Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Speaker 2: Another rerun? Why are there so many reruns?
Speaker 3: Well, I told you each one made sense for different reasons,
Speaker 3: and this one is because Cool Zone Media takes off
Speaker 3: for the holidays sometimes, And so we're going to run
Speaker 3: a rerun about anti fascism and film. Why because I
Speaker 3: like it and I want you to hear it again
Speaker 3: or for the first time, but also because I think
Speaker 3: it's really important that we understand about how culture can
Speaker 3: shape things and also specifically how we can use culture
Speaker 3: to resist. And also I just think it's cool that
Speaker 3: all the original vampires are on our side. Anyway, I
Speaker 3: hope you all are well, and here's an episode. Hello
Speaker 3: and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm
Speaker 3: your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I talk about
Speaker 3: rebels and revolutionaries and weirdos and I guess people who
Speaker 3: passed the basic I'm a bumbar of not liking Nazis
Speaker 3: and people I find interesting.
Speaker 2: And with me today is Shrek. Shrek.
Speaker 4: How are you doing? Oh? Oh, I was I was
Speaker 4: gonna try to do a terrible Scottish accent and then
Speaker 4: so I thought you were gonna do I don't know
Speaker 4: what I was gonna say. It was gonna be bad,
Speaker 4: so I decided against it. I'm great, Donkey's great, Fiona's grey.
Speaker 4: We're just chilling in the swamp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I believe you. Most people might know you
Speaker 2: by your previous name, which is I'm under the impression
Speaker 2: not a dead name, but just not your current name,
Speaker 2: which is Caitlin Derante.
Speaker 4: Is that that's true. I go in and out of identities,
Speaker 4: and all of those identities are fictional movie characters. So
Speaker 4: right now I'm Shrek.
Speaker 2: Excellent, and I'm the dictator of people's identities with me
Speaker 2: today is Sophie. How are you, Sophie?
Speaker 1: Ah? No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I won't to do it again.
Speaker 1: I want to, I really, I really want to rewatch
Speaker 1: Shrek to see if it holds. Have we have we
Speaker 1: done a Shrek on? Have we done any of the
Speaker 1: Shreks on Bechdo cast?
Speaker 4: We've done Shrek one and two, although I don't know
Speaker 4: if you were present for either, but I don't think
Speaker 4: I was one.
Speaker 1: I would have had I would have been I would
Speaker 1: have been annoying. But did they pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 1: I don't remember listeners, you'll have to go back and
Speaker 1: listen to the episode.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, there's no way you could just watch the
Speaker 2: movies and find out if they passed the Bechdel test
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: I do really want to rewatch the movies because I
Speaker 1: want to see if they hold up at all or
Speaker 1: if they are an absolute nightmare.
Speaker 4: Well, you can also listen to our episodes about them.
Speaker 4: The Shrek one episode sucks because mostly my fault it was.
Speaker 4: It was just like one of our earlier episodes. Within
Speaker 4: the first like I don't know, a few months of
Speaker 4: doing the show, and before we really to watch the wedding,
Speaker 4: Jamie did watch this Wow called out.
Speaker 2: Bernie has been dropping completely cold. Caitlin has a podcast
Speaker 2: called Bechdel Cast where they could talk about movies, and
Speaker 2: you should listen.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. I agree you should listen, but
Speaker 4: not to the Shrek one episode. The Shrek two episode, however,
Speaker 4: is what we did to celebrate I think the podcast's
Speaker 4: five year anniversary. It was some celebratory episode, and so
Speaker 4: Jamie and I.
Speaker 1: There's no better way than to, you know, celebrate with
Speaker 1: some puss in boots.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, he and isn't we supposed to be
Speaker 4: having a fiesta, as Puss in Boots says at the
Speaker 4: end of Shrek two.
Speaker 1: Caylin and I could do this banterer for probably several hours.
Speaker 2: So Margaret, so no, no, no, please continue? Uh well
Speaker 2: this will be a three part Okay, So Ian does
Speaker 2: our audio editing, and our theme music was written for
Speaker 2: us by unwoman. One person said, you keep saying your
Speaker 2: music is done by a woman. And while that is
Speaker 2: true as a as a performer named unwoman like non woman,
Speaker 2: who ironically is a woman. But so and you can
Speaker 2: check out her music much like the music that you
Speaker 2: already listened to. Anyway. On Monday, we talked about German
Speaker 2: expressionist horror who and the people who fought Nazis, And
Speaker 2: today we're going to talk about Hollywood. It's a sleepy
Speaker 2: little town. Have you ever heard of Hollywood?
Speaker 4: Caitlin heard of it? I have?
Speaker 2: I mean Shrek.
Speaker 4: It's okay, I'm back to Caitlin for now. Oh okay,
Speaker 4: I have heard of Hollywood. I live adjacent to the
Speaker 4: neighborhood in fact, and yeah, I would say I I'm
Speaker 4: very very peripherally working in Hollywood. Oh okay, in that
Speaker 4: I have a movie podcast that analyzes film, and therefore
Speaker 4: I work in Hollywood. That's how that works, right, Does
Speaker 4: that mean I temporarily work in Hollywood?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah for this?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: Well did you know that there was a homegrown anti
Speaker 2: Nazi league in Hollywood?
Speaker 4: I don't know if I knew about this.
Speaker 2: What do you think that the anti Nazi league in
Speaker 2: Hollywood was called?
Speaker 4: Was it called the Hollywood Anti Anti Nazi League?
Speaker 2: Why did you read my script ahead of me? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Is that really correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called the Hollywood Anti Nazi League.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, I mean you set me up for it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I do still appreciate that, probably more than
Speaker 2: anything else. The actual long term sponsor the show is
Speaker 2: naming things. All of your groups have to have a
Speaker 2: league in the name, because I think there was a
Speaker 2: period between eighteen eighty and nineteen thirty where there was
Speaker 2: not a social movement organization, both right wing or left wing,
Speaker 2: that did not have league in the name.
Speaker 4: So and we don't use league anymore.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 4: It's all like people are like, I don't know, organization or.
Speaker 2: Association, association group?
Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever happened to a league?
Speaker 2: I suspect, And I'm just gonna go ahead and claim
Speaker 2: this is truth. Tell you the truth, which is that
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, with the fall of the cloak
Speaker 2: as a fashion item, also fell the leagues. Because I
Speaker 2: think that the leagues and the cloaks were inexcricably tied together. Okay,
Speaker 2: like a cloak pin holding the two concepts together. Wow
Speaker 2: makes you think, I know, I don't know sure what
Speaker 2: it makes me think. But so the Hollywood Anti Nazi
Speaker 2: they actually started out really cool. It was probably the
Speaker 2: first American anti Nazi organization that wasn't specifically Jewish. Other
Speaker 2: organizations had started earlier, and a lot of the Hollywood
Speaker 2: Anti Nazi League was Communist like members of the Communist Party,
Speaker 2: but notably a lot of it wasn't. It was sort
Speaker 2: of a popular front against fascist influence in filmmaking. Practically
Speaker 2: who's who of Hollywood, including communist, liberal and conservative members actually,
Speaker 2: and including a bunch of refugees from the Nazis like
Speaker 2: Fritz Lang, who we talked about last time. Chico Marx,
Speaker 2: the oldest Marx brother, was in it. M john Ford,
Speaker 2: who directed The Grapes of Wrath and basically like every
Speaker 2: movie at the time, was in it.
Speaker 4: Very popular director.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I looked more into him and he
Speaker 2: was never a communist, but he made it clear that
Speaker 2: if being in an anti Nazi league and I'm smeared as
Speaker 2: a communist, then like fucking bring it on. Specifically, as
Speaker 2: quote was, may I express my wholehearted desire to cooperate
Speaker 2: to the utmost of my ability with Hollywood Anti Nazi League.
Speaker 2: If this be communism, count me.
Speaker 4: In pretty cool, John, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: Basically the whole pro Nazi press, because there's this whole
Speaker 2: pro Nazi press was like, this is a Jewish Communist conspiracy,
Speaker 2: which is always funny because anti Semitism either accused the
Speaker 2: Jews of being communists or capitalists, depending on which ideology
Speaker 2: they want to demonize. And I love how it's like
Speaker 2: doesn't even hit a cognitive dissonance in the anti Semitic
Speaker 2: mind that like you're like, which ever want to hate
Speaker 2: or I'm mad at right now? That's what you know
Speaker 2: people are doing or whatever, And it's like worth knowing
Speaker 2: because when you're like, oh, an anti Nazi league, well,
Speaker 2: threo was a whole league dedicated to being mad at
Speaker 2: like the Germans. Like in the nineteen thirties, if you
Speaker 2: were a right wing person in the United States, you
Speaker 2: were probably a fascist. You were probably at least sympathetic
Speaker 2: to fascism. And there was this huge pro fascist movement
Speaker 2: in the US by people who once the US enters
Speaker 2: the war, people immediately drop off that Some people stay Nazis,
Speaker 2: but most people are like, Okay, well, we want to
Speaker 2: be American right wing people, not you know, our enemy
Speaker 2: right wing people or whatever. Right anyway. John Ford during
Speaker 2: World War Two, he joins the military as a filmmaker.
Speaker 2: He gets wounded twice filming battles. He lands at D Day,
Speaker 2: he films, and he got less cool as he got older.
Speaker 2: He goes from fighting against McCarthyism to supporting Nixon and
Speaker 2: Reagan later but more important to the anti Nazi league
Speaker 2: and more personally. Really, it's actually not more important. It's
Speaker 2: just personal to me. My great grandfather was this tin
Speaker 2: pan alley songwriter who used to write songs in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties for this guy named Eddie Cantor. And Eddie
Speaker 2: Cantor was like this big vaudeville singer guy right, and
Speaker 2: he gave us be Eddie Cantor, not my great whatever
Speaker 2: great grandfather, great great grandfather. He gave a speech at
Speaker 2: the inaugural party, and I just got really excited whenever
Speaker 2: I see his name, because I'm like, oh, maybe my
Speaker 2: great granddad was really cool. I don't know shit about
Speaker 2: my great granddad, and I'm not even gonna tell you
Speaker 2: his name because Nazis have already worked hard enough figure
Speaker 2: out who my family is anyway. Uh Okay. So they
Speaker 2: published not that there's like a through line to the
Speaker 2: modern world or anything like that. So they published two papers,
Speaker 2: the Hollywood Anti Nazi News and Hollywood Now, which I
Speaker 2: feel like Hollywood Now is probably like a cleverer way
Speaker 2: to name your paper.
Speaker 4: Because it's very just like it just makes it seem like,
Speaker 4: and here's what's happening in the movie industry. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 4: without which any sort of like other objective. Yeah, which
Speaker 4: one would you have worked for? Like if you're like,
Speaker 4: which one have you put your weight behind? The Hollywood
Speaker 4: Anti Nazi News or just Hollywood Now, both with the
Speaker 4: same purpose?
Speaker 2: Just which, right?
Speaker 4: I mean? I've I feel based on the names alone,
Speaker 4: I would say the first one because why you know,
Speaker 4: I like transparency. Yeah, so the first one has a
Speaker 4: way more transparent name.
Speaker 2: I think I think I would have too, just and
Speaker 2: also you get to be like part of Hollywood anti
Speaker 2: Nazi news. Get all your anti Nazi news about Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Yep, read all about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. They had two LA radio shows, they sponsored
Speaker 2: lectures and rallies, they organized boycotts of Nazi products, and
Speaker 2: they fucked with all the American Nazis, mostly the German
Speaker 2: American boond as well as the Silver Shirts. And they
Speaker 2: fucked with visiting European Nazis, at least one of whom
Speaker 2: stayed with Walt Disney because Walt Disney was a piece
Speaker 2: of shit. Oh yeah, yeah, and now let's talk about
Speaker 2: Walt Disney, the piece of shit.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: A little little mini reverse, a little bastard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like I was.
Speaker 2: Like, uh, just a little mini bastards, just like a
Speaker 2: little taste, Like.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna start like atonal shrieking. Are you
Speaker 1: no right? Just making sure?
Speaker 2: Yep, no.
Speaker 4: It you definitely I.
Speaker 2: Did think about it. Yeah, yeah, no, I know. But
Speaker 2: that's in that same way that like when someone tells
Speaker 2: you not to do something, it just you instinctively want
Speaker 2: to do it, even if it's and then you realize
Speaker 2: you don't want to do it anyway. Disney he gives
Speaker 2: a Nazi propaganda filmmaker a tour of his studio a
Speaker 2: month after Crystal Knocked while she's there to promote her
Speaker 2: Nazi propaganda film. He later claims that he didn't know
Speaker 2: like that she was a Nazi or whatever. My argument
Speaker 2: is why this is obviously a lie, is that the
Speaker 2: Anti Nazi League was like boycotting him over it and
Speaker 2: making it really clear ahead of time and doing all
Speaker 2: of this press being like, don't host the Nazi lady
Speaker 2: with her Nazi propaganda, And he's like, oh, I just well,
Speaker 2: as an a political filmmaker, I'll just show you around
Speaker 2: this space. You know, I don't know why he is
Speaker 2: that accent. He does not know that accent. So a
Speaker 2: Disney animator the main evidence of Disney as a Nazi.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of weird rumors and complicated things around it,
Speaker 2: but the like main single thing that I can point
Speaker 2: to and be like, no, he was a fucking Nazi.
Speaker 2: A Disney animator named Art Babbitt said quote, in the
Speaker 2: immediate years before we entered World War Two, there was
Speaker 2: a small but fiercely loyal I suppose legal following of
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party. There were open meetings anyone could attend,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to see what was going on myself.
Speaker 2: On more than one occasion, I observed Walt Disney and
Speaker 2: his lawyer there, along with a lot of prominent Nazi
Speaker 2: afflicted Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to these meetings all
Speaker 2: the time. So my argument with that he was a
Speaker 2: Nazi is that he went to Nazi organized Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, not hard to connect those dots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because people are like, oh, is a Nazi because
Speaker 2: like this is that? And like, no, no, because he was
Speaker 2: because he went to the Nazi.
Speaker 4: Actively participating in Nazi meetings. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's this thing happening. And I'm kind of
Speaker 2: curious if you've caught this where there's like this whole
Speaker 2: big like backlash, like there's like a Disney wasn't a
Speaker 2: Nazi discourse that the internet's trying to have.
Speaker 4: I haven't been paying attention to that. Why what are
Speaker 4: they saying?
Speaker 2: It's like, I think what's happening is that people are
Speaker 2: conflating like personal bigotry with supporting fascism, because basically what
Speaker 2: people are saying is that they're like they're like literally
Speaker 2: listing out all of his black friends or all of
Speaker 2: his Jewish friends or whatever, and being like and like,
Speaker 2: it seems to me that most of his like most
Speaker 2: of the bigotry that's expressed in the old Disney films
Speaker 2: actually is kind of in line with all of the
Speaker 2: other bigotry happening in Hollywood films at the time. Like,
Speaker 2: I think it wasn't particularly exemplary, I mean, or like
Speaker 2: particularly standoutish, right, But but yeah, so people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a Nazi because he like didn't have personal
Speaker 2: bigotry against Jews necessarily his entire life. But my argument
Speaker 2: is that I literally am not thinking about that one
Speaker 2: way or the other because I don't have enough information.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying he went to fucking Nazi medians and
Speaker 2: he was like super right wing, so I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's not hard right, And and some of his films
Speaker 2: were the last ones to be he was like trying
Speaker 2: to be buzz of the Nazis, and some of his
Speaker 2: films were the last American films to get banned in
Speaker 2: Germany during the war, and Gobels and all the rest.
Speaker 2: They actually put together a plan to try and figure
Speaker 2: out if they could claim that Walt Disney was German
Speaker 2: so that they could get it, get his films to
Speaker 2: be allowed to continue to be played because they liked
Speaker 2: his film so much, because they were kind of right wing,
Speaker 2: you know, and so they were like put together this
Speaker 2: thing about whether or not they could get away with
Speaker 2: claiming he was born Walter Distler instead of Walt Disney.
Speaker 2: And that's not Disney's fault, like he didn't make sure
Speaker 2: Goebels do that once the war started. And this is
Speaker 2: the other reason that people claim that he wasn't a Nazi.
Speaker 2: He absolutely like the rest of these fucking Nazis. As
Speaker 2: soon as the US entered the war against Germany. He
Speaker 2: was like, no, no, no, I'm an American right wing
Speaker 2: person and so now I'm anti Nazi. He was just
Speaker 2: a social conservative capitalist, and he made a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of anti Nazis during the war because everyone did. But
Speaker 2: very few of the Hollywood studios were willing to stick
Speaker 2: their necks out in critique fascism at the time, like
Speaker 2: very very few. Foreign films made up about forty percent
Speaker 2: of movie revenue before World War two. This is like
Speaker 2: before America entered the war. Basically, okay, and so they
Speaker 2: didn't want to rock the boat, right, because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we want the foreign market and we want all the
Speaker 2: Nazi controlled areas to still show her movies and give
Speaker 2: us money. With one exception, the Warner Brothers okay, the
Speaker 2: most based Hollywood studio of the nineteen thirties. Harry and
Speaker 2: Jack Warner were the sons of a Jewish cobbler who
Speaker 2: had fled pogroms in Poland, and they didn't forget their roots.
Speaker 2: Theirs was the first studio to criticize Hitler in a
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three Looney Tunes cartoon called Bosco's Picture Show,
Speaker 2: in which Hitler is chasing someone around with a meat cleaver.
Speaker 2: The person they're chasing around is play by someone whose
Speaker 2: last name is Drante. But I forgot to write down
Speaker 2: his first.
Speaker 4: Name, Jimmy, Jimmy Duranty, Oh, Durante, Yeah, which is also
Speaker 4: how my family pronounces my last name. But I was like, I'm.
Speaker 1: Also how Robert consistently mispronounces your last name.
Speaker 4: Yes, so in a way, I do change my identity
Speaker 4: around because I lived the first eighteen years of my
Speaker 4: life is Caitlin Duranty. And then I was like, I
Speaker 4: hate the way that sounds Caitlyn Durrante.
Speaker 2: Because that's like the anglicization of it is Durante.
Speaker 4: Is that yeah? Okay, which like I don't I mean,
Speaker 4: Drante is an Italian name, so uh, it's yeah, slightly
Speaker 4: more correct pronunciation wise to say Durrante. But anyway, Jimmy
Speaker 4: Duranty was a famous person in Hollywood at one time.
Speaker 4: But no relation. I'm not related to him.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he was your great grandfather.
Speaker 4: He's my husband.
Speaker 2: Oh that actually makes sense. You took his name, he
Speaker 2: took my name. Oh oh good, Okay, I'm sorry. I'm
Speaker 2: sorry to have accused you of such a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, feminism, hello, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he used to be His maiden name was like
Speaker 4: Jimmy Jimmy Smith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you all made that film together, So I
Speaker 2: made Have Married a vampire.
Speaker 4: Exactly, starring the same actor who plays Shrek.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whose name is Shrek? Oh you mean the ogre Shrek? Okay? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: count Overlock.
Speaker 4: Mike Myers?
Speaker 1: Is that who that is?
Speaker 4: Mike Myers? Well he was in that movie something something
Speaker 4: married an axe murderer, that's what you were referring to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I actually have seen that movie. I okay,
Speaker 2: So Warner Brothers, they those their German offices entirely. In
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four, when the Nazis told them to fire
Speaker 2: all the Jewish employees, they were like, nope, you get
Speaker 2: nothing from us ever again. Fuck all of you. They
Speaker 2: stopped working with the Nazi regime. It took five more years.
Speaker 2: It took till nineteen thirty nine for the other major
Speaker 2: studios to follow suit, and the heads of many of
Speaker 2: these other major studios were Jewish too. It's almost like
Speaker 2: an ethnic heritage doesn't make you a good or bad person. Instead,
Speaker 2: it's your own actions that do that.
Speaker 4: It's almost as if capitalism really just warps your braininess
Speaker 4: of who you are and kind of what your background is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you want your brain warped, you can
Speaker 2: purchase goods and services from done. Yeah, thank you. I
Speaker 2: really retard on that one, such as the following advertisers,
Speaker 2: who we support in every way with our entire hearts
Speaker 2: or entire Golden Onion hearts.
Speaker 1: Especially the it was weird as for gold that keep
Speaker 1: popping up. Oh yeah, that nobody should buy.
Speaker 2: Okay, but hear me out. If you bury gold, don't
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Don't do it cold onions only.
Speaker 2: Okay, if anyone well, okay, but if the sponsors sent
Speaker 2: me gold, I'd probably tell people that, oh, that's the
Speaker 2: problem with capitalism.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: Now I understand you've been capitalismed. I got owned by
Speaker 2: my need to eat food every day. Here's some ads
Speaker 2: and we are back and we are talking about how
Speaker 2: MGM Studios, which had a Jewish head in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 2: the Jewish head Adolf Zukor said, I don't think Hollywood
Speaker 2: should deal with anything but entertainment. The newsreels take care
Speaker 2: of current events. In fucking nineteen thirty nine, the Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers had to fight anti Semitism at home as well.
Speaker 2: Hollywood had a self censorship board called the Production Code Administration,
Speaker 2: which was led by this anti Semite named Joseph Breen.
Speaker 2: And when I say anti Semite, I'm not, once again
Speaker 2: not trying to be like subtle here, because he wasn't
Speaker 2: very subtle. What he said what's wrong with Hollywood was
Speaker 2: all the quote lousy Jews and that ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of Jews were Eastern Jews, the scum of the earth.
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's who was in charge. And then that's funny too, right,
Speaker 2: because everyone's always like anti Semitic shit's always like, ah,
Speaker 2: the Jews controlling Hollywood and whatever, and you're like the
Speaker 2: fucking Censorship Board was like run by this guy who whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: regardless of the PCA, the Warner Brothers went ahead as
Speaker 2: best they could. In nineteen thirty seven, they made a
Speaker 2: Humphrey Bogart film called Black Legion about domestic fascism that
Speaker 2: compared the KKK to the Nazis. They made a nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight version of the Adventures of Robinhood that was
Speaker 2: like really transparently about the need to fight Nazis. And
Speaker 2: then they made a film that I had never heard
Speaker 2: of but made a big fucking we'll talk about what
Speaker 2: a big deal it was. They made a film called
Speaker 2: Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Either of you ever heard of.
Speaker 4: This, I've not heard of Maybe I've heard of it,
Speaker 4: but I know nothing else.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's what's so interesting me is kind of
Speaker 2: like how these things can be like cultural moments, right,
Speaker 2: and then not become classics.
Speaker 4: Kind of have no legacy after that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Confessions of a Nazi Spy was directed by a
Speaker 2: Jewish refugee, and it brings us the Hollywood Nazi the like,
Speaker 2: here's a caricature of a shitty fucking Nazi, right, And
Speaker 2: this is way before the US was involved in the war.
Speaker 2: And it was based on the true story of an
Speaker 2: American detective who uncovered Nazi spies in the US. And
Speaker 2: since it was a true story, it could kind of
Speaker 2: get around PCA censorship barely. The Reich did not like
Speaker 2: this film. The Reich declared it would ban all films
Speaker 2: ever made by any of the actors in the film.
Speaker 2: Other studios wanted it to not come out because they
Speaker 2: were afraid the Nazis would ban all American films if
Speaker 2: this movie came out, which eventually the Nazis did ban
Speaker 2: all American films. A PCA official wrote, are we ready
Speaker 2: to depart from the pleasant and profitable course of entertainment
Speaker 2: to engage in propaganda, to produce screen portrayals arousing controversy, conflict, racial, religious,
Speaker 2: and nationalistic antagonism, and outright human hatred?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're saying that about a film that criticizes fascism
Speaker 4: and Nazism. That reminds me of the time when what
Speaker 4: the fuck is that Loser's name D. W. Griffith, after
Speaker 4: making Birth of a Nation, which was so racist that
Speaker 4: at the time in nineteen fifteen, people were like, this
Speaker 4: is really racist. So when something when people when like
Speaker 4: critics and the general public in nineteen fifteen, thinks something
Speaker 4: is really racist, you know, it was very, very racist. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he didn't like. Griffith didn't like how many people
Speaker 4: were calling his movie racist and we're being quote unquote
Speaker 4: intolerant towards his Yeah movie that he then made a
Speaker 4: movie a couple of years later called Intolerance because he
Speaker 4: didn't like that people were so intolerant of his work.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Those so, anyway, real Nazis were the anti Nazis all along.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that this is a twentieth century relic.
Speaker 2: That is not a pattern that we've ever seen again.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, So the Warner Brothers they released Confessions of
Speaker 2: a Nazi Spy. Anyway, When asked why they were doing it,
Speaker 2: Jack Warner said, the Silver Shirts and the Bundists, the
Speaker 2: two American fascist organizations, and the rest of these hoods
Speaker 2: are marching in Los Angeles right now. There are high
Speaker 2: school kids with swastikas on their sleeves. A few crummy
Speaker 2: blocks from our studio, Is that what you want in
Speaker 2: exchange for some crummy film royalties from Germany?
Speaker 4: And a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and shout out for just using the word crummy
Speaker 2: twice in a very intense yeah. And there was one
Speaker 2: concession that they had to make in order to get
Speaker 2: the PCA to release the film at all. They couldn't
Speaker 2: outright talk about the fact that the Jews were the
Speaker 2: people who are being fucked with the most by the Nazis.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about in a moment the first film
Speaker 2: that did center Jews in an anti Nazi film, but
Speaker 2: Confessions of a Nazi Spy. They received more than one
Speaker 2: hundred threatening letters and they have to hire extra security.
Speaker 2: They didn't do any publicity for it. The cast and
Speaker 2: cruise names were kept secret until like right before release,
Speaker 2: and they were hard to recruit casting crew in the
Speaker 2: first place. And it was like almost entirely made by
Speaker 2: German refugees and like committed anti fascists from the US.
Speaker 2: And this movie was controversial. And when I say controversial,
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from an article by Stephen J. Ross.
Speaker 2: Not everyone was enamored with the film. Nazi sympathizers in
Speaker 2: Milwaukee burned down the local Warner Brothers theater shortly after
Speaker 2: the movie opened. Angry citizens in other cities picketed theaters,
Speaker 2: slashed seats, and threatened exhibitors. In Poland, anti Semitic audiences
Speaker 2: hanged several theater owners in their movie houses for exhibiting
Speaker 2: the films. Film Nazis burned the film everywhere they could
Speaker 2: exert pressure. Wow, so people like literally died for showing
Speaker 2: this anti fascist film, which is like the stakes that
Speaker 2: I think sometimes gets forgotten about. You know, the film
Speaker 2: was carried to its premiere in an armored car and
Speaker 2: all the chicken shit celebrities didn't show up because not
Speaker 2: many of them did, but many of the like A
Speaker 2: list celebrities didn't show up because they were afraid of
Speaker 2: being seen as quote political, and their like excuse that
Speaker 2: they came up with MGM Studios through a birthday party
Speaker 2: for someone that night, like a surprise birthday party, like
Speaker 2: all of a sudden to give all their stars an
Speaker 2: excuse to miss it. And there's some kind of like
Speaker 2: one of the most interesting parallels to me about this
Speaker 2: as everything in the world compares to the Spanish Civil
Speaker 2: War in my head, which is not true. But you
Speaker 2: know whatever, my brain fixates on things. And the Americans
Speaker 2: who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War were
Speaker 2: called premature anti fascists and they were mistrusted and they
Speaker 2: had had trouble, like they would like later go and
Speaker 2: sign up for the army because being like, well, we
Speaker 2: fought not fascist before and we want to fight him again.
Speaker 2: And the army was like holding them at arm's length,
Speaker 2: being like, we don't trust you because you're too anti fascist,
Speaker 2: because you were prematurely anti fascist. And this happens to
Speaker 2: the filmmakers and shit right, they're now under suspicion because
Speaker 2: they were anti fascist before the US government was officially
Speaker 2: anti fascist. And it was basically seen as as big
Speaker 2: of a deal as the birth of the nation. But
Speaker 2: from the opposite point of view. A Jewish film producer,
Speaker 2: Lou Edelman wrote to his bossy last night the motion picture,
Speaker 2: like the concept of the motion picture had a bar mitzvah.
Speaker 2: It came of age. It said today I am a man,
Speaker 2: so big fucking deal. I've never heard of it. I
Speaker 2: kind of want to go watch.
Speaker 4: It now, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I have no idea. It like holds up like as
Speaker 2: like entertainment, but it was fucking important that they made it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm curious and like you said that the steaks
Speaker 4: surrounding something like that, Yeah, we kind of we can
Speaker 4: forget how hot like literally life and death steaks in
Speaker 4: some cases. Yeah, yeah, or making something like that. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm going to go check it out. Yeah, if it's accessible,
Speaker 4: even I wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is. I like didn't specifically look
Speaker 2: it up to be like it's It's kind of my
Speaker 2: plan over the next couple of nights to watch some
Speaker 2: of these movies that I didn't have a chance to
Speaker 2: watch before I recorded to a podcast about them, because
Speaker 2: that is the nature of podcasting. And now you all
Speaker 2: know it's true. I do a lot of research.
Speaker 4: I never watch any of the movies that I cover
Speaker 4: on the beckdal Gast. That's not true. I watched them twice,
Speaker 4: sometimes three times.
Speaker 2: No, I thought, you just read the Wikipedia entry out Yeah, exactly. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's go back to the Anti Nazi League, and there's
Speaker 2: a big Popular Front group made up of all the
Speaker 2: various people opposed to fascism. But they had another there's
Speaker 2: another comparison I can make against with the Popular Front
Speaker 2: of Spain because the people fighting the Popular Front fighting
Speaker 2: fascism in Spain had a problem, and that problem was Stalin,
Speaker 2: because Stalin, you know, went around and like started shooting
Speaker 2: everyone else who didn't agree with him in the middle
Speaker 2: of the war and caused all this terrible shit. The
Speaker 2: Hollywood Popular Front also had a problem. You want to
Speaker 2: guess what that problem was.
Speaker 4: I would guess that. I mean, what problems don't they have.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's probably having something to do with capitalism
Speaker 4: and or they I don't know, the studio system, something
Speaker 4: something you tell me.
Speaker 2: Nope, okay, yeah, it kind of was a kind of
Speaker 2: a terrible riddle that I'm like, it was Stalin. Their
Speaker 2: problem was Stalin.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the parallels okay, because Okay. So the group
Speaker 2: was made up of a wide variety of anti fascists,
Speaker 2: including even conservative members, and its political aims were purely
Speaker 2: anti Nazi, but it was controlled from behind the scenes
Speaker 2: by the Communist Party through the Communist Party of America
Speaker 2: and the American League for Peace and Democracy, which was
Speaker 2: controlled by the Soviet Union, which had the goal of
Speaker 2: getting the US into a defensive alliance with the USSR
Speaker 2: in case of Nazi aggression. So the Hollywood Anti Nazi
Speaker 2: League was created in that context in which the USSR
Speaker 2: wanted Americans to be anti Nazi. But have you ever
Speaker 2: heard of them? I keep asking I need to stop
Speaker 2: asking you questions. Have you ever heard of it? I
Speaker 2: don't like putting you on the spot like that.
Speaker 4: I'm just going to tell you about it, like okay,
Speaker 4: because if I have heard of it, I get to
Speaker 4: feel so freaking cool. Okay, and be like, yeah, I've
Speaker 4: heard of it and I've seen it. Yeah, try me.
Speaker 4: And then if I haven't, then I exposed myself as
Speaker 4: once again a fraud. But I'm willing to take that risk.
Speaker 2: Okay. Have you ever heard of the Molotov Ribbon trop Pact?
Speaker 4: No, it's okay. And then I burst into tears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, actually is literally crying. Shrek right now on
Speaker 2: camera is crying. So on August twenty third, nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 2: it's the eve of World War two and the USSR
Speaker 2: decides to be buds with Hitler, so they sign a
Speaker 2: treaty called the Molotov Ribbon trp Packed with Hitler. And
Speaker 2: it's two things first, and this part's public at the time.
Speaker 2: It's a non aggression pact. Second, and this part's the
Speaker 2: secret part of it, the secret protocol that we find
Speaker 2: out decades later. It carved up chunks of Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and the Baltic states in Finland and said, okay, we
Speaker 2: can invade this, you can invade that. They just like
Speaker 2: split up the spoils of war with Nazi Germany. And
Speaker 2: the most dramatic effects of this, of course, is that
Speaker 2: Germany and the USSR both invaded Poland. And then they
Speaker 2: held like common parades where the Red Army and the
Speaker 2: weimarcht or whatever would like march around together and be like,
Speaker 2: we are friends. You know, people don't like talking about
Speaker 2: this as much. And then the USSR conquered finn tried
Speaker 2: to conquer Finland, which gets called the Winter War, and
Speaker 2: the Finns put up a surprising resistance and the USSR
Speaker 2: seals about nine percent of the country instead of all
Speaker 2: of the country. And you know how the USSR. The
Speaker 2: the way that they got the USSR got that packed
Speaker 2: with Hitler is Stalin gave an order to quote purge
Speaker 2: the Foreign Ministry.
Speaker 4: Of Jews.
Speaker 2: In order to be friends with the Nazis. USSR Nazi
Speaker 2: relations only fell apart when the two countries couldn't agree
Speaker 2: about how to split the spoils of war. Basically, they
Speaker 2: were in talks with I didn't know this shit until
Speaker 2: fucking way recently, like five years ago or something, and
Speaker 2: I've been politically engaged for a long time. They were
Speaker 2: in talks with the USSR to formally join the Axis
Speaker 2: Powers until eventually, at some point Hitler was like, Nah,
Speaker 2: we're just going to invade the USSR and take it all.
Speaker 2: But the USSR tried to join Hitler basicallyops, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Doesn't look great in retrospect. The biggest deal, of course,
Speaker 2: was how the USSR invaded a bunch of places and
Speaker 2: then sent millions of tons of food to Hitler, because
Speaker 2: there was the Western Powers had a blockade on Germany,
Speaker 2: you know, and so they would like send shit all
Speaker 2: the way from the eastern part of Russia. But there's
Speaker 2: another thing that mattered at all of this too. All
Speaker 2: the communist parties in the West were forced to become
Speaker 2: anti anti fascist because now anti fascism so so communists
Speaker 2: in Parliament in France, like a few weeks earlier, had
Speaker 2: voted unanimously for war against Germany, but then they were
Speaker 2: like suddenly against the war and called it imperialist. It
Speaker 2: would be imperialist for France to attack Nazi Germany, m
Speaker 2: because the Soviet Union was suddenly friends. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: there's always a bit of bastards in every episode about
Speaker 2: good people. And all the anti fascist organizations that were
Speaker 2: just communist front groups got dissolved, or sometimes they did
Speaker 2: worse than dissolve. The Hollywood Anti Nazi League didn't just dissolve,
Speaker 2: It joined the American Peace Mobilization, an organization dedicated to
Speaker 2: keeping the US from helping written in France, and they're
Speaker 2: fight against the fucking Nazis.
Speaker 4: Okay, And how does one thing become the other?
Speaker 2: So I think I think what happened was all of
Speaker 2: the like regular anti fascists get out of the group,
Speaker 2: right because the group dissolves officially and becomes this other group.
Speaker 2: And then all of the people who were there because
Speaker 2: they were like communists loyal to the USSR stay and
Speaker 2: become anti anti fascists, got it, and they start fighting
Speaker 2: against military recruitment until of course the Nazis invade the USSR,
Speaker 2: and then they became the American People's Mobilization, and then
Speaker 2: they tried to get the US into the war, and
Speaker 2: then after the war, during the Cold War, they decide
Speaker 2: now they're pacifists and they become the National Committee to
Speaker 2: win the peace. Mm hmm, which is I guess like
Speaker 2: my takeaway from this is it's cool to be a
Speaker 2: coalition with other anti fascists, but maybe don't trust the
Speaker 2: people who are only into it for some weird, other
Speaker 2: shady reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's why again, transparency is nice. You gotta
Speaker 4: have these conversations, right, similar to the conversation that what
Speaker 4: was his name Fritz Lang should have had with about
Speaker 4: how she was a Nazi. You know, maybe be like, hey,
Speaker 4: why are you in this group? Totally and you pick
Speaker 4: out your friends based on that.
Speaker 2: Are you trying to say that Fritz Lang could have
Speaker 2: become a stand up comedian with my wife jokes?
Speaker 4: Yes, he'd be like, get a load of my wife.
Speaker 4: He's a Nazi and that's and that's a perfect joke
Speaker 4: that I just wrote. Believe it or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it's part of Shrek for whatever whatever your
Speaker 2: next movie is after Shrek. I don't know how many
Speaker 2: Shreks there are.
Speaker 4: There's I've starred in four Shreks. Okay, this is material
Speaker 4: for this is Shrek five exactly. Okay, hence forth coming
Speaker 4: what my brain. It's not the best today.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I will say that the liberalish, the not
Speaker 2: actual anti Nazis in Hollywood, they did come together in
Speaker 2: a not controlled by Stalin way, and they pushed for
Speaker 2: progressive themes in film during the war and after the war,
Speaker 2: and most famous among these is the progressive Orson Welles.
Speaker 2: But we've got to talk more about the lead up
Speaker 2: to the war. Megan Feenie, in an article for the
Speaker 2: site Movie, described Hollywood once the US was involved in
Speaker 2: the war, and said the war represented a pivotal moment
Speaker 2: in Hollywood history, one in which the US film industry
Speaker 2: came to take itself seriously as a significant socio political force.
Speaker 2: Hollywood's left liberal filmmakers ascended during the war, and in
Speaker 2: close collaboration with the Roosevelt administration, used fascism as a
Speaker 2: foil to redefine the so called American War on their
Speaker 2: own terms, emphasizing popular democracy. Civil liberties were just tolerance,
Speaker 2: ethnic pluralism, and liberal internationalism. And so the anti war
Speaker 2: movies that were happening during the war weren't just we
Speaker 2: hate the Nazis from like kind of a right wing
Speaker 2: point of view. They were being made by the people
Speaker 2: who are like mostly being made by the people who
Speaker 2: are the most versed in being actually anti Nazi, being leftists,
Speaker 2: you know. And this is in contrast to how later
Speaker 2: during the Cold War, starting the late forties, conservatives take
Speaker 2: control of Hollywood and bring Hollywood back to it's like
Speaker 2: so called a political past of being conservative, and you
Speaker 2: get the Red Scare, you get the Hollywood Blacklist. And
Speaker 2: at this point, at that point, the like leftists in
Speaker 2: Hollywood or even just the like anti censorship people in
Speaker 2: Hollywood kind of pivot to just being First Amendment groups.
Speaker 2: Instead of being like fighting for liberal ideas in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: they're literally fighting for like, please just let us have
Speaker 2: fucking free speech.
Speaker 4: What the fuck right?
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, one of our previous heroes, the Warner brother,
Speaker 2: Jack Warner, testified to the House of on American Activities
Speaker 2: and fired the co writer of Confessions of a Nazi
Speaker 2: Spy because that guy might have been like secretly communist
Speaker 2: or whatever the fuck. But back to the golden age
Speaker 2: of anti fascist filmmaking also known as World War Two,
Speaker 2: I love accidentally saying positive things about one of the
Speaker 2: worst things. Okay, anyway, it's this anti fascist era that
Speaker 2: gives us the Nazis the ultimate villain, and it also
Speaker 2: gives us the unfortunate like good war narrative and the
Speaker 2: idea that like America is the savior of humanity. And
Speaker 2: then I found it even more disturbing shit that even
Speaker 2: the lefties and liberals were doing at this time, or
Speaker 2: at least some of them were. So you know how
Speaker 2: like Nazis are like the ultimate villain right in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: they didn't start out that way because of racism. More
Speaker 2: films with Nazis, like films with Nazis started off before
Speaker 2: the war like really got in, were like usually Nazis
Speaker 2: could be like redeemed right and like a lot of
Speaker 2: like Nazi collaborators like come around to see the light.
Speaker 2: The Japanese, however, were presented as monsters, and the Japanese
Speaker 2: were to be fought in a similar way to other
Speaker 2: like classic monsters of the screen, the indigenous people of
Speaker 2: North America, who the US is, you know, continuing its
Speaker 2: war of genocide and expansion against So basically everyone can
Speaker 2: twist anti fascism into obnoxious propagandistic ends to do really
Speaker 2: bad things. That's my that's actually turned into more of
Speaker 2: a bastard's episode than I thought. Okay, actually that we're
Speaker 2: about to get into the most complicated of them all.
Speaker 4: I'm ready okay.
Speaker 2: And the lead up to this anti fascist film era,
Speaker 2: you get the Warner Brothers being pretty consistently cool, and
Speaker 2: a few more people start coming on board. You've got
Speaker 2: a producer, Walter Wanger, who puts Henry Fonda in a
Speaker 2: Spanish Civil war movie in nineteen thirty eight called Blockade,
Speaker 2: and gets Alfred Hitchcock to make an anti fascist film
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty called Foreign Correspondent. Hitchcock made more movies
Speaker 2: during the war. And then you get Charlie fucking.
Speaker 4: Chaplin, oh the Great Dictator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Charlie Chaplin. He gets both Charlie fucking Chaplin
Speaker 2: as in like hell yeah because of some of the
Speaker 2: interesting shit he did, and he gets Charlie fucking Chaplin
Speaker 2: because what the fuck is wrong with this guy? What
Speaker 2: the fuck is wrong with this guy?
Speaker 4: He did some bad things.
Speaker 2: He did do some bad things. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: some of them, and if you know more of them, please.
Speaker 2: Charlie Chaplin is maybe the most dramatic rags to riches
Speaker 2: entertainment story in history, not just filmmaking, just fucking all over.
Speaker 2: He was born four days before Hitler. A lot of
Speaker 2: people like make weird comparisons about the fact that he's
Speaker 2: like just like Hitler because he was the same age
Speaker 2: and also had a toothbrush mustache. He was born in
Speaker 2: April sixteenth, eighteen eighty nine. He grew up dirt fucking
Speaker 2: poor in South London to a probably Roma family in
Speaker 2: a community of like sex workers and buskers and like
Speaker 2: just like down and out folks coming up with the
Speaker 2: creative means by which to survive. He might have been
Speaker 2: born in Evardo the wagons that Roma folks would have,
Speaker 2: and he grew up more or less orphaned. And he's
Speaker 2: not even fucking seven years old when he's like clog
Speaker 2: dancing on the streets outside bars for money. And you
Speaker 2: know what he could have done with that money, Caitlin Durante.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can imagine a few things. But why don't
Speaker 4: you just let you out?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, he could have purchased products and services.
Speaker 4: Oh I see what you were doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, no, sorry, yeah, products and services much
Speaker 2: like those that support the show the concept of potatoes
Speaker 2: are perennial sponsor. Everyone should well know some people should
Speaker 2: eat potatoes and some people shouldn't, but people should do
Speaker 2: whatever they want. Food. Food is good. Okay, here's some ads,
Speaker 2: and we are back and we're talking abot Charlie fucking chaplain. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's clogged dancing on the streets for money. He gets
Speaker 2: discovered and on the streets he gets given a job
Speaker 2: with a theater troop. At age seven, he learns physical comedy.
Speaker 2: He moves to America to make films in the nineteen tens,
Speaker 2: and by age twenty six, he's maybe the most famous
Speaker 2: man in the world. People refer to it as like
Speaker 2: the world was suffering from chaplain itis. He's like the
Speaker 2: symbol of popular culture. And there's two stories to tell
Speaker 2: about chaplain because and they're fucking messy to resolve with
Speaker 2: each other. And I think that learning how to not
Speaker 2: necessarily resolve with these with each other, but understand them both,
Speaker 2: I think is like crucial. Sure, I'm gonna start with
Speaker 2: the bad story, because before I say cool shit about
Speaker 2: a guy, I want to say he sucks. He's a
Speaker 2: fucking monster. He is an early example of why Hollywood
Speaker 2: is a misogynist cesspool run by fucking predators. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: bragged to have slept with two thousand women in his lifetime.
Speaker 2: He never trusted women. He constantly married children. He always
Speaker 2: waited until they were sixteen to marry them. His first wife,
Speaker 2: Mildred Harris, was sixteen when they got married. The story
Speaker 2: is that she feigned pregnancy to get married, but I
Speaker 2: don't know. That's his story, and I don't fucking trust
Speaker 2: anything he has to say. And once they got married,
Speaker 2: she wound up institutionalized for weeks, and when she divorced him,
Speaker 2: she cited cruelty as the reason for the divorce. He
Speaker 2: was a literal groomer. His second wife, Lyda Gray, was
Speaker 2: twelve when they met. At sixteen, he started assaulting her,
Speaker 2: then married her while she was pregnant to avoid statutory
Speaker 2: rape charges. He tried to pressure her into an abortion
Speaker 2: and he also and she said no to that. And
Speaker 2: then so he tried to pick a random man her
Speaker 2: age to marry her to take the and then take
Speaker 2: care of the kid, and offered, like the man like
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand dollars to do this, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: but she turned that down as well. So he married
Speaker 2: her and a little horror and told her to kill
Speaker 2: herself because Charlie Chaplin is the fucking worst. She was
Speaker 2: around nineteen when he divorced her. His next wife was
Speaker 2: a seventeen year old who he claims told him that
Speaker 2: she was twenty two. His final wife was thirty six
Speaker 2: years younger than him. He was fifty four, she was eighteen.
Speaker 2: She was terrified of him and regularly locked herself in
Speaker 2: her room to get away from him. He had tons
Speaker 2: of children. He was constantly cruel to all of them.
Speaker 2: He got sued over parentage, lost that suit in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty six. He described his ideal woman as I am
Speaker 2: not exactly in love with her, but she is entirely
Speaker 2: in love with me.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, so he's a narcissist. Yeah on top of
Speaker 4: all that, Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, fuck that guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah that was what I knew about. I didn't even
Speaker 4: know most of those details. I just knew that he
Speaker 4: was a sexual predator, child rapist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, he is absolutely those things. Well, fortunately now
Speaker 2: he's just dead.
Speaker 1: I had a high school teacher who was obsessed with him,
Speaker 1: and like, we had to watch so many of the
Speaker 1: films and I was just like, just like, without knowing
Speaker 1: any of this, it's just like the the unbelievable amount
Speaker 1: of red flags you see even in his work, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I've like the way that it's been a
Speaker 2: long time since I watched Chaplin films. I used to
Speaker 2: watch them a lot when I was younger. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's it's.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I am going to tell you about anti fascism in film.
Speaker 1: Please please tell us Magpie were yay?
Speaker 2: Okay? So the other story about Charlie Chaplin is it
Speaker 2: a story about an anti fascist filmmaker who risks his
Speaker 2: entire career, who tanks his entire career to try and
Speaker 2: stop the Nazis. In this story, it is his unshakable
Speaker 2: self confidence that one might call narcissism, that allowed him
Speaker 2: to survive on the streets of Victoria in London as
Speaker 2: a fucking like seven year old orphan. You know. It
Speaker 2: offered him the self confident and he offered that self
Speaker 2: confidence to his viewers and to the world. He described
Speaker 2: how he survived in his youth by the exubriance that
Speaker 2: comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go
Speaker 2: down and defeat. And his main character the Little Tramp.
Speaker 2: No matter what happens, he picks himself up and he
Speaker 2: trots off jauntily into the sunset. It's also the story
Speaker 2: of a person with an unshakable political moral compass with
Speaker 2: the largest blind spot the world has ever seen, an
Speaker 2: unshakable moral compass when it's applied on a geopolitical level
Speaker 2: instead of an interpersonal level. In the nineteen thirties, he
Speaker 2: did radio broadcast supporting the New Deal and his first talkie,
Speaker 2: his first non silent movie. He was like one of
Speaker 2: the last people to want to switch over to talkies
Speaker 2: was The Great Dictator in nineteen forty. It came out
Speaker 2: before the US entered the war. His Little Tramp character
Speaker 2: is modified slightly into a Jewish barber, and he also
Speaker 2: plays a like really obvious Hitler clone. And it's the
Speaker 2: first and this is the first time that a Hollywood
Speaker 2: film acknowledges that the Nazis were specifically after the Jews.
Speaker 2: And I think it's interesting to me that also the
Speaker 2: fact that he was roma like this is something that
Speaker 2: affects him right right, and it brings us one of
Speaker 2: the greatest moments in political Hollywood history. At the end
Speaker 2: of the film, the Jewish barber is mistaken for the dictator,
Speaker 2: and he goes up and he gives a speech, and
Speaker 2: the film gets rid of the fourth wall, much as
Speaker 2: Brecked and all the other people would have liked right
Speaker 2: and specifically as a way to counter propaganda, look directly
Speaker 2: at the camera and talk, which is interesting because I
Speaker 2: feel like, now if you did that, it would kind
Speaker 2: of read as propagandistic, and like this speech that he
Speaker 2: gives is kind of propagandistic, but by breaking the fourth
Speaker 2: wall it ties into this art movement at the time
Speaker 2: of using that to get people to question shit. So
Speaker 2: the Jewish barber goes up, pretending to be the dictator,
Speaker 2: and he gives a speech about how we should destroy
Speaker 2: national borders, how we should never listen to despots, how
Speaker 2: soldiers should fight for democracy and against dictatorship, and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm going to read part of it. I don't want
Speaker 2: to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help
Speaker 2: everyone if possible, jew, gentile, black man, white. We all
Speaker 2: want to help one another. Human beings are like that.
Speaker 2: We want to live by each other's happiness, not for
Speaker 2: each by each other's misery. We don't want to hate
Speaker 2: and despise one another. In this world, there is room
Speaker 2: for everyone, and the good Earth is rich and can
Speaker 2: provide for everyone. The way of life can be free
Speaker 2: and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has
Speaker 2: poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has
Speaker 2: goose stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed,
Speaker 2: but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery gives abundance. That
Speaker 2: gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has
Speaker 2: made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think
Speaker 2: too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we
Speaker 2: need humanity more than cleverness. We need kindness and gentleness.
Speaker 2: Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will
Speaker 2: be lost. And he just goes on in this like
Speaker 2: complete not what people are fucking doing in movies at
Speaker 2: the time, And he spent two years making The Great Dictator,
Speaker 2: and all the while the English and American censors because
Speaker 2: England isn't at war at the start. England isn't at
Speaker 2: war with Nazi Germany either, and they're like, don't fucking
Speaker 2: make this movie. We're at peace with Hitler. You can't
Speaker 2: make fun of Hitler. And he basically is like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to hire all the movie halls myself. I'm
Speaker 2: the most famous man in the world, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to fucking make this anti Nazi film mm hm, because
Speaker 2: I fucking hate Hitler. And before he finishes it, war
Speaker 2: was on and France was conquered and England was at
Speaker 2: war with Germany and the US hadn't entered the war yet.
Speaker 2: It winds up his highest grossing film up to that date,
Speaker 2: but it's controversial. A lot of the critics of the
Speaker 2: last speech was just him declaring communism, which is funny
Speaker 2: because it's a speech about democracy, like literally uses the
Speaker 2: word democracy over and over again. And the press starts
Speaker 2: to hate him at this point, and he literally tanks
Speaker 2: his career with this. All of his films afterwards play
Speaker 2: to his existing fan base but fail to attract new
Speaker 2: audiences because the press spends the rest of his life
Speaker 2: attacking him. Sometimes the press gets it right and they
Speaker 2: attack him for being a fucking child, raping piece of shit,
Speaker 2: fucking absolute monster.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you will.
Speaker 2: Be surprised to know that mostly they spend all of
Speaker 2: their time calling him a communist, which he wasn't. But
Speaker 2: even if he was, you know, right, and his films
Speaker 2: start being picketed after The Great Dictator, and some other
Speaker 2: filmmakers love the speech. At least one director puts the
Speaker 2: whole text into like his Christmas card that year, which
Speaker 2: is like the most like lefty Hollywood thing I can
Speaker 2: imagine someone doing. He reads it to about sixty million
Speaker 2: people on the radio. But while he's reading it, he's
Speaker 2: in a hall and Nazis, American Nazis in the audience
Speaker 2: are like jeering him and coughing really loudly and trying
Speaker 2: to disrupt the whole thing. And he also in his autobiography,
Speaker 2: he wrote about the film quote, had I known the
Speaker 2: actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not
Speaker 2: have made The Great Dictator. I could not have made
Speaker 2: fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. However, I
Speaker 2: was determined to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure
Speaker 2: blooded race. And uh, it seems like you you can
Speaker 2: react as this like tension or weirdness, like.
Speaker 4: I'm just over here processing. I'm like still no, keep
Speaker 4: going and I'm still collecting my thoughts.
Speaker 2: Okay, he doesn't stop his anti Nazi stuff with just
Speaker 2: making a film, he fucks up his whole career by
Speaker 2: going out on a limb over politics. Time and time again.
Speaker 2: He gives speeches about how America needs to help England
Speaker 2: open up a second front against the war while the
Speaker 2: Nazis were busy fighting the USSR. He talked with Roosevelt
Speaker 2: and with previous presidents, anyone who would listen about why
Speaker 2: the US needed to join the war themselves with England
Speaker 2: and Russia. And he makes no bones about being like, yes,
Speaker 2: and Russia. I don't care that they're communists, right, I
Speaker 2: hate Nazis. In the middle of his autobiography, while talking
Speaker 2: about the speeches he was giving he like and all
Speaker 2: the flaks he got, he stops and then spends like
Speaker 2: a paragraph talking about the tits of some lady that
Speaker 2: he saw. Because he's a piece of shit, there's no other.
Speaker 2: He gets labeled a communist, which he denies his entire
Speaker 2: life because he wasn't a communist. He called himself two
Speaker 2: things instead. This part makes me sad. He called himself
Speaker 2: a peacemonger, and he called himself an anarchist, and I
Speaker 2: don't want him. In nineteen fifty seven, he put out
Speaker 2: a king in New York and he's playing a king
Speaker 2: and his own ten year old son plays a kid
Speaker 2: who choose him out about how evil giant corporations are
Speaker 2: and how national borders is like shitty and the whole
Speaker 2: thing is this anti McCarthy film. And the same year
Speaker 2: he says he's an anarchist, he says, as for politics,
Speaker 2: an anarchist, I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can't
Speaker 2: stand caged animals. People must be free, except obviously not
Speaker 2: except teenage.
Speaker 4: The woman he was yeah married too, Yeah, the girl,
Speaker 4: the little girls who was married too.
Speaker 2: Who were hiding in their rooms from yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he wasn't American born. And one time in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two, while he was out of the country, the
Speaker 2: US sort of doesn't invite him back because he's a
Speaker 2: filthy communist. They revoke his re entry permit and he
Speaker 2: moves to Switzerland. Not you came here and sexually assaulted
Speaker 2: uncountable numbers of people, but you are a communist even
Speaker 2: though you're not. And this should be a story about
Speaker 2: a Roma born anarchist filmmaker makes himself into the greatest
Speaker 2: star in the world, gambles at all to pressure the
Speaker 2: US government publican too go into war against the Nazi empire,
Speaker 2: and instead it's a story about a gross fucking man
Speaker 2: who ripped teenagers who went to parties, and his way
Speaker 2: of entertaining people at parties was to mimic a woman
Speaker 2: having an orgasm. So fuck you, Charlie Chaplin for fucking
Speaker 2: all that up. When Chaplain died, some grave robbers still
Speaker 2: his body and they held it for ransom. They called
Speaker 2: up one of his ex wives and was like, we've
Speaker 2: got Chaplain. She says, so what and hangs up the phone.
Speaker 4: There should be a whole episode of your podcast on
Speaker 4: just that, and even.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so what click click I love that I see.
Speaker 2: And Marlon Brando described Charlie Chaplin as the most sadistic
Speaker 2: man I have ever met. All right, Brando, All right, Brando,
Speaker 2: And this is this is not how I usually end
Speaker 2: an episode, But that's what I've got about anti fasion
Speaker 2: and leftism that flows through filmmaking. So what we've learned
Speaker 2: here today is that Shrek uh, not the ogre with
Speaker 2: the donkey friend, but Max Shrek, as far as we know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a real life monster slash predatory vampire literally
Speaker 2: like but yeah, there's I mean, I'm glad there were
Speaker 2: people I never quite understand. I don't know, I've complicated
Speaker 2: feelings about this because on one hand, Hollywood and many,
Speaker 2: many of not most film industries around the world are
Speaker 2: I mean, they're all for sure capitalists, and they are
Speaker 2: you know, priority number one is to make entertainment, is
Speaker 2: you know, to entertain and some of that. But but
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people conflate that entertainment has
Speaker 2: to be completely escapist and cannot also be informative or
Speaker 2: you know, getting behind a particular movement or like political
Speaker 2: ideology or like, I don't know, the people who are like, no,
Speaker 2: entertainment should just be strictly entertainment all the time, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent and not anything that has any sort of
Speaker 2: like political message, I don't trust those people. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: while a lot of the entertainment I like is very
Speaker 2: strictly you know, like silly, mindless, escapist media, a lot
Speaker 2: of it is also very political or like, you know,
Speaker 2: has some kind of message that could be perceived as political.
Speaker 2: So anyone who's like entertainment should never be political, I
Speaker 2: don't Again, I don't, I just don't agree. So for
Speaker 2: the people who are willing to with their platform and
Speaker 2: with their art form and entertainment also push a political agenda,
Speaker 2: especially if that political agenda is anti fascist. That's rock
Speaker 2: and roll. So good for them, and fuck Charlie Chaplin and.
Speaker 4: My tirade.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Caitlyn, do you have anything you would like
Speaker 1: to plug.
Speaker 3: Give?
Speaker 1: Hey?
Speaker 4: Speaking of anti fascist media, the Bechdel cast is anti.
Speaker 2: Fascist coming out with a bold stand.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, and uh, not only that, Jamie and I
Speaker 4: are good people who in our private lives Cita, are
Speaker 4: still good and not scary or just needed.
Speaker 2: That's the funny.
Speaker 4: I co sign for Jamie and Kitlyn.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you so much. It's really good.
Speaker 4: They're really really good friends to me. Yeah, yeah, I've
Speaker 4: got I've got receipts. How good of a person I am.
Speaker 4: I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Kaitlyn has talked to me while I cried before, okay forever?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I believe to quote Paddington too. Okay, if we
Speaker 4: are kind and polite, the world will be right. And
Speaker 4: I behave that way in my public life and in
Speaker 4: my private life. Excuse me, someone who has something to
Speaker 4: prove had a very loud engine that just drove by. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I can be followed. I was like, what as I say?
Speaker 4: You can follow me on social media at Caitlyn Dante
Speaker 4: on Twitter and Instagram. Hey, if you want to follow
Speaker 4: me on TikTok, I have exactly two posts on there
Speaker 4: and they're both Titanic related. So really just filling out
Speaker 4: the trifecta of my personality. We've got Titanic, Paddington, and
Speaker 4: now are r R.
Speaker 1: So I'm so glad we filled that out to a trifecta.
Speaker 4: As as was stated earlier, the triangle is the strongest
Speaker 4: shape that might have been in the first episode. But
Speaker 4: I was stated on the record. It's on the record
Speaker 4: and you can you cannot remove it. So what am
Speaker 4: I saying? And listen to the Bechdel Cast. Please, Oh
Speaker 4: that's where this all started. And we are publicly and
Speaker 4: privately anti fascist. On the Bechdel Cast, it's a and
Speaker 4: it's a podcast about movies and examining those movies from
Speaker 4: an intersectional feminist lens. And uh, that's yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's so listen to that episode that I did on
Speaker 1: the cast.
Speaker 2: Wait, which what did you do?
Speaker 1: We did nine to five?
Speaker 2: Oh, ship, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Five and and once again the Shrek two episode A banger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when are you gonna do? No saratu?
Speaker 4: Oh do you want to come on for it?
Speaker 2: Because yeah, I'll rewatch.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: What if it doesn't hold up, I'll be so disappointed.
Speaker 2: I'll be like I went through all this work to
Speaker 2: be like, yeah, this guy rules, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be like this portrayal is different. I mean, actually I don't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make someone a bad person. They played it.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure he praise on women. I think that's
Speaker 2: his thing in the in the movie is kind.
Speaker 4: Of the whole thing about Vampire Lord.
Speaker 2: He's actually just playing Charlie Chaplin in it.
Speaker 4: I think, dude, Charlie Chaplin real life vampire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, listeners stay tuned. After we forced
Speaker 1: one to watch the Toilight series, She's team Edward or
Speaker 1: team Jacob.
Speaker 4: I'm team Charlie Swan.
Speaker 1: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie Swan. Oh oh okay, good to know.
Speaker 4: Bella, Bella's dad, Bella's Wow, he's a cop. He is
Speaker 4: a cop. Never mind, never mind, I forgot.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, Charlie, sorry, Charlie, a
Speaker 1: cab includes you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's truly no one on the team Anna Kendrick
Speaker 4: and wonderful in those films.
Speaker 1: Margaret, you have a book that's not that people can
Speaker 1: purchase and they can see you on book tour which
Speaker 1: they can find from your Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy is
Speaker 1: that guy?
Speaker 2: That's true? That is correct? I am also a good person.
Speaker 4: Probably, I agree. I hope to be you are.
Speaker 2: Aspiring good person. Yeah, and you can also check me
Speaker 2: out kidding. You can find me on the backdel cast.
Speaker 2: I will be talking about no s Faratu. This is
Speaker 2: just literally the whole thing was a long con to
Speaker 2: get myself back on backdel cast.
Speaker 4: And also we'd love to have you back anytime.
Speaker 2: We Are the Best, which is a movie about me
Speaker 2: and Jamie and Caitlin when we started a punk band
Speaker 2: as teenagers in Sweden.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a biopic about us that we actually directed ourselves.
Speaker 2: And this is a funny joke that I am making
Speaker 2: and it's really good to point that out. And you
Speaker 2: can follow Sophie on the internet at rub Salting.
Speaker 1: Can find men. You can find me on Twitter. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't find me on Instagram because they banned my
Speaker 1: account all the time. But you can't find me. It
Speaker 1: happens often, but you can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Why Underscore Sophie Underscore Why, and you can follow at
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media at fool zone Media. Is that correct, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I do it?
Speaker 2: I think so. I wasn't paying enough attention to the specifics,
Speaker 2: Oh cool?
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not paying attention, I guess the
Speaker 1: episode has to be over what it's over?
Speaker 2: Oh Cool?
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website foolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.