0:00

Welcome to You're Wrong

0:02

About, I'm Sarah

0:04

Marshall. It's the summer

0:07

and we are learning

0:10

about

0:16

crime. Every so

0:18

often we are a true crime show, we are

0:20

also a history show, and the times when those things

0:23

overlap are the

0:24

best times. And in this case, we

0:27

are talking today about Bonnie and Clyde with

0:29

Jamie Loftus. She has a book called

0:31

Raw Dog. She was a huge part

0:35

of our spring tour and the

0:37

magic that she and Carolyn

0:39

brought to these shows

0:41

really defies words.

0:44

But you know, it doesn't defy words, hot

0:46

dogs, because she wrote a book about them.

0:49

It's called Raw Dog. It's an Air

0:51

Times bestseller if you haven't read it yet. It

0:53

is such a fun romp

0:55

through America that actually shows you what

0:58

America is made out

0:59

of. And it is made out of hot dogs for

1:01

the most part, as well as labor issues. So

1:04

we recorded this in true

1:06

hot dog adventurer fashion

1:09

right after seeing the Nathan's

1:11

Famous 4th of July hot dog eating competition

1:14

in Coney Island, New York,

1:16

and riding the cyclone. I

1:18

think you can really hear it.

1:20

This is a story of Depression

1:23

era America. And so it is

1:25

violent, it

1:27

is bloody. And there is a very

1:30

significant amount of domestic

1:32

abuse and violence against women.

1:34

Speaking of trigger warnings, we have

1:36

a bonus episode coming out soon with

1:39

Carmen Maria Machado talking

1:41

about flowers in the attic, the

1:44

topic I believe she was born for. And

1:47

you can find that soon on patreon.com

1:50

slash you're wrong about or Apple plus subscriptions.

1:53

Thank you so much for listening. We hope you're having

1:55

the best summer.

1:57

Here are some hot dogs. We made them for

1:59

you. Welcome

2:03

to You're Wrong About, the podcast where

2:05

sometimes we are talking to you from

2:08

a comfort inn in Sheepshead

2:10

Bay right after the 4th

2:13

of July Nathan's

2:15

Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition

2:17

or is it Nathan's Famous 4th of July?

2:19

It's very tough. Nathan's Famous...

2:21

No, you nailed it. This is perfect. If

2:25

you don't know who Jamie is already

2:27

or where to find her work, what are you doing

2:29

with your life? But for people who don't know,

2:32

where do we find you? You

2:34

can find me at your

2:36

local bookstore. I wrote

2:39

a book about hot dogs called Raw Dog. I

2:41

would love if you read it. I had a really

2:43

good time writing it.

2:44

Or you can find me online

2:47

on Instagram or Twitter. I'm on Instagram

2:49

at Jamie Crye Superstar Twitter

2:52

at Jamie Loftus Help. I

2:54

co-host the Bechdel cast with Caitlin Durante

2:57

and I've done a bunch of limited series

3:00

as well about Mensa and Lolita and

3:02

Kathy comics

3:03

and spiritualism. So if any of those things sound

3:06

interesting to you, you should check it out. If they

3:08

don't, then like... Get a light,

3:10

babe. But I would

3:12

love to start by telling everybody about

3:14

our day. Oh my gosh.

3:17

Our day's been really special. Truly,

3:20

I think it's so fun that we were recording this today

3:22

because I feel completely out of my mind.

3:24

We got scared we weren't going to be able to make it

3:26

back to see Joey

3:28

Chestnut eat so many hot dogs

3:30

because it was a whole day. It rained really

3:32

hard. They were like, we're canceling the

3:35

men's competition. Yeah. So yeah, I was

3:37

like, raining really hard. I'm afraid

3:40

of lightning. And there was a lot

3:43

of lightning and close and they just kept being like,

3:45

we're going to... I think George

3:47

Shea was like, nothing will cancel

3:49

the content. And then the police were like, something

3:52

could cancel the contest.

3:54

And so they told everyone

3:56

to leave, which we did happily.

3:59

It was really... really scary out. So yeah,

4:01

we thought the contest was rained out and then

4:04

due to a tip from living

4:07

legend, professional wrestler,

4:10

professional eater, veteran,

4:13

megabyte Ronnie said, no,

4:15

they are doing the contest. You've got to get back

4:17

here. So

4:20

we hauled as back to the contest.

4:23

I ran faster than I've

4:25

run since I was on the

4:27

track team in eighth grade. And

4:29

we both got there

4:31

just as it was starting. It was so

4:34

awesome. And it was so special

4:36

to be there with you because I only know

4:39

any of the things I know about professional eating

4:41

or the fourth of July

4:42

hot dog eating competition

4:45

because of your book. I was, I

4:47

don't know, I was going into it just feeling

4:49

like this is going to be this incredibly overwhelming

4:52

thing. I'm going to be in a crowd. It's going to be hot.

4:54

I mean, it's going to be stressful.

4:56

There's obviously a ton going on, but

4:59

it felt like this actually very familiar

5:01

place. And like I knew who

5:03

the main characters were and the drama,

5:07

the drama, they

5:09

were bringing it

5:11

this year. I didn't think they could top last year

5:14

when Joey put

5:16

a protester into a chokehold mid

5:18

contest while he had a broken leg. And

5:21

that we don't have time to get into what

5:23

was going on there. But it was really

5:26

special to me that you were there because

5:28

it just we've been traveling together so much and

5:30

it feels like comfortable and nice.

5:33

And

5:33

also to do a

5:35

big weird thing. I don't know. It

5:37

just is like,

5:39

it just feels right to do it with you. I love to do a

5:41

big weird thing with you. And to be fair, we've never done

5:43

a small, normal thing. We've never tried,

5:45

but we are not here to talk about hot dogs today.

5:48

Correction. We are here to talk

5:50

about hot dogs today, but only

5:53

in the context of

5:55

Bonnie and Clyde. That's exactly

5:58

right. And that's what you call a pivot.

5:59

I, she's a pro

6:02

folks. It's been said and

6:04

it's true. I like that you tease

6:06

the hot dog inclusion because I feel like there's

6:08

just enough story to totally forget

6:11

that there's hot dogs coming. And then when they come and

6:13

it's at a pivotal moment in the

6:16

story, you're gonna be screaming,

6:18

cheering, throwing up, getting

6:20

a nosebleed, you'll just be gushing.

6:23

You'll be gushing something. What's the Loftus

6:25

effect?

6:26

I wanted to start by asking you how

6:29

Bonnie and Clyde grabbed you, because

6:31

I feel like there are figures

6:33

in history and in American life who everyone

6:36

knows, we all know the name of, even

6:38

if you don't have a clear association, it's like, it

6:41

exists as part of the culture. And I feel like those things can

6:43

almost be harder

6:45

to cultivate a personal interest in because

6:47

they can feel distant and

6:49

historic and hard to access

6:52

personally. And I wonder about kind

6:54

of when, when they caught hold of

6:56

you in that way. Ooh,

6:59

but I think it was during my

7:02

like

7:03

intense hot dog history research,

7:05

because much like the hot dog, they're icons

7:07

of the Great Depression and very

7:10

recognizable, commonly

7:12

misunderstood Great Depression

7:15

figures. What was

7:17

your like initial like impression of

7:19

Bonnie and Clyde just cultural osmosis

7:21

wise? 100% fade on away in a cool

7:23

hat. Totally, totally.

7:26

I liked the movie, but I didn't

7:28

ever really like go back to it.

7:31

Characters that are just like so cool,

7:35

I get kind of like bored of. Yeah.

7:38

And not to say that those, the characters as

7:40

they are like presented in the movie are not

7:43

like flawed and don't have problems and all this stuff, but

7:45

they were just like so unbelievably

7:47

cool. And like, I think presented

7:50

as kind of masterminds

7:52

that it was like, it's the same reason I don't

7:54

like watching Iron Man movies where you're like,

7:57

yeah, he's gonna figure it out. He's gonna look

7:59

really.

7:59

I was like, oh, we're, and I say

8:02

this with a lot of affection. They were

8:04

like unbelievable fuckups. The Bonnie and Clyde movie for the most part

8:06

is the best press they

8:09

could have possibly gotten because they were just, yeah, they fucked

8:11

up constantly, but

8:13

there's, I mean, there's a ton of songs

8:15

about them. Yours is Bonnie and Clyde by Serge Gainsborough.

8:19

And I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good

8:21

question. I think that's a really good question.

8:24

I think that's a really good question. I think that's

8:26

a really good question. Yours is Bonnie

8:28

and Clyde by Serge

8:29

Gainsborough and Brigitte Bardot, which

8:33

if you don't know French, like I don't know

8:35

French, then you just know it as Bunny

8:37

and Clyde. Mine

8:42

was, um, the Jay-Z and

8:44

Beyonce, uh, Bonnie

8:46

and Clyde, oh three. For people

8:49

who like didn't grow up with the myth, I

8:51

would say that the, the kind of Bonnie and

8:53

Clyde legend is that they were

8:55

this

8:56

hot couple. They

8:58

met somehow. They started

9:01

on a crime spree. The details don't

9:03

matter, uh, in this legend

9:06

and robbing banks. This is, I think

9:08

like the

9:09

iconic line from the Arthur Penn

9:12

movie is they're stopping getting

9:14

gas or something, right? And Bonnie's they're like,

9:16

what do you all do? And Bonnie's like, we rob

9:19

banks. And

9:21

she's got her hat on and you're like, and

9:23

that they were like these, these like hot,

9:26

not just that they weren't hot in real life, but that they were these

9:28

like glamorous

9:30

bank robbers who were

9:32

on a crime spree that captivated America

9:34

and then, you

9:36

know, it couldn't last and they were

9:38

gunned down by. The

9:40

FBI, I think. So

9:43

the two perspectives that I've generally seen on

9:45

how Bonnie and Clyde are presented is the

9:47

first one is just pretty much straight up the movie one

9:50

where they are sexy and they're

9:52

like a little bit troubled, but they're very in

9:54

love and they're really good

9:57

at crime and outrunning the

9:59

law.

9:59

somehow we're born good at it,

10:02

didn't have a learning curve. Exactly.

10:05

And then the alternative, which I think is a response

10:07

to the movie's inaccuracies,

10:10

not that it needs to be

10:12

a documentary, is that,

10:14

oh, well, they were actually incompetent

10:17

criminals who weren't actually that

10:19

conventionally hot as movie stars,

10:21

and they actually weren't even that smart

10:23

at all, and just totally make

10:25

them out to be like, well, people just needed stuff

10:28

to talk about during the Depression, and that's

10:30

the only reason that they were of note.

10:32

But I think that that second perspective,

10:34

especially, really lacks context

10:37

of why they were committing crimes in

10:39

the first place, the sort of basic

10:41

sketch of who they were is they were two

10:44

poor

10:44

kids from Texas. They were in their early

10:47

20s when they died. I think they

10:49

were 23 and 24. They

10:51

had grown up with essentially nothing. They

10:53

went on a two-year crime spree after meeting

10:56

at a party and were ultimately

10:59

responsible for the death of nine

11:01

cops and a number of civilians,

11:04

which is more of what I think is

11:06

the sad part, and were, yeah,

11:08

ultimately

11:09

super turbo killed

11:12

by the, I believe, it was the Sheriff's

11:14

Department that ultimately killed them. But

11:16

it was a collaborative effort between

11:18

the FBI and the local

11:20

authorities in Dallas,

11:23

which is also where

11:24

they are from. But I think

11:27

what made them appealing to the general

11:29

public, because they were folk heroes for

11:31

the majority of their crime spree, it's very,

11:33

very late in their criminal

11:36

tenure that the public

11:39

turns on them. But what made them different

11:41

was it was presented as this love

11:43

story, and it was also at this

11:46

point of peak American

11:48

gangster killings. It's

11:50

presented as different because

11:53

Bonnie's there, and she's a woman, and it's really

11:55

unusual for a woman to

11:57

be in a gang at all, much less appearing.

11:59

to be very influential. Obviously,

12:02

you can't talk about Bonnie and Clyde without talking about Clyde,

12:04

but I want to

12:07

prioritize Bonnie in this, especially

12:11

because I think most of what I read about

12:13

them, even

12:16

the books were pretty comprehensive, were

12:19

extremely Clyde forward.

12:21

Well, women don't have thoughts. We just have the sex and

12:23

the city theme playing

12:24

in our heads continually. And

12:27

Bonnie actually wrote that. But

12:30

Bonnie, I mean, like Bonnie, obviously,

12:32

she's treated as an important character, but always

12:34

a secondary character. When

12:37

the reason that they're called Bonnie and Clyde is

12:39

of Bonnie's making. Everyone in their lives

12:41

called them Clyde and Bonnie, but

12:43

it's because of her writings

12:47

and the fact that it just fucking sounds better.

12:49

This poem she wrote towards the end of their lives called

12:51

the story of Bonnie and Clyde is a huge reason that

12:54

they are known in that order. Like she is

12:56

very

12:56

important in the story. And my

12:58

other favorite in this

13:02

torrid tale is

13:04

a woman named Blanche Barrow. I

13:06

love Blanche Barrow.

13:09

I love me some Blanche. Blanche, I think

13:11

of everyone in Bonnie and Clyde's extended

13:14

circle

13:15

was the most misrepresented

13:18

in the Bonnie and Clyde movie. She

13:21

was Clyde's sister-in-law. She was married

13:23

to his older brother, Buck, and

13:26

she and Buck traveled with Bonnie and Clyde

13:28

for a good portion of

13:30

their criminal career. Blanche

13:33

famously did not wanna

13:35

be a criminal, essentially got tricked

13:38

into joining this crime

13:40

spree, did not wanna be there.

13:43

This is presented as very unreasonable

13:45

in the movie, which is wild. In

13:49

the movie Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie is played

13:51

by Faye Dunaway, glamorous,

13:54

very young, and in the movie

13:57

Blanche is played by Estelle Parsons, who

13:59

is a

13:59

She's a Massachusetts legend. She's

14:02

still with us. She's an icon. She's

14:04

a legend, but she is older than

14:06

fate on the way and is really is

14:08

made to seem older, less conventionally

14:11

attractive and like a shrill asshole.

14:14

The whole like she's constantly in the way

14:16

she's crying. She's whining. Everyone's

14:18

like, shut the fuck up. Like that's how

14:21

Blanche has treated the entire movie. It

14:23

is so unfair. I will die on this hill. So

14:26

I will, I'm excited to talk about

14:29

Blanche in particular

14:29

too, because spoiler

14:32

alert, she's the only one in this fucking

14:34

car who lives to tell the tale. So what now?

14:37

But like, I don't know. I remember when I was first

14:39

really into Tonya Harding research,

14:42

one of the things that like I felt

14:44

I wanted to emphasize was like the

14:47

extreme youth of everybody involved. Tonya

14:49

Harding was 23. Nancy Kerrigan was 24. Like

14:51

at the end of this

14:54

great saga of them competing against

14:56

each other for years, tiny getting married, tiny

14:58

getting divorced. You just kind of look at that. And

15:01

I was about that age when I was doing that research,

15:03

but I was like, I'm a baby. So clearly these

15:05

girls are also babies and

15:07

really makes you think about the amount of pressure

15:09

that they were under. Just because you had to live

15:12

so much very young does not mean

15:14

that you need to be portrayed by someone much

15:16

older. I actually don't know how old

15:19

were, I guess Warren Beatty

15:21

was 30, but they were like

15:23

college age students. Like

15:25

they were so young and they lived

15:28

so hard and I have

15:31

a lot of love for them. They

15:33

did some pretty fucked up stuff. No one

15:35

I love has ever done anything wrong. I

15:39

just think that like, like a lot of people

15:42

that

15:43

you've talked about on the show over the years, it's like

15:46

people who just like never had a chance. But

15:49

first I want to tell you about

15:50

Bonnie, my girl, Bonnie

15:52

Parker. She's born in 1910

15:55

in Rowena, Texas,

15:57

born very, very poor.

15:59

one younger sister whose

16:02

name is Billie Jean. Her father dies

16:04

when she's young. And so her mom takes

16:07

them, they moved to the outskirts of Dallas

16:09

to this place called cement city. It's

16:11

like a lack of fear of naming

16:13

the thing you're doing that I think is very

16:15

charming. It's like, look, why try and hide that we make

16:17

cement here? Or, you know, there's

16:19

nothing shameful about it. So

16:22

Bonnie is, is raised by a single

16:24

mom.

16:25

She has a really close relationship with

16:27

her mom. That's something that comes up later when

16:30

they're on the road is Bonnie is always trying to convince

16:32

Clyde to come back to Dallas, even

16:34

when it's really dangerous for them because she's so close with

16:37

her mom. Her mom supports

16:39

her and her sister as a seamstress and

16:41

she raises them in a way that I've read

16:44

presented as arrogant. I don't agree

16:46

with that at all. She basically

16:48

like Bonnie's mom, Emma raises

16:51

them with a really high sense of self-esteem,

16:54

even though they're very poor. How dare

16:55

kind of tells them that

16:57

they're like better than people,

17:00

which is not great, but like they basically

17:03

raises her kids to believe that they

17:05

can achieve

17:07

more and they can get out of cement city. She

17:10

really overworks herself to try to do this. She

17:13

learned piano so she can teach the kids piano.

17:16

She encourages Bonnie to join

17:18

the local theater troop, which she does. And

17:20

Bonnie grows up kind of a bit of an art

17:23

girly. She loves writing.

17:25

She loves photography and she

17:27

loves acting. And

17:30

she had these, I don't know, like vague

17:33

teenage girl aspirations. That's like, maybe

17:35

I'll be an actor, maybe I'll

17:37

be a writer, maybe I'll be a photographer,

17:39

but whatever I do, I'm not

17:41

going to be in cement city. And I

17:43

really love it. There's this glamour shot

17:46

that she has taken of her when

17:48

she's a teenager. It's very, very

17:50

sweet. She wants to move to New York.

17:52

She wants to write poetry and act on Broadway.

17:54

But this is like just such

17:57

an absurdly disenfranchised part of.

17:59

Texas and at a time where only 8%

18:03

of women would go to college at all. So

18:05

her options are very limited.

18:08

When she's 15, she gets married

18:11

to a guy named Roy, who

18:13

is around her age, but is a, just a

18:16

spectacularly, uh, abusive

18:18

person. He also

18:21

is in and out of jail for,

18:23

for the duration of their relationship,

18:26

uh, is physically abusive to her lies to

18:28

her. And her mom, um,

18:30

is basically begging Bonnie to get

18:33

out of this relationship. Something

18:35

she and Clyde have in common that I think is just

18:38

very,

18:38

um,

18:40

sweet is that Roy is

18:42

a horrible person. She does

18:44

get his name tattooed on her. Clyde

18:47

also has the names of two past

18:49

girlfriends tattooed on him. And

18:51

they just like, they love hard. And

18:55

I feel very seen in that where they're like,

18:57

I would not just have a boyfriend.

19:01

All that to say she, she, her first relationship

19:03

was extremely abusive. Uh,

19:05

she's very traumatized by this. Uh,

19:08

her mom says dump him. Eventually

19:10

Bonnie does. She never formally

19:13

divorces him. This is why a lot of people think Bonnie

19:15

and Clyde were married. They weren't. Uh,

19:17

but Bonnie was always wearing a wedding ring. She wore her

19:20

wedding ring with Roy. She was going

19:22

to divorce him, but then he gets arrested

19:25

before she can file the papers and she's kind of like,

19:27

well, fuck it. This reminds me of how

19:30

the whole,

19:31

I haven't watched twister in a few years and I watched

19:33

it a couple of weeks ago and how like the whole premise

19:36

of twister is that Bill Paxton just

19:38

needs Helen hunt to sign these

19:40

divorce papers, which is a nice role reversal

19:42

from how women normally are in nineties movies.

19:45

God, it's amazing that the plot of twister could

19:47

be solved by docu-son. It's

19:50

on while in the

19:52

Blair witch project. I was watching that this

19:54

week. Then I was like,

19:56

boy, if they, if we were making this today,

19:59

this, I guess then though, the witch could

20:01

like destroy their phones. That's the thing. But

20:03

like, I guess so. I believe in her. But yeah,

20:06

so I admire

20:07

her. I'm

20:10

not saying Bonnie Parker only

20:12

made good choices. However, neither do I.

20:15

And like, yeah, I admire the

20:17

fact that she like

20:19

went forward and loved again.

20:22

I really love that too. And I feel

20:24

like that is a testament to

20:26

her and also her mom in

20:28

spite of, I mean, there's a lot of

20:30

myself that I see in Bonnie in the way

20:32

that she is like, she loves

20:34

really hard. And sometimes she's like, you know,

20:37

we'll overextend herself for a relationship

20:40

such as committing crimes and dying. But

20:43

who among us, like there's just a number of Bonnie

20:46

moments where I was like, yeah, I would have done that

20:48

too, especially if I was 19. But

20:50

I think that there is this other side of her that has a

20:52

really strong sense of self. And

20:55

to the very end just has like, she

20:57

has a lot of like hope that things are going

21:00

to change and that things are gonna turn

21:02

around. And obviously they don't,

21:04

but I think that that is like part

21:06

of what helped sustain them for

21:08

so long was that like

21:10

she and Clyde both

21:12

had hope for the future for

21:14

a really long time, which they should have. They were

21:16

in their early twenties. Like it's just,

21:19

it's wild. And that's kind of your birthright,

21:21

you know, unless you live in a society that takes it away

21:23

from you. And I don't know, I feel like taking

21:26

away the Faye Dunaway archetype, like to me, what

21:28

changes everything in

21:30

the story, the way you tell it is like starting off

21:33

imagining Bonnie as like a kind of dreamy,

21:35

already frustrated teenager. Yeah,

21:38

which I would imagine was at one point the

21:40

majority of this listenership, like

21:43

definitely us. If you were some other

21:45

kind of teenager, then you're presumably listening

21:47

to the show because someone you love

21:49

has put it on and you're in a car with them. After

21:52

the marriage falls

21:54

apart, she doesn't, I don't believe she

21:56

finishes high school. She's working.

21:59

as a waitress. She

22:02

gets in trouble for giving away food to people who

22:04

can't afford it because we're heading into the

22:06

depression years. And

22:09

she was sort of known for just being very beloved

22:11

and giving away food. She also keeps

22:13

these incredible diaries.

22:16

I love Bonnie's diaries so much.

22:18

I have a lot of it written down, but the one that I

22:21

really like to share always is she's

22:23

just like

22:24

living in the middle of nowhere with no money and she's

22:26

fucking bored and there's

22:29

two entries in a diary that

22:31

she also keeps very sporadically. She

22:34

writes, why don't something

22:36

happen? And she writes

22:39

this two days in a row. I love her.

22:41

I love her too. I just think she's the best

22:44

because like, why don't something happen? You're

22:46

like, but what if something never happened?

22:49

Nothing has happened yet. And she's surrounded

22:51

and you know, there's people in her life that nothing

22:54

happened

22:54

and she really

22:56

wants something to happen. And

22:59

in 1930

23:00

something happened. She meets

23:02

Clyde Barrow at a party

23:05

in West Dallas. Most people do

23:07

describe this as like a very instant connection,

23:10

a very love it for Sadie kind

23:12

of thing. She doesn't know a lot about

23:14

him. Bonnie didn't have any history

23:17

of even petty crime prior

23:19

to meeting Clyde. Clyde had done

23:21

some petty crime, which we'll talk about in a second.

23:24

They are very, very enamored with each other

23:26

instantly. They start dating. So

23:29

Clyde at this point

23:30

was a year older than her and had

23:33

a sort of string of petty crimes that

23:35

were mostly survival. He

23:38

stole chickens. He

23:40

stole a couple of bikes. It

23:43

was all very Portland, 2023. It's

23:45

like, yeah, like, I mean, for

23:48

the most part, he was stealing food

23:50

and then he also started stealing cars.

23:53

He wasn't, the point is he wasn't hurting anybody.

23:55

And I think that that's what really frustrates

23:57

me about the sort of born

23:59

killer narrative that surrounds Clyde

24:02

is like all of his crimes were petty

24:04

crimes that were

24:05

majority intended for her survival

24:08

at worst stupid. He

24:10

is arrested from Bonnie's

24:13

house early in their relationship for stealing a car.

24:15

He asks if she'll

24:17

wait for him and she's like, yeah.

24:22

But she's kind of back and forth on it. She

24:24

really cares about him, but also she's

24:27

already been in a really horrific marriage

24:30

with a husband who was in and out of

24:32

jail. She's not sure if she wants to do it. And

24:34

so she starts dating someone

24:36

while Clyde is in jail who

24:39

all description. I feel bad for this guy. RIP

24:41

to him. I'm assuming it was a long time ago, but

24:44

everyone describes this guy as a flop. They're

24:46

like, Bonnie started dating this flop because he

24:48

seemed safe. Uh, while

24:50

she continued to write Clyde letters while he

24:52

was in jail. Well, Bonnie has needs,

24:54

I guess. I get it. Sometimes you got to

24:56

date a flop for awhile. Her letters

24:59

to Clyde are very sweet. They rock

25:01

says, honey, I sure wish I was with you tonight.

25:04

Sugar. I never knew I really cared for you until

25:06

you got put in jail and honey, if you

25:08

get out, okay, please don't ever do anything to get

25:10

locked up again. And listen, honey

25:12

boy, you started this and someone is sure going

25:15

to finish it. Wow. But

25:17

basically, I mean, she visits him. She is

25:19

sort of hedging her bets by being in this other

25:22

relationship, but it seemed like I think the longer

25:24

he's away, the more she realizes that she really does want

25:26

to be with him. So on one visit

25:29

to Clyde in prison, and this is a

25:31

like county jail. It's not a,

25:34

uh, he's

25:34

soon going to go to

25:37

essentially a work camp, but she goes

25:39

to visit him at the county jail and

25:42

he asks her to smuggle

25:44

a gun into the jail so

25:46

he can bust out. So this is

25:48

like a big turning point for Bonnie.

25:51

She, you know, is

25:53

an art teen who's working

25:55

waitressing jobs. And this is like sort

25:58

of the first quote unquote bad thing.

25:59

that she's ever done. Clyde asks

26:02

her to do this. She's not sure. And he passes

26:04

her a note that says, you were the sweetest baby

26:06

in the world to me. I love you. And she's like, I'll

26:09

do it. Which

26:11

I would also do like

26:14

for the right person. So she smuggles him

26:16

the gun the same day. She keeps that

26:18

note for the rest of her life. Oh, Bonnie.

26:20

I know Clyde busts

26:22

out of jail. So the deal with Clyde,

26:26

it gets hot dog adjacent because his name is Clyde.

26:28

Chestnut Barrow. Kind

26:31

of scary. And we don't know how the

26:33

rest of Joey's life is going to pan

26:34

out. So it could happen.

26:37

Joey passes me that note. Are you kidding? Clyde

26:42

Chestnut Barrow was from an even poorer

26:44

family in West Dallas. He's one of seven

26:46

kids. He and Bonnie are

26:48

both very petite, which everyone seems

26:50

to love to point out. Clyde's

26:53

a short King. I love that for him.

26:55

He's a real control freak, which I love

26:57

less for him. But he has,

26:59

I mean, even within the gang, he sort of has this

27:02

cult like presence where Bonnie

27:05

and his brother and

27:07

many of their associates are very

27:09

like, they, they think Clyde knows best.

27:11

We're going to do what Clyde says. The only person

27:13

who's like, fuck Clyde is my girl

27:16

Blanche. Who's like, why are

27:18

we listening to Clyde?

27:19

We keep getting shocked.

27:22

Clyde, also a very arty teenager.

27:24

He loves music. He wants to be a musician.

27:27

He played saxophone. He played Dooka

27:29

lately. He sang. He left school

27:31

when he's a teenager with the hopes of becoming

27:33

a musician, which was

27:36

not possible. Again, it's like, I

27:38

just think it's so sad

27:40

and frustrating that it's like Bonnie wanted to be a writer.

27:43

Clyde wanted to be a musician and like they had

27:45

these very pure aspirations.

27:48

And another thing they had in common was they were both

27:51

Clyde to, I think a

27:52

greater degree. It was like, they were very ashamed

27:55

to be poor. Something, and I think this

27:57

is sort of tied into their legend is in

27:59

in spite of the fact that they were living in horrible

28:02

conditions, or living in a car, or living in the woods,

28:04

like they have to be totally off the grid, but

28:07

they always were, for the most part, like until

28:09

the end, they were always wearing really nice clothes. And

28:11

they would always go out of their way to steal

28:14

clothes because they didn't

28:17

wanna die in the class they were born in. And

28:20

so failing that, they wanted

28:22

to at least look like they weren't gonna die

28:24

in the class they were born in. So they have these

28:26

very twenties, thirties, fashions,

28:28

Bonnie's like very flapper

28:29

coated in her wardrobe

28:32

choices. I feel like that's like one of the,

28:34

not to jump ahead too much, but comes into

28:36

the question of, why do stories

28:39

fascinate people when they do? And,

28:42

you know, seeing it not as like, well, it was the depression,

28:44

people were bored. And so that was why they

28:46

were big, even though they sucked as criminals. It's

28:48

like, no, there's something more, it's

28:50

like they're compelling, but there's

28:52

something maybe about the time that like

28:54

makes the mesh with the public imagination.

28:57

And I feel like being like a criminal

28:59

on the road, having a crime spree in the thirties

29:02

and the depression, like one of the things

29:04

about it, it seems like, is that this

29:06

is one of the only ways to transcend class.

29:09

Hugely, yeah. Yeah,

29:12

part of what makes them appealing is

29:15

that they're also like saying,

29:17

fuck you to a lot of systems that

29:19

are oppressing people across the country.

29:22

The most obvious culprit is the police, but also

29:25

like they're robbing banks because

29:27

fuck banks and

29:29

they're killing cops because fuck

29:31

cops. I think that there was a very like a

29:34

cathartic

29:35

element to following their crimes. And

29:38

that's like part of why people liked

29:40

them so much. Like sure, everyone's bored,

29:42

but like, I feel like it's almost like, I

29:46

already feel like we're hearing people characterize

29:48

COVID like that, where you're like,

29:51

yeah, people are kind of bored, but

29:53

they're way more like mad. And

29:56

especially because of like the way that they

29:59

were presented in the.

29:59

press as like these enemies of

30:02

the police and enemies of the state at a time

30:04

where like most poor people felt that the state

30:06

was against

30:07

them. And so it's like, well,

30:09

yeah, I'm rooting for these guys because they're much more

30:12

like me than the police

30:14

are and in the government are. And

30:17

especially the banks that just like lost everybody's money.

30:20

You're like, I'd like my money please. And they're like, we don't

30:22

have it. Sorry. The

30:24

time when it gets harder

30:27

for the public to embrace them is a combination

30:29

of when the media narrative changed

30:31

and no one was, you know, like they're,

30:33

how would you know, um, anything

30:36

except what the

30:37

papes were telling you at the

30:39

time, borrowing newsies term.

30:42

It was when they killed

30:44

civilians that the public

30:46

turned in them and that I understand. But

30:49

anyways, Clyde, uh, yeah, Clyde wants to be a

30:51

musician. He drops out of school to be a musician and

30:53

he's supporting himself by working

30:56

a string of low paid jobs. He works at Western

30:58

union. Uh, he works at like, I

31:00

think a candy factory. And

31:03

to supplement this, he starts stealing

31:05

chickens and you know,

31:07

a string of petty crime across West

31:09

Dallas. Uh, this obviously gets the attention

31:11

of the Dallas police and there's

31:14

a wife of a Dallas sheriff that

31:17

later says in regards to Clyde,

31:19

if the Dallas police had left that boy alone, we

31:21

wouldn't be talking about him today, which

31:24

I think is really, really true and is obviously

31:27

still a

31:28

policing pattern. Now Clyde

31:31

was caught doing a few petty crimes

31:34

and then the police would never leave him

31:36

alone ever. There's a number of times

31:38

in his late teens, early twenties

31:41

before he's arrested that

31:43

Clyde

31:44

tries to

31:45

have a job and have a life

31:49

and like maybe steal a chicken

31:51

or two here or whatever, but

31:53

the police would go to his place of employment

31:55

and be like, Hey, you really don't want this guy working

31:58

for you. Like he's going to steal

31:59

from you. And then he would lose his job. And so

32:02

he reached a point where he

32:04

felt there was no alternative because

32:06

the police would never leave him alone. And

32:09

in Dallas, from what I can tell, it was

32:12

particularly bad. Like

32:14

these

32:15

guys had nothing fucking better to do

32:17

than just like harass a

32:19

teenager who was trying to hold down a job at Western

32:21

union. It's ridiculous. This is

32:23

sort of where Clyde's at when he meets Bonnie. He's

32:26

arrested. He says you are

32:28

the Swedish baby in the world to me. I love you. And

32:31

now they're both crime and baby because

32:34

she smuggles him a gun. He

32:36

busts out. He is out for

32:39

one week and then

32:41

he is caught again and sent to

32:43

a far worse prison,

32:45

really is this place called East

32:47

Eastham's, Texas penitentiary. There's been a lot

32:49

written about it because it was like, I mean,

32:52

like many prisons, but this was notorious

32:55

in Texas. It was a work

32:57

camp whose goal was to exploit

33:00

labor and completely break your spirit, like

33:02

their long descriptions about it that I will not subject

33:05

you to. But it was basically a torture camp.

33:08

Its nickname was the burning hell. Um,

33:12

and this was like very well known in the

33:14

community.

33:15

Like if you were

33:16

loved one was sent to East and Eastham,

33:19

Texas, there was a very low chance that they would come out

33:21

alive prior to going there. Clyde

33:23

was a petty thief. He

33:26

once he gets there is worked

33:28

nearly to death along with all of

33:31

the, uh, men at this prison, he

33:33

is routinely sexually abused

33:36

by a fellow prisoner. This

33:39

goes on for a long time. And eventually the first

33:41

person Clyde kills is his assaulter.

33:44

He kills this man who's, who's been sexually abusing

33:46

him

33:46

for months and basically

33:49

makes this deal with

33:51

someone who is serving a 50 year sentence

33:54

that this other guy's going to take the fall

33:56

for killing this guy in exchange

33:58

for Clyde.

33:59

who's in theoretically for 14

34:01

years. So he basically

34:04

barters with this guy to say like, hey, I

34:06

have

34:07

busted out of prison once before.

34:10

If you take the fall for me right now, I

34:12

will attempt to bust out again and I'll

34:15

try to come back and help you basically. And

34:17

this guy is like, yeah, I'm here for 50 years.

34:20

What's a few more? Takes the fall. Clyde

34:23

starts planning on ways that

34:26

he can get out or at least transferred.

34:28

And a common

34:30

way to not have to work in the

34:33

fields all day in Texas

34:35

was you would cut off your own hand.

34:38

You would cut off your own foot. You would physically

34:41

make yourself unable to work.

34:42

In the meantime, Clyde's mom, who

34:44

is the sweetest, she's this lady named

34:47

Kimi. And she has

34:49

another son who's in and out of jail, Buck,

34:52

who's eventually Blanche's husband. But

34:55

she is appealing to the state like

34:57

crazy, trying to get Clyde out. But

35:00

Clyde doesn't feel optimistic about it. So

35:02

he cuts off two of his toes so

35:05

he doesn't have to work anymore. The little ones?

35:07

I think it was like the middle,

35:10

two of the middle guys. You know, that's smart.

35:13

I stopped one of my pinky toes really bad recently.

35:16

And it is amazing

35:17

how much work it's doing once it's

35:19

not able to. And he realized how

35:21

much he needed. Middle

35:24

seems smart.

35:25

Well, yeah, Clyde walks

35:28

with a slight limp for the rest of

35:30

his life because of these missing toes.

35:32

And then in just an

35:35

example of brutal irony, less than a week later,

35:37

his mom's appeal to the state succeeds

35:40

and he is released from

35:43

prison, which is great. But he like, if he,

35:45

you know, but he's down two toes. So

35:48

he does get out, but he gets out. Everyone

35:50

in his life is like, he was a completely different person when

35:53

he came out. Wow, I can't imagine why.

35:55

Can

35:55

you imagine once he's

35:58

out, he moves to Boston briefly.

35:59

because a friend of a friend is like, I can get you

36:02

a job. I can get you back on your feet. But Clyde wants

36:04

to be near his family. He bails. And

36:06

once he's back, he essentially, he tells his mom,

36:09

I'm, it's never going to be possible for

36:11

me to have a normal life. I can't hold down

36:13

a regular job. The Dallas police won't let me.

36:15

And I don't want to leave Dallas. I shouldn't have to.

36:18

And so I'm going to do something

36:20

else. Of course, once he's

36:23

out, the question is, are he

36:25

and Bonnie going to get back together? Because Bonnie is

36:28

still sort of working these

36:29

just working waitressing jobs

36:32

and doing the same thing, maybe dating

36:34

a flop or two, who knows? But,

36:36

you know, Clyde gets out sort of with this, I think

36:38

like as close as you could describe to like his missions

36:41

and his life after he gets out of Easton

36:44

is that he never wants to go to jail again,

36:46

ever. And he wants

36:48

to bust people out of Easttown because

36:51

of how poorly he was treated there. So those are sort

36:53

of his two missions. And also to be

36:55

with Bonnie, if she'll have him,

36:58

which

36:59

she does. So there

37:02

you go. Do you remember in

37:04

the movie, Clyde is presented as

37:08

impotent? Yes. And that was

37:10

actually, I've never seen the whole movie. I've

37:12

seen like bits of it. And I started watching

37:14

it in high school because I had gotten a tape of it.

37:17

And I got as far as that issue coming

37:19

up. And I was like, if these two are not boning

37:22

the whole time, I'm out.

37:24

I'm going away. I'm going to go watch true romance.

37:27

And probably I did completely

37:30

reasonable. Because why else would you watch something as

37:33

a horny teenager? Like, and this

37:35

was, I think it's such that was like a Warren Beatty

37:37

creative choice. This really, yeah, this

37:39

was not a thing. I'm amazed

37:41

that if you're making a movie in 1967, you're like,

37:45

let's have less sex in it than the historical

37:48

record supports. I think it was

37:50

like, I don't know, the compulsion of a hot

37:52

guy to play against type. We got it.

37:55

Warren Beatty, you have a mind as well.

37:59

But what about the

37:59

Truth. Part of that I think was like

38:02

Warren Beatty wanting to make a choice.

38:05

But I also think like, oh, there were a lot

38:07

of persistent rumors surrounding

38:09

Clyde's sexuality in

38:12

general. I haven't found that

38:14

there's much to it. I think

38:16

that it speaks to like at the time,

38:18

a lot of the books I was reading, they were

38:20

written in the nineties and early two thousands and

38:23

just speaks like people's literacy on

38:26

consent because there's a lot

38:28

of people that are like, well,

38:30

Clyde was bisexual because he was

38:32

sexually abused by a man. And you're

38:35

like, what?

38:40

I know sometimes it's like, I really feel

38:42

like, ah, the nineties were great. It was

38:44

like a time of economic prosperity

38:47

and we weren't obsessed with terrorism yet.

38:49

And

38:50

Jerry Seinfeld was on TV wearing giant

38:53

sneakers and a slim waist.

38:55

And then you think about that and you're like, Oh yeah,

38:58

we didn't know

38:59

anything. Yeah. Jerry Seinfeld was

39:01

dating a teenager. Yeah. And then they were like, sexual abuse

39:03

sounds like bisexuality dating a

39:06

teenager

39:10

seems good. It was just like, wow. I

39:12

think it's so bizarre that there's a hyper

39:14

fixation around like he was

39:16

impotent when the reality

39:19

appears to be that he was straight and

39:21

fucked a lot, which is like,

39:23

okay. And why complicate

39:26

that? And do you feel like he was like as

39:28

in love with Bonnie that it was like an even

39:31

love match there? Yes. I

39:33

do think they had a very toxic relationship

39:36

in a lot of ways. It's hard to kill civilians

39:38

during a totally healthy relationship. I think

39:40

other than that, they were perfectly fine. No,

39:44

I think that that is like something that

39:47

resonates with people about this story that does actually

39:49

appear to be true. It's like, they really

39:52

love each other. And we lose. Yeah, they,

39:54

they did love each other. They're, I know at times

39:56

that he was controlling and there,

39:59

But there are just all

40:01

these examples of things that they would do for each other

40:03

where, you know, when Bonnie is injured

40:06

later in the story, he carries her

40:08

from place to place for the rest of her life. Like they

40:10

would never abandon each other except

40:12

in this example I'm about to give. A

40:16

lot of people present Bonnie as she had no

40:18

idea what she was getting into, blah, blah, blah. It

40:20

appears she actually does fully know what she's getting into.

40:23

She tells Clyde that she does want to come with him

40:26

on this, like, I mean, they're not saying crime

40:28

spree, but like, she knows that they're going to be sticking

40:31

up small businesses. That's another

40:33

thing that I think I had a wrong idea about was like,

40:35

they're robbing huge banks.

40:38

Right. That's what you, that's just the mental

40:40

image of a bank robbery. Yeah, they were

40:43

not robbing huge banks. They were robbing small

40:46

banks, gas stations and

40:48

small businesses for very, very,

40:50

very small amounts of money. So they weren't like doing

40:53

whatever pretty boy Floyd numbers.

40:56

They were almost universally robbing

40:59

small businesses for small amounts of money.

41:01

That was part of why they robbed so

41:03

much. Because they just had

41:05

to. They just had to. They're like, Oh no, we

41:08

only got $14 from that. And so I think

41:11

it also speaks to like where they were

41:13

traveling at the time they were like, they were robbing

41:16

during the great depression. They were not often getting big

41:18

sums of money. Like who is, who is going to have

41:20

all these great sums of money for them to get? There's

41:23

no strategy is the

41:25

thing. I think that, yeah, like the,

41:28

I feel like it would be dishonest to qualify Bonnie

41:30

and Clyde as organized crime because

41:32

there's no organization about

41:35

it. Like their gang was never

41:37

larger than two cars full of

41:39

people. And that would even be unusual.

41:43

There's a rotating cast of people

41:45

involved. There's, and one is,

41:48

um, imagined as a catch-all

41:50

character in the Bonnie and Clyde movie.

41:53

I think

41:53

his character is called CW

41:55

Moss. Is that Jane, Eric, Jane Wilder?

41:58

No, that's.

41:59

Michael Pollard, who's basically

42:02

their teen ward. They did

42:04

have a teen ward, his name was W.D. But

42:07

there's sort of this sort of rotating

42:10

cast of people that they travel with, but it's all small

42:12

time stuff. They, yeah, they didn't have the resources

42:15

or the strategy or the experience

42:17

or the infrastructure to be able to pull off

42:19

a huge bank heist because they have like a Ford, where

42:22

they can put everything. Like I said before, it like changes

42:24

everything

42:25

starting by framing it this way as

42:27

like disenfranchised kids

42:30

who basically don't know what to do

42:32

with their lives and have run out of other options.

42:35

Bonnie starts helping out with these crimes.

42:38

In one situation, they're running

42:40

from the cops. It's Bonnie's kind of real first time

42:43

encountering the cops. And

42:45

she, because of the shoes she's wearing,

42:47

she gets stuck in a ditch. It's a real Jurassic

42:49

world situation. She

42:52

gets stuck in a ditch and Clyde

42:54

bails. She leaves her

42:57

and I'm like, clang. They

43:00

did have a contingency plan. That's how most of

43:02

these books justify this happening. I'm like, he's still

43:04

wrong for that though. Their plan was

43:06

always like, and I think that this is

43:08

interesting because Bonnie is often presented.

43:11

She's either presented in the media once they become

43:13

famous as like an evil criminal mastermind

43:16

or like this bimbo that Clyde Barrow

43:18

travels with and nothing in between. And

43:20

she is neither of those things. That's the thing,

43:22

I would love for women to be able to commit crimes and

43:24

get a normal amount of credit. But

43:27

they have a plan basically. If you

43:29

get caught alone, just

43:33

play dumb. Well, that does work well for women. And

43:35

well, unfortunately not for Bonnie

43:38

on this day. But she's arrested and

43:40

she's in jail for a while.

43:43

Oh, Bonnie. She's in jail

43:45

for less than a year. Way

43:47

to go, Clyde, get it together. Serious,

43:49

and meanwhile,

43:50

someone's free and it's Clyde. And

43:53

while she's in jail, she starts writing.

43:56

She starts writing a semi autobiographical

43:58

novel about a romance.

43:59

I love her. It's about a romance

44:02

between a con man and his girl who takes

44:04

the fall for him. Oh. Uh,

44:07

which is beautifully passive aggressive.

44:11

She starts writing this story

44:13

called the story of suicide Sal. It's because

44:15

it's so wonderfully teenage, you

44:17

know? Right. I mean, so just

44:20

a quick passage from suicide. Please.

44:22

If he had returned to me sometime, though he

44:24

hadn't a cent to give, I'd forget all

44:26

the hell that he's caused me and love him as

44:28

long as I lived.

44:29

But there's no chance of his ever coming for

44:32

he and his mall have no fears, but

44:34

that I will die in this prison or flatten

44:36

these long 50 years. And you're like, Oh,

44:39

I love Bonnie. While Bonnie

44:41

is in prison, Clyde kills

44:44

his first person outside of East town.

44:47

This is, I think one of the ones that doesn't

44:49

sit very well with people because it's a small

44:52

business owner who he kind of knew. He's

44:55

positioned as an accident. Unclear

44:57

what actually happens, but he's back

44:59

at it. Bonnie gets out of jail in

45:02

the summer of 1932 says

45:04

that she's through with Clyde and 20 minutes

45:08

later, she gets back with Clyde and

45:11

they're back on the road. They're doing

45:13

crimes, uh, several more murders,

45:15

most of them cops. Bonnie is

45:17

often so painfully lonely

45:20

for her mom that even though

45:22

Dallas is the most dangerous place

45:24

on the planet, they could be. That's another thing

45:26

that I was like, Clyde really must have loved her

45:28

because he does bring her back to Dallas all the time, even

45:30

when it's dangerous. And he loves his family too. They

45:33

have, and the, the Parker and

45:35

Barrow families developed this code where

45:37

the moms will call each other. Their

45:39

code is, uh, I've got

45:41

a big pot of beans and some cornbread. And

45:45

that means our children are back from being on the

45:48

lamb. Let's have lunch. Oh God.

45:50

It's so, I don't know. I love

45:52

that so much. It just pulls

45:55

them out of leg gen and you're like, right.

45:57

Like these are two kids with families and

45:59

they're like.

46:01

doing their best. And to be

46:03

clear, I don't advocate killing

46:05

anyone. But I also really sympathize

46:08

or empathize one of the pathizes maybe both

46:11

with Clyde and just being someone who

46:13

like had a chance to be someone who

46:16

would have found it much harder to kill people.

46:19

And I think after his time in prison, you

46:21

know,

46:21

it came out as someone for whom

46:23

that was a lot more thinkable.

46:26

I think that's another thing. Bonnie, as far as everyone knows,

46:28

never killed anybody, but

46:31

she's like, you know,

46:32

the Thanos of accomplices living

46:35

in a place like East Ham for two consecutive

46:37

years and seeing people around you

46:39

murdered constantly and being in a constant

46:42

state of hyper vigilance like that

46:45

very obviously changed him. Like if

46:47

we had the choice, we would all choose to

46:49

not

46:50

harm each other and to be

46:53

able to live in the world in a way that we

46:56

felt able to offer and

46:58

receive safety from other people. And that

47:00

when we when we lose that ability,

47:02

that that's not something that feels good,

47:05

that nobody wants to be that way. You

47:07

know, that's what this whole show

47:10

is about is trying to, you

47:12

know, to say they weren't these super competent

47:14

criminals. They weren't evil losers

47:16

who got more press than they deserve. They

47:18

were just people who whose

47:21

stories resonated so deeply with

47:24

other Americans, I think,

47:26

partly because maybe in

47:28

ways they couldn't verbalize

47:30

people saw themselves in that partly too.

47:32

And in the feeling of like life

47:35

is so impossible for a normal

47:37

person. Yeah. How many of us

47:40

how many people looked at Clyde and thought that

47:42

could have been me and, you know,

47:44

kind of longing for that freedom. And then that could have

47:46

been me in terms of being pursued

47:49

to the point where you can't stop running

47:51

and where you become someone else than

47:54

the way you started.

47:55

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's totally true.

47:57

And these meetings with their usually

48:00

mothers is just like their

48:03

mothers are always trying to say like, please

48:05

stop, please

48:07

stop this. Um, Clyde's purpose,

48:10

I think once you know a little bit about him is very clear.

48:13

And for Bonnie, I think she finds

48:15

purpose for herself and,

48:17

uh, like within this

48:20

relationship in a way that

48:22

is not the way she wanted to, but

48:25

is successful. And it's like, I guess you

48:27

can feel any which way about it, but I don't think that

48:29

they were doing this for no reason. And it's sort of

48:31

sometimes presented like for

48:33

no reason, you know, say what

48:35

you will about murder. But once

48:37

Bonnie's associated with murder, suicide

48:40

cell is published in the paper. So it's hard

48:42

to get published.

48:45

Oh, Bonnie, that's so

48:48

great. You know, it's like many of

48:50

us have spent many years

48:52

trying to crack into publishing. And, uh,

48:54

if you gotta take shortcuts,

48:55

then, you know, she

48:57

got her poem published on

49:00

the front page of a newspaper. You gotta kill

49:02

someone to do that. It

49:05

doesn't just happen. Okay. So by

49:07

the end of 32, they're well on their crime spree

49:10

in 33. That's where my girly blanche

49:13

becomes relevant to the story.

49:15

Blanche Barrow, unlike the movie,

49:17

which presents her as at least a decade

49:19

older than Bonnie, Blanche

49:21

and Bonnie are the exact same age. She's three months

49:24

younger than Bonnie, born in Oklahoma,

49:26

uh, raised mainly by her father,

49:28

who was a farmer and a pastor,

49:31

very bad relationship with her mom. But

49:33

there's a lot of similarities to, I

49:36

think it's really frustrating that in the most popular

49:38

piece of media about Bonnie and Clyde is

49:40

that Bonnie and Blanche are presented

49:43

in opposition to each other. They hate each

49:45

other. Bonnie thinks Blanche sucks. She's

49:47

annoying. And there's no mention

49:50

of

49:50

how many similarities. They're very, very

49:53

different women, but they have a lot of similarities

49:55

in their early lives. Blanche was also

49:58

married off to a man. when

50:00

she was a teenager, when she was 16. And

50:03

this husband was also extremely

50:06

abusive. It's said that he was so

50:08

physically abused by her first husband that

50:10

she was unable to have children by the end of the marriage.

50:14

Her aspirations were not as, I

50:16

think, like lofty or art-oriented as Bonnie

50:18

or Clyde. I think she just, I would describe

50:21

Blanche's aspirations as

50:23

not to be on the run

50:25

with a group of disorganized criminals being

50:27

hunted by the FBI. She

50:30

just wanted to have like a stable, normal life.

50:32

So she runs away from her husband

50:35

in 1929 and relocates

50:37

to West Dallas after getting her divorce.

50:40

And she meets a man named Buck Barrow on

50:42

the street. Another Barrow, another

50:44

short king, Clyde's

50:47

older brother, and sort of the one

50:49

who first kind of got him into stealing chickens

50:52

and the like, they're very

50:53

close. They fall in

50:55

love very quickly as well. Three

50:57

weeks after they meet, Buck is

51:00

arrested and sentenced to

51:02

four years in prison. They

51:05

fall in love kind of through letters. She

51:07

calls him daddy, he calls her baby. Buck

51:10

escapes from prison. Three months later, the Barrow

51:12

boys are graded, busting out of jail. And

51:14

they get married in 1931 after

51:17

her first divorce goes through. But they're

51:19

kind of having the early days of their relationship

51:22

tacitly

51:23

on the run from the Dallas

51:25

police. And Blanche does not

51:27

like this. Fair enough.

51:29

I know, but in every piece of media

51:31

she's presented as like, what a

51:33

bitch. You're like, she doesn't want to be

51:35

on the run for her entire life. She's

51:38

not a bitch, she's regular.

51:43

She writes a memoir much

51:45

later towards the end of her life, spoiler

51:47

alert, in the eighties, she lives for Eppa. But

51:50

she says, I love this man who was haunted by officers

51:52

of the law. He said he loved me as I

51:54

did him. He said he wasn't a criminal at heart. He

51:56

said he was tired of that kind of life. Talk,

51:59

talk, talk. She's sassy. I

52:01

love her. After they get married and they've

52:03

been moving around a lot, Blanche is like,

52:05

look, I want you to go back

52:07

to prison and finish your sentence. And when

52:09

you get out, we will have a normal life together. And

52:13

Buck agrees to this. And

52:15

so Buck goes back to prison and

52:18

Blanche works while Buck

52:20

is in prison. She works at this place called Cinderella

52:22

beauty shop. She becomes a licensed beautician.

52:24

I would watch a whole movie about this period of her

52:26

life. And she does

52:29

like she waits for

52:29

Buck so that they can have a

52:32

normal life.

52:33

He gets out in the spring of 1933 while Bonnie

52:35

and Clyde are already on the run. And

52:38

my girl boss Blanche was a

52:41

big part of making that happen. She's also constantly

52:43

appealing to the state. It was

52:45

rumored that Blanche would petition

52:48

and manipulate governor Ma Ferguson

52:50

played by Kathy Bates in that horrible movie by

52:53

bringing three children that were not hers

52:56

and would pretend to be pregnant to

52:58

try to convince her that she had all

53:00

these kids and Buck had to get out. She needed

53:02

support, just random

53:03

children. I do want

53:05

this movie, right? Like she

53:07

is a crafty lady. So

53:10

Buck gets out. He's 30. She is

53:13

younger than that. So she's like 21

53:16

Blanche is like, great. Let's go stay with my parents

53:18

for a while. Let's get reacquainted.

53:20

Let's go have sex for six weeks or whatever.

53:23

But once Clyde hears the bucks out

53:25

of jail, he wants to go

53:27

see him and talk to him. And so

53:30

in the middle of the night, very, very soon after

53:32

Buck gets out of jail, they wake up and

53:34

Bonnie and Clyde are at Blanche's house and she is like,

53:37

oh fuck.

53:40

No, she actually kind of isn't like that. She thinks Buck

53:42

has made me a promise and I've been

53:44

waiting for actual years. Surely

53:47

this will be fine. We're just going to have a bit of

53:49

sex. Surely he's not going to blow this whole thing. I

53:52

can't with Buck. I mean, like he's,

53:54

you know, I lived a difficult life, but I'm like

53:57

Buck?

53:59

She worked at a beauty shop for two

54:02

years. She kidnapped children

54:04

to delude the governor. And

54:07

day one, it's just, it pisses

54:09

me off. Kathy Bates for you. Oh

54:11

my God. So they're

54:14

woken up in the middle of the night by Bonnie and Clyde. There's

54:16

a very sweet scene. I think that like proves to

54:18

me that Bonnie and Blanche were

54:21

not at odds very

54:23

often, at least. Bonnie at this point,

54:25

once she's been on the road for a couple of months, begins to

54:27

develop an issue with alcohol

54:29

abuse, that is another thing

54:32

that I think de-glamorizes the whole situation

54:34

is like Bonnie is very, very rarely

54:36

sober because of the stress that

54:38

she's constantly under. Yeah, I feel like if you're getting

54:41

chased around and shot at, you know. Right.

54:44

I'm never gonna chase and I still drink too much. So,

54:47

but Bonnie comes in, gets into

54:49

bed with Blanche. She's drunk. Blanche

54:52

says, I asked Bonnie to get in bed with me and try

54:54

to get a little sleep. But Bonnie seemed

54:57

to want to talk instead of sleeping. She

54:59

said it was so

54:59

good to have a woman she knew to talk to, adding

55:02

that it was so lonesome for her just being in the company

55:04

of men all the time and never any women friends

55:06

to talk to. I knew this was true because

55:09

I had experienced a few months of that myself.

55:11

She'd often told me that she was happier when she had

55:13

something to drink. So I did not blame her for staying

55:16

drunk most of the time if it made her feel better.

55:18

Oh Blanche. Like they weren't besties,

55:20

but they were like, I don't know. I just hate

55:22

the way that the movie frames them as like,

55:25

well, there's only two women in the movie. So they better fucking

55:28

hate each other. I think like the patriarchal

55:29

myth that women hate each other is a

55:32

smokescreen they've created so they can ignore

55:35

the fact that we're all coming to get them or

55:38

something. Exactly. Any day now. Any

55:40

day now. We're using this power with

55:42

great discretion. Huge

55:45

L for Blanche on this night because

55:48

downstairs Clyde through whatever magic

55:51

cult of personality Clyde is in possession

55:53

of convinces his brother instantly that

55:56

just join us for a little bit. Oh Clyde.

55:58

You'll get a little bit of money.

55:59

and then you and Blanche can really start over. Actually,

56:02

it seems a little bit like gambling actually,

56:04

right? Because if you're knocking over

56:06

convenience

56:07

stores and stuff, they don't have much money in them,

56:09

then it can cultivate the sense of like, okay, the next

56:11

one. Now Blanche

56:14

is convinced by Buck.

56:16

We're just going on the road with him for a couple of days. We'll

56:18

be back in a couple of days. If you want insurance,

56:21

bring the dog, which she does. She

56:23

brings Snowball. Oh my God. Snowball

56:26

lives,

56:27

but it's not great. They are

56:30

driving to Missouri. They get a two bedroom

56:32

apartment. They're hanging out. Clyde

56:34

and Buck are not gonna have convenience stores during the day.

56:37

The problem is at this point, Clyde's operation is responsible

56:40

for killing six people. Oh boy. So

56:42

Clyde's like escalating. Oh yes.

56:44

And it doesn't seem like he really has an

56:46

interest in him stopping. He's very single-minded

56:49

of like, I will do what is

56:51

going to keep me out of jail. And if that means killing

56:53

someone, I don't care. And I don't care who it

56:55

is. Yeah, which again, it's like,

56:58

it's wrong to kill people. It's insane

57:00

that I have to say that this much, but

57:03

if you create an institution that

57:05

someone

57:05

comes out of so desperate

57:07

to not return to, that they will do anything

57:11

to not have to, then I don't blame the

57:13

individual there.

57:14

Just speaking to the, it

57:17

seems like abusive parts of Bonnie and Clyde's relationship,

57:20

Blanche notes that while they're in Joplin, they

57:24

would get into arguments very often about

57:26

how frequently Bonnie wanted to go back to Dallas

57:29

and how much she missed her mom. Sometimes Clyde

57:31

would bring her back, but if he felt that the

57:33

police were too hot on them, he would say

57:35

no. They would get into physical fights that

57:38

he was the perpetrator of. And

57:40

then there were two examples of her holding him at gunpoint

57:42

being like, I am seeing mommy.

57:44

Yeah. So that

57:46

is an

57:47

element of their relationship. I don't see it brought

57:49

up very much, but it would feel

57:51

weird not to mention it. So

57:55

while they're in Missouri, Blanche

57:58

isn't nervous because they're...

57:59

She has no information. She's being actively lied to

58:02

by her husband about how serious

58:04

the situation has gotten. So

58:07

Blanche is like, we're on vacation. We're gonna go home in a couple

58:09

of days. I've got snowball. They take these

58:11

goofy pictures, Bonnie and Clyde had stolen

58:14

this camera, and they take these very

58:16

important, culturally significant pictures,

58:19

where basically on the side of the road, they're like, oh, let's fuck

58:21

around with this camera. And so

58:23

they take this jokey picture of

58:26

Bonnie smoking, like fake smoking this

58:28

big cigar and like hiking your skirt

58:29

up a little bit. They take pictures of

58:32

Bonnie and Clyde kissing. They take

58:34

pictures of like Blanche and Buck

58:36

hugging. There's a jokey

58:38

picture of Bonnie, like pointing a gun

58:40

at Clyde and he has his hands up. And it's

58:43

all very like

58:44

kid-like. I mean, it's like goofy

58:46

kid vacation pictures. While

58:48

they're at this apartment in Missouri, Clyde

58:50

and Buck have stolen one too many cars, and

58:53

the police are onto them. A

58:55

neighbor tips them off and they're surrounded.

58:59

Clyde kills a cop and Blanche's

59:02

worst nightmare has begun because now

59:04

they're all on the run. Days

59:07

after Buck got out of jail. It is

59:10

so frustrating. Snowball,

59:12

the legend, books

59:14

it. He's like, fuck you guys.

59:17

This family's a mess. I'm out of here.

59:20

Snowball never seen again, but could be

59:22

alive to this day. That's what I choose to think,

59:24

yeah. So

59:26

this is the moment where

59:28

Bonnie and Clyde become famous in newspapers.

59:31

They're like mentioned, mostly Clyde is

59:33

mentioned because he's mostly

59:35

doing the murdering at this

59:37

house that they've just booked it out of. They find

59:40

these jokey vacation pictures. And

59:42

this is like hugely what makes

59:44

them famous. Media climate of the depression,

59:47

people are more desperate to sell papers, very

59:49

willing to sensationalize what, if

59:52

you know their jokey pictures seems

59:54

ridiculous to publish as fact,

59:57

but it doesn't matter at this time. And probably

59:59

still,

59:59

It didn't matter now. They become

1:00:03

less personally safe because now people can

1:00:05

know what they look like. They become famous,

1:00:08

which they seem to kind of like. They kind of collected

1:00:10

some clippings and they

1:00:12

first catch the notice of J.

1:00:14

Edgar Hoover, which is bad for

1:00:17

them. Because at this point in

1:00:19

his career, the FBI has recently been rebranded

1:00:22

as the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover's

1:00:24

in charge and he's looking for some

1:00:26

early successes to sort

1:00:29

of legitimize

1:00:29

the operation. I tried to watch that DiCaprio

1:00:32

movie, J. Edgar, and I just

1:00:35

couldn't do it. It was so bad. He

1:00:38

was doing this voice and

1:00:39

be like, you can't do

1:00:41

it. Like it just was,

1:00:43

it was a flop. I also believed for years

1:00:46

for whatever reason that J. Edgar was a Scorsese

1:00:48

movie and like it's not, right? It's

1:00:50

a Clint Eastwood movie. It's such a relief to know that

1:00:53

he didn't make it. I have projected

1:00:55

too many feelings onto Marty, as

1:00:57

is my right. And what's the, why does

1:00:59

the FBI need to do this? What's

1:01:01

their deal? Well, they

1:01:03

don't need to do this. The reasoning

1:01:06

that I've seen given is

1:01:09

that J. Edgar Hoover had a huge

1:01:11

interest in taking down

1:01:13

gangsters and criminals that were

1:01:15

becoming famous at this time. It

1:01:18

seems that his primary interest in them was

1:01:21

a combination of women have gone

1:01:23

too far and they're

1:01:26

famous and it will legitimize his

1:01:28

operation that he's still

1:01:31

trying to legitimize because of its relative

1:01:34

newness to the public. They're

1:01:36

like, well, this FBI organization must

1:01:38

be great. They're killing people

1:01:40

we've heard of. Yeah, which remains true for

1:01:43

them. I'm really fascinated

1:01:43

by how, you know, in the 70s, the

1:01:46

FBI made serial

1:01:48

killers their business in something that

1:01:50

was very associated with them publicly, which of course,

1:01:53

somebody needs to be catching serial killers.

1:01:56

I'm not against that, but the timing

1:01:58

was excellent because going...

1:01:59

into the 70s, like a

1:02:02

lot of Americans are not looking at the FBI

1:02:04

as the good guys because they weren't.

1:02:07

And, you know, if you're fighting serial

1:02:09

killers, then you must be a good guy. If you're taking

1:02:12

down the crime spree kids, then

1:02:14

you must be a good

1:02:16

and powerful throughout

1:02:19

the spring and summer of 1933. Things just

1:02:21

get worse and worse. Uh,

1:02:23

Clyde takes a wrong turn off a bridge.

1:02:26

Don't do that. This

1:02:28

is bad. Um,

1:02:29

but the car catches

1:02:32

on fire. Bonnie is not able to get

1:02:34

out of the car and she loses

1:02:37

the use of one of her legs. Um,

1:02:40

it's really badly burned. It

1:02:42

doesn't heal. Well, I mean, this is like one of

1:02:44

the most brutal parts for me

1:02:46

is not only is Bonnie's leg

1:02:49

injured because of this genuine accident. She

1:02:52

is not able to go to the hospital or she'll

1:02:55

get arrested. And even when she's

1:02:57

in this like searing pain, she

1:03:00

understands that. And so when

1:03:02

some local people come over to them

1:03:04

and try to help and call an ambulance, Clyde

1:03:07

is like, no, we can't afford it. Sorry.

1:03:10

But like, can you help us? Do you have anything

1:03:12

you can help us with? The family catches on

1:03:14

anyways, calls the cops, Bonnie

1:03:17

and, and they kidnapped the cops

1:03:19

and take the car. They were also known to

1:03:22

take hostages on the road for stretches.

1:03:24

That's the Gene Wilder sequence in

1:03:26

the movie. Sometimes they would corner

1:03:29

and kidnap the cops

1:03:29

that were trying to arrest them or shoot them.

1:03:32

Brilliant. You know, I feel like they don't see that coming.

1:03:34

It's great. But, and Bonnie is said

1:03:37

to also hold

1:03:39

the cops at gunpoint in spite of the fact she's just

1:03:41

lost the use of one of her legs and is in extreme

1:03:43

pain. Anyways, things

1:03:46

continue to get worse. Later that

1:03:48

summer, there's a face off in Platte city, Iowa,

1:03:51

where they're living in the woods.

1:03:53

They're trying to keep things on the low

1:03:56

at this point. It's barely possible,

1:03:58

but Bonnie is.

1:03:59

not able to walk for the

1:04:02

rest of her life. Basically, Clyde

1:04:05

has to carry her everywhere for most of her

1:04:07

life. And if she can walk, it's not

1:04:09

for long. It's 5 a.m.,

1:04:11

they sleep in shifts to watch for the cops.

1:04:14

And their teenage ward, WD, is

1:04:16

cooking them up

1:04:17

a five in the morning hot dog breakfast.

1:04:20

Bet you forgot there were hot dogs coming. Boom,

1:04:23

inception sting. But

1:04:26

during hot dog breakfast, the police attack

1:04:28

them. They're not prepared for it.

1:04:30

And Buck gets shot in

1:04:33

the head. It's like part of his

1:04:35

head is no longer on his head. Blanche

1:04:38

runs after him. Everyone thinks that

1:04:41

Buck is going to die. She tries to bring him into

1:04:44

a car to try to protect

1:04:46

him. And it's so frustrating

1:04:48

to me that Blanche gets erased from this story all the

1:04:50

time. Because

1:04:51

Blanche

1:04:52

is heroic. She gets her husband into

1:04:54

this car. The police shoot the windshield

1:04:56

of the car. Her eyes are filled with glass.

1:04:59

And she thinks that she will

1:05:01

not be able to ever see again. And is

1:05:04

terrified, understandably. Again,

1:05:06

she's made out to seem hysterical in the movie.

1:05:09

They do manage to get away.

1:05:12

And they bring Buck to an abandoned

1:05:15

amusement park. And they

1:05:17

think that this is like where he's going

1:05:19

to die. And so Clyde, I think kind of

1:05:21

sweetly is like,

1:05:22

I want my brother to be somewhere fun when

1:05:25

he dies. Let's go to this abandoned amusement

1:05:27

park. Because again,

1:05:29

they're kids. They're kids.

1:05:31

They're like, let's go to the roller coaster. He loves

1:05:33

that. Or I don't even, I mean, that

1:05:36

seems to be the logic. They just, they just wanted

1:05:38

him to look at something nice when

1:05:40

he died.

1:05:41

Everyone keeps thinking Buck's about to die because he's

1:05:44

missing a lot of his head. But then

1:05:46

he just keeps not dying. He lives for

1:05:48

so long. It's like wild how long

1:05:50

he lives. They're hanging out at this amusement park kind of forever.

1:05:53

And Clyde is like, WT, go get some chicken.

1:05:55

Buck loves chicken. And WT is like, all right. He

1:05:57

goes to buy some chicken, comes back.

1:05:59

all the chicken. I guess Buck's

1:06:02

not dying today. We have to keep moving.

1:06:04

It's not as awkward because you're like, okay, Buck,

1:06:06

we planned a nice moment, but the clock's ticking.

1:06:09

Yeah, exactly. And Buck's like, no,

1:06:12

you know, bitch, I lived. Blanche

1:06:15

washes the glass out of her eyes. She's

1:06:17

lost the use of one

1:06:20

of her eyes entirely and part, she, she

1:06:22

can see partially out of one

1:06:24

other eye. And that's true for the rest of her life. When

1:06:27

they're captured a few days later, Buck

1:06:29

is still alive. Bonnie can't

1:06:31

walk. Buck is almost dead. Blanche

1:06:34

can't see. So when the

1:06:36

cops surround them again, there's

1:06:38

also photographers because they're so famous

1:06:40

at this point. And a photographer

1:06:43

takes out his camera and Blanche

1:06:46

thinks

1:06:46

that he's trying to shoot her at point

1:06:48

blank range and screams.

1:06:50

And there's this horrible picture of her screaming

1:06:54

in these dark glasses because she thinks she's about

1:06:56

to be

1:06:57

killed. So when they're cornered

1:06:59

this time, Bonnie and Clyde get

1:07:02

away, but Buck and Blanche are

1:07:04

captured.

1:07:05

Buck dies after another week. He

1:07:07

lives so long with 1% of his

1:07:10

head. It's wild. But Blanche is

1:07:12

sentenced to 10 years in prison, which

1:07:14

at this point, she's kind of glad for better

1:07:17

than being on the road. She's obviously

1:07:19

miserable about what happened to Buck.

1:07:22

They get to say goodbye to each other, which is very sweet. She

1:07:25

cans vegetables and learns how to dance in prison

1:07:28

and reads a lot of books. So she's

1:07:31

happy with that outcome. However, she is

1:07:33

questioned by J Edgar Hoover himself

1:07:36

and she does not crack. My Leonardo DiCaprio

1:07:38

and a stupid little accent. But J Edgar Hoover

1:07:41

threatens to gouge out her other eye. If

1:07:44

she doesn't give him information about these kids,

1:07:46

he's trying to kill. At this point, WD

1:07:49

bails. It's basically down

1:07:51

to Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie

1:07:54

writes that she blames the Texas police police

1:07:57

for quote, making Clyde what he is

1:07:59

today. He used to.

1:07:59

a nice boy, folks like us don't, haven't

1:08:02

got a chance. Once Buck dies,

1:08:04

I think both of them kind of accept that they

1:08:07

will either be captured or killed and

1:08:10

they decide they would rather be killed than

1:08:13

captured. And I think just based

1:08:15

on, especially Clyde, but both of their experience

1:08:17

is in prison. And so when Bonnie

1:08:20

asks to go back to the Dallas area, Clyde's

1:08:22

like,

1:08:23

fuck it. We're approaching the end of the road anyways.

1:08:25

Let's see our moms. Oh, I know. Clyde's

1:08:29

mom has just lost her son Buck

1:08:32

as well. Their moms begged them to turn

1:08:34

themselves in, but they're like, we're not going to do that. So

1:08:37

Clyde's mom, this

1:08:38

breaks my heart, holds off on

1:08:40

buying a headstone for Buck because she's waiting

1:08:43

for Clyde to die

1:08:44

and she can't afford to.

1:08:46

Oh, it's so

1:08:48

horrible. Yeah. Um, so

1:08:51

one of the last things Clyde wants to try to

1:08:53

do is his other mission

1:08:56

busts some guys out of Easttown and

1:08:59

he does that. He busts four guys

1:09:01

out of Easttown. I know he really

1:09:04

rallies towards the end. That was going to happen. He

1:09:06

does. He organizes a couple

1:09:09

of guys. Uh, Bonnie helps Bonnie

1:09:11

kind of cases the joint by pretending

1:09:13

to visit a prisoner and communicating

1:09:16

information about like, this is the plan. Um, so

1:09:18

she's, you know, the, the accomplice

1:09:20

and, and together, uh,

1:09:23

along with a few other guys from, from Dallas,

1:09:25

they get four guys out of,

1:09:26

out of Easttown. And

1:09:29

unfortunately this new setup

1:09:31

doesn't last long. Once the guys are out of prison,

1:09:33

they don't want to continue lives of crimes and

1:09:35

they don't want to draw attention to themselves after recently

1:09:38

escaping prison. Pretty smart. Yeah. So

1:09:41

they get out and they're like, thank you.

1:09:43

Bye. You know, so they're kind of, they're

1:09:45

back to square one. I just think it is nice that Clyde

1:09:48

at least partially accomplished, you know, he didn't burn the

1:09:51

prison down would have been great if he did, but he got four people,

1:09:53

he got four people out. That's really

1:09:56

impressive. I haven't broken anyone out

1:09:57

of prison yet.

1:09:59

But the media tide turns

1:10:02

on them after they shoot a

1:10:04

rookie cop on their first day. So,

1:10:07

okay. Now we're in May 1934. The

1:10:10

closest thing they have an app to an ally right now

1:10:13

is an old friend of Clyde's named Henry

1:10:15

Methvin. They've been hanging

1:10:17

out with Henry and his family. Henry will

1:10:19

help them do heists. Henry's

1:10:21

parents are very sweet and welcoming to them. The

1:10:25

police, I think the FBI picks up on this and

1:10:28

Henry is wanted as well.

1:10:31

He has a rap sheet and could be taken

1:10:33

to prison for a long time. So,

1:10:35

uh, the FBI basically goes

1:10:37

to Henry's parents and are like, if

1:10:39

you set Bonnie and Clyde up, your

1:10:42

son will never get arrested ever. They

1:10:45

offered that to them in writing. They're

1:10:47

good. But

1:10:50

they're basically like desperate enough to

1:10:53

improve their son's life that they

1:10:55

agree to do this.

1:10:57

And eventually Henry

1:10:58

has made aware of it and also

1:11:00

agrees to sell Bonnie and Clyde out.

1:11:03

And so this brings us to the

1:11:05

death scene, which is actually presented

1:11:08

pretty faithfully in the movie. There's

1:11:12

huge sting operation. I

1:11:14

believe it's a combination of sheriffs

1:11:17

and FBI. The setup is

1:11:19

that Henry's dad

1:11:22

will be on the side of the road, pretending

1:11:25

that he needs help with his tire, knowing

1:11:27

that Bonnie and Clyde will stop because

1:11:29

they're his friends.

1:11:31

So it happens.

1:11:33

They pull up,

1:11:34

he runs away. They don't have time

1:11:36

to figure out what's going on. And they

1:11:39

are, there's 130 rounds shot into their car in 16 seconds, 130 rounds.

1:11:47

It's. I

1:11:49

mean, it's just, I mean, it's

1:11:52

horrible. And that is basically what's

1:11:54

shown in the movie. They are,

1:11:56

I

1:11:57

believe Clyde dies almost instantly. Bonnie lives

1:11:59

for.

1:12:00

longer, they die together.

1:12:02

I think this is one of the most romanticized parts of

1:12:04

their story. I think another bizarre

1:12:07

thing about this is that that car

1:12:10

still travels the museum

1:12:12

circuit as an FBI

1:12:14

success. It was in the Reagan Museum for

1:12:17

recently. Unfortunate crossover

1:12:19

as an example of a huge

1:12:22

FBI success. Yeah, which is

1:12:25

so

1:12:25

ghoulish. It's like a slightly

1:12:28

more sophisticated version of a head on a spike.

1:12:30

Totally. Totally. And then charging admission.

1:12:32

This

1:12:33

guy, I mean, it's it's horrific what

1:12:35

happens. And Frank Hamer, a.k.a. Kevin

1:12:39

Coster, is said to have walked

1:12:41

up to the car after they're

1:12:43

obviously dead and

1:12:46

shoots Bonnie in the head one

1:12:48

more time. Just

1:12:51

as a fuck you. Once people find

1:12:53

out that Bonnie and Clyde have been

1:12:55

killed and nearby, the press obviously

1:12:58

descends. There's a huge mob of press, but there's

1:13:00

also a huge mob of just

1:13:02

people who

1:13:04

felt any way about them. It

1:13:06

didn't matter if you were pro, if you were con, there's

1:13:08

a description of

1:13:10

souvenir hunters that kind of descend

1:13:12

upon this car. Sixteen thousand people to

1:13:15

the point where people start selling beer and cigarettes

1:13:17

at this site of a recent

1:13:20

murder. And also Frank Hamer

1:13:22

takes some guns that Bonnie and Clyde had in

1:13:24

the car as souvenirs of

1:13:27

his own. There's someone tries to cut off

1:13:29

Clyde's ear. They steal

1:13:31

parts of Bonnie's hair. They like it's

1:13:33

just vulturi nasty

1:13:36

behavior. They take, you know, they try to take her typewriter

1:13:38

and they try to take his guitar

1:13:41

like I don't know. It's that to me

1:13:43

is so

1:13:44

disturbing when their bodies are removed from

1:13:46

the car. Camera people take pictures

1:13:48

of their bodies naked and publish them

1:13:50

in the paper. When they're taken to

1:13:52

the funeral home, people mob the

1:13:55

funeral home to see what the bodies

1:13:57

look like to the point where the funeral director

1:13:59

has to.

1:13:59

spray embalming fluid into

1:14:02

the crowd to get them to back away. Well,

1:14:04

those are sourceful. Everyone is just

1:14:07

absolutely fucking feral

1:14:11

about, but it's like, I think it really speaks to like how

1:14:14

impactful they were. Like they were so

1:14:17

famous and you didn't in that crowd

1:14:19

of 16,000 people, it's kind of hard

1:14:21

to know who was on their side at that point,

1:14:24

but everyone was there. But everyone is like on,

1:14:26

on their own

1:14:27

side of as a memorabilia hunter. It's

1:14:29

also like, you know, we talk a lot lately

1:14:32

and justifiably about how the

1:14:34

internet affects our behavior and our culture.

1:14:37

And I think there are plenty of things that people do

1:14:39

online that they would not do in person

1:14:42

in public, but there are also plenty of terrible

1:14:44

things that people are fully willing to do in public.

1:14:47

And they used to do a lot more of them in the 1930s.

1:14:50

It's hard because it's like, I don't want to say like everyone

1:14:53

fucking sucked in that crowd because it's also like the

1:14:55

way the way that Bonnie and Clyde had been presented

1:14:57

to them was so

1:14:59

free of context and and sometimes

1:15:01

just straight up dishonest that any

1:15:04

opinion someone had, it would be really hard

1:15:06

to have an informed opinion about them. But

1:15:09

also, you know,

1:15:10

their moms have to bury them. Like

1:15:12

Clyde's mom buys

1:15:14

the headstone. It

1:15:17

was one of Bonnie's last wishes with her

1:15:19

mom that she be buried with Clyde. Her

1:15:21

mom was like, nope, just

1:15:24

maybe a little disrespectful, but I'm like, I get

1:15:26

it. She said he had her for two years.

1:15:29

Look where it got her. He's not going to have her anymore. She's

1:15:31

mine now. Oh, so hard to be

1:15:33

a mom. I know.

1:15:35

And they have separate funerals as well, which

1:15:38

thousands and thousands of people come to and is

1:15:40

really and is heavily covered in the media.

1:15:44

That

1:15:45

is the story of Bonnie and Clyde,

1:15:47

but it's not the end

1:15:49

of Blanche's life. She's

1:15:52

paroled in 1939. She

1:15:54

moved to Oklahoma to be with her dad and

1:15:56

gets remarried. She's only 28.

1:15:59

when this happens. Her soul is weary,

1:16:02

but her skin is so good. Oh my God.

1:16:04

So she marries this new guy in Oklahoma

1:16:07

does not tell her anything

1:16:10

about her past at all. She's

1:16:12

like, Oh, you know, kind of been through it. Like,

1:16:14

you know, you're twenties. Who

1:16:16

among us? And her mom at one point

1:16:19

brings up this really

1:16:21

famous period of her life in up

1:16:23

in front of her new husband and flanche

1:16:25

scolds her mom for bringing up those quote,

1:16:28

sour onions and dirty shirts.

1:16:31

Imagine referring to your time

1:16:34

with the most notorious criminal element

1:16:36

in the country is sour onions and dirty shirts.

1:16:38

I love her. Don't tell everyone about

1:16:40

that gross apartment I used to live in. Let

1:16:43

me live a mom. I

1:16:45

just,

1:16:47

I love blanche and she, she eventually

1:16:49

does achieve

1:16:50

her goal of

1:16:52

living a normal life. It takes a long time

1:16:55

and she almost doesn't make it out, but she does make it out. They

1:16:57

live happily for a long time. He dies in the late

1:16:59

sixties and blanche is

1:17:02

feeling lonely. She's feeling reflective and

1:17:05

she reconnects with Bonnie's

1:17:07

younger sister, Billy Jean. They

1:17:10

had met

1:17:10

when Bonnie's leg got injured

1:17:13

and they hadn't gotten along then because,

1:17:17

I don't know who would get along. I don't know.

1:17:20

But as, as older women,

1:17:22

they meet, they talk. I think that

1:17:24

like this friendship allows blanche to access

1:17:27

this part of her life that she was suppressing for a long

1:17:29

time and they become best friends. They like

1:17:31

move to be close together and

1:17:34

their besties for the rest of their lives. And

1:17:36

she dies on Christmas Eve in 1998. Aww.

1:17:40

Shout out

1:17:40

to blanche and

1:17:43

yeah, it was Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie

1:17:46

and Clyde and Blanche and Buck. Yeah,

1:17:48

I would put Buck last. He's my least favorite.

1:17:53

I mean, I feel like it says

1:17:55

to me so much about what the

1:17:57

story is that one person

1:17:59

of these four got to survive

1:18:01

and live her dream and it wasn't wealth or

1:18:03

fame, it was just a normal life. Like

1:18:05

everyone is supposed to be, allegedly supposed

1:18:08

to be able to have in America, but of course

1:18:10

not in practice.

1:18:11

Right, which is, I think,

1:18:13

what all of them wanted. I

1:18:15

mean they wanted different versions

1:18:17

of that. And

1:18:29

that was our episode. Thank you for joining

1:18:31

us. Stay cool out there and if you're

1:18:34

in the southern hemisphere, stay toasty.

1:18:37

Thank you so much to Jamie Loftus for

1:18:39

bringing us the story for

1:18:42

everything that you do.

1:18:44

Jamie, you're the best. Thank

1:18:46

you to Carolyn for

1:18:48

editing this episode and for

1:18:50

making this show possible. Carolyn

1:18:53

Kendrick, thank you so much. And

1:18:56

thank you to you out there listening,

1:18:58

doing whatever you're doing. It's

1:19:00

the summer now. If you're listening in the present

1:19:03

and the future, we

1:19:04

hope it's a good one. Take

1:19:06

care of yourself.

1:19:07

We'll see you in two weeks.