The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate spoiler special on David Fincher's Gone Girl, his new adaptation of the best-selling Jillian Flynn novel.

And joining me for today's special are David Hagland, who is an editor at Slate and the editor of Browbeat, our culture blog.

Hey, David.

Hey, Dana.

And from D.C. we have Dan Cois, Slate's Culture Editor.

That's what you are now, right?

That's what I am now.

Hey, how are you?

How are you?

Good.

Okay, so I have to say that this is a case in which I'm actually relieved to be sitting here in this

studio, spoiling this movie, because not only is it a very interesting, in my opinion, pretty good movie that I'm happy to talk about with you guys,

but it is a movie that cannot interestingly be talked about without multiple spoilers.

So I happen to be stuck right as a part of my review where I can no longer analyze anything of interest,

and I had to bring it in here and get it off my chest, and then I'll go home and find some way to take what we said and tiptoe around it and make it work in written form.

But yeah, this one is definitely extremely twist-based.

I wanted to start off by seeing if we had all read the book, what we all thought of the book,

and how we think we might have experienced the movie had we not read the book,

which obviously many viewers will be in that position, best-selling as it was.

I have read the book.

We actually did an audiobook club podcast about it in its peak summer of ubiquity two summers ago.

...