Speaker 1: On the Doll Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef in
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the bec Del Cast. Hello listeners,
Speaker 1: it's Jamie and Caitlin and we're coming to you from
Speaker 1: the future. Here's the deal. We recorded this episode a
Speaker 1: while ago. We recorded it, I think a few months
Speaker 1: ago now, and because this is an episode about space,
Speaker 1: we referenced the potential of a billionaire space race and
Speaker 1: how ridiculous that is in the episode. But when we
Speaker 1: recorded it, it wasn't quite as full blown a thing
Speaker 1: as it is now. So if it sounds a little off,
Speaker 1: that is the reason why. But while we've got you here,
Speaker 1: uh future Jamie and future Caitlin. Uh yeah, we just
Speaker 1: wanted to sort of bring everybody, I guess up to speed.
Speaker 1: You probably know. Unfortunately, because billionaire, I was sure, do
Speaker 1: you get a lot of press? Oh? I thought we
Speaker 1: were going to be talking about space, jam a new legacy?
Speaker 1: Is that not the space that you saw it? But
Speaker 1: do you did you? Is it like as completely bizarre
Speaker 1: as it looks? Because it looks so bizarre Why is
Speaker 1: a mystery machine in it? Why are the people from
Speaker 1: a clockwork orange in it? Right? Yeah, because the movie
Speaker 1: is more concerned about reminding you that other Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: intellectual properties exist than it is about telling a story
Speaker 1: that makes any sense. The plot like is borderline incomprehensible.
Speaker 1: The movie is just like one frame of sensory overload
Speaker 1: after another. It's unwatchable. Is it good bad or is
Speaker 1: it just like No, it's just a bummer. I want
Speaker 1: to I'll still watch it because I have HBO Max,
Speaker 1: but like, it just looks bad bad. Oh god, so
Speaker 1: depressing it Whenever whenever a movie is like we're just
Speaker 1: um here for I P, it's like, well, Jesus, not
Speaker 1: not worth it. It was very disappointed. Was hoping for
Speaker 1: a fun you know, because the first Space Jam is fun,
Speaker 1: a classic. This one is not. Yeah. I I think
Speaker 1: the only more depressing space topic than the fact that
Speaker 1: Space Jam two sucks is that the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a three way billionaire white guy's space race going on
Speaker 1: right now. It's the most just dystopian thing in the world.
Speaker 1: It's between three of the biggest losers on the planet
Speaker 1: that like it shouldn't be illegal to kill them in
Speaker 1: Minecraft of course. Um, and those losers are Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. So yeah, that is now
Speaker 1: officially a thing. Richard Branson has already been to space.
Speaker 1: It goes without saying that, you know it. We talked
Speaker 1: about this in the episode a little bit as well.
Speaker 1: But the fact that, you know, exploring space is not
Speaker 1: the problem here. I understand human curiosity. It makes sense
Speaker 1: that people want to floor space. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: these motherfucker's are going to space for PR instead of
Speaker 1: curing world hunger, which they literally could do. And so
Speaker 1: it is just like disgusting and embarrassing in every potential way.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just read a quick quote, uh that
Speaker 1: came out in July from a piece that I really
Speaker 1: liked that I felt like broke this down pretty well
Speaker 1: in uh, oh my god, Jacobin magazine. I've never tried
Speaker 1: to say that out loud. The writer is Luke Savage,
Speaker 1: and he says this quote more straightforwardly. Extreme wealth in
Speaker 1: the capitalist age is by definition engaged in a constant
Speaker 1: and desperate scramble for new sources of ethical legitimacy. Billionaires
Speaker 1: need a public facing reason to exist, and for the
Speaker 1: time being at least, owning the rights to bits of
Speaker 1: paper and expropriating surplus value still doesn't quite cut the mustard. If,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, plutocratic pursuits and the impossibly decadent
Speaker 1: lifestyle surrounding them can be packaged as extensions of a
Speaker 1: progressive human project, so much the better. The likes of
Speaker 1: private islands, luxury estates, and Silicon Valley sweatshops are now
Speaker 1: justifying themselves with all the pomp and sober purpose of
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong taking his first step onto the surface of
Speaker 1: the moon unquote and um, you know five dollar words aside.
Speaker 1: I feel like that that kind of like puts together.
Speaker 1: You know. The issue isn't a curiosity in space. It's
Speaker 1: repackaging billionaires going to space for attention and also for
Speaker 1: again personal profit in the effort to literally colonize space.
Speaker 1: That is the problem. Uh so bad time pr wise
Speaker 1: for space. But bravely we're doing a contact episode anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jodie Foster going to space. Fine, Jeff Bezo is going
Speaker 1: to space. No thinks that's my Wouldn't it be interesting
Speaker 1: if there was a little accident to be wild, if
Speaker 1: this episode came up, and then it was like, it's
Speaker 1: just I feel too powerful at this point because I
Speaker 1: did call j Lo and ben Affleck getting back together,
Speaker 1: so I have to be careful. So what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is what if the spaceship blew up? So the interesting look. Okay,
Speaker 1: enjoy the episode. The cast. Hey Jamie, Hey Caitlin. No,
Speaker 1: it's not Caitlin, it's it's your father. But it's actually
Speaker 1: also not your father. It's it's an I'm an alien.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is so confusing. I hope we're
Speaker 1: on an island that looks like a screen saver. Yes
Speaker 1: we are, but actually that's what it looks like to you.
Speaker 1: But actually we're we're in we're on a star. We're
Speaker 1: near a star. We're on a planet. We're in the sky,
Speaker 1: on a planet near the star Vega. Oh okay, that
Speaker 1: tracks for me. Oh and have you just you just haven't?
Speaker 1: Why haven't you reached out before? Now? I like how
Speaker 1: he's just like, that's just kind of how it works here.
Speaker 1: You're like, sir, excuse me, I texted you twenty six
Speaker 1: years ago and you're just now responding. Rude. That would
Speaker 1: have been that would have that explanation in that scene
Speaker 1: would have made way more sense to me. Have like
Speaker 1: time works so differently. I just got here, it feels like.
Speaker 1: But instead he pulls like kind of you know, a
Speaker 1: classically male thing to do would just be like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just I don't know. It seemed like
Speaker 1: you're fun. See it was a what's a big deal?
Speaker 1: This is a factel cast? Uh have j B loft I.
Speaker 1: My name is Caitlin Darante and this is our podcast
Speaker 1: where we take a look at your favorite or least
Speaker 1: favorite movies with an intersectional feminist lens. And today we're
Speaker 1: taking a little a little pod all the way to space,
Speaker 1: a little pod cast. This is our little Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is when. That's how the way that Jodie Foster feels
Speaker 1: when she gets into the pod, how I feel when
Speaker 1: we press record. I'm what did she say? She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm good to go, I'm okay to go, I'm okay
Speaker 1: to there. That's what Caitlyn and I are doing for
Speaker 1: like ten minutes before every eppisode starts, and we're getting
Speaker 1: more and more afraid, and then there's people in another
Speaker 1: room that are like, that's what. That's what Aristotle was
Speaker 1: like before before we you know, it's a whole thing,
Speaker 1: and then we record for eighteen hours, but it just
Speaker 1: an audio never saves. Yeah, it's just static too soon. Listen, listen.
Speaker 1: Things happen listeners, and and sometimes audio corrupt. Said, you
Speaker 1: live and you'll learn. But this is our that that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen today. That is not going to
Speaker 1: happen today. Today we're talking about contact and we have
Speaker 1: an incredible guest with us here. We certainly do. Kelly
Speaker 1: is a filmmaker, actor, writer and producer and actor on
Speaker 1: the film Sugar Dad The It's Kelly McCormick. Welcome Wormle
Speaker 1: all Ready to go high Go? What was it okay
Speaker 1: to go? Okay? To go? Okay? To go okay? To go?
Speaker 1: Quite literally, how I feel entering a zoom chat At
Speaker 1: all times I'm like, am I ready to go? Am
Speaker 1: I not ready to go? It's horrific. Like when you're
Speaker 1: in the waiting room you have to like confirm your video,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I guess that is how I look
Speaker 1: okay to go? Yeah, Like the series of questions it
Speaker 1: asks you where you're expecting for your video to pop
Speaker 1: up and it become your new reality, and it just
Speaker 1: says weight we want to know if your audio is working,
Speaker 1: and you're like, it's I'm okay to go, and you're like,
Speaker 1: what we need to know if your video is working?
Speaker 1: I am okay to go, like I need to go.
Speaker 1: It's truly words to live by. Honestly. Yeah, um, you
Speaker 1: know what, Jamie, we forgot to describe what the Bechtel
Speaker 1: test is. Oh my gosh, we were not okay to go.
Speaker 1: It turns out we after all that to do, we
Speaker 1: were not okay to go. Well, we can tell them now.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunately, this isn't rocket science, and it's okay if
Speaker 1: we suck up just a little bit. Yes. The Bechtel
Speaker 1: Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel,
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Bechtel Whilst Test. I'd like how we
Speaker 1: have like it's just like I don't even have to
Speaker 1: think about it when I describe it. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's true anyway. It's a media metric that requires, for
Speaker 1: our purposes our rendition of the test, two people of
Speaker 1: a marginalized gender have names, have to speak to each
Speaker 1: other about something other than a man for a two
Speaker 1: line exchange of dialogue or like for us, it's a
Speaker 1: meaningful conversation that might impact the narrative in some way. Right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, not every movie is going to pass. I
Speaker 1: guess we'll just see. We'll have to set does I
Speaker 1: actually did. I as time goes on, As we talked
Speaker 1: about all the time, I always like, we're always forgetting
Speaker 1: to pay attention to whether it pass because it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like not the most important thing we discussed by
Speaker 1: a mile. But I did pay I don't I was.
Speaker 1: I was on my toes for this one the same. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think probably. I think it probably is when there's
Speaker 1: only like two female characters, you pay closer attention because
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I just I just wonder right right? Yes, So, yes,
Speaker 1: today's movie is Contact Kelly. What's your what's your relationship
Speaker 1: with this movie? What's your history with this I have
Speaker 1: a really emotional history with this, which I was reliving
Speaker 1: last night when I rewatched the film for the first time,
Speaker 1: not on VHS, which was the last film. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: it's actually sort of special. And the more I thought
Speaker 1: about it, you know, watching the film and musing over it,
Speaker 1: I was like, I guess that is a pretty special connection. Um.
Speaker 1: I grew up with a very large family of many many,
Speaker 1: many cousins, and we went up to this wilderness sort
Speaker 1: of space with no electricity and no hot running water
Speaker 1: every summer, and we were super nerds, like absolute super nerds.
Speaker 1: We played dungeons and dragons, We played magic cards, we
Speaker 1: played Fifth Age. I read pretty much exclusively science fiction
Speaker 1: and fantasy from age like ten to now. That was
Speaker 1: all I sort of like, no, I guess I've read
Speaker 1: other things now, but but that was are like the
Speaker 1: lifeblood of our family dynamic. That's what we talked about
Speaker 1: the most. And I had eleven older cousins that were
Speaker 1: all male. That was the first female born like cousin
Speaker 1: of the group of people of the of the major
Speaker 1: super family. And one of my older cousins, Kevin, was
Speaker 1: our smartest, most um shrewd minded, sci Fi obsessed cousin.
Speaker 1: And and for people who have cousins, like naming cousins
Speaker 1: as these like icons, I feel like we'll feel familiar,
Speaker 1: you know, like these archetypes, like everyone everyone has a
Speaker 1: sci fi cousin, everyone has and he he was the
Speaker 1: one who ran all of our fifth Age campaigns and
Speaker 1: are which is sort of a hybrid of or not
Speaker 1: a hybrid and extension of Dungeons and Dragons that plays
Speaker 1: with the Dragon Lines books. And he was the one
Speaker 1: who would be like the game master of all of
Speaker 1: our magic card games. And he was the guy who
Speaker 1: we all sort of looked up to for the sci
Speaker 1: fi fantasy um like advice, and he was the one
Speaker 1: who was like the last word on all of it.
Speaker 1: And he started reading Carl Sagan's book Contact, and um,
Speaker 1: I remember him. I was quite young. I was like twelve,
Speaker 1: and I remember him reading this copy that had been
Speaker 1: up on the island in a stack of books that
Speaker 1: has probably seventy five years old. And he's reading it
Speaker 1: and he's talking about it, and he's talking about transcendental
Speaker 1: numbers and how much math there is in it, and
Speaker 1: talking about pie and and and I was really into math,
Speaker 1: and I was really into science and stuff, and obviously
Speaker 1: science fiction. And I kind of got this feeling that
Speaker 1: if I could understand Contact, if I could read Contact
Speaker 1: and understand it, then maybe Kevin would like talk. You know,
Speaker 1: I was so young, but I just I looked up
Speaker 1: to him so much. Well, maybe he'll maybe he'll talk
Speaker 1: to me. And I'll and I'll be like one of
Speaker 1: the one of the smarter cousins. So he had this
Speaker 1: copy that he read in the corner of the cabin
Speaker 1: and then when he went to bed, or when he
Speaker 1: put it down, I would secretly pick it up and
Speaker 1: try and like understand because the yeah, the Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: book is it's much more. It's it's technically hard science fiction.
Speaker 1: It's sort of classified in that, um, really logic based,
Speaker 1: math based, sort of Isaac asimof school of science fiction
Speaker 1: rather than like the philosophical what is philosophical but the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, which would be like Orwellian
Speaker 1: sci fi, which is a little more digestible sociology. Um.
Speaker 1: So I read the book, or I know I tried
Speaker 1: to understand it. I think I did, and then I
Speaker 1: begged my mom to rent it from Blockbuster. I think
Speaker 1: I think it was a Blockbuster rent and I think
Speaker 1: we just paid that late fee so many times because
Speaker 1: I think I lost it or stole it away because
Speaker 1: I watched it so many times. Um, and uh, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it since since before last night, and last
Speaker 1: night I watched it and there was so many things
Speaker 1: I forgot. I guess conflated from the book, mainly Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 1: I completely wrote out, my little feminist brain wrote out
Speaker 1: Matthew McConney in the nineties and early two straight out
Speaker 1: of that movie. Honestly, were you wrong? I was not.
Speaker 1: I it's very interesting to sort of now I can
Speaker 1: kind of parse how it diverges from the book and
Speaker 1: he is certainly. I mean, we'll get into it, but
Speaker 1: I mean, let's get into it. Yeah, I'm I'm so
Speaker 1: curious to hear about because I didn't do too much
Speaker 1: research on the book, but the Matthew McConaughey character and
Speaker 1: storyline just waked the studio notes to me. I'm very
Speaker 1: curious of how much of that is is the case? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I did read the book when I was somewhere between
Speaker 1: twelve and fifteen, but from my memory, um, there was
Speaker 1: so First of all, let's just I just want to
Speaker 1: say Jodie Foster, like I just want to say first name, Jody,
Speaker 1: last nime Foster. Let's just start with that, because I mean,
Speaker 1: now I can look back on the book and I
Speaker 1: just see her face and that's imbuing the text with
Speaker 1: such marvel that I'm really excited to sort of revisit
Speaker 1: that book. But as I remember it, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of weird alterations from the book. Number one, her
Speaker 1: mother is not dead, And uh, I am Canadian, so
Speaker 1: I will say I've had a couple of conversations with
Speaker 1: Canadian filmmakers and American filmmakers about how fascinating it is
Speaker 1: that American studio movies kill off mothers and Canadian movies
Speaker 1: kill off fathers. It's like a very interesting I guess
Speaker 1: if you look at Disney movies, is like the most
Speaker 1: obvious priganic, sort of big marquee version of that. But
Speaker 1: there always seems to be this dead mother, absent mother.
Speaker 1: She dies in the first ten minutes, um, and the
Speaker 1: mother in this film is sort of no different. But
Speaker 1: in the book she is this constant character um kind
Speaker 1: of pushing dr Ellie. As I believe it again, thirteen
Speaker 1: year old brain told your old brain, pushing dr Ellie
Speaker 1: to make a choice between the personal and the professional
Speaker 1: at all times. And she has this Yeah, she has
Speaker 1: this father that she idolizes, but then he dies and
Speaker 1: then her stepdad is not as good and then the
Speaker 1: whole story you know, kind of follows and then there
Speaker 1: is this kind of religious element to it where she
Speaker 1: meets a theologian and he has opinions about what the
Speaker 1: mission is, but he's not a love interest. I don't
Speaker 1: think think she has a lot. I think she has
Speaker 1: a love interest with another astronaut I believe, or another scientist.
Speaker 1: But and then five people go to the mission. It's
Speaker 1: not just her um as I remember it. And and
Speaker 1: also the more maddening and we'll get into it again,
Speaker 1: but the more maddening aspects of the film I find
Speaker 1: is that this whole like you, where's your proof, where's
Speaker 1: your proof? Like you didn't you crazy woman? Like you
Speaker 1: know that you know in quotation marks that you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're just a delusional and you're hysterical and
Speaker 1: you don't know. And this has just been one big delusion.
Speaker 1: And then at the end, you know, you see, I
Speaker 1: guess we're allowed to do spoilers here, and people have
Speaker 1: seen content. I'm about to spoil the whole dang thing.
Speaker 1: But there's this incredible through line in the book which
Speaker 1: I remembered and thought was in the movie up until
Speaker 1: last night, which is that when she's young, and again
Speaker 1: I'm butchering this So for all the scientists and mathematicians
Speaker 1: and hard science fiction fans like, please please don't like
Speaker 1: admonish me to Kelly alone. I am a fairly intense
Speaker 1: nerd and science fiction fan, so I feel like I
Speaker 1: can pull my weight. But she, when she's young, she
Speaker 1: has this idea that Pie, you know, the three point
Speaker 1: one nine number that goes into eternity that you sort
Speaker 1: of skip over in math class like when you're young,
Speaker 1: that it's not that it's not transcendental or it is transcendental,
Speaker 1: which means it's not algebraic. And then something a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff happens. This is something she thinks of when
Speaker 1: she's a kid. When she's young, she's like, I think
Speaker 1: this about Pie. I think this about this transcendental number.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the book she figures
Speaker 1: out that the transcendental number in fact is a massive circle,
Speaker 1: and somehow that circle is the proof that she actually
Speaker 1: did go and that is the made So she finds
Speaker 1: proof that she went wow yeah, which was much more
Speaker 1: cathartic than how we ended contact the Hollywood film. But well,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey believes her, So I guess that's good enough.
Speaker 1: That moment at the end where like, for some reason,
Speaker 1: all she comes out of the courthouse or the Senate
Speaker 1: hearing or whatever, and all of these reporters aren't asking
Speaker 1: her questions, and then suddenly Matthew McConaughey's character is more
Speaker 1: famous than her in that moment. Absolutely not. It's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: She's all like huddled under a blanket, like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so weak. I just had an existential crisis
Speaker 1: and then we just yelled at me. And then everyone's like,
Speaker 1: you man, who's right there? What do you believe? And
Speaker 1: it's just like who gives a ship what Matthew McConaughey believed,
Speaker 1: And he also like yells over a car. He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think I believe for and he's
Speaker 1: wearing a huge scarf for you're just like, what is
Speaker 1: going on? He has a scarf the size of his head,
Speaker 1: like a wild he is. You know, I don't like
Speaker 1: talking shit about other actors because I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I'm an actor, so it's it's hard.
Speaker 1: But I think I'm going to talk about mac McConaughey
Speaker 1: for a second because I accidentally watched two back to
Speaker 1: back Matt mcgonaughy films because my unsurprisingly, my next film
Speaker 1: is a sci fi feature. So I was sort of
Speaker 1: looking at I wanted to know. I had some questions.
Speaker 1: So I watched, Um, what the hell is it called?
Speaker 1: The Christopher Nolan film Andrew Stellar. Yeah. I had never
Speaker 1: seen it, and I just don't think that. I mean,
Speaker 1: Jodie Foster quite literally wipes the floor with him. It's
Speaker 1: it's every scene that she's in and it cuts to him,
Speaker 1: and he's supposed to emotionally meet her at a place
Speaker 1: he just falls short. And I don't know the whole
Speaker 1: god subplot and the faith and the fact that he
Speaker 1: outs her at the Senate when she's trying to when
Speaker 1: she's trying to speak for her. Yeah, and then he's like,
Speaker 1: guess what I did? Think it was important that you
Speaker 1: had faith, so you represented all of humanity which people
Speaker 1: believe in God, which is I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: like Hollywood science but it or Hollywood statistics. I don't
Speaker 1: know where that comes from. But and then and then
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, actually I did it because I love
Speaker 1: you and I don't want you to believe. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is the smartest woman. She's quite literally discovered
Speaker 1: life on other planets. Like, let's just hold on. Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster has just discovered life on other planets, and she
Speaker 1: has the opportunity to go communicate with that life, go
Speaker 1: communicate in this absolutely pure place of of courage and
Speaker 1: adventure and cure you a city and lust for science
Speaker 1: and all the right reasons. And is there anything you
Speaker 1: can say against Jodie Foster in this film? There is nothing.
Speaker 1: And then he's like, but I love you, so I
Speaker 1: want to just keep you the possession of it here,
Speaker 1: just like, who are you again? That? So his character
Speaker 1: is so annoying and just cutting serious. I'm furious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll talk all about this and his hair every Also,
Speaker 1: I've never seen I've never seen less chemistry between two people.
Speaker 1: They're kids in front of the Watchington d C. Thing,
Speaker 1: I forget what they're called. They kissed in front of
Speaker 1: the Washington d C. Water puddle and it's so you're
Speaker 1: just like, what is Can we get Jodie Foster out
Speaker 1: of here, get her in the pod, get her away
Speaker 1: from away from Matthew McConaughey. That is everything I thought.
Speaker 1: Get Jody like time to go or I'm good to go. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jenny kissing McConaughey, I'm okay to go. Yeah, I'm okay
Speaker 1: to go. I'm writing that on my pad of paper
Speaker 1: beside the computer so that if I need to reference
Speaker 1: okay to go later in this podcast, I will be
Speaker 1: able to quickly. Everybody, you will be okay to go.
Speaker 1: It is. It is shocking how little chemistry they have,
Speaker 1: and then there's all these weird, sustained moments where they're
Speaker 1: staring at each other for quite longer than would be human,
Speaker 1: and the kisses that you you sort of notice it
Speaker 1: they kind of pan to the left and let them
Speaker 1: kind of they rack focus really quickly, so you're like,
Speaker 1: we don't need to see this, And yeah, every time
Speaker 1: they embrace, it's just like, let's get Jodie Foster's head
Speaker 1: on his shoulders to the camera. Can just look at
Speaker 1: her because she's so magnificent. Yeah, it was. The chemistry
Speaker 1: was bad, and also he's just he's so problematic. That
Speaker 1: whole character is problematic, and the whole question of you know,
Speaker 1: what if Theologian's spaces in the sci fi world and
Speaker 1: challenging her and all of it I mean again, and
Speaker 1: this I can't speak from experience because I, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: m Canadian and not American. But there was this this site,
Speaker 1: this hyper sense of American like god fearing we are
Speaker 1: the ones we speak for this planet moment. And you
Speaker 1: get that from so much science fiction. I mean, besides
Speaker 1: the remarkable Angela Bassett in this film, this film is
Speaker 1: hell white and hell American and the the I I
Speaker 1: think Jodie Foster has a line that's so brilliant where
Speaker 1: she says, where the where the aliens talk in prime
Speaker 1: numbers and she says something like what America now owns
Speaker 1: prime numbers? Like no, it's international, math is international. And
Speaker 1: that was so great and a kind of uncharacteristic criticism
Speaker 1: of I guess the American base military god complex thing
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna get in trouble do not? Okay? Good? Okay?
Speaker 1: So Jamie, what's your relationship in history with this movie? Um?
Speaker 1: I had never seen this movie, I think because I
Speaker 1: was I don't know when I would have seen it.
Speaker 1: I think when it came out it definitely would have
Speaker 1: been too long to hold my attention. But it's a
Speaker 1: two and a half hour movie, correct, it is still
Speaker 1: quite long. But I I grew up very my My
Speaker 1: grandfather was and is like a huge Carl Sagan head,
Speaker 1: and I like, growing up, I watched Cosmos with him.
Speaker 1: We had it like the via just tapes, and I yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I'm a fan of the Carl Sagan Expanded Universe.
Speaker 1: But I never actually seen this movie and I I was,
Speaker 1: I honestly like enjoyed it and was more touched by
Speaker 1: it than I was expecting to be. It kind of
Speaker 1: took me off guard because I was like, two and
Speaker 1: a half hour movie from I just don't know. That's
Speaker 1: a gamble, but I thought it was. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: plenty to talk about, um, But in general, I was
Speaker 1: like very captivated. Jodie Foster is like always incredible, but
Speaker 1: she like especially blew me away, and then I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: not again. I have a very short attention span. Not
Speaker 1: many actors can hold my attention for two and a
Speaker 1: half hours, and she's just incredible. And I also am
Speaker 1: excited to talk about the production history of this movie
Speaker 1: because it's very interesting. Um, what's your history with contact?
Speaker 1: This was a movie that my family had on VHS
Speaker 1: one or two. I think it was only one of them, Brave,
Speaker 1: but it is long enough that I don't know. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not remembering. I'm not remembering because I only watched
Speaker 1: this once, so like it was a movie that like
Speaker 1: my family had, I guess, like maybe my brother watched
Speaker 1: it and my mom, but for some reason, I I
Speaker 1: don't know. This was also the year that Titanic came out,
Speaker 1: so as with many movies, from what to say, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was it. This was a year I didn't have
Speaker 1: eyes for anything but Titanic. So to VHS sets, it
Speaker 1: was definitely Titanic, obviously, but then also I think Meet
Speaker 1: Joe Black. That's the only other movie that I've never seen.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone in my family ever watched it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a gift or what.
Speaker 1: But Meet Joe Black to VHS. Interesting. Yeah, I truly
Speaker 1: don't remember if contact was a one or two VHS
Speaker 1: tape scenario, but I don't remember having it, but I
Speaker 1: was I was too busy watching Titanic all the time
Speaker 1: to pay much attention to Contact. Although I think probably
Speaker 1: when I was like maybe thirteen or fourteen, I watched it,
Speaker 1: and there are two very distinct moments from the movie
Speaker 1: that We're like seared into my brain, and then I
Speaker 1: remembered nothing else. I remembered her dad like materialized, like
Speaker 1: the alien materializing as her dad and talking to her.
Speaker 1: I remember that, and then I remembered the kind of
Speaker 1: twist at the end where I didn't remember that it
Speaker 1: was Angela Bassett, but like the reveal that like eighteen
Speaker 1: hours of static was recorded, she did go on the
Speaker 1: trip to Vega. That is a very satisfying moment. I mean,
Speaker 1: Angela Bassett carries it, but it was I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: because I was so I mean, the proceeding scene was
Speaker 1: so frustrating to watch. But I'm also like, Angela, did
Speaker 1: you contact Jodie Foster and tell her like and confirm this?
Speaker 1: Because we never I don't know if if if Ellie
Speaker 1: knows that, like you know, it's so funny. Those are
Speaker 1: the exact two moments that I remember the most as well,
Speaker 1: like absolutely the dad on the beach and then that
Speaker 1: last moment. But did you tell you there was exactly
Speaker 1: eighteen hours of static? And I had the same reaction.
Speaker 1: I remember finding my mom and being like, did they
Speaker 1: tell her? What do you think? Do you think she
Speaker 1: found out James Woods's reaction is so bizarre too, where
Speaker 1: he's like, oh that is interesting, and you're like, so
Speaker 1: what happened? But it's like, you know, his character is
Speaker 1: not going to be the one to admit that they're wrong.
Speaker 1: But I was like, I hope Angela Bassett stepped up.
Speaker 1: We'll never know, and that could have been a scene
Speaker 1: that passed the Bechdel tests, where you know, if Angela
Speaker 1: Bassett calls Jodie Foster, she's like, hey, I got some
Speaker 1: good news for you. You were gone for eighteen hours
Speaker 1: and we have the proof, you know exactly. Instead, instead,
Speaker 1: all they talked about is finding a dress for some
Speaker 1: sort of to impress Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. But the that
Speaker 1: Jame Woods is reaction, his whole thing, his whole screaming
Speaker 1: at her at that, him getting up. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I don't like talking about actors, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk to it about James Woods. It's like, it's extremely
Speaker 1: fair game hundreds at for a game. He is not
Speaker 1: our target, target audience or an allies. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say we're gonna talk to it about him, and he's
Speaker 1: he's an unrepentant Republican. He's he's a big and it's
Speaker 1: so he's awful. He's awful, He's awful, and uh, he
Speaker 1: just trying to him, trying to what's the word. There's
Speaker 1: a word for it, eat the umu. There's an acting
Speaker 1: word for sham, acting like chew the scenery. In that
Speaker 1: last scene, he's screaming at her, he's standing up, he's
Speaker 1: yelling at her. He's trying to James Woods the ship
Speaker 1: out of it, and Jodie Foster is just Jodie fostering
Speaker 1: so hard. She's just sitting there, tears in her eyes,
Speaker 1: standing in her strength and her purity and this like
Speaker 1: feeling of of wonder that she's trying to convey in
Speaker 1: this sort of the space between what is real and
Speaker 1: what is not real? What is science, what is faith?
Speaker 1: What is Oh It's just like I remember that scene.
Speaker 1: I remember her choking back tears and having a hard
Speaker 1: time finding the words, and all I wish is she
Speaker 1: hit then said and then I figured out that pie
Speaker 1: is not in fact transcendental, and she did the circle
Speaker 1: and all this stuff it's in the book. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that moment with James Woods where he's badgering her it's
Speaker 1: not even and you're like, how did you get so
Speaker 1: much screen time this damn movie? Like you're who are you? Yeah? Why?
Speaker 1: Like get rid of James Wood's bringing more Angela Bassett?
Speaker 1: Like anyway, um, let me do the recap of the
Speaker 1: movie and then we'll get even further into the discussion. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break first and then we'll come
Speaker 1: back to recap and we're back. Okay, So okay, you
Speaker 1: know the very end of Men in Black, where like
Speaker 1: the camera keeps like pulling out from New York City
Speaker 1: and then like the US and then Planet Earth and
Speaker 1: then the Solar System, and then it turns out that
Speaker 1: the galaxy is one of several tiny little marbles that
Speaker 1: aliens are playing with, and then you realize how small
Speaker 1: and insignificant you are. The way Men in Black ends
Speaker 1: is exactly how Contact opens. So that's my first brilliant observation.
Speaker 1: My point of reference. There was the end of How
Speaker 1: the Grinch Still Christmas, when you find out the whole
Speaker 1: movie took place on a snowflake. Jim Carrey lives on
Speaker 1: a snowflake. Amazing. Then we meet Ellie, a young girl
Speaker 1: who is sending out radio transmissions and trying to see
Speaker 1: how far she can reach. She lives with her dad,
Speaker 1: baby Jenna Malone. Oh my gosh, I love Genna Malone.
Speaker 1: That is who that is, isn't it? That did not
Speaker 1: even register for me. Yeah. Then we cut to Ellie,
Speaker 1: who has grown up to be Jodie Foster. She is
Speaker 1: now an astronomer trying to make contact with intelligent life
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the universe. She's working on this project called Steady,
Speaker 1: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, with a few colleagues, most
Speaker 1: notably Kent. And then one day she meets Palmer Joss
Speaker 1: That is Matthew McConaughey. First of all, what name? What
Speaker 1: I name? I think that is a name from the
Speaker 1: book though I'm going to say that now, Joss. I
Speaker 1: feel like I read and I was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a book name. It's very much a book name. It's
Speaker 1: a book name. I have the book synopsis in front
Speaker 1: of me because I was so, I'm so interested in
Speaker 1: like the differences you're responding, Kelly. So I'll try to
Speaker 1: try to follow along ecually where things really go awry.
Speaker 1: So Palmer Joss is a theologian. He's trying to interview
Speaker 1: Ellie's boss, this guy Drumlin played by Tom Skarrett, who
Speaker 1: is an asshole. Then Ellie and Palmer they look at
Speaker 1: the stars together, they kiss, they have sex, and then
Speaker 1: we learn via their pillow talk, as well as some
Speaker 1: flashbacks that Ellie's dad died when she was nine years old.
Speaker 1: And then one of the most the mellow drama of
Speaker 1: that sequence slow Motion Baby. General, it was a lot
Speaker 1: very very nineties where it's like, oh, the slow motion
Speaker 1: trauma scene, I know this film convention, yeah, or the
Speaker 1: just general nineties convention of kids parents dying and kids
Speaker 1: having to deal with that. That's a big nineties early
Speaker 1: two thousand, like, let's see, this kid's gonna have this
Speaker 1: kid's going to be an orphan, right, full on orphan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And yet we're not going to address how she survives,
Speaker 1: who raises, how she has money. I mean, maybe she's
Speaker 1: just a very perculous, privileged white girl. And then there's
Speaker 1: sort of like it has like glean of nineties movies
Speaker 1: where they're like, she's white, so we don't have to
Speaker 1: explain her cultural background. The middle class sort of kind
Speaker 1: of exists. It's just a general glean of she's fine,
Speaker 1: she's like gonna be fine. She she was both of
Speaker 1: her parents dide she has a huge house. I don't
Speaker 1: know that was like especially glaring to me where I
Speaker 1: don't know what this character's name is. He shows up
Speaker 1: in a little bit Mr. Mr Plot billionaire or like
Speaker 1: whoa yeah the plot man. Plot Man summarizes her life
Speaker 1: to us for some reason, but also skips over like
Speaker 1: how she who she lived with, what she did, how
Speaker 1: she survived between like age ten in college, Mr Plot,
Speaker 1: I swear to god, some aunt is just like eye
Speaker 1: rolling and like just just sitting there and being like
Speaker 1: I flip and raised you. You're not even gonna mention
Speaker 1: me nice family member? Erasure not nice? Right? Or did
Speaker 1: she grow up in the foster system, the Jody Foster system.
Speaker 1: She would have had to there's no way run it she,
Speaker 1: I will say. As much as I despise this Palmer
Speaker 1: Joss love thing that pops up like once every half
Speaker 1: hour or so in this movie, I did appreciate that
Speaker 1: Ellie initiated their contact. Shall we? I feel like you
Speaker 1: don't you don't get a lot of that. You don't
Speaker 1: get a lot of initiation from a female character where
Speaker 1: she's just like, do you want to get out of here.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, Jody, good for you. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: go let's do it. And then she has sex with
Speaker 1: him and leaves him high and drawing. He's like, what
Speaker 1: that's another thing, you know, Like she she it's on
Speaker 1: her terms. The first time, it's on her terms. The
Speaker 1: second time he literally tries to possess her and stop
Speaker 1: her from living out her dreams. But the first time
Speaker 1: it's great. It's great. She's like, I just want to
Speaker 1: have sex with you. It's not moralized. They're not like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's actually sort of breathtaking lee un
Speaker 1: moralized that she's just doing this. And then she sees
Speaker 1: his number and she's like, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave this number here. I don't need to I
Speaker 1: don't need to keep this in my pocket and hope
Speaker 1: for something else. I'm just gonna And you know that
Speaker 1: was those were good times before the internet and for
Speaker 1: social media, where you could just forget the person's paper
Speaker 1: that wrote their number on it, and then they can
Speaker 1: just disappear them from your life. Like how easy she
Speaker 1: leaves it for the next person who's staying in that
Speaker 1: little shack. I also think there's um a moment where
Speaker 1: speaking of how white this film is. But when we
Speaker 1: meet Matthew Mohonna as Palmer Joss. When we meet him,
Speaker 1: he makes some sort of comment about why they're in
Speaker 1: I think they're in Puerto Rico. I think that's where
Speaker 1: they are, and he's like, well, what is science mean
Speaker 1: to these people like you? Scientists come in here and
Speaker 1: you take up this space in these in these cultures,
Speaker 1: in these communities, that that the science and space exploration
Speaker 1: doesn't serve in some sort of way, And he sort
Speaker 1: of sets up this very important conversation and that it's
Speaker 1: just all God from there. It's just all you know,
Speaker 1: ontological questions about theology from there. But it's completely, just
Speaker 1: completely dropped, And I didn't. I forgot that moment. I
Speaker 1: forgot about that whole sequence, and it's never They never
Speaker 1: get back to it, and I wonder if I can't.
Speaker 1: I want to reread the book and find out whether
Speaker 1: or not they deal with that of the question of
Speaker 1: who is science? Who is space exploration for? And Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster of course answers that question because she's marvelous, But
Speaker 1: who is it for? You know, it's it's for anyone
Speaker 1: who feels alone. That's kind of the the thesis maybe
Speaker 1: of her alien dad and her I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean I also thought that he was the Palmer Jaws
Speaker 1: kind of hate saying that name we all do was
Speaker 1: was also very like in that same conversation, is very
Speaker 1: dismissive of the people who live locally, because he's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they don't they don't know what the you know, satellite
Speaker 1: dishes are for. They think it's for their like basically
Speaker 1: just like making this kind of like a side comment
Speaker 1: to say like, oh, people around here have no idea
Speaker 1: what what you guys are doing. And then and then,
Speaker 1: like you said, continues into this his whole god tangent
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, if you're going to set a
Speaker 1: movie here, set it here, don't you like? I Like,
Speaker 1: we talked about that all the time, of like using
Speaker 1: somewhere and and and the people that are native there
Speaker 1: as set dressing rather than including them meaningfully in the plot,
Speaker 1: which is just always always frustrating. Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: did that with I remember in the book when the
Speaker 1: second machine or maybe maybe there aren't two machines, I
Speaker 1: don't remember, there's there. It's possible that the whole first machine,
Speaker 1: and then the evangelical Christian who bombs it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: happen in the book. I can't remember, but I do
Speaker 1: know that the second machine or the first um is
Speaker 1: built in Japan, and the relationship with the Japanese government
Speaker 1: and the Japanese scientists and engineers is much more a
Speaker 1: part of the book. And you'll notice that it's just
Speaker 1: represented by these two Japanese man stand like leading Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster into this, into the pot, and they say nothing,
Speaker 1: and they're just they behave in this sort of you know, subservient.
Speaker 1: The portrayed is this kind of subservient group of people,
Speaker 1: and like they don't even react to the fact that
Speaker 1: they're standing over this obelisk looking spinning thing. It's just
Speaker 1: so done as like conversation worthy. I would say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they're not, they're not treating the the as you said,
Speaker 1: like the places that they're shooting this with, as anything
Speaker 1: other than just set dressing, which is very nineties early
Speaker 1: two thousand's Hollywood, certainly is okay. Then Drumlin pulls his
Speaker 1: funding from the project because he thinks it's a waste
Speaker 1: of time. So Ellie and Kent and some other colleagues
Speaker 1: pick up and head to New Mexico to lease some
Speaker 1: government satellites there, and Ellie helps them get funding from investors.
Speaker 1: We then cut to four years later they were about
Speaker 1: to lose that funding or like Drumlin is going to
Speaker 1: come back and try to like take over the lease
Speaker 1: of this something. I think like any time they run
Speaker 1: out of funding. Honestly, these scenes kind of blurred for me,
Speaker 1: where it's like any time they lose funding. Jennie Foster
Speaker 1: throws on a turtleneck and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: who do I need to talk to? And then eventually
Speaker 1: it happens. Yeah. Yeah, the funding narrative is sort of repetitive.
Speaker 1: I don't real didn't remember that, but I know Hagen
Speaker 1: the guy, the rich guy in space is a big
Speaker 1: part of the book as well, But but it is
Speaker 1: sort of creepy that he's like, are in very very strange? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Yeah, the funding falls through, she gets the turtle
Speaker 1: lack all of a sudden, guess what funding back back.
Speaker 1: But then it seems like contact has been made by
Speaker 1: aliens from a star that's twenty six light years away
Speaker 1: called Vega. They transmit prime numbers between two and one
Speaker 1: because math is a universal language Da Vinci code. Wow. Um.
Speaker 1: Then the Vega Aliens send a video transmission of Hitler
Speaker 1: announcing the opening Olympic Games in Berlin, because that was
Speaker 1: like the first powerful television transmission to be sent into
Speaker 1: space from Earth. So the aliens recorded it and sent
Speaker 1: it back to be like I see you, I hear you, Hello.
Speaker 1: And then everyone's like, this is not representative of what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do here, right right. Then Ellie and
Speaker 1: friends continue to decode the transmission and they discovered that
Speaker 1: the Vega Aliens have sent thousands of pages of data,
Speaker 1: but it's all in like you know, alien code that
Speaker 1: they don't understand, so they have to decrypt it and
Speaker 1: they need like a primer, like a key to the code. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: James Woods is this. I think he's like the National
Speaker 1: Security Advisor. Fuck James Woods. Seriously, we don't have time
Speaker 1: to unpack all the funk James Woods. But fuck James Woods. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he's giving Ellie hard time. The press is reporting
Speaker 1: on contact being made. Uh, there's a conversation like kind
Speaker 1: of religion versus science that's being had between a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Um Palmer, Joss is on Larry King talking
Speaker 1: about his his book about yet another Larry appearance. I
Speaker 1: feel like ever, I mean, Larry's everywhere, He's everywhere. This
Speaker 1: is not still not the best Larry that's done on
Speaker 1: the best Larry, because that's B movie, Yes, B Larry King.
Speaker 1: Then dr hadn't a k. John Hurt, the eccentric billionaire,
Speaker 1: pays Ellie a visit and he has figured out the primer,
Speaker 1: like a k A, how to decode the data that
Speaker 1: the aliens sent, and with this they are able to
Speaker 1: determine that this data is a blueprint for a machine
Speaker 1: of some kind. They don't know what it's supposed to
Speaker 1: do at first, but it becomes clear that it's meant
Speaker 1: to be a transport to bring a human into space,
Speaker 1: presumably to make direct contact with the Vega aliens. So
Speaker 1: then some government officials have made a list of a
Speaker 1: few candidates who might be the person to go to Vega.
Speaker 1: One of them is Ellie. One of them is her
Speaker 1: former boss Drumlin, and he he really really wants to go. Oh,
Speaker 1: I want to kick his ass. Oh. And then also
Speaker 1: there's a rogue Jake Busey just kind of blue hang
Speaker 1: over and this is Also, Caitlin and I were talking
Speaker 1: about this, uh last night, how Jake Busey in the nineties,
Speaker 1: he just he just he wanted to be in a
Speaker 1: space movie. It didn't matter what was happening in the
Speaker 1: space movie Starship Troopers Contact. He was using his particular
Speaker 1: kind of nepotism to be in space movies. I honestly
Speaker 1: want that particular kind of nepotism so bad, Like if
Speaker 1: I could just love that for him. I love that
Speaker 1: for him, but I want it for me. That's the truth.
Speaker 1: So then it's time to choose who goes. Ellie has
Speaker 1: passed over because she's an atheist slash agnostic, which Palmer
Speaker 1: jaz like docks as her as an atheist in a
Speaker 1: public forum, and because they think that people on Earth
Speaker 1: believe in some form of higher power, they want to
Speaker 1: pick someone who represents most of humanity. So she gets
Speaker 1: passed over, uh and instead Drumlin gets selected to go.
Speaker 1: And then they run a test of the machine that
Speaker 1: they have built. But this religious extremist a k A.
Speaker 1: Jake Bausey a K. Gary Busey's son, breach of security,
Speaker 1: sets off a bomb which destroys the machine and kills Drumlin,
Speaker 1: among many others. So then it seems like okay, that's it,
Speaker 1: no one's going to go to Vega until Dr Haddn't
Speaker 1: shows up again and reveals to Ellie that a second
Speaker 1: machine was built in secret in Japan and they want
Speaker 1: Ellie to go to Vega. This damn plot guy he like,
Speaker 1: I was just like, maybe he's a character that makes
Speaker 1: more sense in the book than he did in the movie,
Speaker 1: but he really just did seem he was like giving
Speaker 1: me plot which energy and this like where he would
Speaker 1: just show up, like when when Jodie Foster was like
Speaker 1: really in a bind, he would be like do do
Speaker 1: do do from space and be like, by the way,
Speaker 1: here's the plot point you need, and then and then
Speaker 1: and then he just dies when he runs out of
Speaker 1: plot points. It's really sad, real old wise man patron
Speaker 1: for a younger woman energy as well, like very very
Speaker 1: like don't worry, I've seen something in you that no
Speaker 1: one else has seen. And you're my girl, like you're
Speaker 1: my you know. He also is like stalking her, and
Speaker 1: he's also stalking her putting stuff in her bedroom. Does
Speaker 1: he have home video footage of her as a child,
Speaker 1: Like I was like that, where did he get that?
Speaker 1: I mean, we still don't know where she grew up,
Speaker 1: So thanks, I guess, but it's true. Definitely nullifies some
Speaker 1: of Jodie Foster's get up and go agency and her
Speaker 1: like you know, tearing this down and making this happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just some wonderful moments where Jody is
Speaker 1: the only smart person in the room or the person
Speaker 1: who knows. Like when she notices what's his name as
Speaker 1: the evangelical she knows that Jake. Yeah, yeah, j thought
Speaker 1: he was so sneaky. And what's interesting. I world note
Speaker 1: with present day context, when the newscaster covers the story
Speaker 1: of the bombing bombing, they call him a terrorist, they
Speaker 1: call him I noticed that too. Yeah, you never see
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is like a problem to this
Speaker 1: day of like declaring white terrorists to be what they are, yeah,
Speaker 1: or white male evangelical terrorists to say Christian terrorists. It
Speaker 1: was such a a weird, interesting moment of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is interesting how we've mutilated the word terrorism to
Speaker 1: mean essentially people of color from different countries. You know,
Speaker 1: it was such an incredibly weird moment. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, blast for the past. Yeah, I made don't
Speaker 1: of that too. Yeah, I hate. I mean it's I
Speaker 1: hate that we live in a world where that is
Speaker 1: like of note, but it absolutely is. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was okay, okay, okay, okay to go okay, to
Speaker 1: go okay. It took me as I don't know why,
Speaker 1: I totally okay. Back to the recount. So then Ellie
Speaker 1: prepares for the trip. Palmer Joss is like, oh, don't
Speaker 1: want you to go, and she's like, I'm going, but
Speaker 1: she also forgives him. He apologizes for robbing her, like
Speaker 1: very near robbing her of her dream. But then she's
Speaker 1: like it's cool because you know the whole Jake beausey thing,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that was the subtext of it.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, you know it all worked out of
Speaker 1: like that. We need a longer conversation about this. So
Speaker 1: she is launched into space. She goes through a series
Speaker 1: of wormholes. She ends up on this like astro beach.
Speaker 1: It looks like a screen faver, it looks yeah, her
Speaker 1: dad seems to materialize in front of her, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that it's a Vega alien who had downloaded
Speaker 1: her subconscious and sort of like is this ambassador who
Speaker 1: has taken on the form of her dad to more
Speaker 1: effectively communicate with her. They have a little chat about
Speaker 1: like people of Earth and how they feel so lost
Speaker 1: and alone, but now they can know that they're not alone.
Speaker 1: And this is just a first of like many steps
Speaker 1: of like contact among different you know, terrestrial beings. And
Speaker 1: then she is pretty quickly after that returned to Earth.
Speaker 1: But back on Earth, they're like, Ellie, there was a malfunction.
Speaker 1: You didn't go anywhere, And she's like, um, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I talked to the aliens obviously, like the machine opened
Speaker 1: up a wormhole and I traveled through spacetime. I was
Speaker 1: gone for like eighteen hours. The aliens was my dad,
Speaker 1: I was. I was on a beach five star resort
Speaker 1: that looks like that. It looks like her painting, right
Speaker 1: she she yeah, yeah, she was like I was. I
Speaker 1: went to Pensacola, but in the middle of space. And
Speaker 1: then they're like, um, we don't believe you. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence of this. Nothing was recorded except for static. But
Speaker 1: how much static? Right can we? I just seemed to
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to pause just to talk
Speaker 1: about the extation, the expectation that that dinky little thing
Speaker 1: they put on her head withstand when this fan I
Speaker 1: just I remember being like they're like, okay, here we go,
Speaker 1: and they open up this very official suitcase with like
Speaker 1: foam in it where they're like, okay, we're gonna give
Speaker 1: you the device and it looks like my Walkman from
Speaker 1: It looks like something like like the Gwen Stefani mike
Speaker 1: like for a stadium Dora. This through a wormhole and
Speaker 1: they put it on her head with this little silver
Speaker 1: headband and I'm thinking, like, they don't even put a
Speaker 1: bobby pin into secure it. Nothing, It's just going to
Speaker 1: stay on her head during this wormhole esque it makes
Speaker 1: me and then the expectation that she is responsible for
Speaker 1: the evidence that she's responsible. He's yelling at her, where's
Speaker 1: your evidence? You don't have any evidence. I'm like, well
Speaker 1: that's on you, bro. You sent her with the like
Speaker 1: the most cracked little piece of technology. Why is it
Speaker 1: on her? And her chair like blows up, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the chair that wasn't even supposed to be there, because
Speaker 1: she's like there's nothing in the design specs for this
Speaker 1: like chair and the harness, and it's like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: understand why because it's like just implodes. Yeah, She's like,
Speaker 1: trust the aliens, trust my dad, This's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: But the evidence thing just absolutely that makes no sense
Speaker 1: because yeah, James Woods is like screaming at her and
Speaker 1: like being like, you don't have any proof, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But then Palmer Joss is like, well
Speaker 1: I believe her. You're like, wow, brave, amazing feminist icon
Speaker 1: Palmer Joss, and we're just like and then James Woods
Speaker 1: and angel A Bassett have that conversation where angel A
Speaker 1: Bassett's like, yes, only static was recorded on this supposed
Speaker 1: trip to Vega, But James Woods, don't you think it's
Speaker 1: weird that eighteen hours was recorded? And then he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess yes, that gets it's weird. And then the
Speaker 1: film ends with Ellie continuing her work on searching for
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence. And that's the end of the movie. Let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and we'll come back for more discussion.
Speaker 1: And we're back. We've we've talked about some stuff already,
Speaker 1: but there are there are some things I want to
Speaker 1: kind of dig into a little bit. I want to
Speaker 1: do a quick overview of the production history of this
Speaker 1: movie because there are some very nineties things that you'll notice,
Speaker 1: um popping out. So this is a movie that has
Speaker 1: a majority white male crew at the top. Directed by
Speaker 1: Robert Zamakis. Uh screenplay is by James V. Hart and
Speaker 1: Michael Goldenberg, but the story is by Carl Sagan and
Speaker 1: Andrew Ien, who were not married I don't think at
Speaker 1: the time of this story, but they were later um
Speaker 1: later married. But what I didn't realize about this was
Speaker 1: that uh, Contact was a book from that was turned
Speaker 1: into a movie. But it was originally envisioned as a
Speaker 1: movie and then someone was like, oh, Carl Sagan, actually
Speaker 1: maybe if you write a book, it'll be easier for
Speaker 1: us to to get it produced. Um. So this was
Speaker 1: in production for a really, really really long time. A
Speaker 1: female producer was the one who got it over the edge.
Speaker 1: Linda Obst shout out. She was friends with Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: and really you know, advocated for this project to exist.
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan wrote the story with Andrew In, who is
Speaker 1: like an incredible filmmaker, scientist, researcher in her own right.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know. We don't have like, you know,
Speaker 1: all the time in the world to get into Carl Sagan,
Speaker 1: but as a very prominent scientist he did um as
Speaker 1: far as my research indicated, was a strong advocate for
Speaker 1: diversity in general in the science fields, but he was
Speaker 1: an advocate for women. They're like this amazing anecdote in
Speaker 1: the eighties of him approaching it's such a silly name
Speaker 1: that I'm like, this can't be a thing. The Explorers Club.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's a very famous astronomer's group, and it was
Speaker 1: all male all the way into the nineteen eighties. And
Speaker 1: he wrote a strongly worded letter to say, why the
Speaker 1: funk aren't women allowed in this group? Like, what's going on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Carl feminist icon also Andrew and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that she she was an advocate as well, obviously,
Speaker 1: and and uh, this is his only novel, and they
Speaker 1: you know, he and Andrean took special care to ensure
Speaker 1: that there was a female protagonist in the novel and
Speaker 1: also in the movie, which is also, you know, relatively
Speaker 1: unusual in sci fi to this day. Ellie Earraway was
Speaker 1: based on a real person, uh, Dr Jill Tarter. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Seti Institute is a real thing who knew not me, uh,
Speaker 1: which she founded right, Yes, she founded Jodie Foster like
Speaker 1: worked with her. Um, so the very nineties thing that
Speaker 1: happens here, and this will kind of get us into
Speaker 1: some of the book versus movie changes that have been made.
Speaker 1: Was there was a male producer, uh, Peter Goober, which
Speaker 1: let's just get into it's really going to live up
Speaker 1: to his name. He so so after the book was published,
Speaker 1: apparently the mother gets killed off very early, which is
Speaker 1: just like such an Erican movie thing to do. On
Speaker 1: top of that, Peter Goober was pitching all these things
Speaker 1: to like quote unquote flesh out Ellie's character more. But um,
Speaker 1: he was really advocating for her to have an estranged
Speaker 1: teenage son, which Carl and Anne were like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: uh but um, Peter Goober says, like quote, here was
Speaker 1: a woman consumed with the idea that there was something
Speaker 1: out there worth listening to, but the one thing she
Speaker 1: could never make contact with was her own child. To me,
Speaker 1: that's what the film had to be about, which is
Speaker 1: like the most male executive note about a female protagonist
Speaker 1: that I've ever heard, where it's just like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if it's a woman, it has to be related to
Speaker 1: motherhood and deal with your mommy issues elsewhere. Gouber, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like can we like just take this your therapist. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah. There was just kind of a lot of
Speaker 1: back and forth in terms of how Ellie should be characterized.
Speaker 1: But luckily carl and and I think took every stand
Speaker 1: they could. I'm very I wasn't able to find information
Speaker 1: about like at what point did Palmer drop become like
Speaker 1: a stud full one McConaughey, But yeah, there there there
Speaker 1: was like a lot of changes made to the story.
Speaker 1: Some of them that proposed changes were pretty sexist and reductive,
Speaker 1: and many of them didn't make it to the movie.
Speaker 1: Some of them did. I also read that it was
Speaker 1: pitched that Ellie the movie would end with like her
Speaker 1: having a baby. Yes, yes, that was another goober pitch
Speaker 1: that was a goober that's forever now that that was
Speaker 1: a goober that has goober written all over it. He
Speaker 1: really gooped that one up. This goober just means like
Speaker 1: anyone trying to just add goob to anything, any female story,
Speaker 1: they're trying to goog it up. My one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things, because we talked about this quite a bit
Speaker 1: of particularly when it's male writers who are just writing
Speaker 1: outside of their own experience. It's like, well, just talk
Speaker 1: to someone, like, have the proper consultants on on the
Speaker 1: movies that you're working on at the very very very least,
Speaker 1: And that does happen in this they so Jill Tarter,
Speaker 1: Jodie Foster, and I guess that the writers and and
Speaker 1: Karl and and work with her. And she was a
Speaker 1: consultant on this story specifically, not just for the scientific elements,
Speaker 1: but to talk about the careers of women's scientists in
Speaker 1: her experience between the fifties and seventies. And I guess
Speaker 1: a lot of the kind of specific instances of Ellie
Speaker 1: being spoken over, opportunities being taken from her, her work,
Speaker 1: kind of being made to seem less impactful than it
Speaker 1: actually was, was pulled from Jill Tarter's experience. So go
Speaker 1: Dr Jill. She said. On her first day as like
Speaker 1: a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley in the mid sixties,
Speaker 1: she was told by the head of the astronomy department
Speaker 1: that the only reason that she was there was because quote,
Speaker 1: all these smart men got drafted for Vietnam. So yep. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: she had to put up with a lot of sexism,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, believe it or not, Shucker, I'm
Speaker 1: really glad she was like meaningfully included. I mean, as
Speaker 1: much as I'm like, can't we get from female screenwriters
Speaker 1: on this, I am very glad that her experiences were
Speaker 1: like really taken into account on the consulting level. Um.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that it enriches the movie. Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: And I think you can feel how much. I mean,
Speaker 1: just knowing the the pedigree that is Jodie Foster, There's
Speaker 1: no way she wouldn't have absolutely absorbed everything this woman
Speaker 1: felt and said and and like I think, my I
Speaker 1: mean when I I don't remember the religious plot, I
Speaker 1: don't remember Matthew McConaughey, I don't remember all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: What I remember is being a young girl watching this
Speaker 1: and being like, holy cow, she loves science. Holy cow,
Speaker 1: she becomes this. It was so empowering growing up. Like
Speaker 1: I remember that moment when she's outside and she's like
Speaker 1: losing her financing and she's like, screw it, I'm taking
Speaker 1: the computer box outside and I'm going to listen on
Speaker 1: my head in my car, and then she hears it
Speaker 1: and she's driving that car like a bat out of
Speaker 1: hell and she's you know, she's spitting coordinates and crap.
Speaker 1: And there's like a ten minute scene where the audience
Speaker 1: doesn't understand funk All, like there's just no way unless
Speaker 1: you're a scientist, you know what the hell they're talking about.
Speaker 1: But even watching it last night, I was so captivating.
Speaker 1: It's so captivating. And what I remember how I felt
Speaker 1: as a young girl watching this. I remember her being
Speaker 1: like I hear it, I I know, and her the
Speaker 1: constant attempt for her to believe, to have the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt in the aliens, for her to be like, no,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have done this if they didn't say they
Speaker 1: needed a chair there. This isn't a weapon, like why
Speaker 1: would they, you know? And just and that a spirit
Speaker 1: and energy. And it's interesting because I had read that
Speaker 1: Andrew and Carl Sagan had written this, as you said,
Speaker 1: as a feature first, and then they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can't get his feature made, so let's make it
Speaker 1: into a book, and then he wrote the book. But
Speaker 1: it's it's I wonder what the differences between those two
Speaker 1: screenplays would have been, because at the end of the film,
Speaker 1: it says, for Carl and You're kind of like and
Speaker 1: Drew's participation. It says it says story by the two
Speaker 1: of them, but her participation is sort of Yeah. I
Speaker 1: do think it's because he died before the movie came out.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that that's why the movie is dedicated
Speaker 1: to him specifically, Um, yeah, because he died in late
Speaker 1: nineties show like right when they were probably finished, probably
Speaker 1: while they're in production. Yeah, okay, well that's sad, Okay,
Speaker 1: never mind. I just was like, where did because I
Speaker 1: it's it's now becomes such a Carl Sagan, like it's
Speaker 1: his project, where the story of the two of them
Speaker 1: writing it is kind of also special, but especially because
Speaker 1: I mean there is there tends to be an erasure
Speaker 1: of like there will be a famous man and then
Speaker 1: he will collaborate with a woman. Maybe it's a romantic partner.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just like a professional partner for like much
Speaker 1: of his career, but people tend to only remember the man,
Speaker 1: and the woman often gets erased from the narrative. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking with John Carpenter and oh my god, I don't
Speaker 1: remember her name because her name gets e raised all
Speaker 1: the time. Let me figure it out. Deborah Deborah Hill?
Speaker 1: Is that ith? Yeah? One of many examples of this,
Speaker 1: so especially in the science world, like it's it's rampart,
Speaker 1: like Marie Curry dealt with this that if you female
Speaker 1: scientists releasing information and making just monster discoveries that men
Speaker 1: have taken credit for, like it's just and I think
Speaker 1: they they show the heartbreak of that in the film,
Speaker 1: with that guy constantly interrupting her and taking credit for
Speaker 1: her and somehow having a press conference with Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: while he was in office, Like Bill Clinton is hell
Speaker 1: of the president at this point and he's in the movie.
Speaker 1: How did I guess? So I did some research on
Speaker 1: that because I was like he did, because first of all,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, right, but but on but on top of that,
Speaker 1: like did he film scenes for that movie? I don't
Speaker 1: think that he did. I think that they repurposed existing
Speaker 1: speeches he's made and wrote around it to make it work.
Speaker 1: That makes sense in the movie, which there was there
Speaker 1: seemed to be some controversy about at the time, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like, I don't know. I was kind
Speaker 1: of like, shut up, but they were like, well, what
Speaker 1: if would have viewers think that it's a documentary if
Speaker 1: it includes the actual president? At the time, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: then I guess that they like, I need to read
Speaker 1: a book. It's very clearly a movie. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he I think that that Like all the CNN anchors
Speaker 1: like did film scenes for the movie, but Bill Clinton didn't.
Speaker 1: They just were like, oh, what are clips of him
Speaker 1: talking about stuff that sounds like it could be about aliens.
Speaker 1: It's seamless enough that it it work, works, it works.
Speaker 1: But yes, Andrean shout out to her. She's still working today.
Speaker 1: She's worked on the Cosmos reboot. She's been like, had
Speaker 1: complete creative control over, won a bunch of Emmys for it. Rocks.
Speaker 1: She rocks. I mean women in science fiction is I
Speaker 1: mean my whole ursula. Ky La Gwin as as the
Speaker 1: probably the most prominent science fiction writer in my life
Speaker 1: and also just an incredible intellect in the gender performative
Speaker 1: gender gender space, feminism space. Like she she is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, and
Speaker 1: she's so remarkably female and talks about all most of
Speaker 1: her protagonists or women and it's uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's women are just so fantastic in this space. And
Speaker 1: because it's science fiction, you don't always it's the future,
Speaker 1: it's it's a hope for a different time where patriarchy
Speaker 1: isn't soaked in everything we're doing, so you can have
Speaker 1: these pockets of you know, like an escape or narrative
Speaker 1: transport in a way that he really gives an opportunity
Speaker 1: to kind of unpack gender issues in the sci fi space.
Speaker 1: So the fact that women would be detectives in that
Speaker 1: space is it makes sense to me. Um. I Also,
Speaker 1: I love that you were saying that the ending of
Speaker 1: the film had like maybe she has baby, maybe this
Speaker 1: and and you know, he's not a palmer. Josh is
Speaker 1: not in that last shot, like he's not watching her,
Speaker 1: but while she you know what I mean, Like I was,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's good because we don't really know.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't know how they have such
Speaker 1: an intimate relationship when they slept together once, she doesn't
Speaker 1: see him for like five years then and then and
Speaker 1: then he just kai boshes her her dreams. She forgives
Speaker 1: him because she's just so kind, I guess. And then
Speaker 1: he's not there in that final sequence where she's inspiring
Speaker 1: young kids. And I remember that when I was younger,
Speaker 1: being like that's Hella inspiring. I remember being like, this
Speaker 1: works this is working on me. I'm a kid, I'm
Speaker 1: watching this. This is this is Hella working. Um, but
Speaker 1: he's not there, Thank god God. Yeah, their relationship is
Speaker 1: We touched on this, but I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 1: like a studio notes thing. It doesn't not appear to
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't read the I didn't read the book.
Speaker 1: But according to the Wikipedia synopsis of the book, he
Speaker 1: is a character, but he does not appear as though
Speaker 1: there's any romantic relationship between them. So for him to
Speaker 1: be introduced in this context in the movie is like
Speaker 1: this potential romantic prospect, which like I mean, it's she's
Speaker 1: just like has a one night stand with him, and
Speaker 1: then she's just like I don't need to talk to
Speaker 1: him again, Like we clearly don't have that much in common.
Speaker 1: He's a theologian, I'm an agnostic scientist, Like we're not
Speaker 1: very compatible here, But then he keeps like creeping up
Speaker 1: and like try Like I'm just like, it's one thing
Speaker 1: if they have a friends with benefits thing, which is
Speaker 1: like what it seems like Ellie wants. But then he's like,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, like I'm going to steal your dreams
Speaker 1: away from you. I am claiming ownership over you, and
Speaker 1: it's just like, leave her alone. My crush is more
Speaker 1: important than your dreams. You're like, what the fuck? Not
Speaker 1: just your dreams, but like the greatest moment in humanity's history, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just Jodie Foster's dreams. It's quite literally, she
Speaker 1: is the one person who has to go talk to
Speaker 1: aliens for the first time in the human species existent
Speaker 1: and he's like a little about my crush. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: what's especially frustrating about that is that like, yeah, she
Speaker 1: too easily forgives him. I feel like once she learns,
Speaker 1: once he reveals to her, oh, the real reason I
Speaker 1: voted for you not to go to Vega was because
Speaker 1: of my little crush, and then she should have been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks for telling me. Now I know to never fucking
Speaker 1: talk to you again. You ask whole I was also,
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly with that studio, like very studio notes relationship.
Speaker 1: I just first of all, this movie just could have
Speaker 1: generally been a little shorter. And that's face that Palmer
Speaker 1: Joss takes up. I feel it could have been way
Speaker 1: better used by giving Ellie a woman to talk to,
Speaker 1: and like, because I understand that like, you know in
Speaker 1: her workplace, it it you know there are other female scientists.
Speaker 1: I wish that she had someone to talk to at work.
Speaker 1: But if that is not possible for story reasons or
Speaker 1: because of the life experience that you're pulling from from
Speaker 1: Dr Jill and on and on, then it's like it's
Speaker 1: a movie. You can include other women for her to
Speaker 1: have friendships and meaningful relationships with. But I feel like
Speaker 1: instead of using the area that we're given in this
Speaker 1: movie to build out Ellie's inner life, it's like dad
Speaker 1: and love interest and there's no and it sounds like
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's extra frustrating Kelly hearing that that
Speaker 1: her mom is present in the book and there is
Speaker 1: a relationship that we have to just kind of built
Speaker 1: her out outside of how she relates to a their
Speaker 1: men and occasionally Angela Bassett, who also doesn't get enough
Speaker 1: to do. The fact that she was barely in my
Speaker 1: recap speaks to like, she's not an unimportant character, but
Speaker 1: she's not so important that she's really influencing major like
Speaker 1: narrative story beats. She shows up, like halfway through she
Speaker 1: shows up. The film is just white people until like
Speaker 1: an hour and a half in and then it's Angelo
Speaker 1: Bassett and then that's pretty much it. It's not and
Speaker 1: you don't you don't not. You don't know what she wants,
Speaker 1: you don't know why she's she, you don't know what
Speaker 1: her job is, you don't know what her opinion is.
Speaker 1: In fact, every time anyone expresses an opinion, her her
Speaker 1: opinion is. Can you guys just stop arguing, like can
Speaker 1: you can you calm down? You don't ever find out
Speaker 1: what Angela Bassett's character, what the fabric of her character is,
Speaker 1: what makes her tick? Nothing, You just you just know
Speaker 1: that she's like the president's mouthpiece. And because we couldn't
Speaker 1: afford the real Bill Clinton, we have Angela Bassett sort
Speaker 1: of like talking for him, but there's no real We
Speaker 1: don't they don't give her anything, and the only conversation,
Speaker 1: as with Jodie Foster, is a girlfriend I need to dress,
Speaker 1: which is problematic, which is it's so fright because it's
Speaker 1: it would have been so cool to build out that
Speaker 1: relationship between those two characters, because they're coming from very
Speaker 1: different places. You get like little tastes of it where
Speaker 1: I like when when Angela Bassett's character Rachel is introduced.
Speaker 1: She's just like, oh fuck, the aliens sent us a
Speaker 1: clip of Hitler, and Jodie Foster is like no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: no no. There's like there's all this, you know, like
Speaker 1: they're they're coming from very different places, and it would
Speaker 1: have been cool to explore that, like, you know, Angela
Speaker 1: Bassett is like, beholden to this, you know, governmental bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: and Jodie Foster like has this totally and it's like,
Speaker 1: well that what's going on there, Like let's get Matthew
Speaker 1: McConaughey the funk out of here. There's like better characters
Speaker 1: for her to be interacting. Yeah, okay, I had to
Speaker 1: go out of the story. Um. Yeah, there's a really
Speaker 1: quick moment that I think could have been just like
Speaker 1: drawn out and and explored a bit more where and
Speaker 1: maybe I'm even like misinterpreting this, but it seems like
Speaker 1: Rachel Angela Bassett's character is kind of advocating for Ellie
Speaker 1: to be kept in control of the project because James
Speaker 1: Woods is all like, let's militarize this, and she's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like for now Ellie is in charge still, and that
Speaker 1: would have been I would have liked to just see
Speaker 1: more women lifting up other women here, because as we've
Speaker 1: kind of touched on already, there's this like recurring motif
Speaker 1: a theme throughout the movie of men taking credit for
Speaker 1: women's work. And this is especially true of Drumlin, who
Speaker 1: keeps like swooping in and when someone's like okay, and
Speaker 1: now the person who's the lead on the project who
Speaker 1: made this discovery, Ellie thinks that she's about to get
Speaker 1: called up. We think she is, but then they call
Speaker 1: up Drumlin and he takes the credit for this discovery
Speaker 1: for the most part, and then that little speech he
Speaker 1: gives her before right before he blows up, I'm like
Speaker 1: byre where he's like, you know, it sucks that, like
Speaker 1: you probably think we live in a meritography, but we
Speaker 1: just don't. So about to take your dream. You're like
Speaker 1: fuck you. And like I was like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: hope he explodes, and then he did. He did, And
Speaker 1: it's interesting. It's interesting that the film sort of positions
Speaker 1: all of this like religion narrative of like, you know,
Speaker 1: the person who goes to meet the aliens should represent
Speaker 1: all humanity, therefore believing God. But it becomes clear that
Speaker 1: Drummond only said that he was doing it for God
Speaker 1: to sort of be political and get the position. And
Speaker 1: I think it was a really interesting critique of how
Speaker 1: politicians and people in power will sort of ride that
Speaker 1: party line, will sort of placate the religious base in
Speaker 1: order to get political gains. It was sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting thing. And he kind of admits it to her.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm sorry that I know you were honest,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I'm butchering it. But he says something like
Speaker 1: sometimes honesty is not how you get ahead, or something
Speaker 1: like that. But he's basically like, don't hate the player,
Speaker 1: hate the game. Yeah right, yeah, that's yeah, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: time to blow up. Yeah. I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about this idea of selecting one person to
Speaker 1: represent all of humanity, and the only topic that gets
Speaker 1: discussed is like religion, really, and they're like, we want
Speaker 1: someone who believes in God, and the person who ends
Speaker 1: up originally being selected is a white, able bodied, upper
Speaker 1: class sisman from from America. And then it's a SIS
Speaker 1: able bodied white woman who is highly educated, middle class
Speaker 1: from America. So what I would like to propose, you know,
Speaker 1: people of Earth basically should have been like, okay, Vega Aliens.
Speaker 1: I see your one person space transport, and I raise
Speaker 1: you a one hundred person space vehicle that can carry
Speaker 1: a larger group of people who are actually more representative
Speaker 1: of the Earth. Kelly, you were saying that more people
Speaker 1: do go in the book. Five people go in the book,
Speaker 1: and I believe it's like from a diverse representation of humanity.
Speaker 1: Um uh, and each of them have This is again
Speaker 1: I'm going to get in trouble with the sci fi fans,
Speaker 1: but I think each of them has their own like
Speaker 1: beach experience where they each are visited by a moniker
Speaker 1: or phantom of a memory that makes them feel uncomfortable. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's definitely I will say this though
Speaker 1: I don't know how you guys feel about this, but
Speaker 1: I do think the film does a good job of
Speaker 1: showing the moments where a female scientist is being stepped
Speaker 1: on and and disregarded and underestimated and all that. But
Speaker 1: the whole conversation, the whole campaign about whether or not
Speaker 1: it should be Jodie Foster dr Ellie going on this trip,
Speaker 1: I do feel like they sort of I mean, the
Speaker 1: reality is there would be so much sexism around that
Speaker 1: would be the fanfare of it and the news coverage
Speaker 1: of it, and like whether or not a woman should
Speaker 1: go or a man like that was completely not and
Speaker 1: what the virtues of having a female go versus a male,
Speaker 1: Like what the type of diplomacy that women are by
Speaker 1: a sad default taught their whole lives to diffuse and
Speaker 1: to be you know, be good at at a sort
Speaker 1: of more maternal maternal and imperative experienceuring, nurturing and represented
Speaker 1: him in the race because and so they don't really
Speaker 1: that's just completely not present. It's just like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be in America if there was a couple of
Speaker 1: women who are nominated for the campaign and men, it
Speaker 1: would just be all fair game. Well we know it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be. And that's like and I think that all
Speaker 1: the religious as you said, it's all about religion, Well,
Speaker 1: if it is about religion, and knowing how gendered the
Speaker 1: religious space can be, especially when coming up with like
Speaker 1: the one Messiah esque person who's gonna talk to the aliens,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I feel like they kind of just
Speaker 1: glossed over that JODI's not sitting there going They're not
Speaker 1: picking me because I'm a woman, which is would be
Speaker 1: my first thought, my first life, right, which which I
Speaker 1: feel like it's kind of partially implied in in the
Speaker 1: text too, because she's being steamrolled by all her male
Speaker 1: superiors basically like I mean, it's I I get like,
Speaker 1: if it's one person who can go, it's like, well
Speaker 1: she discovered it's so like she's like I Also this
Speaker 1: reminded me of um an amazing work by friend of
Speaker 1: the cast, Marsha Belski that has to do with sexism
Speaker 1: in space travel, which the one hundred Tampons song, which
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard it, you gotta hear it. But
Speaker 1: it's based around this, uh, this anecdote where NASA thought
Speaker 1: Sally Ride needed one hundred tampons to go into space
Speaker 1: for a week quote unquote just to be safe. Like
Speaker 1: it's there is I mean in the friger back you go,
Speaker 1: the worse it is, but there was a clear president
Speaker 1: for uh sexism and just a complete no understanding of
Speaker 1: menstruating people at all. The tampons really, um, it's a
Speaker 1: bob will link it in the description. It's really good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I do wish that there that Um, it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's I don't know, I mean, the sexism
Speaker 1: that she is facing is definitely present, but it's like
Speaker 1: you don't really hear her talk about it very much.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, it's more woman for her to talk to. Maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem a bit more subtle because it never
Speaker 1: gets like specifically named, or you never have someone like
Speaker 1: Drumlind being like, who's gonna believe you? You silly women?
Speaker 1: Women can't do science, which is fine, which is good
Speaker 1: because that would be crummy writing, right, So, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it does get kind of glossed over. But I think
Speaker 1: there's also something interesting about like no one's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't do science, you woman, and for there to
Speaker 1: be representation of that on screen, where like people still
Speaker 1: take her seriously for the most part and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: she is a brilliant scientist and don't really bring gender
Speaker 1: into it. Even though it might not be the most
Speaker 1: realistic thing all the time, I still think there's something
Speaker 1: interesting about just like allowing that to be seen by people.
Speaker 1: I guess I just wish that maybe Jody annotates it.
Speaker 1: She's aware of what's going on, Like it's like she's there,
Speaker 1: there's all these things happening to her, and there this
Speaker 1: is the moment where Drummond takes this the podium in
Speaker 1: front of and with the president, and there there is
Speaker 1: this feeling of immediate heartbreak and loss, but it's that's
Speaker 1: just how it is. She's just upset and that. And
Speaker 1: then there's not that other female character for her for
Speaker 1: her to sort of um write trade notes with and
Speaker 1: be like, yes, this is how it is, and da
Speaker 1: da da, and yes this is the nineties. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the thing. And and you're right, there is
Speaker 1: something really remarkable where Jody is not gendering herself. She
Speaker 1: just cares. Her bottom line is science. She identifies as
Speaker 1: a scientist. She is scientist. Dr Ellie like, it's she
Speaker 1: is that so um and I can relate to that
Speaker 1: a lot, because it's like the most I don't know,
Speaker 1: disorienting moments of sexism or when you're you're just identifying
Speaker 1: yourself as a as a as an artist or an
Speaker 1: a tour or a someone who is trying to make
Speaker 1: something happen and someone else is gendering you and you're
Speaker 1: like the math doesn't compute. You're like, oh, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I guess you're thinking this where I'm just thinking of
Speaker 1: myself as artist. I'm just thinking myself as mart And
Speaker 1: and I love that in the film because that's her
Speaker 1: like not to make a not to make a space pun,
Speaker 1: but like that's like her north Star. You know, she's
Speaker 1: just is so. And then when she's in space and
Speaker 1: she sees the galaxy thing and she's like, I have
Speaker 1: no words, it's so beautiful. Like that, the fact that
Speaker 1: she has those blinders on and that's all she cares
Speaker 1: about leads up to this incredible moment, which I'll say
Speaker 1: I only noticed last night because maybe my VHS VHS
Speaker 1: copy was a VHS copy, which you know, for people
Speaker 1: who know VHS, it's like it was mostly static. It
Speaker 1: was there's this moment where she's looking at the galaxy
Speaker 1: and her face changes to her younger version of herself.
Speaker 1: Did you guys catch that sending her voice changes? I
Speaker 1: don't remember that happening whatsoever. And I was like, is
Speaker 1: this like a remastering like someone who made the Blu
Speaker 1: Ray the Blue Ray DVD was like, let's add this
Speaker 1: weird moment because the technology almost almost also feels too
Speaker 1: good to advance for seven Yeah, well, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you guys remember that sweet CG action,
Speaker 1: but it was not seamless and there was super great
Speaker 1: I really, I mean it's I'm I'm so interested to
Speaker 1: hear both of your perspectives and how the sexism in
Speaker 1: this movie is treated. And I yeah, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: of like two minds about it where it I think
Speaker 1: I would have really rolled my eyes if they came
Speaker 1: at it from a super nineties like a woman can't
Speaker 1: do this, and she goes, well, guess what I'm going
Speaker 1: to show you? Like that is such a convention that
Speaker 1: and and I feel like you can really tell that
Speaker 1: someone who had experienced this kind of discrimination had been
Speaker 1: consulted because the examples are so like baked into the movie,
Speaker 1: so it's like Jill Tarter's consultation. You can like feel
Speaker 1: it in the way that like even in moments that
Speaker 1: that were very small where there's a scene where Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster is trying to talk to Angela Bassett as they're
Speaker 1: doing a very West wing walk through the white House
Speaker 1: moment and what I kept calling him a drum line
Speaker 1: in my head, Uh, drumline, drum line. Drumline just starts
Speaker 1: talking over her and like start continues her sentence as
Speaker 1: if it was his own idea, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a small thing, but it really connects. And
Speaker 1: I do think that like the most elegant way to
Speaker 1: acknowledge it without making it like a real bash over
Speaker 1: the head third wave feminism moment is to just give
Speaker 1: her someone to talk to about it, even in passing,
Speaker 1: like I feel like it would have helped. But that said,
Speaker 1: I feel like the the sexism she experienced this is
Speaker 1: pretty clear. I mean, especially at like the James Wood
Speaker 1: screaming at her on national television of like blaming her
Speaker 1: for all sorts of ship. That makes no sense. You're delusional,
Speaker 1: you were hysterical, you hallucinated the whole thing. And the
Speaker 1: way that she keeps her cool like is so it's
Speaker 1: like she's like you're saying, like she's a scientist first,
Speaker 1: and she's like, okay, as a scientist, I have to say, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have any people like maybe you're maybe you
Speaker 1: should have given me better than like a pair of
Speaker 1: five dollar headphones, like attached to a little metal headband
Speaker 1: with nobs, no body pins. They weren't attached. And I
Speaker 1: just love that Jody, even when she's like traverse dimensions
Speaker 1: and she's on some sort of like tropical beach with
Speaker 1: her dad. She's still like, are you guys reading this?
Speaker 1: Like she still has confidence and she's like, I have
Speaker 1: to record this. I I can have confidence in this
Speaker 1: little too hicky. Um, yeah, you're you're still right. It
Speaker 1: is sort of that that nineties convention of of like
Speaker 1: a woman can't do that, and like that's detrimental and
Speaker 1: problematic and leave such a horrible like graveyard of films
Speaker 1: where you're watching women be like subject subjectified and and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So and I will say that I
Speaker 1: would categorize this film in the canon of pre you
Speaker 1: know where we're at now, I guess pre me too
Speaker 1: area era where we're sort of not find a lot
Speaker 1: of the things we know and how the functions of
Speaker 1: these films work has not been normalized. Where I have
Speaker 1: to give a lot of credit to Jodie Foster and
Speaker 1: and a lot of actresses at this time period and
Speaker 1: from the last hundred years of filmmaking who are the
Speaker 1: sort of like last vestige or last stance of of
Speaker 1: being able to advocate for themselves on set. Like I
Speaker 1: constantly read interviews with with Meryl Streep and and and
Speaker 1: actors who have been working forever, who are like I
Speaker 1: literally had to sit down with the writer and say,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't do that. That's not what she did, would
Speaker 1: do She cares about science and at Female actors just
Speaker 1: don't get this sort of retroactive credit that I think
Speaker 1: that they deserve for advocating for their storylines. I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I'm blanking on the film that I read Meryl Streep
Speaker 1: talking about this, the one. Maybe it's the one with
Speaker 1: Deer and the title. What's the title of that film, Dear,
Speaker 1: dear hunter, no killing of a sacred dear damn it,
Speaker 1: I'll have to I can't remember, But there's a one
Speaker 1: where she talks about like, basically I had to help
Speaker 1: rewrite that film because the because the female character made
Speaker 1: no sense, and it's the making of no sense. The
Speaker 1: sort of the thing we're struggling with is it makes
Speaker 1: no sense that her relationship with Palmer Joss. It doesn't
Speaker 1: to us. It reads false because we know we know
Speaker 1: it makes her tick, We know the fiber of her character,
Speaker 1: we know what she would live and die for. She
Speaker 1: says it. She says, I believe this is worth dying for.
Speaker 1: She says it so the falsities in her behavior, the
Speaker 1: choice to forgive Palmer for quite literally stomping on something
Speaker 1: that she is willing to die for, it reads so false.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I just have to give credit to
Speaker 1: Jody because I can't imagine that she wasn't on set
Speaker 1: with those with her, you know, running around looking for
Speaker 1: the writer and the producer and the director with her
Speaker 1: script in hand, being like, no, she cares about science. No,
Speaker 1: she cares about science, and it's on every line she says.
Speaker 1: And it's so radiant in that way. It's such a
Speaker 1: radiant performance because it's like from the very first thing
Speaker 1: we see her in as a young girl to the
Speaker 1: very end of the film and her admitting, yes, I
Speaker 1: can't give you empirical evidence as a scientist, I must
Speaker 1: concede that like her church, her God, her religion is
Speaker 1: almost more realized than any religion that is represented in
Speaker 1: the film. Her religion is so realized in science. Shout
Speaker 1: out to Jody. She's she. They named an asteroid after
Speaker 1: her after the movie came up early. There's an asteroid
Speaker 1: named after Jodie Foster. I have to I'm assuming off
Speaker 1: of the success of Contact, but maybe just her impact,
Speaker 1: and so felt that they're like, well, we were going
Speaker 1: to do this anyways, but yeah, Asteroid seventeen seven forty
Speaker 1: four Jodie Fostering One thing though, the did ring more
Speaker 1: true though in the movie was and already touched on this.
Speaker 1: But like for me, for example, when I have been
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of sexism, it hasn't most of
Speaker 1: the time, it hasn't been someone being like, oh, well
Speaker 1: you're a woman, so you can't do this. It's just
Speaker 1: been like more subtle stuff like me being talked over,
Speaker 1: me being interrupted, me, like people passing me over for opportunities,
Speaker 1: like things like that. That is what Jody Foster's character
Speaker 1: is experiencing in this movie. So I appreciate that you
Speaker 1: do have this like what we clearly identify as sexism,
Speaker 1: but it is not super overt or explicit. The sexism is,
Speaker 1: you know, more covert and subtle, which again I think
Speaker 1: is a more common version of how people's sexism manifests.
Speaker 1: So that happening in the movie to Jody's character just
Speaker 1: ran very true. Right, It's a very good point, very
Speaker 1: good point. One thing I wanted to quickly shout out
Speaker 1: this was kind of my last note on Ellie was
Speaker 1: it like exists throughout the background of the film. But
Speaker 1: I really liked her friendship with her coworker Kent. I
Speaker 1: thought that that was really lovely. And it's I think
Speaker 1: it's just again, it's like we're really looking for scraps
Speaker 1: in movies from the nineties in particular. But the fact
Speaker 1: that she had like a very just a platonic friendship
Speaker 1: that seemed to be built on a lot of mutual
Speaker 1: respect for each other with her friend Kent, and I
Speaker 1: just thought it was so nice. And then when he
Speaker 1: shows up at the end, she's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: my friend Ken. And then he hears her. He's the
Speaker 1: one who hears her saying, yeah, he to go. I
Speaker 1: started sobbing. I started sobbing. I sobbed a lot last night. Guys.
Speaker 1: I'm really trying to play cool, but I sobbed hard
Speaker 1: at the end of Jodie's whole You know, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that relationship with Kent is really really interesting. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little problematic the portrayal of a blind man
Speaker 1: that he plays. It's a little you're kind of again,
Speaker 1: as you said, playing for scraps with movies in the nineties,
Speaker 1: because it's not only that he's portrayed as blind, but
Speaker 1: almost that he's I don't know, something to be um
Speaker 1: to kind of handle with kid gloves a little bit,
Speaker 1: Like the portrayal of of him as blind is sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know. I'm not sure what you guys
Speaker 1: think about that. Yeah, I was trying to find writing
Speaker 1: about this and I couldn't find anything specifically about this
Speaker 1: character in regards to the representation of a blind or
Speaker 1: visually impaired person. Definitely, it's problematic that the character is
Speaker 1: not played by an actor who is blind. Um, he's
Speaker 1: played by William Fitchner, who is not blind. It felt
Speaker 1: to me, and this is just kind of my limited understanding,
Speaker 1: but it felt like there were not a slew of
Speaker 1: tropes surrounding blindness that you do see in a lot
Speaker 1: of movies that are like really problematic. I feel like
Speaker 1: this movie avoided a fair number of those tropes. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious what listeners thoughts are on this, particularly anyone
Speaker 1: with a visual impairment. Um. I also so Kent is
Speaker 1: based on a real person who was part of this
Speaker 1: project who was blind, So it's I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be really curious to hear what our listeners
Speaker 1: think on that. But I was I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it is based on a real person who Jill Tarter
Speaker 1: knew and worked with, So it seems like that they
Speaker 1: were pulling from like some sort of real life dynamic
Speaker 1: that actually existed. But again it's I mean, the conversation
Speaker 1: around actors who who do not have the disability of
Speaker 1: the characters are portraying is like, you know, very ongoing
Speaker 1: conversation that we want to you know, be a part
Speaker 1: of and keep learning about. So shout out to the
Speaker 1: real Kent colors I'm seeing I'm kind of seeing this
Speaker 1: in real time. But there's a documentary on him and
Speaker 1: on his career. Um, he is the first American astronomer
Speaker 1: who was blind from birth and he continued to work
Speaker 1: at the Seti Institute until two thousand five. So very cool.
Speaker 1: It sounds sounds like a legend. I'm like, with all
Speaker 1: this stuff, I like, I don't understand science, but that
Speaker 1: sounds pretty cool. But yeah, shout out, shout out Kent.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to address some of the science stuff
Speaker 1: because it really bothers me. At the end, when James
Speaker 1: Woods goes absolutely like batshit on her, like, like the
Speaker 1: the expectation that she would have evidence and it's on
Speaker 1: her to provide it is it still makes me angry
Speaker 1: in it and it and speaking of like remembering what
Speaker 1: this film felt like when I was young, I remember
Speaker 1: this feeling of feeling frustrated. But what doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: to me is, you know, Palmer at one point and
Speaker 1: her have this conversation about, well, fifty years may pass,
Speaker 1: like it might be a forty five seconds on Earth
Speaker 1: and that might be fifty years, and he's like, are
Speaker 1: you chill with that? And she's like, I'm chill with
Speaker 1: that because this is my life's work and this is
Speaker 1: like what humanity is for and all that. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, like that is not brought back into the
Speaker 1: possible explanation as to why she thinks that she had
Speaker 1: this huge experience and this um like that. Why does
Speaker 1: that not brought up that the space time continuum, the
Speaker 1: inflation of space of time at the end in the Senate,
Speaker 1: why isn't she like, well, as we've talked about, time
Speaker 1: on Earth is forty five seconds, but passing through multiple
Speaker 1: wormholes into you know, lightning years away, time is going
Speaker 1: to be bloated in this way which which they already
Speaker 1: established as being a thing. Even a theologian who is
Speaker 1: not a man of science understands. He's like, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be gone for fifty years, even though it will only
Speaker 1: seem like maybe four years to you, right, So like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you already know that time is different and that is
Speaker 1: perceived differently. Seconds dropping through dropping through will be could
Speaker 1: be a lifetime. And so that's what makes me mad,
Speaker 1: And mostly that that James Wood thought that he's allowed
Speaker 1: to stand up in that sense hearing and turn around
Speaker 1: and yell at her, and like I'm like, who told
Speaker 1: you you're allowed to stand up in those things? It
Speaker 1: seems very intentional that he's like making this show of
Speaker 1: it because it's televised and like all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: like the nineties was so full of women's truth being
Speaker 1: discredited on live television for people to to watch that
Speaker 1: it was like, oh god, there were so many like
Speaker 1: other hearings like that that had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: space that like your head kind of goes to when
Speaker 1: you see like a really aggressive man discrediting what a
Speaker 1: woman says is like the truth. And also, Kelly, when
Speaker 1: you mentioned this earlier, I was like, oh yeah, like
Speaker 1: the fact that James Wood is like blaming equipment failure
Speaker 1: that she didn't design on hers Like for what, like
Speaker 1: if you would think that someone else in the room
Speaker 1: would be like, hold on, she didn't make those shitty
Speaker 1: headphones like Sony did or whatever. You have no evidence.
Speaker 1: You didn't bring back any evidence, Like what the hell
Speaker 1: was she supposed to do besides just experience it? You know.
Speaker 1: It's like she's like, um, yeah, I I'm not like
Speaker 1: a documentarian. I'm a scientist. Experiencing science like it was
Speaker 1: very It made me so angry and then I had
Speaker 1: like like flashbacks to being angry as a kid being
Speaker 1: And I don't know, this film was more formative than
Speaker 1: I thought that. I was quite aware of rewatching and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this did wire itself onto my d
Speaker 1: n A. Yeah, those moments they're frustrating, not because they're
Speaker 1: like poorly written. They're frustrating because like it's representative of
Speaker 1: like again, sexism that exists in the world, and like
Speaker 1: him just not believing women is sexism that exists in
Speaker 1: the world. For them to then go outside and people
Speaker 1: were like mmmmmm, Ellie, yeah, I see that you're there,
Speaker 1: But hey, Mr Mr Perlmer, what do you do you
Speaker 1: believe her? What do you believe? And people are focused
Speaker 1: on the opinion of this man, and it's very frustrating
Speaker 1: because it's sexism that is very familiar to us. You know,
Speaker 1: people only believing a woman if a man is validating her.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's something that the movie is handling very effectively.
Speaker 1: I think I just hate the part where the man
Speaker 1: who is validating her is also this like wedged in
Speaker 1: love interest. Those I mean, those those studio notes scenes
Speaker 1: are so agregious and so cudible to like, it was
Speaker 1: just like you could cut the like, I just it's painful.
Speaker 1: It's painful to watch. We we have references he at
Speaker 1: the movie, but this is an extremely white movie in
Speaker 1: a way that is very unnecessary. And I mean, the
Speaker 1: only black character that has any real impact in the
Speaker 1: movie is Angela Bassett's character Rachel, who, as we said,
Speaker 1: she she has a strong function, she's a strongly motivated character,
Speaker 1: but we don't know anything about her and we don't
Speaker 1: get any look into her interior life. We don't really
Speaker 1: get to know except until I mean, honestly, we don't
Speaker 1: know what she thinks about, Like Jodie Foster is she
Speaker 1: because we couldn't figure out is she the kind of
Speaker 1: character that's going to want to people to know, or
Speaker 1: maybe she's not. Maybe she's like I've I am a
Speaker 1: bureaucratic person, and I'll keep it quiet, like we just
Speaker 1: don't know, we're well enough to know. I wanted to
Speaker 1: shout out legendary character actor Tucker Smallwood, who plays the
Speaker 1: mission control guy. He almost presses the red button, but
Speaker 1: then I couldn't tell that his character was given a
Speaker 1: name or not. He was like pretty like active for
Speaker 1: like a you know, the climax of the movie. But
Speaker 1: I didn't even figure out. But he's just credited as
Speaker 1: mission director, which is so ridiculous. You're like, what the
Speaker 1: what the like? Could you be lazier and more dismissive
Speaker 1: because he he was. He was great. He was you know,
Speaker 1: he was Mr. Red Button like and and then there
Speaker 1: there um was. I think in the first crew of
Speaker 1: scientists there was one black scientist who says like one
Speaker 1: line and then he's gone, and everyone else it's just
Speaker 1: it's just white people. You have to Japanese um engineers
Speaker 1: or engineers. Yeah, but they but as you said, Kelly,
Speaker 1: they they say like maybe a line and that's it.
Speaker 1: They say nothing. And they also sort of portray a
Speaker 1: stereotype of Japanese scientists, and that is sort of this
Speaker 1: kind of stereotype of of of subservience. And um, I
Speaker 1: find that deeply problematic because you because, especially knowing in
Speaker 1: the book how much the Japanese science and inventors have
Speaker 1: such a say in the in the Final Machine, So
Speaker 1: it's a very American lens of how Japanese people behave
Speaker 1: in a way, That's what I felt. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's like ultimately, I mean, even speaking to to what
Speaker 1: the book represents, like this should very much be a
Speaker 1: global story that is inclusive of more than white Americans
Speaker 1: and and and it seems like that was a very conscious,
Speaker 1: like goober Hollywood style choice is to only center sist
Speaker 1: straight white Americans in this story that should be I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like an event for humanity, not middle class
Speaker 1: white Americans. And so that is you know, definitely worth
Speaker 1: you know, continuing to be critical of because we had
Speaker 1: a similar conversation on our episode about Arrival, which we
Speaker 1: covered on our on the Patreon slash Matren similar movies,
Speaker 1: and that a woman in stem is the protagonist of
Speaker 1: the of a movie where aliens make contact with the
Speaker 1: people of Earth, but it is still very like America
Speaker 1: centric narrative, as many Hollywood sci fi films are. I mean,
Speaker 1: I watched, as I said, unfortunately, I watched um Interstellar recently,
Speaker 1: and that one is I missed it when it came out,
Speaker 1: and it's breathtaking how little any other place in the
Speaker 1: whole goddamn world is represented besides America. Like the concept
Speaker 1: is that Earth is dying, that resources are are impoverished
Speaker 1: and depleting, and crops are dying, and all they show
Speaker 1: is this back country American farm. They don't show anywhere
Speaker 1: else in the world that would be absolutely far more
Speaker 1: strapped if the world was if the if there was
Speaker 1: windstorms and you know, climate changes we're dealing with now,
Speaker 1: like as if it wouldn't be Indonesia or anywhere other
Speaker 1: than or in Haiti, where like the very front lines
Speaker 1: of climate change and places where these where that type
Speaker 1: of shift and degree in climate would be most readily felt.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's literally just Jessica Chas Dane and
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey's fam who are struggling on their farm and
Speaker 1: they're you know, he's going to fix the world, start
Speaker 1: a new colony with only white people, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a sad tradition of of this type of movie. But
Speaker 1: I also think it filters into this sort of American
Speaker 1: identity of being like the only ones who have ever
Speaker 1: uh participated in the space exploration space or the sorry
Speaker 1: space exploration space like that sounds that's that's not the
Speaker 1: best way to say that space exploration. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like this idea that we're like, we have to
Speaker 1: be the saviors of humanity. Yeah, it's just such as
Speaker 1: an outsider watching it, I mean, outside of being Canadian,
Speaker 1: non American, it has always been such a difficult and
Speaker 1: weird pill to swallow, like the constant flags that you
Speaker 1: American flags on new planets that you see in every
Speaker 1: flipping movie. You know, it is bizarre to me because
Speaker 1: the end the tradition of engineering and science and technology
Speaker 1: and and stem in all forms is so diverse. It
Speaker 1: is so oh god, look, it just makes me want
Speaker 1: to break something in a not in like a less
Speaker 1: violent wait. But you know, Interstellar Arrival has that any
Speaker 1: type of let's save humanity has that ilk of and
Speaker 1: guess who our saviors are Team America. Yeah, I also
Speaker 1: found it. Maybe this is just me, but it gets
Speaker 1: mentioned in the movie that half a trillion dollars is
Speaker 1: spent on this project, and you hear like similar stories
Speaker 1: in real life about all this, Like federal money is
Speaker 1: doing right now, private money, federal money being spent on
Speaker 1: space exploration and stuff like that, which is important people
Speaker 1: who are working on that, Like, I understand that that's important,
Speaker 1: but also like a large percentage of the world's population
Speaker 1: is living in poverty, so like, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: let's focus on Earth's issues before we like spend trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars. Right now, you're quoting, this is what Palmer
Speaker 1: was talking about at the beginning of the film, and
Speaker 1: it never panned out. Not you agree with Palmer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of what Palmer was talking about, sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you how do you explore other
Speaker 1: places when you're not taking care of the people in
Speaker 1: your backyard. And that's not to say that Palmer had
Speaker 1: a point, but he did have some points. Points were made.
Speaker 1: He had one point. Yeah, it never really came up. Again, Um,
Speaker 1: here's my hot take about this movie. Ready, everyone, So
Speaker 1: the you know, all the billions of dollars that they
Speaker 1: spend on this machine and this trip that Ellie takes,
Speaker 1: the conversation that she ends up having with the alien
Speaker 1: could have been an email. They didn't need, they didn't
Speaker 1: need to build a machine. Why why aren't they just
Speaker 1: sending out some emails? You know, I didn't have to
Speaker 1: be a meeting. Could have been an email, thank you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that's if there's anything you know,
Speaker 1: That's another thing that we've learned in the past year.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things could could have just been
Speaker 1: an email. Yeah, could have been an email. A well
Speaker 1: written email feels as good as a revisit from your
Speaker 1: dead dad, honestly, but also to send it fire off
Speaker 1: a bunch of prime numbers. See if anyone responds, Hey, Ellie,
Speaker 1: it's your dad. That's emoticon? Doesn't she know which emojis?
Speaker 1: Does the aliens feel like alien species? Go with? Oh goodness?
Speaker 1: Does this movie pass the back told test it. I
Speaker 1: think it's technically does, but it's not a very satisfying pass.
Speaker 1: That was what I That was my conclusion. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were two conversations that I felt were candidates for passing.
Speaker 1: One where Angela Bassett is she's kind of addressing a
Speaker 1: whole room full of people, but she like looks at
Speaker 1: Ellie a couple of times and Ellie responds and Ellie response.
Speaker 1: But it's that conversation where like Rachel is saying that
Speaker 1: for now, like Ellie will remain in charge of this
Speaker 1: like decrypt effort. A few men are mentioned in that conversation,
Speaker 1: so that one's a little murky. And then later when
Speaker 1: Ellie is like, hey, Rachel, do you know where I
Speaker 1: can find a really great dress because women be talking
Speaker 1: about shopping? Yikes, technically, but I think that the context,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, maybe it is a reach
Speaker 1: today the context is like, because I want to look
Speaker 1: nice for Matthew McConaughey. That was the implied context to me. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give this one like a Barrelly pass. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not a great If it is a pass,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not a great one. Yeah, drawing around conclusion,
Speaker 1: I mean, and also, it's a fucking two and a
Speaker 1: half hour movie. The fact that we have to be
Speaker 1: the splitting hairs here is ridiculous, truly, So yeah, well
Speaker 1: that brings us to our nipple scale on which we
Speaker 1: rate the movie, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens
Speaker 1: on a scale of zero to five nipples, and I
Speaker 1: would say, I think this movie is ahead of its
Speaker 1: time in a lot of ways. I think that it's
Speaker 1: awesome that you have, you know, women in stem visibility
Speaker 1: because this is the type of representation where like little
Speaker 1: girls watching this movie who maybe hadn't seen themselves represented
Speaker 1: before in a like stem role can be like, wow,
Speaker 1: women can be scientists. I can be scientists, Like I
Speaker 1: can go and be a scientist. So um, I think
Speaker 1: that that's really important. And this was, you know, a
Speaker 1: big budget movie that was successful at the box office.
Speaker 1: A lot of people saw it, so that is a
Speaker 1: great thing. I also think it's cool that and this
Speaker 1: is something that also I brought up on our Arrival episode.
Speaker 1: But I love when a movie with a protagonist who
Speaker 1: is a woman explores like deep philosophical existential questions because
Speaker 1: like philosoph fee has been a topic dominated by men,
Speaker 1: not because women are not capable of philosophical debate, and
Speaker 1: not because they haven't been doing the work. It just
Speaker 1: hasn't been preserved and uplifted in the same way exactly,
Speaker 1: And I also think I think that's like the the
Speaker 1: backside to the Bechtel test is that without women taught,
Speaker 1: when you have films where women are only talking about men,
Speaker 1: it means all the important philosophical like bomb dropping political
Speaker 1: conversations about the film are happening by the male characters.
Speaker 1: Like that I always think is the interesting flip side
Speaker 1: to the Bechtel test is like, for all the conversations
Speaker 1: women are having about only men, the male the male
Speaker 1: conversations can be about what is this film trying to say?
Speaker 1: And what is how is it trying to change the world.
Speaker 1: So for for her to participate in this discussion around
Speaker 1: like faith versus science, for you know, evidence versus like
Speaker 1: all you know, all that kind of stuff, I really
Speaker 1: appreciated because like, for exact ample counter to this would
Speaker 1: be in our Da Vinci Code episode another Matreon episode.
Speaker 1: But um, you have these two men talking about like
Speaker 1: it's not philosophy, but they're talking about you know, history
Speaker 1: and like all all this like Christian mythology and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and then Audrey Tattoo is just like what,
Speaker 1: I don't like she doesn't get to contribute anything. So
Speaker 1: Audrey tattoo and the Da Vinci Code. I don't know
Speaker 1: why that was the first example that came to my head,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so I appreciate that about this movie. The
Speaker 1: sexism that Ellie is on the receiving end of is
Speaker 1: definitely present. I think it's interesting the way that it
Speaker 1: was handled in that it's like very present, but like
Speaker 1: kind of subtle, or it's like not super explicit. And
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that like she is not believed
Speaker 1: that she is kind of she is like accused of
Speaker 1: being delusional and hysterical, she is often overlooked or you know,
Speaker 1: men are take credit for her work. Uh are all
Speaker 1: like very real and present things that women experience. And um,
Speaker 1: I thought that was all interesting. But then it's got
Speaker 1: its problems. You've got this wedged in romantic subplot that
Speaker 1: I can't think of a subplot, a romantic subplot that
Speaker 1: has ever been less necessary in a movie. And more obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just made me feel yucky. Um. The extreme whiteness
Speaker 1: of the film, the stre extreme again like US centric
Speaker 1: nature of the narrative. UM assists white, middle class, highly educated,
Speaker 1: able bodied woman being representative all of humanity. So um,
Speaker 1: you know it's got some like of the time nineties
Speaker 1: era problems, but I also think it's ahead of its
Speaker 1: time and other ways. So I would I want to
Speaker 1: give this like a three somewhere between, like a three
Speaker 1: three and a half range nipple wise, and I'll give
Speaker 1: one to Jodie Foster. I'll give one nipple to Jill Tarter,
Speaker 1: I will give one nipple to Andrew In, and I
Speaker 1: will give all throw in like a quarter nipple to
Speaker 1: the phrase okay to go, I'll meet you there. Three
Speaker 1: and a quarter sounds about right, Um, for all the
Speaker 1: reasons you described, this should very much be a global story,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's something that we us. Centrism
Speaker 1: in basically all of Western film is definitely a huge issue,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it crops up in this genre
Speaker 1: particularly all the time in a way that like I
Speaker 1: can't really think of a space movie that I've seen
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen that, Like, I can't really think
Speaker 1: of like a space movie that doesn't have this kind
Speaker 1: of underbrewing of American patriotism to it in a way
Speaker 1: that is like definitely insidious and long overdue to be
Speaker 1: challenged in like a meaningful way, because it is like
Speaker 1: because I enjoyed this genre, but there always is kind
Speaker 1: of a flag wavy element to it that, um, this
Speaker 1: movie is not the most guilty of that's probably independently
Speaker 1: maybe Armageddon. Armageddon is pretty flag wavy too, like but
Speaker 1: but but it is like, you know, something we should
Speaker 1: keep talking about because it is like even in a
Speaker 1: movie like That's where it isn't the most forced on you,
Speaker 1: it is still very much forced on you. Um I
Speaker 1: I do I like how this movie, did you know,
Speaker 1: they did their homework in a way that most movies don't. Um.
Speaker 1: They spoke to female scientists who have experienced this you know,
Speaker 1: subcategory of sexism and kind of put it into the
Speaker 1: script in a in a way that flowed very naturally.
Speaker 1: I do wish that Jodie Foster's character had another woman
Speaker 1: to relate to about this um or speak too, and
Speaker 1: that would have been a way better use of our
Speaker 1: time than making us look at Matthew McConaughey's scarf that said,
Speaker 1: I really like, I don't know, I was very moved
Speaker 1: by like parts of this movie, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that is just like Jodie Foster. But um, it does
Speaker 1: seem like this is a project that was driven by
Speaker 1: even even in a majority male creative team, that like
Speaker 1: the key creative decisions were pushed through by female producers,
Speaker 1: by Andre and by by Jill Tarter and and by
Speaker 1: Jodie Foster. So yeah, you know, this should have been
Speaker 1: a more global movie. But I still think it holds
Speaker 1: up in more ways than I was expecting. So get
Speaker 1: at three in a quarter and yeah, I'll give one
Speaker 1: to Jody, one to Jill, one to Ann and I'll
Speaker 1: give the last quarter two the headphones that didn't. But
Speaker 1: I want to take a nipple. I want to give
Speaker 1: a nipple to Angela Bassett. So who's on the chopping block?
Speaker 1: I'm just going to redistribute it equally. So, um, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good. You're gonna you're gonna split a number that
Speaker 1: cannot be split into a transcendental pie. Honestly, three in
Speaker 1: a quarter is so close to pie. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it pineapples. That's infinite nipples, pineapples, pineapples, and um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna all distribute them evenly between the people. I said,
Speaker 1: plus Angela Bassett pineapple? Um, what about you, Kelly, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really into this pineapple. I there is so much.
Speaker 1: I do have a really interesting bookend with this film,
Speaker 1: as I've watched it as a young um, a young girl,
Speaker 1: someone who has treated like a girl with as to
Speaker 1: bring it back to my many male cousins and in
Speaker 1: the world I grew up in, I will say, for
Speaker 1: all of its problems and it's um America centrism, which
Speaker 1: if I can provide an alternate, uh, Danny Boyle's Sunshine
Speaker 1: is a really good example of I think of an
Speaker 1: American made film that doesn't have that sort of patriotism. Uh.
Speaker 1: Tarkovsky's Solaris. Solaris is one of the most beautiful sci
Speaker 1: fi films ever made that deals with, like, you know,
Speaker 1: going up into space on a mission, a suicidal mission
Speaker 1: of hope for humanity sort of thing. But I will say,
Speaker 1: for all of its problems and its lack of representation,
Speaker 1: its lack of representing humanity and all of it, I
Speaker 1: can't disregard how this movie made me feel as a
Speaker 1: young girl, and now I cannot disregard how impactful it
Speaker 1: was and how it felt. Watch that moment where she's
Speaker 1: running and the science is happening and she's spitting out
Speaker 1: all these crazy things like it's those moments where you
Speaker 1: don't quite register or or you've registered the sexism You've
Speaker 1: experienced your whole life on such a molecular level that
Speaker 1: when it's being encountered with such a brazen expression of
Speaker 1: a woman following her passion in an area dominated by men,
Speaker 1: you feel like bubbling up from your stomach and your
Speaker 1: gut being like like, oh my gosh, I've never how
Speaker 1: cool is it that she's racing through here and talking
Speaker 1: on the walkies. So I'm going to give it like
Speaker 1: a really, I gotta give all four nipples to Jodie Foster,
Speaker 1: uh and say her and mostly Jodie Foster's eyes like
Speaker 1: just those bigwelling, truthful pools of truth looking into the stars,
Speaker 1: Like I that's the film for me, is going the
Speaker 1: rest of it, All the problems of it sort of
Speaker 1: I think are worthy of discussion, which we have of
Speaker 1: you know, we've discussed it. But what you cannot with
Speaker 1: all the problems and the scarves and the McConaughey, even
Speaker 1: though he tries to make the scenes about himself, nothing
Speaker 1: nothing comes close to Jodie Foster's eyes looking at stars.
Speaker 1: There's just nothing. And the way I felt when I
Speaker 1: was twelve watching this film or thirteen or where however
Speaker 1: old I was versus now is very similar. So for nipples,
Speaker 1: for Jodie Foster's eyes, Yeah, she has more chemistry with
Speaker 1: the the sky and the cosmos that she's looking at
Speaker 1: than she does with Matthew McConaughey. And it's so true
Speaker 1: and how beautiful is that? Like, think about how easy
Speaker 1: it would have been to make this character male, and
Speaker 1: to say, in terms of representation of a woman just
Speaker 1: following her dreams and having an interest for her life
Speaker 1: and her for her heart, that is that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: a male, even though Mathe McConaughey is there. It's like
Speaker 1: her her love interest is the star's end of story.
Speaker 1: We didn't need to add anyone else. Well, Kelly, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for for being here, for joining us.
Speaker 1: I can't believe we recorded for eighteen hours with you.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, creating. I know, it's like what happened
Speaker 1: in Static. We don't know, okay to go, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I had to edit out a lot, so yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like a two hour episode that originally was
Speaker 1: eighteen hours. Thank you for being here. What tell us
Speaker 1: where we can find you on social media anything you'd
Speaker 1: like to plug, et cetera. Oh man, uh, well, on
Speaker 1: social media, I'm on Instagram at Kelly and Phyllis. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much the only I'm on Twitter too, but I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of leaving shortly, so probably for the best, Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably the best. I don't use it really, but so
Speaker 1: find on Instagram. I post a lot of photos of
Speaker 1: trees and nature's I'm just like got an Instagram account
Speaker 1: for the Terrence Malick fans out there. I just like nature. Um.
Speaker 1: I have a film coming out or no, that is
Speaker 1: out already on v o D anywhere you rent movies
Speaker 1: called Gore Daddy, which is about a woman brazenly trying
Speaker 1: to make art and surrounded by patriarchy and men and
Speaker 1: men trying to control her voice and her trying to
Speaker 1: find it. So I will say that this film very
Speaker 1: much is was on the origin story of the film
Speaker 1: that I of this film, Sugar Daddy. So that's that's
Speaker 1: what I want to plug, because it's not set in space.
Speaker 1: It's setting a grimy apartment in Toronto. But is that
Speaker 1: not space? Like, let's be let's be real if anything
Speaker 1: could be space. Thank you so much for being with us, Kelly,
Speaker 1: we really appreciate it and thank you for bringing us
Speaker 1: this movie. It was like, it was such a fun
Speaker 1: there's so much to talk about. It's been a it's
Speaker 1: been a long requested movie. So finally I'm glad we
Speaker 1: finally got to do it. Oh man, that's so happy,
Speaker 1: And thank you for like what a speaking of dreams?
Speaker 1: Like how fun? Is it? Just a chat for like
Speaker 1: two hours, two plus hours, eighteen hours? Like, man, people
Speaker 1: who wanted your Your podcast is so valuable and on
Speaker 1: and it speaks to a type of discussion that I
Speaker 1: could have at all times. So I'm happy to do
Speaker 1: it sort of mildly professionally with you guys. Come back anytime. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: at Bechtel Cast and subscribe to our Matreon where we
Speaker 1: have covered Arrival and Da Vinci Code and other movies
Speaker 1: but I didn't reference on today's episode. Uh that's five
Speaker 1: dollars a month. It gets you access to two bonus
Speaker 1: episodes plus the entire back catalog, and that's at Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com, slash becktel Cast, and you can get our
Speaker 1: merch at t public dot com slash the Bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: for all your various items with our Stefan Aney. We
Speaker 1: don't have a space suit yet yet, but we'll see
Speaker 1: or add or a headband. No flimsy radio shack. F Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so funny. That's the real merge from that film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, that was the merche opportunity um and I
Speaker 1: think otherwise, Uh, we're okay to go, okay, we're okay
Speaker 1: to go. Bye bye, bye bye.