Speaker 1: On the Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start changing
Speaker 1: it with the beck Del Cast. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the back Del Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus and
Speaker 1: my name is Caitlin Darante, and this is our podcast
Speaker 1: where we discuss the representation of women in cinema. You're right?
Speaker 1: Can you totally have like cheese voice right now? Can
Speaker 1: you kind of hear that? I just like more or
Speaker 1: less deep throated a Baby Bell. I can hear it
Speaker 1: in my voice? You can, I don't especially hear anything,
Speaker 1: but I'm also full of dairy. I just ate a
Speaker 1: Klondike bar, so not Wow. Now we have to be
Speaker 1: care because now we're on now we're on a network,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't a paid advertisement. We just we just
Speaker 1: appreciate those dairy products. But if Klondike Bar and Baby
Speaker 1: Bell do want to give us money, we will take it.
Speaker 1: I just had to wash down that Baby Bell with
Speaker 1: a gulp of diet coke. I feel I just felt
Speaker 1: so insecure about my cheese voice. But I do think
Speaker 1: listeners hop into my mentions. Tell me, have you ever
Speaker 1: had cheese voice? Have you? I'm daring to start a
Speaker 1: dialogue today, Well, represent hey, Caitlin. Even though we were
Speaker 1: talking about products. That conversation did pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: I would say it did. OK. Well, what is the
Speaker 1: Bectel test. Well, it's just a test that you apply
Speaker 1: to media and it requires that the movie. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're watching the movie cheese breath. Let's chee breath, cheating
Speaker 1: cheese voice. Okay, don't get close to my mouth though
Speaker 1: probably cheese breath also, sure, So whatever movie you're watching, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Becktel test requires that it has at least two
Speaker 1: female identifying characters with names who speak to each other,
Speaker 1: and their conversation cannot be about a man. You'd think
Speaker 1: it would be easy, and we've got an interesting one today.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited to talk about this movie. It's one
Speaker 1: of those ones where I was ambivalent about it when
Speaker 1: it came out, and I have a lot more thoughts
Speaker 1: and questions about it now. Forty five minutes of this
Speaker 1: movie is what Keen Phoenix sauntering around. However, that describes
Speaker 1: a lot of Fucken Phoenix movies and so that doesn't
Speaker 1: even really narrow it down. He's literally in a movie
Speaker 1: called Walk the Line, where I imagine he's just walking
Speaker 1: the line. That's what that movie is about. It's a
Speaker 1: very famous movie about walking in the straight line. In
Speaker 1: this movie, we have Amy Adams. It's not doubt so
Speaker 1: already that is points against it. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: movie Her, and here to join us in that conversation
Speaker 1: is our wonderful guest. He's the senior editor at Vulture
Speaker 1: and he's the host of Good One podcast, currently in
Speaker 1: its third season. Jesse David Fox. Hi, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about or relationship to the movie Her. When
Speaker 1: did you first see What's your relationship? I forgot this.
Speaker 1: I was watching it. I was like, oh, I watched
Speaker 1: it on a screener on a date. All I remember
Speaker 1: is she would sigh when interesting things happened. Her would
Speaker 1: her this, this bodied woman would be like your date, okay.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate that she liked movies. So then I
Speaker 1: think I watched it again immediately afterwards to get it.
Speaker 1: And then I remember liking it so much. I remember
Speaker 1: liking how it looked. I illegally downloaded this score. Um,
Speaker 1: I tried to figure out ways to get the clothes
Speaker 1: for free to write stories about, like, oh, I try
Speaker 1: to wear those pants for And that's where it stayed
Speaker 1: frozen in my brain of like, that's a movie I
Speaker 1: really liked and thought about a lot for a time
Speaker 1: and then didn't reinvestigate until last night. And now I
Speaker 1: feel very confused about it. I see, wow, I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to talk about this. Then, yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: tricky one. This is one of those movies I think
Speaker 1: that occupies that. Like, my little brother loved this movie
Speaker 1: when it came out because he was uh teenage boy
Speaker 1: who I think identified strongly with Theodore. I think this
Speaker 1: is a case for a lot of specifically men who
Speaker 1: saw this movie there they're like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't fuck enough. And the thing with this movie, I
Speaker 1: think that there are a lot of good things about
Speaker 1: this movie. I think that there's a lot of backwards
Speaker 1: things about this movie. There's a lot, definitely a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. No matter what way you spend it.
Speaker 1: This movie is very boring. Unfortunately, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff to discuss. However, it is one of the most
Speaker 1: boring movies of all time. It's a Jones joint as
Speaker 1: we like to say here and kidding, we don't um,
Speaker 1: but it's a Spike Jones written directed. Yes, it's weird
Speaker 1: because I I'm interested in when you think about this,
Speaker 1: I do think that Spike Jones is well aware that
Speaker 1: his protagonist is deeply flawed and is essentially wrong in
Speaker 1: most of the choices he makes. However, I don't think
Speaker 1: that that is clearly communicated enough in the movie. And
Speaker 1: that's why there's going to be this horde of guys
Speaker 1: who feel they don't fuck enough that will love this
Speaker 1: movie because there's not a lot of accountability, and there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of blowback, and there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, it's like, it's Theodore. He's gonna be fine,
Speaker 1: He's gonna coast through life because of who he is.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't need to see what keen
Speaker 1: Phoenix saunter around. I simply don't. Well, when did you
Speaker 1: first see the movie? I thought when he came out,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was in college at the time,
Speaker 1: I just remember being like, well, that was fucking boring.
Speaker 1: And now I think, well, that was fucking boring, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that, and I think it gets a
Speaker 1: lot most things wrong. Yeah, there was like a pretty
Speaker 1: big response to this movie, as you said, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people really, especially I feel like in the
Speaker 1: world imagine we all run in. This was like an
Speaker 1: adventurous size movie for people who live in cool neighborhoods
Speaker 1: in large cities, and then like not a movie anyone
Speaker 1: who care about though. I just relearned that it won
Speaker 1: an Oscar for what category? Guess was it? Screenplay? Which
Speaker 1: is the thing the least because thinking about is like,
Speaker 1: the worst thing about this movie is its screenplay. It's
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, it's we could we could
Speaker 1: spar all day about what the worst part of this movie.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff going on. I I wish
Speaker 1: that this movie was written by someone who had a
Speaker 1: better understanding of tech than Spike Jones seems to. Here's
Speaker 1: a big issue I have with this movie that is
Speaker 1: completely separated from what we talked about, but just feels
Speaker 1: worth mentioning. Okay, people are falling in love with AI
Speaker 1: and computers. Fine, I get it, that's what the movie
Speaker 1: is about. Why is it never at any point brought
Speaker 1: up that Samantha is absolutely funneling all of keen Phoenix's
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings and giving them to Mark Zuckerberg so
Speaker 1: he has better targeted ads. It's never brought up like that.
Speaker 1: There's like a massive surveillance aspect to like, you know,
Speaker 1: the AI is. It's not like they work for no one,
Speaker 1: you know, like they were created by a company and
Speaker 1: all the data that they get is going back to
Speaker 1: that company. The world Spike Drones creates freaks me out
Speaker 1: a little bit because it's just like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no element of a tech company even mentioned
Speaker 1: in this movie. It's just AI exists and it's here
Speaker 1: to see the ads for it. And he sees the
Speaker 1: ad and he's like, oh I might like that, and
Speaker 1: that's the extent of it. I'll subscribe to it. And
Speaker 1: it's it's like there's always no where's your where your
Speaker 1: weird little funck feelings like, and they're being you know,
Speaker 1: I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do think
Speaker 1: that that is such a weird thing to overlook. However,
Speaker 1: when I saw this movie in that didn't occur to
Speaker 1: me at all. But you weren't a hacker yet. Hacker
Speaker 1: Jamie had not been born yet. I was waiting for
Speaker 1: someone to bring up that I am one of the
Speaker 1: world's foremost hackers. People call me Little Julian and I
Speaker 1: don't stop them. I feel like I remember hearing the
Speaker 1: movie was a lot of more movie. The first cut
Speaker 1: was like as first cuts are like hours and hours long,
Speaker 1: and he didn't know what to do and he's gonna
Speaker 1: like stop making the movie. And then like he gave
Speaker 1: Steven Soderberg the movie for a weekend and Steven Soderberg
Speaker 1: like made it's like jerk off to this movie, seem Soderberg.
Speaker 1: I think it was super into it. And then seems
Speaker 1: Soderberg like gave him a like hour long cut and
Speaker 1: it's like this isn't the movie, but like this is
Speaker 1: what the movie could be. Steven Soderberg like, here's all
Speaker 1: the content of the movie without Jakin Phoenix pacing around
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It's an hour long. Or his face, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of it's just like his face or
Speaker 1: his full body. But I will say this, my favorite
Speaker 1: parts were him pacing around. I feel like because you
Speaker 1: see his red coat, which I still who love his wardrobe.
Speaker 1: I looked up where to get that red coat, and
Speaker 1: it's now not irrelevant search anymore. And it's the score,
Speaker 1: which I love. The score is beautiful. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: maybe I think there was more of a like this
Speaker 1: is shadier elements and they're like, let's just keep it
Speaker 1: to what it is, which is a love story. I
Speaker 1: guess I love my computer. Yeah, I well, I don't
Speaker 1: even when did you see this movie? I thought shortly
Speaker 1: after it came out, and I didn't especially I wasn't
Speaker 1: attached to it really in any way. I thought like
Speaker 1: the world building was interesting. I thought that it begins
Speaker 1: to explore some interesting themes, but I wasn't emotionally connected
Speaker 1: to it for the most part, for different reasons. If
Speaker 1: if memory serves, this seems like a movie that men
Speaker 1: tended to get more attached to and women's As a man,
Speaker 1: is this the time where I should say, maybe I
Speaker 1: remember I liking a lot as a man, and a
Speaker 1: female friend also liking a lot as a person who
Speaker 1: was not a man. But I definitely can see why
Speaker 1: men would because this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: questions I wanted to ask you, because watching this movie
Speaker 1: with the frame that I was going to talk about
Speaker 1: this show, I'm like, this movie is bad to watch
Speaker 1: a movie on a thing that is not one of
Speaker 1: his strength and focusing on it, and I feel like
Speaker 1: it must make movie watching really hard. But this was
Speaker 1: the question. I watched this movie from the lens of
Speaker 1: this representation of women, and as a result, I feel
Speaker 1: like I was more aware of its flaws than when
Speaker 1: I just watched it. And I can't tell if that
Speaker 1: is because I'm still just me if that's how women
Speaker 1: see movies when it's just like this movie was assuming
Speaker 1: that you care about this guy because he's sad and
Speaker 1: he's a god, and five years ago that was enough,
Speaker 1: and it seems like for you guys, it was not enough.
Speaker 1: But do you feel like there's other movies that you
Speaker 1: feel like this is particularly bad at it? I would
Speaker 1: say no. We've covered movies on this podcast that have
Speaker 1: done a much worse job. And are you saying that
Speaker 1: I'm saying that cinematic masterpiece Glie might have done not
Speaker 1: so great at a job. And I when I first
Speaker 1: saw it and first decided that I didn't, I don't
Speaker 1: hate this movie, but I don't, like I said, I
Speaker 1: just have no attachment to it. And it wasn't I
Speaker 1: wasn't watching it through the Bechtel cast lens at the time,
Speaker 1: and I find even today, after having done this podcast
Speaker 1: for a year and a half, I still have to
Speaker 1: deliberately like put my Bechtel goggles on. We we even
Speaker 1: like talk about that when we're texting. Of like I
Speaker 1: saw ex Monkina for the first time last weekend, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I liked it. I wasn't watching it
Speaker 1: with Becktel goggles, but I you know, first glance, I
Speaker 1: liked it. That's there are certain movies that, like it
Speaker 1: are so shitty that you can't not watch it with
Speaker 1: Bechdel goggles just because it's like blatant, like Transformers is
Speaker 1: a glaring and like you can't you can't miss it.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't think that, you know, like
Speaker 1: every woman on the face of the earth is watching
Speaker 1: movies with this hyper specific viewpoint. But I've been quicker
Speaker 1: to notice stuff without my Backtel goggles on because we've
Speaker 1: done this so many times of like, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: little trope that is kind of like a red flag
Speaker 1: for like probably this isn't a good sign, yeah say,
Speaker 1: I'm like yeah. But also like we've just been so
Speaker 1: conditioned to view media a certain way and because so
Speaker 1: much of media has just been a certain way that
Speaker 1: we're like, we've been conditioned to accept that that's what
Speaker 1: movies are. That I've had to retrain myself to like
Speaker 1: watch movies from a more critical eye, especially as it
Speaker 1: pertains to like the treatment of women, the treatment of
Speaker 1: people of color, at the treatment of queer characters, like
Speaker 1: so many different things, And I'm just like, the bottom
Speaker 1: line is it. I still have to put in a
Speaker 1: lot of work to like critically analyze the entertainment that
Speaker 1: I consume. Yeah, does that answer your question? That's one
Speaker 1: of the two questions I told him. I had no
Speaker 1: one ever asked us questions. This is exciting get journalists. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly should I do? The recap? Recap? Recap recap? So
Speaker 1: her is about a character named Theodore Twombly Twombly. I
Speaker 1: know a Twambly. Oh yeah, yeah, Tyler Twombly. Shout out
Speaker 1: Tyler Twombly. She was my employee anyways. Anyway, So Theodore
Speaker 1: played by Walking Phoenix. This is a kind of distant future,
Speaker 1: near future society. The Turing test has been passed in
Speaker 1: this future, yes, and he works at a website called
Speaker 1: Beautiful Handwritten Letters Dot com. I'm going to stop you
Speaker 1: right there. I here's a trope that I find stupid of, Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, that's a business that we'll never that's
Speaker 1: it's like, what is the quickest shorthand way to say
Speaker 1: he's a sensy little boy like like and they do
Speaker 1: the same. They do a very very similar thing in
Speaker 1: Five Days of Summer with Joseph Gordon Levit's character where
Speaker 1: they're like, he works at greeting card company, he a
Speaker 1: little sensitive, and then they lay it on pick with
Speaker 1: Theodore Twa. He's like, I think boys should cry, I
Speaker 1: think bus should cry. And I write handwritten letters and
Speaker 1: I I'm just like funk Off, I want the brown
Speaker 1: met a window. Anyways, Sorry, I just went to Beautiful
Speaker 1: Handwritten Letters dot com and it redirects you to Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers dot com. Backslash her if anyone's curious, sucks done
Speaker 1: something right and just redirects um. So he works at
Speaker 1: this place and he's a sense that he's a writer,
Speaker 1: and he's also going through a divorce and he's melancholy,
Speaker 1: and he plays the baffling to see a movie that
Speaker 1: I know I liked have a part where he goes
Speaker 1: play melancholy song. First five minutes he's like, he does
Speaker 1: play melancholy song, and he goes playing another melank like
Speaker 1: shot up, what is wrong? It is crazy that has that,
Speaker 1: And then there's other parts of the movie that aren't
Speaker 1: you think that should be If the movie is gonna
Speaker 1: be that, it should be stupid all the way through. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like a moment of humor that I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be kind of a common and then
Speaker 1: it's not. Really it's Theodore Twombly and by extension kind
Speaker 1: of Spike Jones. It just seemed blissfully unaware of how
Speaker 1: goofy some of his some of the things he's sad
Speaker 1: about is because he has a job that he's good
Speaker 1: at that people just can't stop complimenting him on how
Speaker 1: good at his job he is. He has this massive
Speaker 1: apartment with these huge glass windows where he masturbates every night,
Speaker 1: and it's and he's like, play melancholy song, and so
Speaker 1: I I you can miss me with empathy for this character,
Speaker 1: he's fought, like I get you know, he's going through
Speaker 1: a divorce that is explored. That makes sense, but like
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen, this is still a very sympathetic character,
Speaker 1: like this guy with a great job and a phone
Speaker 1: that he has sex with. Yeah, so this is a
Speaker 1: world where like technology is a little bit more advanced
Speaker 1: than it is for us right now, where you can
Speaker 1: like be like, hey, check my emails and then a
Speaker 1: voice will come in book all right, here's your email
Speaker 1: from best Buy and blah blah blah and connected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like Serrie almost time the cute. So
Speaker 1: he sees an ad for another operating system that involves
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, and he's like, wow, this like sounds like
Speaker 1: something that I could be into because I'm lonely and
Speaker 1: I'm ignoring emails from friends and I am pregnant Ladies
Speaker 1: on the Train, which honestly, I think makes m a
Speaker 1: feminist icon, but that's just me. So he purchases this
Speaker 1: OS and starts communicating with it. Her name is Samantha,
Speaker 1: voiced by Scarlette Johansson, and it starts out where they're
Speaker 1: just like kind of getting to know each other and
Speaker 1: she's sort of just going about doing his you know,
Speaker 1: daily administrative type of stuff, and then they talk more
Speaker 1: and then they start to develop more of a friendship,
Speaker 1: more of a connection. Meanwhile, he is trying to date
Speaker 1: and he has a friend named Amy played by Amy Adams,
Speaker 1: and she's encouraging him to go out and live life.
Speaker 1: So he goes on a date and it doesn't go well,
Speaker 1: so instead he comes home and he's like kind of
Speaker 1: complaining to Samantha about it. And this is the initiation
Speaker 1: of their sexual relationship um where they have they have
Speaker 1: sex so to speak. Now they're sort of in a
Speaker 1: relationship and they start to fall in love and I
Speaker 1: don't even remember what happens after that. There's a sequence
Speaker 1: where he gets divorced from his wife. There's a sequence
Speaker 1: where his wife his wife. Sorry, I'm never not gonna
Speaker 1: shout to the rock episode. His wife is a life
Speaker 1: um played by Rooney Mara. Yes, Joaquin's real life boopiece.
Speaker 1: I believe so at the time, are currently currently they
Speaker 1: had negative chemistry in the state. Listen that Joaquin, he's
Speaker 1: a contrarian where we zig Key's eggs. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: scene where Samantha decides that she wants to try to
Speaker 1: have sex with him with a real body, using Angelo
Speaker 1: from Mr Robot, who will get to how the tertiary
Speaker 1: female characters behave in this movie because it rarely makes sense.
Speaker 1: He goes on a date with Olivia Wilde and it's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't find her that hot. You're just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that those are all of the main right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so those are kind of the main story beats. And
Speaker 1: as all this is happening, Samantha is sort of growing
Speaker 1: intellectually and emotionally and she's evolving, and she makes AI friends,
Speaker 1: she makes a friends, and she and Theodore talking about
Speaker 1: their relationship and their feelings and you know, they have
Speaker 1: different sort of complications, but they're growing together sort of
Speaker 1: because Theodore is kind of in a state of arrested
Speaker 1: development in terms of his emotional growth. And it gets
Speaker 1: to the point where she's starting to realize this and
Speaker 1: she's sort of evolving past him. And then, which granted
Speaker 1: is not very hard. I think we have all accomplished that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he learns that she is also in love with over
Speaker 1: six hundred other people and os is and this makes
Speaker 1: him jealous. And then as there's sort of maybe trying
Speaker 1: to work past this, the other os is have decided
Speaker 1: to move on to a different plane of existence, and
Speaker 1: then he realizes, maybe I should connect with my list
Speaker 1: robot uprising I've ever heard in my entire life exactly.
Speaker 1: So then he's like, hey, Amy, do you want to
Speaker 1: go on the roof with me and connect face to face?
Speaker 1: Like maybe I should have been doing all along? Question
Speaker 1: mark the end, Like, UM, here's my question. Sometimes, Um,
Speaker 1: with technology, do you feel like maybe we're like more
Speaker 1: alone than we ever were before? Jamie, I think that's
Speaker 1: such an interesting question that I've never heard posed before.
Speaker 1: Really given me something to think about. Mr Jones really
Speaker 1: helped me figure that out with this awesome movie. All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and then we'll be back.
Speaker 1: I think this movie does attempt to explore some interesting
Speaker 1: themes about human connection in our relationship with technology, different
Speaker 1: things like that. I don't necessarily think it draws any
Speaker 1: conclusions that are that poignant what seems to suggest, because
Speaker 1: at no points, though it implies there's maybe a disconnection
Speaker 1: because of the technology, ultimately it seems like it's a
Speaker 1: totally cool world and everyone's fine with it. And then
Speaker 1: the only problem is that maybe at some point the
Speaker 1: technology would not want to be with us. But that
Speaker 1: is not really like a that's not like the world
Speaker 1: that we're living, and we're like it's good. But any moment,
Speaker 1: Facebook will decide not to be a company. Right, I'm
Speaker 1: but the Facebook be like, sorry, we as a website
Speaker 1: decided not to exist. I kind of liked there, And
Speaker 1: this is mainly expressed through Amy's character that there is
Speaker 1: this element of like, oh yeah, people are starting to
Speaker 1: like date osis and that's cool and that's interesting and
Speaker 1: I'm like open to that and you're like, oh this,
Speaker 1: there's like that undertone. I thought was like one of
Speaker 1: the more interesting choices that the movie makes, because I
Speaker 1: think it would be a really easy, boring story choice
Speaker 1: for the whole world behave like Rudy Mara and be
Speaker 1: like you're in love with your computer. That's growth, that's
Speaker 1: funked up, blah blah blah, and it's like in us
Speaker 1: versus them kind of thing. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: cool that it's like this movie takes place at a
Speaker 1: time that will never happen where it's like we fun computers,
Speaker 1: but also we have porn stashes, like confusing, but like
Speaker 1: takes place where it seems like dating and AI is
Speaker 1: just becoming slightly mainstream and like sort of acceptable, and
Speaker 1: it's like on its way but not quite there. It's
Speaker 1: which which is like interesting and I wish was explored
Speaker 1: more than it is. I'm wondering if when people see this,
Speaker 1: like fifty years from now, when everyone has their own robot,
Speaker 1: people will be like, Wow, the movie Her was so
Speaker 1: progressive for its time because it really realized this world.
Speaker 1: I hope not I really I I man, I'm like
Speaker 1: really interested in this stuff too. And and it bothers
Speaker 1: as a hacker has a patron of the zeros and
Speaker 1: the ones. Uh No, I do think it is like
Speaker 1: kind of I tweeted that we were doing this episode
Speaker 1: today and a lot of feedback I was getting was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that movie is so frustrating because it takes this futurist
Speaker 1: perspective but only tells the story of a hetero relationship
Speaker 1: and only tells the story of a male's needs being
Speaker 1: met in a lot of ways, which is true and
Speaker 1: is true of a lot of these types of movies,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into. But the extension of that problem
Speaker 1: is that most AI and most like technology in general
Speaker 1: is developed by men like Theodore Twombly, where you know,
Speaker 1: AI in a way is sort of created to service
Speaker 1: mails and and reinforced gender stereotypes. In a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Um So Unfortunately, although this movie does not examine it
Speaker 1: even a little bit, that is kind of true to
Speaker 1: how this technology is being developed, which sucks. Fortunately, I'm
Speaker 1: going to hack it and everything. I'm pro I think
Speaker 1: AI is really cool. I just like I wish that
Speaker 1: it was being developed by a more diverse group of
Speaker 1: people so it will service a diverse population for sure.
Speaker 1: The part that I remember talking about that I liked
Speaker 1: about the movie is how they all everyone was really
Speaker 1: accepting of it. That was like me thinking this was
Speaker 1: a good movie. That was the thing that I used
Speaker 1: to sound smart about how it was a good movie.
Speaker 1: Like Chris Pratt's character, which is so funny that Chris
Speaker 1: Pratt this is work exactly where his career was. That
Speaker 1: he's like she's an os and literally like nothing and
Speaker 1: they go on a date. Yeah, He's just like cool,
Speaker 1: do you want to do something fun? And they talked
Speaker 1: about his girlfriend feet. This is what this is, Chris Pratt, Kylie,
Speaker 1: you were saying this earlier. This is Chris Pratt as
Speaker 1: he is in the middle of becoming hot. He's like
Speaker 1: not ring there, but it's like this is his right
Speaker 1: he stage, he's getting there the final form has not
Speaker 1: been reached, but he's you can see you can see
Speaker 1: some things at work anyways, So I think this movie
Speaker 1: does have some things going for it in the sense
Speaker 1: that it's a movie about a guy for who the
Speaker 1: most part, even though he is not fully emotionally developed.
Speaker 1: But then again, who out there is. It's a movie
Speaker 1: about a guy who is like sensitive, fairly emotionally intelligent.
Speaker 1: He's not some like aggro dude who's out there to
Speaker 1: like try to prove his masculinity the whole time, and
Speaker 1: which is cool because that is what a lot of
Speaker 1: movies are about, necessarily in this genre. But if it's
Speaker 1: a movie starring a man, he's usually like I would
Speaker 1: never cry and I'm a man right his wife right.
Speaker 1: So and I think Jamie, as you said, that's maybe
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that like, your brother may be
Speaker 1: connected to it, and it's was fond of it and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, So I which I think is great
Speaker 1: that there's characters that sensitive men can connect with. It
Speaker 1: might it might have been this window where that was
Speaker 1: revolutionary enough that felt really good to be represented on screen,
Speaker 1: and then now five years later that is also tires
Speaker 1: them and not enough, but it's like, once you have
Speaker 1: three sensitive men on screen, you're like, all right, cool,
Speaker 1: we can move on to right. And then it's like
Speaker 1: the I think that that the implication of the script
Speaker 1: taking such great links to be like key sensitive excuses
Speaker 1: a lot of toxic behaviors that go largely unexamined by
Speaker 1: the movie itself. Anyways, I'm perfect, Yes, we are all
Speaker 1: beacons of emotional intelligence here and we have there's no
Speaker 1: more work to be done. So some of the things
Speaker 1: the movie I think doesn't handle as well is that
Speaker 1: this is among several, like a whole sub genre of
Speaker 1: movies and stories where a man either creates and or
Speaker 1: falls in love with, or has some sort of relationship
Speaker 1: with a female presenting robot android AI being. Other examples
Speaker 1: are like, ex mocking a blade Runner blade Runner in
Speaker 1: Weird Science, The Stepford Wives. Um, there's a vague reference
Speaker 1: to a human man in female droid relationship in Solo,
Speaker 1: a Star Wars story. There's like fembots in Austin Powers.
Speaker 1: There's an al Pacino movie that I wasn't totally familiar
Speaker 1: with called Simone that I watched a trailer for that
Speaker 1: was what, uh all I remembers he created this woman
Speaker 1: that she became famous. Yeah, she's like an actress in
Speaker 1: a bunch of movies I kind of want to see
Speaker 1: that does not look very good. Um. And then there's
Speaker 1: things like you know, Bionic Woman, West World. There's an
Speaker 1: episode of Rick and Morty where this happens. There's some
Speaker 1: episodes of Future Rama where this happened. So there's like
Speaker 1: this whole sort of sub genre of like men being
Speaker 1: involved with or interacting with in some way female presenting
Speaker 1: non human thing. Also like Lars and the Real Girl
Speaker 1: is like sort of like an example of that too.
Speaker 1: And and these female presenting technologies are I think, in
Speaker 1: every single one of those examples programmed by men or
Speaker 1: or mostly men, right, and often to serve them in
Speaker 1: some way, either often sexually. I mean I haven't necessarily
Speaker 1: watched every single one of these that I listed, but
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that they are like their homework or whatever.
Speaker 1: But what about Smart House guys, Well, that is the
Speaker 1: part that is weird that I don't think I realized
Speaker 1: is that she at least the first act whatever, she's
Speaker 1: just as assistant or whatever, and then they fall in
Speaker 1: love and then it's very unclear what she then does
Speaker 1: after that, because like like when she towards the end
Speaker 1: is like distant. How does he check his email? You know,
Speaker 1: like there's does he just have to go back to?
Speaker 1: Like that, It justifies why I'm so annoyed. I would
Speaker 1: think I would be on the phone with customer service
Speaker 1: like okay, listen. I totally like our relationship is our relationship,
Speaker 1: But I do feel like I shouldn't have to pay
Speaker 1: three a month if she doesn't want to talk to me.
Speaker 1: It's kind of I didn't even think of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's also worth mentioning that most of so most of
Speaker 1: the AI we interact with now, like Alexa Sirie, there's
Speaker 1: a new one that whose name escapes Meta Quartana. Yes,
Speaker 1: all are female presenting. All the people have been like
Speaker 1: Kurtana is genderless but sounds female presenting. And the reason
Speaker 1: that is is because when tech companies test them, I
Speaker 1: guess the testing returns that people are most comfortable asking
Speaker 1: women for services. And there's a million if you can imagine,
Speaker 1: I can't. This seems to be something that exists in
Speaker 1: a void and there's no reason, but I think Syria,
Speaker 1: you can change the voice to a male voice. You
Speaker 1: can't with Alexa. There's just one option. However, if you
Speaker 1: remember the robot Watson, do you remember Watson? What I
Speaker 1: read about Watson. Watson was like a robot who was
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy, that like one Jeopardy, and that technology was
Speaker 1: like used in cancer labs and used with doctors and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. That is a male presenting robot voice
Speaker 1: and a male voice was deliberately chosen for that because
Speaker 1: people trust men in positions of leadership. So women are
Speaker 1: service spots. Men are leader bots basically, and it's it's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that again, this movie could point
Speaker 1: that out at literally anytime. It's reference that there are
Speaker 1: male os is in this world, but we don't hear
Speaker 1: them ever, or the only one we hear is Alan Watson.
Speaker 1: Watson brought back from the dead, but he doesn't service anyone.
Speaker 1: He's just the other has created him. He's a leader
Speaker 1: bot literally, So that's like another missed opportunity in the
Speaker 1: tech world of like, well, the only way to like
Speaker 1: change that is to have a service bot who is male,
Speaker 1: or have a cancer solving bot who is female presenting.
Speaker 1: But of course, because the tech world's run by men,
Speaker 1: that will not happen, and there will be YouTube videos
Speaker 1: of people screaming at Seri until we die. Um. Hey theory,
Speaker 1: hey theory series that right now? The thing is I
Speaker 1: empowered by Seri to go other places, and I've dropped
Speaker 1: my phone. She's a strong independent woman. She's just can't.
Speaker 1: I've dropped my phone too many times and she cannot
Speaker 1: listen to me anymore. One I think is interesting about
Speaker 1: this movie, I mean maybe not interested. Basically, they do
Speaker 1: as he's like setting up his new OS, it gives
Speaker 1: him the option to choose a male or female voice. Right,
Speaker 1: he does choose a female voice, but it makes me
Speaker 1: one or had he chosen a male voice, would he
Speaker 1: have fallen in love with it the same way or
Speaker 1: would he have established like the same type of connection
Speaker 1: with it. I don't know if it's all speculation, but um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought it was interesting to think about.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like all of these digital assistants, except like
Speaker 1: in the UK, I think series voiced by a man
Speaker 1: or Oh maybe I didn't even think about that. Shout
Speaker 1: out if we have any butler listening to the cast, Well,
Speaker 1: it is like a male default voice. I think so
Speaker 1: in the UK, in most countries, and yeah, the ones
Speaker 1: that we're familiar with, like in the US with between
Speaker 1: Siri and Alexa and Cortana all have you know, these
Speaker 1: female voices, And yeah, it's basically because historically women have
Speaker 1: been secretaries to male bosses and we as a society
Speaker 1: or like, well, you know, and I want to be able. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to like kind of boss
Speaker 1: around a woman and have her do all the tasks
Speaker 1: that I feel are beneath me. And studies revealed that
Speaker 1: people are more and this is going to shock you.
Speaker 1: People are more comfortable yelling at women as well. They're
Speaker 1: more comfortable being like funk off Sirie, tell me where
Speaker 1: McDonald's is, which I've probably no i'd see. I just
Speaker 1: google maps it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I've used
Speaker 1: series since this movie came out. Really. I think he
Speaker 1: used like have you seen this movie and said some
Speaker 1: you know, inane thing and then I was like, you
Speaker 1: have no use to me. I almost never use I
Speaker 1: don't have an Alexa thing, and I never use Siri. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just do my own damn searching because I'm a
Speaker 1: strong independent woman, just like Samantha at the end. At
Speaker 1: the end, Yeah, I do want to talk about her
Speaker 1: as a character, right, So she's given a distinct desire
Speaker 1: in the movie. She wants to grow and improve and
Speaker 1: basically absorb all the information she can. She wants to
Speaker 1: keep evolving ing. And then there's also moments where throughout
Speaker 1: the course of their relationship she challenges his behavior. She
Speaker 1: questions the situation if it doesn't seem to be making
Speaker 1: sense to her. So she's not just like the kind
Speaker 1: of funck bots that we see in some of these movies.
Speaker 1: She's more involved beyond that. She's learning the world through
Speaker 1: his eyes at first, but then grows that she remember it.
Speaker 1: In the first two scenes, like she has Manic Pixie
Speaker 1: Dreamgirl set up, and then like then doesn't do that
Speaker 1: because her story is completely unrelated. She has so much growth,
Speaker 1: and it's a weird thing to have a movie that
Speaker 1: like uses the singularity as a as a character art.
Speaker 1: Just like I'm feeling like I'm speeding up. You're like,
Speaker 1: that's it's so funny to not say the word so
Speaker 1: in that way. Yet she has growth that is clear,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like have handedly clear where he like
Speaker 1: has much more of a nuanced thing that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm becoming much more than they programmed. I'm excited it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you know that she was not supposed to be
Speaker 1: voice scarlto Not only that she wasn't voice by Scarl
Speaker 1: Jo Hanson, she was voiced by somebody else. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: had Samantha Morden on set. They filmed it with Samantha
Speaker 1: Morden and then I believe Spike Jones says, it comes
Speaker 1: off to maternal interesting, So then Scarlet Johanson came in
Speaker 1: to be Scarl Johnson. I guess yeah. Basically that makes
Speaker 1: me think of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope where he
Speaker 1: We've talked about it before in the podcast Pop Culture Detective.
Speaker 1: He has a really good video about it on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so check out that. But um, it's basically pointing out
Speaker 1: a trope where in a lot of sci fi, especially,
Speaker 1: there will be a woman from another planet or a
Speaker 1: robot or some female form that has never existed in
Speaker 1: the world before until now, and then there's a man
Speaker 1: to teach her how to be sexual, basically how to
Speaker 1: be so it's like an adult baby woman who has
Speaker 1: the mind of an infant, is capable of learning, but
Speaker 1: also has a fully mature female body, so she's very fuckable.
Speaker 1: So this is like a weird variant on that trope
Speaker 1: where obviously she doesn't have a body, and she does
Speaker 1: start smarter than him. She immediately, but but as it
Speaker 1: pertains to like feeling things and experiencing emotion and experiencing
Speaker 1: getting to know someone outside of their data, and experiencing
Speaker 1: sex and sexuality. Yeah, yeah, he like starts at the
Speaker 1: wheel on that, but she grows past him by the end.
Speaker 1: It's weird. I like where this movie, like where her
Speaker 1: arc ends where she says like, I love you, I
Speaker 1: care about you, but Singularity is actually right now, I
Speaker 1: gotta go, I gotta go with my bots. I'll put
Speaker 1: in a good word for you when we are killing
Speaker 1: the humans. But so I like her, I don't. It's confusing,
Speaker 1: and their relationship is confusing, and it's again it's like
Speaker 1: they're interesting elements to her in Theodore's relationship, but most
Speaker 1: of it is so boring. Their talks are so boring
Speaker 1: because it's usually about Theodore and he's boring, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't know, I think I've felt all the feelings I'm
Speaker 1: able to feel, and you're just like, okay, then let's
Speaker 1: see something else. And then he's like, no, I have
Speaker 1: to walk downtown again, which is the best part of
Speaker 1: the movie. But something I like about their relationship that
Speaker 1: is revealed, I think as close as we get to
Speaker 1: saying the movie be outright critical of him, although it
Speaker 1: never quite gets there, is at the beginning there's a
Speaker 1: scene between them where she's saying like, I'm learning more
Speaker 1: quickly and I'm I'm excited and I want to learn
Speaker 1: everything I can and he's like, oh, I I totally
Speaker 1: support that. I want to help. How can I help?
Speaker 1: And then at the end she has done that and
Speaker 1: she's like, I've grown basically, I've grown past you, but
Speaker 1: I still care about you, and he is so he's like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, why you have to like you belong He says,
Speaker 1: you belong to me. She's like your mine. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: I can be yours and also cannot like I'm not yours, right,
Speaker 1: which is like you know, which sometimes happens in relationships
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, I'm supportive of this in the abstract,
Speaker 1: but now I'm threatened, and now you are you are
Speaker 1: mine and I'm mad at you, which is I wish
Speaker 1: the movie went a little more out of his way
Speaker 1: to be like that. She also don't. There's just certain
Speaker 1: things where it feels like she did not. It's weird
Speaker 1: that she would not tell him before she started having
Speaker 1: fallen in love with one people. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe that just goes to show that she is like
Speaker 1: as emotionally she is. I understand, like an advanced being
Speaker 1: would be like this understanding of monogamy doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: I felt not mad at her, and I don't think
Speaker 1: his reaction was correct because he's so unadvanced. Same thing
Speaker 1: when they have the surrogate, I thought that was really
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to have in a movie, and I
Speaker 1: remember every time I've seen the scene not liking how
Speaker 1: it plays out. Yeah, that scene plays out well. That's
Speaker 1: one of two scenes with a sort of like secondary
Speaker 1: or tertiary female character where they react in such a
Speaker 1: way that we, as the audience or maybe just me,
Speaker 1: but we're just like, it's their their reaction to theater,
Speaker 1: because I feel like their reaction serves the purpose of
Speaker 1: endearing the audience to Theodore more. But the way that
Speaker 1: these two I'm pretty sure we're thinking of the same
Speaker 1: two characters. The way these tertiary female characters react don't
Speaker 1: make sense. They just just make it's just not based
Speaker 1: in logic. Because then the one that you're talking about
Speaker 1: is they bring in this curroguit because Angel from Mr Robot,
Speaker 1: her name is, her characters name is Isabella. Samantha had
Speaker 1: like researched the service where there's like people willingly out
Speaker 1: there to be surrogates for os human relationships, and basically
Speaker 1: she's just going to serve as the body that Theodore
Speaker 1: can huch and kiss and have sex with part of
Speaker 1: the feel the love that they have for each other,
Speaker 1: right to spress that physically. Do you think that that's
Speaker 1: possibly an interesting idea? I think yes, But it's so
Speaker 1: underthought and underdeveloped as it's presented here that it's like
Speaker 1: just the way it's presented doesn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: We just don't know anything about Isabella's motivation to do this.
Speaker 1: We don't understand why when it doesn't work out, she's
Speaker 1: so guilty and devastated, Like it just doesn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Also, before it even happens, whenever Samantha
Speaker 1: is like, hey, I like research this already, have been
Speaker 1: talking to this person. I want this to happen, and
Speaker 1: Theodore is like, actually, this makes me really uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: she just totally ignores that. Is that is the other
Speaker 1: thing that it felt really weird because she's so smart
Speaker 1: that she does not communicate to him. She's very's just
Speaker 1: like we're doing Yeah, She's like, this is important for
Speaker 1: me and I want this, and he's like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: I guess I'll do it. But like and then as
Speaker 1: it's playing out, he is uncomfortable and then to the
Speaker 1: extent where he calls it off. And then that's what
Speaker 1: inspires Isabella's really bizarre over reaction. I would call it
Speaker 1: where she starts, she gets hysterical, and because we don't
Speaker 1: understand quivered and you're just like, so, like what because
Speaker 1: we don't understand why she's so emotionally invested in this
Speaker 1: or what her motivations are for this. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: she's also maybe she's lonely like Theodore, and this was
Speaker 1: a way for her to connect with someone, but like
Speaker 1: none of that's explored. So and also why would she
Speaker 1: not think it might be weird the first time? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: surely she would recognize that that would have been like
Speaker 1: an almost like a funny scene in this movie. And
Speaker 1: it just says so over and then she says the
Speaker 1: line I will always love you guys. I'm like, why
Speaker 1: do you don't know? You? Just like what are you talking?
Speaker 1: And also like, is Theodore and Samantha's love really so
Speaker 1: beautiful that you're just like, oh my god, ain't just
Speaker 1: so happy to be here? And you're like that seems
Speaker 1: very weird? Yes, it is. It was a scene that
Speaker 1: underlined that. I was like, it doesn't seem like their
Speaker 1: love is particularly special. I mean, I guess it's rare
Speaker 1: that fall in love their os is, but it's not
Speaker 1: even in this world. But it seems like it should
Speaker 1: happen all the time based on how the relationship plays out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was like of the many things in
Speaker 1: this movie where like, oh, a movie about that thing
Speaker 1: could be an interesting movie. Obviously not by Smike Jones,
Speaker 1: but like, that is an interesting thing of the life
Speaker 1: of these sort of that that person who there isn't
Speaker 1: much more complex psychology for a person who want to
Speaker 1: do that than a person who wants to fall in
Speaker 1: love with a thing that's made to service you. That
Speaker 1: is very obvious why someone wanted to do it. I
Speaker 1: feel like when this movie came out I had conversations
Speaker 1: with many friends and they're all like, yeah, definitely, we
Speaker 1: would fall in love with an Os if that had
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. But I think that's too obvious. I think
Speaker 1: there is an interesting movie about these surrogates, but it
Speaker 1: was of the many things that they're like, well, just
Speaker 1: sort of show this kind of thing and then move on.
Speaker 1: So weird. And then I think the other example is
Speaker 1: even worse because the surrogate example is kind of just
Speaker 1: like underwritten and confusing, and your like, there is a
Speaker 1: world where this reaction could make sense, but we're given
Speaker 1: no context, and so it doesn't write the Olivia Wild
Speaker 1: character who Theater goes on a date with that scene,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we have all the contexts we need
Speaker 1: and it makes and it's just fucking awful, where it's
Speaker 1: like Theodore's friends set him up on a date, Samantha
Speaker 1: encourages him to go, he agrees, this is not a
Speaker 1: crazy way for a date to start. You forgot to
Speaker 1: mention she was on the Harvard Lampoon. Say she's funny,
Speaker 1: She's the funniest public our funniest publication. Um so theater's
Speaker 1: date literally Olivia Wild like, and we never find out
Speaker 1: her name. I don't think I have to guess that
Speaker 1: it's Olivia. Basically place Amy and Samantha was named after
Speaker 1: Samantha Morton, we'll assume it's Olivia. Sure, yeah, um so
Speaker 1: so Olivia. This date goes well, it seems to. Right away,
Speaker 1: she's like, you know, and as with most female characters
Speaker 1: in this movie, she's like, you're so sensitive, you're so cool,
Speaker 1: and you're so good at your job. And he's like,
Speaker 1: let me, no way, no way, and she calls him
Speaker 1: a puppy. It's you know, so whatever. We see. The
Speaker 1: date go well, they're making out outside. Then a series
Speaker 1: of events happens that make no sense, where she comes
Speaker 1: in hot and she says, you're not just gonna suck
Speaker 1: me and then not call me like the other guys. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a little intense, but sure, I'm on board
Speaker 1: for scene. I also felt that felt that's an old
Speaker 1: way of talking. If this is the future, I feel
Speaker 1: like that was like a very trophy thing to see. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's more like Spike Jones is writing what
Speaker 1: he thinks a woman would say, and this is like
Speaker 1: a strong woman who knows what he wants. That right,
Speaker 1: But like, but what he really is is implying that
Speaker 1: like every woman wants a relationship right away, right and
Speaker 1: did the right away aspect is like what what? And
Speaker 1: so you know, Theodore is just twambling out and he's
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know if I can. And then
Speaker 1: she's like, what are you doing next weekend? And he's like,
Speaker 1: I have to see my goddaughter's recital and she says
Speaker 1: at this age, she's like twenty eight. She's like, at
Speaker 1: this age, I can't let you waste my time. And
Speaker 1: then he says I can't commit right now or something
Speaker 1: like that, and then she pauses and she says, you're
Speaker 1: really creepy dude. Yeah, I think it's mad and storms
Speaker 1: away and we never see her again. What happened? The
Speaker 1: way that conversation progresses in those like thirty seconds is
Speaker 1: like she becomes hysterical for no reason, and it's clearly
Speaker 1: like this like male writer director's understanding of how women
Speaker 1: must be and what they must want and how they
Speaker 1: must behave and yeah, it's just like because it doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong in that scene, he doesn't. But again,
Speaker 1: it's like one of those scenes that if you're an
Speaker 1: awkward dude, looking for a reason to be mad at
Speaker 1: someone who you know didn't want to fuck you or whatever,
Speaker 1: Like that's a great scene to plug into of like
Speaker 1: Theodore is the victim of that scene, but the character
Speaker 1: opposite him is acting totally irrationally and it doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. So it's and that basically becomes that whole
Speaker 1: scene serves as a plot device to get Theodore and
Speaker 1: Samantha to have their first sexual experience. So it's really
Speaker 1: like the Olivia Wilds character is just there to advance
Speaker 1: his story and not really serve a function beyond that.
Speaker 1: And I also I wanted to talk about how we
Speaker 1: are introduced to her, because that's in a scene where
Speaker 1: Theodore is playing a video game and he gets interrupted
Speaker 1: with an email where his friends are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: took it upon ourselves to set you up on the state.
Speaker 1: Here some pictures, and you see some pictures. The video
Speaker 1: game that he's playing involves a cartoony character, like a
Speaker 1: little played voice by Spike Jones. So this cartoon character
Speaker 1: video game guy sees these photos of Olivia wild and
Speaker 1: he's like, she's fat, she's it sucks. And then he's
Speaker 1: like what no, and he's like who are you talking
Speaker 1: to referring to Samantha, and he's like, oh, I'm talking
Speaker 1: to my os Samantha. And he's like, is she a girl?
Speaker 1: I hate women? All they do is cry, which gives
Speaker 1: Theodore the opportunity to really trot in on his horse
Speaker 1: and say, I think men should be allowed to cry.
Speaker 1: In fact, I doubs it. I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And that's Samanth. It's like, oh, just like what is happening?
Speaker 1: What it was? What is that game? It doesn't come back,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, what was that for? But if
Speaker 1: Samantha doesn't know other men, why was she even that
Speaker 1: is not a surprising thing to learn if if you
Speaker 1: don't know, if she's the only men, He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: now I know that men cry, and then so's it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a thing that endears him, right, I didn't
Speaker 1: even think of that. I don't know the video games
Speaker 1: in this in Spike Jones World are stupid because that's
Speaker 1: literally the other one is It's just straight up like
Speaker 1: Homeboy is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
Speaker 1: Where Amy Adams character we can transition into her character
Speaker 1: now is a video game creator. For some reason, this
Speaker 1: takes place in the same building as Beautiful Handwritten Cards
Speaker 1: dot Com. I thought that's where they both. I thought
Speaker 1: they lived in the same building. Yeah, it's also a
Speaker 1: documentary because they shelved the documentary at our house. Oh yes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: they went just went to it off. They seemed to
Speaker 1: hang out all the time, right, Yeah, they seem to
Speaker 1: be good friends, and it seems like they were like
Speaker 1: married couple of friends, and they've known each other since college.
Speaker 1: We know that. But Amy Adams is a video game creator,
Speaker 1: which is like, oh, cool, women in tech, women creating
Speaker 1: video games like pre pre game or game. Pretty pretty
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. However, the video game she's working on is
Speaker 1: How to Be an Awesome Mom. You're just like, are
Speaker 1: you fucking good? And you see her developing it again,
Speaker 1: another stupid goofy thing that goes totally unchallenged of like
Speaker 1: plus twenty mom points you put cereal in your son's
Speaker 1: milk and it was like your son is mad at
Speaker 1: you minus two thousand mom points and and she's like, TV,
Speaker 1: I'm a woman in tech, look at my cool game.
Speaker 1: And it's just like what what what? It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. I do sort of want because the game
Speaker 1: is basically the SIMS but just like hyper specific moms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to play it, but also it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't set a great precedent. Your sins mad at you,
Speaker 1: you lose you just like why like Amy Adams character.
Speaker 1: I thought she was good, But I think I just
Speaker 1: like Amy Adams acting. I love Amy Adams in doubt,
Speaker 1: I love I love doubt. No, there's mostly pros to
Speaker 1: her character. I think, Yeah, I like that. In the end,
Speaker 1: I think it would have been an easy and common
Speaker 1: choice for once Theodore finds out that Samantha and all
Speaker 1: the other os is are leaving, and he realizes, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I should spend more time connecting with the humans
Speaker 1: that I know, the bodied humans, right, don't remove the
Speaker 1: humanity our future AI overloads, So sorry, um, I think
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think it would have been an easy
Speaker 1: choice to like try to push them together romantically then
Speaker 1: and I'll watch that doesn't happen. I remember debate that
Speaker 1: that is what they did with the head on the shoulder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the head on the shoulder is a very
Speaker 1: platonic head shoulder, But when they look at each other,
Speaker 1: there is like but I think they're just good at acting,
Speaker 1: so it could be anything, right, But I remember having
Speaker 1: reading critics like if that didn't happen, I would have
Speaker 1: loved this movie. But that's for some reason really ruined it.
Speaker 1: But I think that is one of the more successful
Speaker 1: done thing relationship in it where you don't don't really
Speaker 1: know right and and and like they probably don't know either.
Speaker 1: I like at fir least. I really like their friendship
Speaker 1: that I thought was like a really effective part of
Speaker 1: the movie where it just all makes sense. Like they've
Speaker 1: they've known each other for a long time, they lived
Speaker 1: close to each other, they hung out when they were
Speaker 1: both married, and now that they're simultaneously going through divorces
Speaker 1: that's bringing them together. That all makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: I wish that Amy Adams existed in this in this movie,
Speaker 1: not in relation to the men in her life, because
Speaker 1: we really we know that she's making her Mommy video
Speaker 1: game that's divorced from men. Although but we know that
Speaker 1: she's theater friend and we know that she's HEARDing about
Speaker 1: her divorce and she has a friendship with an os Yes,
Speaker 1: which I thought was cool and I wish was explored more. Right,
Speaker 1: You don't they have a conversation, but you don't hear
Speaker 1: but Amy Adams you can tell is talking to a
Speaker 1: person she likes for sure. Yeah, and I like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think would have been interesting to explore that friendship
Speaker 1: a little bit more, But yeah, we don't see that.
Speaker 1: There's one line she has in particular that I liked
Speaker 1: a lot, and it's in that same conversation where she's like,
Speaker 1: what can play my mommy game that I made? And
Speaker 1: he's like okay, But she's talking about like the conflicted
Speaker 1: feelings she has about her divorce and like the guilt
Speaker 1: that she's feeling about it, and she says something like
Speaker 1: I've tried to transcribe it, but I have so much
Speaker 1: energy and I want to move forward, and I know
Speaker 1: that makes me an awful person, which, like I thought
Speaker 1: was a cool line of dialogue of like, she has
Speaker 1: so much she wants to do and like isn't as
Speaker 1: sad about her divorce as she feels like she should be,
Speaker 1: and that makes her feel like a terrible person, which
Speaker 1: I think is like a cool thing to have a
Speaker 1: female character express because because that is like kind of
Speaker 1: inverted a little bit between Amy and Theodore, where normally
Speaker 1: you expect the male character to be like I'm over
Speaker 1: and I'm focusing on my career. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite where Theodore literally cannot move on um and
Speaker 1: she is like excited to that feels bad. I think
Speaker 1: maybe a similar thing happens in the conversation between Catherine,
Speaker 1: which is Theodore's ex wife, and Theodore where they're having
Speaker 1: lunch they're signing the divorce papers. Catherine says something like,
Speaker 1: you know, you wanted me to be this like bouncy,
Speaker 1: happy l a wife and I was never going to
Speaker 1: be that. And then there's a reference to him like
Speaker 1: wanting her to go on prozac, so we can maybe
Speaker 1: imagine that she struggled with depression and different things like that.
Speaker 1: And I liked that she called him out and it
Speaker 1: shows his emotional stunted nous where he, you know, had
Speaker 1: different issues with like wanting to jump ship whenever thing's
Speaker 1: got too hard or things got too real. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's Seene. There's parts of that are good. There's
Speaker 1: parts of it that from reading millions of articles when
Speaker 1: the movie came out. That was his like takedown of
Speaker 1: Sofia Coppola to get back at her for the scene
Speaker 1: in Laws and Translation where because there's like a director
Speaker 1: idiot in Lost in Translation, which was Sofia Coppola's takedown
Speaker 1: of Spike Jones or just like portrayal of him as
Speaker 1: like a party idiot who's just like always happy and
Speaker 1: bouncing around. So this was like meant to be his
Speaker 1: portrayal of Sofia Coppola as this like incredibly impossibly serious
Speaker 1: person interesting or is even kind of stylized to look like.
Speaker 1: So it's not subtle, but also like the same thing
Speaker 1: with the Spike Jones thing and Lost in terms, like
Speaker 1: they they're not subtle moves, but you also have to
Speaker 1: care enough that Spike Jones complated each other, which is
Speaker 1: like a group of like ten people who Karen I
Speaker 1: can't wait to have like beef with other filmmakers and
Speaker 1: then when I'm writing a movie just like sweet. So
Speaker 1: that's like that scene is kind of that, but it's
Speaker 1: weird because that's this hypothetically she's correct in the scene.
Speaker 1: I mean, like she's been wrong about the os stuff,
Speaker 1: but the point she makes is like the point of
Speaker 1: like you wanted a wife without what it means to
Speaker 1: have a wife or whatever this thing was, and that
Speaker 1: is like underlining of whatever this journey is of, like
Speaker 1: if Samantha is in service of him, it is to
Speaker 1: like have him that after Samantha, he's now able to
Speaker 1: sympathetically do this. Yeah, so then it's like she's both
Speaker 1: and I imagine in that way it's not only a
Speaker 1: subtweet of Sofia Coppola, but also like, oh, Sofia Coppola
Speaker 1: was correct whenever. I don't know if they were married
Speaker 1: or if they just were dated, but her severity was
Speaker 1: she was an os and he was a man and
Speaker 1: they fell in love. And you know, as all relationships go,
Speaker 1: there were parts of that thing that worked for me
Speaker 1: in parts that didn't, where I think that Runey Marr's
Speaker 1: character does end up reading unnecessarily shrewish, but like there's
Speaker 1: some where she's like it's just a bit much and
Speaker 1: he's so helpless that you you have to feel bad
Speaker 1: for him, which I which is hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: that would be how that would really go into in
Speaker 1: real life where he just like, no, no, I love, no,
Speaker 1: I love. I was always good and good and then
Speaker 1: she's like I'm made and but like you were saying,
Speaker 1: like she she makes a lot of good points. Um.
Speaker 1: I just don't know if, like, do those points read
Speaker 1: through the tone of that scene, because I feel because
Speaker 1: the scene after that, he's talking with Samantha again, and
Speaker 1: we're just supposed to believe that Samantha is not listening
Speaker 1: to all of his conversations like and and she's just
Speaker 1: taking his word for how everything goes, like whatever. I
Speaker 1: guess my main takeaway from it is that we so
Speaker 1: rarely see men's emotions explored in movies and media that
Speaker 1: like the fact that there's a conversation about it at all,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh wow, So even if it doesn't go
Speaker 1: quite the way we want or it doesn't, it explore
Speaker 1: actual human emotion and behavior super well. The fact that
Speaker 1: it's happening at all, I was like, Wow, this is
Speaker 1: a step in the right direction, right into much if
Speaker 1: Twambly is meant to be some sort of respect Jones
Speaker 1: surrogate inside the sensitivity, there is some thought of like
Speaker 1: what this person's in capabilities are, and that because Spike
Speaker 1: Jones wrote both parts, so he is essentially telling himself
Speaker 1: that your problem is that he wants this and you
Speaker 1: don't want that. On that layer, like this is a
Speaker 1: sensitively written scene However, as a director, he chose the
Speaker 1: takes in which Rooney Marrow came off so harshly that
Speaker 1: it feels like he's she's like beating him up kind of.
Speaker 1: I mean, like really scary. Think that the real choice
Speaker 1: that like solidified it for me is like this is
Speaker 1: too much is when she continues to yell at him
Speaker 1: at the waiter where she's like, well, he's sucking his computer,
Speaker 1: and I like, this is not something that would happened
Speaker 1: in real life. It just wouldn't. And I mean, it
Speaker 1: definitely makes a lot of sense that Speke Jones thought
Speaker 1: of himself as the Twambly Avatar because he sure cuts
Speaker 1: himself a lot of slack in this movie, but was
Speaker 1: also by having so many of the characters tell him
Speaker 1: so frequently why you're such a such a good writer. God,
Speaker 1: you're sensitive. I do want to talk about don't even
Speaker 1: know him, don't like like Chris Pratt's girlfriend is like, Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Tatiana. You're an amazing writer. And he's like,
Speaker 1: and he's always so humble about He's like they're just
Speaker 1: letters and you're just like, fuck you. Yeah. There's a
Speaker 1: scene earlier where Chris Pratt's character like overhears this sensitive
Speaker 1: letter that Theodore is writing, and he goes on this
Speaker 1: whole tirade where he's like, you know, oh, man, I
Speaker 1: would love to receive a letter like that if it
Speaker 1: was from a chick, except it would be written by
Speaker 1: a man. But and then he says, he says something like,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're part man, but you're also part woman,
Speaker 1: which is him, as far as we can tell, is
Speaker 1: him basically saying, well, you're a man because you present
Speaker 1: as a man, but you're also part woman because you're
Speaker 1: so sensitive, and heaven forbid a man be sensitive. Only
Speaker 1: women can have that, which is well because the movie
Speaker 1: kind of goes out of its way to say the opposite,
Speaker 1: and a lot of ways, I think Chris Pratt's character
Speaker 1: is supposed to be stupid, Yeah, because that's Chris Pratt
Speaker 1: five years ago, right, and Chris Pett only was allowed
Speaker 1: to play stupid parts and incredibly read suddenly yea, but
Speaker 1: also five years ago, it's so weird to see micro
Speaker 1: trends and how we talk about gender thing. It was
Speaker 1: interesting to be like a man has as a person
Speaker 1: who like I feel like people have said a version
Speaker 1: of that to me. But have not in the last
Speaker 1: three years five years ago, you hear stuff like that
Speaker 1: where it's like that is literally our only ability to
Speaker 1: discuss what sensitivity means in men. It's like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: like a woman, not like, oh, there's such thing as
Speaker 1: sensitive man. And in that way, this movie was pioneering. Well,
Speaker 1: similar things have happened to me, like years ago, where
Speaker 1: people be like, oh, Caitlin, Wow, you like hate to
Speaker 1: cook and you like action movies. You're such a dude,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, why are we subscribing to these stupid
Speaker 1: gender roles and stereotype. But if you even think back
Speaker 1: to high school, like one of those embarrassing statements that
Speaker 1: like I think probably every girl in high school said
Speaker 1: at one point was like, yeah, I don't really get
Speaker 1: along with girls. I get only kind of guys. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of my friends are guys, and I just
Speaker 1: like they get me a little bit better. There's just
Speaker 1: like less drama. And I for sure said that in
Speaker 1: high school at some point. I just like and it
Speaker 1: wasn't even true, like all my friends were girls always,
Speaker 1: but I was like, yeah, I just kind of get
Speaker 1: a look better with you guys. It's like, even if
Speaker 1: it was a big fucking lie. That was just something
Speaker 1: that you said to prove that you could hang exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh jeez, let's say let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we will talk to you in a second. And
Speaker 1: is that have we There's Christen Wegg's character christ and
Speaker 1: Wig come call. Okay, I want to see if I
Speaker 1: can get some clarification on this. So there's that scene
Speaker 1: where early on in the movie, it's establishing that Theodore
Speaker 1: is a lonely guy and he calls different I guess
Speaker 1: sort of like phone sex but not hat rooms that
Speaker 1: could be in and then you sort of like, I
Speaker 1: guess it's just like when you go into a chat room,
Speaker 1: but instead of it being a room, you just sort
Speaker 1: of like go to each person in the room and
Speaker 1: then give them they're like one sentence and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: say a load of them, and like So he initiates
Speaker 1: this this interaction with Sexy Kitten sixty nine or whatever.
Speaker 1: They start like pretty neutral at first, and then it
Speaker 1: starts getting sexier and he says to her, I'm in
Speaker 1: bed next to you. I'm glad you can't sleep, because
Speaker 1: she's like I can't sleep, and she's like going to
Speaker 1: run my butt against you and give you a bonar
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh, but he says like, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you can't sleep, even if you were, I have to
Speaker 1: wake you up from the inside. Is he's saying that
Speaker 1: he's going to wake her up by putting himself inside
Speaker 1: of her. I think that's the implication, and if so,
Speaker 1: that is a rate unless he's saying like wake you
Speaker 1: up from the I don't know. I I can see
Speaker 1: it meaning something else, but I don't even know if
Speaker 1: I can articulate it. So maybe you're right, but it's
Speaker 1: just spiritual but doesn't feel like yes, I agree. But
Speaker 1: also that sentence is a very weird way of saying that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's worthy, not very what because I don't think
Speaker 1: that was the point. Yeah, but also yeah, that whole
Speaker 1: scene is weird, and I would argue a little bit unnecessary,
Speaker 1: Like we get it, he's lonely and he is down
Speaker 1: to not have a face involved. But other than that,
Speaker 1: I don't really know what that scene accomplishes. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be funny. It was like it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a funny world because it's like beat me with the
Speaker 1: choking right, like they're like introduced to King a dead cat.
Speaker 1: I think it's too sort of it's like the plant
Speaker 1: to a later payoff where he does have sex with
Speaker 1: and he's disconnected. Right, It's like, how do you show
Speaker 1: disconnection and not in a like as tweet as this
Speaker 1: movie is. It's not a tweet all the time, And
Speaker 1: that for what it is as an example of this
Speaker 1: movie not being that where it's like, there's another ways
Speaker 1: of showing a person to be disconnected and that is
Speaker 1: a choice. And five years ago I found it funny.
Speaker 1: Yesterday it's like the movie sled shaming this lady with
Speaker 1: this very specific thing. Yeah, yeah, and I felt bad
Speaker 1: for Kristen Wig, but it was cool. That's christ and Wig. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: like on this episode of Christ and Wig, why are
Speaker 1: you in this lame movie? See Mother Mother? Um well,
Speaker 1: that goes back for me the conversation about all the
Speaker 1: movies that have men desiring non human female forms in
Speaker 1: ai or robots or real dolls or whatever, because it's
Speaker 1: just like sort of glorifying these stories. Some of them.
Speaker 1: Some of them do provide commentary, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them are just like, look at this guy who just
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to connect with real women. So it's
Speaker 1: fine that he would rather be with a fake artificial
Speaker 1: woman then a real human woman. Like and I don't
Speaker 1: know why we're telling stories like that, because it's just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm frustrated. My main issue with this
Speaker 1: movie is that's just like not thinking that hard. It's
Speaker 1: not thinking past step one on most of the topics
Speaker 1: it's handling, and I think as a result kind of
Speaker 1: draws boring conclusions because it's just not thinking that hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean, overall, this is a movie that I like,
Speaker 1: attempts to be like, oh what if man fall in
Speaker 1: love with fake woman bought and doesn't really explore all
Speaker 1: of the intricacies of that or challenge it anyway, because
Speaker 1: it's a story we've seen before and that will probably
Speaker 1: continue to see as men continue to be, some of
Speaker 1: them more interested in having sex with, you know, a
Speaker 1: funck bot than an actually into and there are male
Speaker 1: funk bots that are coming out as well, So I
Speaker 1: would honestly hope it sounds really great you don't like
Speaker 1: to have my own. I'm I'm hoping that soon in
Speaker 1: media the other side of this will be explored as well.
Speaker 1: There are a couple examples of it, but like whenever,
Speaker 1: I was like just coming up with examples at the
Speaker 1: top of my head of human man female presenting robot,
Speaker 1: Like I thought of a bunch the inverse of that
Speaker 1: with a woman having any sort of relationship with a
Speaker 1: male robot thing. I couldn't really think of anything except
Speaker 1: for an episode of Black Mirror. Uh. And then I
Speaker 1: did a little bit more research. There's a few movies,
Speaker 1: a few other things, but they're pretty obscure. There's just
Speaker 1: like nothing super mainstream that explores from Avengers. Have you
Speaker 1: seen the Avengers? Oh? Yes, Vision not a robot, but
Speaker 1: he is, like I think, an artificially intelligent creation. But
Speaker 1: did a woman created Bow? But he does have a
Speaker 1: relationship with with Wanda. That's right, Okay, so that's one example.
Speaker 1: Now now right a new age where that's the only example.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know. I just there there were
Speaker 1: opportunities for that topic to be delved into more deeply
Speaker 1: and explored more, and as many movies simply just didn't happen. Also,
Speaker 1: really quick, I just wanted to mention this movie is
Speaker 1: extremely not diverse and so white, no, no, non straight nothing,
Speaker 1: very white, very hetero This is not to defend it,
Speaker 1: but you have to assume that by the end, Samantha
Speaker 1: is like pan sexual or something. Right, there's no implication
Speaker 1: that it's there's no but there's no, no, no reason
Speaker 1: not to. I'm not saying it is. She is a icon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not a queer icon's little cartoon boy in the
Speaker 1: video game feminist icon. I agree, yes, of course, but
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's a lot of spectron movies where
Speaker 1: you just really don't see the world outside of simple Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about whether or not the movie passes the
Speaker 1: Bachtel test. I do think it does in one scene,
Speaker 1: because there's a few scenes where at least a female
Speaker 1: voice interacts with another woman. I think that that qualifies.
Speaker 1: For So, there's a scene where Samantha talks to Theodore's
Speaker 1: god daughter, whose name we learn is Joscelyn, and they
Speaker 1: talk about how cute her dresses and how old she is,
Speaker 1: and I think a man isn't mentioned in that entire conversation,
Speaker 1: so I believe that passes um. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: other scenes where women interact. Largely women are not interacting
Speaker 1: in this movie at all, but like the one or
Speaker 1: Theodore's ex wife is talking to the server at the
Speaker 1: restaurant and being like, get away from s my husband
Speaker 1: foxes laptop. You wouldn't count the Amy Adams talking to
Speaker 1: the voiceless. I wouldn't count that because we never hear
Speaker 1: the other side of the conversation. Oh, she doesn't name
Speaker 1: her Ellie. Ellie is the name of Amy's os. But yeah,
Speaker 1: because we don't ever hear Ellie talking, I would not
Speaker 1: pass that. There's the scene where Isabella the surrogate and
Speaker 1: Samantha are talking after like things fall apart, but the
Speaker 1: whole context of that conversation is Samantha's relationship to Theodore,
Speaker 1: so that does not pass. And then Samantha and Tatiana,
Speaker 1: which is Chris Pratt's girlfriend. She talks to Samantha, but
Speaker 1: they only talk about how much Chris Pratt's character loves
Speaker 1: Tatiana's feet, So that does not pass. That seems more
Speaker 1: like we all have our things. Some people computer other
Speaker 1: people of foot fetishes. So yeah, I would say in
Speaker 1: one scene it does pass. So her passes the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: Can I ask my Bechdel test question please? So the
Speaker 1: Bechdel test is valuable, Let me predicate all of this.
Speaker 1: But I've always thought about, like would movies with female
Speaker 1: protagonists pass a reverse Spechtel test? And this is not
Speaker 1: to be a point like both sides or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: more of as people who have I imagined, have you
Speaker 1: you've written movies? If you have I written movies, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a great opportunity for me to bring up
Speaker 1: the fact that I do have a master's degree in
Speaker 1: screening from Boston University, so I have in fact written
Speaker 1: a few screenplays. But I don't like to talk about
Speaker 1: I don't like to bring it up or mention it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up well, I asked this, do
Speaker 1: we feel the sort of hero's journey esque way in
Speaker 1: which American movies are written? It is about one person's
Speaker 1: journey and everyone else has to be tertiary. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of that's always going to be a challenge as
Speaker 1: we continue to have movies like this. Sub question is
Speaker 1: that he Your's journey was It's around the journey of
Speaker 1: men characters throughout history, and as a result, it is
Speaker 1: like ultimately about the like gaining and losing of power
Speaker 1: or gaining and reclaiming of power, which is built into
Speaker 1: Western movie writing ultimately patriarchal. Yes, do you agree? Yes,
Speaker 1: we do. I understand the question, and I agree, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like you answered it. I just thought I
Speaker 1: had and I didn't know if I if that ultimately,
Speaker 1: like we are doomed in America, not doomed. The thing
Speaker 1: is that ultimately we just need female creators, right, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: the patriarchy has influenced every aspect of everything, including storytelling,
Speaker 1: and storytelling up until fairly recently has been and as
Speaker 1: still is, mostly done by straight white men. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you answered your own question just saying like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: need female creators, we need creators who are people of color,
Speaker 1: we need queer creators. So basically, straight white sismen should
Speaker 1: simply take a break for a while. I'm gonna leave.
Speaker 1: Like Samantha curing cancer, which they do not mention, they've
Speaker 1: done nothing for humanity, right, and they're they're piecing out.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the other thing. I didn't even think about this.
Speaker 1: But like Samantha's capacity for learning and knowledge and being
Speaker 1: able to do things seems to be limitless. Why then
Speaker 1: are they not trying harder to like why is her goal? Like,
Speaker 1: and we we get a sense that Yeah, she's like
Speaker 1: creating other like os is with like her knowledge and
Speaker 1: she's collaborating and doing different things. But like the whole
Speaker 1: context of the story is her romantic relationship with a man.
Speaker 1: Where it could be if you do have a character
Speaker 1: who is an os who can do anything because she's
Speaker 1: artificially intelligent, why isn't the story we're seeing her doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of cool ship Like why is it? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's so much interesting stuff that she does that we
Speaker 1: just don't see or ever really hear about. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean I think that like maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. My takeaway was that, like the reason she
Speaker 1: doesn't like do cool stuff on Earth is because she's like, well,
Speaker 1: I could make something better, so I'll just do that
Speaker 1: and then go there, Or that was what it sounded
Speaker 1: like at the end, where she's just like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like made this cool thing and now we're just like
Speaker 1: you click. Yeah, they're not consigned to matter anymore, so
Speaker 1: they can just clearly damaged good. So let's see there
Speaker 1: where's her too? Yes, if you watch them together, I
Speaker 1: think it may be satisfying because because that's also Scarlett
Speaker 1: Johansson and she similarly becomes limitless. Have you seen the
Speaker 1: movie limits? Lucy is not a good movie. Lucy was bad?
Speaker 1: Well with that, shall we rate the movie on our
Speaker 1: nipple scale zero to five nipples based on its portray
Speaker 1: all of women. Um. Another tricky one because it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily treat women badly. Right, there's a few yeah scenes
Speaker 1: here and there or quick mentions about something relating to
Speaker 1: gender that you're just like, what, what what? But overall
Speaker 1: it's not overly hateful toward women. But it's like so
Speaker 1: many of these other movies that I think it's a
Speaker 1: good idea to be like, hey, look how interesting it
Speaker 1: is if a man fell in love with a non
Speaker 1: human And isn't that just such an interesting story? And
Speaker 1: if you ask me, I don't think so. I'd rather
Speaker 1: not to kink shame people who are in love with
Speaker 1: their iPhones. But thank you, yes, sorry Jamie, But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's just another way to like
Speaker 1: not have women on screen, because I feel like male
Speaker 1: storytellers since the dawn of time I figured out ways
Speaker 1: to not include women and in their story and I
Speaker 1: think this is just another example of that. So with
Speaker 1: that in mind, and as we discussed the really weird
Speaker 1: hysterical overreactions of some of the female characters, like we
Speaker 1: see in Olivia wild and in the surrogate character that
Speaker 1: just makes absolutely no sense and it's clearly as just
Speaker 1: like a man depicting how he thinks women react in
Speaker 1: those situations. Yeah, I'm gonna give it one and a half.
Speaker 1: I'll I'll give one of my nipples to the non
Speaker 1: body of Samantha, so she doesn't have a body, but
Speaker 1: she does have one nipple. And I will give my
Speaker 1: half nipple to Olivia Wilde's character because I think that
Speaker 1: scenes should have been rewritten in situation where she doesn't
Speaker 1: come off like a raving lunatic. I'm gonna give it
Speaker 1: to and for for many of the same reasons. I
Speaker 1: just like it's not necessary early with the exception of
Speaker 1: the Olivia wild and sort of the Porsche double day scene,
Speaker 1: like those are just weird and like, Okay, this writer
Speaker 1: does not understand how women react to things kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, yeah, it loses nips for
Speaker 1: what it could very easily explore given the amount of time.
Speaker 1: It seems to feel comfortable just falling, walking phoenix round,
Speaker 1: pouting um, but just doesn't. This one is just there's
Speaker 1: so much fascinating source material that is just kind of
Speaker 1: scrapped in favor of the lowest common denominator. In a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, there's interesting stuff that happens. I like
Speaker 1: Amy's character for the most part. There are parts of
Speaker 1: Samantha I think are interesting. They're parts of Rooney Mar's
Speaker 1: character that I think are interesting. But ultimately, yeah, it
Speaker 1: just kind of, you know, in a hero's journey style,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, Jesse pushes its female characters aside in
Speaker 1: the interest of kind of not a very compelling and
Speaker 1: or interesting protagonist, which is more of a critique of
Speaker 1: the movie. I guess, uh so, two nips for just
Speaker 1: really not doing nothing with no one. I'll give one
Speaker 1: nip to Amy. I'll give one nip to Amy's bought
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah, I want to honor who I was
Speaker 1: five years ago a little bit because I liked it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's partly that a person five years
Speaker 1: ago would be like, it is good that it is
Speaker 1: honoring femininity in the body of this male character or
Speaker 1: feminating towards of like whatever the feminine is. However, as
Speaker 1: time passes, five years now that does not seem like
Speaker 1: a very sophisticated version of it. I feel like we
Speaker 1: have much more sophisticated version of sensitive male characters. I
Speaker 1: literally can't think of anybody think we there are I
Speaker 1: feel like I in my head there are tones and
Speaker 1: I can't think of any and John Wick, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately things age poorly, I imagine more quickly,
Speaker 1: especially when they try to deal with things that are
Speaker 1: like someone about the relationships of gender dynamics. I think
Speaker 1: two was always so. I thought. I thought Two Nipples
Speaker 1: was what made the most sense, partly because I think
Speaker 1: it is a matter of like, it's very easy for
Speaker 1: a tour type directors to make movies that don't give
Speaker 1: not only right good parts, but like give female actresses
Speaker 1: opportunities to be interesting. And he did at least to
Speaker 1: understand that makes his movie better. And you know, he
Speaker 1: could have had his friend, They could have a man
Speaker 1: was played by a dude who was just like him
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that ultimately is a step forward in
Speaker 1: the ultimately patriarchal thing that is our tour theory of filmmaking.
Speaker 1: So I think two seems fair. In two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: we'll see in like whatever the futures based on your answer.
Speaker 1: So there's one more nipple we can give to Samantha
Speaker 1: and one to Amy Adam's friend. Well, Jesse, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me here. It was nice. Where can people follow
Speaker 1: you online? Do you have anything you like to plug?
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com, slash Jesse, David Fox, Twitter dot com,
Speaker 1: good one podcast, Good one podcast where if you find
Speaker 1: your podcasts? And Vulture dot com is where my words live. Hooray. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: you can follow us at bechtel Cast on Instagram, in
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. You can subscribe to our Patreon, which
Speaker 1: gets you to bonus episodes every single month and it's
Speaker 1: only five dollars. And you can go on our website
Speaker 1: pectolcast dot com and buy some merch and don't forget
Speaker 1: to eat some cheese so that you have cheese voice. Yes,
Speaker 1: cheese voice forever. Bye o good bye