My Best Friend's Wedding

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have 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 2: Hello Caitlin, Hello Jamie.

00:00:19
Speaker 3: So, in spite of being my best friend, you haven't talked to me in a month. Do you ever think about that?

00:00:25
Speaker 2: I think that is normal. I think it's also normal that I didn't know about your wedding until just now, even though it's four days from now.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: But we're best friends, and we know that we're best friends because we are always saying it, and that's really the only But we're best friends. Do we have chemistry? No?

00:00:47
Speaker 2: No, I would say not no.

00:00:49
Speaker 3: Do we know what's going on in each other's lives?

00:00:53
Speaker 2: No, not even a little bit.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: And I would bet Caitlin that you're probably sitting across from your actual best friend right now. But the movie we're in, we'll never acknowledge it, right, it's so wild. George is her best friend, Like yeah, what?

00:01:10
Speaker 2: And she does admit that at some point she's like, well, my best friend these days and it's like yeah, and.

00:01:16
Speaker 3: You're like, sorry, it's he's just your best friend. Like you and Michael don't know each other. You guys are horny chaos machines, and I wish you the worst. Welcome to the Backdeor Cast. This is my best friend's podcast.

00:01:33
Speaker 2: Oh wow.

00:01:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and my name's Jamie Loftus.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: Well, what if someone comes in here and tries to break up this podcast because they're in love with us?

00:01:43
Speaker 3: They want to make a podcast with us more? Oh wow?

00:01:49
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm Caitlin Dante.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: And this is our podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens. And we really have been dragging our heels on this one, but it is a movie that simply begs to be discussed on this podcast.

00:02:08
Speaker 2: It sure does.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: Okay, here's something that doesn't pass the Bechtel test before we tell you what it is. As I was watching this movie, I was thinking Shrek would be having none of this. You know what I mean? What do you mean killing Cameron Diaz is being mistreated the whole movie. Shrek would be having none of this. Well, caught that joke there.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Well, there's another Shrek connection too, because a construction a construction.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: Wow, that's every dessert we ever have a delicious construction.

00:02:46
Speaker 2: Rupert Everett voices Prince Charming.

00:02:48
Speaker 3: Oh, Rupert Everett is a delight in this movie. I think he's one of the movie's few high points. Now, on the other hand, Dermott mulroney, I can't with.

00:03:01
Speaker 2: This guy, This motherfucker.

00:03:04
Speaker 3: He is a fucking dud. He is a dud. It is He's just too much. He's not too much. I wish he were more. I wish he were more. Yeah, Dermott mulroney. I feel like this is not our first encounter with Dermott mulroney, and it's just never been pleasant for me encountering Dermott mulroney.

00:03:27
Speaker 2: Who I'm gonna probably accidentally call Dylan McDermott because I don't know the difference between those two people.

00:03:33
Speaker 3: Dylan mulrony, I mean, and the names certainly don't help, right, I mean, it is interesting whenever you watch rom coms or movies you know, generally directed at or marketed towards women and fems from any era. You have movie stars who have endured, and then you have sort of like the white guy flavor of the months who thirty years from now, your daughter is like, who the fuck is Dermott mulroney. Yeah, you know, like every generation has their Dermott Mulroney's. What if he was a listener? Oh my god, what if he was crying?

00:04:05
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure he's fine as an actor or whatever. It's his character, that's.

00:04:13
Speaker 3: I'm sure he's fine. I would issue a notes ap apology if if I knew that this slander got to Dermott mulroney. Yeah, I'd be like, I am so sorry, Dermott. I didn't realize the power of my platform.

00:04:27
Speaker 2: I mean, he's our biggest fan.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: For all we know, we're in the top one hundred movie podcasts, so and I'm assuming Dermot mulroney is listening to all the hundred of them, so, you know, whenever he gets around to this, my apology start. But boy, what a flop character. I mean, although it did make me laugh a lot because well no, wait, okay, what is the Bechdel Test?

00:04:54
Speaker 2: Gitlin? Oh right right. It's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. It was coined as a goof first appearing in Alison Bechdel's Dikes to Watch Out For in nineteen eighty five. It has many versions. The version we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And is the conversation about something other than a man? And we especially like it when it's a narratively meaningful conversation. Right, So we'll talk about that later, but in the meantime, I.

00:05:36
Speaker 3: Have to say one more thing about Dermott mulroney.

00:05:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. Please, Well, so this won't pass the Bechdel test.

00:05:42
Speaker 3: No, it won't, it won't. No, I was just thinking about it was making me laugh. The surface level similarities that the Dermott mulroney character has to my own dad in that he is a sports writer named Mike Yes who sometimes struggles to emotionally connect. And I was like wow. But also I was like, was my dad like a supervillain? Was he a dormt mulroney type. No? I did love. I loved the detail that he worked at Sport magazine.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: It was cracky. I didn't even notice.

00:06:16
Speaker 3: I couldn't stop noticing it. I mean, it didn't come up with that many times, but the first time I was like Dormitt mulroney, you clown, you said sports wrong. But no he worked at sport magazine. Because later, when Julia Roberts is sending her evil email, ugh, she sends it to like editor in chief at sportmagazine dot com, Like you're just like not sport magazine. Give me a fucking right. I love fake movie companies. They're the best.

00:06:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, today we're.

00:06:45
Speaker 3: Talking about my best friend's wedding, a nineteen ninety seven movie about two people who like should really just like they deserve each other. They deserve each other, get out of here, you know, and let's let Cameron Diaz finish college for crying out.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: Wow seriously, Oh gosh.

00:07:02
Speaker 3: They had me rooting for a billionaire's daughter. This movie had me in the trenches.

00:07:08
Speaker 2: What's your history with the movie, Jamie?

00:07:11
Speaker 3: So this is not a movie that I grew up with, which is weird. I feel like I'm very hit and miss with irrational attachments to nineties and two thousands rom coms. Some I ride for. This is just not when I ever watched growing up. So I didn't see it until a couple of years ago, and I really did not care for it. And I still I'm sorry for fans of this movie. I understand objectively that this movie and then reading a little bit more about the production history of this movie made me at least appreciate what they were going for a little more. But like, I don't like it. I do think it is a like, on its face, a subversive and fun idea for the movie star of the movie to be playing the villain of the movie in a rom com. That's a fun idea. I'm on board for that. And it almost feels like Julia Roberts like Olympics, to like play someone so deeply hateable and still be so likable because due to being Julia Roberts like interesting conceptually, but I just like it just totally flopped so many things and even in a lot of the contemporary criticism or you know, this movie turned twenty five in twenty twenty two, so there were some reflective essays on it, but I still don't see people calling out Dermot mulroney's fucking character for being so like. So I think that this movie was, you know, it written by a very like probably one of the most successful screenwriters of the twentieth century. Weirdly, but like, it just doesn't come together. It just doesn't, and it doesn't come together in a way that I found like pretty confusing and aggravating and gross because for all of the discourse that has apparently been going on around Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz's character for twenty five years, which is interesting. I also like that Cameron Diaz is presented as if she's going to be the villain and then she's not fun subversion, But it's the Michael character where he is I think Barnunn the most evil character in the movie, and there's like, you know, I've seen criticism of it, but not the degree I was expecting to. Over twenty five years later, it still seems to be like Julia Roberts is evil and it's interesting because of the ending. It is interesting because of the ending, but I still feel like at the end of the movie, Michael and Kimmy getting married is a terrible ending for especially Kimmy. Like I found it so aggravating, aggravating because there were moments where you're like, oh, maybe it's about to but then it never does and it has no interest in being critical of Michael.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.

00:10:01
Speaker 3: I don't like it. I found it very frustrating because there's elements of it that I thought should have been interesting, and maybe under a more confident writing team, could have been interesting. But yeah, I think ultimately a waste of Julia Roberts's time in my opinion. Sure, what's your history with this movie?

00:10:21
Speaker 2: I similarly did not grow up with it. This movie came out in ninety seven, and that was famously the year Titanic came out, and so I didn't really have time for anything else besides Titanic.

00:10:34
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, what else would you have been doing?

00:10:36
Speaker 2: Even though Titanic came out at the very end of nineteen ninety seven, I cleared my whole year in anticipation.

00:10:44
Speaker 3: You were getting so high. What else came out in nineteen ninety seven? I think it was like a kind of fun movie year. Oh you know what, I take it back. You know, you could have been seeing a Hercules, you could have been seeing Disney's Hercules. You could have been seeing Goodwill Hunt or something.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: Sure, one of my favorite movies also came out in ninety seven, which is the Full Monty.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

00:11:06
Speaker 2: But other than that, it's kind of a floppy ar for movies.

00:11:10
Speaker 3: I think my favorite Brother came out in nineteen ninety seven, and so that's important. Okay, I just looked up nineteen ninety seven movies and do you I don't know anything about the movie. As good as it gets.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: I've seen it several times. I'll answer you all your questions.

00:11:25
Speaker 3: Do you like it?

00:11:26
Speaker 2: It is not my kind of movie at all.

00:11:28
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:11:29
Speaker 2: So it's more that, like I acknowledge that it's probably a good movie, or I know what's a movie people like. But I am not a fan.

00:11:40
Speaker 3: Personally, so I've never seen it. But I for some reason had like the DVD cover is emblazoned in my mind, maybe because it was just like on sale a lot, and I was like, oh, yeah, that movie about Jack Nickolson falling in love with a little dog. Because that's the cover. I was like, what could that movie be about. It's just Jack Nicholson looking absolutely in love with this tiny dog.

00:12:01
Speaker 2: Okay, here's what I remember. He hates that dog and he puts it down a trash shoot.

00:12:07
Speaker 3: This is the opposite of what I thought, as good as it guests was about. I thought he loved that dog.

00:12:12
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll do this as quickly as I can, but good, this is gonna be a chaos episode.

00:12:17
Speaker 3: Good good good.

00:12:18
Speaker 2: So the dog, if I'm remembering correctly, belongs to Greg Kannear's character, who is the neighbor of Jack Nicholson.

00:12:26
Speaker 3: I didn't know he was in it. I thought it was just Jack and the Dog.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: No, and Helen Hunt is in it as well of Twister Fame and Jack Nicholson. He's like a romance novelist, but he also hates women. He's like super misogynistic.

00:12:40
Speaker 3: Okay, funny because it's true.

00:12:43
Speaker 2: And I think his neighbor is Greg Kannear and Greg Kannear is gay. And I don't remember the relationship between him and Helen Hunt. I don't know if they're friends. I don't know the relationships. I don't remember exactly how the dynamics work, but I think Jack Nicholson is in love with Helen Hunt. And the reason I watched it so many times is because the Jack Nicholson character has OCD, but it's depicted in a very like Hollywood way.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: Like touching the door knob kind of way.

00:13:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, like flipping on the light switches and things like that. But I did a research project in high school on OCD and I watched the movie as research. I hope that I was like in the movie depicts it in a way that's not necessarily very authentic for most people. I don't know what I said. Who knows it was the early two thousands, but anyway.

00:13:39
Speaker 3: You can't be held accountable.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: No point is he hates the dog and he tries to kill it.

00:13:44
Speaker 3: Basically, well, that's certainly not what I thought, as good as it gets was about, and I will not be watching it.

00:13:51
Speaker 2: I don't think it's the movie for you anyway.

00:13:53
Speaker 3: A disappointing movie overall in cinema, right, But okay, so you were watching Titanic that year, We're not watching My Best Friends by okay exactly.

00:14:02
Speaker 2: And I also want to acknowledge that this is generally a beloved movie. It was at the time. It was well received by critics, it was a huge box office hit. Yeah, people still ride for this movie. I don't want to take that away from anyone.

00:14:18
Speaker 3: No, you're wrong, but it's okay.

00:14:22
Speaker 2: I think this is a rancid, little bastard of a movie.

00:14:26
Speaker 3: I feel like we haven't like mutually ragged on a beloved movie at a while. This is going to be thrilling, and there are things I think that aren't necessarily redeemable about it, but are interesting the various versions you pointed out. A gay character is a character that is explicitly gay. I mean, I still have notes, but same, you know, like.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: There's some things, but overall, I'm just like kind of tired of being asked to empathize with or root for characters, especially awful men like Michael in this movie, who are horrendous, and I don't want to do it.

00:15:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing, is like Jewels, I don't know, like regardless of gender. I think it's the interesting gender point is that we are rarely asked in the space of any movie to this day to root for a lead who is a woman and also is clearly in the wrong and is being conniving and evil, especially in this genre. Like I get it, that's interesting. Jewls never won me over it, Like there was no I don't know if it's like nineteen ninety seven there were people who were rooting for her anyways, or if they were just like it's interesting to watch, And I know that there was like some cultural discourse over like people being overly critical. We can talk about that in the production area where they were like, if my daughter did this, I would kick her out of my house. And you're like, all right, relax, but yeah, being asked to root for two horrible people in a romantic comedy in a love triangle means the only character I like ends up with someone horrible, and that is a non starter for me. That's not why I come to this genre. I would watch like an erotic thriller if I wanted to watch a likable character get completely fucked over.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: Well, I was gonna say, it's interesting that we're covering this movie right after His Girl Friday, because they are both rom coms that involve a love triangle, with one character trying to you know, win back or steal their ex lover from their current fiance. It's true, but I think my best Friend's wedding is like almost less progressive than His Friday, which is a movie that came out nearly sixty years earlier.

00:16:42
Speaker 3: I agree, I agree. I mean, you can listen to our His Girl Friday episode. I just everything about that movie just works for me better. It's at least in part of performance thing because Dermnt mulroney, He's no Carrie Grant. Unfortunately, I just yeah, if Julia Roberts can't win me over, like, we've got a album at the base level of the movie. You know so well, I guess let's talk. I feel like people are but everyone's blood is boiling. They're like, they don't get it. They don't understand the subversive nature of nineteen ninety seven.

00:17:13
Speaker 2: And maybe you're right, maybe you're right, who knows. Let's take a quick break while we all mulleed over, shall we?

00:17:31
Speaker 3: And we're back and we're freaking back. Wow.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: Wow, it feels so good to be back. No, yes, here is the freaking recap. Oh, okay, my best friend's wedding. All right, let's hear it. What do you got? We meet Julianne Potter. She's played by Julia Roberts.

00:17:50
Speaker 3: Doing one of my favorite things, which is having a name so close to the actor so that they don't get confused or scared.

00:17:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like, I will only play characters with my name, but maybe plus a few extra letters.

00:18:04
Speaker 3: I know. I'm like, have some faith in Julia Roberts. She can remember a second name, but they weren't ready.

00:18:10
Speaker 2: No. She is a restaurant critic. Basically, she's the critic from Ratatui.

00:18:16
Speaker 3: I wrote that too. I was like, it's like if the Ratatue critic was obsessed with my dad. Like, it's such a weird movie for me.

00:18:26
Speaker 2: She's in New York City, ever heard of it? And she gets a phone call from her alleged best friend, Michael O'Neill, who needs to talk to her urgently, and she is at dinner with her friend.

00:18:43
Speaker 3: George, her actual best friend, her.

00:18:45
Speaker 2: Actual best friend played by Rupert Everett of Shrek Too Fame, Yes, and Julianne tells him about how she and Michael had this like hot month of romance back in college, although she broke it off, but they stayed best friends and they swore an oath that by the time they were both twenty eight.

00:19:09
Speaker 3: And then you're just like, oof.

00:19:12
Speaker 2: If they hadn't yet gotten married to other people, that they would get married to each other, and you're like, brutal twenty eight you.

00:19:20
Speaker 3: Guys, you guys, even in nineteen ninety seven. It's a bummer that feels, yeah, but again one of the subversive things that like it maybe speaks to how binary gender swaps of movie tropes rarely ends up creating anything progressive really, because there's a lot of lines that Julia Robert says that you would normally hear out of. I kept thinking. I was like, oh, she's like doing Freddie Prince Junior and she's all that kind of line reads where it's like, there's not a bet, but there is like these series of deceptions that she is driving. At every single point, she lies every word out of her mouth lie, So she is the decepteur. Yeah, that doesn't make it. I don't know. I just didn't. It didn't win me over, but it is interesting, which is what we say about movies that we don't like.

00:20:14
Speaker 2: Uh huh.

00:20:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:20:15
Speaker 2: Anyway, So she tells this to George and he's like, well, what if Michael is calling you because you're both about to be twenty eight and he wants to marry you. And she's like, oh my god. So she calls him back and she's like, te he remember that night that we made the oath about getting married to each other. And he's like, yeah, but I'm calling to tell you that I met someone and she and I are getting married this Sunday, four days away.

00:20:45
Speaker 3: This movie is not shy to introduce a plaque contrivance. That much is for sure, and it doesn't need to make any logical sense with like what is happening or what we're told. People's relationships are something that really bugs me about this movie and a reason that his girl Friday works for me in spite of very similar plot dynamics where two out of three people are evil and the nice person does get fucked over, but you understand that the two characters who are evil have this like unbelievable chemistry, Like so even when they suck, it is at very least interesting to watch. But I feel like we are only ever told that they're best friends, were never shown why they're best friends, and so it's just like impossible, or at least it was like impossible for me on every viewing of this movie to get on board with the fact that they're actually best friends because they just feel so clearly not. And also he's trying to cheat on his fiance the whole movie, the whole movie, and they're like, Julia Roberts was really fucking You're like, they're both fucked up. They should have ended up together.

00:21:51
Speaker 2: They deserve each other. I kept getting hung up on the logistics of the wedding stuff, because again, it's like if you have a wedding generally unless you're eloping, which fine, sounds like a great idea.

00:22:04
Speaker 3: This is a billion dollar wedding. Literally, this is like a rich guy's wedding, right.

00:22:10
Speaker 2: So, Cameron Diaz's family, her character's family, are billionaires.

00:22:14
Speaker 3: They own the Chicago White Sox, White Sox Wild.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Plus, like a media empire or something like that.

00:22:21
Speaker 3: They own sport magazine, do they not?

00:22:26
Speaker 2: Probably so she doesn't know about the wedding of her again alleged best friend until four days until it's about to happen. Would they have not planned this wedding many many months in advance, if not years, spent all the money. It would be a very opulent wedding. You would think they're billionaires. Also, billionaires are obviously evil, horrid people, and they don't like to mix class with other Like this guy's a well, that's the fret working class guy, Like they would have like vetted the shit out of him. I don't don't think they would have approved of the Michael character.

00:23:03
Speaker 3: I'm just like see I originally because I forgot the like minutia of this movie, but I thought like he was just inviting her really late because he wasn't sure if he wanted her there because he secretly loved her, so I thought it was like a last minute invite. You're like, well, that's kind of interesting. That could be the source of conflict between the two of them. Why didn't you invite me sooner? But then, yeah, what less than forty eight hours before the wedding, Cameron Diaz has not yet chosen a maid of honor, Like this is and and you know obviously goes out and saying you don't need a maid of honor. But this is a very conventional wedding story. We're being given this character would have a maid of honor, and the reason that we're given she doesn't have one makes no sense.

00:23:48
Speaker 2: She's like, I have no friend, she said, her maid of honor fractured her pelvis. Yeah, she had one and then she got an injury.

00:23:55
Speaker 3: She had one friend she had and then her only friend broke her pelvis, which just the way that Cameron Diaz's character was written was so all over the place, because it was like, why does this twenty year old college student have not a friend to her name? If we are told as the movie moves on, that she's a very lovable person, Like, why wouldn't she have friends? Of course she'd have friends if she's as nice as we understand she is by the end of the movie. It makes no sense rich people buy friends. She could have bought am made of honor. It just doesn't mean literally, Yeah, I don't get it, Like why and again, you're totally I didn't even think of that, but like, yeah, how restrictive you know, like this is like this rich family's royal wedding or whatever.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: Hm.

00:24:42
Speaker 3: They wouldn't let her get away with no maid of honor till two days before.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: They wouldn't have even let her marry this.

00:24:49
Speaker 3: Guy, Like they shouldn't.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: You know it?

00:24:51
Speaker 3: Now I'm on the side. This is the other thing that was getting frustrated, Like I keep siding with the billionaires, where I was like, leave this sweet family alone.

00:24:59
Speaker 2: Because is they're not written to be billionaires.

00:25:02
Speaker 3: No, they're written to be like middle class from the Midwest.

00:25:05
Speaker 2: Right, They're not succession characters.

00:25:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: I don't think the writer of the movie like understood what billionaires are like anyway.

00:25:14
Speaker 3: Well, as we'll talk about, there were so many changes made in this movie that I feel like stuff from past drafts were just not updated to reflect with the characters were supposed to be that or they're like rich people they don't have a thought in their heads, which can be very true. Yeah, but in this way, it was like it maybe feel deeply sad for Kimmy the way that like we're told, like, here is this woman who it seems like is a very sweet person. And then also in the like conventional power broker sense, has everything going for her but has no friends. She's surrounded by this wealthy family, none of whom have any interest or insight into her interior life. Because as this whole emotional and he is like this pretty like fucked up thing is happening to Kimmy, no one around her seems to notice or care. And this is her beloved family.

00:26:10
Speaker 2: Care that her fiance is forcing her to drop out of college and follow him around the country.

00:26:17
Speaker 3: That's something that like His Girl Friday, is more progressive than that. Like it. You could listen to the episode, but there was never a point where it's like the idea that the lead woman and his girl his Girl Friday, if you will Hildy Hildy, Yes, that Hildy was going to leave her profession. The movie feels that's not right. And by the end of the movie, you know whatever, through some blah blah blah blah. Listen to the episode, but she is returning to her career and she seems happy with that. But that like that detail that Kimmy is being forced to drop out of school because she's twenty years old, and we are told she doesn't want to.

00:26:57
Speaker 2: She doesn't want to at all.

00:26:59
Speaker 3: And at the end we have no reason to believe because Michael the character changes not a lick, not at all. At least Julia. This is like, at least Jules. She is despicable, she's horrible, she does only horrible things, but at least she grows a little by the end, and she has to apologizes. She admits false things that male characters in her position almost never do. Whether you like her or hater, I don't really like the character, but at least she does grow By the end of the movie. Michael stagnant. He's still gonna make his twenty year old wife drop out of college, and it's just like I hate this guy. Okay, sorry, we're at the beginning of the recap.

00:27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So after this phone call with Michael where he tells her that he's met someone and is getting married. This makes julian realize that she's in love with Michael, and now she has four days to break up his wedding so that he will hopefully choose.

00:27:54
Speaker 3: Her stakes Steaks, Steaks.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: Then we meet Michael. This is dormit.

00:28:02
Speaker 3: He's crying again. Dermott our number one fan is crying.

00:28:06
Speaker 2: Again, Dermit mulroney. And we meet his fiance, Kimmy played by Cameron Diaz, also of Shrek fame, who, upon meeting Julianne, asks her to be Kimmy's maid of honor because of the thing we just discussed of her original made of honor being injured. And so they go to a dress fitting together and then Michael walks in on Julianne in her bra and underwear and he's like, oh wooga, hubba hubba.

00:28:43
Speaker 3: And then you're just like I no matter what happens, I will never like this character. Nothing will make me like this character.

00:28:52
Speaker 2: Nothing. She's visibly uncomfortable. He barges in, he doesn't apologize, he stays, and then he hits on her. Meanwhile, well, his wife in the future. It's like in the next room, but because he expresses this like hint of attraction toward Julianne, She's like, oh, okay, I got this. I can pull this off. So Julianne decides to try to sabotage Kimmy and Michael's relationship. Julianne tells him that she's super comfortable showing affection now. She reminisces with Michael in front of Kimmy to make her feel jealous and excluded. She takes the couple to a karaoke bar to humiliate Kimmy because she knows that Kimmy's a horrible singer. But her plan doesn't work because everyone finds her horrible singing to be endearing. Then something with Michael's job happens, and it's kind of confusing, but as we said, he's a sports writer. And Julianne orchestrates this plan and to convince Kimmy to get her dad to offer Michael a job at his billionaire company, which Julianne knows that Michael will be insulted by and he'll think.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: That, well, yeah, because he's her best friend, which we're told every ten minutes or so to justify the whole chasm of like no chemistry between these two actors.

00:30:27
Speaker 2: Right, right, So he proceeds to act like the biggest asshole in this scene, which I want to unpack a little bit later, but basically, he's screaming at Kimmy, being like, oh, you think I'm not good enough? Blah blah blah.

00:30:45
Speaker 3: This scene is awful, and I feel like it's made out to be maybe a class issue, but it's not a class issue. He's being terrible to her. He's berating her. He's telling her my ambitions are martin important than yours and if you can't accept that, we can't get married, and like you're just like this guy needs to be put through a human sized shredder, and like I cannot believe that he and we can talk about because it's not that women did not have hands on this script, as we'll get to, but the fact that this movie was like written and driven by men is so obvious because it's like, imagine a woman doing anything that Michael does throughout this movie, they would be eviscerated. Like he is worse than Julianne. But there is like nothing in nineteen ninety seven that I could find that was critical of him. It was all critical of Julianne, who is bad, but it's the oh god, he's so terrible in that scene. I found it very upsetting because and also like Kimmi is like crying, falling Julianne. This asshole is like sitting to the side like ha ha ha, it's working, and you're like, I hate you fucking clowns. You guys are clowns. Ah.

00:31:58
Speaker 2: He's being emotionally andverbally abusive to Kimmy.

00:32:02
Speaker 3: In public too. You're like, oh my god.

00:32:05
Speaker 2: It's really upsetting.

00:32:07
Speaker 3: I hate this character.

00:32:08
Speaker 2: But this plan of Julian's also ends up backfiring because Kimmy apologizes and groovels and said, you're right, I was so wrong. We'll do things your way.

00:32:19
Speaker 3: Horrible to watch because you're just like I think that that is a combination of poor writing and like, I don't think this is how it was intended, but like, as someone that young in an emotionally abusive relationship like that can happen, and it's presented in this very lighthearted like I don't know, I just was very upset by their relationship dynamic, like consistently.

00:32:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the scene ends with like, oh no, Julian's plan was thwarted because Michael and Kimmy kiss and make up and everything seems fine again.

00:32:54
Speaker 3: Like I hope the bean falls on her. I hope the Chicago Bean, which I don't even know if it existed, then I wish it just uprooted and rolled over on her and crushed her and Michael too. What if they got killed by the bean and that was the end?

00:33:09
Speaker 2: God well, because like everything's fine between Michael and Kimmy. What that actually means is that Michael will keep the job that he has but still force Kimmy to drop out of school.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: Kimmy is still dropping out of school. Kimmy is still being like I think, forced to move away from her family something like that.

00:33:31
Speaker 2: It reminded me of the first Twilight movie where Bella the reason she moves to Forks, Washington is because her mom gets that baseball player boyfriend and so he's always going to be on the road and her mom wasn't going to be around because she was going to travel with him. So Bella was like, I have to go meet some vampires.

00:33:52
Speaker 3: I don't know if we had the brain cells to talk about it at the time, but it's like if Bella's mom was in that secure of a relationship, like I would have waited for my to graduate high school. Come on, it's not an emergency, it's not a fire, it's a minor league baseball boyfriend. Grow up anyways, grow up?

00:34:11
Speaker 2: Okay. Then Julian's friend George shows up to help Julian, and he's like, just tell Michael the truth, tell him that you love him, and she's about to do that, but then she sees an opportunity to try to make Michael jealous by pretending to be engaged to George.

00:34:29
Speaker 3: And now we have a classic dated contrivance where we're laughing because he's gay.

00:34:36
Speaker 2: He's gay, right, And she goes along with this lie for a while, including during a very long scene of a rehearsal lunch where everyone is singing. I say a little prayer by Deanna d'An warwick.

00:34:52
Speaker 3: Good for dann Warwick. I hope she got a fat check for this movie. But like I mean, it has no bearing on I understand why, Like it was like funny and jarring at the time. As someone with no nostalgia for this movie, I think that seems annoying and weird. So long, so this movie is written by Ronald Bass, right, very very famous writer, has won a lot of awards and written a lot of influential movies, some of which we've covered, some of which we probably will have to at some point. I'm talking Rainman, Sleeping with the Enemy, The Joy Luck Club, Waiting to Exhale, Dangerous Minds, My best Friend's Weddings, Stepmoms, How Stella got her groove back, like very influential writer who and the reason I say that there were women's hands on this where he famously had a small writer's room of younger women who would work with him, who were called the Ronettes and the Ronettes, which is like a whatever old timey motown joke. But anyways, Ronald Bass, who was old of this, but he wrote this movie in his fifties. The reason I think that he was in some ways able to write contemporary is because he had young writers collaborating with him. I don't know what the full deal with the Ronettes is. I know that we've brought it up before. I know that I've like talked about it on the show before. I don't remember what movie we would have been it might have been when Stella got her groove back, that the concept of the Ronettes first came up. But anyways, this scene was a huge point of contention for the director PJ. Hogan and Ronald Bass and the Ronettes. Ronald Bass and the Raetts were like, why do you want to add a full musical number in the middle of a scene? And PJ. Hogan was like, trust me, it'll be awesome. And ultimately, I mean, I guess audiences loved that scene, but I think Ronald Bass and the raw Nets were correct. I think I thought it was annoying. But I'm a hater for this week. If I was enjoying this movie and then that happened, maybe I would like it.

00:36:57
Speaker 2: Maybe, But you're telling me that a family of billionaires goes to a wedding rehearsal lunch at some red lobster ass seafood restaurant, right, Burry the Kudahs.

00:37:12
Speaker 3: No, Well, the thing is like speaks to how little we know about Kimmy. Because if I'm being generous, if they're a family that's like new money, right, and.

00:37:21
Speaker 2: Like new money like Molly Brown.

00:37:24
Speaker 3: Molly Brown style, Mollie would go to a red lobster in spite of being very wealthy, So like, maybe they're a family that came from humble beginnings and then got a lot of money, but we never have enough insight into the family to understand is this like old money generational wealth? Like could this make sense? But I just found it weird for how many of these characters there are, Yeah, Kimmy's I mean not like I was like, I need to know Kimmy's family better, but even like a character who isn't Kimmy that could better characterize this family vibe wise would be really helpful because I just like can't tell. I can't tell if like Kimmy is willing to go into this marriage. I mean, I do believe that she really loves Michael, but it's such an unhealthy relationship, and like, I just don't understand why she is the way she is, unless it's just like she seems pretty emotionally neglected by her family. But we're also supposed to be like they're so funny because they're written like cartoon characters, especially like the weird Cousins or whatever idea What was going on there? Anyways, Sorry that scene it's annoying.

00:38:33
Speaker 2: So frustrating. Okay, So then George leaves and Julianne tells Michael that she and George are not actually engaged, that she had broken it off with George a while ago, and so, you know, another lie. But Michael is like, well, that's good because I actually got really jealous when I thought you were going to marry George. And she's like, okay, maybe this is working. Then Julianne and Michael are on a boat together. The vibe is very romantic. They're slow dancing, They're talking about their feelings and their past relationship. She almost tells him that she loves him, but does not. Then the thing with Michael's job comes up again, because this obstacle has to happen twice for.

00:39:21
Speaker 3: Some reason I don't know where.

00:39:25
Speaker 2: Julianne sneaks into the office of Kimmy's dad, Walter and writes an email to Michael's current boss from Walter at Sport Magazine at Sport Magazine, asking him to basically fire Michael so that he'll accept a job at Walter's company. But then julian decides against sending this email, but the email accidentally gets sent anyway.

00:39:51
Speaker 3: This fucking plot as email, like it's so silly where she I don't know how hard it was to x out a window in or like to not save the draft or like whatever. It's it's a very whatever. It's very plotty, and I know that this movie is like operating on farce logic, and so like when we put it under a super close microscope, like it's supposed to be a farce, but it's not working as a farce. So all of these plot logic things stick out like a store thumb. Why does the email stay open to sport magazine? Come on?

00:40:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, well because she saves it for later. And then Walter is, like, I had some email drafts I had saved, Hey, assistant, send them all out, and that's how it gets sent. But like I just have to move on, Okay. Yeah, Michael finds out about this email that he doesn't realize Julianne had sent. He thinks it's coming from his future father in law, and he thinks it was Kimmy's doing that, like she put her dad up to this, and he gets so furious that he calls the wedding off. But nobody tells Kimmy's family that the wedding is off. So Michael goes to the wedding brunch. I guess to handle things face to face with Kimmy, although he decides he will marry Kimmy after all, after a series of like, hey, Julianne, go be my messenger and like you go talk to my future wife, and then like she's just lying back and forth and I'm like, you're adults. Well Kimmy barely is.

00:41:27
Speaker 3: But like, yeah, Kimmy, I would say, is she is an adult. I don't want to like treat her like her She.

00:41:33
Speaker 2: Is an adult, but she's twenty, like her brain is still developing.

00:41:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, Julia Rowerson, Dermott, mulroney. They don't have any such excuse. They're just grown people fucking around with a college student's entire life and for what.

00:41:52
Speaker 2: For what? Anyway, it's decided that the wedding is back on. But then Julianne finally worked up the courage to tell Michael that she loves him, and then she surprised kisses him, which Kimmy sees, so she runs off.

00:42:09
Speaker 3: Right, And it's the rare surprise kiss where the surprise element of it is of consequence, which I thought was interesting.

00:42:15
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, true, So now Michael is chasing Kimmy through Chicago. Julianne is chasing Michael. Julianne catches up with Michael at the train station. Kimmy is nowhere to be found, and Julianne confesses to writing that email, and so he's furious and he's like your pus and pond scum and blah blah blah.

00:42:39
Speaker 3: But the way he's furious is still like flirtatious, where he's like you're piece Like it feels like a kink discussion, where it's like you're a piece of shit, You're a fucking scum. You're just like, what is going on with you? Guys? Just get on a train and go to hell. Like drive take the next Amtrak to the core of the earth. You fucking losers.

00:43:04
Speaker 2: I hate them U. Anyway, Julianne realizes that she lost right and that she needs to set things right, so she helps Michael to find Kimmy and they bring her back to the wedding place, and the wedding happens. Michael marries Kimmy, and then Julianne is at the reception. She's like, Wow, I did the right thing, even though for the past ninety minutes I did everything wrong. And then she gets a phone call from George who surprise is there at the wedding, and then they dance and that's the end of the movie. So let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

00:43:56
Speaker 3: And we're back. Yeah, oh gosh, where to begin. Well, if it's okay, let's begin at the beginning, the beginning of this movie. Moment one. I don't like it. The beginning of the movie makes no sense to me. It is, you know, it is like a ViBe's kind of introduction. But it's just like brides with bridesmaids singing, wishing and hope and there's no it's nothing. It's about nothing, and it's presenting this very I mean, I guess you could say it's presenting this very idyllic idea of like the white American bride, and that is like, sure, the rug pull of this movie is that who we think is our heroine is not going to get that. But like I found that again, I just didn't like it. I didn't think it did anything. But okay, I wanted to offer context for this movie, and I say that with also knowing that I think it's interesting. It doesn't really change my opinion of the movie, but I do think it's interesting. This was published in Vulture. It is an excerpt from a book called From Hollywood with Love by Scott Maslow. I haven't read it, but it is a book about the production and the subversive elements of My best Friend's Wedding. It is interesting because I didn't realize another movie that's been on my to watch list forever is Muriel's Wedding. We've gotten a lot of.

00:45:29
Speaker 2: Requests for it, oh many.

00:45:31
Speaker 3: And this movie was directed by the director of Muriel's Wedding, so he's also kind of mister Wedding. And I guess that he got this movie in part because Julia Roberts had really liked Muriel's Wedding. So he's an Australian guy who directs movies about weddings. Something to know. This was a Ronald Bass script. He obviously was already very successful. He'd want oscars. He's written all of these very successful movies with the raw question mark. And there is a passage in the story I think is interesting because it does boil down what, at least on its face, was the versive about this movie at the time. So a quote from the piece it's describing when PJ. Hogan got the script. When Hogan sat down to read the script, he discovered, to his surprise that my best friend's wedding was a closer cousin to Muriel's wedding than he had expected. What really surprised me was that it wasn't really very romantic, he says. In fact, my experience of reading the screenplay was Wow, I'm not sure I like her very much. And usually in romantic comedies, everything the main character does in order to win love and find happiness is totally justified, even if it's kind of awful. What Meg Ryan does to Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle is kind of awful, And as I was reading it, I was thinking, God, it's that damn romantic comedy problem. She's kind of awful. And I got to the end and she didn't get the guy, and I thought, oh my god, that's the point. This takes the form and smashes it on the floor. Most romantic comedies are about how all fair in love and war, which is something I've never really believed in. And this was a screenplay about how all is not fair in love and war. It was a romantic comedy that wasn't very romantic. I think that this is, on its face, basically true, right, Like, yeah, I'd agree, but again, it just feels like every discussion I've seen of those elements of this movie are undercut by a lack of insight into who these characters really are, the tropes that do still appear, and the fact that I think that the male lead of this movie is just like irredeemably horrible, and so I like the fact that he ends. I would rather he end up alone, and like not ideal for Kimmy either way, but I would like a more just outcome to this because I feel like, you know, Juliane ending up alone was perceived by audiences at the time as wow, a sort of unusually just outcome to a romantic, high jinks kind of movie, for sure. And the other thing that I learned about the production from this essay was that they had to reshoot the ending more than once, and that test audiences. Originally there was a lot of pressure put on Ronald Bass to have Julianne end up with someone, so every draft of the movie does end up with her not getting the you know, Dermott mulroney, okay, but the original ending had her meeting oh my gosh, what's the guy from Sex and the City and My Big Fact Creek Wedding, John Corbett. Oh yeah, So in the original ending, John Corbett shows up and she meets John Corbett. She still calls George and she's like, oh, this sucks. I'm lonely, I lost the movie. And he's like, maybe there's someone awesome, Like George doesn't come to the wedding at the end, she just meet the guy named John Corbett. It kind of reminded me of the end of Five Hundred Days of Summer, another annoying.

00:49:01
Speaker 2: Movie about a villain who is positioned as the protagonist. Yeah.

00:49:07
Speaker 3: Yes, and at the end of that, you know, he meets a girl named Autumn and you're like, great, now he's gonna ruin were unto her? Like, yeah, So that was the original ending because there was a lot of pressure for producers of like it's Julia Roberts, she has to end up with somebody, which is inherently sexist trope, but audiences. Test audiences hated that ending, which again is kind of complicated, but they were just like in a way that felt like maybe a little sexist as well, where they were like, this woman deserves nothing like, you know, maybe an over correction, but they didn't like the ending. And also in the original ending, there is never a scene where Kimmy stands up for herself. I guess that that baseball stadium climax was added, but audiences didn't like that. Kimmy never advocated for herself the entire movie, so I guess that was because of poor test screenings that that scene was added, which I do think is interesting and says you know, how you feel about it. Good that are indifferent is up to you, But like does say something about nineteen ninety seven, like the things that people were responding to, because I think that like the scene where Kimy stands up for herself, it's not enough because it's still ultimately undercut by the plot of the movie, which I guess makes more sense once you know that it wasn't originally there. But I am glad that that scene is there, you know, I just wish that Kimmy, Kimmy's character was able to recognize how this was not the fault of one person that, like Julianne, certainly deserved to have a new asshole riped for her. Fine, but the fact that it is very much presented as like Julianne's the other woman, and the other woman narrative always erases any fault of the man that she's going back to, and so that scene was again I see what they were trying to do, but it's still like this movie just like doesn't work if you treat Michael as as on the chaffing block for morality as Kimmy or Julianne is, but he's not. So it just yeah, but anyways, that's the production stuff.

00:51:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, very interesting. Shall we kind of go character by character? Yeah, let's set starting with I guess Julianne.

00:51:31
Speaker 3: Not Julia.

00:51:32
Speaker 2: Julianne, not Julia Roberts, no Julianne. She's presented as a bit of a guy's goal.

00:51:41
Speaker 3: Definitely.

00:51:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's not like the other girls. She they spell this out in dialogue that she's not up for anything conventional or that's assumed to be a female priority, including marriage, romance, or love. She hates weddings. She's only cried three times in her life. And I guess it.

00:52:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like quality is frequently attributed to men, not based in nothing comes from somewhere, but like being like, isn't it cooler? When it's a I mean, and it's weird because I sort of, you know, not completely remembering how the movie goes. Specifically, it's very weird that, like Julia Roberts is presented as a guy's gal, and then camer Diaz is presented as no one's goal, and so there's just not room for any friendships between women by design. Like it's so I thought that Cameron Diaz was going to be presented as a girl's girl, pejorative, but they can't even do that. They're just like, for some reason, no one likes this sweet, wealthy, conventionally attractive model. Everyone hates her. You're like, what, what are you talking about?

00:52:52
Speaker 2: It's more just that she's so undercooked as a character that there's no rhyme or reason to why she she doesn't have more friends.

00:53:03
Speaker 3: I just feel so bad for you. I feel I'm overreacting with Kimmy because I just feel protective of her.

00:53:08
Speaker 2: Because she's also twenty and she's not even of legal drinking age, and she's.

00:53:13
Speaker 3: Still drinking her own wedding. This should not be happening. No a plot contrivance that I felt neutrally towards. It's just a rom com thing is that Julia Roberts is, of course a writer. Her love interests also a writer. Her actual best friend George also a writer. Does this ever come into the plot? Are they ever seen writing other than one evil email?

00:53:40
Speaker 2: No?

00:53:40
Speaker 3: These are the jobs. There are three jobs these kinds of people can have. Writer with infinite PTO is one of the jobs. And also her boss is taking PTO to do various hijinks.

00:53:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, he flies from New York to Chicago twice in a matter of two days.

00:54:03
Speaker 3: There is no one I love in the world at once, sure to us, But that's because that's because in the original script he doesn't fly back. The second time. He never comes back, and then Rupert Everett's character was testing so well that's why they ended up deciding to bring him back, which I think is one of the more effective subversive things that happens in the movie. Is that like whatever that like, friendship can be just as fulfilling a thing as what you're told you're supposed to be doing at a certain stage in your life. And there are other ways to find joy and fulfillment. And I appreciate that message, but it was added basically in post like it was kind of there because people really liked Rupert Everett versus anything else.

00:54:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and back to the julian guy's girl only has friends who are men, and then when she meets Kimmy, the rest of the movie hinges on. I mean, there's like varying degrees of what we see here where there's like the scene at karaoke where Julianne is like deliberately being cruel to Kimmy and like trying to exclude her from the conversation, trying to make her feel jealous, things like that. Other times she's being more pleasant to her, but it's because Julianne is like conspiring and needs Kimmy's help. But really she's just using Kimmy to try to get Michael to hate his own fiance. Like there's all these things that she does. Anyway you look at it, it boils down to like this is a narrative about two women who are competing against each other over the affections of and looser exactly because there's that scene where and this is understandable, but like, I mean not Kimmy's behavior in the scene where she like stops an elevator to be like I'm jealous of you, right, but like she expresses that to Julianne, which I think is honestly like an interesting thing.

00:56:15
Speaker 3: Right, I don't hate that, And I feel like the way it was actually written and the way it's introduced in the movie, I thought like the direction of it was weird, but like on its face, it's not something you're expecting. Like, I feel like that was the first indication that, like, Kimmy is smarter and more emotionally intelligent than we are being encouraged to give her credit for because we're seeing all of these tropes she's young, she's friendless, she's a bad driver because question mark like women, because she's rich or a woman to strive, Like, I don't really know what the joke was there, but like you know, we're basically being thought like she's a spoiled brat, right, and she doesn't even realize what's going on. She's a brainless Like I feel like they're just playing on blonde tropes. They're playing on rich girl trubs, they're playing on young woman trubes. And then they do bring that to a screeching halt, and we know that Kimmy, of course she's twenty, but she was not actually born yesterday, Like she does realize that this is a weird dynamic and that her asking Julianne to be her maid of honor is kind of this over correction made out of insecurity, and she's honest about that, which is more emotionally intelligent than the other two demonstrate the entire movie where it's like, yes is admitting to I mean, it's kind of a confusing too, because it's like she's also not wrong. It's not like she's being paranoid or I don't know. But then that introduced like she is threatened by this other woman, which is such a frequent thing that like there are two primary women characters in this movie and they are pitted against each other. And also in the world of this movie, that is true, like he is.

00:57:59
Speaker 2: Like emotionallyting on Kimmy with Julianne in several scenes.

00:58:03
Speaker 3: With the elevator scene, I think that, yeah, it was over the top, but at its core, what happens in that scene, I wish it had just happened in maybe a room, but it's a rob com. It had to happen in a stopped elevator while Julia Roberts was having a panic attack, But what Kimmy communicates there is pretty vulnerable and reasonable, and yeah, it just demonstrates like she can read the room like this is weird. And it is the scene that pissed me off the most is when I forget what they're on their way to, but like all three of them are in a car and then Julia Roberts and Dermott Maroney just get out of the car and go on a date. Yeah, and Kimmy feels weird about it. She's like, are you sure? Should we should we do this? Are you sure? And they're like, yeah, we're gonna go on a date, see you later, sucker, And I was like, what the fuck? Like I felt so horrible for her, where she clearly did not want them to and understandably did not want them to get out of the car and go on a date due to they were getting into a monogamous marriage the next day. Yeah, but then Dermot Moroney just goes on a date. Where are the essays about that? Because yes, yes, Julianne is being forty chess pto ratitudey critic, like she's being bad, she's acting out, but like Dermot Rammoni is not being dragged out of the car. He's like, yes, I would like to go on a date on this the evening of my marriage. Like he's being bad and he's being flirtatious the entire time they're together.

00:59:48
Speaker 2: Openly in front of her, his fiance.

00:59:51
Speaker 3: And her family, and You're like, a true billionaire family would have him killed. Yeah, Like they would just have him die under mysterious. They would chap aquittic him, like off of in the like Chicago river, he would get chap aquatic. Yeah, it's just so frustrating.

01:00:11
Speaker 2: The scene that really, and we already alluded to this, but just the worst thing I've ever seen is this is the scene where Kimmy pitches, oh, why don't you work for my dad? And the way he lashes out. He screams at Kimmy, accusing her of lying. He's like, why don't you start by being honest for one second? And she's like I am.

01:00:34
Speaker 3: You're like, excuse you? What about the rest of the table, right, And.

01:00:40
Speaker 2: To Kimmy's credit, she says, what like, all of a sudden, I'm supposed to drop out of school, forget my family, forget my career, forget about all the things I had planned for my life, and he responds, well, forgive me for screwing up your plans. I'm just glad that I'm hearing about this before it's too late. What am I supposed to do with my life? Huh? I work a low paying, zero respect job, which I happened to love. And then Julianne tries to interject, saying like, hey, Michael, maybe this is actually a good opportunity for you, and he's like, oh, yeah, well, how come you never took some sellout job. That's it's because that's not you and that's not me either.

01:01:19
Speaker 3: Just say it.

01:01:20
Speaker 2: I'm not good enough for you, Kimmy, and she's now crying at this point. She's like, yeah, you ever said that? And she didn't, she didn't, and then he continues to lay into her. He's like, fine, I'm the sexist, insensitive asshole and it's like yeah, yeah, correct, And now Kimmy is bawling. She's pleading, like groveling at his feet, being like, you're so right. I was so wrong. We settled this, I renegged. It wasn't fair. You have to forgive me, blah blah blah, and it's just like no, Kimmy, like you started up like it's this started out in a way because she's again she's advocating for herself.

01:02:00
Speaker 3: Which was at Julianne's suggestion. Though too it was like it wasn't even really her idea to advocate for herself, which just sucks and is like how whatever inherently anti woman the character of Julianne is where she has no issue with like the only relationship we see her have with another woman is an attempt on her life.

01:02:25
Speaker 2: Basically, it's just so sad. It's so sad, so upsetting. And then this is followed by a scene where Julianne tells George how wonderful she thinks Michael is, and it's like if I saw my best friend, my quote unquote best friend speak to their fiance the way that Michael speaks to and treats Kimmy, I'd.

01:02:44
Speaker 3: Be like mortified.

01:02:46
Speaker 2: I have to get a new best friend because this person is evil.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the fact that like the subtext of that scene is that this dynamic has been was like Julianne's idea. I feel like a lot of why the movie is encouraging us to think Michael is a good guys. First of all, because it was written and directed by men, but also because I feel like there's this implication that his emotionally abusive behavior is only happening because Julianne set him up to do that, and that's just like not how people work. Because the question that she quote unquote like tricked Kimmy into asking was not even irrational, like it was it was Julianne being like, oh, I know what will trigger my emotionally abusive friend's abuse tactics. Let me do that. And then she does and it happens, and she says nothing, and you're like, I hate her, and it's so miserable. It's miserable. I hate it. And meanwhile, like in that scene, Kimmy is once again being the only honest character in the movie, which also introduces kind of this dichotomy where Michael ends up with I don't know. It sucks because it's like Julianne is objectively an asshole, Like I don't think that, Like I think that some of the over the top reaction to her of like burn the Witch was like, well, no, no, let's not kill her. She's an asshole. I'm not like eager for her to have a reward for all of this bad behavior. But I feel like it also does introduce this like because there's no criticism of Michael, and he goes with like the woman who is more demure and more willing to bow to his will and like things that we know Julianne. Julian's not giving her career up for a guy, of course, not like there's nothing about her that would indicate that, but Kimmy will, and so that sort of makes her a like morally superior. Like it just felt like the things that Kimmy was willing to sacrifice, because she never ends up getting those things back, It is pulled into this idea of like what does a morally good woman look like in a way that feels really regressive. And again, like you're saying, like behind his Girl Friday that came out sixty years or so before this, and you're just like pretty fucking bleak, Yeah.

01:05:21
Speaker 2: Because the movie ends in a way that we are to assume Michael is making zero compromises. He's expecting his wife to make every compromise and we're all just supposed to be okay with that.

01:05:36
Speaker 3: I mean, it doesn't make anything that Hilly does to her por fiance who she's just like batting around like a fucking cat toy the whole movie. It doesn't make it less emotionally abusive, her like less shitty what she does. I think why it works is a number of things. First of all, the two assholes end up together, and good for them. She is not forced to give up her career and at least at very very lee. Also, all the performances are better, the direction is better, the script is better. This always helps. But at least you know the person who she's fucking over is an adult, you know, Like it does feel like ultimately, someone who has very recently become an adult is being forced to sacrifice their future for someone we understand to be an emotionally abusive, emotional cheater. But again, the thing with the surprise kiss, right, the surprise kiss and the whole George like, well did he kiss you back? Did he kiss you back? Which is the first time I've heard a surprise kiss interrogated on screen, which is interesting. But the fact that he doesn't kiss her back is made as a wholesale everything else he's done doesn't count because he didn't kiss her back, And you're like, that is just like ridiculous. That sucks. He's given such a carte blanche. I have another thought. You're ready. I'm sorry, I'm talking too much.

01:07:06
Speaker 2: No, I'm ready.

01:07:07
Speaker 3: This movie got me worked up. It got me pissed off. Okay. In defense of Julianne, Okay, I can't defend any of her actions, but something that I think is interesting. I noticed it where part of what is subversive about this movie, and I think effectively subversive is that the villain is the main character, is the movie star, and is a woman. These are all things we don't normally see in a movie in this genre. True, Okay, I am glad that Julianne was like, had to confront the severity of her actions. I am glad that Kimmy, like we were talking about, it only goes halfway, because Kimmy is only calling Juliana out as if she is the only perpetrator here, when there are two people perpetrating this, and the more consequential person is about to ruin her life. But you know, I'm not upset that Julianne was called out for her behavior. I think that makes narrative sense. I do think that most men in that same role and position would not have to answer for this so severely, and I don't think that a man in this character's position would have to meaningfully apologize. I mean, like they have Julia Roberts on her knees being called the worst piece of shit who's ever taken breath, and like, as a rom com viewer seeing a woman in this position, for like, if not the first time, but one of the first times, it feels like, Okay, so if we're putting a woman in the villain role, she's going to have to spend the last fifteen minutes eating shit at unprecedented rates. Where you know, if you put Freddy Prince Junior, he's like, yeah, so I've been lying to you and that's why your life sucks. Do you want to be my girlfriend? Like my bee? I don't even really have a like moral thing, because I don't think that this character deserves to be let off the hook for what she's done. But I do feel like the reason that, or at least part of the reason that she we're really meant to sit in the consequences of her actions is because it's a woman in this role, right.

01:09:16
Speaker 2: And because women are expected to be morally upstanding and they're not allowed to misbehave, and just the standard for behavior for women is very different than it is for men. I also think it's interesting that the apology that she gives to Michael again on her knees, groveling, insulting herself, calling herself upon scumb blah blah blah, versus the apology slash acknowledgment of her behavior that she gives to Kimmy in the bathroom of the stadium is very different. She kind of doesn't really even apologize to Kimmy. She says like, yeah, I did all these bad things, but I lost, so okay. And then you're like Kimmy like no, forgives her and hugs her and she's like, oh my god, blah blah blah. But it's like a very different apology slash like a non apology that Julianne gives to Kimmy, and I think that she owes her a far more significant apology.

01:10:23
Speaker 3: I totally agree Kimmy is owed an apology by both characters in this movie. And we certainly don't see Michael apologize for anyway, and based on how he talks to her, he never will, right, And you're totally right, like the point of that scene being added was for Kimmy to stand up for herself in some way and for Julianne to be called out explicitly by the person who is hurting the most from this. But it's like Kimmy doesn't ultimately really get anything out of that scene. She does get to, you know, the catharsis of being like you fucking suck, which is true, and like you have publicly humiliated me on purpose in spite of the fact that I am a stranger and almost a child. And it works on paper, but yeah, if you think about the consequences, how does Julianne respond. She's mostly embarrassed that she's been humiliated like this. It doesn't feel like she's genuinely feeling remorse for what she's done. She's just upset that she's being yelled at in a bathroom and she's upset. And this is why I mean, And I don't know at this point, I really don't know how this character's being written, because this character's being rewritten. But I don't know if she really feels bad about what she's done or she's just embarrassed that she lost, you know, like HM. At the end of the movie. I do sort of get the feeling that like she has grown in that at the beginning of the movie she thought she could do this, and at the end of the movie she realizes that she couldn't. But I still am unclear. And again, this is like a valueless thing, like if you like Julianne, like, because everyone does fuck up, not like this, but everyone does fuck up. Like I feel like plenty of people have done things that they are embarrassed about in hindsight romantically right, sure, and sometimes it does involve hurting other people blah blah blah, rarely this bad, rarely this evil. I will say there is a change in her character from the beginning to the end of the movie, But by the end, I was just like, I cannot tell if she feels bad about what she's done or she's just embarrassed that she lost. I don't know, yeah, and I don't even think that like if at the end of the day she's like, I'm a little evil and I'm just pissed that I lost this round. Like I can accept that whatever. I don't need her to be morally perfect, but I just like it wasn't clear to me which it was, and Also, I'm like, right, she's supposed to be friends with Michael after this, absolutely not, you know, like I this is the last time she'll see either of these.

01:13:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if this will affect her relationship with George, because George witnessed her be pretty awful to several people, And if he were any upstanding person, he'd be like, hey, Julianne, uh, maybe stop trying to break up a marriage. See.

01:13:20
Speaker 3: If I'm George, I would extort her for money. Hmm, okay, I would be like, you better not ever give any of my friends a bad restaurant review. You're wrapped around my finger. You're gonna give my friend Remy the rat the best review he's ever seen.

01:13:35
Speaker 2: Wow?

01:13:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rupert Everett, was he in Ratitui because he should have been.

01:13:40
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not sure, But let's talk about George while we're on the yes subject. So he is a gay character and is played by a real life gay actor.

01:13:54
Speaker 3: A real life gay actor. Yes, Oh my gosh.

01:13:58
Speaker 2: Which is something that I found surprising for a mainstream movie in the nineties. First of all, that it has a openly gay character at all, and that they cast a gay actor to play that character. Because, as we've discussed on countless occasions in this era and obviously before, if there were gay characters present in a movie at all, they were often either the butt of a homophobic joke, they were written and performed using reductive stereotypes, they were not allowed to be explicitly queer, and they were just queer coded any number of things like this. All of that is generally avoided with the George character. However, you know, he's only there to serve the story of the straight protagonist. He doesn't have any romantic storyline of his own.

01:14:50
Speaker 3: No. Yeah, it's a very half step in the right direction where his character is adhering to some tropes and others not. I do think that he is. Ultimately he and Kimmy are the moral centers of the movie, and that George, I don't know. I mean, he's a little chaotic, right Like at certain points he calls Julian in to reflect, and then other times he's like, what if you did this convoluted email scheme? You know, Like so he is a little all over the place. He's flawed like any of us. And he does yes, like you're saying, have unlimited PTO to assist his straight friend in various nefarious schemes, which is another very trophy type of trope. But I agree that it is a I don't even know if it's a step in the right direction. Certainly unusual for the time that there is an openly gig character played by I. Actually I don't know that Rubert Everett was completely out at this time. I've seen different versions of the timeline, and I didn't want to pathologize about it, but he had played many gay and queer characters in the past. It was something he was known for. And he also, because of how gay actors are typed, played a lot of villains. So that was something kind of interesting about the casting process where I forget who it was, but someone was like, oh, Rupert Everett has to play George, and they were like, why he always plays a villain who dies, and they're like, listen, he has to play George. And then he ended up getting cast, and I think he is like very much a high point of the movie. There are all these trips. I mean, even at the beginning of that, like the thing that had me rolling my eyes the most outside of the fact that obviously the thing I'll say that's good is that we know he has a life outside of Julia Roberts, because we see him at dinner parties, he's throwing, we see him at events, we see him doing different things. But he's not allowed to have a relationship.

01:16:43
Speaker 2: Well, he mentioned someone is though he's talking about a partner. Yes, I forget the man's name, but he's referring to we never see him, right, or if we do see him, we don't realize that's his partner, because that's how underthought that relationship.

01:16:59
Speaker 3: I don't even think underthought. I think it's strategic about how gay characters could or could not be shown in mainstream movies.

01:17:05
Speaker 2: At that time.

01:17:06
Speaker 3: But I don't know, because you also think about the bird Cage came out around this time too. It wasn't like a time like nineties popular movies were kind of a crap shoot, We're about to cover Priscilla Quid to the Desert, like it wasn't verboten. But they're clearly I don't know if it's I'm assuming it's the studio, but like there clearly is a line like, well, this is as much representation as will allow. We would not allow a visible partner.

01:17:32
Speaker 2: Right, Certainly they can't touch or kiss. That would be no.

01:17:37
Speaker 3: The thing that like really solidified, like, okay, this movie has I remember George's character because he is one of the more fun characters, even though even Rupert Everett can't save how annoying I find the karaoke scene. Not the karaokes. Actually I like the karaoke scene with Camera Diaz, the Dean Warwick.

01:17:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that scene the lunch singing the song.

01:17:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that the Cameron de Has karaoke scene. He's very charming. Anyways, even though she should divorce him. I do feel like Kimmy is like sort of a future Real Housewives cast member.

01:18:11
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe five, like twenty.

01:18:12
Speaker 3: Years down the line. Anyways, Yeah, with George. The thing that really sold me on, like, Okay, this movie is not going to cross a certain line of representation. Is when in the introduction scene or no, I think the first time that she's in Chicago and he's in New York and they're on the phone, he says the word gay whispered while he's at home. He says, even though I'm you're like, you're at your apartment like that. That is the values of the movie. That's not you. It was just like, Okay, you can say gay but quietly, you know, and that's how this is represented.

01:18:50
Speaker 2: Unless he's like making a joke about how he's had to conceal that part of himself, I could maybe see that.

01:19:00
Speaker 3: I think that that's even likely, But I just feel like the representation of a gay character in this movie is gay but whispered instead of stated. But again, whispered in nineteen ninety seven wasn't nothing, but it's still like, I mean, you can point to a number of successful movies around this time in the same genre that had openly gay characters in a relationship that did tremendously well, and we're very loved because The Bird Cage came out the year before this movie, So I think that it is still very like more than you're used to for the time, certainly, but also like this I think goes below the bar for even nineteen ninety seven in terms of representation, just because of the lack of a life that George has outside of it. I do like that he's kind of the moral center of the movie. I kind of like his and Julienn's relationship. I like that he's her boss. I like that he is like they're they're both a bit nefarious, but like they're just kind of trying to I don't know. I don't dislike their friendship. I think they'll stay friends forever. And I think he'll be like, this is Julianne. She's my friend who's kind of evil, you know, like when she goes to his wedding in the future, when it's legal, that will be her actual best friend's wedding.

01:20:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll be like twenty eighteen or something.

01:20:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be twenty fifteen and they'll be getting married in New York and she'll be like, oh, this is my best friend's wedding. Not that I want a sequel another version of this movie, I don't. Although this movie was I think adapted twice internationally, Like it was so successful that there was a I believe a Chinese version of it, and then one other one.

01:20:50
Speaker 2: Am I wait, I think there's a version that came out in Mexico.

01:20:54
Speaker 3: Yes, just a couple of years ago, in twenty nineteen.

01:20:57
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:20:57
Speaker 3: So it is a very enduring thing. It was almost.

01:21:00
Speaker 2: A musical and a Bollywood movie was inspired partially, okay by this movie.

01:21:07
Speaker 3: So and I honestly, I mean as frustrating as I find this movie, it does feel weirdly old Hollywood in the internal mechanics of it. But unfortunately, having just covered his girl Friday, it might have worked better and more subversively a half century before it came out, because it was just doing nothing for me with nineteen ninety seven. This is not a plot that belongs in the age of computers. Yeah, there was almost a Broadway musical that came out, but Covid thwarted it. And yeah, I don't know. Do you have anything else to talk about for this movie.

01:21:44
Speaker 2: It's a very very white movie. Yes, people of color have nothing in terms of character or even spoken lines.

01:21:53
Speaker 3: And in all white New York and Chicago, which is a really a two hander for famously diverse cities that in this movie are only white.

01:22:02
Speaker 2: I was grossed out by the scene where Julianne they're in like the whatever like box at a white Sox game, and she's talking to Michael's teenage brother Scott played by Christopher Masterson, the brother of disgraced sex criminal Danny Masterson.

01:22:25
Speaker 3: Fun fact, Julianne is like.

01:22:28
Speaker 2: You have to dance with me at the wedding, and she holds him really close and It's just like, why are we normalizing adults being sexually suggestive toward teenagers.

01:22:40
Speaker 3: Which is objectively you know, give her take a couple months. What Michael is doing. He's marrying a twenty year old. I hate these I hate these freaks. They're freaks.

01:22:52
Speaker 2: Yes. The other quick thing was Kimmy describing her other bridesmaids as debutante sisters from Nashville who are basically vengeful sluts, which does pass the Bechdel test because she's describing them too well.

01:23:08
Speaker 4: I also clocked that to Julianne, which also again just speaks to the dissonance of Kimmy's character, because Kimmy at the end of the movie would never say that, but for some reason, Kimmy at the beginning of the movie would say that, because we're supposed to hate her at the beginning, and so she says awful things.

01:23:24
Speaker 3: And like, when there's no like this movie, I feel like, really, I don't like it on the first watch, But on the second watch, it's somehow even more frustrating because it's so obvious that really every character, but basically every character that isn't Julianne or Michael, are written moment to moment to serve the plot, and there's no consistency because I really don't think third act Kimmy would talk about people that way, like she's the sweetest girl in the world. By the end of the movie, she's flawless, which is another thing where it's like, oh, the person who deserves to get married is has to be willing to sacrifice everything. It has to have no flaw right.

01:24:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, one of the bridesmaids tried to give a blowjob to an ice sculpture and got stuck to it.

01:24:10
Speaker 3: That was me. I thought that was like, yeah, I don't have any like I just was like, weird, weird joke, weird joke. What are we supposed to think about? This family? Just kind of yet another moment of like what is this family like? Confusing?

01:24:29
Speaker 2: I don't know, but yeah, that's pretty much all I had to say. Yeah, the movie does pass the Bechdel test. It's in that aforementioned occasion and probably a couple other times, but not enough. But yes, yeah, because mostly it's conversations about Michael if Julianne and Kimmy are talking to each other, for example. But our nipple scale though, yees, where we rate the movie zero to five nip bulls based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I oh boy, again, I appreciate its attempts at subverting rom com tropes. Yeah, I generally appreciate that in a movie, because there's a lot of rom com tropes that should be subverted. But the ones that especially should have been subverted, such as the man being an awful person and ends up with, you know, the love of his life anyway, that one doesn't get subverted. And there's really no attention called in the movie to how heinous of a person he is. All of the attention is called to Julianne, and that feels gendered. So that's pepe poo pooh for me. Yeah, I think I'm only going to give the movie like a half nip. Yeah, and maybe it's because I just on a personal level don't like the movie, But I just I can't find that much that's redeeming about it, honestly. Yeah, maybe I'll bump it up to a one. No, I'm gonna stick with point five and I'm gonna split that half nipple between Paul Giamatti, Oh My movie and Harry Sheer who's in the movie?

01:26:31
Speaker 3: I was, yeah, I was watching this with Grant there. I said it, who I know?

01:26:38
Speaker 2: Do you have a boyfriend?

01:26:40
Speaker 3: I know?

01:26:40
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it's bad.

01:26:42
Speaker 3: It's bad. He's great, But yeah, it was we were both having a bad time, and the moment Paul Giamatti was on screen for less than a minute, it was like Grant took an audible sigh of relief. He was like, oh. I was like, oh, do you feel safe? Like he seemed to suddenly feel safe. But it is a movie that really made us both But like, I don't know, it's a movie that makes you feel hostage in the present day. So I'm also going to give it half a nipple. I appreciate the attempt and understanding a little more. I really appreciated the essay by Scott Maslow that sort of detailed what the attempt was. I just think, again, having women in the room does not guarantee you're going to get a better script, because people are people. But I cannot imagine a world where the script would have gotten worse with more women in the room, because I think you're right, like, the subversive elements are interesting, but they still ultimately fall victim to very gender tropes, which is that we are willing to inquire one character's villainy and not another's, and that just the whole movie unravels. The way Kimmy has written, I think is just like bad and does not like sells the character and the performance short. I don't even like Cameron Diaz as an actor, but I felt bad for her having to play this character. And Julia Roberts I do like as an actor, so I felt really bad for her having to play this character. And you know, Dermott mulroney as we you know, he's crying. We can't. I can't say another bad thing about him.

01:28:14
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sorry dermltlrmalt uh.

01:28:20
Speaker 3: And again like if this is a movie you ride for, it's a movie you ride for. I ride for a lot of movies that don't hold up. But yeah, So I'm going to give the half nipple at this movie to Julia Roberts because I like her, and also I like that it was definitely a creative risk for her to take this part. She always played the uh you know young Angenou who won at the end. I think like her being willing to take this at the peak of her career was a very cool choice. Reading about the production you I learned that she was really committed to like moments where she was being encouraged by the director to seem more like she was like, no, what's written on the page is like in the karaoke scene. Specifically, I wish it was in the yelling scene. I would be curious to know what she thought about that. But like in the karaoke scene, I guess she was being encouraged by I don't know if it's a director or producer, someone on set with a lot of power who is like, you should be on board with Kimmy singing by the end, and she's like, no, that's not what my character would do. My character hates her. My character is going to like sit in like getting one up on her, and you know, like she was just so game to play a villain. And I really wish that the movie was written in a way that would have made that a more rewarding experience, because it's a good idea executed very poorly. So I'll give my half nipple to Julia and that's all I have to say.

01:29:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there you have it, folks. That's my best friend's wedding. Hey, you want to follow us on Instagram, Well you can.

01:29:57
Speaker 3: Well do it.

01:30:00
Speaker 2: And more importantly, subscribe to our Matreon, where you get two bonus episodes every month for five dollars a month, and it's always on some brilliant, amazing genius theme that Jamie and I cook up. Plus you get access to the entire back catalog of bonus episodes and that can be found at patreon dot com slash back to cast woo.

01:30:26
Speaker 3: And also you can get our merch at teapupic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast and we'll see it's the end of summer. Summer is waning, summer is gone, and now it's time to go back to school. And oh yeah, that's right. No, that's more you because you, I know you don't like to forget up, but you love to go back to school because my.

01:30:50
Speaker 2: Gosh, yeah, are you referring to back to school?

01:30:53
Speaker 3: Is your favorite? You love back to school? You couldn't stop.

01:30:58
Speaker 2: I love well. Also because I teach school at Caitlin University, It's true where I teach my screenwriting classes and I actually have a few classes starting up in September. Because she is back to schochool exactly, So if anyone's interested in those, you can go to my website Caitlindurante dot com slash classes. I have an intro class, so if you're brand new to screenwriting or you need a refresher or anything like that, you can take that class. And then I also have workshopping classes for people who are in the process of writing something and you want feedback on your materials. So, wow, back to school. What's happening?

01:31:45
Speaker 3: And this has nothing to do with school, but listen to my other podcast, sixteenth Minute of Fame as well. Yes, it is so hard to make, so please listen to it. All right, shall we go to I mean, it's kind of our thing. Let's go to a wedding with our friend. So many wedding style I know, it really is. We're each other's go to deal with it, and that's a true best friend's wedding. Bye bye.

01:32:19
Speaker 2: 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 Catherine Volskrosenski. Our logo in 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