Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zephim vast
Speaker 1: start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 3: My name's Caitlin Derante.
Speaker 2: And before we get our episodes started today, we wanted
Speaker 2: to welcome all our new listeners. This is our first
Speaker 2: episode on the How Stuff Works Network. We are so
Speaker 2: thrilled to be here. Yes, so if this is your
Speaker 2: first time listening to our podcast, we'll just give you
Speaker 2: a quick explainer on what we do here.
Speaker 3: That's right, So we again are the Bechdel Cast. We
Speaker 3: talk about the portrayal and representation of women in movies
Speaker 3: through an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 2: Every Thursday, we bring in a special guest who brings
Speaker 2: in one of their favorite movies, a movie that's really
Speaker 2: affected them, and we tear it apart based on the
Speaker 2: way that it treats women in that movie. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: does really well, times not so nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hollywood kind of has a long history of not
Speaker 3: representing women well at all what Yeah, hard to believe.
Speaker 2: Hot take.
Speaker 3: That's why we're here. We use the Bechdel test as
Speaker 3: a sort of jumping off point to initiate this larger
Speaker 3: conversation about representation of women.
Speaker 2: What on earth is the Bechdel Test? Kaitlin?
Speaker 3: Why, Jamie? I'd be happy to tell you, Okay. It
Speaker 3: is a test that originated from cartoonist Alison Bechdel in
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties. It requires that a movie has at
Speaker 3: least two women in it who have names check. They
Speaker 3: have to speak to each other eick, and that conversation
Speaker 3: cannot be about a man.
Speaker 2: Oh at all? Word?
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Shall we demo it?
Speaker 3: I'd love to.
Speaker 2: Let's demo it for the people? Okay, begin test. Hi, Caitlin,
Speaker 2: Hey Jamie, did you know that this is our first
Speaker 2: episode on the House Stuff Works Network?
Speaker 3: I did know that, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: But like for people who are like new to the podcast,
Speaker 2: like what should listened to? Are there other episodes?
Speaker 3: There are because we've operated independently up until now. Good
Speaker 3: for us, I know we're such strong independent women.
Speaker 2: Queen go off.
Speaker 3: We have over eighty episodes backlogged of a ton of
Speaker 3: different movies, so check those out. Chances are we've covered
Speaker 3: one of your favorites.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got a lot of hot, spicy backlog with
Speaker 2: some hot spicy discourse. We've covered Star Wars, We've.
Speaker 3: Covered Black Panther, We've covered Jili for some reason, we
Speaker 3: covered Gilie.
Speaker 2: We sure did. Uh So, did that conversation pass the
Speaker 2: Vitels test?
Speaker 3: Well, except for Gelie because Julie is a man, but
Speaker 3: up until Larry and Icon, yeah, grows up until the
Speaker 3: very end of that conversation, I would say we've passed
Speaker 3: with flying colors.
Speaker 2: Good for us, I know.
Speaker 3: And so toward the end of every episode, after our discussion,
Speaker 3: after our heavy but also fun discourse.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's heavy, sometimes it's light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will determine whether or not the movie passes
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test, and we will rate the movie on
Speaker 3: our special rating system, which we will get to. But yeah,
Speaker 3: other than that, we're so happy to be here on
Speaker 3: how stuff works. We're happy you're joining us. And today's episode,
Speaker 3: we are talking about breakfast of Tiffany's. Yes, and we
Speaker 3: have a wonderful guest, so let's introduce her.
Speaker 2: Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: She is the host of Bad with Money podcast and
Speaker 3: she is the writer of I hate everyone, but you
Speaker 3: Gaby done. Hi, Hi, thanks for being here.
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks for having me. We're going older than we
Speaker 4: usually go today.
Speaker 2: We haven't done a lot of movies before nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: I would say, agree, yeah, but this is a big one.
Speaker 2: This is a classic.
Speaker 4: Yes, I did notice that you guys don't do a
Speaker 4: lot of very old movies, which is why I suggested
Speaker 4: this one.
Speaker 3: I think probably one of the reasons we tend to
Speaker 3: steer more toward modern and contemporary movies is that our
Speaker 3: conversations are about how we influence media. Media influences us.
Speaker 3: So today's world, not as many people are watching the
Speaker 3: older movies anymore.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know my grandmother. I'm a turner classic movies.
Speaker 2: I used to be a TCM right addict.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Kim, it's really good.
Speaker 3: But like, especially like with today's younger generation, who are
Speaker 3: the most easily influenced, they're watching you know, Marvel stuff
Speaker 3: like what's in theaters right now, and they're not a
Speaker 3: lot of them unless they're like film buffs, aren't necessarily
Speaker 3: going back to older movie.
Speaker 4: Pretentious I mean. But also the thing is with this
Speaker 4: one is that like young women have this aesthetic about it,
Speaker 4: and they also like, have you know the poster of
Speaker 4: Audrey Hepburn, and like they're aware of this as like
Speaker 4: a classic that keeps keeps coming back kind of as
Speaker 4: like a cool thing, right without possibly even understanding the
Speaker 4: movie or having seen the movie.
Speaker 2: I hope that we do more old movies. It's it's
Speaker 2: for me. I just sort of assume that anything before
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, even though I've seen a lot of them,
Speaker 2: but like a lot of pre nineteen eighty is just
Speaker 2: straight up a wat where you're just like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: not gonna do well. That's not gonna do well. And
Speaker 2: most movies after nineteen eighty and also most movies that
Speaker 2: come out now, but yes, in particular before that.
Speaker 4: But sometimes they're really sneaky feminist. Yeah, like they get
Speaker 4: away with a lot of stuff. Like I was just saying,
Speaker 4: I love the movie Gentlemen before Blondes, and that is
Speaker 4: like very they get away with so many things, like
Speaker 4: Marilyn Monroe's characters they're both like so overtly sexual and
Speaker 4: it's just like completely fine. So I think there's like
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that I don't know. It's not
Speaker 4: all like oh this is terrible and Women Suck and
Speaker 4: there were a lot of really great like leading parts. Yeah,
Speaker 4: women back, And I don't know where we steered wrong, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's probably the well, this movie
Speaker 3: came out in nineteen sixty one while the production Code
Speaker 3: was still in full effect, so I would hazard to guess.
Speaker 3: And I don't know a whole ton about this, but
Speaker 3: the production code was an effect between nineteen thirty four
Speaker 3: and I think nineteen sixty eight or nine, and this
Speaker 3: was like all the censorship of like you could, like
Speaker 3: there was no overt sexuality, you couldn't swear, there couldn't
Speaker 3: be graphic violence, there couldn't be snaky. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 3: tons of innuendos, and that gave birth to things like
Speaker 3: screwball comedy and like a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker 3: But like, yeah, because of the production Code and all
Speaker 3: the censorship that came with that, I think reinforced more
Speaker 3: like rigid gender roles. But they have think.
Speaker 4: They I think like limitations made people a little more
Speaker 4: I don't know them, made them a little more creative
Speaker 4: about rather than just going for like the eases.
Speaker 3: In some movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Just am always shocked by how overtly sexual. They're like
Speaker 4: allowed to be with these kind of innuendos or like
Speaker 4: having to write around these sort of things. Like I
Speaker 4: was saying to Jamie too before this that I read
Speaker 4: that they had the Paul character. They added more sexual
Speaker 4: stuff for him in the script so that the sensors
Speaker 4: would go after him and censor more of his things
Speaker 4: and leave Holly golightly alone. Yeah, which is smart, Which
Speaker 4: is like an interesting trick.
Speaker 2: That's a cool misdirect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I Well, let's
Speaker 2: talk about your history with the movie. When did you
Speaker 2: first see the movie? And like, what is your history
Speaker 2: with that up till now?
Speaker 4: When I was in high school, I was like a
Speaker 4: very pretentious asshole, and so I was kind of doing
Speaker 4: this thing where I was like I like old music,
Speaker 4: I like old movies. I'm wearing silk gloves to prom
Speaker 4: whatever that kind of girl, And so I would start
Speaker 4: watching these old movies because I just I don't know,
Speaker 4: I was trying to be like a person who knew
Speaker 4: about things that other kids at school didn't know about,
Speaker 4: which you know, people loved obviously, like Super wanted to
Speaker 4: be friends with me, and so like I took a
Speaker 4: lot of pride in being like I know about all
Speaker 4: this media that you don't even know about. So I
Speaker 4: think I watched it just because I had seen all
Speaker 4: these photos and I knew about like the picture of
Speaker 4: her with the with the tiara andy, but I had
Speaker 4: no idea what it was about. So I watched it
Speaker 4: in high school because I watched a lot of like
Speaker 4: Elvis Beach movies. I watched Hard Day's Night all the time.
Speaker 4: I liked Marilyn Monroe's stuff.
Speaker 2: This was like your era that you that you into,
Speaker 2: like got in late fifties early sixtiest.
Speaker 4: Like got into it. And then when I watched it,
Speaker 4: I was like, wait a minute, they're both sex workers.
Speaker 4: Like this is crazy, Like I this movie that is
Speaker 4: built up as being this classy kind of like beautiful
Speaker 4: thing that like an Audrey Hepburn especially who's viewed as
Speaker 4: kind of like untouchable and like a porcelain doll.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's like not explicitly stated in either in
Speaker 2: the story or the movie, but it's so Like Truman Capoti,
Speaker 2: I liked this phrase a lot when he was asked
Speaker 2: if like A Letley was a sex worker, like years later,
Speaker 2: he's like, I like to think of her as an
Speaker 2: American geisha. Yeah, okay, okay, so you're saying it, but
Speaker 2: you're not going to say, Hey, they.
Speaker 4: Would in the in the press for the film at
Speaker 4: the time, they were saying she was a party girl
Speaker 4: or that she They also used the word cook a lot.
Speaker 4: They were like, she's an eccentric kuk right, And it's like.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is some really wild codd language we're pulling out.
Speaker 2: But it's like, no one will actually say it, but
Speaker 2: it is clearly what's you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's it's not subtle. I mean he
Speaker 4: gives her money for the quote unquote powder room, the
Speaker 4: interior decorator quote unquote leaves Paul three hundred dollars like
Speaker 4: on the nightstand. Like it's not subtle at all. So
Speaker 4: then I was like, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 4: same movie that people lawed as this classy sort of
Speaker 4: thing that like women you know, dress up for as
Speaker 4: Halloween like in you know what I mean. I put
Speaker 4: the poster in their dorm and I was like, does
Speaker 4: anybody else understand what this movie is about? And then
Speaker 4: I loved it because I always loved sort of subversive stuff.
Speaker 4: So I was like, this is great, and then I
Speaker 4: would watch it every so often as like a you know,
Speaker 4: to fall asleep, as like a soothing because now it's
Speaker 4: kind of like this comfort movie, which a lot of
Speaker 4: Audrey Hepburn's stuff is for me. Yeah, like just very comforting.
Speaker 2: So it's been with you for a long time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's sort of similarly. I had the poster before I
Speaker 2: saw the movie. Yeah, I had the poster hanging in
Speaker 2: my room. I think my mom gave it to me,
Speaker 2: and I had it for like a full year before
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, yeah, I should probably watch this
Speaker 2: because I love old movies. My era was I was
Speaker 2: like wartime MGM movies. Okay, I had a stack of
Speaker 2: tapes and like DVDs full of TCM Judy Garland movies,
Speaker 2: like every Judy. I was a full on Judy person,
Speaker 2: which is also one of the many reasons it's so
Speaker 2: painful to watch Mickey Rooney in this movie, because he's
Speaker 2: in all the Judy Garland movies. But so I finally
Speaker 2: got around do watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and then read
Speaker 2: the book as well, and I really really really loved
Speaker 2: Truman Capoti, who did not like this movie. But I
Speaker 2: think it's really nice. There was so much I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it in at least two or three years. Like
Speaker 2: it's sort of the thing that whenever it's on Netflix,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, this is a good background thing, but
Speaker 2: I totally forgot about some of the very like moving,
Speaker 2: sad things that happened in this movie. It's and I
Speaker 2: think that that's true. There's just like this weird dissonance
Speaker 2: with this movie where you remember what Audrey Hepburn looks like,
Speaker 2: you remember sort of how she behave. Do you remember
Speaker 2: that there's parties, and you remember there's a kiss in
Speaker 2: the rain at the end and everything else. It's you're
Speaker 2: sort of just like, oh, yeah, she's arrested. There's a
Speaker 2: character named Sally Tomato.
Speaker 4: There's like brother does I totally forgot her brother died? Yeah,
Speaker 4: It's like an incredibly sad movie. And then it's recreated,
Speaker 4: like I keep thinking of the scene of Gossip Girl
Speaker 4: where they recreate it and Leeton Mester is her, and
Speaker 4: then it's just played us this very romantic thing, right,
Speaker 4: and people like don't know what the movie is about,
Speaker 4: which I can see why Truman Capote would freaking hate that.
Speaker 2: He hated well, we'll get into this in a bit,
Speaker 2: but there's like the context that he wrote this story,
Speaker 2: and also that in the short story, Paul is coded gay,
Speaker 2: which obviously they completely scrap in this movie. But there's
Speaker 2: you know, there's just like a lot of interesting stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this movie was with me since I think
Speaker 2: high school as well. I have a really embarrassing MySpace
Speaker 2: profile pick with the poster in the background and it's
Speaker 2: black and white and it's really horrible. No, it's really bad,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. And then watching it this time,
Speaker 2: I don't dislike this movie. I still I still enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: but there's just like a lot that stuck out to
Speaker 2: me and just stuff I'd forgotten. Yeah, what about you.
Speaker 3: I saw it for the first time in college during
Speaker 3: that period of time because I was not to brag,
Speaker 3: but I was majoring in film, so I was trying
Speaker 3: to watch as many movies as I could, so I
Speaker 3: would sometimes watch like two or three movies a day,
Speaker 3: and then like from that period of time, my brain
Speaker 3: didn't store anything about the story or like any of
Speaker 3: important things about the movie. The only thing I would
Speaker 3: remember about the movies I watched back then is whether
Speaker 3: or not I liked them, and what I remembered about
Speaker 3: Breakfast at Tiffany's is a very visceral hatred.
Speaker 4: For this movie.
Speaker 3: I hate this movie.
Speaker 2: You hated it the first time you saw it, so yes,
Speaker 2: oh wow, and you hate it now.
Speaker 3: I hate it this movie.
Speaker 4: Were you really left to have me on because of that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: We like because it's fun.
Speaker 3: I think it's fun a lot of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love talking about movies that we hate and
Speaker 2: more fun.
Speaker 3: I think we do our best, at least to try
Speaker 3: to not let our personal feelings about the movie influence
Speaker 3: our critical analysis of the portrayal of women in the movie. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I do my best to keep that separate.
Speaker 2: Anytime it's an old movie, Caitlin hates it. Anytime it's
Speaker 2: a movie with aliens, I hate it. We all do our,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong.
Speaker 3: I like a lot of old movies. This just isn't
Speaker 3: an example of one of the ones that I like. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I like Audrey Hepburn.
Speaker 4: She kind of plays a similar type of woman a lot.
Speaker 3: I think the only other thing I saw her in
Speaker 3: was My Fair Lady.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I liked that movie. Okay, and I had Red Pig
Speaker 3: Million and I liked that. I haven't seen it for
Speaker 3: over a decade, so I don't know if it holds
Speaker 3: up at all. But the reason I don't like this
Speaker 3: movie is I find the Holly Golightly character absolutely insufferable.
Speaker 3: I didn't read the novella, sall, I'm not super familiar
Speaker 3: with the context, but just there's barely a plot and
Speaker 3: I hate the character. So sorry about that. But from
Speaker 3: here on out, I'm going to be happy and nice anyway,
Speaker 3: So I'll do the recap.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: We are introduced to Holligo lightly. She's living in New
Speaker 3: York City. Wow city where dreams true, concrete jungle where
Speaker 3: dreams are made up? Okay, so it's the early sixties. She's,
Speaker 3: you know, living a life in New York City. Although
Speaker 3: it's never explicitly stated, there are different innuendos and hints
Speaker 3: to suggest that she is a sex worker, escort American geisha.
Speaker 3: And early on she meets her new neighbor who moves in,
Speaker 3: named Paul, but she keeps calling him Fred because he
Speaker 3: looks like her brother and Fred.
Speaker 2: And we know that it's a red flag because he
Speaker 2: is a blonde male adult. It's still one of the
Speaker 2: biggest human red flags you can encounter is an adult
Speaker 2: blonde male, very dangerous. Do not interact with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Paul also seems to have a certain arrangement with
Speaker 3: a woman named missus Phalanson.
Speaker 2: I love missus Phalanson.
Speaker 4: So Patricia Neil, she's amazing, so got her.
Speaker 2: Husky voice, and then she she just she like appears
Speaker 2: in a room and like, oh, she's going to fuck him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like it's just such.
Speaker 4: She's married to Roald Dahl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know that. That's so cool.
Speaker 4: Fact cool.
Speaker 3: So they have an arrangement where he he's a writer,
Speaker 3: but a struggling writer. He's written one book of nine
Speaker 3: short stories. But other than that he needs some financial security,
Speaker 3: which missus Falansen seems to provide. So Paul and Holly
Speaker 3: are in similar careers and they relate. They yeah, so
Speaker 3: they kind of They started to become friends early on,
Speaker 3: Like Holly throws a party and she meets a few
Speaker 3: different rich guys who get invited. One's named Jose Da
Speaker 3: Silva Pereira and the other one is rust Patrolla. These
Speaker 3: men eventually become two men that Holly tries to pursue
Speaker 3: and like seduce so that they will marry her so
Speaker 3: that she can be wealthy, a wealthy man. Then Holly's husband,
Speaker 3: we find out that she was previously married when she
Speaker 3: got married. Okay, so this is going on fourteen thirteen.
Speaker 4: This is crazy. So she and her brother were poor,
Speaker 4: their parents died. They were stealing turkey eggs from this
Speaker 4: guy's yard. He was like full grown man. He was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I'll adopt you. So she so he
Speaker 4: adopts her and Fred and then when she gets to
Speaker 4: be thirteen, he's like and he has kids from a
Speaker 4: previous marriage. He's like, oh, I want to marry you.
Speaker 4: So then he marries her and then they like are
Speaker 4: raising the brother and the kids together.
Speaker 2: What so weird. And then the way that the movie
Speaker 2: presents him to me is also very bizarre, Like they
Speaker 2: present him as like you understand why she doesn't go
Speaker 2: back with him, obviously, but also he's presented it's like
Speaker 2: this really like sympathetic.
Speaker 4: Sweet, simple man, but.
Speaker 2: He loves her, and you're just like, no, this guy's
Speaker 2: like sucking criminal raise this saturatory rapist who shows up
Speaker 2: with his big blue eyes. He's like, come back to
Speaker 2: the farm, and you're just like.
Speaker 4: No, she's in the right, but as played as that,
Speaker 4: like he's in the right. And also she says like,
Speaker 4: well I was I was only thirteen, so the marriage
Speaker 4: wasn't old. Yeah, yeah, I bet it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that tracks like there's and also Paul pissed me
Speaker 2: up in that scene, and this is I think, in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, just revealing of the era. Where
Speaker 2: Doc shows up. He's like, hey, that girl you have
Speaker 2: a crush on I raped her and and like I
Speaker 2: need to see her because I'm her husband. And Paul,
Speaker 2: without checking, without giving Holly any manner of heads up,
Speaker 2: just knocks on her door and he's like, hey, found
Speaker 2: your rapist outside. Was like you fucking there. You just
Speaker 2: sold her out so hard, And then Holly has to
Speaker 2: deal with it. She does not get mad at Paul.
Speaker 4: She's like Doc's just a sweet guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just like we we can be upset with Doc.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just that scene was so like there's a few
Speaker 2: different moments in the way that Paul treats Holly that
Speaker 2: this story doesn't address that. It's really just like okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: at that time, if a man says I'm this woman's husband,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how the woman feels you bring him
Speaker 2: to her right, and his like this person you just met,
Speaker 2: his needs matter more than the person you're falling in
Speaker 2: love with. Sure, right, right.
Speaker 3: So that is a fun story beat, But ultimately he's
Speaker 3: like trying to lure her back home with the promise
Speaker 3: of like, hey, your brother Paul's getting out of.
Speaker 4: The army, said Fred.
Speaker 3: She's like, no, I can't go back, and.
Speaker 2: Then he like sort of threatens. He's just like, well,
Speaker 2: if you don't get on his Greyhound buzz with me,
Speaker 2: maybe you'll never see Fred again.
Speaker 4: It was like, what friend's an adult?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a man.
Speaker 3: But so then she's like, oh, I have to marry
Speaker 3: a rich guy so that I can bring Fred to
Speaker 3: me in New York City so I can take care
Speaker 3: of him again, this adult man who has been in
Speaker 3: the army for presumably a few years.
Speaker 4: She kind of insinuates that Fred is not smart.
Speaker 2: Yes she's it's not stated, but yeah, she says at
Speaker 2: the beginning that he's very slow and tall.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's like John Malkovich of Mice and Men.
Speaker 4: Yep, that's what that's the canon I'm going with.
Speaker 3: So she's trying to seduce these different rich men. First,
Speaker 3: she starts with Rusty Troller, but then she finds out
Speaker 3: that he has married someone else, and then she starts
Speaker 3: to go after Jose And meanwhile, like she's spending time
Speaker 3: with Paul and they're really connecting and he's catching some
Speaker 3: feels for her. But she, you know, she doesn't know
Speaker 3: she is or not because she doesn't like to be
Speaker 3: tied down to anyone. She's she's a free as a bird.
Speaker 2: There's a hat. It's a metaphor, right right.
Speaker 4: The cat doesn't have a name, and the cat will
Speaker 4: get a name when she feels like she can settle down, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But these different pursuits don't work out because she
Speaker 3: gets arrested for her Oh wait, she I can't believe
Speaker 3: I forgot to mention Sally Tomato.
Speaker 2: Feminiss Sally Tomato.
Speaker 3: He was like a known gangster. This like drug scandal
Speaker 3: surfaces and because she was visiting him in prison. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she gets I guess. Yeah, I don't really understand that hole.
Speaker 4: I read about it, and in the write ups I read,
Speaker 4: they believe that she really didn't know, like she really
Speaker 4: thought it was a weather report. But I don't know
Speaker 4: if she's that stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's gotten through life pretty cleverly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But so then she she's like about to go
Speaker 4: to Brazil to marry Jose, and then she gets arrested
Speaker 4: for her involvement with Sally Tomato.
Speaker 3: And then she is this before or after She finds
Speaker 3: out that her brother has died in a.
Speaker 4: Before before before because Jose is still there. Doesn't Jose
Speaker 4: leave after?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah he leaves because.
Speaker 4: She got arrested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, So she finds that out, and then
Speaker 3: she trashes her room and then she is in a cab.
Speaker 3: Paul has like picked her up from prison, and then
Speaker 3: he's just like, I love you, Holly. You need to
Speaker 3: get out of your cage that you built for yourself.
Speaker 3: You belong to me. He tells her that because he
Speaker 3: loves her, that she belongs to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he won't let her go in the library and
Speaker 2: he's like, good, he's got icecript. It's very romantic.
Speaker 3: And then she flings her own cat out of the cab.
Speaker 2: Oh, she's like.
Speaker 3: Kind a home here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also that one shot. This is like, I
Speaker 2: think it's the scene we found out where Fred died,
Speaker 2: where someone it's clear it's not Audrey. Hepburn throws a
Speaker 2: cat at the wall and you see the cat lie
Speaker 2: through the frame and hit the wall. I was like,
Speaker 2: you can't do that, you kitchen, you.
Speaker 4: Had lands on the window.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you see. Like I'm like, you just imagine
Speaker 2: like a first dad being like, Okay, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: throw this cat really quick.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Also, cats do have eight nipples. This is cat facts
Speaker 3: with Caitlin, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, basically, in the in the cab right at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie, Paul is confessing his love for Holly.
Speaker 3: She's like yeah, and then she's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: He's right. I do need to let people in. I
Speaker 3: need to let love into my life. I do need
Speaker 3: to go back and get my cat. So she gets
Speaker 3: out of the cab and they look for the cat together,
Speaker 3: they find it, and then there's a kiss in the rain,
Speaker 3: and that is the end of the movie. Okay, let's
Speaker 3: take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 3: All right, and we're back.
Speaker 2: There's a lot that happens in this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's not on top of plot.
Speaker 3: To me, it's like there's no like really distinct desire
Speaker 3: that she's given she has a few like micro goals,
Speaker 3: but I think that Fred.
Speaker 2: And security or her two motivations, Like she wants to
Speaker 2: be with her brother, and she also wants to like
Speaker 2: live a comfortable life without having to commit to someone
Speaker 2: at first and then later decides she does want to
Speaker 2: commit to someone because of comfort.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Paul wants to be a writer. They're both
Speaker 4: kind of trying to get out of sex work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this just for context of the book, which
Speaker 2: is very different. So Holly Golightly was pulled from two
Speaker 2: different sources in Truman Capotte's life. One is his mom,
Speaker 2: who literally did basically the Lula May thing where when
Speaker 2: Truman Compotti was very young, his mom and this is
Speaker 2: like they lived in Alabama, blah blah blah. Truman's mom
Speaker 2: boots out, She's like, actually, I'm going to go to
Speaker 2: New York and like find us a cool life, changed
Speaker 2: her name the whole, like the whole Holly Galately sort
Speaker 2: except she had a kid, and then eventually move Truman
Speaker 2: Capoti to New York with her. It didn't work out.
Speaker 2: They ended up moving back to Alabama. But so his mom,
Speaker 2: who he had like a weird relationship with his whole
Speaker 2: life basically lived this sort of Holly Golightly adjacent lifestyle
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 4: Wait are you telling me a gay creative had a
Speaker 4: weird relationship with his mom.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it, but I get it better.
Speaker 2: Okay, because Paul in the story is Holly's neighbor but
Speaker 2: is not like an explicit love interest at all and
Speaker 2: is coded gay or that is like what was speculated
Speaker 2: by a lot of critics. So it's like Truman Capoti
Speaker 2: wrote this novella where he as an adult, became friends
Speaker 2: with his mom at his age and then they have
Speaker 2: this like it's it's great, and then the other one
Speaker 2: is a.
Speaker 4: Neighbor of his right, a woman who lived downstairs from him.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, So it's like interesting self fan fic in
Speaker 2: some ways. And then he also pulled on like he
Speaker 2: I guess he's like, I want to write a female
Speaker 2: Gatsby character, which you can see a lot of in
Speaker 2: Hollygolately as well as like, oh yeah, the self made.
Speaker 4: Yeah is she a phony? The thing is she's a
Speaker 4: real phony exactly. Yeah, she is a prototype manic pixie
Speaker 4: dream girl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: The way she's introduced when he comes in and she's
Speaker 4: just talking over him so manically and like doesn't even
Speaker 4: find my shoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah they're alligator.
Speaker 4: And it's just very like, oh, of course I'm doing this,
Speaker 4: like and he's sort of blown away by her, and
Speaker 4: she's like, you know, just being super quirky.
Speaker 2: Her being able to call a taxi, like her catching
Speaker 2: her on the balcony, just improvising this beautiful tweet song
Speaker 2: from the acoustic.
Speaker 4: Guitar which is moon River, which was written for the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but I feel like that trope is I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not even fully a recognized trope at this point,
Speaker 2: but it's commented on more than other Manic pixies where
Speaker 2: we are given the context of her background and like
Speaker 2: why she puts on this persona to survive, and like
Speaker 2: it it makes sense and is explained and commented on
Speaker 2: enough that it almost doesn't bother me really too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah it does movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah it doesn't bother me that much either, especially because
Speaker 4: nobody is like shaming her for her flaw or like
Speaker 4: her being a sex worker is not even the problem,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? And so that's that's
Speaker 4: like a twist on it for me, where it's not
Speaker 4: like someone had to save her necessarily. She had to figure,
Speaker 4: she had to come to this on her own, that
Speaker 4: she she doesn't want. I don't know. I guess Paul
Speaker 4: does a lot of the work, but she like makes
Speaker 4: the choice to get out of the cab, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, she she has a lot of agency. The
Speaker 2: ending rings where it was like my favorite part when
Speaker 2: I was younger, Like it rings a little bit hollow
Speaker 2: for me now because the way Paul behaves at the
Speaker 2: end of the movie is so entitled.
Speaker 4: And yeah, he's very entitled, not like you belong to me,
Speaker 4: And she says people don't belong to each other, right,
Speaker 4: and she's right.
Speaker 2: Right, But then cut to five minutes later, she belongs
Speaker 2: to him now and the cat you know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's weird that we hear her say those lines that
Speaker 2: like definitely stuck with me when I was younger, and
Speaker 2: then minutes later she goes back on it entirely, or
Speaker 2: the story has her go back on that entirely, and
Speaker 2: now she's gonna be in, you know, a normal relationship
Speaker 2: with Paul, which is apparently all she ever wanted, even
Speaker 2: though that's never really what she said that she wanted.
Speaker 3: Which is why, like, I don't know if she has
Speaker 3: that much agency. She's not that active of a character,
Speaker 3: like so she's like, yeah, she has a few different
Speaker 3: goals and motivations, but she's the worst person.
Speaker 2: Why didn't she like her? Why?
Speaker 3: I have a list why you don't like her. She
Speaker 3: treats people around her horribly, most notably her neighbor mister Yuniyoshi,
Speaker 3: who will get into a whole horribly problematic oh boy
Speaker 3: thing there. But there's a lot of people she doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to care about. She uses people. She is superficial
Speaker 3: and has terrible friends, and she only cares about status
Speaker 3: and money. She is hyper materialistic. She never says anything
Speaker 3: of substance. She only ever talks about like the rich
Speaker 3: man she wants to marry. She's unaware of her surroundings,
Speaker 3: and she accidentally lights a woman's head on fire. She
Speaker 3: is calling people ugly and fat all the time. She
Speaker 3: doesn't own any books. She's never been to a library before.
Speaker 3: She thinks that South America is a country.
Speaker 2: I disagree on a lot almost all she does think
Speaker 2: that South America is okay.
Speaker 4: I'll give you that.
Speaker 2: I think that you know those things in a void
Speaker 2: are issues, but it's like she's a she's a I
Speaker 2: think she does have a clear motivation and a lot
Speaker 2: of those qualities. Especially I would argue the materialistic stuff
Speaker 2: is so rooted in that she has had to find
Speaker 2: ways to survive for so long and and it's like,
Speaker 2: it's not like these men with money that you know, like,
Speaker 2: I guess you can make the argument that she has
Speaker 2: manipulating them, but they're doing the same thing to her.
Speaker 2: They don't give a fuck about her. They want, you know,
Speaker 2: like a piece to bring to events like it is,
Speaker 2: and like fitting in with her like background as a
Speaker 2: sex worker, even though no one's gonna say sex sex worker,
Speaker 2: Like it's transactional in a lot of ways. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, like the whole thing with her loving Tiffany's
Speaker 2: just seems like in her life, given what we know
Speaker 2: of her, the only consistent thing you can count on
Speaker 2: our material things, because she's been let down by so
Speaker 2: many people, with the exception of her brother, who she
Speaker 2: is genuinely fighting for, but everyone else in her life,
Speaker 2: like who else can she point to is like, Oh,
Speaker 2: here's a person that is worth more than material security.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that there is any I mean,
Speaker 2: like her husband, like, well, we already went through that
Speaker 2: where you know, the statutory rape and the you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Like what choice. She didn't have a choice but to
Speaker 4: marry him. So it's really like because there was no
Speaker 4: way out of that situation, right, It's similar like this
Speaker 4: is like a downer, but my grandmother survived the Holocaust
Speaker 4: and she's incredibly materialistic now, And like when I was younger,
Speaker 4: I used to judge her for that, and now that
Speaker 4: I'm older, I'm like, oh, of course, Like of course
Speaker 4: she wants to surround herself with like finery. The background
Speaker 4: on that is so dark that like she's just like
Speaker 4: I want all the jewelry. I want all the stuff.
Speaker 4: I deserve this right, Like and that completely makes sense
Speaker 4: to me, Like that tracks as like motivation totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, it makes I think we're given
Speaker 2: the context for it to make sense. I get that
Speaker 2: she's like not likable in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 2: that definitely like the Manic Pixie stuff is like present
Speaker 2: and like used as oh, it feels almost like a
Speaker 2: short cut at some points to like get us from
Speaker 2: point A to point B, especially in terms of like
Speaker 2: why is Paul in love with her manic pixie behaviors,
Speaker 2: so easy for it to be like and that's why, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he lives here.
Speaker 4: And also she's totally messed up and has a lot
Speaker 4: of problems but flawlessly beautiful the whole time. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: I would have like sleeping with makeup on, like like
Speaker 4: she's like when she's like got the pigtails in the
Speaker 4: sweater on and she's like, we have to go somewhere
Speaker 4: where I can get in looking like this. I'm like,
Speaker 4: but shut up, but joking, you look top ten most beautiful?
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Right now than any of us will ever look in
Speaker 2: our entire lives.
Speaker 4: Great thing, right, So there is a thing of like
Speaker 4: romanticizing trauma and like making trauma beautiful, which is definitely
Speaker 4: at play here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's there's multiple points where I think
Speaker 2: it's like three different men in this movie call her
Speaker 2: crazy and that is always like red flag. And there's
Speaker 2: one of my favorite ones just of like you know,
Speaker 2: like when you watch an old movie, there are just
Speaker 2: like some clueless ways that it will interact with its
Speaker 2: characters where Doc says to her, you're talking crazy, Lula
Speaker 2: May and she says, don't call me that, and I'm
Speaker 2: thinking crazy and then she's like, don't call me Lula May.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the bigger issue here, because people call
Speaker 2: her crazy all the time, and it's just something she
Speaker 2: has to deal with.
Speaker 4: She's a kook, she's an eccentric coup. Then what that was, Paul?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, I don't know. I was. I was like,
Speaker 2: interesting choice that she's never been to a library before,
Speaker 2: But then I forgot. I mean, there are so many
Speaker 2: details of this movie I've forgotten. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: but she goes back later and she's like, oh, maybe
Speaker 2: there is something to this.
Speaker 4: Whole He's never been to Tiffany's. So true, everyone's never
Speaker 4: been places.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think it's much more common to have never
Speaker 3: been to a Tiffany's than to never have been to
Speaker 3: a library.
Speaker 2: And the I kind of liked, I don't know the
Speaker 2: whole Tiffany's and like stealing in that whole sequence is like,
Speaker 2: this is a bit long. They like each other, but the.
Speaker 4: Well do you know that New York City is the
Speaker 4: third character? There's everyone I just want for the listeners
Speaker 4: at home, Jamie and Caitlin both very much hated that.
Speaker 2: No, he collapsed, did not like that at all. I
Speaker 2: need to be revived. There's that's something that happens when
Speaker 2: we have male guests sometimes where male guests love to
Speaker 2: say that locations are also characters, Like.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for telling me that there's Oh
Speaker 4: I mentioned in the beginning, I'm an old movies asshole, right,
Speaker 4: like that was weird to everyone.
Speaker 2: Carrina Longworth over here, Oh god, I wish there's I
Speaker 2: know she's.
Speaker 4: The I listened to that. I listened to that show
Speaker 4: and it's real good.
Speaker 2: It's really good. Oh yeah, the Tiffany thing. I liked
Speaker 2: the comment that she makes inside of Tiffany's that like
Speaker 2: just reminded me of being poor, of like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't buy anything. I just like, you know, I
Speaker 2: just like ster at nize things and it just like
Speaker 2: calms me down. And that fits into the character very well.
Speaker 2: Of just like the atmosphere of materialism is more comforting
Speaker 2: than like other people.
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of class stuff too that they
Speaker 4: like get the Crackerjack ring engraved. Yeah, Like it's just
Speaker 4: a lot of like, you know the way that the
Speaker 4: sales guy looks at them, and his judgy and that
Speaker 4: they like keep going with the bit.
Speaker 2: And also in this world, it makes no sense that
Speaker 2: he would look at these two gorgeous, well dressed people
Speaker 2: and be like, seems sus it's like now they look
Speaker 2: like they have money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, he's being a full on asshole.
Speaker 3: I think we had a similar discussion on like the
Speaker 3: Mulan Rouge episode, where if you really boil down this story,
Speaker 3: it is sort of about a woman who's a sex
Speaker 3: worker who maybe is trying to get out of this lifestyle.
Speaker 3: How active she is in that pursuit is kind of
Speaker 3: up for debate, but ultimately it's about a man who
Speaker 3: comes in and sort of rescues her from it in
Speaker 3: the sense that he's willing to provide her with actual love,
Speaker 3: unlike the other men that she's interacting with in her profession.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, this is a story like the
Speaker 3: one that we saw in Mulan Rouge and like we
Speaker 3: see in Pretty Woman, and just a lot of like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're a sex worker, that must mean that you just
Speaker 3: need love from a man.
Speaker 4: I The counterpoint to that is that he is also
Speaker 4: a sex worker, yes, and that he gives up missus
Speaker 4: Phil he gives up her, and he gives up he
Speaker 4: starts writing again because he's like, I need to make
Speaker 4: money on my own, and he kind of also is
Speaker 4: rescuing himself and she's rescuing him a little bit.
Speaker 3: But it's not his story, it's her story. So I
Speaker 3: feel like I wish she had more agency and more
Speaker 3: she was more active in the pursuit of whatever she wants,
Speaker 3: which again I would argue, we don't like again, some
Speaker 3: things are sort of defined, but I think there could
Speaker 3: be a much clearer definition of what she actually wants
Speaker 3: out of life.
Speaker 4: He's very entitled, but there is the thing that he
Speaker 4: leaves her alone for a long time and then she
Speaker 4: calls him to come back to the apartment.
Speaker 2: Which is good. Yeah, I agree with both of you
Speaker 2: on that. I think it's weird that, Like again, it's
Speaker 2: like a Hollywood third act problem, where I think all
Speaker 2: the work is done to make Holly a realized enough
Speaker 2: character that the movie does not have to end the
Speaker 2: way it does. She could act with way more agency
Speaker 2: towards the end of the movie, and it would make
Speaker 2: sense with her character because we've been given the contacts
Speaker 2: in the background that she would have the motivation to
Speaker 2: do it, but because of how these stories are structured,
Speaker 2: she's not allowed to. There is one line that Paul
Speaker 2: says when he's breaking things off with Missus Phelanson, where
Speaker 2: he's that really, I was just like, oh, come on,
Speaker 2: she can't help anyone, including herself. The thing is I
Speaker 2: can help her, and that's a nice feeling for a change,
Speaker 2: And so we know that he's going into it thinking
Speaker 2: that he is rescuing her and like that is even
Speaker 2: though we know that she has a lot to offer
Speaker 2: him as well. He pretty explicitly articulates what his mindset is,
Speaker 2: which is that like, I can help her, and that
Speaker 2: makes me feel good, and I care about her, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to.
Speaker 3: And also because I love her, then she belongs to.
Speaker 2: Me, right, So that is like a third actissue I have.
Speaker 2: And then there's also like one the other thing where
Speaker 2: they are both sex workers, right, and her motivation is
Speaker 2: so deeply rooted and survival. We also see her, you know,
Speaker 2: because she is a woman like treated worse like. At
Speaker 2: the very beginning, the motivation for their first hang is
Speaker 2: that mel blank fucking bugs Bunny is like chasing her
Speaker 2: out of her own apartment to the point where she
Speaker 2: has to leave out the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these men are getting violent and like there's an
Speaker 4: implication that he's gonna rape her. Right, She's just like
Speaker 4: another day at the office exactly.
Speaker 2: She's like, he's nice when he doesn't drink, and you're
Speaker 2: just like, yikes, okay, Yeah, so she has so so
Speaker 2: much more shit even though they're both workers. It's clear
Speaker 2: that she has to take more shit and Paul is
Speaker 2: sort of given the luxury that I don't think she
Speaker 2: really has in this movie of he has wanted to
Speaker 2: provide her yes and is allowed to have a creative
Speaker 2: pursuit and has the time to be able to do that,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't seem as possible for Holly.
Speaker 4: I also think the belong to each other thing is
Speaker 4: interesting because it's phrased terribly, but what he means is
Speaker 4: and what she ultimately takes away from it, and what
Speaker 4: the cat provides is that.
Speaker 3: What the cat provides my new podcast.
Speaker 4: Is that put down roots. You have to put down roots,
Speaker 4: you have to commit to something, you have to name
Speaker 4: your cat. And that's why I like that she goes
Speaker 4: after the cat when she gets out of the car,
Speaker 4: because it's yes, belong to each other's phrased poorly, but
Speaker 4: I do think he has a point in that, Like
Speaker 4: she's she's always gonna be running, and as is this
Speaker 4: doctor SEUs. Wherever you go, there you are. Uh oh,
Speaker 4: I feel like that's a doctor Seuss thing, but maybe not.
Speaker 4: But basically, like you you have to you're always gonna
Speaker 4: be stuck with yourself, so she can't keep running. Like
Speaker 4: in the cabs, she's like, well, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 4: Brazil anyway. I'm just gonna try to go anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he's like, you love New York, you love me,
Speaker 4: you love this cat, like deal with it. So I
Speaker 4: do think there is If she was like, actually, I
Speaker 4: do want to be this free person and he was
Speaker 4: coming from no evidence and no information, then I can
Speaker 4: see it. But also it is hard to swallow a
Speaker 4: guy being like, here's what you need, but it is
Speaker 4: what she needs.
Speaker 3: Well, but it's just it sucks that he has to
Speaker 3: make her see that and she doesn't come to that
Speaker 3: conclusion on her own, but.
Speaker 4: She does when she gets out of the car because
Speaker 4: she kind of just gone to Brazil and been like, nah,
Speaker 4: fuck you dude.
Speaker 3: Well, it's only because the long speech that he has delivered. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like it was still like his actions and his words
Speaker 3: poorly phrase though they may be that gets her to
Speaker 3: realize what I mean.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's why it would have been great if
Speaker 4: jose had been waiting for her, Like if she had
Speaker 4: actually have a choice, then she would have made a choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah. I don't hate aside from
Speaker 3: his very horrible phrasing of saying that she belongs to him,
Speaker 3: I don't hate the message that he's saying, which is
Speaker 3: basically just like, you need to be emotionally vulnerable if
Speaker 3: you ever want to connect with anyone and be happy,
Speaker 3: which she realizes that it just yea. I wish that
Speaker 3: she had come to that conclusion on her own, through
Speaker 3: her own you know, journey, rather than to have him
Speaker 3: very explicitly teach her that lesson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and also would have liked to see maybe a
Speaker 4: bit more of her throwing that back at him and
Speaker 4: being like, you do the same thing. You don't fucking write.
Speaker 4: You say you're a writer, but you don't write. You're
Speaker 4: kind of a prototype of a of a guy who's
Speaker 4: just privileged in just being like I'm gonna I'm good looking,
Speaker 4: so I'm gonna like let women, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 4: she doesn't give it back to him.
Speaker 3: She was a hard challenge him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at all, as hard as anyone.
Speaker 2: I wanted her to yell at him so much when
Speaker 2: she was like, why did you bring Doc to my house?
Speaker 2: But that's just I don't know why. That was the
Speaker 2: part I most strongly objected to. But I was so
Speaker 2: mad at he's so mad at me.
Speaker 4: He ambushes her with her rabbit.
Speaker 2: He's just like, yeah, you're gonna want to get on
Speaker 2: a Greyhound bus with this guy. I'm like, what is
Speaker 2: wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Anyways, are there any the other women at the party?
Speaker 4: Is that one boisterous woman that she hates, mag wild
Speaker 4: mag Wildwood, who she hates and thinks is a bore
Speaker 4: and then who passes out and everyone just lets her
Speaker 4: hit the ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another reason she's a terrible person. Like she
Speaker 3: knows that she's about to fall, and instead of Holly
Speaker 3: helping her fellow woman, she goes timber.
Speaker 2: Also, no one, no one like that clear out of
Speaker 2: the way. It reminds me of that scene at the
Speaker 2: beginning of School of Rock where Jack Black tries to
Speaker 2: do the stage dive, but everyone's like he's a jerk
Speaker 2: and they just let him hit the floor. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that she would be dead, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, And like that's off, like she hits her
Speaker 4: head like it's not okay.
Speaker 2: She would have at least broken her no, right face.
Speaker 4: And then there's like other women at the party, irving
Speaker 4: who's like the guy the OJ the agent is trying
Speaker 4: to get with yes, oh yes, And then who's he's
Speaker 4: kind of like chasing her around. And then there's one
Speaker 4: Asian woman, yes, who does not does not speak.
Speaker 2: Is I mean not the worst part of the way
Speaker 2: Asian culture is portrayed in this movie, for sure, but
Speaker 2: this reminded me a little bit of a few episodes
Speaker 2: ago we did the Royal ten and bombs in just
Speaker 2: like the use of Asian culture as set dressing correct
Speaker 2: and characters that are never given any.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she's dressed a very specific way. Yes, I
Speaker 4: mean it was interesting that she was in clue in
Speaker 4: the socialite scene. I thought that was interesting, but also
Speaker 4: dressed a certain way and doesn't.
Speaker 2: Talk, doesn't Yeah, so we just have no context of
Speaker 2: like who she is, why she's there.
Speaker 4: And then also there's like an interesting thing where with Jose.
Speaker 4: It seems like his family is like very important politicians
Speaker 4: in Brazil, and so there's like an implication that he
Speaker 4: can't marry a white woman, which is very interesting too.
Speaker 2: Oh I didn't catch that.
Speaker 4: I mean that he's like bringing her around and she's like,
Speaker 4: we're gonna get married with all his family there, and
Speaker 4: it's like very clear that that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if that was because she was a
Speaker 2: call girl. Oh.
Speaker 4: I got the impression that like she's trying to, like
Speaker 4: she was learning to cook and like trying to learn
Speaker 4: Portuguese and like fit in with his family, and I
Speaker 4: think there was like an implication that he can't marry
Speaker 4: someone who's not part of like the Brazilian political family.
Speaker 2: Or whatever that makes sense. I thought that they were
Speaker 2: just like, hey, don't marry a sex worker.
Speaker 4: But then she has a line well yeah, and then
Speaker 4: she has a line where she says, oh, our kids
Speaker 4: will have dark skin, but but green eyes. I was like, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: x yeah. Well, I was like, what do you mean, Holly,
Speaker 4: you don't have green eyes? Like what are you talk about?
Speaker 4: Who here has green eyes? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: From?
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's it's very weird. And then of course
Speaker 4: Mickey Rooney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we should we just do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we gotta do it. I'd recommend an article that
Speaker 3: was in the Wall Street Journal from a few years
Speaker 3: ago by Jeff Yang, who talks about this role at length.
Speaker 3: So this, this is something that's been talked about for years.
Speaker 3: People have protested like different.
Speaker 2: Screenings of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, because of Mickey Rooney's portrayal of the character
Speaker 3: of mister Unioshi, which is.
Speaker 2: Of course two thousand and eight comes out with a
Speaker 2: big old defense of ye doing it Earlier.
Speaker 4: Earlier he had said he regretted it, he's sorry he
Speaker 4: did it, he didn't know, blah blah blah, you did
Speaker 4: this whole thing. And then he got older, I assume,
Speaker 4: more senile, and then in two thousand and eight was like,
Speaker 4: not fuck y'all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I I never in defense of Mickey Ronny here,
Speaker 2: but Mickey Ronnie the last couple of years of his life,
Speaker 2: pretty much anything he says is not loucid. So it's
Speaker 2: a bummer that he was even allowed to make a
Speaker 2: statement about it, because I think he was like still
Speaker 2: lucid when he was like Oh, that's incredibly offensive.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he.
Speaker 4: Believed, Yeah, he believed it was offensive, but I think
Speaker 4: he got upset when screenings were canceled, and that's when
Speaker 4: he was like went full defensive.
Speaker 3: Like no one's ever complained about this role before that
Speaker 3: they have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really he has never seen a computer before.
Speaker 4: It's really bad. It is him straight up in yellow face.
Speaker 4: He's got a terrible accent. He's treated terribly by hollygo lightly.
Speaker 3: It's such a wee weird, horribly offensive character. It's like
Speaker 3: one of the worst, like the most racist characters ever
Speaker 3: committed to film.
Speaker 4: For sure.
Speaker 3: They put buck teeth in his mouth, they like taped
Speaker 3: his eyes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker 2: That really irresponsible thing. You can think of, every insensitive thing,
Speaker 2: incredible attention to detail. It's just fucking crazy.
Speaker 3: Because we did an episode recently also about Aliens, and
Speaker 3: we talked about the character of Vesquez being a brown face.
Speaker 3: At the very least, Again not to defend any you know,
Speaker 3: whitewashing or anything like that, or any racist characters, but
Speaker 3: at least that character of Vesquez is treated with respect
Speaker 3: by the other characters and the movie itself. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: is just like the worst example, and.
Speaker 4: It also doesn't add anything to the story. Like I've tweeted,
Speaker 4: I've tweeted about like loving Breakfast to Tifany's and I've
Speaker 4: been like my kingdom for someone who will just cut
Speaker 4: a version of the movie without his character at all,
Speaker 4: and the movie would make complete sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, don't need it. There's a few different
Speaker 2: elements of this movie. Just from a story perspective, you
Speaker 2: don't need that character. You don't really need Sally Tomato,
Speaker 2: Like there's not there's some there's certain things that just
Speaker 2: like you're some weird fat trimming.
Speaker 4: Sally Tomato comes into play because her arrest is what
Speaker 4: leads Jose to leave her. But it would make even
Speaker 4: better and just as much sense if she decides on
Speaker 4: her own to leave Jose and be with.
Speaker 2: Paul, right she loves him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think the cat has is more of
Speaker 3: an important part of the story plot wise than any
Speaker 3: of those other.
Speaker 2: Things, right, yes, so yeah, I checked that piece out.
Speaker 2: And and then also it Warrant's saying that, you know, well,
Speaker 2: this is one of the most egregious examples of a
Speaker 2: yellow face character in film. It was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: as recently as Emma Stone, so it is something that
Speaker 2: still happens in film and will anyone ever learn ever?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just watched Doctor Strange until this Winton's character
Speaker 4: is supposed to be Asian as well.
Speaker 3: It's like, what, there's so much whitewashing.
Speaker 2: That's horrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially I think like I think because it's yellow face,
Speaker 4: people are willing to give it more of a pass
Speaker 4: than like if he was straight up in black face,
Speaker 4: people would be like, well, obviously that's not I mean,
Speaker 4: some people would say it's bad, but because it's yellow face,
Speaker 4: people are like no, it's like okay, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, Like they view it as not as bad
Speaker 4: when it very clearly is right. And similarly with aliens too,
Speaker 4: I think they're like, that's not so bad. Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It is it is.
Speaker 4: It is so bad. Yeah, and it sucks because it's
Speaker 4: otherwise like a good, feel good movie. And then you're like, like,
Speaker 4: I really do please someone out there edit together the
Speaker 4: movie without those scenes and it would be just as good, right.
Speaker 2: It's really it's really frustrating, And at the time I
Speaker 2: was trying to like figure out like, okay, what did
Speaker 2: this add to this movie at the time, and it's
Speaker 2: just like I think it was intended as like a
Speaker 2: slap sticky, like, oh, wouldn't it be funny, which is
Speaker 2: just makes it even worse. And it's also totally at inconsistent.
Speaker 2: It's like a completely different it's taking place in a
Speaker 2: different movie. Right, It's not good. It's bad.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if you just like lost your keys
Speaker 3: all the time and then you woke up your neighbor.
Speaker 4: If you have twenty six keys made to your apartment,
Speaker 4: yeah you can get in, But do you.
Speaker 3: Like consistently like buzz your neighbor and wake him up
Speaker 3: all the time, and then in order to like appease
Speaker 3: him for a moment, you say, yeah, you can take
Speaker 3: nude pictures of me.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I did that with my moment orn yesterday. No
Speaker 2: kind of we just just a moment in praise of
Speaker 2: Emily Eustace Phalans.
Speaker 4: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Patricia Neil, she just think that she is so cool
Speaker 2: and like for this time she's so confidently cheating on
Speaker 2: her husband that it is fun to watch. And then
Speaker 2: and then you see this breakup scene between her and Paul,
Speaker 2: which I thought was like kind of sad but also
Speaker 2: kind of I don't know, I was surprised. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: we only see her three years.
Speaker 4: She doesn't break out. She's sort of very like practical
Speaker 4: minded about it.
Speaker 2: She's not like, yeah, but it's a little sad too,
Speaker 2: where it's like the way that she exerts her control
Speaker 2: over the situation with her and Paul is with her
Speaker 2: money and so when he makes the emotionally based decision
Speaker 2: of like I'm falling in love with someone, I need
Speaker 2: to break this off. I can't do this anymore, she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: how do I retain my power in the situation? And
Speaker 2: she tries to give him money, and that was just like,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: My assumption was that she was I thought, I always
Speaker 4: think that she's giving him the thousand dollars check to
Speaker 4: go on a trip because she thinks that they will
Speaker 4: spend time together, realize they're not in love, and that
Speaker 4: he'll come back.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 4: I always thought that she was like saying, like, go
Speaker 4: for it. Then, like I'll even pay for it because
Speaker 4: this isn't gonna work out, so.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean exactly, Yeah, like.
Speaker 4: Enjoy your trip, realize you're both people, fall out of love,
Speaker 4: you'll come back, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: And then he goes into his closet and he's like,
Speaker 2: find another fuck boy, goodbye.
Speaker 3: Hopefully he has the same length of arms as me,
Speaker 3: so you don't even have to go to a tailor.
Speaker 2: Starts toss out. It's great.
Speaker 3: So she'll be fine. She'll she'll find another young, strapping man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're super hot. You want to be writers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that character. She's a feminist icon.
Speaker 3: I love her calls Paul while her husband is in
Speaker 3: the room. This just like, Hey, my husband came home early. Gross,
Speaker 3: So I guess we can't see each other today. He's
Speaker 3: right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know why she's the
Speaker 2: icon of this movie for me.
Speaker 4: We don't know what the husband's deal is. She just
Speaker 4: like she's just like I want to pay for sex
Speaker 4: and I don't care.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're in an ethical non monogamy relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why she is able to make the call
Speaker 2: while he's in the room. My god, I don't I
Speaker 2: guess I sort of just assume, like, well, it was
Speaker 2: a marriage in nineteen sixty one, so it probably was
Speaker 2: bad and she could not get out of it and
Speaker 2: being disgraced.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and likes likes her younger men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good for her. Yeah, she's also Yeah, she's like
Speaker 2: an older woman who's just I just I like her
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, speaking of marriage and that, like the fact
Speaker 3: that Holly is trying to pursue two different men who
Speaker 3: are rich and she thinks that she's going to be
Speaker 3: able to marry into money. I get that that is
Speaker 3: maybe a logical next step for someone in her profession.
Speaker 3: Even so, the fact that she is trying to marry
Speaker 3: for money and not actually pursue like any of her
Speaker 3: other talents or anything like that, to just try to
Speaker 3: get a job and earn money for herself.
Speaker 4: Where would she work.
Speaker 3: I don't know. You could go to work at Tiffany's not.
Speaker 4: Really Yeah, yeah, well she doesn't have a bumpkin. You know,
Speaker 4: she's a bumpkin. She doesn't really have a lot of
Speaker 4: other options.
Speaker 3: Like there have many options in something, but it's notety.
Speaker 4: One, it's not nineteen sixty one. It's hard. There's not
Speaker 4: a lot of avenues for women. You really only had
Speaker 4: you had to get.
Speaker 2: Married, right, It's like, well that's the sex work does
Speaker 2: seem like one of really the only routes for Holly
Speaker 2: to live the life that she wanted to live at
Speaker 2: that time, because it it seems like if her motivation,
Speaker 2: her ultimate motivation is she's waiting for her brother to
Speaker 2: get out of the army so that they can go
Speaker 2: off and live together. And she's trying to save so
Speaker 2: she doesn't want to be tied down because that means
Speaker 2: when Fred gets out of the army, then they can't
Speaker 2: go through with the plan. And so, yeah, she has
Speaker 2: so few options. She doesn't have an education, she's.
Speaker 4: Never been to a library, like yeah, yeah, and she
Speaker 4: is like coming from a trauma background and I don't
Speaker 4: don't think she has a lot of And honestly, like
Speaker 4: that was that was like a valid career path, Like
Speaker 4: marrying rich is like a valid career path to get
Speaker 4: out of shit.
Speaker 3: I mean women used to go to college to meet
Speaker 3: their husbands so.
Speaker 4: That you can like try to move up in class,
Speaker 4: move up in your station. She's already pretty wild that
Speaker 4: she got out of she's in Alabama.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't know if she's from Texas that she
Speaker 2: got he's from Alabama.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, that she got out of there anyway to
Speaker 4: go in the sixties to be in New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's a miracle then she and like a
Speaker 2: testament to her own, you know, like cleverness and tenaciousness,
Speaker 2: that she is able to live the life she has,
Speaker 2: even though it is unsustainable and requires constant like hustling,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I don't know. I think I left this
Speaker 2: viewing with a better understanding of Holly. I still like that.
Speaker 2: I still like the movie. It's darker and sadder than
Speaker 2: I remember, and I think that's like a super common
Speaker 2: I know, way to.
Speaker 4: Forget sadder and darker than I think people who only
Speaker 4: look at it for the esthetic give it credit.
Speaker 2: For yeah, you know, and it goes without saying, but
Speaker 2: we should say it is a very white movie. It
Speaker 2: is the most prominent non white character is played by
Speaker 2: a white person. So there you go. That is just
Speaker 2: a version of New York that only exists in fiction
Speaker 2: and is frustrating.
Speaker 3: To write and of, you know, as we come up
Speaker 3: upon on almost every movie we encounter a very hetero movie.
Speaker 3: And I think it had the movie like adapted the
Speaker 3: character of Paul as I mean, but then we like.
Speaker 4: Then you don't get the love story well, which.
Speaker 3: Is fine for me, but I also don't necessarily want
Speaker 3: like I mean, and this is you know, early sixties,
Speaker 3: so if there is a gay character, they would have
Speaker 3: to be coded gay because of the production code, like
Speaker 3: you know, that wouldn't have flown. But I just, man,
Speaker 3: I haven't read the book.
Speaker 4: Is he still fucking the wife even though he's gay,
Speaker 4: he's coded as gay?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't I didn't reread the book
Speaker 2: before this. I just went to read the He is
Speaker 2: definitely still like coded as a sex worker. So I
Speaker 2: think that, yeah, it's possible that he was having sex
Speaker 2: with Valenson because she is a character in the novella
Speaker 2: A double check. Yeah, how explicit because it seems like
Speaker 2: even more so in the book than in the movie.
Speaker 2: There's I don't think it would say explicitly that he's
Speaker 2: fucking her. Yeah, right, so my guess is it would
Speaker 2: be more implications. Okay, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 4: It would have been a cool movie if if he
Speaker 4: was coded as gay and they just helped each other
Speaker 4: as friends. That's interesting.
Speaker 3: Or it would have been even cooler if he was
Speaker 3: just allowed to be explicitly gay and then they were just.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I'm talking about nineteen sixty right right now,
Speaker 4: you remake it. Now he's just like played who's he
Speaker 4: played by Billy Eichner.
Speaker 2: Right, well, even in the book, he does say in
Speaker 2: the book that he's in love with Holly Golightly, but
Speaker 2: it is open interpretation of like what kind of love
Speaker 2: for he's bisexual? Right, we don't know.
Speaker 4: We don't know.
Speaker 2: Capote's dead. He cannot tell us. And on that note,
Speaker 2: let's take a quick break and we'll be back in
Speaker 2: a second. And here we are.
Speaker 3: We're back, We're back.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie?
Speaker 4: No, I mean, I'm trying to remember if if it
Speaker 4: passes the Bechdel test, but we'll get there.
Speaker 2: The only other female character that gets to speak, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure, is that female police officer when Holly's arrested.
Speaker 2: She goes nuck it off, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: a woman spoke a female police officer.
Speaker 4: Though, yes, hey, very progressive.
Speaker 2: Shere's no female detectives, but a female arresting officer.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's also a female librarian who keeps yelling at
Speaker 3: Holly because she's never been in a library before and
Speaker 3: doesn't know that she needs to keep her voice down.
Speaker 3: So yeah, let's talk about if the movie passes the
Speaker 3: Bechdel Tester or not. There are very few scenes where
Speaker 3: women interact.
Speaker 4: Mag Wildwood and Holly.
Speaker 3: At the party.
Speaker 4: Party.
Speaker 3: I had that conversation is not passing because they mentioned
Speaker 3: mister Unioshi and the two mens that the Mag brings
Speaker 3: to the party, Jose and Rusty So and.
Speaker 4: She's talking to them and Audrey Hepburn says, you're being
Speaker 4: a bore and that's kind of the only right.
Speaker 3: So I didn't have that scene as passing, Jamie, you
Speaker 3: said I.
Speaker 2: Had, Holly mag Darling, you're being a bore. Mag says,
Speaker 2: shut up, but that does.
Speaker 4: And then she talks to Emily Ustace whatever, what's her life?
Speaker 2: Hale.
Speaker 4: They talk in the beginning with Paul when they meet outside.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Paul introduces them. Holly says how do you do? And
Speaker 3: missus Vallinson says how do you do? But doesn't look
Speaker 3: at her. She looks away because she hates her so much.
Speaker 4: Then he says, oh, this is my interior decorator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But that's all they that's that. It's
Speaker 3: just like, how do you do? How do you do?
Speaker 3: We see a few women interacting at Holly's party, but
Speaker 3: we don't know any of their names. Holly does talk
Speaker 3: about that librarian, but we never learned her name, or
Speaker 3: the police officer or the police officer. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: don't think she and the police officer are actually interactive,
Speaker 3: more like a side by side like yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess there are a couple two line exchanges that
Speaker 3: technically pass the Bechdel test, but.
Speaker 2: Given the movie, it should do a lot better.
Speaker 4: You would think, yeah, yeah, and I think Mickey Rooney's
Speaker 4: character should just decimate like that's like negative one thousand points. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: so any points you've earned, Yeah, it's a negative one thousand.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, shall we the movie on our Nipples scale for
Speaker 3: new listeners. We have a special rating scale that we've
Speaker 3: devised to judge the movies that we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is called the nipple scale. Get used to
Speaker 2: that phrase. You'll be hearing it a lot. It is
Speaker 2: where Kayla, myself and our guest I'll rate the movie
Speaker 2: we just discussed on a scale of zero to five
Speaker 2: nipples based on how the movie treats its female characters,
Speaker 2: not on how much you like the movie. The best
Speaker 2: part of the Nipple scale is you get to describe
Speaker 2: them in fact, you have to to describe them, and
Speaker 2: you get to give them two characters in the movie,
Speaker 2: or Alfa Malina if you want to right, Yep.
Speaker 3: So that's our nipple scale for me. I think I'm
Speaker 3: gonna give it one nipple. I think it's interesting to
Speaker 3: explore a story about a woman who's a sex worker
Speaker 3: who falls in love with another sex worker. I think
Speaker 3: that this movie, though, and it could be due to
Speaker 3: some restrictions of the era and the production code and
Speaker 3: things like that, but I think it doesn't do a
Speaker 3: whole lot to explore all the interesting facets of that premise.
Speaker 3: Number one. Number two. I think that Holly go Lightly
Speaker 3: is a bad person who is careless and who mistreats people,
Speaker 3: and she's like a prototype of the very annoying manic
Speaker 3: pixie dreamgirl trope that we've come across several times and
Speaker 3: that I don't especially care for. I think that her
Speaker 3: desires and her motivations are arguably not that well defined,
Speaker 3: and everything we do know about her and what she
Speaker 3: wants is tied to a man in some way. She
Speaker 3: wants to marry a rich man so that she can
Speaker 3: take care of her brother, so at least that motivation
Speaker 3: isn't entirely selfish, but men are still the source of
Speaker 3: her desires, her motivations, and pretty much all she does
Speaker 3: on screen is talk about men. And then also after
Speaker 3: her brother dies, she just goes right back to wanting
Speaker 3: to marry a rich dude. So it feels like just
Speaker 3: kind of inconsistent and sort of like negates the motivations
Speaker 3: that had been established for her earlier. Then finally it
Speaker 3: takes a different man, Paul, to basically fix her and
Speaker 3: to inspire her character arc. Also, and we didn't really
Speaker 3: talk about this that much, but her relationships to the
Speaker 3: other women in the movie are generally like very petty,
Speaker 3: very caddy. It's like women feeling though they have to
Speaker 3: compete against each other, women not treating each other with
Speaker 3: kindness and respect. So it just kind of reinforces those
Speaker 3: stereotypes of like women are always fighting, women are caddy
Speaker 3: towards each other. And I understand that this is a
Speaker 3: movie that came out many decades ago. Things were very
Speaker 3: different back then. Historical context was very different back then,
Speaker 3: but I still find that there's not that much redeemable
Speaker 3: about the character of Holly, about the movie itself. I
Speaker 3: just think that it could have gone in much more
Speaker 3: interesting directions, explored her experience in a more interesting way,
Speaker 3: had it so that everything that she does and wants
Speaker 3: to do isn't tied to men in some way. So
Speaker 3: one nipple from me and I will give it to
Speaker 3: missus Fallonson because she is pretty dope femino Psyiconvalencin.
Speaker 2: Yes, I man, I hope that I'm not being too generous.
Speaker 2: I'm wanting to give it a two or two and
Speaker 2: a half. Yeah, I'm gonna go with it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: The thing is that's a metric and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: But I'm so stressed sor right now, I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: it two and a half. I mean, it goes without
Speaker 2: saying that the way this movie treats race, especially in
Speaker 2: regards to Mickey Rooney's character, is abhorrent and terrible and
Speaker 2: bad and there's no excuse for it. I agree that
Speaker 2: this movie should have it cut entirely, and it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have much of a difference on the movie. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: as it pertains to the treatment of women specifically, I
Speaker 2: do think that Holly golightly, I think she does have
Speaker 2: a motivation and I think that she it is clearly.
Speaker 2: She comes by her fault in a way that is
Speaker 2: clearly explained by the movie and is grounded, and she
Speaker 2: loses points for the manic pixie dream girl stuff, and
Speaker 2: the movie loses points for how it sort of botches
Speaker 2: the third act. I think in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: in the way that the message of being emotionally vulnerable
Speaker 2: is communicated as ownership to a man, and you know,
Speaker 2: the last fifteen minutes. I have a lot of issues
Speaker 2: of how her characters treated, but in the way that
Speaker 2: she's built and the portrayal of sex work, even though
Speaker 2: it can't be explicitly stated in movies at all, at
Speaker 2: this point, she's treated with respect. I think she's called
Speaker 2: out for faults in ways that for the most part,
Speaker 2: with the exception of her being called crazy, with the
Speaker 2: exception of her being chased out of her own apartment,
Speaker 2: with the exception of her romantic interest bringing her rapist
Speaker 2: to her door, with the exception of those things, she
Speaker 2: she is for the most part treated as if not
Speaker 2: with respect, because she's not necessarily treat with respect. But
Speaker 2: I do think she is treated as like a capable
Speaker 2: character who for most of the movie has agency in
Speaker 2: how she lives her life given the restraints that are
Speaker 2: put on her by the world and the era.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'm I'm ignoring like the time period
Speaker 3: and the socioeconomic cultural situation of the early sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: she doesn't do here, But at the time, I think
Speaker 2: it's like it implied just because this is the world
Speaker 2: that it came out, and that she couldn't do that
Speaker 2: and that wasn't an option for her really at all.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna give it two and a half nipples.
Speaker 2: I do like Holly, and I love missus Phalinson, and
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna give a nip to miss Phalenson, a
Speaker 2: nip to Holly, and then I'm gonna toss half a
Speaker 2: nip to the one who goes knock it up. I
Speaker 2: liked her a lot.
Speaker 4: I agree with everything Jamie said. You put it really well,
Speaker 4: and I just think it's so cool. In a lot
Speaker 4: of the old movies that I really love, I'm constantly
Speaker 4: surprised by the way women are portrayed and that they
Speaker 4: are just speaking purely in terms of being sexual beings,
Speaker 4: Like the way that they're portrayed as like being allowed
Speaker 4: to be that way, And I guess I had this
Speaker 4: idea in my mind of women kind of only being
Speaker 4: these like fifties or early sixties kind of like housewives,
Speaker 4: And so I'm constantly or even like that pre marital
Speaker 4: sex might be seen as bad, but like that, there's
Speaker 4: so many characters and especially typified by hollygood lightly but
Speaker 4: just in a lot of these older movies, there's so
Speaker 4: many female characters whose motivations are sex or who like
Speaker 4: are having sex. And when I started watching old movies,
Speaker 4: I was really surprised by that because it's today seen
Speaker 4: as such a thing. Like women like movies where women
Speaker 4: are sexual are like given a standing ovation, And I'm like,
Speaker 4: but we've been doing this. I don't know why, like
Speaker 4: we have this. I think people haven't watched a lot
Speaker 4: of these old movies, so they see it a certain way,
Speaker 4: and they think that this movie is about like an
Speaker 4: upscale woman in a tiara who just buys things from Tiffany's,
Speaker 4: and like, they haven't watched it, so they don't know
Speaker 4: that it's actually about like class and trauma and like
Speaker 4: sex work and you know, all these things that.
Speaker 2: And that she doesn't buy anything from Tiffany.
Speaker 4: She does.
Speaker 2: No purchase.
Speaker 4: She doesn't even eat breakfast inside you guys. Although fun fact,
Speaker 4: this is like the first time Tiffany's allowed anyone to
Speaker 4: film inside of Tiffany's.
Speaker 2: Oh no kidding, that's cool.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So I just and I and that we
Speaker 4: never we almost never see male sex workers treated with
Speaker 4: respect or like, you know, male sex workers who are
Speaker 4: with women, although I guess that show hung but like.
Speaker 2: Who's in that show to miss Jane?
Speaker 4: Wow, if I got that right, that would be incredible.
Speaker 4: And so I just think it's surprising, like maybe I'm
Speaker 4: giving it too maybe I'm gonna give it three nipples,
Speaker 4: and maybe I'm giving it too many nipples because I
Speaker 4: was just so shocked by how chill the movie was
Speaker 4: about so many things. Yeah, and for its era, and
Speaker 4: how like misunderstood it is by like anyone who's ever
Speaker 4: had a poster of it in their dorm room.
Speaker 2: It is Thomas Jane by the.
Speaker 4: Way, Wow, guys, take me on your trivia team. I
Speaker 4: know so much useless stuff and so and I think
Speaker 4: it's trying as hard as it can for its time.
Speaker 4: I will give it negative five thousand nipples for Mickey Rooney. Yes,
Speaker 4: and I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking.
Speaker 4: I guess they thought it was it was a comic
Speaker 4: relief even racism aside, which it never is. But it
Speaker 4: tonally does not fit with the rest of the movie.
Speaker 4: It takes so away from the movie. Even if even
Speaker 4: if the role was played by an Asian actor, even
Speaker 4: if the role was toned down by fifty percent, it
Speaker 4: would still tonally not fit in with the rest of the.
Speaker 3: Movie for sure.
Speaker 4: As a like screenwriter, it doesn't make any sense to me,
Speaker 4: There's no point to it.
Speaker 3: The party scene also seems totally inconsistent because there's some
Speaker 3: like slapsticky physical humor there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just I was like, what is this supposed to be funny?
Speaker 3: Like what I think this.
Speaker 2: Movie was supposed to be like a rom COMI thing
Speaker 2: of its time, But the rom and the calm feels
Speaker 2: so separate. But it's just yeah, there's no there's no overlap.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, So some of the characters feel very grounded,
Speaker 4: and then some of the characters are in a different
Speaker 4: movie right, and that is either poor screenwriting or poor
Speaker 4: directing or.
Speaker 2: A fun mix. Who are you giving your nipples too?
Speaker 4: Two to Failstein Failingstein, She rocks one to all you
Speaker 4: go lightly, I guess the nipple only go to women.
Speaker 2: They can go to anywhere you want to, men, animals,
Speaker 2: people who aren't even in the movie objects.
Speaker 4: I want to give one to the cat idea, I
Speaker 4: want one to the cat. Absolutely, the cat is wonderful.
Speaker 4: It did its own stunts.
Speaker 3: That was That was such good acting by that cat.
Speaker 4: That cat ruled. I mean the scene where the scene
Speaker 4: where the cat's playing with the cigarette that I mean,
Speaker 4: that cat was trained so well. I loved it.
Speaker 2: The cat was wet and didn't freak out care. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're just like, what is what is this? Cat's a
Speaker 2: star acharcter a cacter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, cat actor.
Speaker 3: Anyway, all right, well, Gabby, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: For being here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me, and thanks for doing a
Speaker 4: movie that you fucking hate.
Speaker 3: You're so welcome. I'm happy to make the sacrifice for
Speaker 3: this podcast and for you, Gabby.
Speaker 4: Oh I just I wanted to try to get like
Speaker 4: something super old in here. Yeah, just for your your
Speaker 4: fans that are like seventy to eighty, like really your
Speaker 4: demo which.
Speaker 3: We have so many of us. Yeah, I'm sure shout
Speaker 3: out to our older fans. Thank you so much for listening. Gabby,
Speaker 3: where can people follow you online? Do you have anything
Speaker 3: you'd like to plug?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure.
Speaker 4: My podcast Bad with Money is currently on season three.
Speaker 4: It's out now and it's about money, but it's tries
Speaker 4: not to be stressful, just trying to break the taboo. Guys,
Speaker 4: thank you. And I'm on Twitter at Gabby Done and
Speaker 4: on Instagram at Gabby Road because I don't understand branding. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then I had a book come out last year
Speaker 4: called I Hate Everyone But You and it was a
Speaker 4: New York Times bestseller and it's a ya novel but
Speaker 4: also like a novel regular and you can get that
Speaker 4: wherever books are sold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, not at Tiffany's though, they don't sell books.
Speaker 4: Not at tiffany.
Speaker 3: You can go to a lot, you can go the
Speaker 3: library though, but you should buy. You should buy Gabby's book.
Speaker 4: Get to Tiffany's, get it engraved.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can find us. We are now in the
Speaker 2: house stuff Works Network. Wow exciting. We're network girls, We're
Speaker 2: little bitches. But you can also still find us on
Speaker 2: our Matreon, Patreon dot com slash Bechdelcast. Five bucks a
Speaker 2: month gets you two extra episodes. Wow.
Speaker 3: Amazing for our new listeners. You can follow us on
Speaker 3: social media at Bechdel Cast on both Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 3: and we also have a Facebook page just called the
Speaker 3: Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Nothing Tricky, Nothing Tricky. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 2: dot com at Jamie Loftis Help.
Speaker 3: And you can find me at Caitlin Dorante. And then
Speaker 3: for our existing listeners, thanks for always being here, Thanks
Speaker 3: for all of your support.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys for doing this show. It's so fun.
Speaker 2: I love it, you love doing it, and we're glad
Speaker 2: you could be here on your upgrade.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. And I said, what about breakfast
Speaker 3: at Tiffany's?
Speaker 2: And I said, I think I remember the film, and
Speaker 2: as I recall, we both kind of liked it.
Speaker 3: Well, you recall correctly because I did not like it.
Speaker 3: But that is still one thing we've got that passed
Speaker 3: the Victal test.
Speaker 2: Yay, good eye