The Blackening with Nonye-Brown West

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have.

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 3: Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlyn, let's play a game. It's me Jigsaw, but it's also me the villain from the Blackening.

00:00:26
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, spoiler alert. I also went, oh, the Jigsaw parallels undeniable. I mean, I know, it's like, yeah, every horror movie parallel, so that's the whole point. But also Jigsaw specifically, you get a beautiful Jigsaw.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: Oh you know, but I don't.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: I don't remember the words from college motif, pastiche homage, anything like you get one of those at the end. Oh I yes, sorry, I just was effusive about you.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: So is that a yes, you will play a game with me?

00:00:58
Speaker 2: Of course I'll play a game. Of course I'll play game. And I hope that it is basically bar trivia. I love that that's the game. It's bart trivia.

00:01:08
Speaker 3: And you know me, I love a pub quiz. I love bar trivia. I go all the time. Yes, I played it by myself in Paris when I was there recently brag number one very what's.

00:01:20
Speaker 2: The movie very frances Ha when she goes to Paris and just like hangs out, just like hmm, which lay.

00:01:27
Speaker 3: Most of the time, hangs out by yourself. Yeah, I did manage to go outside and go to bar trivia. Well, it was because it was happening right after the comedy show that I just did at the same location, so I was like, well, there's trivia here. There was only like five or six teams, but I was in like second place at one time because there was a round of ten questions that were all Star Wars questions and I got them all right, and it really propelled me to the front of the group.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: You single handedly healed relations between France and the US and that it Yes, anyway, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. I feel like that was a very focused intro. We're doing great, we nailed it. Yeah, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftis.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin Deronte, and this is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it though?

00:02:21
Speaker 2: Okay, I can tell you.

00:02:22
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:02:23
Speaker 2: So, the Bechdel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test because she co created it with her friend Liz Wallace. Lots of versions of this test. We sort of use it as a jumping off point for discussion because it was originally created as a joke for her comic dikes to watch out for. But the version of the test that we use requires at there be two characters with names of a marginalized gender who talked to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. Low bar to clear. A lot of movies still don't more movies than used to true. And there's also a lot of tests that have been inspired by this test, which I feel like is maybe more relevant to the conversation we're going to have today. We have a highly requested movie today. We've been getting requests for this movie since before it came out, and we were waiting for the right time, the right place, the right guest. That's right, the stars have aligned. Today we are covering the Blackening m.

00:03:25
Speaker 3: HM and our guest is a writer and comedian. You've seen her on NPR and Sway in the Morning. It's no Yea Brown West.

00:03:32
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, welcome, thanks for having me on. Guys.

00:03:36
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thanks for being here.

00:03:37
Speaker 2: A true Boston twenty tens comedy scene reunion.

00:03:42
Speaker 3: We did it.

00:03:45
Speaker 5: Here.

00:03:45
Speaker 3: We are so good to see you.

00:03:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very good to see you both. It's been a very long time. Jamie Caitlin and I just.

00:03:51
Speaker 3: Saw Yeah, we were hanging out in New York. I've heard of it. No, tell me more, Noya, tell us about your relationship with this movie.

00:04:01
Speaker 5: I was very excited first come out because I saw the original sketch that Dwayne Perkins posted on his I think ig and YouTube everywhere. It was so funny, and we were friends at the time. I found like a I don't remember where I found. I think I was like messaging them and I saw this photo that they had sent me of us hanging out.

00:04:27
Speaker 4: So I guess we were friends, you know, and.

00:04:29
Speaker 5: So sure, the way cowedy works, yeah, you don't always remember.

00:04:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like, I did one show with Dwayne Perkins. That means we're friends, right. He doesn't have any idea who I am, but I we know each other.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: We've all yeah, we've all chose with him, and we're all his close personal friends. I think it's safe to say. I just checked. He follows me back on Twitter, so we're actually really close. Oh we actually woke up next to each other.

00:04:58
Speaker 4: Wow, we had like face book DM.

00:05:01
Speaker 2: So that's another level. That's another level old friendship.

00:05:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, I couldn't wait to see it.

00:05:07
Speaker 5: So I saw it the opening weekend, and I saw it again and then I have Stars and I watched it like four times on Stars.

00:05:15
Speaker 4: Love it so much. Nice, It's one of my favorites.

00:05:19
Speaker 5: It's one of the three comedians that I know movies that came out last year or the year before that rocks.

00:05:25
Speaker 3: Okay, huge flex.

00:05:27
Speaker 5: Well listen, we all know people in movies and we're like, oh, that's a possibility.

00:05:33
Speaker 4: I didn't even realize it could be hiring us.

00:05:39
Speaker 5: My manager has me in acting school now, and I'm like, okay, okay, this might happen. I'm kind of old, so we'll see maybe a Viola Davis in the works.

00:05:50
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:05:52
Speaker 2: I love this. The thing I do every couple of weeks is just like Google and it like fills right in. So you know that every inspiring actor does it where it's like actors who bloomed late. You're just and it's like the same ten people every time, and you're like, yes, yes, yes, it's an.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: At me and add me as well someday. Nice. So you love the movie, You've seen it many times.

00:06:17
Speaker 4: Seen him many times. I'm a big fan. Love the humor. Something that I noticed right away in it is.

00:06:24
Speaker 5: That they had every type of black person represented, like in the humor, in honestly the casting. So like, I'm first generation, I'm Nigerian. They had a character for me. They had a character that's supposed to be of like the core subset or something or you know, just could that's kind of what I've become in my old Dade. So I was like, oh, I identify with a lot of this. But yeah, they were jokes everybody.

00:06:52
Speaker 4: It was great.

00:06:53
Speaker 5: Hell yea, even the nerdy guy. Yeah, he's a little bit of me too, praw nerds here. I feel like I say.

00:06:59
Speaker 3: That what we contain multitudes? Jamie, how about you, what's your relationship with the movie.

00:07:06
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the second time I've seen it. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was like a movie I was really excited for last year. Also because just yeah, Dwayne Perkins is an amazing stand up who I've seen and performed with over the years, and it's just like so exciting, like you were just saying no yet, Like it's so exciting to be like, oh my god, wait what you can and then to see him in particular, because I mean, he's just like the person that I show up to the movie for like just seeing him shine and seeing him be a movie star. You're just like, this is so fucking cool. It was really exciting. I was excited to see it. I think it's a really funny movie. I think it's like it feels like tonally, it feels like a throwback, but it also has like new ideas that I haven't seen in horror movies before. It just felt like a really cool split of It has the feel of a nineties like horror comedy to me, and it also as all like but it is obviously very very clearly made in the modern day. I just really enjoyed it, and also as a big fan of the original sketch, like, it was really really cool. I think just again in a world where we are conditioned to feel and so often it is true that artists, and especially marginalized our artists are not able to like make their own movies through these traditional channels. But like here is an example of a sketch team that like hustled on stage I think UCB forever and then got like a chance to make a sketch for a couple thousand dollars worth Comedy Central, and then made a huge movie that people love, And I just think it's amazing, it's really funny. I'm excited to talk about it, Kitlyn, what's your history?

00:08:45
Speaker 3: I saw it in theaters. I was similarly excited for it to come out. I was getting a lot of like Instagram.

00:08:51
Speaker 2: Ads yeah, and trailers for.

00:08:53
Speaker 3: It, and I was like, oh, I love Dwayne Perkins. He's a hilarious stand up comic. As we've already said.

00:09:01
Speaker 2: It's just the Dwayne Perkins fan club, Yeah truly.

00:09:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it seemed something that was like just very up my alley because I love a horror comedy. Not that I'm not a fan of like pretty straight horror, but I seek it out probably the least of all the major genres. But if you add some comedy in there, then I'm way more likely to be on board. So I was very excited to see it. I saw it with some friends, we all enjoyed it, and then yeah, I've watched it a couple times since then.

00:09:33
Speaker 2: It is a very rewatchable movie for sure.

00:09:36
Speaker 3: Definitely, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to recap it. We're back, and here is the recap. So we open on a couple Morgan and Sean played by Yvonne Orgie and Jay Farrow, at a cabin in the woods.

00:10:07
Speaker 2: This like continues the grand tradition that I feel like was begun maybe by Scream.

00:10:13
Speaker 3: My horror movie.

00:10:15
Speaker 2: Knowledge is not comprehensive, but like already you open the movie with the two kind of most famous people in the movie and then they die, Like it's just a time honored tradition. You see two famous people and you're just like, we're gonna lose them, We're gonna lose them.

00:10:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like, oh, they had only the budget to pay them for one day.

00:10:35
Speaker 2: If they had at most a day and a half with these two famous people.

00:10:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, they make that joke in the movie too, like yeah, they're just like, yeah.

00:10:45
Speaker 2: You don't want to be someone a little too famous at a horror movie, you're Yeah.

00:10:50
Speaker 3: So they are at this house and they're waiting for their other friends to arrive for a college reunion slash Juneteenth celebration. But right now it's night and it's spooky, and there's a masked person lurking outside watching them through the window, and they discover this game room in the house, and in the middle of the room is this board game called The Blackening, and it's this very weird, creepy thing where there's a face that looks like blackface minstrel kind of.

00:11:25
Speaker 2: Thing, like old racist toys.

00:11:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, or like any cartoon that was made before the fifties, you know.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:11:34
Speaker 3: So that's kind of like the centerpiece of the game board. And out of curiosity, they start playing. And the first question is name a black character who survives in a horror movie. Answer correctly, or you die, and they kind of brush it off. They're not taking it seriously and they don't answer before the time limit, and then a masked man, the one who was lurking outside, shows up and kills them.

00:12:04
Speaker 5: I could answer that question, please, So like I was, I wanted to, like yell at the screen during the first time I saw it, I could yell at the screen because it was one of those theaters spear in the movie sphere, which I feel like is a horror movie. I love horror movies, and I would categorize that as a horror movie.

00:12:20
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't think I've seen that.

00:12:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, Samuel Jackson's character survives, but they all, all of them technically survive. I think two of them might, like, Okay, I don't know. I think two people do actually die, but Samuel L. Jackson survives. I don't remember his character's name though. Okay, so what I have been murdered?

00:12:35
Speaker 4: Probably, I don't know.

00:12:37
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:12:38
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, yeah, it depends you might have gotten away on a technicality.

00:12:41
Speaker 5: Yeah right.

00:12:43
Speaker 3: I hope you never are in a situation where you find out. So J Parrow's character is killed and then Yvonne Orgy's character is like abducted. Cut to the other friends who that couple was waiting for. I think it's the next day. They're in the car on their way to the cabin. We meet Dwayne played by Dwayne Perkins. Alison played by Grace Buyers and Lisa played by Antoinette Robertson. It's established that Alison and Lisa can kind of communicate telepathically, not in a like literal sci fi way, more in like a jokey way. We're like like a best friend, right close friends, just know what the other one is thinking.

00:13:29
Speaker 5: We're just all black people too, because I've done it with people at stop and shop, done it with people on the train. One woman actually communicated to me that my lace in my wig was lifting.

00:13:41
Speaker 4: Oh and then she handed me a clip.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: So just all with the eyes, so beautiful.

00:13:46
Speaker 4: I feel like black people, people of color, we can do it with each other.

00:13:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, white people cannot know in fact, we in fact do the opposite. Yeah, okay. So then we also meet Shanika played by x Mayo. She is in a separate car. She stops at a convenience store for some snacks, where a creepy white guy is working behind the counter. She also bumps into Clifton played by Jermaine Fowler, who she didn't realize was coming to the reunion. Then we meet King played by Melvin Gregg, who is already at the cabin where a white park ranger whose name is Ranger White, cher White Yea and later Ranger White White.

00:14:35
Speaker 3: He's played by Dietrich Bader. He's giving King a hard time because he thinks King is trying to break into the cabin. But then the others show up and they're like, no, we're renting this place for the weekend, so Ranger White leaves. We also meet Namdi played by Cinqua Walls. He is handsome, Yeah, he's handsome for sure. Dwayne does like him because Namdi and Lisa used to date, but he cheated on her a bunch and like Dwayne was always there to kind of pick up the pieces. But Namdi and Lisa are back together, which is something that will like create tension among them throughout the movie. They settle into the house or the cabin. There's some creepy vibes. Alison notices the door to the game room and she's like, once that, but it's locked. Then they start drinking and doing molly and playing spades. They reflect as a group how some of them have changed or how they haven't changed since college. They're all kind of not sure why Clifton is there. He wants to learn how to play spades, but they don't want to be bothered teaching him.

00:15:49
Speaker 4: Do you too know how to play spades?

00:15:51
Speaker 3: No? I do not.

00:15:52
Speaker 4: I play it.

00:15:53
Speaker 5: Periodically, but we like actually had a tournament this Christmas. It was like me and my sister and my little brother and my husband and my sister and my husband were together because they're like best friends and my little brother were together.

00:16:04
Speaker 4: We won every single time. It was crazy.

00:16:06
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, nicely done.

00:16:07
Speaker 4: They were terrible. We got to know my husband is white, so that might be why they lost, you know.

00:16:13
Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, I've always been curious about it. Is it similar to the game Hearts?

00:16:17
Speaker 5: It's just like Hearts, okay, but only you have to In Hearts you don't have to like predict how many books you're gonna win, how many hands are gonna win, But in Spades you have to predict, and then you lose points or gain points if you hit it exactly right, got it?

00:16:33
Speaker 3: Okay?

00:16:34
Speaker 4: Yeah? Cool.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: I never advanced from like go Fish and Slapjack.

00:16:39
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I know how to play some game. I know how to play Hearts, I know how to play Canasta. Anyone else out there in the world, No, what's that slide into my DMS? If you're a Big Canasta Head. It's a two deck traditionally card game, although there are versions of it where you can play with more den It's similar to bridge in the sense that like a lot of like old white ladies play it.

00:17:06
Speaker 4: So black people love bridge too, though, Okay, okay, nice.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: That's what I just assume all old people are doing in social situations. Yeah, just playing, yeah, playing bridge.

00:17:18
Speaker 3: In any case. So Clifton's like, I want to play spades, but they're mostly just dismissing him because he's like not really their friend and they're not sure why he's there.

00:17:28
Speaker 2: I think it's nice of them that they like didn't kick him out. I know that plot was, but like they could have been meaner.

00:17:37
Speaker 4: True.

00:17:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, they made him a drink, they got him a chair, he took his bag.

00:17:41
Speaker 4: That's nice.

00:17:42
Speaker 1: You know.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: I feel like he has like sort of the Revenge of the Nerds syndrome right where it's like, oh, like everyone is like, oh, well, he's kind of a misfit, you know, he's just lonely, and you're like, no, no, you've trusted baby Elon Musk.

00:17:59
Speaker 4: Don't let him.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, spoiler alert.

00:18:03
Speaker 3: Okay, So then suddenly the lights go out and Lisa notices something or someone lurking outside. They're very creeped out. They search the house for a fuse box, and they realize that all the doors in the house are now locked, except for that game room from earlier. They enter it and discover that same game, the Blackening Game, which has game pieces specific to each of them, so they think it's their friend Morgan messing with them, so they start to play. Then the very racist face on the game says pick a card and save Morgan, and they're like, what do you mean, save Morgan? And then a TV turns on in the room showing Morgan tied up and trapped somewhere, and the game is like, if you answer ten questions correctly, Morgan lives and you're all free to go, but if you get one wrong, she dies, so they have no choice but to pay. They start playing, and it's questions about black history and black pop culture. They get several correct until they get to a trick question about the show Friends Hilarious. They get it wrong and it seems like Morgan is about to be killed, but she manages to get away and they realize that she's in the basement, so they try to open the door, but then the masked killer comes through the door and is shooting arrows at them with a crossbow. A few of them get injured, but then they stab the killer in the foot and shoot at him with the gun that King brought, so the killer kind of scurries off. The group ends back up in the game room and the killer forces them to keep playing the game. For the next round, they have to sacrifice the person who they deem to be the quote unquote blackest and send them out to face the killer because normally in horror movies, the black character always dies first, so they all select Clifton since again he's not really their friend. So Clifton goes outside and the killer shoots him with an arrow and drags him away. Then the friends are like, all right, we're done with this. We're not playing your game anymore, and the Killer's like, okay, well, guess what. It's the sudden death round pretty literally where you can either stay in the house and like hide or go outside and try to escape, but either way I'm coming for you. So Dwayne, Lisa, and Nomdi decide to stay inside while Shinika, Allison, and King go outside to make a run for it. The inside group goes into the basement to try to find Morgan. They don't, but they find some other creepy shit. So they go back upstairs.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: And everyone is like acknowledging every hard ror movie trope at every single step. It's yes, that don't split up trope, and then don't go down stairs trope.

00:21:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:21:07
Speaker 2: I do just love a horror movie where all the characters have seen horror movies, right, and then do it anyways, it's beautiful.

00:21:16
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Yeah, that's always great.

00:21:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:18
Speaker 5: I just saw a Korean film, like a Korean horror movie that was basically that the whole thing was just them going to an asylum, which everyone was like, maybe you shouldn't do this splitting up.

00:21:28
Speaker 4: Everyone said, maybe you.

00:21:29
Speaker 5: Shouldn't do this m hm, sacrificing the weakest and she immediately dies.

00:21:37
Speaker 4: Terrible.

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I feel like the Blackening sort of demonstrates sometimes it's just a pragmatic choice. It didn't not make sense.

00:21:46
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, when Allison is like explaining the whole thing, it's like, yeah, maybe it does make sense for you to split up. Actually, yeah. Anyway, so they find some creepy shit, so they go back upstairs and run into Rain White from earlier. He seems to be an ally who wants to help them, so they proceed but with caution. Meanwhile, the outside group is trying to get to a main road, but the killer finds them and is shooting arrows at them. They fight back and Alison eventually kills him. They pull off his mask and it's the creepy man from the convenience store, a guy named Camden Connor. But they realize that he's wearing different boots than whoever they had stabbed in the foot, so there must be more than one killer.

00:22:42
Speaker 4: They screen from the multiple killers.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, Ranger White is trying to get the other group to safety, but he like, here's a noise. He goes to check it out. There's a moment where they think he might be the killer because they find one of the masks in his vehicle, But then Ranger White gets killed and it turns out he was an ally all along. They run back into the house. Dwayne gets separated from the other two for a bit, but then you know, they reunite inside. The other killers after them, but they managed to kill him too after Dwayne pukes on his face. Yeah.

00:23:22
Speaker 4: The real I feel like I would throw up a baska and chased right.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: I really love that you just like flew through that, like after he throws up anything like that's actually a really impactful moment in the film.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to overshadow it.

00:23:39
Speaker 5: And something else you skipped from the other death is like they reference the dance scene from Scary movie.

00:23:46
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about that.

00:23:49
Speaker 2: This is cinema.

00:23:51
Speaker 4: It's all a references.

00:23:56
Speaker 3: So now everyone is back inside. They've killed the two killers. They pull off the second person's mask and he looks just like the other guy and his name is Clive Connor. It turns out they are twins, but it seems like they were both hired by someone else to kill this group of friends. Then Dwayne, Shanika, Lisa, and Nomdi go back down to the basement to try to find their other friends, Morgan and Sean. Instead, they find Clifton, who appears to be dead.

00:24:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, another like saw coded moment.

00:24:34
Speaker 3: He appeared, oh right, and then he stands up.

00:24:39
Speaker 2: There is nothing more fun to be in a horror movie when all of a sudden someone goes You're just like, whoa, it's the best. It's like, yeah, it's just how like I wake up every day and it's funny to watch it.

00:24:54
Speaker 3: Yes, So there's a newspaper clipping on Clifton about an incid from ten years ago where he killed someone in a drunk driving accident, and they're like, what's this about, and then twist, Clifton wakes up. Basically the saw music is playing. No no no, no no no no no no. Yeah, he is the mastermind. He's the bad guy behind all of this. He traps them inside the basement and we learn that he's basically enacting revenge against them because on this night ten years ago, they were all at a Juneteenth party playing spades and Clifton made a mistake during the game and then everyone gave him shit for it and he got really embarrassed, and he got drunk for the first time ever, drove home and killed someone in this drunk driving accident, and his life has been in shambles ever since, with jail time and everything. So he's getting revenge and the friends are trying to form a plan to disarm Clifton using their like close friends' telepathy abilities, but it doesn't work because he also can hear them and Meanwhile, upstairs, Alison and King find a remote control on one of the dead guys, and they're trying to figure out how to unlock the basement, but they accidentally turn off all the lights. So the friends in the basement use this as an opportunity to fight back against Clifton. There's a scuffle and they eventually defeat and kill Clifton and like throw him into this very deep well. So the six friends having all survived, they're now outside trying to figure out what to do. They know that calling the cops is a horrible idea.

00:26:46
Speaker 2: And by this time the credits are inexplicably running right.

00:26:51
Speaker 3: I don't know why. This is like a post credits moment.

00:26:54
Speaker 2: Feels like a studio decision.

00:26:56
Speaker 3: I don't know it could be. So rather than calling the cops, they call the fire department, but then they still get sprayed down, and that's like the little button that ends the movie.

00:27:08
Speaker 5: It's hilarious, so funny when I remember seeing that the first time, I like, spit out my drink is so funny. Also, something you left out.

00:27:16
Speaker 4: Clifton starts laughing from the bottom of the.

00:27:19
Speaker 3: Well, so he might not be dead.

00:27:23
Speaker 5: That there's gonna be a second exactly, there's gonna be a second film, which I know they're working on now.

00:27:29
Speaker 3: Yes, I saw that very excited. Let's take another quick break and then we'll come back to discuss and oh, we're back, and we're back. Where should we start? No yet?

00:27:51
Speaker 2: Does anywhere jump up for you? Where would you like to start?

00:27:54
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:27:54
Speaker 5: There's some moments I just love. I really liked when they sing the Sister Act song to each other. Sister Act, So if you want to be somebody and you want to go somewhere, you gotta wake up and pay attention. So me and my sisters will randomly just like sing that to each other, and whatever's happening calls for it, you know what I mean?

00:28:14
Speaker 4: So I like seeing that in a movie.

00:28:16
Speaker 3: Sure.

00:28:17
Speaker 4: And then I did like the part where the really hot.

00:28:21
Speaker 5: Woman played by Antonette Lisa was saying why do black women have to save.

00:28:26
Speaker 4: Everybody all at the goddamn time when she's like.

00:28:28
Speaker 5: Killing the guy, and I was like, yeah, that's my.

00:28:33
Speaker 4: That was my little like, yeah, exactly.

00:28:36
Speaker 5: Like Black House, black women power movement moment for the movie.

00:28:43
Speaker 3: I feel like that's kind of part of a larger thing, which is that like, women are allowed to do things in this movie in a way that they're often not allowed to do things in most movies, where like, you know, obviously it's Shanika, Alison, and Lisa, they're you know, answering the questions of the game. They're fighting back against the killer. And I didn't clock any moment where a woman had to be saved by a man, but we do see Alison save King when the killer is descending on him. In the woods, we have women killing the two masked minions. Okay, bellow, Alison kills one and Lisa kills the other one. I also appreciated that a queer character, Dwayne kills the final big bads. So it's like you have characters who are not normally even allowed to participate, well.

00:29:43
Speaker 2: Not even allowed to live and yeah, to live to participate.

00:29:49
Speaker 3: Yeah right. It's no surprise that a black woman co wrote this script.

00:29:54
Speaker 2: I wanted to shout her out because Tracy Oliver is I think, like a modern icon in comedy writing just in general, because she started. I mean, she was the writer who co kicked off Isa Ray's career with the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl back in twenty eleven. Yeah, I'll never forget for some reason, like she and Issa Ray came to speak at my school when I was like a sophomore in or like a freshman or software in college about that web series, and she's gone on to have such a cool career, and like she was a co writer on Girls Trip. She wrote a Barbershop sequel, which the director of this movie, Tim Story, was also the director of the original Barbershop, amongst many, many many other movies. I'm sorry, I have scholarly journal Wikipedia up two thousand's fantastic four, interesting deep cut. I think like a Man one and two, the Shaft.

00:30:53
Speaker 3: Reboot, ride Along and Ride Along too.

00:30:57
Speaker 2: If there's one thing Tim's Story is gonna do, it's stick with his franchises. But yeah, like a lot of sort of modern icons are involved in this movie. I totally agree with you, Kitlin, and I love how much agency the women in this story have. I do wish that we had more like because obviously it's a huge ensemble cast, you have to be very careful about like what relationships you're giving focus to. I do wish that there was more relationships between women that were given focus because I do feel like it was mostly the relationships between women and men, whether it was romantic or not. There didn't feel like a strong core friendship between women, and I felt like, I don't know, I wanted that, and you could tell everyone as friends, but there wasn't like an ongoing sort of story between women, and I wish that that was there.

00:31:47
Speaker 5: I did write down all the instances where the women were talking to each other about something other than a man, yeah, or not involving a man, and it was like always about drugs or spades.

00:31:58
Speaker 4: And then there's like The.

00:31:59
Speaker 2: Sister, which powerful interaction nonetheless, but.

00:32:05
Speaker 5: Exactly it's like, I'm glad there's a movie where women are talking about these things. But yeah, you're right, they didn't really you didn't really feel that much depth of their relationship unless it was the talking to each other telepathically, because the women did that with each other a lot. Yeah, but they weren't really talking about anything deep. But that's also refreshing because as black person, nothing takes me out of a movie more when all of a sudden there's a deep conversation when it's a silly movie and you know about whatever we go through in day to day life as black people it's like, Okay, well this was a comedy and so yeah, until you were like, oh my life, I've had to fight and they literally are fighting for their lives.

00:32:48
Speaker 4: Here and you can barely complain, which I loved. I love that.

00:32:53
Speaker 3: I think what would have helped for me is because we get there's only one real subplot in the movie, which is the relationship situation between Lisa and Amdi, and then Dwayne's sort of resentment of that, so the three of them are kind of embroiled in this subplot. So I think what would have been nice is if the other three characters had their own subplot, and that would have allowed Alison and Shanika to have a subplot, and then we would have seen Shanika and Alison interacting more and have a better understanding of their friendship or something along those lines, where like an entire subplot revolved around at least two of the women and we could get a better sense of their friendship. Yeah.

00:33:39
Speaker 5: I do feel like they attempted that with the adderall yeah, that Shanika gives Allison, and then also with King being so injured, like.

00:33:48
Speaker 4: Just shot immediately and then shot in the same place, right, they had to rescue him.

00:33:52
Speaker 5: I feel like that was the attempt at that, but maybe they cut some things. I don't know, Yeah, because it didn't seem like a full sub story at all.

00:34:02
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that was the thing that I had written down where it was just like I want the studio notes and production history of this movie, Like what was there that got cut? Because it is like a tight movie. It's an hour and a half my favorite kind of movie. Not complaining. I love when a movie is not three hours so long. It's my favorite.

00:34:21
Speaker 3: Unless it's Titanic and that's the only exception.

00:34:23
Speaker 2: To that, and that it has to be three hours long. But like, I'm not complaining about the link that I am curious, like, because you have an eight person cast, which relationships were explored in earlier drafts? What was left? And why did the relationships that are focused on end up being focused on? Because I'm honestly, I mean, I like non d It just felt like, yeah, it ultimately kind of ended up like the subplot ended up revolving around this kind of like this straight couple from college, and you have more interesting dynamics right there. I don't know I'm being picky, but that said, I think that the dynamic between Lisa and Douayne is really interesting and not one that you see often explored of just kind of how he it seems like in college was her closest friend who she would go to when her relationship wasn't going well, but not when her relationship was going good. And that's a rare thing to see explored, And I thought it was really well done. I just wish you just got to see more between like especially with like Shanika. I felt like there was a ton of opportunities for her to like be characterized a little more because x MAO is so funny and like can do anything. I was like, give her more to do, you know, but it's only an hour and a half, So what are you gonna do?

00:35:45
Speaker 4: Sure?

00:35:46
Speaker 3: Right? Something I do like about her character is that she swims in the lake because you know, this movie has an agenda to like dispel a lot of tropes or examine popular tropes, whether they be racist tropes or just sort of general tired movie tropes, and one of them, she says something like, Oh, I'm gonna swim to the other side. I can see like houses on the other side of the lake. They probably assume we can't even swim. But then King is like, well I can't, and she's like, way to be a stereotype, but you know, then she swims in the lake. Also, she is a fat character and she's the only one who does a physical activity like this, which is also rare to see in a movie where a fat character is written to do some kind of physical activity like this. So I appreciated that different stereotypes were unraveled there.

00:36:46
Speaker 4: I love that too.

00:36:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love that because in elementary school, like my biggest friend was the one who like swam the fastest, ran the fastest, and it was nice to see that represented in a movie because you're right, you never see that, you know.

00:37:00
Speaker 4: Then also like I grew up.

00:37:01
Speaker 5: In a family where we all swam, you know, so that was also nice. Yeah, and it made sense. The character that they had say I can't swim made sense like socioeconomically too, because he was like supposed to be this character that seems as though he was from an inner city where a lot of people don't know how to swim, not just the black people, like if you don't have access to pools. So I love that they it seemed like they even thought about that.

00:37:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would take like the length of three episodes to go through the amount of detail this script goes through. And just like, especially in the trivia sequences, I feel you're getting a lot of like really overt references to black pop culture. But like, also there's just a million tiny moments in this movie where it's just like effortlessly kind of taking down what you're expected to see in a horror movie by just like letting the characters be the characters. And that's the best mm hmm.

00:37:59
Speaker 3: Obviously, huge theme of this movie is the story kind of examining this idea of black as a spectrum, where you know, some black people are quote unquote more black than others based on interests or lifestyle or things like that. And ultimately the movie comes down on the side of there's no such thing as a black spectrum and it's harmful to think that, although you do see the characters like having to work through that and learn that because they're talking about, oh, well, this person's more black than this person because xyz. And there's a whole scene predicated on that, and that's the scene that the original sketch by the comedy Troupe three p right, It's like this whole movie is based on that.

00:38:52
Speaker 2: I was kind of waiting for that in the whole because I was like, are they going to do the sketch is the movie?

00:38:57
Speaker 3: Are they going to do the sketch?

00:38:59
Speaker 2: Because it was like a real famous sketch, and they did the sketch I felt so it was like they basically said the title of I mean they do also say the title of the movie and the VideA You're just.

00:39:08
Speaker 3: Like they did the sketch. Yes, So like, ultimately the characters have to learn that, you know, it's their differences that make them special and there's no one way to be black and it's not as cheesy as I'm making it sound in the movie.

00:39:28
Speaker 5: I feel like they did already know that, and it's very it's very funny that the character that didn't know that Clifton was the one who even designed the game, because they even say like what do you mean who's the blackest? Like they're even like, what do you mean? That doesn't make sense? And the things that they say in that scene are so funny because they're usually the things that are said to people to be like, oh, you're not black enough, Like the thing they say to Nomdi where it's like, oh, your original recipe black because you're from Africa. That's usually that they that's said to be to take away some blackness from a person, So they like definitely thought about that.

00:40:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also like Alison's Alison as a biracial character too, and she is sort of repeatedly like dunked on forrit kind of clown on for it, and that she defends herself and like, and I also just love the sort of contrivance that it's like basically a college reunion where they all know each other, and it just like builds the perfect world to be like, oh, I'm just going to project who I was ten years ago on to this person, and then you have to be like, well, wait a second, why am I giving Namdi shit? Why am I giving Alison shit the same way I did ten years ago? And you sort of see the characters organically grow through having to do that, and it's still funny because they've known each other for ten years, so they don't have to be like polite about it.

00:40:51
Speaker 4: That's true.

00:40:52
Speaker 5: Another thing I really liked with Alison's character, There is a stereotype in the black community, especially at the academic level where the mixed race kids are gonna be in every like African American studies class, they're really gonna try really really hard to learn every little ounce of like black history. And they keep bringing that up with her character. You know, she's the one that knew all the words of the black national anthem.

00:41:21
Speaker 3: She's wearing a.

00:41:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, I thought that was really funny. Yeah, they really did think of all the tropes they did, it was great.

00:41:30
Speaker 2: But even in like addressing all of these tropes, every character had humanity. Like there was no character that it felt like even if it was like a very sort of like broad like Jermaine Fowler's character, who I feel like is maybe the least you know, like given any respect because he famously voted for Trump, which is the quickest way to lose respect for a character. But yeah, that I would imagine, as Dwayne Perkins and Tracy Oliver are ready script it has to be such a like tricky like needle to thread of like how do we show these stereotypes, debunk them and have these characters have individual humanity? But they did it it just like it's a really thoughtful script in that way.

00:42:19
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, they did an excellent job, because at no point did I feel like I was watching a very like stereotypical movie. I just I felt like, oh, this was written by black people, and I can tell and I feel very represented. Everyone that I watched the movie with felt represented and it was good. I was gonna ask you, guys, when did you realize that Clipton was the murder? Because I realized it immediately in the in the convenience store.

00:42:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's being very suss.

00:42:49
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:42:49
Speaker 2: No. I feel like there are so many like red herrings presented at the beginning of this movie where you're like, well, even if it does have to do with the scariest guy we've seen so far, it's probably not actually him who's nearby and it's Clifton And yeah. I mean that weirdly goes into conversations we've been having on the show forever with like the Revenge of the Nerds kind of trope, where it's like, oh, in the eighties and into the nineties, there was this whole idea of you know that the nerd character is owed to something by others around them, and that we have wronged them, and that there is a wrong to be made right. And now it's like there's almost like an automatic like, Oh, he's not a bad guy, he's just lonely, he's just a misfit. And now I feel like that's come all the way around because the world is run by cruel nerds. Yeah, so when I see a Nerds stock character, I'm automatically like, well, I don't know. In twenty twenty three, when the movie get like, you know, we can't be so sure that we're supposed to be on this guy's side exactly either way. Thrilled the feature main Fowler don't care in what capacity?

00:44:00
Speaker 4: Right, That's true. He's always good to see.

00:44:02
Speaker 3: Yeah. That was the thing for me where I was like very immediately suspicious of him, and I was like, oh, he's probably the killer, partly because Jermaine Fowler is like not playing to type at all.

00:44:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:44:14
Speaker 3: Normally he's like, you know, a very smooth, sexy person. Not that Nerds can't be sexy obviously, but like.

00:44:22
Speaker 2: We're about to get a five hundred emails excuse me, obviously we're nerds.

00:44:29
Speaker 3: Yeah hello, and we do fine. No, but he's playing not to type with this character. So I was like, hmm that I bet that's like indicative of something about his character. But then when he goes outside and gets shot with the crossbow, I was like, I guess it's not him. And then there's you know, the red herring of Ranger White showing up and you're like, oh, is he an ally? Isn't he? Can they or can they not trust him? And he gives that like monologue about oh, if I was invited to the cookout, be honored, but I wouldn't go because I know that that would, like my presence, there would be a disturbance of an all black space and I wouldn't want to do that and all this stuff, and they're like, oh, that's actually a pretty good answer. But then they find the mask in his car and you don't know if you can trust him or not, and then ultimately he dies and he was seems like he was trying to help them. So I've found that kind of rollercoaster of like can we can we not trust this character to be amusing?

00:45:28
Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, that was good.

00:45:30
Speaker 2: It's a good fake out. Yeah, because it's also like, I mean, this movie is doing so much at once, where like it's straddling genres, it's trying to dispel all of these timeoutit tropes, and it's just like trying to create a coherent horror movie where there's like the right amount of fake out villains and the right amount of twists and it does everything. Yeah, I thought that twist made. It's so cynical. But like, as a now horror movie fan, when Dark Ranger White returned, I just looked at where we were in the run time and it was like, well, it's not him. Yep, Like, based on the run time, it's not him. But I wonder how it will end up not being him?

00:46:12
Speaker 5: Right, that's true because it's like we just watched too many movies now, or like you guys especially probably watch any movies.

00:46:19
Speaker 2: We're pilled.

00:46:20
Speaker 3: We know the formulas. It's true, it's bad. I also just want to shout out Duwayne the character, Dwayne the person and writer and actor in this movie. It was very important to Dwayne Perkins that there be a representation of a queer character who's not just like the gay best friend who has like very little actual characterization, who's just there to be, you know, a stereotype and make little jokes and stuff like that. And so obviously he put a lot of care into writing and performing this character that has dimension. Again, he's a participant in this subplot with Lisa nom Dy, and it really focuses I think on I.

00:47:03
Speaker 2: Think Lisa and Duyanne are kind of like, if you had to choose central characters, I feel like it's them for sure.

00:47:10
Speaker 4: For sure.

00:47:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I appreciate that he has this subplot that characterizes him a bit more. And yeah, it was again just important to Dwayne Perkins. He was talking about especially the intersection of being black and queer, and he wanted to really focus on that and make sure that that character is someone who other people could see and look up to.

00:47:36
Speaker 5: So exactly, So, how do you guys feel about I'm gonna do a deep black question. Two of the dark the dark skinned characters did die first, but then they have Namdi, who arguably is like maybe darker than both of them, who does survive, and then everyone else is like somewhat light skinned.

00:47:57
Speaker 3: Oh you mean, with Morgan and Sean dying first. Yeah, that is something that I feel like this movie would have actually tried to avoid, and it's kind of surprising that it went din Yeah right, yeah, because they do talk about colorism in the movie and there's this running joke of like Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince, and she's eventually replaced by a lighter skinned actor. And there's another moment where the group I think it's the ones who stay in the house, and like after it's like the sudden death thing, and one of the characters says, oh, typical for like the killer to go for the darker people first. So they're acknowledging colorism, and so it is still.

00:48:38
Speaker 5: I will say that Lisa was also dark skinned, so like, two dark skinned people survive, but you died first.

00:48:45
Speaker 3: Uh oh makes you think?

00:48:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that also registered for me, And I sort of went back to like, well, they are the two most famous cast members, and I was wondering, like, is it a legiti thing, because it feels clear that for the most part, I think that this movie was written for certain actors in mind ideally, but the first two people, I mean, I guess if I'm playing Devil's advocate, I would guess that the first two characters who die were just written as the first two characters who die. Obviously they're black characters. But I'm sort of wondering if it's like whatever, the most famous black woman and those famous black men that want to be in this movie, We'll go with them. And then, like in retrospect, it sort of ended up like you're saying, which makes total sense of they are darker. I don't know, what do you think? I don't know.

00:49:39
Speaker 4: I literally asked that question to like see if you guys would freak out. But I'm just kidding. It was. It works.

00:49:48
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for falling apart.

00:49:50
Speaker 2: I was sort of like yvon Orgy and j Ferrah. I mean, they're both so famous, so of course they don't have more than two days to commit to that exactly.

00:49:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:49:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I I do feel like the lead story, other than them fighting off a murderer, being between nom D, Lisa, and Duyne was because like those three actors, I feel like this was like kind of their vehicle.

00:50:13
Speaker 4: It was definitely Duyne's vehicle. And then Antoinette.

00:50:18
Speaker 5: I keep calling her Antoinette because it's just like her real name, and nam D I'm not gonna saying his real name. They're also pretty famous. Yeah, so I wonder if that's why the other characters kind of got cut away, not saying that they're not a saerience because X Mayo is very famous, Like, so is Grace Byers Chris Byers.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean as an Empire fan.

00:50:40
Speaker 4: I love Empire.

00:50:41
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, as an Empire fan, like that was one of my first.

00:50:45
Speaker 5: Like, oh, I know, I was excited to see her.

00:50:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:50:49
Speaker 5: Her husband was in Origin too, which I love. So that was pretty Oh wow. He's been doing stuff. He's been directing a lot too. But I just feel like they definitely were put every movie. You can tell who they're pushing right, who they're trying to say, you know, hello to Hollywood's book them in more things. And I feel like that other storyline, like the romantic storyline, was that.

00:51:13
Speaker 4: That was my thought about it.

00:51:14
Speaker 3: Yeah that makes sense.

00:51:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, so hopefully it worked. Hopefully Dane will be more things.

00:51:19
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm.

00:51:19
Speaker 2: Oh god. I mean, like, regardless of any criticism anyone has of this movie, if Dwayne Perkins ends up being a movie star, then we want it's gravy. It's fine.

00:51:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're good. Yeah, our close personal best friend, Dwayne.

00:51:31
Speaker 2: Perkins, he's like actually on the phone right now with us.

00:51:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:51:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's just shot Facebook messaging.

00:51:39
Speaker 3: I will say that one of the members of the comedy Troupe three Pete who made the original sketch, which I believe has disbanded a few years ago. But one of the original members was my friend Namdi. I don't think the character Namdi was really based on him. I think they're just like, who are the people that were in this grooves? A lot of the characters have the same names as the members of this group, but not played by the same actors, with the exception of Dwayne Perkins. But yeah, I think Namdi is like supposed to be my friend Namdi, so there's little flex.

00:52:17
Speaker 5: So were they involved, like the other people in the sketch group? Were they involved in the film? I actually don't look that up.

00:52:22
Speaker 3: If they are, I couldn't really tell they or not. I wasn't sure I did really in any sort of like writing capacity.

00:52:30
Speaker 2: I certainly hope they were compensated because this movie was very much made off of the very successful comedy Central Sketch. But yeah, I wasn't able to find information about it.

00:52:40
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another thing I wanted to point out, just a small criticism of the movie, but this is a movie that's guilty of having one of the villains have a facial difference. Yeah, one of the twins has one eye. And we've talked about this huge trope in especially horror movies.

00:53:04
Speaker 2: But disability representing evil.

00:53:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, villain will have a facial difference and it's meant to telegraph to the audience like this is how we know they're a villain, or this is part of why they're a villain. And this is a very harmful trope obviously that the movie does still participate in. I feel like, similarly, one of the villains has asthma and uses an inhaler, the way that a lot of movie villains are often written to have a breathing condition. So this movie does still lean into some tropes, not in a way that I feel like it was malicious. It was more just like, oh, I'm writing a horror movie. What do horror movies do? And like they just maybe didn't consider the harmful implications of some of the tropes.

00:53:56
Speaker 5: Even the makeup they put on Officer White. The makeup they put on him was to make him look weird. Like the way that his face was done in production was to be like, oh, something's wrong with him, something's a little off, even though he you know, he has a red herring.

00:54:13
Speaker 4: Like even in that and Clifton.

00:54:15
Speaker 5: Also, he seemed like he might have been like on the spectrum a little bit, which was also not great. They were really doing basically a caricature of that with the Clifton character, and I don't know if that's the way it was written or if that's just the way you know, the performance went.

00:54:34
Speaker 2: I agree. I had a similar note no, yeah, yeah that it just felt like there and again I want the studio notes history of this, because you don't need to other white characters very much to make them suspicious. It just felt like almost like sort of a default, like less thoughtful choice by whoever. I have no idea like is this a writer choice, this is a director choice? Is studio choice? I have no idea, but in a movie that yeah, it is like so you know, based on taking down all of what you're meant to assume in a horror movie, it felt like yeah, especially with disability, it was not as.

00:55:17
Speaker 3: Juicy, right, but the movie does yes, fun and funny. I also want to shout out the predominantly black production team. We've already talked about the director and the writers. There's also the team of producers is mostly black. The cinematographer Todd a dos Race, the music Dexter, story and production designer Cecil Gentry, all black filmmakers.

00:55:49
Speaker 4: It's pretty cool.

00:55:50
Speaker 3: Wow cool, And I might be leaving some people out, but those are, like, you know, some of the main creative decision makers. So just wanted to shout those.

00:56:00
Speaker 4: Shout out to Lionsgate.

00:56:01
Speaker 5: Allie's choosing diverse programming, so that's pretty good.

00:56:05
Speaker 4: They did joy Ride.

00:56:06
Speaker 5: Also they do a bunch of my favorite television shows. Yeah, the Power Universe is Lionsgate, so yeah, nice.

00:56:13
Speaker 2: And also just you know, box office wise, this movie was made for five million dollars. Wow, which is wild, especially because this is in last year dollars. This is in current dollars, and it more than tripled its budget, which is you know, I don't know. I feel like so often, especially with movies that are made by black directors, by marginalized directors in general, or by women, I mean just any marginalized director, it's always brought to like, well, you know, like if you can't get butts in seats, you can't tell us blah blah. But like, this movie tripled its budget. If there are not more movies like The Blackening or more movies from this creative team coming out. It is a structural There is no argument for this boofy being unsuccessful. It tripled its budget and it's funny and everyone liked it. So yeah, I don't know, I'm like getting ahead of it, but I'm like, shut up in it.

00:57:15
Speaker 5: Well, I do know that they're working on a second one. Well it's yet to be seen if it actually comes out, because those state of things you never know, but hopefully.

00:57:23
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, people are trying to just like delete Hollywood in general, but we'll see, Yeah.

00:57:30
Speaker 3: We shall Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss.

00:57:35
Speaker 2: The only other thing I had to say was like, I feel as if anytime there is a like niche movie that comes out so like a genre movie, basically like a horror movie, it's always like, oh, this is the first horror movie directed by a woman, and it's like treated like that, or this is the first black horror movie, and you know, this is not something that is big endorsed by the blackening. It clearly draws from the legacy of black horror movies. But if you enjoyed this movie, there is a whole genre of black horror movies. In case you need to hear that, because I feel like the way that Hollywood marketing works is very often any movie by a marginalized director is made to seem like the first movie that's ever existed, and that thankfully is very rarely actually true. And so if you enjoyed The Blackening, there are so many movies like The Blackening going back decades, and you should check them out.

00:58:35
Speaker 4: That's right.

00:58:36
Speaker 3: I would also recommend the documentary called Horror Noir, A History of Black Horror, which examines tropes and you know, horror movies in general centering black characters or that involve black characters. But it's a really good documentary that breaks a lot of that down. So HI highly recommend.

00:58:57
Speaker 5: On the same subject, You guys are very right. There are a lot of horror films by black people that I loved in like the seventies, eighties, like every decade.

00:59:06
Speaker 4: But would you.

00:59:08
Speaker 5: Consider Leprechaun in the Hood a black horror movie?

00:59:14
Speaker 3: I cannot safely say because I've never seen it.

00:59:17
Speaker 4: Oh what would you know?

00:59:22
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:59:23
Speaker 5: No, okay, but I feel like it was marketed that way, Like it definitely was marketed to black people.

00:59:29
Speaker 4: I was like, Oh, there are.

00:59:30
Speaker 5: Lots of black people in miss I'm like, because he's in the hood, he's still played by he's played by a famous white man.

00:59:40
Speaker 2: A Leprechaun Allprechon.

00:59:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, lepre in the Hood.

00:59:43
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:59:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, We've covered five hundred movies, but that is not one of them.

00:59:49
Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like it definitely. I understand why you haven't. I'll say that right now. I think Warwick Davis.

00:59:59
Speaker 5: Honestly when it even tell people to watch it at this point, but it has become sort of a classic.

01:00:04
Speaker 3: So I mean, if you want to come back on the show and talk about a movie with us, you are more than welcome.

01:00:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, a camp movie is a camp movie. Is a camp movie.

01:00:14
Speaker 4: That's true.

01:00:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I haven't rewatched it recently, but I do have vivid memories of it, just like it just would not be okay in the stage or maybe it would maybe do great because of the way things are going.

01:00:27
Speaker 4: But it shouldn't be God.

01:00:30
Speaker 5: So like maybe, Yeah, if you guys want to watch it, I don't think you're gonna like it, but only.

01:00:36
Speaker 3: One way to find out.

01:00:37
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, I can't wait.

01:00:38
Speaker 4: It's like a Howard the Duck type vibe. I don't know if you saw that.

01:00:42
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen a clip. I haven't seen any of the Leprechaun movies, no, but I've seen clips from at least one of them, and it seems goofy as hell. Yeah, does anyone have anything else before we Bechdel test it?

01:00:59
Speaker 4: No, let's back to test it. I feel like it's going to be good.

01:01:02
Speaker 3: It does pass. Yeah, Lisa, Shanika, and Alison all talk to each other in different combinations, both verbally and telepathically, and so that makes it kind of an interesting and novel pass.

01:01:17
Speaker 2: A telepathic pass, but it definitely passes.

01:01:20
Speaker 3: Yes, So yeah, kind of that's all there's about it.

01:01:24
Speaker 5: And they talk about something other than a man, although in the first thirty minutes it's touch and go because there's a lot of just talking about Namdie or do I Yes, very true, but they do move on from that.

01:01:36
Speaker 3: After that. They're talking about weapons, they're talking about adderall, They're quoting sisterrect too, you know, stuff like that.

01:01:43
Speaker 4: Love it, love to see it.

01:01:45
Speaker 5: I was gonna say just on a because I'm all about intersectionality. So for intersectional feminism passes that test too. They talk about race, class, culture, sexuality, spirituality.

01:01:58
Speaker 4: It kind of like encompasses that whole thing as well.

01:02:01
Speaker 3: Absolutely for sure. The movie scores very high marks on the Kent Test, which of course is a media metric created by friend of the cast, Clarkasha Kent. If you're not familiar, it's a pretty comprehensive list of criteria that examines representation of women of color and especially black women in media. So I haven't done a full breakdown for this movie in relation to the Kent Test, but i'd imagine it gets pretty high marks. And that kind of brings us to our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples. Examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I'm gonna go like four and a half on this one. I think it's doing so much. I love comedy as a vehicle to examine things like, you know, racist tropes in movies and to examine really anything. But I think it's such an effective tool for that, and I think this movie does such a good job of that. The different just kind of thematic things that the movie explores, the tropes that it seeks to dispel, things like that. I appreciate that the women are characterized in such a way that they are allowed to do things in the story and push the story forward with their choices and actions. I appreciate that they are distinct characters. There's body diversity among them, there's all kinds of stuff that we don't see, and this movie writes women in such a way that they are, you know, all the characters of this movie. But I pay particular attention to the way women are written in horror movies and how cautious and aware of their surroundings they are, because women in horror movies are almost never written that way. They're just oblivious, they're just like careless, not doing anything. But like these characters, and again particularly the these women and even more specifically, these black women, are like appropriately cautious and aware of their surroundings. So it's not hard to do, but yet most horror movies don't do it. This one does. I appreciated that. I also think it's really cool that the movie centers Juneteenth. There's just so little acknowledgment of June teenth in Hollywood movies and in media in general, so it's cool this holiday is the backdrop for this movie. So much to love about this movie. I would say that where I would take off any kind of nipple points would be the few harmful tropes that it does lean into regarding ascribing a facial difference or disability or neurodivergence to the villains, specifically violent villains. And it's just surprising that this movie does this since it seeks to avoid and subvert so many other harmful tropes, which is why I will still give the movie four point five nipples. I really love this movie. I think it's so funny, and I'll throw my nipples to the original group three Peete and the cast of the movie, so that's who gets my nipples. That can divide them up how they choose.

01:05:25
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go on like a four nipple about I think this movie is wonderful. I think the fact that this movie exists fucking rocks. I think that the legacy of black horror like needed sort of like a shot to the leg and that the Blackening very very very much did that, and that it will lead to a number of wonderful movies. I do wish that because we have a cast of a lot of women, that there was more narrative space made for relationships between women, and I feel like the things that this movie falls back on are both what you said, Kaitlyn and I in the sort of ablest tropes that appear within the movie, but also just sort of the heteronormative tropes that appear within this movie in spite of the fact that our sole queer character as far as we know, end up being sort of the hero of the movie. Like I feel like in a cast that is about split down in terms of gender, if we're talking in the binary sense, I wish that there were more dynamics between women that we're seeing because there's a lot of setup that I feel like we could have had more of and there could have been explored more. But there are very few movies like this coming out at any time, much less last year. And it's a funny movie. It's a great movie. I really appreciate, and like want to shout out what we're just talking about of how the diversity behind the camera equals the diversity in front of the camera, because I feel like in so many movies that we talk about that have a lot of black actors in front of the camera, that energy is rarely matched behind the camera because of how Hollywood is structured and the fact that the blackening actually is like doing that on all sides is wonderful.

01:07:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:07:15
Speaker 2: I think it's a really funny movie. I think it's really rewatchable. I hope we get a sequel. Oh my god, I don't trust Hollywood with fucking anything right now.

01:07:24
Speaker 4: Same honestly, they can't.

01:07:25
Speaker 2: Seem to release anything without deleting it three months later. But this is a really awesome movie. I mean, it's fun and it was successful, and I want to seem more like it. So I'm gonna go four nipples. I'm going to give one to Tracy Oliver, two to Dwayne Perkins because you know he's doing double duty at least in this movie. And then I will give my final nipple two x Mayo because I'm a fan.

01:07:54
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, how about you know you.

01:07:56
Speaker 5: I think I'm gonna go higher than both of you, but it's not gonna be perfect. I think I'm gonna do a four and three quarters nipple, which I do have three quarters of a nipple on my right side. I won't get too into it, but I agree with you with the ableism. And then also I do wish they built the female relationships a little bit more, or just you know, showed more scenes with that, I do appreciate that it was a short movie, Like you were saying, Jamie.

01:08:26
Speaker 4: I love a short movie.

01:08:27
Speaker 5: That's why I've been able to see it so many times, be honest, because it's like just watching a television show at this point or YouTube video. I watch all these retrospectives on YouTube. They're the same hour and a half. So yeah, I do like that. I know that there's a second one being worked on. Please let it happen. I mean, if the budget was only five million for the first one, they could do it again with the same budget. Hopefully they would get more money though this time. And that leads me to give the three quarter nipple to lions Gate for making it happen with that small budget. Thank you to them. And then, you know, just evenly disperse my nipples to the cast, the writers, the crew. Yeah, everyone that just made it happen, because that's great. I love giving my nipples away too, feels good.

01:09:15
Speaker 2: You know, it's slipperating.

01:09:19
Speaker 4: Give them away.

01:09:19
Speaker 5: Heal him of the XMA, then give them right back, all right?

01:09:22
Speaker 4: That was CMI.

01:09:25
Speaker 5: Oh, can I also say, okay, this is you two are are white. But I do love that it was still just rated R. When they got to say nigga so much, that's very refreshing for me, like that they still let it have just the rated R rating because there was once upon a time that would mean like N C seventeen and C seventeen or something.

01:09:47
Speaker 2: You know, based on what I saw, I still feel like this movie could have warranted a PG thirteen.

01:09:53
Speaker 4: Same.

01:09:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, the violence wasn't that graphic.

01:09:56
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess if you're going on a gore on. The thing that stuck with me the most was the vomit and that's very PG thirteen. I just can't deal with it.

01:10:06
Speaker 5: I think the rated R was because of the use of nigga, like the use of the N word, because I don't know if you guys can say that on this podcast, I'm gonna say N word from that you can, okay, Yeah.

01:10:18
Speaker 4: Sound like eight times.

01:10:20
Speaker 2: I mean like we talk about that a lot though, of like why in the rating system, why do certain movies get our ratings? And so often it's just because of like something that is not commonly accepted among like the white middle class is like what will directly influence the rating? And I feel like I'm glad this movie got in our rating, and I also think it could have been a PG thirteen rating and done even better as a result, because this should have been a movie that was I mean, I think it probably was anyways, because thankfully it is easy to sneak into our rated movies, but this should have been a movie that was like readily accessible to any high schooler, Like why wouldn't it be true?

01:10:57
Speaker 5: The first time I saw it there were definitely some high schoolers there, so definitely people were able to see it, So that's good. But you're right, it should have been PG thirteen, So I take back my kudos for them, because even with the use of nigga like they should, it should have been PG thirteen.

01:11:13
Speaker 4: That's true.

01:11:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, they say fuck a lot, and I think are only allowed like one or two fucks okay.

01:11:21
Speaker 2: Which is also ridiculous and grow up like what fourteen year old is like, Oh, one fuck okay, that's all I'll use moving forward.

01:11:32
Speaker 5: I used to say fuck all the time when I was six. I don't know where I heard it, but I got in trouble.

01:11:36
Speaker 4: At school all the time for saying it.

01:11:39
Speaker 5: If six year olds in Catholic school can say fuck all they want, then it should be in movie.

01:11:43
Speaker 3: It's a movie.

01:11:45
Speaker 2: Fuck, every kid says, fuck why it's fun and it doesn't hurt anybody true anyway.

01:11:53
Speaker 3: No, yeah, thank you so much for joining us.

01:11:56
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.

01:11:57
Speaker 5: It was really fun. I'm sorry if I so quiet all the time. I just like, really like how much work you guys put into your research. It's like very nice, and you guys have that very like MPR Okay, sorry, Public Radio Comming voice.

01:12:15
Speaker 3: I'll type the compliment.

01:12:16
Speaker 4: Thank you m a compliment. I love it. What I'm hearing is.

01:12:19
Speaker 3: That I'm brilliant, yes, and so cool and also beautiful. So yes, thank you, yes, thank you for coming on the show. Tell us where people can follow you online? Check out any of your stuff plug away.

01:12:37
Speaker 5: All right, Yeah, you can find me my schedule at no yacomedy dot com. No o n y ecomedy a dot com. I think I have some stand up on there. I don't even remember anymore. I'm gonna be traveling a lot, so I'll be in New England a bunch of times this summer. I'll be in DC and that'll be in like September ish. Yeah, and you can follow me at nony Fizzle at Gmail or sorry, no, not Gmail.

01:13:05
Speaker 4: Sorry I'm on autopilot. I do only know nony fizzle.

01:13:10
Speaker 5: Gmail is not my email address, so nony Fizzle at Instagram.

01:13:15
Speaker 4: So that's n O n e E f I z z l E.

01:13:19
Speaker 5: And then I'm not really on Twitter anymore, but it's at that, no ya. I will retweet stuff that I think is funny. I might post a show so you can follow me there, and that's just that n O N y E. And also my ig in my Instagram.

01:13:33
Speaker 4: Sorry, that's the same thing. I'm so tired, you guys. I had no copy today.

01:13:37
Speaker 5: My Instagram and my TikTok are the same thing.

01:13:42
Speaker 4: Okay, now I'm done. Perfect.

01:13:44
Speaker 3: That was beautiful. I loved it every moment of it. You can follow us on mostly Instagram these days, but also Twitter if you so feel inclined. At Bechdel Cast, you can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon. It's five dollars a month. You get two bonus episodes every month that center a super fun, super cool theme that's brilliant and awesome and beautiful as well.

01:14:12
Speaker 2: And never weird and never does it's never weird.

01:14:15
Speaker 3: And yeah, so normal. Actually that's all at patreon dot com slash Bechtel Cast. And we've also got a link tree where you can find some of our goodies link tree slash Bechdel Cast. And Jamie tell them about our little merch store.

01:14:35
Speaker 2: Oh maybe I will. So we also have a merch store over at teapublic dot com slash the Bechtel Cast, where you can get all of the random Bechtel Cast inside jokes you've been listening to for years, onto a shirt, a bag, a pillow, whatever you so please.

01:14:52
Speaker 3: And it's all designed by Jamie.

01:14:56
Speaker 2: And with that, what does everyone say? We all, I'll call the fire department and see what happens.

01:15:04
Speaker 4: Let's do it.

01:15:05
Speaker 3: Bye bye, bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskressensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechdel Cast