S02E02 — Gone Girl

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Gone Girl.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Rebekah is the one who writes these summaries, and she’s not a fan. Josiah is, though, so she will pretend this isn’t just two hours of her ranting…

But seriously, unreliable narrators make for some of the most frustrating… and intriguing. What did we think of how Gone Girls book was adapted to film?

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Gone Girl book dives deep into the twisted minds of Amy and Nick, layering unreliable narration with shocking psychological manipulation. The movie keeps the core of the story intact, tightening the pacing while making some small but impactful changes to character depth and motivations.

Tim: The film was better

Donna: The film was better

Rebekah: The film was better

Josiah: The book was better

Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is Better podcast. We are a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. This is a clean podcast. We do not use the cussies, if you will. However, we are covering a very, very let’s say, mature work of fiction today. I like that Josiah said once, if you wouldn’t let your kid watch the movie, then you probably shouldn’t let them listen to the episode as far as our podcast goes.

I think that that is great advice. So today we are going to be covering we’re going to be covering Gone Girl. It is a rated R film. It is a rated, probably NC 17 book, if I’m being totally honest. So this is definitely not an episode for younger ears. But that out of the way, we are going to spoil the whole plot.

Twisties and turnies and much bombshell ease. And so just be aware of that if you haven’t read it or watched it and you really want to before we start go ahead and do that. And I’m going to try to be nice and not say whether or not I would recommend doing that or not before we get to the end of the episode.

Look at me, personal growth. Okay, so as we introduce ourselves at the beginning of every episode, we like to give you a little fun fact about us, probably related to what we’re covering today’s fun fact. Have you ever been the victim or creator of an elaborate? Because what happens in this movie is insane.

So we’re not, none of us have been the victim of elaborate murder plot or perpetrator. Well you don’t know. Maybe I’m in the process of creating it. You don’t know. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. I’m 

[00:01:33] Donna: pretty sure. I know. 

[00:01:37] Rebekah: My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the pod. I don’t know that I would say victim or creator of an elaborate prank.

I hate pranks. So it is well known in my household that if you commit a prank against me, I will well, I guess I’ll turn to Amy from gone girl a little bit. I will make it my life’s mission to destroy your life. And so my husband knows this has very Kindly not been a prank puller, even though he loves pranks kind of in theory, I would say like the worst one was he one time forgot that I wasn’t a big fan of pranks and we were just with a bunch of friends and I went to the restroom during dinner and they had these cute little like cheesecake bites as our, as our dessert and they each had their own little thing that they sat on no, they were like little cupcake things.

Like I don’t know what they’re like papers that like open. So they were little squares. And so while I was in the restroom, my husband, Josh, our producer, who’s very wonderful, you know, most of the time he took one of the empty ones. And he cut a part of a stick of butter to be the exact same size and then put it in one and he was going to let me eat it.

I come back and sit down and it was the one sitting in front of me and so I was about to go to eat it and our friend Eleni goes, Rebecca, I can’t, I can’t let this happen. And so she starts to describe what happened. And I looked at him with the fire of a thousand suns and his poor little face, his eyes go wide and he goes, I forgot you don’t like pranks.

I’m sorry. So sorry. Like he felt so bad. And so since I didn’t take a bite out of it, I did not you know, murder him. So yeah, he is alive to this day, actually. 

[00:03:18] Donna: So I am Donna. I’m the wife and mom of our little herd.

This one this is a tough one because I don’t like pranks and I stay clear of them. I’ve been involved in a couple, but they went really bad. And so I learned when I was young, it’s just literally not worth it. Okay. So I’ll share this one after we got married we were married two years. I got pregnant with Rebecca and the summer I was pregnant with her and she’s born in March.

So it was early, I was early on in my pregnancy. I did agree to be part of a prank and it did turn out funny. So thankfully, like nobody was hurt over it or anything like that. But Tim and I work at senior high camp, a senior high church camp in West Virginia. And we’d been working these the last few years since we got married and we knew people that were there and we established friendships with, with other people there.

Well, one of our friends, Bonita, knew one of the high schoolers that was there, and Bonita was a, she was in high school as well, and we’d gotten acquainted with her, and she knew this girl that was going to be there, and her name was Lori, and Lori was a little gullible. I think that’s probably the best thing to say.

And so she saw us, she was coming toward us, and I don’t know what, why Bonita thought of this, so it was kind of off the fly, because it wasn’t something we planned, but there were some kids as we were walking down a lane, a street. There were some kids with water guns and Lori had a water gun and she came running toward us and she was like, watch out and Bonita goes, No, no, you can’t do it.

She’s pregnant. No, don’t shoot her with a water gun. And Lori said, why? What’s wrong? And she said, her baby is allergic to water. What? No, I did not know she was going to say that. It completely took me by surprise and I was just like, I can’t say anything right now. I don’t know what she’s doing. And so Lori goes, what?

And Bonita said, she is, her baby is allergic to water. You can’t spray her. Lori completely goes with this. I don’t know why, but she said, I’m so sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry. I would, I would never, I would never. A little while later in the afternoon, they go on, we go on walking and she comes back and she said, like, I don’t want to doubt you, but that’s just, I don’t know if it doesn’t make sense to me.

And she goes, 

[00:06:05] Tim: how do 

[00:06:06] Donna: you bathe? How do you keep your body clean? And Bonita goes, she has a special lotion. She uses to wash her body off. And it, and it cleans her body and she was like, oh, oh, okay. Okay. So, like, in the evening, later on, we had like a church service that evening and I think it might’ve been that evening afterwards.

She walked up toward, to us and there was, she was with a bunch of friends and she was like, You guys, my friends, my friends just didn’t believe this. And finally, Bonita was like, Lori, you’re the, you’re so gullible. That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. So anyway, so I did, I didn’t actively do anything except not say anything.

So if that counts as taking part in it. 

[00:06:57] Josiah: My name is Joe Sia. I’m the brother of our murder and also the son. And I. Have never been pranked. No, no. Well, on one side I like 

[00:07:12] Rebekah: pranks about as much as I do, so I 

[00:07:14] Josiah: don’t like pranks too much, but if it’s like Evan and I like to scare each other. We scare each other, and that is fun.

Whenever we lived with one another, I think I was better at it. Mm 

[00:07:24] Tim: hmm. 

[00:07:24] Josiah: But, whenever we lived with one another When he would be, like, finishing up with a shower or something like that, I would take the few minutes that he was in there to set up, I got, there was, my favorite time probably, I got all of the candles in the house, and lit them all in a circle in the living room floor, turned off all the other lights, and I put a teddy bear in the middle of the circle of candles, And so he came out and he was like what’s happening?

And then I was hiding on the corner and I started running at him on all fours like a beast man. So that was probably the funniest one that I can remember. Wow. 

[00:08:05] Donna: I don’t like pranks too much. I don’t. Anyone wanna know why I hate pranks? 

[00:08:13] Rebekah: Isn’t that fun? 

[00:08:13] Donna: That’s a 

[00:08:14] Rebekah: horror story. 

[00:08:15] Donna: Before you say, I do have an alternate prank.

That Josh could choose between the two one time in a one time in an Easter musical at church there’s a scene where Jesus is Tastes of fish he picks up a piece of fish and tastes it and we had these little just paper fish in a basket And we had him in there, and it was shaped like a fish right and he picked up well the last night of performance I gave Justin a real fish, a raw fish, to put up to his mouth.

Oh my gosh, why? I thought it would be funny. Wow, okay. He carried it really well, but Josh can pick if he wants to do one of those two. 

[00:09:01] Tim: Oh my. So, my name’s Tim. I am the husband and the dad. Of our wonderful family yeah, not a murder. 

[00:09:10] Rebekah: We’re not killing Josiah 

[00:09:11] Tim: anymore. Is that listen, this is a book about family.

Oh, family 

[00:09:16] Rebekah: in a way is certainly that. 

[00:09:20] Tim: OK, and I know exactly why you don’t like pranks. I can’t stand pranks. I despise them. I’ve never been a prankster. I don’t like to be part of things like that. 

[00:09:32] Rebekah: Well, this is good. So let me just summarize the plot of this. I’m just, it’s really quick. Okay, here we go.

A sociopath and a deadbeat repeatedly hurt each other, wasting taxpayer money and police resources to try hurting each other more while unreliably narrating a book about how awful they both are. Everyone in this This story sucks except for a dead mom, the deadbeat’s twin sister, and one police officer who happens not to be a total moron.

[00:09:57] Josiah: Oh, you like Margo? 

[00:09:58] Rebekah: So that was like the story. I feel like that’s, we could probably just leave it there. Do we need to do the rest of the episode? That’s Rebecca’s 

[00:10:03] Tim: true version. Huh? 

[00:10:05] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:10:06] Tim: It’s 

[00:10:06] Rebekah: been wonderful being with you all 

[00:10:08] Donna: this evening. 

[00:10:09] Rebekah: Thanks. Yeah. Guys, I had such a good time with this episode.

Shortest one so far. No in reality, I wanted to change up the way that we formatted this episode. So instead of walking you through the whole plot with all of its twisties and turnies, I thought we would give you an introduction to kind of how the book is formatted, how the film is formatted. And then instead of our sections of differences, we’re going to go chronologically through what happens in the book and film, and we’ll clarify changes like as we go through the Complex actual plot.

So we’re actually going to tell you a lot more about what happens in the book and film. So if you’ve never read this book and honestly, if you haven’t seen this film and are not sure it would be for you we will just walk you through the whole thing. So I think the person who enjoyed this book the most should introduce us to it.

[00:10:57] Josiah: Yeah, I will. Hey, did you know that Gone Girl is a psychological thriller about Nick and Amy Elliott Dunn? Two unlikely lovers who serve as unreliable narrators in a tale of kidnap, infidelity, murder, and revenge. Wow. The book by Gillian Flynn is broken into three major sections. Part one, boy loses girl.

Part two, boy meets girl. Part three, boy gets girl back, or vice versa. Each part consists of alternating chapters, narrated in the first person by Nick and Amy. In part one, Amy’s chapters are journal entries, chronicling her relationship with her husband, from their meet cute all the way to her fear that he will kill her.

Once we enter Part 2, the alternating chapters are simply the first person narration during different parts of the ongoing timeline. The 2014 film adaptation, directed by David Fincher and starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, It closely follows the twisty plot of the book, even using the journal entry titles like The Morning Of to keep viewers in the timeline of the film, although there are no delineations like we read in the three parts of the novel.

[00:12:12] Rebekah: Okay, so as I mentioned, we’re not going to do three different types of changes, so we’re just gonna walk you through the plot and the changes that occur during that. 

[00:12:22] Tim: Can I interject just one thing there? I felt like I felt like the film seemed to jump around in time and it was sometimes difficult to know exactly whether you were in the present or in the past.

So I, I felt like it was a little bit jostled that way. 

[00:12:40] Rebekah: The book did the same thing, but I feel like it was a little easier to follow because it’s like, you see the chapter start and you’re like, Oh, this is how many days since this, or at what point or whatever. So, 

[00:12:51] Josiah: right. Well, talking about the major differences, let’s start with talking about how the book and film both begin with a quoted paragraph spoken by Nick.

That immediately sets the reader, or watcher, with an unsettled feeling that not all is well in this marriage between the main characters. Nick Dunn then meets his twin sister Margo, whom he affectionately calls Go, at The Bar, which is a wandering home. Very meta. Yes, they own together in their hometown of Carthage, Missouri.

It’s called The Bar. I, I liked in the book how he said something like, Yeah, I thought it would be funny in like a hipster way. But it ended up being funny and just, like, people thought it was funny and ironic. I don’t know. Nick actually commiserates about his failing relationship with his wife, Amy, dreading the annual scavenger hunt she has certainly prepared for this day, just like she does every anniversary.

She takes him every year poetically written clues to point him to various locations. Significant to her, mainly to her. 

[00:14:05] Rebekah: Supposedly, and him, but 

[00:14:07] Josiah: And every year, Nick barely manages to correctly identify even one. As he gears up to learn all she has planned, he gets a call that their front door is open, and the cat was let out of the house.

Nick arrives home to find odd signs of a struggle in their house. He calls the police. They quickly call it a missing persons case, led by Detective Boney and Officer Gilpin. And 

[00:14:31] Rebekah: let me say, I did think it was kind of funny, like, his description of the scavenger hunt. I didn’t like the first paragraph of the book.

I immediately listened to it on audiobook and I was like, Ugh, I hate this. And so it was hard for me to like, get into it at first. But when he gets into describing how the scavenger hunt is like by the second clue, she gets so angry with him. Like she expected it to be this like big romantic thing. And then he’s like, but I don’t understand any of it.

I feel like it’s memories that we didn’t actually share. And I’m like, so you’re just an idiot. Like, I don’t understand. And it cracked me up. 

[00:15:04] Tim: Much of the early scenes are very similar from book to film. However, in the book, Nick notes that he’s always been confused by this anniversary scavenger hunt, by the, all of the clues.

They never make sense to him. In the film, he liked and seemed to understand them for the first two years. But on this very different scavenger hunt, the clues are obvious to him all the way to the last one. That should have been your first clue, buddy. 

[00:15:34] Donna: I did like that they used a scene in the film where The the linen year, which is two or three, I can’t remember, but they ended up at dinner together and the waiter brings in a box, his gift in a box and he opens it and it’s these linen sheets.

And it was a certain thread count. Yeah, really expensive. 2, 000 thread count. Yeah. And then he picks up a box that he’s got with him and it’s the same sheets. And so I did like the fact that they kind of tried to establish early on whether they were really being themselves or just caught up in the romance.

That the marriage was good. It wasn’t. They were getting along. They were funny together. They were quirky together. 

[00:16:18] Rebekah: And you missed out on a lot of her, like talking about what happened early on. And so I thought that was a really, it wasn’t in the book, but it was a good scene that just gave you that impression of like, Oh, they were happy at first.

[00:16:31] Tim: I like in the book, he’s just a doofus from the beginning. He never knows. He’s a man and he can change if he has to, I guess. 

[00:16:40] Rebekah: I guess. In the book, Nick quickly discovers the first clue in Amy’s scavenger hunt in the initial search of his home. So he was there, the police are there, he found the first clue.

The film shows the police discovering this a little later. He’s not around, they find it, come ask him about it. They follow this clue, the police and Nick, to his office. And it’s all of them are little poems like we said, so at his office they find clue number two and a bright red pair of women’s panties that he cannot immediately identify.

Nick claims he doesn’t know what the clue means and the funny thing was the red panties were the wrong size for Amy, which makes them a confusing literally red pairing. 

[00:17:26] Donna: One of the insertions of Amy’s journal entry comes at this point where he’s, he’s going through this police investigation walking, Nick’s walking them through it and he’s becoming increasingly anxious.

You know, he knows he didn’t do it. I did. Although in the book, is it 

[00:17:47] Rebekah: clear that he knows 

[00:17:48] Donna: that? It’s clear in the movie to the watcher. I would agree with that, and I did think that that gave more thriller aspect to the movie where in the book you go along and it’s kind of like, I think Jillian Flynn was more convinced, was more concerned with us pretty sure he probably did something to her through a certain point in the book.

I mean, that’s just my own opinion, but like it or not. We learn about, from Amy’s journal entry, how the two of them first met at a party, and then the ridiculously ignorant sugar storm they walked through. On the streets of New York and the way it worked 

[00:18:33] Rebekah: in the movie, by the way, like it was 

[00:18:35] Tim: good. Donna thinks it’s, Donna thinks it’s atmospheric pollution, you know, it’s like breathing in that sugar and all that stuff.

You 

[00:18:42] Donna: have to breathe, you breathe in the sugar in the air because it’s it’s powdery, really. You breathe it in, it’s all over you, so you can’t go anywhere else. 

[00:18:50] Tim: It’s an asbestos cloud. You 

[00:18:52] Donna: can’t, you can’t do anything else on the day because you’re covered in a sugar powder. I mean, I don’t know, I got the romance of it.

I did get that. Anyway 

[00:19:03] Rebekah: Yeah, this book is so romantic. I mean, like, that’s what I was feeling. Yeah, it’s a sense of love. 

[00:19:08] Donna: It does establish well the way their charm just worked from the first day on. The first part of their love story is, is really like a storybook romance and their, their personalities kind of click together like that.

And as it goes along, you know, it unclicks a little bit. 

[00:19:27] Rebekah: So there are two small but notable changes to the journal entries in the film, kind of when they’re going back to Amy’s memory. So first, the two do meet at a party, but they have this little inside joke about just one olive. The movie cuts that from the dialogue.

It’s used like throughout the book to talk about their relationship and kind of. How they have all of these inside jokes, whatever. The second change is that in the book, Amy’s journal mentions that after the first time she met Nick, they didn’t speak again for eight months. They run into each other by chance later, and he says, oh, the post it, I, my phone was dead, so I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and then I put the post it in my pocket, and then I put my jeans in the wash, and then it got ruined, and then, oh my gosh, I, like, wanted to meet up, I wanted to call you, but I, I couldn’t.

So, again, the doofus just, you know, messes something up. For some reason, he’s so lovable now. Wow. Oh, man, that’s who I don’t know if I grew that for a minute. But anyway, yeah, he like he lost her phone number. They connect again in the film. It’s basically just like for the sake of time, which I think worked.

They just immediately are like, yeah, OK, they met and now they date. Right. They click 

[00:20:36] Tim: and everything clicks with them. We learn early on that Amy is the titular character in her parents book series, Amazing Amy. Amazing Amy was a popular book series for young girls that are parents, both child psychologists.

Used to play out a perfected version of Amy’s real life while she resents it. You can you imagine why while she resents it, Amy admits that amazing. Amy is also the reason she has a modest trust fund and has always wanted for nothing. So she’s lived with it. Resentfully, ugh. When, and we find out in the, in the book, I think it is that when she quit.

Cello. Amazing Amy came out later and she stuck to it. And she became a prodigy. First chair, yeah, she did an amazing job. 

[00:21:33] Rebekah: Basically, they take all of her failures and then explain how amazing Amy did them directly. 

[00:21:39] Josiah: Did you know that there is an added movie only scene where Nick, still a reporter at a magazine, interviews Amy at a party for her parents newest release?

Amazing Amy and The Big Day, they have written an anniversary edition of Amy’s story, hoping to pull in readers who read the book growing up, considering failing book sales from the previous few editions. Nick ends the conversation with Amy with a proposal, making Amazing Amy’s happy life and real Amy’s match up the first time in maybe forever.

Oh! In the book, we never hear about the exact way he proposed. I’m sure he was a dumb man about it. And the release of Amazing Amy’s wedding book occurred during the eight months between the couple’s first meeting and the beginning of their relationship. 

[00:22:31] Rebekah: I thought that was all so sweet. thing in the book.

Like her dad was like, you got to talk to the reporters. And she’s like, I hate being Amy in her mind. But she seemed like at this point in the movie, I think this woman is nice. And her husband probably has killed her. And so now I’m getting to know her, right? Like she’s missing. 

[00:22:51] Josiah: You are so gullible. You are such a pleb.

I was. I was 

[00:22:54] Rebekah: trying to just suspend my disbelief. And so I thought it was sweet that she’s like, Still trying to be kind to her parents and like do this thing that they want her to do. And then Nick uses it as a way to like be charming in front of all the other reporters and propose to her instead of them getting to make fun of Amy for the fact that she’s not engaged.

[00:23:14] Tim: So, 

[00:23:15] Donna: well, from both Nick and Amy’s chapters, we find out they both lost their jobs in the recession. They’re both writers after the 2007 or eight housing crash and all that. So this takes place. Just after 2010 somewhere 2010 11. They both lost their jobs. He lost his first and then hers went and Amy’s trust fund ended up depleted as her parents mishandled their own money And needed to borrow most of what she had left to cover their debts shortly after the money troubles began Nick’s sister Margo Calls to inform him that their mother has stage four breast cancer and their father had to be moved into an assisted living facility as his Alzheimer’s worsened.

Ultimately, Nick and Amy moved to Nick’s Missouri hometown three years after their marriage began. And it’s interesting for me to note here that neither decision, the trust fund decision or the move decision were made as a couple. And to me, that was like, things were already getting weird because Nick was laid off first.

And he was not sure what to do with himself and kind of felt whatever, it never really says why he wasn’t going out looking for work, but he just kind of felt lost and, and, you know, aimless, but at that point they were starting to get snippy with each other, but. Still, you get snippy sometimes. I mean, that happens, but at this point, when those two things happened kind of in the same period of time, basically, I thought, Oh, okay.

This is where stuff started to. Things are bad. Yeah. Yeah. And when you, when you’re in a marriage like that and you try to make decisions, especially ones that large, that trust fund could have sustained them if, if they’d done it right for a while. And she gave almost all of it to her parents because she said, well, it’s really theirs.

Really, they’re the ones that earned it. 

[00:25:23] Rebekah: I don’t know why I, I don’t know why they did this. I did not have this to the notes because I just noticed it and thought it was odd. So in the film. Her trust fund has, quote, almost a million dollars in it, and then they borrow 879, 000. But in the movie, or sorry, that was in the film.

In the book, her trust fund has like 730, 000 or 40, 000, and they borrow 650, 000, leaving her the 80, 000 ish that she donated or like gave for them to open up the bar. It was such a weird thing. They changed. so little in a lot of ways in the film that I just thought it was weird. Like, why would you change the amount that they took?

Like, that’s so weird. So going back to changes, the film briefly shows you Nick and Margo’s dad and mom, so they are divorced. We see a scene where the father. Alzheimer’s ridden, has escaped assisted living, he’s at the police station, actually, while Nick is being questioned and they don’t realize Nick is there, he doesn’t get service, so he like, gets really upset that his dad’s just been like, in the police station all day he’s a jerk, he calls women by very degrading names, Nick is Terrified that he will become like his father in the book.

None of that is like part of the film. I think that you just like really, really briefly see their dad and then you move on in the book. There’s like multiple times where he gets out of assisted living and Nick finds him and has to take him home and like all this stuff. And then we see Nick’s. And goes, Mom, Maureen, who has passed away in the present, she is already gone.

But we see when they go back to like the scene where they move into their new rental house, Margot and Maureen are standing there, she’s got like, you know, a scarf on her head, and There was like a little scene where they were helping them move in and then we do see a movie only scene With a wake for Maureen after her passing.

So they’re like at Nick and Amy’s house when you see all that 

[00:27:17] Donna: it was at this point for me in my first watch and read of these That I thought oh They’re both Really? They have a lot of emotional baggage On both sides of their lives, I can see doesn’t, it’s not an excuse for making bad decisions. I’m not saying that’s okay, but I could totally see where the author, how the author developed their character and showed you their background and why they both struggled in the ways that they did.

So she did accomplish that, at least for me to show me, Oh, dad was absent. They divorce. Mom took up the slack for everything. She, every mom made everything. Okay. She required him to be nice to people. And so he was always awkward with people cause he never wanted to come across mean, but he had feelings and he got, you know, that kind of thing.

And then, like we said before, Amy’s background, psychological nightmare. So I just thought that was interesting, but it was at that point. Where I thought, Oh, yeah, I can see why they’re so messed up. Yeah, 

[00:28:27] Tim: their problems are legitimate. OK, so going back to Amy’s disappearance in the present, Nick becomes increasingly worried as evidence starts to point to him as the perpetrator of whatever has happened to his wife.

Crime scene investigation found a poorly cleaned blood spill and inconsistencies as though the area was badly staged to look like an abduction. Nick has no good alibi, claiming he spent the morning of Amy’s disappearance at the beach. During news conferences and a search party organization, Nick awkwardly smiles at the wrong times.

Takes inappropriate selfies with women who’ve shown up to help search and seems apathetic and disconnected from the fact that his wife is missing. Contrasted against her obviously worried parents, Rand and Mary Beth, and that kind of speaks to what Don was talking about, you know, that He, he’s doing all the wrong things at the wrong times because he’s trying to be nice when he should be grieving, you know, he’s trying to, to be friendly when he should be concerned.

That sort of thing. 

[00:29:34] Rebekah: I was trained to smile when a camera was pointed at my face and why, you know, I get all that. And Ben Affleck pulled that off. 

[00:29:41] Donna: I thought he was very convincing as that he’s a good looking guy, but he’s not necessarily into himself. He didn’t seem like he was. Self centered like that sure, but he did come across well as awkward and not exactly not kind of socially awkward almost The time period in the morning when Nick was at Sawyer Beach, and it’s very obvious they don’t want the viewer or the reader to really know if he was at Sawyer Beach, but supposedly between the time he left the house in the morning.

And the time he finds out something’s gone wrong, he’s supposed to be at Sawyer Beach. And so it was reduced down to like over an hour, where in the book, he was supposedly there most of the morning. In the film, he says later, he actually did go there to think about their marriage and decided he really did want a divorce.

[00:30:41] Tim: At the beginning of the film, I think it was less effective than it should have been when Nick walked out of his house and he was looking at people around the town and all. Because in the book, it’s very, very clear that the town is impoverished, lots of people out of work, lots of homes are unoccupied, but the filmmaker They’re in 

[00:31:01] Rebekah: this neighborhood where there’s like nobody there but them, other than a few other folks.

The 

[00:31:04] Tim: filmmaker chose to f to film the scene as if it’s It’s just the sun is just beginning to rise. And so there aren’t people around, which makes it seem more like a quaint little town where people just haven’t quite gotten up yet. It doesn’t, it doesn’t convey that this is a, that this is an impoverished place.

And Amy hates being there cause it’s, you know, it’s all about that kind of thing. Just like when in the film. She gave them money from the trust fund. It was just so small, it was just such a tiny piece. They didn’t take much time on it, you know, so it almost goes unnoticed. 

[00:31:40] Rebekah: Which is interesting because there’s like a whole thing later where one of the police officers kind of insults Nick because he’s trying to ask like, well, there’s all these homeless people around here, the economy so bad, like, you know what I mean?

Like he mentions it in the film. 

[00:31:53] Josiah: I think the Missouri town in the film is a different character. 

[00:31:58] Rebekah: I would say that’s fair. 

[00:32:00] Josiah: When the police confront Nick But Amy’s so called best friend, Noelle Hawthorne, I thought that, I think it was Casey Wilson. She was on SNL for a few years. But I really enjoyed the Noelle Hawthorne character.

Nick, in the book, mentions that Amy might have met Noelle, but that the two were not friends. Nick recounts internally that Amy discussed how much she could not stand that particular neighbor. In the film, Nick claims To not have ever heard the name. Which I do think I like the book version a little better.

It’s, I, I, I mean, I guess it’s reasonable that Nick literally has no idea about his surroundings. I guess that makes thematic sense. But logically speaking, how do you not know any of your neighbors in a relatively small Missouri town? 

[00:32:49] Rebekah: Yeah, I think especially with what dad said with like the fact that there were very few occupied houses in their neighborhood to begin with, it made more sense that in the book, he’s like.

In his head going she didn’t like know. Well, what are you talking about? Like in the movie, it felt a little weird that she, he’d never heard of her. Which seems to be the truth in the, in the film, the way that that’s written. But I didn’t like that. 

[00:33:14] Donna: Well, to me, him never knowing her just added to Amy’s.

Psychoticness. I mean, to me, I thought, wow, you would think at least one time you’d hear from Noelle, you’d hear the phone ring and it was Noelle or something. Sure. But that doesn’t sound like that at all. So to me, it just kind of ramped up her, her madness and how plot, how she plotted this out. But Amy’s journal entries continue to weave a story of unraveling marriage.

Nick wanted children, then he didn’t want them, he ignores her, he’s never home, you know, he’s going out and she wants to go with him, oh, it’d be so boring, you’d hate it, he shoves her, he knocks her down, he causes memorable, if not permanent, damage an injury to her. 

[00:34:05] Rebekah: Yeah, I, I, I thought that the journal entries here I, in the very first watch through of this, like I said, I suspended my disbelief.

I don’t think I remember, like, I didn’t know from the previews what was going on. And so at this point, I’m like, this guy’s a monster. The scene in the film where he pushes her, so good, like so compelling. 

[00:34:26] Josiah: Yeah, it fades in and out, like, it reminded me of a trailer for the Aliens horror movie. 

[00:34:33] Rebekah: Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So in the journal entries, there’s a few that are in the book, but not in the film. In the first of these, Amy goes with Maureen, his mom, to donate plasma with some friends. But Amy can’t donate because she’s deathly afraid of needles. Oh, and tells everybody. And this was also part of how she was kind of talking about that she was like the one that was always spending time with Maureen, even though it was Nick’s mom, she was the one kind of tasked with taking care of her, blah, blah, blah.

In another of the book only journal entries, Amy describes a brief, very intense illness that Noelle sees her have. That sounds very much like antifreeze poisoning. And then she writes out the story of a day when Nick seemed to come back to her, acting just like he had when they were first married and she gets all excited.

Maybe I have my marriage back. Amy was worried, she writes down, because she’d seen him going through her file box and was originally worried that he would ask her about taking out like a second mortgage or some other thing that was like against money. And so just to note, that scene was used to correspond with the fact that the police come to Nick and say, Hey, you increased Amy’s life insurance, like you filed it and he says, Oh, I, I didn’t like, I filed it because she told me I needed to do that.

And so we see the insurance policy mentioned in the film, but not where Amy like saw him rifling through paperwork and thought, Oh, what is he going to ask for? 

[00:36:00] Tim: Well, in the book, before he realizes he is. Almost certainly been set up to take the fall for Amy’s disappearance. Nick goes with Amy’s father and a couple of other men to the town’s abandoned mall, a gathering place now for the homeless and drug addicted.

They learn that Amy also visited the mall months earlier and attempted, unsuccessfully, to buy a gun. After Nick’s insistence After Nick’s insistence, the police visit the same place and learn about Amy trying to procure a firearm. The movie simply shows the police going to the mall to learn this information.

In general, Marybeth and Rand are present very little throughout the film. 

[00:36:43] Rebekah: Yeah, 

[00:36:44] Tim: this was one 

[00:36:44] Rebekah: of the really interesting ways I thought you got to know her dad in the book. So I get why they didn’t have them as much in it, but I, yeah, that was a really interesting 

[00:36:52] Josiah: Well, Nick eventually does follow that second clue that Amy left him, which leads to his father’s unoccupied home.

Now, am I correct? I do believe in both book and film, he lies to the cops, says he doesn’t know what it is. And yeah, he doesn’t 

[00:37:09] Rebekah: understand what it means and then follow it. And he’s like, I’m going to find those straight 

[00:37:12] Josiah: over. Yeah. 

[00:37:13] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:37:14] Josiah: And when the alarm goes off his dad’s house and his dad’s unoccupied house, cause his dad’s at the assisted living facility, Nick tries entering the code.

He knows to turn it off, but it’s unsuccessful and ends up on the phone with the alarm company. It’s a little different from book to film. I think. Mom, what were you saying? How are you saying it was different in versus book to film 

[00:37:34] Donna: when the alarm goes off at Nick’s dad’s house, he’s able to get the company to turn it off over the phone.

It comes up later in the police investigation, but not that night in the film, the police find him there and ask him about, he also doesn’t have an opportunity to search the house in the film in the way he does in the book, he was able to go through and look around in. And, and try to uncover looking 

[00:37:59] Rebekah: for how he’s like looking for clues that she’s left and things that she’s doing to set him up.

[00:38:06] Donna: This is unfortunate for Nick in both the book and film because his father’s furnace contains a partially burned diary written by Amy. The entries in the journal are in fact the ones we read in part one of the book. And this is where things. Started coming together a little better for me. Like, I knew, I, I knew what was going on by this time in general, but I think, I thought this scene in the film was a great bit of, oh my gosh, turn the alarm off.

Get it off, please. Just shut it off. Mm-hmm . You know, and, and I thought that, I thought it was a good thing to see him react harshly. You know, he’s, he’s losing control. And you needed to see some of that, because you still needed to think that he was just a doofus, horrific man. 

[00:38:58] Rebekah: I liked the fact that at this point I think it’s when Detective Boney, she’s like, huh?

Like the other guy, Gilpin’s like, oh my gosh, like we have this diary. It’s everything we need. Look, she’s afraid of him, blah, blah, blah. And Boney’s like, Oh, this is a little too obvious. Like how he tried to burn it. And Boney’s like well, not well. Why wouldn’t you make sure it was burned if you came over here to burn?

And like it’s when you actually see that she’s like. This is weird. And I think it’s a little later that she says something along the lines of like, Yeah, it’s kind of weird when we start a murder investigation and find something labeled clue one when investigating. Like, you know, and so I appreciated that they painted her as someone who like had her head on.

Yeah, she’s very 

[00:39:46] Tim: cool. I love Bono. Definitely. Well, Nick follows a third clue in the book that is cut from the film altogether. This clue leads him to a spot in Hannibal, Missouri, famous for Mark Twain. It is a nearby town where he and Amy had a rare good day together, visiting his childhood haunts.

This later becomes the place where the police find a discarded purse of Amy’s. Conveniently thrown off the bridge, but onto the land. 

[00:40:18] Rebekah: The shore, so that it was findable. 

[00:40:21] Josiah: Yeah, I feel like I was reading this in the book, and I don’t think that’s in the movie. And I, I like this in the book, but I get cutting 

[00:40:31] Rebekah: it.

I think that trying to describe the whole like thing about the purse and then when like the fact that they set him up to be going there the day after she gets, like Amy set him up to go there the day after she got kidnapped or whatever they thought was happening. Like I understood it in the book, but I think that it would have been very hard to show on screen and I thought the other stuff was already very compelling.

Like they didn’t need to add that. In my opinion. So I thought it made sense to skip that. Also they, I will say in this kind of, at this point you realize in the movie, if you’ve read the book already, they do share a lot of the clues. A lot of the text is very like similar to how it’s laid out in the book, but we do also skip this thing that’s happening in Nick’s inner monologue where the clues also have stuff about how I’m amazed by you, I’m in awe, you’re so witty, like, and she’s complimenting him.

And he’s like, I know. In this, I feel like I’m getting set up, but at the same time, I feel like I’m falling in love again. Like, I’m, I’m feeling affection towards her. Like, with, cause he thought, oh, she was trying to rekindle our marriage. Like, stuff like that. So, then, as that was all happening. At this point, we are greeted with the unwelcome discovery that Nick, the doofus, has been cheating on his wife.

So if there was any vestige of like, Oh, he’s cool, or I like this guy, you kind of lose it at this point. He’s been cheating on his wife for a year and a half with Andy and early 20 something he met when he was a, she was a student of his at the local college. He taught creative writing, and so he, the mid.

Mid, late thirties, mid thirties guy starts dating a young, early twenty, late 

[00:42:17] Tim: thirties because he makes mention of the fact that there’s not a lot of time for her to, for his wife to get pregnant because she’s thirty seven or thirty eight. Right, 

[00:42:25] Rebekah: and so, as it turns out, when this comes to light and he starts to look at everything in light of it the scavenger hunt clues were not, in fact, Meant to rekindle their marriage.

They were meant to show Nick that Amy knew of many of the places where he had had this illicit affair. Oh, and lest we not forget, the red panties we found in Nick’s office. They are not Amy’s after all. They’re the wrong size. 

[00:42:52] Josiah: Mm hmm. They, no, the panties were actually made to look like Andy’s. In the film, but we read in the book that they’re actually the wrong size for both of his partners.

In the book. We learned that Nick was never, he never actually went to the beach the morning Amy went missing. He actually snuck off to see Andy and then went to an abandoned house, one of many, around after the housing crash to look at his old magazine clippings and relive his glory days. Just the most pitiful possible thing.

[00:43:24] Donna: Ugh. That sounds 

[00:43:25] Josiah: very sad. Pitiful is a 

[00:43:26] Rebekah: good word. 

[00:43:27] Donna: Book Andy has a bizarrely relatable quality of asking about how Amy is and talking about Amy and caring about Amy’s well being, which I found 

[00:43:40] Rebekah: weirdly off putting. Which I think is one of the reasons that Nick liked her. I think it was one of the weird things that he found attractive about her because he’s awful.

He’s just a despicable human. 

[00:43:52] Donna: But in the film, she rushes into Go’s house and Quickly finds a way to get off her shirt and have sex with Nick. I know Josh like picks up 

[00:44:03] Rebekah: the remote. We do not watch sex scenes on movies. We like fast forward them if we can’t watch them on VidAngel. And he was like, Oh, I gotta grab the remote!

Get it quick! Cause it’s very fast. Yeah. This 

[00:44:15] Donna: whole relationship, she kind of comes out of nowhere. Because he hasn’t told anybody, even his twin sister. In the movie, he’s like, Just like, you’ve got to go, I mean, you know, real quick, real quick, you gotta go and rushes her out of the house. And then he turns around and there’s Margo standing in front of the refrigerator and she’s literally furious at him and curses and calls him many names.

And it’s at this point for the next while, not the whole time, but for the next little while as you go along, Margo starts to doubt him. And that is weird because. She’s his, she’s his anchor at this point. She’s the only one holding him down. That he’s not just totally flying off the rails and being stupid and, and, and all that.

So, I thought that was another, that was another very clever conflict in the story. 

[00:45:13] Tim: Nick continues to try finding other possible explanations for who would have taken Amy including paying a visit to her high school ex boyfriend, Desi Collings. Meanwhile, the story looks worse for him. Credit card bills show up with tons of purchases that are nowhere to be found in the house, and there are more inconsistencies with Nick’s story in the crime scene.

It’s like he can’t speak the truth, so it keeps coming back to haunt him. These are lies. You lied about this little thing. You lied about that little thing. Why did you lie? I don’t know. I just needed to lie. He lied. 

[00:45:52] Rebekah: He said in the book. He said in the book that he’s like like the first time the police come and they ask him just like the first few questions, I believe they walk out or something.

And in the book, his internal monologue is like, that was, that was the first lie I told the police. And I’m like, why, why are we starting? Like what are you doing? He’s such, I mean, 

[00:46:12] Tim: he was so embarrassed about, about just going to this abandoned house and reading his old magazine articles that he could, that he told them he was somewhere Wasn’t and nobody could prove that he was there.

I mean, it would have been pitiful, but it would have been wiser to tell the truth. I mean, he was having an affair. So he’s living a lie day after day. So I get, I get that, 

[00:46:38] Rebekah: which I guess is the point. Like he’s already like his life is such a lie already. Like that’s why he has to lie more. But 

[00:46:46] Josiah: well, when Nick visits Desi in the book.

They actually have an extended conversation where Desi’s mother, Jacqueline, is present. The film shows this scene much shorter. Nick never goes into the house, and Jacqueline is not present, nor is she ever seen in the film, which is a little bit important because Jacqueline’s appearance, Jacqueline’s appearance is very important to Desi’s affection towards Amy, in that they look alike.

They look like Amy in 40 years. I forgot about 

[00:47:15] Donna: that. 

[00:47:16] Rebekah: Yep. Yep. Yep. 

[00:47:16] Donna: Yep. 

[00:47:17] Josiah: Nick, Nick was like, Oh my goodness, my wife in 40 years is his mother. 

[00:47:21] Donna: Yeah. In another attempt to find somebody else to end this on, Nick also speaks with Tommy, Amy’s boyfriend before Nick, to learn that Amy set Tommy up to be charged with rape.

In the book, she dropped the charges after ensuring that Tommy knew she had control over the situation. Whereas in the movie, Tommy shares that he was actually charged with a crime, had to bleed down so he would not spend time in jail. However, it ruined his life because he has to show himself as a reg, he has to register everywhere he moves or tries to work as a sex offender.

And he makes a big deal about like, she just, she basically ruined his life. I did think that was a pretty cool scene. I’m very glad they put that in there. 

[00:48:15] Rebekah: I thought it was interesting that they made the, like, what she did to him so much more Strong in the film, but I think it’s probably because they cut the other person that Nick got to know.

Yeah, so there was a, there was a book only person, Hilary Handy, that came up as like someone that Amy, basically her parents brought it up. Yeah, her parents brought it up as someone who had like quote stalked her or something, or like had been weird in the past. And so Hillary was a childhood friend of Amy’s.

I think this was in middle or high school, I don’t remember. It might have been high school. So Amy accused her of pushing her down the stairs. Was it in college? 

[00:48:56] Tim: I think it was college because she, she said that, you know, she came there and it seemed like all of them had grown up together almost because she went to an Ivy League university.

And she was from down south, 

[00:49:08] Rebekah: so she was becoming like, according to Amy’s story to her parents who had heard the most about this before it all comes up to Nick she had become increasingly unhinged. She was trying to imitate Amy at one point, Amy likes, or Hillary called Amy’s mom and was like saying that she wanted to become amazing Amy and like all this stuff.

She’s being your 

[00:49:31] Tim: daughter now. 

[00:49:32] Rebekah: Yeah. And so Nick’s conversation with her, now a wife and mom, revealed a similarly concerning story like Tommy’s. She describes how Amy treated her, Hillary, as a friend. She encouraged her to do several strange things, and she just said, I kind of did it, like, we were just, you know, doing stuff, like weird, like I didn’t find it that weird in the moment.

Colored your 

[00:49:52] Tim: hair like mine, bought clothes. Yeah. Let’s buy these clothes. We encouraged 

[00:49:56] Rebekah: all of it. Yeah, and so and then, Later, you know, Hillary’s like, I never did this, then Amy accused me of pushing her down the stairs, and she said something along the lines of, like, this girl was willing to break her own ribs just to make the story believable and so yeah, like we said, that character’s not in the film, but I think that that might be why they made Tommy’s story so much Like worse, you know what I mean?

Just to kind of drive home the point that, that this girl, Amy, has a history of setting people up. Yes. Of doing things like this. Now I’m starting 

[00:50:30] Donna: to think about this. There’s Able Andy, and then there’s Girlfriend Andy, and there’s Hillary Handy. I’m like, Oh my, let’s come on Jillian, you needed to have a talk with J.

K. Rowling and get some different names or something. 

[00:50:45] Josiah: Funny enough, her name is Gillian, not Jillian. 

[00:50:48] Donna: It’s not Jillian. I’m so glad you corrected me now that I’ve said it probably four times. 

[00:50:55] Josiah: Who 

[00:50:55] Donna: cares? 

[00:50:56] Josiah: She’s not, she’s not important enough. 

[00:50:57] Donna: Okay. The pranks, the pranks are going to be on you next, buddy. 

[00:51:01] Tim: Well, there is a crime scene issue with an Ottoman in the book that seems to continue pointing to Nick as guilty.

It’s brought up several times throughout the story. Another book only issue with Nick’s story is a neighbor who heard them arguing loudly the night before Amy went missing. Nick recounts that the argument was bizarre, that Amy forced it very uncharacteristically, and came back to him later, but very quietly.

Apologize for it. So the neighbor heard the argument. The ottoman is funny to me because they don’t, they don’t do a lot with it in the film, but it is there. The ottoman is there. Yes, it’s turned over. And it’s the fact that I think they replaced it. That it’s, it’s bottom heavy. And so it wouldn’t have fallen over easily.

You couldn’t have knocked it over easily. You just kind of kick it and it stays on its place. It just like slides across the floor. As opposed to, oh, it’s turned over. It’s like it. 

[00:52:01] Rebekah: I think it was quicker for them to replace that with Boney. Like she stomps on the ground and two pictures fall on the mantle and she said, weird, these were, these were up on the mantle like they didn’t fall.

And so I thought that that was a very fast way to show that the crime scene was potentially staged. The ottoman thing had to be ex Explained. You know what I mean? 

[00:52:24] Josiah: Correct. I get that. At a vigil held for Amy, Nick actually claims in the film to have had nothing to do with the disappearance of his wife, which is so 

[00:52:35] Rebekah: awkward 

[00:52:36] Josiah: to say that.

Yeah, just before Noelle Hawthorne, the best friend, demands in front of the crowd to know What he’s done with his pregnant wife. In the book, he doesn’t explicitly say that he had nothing to do with her disappearance in this setting, although it is, this is the point at which Amy’s pregnancy is discovered.

Medical records from a recent visit of Amy’s to a doctor confirm she was going to have a child, which her journal claimed. Was something Nick would become violent in order to prevent. 

[00:53:05] Donna: Hmm. Dang. 

[00:53:06] Tim: Another nail in Nick’s coffin. 

[00:53:10] Donna: Did you find it weird that Boney, like, tried to avoid her? It seemed like every time Noelle came in, why wouldn’t she just say, we can talk?

[00:53:20] Tim: Well, she did at one point. That 

[00:53:21] Rebekah: is interesting. But she told us she’d come back in 30 minutes and, you know. You never ended up seeing them. And I 

[00:53:28] Donna: was just like, is it? It just seems like once Nick said he’d never heard of this woman, but then if they had, if it had shown them talking, because at some point they did talk to her, but if it is shown them talking, then you wouldn’t have had this pregnancy reveal at this, at this rally.

So I mean, I get that, but I just thought it was kind of interesting. Maybe that was to show a little bit more of how Boney was really trying to stay in his court. Yeah, I could see that. Maybe. 

[00:54:01] Josiah: I think that from a filmmaking perspective, although maybe they could have made it make more narrative sense.

I do think for the audience, it is supposed to be a signal that Boney sees through the, the weirdnesses that any sort of criminal mastermind might have laid. 

[00:54:24] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:54:24] Josiah: So it’s supposed to make us respect Boney more for seeing through that. It didn’t line up just a little too easily. Yeah, whereas the media just jumps on all of it.

[00:54:33] Rebekah: Well, Nick, at this point. Ish realizes the evidence is like mounting against him. In the movie, you see him tell bony, you know, I’m not going to talk to you again without my lawyer. So he says I have to hire an attorney. So he chooses Tanner Bolt, a lawyer famously known for defending men accused of harming or killing their partners.

At Bolt’s request, Nick does an interview with a sympathetic reporter although this was originally going to be this plan where Nick was going to reveal the affair with Andy before it came out unfortunately, as he is literally about to sit down with this reporter Andy goes on television to have a press conference and foils his plan to do the big reveal at this point.

And he does a good job during that interview, even though it turns out being his like. Reaction, basically and they, you know, there’s a lot, this is actually the point at which people start to become slightly more sympathetic with him, which I thought was interesting. 

[00:55:32] Donna: Oh, it was interesting. You mentioned Tanner Bolt.

Tyler Perry portrayed this character and he was not interested in doing this film and he didn’t know anything about the book and he didn’t know the potential of it as much as the producers and the director were looking at. Yeah. But his and so his agent didn’t tell him some things about it. He had some weird thing about, I can’t remember if it was being in a strong ensemble cast or something, whatever.

And his agent knowing some of that stuff and knowing he would like flatly refuse kept it from him. And so then he went ahead and accepted it and afterwards said it was definitely the right thing. He was glad he did it. But I thought it was interesting because It was a great part for him. I thought he, I thought did 

[00:56:30] Rebekah: really well.

Yeah. He was compelling, relatable, like, and you didn’t feel like he was a sleazy attorney, which I feel like in the book it’s like, this is someone you’re supposed to think is not the greatest person. But he’s filthy rich. Tyler Perry 

[00:56:44] Josiah: was very likable. 

[00:56:47] Donna: Yeah. I agree. 

[00:56:48] Josiah: In fact, by the end of the film, Tyler Perry Is the most audience avatar of anyone, maybe besides Margo, but Tyler Perry is the one reacting as if he’s an audience member watching the movie.

Like, 

[00:57:03] Rebekah: man, this 

[00:57:03] Josiah: is 

[00:57:03] Donna: crazy. 

[00:57:03] Josiah: It is true. 

[00:57:05] Rebekah: Y’all are insane. Yeah. 

[00:57:08] Donna: Yeah. That’s one of my favorite lines. Y’all are one of the most effed up couples I’ve ever met, and that is my, my whole career is working with that. So Andy and Nick only meet one time in the film, where in the book they actually meet twice. The second time is after Tanner has told Nick he needs to break off the relationship and, you know, you have to let it go.

And even though Nick, it’s just so funny because his 

[00:57:36] Rebekah: idea was like to not do that, right? Because he was going to be like, well, maybe later and he said, but, but I love her. And they were all like, idiot. You don’t love her. Tanner says like three sentences, oh you gotta break up. He says three sentences and Nick goes, you know I don’t love her.

Like he was so easily able to just let it go after like the smallest bit of pushback. 

[00:58:00] Donna: Yeah, well in the book at their second meet, Meet up, Andy bites him, leaving a mark on his cheek because she’s mad at him. And so he has to tell somebody who notices he’s got red mark on his cheek. He has hives. 

[00:58:16] Rebekah: So if anybody asks him, one person goes, those look like bite marks.

He goes, they’re hives. Is that it really looks like bite marks. They’re hives. Like 

[00:58:23] Tim: Amy’s mom. 

[00:58:24] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:58:25] Donna: But in the film, after his meeting or his little tryst with Andy at Margo’s house. The next time we see her is she’s at the press conference where Nick cries out and then they come back and say, that’s when Noel says, oh, she’s pregnant.

And so then finally, I think it’s probably her last, I think it’s her last appearance. She gives a press conference, Nick see, he doesn’t know anything about it and they’ve been trying to let him uncover it, according to Tanner. That would be smarter if he’s the one that came, came clean about it, but she beats him to the, to the punch by about a day.

She gives a press conference. She reveals their tryst. And in the movie, the press conference has Amy’s parents standing there beside her. I don’t know why. I don’t understand that. I was so weird. And because they’re just kind of standing back there like, are we, what are we doing here? But in the book, there’s no indication that they ever interact with her.

[00:59:28] Tim: Well, it is apparently a good time for an attorney, because the suspicious credit card purchases on the accounts with late payments all show up in one spot at the same time in Go’s shed in her backyard. Nick found them based on the third clue. In the book, the one he found in Hannibal, and in the film, the clue from his dad’s house.

The receipts and the unopened boxes of goodies all match up, convincing the police that he’s been hiding his money and spending issues after all. Even Margo doubts him briefly, which bruises Nick’s confidence more than anything else has. Losing 

[01:00:08] Rebekah: Go’s respect was like, kind of, it was a huge deal. 

[01:00:13] Josiah: Yeah, very tough.

[01:00:15] Donna: You almost get the thought that. He starts thinking himself, did, did I do this? Did I, did I do this? Did I forget 

[01:00:22] Josiah: about, I may not 

[01:00:23] Rebekah: remember. Do I have multiple personalities? Really? I feel like I did 

[01:00:27] Tim: this. That’s an alternative book. 

[01:00:30] Rebekah: Are you guys ready for this? This is the big one. Okay. Oh no. Around the time Nick hires an attorney, the book and film drop the biggest bombshell yet.

Amy is alive. She has been alive the whole time. Skank ho. She, Amy, set all of this up, planning for Nick to take the fall before she would commit suicide. Which was her original plan for some reason. She learned of the affair between Nick and Andy, and decided that because he actually did murder her soul, that Nick deserved to be set up.

[01:01:12] Tim: So 

[01:01:12] Rebekah: it’s at this point, this is like, I don’t know, halfway through the book? Let me look, let me look at where it is. It’s 

[01:01:17] Josiah: a little less than halfway. 

[01:01:18] Rebekah: We Finally, get to hear from the real Amy. Amy’s inner monologue reveals that her journal entries, which we have read this whole time as just her thoughts, like most of the later story, were fabricated as part of her carefully laid plans.

Yes, Nick and I were happy in the beginning, but Nick never pushed her. Nick never told her he didn’t want a baby. It’s in fact her that wanted no baby. Amy isn’t actually afraid of having her blood drawn. She set it up that way over a long con that a lot of people knew about so that an OB GYN would be okay with doing a simple urine test rather than a blood test.

Why does that matter, you ask? Because the urine used in the pregnancy test she took at the doctor’s office was also fake. Oh! Amy set up her supposedly best friend, She’s a disgrace! Noelle Hawthorne, during one of their frequent visits when she knew Noelle was pregnant, so that she could save the urine and use it at the doctor’s.

No! And yes, she does hate Noelle, by the way. 

[01:02:22] Josiah: Amy is so cool. 

[01:02:23] Rebekah: She set up the fake crime scene and made sure to send Nick off to a spot where he’d have no alibi. She suggested he go there. Now, Amy is staying in a remote place in the Ozarks, hair dyed and cut, gaining weight as she eats whatever she feels like, and whenever she feels like it.

Wow. 

[01:02:40] Josiah: And Rosamund Pike actually did gain that weight. 

[01:02:44] Donna: Do you remember the first time you read this, and you get to this part, and you First, okay, she’s alive, what, and then you get into the, some of these other things like the, watching the video of how to drain the, the commode tank. So it’s dry and it wouldn’t flush.

So she had Nicole’s urine. Oh my gosh. And that means she had to get in there and get it in a cup. She could have pooped. Oh, right, exactly. What if she pooped? Pregnant women poop. 

[01:03:16] Josiah: Pregnant women do 

[01:03:19] Donna: poop. I mean, it’s not like they stop. No, 

[01:03:22] Josiah: all the poop gets stored in the womb and it forms the baby. Oh, that’s it.

We 

[01:03:27] Tim: need to go over the birds and the bees. 

[01:03:30] Rebekah: We need to stop. Ooh, he’s not married yet. So at least we found this out in time. I saw this movie like when it came out, so it’s been a decade since I’d seen it. So I, I remembered that she had some treachery. I did not remember the degree to which it went, if I’m being totally honest.

I read the book and finished it. I do about this kind of thing. So when I read this and I finished it. Like, before I watched the movie today, I finished it yesterday, I think. When I got to this point, I was just like, So, Nick sucks, he’s bad, but also, he did not kill her, and she sucks, and is bad. Why do I care?

Like at this point, I just, oh, yeah, it would be great if he got caught. She got caught. They all went to jail. I just want you to know how this book made me feel. I finished this book at like 8 30 p. m. last night. I walked or no, it was like nine o’clock because I walked upstairs in Texas when I know what time I texted them.

I walk upstairs with another book that’s the next, I have this big like next read list. I walk upstairs to the next book, I sit down, I read the entire next book I wanted to read. Just to cleanse myself of this book of Gone Girl. I literally was that like, like at that point. Wow, because it was so difficult for me to because I didn’t care.

I hated both of them. But like this was the point which it just like switches for me. And I’m like, oh, 

[01:05:00] Donna: and you were a lot younger when you watched it. Yeah, I mean, 10 years of your, a lot happens in 10 years. 

[01:05:06] Tim: This is, has been difficult to listen to for me. It’s been, it’s been one of those that it’s like, I have to intersperse it with other things that I’m listening to.

And. 

[01:05:18] Rebekah: Cause it’s just so graphic. Yeah, 

[01:05:20] Tim: and it, it’s just like, it’s just. A sinful world, and it’s like, okay, who’s the good guy? Nobody. 

[01:05:29] Rebekah: The dead mom. Boney, I guess, and the dead mom. Hey, and the attorney. He was nice. Yeah, but he’s supposed to be a sleazeball. Tyler Perry just can’t pull off the sleaze part. He’s too relatable.

[01:05:46] Josiah: Yeah. Well, I absolutely adore this book. I I I see so much of that’s why we did it. I see so much of myself in Nick and Amy . 

[01:05:56] Rebekah: I literally need you to never say that If it’s true , like 

[01:05:59] Josiah: I don’t want to know that you are a horrible person, and I think that deep down inside all of you have Nick and Amy inside of you too.

[01:06:08] Rebekah: Hmm. I rebuke that in the name of Jesus. I do not receive it, . I do not allow that to be spoken over me. Please. Thank you. 

[01:06:14] Josiah: Yeah, this is great. I was so sad when this ended. It was the, the ending of the book. I was just like, 

oh no, that’s the end? 

Yeah, I mean both really. But the book was like, 

oh no, I want to listen to more about how they’re gonna make it work.

[01:06:29] Tim: How they’re going to torture each other for the rest of their lives. She 

[01:06:33] Donna: should write a sequel of their kid being like 15 and he just axe murders both of them. 

[01:06:39] Tim: Yeah. Yeah, 

[01:06:40] Donna: go for it. 

[01:06:41] Tim: Yeah, he’s 15, and they all go down a trip on the Mississippi on one of those stern wheels, and 

[01:06:48] Josiah: they don’t make it. Well, let me tell ya, in the faking her death scene in the film, Amy uses an IV kit that she stole from the OB GYN to collect her own blood.

In the book, she cuts her arm badly to create the blood she would then clean up. Amy dyes her hair brown in the book, whereas she dyes it a mousy, dirty blonde in the film. Not 

[01:07:12] Rebekah: that different than her real hair color, by the way. It was not good. Not different enough. 

[01:07:16] Josiah: I don’t think so, yeah. Chelsea uses a hammer in the movie to blacken her own eyes!

[01:07:22] Rebekah: Solidifying 

[01:07:23] Josiah: her new identity as an abused woman is very visceral. I literally 

[01:07:27] Rebekah: like, I can’t, it’s like one of those things that you just have to like, I like can’t even look at this thing. 

[01:07:32] Donna: But at this point, we should have also remembered Hilary Handy said, I’m pretty sure she threw herself down a set of stairs to break her rib.

To, yeah, something 

[01:07:41] Josiah: to break her arm, break her 

[01:07:43] Donna: own arm. So it’s like, okay, 

[01:07:45] Josiah: wow. Yes. In the film, she also talks about how her partner cheated on her. But in the book, she was very careful not to indicate in any way that she might have been anything like Amy on the news. And I do think I was watching this in the movie.

And I do think that there’s something powerful about when she’s talking about how She found out that Nick was cheating on her to whatever her name is at the hotel. 

Greta. 

Greta. What an awful name. Greta. Sorry to anyone named Greta. It’s a, it’s a harsh German woman’s name, and that’s all. In the film when she’s talking to Greta at the pool about finding out Nick and Andy outside of the bar, and then Nick did something cute on Andy’s chin or something that Nick had done on the show.

The lip thing, that’s right. Nick, that Nick did with Amy on maybe their first date or one of their early dates. I thought there was something powerful about not only seeing from Amy’s perspective. You know, because you’re asking as an audience member, why would you do this? Like, why would you spend all this time trying to ruin this man’s life if he didn’t actually kill you?

And then just I do agree with that. Describing, describing that feeling. What if you saw your partner do something that you do with your partner, cute, that you’ve done since the beginning. And suddenly they’re doing it with someone who’s way, way younger than them. Wouldn’t that make you want to kill them?

[01:09:18] Tim: Nick says something in the book that about the fact that Amy has always been privileged and always feels like she’s above everything. So when people adore her, they’re supposed to, and it’s just normal. That’s just the normal thing that should happen. So for her, it was even deeper. If he betrayed her, are you kidding?

Her? I’m the one who should be betraying you! Yeah. How, how 

[01:09:42] Josiah: dare you? This is, this is unspeakable even. I also think that cinematographically, her describing the cheating at the poolside acts as the first time you see a flashback that’s real. Instead of all of this, instead of this, the hour of flashbacks that have been faked, here’s a real one.

Oh, that’s 

[01:10:08] Rebekah: all pretend. Yeah, that makes sense. I thought that was 

[01:10:11] Josiah: interesting. 

[01:10:12] Rebekah: I, I generally, I mean, you’ll hear what I think in the final verdict. I will say I thought that the part in the Ozarks, like at the cabin slash motel in the book, it’s more clearly like a motel, but at that point when she’s talking to Greta, I think that the movie was a little less compelling that I expected based on what I’d read in the book from Amy’s perspective, because of one thing that I haven’t like necessarily mentioned, but in the book, When you realize she set all this up, like, and she’s talking about all of it, you realize she’s a sociopath.

She decides what kind of persona that she’s going to take on and that’s what she becomes. When she met Nick, she was pretending to be this specific cool girl or whatever. The kind of girl that every guy 

[01:11:03] Tim: likes. Yes. 

[01:11:05] Rebekah: And then she talks about how I have these different personas for these different people and I act this way for people.

And so when she went to the Ozarks and she was at the hotel, she was trying to take on the abused girl persona. And she was like trying to act kind of like Greta. And this is where I lost it. did a little bit because I don’t feel like she pulled that off. I don’t feel like she was acting very different in the film from what you saw in her real and fake flashbacks versus at like at the pool and stuff like that.

She still just seemed vindictive and calculating, but she said in the book, she was trying to act like this wounded girl. And so that was one that I didn’t have a Southern accent. She did, and she did have a black eye, but like, I don’t know, that part was a little bit of a miss for me. Like, they don’t change a ton.

In the film, a lot of the things that they do are pretty spot on. But, I just, you lose that part because you’re not hearing her inner monologue. It reminds me a little bit of why Songbirds and Snakes. When we watch it, it’s a little harder because you don’t know what he’s, the main character, Snow, is thinking.

It’s like a little easier when Coriolanus is like thinking in the book because you know all of the crazy, like, diluted things. But in the film, it’s like, you don’t totally get that. So, if you haven’t read the book, it’s, you know, not quite as impactful. Well, when 

[01:12:23] Tim: you, when you say, oh, it’s so nice to see you, and the inner monologue is, I can’t stand this person.

I can’t stand even being around them. Yeah. 

[01:12:32] Rebekah: Okay, so moving on the plot, Nick gets arrested after the diaries discovered they go through it, realize, you know, feels like the nail in the coffin here, ending with an entry shortly before Amy goes, disappears about how scared she was that he might kill her.

This man might kill me. Oh my gosh. And so he does end up getting out on bond, but you know, he is arrested. They’re moving forward with a case against him. 

[01:12:59] Josiah: Tanner Bolt suggests in the film that they should find Amy, which is something they never even attempted in the book. Tanner’s search for Amy is mentioned a few times in the film.

Did 

[01:13:11] Tim: they not say in the book that, that he had private investigators looking for her 

[01:13:15] Rebekah: though? I don’t remember that at all. Maybe, maybe a 

[01:13:19] Josiah: single mention, but it might have been like a, there’s just no chance we’re gonna find her. 

[01:13:24] Donna: Now we come to the point where it’s Nick’s turn to go on television and he’s going to do an interview.

And so Amy’s getting to see this and she realizes, oh, this version of Nick she’s seeing in the interviews on TV is the Nick she wanted to be married to all along. And she decides she’s not going to kill herself. I think it’s hilarious. Because he calls it so perfectly, he knew that’s what would happen.

And he kind of builds up to that. Just trust me, you know, just, it’s going to be okay. She continues using anonymous tips to put the police on the scent of a few more incriminating problems for Nick. Which, inserting here, kind of suggests that she knows, is smarter, that she’s smarter than the police. Which I think is kind of weird, but then realizes it’s time for her to get the heck out of Dodge When she thinks one of the people she’s been hanging out with might recognize her.

Her two new Quote unquote friends in the Ozarks, Greta and Jeff, Steal Amy’s cash after realizing she’s holding out and not as broke as she seems and that was a very really That was great to see them. You don’t want to see them corner her, but it’s great to see something wrong happened to her. Like her plan, finally, something is a kink in her plan.

[01:14:59] Rebekah: Yeah. And it’s like, Hey, I know they’re committing a crime against her, but first of all, she had just spit in home girls drink. Thank you very much. 

[01:15:07] Donna: In 

[01:15:07] Rebekah: the, 

[01:15:08] Donna: in the book, in the book, 

[01:15:10] Rebekah: she went in the kitchen, she’s spitting her drink 

[01:15:12] Donna: and in her meal. All of her stuff. Yeah. She’s kind of spitting on the liquid.

[01:15:15] Rebekah: And so it’s definitely come up and you’re not supposed to feel bad for Amy, but it’s so funny because I’m like, they’re literally committing a crime against her. And I want them to, because these are actually the people who have been wronged. Like it’s just, Oh, it’s wow. I mean, Amy was wrong, but the way that she turns it against.

The way she turns against people just make me not care. Do you, I can’t tell if you actually like Amy or just think that she’s a compelling villain. Because she really sucks. Like she’s a horrifying person. She’s a whore. I’m sorry. She’s just a compelling villain. I 

[01:15:51] Tim: have no idea what he’s thinking either.

I have no idea. But actually, when I was, when I saw this scene in the movie, I did feel sorry for her. And at the same time, I’m thinking you’re a terrible person. And these are even more terrible. I mean, it’s just like, like I said before, this is, this is filled with people making horrible decisions, doing horrible things.

And it’s just over and over and over. 

[01:16:21] Rebekah: I was sad that I had kind of grown to like Greta a little bit, and then she, you know, becomes a criminal too, and I’m like, oh, okay. She chooses the 

[01:16:29] Josiah: man over her female friend who they, they related over choosing bad men, and she ended up choosing the man instead of going with Amy.

[01:16:39] Donna: In the book, there was the scene where Greta, or where Jeff says you want to make some money only about 50 and they go out at night and get these steal these fish out of this, this guy’s pond and it’s totally illegal. And then sell them to a restaurant or a restaurant. I was 

[01:17:00] Rebekah: like, Oh my gosh. Yeah.

There is also a point around this time, kind of, when you go back to Nick’s point of view. He does an impromptu interview at a bar in Carthage. He meets a friendly young reporter, does the interview half drunk, and somehow manages to come off relatable. Go and Tanner. Yeah, I think it was a little much.

In the book, this was just another way that Amy, like, saw him as, Oh, my husband’s becoming the one I want him to be. 

[01:17:28] Tim: Yes. Well, I think it’s probably because he really realized what was happening. Yeah. Okay. Now, actually attempting to survive with no cash, Amy turns to the only person that she can think of, Desi Collings, 

her 

ex boyfriend who never stopped loving her and has been writing her letters for decades.

So, Desi rescues Amy, but very quickly puts her under his thumb. Gently, as he has her stay in his mansion on the lake with no phone or no vehicle access, he clearly wants her to become the Amy he fell in love with, encouraging her to lose that extra weight, and to get her hair back to its normal color again, and of course dressing in the clothes that he buys for her, and this pushes her more toward falling in love with Nick again.

Ooh, Nick! Your husband? Okay, the one that you’re framing for murder. Realizing that Her husband that she 

[01:18:31] Josiah: swore herself to. 

[01:18:32] Tim: Yes, but she realizes that her husband is the one who treats her the way she truly wanted in the first place. 

[01:18:41] Rebekah: Aww. They’re all insane. I, Neil Patrick Harris, did a great job at playing Desi, first of all.

I will say his performance was phenomenal. I hated that somehow, in some way, you managed to create another villain. How did you even do that? Like, everyone’s a villain, but somehow Desi was the creepiest one. Like 

[01:19:05] Tim: you’re free to do whatever you want as long as I’m right here make sure that I Keep you in my cage 

[01:19:16] Josiah: It’s Amy getting a dose of her own medicine the overly controlling the gaslighting Very upper class and feels like they’re better than everyone 

[01:19:28] Rebekah: Mm hmm You know what?

It is kind of like taking Amy, putting it on steroids, like, I didn’t think about it that way, but that makes sense. Like, she’s actually getting a feel for what she did. 

[01:19:40] Josiah: And it’s mainly for the audience’s benefit. 

[01:19:43] Tim: I have a question, and I don’t want to jump too far forward, hopefully I’m not. Do you think that the ending of that story arc was premeditated?

When she first called him or do you think she was actually hoping to get some money and a little bit of Sympathy from him and then be able to wash her hands of him and move on 

[01:20:08] Rebekah: Personally did not get the impression that it was premeditated I felt like she called out of desperation and then as soon as she realized that he was going to control her She was like this and you’re gonna find out 

[01:20:20] Josiah: in the film Amy verbalizes her internal monologue, as you sometimes have to do in a film, about Andy, as she watches Andy’s press conference while at Desi’s lake house.

The text is mostly from the book, but in the book Amy never said anything aloud that could have implicated her knowledge of any of this to another soul. I do believe She watches Andy’s press conference in the film at the bar where she meets Desi in public. 

[01:20:48] Rebekah: Yeah, I think that that’s correct. The casino.

She watches his interview with Schieber or whatever at Desi’s house. Yes. But it’s reversed in the film. It is 

[01:20:59] Josiah: reversed in the, 

[01:21:00] Tim: in 

[01:21:00] Josiah: the, from the book. Yeah. 

[01:21:01] Tim: Yeah. But in all of those instances, he, he’s trying to kind of get her away from that. Let’s, let’s not watch the rest of this. Let’s just. Go on so we can start our life together.

[01:21:12] Rebekah: When she is like Entranced, watching, and he picks up the remote and turns it off. I’m like, don’t make me feel sympathetic for this woman, I would kill you. Like, don’t do that to me. Don’t you ever 

[01:21:27] Tim: take the remote and turn it off? I was watching that. 

[01:21:30] Rebekah: Okay, so, at this point, we continue flipping back and forth between the two POVs in book and film.

We learn that Nick is still fighting to show his innocence, as Amy is devising a plan to escape from Desi after all. Weeks pass quickly, so we go, like, several days at a time. Up to this point, we’ve gone, like, A few hours or one day at a time and then all of a sudden it’s like five days, 10 days past, whatever.

Amy physically fabricates, and I will not be describing more of how that works, a terrifying alternate reality in which Desi supposedly kidnapped her on the day of and has been keeping her hostage at his lake house, repeatedly raping and starving her. What actually happened is that as she’s creating this evidence, she waits until the day she’s ready to leave, then seduces the very willing Desi into her bed.

This is the first time that they actually sleep together, slicing his throat and leaving him dead in the house. 

[01:22:27] Donna: When she does the camera, the thing on camera, and she’s, you know, she’s paying attention to all the security cameras, and he makes that big deal, you’re safe. There’s cameras literally everywhere.

And she does the thing where She’s gets there in, in the front door and she’s screaming and she sits down in the floor and she’s, you know, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I mean, it, there were just certain moments that just took it to the next level thriller 

[01:22:56] Rebekah: and I do want to, I mean, I agree with that. I didn’t know what she was doing.

And then all of a sudden she starts the fake screaming and I’m like, Oh my God, like, that’s what you’re doing. I think that there is a slight plot hole at this point because. The cameras were recording all the time, and they would have been able to show, like, all of that stuff. For coming in. So somehow, you would have, because she goes and mentions later to the police, like, that they need to look at the cameras.

So she would have had to delete everything except the few things that she wanted them to see. 

[01:23:29] Tim: But she was, she had gotten good at figuring out how to use that control. And she, she did delete it. Yeah, that’s, that’s implied, I think, by the fact that she’s flipping through and learning how to control it and everything, so it only shows the things she wants to be incriminating.

[01:23:50] Josiah: Yeah, in the film, Desi mentions the cameras at his lake house, like, right away, which is one of the things that is a little menacing in those first reactions, but in the book, the cameras are not mentioned. He is certainly given a creepy persona. 

[01:24:05] Rebekah: In the middle of their sexual encounter in the film, Amy slits Desi’s throat.

It is so intense, like It’s at the point and poor guy in the book, it’s less like dramatically violent. She just gives him a drink laced with their sleeping pills after they do the deed waits until he falls asleep and then murders him in his sleep. The 

[01:24:30] Donna: movie version of his death, it accomplishes so much for the, for the feel of this thing.

Cause you’ve, it, exactly what the looks at the TJ had on his face. I can remember, I mean, every time I watch it, you’re just kind of going, Oh, it really takes you by surprise. You just wonder what I thought she would stab him. I thought she would take it and stop 

[01:24:55] Tim: it, 

[01:24:55] Donna: but she didn’t. It was much quicker, but it had to be.

It needed to be messy. It was efficient 

[01:25:00] Rebekah: for her 

[01:25:00] Donna: sake. Yeah, because it covered her. 

[01:25:02] Tim: Now, Amy triumphantly returns home to Nick, covered in blood and clearly the victim of a terrible crime. Oh lord. So, so, Nick knows the truth. And Amy confesses it to him, but it’s quickly clear that Nick will never be able to be free of her.

She plays up to the camera’s outside the house when she comes up, and of course, he whispers in her ear, basically, that he knows what’s happened. So, Detective Boney, who was originally supportive of Nick in the investigation, briefly talks to him about trying to bring Amy down. But she’s no longer allowed to look into this case, as Amy did a great job of accusing the police on the, the police that were on the case, of incompetence.

So Nick is scared of her and won’t sleep in the same room as Amy or even sleep in the house without locking the door. Smart man. And, and knowing she knowing that she’s now committed an actual murder. 

[01:26:07] Rebekah: At this point, she’s never been physically violent towards anyone but herself. That’s right. 

[01:26:12] Tim: Yeah, right.

[01:26:14] Rebekah: And so it’s like she will set people up and gaslight and do all these things. But all of a sudden he’s like, Oh, so she won’t just ruin my life. She’ll literally kill us. 

[01:26:24] Tim: Yeah. 

[01:26:24] Donna: This was a big miss in the film for me. Because two things happened. In the book, her going back and forth with Boney. And making it very clear that they dropped the ball.

That they tortured her husband. That la Okay. That and then the other part and I don’t understand what you don’t like it in the movie. I thought that I don’t think it was as effective in the movie. I think they made more of a deal of boney watching her like standing there with the reporter or the detectives and just kind of looking her like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?

Watching her totally play them and being so disgusted. But after Amy comes back in the book, Jacqueline, who’s Desi’s mother. Storms into the police station and claims that Amy killed her son. She’s hollering, what are you going to do? Nobody believes her because at this point, Amy has completely pulled them into her, to her fantasy.

As she’s seen, she’s just seen as the mother refusing to believe that her son could have committed atrocities like this and, and that he would deserve to be killed or whatever. 

[01:27:36] Josiah: Yeah, it was tough in the book because you had this kind of cool plot point background detail of Desi’s mom being old Amy.

But at the same time, I thought in the book, it’s like, oh yeah, Jacqueline tried real hard to fight for her son’s murder to be avenged. No, she didn’t. 

[01:27:56] Rebekah: Yeah, not really. 

[01:27:57] Josiah: Well, Nick is seen rehearsing his accusations towards Amy in the bathroom mirror just before a big interview with the reporter who most voraciously covered their case in the film.

Ellen Abbott, is that her name? 

[01:28:12] Rebekah: I think so, yeah. Ellen Abbott, 

[01:28:13] Josiah: very, very fun. Kind of the face of the media circus. In the book, this interview isn’t described, but he does write a full length book exposing all of Amy’s sins. A book that never sees the light of day because Amy does get pregnant for real this time.

I will say that him writing a full length book exposing Amy of all her sins is hilarious. And then her revealing that to him, making him throw it away, I thought was poignant in multiple ways, including that he was a failed writer, that he was a writer, and he was gonna like, he came back and he used his talent that he hasn’t been able to use for years to do the right thing, do the thing that would be best for him and Goh and everyone and against this insane woman, and she says, no, I’m still going to make sure you’re impotent in every way, because that’s how I like you.

You’re not allowed to write. 

[01:29:08] Rebekah: That’s wild. I hadn’t thought about that, but that makes sense. One creepy book only wrap up. Creepy, gross, etc. We learn that Amy literally poisons herself with antifreeze earlier in the story. She did not just journal about it. And then she saves her own vomit during that time.

Froze it for later use so that she could have a way of accusing Nick of hurting her again should he cross her. One very small bit that he gets back at her, he discovers the frozen vomit, which is hidden behind the vegetables in the freezer because she would make fun of him for not eating his vegetables, so he would never find it.

He, and he makes a comment in his monologue to himself about how You know, now I eat my vegetables. Now I know how to check for things. I’m not as much of a dummy as before. He cleans out the container and leaves it on the counter so that Amy would know that he found it. And I just, again, it’s just like the level of awful, gross things that she was willing to do were just like, Oh, Oh, so bad.

[01:30:10] Donna: There’s a final nail in this coffin to Nick being stuck in this reality forever. She gets pregnant. But he knows they haven’t had any relations since she came home 

[01:30:23] Josiah: and barely before that. Yeah. 

[01:30:25] Donna: Yeah. And then he realizes she took his donation from the fertility clinic years before and she had kept it, although she convinced him before her disappearance.

That she allowed the clinic to dispose of it. So 

[01:30:43] Josiah: yeah, in the film, he says something like, I saw the notice of disposal in the trash. And she says, yes, you saw the notice and trash. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t call them. 

[01:30:57] Donna: Okay. And then I keep thinking to myself, when is the last thing going to happen?

That you thought you knew how mad she was. Okay, well here, 

[01:31:05] Tim: here goes. The film ends with Go tearfully realizing that Nick will never leave Amy because this child will tie him to her forever. The book, however, goes a bit further, ending after the birth of their child on their sixth anniversary. When we realize that Both Amy and Nick have fully taken on their pretend happy married personas.

Creepy. 

[01:31:41] Josiah: Happily married. Yes, and I did like the final chapter. It was quite understated. But I thought it was a very interesting and powerful take on the final chapter that she said something sweet or something like that. Almost half flirting, and Nick responded the wrong way. He said something like, I’m, I’m so sorry that you’re you.

That you have to live with the fact that you’re you. And she’s like, why did you say that? You’re not supposed to say that. We have like a script, basically. And, that she’s still, That’s not part of the script. That he’s still with her. And he’s still, whether or not he’s lying to himself, I don’t know. And just being like, I have to do these small rebellions so that I feel better about myself, or whether he Is literally just there for the baby, which I would not say that he’s just there for the baby.

[01:32:38] Rebekah: When she said the thing about like, oh, you’re gonna go marry some Midwestern girl. Like in reality, he thinks about it and he’s like, I would be so bored. Like I, Because there’s a part of him that wants the drama. 

[01:32:52] Josiah: Oh, and she says, oh, So beautiful. She says, I’ve killed for you. Who else can 

say that? 

I have killed for you.

Because you begged me to come back, and I obliged. I killed for you. It’s like, yeah, she did kill for him. No one else would ever do that. 

[01:33:13] Donna: As you can tell as we’ve gone through this. This is a book with a very dark theme, but I will give you a little tiny spoiler that the world loved it. The book was released in June 2012, and the movie released two years later in October of 2014.

It was very fast. Yes. 

[01:33:36] Josiah: Mm hmm. Gone Girl was actually the first film adaptation from one of Gillian Flynn’s works. It was the first screenplay written by her as well. So she was new to the film scene. 

[01:33:47] Rebekah: She Okay, you know what? I may hate most things about this story, but Gillian, you, I begrudgingly say, did The best job so far that we have seen, I think, on this podcast of taking a movie and making it like the book.

Like I don’t, I don’t feel like any major substance was changed and I love that. Like I wish that more book to film adaptations were like that. That’s why I like the movie less than the book almost every time I did not know she wrote it. We have seen somewhere the author wrote the screenplay that aren’t like that, but I mean, Honestly, good job, and maybe that’s part of how you can get a movie done quickly.

If the screenplay writer is the person who did the original story, it’s a lot easier to just knock out the screenplay, I feel like. So, 

[01:34:35] Donna: well the book writing, and this is 3. 1 million writings. And 158, 000 reviews. That’s a lot. And the book rating was 4. 1 out of five. So that’s strong for that many over four.

When you have that many ratings and reviews and stuff is pretty impressive. The rotten tomatoes rating of critics was 88%. The IMDb rating was 8. 1 out of 10. So there again, high, high for IMDb as well. 

[01:35:05] Josiah: And I think these are high scores because Rebecca and dad, there are lots of people like you who are like, this is a well made movie, but I, I don’t, I didn’t enjoy it.

Yeah. I don’t like it, but it was good. High, high score all the time. 

[01:35:19] Donna: Yeah. So the production cost of this freakishly nightmarish horror tale 61 million. And 

[01:35:28] Rebekah: that’s low, but it’s low, but I mean, they have done a few special effects and that’s it stunt. No, very few stunts. I mean, yeah, I guess that would Ben 

[01:35:35] Josiah: Affleck and Rosamund Pike were probably the most 

[01:35:39] Rebekah: expensive part of the movie.

I mean, David Fincher is also expensive. 

[01:35:43] Josiah: If you tie in the director, that’s probably half the budget right there. 

[01:35:45] Donna: Yeah. Opening weekend in the U. S. They pulled in 37. 5 million So it could have been kind of old, but the USA Canada gross 168 million. So that’s really awesome. Over four times their opening weekend in the, in the run during the run internationally, it pulled in 203 million for a total of 371 million for the 61 million production 

[01:36:12] Tim: over six times the budget.

So, during the filming, Ben’s weight fluctuated between average build to muscular. As he began bulking up for his future role as the titular character in Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice. This is one of the reasons that I think it’s funny that it is the normal habit to film out of sequence. It’s like, what if somebody changes?

[01:36:42] Rebekah: Okay, one of my favorite things we found about this movie, filming got shut down for four days because Ben, who’s from Boston, refused to wear a Yankees cap in the airport scene where Nick goes to meet Tanner Bolt. According to IMDB, Affleck was quoted to say, David, I love you. I would do anything for you, but I will not wear a Yankees hat.

They eventually settled on a Mets cap. 

[01:37:07] Tim: Oh my. Isn’t that 

[01:37:08] Rebekah: lovely? 

[01:37:09] Tim: Well, before David Fincher was tapped as director, 20th Century Fox and Reese Witherspoon. Reese 

Witherspoon. 

[01:37:19] Rebekah: Oh, we’ve all done it. Reese Witherspoon. Where’d it come from? 

[01:37:25] Tim: Before David Fincher was tapped as director, 20th Century Fox and Reese Witherspoon bought the screen right to Gone Girl for 1.

5 million dollars. After Witherspoon spoke to Fincher about his vision for the film, She withdrew herself from portraying Amy thinking she wasn’t the right one for the role. 

[01:37:49] Donna: Now I can’t even see. She 

[01:37:52] Tim: didn’t still own the rights. 

[01:37:54] Donna: It’s not that Reese Witherspoon couldn’t have done it. But in my brain, what, when I think of her, 

[01:38:00] Josiah: it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t have been a psychological thriller.

It would have been a girl power Dolly Parton comedy romp. 

[01:38:08] Rebekah: I don’t think it would have necessarily gone full comedy, but I do think if Reese Witherspoon had played the lead, it would have been more like kind of a, what’s the right way to say that? Like a sassy Girl power is a good word for it. I feel like it would have felt more like that and less like, Oh, this is a sociopathic murderer.

Like, I do think it would have had a massively different feel. And Rosamund Pike did a fantastic job. I had one more question about just kind of a closing thoughts before we give our final verdicts with our verdict, actually. Yeah, if you want to give this as part of your verdict, that would be totally fine.

So we don’t really talk about Amazing Amy in our list. We didn’t discuss it a ton as we got after the point where we find out like Amy was indeed setting all this up. But in the book, it comes up a lot because she talks about how she doesn’t care at all that she won’t see her parents again when she’s planning on going off and living a life outside of them before she wants to come home or whatever because her parents.

Like copy wrote her childhood and then made it better than her because she was never gonna be good enough and all that stuff So do you think that? Gillian wrote this character of Amy as someone who became a sociopath because of the amazing Amy books Or, was Amy just a sociopath all along, and then the Amazing Amy books just kind of gave her something to use to secretly hate her parents with?

So, I’ll go first with my verdict. First answer is, answering this question, in my opinion I think the book is written to make it seem like the amazing Amy books were the thing that initially made her a sociopath. I thought it was interesting that there was such a big deal made about the fact that her parents were child psychologists, and that they were in a perfectly happy relationship.

Their relationship sounds a lot like mom and dad’s. Not 

[01:40:04] Tim: perfectly happy, perfect theirs was. 

[01:40:07] Rebekah: Yes, everything about it was perfect. They were completely supportive of each other. They still smacked each other on the tush like they were madly in love forever. And I think that the book was written so that Amazing Amy made Amy feel like she had to lash out at people and like just became this very despicable person.

Early on in her life and that there was like no hope because she spent her life playing a character at that point. So, I wrote the question. I do think that that’s how it’s written. Amy’s clearly a sociopath, by the way. I loved Abnormal Psych and I can diagnose that. I’m not a professional, but enough of one to recognize that.

In terms of final verdict the movie was better by a very, very long margin for me. But, I will say, the book was incredibly well written the way it was set up, the voicing between the two POVs being very distinct and different, like, was so well done. The way that she jumped the timeline all the time, but like, kept you where you were supposed to be, but changed it up so that you never knew what was coming next.

The twists happened, like, right at the right time. The book is not at all the type of book that I want to be reading. And part of what I mean by that is, I don’t mind reading books with some grit, I don’t mind reading books that are somewhat, maybe explicit about certain things, like violence usually is not something I mind.

In this particular thing, the reason I don’t want to read a book like this is because I, Could not latch on to any of the main characters. I don’t mind even reading a first person POV. One of my favorite books is by Dean Koons, From the Corner of His Eye. And a lot of the vibe is very similar to this book in a lot of ways.

And one of the main character POVs that you’re reading from is One of the most horrible characters I’ve ever written or read, rather, I’m not Dean Coons and so he’s awful, right? Like, terrible. And Josh was asking about it when I was complaining about having to read Dawn Girl the other day. He’s like, yeah, but you like that other book, isn’t that kind of similar, like, vibe, whatever?

And I said, yes, but one of the people you meet early on in the book. Is like the most empathetic character in the whole thing. You love her. She is like, you want to root for her. She saves the cat. It’s that whole thing. I am a predictable audience member. I need somebody to save the cat for me. And the very first paragraph is Nick talking about, I like to look at the back of Amy’s head.

And then, think about what did we do to each other and why do we hate each other so much. And I knew from the first paragraph. 

[01:42:42] Josiah: Did he say in the book, I want to bash my wife’s skull open so I can see inside her brain and what she’s thinking? 

[01:42:49] Rebekah: He says it later in the, in the book. He says it later, but hang on, no, in the, in the beginning part, he says, like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts.

And so then in the movie, he makes it like the violent thing. And then in the book, he says that violent thing later, but I, you know, I hated him at the beginning. Then I’m like, okay, it’s Amy’s POV. And I couldn’t remember what happened in the movie. I just knew she wasn’t everything. She was. Portrayed to be, but like, maybe I could, and I just couldn’t place it.

And when I realized that she was just terrible, I just, Oh my gosh. I was like, I want to know what happens like out of kind of pure, morbid curiosity and the fact that I have to read this book, like for the podcast. And it just, I was just miserable reading most of it. It made me so sad. Like, I know it’s a book and it was not real.

But it just makes me sad that anyone lives this life, and I couldn’t, like, move past that. Had you not read the book? I had not read the book. I’d only seen the 

[01:43:52] Tim: movie. 

[01:43:53] Rebekah: I saw the movie when it first came out and so I didn’t remember a lot about it, but we watched the movie again today and I remember thinking, I really liked this movie.

I liked it as a movie because it was interesting. It kept me focused on wondering what was going to happen next. Like I think the book being in first person and me having to, like, live in their heads and realizing how much I hated them, it was, like, easier to hate them in the movie but still be interested in what was happening.

I think the amount of time, it still did, I mean, I don’t know how long it took me to read this book, like, five hours or something, but, like, the amount of time of the book compared to how much time I could get through the movie in, Like, it made the book so much more difficult for me. Are you making fun of me?

[01:44:38] Tim: You’ve read the reading so quickly. Five hours. You poor thing. It’s a 17 hour book. Audio book. 

[01:44:45] Donna: Maybe it was six hours. I will say, I disagree with you about Amy, Amazing Amy making her a sociopath. According to Criminal Minds, I think you’re kind of born like it. You’re born with the, your brain messed up.

Yeah. Now, I can’t diagnose her cause I’m not a doctor and that’s not what I do, so this is not a legal diagnosis. Well, I am, 

[01:45:06] Josiah: and Rebecca has a psych. 

[01:45:08] Donna: Oh yeah, she is a psych thing. 

[01:45:10] Josiah: She’s a major psychotic, I should have said. 

[01:45:13] Donna: However, my final verdict would be reading them, reading the book, then watching the movie within the same two week period, I do like the movie better.

Had I, I’d not seen the movie in conjunction with reading the book so closely, they were spaced out and I have watched the movie a handful of times. I have rewatched it in this close proximity like this, I think the movie was better. And I think that’s because the book is so dark and so mentally deranged.

The character, the character, two main characters are so deranged being able to see it in a 2 hour and 20 minute movie. I can take that. I mean, I can handle that mentally, but just like your dad said, you read a little bit of it and it’s like, I have to step away from this for a minute. Because yeah, I gotta, I gotta stop.

And a lot of just unrelated to the podcast, a lot of weird stuff happened for us this week. And so as we’re reading this book, we had some other stuff go on in our church. Just some, some weird things and it’s not important what they were, but it really kind of kept a tone of, Oh, this is so dark. But I still like it.

I’ll, I’ll watch it again. I’ll probably read the book sometime in the future again, but that’s what I think. 

[01:46:39] Tim: Although sociopath may be born that way. I think that the Amazing Amy series really mess, mess with her mind. Because so many times Amazing Amy made the right decisions that she had not made.

And so she was never, she was never good enough in that way. So I can certainly see that that would, that would be damaging to her. I think I liked the movie better, partly because I didn’t have to listen to all of the things going on in their minds. Just like you said, I, I, that was, that was tough. And I liked the movie because it, it at least took away one or two horrible people over the, over the book.

So it was, it was a little better to watch the movie. Here again, I’m going, I’m going to say this. I just don’t think that. A lot of the, the reason for the ratings I don’t think those things need to be in movies. I just, I don’t think they need, I don’t think they add anything. You know, you and your family have to, to fast forward through it and We do, we do some different things with that, but.

I think without, without some of those things, it was still a thriller. It was still you know, gritty and all of those kinds of things. So, yeah, that’s my opinion. 

[01:48:06] Josiah: I think that Amy was raised by two insufferable people who did really insufferable things. And I mean, what is a sociopath, you know, 

[01:48:19] Rebekah: are you actually asking that question?

Yes. Someone who doesn’t have 

[01:48:22] Josiah: emotional intelligence who can’t. Tell what other people’s, like, can’t even fathom other people’s emotions. 

[01:48:29] Rebekah: Not really. A sociopath is someone who does not be, does not know how to be, behave with actual empathy. When they have empathy for someone, it’s because They’re imitating someone else having it, but they don’t actually have like a sense, for instance, like a sociopath could like look at you and be like, I guess I’ll shoot you in the face and then they’ll shoot you in the face and then go, I don’t like, I don’t feel bad for that.

Who cares? Like they don’t have empathy is like the big defining factor. They’re not psychotic, like they’re not psychotic. Psychosis is different. Where, like, a psychotic killer enjoys the killing, a sociopath just decides to be who they want to be in the moment. And, like, they can pass as someone with empathy, they just choose, like, they can just turn it off.

Like, they can, I don’t know. It’s not necessarily someone who enjoys violence. 

[01:49:25] Josiah: Okay. I can see, I can empathize with Amy growing up with two people who, through their actions, showed her you’re not your own person and your life is not your own. And so Amy growing up with that, then as she grows into a person, she says, Oh, well, I can claim other people’s lives.

My parents did it to me. So that’s just like how the world works. Yeah. I mean, is that not being able to empathize with someone? Or is it just like, this is what I experienced as a child is normal. And whether it’s subconsciously, I want revenge for that or just, no, this is the way that my parents made themselves happy.

I’m going to make myself happy by. Taking control of other people’s lives. They don’t need control of their own lives. I turned out to be a great person. You know, and I didn’t have control of my childhood. So 

[01:50:23] Rebekah: I would, I would just, I agree with what you’re saying in some ways, like I understand it, but I would just say it moved into sociopathy when she took what her parents had done and she did not just pretend to be someone else and live the life of whomever she decided in that moment.

She also committed incredibly violent acts against herself and eventually someone else. And criminal acts against people to punish them for, like, slights against her. 

[01:50:49] Josiah: Well, I do think I like the movie better. I think the book is probably a 5 out of 5 for me. But the movie is a, is a modern masterpiece.

It’s exactly the sort of piece of art that I would want to make and that I would want to be a part of and that I want to consume. It’s, it’s so darkly beautiful and disturbing in all the coolest ways and I think that David Fincher and Rosamund Pike and everyone involved with the movie really Brought together all of the pieces that were already five out of five and Elevated the material to be greater than the sum of its parts So I do think the movie is a modern masterpiece even more so than the great book Which I so enjoyed reading the book.

[01:51:40] Rebekah: Well folks. I hope that you have It’s enjoyed the right word to use here. Enjoy listening to us chat about Enjoyed our take on Gone Girl. It’s kind of interesting when we all have like fairly varied opinions. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a five star rating or review. It helps us out a ton.

You can find us on X, Instagram, and Facebook at BookIsBetterPod to send feedback, ask us questions for future episodes, or just have fun with the hosts. You can join our free discord server. There is a link in the episode description. And until next time, I will find you. Oh,

[01:52:24] Tim: and I will keep running.