This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "Burn for You" — performed by Unknown artist ♪

[0:37] Jess McAnally: Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of The Dear Friends Podcast, and I am joined by one of my closest and dearest friends, Emily Clark!

[0:44] Emily Clark: Hey everybody!

[0:47] Jess McAnally: Um, and this is an emergency episode because we both have been catty enough about this on Twitter, and I feel like we need to have a proper conversation. Emily, what are we talking about today?

[0:58] Emily Clark: Oh gosh, we are talking about, um, well, I guess we're talking about IPs and musical theater.

[1:06] Jess McAnally: We're talking about the Bridgerton possibility.

[1:09] Emily Clark: Um, Bridgerton, we want to do a little Bitcherton about it.

[1:14] Jess McAnally: Yes.

[1:15] Emily Clark: Because this is, this is some crazy shit.

[1:19] Jess McAnally: Unprecedented shit. Like, I feel like we, like, it's, it's, I think I made a tweet about it because this week, it's just been IP argument crazy with the Hamilton Christian bullshit going on, and the Bridgerton bullshit. I'm wondering which lawsuit will happen first and bigger.

[1:34] Emily Clark: Yeah, well, the Bridgerton one is really surprising, not surprising, I guess like pure pure hubris, I guess in some ways like it's kind of like these creators had to have thought they could get away with this like charge $150 for a Kennedy Center concert of the full show.

[1:58] Jess McAnally: That is not a parody and not protected under parody law. And it's actually pretty clear that they are taking whole chunks, characters, lines, scenes, verbatim from Bridgerton at least that's what I hear.

[2:15] Emily Clark: Yeah, because I don't know the Bridgerton musical, because I've never seen the show, so I've always just like okay well when I get to the show someday I'll get to the musical. Also, I don't know it just felt it felt very much of that like TikTok younger generation musical thing like I just was kind of like, that's for them, that's fine.

[2:35] Jess McAnally: And then I know people who loved it I know people who didn't love it so much. And then I hear about this, that they're being sued by Netflix.

[2:44] Emily Clark: Great, great, great vaudeville duo name, but it kind of is like, you can't just do like you can't just do that, especially when Netflix offers you a license and you decline it.

[2:59] Jess McAnally: I don't know what either their teams stirred. Sorry, either their teams steered them incredibly wrong, or they didn't want to listen to them, or they know exactly what they're doing and they're doing this to stir up controversy.

[3:15] Emily Clark: Okay, there are two minds I have of this. So, um, my context for the Bridgerton musical, I did listen to all of it, and I want I binged all of it, Bridgerton, so I could listen to it for this podcast we did a few months ago right after it won the Grammy.

[3:28] Jess McAnally: You're so much better than I.

[3:29] Emily Clark: That was like my, because like, it was curious, it's a curio, you have to talk about it, or else, someone else will do it and then they'll say that you ripped them off later. So, yeah, we got to avoid that so I knew about the Bridgerton musical and I kind of liked it I was like it's fine my biggest problem, as I brought up in the episode was the framing of it as a TikTok musical as if these were two nobodies, when they are two very established people in the industry trained by Meghan Trainor and Quincy Jones, and one of them is like,

[3:57] a pianist that has been on Ellen DeGeneres since she was six years old like professionals in the biz.

[3:57] Jess McAnally: Yeah, they weren't just people on TikTok, which is how the framing of this.

[4:09] Emily Clark: So, what I, my opinion of what they probably thought was best case scenario, Netflix just turns the other way. Worst case scenario they sue us, and we, we have so much goodwill earned by our fandom and all that began it would just look like a corporation's coming after the little guys, they were using that framing of them being these two TikTok creators as, as a reason that they can get away with anything, but I think that all died when they won the Grammy.

[4:37] Jess McAnally: I feel like all that kind of goodwill for that kind of died the minute you got that legitimacy.

[4:44] Emily Clark: It is fascinating to me that they won the Grammy for a musical theater piece when I mean, we've been expanding what theater is especially in this COVID world, but the fact that it, it was essentially a concept album, winning for musical theater is kind of, I mean I don't know what's right and what's wrong I don't know if there's a better choice or another but it is unprecedented.

[5:08] Jess McAnally: And then the other thing I'm hearing is oh they're very they're like 20 and 23 but it's like they're professionals in the biz like the like them presenting themselves as like humble TikTok artists is a is an angle you know it's it's the whole accessibility.

[5:23] Emily Clark: Yeah, relatable kind of thing. And the reason why their stuff was able to even pop up more on TikTok is probably because they had the resources to do that.

[5:34] Jess McAnally: Yes, no one else is getting instrumentation like that. Yeah, they should know better.

[5:39] Emily Clark: You want to hear what were the other nominees for the 2022 cast recordings. What were they? Angela Lloyd Webber's Cinderella, Burt Bacharach and Stephen Sater's Some Lovers, Girl from North Country which is a show everyone's forgot about it by now.

[5:52] Jess McAnally: But the name is the stage concert. Um, Stephen Schwartz snapshots which is a bunch of his just old songs, and the unofficial British musical. So those were its competition.

[6:03] Emily Clark: Okay, well that makes sense. I guess it's because we also theater wasn't being produced in 2021, you know, in the same way so the pool is very different. And then what are you going to give it to Cinderella? No.

[6:18] Jess McAnally: I'm a bad Cinderella. I'm a bad Cinderella.

[6:22] Emily Clark: So, yeah, it just feels like they kept getting away with stuff.

[6:27] Jess McAnally: And now it's like they just can't anymore and I think this is like the difference between like the Ratatouille musical which was genuinely made by a community and never did a concert for money they did a charity concert and that was approved by Disney like that was like a Disney held event in a way.

[6:45] Emily Clark: Yeah, yeah. And to just kind of whole hog take it and then keep being in contact with Netflix according to the lawsuit, and then kind of going okay well let this but don't do that.

[6:59] Jess McAnally: They feel like they had, they got to the point where they were like, they had to do it like they had to kind of, I think the agreement for what because I read all 25 pages of the Netflix lawsuit, because you know what I got nothing else better to go on in my life.

[7:13] Emily Clark: The way they framed it is the agreement like yeah we're happy to have you guys do this it looks good for us it looks good for you we respect you as artists, but as long as you don't take away money that we could be making, we're in good.

[7:26] Jess McAnally: We're all good. So winning the Grammy we let you guys have your Spotify album and release it yeah that's great because we're not, we have our own thing but and there's not really an overlap there.

[7:36] Emily Clark: But we have this Bridgerton traveling event and we really don't want that to get confused with you because we could take away money from you, you guys could take money from us because people think it's that.

[7:47] Jess McAnally: And don't put on these live concerts and charge people you can do, because in the past they have done charity concerts, both at the Kennedy Center, and those are all for charity which is different than for profit and selling merch with the Bridgerton logo.

[8:03] Emily Clark: And then like, I feel like what people keep getting lost in the conversation or what, what keeps getting lost in the conversation is Julia Quinn, who wrote the books, who owns the IP and didn't give her IP to Barlow and Bear she gave it to Netflix, and so they fan works, you know, if, if big corporations or IP holders went after every single bit of fan work it wouldn't be worth it.

[8:29] Jess McAnally: But when you're at this level where you're so high profile you want a Grammy, and you're just like pushing pushing pushing, and then it's like max tickets $150, and then we're going to do it again in London.

[8:43] Emily Clark: Yeah, that's, that's really playing with fire and it cuts to a point where Netflix was like, we have to do something, because that's copyright law like, and the thing is I, you know, being a little theater person and like a Hollywood Fringe Festival and whatnot.

[9:00] Jess McAnally: I've seen a lot of unofficial shows. I've seen a lot of parody shows.

[9:06] Emily Clark: I've seen many iterations of that and it's great and he's very careful on how he's handling that.

[9:12] Jess McAnally: Yes. And they're usually original songs which is good. Um, I remember there was one season of fringe where there were multiple Game of Thrones parody musicals, but I've seen like a Sex and the City one there was like a Twilight one there was there used to be this group called for the record that would do these unofficial

[9:32] Emily Clark: like kind of cabarets on like kind of a director or theme. Oh, like, for example, they did one that was like the Breakfast Club and it was basically the Breakfast Club in cabaret with the characters kind of singing the song.

[9:32] Jess McAnally: Yeah, from the score and that they must have gotten permission to do that eventually because my friend did that like on cruise ships so there are also like things that are eligible but like so I'm going to pull this specifically Joe Iconis and his most recent album just called album. He has one song based in the world of what is that film Death Becomes Her one song from the point of view of Michael Myers returning to Haddonfield one song in the point of Norman Bates and like he doesn't own the IP.

[10:16] Emily Clark: He just keeps it vague enough where it could be about that. So there are those options you could have to but they decided to do none of those options with Bridgerton and you, whether we like it or not the Bridgerton brand is the only reason why anyone knows that this show exists or knows who Barlow and Bear are on a national level big enough to win a Grammy.

[11:40] Jess McAnally: And just kind of work off of our pop cultural knowledge of them to kind of infer things.

[11:45] Emily Clark: Um, that being said, what makes Barlow and Bear halfway decent, um, musical theater writers is they write very specifically. They have written themselves, I know you haven't really dove into this, but these songs are written so specifically into a hole they cannot be about anything else other than Bridgerton. Like the plot could not be adjusted to fit anything that isn't the musical Bridgerton. Yeah, and like let the songs, you could in theory also let the songs live in some nature, like your best songs. Like again, that would be something that wouldn't, probably Netflix would be fine with if you can like share the royalties or something with them. But like, you know, a lot of these would do well in like cabarets and whatnot, I assume, since they did well as standalone pieces on TikTok.

But, um, but the con removed from the context, they would not get any hits. These would not be songs. And again, it's not a parody. It's not transforming it or commenting on it or making it so that like you would never mix it up with, you know, a Netflix production. Um, and this is the line a lot of creatives have to walk, but I know a lot of people who write musicals and the first thing they do when they get an idea from something that isn't theirs is they contact the estate and find out if they can write this or the company or whoever holds the rights and find out whether they are allowed to do that or not.

[13:08] Jess McAnally: But they're young 22 year olds. They think they can do anything for everything. But they're in the biz and they should know better. They should have someone that knows better with them. The fact that they have like people and representation, handlers and whatnot, they're professionals.

[13:27] Emily Clark: One of my favorite pastimes, um, is watching you argue with young people on the internet. It brings me such joy to watch it happen. I see that a lot of youngsters that just think that Netflix are the big bad guys in this situation are coming at you. What are their biggest defenses?

[13:43] Jess McAnally: Some of them are like, why did they wait till now? Um, and why did they promote, you know, their stuff before? And it's like, first of all, anyone who owns an IP can go after you whenever there's no like statute of limitations on that. And that's exactly it. Once it started making money, that's when it became a problem.

[14:04] Emily Clark: A problem. If they just kept doing it for funsies online and not really making any money, that nothing, nothing would have happened. And that's just not how intellectual property and copyrights work. And there's a lot of arguments you can have about copyright law and whatnot, but artists have to create their intellectual property full stop. And there's no statute of limitations on that.

[14:29] Jess McAnally: Um, I think there's also just a lot of people who just got very invested in the two of them in Barlow and Bear. They think, I know, I know a few people who have a parasocial relationship with them. Um, just kind of see them as one of us.

[14:46] Emily Clark: And that bothers me too, but I'll let you continue.

[14:51] Jess McAnally: No, I mean, like, and even if they're not, that's okay. You can still admire them and like them, but like they made it, they fucked up. This is a mistake. You can't just completely take someone else's stuff and just be like, whatever. And they more or less admitted to the mistake by pulling out of the Royal Albert Hall performance.

[15:08] Emily Clark: Shit.

[15:09] Jess McAnally: Yeah. So there you go. Like they, they can't do it. And I think it'll be interesting to see what comes out further in this lawsuit because Netflix in that document, they, they really kind of, they were thorough. He spilled a lot of tea. Like they, they kind of told, I don't know. I think some people think that they're just lying.

[15:28] Emily Clark: And it's like, no, I don't think so.

[15:30] Jess McAnally: I don't think so either. Just because when I have heard about this show and how it's still called the unofficial Bridgerton musical, I kept thinking like, okay, Netflix has to be involved in some way, or at least have given their permission in some way.

[15:46] Emily Clark: And to find out, Nope, Nope. They just didn't. It is very, um, it's bold. It's like, where do you get the, where do you get the balls to do that?

[15:57] Jess McAnally: Like, Ooh, it's the same with the, uh, the church doing that Hamilton.

[16:01] Emily Clark: That's a good transition. Um, so these are the same issues. And I, I, I don't know if you saw this, but I tweeted out like the Bridgerton lawsuit versus the Hamilton lawsuit, dueling lawsuits. And then someone's like, how dare you even compare the two? I was like, they're, they're about the same. If you really think about it.

[16:21] Jess McAnally: Yeah.

[16:21] Emily Clark: And in this case, it is the musical theater properties themselves that are being, uh, changed without permission and done without paying the rights. Like the big me as, as a, um, educational theater person who directs middle school and high school productions, literally the first thing I have to do is go to MTI or Concord or whatever, and make sure my district has the funds because it is the biggest expense.

[16:50] Jess McAnally: This is Broadway is not where writers make their money folks. I mean, it helps, but like they make their money forever from licensing these shows.

[16:59] Emily Clark: Um, and Hamilton isn't even licensable. You can't, there's no junior, there's no Hamilton junior yet. There will be, but no, it's still running strong on Broadway. It's why my students will be like, can we do wicked? And I'll go, no, I can't get it. I can't get it. They're still milking that. They will milk that until they can't anymore.

[17:16] Jess McAnally: Cynthia Erivo goes up in that movie and then suddenly those licenses will come out.

[17:20] Emily Clark: Yup, yup, yup, yup. So now here's the other thing is that, um, it's a church and churches have this way of being able to skirt, uh, I guess.

[17:30] Jess McAnally: Yeah, exactly.

[17:31] Emily Clark: So they weren't profiting necessarily. Well, they, I don't think they were charging tickets. Were they charging tickets?

[17:37] Jess McAnally: They put it out for free on YouTube stream. So I don't imagine they were charging for tickets.

[17:43] Emily Clark: Yeah. Well, and then to transform the work and make it about something that it's not, yeah. Or any of these ones, the ones that I saw the clips of them doing beauty and the beast and doing the same thing. You can't just, you can't just do that.

[17:55] Jess McAnally: Like it's misrepresenting the author's intention.

[18:02] Emily Clark: And obviously you can have conversations with license holders and whatnot, um, creators with changes. Um, the recent revivals of Oklahoma have demonstrated that, um, where there's the one where they did it in Oregon where they, um, changed genders, um, had a trans character, you know, all that changed were the pronouns.

[18:25] Jess McAnally: And then in this latest revival, every word is the same, but some of the orchestrations and the scoring are different and the, and the, um, sorry, and the directorial intent is different.

[18:35] Emily Clark: Um, those are conversations. If you're going to drastically change a piece like that, you have to be in communication.

[18:42] Jess McAnally: Um, I knew I was part of a theater company back in like, Oh eight, Oh nine. And they did Vita and, and they changed Che to be multiple characters.

[18:51] Emily Clark: They wanted shade choice.

[18:54] Jess McAnally: Yeah. And cause they were like, she didn't actually know Vita. And it's like, yeah, that's not the point of why he's in the show, but whatever.

[18:59] Emily Clark: Um, uh, and, and Rogers and Hammerstein, it was Rogers and Hammerstein at the time. Um, they held the rights and they found out the week of the show and they said, you need to have a Che or we're going to cancel this production. We're going to have to shut it down.

[19:11] Jess McAnally: And so they had to take one of the actors who was playing one of the Che's and kind of beef him up and in order to technically have the role.

[19:19] Emily Clark: And they, they were a pretty, they're a pretty well-known theater company there. You know, they're not, they've been around for a while. And, um, it was kind of, that was a moment where I was like, that was bold. That was bold of you to do this without like asking them design posters.

[19:33] Jess McAnally: Without a certain amount going to certain things, uh, even in your local high school.

[19:38] Emily Clark: Oh yeah. You think that someone wasn't going to go for you for making Hamilton say that he has repented with the Lord Jesus Christ.

[19:45] Jess McAnally: And that is his legacy. Have you seen the clips of it?

[19:48] Emily Clark: My God, this show's wild.

[19:49] Jess McAnally: Yeah. And I feel bad for those kids because the kids want to do Hamilton. They are always like, they want to do shows like that. They think it's cool. They don't, they're like 15 years old. They don't know.

[20:00] Emily Clark: They don't know the deals with licensing rights or whether it's appropriate for their voices, um, or something they can handle and do in a respectful or, or, um, even entertaining way.

[20:13] Jess McAnally: It's up to the adults to be, to be a little more aware.

[20:17] Emily Clark: Oh, it's so frustrating to me.

[20:20] Jess McAnally: Yes.

[20:20] Emily Clark: And then it ends with a LG anti-LGBT like sermon from their preacher. Like this is ridiculous.

[20:28] Jess McAnally: And the show obviously isn't really explicitly LGBTQ, um, in some subtext, I suppose, but if you think about the creative team or the actors who have been in it, or just the Lin-Manuel of it all anyway, like putting an anti-LGBTQ plus sermon at the end is completely contradictory, not just to Hamilton, but like musical theater, like in general.

[20:54] Jess McAnally: Um, it, it, yeah.

[20:57] Emily Clark: And the thing is, churches do this shit. They do this shit all the time.

[21:02] Jess McAnally: And get away with it.

[21:04] Emily Clark: Like the Jenny Nicholson Easter videos that.

[21:08] Jess McAnally: Yeah.

[21:09] Emily Clark: And those are, those are funny. Those are even more transformative, I'd say, than, than like kind of what this Hamilton thing was. Cause it seemed like it was just Hamilton, but with these few.

[21:50] Jess McAnally: Yeah, I'm not charging for admission. We're like a middle school, you know, no one really, no one would care about that. It's educational theater, like, and that's kind of a big thing about that is that no one's going to go after like, a public school for doing like a couple songs from your musical. Now they would if I mounted a full production, probably without the rights. That's a different story. But then again, like you're not even then they might not be as litigious because you know, you're not you're not making a huge profit from that. If anything, you're just keeping your program afloat. Just use Pirates of Penzance and put Jesus into it because you know what, that that's, that's basically you don't even need permission to do that one.

No, yeah, find you some public domain stories and then just build a story off of that and you know, like the pirate movie did. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what Hamilton chooses to do. Well, Lin made a proper statement today say yeah, he was like, not happy with it. Yeah, but he was like, let the lawyers do their work.

[22:46] Emily Clark: So yeah, and that's also what I'd say about the Netflix thing. Back to Barlow and Bear before we wrap this on up. What do you think this is going to do a damage because I thought they were going to have a meteoric rise. I thought they were going to have like a track to like, maybe like do some film or Broadway work after this. But now I'm thinking this is this is put a big sully on their reputation in a way that I doubt they even expected. Like, I'm surprised at how quickly the internet turned on them.

[23:18] Jess McAnally: Yeah, I think if they I hate to say this and pull this card, I think if they were men, they would be able to get away with it a little bit more. We tend to, you know, when women do something wrong like this, they tend to get vilified a little bit harder.

[23:27] Emily Clark: Yeah. But on the other hand, like they did what they did. Like, you can't deny that. I think it would be very smart of them to try to let this go and to settle that lawsuit as much as possible and try to put it behind them because they're obviously very talented and they have extremely talented. They have connections, even more so now. So I think like you were saying, if there was ever a time for them to use it as the jumping off point, they will be able to. But I think I don't know. I mean, some people, some people might be willing to work with them again, because they probably are not likely to make this mess up again.

[24:07] Jess McAnally: Do you know who's hanging out with them basically every weekend?

[24:12] Emily Clark: Who?

[24:13] Jess McAnally: Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. They are like, like on his TikTok. He's hanging out with Barlow and Bear a lot. So my first guess is that there's going to be a Lloyd Webber Barlow and Bear collaboration where he's using their internet to try to make his shows look cooler, where they'll either be brought on as like lyricists or musical accompaniment. So I think that's where they're headed. And if that is where they're headed, lawsuits, this won't be their first lawsuit.

[24:45] Emily Clark: Yeah, they might sue him. They might sue him. Or he might be like, all right, so you hire Patti LuPone, and then you fire Patti LuPone.

[24:52] Jess McAnally: Oh, God. Yeah. Well, then they'll be fine. I mean, they'll if they're meeting if they're hanging out with Andrew Lloyd Webber, he maybe he'll pay for their legal bills or something. I don't know. I think that they're gonna be fine. And I don't mean that in a negative kind of like pithy like, oh, they'll be fine. Stop worrying. I think that they were gonna be fine whether Bridgerton hit and it was a matter of when the exposure got out.

[25:23] Emily Clark: That being said, I think this did do a lot of damage to how fast they're gonna do their next thing.

[25:28] Jess McAnally: Yeah, and I think you're right. I think they really did misjudge how their how the internet would respond. Because while there are still just people who are like, just Barlow and Bear Stans and just going to believe whatever they say, even though they haven't said anything yet, which also I think is a bad look.

[25:44] Emily Clark: Yeah, it's not great. But I think enough people are creatives, especially on the internet, enough people create art of various across various media, and they don't want their work just taken by someone. And and have them profit off that. I mean, just look at anyone who gets who steals someone's art on Twitter, and then just reposts it without an attribution, cropping out the watermark.

[26:08] Jess McAnally: Exactly. Like, I think a lot of people. I think a lot of people genuinely understand that. And I think there were a lot of us watching this, this Bridgerton thing and going, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Because this is still going. And Netflix is just not saying anything like, do you guys work with Netflix? I don't know. And then Netflix had to be like, Nope, I think Netflix were good to look away until the moment it stopped being good for them.

[26:36] Emily Clark: Yeah, yeah. And then fair. I do the same thing for me.

[26:36] Jess McAnally: Exactly. It was only profitable for them at first, because I know Netflix isn't in the best light right now, either. They've got a lot of shit. But in this one fleeting instance, I think they're in the right to do this.

[26:53] Emily Clark: Yeah, I don't agree with you a lot Netflix. But I think this was the right choice. I think it would have gone farther. And again, I want to bring it back to Julia Quinn, who wrote these books something like 20 years ago, like, she gets nothing, like nothing from any of this. That's like, kind of shocking to me. And the fact that they were offered a license, and they just went like that license had to be really bad, or they just thought they could keep getting away with it.

[27:19] Jess McAnally: I think it's the hubris side of it.

[27:19] Emily Clark: Yeah, yeah. Like they were like, it's not like these. It's not like these ladies were hurting for money. They're both from the wealthier side of the tax bracket. So I don't know.

[27:30] Jess McAnally: So Emily, what I'm hearing here is that you and I need to start a Bridgerton rewatch podcast or we watch Bridgerton.

[27:39] Emily Clark: God, well, I watch it where I watch it like for the first time.

[27:46] Jess McAnally: Yeah, sure. Let's do it. I would love to. And then we can compare to the musical.

[27:54] Emily Clark: Hell yeah. And then we can say which is better. You know what, if you want us to do this, let us know I any excuse to spend more time with Emily Clark is a welcome into my life. So if there is like enough love, I think I can convince her to do it because I don't think I need the convincing here.

[28:08] Jess McAnally: Tell us, folks, tell us what else you want to hear us bitch about.

[28:13] Emily Clark: Oh, yeah. A new segment, Jess and Emily, bitch, Jess and Emily, bitch, bitch, bitch.

[28:21] Jess McAnally: That's actually a great podcast title for Bridgerton. Exclamation point on official podcast musical. And then we can take a picture like Barlow and Bear, like in that chair with the tiara. We just photoshop our faces onto their faces.

[28:34] Emily Clark: There you go. There you go. And then we'll be like, what? It's transformative.

[28:40] Jess McAnally: Yeah. It's parody. Emily, Emily, we can record our own album like that's just the Bridgerton album, but we just replace every character name with Emily.

[28:52] Emily Clark: But if I were a Jess, I'd go and I'd be Jess and I'd be Jess. Change every fifth word to like poop or something.

[28:59] Jess McAnally: I burn for poop. There you go. We got it. We got a concept here, baby. We got it.

[29:09] Emily Clark: Yeah. We're going to make the millions. Andrew Lloyd Webber, call us.

[29:13] Jess McAnally: Yeah. Give us a call. We're going to win 2022 Grammys. We got it. 2023 Grammys. Let's go.

[29:20] Emily Clark: Yeah. No, no theater works to be seen in the musical theater.

[29:24] Jess McAnally: Oh, Les Mis was in there.

[29:24] Emily Clark: Yeah. Les Mis, they need another. You know what we need is another Les Mis album.

[29:29] Jess McAnally: You say that, but I just saw that the touring production of Les Mis was coming to Detroit. I bought the first five minutes of the posting because I am a basic bitch, Emily.

[29:35] Emily Clark: Yeah, that's OK. That's OK. It's a good show. You're allowed to show.

[29:41] Jess McAnally: Yes. All right. Emily, for those that don't know, promote your stuff so they can find you.

[29:47] Emily Clark: Oh, sure. You can find me at Stealing Focus on YouTube and we have a Stealing Focus Patreon. And you can find me at Emily A.B. Clark on all the socials that are appropriate for a woman my age to be on. And also you just released an incredible video on Diana, the definition of camp and so many other things with a lot of wonderful people, including yourself, including you.

[30:12] Jess McAnally: Oh, I blink and you'll miss me.

[30:12] Emily Clark: No, it's the best. It's the best. You have to watch to the very end, though. So, yes, you're not going to get like I'm just imagining people halfway. He's not in this.

[30:23] Jess McAnally: Yeah. Where is he?

[30:23] Emily Clark: Yeah. Where's Jess?

[30:30] Jess McAnally: No, no one's ever thinking that, Emily.

[30:30] Emily Clark: I am.

[30:30] Jess McAnally: Oh, I'm right here. And right next to the cheese.

[30:37] Emily Clark: Hell yeah. I can't wait to see you in person. It's going to be soon. I feel it in my gut like I'm going to I'm going to be hanging out with you drinking wine and we're going to sing musical theater songs. It'll be a good time.

[30:45] Jess McAnally: Done and done, baby. Done and done. All right. We'll see you next time on Bitcherton.

[31:03] I can't even drink. I can't even drink champagne. No. Without hearing your name. Am I the one to blame?

[31:51] When we're dancing in the same room, but you're an ocean away.