Speaker 1: On the bed cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy, Zef and Vast
Speaker 1: start changing it with the beck Del cast. Welcome, thank
Speaker 1: you for drumming. Hi Jamie, hiy. So let's start by
Speaker 1: saying again, thank you for coming to the live show.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the notebook. You have been given Bechtel
Speaker 1: cast bingo board cards, but we can't say boards, bingo boards,
Speaker 1: bingo boards. I keep bingo board. I had this whole
Speaker 1: plan where I was gonna keep saying bingo board moment.
Speaker 1: Oh just in now, but also in the future. I
Speaker 1: was like, I think we're gonna have all these bingo
Speaker 1: board moments when we're like together, we for sure will, right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you got bingo boards, so we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: for a while, and if we say anything, you've got
Speaker 1: your boards, You've got your writing utensils. The first person too,
Speaker 1: I guess the rules of Bengo is a diagonal, horizontal
Speaker 1: or vertical five in a row yellow Bechtel. That was
Speaker 1: Aristotle's idea, and now everyone can find it on your board.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean get great. We between Kalen and I,
Speaker 1: we have about twenty five thoughts that go on a
Speaker 1: loop and they're all on that Bengo board. So so
Speaker 1: the winner will get a prize. UM. Shout out to
Speaker 1: our fan at Danny Cavalier, who created the Spectel Bingo board,
Speaker 1: so thank you. It was utilizing it. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he was like, to prove the concept. I've really listened
Speaker 1: to twelve episodes and lost Bengo at all of them. So,
Speaker 1: but you guys are gonna win. Someone's gonna win anyway.
Speaker 1: But around up the plus, has everybody here seen you?
Speaker 1: Give it up? If you've seen the notebook? All right,
Speaker 1: we've got some horny people in the audience. I like it.
Speaker 1: Clap it up. If you have not seen the notebook,
Speaker 1: don't be ashamed. Okay, so we've got a few people. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: We've got a lot to talk about. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen the notebook, we will, I mean, Caitlin is extremely
Speaker 1: good at recapping things, so we will. We will guide
Speaker 1: you through it, and we're gonna have We're gonna have
Speaker 1: a killer time. I'm so excited for our guest too. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's figure out. Yeah, she's a comedian. You know her
Speaker 1: from our Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid episode all right,
Speaker 1: and she wrote for the upcoming Misfits and Monsters. It's
Speaker 1: going to be coming out on True TV. Give it
Speaker 1: up for Caitlin gil Okay again to Caitlin's in one stage.
Speaker 1: I don't know how similar our voices are, but I
Speaker 1: am Caitlin Gil yes, and I am Caitlin Drante. We
Speaker 1: forgot to introduce ourselves. Oh I'm little Jamie. I just
Speaker 1: show up to I'm Skatelin Guilt the roller skate and
Speaker 1: Grandma you'd like to fuck right love it? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I okay. First of all, I'm looking over your shoulder,
Speaker 1: Kitlin uh Durante, Oh god, okay, looking over your shoulder,
Speaker 1: Caitlin Durante, as I always am. And you've got how
Speaker 1: many pages of notes today? Seven? Seven? And I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I say that's a full note book. Good night, everybody,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, thank you. And that was a
Speaker 1: full discussion. Eleven point font what's you're saying at one
Speaker 1: point five one? Baby margins are slim? Caitlin's got a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts on this. I have exactly I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give you a bingo board moment whatever.
Speaker 1: First of all, a man just yelled do it to me.
Speaker 1: I'll gonna come up. No, Okay, I did. For all
Speaker 1: you bingo borders out there, I did watch this movie
Speaker 1: this morning, and I have exactly eight bullet points. I
Speaker 1: got out a bottle of water, but I peeled the
Speaker 1: label off so I knew which one was mine. That's
Speaker 1: how prepared I am. That's not true very much. Degrees
Speaker 1: of prepared a fast spectrum of preparedness. I watched the
Speaker 1: movie three times, so for the podcast, let's clarify you
Speaker 1: have seen it many times independently, only a couple before this. Okay,
Speaker 1: don't don't. That's freeing, that's feude, fude in fud. We're
Speaker 1: just giving them away and borne al from Milena. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will just get it out at the top. Alfam
Speaker 1: Billina in this movie could have played Rachel mcadam's twirly
Speaker 1: mustache Dad for sure. For sure, because the mother is
Speaker 1: a big character and we'll talk about her a lot,
Speaker 1: But twirly mustache Dad. Isn't it for like three seconds
Speaker 1: that he's always just like doing a twirly he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to a pool boy. I see, that's
Speaker 1: like all he does. Like there's one and where he
Speaker 1: talks to a poor man in another scene where he
Speaker 1: talks to the sandwich with like crayfish on, it doesn't
Speaker 1: pass the Backtel tests. If a guy with a twirly
Speaker 1: mustache talks to a sandwich. I suggest we revised the rules.
Speaker 1: What does that mustache smell like? I'm speaking of the
Speaker 1: Bechtel test. I wonder, just out of curiosity, is there
Speaker 1: anyone who has never listened to an episode of the
Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast and are therefore very confused by everything that's
Speaker 1: happened so far. Don't be afraid. They're nice. Oh we've
Speaker 1: got a little hand. Okay, what if you really had
Speaker 1: a little party. He's got a regular size hand? Thank you? Did?
Speaker 1: Did someone bring you hi? Okay? Well, welcome, welcome. So
Speaker 1: we will define the Bechtel Cast for you and you alone.
Speaker 1: The best is fluid, beautiful, gorgeous. And the test does
Speaker 1: have several interpretations. We use a very specific one. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Bechtel test applied to for our sake movies. It
Speaker 1: requires that there are two women who have names. Their
Speaker 1: characters have names. They speak to each other, and their
Speaker 1: conversation cannot be about a man. That is the test.
Speaker 1: The Bechtel cast, we that's are sort of jumping off point.
Speaker 1: We talk about the portrayal of women in movies, one
Speaker 1: movie at a time. I do think it's funny that
Speaker 1: sometimes people are like, oh, yeah, that's just the podcast
Speaker 1: where you decide, Like, do you think we take an
Speaker 1: hour deciding if one conversation takes tonight? I feel like
Speaker 1: we could though. We Yeah, because we started a pre debate.
Speaker 1: We did. We warmed up. Yeah. I asked whether or
Speaker 1: not you guys think the notebook passes the test, and
Speaker 1: we will, Well, well let's save it. Save it talking
Speaker 1: away a twist, I do. As soon as I started
Speaker 1: this segue, I was like, these two have a plan,
Speaker 1: and I am like trying to be at the hot
Speaker 1: shot guest all like, hey, guys, how about a guide
Speaker 1: our conversation a little bit. You have seven pages of
Speaker 1: eleven font note with slim. Margree basically brought a manifesto,
Speaker 1: and I'm here like, why don't I throw out a
Speaker 1: pitch for a topic. You've got this covered, We'll get there.
Speaker 1: I think that, Yeah, you're the UNI Bomber. I'm the
Speaker 1: UNI Bomber's friend. He didn't have any UNA. I know
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean one. I just wanted it to mean one.
Speaker 1: It means university Bomber because that's where he started. He
Speaker 1: was ruined in a university. Anyway, don't I get a
Speaker 1: university shout out to Kazynski. I have a Kazynski sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: I was robbed of a Bechtel Bingo board moment when
Speaker 1: I said speaking universities, take it home. To have a
Speaker 1: master's degree from Boston University? What in screenwriting? Where from
Speaker 1: Boston University? UNI bomber adjacent a master's degree? Indeed? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the notebook? Shall we the notebook? Yes, Caitlyn,
Speaker 1: you saw it recently. I had not seen the notebook,
Speaker 1: and I did for this podcast. So that tells you
Speaker 1: how deeply am willing sacrifice for the two of you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, right, Jamie, when did you see it?
Speaker 1: I saw this. I watched this movie with my grandma
Speaker 1: on T N T. Let's say in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: I think we watched it with commercials in Massachusetts and
Speaker 1: two thousand. I remember at that time, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is dumb. I don't love is. I was like
Speaker 1: a big hot topic shopper, and I didn't really believe
Speaker 1: in love if it wasn't directly related to Jack and Sally.
Speaker 1: So so I did see that it, didn't care for it,
Speaker 1: and didn't see it again until this morning, and I
Speaker 1: watched it twice and I cried so much. Did you watch?
Speaker 1: I got very I mean, and I've become a very
Speaker 1: emotional adult. No, but I did, and I saw it,
Speaker 1: and I was, I was. This was one of those
Speaker 1: episodes where I was fully going and expecting to unequivvocally hate.
Speaker 1: Have a problem with every element of this movie, and
Speaker 1: there's mistakes were certainly made. We will discuss them. But
Speaker 1: it did far better than I expect it because I
Speaker 1: forgot forgot almost everything. Yes, so I think that takes
Speaker 1: us to the recap and then we'll get into the discussion.
Speaker 1: So the notebook, if you have not seen it, um
Speaker 1: we open on two old people, Duke and unnamed old
Speaker 1: woman who lives in a nursing home. They call him
Speaker 1: Duke because they they're just like, what if it's not
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling parentheses old? Yeah, it's confusing. I guess that's
Speaker 1: his nickname. They really could have. We could have used
Speaker 1: a nickname reveal toward the end of the movie. They
Speaker 1: they didn't do that. It would have been handy after
Speaker 1: you know, you get you'll get there in the recap,
Speaker 1: but there would have been a time to give him
Speaker 1: a nickname. And frankly, I want to know why they
Speaker 1: call him Duke. There's a story that doesn't come out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. You don't just reading the paper one day,
Speaker 1: you're Duke. Now He's never He's never referred to as
Speaker 1: Duke in the earlier events of the movie. So something
Speaker 1: happens between ages like and seventy. He becomes Duke. Good
Speaker 1: life crisis, buys a boat, Call me Duke. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So our friend Duke visits this old woman and he
Speaker 1: reads her a story from the notebook a notebook. Oh
Speaker 1: I just I write, Yeah? Did you just want to
Speaker 1: hear out why the movie is called the Notebook? I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: It was a notebook as much as it was aleatherbound journal.
Speaker 1: But that's not a leatherbound journal in theater's Mealentine's Day.
Speaker 1: They just figured that out. Yea, yeah, happy. So, so
Speaker 1: Duke reads this man a story from the book, and
Speaker 1: the leather bounds up. The story is about Noah and Ali.
Speaker 1: They are a couple of young people who meet for
Speaker 1: the first time in ninety Noah is poor, he's a
Speaker 1: poor boy, and he works at the lumber yard. When
Speaker 1: do we want to introduce the fact that this is
Speaker 1: like Titanic? Basically, there's a lot of As you go
Speaker 1: through the recap, Oh god, these fucking bingo borders. I
Speaker 1: don't know why were we gave it to you? Sorry,
Speaker 1: like so gross of you to participate like we asked.
Speaker 1: But do as you listen through the recap, there's so
Speaker 1: many parallels that we will break down in detail. We
Speaker 1: sure will so. Ali in the meantime is a rich
Speaker 1: girl and her family is in town for the summer.
Speaker 1: Noah pursues Ali, and she is resistant at first, and
Speaker 1: we will don't forget to percent talk about it. He's
Speaker 1: got a little news. He's hat. He's wearing a hat.
Speaker 1: I love how I love like the interesting little choices
Speaker 1: that people will make to make an actor who's clearly
Speaker 1: like in his late twenties seem like a teenagers like
Speaker 1: I just put a little newsy tat on him, just
Speaker 1: like young make those pants bag year. That'll cut off
Speaker 1: about five years, slouch a little bit and go oh man.
Speaker 1: So he's pursuing her. She is not into it at first,
Speaker 1: but eventually he wins her over and then they start dating.
Speaker 1: But it's the summer before she's going to leave for college,
Speaker 1: so she's about to leave for college, and they break
Speaker 1: up because he's like, I don't see how we're gonna
Speaker 1: make it work. I'm too poor. And then a few
Speaker 1: years pass, Noah bidses like old plantation house and meanwhile
Speaker 1: also goes to World War two? Ever heard of it?
Speaker 1: Everyone's on their bingo boards. I guess world War two?
Speaker 1: One World War two references on the bingo board. He
Speaker 1: goes to war, his friend dies, he comes back, He
Speaker 1: goes back, and he fits. He buys this old plantation
Speaker 1: home that he was like, Ali and I are going
Speaker 1: to live here because we're gonna be together forever. Psych
Speaker 1: but that is what happens. Uh sorry, I just to
Speaker 1: all everything. So he he makes this house all nice,
Speaker 1: and then someone takes a picture of it in the
Speaker 1: paper and then Ali sees it, except that meanwhile she's
Speaker 1: found another man, James Marson. Yes, okay, the people some
Speaker 1: people would disagree. I think Gosling to Marsden upgrade, That's
Speaker 1: what I think. Yes, Yeah, James Marson is like cartoonishly handsome,
Speaker 1: which is why he plays a cartoon What an upgrade.
Speaker 1: Not only that actor is, but that character. Yeah, the characters,
Speaker 1: majorly James Marson. God, it's like, like, what does he
Speaker 1: do to his eyebrows or are they just like that?
Speaker 1: It's just crazy, It's amazing. One of the parallels to
Speaker 1: Titanic is that he has great eyebrows. Cal Hockley great eyelashes.
Speaker 1: All right, what if Billy Zane was in both of
Speaker 1: these movies? What if he was the connecting thread The
Speaker 1: Notebook a movie about a notebook. So she's used his
Speaker 1: picture in the paper, she faints because women be fainting,
Speaker 1: and then in her wedding dress, and she decides to
Speaker 1: go and see him, to pay him a visit because
Speaker 1: it's been seven years and their relationship broke off kind
Speaker 1: of abruptly. Oh and there's a whole thing where he
Speaker 1: wrote her a letter every single day for a year
Speaker 1: and her mom intercepted all those letters, so she never
Speaker 1: got them and she didn't know that he was writing
Speaker 1: to her, which honestly you lazy checked the mail once
Speaker 1: a year. Yeah, get here, get up earlier and yeah
Speaker 1: you see the mom getting the mail and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about two. She's fully dressed the same early. It's
Speaker 1: not like she has the mail guy delivering stuff on
Speaker 1: the low. He's delivering it regularly, right. So she approaches
Speaker 1: him and she's like, hey, how how are you? And
Speaker 1: he was like, I've been drunk for a long time.
Speaker 1: To be fair, he's lost everyone, his dad and for Brith. Basically,
Speaker 1: we'll get there. His name is Finn, but it's like
Speaker 1: his name's and he died in nineteen twelve. Why is
Speaker 1: he in this movie? So Ali and Noah reconnect, but
Speaker 1: she's like, oh do I stay with my James Marsin Like,
Speaker 1: just just so you know, Kitlen gill is fully I
Speaker 1: was making the finger inserted into the fist sex implication
Speaker 1: motion because they do it. That's when they do it.
Speaker 1: That's the part of the movie where they do it.
Speaker 1: It's true. If you're looking at the fast forward to
Speaker 1: a really boring milk toast love scene, that's you gotta
Speaker 1: go to about two thirds not even a nippy, not
Speaker 1: even a nippy. There was gonna be a nippy. Yes,
Speaker 1: they have sex, and she's like, wait a minute, Do
Speaker 1: I stay with Lawn my James marsden fiance or Lawn
Speaker 1: is James Marsin For the purpose of this podcast, we'll
Speaker 1: be calling him James Marsden obviously, or do I go
Speaker 1: back with Noah Ryan Gosling and honestly, because he makes
Speaker 1: her come and and James Marsden doesn't, well, I don't
Speaker 1: see it. Well, after they have sex, she's like, so
Speaker 1: that's what I've been missing. I think there's because she
Speaker 1: like how she is like losing her purity. I definitely
Speaker 1: thought she had an between her knees until she went
Speaker 1: back to see Noah. But that that's a very different interpretation.
Speaker 1: That does have different The last spring, I think that
Speaker 1: was her. I think she was having really boring sex. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that so and that I would buy that that
Speaker 1: she was basically telling James Marsden that she was a
Speaker 1: virgin and wanted to wait for a marriage. I don't
Speaker 1: even know even if that was like a little proper ship,
Speaker 1: like this is a dude who asked her parents first
Speaker 1: and all that, Like, I can't say for sure. It's
Speaker 1: just that was my interpretation, because there was there was
Speaker 1: nothing about that sex scene that implied in any way
Speaker 1: that she would come from what he was doing. I
Speaker 1: do not believe she was like that he had the
Speaker 1: focus or dexterity to accomplish. No, it's stunted, a little joking,
Speaker 1: and she's like, so that's what I've been missing out
Speaker 1: on on this whole time. And then he turns to
Speaker 1: her and I was like, yeah, it's all kind of
Speaker 1: love scene where someone strong is carrying someone tiny, which
Speaker 1: inevitably ends in the tiny person being pressed up against
Speaker 1: the wall, and in this case it was like a cabinet.
Speaker 1: There's nothing she's you cannot come with a handle sticking
Speaker 1: in your back and like, yeah, okay, cool, you dragged me,
Speaker 1: Like we're off the wall now and now we're just
Speaker 1: in your ghostly ass plantation trying to fuck in the
Speaker 1: same room we couldn't fucking when we were seventeen. What
Speaker 1: do you remember how romantic it was to go back
Speaker 1: to where you first tried to funk when you were seventeen.
Speaker 1: Drive your car to your parents driveway and just sitting
Speaker 1: it fumbling. Yeah, hard pass, hard pass. Yeah. I guess
Speaker 1: we should all go back to that oh one Ford
Speaker 1: focus that we were all in at one time. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I kind of misinterpreted what happened. Now I think
Speaker 1: that's open either way. We're still at the recap. So
Speaker 1: she is like, yeah, I'm gonna pick Noah because he's
Speaker 1: my first love. And she does confront her mom about
Speaker 1: the whole letter thing and her mom was like shrug
Speaker 1: and her mom. Her mom reveals that not only did
Speaker 1: she hide the letters, but she did it in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that she herself harbored a young summer love.
Speaker 1: That she still occasionally goes back to watch work in
Speaker 1: his rock quarry from her fucking convertible Plymouth with her
Speaker 1: like Gucci's on or whatever if that was a thing
Speaker 1: in seven just watching this dude like shovel Rocks, it
Speaker 1: looks at your daughter like I love her father, but
Speaker 1: I'd still that graveled guy. That was the question, because
Speaker 1: at the end of that scene he looks over, I'm like,
Speaker 1: does he recognize her? And it's like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: used to hook up. And now forty years later, she
Speaker 1: still comes and stares at me shovel Rocks. Sometime, in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering if I've got that good dick or not.
Speaker 1: Women be staring at me shoveling rocks four decades on.
Speaker 1: Wax mustache guy outside like shoveling the driveway, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know why she asked me to do this. She's
Speaker 1: so aroused. When I come back in, wax mustache guy
Speaker 1: comes like coins or like because he looks like an
Speaker 1: extra from the Greatest Showman, Like he fully looks like
Speaker 1: a magician who's gotten lost. It's just but she's she
Speaker 1: loves him. Yeah. So the mom takes Ali to the
Speaker 1: quarry or whatever, and it's like, I do once love
Speaker 1: to pour and it's basically the end of the year.
Speaker 1: And then she's like, make the right choice and then
Speaker 1: drops her daughter off at the fully restored plantation mansion
Speaker 1: the poor lives in so hard air quotes around poor
Speaker 1: at home listeners. Right, so, and then at some point
Speaker 1: in the story, it's revealed remember Duke and the old
Speaker 1: woman who is hearing the story. Turns out Duke is
Speaker 1: Noah and the old lady is Alip gasping. But the
Speaker 1: reason that he is recounting this story to her is
Speaker 1: that she has dementia and she's lost her memory. So
Speaker 1: he reads the story to her to help her remember
Speaker 1: their love for each other from the note book, it
Speaker 1: turns out from the leatherbound journal, and then sometimes it
Speaker 1: works and she remembers, and then they die together. I
Speaker 1: totally forgot that there's this like rapid fire fifteen minute
Speaker 1: ending where like she remembers, she sundowns, he has a
Speaker 1: heart attack. He goes to see her in the ward
Speaker 1: that she's now trapped in because he's not there to
Speaker 1: read to her. I guess he like shovels out and
Speaker 1: a nurse is like, sir, you're not allowed to walk around,
Speaker 1: and I'm definitely gonna leave to get coffee and let
Speaker 1: you wink winks. He goes in to see his ailing wife,
Speaker 1: who wakes up in full cognizance. Hi, honey, good to
Speaker 1: see you know. Uh, do you think our love could
Speaker 1: kill us together? He crawls into bed, and that poor
Speaker 1: nurse comes back to work in the morning, like I
Speaker 1: can't whistle into the microphone, but she is a whistling
Speaker 1: carrying a cup of coffee, Like I wonder where those
Speaker 1: old people who are in love are. Pushes open the door, corpses, blackout,
Speaker 1: credits roll. Sorry there are birds first, and then credits
Speaker 1: roll a lot of swans, a lot of bird for
Speaker 1: I thought they were geese, and I was like, are
Speaker 1: we to believe that writing consoling has been a goose
Speaker 1: that apparently we are. We missed it, we didn't. You
Speaker 1: can't cap the birds. But the movie opens on this lay.
Speaker 1: I love to notice in a movie, like when the
Speaker 1: editor's name pops up in the opening credits, like what
Speaker 1: scene was there? Because that's obviously a choice. The editor
Speaker 1: chooses that, or like director of photography, and all of
Speaker 1: them are just like glorious birds, like everyone who edited
Speaker 1: or had a like a saying how the picture looks?
Speaker 1: Opens to swan soaring. The movie goes through and they're
Speaker 1: at the beach and Ali's like, what has be incarnated
Speaker 1: as a bird? No, it's like that's weird, except fine,
Speaker 1: you're a bird. I'm a bird. And then when Ali
Speaker 1: comes back to see you now after after he's rebuilt
Speaker 1: the house, he's like, come with me. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: tell you where, but it's probably dangerous. I consistently endanger you.
Speaker 1: And then took her on a boat to see ducks.
Speaker 1: They look at ducks, at rains, then their land. It's like,
Speaker 1: let's die together. They die together. Camera pulls out of
Speaker 1: the nursing home, fucking birds, like, did we need this
Speaker 1: book end? I hope somebody. I hope a camera, like
Speaker 1: a b unit camera guy got shot on so hard.
Speaker 1: I hope that there is someone in the theater in
Speaker 1: two thousand four who just like wailed like and there's
Speaker 1: bird like that really made that tied the movie together
Speaker 1: for them. I will say I decided to view that
Speaker 1: from like a bitter on relence. There's no reason to
Speaker 1: It is beautifully shot. It's some gorgeous immagery way to go, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: be a bird. I guess that's a very free way
Speaker 1: you imagine your dead parents, which is what that movie
Speaker 1: makes you do at the end. So cool. Yeah great.
Speaker 1: Here's another question I had because there is a moment
Speaker 1: in the Old People's Story where all of their kids
Speaker 1: and grandkids show up, but Ali doesn't realize that because
Speaker 1: she has dementia, and so Duke it's just like dude,
Speaker 1: I like to think he joined a middle aged man's
Speaker 1: basketball week and he's like, I'm Duke. He got Duke's
Speaker 1: jersey from last year and he's Duke now. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: there's like a brief conversation after Ali takes her nap
Speaker 1: or she like she leaves the scene and all the
Speaker 1: kids are talking to to Noah and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: Mom doesn't remember us of that. I'm like, have you
Speaker 1: read this weird, long handwritten story about your parents? Fucking Like,
Speaker 1: do they know the notebook story? I feel like they
Speaker 1: all do. I feel like they all know. Like, hey,
Speaker 1: when we first tried to lose our virginity, it was confusing,
Speaker 1: but Tanya, years later, we raw dogg hard. I hope
Speaker 1: there's some explanation for why those kids were so fucked
Speaker 1: up and cold. They're seriously only in the movie to
Speaker 1: be like mom doesn't recognize me, and then immediately be
Speaker 1: like dead leave mom, she's boring. Will help like they don't,
Speaker 1: and then they just take off, never to be seen again.
Speaker 1: That was the part in the movie where I genuinely
Speaker 1: because it is for some reason intentionally ambiguous for a while,
Speaker 1: who the identity of the old man is. Once the
Speaker 1: kids were so like fuck her, leave her, I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe he's actually James Marston. And the kids know that
Speaker 1: their dad has no self respect and that she's been
Speaker 1: in love with Ryan Gosling the whole time, and they're like,
Speaker 1: you've blown your life on this lady. James Marsden has
Speaker 1: to go read the book about how she fell in
Speaker 1: love with Ryan Gosling to get her to remember it
Speaker 1: every single day. He has to be like, so you
Speaker 1: want to hear this story about how you don't love
Speaker 1: me again? Although you know I wouldn't put it past Marsden.
Speaker 1: He's a class act, alright, So onto. So in this
Speaker 1: page of Caitlin's notes, there's some highlighting, and there's different shades.
Speaker 1: There's a what would you call this a table? It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a lavender shaded box. The box. It's
Speaker 1: very so what I've done here. So the first thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about is the first fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of the movie and how problematic they are. I will
Speaker 1: quote my girlfriend here who watched this with me. I
Speaker 1: love her so much. Thank you. That was very kind
Speaker 1: of you. Get it up for a love, Kelly. Let's
Speaker 1: die in the same senior home. Gurnee someday hands told
Speaker 1: I get writing that notebook, girl. Uh, but she looked
Speaker 1: over and she was like, so get ready, because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this movie is responsible for all the problems
Speaker 1: that women have had with men for the past fourteen years,
Speaker 1: like this problematic setup. This fifteen minutes is why men
Speaker 1: are so confused about what we actually want and why
Speaker 1: women are letting dudes crawl onto their carnival rides. I
Speaker 1: guess right, yeah, walk us through it because it The
Speaker 1: first fifteen minutes is like, so we open in ninety
Speaker 1: there at a carnival. Noah sees Ali from a distance,
Speaker 1: she's riding bumper cars. He I'm pretty sure we witnessed
Speaker 1: her getting the CT that cost her later brain traumpa.
Speaker 1: This is that's foreshadowing as hard as those birds. Amazing.
Speaker 1: You can map this scene directly on Titanic as well,
Speaker 1: for when Jackson's rose for the first time on the
Speaker 1: Titanic deck at a distance and it's like, who is
Speaker 1: rich girl? And then then his friend is like, that
Speaker 1: is rich girl. She is rich and then he says me,
Speaker 1: must have her. That basically happens in this scene as West. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so he's leering at her. She gets out of her
Speaker 1: bumper car. He like runs up to her and says,
Speaker 1: do you want to dance? She responds no, why not
Speaker 1: because I don't want to? And then they go off. Jeez,
Speaker 1: so fucking ambiguous. I don't want to look could that
Speaker 1: possibly mean? So then they get on a ferris wheel,
Speaker 1: Ali and this other guy and no it jumps onto
Speaker 1: the seat that they are in and she screams, get
Speaker 1: off me, don't touch me, and then he himself. They're like,
Speaker 1: go away, and the ferris wheel operators like you can't
Speaker 1: sit there, and he stops the ferris wheel. So in
Speaker 1: order to resolve that situation, he instead he climbs out
Speaker 1: of the seat and hangs from the fort swheel guy
Speaker 1: Noah hangs from probably thirty to forty ft in the air.
Speaker 1: His news, he's caap, totally intact. The ferris wheel operator
Speaker 1: is just like, yes, fine, this is not a liability.
Speaker 1: I will let this happen. I definitely shouldn't have just
Speaker 1: waited for their car to come to the ground before
Speaker 1: I stopped the ride. I made a good plan by
Speaker 1: stopping it while he was suspended in mid air. Also,
Speaker 1: there's this other guy in the scene with Ali the
Speaker 1: whole time, who we understand to be like her friend,
Speaker 1: who is demonized by the movie hard as like when
Speaker 1: Noah first is like, dance with me and she's like no,
Speaker 1: and then the guy's like, hey, leave her alone, like
Speaker 1: the movie would have you believe, what an asshole. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: that's hurt, that's someone she knows. Yeah. So he's now
Speaker 1: hanging from a ferris wheel forty ft in the air,
Speaker 1: and he says, now, will you go out with me?
Speaker 1: She says what? No? No, no, no, and then his
Speaker 1: friends like, we're just you play all parts the friend
Speaker 1: who the movie thinks as an asshole. It's like, apel,
Speaker 1: she just told you. Noah says why not? Ali says
Speaker 1: I don't know because I don't want to, and then
Speaker 1: he lets go of one hand and now he's dank
Speaker 1: myself super stable, no red flex here, and then e
Speaker 1: from Entourage is like, just go out with him. That's Fabrizio, right, Finn. She,
Speaker 1: because he's threatening to kill himself, play kates him by
Speaker 1: being like, okay, fine, I'll go out with you and
Speaker 1: we can end the movie right here. So weird. This
Speaker 1: poor guy approached me and like and then it's like
Speaker 1: just fell from a ferres feel to his death. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Sarah Lawrence next year. And then he
Speaker 1: was all smug about it, and he was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't do me. Any favors, like, fine, I'll go out
Speaker 1: with you. And then she takes his pants off, which
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of that. We can
Speaker 1: get into it later. He's trying to get some sorty
Speaker 1: I mean that. I was like, at least she did
Speaker 1: something to give herself the upper hand. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I was like, did she take his dick out? In?
Speaker 1: Like she didn't? She didn't. Yeah, that whole scene is
Speaker 1: is a nightmare and is like totally textbook giving young
Speaker 1: men the wrong idea and giving young women the wrong
Speaker 1: idea of like, here's the beginning to a beautiful love story.
Speaker 1: A man would be the rest of your life. You're
Speaker 1: going to become a swan with this man, for sure, right,
Speaker 1: Like if a guy harasses you having never met you
Speaker 1: and he's wearing a horrendous hat, this is the man
Speaker 1: who will hold your hands as you die, Like, it's
Speaker 1: not good, right, Because then in the next scene he
Speaker 1: sees her walking down the street. He sprints up to
Speaker 1: her and he's like, Oh, I'm really sorry. That was
Speaker 1: stupid for me to crawl on a ferris wheel, but
Speaker 1: I had to do it. I was drawn to you.
Speaker 1: I thought he was about to say, like I was
Speaker 1: very drunk or high. He was like, I was drawn
Speaker 1: to I was like, so that's not an excuse at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was drunk, perfectly reasonable. I was drawn. Do you
Speaker 1: running running in the other direction? Leaving, fleeing? And then
Speaker 1: he goes, hey, how about that date? And she's like
Speaker 1: what date? And he's like the date you agree to
Speaker 1: and she says no, and he's like you did. You
Speaker 1: promised you swore it, and then she's like, I changed
Speaker 1: my mind. But she's like flirting with him now, and
Speaker 1: they're always flirting. Well, that's the thing is like, even
Speaker 1: in the middle of these super weird, stocky scenes, she starts,
Speaker 1: like her character starts to engage it just a little
Speaker 1: bit and just a little bit, until you, as a
Speaker 1: like thirteen year old watching this with your grandma, let's
Speaker 1: just say, are fully gaslighted and being like, oh yeah
Speaker 1: this if someone is horrible to you, that's a freaking yes.
Speaker 1: That's just because then the scene ends with he's like,
Speaker 1: what's it going to take to change your mind? And
Speaker 1: she's like, love that he'll figure something out. I guess,
Speaker 1: he splits he didn't. He. I actually thought they might
Speaker 1: have written these lines for her, and they switched sides
Speaker 1: that day because he winds up saying like, I'll be
Speaker 1: anything you want me to be. You want me to
Speaker 1: be smart, you want me to be strong, you want
Speaker 1: me what do you want? You want me to be
Speaker 1: a big guy. I'll be a big guy. And then
Speaker 1: she's like, you're dumb. I can be that like instantly,
Speaker 1: just like I will make myself literally anything you tell
Speaker 1: me to be. I am a slate for you to
Speaker 1: draw upon. I am but a canvas. You are the
Speaker 1: brush you like painting. Right Wait, I don't find that
Speaker 1: out until I take you to the middle of the
Speaker 1: street and make you lay down, And she does. Right,
Speaker 1: can I break down this date? Because they go on
Speaker 1: a date, they go to a movie with friends. They
Speaker 1: sit apart from each other. He leaps across seats to
Speaker 1: be next to her. Apparently she's fine with that. He
Speaker 1: stares at her, not the movie and just watches her
Speaker 1: eat popcorn. Again, totally fine. Who isn't comfortable with a
Speaker 1: man lustily staring at you as you like move buttered
Speaker 1: greasy fingers to your mouth. They leave the movie. They
Speaker 1: decided to walk together. Finn is like you and love
Speaker 1: now and they're like, oh maybe, and they walk into
Speaker 1: the street. He uh tells her, you don't know what
Speaker 1: you like, you don't know what you're doing. I'm condensing
Speaker 1: this conversation, but that is the thesis, like, what do
Speaker 1: you like to do for fun? Oh? What your parents
Speaker 1: tell you? That's stupid, You're stupid. And then it's like,
Speaker 1: you don't take any risks. Come here and take the
Speaker 1: risk I tell you to take, whether it's what you
Speaker 1: want to do or not. I'm gonna show you how
Speaker 1: to be free. And it's by stepping into this cage
Speaker 1: that I'm building for you us. One of the most
Speaker 1: romantic scenes in the movie, Oh yeah, precious, he lays
Speaker 1: down in the middle of the street to watch the
Speaker 1: lights change, like he used to do with his dad.
Speaker 1: I don't know, get a nickel, go to the goddamn movies.
Speaker 1: He gets her to lay down, and she thought. She
Speaker 1: loses herself in the moment. You know what I do
Speaker 1: for fun? You know what ive? I love painting? Hong
Speaker 1: Kong beep car coming doesn't slow down even a little
Speaker 1: bit as they laip out of the road. Oh so
Speaker 1: what it takes for you to realize that you like painting?
Speaker 1: Is to be seconds from death. Honey, loosen up. You're
Speaker 1: not doing good. But that whole first date is like,
Speaker 1: your ambitions are wrong. Do what I tell you to do.
Speaker 1: You don't know how to think for yourself, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you some options. Choose between the one I tell
Speaker 1: you was right. Also laid down in traffic. That's the day.
Speaker 1: Well in the movie, in the notebook, the next page
Speaker 1: it cuts back to the old people and it's like,
Speaker 1: and they were inseparable after that, Like that's what it
Speaker 1: took Jesus Christ. Well, let's backtrack a minute, because while
Speaker 1: this movie does not have a surprise kiss, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's one of the Bengo things. It does
Speaker 1: not have a surprise kiss. This movie, I would argue,
Speaker 1: has a surprise date because Noah's like, hey, Finn, arrange
Speaker 1: this thing so that I can hang out with Ali,
Speaker 1: and then they all go to the movies. It's like
Speaker 1: Finn and her friend Sarah and then Noah and Ali
Speaker 1: and he shows up and she's visibly uncomfortable. She's like,
Speaker 1: what's he doing here? She's not happy that he's there.
Speaker 1: But some point in the movie something switches. We do
Speaker 1: not understand why this happens, but suddenly she's okay with him,
Speaker 1: and then there's the traffic scene. Though I think that
Speaker 1: that's where we're supposed to be, Like Bond is like
Speaker 1: when they when this horrible thing happened, like yeah, but
Speaker 1: the fact that she agrees to go to that point
Speaker 1: with him because he's like, you want to go for
Speaker 1: a walk and she's like okay, sure, and it's like how,
Speaker 1: like what what? Unclear? Like their Nicholas Sparks is clearly
Speaker 1: a very stable man who is definitely kissed a girl before,
Speaker 1: and every wait a story he tells has an uncanny
Speaker 1: vale quality of like and the girl just comes around.
Speaker 1: He's he's wearing a hat. Wait, I know what it is.
Speaker 1: I know what it is. So she enters the movie
Speaker 1: being like, oh, I don't want to hang out with
Speaker 1: this guy. I'm sitting several people away from him. She
Speaker 1: watches that movie. The movie tricks her and it's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is how romance is supposed to be. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a man praying on you and not ever.
Speaker 1: But I'm tended now because that's what they were watching.
Speaker 1: I don't know right which I mean, it's sad to
Speaker 1: say any movie that came out ever, is pro predatory
Speaker 1: stalking if it was in theaters in I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it had a progressive discourse on intersectional feminism. And then
Speaker 1: I just laid out in traffic and wait, I prince
Speaker 1: to come. Yeah, so that's why I think up. But
Speaker 1: she saw the movie and then she got because movies
Speaker 1: are very influential, she was like, oh, I guess this
Speaker 1: is how romance is supposed to be. So it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very like predatory stalking start to this
Speaker 1: relationship in this movie. And that is so common in
Speaker 1: all romance movies and all rom coms specifically. And I
Speaker 1: want to make a point to not like, I think
Speaker 1: that people are so often shamed for enjoying rom comms
Speaker 1: and romantic movies in a way that like dudes are
Speaker 1: not shamed for enjoying like transformer style movies. And so
Speaker 1: it's like, if you love romantic movies, awesome. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of these movies that I like choked
Speaker 1: up at and thought was like extremely beautiful, But I
Speaker 1: didn't because I have no emotions. You're welcome, Okay, she's
Speaker 1: pandering to the bingo boards. But but but like the
Speaker 1: predatory stocking narrative is so prevalent in both of these
Speaker 1: genres to the point where it's like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can draw in an example in my own life of
Speaker 1: like a dude pursuing me pretty reluctantly when it's clear
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you've just seen this movie, Like that's
Speaker 1: weird when you spot quotes like in somebody's terms like
Speaker 1: terrifying pursuit of you were recognized, like are you getting
Speaker 1: a boom box right now and coming to my house right?
Speaker 1: I feel like that's where you got it. And the
Speaker 1: thing that bumps me out about it is that I
Speaker 1: do love romance. I love infatuation, and I totally by
Speaker 1: seeing someone being so taken they just have to talk
Speaker 1: to him, and like finding a love that you're so
Speaker 1: passionate about even those circumstances in your life are unsure,
Speaker 1: Like that's such a real and beautiful situation, Like falling
Speaker 1: in love young and figuring out a way to see
Speaker 1: it through your adulthood and your seniorhood. That's such a
Speaker 1: beautiful story. And it is terrible that these are the
Speaker 1: dominant narratives in them, Like there are absolutely ways to
Speaker 1: meet the love of your life at a carnival that
Speaker 1: aren't endangering a woman and then manipulating her in the
Speaker 1: dating you it could start with a candy apple, Like,
Speaker 1: let's just resource like, you've got a lot of excellent
Speaker 1: things available to shortage of setups, no shortage of props.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of stuff. Like the first thing
Speaker 1: is you can do with the carnival. His friend Finn
Speaker 1: wins a twiny toy at like one of those like
Speaker 1: hammer hit a thing real hard, like we know that
Speaker 1: strong boy. Yeah no, what goes on to build a fight,
Speaker 1: a war and build a house with his fucking hands,
Speaker 1: Like you had so many choices that weren't that. It's
Speaker 1: a bummer that more of these movies because I love
Speaker 1: that heart. I do like this movie. It's a good
Speaker 1: movie with great performances. I wish that's what they weren't perform, Like,
Speaker 1: I wish there was something better that they could have
Speaker 1: been doing. Right. A few chunks of this movie that
Speaker 1: play into those tropes in such a direct way, and
Speaker 1: then other chunks of this movie that are so beautiful
Speaker 1: that it's just like I wish that, Yeah, if this
Speaker 1: movie has started and been framed in a different way,
Speaker 1: that would have been like more realistic than what we see.
Speaker 1: It would have been like way easier to digest the
Speaker 1: rest of the movie totally. But instead, Yeah, the movie
Speaker 1: like frames is like very stocking. Predatory behavior is romantic.
Speaker 1: I did want to say we were talking about this
Speaker 1: in the car over, not to justify this setup at all,
Speaker 1: because it is bad and this movie came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand four and it feels right. But I have
Speaker 1: been thinking about this a lot every time I see
Speaker 1: like a periods that movie of like, how so many
Speaker 1: couples in this period of time their beginning of their
Speaker 1: love story is very predatory and creepy. I think that
Speaker 1: if a lot of like if anyone knows of like
Speaker 1: how their grandparents met, guaranteed terrifying. My grandparents, my paternal grandparents,
Speaker 1: and my dad told me this after both of them
Speaker 1: had died, and in the middle of telling me the
Speaker 1: story was like, oh, this is how my grandparents met.
Speaker 1: My grandmother fifteen years old walking her infant sister around
Speaker 1: in a carriage outside, brought to Massachusetts nineties beautiful. A
Speaker 1: man eight to ten years her senior, my future grandfather,
Speaker 1: spotsor from behind, cat calls her, says hey, that your baby.
Speaker 1: She turns to him says no. He says, cool, want
Speaker 1: to go on a date this weekend. They're married for
Speaker 1: five million years, just like imagine marrying the first man
Speaker 1: who cat called you, like I just I expected better off.
Speaker 1: Well in the notebook, we see like all the times
Speaker 1: that she either says a flat out no or I
Speaker 1: don't want to or don't touch me. She says it
Speaker 1: like eight times. And why Like movie basically like teaches
Speaker 1: men like, oh, just push past the no like emotional yeah,
Speaker 1: to like ignore the no because eventually she'll give in.
Speaker 1: Just wear her down and it's going to be romantic.
Speaker 1: Like that's the horrible, irresponsible message that so many fucking
Speaker 1: movies send. I never find the movie to Brownie points
Speaker 1: that I didn't expect one the scene where they try
Speaker 1: to do it and can't. I think they did that
Speaker 1: pretty well with them stripping in front of each other.
Speaker 1: But I'm old and apparently very frigid. Uh. But they
Speaker 1: so they try to get it down like in their
Speaker 1: Summer of Love when they're young. They try to boe
Speaker 1: and she gets nervous and very chat in the middle,
Speaker 1: and he I think there's like a physical expression of
Speaker 1: frustration of like, oh like, which is understandable. Uh, but
Speaker 1: he like rolls over and they just talk for a minute.
Speaker 1: He's not mad, he's not pouty. He doesn't ask her
Speaker 1: a bunch of shitty. He says, we don't have to
Speaker 1: do this if you don't want to. Yep. I think
Speaker 1: that's bonus points. They're a teenagers who have been rubbing
Speaker 1: on each other all summer. Like, this is a tough moment,
Speaker 1: heart conversation. I thought that that was well handled. Also,
Speaker 1: when you're in the movie Lawn, what a gentleman like
Speaker 1: la that she winds up ditching and in the scene
Speaker 1: in which she ditches him, she is expressing her emotions,
Speaker 1: perhaps clearly for almost the first time in the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: when she was saying no to Rye and don't touch me.
Speaker 1: But she's honest. She tells him that she's like, hey, Lan,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go on a trip. I have to figure
Speaker 1: some sh it out before we get married. That's pretty honest.
Speaker 1: Don't have to be specific yet you're not. You don't
Speaker 1: know what you're doing yet. Once Lon is like figuring
Speaker 1: it out, she comes to him and talks to him,
Speaker 1: is honest. Bonus point and his reaction is pretty tempered.
Speaker 1: I could kill him, like a punch him in the
Speaker 1: nose where I could leave you. But none of those
Speaker 1: are really good because they don't give me you like,
Speaker 1: oh you're like good job. Even before that, whenever she's saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I have I have to go take care of some things.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to seawood or whatever, then it's
Speaker 1: called world the tank. In this world, Rachel make out
Speaker 1: into love with a whale shape of water so fast
Speaker 1: Jamie started sells open and fishman to activated. My legs
Speaker 1: are double crossing a like wrapped around each other, trying
Speaker 1: not to have to change my clothes. The fish is
Speaker 1: so hot. Say please sit in a movie with a
Speaker 1: lot of negative like narratives that there were at least
Speaker 1: a couple of points where dudes and ladies can learned
Speaker 1: some good ship. Well and yeah, like the scene whenever
Speaker 1: she's just like I have to go take care of
Speaker 1: some things and he's like, oh, you're getting cold feet
Speaker 1: and she's like no, He's like, but that's totally normal,
Speaker 1: Like take as much time as you need, do whatever
Speaker 1: you have to do. Like he's very supportive. I feel
Speaker 1: like it would have been very easy for this movie
Speaker 1: to paint that character is like they're just lazy, easy whatever,
Speaker 1: like he's abusive, or he's mean, or he's distant or
Speaker 1: any number of things. And I think this is one
Speaker 1: of the because by and large the Titanic parallels, which
Speaker 1: we should break down, by and large, the ways that
Speaker 1: it's the same are like in a way that is
Speaker 1: Titanic gets the edge, but in this way, I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to present the guy she's going to
Speaker 1: marry as a good guy because it makes her choice
Speaker 1: harder and it makes it more interesting to watch, where
Speaker 1: like cal Billy Zane, no one's going to fall in
Speaker 1: love with this guy there, he's a mess, and and
Speaker 1: and so it makes it so clear, you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well then these two characters should be together, no question.
Speaker 1: But it is kind of like hard as an audience
Speaker 1: member to be like, oh, she's she's caught between a
Speaker 1: great guy and Ryan Goslin in a house, and and
Speaker 1: so it is like kind of more interesting to watch.
Speaker 1: I did want to get back to that virginity scene
Speaker 1: because I thought it was so I was so pleasantly
Speaker 1: surprised at how well done it was, where yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just see like positive communication between teenagers in a
Speaker 1: sexual situation, which is like, um, what there, but it's good.
Speaker 1: And then also another I didn't like climb on top
Speaker 1: of her and then hang off of her and then
Speaker 1: let go of one hand, like just do it? Come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: call back to their meeting. But it was it was good.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that they're basically like, they're like,
Speaker 1: let's lose our virginity in this haunted house. It's like
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna buy and make pretty for you, right,
Speaker 1: so we can sucking this less haunted house later hot place.
Speaker 1: Ten years of four plays, I made out with an
Speaker 1: abandoned farmhouse. Never promised me he'd painted white and put
Speaker 1: shutters on it. I should have held out for something
Speaker 1: better in middle school, you know, proms to making out
Speaker 1: in a farmhouse, though it was crazy, drink a lot
Speaker 1: of peach snaps in that weird building. Nine. Should we
Speaker 1: take this time to discuss be parallels between I think
Speaker 1: it would be a good time to point the fact
Speaker 1: that you have a dark gray box with a white
Speaker 1: font all bald some underlined. I don't know why you're
Speaker 1: shaming me for my amazing organizational skills there's this okay,
Speaker 1: so fan theory, and then we fact checked it right
Speaker 1: before we we came on stage. My original theory was
Speaker 1: that Nicholas Sparks wrote the book The Notebook right after
Speaker 1: seeing Titanic, because so much of it is like seen
Speaker 1: by scene, kind of the same thing in a lot
Speaker 1: of places. But then we found out because as we
Speaker 1: all know, Titanic came out in December, the Notebook the
Speaker 1: Book came out in six So new fan theory by
Speaker 1: Kaitlin Gill is that James Cameron stole the Notebook because
Speaker 1: he had to shoehorn a love story into his weird
Speaker 1: boat movie. And I I like that. I think I
Speaker 1: think that could be very I know that that's true,
Speaker 1: that they shoehned a love story. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of common knowledge about Titanic because you wind
Speaker 1: in a movie with fancy boats and things that went underwater.
Speaker 1: But they were like, no, that's not a movie, and
Speaker 1: he was like, love story and they were like, forty
Speaker 1: million dollars bring insane. That famous Hollywood line push a
Speaker 1: button a carbonite block just comes at rome. So there
Speaker 1: is so there is so much all right, starting with
Speaker 1: the framing device of an old person telling a story
Speaker 1: that takes place many decades earlier. Poor boy sees rich
Speaker 1: girl with reddish hair, Instantly enamored with her, they meet
Speaker 1: and vollmov very quickly. In Titanic it's a matter of
Speaker 1: a day, poor boy teaches rich girl how to not
Speaker 1: be such a stuffy rich girl. Poor boy like re
Speaker 1: educates rich girl because in in both of these movies,
Speaker 1: poor people are cute people. They play the spoons on
Speaker 1: their porch or under the deck of a boat, the
Speaker 1: Difficulties of the Port. I just want to give you
Speaker 1: a soundtrack for the Port conn Well, not exact dancing
Speaker 1: is in both movies. The news He's had dancing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: poor people be dancing in newsies hats all the time,
Speaker 1: never mind the fact that they're fucking dying like they're whatever.
Speaker 1: Then we've got rich girl has fiancee who is a
Speaker 1: rich boy. Rich girl's family disapproves of poor boy in
Speaker 1: that exact same scene where they have a meal with
Speaker 1: the poor boy and they're like for being poor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're like, so you're poor, and he's like, yeah, being
Speaker 1: poor is cute, and they're like, well, we don't think
Speaker 1: it's cute, and then the rich girls like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Let's go dance in a Newsy's hat,
Speaker 1: and that is how it. Both movies got a dinner
Speaker 1: scene in The Notebook starts with waxy mustache Da telling
Speaker 1: like a joke, being like, oh, we're all a bunch
Speaker 1: of millionaires and yet we live with several whores. He's
Speaker 1: a feminist icon. We can all create icon. James Marsden
Speaker 1: in this movie is a feminist icon. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: was um. He's a little creepy when he's all on
Speaker 1: the cement plaster and it's like like he meets at
Speaker 1: because she's a nurse in New York, and then he
Speaker 1: comes back from the world busted up. He's got a
Speaker 1: bruce face, so you don't always cute yet, and he's
Speaker 1: in a big claster thing so you don't always fit yet,
Speaker 1: and he just like she like half flifts him up
Speaker 1: and he's like getting into his bed pan presumably he's
Speaker 1: cut to blow his waist like, and she's like, you're
Speaker 1: a zombie. No, He's like, someday I won't be. And
Speaker 1: the next thing it's like comic fancy car, I'm better
Speaker 1: come here, and the twist is I'm James Marson, and
Speaker 1: she's like, Okay, sounds good. He's like, I'm James Marson. Okay,
Speaker 1: James Morrison is we have to say the owner of
Speaker 1: a cotton plantation in ninety so like there's other stuff
Speaker 1: going on with his view. We haven't even talked about
Speaker 1: the Bechdel test part, which also is problematic with the
Speaker 1: time period in the South. But we'll get there, Truman
Speaker 1: to get there, because I we do. Because this, yeah,
Speaker 1: just a couple more Titanic parallels, but I want to
Speaker 1: get through. Rich girl and poor boy drink beer together.
Speaker 1: Poor boys friend whose name begins with f dies tragically.
Speaker 1: This is my favorite, am This is my Finn dies
Speaker 1: in World War Two. Fabrize Ceo dies via Titanic smokestack.
Speaker 1: It's basically the same thing. But there's one key difference
Speaker 1: between the two movies that in the Notebook the old
Speaker 1: people die at the end, and in Titanic Rose simply
Speaker 1: falls asleep and has a dream. She can we just
Speaker 1: round of applause. Who thinks that she dies at the
Speaker 1: end of Titanic agrees that she falls asleep and has
Speaker 1: a dream. I'm actually I thought I was with you
Speaker 1: there in one person clapping in the back dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you everyone. Because the credits of Titanic, you just
Speaker 1: see Bill Paxton like holding up an old banket just
Speaker 1: off the top of the boat, sticks down with the jewel. Oh,
Speaker 1: rest in Paradise. One of the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up. And this isn't specifically about any female characters,
Speaker 1: but it is about the portrayal of men and masculinity
Speaker 1: because the relationship between Noah and his dad is actually
Speaker 1: like very positive and healthy and like a very nice
Speaker 1: portrayal of that father son relationship in him. It that
Speaker 1: we almost never see in movies, especially of a movie
Speaker 1: of this kind. It's a period piece, it takes place
Speaker 1: in the South, they're poor. A lot of movies I
Speaker 1: think would be like have an emotionally abusive or physically
Speaker 1: abusive father or he And that's also just like crazy
Speaker 1: writing that we see a lot is like the daddy
Speaker 1: is bad, mustache dad is Also he's got that kind
Speaker 1: of like charming evil of the South where like, you're
Speaker 1: positive he's racist and he's definitely misogynist, but he's also
Speaker 1: overtly sweet to everyone, and he's never like even unkind
Speaker 1: to his daughter, and you don't see a lot of him,
Speaker 1: but what that actor manages to portray as kind of
Speaker 1: that dad's thing of like I know what you're doing
Speaker 1: and I know you might get hurt, but like I
Speaker 1: love you. There's I know it's very small, but I
Speaker 1: kind of got like a little there's a little scene
Speaker 1: where he's just on the porch where and she gets home.
Speaker 1: My favorite take in the movie is Rachel McAdams being
Speaker 1: scared of her father, like she jumps. He doesn't realize
Speaker 1: he's there as she walks onto the porch and gives
Speaker 1: a great jump take that I want to loop in
Speaker 1: a gift that I would never stop watching. Um. But
Speaker 1: he's just sort of he's paternal in a way that
Speaker 1: isn't negative in a movie where it would have been
Speaker 1: really easy, Joan Allen is the more complex parmental figure
Speaker 1: for Allie. Her mom is definitely the one who is
Speaker 1: more protective for complex reasons too. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: not the first to express this sentiment, but I will
Speaker 1: give myself credit for novel phrasing. I'm convinced that there's
Speaker 1: a phone in Joan Allen's house that just rings every
Speaker 1: time Hollywood needs a distressed mother. It's just like a
Speaker 1: hotline directly to only her. And if she's not already
Speaker 1: on a set being a mom who's sad, she has
Speaker 1: to go to another set immediately. They're like als and
Speaker 1: Janny's busy. But that dad isn't so bad either, And
Speaker 1: there's good male friendships except for like trying to you know,
Speaker 1: set your dude up with a date with a girl
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to go on that date. Aside from
Speaker 1: that problematic, like, you know, it's not the worst toxic masculinity,
Speaker 1: it's like romance toxicity. It's somehow different for both men
Speaker 1: and women. Yeah, I mean aside for her because it's
Speaker 1: like a guy with a great dad, a girl with
Speaker 1: parents who don't and care about her, who seems to
Speaker 1: have a level head right, Like they're onto something here.
Speaker 1: Their kids would like there's no trauma in their background
Speaker 1: that makes them irresponsible with romance. There's something like whatever,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's cultural. There's just something about
Speaker 1: the circumstance of romance that makes them be totally evil
Speaker 1: Turts like you know what with a great dad who
Speaker 1: like reads some poetry, hanging from one arm on a
Speaker 1: ferris wheel, like there's a disconnect, Like you've read poems,
Speaker 1: you've read sonnets, you should have some idea of how
Speaker 1: to treat a lady. Where's your bouquet of Posey's, dude?
Speaker 1: Like how many of those? If you take a hike
Speaker 1: famous Walt Whitman poem about hanging off of Carnival and
Speaker 1: then she was mine. The romance is broken. Maybe not
Speaker 1: not families, I guess. I don't know. I did really
Speaker 1: like the father character and like actually was his father
Speaker 1: because yeah, because I forgot that he died and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that was that was so quick that
Speaker 1: seat of the funeral because they know his father passed
Speaker 1: us after they were store the house together, and he
Speaker 1: is uh. They expressed that by saying it out loud.
Speaker 1: And then there's like a two second flash, almost like
Speaker 1: a coke appearing in a movie theater trailer. To like
Speaker 1: get you thirsty, they just throw up a flash card
Speaker 1: of a funeral. It's like ten people in black suits
Speaker 1: facing a hole in the ground, and then it's gone.
Speaker 1: I just picture like the director being like, fun we
Speaker 1: need a scene in the funeral. Everybody get your suits
Speaker 1: and go outside. Staffers and suits. There's there is like,
Speaker 1: and that's the only thing you see of the funeral.
Speaker 1: It's like people leaving the funeral. It's not even them
Speaker 1: at It's like they're like, well that was sad. The
Speaker 1: way this movie YadA YadA, YadA, is everything that isn't
Speaker 1: their relationship. It is totally focused on the two of
Speaker 1: them and whether or not they're going to stay together
Speaker 1: other the World War two is just like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like we're going to ore, We're back. That's the
Speaker 1: whole thing. They're like, Fabrizio died. That's too bad. There
Speaker 1: there there was I. They do fast forward a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but I feel like they still care. They
Speaker 1: the characters still developed as if all of those things
Speaker 1: are happening. But because we're only talking about the relationship
Speaker 1: beats sometimes when we cut foward, we're like, whoa, why
Speaker 1: is Ryan gosl like an alcoholic? And then you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: he loves everyone he loved died, that's why. And now
Speaker 1: only has this this haunted plantation and a war widow
Speaker 1: to thing. Oh what we got to talk about the
Speaker 1: war widow? She was disservista. There's a pun there. Where
Speaker 1: are we? How's everyone doing on their bingo boards we've
Speaker 1: got Okay, okay, I feel like, um, there are no
Speaker 1: cats in this movie. Cats have eight nipples. This has
Speaker 1: been cat facts with Kaitlyn does that. I don't think
Speaker 1: there are any cats. There's a noticeable there's just ducks.
Speaker 1: I like the scene where um Martha shot who is
Speaker 1: Noah's I guess buddy, Like he clearly does not take
Speaker 1: her very seriously and it is not serious about her.
Speaker 1: This is this is like in the future, well not
Speaker 1: like well, like you know, it's after he's restored the house.
Speaker 1: He's in a big old plantation mansion. All dead dad's
Speaker 1: in the backyard. I guess wherever you put your old
Speaker 1: people when you're poor but have a mansion. Uh, all
Speaker 1: of Noah's hamsters and also his father. But yes, there's
Speaker 1: a lady a couple towns over who swings by for
Speaker 1: a little sad time boody call. It's just sad people boning.
Speaker 1: Who hasn't been that's yeah, we've all been there. But
Speaker 1: in the scene in which she and Ali meet, there's
Speaker 1: just an understanding of like, oh, you're the person that
Speaker 1: he used to love. Oh, you're the person that he
Speaker 1: currently sucks. Nice to come on in. I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're both very mature about another. Plandy point
Speaker 1: I forgot for this movie where two women don't call
Speaker 1: each other's side out like an episode of Cheaters. Says
Speaker 1: comes by like, oh, I've heard a lot about You've
Speaker 1: heard a lot about you too. Let's go in while
Speaker 1: it's daylight and you're gonna leave when it's nighttime. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: Conversations that happened inside. I guess, but I just think,
Speaker 1: like I think again, like lazy writing would have had
Speaker 1: them just like be very petty and jealous at each other.
Speaker 1: But realistically, I don't want to meet my fun buddies,
Speaker 1: love of their life. I will say if I'm sucking
Speaker 1: him because my husband died in the same war, this
Speaker 1: dude came back from there, that's a whole other movie.
Speaker 1: It's like the war Vett fucking the War Widow is
Speaker 1: a whole other kind of romance. Like she's not there
Speaker 1: to stay. What are you going to do? Live in
Speaker 1: the eyes of the memory that the war that your
Speaker 1: husband didn't come back. Yeah, tell me again what the
Speaker 1: war was, like, I don't think that's gonna ca The
Speaker 1: notebook does not care about the war, all the winter whatever.
Speaker 1: The opposite of a spring the summer romances. This is
Speaker 1: the dark, cold season's romance. The notebook does not care
Speaker 1: about World War two to the point where why did
Speaker 1: it even take place? As World War two was happening,
Speaker 1: because it comes in at almost no point. It's like
Speaker 1: glazed over as like, oh, I guess we'd better addressed
Speaker 1: the fact that World War two happens. Also, we got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to kill Fabrizio. It was just
Speaker 1: to kill Finn because she's gone by then. He just
Speaker 1: makes that choice, like after at least this is part
Speaker 1: of his mourning the loss of his love. After that
Speaker 1: year of letter writing, I don't know, war broke out.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll join the army, right, yeah, heaven Fabrizio
Speaker 1: or like working at some rocky yard for pores and
Speaker 1: and they're like everyone better join up, and they're like,
Speaker 1: thats good. How do we feel about Ali as a
Speaker 1: character herself? I generally I like how her character has
Speaker 1: developed over time because she starts out on top because
Speaker 1: she's repeatedly saying no, which is great. But then once
Speaker 1: she is involved in this relationship when she's younger, especially,
Speaker 1: she's very combative, but you see her kind of mellow
Speaker 1: out as she gets to the point where she like
Speaker 1: hits him. She looks physically abusive to Ryan Gosling to
Speaker 1: the point where there's one scene where they're breaking up
Speaker 1: when they're teenagers where she's hitting him over and over,
Speaker 1: and then there was this I had to rewind it
Speaker 1: because i was like, did he hit her back? But no,
Speaker 1: he hits He also starts hitting himself, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: why are we all hitting Ryan Gosling? This is very stressful,
Speaker 1: but she hits him a bunch of time. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is please stop hitting Ryan as he's
Speaker 1: a national treasure, like he's Canadian, so he's a Canadian.
Speaker 1: They're both from the same town. And Rachel McAdams is
Speaker 1: two years older than mine Gossling. I'd like to point
Speaker 1: that out because usually the Hollywood age gap has a
Speaker 1: male man being too many man how I would full
Speaker 1: of mail. Then the man being like years and years
Speaker 1: sometimes decades older than especially romance with a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old girl. Yeah, that guy could have been fifty and
Speaker 1: it would have been like Rachel, I mean strengthly speaking
Speaker 1: from a Rachel McAdams perspective the Rachel McAdams. She is
Speaker 1: I think awesome in this movie. This is also the
Speaker 1: same year that Mean Girls comes out, Like her two biggest,
Speaker 1: most different roles came out the same year. She's awesome.
Speaker 1: I love her. Okay, sorry, that's it, we can go home. No,
Speaker 1: Ali is a character I don't know. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a part of her that is a little bit like
Speaker 1: rich girl underwritten for me of just like she's never
Speaker 1: really struggled, and then just sort of why does everyone
Speaker 1: like her so much? Why are we all like dying
Speaker 1: to I don't know. She paints another thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh god, what a what a lazy like trope of
Speaker 1: just like, but she wants to be an artist. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's be She doesn't say I want to be an artist.
Speaker 1: She says, I paint for fun, right, there's no ambition
Speaker 1: beyond just like hanging out with a canvas. I guess,
Speaker 1: like it's really and someday I'd like to be in
Speaker 1: a gallery. I think. I don't know. I give him
Speaker 1: out for Christmas, Like it just seems like and that's
Speaker 1: like and that's used as sort of this weird leveraging
Speaker 1: point of why we should favor Ryan Gossling over James
Speaker 1: Marsden because Ryan Gosling leaves this series of literal arrows
Speaker 1: leading to a canvas and then she paints in the nude.
Speaker 1: Because he tells her how to have fun. He instructs
Speaker 1: her with physical arrows where to go to have a
Speaker 1: good time. This is your recreation. But and also it's
Speaker 1: like at that and it's like, imagine if someone was
Speaker 1: telling you, hey, you liked doing this ten years ago,
Speaker 1: you probably still love it. Somebody sets up a dance
Speaker 1: dance Revolution pat in a PlayStation two for me. I
Speaker 1: know you, but then but then we're we're supposed. Oh.
Speaker 1: James Morrison doesn't get it because one day she shows
Speaker 1: up at his office in the middle of the day
Speaker 1: and she's just like I used to like painting, and
Speaker 1: he does not tell her to get the funk out,
Speaker 1: which is when I should. Oh. Man, he's James Morson
Speaker 1: is a champ because she's so like and both of them,
Speaker 1: to their other romantic partners, but especially Ali, are very
Speaker 1: like emotionally careless towards them. James Marson has done nothing
Speaker 1: to deserve, like her going off for a week and
Speaker 1: cheating on him for a week and then coming back
Speaker 1: and being like I don't know, and then I just
Speaker 1: feel like someone different when I'm with him, right, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh, that's something that people who cheat
Speaker 1: on you, who can't be trusted would say. But it
Speaker 1: is a lifelong romance founded by teenagers on a summer
Speaker 1: fling and then infidelity, Like those are the two bread
Speaker 1: rock moments of their then lifelong relationship. So that's fight
Speaker 1: where he like, Noah's like, there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of work where you gonna working at it every day, Like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: you started this on some rocky ground, not at your job.
Speaker 1: And also we got a lot of trust to build, buddy.
Speaker 1: They have they have this exchange a couple different times
Speaker 1: where they're like, we fight all the time, that's okay,
Speaker 1: Like when their teenagers are like all like there was
Speaker 1: like a voice over like all they do is fight,
Speaker 1: cut to Rachel McAdams hitting Ryan gossling incessantly, but boy
Speaker 1: did they kiss nice? No, that's not what a good
Speaker 1: relationship is. And then they say it again ten years later,
Speaker 1: all we do is fight, That's fine. I would have
Speaker 1: loved to see her pop out of to menship at
Speaker 1: the end and spend the three minutes she had cognizant,
Speaker 1: Just like is the candles that you're putting out? These
Speaker 1: are my scandle stits, you idiot, just parading him. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to mentioned that, as with most mainstream Hollywood movies,
Speaker 1: this is a very heatero movie. This is a very
Speaker 1: white movie. All the character is fun. What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? At Lee's dad is totally gay. Hello sou
Speaker 1: southern dandy's married pretty ladies head to the South. Y'all
Speaker 1: tapped it all the time. That mustache daddy, he gay
Speaker 1: queer icon mustache daddy. For all you bingo borders out there,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's from the text of Joan Allen
Speaker 1: in the car, Like I could have married this poor
Speaker 1: viral at like beautiful man, but because I was in
Speaker 1: love with him, I married your gay father. We both
Speaker 1: needed a beard. But honey, you get it right, Like
Speaker 1: you saw the mustache. That's very implicit and not it
Speaker 1: is not explicit. I'm definitely deciding that that's the case.
Speaker 1: And and for a movie that takes place in the South,
Speaker 1: in race is not touched at all. Oh yes, it
Speaker 1: is a lot of strap. Actor of color got an
Speaker 1: extra day. Right, that's super nice. Yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of background characters, and there are the only people
Speaker 1: of color who have lines are the help. One of
Speaker 1: the lines is I would be happy to pack your bags.
Speaker 1: And that are the only person of color that I
Speaker 1: know is who actually had a name. Was it was
Speaker 1: the servant in the house in the forties. So that's
Speaker 1: the only person of color with a name. Because there
Speaker 1: are two nurses that we see in the forward scenes
Speaker 1: with the old people over and over, there two women
Speaker 1: of color who worked the nursing horme horm that sounds
Speaker 1: like he would seem worse than using home. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: it's infectious, table basset, the whole Todd Lake can's beach.
Speaker 1: But there, uh, we see and we see these two
Speaker 1: characters for a lot of the movie. We see them
Speaker 1: in almost every scene that the old people are in.
Speaker 1: Never find out their names, nothing, nothing, And it's just
Speaker 1: it's that's just like careless, stupid, right, that's why it
Speaker 1: doesn't us the Bechtel test. Let's get one last thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to say is that, um, we've got some
Speaker 1: other tests to address. I wanted to just say that, um,
Speaker 1: as it relates to the character the people of color. Oh,
Speaker 1: hand over, baby, someone's got Bacton. Give it up for
Speaker 1: our first Bengo winner. Congratulations Betel Bengoway. What else do
Speaker 1: we have to talk about? So I wanted to finish
Speaker 1: my point about so the people of color in the movie.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the Bechtel tests, also the DuVernay test,
Speaker 1: which requires that people of color in the movie can't
Speaker 1: just be supporting the white characters in the movie. They
Speaker 1: have to have their own realized lives and stories and
Speaker 1: back stories and everything like that. So this movie doesn't
Speaker 1: every person of color is literally seen serving a white person.
Speaker 1: There is not, although we do see apparently I uh,
Speaker 1: Noah and his father have several black friends, because there's
Speaker 1: that scene where they're all dancing together. I don't It's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't really don't know anything about them,
Speaker 1: and they're they don't have any lines. That's also just
Speaker 1: used to imply like those rich snobs, they they buy
Speaker 1: the black people, we play spoons with them. There's like,
Speaker 1: we would be remiss to not say that. Several times
Speaker 1: in the movie, James Marsden owns a cotton plantation, and
Speaker 1: you know, and everyone's like Oh cool, he's successful and
Speaker 1: it's like he's racist. There's no way around it. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Bechtel test. By the Bechtel cast version,
Speaker 1: it technically does, but you had a compelling argent. So
Speaker 1: I think that because we were talking about this before,
Speaker 1: and I think it. I think you had a really
Speaker 1: good point that it does come to a matter of
Speaker 1: subtext where our version of the Bechtel test requires two
Speaker 1: female identifying characters with names talking about something other than
Speaker 1: a man for two lines of dialect. But that gets
Speaker 1: and so so basically it's safe to say get tricky
Speaker 1: if you're at the point where it's that bar, if
Speaker 1: you're squeezing something under it, it doesn't fit. Okay, I
Speaker 1: because of the scene we were talking about. The subtext
Speaker 1: is so this scene that you could even use to
Speaker 1: suggest between Ali and her mom right after Ali and
Speaker 1: no Uh are out late, trying to fuck doesn't work out.
Speaker 1: So then her parents freak out because she's out late,
Speaker 1: and then they say we're leaving tomorrow and you're going
Speaker 1: to college. Great normal reaction. We're vacating the mansion because
Speaker 1: you got fingered one time. Very chill. So we see
Speaker 1: the scene with her and her mom the next day,
Speaker 1: and they do have several lines. I do have the
Speaker 1: actual lines dies it's in your novella. It's basically something
Speaker 1: to the effective. She's seen like cars getting packed up
Speaker 1: and she was like, what's going on? And her mom's like,
Speaker 1: we're leaving, and she's like, we're leaving now. She's like, yes,
Speaker 1: sit down and have some breakfast. Then Willow, I think
Speaker 1: it is we'll pack up your things. So that's where
Speaker 1: the argument comes in, is like they are not explicitly
Speaker 1: saying we're leaving now because you got fingered in a
Speaker 1: haunted house last night by a guy. But I do
Speaker 1: I do agree that that is the subtext of like,
Speaker 1: that's what's driving this whole scene, is the you know,
Speaker 1: I would even like, I don't know if it's subtext
Speaker 1: because to me, Alie's response it's like of like I'm
Speaker 1: not going anywhere, is like not because I like the
Speaker 1: seaside like I'm not leaving, like have you smelled this
Speaker 1: coastal air? It's because she wants she didn't get the
Speaker 1: sled down the pole. She wants to get another shot.
Speaker 1: But it The only other scenes with women who talk
Speaker 1: to each other are in the retirement home and it
Speaker 1: is uh, none of those nurses have names. None of
Speaker 1: those scenes are more than two lines anyway, with Joan Allen,
Speaker 1: Rachel the Cabs and Gina rollings in it. And you
Speaker 1: can't find a conversation for any of those actors that
Speaker 1: those actors could read the back of a Cheerios box,
Speaker 1: and I would right, well, okay, so I have a
Speaker 1: few more scenes that could pass, or they have women characters.
Speaker 1: And Ali talks to her friend Sarah a couple of
Speaker 1: different times, and one of the scenes, Sarah is telling
Speaker 1: Ali about Noah does not pass. God. That seems so
Speaker 1: annoying too, because Ali is like, isn't it so weird
Speaker 1: how he just threw him off at me? And she's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's like later on, whenever Noah shows up to the
Speaker 1: surprise date that he has orchestrated, Sarah goes, you remember Noah,
Speaker 1: don't you? And she's like, it doesn't pass. They talk
Speaker 1: about I mean a scene later on when they're like
Speaker 1: playing in a body of water birds. No bird birds
Speaker 1: are not present here. Um, there's there's a rope that
Speaker 1: they're all swinging from. Oh God, that scene is terrible.
Speaker 1: Sarah is like get in the water and she's like,
Speaker 1: I can't. Maybe passes. That is honestly the closest one yet,
Speaker 1: but I forgot about that scene Ryan Gosling, She's afraid
Speaker 1: to do muff the rope swing and Ryan Castling is
Speaker 1: just on the side like do it, go for it,
Speaker 1: get do it, go for it, baby, just try it, honey,
Speaker 1: you left. Get out the fucking water, I mean, drump baby.
Speaker 1: Other scenes where women interactor. Other scenes where women interact.
Speaker 1: Um Ali is chatting with her college friends about James Marsden.
Speaker 1: We do not know any other names, and they're talking
Speaker 1: about a man. Ali is in a group of women
Speaker 1: at her wedding dress fitting their squealing about the dress
Speaker 1: and the wedding but we do not know any of
Speaker 1: their names out and she's on the top half of
Speaker 1: the newspaper and then it flops down in port elis
Speaker 1: under the fold with the picture of poor man renovates
Speaker 1: haunted house. It's like rich girl getting married, poor boy
Speaker 1: does something. Question. Another another contender for passing the Bacte
Speaker 1: test is when old Ali meets all of her female relatives.
Speaker 1: Obviously they know she is, but she doesn't know who
Speaker 1: they are. It's all his like, those are the kids
Speaker 1: that they made in their relationship. I don't think like
Speaker 1: what's your name again counts when they're the literal if
Speaker 1: it was a character like someone else's family. IBE. That's
Speaker 1: me stretching, but like reintroducing yourself to your kids when
Speaker 1: you have dementia and your husband is right there, it's
Speaker 1: still kind of about your relationship in that case. And
Speaker 1: also I like, I think that God and I hate
Speaker 1: that we have to get so into the weeds of
Speaker 1: like what is a past? But the fact that even
Speaker 1: if the daughters in that scene do have names, which
Speaker 1: they believe they do, it some they don't. She doesn't
Speaker 1: know their names, so it can't pass if at least
Speaker 1: the women talking don't even know each other's name. So
Speaker 1: that I was like, that can't I think that's very
Speaker 1: ablest of you. But those kids only come in to
Speaker 1: be like dad, stop taking care of Mom, so they
Speaker 1: also only talk about their relationship. And also what hateful children?
Speaker 1: So we hate don't you hate how dad loves mom?
Speaker 1: I know they're terrible. I will say I'll give this
Speaker 1: movie credit as a film. It is very focused on
Speaker 1: telling one story that although we've criticized it's negative aspects,
Speaker 1: is very beautiful. It's a love story over the overtime,
Speaker 1: and it's it is just about the relationship of these
Speaker 1: two people. And in the movie, no one talks about
Speaker 1: anything else. So it's a weird movie to apply the
Speaker 1: test too, because no one has a conversation about anything else.
Speaker 1: It's not like two women in the movie would have
Speaker 1: an opportunity to be like, did you admire this silverspoon?
Speaker 1: It's detail is quite exceptional. They talk about nothing except
Speaker 1: for whether Ali and now we're gonna sunk forever. That
Speaker 1: is the sole focus of the film, an accomplishment in storytelling.
Speaker 1: It is a very focused, well crafted story with not
Speaker 1: a lot of fat to trim. Again, that scene with
Speaker 1: Martha after Ali shows up and war Widow comes cruising
Speaker 1: in knock knockdock, I brought you a pie. Wink winkly
Speaker 1: opens the door and it's like, come on in, let's chat.
Speaker 1: And again the next scene is like it's dark out.
Speaker 1: They just YadA, YadA through all that conversation. They don't
Speaker 1: talk about anything that isn't just the two of them.
Speaker 1: With that scene pass the backtel test, though he's right
Speaker 1: there and the context of their conversation is like, we
Speaker 1: both have kissed the same man. Sisters, let's take bread
Speaker 1: or whatever. Oh wait, oh, the bingo board has reminded
Speaker 1: me of something I wanted to talk that this movie. Originally,
Speaker 1: the Steve Bushemy test is basically just a framework that
Speaker 1: makes it so that because Ryan Gosling is the one,
Speaker 1: you know, Ryan Gosling, notorious Hollywood hunk, is the one
Speaker 1: displaying all the predatory behavior at the beginning of this movie,
Speaker 1: we're conditioned by movies to think that because he's so hot,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So the idea being if we sub out
Speaker 1: Gosling with Bushemy or just someone not considered Hollywood hot,
Speaker 1: it immediately registers as not okay. Where if bush Emmy
Speaker 1: shows up in the rain saying I wrote you every
Speaker 1: day for a year, you call the cops and it's like,
Speaker 1: not a question. So that's that's what that's what that is. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's alarmingly true in this film. Yeah, if you subot
Speaker 1: it flies because they're like both hotties, anyone who's not
Speaker 1: right if you and if you sub ut Rachel McAdams
Speaker 1: with someone who's not alarmingly hot and she's just hitting
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling. You're like, no, this is but I feel like,
Speaker 1: especially when this movie came out, probably that behavior on
Speaker 1: her part barely registered. It didn't register for me at all.
Speaker 1: I forgot that she was hitting him all the time
Speaker 1: they were teenagers. You know, I just accurred to me,
Speaker 1: what's kind of beautiful about being unconventionally attractive is that
Speaker 1: even if you're rich. Report if you fell in love
Speaker 1: at seventeen as an if you're a bush Emmy and
Speaker 1: a lady bush Emmy and you eat each other, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: deeply love and you come back to your mother and
Speaker 1: father like tooth jutting out over your lower lip. No,
Speaker 1: his hair visible, whatever your problems are, Like, daddy, I
Speaker 1: found love like you don't. Yeah, congratulations, we don't give
Speaker 1: a ship. If he works at the lumber yard. This
Speaker 1: is the best. He's a rock hormp on his back.
Speaker 1: He's just got like you know, he's bald but wrong.
Speaker 1: It's just on the sides and not on the top
Speaker 1: like you know, just like whatever, I'm so glad you
Speaker 1: love our beaver tooth daughter. Congratulations. I'm gonna buy you
Speaker 1: that mansion and restore with your huge hands. I do
Speaker 1: want to pitch to our certainly all industry audience. UH
Speaker 1: My new film Lady bush Emmy, directed by Credit coming
Speaker 1: of It's a companion to my famous uh Tony Dance,
Speaker 1: A biopic Tony also coming out in the coming year,
Speaker 1: so check out. I'm gonna take these movies led by
Speaker 1: women and replace them by man. I do want to
Speaker 1: see Tony Dance land a triple axel, Tony spot haircut.
Speaker 1: Everything else is the same, but it's Tony Dancing. Shall
Speaker 1: we rate the movie on our nipple scale? So we
Speaker 1: have a nipple scale, will rewrite the movie based on
Speaker 1: its portrayal of women a zero to five nipples. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be tricky for me because, aside from the
Speaker 1: first fifteen minutes, which are very problematic and very irresponsible
Speaker 1: in the way that they depict like a budding romance,
Speaker 1: the rest of the movie I don't think does that
Speaker 1: badly in depicting a romance. I think I want to
Speaker 1: give it two and a half nipples. I mean between
Speaker 1: like the like noticeable lack of toxic masculinity. Again, aside
Speaker 1: from the first fifteen minutes in the movie, the way
Speaker 1: that you depict Noah in his dad relationship and other
Speaker 1: male characters. I mean, why am I giving credit to them?
Speaker 1: This is not what this podcast is about. I guess
Speaker 1: Ali is a character I appreciate. She's generally pretty well developed.
Speaker 1: I think, um, she doesn't fall into a lot of
Speaker 1: tropes that you see in romantic stories. Some of them, yes,
Speaker 1: but overall, I think she's like pretty dynamic. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's one of two main characters. She's helping to drive
Speaker 1: the story, she's making choices, she has agency. But you know,
Speaker 1: the movie is not perfect for all the reasons. So
Speaker 1: we've already discussed. So Yeah, I'm gonna two and a
Speaker 1: half nipples. One of them goes to Ryan Gosling's nipple
Speaker 1: that is exposed in the movie. That is the only
Speaker 1: nipp we get right. One of them I'm going to
Speaker 1: give to Fabrizio from Titanic. Uh. And the half nipple
Speaker 1: I'll give to gay Mustache Daddy's mustache sick. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: give a mustache. That's actually very forward thinking of you.
Speaker 1: I would accept a glass of milk from the mustache netball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll give it two and a half as well, for
Speaker 1: all the reasons you stated, I think that the other
Speaker 1: female characters we see in this movie, even the ones
Speaker 1: that are better developed, like Ali's mom and like Martha,
Speaker 1: are really I mean, and again it's kind of like
Speaker 1: what you're saying, Caitlin Gil that it is because it's
Speaker 1: just such a focused story that there's not really a
Speaker 1: b plot at all. The b plot is the main
Speaker 1: characters but older like Finn, who's there to set him
Speaker 1: up on a date once, and then Diana war Let's
Speaker 1: the entire that was his entire orbit to pretty embarrassing
Speaker 1: set people up on a date one time later killed
Speaker 1: in World War two. Uh. But like, I think that
Speaker 1: there's little things this movie and the story could have
Speaker 1: done more to better services female characters, such as not
Speaker 1: having the best friend only say like you shouldn't go
Speaker 1: with that guy who is threatening to kill himself if
Speaker 1: you don't go on a date with him. The mom beat,
Speaker 1: even though I didn't totally dislike that scene where it's like,
Speaker 1: at least we get a scene understanding where the mom's
Speaker 1: coming from and she's not just totally villainized, but the
Speaker 1: fact that it was just like I sucked a poor
Speaker 1: person ones to a big mistake, but what a great
Speaker 1: dick like there that this is weird and I also
Speaker 1: really don't like how the women of color in this
Speaker 1: movie are treated where there, I mean, every woman of
Speaker 1: color in this film is in a service position and
Speaker 1: only one of them is given a name, and that
Speaker 1: is annoying, especially considering that this movie takes place in
Speaker 1: the South, and it's just like it's just this weird,
Speaker 1: bizarre blind spot where it's okay, like it's like this
Speaker 1: movie doesn't have to be about race, but it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, give your characters a name, give them something
Speaker 1: to do, give them, you know. So for for that reason,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it two and a half and give
Speaker 1: one nipple to Alley because I do like her. She
Speaker 1: goes on a you know journey. She for a rich girl.
Speaker 1: I don't want to killer, I guess. So that's good,
Speaker 1: that's honestly, that's true. That is a solid point. One
Speaker 1: nipple to Ali. I'll give one nipple to James Marsden,
Speaker 1: who like feminist icon James Marsden in this movie, and
Speaker 1: then I will give a half nipple to the wonderful
Speaker 1: nurse who's constantly restraining old dementia Ali, whose name we
Speaker 1: never get to learn, even though she has to discover
Speaker 1: them dead not fair anyways. So that's those are who
Speaker 1: I give my nipples to come with you. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it to because I am frustrated by something I
Speaker 1: didn't see but felt implied, and you had such great
Speaker 1: actresses there would I like to feel this totally in
Speaker 1: the movie even two in two thousand four. So much
Speaker 1: of Ali's choice in the film is between you know,
Speaker 1: her heart and her common sense, sort of like, she
Speaker 1: has this uncertain but passionate relationship with this guy who
Speaker 1: built a house for her and a very steady relationship
Speaker 1: with a guy who's literally named lon uh Like. By
Speaker 1: the time she has to make that choice, I as
Speaker 1: a film watcher, only feel the tension of those two relationships,
Speaker 1: when in reality that character is in a much like
Speaker 1: a larger context of her family and then the context
Speaker 1: of the stupid world we live in, where a lot
Speaker 1: of her choices aren't about her harder her head. It
Speaker 1: is circumstance that, like Allie's parents do have a complicated
Speaker 1: choice to make. Realistically, they're not crazy for thinking their
Speaker 1: daughters shouldn't be in this impulsive romance, both for circumstance
Speaker 1: and other reasons, and her mom, especially like waiting until
Speaker 1: that scene where mom takes daughter to go look at
Speaker 1: the dude she used to fuck, to reveal like the
Speaker 1: complexities of the heart there These are women trapped by
Speaker 1: choices that aren't made by the men that they're in
Speaker 1: relationships with. Like everyone is kind of stuck here, Gay Mustache,
Speaker 1: Daddie campy out he asked to marry Joan Allen, Like
Speaker 1: everybody's got a circumstance binding them. And I wish when
Speaker 1: it got to Alie's choice between these two boys that
Speaker 1: she gets to funk forever or whatever. I wish I
Speaker 1: didn't feel any of that weight. There's no greater social
Speaker 1: Like you know, he yells at her, like forget what
Speaker 1: other people want? What do you want? And we're supposed
Speaker 1: to think that's romantic, But like, like I guess the
Speaker 1: answer comes into a book about feminism in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Like what she wants is to not have her only
Speaker 1: choices be which guy to marry. Like what's not on
Speaker 1: the table is like going to college, not to find
Speaker 1: a husband, but like maybe learn something you want to do.
Speaker 1: What's not on the table is like wearing pants, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many things she doesn't get to do.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure she majors in English too, because the
Speaker 1: one scene we see her in college, the professor is
Speaker 1: talking about Walt Whitman. Hey, do you think Nicholas Sparks
Speaker 1: likes Walt Whitman. I wonder. I feel like Nicholas Sparks
Speaker 1: and like Mitch Album have this time share together where
Speaker 1: they just like jerk off for like a week every year,
Speaker 1: and at the end they're like, it's a book. We
Speaker 1: did it, the five notebook. The five notebooks, you mean,
Speaker 1: and so those are I I wish that that there
Speaker 1: had been a little bit more influence to that greater choice,
Speaker 1: because it better understands Mom's choice to hide the letters
Speaker 1: and not marry the hunk. Like for such a closed story,
Speaker 1: I wish a little bit more of the world had
Speaker 1: pushed its way in, because I think that's that would
Speaker 1: have made this character of Adlie more real, and Rachel
Speaker 1: McAdams is certainly capable of giving you a character with
Speaker 1: more sales. Joan Allen, there was just something missing from
Speaker 1: the women because all their choices were only about men,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's implied. Yeah, they don't get to
Speaker 1: make choices about anything else. There's no pain from that.
Speaker 1: There's no weight from that in the film, and are
Speaker 1: literally birds flying away like so it's hard. I those
Speaker 1: are That's why I can't give it that extra half nipple.
Speaker 1: And that's why even though I love love and I
Speaker 1: think it's beautiful that you want to be in love forever,
Speaker 1: and I think love is hard work and relationships are tough.
Speaker 1: And it takes two devoted people who are passionate not
Speaker 1: just about each other but about their relationship to actually
Speaker 1: die in a hospital gurney together like that's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I said, don't think it's crazy for women and
Speaker 1: men to want that. I'm not inherent like monomies whatever.
Speaker 1: But if it's what you want, do it. Do it
Speaker 1: for real? Do it like that, be birds together. But
Speaker 1: there's so much more that goes into that choice, especially
Speaker 1: in those circumstances for that character. So two nipples and
Speaker 1: they go on either side of the ferris wheel, beautiful
Speaker 1: symmetry and and to the but I think that that
Speaker 1: is also possibly because it is a love story written
Speaker 1: by a man, that those that those points aren't addressed.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, And the point of view character is
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling. He's pretty much the protagonist this old time
Speaker 1: I was arguing. I was like, Oh, is Ryan Gosling
Speaker 1: man splaining Rachel McAdams's own life story to her the
Speaker 1: whole movie? But I thought it was her. Nope, bug
Speaker 1: the story that we talked about, where you just mastered
Speaker 1: her handwriting and wrote the whole thing, and then you
Speaker 1: were an idiot. You yelled at me, But I stuck
Speaker 1: with you anyway, and forgetful old late it's like the
Speaker 1: end of that love Rachel mcado. There's the same where
Speaker 1: he's looking through a photo album of like their life together,
Speaker 1: and it's pictures of young James Garner instead of Ryan
Speaker 1: Gosling and Rachel mc adams. It's nothing like Rachel McAdams.
Speaker 1: I'm like, like Michael Jackson, black and white fade out
Speaker 1: of their faces, becoming one, like this is another thing
Speaker 1: stolen from Titanic. The Titanic at least tries to photos
Speaker 1: shop this real, real hack job in the notebook of
Speaker 1: two people we've never seen before, and then he's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is nice, Like who are these people? I do
Speaker 1: feel like that's fan service for all the grandma's watching
Speaker 1: it with a thirteen year old on t and t
Speaker 1: you've been the whole time, like they've had to watch
Speaker 1: James Garner. They're sex symbol there, Ryan Gosling in an
Speaker 1: old folks home taking his button down off to be
Speaker 1: in the doctor and this wife beater and he's got
Speaker 1: this like, oh, at one point, I'll make this very quickly.
Speaker 1: I'm glad old people got to be sexy in this movie.
Speaker 1: Sexy old people. I think sex when year old is passionate,
Speaker 1: beautiful and so great. And I hate it when movies
Speaker 1: act like it's gross. And I thought that was really
Speaker 1: sweetly handled. She wakes up from her dementially dance for
Speaker 1: a minute. It's fair romantic. I like giving little people
Speaker 1: credit that they the rock hard because they boned down.
Speaker 1: Where the places where vinegregal diseases are spreading the fastest
Speaker 1: is nursing homes. Yeah, my grandma is was the horny
Speaker 1: cheefe rests ground, horny ist American woman I've ever met
Speaker 1: in my life. Hey, thanks for coming to our show.
Speaker 1: Thank you Caitlyn gil for being our guest. Thank you
Speaker 1: Caitlin and Jamie for having me. Thanks for coming, and
Speaker 1: good sail.