Classic WOF Podcast: LUSH LIFE - Alcohol in the Movies

 One of my favorite podcasts from 2024 was this one I did about drinking on film.

"April is Alcohol Awareness Month. To mark the occasion, The Words On Flicks Show will look at how alcoholic drinks have been portrayed in film over the years. Joining host Janine Coveney will be frequent guest, journalist, essayist, and cultural critic Michael A. Gonzales. Join us as we take a tour through a bar’s worth of  martinis, whisky shots, champagne cocktails, Cosmos, gin and tonics, and green fairies, as well as the drunk tanks, dry outs, brawls, pratfalls, and bottom scrapings of movie characters who imbibe."

Though we discuss such films as Days of Wine And Roses, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Lost Weekend, Arthur and others, Michael and I end up telling a lot about our own alcohol habits. A little true confessions, if you will. Enjoy by clicking the arrow below. . 

JCoveney · The Words On Flicks Show Alcohol In Film April 2024

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The Words On Flicks Show: Courtesans

For the June 2025 Words On Flicks Show podcast, I created a video to talk about Courtesans on film, but only made it through two films! 

My idea was to discuss narratives that focus on the courtesan. Here I am a contemporary AfroCaribLatina woman who is fascinated – OK obsessed -- by stories about these white women from another era. Why? I don’t know. It could be that I’m always interested in how people, particularly women, survived amid societies and cultures that are very different from our own. How women have always been separated into saints and sinners, Madonnas and whores, and courtesans managed to walk a thin line between these labels.

 I was talking to a friend of mine not that long ago about the Lerner & Lowe musical Gigi, which he said he had never seen. I started with “It’s about a girl in the year 1900 in  Paris being trained as a courtesan –”  

“What’s a courtesan?” he asked. 

And I had to stop. Maybe everyone is not aware. 

So here's the WOF breakdown of Gigi and Camille. Enjoy!