Speaker 1: Hi listeners. Caitlin here with a quick content warning for
Speaker 1: this episode. Sexual assault and date rape are brought up
Speaker 1: in a few different parts of the episode. It's not
Speaker 1: an extensive part of the movie nor our discussion, but
Speaker 1: again it is discussed throughout the episode, so we wanted
Speaker 1: listeners to be aware of that. Enjoyed the episode. On
Speaker 1: the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start
Speaker 1: changing it with the bec Del cast. Hey, Caitlin, Yes, Jamie,
Speaker 1: what do you think the devil looks like? Well, the
Speaker 1: movie would have you think, or at least the character
Speaker 1: of Aaron in this movie would have you think that
Speaker 1: it looks like William Hurt. But I think it looks
Speaker 1: like Albert Brooks's character. Oh and he's the devil. I
Speaker 1: think that I the devil looks like who in this movie?
Speaker 1: Who does the devil most look like? This is actually
Speaker 1: a challenging question. Is it is it Jack Nicholson? Could
Speaker 1: it be him? He's refused to give up any of
Speaker 1: his salary to save any anyone else's job. It was
Speaker 1: all a big joke to him. Oh my gosh, that part.
Speaker 1: I was just like, I can't wait to talk about it. Also, honestly,
Speaker 1: he looks like how I would imagine the Devil would
Speaker 1: look like, just like eyebrow Wise, do you remember the
Speaker 1: movie which is of Eastwick where he was play the Devil? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do. And there's like some production crossover between which
Speaker 1: is of Eastwick and this movie. It all comes together.
Speaker 1: Did Jack Nicholson confirmed the Devil? It's hot here first
Speaker 1: that he's played the devil. It would have been a
Speaker 1: real waste of waste of his vibe if he did not.
Speaker 1: At one point, I hate to see a vibe wasted.
Speaker 1: So that's right. Yeah, well that was my little opening.
Speaker 1: Although I loved it the Bectel Cast, I was gonna
Speaker 1: do do you want to hear what I would have done? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if I were opening it, I would have said
Speaker 1: breaking news do do do do, and then like done
Speaker 1: some like news jingle, and then I would have been like,
Speaker 1: this is the Bechtel Cast. I like it. I like it,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I think we have two strong options. I
Speaker 1: think everyone should sound off in the comments of what
Speaker 1: they the stronger opening was, and that will be that
Speaker 1: will be helpful for us moving forward. We love feedback,
Speaker 1: especially with unsolicited Oh good grief. Okay, well, this is
Speaker 1: breaking news. This is the Bechdel Cast, and this is
Speaker 1: our podcast in which we examine movies through an intersectional
Speaker 1: feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping
Speaker 1: off point to initiate a larger conversation. The Bechdel Test
Speaker 1: being a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test, in which are standard
Speaker 1: these days. Two people of a marginalized gender have to
Speaker 1: have names, they have to speak to each other about
Speaker 1: something other than a man, and ideally it is a
Speaker 1: conversation that is narratively meaningful, right, and it's and it
Speaker 1: really cannot ultimately be about Albert Brooks, which is where
Speaker 1: I struggled in this one. Uh, there were somewhere I'm
Speaker 1: like oh, and then it's like, oh, but that was
Speaker 1: about William Hurt or Albert Brooks, wasn't it? You know?
Speaker 1: That was What was the name of this new station?
Speaker 1: What was the name of the fictional w Oh who cares?
Speaker 1: W who cares? Recovering broadcast news today we are I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk about this movie. There's so
Speaker 1: much to talk about. There's a lot to unpack, and
Speaker 1: we have an amazing guest. We certainly do. He's a writer.
Speaker 1: He's a host of the new Polygon podcast Galaxy Brains.
Speaker 1: It's Daveilling. Hello, Welcome. What a pleasure it is to
Speaker 1: be here today to talk about a movie that is
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of all time. But I also
Speaker 1: do believe that it is in fact not going to
Speaker 1: pass the test. We'll go through it later. But when
Speaker 1: I racked my brain thinking about this movie that I love,
Speaker 1: that I've seen many times that I own a blue ray,
Speaker 1: I think no, definitely. First of all, huge flex with
Speaker 1: the blue ray when someone drops a blue ray physical
Speaker 1: media baby. Um yeah, Well, I I think I I
Speaker 1: have um a compulsion towards owning movies that I love
Speaker 1: because they do disappear often, like they leave streaming services,
Speaker 1: um for years at a time, sometimes more than that,
Speaker 1: you know, decades. So I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: when I want to see my favorite movies, I I
Speaker 1: have them. For instance, the movie Crossroads, which we always
Speaker 1: get requests for, but it's literally not not accessible to us.
Speaker 1: It is unavailable. We've even set up episodes for this
Speaker 1: and then been like, wait a second, this movie has
Speaker 1: been disappeared. Why is that? I don't know, erased from
Speaker 1: human existence? You can buy it on DVD, but the
Speaker 1: DVD is also like sixty dollars. What is going on
Speaker 1: with that? There's another movie that I think you two
Speaker 1: should do at some point, um, Catherine Bigelow's movie Strange Days,
Speaker 1: which was really on my mind quite a bit last
Speaker 1: summer during during all of the protests and uprisings over
Speaker 1: the George Floyd killing, because as that movie was about,
Speaker 1: you know, our relationship with law enforcement and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, and it's nowhere. You can't buy it on
Speaker 1: on physical media. You have to you have to find,
Speaker 1: you know, a used copy on eBay or something. I
Speaker 1: just happen to have one from college because I was
Speaker 1: a physical media collector when it mattered back then. But
Speaker 1: otherwise just unavailable. And it's a shame because that's a
Speaker 1: movie that people need to be watching right now. That
Speaker 1: is so I yeah, I've I've never seen it and
Speaker 1: now I have no options. You can borrow my pan
Speaker 1: and scan DVD if anyone has copies of either of
Speaker 1: those movies lying around. We do have a po box.
Speaker 1: I like Crossroads was sorry to go basket to cross Road.
Speaker 1: Cross Roads was written by Shonda Rhymes, Like, there's just
Speaker 1: so much going on for cross Roads. I completely forget
Speaker 1: what happens in the movie. Maybe it's really fucked up
Speaker 1: and they don't want us to see it. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what happens right. I haven't seen it. It feels
Speaker 1: like I never will because of it being so inaccessible.
Speaker 1: We might be fucked uh So, Dave, you said that
Speaker 1: Broadcast News is one of your favorite movies of all time.
Speaker 1: What's your history? Boy? I must have seen it for
Speaker 1: the first time in film school because that was when
Speaker 1: I first started getting into Albert Brooks movies. Um. You know, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you are a young film enthusiast at a certain age,
Speaker 1: you are and you are like me Jewish, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish on my mother's side, you are pushed into
Speaker 1: a filmography of someone who we don't have to talk
Speaker 1: about that he's out there and he made a lot
Speaker 1: of movies for people of that ilk and Albert Brooks
Speaker 1: is was never given that same amount of credibility. With
Speaker 1: the film community. He was never a box office success,
Speaker 1: he's never won an Academy Award, but his movies are
Speaker 1: so much more rewarding than other people playing in this
Speaker 1: kind of nebushy jewish millie you because in every film
Speaker 1: that he is in, at least the ones where he's
Speaker 1: written and directed them or co written them and directed them. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this one he did not do either, but it's
Speaker 1: still fit into that sort of vibe. He's the villain,
Speaker 1: he's the bad guy, and I was glad that we
Speaker 1: got to do this because it does This movie and
Speaker 1: in his work in general, really underlines certain toxic qualities
Speaker 1: about the masculine id and the masculine id of people
Speaker 1: who believe themselves to be smarter or better or more
Speaker 1: self aware. In reality, they're the least self aware people
Speaker 1: that there that there is. But he's kind of the
Speaker 1: fake ally in this movie because he says to Jane, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm your best friend, I'm your only friend.
Speaker 1: We have this special connection. He's gaslighting her the entire movie.
Speaker 1: He is manipulating her the entire movie, and he's created
Speaker 1: this codependent relationship with this person. Uh that is damaging
Speaker 1: to her to an extreme degree, and I think it's
Speaker 1: really brave of him to have been willing to play
Speaker 1: that character in all of these films, and to write
Speaker 1: and direct movies where he's playing this unlikable character. I
Speaker 1: think the only movie that he is in that he
Speaker 1: wrote or co wrote and directed where he's not unlikable
Speaker 1: is Defending Your Life. But the rest of him, he's
Speaker 1: kind of like he's the reason why everything is going wrong.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really laudable, wonderful thing. And
Speaker 1: uh so that's one of the reasons why I love
Speaker 1: this movie is it it shines light on certain things
Speaker 1: that we don't like to talk about about masculinity. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: He didn't write or direct this movie, but a different
Speaker 1: Brooks did, Yeah, James L. Brooks, which I was like,
Speaker 1: are they related? And I don't think they are. They're not.
Speaker 1: James L. Brooks though, was in another film that Albert
Speaker 1: Brooks is and one of Albert Brooks's directorial efforts, Modern Romance.
Speaker 1: He plays a film director. Um I don't believe he's
Speaker 1: playing himself, but he does play a film director in
Speaker 1: that movie. Um. So they were kind of friends from
Speaker 1: the comedy community of that time. A kind of alternative
Speaker 1: comedy scene of that moment um. And I believe that
Speaker 1: he was also in um he was in terms of
Speaker 1: endearment before this too, Like, yeah, there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: fun overlap. It seems like James L. Brooks really, I
Speaker 1: mean I I sort of knew this, but you know,
Speaker 1: in researching the production of this movie, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: he has like a crew that he works with over
Speaker 1: the course of like what like forty years at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and co creator of the Simpsons, And that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Albert Brooks was in so many Simpsons
Speaker 1: episodes in the early part of the run of that show. Wow, Jamie,
Speaker 1: what's your relationship in history with this movie? I liked
Speaker 1: this movie. I think I also first saw it in college.
Speaker 1: I remember liking it then, and I didn't revisit it
Speaker 1: for a long time after, and then I don't I
Speaker 1: think it was. It wasn't until a friend of the cast,
Speaker 1: Karina Longworth, put out an amazing season of her show
Speaker 1: You must remember this last year about Polly Platt, who
Speaker 1: was really integral in this movie, worked with James L.
Speaker 1: Brooks a lot and produced this movie. And when I
Speaker 1: was listening to that series. I think, like last summer
Speaker 1: or fall, I was watching kind of her filmography as
Speaker 1: I was listening, and so I revisited this movie and
Speaker 1: was like pretty blown away by it and was really
Speaker 1: excited to revisit it for this show. I think that
Speaker 1: this would have been kind of my introduction to most
Speaker 1: of these actors. When I saw these I wasn't like
Speaker 1: a huge film buff in high school or anything. I
Speaker 1: was very very normal in my tastes. I take no
Speaker 1: shame in it, but it but it was true. Like
Speaker 1: to before I saw this movie, I was like, like,
Speaker 1: literally most of these people were Pixar characters to me,
Speaker 1: because Albert Brooks is the dad and finding Nemo and
Speaker 1: Holly Hunter is Mr is incredible. So long story short,
Speaker 1: I've I've never worked in broadcast news, but I have
Speaker 1: worked in news news, and it was really interesting to
Speaker 1: watch after having some experience in that space, and I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to talk about it. What about you, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I too, saw this movie for the first time in
Speaker 1: film school and push on. Yet they really want film
Speaker 1: students to watch broadcast news. I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the only movies they want to show that's like entertaining.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, this is funny. We're gonna show this
Speaker 1: funny movie instead of you know, yeah, maybe that's why
Speaker 1: I remembered because I was there were so many movies
Speaker 1: in film school, like in the film program I was in,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I wow, boy did I hate that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was competent, but what a drag? I
Speaker 1: am going to sleep through this? Yeah, there would always
Speaker 1: be an intermission like Okay, we're gonna pause for a
Speaker 1: little bit so you guys can go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I would just go back to my
Speaker 1: door to sleep. I don't want to watch The Blue
Speaker 1: Angel by Max Offals. I want to sleep. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: about to be the villain the Albert Brooks of this
Speaker 1: episode and say that I wasn't as enamored with this
Speaker 1: movie and I find it to be longer than it
Speaker 1: needs to be. Well, that that's absolutely true. I will
Speaker 1: not pretend that that it's not true. Why is this
Speaker 1: movie two hours and thirteen minutes. It could be a
Speaker 1: breezy minutes. I'm not sure why it's as long as
Speaker 1: it is, and therefore I find it a boring movie
Speaker 1: punctuated by some really fun scenes. It's not really my
Speaker 1: type of movie, although I you know, it is obviously
Speaker 1: competently made, incompetently written and directed, and the performances are
Speaker 1: really good. But it's just I don't know, it's not
Speaker 1: really my jam. But there are many things to talk about.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to unpack it, and I will never not
Speaker 1: be better that it's two hours and thirteen minutes long.
Speaker 1: It used to be longer. There's an entire subplot that
Speaker 1: was cut out. Oh my gosh, it was a longer movie.
Speaker 1: I know. Do tell what was what else could have
Speaker 1: possibly happened? Um? I believe these scenes were shot because
Speaker 1: I think they're on the criterion. But the shooting script
Speaker 1: that I read had a sub lot where Tom be
Speaker 1: friends a State Department official or employee. I think he's
Speaker 1: kind of a low level State Department person, but his
Speaker 1: roommate knows a bunch of people, and so there is
Speaker 1: um a transference of information for uh, flirtation that occurs, um.
Speaker 1: And that's where Tom gets a lot of the information
Speaker 1: that he uses to then advance in his careers. Is
Speaker 1: because this the State Department person finds him attractive, and
Speaker 1: Tom is kind of guileless He's just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just friends, but he wants to, you know, take
Speaker 1: things to the next level with Tom, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: understand why it. On the page it read really offensive
Speaker 1: and I'm glad they cut it out, But that was
Speaker 1: a whole like it must have been an extra twenty
Speaker 1: pages of screenplay. Thank you. Yeah, this movie is definitely
Speaker 1: already a bit long. I feel like that's just like
Speaker 1: any outour movie is going to be too long. But
Speaker 1: I still think that there's so I don't know that,
Speaker 1: and I think that this is like one of those
Speaker 1: movies that sometimes like when I learned about the production
Speaker 1: of a movie, I like it less by the time
Speaker 1: I've learned more. This is the opposite. The more I
Speaker 1: learned about the production of this movie, the more interesting
Speaker 1: I think it is. Cool. Well, shall we talk about
Speaker 1: the story and then go from there? Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: here's the recap. We meet our three main characters when
Speaker 1: their children. Tom who is a nice looking boy but
Speaker 1: who doesn't get good grades and therefore he will be
Speaker 1: a future news anchor. Aaron is like smarty pants brainiac
Speaker 1: he will be a future news reporter. And Jane writes
Speaker 1: letters to Pen pals and like job like it's her
Speaker 1: job achiever. She cares very much about precision, and therefore
Speaker 1: she is a future news producer. I really loved that
Speaker 1: scene with with Little Jane where she tells her dad
Speaker 1: off for like not being specific enough in his criticisms
Speaker 1: of her and like it's so fun. And then Jane
Speaker 1: grows up to be Holly Hunter, who is in fact
Speaker 1: a news producer. She works with and is good friends with,
Speaker 1: adult Aaron, who is Albert Brooks. We see Jane give
Speaker 1: a speech criticizing the state of like news reporting and
Speaker 1: newscasting too soft, and afterward, Tom, who is William Hurt,
Speaker 1: approaches her and he's like, hey, great job, so she
Speaker 1: asks him about for dinner. It seems like things might
Speaker 1: get romantic. He also was talking about how he's not
Speaker 1: good at his job and that he's been sickly failing
Speaker 1: upward and she's like, well, okay, get better and try harder,
Speaker 1: which upsets him and he leaves. I hate Tom. I
Speaker 1: hate Tom, so I feel like we I know, I
Speaker 1: know that Aaron is very much a villain, but I
Speaker 1: do hate Tom the most out of everybody. I hate.
Speaker 1: I dislike both of the men that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be that. I don't. I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: we're really supposed to be rooting for any relationship. I
Speaker 1: don't think even know that we are. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not a movie that is neutral in its moral judgments.
Speaker 1: I think it does judge every character in time in
Speaker 1: the film. And that's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: like it so much, is because it casts skepticism on
Speaker 1: all three of the protagonists, which is very rare in movies.
Speaker 1: I think most of the time, when you watch a
Speaker 1: comedy like this, or even a dramedy something that has,
Speaker 1: you know, gravitas, you're watching and the movie decides, this
Speaker 1: is the person you're supposed to like, This is the
Speaker 1: one that's going to make all the good decisions, or
Speaker 1: is at least going to um reverse course on the
Speaker 1: bad decision at some point. But I think at a
Speaker 1: certain juncture in the movie, for all three characters, and
Speaker 1: I think for Aaron, multiple times through the movie, the
Speaker 1: movie points fingers at him and says, you are a bad,
Speaker 1: bad person, you are making wrong choices, you are a
Speaker 1: selfish person, and um the movie judges him accordingly. It's
Speaker 1: really it's it's fascinating, like going through the moral gymnastics
Speaker 1: of this movie, because there's multiple points where you have
Speaker 1: to like think about what someone just said and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they said that for a selfish reason, but I don't
Speaker 1: totally disagree with what they were saying. But they're doing
Speaker 1: it to be emotionally manipulative, and ultimately I don't like
Speaker 1: any of them. I wanted to read Tom's character's description
Speaker 1: on the Scholarly Journal Wikipedia page because it made me
Speaker 1: laugh a lot. Uh. It says Tom is tall and
Speaker 1: someome likable, intelligenic, but lacks news experience, general knowledge, intelligence,
Speaker 1: and language skills. Like I mean, I think that that
Speaker 1: that is certainly true, but also what it's not a
Speaker 1: stretch to say that he is all those things. But
Speaker 1: the one thing that makes Tom a special, interesting, complicated
Speaker 1: character is his intense self awareness of his faults. That
Speaker 1: is a cool thing to me. Not that I like Tom.
Speaker 1: That I walk away from this movie saying, ble, I
Speaker 1: wish Tom and Jane got together because they're just great
Speaker 1: for each other and he's so cool. No, he's he's
Speaker 1: a manipulator. He is a figure who is really just
Speaker 1: out for himself. But he doesn't know that he's not
Speaker 1: savvy enough to understand of his problem, but he can
Speaker 1: point out some of it. Yeah, that's what's cool about
Speaker 1: the movie, Like, Okay, he gets it, but he at
Speaker 1: the end he expressed is this belief in what he
Speaker 1: did being okay even though Jane is like, this is
Speaker 1: the worst, most unethical thing you could possibly do. So
Speaker 1: he's self aware to a point, but when he gets
Speaker 1: something out of his naivete or his perceived lack of
Speaker 1: awareness or ability, he doesn't mind. Yeah that's a very
Speaker 1: American thing, isn't it. It's it's like he knows that
Speaker 1: this is not a meritograhy and that is going to
Speaker 1: work to his advantage in every way. Yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: line what's the exchange of dialogue where Jane is like,
Speaker 1: you could get fired for that, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: got promoted for that. We're like, yeah, heikes. Through the
Speaker 1: process of the movie he is learning the full extent
Speaker 1: of his devious powers and that it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the origin story of a Marvel villain. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's I'm so I'm like, what does that character look
Speaker 1: like twenty years down the line, because it's like he's
Speaker 1: almost like ahead of the curve and where news ended
Speaker 1: up going to the point where like the central ethical
Speaker 1: conversation around this movie would barely even be a discussion.
Speaker 1: Oh he's Brian Williams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, did the same
Speaker 1: thing of a similar thing to what happens in this movie,
Speaker 1: where he's like, I was you know that helicopter and
Speaker 1: boy it was scary. That was a lie. That was
Speaker 1: a whole lie. Yeah. Side Well, Tom leaves Jane's hotel room,
Speaker 1: but then he calls her right away and he's like,
Speaker 1: by the way, I've gotten a job at your network,
Speaker 1: so I'll see you at work. And this is the
Speaker 1: beginning of a like will they or won't they get
Speaker 1: together kind of thing between Jane and Tom. Then we
Speaker 1: see this great sequence where Jane, Aaron, and some other
Speaker 1: staff like this editor guy Bobby, as well as Blair
Speaker 1: who's played by Joan Cusack. They like are putting together
Speaker 1: this segment and they have to like really quickly get
Speaker 1: it all together and like rush the tape to the
Speaker 1: people so that it gets on air, and they like
Speaker 1: have like not a second to lose some great Joan Cusack,
Speaker 1: I feel like Hillary Duff one day would watch that
Speaker 1: tape of the Sheer Pratt follery of that sequence beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's it's really an obstacle. Course, she made a real
Speaker 1: career out of playing that character in in the eighties.
Speaker 1: This and Working Girl. It's just like, Wow, Joan Cusack
Speaker 1: knew how to play this kind of harried, low level
Speaker 1: employee in a high stakes work environment. She's just fantastic
Speaker 1: in this movie, very very funny. She almost impaled herself
Speaker 1: on a water bubbler at one point. It's like there
Speaker 1: was just like I was like, oh my god, that
Speaker 1: had to have really hurt, and the shot continued for
Speaker 1: twenty seconds after. She's amazing. So meanwhile, Tom keeps wanting
Speaker 1: to pick Jane's brain and she's like, I'm busy. But
Speaker 1: then he starts getting better as a reporter, and Jane
Speaker 1: is like, oh am, I still attracted to Tom even
Speaker 1: though I don't respect him, And wow, this is happening.
Speaker 1: Aaron is starting to feel overlooked and unappreciated. Then some
Speaker 1: like big breaking news is happening about a fighter plane
Speaker 1: and their boss, like the network president Paul wants Jane
Speaker 1: to executive produce this story and wants Tom to anchor it,
Speaker 1: even though Aaron is far more qualified, and Jane confronts
Speaker 1: Paul about this, but Paul doesn't budge, so they cover
Speaker 1: the story with Tom as the anchor, and it goes
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. Jane and Tom have a great rhythm, and
Speaker 1: she's back to being attracted to him, But then he
Speaker 1: goes off with another reporter, Jennifer, and they have sex
Speaker 1: and then and then she is unceremoniously written out of
Speaker 1: the story. I know, you can't get deported to Alaska,
Speaker 1: but she gets deported to Alaska essentially because of Jane.
Speaker 1: Jane is like, we need to send her there to
Speaker 1: cover this story because she's jealous. Um. It also should
Speaker 1: be mentioned that throughout the movie we have seen Jane
Speaker 1: have these like very short outbursts where she just like
Speaker 1: bursts into tears for like a minute when she's by
Speaker 1: herself and then composes herself and like gets back to
Speaker 1: whatever she's doing. She's an Olympic compartmentalizer for sure. So
Speaker 1: then Tom pitches a story to Jane a about women
Speaker 1: being sexually assaulted on dates, and he wants to do
Speaker 1: this story and he puts it all together and part
Speaker 1: of it is him interviewing a woman about being a
Speaker 1: survivor of date rape, and she's crying while she's telling
Speaker 1: her story. It cuts to Tom crying as well, and
Speaker 1: after Jane watches this, she's like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, like cutting to your reaction, but otherwise this
Speaker 1: was a good segment, Like it was very moving, so
Speaker 1: let's put a pin in that, shall we. We also
Speaker 1: learn that their boss, Paul, has to fire a bunch
Speaker 1: of people because of a major budget cut. Aaron thinks
Speaker 1: that he might be fired, so he wants a chance
Speaker 1: at anchoring the weekend news to prove that he can
Speaker 1: do a good job, and he begrudgingly has Tom help
Speaker 1: him prepare, who tells Aaron like, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: just reading the news, you're selling it. You're a salesman.
Speaker 1: And Aaron is like, that scene is gross, but it's funny.
Speaker 1: And then when Aaron does that like weekend news spot
Speaker 1: where he anchors it, he starts sweating horribly and the
Speaker 1: whole thing is quite sloppy. Meanwhile, Jane and Tom are
Speaker 1: together at a correspondence dinner and they're flirting and they kiss,
Speaker 1: but then Jane has to go see Aaron after his
Speaker 1: big night. So she goes to him and she's like,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think I'm in love with Tom,
Speaker 1: and Aaron is like, well, Tom is the devil. Also
Speaker 1: I'm in love. So you're like, oh, okay, so this
Speaker 1: is a completely unbiased opinion. Good. Um. So then things
Speaker 1: kind of fall apart between Jane and Tom. The layoffs happen.
Speaker 1: Jane gets promoted to bureau chief. Tom also gets promoted.
Speaker 1: He's being sent to London. Aaron quits and Aaron is like, hey,
Speaker 1: Jane asked Tom how he was able to get a
Speaker 1: cutaway to his reaction during that story where we see him,
Speaker 1: you know, reacting and crying when he only brought one
Speaker 1: camera with him. So then Jane goes back through the
Speaker 1: footage and it shows that Aaron got that reaction shot
Speaker 1: after the interview that he was acting, and then he
Speaker 1: edited it into the story. And Jane is just completely
Speaker 1: disgusted and appalled by this. And she was supposed to
Speaker 1: go away with Tom before he left for London, but
Speaker 1: she confronts him at the airport, which I thought was
Speaker 1: a fun subversion of like, you know, people go to
Speaker 1: the airport and like makeup and kiss. But she goes
Speaker 1: there too to scald his ethics. Yeah, She's like, you
Speaker 1: make me sick. I'm not going on this trip with you.
Speaker 1: You committed a terrible breach of ethics. Screw you forever.
Speaker 1: It's it's also one of the great pre nine eleven
Speaker 1: airport scenes because she's just kind of wandering around. She's
Speaker 1: not sure if she's gonna go or dot. She doesn't
Speaker 1: have a ticket because he's got the tickets. He's wandering
Speaker 1: around with like funny hats and like, hey, the airport
Speaker 1: is a fun place to be. Is great. She's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break up with you. And then he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just walk through this single piece of
Speaker 1: security and get right the one metal detector and that
Speaker 1: is it. It's just very very interesting. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: walking into a J. C. Penny basically. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: people just go to the airport to have lunch. Oh
Speaker 1: there's a Binny Hotta in the airport. Yeah, let's go there.
Speaker 1: I can't relate. So that's the end of them. Then
Speaker 1: we cut two several years later, where Jane, Tom and
Speaker 1: Aaron all and into each other. Jane is considering taking
Speaker 1: an even higher position as a managing editor, where she
Speaker 1: would be Tom's boss. Tom is engaged to someone else.
Speaker 1: Aaron is married and has a young son. So they've all,
Speaker 1: you know, like moved on with their lives doing other stuff.
Speaker 1: And then the movie ends on Jane and Aaron catching up.
Speaker 1: So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then we'll come right back to discuss. And we're back.
Speaker 1: Where should we start. I mean, I have a lot
Speaker 1: of info on on the background of this movie that
Speaker 1: we could maybe start by just like ping ponging off
Speaker 1: each other about There is a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: maybe appreciate certain parts of the movie morphed for for
Speaker 1: knowing about it. So this is this is a James L.
Speaker 1: Brooks movie. It's his Ohtour period shortly pre Simpson's. He
Speaker 1: made this movie with um Polly Platt as a producer.
Speaker 1: She is not even on the Wikipedia page for this movie, which,
Speaker 1: after listening to Karina season on it is baffling and frustrating,
Speaker 1: but also fix it right now, let's franks it now.
Speaker 1: By the time you hear this, she'll be there it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is pretty like ridiculous that she's not.
Speaker 1: She had worked she had worked with James L. Brooks
Speaker 1: on his I think it was his immediate previous movie
Speaker 1: in terms of endearment. James L. Brooks had a pretty
Speaker 1: good track record in centering women in stories, particularly women
Speaker 1: in the workplace. He was a producer on The Mary
Speaker 1: Tyler Moore Show. He centered women and women's stories at
Speaker 1: a time where it was kind of unusual to do
Speaker 1: so as a white male. Ohtour, So that was his background.
Speaker 1: Polly Platt came on for this movie. She had previously
Speaker 1: worked in terms of endearment as well. She had worked
Speaker 1: on a number of Peter Bagdanovich's best movies when they
Speaker 1: were married, but she was never credited as an actual producer,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of the story of her life
Speaker 1: up until broadcast news that she had been repeatedly contributing
Speaker 1: on a producer level but was never credited. That way
Speaker 1: was always overlooked. Was supposed to direct her own movies.
Speaker 1: There was like a time in I think the late
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties where she was projected to be like,
Speaker 1: quote unquote the first great female director. But she never
Speaker 1: did direct a movie for a lot of reasons, but
Speaker 1: you know, one of the big ones was how frequently
Speaker 1: she was erased from the projects she did contribute to
Speaker 1: on a really high level and broadcast News was the
Speaker 1: first movie that she was actually formally credited as a
Speaker 1: producer on. I have a question, did she receive an
Speaker 1: Academy Award nomination for Best Picture for this or was
Speaker 1: she not one of the credited producers on that? That's
Speaker 1: a good question. Let me let me check that that
Speaker 1: the because is it the executive producer who gets the
Speaker 1: nomination for the Best Picture Academy Award? Is that the case?
Speaker 1: Possibly she she I'm not seeing that she was. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that she was nominated for an Academy where
Speaker 1: she was nominated for an Academy Award for Art Direction
Speaker 1: on Terms of Endearment, which was kind of her It's
Speaker 1: so into like that that and we'll just like link
Speaker 1: to that series because I'm going to like fumble my
Speaker 1: way through the summary of her life. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the ways that she was credited and she worked
Speaker 1: in an art director capacity really frequently because that was,
Speaker 1: you know, considered more traditionally to be women's work in film,
Speaker 1: and also she was really good at it. But she
Speaker 1: you know, she didn't really have much trouble getting credited
Speaker 1: as an art director, but when it came to the
Speaker 1: actual production, she was never credited. So yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that she was an executive producer, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like she was nominated for the Academy Award, which
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Yeah. I don't know if the requirements for
Speaker 1: being the Best Picture nominated producer have changed since then,
Speaker 1: but they certainly should have because of that. Um. She
Speaker 1: was the executive vice president of James EL Brooks's production company,
Speaker 1: Gracie Films, so she was involved in quite a few
Speaker 1: of the movies that he was involved with, both as
Speaker 1: a director and a producer going forward. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for her, the Simpsons wouldn't exist. She introduced
Speaker 1: Matt Grinnig too, if that's how you say his name
Speaker 1: to dubious James L. Brooks. So she's like, she's like
Speaker 1: she is the reason that Cameron Crow had a career,
Speaker 1: which I guess Wes Anderson, she her whole career was
Speaker 1: like making things happen for men and never getting credit
Speaker 1: for it. But yeah, I highly recommend listening to that.
Speaker 1: You must remember this season because it will shine a
Speaker 1: light on somebody who was primarily in her career overshadowed
Speaker 1: by people who didn't deserve the limelight as much as
Speaker 1: she did, right, Yeah, because she was for the most part,
Speaker 1: very much like the common thread in like their best work.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, you know, who is here for
Speaker 1: all of your best work, and especially for like Peter Bogdanovich,
Speaker 1: which I guess film majors can jump in my mentions
Speaker 1: if they feel like it. But she was involved with
Speaker 1: his two best regarded movies ever and his career, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of that kind of absolutely certainly did take a
Speaker 1: downturn after he decided to divorce her. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: an affair with um Civil Shepherd. Shepherd on the set
Speaker 1: of Last Picture Show, and that was kind of the
Speaker 1: swan song for him being considered a top level a tour. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Polly Platt, which I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: she gets her her do And it also sounded it
Speaker 1: sounded like there was a really good on the ringer.
Speaker 1: There was a really good piece on the production of
Speaker 1: this movie. It's been written about pretty extensively at this point,
Speaker 1: but there were elements of Jane's character that were pulled
Speaker 1: from both Susan Zarinsky, who I think was like the
Speaker 1: main source for Jane's life, who ended up becoming the
Speaker 1: head of CBS News up until like this year, I guess.
Speaker 1: But but there are elements of her character that we're
Speaker 1: pulled from Polly Platt and James Brooks's relationships, so she's
Speaker 1: very present in the movie. She she also had to
Speaker 1: take on the movie that I super disagreed with, but
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting because I think from her perspective
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense because she, you know,
Speaker 1: her career was very much the story of like trying
Speaker 1: to quote unquote have it all and have a successful
Speaker 1: marriage and a successful career in film, and she was
Speaker 1: never able to have you know, both at the same time,
Speaker 1: as is somewhat common experience, especially in the you know,
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. Um, So she really really really wanted
Speaker 1: Jane to be able to go with Tom at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, even if the relationship was doomed.
Speaker 1: She was really frustrated that James L. Brooks wouldn't let
Speaker 1: Jane have some sort of romantic Catharsis, even if it
Speaker 1: was like not the guy for her she was. She
Speaker 1: seemed really really like upset about it that but then
Speaker 1: she says in her unpublished memoirs that Karina Longworth read
Speaker 1: a lot from in her series that she's She's like,
Speaker 1: I suppose I am a living example that you can
Speaker 1: have the career, but you generally don't get the man.
Speaker 1: So I think she wanted this ending for Jane that
Speaker 1: she didn't get for herself, and that also didn't happen
Speaker 1: in the movie. I think that that would have sucked
Speaker 1: in the movie. But perspective it makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of creative people will do this,
Speaker 1: where they will project themselves onto the characters, and that's
Speaker 1: I think a function of the fact that when you
Speaker 1: become a creative person, it's usually because you have a
Speaker 1: surplus of empathy. Sometimes it's because you are a sociopath,
Speaker 1: raging narcissist, super narcissist. But I think, you know, for
Speaker 1: the people who really do the best work, the people
Speaker 1: who you know, we we are beginning to laud more
Speaker 1: than those narcissists, it's empathy. It's being able to put
Speaker 1: yourself in the characters and see their perspectives. And I
Speaker 1: can see doing that. But James L. Brooks was a
Speaker 1: d percent right. Jane going with Tom is a rejection
Speaker 1: of bathing that Jane stood for as a character. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just wrong and it would have been terrible and
Speaker 1: it would have made you dislike Jane even more than
Speaker 1: you might have just through the course of the movie.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that it is the way that it is.
Speaker 1: And Jane does get a boyfriend in the in the
Speaker 1: flash forward, Yeah, she does, and and I'm all for
Speaker 1: and we've we've you know, gone back and forth about
Speaker 1: this on our show for Forever, Caitlin. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like she she It's clear throughout
Speaker 1: the movie that she does want some sort of companionship,
Speaker 1: and so it's like, yeah, I'm rooting for her to
Speaker 1: get a companionship that is equitable and good for her.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm definitely glad she didn't end up with
Speaker 1: either of the men in this movie. When I'm watching, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I'm watching the film, I don't think of her
Speaker 1: having a boyfriend or a husband or something as the goal.
Speaker 1: The real goal for her. It's to have peace, you know,
Speaker 1: internal peace, like the feeling of of intentment and this
Speaker 1: is enough. And that's the part of it that I
Speaker 1: relate to. And I think a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: relate to is I need more. I need more. I
Speaker 1: need to be more successful. I need to have more
Speaker 1: esteem from my peers, more acclaim. I need to be
Speaker 1: a bigger personality. I need to be like the most
Speaker 1: huge and loved human being within my sphere of influence.
Speaker 1: And that's what she wants, and that drives her to
Speaker 1: kind of struggle internally for the entire movie, and she thinks,
Speaker 1: maybe Aaron will be the person to give me that piece,
Speaker 1: Maybe Tom will be the person to give me that piece.
Speaker 1: But she has to find it in herself, and by
Speaker 1: being able to say to Tom, no, you are wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand up for myself. I have limits, and
Speaker 1: then to be rewarded for her talent and her and
Speaker 1: her intelligence and her ability, that's what gives her the
Speaker 1: piece at the end, and I feel like she she's
Speaker 1: the one who wins the jackpot. At the end, Tom
Speaker 1: gets what was always coming to him because Tom is
Speaker 1: the white man, the handsome white man in a world
Speaker 1: run by handsome white men. And Aaron gives up and
Speaker 1: he decides, I'm just gonna go to Portlands and you know,
Speaker 1: start growing weed, you know, do local news and stuff.
Speaker 1: Jane is the one who gets to really feel like
Speaker 1: she's accomplished what she wanted to accomplish, and she worked
Speaker 1: for it. Tom didn't work for anything. Tom is the
Speaker 1: scion of the American capitalist system. The way in which
Speaker 1: he fails upward and is aware that that's what's happening,
Speaker 1: it's just so frustrating to watch. And yeah, but the
Speaker 1: movie is really astute about pointing that out. In the
Speaker 1: eighties when we were lauding those people more than anybody else,
Speaker 1: those were our heroes. Yeah, for sure. Well let's let's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, this is kind of a good opportunity,
Speaker 1: I think, to kind of pivot the discussion to Jane
Speaker 1: as a character. I guess the last thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to say about the production of the movie was that, um,
Speaker 1: because again, Caitlin, like we talked about this on the
Speaker 1: show all the time of like, when men are writing
Speaker 1: female characters, what kind of research are they doing? Who
Speaker 1: were they talking to when they're preparing for a person's
Speaker 1: experience would be wildly different from their own? And it
Speaker 1: does seem like James Brooks is pretty at least by
Speaker 1: the accounts that I read that he was pretty solid
Speaker 1: in this department, And I think it does come across
Speaker 1: in the movie where he researched women who were working
Speaker 1: in broadcast news in the early to mid eighties pretty extensively.
Speaker 1: He interviewed Susan Serinski for I think over the course
Speaker 1: of months, but he spoke to I think it was
Speaker 1: like as many as ten women working in that field,
Speaker 1: and you know, just kind of doing the work of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the common threads were, um
Speaker 1: in the struggles they experienced at work. And so I did.
Speaker 1: And and also Susan Zarinsky was an associate producer on
Speaker 1: this movie too, so she was also you know, like
Speaker 1: cut in and worked with Holly Hunter. And as as
Speaker 1: far as you know, a male author writing a female character,
Speaker 1: I was. I was like, I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 1: like the the bar is so extremely low, but I
Speaker 1: was like pretty impressed. I was like, Okay, he actually
Speaker 1: did his homework. He brought someone into the production who
Speaker 1: is an authority on this field in this specific role,
Speaker 1: who worked with the actor, and like it seemed, you know,
Speaker 1: I was um impressed light with that. I thought that
Speaker 1: that was cool that she was like accredited producer as well.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for how how women respond to this movie.
Speaker 1: But it always felt natural to me, like it didn't
Speaker 1: feel as though he was making things up. And part
Speaker 1: of that probably is his own background in journalism and
Speaker 1: working in in I think of a CBS news when
Speaker 1: he first started. That might have helped him see how
Speaker 1: he needed to go about the process of actually making
Speaker 1: this is not to just make it up pull cloth,
Speaker 1: which is I think how a lot of male writers
Speaker 1: and directors will approach a woman's story, and this is
Speaker 1: ultimately Jane's story. He looks at it. It seemed like
Speaker 1: he looked at it more from a journalistic standpoint and
Speaker 1: and said, I need to bring some fair similitude to
Speaker 1: a story that I have some understanding of but not
Speaker 1: the full picture. I'm I'm all for male writers doing
Speaker 1: their homework like it's just it's a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 1: It's really nice. Yeah, let's talk about Jane. Jane, sweet Jane.
Speaker 1: She I mean some just pretty obvious stuff here. She
Speaker 1: is extremely competent at her job. We see this constantly,
Speaker 1: which is something that I feel like in a lot
Speaker 1: of movies that center a female character or female protagonist,
Speaker 1: even that is good at her job. We are mostly
Speaker 1: only like told this or like other characters talk about
Speaker 1: how good she is at her job, but we don't
Speaker 1: actually see any like visual evidence of this. So the
Speaker 1: fact that we constantly see her working and see the
Speaker 1: ways in which she is good at her job again
Speaker 1: bare minimum stuff here, but uh, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that that's a very important aspect of her character.
Speaker 1: We see her be appreciated for the work that she's doing.
Speaker 1: We see her being valued and recognized. There's one scene
Speaker 1: where the president of the is it the network president
Speaker 1: or I think the head of the network news the
Speaker 1: network news division. Yeah, because this is a broadcast network.
Speaker 1: This is this is like an ABCC major yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: right right, as opposed to like today news channels and stuff.
Speaker 1: Then right, so their boss Paul is like observing her working.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where she's like screaming into the phone
Speaker 1: at someone about like a parking issue. She does like
Speaker 1: body shame someone during that, so we don't love that,
Speaker 1: but she's like getting the job done, and Paul says
Speaker 1: something like I had no idea she was this good,
Speaker 1: and then that leads to her eventually getting like a
Speaker 1: major promotion. So even though it's perhaps not always the
Speaker 1: most realistic thing, especially for a woman in the eighties,
Speaker 1: to be like really acknowledged for the hard work they're
Speaker 1: putting in and being rewarded for it. Because I mean, again,
Speaker 1: looking at Polly Platt and how often she was overlooked,
Speaker 1: it's not uncommon for women, especially of that era, to
Speaker 1: do amazing work and never get any recognition or acknowledgement
Speaker 1: for it. But on the other hand, to see that
Speaker 1: on screen as an example of something that can happen
Speaker 1: and should happen was just really cool to see. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate that aspect of her character. The other kind
Speaker 1: of major thing about her is that she's looking for
Speaker 1: love in all the wrong places. Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 1: I think there's a little bit of the well, this
Speaker 1: is who is who is the closest person to me?
Speaker 1: And I think that that's probably true of a lot
Speaker 1: of people, um, you know, in in a variety of
Speaker 1: different fields, but especially in these kinds of high stress,
Speaker 1: um high impact jobs. You look for someone who understands
Speaker 1: your plate, who understands why you're freaking out and you're unhappy.
Speaker 1: You're bursting into tears once a day every day exactly yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so she looks for these people who are going
Speaker 1: to fulfill her. But boy, you know these are not
Speaker 1: the best options, but they're the only options. I know.
Speaker 1: It's like I wanted and this is so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like so upper middle white issues that that everyone
Speaker 1: in this movie is having, if not just like full
Speaker 1: blown rich person ship going on. But I'm like, we
Speaker 1: gotta get Jane on Riya, like we gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: get Jane like some we gotta get her on up
Speaker 1: on a dating platform. She needs to date someone outside
Speaker 1: of this industry who understands high stress environments but not
Speaker 1: the one that she's in every day. I just was like,
Speaker 1: let's let's get let's get Jane into like two thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty one and see and see what's up then,
Speaker 1: because give her a yoga class, some crystal juice regimen,
Speaker 1: get her good, some goop. Tell Jane about Goop, like
Speaker 1: you just you know what, girl, wash your face, Okay,
Speaker 1: watch your face. The thing with Jada is she is
Speaker 1: an unrepentant girl boss and like the kind it's it's true,
Speaker 1: and it's like and it bearss saying that. The kind
Speaker 1: of news that's being done here which I guess it's
Speaker 1: like it's hard for me to go into like seven
Speaker 1: audience brain here because now I feel like there's been
Speaker 1: there's been so much discussion around news bias and mass
Speaker 1: media news bias um that now when you see this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you're like, oh, this is this. You know,
Speaker 1: this news has a very clear tilt. It's always going
Speaker 1: to prioritize the West. It's always going to prioritize the
Speaker 1: white West, and and on and on and so in
Speaker 1: some ways, it's like, if I'm looking at Jane on paper, No,
Speaker 1: I don't really like her that much, but I do
Speaker 1: appreciate her commitment to two ethics and I can empathize
Speaker 1: with her on I mean, I guess on I got
Speaker 1: kind of like lost in my how how I actually
Speaker 1: like fall on this because we see Jane have these
Speaker 1: like literally like power cries at multiple points in the movie,
Speaker 1: and I do think it kind of becomes a joke
Speaker 1: as the movie goes on that like she's going to
Speaker 1: just take any moment she can find to herself, which
Speaker 1: is not often, to like have a power cry, and
Speaker 1: then she'll either pull it together or someone will walk
Speaker 1: in and she'll be forced to pull it together, which
Speaker 1: I think is like, you know, I don't hate that choice.
Speaker 1: I don't know she she is so tricky. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like there's no one in this movie that you
Speaker 1: are rooting for because it's like, Okay, I want you
Speaker 1: know Jane too. I don't know. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I I like her on the Okay, where is this going?
Speaker 1: I think that Jane has a problem that I don't
Speaker 1: think he's really often seen in movies, where Jane is
Speaker 1: like primarily valued for her skill at her job, which
Speaker 1: I don't think we see female characters valued for primarily
Speaker 1: at least in movies very often. But it also shows
Speaker 1: the offset of that and what I what I think
Speaker 1: is like a pretty logical thing that she feels is
Speaker 1: missing from her life is like, oh, people value me
Speaker 1: for my ability so much, but like what about me?
Speaker 1: And like what about who I really am? And like
Speaker 1: my desires and what I want in life? And both
Speaker 1: of the men in this like sort of love triangle
Speaker 1: we're being presented with do seem to value her ability
Speaker 1: over who she actually is. And that I thought was
Speaker 1: like a pretty interesting thing to see on screen. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's a lot of movies that
Speaker 1: have really done that because I think that, like there
Speaker 1: is this whole current wave feminism of like it is
Speaker 1: really good to be valued for your skills, which it is,
Speaker 1: but also like to be valued for your skills and
Speaker 1: not yourself, Like that sucks and that feels bad. And
Speaker 1: I I think it's interesting that that comes through in
Speaker 1: her character and her storyline. I think that there's still
Speaker 1: a an element of vampirism to the relationships she has
Speaker 1: with both men. Is even though oh great, you know
Speaker 1: they value her her ability, they want that ability for themselves.
Speaker 1: The seduction in this movie, the grand scene where Tom
Speaker 1: is like, whoa Jane? Okay, now I really notice her,
Speaker 1: is when she allows him to do the nightly news
Speaker 1: without ruining it, without saying something inappropriate or you know,
Speaker 1: getting something wrong. She guides him to where he needs
Speaker 1: to be in his career. Aaron similarly, is constantly looking
Speaker 1: to her for approval and acceptance and some kind of
Speaker 1: help in his career. And he said, Aaron is always saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I know you better than you know yourself,
Speaker 1: for like we're best friends, were doing all this stuff
Speaker 1: because that's Aaron needs her to give him this validation.
Speaker 1: So they're constantly just taking from her, but they never
Speaker 1: asked her how she's doing, or what's going on in
Speaker 1: her mind, or why she feels the way that she does.
Speaker 1: It is just it's constantly like psychically sucking the energy
Speaker 1: out of her. And that's why she has to pick
Speaker 1: neither of them, because if she went with either one
Speaker 1: of those guys, they would just like whittle her into
Speaker 1: a little tiny nub. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: glad that she picks neither of them. I would have
Speaker 1: been simply furious if the movie had her ended up
Speaker 1: with one or the other of them. It would have sucked.
Speaker 1: But then you have this yet another example of a movie,
Speaker 1: and this is something we've talked here and there about
Speaker 1: on the podcast of a very career driven woman who
Speaker 1: is very successful in her line of work and very competent,
Speaker 1: who doesn't it's sort of that like women can't have
Speaker 1: it all thing where we see her not able to
Speaker 1: you know, she again she's looking for love, she has
Speaker 1: trouble finding it, and when she does find something that
Speaker 1: seems like it might be a romantic prospect, she can't
Speaker 1: maintain a relationship. And even at the end when she
Speaker 1: has this like boyfriend who she's known for like three
Speaker 1: months or something like that, and you know, we don't
Speaker 1: know how serious it is or if that's going to
Speaker 1: be kind of fleeting or whatever. But well, that's also
Speaker 1: like one way of looking at it where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's she's really good at her job, but
Speaker 1: that's the only thing she gets to have. She can't
Speaker 1: have love because women can't have it all. But then
Speaker 1: there's also like, but then you could see it like, well,
Speaker 1: she doesn't need a man. Her her passion and her
Speaker 1: love is her job, and so I'm kind of torn.
Speaker 1: But it's like she wants one, but she wants love. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I think that that's such an like it's interesting and
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't know, it's almost like an
Speaker 1: impossible puzzle to solve right where It's like I feel
Speaker 1: like if she if this movie resolves with like her
Speaker 1: being like, oh wait, there was this guy I knew
Speaker 1: from college who respects me and like fulfills me in
Speaker 1: every way, like that would be I guess it's like
Speaker 1: I was struggling with that too. Or it's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's idealism versus the reality. Of her time and
Speaker 1: her profession, which which does come off as bleak because
Speaker 1: it is. And that's why I was really interested in
Speaker 1: how frustrated Polly Platt was by how her story ends,
Speaker 1: because we all agree that she shouldn't have ended up
Speaker 1: with one of the assholes in the movie, But it
Speaker 1: seems like Polly Platt very much wanted the more idealistic
Speaker 1: ending to this, which is that she was able to
Speaker 1: be fulfilled on every level, which I know is possible
Speaker 1: and I know that women of this era were able
Speaker 1: to have that. But I would be interested to hear
Speaker 1: from our listeners of this generation who are women uh
Speaker 1: in the workplace at this time as well, because it
Speaker 1: does seem like there is kind of this very bleak
Speaker 1: realism to Jane's character of or that's like one way
Speaker 1: to look at it, Like I can see it as like, well,
Speaker 1: funk James L. Brooks for not giving this very motivated,
Speaker 1: intelligent female character at the happy ending she deserved. But
Speaker 1: then I can also see it as like, well, what,
Speaker 1: we're very intelligent, highly motivated women in the workplace at
Speaker 1: this time actually getting and what does this movie reflect
Speaker 1: of that? And I don't know, Yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: thorny and tough, and I mean, I I like that
Speaker 1: this movie kind of engages with that, but it is
Speaker 1: like it's a bummer for I Like, I feel it
Speaker 1: is kind of a cool choice to at the end
Speaker 1: add the flourish of like, maybe this is going to
Speaker 1: be the relationship that works for her, and maybe she
Speaker 1: is like on the brink of having it all because
Speaker 1: she had to deal with all this bullshit and got
Speaker 1: her career in line and rejected these two assholes and
Speaker 1: moved on with her life. But but we don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I've always liked the kind of ellipsus,
Speaker 1: the elliptical nature of it, where it just kind of
Speaker 1: leaves you wondering. I hope she gets what she wants,
Speaker 1: but you don't know because she's still herself and she
Speaker 1: still is grappling with these things because she hasn't had
Speaker 1: the complete like revelation, Oh, this is how we solve
Speaker 1: the problem, because none of us really ever do. That's
Speaker 1: the thing that I think separates great films from very
Speaker 1: good films is the acceptance of the fact that most
Speaker 1: of us will never solve the one big problem in
Speaker 1: our lives because it's hard. That's work that never ends.
Speaker 1: We're constant only trying to perfect ourselves and and perfection
Speaker 1: is impossible. Um. It is worth noting that the year
Speaker 1: after this movie came out, that was the year of
Speaker 1: Working Girl, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford,
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weaver, and that movie, in contrast to this one,
Speaker 1: is about where where Jane is kind of you know, um,
Speaker 1: I think, always destined for success, upper class kind of person,
Speaker 1: lauded for her her intelligence. Melanie Griffith's character in that
Speaker 1: movie is considered lower class and doesn't belong on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: which is certainly a less morally upright profession than broadcast
Speaker 1: news at that time. Neither are great, but that one's
Speaker 1: definitely you know, yeh, like yeah, on the list. At
Speaker 1: least you know they were trying to tell the truth
Speaker 1: on some level, but not really. Um, Mellie Griffith gets
Speaker 1: everything she wants the end, She gets the corner office,
Speaker 1: she gets all the fancy clothes, she gets Harrison Ford
Speaker 1: at the end, even though Harrison Ford in that movie
Speaker 1: is kind of a jerk. Oh god, she sucks, he sucks, yeah, exactly, Like,
Speaker 1: but like that was the inverse of this. And if
Speaker 1: I like Working Girl because it's funny and it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like an amusing fairy tale. But of the two,
Speaker 1: Broadcast News is far superior to me because it does
Speaker 1: paint the realistic picture of human beings constantly stepping on themselves,
Speaker 1: trying to succeed and trying to be better people and
Speaker 1: failing miserably. And that's how I feel as a human
Speaker 1: being all the time. Yeah, And it's like and I think, like,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why it's like a tough pill
Speaker 1: to swallow. But it's like this this movie doesn't present
Speaker 1: itself as the bizarro like Reagan era fairy tale that
Speaker 1: Working Girl does. And you and listen to our episode
Speaker 1: about Working Girl on on the Patreonic that we did
Speaker 1: I think a year and a half ago, even years ago,
Speaker 1: yah know when that was. We've covered it. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree that, Like, I think that this movie has
Speaker 1: endured more and it's partially for those reasons, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's I I like that Jane's ending
Speaker 1: is pretty ambiguous and like opens up this kind of discussion.
Speaker 1: It's cool to have these discussions, and you know, how
Speaker 1: the discussion of a woman's career in seven would be
Speaker 1: different than now, hopefully in some ways. And it does
Speaker 1: seem like a cool I don't know, just like marker
Speaker 1: of of where things were at, especially because and again
Speaker 1: I don't want to give James Albert too much credit here,
Speaker 1: but he was he was engaging with very popular female
Speaker 1: characters who were in the workplace, um for fifteen years
Speaker 1: before this movie came out, and he or over fifteen
Speaker 1: years where he was working in the Mary Tyler Moore Show,
Speaker 1: which was like a huge component of second wave feminist entertainment,
Speaker 1: where it was like a huge deal that a career
Speaker 1: woman was being centered in any way, regardless of what
Speaker 1: she was doing, even and and now it seems like
Speaker 1: pitally nothing because you're like, okay, a white woman working
Speaker 1: in an office like I'm asleep, but but you know, like,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't always the case, and it's he he
Speaker 1: seems to have been engaging with kind of this story,
Speaker 1: you know that not this story, but just like this
Speaker 1: social movement pretty consistently, and it's interesting to watch it
Speaker 1: kind of bear out in this way where like by
Speaker 1: the late eighties, it's clear that characters like Jane have
Speaker 1: benefited from second wave feminism and that she is highly
Speaker 1: respected in her profession, but she's still a person, and
Speaker 1: she is still experiencing sexism in this space, and she
Speaker 1: is still being you know, vampired and used by the
Speaker 1: people around her in spite of the successes of the
Speaker 1: past you know, ten fifteen years of feminism. It's wild.
Speaker 1: One thing. I do think that in terms of like
Speaker 1: how her character has written that I feel like there
Speaker 1: was room for that. I would have liked some of
Speaker 1: the time to be reallocated. I'm not advocating for the
Speaker 1: movie to be longer, but um I will it's it's
Speaker 1: four hours. Why not. I wish that she had a
Speaker 1: woman to talk to in the story. I feel like
Speaker 1: those characters were present, especially with right there, like I
Speaker 1: I understand probably I can imagine James Brooks's argument for like, well,
Speaker 1: she was intimidated by her and blah blah blah. But
Speaker 1: it's like there was room for two women in this
Speaker 1: workplace to have meaningful conversations that would have lifted the
Speaker 1: story in general. And I wish that there had been
Speaker 1: room made for that because the characters are literally there,
Speaker 1: like it's frustrating that they don't engage with that at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the conversations between Joan Cusacks character Blair and Jane are
Speaker 1: really minimal, to the point where every time Blair popped
Speaker 1: up again in the story, I'm like, all right, John
Speaker 1: Cusacks in this movie, Like, she's there so infrequently that
Speaker 1: you could basically write her out of the movie and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be different at all. And as much as
Speaker 1: we love to see her run through that obstacle course
Speaker 1: to get the tape in on time, that kind of
Speaker 1: could have been anyone. So the fact that she's not
Speaker 1: a more important character is pretty glaring. It stands out
Speaker 1: only because of the performance. But the female character that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about before we move on that
Speaker 1: always chaps my ask the most is Jen of her
Speaker 1: played by Lois Childs, who was also in the James
Speaker 1: Bond film Moonraker and I believe was a model for
Speaker 1: many years. Interesting that, Yeah, I think that was maybe
Speaker 1: her first movie. But um, I mean, she has done
Speaker 1: no favors in this film. She is there specifically to
Speaker 1: be derided and to be an obstacle of a sort
Speaker 1: for Jane, and I think they have one conversation and
Speaker 1: this is I guess getting ahead of ourselves about the
Speaker 1: Bechdel test. But they have one conversation and I believe
Speaker 1: it is specifically about Tom. Oh yeah, and there is
Speaker 1: nothing else going on there. They don't have any rapport
Speaker 1: related to their unique position in a broadcast network newsroom
Speaker 1: in they don't talk about their own hopes and dreams.
Speaker 1: They don't talk about UM, the struggles that they have,
Speaker 1: or or the conflicts that they have. It is just
Speaker 1: about Mom. And I mean, she's played for UM for
Speaker 1: comic relief the entire time, and we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: so amused by the fact that she has banished to Alaska,
Speaker 1: which but I feel bad. I feel bad for her.
Speaker 1: Tom was cute. She just wanted to hook up with Tom.
Speaker 1: The thing is, like, I like Jennifer. I feel like
Speaker 1: Jennifer is. I wish that she's been written out more,
Speaker 1: and I wish that Jane had been taken to task
Speaker 1: more for doing what she did, because she derailed did
Speaker 1: Jennifer's life and career entirely where I thought it was
Speaker 1: like I thought. I mean, I don't know, Klin, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in your opinion on this as a well, But
Speaker 1: like when when Jennifer goes up to Jane at whatever
Speaker 1: that news hard Heart and it's like, hey, I'm interested
Speaker 1: in Tom, Like I wasn't sure if there's something going
Speaker 1: on with you. I just wanted to check in. I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, O, that's like she didn't technically have
Speaker 1: to do that. They weren't friends. It was like I thought,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's that's what a what a
Speaker 1: nice person does um or if not nice, conflict a verse.
Speaker 1: I could relate with it. But she she was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in Tom. Is there anything going on? And
Speaker 1: then she gets a feeling from Jane that oh Jane
Speaker 1: is interested and she's like, okay, fine, then I'll back off. Fine.
Speaker 1: And then Jane is the one who acts like, you know,
Speaker 1: just bizarre about it, and it's like, oh no, go
Speaker 1: fuck him right now, kind of like she's very immature
Speaker 1: about it. And then Jennifer is like okay, and then
Speaker 1: she does, and then she's punished for it, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not cool. I think that, like Jane is written
Speaker 1: to be cool, and so the fact that she is
Speaker 1: like so unceremoniously written out as a punchline rather than
Speaker 1: like it, it would have been like another interesting thing
Speaker 1: that could have happened is like and again I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell James Brooks what I think he should have done
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. But like, you know, there are other
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there's another person in the at the
Speaker 1: news station who would have been piste off on Jennifer's
Speaker 1: behalf for the fact that she was clearly banished to Alaska, Like,
Speaker 1: did Jennifer have any friends that we're going to stick
Speaker 1: up for her? Why is no one mad about this? Nobody?
Speaker 1: Because Jane was Jane was being an asshole, and like
Speaker 1: that is one of the things that for me watching
Speaker 1: in one, I was like, Oh, Jane can be a
Speaker 1: real like, you know, really weaponize her insecurities against other people.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially because she gets on her high horse
Speaker 1: about ethics in reporting the news. And then she's she
Speaker 1: makes this choice too, because she had the choice between
Speaker 1: a character named George, who we could also talk about,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer as the person who they're going to send
Speaker 1: to Alaska to report on some Alaskan serial killer, and
Speaker 1: without a moment's hesitation, the second Jane, here's Jennifer's name
Speaker 1: as an option. She's just like Jennifer Son, Jennifer and
Speaker 1: it's because she's trying to get rid of her so
Speaker 1: that she can move in on Tom, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: had called the reason that Jane was like, yeah, Jennifer,
Speaker 1: you can go after him, I don't care is because
Speaker 1: Tom went up to her and he's like, you look
Speaker 1: so pretty and clean, because normally at the office you
Speaker 1: have this gross layer of film on you. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: She was like, well that, thank you. It's so it's
Speaker 1: so frustrating, yeah, because it's I mean, it's like I think,
Speaker 1: I hope that we're supposed to you know, that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be like audience wise, a strike against Jane, and
Speaker 1: clearly like you know, she she's like you're saying, Caitlin
Speaker 1: constantly on her high horse about ethics, but then in
Speaker 1: practice her record is spotty or than she'd like to admit.
Speaker 1: But the most frustrating thing is if Jane had just
Speaker 1: been straightforward and been like, no, I'm interested in Tom,
Speaker 1: like I would appreciate if you didn't hook up with him.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Jennifer would have been like okay and
Speaker 1: moved on with her life and this never would have
Speaker 1: been a problem. Jennifer is kind of cool. She's cool.
Speaker 1: She's a very chill lady, and she's just kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was living my life whatever Tom's. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where I felt bad for Jennifer too. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty early on where all the reporters at the station
Speaker 1: are kind of like asking each other ethics questions where
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, would you tell a source you love
Speaker 1: them to get information out of them? And they were
Speaker 1: all like, yep, of course I would. And then when
Speaker 1: when like Jennifer confirms that she would, Aaron is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jennifer didn't know that there was any other option, as
Speaker 1: if to be like, wow, Jennifer, what a floosy She's
Speaker 1: out there loving and having sex with all of her sources.
Speaker 1: I do wonder, basically, I do wonder if there was,
Speaker 1: like in My Okay two things like, I wonder there
Speaker 1: was some sort of deleted scene where this is addressed,
Speaker 1: because it does seem like Jennifer is a pretty like
Speaker 1: heavily set up character to completely disappear with a throw
Speaker 1: a joke. It does feel kind of bizarre to me,
Speaker 1: given the rest of the characters in this movie. Nothing
Speaker 1: else for Jennifer. She is long gone to Alaska, that
Speaker 1: is the end of Jennifer. I liked this scene. I
Speaker 1: liked the other like one of her moments where after
Speaker 1: she and Tom do hook up, Tom notices that she
Speaker 1: has like a spare room in her apartment maybe that
Speaker 1: is like for her clothes, and Jennifer gets defensive before
Speaker 1: he even says anything, and it's like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: had that extra space, and you know, it felt like
Speaker 1: kind of you know, however you feel about it, like
Speaker 1: commentary on how female news anchors have a higher pressure
Speaker 1: to look a certain way than their male counterparts, to
Speaker 1: the point where she felt the need to like get
Speaker 1: ahead of his potential criticism. And that was like another
Speaker 1: like pretty thoughtful moment, I thought. And then she just
Speaker 1: she just disappears. I hope that she wins a Pulitzer
Speaker 1: in Alaska. That's my head canon for she catches the
Speaker 1: serial killer. They make an incredible docuseries about it, and
Speaker 1: Jane is kicking herself. Yeah. I mean, I think this is,
Speaker 1: like you said, Jamie, a very very tricky movie because
Speaker 1: it isn't cleanly moralistic. It isn't cleanly one side or
Speaker 1: the other. It is very messy with the perspective, and
Speaker 1: I think that that is one, as we've all pointed out,
Speaker 1: a fault of the fact that it came out of
Speaker 1: but also I think it's because this is a movie
Speaker 1: that is conflicted about its own subject matter. It's conflicted
Speaker 1: about the idea of the news and whether or not
Speaker 1: the news is good as it is portrayed in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: there's the that whole sequence when they're in the um
Speaker 1: involved in the the war. I don't even remember what country,
Speaker 1: nicarag I'm glad that they actually had a country instead
Speaker 1: of just like, we're in a war zone and there
Speaker 1: are people that don't speak English. Um, it's it's played
Speaker 1: not for laughs necessarily, but they are oddly not engaged
Speaker 1: with anything. They're kind of detached from the fact that
Speaker 1: they're in a war zone, that there are people losing
Speaker 1: their tea. Yeah, it's opportunistic. It is not empathetic. It
Speaker 1: is not oh my goodness, this is this is a
Speaker 1: situation where people's lives are being lost, that there's political
Speaker 1: upheaval and you know whose side are we on? You know,
Speaker 1: why is this happening. It's just here's the thing that happened,
Speaker 1: and can we get a shot of the boots? Okay,
Speaker 1: we got a shot of the boots. Great, nobody got shot, Okay, wonderful.
Speaker 1: It's just very matter of fact. And I think today,
Speaker 1: you know now we would say, you know that detachment
Speaker 1: is actually bad. That the the people who are nostalgic
Speaker 1: for the days of the news being told for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes every five five o'clock every day and we're objective
Speaker 1: is not realistic or feasible. You can't be objective in
Speaker 1: the news when horrible things are happening. You have to
Speaker 1: speak out and you have to tell it not like
Speaker 1: it is, but tell people what it shouldn't be, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Um. And so this movie I think
Speaker 1: has that ambivalence about the news, and it's satirical about
Speaker 1: that world. So it makes every character's decisions more glaringly negative. Um,
Speaker 1: everybody is doing the wrong thing because the movie isn't
Speaker 1: sure if the thing that the career, the industry that
Speaker 1: they have given their lives too is even good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's kind of where like Jane's
Speaker 1: Girl Boss angle does kind of come in is like, yes,
Speaker 1: you you are, like ten did as an audience member
Speaker 1: and as someone who generally is like women succeeding could
Speaker 1: could be good, uh to say like, well, look, she's
Speaker 1: succeeding at a really high level in this field, but
Speaker 1: what is she actually doing and like what are the
Speaker 1: ethics and what is the impact of what she's actually doing.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not universally good at all. And
Speaker 1: I like that the yeah that the movie like that
Speaker 1: that the scene where they're reporting in Nicaragua, I feel
Speaker 1: like at least now like comes off as pretty embarrassing
Speaker 1: for them too. It's like they can barely communicate with
Speaker 1: the people that they are supposed to be reporting on
Speaker 1: and about. And then it's ultimately kind of played as
Speaker 1: this little romantic tension when they're in the middle of
Speaker 1: like you're saying, to have a war zone where people
Speaker 1: are dying, and they're kind of like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: so exciting. She'll be kiss no, and it's like they're
Speaker 1: just like centering themselves in this way that looks ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the movie, to its credit, does recognize
Speaker 1: how ridiculous it is, right, Yeah, Yeah, I I do.
Speaker 1: I do. I do like that because it's like there,
Speaker 1: you know, it's what what Jane is fighting for in
Speaker 1: this industry is I guess on this watch for me.
Speaker 1: It was like, it's like she's just fighting for like
Speaker 1: a two percent better thing than what she's currently doing,
Speaker 1: which is better. Like, I agree that Jane's version of
Speaker 1: the news is better than Tom's version of the news,
Speaker 1: But is it better enough to justify rooting for it? No?
Speaker 1: But is she right? Yes, it's the eighties were an
Speaker 1: era of incremental progress, the nineties eighties, Yeah, you're the
Speaker 1: two thousand's. On some level, it's like, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we we've made some strides, right, ladies, right, everybody. You know,
Speaker 1: black people can be senators now, isn't that amazing? Dude? Dude?
Speaker 1: Do dude, dude? And is Obama and Hillary and oh
Speaker 1: you know, black people can can operate drones to like this,
Speaker 1: is this wonderful? We can have a Korean head of
Speaker 1: the CIA or whatever it is that like we're starting
Speaker 1: to like look at it that way. And now people, finally,
Speaker 1: you know, in in this era, are seeing it's not
Speaker 1: enough to just have incremental progress to put people of
Speaker 1: color or marginalized groups into these jobs that are fundamentally
Speaker 1: bad for the planet. It is not just about having
Speaker 1: a person of color as the head of the CIA,
Speaker 1: because it's the CIA that is the problem, right, that
Speaker 1: those are the things that we couldn't fathom or grapple with.
Speaker 1: That now people are are are able to to to
Speaker 1: grapple with because we don't have the illusion that the
Speaker 1: system itself is good. And I think in broadcast news
Speaker 1: and in a lot of other quote unquote feminist movies
Speaker 1: from that era, baby baby boom, um with um Diane Keaton,
Speaker 1: you know, that's like, oh, look at how great it
Speaker 1: is that Diane Keaton is able to have a kid
Speaker 1: and you know, be a boss. Like, that's not good.
Speaker 1: What does her company even do? It's probably like selling
Speaker 1: arms to the Contras or something. I don't know. This
Speaker 1: isn't right, baby, So we did, and that baby is
Speaker 1: going to end up inheriting millions of dollars and probably
Speaker 1: being a bad person. Um. Yeah, it's it's just a
Speaker 1: different way of looking at the world. And I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we are outside of the expectation that incremental progress
Speaker 1: is going to save us. It is not. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and then we'll come back for
Speaker 1: more discussion. And we're back. Is there any other stuff
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about? Jane? Before we started going
Speaker 1: into I have like a few little things, but to
Speaker 1: take it away. UM. Oh well, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the exchanges that I really did like, and I
Speaker 1: watched the scene back a couple of times because it
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, Hollyhunter is really good in
Speaker 1: this scene where I I do again, it's like, this
Speaker 1: is in the context of what Jane is doing is
Speaker 1: ultimately not good for the world. I do think it's
Speaker 1: like there are a few elements of her character where
Speaker 1: she she is a huge advocate for the people who
Speaker 1: work for her, um in a way that I thought
Speaker 1: was was really cool, Like when she's trying to get
Speaker 1: Aaron to be the anchor on the story about Libya
Speaker 1: because he actually knows what he's talking about, has expertise
Speaker 1: in this area to an extent, and you know, can
Speaker 1: unlike Tom, can like do the job that Tom admits
Speaker 1: he cannot do. UM. I thought it was it was
Speaker 1: cool to see her really, you know, go up against
Speaker 1: the superior and advocate for someone who she knew would
Speaker 1: do a better job. And that whole exchange of like,
Speaker 1: you know, being patronized and like she it's that complicated
Speaker 1: girl boss thing where you're like she is being met
Speaker 1: with some misogyny but doesn't justify the ends, not really,
Speaker 1: but you know, it must be terrible being the smartest
Speaker 1: person in the room is, you know, being kind of
Speaker 1: patronized by her boss, and she says it's awful, and
Speaker 1: it's like she means it. I loved that. I loved
Speaker 1: I mean because it's like she she's right, she is
Speaker 1: right in this situation, and we know she is. And
Speaker 1: there are still these like these little misogynistic ways where
Speaker 1: she's treated where I feel like with her relationship with Aaron,
Speaker 1: there's this expectation that she's going to be maternal towards
Speaker 1: him in a way that in terms of a working
Speaker 1: relationship makes no sense at all. But like that he,
Speaker 1: you know, feels entitled to bargein in her life in
Speaker 1: whatever way he pleases. He feels entitled to her emotional
Speaker 1: energy at the drop of a hat for reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like she has to go see him the night
Speaker 1: that he anchors the news she has you know, she
Speaker 1: adjusts his clothes, She does all these little maternal things
Speaker 1: that are not her job, but she clearly feels, you know,
Speaker 1: compelled or obligated to do for him. That does feel
Speaker 1: like very I don't know, it's interesting to see those
Speaker 1: like moments that you're like, oh, this is very intentionally.
Speaker 1: I felt like it was like written very intentionally. It
Speaker 1: was like a half step towards progress of like is
Speaker 1: she technically his superior, Yes, but look at how he
Speaker 1: still feels so entitled her time and her energy in
Speaker 1: spite of that. This this makes me think about the
Speaker 1: concept of the work wife, which is I think best
Speaker 1: left in the twentieth century, but it's the thing that
Speaker 1: people still talk about a lot, maybe less so now
Speaker 1: that we are in a post COVID world where we
Speaker 1: are not going to offices and there isn't that forced
Speaker 1: camaraderie between employees and in a workplace anymore. But there
Speaker 1: was certainly for many, many years this idea of oh boy,
Speaker 1: those two they just like they're like peas in a pot,
Speaker 1: you know, that guy and that woman, and they just
Speaker 1: have this great relationship. And she's my work wife and
Speaker 1: he's my work husband. And it's a blurring of the
Speaker 1: lines that people thought was funny. That was the cause
Speaker 1: of you know, there was the launching pad for a
Speaker 1: lot of sitcoms and things of that nature. But it's
Speaker 1: really like inappropriate ultimately. Uh. And I can look back
Speaker 1: on you know, workplace relationships friendships where it's like this
Speaker 1: is we should just be co workers. But because we
Speaker 1: no one talked about this stuff back then, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just how it's supposed to be, you know,
Speaker 1: we we can you know, have this kind of a
Speaker 1: meshed codependent work relationship that is allegedly platonic but not
Speaker 1: necessarily so. And I think that holds back a lot
Speaker 1: of workplace equality. Is this idea that you can't have
Speaker 1: these platonic relationships with people, um where you don't have
Speaker 1: a line, there is no line in the sand of
Speaker 1: this is okay, this is not okay, and this is
Speaker 1: work and this is personal. And Aaron certainly has that
Speaker 1: work wife relationship with Jane that has become terribly inappropriate
Speaker 1: and it is gendered, as you pointed out, that he
Speaker 1: is having her mother him. Yeah, he wants her to
Speaker 1: be his mom, he wants her to be his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: he wants her to be his best friend. Like it's
Speaker 1: it's really icky. Yeah, yeah, And it wouldn't be that
Speaker 1: way if she was not a woman in this situation,
Speaker 1: that she was not you know, she wouldn't be that
Speaker 1: for him if she didn't fit the the idea of
Speaker 1: what he wanted romantically, and if she wasn't a woman,
Speaker 1: you know, if it was a man, he would probably
Speaker 1: be intimidated by him, because he's very clearly intimidated by
Speaker 1: Tom in constant and chech Nichols. Yeah, every event around him,
Speaker 1: he's constantly being like, well, I'm smarter than you. You
Speaker 1: know that, right, And it's likely he was a child
Speaker 1: and he rightfully gets beat up. Scene. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: kind of on the bully's side. I hate to say
Speaker 1: it in that first, I mean to get into the
Speaker 1: air and stuff. I agree with you, Caitlin that he
Speaker 1: is definitely the character I like the least of these three,
Speaker 1: but all I don't know. But it's like, also, I
Speaker 1: really do hate Tom. I don't know, I have a
Speaker 1: special kind of hate for Tom. I hate them for
Speaker 1: different reasons. I guess. I don't know which one's more.
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, it's like the rankings will become clear
Speaker 1: with conversation. A tough choice. They're both so little bad,
Speaker 1: Aaron Is. I mean, it's I do feel like it's
Speaker 1: at least I guess again, the amount of intention because
Speaker 1: it's It does kind of evade me a little because
Speaker 1: they feel like there are so many characters that you
Speaker 1: know throughout history of old media that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, the lovable misogynist guy, and like, sure
Speaker 1: he's a little insecure, and sure he punches down to
Speaker 1: every woman he comes in contact too, but he's a door.
Speaker 1: He's insecure. And the eighties are like the peak of
Speaker 1: that had a sad sack. Nebish is the hero in
Speaker 1: so many of these movies, and you realize in retrospect
Speaker 1: they are the the antagonists in all of these movies.
Speaker 1: They're the cause of every problem. It comes off the worst,
Speaker 1: and it's it's because it's like constantly air And is
Speaker 1: kissing his female coworkers without their consent, just like really
Speaker 1: lunging and making a go for it. He feels entitled
Speaker 1: to their time. He makes comments like like that comment
Speaker 1: you mentioned Dave to Jennifer that was or Kaylie, I
Speaker 1: forget who said, but like that completely inappropriate, like oh
Speaker 1: you you must you know you would tell anyone you
Speaker 1: love them, uh kind of thing. The way he acts
Speaker 1: when the date rape segment is at when you know
Speaker 1: he's the worst person in the world if there was
Speaker 1: any doubt he is horrible, and like, I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll get into that segment because that's like very very interesting.
Speaker 1: But you know, he has a lot of uh, dislike
Speaker 1: and just dismissal towards women even when and I think
Speaker 1: it is kind of like I mean, we've talked about
Speaker 1: this all the time of of how it tends to
Speaker 1: be at least more narratively interesting and you know, applicable
Speaker 1: to see male characters who male audience members can see
Speaker 1: themselves in. And I can, I can see, you know,
Speaker 1: watching broadcast news. The casualness of his misogyny and the
Speaker 1: casualness that he feels entitled to feels not unrealistic. And
Speaker 1: it's not like a cartoon villain of a misogynist. It's
Speaker 1: someone who is just projecting onto people who he doesn't
Speaker 1: think are more powerful than him, and people who he
Speaker 1: clearly doesn't think are gonna, you know, bring it up
Speaker 1: or do anything. And I feel like his character is
Speaker 1: so emblematic of that. He's like, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a good guy? Like he's that kind of character,
Speaker 1: But it's written, so I don't know. I like how
Speaker 1: his character is written because it does. It feels like
Speaker 1: a recognizable person who is saying despicable stuff really regularly.
Speaker 1: But it's so it makes sense that it's normalized in
Speaker 1: this Yeah, I think it's. Um it's important to note
Speaker 1: that they cast a comedian in this role. So then
Speaker 1: and if you cast a comedian, most likely you're going
Speaker 1: to look at that person as sympathetic, especially when that
Speaker 1: that type of character was considered heroic. Um. So casting
Speaker 1: someone who is used to kind of begging for affection
Speaker 1: in the way that all great comedic performers do. Even
Speaker 1: if you if you have ever performed out a stage
Speaker 1: and try to get people to laugh, you know how
Speaker 1: kind of desperate that is, and how like he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be loved and I know, right, And so
Speaker 1: Albert Brooks is able to bring that and that is
Speaker 1: I think why he was only successful to a point
Speaker 1: playing the lead in movies like this because one, he
Speaker 1: and his co writer Monica Johnson, we're writing characters that
Speaker 1: were loathsome and satirical for him most of the time.
Speaker 1: But also because even when he's trying to be likable,
Speaker 1: he's kind of annoying. You kind of don't like this
Speaker 1: person because he just has this um like you said, this,
Speaker 1: this underlying kind of menace and misogyny to his characters,
Speaker 1: um that is softened in probably his most popular movie,
Speaker 1: like I said, Defending Your Life, where he is the
Speaker 1: romantic lead and he is trying to be a better person,
Speaker 1: and he does get the girl at the end, and
Speaker 1: he does kind of almost maybe possibly sort of deserve it,
Speaker 1: but he's still it starts the movie as this self centered,
Speaker 1: narcissistic person um. So I think there was never a
Speaker 1: point where he was when he was going to be
Speaker 1: a super duper movie star on the level of Steve
Speaker 1: Martin or other other contemporaries of his because he was
Speaker 1: so attracted to these parts that when a comedian had
Speaker 1: to be unlikable in a in a lead role in
Speaker 1: a movie, he was the one you went to because
Speaker 1: he could be just likable enough but not afraid to
Speaker 1: be completely unlikable. And that is again why I love
Speaker 1: his work so much, is because he projects projects this
Speaker 1: awareness in this vulnerability and also this um menace that
Speaker 1: is recognizable. I think for a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of men who are looking at themselves and saying
Speaker 1: I'm not so great. You know, there's a realism and
Speaker 1: in an honesty to it that is incredibly rare. Even
Speaker 1: when you're playing the most loathsome character in a TV show,
Speaker 1: if you're Steve Carrell in the office, you still kind
Speaker 1: of want to be liked. Albert Brooks most of his movies,
Speaker 1: he's like, you don't have to like me. Stink and
Speaker 1: does does he stink? That scene towards the end of
Speaker 1: the movie where Jane is like, I'm going on this
Speaker 1: trip with Tom, this is my last chance to see you.
Speaker 1: Let's have lunch or whatever, and he and they're like
Speaker 1: kind of saying goodbye, and they're like talking about their
Speaker 1: futures and stuff, and then he says something like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's what's here's how it's going to go down, will
Speaker 1: you know, drift apart a little bit, and then we'll
Speaker 1: reconnect a few years down the road and my son
Speaker 1: will be there and he'll say something really mean to you,
Speaker 1: and I'll have to jump in and be like, it's
Speaker 1: not nice to say something about lonely fat women like that.
Speaker 1: And it's just really a painful scene. Bad saying that
Speaker 1: to your best friend. I was like, she still kind
Speaker 1: of forgives him. Yeah, she I feel like there is
Speaker 1: very much a vibe of like, that's our erin and
Speaker 1: you're like, but why, why why are you friends er
Speaker 1: this jackass? Yeah, I think she feels that way. I
Speaker 1: don't think the movie is saying that it's okay. I
Speaker 1: do think that the movie judges him harshly. And but
Speaker 1: then when they like, the movie ends on what I
Speaker 1: think is meant to be this like tender moment of
Speaker 1: them reconnecting after like seven years and they're catching up,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Jane get away from him, like this
Speaker 1: guy sucks. You know, you've got your issues too, but
Speaker 1: you can do better. And I was just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was just very disappointed. Yeah, it would have been
Speaker 1: nice to have some Catharsis for her at some point
Speaker 1: where she could really tell him off, But the movie
Speaker 1: does not grant her that, or any of the characters
Speaker 1: that really. I guess the scene in the airport where
Speaker 1: Jane gives it to tom And and expresses her outrage
Speaker 1: at his behavior is the only scene where any character
Speaker 1: is truly dressed down. Everybody else kind of gets away
Speaker 1: scot free with their with their problems, at least at
Speaker 1: least their actual problems, you know, when when Aaron confronts
Speaker 1: Jane in that restaurant at the end, he is not
Speaker 1: saying anything true about her. He's not he's not expressing
Speaker 1: any real issue that she has in her personality. He's
Speaker 1: just being cruel for the sake of being cruel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he just like very much projects. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's just he's the worst. And yet he is not
Speaker 1: totally wrong about everything that he says, and that is like,
Speaker 1: I feel like that kind of dovetails into the Tom
Speaker 1: discussion a little bit. We're that scene with with him
Speaker 1: and Jane where Jane is like, I think I'm falling
Speaker 1: in love with Tom, and Aaron is just being a
Speaker 1: total fucking baby about everything. He's like, but you're my
Speaker 1: mom and my wife. What like, He's like spiraling, having
Speaker 1: a total meltdown and just like peeing his diaper about it.
Speaker 1: But then he brings up a point that is a
Speaker 1: pretty good point about how Tom approaches the news and
Speaker 1: how you know, you know, he said as Tom is
Speaker 1: the devil and which is dramatic, but but also he
Speaker 1: does bring up a point that Jane doesn't want to hear,
Speaker 1: which is also kind of I thought, like a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting thing that is like brought into her character of
Speaker 1: like she knows, she's well aware that Tom doesn't know
Speaker 1: what he's doing, and she knows that because she's doing
Speaker 1: it for him a lot of the time, and sometimes
Speaker 1: Aaron's doing it for him. In the case of that
Speaker 1: big story about Libya where uh, you know, Aaron called
Speaker 1: Jane and gave Tom the information he needed to look good.
Speaker 1: She knows that because she told Tom off when she
Speaker 1: first met him, like why are you whining to me?
Speaker 1: Learn how to do your job? Then like why are
Speaker 1: you telling me this? Like fuck you? But she's still
Speaker 1: attracted to him, and she's struggling with that, which I
Speaker 1: guess like if you're a comedian who's head sex with
Speaker 1: a comedian, then you can understand that maybe that I
Speaker 1: was like that interaction. I was just like I see
Speaker 1: my life in this at times relatable, Like why doesn't
Speaker 1: anyone laugh when I talk? I'm like, that's a you problem? Um.
Speaker 1: In any case, like Aaron's view of Tom isn't wrong,
Speaker 1: and that like Tom does it is kind of the
Speaker 1: antithesis of what Jane claims to stand for. But she
Speaker 1: thinks that maybe she could get an area of her
Speaker 1: life filfelt that she hasn't had fulfilled in a long
Speaker 1: time through him, and so she's getting to the point
Speaker 1: where she's like, well, maybe I can overlook the ethics
Speaker 1: of it, and Aaron does bring her back to earth,
Speaker 1: and it's like, are you sure you can see overlook
Speaker 1: the ethics of it? And it's just so like everyone
Speaker 1: in this situation sucks and is making a huge compromise
Speaker 1: of their morals And I hate that it's Aaron that
Speaker 1: makes a good point, but I do think he he
Speaker 1: makes a really good point there, Like he's simply not
Speaker 1: wrong in that case. I almost wish that it had
Speaker 1: been her to put the pieces of the puzzle together
Speaker 1: and figure it out on her own. That Tom had
Speaker 1: like brought only one camera and that he must have
Speaker 1: staged it, and like, yeah, I don't. I feel like
Speaker 1: the fact that it's Aaron doing it out of spite
Speaker 1: and rage and selfishness is it takes some of the
Speaker 1: thrill of victory away. But I wonder if you know
Speaker 1: that too. Is The point is is you know, Jane
Speaker 1: is so lost in her fantasy of who Tom is
Speaker 1: or could be that she can't see so it has
Speaker 1: to be someone else. But it has to be someone
Speaker 1: acting in self interest as opposed to someone who really cares,
Speaker 1: because none of them really care. All of them are
Speaker 1: self interested at the end of the day, none of
Speaker 1: them are truly altruistic in their behavior at all. There
Speaker 1: is no truly good person in this movie. Everyone just
Speaker 1: once love or approval or acclaim or esteem. Nobody is
Speaker 1: thinking about how can I help someone else? I guess
Speaker 1: on some level there is some altruism from Jane in
Speaker 1: regards to her her coworkers a little bit, but not really.
Speaker 1: Or Aaron choosing to leave instead of sticking around so
Speaker 1: somebody could keep their job. Maybe, but not really. It's
Speaker 1: still about yourself and self interest. Yeah, not enough not
Speaker 1: to take the promotion. She's very nice to the people
Speaker 1: who are laid off, but she still takes the promotion.
Speaker 1: You know, in the same way that like Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 1: when everyone's laid off, he's the clearest valid where they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, oh, you want to shave a
Speaker 1: million off of your salary, and he gets like, he's
Speaker 1: like yeah. He starts histing and spitting, and then Paul
Speaker 1: is like, I'm so sorry, that was the worst joke
Speaker 1: I've ever made. What a silly joke I made. I
Speaker 1: would never that is why I was not being serious.
Speaker 1: It was very much a joke. And then Jack Nicholoson
Speaker 1: goes but then it's like, but but Tom and Jane
Speaker 1: are very involved in this too, where they you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're nice to the people who were laid off,
Speaker 1: but they take their promotion and they're going to go
Speaker 1: on vacation about it. Like I got to clear my head.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's that was hard for me. Okay, I
Speaker 1: have a job so hard. I better go to wherever
Speaker 1: they're going to go about it. Like you know, if
Speaker 1: if you're if you put yourself in the in the
Speaker 1: shoes of you know, Joe Cusack who just got laid off,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, fuck you, you're going on vacation for what.
Speaker 1: And I do like that exchange between um, Joe Cusack
Speaker 1: and and Jane where she's like, except for socially, you're
Speaker 1: my role model, which I think passes the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: I think that's as close as we get. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: that's something right, that's something something. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: funny path. I like it, But I did want to
Speaker 1: talk about the the actual story read that I think
Speaker 1: is like, you know, I feel like there's this little
Speaker 1: ambiguity of like, Okay, so Tom is self aware that
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what his job is, but how far
Speaker 1: is he willing to go? Is he just going to
Speaker 1: fail upwards passively or is he going to actively fail upwards?
Speaker 1: And the moment where he the story he chooses is
Speaker 1: particularly It's again, it's just like this like such an
Speaker 1: ambiguous thing, or it was for me when I like
Speaker 1: put my seven goggles on, because he does a story
Speaker 1: on date rape, which in n was barely a term
Speaker 1: that existed. It was not a popular discussion and at
Speaker 1: that time would have been a risky broadcast. And I
Speaker 1: feel like that is reflected in the way that it's received,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially by Erin's like this isn't news. But
Speaker 1: but I don't think that that is like as despicable
Speaker 1: as a reaction as it was. I don't think it
Speaker 1: would have been an uncommon one um at the time.
Speaker 1: If this isn't the salt to nuclear dis armament talks,
Speaker 1: who cares? Right? That was? That's the Aaron Altman attitude
Speaker 1: about the news, and to a certain extent, Jaane's attitude
Speaker 1: about the news, which is it has to be about
Speaker 1: powerful men and countries and money changing hands and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But in this I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: it was really well done the way the way that
Speaker 1: scene was like shot, especially where we know as an
Speaker 1: audience by the end that Tom spotlighted this story for
Speaker 1: completely selfish reasons. He does not actually care about women
Speaker 1: who are, you know, experiencing date rape. He does not
Speaker 1: actually care about their stories. This is a side note,
Speaker 1: but the woman who appears on screen and that news
Speaker 1: item is accredited as date rape woman, so that's unfortunate
Speaker 1: and in any case, uh like he's doing it for
Speaker 1: selfish reasons, but he is championing a story that would
Speaker 1: probably not have been told on the news otherwise, so
Speaker 1: that's difficult. And then also watching the way that the
Speaker 1: women in the room react to that story as they're
Speaker 1: watching it was also really interesting where I think that
Speaker 1: was one of Joan Cusacks more plot relevant moments where
Speaker 1: she tells um she tells Jane like, oh, that happened
Speaker 1: to someone I knew, And there's other women in the
Speaker 1: room who were like reacting in a way of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I recognize what she's talking about. And there is this clear, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't know because it's fiction, right, But
Speaker 1: like I would guess that a story like this, even
Speaker 1: though it was done for the most despicable, selfish, manipulative reasons,
Speaker 1: which is why Tom did it, had probably a net
Speaker 1: good impact because it had the potential to start a
Speaker 1: conversation no one else was willing to have, to the
Speaker 1: point where it even got to Jane, who Jane is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, fuck you for cutting to yourself, like literally
Speaker 1: a Brian Williams move. But I was moved by the story,
Speaker 1: which is a lot from Jane, who does prioritize these
Speaker 1: stories about war and politically influential men, and for for
Speaker 1: her to kind of hand it to any reporter about
Speaker 1: a story that is about something that commonly happens to women,
Speaker 1: those don't seem to be the kind of stories that
Speaker 1: she champions, And so I feel like that makes that
Speaker 1: almost I don't know, maybe I'm like reading too far
Speaker 1: into it, but I feel like that that almost from
Speaker 1: her perspective, makes the betrayal of him doing it disingenuously
Speaker 1: even worse of Like, you know, he got her to
Speaker 1: consider something as news that she hadn't previously considered as
Speaker 1: news and then it turned out to be for this
Speaker 1: really selfish reason and so not only is it unethical,
Speaker 1: it was like he locked he you know, he was
Speaker 1: able to get through her bullshit meter, which she can.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like she can handle almost any
Speaker 1: level of bullshit, but he it was. It just is
Speaker 1: like a betrayal on so many levels. There's another kind
Speaker 1: of side note love to this where when this movie
Speaker 1: was being filmed, William Hurt who plays Tom and again
Speaker 1: another trigger warning here for sexual assault, but William Hurt
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted his girlfriend at the time. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Marley Matlin, Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't either. So you have this actor playing this character
Speaker 1: who's like championing this story for very selfish reasons, and
Speaker 1: an actor who is committing these atrocities that his character
Speaker 1: is speaking out against, and the whole thing is just
Speaker 1: a huge mind fuck. I mean, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: that's the movie makes a point about our society and
Speaker 1: how we function with each other and the reasons why
Speaker 1: things happen and why people what motivates people, and that
Speaker 1: particular story is really telling because you know, you can
Speaker 1: look at this movie and say, oh, this you know,
Speaker 1: this was a movie that projected a lot of good
Speaker 1: things about a gender equality and all of all that
Speaker 1: into the world. But then, you know, you hear about
Speaker 1: something like that and you say, oh, well, this person,
Speaker 1: this real human being who's in this movie was in
Speaker 1: this movie that you know, a lot of people hold
Speaker 1: up as as as a step forward for feminism in
Speaker 1: in entertainment. He did it for selfish reasons, the same
Speaker 1: for the same reason. You know, the character he plays
Speaker 1: in the movie puts this story onto the news, and that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is why anything happens in a capitalist society. That is
Speaker 1: the that is the form and function of capitalism when
Speaker 1: it is going well, which is people will do good
Speaker 1: things to satisfy themselves in their own egos, and that
Speaker 1: is how it works. And that's good. You know, good
Speaker 1: things will happen if people have you know, a financial
Speaker 1: or personal stake in it. But that's ultimately not a
Speaker 1: positive for the world. It is not good for people
Speaker 1: to claim to be doing the right thing but for
Speaker 1: it to really be you know, just for their own benefit,
Speaker 1: and hypocrisy grows and grows and grows because that is
Speaker 1: how we think the system should work, which is giving
Speaker 1: people a praise for doing things in their own self
Speaker 1: interest as opposed to doing things collectively, or doing things
Speaker 1: altruistically or for a good reason that is centered on
Speaker 1: other people as opposed to ego. It really breaks your brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does anyone have any other things they want to talk about? Shockingly,
Speaker 1: little black or brown faces in the movie. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is a very very very white movie about a very
Speaker 1: white industry. Oh and that, Yeah, that's there is one
Speaker 1: black reporter, George, who, similar to Joan Cusack's character, could
Speaker 1: be written out of the movie and you wouldn't notice
Speaker 1: because he is in it so infrequently, and his character
Speaker 1: is extremely insignificant to the larger narrative, which is extremely
Speaker 1: unfortunate yet not surprising for a movie. Tokenism was certainly
Speaker 1: very popular back then and still is to a certain extent. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like of of of the many I mean,
Speaker 1: it's of the many things that James Brooks seems to
Speaker 1: want to point out, like, Hey, isn't this exclusion or like,
Speaker 1: you know, change funked up in this industry? Whiteness never
Speaker 1: comes into the equation. He that's like he interrogates the
Speaker 1: gender dynamics of this workplace, constantly, but he never, never,
Speaker 1: never interrogates the race dynamics of the workplace. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think there was a point in American culture and we
Speaker 1: only recently got past it where there was this idea
Speaker 1: of well, racism was solved in the sixties. We solved
Speaker 1: it and everything's fine, and there's a black person in
Speaker 1: the newsroom, and isn't that cute boy? He's got a
Speaker 1: job and everything and died a little tie and su wow,
Speaker 1: amazing and does he do what's his life? Like? It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter? Um, yeah, it is not about him, So
Speaker 1: move along, sir. Uh. That that is a very common problem,
Speaker 1: and it is why we go from you know, the
Speaker 1: gains of civil rights to seemingly regressing so significantly to
Speaker 1: this point is because we were told the fiction that
Speaker 1: it was solved through things like film and television and
Speaker 1: literature the news like yeah, look at this, look at
Speaker 1: we have diversity. The United Colors have been it on.
Speaker 1: It's real. Everybody's equal. And I think token is had
Speaker 1: the exact opposite result of what they wanted it to have,
Speaker 1: which is that it it made people, um unaware of
Speaker 1: the prejudice that exists. That it made people think that
Speaker 1: things were fine. It created a fiction, and the actual
Speaker 1: fiction perpetuated that that deception for decades until now when
Speaker 1: it's all starting to boil over and people are finally
Speaker 1: talking about it again and saying, it's not enough for
Speaker 1: there to be a black judge in a movie. It's
Speaker 1: not enough for the cops to be black. It's not
Speaker 1: enough for there to be you know, one Latino actor, um,
Speaker 1: and they happen to be playing a criminal and like, well,
Speaker 1: no diversity. Look, we have this whole gang of of
Speaker 1: of criminals and they're they're diverse, Like that is not
Speaker 1: how it works. And it took forever for people to
Speaker 1: see that that is just as harmful as having nothing
Speaker 1: but white faces in a movie, if not more harmful.
Speaker 1: I think it might be more harmful because it perpetuates
Speaker 1: the fiction. The lie. Definitely. James Brooks, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's just simply ill equipped to like he's he's he's
Speaker 1: accomplished a lot, but commentary on race in any meaningful way.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be anything He's ever even really attempted,
Speaker 1: and when he does, it seems like it is never gone.
Speaker 1: Did you see spanglish? Oh wait, I forgot Spanglish did
Speaker 1: solve racism? Am I right? Correct? Um almost ended his career.
Speaker 1: It was so bad. I saw Spanglish I think in
Speaker 1: elementary school, and I thankfully don't remember a single minute
Speaker 1: of it. I've never seen it. You're fine to say
Speaker 1: he did he direct that? Yes, that was he was
Speaker 1: full on tour still at that point, you know, as
Speaker 1: good as it gains has just recently come out Banglish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was based on his actual housekeeper. No, wait,
Speaker 1: this is all don't quote me on that. Looking up
Speaker 1: on literary and academic resource Wikipedia if you want to
Speaker 1: be sure, but I believe that he said something about
Speaker 1: how it was inspired by his own life. Wait, this
Speaker 1: is boom, holy sh it. Okay, this is news to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm upset. This is broadcast news, this is brought.
Speaker 1: Yet I feel a deep sympathy for James L. Brooks.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. Yeah, well, fuck, folks, just take this as
Speaker 1: a lesson if you are if you think you are
Speaker 1: the hero of your own story, you're not okay. And
Speaker 1: that is what I think movies and TV shows and
Speaker 1: literature have done for men of all races, is to
Speaker 1: say you are the hero of your story and everyone
Speaker 1: wants to hear your story. Isn't that great? No? Now,
Speaker 1: Albert Brooks was right. He is the villain of his
Speaker 1: own story. I am the villain of my own story,
Speaker 1: and all I can do every day when I wake
Speaker 1: up is to be slightly less bad. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm horrible, but I think that I make tons of mistakes.
Speaker 1: And uh, this movie is it has its heart in
Speaker 1: the right place ultimately, but it is very unsuccessful at
Speaker 1: a myriad of things, and I think we pointed most
Speaker 1: of them out. I'm sure we missed some, but you
Speaker 1: could always be better, folks. That is. That is the
Speaker 1: one thing I hope everybody takes from from life is like, man,
Speaker 1: we're messing up all the time. We can try to
Speaker 1: be a little bit better tomorrow. Maybe you know where
Speaker 1: where a work in progress all of us, and some
Speaker 1: of us are progressing at a different rate than others,
Speaker 1: or backwards or going the other way. We're simply refusing it.
Speaker 1: But we said enough about this movie, haven't we? I
Speaker 1: think so. I think it does pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: In the like again, Blair is like, hey, Jane, can
Speaker 1: I tell you something? Jane? Yeah, Blair, except for socially,
Speaker 1: you're my role model. It also, I does think passes
Speaker 1: while they're watching the broadcast of the date rape story
Speaker 1: where Blair says that happened to my cousin Donna and
Speaker 1: Jane says really. So those are two extremely bleak passes,
Speaker 1: potentially their technical passes that again are not I think
Speaker 1: they are like impactful towards this story, but they're they're
Speaker 1: not particularly uplifting or long. I would say that this
Speaker 1: does technically pass, but not well, can I disagree it passes? Okay,
Speaker 1: So two reasons why I think it does not pass.
Speaker 1: Number One, in that scene in question, where there is
Speaker 1: the video package about date rape, they are talking not
Speaker 1: just about the thing that has happened to junqu sex
Speaker 1: character's friend, they're also talking about the package itself that
Speaker 1: is produced in Stars Tom. So Tom is still kind
Speaker 1: of centered in this conversation. They're not able to separate
Speaker 1: the contents of the package from the fact that it
Speaker 1: is made by Tom, so they never really have a
Speaker 1: true conversation about that issue. It is in reference to
Speaker 1: this thing by a man exactly. And then when um,
Speaker 1: she's talking about how Jane is her role model except
Speaker 1: for socially you could interpret socially to mean romance of
Speaker 1: a heterosexualat and so I just feel like it so
Speaker 1: marginal and so fleeting that it would be unfair to
Speaker 1: the test itself to pass this movie. This happens all
Speaker 1: the time where we'll come upon conversations in which a
Speaker 1: man is not explicitly mentioned or talked about, but it's
Speaker 1: like implicit or the context or the subtext is still
Speaker 1: about men do to quote a great to quote Homer Simpson,
Speaker 1: a James L. Brooks creation, perhaps dough. I'll give it
Speaker 1: a light pass, but also ultimately it's a flawed metric
Speaker 1: that we barely with all due respect to Alice, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but the nipple scale, though, is an amazing metric.
Speaker 1: That's what I call em. Actually is awesome, and that's
Speaker 1: what I call a metric. Um So the nipple scale
Speaker 1: is our scale of zero to five nipples based on
Speaker 1: an examination of intersectional feminism as it applies to the movie,
Speaker 1: or how the movie fairs looking at it through that
Speaker 1: particular lens. As we've discussed, this is a challenging movie.
Speaker 1: This is a complex movie. This is a very interesting
Speaker 1: movie that tackles a lot of things, that explores characters
Speaker 1: and develops them in such a way that they are
Speaker 1: far more just like complex and interesting than your average
Speaker 1: romantic comedy dramay narrative. And like Jane, especially the way
Speaker 1: that she's depicted, the way in which the toxicity that
Speaker 1: the men are displaying, the way that all these characters
Speaker 1: in these situations are being commented on. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot happening. Um how effective it is. You know,
Speaker 1: it was the eighties, so certain things get overlooked, but
Speaker 1: other things, like the commentary is very clear and present
Speaker 1: and interesting. And I'm just stalling because I have no alright,
Speaker 1: is there a number? How many nipples? I give it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just sort of like a split down the middle,
Speaker 1: So maybe a two point five nipples situation. I wish
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't even know what I wish
Speaker 1: for this movie or for movies like it. I wish
Speaker 1: we could all kick William Hurt in the face. How
Speaker 1: about that. I want to kick him, give him a
Speaker 1: big old wedge. I want to thank you for that
Speaker 1: context of him too, because I did not know that,
Speaker 1: and that is, yeah, very upsetting. I came upon that
Speaker 1: in my research a link to there's an article pulls
Speaker 1: quotes from Marley Matlin's memoir Shout Out Marley Matlin Who Rocks,
Speaker 1: in which she details the nature of her relationship with
Speaker 1: William Hurt, which sounds like it was extremely emotionally, physically
Speaker 1: and sexually abusive. So fuck William Hurt, his character, the
Speaker 1: character of Aaron. Everyone just needs to go to therapy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to you and a
Speaker 1: half as well. I feel like this is like a
Speaker 1: really really I think the movie is really great, and
Speaker 1: I like every time I watch it, I get something
Speaker 1: new out of it that I didn't get before. I
Speaker 1: think in terms of commentary on women, it's pretty limited
Speaker 1: just based on the setting that we're being put in.
Speaker 1: We're really only getting to know a single woman who
Speaker 1: is very complex but also very ethically complex. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not like saying that every email character needs to
Speaker 1: be a role model. That's an unnecessary thing that's pushed
Speaker 1: on a character that's marginalized in any way of all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, they have to be a role model
Speaker 1: for fucking everybody. That's not true. But Jane is ultimately
Speaker 1: a girl boss who's in it for herself, like I
Speaker 1: don't think we're getting a ton of I think that
Speaker 1: we do get some really valuable insight into the ways
Speaker 1: that she has to suppress herself and she has to
Speaker 1: suppress her own emotions. She's under a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of pressure for her specifically to succeed.
Speaker 1: If she fails, it indicates something larger to this industry
Speaker 1: than an individual failure. Like I think that that all
Speaker 1: comes across and the fact that like you, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Davi, the men around her are vampires who um.
Speaker 1: I think it is an interesting look at a character
Speaker 1: that it has been, you know, somewhat liberated by the
Speaker 1: feminist movement as a you know, upwardly mobile white woman.
Speaker 1: You know, she has been liberated to an extent, but
Speaker 1: there are still all of these asterisks associated with her
Speaker 1: being able to function in this space. She's still going
Speaker 1: to be treated like a mother. She's still going to
Speaker 1: be you know, if she's valued for her intelligence, it
Speaker 1: that is at the sacrifice of something else. And there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of stuff that play there, and she
Speaker 1: she shouldn't have done that to Jennifer, you know, like
Speaker 1: there was an opportunity to explore the relationships between women
Speaker 1: in a workplace like this that didn't end up happening
Speaker 1: in favor of this, you know, love trianglly bizarreness, like
Speaker 1: there was just room for more. But I do think
Speaker 1: that what is explored holds up maybe in a way
Speaker 1: that's kind of unfortunate, that is like, oh, maybe not,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe James Brooks hoped that more would be
Speaker 1: different by now. I don't know, but it's definitely like
Speaker 1: a really well thought out movie. And you know, and
Speaker 1: and go Polly Platt. I'm glad that she got her first.
Speaker 1: I mean, like her story alone and how it intersects
Speaker 1: with this movie is a fascinat ending look at women
Speaker 1: in the workplace at this time too. So give it
Speaker 1: two and a half. I'll give one to Polly, I'll
Speaker 1: give one to Holly, and I'll give a half to Joan.
Speaker 1: Give it to Joan. Do I have to give nipples? Yes? Please?
Speaker 1: All right? I mean I feel ill equipped to rate
Speaker 1: this on any sort of inter sexual, intersectional feminist scale
Speaker 1: because I'm a guy, and because I think for many
Speaker 1: years I saw this as a paragon of feminist theory
Speaker 1: in thinking, and that is because of my own Um,
Speaker 1: you know, lack of understanding or awareness of of these things,
Speaker 1: because it's not we're not taught these things in school,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not taught how to look at things
Speaker 1: differently and to empathize and put ourselves in the shoes
Speaker 1: of marginalized people were taught to be. It's like I said,
Speaker 1: it's very selfish and very self self centered, and to
Speaker 1: look at the world through a white male lens. So
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to say this is acceptable or unacceptable,
Speaker 1: or this is enough or this is not enough. But
Speaker 1: I will say just from my own perspective and what
Speaker 1: I took from it as a man who is of
Speaker 1: a certain age and from a certain generation, and seeing
Speaker 1: the flowering of of people's perception of the world and
Speaker 1: our our collective common struggle. Um, it was enlightening to
Speaker 1: me every step of my life. Every time I watch it,
Speaker 1: I think I learned something new, like you do, Jamie,
Speaker 1: every time I watch it. And you know, when I
Speaker 1: watched it the first time, it was, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a you know, this is a feminist masterpiece, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: When I watch it now, I get so much more
Speaker 1: from the male characters because I can put myself into
Speaker 1: the shoes of these loaths and male characters and say, oh,
Speaker 1: here are things that maybe I thought before. We're okay
Speaker 1: and aren't okay. And I can understand my effect on
Speaker 1: people a little bit more. I can understand my effect
Speaker 1: on women in the workplace a little bit more. I
Speaker 1: can understand why I want or need certain attention from
Speaker 1: women a little bit more, and why that may or
Speaker 1: may not be damaging to them. That is what I
Speaker 1: take from this movie more than anything else, is it
Speaker 1: forces me to be a bit more introspective about who
Speaker 1: I was raised to be and who I would like
Speaker 1: to be going forward. And I think that's that's what
Speaker 1: makes it a movie that I keep coming back to,
Speaker 1: is because it is ultimately a satire about how we
Speaker 1: talk to each other and why the world is the
Speaker 1: way that it is from the micro level of the
Speaker 1: news and the macro level of how men and women
Speaker 1: or genders or sexuality functions in the world. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I will give zero nipples, but I will give it
Speaker 1: two thumbs up, just like my good friends Siskel and Ebert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't think I could. I can
Speaker 1: judge it that way. I have to. I have to
Speaker 1: judge it based on like what I'm learning from and
Speaker 1: I think totally fair. Well, Dave, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. What an I could have continued to
Speaker 1: talk about this movie for another two hours, but that's
Speaker 1: just that's too much. We went as long as the
Speaker 1: actual movie right to do Right tell us where people
Speaker 1: can follow you on social media, plug anything you'd like
Speaker 1: to plug. Uh, I am at Dave underscore shilling on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Please when you have time free, spare time, subscribe, follow,
Speaker 1: Listen to Galaxy Brains. Uh. It is my new podcast.
Speaker 1: My co host and I Jonah Ray talk about movies, television,
Speaker 1: all of the pop culture things that we love, but
Speaker 1: from a kind of comedically analytical perspective, hence the title
Speaker 1: Galaxy Brain. So we we we will take a an
Speaker 1: outlandish theory about a movie or a television show and
Speaker 1: extrapolate upon that too. It's most absurd uh logical or
Speaker 1: I guess illogical conclusion. We've done episodes about the Zack
Speaker 1: s Nyder Justice League where we talk about the nature
Speaker 1: of Superman and I end up giving a kind of
Speaker 1: passionate speech about why Superman should be sad because he
Speaker 1: is responsible for everyone else in the world. And why
Speaker 1: he should be black. We talk about Godzilla versus Kong
Speaker 1: and try to figure out what Godzilla represents in that movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have an episode about Mortal Kombat and my moral
Speaker 1: Kombat and professional wrestling are basically the same thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked to Patton Oswalt about Star Wars and uh,
Speaker 1: the efficacy of animation versus live action in that universe.
Speaker 1: And the episode I'm most excited about that we just
Speaker 1: finished recording is a look back at Joe's and the
Speaker 1: Pussycats for the anniversary, and we discussed whether or not
Speaker 1: Josie and the Pussycats is not just a feminist film,
Speaker 1: but also is it the most anti capitalist socialist movie
Speaker 1: of all time? And our guests for that episode are
Speaker 1: the writers and directors of Josie and the Pussycats, Deborah
Speaker 1: Kathleen Harry Elfont. They were such a treat and spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: they agreed with everything we had to say, and they
Speaker 1: were very much appreciative of our reading of the movie.
Speaker 1: So I hope you listen to that one at the
Speaker 1: very least, because I think that's the one I'm the
Speaker 1: most proud of because we got to really chop it
Speaker 1: up with the people behind the movie and hear their
Speaker 1: perspective on why they were able to and what they
Speaker 1: hope to gain from making a movie that was so
Speaker 1: very much about collective action and socialist thinking and feminist thinking.
Speaker 1: I mean, Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie
Speaker 1: ever joined the army because we did talk about subliminal
Speaker 1: advertising too, and how it clearly worked on me because
Speaker 1: I've seen the movie so many times. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it's same. I have not one, but two T shirts.
Speaker 1: Did you get to do your T shirt? No, but
Speaker 1: I have seen it on super yocky and I am
Speaker 1: getting ready to buy it. Yeah. I know. Um well, Dave,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. You you can
Speaker 1: follow us on social media at Spectacle Cast on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. We've got a Patreon a k a Matreon
Speaker 1: to subscribe to. It's five dollars a month and it
Speaker 1: gets you access to two bonus episodes every single month,
Speaker 1: plus access to the entire back catalog. And you can
Speaker 1: grab some merch over at t public dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: the betel Cast. Get some masks if you're still getting masks,
Speaker 1: Got some T shirts if you're still wearing shirts. Live
Speaker 1: your life not my business. Uh and are we signing off?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, good night and good luck more at
Speaker 1: eleven A great way to end it.