Speaker 1: On the Bedel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef and best
Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast. Hey Jamie, Hey Caitlin,
Speaker 1: it's me a journalist and you know you're the lead
Speaker 1: podcaster of the Bechdel Cast. Yeah, and it's time for
Speaker 1: our interview. So tell me, Jamie, what is it that
Speaker 1: you love about podcasts? Sorry, I can't talk right now.
Speaker 1: I have to go hook up with a podcast fan,
Speaker 1: the horniest fans in the world. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: a groupie or is she more of a No, I'd
Speaker 1: say she's more of a there's no good word for
Speaker 1: like band aid, like pod aid and for a assistance.
Speaker 1: I'm more of a way a way. No, wait, wave.
Speaker 1: There's more possibilities with wave. Oh sure, it's more of
Speaker 1: a wave. Yeah, there's gotta be there's gotta be puns
Speaker 1: like podcast something. I think it does speak to the
Speaker 1: inherent and I say this with love, the inherent dorkiness
Speaker 1: of having a podcast and being a big fan of
Speaker 1: them that instead of having our equivalent of like super fans,
Speaker 1: it's like parasocial relationships I'm very self conscious about. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're all such dorks. It's fun. It's fun anyway. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Darante.
Speaker 1: My name's Jamie Loftus. And this is our podcast where we,
Speaker 1: you know, get profiled and Rolling Stone once and completely
Speaker 1: lose sight of ourselves and then almost get into a
Speaker 1: plane accident. Yes, so you know, nice knowing you. No,
Speaker 1: this is our podcast where we take an intersectional feminist
Speaker 1: look at your favorite movies. And today a long time
Speaker 1: request the two thousand Cameron Crow epic question Mark, Almost
Speaker 1: Sure the Mouse. Yeah, a long time request for the show.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually kind of glad we're covering it now
Speaker 1: versus closer to when the show began, because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's there's ways I feel about this movie now
Speaker 1: that I may not have been had the tools to
Speaker 1: articulate five or six years ago. Certainly. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: have an amazing guest. Yeah, should we stay what the
Speaker 1: Bechtel test is? Oh? Fun at any point? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we've been doing the show for five thousand years, Caitlin'
Speaker 1: you're right to say that. What is the Bechtel test anyways?
Speaker 1: The Bechtel Test anyways is a mediometric created by a
Speaker 1: queer cartoonist, Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test.
Speaker 1: Many versions of the test. The one that we use
Speaker 1: is two characters of a marginalized gender with names must
Speaker 1: speak to each other about something other than a man.
Speaker 1: Hopefully it's a substantial conversation, something like one of my
Speaker 1: favorite exchanges towards the end of this movie, I forgive you.
Speaker 1: I didn't apologize meaningful. I mean that's actually a very
Speaker 1: very meaningful exchange. That conversation carries a lot of weight
Speaker 1: and meaning. Yes, for one moment, this movie is about
Speaker 1: mothers and daughters, and I celebrated that one moment exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's the metric that we use simply as
Speaker 1: a jumping off point to industry a larger conversation and
Speaker 1: to join us in today's conversation. Is pop culture journalist
Speaker 1: film editor for The Rape and her book But have
Speaker 1: you read the book fifty two Literary Gems that Inspired
Speaker 1: Our Favorite Films, which is coming out on March seventh.
Speaker 1: It's Kristin Lopez. Hello, I'm so glad I totally didn't
Speaker 1: plan on this, but I'm wearing my wed Zeppelin T
Speaker 1: shirt to talk about them. So yeah, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like I came through paired. You did. Penny would be proud.
Speaker 1: I feel like she would only the best bands. I'm
Speaker 1: wearing my Titanic sweatshirt. Enny would still be proud. I mean,
Speaker 1: she would be proud. I feel like she'd give me
Speaker 1: some shit. I'm wearing an Ariana Grande sweatshirt. I mean,
Speaker 1: it'd be interesting to see how they the feminist world
Speaker 1: of rock star groupies would feel about female singers of today.
Speaker 1: I feel like they would have many opinions, or they
Speaker 1: would be like boomer women and just be like remember
Speaker 1: back in our day. I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: they'd be opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah, totally. So
Speaker 1: you brought us Almost Famous and we must know. What
Speaker 1: is your history with this movie? What is your attachment
Speaker 1: or non attachment to it? Please share with the class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, Almost Famous is probably one of my favorite
Speaker 1: movies of all time. I remember seeing it in the
Speaker 1: heyday of like when indie film was cool in like
Speaker 1: the early two thousands. You know, this is like the
Speaker 1: Garden State era. Right around you know, two thousand to
Speaker 1: two thousand and three or four, when indie film was
Speaker 1: still considered small scale, but studios were starting to get
Speaker 1: into it and making independent films that just had budgets
Speaker 1: and big stars, intended to win Oscars and had great soundtracks.
Speaker 1: So for me, this was something that I gravitated towards
Speaker 1: because of the soundtrack and the time period. You know,
Speaker 1: I love the era of the seventies rock scene, even
Speaker 1: though now as as an adult woman, I'm like, hm,
Speaker 1: there's something to reading Pamela des Bars' book about you know,
Speaker 1: groupies of the nineteen seventies and the power they held,
Speaker 1: or watching you know, Cynthia plaster Casts documentary. But then
Speaker 1: you realize that these were children running around at Los
Speaker 1: Angeles at like fourteen fifteen, sleeping with grown men, And
Speaker 1: I've had to reconcile with that a little bit. But
Speaker 1: you know, as a teenager writing care about that, I
Speaker 1: was just like the hedonism and let Zeppelin throwing TV
Speaker 1: off of a balcony and driving a motorcycle through the
Speaker 1: the you know Continental Hyatt House, Like that's that's cool, thrilling,
Speaker 1: and also I mean it's it's probably one of the
Speaker 1: few films that actually details with some authenticity do that
Speaker 1: I don't think has changed, sadly, the desire to be
Speaker 1: a journalist as a young person. You know, like I
Speaker 1: tell people a lot like William Miller is very much
Speaker 1: my prototype for how I started, you know, big dreams,
Speaker 1: thinking it was going to be about hanging out with
Speaker 1: cool people. And I mean Cameron Crowe because he based
Speaker 1: a lot of that on his own life, really does
Speaker 1: capture the naivete and the excitement of journalism in a
Speaker 1: way that I don't think you necessarily get. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at like the history of journalism movies,
Speaker 1: all the president's men, their dudes in three piece suits
Speaker 1: and you know they're they're breaking like government conspiracies. It's
Speaker 1: not sexy. It's not fun. I mean Robert Redford is,
Speaker 1: but you know, water Gates not sexy. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of different things too. I mean
Speaker 1: Kate Hudson's great, I mean Billy crude up like that
Speaker 1: was a moment in time that I'm not really proud of,
Speaker 1: uh for for set problems. It was a wonderful moment
Speaker 1: in time, and I think it still remains one of
Speaker 1: like the de facto like two thousands era films that
Speaker 1: just really captures like my own desire to be a
Speaker 1: writer and to be a journalist and sets the bar high,
Speaker 1: but at times is also ridiculously authentic and like how
Speaker 1: much how little money you get paid, how much you're
Speaker 1: working versus how less little you're sleeping. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the celebrities are weird, man, and they say that they're
Speaker 1: your buddies until you write something they don't like, and
Speaker 1: then it's like, we'll slit your throat up, you know.
Speaker 1: So it really does capture a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that you know. Now is it as an adult? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh God, I remember those bright starry eyes
Speaker 1: I had. I mean, I still have them to an extent,
Speaker 1: but they've slowly been pounded down by time. Tell me
Speaker 1: about it. There is something so appealing about the like,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. I think the seeing Little William,
Speaker 1: You're just like, oh that if you see that movie
Speaker 1: at the right time, You're like, that's me. That's so me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave home tomorrow. My mom is so oppressive
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go in the road and everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna get it. But then it ends up kind of
Speaker 1: being a cautionary tale, but then also not because if
Speaker 1: you know anything about Cameron Crowe, which I did when
Speaker 1: I first saw this movie, I like and it worked out.
Speaker 1: Now he makes movies man like, so it's not a
Speaker 1: super cautionary tale because you know that he's ends up
Speaker 1: like he stays at journalist, he stays an artists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he made elizabeth Town and then people got
Speaker 1: mad at him. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean Cameron Crowe.
Speaker 1: I think people forget the camera. Crow had such a
Speaker 1: string of hits. He was almost too big to fail
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties through to the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and I mean I love most of them. You know,
Speaker 1: they're all problematic ish in different ways. I've still never
Speaker 1: seen Jerry McGuire. Jerry McGuire is a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: even though it is again incredibly troubling. But it's got
Speaker 1: a it's got a fantastic Kelly Preston performance. So I
Speaker 1: always it's one of those movies that I don't plan
Speaker 1: on watching and then like an hour will have gone by,
Speaker 1: but it's great. But then he did this, and then
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think Elizabethtown necessarily doomed him. I
Speaker 1: think it was the film that people just realized that
Speaker 1: they were sick of him. I think Vanilla Sky was
Speaker 1: like the first, like Wobble, which I think Vanilla Sky
Speaker 1: is a fantastic movie. Time is going to tell on
Speaker 1: that one. And Elizabeth Town. I remember reading the script
Speaker 1: for Elizabethtown back in the days when people would like
Speaker 1: trade screenplays that they got from illicit means, and I
Speaker 1: read the script, and the script that I read was fantastic.
Speaker 1: The movie is not that. And I know that Crowe
Speaker 1: is played around with it a bit more, and he's
Speaker 1: released not necessarily director's cuts, but more extended versions of
Speaker 1: that film that have gotten I think, closer to the
Speaker 1: heart of what he wants it to be. But the
Speaker 1: spark is gone because if you look at everything else,
Speaker 1: you know, loha, Oh my god, I forgot that with him.
Speaker 1: And then did he do we bought a zoo? He did?
Speaker 1: We bought a zoo, which is only good for Matt
Speaker 1: Damon in a cozy dad's sweater. So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if maybe he's one of
Speaker 1: those directors that, like, once you become so far removed
Speaker 1: from the zeitgeist, you just can't get it back because
Speaker 1: I think that like Cameron Crowe as a director really
Speaker 1: defined some some respective eras, whether that was writing the
Speaker 1: script for Fast Times a Richmond High or say Anything,
Speaker 1: or or even something like singles. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: really close to the eras that he got, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe he's a maybe just you know, the
Speaker 1: benefits of time and age. He's just not hitting it
Speaker 1: in the same way. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: directors from this generation are currently in a flop era,
Speaker 1: and in some cases that's a decades long flop era.
Speaker 1: I e. Robert Zemeckis and others. Oh yeah, anyway, Wow,
Speaker 1: Caitlin just took this opportunity to just fling shit for
Speaker 1: Robert Zamecas for no reason. Look, I had to. We
Speaker 1: had to watch Pinocchio recently, and I'm still mad about it. Anyway, Jamie,
Speaker 1: what is your history with almost Famous? I honestly I
Speaker 1: rewatching this for this episode was kind of a journey
Speaker 1: because I sort of went into it. I mean I
Speaker 1: went into it being like, this is a movie I've
Speaker 1: seen maybe like two times. I was like, I think
Speaker 1: the first time I saw it would have been in
Speaker 1: high school, and I liked it, but I don't something
Speaker 1: about like movies about classic rock or just like not
Speaker 1: fun for me. Usually it's just not my thing, even
Speaker 1: though I liked the music itself, but like rock star
Speaker 1: movies were never really it for me. However, journalism, scrappy
Speaker 1: little journalism movies are for me. But I think that
Speaker 1: I saw this movie on both sides of the raging
Speaker 1: Manic Pixie dream Girl debates of the early twenty tents
Speaker 1: and place out once before that was like a popular
Speaker 1: term and was just like, ah, this movie is like
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about it very hard because I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I want to live on a bus,
Speaker 1: and I think that might have been the extent of
Speaker 1: my thoughts. I was like, I don't want to see
Speaker 1: people do weird stuff, but like be a loser like
Speaker 1: that seems like we're all excel in life hopefully. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side, I think it was after
Speaker 1: the Manic Pixie dream Girl thing, and I came in
Speaker 1: with a feeling of dismissiveness towards the movie and the
Speaker 1: character Penny Lane that now watching it again years later,
Speaker 1: I think was maybe a little unfair, and I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like if on a whole journey with this
Speaker 1: damn movie because now, like I don't know, I did
Speaker 1: that show Lolita podcast a couple of years ago and
Speaker 1: really looked into how young women and in the case
Speaker 1: of Penny Lane, girls are you know, hyper sexualized by
Speaker 1: older men, and like how and then also on top
Speaker 1: of that, how like fairly complex characters and movies can
Speaker 1: be reduced to marketing symbols in a way that I
Speaker 1: feel like Penny Lane kind of has become over the years.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even realize that when I was going
Speaker 1: into this viewing. I was coming in with the like
Speaker 1: poster of Penny Lane in my head and didn't really
Speaker 1: remember that much about what actually happens with the character,
Speaker 1: what she says and what she does. And I still
Speaker 1: think that, you know, we have a lot to talk about,
Speaker 1: and there's like, certainly not enough to be like she's
Speaker 1: actually like one of the most well developed characters in
Speaker 1: film canon, Like she's definitely not. But I do think
Speaker 1: that there was more to her than I gave credit
Speaker 1: for on my last viewing. I have a lot of,
Speaker 1: like I guess Lolita Dolores adjacent thoughts where Penny Lane
Speaker 1: is the idea, and then Lady is the person and
Speaker 1: finding the space between that, and then I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun looking into the person who Penny Lane
Speaker 1: is based on, Pamela de Bars. Got a little bit
Speaker 1: about her for later. I don't know, I just it's
Speaker 1: been a real day I've been I'm in the fucking zone.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't walk into this recording being like
Speaker 1: it's time to lightly hand it to Cameron Crowe. But
Speaker 1: here we are. It's the day we're doing it. Caitlyn.
Speaker 1: What's your history with this movie? Not a long one.
Speaker 1: I saw it for the first time in the mid
Speaker 1: two thousands, I think as a freshman in college, and
Speaker 1: I was not really I guess I was just kind
Speaker 1: of indifferent about it. I was not like, Wow, I
Speaker 1: love this, nor was I like I don't like. I
Speaker 1: was it's like, okay, now I've seen it. So brave
Speaker 1: of me to be indifferent about things. And then I
Speaker 1: watched it again, I would say probably within the past
Speaker 1: like six years or so, I think, just because I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, people still talk about this movie a lot.
Speaker 1: People still ride or die pretty hard for this movie,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember it at all, So maybe I
Speaker 1: should watch it again. And I watched it, and I
Speaker 1: realized I kind of confused this movie with Boogie Nights.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily like the plot or anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: more just like scenes that I thought happened in Boogie
Speaker 1: Nights actually happened. And Almost Famous. I think, like the
Speaker 1: like guy on the roof and jumping into the pool scene,
Speaker 1: I was like, that could happen in either a movie.
Speaker 1: I feel like, so my brain kind of just like
Speaker 1: confuses scene like individual scenes from those movies. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the most important thing is that Almost Famous has no
Speaker 1: Alpha Molina, and so it is by default the weaker film.
Speaker 1: Um but precisely, you know, I don't think that that
Speaker 1: means there's there's nothing to love about Almost Famous, But
Speaker 1: what if Alfred Molina was in it? I also, this
Speaker 1: is like so goofy. But I forgot that this was
Speaker 1: the movie where Mark Marin said locked the gates, and
Speaker 1: I sort of it like itched something in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind where I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I like, I just forgot that that was where that
Speaker 1: soundclip was from. I didn't realize that was Mark Marrin.
Speaker 1: I didn't either. Yeah, at the beginning of not to
Speaker 1: out myself as someone that. I mean, do WTFS gave
Speaker 1: me a really good show, Okay, I can, and I
Speaker 1: listened to it sometimes when i'm when I'm excited about
Speaker 1: the guest. Okay. And at the beginning of every episode
Speaker 1: of the show I've been listening to since high school.
Speaker 1: That's just started when I was in high school. Wow,
Speaker 1: And at the beginning of every episode, you guys, there's
Speaker 1: that there's that clip where he goes, look the gates.
Speaker 1: Now I'm embarrassed. I like that show sounds like you're
Speaker 1: a podcast groupy to me, Jamie. He seems nice. Now,
Speaker 1: my mom was a podcast groupie. My mom. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I've told the story in the podcast before.
Speaker 1: My mom. I showed her WTF when I was in
Speaker 1: high school and she got really into it, and she
Speaker 1: had a huge crush on Mark Marin and we saw
Speaker 1: him do you Stand Up? Once? And he like remembered
Speaker 1: who she was because she had replied to all of
Speaker 1: his tweets every single day for months, and he remembered
Speaker 1: who she was, but like, not in a positive way.
Speaker 1: He was like, so, Jill the groupie is in my
Speaker 1: bloody fair Anyway, I'm excited to talk about the movie.
Speaker 1: So shall we Let's unlock the gates and started this
Speaker 1: amazing discussion. Let's do that right after we'd take this
Speaker 1: quick break. All Right, we're back and we're unlocking those gates.
Speaker 1: Mark Marin would be so mad. All right, shall we?
Speaker 1: Is it time for Caitlin's famous recap? Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's nineteen sixty nine in San Diego, California. Ever heard
Speaker 1: of it? We meet a young William, his mom, Elaine
Speaker 1: played by Francis mcdormant, and his older sister Anita that's
Speaker 1: Zoe Deschanelle. William's mom has a lot of rules, but
Speaker 1: she's also kind of a hippie. But she hates drugs
Speaker 1: and rock and roll's. But she's also pretty cool and chill.
Speaker 1: She's also a non conformist who doesn't want them to
Speaker 1: They don't celebrate Christmas on Christmas. They celebrate in September,
Speaker 1: so it's not commercial. And they they're maybe vegans, I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're whatever. Yeah, they see vegetarian vegans, is right.
Speaker 1: She kind of cracked She cracked me up because I
Speaker 1: feel like she I've known, like when I was younger,
Speaker 1: I had like friends with like kind of hippie parents
Speaker 1: like this where they were so countercultural that they sort
Speaker 1: of were back to being conservative parents, and like didn't
Speaker 1: realize it. I was like, but wait, they can't go
Speaker 1: outside or say bad words, and they're like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's because of counterculture, and you're like, hmm okay. So
Speaker 1: Elaine and Anita don't get along because of all the
Speaker 1: things that Elaine has banned in the household. So Anita
Speaker 1: leaves home and leaves her music collection to William, saying
Speaker 1: it will set him free, which is the best gift
Speaker 1: that an elder sibling can give a younger sibling. That's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. Yes, and I hope that William saved all
Speaker 1: those records because they would fetch him the mint. Truly
Speaker 1: someone's dad. Yeah, So yeah, we see him listening to
Speaker 1: all these records, and then we flash forward to four
Speaker 1: years later. He is now fifteen. He played by Patrick Fuget.
Speaker 1: He is an aspiring music journalist and he's kind of
Speaker 1: following around Lester Bangs. That's Philip Seymour Hoffmann, who is
Speaker 1: the editor of Cream, a music magazine, and Lester is like,
Speaker 1: all right, so you want to be a music journalist, great,
Speaker 1: but don't make friends with rock stars because there'll be
Speaker 1: a bad influence on you and they'll use you. Just
Speaker 1: be careful. But he gives William his first assignment to
Speaker 1: write a thousand words on Black Sabbath. So William goes
Speaker 1: to a Black Sabbath concert but he can't get in
Speaker 1: because he's not on the list and he's a baby
Speaker 1: and he's a child. Also the baby Baby William as
Speaker 1: Michael Anganaro, which I thought was fun. He's like a
Speaker 1: child star and an adult star. He's lovely, and he's
Speaker 1: married to Maya Erskin. He's the hilarious drama teacher in
Speaker 1: Penn fifteen. If anybody watch this into Okay, he's amazing.
Speaker 1: But the Patrick fugit, I think it's so like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, so rare that Like I as I was
Speaker 1: watching it, I was like, oh, you don't really see
Speaker 1: a lot of like actual teenagers playing teenagers. Like he's
Speaker 1: at the exact perfect moment where you're always just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Like he's just so pubizent in struggling,
Speaker 1: he's extremely fifteen. He's poor kid. Yeah, So outside the
Speaker 1: Black Sabbath concert, he meets Penny Lane. That's Kate Hudson
Speaker 1: and some other they're not groupies. They are band aids,
Speaker 1: as they call themselves, because they are there not for
Speaker 1: the famous people, but for the love of the music.
Speaker 1: They're literally kind of announced themselves as like muses. They're like,
Speaker 1: we are We're not here to fuck the band. We're
Speaker 1: like a part of a grand tradition, right, But according
Speaker 1: to be Hugh Phillips, she's like, we still kind of
Speaker 1: fuck the band. Yeah, it's only what was a lie
Speaker 1: like way, it's only black jobs. Yeah, just blow jobs
Speaker 1: and that's it. Yes, there's rules, there's standards. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then William meets the guys from fictional rock band Stillwater,
Speaker 1: although there is a real rock band named Stillwater, but
Speaker 1: this is not the same band. The Stillwater in this
Speaker 1: movie is a very fictional band. They are coming into
Speaker 1: the Black Sabbath concert. I guess they're probably like the Openers,
Speaker 1: but um, we meet lead guitarist Russell that's Billy Crude. Up.
Speaker 1: We also meet the lead singer Jeff that's Jason Lee
Speaker 1: and the other band mates who are far less important characters. Um,
Speaker 1: but William wants to interview them, and they're like, fuck critics,
Speaker 1: we play for the fans, and then William shows them
Speaker 1: that he is a fan because he knows theirs and
Speaker 1: their songs and other tidbits about them. So they take
Speaker 1: a liking to William and they get him into the show.
Speaker 1: Then they invite William to go to La with them
Speaker 1: and he basically starts touring with Stillwater as they're kind
Speaker 1: of like journalist on retainer where everyone's role and I
Speaker 1: know that this is like based in Cameron Crowe's actual experience,
Speaker 1: but I'm just always like it would be so stressful
Speaker 1: to me to be in a ragtag group and be
Speaker 1: that unclear on what my role was. I be like
Speaker 1: what am I doing here? Like what is my job? Well,
Speaker 1: it's really like the ultimate who you know story apparently
Speaker 1: because like he gets the first assignment because he meets
Speaker 1: Lester Bangs the Great Philip symour Hoffmann who gives him
Speaker 1: the assignment, and then at a certain point Ben Fong
Speaker 1: Torres from Rolling Stone just calls him up and says, oh,
Speaker 1: we've seen some of your stuff. We want you to
Speaker 1: write for us, which, in Cameron Crowe's actual narrative he
Speaker 1: did work partially for a Rolling Stone. They did hire
Speaker 1: him on not knowing how old he was, but like
Speaker 1: he was doing actual work for them before this, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just them being like, oh, we read some
Speaker 1: of your stuff other places and we want to poach
Speaker 1: you as like probably a permalance, a physition. I don't
Speaker 1: see them hiring him his staff. So you know, back
Speaker 1: in the days when you didn't have to show any
Speaker 1: proof of identity to get a job. They just call
Speaker 1: him on the phone. They're like, you can write two
Speaker 1: thousand words for us, right, we don't need a bank
Speaker 1: account or social Security card. Just tell us where to
Speaker 1: drop the money. Yeah, no need to hill out tax forms, etc.
Speaker 1: I liked the few like actual historic figures that they
Speaker 1: bring in from this era because mostly everyone's made up,
Speaker 1: but like ben Functuras and lester Bangs, very real guys.
Speaker 1: I went, my dad was a big lester Bangs head. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had some lester Bangs kicking around the house. Make
Speaker 1: no mistake. Okay. So William starts touring with the band
Speaker 1: and they're going around the US penny Lane and the
Speaker 1: other band aids are along for the ride, such as
Speaker 1: Plexia that's Anna Paquin and Sapphire played by for Roosa
Speaker 1: Balk and Penny Lane is having a not so secret
Speaker 1: affair with the lead singer Russell, even though he has
Speaker 1: a partner back home. And then also William seems to
Speaker 1: have a crush on Penny. Meanwhile, back in San Diego,
Speaker 1: Elane is not thrilled that William is like touring with
Speaker 1: this rock band and she's always calling him and like
Speaker 1: terrorizing the people at the front desk of hotels and
Speaker 1: being like, send a message to my son to stay
Speaker 1: away from drugs. I wish we knew more about Elaine
Speaker 1: because I really I'm just like, she's just I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just want more context for how she got to
Speaker 1: where she's at. I also love that one of the
Speaker 1: many people she calls and interacts with is a pre
Speaker 1: modern family Eric stone Street. Yes, yes, the guy that's
Speaker 1: like your mom really freaked me out. Yeah. I do
Speaker 1: like the idea of Frances McDormand just calling around and
Speaker 1: terrifying different men, which is kind of what she does
Speaker 1: the whole movie. And she's totally fine with the long
Speaker 1: distance charges because she's calling pretty much across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, it's so I mean, I don't know. Also,
Speaker 1: her character was more complicated than I was expecting the
Speaker 1: movie to allow her to be but we'll get there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then William gets a call from Ben Funktores at
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone, who wants William to write for them and
Speaker 1: do a piece on Stillwater and they're going to pay
Speaker 1: him a thousand dollars in nineteen seventies money. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't a thousand dollars in twenty twenty three money
Speaker 1: for writing something like that. You're just like, right, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: and like all expenses pay. That's how you know it's
Speaker 1: fucking fiction. They're right. So now Stillwater is apprehensive about
Speaker 1: talking to William because Rolling Stone has a reputation for
Speaker 1: like hating certain bands, and they don't know if they
Speaker 1: can trust him. But they're like, yeah, he's probably harmless.
Speaker 1: So William keeps trying to do an interview with Russell,
Speaker 1: but Russell keeps blowing him off. He's usually too busy
Speaker 1: in his hotel room with Penny Lane. Then Russell and
Speaker 1: Jeff get in a fight about their roles in the
Speaker 1: band and the band's image and all this stuff. So
Speaker 1: Russell takes off, with William saying that he just wants
Speaker 1: to hang out with real people from now on. So
Speaker 1: they go to this party at a fan's house in
Speaker 1: Topeka where Russell does acid and is like, I'm a
Speaker 1: golden God. I'm on drugs, and then he jumps over fun.
Speaker 1: I didn't remember what happens in this movie to the
Speaker 1: extent where I'm like, does he get injured when he jumped?
Speaker 1: Because there are I feel like a few different scenes
Speaker 1: in movies over the years where someone jumps into a
Speaker 1: pool from a great height. Sometimes it's a really cathartic moment.
Speaker 1: Other times they get gravely injured. This one was one
Speaker 1: of the cathartic ones. Sometimes you have not another teen
Speaker 1: movie where it's hilarious. Other times you get Get Him
Speaker 1: to the Greek where Russell Brand does break his arm.
Speaker 1: I hate that. I was probably thinking about Get Him
Speaker 1: to the Greek. It was a moment in time. That's
Speaker 1: a good movie. That's also a great rock star movie.
Speaker 1: So were we ever so young as to be watching
Speaker 1: Get Him to the Greek? Yeah, Oh my gosh. Okay.
Speaker 1: So then and the next morning, the band reconciles and
Speaker 1: they head to Greenville on their next step of the tour,
Speaker 1: but William's deadline for the Rolling Stone piece is four
Speaker 1: days away. And he still hasn't really interviewed Russell, and
Speaker 1: he hasn't written anything substantial yet. Then the band's label
Speaker 1: brings in a new manager, Jimmy Fallon, because they're they're
Speaker 1: current manager doesn't really know what he's doing. So Jimmy
Speaker 1: Fallon comes in. He's like, I know how to do
Speaker 1: all this stuff for you, and also we're gonna fly
Speaker 1: in a plane from now on. And they're like, what
Speaker 1: abandoned Doris the Bus? Yeah? Right, that is like a
Speaker 1: fun movie paner. It's like, bus means your assault of
Speaker 1: the earth. Playing means your sellout garbage. You're like, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but also what a spirit airlines mean? Not addressed in film,
Speaker 1: but also feminist icon Doris the Bus. It's true, you know,
Speaker 1: although classically set in a nurturing role. Yeah, it's complicated anyway.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, William keeps not going back home as he's
Speaker 1: supposed to. He misses his high school graduation, and then
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone informs him that his piece on Stillwater is
Speaker 1: going to be the cover, so the stakes are even
Speaker 1: higher than They all head to Boston, where, during a
Speaker 1: poker game with some other rock stars, Russell is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys, can have Penny Lane and the other band
Speaker 1: aids after this, because Russell's girlfriend will be joining them
Speaker 1: on the next step of the tour in New York,
Speaker 1: so they kind of have to like distance themselves from
Speaker 1: the band aids. And then William sees this unfold. Penny
Speaker 1: sees Russell with his girlfriend Leslie. She's very upset by this,
Speaker 1: and she takes a bunch of queludes and William finds
Speaker 1: Penny in her hotel room. She's oding. He calls in
Speaker 1: some doctors. They have to pump her stomach. There's more
Speaker 1: that happens in this scene that we will unpack, but
Speaker 1: the next day she's recovered and she kind of wishes
Speaker 1: him farewell and she heads back to San Diego. Then
Speaker 1: William is on the plane with the band. He finally
Speaker 1: is getting his interview with Russell, but then the plane
Speaker 1: runs into an electrical storm and it seems like they
Speaker 1: might crash and die. So everyone starts yelling out all
Speaker 1: of their secrets and they're like, I love you guys,
Speaker 1: but wait a minute, I hate you. I killed a
Speaker 1: man in my car, and then a very two thousand
Speaker 1: gay joke, yes yeah, and everybody slept with the one
Speaker 1: guy's wife. Yeah, yes, it's not like actual like real
Speaker 1: stuff like I been stealing. Like I feel like the
Speaker 1: menu does this a bit better where there like actually
Speaker 1: have consequences like if you're not I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that the manager admits that, like maybe he took an
Speaker 1: extra dollar here, like maybe he's been embezzling. But like,
Speaker 1: considering most of the rock stars of the seventies that
Speaker 1: got like royally screwed over by recording companies, I feel
Speaker 1: that this guy definitely probably stole way more from them, probably.
Speaker 1: And then so William is like, you know what, all
Speaker 1: you guys suck. You claim to be about the fans,
Speaker 1: but Penny was your biggest fan and you used her
Speaker 1: and dumped her. So it's a very intense moment. But
Speaker 1: then the plane recovers from the storm and they all
Speaker 1: survive and they land, and Russell is like, you know what,
Speaker 1: William write whatever you want about us. So now William
Speaker 1: has all these juicy secrets, and with pressure from Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: he writes this juicy story. But the band and eyes
Speaker 1: everything because they realize they seem super corny and amateurish.
Speaker 1: I love this like another as a fan of journalism movies,
Speaker 1: even when they suck. There's something so fun to me
Speaker 1: about the deadline call. The deadline call comes a couple
Speaker 1: different times. The actor who's enforcing the deadline has really
Speaker 1: never given much to work with, so it always sounds
Speaker 1: kind of goofy, where he's like, all right, William, you
Speaker 1: have one minutes to get me the best story of
Speaker 1: all time or the magazine will explode, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel it. I love when there's a character that's
Speaker 1: like and I'm here to remind you of the stakes
Speaker 1: and you're like, thanks, man, appreciate it. And then he
Speaker 1: says something like oh yeah, when my lady wants me
Speaker 1: to unclog the garbage disposal, I have I understand. I
Speaker 1: gotta get on it too, And I'm like, okay, sir,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ben Fong Taurus. So the band denies everything,
Speaker 1: and so Rolling Stone can't run the story because they
Speaker 1: think William made everything up, which I have a lot
Speaker 1: of issues with that ending, well, at least that section
Speaker 1: as a journalist, Like yeah, of course they're gonna say no,
Speaker 1: they didn't do all of this, which is why you
Speaker 1: have like if he has those seats or like other thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure like if he demanded it, they
Speaker 1: could go to legal and pretty much say like sue us.
Speaker 1: Like the US is pretty like when it comes to
Speaker 1: like slander laws. I mean, I don't think Stoewater was
Speaker 1: going to be sue in them because they would have
Speaker 1: had they would have to prove that it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: This is where I'm just like, come on, yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: he has all this stuff on record, like he was
Speaker 1: rolling a job that also stuck for me where you're
Speaker 1: just like, but we've seen him taking notes and recording
Speaker 1: everything the whole time he has their and even so
Speaker 1: you're totally record like he would have more you know,
Speaker 1: leeway than it's implied. And then also at the like
Speaker 1: insult to injury that they cast off the entire like
Speaker 1: blame of that onto like shrew woman who works at
Speaker 1: the magazine who's like, you know, like the feminist kill
Speaker 1: joy at Rolling Stone ruins the story and you're just like, ah, man,
Speaker 1: You're just like, oh, it's a conspiracy. So the Who
Speaker 1: can get on the cover of Rolling Stone, which I
Speaker 1: was like, I love that still Water with your first
Speaker 1: choice and the Who in nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventy whatever
Speaker 1: with your backup choice, Like, that's offensive to rog your
Speaker 1: daltry in so many levels, right, especially because at this
Speaker 1: point in this like fictional band's career, they were still
Speaker 1: an opening act. It seemed. Yeah, yeah, there's no like moment.
Speaker 1: There's no like Star is Born moment where they like
Speaker 1: have a song that races up the chart. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not that thing you do. Not pretend
Speaker 1: to be nice and Josie and the Pussycats yet. No,
Speaker 1: and I mean I know as I know he sells.
Speaker 1: It is like it's a think piece, which is that's
Speaker 1: pretty much every journalist like thing where we don't know
Speaker 1: what the hell to say. We're like, it's a think
Speaker 1: piece about a working band making good and you know like, okay,
Speaker 1: yeah that's great. It's not original, but I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's doable. Um, So I mean I guess that's that's
Speaker 1: your angle. So I mean, damn, dude, you better have
Speaker 1: a really great story to back that up from every
Speaker 1: other working band making good in the nineteen seventy Yeah,
Speaker 1: can I have I have one more? I'm late to
Speaker 1: adding that it's no blank from other music mon oh, no,
Speaker 1: go for it. It's no Cinderella from the Cheetah Girls. Folks,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, overnight hit, which I mean, I shouldn't complain.
Speaker 1: Nobody's really watching Almost Famous for the journalistic elements of it,
Speaker 1: I get it, But as a journalist, I just have
Speaker 1: to be like, this is not how actual writing works.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that Hollywood has misrepresented something? I mean, yeah, Hollywood.
Speaker 1: If we're talking about how Hollywood has represented journalism again,
Speaker 1: they're all hot dudes that are breaking like government corruption
Speaker 1: in three piece suits looking like Bob Radford and or
Speaker 1: they are female reporters who are sleeping with their sources
Speaker 1: a la Amy Schumer or all of the other female
Speaker 1: journalists that apparently can't keep it in their pants. Or
Speaker 1: they're female journalists who are, in spite of being journalists,
Speaker 1: constantly referred to as mothers and wives like the recent
Speaker 1: movie she said, Oh yeah yeah, or they're they're never
Speaker 1: been kissed, you know where. It's just like, we want
Speaker 1: to have you relive your trauma in order to sustain
Speaker 1: a story. Godos. I feel like if a woman had
Speaker 1: been at the center of Almost Famous, this would have
Speaker 1: been like pretty baby or something. This would have taken
Speaker 1: a really dark her where they would have been like,
Speaker 1: we can't take you seriously as a journalist. You're a groupie, right,
Speaker 1: she would have been completely mistaken as a woman offering
Speaker 1: sex with like a no patner hand. So, oh, you're
Speaker 1: totally right. You're totally right. And it's like, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't think I want that movie. I mean I kind
Speaker 1: of do, but I would love, like maybe like a
Speaker 1: Lourene Scafaria or like a woman who actually understands the
Speaker 1: nuances of that era in some way to do it
Speaker 1: because I think that, I mean, I have a lot
Speaker 1: of opinions. I'll let you get through the recap before
Speaker 1: I started throwing them out. So, because the band has
Speaker 1: denied all of these you know, stories and quotes and stuff,
Speaker 1: William basically gets fired from Rolling Stone, so he goes
Speaker 1: to the airport to go back home, where he runs
Speaker 1: into his sister Anita. They both return home and reunite
Speaker 1: with their mom Elaine. Meanwhile, Russell calls Lane to see
Speaker 1: how she's doing. He wants to meet up and like
Speaker 1: clear the air and say the things they never said
Speaker 1: to each other, and she gives him an address that
Speaker 1: turns out to be William's address, so Russell shows up
Speaker 1: realizes it's not Penny's house, it's Williams. And he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I called Rolling Stone and I was like, actually, what
Speaker 1: William wrote was true. And then William's like, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: do this one last time, and he takes out his
Speaker 1: recording device and he starts to interview Russell again, and
Speaker 1: then the movie ends with William's story does end up
Speaker 1: on the cover of Rolling Stone. Penny. We see her
Speaker 1: leaving on the trip to Morocco that she's always wanted
Speaker 1: to go on. We see the band continuing to play together,
Speaker 1: and we see William hanging out with his family. Yeah
Speaker 1: the end as led Zeppelin plays at the end and
Speaker 1: getting another Zeppelin reference in there. Yeah, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we will come back to discuss.
Speaker 1: And we're back, and we're back. Where shall we start
Speaker 1: with this movie? There's so much to talk about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think for me, there there's two there's
Speaker 1: two things that are worth pointing out. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: did you got you guys. I'm assuming saw the theatrical
Speaker 1: version of this. Yes, Oh, I guess I don't know
Speaker 1: the difference, but I saw whatever version is on Amazon Prime. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's there's two versions. There's there's the theatrical cut,
Speaker 1: and then there's crows director's cut, which is commonly called
Speaker 1: untitled UM, which is what he wanted to name the
Speaker 1: movie and they told him, no, you can't. People will
Speaker 1: get confused by a movie with no title called untitled,
Speaker 1: which is fair enough. And the un title version is
Speaker 1: maybe about half an hour longer it's and it's got
Speaker 1: a bit more backstory, particularly with regards to Penny Lane's
Speaker 1: relationship with Russell Hammond. It's kind of frustrating that they
Speaker 1: cut so like that sequence when they first re meet
Speaker 1: at the hotel and the ice room where you just
Speaker 1: see her coat go over the window to block it.
Speaker 1: There's a whole dialogue exchange there that goes on that
Speaker 1: pretty much like yeah, yeah, that lays out their history
Speaker 1: and pretty much she's like the back and forth of
Speaker 1: like she doesn't want to, but she can't help it,
Speaker 1: you know. There's an extended sequence about her birthday that
Speaker 1: is just like heartbreaking leading up to the reveal that
Speaker 1: they've sold the groupies to Humble Pie, where Jimmy Fallon
Speaker 1: just like treats her like shit and it's just like
Speaker 1: another like poker. So there's a lot more to her
Speaker 1: character in the untitled version, as well as more like
Speaker 1: inside rock things like I think the Mark Marin scene
Speaker 1: goes all longer in that one. Uh So I would
Speaker 1: say to people Mark Merrin, yes, I would say, if
Speaker 1: you haven't, it's it's worth watching the director's cut, if
Speaker 1: only because I think the biggest complaint a lot of
Speaker 1: people have when they watch the theatrical is like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know why she would give this guy the
Speaker 1: time of day other than he's hot, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's a rock star. In the movie, there are a
Speaker 1: couple more scenes that showcase this history. She doesn't seem
Speaker 1: quite as naive when it comes to him. So I
Speaker 1: just had to throw that out. It's worth It's worth
Speaker 1: a watch. It doesn't completely fix the Penny Lane issues,
Speaker 1: but it gives a little bit more backstory. Sure, I
Speaker 1: watched the ice box scene and then I read about
Speaker 1: the kind of the rest of their mouth stuff, and
Speaker 1: I do feel like it would, yeah, like help a
Speaker 1: little bit because so much of I don't know, I
Speaker 1: have so many complicated feelings about Penny Lane. But I
Speaker 1: think that in the theatrical cut, before I started doing
Speaker 1: research when I just watched it raw. I mean there,
Speaker 1: you just don't get to learn very much about her
Speaker 1: until the very end, and that's because you know, this
Speaker 1: movie is so told through William's eyes and like part
Speaker 1: of and so that's like, I guess that's where I
Speaker 1: struggle with it. Where it's I think the criticism around
Speaker 1: how little we know about her is like well placed,
Speaker 1: and we don't know a lot about this character, but
Speaker 1: this movie is being narrated by someone who doesn't know
Speaker 1: a lot about her and is clearly like idealizing her
Speaker 1: in a way that is, you know that maybe is
Speaker 1: like what she how she wants to be idealized, but
Speaker 1: not as is not a reflection of who she actually
Speaker 1: is as a person. And I do think that that's
Speaker 1: really interesting in a character. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how well I'm going to be able to articulate
Speaker 1: my thoughts on Penny Lane, because there definitely is like
Speaker 1: so much going on with her in terms of like
Speaker 1: who she wants to project to the world versus who
Speaker 1: she actually is, which is like such a thing for
Speaker 1: sixteen year olds that I feel like it's overly dismissive
Speaker 1: to be like Penny Lane is not a real character.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, no, Penny Lane is a like character
Speaker 1: that lady devised for herself to be able to navigate
Speaker 1: the world. And you know, you can have issues with
Speaker 1: that on its face, and you can have issues with
Speaker 1: like a you know world where that seems necessary. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that that means that it's not a
Speaker 1: character worth examining. It's she's a Cameron Crowe woman, I
Speaker 1: think is the big thing. You know, like Cameron Crowe
Speaker 1: is nothing if not consistent with the types of women
Speaker 1: that he has written. You know, she's she's Dorothy Boyd
Speaker 1: and Dorothy Boyd I think, yeah, Dorothy Boyard is the
Speaker 1: Renees Awa, her character in Jerry Maguire, you know, the
Speaker 1: woman that makes you want to be a better man,
Speaker 1: you know, type of thing hit a woman who has
Speaker 1: you at hello. Yes, yes, exactly. And they're all blonde too.
Speaker 1: Like we didn't really start to realize that he was
Speaker 1: actually creating the same type, you know, like Penelope Cruz
Speaker 1: and Ventila Skies is very similar. Or of course, like
Speaker 1: the Apotheosis is the Manipixie dream girl. Karson Dunst in
Speaker 1: Elizabethtown and that's where it becomes dissociative, yes, And I
Speaker 1: think what's what's interesting is Crowe has talked about how
Speaker 1: he wrote Penny Lane to be a tribute to the
Speaker 1: women that he saw on the road in groupie situations
Speaker 1: now what we know as groupies, And it's really jarring
Speaker 1: to me again to watch this movie as a teenager
Speaker 1: and to read Pamela Despar's book and numerous other groupies
Speaker 1: of this time period of written books and Cynthia plaster
Speaker 1: Casts did a documentary which is also really interesting worth watching,
Speaker 1: and these women will tell you that in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: which was a far more permissive time, that they felt
Speaker 1: there was empowerment in being a groupie, that they are
Speaker 1: inspiring the music right as as as she says, you know,
Speaker 1: and that did happen? You know, I think, like what
Speaker 1: is it? Rolling Stone referred to groupies by name in
Speaker 1: some of their songs. Zeppelin did it, like all of
Speaker 1: them have name dropped. But now to go back to
Speaker 1: this post me two world that we're living in now,
Speaker 1: especially like watching the movie this week after like Steven
Speaker 1: Tyler got sued for sexually assaulting a minor who he
Speaker 1: also talked openly about having a relationship with when she
Speaker 1: was a child. It hits differently now, I think, like
Speaker 1: I realized I had aged differently with this movie when
Speaker 1: I realized that Penny Lane, they make a very specific
Speaker 1: point of saying that she's over eighteen. She's clearly over
Speaker 1: twenty one because they're drinking too, So like she's in
Speaker 1: this weird non specific age limit where she's clearly legal,
Speaker 1: but she's not old and decrepit, like twenty okay, because yeah,
Speaker 1: because I was really I mean, and we'll talk, we'll
Speaker 1: get into this, but this movie's approach to consent. This
Speaker 1: movie is approached to underage characters and their sexuality. Right.
Speaker 1: Not bad, it's real bad. Um, But I was like,
Speaker 1: how old are these these band aids? Because there's a
Speaker 1: scene early on where Penny Lane is talking to William
Speaker 1: and she's like, how old are you? And he's like eighteen.
Speaker 1: She's like me too, okay, but how old are we really?
Speaker 1: And he goes seventeen. She says me too, and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sixteen. She says me too, and then he's like,
Speaker 1: but I'm also fifteen, and then she stops talking. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I guess she's sixteen. But I also
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if she was just kind of like playing
Speaker 1: along with him. Yeah, she's playing along with him. She says,
Speaker 1: the truth sounds different. You know, it's clear that she
Speaker 1: can tell that he's not being truthful. I mean, I
Speaker 1: got the impression, and I think it's helped by Kate Hudson. Looking.
Speaker 1: I think she was like what twenty twenty two was
Speaker 1: early twenties when she was twenty one when the movie
Speaker 1: came out, because she's born in seventy nine, so she
Speaker 1: was an adult one of his film. But then I
Speaker 1: went and looked at the script because the script usually
Speaker 1: tells how old a character is or ballpark. So here's
Speaker 1: what I found. As far as Penny Lane, her character
Speaker 1: introduction does not specify how old she is, so we
Speaker 1: don't have anything to go on there. But Plexia when
Speaker 1: her character is introduced, here's what the script says. Another
Speaker 1: breathless girl teetering on tall shoes. She is in the
Speaker 1: vicinity of sixteen. Her black hair is cropped short and
Speaker 1: died red, just like the cover of Bowie's Aladdin Sane.
Speaker 1: She is Plexia, the voluptuous one from Riverside. So Polexia
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. Here we go for outsteps Sapphire nineteen,
Speaker 1: a tall girl with taller platforms, heavy eye makeup, etc.
Speaker 1: So we have a Sapphire who's the Froosa Baut character.
Speaker 1: She is nineteen in the script. Then we have chattering
Speaker 1: excitedly with sophistication far beyond her seventeen years. Is Australia
Speaker 1: so or estralla, I don't know how she pronounces it.
Speaker 1: So she is seventeen. So we have these characters who
Speaker 1: are no older than nineteen, and some as young as
Speaker 1: sixteen Penny Lane unclear. Again it's not specified, but I
Speaker 1: have to assume because even if they are drinking, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're of legal drinking age, right because they're
Speaker 1: usually like you know, they're in hotel rooms and stuff
Speaker 1: like that where they wouldn't be carded or anything. I
Speaker 1: feel like Penny Lane could very easily be sixteen. There's
Speaker 1: definitely a chance that she's not of age. Yeah, the movie.
Speaker 1: The movie puts her in this like she's old enough
Speaker 1: to party age whatever age that you want that to be.
Speaker 1: And and I mean to read Pamela Dispar's book in
Speaker 1: the other like groupies of that era sixteen would be
Speaker 1: nice because like a lot of these girls started out
Speaker 1: at like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I mean they're they're babies
Speaker 1: who had very permissive parents, you know, or we're not
Speaker 1: you know, came from from families where it was okay
Speaker 1: for them to be running around and I mean you
Speaker 1: and I think what's hard for me to reconcile with
Speaker 1: is like the real world implications of what we now know.
Speaker 1: You know, like what is an Axel Rose adopted his
Speaker 1: teenage girlfriend, you know, so he could write sweetch out
Speaker 1: of Mine or something like that, like absurd. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there's like I mean, the list I feel like
Speaker 1: the lists of kind of classic rockers of the sixteen
Speaker 1: and seventies that didn't engage in this behavior is shorter
Speaker 1: than the ones that did. I usually, I joke quote
Speaker 1: unquote because I think that's the only way to deal
Speaker 1: with with some of this sometimes is I'm like, finding
Speaker 1: a rock star that didn't sleep with children is a
Speaker 1: lesson futility because I think, I mean, I know, like
Speaker 1: like you know, I've read rock star biographies. I love
Speaker 1: the who you know. I'm like Roger Daughtry writes in
Speaker 1: his autobiography that like he had illegitimate children, but you
Speaker 1: don't need to know about like he was. He claims
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing anything terrible, you know, whereas as we
Speaker 1: know like Pete Townsend, you know, it was definitely dating
Speaker 1: underach girls. So it's it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: you're like, how do we reconcile with what we historically
Speaker 1: know and in which now I think, even within the
Speaker 1: last few years with me too, is far more open
Speaker 1: about like actually know this was inappropriate and some of
Speaker 1: these these you know, women that were groupies in that
Speaker 1: era have had to go back and do their own
Speaker 1: kind of reflection on like, yeah, did I get taken
Speaker 1: advantage of? And it's hard to enjoy the movie without knowing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I compartmentalize because as a woman, as a
Speaker 1: disabled woman, like I have to compartmentalize in order to
Speaker 1: enjoy anything, because nothing is perfect. But they talk about
Speaker 1: this often on the podcast, and I mean, like you
Speaker 1: have to in order to enjoy this movie, because you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't really know if that's appropriator, right, because what's
Speaker 1: happening in the movie, there's certainly a historical precedent for
Speaker 1: all of this behavior, and it was very permissible back
Speaker 1: then in the in this era, and even in two
Speaker 1: thousand when this movie came out, it was still far
Speaker 1: more permissible by our rape culture than it is today
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. So it's very tricky too. My
Speaker 1: thing is like it's I have no issue with even like, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, the character descriptions I think are very obviously
Speaker 1: written by a man, But I mean the fact that
Speaker 1: these characters are the age that they are, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's just pretty historically accurate. I feel like it
Speaker 1: would be almost dishonest to be like, and these women
Speaker 1: were twenty seven and like, you know, taking time off
Speaker 1: from their job at the bank or whatever fun you know,
Speaker 1: Like it is like this was what historically happened, and
Speaker 1: it's something that I agree Christmas has been really uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and fascinating to watch the people involved have to grapple
Speaker 1: or not grapple with that period of history. I think
Speaker 1: that my problems with it just have to do it
Speaker 1: the way that it's framed and told, and like it
Speaker 1: just seems like I mean, in some ways and for
Speaker 1: certain characters, Cameron Crowe is an excellent person to be
Speaker 1: telling this story. He literally, to some extent was William,
Speaker 1: but in other areas he's like deeply unqualified to like
Speaker 1: I mean, and even in most of the issues with
Speaker 1: this movie are not with what's happening. It's how it's
Speaker 1: we're being told that it's happening, and the way that
Speaker 1: it's you know, like glorified as like these are the
Speaker 1: golden days, like this was the best that things ever were,
Speaker 1: and there's it's just deeply uncritical of anything and is
Speaker 1: so determined to kind of glorify certain aspects of this world,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but most of but a lot
Speaker 1: of them. There's the point at the end, towards the
Speaker 1: end of the movie where they're talking about the new
Speaker 1: types of groupies, right Sapphire brings out. You know, none
Speaker 1: of them use birth control, and you know they don't
Speaker 1: know what it's like to be a fan, you know,
Speaker 1: until love a piece of music till it hurts. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's this real critical distinction that Cameron
Speaker 1: Crowe feels that these women are responsible for that they
Speaker 1: are responsible. They are muses, right, they are these Tripsikorean
Speaker 1: type of muses that have inspired the music. And they're
Speaker 1: not here for the money. They're not here to get
Speaker 1: pregnant and railroads, you into marriage or any of that.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not here for anything other than the music.
Speaker 1: But as we've seen a lot of rock stars, Will
Speaker 1: Jeff says at one point, the chicks are great, and
Speaker 1: so it's a little like ridiculous to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of stupid for you to say that the
Speaker 1: women are here for this altruistic like they're here to
Speaker 1: inspire music and the dudes are are just here because
Speaker 1: you know they're not. They don't see them just things
Speaker 1: to have messed around with and get weighed. And really,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about inspiring the music, I mean, sweet
Speaker 1: Child of minds a great song, but would we does
Speaker 1: anybody know the name of the girl that inspired it? No?
Speaker 1: You know, like, and I think so it is a
Speaker 1: little disingenuous to be like, these these women are here,
Speaker 1: these young girls are here, you know, purely because they
Speaker 1: don't want to And Penny Laye makes that distinction at
Speaker 1: several times. You know, groupies want to be near someone famous.
Speaker 1: They're not here for anything else. There's a hierarchy, right,
Speaker 1: I'm also sorry. I always think of that. I also
Speaker 1: think of the song My Sharona every time that this
Speaker 1: like thing comes up, like there's so many songs and
Speaker 1: you're totally right, Christmas. It's like that you never know
Speaker 1: who it actually is, very very rarely. There's a few
Speaker 1: songs that you're like, oh, that's about yo, go on
Speaker 1: now and h and John Lennon, you know, no notes
Speaker 1: about him? Great guy. Well there's that scene where I
Speaker 1: don't remember which character it is now, but she's introducing
Speaker 1: William two Penny Lane and being like, you haven't heard
Speaker 1: of Penny Lane. She is like one of the founders
Speaker 1: of the band Aids, and her whole ethos is, I'm
Speaker 1: tired of letting my body be sexually exploited by these
Speaker 1: rock stars. You know, we're here for the music, we're
Speaker 1: here simply because we are fans of the music. So
Speaker 1: it's almost it seems as though Penny and the other
Speaker 1: band Aids they're again their ethos is like we're taking
Speaker 1: the power back for ourselves, like well, but they still
Speaker 1: end up being exploited by these men and in many
Speaker 1: cases like statutory rape is happening right here, and remember
Speaker 1: nobody's Williams not interested in writing about their struggle Like
Speaker 1: that's I think that's that's an actually more interesting story
Speaker 1: than local band makes good. Like let's talk about these
Speaker 1: young girls that are supposedly inspiring the music or you.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like this we saw in the two
Speaker 1: thousands up until maybe about like what is it like
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. This this kind of like reverse feminism, which
Speaker 1: is which was women taking things that we've historically like
Speaker 1: as a response to, like second wave feminism and kind
Speaker 1: of like recontextualing it as empowering. Yet the girl Boss era,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, and relationships, the cougar thing, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's okay because like men have been doing it, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it, um right, And I feel like
Speaker 1: they're this is kind of this is part of that. Like,
Speaker 1: and if you read Pamela des Bars and any other
Speaker 1: groupie of the seventies, like they'll say that, yeah, they
Speaker 1: thought that they were empowered and that they were doing
Speaker 1: something that was like saying screw you to the counterculture.
Speaker 1: But it's one thing to hear that, and then it's
Speaker 1: another to read out of the same breath. You know,
Speaker 1: Pamela das Bars talking about like locking herself in a
Speaker 1: bathroom because a rock star was trying to have sex
Speaker 1: with her and she had told him no, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're kind of like like Crow, I think sees this
Speaker 1: as this this empowerment thing. But even the women of
Speaker 1: the two thousands into the twenty tens that we're doing
Speaker 1: this now, like looking back at this, were like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that actually wasn't as empowering as they thought they were.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a forty day but it's true, which
Speaker 1: again is like he's just I just don't think that
Speaker 1: he as a writer is kind of able to or
Speaker 1: qualified to give you the appropriate context, Like because even
Speaker 1: if you're watching this in two thousand as a young person,
Speaker 1: like it would have I think it would have been
Speaker 1: really helpful to in any way in the story shoehorn
Speaker 1: in like where is second wave feminism at this point?
Speaker 1: Like there are certain things about this story that they
Speaker 1: go out of their way to give you the historical
Speaker 1: contexts you need, and then other areas where you just
Speaker 1: kind of don't know, because like I didn't understand the
Speaker 1: first time that I saw this movie. You know, I
Speaker 1: just was like, Oh, this looks really fucking cool. But
Speaker 1: how you know, like with the ethos of second wave feminism,
Speaker 1: like they are still very much under the thumb of patriarchy,
Speaker 1: like they're still very beholden to the interests of men.
Speaker 1: The subversion, or the way that the subversion was often
Speaker 1: seen is that like, I don't have to be a
Speaker 1: fucking housewife. I'm not like demand, Like it's not demanded
Speaker 1: that I am home and being a wife. And that
Speaker 1: is kind of where the freedom and the catharsiss is
Speaker 1: like some level of choice, but even when you're able
Speaker 1: to make that choice, you're still treated like shit, which
Speaker 1: I feel like it is illustrated in Penny Lane and
Speaker 1: the Band Aids to some extent, but it just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it doesn't go far enough for me,
Speaker 1: and I think it makes you wonder you look at
Speaker 1: like the relationship with Anita. Anita is a great example
Speaker 1: of exactly what you're saying, Like she's a woman that
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be a housewife. From what we know
Speaker 1: about her, she wants to go see the world. She
Speaker 1: becomes a steward is and like seems to be having
Speaker 1: a real good life. You know, she's happy about that,
Speaker 1: and yet the movie still doesn't really I don't know
Speaker 1: if it makes an opinion about how it feels about Anita,
Speaker 1: because she clearly has no relationship with her mother. It's
Speaker 1: unclear what her mother expected of her to do, you know,
Speaker 1: because because she seems fine with when William follows his bliss,
Speaker 1: but when Anita tries to do it, it's like, I
Speaker 1: feel like there's so much internalized misogyny going on with
Speaker 1: the mom that I would have been cool to see more.
Speaker 1: Elaine's whole thing is like, oh, this is a hobby, right,
Speaker 1: William's gonna give this up at some point and go
Speaker 1: become a lawyer. And and even though she's opposed to it,
Speaker 1: she still allows it to happen. There's no like, don't
Speaker 1: come back if you can't do this. I mean, the
Speaker 1: kid misses his high school graduation and she's like upset,
Speaker 1: but we don't see any like severe pushback. But it's
Speaker 1: unclear what she wants from her other daughter. You know.
Speaker 1: She says to her at one point in like this
Speaker 1: really hurtful moment that you know, when she asked what
Speaker 1: their dad thought of her, and Elaine says, you are
Speaker 1: rebellious and ungrateful of my love. Yeah, it's not really
Speaker 1: clear what she expects her child to do, and she
Speaker 1: seems to be doing okay. If anything. It seems more
Speaker 1: empowering than Penny Elaine. And yet we still have to
Speaker 1: send Anita back home to reunite with the mom, and
Speaker 1: it's really unclear she kind of stay home? Is she going?
Speaker 1: Did she quit her job? Yeah? What is the deal here?
Speaker 1: Because she's actually living this empowered life that the movie
Speaker 1: seems to be saying that the band Aids are living, right,
Speaker 1: and she and we explicitly know her age. We know
Speaker 1: that she is eighteen when she leaves home, and so
Speaker 1: it's like, well, she's on her own, she's doing her
Speaker 1: own thing. And and by the time the movie jumps
Speaker 1: she's eighteen when when he's little right, and then right
Speaker 1: the movie jumps forward to like him, missus sears in
Speaker 1: high school. So yeah, she's she's easily like early mid twenties,
Speaker 1: so definitely old enough to make decisions and like start
Speaker 1: paying taxes and whatnot. So I think that characterization and
Speaker 1: just like the framing of all of that is indicative
Speaker 1: of the big issue with this movie, which is that
Speaker 1: there is a far more interesting story to be told
Speaker 1: about these characters. Like you said, Kristen, as far as
Speaker 1: the way that these teen girls are having to kind
Speaker 1: of like reframe or thinking of like, oh, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not being abused if I don't view what's happening to
Speaker 1: me as abuse, Like if I am again like kind
Speaker 1: of taking the power back and saying like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: same thing still happening, but if I approach it differently
Speaker 1: in my mind, then then it's fine. I'm I'm consenting
Speaker 1: to this actually, which young people are kind of put
Speaker 1: in a position to do all the time. Like every
Speaker 1: generation has those situations. I feel like it's just the
Speaker 1: way that Crowe frames the Rockers, Like he frames them
Speaker 1: as assholes for sure, and he frames them as like
Speaker 1: vapid and too into their own success, but he does
Speaker 1: that in a way that still makes them extremely redeemable
Speaker 1: and clearly wants you to still love them by the
Speaker 1: end of the movie and still be rooting for their success.
Speaker 1: Is just like, well, then he's he's coming at it
Speaker 1: like in a way that is just like not I
Speaker 1: don't know, like it just I always and maybe if
Speaker 1: I watch the extended cut I would feel different, but
Speaker 1: I am. I just I'm like I don't care about Russell.
Speaker 1: I don't care about him. I'm like, who gives a
Speaker 1: shit if this guy's successful? And at the end when like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like, oh, I think Penny wanted you
Speaker 1: and me together. I'm like, why would william even want
Speaker 1: to talk to you? You're the fucking worst. I don't
Speaker 1: understand why Williams still interested in you after all this time,
Speaker 1: christ And I think you're totally right. If he was
Speaker 1: a really good journalist, he would have realized that Russell's
Speaker 1: not the story or he if anything, he's the villain
Speaker 1: of the story. If anything, he would have written a
Speaker 1: story that like, Snowwater is great, but Russell Hammond's a dick,
Speaker 1: a piece of shit. Yeah, like yeah, like their music
Speaker 1: might be good, but them as people are bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean I know that like the movie
Speaker 1: The Snowwater is supposedly loosely based on Robert Plant and
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page from from Led Zeppelin, which yeah, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: if that was the case, trust me, this would be
Speaker 1: way more fucked up of a movie, because if you've
Speaker 1: read even an ounce of what Zeppelin did during their heyday,
Speaker 1: like they committed practically committed crimes. Oh so, but I
Speaker 1: always I tell people all the time, I think I
Speaker 1: put this on Twitter, like a year or two ago,
Speaker 1: who was who is your favorite trash boyfriend? And why
Speaker 1: is mine? Russell Hammond um and that like he is
Speaker 1: he is essentially like the Troy Dwyer of this movie,
Speaker 1: you know, but the Ethan Hawk in the sense that, like,
Speaker 1: I know, he's a horrid human being. But maybe it's
Speaker 1: the hair. Maybe it's like the seventies aesthetic. There's just
Speaker 1: something where you're like, oh, I can't. I didn't. I know,
Speaker 1: it's terrible. I can't do him. I can't do him,
Speaker 1: And I wonder how much of this now? I mean,
Speaker 1: I have backstory to Mike's and my explanation for this
Speaker 1: because I think, again, as I said it up top,
Speaker 1: I had a billy crude up thing back in the
Speaker 1: day leading up to the whole like Claire Danes Mary
Speaker 1: Louis Parker triangle that happened, which again he's also part
Speaker 1: of the problem because he is just as problematic as
Speaker 1: the movie that he's in. Google that story if you
Speaker 1: want some juicy reading. But but I mean to watch
Speaker 1: them like this was kind of like his stock in
Speaker 1: trade is he played douchebags, like inventing the Abbots, which
Speaker 1: is another favorite of mine, Like he plays the same character,
Speaker 1: he's got better hair, h So I mean, I get it,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how much that plays into all of this,
Speaker 1: And I think conceiving him as kind of like a
Speaker 1: Robert plant esque like musical genius, but he's like a
Speaker 1: piece of shit. I hate it. I have no explanation
Speaker 1: for why I dug it then, I have no explanation
Speaker 1: for why I dig it now. But I think that
Speaker 1: like in the grand tradition of like all the trash
Speaker 1: boyfriends again going back to Ethan Hawk, in reality bites
Speaker 1: like there's just something where you're like, God, I maybe
Speaker 1: I want to feel like shit. Maybe I want somebody
Speaker 1: to treat me bad. It's a very masochistic relationship. The
Speaker 1: movie kind of explores this in certain conversations between William
Speaker 1: and Lester Bangs, where they're both like, we're not cool
Speaker 1: and we're never going to be the type of guy
Speaker 1: who's gonna like instantly get the girl quote unquote, because
Speaker 1: it's the rock stars who get the girl and who
Speaker 1: are perceived as so cool and who you know, are
Speaker 1: just like effortlessly like chicken magnets. It feels a little
Speaker 1: revenge of the nerds that that whole exchange where he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're just we're smarter than them, Like
Speaker 1: we're we're playing the long game. And you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: so women are still objects to you, but you know
Speaker 1: you're just playing a longer game. Cool, right, So it's
Speaker 1: so the movie has some self awareness about like these dynamics,
Speaker 1: these these power dynamics as they relate to gender and
Speaker 1: like these age gaps and all this stuff. But for me,
Speaker 1: it goes back to what would be a more interesting
Speaker 1: story here, the mental gymnastics that a lot of girls
Speaker 1: and women have to do in a culture where they
Speaker 1: are so heavily oppressed and objectified, and you know, any
Speaker 1: marginalized person has to deal with this, like the mental
Speaker 1: gymnastics you kind of have to do just as a survival, right, technique,
Speaker 1: Like that would have been the more interesting thing to
Speaker 1: explore through the lens of like the Penny Land character
Speaker 1: and seeing things from her point of view, But instead
Speaker 1: we're seeing the story from the point of view of
Speaker 1: this teenage boy who doesn't understand her, who doesn't understand her,
Speaker 1: who's in love with her, quote unquote, but he's can't
Speaker 1: be because he doesn't know her, Like he's in love
Speaker 1: with the right, with the persona she's crafted exactly. I
Speaker 1: feel like Sophia Coppola did this a lot better, you
Speaker 1: know what, like the year before with the version of Suicience,
Speaker 1: which which is very much about like a group of
Speaker 1: boys that think that they know these manic pixie dream girls,
Speaker 1: and Sofia Coppola's like, slow your role, you actually know
Speaker 1: shit and you don't know these people, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the source materials very similar to that. So it's doable.
Speaker 1: It's doable if you care. And fortunately, I mean I
Speaker 1: think again this was this was Cameron Crow and his
Speaker 1: too Big to Fail era, and you know, we weren't.
Speaker 1: We weren't asking those questions. We were just like wrapped
Speaker 1: up in the seventies aesthetic man. And I think Boogie Knights,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, you know, really did play into this
Speaker 1: as well, because what is it the thirty year gap
Speaker 1: that we take to nostalgize stuff, you know, so like
Speaker 1: the nineties into the two thousands, was this seventies heyday,
Speaker 1: which honestly, I would love for us to go back
Speaker 1: and look at now because I feel like we still
Speaker 1: have never reconciled. We just went straight to letting dudes
Speaker 1: make movies about how great the eighties were, but we
Speaker 1: never really looked at or criticized the nineteen seventies, which
Speaker 1: is probably one of the most fraught decades just from
Speaker 1: a gender perspective, and gender influenced everything. I mean, it
Speaker 1: even influenced the music and in so many ways. So
Speaker 1: you know, I would love a nineteen seventies groupie story
Speaker 1: from like a feminine, like a female director script that
Speaker 1: it's just like, actually, how do you reconcile with the
Speaker 1: fact that you're like a teenage girl and you're hanging
Speaker 1: out with like again Louren Scafaria, just like make Diary
Speaker 1: of a Teenage Girl again, but like groupy addition, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would, I mean I really would love to see.
Speaker 1: And also I would love to see a piece about
Speaker 1: like a woman now who was who was a teenager
Speaker 1: then having to reconcile it and like getting into arguments
Speaker 1: with her daughter or something about like how because that's
Speaker 1: like it is like a fascinating, difficult position that I
Speaker 1: don't envy anyone to have to be in, is to
Speaker 1: have to feel in conflict with modern feminists because you
Speaker 1: didn't have a twenty twenty three brain in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two and having to process that with a modern lens,
Speaker 1: a past middle age and figure out, well, how do
Speaker 1: I feel about that, and like challenging how you It's
Speaker 1: like challenging sort of everything, you know, which I think
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've talked with my mom a lot
Speaker 1: about that too, because I think and this movie again
Speaker 1: almost sort of I think, touches on it a little
Speaker 1: with Elaine and Anita of how a parent, in this
Speaker 1: case a mother specifically's own you know, internalized misogyny can
Speaker 1: be projected back onto their own kid in a way
Speaker 1: that diminishes them and makes them feel like shit. And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, yeah, if you don't, if you're not
Speaker 1: able to for whatever reason, process your own experience and
Speaker 1: figure out how you feel about it, it's going to
Speaker 1: turn into like this inadvertent weapon that can like hurt
Speaker 1: people you don't want to hurt. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm excited that I ordered Pamelad as far
Speaker 1: as book because I really want to read it now.
Speaker 1: And there was a good interview with her in Vulture
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty just talking about this with a
Speaker 1: post me to sort of focus on how she sort
Speaker 1: of views this character because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: Peter's I think three different women that Ameron Crowe has
Speaker 1: like alluded to. There's Penny Lane, Trumbull, Baby Bull, and
Speaker 1: Pamela Dispars. Penny Lane Trumbull also fascinating person, and I
Speaker 1: think what was cool about her was that she later
Speaker 1: made a band that was like made up of other
Speaker 1: groupies and they started making their own music, which is
Speaker 1: another thing of like access, Like that's a way to
Speaker 1: gain access to a world you may not have had
Speaker 1: access to otherwise that was not as welcoming to women.
Speaker 1: But anyways, Pamela Diaspars, she says a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, she she's particularly bothered by the Penny Lane
Speaker 1: overdose scene, not for the same reasons I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about, but because of so she says this.
Speaker 1: She says that that scene where Penny Lane sees that
Speaker 1: Russell is with his girlfriend and then seems to attempt
Speaker 1: to or inadvertently overdoses. She says that that's quote horribly
Speaker 1: misogynists to look at what a groupie muse is. That
Speaker 1: made me so angry. This character, the groupie like she's portrayed,
Speaker 1: is pathetic. I knew all the main groupies in a
Speaker 1: heyday of group edom, none of them would have done that.
Speaker 1: There was always someone else coming to town that really
Speaker 1: turned me off. No actual music loving goddess groupie would
Speaker 1: do such a thing unquote. So I think she thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, Cameron Crowe is being melodramatic and diminishing a
Speaker 1: character that was very much based on her. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing that she said that I was like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, Cameron Crowe hired a number of consultants for
Speaker 1: this movie because obviously he's like well connected in this
Speaker 1: period of history. Peter Frampton was a consultant on this movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I guess that Pamela dispars because she didn't meet
Speaker 1: Cameron Crowe when he was a fifteen year old writer,
Speaker 1: and she did see the movie, and she did have
Speaker 1: notes about it. She's not completely dismissive of it, but
Speaker 1: she's there's a lot of things she's kind of like
Speaker 1: what the fuck about. One of them was that she
Speaker 1: wasn't brought on as a consultant, And that makes a
Speaker 1: ton of fucking sense, Like, if you've got a Peter
Speaker 1: Frampton consultant budget, you've got a Pamela dispar As consultant
Speaker 1: budget and like your Cameron Crowe in two thousand, fucking
Speaker 1: hire her. And I bet that this the material would
Speaker 1: have been elevated. And I don't think Peter Frampton would
Speaker 1: have been giving a lot of great insider Like when
Speaker 1: you talk about top tier hedonistic rock stars at the
Speaker 1: seventies that had like groupies that were probably on that level,
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking Frampton comes alive. Okay, it is interesting
Speaker 1: though you brought up, you know, reconciling as an older woman.
Speaker 1: People forget. Two years after this movie came out, we
Speaker 1: got Goldie Hawn and Susan Surandon in The Banger Sisters,
Speaker 1: which actually is a comedy about two women who were
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies groupies dealing with like being essentially fish out
Speaker 1: of water. Like it's just it's just not at all
Speaker 1: Like it's a very two thousands look at groupie dom
Speaker 1: in the same way as this, where it's like Susan
Speaker 1: Surrandon's given up that groupie life and wears brown suits
Speaker 1: and she's very type A and she puts that aside
Speaker 1: to raise her children to be utterly perfect and they
Speaker 1: hate her for it. And Goldie Hawn is like the
Speaker 1: Goldie han She's this free spirit who's still trying to
Speaker 1: be She's like, um, she's like Steve the pirate from
Speaker 1: from Dodgeball who like still commits to the bit and
Speaker 1: doesn't understand why people believe, like don't believe that she's
Speaker 1: a modern woman. She's Austin Powers. Pretty much very fun movie,
Speaker 1: but not does not reconcile at all with like the
Speaker 1: dichotomy of that era. It's more just like Susan Sarandon's
Speaker 1: daughter in the movie, who's Erica Christensen is like, you're saying,
Speaker 1: our mom used to be fun and made mistakes and
Speaker 1: smoked weed. What What's It's very much of its era, right.
Speaker 1: Do you think Goldie Hawn, her character in that movie
Speaker 1: is somehow related to Penny Lane's character in Almost Famous
Speaker 1: because famously Goldie Hawn is Kate Hudson's mom. It took
Speaker 1: until two thousand and three, February seventeenth, at one o
Speaker 1: six pm for me to make that connection. I did
Speaker 1: not realize that until I just started talking about it,
Speaker 1: and I wish I had made that connection that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very very possible. It's very possible. The movie did
Speaker 1: not do well enough to make any impact on audiences
Speaker 1: except me, who still finds it delightful. And I think
Speaker 1: if anything, that movie also throws in like the plaster
Speaker 1: castor elements like there's a whole there's a whole sequence
Speaker 1: of Goldie Haunt and Susan s Randon looking at pictures
Speaker 1: of supposedly famous rock penises, but again never reconciling with
Speaker 1: the fact that they're like, also, hey, look at this
Speaker 1: photo of us. We were like fourteen years old, and
Speaker 1: also we have dick pics on Polaroid. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I would, and I do think that there's a way
Speaker 1: to make a movie like that that isn't inherently fucking depressing,
Speaker 1: which I think is always my issue with movies about
Speaker 1: like women reflecting on their lives. And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: of course it's safe to assume it fucking sucked, and
Speaker 1: like it was really depressing the whole time. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: it can still be like an engaging, interesting I think
Speaker 1: we just need to write this. Yeah. Another thing that
Speaker 1: Pamela despars mentioned that also registered for me, just given
Speaker 1: the time and the scene that you're in, is she
Speaker 1: made a note in that twenty twenty interview with Vulture
Speaker 1: of saying how whitewashed the movie felt to her, and
Speaker 1: how like centered on white rockers, you know, white rockers
Speaker 1: who were certainly around and people that Cameron crow would
Speaker 1: have encountered, but like the seventies was a huge moment
Speaker 1: for black music in particular, and like the fact that
Speaker 1: you the only black musicians and black people in general
Speaker 1: that you see are very much in the background of
Speaker 1: scenes either like set dressing and the way that women
Speaker 1: are occasionally used as set dressing in this movie as well,
Speaker 1: in a way that this is just like not historically accurate, right,
Speaker 1: I feel like Cameron Crowe has that problem in all
Speaker 1: of his movie. Well, he did make a lohot, didn't
Speaker 1: he did. I was gonna say, yeah, I mean Emma
Speaker 1: Stone was one eighth Chinese or what I whatever the
Speaker 1: hell that movie was saying, Yeah, saying she was so
Speaker 1: you know, chronic problem, yes, but yeah, I appreciated that
Speaker 1: she called that out as well. Yeah, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess she teaches memoir writing classes now, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Cool, I was I want to take that
Speaker 1: what okay, Um, We've been speaking broadly about consent so
Speaker 1: far in this episode, there's a few specific let's talk
Speaker 1: about the scene, the two scenes where it's a huge thing, yes,
Speaker 1: um placing a trigger warning here for rape for underage
Speaker 1: sexual assault. So chronologically, the first one is the let's
Speaker 1: deflower William scene where three of the band aids Sapphire,
Speaker 1: Polexia and I think Beth from Denver. Question Mark is
Speaker 1: the third one. They basically decide amongst themselves that they
Speaker 1: are going to deflower William, who they know is fifteen
Speaker 1: years old. They then descend on him while he's trying
Speaker 1: to talk to Penny Lane, who he's in love with
Speaker 1: the idea of who she has presented herself as being.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so they're talking, they descend on him. They
Speaker 1: kind of like pull him into the other room. He's resisting,
Speaker 1: He's saying no, no, no. They are pulling his clothes off,
Speaker 1: and then they start kissing in front of him, and
Speaker 1: then we cut to the next morning they wake up
Speaker 1: and bed together, and then they say they refer to
Speaker 1: him no longer being a virgin, and everyone's kind of giggling, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very clear what happens. It's the way
Speaker 1: that it's framed as this like romantic cool moment like
Speaker 1: the scene could not be filmed more as like, pro
Speaker 1: what's happening, even though what he's saying is no. And
Speaker 1: he's in the middle of a conversation with Penny, and
Speaker 1: like they physically drag him into the bedroom. But then
Speaker 1: it's like a very romantic tone, the cameras like circling them,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's very cropped body. You know, there's
Speaker 1: just butts passing his face and he's looking at Kate
Speaker 1: Hudson and she seems to be thrilled that this is
Speaker 1: happening as well, and she leaves the room and it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, this is an assault that's taking place,
Speaker 1: but the way that Cameron Crowe films it and frames it,
Speaker 1: you kind of would never know it. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that people really talked about it like that until
Speaker 1: at least a decade later, right, I think we still
Speaker 1: have this weird issue with male consent. I mean, we
Speaker 1: saw the same types of discussions when Bridgertin came out.
Speaker 1: There was some deep talk about like is that a
Speaker 1: rape scene that we're watching it certainly non doesn't feel
Speaker 1: consider ENSUALU And that just came and went, like we
Speaker 1: never really talked about it after that. And I think
Speaker 1: that with with something like this, it goes back to
Speaker 1: that whole concept of like the reverse feminism that we
Speaker 1: saw in the two thousands, where it's like, well, these
Speaker 1: women have power, they're taking it back, and like they're
Speaker 1: the ones that are offering, like as if to say
Speaker 1: that as long as women are consenting, that makes it
Speaker 1: okay that they're okay with it. And you know what
Speaker 1: kind of guy wouldn't want his first time to be
Speaker 1: with three women? Am I right? Like it's just very
Speaker 1: much in that grand scheme of like women can't be predators.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, if they're dating young men, it's
Speaker 1: just like doing what men have been doing all this time.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make it right. But it's this this mentality
Speaker 1: that I think we had at the time, where it's
Speaker 1: the rock and roll lifestyle and the women are okay
Speaker 1: with it, so therefore it is fine. Right, That is
Speaker 1: very much a byproduct of rape culture. That's still yeah,
Speaker 1: permis to this day where there there's still an idea of, oh, men,
Speaker 1: there's no need for a man to consent or not,
Speaker 1: because a man is always going to consent to sex
Speaker 1: with a woman, right, And then if you don't, there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with people. And it's like your if your
Speaker 1: default isn't hyper sexual, then you're lesser, you're less masculine
Speaker 1: or whatever that thing is. Yeah, like it's so frustrating
Speaker 1: and interesting to like reflect on that period of time.
Speaker 1: They're talking about Christen of like the girl Boss mentality
Speaker 1: of like, well, the solution to patriarchy, which already is
Speaker 1: very like cut down the gender binary, is that women
Speaker 1: should just be able to do what men have been
Speaker 1: doing the whole time. And it's like, no, it's a
Speaker 1: systemic no, no, Yeah, it's come on, like it's not
Speaker 1: a challenge of like, well, how do we view consent
Speaker 1: in general? And like have we ever had a productive
Speaker 1: cultural conversation about consent. It's just that, you know, women
Speaker 1: should be allowed to do what men do. And it's like,
Speaker 1: well no, but we didn't like what they were doing.
Speaker 1: That was the that was a big problem. No one
Speaker 1: should mistreat anyone, regardless of gender. So yeah, the movie
Speaker 1: does not frame what happens as a gang rape, but
Speaker 1: that's what is happening. And then the movie just moves on.
Speaker 1: Immediately they're like okay, and now there's another call about
Speaker 1: the deadline and then it just like never comes back.
Speaker 1: And this is also like would be an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to see an older man reflect on in a movie
Speaker 1: like this is just yeah, I don't know, this is
Speaker 1: sort of bizarre. But I used to be really into
Speaker 1: these self published blog memoirs that a Carney would write.
Speaker 1: He would be around Kivered Crow's age, but like, same,
Speaker 1: what was traveling in carnivals as a teenager in the
Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies, And when I was watching the scene,
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, this is so similar to something
Speaker 1: that Kevin wrote about in his blog of like how
Speaker 1: when he was a teenager, like there were a group
Speaker 1: of women carnies that were like, Okay, it's time for
Speaker 1: you to lose your virginity and he was like okay,
Speaker 1: and then like writing about it as an older man,
Speaker 1: like not quite knowing how to place that experience, and
Speaker 1: like at the time telling himself as a kid like
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to feel happy about this, So I guess
Speaker 1: I feel happy about this, but in reality, it's like
Speaker 1: that's it's just because you're sort of in the same
Speaker 1: way that Penny Lane is sort of reflecting how she's
Speaker 1: supposed to feel about things in order to keep some
Speaker 1: semblance of control of her life. It's like William has
Speaker 1: to do that too, But I don't think that Cameron
Speaker 1: Crow sees it that way. And then I'm also wondering
Speaker 1: how this reflects Cameron Crowe's life and experience like that too.
Speaker 1: We don't know he's the William character. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: very curious about that too, but I haven't found any
Speaker 1: thing about it, not that it's any of our fucking business. Right,
Speaker 1: how Camera Crow lost his virginity? So there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, the movie's attitude toward consents insects is very
Speaker 1: reflective of the seventies the two thousands. And then there's
Speaker 1: the overdose scene. Yes, what happens here is Penny Lane
Speaker 1: is overdosing on Quelude's William calls a doctor to the
Speaker 1: hotel room. He's waiting for the doctor to arrive. He's
Speaker 1: like holding her, She's drifting in and out of consciousness.
Speaker 1: He professes his love to her, and then he says
Speaker 1: something like I'm going to boldly go where many men
Speaker 1: have gone before. Hilarious moon landing assault joke. And then
Speaker 1: he kisses her while she's unconscious. Good one, and the
Speaker 1: movie again it is not critical of this at all.
Speaker 1: It does not see this as the assault that it is,
Speaker 1: and it just breathes right past this moment as if like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just what you do. It's also unclear what this
Speaker 1: does to their relationship, in the sense that it's not
Speaker 1: even clear if she knows. Don't think she does. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: considering like their their relationship and that this would be
Speaker 1: a moment for them to discuss are we into each
Speaker 1: other or is she into him as much as he
Speaker 1: is into her, it's never acknowledged. The scene culminates with
Speaker 1: the stomach pumping. I mean, I think, if anything, that
Speaker 1: the humor of having my Sharia Moore play over her
Speaker 1: bar finger gets out is probably a better use of
Speaker 1: humor than the moon landing joke. But when she, you know,
Speaker 1: has the realization later and they have that discussion, it's
Speaker 1: more of a moment for her to be real with
Speaker 1: him right and say what her real name is and
Speaker 1: talk about her background very briefly, But it never is
Speaker 1: discussed what their relationship is. It stays fairly platonic, not
Speaker 1: for his lack of trying, but he never makes any
Speaker 1: effort to do that. While she is coherent right right.
Speaker 1: He even says, like, why am I doing this? You're
Speaker 1: never even going to remember it tomorrow, Like he's aware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he comes so close to being self aware in that moment.
Speaker 1: And then still and even the setup of that scene,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think once I read that Pamela
Speaker 1: des Bars took serious issue with the fact that that
Speaker 1: scene happens at all, sort of clarified for it, like
Speaker 1: he's already set up as the hero of that scene
Speaker 1: where it's like sort of implied that not only you know,
Speaker 1: as Penny Lane so devastated that she would you know, overdose,
Speaker 1: but also that she needs to be rescued by William,
Speaker 1: which she does. And then later Russell echoes that exact
Speaker 1: thing in that scene I don't like where he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think she wanted us to do our little interview,
Speaker 1: what do you think? And then it's also one of
Speaker 1: her friends is like, oh, I always told Penny not
Speaker 1: to let too many guys fall in love with her,
Speaker 1: but I guess I was wrong because one of them
Speaker 1: saved her life kind of like Mario style, and you're like, uh, like,
Speaker 1: I feel like at that point in the movie, you
Speaker 1: have enough about Penny that if we're talking movie logic.
Speaker 1: It would have made sense to me that she would
Speaker 1: have saved herself, because that's like where her narrative is
Speaker 1: heading anyways. But William has to be the hero in
Speaker 1: that moment, but he also assaults her immediately before, Like
Speaker 1: it's just it's a mess of a scorn horrid. How
Speaker 1: did Peter Frampton not say something? But again, it's like,
Speaker 1: I bet that scene wouldn't even be there if Pamela
Speaker 1: Dispars was a consultant, or would be there in a
Speaker 1: different form, in a different capacity. Yeah. Yeah. The last
Speaker 1: thing I want to touch on is the character coming
Speaker 1: out as a joke two thousands a two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what happens here is one of the other members
Speaker 1: of the band who we haven't spent much time with,
Speaker 1: so not Jeff or Russell. Um, I honestly don't even
Speaker 1: know which one it is, Larry or is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's Ed. It's Ed. It's Ed. Okay, it's Ed,
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't speak throughout the entirety of the movie.
Speaker 1: He literally says almost nothing. So what happens is they're
Speaker 1: on the is the scene on the plane they're hitting
Speaker 1: all this turbulence, they think they might crash and die,
Speaker 1: so they're again they're like kind of being very forward
Speaker 1: with their feelings and their secrets. And the button on
Speaker 1: that conversation is, um, who did we decide it was Larry?
Speaker 1: I think okay, ed name so Ed is like I'm gay.
Speaker 1: Everyone is like huh. And then immediately after that, the
Speaker 1: plane kind of like levels out, the turbulent stops, the
Speaker 1: light comes back on, like everything seems smooth, sailing through
Speaker 1: one lens, living his authentic truth saved everyone's life through magic.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's what camera Crow is trying
Speaker 1: to do exactly so, and then the character has this
Speaker 1: kind of like panicked look, which fair coming out is
Speaker 1: gay in nineteen seventy three certainly came with a lot
Speaker 1: of risk, But I feel like the coming out and
Speaker 1: then his panicked aftermath is it was a Joel played
Speaker 1: for comedy. Yeah for sure, Like, oh and now everyone
Speaker 1: knows he's gay, and isn't that funny? Is how the
Speaker 1: movie wants you to view that. Yes, On the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's really weird to find the connection because there's a
Speaker 1: joke in Mall Rats that Jason Lee ironically tells that's
Speaker 1: a very similar story about like people on an airplane,
Speaker 1: the plane crashes and they start essentially masturbating, and then
Speaker 1: the plane rights itself and everybody asks to look at
Speaker 1: each other knowing what they've done. Kevin Smith that in
Speaker 1: like ninety four, and then it happens in this movie
Speaker 1: in the sense that like it's a very similar and
Speaker 1: it starts Jason Lee. So I never liked know how
Speaker 1: to take that. If that's like an intentional comparison, that's
Speaker 1: so bizarre. But I mean the plane, the plane crash element,
Speaker 1: there's this this air of dark comedy in it. Right,
Speaker 1: considering how many rock stars did perish in plane crashes,
Speaker 1: do you wonder what their their last moments were, like,
Speaker 1: you know, was it a similar like confessional moment? And
Speaker 1: I think that at the time, like as as you said,
Speaker 1: two thousands is going to two thousand, like we this
Speaker 1: is the Will and Grace era still, you know, like
Speaker 1: we were still laughing at like we accepted that, you know,
Speaker 1: gay people or a thing, and we're still finding we're
Speaker 1: trying to find humor in this type of like revelation.
Speaker 1: But I think for me, again, context is key and
Speaker 1: knowing that it's nineteen seventy three. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: so they would have just kicked it out of the
Speaker 1: band after this, Like what is the discussion after this?
Speaker 1: Because there I mean, I'm doing just a casual search
Speaker 1: of my brain, and I don't know any rock stars
Speaker 1: that openly were gay in the nineteen seventies, especially considering
Speaker 1: this is like the era we're coming up on, like
Speaker 1: Anita Bryant and like harsh backlash for gay people. I
Speaker 1: don't I think that, like if anything, again, William leaves
Speaker 1: the story on the table, not that outing should be
Speaker 1: a thing, but like that would be like Ben functorres
Speaker 1: might be like, dude, wait a minute, one of these
Speaker 1: guys is gay, like the screw local band makes good,
Speaker 1: Like there would be repercussions. There would have to be
Speaker 1: a discussion because to be a major rock band came
Speaker 1: with a heavy dose of heterosexuality. That's why they had groupies.
Speaker 1: There weren't We weren't hearing stories about groups of dudes
Speaker 1: offering sex to rock stars, you know, in this time period,
Speaker 1: even though I'm sure there were rock stars that were gay,
Speaker 1: and there probably were groupies that were also, I mean,
Speaker 1: those stories aren't told, but there would have to say
Speaker 1: that they would have gotten off that plane and not
Speaker 1: looked at him, it would have changed everything, I think.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the movie when it's like
Speaker 1: every look at where everybody is like they show ed,
Speaker 1: He's just like, I'm with the bands still okay, So
Speaker 1: did you have to lie? Did you get a girlfriend?
Speaker 1: Like Elton John had to date women? Right, and he
Speaker 1: was the biggest star in the world. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: same time period, what was happening with Freddie Mercury? Freddie Mury?
Speaker 1: I think Queen was starting out in the mid seventies
Speaker 1: and even then, like I mean, Freddie was okay, well,
Speaker 1: but we still like people still made fun of him
Speaker 1: and there was still criticism and back like he just
Speaker 1: didn't give a fuck about it. Yeah. Well, I ultimately
Speaker 1: think that that joke takes place in two thousand in
Speaker 1: a movie that is supposed to be in nineteen seventy two. Like,
Speaker 1: I think that that is a very of the late nineties,
Speaker 1: well into the two thousands, just referencing queerness as a
Speaker 1: punchline with no serious thought about the year. Like I
Speaker 1: don't think Cameron Crowe was thinking about nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: when he wrote that Big used those oh, this is
Speaker 1: a fun button for the scene like, and it simply
Speaker 1: is not. And maybe he knows that now. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's always one of the things that frustrates me, especially
Speaker 1: about this new world of color blind casting in period pieces.
Speaker 1: We've just bypassed the discussion and gone straight to it's
Speaker 1: okay to see to have all these characters be different ethnicities,
Speaker 1: that's great. I'm glad that we're seeing something like Minx,
Speaker 1: and there's more black women and we're having more minorities.
Speaker 1: Minx is a great example. It's not just casting that way,
Speaker 1: it's also saying, what would the experience of a black
Speaker 1: woman in the nineteen seventies have been like? Because trust us,
Speaker 1: it would not have been the same as the experience
Speaker 1: of a white woman in the nineteen seventies. And I
Speaker 1: think that too many films and television shows have not
Speaker 1: wanted to reconcile with how different races would have been
Speaker 1: treated in the past. Again, not to piss on Bridgertin again,
Speaker 1: but Bridgerton is a great example. It's a great world
Speaker 1: to live in where you have a predominant cast of
Speaker 1: people of color. That's great, but you have to look
Speaker 1: at the era in some way, we can't. We have
Speaker 1: to talk about how the distinctions of having a black
Speaker 1: monarch would be in that time period, and to not
Speaker 1: discuss it with any nuance just seems disingenuous. And we're
Speaker 1: still not having those conversations. And it's twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: It's how many years since this movie came out. We're
Speaker 1: still not able to have those those discussions. The last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to touch on is how Cameron Crowe
Speaker 1: did have to sort of like answer for some of
Speaker 1: his crimes in this movie about twenty years later. I
Speaker 1: think it was like twenty nineteen or twenty that Almost
Speaker 1: Famous was being adapted into a Broadway musical and Cameron
Speaker 1: crow is very involved in the process, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of the criticism that have been made of the
Speaker 1: movie came up while this was being developed into a
Speaker 1: Broadway musical. He did defend Penny Lane against the manic
Speaker 1: pixie dreamgirl allegations. He said, I always thought that she
Speaker 1: was a soulless, selfless, loving person who was super into
Speaker 1: community and kept herself a little bit hidden, and also
Speaker 1: makes reference to the real women he was pulling from,
Speaker 1: which fair point, but they did not get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to weigh in on the characters. I feel like that
Speaker 1: is maybe perhaps a little deflective. But the positive thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention was that he does at least
Speaker 1: have the self awareness that he cuts the gang rape
Speaker 1: scene from the musical that does not appear. It seems
Speaker 1: as if he took the note that that is not
Speaker 1: a sequence that you would want to glorify, and I
Speaker 1: think that his response was to not include it in
Speaker 1: the musical adaptation at all. Wow, a man doing the
Speaker 1: bare minimum. I know, yeay, not including a gang rape
Speaker 1: scene in a lighthearted Broadway musical. So that's that. Does
Speaker 1: anyone have anything else they want to talk about? I
Speaker 1: will throw out that as flawed as this movie is,
Speaker 1: the Tiny Dancer sequence is still my favorite favorite movie
Speaker 1: moment of all all time on feminist icon Doris the Bus. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't believe any movie has has done the group
Speaker 1: sing with as much fun and beautifully filmed as it
Speaker 1: does in this movie, So much so that me, as
Speaker 1: a little film nerd in junior my junior year of
Speaker 1: high school, did a whole presentation about just that scene
Speaker 1: and Cameron Crowe's relationship to music and editing, and I
Speaker 1: knew I was a goner. So I give this movie,
Speaker 1: if anything, credit for that moment. Hell yeah, Well does
Speaker 1: this movie pass the Bechdel test? Ah? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: It does. It passes between at least Anita and Elaine
Speaker 1: at I think a few different points. They're arguing about
Speaker 1: Anita's direction in life and Elaine's opinions on when Christmas
Speaker 1: Shippy slid rated. It passes again at the end with
Speaker 1: that exchange that was so loaded, and I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I want to know more about this of like, I
Speaker 1: forgive you, I didn't apologize. I think it may pass
Speaker 1: the most between them, but I'm sure it passes at
Speaker 1: least a couple times between the band aids. Among the
Speaker 1: band aids, yeah, I feel like they are often talking
Speaker 1: about the male members of Stillwater, but yea or well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talk about music, question mark. I always forget to
Speaker 1: pay attention. Famously, I am almost famous for not remembering
Speaker 1: how to do our show. I was gonna say it
Speaker 1: might pass for that wonderful discussion between the band aids,
Speaker 1: Sapphire saying that she needs to get into a room
Speaker 1: and have a valium. I think that might that might
Speaker 1: count Mike. My favorite pass was when Anita says, feck you, mom,
Speaker 1: and then Elaine says her sister did it. She used
Speaker 1: the effort in Little Little Williams like I think she said, fete,
Speaker 1: what's missing the letter you? And then Elaine was like,
Speaker 1: I gotta hand it to him there, Yeah, Elane. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Lane, there's so much going on with Elane
Speaker 1: and I wish that. I mean, will you get a
Speaker 1: good amount of Elane and you get like a single
Speaker 1: parent in the seventies. We know what her job is,
Speaker 1: we know like stuff you wouldn't normally know in a
Speaker 1: movie like this. I will say that there is a
Speaker 1: sequence in the untitled version as we were talking about
Speaker 1: like what are her beliefs as this, like maybe she's
Speaker 1: a hippie. There is an extended discussion at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie where she stops somebody who is painting
Speaker 1: Mary xmis on a storefront and she goes on like
Speaker 1: a five minute diatribe about how it's either marry Christmas
Speaker 1: or happy Holidays because ords have meaning. That says a
Speaker 1: lot about her as a person. It does based on
Speaker 1: Cameron Crowe's own mother, It's true and I guess she
Speaker 1: was like on set a lot, Yeah, to keep any
Speaker 1: why couldn't you have high hired family dispars Everyone worked
Speaker 1: on this anyways. But let's get to the metric that
Speaker 1: really matters. The nipple scale shall exactly zero to five
Speaker 1: nipples based on how the movie fares when examining it
Speaker 1: through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh, well, I would probably
Speaker 1: only give this a nipple because for the potential that
Speaker 1: ends up being squandered. But as far as like Penny
Speaker 1: Lane and the other band aids circumstances and their situation,
Speaker 1: there's a very interesting story there that just simply goes
Speaker 1: almost entirely unexplored by Cameron Crow and the other kind
Speaker 1: of creative forces behind this movie, because it's more interested
Speaker 1: in telling, ultimately a story about what it's like to
Speaker 1: be a young teenage boy journalist swept up in the
Speaker 1: cool world of rock and roll. And even though those
Speaker 1: rock and rollers are pieces of shit who absolutely abuse
Speaker 1: women and are predators and creeps, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, aren't they still kind of cool? But ultim
Speaker 1: believe they deserve a redemption arc At the end, Russell
Speaker 1: actually was a pretty good guy who deserves all the
Speaker 1: success he got, which is how the movie feels. This
Speaker 1: is how the movie. They're like, he's yeah, he was flawed.
Speaker 1: But would I hire him to consult on my movie
Speaker 1: in thirty years I guess I would. And yeah, the question, yeah,
Speaker 1: we never know if like Russell and Leslie, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's eluded that maybe they aren't together. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It could very well be that she decided after a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks that their toxic relationship is worth keeping.
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe that he never cheated again. But again,
Speaker 1: to go back to Roger Daldry's autobiography, he could also
Speaker 1: have just been the guy that, in twenty years or
Speaker 1: thirty years would write a Stillwater biography where he says,
Speaker 1: I have illegitimate children, but my wife understood that what
Speaker 1: happens on the road stays on the road, and we're
Speaker 1: not going to talk about all of the cheating I did.
Speaker 1: I have three children from it. But you know, you
Speaker 1: don't need to know the details. You're like, sir, sir,
Speaker 1: there this is I mean, yeah, this is like anything
Speaker 1: I hear about rock history inherently stresses me out, which
Speaker 1: is why maybe this is just like not my genre,
Speaker 1: because you do have to like like you're saying Christ
Speaker 1: and like compartmentalize so many different parts of your brain
Speaker 1: to be able to engage with it where it's trying
Speaker 1: to come at you. It's like my mom grew up
Speaker 1: in the seventies and she always tells me stories and
Speaker 1: they always culminate with me saying how did you not die?
Speaker 1: Like how are you not on a block curtain? Because
Speaker 1: every story is horrible? And she says to me all
Speaker 1: the time, if you were there, just got it. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's like the thing is that, like
Speaker 1: if you lived in that time, it makes more sense
Speaker 1: than us as outside observers. So maybe that's Cameron Crowe's
Speaker 1: whole thing, Like you had to be there, man, Like
Speaker 1: you know, it's like me trying to explain the beanie
Speaker 1: baby thing to somebody likes you had to be there.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't explain that to you now. I
Speaker 1: mean you missed it. Oh I've tried to explain it
Speaker 1: to people and no one fucking gets it there. But no,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And but again that that would
Speaker 1: only be elevated by him hiring Pamela des Bars because
Speaker 1: she was also there. And it's like, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, the real winner is Pamela des Bars.
Speaker 1: I think we all agreed yes, because she's she's been
Speaker 1: plugging her this entire Yes. In conclusion, the movie's failure
Speaker 1: to understand various nuances across a bunch of different topics,
Speaker 1: most horrifyingly, the movie's failure to understand consent. So yeah,
Speaker 1: one nipple for the female characters we do get who
Speaker 1: I would have liked to see more of potential was squandered.
Speaker 1: One nipple all give to Doris the Bus. I'll give it,
Speaker 1: I guess a nipple and a half. I'll I'll skew
Speaker 1: you up a little bit, and I'll bisect a nipple
Speaker 1: for because I do think that like Penny Lane is
Speaker 1: a very rich character who is um, I think miss misused.
Speaker 1: I would be interested to see the other cut in full,
Speaker 1: where you do get more context for what her history is. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm just like bringing my Litlita
Speaker 1: podcast up to the to the table here, but I
Speaker 1: am always like interested in a young woman who is
Speaker 1: sort of just being projected upon like fucking wildfire and
Speaker 1: has to develop a way to navigate that. UM. Like
Speaker 1: young women, especially the further back you go historically, like
Speaker 1: are always projected upon and viewed through this very through
Speaker 1: the fucking mail gaze. God, And now I sound like
Speaker 1: a freshman in college. But in all serios, like, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that Penny Lane slash Lady has to
Speaker 1: develop a persona in order to navigate the world with
Speaker 1: some feeling of power and belonging, and of course that
Speaker 1: is still not going to be enough in a place
Speaker 1: where she's not being looked out for by anybody really,
Speaker 1: And I think that there's just there's just more there
Speaker 1: than Cameron Crowe was interested in exploring, and she was
Speaker 1: I think misused in like you're describing Kristen as like
Speaker 1: the Cameron Crowe woman, where ultimately her purpose is to
Speaker 1: show Russell and William that life is epic and boys
Speaker 1: can be forgiven for all of their trespasses and it's
Speaker 1: all good. And I just wanted you to hang out
Speaker 1: the whole time, ignore all the assaults and my lack
Speaker 1: of ability to navigate the world with a sense of identity.
Speaker 1: But I think that that was there. It just he
Speaker 1: just wasn't interest did in it, which is frustrating. I
Speaker 1: like Anita a lot. I wish that there was more Anita.
Speaker 1: Maybe not in the framework of that story, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have worked, But I just thought it was a good
Speaker 1: performance and a good character. I like Lane. I wish
Speaker 1: that we could have understood her a little more as well.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, there's no shortage of
Speaker 1: interesting women in this narrative, and I just feel like
Speaker 1: they're not really focused on by the story, and that
Speaker 1: is a bummer. Also the consent, I mean, and then
Speaker 1: I'll go everything you said gaitly about the consent stuff,
Speaker 1: which is complete dogshit and forgivable. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: on the part of the filmmaker prioritizing bringing on consultants
Speaker 1: who would not bring any sort of critical lens to
Speaker 1: this era, I feel like it's kind of a misstep
Speaker 1: on his part. So given a nipple and a half,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give one to lady and I'll give
Speaker 1: the other half to Anita. Nice Christ, how about you?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I mean, I I compartmentalize a lot with this.
Speaker 1: But if if we're looking at it, you know, just
Speaker 1: watching it, especially somebody watching it today, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those moments in time where I'm like yeah,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand, man, it was great. I mean
Speaker 1: it gets it gets it gets a two. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I'd give it higher just purely off of the nostalgia
Speaker 1: and you know how it affected me as a person
Speaker 1: and as a writer, Like it's it's up there with
Speaker 1: like you know, I tell people the two movies that
Speaker 1: define me are like my girl in this uh you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of like who I am as a person. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, yeah, I mean reading the
Speaker 1: stuff that I've read, like growing as a person. It's
Speaker 1: one of those movies, you know, much like Garden State
Speaker 1: is a great example going back and like being like,
Speaker 1: oh god, I have real issues with this now, um
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean as a piece of film,
Speaker 1: I still look at it and I still you know,
Speaker 1: the soundtrack and the time period in the la story,
Speaker 1: like the acting. It's I love it for all of
Speaker 1: those things. I and I have to put all of
Speaker 1: the problems in a in a separate little container where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I love it, but uh and the butt
Speaker 1: gets longer every time I talk about it. Um, So
Speaker 1: I love it, but you know, Cameron Crow and I
Speaker 1: know it's got problems, and I am glad that Cameron
Speaker 1: Crowe seems to know it has problems. Now. That is
Speaker 1: like again, a fun, bare minimum thing to to observe of,
Speaker 1: like someone who's able to engage with the criticism of
Speaker 1: their work over time. H is not nothing. However, the
Speaker 1: crimes of Aloha will never be forgotten. Um all right, um, Kristen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. We're
Speaker 1: a big fan. We cite your writing frequently, so it's
Speaker 1: so nice to have you finally on the show. Come
Speaker 1: back anytime. I mean I'm always around to talk mess
Speaker 1: and feminist them and where the two intertwine. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to team up again. I'm ready. So you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys were my first like la event that I
Speaker 1: ever I ever saw came to our show at the Ruby.
Speaker 1: I forget which movie it was, but it feels so
Speaker 1: long ago. I mean it must have been like maybe
Speaker 1: three or four years ago. Yeah, it was a robe
Speaker 1: in Michelle. Oh maybe God yes, yeah, wow it was
Speaker 1: a simpler time. Yes, I've come full circle. So yeah,
Speaker 1: well here you are, and we'll have you back. Where
Speaker 1: can people um follow you online? Check out your writing,
Speaker 1: check out your book. Yeah, so I'm I'm over at
Speaker 1: The Wrap The Wrap dot com you can search the
Speaker 1: Rap Kristin Lopez. You'll find my my writing there. I'm
Speaker 1: on all the social media platforms, probably to my detriment,
Speaker 1: but I'm most active on Twitter at Journey's Underscore Film
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Kristin Lopez eighty eight. And yes, but
Speaker 1: have you read the book fifty two literary Gems that
Speaker 1: inspired our classic or favorite Holmes is out merged seventh.
Speaker 1: You can buy that wherever you get books. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of authors hype buying independent, but honestly, I
Speaker 1: will just be happy for anybody who buys it anywhere.
Speaker 1: So it's wherever you can get your books. And I
Speaker 1: hope to do a lot of stuff in the LA
Speaker 1: area when the book comes out. So if you're you're
Speaker 1: around and you buy it, let me know ooh amazing.
Speaker 1: We'll be there and you can follow us on social
Speaker 1: media Twitter and Instagram. At Bechtel Cast, you can scoot
Speaker 1: over to our Patreon aka Patreon. It's five bucks a month.
Speaker 1: It gets you two bonus episodes every month. That's at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Bechtel Cash. That's where you can
Speaker 1: find the Pinocchio Wars episode that Kaitlin was dumping on
Speaker 1: earlier zamecas found dead ditch all right, you can also
Speaker 1: get our merch at public dot com, slash v Bechtel
Speaker 1: cast And with that, let's let's let's load onto Doris
Speaker 1: and get the fuck out of here. What are you saying?
Speaker 1: I'm a golden god jumps into pool, Bye bye,