Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions ask if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
Speaker 1: start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Jamie, and in case I don't see you,
Speaker 2: good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
Speaker 3: And Caitlin. While I have you here, might I suggest
Speaker 3: some delicious dunkin Donuts coffee to go with your podcasting.
Speaker 3: Dunkin Donuts. It really isn't that bad.
Speaker 4: Who are you talking to, Jamie?
Speaker 3: It's just me here? What what?
Speaker 2: Wow? Incredible intro Wow?
Speaker 3: I think honestly, you know what? That was the usually
Speaker 3: just one of us wakes up today today we're both here, Ernie,
Speaker 3: all right, Welcome to the Bexel Cast, the podcast where
Speaker 3: we take a look at your favorite movies using an
Speaker 3: intersectional feminist lens, as well as the Bechdel Test for
Speaker 3: jumping off point for discussion. My name, Jamie Loftis.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Dorante. The Bechdel Test, of course,
Speaker 2: being a media metric created by our dear friend, Alison Bechdel,
Speaker 2: friend of the show, best friend in real life, of course,
Speaker 2: first appearing in her comic collection Dicks to Watch Out For,
Speaker 2: has since been kind of mainstreamified into a media metric.
Speaker 2: There are many different versions. The one that we use
Speaker 2: is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names?
Speaker 2: Do they speak to each other? And is their conversation
Speaker 2: about something other than a man? And ideally it's like
Speaker 2: a narratively impactful conversation and not just throw away dialogue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what if you live in a simulation? Oh,
Speaker 3: this is boo, which brings us to today's movie. Another
Speaker 3: one in our as we approach our ten uere anniversary,
Speaker 3: a movie that you would think we would have covered
Speaker 3: by now, but it just never the piece has never
Speaker 3: quite came together until now exactly. And today we are
Speaker 3: talking about nineteen ninety eights, The Truman Show, Ye, not
Speaker 3: the True Woman Show.
Speaker 2: The True Man Show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and fucked up. It kind of makes you think,
Speaker 3: and we'll get we'll get into it. We have an
Speaker 3: incredible returning guest. Let's get her in here.
Speaker 2: We sure do. She's a comedian. She's got a new
Speaker 2: comedy special out called Milk Job on burn This Records,
Speaker 2: which you can watch on YouTube and which you should
Speaker 2: watch and you remember her from our episode on five
Speaker 2: Hundred Days of Summer.
Speaker 3: It's Brandy Posey. Welcome back.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, thank you for having me. This is one
Speaker 4: of my favorite movies of all time. So I rememberly
Speaker 4: when I saw you guys hadn't done it yet. I
Speaker 4: was like, ooh ooh ooh, please please please.
Speaker 2: And here you are.
Speaker 1: Yay.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad this is This has been a show
Speaker 3: that a movie we've almost covered several times and just
Speaker 3: for some reason, it just hasn't happened. So I'm so
Speaker 3: glad that you're here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is your what is your history with the
Speaker 3: True Man Show?
Speaker 4: Okay, So I am a and I am now an adult.
Speaker 4: So this has waned a little bit obviously because of
Speaker 4: things over time. But I am a massive Jim Carrey
Speaker 4: fan from way back. A's Venture Too was a religious
Speaker 4: awakening for me and comedy in the theaters as a child.
Speaker 4: I have not missed the opening day of a Jim
Speaker 4: Carrey movie since af Sventurre.
Speaker 3: Two, even number twenty three.
Speaker 4: Yes, I saw that at the Grove on opening day
Speaker 4: with about five other people, and that includes mister Popper's Penguin.
Speaker 3: You're a real hell, every single Sonic.
Speaker 4: Every single Sonic. I was on vacation for Sonic two
Speaker 4: and I said, sorry, I'm gonna need about three hours
Speaker 4: to go see Sonic two because the tradition lives on.
Speaker 3: That's reallyful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just a fun thing I've always done because
Speaker 4: it's like I was really just really drawn. I love
Speaker 4: I love I love him. His nineties run is like
Speaker 4: pretty unfuck with heable, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 4: you can't touch it. And if you were like a
Speaker 4: drawn to comedy but also kind of shy person, I
Speaker 4: think that his just like larger than life persona was
Speaker 4: this like you can be that. Like, yeah, I'd consider
Speaker 4: him like one of my biggest It's funny because my
Speaker 4: stand up is nothing like him, but he's like one
Speaker 4: of my biggest comedy influences of all time. And I
Speaker 4: the one person I think that him and Patrick Stewart,
Speaker 4: I think if I met them, I would cry on site.
Speaker 4: So don't ever want to do that.
Speaker 3: Never meet your heroes, I mean hero But also like
Speaker 3: he has some weird stuff in his personal life as a.
Speaker 4: Human, so as we all do. Yeah, so you know
Speaker 4: that's separate. But young Brandy, he meant the world to
Speaker 4: me basically, yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, so you saw this. This came out after
Speaker 2: a spener or two. So you saw this in theaters?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: June fourth, nineteen ninety eight was also the last day
Speaker 4: that my friend Lindsay lived in Maryland because she was
Speaker 4: like a navy brat and then she was moving. And
Speaker 4: the very last thing we did before she moved to Colorado,
Speaker 4: oh was go see and Truman shaw An opening day. Wow.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what a nice memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship with this movie?
Speaker 3: I somehow had never seen this movie, in spite of
Speaker 3: the fact that it's definitely like on description, like this
Speaker 3: is a movie I would love, and it is a
Speaker 3: movie I love. Spoiler alert. I really wish I had
Speaker 3: seen this when I was in high school. Would blow
Speaker 3: my mind, because it blew my mind and I'm in
Speaker 3: my thirties. So we've talked about this recently on the
Speaker 3: show and kind of anytime Jim Carrey growth I was
Speaker 3: not allowed to watch Jim Carrey movies for the most
Speaker 3: part when I was growing up because my mom found
Speaker 3: him annoying. So Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler movies, I
Speaker 3: still like, have not really seen most of their nineties
Speaker 3: classics because my mom found them annoying and unfortunately it's
Speaker 3: a hereditary trait. So I've seen more. I think I've
Speaker 3: seen more serious Jim Carrey movies than for some reason, Grinch.
Speaker 3: We made an exception for Grinch. I don't know why
Speaker 3: we showed up for Grinch hard. We still do, sure,
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't have a strong attachment to him
Speaker 3: his his nineties work. But I did see Eternal Sunshine
Speaker 3: in middle school and you know, was pissing shitting for
Speaker 3: the next twenty years about it. Yeah, I mean he's
Speaker 3: he is. Yes, has a lot of controversy that we
Speaker 3: probably don't have the bandwidth to get into today, but
Speaker 3: incredibly versatile actor and this I feel like this was
Speaker 3: maybe his first step into more serious stuff and like
Speaker 3: where he started to show that he had range. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I definitely didn't know that Peter Weir had directed this,
Speaker 3: and like he has a kind of ridiculous track record
Speaker 3: of helping comedic actors make a dramatic turn because he
Speaker 3: did Robin Williams Dead Poets. I just I really, I mean,
Speaker 3: this movie is incredible. I feel like it does something
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of a similar movie to this,
Speaker 3: and that it's like, this is an idea everybody has had,
Speaker 3: or at least an intrusive thought everyone's had, and it's
Speaker 3: executed perfectly, and like, how many times has that happen?
Speaker 3: It's pretty incredible and I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 3: Laura Lennie is so good in this. If only if
Speaker 3: only she been allowed to have a conclusion to her arc.
Speaker 3: We'll get there, We'll get there. Yeah. But I yeah,
Speaker 3: this movie is amazing. First time, Kitly, what about you?
Speaker 2: I would count this among my favorite movies. I saw
Speaker 2: it around the time that it came out, I don't
Speaker 2: think in theaters, but probably within a couple of years
Speaker 2: of it being out. I eventually bought it on DVD,
Speaker 2: which I still own, thank you very much. I've seen it,
Speaker 2: you know a few dozen times. I would say I
Speaker 2: love a movie where characters are in a like things
Speaker 2: aren't what they seem kind of world and that they
Speaker 2: have to like figure out the truth of what's going
Speaker 2: on around them.
Speaker 3: So very late nineties, because it's like we get the
Speaker 3: Matrix the next year. There's a lot of simulation. Culture
Speaker 3: is so hot.
Speaker 2: Right now and then this movie. I would also pair
Speaker 2: it with Pleasantville as like if you wanted to do
Speaker 2: like a double feature. I feel like these two movies
Speaker 2: pair together really well. But then you've got your other
Speaker 2: like things aren't what they see movies such as like
Speaker 2: Vanilla Sky, they live total recall Stepford Wives. You know,
Speaker 2: the list goes on, but I love that as a
Speaker 2: narrative thrust, if you will. So I've always loved this movie.
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it in quite a few years before
Speaker 2: rewatching it for prepping for this episode. But yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a joy. I was worried, like, oh no, what
Speaker 2: if it doesn't hold up as well or you know,
Speaker 2: But honestly, I don't have that many complaints.
Speaker 4: I think it gets more prescient with age. Honestly, I
Speaker 4: know it's really shaped a lot of my view of
Speaker 4: the world and how to like question things and kind
Speaker 4: of just like be looking for it really like is
Speaker 4: like a really seminal movie in the DNA of a young.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's like there's been so much written about
Speaker 3: how this movie came out before Survivor and like before
Speaker 3: most contemporary reality TV and like surveillance culture of self
Speaker 3: surveillance culture. It's just like it's it's like ahead of
Speaker 3: its time by only a couple of years, which is
Speaker 3: pretty wild.
Speaker 2: But it had such an impact on me that to
Speaker 2: this day I would say, at least once a month,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh god, I'm probably in the Truman Show.
Speaker 2: I better not jerk off in case anyone's watching. So
Speaker 2: it really really affected me.
Speaker 3: Luckily, Truman only does funny bits in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: He never jacks out, he's ever taking an explosive shit.
Speaker 2: This deeply lonely thirty five year old man does not
Speaker 2: jack off, eva, absolutely not.
Speaker 4: No, he just makes weird collages.
Speaker 2: So why don't we take a quick break and then
Speaker 2: we'll come back for the recap and we're back.
Speaker 3: Oh, Ed Harris in a in a beret.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: I didn't know well, I didn't know any to go
Speaker 3: out this except the premise. But he replaced what's his name,
Speaker 3: mister Scarry Dennis Hopper. Yeah, Dennis Hopper shot for one
Speaker 3: day on The Truman Show and they were like, get
Speaker 3: him out of here. And Ed Harris had like twenty
Speaker 3: seconds to prepare for this role, and just like Abs
Speaker 3: Destroys knocked it out. Of the part. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 3: he got nominated for an Oscar for this. I think
Speaker 3: he did. Yeah, yeah, after twenty seconds of preper he's
Speaker 3: he's amazing, man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the Christoph character. I mean we can
Speaker 4: get into later obviously, but the Christoph character is like, so,
Speaker 4: how many of those people have we encountered that are.
Speaker 2: Just like Holl'm making art by exploiting others?
Speaker 3: Also that true? Okay, and then I promise we could
Speaker 3: start talking. But that Truman's House is owned by Matt
Speaker 3: Gates's family. That's another disturbing fact I learned, Oh I
Speaker 3: have We just have to live with that for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a whole tangent about master planned communities
Speaker 2: that all.
Speaker 3: Get into Oh yeah, when you know about master planned communities.
Speaker 3: Of course, that's the way that Matt Gates grew up.
Speaker 3: And also his last name is literally Gates. But just
Speaker 3: Truman's House is where Pat Gates grew up. We hate
Speaker 3: to say it, but it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, anyway, here's the recap of the Truman Show.
Speaker 2: We open on the Ed Harris character Christoph. He is
Speaker 2: talking about Truman Burbank, who is the star of the
Speaker 2: Truman Show. A television program in which Truman's entire life
Speaker 2: is recorded and broadcast twenty four to seven. Except Truman
Speaker 2: has no idea about this. He doesn't know that he
Speaker 2: is the subject of this show. He doesn't know that
Speaker 2: he's being filmed by hidden cameras all over his community.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know that everyone around him is an actor,
Speaker 2: including his best friend and his wife.
Speaker 3: He doesn't know that the.
Speaker 2: Town that he lives in, Sea Haven is a set,
Speaker 2: and that his whole life is a lie, fabricated for
Speaker 2: the sake of this show, which Christophe is the like
Speaker 2: creator slash executive producer of.
Speaker 3: It's a really quick one off line that could be
Speaker 3: its own movie entirely. But I was like, what, Like
Speaker 3: Grant and I both stopped and were like, what the fuck?
Speaker 3: That hope is imprescient of something that is going to happen,
Speaker 3: but where they're like, Truman Burbank is the first baby
Speaker 3: to be adopted by a corporation, and the way that
Speaker 3: they say the first, as if to imply although, of
Speaker 3: course now that is completely normal, like it's so oh.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, so so scary is such a
Speaker 3: good detail?
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, so this is going on with the Truman
Speaker 2: Show for nearly thirty years, ever since Truman was born.
Speaker 2: So then we meet Truman Burbank played by Jim Carrey.
Speaker 2: He's a very cheery guy, but he also seems to
Speaker 2: be longing for something or someone. He's searching for a woman.
Speaker 3: Much more than this professional life.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he's searching for a woman named either Lauren
Speaker 2: or maybe Sylvia. We'll find out more about that. He
Speaker 2: feels very restless where he is. He yearns to leave
Speaker 2: and go somewhere like Fiji, but he is intensely afraid
Speaker 2: of boats and crossing bodies of water, so he feels
Speaker 2: stuck on this small island where Sea Haven is. At
Speaker 2: some point we get a flashback from when Truman was
Speaker 2: a child where he and his dad went out on
Speaker 2: a boat during a storm and his father fell overboard
Speaker 2: and drowned. And that's why Truman is so petrified of water.
Speaker 3: And when you know this is fake, because you find
Speaker 3: out in the framing device at the beginning that everything
Speaker 3: is fake. Yeah, I feel that sequence of Truman's dad
Speaker 3: drowning reminds me so much of the Arrested development cutaways,
Speaker 3: so like and.
Speaker 4: That's why you always leave.
Speaker 3: A note so goofy looking.
Speaker 4: Duh.
Speaker 2: And that's why you never go out on a boat
Speaker 2: in a storm.
Speaker 3: Right, a tiny dinghy with your child in the middle
Speaker 3: of a storm. Oh man.
Speaker 4: And that scene is wild because then it's also the
Speaker 4: dad floats away and then a guy in a scuba
Speaker 4: suit comes up and just gives them like a little oxygen,
Speaker 4: and he's that he had to just betray his adopted son.
Speaker 3: It's so dark.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, I interpreted it that he was mad that
Speaker 2: his character got killed off and he's out of work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well probably not soo.
Speaker 3: There's there's a lot of like interesting stuff with the
Speaker 3: like how do the actors feel about that? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I would watch a whole separate movie about the actors.
Speaker 2: And we meet some of these actors, such as the
Speaker 2: person who plays his wife Meryl. Although that's her character's name,
Speaker 2: I forget what like. He name's Hannah Hannah McGill, I
Speaker 2: think played by Laura Lenny. So it's an actor playing
Speaker 2: an actor playing a character.
Speaker 4: And she's so good in this that I did not
Speaker 4: like Laura Lenni for probably fifteen years because of how
Speaker 4: much I hated the character of Meryl. She disturbed me
Speaker 4: to my core in this movie.
Speaker 2: She's spooky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like that you could make that you could live
Speaker 4: a life, a complete fake life with somebody that you
Speaker 4: said you love like that, Like really, as a eighth
Speaker 4: grade Brandy really was like, I can't that's a possibility.
Speaker 4: It can't even allow to be real.
Speaker 3: It's so scary. Yeah, yeah, she's she's incredible. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of we can talk about it in a bit,
Speaker 3: but there was like some I when I was doing
Speaker 3: some research, like the actors were given a lot of
Speaker 3: freedom to write their own backstories, and Laura Lenny came
Speaker 3: up with the like some really scary shit an that
Speaker 3: like you wouldn't know because I think she's not in
Speaker 3: the movie enough, but like she really cooked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to read more about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2: So we meet Meryl. We also meet the actor who
Speaker 2: plays Truman's best friend and then his character, Marlin, played
Speaker 2: by Noah Emmerick, and the two of them, Meryll and
Speaker 2: Marlin are always plugging products like kitchen utensils or ice
Speaker 2: cold Bruce Ki's because they have to advertise things within
Speaker 2: the show. And this happens at Truman and he's always
Speaker 2: like okay, and then Truman starts to notice other strange things,
Speaker 2: such as what appears to be a large movie set
Speaker 2: light falls from the sky right next to him. It
Speaker 2: starts pouring rain on him, but only a tiny little section.
Speaker 2: At first, he sees an unhoused man who he thinks
Speaker 2: is his father on the street, but then this man
Speaker 2: is promptly grabbed away and put onto a bus, And
Speaker 2: so Truman talks to his mom played by Holland Taylor.
Speaker 2: Again his fake mom love her about all of this,
Speaker 2: and she brushes it off because her role, his wife's role,
Speaker 2: his best friend's role, is not only to advertise things
Speaker 2: in the show, but also to gaslight Truman and maintain
Speaker 2: this facade. Then we get more insight about the Lauren
Speaker 2: slash Sylvia person and we flash back to when Truman
Speaker 2: was I don't know if he's in high school or college,
Speaker 2: but a woman named Lauren played by Natasha mcelhun catches
Speaker 2: his eye, but clearly Christoph again, the guy who's the
Speaker 2: brains behind the Truman show, cast Meryl to be Truman's
Speaker 2: love interest, so there's this forced meet cute between Truman
Speaker 2: and Meryl, and Lauren isn't supposed to be heavily involved
Speaker 2: in Truman's life, but he keeps trying to pursue Lauren
Speaker 2: and asks her out, and they sneak off to the beach,
Speaker 2: where she tells him that everyone around him is pretending
Speaker 2: everything is fake. It's a show that everyone is watching.
Speaker 2: Her name isn't Lauren, it's actually Sylvia. And then a
Speaker 2: man pretending to be her father shows up, excuses her
Speaker 2: behavior as mental illness, and then drags her away, saying
Speaker 2: that they're moving to Fiji, which is why Truman is
Speaker 2: so obsessed with going to Fiji. But every time Truman
Speaker 2: talks about traveling or wanting to travel, various characters make
Speaker 2: excuses they continue to gaslight him. Meanwhile, more strange things
Speaker 2: are happening. Truman hears a radio broadcast in his car
Speaker 2: that seems to be narrating his every move.
Speaker 3: I had a I'm curious what you both think about this,
Speaker 3: or maybe I just missed something. This does seem like
Speaker 3: the kind of movie you have to watch like twenty
Speaker 3: two times. I watched it twice, but I was like,
Speaker 3: maybe this is maybe real. Heads will know. What is
Speaker 3: the reason do you think that things get so sloppy
Speaker 3: around this point? Because it's so many things in a row,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's just like a movie that feels like
Speaker 3: a movie. But I was like, wow, they keep this
Speaker 3: They keep this shit up for thirty years, and then
Speaker 3: in a couple weeks, I'm like, who got fired? Like
Speaker 3: just it's like, this show is a mess.
Speaker 4: I hired a bunch of scabs.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, verizing, I do like there there could
Speaker 3: have been like a fun and it seems like there
Speaker 3: was a lot about this. There's a lot of like
Speaker 3: deep lore done around the Truman Show that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 3: make it to the screen. But I'm like, I wonder
Speaker 3: if there is a reason somewhere of like because there
Speaker 3: could be a million external, interesting in world reasons why
Speaker 3: all of a sudden things are getting sloppy. That could
Speaker 3: be like a union thing. I don't know. I just
Speaker 3: I was like, did I miss something? Did they explain
Speaker 3: why all of a sudden the show is like kind
Speaker 3: of a disaster.
Speaker 2: They don't explain it. But I guess my head canon
Speaker 2: is that probably a lot of little mishaps have been
Speaker 2: going on this entire time. It's just that now Truman
Speaker 2: is starting paying attention sure and connecting the dots that's
Speaker 2: my Okay.
Speaker 3: I guess got it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, Truman, here's this radio broadcast that seems
Speaker 2: to be about him. He almost accidentally walks into what
Speaker 2: seems like a like backstage craft survey area that is
Speaker 2: disguised as an elevator.
Speaker 4: Well, and he does that because he breaks his routine.
Speaker 4: And I think that's probably part of it too, Jamie,
Speaker 4: because then people are so used to him just doing
Speaker 4: the routine that when he starts breaking it, I think
Speaker 4: that's when the fuck ups start happening more and more too,
Speaker 4: because they're like, whoa, we don't know what to do
Speaker 4: with this guy that now is becoming uncontainable.
Speaker 2: He's going off script, yeah right, And so he's like,
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on? So he starts doing
Speaker 2: some kind of like wacky stuff like running out into
Speaker 2: the street and stopping traffic, basically seeing what he can
Speaker 2: get away with, but no one seems to pay him
Speaker 2: any mind, which is also weird. So he's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: something's up, and he goes to Marlin to be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I think there's a conspiracy happening, but he thinks it's
Speaker 2: about his dad, that maybe his dad is still alive.
Speaker 2: Marlin of course gaslights him and says, oh, your cuckoo,
Speaker 2: everything is normal. And then one day Truman follows Meryll
Speaker 2: to work because because he suspects that she's lying about
Speaker 2: her nurse job at the hospital, and sure enough, the
Speaker 2: operation that he tries to observe seems sketchy as hell.
Speaker 3: It's so funny, just the idea.
Speaker 4: Of actors being like, just all go with it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make the primary incision. So this prompts
Speaker 2: him to try to leave for Fiji, but oh no,
Speaker 2: there aren't any flights. So he gets onto a bus
Speaker 2: to Chicago that quote unquote breaks down, so he's like,
Speaker 2: fuck it, I'll just drive somewhere. So he has Merrill
Speaker 2: get in his car and he starts kind of like
Speaker 2: erradically driving around. There are all these clearly fabricated obstacles,
Speaker 2: including fake traffic and a nuclear power plant leak.
Speaker 3: I was like, there was a fair amount of stop
Speaker 3: gaps in place. There's about half a mile of error
Speaker 3: space that was pretty.
Speaker 4: Unpressed, just like him running through the woods trying to
Speaker 4: get away from the nuclear power plant to just it
Speaker 4: really reminded me of et being just like captured.
Speaker 2: Totally, and so he ends up nearly getting arrested and
Speaker 2: taken back home, and he's demanding to know what's going on,
Speaker 2: and again Merrill is gaslighting him, but she's also freaking
Speaker 2: out and she's scared for her safety and like talks
Speaker 2: to camera almost but then Marlin shows up. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, things kind of calm down. Truman confides in Marlin,
Speaker 2: and we realize that it's christof feeding Marlin lines through
Speaker 2: an earpiece from like Truman Show Control Center. Q. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where Paul Giamatti is there. I kind of forgot he
Speaker 2: was in this movie.
Speaker 3: Bab Oh.
Speaker 2: He's like a technician of some kind who does different
Speaker 2: things to like control different cameras and manipulate the weather
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It's like that baby Paul Giabody, We're fully talking about
Speaker 3: a thirty five year old man, like, oh, baby Paul.
Speaker 3: It's like when we talk about baby Holland Taylor, We're
Speaker 3: like she was fifty yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And then Truman's father shows up and there's like
Speaker 2: this big dramatic reunion, but it is clearly to divert
Speaker 2: Truman's attention away from the actual conspiracy that he's starting
Speaker 2: to uncover, and Truman and his dad have a very
Speaker 2: tearful reunion. And also we are periodically cutting to the
Speaker 2: people at home who are watching the Truman Show.
Speaker 3: There's a Truman bar. There's a bar, but I found
Speaker 3: very fun. That's like, of course that would exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love a gimmicky bar. I would absolutely go.
Speaker 3: To that Truman bar.
Speaker 4: Definitely get that merch.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've been to more ill conceived bars than that.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I've been to it, for sure. I've
Speaker 2: been to a Titanic themed bar. I've been to a
Speaker 2: big Lebowski themed bar, into a Beetle Juice pop bar.
Speaker 1: Bars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the unlicensed Star Wars bar on Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: There used to be an Austin Powers bar and I
Speaker 4: went to that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, I love all these This is this
Speaker 3: is our culture.
Speaker 4: I was thinking of watching this. I was like, when
Speaker 4: this when this show ends, I wonder if there is
Speaker 4: like a in this world, like a version of a
Speaker 4: Jake Tapper that shows up to try to change the
Speaker 4: Truman bar something else.
Speaker 3: Wait, rescuing the bar. Rescue guy.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, oh yeah yeah, sorry, quite right.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so we know we we see the different
Speaker 2: audience members who are diligently watching the program that is
Speaker 2: The Truman Show, one of whom is Lauren aka Sylvia,
Speaker 2: who watches with bated breath. Then we get a kind
Speaker 2: of like news report slash. Harry Shearer is interviewing Christoph
Speaker 2: about the show. Christoph talks about all the ways that
Speaker 2: he's had to manufacture ways to keep Truman on the
Speaker 2: set that is Sea Haven Island, which is why he
Speaker 2: killed off Truman's dad by drowning him at sea to
Speaker 2: sort of induce this phobia of water in Truman. Christoph
Speaker 2: also discloses that Truman was the result of an unwanted
Speaker 2: pregnancy and that he was, to your comment earlier, Jamie,
Speaker 2: the first child to be adopted by a corporation. And
Speaker 2: then Sylvia calls in and brates Christoph for being a
Speaker 2: liar and manipulator and making Truman this prisoner. But Christoph
Speaker 2: insists that Truman could leave whenever he wants and that
Speaker 2: the life that Christoph has given him is better than
Speaker 2: any life Truman could have in the real world. And
Speaker 2: then we cut back to Truman's life. He seems to
Speaker 2: have returned to his you know, normal cheerful self despite
Speaker 2: Meryll having left him, so that Christoph can introduce a
Speaker 2: new love interest for Truman. So basically, Laura Lenny's character
Speaker 2: is written out of the movie from that point on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's gonna go off Broadway. I do, I really
Speaker 3: do wish that we found out what became of that character. Ye,
Speaker 3: Laura Lenny's really quickly. This is well, I'll save a
Speaker 3: bit of it because we have to talk about like
Speaker 3: the consent as it is conceived in this world. But
Speaker 3: Laura Lenny's head cannon for Hannah because I guess her
Speaker 3: and Noah Emmerick, they I mean, they're important in the movie,
Speaker 3: but they had a lot of downtime and so they
Speaker 3: just like wrote these elaborateories. They were also living in
Speaker 3: the homes that they, like most of the actors were
Speaker 3: living in the homes that their characters lived in. And
Speaker 3: so for Hannah, she conceived this whole backstory that like,
Speaker 3: Hannah does the most product placement because she does backdoor
Speaker 3: deals herself, and she's saving up money so is that
Speaker 3: she can afford to leave the show. That's her whole
Speaker 3: And then there's some like pretty diabolical stuff that we'll
Speaker 3: get into when we talk about consent. But okay, anyways, yeah,
Speaker 3: she had she had a whole she she thought more
Speaker 3: about Hannah than maybe the script of the movie did.
Speaker 3: But it's a fascinating character because it's like they what
Speaker 3: theoretically she and Noah Emrick's character Lewis right, like Marl
Speaker 3: Marlon Marlon Marlin, they've been on the show since they
Speaker 3: were children. So it's like, what is that.
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: I know that they're that the movie would sort of
Speaker 3: have you feel that they're villains, but it's like I
Speaker 3: find them like sympathetic to some extent too, because it's
Speaker 3: like they it's it's clear to me how much they
Speaker 3: signed up for this, you know.
Speaker 2: This is all they know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, I mean Marlon is I mean they were
Speaker 4: more best friends when they were seven, right, those when
Speaker 4: they met and became best friends, And it's like, so
Speaker 4: you're a child actor. Honestly, I has only ever known this,
Speaker 4: like right.
Speaker 2: I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 3: And he answers to ed Hiris like God as well,
Speaker 3: like of course he does. It's all he knows. So
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I especially in the second watch,
Speaker 3: I'm like I think Noah emeriic, especially because just because
Speaker 3: he gets worse green time is doing something so like
Speaker 3: nuance that I didn't pick up on and the first time.
Speaker 3: But you're like, yeah, of course this is all this
Speaker 3: guy knows, like he's doing something horrible. But also do
Speaker 3: you see the picture of that little kid and you're like,
Speaker 3: she's supposed to do Yeah.
Speaker 2: I know, a product of his environment. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 2: Truman seems back to normal, and it appears as though
Speaker 2: he no longer suspects anything unusual is happening, just kidding.
Speaker 2: We discover that he has staged a scene in his
Speaker 2: basement to make it look like he's sleeping, but really
Speaker 2: it's like just a lumpy blanket and like a tape recorder.
Speaker 3: It's a classic honk shim is seed. I'm like, I'm like, Christoph,
Speaker 3: how did.
Speaker 4: You miss him recording himself snoring for hours?
Speaker 2: It is for thirty years, pal, come on, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: man has no privacy. You know everything he's doing.
Speaker 3: But it's paulgi I guess it's Paul Giovanni's fault, that's right.
Speaker 3: Like they're like, Paul Giamatti wasn't wasn't paying attention to
Speaker 3: sleeping on the job or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yes, anyway, Truman escapes through a hole that
Speaker 2: he dug in his yard. So Christoph cuts the transmission
Speaker 2: of the Truman Show while the principal cast and extras
Speaker 2: look for Truman around the set, but no one can
Speaker 2: find him. And then Christoph realizes that no one's looking
Speaker 2: for him on the sea, which is where Truman turns
Speaker 2: out to be. He's facing his fear of the water
Speaker 2: and leaving the island on a sailboat, so Christoph orders
Speaker 2: a violent thunderstorm to try to stop Truman, who falls overboard.
Speaker 2: It seems like maybe he dies, but Truman lives and
Speaker 2: his boat then crashes into a wall. It's like the
Speaker 2: edge of the set that shot.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So he finds a door and he's about
Speaker 2: to go through it, but then Christoph, who sounds like
Speaker 2: the voice of God like coming from above, starts talking
Speaker 2: to Truman and trying to convince him to stay, but
Speaker 2: Truman's like bye. He does his famous good morning and in
Speaker 2: case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and
Speaker 2: good night, and then he exits through the door, and
Speaker 2: so Truman is free. The audience watching at home is
Speaker 2: thrilled for him, Sylvia runs out to presumably reunite with him,
Speaker 2: and Christoph is like, oh fuck.
Speaker 3: Oh but and I love the last line. It's so good,
Speaker 3: like the what else is on? It's so good, so good.
Speaker 4: It reminds me of a lot of Are we all
Speaker 4: seen Cable Guy?
Speaker 3: No, actually, that's one of the ones that I've seen.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's great, it's it's it's it's kind of like.
Speaker 4: I think they're honestly a very good pairing together because
Speaker 4: the Cable Guy also is about media consumption and is
Speaker 4: incredibly critical of it. And the ending of that is
Speaker 4: a little bit more hopeful actually, because they end up
Speaker 4: cutting the power and then they don't have that moment,
Speaker 4: which is nice but not to ruin cable that and
Speaker 4: it doesn't at all. But I think that they're really
Speaker 4: great companion pieces to me.
Speaker 3: I mean the two Jim Carrey movies of this era
Speaker 3: that I genuinely think I would like it, but haven't
Speaker 3: seen our Cable Guy and liar liar, based on the descriptions,
Speaker 3: they seem interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, liar liar, I think I've said this before in
Speaker 2: the show, but that was a big one of my childhood.
Speaker 4: Yes, Liar Liar was huge for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ye love it anyway, So that's the movie. Let's
Speaker 2: take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 3: And we're back. We're back. Yeah, where to start, Brandy,
Speaker 3: what's jumping out to you?
Speaker 4: I mean, they're are just I rewatching it. I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna actually write down some quotes that really are
Speaker 4: jumping out of me for the and looking at it
Speaker 4: through a twenty twenty six lens, that it had been
Speaker 4: a few years since I'd really watched it, and thinking
Speaker 4: about our relationship with entertainment now and the Jamie said,
Speaker 4: self surveillance, but also like the way that we have
Speaker 4: all made ourselves these little like content king pins in
Speaker 4: a certain way. Like Lord Lenning early in the movie
Speaker 4: says that when they're interviewing the top says, there's no
Speaker 4: difference between a private life or a public life to me,
Speaker 4: and she's like proud of like this is just I
Speaker 4: make my art, is my content all day long, twenty
Speaker 4: four to seven and it and she calls it a
Speaker 4: blessed life. Yeah, and I struggle with like the how
Speaker 4: much of myself to put online all day long, all
Speaker 4: the time. So just like I think that that's also
Speaker 4: a part of her character that unnerves me to a degree,
Speaker 4: you know, that the the leaning into it at all.
Speaker 4: I remember there was like a moment during COVID very
Speaker 4: early on where I got onto Instagram and there were
Speaker 4: like thirty lives across the top of my stories, and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, so many people are just live
Speaker 4: broadcasting anything right now. And I remember being like I
Speaker 4: want nothing to do with that whatsoever. And I think
Speaker 4: that this movie makes me think about.
Speaker 3: That a lot. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. I thought the other
Speaker 3: line from that beginning that I got to me is
Speaker 3: Marlin's line of like it's all real, it's just controlled,
Speaker 3: and like how that feels like connected to that same
Speaker 3: conversation of like, yeah, since the Truman Show has come out,
Speaker 3: like shortly after the Truman Show comes out, you have
Speaker 3: the big wave of American reality television, which is all
Speaker 3: tied in with union issues not wanting to pay writers,
Speaker 3: and so it's like what's cheap exploited if TV we
Speaker 3: can make And unfortunately it did create some some real hitters,
Speaker 3: and like I can't argue with Survivor. Conceptually it's a
Speaker 3: great idea, yeah, but quite evil, But like so the
Speaker 3: the like the Ed Harris type producers, they still exist
Speaker 3: in like the Andy Cohen's of the world, but now
Speaker 3: it's like we've sort of cut out the Ed Harris middleman.
Speaker 3: Like we do that for ourselves now, right, and like
Speaker 3: we delude ourselves into being a main character and our
Speaker 3: condition to feel frustrated when we when that's unsuccessful or
Speaker 3: like I don't know, Yeah, it's this movie is like
Speaker 3: endlessly relevant in a way that like it's not the
Speaker 3: movie's fault, but it sucks. It sucks to be like true,
Speaker 3: like it forecasts so much and also it just like
Speaker 3: gets worse a worth.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, because there's so many conversations that we
Speaker 2: could start to have from this movie. There's the obvious
Speaker 2: conversation about how quote unquote Reality TV is not actually reality.
Speaker 2: All these things are, all the dramas manufactured, all the
Speaker 2: situations are manufactured. There's a conversation about how about product
Speaker 2: placement and about how so much media is just there
Speaker 2: to sell products or fill the space between commercials or whatever.
Speaker 4: Well, and I think there's also like a a yearning
Speaker 4: in society to see something real too, and you have
Speaker 4: to be where does that come from? On us as people.
Speaker 4: It's wanting to escape to see something real because we
Speaker 4: feel so beat down by our everyday lives. Like what
Speaker 4: is actual authenticity?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And people are so so hungry for it, and you
Speaker 4: know they Kristav's character says at the end, you were real.
Speaker 4: It's what made you so good to watch. And it's
Speaker 4: just people just are like we I want to see authenticity.
Speaker 4: I don't think I can live it myself, or I
Speaker 4: don't I'm not on that level, but I'm urting for something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I even the idea of like the I've a
Speaker 3: product placement existed before The Truman Show. But like so
Speaker 3: much of what like they're all, Christoph is also selling
Speaker 3: something larger, Like he's selling this regressive view of America
Speaker 3: that didn't exist in like he lives in actual nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight. They live in like nineteen fifty five, and
Speaker 3: not even real nineteen fifty five, like television nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: So he's also like selling all of that. He's selling
Speaker 3: an idea of like this American lifestyle. On the second viewing,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh yeah, this movie also was far ahead,
Speaker 3: even though it's like the phrasing wasn't there, But like
Speaker 3: the whole world has this parasocial relationship with Truman that
Speaker 3: he has. I mean it's like obviously extreme because he
Speaker 3: is not even aware that it exists. But that like
Speaker 3: speaking to Yeah, what you were just saying Brandy about
Speaker 3: like there is this like desire to see yourself where
Speaker 3: I do believe that even though like whatever people at
Speaker 3: the Truman Bar, like we would go to the Truman Bar,
Speaker 3: even though by doing that you're participating in something pretty dark, right,
Speaker 3: But I do believe that that normal people are rooting
Speaker 3: for him and care about him, even though in doing so, there.
Speaker 2: They're complicitly participating sinister. Right, everyone who is watching the
Speaker 2: show is complicit to some degree in the exploitation of Truman.
Speaker 3: And then you've.
Speaker 2: Got some people and I'm thinking of the bathtub guy specifically,
Speaker 2: just like does he ever leave his bath hub? But
Speaker 2: like it seems like a lot of these audience members
Speaker 2: are kind of like living vicariously through Truman. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like the conversation around like celebrity worship, but Truman
Speaker 2: doesn't even know he's a celebrity. Because there's this whole
Speaker 2: issue with lack of informed consent. And that's another conversation
Speaker 2: and just all of these all these things.
Speaker 3: It's it's wild how much this movie like bites off
Speaker 3: without ever feeling like super didactic or boring. It's kind
Speaker 3: of a miracle that it's like really funny and fun
Speaker 3: to watch. And yeah, I guess like that does sort
Speaker 3: of just tumble right into the consent conversation where obviously
Speaker 3: Truman never consents to any of this. He's you know,
Speaker 3: living in a simulation. And I think it's probably for
Speaker 3: the best that the movie doesn't get too into certain
Speaker 3: issues of consent, because it gets that gets very scary.
Speaker 3: I mean in Laura Linny's backstory, and this is again
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I'm glad they didn't include this, but
Speaker 3: that they I mean that she was like, well, of
Speaker 3: course these two characters have sex, and she gets a
Speaker 3: raise every time he has sex with her, and like
Speaker 3: she created this really fucked up backstory for how her
Speaker 3: I mean her actor knowingly operates, and that she has
Speaker 3: a marriage outside of this, and that she's to some extent,
Speaker 3: I mean, assaulting Truman and some extent is being trafficked.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, if you think about it too hard, it
Speaker 5: gets so scary.
Speaker 2: Everyone's being exploited.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and they're trying for a baby too, right,
Speaker 4: like Christoph wants the first own air conception number one
Speaker 4: and like, which is just what a horrific phrase. And
Speaker 4: then it's also like, so, now you've done the trauma
Speaker 4: to a new baby that you're probably also going to
Speaker 4: raise and it will never know. And then are you
Speaker 4: actually it's you are it's mother biologically? Do you consider
Speaker 4: that your child.
Speaker 2: I know? Or is that just your character's child? Like
Speaker 2: it's all such a mind fuck.
Speaker 3: There was another Yeah that the thing I'm pulling from
Speaker 3: here with the actors making up their characters who are
Speaker 3: also actors backstory was a I found it's like basically
Speaker 3: lost media, but someone ripped it from it aired on
Speaker 3: nicked Night. It was called like true TV, and it
Speaker 3: was just like BTS but in character BTS that aired
Speaker 3: on nick at Night once. But you get a lot
Speaker 3: of insight into how the actors were thinking at the time,
Speaker 3: and like doing all these thought experiments where Holland Taylor
Speaker 3: does this interview in character where she's like, yeah, we're
Speaker 3: like the most famous actors on TV, but we're also
Speaker 3: prisoners here and so I have forty million dollars and
Speaker 3: I own all these properties. I've never been there, but
Speaker 3: I hear it's amazing and like and like, to the
Speaker 3: degree they've consented to be there seems to be different.
Speaker 3: You would think that Hall and Taylor was old enough
Speaker 3: to consent to be there, but yeah, Noah Emerick was
Speaker 3: sort of put there.
Speaker 2: Yeah as a kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. It's it's all. It's also interesting.
Speaker 4: Well and y'all you had to wonder, like how it's
Speaker 4: pitched them too write It's like his mom was probably
Speaker 4: what like she was probably in her mid to late thirties,
Speaker 4: Like when, well, this role of a lifetime because they
Speaker 4: never really knew exactly what this was going to be
Speaker 4: at a certain point anyway, right, they kept expanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if it wasn't a hit, Yeah, what if
Speaker 3: it wasn't And so.
Speaker 4: There's probably some insane contract that she had no one,
Speaker 4: it's an actress, she doesn't know what she necessarily signed
Speaker 4: away completely at that point, and she's an aging actress
Speaker 4: in Hollywood. It was like, oh, this role of a lifetime,
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't you know? It's just the the levels of
Speaker 4: people just trying to work within a system, just really
Speaker 4: I Also I'd never actually noticed it until this time
Speaker 4: because I had not watched it in a long time.
Speaker 4: But they show the shot of the dome itself. It's
Speaker 4: over the entire city of Burbank into like North Hollywood
Speaker 4: because it's like right behind the Hollywood side, And I
Speaker 4: was like the idea that they just like bought everybody
Speaker 4: out of that part of the valley and just flooded it.
Speaker 4: It really was making me think of like the Dodger
Speaker 4: Stadium of it all. Really sure, you know, just like
Speaker 4: this the displacement of so many families for the creation
Speaker 4: of this like real life.
Speaker 2: Which I kept thinking on this watch. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: is the budget for this show? And how could it
Speaker 2: possibly be sustainable? Because there's a whole ecosystem that you
Speaker 2: have to pay for. There's all these actors, you know,
Speaker 2: principal cast and extras who presumably live there full time
Speaker 2: that you have to like pay for their labor, like,
Speaker 2: and I know this is not the biggest issue with
Speaker 2: this show, but I'm just like, how is this show
Speaker 2: actually sustainable? But Christoph insists that it is, so I'm
Speaker 2: just like, all right, who knows.
Speaker 4: Well, and if you're scaling with the kid right. It's
Speaker 4: like when you're young, your world is very small, you know,
Speaker 4: and you're kind of just taken around. So it's like
Speaker 4: it can it maybe didn't start that way over overnight,
Speaker 4: but they kind of have built it as as he
Speaker 4: kind of grew over time too, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and then there's like Christoph himself, who I get.
Speaker 3: I like. I like that he's kept vague enough that
Speaker 3: you can sort of guess your way around, like how
Speaker 3: does this man come to play god? And like that
Speaker 3: I forget how much of this is included? And how
Speaker 3: much of it Isn't this weird Niked Knight thing I watched,
Speaker 3: but that like Christoph had built his career on exploiting people,
Speaker 3: and that like he had won an Oscar for a
Speaker 3: documentary on unhoused people that involves surveilling them against their will,
Speaker 3: and like from that came this idea to like, to
Speaker 3: what if I could do a completely controlled surveillance experiment
Speaker 3: and broadcast and call it art and elect myself the
Speaker 3: god of this person's life. I just I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think like Ed Harris makes so many interesting choices
Speaker 3: where it is like on paper, so nuts that he
Speaker 3: tries to kill Truman and he's like, kill jiamati kill
Speaker 3: it him, kill him now, and then twenty seconds later
Speaker 3: he's like, Laurret, I guess you lived. I guess I
Speaker 3: have to give him this god speech. But you can
Speaker 3: feel that it like really does meet. Like he's just
Speaker 3: so deep. He's in his freaky simulation. And you see
Speaker 3: that in the scene where he's like touching Truman's huge face.
Speaker 3: We were like this, this man is very very sick. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know with what, but it's so I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's I fully believed that he would kill Truman, and
Speaker 3: I fully believe that he was devastated that Truman was
Speaker 3: like electing out of this horrible thing.
Speaker 4: Well one thing, that's what it's like. An abuser gets
Speaker 4: high on their own supply a lot of the time too,
Speaker 4: where it's like I I did try to kill you,
Speaker 4: but now I've let you live, Like how benevolent I am.
Speaker 4: Like it's such a retaining of extreme power in that
Speaker 4: circumstance because it's like you can always leave whenever he wants,
Speaker 4: Like it's but you know that's not it. You've created
Speaker 4: things than his mind that make that impossible, right, but
Speaker 4: for long until it's not.
Speaker 3: I mean it's also yeah, it's like I'm sure someone's
Speaker 3: written this essay of like how freaky and biblical. That
Speaker 3: final sequence is where he's like, I have to kill
Speaker 3: my son to prove a point to everyone. And it's
Speaker 3: like a version of the Bible where Jesus gets off
Speaker 3: the cross and is like, I'm out of here if
Speaker 3: I don't see you, good evening, A good night. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 2: I also forgot that Christoph is answering to like network
Speaker 2: executives to who are like, you got to pull the plug,
Speaker 2: we can't have some and die on national television, and
Speaker 2: like Christophe tries to justify it, but I forgot that
Speaker 2: that was a component of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like he is, he's playing God, but he actually
Speaker 3: doesn't have the final word, which feels like he.
Speaker 2: Still answers to a higher God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many like levels of complicity that you
Speaker 3: see play out. Okay, and then this is where we
Speaker 3: get to like where I have some. Like it's an
Speaker 3: incredible movie. I do wish that we saw more anyone
Speaker 3: other than white guys struggling with these degrees of complicity.
Speaker 3: I think that like, yeah, we see it with Hannah,
Speaker 3: but then she kind of disappears from the movie. I
Speaker 3: think that the character we really get to see a
Speaker 3: full arc of like navigating this world is Sylvia Slash.
Speaker 3: I forget what her real world name is, but like Sylvia.
Speaker 2: Is her real world name, Laura Lauren was the character.
Speaker 3: Lauren's her fake name. Yeah, she's the only woman in
Speaker 3: the story who you get to really see out her
Speaker 3: story because you do get to see so many micro
Speaker 3: levels of complicity, where like we're just saying, like the
Speaker 3: buck doesn't even stop with Christoff. We see these like
Speaker 3: nameless masses watching the Truman Show and being complicit in
Speaker 3: there watching and being a fan. We see like Sylvia
Speaker 3: elect out. We see Paul Giamadi be like I don't
Speaker 3: want to kill him, all right, I guess I have
Speaker 3: to because it's my job. Like, there's so many micro levels,
Speaker 3: but the movie does seem still primarily interested in like
Speaker 3: the micro levels that exist for white men at every
Speaker 3: level of society.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I again, since it had been a few years since
Speaker 2: I've watched this, I sort of forgot how present Sylvia
Speaker 2: is because she's sort of the only character that is
Speaker 2: objecting to the exploitation that's happening with this show.
Speaker 3: She's cool. I love it. She's so interesting.
Speaker 2: I like her too, and I couldn't remember like once
Speaker 2: she gets, you know, booted off the show when she
Speaker 2: tries to expose to Truman, what's actually happening, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: do we see her again? And if so, how frequently
Speaker 2: and what is she doing? I kind of forgot that
Speaker 2: she makes that phone call to Christoph. I remembered her
Speaker 2: as just sort of like watching and hoping that Truman
Speaker 2: would reach his liberation kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Well, she's got some free Truman signs behind her and
Speaker 4: stuff too, which leads me to think there's at least
Speaker 4: there's some level of a movement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope. So, yeah, I would be curious if
Speaker 3: that was like deleted scenes stuff, because yeah, it seems
Speaker 3: like that has been her. Like, I mean, whatever, Truman's
Speaker 3: been through a lot, he's got a lot to reckon with.
Speaker 3: But you know, to find out that your crush has
Speaker 3: since dedicated her life deliberating you from the Sico government
Speaker 3: experiment like good self esteem boost to be like, not
Speaker 3: only didn't she forget you, she's professionally obsessed with you, Jude.
Speaker 3: But I really liked that even though we don't. I
Speaker 3: kind of like that we don't see them reunite. It's
Speaker 3: just implied that they do. And it's one of the
Speaker 3: few like whatever the looming sort of like love story,
Speaker 3: but also like they it's just like they represent something
Speaker 3: to each other that is really significant, and I was
Speaker 3: moved by it. I thought it was so beautiful.
Speaker 4: Well and it's like them us not seeing that means
Speaker 4: that Truman had that moment to himself too, you.
Speaker 3: Know that's so true. Oh I didn't think about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a private thing that he got. Shit, it's
Speaker 4: just beautiful, beautiful, I know what that like makes me emotional?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really nice. Yeah. I found their dynamics so
Speaker 3: moving and beautiful where they just like they they are
Speaker 3: childhood sweethearts in one way, but it's also just like
Speaker 3: they represent like liberation to each other and like yeah,
Speaker 3: that's so cool, like yeah kidding, yeah, well no.
Speaker 4: I know, but I mean, well, it's like it's the
Speaker 4: the yearning for freedom and then like pursuing it at
Speaker 4: all costs in him like getting over his fears and
Speaker 4: being like I know this isn't right. I'm going to
Speaker 4: push against this. Like entertainment fascism that he's surrounded by. Honestly,
Speaker 4: I mean it is like a full mechanism just to
Speaker 4: keep his free will completely beat down. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 4: like it's powerful, and that.
Speaker 3: Like him being drawn to Sylvia Lauren at the time,
Speaker 3: like that that that she also like symbolizes to him
Speaker 3: the one off script choice he like confidently made and
Speaker 3: was like punished for. It's just like, oh, it's so good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I mean I the two I guess, I mean
Speaker 3: Holland Taylor also, I don't think as strong of a
Speaker 3: presence as she could or should have been, because also
Speaker 3: it's like you have Holland Taylor, let's give her more
Speaker 3: to do. So we do have like three women in that.
Speaker 3: And then there's also a woman who works with Paul
Speaker 3: Giamanni and Ed Harris, but she mostly just responds to things.
Speaker 3: She doesn't really do very much. One of the few
Speaker 3: people of color in the movie.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if we learn her name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like so we I would say, we basically have
Speaker 3: three women characters. And yeah, I would say, like Sylvia
Speaker 3: they stick the landing with and that that story is
Speaker 3: like fully realized and beautiful. I do wish that Hannah
Speaker 3: wasn't disappeared from the plot in a special Marl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about that too, but then I
Speaker 2: was like, well, they write his dad back in, and
Speaker 2: then as soon as he's presumably a fixture in Truman's
Speaker 2: life again, he's not like the dad character is gone too.
Speaker 2: So I don't even know if it's like necessarily a
Speaker 2: gendered thing.
Speaker 3: No, no, I don't. I don't think it's a gender thing.
Speaker 3: I think it just sticks out because there's so few
Speaker 3: women of importance in the script.
Speaker 4: Definitely, right, well, and it's it's interesting too. It's like
Speaker 4: thinking about that from Hannah's the actor's perspective too, though.
Speaker 4: I mean I would have liked more outside of the
Speaker 4: Dome because I think the second you're like, it's unprofessional,
Speaker 4: my line's been crossed, I'm out. Yeah, like you would
Speaker 4: be gone. I mean, yeah, I would love to see
Speaker 4: deleted scenes of these. I always wish we got so
Speaker 4: much more of the world because it's like I would
Speaker 4: love to know so much, Yeah, so much more of it.
Speaker 4: I love that you found like some of the backstory
Speaker 4: stuff because maybe she does does she have enough money?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 4: Did she make enough money?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Does she get to go do QVC for a living, right.
Speaker 3: I'm sure. I'm sure she'll you know, land on her feet.
Speaker 4: But it's just like, yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's comparatively a small thing, and I feel
Speaker 3: like Laura Lennie makes so much of the time she
Speaker 3: spends on screen where I feel like the two images
Speaker 3: that I most strongly associate with this movie are Jim
Speaker 3: Carrey at the wall at the end and Laura Lenny's
Speaker 3: smiling and holding up the like malt.
Speaker 2: Spice or dicer.
Speaker 3: Oh the malt. Yeah, any of her product placement shots
Speaker 3: are like the other big thing. And so it's like,
Speaker 3: but yeah, this movie has so much going for it
Speaker 3: that it's like hard to hard to stay mad.
Speaker 4: It's also tight too, It's like yay really Like it's
Speaker 4: so I forgot how quickly that light falls at the
Speaker 4: very beginning, where I was like, oh, we got exciting
Speaker 4: incident in like four minutes in or something like that.
Speaker 4: It's so quick You're like, oh, wow, we're off to
Speaker 4: the races.
Speaker 3: I've got a Phillip Glass score. There's just everything is happening. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, something that I kind of forgot about the
Speaker 2: Meryl character slash sort of the production design of the
Speaker 2: whole movie is that it's embodying this like nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: white suburban ideal, where like Meryl is dressed like a
Speaker 2: suburban housewife.
Speaker 3: Donna read days, Yeah, Donna Reid had a part time job, right.
Speaker 2: And then I was thinking about like the whole product
Speaker 2: design of the entire movie, because I don't know how
Speaker 2: aware I even was that it is emulating this nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties esthetic. I think it was like a detail that
Speaker 2: I mostly overlooked when I watched it as a younger person,
Speaker 2: but this time I was like, really, I really latched
Speaker 2: onto it. And then I was also thinking about Sea
Speaker 2: Haven Island as one of the characters. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: I learned that the majority of the movie was filmed
Speaker 2: in a place called Seaside, Florida, which is, as we
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, a master planned community, which, for anyone who's
Speaker 2: not familiar with that, it's a part of the new
Speaker 2: Urbanism design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods and seeks to
Speaker 2: eliminate urban sprawl, which sounds great in theory. But then
Speaker 2: I was like, wait a minute, where have I heard
Speaker 2: this ar exactly? I was like where have I heard
Speaker 2: this term master planned community before? And then I remembered
Speaker 2: a place that I learned about many years ago called Celebration, Florida.
Speaker 2: Do either of you know about this place?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Disney company town.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so even though the Truman Show is not
Speaker 2: filmed at Celebration, I feel like there are like interesting
Speaker 2: parallels between Sea Haven Island and Celebration because there are
Speaker 2: these like corporate built communities that are incredibly white, incredibly
Speaker 2: lacking in racial and economic diversity as well.
Speaker 3: But there's also places like Ford Landia, which was I
Speaker 3: believe in Brazil. I mean, companies in the mid century
Speaker 3: were doing this. We're like Disney. I feel like Celebration
Speaker 3: is the most famous. But yeah, Ford Landia, Sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: play it up. It was owned by Ford and it
Speaker 3: was a company town that was built in the middle
Speaker 3: of the Amazon rainfall. Oh ye doll the Dole Company,
Speaker 3: which could be as a whole other They had company
Speaker 3: towns in I believe Hawaii, Like there's all sorts of shit.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of these like billionaires now are trying
Speaker 4: to make these like crypto towns in South America too.
Speaker 4: That that's some thing they're currently trying to build these
Speaker 4: little little libertarian havens that run off of you know,
Speaker 4: micro coins and stuff, and.
Speaker 3: Even like smaller quote unquote plant like any gated community
Speaker 3: is like building on that idea. And it felt like
Speaker 3: there's a lot of like I guess, like movies. I
Speaker 3: associate it with movies from the seventies and nineties as
Speaker 3: like having strong criticisms of these kinds of communities. But
Speaker 3: also I mean, it's not a good movie, but don't worry.
Speaker 3: Darling is like kind of doing something similar in like
Speaker 3: this simulated American ideal. But I also thought of Edward
Speaker 3: Scissorhands in like the way that a neighborhood is false
Speaker 3: and presented in a very specific way. And then like
Speaker 3: you know, Stafford Wives and Pleasant Villa. Yeah, like all
Speaker 3: all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always have to remind myself that Seaside is
Speaker 4: not clear Water, Florida in my head, that I know
Speaker 4: this is not the scientologist town, but in my head
Speaker 4: they are the biggest town, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: the same thing to me too. Or it's like a
Speaker 4: religion that runs a city, the cult town, yeah town
Speaker 4: cult towns or company towns also damn yeah, damn.
Speaker 2: Well, then I was thinking about how Sea Haven Island
Speaker 2: is again a very white community, white middle class community,
Speaker 2: even though everyone who is there is cast to be there,
Speaker 2: like they're very deliberately placed there, so theoretically anybody could
Speaker 2: be cast and yet the vast majority of the quote
Speaker 2: unquote inhabitants of Sea Haven are white people. And I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, well, is that an intentional creative choice,
Speaker 2: meaning like, is this is Christoph's idea of this perfect
Speaker 2: world that he has built for Truman. Is that him
Speaker 2: making that choice for it to be a nearly entirely
Speaker 2: white community, or is it that this is a Hollywood
Speaker 2: production in nineteen ninety eight, where most movies had majority
Speaker 2: white casts, I would guess.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, yeah, probably a little bit of column,
Speaker 3: a little bit of Columbe. Yeah. I feel like this,
Speaker 3: I mean, especially because this movie also takes place in
Speaker 3: real world nineteen ninety eight, because all the relevant characters
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety eight are also white, it does still
Speaker 3: feel like racism of the time as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's Yeah, I definitely think it's the
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety eight of it all. But I do think
Speaker 4: it also like plays into unwittingly into like the pyramid
Speaker 4: scheme that is white supremacy, right where you are trying
Speaker 4: to build this like perfect world where everything is, you know,
Speaker 4: this amazing reality that everyone's watching. It's like it fits,
Speaker 4: which it fits into the entertainment fascism of it all,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like, oh, this is the ideal that
Speaker 4: we're all working towards. If you live in a white
Speaker 4: Christian nation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I found a piece on the sub stack of
Speaker 2: Ida Bradford that examines how the Truman Show, like Truman
Speaker 2: Show at the television program where again Truman lives, lives
Speaker 2: in this fake, highly controlled world and is like quote
Speaker 2: unquote protected from the quote unquote sick world outside. How
Speaker 2: that can be seen as a metaphor for whiteness and
Speaker 2: for how so many white people insulate themselves on individual
Speaker 2: levels and then also like on systemic levels, they insulate
Speaker 2: themselves from learning about the impacts of racism and capitalism
Speaker 2: and colonialism. And I thought it was a really interesting piece.
Speaker 2: I'll share a few quotes from it here. Quote in
Speaker 2: the movie, Truman must give all he has, including his
Speaker 2: willingness to live, to uncover the truth. He is only
Speaker 2: able to reach the boundaries of the large city sized
Speaker 2: dome that has contained his entire life. After choosing to
Speaker 2: continue the process of liberation, even if it costs him
Speaker 2: everything he knows, including his very existence, he would rather
Speaker 2: die than continue to live knowing that his life is
Speaker 2: nothing more than puppetry. This is the cost of liberation.
Speaker 2: This is the reality that white folks, white adjacent and
Speaker 2: those with internalized white supremacy need to come to terms with.
Speaker 2: They can at any point turn back and live the
Speaker 2: privilege protected life that hundreds of years of global colonization
Speaker 2: and racial capitalism have afforded them. They can, and most do,
Speaker 2: choose white supremacy. Even the liberals who are disgusted by
Speaker 2: the idea and set themselves as ideologically against it, these
Speaker 2: very people give in to the luxuries and comforts of
Speaker 2: having their perceptions undisturbed and unchallenged. Unquote. The piece keeps going,
Speaker 2: and I think the whole thing is worth reading. We
Speaker 2: can link it in the description, but it's yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like making the argument that this movie can be seen
Speaker 2: as a metaphor of that, and the Truman's Liberation is
Speaker 2: like allegorical to like people on learning white supremacy and
Speaker 2: kind of liberating themselves from them.
Speaker 3: Perhaps even taking the whatever color is it, the red
Speaker 3: taking the red pill even though they took that from us.
Speaker 3: But anyways, but that's what it originally meant. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: is like it like taking it back, taking a red
Speaker 3: pill box, but like enlightenment and the willingness to engage.
Speaker 3: That's like, that's I want to read that piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it does.
Speaker 3: Definitely it feels very I've been thinking about this. I've
Speaker 3: been doing a lot of research for a different project
Speaker 3: right now about the history of AA, which is a
Speaker 3: very white dominated group to this day for many reasons,
Speaker 3: but one of them is that there is a sort
Speaker 3: of explicit rule in the group of quote unquote not
Speaker 3: discussing politics, and how that is like such a privileged
Speaker 3: white thing to say, because it limits anyone marginalized in
Speaker 3: the group from discussing how their marginalization and discrimination has
Speaker 3: informed their drinking. And there are all of these testimonies
Speaker 3: of people of color in AA bringing up how people
Speaker 3: being racist towards them has been a factor in their
Speaker 3: relationship with drinking and had that conversation completely shut down
Speaker 3: because quote unquote, we don't discuss politics here. And like,
Speaker 3: I feel like that energy is all over all over
Speaker 3: like the Truman simulation. And I would assume it's because
Speaker 3: Christoph is sort of not even recreating the world of
Speaker 3: his childhood, which would have been the fifties ish, but
Speaker 3: he's reconstructing the entertainment of his childhood to try to
Speaker 3: resell the propaganda he was given for a new generation,
Speaker 3: which still happens all the time. But it's like if
Speaker 3: we we created a simulation where Jim Carrey lived in
Speaker 3: Spice World and said this was how nineteen ninety five was. Guys,
Speaker 3: we swear, but yeah, just like that, a refusal to
Speaker 3: present the world as it is, but insisting that this
Speaker 3: is the world, which is like that whole opening sequence
Speaker 3: of all the actors being like this is basically real.
Speaker 3: We basically are okay with this. It's so dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and it's like you also, what's the what's
Speaker 4: the oh man, I'm not going to get the quote right.
Speaker 4: I'm horrible quoting stuff. But the in World War Two
Speaker 4: where they talk about Nazis and they're like, it wasn't
Speaker 4: the soldiers that were like always the issue was like
Speaker 4: my neighbors that were also complicit in everything. The complete
Speaker 4: complicity of the removal of freedom from this person, and
Speaker 4: everyone just it's going along with it because it's benefiting them.
Speaker 3: And there are there are I mean, Truman's neighbors are
Speaker 3: a black family in the in this world, but we
Speaker 3: only get to see them say good morning. Like I
Speaker 3: don't know. This movie is so tight that it's like
Speaker 3: there's a million small interactions that could be It's entirely
Speaker 3: its own movie, but it would be interested a series. Well,
Speaker 3: I was like, I would be interested in just more
Speaker 3: simulation stories that don't center around white protagonists, because that,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we've at this point gotten there's
Speaker 3: there's a few around white women like step for wives.
Speaker 3: Don't worry Darling. Uh, there's certainly two very famous ones
Speaker 3: back to back about white men, Truman Show and The Matrix.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Keanu is mixed, but.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, that's true. Yeah sorry, white white passing then yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, I think that there there is a
Speaker 3: dearth of at least that I know of. If listeners
Speaker 3: know of simulation stories that don't revolve around white or
Speaker 3: white passing characters, drop them in the chat. I just
Speaker 3: love a simulation.
Speaker 4: I don't like horror movies, but is the second Jordan
Speaker 4: Peel movie, Well, US Goppelgangers is that kind of that?
Speaker 4: I never saw it. I'm scared, but.
Speaker 2: Not not quite.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess I wouldn't know how to describe what happens
Speaker 3: in US. Yeah, I mean I want to. I think
Speaker 3: I do want to see it again, because yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know how to describe what happens. It's not quite that.
Speaker 2: But it's not that.
Speaker 3: It's not really it's not not that. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether it.
Speaker 4: Feels like a theme that i'd like to see Jordan
Speaker 4: Peel explore.
Speaker 3: I think I would do a couple masterfully. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: oh m that Shyamalan The Village get Out is get
Speaker 3: Out does have set simulation elements to it, kind of
Speaker 3: like there.
Speaker 2: There's definitely like a world that's not what it's right,
Speaker 2: It's very small, but right, I don't know. Let's well,
Speaker 2: little people keep pondering it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should do a simulation theme on the Matreon
Speaker 3: or something that would be interesting.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Yeah, does anyone have anything else they'd
Speaker 2: like to talk about.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to I'm looking through all my all
Speaker 4: my notes of stuff. I think just the you know,
Speaker 4: what's interesting is the Jimmy you mentioned, like the self
Speaker 4: surveillance culture that we have going on now. I would
Speaker 4: really like to watch this movie with like some gen zs,
Speaker 4: some older alphas to be like, what do you think
Speaker 4: because you all have each other's locations, Like flap cameras
Speaker 4: are such a big discussion happening now, Like does this
Speaker 4: like horrify you to your core in the same kind
Speaker 4: of way because now a lot of these younger people
Speaker 4: have been raised in They're much more comfortable to surveillance
Speaker 4: from a young age in a similar way, you know.
Speaker 4: So I just want to know if this hits as
Speaker 4: hard if you've been more raised in.
Speaker 2: It, more acclimated to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I know so many people love to
Speaker 4: share locations, and I'm always kind of horrified at the
Speaker 4: idea of it.
Speaker 3: I only do it.
Speaker 2: If I'm going on a date and I think I
Speaker 2: might be murdered. But then I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's kind of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2: Well, there's not only this self surveillance component to it,
Speaker 2: but there's also just regular ass surveillance. To share a
Speaker 2: little anecdote, I recently got back from a trip overseas,
Speaker 2: and I have global entry brag, and I like was
Speaker 2: walking through the global entry line to like whatever pass
Speaker 2: through customs and blah blah blah. Normally there would be
Speaker 2: a camera that like unfortunately scans all your biometrics and
Speaker 2: your face and all that stuff, and then it like
Speaker 2: lets you go on through. There wasn't even that. There
Speaker 2: wasn't even a camera, so I don't even know what
Speaker 2: had scanned me. But I'm walking through and a guy
Speaker 2: was just like, you're good to go, Caitlin, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: how do you know it was me? How do you
Speaker 2: know that I'm here? Like it was so freaky, And
Speaker 2: I think it just speaks to the level of surveillance
Speaker 2: and again with all the biometric data that's being collected
Speaker 2: and yeah, and never going to be able to like
Speaker 2: have any privacy.
Speaker 3: Like classic police surveillance, and like how all surveillance technology
Speaker 3: is inherently.
Speaker 5: Racist because of the data sets that they're.
Speaker 3: Trained on and they're transphobic because of the data sets
Speaker 3: that they're trained on. It just like it's endless. And
Speaker 3: then yeah, like we have ring cameras and surveil each
Speaker 3: other and there has to be a generational difference like
Speaker 3: there too, because I personally, I do not want to
Speaker 3: know where my fiance is at. I'm like, if you're
Speaker 3: gonna cheat on me, do it normal style, Like it's
Speaker 3: none of my business, none of my business, and it's
Speaker 3: it's first of all, it's creepy to me. And it's
Speaker 3: also like feels like I don't trust someone, Like I think,
Speaker 3: like what you're talking about, Kayle, it makes total sense
Speaker 3: because that's safety and temporary. But then at some point
Speaker 3: it's like if I don't know, if if I need
Speaker 3: to like put an Apple tag on a boyfriend, then
Speaker 3: I'm probably not a boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Then you shouldn't be with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But it's like a societal urging of the
Speaker 4: breaking down of trust between us, right, you know, It's
Speaker 4: like they don't want us to have that instinct to
Speaker 4: just trust somebody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, bleak.
Speaker 4: I just, man, there's so many conversations. But I also
Speaker 4: I was just one more thing. I just I always
Speaker 4: love to think about Truman getting out seeing Sylvia and
Speaker 4: then some lawyer comes and gets him all his residuals
Speaker 4: and he gets to do whatever the hell he wants.
Speaker 3: For the rest of it.
Speaker 4: He gets to travel a whole world because he's got
Speaker 4: MySpace Tom money.
Speaker 3: Now, oh my god.
Speaker 2: All he wants is to travel and explore.
Speaker 3: He wants to see Fiji. Oh I mean yeah, I
Speaker 3: want him to see the world and go off the grid. Yes, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 4: The only person that's allowed to be an off grid
Speaker 4: prepper truly is Truman Burbanks truly.
Speaker 3: And the person who's really earned it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 3: It doesn't pass the Bechdel test. Look, we have to
Speaker 3: say it. It doesn't. It just doesn't.
Speaker 2: The only scene where women are interacting is the Merral
Speaker 2: character in Truman's mom and they're talking about True.
Speaker 3: They're talking about Truman, which I'm willing to be generous
Speaker 3: and say that's by design that these characters wouldn't have
Speaker 3: personal relationships with each other because their coworkers and their
Speaker 3: relationship would be incidental to the focus of the show.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. But I still think that there's far
Speaker 3: more room for not white guys in this story than exists,
Speaker 3: which just feels product of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, but what about the most important metric in the world,
Speaker 3: the Bechdel cast Nipple scale.
Speaker 2: Our skill, where we rate the movie zero five nipples
Speaker 2: based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. This
Speaker 2: is a tricky one because it's not necessarily like promoting
Speaker 2: any ideas of intersectional feminism, but it is examining all
Speaker 2: of these things that we've talked about, as far as
Speaker 2: exploitation and media.
Speaker 3: Living in a society, society.
Speaker 2: Product placement, and like you know, promoting rampant consumption and consumerism,
Speaker 2: selling this idea of a like white hetero status quo utopia,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And I think the movie has
Speaker 2: a lot to say about that. So honestly, I think
Speaker 2: I'm going to give it like three nipples, and they're
Speaker 2: going to queer icons. The two old women who watch
Speaker 2: the Truman Show together at home on the couch, and
Speaker 2: they're always like snuggling with each other.
Speaker 3: It's cute.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: It's cute. I love this movie, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: give it two nipples, just mainly because it's just like
Speaker 3: having It has a lot of interesting societal commentary, but
Speaker 3: is mostly still relegated to how society shapes and affects
Speaker 3: this specific white guy. And I do think that that
Speaker 3: is intentional for all of these reasons. But I'm more
Speaker 3: I guess thinking about the characters that we meet outside
Speaker 3: of people who aren't the nineteen ninety eight characters we meet,
Speaker 3: I still feel like there that is an opportunity to
Speaker 3: show a more diverse array of characters, to show you
Speaker 3: the world that Truman is not able to participate in.
Speaker 3: That said, it's pretty close to a perfect movie, and
Speaker 3: I love it very much and it's a part of
Speaker 3: my family now. But I'm two nipples, one to LAURELINI
Speaker 3: and one two. Oh my gosh, I don't think I've
Speaker 3: seen her in anything else. Natasha macklhone shout out to.
Speaker 2: Her, Brandy, how about you.
Speaker 4: I'll give it. I'll give it three as well, I
Speaker 4: think for similar reasons I'll give I'll give it a
Speaker 4: little bit more, just because I think that it is also,
Speaker 4: like I don't know, showing that the way that like
Speaker 4: a straight white Ki can also become a victim of
Speaker 4: the assign of things. I think maybe hopefully that helps
Speaker 4: that story break through to some people that might need that,
Speaker 4: because it is, like, you know, ultimately, like even the
Speaker 4: system that in theory is like benefiting you, you will
Speaker 4: ultimately become a victim of it if you step outside
Speaker 4: of it. It's a prison, still a prison. And I'm
Speaker 4: gonna give him. I'm gonna give alter Jim Carrey. I'm
Speaker 4: just so proud of him. I'm just so proud of him.
Speaker 3: Close personal friend, my close personal friend.
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm just so proud of him. He was
Speaker 4: he dropped out of high school in ninth grade and
Speaker 4: was like houses with his family for years in Canada.
Speaker 4: And like I just, I'm just always so proud of him.
Speaker 4: He's a problematic fave for life. He always will be fair.
Speaker 2: We all get at least one. Yeah, well, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming back and having this discussion with us.
Speaker 4: Come back anytime, Yeah, come back absolutely.
Speaker 2: Tell us what you want to plug and where to
Speaker 2: where to if people want to watch your.
Speaker 3: Seven oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Please come surveil me on Instagram at brand Dazzle on Instagram,
Speaker 4: I'm on TikTok at Brand Dazzle is here. I barely
Speaker 4: use it, but if you follow me, maybe I feel
Speaker 4: compelled to. My new comedy special is called Milk Job.
Speaker 4: It is available everywhere that you listen to audio, but
Speaker 4: also it is available on video at YouTube dot com,
Speaker 4: slash at sign burn This Records, which is a record
Speaker 4: label that I started a few years ago to try
Speaker 4: to create a more artist friendly space in the comedy
Speaker 4: industry because it's getting bad and worse all the time,
Speaker 4: and I'm just trying to create like an equitable space
Speaker 4: to try to like help out people around the country
Speaker 4: that I've meet that are like pillars in their own
Speaker 4: local comedy scenes, are keeping like an independent alternative to
Speaker 4: the current mainstream bs afloat that's awesome. Basically, Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: like I'm I'm a punk rock kid through and through,
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to like bring that ethos to more
Speaker 4: and more to comedy, and like it's important that there
Speaker 4: is a healthy working class middle the middle class in comedy.
Speaker 4: And yeah, if you want to come and listen to
Speaker 4: some comics you might not have heard of but are
Speaker 4: very funny and are very funny and are very good people.
Speaker 4: These are the metrics by which I am trying to
Speaker 4: build a label, and I'm really proud of it and
Speaker 4: the comedy. The YouTube shape page is almost monetized, and
Speaker 4: what would mean a lot to me is if you
Speaker 4: could subscribe but then also definitely watch the special and
Speaker 4: then if you want to throw it on a few
Speaker 4: more times on mute, I wouldn't be mad at you.
Speaker 4: I'm about one thousand hours from being fully monetized and
Speaker 4: that would mean a lot. So I'm it's insight. We're
Speaker 4: very close and you guys could get me there and
Speaker 4: that would mean a lot to me and a lot
Speaker 4: of good people.
Speaker 3: Amazing cast hive you night, and we'll have the link
Speaker 3: in the description as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely leave a comment. Let me know how many
Speaker 4: nipples you would give German show in on on milk job.
Speaker 4: I would love that. Yeah, please please do.
Speaker 2: And with that, good night inwe night is it on,
Speaker 2: good afternoon and good night bye bye.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
Speaker 3: produced by Me, Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: And Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by
Speaker 2: Sophie Lichtermann and.
Speaker 5: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever Heard of Them? That's me
Speaker 5: and our logo and merch and all of our artwork
Speaker 5: in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever heard of Her?
Speaker 3: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way,
Speaker 3: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Vosskrasinski.
Speaker 3: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and all
Speaker 3: Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash
Speaker 2: Spectelcast