Why Is Amy in the Bath?

In which we consider the late-20th-Century romcoms of such as Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, a world of dead husbands, new loves, appealing French gynecologists, and of course eating sundaes by the side of the bathtub. From there we’ll get into how Julie & Julia is really a manifesto for the rise of the self-obsessed influencer class … and how it would potentially be a better movie if it was ca...

Hey Tub Gang! If you tuned in to Episode 2, you got a taste of our interview with David Magee, the screenwriter for the 2008 film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, aka Amy's first bathtub performance. Here's our longer chat with David. He explains, among other things, how to write a scene in which kids are pulled into a magical realm through the bathtub in such a way that it doesn't look like they'r...

Our investigation culminates with us settling once more into the bathtub, which has the best view of the end of the world.  We finally talk to an actress who’s done a tub scene: Autumn Reeser, whose experience in a time-loop movie woke her up to the time loop she was living in her real life.  Then, a quick shower over a sea of fog and we’re ready at last to face the everyday apocalypse we’ve been...

The whole reason we put out Why Is Amy in the Bath? now is that we thought Amy Adams might get her Oscar at long last — for Nightbitch . We suspected this year would be important. (We were right.) And, at long last, we now know how the 2025 Academy Awards turned out. But so does everybody, so who cares, right?  Ah, but we’re the only ones who know what those winners & losers really mean to the...

In which Gabby reveals that her own bathing saga is much, much older than this one investigative series. In which Brandon embraces the mystical power of Holistic Journalism. In which the both of them try to figure out why this is the Century of Bathing by looking into wellness, and Goop, and home improvement shows. In which a chance meeting on a rooftop leads to a stunning revelation about the sec...

In which Gabby & Brandon find themselves embroiled in an imitation game. Following Amy Adams’ career through the Century of Tubs, we find ourselves face to face with the bathing scenes of the modern traumatized woman of the psychological thriller, and one of the authors responsible for rejuvenating the genre: Gillian Flynn, she of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects. Unfortunately, there’s another pod...

We wanted a mission. And for our sins, they sent us to Hollywood. In this episode, Gabby & Brandon finally confront the very nature of prestige by taking a tour of duty to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and by tackling the bathing data for every single film nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Will Brandon’s “Prestige Bathtub Theory” (PBT) hold? How does Amy Adams compare to other A-listers? And w...

In which we discover a secret history of cinema, a history that created American pop culture one terrifying shower and screwball bathtub scene at a time. One in which the hot tub plays a major role in the war on drugs and the battle of the sexes, and in which sci-fi visions imagine bathtubs of the future as places for healing, transformation, and goo. In this episode, Gabby & Brandon dig into...

It began, like so many stupid journeys, with a stupid question: Why does the actor Amy Adams do so many bathing scenes? From the beginning, we suspected a conspiracy — Is Amy, who has never won an Oscar, doing all these bathtub scenes because they offer the opportunity for the kind of dramatic acting that earns the biggest, goldenest prizes?  So in 2021, two journalists — Brandon R. Reynolds and G...

In 2021, two journalists started an investigation to answer what seemed like a simple question: Why does the actor Amy Adams do so many bathing scenes? From the beginning, we suspected a conspiracy — Is Amy, who has never won an Oscar, doing all these bathtub scenes because they offer the opportunity for the kind of dramatic acting that earns the biggest, goldest prizes? This is the story of how B...