Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zeph and Bast
Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: How is it?
Speaker 3: It's like it's like Hi, I'm Jamie, him Jamie, and
Speaker 3: then like hi, I'm Ji, Like how do you There's
Speaker 3: so many scenes that are like three different out of
Speaker 3: Sandler voices, and.
Speaker 4: They're all annoying their way.
Speaker 3: Well, yes comes with the territory, Yes, indeed, and meanwhile
Speaker 3: bringing New Hampshire into like, leave New England out of this,
Speaker 3: Leave New England. I have so many thoughts I leave
Speaker 3: New England.
Speaker 4: Out of this. I was.
Speaker 3: I was mad they called it Dukesbury. I think that
Speaker 3: they were I Alex, let me know what you think. Sorry,
Speaker 3: we're just gonna the episode started. They're like I thought
Speaker 3: they were like making a weird reference to Tuksbury, which
Speaker 3: is not in New Hampshire. My dad used to work
Speaker 3: at a mental hospital in Tooks, so I was like,
Speaker 3: you leave ticks Burry out of it.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I actually spent a long time googling what potential town
Speaker 5: this could be in New Hampshire, because I was like, so,
Speaker 5: I'm obviously we're skipping. We'll tup back to the introductions later.
Speaker 5: I am a Jewish person. I grew up in New
Speaker 5: York City, which obviously has a very large portion of
Speaker 5: Jews are there, like many many people are Jewish there,
Speaker 5: and if you're not Jewish, you obviously.
Speaker 6: Know many Jews. So it's just like infused in the
Speaker 6: culture of New York.
Speaker 5: I'm a fourth or fourth generation Brooklyn Night so hardcore
Speaker 5: like Brooklyn Jewish history here. And then I moved to
Speaker 5: New England around two thousand and eight, so I have the.
Speaker 6: Jewish experience in New York.
Speaker 5: And then also this like cultural whiplash of being in
Speaker 5: New England and being Jewish in New England, which is
Speaker 5: really different than being Jewish in New York. So the
Speaker 5: whole time watching this movie, I spent a lot of
Speaker 5: time googling life but what town could this be?
Speaker 7: Though?
Speaker 5: Like there aren't enough Jewish, like what town in New Hampshire?
Speaker 5: Like it's I have a whole list of notes, It's
Speaker 5: just not true.
Speaker 3: Like like I thought it was such a weird place
Speaker 3: to set it. Yeah, I mean, and they made it
Speaker 3: sound like there's a very small Jewish population in this town.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, why are we setting it there, because
Speaker 3: then Hanaka doesn't really happen, Like it's just confusing.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's confusing, and that is the whole movie what
Speaker 2: we're talking about today, which is eight Crazy Nights. Hello,
Speaker 2: and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. It's us here, we are,
Speaker 2: and the voice you heard is that of our guest.
Speaker 2: She is a Jewish leftist fiber artist. She works in
Speaker 2: fundraising and is the tech director of a middle school
Speaker 2: theater program. It's Alex Stanton Klein. Hello and welcome.
Speaker 6: Hi. I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Tell us more about your fiber artistry to start, and
Speaker 2: then we'll get back into dumping on Crazy Nights.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also just like, if you don't know what the
Speaker 3: Bechdel Test is or what this show is, just look
Speaker 3: it up. It's fine, we've been on for eight years.
Speaker 3: Like do your homework.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very happy to be here.
Speaker 5: I do a lot of embroidery and textile art and
Speaker 5: like I said, I'm in New England. I sell in
Speaker 5: New England markets. You can find me on Instagram at
Speaker 5: Zinia Socialist Supply company just co ginnya socialist supply co
Speaker 5: on Instagram. Also in addition to making leftist art and
Speaker 5: make an embarrassing amount of musical theater themed stickers and
Speaker 5: postcards and so on. So if you need something that
Speaker 5: is a very very specific reference to just one line
Speaker 5: in Rent, I'm your girl.
Speaker 2: Love that. I love that.
Speaker 3: We still haven't we actually still have not covered Chris
Speaker 3: Columbus's Rent two thousand and five, if you like to return,
Speaker 3: as someone would ay, I still like I because I
Speaker 3: didn't see the show before that. I'm like, that movie
Speaker 3: is good, and then you watch it You're like, no,
Speaker 3: it's not. But even as I'm watching it like it's perfect,
Speaker 3: it's great.
Speaker 5: No, I have the deepest amount of love and hate
Speaker 5: for that movie. Like it's like they're both there in
Speaker 5: my soul. And I'd be happy to talk more about it.
Speaker 5: And you know that we have a whole group of
Speaker 5: friends in a little chat that would be delighted to
Speaker 5: join in us as well.
Speaker 4: So thrilling too.
Speaker 3: I remember that I for a listener context, Alex is
Speaker 3: a dear friend of mine, and the night before I
Speaker 3: moved to La so like almost ten years ago, Jake
Speaker 3: was driving me from I forgot something, I'd like lost something,
Speaker 3: Jake being her husband or her husband refer to him
Speaker 3: as nothing else. But Jake and I were driving somewhere
Speaker 3: and we were listening to the Rent movie soundtrack, like
Speaker 3: just screaming and reaching the conclusion that maybe this is
Speaker 3: not very good and it was just the best.
Speaker 2: Wait, is Jake not who you saw I Frankenstein with?
Speaker 3: Yes, Jake actually has deep Buchdel castlere like Jake and
Speaker 3: I saw I Frankenstein, I would say easily three times.
Speaker 3: And this was before the AMC stubs days, so we
Speaker 3: were paying twenty bucks a pop, which we were really
Speaker 3: heavily investing in the I Frankenstein lore universe. Always have,
Speaker 3: always will, same with the Master of Disguise.
Speaker 6: Yeah, not to keep bringing like mad into the Backdel
Speaker 6: cast because.
Speaker 2: Wow, but sorry, we're talking about We're talking about Jake,
Speaker 2: We're talking about Frankenstein.
Speaker 5: But we're gonna talking about Grant too, because Jamie and
Speaker 5: Jake forced me and Grant to watch I Frankenstide like
Speaker 5: all of us, very late at night one night pretty
Speaker 5: recently actually, like within the past six months or so,
Speaker 5: and we had to sit down and watch it.
Speaker 3: It was actually pretty violent, because yeah, it was already
Speaker 3: like one in the morning, was like, we have to
Speaker 3: start watching I Frankenstein and pause and rewind the part
Speaker 3: where he's swinging nunchucks at nobody on the top of
Speaker 3: a mountain, which is still my favorite part.
Speaker 4: I am a demon Prince.
Speaker 5: Jammie bought our baby a demon prince, Onesie. So before
Speaker 5: is going to continue to.
Speaker 3: The next generation, Kitlin, I forgot to tell you I
Speaker 3: did order a custom I Frankenstein baby once for.
Speaker 4: Baby kline.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing. So okay, sorry your fiver art right slash.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your relationship with the movie Eight Crazy Nights.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 5: So Jamie texted me and said, would you like to
Speaker 5: come on beckdelcast and talk a little bit about this movie?
Speaker 5: And I said, oh, yeah, I think I've seen it before.
Speaker 5: And then it horrifically like played before my eyes in
Speaker 5: slow motion as I was like re experiencing this event.
Speaker 5: So let me take you back to like two thousand,
Speaker 5: let's say five or six, and I'm in college and
Speaker 5: it is an unnamed liberal arts college wherein it is
Speaker 5: the perfect blending of both the era and then the
Speaker 5: type of college I went to where everybody was really
Speaker 5: into ironic racism, which, as we all know, is just racist,
Speaker 5: but white people get to be like, oh haha, it
Speaker 5: was funny when I said it, and that's it.
Speaker 4: What a time.
Speaker 5: It was really lovely, and I was one of smattering
Speaker 5: of Jewish people on campus, and I can't remember it
Speaker 5: was my roommate or someone who like lived in my door,
Speaker 5: my near us, but at the time they were like,
Speaker 5: you have to watch this movie.
Speaker 6: It's really funny.
Speaker 5: And I'll say, similarly to the I Frankenstein watch, it
Speaker 5: was inflicted upon me, but unlike I Frankenstein, I didn't
Speaker 5: laugh at all. And I remember just sitting there letting
Speaker 5: them watch me watch this movie. And it was like
Speaker 5: the weirdest experience of like a group of non Jews
Speaker 5: of boys just like sitting there watching me experience a
Speaker 5: movie that they thought was like the epidity of Jewish culture.
Speaker 5: I was just like, why, why, why is this a
Speaker 5: part of my life? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Unfair, unfair.
Speaker 3: I am curious because this is the second I believe
Speaker 3: Hanuka movie we have on the show. Both movies, as
Speaker 3: Kaylin and I both have in our notes, ultimately end
Speaker 3: up being more about youth basketball than Hanukkah. So I'm curious,
Speaker 3: is there Do you have a favorite and it doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be a movie, but do you a favorite
Speaker 3: piece of Hanukkah media?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean I think before we talk about that, I
Speaker 5: will just say because it would be weird for me.
Speaker 6: I feel like my grandmother would be really mad if
Speaker 6: I didn't say.
Speaker 5: This, Like, Hankkah is only it's not one of the
Speaker 5: major Jewish holidays, which often surprises people who aren't Jewish,
Speaker 5: like there are many other holidays that actually are of
Speaker 5: greater significance, and so Hannaka is just it's it's in
Speaker 5: the winter time. It has this weird sort of competitive
Speaker 5: thing with Christmas sort of.
Speaker 2: Which is why people like place so much emphasis on it,
Speaker 2: because it's actually just like, well it's Christmas time, but
Speaker 2: we'll acknowledge all their holidays that are happening around this
Speaker 2: ends up, but ultimately it's just very Christmas centric, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I feel like a lot of Hanukka material relates like
Speaker 5: exists only in relationship to Christmas. It doesn't have its
Speaker 5: own thing, which is just sort of Obviously, we live
Speaker 5: in a fairly Christian society, even if we're not legally
Speaker 5: yet just pure Christian society.
Speaker 2: Not quite a christ sho fascist regime yet.
Speaker 3: But yeah, just take note of when this is released,
Speaker 3: because by the time you listen to it, we may be.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 5: All that said, knowing that Hankkah is like a major holiday,
Speaker 5: I think there are other Jewish movies that are awesome
Speaker 5: and amazing and are about Jewish culture and are really
Speaker 5: fun and exciting.
Speaker 6: Crossing Delancey is a delight.
Speaker 5: It's a rom com and this woman gets set up
Speaker 5: by like a matchmaker with a man who sells pickles
Speaker 5: at a deli, and it's very, very cute, and it's
Speaker 5: a woman director too. I think that one's lovely, not
Speaker 5: a Hanuka movie, but a very lovely Jewish movie. I
Speaker 5: honestly have a really problematic as hell, but I have
Speaker 5: a really large soft spot in my heart for.
Speaker 6: Hanka. Oh my god, sorry, pregnancy brain.
Speaker 5: The big like Honega, like the juice ploitation type Honka
Speaker 5: movie that came out with Adam.
Speaker 4: Is it the Hebrew Hammer?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, my dad and I watched that all the time.
Speaker 6: We love it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's problematic as hell. It is supposed to be
Speaker 5: like a black exploitation movie. But with Jews, and it's sexist.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's like, got terrible problems with it, but
Speaker 5: I find.
Speaker 6: It very funny.
Speaker 5: And the idea is that he has to save Hankah
Speaker 5: again from some like evil kind of Christian fascist type
Speaker 5: played by Andy Dick.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I was like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this this this cast so Adam Goldberg, Judy Greer,
Speaker 3: Andy Dick, Mario Van Peebles, Peter Coyote, I mean of
Speaker 3: e t Fame, of et No No, of the Hebrew
Speaker 3: Hammer fame.
Speaker 2: Sorry, So yeah, that's a.
Speaker 6: That's a fun one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying it's good. I want to stress it's
Speaker 5: not good. It is fun, sure, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: What was the name of the dcom that we covered
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, Jamie, that's also about youth basketball.
Speaker 2: It was called Full Court Miracle, right.
Speaker 3: We had fay or Love on for that, And I
Speaker 3: think at the time we discussed I mean, I am
Speaker 3: not Jewish, and I grew up with such limited exposure
Speaker 3: to Jewish culture because, as we've alluded to, I did
Speaker 3: not grow up in a community where there were a
Speaker 3: lot of Jewish people, and so I think my main
Speaker 3: understanding of this holiday specifically would have been an episode
Speaker 3: of Rugrats, and honestly.
Speaker 6: That pretty accurate. I would say I grew that.
Speaker 4: I was like, all right, yeah, that.
Speaker 6: Gives you a good working knowledge of the basics of
Speaker 6: the holiday.
Speaker 5: What's weird is there's iconography in the movie vaguely that
Speaker 5: relate to Hankah, but like, you never see him. I
Speaker 5: don't think lighting a manora or doing like none of
Speaker 5: the characters are doing Honkkah right, unless I'm misremembering.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 8: I also was a little bit confused at like at
Speaker 8: the beginning, I'm like, maybe, honestly, I found it very
Speaker 8: hard to focus on this movie and I refuse to
Speaker 8: watch it twice, so there may be And.
Speaker 2: It's only eighty six minutes long, not even it's like
Speaker 2: seventy six minutes long.
Speaker 3: It definitely has like Master of Guy's syndrome, where it's
Speaker 3: so short but it feels unbelievably long, grueling. Yeah, but there,
Speaker 3: I think at the beginning, Whitey aka also Adam Sandler
Speaker 3: says that he is not Jewish, but then by the
Speaker 3: end they invite everyone over for Hanukkah, and I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: didn't this start with this character stating he like he
Speaker 3: doesn't celebrate Hanukkah.
Speaker 2: Right, and then also, but is his sister not extremely
Speaker 2: like Jewish coded Yes, in an offensive and stereotypical way. Yes,
Speaker 2: but they're not a Jewish family, so you really just
Speaker 2: wonder what's happening there.
Speaker 3: So why did they go so far out of their
Speaker 3: way to be like, these siblings are not Jewish, but
Speaker 3: then by the end they are.
Speaker 4: It was like, I don't know, this movie's a mess.
Speaker 4: It's all ye, and.
Speaker 5: I'll say I even at one point when they showed
Speaker 5: the exter of Whitey and his sister's house, I've paused
Speaker 5: it because you can see I think that there are
Speaker 5: Christmas and Hanuka decorations just to add extra confusion, so
Speaker 5: like they have a large amount of Christmas decorations and
Speaker 5: also some Honica decorations too, Like I saw some blues
Speaker 5: white in there.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, this family is considering celebrating Hanukkah, and it's unclear why.
Speaker 2: They just appreciate a whole cultures question.
Speaker 4: Mark, Yeah, there, I mean unproblematic, simply duo.
Speaker 2: So wait, Jamie, what's your history if any with this movie.
Speaker 3: I hadn't seen it, I although I've heard it like
Speaker 3: referenced so many times I've heard there's I don't know,
Speaker 3: like I wouldn't have seen this, Like I was too
Speaker 3: young to see this when it came out, but I
Speaker 3: do remember like later on, just like boys doing impressions
Speaker 3: of the Whitey character. I do have like probably around
Speaker 3: the same like Borat impression era, just like a really
Speaker 3: difficult time to be in middle school. But I mean
Speaker 3: I guess that there's just so there's always going to
Speaker 3: be an annoying, offensive character and middle school boys are
Speaker 3: going to do an impression of it ad nauseum.
Speaker 4: So I knew about Whitey weirdly.
Speaker 3: And that is all I knew about this movie. I'd
Speaker 3: never seen it before. What about you, Caitlin.
Speaker 2: I did see it for the first time only like
Speaker 2: probably two or three years ago. I don't know what
Speaker 2: compelled me exactly to like it's time take it upon
Speaker 2: myself to watch it, but I was just like shot
Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I must do this.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've been talking about potentially covering this movie
Speaker 2: on the podcast for years because around this time we
Speaker 2: almost always do like a very Christian centric Christmas movie
Speaker 2: slate of movies, and we were like, let's diversify the
Speaker 2: slate of movies. So because this is one of the
Speaker 2: few mainstream, you know, Hollywood movies that centers Hanukkah or
Speaker 2: that at least has Honkah as a backdrop, because this
Speaker 2: movie is kind of not about Honkah at all, that
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, I should watch this. I've heard
Speaker 2: about it. And at the time, because we were well
Speaker 2: into doing the Bechdel Cast, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is one of the most problematic movies I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's not funny at all, not a single joke lands.
Speaker 2: And I know that comedy is subjective, but this movie is,
Speaker 2: I would say, objectively not even remotely funny. So I
Speaker 2: was like, gross, But it'll make for a good conversation
Speaker 2: when we inevitably cover it. And here we are doing
Speaker 2: just that, and I can't wait to really just do
Speaker 2: us a slam dunk to use some basketball terminology to
Speaker 2: dunk on the movie.
Speaker 4: Wow, incredible.
Speaker 3: And also the animation sucks. Sorry, Like I said, the
Speaker 3: like sync between the mouth and the the vocal performances.
Speaker 4: Is never SINGCD.
Speaker 3: And then there is something I kind of like. I
Speaker 3: was bothered by it at first, but then I kind
Speaker 3: of grew to like it.
Speaker 4: Over time.
Speaker 3: Anytime there's a group like a wide shot of everyone singing,
Speaker 3: no one's mouth this movie, I think they like were
Speaker 3: not able to.
Speaker 4: Like afford to make everyone sing.
Speaker 3: But it's just like you hear, especially like that big
Speaker 3: number towards the end and they pull out, it's like
Speaker 3: the whole community center singing and dancing. Everyone's mouth is
Speaker 3: totally shut like like it's I found it scary at first,
Speaker 3: and then they do it again in the end end
Speaker 3: scene at the mall. Still couldn't afford to open the mouths.
Speaker 3: Why make it a group scene if that is you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: It's a perfect movie.
Speaker 6: No, that's.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: I think that I do at some point want to
Speaker 5: talk about the music from it because like some of
Speaker 5: us talking are very musical theater kids at our hearts,
Speaker 5: and like the music is so bad it's like hurt
Speaker 5: my I was like, this isn't how music, Like, like
Speaker 5: I understand they're supposed to be funny and the songs
Speaker 5: are funny, like I'm not I did not get that part,
Speaker 5: but right it just like like to me, I was.
Speaker 6: Like, but this is it.
Speaker 5: Like when you think about an animated movie that has
Speaker 5: music or musical or something else that where people sing
Speaker 5: like none of the there weren't reasons for them to sing.
Speaker 5: He was just like, I guess the musical number will
Speaker 5: go here, and then another one will go here, and
Speaker 5: like they just don't function well as musical numbers.
Speaker 6: And that was, yeah, honestly very stressful for me.
Speaker 4: Why technical.
Speaker 3: I think it was the song technical foul that broke me.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, where and it was stuck in my head.
Speaker 3: That's why I had to go see Wicked immediately after,
Speaker 3: because I was like, I can't go to sleep, but that's.
Speaker 4: A technical foul, like stuck in my head. That song was.
Speaker 3: I mean, none of the songs are really necessary, but
Speaker 3: that one just comes out of nowhere. It's so long
Speaker 3: and has nothing to do with anything. The best song
Speaker 3: in the movie is a decade old song they use
Speaker 3: in the credits, the Honka song Like, which is also
Speaker 3: clearly why the movie exists, because the line eight crazy
Speaker 3: nights appears in the song and it's a classic.
Speaker 4: It's super funny.
Speaker 3: Like Adam Sandler does is not He's not one of
Speaker 3: my guys, but I get why people like him. When
Speaker 3: I listen to the Hankkah song. I don't get why
Speaker 3: people like him. When I watch Eight Crazy.
Speaker 5: Nights, do you know that the big joke among at
Speaker 5: least someone of my friends and family about the Hanka
Speaker 5: song is just like our whole family would.
Speaker 6: Just go, I mean, Adam, what are you doing? Why
Speaker 6: are you just giving people a list of Jews?
Speaker 5: Nobody needs that that secret like, don't make a list
Speaker 5: of us, It's not safe. And yeah, I would have
Speaker 5: actually kind of enjoyed a movie if it featured eight
Speaker 5: Crazy Nights and eat Crazy Night or like sorry, if
Speaker 5: the the Hanka song had been like a part of
Speaker 5: the story.
Speaker 6: In some way.
Speaker 4: Why not? Really, yeah, why just do that?
Speaker 6: I would have had fun with that. You know, that
Speaker 6: would have been a really enjoyable movie.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, Well, let's take a quick break and then
Speaker 2: we will come back and do the recap of this
Speaker 2: seventy six minute long feature film.
Speaker 4: Bear it back and we're back, and we're back.
Speaker 3: Yes, this does have another feature of a movie that
Speaker 3: just couldn't make it to feature length, which is that
Speaker 3: it also has an incredibly long credit sequence.
Speaker 4: So it looks like it's eighty minutes long, but it
Speaker 4: is not.
Speaker 3: It just they play the Hanakah song all the way through,
Speaker 3: but it's like a new improvised version, so it's like
Speaker 3: six minutes long.
Speaker 2: As soon as you get the title card where it's
Speaker 2: like directed bye blah blah blah, I turned it off.
Speaker 2: I couldn't listen to another second, so I missed that
Speaker 2: the whole credit song, unfortunately, but oh no, it would
Speaker 2: darn it missed it. Okay, So here's the recap. We
Speaker 2: open on voiceover narration from Rob Schneider. And if that
Speaker 2: doesn't tell you everything you need to know right at
Speaker 2: the top, I.
Speaker 4: Just also the narrator.
Speaker 3: I know that they're trying to like do like a
Speaker 3: holiday movie pastige there, but also anytime the narrator talks,
Speaker 3: it just makes it sound like the movie is insecure,
Speaker 3: that you don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 4: You're like, I know, I got it.
Speaker 3: I know he's walking around, and then cut to Rob
Speaker 3: Schneider doing an offensive accent. Yes, first spoken line of
Speaker 3: dialogue is Rob Schneider.
Speaker 5: This movie is so firmly rooted in two thousand and two,
Speaker 5: like in particular with the racism, the offensiveness, the weight jokes,
Speaker 5: the joke. We'll get to all of that, but like
Speaker 5: you when you open, when the movie opens with Rob
Speaker 5: Schneider doing something offensive, you're like, it's really two thousand
Speaker 5: and two.
Speaker 4: In here, it stinks in here.
Speaker 3: It's wild that this is like this is also this
Speaker 3: is the same year as my favorite Adam Sandler performance
Speaker 3: in Punch Drunk Love. Oh yeah, and then he just
Speaker 3: had to end the year like this, no accounting.
Speaker 2: For it, you know. He he has range from something
Speaker 2: that's pretty good to something that's really.
Speaker 4: Fucking terrible, too horrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. So the voiceover is explaining that Christmas
Speaker 2: is right around the corner and that tonight is the
Speaker 2: first night of Hanukkah, although some people aren't excited about
Speaker 2: the holidays, including a man named Davy Stone. This is
Speaker 2: the main Adam Sandler character who is designed to look
Speaker 2: like Adam Sandler. Yes, very much.
Speaker 3: I will be calling him Adam Sandler. I can't be
Speaker 3: bothered to call him daddy.
Speaker 2: So he is a down on his luck guy. He's
Speaker 2: at a Chinese restaurant getting drunk. He leaves without paying,
Speaker 2: so the cops start chasing him, but not before he
Speaker 2: drunkenly makes with his car. For some reason.
Speaker 5: That is a note on my many list of things
Speaker 5: I don't like. I just said, do not like him
Speaker 5: making out with his car at all? Not a good
Speaker 5: joke comment not good bad.
Speaker 3: Is well, you're you're correct, it is not good and
Speaker 3: it doesn't even crack the top fifty percentile of bad,
Speaker 3: which is which is wild.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then he starts like snowboarding around town on the
Speaker 2: lid of a trash can or something. He's singing a song, Oh.
Speaker 3: My God, and the songs are even the song's titles
Speaker 3: are lazy. Davy's song is the first song, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I don't like Hanukkah or Christmas. I don't like this
Speaker 3: time of year. And you're like, oh, all right, this
Speaker 3: thinks I don't like it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the whole song.
Speaker 2: The chorus is I hate love, I hate you, I
Speaker 2: hate me, and you're like, cool, go to therapy, sir.
Speaker 3: There's I mean, it's like there, that is a reasonable
Speaker 3: starting point. I mean, he's like, he's scrooging around. Okay,
Speaker 3: but what is this going to build to? And the
Speaker 3: answer is not very much.
Speaker 5: I do want to know in the opening bits, and
Speaker 5: this is something that I noticed when I moved to
Speaker 5: New England, is that they had this the Ice Santa
Speaker 5: and the Ice Manora side by side, and they are
Speaker 5: of equal height and of equal importance in this town
Speaker 5: that supposedly of Jewish people, right, Yeah, the percentage of
Speaker 5: the percentage of the Jewish population in New Hampshire is
Speaker 5: around zero point eight percent.
Speaker 6: So I don't think I googled it after living because
Speaker 6: it's eight.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's small, and I think there's like a few
Speaker 5: towns that have like concentrations, but it's not like there's
Speaker 5: a huge you know, So it doesn't make sense to
Speaker 5: Jamie's point earlier to have it set in New Hampshire.
Speaker 6: But also my point is living.
Speaker 5: In New England, it's very rare to see Honeka be
Speaker 5: treated with the same level of decorative important as Christmas.
Speaker 5: And I just like straight from the beginning, I was like, well,
Speaker 5: that doesn't feel right to me. Like the last like
Speaker 5: like I right, my husband and I went to a
Speaker 5: mall and the whole you walk into the mall and
Speaker 5: the whole entryway is all Christmas stuff And then we
Speaker 5: walked like down the side to the area that had
Speaker 5: actually there was like they were renovating it and it
Speaker 5: was ripped off with caution tape and there was like
Speaker 5: one small manora of side over there, like that's that's
Speaker 5: kind of how we expect honna going to be treated
Speaker 5: in places where there are not a lot of Jews, right,
Speaker 5: It's not the main focus.
Speaker 6: So it just felt so not accurate.
Speaker 5: Like right from the beginning, I'm like, ad a buddy, like,
Speaker 5: what what are you doing? This isn't how this is
Speaker 5: not an authentic to me anyway, based on my experience
Speaker 5: and how I experienced a hanika.
Speaker 6: In New England or outside of a major metropolis.
Speaker 3: I was very confused at the choice to set it
Speaker 3: in New England if they were not going to make
Speaker 3: it a point that like Christmas is so dominant in
Speaker 3: New England and like have that be sort of like
Speaker 3: a plot point or something that's referenced in more than
Speaker 3: a couple of passing jokes. But it just feels like
Speaker 3: an excuse for the movie to not actually be about Hanakah.
Speaker 4: It's really bizarre. I was like, what is this movie about?
Speaker 6: Is Adam Sandler? Is he from New England? Is that
Speaker 6: I'm kind of guessing he's from New York?
Speaker 5: Okay, I just assumed he was, Like, let's just set
Speaker 5: it up in New England for the.
Speaker 6: Hell of it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess he moved to Manchester when he was
Speaker 3: a kid. Okay, Okay, so he did go to high
Speaker 3: school in New Hampshire. I guess that explains New Hampshire
Speaker 3: at least.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but the like vibe seems very off. As
Speaker 2: you said, Alex, in any case, he's snowboarding around, he's
Speaker 2: singing about how he hates everybody, and he's just being
Speaker 2: cruel and awful to everyone he encounters. And like you said, Jamie, like, sure,
Speaker 2: if he's like a gringe type, fine place for a
Speaker 2: character to start, assuming he'll have an arc. But they
Speaker 2: like went way too far in that direction of just
Speaker 2: being so horrible that he is like irredeemable.
Speaker 5: I think I couldn't find myself rooting for him. No,
Speaker 5: in anyway I.
Speaker 3: Felt that, especially the second we meet Jennifer, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I can't believe she has to end up with this guy.
Speaker 4: This is so unfair to her, like I know this
Speaker 4: is the only woman. And also I mean, we'll get
Speaker 4: to it, but just the animation style.
Speaker 3: We talked about this a lot in animated movies in general,
Speaker 3: but just how like the tropes in how women are animated,
Speaker 3: and then the love interest just looks like a hot lady.
Speaker 3: You're just like And then any woman who the Adam
Speaker 3: Sandler character doesn't want to have sex with is designed
Speaker 3: so wildly differently, so like offensive that the lady with three.
Speaker 4: Boobs, I'm like, what are what is? What is that?
Speaker 3: And she comes out of nowhere in nax and I
Speaker 3: was like, wait, we haven't met this character before. She
Speaker 3: shows up so late in the movie.
Speaker 4: She's like, here's me.
Speaker 9: I was like, what is this?
Speaker 2: She is established early on, but like for what reason?
Speaker 2: It's it's so annoying anyway. So he's being awful to everyone,
Speaker 2: and then he gets arrested and goes before a judge
Speaker 2: who is about to give him a harsh sentence because
Speaker 2: he has a history of like just being awful and
Speaker 2: disruptive in the community. But then a man named Whitey
Speaker 2: Duval who is also voiced by Adam Sandler, is this a.
Speaker 4: Whitey Bulger joke?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 4: What? What?
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know.
Speaker 4: If so, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense. He interjects and suggests that Davy
Speaker 2: do community service in the form of helping Whitey referee
Speaker 2: youth basketball games. That's because that's gonna set him straight.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a hefty dose of white privilege right
Speaker 3: at right at the top where it's like, oh, you've
Speaker 3: been sentenced to not even community service, you've been sentenced
Speaker 3: to a part time job, right like he got a
Speaker 3: job out of almost getting a dy Yes.
Speaker 2: And then Davy reluctantly agrees to this after saying a
Speaker 2: whole string of very ablest things to Whitey. But he's like, fine,
Speaker 2: I'll do it because otherwise he's going to be sentenced
Speaker 2: to like ten years in prison. So he's like, I
Speaker 2: guess i'll referee youth basketball instead ten.
Speaker 4: Years in prison, or we'll give you a job. I'm like, uh,
Speaker 4: huh huh. Justice system makes sense.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, there's a subplot where Whitey is hoping to
Speaker 2: win the All Star patch at the youth league basketball
Speaker 2: banquet that's coming up.
Speaker 3: I will say I was I was a little invested
Speaker 3: in the patch. I wanted him to get the patch
Speaker 3: that makes one of us because I didn't give a shit.
Speaker 4: Now I was rooting for him.
Speaker 5: I think it like Jamie is saying, there's a movie
Speaker 5: that appears to like middle school boys, and then they
Speaker 5: do the voice, and like, the Whitey voice just made
Speaker 5: me like physically tends up because I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's every boy from my middle school. It just like
Speaker 5: as you just that, it just brought it all back,
Speaker 5: and I just couldn't.
Speaker 6: I couldn't support Whitey because of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally understand. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I I he's the only character that I mean,
Speaker 3: he's just so abused when he's put in the in
Speaker 3: the shit statue.
Speaker 2: Oh, he is a sympathetic character. Yeah, because you feel
Speaker 2: sorry for him, you feel pretty for it. We'll talk
Speaker 2: all about it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not like,
Speaker 3: why don't you guys like Whitey. I understand, I understand.
Speaker 3: I just wanted him to get the patch. I mean,
Speaker 3: he gets spoiler or he gets five of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. So it's the first basketball game that Davy
Speaker 2: is meant to be refereeing, but he's not really doing
Speaker 2: his job. He then makes another string of extremely fat
Speaker 2: phobic remarks to one of the players on one of
Speaker 2: the teams, and the game ends and Whitey is upset
Speaker 2: about the way Davy is treating people, so he takes
Speaker 2: Davy to the mall.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's why I like Whitey. I like going to
Speaker 3: the mall because he I find it comforting.
Speaker 2: To the going to the dunkin Donuts in the mall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm doing that too. I'm hitting up the dunks
Speaker 3: at the Glendell Gallery. I'm unknown entity there. So maybe
Speaker 3: that's why I connect with him.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I understand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a technical file. It's sucking my head again
Speaker 4: much anyway.
Speaker 2: So Whitey is teaching Davy a lesson at the mall,
Speaker 2: of course, and he's telling Davy he needs to be
Speaker 2: more respectful. And there a woman named Jennifer Friedman who
Speaker 2: is voiced by Jackie Sandler aka Adam Sandler's his wife.
Speaker 2: Although I don't think they were married at the time.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is how they met or what,
Speaker 2: but this is pre their marriage, I believe.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Yes, I did not realize that it's true.
Speaker 3: That is baffling that you could fall in love during
Speaker 3: the production of this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got married the next.
Speaker 3: Year, So I feel like it's kind of safe to
Speaker 3: say that eight Crazy Nights, I mean, something good came
Speaker 3: out of it.
Speaker 2: So they brought them together there good for them anyway.
Speaker 2: So Jennifer and her son Benjamin are there at the
Speaker 2: mall because I believe she works at Dunkin Donuts. She detonomically.
Speaker 3: I looked into it because I Caitlin, as you know,
Speaker 3: I love keeping track of product placement. There is so
Speaker 3: much of this. What I learned though, is that they
Speaker 3: got permission for none of it. None of it, well
Speaker 3: none of it, so there's not even a reason for it, Like,
Speaker 3: but you've got which because at first, when Whitey was
Speaker 3: showing Adam Sandler every store at the mall, first reason,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this must have been how they
Speaker 3: funded the movie, right with this product life. It turns
Speaker 3: out they were just doing that for no reason at all.
Speaker 3: Sharper Image, Body Shop, GNC, Tyrax, Spencer's Sabarro, Dunks Sees Candy,
Speaker 3: Panda Express, Victoria's Secret Italian Eatery, Hot Dog Gonna Stick,
Speaker 3: and seven to eleven. They got no money to do that.
Speaker 3: They just they were just like, here's this.
Speaker 4: Do you like this?
Speaker 6: It's just for the love of them all. Yeah, they
Speaker 6: just had to. I mean, I like, how did you feel,
Speaker 6: how did you.
Speaker 5: Feel about the Dunks situation? Because I know your feelings
Speaker 5: on Dunks.
Speaker 3: But like representation matters, like it's I I liked that
Speaker 3: there was a Dunks in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4: That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: And I like Jennifer all one thing I know about her.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm rooting for Jennifer to somehow bust through the
Speaker 3: fourth wall.
Speaker 4: And be in a different movie. But I do.
Speaker 3: I like a girl who works at Dunkin Donuts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: hell yeah, working class hero, exactly.
Speaker 4: Exact single mother.
Speaker 3: But then she ends Honestly, she ends this movie worse
Speaker 3: off than when she started because now she has like
Speaker 3: a second.
Speaker 4: Son, not even a boyfriend.
Speaker 3: She's a single mother to a man child, ten year
Speaker 3: old and a thirty three year old.
Speaker 4: It's just it's unpleasant. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In any case, Jennifer and her son are there and
Speaker 2: they bring donuts to Whitey. This is something she does regularly,
Speaker 2: and Davy is like, you know, noticing her and sexually
Speaker 2: harassing her and insulting her son. But then he realizes
Speaker 2: that he knows her because they went to school together
Speaker 2: and they used to be friends. But he's been an
Speaker 2: asshole for the past twenty years and so he probably
Speaker 2: doesn't have a chance with her. Just kidding. Jennifer is
Speaker 2: Davy's love.
Speaker 3: Interest I for some reason, I mean not that I mean,
Speaker 3: I like, there's never a point in the movie where
Speaker 3: I'm on Davy's side, but it like make me extra
Speaker 3: angry that he didn't even recognize her. I was like,
Speaker 3: she like of all of the like he didn't even
Speaker 3: remember who she was his best friend from childhood.
Speaker 4: Like that's it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: They dated, like they were like tween boyfriend girlfriend, you
Speaker 2: had a little kiss in the flashback.
Speaker 3: You would recognize that person. It doesn't matter how different
Speaker 3: they look, you would recognize them.
Speaker 5: That's like he's just too busy bullying her son, like
Speaker 5: he loves bullying children.
Speaker 3: That I found that like so wildly off putting, Like
Speaker 3: on top of everything else. I was like if I
Speaker 3: if my childhood sweetheart didn't recognize me, I would be
Speaker 3: like fuck this guy, Like I know.
Speaker 2: Also worth noting that Jennifer and her son are seem
Speaker 2: to be the only other two Jewish characters besides Davy
Speaker 2: in the story, because Benjamin is describing the Hanuka give
Speaker 2: he has received so far, so it's established that Jennifer
Speaker 2: is also Jewish. So then Whitey takes Davy home, but
Speaker 2: gets stuck in the snow outside Davy's house and Davy
Speaker 2: doesn't care or do anything to help, So Whitey's just
Speaker 2: like out there for hours until he gets unstuck with
Speaker 2: the help of some plot deer that keep showing up.
Speaker 6: The deer also played by Adam Sandler.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so when they.
Speaker 6: Go that's important.
Speaker 2: That's Adam Taylor's voice.
Speaker 4: Another fun fact.
Speaker 3: From Scholgarly Journal Wikipedia is that in the test screenings
Speaker 3: of this, Whitey's voice was originally even more high pitched
Speaker 3: and they brought it down, and that Sandler was begged
Speaker 3: to remove some of the deer shitting jokes, but he
Speaker 3: was like, that's a bridge too far.
Speaker 4: I will not.
Speaker 3: I'm keeping them, all of them, all of them, all,
Speaker 3: forty of them. I think though you honestly see deer
Speaker 3: shitting on screen more than you hear Jennifer speak.
Speaker 2: I think that's accurate.
Speaker 4: Anyways, this movie wrong.
Speaker 2: So in Davy's house, he is drinking and also looking
Speaker 2: at a picture of his parents, who are implied to
Speaker 2: have died. Then Whitey finally gets home and we meet
Speaker 2: his sister, Eleanor, who he lives with. Eleanor is also
Speaker 2: voiced by Adam Sandler and we'll talk more about Eleanor.
Speaker 2: But then we get voiceover narration that says that Whitey
Speaker 2: tends to do odd jobs around town to make ends meet.
Speaker 2: The next day we see him doing this type of work,
Speaker 2: which includes cleaning out some port of Davy is there
Speaker 2: puking in one of the porta potties, and he comes
Speaker 2: out and then he shoves Whitey into one of the
Speaker 2: stalls and pushes it down a hill. So now sewage
Speaker 2: gets all over Whitey.
Speaker 4: And that's I think we can all agree. That's a
Speaker 4: technical owl.
Speaker 2: That's a technical that's a technical fowl. That's comedy, baby,
Speaker 2: you know. That's does hilarious jokes and we love it.
Speaker 2: And then Davy sprays him with a hose which freezes
Speaker 2: because it's winter in New Hampshire. And then the deer
Speaker 2: help Whitey again by licking the shit ice off of him,
Speaker 2: and we're just like, why is this movie like this.
Speaker 4: It's also implied that he gets like sort of a blowhop.
Speaker 4: Dear o sorrow.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, that's referenced in a one off joke Crazy.
Speaker 4: Day licked my balls or whatever.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 4: This is a movie for ten year old boys.
Speaker 2: That night, Davy Whitey and Benjamin Jenniferson are at the
Speaker 2: basketball courts where a few adult men are playing pickup,
Speaker 2: and Davy's like, I could beat all you guys at basketball.
Speaker 4: Oh this pissed me off. This pissed me off.
Speaker 3: When it's implied that he does nothing but drink beer
Speaker 3: and then he's shirtless and like ripped, I was like,
Speaker 3: this is this is ego gone wild? This character canonically
Speaker 3: and this is not a judgment, but it just felt
Speaker 3: like Adam Sandler being like, oh my cartoon avatar has
Speaker 3: to be hot ripped. Like yeah, it just it felt
Speaker 3: like it was an email.
Speaker 2: Also, I formed a theory in this scene where I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I wonder if the reason this is
Speaker 2: animated is because Adam Sandler wants to be portrayed as
Speaker 2: being way better at basketball than he normally is. But
Speaker 2: then I saw some clips of him playing basketball. I
Speaker 2: he seems all right. I guess he could probably have
Speaker 2: done it live.
Speaker 3: ASHI played those at those like famous oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: what am I thinking? Those famous Gary Shandling basketball games.
Speaker 3: He was like a common attender. I know that he
Speaker 3: really likes basketball. I think that this is only animated
Speaker 3: because he was trying to which again like doesn't worry.
Speaker 4: It was trying to.
Speaker 3: Like visually parody old animated Christmas Specials. But I don't
Speaker 3: know where the thirty four million dollars went here because the.
Speaker 4: Mouths don't even move. It's just I don't know.
Speaker 5: And did it look to you like the old Christmas
Speaker 5: Specials animated example, Yeah, I didn't get that feel like
Speaker 5: the the the animation style didn't feel like it was
Speaker 5: connected to a specific era and was like in conversation
Speaker 5: with that era if you welcome, right.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like it was like referencing anything in particular,
Speaker 3: which I guess I find somewhat explained by the fact
Speaker 3: that like ten animation studios ended up working on this,
Speaker 3: so I don't know like what was going on behind
Speaker 3: the scenes, but like.
Speaker 4: There's no there's no cohesive creative vision going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It kind of reminds me of Sausage Party, which
Speaker 2: also had a lot of like animation stuff going on, and.
Speaker 3: I was like they were like breaking union, like they
Speaker 3: were crossing picket lines to do Sausage Party.
Speaker 4: It's awesome, Yeah, worth it?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, Okay, So Davy is like I can beat
Speaker 2: all you guys a basketball. So he plays two on
Speaker 2: two first with Whitey, who gets immediately injured, and it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a hilarious.
Speaker 4: Joke technical foul.
Speaker 2: It was a technical foul. Then Davey plays with Benjamin
Speaker 2: as his teammate and they win. We'll talk more about
Speaker 2: that in the discussion, but I'll just breeze right past
Speaker 2: all the fat phobia inherent in this scene. But Jennifer
Speaker 2: then comes by to pick Benjamin up up and she
Speaker 2: sees Davy and her son playing together, and she's like hmm.
Speaker 2: But then she's also like mmmmm, yeah, because she hates Davy,
Speaker 2: but also maybe she's starting to like him.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want my kid around Davy, to be perfectly honest,
Speaker 3: he's a bad guy, yes, And then anytime she's like, hey,
Speaker 3: get away from my kid. You're a bad guy, he's like,
Speaker 3: what do you mean by that?
Speaker 5: He spent the beginning of the movie bullying other children
Speaker 5: and then also bullied.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, Like it's very reasonable for her to be like,
Speaker 5: based on my past experiences with you, I don't think
Speaker 5: that you'll treat my son well, you know, Like that
Speaker 5: seems like a very normal Jennifer, that's very normal.
Speaker 3: Right, She's got to do it, She's got to do
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, like Adam Saylor is standing next to an
Speaker 3: unconscious old man and is like.
Speaker 4: What is wrong with me? And it's like, dude. Anyways.
Speaker 2: Then there's another song where Davy and Jennifer reminisced about
Speaker 2: their youth. There's a whole flashback sequence. They used to
Speaker 2: be friends and like young lovers as tweens, and but
Speaker 2: obviously everything has changed. Then Davy comes home to discover
Speaker 2: that the men that he had just beaten at basketball
Speaker 2: are lighting his house on fire. So now his home
Speaker 2: is gone, and Whitey offers Davy to let him stay
Speaker 2: with him and his sister Eleanor.
Speaker 3: Things get very dark in the back half of this movie.
Speaker 3: The most and this is like not the most, the
Speaker 3: most depressing thing is yet to come, which I was
Speaker 3: truly shocked by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So then Davey comes to stay with them for
Speaker 2: a while, and this is where we get the it's a.
Speaker 4: Technical foul motivated by anything. No, it's just like farting.
Speaker 3: Yet that that's a technical foul, Like it's just this
Speaker 3: in my mind, technical foul is half the run time
Speaker 3: of this movie, it.
Speaker 4: Just felt like it would not stop.
Speaker 2: It goes on so long. Yeah, it's basically just Whitey
Speaker 2: explaining the rules that Davey has to follow because he's
Speaker 2: so disrespectful. And it seems to actually kind of work,
Speaker 2: because the next time we see Davy, he is behaving
Speaker 2: a little bit more respectfully. He seems to be like
Speaker 2: kinder and more sensitive.
Speaker 4: Kind of like that's what worked on him. The song
Speaker 4: is technically.
Speaker 2: Right, it doesn't make sense. But then sometime passes and
Speaker 2: I think it is now the eighth day of Hanukkah,
Speaker 2: and now you're realizing, oh, this movie is called Eight
Speaker 2: Crazy Nights. You have an expectation that it's going to
Speaker 2: be about eight crazy nights, and yet most of it
Speaker 2: happens off screen, and none of the nights are actually
Speaker 2: crazy quote unquote.
Speaker 3: And so a couple of like vaguely eventful days. But
Speaker 3: because this, like because the main character doesn't celebrate Hanukkah
Speaker 3: anymore for a reason, where about to learn? And because
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem like anyone except Jennifer and Benjamin celebrate Hanukkah,
Speaker 3: and we never see them celebrate Hannakah because we don't
Speaker 3: care about them. The fact that it's Hanakkah is very
Speaker 3: easy to forget because you only see Christmas decorations and
Speaker 3: no one is celebrating Hankah.
Speaker 5: So I saw because I went deep down a rabbit
Speaker 5: hole reading like reviews from that time, and then I
Speaker 5: ended up on like a Reddit talking about this movie,
Speaker 5: and somebody from many years ago wrote in that this
Speaker 5: was their favorite movie to watch during the Christmas season
Speaker 5: and it just really exemplified Christmas.
Speaker 6: For them, which I thought was just a really great point. Like,
Speaker 6: it doesn't it's not a Hanukkah movie. I don't know
Speaker 6: what to say. It's not.
Speaker 5: There's no Ronica's not present. It's not a character in
Speaker 5: the movie. It's not it's just not there.
Speaker 3: It's a whole movie about why this one character no
Speaker 3: longer celebrates Hanukkah due to brutal childhood trauma, which is
Speaker 3: a story, but not really a Hanakah story.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So we are now at the eighth day
Speaker 2: of Hanukkah. Davy is hanging out with Whitey and Eleanor
Speaker 2: and white He tells the story of how Davy learned
Speaker 2: that his parents had been killed in a car accident
Speaker 2: when he was a kid. Like twenty years prior, and
Speaker 2: this grief and traumatic loss is what has made Davy
Speaker 2: so horrible to everyone around him.
Speaker 3: I was not prepared for something that heavy that the
Speaker 3: movie is, like, you know, the second you learn that
Speaker 3: his parents died in this horrible way, you're like, well,
Speaker 3: this movie isn't equipped to have this conversation remotely.
Speaker 4: Why even try?
Speaker 3: Oh but yeah, I was like, wow, it's a dark
Speaker 3: turn at the very end.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they put it in. I mean it
Speaker 5: felt to me very strongly like they put it in
Speaker 5: there just to be like and that, uh, that excuses
Speaker 5: every single thing he's ever.
Speaker 6: Done so far. Right, You're right, that's the solution.
Speaker 5: And it's just you know, I used to teach it
Speaker 5: at preschool and we used I mean we used to
Speaker 5: say a.
Speaker 6: Lot of like that may explain the behavior, but it.
Speaker 5: Does not excuse it. And I feel like that phrase
Speaker 5: works really well here for Davy, Like that might give
Speaker 5: some explanation for why he's he acts like an asshole,
Speaker 5: but like, ultimately it's on him to still be a
Speaker 5: good person in the world, right, Like, we still participate,
Speaker 5: we live in a society, Davy, Like, come on, get
Speaker 5: it together. You can't just put people import of bodies
Speaker 5: and throw them off a cliff, like, we don't do that.
Speaker 4: It won't bring your parents back. Davy, to throw an
Speaker 4: old man off a cliff.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the lesson he learns by the end.
Speaker 4: I guess that's what he learns by the end.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have thrown that old man off of a cliff. Okay, girlfriend, please, son, please,
Speaker 3: I learned to my lesson.
Speaker 4: Where's my reward?
Speaker 2: Where's my reward in the form of a human woman
Speaker 2: who I now get to claim as my property anyway? Okay.
Speaker 2: The reminder of this story about the loss of his
Speaker 2: parents sets Davy off. He lashes out at Whitey and
Speaker 2: Eleanor and he storms off. He gets drunk again and
Speaker 2: then breaks into the mall because ninety percent of this
Speaker 2: movie either takes place at the mall or at a
Speaker 2: youth basketball game. And he goes to the mall and
Speaker 2: he's there to try to talk to Jennifer at Dunkin Donuts,
Speaker 2: but it's like very clearly after hours and no one
Speaker 2: is there, and he just like breaks in and he's
Speaker 2: belligerently screaming into the void until all of the stores
Speaker 2: in the Mall come to life, question.
Speaker 7: Mark really interesting, you know, And then they sing to
Speaker 7: Davy and they tell him to cry and to let
Speaker 7: it all out because he has never dealt with his
Speaker 7: grief over the loss of his parents in a way
Speaker 7: that is like healthy or effective or anything like that,
Speaker 7: and he's really didn't to cry.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be amazing if that message came from a
Speaker 3: character we've met before and not.
Speaker 2: Some weird like foot Locker animated like hallucination or something like.
Speaker 3: I know we could talk about this in the discussion too,
Speaker 3: but like you can't even get away from the misogyny
Speaker 3: in the mall.
Speaker 4: Like it's Tyra Banks as an.
Speaker 3: Empty dress which from Victoria's Secret that still gets sexually
Speaker 3: harassed by a jar of vitamins or like protein powder
Speaker 3: oh from Chance, Yeah yeah, Tyra Banks as an empty
Speaker 3: dress that is still getting hit on really sums up
Speaker 3: the movie's views on women to me.
Speaker 5: And I love again that you were saying that he didn't.
Speaker 5: It wasn't like he was sponsored by this movie. He
Speaker 5: was just like what if corporate? What if like the
Speaker 5: embodiment of corporations told me how to have feelings?
Speaker 3: It's so good that, like I became all the more
Speaker 3: confused by this movie when it when I found out
Speaker 3: that he was like sort of doing something like illegal
Speaker 3: by having done that, because you're supposed to get the
Speaker 3: consent of but it's really weird.
Speaker 4: I don't know. But yeah, they're like, well, okay, we've
Speaker 4: introduced five thousand characters for some reason, but at the
Speaker 4: emotional peak of the movie, let's have none of them
Speaker 4: there and it'll just be logos from the mall.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Awesome, good storytelling.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so they're telling him to let it all out
Speaker 2: and to open up about his feelings, and he's reluctant
Speaker 2: to do so, but then he opens the Hanaka card
Speaker 2: that his parents wrote for him and that he received
Speaker 2: the night that they died, and he finally cries. And
Speaker 2: then some cops come into the mall because he's broken in,
Speaker 2: and he's like, you know, trespassing, and they're about to
Speaker 2: arrest him, but Davy escapes and he gets on a
Speaker 2: bus to New York City. Ever heard of it? But
Speaker 2: then he has a change of heart and heads to
Speaker 2: the youth league basketball banquet, the one where Whitey hopes
Speaker 2: to win the All Star patch.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, right, that plotline, still rooting for him, and.
Speaker 2: He does this because Davy wants to apologize to Whitey
Speaker 2: for his behavior. And then we cut to the banquet.
Speaker 2: Whitey does not win the patch, so he is devastated.
Speaker 2: It goes to sub guy voiced by John Lovetz. I think, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: So Whitey and Eleanor leave because Whitey is so upset
Speaker 2: that he didn't win. And then Davey comes into the
Speaker 2: banquet and the cops are right behind him and they
Speaker 2: arrest Davy, but before they take him away, he makes
Speaker 2: this impassioned speech via song about how Whitey should have
Speaker 2: won the patch because he does so much for the
Speaker 2: community and no one appreciates him. But Whitey cares about people,
Speaker 2: and Davey regrets it's being so cruel to him. And
Speaker 2: this is where I just like basically zoned out, and
Speaker 2: I didn't write the rest of the recap because I
Speaker 2: was just like my brain turned to mush. But basically
Speaker 2: I think what happens. So everyone goes back to the
Speaker 2: mall and.
Speaker 4: But their mouths are they're lockdobs.
Speaker 2: Okay, First, first, it's just Whitey and Eleanor at the mall,
Speaker 2: and Whitey is crying because everyone in town thinks he's
Speaker 2: a joke and I didn't vote for him for the patch.
Speaker 2: But then Davy and the whole rest of the town
Speaker 2: show up, and the mayor is like, here, Whitey, here's
Speaker 2: the patch after all. And then everyone who had previously
Speaker 2: won the patch from the past thirty five years also
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, Whitey, here's my patch because you're the
Speaker 2: best guy in town. And then there's like a moment
Speaker 2: where Davy and Jennifer like kind of reconnect, and that's
Speaker 2: the end of the movie. Yay, So let's take another
Speaker 2: quick break and we'll come back to.
Speaker 3: Discuss, and we're back. My first, I'd like to open
Speaker 3: the conversation by saying, why isn't David Spade in this movie?
Speaker 4: Were they fighting?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: I feel like he's.
Speaker 3: The one, you know, Sandler verse guy who who's not
Speaker 3: popping up. True, that's all the thoughts I have in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 4: Everyone else, take it away, Yeah, take it away. Episode.
Speaker 2: I guess the context for this movie. I couldn't find
Speaker 2: a whole lot on the development of it. But the title,
Speaker 2: as we've referenced, is taken from the line of the
Speaker 2: Honkkah song that Adam Sandler wrote and performed and so
Speaker 2: that's they were like, Hey, there's a line in the
Speaker 2: song it says eight crazy nights if that was a
Speaker 2: movie where most of the nights take place off screen
Speaker 2: and the ones we do see are pretty tame.
Speaker 3: I mean, they've they've built SNL spin off movies on less,
Speaker 3: so that's not even disqualifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, necessarily right, but uh, it just like is a
Speaker 2: bummer that one of the few American movies that centers
Speaker 2: a Jewish holiday is like also one of the worst
Speaker 2: movies ever made.
Speaker 3: And also not about the holiday that it's advertising that
Speaker 3: it's about, right, Yeah, Alex, Alex, what was it like
Speaker 3: for you to, uh to revisit this this gem?
Speaker 5: Well, well so again, I think I said to Caitlin
Speaker 5: before we started, it is really something to watch a
Speaker 5: purported comedy just in complete silence, Like Jake and I
Speaker 5: were sitting I were sitting there.
Speaker 6: We just sat there like the whole time.
Speaker 5: Like, I don't think either of us laughed at anything
Speaker 5: pertaining to the movie. I think during the corporate day scene,
Speaker 5: I might have just blacked out, Like I almost don't
Speaker 5: remember it at all because I was just like, what
Speaker 5: is happening here? Yeah, utterly bizarre.
Speaker 6: I you know, the message of Honicah is really it's you.
Speaker 5: Know about the I mean every I don't want to
Speaker 5: speak for every disperson, but I feel like there are
Speaker 5: a lot of different ways that you can interpret it
Speaker 5: and talk about it, and none of them were present
Speaker 5: in this movie.
Speaker 6: I don't even think we ever saw a minora being
Speaker 6: lit at all.
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 6: And again, as you said, it wasn't eight crazy nights.
Speaker 5: It was eight mostly during the days, and nothing to
Speaker 5: do with Hankah really, and we're in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it just felt I mean like I feel
Speaker 3: like because yeah, I was also had a hard time
Speaker 3: finding any sort of meaningful background on this. But given
Speaker 3: the number of like credited writers and credited animation companies.
Speaker 4: I feel like it's it's safe to say that.
Speaker 3: Maybe this was coherent at one point being generous, but
Speaker 3: it definitely did not like end that way.
Speaker 4: I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It seems like Adam Sandler was really you know, like, no,
Speaker 3: we will not like he had a lot of creative
Speaker 3: control to the point where he could be like, you
Speaker 3: cannot take out the deer shitting scenes, so like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't know what to make of this.
Speaker 3: It's like it's so bad and like you were saying earlier, Alex,
Speaker 3: like is just sort of like this charcutory board of
Speaker 3: like offensive early two thousands jokes where we have not
Speaker 3: one but two characters that are strictly there to be
Speaker 3: fat shamed, one child, one adult, incredible variety. The callback
Speaker 3: with we didn't I don't think this came up in
Speaker 3: the recap because it has no bearing on the.
Speaker 4: Plot, But there's a child who.
Speaker 3: Just like Adam Sandler's fat shaming, who is crying, and
Speaker 3: I feel like that plays into bullying and also plays
Speaker 3: into like tropes around bad people being really sensitive I guess,
Speaker 3: and like overly emotional. And then we cut to like
Speaker 3: a joke of like he Adam Sandler's like, kid, you
Speaker 3: gotta get a bra, like just middle school bullying as a.
Speaker 4: Thirty three year old character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then when we go to Victoria's secret apparently
Speaker 3: against Victoria's secrets, Will not that that's a great company,
Speaker 3: but it's just so weird that he didn't ask. But
Speaker 3: then we see like that kid trying on. It's a
Speaker 3: very like incoherent joke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not only are the jokes incredibly problematic and reductive
Speaker 2: and punching down to marginalize people. They often don't make
Speaker 2: sense and are very sad.
Speaker 3: And then it never comes back, which is not like,
Speaker 3: oh I wish there was a third beat of that joke,
Speaker 3: but like it's still You're like, why is why is
Speaker 3: any of it here?
Speaker 4: I don't know right.
Speaker 2: Similarly, the adult who is relentlessly fat shamed is shown
Speaker 2: on screen. The brief moment that he's on screen, he's
Speaker 2: depicted as being like very uncoordinated and clueless, and then
Speaker 2: the losing players of the two on two game have
Speaker 2: to eat his jockstrap because that is like the worst
Speaker 2: punishment conceivable, You have to eat a fat person's undergarment.
Speaker 3: Like, but it's also like that should be true if
Speaker 3: anyone's undergarded.
Speaker 2: That shouldn't for.
Speaker 3: The punishment for anybody, Like body type should not be
Speaker 3: a factor in why you wouldn't want to do that.
Speaker 4: They're like, well, if it was.
Speaker 3: If it was like a guy, I would need to
Speaker 3: cuss jockstrap if it was his, if he had a
Speaker 3: different body type.
Speaker 2: Well that's the joke. It's just like it's especially gross
Speaker 2: because it belongs to a fat person. So it's just
Speaker 2: like nonsensical jokes like that. There's, as we referenced already,
Speaker 2: the anti Asian racism in a care who works at
Speaker 2: a Chinese restaurant who is voiced by Rob Schneider doing.
Speaker 3: His definitely not the only time Rob Schneider's done this,
Speaker 3: I cannot I could pull a second example out of
Speaker 3: my head, but I know he's done this before.
Speaker 7: We know.
Speaker 2: We talked about this on I think it was our
Speaker 2: fifty First Dates episode. There are like the whole pieces
Speaker 2: written about the long list of often anti Asian racist
Speaker 2: jokes and characters that he does in movies like I
Speaker 2: Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is an example. He
Speaker 2: does it in fifty First Day, every movie, it's almost
Speaker 2: every movie he's in, honestly, So he's just doing another
Speaker 2: example of it in Eight Crazy Nights. And then there
Speaker 2: are a whole slew of ableist jokes that are directed
Speaker 2: toward Whitey and Eleanor.
Speaker 5: I have a real problem with how they treated Eleanor
Speaker 5: in the movie. I mean it just it starts bad
Speaker 5: and then it gets so much worse. And then the
Speaker 5: thing with the like she her hair is a wig,
Speaker 5: and that's a big funny joke for a while that
Speaker 5: she loses her wig, and it just felt like everything
Speaker 5: they were doing to Whitey but made it worse because
Speaker 5: she's a woman, you know what I mean, Like they're
Speaker 5: like it's already bad. And then we added in a
Speaker 5: lot of misogyny too.
Speaker 2: Because they seem to have they're like fraternal twins, they
Speaker 2: seem to have been born with the same physical disability,
Speaker 2: and so there's a ton of ablest jokes made about them.
Speaker 2: But like you said, yeah, it's even the offensive jokes
Speaker 2: that are leveled at Eleanor are even more so because
Speaker 2: she is a woman and she's like voiced with this
Speaker 2: very like shrill, annoying voice that Adam Sandler is doing
Speaker 2: that's like very intentionally annoying.
Speaker 4: And apparently could have been worse, which is so wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then for those two characters, the character design
Speaker 2: is way more cartoonish than every single other character. Every
Speaker 2: single other character you see at least resemble like human people,
Speaker 2: But for these two characters, Whitey and Eleanor, they're very
Speaker 2: very very cartoonish looking, like they they don't resemble human
Speaker 2: beings the way that humans look. So it's just another
Speaker 2: way that the movie doesn't take them seriously, that the
Speaker 2: movie is disparaging toward these people. And then meanwhile, like Davy,
Speaker 2: as we said, has like chiseled pecks and abs, and
Speaker 2: it's like, give.
Speaker 3: Me a bit break doesn't make Yeah, that's I feel
Speaker 3: like that's an Adam Sandler email, like hold on, hold on,
Speaker 3: make me way.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he's a loser, but he's got to be sexy
Speaker 10: because he looks like me, Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 10: don't know how much creative control should one person be.
Speaker 9: Permitted to have, do your dumb man, this guy would
Speaker 9: not have chiseled abs like and the fact that like
Speaker 9: that is sort of used to justify why he's like
Speaker 9: treating other characters so fat phobic, like is well.
Speaker 3: Because he's got You're like that doesn't make narrative sense
Speaker 3: given his the only.
Speaker 4: Thing we see him consume the entire movie is.
Speaker 3: Beer anyways, right, I don't even know? And yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean going back to Eleanor a little bit, I mean
Speaker 3: I just found it. Really I felt like she was
Speaker 3: treated I mean, she's treated horrifically, but it also felt
Speaker 3: like she was like they were leaning on like Jewish
Speaker 3: stereotypes with her, but her character was. It was very unclear.
Speaker 3: I mean, not that it would make it okay either way,
Speaker 3: but I was like, I'm pretty sure we were told
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the movie this character isn't Jewish,
Speaker 3: and then they layer all of these horrible stereotypes on her.
Speaker 3: It's just like another thing where it's like both offensive
Speaker 3: and confusing.
Speaker 5: He's doing it like a stereotypical Jewish old lady voice,
Speaker 5: and like we picked up on that right away when
Speaker 5: I was watching it. I was like, that's so weird
Speaker 5: because like, again, they're not they're not Jews away.
Speaker 3: Right, like the first thing we learned about those, right
Speaker 3: And like you said, like even if they were Jewish characters,
Speaker 3: to then lean into that stereotype is just lazy and reductive.
Speaker 4: Problematic and confusing. Every joke in this movie.
Speaker 5: I was pleasantly surprised that, I mean, are we ready
Speaker 5: to talk about We're ready.
Speaker 6: To talk to Jennifer.
Speaker 2: Let's let's do it.
Speaker 5: I was pleasantly surprised that Jennifer didn't seem to fulfill
Speaker 5: any Jewish like women's stereotypes. Really, I mean, in all
Speaker 5: of that, I'm saying it as if it's a compliment,
Speaker 5: but also as I angrily texted Jamie, we know like
Speaker 5: six facts about Jennifer, Like, what do we really know
Speaker 5: about Jennifer. She's not a well defined character. She's a woman,
Speaker 5: she's a brunette.
Speaker 2: She's a mom, she works at Dunkin Donuts, she's Jewish,
Speaker 2: she's generous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she's a nice person.
Speaker 2: And she doesn't put up with Davy's shit a lot
Speaker 2: of the time. And until that very it makes you
Speaker 2: wonder why she's willing to like get with him, because
Speaker 2: has he redeemed himself because he's so irredeemable that like
Speaker 2: he doesn't do enough.
Speaker 3: I think No, it's she's treated as a trophy at
Speaker 3: the end, I mean, which I think has made pretty explicit.
Speaker 4: By how like and they make eleanor do it where it's.
Speaker 3: Like, if you guys don't, Kish shall kick you in
Speaker 3: the teeth.
Speaker 4: And then Jennifer is like, yep, makes sense. I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess you're my son now too. You're like Jesus, come.
Speaker 5: You know, honestly, Then I'm going to retract my previous
Speaker 5: statement that it was nice that she wasn't treated with
Speaker 5: Jewish stereotypes, because the reason they probably didn't imbue her
Speaker 5: with Jewish stereotypes is because she was a trophy at
Speaker 5: the end, right, Like a lot in a lot of
Speaker 5: movies like that, the Jewish woman character really does only
Speaker 5: exist to be sort of mocked in a number of
Speaker 5: different a variety of different fun ways. And so I
Speaker 5: feel like you can you can have one or the other.
Speaker 5: But Adam Sandler would not want his prize to be
Speaker 5: kind of, you know, mired in Jewish stereotypes, right, like
Speaker 5: he would he would separate those two out.
Speaker 2: It's very bleak, right, especially because the like the woman
Speaker 2: trophy in so many movies is like very waspy. Everything
Speaker 2: is bad in the movie.
Speaker 4: It's like where does ivid?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the I guess I don't have anything to say
Speaker 3: about the Dead Parents except like, what a wildly serious
Speaker 3: plot point to deploy with like ten minutes left in
Speaker 3: the movie. But yeah, I think, like Alex you said
Speaker 3: it perfectly earlier, where it's like it's that is presented
Speaker 3: as a justification for all of his behavior, which obviously
Speaker 3: it isn't, and then when he makes the smallest bit
Speaker 3: of progress as a person, he's immediately given trophy. Jennifer
Speaker 3: who like stands up for him kind of in a
Speaker 3: weird vacuum. I think it's like the only real justification
Speaker 3: is like they have a connection from the past and
Speaker 3: she's nice. There's also oh gosh, I want to take
Speaker 3: sure I mentioned that there's also just like a again
Speaker 3: like expectedly bad presentation of an unhoused person in this too, yes,
Speaker 3: where like I don't even want to get it, but
Speaker 3: it's like all of the stereotypes you would expect are present,
Speaker 3: and it's again a character that doesn't do anything except
Speaker 3: be there.
Speaker 2: So it's like they just either to be made fun of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, the same as you know, mister Chang and
Speaker 3: like yeah, they're just like oh yeah, these are like
Speaker 3: this is the joke we always make in the Adam
Speaker 3: Sandler movie, so we have to make it here too,
Speaker 3: and it's just like lazy and bad what else.
Speaker 2: They're similarly a very brief but noticeable transphobic joke in
Speaker 2: one of the songs in Songs song Form emblematic of
Speaker 2: the type of stuff that this movie thinks is funny.
Speaker 3: The protein powder hits on the victorious decrodrazy. You're just
Speaker 3: at the point you're like, all right, I'm just like
Speaker 3: I've I've stopped.
Speaker 2: Feeling I didn't even write that down because I had
Speaker 2: like checked out so hard at that point that I
Speaker 2: was like, I can't My brain is mush, I can't even.
Speaker 3: It's honestly like, yeah, listeners, let us know if we've
Speaker 3: forgotten anything, because I found it so hard to lock
Speaker 3: in on this movie, and I kept pausing it to be.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, we'll do an earlier point.
Speaker 2: Like It's one thing. If there is a character who
Speaker 2: hasn't properly dealt with grief, who is like turning to
Speaker 2: substance use to cope, and who like with the help
Speaker 2: of their community perhaps is able to like turn things
Speaker 2: around and deal with things in a healthier way. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of movies about that. Also. I was thinking
Speaker 2: about how there's like a whole subgenre of movies about
Speaker 2: a like down on his luck man, often someone who
Speaker 2: is like dealing with alcoholism, who is either by like
Speaker 2: community service, like is sentenced to community service, or something
Speaker 2: that he has to coach a like youth team. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are so many movies to this effect. I'm starting
Speaker 2: a lit boxed list, and so far I have. There's
Speaker 2: a movie, there's a Ben Affleck movie called The Way Back.
Speaker 2: I think Hoosiers has this premise. I want to say,
Speaker 2: is Mighty Ducks one of them? Yes, Mighty Ducks?
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely a.
Speaker 2: League of their own. Like it's the Tom Hanks character.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's half like TV pilots too. He's back.
Speaker 2: So if anyone has any other I know I'm missing
Speaker 2: so many. Oh there was actually a movie that I
Speaker 2: was an extra in called The Winning Season starring Sam
Speaker 2: Rockwell and Emma Roberts, that I think never got a
Speaker 2: theatrical release.
Speaker 4: But like that sounds like a mad lib.
Speaker 2: I'm basically the star of it as I walk through
Speaker 2: one cafeteria scene with no speaking role. But it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Sam Rockwell like gets community service and has to coach
Speaker 2: a girls basketball team. So like, there's just so many
Speaker 2: movies to this effect, a Crazy Nights being one of them. Anyway,
Speaker 2: if there's a movie where like it's a similar premise
Speaker 2: and the character like learns through like the love and
Speaker 2: companionship of the people around him and that's his arc
Speaker 2: and that he like treats people better because of it, fine, whatever,
Speaker 2: Like this is also the premise of many many holiday movies,
Speaker 2: but like this one is just so half baked in
Speaker 2: its execution, and the character starts out so irredeemable that
Speaker 2: you're just like, why do I care? Why am I
Speaker 2: watching this? It's horrible, it's so tropy. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: an absolute mess.
Speaker 5: I think that his character, like I was saying, a
Speaker 5: lot of his behavior, I mean, there's no coming back
Speaker 5: from some of the things he did, Like when you
Speaker 5: throw you know, when you throw an old man off
Speaker 5: a cliff inside a porner body and let him get
Speaker 5: covered in shit, like there's really I mean, there's no redemption.
Speaker 6: There's no redemption to be how No, And I think
Speaker 6: that even and I think that's probably why they drop
Speaker 6: the dead parents in at the end. They're like today
Speaker 6: and it.
Speaker 5: Just doesn't that doesn't make it better. And I also
Speaker 5: think that is redeeming himself by saying maybe white he
Speaker 5: should win the Patch Award, Like that's not.
Speaker 6: Is that redemption? Is that enough? Did he balance the
Speaker 6: scales of justice? I feel like he did not right.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this before, but male redemption arcs and
Speaker 2: stories like this is something we see all the time,
Speaker 2: where a man will be really awful to people and
Speaker 2: do things that are arguably irredeemable, but because he does
Speaker 2: one tiny little thing he does not even the bare minimum,
Speaker 2: He does less than the bare minimum, but still gets
Speaker 2: a redemption arc because culturally we just allow bad male
Speaker 2: behavior far more than we permit or tolerate any kind
Speaker 2: of bad behavior from marginalized genders.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, like the thresholds for a man's redemption is
Speaker 3: far lower, and the threshold for punishment of anyone who's
Speaker 3: not a man.
Speaker 4: Is also a far lower.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, we see women get punished all the
Speaker 3: time for existing and then like you know, characters like
Speaker 3: this do the most horrific shit possible and then are
Speaker 3: nice one time, and then it's like, no.
Speaker 4: You're right, you're right, here's your woman property after me too.
Speaker 5: There were all those apologies that came out, and I'm
Speaker 5: thinking in particular of I want to say Mario Batali
Speaker 5: and he was like, I'm sorry I sectually harassed people.
Speaker 6: Here is a cinnamon role recipe. Everything's good, And it was.
Speaker 2: Just like, what, Well, that's the thing. Yeah, Like, if
Speaker 2: you're a white man in society and you do something horrible,
Speaker 2: you have a shot or redemption.
Speaker 3: Caitlyn, I keep forgetting to bring this up. I think
Speaker 3: about it every couple of months. I want to do
Speaker 3: a Matreon theme that's like white male O Tour post
Speaker 3: Me Too movie, because there were so many of them
Speaker 3: that were like, I get it, guys, I get it,
Speaker 3: my bad and then it's like the only movie they'll
Speaker 3: ever make that centers a woman and it makes no sense. Listeners,
Speaker 3: please drop your your Like I've been meaning to make
Speaker 3: a letterbox list of like Maleo term my b post
Speaker 3: Me Too movies because some are okay, most of them
Speaker 3: are incoherent and forgettable, but I feel like there was
Speaker 3: they were like, oh, we gotta get Brad's in here
Speaker 3: and like and it.
Speaker 4: Like doesn't work. I actually think one of the better
Speaker 4: ones is The Last Duel. Oh, the Last Duel is
Speaker 4: a good example that men.
Speaker 3: For example, is a that's the Alex Garland post me
Speaker 3: to movies.
Speaker 4: There's just a lot of them.
Speaker 2: It's Bombshell, directed by j Rod.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's that might be bottom of the barrel for me.
Speaker 3: That movie is dog shit And at the time I
Speaker 3: was and they tried to kill me.
Speaker 4: At the time I got called by the newspaper.
Speaker 3: When I said the Bombshell was like dog shit and
Speaker 3: bad for women.
Speaker 4: They're like, what do you mean you hate you hate women, Like.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's exactly what that means there is that it.
Speaker 2: Does anyone have any other thoughts about Eight Crazy Nights?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I forget when we last
Speaker 3: had this conversation, but I do want to just sort
Speaker 3: of like take a second for us to acknowledge Adam
Speaker 3: Sandler's politics, which are actually quite relevant to this movie
Speaker 3: in spite of it not really being about Hanakah.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, So Adam Sandler has a history of
Speaker 2: having a very pro Israel stance. A couple examples of
Speaker 2: this seems like a lot of it happened in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: at least publicly, where he was reported as saying, quote,
Speaker 2: I will always stand with Israel. I can't tolerate people
Speaker 2: who criticize Israel without walking in their shoes. I hate
Speaker 2: the lies they spread and their lack of knowledge. I
Speaker 2: am proud to stand up for the Israelis unquote. And
Speaker 2: then also in that year, there was this whole thing
Speaker 2: where the frontman of Pink Floyd Roger Waters, you know,
Speaker 2: he's a proponent of the BDS movement, he said he
Speaker 2: would not play shows in Israel. Howard Stern then went
Speaker 2: on like a long rant about this on his show
Speaker 2: in October of twenty fifteen, and then Adam Sandler went
Speaker 2: on The Howard Stern Show and said something to the
Speaker 2: effect of like, I'm disgusted when they single out Israel.
Speaker 2: I'm very pro Israel. He goes on to say like
Speaker 2: he doesn't like it when musicians won't play concerts in Israel,
Speaker 2: and then he's like, I love what you had to
Speaker 2: say about it, Howard Stern, which was like some of
Speaker 2: the most vile, racist, horrible stuff. I don't even want
Speaker 2: to repeat it, but if anyone's interested in looking that
Speaker 2: up on their own time, and that's why I was curious, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is you know, nearly ten years ago. Has Adam
Speaker 2: Sandler's stance changed at all? And it seems like he
Speaker 2: hasn't said a whole lot about it in the past decade,
Speaker 2: aside from after October seventh of twenty twenty three, he
Speaker 2: did post on Instagram saying that I've been heartbroken by
Speaker 2: the horrendous attacks on Israel. I pray for peace ands
Speaker 2: the safety of innocent Israelis and Palestinians everywhere. So now
Speaker 2: he's sort of like both sides in it, which is
Speaker 2: it's a choice. It's a choice, and I don't think
Speaker 2: he said much about it publicly since.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's a different choice I think than he
Speaker 5: had been making in the past. And part of me
Speaker 5: wants to the optimistic part of me wants to see
Speaker 5: that as a sign of progress. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: going from supporting Howard Stern's vile statements that are incredibly
Speaker 5: racist to saying Palaestins are also people who deserve safety
Speaker 5: is like, you know, again, that is it's a step.
Speaker 4: We can call it.
Speaker 5: Let's just call a step. I don't think it needs
Speaker 5: to be complimented. I don't think it needs to be
Speaker 5: like celebrated. It's just like a hey, so we did
Speaker 5: do and that's cool, you know. And I think that
Speaker 5: like a lot of the support for Israel is generational.
Speaker 5: So Adam Sandler just want to note what generation is
Speaker 5: he and he's how old is he?
Speaker 4: Gen X?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so there's actually been a real shift in like
Speaker 5: millennials and gen z around Israel. And I think a
Speaker 5: lot of it is that there's social media and that
Speaker 5: you can really see the harm that is being done
Speaker 5: into Palestindian So I think that there's that component of
Speaker 5: it that younger people are just a little bit more
Speaker 5: in the know about that sort of thing and a
Speaker 5: little more involved in that way. So I'm not trying
Speaker 5: to give him a pass at all, but I am
Speaker 5: like contextualizing that, like older Jews tend to have stronger
Speaker 5: opinions and stronger support for Israel. Then sure, and again
Speaker 5: and painting with a very brudbrush, because everybody has their.
Speaker 2: Own thoughts, of course, of course, yeah, so I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: unsurprising that he has these various stances over the years.
Speaker 2: But it feels like what so much of Hollywood is doing,
Speaker 2: which is just like remaining mostly silent on the.
Speaker 4: Matter, right, which which is? Which is? Which is still
Speaker 4: saying something? Which is very.
Speaker 2: Point to say something, because when a genocide is happening,
Speaker 2: and when a decades long subjugation of an entire population
Speaker 2: of people is not being acknowledged, that is being complicit
Speaker 2: and that is very much part of the violence.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm a member of Jewish Voices for Peace, which
Speaker 5: is a nonprofit that's anti Sionist. I feel like that's
Speaker 5: important to say, and a big part of Jewish Voices
Speaker 5: for Peace is talking about how so many Jews have
Speaker 5: just like a deep understanding of what state sanctioned violence
Speaker 5: looks like and what a genocide looks like, because this
Speaker 5: is unfortunately, a big part of our history, from programs
Speaker 5: to blood libel claims and so much more all the way,
Speaker 5: including the Holocaust. And I mean Jews, I feel like,
Speaker 5: unfortunately are uniquely qualified to say this is a genocide.
Speaker 5: And that's where Jewis Voices for Peace really comes into plays,
Speaker 5: saying like we can see what we can call it
Speaker 5: for what it is, like, we see what's happening, and
Speaker 5: that is I think what is so heartbreaking to be
Speaker 5: a Jewish person watching this happen is that, like, I
Speaker 5: know what this is. I am familiar with the name.
Speaker 5: I'm familiar with what a genocide is, and to see
Speaker 5: it be perpetrated by people who call themselves Jewish like
Speaker 5: me is just it's it's deeply heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I have felt so like heartened bias
Speaker 3: seeing work like the La branch of Jewish Voices for
Speaker 3: Peace is wonderful.
Speaker 4: I've been going to a lot of events.
Speaker 3: Actually, one of our previous guests on the show, Sammerfera,
Speaker 3: recently did an event with writers against the war on
Speaker 3: Gaza out here, and like it does feel, and I
Speaker 3: just like I've been tremendously educated by groups like these,
Speaker 3: and particularly by Palestinian writers, and I am glad for
Speaker 3: like and younger generations that there has been such movement
Speaker 3: because we have, you know, flawed tools, but tools to
Speaker 3: be able to better understand that makes the propaganda less
Speaker 3: powerful kind of, I guess taking it back to Adam Sandler,
Speaker 3: I've the silence. I don't know, It's like, again, everyone
Speaker 3: is on an individual journey. Who knows how his kids feeled.
Speaker 3: I know that there's a lot of families that are
Speaker 3: fractured by younger generations being against Israel, you know, But
Speaker 3: silence is a business decision is something that I find
Speaker 3: particularly vile and unsettling because it's like, I don't not
Speaker 3: particular to Adam Sandler, but it's like there's you can't
Speaker 3: not have a feeling about it. So the silence is
Speaker 3: just it's it's a very pointed choice.
Speaker 4: So we don't know, but something.
Speaker 3: That I have seen just again of how this continues
Speaker 3: to affect. I mean, obviously we should be centering the
Speaker 3: Palestinian people first and foremost, but as sort of we
Speaker 3: see these issues continue to be discussed less and less
Speaker 3: in media. I was really surprised. There's a recent story
Speaker 3: where Gladiator Too just came out I'm going somewhere with this,
Speaker 3: and there was originally an Egyptian Palestinian actor, I hope
Speaker 3: I'm saying her name correctly, Mae Kalamawi, who was originally
Speaker 3: I believe Paul Mescal's love interest. It's Gladiator, so I'm
Speaker 3: sure it wasn't a great part, but like all of
Speaker 3: her scenes were shot and then her entire part was
Speaker 3: cut out of the movie in post production, which was
Speaker 3: taking place after she had been vocally supportive of Palestine
Speaker 3: because of course she's a Palestinian actor. And just the
Speaker 3: fact that this is still really deeply affecting, particularly Palestinian artists,
Speaker 3: and it is like becoming less and less and less
Speaker 3: discussed as time went on.
Speaker 4: I'm so like surprised. I guess at this point that
Speaker 4: that is like.
Speaker 3: Not a story that seems to have broken through in
Speaker 3: any meaningful way, in spite of the fact that like
Speaker 3: the movie is out and doing very well.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I don't know, it's.
Speaker 2: Just I mean, it's just indicative of medias of Hollywood's
Speaker 2: of society's apathy. Yeah, if not outward cruelty and violence
Speaker 2: toward Palestinians, and it's so disheartening, and that's why we
Speaker 2: must continue.
Speaker 3: That's why we must talk about eight Crazy Nights on
Speaker 3: the Betel cast.
Speaker 2: If it's a vehicle for us to then also talk
Speaker 2: about Palestinian liberation.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, we're also in the in the new year,
Speaker 3: going to be covering a few Palestinian films as well.
Speaker 3: Like we want to keep the conversation going. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we wanted to talk to you about it because I
Speaker 3: know you're you're involved with Jewish voices for peace and
Speaker 3: just in general are the best. I've learned so much
Speaker 3: from you. You've You've educated my whole family truly, Yeah about.
Speaker 4: What well my brother lived with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's trying to radicalize your brother.
Speaker 3: And then my dad visited you guys on the stoop
Speaker 3: during the pandemic and he learned things too.
Speaker 4: He was like communist. Alex Is added again.
Speaker 5: He called he called me the world's friendliest socialist.
Speaker 2: I think he.
Speaker 4: Gave me that feels like an attack on me.
Speaker 3: As opposed to my daughter, who's the world's bitchiest socialist.
Speaker 4: Because I just say in a really friendly way.
Speaker 6: I'm like, wouldn't that be neat if?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, anyway, thank you for talking with us
Speaker 2: about this, and yeah, does does anyone have anything else
Speaker 2: they want to talk about?
Speaker 3: This movie sucks ass, it's quite bad. And if you
Speaker 3: think it's good, considered, did you see it when you
Speaker 3: were ten? And if not, there's something seriously wrong with you.
Speaker 4: This is the time. Usually it's like, you love what
Speaker 4: you love.
Speaker 3: If you love this movie, you're sick and need you
Speaker 3: need help?
Speaker 5: Oh, we didn't talk about this, but very briefly did
Speaker 5: a woman talk to another woman ever in the course
Speaker 5: of the movie.
Speaker 6: Because I tried to keep track of that.
Speaker 5: I think that the closest it comes is when Eleanor
Speaker 5: tells them to kiss. But she's not just talking to Jennifer.
Speaker 5: She's also talking today, she's.
Speaker 3: Talking to the royal Yeah, right, the collective we.
Speaker 2: And the context is like, have a heterosexual kiss, please?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't think it passes the Bechdel test even remotely. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Jennifer doesn't have any friends. Also, like if she was
Speaker 2: like on a basketball team with Davey when they were kids,
Speaker 2: Like she's a basketball player, why doesn't like there could
Speaker 2: have easily been a thing where like she's playing basketball
Speaker 2: with her son or shooting hoops or whatever like, but
Speaker 2: the movie doesn't care at all about characterizing her except
Speaker 2: to have her be like an attractive person that Davy
Speaker 2: can win as a trophy at the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is too bad because they give her like
Speaker 3: some potentially interesting characteristics but have no interest in exploring
Speaker 3: any of them, any of her interiority, Like she is
Speaker 3: just a cardboard cutout at them all, and I will give.
Speaker 2: It to her that she's kind of the she's one
Speaker 2: of the few people who will call Davy out for
Speaker 2: his cruel awful behavior light he does it too, But
Speaker 2: that feels.
Speaker 3: Very like attempted feminism of the time, where it's like
Speaker 3: they say one thing and then they do another. Because
Speaker 3: she still ends up with them at the end, like
Speaker 3: there's there is no real consequence other than a delay
Speaker 3: of less than a week, it seems like.
Speaker 2: Well, also, there's a fine line between a character who
Speaker 2: we are not meant to like making reductive and problematic
Speaker 2: remarks to people and the movie framing that as being wrong,
Speaker 2: And there is some degree of that in this movie,
Speaker 2: because he does get called out quite a bit. But
Speaker 2: then the movie also relies on jokes that are like,
Speaker 2: for example, any time Whitey has a seizure or a
Speaker 2: lot of Whitey's behavior is like the movie making fun
Speaker 2: of him from a very ableist point of view. So
Speaker 2: even though the Davy character will be called out for
Speaker 2: being ablest, the movie then turns around and makes the
Speaker 2: same ableist jokes. So it's like, then, then why are
Speaker 2: you even calling him out? If this is how you
Speaker 2: feel about people with disabilities, or if this is how
Speaker 2: you feel about fat people or whatever. So it's just
Speaker 2: so disgusting. I'll give the movie zero nipple. I give
Speaker 2: the movie negative five nipples.
Speaker 3: Nice the end, I think I will do the same,
Speaker 3: and I have nothing else to say about it, like, honestly, yeah,
Speaker 3: what about.
Speaker 4: You, Alex?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think negative five feels fair. Can I give
Speaker 5: it like negative stars of David too? Maybe like half
Speaker 5: a half a star of David? Just because like, where
Speaker 5: is the Hanukah? I saw some menorahs in the background.
Speaker 5: They were ice sculptures. That's it, basically, So I'm gonna
Speaker 5: give it half a star of David.
Speaker 6: Hmm, That's all I got.
Speaker 3: It's brutal I also, I think, as we've talked through this,
Speaker 3: I think now that in an earlier draft of the
Speaker 3: movie that Whitey and Eleanor were Jewish, and that's why
Speaker 3: the ending doesn't make sense. But then they changed it.
Speaker 3: Why they changed it is anyone's guess, but I would
Speaker 3: guess that they added that because they say it's in
Speaker 3: that one line that we that unfortunately introduces Whitey where
Speaker 3: he they're like, Whitey, you're.
Speaker 4: Not even Jewish. He's like, I know. But so I
Speaker 4: don't know why they added that. They could have just
Speaker 4: taken it out.
Speaker 3: Anyways, I have nothing else to say.
Speaker 2: Well, Alex, thank you so much for joining us for
Speaker 2: this discussion.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Tell us more about your your art and your work
Speaker 2: and where people can find you and plug away.
Speaker 6: Excellent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, Zinnia Socialist Supply Company.
Speaker 5: I make radical art stickers, all sorts of stuff like that,
Speaker 5: lots of rent theme stickers as we discussed before, but
Speaker 5: don't worry, other musical theater stickers as well.
Speaker 4: Thank god.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know we got to keep the all.
Speaker 4: We need it all.
Speaker 6: So you can find me on there and yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: That you can get our stickers on our merch store.
Speaker 2: So but the best way to support our show is
Speaker 2: to go to patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast and
Speaker 2: subscribe to our Matreon where you get two bonus episodes
Speaker 2: every single month, plus access to the back catalog. Also,
Speaker 2: we have live shows coming up in La San Francisco
Speaker 2: and Portland, so if you go to link tree slash
Speaker 2: Bechtel Cast, you can grab tickets to those shows. We'd
Speaker 2: love to see you. They as well as some of
Speaker 2: them will be live streamed, so even if you don't
Speaker 2: live in those cities, the La Show and the Portland
Speaker 2: show will be live streamed, so you can still watch
Speaker 2: those if you grab tickets.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's Alex.
Speaker 3: We owe you a good movie, so come back with
Speaker 3: your favorite movie and we will cover that next.
Speaker 6: That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3: Come on board, all right, gang, and yeah, with on
Speaker 3: that note, let's.
Speaker 2: This movie has been a technical foul.
Speaker 4: Perfect Bye bye.
Speaker 2: The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin
Speaker 2: Derante and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichtermann, edited by
Speaker 2: Moe laboord Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
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