Man, what to do about this whole Epstein thing? On the one hand, it is clearly so potentially toxic, do we at Last Movie Outpost ignore it other than in snide jokes for cheap laughs? After all, what has it got to do with movies and entertainment?
Then again, it is such a massive political and cultural inflection point that it is already impacting governments, with bookies expecting a British Prime Minister to be the next to go, any minute now. So maybe it can’t be ignored.
Outside of the concrete proof that the global elite network is basically an old boys club who couldn’t care about us little people as anything other than tax cows and worker bees, there is caution required around the more salacious and outlandish content in the Epstein files.
Much as confirmation bias kicks in deep in our very souls, no matter what our political or personal tribe, whenever we see that somebody whose downfall we would personally applaud is named, it’s important to be on our guard.
Many of the often cited “mentions” are merely a person being discussed as a third party, perhaps to be appointed to some committee, or to definitely be excluded.
The really horrific stuff seems to largely have come from an FBI tip line that was completely open to the public for unsolicited info.
A few of these really disturbing reports seem to have been made by individuals genuinely accompanied to their FBI interviews by the kind of online conspiracy theorists that make Alex Jones look like a moderate fence sitter.
Keeping with this theme of conspiracy theories, the Epstein files release seems to do two things, simultaneously.
Both prove huge swathes of the most controversial “conspiracy theories” in modern human history as being absolutely true, while at the same time place even more juicy ones as tantalisingly out of reach as they ever were.
So as we wrestled how, if at all, to cover the Epstein files here at LMO, we were somewhat relieved when the answer fell into our laps from the always reliable, and frequently sued for it, most excellent online gossip mongers over at Popbitch.
Thanks to their absorption of the files, they have highlighted some pop culture hooks into this story that we can exploit to get us back on topic.
First of all, it appears that Jeffrey Epstein listened to “a shocking amount of Michael Bublé”.
He had a very expensive Madden NFL gaming habit, despite being banned from Xbox Live for abusing other players.
His eBay usage extends to procuring 1960s porn, a tropical fish coffee set and a vintage milkshake maker.
Finally, we arrive in our own sweet spot – his movie viewing habits were also revealed by the files. Here is every movie that the Epstein files mention the world’s most notorious nonce watching.
Eyes Wide Shut – Kubrick’s final movie, about a shadowy society of billionaire sex addicts. What are the chances?
Also in the mix are Jason Statham’s The Transporter, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Criterion Collection’s Three Colors: Blue, White, Red, and French police/legal drama Spiral.
There is Maison Close, period drama based in a French brothel, and Hanna which stars Saoirse Ronan as a CIA-trained teenage assassin.
Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness, Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, and Ryan Gosling’s All Good Things about the wealthy son of a New York real estate tycoon who becomes suspected of a series of murders.
Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States features.
Curiously, so does Rev, a BBC sitcom with Tom Hollander.
Personally, my favorite revelation from the files is that Epstein had an underwater escape tunnel, and seemed to have forced Stephen Hawking into it.
