Xanadu with Jonas Vail

This week on Make Me A Nerd, Mandy Kaplan bravely roller-skates into the glittery fever dream that is Xanadu, joined by writer, brand strategist, and lifelong apologist for questionable cinema, Jonas Vail. Jonas has loved Xanadu since kindergarten.What follows is a spirited interrogation of how a movie with no functional script, no clear protagonist goals, and no apparent understanding of what a musical is managed to spawn multiple chart-topping hits, a Broadway redemption arc, and the literal invention of the Razzies. Mandy presses the case against the film with surgical precision: Olivia Newton-John as a confused hostage, Michael Beck as a charisma vacuum in roller skates, and a plot that appears to have been assembled by shuffling index cards in a wind tunnel.Jonas, to his credit, does not deny any of this. Instead, he offers nostalgia, vibes, and the radical proposition that Xanadu only works if you stop asking it to work. Together, they unpack the soundtrack’s undeniable greatness, Gene Kelly’s astonishing late-career charm, and the deeply suspicious decision to let Olivia sing entire numbers while not physically appearing anywhere near them.Along the way, they stumble into bigger questions: Is Xanadu secretly a proto-MTV artifact? Is the animated sequence the movie’s only sex scene? And how did a roller-disco fantasy with zero internal logic influence everything from Back to the Future to Janet Jackson choreography? It’s messy, affectionate, occasionally unhinged—and somehow ends with a sincere defense of dreams, disco, and donuts-for-dinner cinema.Make Me a Nerd:

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