Hello and welcome to Flashback Slate's podcast about older and classic movies.

I'm Slate's movie critic Dana Stevens, and I'm here, as always,

distantly talking in the ether with Chaos and Collins of Rolling Stone. Hey, Cam.

How's it going? Pretty good. This is our 50th show that we've ever done, so happy 50th.

Happy anniversary. And so you picked this episode's choice, The Apartment, the Billy Wilder movie

from 1960, as a kind of

celebratory piece. Why did it feel that way to you? I think I chose it because it was a movie I hadn't

seen in a while. And, you know, I mean, people didn't hear this, but I had a whole bunch of

crazy ideas for what to choose, but this one just felt like the right one. I will say, though,

I saw a meme immediately

after choosing it and noticed that in Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond is 50, and that would have been

same director, another great best picture winner. That would also have been appropriate. But I think I, you know, was Jonesing for some Shirley MacLean.

Gosh, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite actors.

This is one of my favorite of her performances.

And I was in the mood for some widescreen, black and white, and some awkwardness and

some nebishness and some cuckolding and, you know.

It never doesn't hit the spot, at least for me, this movie.

I mean, I feel like I can remember each individual screening of it in my life, even though

I've seen it a lot, and that they all have just that feeling of compactness and satisfaction.

You know, this movie has this kind of compact

perfection that is all about the writing. It's a really written movie, and I'm sure we'll talk

about that. And, you know, just how the screenplay, which is by Billy Wilder and IA.L. Diamond,

...