Dazed and Confused with Maris Kreizman

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism the patriarchy zeph and best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Dinner, We're going on tour. That was supposed to be the intro to the Star Wars theme song. Did you get that? Oh it sounded like I was going Donna, Okay, Jamie and Caitlin. Here, we're going on tour and we're not going on tour just anywhere. We're going on tour in the Midwest and soon. Why did I make the Star Wars noise? Well, it's because we're covering the Star Wars prequels. If you haven't seen them, we're gonna just cover all three at once. You know it's gonna be fine. If you have seen them, you're gonna be so mad at us. There's been so much talk about the prequels over the years, often on podcasts we really like, often by writers we really like, but never from an intersectional feminist perspective. And so we're going on this tour to quickly realize why that is so true.

00:01:10
Speaker 3: And also some people love these movies. I know, I don't quite get it, but we'll explore why. At the shows.

00:01:17
Speaker 2: They're so soapy. I kinda like it.

00:01:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can see us discuss all three prequels in one show, in fabulous outfits, in wonderful coseplay. You don't want to miss this, among many other things that you will see because we pull out all the stops.

00:01:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:37
Speaker 3: For our live shows.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: Oh we it's embarrassing what we do.

00:01:40
Speaker 3: We do fanfic, we do, I edit little videos that I insist on screening. We do trivia.

00:01:48
Speaker 2: I usually do some piece of performance art that no one asked for.

00:01:51
Speaker 3: It's a spectacle. Let me tell you.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: It's all happening.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: So we will be doing all of that and more at the following cities. We will be in Indianapolis for Let's Fest on Saturday, August thirtieth for a matinee show, and then Jamie, you have a solo show that evening that can't be missed.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: Also at the Fountain Square Theater called Jamie Laftus and her Pet Rock Solve the World's Problems, in which that will happen.

00:02:19
Speaker 3: I can't wait.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: Then the next day, the very next day, we are going to Chicago. You asked, we listened. We will be at the Den Theater on August thirty. First, that show is going to start around seven, seven to fifteen pm. It's an evening show, a sexy little evening show. We're so excited to go to Chicago and the Den Theater is so beautiful, so Chicagoans do not miss it.

00:02:44
Speaker 3: And then then we will be in Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, September fourth. I believe that's a seven thirty show and oh, we're so excited to be in Madison.

00:02:57
Speaker 2: And then finally we will be ending the tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Dudley Riggs Theater on Sunday, September seventh. That is another evening show. It starts at seven o'clock and that is where we're ending our grand tour of the Midwest. So if you have been one of the many people asking us to come to your town for the last ten years we're doing it, we would love to see you. The shows are super fun. As we've said, if you're a Matron, specifically, if you're a member of our Patroon aka Matreon, you get a free little gift at the merch table when you come to say hi after the show. It's a blast. It's going to be a super good time. We love Siena. You can get all tickets on our link tree at link Tree slash Bectel Cast. Exqueeze me, We'll see you there.

00:03:47
Speaker 3: Oh was that a jar jar impression?

00:03:49
Speaker 2: I did? Yeah? I went there.

00:03:51
Speaker 3: Wow. Enjoy the episode cast?

00:03:55
Speaker 2: All right, all right, all right, yeah, I mean, I guess that's the line.

00:04:00
Speaker 3: I guess.

00:04:01
Speaker 2: I guess that's the line.

00:04:03
Speaker 3: I'd rather say that than some of the other choice words from this movie.

00:04:07
Speaker 4: What do you mean?

00:04:08
Speaker 2: No, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast, as we say, where you're disgusting older friends.

00:04:14
Speaker 3: No, where your cool older friends.

00:04:18
Speaker 2: We are mature friends who don't show up at parties. We don't belong at. My name's Jamie Loftus.

00:04:26
Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin Dronte. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. And Jamie tell me what that is.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: Well, we're gonna actually need the Bechdel test today. There's certain movies where you're like, yeah, we gotta glaze over it. I think the Bechel test was actually created for this exact kind of movie. M So, the Bechdel Test is a media matter created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel with her friend Liz Wallace, which is why it's often correctly called Bechdel Wallace Test. I can't stop thinking about. We recently had Alson Bechtel on the show and we're like, where is Liz Wallace And she's like, I don't know. I met her at a karate class and we lost touch, and you're like, okay, wow, wow, I love that. Anyways, they co created this test together originally as a way of commenting on how there was no queer representation for primarily women in movies, but it has since become a larger, more mainstream media metric, which means it's been heteroonormative affied. Here's the version of the test we use. Our version of the test requires that two characters with names who are of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something that isn't a man. And this movie is really gonna stretch this test to its very limits. Yes, like many nineties movies, I feel like most of the arguably Bechtels fasting things are women being horrible to each other, which technically counts, but spiritually it doesn't. We'll get into it. Yeah, it's the Dazed and Confused episode. I don't know how it took us nine I mean, one could even say avoidance.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: We might have been avoiding it for this whole time. I feel like pre Pandemic, we scheduled a live show in Austin, and I think we were considering covering this movie. I think we ultimately were like, we should do whip it instead. And then it doesn't matter. The whole show got canceled because of COVID, But yeah, we were we were like, hm, days and confused. Maybe this is the time, and then you know, five years past. So now we're doing it.

00:06:44
Speaker 2: It's five years. We don't talk about that. We have an incredible guest here today. Let's get her in here.

00:06:49
Speaker 3: Let's do it. She's the author of the book I want to burn this place down. Great title. It's Mary's Chrisman.

00:06:57
Speaker 2: Hello, Hi, what an honor to be here.

00:07:02
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thanks for coming.

00:07:04
Speaker 2: Before we get into the Dazed and Confused of it all, tell us more about your book.

00:07:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an essay collection about all of the things I want to burn down basically, and if you take a look at the world right now, you might have a few items on.

00:07:19
Speaker 3: Your list too, certainly.

00:07:22
Speaker 5: So it's basically about all of the institutions and ideas that I used to revere that I just no longer do because they have not worked.

00:07:33
Speaker 2: It is a great book, Thank you, And speaking of things.

00:07:37
Speaker 3: That you might want to burn down, Yeah, dazed and confused, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

00:07:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know how you feel about this movie. Yeah, yeah, So to start, what is your history with this movie? What's your relationship with this movie?

00:07:50
Speaker 5: So I'm a little bit older than you, and this is important because I had just started high school when this movie came out. Okay, so for the longest time I was like, well, that's what high school's supposed to be. Like, you know, if that's not an accurate depiction of high school, then what's going on? I guess I should say too that at that time, yes, I had a strong desire to fit in sure, so I absolutely understood why hazing is so exciting to some people.

00:08:27
Speaker 3: Let's say that, yeah, I mean, characteristic of so many movies from this era about teens, is like, yeah, this is how high school is, and isn't that awesome? Actually?

00:08:40
Speaker 2: Yes, right, that's what is like one of the many tricky elements of this movie where it's like, to some extent, like there is some scary, realistic stuff that does happen in high schools and like dynamics that I recognize, but they're just kind of presented without comment. And that's being generous because because there's almost like aspirational to be like, you're gonna if Parker Posey. I mean it's a bad example because I would let Parker Posey scream at me in a parking lot and cover me and ketchup. I mean absolutely, and like that would kind of be like a kinky day for me.

00:09:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:09:16
Speaker 2: But but theore, you know, it's just like and this is what and isn't that cool? It's like, I don't know, there's like fun nostalgia vibes because it's clearly based on Richard Linklater's childhood, to the point where there was a lawsuit about it, which I'm excited to talk about. Wow, oh I don't know that part basically he used the I mean, it was a bunk lawsuit and probably more embarrassing that they even filed it, but there were three of his former classmates. Their last names are water Send, Slater, and Floyd, and they filed a defamation lawsuit against Richard linklater, and I was like, guys, you just pretend to say I haven't seen it.

00:09:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then also, Dick Link, don't use real people's names, like have some creative Yeah, that's weird.

00:10:01
Speaker 2: Well unless he actually did base them on those guys. And there's a guy named Woderson who should feel like a piece of shit.

00:10:08
Speaker 3: I mean, true, Yeah, I'm kind of on the fence. Sure, sure, Jamie. What's your relationship with this movie?

00:10:17
Speaker 2: Not very much. I saw this movie once in college and I did this is just like not my kind of movie. I feel the same way about what's the George Lucas version of this movie American Graffiti. Yes, where it's like a director in his thirties making a movie about like high school was so fucking cool. Man, it's just like never been my bag at all. Also has to do with that I was a total fucking dork. So I'm sure that there's like an internal like I didn't find it aspirational to like watch party movies. I think it just reminded me of parties I was not invited to. So I don't have a lot of history in this movie. I do have a lot of history with Richard link Later. Yes, he directed my favorite movie of all time, School of Rock. But the thing with Richard Linklater is that he has such like range that you can also really hate some of his movies. I wouldn't say I hate this movie. I definitely don't like it. I didn't know Ben Affleck was in it, and I guess that's that's a pertinent thought.

00:11:21
Speaker 4: I mean, there are a lot of cameos to talk about.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I kept feeling like there's no way, but then by the third time, you're like, no, that is that is him, Ben aff Preveneers.

00:11:32
Speaker 3: That's why you didn't recognize him.

00:11:34
Speaker 2: It's hard to recognize him with his original teeth. You had to like go back to the nineties. But yeah, mister duncan himself in Texas. Maybe he's doing a better job at acting because we talked about this in our Gone Girl episode. But like having to suspend my disbelief to be like, yeah, Ben Affleck lives in Missouri, Sure it wouldn't happen. All I don't really care for this movie, but I am excited to talk about it, and I also get why people like it.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if I had seen this like at the right time, it would have hit better for me. I don't know, Kaitlyn, WIT's your history with this movie.

00:12:13
Speaker 3: Pretty similar to yours, Jamie. I saw it during the Great Caitlin movie binge of two thousand and five when I was a freshman in college that is, watching just like a Bazilian movies, and I never returned to it since until prepping for this episode, because it clearly did not appeal to me enough to revisit it. I think it's an interesting concept in theory. I mean, I don't I like a day in the life of an ensemble cast of characters. It kind of reminded me of what's that other teen movie where they go to a party for the whole time and we covered it recently.

00:12:51
Speaker 4: Can hardly wait?

00:12:52
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly what is that movie? Tower Records? Empire Records, Empire Records with some of the cast, in fact, some of the same cast. Yes, a similar kind of like Hang nineties movie. I don't know, I never I can't gelll the nineties Hang, even though this is the seventies, it's the nineties.

00:13:11
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be your normy friend.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: No, this is good.

00:13:13
Speaker 2: I want I mean, like I wanna. I don't know. Yeah, I like a lot of movies that aren't. I mean, people love this movie though. That's the other thing, is like, this is a good movie.

00:13:24
Speaker 3: I'm told it's like well crafted. It's just that most of the characters are absolutely despicable and very hard to root for sure looking at it through a twenty twenty five lens.

00:13:36
Speaker 2: Which is true of a lot of high schoolers to this day.

00:13:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:13:40
Speaker 5: Absolutely, But I even feel like the hazing stuff felt like in the nineties, okay, question mark.

00:13:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now it's just.

00:13:51
Speaker 5: So loaded with Trump and ice and all of these terrible things that like, I can't it's hard to go back and be like, oh, yeah, that was cool, right.

00:14:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:14:04
Speaker 3: So anyway, I saw it for the first time back in the day about twenty years ago, and I too find Dick Link aka Richard Link later a versatile director in that sometimes I love his movies aka The Before Trilogy, and sometimes I don't love his movies aka Dazed and Confused. But we'll talk more in the meantime. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. And we're back. Okay, So preface for the recap. There's like eight thousand characters in this movie. A lot of stuff happens. I'm gonna kind of like skip over some stuff, but i feel like I've got the core beats.

00:14:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:14:55
Speaker 3: So this movie is basically a day in the life of a bunch of teams on their last day of school in Austin, Texas in nineteen seventy six. It is mostly teens who are about to be seniors and then a few kids who are about to be freshmen. We meet a character named Pink. He's the quarterback of the football team, but he's also hanging out with stoner kids like Slater played by Rory Cochrane, which is one of the actors in Empire Records, as well as a kid named Pickford who is throwing an end of school party that night. Pink is also friends with a group of like I guess, kind of bookish teens who play poker together.

00:15:47
Speaker 2: Featuring another recent actor on the Pod, Anthony Rap. Anthony Rap's jawline in the nineties was like hard to wrap your head around, like it's in a good way, but you're like, whoa, how is this physically possible?

00:16:05
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah, we talked about him on our recent episode on Adventures and Babysitting. He plays a character named Tony. And then we also have Mike played by Adam Goldberg, as well as Cynthia played by Marissa Rabisi, who is Giovanni Ribisi's twin sister.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, missus scientology herself exactly, Ohn, Are they scientologists?

00:16:29
Speaker 6: Oh?

00:16:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, they are lifelong good grief well shit anyway, So we have those trio of characters, we meet some more.

00:16:39
Speaker 3: Football players like Don Benny, question Mark name.

00:16:46
Speaker 2: A generic white guy named It's someone in the movie.

00:16:52
Speaker 3: And then we'll eventually meet O'Banion, which is Ben Affleck's character. And the two things with the football players are that they're debating on whether or not to sign this pledge from their coach that they won't drink or do drugs over the summer. And the other thing is that they're obsessed with beating the shit out of freshmen. Those are the two things.

00:17:17
Speaker 2: Like above anything else in their lives. Yeah, I knew older kids that really thrived when bullying others and not to handage to them, but they usually did have like a second thing they did, but obeyed. Like it's no wonder he was held back. He treats it like a job.

00:17:38
Speaker 3: Full time job.

00:17:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never seen a class of almost seniors pay so much attention to freshmen ever in my entire life.

00:17:48
Speaker 2: Right, well, actually this is a good point to ask, like what was what were your respective high school experiences, because I my high school was really big and so like this might have happened, but it would have been like with a specific social group, like no one knew who each other was. And I am grateful for that because I think I would have been bullied worse if I was in a small school and people could keep track of you. But like there were five thousand kids, so who oh my god. If someone was giving you a hard time, you just sort of had to wait. You'd lose them eventually.

00:18:24
Speaker 3: My high school experience was kind of bizarre. We had grades seven through twelve all in the same building.

00:18:30
Speaker 4: Oh that's a lot.

00:18:31
Speaker 3: Oh whow so we had like twelve year olds going to school alongside eighteen year olds. That doesn't sound smart. It was bizarre, And yeah, it was very small. I would say it was probably only about it was like usually one hundred or one hundred and twenty students per graduating class. So what's that like eight hundred seven hundred kids? And I was a weird mix of like I was kind of a jock honestly, but not like a toxic bullying kind. I just like played a lot of sports. But then I was also like a mathlete, and I don't know, I like ran in a few different circles.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: That's the key. If you're a t if you're a teenager, that's the Yeah. Because I did like dorky stuff, all of it possible. But I also was on the dance team, and I feel like that was my saving grace. Sure at the end of the day, where there was one thing that was quote unquote socially acceptable, right, I just have one socially acceptable skill.

00:19:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, Maris, how about you?

00:19:35
Speaker 5: I was a theater kid. Nice, but I also I felt like a lot of high school for sure passed me by, probably for the best.

00:19:48
Speaker 4: I think that's probably for the best.

00:19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, it's like I enjoyed high school more than I enjoyed college, which I think is unusual. Yeah, but I do feel like really thriving in either of those faces is like dream bigger.

00:20:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is like sort of the ethos at the end of the movie where yeah, what's his face? Pink is like if I ever say that these are the best years of my life, like that fucking sucks. And then the other kid is like, well, yeah, but I'm gonna make the best of my time here while I'm stuck here, and it's like, yeah, but also your idea of like making the best of it is beating the shit out of children, so we're not too sure about that. Yeah, I have some notes, Okay, So yeah, that's the whole thing with these like senior football players is that they relentlessly bully and physically abuse children. And there's one kid in particular who they're after, Mitch, and then he has a few like freshman boy pals who are also targets, and the seniors chase these freshmen to one of the boys' houses, but the kid's mom pulls a shotgun on Ben Afflex character.

00:21:06
Speaker 2: One of my favorite moments of the movie.

00:21:08
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, one of the only moments when there's an adult who does something, which so that's fine, I know.

00:21:15
Speaker 3: Right, And the thing with Obanyon ben afflex character is that he's like particularly thirsty for the blood of children. Anyway, make no mistake, the boys aren't the only ones terrorizing younger people, because meanwhile, the senior girls, such as characters played by Parker Posey and Mila Djovovich, is there, among others wilds. They are also bullying, slash hazing freshman girls by squirting. I would say hot dog condiments, yes, onto them.

00:21:53
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it. I was like, ultimately it's corn dog coated because of the flower Ah. I see, yes, they're frying in the sun.

00:22:01
Speaker 5: Oh.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: I saw the vision for this vicious bullying. Yeah, I saw the vision. I think they're at least creative about it. Yeah.

00:22:10
Speaker 5: But then they get put on leashes towards the end of the frying yeah, and that seems to have nothing to do with corn dogs no, and.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Then they just kind of start free wheeling it. So, like I was reading about just like general production stuff, especially when it's like earlier in a director's career, I'm like, I think that they just had to do that, and that is in fact what happened. They like were in a hot parking lot, not wearing sunscreen, having ketchup poured all over them, and you're just like, Dick, Dick, come on, come on, you can't actually turn your young actors into hot dogs. It's a bad look.

00:22:48
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so we meet some of these girls and if you're wondering if we will really get to know any of them, well the answer is no, aside from kind of Parker posey, but not really. And then also this freshman girl, Sabrina, who ends up linking up with a senior boy, Tony, the Anthony Rapp character, and we can talk more about that, but basically Sabrina ends up kind of befriending this senior girl, Jodie, where it's that idea that if the younger teens can withstand the hazing from the older kids, then they're cool enough to hang around the seniors. So then Slater and Pink head to Pickford's house. He's the one who's throwing the party that night because his parents are heading out of town. But then the beer keg delivery guy shows up early and Pickford's dad realizes what's going on, so his parents decide to stay home and Pickford has to cancel the party.

00:23:54
Speaker 2: I guess that's the second responsible parent he's scary. Yes, yeah, but that is I guess responsible parrot number two, right, maybe the final one.

00:24:04
Speaker 3: Right? And now this means that all of the other teens have to figure out something else to do that night. Some of them just kind of drive around for a while. The football players head to the freshman's baseball game to go after Mitch. They capture him and beat him with a paddle. Then Pink, who goes easy on Mitch, invites him to hang There's like a similar dynamic between Jody and Sabrina where Pink kind of befriends Mitch, and then he and Wooterson, the Matthew McConaughey character, who is famously a lot older than the high school kids that he hangs out with. They take mitche to this like pool hall place where Mitch meets a sophomore girl, Julie, who he thinks is cute. Meanwhile, the freshman boy's minus Mitch, so like just Mitch's friends are leaving a junior high dance ready to become men, aka, they're ready to objectify women even harder.

00:25:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is another movie where it's not the worst offender of this by far. And I'm curious what you both think about it, because I'm like, I feel like it's maybe a teeny bit aware of it, but then later not as much. But how like all of the boys treat girls horrible at one point or another. I think that ultimately, unfortunately, Richard Linkliner's allegiance is still with the nerdy guys even though they do say and do many of the same things that the jocks are doing. They're just more aware of it. Yeah, which kind of makes it worse. Which is the thing that we talk about all the time with like these like eighties, nineties, Stock two thousands stock geek characters that like get the girl. Because and this is a generalization, but it is true, dorks are the ones that end up directing movies, and so that's why you see that so often. There's an element of wish fulfillment. I can say that because I'm one of them, but that they are kind of behaving similar, if not identically, to the like antagonist jocks.

00:26:30
Speaker 3: It's almost like the logic is, yeah, the nerds are similarly toxic and horrible toward girls and women, but they do it a little differently than the jocks, so it's actually fine.

00:26:45
Speaker 2: They put a little intellectual twist on misogyny, and we love that.

00:26:50
Speaker 5: I'm gonna give them one credit, which is that they do hang out with the Marissa Rabisi character.

00:26:56
Speaker 4: Yes, and she is an ee ish character.

00:27:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, she is one of the women or the you know, teen girls who gets more characterized than the others.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: I wish that Richard linklater had more of an interest in that character because I feel like there's a lot going on with her that I felt like in a good and bad way, kind of not seen but like, well we'll get to. Specifically, when the McConaughey character starts to hit on her, like, it's not dealt with well in the movie, but I was like, that's like a dynamic that happened for sure. Is like dorky girl or like art girl feeling recognized and like attractive to an older person who is ultimately taking advantage of her. That happens all the time. If only he had interest in exploring how complicated and toxic those dynamics are, right.

00:27:50
Speaker 5: Rather than just being like she won right right.

00:27:53
Speaker 2: That is where they leave it, like and she's going to the Aerosmith concert because he's like he's fifty five years It's so wild because it's like they have to keep calling Matthew McConaughey old because he is basically everyone else's age. I didn't realize that Joey Lauren Adams is older than him.

00:28:12
Speaker 5: Yeah by a year, and Parker Posey too, and yeah, so it's like Matthew McConaughey, I think they like they make him up.

00:28:19
Speaker 2: Well, but he is twenty four in this movie. You shouldn't be hanging out with high schoolers. But they talk about him like he's like he's like their parents. Yeah, because they're like, he graduated high school when we were three. I was like brutal, I know. I was like, was that hyperbole or not? Hard to say? Probably, But in any case, we're with the freshman boys for a moment, and then Obanion and some of the other football players start chasing them down and they catch and flog a kid named Hirschfelder who had just been making out at the junior high dance with.

00:28:54
Speaker 5: A with a girl who clearly stuffs her bra with two pairs of socks.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, good for her. Then we cut to I think the pool hall again, where a bunch of teens are it's hard to keep track of who everyone is and where they are.

00:29:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a vibes movie. Es. Yeah, you're just like, Hey, at some point the characters started blurring together, and I'm like, I have to be okay with this.

00:29:23
Speaker 3: Well, so many of them look alike. They all have a very similar hairstyle, well, bottoms, yeah, same clothes. Yeah, way too many of them are white people. So yeah, but this is the part of the movie where Woodterson aka Matthew McConaughey's character says the infamous line of I get older, but high school girls stay the same age.

00:29:45
Speaker 2: The line that launched a thousand products at Spencer's Gifts.

00:29:49
Speaker 3: Oh god, yikes. Okay, So then the football boys and Mitch drive around. They smash some mailboxes and car windows for fun. Then a man whose mailbox was smashed comes after them with a gun he's shooting at them. They speed away, and they head back to the pool hall, where this guy named Melvin has Mitch by him a six pack of beer, and Mitch is able to convince the store clerk that he's eighteen, even though he's visibly fourteen.

00:30:24
Speaker 5: So, yuh, I feel like the seniors look like grown adults and the freshmen are children. Yeah, and yet somehow was the legal age eighteen drinking ages back.

00:30:37
Speaker 2: Then in the seven Yeah, it was.

00:30:40
Speaker 3: I had to look this up.

00:30:41
Speaker 5: Okay, that makes it a little bit better.

00:30:44
Speaker 2: What is the year that changed?

00:30:45
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty four? I think?

00:30:47
Speaker 2: Okay, because I think, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that my dad was cool in high school, which is like so weird to think about because I would say he's a very uncool adult. But this is like literally exactly when my parents were in high school. M like, my dad used to throw a house party. He was famous for throwing like house party ragers, and I was.

00:31:09
Speaker 3: Like, whoa, I know he was the Pickford of the group.

00:31:13
Speaker 2: I guess none of this trickled down in the bloodline. The wanting to be at a party really did not get down to be in my brother. But I do remember that they used to be like we just got in under the wire. We could drink when we were eighteen and rem because my aunt was like younger than him and she was able to drink. And then she wasn't. She was like this cusp and she took that personally right.

00:31:41
Speaker 3: So Mitch was able to buy this beer. His friends approached him outside the liquor store to be like, hey, let's get back at ben Affleck for kicking our asses, and they pour a bucket of paint on him on the Obanian carear and he's humiliated. He freaks out and storms off, and then at some point Woodson announces that there's a party later on at the Moon Tower. Then he bumps into Cynthia and Mike and Tony while they're driving around, and Wooderson takes a liking to Cynthia and she's into it, though her friends Mike and TONI are like, ooh, that guy's a creep. He's way older than you, and she's like ha ha.

00:32:31
Speaker 2: So what I actually thought that scene was again like a missed opportunity because it did feel like, again like a real life dynamic of the guys are like, that's so fucked up you would, And then ultimately they're going to go with where the social capital is, so of course they're always gonna do it right, which is a very unfortunately teenaged thing.

00:32:50
Speaker 3: Right because that scene ends with well are we still going to go to the party, and they're like yeah, let's go. Yeah, but is there commentary?

00:32:59
Speaker 2: No? I mean, that's that's the whole problem. Is and here's this thing you probably recognize. I don't have anything to say about it, but there it is. It is okay, cool.

00:33:09
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then we cut to everyone arriving at the party at the Moon Tower. Mike gets in a little tiff with some agro dude named Clint.

00:33:20
Speaker 5: I am sorry to announce that I looked him up because he's in a lot of Dick's movies and he he died by suicide last year.

00:33:30
Speaker 2: Oh oh, that's horrible.

00:33:31
Speaker 4: Sorry that brought it down.

00:33:33
Speaker 3: No, I mean his character will later beat the shit out of Mike in a scene that again, like there could have been more commentary on the Mike character, because he starts out kind of one way and then he almost like Arcs so for the course of this one day where he's like, you know what, I'm gonna lean into being toxic and shitty, and then he incites this this fight with this guy. So that that happened. Other things are happening, such as Tony and Sabrina link up. This is the like kind of bookish Anthony Rapp character who is a senior and Sabrina is a freshman. Then we've got Pink having to decide if he's gonna quit football or not. And then he also cheats on his girlfriend Simone with Jody, and we're sort of like, who are either of those people?

00:34:29
Speaker 2: I know, I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known a thing. I was like, I think they both had brown hair.

00:34:35
Speaker 3: No one of them is blonde.

00:34:37
Speaker 5: Didn't know Joey Lauren Adams has a higher voice.

00:34:40
Speaker 4: That's how you know.

00:34:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, she has a soft voice. I wrote down because I had to, literally, like, I hate doing this, but to differentiate the teen girls in this movie, I was like, yeah, she's the one with longish blonde hair, and then this other one is the one with shorter blonde hair, and then this one is the redheaded one. Because we know so a little about each one that you sort of have no choice but to identify them by their hair color. Anyway, that's happening. Mitch is flirting with Julie, that sophomore girl. Then the party winds down and a few of the teens head to the football field to smoke weed. The cops bust them. I think I'm pretty checked out at this point, honestly. The next morning, the coach b rates Pink for hanging out with his stoner friends, and Pink is like, you know what, screw you man, And I think that's the climax of the movie.

00:35:40
Speaker 5: A thing that I realized I misremembered about the film was watching it this time. I thought that Pink had like a kind of the graduate moment at the end, like makes a decision and then has a moment of doubt. But there's nothing on his face at all. Nope, he's just not reflecting I think at all.

00:36:04
Speaker 2: I feel like you could definitely see it both ways. I didn't feel strongly about it either way. I could see that, like I don't know, it feels like we're pink Lands, is that he probably still wants to play football, but he doesn't want to like have the terms dictated to him.

00:36:22
Speaker 6: All right.

00:36:23
Speaker 3: I mean, you could look at it like this is a story about a kid who is like trying to defy the sort of authoritarian control of the older generation and like push society or at least his football team's dynamic in a more progressive way. But on the other hand, it's like the big arc of this movie is the star quarterback of the football team deciding to like say fuck you to his coach, and it's sort of like cool story, bro.

00:36:57
Speaker 5: But he decides to do drugs and drink instead, which.

00:37:01
Speaker 3: Is yeah, and cheat and his girlfriend, so you know, could have been slightly more meaningful, but here we are. And then the movie basically ends with Pink and his girlfriend, Simone and Woodson and Slater just driving around and smoking doobies.

00:37:24
Speaker 2: Going to the Aerosmith concert.

00:37:28
Speaker 3: Woo the end. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss Where shall we start, Maris, Is there anything that jumps out to you?

00:37:49
Speaker 5: I want to always start with Parker Posey in this because another thing I misremembered was how much of the movies she's in. She's like a very secondary character, third character tertiary, Yeah, tertiary.

00:38:04
Speaker 4: And yet I just she is so memorable.

00:38:07
Speaker 5: When I think of the movie, I think of her first, and then to realize that, aside from the one scene with the hazing, she doesn't really get to do anything.

00:38:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is sort of all of the women in the movie, as we were already hinting at.

00:38:24
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:38:24
Speaker 2: I found it was almost a ten year old article, but I thought it was interesting. It was a bitch media article about sort of how women are portrayed throughout Richard Linkletter's catalog. Obviously there's a lot of variants because his movies are so like he also did the Before trilogy, but men are definitely at the center of his movies, especially his comedies. And it's especially because it's like, there are women in this movie, but when you bounce back and forth constantly like we do from like cars full of boys and cars full of girls, it's just so obvious who he's interested in. Because one of the most bummer things because it was a scene that I was like, ugh, I wish that there was more the scene you get where Parker Posy and Joey Adams are in the car and they're like, what did they call me? Well, he called you a bitch and he called she called you a slut or whatever like, and it's just like the most it feels improvised, And it turns out it's because it was improvised. Oh, Parker Posy asked if they could just film something because so much of the scenes with the girls had been cut out of the movie that I think, kind of in an act of desperation, she's like, here, just let's do this, and they like improvised that whole seed, which is why it's kind of like half baked and sloppy for her, right, I was like, in retrospect, I'm like, I guess I am glad that's there because it was almost replaced with nothing, and it seems like, yeah, the citation was a book that I don't have, but they just cite a book that references the production of this movie where Richard linklater basically admits that he cut out because they shot a lot for this movie because it was so loose. The actors had a lot of say and what their characters said and did, like most of his movies, and then he just ended up cutting into the scenes with the women pretty intensely.

00:40:20
Speaker 3: And you can tell.

00:40:21
Speaker 2: You can tell, cause where are they.

00:40:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of them, but none of them necessarily aside from Parker Posey. And that might just be because we already, like with this hindsight, we know who Parker Posey is, and we know how dynamic of an actor she is and how memorable of a presence she can have on screen. But like again, her character is given basically nothing. All the other teen girl characters are given less basically nothing. We might learn some of their names, other names, we don't know. The Mili Joviovic character doesn't even say a single word.

00:40:57
Speaker 2: Again. Richard linklater said she didn't really gel with the group, and so he cut all of her scenes. She had an arc and he just cut it. I was like, it's Milijovivich, it's your fault if she'd you know, yeah, write a better character.

00:41:13
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:41:14
Speaker 5: And you know, she ended up marrying the guy who played her boyfriend in real life. Oh, I didn't know that when she was like still a teenager, you know, because she was I think sixteen when the movie was shot.

00:41:25
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

00:41:26
Speaker 5: So she obviously vibed well with someone somewhere.

00:41:30
Speaker 3: You know, right, Is it Pickford who she's dating, the kid who was supposed to throw the party?

00:41:36
Speaker 6: Yes?

00:41:36
Speaker 3: I think that's who she's like with. But it's also hard. It took me forever to figure that out because when she's on screen, she's not saying anything or doing she does paint those like kiss statues. Yeah, but that's sort of it. And then yeah, the other characters, like there will be like an interesting moment here or there, but they're so fleeting, especially compared to how the men are character that you kind of forget who was that girl again and what's her thing. There's a part where one of the girls, which one I don't remember her name, if she even has a name, but she's talking about how Gilligan's Island, Oh yeah, is this like pornographic fantasy for men? Because she's like, yeah, it's you know, these male characters being stranded on an island with a sexy lady and then like an approachable girl next door type. So you got the Madonna horror complex. And that's like an interesting start to examining media.

00:42:40
Speaker 2: Right, we don't need high school girls to be operating at PhD analysis levels.

00:42:44
Speaker 3: They're talking right, and then but her friends are just like whatever I thought the captain was sexy, and then like end of scene, we never see her again. Maybe I don't even know.

00:42:55
Speaker 5: I think she shows up at the party, but because I remember pink pan that's.

00:43:00
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, that's that was my that's the north Star.

00:43:04
Speaker 3: Pink pants, short, dark brown bob, I think is how we know her.

00:43:10
Speaker 2: Basically, there were these scenes that felt I mean, I think the reason that this movie is tricky to cover on this show specifically is because I don't think that this movie, Like part of the approach to this movie is that it isn't trying to comment on anything really, and like reading about how Richards lank Later was making this, it seems like that is very tied into what the movie is supposed to be. But even so, it's like the men have stories that start an end, Like even though there the stories are relatively low stakes, like whatever, that's great, but like how Pink is supposed to sign the piece of paper and at the end he says, fuck the piece of paper, I don't want to sign it. Mitch, he has a whole arc of like this is his first party, and it's like if there are women who have arcs, it's generally like it ends with them kissing Anthony rap Like is there any other girl besides Sabrina And she's the only technically the only woman or girl in the movie that has like an arc that starts an ends.

00:44:22
Speaker 3: I think, so I would argue that maybe Cynthia, she is the redhead.

00:44:29
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh, I guess I guess she'd But also it is just tied to like and then I met a guy, a guy.

00:44:35
Speaker 3: Who is this is the one of the like very obvious things for us to talk about on this show. As far as his famous line of Oh, that's what I love about high school girls. I get older, they stay the same age. And that is something that you know, a statutory rapist might say, right.

00:44:57
Speaker 2: Which is the joke.

00:44:59
Speaker 5: Unfortunately it's the joke, and the girls are interchangeable to him and to the film like that that is part of it too, And then I always get caught up in the what is he saying that?

00:45:12
Speaker 3: Right?

00:45:13
Speaker 4: Right?

00:45:14
Speaker 2: I think part of the reason that that character has the legacy that it does is because of the approach that Richard Linklader takes is he's just presenting this guy and not commenting on this type of guy at all, which makes it really easy for like Spencer's gift stores for decades to come to just be like, this guy's awesome. That must have been what he was saying. I was like looking into the cast, because they cast mostly locally for this movie, and I was like, I haven't. I don't think I've seen the actress who plays Sabrina and anything else. And it's because she quit acting in the late nineties and became an anti war activist.

00:45:54
Speaker 4: Oh wow, oh that's cool.

00:45:56
Speaker 2: And she is to this day. Hmm, so good for Kristin, Hina Jessa nice. But in any case, it's almost hard. It's like it's hard to think of something to say about the Matthew McConaughey character that probably hasn't been said already, but like I tend to agree.

00:46:17
Speaker 3: Well, there's like a quick moment as he's gearing up to spew his rapie rhetoric that one of the characters I think it's down maybe or someone says to the Waterson character like, oh, you're gonna end up in jail sometime soon because of his interest in minors. But that's such a throwaway line, it's not what anyone remembers. It's not like challenging his behavior nearly enough. Similar there's a part where the senior girls are hazing the freshman girls and making them like propose to senior boys and being like I'll do anything, spit or swallow whatever, and then Slater says, oh, it's so degrading, But he's also like laughing as he's saying this, and again not challenging any one of his friends. And then later that same character says, the girls in our class are all prudes, worthless, little bitches, right.

00:47:23
Speaker 5: So you know, there's one thing I want to go back to with Waterson m hm. And maybe this is me just try like being generous. But I thought that when he walks into the pool hall and the song that's playing is Dylan's Hurricane m and he's walking in there so seriously that you are meant to be laughing at him there.

00:47:54
Speaker 3: I could see that, I get to yeah, but also that is possibly a generous read.

00:48:03
Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to think of other characters that meet this if like this isn't a good comparison Good Fellas go with, be here of like characters that the director doesn't necessarily respect or be like, look at this awesome guy. But that's the cultural takeaway. I think there's an argument for that here. But I also feel like Richard Linklater is saying like, because a good fella is Scarsese is like these guys are bad, these guys are sucking their lives. Yeah, right, and Richard Linklater sort of yeah, again, it's tricky because he's just like, here's this guy, what do you think of him? Which is an approach.

00:48:37
Speaker 3: But I did keep waffling back and forth on this where I was like Okay, is this commentary in the sense that it is presenting very obviously shitty and abusive behavior, and then we're just sort of meant to like take this in as the audience and be like, yes, that's super shitty, or is it simply just presenting it and being like pretty wild teenagers in the seventies. Huh. But I ultimately concluded that it's sort of like a history was written by the victors, where like the ruling class of a typical American high school is the characters who are the most focused on in this movie. You know, the football playing jocks, the pretty popular people who tend to abuse their high social status. Not all of them. You know, that's a sweeping generalization, but it's pretty common and there's reason a lot of movies are about it. But again, yeah, it just feels to me ultimately like the movie is presenting this just being like, yeah, kids got into some bad stuff, and maybe even some of them deserve to be punished, such as Obanion, Like he gets his come upance by having the paint dumped on him and he's humiliated. But also it feels like the movie treats him almost like, well, yeah, he's the one bad apple, but the other jock bullies are nice. Actually, maybe because they befriend the kids who they beat the shit out of.

00:50:13
Speaker 4: So here's a question.

00:50:16
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like when I first saw this movie, I thought like, is there like a high school fraternity and sorority system?

00:50:23
Speaker 4: Like is there a Greek system?

00:50:25
Speaker 2: Right?

00:50:26
Speaker 4: Like what are they being hazed for?

00:50:29
Speaker 5: And if they're being hazed, how do they choose which people get haste? Like with the with the guys, it's a little easier because you see sports and like you can imagine that they then grow up to play on the same teams and right, but like, how is Parker posey yelling at a random thirteen year.

00:50:50
Speaker 3: Old She literally just goes up to Sabrina, who is not yet participating in the being hazed. She's chosen, Yeah, basically because she's like, she's attractive. Yeah, if she wants to be popular, if she wants to have all this social capital, then she has to be hazed because that means we'll take her under our wing and haes her, but then ultimately befriend her. I guess I was.

00:51:17
Speaker 2: Also kind of puzzled by that to the point where I was like, is it a small town thing. Is it a seventies thing? Is it completely made up? Any of these answers could be true. I don't, yeah, because it is like the girls are being hazed for something way more general. Yes, yeah, this behavior like it's horrible wherever it is, but it would make more sense in college to me.

00:51:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, and even just the paddles. The paddles are very Greek.

00:51:43
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I didn't get it. And then there's like that scene where Anthony Rapp is like, they're selling concessions. I'm like, they're selling concessions at the hazing ritual. I guess I was like, if that's a thing, my school was different. I don't know, Like kiss got beat up, there was bullying, but there weren't concessions. That's wild.

00:52:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure, but those are some of the few characters who do challenge the behavior of the kids with higher social status around them, and it's predominantly Mike, the Adam Goldberg character, who's like, it's so wild that our school and the entire community seems to just support these hazing rituals. He and Tony ask Sabrina why she would subject herself to this. She kind of has no answer. We can presume she wants to fit in and make friends, but there are some of the few characters who are actually challenging this. But then that culminates in Tony kissing a girl who's four years younger than her and in high school, when those four years of development emotionally and like psychologically make a huge difference. Like that is an age gap that I am not okay with. But this happens in like three or four different dynamics throughout the movie where a much older person gets with a much younger person.

00:53:15
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that's the like whattersin and YEAHBC sorry KILLERBC.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: Right, but that's presented with like no commentary, just like, yeah, this is how.

00:53:28
Speaker 2: It is, right, I mean it's like and do I believe that happened in the seventies. Yes, But again, like that's the I guess that's the risk of just showing without comment It feels like a tacit or like over kind of endorsement of like nothing nothing wrong with this. And again it's like there are interesting dynamics, not with the age gap relationships. I'm talking more about like with the Mic character. Again, it's it wouldn't have been unusual to see that dynamic that we saw of like, this is so fucked up, but I'm too scared to personally do anything about it. Right, that is definitely a relatable thing, But again it's just like it doesn't go anywhere. It just sort of like, I guess, I just don't really like this approach to filmmaking.

00:54:17
Speaker 5: Like I also wonder though, like I mean, and this might be true for so many different nineties films, like the age I was when I first saw this movie, I didn't have the vocabulary to express why this made me feel weird.

00:54:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, anti.

00:54:35
Speaker 5: Bullying wasn't a thing like that, right, or like it wasn't bullying was just something that happened. And I wonder if there was just so much less demand for him to be the self aware back then.

00:54:52
Speaker 3: That's what I kept coming back to.

00:54:55
Speaker 2: I would guess so because he does become, like to his credit, way more self aware in future movies.

00:55:03
Speaker 3: He makes way many more thoughtful movies after this.

00:55:07
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he.

00:55:08
Speaker 2: Can't do it, which almost makes this movie more frustrating. He's choosing not to.

00:55:14
Speaker 3: Right, I guess he learns by the mid to late nineties. Well, that's something I kept coming back to where this movie was released in nineteen ninety three, but it's set in nineteen seventy six, so it has the benefit of over fifteen years of hindsight to make commentary if it wanted to on things like, you know, casual sexism, casual racism, casual homophobia, et cetera. But because it's still the early nineties when this is being written and made, and those were such culturally pervasive attitudes still at that time that, yeah, I think Dick Link just didn't have the where withal.

00:55:58
Speaker 2: No one was asking for it, yeah, right, and I guess he was like, Okay, great, I guess like yeah, and even within this like style of filmmaking, there if he had written characters, like if he had written women that had and it's like, who knows, like if those scenes possibly do exist, of is there a scene where we get more context for Parker Posey's character, Maybe, but it was all cut, and like, is there a scene where we get context for Bilee Jova Vicious character? It sounds like we did, but it was all gone. And so it's like if this movie was primarily made in the editing room, that's on him.

00:56:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I would say also in the nineties, the idea of a very long music video felt kind of okay and cool. And if you just show a lot of fun images and have a lot of good songs, who cared about the words.

00:56:58
Speaker 2: Right, that's a great way to put it.

00:57:00
Speaker 3: This movie does mostly just feel like a like a best of compilation, like best Songs of the seventies. Yeah, yeah, and there's teenagers there too.

00:57:11
Speaker 2: It's best stock characters of the seventies, scored to what had to have been a soundtrack that took up most of the budget.

00:57:21
Speaker 3: It did, Yeah, Oh it did.

00:57:24
Speaker 2: Yep. That's really funny. Sure, I mean, I guess. But also this is just like I love a movie with a lot of great needle drops, but when there's too many, yeah, it was a lot. I'm like insecure, insecure filmmaking. If you need that many needle drops to be like it's nineteen seventy six, it's like, I could I could see that.

00:57:45
Speaker 3: I could see that, we get it.

00:57:47
Speaker 2: Other there were characters that I like to disappeared, I thought, I mean again, she's introduced in very what is this way? They have a teacher who is we are introduced to her by she's getting hit on by a student, and I don't think she appropriately pushes back. She kind of rolls her eyes.

00:58:08
Speaker 3: And is like she gives them like a pat on the head.

00:58:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then she does have one of the better lines of the movie before we never see her again, where she's pushing back on celebrating the bisentennial because it was like white slave owners who didn't want to pay their taxes. Good line, which we saw her again, Yeah, but we didn't because again, just like the way that he wrote this is like and people could just disappear at any time.

00:58:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:58:37
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, there's again and I need help finding out what his name was. There's exactly one black character, Melvin Melvin. Okay, where again, this is an extremely white movie, and Austin in the seventies it was majority white, but there was way more diversity than we see in this movie. It seems like they're atam public high school. It doesn't seem like Amy. It's like a middle class public high school. It's unrealistic that it's as white as it is, and that the one black character we get to meet is so vague. He's just like another bully, Like we don't know anything about him except here's another bully.

00:59:19
Speaker 3: He's almost treated the way the teen girls are in the sense that he'll be around, we might recognize him, but he won't really say much. He won't be there super consistently, he won't have his own story arc, nothing like that.

00:59:34
Speaker 2: No, And again it's like you wonder, like, is there a version of this movie where he had more screen time? Maybe, but we'll never know. But it really like that choice sticks out like a sore thumb here. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

00:59:47
Speaker 3: It seems like the storylines that the movie is most interested in are Pink with his like should I succumb to tyranny from my football coach? And Mitch, who is the freshman boy who like shows that he's cool actually because he was willing to be abused by older kids, and not that I'm blaming him for that, because again that's this is a familiar dynamic. Younger people and people with lower like social status in high school will generally do things to be accepted and to make friends and things like that. But the story is mostly interested in those two characters and not really anyone else.

01:00:35
Speaker 5: I mean, I could see the case that Sabrina is also meant to be like.

01:00:41
Speaker 2: The Mitch of ladies, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's again it's like, I like Sabrina in the performance, like she seems like a sweet kid. Yeah, and I feel like you could feel her predicament where especially in the scenes where she's being torn between it. It sucks that she ends up with the Anthony rap character because again you're presented with an interesting scenario of like, who does she think it's more important to impress boys or the girls who are like exerting this hazing control over her. It's an interesting setup.

01:01:17
Speaker 4: Ginger a Marian slutterbitch right right.

01:01:21
Speaker 2: It's like it would be interesting if it went anywhere interesting, which it doesn't, and so then it just sort of ends up coming off kind of not as good, I don't.

01:01:32
Speaker 3: Know, pretty flat. I feel like Cynthia also had potential. She's the like quote unquote guys gal who only hangs out with other boys, it seems, and again, that was a familiar situation many such cases. You know, that would have been easy to explore a bit further. It would have been easy for her to not end up with a creep, but again the movie didn't really have any interest in doing that. But uh, yeah, she was kind of the one character who I latched onto as far as like, can we know more about her, can we get a little bit more of her insight into the world, Because there's a scene where she and Mike and Tony are driving around and they're sort of realizing, Oh, everything that we're doing is in service of the future, But like, why don't we live in the now? And maybe that's what compels her to say yes to Waterson's advances. Maybe I don't know, I'm maybe not.

01:02:36
Speaker 4: Giving her enough credit.

01:02:38
Speaker 5: He was a cool guy.

01:02:40
Speaker 4: That's a cool guy.

01:02:41
Speaker 5: Right, what else do you need? If a cool guy is interested in you, you show interests back, because why be introspective about it?

01:02:50
Speaker 3: I mean right, exactly, Like we are conditioned to think that older, cool dudes are worthy of our attention, and if they pay attention to us, then, oh my gosh, that's going to elevate our social capital. That's that like reinforces the worth of a woman quote unquote. So yeah, the movie again it presents that without commenting on it. But again, it was nineteen ninety three, So still.

01:03:20
Speaker 2: It's just so weird that like his movie after this is the first before movie. Yeah, I always guess it wrong. Before Sunrise, Before Sunrise, Yeah, which I guess it also should be reminded that he co wrote that movie with a woman, so it wasn't like he suddenly true he had a deep understanding of women in not in nineteen ninety three, but then suddenly did in nineteen ninety five. But still, yeah, I just this movie ends up. It's just I found it very frustrating because it's not trying to say very much.

01:03:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:03:56
Speaker 5: For me, it's take an edible turn on this movie.

01:04:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, watch the.

01:04:01
Speaker 4: Pretty People Go By.

01:04:02
Speaker 5: It's a screensaver, Listen to some songs that are now classic rock, and.

01:04:09
Speaker 4: Have an okay night. Yeah.

01:04:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're a nostalgic for the seventies, this is the movie for you.

01:04:19
Speaker 2: Then you're Richard Lakeletter and here's this.

01:04:23
Speaker 3: And here's this.

01:04:26
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:04:26
Speaker 3: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss?

01:04:30
Speaker 2: No, not a thought. It's so hard to develop a cochin thought about this movie because like, nothing really happens in the Yeah.

01:04:39
Speaker 3: Well, originally it was supposed to be a movie that took place entirely in a car. It was only going to be a couple shots, but like a full feature still, I think, And it was just gonna be characters driving around listening to an entire Zzy Top album, I think is what I read, right, And then link later was like, hmm, what if I expand this to represent other points of view? And by that I mean teen boys who are white, so it could have been whatever the Zezy Top thing was. But yeah, that's that's pretty much all I had. I feel like we were so efficient and I got the discussion out in record time with this one.

01:05:28
Speaker 2: I mean, I was like, I feel like, are we missing something I don't. There's not really a lot of Most of the behind the scenes stuff is kind of a bummer, yeah, but mostly anecdotal. The whichever characters. The characters who were getting paddled, their parents called Richard link later and they were like, you have to tell Ben Affleck to paddle soft dar on my son. Wow, Ben Affleck confirmed bully in real life. You have the stories about the like budget nightmare fuel of like, nope, we actually made teenage girls flop around in a hot parking lad in the sun and we forgot to give them sunscreen, very indie filmmaker horror story. And then you have I think, to me, the biggest bummer is just hearing from Parker Posey that there was a lot of stuff shot with their characters. Yeah, it just didn't end up in the movie.

01:06:24
Speaker 5: Can we talk about one moment with Parker Posey that, yes, I think is the most The only instance of women helping women in this film is Renee Zelweger was in this movie.

01:06:39
Speaker 2: Yes, what I didn't catch her, blink and you miss her.

01:06:42
Speaker 5: Renee zell Wigger was holding up the funnel wild Parker Posey, chuck. And that is women helping women.

01:06:51
Speaker 3: And that's that means this movie is a feminist masterpiece.

01:06:56
Speaker 2: It is two time oscar in our humble beginning.

01:07:00
Speaker 3: We all have to start somewhere. I guess you could make the argument that Jody, who befriends Sabrina, now, does that friendship really have any bearing on the story. Do we see that develop in any meaningful way? Do we really see them talk beyond like the one or two scenes they have together that are pretty quick. No, but she does say like, hey, little freshman girl, you're cute, so you should be haze And then also you're my friend now, so come to the party later. So maybe that's women helping women.

01:07:36
Speaker 2: And if so, I mean going back to your comment Caitlin about like this big kind of a history written by the victor's kind of vibe is there is this feeling and again, we weren't there for the seventies, so maybe it's true, but there is this feeling that like, oh, don't worry if you're being like it's almost feels like this kind of gaslighting of like if if the boy is mean to you, that means he likes you. That's how the bullies are treated in this movie. They're like the bullies. It's not treated like I think most bully characters are now, which is that they are fundamentally insecure and might have other stuff going on in their life that causes them to lash out at other kids like this. They're just like they probably like you. They just have to do this. It's their job. The city pays them to hit you with a paddle like and.

01:08:26
Speaker 5: That again reminds me more fraternities than any high school bully.

01:08:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:08:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like high school bullying to me was it was a psychological game.

01:08:39
Speaker 3: It was like, you know, dumping a kid's books as they were walking down the hall sort of thing. But to that point, Jamie, there are a couple scenes where the older boys are talking to Mitch and giving advice on oh, here's how to handle women, and of course it's the worst advice you've ever heard, because things like, oh, you want her, well, you got to play it cool, and you can't let her know that you like her because if she knows, she'll dump you, which is, you know, basically telling a young teen to be really aloof and dismissive about girl's feelings. And then later when he has started to hang out with Julie, Mitch has the older boys are like, oh, you're gonna have sex with her tonight, in a way that is very like them encouraging Mitch to be predatory and be like, if you want it, take it, it's yours. You deserve it. Oh, you're like, it's just horrifying. Does the movie pass the Bechdel test? Though?

01:09:48
Speaker 2: I think technically it does, which is kind of hilarious. Really let me double check, because this we always forget to check this because ultimately it's not what the showsph it's deceptive. I do believe that there's a few sort of passes, but none of it's tricky to like identify what a meaningful conversation in this movie means, I don't know if it passes our version of the Bechtel test, where it has to be a meaningful exchange, right, yeah, okay, oh this is fun. On Bechdel Test dot com.

01:10:20
Speaker 3: Mm scholarly journal, frequent.

01:10:22
Speaker 2: Resource for this show, there is hot debate the page as it technically passes, but Caroline disagrees with this rating. I love Caroline. I think that certainly, even if there's like little two line exchanges that pass, spiritually it doesn't.

01:10:37
Speaker 6: NA.

01:10:38
Speaker 2: There's no like relationship between women in this movie that is meaningful, I would say. And there are relationships between men, including very toxic relationships, including like pretty positively framed relationships between bullies and their victims yep, as like meaningful young Like I'm not saying that this movie does a lot for men, and it also doesn't do anything for men, but like, yeah, with relationships between not men, name a dynamic where that like sticks with you, there just isn't one, So spiritually I say, no.

01:11:13
Speaker 3: Pest agree. And that brings us to our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens and based on everything we've talked about regarding the way the movie treats women in that it's not interested in them at all, the way women and girls are talked about by the characters they you know, mostly men, characters in a horribly dehumanizing and objectifying manner. The utter disinterest in the one character of color, all of that. Uh, honestly, I have to give this zero nipples. I don't. I don't think it deserves any more than that.

01:12:02
Speaker 2: The end, I kind of want to give it maybe a half nipple, because there were little things that I like, I felt promised in certain scenes and performances. Sure, but the half nipple goes more to the actors who created those moments versus the script or the direction.

01:12:23
Speaker 3: The Parker Posy of it all. For example, Yeah.

01:12:26
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give half nipple because Yeah, Parker Posey put her whole ass into that Parking Loss scene. She is amazing. I one of the other movies that I really I saw for the first time recently that I really want to cover his party girl Oh the best because luckily shortly after this, Parker Posy was allowed to fully Parker Posy and was like in the Indie Darling of the century. But yeah, I think like for moments like that. I really thought that, like Sabrina's performance was very like sweet and understated, and then she became an anti war activist. Hard to, hard to. I'm giving it a half nipple, and I'm just giving it to the girls. I'm just giving it to the girls.

01:13:06
Speaker 3: All those bitches and sluts.

01:13:08
Speaker 2: All those bitches and sluts can have a little slice of my half nipple.

01:13:13
Speaker 3: Marius, how about you.

01:13:14
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm going to go one nipple, partly because I don't want to betray child me who saw this and really enjoyed it fair, but also yeah, I think it all goes back to Renees Alwigger helping Parker posy funnel.

01:13:34
Speaker 4: There there's a little.

01:13:37
Speaker 3: Something there, feminist moment. Yeah.

01:13:39
Speaker 5: The intersectional part of it, no, not at all abysmal.

01:13:44
Speaker 2: No, there's no intersection. There's just section.

01:13:48
Speaker 4: There's just section there.

01:13:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:13:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and barely even any of that to one. Yes. Nice. Well, Maris, thank you so much for joining us in this discussion.

01:14:02
Speaker 4: This was so fun.

01:14:03
Speaker 3: Tell us where people can follow you on social media, where people can buy your book, etc.

01:14:10
Speaker 5: My book is available wherever books are sold, and you can find me at Mariscrisman dot com. That's where you can sign up from my newsletter called the Maris Review. And I'm also on Blue Sky at Maris And yeah, please buy my book.

01:14:28
Speaker 2: Kay, please do please, it's amazing great. Well, I think we thoroughly eviscerated this movie. So why don't we get into a beat up old car and go buy Aerosmith tickets?

01:14:42
Speaker 3: All right, all right, all right, bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike capp Ln with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechdelcast