Peggy Sue Got Married with Jackie Kashian

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Speaker 1: On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have women in um, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef and best start changing it with the Bell Cast. Jamie, I've got the eyes, I've got the teeth, I've got Look out the window, I've got the car, Look at the look at the window of the basement. I just dragged you into to yell at you in after nearly trying to suffocate you to death. It's me, Nicholas Cage. I'm just in my uncle's movie right now and one of my most dialed back performances of my career. Oddly enough, isn't that? I thought that too, And I was like, that is shocking because he is being so weird. Well, Caitlin, now that you have yelled all of your qualifications of why I should marry you, I guess I will settle for you, not once, but twice. To you so much. I love that love our future together. Hello and welcome to the Bechtel Cast. My name is Caitlin Darante, my name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping off point for a discussion. Caitlin, what is I mean? You got the eyes, you've got the teeth, you get the hair, you get the car, which is true, I don't have the car. You do have the car, and you always have. You really rely on me. I kind of do to get from point A to point beat. Sometimes they do art imitating life. Yeah, you're the knick cage in our relationship, which I don't know what that says. I'm honored. So we use the Becktel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what is that anyways? The Bechtel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test. There are many different variations of the test. The one that we use is that two people of any marginalized gender have to have names, and they must speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines of dialogue, and ideally for us, it's maybe more meaningful conversation to the narrative. If that happens, we are cheering. We are clapping, we're celebrating, we're saying we love it. Yes, Queen go girl boss. Way to have a conversation. Yeah, especially if it's in a movie that is directed by a man, because you just don't see it coming. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe Francis Ford Coppola directed this movie. What a weird choice. He really pulled this one out. I wouldn't. There are a few we were talking about this earlier. There's like a few shots in this movie that you're like, oh, yeah, this is a Coppola movie where like when the cake is rushing towards her, You're like, oh right, that guy that first mirrorsing. Yeah, scene that is supposedly in a mirror that is not a mirror. Not a mirror? Right? Okay. I was like, are my eyes just failing me right now? Or is this two actors who are pretending to mirror each other? Okay? Good. There's so much going on. We're covering Peggy Sue got married today, and we have a returning guest that we're so thrilled to have back. Let's let's get her in the mix. Baby. She's a comedian, she's got a new special coming out and a new album, both called stay Cation. You remember her from our episode on Groundhog Day. It's Jacky Cation. Yeah, it's me. I feel welcome, we welcome love having you here. Yeah, and Staycations out. It's so out. It's been out for like three weeks. It is out currently. Okay, but it's super fun. It's free. Find it. My last name, stay the words stay cation, K S H I and do whatever you want. But incredible. Yeah, it's out there. It's in the world. There's no excuse not to listen to it. Watch it. It's free, Jackie. What is your relationship with Peggy Sue got married? My relationship is a little complicated. My brother Russ is a delightful human being in many ways and a button bush or in other ways because he's my brother. But he loves movies and honestly loves some terrible movies. He has been known to say out loud, if it has one good scene, I'll watch it, and you're like, that is a low bar, my friend. But he is an econ professor. He did an episode of The Dork Forest about Hallmark movies where he showed me his spreadsheets last Christmas. His spreadsheet. Yeah, yeah, he did a great spreadsheet about how much they cost to make, who got most of the money, who were the recurring directors and actors and actresses, and uh, yeah, it's pretty outstanding, and this is one of his favorite movies. Really, how weird is that stand? He says that he calls it an adult back to the future. Okay, that's interesting. I would call it a less fun back to the future, right, which is a way of saying adults, right, And it has I mean the thing about this movie that was fascinating. I mean, there's so many things that are fascinating about this movie, but those tiny scenes of the powerlessness and the repetition of women in this thing. He's like he also called it sort of he said it was like diner, but it was only about the women. Yeah, I can see that. There's so much about this movie that's fascinating too, because it does take like such a high concept premise and focus it so much, and it like chooses to focus on things that are pretty like pragmatic and mundane. It's very interesting because a movie like Back to the Future is largely focused on the external goal of trying to get Marty McFly back to his timeline in so it's very like rompy and plotty, whereas this movie takes that high concept like you said, Jamie, but it's like, but let's explore the character arc. It's more of a character studying than anything. I love. I kind of love it, Like yeah, by the time he was to talking about it, I was like, yeah, no, it is kind of a great movie. I mean just because she goes into this thing and you can't change time, so she's going to make this mistake again, but the character herself has changed fundamentally because of whatever time travel coma whatever, this was right, and she comes out of it more in charge, like because she went in going I feel humility. Remember that line it was do you feel humiliated? Do you feel less than? Do you feel worseless? And good? Good because that's how she felt when when Nicholas Cage went with Janet and and she comes out of it with more power. I think that's an interesting argument. I would argue the other the opposite, or really I think there's so many ways. I'm still kind of figuring out how I feel about how this movie goes, because I feel like there is a way to read it where you're like, oh, this is the first time I saw it, it made me sad at the end, But then the second time I saw it, it didn't make me as like, it's just I don't know. I really like taking a huge premise and then taking it in a weird direction, because this is just like a woman in her early forties taking a look at the choices she's made in her life so far in a back to the future style premise, which is like so weird, but it's but it's I've never seen anything like it. And I saw this movie. I saw this movie in nine in the movie theater, and I was infuriated. It was sad, it was it was I found her kind of pathetic and irritata and I was like, why did you make these choices? But watching it again, I was like every single person in that in that timeline, we're like, we'll marry me and go work at this chicken farm for me so that I could write, Marry me and support me while I'm a musician, Marry me and give me great tech ideas so that we could be billionaires, and which that would have been the option I would have gone with. It's like I'm going with panty hose guy exactly. And then every like her parents and her and her mom and her grandmother, and you know, there was nobody who's who said don't get married, nobody who said are you going to go to college? Nobody said what do you want to do? Ever? Right, So I left that movie the first time going you And the second time I watched it last night, I was like, this is a real slice of life of some Americana here, because it was n right. Her dad is in the fucking hat business. Do you know when men stopped wearing hats nineteen sixty one? So fucked? He is so fucked And he just bought an etzel because they stopped wearing hats because John John Kennedy did wear hats, So hats went completely out. So if you owned a hat business, you were for cutted. Flowing my mind, that is so like there, I'm excited to kind of dig into that side of it and like kind of the historical because that was something that stood out to me as well of like something that is frustrating to witness but also seems authentic to that time of like she and it made me wish ultimately that we had spent a little more time in the eighties with her because I feel like the movie started in such a cool, strong place where it's like she's, you know, kind of torn between this you know, middle class white woman eighties paradigm of like do I want to be a liberated woman? Do I want to strike out on my own? Or do I want to stay in this domestic situation and figure out who I am? There? And she has one friend on each side, and right with Nicolas Cage in a wig, who's like, I think twenty two in this movie, but he's playing whatever, Like, but I I like that pushing Paul and Sophia Coppola. Yeah, Baby. Sophia played her younger sister. Jim Carrie's in it. Helen Hunt. Isn't it? Helen Hot? Joan Allen? Isn't it? Yeah? Was that Wilford Brimley wasn't Maybe? Maybe I might be wrong. I played her grandfather, who had that great line, why have a lodge if you can't have funny hats or something? That was a great they're obsessed with hats? Um. Yeah. I just like, there's there's so much going on. I'm excited to get into it because this My history with this movie is that I had never seen it before. I just knew that I liked Kathleen Turner and that I was going to like it based on the fact that I liked Kathleen Turner, which did bear out as expected. She's so amazing. But I I, yeah, I knew very very little about this movie. I feel like it's a movie that's maybe, um, I don't know, if it's like you know, under it's not very discussed. I don't think true, but I think it's very worthy of discussion. Like once I watched it was like, oh, there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of ship to chew on in this one. I'm very excited to talk about it. And I even though so much of it made me sad, I liked the movie and I'm glad that it exists, and it exists kind of the way that it does because it feels like such a almost like a weird kind of like little historical document of taking a woman who you meet her at this crossroads and then you go back and get context for like, well how do you get there? Which is cool, and I'm like, you don't especially, I mean, I just don't expect that in a Francis for a couple of movie is to get like a deep character study of a middle aged woman. Didn't know. I didn't know, didn't yet, did not call it and everybody, And I thought the depiction of what seventeen year olds are kind of like was kind of great too. In the fact of all this emotion and all this angst, I was like, yeah, not not for a hundred dollars. When I go back, they were real horny. It was stressful to watch, sup horny, super emotional. Confused Cait, what's your history with this movie? I had also never seen it. I was a big fan of again Back to the Future throughout my whole life and still today, But for some reason, a similar movie with a similar premise that came out one year later I didn't see. It's a very different movie. I mean, I think the main plot of Back to the Future is don't be attracted to your son, and like the main thing is like, don't do it. It's it's like that. That is the message is that you know, it's weird, it's not okay, be careful who you fall in love with in high school because it might be your time traveling son, which is, you know, a very specific and not very relatable theme but hilarious weird plu hilarious, weird. It's very very strange and yeah, this movie, this movie explores a far more in theory compelling character arc. But again, the way her art still kind of pans out is up for debate. I think it is compelling. I think it's something can be depressing and compelling at the same time. Absolutely, it just made me sad the way it pans out. But well, we'll get we'll get there. In the meantime, I will do the recap. Okay, Jackie for to jump in at any time. Yes, okay, So it is nineteen again. This movie comes out in but we open its we meet Peggy Sue. That's Kathleen Turner. She is getting ready for her of your high school reunion. She and her I guess early twenties daughter, Beth Helen Hunt are talking about best dad slash Peggy Sue's ex husband or soon to be ex husband, Charlie. I went into this movie completely cold, and so at the first scene I didn't note that she travels back in time in it, So I was like, why do these people keep saying that they're forty five? They're very obviously not um, but I did like that. UM. I feel like there are so many movies that, um, there are so many movies that if there's a time jump, like the facial changes will be so distractingly large that you can't even really engage with the movie. But instead, I like that the casting split the difference and they're like, well, we're going to cast people in their late twenties early thirties, so they kind of don't look like a teenager and they kind of don't look like a forty five year old. But like you could buy into either and it's fine. It's like it's a very community theater approach, and I think it works right. So Peggy Sue and her daughter are talking about Charlie, who we see on a commercial on TV. He is played by Nicholas Cage. Peggy Sue hates and resents him because he was cheating on her throughout their marriage, which has led to them getting divorced. Then she heads to the reunion and we meet a lot of her friends from when she was in high school, such as Carol Maddie. Maddie is Joan Allen Walter played by Jim Carey. Also this guy Richard Norvik who used to be a nerd, and now he's a millionaire. I sort of forgot that when a nerd becomes a millionaire that didn't used to be a scary thing in a movie. It used to just be like a thing that happened, where now you're like, oh no, Elon Musk, you have to get away from this person. But at this time it was like, oh no, he's lovable, right, right, He's he's just he's the lovable UM six US guy who got pushed around in high school. Right. Reminds me of Alan Cummings character in Romeo Michelle's High School Reunion. Yeah, oh yeah, exactly, also directed by Coppola. Yes, could you imagine? Oh my goodness. So, Peggy Sue is talking to her friends. She tells them about how her marriage fell apart. She explains that she and Charlie got married too young, and they ended up presenting each other for all the things they feel they missed out on. Peggy Sue never even dated anybody else. She mentions this guy, Michael fitz Simmons, who she wishes she had gone to bed with in high school when she had the chance. She says, if she knew then what she knows now she do things a lot differently, is so self aware from the moment one she knows exactly why her divorces. I'm like, are you in therapy? Like you're killing and she's like, I know exactly why. She's like, I hold anger for him, but also, you know, neither of us got to explore lives before we settled down. She's emotionally intelligent, that Peggy su. I like her. Truly, I wish she'd had a better husband, right, I wish she had chosen such a mess of a kid. You know, it is in some ways it is a Shakespearean tragedy because imagine picking the same loser twice frustrating, and that loser is Charlie, who right then shows up at the reunion. It's awkward between him and Peggy Sue. Then the reunion Alexa King and Queen. Richard Norvik is the King and Peggy Sue is the Queen. But as she's giving her acceptance speech, she faints because women be fainting. And then I know that women be fainting, women be fainting, But I liked this faint. I don't know what it was about this, I mean, I do know what it was. It was like it was just scary for him for a minute. Like, I feel like that scene did a good job of putting you in her head of like, because times women be fainting and a void. But I was like, at least in this I understood why she was faint. It worked for me too. Yeah. Yeah, and you got to move the plot forward, so good for her them faint, The plot must go on, that's true. She got a bonker head, or the movie can't start, can't happen. So when she wakes up, it is nineteen sixty. She is in high school again. Her friends are there, Charlie is there. She has the memories and consciousness of her fully adult self, but everyone perceives her as her high school self, even though she is visibly in her thirties. Right, And he has always looked forty always, Yes, I don't care if he was twenty years old. He has always looked forward to even though he's twenty two. In this he did. Yeah, what a goony looking dude, man, he I was. I mean, I will get into this a little later, but there was a lot of like sparring about how the production of this movie went, and like Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage ended up getting into a lawsuit over stet like there was some interesting stuff going on. It sounds like everyone was being messy. This is just a messy. Yeah. So then Peggy Sue's friends take her home. She reconnects with her mom, her younger sister Nancy played by Sofia Coppola. Because nepotism, she reconnects with her dad, who also gets her in trouble for getting drunk because she's like, I'm forty three. I can drink whiskey straight from the bottle and he's like, no, you're a teenager. Anyway. The next day, Charlie picks her up to go to school and he's like, hey, remember how we talked about how we should see other people. I think it's a good idea to do after graduation. That way I can focus on my music for a while and then we can settle down and get married. And she's like, fuck it, let's break up now. And it's the best line because you're like, oh, good, good, She's not gonna do this again, right right right, which makes it so I'm like, oh, you're so close. It's so like and I get it because sometimes you you you break up with someone, you're like, this isn't right, and then you date a different person and you're like, oh, this sucks in a totally different way. But then date a third person. Don't go back to the first person. There's always a third person out there that's going to hurt you in a in a new and interesting way. If you're gonna build and then and then a fourth person, and then a fifth person, and so on and so and it'll go on and you'll never find someone the literal story of my life. So then she is not dating Charlie anymore. So she's kind of like focusing on school for some reason. She's uh, she flunks an algebra test. She admires that classmate Michael fitz Simmons, who she wanted to bang back in high school. He has some hot takes on literature, and she's like, wow, he's so intellectual. Well it's Caraway. Oh my god, You're just like I don't like kemming Way. Like Carraway. I was like, they're the same guy. One has bowls and the other one is like the Roadman and LSD. And you're like, shut it's so, I mean, it's Kevin j O'Connor. Right, Yes, it's so funny because I feel like the movie has to keep telling you he's a good writer, because when you hear him talk, you're like, this sucks. They also have to tell you that he's good looking. And because you're like that guy, like the picture of him running, You're like, what is with his face anyway? So, I mean there's classically good looking, and then there's Nicolas Cage movie good looking, so you gotta have some. I mean, Jim Carrey's in this thing, So Jim Carrey is looking beautiful as usual. Nicolas Cage, it's really actively distancing himself from how he looks in this movie, which I also is reading production notes about where he's like whatever, uncle, uncle Daddy, Like I want to wear a wig and fake teeth and talk like Gumby And he was like, oky dog, Nick, do whatever you want, have a career on me. And Kathleen Turner was fuming, right, She's like, there's not a chance she would go with this guy ever anybody. He's such a dweep. Wait, Jamie real quick, Yeah, Jim Carrey hot, you say question mark? I was gonna I was gonna let it go, But I are you kidna? I'm sorry? Are we not all on the same page about Jim Carrey hot and interesting? I feel like if you saw young Jim Carey and you didn't know he was Jim Carey, you would say hot. That's my opinion. Not for me. There might have been a window when you saw Jim Carrey and you're like, that guy has given me the Peter Tingles and then that's enough. But look, I've been known to have eccentric tastes. But I say I've I've said it before. I don't know if I've ever said it on the show, but I'm glad we're putting out on wax. Jim Carrey hot. Okay, you're alone there, so sorry, sorry call um. Anyway, so we're we're told that this Michael fitz Simmons guy is brilliant and hot and Kathleen Turner likes him, so we're like, okay, I guess. Then Peggy Sue approaches Richard Norfolk, the current NERD future millionaire. She asks him if time travel is possible, and then she convinces him that she has time traveled from twenty five years in the future. I like that he believes her. That's so sweet in such a nice moment. I do wish there are multiple moments in the we'll get into this, but in the flashback, I feel like the eighties premise sets you up for a movie that's going to be about her relationships with her female friends, but then once you go back to the sixties, it's all about these three guys. I was hoping you had spend more time with the with with the three friends here, but I also like that Richard believes her, yeah yeah, and then one friend disappears entirely. There's a character named Rosalie who will also discuss, but she appears in the flash forward and it's kind of introduces like a close friend of hers, and then she's like not there in there she married to, right, because the movie keeps defining women by who they are or who will they will be married to, but we don't know anything about her character named Rosalie Testa, but then she like doesn't appear at all in the flash I don't know that was I think that was like my my actual like writing disappointment. It was like that you were just focusing on like kind of Richard, Michael, and Charlie. I mean and you do get the relationship with her mother and her sister, like it's it's not just them, but in terms of like at school, it kind of was like mar Carol more Maddie, that relationship with her sister was kind of cool, you know where I was just like where She's like, I regret You're like, I wanted to know, how did you break that? What did you do to Nancy? Right that you don't hang out with her anymore, You're busy hanging out with Charlie. I thought that maybe Nancy had died, like the way that she's so excited to see Nancy, and like what happened to Nancy and the current the current time? Do we know? Do we ever find out? I would like to know. I think a more interesting version of this movie would be you spend more time in learning about Peggy Sue's kind of broken life and failed relationships and then her traveling back. One of them can be a romantic relationship, fine, but it should be like a bunch of different areas of her life and a bunch of different relationships that like she has to with all of this hindsight, she can now figure out like how to repair this or how to not make the mistakes in the first place, you know, stuff like that. But instead it's just like I'm going to date one guy and then kind of another guy, and then be friends with a third guy and give him give him a bunch of million dollar tech ideas, and then the end anyway, Um okay, So she has convinced Richard Norvik that she's a time traveler and this is the beginning of a friendship with him. Meanwhile, Charlie is trying to win Peggy Sue back. He takes her to a party. She sees him perform music, and she's kind of smitten again, even though she's like, his music ambitions are going nowhere because he's an appliance salesman in twenty five years. Um well, I thought that that seed did his when he's um he works at a record store and she's like, do you know anything about classical music and he's like, nope, sales a sales right, you know, essentially he's a salesman. Yeah he is not a musician, which is like tells you everything you need to know about him. But but his life story is so sad too, where it's his God where that scene at the end when we get to the end of this movie. The last ten minutes of this movie are such whiplash. Like I watched the last ten movie minutes back a few times because I was like, is there any world where I can interpret this as like good for them? I just couldn't get there. What we know is that they all lived, and Helen Hunt seems to ever shipped together. But the thing is is it's so weird because to back up a little bit, when she drinks all that whiskey and then finds out that he's and we find out he buys an ed sol and then we find out that he's in the head industry and um, and then like a couple of scenes later, she comes home and her mom is selling her jewelry. Oh I missed that. Oh there's this tiny scene where she's like, I'm gonna vote Democrat. Don't tell your dad. She was talking to a pawnbroker, right, So her dad is a guy who cannot get his act together either. It's the all the men in this thing except for Wilford Brimley, if that was um, seemed like just not really great dudes, right, who have these grandiose ideas of themselves that never manifest and the women around them are picking up like she's always done for Charley, I thought that that was I totally agree, like that setting up. Her dad is like this guy that obviously she loves very much, and like even when he like makes the reckless purchase that clearly puts the family into debt of getting this car, she's like, Oh, you always do stuff like this, and like when you're it's so interesting. Just like the little moments in this movie that I really like, a lot of them are with her family and maybe wish that you saw her family in the eighties or at least knew what sort of became of them, right right, because she has a son right where is he at? Scott was not named after Wilford Brimley, but the daughter named after the grand God. But it's like, you see, you see why she's kind of attracted to I mean whatever, it's kind of an hereditary thing. She's used to a guy who really puts on a show and then has the woman in his life pick up and tolerate stuff after him. And I like that little moment with her mom that I think might be in that same scene or in a similar scene where her mom is sort of gently warning her against this personality type where she's like, you have to learn how to stand up to Charlie because we've just seen a scene where she is quietly cleaning up her husband's mess, and it's clear she doesn't want that for her daughter. And that's such a generational thing, I feel like, especially for these two generations of you can't fix this problem loudly or that's not customary, but she wants a better relationship for her daughter than she had for herself, and then it doesn't happen, and it's so sad, Like it's just so sad. But there is a recurring theme that does sort of sell the fact that we all just go through life and then at the end of it, you can't really change anything, so you have to be psyched about the things that you do still love like that that you did, right, And she always talks about missing your kids. Yes, I do like that. Yeah, And that was kind of beautiful, and it was just it was also in the moment, like in the time, it made you go, yeah, you know, of course, that's all you're accomplishing, is you you brought a couple of kids and and they aren't a mess. I guess, right, And that's like, I hope Scott doesn't work for Crazy Charley. I hope Scott has a music career. Yeah, it's I was. There's so much about Peggy too that it's like we are never and I wonder how, I guess, I'm curious of what you both think of. Like, she's never presented as someone who is particularly ambitious. That's that's strictly attributed to her husband, who had a huge ambition and failed in a spectacul other way and took out his anger at failing on Peggy sue. We're never told that she has a particular ambition, but she's also very emotionally intelligent and highly motivated to understand the choices she's made in her life, but none of them are in relation to her work or like we're told that she I think owns a baker question right, Yeah, that's right, she owned a bakery, right, we know nothing about that. I forgot about that. Yeah. I feel like it's a little complicated because it's like not, not everyone has huge career ambitions and that's not like a prerequisite for being a person, And that's like okay to see reflected on screen. For someone that isn't like I want to have this huge fucking career and do this, this and this. But I was I was kind of like, but like, nothing, you know nothing outside of your romantic relationship you want to examine. Yeah, it was jarring that nobody asked her right, that she never said anything like there's a scene where she's with Michael and they're gonna have sex and she's like, all right, I want to be a dancer, and then he's like, let's go to Utah and you can raise chickens for me, and she's and you're like, you want to dance? Counter offer? Yeah, since Wind does that? Is that if she does want to dance, I would love that. But is that true or is that just like her being like silly in the moment we know nothing about just don't ye right right, Like we don't know enough about her kind of backstory or like any of her her ambitions or or just interests. It would have it would have been cool to just explicitly know, you know, because it's like, even if the answer to that question is like, what I want in life is to enjoy my family and my friends and to like work as much as I need to but like work isn't the most important thing to me. But it's just like, tell us, what does she want besides to understand Charlie who sucks? Because there are some genuine beautiful moments in this movie, and some real cool nuggets and some revelatory moments of of of stuff. But this movie genuinely feels like I'm watching real time someone make bad life decisions. Yeah, it feels like a real slice of life where you're like, this is a life I didn't want to see a slice of and parts of it are very beautiful. And so I get why my brother loves this movie because he has such eclectic taste, Like he loves every kind of movie from Hallmark Movies, two like Cinema, pair of Dees, like foreign films, and he likes right now he's into German musicals whatever from the sixties. Anyway, Um, but I will say that, yeah, I just I do want it to have a good ending, though. I want her to come back and be able to say to Charlie, I need some time. I don't want to be with you. You could come over on Sunday for lunch with your kids in the house you paid for. It's so like yeah, it's so I think that you say, maybe I'm trying to, you know, overly empathize with this person who doesn't exist, which I've been known to do. But um, but yeah, like a slice of life from a life you don't necessarily want to see a slice of I feel like sums up this entire movie in a in a way where you're where even and it's like you see these kind of close brushes that she has with something more, but then she has no interest in it, like even there. Oh, I wrote at some point in my notes, like that thing about her giving Richard the idea for pantyhose and then her becoming like the like he has the science and she could have the business acumen, and he literally says to her like, you're amazing, you could do this, We could do this. You're like, That's the whole movie that I would want to watch, is them stealing the idea for pantyhose and like seeing how that affected the few your timeline. But it is like the way that even the way that time is treated in this movie is kind of depressing because it's treated like, well, no matter what she does differently here, this is an exercise for her internally, it's not going to affect anything in her future. It's never even suggested that it might change anything in her future, well in the existing timeline. But I would posit that she comes back stronger. I would positive that she has learned from this history and has come back stronger. But she does look at the end of the movie like she's going to make the same mistake. Right she is. I think she comes back with more, I guess, just like a clearer understanding and more. She comes back wiser. But the choice that she makes is what makes me argue that she's kind of succumbing to I don't even know, like cultural expectations or something. It's so it's like, I don't know what. Maybe there's a maybe there's a German word for this where it's like she goes back, gets so much more information, really really thinks about it, and then makes the same bed. So she's making a more informed version of it's more sympathetic the first time when she's a kid and she doesn't know any better, but she's like, no, I'm forty two years old and I've really looked at all of my choices and I've decided that this fucking guy is all that I'm going to Yeah, and you're like, goodness, let me finish the recap really quick. We've had half the discussion already. That's true. That's true. It will make our jobs easier later. Okay, So where was I? Um, Charlie is charming her, she's getting horny about it. There's a scene where she suggests they have sex. He's like, what I thought we were going to wait till marriage and we are like, wait, this character is a teenager and her characters and her forties and it's absolutely not okay either way. He freaks out and takes her home. So then Peggy starts to pursue Michael fitz Simmons the like I love Jack Caroat guy and Jack Carroak fanboy. They bond, they smoke pot, they kiss, and then do they have sex or is it implied that they see It's implied that the one starry night, right, okay, Yeah, they have so much sex she gets a whole book about it. Yes, right, yikes, he loved that night. Yeah he really. It's it's stuck with him. Yeah, that's the only thing that it changes in the timeline. Isn't it that the Starry Night gets that reminded me. Maybe this is a reference for no one. Um. There was an Aaron Carter music video and Aaron Carter Carter song called how I Beat Shack? Do you remember this song, Caitlin, I'm sorry, okay. It's Aaron Carter. Nick Carter's little brother from the Bacty Boys. He's probably nine or ten. He made a little song, a little song, a great song called how I Beat Shack. It was about him having a dream about beating Shaquille O'Neil and basketball. There's a fun twist at the end of the music video and song where he wakes up. He's like, it was all a dream. I can't believe it. I didn't. I a tiny, little nine year old boy didn't beat Seaquille O'Neil at basketball. But then he wakes up in a jersey that says Shaquille O'Neil, suggesting that perhaps he did beat shack. The Starry Night dedication is for me, the inspiration for the music video for How I Beat Shack by Aaron Carter. I'll link it in the description. It's a delight. Have you guys seen the Katie Perry Pokemon song called Electric Yes Wait, Yes, Yes, yes, yes, man. There's It's also music is magic Wow. And then there's Katie Perry saking electric and it is I mean she loves Pokemon. I'm not going to say she should anyway, She's really pressing it in the most interesting ways she could think of. Okay, So the Peggy Sue keeps hanging out with Richard. She helps him invent some stuff that she knows will be popular in the eighties, and then she also boxes spoon boxes. She also gets the idea to invent pantyhose. Then Charlie comes around and apologizes for freaking out the night before, so she's kind of like, do I take him back or not. Her friends and her talk about their futures and who they might marry, and they're supposed to grow up on our cul de sac with their kids growing up next to each other. But when when in the beginning of the movie she goes to the reunion, it doesn't feel like she has spent twenty five years with these people. No doesn't. She hasn't seen it doesn't, which I think it's kind of a fun detail. Is like, of course, the way you say things are going to be when you're seventeen with your best friends is unfortunately famously never how it goes. You felt like, what was it the hell and Hunt character who's like, I'm sucking off to New York or wherever and I'm having a whole sex in the city side quest like everyone's going to go off and do their own things. And then you're I don't know, I am still pretty close with my friends from high school, but not like, you know, living on the same street clothes. Oh sure, I talked to one friend from high school, and the rest I know nothing about what their current situation is. They come out after about twenty five years, you meet them again, and then you're like, oh, you're okay, you grew up in the ensuing twenty five years, you're no longer that jackass. I mean, I don't know that I would ever want to see Vicky Emberts again. That's because she made me eat dirt junior High. So God should beat the hell out of me and jam my face into the munth is an anti Vicky podcast. Fuck Vicky ended up at the cop shop you guys anyway, Um, it was the it was the seventies. It was the seventies, we said, cop shop. Lord anyway, anyway, how does it end well? Speaking of violence? Um, and then then there's a scene where Charlie considers smothering Piggy Sue with her pillow while she's sleeping because he is upset that she was hanging out with Michael fitz Simmons. They have a fight. She tries to break it off again, knowing it doesn't work out for them in the future, but he's like, I love you, but then he storms off. The weird thing is when he shakes her when they're in the basement. Oh my god, that's set felt actually very much more violent. I thought that the pillow might a been a joke, but the shaky hard to say as dangerous. Yeah, that was like, that was a very scary thing to do. I was like, is there violence in their future relationship? If this guy is gonna shake her? Well, it's like, I mean, I might be extrapolating. The second he asked her to go to the basement, It's like, this is where I'm gonna lose the body, right right? Yeah, that I mean that there are so many reasons for the odds to be stacked against Charlie is like a viable I mean, there's so many reasons for her to break up with Charlie before we even go to nineteen sixty. But that one I was just like, this is if she ends up with him, which I was convinced for most of the movie that she would not. I thought that she would do. Uh, you know, I'm going to be single for a while. I'm going to figure something. I'm going to figure myself out. I'm gonna take some time and not and not less than twenty seconds. Yeah yeah, wait, fresh out of a concussion and you're like, yeah, this is a great time to agree to go back with your piece of shit husband. Give her a day, Charlie, come on, Yeah, we're almost there. First, there needs to be Freemasons and their time trouble ritual um while hats lots and lots of hats. So weird, Okay. So then Peggy Soup bakes things off with Michael Fitzsimmons and goes back to Charlie and they talk about his musical ambitions and she seems to be warming up to him again, but she's also freaking out about still being stuck in nineteen sixty. So then Richard Norvik is like, well, you can change your destiny and marry me, and she's like, now, yeah, which is fair enough, A right fair. Then Peggy Sue visits her grandparents because made me cry, right because in her present they have died long ago, and her parents everybody it seems that way. Yeah, and maybe Nancy, maybe Nancy. We're not sure. Either she's on the outsit Nancy or Nancy died. I'm like, what was there a fire? Like, I think she's just maybe estranged from Nancy. But anyway, she tells her grandparents that she time traveled and they also believe her. She's like, I miss my children. There's also this locket that she has that has pictures of her children as babies or so she inks, question Mark, Um, well no, no, because the locket in the beginning of the movie, they were color pictures of her babies. When he actually gives her the locket, it's black and white pictures and them as babies. Yeah, they just looked the same because once a boy was a girl and they are breeding and whatever. Okay, yeah, that was confusing to me, super creader breeder logic. But it turns out that Peggy Sue's grandpa is in a Masonic cult. In the Freemasons films, and America, and they they perform this ritual to send her back to her present, but before that can happen, Charlie comes in and snatches her away and they all just go get the cards. It worked, right, as far as they're concerned. They helped a teen woman who's actually in her thirties time travel that didn't happen. Instead, Charlie is still like, hey, marry me. I can support you. My dad gave me ten percent of his business. And she's like, no way, I'm not, you know, out of my mind enough to to marry you twice. But then he gives her her beloved locket and then he's like, I love you and she's like, wait, I love you too, Charlie. You're like, na, no, I know. And then she wakes back up and you know what sends her back in time? That Dick sends her back in time? Because isn't that the like Greenhouse? She gets fucking pregnant in right, does she? Like? I think I think Nick Cage is Dick sends her catapulting through time and space, which I would believe. God, yeah, um. So then she wakes up in like in a hospital bed. Charlie is there professing his love for her, and she's like, wow, you never gave up on me. And then she invites him over for dinner and it seems like they're going to get back together. She is literally all he has. She is literally the only constant in his life. Yeah, she deserves better. We did miss We did miss uh. When she goes with Michael to the R and B to the black club and sees the him singing R and B and then she wrote a hit song that was I was like, is it the Beatles? What does she stealing? It sounded like she was trying to write the Beatles and he couldn't execute it, and she's like, musician right, And he changed all the ouze to yeahs or all the yeahs touz I love you, yeah yeah, and he changed him to ouze and you're like, oh my god, no instincts. At least Richard took her word for it and invented pantyhose or whatever. So, yes, my favorite invention from history, um, the legs egg it might have been him. Let's take a quick break and then we will come back to continue discussing. And we are back, all right, So we have already discussed a good chunk of the movie. I guess, since we've already discussed it so much, let's let's put a little bow on this discussion about her marriage, maybe because I think we've we've been discussing it throughout the recap. I did find, I mean, the last ten minutes of this movie, where you're spending half of it with her and Charlie in the sixties at half of it with her and Charlie in the eighties, just made me so profoundly sad for her, and in a way that it's like, I'm so sad about what happens, but I don't think that it makes it, you know, a bad movie. It's just like, wow, what a bleak, you know, this is something that happens. I mean, of course, like particularly women who grew up in the environment that we're seeing her grow up in, where the idea that she could do something on her own is never floated, suggested, encouraged in any way shape or for him. The only way that she is like, uh, you know, spoken to, is like, well, who are you going to marry? And how are you going to survive? Basically, and and so you're given the context of why she makes these really sad choices. But this first scene where I mean it's just so sad for both of them, where you're like, oh god, you guys are both just like such a prisoner of this era where Nick Cage comes into the greenhouse after yeah, like smuggling her out and like physically like he's too. I don't like how he is touching her the whole movie. I don't like it smuggles are into this greenhouse and then says some of the most depressing should've ever heard. He's like, look, I just decided today, I'm going to give up on my dream. My dream is dead. The dream is dead, and I'll get you pregnant right now, and then the dream will be double dead. What do you say? Like, it's what if? What if I just gave up on fucking everything right now? Is that sexy to you? Yes? Or no? And that's and then and then you flash forward and then and then it's like it's almost scary where she's like she says in both of these scenes, she says no, and then she thinks about it for one second, and then she says yes, Okay, that happens in the sixties, and then the dick catapults her, and then she's in the hospital room and the same thing happens again, where he's like, I love you, You're the best. What do you say, like, let's try it again, and she says yeah. She basically says like I need some time. I want to think about it, and then he like kind of pouts in the same way he did in nineteen sixty, and then she says, Okay, fine, actually you can come over tomorrow. And it's implied that they're going to get back together, and it's like, oh, so you learned nothing, Peggy, Sue, you learned nothing. Well, the weirdest thing for me was that she he asked her to marry her in nineteen sixty and she goes, no, you gave up your dreams. You're gonna resent me for it, and it's gonna poison our entire relationship. And then you're gonna get with Janet And he's like, you're nuts. You're a hysterical woman saying things that aren't true, and she was like, am I And then she's like, all right, I guess we'll get together. But I do think that the locket thing triggered that thing that is that is reiterated through the entire movie where the only thing she's proud of are those two kids, and that I think it's that more than the dick that catapults her back into that relationship. Yeah, that was my read as well. I have this question if there had been different casting. Wipe your mind of Nicholas Cage and his weird hair and teeth issues, and it's Tom Cruise and they cast Tom Cruise or Michael J. Box, I think it would be a little different. I mean, I still, ultimately the way it's written, I can't see myself ever being like she should end up with Charlie. I do think that if it was perform I don't think Nicolas Cage's performance really helps you in endearing your self to this character in any way. Like, it's more he's impossible to root for. He's impossible, he's unlikable. It is ridiculous. Well, this is something we notice on the show a lot, where like if and we have formerly called it the Steve Bushemy test. You know, we're tweaking the the name, but let me inside, that's not nice, change it. But the idea is that if usually a male character is exhibiting creepy stoker ish predatory behavior. A lot of times a movie will present that behavior as being actually cute and charming as long as it's a classically handsome man who is doing it. But if you, you know, plug in right, then it's more noticeable for people to see that it is actually the creepy stoker ish behavior that it is no matter who is displaying it. But the movie is trying to suggest that, oh no, it's actually charming when Ryan Gosling threatens to jump off a ferris wheel in the Notebook to try to get Rachel McAdams to go out with him, etcetera. So it's like this movie doesn't maybe doesn't recognize because it's like, such, I mean, and I like Nick Cage a lot, but like it is such a nepotism casting choice to do um that maybe the movie doesn't recognize that they're actively demonstrating this test that we've been talking about for years of like what if we did put someone deeply unlikable in the romantic hero position, how do you feel? And the answer is not great not wanting Kathleen to end up with them, because conversely, she's in Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Michael Douglas is not, oh you haven't seen Romancing the Stone, well, that that would be an excellent choice, because it's he's not great either, He's a mess, right yeah, And they spend most the movie hating each other, but then, of course what happens at the end They fall in love and kiss, so the classic Hollywood formula. But for me, the big thing with this movie is setting up this idea that she feels she missed out on some stuff and it led to resentment in her marriage, which for Charlie manifests as him having affairs. And she even says, you know, if I knew then what I know now, I'd have done things differently. But then she doesn't do things differently. She makes the same mistake. But and then she's given this second chance where she time travels back to her high school self, and then she uses it to make out and have sex with a teenager. Like let's not forget that that is that's to but it's like, but I mean, just like the core thing of like everyone is like, oh, what if I could do this over? But if I have a second chance, and it's like, but what if you just fucked up in the exact same way like that is, But I don't think that's what the movie is saying. Though I don't think the movie but that's what's happening. The movie is positing like, oh, but there's such a good match and it just took her needing to go to travel back through time and see how devoted he was to her for her to realize that they should be together. I think that's like what the movie is saying. I think, yeah, we're watching this and just like noticing this missed opportunity for her to go back and like learn things about herself and to discover new interests and discover things that she did miss out on and then she can actually pursue now, but instead is just like, no, she should make this horrible mistake twice. And and the weird thing is she said is is she's a forty two year old woman and we see her using her knowledge of psychology and and maturity and growth to shut down the asshole woman, the woman who's yeah, yeah, but she's she's an asshole in the eighties and she's an asshole in the six so she never gets better. But Peggy Sho uses her her maturity and and her the knowledge of being a forty two year old woman to shut her down in high school and the bad teacher. But she also uses that same forty two year olderness to get to sleep with Michael what's his face? And he's creepy, and that's creepy. And I don't think I really thought about that until you said that that was creepy, Caitlin, So I think you're right. But well, the movie doesn't present it that way at all. But again, because she's in her like forty three, forty two whatever year old consciousness, that she has all of those memories, all that wisdom, she's has the mind of a forty three year old and she's having sex with a teenager and that it's gross, and she does that with two different characters because it's not and it's like, even if it's consent legal, it's fucking weird. And I think that's the thing that we've we've talked about that in so many episodes because it's just like this little sneaky Hollywood trick that is used constantly. It's like in this movie, it also is downplayed by the casting choice, which is like both of these actors are in their late twenties early thirties, so it looks completely above board consent wise, it looks okay, right, consent wise, and it's a woman doing it to a man, which I don't know, I mean, as it's become because it was never it used to. I remember when I was a kid, guys been like, if I could get some older woman, you know what it means, that would be great, and you're just like, no, no, it's still not okay. And then and then sometimes in the eighties or late eighties or the nineties, it started coming out with women teachers sleeping with their boys students and adult men going no, that's that's the rite of passage, such a thing, And it's become more and more like, no, it's still in a predatory it's super predatory. And but yeah, it is this Hollywood trick that they're playing in because it's a woman and it's somehow okay. And there's so many yeah, so many like media I mean that, I mean, we we don't even have time to get fully into it. But the whole you know, like long and media tale of like tolerating that and presenting it as a right of passage. I feel like that has so much to do with it is like, because you know, media of all times presented this as like, oh well, in certain cases, um, it can be predatory. But but when it's an older woman praying on younger boy, generally, well that's just a rite of passage and you should be grateful that it's happening. Or if it's an older man in Gigi, I don't know if you ever so musical, but um, it's an older man without with a girl who's twelve eleven years old when he meets her and he essentially is she's being groomed for a guy just like him, and then they get married and then it's this the greatest love story in the world. My four year old great aunt was just talking to me last weekend about how much she loved that movie. Such a beautiful story, and I was like, run it back, we'll link podcast in the description. You know that I have a historical note that I don't know if it'll derail us from the actual back dol, But um, it's you know, it's nineteen sixty, he's seventeen years old. Why doesn't he go to Vietnam? He doesn't go to college? Interesting, Charlie, Yeah, whoa is he a draft dodger on top of everything. Yeah, he dodged the draft. I mean, not the worst thing, but yeah, hard hard to say. Well, I had a historical note as well. I mean this, this movie clearly is making the choice to I mean, it's so hyper focused on Peggy Sue's a very specific corner of Peggy Sue's life that I feel like, you know, you're given this something that we see in a lot of movies. It's very like rosy look at the past, especially with this era. I feel like you get it a lot with the fifties. This is technically nine, but it looks like the fifties where there's no real acknowledgment of like social upheaval, like you're just saying, Jackie, like there's all of these you know, it's you're in an American white suburb and it's presented as like now these were the days, which always when when I see this now, it always feels a little insidious because it's like, well, it's so much has to be raised for us to just like live in this basically like poster this kind of like false version of reality. Um that again, it's like this movie has it's it's so bizarre to me that I can, Like, it's just bizarre to me the direction this movie chooses to go, because it's so like specific where it goes that and it feels like kind of a lot of these stories opportunities are left along the way because it's so focused on Peggy sus How like why Peggy Sue got married? That is, the movies only int mentioned that that is its mission? Why did she get married? When it's like there is like I mean, there's a ton of stuff going on that could have been integrated into the story in a more interesting way. I was honestly surprised that because it did feel like there was room for commentary on the values of the sixties and how maybe those values clash with the more modern values of the eighties, or like you know, how Peggy Sue with her knowledge of history, how you know she could have some takes right something like that. But the movie doesn't bother to go in that direction at all. And not to say that like every movie has to have like biting socio political commentary or something like that, but the movie just completely ignores it. And the only for example, the only people of color in the entire movie, which takes place during the civil rights movement are kind of in the background seen on stage with Nick Cage because he's secretly he secretly performs at like an R and B club sometimes, which is just presented as like something that makes him quote unquote cool because of his proximity to black culture, and then it's just dropped. Would have been cool for the movie to explore and comment on the cultural landscape of the sixties and how it compares to the culture of the mid eighties, especially since Peggy Sue would be viewing the sixties that she's in right now through this more modern eighties lens that she just came from. But that's not what the movie is about. I guess, uh, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more discussion. I just want to like close out my thoughts on the just bizarro direction of this movie takes, especially because again, what's what to me feels like is being said up is her being given this second chance to discover some interests, discover some ambitions, to learn about herself, to not make the same mistake over again with Charlie, And it feels like that's really the direction it's going to go in. When she's giving this speech too. I think it's Richard when he proposes to her and he's like, you know, you can change your destiny and you know, marry me instead, and she's just like, no, Peggy Sue got married case close. And then she says, I don't want to marry anyone I know, as if to say, like she has been defined by the fact that she got married very young, and she doesn't want to be defined that way anymore. The movie is like setting up this arc where Peggy Sue realizes that her value has more than just her relationship with Charlie and that she's like gonna discover all this stuff about herself. But then it just ends with her realizing that she's actually loved Charlie this whole time and that she should get back together with him, right, and how is anything going to change? Right? Right? I mean it felt like a haze Code moment almost at the end where where like he and she invites him over to the house. Right, It's either that or it's like is this an existential piece? You're like, you can, you can search the world for answers, but but you know you're you're fucked, baby, You're fucked, Like you're just like, this is your destiny. It's so bleak, And I want to be clear that, like, as we've always said, a woman having a hetero relationship with a man is not anti feminist, Like we are just simply commenting on the cultural expectation that a woman should get married to a man or must be married to a man. Well, and I think it's the lack of anything else is what I'm concerned with here. It's like, you know, whatever, a relationship is a wonderful part of any life if it's if it's good, and it's what you want. But it's like, but this is the defining event of her life, and she resents that, she seems to resent that, but then the movie has her continued to be defined by it at the end, and it just like it's so dissonant and weird. It's so weird. It makes me so sad for her, right, it makes it weird. It makes it weird and sad. Even if there are some amazing filmmaking, there's some really cool storytelling within it that that really does an amazing job showing us some depth to these characters. Like I I don't want to watch it, but I'm more interested in a movie about her mother, you know, like her mother just making ends meet, chipped beef with Ruda Vegas, her father's favorite that that you know what it feels. It feels like she's making ends meet, and she's convinced Peggy Sue his dad that that's his favorite, and right, I can't. It's very Yeah, it is like a very very strange I mean, I've just never seen a movie like it. It's so high concept and yet so preoccupied with something, and the ending is so like, you just don't expect a Back to the Future style premise. They came out right after Back to of the Future to end in this kind of sad way, like why has it ended? So say, I know that the movie doesn't want you to think it's sad, but even if even if you don't think it's sad, it's a very quiet ending to a very high concept story. There's no like Deloreans, there's no end, the loop is closed, there's not gonna be Peggy's got married to, Like I'm trying to imagine what a Peggy's got married too. She goes back in time it's actually now the seventies, and she just thinks everything's going great, but he's sleeping with Janet. And then at the end she's like, well, I guess I'm just gonna stay married to him again, and then it'll just keep happening and happening. God, it's so depressing, poor Peggy sus. A few stray because I know we're running short on time, a few straight things that I wanted to note. Um, so, I think we're already kind of touched on this, but I felt like the beginning of the movie gave her a pretty interesting connection to the women she went to school with, and then that kind of went under examined in the sixties. They to the point where there's a joke made about it, like she Peggy Sue asks her friends to spend a night with her, some time with her, and they're like ha ha ha no, And then you never get that scene of them talking to each other really like so that was a bummer. Literally, they're sitting in three chairs going did you screw Michael? And that's the only real moment they have. And then it's it's date night. Walter is coming over and you're like and she's like, let's have a sleepover, let's hang out, and they're like, grow up, grow up, and then that's it, like, which is like a funny joke, but I was like, oh, we're and then we're just never going to see them talk again. Interesting. It makes me want to see Diner because if if this is like my brother thinks, this is the woman version of Diner, I've never seen Dinner. I've never seen Diner. But but this movie, I feel like this movie doesn't deliver on the relationships with women that are set up, because I really liked that when she goes to the high school reunion, she goes to her female friends right away and they start gassing her up there like, Oh, that's great that you're getting a divorce, do you blah blah blah. It's really nice. And then also when she goes back to the sixties, the first people she wants to see are her mother and her sister, and like she you know, kind of blows Charlie off at first. She's like, I don't want to see you. I see you all the time. I want to see my mom and I want to see my sister, and I want to have like this bond and like the same thing with her grandma. Like she has very very strong connections to the women in the story, but you just don't really get to see they don't play out or have an arc with them. You only see the ark with Charlie, right, So that was a big bummer. Um. Yeah, does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie? I like that it has a quiet ending. I like that that feels more cheerful than more of the same. Yeah, I like to think. But I'm a lady in the Tiger catec person and where I want I wanted to be the lady I want her to have. Like what she's learned is she's got better boundaries now with Charlie. That's what I hope happens when when we stop watching. I mean, I hope, I hope that at least there's an adjustment made. I mean, if she really wants to stay that relationship. But I just we'll know if it's going to happen here. I love that she loves her kids though that it is nice, and she seems to have a really good relationship with her daughter, and we see that actually on screen. Yeah her Oh I love that first scene where her daughter is like, Mom, you've got this, You're hot, wear your weird dress, and she's like, all right, I'll do It's cute. I take comfort in this since the ending it's kind of ambiguous. We don't know for sure if they will get back together, even though the movie is clearly heavily in playing that. But because it doesn't explicitly state that, and we don't like see like a scene where they are renewing their wedding vowels or something like that, or they don't sign the divorce papers. Maybe it is just that she's like, Okay, you can come hang out with our children and we can try to like be on friendly terms. But I'm gonna go I'm gonna turn this bakery into a into a awesome gig. What about the bakery? Where does this fucking bakery come from? Sho And then they take time out in the like they make a point in the eighties for her to say, oh, are you the manager? No, I own the bakery, and you're like, so you own a bakery, Like, why couldn't that be something that you always wanted from the sixties? So we can give this woman something that she wants to own a bakery. It's the most rom com thing in the world, but fucking whatever, give her bakery. Have her want that, Like jeez. Anyways, Yes, such a bizarre ending, and the freaking weird like eleventh hour Freemason's time travel ritual they perform is not even the weirdest part. Okay, I thought that was that was I mean, Freemasons are like chaotic evil, but I thought that was a very fun I mean, that was another thing that I was like, Oh, couple of movie. Okay, I guess, but maybe this is where does it come from? It feels so out of place in this movie. I mean, I didn't hate it. I think it's very funny that this is randomly at the end of the movie, but totally another dissonant thing. The movie does pass the Bechtel test. We see Peggy Sue talking to her sister about board games. We see her talking to her mom about different things like her hair and her clothes and her grandma. I think most of the conversations she has with her friends don't pass because they're always talking about boys. My favorite scene that does not pass the Bechtel test is when her mom is like, have you ever heard of a penis? And Pekysu was like yeah, and her mom was like, well, stay away from them, right, iconic Hilary. But even though a lot of scenes between women they are talking about men, there are a fair number that do pass the Bechdel test. So yes, there's that. It ain't nothing. Ain't nothing. As far as our scale, the nipple scale, in which we evaluate the movie from an intersectional feminist lens zero to five nipples, I would give this. Oh gosh, I'll give it a one and a half. What what's gotten the five? Very few things? Almost nothing And we don't even stand by all of our fives over time, I think like, mo, wanna got a five? Have they gotten zeros? We've given zeros, We've given negative nipples. Um, if you can do free form jazz on the I mean it's on the scale. Yes, I'm giving it a one and a half because I like Peggy Stu as a character. I like that we see this emotionally intelligent woman who is confident in herself, and it's just that all of her potential is squandered because the movie has her make choices that don't even align with the character that they developed for her. It doesn't make sense, Like I feel like there's another twenty minutes of this movie. Yeah, maybe there is. Maybe there is. I read that there was a lot of this movie that didn't it was shot very quickly, and that it sounds like there were there was stuff that either wasn't shot or didn't make the movie, including the character. And I think also the only disabled character we see in the movie Rosalie, who was in the beginning and then it's cut from I think that she was supposed to be in the whole movie. I read, but there wasn't time or I got cut. I mean, and again it's like, and I don't believe that that character is played by a disabled actor. And yeah, I don't know. There there were threads that you're just like, well, where did that person go? Where did that story go? Right? I want to believe that there was more, but I don't know. Right there, there's got to be, but what with what we're given, it's dissonant and it doesn't make any sense. And like Peggy, Sue is a level headed character who seems to understand herself very well and understand her surroundings, and yet the movie makes her make this choice to get back with Charlie, even though it doesn't seem like that character would make that choice. But Hollywood is like we need a happy ending, and a happy ending is when two hetero people kiss and are in love, even if the man is terrible, even if we've been spending two hours realizing why this is a bad idea for both of them. What a treat. So yeah, it feels like a very like of the era. I think if like this were to me remade today, it would be like again the thing that I pitched, like Peggy Sue being like, wow, hindsight is and that guy sucks and I'm not gonna get back with him and I'm gonna learn how to invent boom boxes myself. I don't need a man. Interesting because it could have been that in eight six to like it kind of could have gone either way in that era, and this this one uh just does not. It didn't. I was thinking of my mom the whole time, and I'm like, well, at least my mom made a different choice in her one timeline at some point, you know, she actually did do the divorce. Yeah, she actually made a divorce, like like, was the right idea? Yea, she was, Yeah, Peggy, she was right from the get go, get out. Yeah, you still do have your kids, right, right, you don't lose your kids, if you get it, if you divorce Nicholas Cage. That is just famously a truth of this world. Right, look at it. Look at Elvis Presley's daughter exactly. Oh right, I forgot about that. Gosh so too. Nipples or sorry, nipple and half nipples. I'll give one to Kathleen Turner and I will give the half nipple to Helen Hunt, her daughter who's in the movie for four minutes. I'm gonna do. I think I'll go to for this. We didn't get to talk much about the production, but this movie was written by a married couple, one of us, so there there is a woman co writer on this movie. I think that it is, you know, unique, that there is a Francis Ford Copela movie that's the character study of a woman in her forties. Uh, that is scraps, but I do think it is. It is interesting. I I am so depressed by what happens to be yous. Do I want better for her? Um? But I do appreciate that, you know, she is the character that we learn inside and out, even when we find her frustrating, even when we're like, you're fucking up so bad. I feel like the reason that we're so frustrated that she's sucking up so bad. Is because we really get to know her, We get to like see I feel like there's often in stories like this it's like, oh, she's the protagonist, but then you spend the whole movie learning about like her boyfriend's family for some reason, and this movie does not go that way. You really do learn who Peggy Sue is, where she comes from, the culture she came up in, and why that culture, you know, motivated her to funk her life up with Nicolas Cage. It's not a happy story. I know we're supposed to think it is. I don't think it is, but I but I was really I don't know. I mean, I feel like this movie has to be doing something right if I'm so sad for Peggy Sue at the end of the movie. Right. So a uniquely bleak take on a time traveling movie. I don't know that I will want to watch it again soon. But I love Kathleen Turner. I liked seeing her in a role like this. Just watch Romancing the Stone with Me or More of the Roses where they kill each other and she throws Michael Douglas's hand off of her dying body, like, holy shit, part of the Roses is brutal. Actually, I don't recommend it. Danny DeVito directed it, oh right, I did know, Okay, okay, so I haven't seen it, but I didn't know that he directed it because I think that Polly Platt was supposed to direct it originally. Um okay, So so yeah, I'll go to I think it's an interesting character study that made me want to die. Um so. And also, you know, Super White movie didn't need to be. There were story opportunities to, you know, do other stuff than this movie just didn't do. I'm gonna give one nipple to Kathleen Turner and then I'm gonna give the other nipple to Penny Marshall, who almost directed this movie. And I would have loved to see the Penny Marshall version of this movie same too. Smokes. What a different movie that would have been, and it would have done. It would have solved my problem, which is Nicholas Cage being in it at all? Right, right, yeah, I just because of how beautifully some of it was and and how these there were these nuggets in it that kind of reminded me of Jaws in the way that it has these background stories, these complete stories that are in the background. The hat thing I didn't notice until my brother told me about it, But I'll tell you that hat thing. The fact that the guys in the freaking hat business in nineteen sixty and buys an Edzel and she sells his jewelry, this jewelry business, and that sort of that tiny plot of that, and the and the you know, just sort of these like really weird kind of and the and the the draft thing, and they were just sort of there were interesting parts of the movie that that I liked it. I'm gonna give it two and a half nipples. I'm gonna go halfway because I'm glad I watched it again because I had such a visceral when I saw it on the list of possible movies to watch, I was like, that damn movie. But so who might give the nipples to? I guess I'm giving him to Kathleen Turn And then I have to give it to I gotta give it to the mom, the actress who played the momb And I think I'm going to do kind of a trifecta. I liked, I'd like, uh Sofia Coppola sure I did. I thought she did a good job. I'm gonna give it to the to the generations. I almost would grandmother, gonna go, little sister, Yeah, go a little Sophia. Well, Jackie, thank you so much for coming back and discussing this movie with us. What a treat it's It was so fun. What a deep dive. You guys do it every movie. I love it. Thank you for coming on, come back any time, bring us, bring us another wild card. We're ready. And if either of you want to be on the dork Forest, you're always welcome to be on the dork Forest. Gosh, speaking of the dork Forest, tell us about your podcasts, tell us about your special in your album and and all that stuff. I have a podcast called the dork Forest. We're our sixteenth year of of of different episodes where people talk about they love the dork Forest. Could be about anything. It could be about bees, It could be about Canada, it could be about Bob Dylan. We I just did a Sandman LARPing. It could be so nerdy. It's a live action role playing uh five games covering Neil game in Sandman over fifteen twenty years and it was amazing, so we ever done Chuck e Cheese? No, but I would love to do Chuck e Cheese. Caitlin, what would you? What might you? What do you got? Oh my gosh, Paddington Bearing, Paddington Bear. Yes, I would love that. I didn't have not seen either of the movies. She'll sit you down, She'll sit you down, all right? Hooked me up? And then so that's the dork Forest. And then I do a podcast with Lori Kilmartin every week where we discuss stand up comedy and we celebrate and bitch about it. And so we do a little we do our own little Beckel test with it, and it turns out stand up comedy fails it on a regular And then I have yeah, five albums out there, all streaming on Pandora, Amazon iTunes, They're playing on siries x am uh. Spotify just took him down because of some sort of I wanted more than four hundreds of a cent for every spin, well as how Dare I and so? But the new Special and then the album which is of the same name is called Staycation Get It. We were all home for a little bit and my last name is Cation and it's a mask that it was and it did did good on the list, and it's super fun and it's free, So YouTube google staycation s t A y K S h I N and you can watch for free on YouTube or you can listen to it wherever you like. And thank you very much for having me on the best. Thank you so much for coming back. You can find us online cross platforms except for Facebook Facebook. You can find us at Bechdel Cast on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, but you can also find us on Twitter, which also sucks. Uh. You can also join our patreon ak Matreon, where we for five dollars a month you can get to bonus episodes based on a theme that we choose or you choose and we ignore. So we're we're finally going to get around to covering those Jane Austen movies. Just you wait any day? Now? Do you wait for austin August? Which couldn't happen anytime? And that's at patreon dot com slash spectol Cast. You can go to t public dot com slash the pectol cast to rob some merch and um, I guess let's all time travel back in time to our senior year in high school and see what lessons we might learn. You couldn't pay me to do it. Bye bye bye,