, in this case, really shimmery guitars and incredibly funny lyrics. And the band is Bad Bad Hats. They're a small band from Minneapolis, and they just put out a brand new album, self-titled, but they refer to it as "The Flower Album" 'cause it has daisies on the cover. One of my favorite songs off this most recent record is called "Meter Run."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "METER RUN")
BAD BAD HATS: (Singing) We could get married for the toaster. You could at least buy me a drink. What is your idea of fun? Baby, spend the night. Let that meter run with me.
WILLISON: If you like "Josie And The Pussycats," you should be listening to Bad Bad Hats.
HARRIS: Thank you so much, Margaret. Stephen, friend, what is making you happy this week?
THOMPSON: Well, my pick is also musical in nature, and it kind of keys off of a couple of projects that I've been working on in recent weeks. One is I had to watch the very bad Amy Winehouse biopic, "Back To Black."
WILLISON: Oof.
THOMPSON: And the other is that I did my annual ranking of the "Saturday Night Live" musical guests...
WILLISON: Ooh.
THOMPSON: ...And in the process of doing that, discovered an artist I had not spent nearly enough time with, a singer-songwriter named Raye.
HARRIS: Yeah, Raye.
THOMPSON: Raye is a British artist who is, I think, the closest we've come to a spiritual heir to Amy Winehouse. Watching her perform on "SNL" kind of compelled me to go back and dig into Raye's album "My 21st Century Blues." You really get a sense of an artist who just has fluency in so many different genres at once and swirls them together in something that sounds just like her. Let's hear a little bit of the song "Worth It."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORTH IT.")
RAYE: (Singing) Ooh, worth all of the time I'm 'bout to give you, baby, so I hope you're going to make it all worth it, worth it, worth it, worth it. Ooh, give all of the time I should be working on me, so I hope you're going to make it all worth it, worth it, worth it, worth it.
THOMPSON: She also did a Tiny Desk Concert in 2023 that is totally terrific. So that is what is making me happy this week, Raye and her album "My 21st Century Blues."
HARRIS: Awesome. Thank you so much. "Worth It." was actually the song that got me hooked on her, so...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
HARRIS: ...Fully agree with that one. So for my pick this week, it's "Gasoline Rainbow," which is a movie directed by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, aka the Ross Brothers. This is a really beautiful sort of lovely road trip movie about five close-knit teenagers who are from a small town in Oregon, and they set out on this road trip to see the Pacific Coast. They've never been. And it's sort of this, you know, last hurrah of adolescence before they all have to worry about getting jobs, responsibilities, etc.
And if you're familiar with the Ross Brothers and their previous work, you might know that they are kind of known for blending and blurring this line between reality and fiction. They play with these perceptions of those things in documentary and fiction. And they tend to use nonprofessional actors in these semi-scripted scenarios. And this movie is no different.
It's subtly set against the backdrop of the pandemic, but it's not, like, beating you over the head with it. You can just kind of sense that this is in the background. It has this very restless energy. And it's just filled with a lot of really beautiful moments with colorful characters. So it's had a limited run in theaters, but it's also streaming on MUBI as of May 31, so you should check it out. So that is "Gasoline Rainbow," and that is what is making me happy this week.
We also have one little bit of housekeeping, a really big announcement that I think we're all very excited to share, which is, you may recall that last year in honor of Barbenheimer we asked you to vote on a number of pop culture matchups - Batman versus Superman, NSYNC versus Backstreet Boys, yada, yada, yada. This time, though, we want to hear your opinions on a very, very important subject matter - summer snacks.
THOMPSON: Hard-hitting and divisive.
WELDON: It's on.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HARRIS: (Laughter) Are you team hot dog, team hamburger? I know which one I'm choosing. What is better - sugar cone, waffle cone, churro, funnel cake? We - yes, big, big, hard-hitting journalism here.
THOMPSON: I'm already angry at my colleagues about this.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Oh, no.
WELDON: That's my default position, so now join me. Thank you. Appreciate that, Stephen.
HARRIS: Simmer down here. But you should vote now. Find the link in our episode notes. And the reason we are asking you about these summer snacks is because we are going to be revealing these results in a virtual live taping exclusively for NPR Plus supporters - yes, NPR Plus.
THOMPSON: Woo-hoo.
HARRIS: That is happening on Thursday, June 27 at 6 p.m. Eastern time, and that's 3 p.m. Pacific. We'll also be taking some of your questions. So I'm sure you've all heard us talk about Plus before. It's a great way to support our work and public radio. You also get to listen sponsor-free. Who doesn't love that? And since it's summer, we just wanted to give our Plus listeners something a little extra special, a little extra treat.
WELDON: I see what you did.
HARRIS: And if you miss the event - it happens. Plus subscribers, you'll still be able to hear the episode in your feed later this summer, so win-win here if you're a Plus subscriber. And if you're not a Plus supporter yet, you should go to plus.npr.org/happyhour. Again, that's plus.npr.org/happyhour. And if you're already with us, or you're already a Plus supporter, thank you. We really mean that. It really means a lot to us. And you can check your feed today for more information on that virtual event. So look at the episode notes. See how to vote on the best summer snacks. Anyone can participate. And that brings us to the end of our show. I'm also really hungry right now.
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HARRIS: So Margaret H. Willison, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for being here. This was, as always, a very fun time.
WILLISON: Thank you so much, Aisha.
WELDON: Thank you.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
HARRIS: And this episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. And thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next week.
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