Gossip Part 1

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Gossip from a few years ago. I recorded it off cable. But something, well, more on that later.

Story has three obnoxious college students in New York at some ritzy college having fun and drinking. They share a course in communications or sociology or media studies or something, and they have to to a paper, so they decide to do one together. Since in class that day there was a discussion of the difference between gossip and news, they decide to start a rumor, which is entirely false, and then tell a couple people, and watch it spread across campus to see what it becomes.

Okay, here are our three heroes:

• Cute charming guy who can lie really really well, and is very very rich: Derrick.
• Studious not so rich girl who is beautiful but she has dark hair and wears glasses, so we know she is smart: Jones.

• Artistic guy, who is not so self-assured, somewhat shy: Travis.

These three have become friends somehow, and Derrick lets Jones and Travis live in his million-dollar loft apartment which is so trendy and great it made me sick. Think Beverly Hills 90210 territory, that’s kind of the image they are promoting here. Or Cruel Intentions – though Cruel Intentions was ten times better than Gossip on every level.

The movie is well cast and well shot and quite pretty, but since I hate rich kids like that, well, I was never empathizing with any of our three heroes.

Back to the story: that night Jones and Derrick go to a party. Jones is bumped by rich girl Naomi, and kind of dislikes her, though she doesn’t really know her. Then later at the bar Jones is told a rumor by a girl she knows, who’s friends with Naomi, that Jones is sleeping with the handsome (also obnoxious) media/sociolog/communications professor. Somehow Jones get the impression that Naomi is the source of this rumor, and so she get mad at Naomi.

Later in the party, Derrick is making out with a girl, and they go up to the bathroom upstairs in this fabulous loft apartment of whoever it is who’s throwing the party. They are making out, then the girl starts wanting to puke because she’s had so much to drink. Derrick guides her to the toilet to puke, and goes to get a wet tissue to cool her head and wipe her mouth. But when he steps back out to get the tissue, he sees campus hotshot Beau making out with Naomi on the bed.

Now, Naomi has the reputation of being a virgin who’s ‘afraid of sex’ (another rumor, more gossip – see where all this is heading yet?) but she’s clearly turned on by Beau, but she’s also drunk, and she’s saying, ‘I’m drunk, no, stop.’ Then–

Then the girl in the toilet makes a sound. Beau looks up. Derrick ducks back into the shower and hides. Beau comes looking, and finds only the sick girl sitting on the floor by the toilet, half out of it. He goes back to Naomi, who is now passed out on the bed.

Derrick comes out of the shower to watch what they do. We don’t see what he sees.

Next we see Beau coming back downstairs. He passes his buddy who says something like, ‘I saw you with Naomi, did you get any?’ And he smiles like they had sex.

On the way back from the party, Jones and Derrick and Travis (who’s almost passing out) decide to make the rumor about Beau and Naomi. Actually it’s just Derrick and Jones who decide this, as Travis has in fact passed out on the sidewalk, and they have to drag him back to the loft.

The next day they start the rumor, making it small: Beau and Naomi had sex in the bedroom where the party was.

For awhile it seems fun as the rumor grows wilder and bigger and stranger, and the three chart its course. But when it gets back in horrible form to Naomi herself, she is shocked, and she goes to the police, and says that she’s sure that Beau raped her while she was passed out from being drunk.

Now it’s serious, and Jones (the girl, just to remind you – Derrick and Travis are both guys) says they ought to tell what they know. That Derrick ought to tell what he knows; he saw that nothing happened, after all, and that was the whole point of the project, that the original rumor was not true.

Only now Derrick says he’s not so sure nothing happened at the party that night. He didn’t see everything, he says, and it might have happened, and if Naomi is sure, he doesn’t want to call her a liar.

So they do nothing. ‘it’s just words, it won’t hurt anyone,’ Derrick assures Jones. But since Naomi’s family are very rich and powerful, there is pressure, and the police charge Beau with rape.

Jones goes to the police, after unsuccessfully trying to get Derrick to tell the truth, but the police only think that Jones is in love with Beau and trying to protect him. In truth Jones doesn’t even know Beau, but Derrick has planted this lie/rumor/gossip to make sure even if Jones goes to the cops they don’t believe her – which they don’t.

So Jones goes to Naomi to tell her the truth. Only she does it in roundabout way, asking Naomi, ‘are you sure what you said is true?’ ‘I’m sure,’ Naomi answers. They talk a bit and Naomi doesn’t seem like such a bitch, as Jones at first thought. Then Jones says she is living as flatmate with Derrick, and Naomi screams, ‘what is this some kind of sick joke? Get out of here! Out!’

Jones, shaken, goes to Derrick to confront him. He swears that he never knew Naomi, they might have gone to high school together the way Naomi said, but he didn’t know her. He starts kissing Jones, and she at last succumbs to his handsome charm, and they have sex.

But the next day Jones still can’t get it out of her head, so she takes a taxi to danbury connecticut to the private prep school where Derrick and Naomi attended. She finds the old yearbooks and in there are photos of Derrick and Naomi together. She also speaks with a woman who works in the school office, who tells her that Derrick raped Naomi when they were in high school together, but it was all hushed up, she didn’t press charges.

Jones confronts Derrick with the information, and he admits yes he dated Naomi, they were in love, and one night they almost did it, but she suddenly pulled back and pushed him away. After that the rumors/gossip/lies started circulating that he had raped her, and this ruined his life – he was almost kicked out of school, lost his friends, his family just left him with a trust fund but won’t speak to him anymore.

After this Beau is arrested for rape. Again Jones makes efforts to get the truth out, to no avail. She even calls Naomi again to try to get at the full truth, but Naomi just hangs up on her.

One night Derrick goes to see Naomi. He meets Beau along the way, now out on bail. Beau starts beating Derrick because he has heard that Derrick raped Naomi in high school. ‘well did you rape her?’ Derrick counters. ‘we are both in the same place Naomi is crazy, she told a lie about you, she told a lie about me.’ Beau is confused, seems to believe Derrick. Then Derrick hits Beau, kicks him, beats him up.

Derrick goes on to Naomi’s. He forces his way in, and they talk about the past. He finally says, ‘you ruined my life, with that lie, and now We’re even, because I ruined yours. I was there in the bathroom and I saw you and Beau and nothing happened, but I told everybody that he raped you, now your life is ruined like mine was.’

Naomi freaks out, attacks Derrick, scratches him. He takes a picture of her from high school and leaves. As he goes, Travis is there watching outside the dorm building, though Derrick doesn’t see him.

Next day Derrick and Jones start to reconcile. ‘why should I let Naomi ruin my life?’ asks Jones. But then Travis comes in. he tells them Naomi is dead – she took pills or something and killed herself last night.

Now the police come and see Derrick when he’s alone in the apartment. Derrick lies and says that while he knew Naomi from high school, he didn’t go to her dorm room. ‘Beau says he saw you going into her dorm last night.’ ‘Well Beau has been charged with raping her, and he will say anything.’

Derrick later persuades Travis to lie for him, and to say that he took the picture of Naomi from her room and that she was still alive, after Derrick left. Travis seems to agree.

With no one else to listen to her, Jones goes to the communications professor and tells him the whole story. The next class, the professor lays out the whole story and accuses Derrick. Derrick defends himself. When the other students call him a ‘murderer’ for spreading the rumors, he answers that they all spread the rumor more than he did, they are really responsible, not him. He leaves.

At the apartment Derrick finds the cops, with a warrant, searching everywhere. Derrick asks Jones what she told them. She says she told them he went to Naomi’s dorm room, and if he had told the truth, it wouldn’t matter what she said.

Frustrated, Derrick shows the cops Travis’s room where there are pictures of Naomi all over the wall. Throughout all this time, Travis has been taking pictures of Naomi and blowing them up, to make a visualization of the gossip/rumor campaign for their project. Now Derrick tries to convince the cops that these pictures prove that Travis is unstable, a psycho, and more likely to be the killer. Travis runs out of the apartment.

But the detective says, ‘We will find Travis and ask him about all this. But meantime we have a dead girl with skin under her fingernails and I bet the hair on your hairbrush will match dna with that skin, and your fingerprints are all over the dorm room, and we found this picture of Naomi in your sock drawer, so don’t leave town. I can’t take you in without a warrant, but I don’t think that will be hard to get, so I’ll be back.’

The detectives leave and then –

– and then –

– and then the recording stops, because the time scheduled on hbo was a mistake!

So I didn’t get to see how it turned out.

The film is also broadcast tomorrow though so I have it set to record that, and I’ll report later, but in the meantime:

Who did it? Can you guess correctly? Can I guess?

I don’t think it was Jones, she is the nice one. But it would be a big big shocking twist if it turned out to be her all along.

It could be Travis, maybe he got obsessed with Naomi with all these pictures, what was he doing outside her dorm thenight Derrick was there and she died?

It could be Derrick, but that’s the way it’s all heading, so I doubt that, but maybe?

It could also be Beau – he was there outside the dorm that night also, after all.

And finally, the detectives have not said conclusively that it was murder. it’s rather vague. She was drinking that night, and had pills. It might have been suicide, or it might have been accidental overdose.

– or –

– or maybe Naomi isn’t dead after all, maybe this is just a game she is playing to turn the tables and get back at Derrick for the rumor? We didn’t see her body or anything, we don’t even know these ‘cops’ are real cops, and even if they are, we know Naomi’s family has political pull, and might just be pushing the cops to do this to teach Derrick a lesson and learn the truth about whether Beau really raped Naomi and if anything happened that night.

(Of course, medical evidence is never mentioned, because that would spoil it. Naomi is said to be – another rumor, no more than that – a girl who’s a virgin, afraid to have sex. So if she was raped in high school, there would be evidence of that. If that rape never happened, there would be evidence if Beau had raped her. But that is skipped over in the movie, because the point is that ‘you can never tell the truth of what happened’ where rumors, gossip, are concerned. What do you really know, and how do you know it?)

So – what is your theory?

I lean toward Naomi being behind it.

Number two after that would be Travis.

And I think Derrick will end up dead, or in jail, and we won’t feel sorry for him, because he has been such a lying bastard through the whole movie. But all the same the charges against him will be false. He will be the victim of lies and rumors and gossip – a fitting end.

Oh yes, here is the cast, as that can give you some clues as it does me:

• Derrick is James Marsden.
• Jones is Lena Headey
• Travis is Norman Reedus
• Beau is Joshua Jackson

• Naomi is Kate Hudson.

The movie was made in 2000.

Naomi as Kate Hudson is the odd one. Kate was a bigger star than any of these others, as far as I can see. Her part was smaller, and she doesn’t even get a juicy death scene? that’s one reason I lean toward thinking she is not dead and is pulling the strings, maybe using Travis, maybe not, but she is manipulating all these rumors to get the cops after Derrick.

But what’s your conclusion?

I’ll tell you what I find out tomorrow after I see the end.

(written around 3 March 2009)