Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, Hello, welcome to another edition of d I
Speaker 1: am one half of your host Danny Fan isn't sitting
Speaker 1: across from me as always as if you way, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? I'm doing good? If you were you
Speaker 1: asking me or were you asking the audience collectively? And
Speaker 1: you know I was asking the royal We everyone involved,
Speaker 1: front to back, side to side, up and down all around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? How are you feeling? Maybe you
Speaker 1: know today was a rough day and you were along
Speaker 1: with me for it. And you know, people can keep
Speaker 1: up with my life on social media, so I know
Speaker 1: Danny was going through hard stuff. Meanwhile, I was playing
Speaker 1: Apex Legends all day. Your your your struggle was also
Speaker 1: hard you uh you know you'd be you know. Something
Speaker 1: to note is they released a new hero out uh
Speaker 1: called Octane, who is Latin x h yeah and he
Speaker 1: uh he's also disabled. He has to uh metal legs
Speaker 1: and he runs real fast. Now you know they've been
Speaker 1: It's it's funny because they've been effortlessly diversifying the game,
Speaker 1: like they have Bloodhound, who is uh non binary. You
Speaker 1: have uh, you know Gibraltar, who is a you know,
Speaker 1: Maori gay biker. Uh you know, so so you know
Speaker 1: all that stuff, all that stuff that and and it's
Speaker 1: people in the real world are what's fun about it
Speaker 1: is it's such a good game that no one's been
Speaker 1: complaining too much about it. I was there's someone I
Speaker 1: still don't know if it's a joke or not, honestly
Speaker 1: don't care. But the one white male character is this
Speaker 1: guy who who drops like this toxic bombs. And so
Speaker 1: someone made a YouTube video that was like, the one
Speaker 1: white male is the toxic white male read between the lines.
Speaker 1: There's like it's funny because it's like, oh man, this
Speaker 1: is a great character if it is. But we live
Speaker 1: in a time where you just can't tell. But if
Speaker 1: you're doing a character, good job. If you're not, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Um, I wanted to introduce our guests.
Speaker 1: They are both They are in our studio here there
Speaker 1: at our how stuff work stuff. I heart media studio.
Speaker 1: There we go podcast studio works. What we are Disney. Um.
Speaker 1: That's Caitlin Dante and Jimmy Loftus of Bechtel Cast. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us. Yeah, we today are talking about
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Tests. Yeah, really excited about it. Me and Caitlin.
Speaker 1: We're matching. We both have pesta. You're the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we take a picture. Yeah, let's do it. Look my Instagram,
Speaker 1: always trying to show the looks and always trying to
Speaker 1: show the friends. I was on y'all's podcast Were You
Speaker 1: on It? Black Panther episode lauded as one of the
Speaker 1: best episodes of their podcast, people that Yes, look I was.
Speaker 1: You caught me out a good time. I was charged
Speaker 1: up on Black Panther Energy. I was doing voices, I
Speaker 1: was re enacting scenes. It is the most ridiculous I've
Speaker 1: been on any podcast ever. You're reenacting full scenes, like
Speaker 1: playing every single part I was going to. I was
Speaker 1: on the Lota Croft tomb Raider episode and introduced the
Speaker 1: cast to women in fridges watches, Uh yeah, fridging the
Speaker 1: doom fridging and how gayl Simone came up with that
Speaker 1: whole website. If you don't know what that is, it's
Speaker 1: essentially when a female character is killed to further the
Speaker 1: plot of a male character, which is very common, and
Speaker 1: that website still exists. It's really cute because I think
Speaker 1: it still has like almost n these ish looking software too.
Speaker 1: It like a space Jam website. Yeah, I think they
Speaker 1: did that with Captain Marvel too. They made it like
Speaker 1: nineties for her website. Yeah, so we are talking about
Speaker 1: the Bechdel tests. Wh Why did y all decide that
Speaker 1: you wanted to make a podcast about this? Caitlin, Well,
Speaker 1: I suppose it was my idea, Bragg, But basically, I
Speaker 1: am a huge film buff, to the extent that I
Speaker 1: stupidly got two different degrees in film and spent you know,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars on an education and film
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I mean movies. Movies are life for me,
Speaker 1: umnestly crazy, I mean brave, really really brave. Yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: started hashtaging Caitlin brave. Um. So I love movies and
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about them and kind of reconcile
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of my favorite movies treat
Speaker 1: women horribly, or at least the movies that I grew
Speaker 1: up with and just had become accustomed to watch. Some
Speaker 1: of those that you discovered, like, oh crap, I love
Speaker 1: me awful, but I didn't didn't have the representation of
Speaker 1: women yet, right, Um. The Big Three were like for me,
Speaker 1: it was like the like trilogies of Back to the Future,
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones, and Star Wars like those were like the
Speaker 1: crux of my childhood movie development. Uh and then just
Speaker 1: any I mean most movies since and before those were
Speaker 1: also not great to women. So I just I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of examine these movies more closely, just any
Speaker 1: movie that has had like a big cultural impact and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, take a look at them and figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe how much media is responsible for the
Speaker 1: patriarchy still being a thing. Um. And so yeah, we
Speaker 1: just to I I asked Jamie if she wanted to
Speaker 1: collaborate with me on this idea, and she was very down.
Speaker 1: And two and a half years later, here we are,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that sounds about the same as krilling it.
Speaker 1: And eventually nerdifficent. I was like, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: do this. I was like, yeah, yeah, good idea. And
Speaker 1: I had seen, like, I have not seen a lot
Speaker 1: of well now I have when the podcast started, I
Speaker 1: had not seen like most of I had also technically
Speaker 1: onto film school, but technically I went, but I've majored
Speaker 1: in radio, so I had also had to use the
Speaker 1: medium more radio worth it thousands in debt. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't seen most of the movies that we
Speaker 1: covered and so it was like an in real time education.
Speaker 1: But I think it helps to get those two different
Speaker 1: perspectives from like me, who like is apologetic to a
Speaker 1: lot of these movies and then you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just seeing them for the first time and wow, they're
Speaker 1: not good. Yeah that makes sense, Yeah, because you're watching
Speaker 1: them with like an air of nostalgia too. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: for people that don't know what is the Bechdel test
Speaker 1: is our favorite thing to explain to the Bechdel Test.
Speaker 1: We can get into the history of it, but just
Speaker 1: like the version and the way that we use it,
Speaker 1: because there's a few different like permutations of it. But
Speaker 1: it's a test that is applied to media, usually movies
Speaker 1: and TV, in which a movie that passes the Bechtel
Speaker 1: test has a scene with two female identifying characters who
Speaker 1: have names, who talk to each other about something other
Speaker 1: than a man for at least two lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: That's our version. That's our version. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different versions. They're simpler ones, there's more demanding ones, but
Speaker 1: that's the one we use, okay. Yeah, And it originally
Speaker 1: started from Alison Bechdel, right, who wrote in a comic
Speaker 1: strip that was Dikes to Watch out for that appeared
Speaker 1: in nine and we'll have a link to the actual
Speaker 1: comics so y'all can see it. But it was essentially
Speaker 1: two women that were trying to go see a movie
Speaker 1: and had that same thing where they were saying, I
Speaker 1: only go to see a movie if it satisfies three
Speaker 1: basic requirements, when it has to have at least two
Speaker 1: women in it who talked to each other and about
Speaker 1: something other than a man. And then it ends with saying,
Speaker 1: the last movie I saw was Alien. Yes, that was
Speaker 1: like that, which is funny because that movie barely passes
Speaker 1: the Bee. So because they're talking about the alien and
Speaker 1: or protocol on the shipsina monster as with every like
Speaker 1: major sci fi movie as a vaginal monster because yourgina's
Speaker 1: are scary, scary, so wild. And then there's just to
Speaker 1: give a little bit more context on that is Alison
Speaker 1: Bechdel is a queer cartoonist. A lot of her work
Speaker 1: has been about, you know, her identity as a queer woman.
Speaker 1: And if you've seen fun Home, which is like a
Speaker 1: very famous comic book and musical, now that that was
Speaker 1: all her. Yeah, And in the context, this test derives
Speaker 1: from it's these two women who basically they they've established
Speaker 1: these kind of guidelines for this test because they there's
Speaker 1: so little representation of queer women in movies that they
Speaker 1: are like, oh, well, if two women are in a
Speaker 1: movie and they're not talking about men, that kind of
Speaker 1: allows me to ship them together and pretend that I
Speaker 1: am seeing like two queer women on screen. So like,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit more of the context that has
Speaker 1: gone largely ignored in conversations about the Bechtel tests, like
Speaker 1: as it's been sort of appropriated to more like mainstream
Speaker 1: entertainment stuff. But and and yeah, like unlike I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess sort of like a lot of these metrics
Speaker 1: that have come more into the conversation in the past
Speaker 1: ten years, it wasn't originally intended to be a metric.
Speaker 1: It was just like a joke that she she said,
Speaker 1: it was a quote, a little lesbian joke in an
Speaker 1: alternative feminist newspaper um And then like twenty years after
Speaker 1: it came out, everyone's like, oh, this is here, it
Speaker 1: is this is the rule and the hard and fast
Speaker 1: tests feminism. But it was I mean, at the at
Speaker 1: the time that it was the only thing that anyone
Speaker 1: had it's so strange. It's and we've found, like through
Speaker 1: our podcast that it's definitely it's not the test by
Speaker 1: any means. It's definitely flawed. You can have two women
Speaker 1: in a movie talking about some really dark um that
Speaker 1: doesn't test. There's very often they're talking about something extremely
Speaker 1: domestic and still pretty starry types um that makes sense
Speaker 1: talking and movies are always talking about either clothes, food,
Speaker 1: or cooking other domestic chores birth like babies. There are,
Speaker 1: of course exceptions, but we come up on this a
Speaker 1: lot where a movie will pass the test and then
Speaker 1: it's like, but they talked about cooking, but there's like,
Speaker 1: but that exchange was so or is this like an
Speaker 1: exchange that's so like just like, hey, what's up? Nothing?
Speaker 1: And then they're like, wow, it's a feminist text. Um. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Alison Bechdel also credited the idea to her friend Liz
Speaker 1: Wallace and the writings of Virginia Wolf. After the test
Speaker 1: became more widely discussed in the two thousands, a number
Speaker 1: of variants like y'all were saying came out that we
Speaker 1: will also get into. So in her nineteen essay A
Speaker 1: Room of One's Own Virginia Wolf observed about the literature
Speaker 1: of her time with what equivalent would be of the
Speaker 1: Bechdel test back then that essentially it was largely the
Speaker 1: same thing, largely male. I mean, also who was Who's
Speaker 1: writing most of these roles? You know? Like that for
Speaker 1: because a study of gender portrayals in eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five of the most financially successful US films ranging
Speaker 1: from nineteen five d to two thousand and six, And
Speaker 1: they did another study after that, but during that range
Speaker 1: show that there were on average two male characters for
Speaker 1: each female character, a ratio that has remained stable over time.
Speaker 1: Female characters were portrayed as being involved in sex twice
Speaker 1: as often as male characters, and their proportion of scenes
Speaker 1: with explicit sexual content increased over time. Have you all
Speaker 1: seen that as you've had to watch all these because
Speaker 1: you watch like a movie a week for your podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think we do. It's we rarely cover
Speaker 1: movies that didn't come out post seventy ish. We've only
Speaker 1: done a few older movies. But you can see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I always I feel like I always get harsh feedback
Speaker 1: every time I'm like really critical of eighties movies. But
Speaker 1: I think that that is like the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: it's sort of had problematic peak um for for stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I've found, I don't what do you think.
Speaker 1: I mean, Yeah, it depends on the filmmaker, and it
Speaker 1: depends on a few different things. But yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: whole swaw of very problematic movies from those eras and
Speaker 1: from before and from yesterday. So it's just an ongoing trend.
Speaker 1: And the more we watch, I mean, yeah, we definitely
Speaker 1: we're noticing a lot of trends. We're noticing a lot
Speaker 1: of tropes in terms of how women are represented and treated.
Speaker 1: I mean the ones that you listed, there's also you know,
Speaker 1: so few women of color in movie in mainstream movies,
Speaker 1: or so few queer women, uh so, a few you know,
Speaker 1: women with disabilities, any any group that's marginalized. It is
Speaker 1: rare to see them represented, and when they're represented, it's
Speaker 1: always in very specific trophy ways. Yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: conversation that I tried to have on Twitter as civilly
Speaker 1: as possible about you know, people people really okay, because
Speaker 1: the whole thing with Netflix and Steven Spielberg trying to
Speaker 1: basically discredit some of the films that were on there,
Speaker 1: including Roma, which won an Academy Award. So my argument
Speaker 1: about Netflix, which also just canceled one day at a time,
Speaker 1: so not great. This my argument was before that happened,
Speaker 1: but which was a great representation of both women of
Speaker 1: color and the queer community and veterans. To be honest, um,
Speaker 1: but my issue is that a lot of people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: Netflix doesn't care about about real cinema, and if you did,
Speaker 1: you would have films from the fifties, you know, you
Speaker 1: only have these current films. I'm like, yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: those films from the fifties didn't really include us at all,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm like, there weren't so great for women
Speaker 1: of color, people of color in general. So the fact
Speaker 1: that there's such a wealth of of filmmakers of color
Speaker 1: and specifically women of color that are in a lot
Speaker 1: of these Netflix films, to me, it's like, I understand
Speaker 1: what you're saying, but also it is giving a more
Speaker 1: diverse platform for people that didn't previously have it. And
Speaker 1: also we are still considered real film Like to me,
Speaker 1: when you say that, when you say, oh, they don't
Speaker 1: have real films, what you're saying is Oh, these films
Speaker 1: of these people that don't look like me in these
Speaker 1: stories I don't care about. That's why it's not real.
Speaker 1: In your nineteen fifties film is real cinema. And to me,
Speaker 1: it's like, no, that there's a clear just like there's
Speaker 1: a clear issue of why you're saying that that you
Speaker 1: don't you don't care about our stories as much, or
Speaker 1: you don't care about you know, these these filmmakers. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like anytime you put real in front of,
Speaker 1: like as a descriptor in front of any subject, it's
Speaker 1: usually followed by some bs like real women have curl,
Speaker 1: really don't cry. Real blank, you know, like it's it's
Speaker 1: a nothing term and it's something used to be elitist,
Speaker 1: you know, and because usually when the person is using
Speaker 1: real blankety blank blank blank, it usually means the latter.
Speaker 1: So it's like real films. No, a real film is
Speaker 1: any film made, work put into it. Because if if
Speaker 1: you've ever tried to shoot anything, not even necessarily a film,
Speaker 1: you know how much of a labor of love and collaboration.
Speaker 1: It is so too for anyone, you know, to disc
Speaker 1: credit anything because they think it's cool and edgy, because
Speaker 1: it's in black and white, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: like Clerks did it in black and white, and they
Speaker 1: didn't have to be in the fifties. I think also
Speaker 1: we're not. I mean when you look at to the
Speaker 1: amount of people who are are allowed to have theatrical releases,
Speaker 1: because that's essentially what he was saying is, oh, no,
Speaker 1: the film should have to have a theatrical release. Well,
Speaker 1: think about who gets that type of funding, and think
Speaker 1: about the stories that don't get that funding, you know,
Speaker 1: in the studio and the and it's nice that we're
Speaker 1: able so many eyes on Netflix are able to see
Speaker 1: our stories and are able to see the work of
Speaker 1: these filmmakers, and it's unfortunate. Of course they want to
Speaker 1: have theatrical releases. It doesn't mean the studio is going
Speaker 1: to help them with that. Yeah. I think what it
Speaker 1: all comes down to is this just that old head mentality,
Speaker 1: which is all funny because as I explained that there's
Speaker 1: still going to be some like light irony stuff because
Speaker 1: like I feel like a lot of old head mentality
Speaker 1: is this idea that now it's becoming easier to do
Speaker 1: what I worked hard to do. The reason that's irony
Speaker 1: is because especially a lot of creative spaces. Uh. You know.
Speaker 1: The reason you're right, the reason there are a lot
Speaker 1: of these issues are because it's primarily dominated by white men,
Speaker 1: specifically older white men who have been in the game
Speaker 1: for longer than The reason they've been in the game
Speaker 1: for longer is because they've had this ability to like
Speaker 1: whenever I hear like a story of this filmmaker who
Speaker 1: had a camera at like three, and he always got
Speaker 1: it like my my dad would never let me touch
Speaker 1: a camera because we didn't have the money to burn
Speaker 1: on me wasting the family camera like I didn't, so
Speaker 1: you have. And and then also I was talking about
Speaker 1: this a little bit in the E Sports episode, and
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of the same, the same kind
Speaker 1: of symptom of it, where it's like there's all these risks,
Speaker 1: like for me to pursue my career, it was it
Speaker 1: caused like a real huge, big blow up in my
Speaker 1: family for me to you know, my dad comes here
Speaker 1: from Nigeria and he wants me to be something that
Speaker 1: is guaranteed to make money, like a doctor or a lawyer,
Speaker 1: or an accountant or a pharmacist. You know. I I
Speaker 1: used to want to draw and I got talked out
Speaker 1: of going to college for art because he said there's
Speaker 1: no money in that. So when you think of that
Speaker 1: mentality from parents who and usually families uh from poverty,
Speaker 1: like even you know, even like some white families. And
Speaker 1: then you add like a layer to it where like
Speaker 1: say you are a person of color, or if you
Speaker 1: are a female or a woman, uh, you know, sorry,
Speaker 1: it's a black thing. You know, you have to move
Speaker 1: it out my vernacular. Uh, if you're a woman and
Speaker 1: you're like expected to like especially like a lot of
Speaker 1: immigrant families are like you when you're a woman, it's
Speaker 1: like you have to make yourself presentable for a husband.
Speaker 1: You need to. You can't intimidate them. So like me
Speaker 1: trying to go into this field that is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could be in this for thirty years and nothing happens.
Speaker 1: Luckily for me, things have been happening and my dad
Speaker 1: has been able to sigh release and now he's bragging
Speaker 1: as if I did get a doctorates. But but that's
Speaker 1: what you know, people of color and women are usually
Speaker 1: facing where it's like because I don't have anyone to
Speaker 1: point to and hopefully now you know, you know, even
Speaker 1: on my stream, you know, he means it jokingly, but
Speaker 1: hopefully like you know someone he's like, he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can show you like, um, this guy Draco, he's
Speaker 1: he's Nigerian, he's in the UK, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: can show my mom that you have dreads and and
Speaker 1: she'll let me get dreads. Because that's really how it works.
Speaker 1: That's you know, when you can point to a Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson, any name, any one of them and be like, look,
Speaker 1: that's who I want to be, and your parents are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you are a young white kid and yeah
Speaker 1: you look like that. But if if I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, I want to be like Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson, there's all this baggage where my dad's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: you're not like them, you you you gotta go, you
Speaker 1: gotta do the lawyer. And then you add even more
Speaker 1: compound that's from an immigrant perspective, where like some people
Speaker 1: who grow up in the hood and think the only
Speaker 1: way out is basketball, sports or or or wrapping those
Speaker 1: those are the only two options. So of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is going to be dominated by this. And then
Speaker 1: you add in the effects of like, okay, you got
Speaker 1: like college you know, bonds, so you got like Emmerson mafia.
Speaker 1: If you wrote for the what you McCall it the
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, But what's the comedy
Speaker 1: thing over there that's real big, right for the Lampoon.
Speaker 1: You have all these connections, and you have this expectation
Speaker 1: where you have these these these like Ivy League folks
Speaker 1: in these rooms, um show runners who who think that, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm good because I went to an Ivy League school
Speaker 1: and not necessarily because they're funny, and they may have
Speaker 1: a person of color or a woman in front of
Speaker 1: them who is genuinely funny, but they're like, well, they
Speaker 1: didn't go to Emerson, they didn't go to an Ivy
Speaker 1: League school, they didn't write for the National Lampoon. And
Speaker 1: that's my like bar for comedy. When it's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's this whole funny thing like that's you know, and
Speaker 1: it and it gets even more insulting. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: tangent ran again, but it gets even more insulting when
Speaker 1: you see like how often people pluck from black Twitter
Speaker 1: memes and pluck from the things that we are saying
Speaker 1: and use it in their bs and then uh, and
Speaker 1: then still have the goal to not want to hire
Speaker 1: black people for some BS bar that we can't reach
Speaker 1: because even then, ivye have a hard time letting in
Speaker 1: black people. And I and when I say black people,
Speaker 1: I mean black people. Africans get in higher on average,
Speaker 1: just so they can say they're letting in black people,
Speaker 1: but they're letting in Africans. And there goes a whole
Speaker 1: another baggage that I can but anyway to reel it
Speaker 1: all in that is that I don't barely scratch the
Speaker 1: surface of the baggage. But that's what is up against
Speaker 1: all of people of color and women, and that type
Speaker 1: of stuff isn't carried. And that's generally what people talk about,
Speaker 1: just in case someone needs to hear this, When they
Speaker 1: mean privilege, that doesn't mean that you didn't have a
Speaker 1: hard life. That doesn't mean that you may not have
Speaker 1: been poor. But if you were poor and white, you
Speaker 1: still have a better chance of getting at Harvard than
Speaker 1: a poor and black person. It's just simple facts, and
Speaker 1: there's data to back that up. Affirmative action help no
Speaker 1: one but white women, straight up. And it's and it's
Speaker 1: and that's just why let's just stick to the back.
Speaker 1: But I would say to go to end that point
Speaker 1: is essentially that is what studios are more willing to
Speaker 1: take a risk on, their less willing to take a
Speaker 1: risk on filmmakers of color, and they're less willing to
Speaker 1: take a risk on stories from people of color. And
Speaker 1: that has been shown throughout these decades and even now,
Speaker 1: which is a conversation that we've had in the last
Speaker 1: couple of podcasts, we're still dealing with that. So all
Speaker 1: I wanted to say is when people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't have real film, you know, because it's we
Speaker 1: don't have film from the nineteen fifties. It's not that
Speaker 1: I'm saying that you can't watch those. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that you're invalidating the current landscape of what they have
Speaker 1: on there that is hard hitting stuff from people of coloring.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. You even like what you like,
Speaker 1: but don't try and uh nag or knocked down something
Speaker 1: someone else likes to try and prop up the thing
Speaker 1: you like, And which is like Steven Spielberg game by
Speaker 1: saying something like what is he losing out on by
Speaker 1: making that criticism, and just like it just seems so
Speaker 1: empty to do in the first place. It's just the
Speaker 1: the old head thing. It's that idea of like it's
Speaker 1: so easy when I worked so hard, when you should
Speaker 1: be happy about it. It's it's very much like crabs
Speaker 1: in the barrel, like I made it and everyone should
Speaker 1: should that. That's what separated the cream from the crop.
Speaker 1: And I was like, now there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: stuff that's separated. And it wasn't even the cream of
Speaker 1: the crop. It was the cream of the who had
Speaker 1: the most known father or uncle or somebody who can
Speaker 1: give them a leg up. It's it's as simple as that.
Speaker 1: We all know it. It's all part of it. Nepotism
Speaker 1: is part of it, and and that's not and this
Speaker 1: always will be a part of it, because like I said,
Speaker 1: there's a very collaborative scene. So even even everyone in
Speaker 1: this room is probably gonna hire someone who is their
Speaker 1: friend or homie. But then that just means the onus
Speaker 1: is if you see a hole or a blind spot
Speaker 1: in the people you're hiring, maybe hire one less homie
Speaker 1: and put someone on who you think deserves it. Fritzing
Speaker 1: out And I want to end on a positive a note.
Speaker 1: Before I know Danny is about to take us to
Speaker 1: break because I don't like to be so like negative
Speaker 1: in the industry. I am without like shining line on
Speaker 1: some positivity. And I will say, and Danny is really
Speaker 1: good about this. Because of that, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of dope programs to highlight and shine women and people
Speaker 1: of color to get them at that point, Danny is
Speaker 1: real good about posting when all of these are entering in.
Speaker 1: So don't listen to this and and think that I
Speaker 1: don't have a chance with all that that whole diet tribe.
Speaker 1: If you do have a chance, and they are working
Speaker 1: to fix it. It's a long problem to fix when
Speaker 1: you have to fix so many stems and loops and
Speaker 1: all that. But there is a shot. And I think
Speaker 1: if you want it bad enough, even with nothing you
Speaker 1: know really in front of you, just go for it,
Speaker 1: you know, just make a safe thing. Make sure you
Speaker 1: don't kill yourself doing it, but just go for it.
Speaker 1: Never let anything stop you from doing what you believe
Speaker 1: you are set out in this world to do. If
Speaker 1: you thank you for that, I'm gonna I'm gonna save
Speaker 1: that and listen to whenever I feel like giving up. Um,
Speaker 1: I do post on my If you follow me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I do post. I try to post as often as
Speaker 1: possible for different writers and creators of color when they're
Speaker 1: accepting submissions for things. We do have to take an
Speaker 1: ad break. We will be right back to talk more
Speaker 1: about the Bechdel Test. And we're back still joined by
Speaker 1: Caitlin and Jamie, and I wanted to ask y'all about
Speaker 1: some of the films that we're surprising that didn't pass
Speaker 1: the Bechdel test. Okay, let me pull up our list.
Speaker 1: There's I'm never surprised when a movie does not pass
Speaker 1: the Bechdel times. I mean sometimes they seem to be
Speaker 1: marketed specifically for women, right, and there's even some of
Speaker 1: those don't pass it. I think the most famous example
Speaker 1: of that that we get. We haven't covered it on
Speaker 1: the show, but it comes up all the time is
Speaker 1: I think it's like ane late nineteen thirties movie called
Speaker 1: The Women and we're all female past. It's like ten
Speaker 1: women you do not like your famously, and the way
Speaker 1: it was marketed like it was like you don't see
Speaker 1: a man on screen the whole time, and that is true.
Speaker 1: It does not pass the back because they're only talking
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. But it's always about it's
Speaker 1: always about a gotten, it's always about a man named Steve.
Speaker 1: They're talking about Steve the whole movie. Do you know
Speaker 1: who wrote that? Let me the womenkay written by? Oh,
Speaker 1: it was written by It was written by two women
Speaker 1: over so really uh really uh job, no no way
Speaker 1: to no way around it. No, the thing is for me.
Speaker 1: I tend to not remember unless it's like it very
Speaker 1: handily passes, or it is very clear that the movie
Speaker 1: would not pass because it only has one woman in
Speaker 1: the entire movie see Raiders of the Lost Dark see
Speaker 1: you Know a New Hope, that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I tend not to really remember if a movie passes
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Test or not us because it's a metric
Speaker 1: that is a useful metric first starting off point to
Speaker 1: talk about representation of women in movies. But that's pretty
Speaker 1: much all we use it for is just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this initiates a larger conversation that we can talk about
Speaker 1: a whole stoe of other things. So whether or not
Speaker 1: a movie passes Jamie, as you said, like like the Room,
Speaker 1: that famously horrible, horrible movie past test, but like it's
Speaker 1: still such a piece of and you know, it's fun
Speaker 1: to watch, but you know, it doesn't mean anything that
Speaker 1: that movie passes. And then I think, like we determine
Speaker 1: chart here, our our friends are very studious and make
Speaker 1: up the chart. I would say one that I found
Speaker 1: surprising was You've Got Mail because it's a rom com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you didn't think like movies that are like made right
Speaker 1: for women in theory. And that was came out like
Speaker 1: what two decades ago. So yeah, I think they talked
Speaker 1: about you know, well, no, I think I think it's
Speaker 1: probablyly in her book in the scenes in the bookstore,
Speaker 1: you know, when she because she's talking about her mom
Speaker 1: and she's talking about you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably how it passed. It. The whole
Speaker 1: order of the Rings trilogy does not pass the Vachtel test,
Speaker 1: not one of it's a ten hour it doesn't pass.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It has every opportunity and it doesn't. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then another one we did recently that I thought,
Speaker 1: I guess sort of for the same reason you were saying,
Speaker 1: Danny about You've Got Mail, is five Days of Summer
Speaker 1: doesn't pass the Vechtel test um. Wait, were you saying
Speaker 1: that it does it does pass? Yeah, it does pass.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm saying I find that surprising because it's
Speaker 1: a rom com. You think, like you know, because she
Speaker 1: was yeah, okay, yeah, I mean rom coms often don't pass.
Speaker 1: I think we did. We did an episode about we
Speaker 1: haven't done um you've got mail yet, but we did
Speaker 1: do when Harry met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, And
Speaker 1: there are most of those. There might be like a
Speaker 1: very quick conversation that just happens to not be about men,
Speaker 1: but often in rom comms, I mean, there's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because like there are certain genres that almost
Speaker 1: never passed, like action movies like often do not pass
Speaker 1: because there's usually one woman and she's the love interest.
Speaker 1: She gets captured, she has to be saved, like she's
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh my god, she can kick. I mean
Speaker 1: even if she's allowed to fight. Usually women are not
Speaker 1: allowed to fight. Usually they just actual or if you're
Speaker 1: in the locks arc, your only weapon can be like
Speaker 1: a domestic item like a frying pan or in Halloween,
Speaker 1: it's like all domestic items that that are weapons and
Speaker 1: oh boy, well this is such an interesting statistics. So um, vactives.
Speaker 1: Authors found that films from thirteen that passed the test
Speaker 1: earned a total of four point two billion in the US,
Speaker 1: while those that failed earned only two point sixty six billion,
Speaker 1: saying that Hollywood makes more money by having more women
Speaker 1: on screen, which, hello, we've been seeing that, you know,
Speaker 1: as Yeah, it's kind of interesting that you might be
Speaker 1: able to capture that whole other demographic of our population.
Speaker 1: And you know, we make up half or more than
Speaker 1: half of the population. Yeah, I mean, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: hopefully people will continue to I mean the past three
Speaker 1: years is there's been an increase in diversity almost across
Speaker 1: the board, and it's like, can we, for the love
Speaker 1: of God keep that going. There's it's not it's like
Speaker 1: it's good business to like, there's no reason except being
Speaker 1: a bigot toll to not do that. Like people want
Speaker 1: to see these stories, and people will pay to see
Speaker 1: these stories, So make it happen. Stop making the same
Speaker 1: boring movie over and over and over. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of other tests it looks like that have come up.
Speaker 1: There's GLADS, which is Studio Responsibility Index, So that has
Speaker 1: to do with queer characters. So essentially their criteria is Um,
Speaker 1: the film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual,
Speaker 1: or transgender. The character must not be solely or predominantly
Speaker 1: defined by their sexual orientation. We see that so much.
Speaker 1: It's like, that's my personality. Um, that's who I am.
Speaker 1: That's my character trait is that I'm gay. That's it. Um,
Speaker 1: I see that. Also. I don't know if there's a
Speaker 1: if there's a marker for this one, but for plus
Speaker 1: size women it's normally I'm fat. That's it. That's my character.
Speaker 1: And I remember people like tweeting, hey, you know the
Speaker 1: fact girl you can like actually give her a storyline
Speaker 1: and other things. Right, she's almost always like the butt
Speaker 1: of jokes. But yeah, exactly. Yeah, the test you were
Speaker 1: just talking about is the Vito Russo tests. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think the third caveat of that is that
Speaker 1: that character, if they were removed from the story, it
Speaker 1: would have like significant impact on the plot. So basically,
Speaker 1: like their integration into the story, uh needs to be
Speaker 1: so important that removing them would affect how the story
Speaker 1: plays out. Um, So few movies that we've done on
Speaker 1: the podcast that I've seen in general past the Vito
Speaker 1: Russo test, which is very upsetting. Um. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that one. UM. There's another one that I like is
Speaker 1: the way test, which the rules of it are movie
Speaker 1: passes if there's a black woman in the work who's
Speaker 1: in a position of power and she's in a healthy relationship. UM.
Speaker 1: Of the top fifty movies, five movies passed that very
Speaker 1: simple metric. Um. There there was a project that five
Speaker 1: thirty eight did at the I think it was at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty at the end of where they
Speaker 1: invited women of you know, like every every type of
Speaker 1: woman you could think of to make up their own metrics. UM.
Speaker 1: And there were more. There were more intersectional tests. There
Speaker 1: were tests that focused for behind the camera, which is
Speaker 1: I think something that we don't get a chance to
Speaker 1: get a lot in our show, but like it's one
Speaker 1: thing to have. UM. I mean, there's so many movies
Speaker 1: we've covered where we're like, oh, cool, a female protagonist.
Speaker 1: Like I think Carrie is a movie that we covered
Speaker 1: that It's like, Okay, you have a movie that is
Speaker 1: about women, but so much of it is Uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: because everyone behind the camera is a man. So it's
Speaker 1: like a man writing a woman's story, and so you're
Speaker 1: like the story doesn't make sense. Um, and I don't
Speaker 1: know everyone, everyone check it out. There's I think like
Speaker 1: thirty or forty different positive tests. Here's something I want
Speaker 1: to butt in with two because I know, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you have these conversations, there's this like weird like
Speaker 1: so there shouldn't be any movies about white wo men,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, that's not the case. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to just drop a number to kind of help
Speaker 1: you realize how this actually isn't a huge impact and
Speaker 1: you still can have your cake and eat it with
Speaker 1: us representing other people and still making movies about white men.
Speaker 1: Because look, I love Ryan Gosling. You put him in
Speaker 1: anything that he's my favorite white dude. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sen but there are a total of two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and seventy seven films produced each year on
Speaker 1: average around the world. So yeah, I feel like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't really know the difference if you sprinkled it in. Especially,
Speaker 1: I want everyone to take two seconds to try and
Speaker 1: remember every movie you saw it last year and see
Speaker 1: if they're see which ones you even remember. We see
Speaker 1: so many movies and there are are only ones that
Speaker 1: stick with us, and I think that's okay, because that's
Speaker 1: how stories work. We're gonna see a lot of stories,
Speaker 1: and certain stories are going to impact us and hold
Speaker 1: a place within us. I still have yet to see anything,
Speaker 1: so so I think it really wouldn't make a difference
Speaker 1: if every week one movie only one, not even asking
Speaker 1: a lot. I want more, But I'm just saying, in
Speaker 1: this hypothetical, if every year one movie is featuring just
Speaker 1: solely underrepresented characters and actors and people, that would not
Speaker 1: even impact the movie scene in a big way. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't even notice. So so that's that's always And once again,
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we because you know we
Speaker 1: which which I forget which episode we're talking about, we
Speaker 1: were talking about like you know, white men writing, you know,
Speaker 1: people of color and women and this, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was contacted by you know, two different people who
Speaker 1: were who were writers and we're concerned about, like, well,
Speaker 1: can I not write? And I was like no. What
Speaker 1: we're saying is there's a difference when it's handled by
Speaker 1: certain people, and actually it's it wouldn't be a problem
Speaker 1: if the people representing being represented were able to write
Speaker 1: their own stories. And we just want everybody to write.
Speaker 1: But when someone's taking the center stage and getting to
Speaker 1: tell all the stories, when they're getting all the chips
Speaker 1: in the bowl and the salsa and we were stuck
Speaker 1: with the crumbs, then we're gonna look at your chips
Speaker 1: in all your hand and be like, hey, but if
Speaker 1: everybody's getting chips, everyone's happy. And that's that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's more equity than anything, right. We talked about this
Speaker 1: on the episode we did on the Beguild, which was
Speaker 1: that Sofia couple of remakes forgot. It's like, what was
Speaker 1: just a wretched movie, but it's it's an adapt She
Speaker 1: remade a movie that Clint Eastwood was in from I
Speaker 1: think the seventies, and that was an adaptation from a
Speaker 1: novel um and basically she erases all of the people
Speaker 1: of color in the book, so it's only white women
Speaker 1: in this. In this story, she there was there was
Speaker 1: a character who was a slave because it takes place
Speaker 1: during the Civil War, but that character gets erased and
Speaker 1: then when asked about it was like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't think I would be qualified to write that character,
Speaker 1: so I just took her out her completely instead of
Speaker 1: hiring someone Ellab someone I thought I hadn't. I thought,
Speaker 1: like I saw a couple of people commenting on this,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was also because then it would
Speaker 1: make her white female protagonists harder to root for if
Speaker 1: they had slaves. It's like, well then you need to
Speaker 1: write a better than don't. Don't make that Like it's
Speaker 1: as simple as that. It wasn't a good movie to
Speaker 1: begin with. It was not. It was also the that
Speaker 1: I never saw it. I mean, not to come down
Speaker 1: too hard on the nepotism scale, but like that was
Speaker 1: on that same press tr Sophia. Couple of us like
Speaker 1: what am the beck tailed tests? Just like I just
Speaker 1: I sure feminist hero you know, I mean everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that movie was trash. Did you want to go over
Speaker 1: the Maco Morey sure? Yeah. This is another interesting one.
Speaker 1: This originates from the film The Masterpiece Pacific rim and
Speaker 1: the Maco Morey test requires that there must be at
Speaker 1: least one prominent female character in the movie who has
Speaker 1: her own narrative arc and which is not about supporting
Speaker 1: a man's story, right, so it's those three conditions. Is
Speaker 1: named after the character in the movie whose name is
Speaker 1: Macomoory who who whose arc does pass that test? And
Speaker 1: she has I mean, she has like her own story.
Speaker 1: I My main criticism of that movie is that, in
Speaker 1: spite of the fact that she's given her own storyline
Speaker 1: and it's satisfying and as dependent on a man, she
Speaker 1: has launched out of the climax of that movie, which
Speaker 1: made me gasp, and she doesn't get to participate. They
Speaker 1: are putting her in a pod and she can't be
Speaker 1: at the end of the movie. And then at the
Speaker 1: end she's bobbing at the top of the It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But didn't she say? It also didn't pass the Bechdel
Speaker 1: tests that that movie, and I don't think that yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: There's also the Duvernate test um, which is says that
Speaker 1: characters who are people of color have fully realized lives
Speaker 1: rather than serving as the scenery in white stories, which
Speaker 1: is something that we do see a lot in the
Speaker 1: movies that we cover on the podcast, where there might
Speaker 1: be one person of color who's the best friend of
Speaker 1: the protagonists, but they don't have their own narrative arc.
Speaker 1: They only exist to basically serve as scenery. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's every nineties movie, really, I do. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's every It was like, you know, the black friend,
Speaker 1: the Latina friend, you know, and it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a sassy one, you know. And then they normally
Speaker 1: die or get killed, like I'm thinking of scary movies,
Speaker 1: but they you know, comes, It's like they never get
Speaker 1: a fully realized their own Yeah. Yeah, that reminds me
Speaker 1: of Sorry, I was going to say, that reminds me
Speaker 1: of Dave Chappelle showed up randomly and you've got veil
Speaker 1: also also in A Star is Born, he just shows
Speaker 1: up randomly. It's like, Dave Chappelle, why are you in
Speaker 1: this movie? And then by the time you get the
Speaker 1: chance to ask that question, he's gone. You don't. I
Speaker 1: don't why you keep drinking your brother telling you what wrunk?
Speaker 1: I love a minute, but I just was like, wait,
Speaker 1: he shows up and then he never comes, you know.
Speaker 1: That's what I want for the twilight of my career
Speaker 1: is just to show up in movie like he's just
Speaker 1: been showing up, like he showed up at the Means,
Speaker 1: he showed up at the oscars. That's That's where I
Speaker 1: need my career to That sounds nice. That sounds nice.
Speaker 1: So then there's the Riz test Uh, named after a
Speaker 1: Riz amn Muslim character based on either their ethnicity, their clothing,
Speaker 1: or language they speak. Do they talk about or are
Speaker 1: the victim of a perpetrator of islamis terrorism? Are they
Speaker 1: shown as being irrationally angry? Is the character anti modern
Speaker 1: culturally backwards? Are superstitious? Do they get presented as a
Speaker 1: threat to the Western way of life? And when it
Speaker 1: comes to the gender of the Muslim character, is the
Speaker 1: male character presented as being misogynistic? Does a female character
Speaker 1: get presented as someone who is oppressed by males, which
Speaker 1: which just seems like all these tests are like are
Speaker 1: you doing the stereotype? You know, like yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: don't adhere to stereotypes, because yeah, I imagine people listening like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we have to do all of these tests,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, it's just if you have a
Speaker 1: person of color, if you have you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a woman, if you have these which you should,
Speaker 1: but like actually make them real characters and not just
Speaker 1: side characters and not just stereotypes. Well, my new answer
Speaker 1: is like, if you're a good writer, you have nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about because you know, as as I've been
Speaker 1: just writing more and more, you go back and like
Speaker 1: there there are like blind spots, Like I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this episode today and uh, you know, and one
Speaker 1: of my pilots I was like, damn, there's like two women,
Speaker 1: uh actually three, but they all are so disjointed that
Speaker 1: they literally can't pass the Bechdel test because they don't
Speaker 1: have any scenes together. So then you you have to wonder,
Speaker 1: you know. I I've eventually came to terms that it
Speaker 1: kind of served the story I was telling. But but
Speaker 1: like and I think that's an important thing too. Whereas
Speaker 1: like that's something to have in my head and say,
Speaker 1: you know, you know this gets picked up to a series, baby,
Speaker 1: you know, like then I have to make an honest
Speaker 1: effort to rectify that and make sure you know, we're
Speaker 1: getting scenes with women, adding more women, I think. Uh so,
Speaker 1: like in the case of you know, white women, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a we write stuff for ourselves
Speaker 1: and we're six black dudes, so we make sure that
Speaker 1: you know, when we write something that we are including women.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny looking at our old stuff
Speaker 1: because some of our old stuff we're like, we failed y'all,
Speaker 1: uh simply put, but we're like, you know, going forward,
Speaker 1: we need to be more aware of that because you know,
Speaker 1: you've got six men locked in there, and what can
Speaker 1: you do do here? And I think it's literally that simple.
Speaker 1: And like sometimes if you're like, if the story is
Speaker 1: so important that it serves us, you know, then yeah,
Speaker 1: then you just go forward with that in your mind
Speaker 1: and be considerate of that and considered just the women
Speaker 1: you do have in your story, how are they, how
Speaker 1: are they communicating with people, how are they being portrayed?
Speaker 1: And and that's really all you need to think about.
Speaker 1: Like I was had one show concept that had you know,
Speaker 1: and an Asian woman in it who like had the
Speaker 1: the like tiger mom type thing, and I like called
Speaker 1: up a friend I don't think she's been on the
Speaker 1: cash Jinny Yang, and I like walked through the beats
Speaker 1: of the character is to make sure like I'm not
Speaker 1: doing anything offensive and and we hash it in it
Speaker 1: with something great. And obviously if that show got picked up,
Speaker 1: it's like you're in the room. But like you know,
Speaker 1: right now, when it's just me the writer, you have
Speaker 1: to do your due diligence. And those are examples of
Speaker 1: ways that you can represent people appropriately, talk to have
Speaker 1: them read it. You know, if you if you have
Speaker 1: black people in your story and you're wondering like, oh,
Speaker 1: is this gonna be offensive? Find a black friend sended
Speaker 1: to them and have them read it. They'll tell you straight.
Speaker 1: It's so it's so frustrating, Like and I like when
Speaker 1: a writer is like, well, I'm too anxious to try
Speaker 1: to represent people that aren't exactly me. That's like what
Speaker 1: perpetuates this problem every single time. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to go out and say you're not a good writer
Speaker 1: if you don't want to do that. If you're limiting
Speaker 1: your if you're putting training wheels on your scripts because
Speaker 1: you're afraid of messing up, you're not a good writer
Speaker 1: because you're supposed to be challenging yourself. And right, like
Speaker 1: what we said, like if you have queer characters, that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be their whole That's why if you're saying, like
Speaker 1: you're not a good writer, that shouldn't be their whole
Speaker 1: thing is that they're queer. That's just the part of
Speaker 1: who they are, but it's not their whole personality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a fleshed out character, is just queer. So
Speaker 1: on that we have to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we will be right back to talk more about the
Speaker 1: Bechtel test, and we're back. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have a Latin next one,
Speaker 1: but I think if we did, I would want to
Speaker 1: Are they superstitious? Do they have a decal of Virgin
Speaker 1: Mary on the back of their car? Do they at
Speaker 1: some point say that's in so many school? When I
Speaker 1: was at Io in their screenwriting class, I was like,
Speaker 1: please stop writing us, like we don't all say that. Well,
Speaker 1: this is your opportunity to make up. Yes, the IF test,
Speaker 1: the IFI test for you know, movies feature in Nigerian?
Speaker 1: Am I in it? It fails? Or you're racist? Um?
Speaker 1: So I think those were the main tests that I
Speaker 1: could find. There's no please go ahead. There's something called
Speaker 1: the sexy lamp test. Gosh, she told me this and
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. Isn't that based around a Christmas story.
Speaker 1: It's the Christmas story that has the the late woman's
Speaker 1: leg as like the base of a lamp um. So basically,
Speaker 1: if you can replace your female character with that sexy
Speaker 1: lamp in your story and the story is still basically works,
Speaker 1: then that movie fails. Were the ones that they tried
Speaker 1: to do that with. I mean, I would say, like,
Speaker 1: are they saying a Christmas story? Is that movie? You
Speaker 1: could replace them? Or no, not so much that they're
Speaker 1: just borrowing that sexy leg lamp from that movie. But
Speaker 1: I would I would say that, like apply the sexy
Speaker 1: lamp test to a lot of like Bond films. I
Speaker 1: bet those would fail like anyone though, there's just like
Speaker 1: a token woman who is like the male heroes, like
Speaker 1: you know, girlfriend back home that he has to like
Speaker 1: have sex with once and then like or like a
Speaker 1: woman who's there to like give one piece of information
Speaker 1: and then disappear like it could have been from the lamp. Yeah, talking,
Speaker 1: would you count Lars in the Real Girl? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting well we have this com We had
Speaker 1: this conversation before we started recording. I think about Solo
Speaker 1: about the robot. Do you count? Like do those do
Speaker 1: female characters that aren't human count? I would? I would
Speaker 1: say so, yeah, if they are, if they seem to
Speaker 1: identify as female in some way. And I would also
Speaker 1: extend like so that we're not being so rigid with
Speaker 1: like gender, if they are like non binary, if there's
Speaker 1: a non binary character who talks to a woman or
Speaker 1: another non binary character like I would and if they're
Speaker 1: not talking about a man, I would say that pass,
Speaker 1: like yeah, we don't, we don't want to like you know,
Speaker 1: place these rigid restrictions on anything like that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's just like our men not talking the
Speaker 1: whole movie, liked about right right or the subject of
Speaker 1: every conversation. Yeah, another one I like this. This is
Speaker 1: like a more specific vision of the behind the camera stuff.
Speaker 1: Is the Reese Davies test by Katerie Davies. A movie
Speaker 1: passes if every department has two or more women, which
Speaker 1: is not which which is something that doesn't happen very much.
Speaker 1: Only about a third of movies pass this test because
Speaker 1: there is such a disproportionate representation behind the camera as well,
Speaker 1: which is something that I want to be better on
Speaker 1: our show about like paying attention to of. Like it's
Speaker 1: so rare to see female composers, female editors, photographers, um,
Speaker 1: where it's usually where I we're talking about directors, writers
Speaker 1: and talent. But there's like there's so many things that
Speaker 1: like when a movie is edited by women, they're probably
Speaker 1: going to edit out the shot where you know, probably
Speaker 1: the male cinematographer. It's like a lingering shot of a
Speaker 1: woman in a swimsuit exactly. Yeah. Um, there's another one
Speaker 1: that is, uh, I think lesser known because it's it's newer,
Speaker 1: but it's called the Kent Test. It's from um Clarkesha Kent,
Speaker 1: and it's there are many different components to it, so
Speaker 1: I'll just name kind of the main one. But it
Speaker 1: determines whether a film or other piece of media has
Speaker 1: provided the audience with adequate representation of women or fans
Speaker 1: of color. And then it has all these different like
Speaker 1: criteria by which you can like basically, it's like, I
Speaker 1: think twelve different things, and if it scores higher than
Speaker 1: like a six or an eight or some some number,
Speaker 1: then it's like, oh, it's doing pretty well. A lot
Speaker 1: of movies don't fare very well on this test. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, for if he for your episode of
Speaker 1: Black Panther, I'm assuming that that passed the Bechdel test, right.
Speaker 1: And I love the fact that Ryan Coogler had Rachel Morrison,
Speaker 1: who's his DP and has worked with him on Fruitvale
Speaker 1: Station and on Black Panther, So that was that is
Speaker 1: a huge thing that that was pretty cool that he
Speaker 1: had a woman behind the scenes. Um, as one of
Speaker 1: the head people of his crew. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: then I was pointing I was pointing this out to
Speaker 1: you the other day that George Miller, who made Mad Max,
Speaker 1: his wife edited it and he there's this quote where
Speaker 1: his wife was like, why do you want me to
Speaker 1: edit this movie? Was like, because if I have a
Speaker 1: man edited, it's gonna look like every other action movie.
Speaker 1: And that that's true. Like one of the benefits you
Speaker 1: get from having an underrepresented peace to your film is
Speaker 1: you're getting a different perspective. I mean, in a good
Speaker 1: writer's room, that's why you want different perspective. I was
Speaker 1: and probably one of the most diverse writing room a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, and you know, we had you know
Speaker 1: me uh, you know, the showrunner was Indian. You had uh,
Speaker 1: we had like two women to two men who were writing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and it was just interesting too, like you know,
Speaker 1: have you just your different things to the way people say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's all. It's very interesting too to
Speaker 1: have just the one line that I always like to
Speaker 1: hear in those situations, uh, you know when someone speaking
Speaker 1: and goes, oh, a woman wouldn't say that, you know,
Speaker 1: like his because because I just even from my perspective,
Speaker 1: whenever you see like a black person written by a
Speaker 1: white person, you're like, no black person in their life
Speaker 1: would ever say that, you know, even just I think
Speaker 1: we were saying that a few episodes ago. Just even
Speaker 1: the relationship to the police, you know, like you, black
Speaker 1: people have a different relationship to the police. Black people
Speaker 1: have a different relationship to food. Family eating. There's a
Speaker 1: different dynamic and one parent, two parent households, how they
Speaker 1: look at wealth, how they look at fame. There's it's
Speaker 1: just a whole different worldview. So without someone in there
Speaker 1: to check you and be like, oh, that would be whack.
Speaker 1: And this is why, And I can like totally break
Speaker 1: down why that person wouldn't say that. You know, it
Speaker 1: really does help you give that film that extra And
Speaker 1: if you just pay attention to what people say when
Speaker 1: films nail at on Twitter, I don't see why no,
Speaker 1: not everyone does it. You know, what were some of
Speaker 1: the films since we're closing up here, what are some
Speaker 1: great films if someone want to check out that do
Speaker 1: pass the Bechtel test that you guys really love well?
Speaker 1: You you just had your Captain Marvel episode, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: handily passes if we're talking about recent movies that pass
Speaker 1: the Bechtel test, I mean we always talk about Moana. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's just like kind of the golden standard of all movies. Um,
Speaker 1: are there any Selman? Louise is one of my faves
Speaker 1: that you know passes handily, and it like Beckham is
Speaker 1: covered semi recently that that does really well with representing
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of female relationships, where there's
Speaker 1: relationships between women of different uh, generations, of different races,
Speaker 1: of different um like income levels. There's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different types and that's something that I think is
Speaker 1: a blind spot of I mean of the many blind
Speaker 1: spots of the Bechtel test too. It takes it doesn't
Speaker 1: take into account what type of women are you seeing? Right,
Speaker 1: because there's a jillion funnily funnily is that a word?
Speaker 1: I'm going to make it funnily enough. Um. Netflix tweeted
Speaker 1: that out on International Women's Day and they were just like,
Speaker 1: when taking positive representative this is what they tweeted from
Speaker 1: at Netflix Film, when taking positive representation for women, we
Speaker 1: need to be critical of what good representation looks like,
Speaker 1: not just for white women, but for women of color.
Speaker 1: To here are some films to watch on International Women's
Speaker 1: Day that not only passed the Bechtel test, but the
Speaker 1: DuVernay test too. Awesome. Yeah so and then people, oh, um,
Speaker 1: let's see Roma, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Breaker Uppers,
Speaker 1: High Flying Bird to all the boys I've loved before.
Speaker 1: Lot of people wrinkling time. Um. People got you know,
Speaker 1: kind of through some shade at them by tweeting back
Speaker 1: at them their senior leadership team which is all white men. Um,
Speaker 1: and so what I know. But I think for me,
Speaker 1: I tweeted something like, we are aware of the problems.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many issues we're aware of. Who
Speaker 1: runs the studios, We're aware of you know. Even when
Speaker 1: it comes to Netflix, I think Netflix is more has
Speaker 1: been more willing to take risks and giving a platform
Speaker 1: to these voices than say other studios. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: where I'm a win for it. But it's not flawless.
Speaker 1: None of these are none of them are so um
Speaker 1: in this progress. Yes, So it's it's gonna take time.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take time for there to be you know,
Speaker 1: more diverse, like you know, studio execs and and directed
Speaker 1: everyone through every step of the process. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of waiting it out and contributing to the
Speaker 1: diversity if you are, you know, a writer, young writer, yeah,
Speaker 1: and not a straight ciss white man. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that wraps everything up, unless you had something iffy. No.
Speaker 1: The only thing I have is where can people find you? Wow?
Speaker 1: You can follow our podcast and listen to it on
Speaker 1: all the places that you would find a podcast anywhere
Speaker 1: where you get your podcast, which podcasting Apple because I
Speaker 1: find that or probably, and then you can follow us
Speaker 1: on social media on Twitter and Instagram at bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: and then on Facebook as well. Just type in bectel
Speaker 1: cast if you don't know how to spell it because
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, yeah, I tried to
Speaker 1: look you up and I don't know how to spell
Speaker 1: this damn word. It's a b E C H D
Speaker 1: E L. And just check out Alison Becktel's work because
Speaker 1: it's really good. Um. Yeah, that's where you can find
Speaker 1: should be, I guess individually. Yeah, please do. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Jamie Left His Help or
Speaker 1: Instagram am at Jamie christ Superstar, and you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Toronte. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having Yeah, thanks for coming on and
Speaker 1: for going on. I learned some new tests, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's really cool. Many tests to make my
Speaker 1: own tests, Like like you're saying, if they're all like
Speaker 1: basically common sense a good writer, So just have common
Speaker 1: sense to the top of your intelligence. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: asked someone smarter than you. I do script notes professionally
Speaker 1: not to plug but yeah, if you should, because we
Speaker 1: I mean, if you actually are taking submissions. We have
Speaker 1: a ton of you know, newer writers that we constantly
Speaker 1: hit us up. So yeah, I do. I'm a professional
Speaker 1: story analyst. I give thorough notes and uh, I'm so
Speaker 1: excited for all the resources we give the people that
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast. I'm such a nerd, but I
Speaker 1: like we had voice actors giving advice. We've had we
Speaker 1: had Xavier come on and and also take he's taking
Speaker 1: horror scripts that he'll read, and like, oh man, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. Hit me up at Caitlin Dronte on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Just you know, so I don't know tag me. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you slide into my d M S.
Speaker 1: I don't know how things work professionally, sally professionally, you
Speaker 1: can just slide into my dar. For whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: don't respond, but I do read them. Hey, how's it going?
Speaker 1: And you know that's your boy. If I f y
Speaker 1: n w A d i w E on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: the discord is Discord dot g g slash Salt Squad
Speaker 1: and you can watch me on Twitch at if D
Speaker 1: s I f d E easy on Twitch. We're getting
Speaker 1: it in uh and yeah. Also, you know, if you
Speaker 1: like clothes and you need them. If you're listening to
Speaker 1: this and you look down and you're like, all my
Speaker 1: clothes got holes in them, you can go to Tea Public.
Speaker 1: We have a Tea Public store with lots of narraw
Speaker 1: Diifficent merch always at new stuff and we're like hitting
Speaker 1: you up with the I don't know if you could tell.
Speaker 1: We've had a themed merchant there. We had the Captain
Speaker 1: Marvel March for the Captain Marvel episode. We had Harley
Speaker 1: during the Terror Strong Harley Quinn episode. So just thank you.
Speaker 1: Peep it. Yeah, it's t public dot com slash near Deifficent.
Speaker 1: I'm at miss Danny Fernandez. If you're going to Wonder Con,
Speaker 1: I will also be there on Friday. I have a
Speaker 1: panel with Aurice Wanser who was on our show. Also
Speaker 1: Chris Lam who has a who's going to be on
Speaker 1: one of our future shows. It's LGBT and minority host
Speaker 1: How to break Through. I know that we kind of
Speaker 1: did an episode on that, so then you can hear
Speaker 1: even more if you're interested in becoming a host. That's
Speaker 1: at four pm, Um, I'm going to tweet out all
Speaker 1: of this, and then Saturday, I'm on the Most Dangerous
Speaker 1: Women panel with some killer women that I love, and
Speaker 1: that is at eleven am. So if you're at Wonder Con,
Speaker 1: come and say hi to me. Very very so approachable
Speaker 1: and like we always say, stay neardy, stay neardy on