Speaker 1: On the Bell 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 in best
Speaker 1: start changing it with the beck Del cast. Hey thirteen
Speaker 1: year old Jamie. It's me, thirteen year old Caitlin Hey,
Speaker 1: thirteen year old Caitlin is thirteen year old Jamie. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm about to who how do we okay? Listeners? We
Speaker 1: were struggling with an intro, who is okay? Here's a question,
Speaker 1: the central question of thirteen I thought when I was thirteen,
Speaker 1: I was wrong, is who's the bad guy? Did not
Speaker 1: occur to me that the bad guy was society? But I,
Speaker 1: you know, of the two of us, who is the
Speaker 1: bad influence? Good question? I know, Oh my gosh, well
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. I actually now right now I'm
Speaker 1: really thinking about it. We we have kind of equal
Speaker 1: amounts of like we both have chaotic instincts, but they're
Speaker 1: like not the same instincts. So I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on like there's certain things that you're the bad influence on,
Speaker 1: and then there's certain things on the beat. And that's
Speaker 1: why we create a whole bad person because one bad
Speaker 1: person collectively Hell yeah, because I was gonna say, like,
Speaker 1: we have equal amounts of like tattoos, because tattoos equals bad.
Speaker 1: Tattoos are bad. Do you what is your peers? I
Speaker 1: don't have. I wanted a belly ring so bad in
Speaker 1: middle school. It was physically painful. And my cousin Tammy,
Speaker 1: who everyone in the Zoom Call has met, we went
Speaker 1: to um eye Hoop with her and had minions breakfast
Speaker 1: ever of it. Some really some real bad girls ship
Speaker 1: at the eye hop. But she was allowed to get
Speaker 1: a belly ring and I wasn't. And it was devastating,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, and it was she was like even we
Speaker 1: were both such like goody two shoes, but she was
Speaker 1: even goody two shoes or so I think my aunt
Speaker 1: was like, we gotta give this girl some edge. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can get a belly y. I love that for Tammy,
Speaker 1: shout out. The only thing I have pierced are my ears,
Speaker 1: but I have like double piercings in the lobes and
Speaker 1: then like a cartilage piercing. So cartilage, okay, cartilage is
Speaker 1: like that's cool. And it was the first piercing I
Speaker 1: got before I even got my lobes pierced, which is
Speaker 1: kind of wild. You went directly for the bone. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean the cartilage. But yeah, okay, oh okay, Nerd,
Speaker 1: there there's a difference. Actually, thank you, resident biologist Kate Rent.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. You're so welcome. That one's painful, though, it's
Speaker 1: so painful, and it was like effected for a year,
Speaker 1: and because I got it done at Claire's obviously and
Speaker 1: it was just not the best experience. Then I got
Speaker 1: my lobes pierced a few years later, which it's nothing comparatively.
Speaker 1: I don't like being in physical pain even for one second.
Speaker 1: And so I my lobe holes uh closed like a
Speaker 1: year ago, and I have yet to go to Claris
Speaker 1: to resolve the issue. My mom and I have this
Speaker 1: I like, this is my very mother daughter episode and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna start the show. My mom used to
Speaker 1: love to do this thing when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: where if I was getting something exciting done, my mom
Speaker 1: would be like, what if I want up to that?
Speaker 1: And so when I went to Claire's to get my
Speaker 1: lobes pierced, and I think I was like six seven
Speaker 1: something like that, she just like we were at Claire's
Speaker 1: at the Westgate Mall in Brocton. And then she was like,
Speaker 1: she was like talking to this sixteen year old. This
Speaker 1: is my memory, So she's more of a villain in
Speaker 1: my memory than probably what's happening in real life. But
Speaker 1: she's talking to like the fifteen year old who worked
Speaker 1: at Clari's, and she's like, should I get my ears? Piers?
Speaker 1: Should I get my car artilage? Piers as like, MoMA,
Speaker 1: this is my day. And she did and she still
Speaker 1: has it. Jill stole your thunder. Jill goes hard. Jill
Speaker 1: goes hard. She's like, she's like a little girl. You
Speaker 1: think you're gonna get your lobes, Piers, Well, guess what
Speaker 1: mommy's going for the cart? All right, we might cut
Speaker 1: that from the episode. It's hard to say. Come to
Speaker 1: the Becktel cast. My name is Caitlin. Sorry that was exciting.
Speaker 1: Well again, we are together, one whole person, so we
Speaker 1: do have to speak in unison. Yes, take me orantis.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll figure it out. We'll workshop it. We'll
Speaker 1: workshop it. There's time. This is our show, so where
Speaker 1: we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the
Speaker 1: Bechtel tests. Simply as a jumping off point. The Bechtel
Speaker 1: Test being, of course, a media metric created by a
Speaker 1: queer cartoonist, Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace test
Speaker 1: that has many different variations, but the one we use
Speaker 1: requires that two people of a marginalized gender have names
Speaker 1: speak to each other about something other than a man,
Speaker 1: and ideally that conversation is like substantial, narratively relevant, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Not a huge deal in this movie. There's there's a lot,
Speaker 1: there's interaction between teen girls and women. It's really not
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, And we have an incredible returning guest
Speaker 1: today to cover this two thousand and three, Katherine Hardwick
Speaker 1: Nicky read Evan rachel Wood classic. Please let's get her
Speaker 1: in the room, shall we, Caitlin, Let's do it. She's
Speaker 1: a writer, actor, and video essayist. You remember her from
Speaker 1: our episode on Edwards scissor Hands. It's Maggie may Fish.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Welcome. Sorry I meant to say, um, thirteen
Speaker 1: year old Maggie may Fishing on this episode. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm already sweating just as I remembered. Uh, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: it's so great to be back. Welcome back this is
Speaker 1: and and what a what a vibe shift for for
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, although both like you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like trying to be like Edgy in a way, a
Speaker 1: lot of angst, a lot of angst. Each director had
Speaker 1: their own approach. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very um excited, confused,
Speaker 1: like honestly going into preparing for this episode. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about our experience with this movie in a second,
Speaker 1: But this is a really really tricky movie to talk about.
Speaker 1: The more you learn about the production, the more you
Speaker 1: learn about like it's I'm coming in with my opinions
Speaker 1: a little malleable, and the more I watch that there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of interesting retrospective work done, Like both
Speaker 1: lead actors and Catherine Hardwick have been super open about
Speaker 1: talking about this movie almost twenty years down the line. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just there's there's a lot to discuss. So to begin,
Speaker 1: Maggie may Fish, what is your history with the movie? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I felt like my experience of this movie is very iconic. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was a cool girl having to sleep over in
Speaker 1: her very fancy house that was close to the beach
Speaker 1: as all the cool houses where and all the cool
Speaker 1: people lived. Yeah, she was turning thirteen sleepover. We watched
Speaker 1: this movie. I think we also rented it behind her
Speaker 1: mom's back. I think, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. When
Speaker 1: this movie came out, we definitely were because yeah, we
Speaker 1: were like younger than thirty. We were not allowed to
Speaker 1: watch it. It was not allowed, but the movie was
Speaker 1: called thirteen and they were sticking their tongues out. You
Speaker 1: did have to watch it. Yes, it felt very um
Speaker 1: underground in a way. You know, it was like a
Speaker 1: movie for people our age quote unquote, even though it's not.
Speaker 1: And then watching it, I read who that's my big question?
Speaker 1: Who was this movie for? Who is this for? Who's
Speaker 1: this movie for? Um? Yeah, I do remember, and it
Speaker 1: came back to me as we were watching it. I
Speaker 1: remember the overall feeling of being like, how are we
Speaker 1: supposed to feel about the mom? And are we getting
Speaker 1: creepy vibes from her? Or is this just she's jealous?
Speaker 1: Like if we were all very confused. Um, none of
Speaker 1: us had a relationship with our moms like this, and
Speaker 1: though we all had very complicated relationships with our mothers. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah that was just upon first impression. Uh, And
Speaker 1: we did feel very cool watching it. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what that Jamie. What's your history in relationship with
Speaker 1: the movie. UM, I don't remember exactly how we got
Speaker 1: our hands on this movie, because this movie, I think
Speaker 1: we probably I probably saw it like maybe the year
Speaker 1: whenever it was like became available at I'm guessing Blockbuster.
Speaker 1: But I I very clearly remember watching this with one
Speaker 1: of my closest female friends who was like a neighborhood
Speaker 1: friend who I had a very close, um, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit unhealthy relationship with. Um. Yeah, I will not
Speaker 1: name her. She's doing great now, she's the best. But
Speaker 1: we were super close growing up and like especially like
Speaker 1: in middle school, we liked dance classes together, we did
Speaker 1: after school stuff together. We like watch things we weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to watch. We weren't doing like thirteen Ship, but
Speaker 1: we were like, we were like we could do that,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I don't know, it was just like
Speaker 1: a very like my close friend who I loved, sleeping
Speaker 1: in the same bed as and we would watch Degrassi
Speaker 1: and thirteen is basically like X Game de Grassy and
Speaker 1: so like we were like, oh, we thought it goes
Speaker 1: there on the grassy, which was the tagline at the time. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what, thirteen, It actually scared us. But also it
Speaker 1: was like that sort of thing, like when you encounter
Speaker 1: something like this when you're at that age, and I'm
Speaker 1: guessing I was probably eleven or twelve when we watched it.
Speaker 1: Um Like, there's a part of this movie that makes
Speaker 1: you want to do everything in it, and that's a
Speaker 1: part that I'm very critical of. And we talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show before. It's like I had the
Speaker 1: same kind of feeling towards the Grassy, Like there's certain
Speaker 1: things that happened in this movie that I think are
Speaker 1: like wildly unethical to show on screen, and it's anyone
Speaker 1: I was looking through stuff at the time. It just
Speaker 1: like this movie was co written by a thirteen year old.
Speaker 1: It's absurd to think that thirteen year olds would not
Speaker 1: find this movie. And so in some ways, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is really unethical, and then in other ways it
Speaker 1: was a very effective cautionary tale about stuff that like
Speaker 1: I don't know again, like I was a super goody
Speaker 1: two shoes, and like watching this movie, I almost definitely
Speaker 1: didn't hadn't heard of or didn't understand most of what
Speaker 1: they were encountering or a lot of what they were encountering.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I only watched it like once
Speaker 1: or two, I mean for as long as the blockbuster
Speaker 1: rental lasted. But we like talked about it and we
Speaker 1: were like, who's Eavy, Who's Tracy, blah blah blah, Like
Speaker 1: we were really into it. And then I didn't revisit
Speaker 1: it for years and years, And it was a wild
Speaker 1: thing to rewatch because but the first time this came out,
Speaker 1: for example, I didn't know who Vanessa Hudgins was. She
Speaker 1: wasn't famous, and now we know. Now we all know
Speaker 1: who Vanessa Hudgens. And the princess switched herself. She really
Speaker 1: did something there, and uh yeah, it was like this movie,
Speaker 1: I have such complicated feelings towards it, and as I
Speaker 1: was preparing for this episode, I was struggling to untangle
Speaker 1: my middle school self and analyze seeing it as a
Speaker 1: crusty adult. So let's see how this goes. Caitlin, what's
Speaker 1: your history with the movie thirteen? Well, I did see
Speaker 1: it not long after it came out. I think, like
Speaker 1: also when it became available to rent on like DVD,
Speaker 1: maybe even VHS back then that covers hard to ignore.
Speaker 1: I really got three. It's so like scrap booky looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved it. Um So, I was like sixteen or seventeen, sixteen,
Speaker 1: I think when this movie came out, so I was,
Speaker 1: you know, still an impressionable teenager, but um older than
Speaker 1: the characters. Thirteen year olds are famously feral. I feel
Speaker 1: like by the time you're sixteen, you're a little less feral, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it just depends on the person.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're more feral by then. Some people are, that's true,
Speaker 1: and some people stay feral their whole lives. And you
Speaker 1: look at but um, I was also, uh, I was.
Speaker 1: I was quite the goody two shoes myself. So I
Speaker 1: found this movie like understandable but also disturbing at the time,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the same impression I have of
Speaker 1: it now. I find this movie more stressful to watch
Speaker 1: than Uncut Gems. I guess that that is like the
Speaker 1: go too stressful movie didn't compare it to but for
Speaker 1: like different reasons obviously. I mean, I will say, before
Speaker 1: preparing for this episode, I knew nothing about the production
Speaker 1: background about Believing, and I sort of went into this
Speaker 1: rewatched thinking this movie had to have been strictly a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale, like in the way that I feel like
Speaker 1: every generation has its like grand cautionary tale. I know
Speaker 1: that my mom gave me a copy of her Generations
Speaker 1: Cautionary tail, Go ask Alice Ship. Yeah, I wrote that
Speaker 1: book right when I was a kid, and like that
Speaker 1: for for listeners not in the know of how go
Speaker 1: ask Alice culture, it's very bizarre. It is also a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale about a young girl. I don't remember how
Speaker 1: old she is in the book, but um, it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be like an anonymous journal from like the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies of a young girl who gets into drugs and
Speaker 1: sex very young it destroys her life. Later on it
Speaker 1: was revealed that it was not an anonymous journal by
Speaker 1: a twelve year old girl who I think canonically dies. Um,
Speaker 1: it was written by an old lady under an assumed
Speaker 1: name to scare young girls out of doing anything. It's
Speaker 1: far more complicated than that. But this is like a
Speaker 1: recurring I feel like every generation has a story like this.
Speaker 1: But the kind of like wrench in that for thirteen
Speaker 1: is that Nicky Reid was extremely involved in the writing
Speaker 1: of this, So there was a thirteen year old girl
Speaker 1: and it's like based off of her life, right, and
Speaker 1: it's like, so a thirteen year old girl's perspective is
Speaker 1: like absolutely cannon to this movie. And rewatching it back,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, I feel like that actually does
Speaker 1: come through Again, we'll get into the ethics of it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is a really sticky, interesting movie. Indeed,
Speaker 1: shall I recap it? Yeah? Good luck. I love this
Speaker 1: part of the podcast. By the way, Caitlin, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for doing it every time. Truly, she's braver
Speaker 1: than the truths for this. Oh my goodness, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Um. Well, actually, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: first and then I'll come back and recap. And we're
Speaker 1: back and here they are with the famous Caitlin. First,
Speaker 1: I'll do a content slash trigger warning for everything, like
Speaker 1: for for everything self harm, teen drug use, teens, sex,
Speaker 1: and sexuality that's mostly suggested and not but like some
Speaker 1: of it is kind of shown on screen. What else,
Speaker 1: I mean, discussion of sexual abuse and physical abuse, of
Speaker 1: depictions of overdose, kind of name it. It's referenced or
Speaker 1: happens in the movie. Right. Yeah, So the movie opens,
Speaker 1: we meet two girls who are presumably thirteen years of age.
Speaker 1: One of them is Tracy played by Evan rachel Wood.
Speaker 1: We see her friend also, who will turn out to
Speaker 1: be e V. Samora. They are inhaling like keyboard cleaner,
Speaker 1: like some kind of thing from an aerosol can. They're
Speaker 1: getting high. They are punching each other because they can't
Speaker 1: feel anything, and they're trying to see if they can
Speaker 1: like sense paint. We then cut to four months earlier.
Speaker 1: Tracy is a you know, quote unquote normal kid. She
Speaker 1: comes from kind of like a lower middle class background,
Speaker 1: working class background. We meet Tracy's mom, Melanie played by
Speaker 1: Holly Hunter. Did not know who Holly Hunter was. The
Speaker 1: first time I saw this movie totally forgot she was
Speaker 1: in it. I did because Oh, Brother Were Art though,
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite movies at the time, So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're so cool. Oh my gosh. Melanie is a single mom.
Speaker 1: She works as a hairdresser. She's in a twelve step program.
Speaker 1: We also meet Tracy's older brother, Mason played by Brady Corbett,
Speaker 1: who goes to school with Tracy. It seems like he's
Speaker 1: like a year or two older. We also meet Tracy's
Speaker 1: friend Noel that's Vanessa Hudgens Wild how Vanessa Hudgens was
Speaker 1: like just They're like, oh, we need a good girl.
Speaker 1: We gotta get Vanessa Hudgens in the mix, like she
Speaker 1: was so good girl Cannon in this era high school
Speaker 1: musical much the Best Girl, Find Me a Better Girl.
Speaker 1: We see Tracy and Noel on their first day of
Speaker 1: first day, I'm not sure a day of seventh grade.
Speaker 1: There's another girl at school, Evie Zamora, played by Nicky Reid,
Speaker 1: who again co wrote the screenplay. This movie is based
Speaker 1: on her experience from like ages twelve to thirteen. Also,
Speaker 1: the use of the name Evie. I was like, okay, Bible, okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Is there a biblical character named I've never
Speaker 1: read them? Well, here is Eve, the o g tempest.
Speaker 1: Do I tell them this story? Have heard of Eve?
Speaker 1: I That my guess is because this movie does makes
Speaker 1: a lot of broad writing choices, that the use of
Speaker 1: Eve was intentional because she goes into a garden and
Speaker 1: then there's like a snake there and the snake is like,
Speaker 1: eat this apple. And he was like, okay, well, I
Speaker 1: feel like a story right, That's exactly how it goes.
Speaker 1: It's like the moral is um women are bad um.
Speaker 1: Except for Vanessa Hudgens, except for Vanessa Hudgens, who gets
Speaker 1: written out in midway that scene where poor sweetie Vanessa
Speaker 1: Hudgens is in her like puppy shirt or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it's like Evan Rachel would hang out with me and
Speaker 1: they're like look and then just like bail on her.
Speaker 1: You're like Vanessa sad. And then she goes to a
Speaker 1: ski lodge with her family and her life changes because
Speaker 1: she meets to think that that's can and she's like,
Speaker 1: I have to my only friend broke up with me.
Speaker 1: I have to move to East High exactly. Okay. So
Speaker 1: there's this girl Evie. She's like very popular, she's cool.
Speaker 1: All the boys like her, all the girls think she's
Speaker 1: super cool. Tracy is feeling very insecure about like her
Speaker 1: clothes and just sort of her whole persona because some
Speaker 1: like girls make a mean comment about what she's wearing.
Speaker 1: So she comes home, she like throws away all of
Speaker 1: her barbies and stuffed animals, and she wants to be
Speaker 1: more mature, more grown up. And part of this is
Speaker 1: her approaching ev at school and like trying to befriend her,
Speaker 1: and Evie is like, why don't you call me after
Speaker 1: school and we can go shopping on Melrose And I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess we're in Los Angeles. Ever heard of it there?
Speaker 1: This is already where I feel like me and Tracy
Speaker 1: diverged in a wood at that time, because I would
Speaker 1: never be have enough to talk to a popular girl,
Speaker 1: especially if she then gave me a fake phone number.
Speaker 1: I would um, I would walk into the ocean if
Speaker 1: that had happened. Yes, But this does not deter Tracy,
Speaker 1: and she goes and somehow knows exactly where Evie is
Speaker 1: shopping at this exact moment, and she goes to this
Speaker 1: store because she does try to call Evie and like
Speaker 1: the numbers not in service, so it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess Evie gave her the wrong phone number on purpose,
Speaker 1: question Mark. But Tracy goes to find her, and she
Speaker 1: watches Evie and her friend shoplift, which Tracy is like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is new territory. But then she
Speaker 1: goes and steals a woman's wallet at a bus stop
Speaker 1: or she was having a bad day, she was having
Speaker 1: a bad day. You get here and then her wallet
Speaker 1: with and it's full of cash. So Tracy Evie and
Speaker 1: Evie's friend Asterriid. I think we learned her name is.
Speaker 1: They go to say Chers and buy a bunch of shoes.
Speaker 1: I know the Sketchers they go to. Do you guys
Speaker 1: know the Sketchers. I think it's still there. If it's
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Boulevard Sketchers, I'm like, I've browsed there, Okay,
Speaker 1: browsed there. Wow. I can't believe I went to the
Speaker 1: Sketchers from thirteen. I didn't even know. Amazing A great story.
Speaker 1: Um So back home. Tracy's mom Melanie her on again,
Speaker 1: off again boyfriend Brady played by what's the guy's name?
Speaker 1: Jeremy's sister. How do we know who Jeremy's sister is?
Speaker 1: Every time I see him, I go oh yeah, oh
Speaker 1: yeah him? Is that? What is he famous for? How
Speaker 1: do we know who? Oh? He was in six ft Under?
Speaker 1: That doesn't help because I didn't want to show. But
Speaker 1: I think that that's what people know him from. Oh
Speaker 1: he's in clueless. I think that's what I recognize him from.
Speaker 1: As Elton. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes he's the
Speaker 1: guy that you're supposed to want share with and then
Speaker 1: he turns out to be an asshole and he bails
Speaker 1: on her. Right, that's Jeremy Sister, got it. Yes, he
Speaker 1: is an addict, like recovering addict. Who um. It's suggested
Speaker 1: that like he and Melanie know each other from the
Speaker 1: twelve step program, he also seems to like bail on
Speaker 1: Melanie and kind of only be around when it's convenient
Speaker 1: for him. So Tracy really resents him and the way
Speaker 1: that he treats her mom and also has been like
Speaker 1: exposed to him withdrawing from drugs in a way that
Speaker 1: I think was really scary for her or position as. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way this movie treats addiction I thought was interesting,
Speaker 1: like where it's like you can totally understand that from
Speaker 1: a however old she was then eleven or twelve year
Speaker 1: olds perspective, that's a really scary thing to see. And
Speaker 1: also that that's not that doesn't make Jeremy Sister a
Speaker 1: bad person. Like, Yeah, So Tracy and ev get closer.
Speaker 1: Evi turns out to sell acid. She and Tracy go
Speaker 1: to a park, they get high, they're kissing some boys.
Speaker 1: They're spending more and more time with each other, and
Speaker 1: Tracy is spending less and less time with her mom,
Speaker 1: less and less time with Vanessa Hudgens. That's a red flag,
Speaker 1: a bat path. I feel like, so Evie is sort
Speaker 1: of like the Vanessa Hudgens character and princess switched to
Speaker 1: the bad what was her name? Fiona? And honestly amazing
Speaker 1: that you remember that. I think that that is true.
Speaker 1: I would not have gotten that with a gun to
Speaker 1: my head. And then Vanessa Hudgens character in the movie
Speaker 1: thirteen is Vanessa Hudgens, the Chicago Baker, the worst Vanessa Hudgens,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, the flop Vanessa Hudgens. I
Speaker 1: hate that the main Vanessa Hudgens is like the worst one.
Speaker 1: It's like, give me more bad British accent Vanessa Hudgens
Speaker 1: where she's what I'm saying, yeah, exactly, heart degree. So Tracy,
Speaker 1: you know, she's again she's kind of bailing on her
Speaker 1: her like former friends and family. She's slacking off at school,
Speaker 1: she's dressing more suggestively, she gets her tongue pierced, and
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, Evie perhaps is a bad influence on Tracy.
Speaker 1: And then Evie confides in Melanie that Evie's guardian, this
Speaker 1: woman Brooke, who is Evie's older cousin that Brook's boyfriend
Speaker 1: is physically abusive to Evie. And then this is kind
Speaker 1: of the start of a relationship between Evie and Melanie
Speaker 1: that we can unpack. But there's some kind of there's
Speaker 1: a dynamic happening here that's worth discussing. Every complicated to me.
Speaker 1: The movie starts to get like, this is where yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where I come undone. You're just like,
Speaker 1: but but ev essentially moves in to the family home
Speaker 1: because everyone is allowed to move into the family home, right,
Speaker 1: Because there's a friend of Melanie's who is played by
Speaker 1: the same actor who plays Bella Swan's mom in Twilight,
Speaker 1: which this is like ground zero Catherine Hardwick, which is
Speaker 1: why I never connected that. That's why Nicki Reid is
Speaker 1: a cullin. Yes, she plays Rosalie. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's how I feel like she became super super famous.
Speaker 1: But I I totally forgot that, Like that is why
Speaker 1: she probably got cast in that movie. Wild. Didn't even
Speaker 1: make that connection until like two days ago. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize and we'll get into it. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Nikki Reid like grew up with Catherine hart
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess why would you infer that? But
Speaker 1: like their relationship is very close and like still I
Speaker 1: mean I watched a bunch of interviews from like just
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. It seems like the three
Speaker 1: of them Evan Rachel would Nicky Reid, and um, Katherine
Speaker 1: Hardwick are still very close, which I think is sweet.
Speaker 1: But then also the ethics of this movie are so weird. Okay,
Speaker 1: circle bam. The point is though, that, um, that Melanie
Speaker 1: is extremely accommodating and whenever someone needs help, she kind
Speaker 1: of bends over backwards to help them. So she has
Speaker 1: this friend who has a young daughter who uh stay
Speaker 1: with them for a few days, and she's again a
Speaker 1: hairdresser who seems to like feed all of her clients
Speaker 1: all the time. She's just very accommodating. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to like love mel She really cares about people.
Speaker 1: But then sometimes it's like but this, you're you're fostering
Speaker 1: and not help the environment for your kids. But also
Speaker 1: sometimes you're like, but I get why she wants to
Speaker 1: help people out. No, yeah, she's complicated. Meanwhile, Tracy's dad,
Speaker 1: who is obviously like separated from Melanie, he bails on
Speaker 1: spending time with Tracy, which upsets her, as does Melanie
Speaker 1: continuing to see this guy Brady. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff with Tracy's family that is upsetting to her,
Speaker 1: and Tracy's relationship with Melanie is getting more and more tense.
Speaker 1: We're also seeing like Eve trying to get closer to
Speaker 1: Tracy's mom in this weird and arguably manipulative way a
Speaker 1: lot of times. Um we also see Tracy self harming.
Speaker 1: We'll go back to that because I really don't think
Speaker 1: they should have shown that you can address that without
Speaker 1: showing thirteen year old how to do that. Get Then
Speaker 1: this guy Hobby wants to like hang out with Slash
Speaker 1: go out with Tracy, and so he and some other
Speaker 1: guy go over to Evie's place and hang out with
Speaker 1: Tracy and Evie. We see the two kind of pairs
Speaker 1: of them making out, and then it's later implied that
Speaker 1: Tracy gives Hobby oral sex. Things are continuing to get
Speaker 1: more and more out of hand. Tracy and Evie like
Speaker 1: sneak out when they're supposed to be at the movies.
Speaker 1: Tracy gets all funked up. She's been like experimenting with
Speaker 1: drugs this whole time, drugs and alcohol. Her brother Mason
Speaker 1: catches her. He's ready to tell on her. He like
Speaker 1: slut shames her things like hit critical mass at home,
Speaker 1: where Melanie finds out a bunch of stuff. She finds
Speaker 1: out about Tracy's different piercings. Tracy's really acting out, and
Speaker 1: Melanie wants Tracy to go live with her dad a bit,
Speaker 1: but he's too busy with work and just kind of
Speaker 1: absent overall. He's not able to take her in. And
Speaker 1: then Tracy is like, well, I think I would get
Speaker 1: along better with everyone if Evie could just live here,
Speaker 1: which very much puts Melanie on the spot, but because
Speaker 1: she's so kind of like accommodating, she doesn't like challenge
Speaker 1: this at first. Um then we cut to the scene
Speaker 1: we saw at the beginning where Tracy and Evie are
Speaker 1: huffing the air soul and getting high and punching each other.
Speaker 1: Melanie sees the aftermath of this, and it's like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck? And there's also this at the time, it
Speaker 1: looks honestly a little goofy now, but at the time
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, iconic. As she descends into thirteen
Speaker 1: year old debauchery. The aesthetic of the movie. The movie
Speaker 1: just gets bluer and bluer and bluer, and then at
Speaker 1: the end it looks like a scene from Twilight, which
Speaker 1: her name. It's a very blue and gray movie. It's
Speaker 1: just like you're watching Katherine Hardwick arrive at her Twilight
Speaker 1: aesthetic throughout the course of this movie, and it is
Speaker 1: like watching it now, I'm just like, this feels like
Speaker 1: such a cautionary tale where it like almost feels like
Speaker 1: a p s a creative choice. But at that time,
Speaker 1: I was like, I know, you're like, oh my god, genius, genius.
Speaker 1: Never seen anything like it. So Tracy she misses a
Speaker 1: big school project. She lies to her teacher. She's basically
Speaker 1: hitting rock bottom, especially after Evie starts blowing her off
Speaker 1: because Melanie was like, sorry, Evie, I can't let you
Speaker 1: live here. So Tracy now feels abandoned by Evie and
Speaker 1: the other popular girls. She feels abandoned by her dad.
Speaker 1: She's self harms again. She then learns that she might
Speaker 1: fail the seventh grade and get held back, and then
Speaker 1: Melanie and Brooke again Evie's guardian hold basically like an intervention.
Speaker 1: After finding at Ash of drugs and money that was
Speaker 1: hidden around Tracy's room, stuff that Evie had put there,
Speaker 1: but is not taking the fall for it. She's kind
Speaker 1: of dumping all the blame on Tracy and Evie and
Speaker 1: Brooke act like Tracy is the one who had been
Speaker 1: a bad influence on Evie. But luckily Melanie sees through
Speaker 1: this bullshit and kicks them out. Tracy is just sobbing.
Speaker 1: Melanie comforts her, She discovers Tracy's injuries from self harming,
Speaker 1: and then just embraces Tracy, and the movie ends with
Speaker 1: Melanie spending the night holding and comforting Tracy. So that
Speaker 1: is how the movie ends. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then come back to discuss, and we're back. I
Speaker 1: do feel like, before getting into the main discussion, the
Speaker 1: production history of this movie is really relevant. I want
Speaker 1: to learn more. Yeah, because I am blissfully ignorant of
Speaker 1: what went down. So this is like a very I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, throughout the course of researching this,
Speaker 1: I feel like my personal opinion changed several times. So
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see that Nikki Reid, who was
Speaker 1: fourteen when this movie was shot, is a credited screenwriter
Speaker 1: on this movie not you know, call me ages. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know fourteen year olds can write movies. Um,
Speaker 1: but here is the situation. Okay, So NICKI read this
Speaker 1: is at the time she said heavily pulled from her
Speaker 1: own life, so she from like the year before this movie.
Speaker 1: That's where I get like, because I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I made a movie about my life when I
Speaker 1: was thirteen, it would also be very over dramatic and
Speaker 1: paint my family as villains. Um. So it's a complicated thing,
Speaker 1: and she's I have some quotes from her in later
Speaker 1: years of her kind of reflecting on this, which I
Speaker 1: think are really interesting. The good thing is that it
Speaker 1: seems like the three main people involved here, Evan Rachelwood,
Speaker 1: Nicky Reid, and Katherine Hardwick all do stand by the
Speaker 1: movie they've done reflecting on it, and it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like anyone anyone's you know, life was wrecked by this
Speaker 1: movie having made. I still think it's an interesting discussion. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nicky Reid grew up in l A. Her dad was
Speaker 1: a production designer, her mom was a hair dresser. They
Speaker 1: got divorced very young. She has an older brother. Um.
Speaker 1: She did not apparently in retrospect, she said, like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually do as much as I said I
Speaker 1: did at the time, but she did. She did. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think have to grow up very quickly
Speaker 1: and felt as a kid kind of neglected to varying
Speaker 1: degrees by her parents. So in the movie, like, Tracy
Speaker 1: is the insert for Nikki Reid, and EV is more
Speaker 1: or of a construction of general debauchery. I guess, as
Speaker 1: far as I know, ev is not based on any
Speaker 1: particular person, but Tracy is very much the Nicky Read
Speaker 1: character stand in, which is confusing because Nicki Reid plays
Speaker 1: e V. But in real life, Nicki Reid was the
Speaker 1: Tracy character, not the Evy character, which I guess was
Speaker 1: very intentionally done right because it was like, you don't
Speaker 1: want to just like react out your own trauma as
Speaker 1: a kid. It's still complicated no matter what happens. So
Speaker 1: where Katherine Hardwick fits in is she dated Nicky Reid's
Speaker 1: father for a while. Kiss. Katherine Hardwick also started as
Speaker 1: a production designer, so I'm assuming they knew each other
Speaker 1: through work. Don't really know, um, but she dated Nicki
Speaker 1: Reid's dad when Nicki Reid was like five years old.
Speaker 1: I don't know when things broke off, but I know
Speaker 1: that Katherine Hardwick was very close with the kids, Nicky
Speaker 1: Red and her older brother, and that even after the breakup,
Speaker 1: Katherine Hardwick wanted to stay involved in the kids lives.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of gray area here. It's hard to
Speaker 1: figure out the particulars, but basically, Katherine Hardwick said she
Speaker 1: wanted to stay involved in the kids lives, so she
Speaker 1: started seeing their mother to get her hair done. Question Mark, Like,
Speaker 1: I I that is, I guess what happened. But so
Speaker 1: she and Nikki remained close and per both of them
Speaker 1: around the time Nikki was turning twelve and thirteen entering
Speaker 1: middle school. She I mean in the way that a
Speaker 1: lot of like kids going through puberty go like, she
Speaker 1: you know, became moody. She was like going out when
Speaker 1: she wasn't supposed to. She was playing her divorced parents
Speaker 1: against each other and sort of you know, doing I
Speaker 1: think kind of a diet version of what you see
Speaker 1: in the movie thirteen. So Katherine Hardwick, I get like
Speaker 1: the way that they tell the story is that Catherine
Speaker 1: Hardwick was concerned about Nikki and wanted to give her
Speaker 1: a productive, creative outlet to think about and talk about
Speaker 1: what she was going through that wasn't acting out and
Speaker 1: potentially hurting herself and other people. So she invites Nikki
Speaker 1: over to her house and over the course of six
Speaker 1: days they write out the plot to so they built
Speaker 1: it together. Katherine Hardwick had not directed a movie at
Speaker 1: this time, but then becomes really into the idea and
Speaker 1: starts to say, like, Okay, I actually do want to
Speaker 1: make this movie, Nikki. I want you to be in it,
Speaker 1: and like we're gonna make the movie and that is
Speaker 1: how it comes to be. Thoughts, Wow, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's hard. I mean, ultimately, as long as Nikki
Speaker 1: read it feels okay. Now that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1: And it's like our opinion doesn't super matter. But I
Speaker 1: but I do think Katherine hard Work was a little
Speaker 1: bit wrong for that. Like I think it's one thing
Speaker 1: to be like let's do a creative writing exercise, let's reflect,
Speaker 1: and let's you know, like work together. But it's like
Speaker 1: thrusting a kid into that. Like the negative consequence of
Speaker 1: this movie for Nikki Reid was I mean, on the
Speaker 1: bright side, she got a whole last career out of it.
Speaker 1: She gave an incredible performance. She is credited as a
Speaker 1: co writer, which I feel like not every adult would do,
Speaker 1: and like she does get a well deserved career out
Speaker 1: of this. But also she has said, and we'll link
Speaker 1: this in the description, there's like a really interesting Refinery
Speaker 1: twenty nine like retrospective on this movie where it's the
Speaker 1: three of them talking and you know, Nikki Reid and
Speaker 1: Evan rachel Wood are in their thirties now, but for
Speaker 1: for years, like this movie most directly affected Nikki because
Speaker 1: it was her telling her perspective of her parents divorce.
Speaker 1: As we'll discuss, neither of the parents come off particularly well,
Speaker 1: and she's you know, when the movie comes out, she's
Speaker 1: like fourteen, fifteen years old and still living with her mom,
Speaker 1: and her mom has to see Holly Hunter play her,
Speaker 1: and like she had a really really tense relationship with
Speaker 1: both of her parents after this movie was released, and
Speaker 1: I guess that she didn't speak to her father for years.
Speaker 1: They later repaired their relationship, but it's like, per I
Speaker 1: don't have a direct quote from her on this, or
Speaker 1: maybe I do, but her general thing was like she
Speaker 1: ten years after this movie came out, when she was
Speaker 1: in her twenties, expressed regret at being kind of harsh
Speaker 1: on her parents. She oh, I have a direct quote
Speaker 1: about this, you do? Okay? I would, because I it's
Speaker 1: buried in my notes. I pulled it from scholarly journal Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: but the quote is pulled originally from like People or
Speaker 1: something like I think, like a Huffington Post maybe peace
Speaker 1: point is here's the quote. Um Nicky read in says,
Speaker 1: and this is paraphrasing, but that she regrets the way
Speaker 1: she portrayed her family uh in the movie thirteen, saying quote,
Speaker 1: I wrote this movie about them and their flaws and
Speaker 1: imperfections and what it was like growing up. It was
Speaker 1: from one kid's perspective and not a well rounded one.
Speaker 1: You get older and it's like, how dare I portray
Speaker 1: my father as being a totally vacant, careless schmuck unquote
Speaker 1: So um, which I think is like, I mean again,
Speaker 1: only she knows what her childhood was really like. But
Speaker 1: this does seem to it's definitely the most loaded experience
Speaker 1: for Nikki read specifically, which I do think kind of
Speaker 1: opens uh portal of everyone's going to have a different
Speaker 1: opinion on this, of like Katherine Hardwick is you know,
Speaker 1: in her late forties when she makes this movie, you
Speaker 1: would have to know that like that is going to
Speaker 1: affect this kid you love's relationship with her family. And
Speaker 1: it's like it's like, on one hand, you want to
Speaker 1: respect her creative voice and you don't want to like
Speaker 1: tell her that her perception of what's happening in her
Speaker 1: life is wrong, Like certainly not. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: she's a kid. And because I am ultimately glad that
Speaker 1: this movie exists, I feel like there's truly nothing else
Speaker 1: I've ever seen like it, and so many I mean,
Speaker 1: and this movie can skew a little preachy at times,
Speaker 1: but like but in terms of like pulling from an
Speaker 1: actual kid's experience and making her voice really really important
Speaker 1: to the movie, like there's there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: movies like that. And then on the other hand, it
Speaker 1: negatively affected her life for a while. She had to
Speaker 1: drop out of high school. Like there's a there's a
Speaker 1: quote from Nikki read Um. She says, quote religious people
Speaker 1: who don't even know me are calling my mom to
Speaker 1: telling her she should burn in hell and that God
Speaker 1: hates her. My mom can't defend herself to the world
Speaker 1: she's such an amazing woman with such an open heart.
Speaker 1: It's a real hard line and I crossed it. So again,
Speaker 1: she's a kid when these decisions are made, and it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a real meyer. And well, on
Speaker 1: top of that, you have a movie where you're casting
Speaker 1: literal teenagers because Evan Rachel would and Nicky Reid we're
Speaker 1: both fourteen years old during the filming of this movie,
Speaker 1: and then I think Evan Rachel would turn fifteen during
Speaker 1: the shoot, which was like a twenty four days shoot.
Speaker 1: But they're like teens, right, They're very young, and so
Speaker 1: them as actors are made to do things on set
Speaker 1: that are inappropriate for like teenagers to be doing. Um
Speaker 1: I felt, and I think like the filming of it
Speaker 1: was probably handled as responsibly as you can handle something
Speaker 1: like that. But like you're having to fourteen year olds
Speaker 1: like straddling teen boys, like making out with them. They're broad,
Speaker 1: like their shirts are off there like braws or exposed.
Speaker 1: You're having teenagers like smoke cigarettes and yeah, they were
Speaker 1: filled with catnip according to something I read, but that
Speaker 1: was the way I was that was presented was like, well,
Speaker 1: don't worry it with cat, it was I also don't
Speaker 1: want my fourteen year old. Yeah, and then I read
Speaker 1: that um like like the crushed pills that they were
Speaker 1: snorting were actually quote harmless dietary supplements, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, dietary supplements are not harmless. And then like
Speaker 1: I read that, um, all the scenes where Tracy was
Speaker 1: inflicting self harm, they were all shot in a single day,
Speaker 1: and that everyone Rachel would her brother would have to like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like go to her brother for emotional emotional support between
Speaker 1: the takes of these scenes, because I think just filming
Speaker 1: that was very traumatic, understandably. Yeah. So yeah, you're having
Speaker 1: these actors like do these like very sexually explicit things
Speaker 1: on camera, like simulating drug the use sets, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that kind of brings it back to the thing
Speaker 1: where it's like there's no other movie like this, but
Speaker 1: that is for a reason, and like this, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is a story that you could possibly
Speaker 1: tell ethically, which unless it's like animated, which would also
Speaker 1: makes for some weird probably like tonal disconnect, right, which
Speaker 1: which I feel like that is kind of tends to
Speaker 1: be cw NET negative anyways, and right, right, and then
Speaker 1: you don't get that actual perspective that is appreciated in
Speaker 1: the movie of like, you know, someone's perception of their
Speaker 1: own experience att is like this intense, and that's also
Speaker 1: something that isn't often captured. It's like it's a real
Speaker 1: it's a real Maria and like reading how what Evan
Speaker 1: rachel Wood's experience was. And at this point she was
Speaker 1: like a well seasoned child actor, like she'd been performing
Speaker 1: for some time. I think her dad was also an actor,
Speaker 1: and that's a whole Like I feel like we're having
Speaker 1: the most recent round of child star discourse, which I
Speaker 1: um respectfully tap out of um, but but I mean
Speaker 1: I think that I mean in this in the case
Speaker 1: of this movie, it's very relevant because and I can't
Speaker 1: think of another situation like it where it's like it's
Speaker 1: very common that teens, teenagers, especially teenage girls are exploited
Speaker 1: in movies like this and and like you know, made
Speaker 1: to do, like putting sexual situations in movies very early on.
Speaker 1: There's always some sort of pressure, especially with an indie
Speaker 1: movie like this, where it's like doing this whole movie
Speaker 1: in twenty four days also doesn't seem like it's possible
Speaker 1: to do completely ethnically spotlessly with not a lot of money, right,
Speaker 1: like on a low budget where you can't hire probably
Speaker 1: all the like people you need to hire to make sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm speculating here and to be fair. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a scene which I think we should talk
Speaker 1: about for other reasons, but there's a scene where the
Speaker 1: two girls more or less assault this guy, Luke, this
Speaker 1: older guy who seems to be friends with Mason. They
Speaker 1: come onto him. He is very reluctant. He's like saying no,
Speaker 1: he's pushing them off. Uh. We have Nicky Reid and
Speaker 1: Evan Rachel would like kissing this guy, kind of like
Speaker 1: getting on top of him. All this stuff. On set
Speaker 1: were just a few crew members. There were social workers
Speaker 1: and parents present, so there were at least people. They're
Speaker 1: just kind of like making sure this was like again
Speaker 1: as safely and ethically done as possible, and the pretty
Speaker 1: consistent with this production. But it's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: my opinion that is, like, Okay, I'm a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old the actor acting out this scene, Like I appreciate
Speaker 1: that my parents would be there to look out for
Speaker 1: you and make sure you're not pressured to do anything
Speaker 1: you don't want to do. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't want my parents watching me do that ship
Speaker 1: I'm fourteen years old, Like what the fuck right? It's
Speaker 1: like it's there's no winning, and it's just the fact
Speaker 1: that it's like, okay to fourteen year olds make out
Speaker 1: with this older guy, this older actor to do that
Speaker 1: at all, to do that on camera, like it just
Speaker 1: felt icky. Of all the many vignettes in this movie
Speaker 1: that is so cutible that I was like, why is this,
Speaker 1: Like you achieved the same downward spiral without having to
Speaker 1: fourteen year old actors do that. It kind of didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't add anything like, looking at just from a
Speaker 1: story perspective, it's so get ridable and yeah, not in
Speaker 1: any way. I don't know. Yeah, I didn't did not
Speaker 1: like that scene. Um yeah, I'm trying to think if
Speaker 1: there's any other Oh, I just want to say that
Speaker 1: the last thing for Nikki Read and Evan rachel Wood,
Speaker 1: I think a little heavier on Nikki Reads side, But um,
Speaker 1: this also feels very two thousands and probably still now.
Speaker 1: I'm probably um giving the present too much credit. But
Speaker 1: Nikki Reid co wrote this movie had a huge hand
Speaker 1: in shaping it and making it what it was. She
Speaker 1: gave an amazing performance, and then her career very quickly
Speaker 1: became her playing other heavily sexualized teenage characters for years
Speaker 1: and years and years until she did Twilight and then
Speaker 1: was able to like access more roles. But it was
Speaker 1: that sort of thing where it was like she did
Speaker 1: I mean, she did a pretty amazing thing here, and
Speaker 1: then instead of being treated as like, Wow, this kid
Speaker 1: can like really write and perform, they're like, oh, just
Speaker 1: do that again, and we like that. We liked that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like do the part where you are exploited over and
Speaker 1: over and like, which is very of the era and
Speaker 1: like not at all surprising, but also like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: this movie did a lot of good things for the
Speaker 1: people involved, and I feel like it had like a
Speaker 1: pretty negative I don't know, there's I was like it
Speaker 1: was Catherine Hardwick was like a little bit wrong for
Speaker 1: this and I but I also know that this movie
Speaker 1: means a lot to a lot of people, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to like discount that either. I know it's
Speaker 1: very I mean it was like formative for me and
Speaker 1: there is nothing like it, right, But there's all these
Speaker 1: like weird asterisk situations that you don't you can't ignore,
Speaker 1: and the ethics of this movie are all over the place.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's it's a it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a mind fuck. It's one of those things where I
Speaker 1: think people will be like, well, the ends justify the
Speaker 1: means because like, and I'm not saying that's what I believe.
Speaker 1: I'm I don't think this movie should have been made
Speaker 1: like this exactly. I think you can explore very intense
Speaker 1: yet authentic experience that a lot of adolescents have without
Speaker 1: like exploiting the young people involved in excative But um again,
Speaker 1: like you said, Jimmy, this movie is because it is
Speaker 1: thanks to the very close involvement from Nicki Reid, like
Speaker 1: telling her own story. This does feel authentic. Not to
Speaker 1: everyone's experience, of course, but plenty of impressionable teens who
Speaker 1: are dealing with a whole array of difficult like societal pressures,
Speaker 1: struggles at home, exposure to like addiction from people they know,
Speaker 1: and that kind of being a path for their own addiction.
Speaker 1: Like all this stuff gets explored that is worth exploring
Speaker 1: and like worth representing on screen. But it's I just
Speaker 1: feel like there's like if you isolated it, like scene
Speaker 1: by scene, choice by choice. There's a lot that I
Speaker 1: wish had been done differently, I do. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like we could talk about this all day of like
Speaker 1: is there a way to ethically make a movie like
Speaker 1: this on this budget? I don't know, Like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not unhappy it exists. It seems like the main
Speaker 1: people involved are very happy that they made it. But
Speaker 1: also I think it's interesting that, like I didn't. I
Speaker 1: also thought it was cool that Nicky Reid was like
Speaker 1: so willing to publicly reflect on the effect that it has. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, I mean think I think a lot
Speaker 1: of actresses would feel pressured to be like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was great and I'm grateful for it, but her
Speaker 1: being like, you know, yeah, and I and I do
Speaker 1: think that Catherine Hardwick was like made some irresponsible creative
Speaker 1: decisions by putting young actors in sexual situations that are
Speaker 1: not just you know, kind of unethical on its face
Speaker 1: at all, but also don't even move the story forward.
Speaker 1: So what then are you doing? Right? Like it feels
Speaker 1: like secondhand exploitative, like when you're watching, especially as a
Speaker 1: young girl, I don't know. It was very like, yeah,
Speaker 1: why are we watching this specifically? Yeah? Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: if it does feel like when you show something like that,
Speaker 1: especially when you got squishy pubescent brain, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: well they have to be showing that this for a reason.
Speaker 1: And I think these girls are cool, so this is cool.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like that baby lizard brain thing where
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, this must be like I remember
Speaker 1: thinking like even though you know when you're twelve, you're
Speaker 1: like they're doing bad stuff. You want to do it
Speaker 1: like like school. You want to do it more exciting
Speaker 1: than what we're doing right now. Yeah. Well, even from
Speaker 1: like a young actor's perspective, like being asked to do
Speaker 1: a scene like that, I mean you're just like absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can I feel grow, Yeah, I can do this,
Speaker 1: like and it's all plate pretend and you don't realize
Speaker 1: until later that even if that was true in the moments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the power dynamics you like had no grasp on. You
Speaker 1: didn't understand who was going to be watching, what they
Speaker 1: were going to be getting out of it. Like all
Speaker 1: of those things are very and that's on Catherine Hardwick
Speaker 1: to take care of and like manage, and I just
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's I'm glad everyone still stands by
Speaker 1: the movie, but some Catherine Hardwick ship in here. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're you were very much an adult like it, and
Speaker 1: and also this girl like you You've like helped raise
Speaker 1: this young girl, Like why are you putting her in
Speaker 1: this situation? And I mean whatever everyone's relationship is, but
Speaker 1: like it's hard because I don't want to come off
Speaker 1: as like super judge if they're all fine with it now,
Speaker 1: but it's just like it's kind of a mind fuck. Um.
Speaker 1: I would not want a production like this to happen again,
Speaker 1: That's for sure. That's what I know. And also Nicky
Speaker 1: Reid was saying in this Refinery twenty nine interview that
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, when she was collaborating with
Speaker 1: Katherine Hardwick on this script, that she was doing the
Speaker 1: very thirteen year old thing that the characters in this
Speaker 1: movie do, which is like overstate their level of experience.
Speaker 1: So Nicki Reid was also saying she had done stuff
Speaker 1: that she hadn't actually done at that point in her
Speaker 1: life and then had to simulate something she had actually
Speaker 1: never done and was lying about to her like to
Speaker 1: a trusted adult. Katherine Hardwick. It's just confussing, right, because
Speaker 1: when you when you're that age, you think you're mentally
Speaker 1: and emotionally more prepared for things than you usually are,
Speaker 1: and then if you do go through with an experience,
Speaker 1: you might not even fully realize how traumatic that was
Speaker 1: until that Alma manifests later and which ironically, I think
Speaker 1: this movie illustrates pretty well with its character. There is
Speaker 1: a lot of irony in this film, so it's wild
Speaker 1: that it's also doing the thing that it's like illustrating
Speaker 1: pretty well. So anyways, um, listeners were also interested in
Speaker 1: your perspective on this. It's it kind of broke my brain, um,
Speaker 1: because I am always pro people telling their own stories,
Speaker 1: but also like when you have, you know, a kid
Speaker 1: telling their story, you just have to be really really
Speaker 1: careful and you have to think of I feel like
Speaker 1: it's on you as a director and a creative collaborator
Speaker 1: to think of the kid telling their story in the
Speaker 1: moment and also think of their well being five ten
Speaker 1: years down the line, because if you're thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: you're not thinking past next week. It's like on you
Speaker 1: as the adult collaborator to look out for a minor's
Speaker 1: best interest, doy okay um any anything else we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about on on that end before we get
Speaker 1: into the story. I guess the only oh, I guess
Speaker 1: well before story. I don't know, you guys pick when
Speaker 1: we talk about this, but I do want to talk
Speaker 1: about the mom and the portrayal of her, because I
Speaker 1: was so confused about it as a kid, and even
Speaker 1: when I rewatched it, I was, I don't know, confused
Speaker 1: the right. It kind of reflects Jamie where you're talking
Speaker 1: about of like the some things I like, some things
Speaker 1: are confused. It feels very like I don't know all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah for me, so I remember having a discussion like
Speaker 1: this on the like Mrs Doubtfire episode where when we
Speaker 1: were kids watching that movie, we all thought the Sally
Speaker 1: Field character was like such an overprotective, kind of overbearing,
Speaker 1: mean shrew of a mother, and then watching it as
Speaker 1: an adult, you're like, oh my god, no, I am
Speaker 1: so on Sally Field's side, and like she was just
Speaker 1: trying to be a responsible parent, and yeah, she might
Speaker 1: seem like a kill joy, but she's just like trying
Speaker 1: to like from a kid's perspective, but we as adults realize,
Speaker 1: you know, she's just trying to keep her kids safe,
Speaker 1: right right. Seeing this movie as an adult looking at
Speaker 1: the Holly Hunter, the mom character Melanie, I was very
Speaker 1: sympathetic towards her and and thought that is she someone
Speaker 1: with faults and is one of those major faults being
Speaker 1: that she kind of lets people walk all over her
Speaker 1: and she's too accommodating for sure. Um, but like also
Speaker 1: I relate because I can be that way sometimes. But like,
Speaker 1: to me, as far as the portrayal her character and
Speaker 1: like that mother daughter relationship, she felt to me like
Speaker 1: just a very overly a common dating but extremely loving
Speaker 1: and supportive and like doing her best. Did she maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes ignore some red flags? Perhaps? Um, you could chalk
Speaker 1: that up to like, you know, not wanting to interfere
Speaker 1: too much, and like your kids like self exploration and
Speaker 1: growth during this especially very kind of like pivotal confusing
Speaker 1: scary time. Relationships like this, for the people who have
Speaker 1: experienced them, can be just like so complicated and tricky.
Speaker 1: And I think this movie does a really good job
Speaker 1: of of representing what felt like a very authentic dynamic
Speaker 1: between Tracy and Melanie, and at least from where I'm
Speaker 1: coming from and and and feel free to. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's going to have a different perspective on this. But
Speaker 1: like the Melanie character to me, like I was just like,
Speaker 1: she's like just doing the best she can. She's a
Speaker 1: working class person. She's raising two kids as a single parent.
Speaker 1: The co parent Tracy's in Mason's dad seems to be
Speaker 1: like largely absent. This is like unrelated. But I'm also
Speaker 1: like Catherine Hardwick wise, I'm just trying to put myself
Speaker 1: in her head. I want to understand. But like that's
Speaker 1: that's like her ex partner that she's like ripping to
Speaker 1: sha putting through a human shredder with his kid. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's just I mean, that's just a lot. Maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's deserved, maybe it's undeserved. We don't know. Nikki
Speaker 1: read later says it was not deserved. But anyways, sorry,
Speaker 1: that was just thought I could have it. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, she's really going for it. She's
Speaker 1: really saying my ex is trash so um, which is
Speaker 1: you know true more often than not. That I just
Speaker 1: I just like, once I knew the production stuff, I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, pretty wild choices were made. But sorry,
Speaker 1: continue I guess my point is to me, the relationship
Speaker 1: felt authentic and complicated, and obviously like that relationship is
Speaker 1: very tense and Melanie is dealing with a handful. But
Speaker 1: also I could see another perspective where Melanie is being
Speaker 1: negligent as a parent and not interfering enough and being ignorant,
Speaker 1: possibly willfully, possibly not. And I can see if you're
Speaker 1: watching this movie as a youth, you would be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the mom is such a drag. She's trying to control me,
Speaker 1: She's invading my privacy, she's you know, doing this and that.
Speaker 1: But I'm looking at it like, no, she's just trying
Speaker 1: to make sure you don't get yourself killed. Tracy. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's my thought on it. Maggie, what was
Speaker 1: your perspective on that when you were a kid versus now?
Speaker 1: Because I because I definitely had like because I Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you, and I also did not
Speaker 1: see it that way when I was right. Yeah, I remember, um.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially with that scene with the mom and
Speaker 1: like Nikky on the bed where it starts to get like,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, it almost felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: inappropriate a parent territory. UM. I think that really threw
Speaker 1: us off, because, yeah, it looked throughout most of the film,
Speaker 1: she's depicted as this like archetypal um overbearing in a
Speaker 1: way which I think a lot of us saw in
Speaker 1: our own moms, and not in a bad way, you know.
Speaker 1: I think, like the way that she cares about her kids,
Speaker 1: we very much you know, saw and identified with it,
Speaker 1: and we were all like straightedge, so we weren't doing
Speaker 1: any of this stuff. So it was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: our moms would be that mad if we had done
Speaker 1: any of it. If a guy had wanted to make
Speaker 1: out with us, I'm sure that right, this is how
Speaker 1: what had gone down. But I that see did stick out,
Speaker 1: and I like, I don't think any of us had
Speaker 1: really had that much experience with like adults, you know,
Speaker 1: treating us in that way or like seeing us in
Speaker 1: that light or UM. I guess, you know, just speaking
Speaker 1: for myself as very like naive, UM, and I guess
Speaker 1: in a good way, like protected from that as a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, I had very good relationships with most of
Speaker 1: the adults I knew. UM, so that I think rubbed
Speaker 1: all of us in a really weird way. I think
Speaker 1: it was like maybe some of the first media that
Speaker 1: we saw where you know, like a kid an adult
Speaker 1: had a encroaching upon a inappropriate relationship that wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: a clearly gross guy and you know a young girl
Speaker 1: who was like rebuffing him or like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of media that I think does a good
Speaker 1: job of speaking to you know, like young women's experience
Speaker 1: of like older people kind of being two into their business.
Speaker 1: But I think this was the first time we saw
Speaker 1: one like a woman being involved um and that it
Speaker 1: was like a mom, you know, and we all knew
Speaker 1: each other's moms. We were all like very close small towns.
Speaker 1: I think it was in a weird way eye opening.
Speaker 1: Maybe not eye opening, but I think more more so
Speaker 1: than like the drugs and stuff, because that, you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of just assumed was happening, and like we
Speaker 1: new kids older than us we're taking drugs and so
Speaker 1: I think that threw us less for a loop. But
Speaker 1: I think that was like relationship dynamics. I think all
Speaker 1: of us were like whoa, yeah, see, I have a
Speaker 1: complicated thought on that because so so there's also kind
Speaker 1: of a mother daughter relationship between e V and met
Speaker 1: Anie or like mother figure. Yeah, when when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I thought that the relations I thought that,
Speaker 1: like I viewed e V as trying to basically like
Speaker 1: single white female Tracy. I was so on Tracy side
Speaker 1: when I was a kid that I would get frustrated
Speaker 1: with Melanie, even though, like I don't know watching that
Speaker 1: character now, I feel like it's interesting that other mothers
Speaker 1: saw that movie and went after Nicky Reid's mother, because
Speaker 1: I thought Melanie is actually like written and especially portrayed
Speaker 1: by Holly Hunter, really sympathetically um and like she has
Speaker 1: a lot of layers. But when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I definitely was like Melanie, Melanie isn't like she's she's
Speaker 1: all over the place with Tracy. She like and I
Speaker 1: had like not a totally dissimilar relation, I mean, not
Speaker 1: identical at all, but like when a parent wants to
Speaker 1: be your friend but also needs to parent at the
Speaker 1: same time, that's just like a difficult situation for both
Speaker 1: parties because at the beginning, it is clear that like
Speaker 1: Melanie wants to be a cool mom because she's a
Speaker 1: chronic people pleaser. We see that in every area of
Speaker 1: her life, and it doesn't and her daughter is a
Speaker 1: big part of it, where you know, it's like when
Speaker 1: that scene that really like hit for me with when
Speaker 1: Ever and Rachel Wood comes home and she's like someone
Speaker 1: made from of my socks. I'm not a kid anymore,
Speaker 1: and her mom takes her out shopping and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you're growing up, Like she's not doing the weird, like
Speaker 1: I want you to be a little girl forever, and
Speaker 1: she wants to be the cool mom that takes her
Speaker 1: daughter to get closed that she likes. And but then
Speaker 1: later on, you know, you see Melanie's always trying to
Speaker 1: kind of have it both ways, and it's not possible
Speaker 1: to have it both ways in a lot of situations.
Speaker 1: And that comes up again with when she brings Evie
Speaker 1: and Tracy to the store that they love to shoplift from,
Speaker 1: and you know, mel is like, wait, I need to
Speaker 1: call your guardian. But it is still like in a
Speaker 1: cool way though, and then she like has She's like, well,
Speaker 1: your guardian said that you can't be alone, but I'm
Speaker 1: cool and I'll get you pants and like, but as
Speaker 1: a kid, I saw I saw Melon sort of was
Speaker 1: like why isn't she why can't she see what Tracy needs.
Speaker 1: Why is she letting this guy stay around? And like,
Speaker 1: I just didn't understand the adult next. I still think
Speaker 1: that Brady shouldn't be around those kids, and especially if
Speaker 1: she had whatever like that the promises that your parents
Speaker 1: make you and your kid are sacred. And the fact
Speaker 1: that she told her kids, Okay, he's not going to
Speaker 1: be around anymore and then he was still around, that's
Speaker 1: a huge deal and like that is a failure of
Speaker 1: parenting on her part. I thought then and still now,
Speaker 1: But now I can understand the Melanie like she It
Speaker 1: sounds like she's been through the fucking Ringer and had
Speaker 1: moments in her life where she really needed love and
Speaker 1: support from some from other people, and she wants to
Speaker 1: be that person when people she loves is in trouble.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it's like you can't save everybody, and like
Speaker 1: it's just this whole I don't know, Yeah, my my,
Speaker 1: I've my opinion on her when I was twelve was
Speaker 1: not super favorable. And now it's like I think that
Speaker 1: she's like, Holly Hunter did an amazing job, and I
Speaker 1: guess that she Holly Hunter like asked to be an
Speaker 1: executive producer on the movie so she could help shape
Speaker 1: the character in a more sympathetic way. Um, so she's
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah, And to go back to I think
Speaker 1: like the dynamic that you were talking about, Maggie, between
Speaker 1: Melanie and Evie were you talking about. So there's like
Speaker 1: a scene where like Evie kisses Melanie on the blips.
Speaker 1: So there's a few scenes similar. That was the most extreme,
Speaker 1: but there's examples throughout the movie of how I perceived
Speaker 1: this was. Evie is an extremely manipulative person, right. She
Speaker 1: perceives that Melanie is very accommodating and is very much
Speaker 1: a people pleaser, and knows that she's going to be
Speaker 1: very easy to manipulate and exploit. So she does different
Speaker 1: things where she like, for example, that scene where she
Speaker 1: kisses Melanie on the mouth, you can see how like
Speaker 1: taken aback and weird it out Melanie is by that.
Speaker 1: And there's another scene where Evie confides in Melanie that
Speaker 1: she was abused by her guardian's boyfriend and and then
Speaker 1: like you know, Melanie's like, oh my god. And then
Speaker 1: there's like kind of a weird hug that they share
Speaker 1: that like Tracy walks into and she's like, what the
Speaker 1: hell is going on here? And it's also I mean,
Speaker 1: I watching that back now, I've I used to feel
Speaker 1: more like I think because it was just like whatever,
Speaker 1: you're twelve and you have your own mommy problems. But
Speaker 1: like I was, like, Evie is stealing Tracy's mom and like,
Speaker 1: and Mel isn't doing enough to like draw boundaries with her,
Speaker 1: and that has to be hurtful for Tracy because anytime
Speaker 1: like your parents like is like I don't know, like
Speaker 1: you get jealous in this weird way when you're a
Speaker 1: kid and your parent is like paying attention to someone
Speaker 1: who isn't you or your sibling. Right, My mom ran
Speaker 1: a daycare, so I was constantly like, but this is
Speaker 1: my mom and like, you know, like that that does
Speaker 1: stick with you. But I thought, like what I what
Speaker 1: I didn't internalize is that Mel would have seen a
Speaker 1: lot of herself in Evie and wanted to help her,
Speaker 1: and like they do connect in that scene where Evie,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's it is tricky where it's
Speaker 1: like there's kind of this question looming over Evie's character
Speaker 1: of like what is the truth and what isn't I
Speaker 1: think it is heavily implied that she is not telling
Speaker 1: the truth about everything, or she's overstating a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff and is willing to throw other people under the
Speaker 1: bus if she feels backed into a corner. But it
Speaker 1: seems like she knows exactly what to say to appeal
Speaker 1: to mel And you know, mel I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a mom around when I was growing
Speaker 1: up either, So if you need a mother figure, I
Speaker 1: guess sure you can stay here like where, Like I
Speaker 1: think you can see it as Evie being legitimately desperate
Speaker 1: for a supportive mother figure. You can also see a
Speaker 1: lot of those interactions as Evie manipulating Melanie to get
Speaker 1: what she wants and possibly lying about some stuff. It
Speaker 1: could be both things, because Evy is clearly someone who
Speaker 1: comes from the very rough background, and you know it,
Speaker 1: is probably doing a lot of this stuff as like
Speaker 1: a survival technique or some kind of coping mechanism. So like,
Speaker 1: obviously her behavior didn't happen in a vacuum, we don't
Speaker 1: really know that much about her background because we also
Speaker 1: don't know what is the truth and what's not because
Speaker 1: we see her lie effortlessly, effortlessly, effortlessly constantly, so you
Speaker 1: you don't really know what she's telling the truth about
Speaker 1: and what she isn't, but we can assume that she,
Speaker 1: you know, had a pretty unstable upbringing and which informed
Speaker 1: a lot of her behavior. So it's it's just so
Speaker 1: complicated and the fact that like Melanie is like kind
Speaker 1: of and it's not her fault that she's easily manipulated,
Speaker 1: but you also kind of have to like examine yourself,
Speaker 1: like you know, different things when you're a parent, in
Speaker 1: in your kids safety is at stake here, So like
Speaker 1: it's just so complicated, but this is all like such
Speaker 1: real stuff that a lot of people deal with, So
Speaker 1: like it's she can be frustrating, but I think, like
Speaker 1: watching it now, it's like she does come by all
Speaker 1: of her problems honestly, and in the in the writing
Speaker 1: of the movie, it's like that's not something that comes
Speaker 1: out of left field, that she would be very easily
Speaker 1: manipulated by someone who is like, I don't have anyone
Speaker 1: else in the world. Will you help me? Because that's
Speaker 1: how her relationship with her boyfriend works, And that's how
Speaker 1: her relationship with her friend works. Like people know if
Speaker 1: they show up at Mel's house and they're like, I
Speaker 1: need a place to crash, I need a hot meal
Speaker 1: I need something like if she can give it to them,
Speaker 1: she will, which is like a really hard quality to
Speaker 1: dislike about someone, But I do. I think that it's
Speaker 1: kind of a rare example of seeing you know that
Speaker 1: that kind of behavior, no matter how honestly you come
Speaker 1: by it and how well intentioned it is, can hurt
Speaker 1: other people, and it can result in like neglecting other stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, I do remember, like when
Speaker 1: I first saw the movie, being like, how does she
Speaker 1: have no idea what's going on? Her daughter is coming
Speaker 1: home all the time visibly fucked up and is rarely
Speaker 1: called out on it, and that is something that I
Speaker 1: still sort of felt on that. I feel like that,
Speaker 1: like I don't even know if that's a criticism, it's
Speaker 1: just like something that is always stuck with me because
Speaker 1: I know that that hopen and I know that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, none of us are parents, and you know,
Speaker 1: her kid is clearly in trouble and it seems like
Speaker 1: she doesn't know what to do, so she's ignoring the problem,
Speaker 1: which definitely happens, but it's frustrating to watch. Or it's
Speaker 1: just like your kid needs you, mel I know. And
Speaker 1: then I think her being a recovering addict informs a
Speaker 1: lot of just sort of you know, like how how
Speaker 1: she is, how she parents, even like the non addressing things.
Speaker 1: It's probably an overcorrection of well, if I am really
Speaker 1: strict with her, she'll just go towards it more, you know,
Speaker 1: like as right, like a self, that's how I did it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I do like that. It's complicated though, because
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of these movies, especially ones
Speaker 1: that are written from like a teenage perspective. You know,
Speaker 1: she has said in retrospect that you know, things are
Speaker 1: exaggerated and stuff, which like, even as a thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, this is a little know, like
Speaker 1: melo dramatic if we're you know, gonna label at something.
Speaker 1: But I do like that it's complicating because I think
Speaker 1: that is so much rarer and feels more real than
Speaker 1: a lot of the other like go ask Alice like
Speaker 1: that is so you know, like tunnel vision uncomplicated, don't
Speaker 1: do drugs, um Whereas yeah, this you know, adds a
Speaker 1: lot of human layers to the story of you know,
Speaker 1: teenage girl rebelling for sure. Part of that too, something
Speaker 1: that I thought was handled in like an interesting and
Speaker 1: nuanced way was the way that media influences the teens,
Speaker 1: where there's like often a lot of shots of like billboards, advertisements,
Speaker 1: ones that are like are using sex to sell and
Speaker 1: like using Western beauty standard images to you know, influence
Speaker 1: people to buy things and like convince people they need
Speaker 1: to look a certain way. And and you see, like
Speaker 1: show to this and you see it's not necessarily uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's more like, I guess implied that these things
Speaker 1: are affecting the girls, but it's not a hard like
Speaker 1: I like that, it's not super I mean, and there
Speaker 1: are some points where it's literally like zoo men on
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein billboard, Like I felt I felt like they
Speaker 1: kind of bop you over the head with it a
Speaker 1: little bit without them talking about it, which which did
Speaker 1: feel authentic to me, because it's like you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: realize that that's what's happening, but they're surrounded by it,
Speaker 1: especially like these these l a kids, Oh baby, like
Speaker 1: you're super surrounded by it. And then like it's implied
Speaker 1: that Tracy kind of stops eating or is barely eating.
Speaker 1: It seems like e V doesn't eat that much. She
Speaker 1: mentions like, you know, if you drink ten cups of
Speaker 1: ice water a day, you'll burn three D calories. Like,
Speaker 1: it's clear that these girls are very concerned about the
Speaker 1: way they look, how skinny they are, and you know,
Speaker 1: there is a known correlation between media images and disordered eating,
Speaker 1: especially in young people, young girls especially. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I feel like early two thousands it was at its
Speaker 1: fucking peak. It's even seeing the low rise jeans culture
Speaker 1: of this movie is so triggering You're like, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess my My point is, like, I think this movie,
Speaker 1: not super overtly or like at least not in dialogue,
Speaker 1: but more in just like images, explores how influential media is,
Speaker 1: especially to teens who are so susceptible and you know,
Speaker 1: easily influenced by the images they consume. And um, there's
Speaker 1: also a scene where Tracy is like about to go
Speaker 1: out with that guy Hobby, and e V is like,
Speaker 1: you don't even know how to kiss, do you? And
Speaker 1: Tracy is like, yeah, I do. Noel and I practice
Speaker 1: with cruel intentions fifty times, which I think the implication
Speaker 1: is there that they kissed each other the way that
Speaker 1: Selma Blair and um, Sarah Michelle Gellar do in cruel intentions.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, media influencing, like a movie influencing
Speaker 1: these girls, and like, I mean, I I do love it.
Speaker 1: I like, I think it's so like and and the
Speaker 1: way that I mean, I guess kind of transferring to
Speaker 1: There was a scene that I mean, when I was
Speaker 1: watching it and I was a kid, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they kiss wow, because and I thought that that scene,
Speaker 1: I mean, ethics wise, we could get into it with
Speaker 1: what that means for the actors. As far as the
Speaker 1: characters go, I thought it was pretty well done. And
Speaker 1: it felt very like whenever when when you're thirteen, your
Speaker 1: sexuality is very elusive. Um, I know that I was
Speaker 1: definitely kiss kiss kissing my friends when I was thirteen.
Speaker 1: And the fact that they're framing it as practice and
Speaker 1: maybe it is and maybe it isn't. Like it just
Speaker 1: felt like a very authentic experience having two young actors
Speaker 1: to do that in a movie that opens up another door.
Speaker 1: I will say that Evan rachel Wood, who came out
Speaker 1: as bisexual in sometime in the early UM later was
Speaker 1: like I had the biggest crush on Nicky Reid and
Speaker 1: it was so embarrassing that my mom had to watch
Speaker 1: me kiss my crush, and I couldn't tell anyone that, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean in the early two thousands, I mean, the
Speaker 1: discussion around bisexuality in the early two thousand's fucking forget it.
Speaker 1: But I thought of that. I mean, we've seen so
Speaker 1: much queer baby scenes that like don't work and that
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's not how I interpreted that scene.
Speaker 1: That felt very like authentic to experiences that um I
Speaker 1: either had had or wanted to have at the time
Speaker 1: of watching this movie. I don't remember of all the
Speaker 1: things that happened in the movie, that was scene that
Speaker 1: felt like retrospectively important for me to see and that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm and I'm glad it was like treated
Speaker 1: in that way. Um yeah, there was still some like
Speaker 1: you know, like teenage of that era, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: just sort of attitude toward it, because like Tracy says
Speaker 1: something like, oh, you want me to prove it to you?
Speaker 1: You like lesbo, right, I mean, but also like that's
Speaker 1: defensive kids ship like exactly. Yeah, just another thing that like,
Speaker 1: you know, problematic kids saying problematic things because kids are
Speaker 1: you know, can be problematic. Kids are problematic, You're still problematic.
Speaker 1: I was, I would argue like that like a kids
Speaker 1: saying that in defensively in two thousand three, I probably
Speaker 1: would have done that if I was, because there was
Speaker 1: no discussion around bisexuality at that time. So you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like when am I? What's wrong with me?
Speaker 1: Like I felt weird about myself all the time? You know,
Speaker 1: it felt it's very authentic. Yeah, for sure. Um, speaking
Speaker 1: of kissing, here's a I'd love to start every sentence
Speaker 1: that way. Always something that I took big issue with.
Speaker 1: But I'm also interested to hear different people's perspectives on
Speaker 1: this listener's perspectives. But it felt to me so obviously
Speaker 1: this movie centers whiteness in a pretty big way, as
Speaker 1: as many coming of age stories do, and it felt
Speaker 1: to me so you there are a number of characters
Speaker 1: of color, teens of color, and we learn a few
Speaker 1: of their names. One is Hobby, one is KK. There's
Speaker 1: another guy named Reuben. I don't know who Reuben is,
Speaker 1: but his name gets mentioned. It seems like he's like
Speaker 1: kind of dating Evie. Anyway, it felt to me as though,
Speaker 1: because so much of this movie is like look at
Speaker 1: the risky dangerous, wild things these girls are getting into
Speaker 1: that black teens are being used by the movie to
Speaker 1: imply that, like kissing a black kid is yet another
Speaker 1: dangerous thing that they're doing, and it wouldn't be as
Speaker 1: wild if they were kissing white boys, but because they're
Speaker 1: kissing black boys. Yeah, it felt like very coded. And
Speaker 1: that was one of the things where it was like,
Speaker 1: not oddly shallowy something since movie our shallow. That felt
Speaker 1: like a very shallowy, like surface level decision that had
Speaker 1: no you know, like especially because we don't learn anything
Speaker 1: else about those characters except that, like one of them
Speaker 1: likes to beat box, Like we don't know anything about them.
Speaker 1: I think I think it's bad writing. And if it
Speaker 1: wasn't intended that way, then you need to give characters context. Exactly,
Speaker 1: a black teenager's experience exists in a void, whereas like
Speaker 1: Tracy's life is extremely complicated, which it is, but it's
Speaker 1: like we need to extend that to everybody. Katherine Hardwick, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: like they could have added you know, there's no reason
Speaker 1: not to, Like why don't we know those kids, Why
Speaker 1: didn't why didn't we get introduced to them at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the movie you know, like why aren't they characters? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just not given characters at all. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of I felt like, I mean, and this is
Speaker 1: kind of like a renteres thrown and by the fact
Speaker 1: that this is like Nicky Reid talking about her own experience,
Speaker 1: but even the idea of like casting a like blonde,
Speaker 1: pale white girl as like being corrupted by a young
Speaker 1: girl with just darker features than her. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's so like in terms of the parts of this
Speaker 1: movie that doesn't work. It's all very over the top,
Speaker 1: not challenging anything in terms of like who this movie
Speaker 1: considers as worthy of context and empathy and too isn't
Speaker 1: And then like the only thing this movie does to
Speaker 1: attempt to comment on race at all is Tracy says
Speaker 1: something like if everyone married someone from a different race,
Speaker 1: then in one generation there would be no prejudice, which
Speaker 1: is such a naive way to the most white girls.
Speaker 1: Should I ever, that's like it um, it made me cringe.
Speaker 1: It made me uncomfortable, And then we cut to the
Speaker 1: next scene, right right, yeah, I I also felt like
Speaker 1: it's not I mean, and we've touched on this on
Speaker 1: the show before, where it like it's not enough to
Speaker 1: cast inclusively, like you need to like there needs to
Speaker 1: be care and thought given to characters of all races.
Speaker 1: Like it. It sounds so goofy simple, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: do it. It feels like white people not knowing how
Speaker 1: to write black characters. It felt like a boomer white
Speaker 1: lady made the movie exactly exactly because this movie does
Speaker 1: subvert a fair amount of things. But yeah, in terms
Speaker 1: of like challenging what characters are are given and which
Speaker 1: are not, that we barely learned character's names. I think
Speaker 1: we learned the names of the boys that they hook
Speaker 1: up with, but they don't exist outside of that context.
Speaker 1: So versions I did like, I liked Um, he wasn't
Speaker 1: in the movie a lot. But I did like the
Speaker 1: brother character. I thought that that was pretty well done.
Speaker 1: Of like, he's a pubescent boy and therefore sucks, but
Speaker 1: also like does care a lot about his sister and
Speaker 1: is visibly frustrated with his mom and his sister for
Speaker 1: reasons that make a lot of sense. But also he's
Speaker 1: a kid and there's not really a lot he can do,
Speaker 1: And I thought that character was well written. What do
Speaker 1: we think of Brady opening the flow? Brady. I was like,
Speaker 1: it was seemed to see is he the role model
Speaker 1: of the century. No, but he's also someone struggling with addiction.
Speaker 1: He mentions like wanting to relapse because in like kind
Speaker 1: of being triggered by the environment in this household is
Speaker 1: sort of like kind of dangerous for him and to tempting,
Speaker 1: so he leaves. But then you also see him like
Speaker 1: be someone who does seem to care about these kids
Speaker 1: and who wants to be as present as possible. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just like a person going through a lot, trying
Speaker 1: their best. Again, Um, I think that I think that
Speaker 1: addiction is given more empathy in this movie than we
Speaker 1: usually see in media. But I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: I didn't honestly pay him that much thought. So I
Speaker 1: was watching, I don't know. I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: it because I guess my main thing and again I'm
Speaker 1: bringing my youth baggage to this as well, was like,
Speaker 1: did did he know that Melanie had promised to her
Speaker 1: kids that he wouldn't be around? Because if so, I
Speaker 1: feel like he shouldn't be around and it's disrespectful to
Speaker 1: the family to be around. If he was aware that
Speaker 1: the chill did not want him there and that it
Speaker 1: had been said he wouldn't be there. That was something
Speaker 1: that like pained for me when I was twelve for
Speaker 1: personal reasons also, Um, but I do agree that it's
Speaker 1: like he does care about the family and like he does.
Speaker 1: I I thought, like that moment where mel is just
Speaker 1: at the end of her rope and she's tearing up
Speaker 1: the shitty floor and like she's just like had it.
Speaker 1: He shows up for her in that moment and like
Speaker 1: everyone's doing the best they can. And yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: I I yeah, I remember really not liking that character
Speaker 1: when I was a kid and I was like, why
Speaker 1: is he here? He shouldn't be here. But then as
Speaker 1: an adult, so I'm like, there's more, there's more nuance
Speaker 1: that exists in the world than I realized when I
Speaker 1: was twelve. Go figure, Yeah, we had someone, um you
Speaker 1: know close to her family and I'd be over that
Speaker 1: all the time and they would have you know, a
Speaker 1: Brady who change, you know who change, and you know,
Speaker 1: a Brady for every season. Um. Yeah, So it was
Speaker 1: something that was like recognizable. Um yeah, and especially like
Speaker 1: in the moments where he is there for her, you know,
Speaker 1: and you can you know when you're around that you'll
Speaker 1: see that peek through every once in a while, like
Speaker 1: like a genuine, like caring moment or just like something
Speaker 1: that you know makes it seem like it is making
Speaker 1: the mom's life or you know, something for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Yeah, I think that Like when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I viewed him as being very selfish, but
Speaker 1: then like watching it as an adult, I was watching
Speaker 1: it from Tracy's perspective as a kid, and I was like,
Speaker 1: she isn't like he must yeah, which like he did,
Speaker 1: like did enough for them to be like, he's not
Speaker 1: coming back, right, But I thought it was interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that this movie, of the things that we
Speaker 1: are critical of and right so um, addiction was something
Speaker 1: that was handled I think with a fair amount of nuance.
Speaker 1: Um my last big thing, and we mentioned this already,
Speaker 1: but I just want to hit on it again because
Speaker 1: I really don't like this. When it appears in movies
Speaker 1: is when it's inevitable that young people are going to
Speaker 1: find a movie don't show them how to self harm
Speaker 1: on screen. That is so fucked up. It's one of
Speaker 1: my least favorite coming of age movie choices. Um, any
Speaker 1: sort of self harm if there is a chance that
Speaker 1: a kid is going to see it, imply you don't
Speaker 1: need to show and an adult audience will know what
Speaker 1: you're fucking talking about. I really hate that they showed that.
Speaker 1: I don't like that Evan Rachel would even had to
Speaker 1: act it out. You know, you can even show like
Speaker 1: whatever scars in my My opinion is like you can
Speaker 1: show that people will get it. It will be very upsetting,
Speaker 1: and it won't show kids how to self harm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so some irresponsible choices were made in conclusion, yes, but
Speaker 1: it's also a movie that you know, feels very authentic
Speaker 1: and many other regards. So this, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: talk about a mixed bag of a movie. Talk about
Speaker 1: the next bag um. Yeah, I'm very curious of what
Speaker 1: our listeners experience with this movie is. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a wide spectrum of people's opinions and experiences with it.
Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot of young people that
Speaker 1: really glommed onto it as a kid and felt seen
Speaker 1: because there's not a lot of movies about young girls
Speaker 1: growing up in unstable households that show a lot of
Speaker 1: sides to a lot of people, Like I understand why
Speaker 1: a lot of people felt seen by this movie, and
Speaker 1: then there's also whatever we've had. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: it for two hours. There's a lot of ship going on.
Speaker 1: I'm also curious, listeners if you have an answer for
Speaker 1: this of like more modern or maybe you know, less
Speaker 1: ethically ambiguous but within the same style, or like you know,
Speaker 1: more modern depictions of this and that makes sense, or
Speaker 1: like what did what did thirteen open the doors for?
Speaker 1: You know? I feel like Euphoria is like gen Z's
Speaker 1: kind of version of this, which also makes some questionable choices. Well,
Speaker 1: I would saying, and I think they're worse off for it,
Speaker 1: because I don't like that Euphoria is famously written by
Speaker 1: an adult man and like you don't have a nikky
Speaker 1: read in the mix with Euphoria, which is I think
Speaker 1: like for the ethical fucking black hole it opens up.
Speaker 1: I think what makes thirteen really unique is that a
Speaker 1: kid's voice was heavily prioritized, and I think that that
Speaker 1: is like part of what makes it special versus versus
Speaker 1: a euphoria where it's an adult guesting their way around
Speaker 1: youth experience. Right at the same criticism about eighth grade,
Speaker 1: but no one wanted to hear that. People they were
Speaker 1: already We're already into the people are never ready. I
Speaker 1: really love that movie, but it's like yeah, anyways, yeah right. Um,
Speaker 1: does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie? Thirteen? No, No,
Speaker 1: I think we covered it. It definitely passes. The fact
Speaker 1: has no doubt about it. Most of the movie I
Speaker 1: mean not that I mean talking about kissing boys and
Speaker 1: talking about difficult relationships with father, brother and Brady comes up,
Speaker 1: but like a large portion of the movie is women
Speaker 1: talking to each other and coming of age and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Also like an example of mommy issues, which
Speaker 1: I think is becoming more popular. I mean Tangled, you know, great,
Speaker 1: great mommy, big week for mommy issues on the factal
Speaker 1: cast honestly, but yeah, I I agree. I think that
Speaker 1: the more glaring issue is it's all uh white women
Speaker 1: talking to each other for the movie. Yeah yeah, yes, Um.
Speaker 1: So that brings us to our nipple scales zero to
Speaker 1: five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional
Speaker 1: feminist lens um tricky one. Well. Also, this movie is
Speaker 1: like kind of a biopic basically, which like are always
Speaker 1: tricky to rate on the nipple skille because it's like,
Speaker 1: this is about a real person's experience, but also it
Speaker 1: is fictionalized because Ev is not a real person. That
Speaker 1: all that was the laws I wanted to say. I
Speaker 1: thought that the character that was developed the least well
Speaker 1: was Ev, which makes sense because that's literally the only
Speaker 1: character that's not based on a person in Nikki Reid's life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or writing criticism, right, I read something that, like, so
Speaker 1: Nikki read when she was like twelve or thirteen, her
Speaker 1: friend got arrested for selling acid, and like that's kind
Speaker 1: of who e. V Is based on, but like not fully,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of like that experience of like a
Speaker 1: teen kid getting arrested for selling acid. Let's sort of
Speaker 1: map a character onto that experience. And that's like, how
Speaker 1: more more like general than because it's like Tracy is
Speaker 1: so specific and it's so like demonstrably Nikki Reid where
Speaker 1: it's like Ev. I mean, part of the movie is
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to be guessing around what is true
Speaker 1: about her life and what isn't um, which I feel
Speaker 1: like honestly I would have I would rather have done
Speaker 1: away with that and let us, like, I think it's
Speaker 1: more impactful if we do know what her life experiences
Speaker 1: versus because I feel like that takes her into like
Speaker 1: this villain territory, or that's how I interpreted it at
Speaker 1: the time. Unreliable narrator, Yes, right, when it's like that
Speaker 1: character deserves empathy, but we but in order to really
Speaker 1: ampathize with her, we would need to know who she has,
Speaker 1: more things about her, right. So, oh gosh, it's so,
Speaker 1: as we have discussed, there are you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like behind the scenes things that you can call into
Speaker 1: question as far as the ethics of, you know, making
Speaker 1: teen actors do sexually explicit things on camera. It was
Speaker 1: handled probably as responsibly as possible if you're going to
Speaker 1: make the choice to do that, but you could say,
Speaker 1: maybe don't make that choice at all, because it's unethical
Speaker 1: to make the choice at all. Um. So there's that.
Speaker 1: There's the way again blackness is treated and used to
Speaker 1: suggest to suggest danger. Yeah, danger, which is such a
Speaker 1: fucking harmful thing to do because of like white America's
Speaker 1: perception of blackness is and black youth especially is often
Speaker 1: correlated with danger, and it's so harmful and so sinister,
Speaker 1: and that the movie makes suggestions at that is really
Speaker 1: fucked up. Um. But then like on the other hand,
Speaker 1: this is like a story about a teenager's experience told
Speaker 1: from the perspective, literally co writing the script of a teenager.
Speaker 1: Some things were clearly exaggerated for like cinematic effect. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's tricky, it's a it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 1: As we've said, I would give this movie. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The things that it handles irresponsibly, like really are upsetting
Speaker 1: enough to maybe even knock it down to like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking somewhere between like a two and a three, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's just like a two point five kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, not the nipple scale, what does it
Speaker 1: even mean. It's also a flawed metric. It's perfect. I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna I'm gonna go three, But I might
Speaker 1: be leaning a little bit on nostalgia there. Um. And
Speaker 1: also I think that my opinion would be heavily swayed
Speaker 1: by how the actors feel about it now. And sure
Speaker 1: that's my justification for going with three. I also just
Speaker 1: have like a bizarre attachment to this movie. Um, it
Speaker 1: feels like a very micro generational movie. Um. But because
Speaker 1: Nikki Reid, I mean, I really feel terribly that it
Speaker 1: had a negative effect on Nicki Reid's life, she was
Speaker 1: a kid. How would you possibly fucking know what would happen?
Speaker 1: And but listening to that interview that they did, reflecting
Speaker 1: on this time and knowing that everyone feels okay about
Speaker 1: it and that they don't regret having made it, I
Speaker 1: feel a little more lenient on that point. However, do
Speaker 1: I think movies should be made this way? No? No,
Speaker 1: this is like strictly viewing it in retrospect, like would
Speaker 1: not advocate for this style of filmmaking. I think it's
Speaker 1: potentially could have really really been horrible, and it's very
Speaker 1: lucky that it wasn't. And I'm glad all the precautions
Speaker 1: that were taken we were taken, but also even that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have guaranteed, Like even though every precaution was taken,
Speaker 1: they still had a negative effect on the child's life
Speaker 1: who was telling her story, Maggie, how about you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I think I'm also going to go with
Speaker 1: the three for similar reasons, and that it feels almost
Speaker 1: like a relic of this very specific time, and it
Speaker 1: feels like it captured some things, especially like the things
Speaker 1: are insinuated, like the diet culture, the this the that
Speaker 1: um I think the other reason I'm going to get
Speaker 1: into three is purely the aesthetic of it, because I
Speaker 1: feel like that like defined the aesthetic for a long
Speaker 1: time of both like low budget films, uh and things
Speaker 1: that wanted to be critical. Darling's kind of took on
Speaker 1: this leg crungy blue color for so long, um that
Speaker 1: I think it's at least visual lasting impact. I think
Speaker 1: we've made me don't give enough credit to it. I
Speaker 1: think part of that is the backwards like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: especially men watching it. I didn't know that like a
Speaker 1: movie about like girls and women could be this like
Speaker 1: you know, like real, yeah, this grit you know of
Speaker 1: which is being all its own. But I think because
Speaker 1: of that, the style it aesthetic influenced a lot of
Speaker 1: directors that were working around the same time or you know,
Speaker 1: we're up and coming and kind of became shorthand for
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, take my movie series slee um yea,
Speaker 1: which I think that alone, watching it was like damn
Speaker 1: like that. Just the look of this did a lot.
Speaker 1: And of course then we had all of the Twilight
Speaker 1: series which pay homage to this blue grade. This became
Speaker 1: the Hardwick House style. But Catherine Hardwick only directed the
Speaker 1: first one I know, and that is I mean, for
Speaker 1: all the rightful criticism around Katherine Hardwick in regards to
Speaker 1: this movie, she still should have been allowed to direct
Speaker 1: the other point, like, oh my god, absolutely yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, if you haven't seen this movie, maybe
Speaker 1: watch it for the static. I think like it kind
Speaker 1: of communicates a lot where the story may stumble here
Speaker 1: or there, or the characters are sometimes you know, viewing
Speaker 1: it as a moment in time, I think is the
Speaker 1: easiest way to interact with this movie now, very time capsuling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the movies like this, But also
Speaker 1: do I think that this is like more off authentic
Speaker 1: than a euphoria in some ways. Yes, I do like
Speaker 1: that it like focuses a mother daughter relationship and in
Speaker 1: a complicated one at that that's very relatable for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And I think it is important to
Speaker 1: see things like this, issues like this, things that teenage
Speaker 1: girls deal with to be given the like cinematic respect
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, it is a big deal to deal
Speaker 1: with these things. Um, yeah, for sure. Yeah. As far
Speaker 1: as Caitlin's rombo meter goes, sorry to give it a
Speaker 1: zero out of t Yeah, I don't know twists, they're
Speaker 1: uh the last thing because I just didn't know this,
Speaker 1: and I guess I wouldn't have guessed it for a
Speaker 1: movie this indie. Um, Holly Hunter was nominated for an
Speaker 1: Oscar for this movie. It kind of a fair amount
Speaker 1: of awards attention. It got some Golden Globe attention. I
Speaker 1: think some like Baptist stuff. Yeah, but yeah, I UM,
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought Holly Hunter did an incredible job
Speaker 1: in this movie. I really, this is incredible herself, Like
Speaker 1: forget it, oh, I mean it's a Holly Hunter. Really.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've covered a fair amount. I feel
Speaker 1: like we we always mentioned that we love her, but
Speaker 1: like she's just special, She's got range, she does she
Speaker 1: really does well. Well there's our chat on and on
Speaker 1: that note, I will say, I'll tag on that. If
Speaker 1: anyone watched this and like kind of liked it, maybe
Speaker 1: check out the films by Greg Iraqi, who does he
Speaker 1: worked more on the eighties, but he does extremely I
Speaker 1: thought provoking. Queer cinema usually depicting young, um, younger not
Speaker 1: this young, but like younger teens. UM that feels very
Speaker 1: much like their perspective is like respected and um feels important.
Speaker 1: He's just also just a great director or so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Check out some of the stuff. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: um cool. Well, Maggie, thank you for bringing us this real,
Speaker 1: really complicated text bratcher. Yeah rich text. Yeah. Where can
Speaker 1: we find you on the world Wide Web? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I am still on the internet one day no longer,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you can find me on Twitter. Just my
Speaker 1: name Maggie Mayfish m a e like my dad, great grandmother,
Speaker 1: not like the month the real ones now uh. And
Speaker 1: also on YouTube. I have another video coming out. I
Speaker 1: don't know when this is being released, but we have
Speaker 1: a video on Jim Carrey's depiction of Dr Eggman from
Speaker 1: the Sonic series and was he doing an Elon Musk question? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's our rich text for the next month. Is
Speaker 1: Sonic amazing? Yes? Everyone, please check out Maggie's stuff. And
Speaker 1: then you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast. Throw us a little rate and review and
Speaker 1: give us follow and if you're feelings, you're at it bulls.
Speaker 1: And we've got a Matreon at patreon dot com, slash
Speaker 1: backtel Cast where you get to bonus episodes every month
Speaker 1: plus access to the entire back catalog. This month, we're
Speaker 1: you know, knocking out a couple popular requests. And it's September,
Speaker 1: so we're doing back to schools. We're doing Never Been
Speaker 1: Kissed and Pitch Perfect. It's perfect, had I'm finally my
Speaker 1: big boss, my big boss of Bectel cast. I've been now,
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I just don't like it, and I
Speaker 1: know everyone loves it and so it's gonna be pissed
Speaker 1: at me. Maybe I'll love it. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: since it came out. Maybe maybe I just have a
Speaker 1: thing against acapella groups, so like it was never gonna be.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I really as a former acapella radio producer,
Speaker 1: um sorry to out myself. I produced an acapella radio
Speaker 1: show for no less than two and a half years
Speaker 1: and did it traumatize me? Obviously because they're no wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I was never the same. My good my goodness. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess tune into our Matreon to hear Jamie unpack
Speaker 1: all of her acapella related trauma. Yeah yeah yeah. Could
Speaker 1: I at one point named twenty Boston area acapella groups
Speaker 1: and rank them by preference? Maybe? WHOA But we don't
Speaker 1: want to. Literally, the show has been on for six
Speaker 1: years and I have not been able to go there.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I had no idea. Well, if you
Speaker 1: need some merch, you can go to uh T public
Speaker 1: dot com, slash the Bechtel Cast and grab yourself some teas,
Speaker 1: some stickers, some pillows and the other items. Follow your heart.
Speaker 1: We got pillows, I love. I love my Becktel Cast. Pillows.
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie. I might get some more um. And
Speaker 1: with that, let's repair our relationships with our moms. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. Let's do it. Bye bye bye