Speaker 1: On the Beck Dol Cast. The questions asked if movies
Speaker 1: have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends
Speaker 1: and husbands, or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef
Speaker 1: in best start changing it with the Beck del Cast. Hi,
Speaker 1: welcome to the back Dol Cast. My name is Jamie
Speaker 1: loft Is. My name is Caitlin Dronte. I'm still getting
Speaker 1: used to the last name thing. We started out early
Speaker 1: episodes we were saying our last names, and then we
Speaker 1: dropped and we got really casual, and then I was
Speaker 1: I was about to say, I've got I haven't done
Speaker 1: this in like, I think four or five episodes. Now
Speaker 1: I do have Mix Hard Lemonade with me today. Yes, congratulations,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I do think this was a
Speaker 1: cute bit when we were recording most of the episode
Speaker 1: that night. However, it's three pm and buying a Mike's
Speaker 1: Hard Lemonade three pm is a bad look. People get worried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I panics, and I also grabbed oatmeal raising cookies to
Speaker 1: be like no, but I also care about my health. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I balanced lunch, Jamie, great job. Yeah. To address the
Speaker 1: Mike's Hard Lemonade ongoing storyline, on the back to cast.
Speaker 1: They have followed us on Twitter. Have we dem them yet?
Speaker 1: We have not? God, I know, I guess we should
Speaker 1: do that. Mike's Hard lemon that's a full name, right,
Speaker 1: mike Age Lemonade. Yeah. Okay, so that's the state of affairs.
Speaker 1: Our guest is horrified with your choices. I'm just waiting
Speaker 1: to say something about your choices. You want me to.
Speaker 1: So I'm literally sitting only other time I've ever seen
Speaker 1: anyone drink Mike's Hard Lemonade is on Dateline Predator. It's
Speaker 1: literally the drink of Predator's choice every time. Every time
Speaker 1: I used to be assessed with that show, and it
Speaker 1: would be like the fake adult would be like, I'll
Speaker 1: but don in a minute, and then the creepy predator
Speaker 1: would be like, you got some Mark's Hard Lemonade. And
Speaker 1: so I kind of feel like the crew of Dateline
Speaker 1: Predator love Mike's Hard Lemonade. So the way that they
Speaker 1: got it for free was to tell the person posing
Speaker 1: as the person and it was going to be predated,
Speaker 1: they don't have it was gonna be datelined. Um to
Speaker 1: tell that guy that she liked Mike's Hard lemonade. He
Speaker 1: gets hauled off to jail. They're like, here's our Mike's
Speaker 1: Hard Lemonade. Who we are nailing it? That's super sneaky,
Speaker 1: I love. I mean maybe that, maybe it's there's some
Speaker 1: sort of people who love Daateline, people who love Mike's Hard.
Speaker 1: Because I love day Line and BC. I've been known
Speaker 1: to crack a Mike's Hard and enjoy an episode. The
Speaker 1: correlation is obvious. Molesters Mikes It's hard, I know. So
Speaker 1: it's got all of the ingredients of a Dateline predator episode,
Speaker 1: a dude something that's hard, and a non alcoholic beverage
Speaker 1: for your underaged team. But then the hard I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know what, I just ruined your sponsorship to listen
Speaker 1: to the head that would be I would I think
Speaker 1: it would be a wild I mean, if Mike's Hard
Speaker 1: Lemonade WANs to clean up their image a little bit,
Speaker 1: sponsor a feminist podcast, you know, that's how we do
Speaker 1: not have an actual sponsorship. No, we've just been harassing
Speaker 1: them from years. Also predators probably like you know, chocolate
Speaker 1: and and soft pillows too. So it's not like I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to like deem this the beverage of of
Speaker 1: Roy Moore, Mike's Hard, Lemonade, and a goblet. Alright, anyway,
Speaker 1: what's the podcast about? So we are the Bechtel Cast.
Speaker 1: We talked about the portrayal of women in movies. We
Speaker 1: use the Bechtel test, created by cartoonist Alison Bechtel, as
Speaker 1: sort of a yard stick, a jumping off point. The
Speaker 1: Bechtel test requires that two women in a movie have names,
Speaker 1: they talk to each other, and their conversation has to
Speaker 1: be about anything besides a man. Do I do a demo?
Speaker 1: I'd love to. Oh, it's going to bring up Mike's Hard.
Speaker 1: I can't about that oatmeal cookie. The oatmeal cookie is bad.
Speaker 1: We just passed that. Yeah, perfect, Well you've already heard
Speaker 1: her voice. But let us actually give up normal introduction
Speaker 1: to our wonderful guest today. She is the co creator
Speaker 1: of The Daily Show, Ever Heard of It? And she
Speaker 1: is the founder of Lady Parts Justice Liz Winston, I
Speaker 1: don't think. I was also the producer of Dateline Predator.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: brought us the movie The Post I did. Tell us
Speaker 1: why you chose this movie. Well, I um, as you
Speaker 1: would maybe uh guess for my CV that you just said.
Speaker 1: I'm a big political junkie and a media junkie. And
Speaker 1: when I heard there was going to be a movie
Speaker 1: about Katherine Graham's sort of taking over the post from
Speaker 1: her husband in an era where you know, women weren't
Speaker 1: running media anything's and women weren't really even working in
Speaker 1: the media that much, and it was just twenty or
Speaker 1: twenty five years that women even covered Why Shington, you know,
Speaker 1: it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, when I do press conferences,
Speaker 1: I will only talk to women, which forced every single
Speaker 1: newspaper to have to hire women reporters because they didn't
Speaker 1: have any. And it was genius. And so I figured, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in like, you know, the late thirties, So
Speaker 1: that means that this was in two I think. And
Speaker 1: so you know, forty years of just having this woman
Speaker 1: take over the paper. It was owned by her family,
Speaker 1: they gave it to her husband, not her, and then
Speaker 1: her husband does it. So and I just love news
Speaker 1: and media and all that stuff, and I really love
Speaker 1: Watergate and the Knicks administration and all that. So it
Speaker 1: was exciting for me to have a story that told
Speaker 1: of how the Pentagon Papers came to be and the
Speaker 1: injunction with the Times, and how the Washington Post kind
Speaker 1: of had to come back. So that's why I picked it,
Speaker 1: because I thought it was going to be really great,
Speaker 1: and I didn't find it really great. I was so
Speaker 1: ready to enjoy this movie. It was because it has
Speaker 1: and this will be I think this is like my
Speaker 1: main thing with it. It's like it had as all
Speaker 1: the ingredients for a great movie, but it's not. It's
Speaker 1: extremely mediocre. It's it was really frustrating because it's like
Speaker 1: they have this it's an amazing story. They've got the
Speaker 1: actor that you would think, but the all star casts,
Speaker 1: you've got Steven Spield this one. Yeah. I just saw
Speaker 1: it about two hours ago, so Jamie, you had already
Speaker 1: seen it, and I only thought today, So it's like
Speaker 1: already switching roles. I was ready. I mean, I I love,
Speaker 1: or I have loved like journalism movies. I think that
Speaker 1: they can be great, very exciting, but this one wasn't. No,
Speaker 1: and it's I was reading that they wanted to get
Speaker 1: it out this year because of the parallels of journalism
Speaker 1: and controversy and government overreach. And all of that, and
Speaker 1: it was so thrown out. And I'm a historian and
Speaker 1: so I knew who all the players were, but I
Speaker 1: can't imagine. And I don't know if you guys are
Speaker 1: like news nerds or anything, but like they didn't really
Speaker 1: tell me enough about who Daniel Ellsberg was is a
Speaker 1: backstory what the Rand Corporation is as a backstory. Um,
Speaker 1: the first time you meet Ben Bradley, you don't even know,
Speaker 1: you know, the guy named Ben, you don't know like
Speaker 1: that he is, you know, running the Washington Post. So
Speaker 1: it was all and even Robert McNamara they kept calling
Speaker 1: him Mr. Secretary in this opening scene that introduces his
Speaker 1: role as the Department of Defense secretary who crafted this
Speaker 1: incredible dossier that we now know as the Pentagon Papers
Speaker 1: that showed that we knew we were losing the war
Speaker 1: and we sent men anyway, and and then our government
Speaker 1: covered it up. But like, you don't learn that he's mcnamarital.
Speaker 1: And so it's to me, I felt like you need
Speaker 1: to give people a context. You know, when All the
Speaker 1: President's Men was made, it was made just under two
Speaker 1: years after Watergate happened, So everybody had the information and
Speaker 1: they knew this is forty five years later cut us
Speaker 1: a break on the story. And then when I saw
Speaker 1: David Cross is in it and Bob Owner Kerk. The
Speaker 1: first time I watched it, I thought that they were
Speaker 1: um Woodward and Bernstein. They're not. They're absolutely that, you know.
Speaker 1: I was like, I thought they were going to be
Speaker 1: Woodward and Burnt. Yeah, why would David Cross and Kirk
Speaker 1: not play wood And I was like that's a failing.
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, yeah, this was tricky. It was like because
Speaker 1: I I am like aware of everything that happened and
Speaker 1: and know all the the main you know players, but
Speaker 1: it was confusing with the way the movie treats a
Speaker 1: lot of the characters like it does. Assume that you're
Speaker 1: going to make a lot of connections that there's no
Speaker 1: reason that you would unlece you knew everything where yeah,
Speaker 1: like that that's the secretary connection took me, I think
Speaker 1: until almost halfway in the movie like, oh that's where
Speaker 1: they're talking. That makes way more sense. Where like that
Speaker 1: sometimes they're using like Mr. So and so, sometimes they're
Speaker 1: using their titles, sometimes they're just using their first name,
Speaker 1: and there's never any connection. And I'm not surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that. There was like a timeliness thing to it
Speaker 1: because that that felt like a little like we're being
Speaker 1: kind of hit over the head with it too. Where
Speaker 1: there were like two scenes I wrote done like Tom
Speaker 1: Hanks may as well break the fourth wall and look
Speaker 1: to camera and like wink of like hear that. Mr
Speaker 1: PRESI like, it's just like it was at getting his
Speaker 1: accent a lot, yes, being like I'm sorry, who are
Speaker 1: you right now? What accent was he meant to be doing? Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know it sounded but sometimes and other times
Speaker 1: I'm just like what is happening? Also, the protest scenes
Speaker 1: were so cheeseblly, so it looked like they gave every
Speaker 1: extra sharpie and said write something that sounds like it
Speaker 1: was back then. I mean there was so many fringe
Speaker 1: vests and so many dudes of like long hair singing
Speaker 1: like everybody played the guitar. It was like there was
Speaker 1: four people in a pod playing guitar and singing a
Speaker 1: pizze song and other people have like moltough cocktails. It
Speaker 1: was like, is all of the everything that happened happening
Speaker 1: at once? It was so there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley qualities to this movie. I'm just like, what
Speaker 1: is it like this? This era had been described to
Speaker 1: the set dresser but not actually heard that Meryl Street
Speaker 1: just kept sleeping in her own in her own paper,
Speaker 1: like she had a notebook, and she every scene of
Speaker 1: her was like waking her up from the narcolepsy moments
Speaker 1: that she was having. And I keep calling her Mery
Speaker 1: from Catherine Graham, the ke I know her as Meryl Street.
Speaker 1: Listener's of the pulp fiction episode might recall that, according
Speaker 1: to me, her name is Meryl Street anyway. And the
Speaker 1: other the other part that I thought was so lame
Speaker 1: is whenever they would cut to the Nixon lookalike on
Speaker 1: my phone, Like you see him through like a window
Speaker 1: of the White House and he's like talking on the phone.
Speaker 1: He's like making these insane hand gestures, not a particularly
Speaker 1: good impression. No, and just like not shot. Well, Like
Speaker 1: I was just like, what is this? I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I I've taken history classes, I've learned about the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. I read a whole book about it, and
Speaker 1: somehow I don't remember a single thing about it. I
Speaker 1: know almost anything about the historical events that were depicted
Speaker 1: in this movie. For some reason, American history goes in
Speaker 1: one year not the other. I just cannot absorb it
Speaker 1: or remember. That's helpful because it's because this movie must
Speaker 1: have been truly insane to watch. Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: not not really not knowing any of the major players
Speaker 1: of this story, not remembering or knowing much about it
Speaker 1: to begin with. I would say I was watching the
Speaker 1: movie for about forty five minutes until I even understood
Speaker 1: what was happening. Well, it's true, and that's the part
Speaker 1: that and for somebody who does understand it, all I
Speaker 1: kept doing was getting more frustrated that they weren't filling
Speaker 1: other people in what was happening. And for me, like
Speaker 1: I got so I'm old as fun. So I when
Speaker 1: Watergate was happening, I was around eleven or twelve or
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was like, yeah, but I got
Speaker 1: like preteen chicken pox one summer, so I couldn't go out,
Speaker 1: and I watched the Watergate hearings every day, Like I
Speaker 1: was like a crazy looning kid who watched the Watergate
Speaker 1: hearings every day, and I was sort of fascinated by it.
Speaker 1: So I loved it, and I was kind of like
Speaker 1: I don't know what a nerd, So this life changing
Speaker 1: chicken pox it was, you know. And so I was
Speaker 1: like this eleven year o kid talking about Sam Irvin
Speaker 1: and John Dene and like I kind of knew what
Speaker 1: was happening, and then I would ask my dad to
Speaker 1: kind of fill me in. And then I realized my
Speaker 1: dad was like a total right wing kook, and so
Speaker 1: um that was problematic. And so I had a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of older siblings who were like protesting the war,
Speaker 1: and our dinner was always like a ship show of
Speaker 1: screaming at each other. So I wanted to see this
Speaker 1: part of because we always heard about the New York
Speaker 1: Times and then we saw the Presents Man, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to hear this like take on what happens
Speaker 1: when a woman takes over a paper. And all I
Speaker 1: did was see somebody going, have me check to Bob?
Speaker 1: What is Bob? Bob, Bob, are you on the phone?
Speaker 1: Where big glasses? That this guy I don't know? And
Speaker 1: it was like, what the well, Meryl is meryling out.
Speaker 1: It's just like Beryl Street, what was happening? She's like
Speaker 1: she's doing like I was. Because I went back and
Speaker 1: watched interviews with Katherine Grandma, was like, why did she
Speaker 1: make these choices that she made? It didn't make like
Speaker 1: she was doing sort of her Julia Child voice, but
Speaker 1: like if Julia Child was very tired, Katherine Grandma was
Speaker 1: asking God blesses. There's a few different times where she
Speaker 1: went ben characters. The was also that was also problems
Speaker 1: too many bends. I would argue that in a cast
Speaker 1: a pretty amazing cast, almost Noah does a good job,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's kind of amazing, how how bad
Speaker 1: everybody does. Steven Spielberg, I would say, did a pretty
Speaker 1: horrendous bang up job totally. It just really bothered me
Speaker 1: of like even in the first scene where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: we start with the flashback and then we go to
Speaker 1: um the story being put together, and it's all this
Speaker 1: it's all like swelling music, cross fading in of headlines,
Speaker 1: spoken exposition. It's like, there has to be a more
Speaker 1: could this scene be faster? Why is this scene slow?
Speaker 1: It's the most important part. It just was driving reenactment.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say a line and you guys are gonna
Speaker 1: repeat what the next line is? Okay, I have a
Speaker 1: little kid you want some lemonade? What do they like? No?
Speaker 1: How much is it? No? No? Is there von? Okay?
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed in the both of you. We're not like
Speaker 1: taken by the I have a question, was one of
Speaker 1: the female lines, does that counts? The child selling lemonade
Speaker 1: says yeah, is there vodka? Well it is too woman
Speaker 1: talking about so we find out what the kid's name is.
Speaker 1: I think we do, right, No, that was like I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of female characters in this
Speaker 1: movie whose names we do not know. Also, speaking of
Speaker 1: it was confusing. You are drinking lemonade with basically vodka
Speaker 1: in it. You know, who knows what's indence camp could
Speaker 1: be anything, could be anything taking years off my life,
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure what was in it exactly. Couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you no, no, no. In the theater, I saw
Speaker 1: this movie for the first time last week, and so
Speaker 1: we've all seen it in theaters, right, yes, okay and
Speaker 1: my theater. Every time the Nixon impersonator was on screen
Speaker 1: and the movie closes with him too, there was audible laughing.
Speaker 1: There was like what the funk is this like when
Speaker 1: it closed on him, being like, I forget where Like
Speaker 1: the closing line, but he's just like, hopefully nothing else
Speaker 1: bad will happen, and then his little cheek noise like whatever,
Speaker 1: his jowls are clattering together like symbols, and everyone was
Speaker 1: like cackling. And then it was like, oh, the movie
Speaker 1: is over. What great They could have literally cast a
Speaker 1: great Dane to play Nixon and that's how bad so
Speaker 1: and it was shot so lame. It was just like
Speaker 1: and like another part where there was audible laughter in
Speaker 1: the theater was when they cut to the picture of
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks and his wife and the Kennedy's and it
Speaker 1: was a really bad photoshop that frame photo. Everyone was like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is this? This is so stupid. Also,
Speaker 1: it was for me, I guess you know, this is
Speaker 1: like a marginal detailed drue me in saying. But Ben
Speaker 1: Bradley was married three times and this was his second wife.
Speaker 1: Amazing waste of Sarah Paulson in a roll, and so
Speaker 1: it was like his last wife. Sally Quinn also wrote
Speaker 1: for The Washington Post, and so if you didn't know
Speaker 1: the history, but you maybe knew about her because the
Speaker 1: cool thing about Sally Quinn and Ben Bradley is that
Speaker 1: they bought the Gray Gardens House from Crazy Little from
Speaker 1: the Beals and they redid the whole thing. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: a treasure trove useless bullshit. That's good, thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was like, that's not Sally Quinn. That's got
Speaker 1: to be her name was like and Twinette. I think,
Speaker 1: I literally think her name is an. She was like
Speaker 1: teen you know, that's like going like some doing some
Speaker 1: deep cuts. Oh, so I guess we're gonna do the
Speaker 1: research and find out her nickname was teen I. And
Speaker 1: then she's really only and I mean she appears in
Speaker 1: it several times, but usually she's serving food. She's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, facilitating whatever. And then she's in that one
Speaker 1: near the climax of the movie we want some Sandwiches? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want some sandwiches scene, which is all of
Speaker 1: her scenes. Uh, and then the scene where she explains
Speaker 1: to Tom Hanks actually being a woman hard sometimes and
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, never thought about it. Also, her sister
Speaker 1: was having an affair with JFK and so Ben Bradley
Speaker 1: used to be really good friends with James Jesus Engleton,
Speaker 1: who was the head of the CIA then, and they
Speaker 1: did a whole giant investigation because the CIA was trying
Speaker 1: to do all of this crazy much more interesting story
Speaker 1: is this crazy covert operation where the CIA was trying
Speaker 1: to manipulate and control what the media was reporting. So
Speaker 1: they were really good friends. And then when it was
Speaker 1: revealed that his sister in law was having an affair
Speaker 1: with JFK, they had like a big breakup around all
Speaker 1: of it, Like there's a lot of palace intrigue around
Speaker 1: the CIA and Ben Bradley and the Kennedy administration, so
Speaker 1: many interesting things that would have made the movie more fun. Time.
Speaker 1: Ben Bradley's Wives would have been a better movie. They
Speaker 1: cover those three wives and they met in Paris. It's
Speaker 1: like a whole thing, like there's some good ship, but
Speaker 1: we got the garbage heap. Tom Hank, I mean, and
Speaker 1: and maybe there are exceptions to this role that I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking of, but Tom Hanks has like pretty exceptionally
Speaker 1: bad taste in like period movies, because he's in one
Speaker 1: of my least favorite movies of all time, Charlie Wilson's War,
Speaker 1: a movie that is ten years old and yet is
Speaker 1: like how did this movie come out? And people were
Speaker 1: like it's so cute? How this like political effict role
Speaker 1: is harassing women for three hours. It was God, But wait,
Speaker 1: can I just talk about one more thing about the movie? That? Okay,
Speaker 1: So when Bob and Kirk's character Ben goes to me
Speaker 1: Daniel Ellsberg, and it goes to hotel room and there's
Speaker 1: literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of stacks
Speaker 1: of paper everywhere, and then he compiles it into two
Speaker 1: file boxes and brings it on the plane. And I
Speaker 1: was a trailer moment to deliver that trailer moment. Okay,
Speaker 1: trailer guy, easy job for you. We're all laughing. And
Speaker 1: also there's so much weird bumbling for no reason, like
Speaker 1: Ben has to make a phone call every time. He's
Speaker 1: like he drops his notebook and reporters are falling, and
Speaker 1: I was like, why is he bumbling? I do not
Speaker 1: have to do it? Is that a choice? I wrote
Speaker 1: that done? Because every time he's had a pay phone,
Speaker 1: which is like three or four times, there's some sort
Speaker 1: of fit there like let's let out and kirtius and
Speaker 1: physical improv like not, why that's not what this movie is?
Speaker 1: What do you builds the tension of the scene. One
Speaker 1: of my got in a movie full of my least
Speaker 1: favorite scenes. At some point Jesse, Clemens and Zach would
Speaker 1: show up and it's like are they would word in Bernstein,
Speaker 1: No they're not. But there's that scene at the end,
Speaker 1: and this is like another time where I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but in so many recent episodes, like the way music
Speaker 1: is used in movies has really been like bugging me,
Speaker 1: and it's so it's just lazy in this where it's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, let's just throw in some swelling strings
Speaker 1: and hopefully people won't notice, you know. But there's like
Speaker 1: the scene at the end where a woman in the
Speaker 1: office is getting a call and she's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it's so and so and the ruling is in and
Speaker 1: they say that journalism is good and journalists are good,
Speaker 1: and then like the music is like do do do
Speaker 1: do do do? I was like, funk this, what do
Speaker 1: you How dumb do you think we are? Exactly not
Speaker 1: to mention like the way that all went down, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that's how it goes down. For a screamed
Speaker 1: line of exposition, journalism wins. It's like and it's like
Speaker 1: just make eye contact with the camera, like that's oh boy,
Speaker 1: right now? Should I even attempt to recap. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm gonna yeah, well, well we can help
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps. This is a tricky this is
Speaker 1: a hard movie to recap. Trure is So it's nineteen swo.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of the Vietnam War. Nixon, President,
Speaker 1: k Graham, the publisher, I guess the Catherine again, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what The first forty five minutes of
Speaker 1: the movie are like. Oh, opens with this scene in
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War where this journalist he's like observing, he's
Speaker 1: checking things out, and then he reports back to Bob
Speaker 1: McNamara and he's like, actually, things in the war aren't
Speaker 1: really good, and they're like, well, we can't tell anyone this.
Speaker 1: We have to lie. So it becomes this like huge
Speaker 1: study that becomes these talk secret documents, and then Daniel
Speaker 1: Ellsberg is like, why shouldn't I should steal and link them?
Speaker 1: So The New York Times gets hold of them first
Speaker 1: and leaks a little bit of it. But then the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is like, no, you can't do that. I'm
Speaker 1: sending up for a long week. Well no, no, the
Speaker 1: Spreme Court didn't say you can't do that. What happened
Speaker 1: was there was an injunction because of the White House. Um,
Speaker 1: so the White House tried to get this from not happening,
Speaker 1: saying that it was it would be a national security risk. Right,
Speaker 1: yeah again, I'm going. And meanwhile, Katherine Graham and Ben
Speaker 1: one of the Bends, they're like, wow, crap, like, oh
Speaker 1: this paper, we should take it public and no one
Speaker 1: takes out seriously and they're all upset about that. And
Speaker 1: then the people are like, there's like the implication of like, well,
Speaker 1: we have a woman running a paper. It's a liability
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, No one really is confident in her abilities.
Speaker 1: And she's really good friends with a guy who wrote
Speaker 1: the Pentagon papers, and she fired she fired out friendly
Speaker 1: like they had in such weird specific details. I'm like,
Speaker 1: who is this for? Yeah? Anyways, So the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: via another of the Bends, the Bob Owen Kirkman, gets
Speaker 1: ahold of this huge study the Pentagon Papers as they
Speaker 1: later become to be known all the phone. But he's
Speaker 1: a great journalist. There's this whole sequence about oh do
Speaker 1: we publish these like it's our journalistic responsibility to let
Speaker 1: the American public know that the Vietnam War is actually
Speaker 1: not good, and that the government knew that we couldn't
Speaker 1: win it from the very beginning, but we still keep
Speaker 1: sending soldiers over there to die in this war. And
Speaker 1: then but then they're like, oh, but what will it
Speaker 1: do to our newspaper? It might you know, will collapse
Speaker 1: and all this because of the injunction. So they were
Speaker 1: trying to decide whether or not they would be shut
Speaker 1: down because of whether or not the Supreme Court would
Speaker 1: rule that it was illegal. Do you know, I did
Speaker 1: not check this, but was like the timeline of like
Speaker 1: because the timing of this. Part of the reason that
Speaker 1: she that k is like, I don't know if we
Speaker 1: should lead the papers is because there's some sort of
Speaker 1: like week long thing when they were going public. So
Speaker 1: what happens is the newspaper was was a family owned paper,
Speaker 1: and they were hemorrhaging money and they were in debt.
Speaker 1: So what they were going to do is go public,
Speaker 1: so people go by shares in the newspaper could stay afloat.
Speaker 1: There's a window of time when you go public and
Speaker 1: you have shareholders, there's a window of time where if
Speaker 1: you do something that is highly illegal or unethical, the
Speaker 1: deal can fall through and the shareholders can back out
Speaker 1: of the deal. So that window of time when they
Speaker 1: were deciding whether or not they were going to defy
Speaker 1: what could possibly be a Supreme Court ruling that said
Speaker 1: freedom of the press does not mean that you can
Speaker 1: take government acquired whistleblowing papers and expose them to the public.
Speaker 1: And the Supreme Court ruled that it is in the
Speaker 1: public's good to know that this is happening in the
Speaker 1: in their name. But this was the timeline where this
Speaker 1: was happening during that window where they so after a
Speaker 1: lot of like kathin Kay being like should I publish
Speaker 1: or should we not publish the story? What do we do?
Speaker 1: She finally decides to go ahead and run the story,
Speaker 1: publish and then I'm going to bed. She's sleeping for
Speaker 1: a lot of yess right, She's slow, tired, she's exhausted.
Speaker 1: And so they're like, oh no, what's this going to
Speaker 1: do Because there's another like extra obstacle at the last
Speaker 1: minute where the lawyers were like, oh wait, your source
Speaker 1: was the same source as the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: that could really like you could go to prison for that.
Speaker 1: Like the steaks were very high. Catherine's like fuck it
Speaker 1: published the damn paper and they do and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. And then all the other papers follow
Speaker 1: suit and they're like, wait, we saved the world. And
Speaker 1: then there's a forty five minutes sequence of Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: filming newspaper presses, which I actually kind of liked. That
Speaker 1: was the most visually interesting part of the movie, because
Speaker 1: the rest of it's just toss yeah like that. It
Speaker 1: takes like there's a million I can give you a
Speaker 1: million papers where they spin around. It's the headline, like
Speaker 1: that visual effect that it is not insufferable time you'll
Speaker 1: never get back. It's just like, can we reallocate the
Speaker 1: time spent looking at newspaper presses explaining what's happening in
Speaker 1: the fucking movie? Because actually newspapers that aren't yours and
Speaker 1: we just keep reading the New York too. It was
Speaker 1: smiled the majority of revelations come from the New York Times,
Speaker 1: which is because it's eventually the Washington Post does get
Speaker 1: a story, but that is not really focused on what
Speaker 1: that actually happened. I don't I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what is happening in this movie? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is that everything? Though? I mean the Supreme Court rules
Speaker 1: that created the press. Yeah, and then could we have
Speaker 1: seen that instead of hearing someone screaming on to the
Speaker 1: office on a phone. Yeah, that would have probably been
Speaker 1: more appropriate. And then the movie ends with the like
Speaker 1: Watergate scandal robbery thing happening, like, oh wow, is gonna
Speaker 1: not be the president anymore? Yeah, that's why. That's what
Speaker 1: I realized. It wasn't would Ward and Bernstein because they
Speaker 1: have heard yet. It's like, oh, right, they're breaking into
Speaker 1: Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrists office, is what they did. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: craziness so right, it was. I mean, it was such
Speaker 1: a cheeseball ending to the movie, like yeah, audible laughter,
Speaker 1: you literally don't mean you don't. Yeah, listen, I know
Speaker 1: we've been talking about it for a while now, but
Speaker 1: skip the post. I've got to see its sanator early
Speaker 1: in the podcast there. Well, well, let day with us, though,
Speaker 1: keep listening because we haven't even told you if it
Speaker 1: makes the grade, yeah, it's true. I mean, let's get
Speaker 1: into the female characters discussion, because oh boy, I mean
Speaker 1: boy so much. It's all just missed opportunity after a
Speaker 1: missed opportunity, right, I feel like until the third act
Speaker 1: Katherine Graham is not very much an active character in
Speaker 1: this story. She's not really doing any I mean, she's
Speaker 1: making decisions, but we don't actually see her doing much
Speaker 1: like she's not I mean, I guess, and that's like
Speaker 1: not necessarily her role as the publisher to be like
Speaker 1: like in the middle of the excitement and like reporting
Speaker 1: on stuff. But well, partly part of what bothered me
Speaker 1: from like very early in the movie is that I
Speaker 1: don't even know if, like the way the movie portrays
Speaker 1: her and kind of a little bit the way Meryl
Speaker 1: Street plays her, it's not super clear to me that
Speaker 1: she's extremely competent at her job, which in real life
Speaker 1: she was, And so it was like weird where they
Speaker 1: were just like, well, we don't know if she's able
Speaker 1: to do the job, and I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm I'm sure she's able to do the job
Speaker 1: because she's always just waking up and being liked. But
Speaker 1: but I feel too, it's like this was her family's business, right,
Speaker 1: So you were the newspaper of record through monumental things.
Speaker 1: You grew up in a newspaper family. Do you have
Speaker 1: passion about information? Do you do you have passion about
Speaker 1: freedom of the press, caring about what the public thinks,
Speaker 1: or was your family just like these rich publishing people
Speaker 1: who were hob nobbing around with lb J and all
Speaker 1: the way that they sort of dropped that stuff about
Speaker 1: she and her husband, but forget about the husband. Her
Speaker 1: dad owned the paper, So I was like, do you
Speaker 1: care about this ship? It's not clear. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like she is far more like her motivation in
Speaker 1: regards to working for the paper, like her character always
Speaker 1: connects it back to like I want to make my
Speaker 1: dead husband and father proud, Like it never really has
Speaker 1: to do with like journalistic integrity or or breaking stories,
Speaker 1: and and and I haven't done a deep dive on
Speaker 1: kay Graham, and I don't know what her actual you know,
Speaker 1: like interviews. She loved it, I mean, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: This movie is weird because it made me like her,
Speaker 1: Like I had more like excitement and respect for her
Speaker 1: as like a historical character before I went into the
Speaker 1: movie than when I left. Because the way the movie
Speaker 1: portrays it, it's weird. And there's that scene with her
Speaker 1: and her daughter towards the end of the movie where
Speaker 1: it's like I feel like ka, like the movie sells
Speaker 1: out the character entire really in like one of the
Speaker 1: last scenes where she's just like, you know, she's saying
Speaker 1: like it was very stressful, and but she's only talking
Speaker 1: about I want to make my dad proud. I want
Speaker 1: to make my husband proud. I wanted, and just going
Speaker 1: on and on and to the point where she's saying, oh,
Speaker 1: and when my father wanted to give the paper to
Speaker 1: my husband and not me, I thought that made total sense.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is She also says something weird,
Speaker 1: like people always say that whenever they see a woman
Speaker 1: doing something. I forget what verb she was, but it
Speaker 1: was like, when a woman does this thing, it's like
Speaker 1: seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. It's bad
Speaker 1: and it's weird, and like dog shaming. Don't shame a dog. Well,
Speaker 1: And also it was like when they were going public,
Speaker 1: they were saying, oh, you know, maybe you could try
Speaker 1: to think about expanding and becoming more than just like
Speaker 1: a local paper and the Washington And she was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I kind of just want to reach
Speaker 1: for the top shelf. I'm not really reaching for the
Speaker 1: moon of the stars. I know, I just want to
Speaker 1: keep it going and pay people and and even the
Speaker 1: opening scene was just like she was all consumed with
Speaker 1: making sure that the paper was covering Richard Nixon's daughter's wedding.
Speaker 1: That was the hill she was ready to die on
Speaker 1: for some reasons. Die on that hill, girl. Well. Another
Speaker 1: early scene is when I don't know the guy's name,
Speaker 1: but she was kind of being coached by this guy
Speaker 1: of what to say whenever they go into this big
Speaker 1: board meeting about when they're discussing like what the stock
Speaker 1: prices are going to be, breading it down as like
Speaker 1: Meryl Streep's friend. Yeah, I mean he worked for the paper,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what his name is or what
Speaker 1: his role is. Maybe now Bradley Witt for the actor,
Speaker 1: isn't the older guy? Yeah? Maybe? And every role he's
Speaker 1: in recently, I'm just like, wow, that wasn't because he's
Speaker 1: in't get Out too, And I'm like, he was in
Speaker 1: West Wing, Yes, he was in west Wing. West Wing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a west Wing guy, wasn't. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: he wasn't the west Wing guy. So so him, he's
Speaker 1: like coaching Katherine Graham on like what to say, and
Speaker 1: she seems flustered and she's like, I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't know this stuff, and then you see a scene where,
Speaker 1: like immediately following that, she's in the board meeting. She's
Speaker 1: the one woman out of like twenty other men and
Speaker 1: they're all talking about, oh, I thought the shares were
Speaker 1: going to be sear And there's like an opportunity for
Speaker 1: her to reveal the knowledge that she was practicing with
Speaker 1: this guy, and she's going to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: quality drives profitability, and then she totally chokes and then
Speaker 1: her friend See, I actually kind of liked that scene
Speaker 1: if it were paid off on in any way later on,
Speaker 1: But it's not like if she would like gets a
Speaker 1: chance to redeem herself. Maybe is that what you mean?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like the way that that scene plays out,
Speaker 1: like we as an audience know, it's like what I
Speaker 1: missed chance? And you know, she has in this huge
Speaker 1: room full of men who don't want to listen to her.
Speaker 1: But then the movie kind of, I mean, like sputters
Speaker 1: out in terms of keeping that going, in terms of
Speaker 1: like developing her as someone who you want to see succeeds. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I was hoping that that would come.
Speaker 1: I was hoping we would see her in a meeting
Speaker 1: later where she would, you know, have one of those
Speaker 1: movie moments of like, actually I have something to say,
Speaker 1: and but you know that never happened. We do, well,
Speaker 1: we do. I mean she does and kind of redeem
Speaker 1: herself by the end when she's like, I know the steaks.
Speaker 1: I know I might go to jail over this. I
Speaker 1: know that the paper might totally fail, but I say
Speaker 1: publish anyway, and we're like going to bed. But that
Speaker 1: character arc, we don't see the actual arc happen. Like
Speaker 1: it's just she like flubs up at the beginning and
Speaker 1: then we don't, like you said, yeah, we don't really
Speaker 1: see her character grow and develop and build over the
Speaker 1: course of the story that leads to that point where
Speaker 1: she like suddenly has strong decision making skills. She has
Speaker 1: a few moments that I'm like, you know, there was
Speaker 1: like there's one scene she had with Tom Hanks been
Speaker 1: uh where they're sort of challenging each other on uh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and and like the way that Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: character treats Meryl Street is you know, a ma of
Speaker 1: respect and condescension. But I mean there are scenes where
Speaker 1: they're challenging each other and it is like a lively discussion.
Speaker 1: We have no idea. If you don't know the exact
Speaker 1: particulars of the history, you have no idea what the
Speaker 1: funk they're talking about. But they're challenging each other, and
Speaker 1: so she has these few moments of like, oh, she
Speaker 1: does know things, we just don't see her demonstrate knowing
Speaker 1: things in the way she does her job. So also,
Speaker 1: there was a scene, and I'm sure that it was
Speaker 1: put out there for discussion, but it was just angering
Speaker 1: where there's a dinner party and then somebody starts to
Speaker 1: talk about some kind of smart thing, and then a
Speaker 1: woman says, well, that's time for us to move, and
Speaker 1: all the women and Katherine Graham go into one room
Speaker 1: and talk about outfits or some ship, but the men
Speaker 1: talking about politics. Yeah. Yeah, that scene was fucking infuriating,
Speaker 1: And to keep our discussion about Titanic always going from
Speaker 1: I was thinking this far more effectively done in Titanic.
Speaker 1: But there, I mean, but this is sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the women go to one room, the men staying in
Speaker 1: the room and smoke cigars, and you know, what's the
Speaker 1: line politics? Wouldn't it just do anyway? Exactly? The famous
Speaker 1: Billy Zane performance Shout out Billy Zane every day always.
Speaker 1: But the way this knows that to Jack, he's like,
Speaker 1: you're too poor to know about feminist ion. Jack Dawson's like,
Speaker 1: I'm going with the ladies, see you later. I just
Speaker 1: want to watch Titanic again. Um. But in the post,
Speaker 1: the way that rolls out, it challenges nothing. They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the women are not going to talk about anything but clothes.
Speaker 1: We don't know what any of their names are. And
Speaker 1: one literally goes like, kay, that that dreadful day job
Speaker 1: of yours, and are you fucking Katie? They are you know,
Speaker 1: according to the post, women are that dumb? I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: it was just an endless and it felt like they
Speaker 1: were wedging things in to remind people how sexist things
Speaker 1: were by like ship like that, where it's like I
Speaker 1: get that. You can't show me into posortable ways, any
Speaker 1: redemption at all, you know. Even her decision to change
Speaker 1: the course of journalistic history was like are you there?
Speaker 1: Are you on the line? Are you on the line?
Speaker 1: It's everybody on the line of the Russians on the line.
Speaker 1: So many climactic scenes in this movie take place over
Speaker 1: the phone. It's very frustrating. I'm like what's actually happening,
Speaker 1: also to the point of like all the women talking
Speaker 1: about like oh, gowns and whatnot. There's a scene at
Speaker 1: the end after like after the climax, and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: we won. Journalism saves the day. And there's a group
Speaker 1: of people gathered around a woman's desk in the newsroom
Speaker 1: and she says something like no more articles about dresses
Speaker 1: or shoes, and but it's just like a throw white
Speaker 1: line that like you probably it's just like, oh, subtle,
Speaker 1: great job. But there's also that scene where she goes
Speaker 1: and challenges Robert McNamara and she's just like, how could
Speaker 1: you do this? Like you knew all this stuff, you
Speaker 1: kept it secret, and Bob, could you do my dirty
Speaker 1: Bob so my son, my nephew, Bob. I think I
Speaker 1: might take back what I said about like not really
Speaker 1: seeing her arc because you do see those times where
Speaker 1: she does go and like challenge people, and she seems
Speaker 1: like she's getting more confident in her abilities and decision
Speaker 1: making and whatnot. And I also think it's cool that
Speaker 1: you do see kind of the stakes of the country
Speaker 1: and different parts of the globe kind of resting on
Speaker 1: her shoulders in terms of like do we leak this information?
Speaker 1: Do we let the public know about this like very
Speaker 1: important thing that was happening at the time. I like
Speaker 1: that you get to see a woman in that position
Speaker 1: where she's making such a crucial decision. Was it told
Speaker 1: interestingly in this movie? I felt like this movie was
Speaker 1: not interesting, which is crazy given the story it's telling.
Speaker 1: But I also feel like it just like does a
Speaker 1: huge injustice to the story and its characters. Like it
Speaker 1: just if I knew nothing about depending on Papers or
Speaker 1: any of that going into this movie, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: so this was kind of a drag kind of thing that,
Speaker 1: which is crazy because there's there's so much and they
Speaker 1: just do nothing like they're One of my main things
Speaker 1: with this movie was like I feel like this exact
Speaker 1: movie in every single way could have been made fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. Like it just feels like it could have
Speaker 1: come out at any time, Like there's no especially because
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's a timely movie. It's a timely story.
Speaker 1: If you told me this movie came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, I would believe you because of how
Speaker 1: he treats his characters and how it treats the source
Speaker 1: material it could have come out fucking whenever well, and
Speaker 1: also likes somebody who created a TV show that wanted
Speaker 1: to ship all over the nepotism in the media, which
Speaker 1: is how the Daily Show came to be. It's driving
Speaker 1: force was observing the media and watching, you know, all
Speaker 1: these shows the storylines for me. I literally when Catherine
Speaker 1: Graham is challenged by Ben Bradley, the editor of the paper,
Speaker 1: and he says, wait, Robert McNamara has literally written this
Speaker 1: massive dossier that shows there's election near fraud. We've covered
Speaker 1: up the war where we send people to die knowing
Speaker 1: we were losing. And she goes, oh, do we have
Speaker 1: He said, haven't kind of a bad time lately, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's like so it's like that is the point.
Speaker 1: You know, even the journalism that's supposed to be the
Speaker 1: best journalism we have in this country is so full
Speaker 1: of bullshit. And Tom Hanks started touches on it by
Speaker 1: like everybody wants to go to the same parties with
Speaker 1: this one and that one, and and those stories of
Speaker 1: like of how those things intersect and how people finally
Speaker 1: do the right thing, Like I think that's really important.
Speaker 1: And so it was like a ship bath up until
Speaker 1: she finally pulls the trigger. But like, how much do
Speaker 1: you have to be convinced when there's thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of paper and thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of dead people and young people and and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my friends, I don't know. It's got you know, restless
Speaker 1: leg syndrome and it's just trying to make it work.
Speaker 1: And life and him had a fight, Yeah, a hard time.
Speaker 1: It's so yeah, I mean all of it was just
Speaker 1: sad by and large Yeah, I feel like Kay's character
Speaker 1: is under service and kind of largely just like unexamined
Speaker 1: as a person. It just kind of all over. She
Speaker 1: doesn't get that much screen I mean, this is an
Speaker 1: ensemble cast. I don't really know if we're supposed to
Speaker 1: identify any one character as the protagonist of the movie,
Speaker 1: because it seems like it's her and Tom Hanks's character,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't get that much screen time. Okay, if
Speaker 1: they were doing a movie called the Begdell Cast and
Speaker 1: you were hardly in it, right, that would be weird,
Speaker 1: and they made one of us significantly dumber than we
Speaker 1: were in real life, that would be Yeah. Like it's
Speaker 1: like it's called a post, right, And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just kind of feel like, I mean, I know that,
Speaker 1: like there's not like two und of people that work
Speaker 1: out your podcast, so I know that's different. How dare
Speaker 1: you that we feel your strength? She's so clearly amazing,
Speaker 1: Um that you don't need to hundred people. That's right,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That would be funny if there
Speaker 1: was a betel Cast movie and I was in it
Speaker 1: for three minutes and I was only drooling. I feel
Speaker 1: like all you did was strength. I'm just like, um,
Speaker 1: what are we doing? Where are we haming? And my
Speaker 1: name was Bob but all but a stripe? Who else
Speaker 1: do we have for female characters? We have Judith, who
Speaker 1: is the She was the person who was maybe going
Speaker 1: to report on the wedding because they were like, you're
Speaker 1: not allowed, right. She said that Tricia Nixon looked like
Speaker 1: it looks like trash. She said, she looked like a
Speaker 1: vanilla scarpe coat. Sick for DELI get that money, vanilla,
Speaker 1: I screen cop. Oh my god, you're fired. That's too
Speaker 1: sick of burn she is, So she is in it.
Speaker 1: There's another woman who appears to be a journalist or
Speaker 1: reporter of some cod She's the one who at the
Speaker 1: end was on the phone and kind of like dictating
Speaker 1: what the journalist or Tom Hanks's secretary. Oh yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I'm clear about her role. Yeah, there was the daughter,
Speaker 1: the daughter who did we have a name? I don't
Speaker 1: know if we learned her name. I was struggling with that.
Speaker 1: I was like, did I miss it? Did I miss it?
Speaker 1: Because those were the scenes that I thought like, well
Speaker 1: this and it sucks because there's two extended scenes with
Speaker 1: k Graham and her daughter, and there are some exchanges
Speaker 1: that you're like, this could maybe pass the Backeal test.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure what her name is. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I mean, from what I could tell, you don't learn
Speaker 1: what we know her Her maiden name is probably miss Graham,
Speaker 1: but we don't. I'm like, I don't think we learned
Speaker 1: her name. And the little daughter's name, did we learned
Speaker 1: her name? I don't think. I don't think so. Also,
Speaker 1: it would be hilarious if this movie passed the back
Speaker 1: to test strictly on that lemonade standing direction. I think
Speaker 1: it might name vodka, Yeah, vodka. And Catherine also has
Speaker 1: an assistant or secretary. She's walking up the steps and
Speaker 1: that's I don't know if we know her name either. No,
Speaker 1: she was like you have to be at this place
Speaker 1: at five, Yeah, thank you. Yeah, there was that scene.
Speaker 1: And then there was the scene with the daughter but
Speaker 1: we don't know, And then was there an exchange between
Speaker 1: to say who wants sandwiches? And there was one woman
Speaker 1: in that room? Was that Judith or not Judith? I
Speaker 1: think it was not? Oh yeah it was Judith? Was
Speaker 1: it Judith? There is this movie so I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you the name of literally anyone if I didn't pay
Speaker 1: and teen or Tin and Twinette twin Tin. Yeah. Actually
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks being lady not easy. Oh that was Oh
Speaker 1: my day was fine, Thanks for asking um. Feminist icon
Speaker 1: look out. There's a scene where a woman and I
Speaker 1: don't know who it is, says to Okay, I got
Speaker 1: a cake? Is that okay? And Kay says as long
Speaker 1: as no one counts the candles because it's her birthday.
Speaker 1: What's her name? I don't know his name. Am walking
Speaker 1: towards the door to answer it when Ben Bradley is
Speaker 1: there to say, I'm at your part day. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: tell you something, Ben, Bradley comes to her house at
Speaker 1: the beginning of scene to this movie, He's like me again,
Speaker 1: and to the point where the movie even starts calling
Speaker 1: it out of like wow, Ben, you keep showing up
Speaker 1: at my house. It's like yeah, almost like there's a
Speaker 1: more interesting way to do this scene, Like I know
Speaker 1: it's And I also just feel like we have to
Speaker 1: ask some old people if you just went over to
Speaker 1: people's houses on announcement, before the times of phones and things.
Speaker 1: Did people just show up that your house all the time?
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid, like my dad's
Speaker 1: friends would just maybe people just came over to your boss.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm kind of glad that that trend
Speaker 1: has died out when whenever someone is like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: just popping in, I was like that you have to
Speaker 1: leave my home. I'm not I'm not home, no matter
Speaker 1: of how many clear indicators that I'm home. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: grandfather would do that or a little and it would
Speaker 1: drive maybe than it is like an old person thing,
Speaker 1: because we're drive My mom fucking crazy. She was just like,
Speaker 1: why is he what? He's got a phone, Like, there's
Speaker 1: no need to just show up places. Yeah. Yeah, feminist
Speaker 1: like your grandfather. No, he's actually pretty bad person. So
Speaker 1: we're all my grandparents. Okay. So as far as the
Speaker 1: movie passing the Bechtel test, I don't couldn't identify any
Speaker 1: scene where there were quite a few scenes where women
Speaker 1: were interacting, but they were either talking about men or
Speaker 1: we did not know. It's usually Katherine Graham talking to
Speaker 1: someone else, but I don't think we know the other
Speaker 1: character's name in almost all of those scenes. With I
Speaker 1: don't think I was the same way because I was
Speaker 1: like super because I did the same thing. I watched
Speaker 1: it three weeks ago, and then I watched it again
Speaker 1: for the podcast, and I was really look get through
Speaker 1: the lens right, and I have notes of like this
Speaker 1: happened at this And I took a note of every scene,
Speaker 1: and I was like, do I know that person's name?
Speaker 1: Like do I have to go back and rewind it
Speaker 1: four times to see if maybe? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know any of these people's names, right, and
Speaker 1: this is and and something else that I noticed that
Speaker 1: really bugged me, especially in the second viewing, was how
Speaker 1: many times there are several women in the same room
Speaker 1: and their characters don't interact in any way and that
Speaker 1: to me, it says like, I don't think that was
Speaker 1: done intentionally. But to me, that's even worse of just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this filmmaker, it wouldn't even occur to them to have
Speaker 1: female characters interact like it. Just there's so many scenes
Speaker 1: where Meryl and her secretary are in the same room
Speaker 1: the whole time. They do not speak well and they
Speaker 1: didn't speak to them, but that's it. Well, And there's
Speaker 1: that same when she walks in to talk to all
Speaker 1: the stockholders and she walks up these steps and all
Speaker 1: of these women are standing out there and they open
Speaker 1: the door, and I was like, are they the secretaries
Speaker 1: of all the men in there? Like? Who are all
Speaker 1: those women on the stairs? But yeah, and they all
Speaker 1: have these weird forty yards stairs and what are they?
Speaker 1: Why were they all standing there? For? They were like
Speaker 1: smiling at her to a good job. They're also ladies,
Speaker 1: there's right, it's just like a very vague over like
Speaker 1: women other women, But it's like, why would you know
Speaker 1: who she is? There's that scene I forget why exactly
Speaker 1: she's in court at this point, but there's that scene
Speaker 1: where she's speaking to a young woman and young woman's
Speaker 1: like I hope you in and then she sees that
Speaker 1: woman's boss mistreat her and be like you're late even
Speaker 1: though traffic or something. And that was another weird scene
Speaker 1: that I'm like, I think that Steven Spielberg thought he
Speaker 1: was being a feminist just then, but it was ultimately
Speaker 1: just a weird scene that and it never comes back.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she worked for She was like work for
Speaker 1: the one of the judges. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, Like that was the one who's like,
Speaker 1: She's like, my brother is still over there, and I
Speaker 1: hope you win, but don't tell my boss I said that,
Speaker 1: or even that I talked to you. I can't. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that I because I came in here
Speaker 1: fucking hating this movie and I, oh my god, these
Speaker 1: women are like, I'm so happy. You guys were just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. I was worried that you picked it
Speaker 1: because you liked it. No. I was like, man, this
Speaker 1: is the smartest person in the world. How could she
Speaker 1: like this movie? Oh no, I will never let you
Speaker 1: down by telling you this. Right now, I tell you
Speaker 1: I haven't say Titanic. No, that's that you know you're
Speaker 1: going to have an amazing night. I'm gonna watch it
Speaker 1: and then I'm just gonna call you about the like
Speaker 1: I watched it. It's it's like, I'm really happy. It
Speaker 1: does so much better than you would ever in your
Speaker 1: life think it would do in terms of the way
Speaker 1: it treats female characters. However, it's not necessarily a great movie.
Speaker 1: Hover counterpoint, it is the greatest movie of all time,
Speaker 1: I know, and I haven't seen it. I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those movies where do you ever meet those
Speaker 1: people who like, they didn't have sex in high school,
Speaker 1: and then they didn't have it in college, and then
Speaker 1: their virgins and by accident they're like, now I just
Speaker 1: am keeping it as a point of pride, and maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just And I feel like that way about Titanic,
Speaker 1: where it's like I just didn't see it, and then
Speaker 1: I was gonna and then I haven't, and like do
Speaker 1: I not see it? But I feel like I should
Speaker 1: just funk. Titanic just hasnicually just the Titanic suck the Titanic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm the same way with The Godfather. I've never seen it,
Speaker 1: and then I think it's like extremely cute when I
Speaker 1: tell people I haven't seen it and then they go
Speaker 1: and unhinge their jobs, and like, that's right, it's not
Speaker 1: on purpose, but yeah, it becomes on purpose after a while.
Speaker 1: Let's see how far into my life I can make
Speaker 1: it without seeing The Godfather. Yeah, it's good, you should
Speaker 1: say it. That's kind of an amazing movie. I've heard
Speaker 1: good things, largely considered to be a better movie than
Speaker 1: the first time. Similar with Paddington Too, and how it
Speaker 1: is the other best movie ever made, along with alright,
Speaker 1: Paddington Too. Love it anyway, everyone's upset with me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen even a Paddington one. I think I'm
Speaker 1: a bear. It's a bear with a raincoat. He's got
Speaker 1: a defle coat and a red hat. Yeah. I had
Speaker 1: to kill two hours yesterday and so I saw about
Speaker 1: seventy of Jumanji. Oh, I wouldn't talk to you about that.
Speaker 1: I stayed until Nick Jonas showed up. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: guess I'm out. I guess I'm fun. I guess I'm good,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna just go do what I have to do.
Speaker 1: But you know not, Jamie, No, it's no. It's like
Speaker 1: a board and board game. Right. I hadn't seen the first,
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with Jumanji whatever. I don't know what Jumanji.
Speaker 1: I know something I don't know the new Jumanji. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of colors. It's kind of like a sensory
Speaker 1: overload car tune. No, no, it's a It's Jack Black,
Speaker 1: Kevin Hart, The Rock, The Rock, Nick Jonas Jonas a
Speaker 1: woman from doctor who whose name escapes me. I feel
Speaker 1: like you deserve better. I thank you so much. Your
Speaker 1: time deserves better. I just didn't have enough time to
Speaker 1: go home. So I'm like, I guess I'm going to
Speaker 1: just see part of Jumanji. Did you pay money? I had?
Speaker 1: Used movie Pass? Is that free? So? Yeah? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's like you can see one movie a day for
Speaker 1: like ten dollars a month. So it's not free. It's
Speaker 1: not free, but if you go to the movies, movie
Speaker 1: pass is much like freedom. And you know what else
Speaker 1: and that is not granted to everyone. You have to
Speaker 1: ask for him. No one else isn't free? Is the
Speaker 1: press for a little bit in this movie that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, Thankfully they I love trying it back to
Speaker 1: killing the relevant topics. The master you are, so you
Speaker 1: are the seguess, shall we rate the movie on our
Speaker 1: Apple scales, so as we have a scale of zero
Speaker 1: to five nipples by which we rate the movie based
Speaker 1: on its portrayal of women. I'm gonna have to say
Speaker 1: it's not like this isn't the worst one we've ever done,
Speaker 1: but certainly not the best. I'm gonna I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it like maybe a two and a half nipples. We've
Speaker 1: talked about how disserviced Katherine Graham was in the movie.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're not really ever on board with her,
Speaker 1: and that might be because she doesn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of screen time or opportunity for us to get to
Speaker 1: know her. Um. I feel like the story could have
Speaker 1: just come from a different angle and told her version
Speaker 1: of it much better. Of the other female characters there are,
Speaker 1: we never even get to learn their names. We don't
Speaker 1: even know what their situation is. We see eighty billion
Speaker 1: men on screen at all times, and that's frustrating. I
Speaker 1: don't know it could have done better. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. Who are you? The most
Speaker 1: important question? But yeah, I'm going to give two of
Speaker 1: them to the Lemonade, and the half nipple will go
Speaker 1: to k Graham. I'm gonna give it to and and
Speaker 1: I would like to see what this movie would look
Speaker 1: like in the hands of a female director, because I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of missteps would not have been
Speaker 1: But I mean, and I know that we're commenting on
Speaker 1: how women are treated by the movie and not the
Speaker 1: movie itself, but this movie is just so lazily done
Speaker 1: in every single way, and I feel like just the
Speaker 1: way it treats its female characters is one of the
Speaker 1: very lazy components. John Williams composed the music for his
Speaker 1: and it's the worst. Like, it's just no one is
Speaker 1: doing a good job. I think that they give us
Speaker 1: a female protagonist and they're given the source material for
Speaker 1: a very interesting, nuanced character, and we just don't get it.
Speaker 1: Women be servant sandwiches, women be providing exposition, women be
Speaker 1: talking about shoes. It's just like it's just also fucking
Speaker 1: lazy and is a bummer on many levels because there
Speaker 1: is a good movie to be had about the subject
Speaker 1: matter and this was not it. It's like there is
Speaker 1: a movie called The Pentagon Papers, which have you seen it?
Speaker 1: Is there? I haven't seen it years ago? Okay, I
Speaker 1: should have done more research on it. Sorry, everyone. If
Speaker 1: you know about the movie The Pentagon Papers, please twe
Speaker 1: someone's favorite movie. It was the movie was co written
Speaker 1: by a woman, Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, so you
Speaker 1: feel like it would have been a better movie. But
Speaker 1: just kidding, not this time, not this time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I give it two nipples. I'm going to give one
Speaker 1: of the nipples to Zach Woods because yeah, I like
Speaker 1: him a lot, but he didn't blind this movie. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give the other uh nipple to Sarah Paulson
Speaker 1: because she also deserved way better. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess I would give it to grudgingly um, because really,
Speaker 1: what did you want me to walk out of this
Speaker 1: movie knowing and feeling like I don't know the answers
Speaker 1: to those two questions. There's a biography about Katherine Graham
Speaker 1: that I would say we should all probably read because
Speaker 1: if Catherine am was a fraction of how she was
Speaker 1: portrayed in this movie and Bren Bradley saved that paper,
Speaker 1: then that's the movie. And why are you making that
Speaker 1: movie trying to act like she did something if he
Speaker 1: pushed her into everything, you know, I just feel like
Speaker 1: everything about this movie was sexist. If she was not awesome,
Speaker 1: then why did you make the movie? It's like, and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to make a movie that was about
Speaker 1: Ben Bradley and how awesome he was, and that Katherine
Speaker 1: Graham said, I inherited this newspaper. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be in the newspaper business. But you're really smart, and
Speaker 1: I'm willing to put my family business on the line
Speaker 1: because you are willing to like fight for democracy. That's
Speaker 1: a movie. But like, I don't know what this movie
Speaker 1: was other than I felt insulted by Katherine Graham's ineptitude.
Speaker 1: I felt insulted by the fact that I thought I
Speaker 1: was going into a movie that was going to tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about her journey in this historical
Speaker 1: context and didn't. And I just feel like every woman
Speaker 1: in it, I don't know who they were. It was
Speaker 1: sometimes you literally cannot tell them apart and you don't
Speaker 1: know their names. So I'm gonna give my two nipples.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give, I guess one to Judy for wanting
Speaker 1: to have some Mike's hard lemonade. Hell yeah, what it matters.
Speaker 1: And the other nipple I'm gonna give too. I don't
Speaker 1: even know who deserves it. I guess I guess Sarah
Speaker 1: Paulson for having to suffer through that bad photoshop picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all had to. We were right there with her.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like Steven Spielberg or you
Speaker 1: know who, whomever tied to him. We're like, we want
Speaker 1: to make a journalism movie. Give me five ideas for
Speaker 1: a journalism movie. And he arbitrarily was like, oh, women
Speaker 1: are hot right now, like the woman journalism movie. And
Speaker 1: it's just like every it's just so thrown together and
Speaker 1: wishy washing, and the movie doesn't know what it thinks
Speaker 1: about itself. And then it ends on that horrendous like
Speaker 1: like a bad SNL sketch of Richard Nixon imprisonator. But like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing that, like, after knowing they made this
Speaker 1: movie because of the parallels of the times, like they
Speaker 1: chose the subject matter but also of the times, is
Speaker 1: now you know, it's like, then, do a movie about
Speaker 1: women in journalism who we don't know about because they
Speaker 1: got sucked over by creepy bosses. Who are the women
Speaker 1: we don't know? Like, where's the journalism version of Hidden Figures?
Speaker 1: Make that movie? Yeah, that's what we need. We need,
Speaker 1: we need the hidden figures version of every everything in
Speaker 1: the world. It's hidden figures of and call me later.
Speaker 1: It's the new hidden figures, extended universe, forgotten women through history.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just unbelievable. There's like, way too many
Speaker 1: cool people who did really cool ship like that. I
Speaker 1: can't even and we don't know about them because history
Speaker 1: has buried them. The Post has gotta go. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gotta go. Don't like it, and it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It's nominated for everything, to the point where I don't
Speaker 1: think that anyone who like nominated the Post for an
Speaker 1: award has actually seen it. No, I don't know, because
Speaker 1: it's not winning no way, didn't win anything. No good. No,
Speaker 1: it's also you have to nominate Meryl Streep or uh,
Speaker 1: Ninja comes after you, Caryl Streets, Ninja, Army Street. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: You're right, Meryl Street. Well, Liz, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being This is so much fun. I'm saying I
Speaker 1: loved it. I come back. Are you Do you have
Speaker 1: those one guest rules like the people who like, No,
Speaker 1: you can't five years dad whenever you want? Okay? Policy?
Speaker 1: Where can people find you online? Is there anything you'd
Speaker 1: like to plug? Oh? My gosh. Yes, you can find
Speaker 1: me online at Liz Winstead on all platforms. I spelled
Speaker 1: my name with two z's because I'm an ass whole um.
Speaker 1: And then maybe what you want to do, because this
Speaker 1: is going to be super fun. On February first, Lady
Speaker 1: Parts Justice, which is my reproductive rights crazy comedy organization,
Speaker 1: is to a big livestream telephone at Lady Park Justice
Speaker 1: dot com. It's Rachel Bloom, Sarah Summer and I are
Speaker 1: hosting it and it's a whole fun evening two hour
Speaker 1: broadcasts of comedy and learning about what's happening to reproductive
Speaker 1: rights and abortion access and how you can join in
Speaker 1: and have fun. You can pledge. Mark Hamill is going
Speaker 1: to be sitting for two hours making crafts that are
Speaker 1: going to be auction. It's gonna be Does Mark Hamill
Speaker 1: make craps? Yes, he doodles and he does crafts and
Speaker 1: he's a bunch of stuff like you have me at
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill jass. Go to Lady Parts Justice dot com
Speaker 1: for all the info. It's gonna be a ballas there
Speaker 1: may or may not be a Piniona that is the
Speaker 1: patriarchy with garbage inside. Oh my god, gat my blood
Speaker 1: pressure is rising. Yeah, well hey on that. You can
Speaker 1: follow with the Bechtel Cast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, You
Speaker 1: can go to our website backtel cast dot com, tweet
Speaker 1: on US, rate and reviews on iTunes, Pledge to our page.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, coming up on the Patreon in February, it's Oscar.
Speaker 1: What did what I call it? You called it biopic March? Okay,
Speaker 1: but it was actually February, and it was actually not
Speaker 1: even biopics. It was it was Oscar Watch February. I
Speaker 1: accidentally called it biopic March about forty sons. But this
Speaker 1: month in the Patreon, we're doing a Tania and the
Speaker 1: Disaster Artists, which are biopics. So I understood your mistake,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately it was not for March. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I spent the whole day thinking it was. But
Speaker 1: subscribe to the patreon five dollars a month gets you
Speaker 1: two extra episodes a month. You bet you pretty good?
Speaker 1: And yeah, journalism is alive and well, especially print journalism swelling.
Speaker 1: John Williams score doing great. All right. Bye by