Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Jamie, I wish I could quit.
Speaker 3: You, Caitlyn, I wish I could. It's the only way.
Speaker 3: It feels like. I wish I could quit this podcast.
Speaker 3: But that's not even true. That's not even true. I'm
Speaker 3: thrilled to say I like my job.
Speaker 2: You know, I love it.
Speaker 3: I don't wish I could quit this podcast or you.
Speaker 2: That's what I meant to say. The other the alternative
Speaker 2: was Jamie Twist Jamie Nasty.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that is what a beautiful turn of phrase. Every
Speaker 3: time I hear it, it really gets me. It hits
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Bachdel Cast. My name is Jamie Nasty.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlyn Nasty. Yeah, doesn't quite roll off
Speaker 2: the tongue as much. But this is our show where
Speaker 2: we examined movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Now, Jamie,
Speaker 2: what on earth is that?
Speaker 3: Well? It will be an interesting discussion. Today, we use
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion.
Speaker 3: It was originally created by friend of the show guest
Speaker 3: of the show, queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who originally wrote
Speaker 3: or sort of invented the Bechdel Test sometimes called the
Speaker 3: Bechdel Wallace Test in her comics collection Likes to Watch
Speaker 3: Out For in the eighties nineteen eighty five, and was
Speaker 3: written in the context of we've talked about this recently
Speaker 3: how there were so few first not just women in
Speaker 3: movies that spoke to each other, but specifically queer women
Speaker 3: who spoke to each other. And the joke of the
Speaker 3: strip was that the characters would have to ship characters
Speaker 3: together because there were so infrequently canonical lesbian couples on screen.
Speaker 3: There's now many versions of it. It has sort of
Speaker 3: been adapted to a more mainstream, offied version of that.
Speaker 3: The version of the test that we use requires that
Speaker 3: two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to
Speaker 3: each other about something other than a man for more
Speaker 3: than two lines of dialogue. But again, this is a
Speaker 3: jumping off point for discussion. Not every movie is going
Speaker 3: to pass it, and it really is a case to
Speaker 3: case basis if.
Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain doesn't pass the Bechdel test, which who
Speaker 2: can say, We'll find out later.
Speaker 3: So I mean it reminds me of so much, Caitlin.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you were thinking about this as well,
Speaker 3: or a couple of years ago, I think some bad
Speaker 3: faith actors weaponized the Bechdel test for Firegast Fire Island,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, get a life, get a life. You
Speaker 3: know what you're doing. Anyways, we'll talk about it, but
Speaker 3: but yes, that is what it is. And today we
Speaker 3: are covering at long last a movie that we have
Speaker 3: almost covered so many times, but it was never it
Speaker 3: either didn't win a poll or we didn't have quite
Speaker 3: the right guest and the stars of a line. We
Speaker 3: are covering Broke Back Mountain two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: We sure are, and our guest today is a professor
Speaker 2: of Communications in Film at Georgetown University. He's the author
Speaker 2: of books like Working Like a Homosexual, Gray Gardens and
Speaker 2: Queer Theory and Broke Back Mountain Relevant. Hello, it's Matthew Tinkham.
Speaker 3: Welcome, thank you.
Speaker 4: It is really lovely to be here with you talking
Speaker 4: about this film. And I already have a sense of
Speaker 4: whether I may fit with the Bechdel test or not.
Speaker 4: But I think it fails. It fails for really great reasons,
Speaker 4: which are the more compelling.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I mean our listeners know this at
Speaker 3: this point. But sometimes I feel like it's like when
Speaker 3: people when people lie to Caitlin and I at parties
Speaker 3: about having listened to the show, They're like, right, it's
Speaker 3: the podcast where you figure out if something is passes
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test and therefore it's good or bad. And
Speaker 3: you're like, get a library card, and it takes us
Speaker 3: to two hours each episode to figure it out. I know,
Speaker 3: I was like, what do you think for saying anyways, yes,
Speaker 3: if this, I honestly I was so locked in that
Speaker 3: I was not particularly paying attention for the Bechtel test
Speaker 3: in this particular movie. But we'll talk I mean.
Speaker 2: Story of my life, yeah, every episode. But yeah, well
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that a little later. For now, Matthew,
Speaker 2: tell us about your relationship, your history with Broke Back Mountain.
Speaker 5: Sure, so, a little bit of backstory, literally, which is
Speaker 5: that the film Broke Back Mountain is based on a
Speaker 5: piece of short fiction by the writer Annie Koole and
Speaker 5: the original really short story It's not even a novella,
Speaker 5: was published in nineteen ninety seven in the New Yorker magazine, and.
Speaker 4: I remember just randomly sort of finding and reading it
Speaker 4: and being astonished at what an amazing piece of writing
Speaker 4: it was. And Prole was such an interesting figure. She's
Speaker 4: the famous, important, you know, novelist, and her attentions have
Speaker 4: been lots of places, but this seemed a kind of
Speaker 4: an anomalous, fascinating project for her to take on, which
Speaker 4: is in kind of really the space of about thirty
Speaker 4: pages of writing, he rethinks of the American West and
Speaker 4: the American Western in terms of same sex erotics between
Speaker 4: these two figures, these two men, and the still More
Speaker 4: and Jack Twist, and the story at the time, and
Speaker 4: all before the film was even sort of you know,
Speaker 4: sort of being developed, really sort of grabbed a lot
Speaker 4: of people as at attention, and for a number of reasons,
Speaker 4: one of which is they say, was she was rethinking
Speaker 4: how to write about the West. She's sometimes identified as
Speaker 4: a kind of environmental writer, and then she was aligning
Speaker 4: it with you know, the Western and this kind of
Speaker 4: you know, my mythological storytelling, especially in American you know,
Speaker 4: popular culture around these kinds of heroic figures, the cowboy
Speaker 4: in the Western, which was really interesting inasmuch as a
Speaker 4: as a you know, straight identified cisgender woman. What's going
Speaker 4: on with this project of taking on of all Western
Speaker 4: and doing it in this very careful, very sensitive and
Speaker 4: loving way, which is not to dismiss or insult these characters,
Speaker 4: these white working class men, and to think about a
Speaker 4: world in which some kind of uh sort of romantic
Speaker 4: and sexual and erotic possibilities sort of are thinkable, and
Speaker 4: that what's going on is I think that it's and
Speaker 4: this will get to I think our our our topic,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, I think it's a feminist project
Speaker 4: kind of coming in sideways towards thinking about masculinity and
Speaker 4: working class masculinity. And as we'll talk about in a
Speaker 4: moment when we get to the film, I mean their
Speaker 4: adaptations then that happened in the movie, that sort of
Speaker 4: build out from what supplied on the story in the
Speaker 4: Cruel's story. So I remember reading it in ninety seven,
Speaker 4: and this was when a sort of a particular body
Speaker 4: of scholarly, philosophical and political work that we now kind
Speaker 4: of call in broader fashion and queer theory was really
Speaker 4: a taking off. And so this was when I was
Speaker 4: writing my very first book, which was working like a
Speaker 4: homosexual and thinking about the larger queerness of American popular
Speaker 4: culture than even had been sort of recognized, and that
Speaker 4: people like and I discussed for work at length the
Speaker 4: Queer Brokeback Mountain book. Eve Sedgwick's sort of just amazingly
Speaker 4: important scholarship and writing was really becoming influential. So it
Speaker 4: felt as if Andy Prule was kind of doing over
Speaker 4: on the literary fiction side something that you Sedgwick was
Speaker 4: working over in kind of the literary and philosophical collary side.
Speaker 4: So that happened. The story was published in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 4: and then in the early two thousands, this rumor started circulating,
Speaker 4: which is that there's going to be a film adaptation
Speaker 4: of it. And as the details unfolded, it got more
Speaker 4: and more exciting, which was that the kind we needs,
Speaker 4: American filmmaker On Lee had signed up and was actually
Speaker 4: really the person who was pushing most most to see
Speaker 4: if this could be made into a film, and a
Speaker 4: little bit of that sort of knowledge about that on
Speaker 4: Lee is one of those directors that never makes the
Speaker 4: same kind of movie twice, so you know, he he
Speaker 4: did this idea of much like you know, Poule, who
Speaker 4: wouldn't be the first person you might identify with the
Speaker 4: Western wants to do this project, and it seems like
Speaker 4: there are all these question marks over you know, why
Speaker 4: and what's his interest. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 4: later when we unpacked the film in more detail, but
Speaker 4: so first it was on Lee, and then when the
Speaker 4: cast started to be sort of discussed, the then really
Speaker 4: sort of you know, hot emerging figures of Hate Ledger,
Speaker 4: John Jake, Kellen Hall, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway for
Speaker 4: the sort of four main leads really said this is
Speaker 4: this is an important film. This is not just some
Speaker 4: kind of niche, little smaller production. And then the kind
Speaker 4: of jewel in the crown was going to be that
Speaker 4: the film is being adapted by Diana Ausena and Larry McMurtry,
Speaker 4: and especially Larry McMurtry so associated with these kind of
Speaker 4: colossal pieces of American popular culture about the West and
Speaker 4: the big project being a lonesome cowboy, and that in
Speaker 4: a certain sense everyone was wondering, what is Larry McMurtry doing,
Speaker 4: like basically working on a Western about as it was
Speaker 4: then called the Gay Cowboy Story and what's going to happen?
Speaker 4: And so there was a lot of excitement around the
Speaker 4: possibility of this film being made because the perception was,
Speaker 4: and I agree with the perception, there's never been a
Speaker 4: film of this budgeting or stature dealing with a Cauer
Speaker 4: erodics in the American corporate film, and that it was
Speaker 4: getting more and more interesting to think about this possibility.
Speaker 4: So when the film came out in two thousand and five,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of anticipation, and there was also
Speaker 4: a lot of sense of can this thing even work
Speaker 4: is going to be is going to be weird? Is
Speaker 4: it going to be sanitized? Level of nuance might have
Speaker 4: there's a certain brilliance that was attached to it. Then
Speaker 4: it turned out to be a really interesting work of
Speaker 4: art that took seriously its source material and understood the
Speaker 4: stature of what it was trying to do, which was
Speaker 4: to try to kind of assert a kind of different
Speaker 4: narrative of same sex erotics in the face of probably
Speaker 4: the genre that's most difficult and instance that's resistant to
Speaker 4: that of the genre being the Western. So I remember
Speaker 4: seeing the film and kind of out of the cinema
Speaker 4: being astonished, and then seeing it several times just sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, wanting to really understand what was going on.
Speaker 4: And then because of the film, and the film did,
Speaker 4: by the way, extraordinarily well. I mean it was I
Speaker 4: think produced for about fifteen million dollars and it earned
Speaker 4: a global sort of box office I think one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty million, which just meant this thing was just going, yeah,
Speaker 4: like you know, it's a word, you know, this is
Speaker 4: this is a success. And what that theme to Harold
Speaker 4: at the moment was the idea that Hollywood was now
Speaker 4: able to take on her sexualities and not be weird
Speaker 4: or squeamish about them. So then just to follow open
Speaker 4: the last chapter, is that when I was asked by
Speaker 4: an editor named Todd McGowan, who's a faculty member at
Speaker 4: the University of Vermont, if I would like to write
Speaker 4: a book in a series he was editing. And the
Speaker 4: idea of his book was very similar to how you
Speaker 4: think about your podcast, which is pick a film and
Speaker 4: then find that as the doorway into a particular intellectual
Speaker 4: topic or area. And so Todd had asked me if
Speaker 4: I wanted to write on queer theory, and to think
Speaker 4: about a particular film that I thought that this would
Speaker 4: work with, and so I gave it a lot of thoughts,
Speaker 4: and I'll oh, I ultimately obviously arrived at broke Back
Speaker 4: Mountain as the films to write on. I thought about
Speaker 4: some others, and that included, you know, Todd Haynes's film Carol,
Speaker 4: the one car Why film in the mood for love.
Speaker 4: But Todd's sort of response was, and now I know
Speaker 4: he was right, not that I disagreed, was he was like, look,
Speaker 4: broke Back Mountain, we'll get people excited in a way
Speaker 4: that those other films wonderful as they are, they're they're smaller,
Speaker 4: they're they're more niche on kind of perception. Whereas this
Speaker 4: thing he won all these awards and won Best Director
Speaker 4: for ron Lee, won the Baftub for Best Film, and
Speaker 4: that for a reader who wasn't particularly sort of knowing
Speaker 4: how to approach it queer theory, the doorway of this
Speaker 4: film would be then an tindy imitation and entrance into
Speaker 4: thinking about what this body of work of queer theory is.
Speaker 4: So that's how the book came out of then that longer.
Speaker 2: History, incredible thank you for outlining all of that, A
Speaker 2: rich history, a broke backstory.
Speaker 3: If you wrote nice, nice, thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Jamie.
Speaker 3: What about you?
Speaker 2: What's your history with this movie?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I will be far less articulate and say,
Speaker 3: although I had seen this movie once before in college,
Speaker 3: I believe is when I first saw it. I didn't see
Speaker 3: it when it came out, But I think it was
Speaker 3: because I was in seventh grade and this was a
Speaker 3: grown up movie, so I was still saying about our
Speaker 3: kids movies. But I do remember I read the short
Speaker 3: story before I saw the movie. I don't remember why.
Speaker 3: I think I just read it because it was at
Speaker 3: the library. It must have just been. I used to
Speaker 3: be all about the front table at the library, and
Speaker 3: so I read a collection, the Collection of Annie Pool
Speaker 3: Stories that this the Propac Mountain appears in, which has
Speaker 3: the word wyoming in the title. Anyways, she's an incredible writer.
Speaker 3: The short story is. I reread it last week and
Speaker 3: it's still so beautiful. It is like so overwhelming and inspiring.
Speaker 3: How much emotion and story and interiority she fits into
Speaker 3: so little space. I have no idea. It's like a
Speaker 3: magic trick, but it's really a really beautiful short story.
Speaker 3: And then I saw the movie once and it may
Speaker 3: be so sad that I didn't return to it for
Speaker 3: years because it was making me feel too much. But
Speaker 3: I first sat in a film history class, and this
Speaker 3: would have been in college in the early twenty tens,
Speaker 3: so still fairly new at that time. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: very excited to talk about it today. I had another thought,
Speaker 3: but it has left to me, so leave it at that.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to talk more about it. And it
Speaker 3: was really a pleasure to revisit both the Oh. I
Speaker 3: was thinking, if either of you remember this. I looked
Speaker 3: for this story. I remember very strongly it was a
Speaker 3: radio story. Maybe it was this American life story. I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure, but there was a story I heard
Speaker 3: years ago about a superfan of Broke Back Mountain who
Speaker 3: was a gay man who had read it when it
Speaker 3: first came out and then had really like it was
Speaker 3: a whole radio story about his history with the short
Speaker 3: story and then later the film and just like how
Speaker 3: much it had affected him. And I don't know, I
Speaker 3: just if anyone remembers hearing that radio story and it
Speaker 3: is able to find it. For me, I remember that
Speaker 3: story and this particular person's connection to the material almost
Speaker 3: as strongly as I remember the story itself. So just
Speaker 3: shouting that possible piece of loss media out as well, Caitlyn,
Speaker 3: what about you.
Speaker 2: I saw this movie around the time it came out.
Speaker 2: I was in college at the time. I don't think
Speaker 2: I saw it in theaters, but it would have probably
Speaker 2: been within a year of it coming out for the
Speaker 2: great Caitlin movie Binge, which I always say was of
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, but it really started in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four and lasted into like two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven eight. So I saw it then and it was like,
Speaker 2: I mean, we'll talk about this movie's cultural legacy, of course,
Speaker 2: and then culture's response to it when it came out,
Speaker 2: but I just remember, in addition to the film itself,
Speaker 2: all of the jokes, spoofs, references that were made in
Speaker 2: pop culture for years afterward, and so that was just
Speaker 2: like a part of the zeitgeist at the time. And
Speaker 2: then I rewatched the film and read this short story
Speaker 2: for the first time when I was in grad school
Speaker 2: because I took a film adaptation class and shout out
Speaker 2: to my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University that
Speaker 2: I hate to bring up and never mention, but this
Speaker 2: is one of the films that we studied, one of
Speaker 2: the adaptations that we read the source material for and
Speaker 2: then studied the adaptation, and so I got pretty like
Speaker 2: in depth with that from an adaptation standpoint. But then
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it since then. So it's been a
Speaker 2: number of years since I've watched the film, and I
Speaker 2: was excited to revisit it. I forgot how just wrenching.
Speaker 2: The final scene is just cry and crying, crying, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm excited to discuss it. Yeah, So let's take a
Speaker 2: quick break and then we'll come back for the recap,
Speaker 2: and we're back, broke back.
Speaker 3: Broke back. Yeah, and if you don't like that joke,
Speaker 3: buckle in because it's gonna keep happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately. So we'll provide a content warning at the
Speaker 2: top here for violence against women and anti queer violence.
Speaker 2: We meet Ennis del Mar played by Heath Ledger and
Speaker 2: Jack Twist played by Jake Gyllenholl. They show up in Signal,
Speaker 2: Wyoming looking for work. A sheep rancher named a Geary
Speaker 2: played by.
Speaker 3: Rand Jump Scare. Truly, I did not remember him completely
Speaker 3: forgot Randy Quaid was in this The Quaid lineage should
Speaker 3: be studied, and.
Speaker 2: Not by me and not by us.
Speaker 3: Someone should do that, truly.
Speaker 2: So he hires these two men to camp on a
Speaker 2: place called broke Back Mountain for the summer to look
Speaker 2: after his flock of sheep. Jack and Ennis get acquainted
Speaker 2: with each other. They settle into the daily life of
Speaker 2: tending to the sheep. They're camping, they're eating beans, They're
Speaker 2: dealing with bears and coyotes. Jack has to travel several
Speaker 2: miles to the sheep grazing area each day, and after
Speaker 2: a while he says, you know, I spend too much
Speaker 2: time commuting. We should both sleep here at the camp together. Wink,
Speaker 2: and Enis maybe doesn't get the hint, or maybe he
Speaker 2: simply ignores it, because he says, oh, I don't mind
Speaker 2: switching with you. I'll go off and look after the sheep.
Speaker 3: So they kind of switch rolls.
Speaker 2: After more time, Jack gets Ennis to open up a
Speaker 2: little bit because he's a very like stoic, quiet reserved man,
Speaker 2: and they start becoming friends. And then one night, Enis
Speaker 2: gets too drunk to head back to where the sheep are,
Speaker 2: so he has to stay at the campsite, and Jack
Speaker 2: offers to let him sleep in the tent with him,
Speaker 2: and eventually Ennis agrees, and after a short time, Jack
Speaker 2: makes a move. Ennis is taken aback and he pushes
Speaker 2: Jack off at first, but after a few moments the
Speaker 2: tides turn and they start having sex. The next morning,
Speaker 2: Jack tries to be like hey boo, but Ennis leaves
Speaker 2: in a hurry. It's awkward. A bit later, they both
Speaker 2: deny being queer, and so we're not sure if anything
Speaker 2: is going to happen again because Enis makes a reference
Speaker 2: to this being sort of like a one off thing.
Speaker 2: But then one day Ennis goes into Jack's tent and
Speaker 2: they start kissing and snuggling and it's very tender and intimate.
Speaker 2: Then one day the boss man a Geary, sees them
Speaker 2: in the distance. They're kind of like rough housing with
Speaker 2: their shirts off, and he gets the sense of what
Speaker 2: is going on between them, and then a short time
Speaker 2: later he tells Jack and Ennis to bring the sheep
Speaker 2: back down from the mountain a month earlier than they
Speaker 2: were expecting. Basically, he's like firing them, but before they go,
Speaker 2: Ennis and Jack start sort of like playfully rough housing again,
Speaker 2: but then it gets too rough. Perhaps they resent having
Speaker 2: to leave each other, and Ennis ends up with a
Speaker 2: bloody nose and he bleeds on Jack's shirt and will
Speaker 2: put it and maybe his own shirt.
Speaker 4: Is like it.
Speaker 3: There's such a this I forgot what a like master
Speaker 3: class on like masculinity. This movie is.
Speaker 2: Repression, yes, yeah, yeah, And also Chekhov's shirts will put
Speaker 2: a pin in those. He is always talking about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So things get physical. They're punching
Speaker 2: each other. The repression is palpable. They're about to part ways,
Speaker 2: and it seems like they'll never see each other again.
Speaker 2: After Jack leaves, Ennis has a panic attack or you know,
Speaker 2: he's vomiting or dry heaving. Clearly he's in emotional turmoil.
Speaker 2: We cut to enis getting married to Alma Alma a
Speaker 2: character played by Michelle Williams, and then a few years
Speaker 2: pass they've had a couple daughters.
Speaker 3: I always love that they have Almah junior. You dont's
Speaker 3: see that very often? More shout out.
Speaker 2: More junior girls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I liked that.
Speaker 2: Then meanwhile Jack goes back to Ageary asking for work.
Speaker 2: Ageary says no, the subtext being like, I'm not hiring
Speaker 2: you again because I'm homophobic. So then Jack goes to
Speaker 2: Texas to try to get some rodeo work, and there
Speaker 2: he meets a woman named Loreen played by Anne Hathaway.
Speaker 3: Who I learned auditioned for this movie while on break
Speaker 3: from Princess Diaries Too, which I just find delightful. She
Speaker 3: came in a ball gown and yeah, it's like, wow,
Speaker 3: what a what a story? Yeah, Princess Diaries Too, I'll
Speaker 3: say it not the cinematic masterpiece that brother bag Matton is, right, Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: So Jack and Loreene get married. Cut to they've had
Speaker 2: a baby. So a few years have passed, and in
Speaker 2: that time, Ennis and Alma are doing their best to
Speaker 2: raise their little girls. They're trying to make ends meet.
Speaker 2: But and we'll talk about class as it relates to
Speaker 2: this movie, and generally they're struggling and it seems like
Speaker 2: their marriage isn't that great. Then, out of the blue,
Speaker 2: one day, Ennis gets a postcard from Jack inviting him
Speaker 2: to get together with Jack and hang out, and Ennis
Speaker 2: lies and tells Alma that they were fishing button ease.
Speaker 2: They reunite after four years of not seeing each other.
Speaker 2: They make out a little bit right in front of
Speaker 2: Ennis's house, which Alma sees, and she's shocked and upset,
Speaker 2: but plays it off like everything is fine. Ennis and
Speaker 2: Jack spend the night together. Then they go on a
Speaker 2: quote unquote fishing trip in which they never actually fish,
Speaker 2: but Jack and he'll do this throughout the story, but
Speaker 2: he suggests that they try to make a life with
Speaker 2: one another. He suggests that they buy and work on
Speaker 2: a ranch together, but Ennis doesn't see how that's possible.
Speaker 2: He says, we can't abandon our wife and kids, and
Speaker 2: if people find out we're together, we might be killed,
Speaker 2: And then Ennis tells a story from his childhood to
Speaker 2: this effect. We can talk more about that later, but
Speaker 2: so the plan becomes for them to meet up every
Speaker 2: once in a while in the privacy of the middle
Speaker 2: of no where on Brokeback Mountain. Sometime later, Ennis and
Speaker 2: Alma get divorced. Jack hears about the divorce and drives
Speaker 2: up to Wyoming to see Enis, thinking that maybe this
Speaker 2: means they can finally start a life together. Jack is
Speaker 2: such a romantic no oh quick, But this is the
Speaker 2: one weekend of the month that Enis gets to see
Speaker 2: his daughters, so he sends Jack away and Jack is
Speaker 2: so disappointed and he's crying on his way back home.
Speaker 2: It's again so heart wrenching. He goes to a town
Speaker 2: in Mexico by the border to go cruising, and he
Speaker 2: picks up a man to be with for the night.
Speaker 2: It seems like he does this somewhat regularly. Then it's
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving time. We see two separate scenes, one with Jack
Speaker 2: and his family and in laws, and then another scene
Speaker 2: with Enis, his daughters, Alma and her new husband, and
Speaker 2: both scenes are quite tense. We can also talk more
Speaker 2: about those later if we would like. And then Ennis
Speaker 2: meets a woman named Cassie played by Linda Cardellini. Also
Speaker 2: did not remember if he's in this movie now.
Speaker 3: Much less Anna Ferris, David Harbor. Yeah, Kate Mara, you're
Speaker 3: just like, so what a cast famous people bit parts
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 2: So Ns meets Cassie and they start romantically seeing each other,
Speaker 2: but he seems to be keeping her at arm's length. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Jack and Loreene make friends with another couple. This is
Speaker 2: the David Harbor and Anna Faris pair, and it seems
Speaker 2: like this guy, Randall and Jack something might be happening there.
Speaker 2: It seems like Randall is interested in Jack, he suggests
Speaker 2: they go camping together. We never fully know what might
Speaker 2: transpire there, but there's something happening there. Then we see
Speaker 2: a couple more of Ennis and Jack's trips. Again, Jack
Speaker 2: longs to see Enis more frequently. He wants to build
Speaker 2: a life together. Ennis thinks he's being unrealistic about that
Speaker 2: being a possibility. They argue, we get the famous line
Speaker 2: of Jack saying, I wish I knew how to quit you.
Speaker 2: You know, they're breaking down, crying, and this is a
Speaker 2: goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation, to quote the movie again.
Speaker 2: Ennis returns home and sometime later he receives a returned
Speaker 2: postcard in the mail that he had sent to Jack,
Speaker 2: saying that the recipient is deceased. So Ennis calls Jack's
Speaker 2: house to see what's going on, and Loreene tells him
Speaker 2: that Jack died after a tire changing mishap on the
Speaker 2: side of the road, But we see a flashback of
Speaker 2: either what really happened or what Ennis speculates might be
Speaker 2: what really happened, which is that Jack was beaten to
Speaker 2: death by a group of men who presumably found out
Speaker 2: that he was queer. Loreene tells Ennis that Jack wanted
Speaker 2: his ashes to be spread on his favorite place, broke
Speaker 2: Back Mountain. So Ennis goes to Jack's parents to retrieve
Speaker 2: the ashes and carry out his dying wishes. After a
Speaker 2: tense interaction with Jack's parents, especially his mean old son
Speaker 2: of a bitch of a father, Ennis goes into Jack's
Speaker 2: childhood bedroom, where he finds those two shirts, one belonging
Speaker 2: to Jack and one belonging to Ennis. They're tucked into
Speaker 2: each other. Yep. Yeah, the idea being that Jack kept
Speaker 2: these as a memento of their relationship, and you're just
Speaker 2: like crying, crying, crying. Ennis clutches the shirts. He's fraught
Speaker 2: with emotion, and then he returns home. His daughter, Alma
Speaker 2: Junior played by Kate Maara. Now she's I think late
Speaker 2: teen's early twenties. She pays her dad a visit to
Speaker 2: invite him to her wedding, and at first he's like,
Speaker 2: a heatero wedding. I don't think I can do that,
Speaker 2: but then he's like, it's my daughter, I'll be there.
Speaker 2: And then after she leaves, he discovers that she left
Speaker 2: her sweater behind accidentally, so he goes to put it
Speaker 2: in his closet where we get a reveal that he
Speaker 2: has hung up the shirt that he took from Jack's parents' house,
Speaker 2: along with a photograph of broke Back Mountain cry the end.
Speaker 2: So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 2: we'll come back to discuss, and we're broke back and
Speaker 2: we're broken after that.
Speaker 3: That was our last break. So you don't need to
Speaker 3: hear it again, Okay, there is so so much to
Speaker 3: talk about. I get emotional even hearing the plot described
Speaker 3: to me, Matthew, is there anywhere that you would like
Speaker 3: to jump off guest privilege?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, thank you for that description, and it
Speaker 4: always really helps to kind of see the narrative arc
Speaker 4: of this thing. And one of the things that's you
Speaker 4: remarkable about this film, and I'm interested, you know, in
Speaker 4: your experience, Caitlin in terms of, you know, studying in
Speaker 4: terms of adaptation from this piece of fiction writing into cinema,
Speaker 4: is that a lot of what this film is about
Speaker 4: is about language lessness. It's about silences and misunderstanding and
Speaker 4: attribution and never clarity. And so one of the things
Speaker 4: that is so significant about it and one of the
Speaker 4: things I do in the books, I locate sort of
Speaker 4: rules locating of it in the early nineteen sixties, right
Speaker 4: at this moment in which it seems kind of in hindsight,
Speaker 4: we know that there's an incipient new kind of politicization
Speaker 4: of sexuality coming, both in terms of second wave feminism
Speaker 4: but also in terms of the then what we're called
Speaker 4: gay in the lesbian liberatory politics, and that this is
Speaker 4: kind of the threshold moment in which what we see
Speaker 4: is a world in which there is no language per
Speaker 4: se to talk about sexuality and desire and it's effect
Speaker 4: on all of these institutions, most importantly the family. And
Speaker 4: so you know, the Western, especially as a genre, which
Speaker 4: is full of these you know, magnificent landscapes that are
Speaker 4: sort of empty of language and can be kind of
Speaker 4: builled in right in a way with these figures, but
Speaker 4: to themselves, they don't have any way to describe what's
Speaker 4: happening to them. And so much of the film's sort
Speaker 4: of then drama in folds over the fact that there
Speaker 4: are these you know, really sad you know this is
Speaker 4: I think you and you've both said it. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like this film really just never it's a deep
Speaker 4: emotion sort of impact never really dissipates I mean, as
Speaker 4: many times as I see the film, I always think
Speaker 4: like it's going to get easier, and it doesn't, because
Speaker 4: that languagelessness thing is about this kind of ache of
Speaker 4: wishing that these characters could find some way of telling
Speaker 4: each other what's going on. And that's both between the
Speaker 4: two figures of Nice and Jack, but it's also within
Speaker 4: their marriages, and that the fact that their marriages are
Speaker 4: these frames that sit around sort of their bond with
Speaker 4: these two women, Alma and Marine who And this is
Speaker 4: one of the things I really respect about of the
Speaker 4: films kind of building out of their characters because they're
Speaker 4: not huge in the source material, but that they are understood,
Speaker 4: even though they had a lot less sort of development
Speaker 4: as characters, but they're understood with a great deal of
Speaker 4: compassion as to their situation and they are not made
Speaker 4: into villains of Jack, and this is desire for each
Speaker 4: other in fact, I think, especially you know Alma's confusion
Speaker 4: over what is essentially excluding her from any understanding what's
Speaker 4: going on with with her husband and the next husband,
Speaker 4: and the Michelle Williams character or performance is just really
Speaker 4: beautiful in terms of her anger and fear and her
Speaker 4: sense of you know. And this is the thing about
Speaker 4: the class politics of the movie as well, which is that,
Speaker 4: you know, there's this thing about the fact that with
Speaker 4: Ennis and her no longer together as a kind of
Speaker 4: viable heterosexual couple with children, this jeopardizes her as a woman,
Speaker 4: and you know that this is about her livelihood, and
Speaker 4: on the one hand, that's you know, about a certain
Speaker 4: kind of homophobic sort of inheritance that she probably has
Speaker 4: as a woman of that historical moment. But it's also
Speaker 4: about the fact that what the film wants to do
Speaker 4: in a certain sense depict as this kind of utopian
Speaker 4: sexuality of Jack and Ennis up on the mountain, you know,
Speaker 4: in social life, puts her and her daughter's you know,
Speaker 4: into into financial jeopardy. And I think it's very subtle
Speaker 4: and sympathetic you know, around that. But you know, just
Speaker 4: to close the point on that this this ache of language,
Speaker 4: the sort of loss of language or not having language,
Speaker 4: and that the only sort of ever approach that you
Speaker 4: see in the film is you know, between Edison and Jack,
Speaker 4: the I ain't no queer, I ain't either sort of
Speaker 4: you know thing is about the fact that you know,
Speaker 4: you really want, like Stonewall, to happen. It's that these
Speaker 4: men need, like you know, something to come into their
Speaker 4: world for them to be able to describe it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I thank you for I mean, you have literally
Speaker 3: written the book on it. But it's just it's it's
Speaker 3: really helpful hearing it framed that way. This was the
Speaker 3: first time that in conversation with this movie, I did,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess like just research alongside of like,
Speaker 3: well what history like, I you know, it's specifically in
Speaker 3: Wyoming where they are, where this is such a rural area,
Speaker 3: and that how much class figures into this movie in
Speaker 3: a way that I feel like isn't as talked about,
Speaker 3: but there was a wonderful friend of the show, Matt Boehm,
Speaker 3: made a really thoughtful video about that as well of
Speaker 3: specifically speaking to your point, Matthew, why this story is
Speaker 3: set when it's set and where it's set, which is
Speaker 3: all very intentional, where it's like on the cusp of
Speaker 3: a step forward for visibility but also still a time
Speaker 3: of incredible danger. And that's not to say that that
Speaker 3: has changed meaningfully enough, but just to root it in
Speaker 3: this specific moment that you just are like so desperate
Speaker 3: for something to change, for there to be some cultural
Speaker 3: conversation that could just make Ennis feel comfortable in envisioning
Speaker 3: a life for himself that he's just so unable to
Speaker 3: and and to really sit in. And obviously the Heath
Speaker 3: Ledger performance is incredible, like where you really feel not
Speaker 3: just how his internalized homophobia is corrosive, but just how
Speaker 3: homophobia is corrosive to everyone. Everyone in this story is
Speaker 3: touched by it in one way or another, and it's
Speaker 3: done so devastatingly but not but still somehow not whacking
Speaker 3: you over the head with anything. It's so personal to
Speaker 3: every character, right, Yeah, I really was able to appreciate
Speaker 3: the historic moment it was set in at this time,
Speaker 3: and like part of the tragedy is that they are
Speaker 3: so close to possibly being able to envision a different
Speaker 3: kind of life together.
Speaker 4: And then Jack is that's right, which is the you
Speaker 4: know the one of the distinctions between them as characters
Speaker 4: is that Jack can envision something and says this, you know,
Speaker 4: talk about you one of the few people in the
Speaker 4: film who seems to be you know, bordering onto a
Speaker 4: language which to think about a different possibility. You know,
Speaker 4: this idea he has like you know, look, we could
Speaker 4: we could live together, well, we could both be in
Speaker 4: the place together. And you know, he has that sort
Speaker 4: of idea, and I think the Gillenhall performance has this
Speaker 4: exuberance around it. And then by contrasts and before he died,
Speaker 4: you know, Keith Ledger said that one of the things
Speaker 4: that on Lee and he talked about was how to
Speaker 4: sort of have us as this character. And it's in
Speaker 4: Ledger's beautiful performance who like words just like he has
Speaker 4: to he can't get them out. He's punched over and
Speaker 4: the way the Ledger uses his mouth to have almost
Speaker 4: like you know, it's like a struggle. It aches for
Speaker 4: him to have to to speak that you know, that
Speaker 4: language just doesn't come to him. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 4: and this is when I teach the film. I always
Speaker 4: ask my students in the conversation. You know, the film
Speaker 4: concludes with this assertion from endos you know Jack I swear,
Speaker 4: And I asked my students, think, what's the second half
Speaker 4: of that sentence that we always wonder, like, what is
Speaker 4: it that he is swearing? What is he making a
Speaker 4: vow around? And because we know anas we know that
Speaker 4: he himself is you know, it could take forever for
Speaker 4: him to finally figure out the second half of that
Speaker 4: sentence totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, we get the impression throughout the movie
Speaker 2: that Ennis is so haunted by an image he saw
Speaker 2: as a boy. One of two flashbacks in the movie
Speaker 2: both show anti queer violence, where the first one is
Speaker 2: Ennis describing something he saw as a boy, something that
Speaker 2: his father deliberately showed him as like a cautionary tale,
Speaker 2: because he tells his story about how there were two
Speaker 2: men who lived together and that everyone in the community,
Speaker 2: you know, presumed that they were in a romantic relationship,
Speaker 2: and then one of the men was murdered, and Ennis's
Speaker 2: father shows Ennis as a I don't know, eight nine
Speaker 2: ten year old boy the body of the murdered man,
Speaker 2: something that clearly affected him for life, and Ennis even
Speaker 2: speculates like, it might have been my dad who murdered
Speaker 2: this man. I'm not sure. And we also get the
Speaker 2: impression that no justice whatsoever was was done for the victim.
Speaker 3: It's still this was a time in Wyoming specifically, but
Speaker 3: also in so many states where it wasn't just that
Speaker 3: homophobic hate crimes weren't, you know, explicitly against the law,
Speaker 3: but that the law would sometimes encourage them, you know,
Speaker 3: by how it wasn't just that gay rights weren't codified,
Speaker 3: said anti gay legislation was the state of the law.
Speaker 3: So right, So that's the nature of the first flashback,
Speaker 3: and it's clear the impact it has had on Na.
Speaker 3: It has led to repression. It has led him to
Speaker 3: believe that if he and Jack live the life together
Speaker 3: that Jack wants them to live, one or both of
Speaker 3: them will probably be killed. And then the second flashback
Speaker 3: we get is of either the real event of what
Speaker 3: happened or Ennis's speculation of what might have happened regarding
Speaker 3: Jack's death, which might have been another homophobic hate crime.
Speaker 3: Either way, Jack dies, which means Ennis will never see
Speaker 3: him again and any future that they might have had
Speaker 3: together no longer exists. And so the movie ends in tragedy.
Speaker 3: And that got me thinking about queer cinema of the
Speaker 3: time and then even in years that follow and how
Speaker 3: so much of it ends in tragedy. And I was
Speaker 3: thinking about how it seems like a hetero mainstream audience
Speaker 3: tends to be more comfortable with queer love stories that
Speaker 3: do end in tragedy than not. Because again, this was
Speaker 3: such a hugely successful film both box office and critical.
Speaker 3: We've shifted away from that a bit, but I couldn't
Speaker 3: help but think about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really important question for this film in
Speaker 4: terms of the implications of it. You know, we could
Speaker 4: come at it from you know, a couple of directions,
Speaker 4: one of which we need to say. What it's trying
Speaker 4: to describe is the sort of deep suffering of sort
Speaker 4: of queer people, you know, like queer phobic society, and
Speaker 4: that you know, there are no miraculous or heroic outcomes
Speaker 4: in the face of such monumental violence and exclusion. So
Speaker 4: in a certain sense, it tells the truth about that
Speaker 4: historical sort of moment. And on the flip side, does
Speaker 4: you know, does the film in a certain sense? I
Speaker 4: don't necessarily agree with his reading, but I respect it
Speaker 4: sort of in a certain sense, and join with a
Speaker 4: long tradition of pathetic queer people who all what Lee,
Speaker 4: never can have any kind of sort of life. You
Speaker 4: know that, you know, it's like adult they all die
Speaker 4: or kill themselves kind of, you know, frame everyone's doomed exactly.
Speaker 3: I guess I wonder well, I'm curious what you think, Matthia,
Speaker 3: because we've recently also covered I mean, We've covered a
Speaker 3: lot of queer cinema on the show over the years,
Speaker 3: but it is like this clear pattern of it's It's
Speaker 3: not even something that I hold against the movie specifically.
Speaker 3: I think it more is just as an industry, like
Speaker 3: the film industry, tends to elevate and promote and award
Speaker 3: tragic stories versus stories that center queer joy or even
Speaker 3: just has queer characters that doesn't end in abject tragedy,
Speaker 3: like we just covered Desert Hearts, a movie that definitely,
Speaker 3: you know, it's also rooted in the past, addresses all
Speaker 3: of the homophobic elements that existed in that moment in time,
Speaker 3: but doesn't end in abject tragedy, is made by and
Speaker 3: written by a queer woman. And these are both tremendously
Speaker 3: great movies as far as I'm concerned, But one movie
Speaker 3: gets the mainstream approval, and it's the one that is
Speaker 3: more centered on tragedy. So I don't view Yeah, I
Speaker 3: agree with you, I don't view it as a fault
Speaker 3: of Broke Back Mountain. I think it's just more the
Speaker 3: pattern of what gets uplifted and sort of put into
Speaker 3: mainstream cannon and why a movie like Desert Heart sort
Speaker 3: of remains more obscure. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well this gets at the heart of you know
Speaker 4: what you know. Earlier I was describing as the anticipation
Speaker 4: of the film coming out in two thousand and five
Speaker 4: and leading up to, you know, its appearance, was an
Speaker 4: excitement over the idea that you know, a large scale,
Speaker 4: well funded, sort you know, with star and mass appeal
Speaker 4: film was now possible. And then in a certain sense
Speaker 4: of kind of all moments or say, but does it
Speaker 4: applicate the pattern of the pathetic queer you get again,
Speaker 4: only with maybe a bigger budget and more stories, you know,
Speaker 4: star power, And then you kind of ask yourself as like, oh,
Speaker 4: is that a progressive politics or is that just you know,
Speaker 4: the same one with like, you know, more movie stars.
Speaker 4: And then a sort of larger framing historical issue around
Speaker 4: is that the American corporate film just doesn't have a
Speaker 4: great track record of any kind of you know, queer
Speaker 4: positive sort of long term you know practice, and that
Speaker 4: we can we can love the film work back Mountain
Speaker 4: and sort of say it's nuanced and subtle and his
Speaker 4: complexity in all the ways that it does, and then
Speaker 4: kind of go, but it's like one movie you know
Speaker 4: that happens on a very rare occasion, and this seems
Speaker 4: to be, you know, in a certain sense, a larger
Speaker 4: indictment of the what i'll call the conservatism of the
Speaker 4: American corporate film.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it did not seem like this was an easy
Speaker 3: movie to not I mean, first of all, just make
Speaker 3: much less make well where this was my first time
Speaker 3: sort of digging more into the production history that I'd
Speaker 3: love to talk about with both of you. Matt Boma
Speaker 3: also talks about this in his video, and also I
Speaker 3: think he was in high school or college when the
Speaker 3: film came out, and sort of his experience of being
Speaker 3: frustrated with the film's popularity and also feeling quite defensive
Speaker 3: of it, especially when I think most famously it was
Speaker 3: you know, Crash one Best Picture over Broke Back Mountain,
Speaker 3: which I think now everyone can say makes absolutely no sense,
Speaker 3: and even at the time most people were like, this
Speaker 3: feels homophobic for Crash to be winning an oscar like this, Like,
Speaker 3: if you've seen it, it has no it barely has
Speaker 3: a right to exist as far as I've concerned. But
Speaker 3: in any case, just to get a little bit into
Speaker 3: the production history of this movie, there is so much,
Speaker 3: so everyone feel free to jump in. But this started
Speaker 3: with Diana O'sana reading the story and immediately saying like,
Speaker 3: I want to adapt this. I want this to be
Speaker 3: a film. Annie Poole, who I think, like many great
Speaker 3: short story writers, is somewhat prickly, was like, it can't
Speaker 3: be a movie. Sorry, just like, girl, take the check.
Speaker 3: But you know, she has her dignity and I respect
Speaker 3: her for that. But in terms of and we've talked
Speaker 3: about this quite a bit, when it comes to any
Speaker 3: marginalized identity being represented in a Hollywood film, really that
Speaker 3: there is so much internal pushback. There is a pressure
Speaker 3: to change material. There are actors who are quote unquote
Speaker 3: not comfortable portraying a queer character. Oh yeah, in as
Speaker 3: few words as possible. I mean. Gus Van Sant was
Speaker 3: on board to direct this movie for some time and
Speaker 3: encountered enough frustration and pushback that he ended up leaving
Speaker 3: the project and ended up making Milk, which is a
Speaker 3: movie I have not seen actually, but would be an
Speaker 3: interesting discussion. I hate Sean Penn. I don't know what
Speaker 3: do we do with that.
Speaker 2: It's complicated.
Speaker 3: But anyways, just going through the list of actors, all
Speaker 3: of whom are still famous and working, who were considered
Speaker 3: or approached for the roles of Jack and Ennis, and
Speaker 3: how many, many many of them were quote unquote not
Speaker 3: comfortable or just responded in an overtly homophobic way to
Speaker 3: the suggestion. I think the most famous examples are Matt Damon,
Speaker 3: who said, Gus, he's saying this is when Gus van
Speaker 3: Sant was still the attached director. He said, Gus, I
Speaker 3: did a gay movie referencing the talented mister Ripley than
Speaker 3: a cowboy movie all the pretty horses. I can't follow
Speaker 3: it up with a gay cowboy movie. Really awesome response.
Speaker 3: There was also Mark Wahlberg who one as well, it
Speaker 3: feels almost absurd to approach in this context, but they tried.
Speaker 3: He have course responded in the way that Mark Wahlberg
Speaker 3: would respond. He said he was quote creeped out unquote
Speaker 3: by the script, which again Mark Wahlberg wouldn't know a
Speaker 3: good script if it like you know, so anyways, that
Speaker 3: it took some time to find, uh, I mean, the
Speaker 3: right writer found the material almost immediately. But in terms
Speaker 3: of building the rest of the team in a way
Speaker 3: that was respectful and reverent of the material took quite
Speaker 3: a long time, and it had everything to do and
Speaker 3: I feel like as a direct may of the homophobia
Speaker 3: of the time for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as you pointed out, Jamie Gus van Sandt
Speaker 2: eventually like abandoned the project because he had such a
Speaker 2: hard time casting it. So he dropped out. And then
Speaker 2: other directors were approached, including queer directors like Jewel Schumacher
Speaker 2: and Pedro Almodovar. Schmacher Broke Back Mountain would have been
Speaker 2: the mountain have had nipples like what would have happened
Speaker 2: in dul Schumacher Broke Back.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. Three amazing I mean, including only
Speaker 3: three amazing directors, three wildly different versions of this story.
Speaker 3: You'll beginning absolutely, I.
Speaker 4: Didn't didn't know about Pedro alma Jovar. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: just kind of mind boggling to contemplate the It's almost like,
Speaker 4: you know, because you know, he's a famous director of women, right,
Speaker 4: so it would have been maybe emphasis would have been
Speaker 4: if it's my version of the Almodovar Broke Back Mountain,
Speaker 4: it's all Alman Loreene and then the two.
Speaker 3: Men background, right, so and only ends up taking the
Speaker 3: role who I we've covered one other only. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously I've seen a lot of his movies, but I
Speaker 3: think the only other only movie we've covered on the
Speaker 3: show is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I believe so. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he had directed movies with queer characters before in
Speaker 3: the Wedding Banquet, but it is kind of a fascinating
Speaker 3: run of movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Broke Back Mountain.
Speaker 3: That is range sense of sensibility, sentence, sensibility before that, yes,
Speaker 3: but going from Hulk to Broke Back Mountain is kind
Speaker 3: of incredible, right.
Speaker 2: Well, he was kind of he was in the middle
Speaker 2: of debating retiring from the film industry. He's like, I
Speaker 2: made a few movies that were exhausting, and I want
Speaker 2: to quit. And he had been approached to direct Broke
Speaker 2: Back Mountain, and initially he was like, I'm so tired.
Speaker 2: But then he reconsidered and he decided to give it
Speaker 2: a go, and he tried to get financing, which was,
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, a struggle at first. People were
Speaker 2: not interested in financing a film like this typically, But
Speaker 2: then he eventually met a producer who had a partnership
Speaker 2: with Focused Features and they stepped in to finance the
Speaker 2: film and Onley was attached as a director. There were
Speaker 2: more castings, but then Heath Ledger and Jake Jillenhall were
Speaker 2: both really enthusiastic about the script and their characters, and
Speaker 2: they were cast. Obviously, it has been criticized the casting
Speaker 2: of two straight actors to portray these characters, and that
Speaker 2: is fair. That was far more common at the time.
Speaker 2: We have seen more of a shift in casting queer
Speaker 2: actors to play queer characters, but for a very long time,
Speaker 2: it was the standard to cast SIS had actors to
Speaker 2: play queer characters.
Speaker 3: It was pretty normalized up until like even in the
Speaker 3: last when did Carol come out? I mean that was
Speaker 3: the last time I remember really seeing that conversation, and
Speaker 3: I know we discussed it when we talked about Carol
Speaker 3: and the show years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are some examples even after that,
Speaker 2: especially of SIS actors playing trans characters, because that was
Speaker 2: a conversation that was still being regularly had up and
Speaker 2: till like the late twenty tens, maybe even into the
Speaker 2: twenty twenties. Yeah. And then the last thing I want
Speaker 2: to say about the like you know, production and development
Speaker 2: and casting and stuff like that was the marketing of
Speaker 2: this film. I don't know much about it, but the
Speaker 2: one thing that I did make note of is that
Speaker 2: the poster for this film was heavily influenced by Titanic
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. And then when you do a side
Speaker 2: by side comparison, you're like, oh.
Speaker 3: That's actually so true. Wow, Wow, two tragic love stories.
Speaker 2: Yep, wow.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. And now once you see it,
Speaker 3: you cannot unsee it.
Speaker 2: You simply cannot. I'd love to go back to talking
Speaker 2: about the wives. Yes, Matthew, you you talk about this
Speaker 2: in your book, about how Alma and Loreene's labor make
Speaker 2: it possible for their husbands to go off on all
Speaker 2: of these fishing trips, and how their labor is pretty
Speaker 2: wildly underappreciated by their husbands. Again, I forgot how much
Speaker 2: class and labor plays into this story, as does some
Speaker 2: misogyny of the characters. I'm thinking about a scene where
Speaker 2: Enis is supposed to be taking care of his two
Speaker 2: small daughters, but he drops them off at Alma's workplace
Speaker 2: at the grocery store while she is working because he
Speaker 2: has to tend to something with his job and He's like, well,
Speaker 2: my thing is more important. So woman, you take care
Speaker 2: of the children even though you're working. Also, I have
Speaker 2: to go do my work. That scene really struck me.
Speaker 2: There's another scene where Ennis and Alma are screaming at
Speaker 2: each other because she had agreed to pick up another
Speaker 2: shift at work because they need the money because he's
Speaker 2: always running off to go on fishing trips, and Enis
Speaker 2: is furious. He wants her to stay home and serve dinner,
Speaker 2: but she defiantly leaves, saying like, I need to work
Speaker 2: to help support this family. So just a few moments
Speaker 2: that I didn't really clock the first time I watched
Speaker 2: this movie. And then also, I think the first time
Speaker 2: I watched this movie, I remember thinking, I confess that
Speaker 2: I viewed Alma not as a villain necessarily, but as
Speaker 2: an obstacle or kind of like a foil to Ennis
Speaker 2: and Jack's relationship. I was sort of like, leave him alone,
Speaker 2: let him be in love with Jack. Twist, because there's
Speaker 2: that scene where she confronts him after Thanksgiving dinner. She
Speaker 2: says like, you know, I thought you were going fishing,
Speaker 2: but then you never brought back any fish. And then
Speaker 2: I looked in your fishing box and all the equipment
Speaker 2: had never been used, and then he reacts with violence
Speaker 2: because she has clocked the situation accurately. I remember thinking
Speaker 2: at the time, I was like, oh, like, she's a
Speaker 2: foil to this relationship. Watching it this time around, I
Speaker 2: was way more empathetic to her character because all she's
Speaker 2: asking for is like honesty and transparency in their marriage,
Speaker 2: which she had done throughout, which she was never able
Speaker 2: to get. So I'm like, oh, of course, Like I
Speaker 2: absolutely understand her frustration, but then you also understand why
Speaker 2: Ennis is withholding information. Yes, he is cheating on her
Speaker 2: in a monogamous relationship, but he can't be honest about
Speaker 2: his sexuality in a time and place such as this,
Speaker 2: or at least there's great risk associated with him being
Speaker 2: honest about it. But either way, I was way more
Speaker 2: empathetic to Almah's circumstances on this watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, one of the things that
Speaker 4: you know it has to be sort of seen as
Speaker 4: implied but not explicitly are articulate them in the film,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of works in subtle ways in this
Speaker 4: regard is that classes in here, and there's very sort
Speaker 4: of you know, important ways both Jack and Ennis, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of are but the very bottom of the sort
Speaker 4: of ranking of social prestige around labor, you know. And
Speaker 4: and famously, you know, the film is called the gay
Speaker 4: Cowboy Movie. And then you know, one of the things
Speaker 4: remarkable about it, and this is very much in the
Speaker 4: pool story and the film. They're not even cowboys. They
Speaker 4: can care of sheep, you know, I mean, they're.
Speaker 6: Sometimes and it doesn't even have I mean the landscape
Speaker 6: is that to be of the sort of West, but
Speaker 6: the sort of prestige of them being these kind of
Speaker 6: cowboy figures, you know, in a certain sense is diminished.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, the West is now no longer
Speaker 4: the space of cowboys. It's the space of a certain
Speaker 4: kind of you know, grunt labor that's not particularly glamorous
Speaker 4: or dignified. So there's that with class. But then to
Speaker 4: come to the topic of the women, I think the
Speaker 4: class ordinances get even more explicit, which is that you know,
Speaker 4: Alma works in the in the supermarket, trying to make
Speaker 4: ends meet around this sort of occasional labor that Enna
Speaker 4: seems to do. And then Loreene, you know, is attached
Speaker 4: to uh sort of her father's business and it's a
Speaker 4: successful business. And the film really and I love the
Speaker 4: way that the film builds out from what little there
Speaker 4: is in the short sort of fiction. But Lorene's this
Speaker 4: really interesting figure. You know, she's she's in the rodeo,
Speaker 4: she knows how to dance, She's really all got a
Speaker 4: social life, and she is making this business happen. And
Speaker 4: that in a certain sense, Jack has married up in
Speaker 4: that particular sort of organization of a social prestige. And
Speaker 4: there comes a point in which she's kind of not
Speaker 4: really all that worried about what he's up to on
Speaker 4: the fishing trips because she has her own life in
Speaker 4: a way that Alma is still reliant on, you know,
Speaker 4: on ns is sort of unreliable as he seems to be.
Speaker 4: And then you know the other thing, and I want
Speaker 4: to come back a little bit too. What you were
Speaker 4: talking about a moment ago, Kaylin, in terms of the
Speaker 4: fantasy statements is in this film, and this is very cinematic.
Speaker 4: This is where I think the film really sort of
Speaker 4: can handle because it's on the visual sort of score here.
Speaker 4: And this is description of the shock of violence of
Speaker 4: the murdered figures from his childhood and implication that his
Speaker 4: father is a participant in this film level, whether he
Speaker 4: is the murderer or simply, you know, sort of showing
Speaker 4: his child that this kind of violence is possible and
Speaker 4: to be respected perversely. And then the second fantasy, which
Speaker 4: I think is just really an amazing piece of filmmaking,
Speaker 4: of the conversation between Ennis and Loreene, who you know,
Speaker 4: in narratively, if you kind of piece it out, you
Speaker 4: figure out this is the first time they've actually ever
Speaker 4: had to talk to each other, and the class ordinances
Speaker 4: get even more sort of complicated. And part of it
Speaker 4: is that the beauty of the editing and that sequence,
Speaker 4: the heartbreaking editing, is both of them know what each
Speaker 4: other thinks of the other because of the figure of Jack,
Speaker 4: who is gone, and both of them are creating this conversation,
Speaker 4: the last sort of you know, conversation about Jack, this
Speaker 4: thing on the telephone, about the meaning of it or
Speaker 4: the circumstances of Jack's death, on Loreen saying well, the
Speaker 4: official explanation we will agree upon is there was an
Speaker 4: accident on the roadside. And then this sort of you know,
Speaker 4: then momentary fantasy of you he was murdered. This was
Speaker 4: a scene of queer violence, and that this is you know,
Speaker 4: in a certain sense, getting into Ennis's head, but also
Speaker 4: understanding you know, and the context of what's going on
Speaker 4: in sort of Ennis's mind through this conversation, you know,
Speaker 4: with Loreen. And I think that that is has a
Speaker 4: has a kind of class to mention to it, which
Speaker 4: is I think that there's a way that he kind
Speaker 4: of realizes that Loreene lives in a world of sort
Speaker 4: of you know, wealth and material comfort in a way
Speaker 4: that you know he never will, and that the strange
Speaker 4: connection through Jack, you know, is about him realizing Jack
Speaker 4: had that life of living with someone that he Jack
Speaker 4: had proposed to Ennis. Jack had that with Loreene fraud
Speaker 4: as it might have been, because you know, her family's
Speaker 4: not ideal by any means, but that that comfort was there,
Speaker 4: that wealth was there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anne Hathaway's performance in that scene is also so
Speaker 2: stunning to me because there are a couple of moments
Speaker 2: where when Ennis makes a reference to his relationship with
Speaker 2: Jack and it's all very you know, like codd where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, yeah, we met that time on broke
Speaker 2: Back Mountain summer of sixty three, where we just hearted
Speaker 2: sheep and nothing else, and it's implied that she knows
Speaker 2: exactly what that means and what happened there, and you
Speaker 2: see her give a little like.
Speaker 3: Like a whimper.
Speaker 2: She's like suppressing crying because she knows who Ennis is
Speaker 2: to Jack. And then she does it again a second
Speaker 2: time when he makes another reference to him and Jack's
Speaker 2: connection without being explicit about who they actually were to
Speaker 2: each other, but just saying something about their friendship, and
Speaker 2: she whimpers again, and it's just like, oh that, like
Speaker 2: that performance just it blew me away.
Speaker 3: It gets back to what you're saying about you about
Speaker 3: like the conversations without words that happen at so many
Speaker 3: points like that, what can't be expressed by the characters
Speaker 3: that is like physically seeping out in their performances is
Speaker 3: like it's just it's unreal. Yeah. I think I also
Speaker 3: sort of did not remember how crucial class is to
Speaker 3: the whole story, but also specifically the women's stories. On
Speaker 3: the reread of the short story. Yeah, there's there's not
Speaker 3: too much on the page about them, and I really
Speaker 3: appreciated how it felt like they were. These characters were
Speaker 3: built out, first of all in like a very sympathetic
Speaker 3: and grounded way, but also in a way that really
Speaker 3: distinguishes them from one another, even though obviously they have
Speaker 3: so much in common. Was weirdly thinking about how if
Speaker 3: you flip it and then move the timeline ahead just
Speaker 3: fifty years, it's Grace and Frankie. That's another story though,
Speaker 3: But that Alma and Loreene, they both have their own
Speaker 3: distinct personalities, but that Loreene in some ways, you know,
Speaker 3: has the financial ability to move on in a way
Speaker 3: that Alma never does, and in a way that I
Speaker 3: think women in this place at this time would have
Speaker 3: been more beholden to a marriage. There's always going to
Speaker 3: be the stigma that comes with divorce, you know, really
Speaker 3: at any time, but certainly in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3: But that Loreen, we know she has the ability to
Speaker 3: move on financially, she has the support where Alma you know,
Speaker 3: sort of needs to. And it's lovely that it seems
Speaker 3: like she moves into a relationship that is positive for her.
Speaker 3: I mean, and on this rewatch, the second you see
Speaker 3: the grocery store manager, you know, be okay with all
Speaker 3: the glass being knocked down, You're like, there's the guy.
Speaker 3: It's like such a well directed moment. He has a
Speaker 3: little crush on her. Yeah, it was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: your boss doesn't mind if you broke the whole store,
Speaker 3: whole inventory. Yeah, he's interested, but I I it does
Speaker 3: make me happy for her to some extent, But it
Speaker 3: also means, you know, like Alma's not living at a
Speaker 3: time or within a socioeconomic class where she can really
Speaker 3: consider being fully independent, where Loreene sort of has more leeway,
Speaker 3: and and seeing how class affects obviously Jack and Ennis
Speaker 3: as well. And moment that stuck out to me on
Speaker 3: this viewing was after Loreene has their baby, how immediately
Speaker 3: dismissive her parents are of Jack. They're calling him rodeo
Speaker 3: and hyperfixating on Loreene and the baby. It is so
Speaker 3: clear that he is incidental to them, He is not important.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and just sort of watching all of these
Speaker 3: like tiny fractures and structures being built in trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of keep this relationship at least functioning.
Speaker 3: It's done very subtly, but if you're looking for it,
Speaker 3: it is like so crucial to the story.
Speaker 2: And then a scene that follows that between Jack and
Speaker 2: his father in law is the Thanksgiving scene where they're
Speaker 2: basically doing a dick measuring contest about who has more
Speaker 2: power in this situation where the father in law is like, oh,
Speaker 2: your boys should watch football if you want him to
Speaker 2: be a man when he grows up, and Jack is
Speaker 2: just like, fuck you, this is my house, my rules.
Speaker 2: Loreene spent a lot of time and effort preparing this meal,
Speaker 2: so we're gonna appreciate it without being distracted by a
Speaker 2: football game. And eventually, I mean, you could argue that
Speaker 2: like Jack exercises his enough masculinity over the situation that
Speaker 2: he defeats the other like masculine boy man of the
Speaker 2: scene and masculine boy man awesome, thank you. I will
Speaker 2: be saying that every day from now on. But because
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot has been written about this movie
Speaker 2: in its relation to the setting, the genre of Western,
Speaker 2: the implications of masculinity therein where including you, Matthew, you
Speaker 2: know in your book you talk about how like, you know,
Speaker 2: the rugged, stoic cowboy character that is the center of
Speaker 2: the Western genre and is like, you know, the embodiment
Speaker 2: of the masculine ideal for what a man is quote
Speaker 2: unquote supposed to be, especially an American man, has been
Speaker 2: present throughout cinema history. But also there have been homo
Speaker 2: erotic undertones present within this genre, but that Broke Back
Speaker 2: Mountain was one of the first films to bring that
Speaker 2: homo eroticism to text rather than subtext.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, one of the things that's remarkable about how
Speaker 4: this film is trying to work on its topic of
Speaker 4: this particular version of white American masculinity in this genre
Speaker 4: of the Western, is that the Western, which paradoxically only
Speaker 4: becomes a kind of afterculture genre right at the moment
Speaker 4: in which the idea that the Western has about the
Speaker 4: West has concluded. The American frontier has in a certain
Speaker 4: sense been enclosed, and so the expansive, utopian sort of
Speaker 4: idea of it around eighteen ninety to nineteen hundred is
Speaker 4: the demise of actual cowboys as these kinds of sort
Speaker 4: of you know, mythical figures. But then the Western takes
Speaker 4: off many critics, and especially James Hompkins, whose wonderful book
Speaker 4: West of Everything is really worth finding, The Western takes off,
Speaker 4: especially just by coincidence or maybe not, but because cinema
Speaker 4: is taking off at the exact same moment, and so
Speaker 4: the Western becomes this very kind of American project to
Speaker 4: in a certain sense keep this narrative going, even though
Speaker 4: the historical circumstances of the actual West have concluded. The
Speaker 4: center of that genre is this particular idea of a
Speaker 4: man of a cisgender man. And what makes this person
Speaker 4: the hero that they might be, And it's that thing
Speaker 4: that you know, we were talking about, you know, earlier,
Speaker 4: what makes him heroic is that he doesn't need language.
Speaker 4: He stands outside of society and he doesn't need human
Speaker 4: sort of language. And then the second part, and this
Speaker 4: is where the homo erotics come into it, is but
Speaker 4: at the same time, this fantasy of the American West
Speaker 4: is populated largely by men, and that sort of women
Speaker 4: are seen as sort of associated with civilization and all
Speaker 4: of the kinds of obnoxious encroachments on male freedom. And
Speaker 4: this comes up again and again in Western films. And
Speaker 4: so one of the things that's remarkable about Broke Back
Speaker 4: Mountain is it takes all the pre existing ingredients of
Speaker 4: the Western and then it tweaks them enough for us
Speaker 4: to see them in a different light. And it's this
Speaker 4: thing about you know, on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 4: I'll make the assertion that we want Jack to succeed
Speaker 4: in a certain sense because there's a certain kind of
Speaker 4: openness to experience that he has, and he's you know,
Speaker 4: adventurous in a way that Ennis is not. But the
Speaker 4: real hero in a conventional sense of the Western is
Speaker 4: ns who doesn't like language and has no use for
Speaker 4: society and kind of just kind of just does what
Speaker 4: he wants. And then you know, the irony is it's like,
Speaker 4: is Ennis really any kind of hero? You know? You know,
Speaker 4: he he turns down the new possibility of a shared
Speaker 4: life with someone he seems to care about, which is
Speaker 4: this idea that Jack has that they'll go off and
Speaker 4: live together. And so the film puts you in this
Speaker 4: awkward position of trying to, on the one hand, know
Speaker 4: that you should identify with Ms as this kind of
Speaker 4: American hero, and on the other hand see him as
Speaker 4: really really disappointing as any kind of role model for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that acting out these masculine tropes really only
Speaker 3: brings suffering to the history. Yeah, And that where we
Speaker 3: leave him at the end is just like in the
Speaker 3: most tortured place, and we don't really know, I mean,
Speaker 3: and we're not meant to know is he ever going
Speaker 3: to move through or past this? It seems like I mean,
Speaker 3: we'd end with a shirt in the closet, So, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I once had a friend say to me, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, Jack is gone, but and it's actually still
Speaker 4: has something left of his life. And this friend said,
Speaker 4: I have a fantasy that he just gets the hell
Speaker 4: out of there finally and he moves to San Francisco.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: I want him, yes, but I do also then when
Speaker 4: I can double back on something you mentioned earlier, which
Speaker 4: is that, you know, this sort of erotics between these
Speaker 4: two men is so much about repression, but repression as
Speaker 4: something that produces something else, and the sort of first
Speaker 4: parting scene when they leave the mountain results and them
Speaker 4: having this you know, this this fist fight. They attack
Speaker 4: each other, and there's this idea it's like, do they
Speaker 4: not know how to you know, embrace or say something
Speaker 4: of mere kindness to each other? And the answer is no,
Speaker 4: they have no language except for for physical you know, violence,
Speaker 4: and that you know, the thing about it is that
Speaker 4: that repression is productive of violence in this particular version
Speaker 4: of masculinity in a way that you know, what we
Speaker 4: want to see is that it could be repression could
Speaker 4: be productive of a new kind of sexuality and a
Speaker 4: new kind of shared life that the film is just
Speaker 4: kind of glimpsing at that doesn't sort of open the
Speaker 4: possibility to which is the way I think, you know,
Speaker 4: you end up having a heartbroken over and over again
Speaker 4: by watching this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just they don't have the tools they need
Speaker 3: to be able to communicate with each other. Another seed
Speaker 3: that out to me with especially like with regards to
Speaker 3: how masculinity is. Like I think it's like another scene
Speaker 3: where Ennis is doing what he thinks is necessary and
Speaker 3: it causes discomfort. It's the scene where they're at the
Speaker 3: fireworks at Alma and Ennis bringing the girls to see fireworks.
Speaker 3: There are some drunk guys doing drunk n PC dialogue
Speaker 3: behind them, being like that guy you know probably it
Speaker 3: doesn't even like them.
Speaker 2: They're being very wildly misogynistic, and.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean they're they're being assholes, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: But Ennis almost provokes a fight with them in front
Speaker 3: of his family, which clearly is distressing and upsetting to everyone.
Speaker 3: And it's I think just another example of Ennis, you know,
Speaker 3: doing what he thinks quote unquote a masculine Western guy
Speaker 3: should do. He's doing the cowboys. He's defending his family,
Speaker 3: don't talk about my wife that way, all that stuff.
Speaker 3: He's defending his own masculinity, which we know he is
Speaker 3: constantly calling into question, but it doesn't produce the victorious
Speaker 3: moment we're trained to sort of expect from there. It's
Speaker 3: not like a hero beating down a bully. It's just this.
Speaker 3: It's this tense, uncomfortable moment that Alma doesn't seem particularly
Speaker 3: happy about. It breaks the kids out, and even Ennis,
Speaker 3: I don't know. This is just my like I guess
Speaker 3: interpretation of the performance, but even in that moment, it
Speaker 3: doesn't feel like the character is even sure of what
Speaker 3: he's doing. It just feels like, this, this is what
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to do. And that's you know, at the
Speaker 3: core of so much of NS. His behavior is like
Speaker 3: performing masculinity because he thinks that that's what he's supposed
Speaker 3: to do and that it's what will keep him and
Speaker 3: his family safe, even though it is just a corrosive force.
Speaker 3: And we learn why that is from the flashback with
Speaker 3: his dad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to talk about the cultural impact of
Speaker 2: the movie, especially at the time and the media landscape,
Speaker 2: and just like the cultural landscape that this came out in,
Speaker 2: because I mean, this movie is largely considered a pretty
Speaker 2: pivotal moment in queer cinema in the sense that it
Speaker 2: centers a queer love story that entered the mainstream. It
Speaker 2: was critically acclaimed, and it was a huge box office success.
Speaker 2: There were not a lot of examples of a movie
Speaker 2: that fit those criteria prior to Brokeback Mountain, and so
Speaker 2: it paved the way for more representation of queer characters
Speaker 2: and queer love stories on screen. It started to normalize
Speaker 2: that as a narrative vehicle, at least stories that feature white,
Speaker 2: CIS queer characters. But yeah, I just I you know,
Speaker 2: the general cultural landscape at the time in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, I mean, this was in the middle of
Speaker 2: George W. Bush's presidency, where like homophobia was part of
Speaker 2: his platform, This was an era where in the media
Speaker 2: mostly queer representation was obscenely homophobic jokes in raunchy comedies.
Speaker 2: The best you might get would be a trophy character
Speaker 2: like you know, a gay best friend or you know,
Speaker 2: the hairdresser or something like that in a film, very
Speaker 2: stereotypical roles, and society at large was just like was
Speaker 2: very homophobic, and so this movie coming out and being
Speaker 2: the success that it was, like represents a cultural shift
Speaker 2: or you know, kind of a turning point. But also
Speaker 2: there was a lot of conservative backlash to this movie.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of jokes made at this movie's expense.
Speaker 2: Many of them were extremely not tasteful and were punching down.
Speaker 3: And Heath Ledger, I mean to the point where Heath
Speaker 3: Ledger there's like an anecdote that resurvices about him every
Speaker 3: so often that he refused to appear on any like
Speaker 3: awards broadcast during the promotion cycle for this movie that
Speaker 3: featured homophobic jokes. He like would not appear. I mean,
Speaker 3: he I think refused to present at the two thousand
Speaker 3: and six Oscars for this reason because he caught win
Speaker 3: that there was going to be a homophobic joke at
Speaker 3: broke Back's expense in the opening. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: shout out to him there. But it's again like this,
Speaker 3: even when there was this massive moment for queer cinema
Speaker 3: breaking into the mainstream, the movie and its fans then
Speaker 3: had to deal with how America always spoke about queer
Speaker 3: people after that, and with you know, it's like relatively
Speaker 3: little pushback, which is why that heat Ledger anecdote stands
Speaker 3: out well.
Speaker 4: I think in terms of the you know, the sort
Speaker 4: of sense of the impact of the film, both in
Speaker 4: the moment of its appearance and then kind of in
Speaker 4: the long life that it's had, you know, twenty years later. Well,
Speaker 4: one of the things I become ever more sort of
Speaker 4: aware of is that the sort of culture of cinema
Speaker 4: in the past two decades has changed so much inasmuch
Speaker 4: as we live in such a mosaic media environment now
Speaker 4: that the idea of a big movie like this kind
Speaker 4: of grabbing the attention of lots of people simultaneously, you know,
Speaker 4: seems almost impossible. I say almost because then I think
Speaker 4: about something like Barbie, which is whole other podcast episode, but.
Speaker 2: It's much less common than like monoculture doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4: Really, No, that's right, And so you know, it's hard
Speaker 4: to in a certain sense remind ourselves that you know
Speaker 4: that this was in a cinema culture of you know,
Speaker 4: going to the cinem This is where you know, you
Speaker 4: had to wait six months before something came out on
Speaker 4: DVD in order to do a home viewing, and you
Speaker 4: know that there was an event of going to see
Speaker 4: a movie like this at the theater, and then you know,
Speaker 4: word of mouth built, and then there became this kind
Speaker 4: of endless kind of you know, and I do say,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it built out a more nuanced
Speaker 4: popular audience's ability to talk about a film like this
Speaker 4: without immediately just resorting to homophobic tropes. I mean, those
Speaker 4: are available, but I think that it also opened up
Speaker 4: a lot of people's sort of imagination to sort of say,
Speaker 4: this is a really interesting film. It doesn't hand me
Speaker 4: the tools just simply you know, insult these people, especially
Speaker 4: these two men, which I think, you know, really means
Speaker 4: a lot in its moment. And then the other thing
Speaker 4: is that you know, you'd mentioned that, you know, it
Speaker 4: was nominated but didn't win, in this case, the Academy
Speaker 4: Award for Picture that year. Crash one Crash has not
Speaker 4: gone on to have anywhere near those the sort of
Speaker 4: monument mental stature that Broke Back Mountain has, I mean,
Speaker 4: not at.
Speaker 3: All sub zero. I feel like it's honestly most famous
Speaker 3: for the fact that it like could have stole so
Speaker 3: many you know, oscars from superior movies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I attribute that to basically and I'll be
Speaker 4: a little bit mean spirited here, but basically kind of
Speaker 4: go to the kind of the white male liberal politics
Speaker 4: in the Academy was basically sort of like more invested
Speaker 4: in idea of race politics that were available in Crash
Speaker 4: than they were in the more nuanced and subtle and
Speaker 4: actually radical politic that a film like Broke Back Mountain,
Speaker 4: which offers ambiguity and subtlety and you know, all of
Speaker 4: this complexity that I think have only more so built
Speaker 4: Broke Back Mountain's sense of importance in the kind of
Speaker 4: cinematic culture.
Speaker 3: No, we definitely needed the movie that was written and
Speaker 3: directed by a since canceled scientologist that was that was
Speaker 3: the movie that should have So it's so wild to
Speaker 3: look that gud.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But you know, there's a funny thing about this
Speaker 4: film that really is always fascinating me, which is that
Speaker 4: in China and the PRC, Broke Back Mountain came out
Speaker 4: at the moment in which the gray market cinema sort
Speaker 4: of economy was developing around book like copies of non
Speaker 4: Chinese films come back disc on the DVD, and this
Speaker 4: was a hugely important film in China for the distribution
Speaker 4: illegal because the government prohibited it because of its perceived
Speaker 4: on tolerance of dissident sexualities. But that reports and I
Speaker 4: trust them largely because some of my students from China said,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, like my mom love Broke Back Mountain and
Speaker 4: we had a copy of it, you know, at home.
Speaker 4: That because you could buy these things in you know,
Speaker 4: like I say, the gray market economy, and that part
Speaker 4: of the appeal of Broke Back Mountain is that it
Speaker 4: is literally a global piece of filmmaking in as much
Speaker 4: as audiences in lots of different places that I still
Speaker 4: don't know enough about did things with in order to
Speaker 4: sort of embrace this film. And it's, like I say,
Speaker 4: it's interesting ambiguity and complexity, and what my sense of
Speaker 4: the kind of one of the reading formations along Chinese
Speaker 4: audiences was that the film is an allegory about conformism
Speaker 4: and individuality, and that it's about asking what price does
Speaker 4: a person pay in order not to have a life
Speaker 4: that they want to lead credit in independence, and that
Speaker 4: this sort of resonates very strongly with audiences in that context.
Speaker 4: And I love that that sense of yeah, this is
Speaker 4: a subtle work of art that can handle a lot
Speaker 4: of sort of multiple interpretations and never resolve them in
Speaker 4: a way that Let's be honest, I don't think Crash
Speaker 4: really holds up that well.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't seen it, but I can't imagine it.
Speaker 3: You don't need to, Okay, Okay, it doesn't seem worth
Speaker 3: worth the squeeze I I was. I also, I didn't
Speaker 3: do enough of a deep dive on it. But I
Speaker 3: think that yeah, Onlee's connection to the material and how
Speaker 3: this was received because only is Taiwanese. He has said
Speaker 3: many times that even though you know, he's made movies
Speaker 3: that take place in England and in this case, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's hard to find a more white American working class
Speaker 3: setting than where we are, but that all of his
Speaker 3: movies are connected to Taiwan and to who he is,
Speaker 3: and that is how he chooses the stories that he adapts.
Speaker 3: I would be curious to hear how Hulk ties in there,
Speaker 3: But that's not the conversation for today. But but that
Speaker 3: when when he you know, won an Oscar, that the
Speaker 3: way that even on Li has talked about in China
Speaker 3: is very particular and heavily censored. Where he was celebrated
Speaker 3: in China for being like like, look at this Oscar
Speaker 3: winning director, with the caveat that all references to both
Speaker 3: Taiwan and Queerness were removed from his acceptance speech. I
Speaker 3: don't know how long of an acceptance speech that leaves
Speaker 3: you with. I think it just sort of leaves you
Speaker 3: with a sentence but thank you bye, right, hello, and
Speaker 3: it's a lovely speech. But I wanted to mention that
Speaker 3: as well, that you know, Onley has had a really
Speaker 3: fascinating life and career that we don't really have the
Speaker 3: bandwith to talk about in its entirety in this episode.
Speaker 3: But the international reception of this movie is not just
Speaker 3: in connection to the theme, but in connection to the director.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whate thing. I'll also say I can just add
Speaker 4: on in terms of this topic of the genre of itself,
Speaker 4: is that one of the brilliant things that Onley did
Speaker 4: not only him, but he recruited a great cinematographer, on
Speaker 4: Diego on piare Troll to photograph this film, and that
Speaker 4: one of the things that you know, it's so fascinating
Speaker 4: about this movie is that it is usually ravishing in
Speaker 4: terms of its sense of the American weft. You know,
Speaker 4: there's this way you know that's been talked about, is
Speaker 4: that the landscape is one of the characters in the movie,
Speaker 4: and the landscape is in that face of in the
Speaker 4: in the context of the lack of language among the
Speaker 4: sort of you know, human actors, that the world is
Speaker 4: expressing something about what's going on. You know, it has
Speaker 4: this kind of presence, and that the Pietro photographs these
Speaker 4: in a sort of lush I mean, they're just magnificent.
Speaker 4: You just you want to sort of stop the image
Speaker 4: of the like, you know, just look at it in
Speaker 4: terms of its beauty. And that he does this in
Speaker 4: multiple layers of both distance photography and the opening shot
Speaker 4: across them towards the mountain range kind of this sort
Speaker 4: of you know, place of longing and yearning that we'll
Speaker 4: learn about, and then up close when you have these
Speaker 4: beautiful sort of senses of the landscape is the layers
Speaker 4: of trees and green an animals, and that that's really
Speaker 4: necessary in order to not just have this become this
Speaker 4: very claustrophobic domestic drama, but really why these characters want
Speaker 4: to go to, you know, the natural world is to
Speaker 4: escape this enclosure inside you know, those households that do
Speaker 4: feel very very enclosed. And then there's trope of especially
Speaker 4: Ennu's like looking out of windows trying to find his escape,
Speaker 4: you know, to to those vistas. That's really important. And
Speaker 4: I think if if that hadn't been achieved in this film,
Speaker 4: in terms of that sense of the visual presence of
Speaker 4: the landscape as an expression of something about the erotic,
Speaker 4: I don't think the film would have been quite as
Speaker 4: sort of a thing that it does. That it turned into.
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful. I love how he uses like I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's hard to think of a movie that
Speaker 3: more like intentionally uses distance and close like. It's just
Speaker 3: it's gorgeous. And as with a lot of great movies
Speaker 3: about America, it is shot in Canada, which I always
Speaker 3: find delightful. You're just like that, right as far as
Speaker 3: movies are concerned, New York is Vancouver, Wyoming is Alberta.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: Does anyone have any other thoughts about the film?
Speaker 4: The last thing I'll say, in terms of just shout
Speaker 4: outs for all you know the talent involved, is that
Speaker 4: this also does this very you know, it takes a
Speaker 4: budget to do this in any kind of filmmaking anymore.
Speaker 4: Which is it has its scored, It has this gorgeous
Speaker 4: score that wants actually you know, the Guestago Santo Alalo
Speaker 4: score which won many awards. Rightly so, because part of
Speaker 4: this thing that we're describing in terms of this just
Speaker 4: you know, emotional intensity is because of that lack of
Speaker 4: lack of language that you know we've been talking about
Speaker 4: gets articulated musically, and that that score is basically booming,
Speaker 4: you know, with these emotions at these moments of heartbreak
Speaker 4: or rapture. And again, much like the Piatro cinematography, you know,
Speaker 4: if you were to take that score away, it'd be
Speaker 4: a really interesting experiment to kind of go emotionally what
Speaker 4: happens to this film? What happens to this story?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that we've talked about this so many times
Speaker 3: on this show. But this is yet another example of
Speaker 3: the film industry in Hollywood specifically insisting that there isn't
Speaker 3: an audience for this movie because it's about marginalized people.
Speaker 3: And how many I mean this add this to the
Speaker 3: list of examples that has wildly proven this wrong. God,
Speaker 3: I mean, how many this movie made its budget back
Speaker 3: like fifteen times or something like that. And we hear
Speaker 3: that every time there's a movie that is too centered
Speaker 3: around women too, centered around people of color. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the whole story around the production of Black Panther
Speaker 3: and so many other movies that are extremely successful and
Speaker 3: well regarded. And it's because these are movies that actually
Speaker 3: got you know, reasonable budgets and marketing campaigns. It's the
Speaker 3: you know, you don't need us to tell you. If
Speaker 3: you're listening to the show, you probably agree, but that
Speaker 3: it's so infrequent that movies that center marginalized people in
Speaker 3: any way receive the support that they deserve. And when
Speaker 3: they do receive that support, and sometimes when they don't,
Speaker 3: they find their audience because the audience is very much there, and.
Speaker 2: Even when they do extremely well at the box office,
Speaker 2: like Broke Back Mountain did, Hollywood will still be like
Speaker 2: that was a fluke, that was an accident. We can't
Speaker 2: make any movies like that.
Speaker 4: Again, it always seems to be an anomaly, right, Who
Speaker 4: know that this might at sixteen? Right? I think?
Speaker 3: Well, even speaking to your point with Barbie Matthew, it's
Speaker 3: like the takeaway from there is we need to make
Speaker 3: more movies around toy is not that people are interested
Speaker 3: in a diverse cast of women, right right, right?
Speaker 2: I mean also worth noting that after the accolades that
Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain received, the next queer centered story to
Speaker 2: receive a major Academy award was in twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 2: Moonlight won for Best Picture. So over a decade had
Speaker 2: passed before and there was any like Academy Award attention
Speaker 2: for a queer story, And in.
Speaker 3: That context, it really even It turns the fake out
Speaker 3: for Best Picture even more charged. If La La Land
Speaker 3: was about to once again take the oscar from that's right,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like, oh no, another crash moments.
Speaker 3: And thankfully it did not go that way. But oh, Caitlin,
Speaker 3: I remember we were together that night. Never forget where
Speaker 3: you were. Oh my gosh, we were at your friend
Speaker 3: from grad schools apartment.
Speaker 2: What a night that was, truly.
Speaker 3: Anyways, and you know, does Moonlight win without the success
Speaker 3: of Broke Back Mountain proving that queer stories you deserve
Speaker 3: the backing of studios, I don't know. It seems like
Speaker 3: Broke Back Mountain definitely has a massive place in the
Speaker 3: history of American core cinema. Yeah, and that's a I think.
Speaker 3: You know, Onley unquestionably has made a gorgeous movie here,
Speaker 3: And I did notice this is the first time I'd
Speaker 3: really gotten into the production history. How many queer directors
Speaker 3: almost directed this movie and then didn't. And well, nothing
Speaker 3: takes anything away from angle. I think that that is
Speaker 3: kind of a shame that there were at least two
Speaker 3: very famous queer directors who really wanted to make this
Speaker 3: movie and were not able to get to the finish
Speaker 3: line with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I
Speaker 2: don't say no.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's a scene in which two women
Speaker 4: talk to each.
Speaker 3: Other, thinks So I think that this is rectified by
Speaker 3: Grayson Frankie eventually, Grayce and Frankie is about Alma and
Speaker 3: Loreene moving in together in a world war, Jack and
Speaker 3: Ennis get together and then they form a beautiful, fun family.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, But similar to the discussion that was happening around
Speaker 2: Fire Ireland a few years ago, the Bechdel test is
Speaker 2: not It's not relevant here, and it doesn't need to
Speaker 2: be applied to every movie, especially when it's a movie
Speaker 2: that's doing so much else.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think it kind of to some degree,
Speaker 3: and only our dear friend Alison Bechdel could tell us
Speaker 3: for sure. But to say that this movie is any
Speaker 3: less wonderful because it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test flies
Speaker 3: in the face of the part of the Bechdel Test
Speaker 3: that people are less aware of, which is that it
Speaker 3: began as a commentary on how there is no queer
Speaker 3: representation in movies. So it's I think, kind of antithetical.
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't pass the mainstream version, but I
Speaker 3: think in some senses, you know, spiritually, it holds true
Speaker 3: to the reason that the joke existed in the first place,
Speaker 3: which is that there was almost never queer characters that
Speaker 3: were actually canonically queer on screen.
Speaker 2: So, right, you could interpret the Bechdel test as is
Speaker 2: there explicit queer representation on screen totally of characters that
Speaker 2: we don't have to ship together, in which case, yes,
Speaker 2: Broke Back Mountain does pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 3: Which, by the way, again I'm going to start doing
Speaker 3: this on the show, like if you do a cursory.
Speaker 3: I mean, the amount of fan fiction written about Jack
Speaker 3: and Ennis is just overwhelming, overwhelming, to the point where
Speaker 3: I think at one point Annie Poole a little grumpily
Speaker 3: was like, people need to stop writing to me about
Speaker 3: what they think should have happened, okayo, fair enough, but
Speaker 3: also evil love it of evil one, you know, I
Speaker 3: think it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then that brings us to our nipple scale, where
Speaker 2: we rate the movie on a scale of zero to
Speaker 2: five nipples. Examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, it
Speaker 2: is tough. But because the movie examines masculinity in the
Speaker 2: prison therein and its effect on people, and the repression
Speaker 2: that it leads to and the torment that that repression
Speaker 2: leads to, and the fact that it was a significant
Speaker 2: milestone in queer cinema. Is it a perfect film, Perhaps not,
Speaker 2: but it did do so much to pave the way
Speaker 2: for more inclusive and just more representation in general. Does
Speaker 2: it focus on CIS white characters, Yes, but that wouldn't
Speaker 2: be as much of an issue if there were plenty
Speaker 2: of other movies that centered a diverse array of identities
Speaker 2: within the queer community. But even today, there aren't that
Speaker 2: many options, and certainly not in mainstream cinema. You really
Speaker 2: have to dig for them usually. But because of the
Speaker 2: cultural impact this movie did have on queer cinema and
Speaker 2: American cinema in general, I'll give it.
Speaker 3: Like three and a half or four nipples.
Speaker 2: Does that sound nuts to your decision? That's so true
Speaker 2: your decision. I'm gonna do three and a half. I'll
Speaker 2: give them to I'll distribute them between only the screenwriters
Speaker 2: and any proul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I'll go. I'll go three and a
Speaker 3: half or four. I can't really decide, and so I'm
Speaker 3: going to not to decide. But I think, you know,
Speaker 3: speaking to your point, Klyn, that the frustrations that I
Speaker 3: totally understand people may have with this movie, I think
Speaker 3: aren't necessarily criticisms of them, or to me, aren't criticisms
Speaker 3: as much of the movie as of what Hollywood is
Speaker 3: willing to finance and elevate versus what it is. Not sure,
Speaker 3: I think that this story, I appreciate that it is
Speaker 3: very it seems very intentionally written. Where, when and who
Speaker 3: it's about. Going back to the original short story, that
Speaker 3: this movie is entrenched in the white working class masculinity
Speaker 3: of this place and this time that is not incidental
Speaker 3: to the story, and that Annie Poole is commenting on it,
Speaker 3: and I think to some extent the movie is commenting
Speaker 3: on it pretty extensively, less so on whiteness. We are
Speaker 3: sort of presented with a white actor void, I think,
Speaker 3: as we are in many movies, but most of these
Speaker 3: elements are pretty thoroughly commented on. I think that especially
Speaker 3: in the moment that this movie was released, the fact
Speaker 3: that it was as difficult as it was to get
Speaker 3: a movie with a queer couple at its center released,
Speaker 3: it almost feels like the movie how I hope I'm
Speaker 3: articulating this correctly, that often when seeing marginalized identity represented,
Speaker 3: it's starting at almost the most easy difficulty level to
Speaker 3: do so, which is having famous white actors do it
Speaker 3: and almost ideally prove that these are stories that people
Speaker 3: are eager to hear.
Speaker 2: It's like a proof of concept almost, which sucks because
Speaker 2: it's again this is a criticism of Hollywood, of like
Speaker 2: that we're so often told, well, there's no interest in
Speaker 2: anything except action movies starring.
Speaker 3: White CIS guys, right, like overgeneralizing there, but that any
Speaker 3: marginalized story has such a significant barrier to even being
Speaker 3: produced or seen that I think that that is why
Speaker 3: we often see famous CIS, white straight actors at the
Speaker 3: center of stories, and that ideally they're used as a
Speaker 3: successful template for more diverse stories to be told. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that that is necessarily what happens, but I
Speaker 3: do sort of see Broke Back as a building block
Speaker 3: in more diverse queer cinema going mainstream in the years
Speaker 3: that followed. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, totally outside
Speaker 3: of I think, yeah, incredible in its cultural impact, and
Speaker 3: it's just a beautiful movie. It's so, so, so beautiful,
Speaker 3: and I think for two thousand and five for a
Speaker 3: movie to be so faithfully adapted and also expanded on,
Speaker 3: I love the ways that the movie expands on the
Speaker 3: source material really skillfully. Yeah, really beautifully in a way
Speaker 3: that I think works great for our show because it
Speaker 3: a lot of it expands on giving the women more
Speaker 3: interiority and sympathy.
Speaker 7: Then there's like a space for in the original story.
Speaker 3: So I just it is beautiful. I guess I'm gonna
Speaker 3: I'm going to go three point seventy five because I'm
Speaker 3: feeling indecisive, and I will I will distribute it between
Speaker 3: on Leigh Larry McMurtrie, Diana Osana, and Annie Proul.
Speaker 2: Matthew, how about you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think in terms of getting it, you know,
Speaker 4: some kind of assessment around it being intersectionally, you know,
Speaker 4: having an intersectional feminism. I think what I would say
Speaker 4: is it's it comes at it kind of sideways in
Speaker 4: terms of having a kind of feminist critique that relates
Speaker 4: to other kinds of ideas. And we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 4: in terms of how it's racialized without sort of announcing
Speaker 4: that that's what it's working on. It has a class
Speaker 4: politics without necessarily announcing that that that's what it's you know,
Speaker 4: working on. And you know, there's this there's this way
Speaker 4: that I think about it in terms of an intersectional feminism,
Speaker 4: which is that one of the things I think is
Speaker 4: interesting about the film is that it's historical. It says,
Speaker 4: you know, nineteen sixty three to whatever nineteen sixty aid,
Speaker 4: but it's not nostalgic at all or any of that.
Speaker 4: And that that's one of the centerpieces of a lot
Speaker 4: of what I will call sort of reactionary popular culture.
Speaker 4: It's always like a you know, because that's part of
Speaker 4: the current conservative political formation, starting with Reaganism, that you know,
Speaker 4: in the present moment with trump Ism, it's let's go
Speaker 4: back to the past when it was better. This film
Speaker 4: does not do that at all, day right, And so
Speaker 4: part of it's what I would say sort of relationship
Speaker 4: to feminism is that, especially in relation to the women characters,
Speaker 4: that second wave feminism is literally just about to sort
Speaker 4: of emerged as a public discourse in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 4: and it's so needed. It's sort of the film's not nostalgia.
Speaker 4: It's about the constraints around these women and the fact
Speaker 4: that a feminist political project that's about to emerge, and
Speaker 4: you know, with understandings that it's largely a white middle
Speaker 4: class of feminism and in the first iteration of the
Speaker 4: second wave, but that nevertheless that you know that it's
Speaker 4: about thinking about new kinds of possibilities for the lives
Speaker 4: of women, and that you know, the pathos of just
Speaker 4: takes a you know, Alma's situation is that she is
Speaker 4: left high and dry by some sort of disappearing on
Speaker 4: their marriage, and that you know, she has to take
Speaker 4: the initiative and basically sort of like figure out what's
Speaker 4: going to happen next because he he won't and that
Speaker 4: you know, in the utopian world, it would be like
Speaker 4: sort of like why must Alma be reliant on anyone
Speaker 4: to have the life that she would like to have
Speaker 4: to lead or Loreen. For that matter, she does rely
Speaker 4: on her father, who's you know, no role model of patriarchy,
Speaker 4: you know in you know particular you know fight at
Speaker 4: Thanksgiving God. So I think you know, yes, I'm with you.
Speaker 4: I'd say around three nipples would allow me to sort
Speaker 4: of say, I think that it's sort of inadvertent feminism
Speaker 4: still is a kind of intersectional feminism of sorts.
Speaker 2: Totally easly, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: This has been such a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 4: Truly, Oh my pleasure. This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Come back anytime, Yeah, truly, Yeah, bring another favorite.
Speaker 4: Well, if you haven't talked about Grey Gardens, I'm always
Speaker 4: up for that. I have.
Speaker 3: Somehow done that yet, So please come back.
Speaker 4: Sure, and I can do a plug in fact in
Speaker 4: regards to that, which is that a new edition of
Speaker 4: the Greg Gardens book has just come out from the
Speaker 4: British Film Institute. They asked me to update it. The
Speaker 4: first version came out in twenty twelve and they're doing
Speaker 4: a reissue of some of their top titles and so
Speaker 4: they asked me if I would revise it, and so
Speaker 4: I did. And largely what I do is put the
Speaker 4: new version that just came out in the context of
Speaker 4: drag culture and thinking about Grey Gardens, Is this like
Speaker 4: having this presence film in sort of drag performativity now,
Speaker 4: which it didn't as much in twenty twelve?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, please come back for Grey Gardens. That would
Speaker 3: be a blast.
Speaker 4: Yes, please, I would love that anytime.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else you'd like to plug in addition
Speaker 2: to note that's it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, just look for Grey Gardens and it has a
Speaker 4: beautiful new cover of the I mean covers. Yeah, what's
Speaker 4: the big deal. When the first version came out it
Speaker 4: was okay, And then for the re issue they said,
Speaker 4: would you like redesign? If you go google it, you
Speaker 4: can see the beautiful and elegant vision with little Edie
Speaker 4: on the cover. And I think it's much more loving
Speaker 4: and respectful of her than the first edition was.
Speaker 3: I remember the first edition clear, yeah, vividly. Oh this
Speaker 3: is wonderful.
Speaker 2: And let this be a lesson that sometimes you can
Speaker 2: judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 3: People do, whether whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh this is so wonderful. Thank you so much again
Speaker 3: for joining us, Matthew, my pleasure.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You can support us by joining our Patreon aka Matreon.
Speaker 2: It's five dollars a month that gets you access to
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Speaker 2: Cast and with that, shall we It's.
Speaker 3: Always hard to do a send off in a movie
Speaker 3: that ends tragically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we just have to say we quit
Speaker 4: each other?
Speaker 3: And ye, shall we quit this?
Speaker 2: I wish I could quit this episode.
Speaker 3: By bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
Speaker 3: hosted and produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 2: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Speaker 2: Lichtermann and.
Speaker 7: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them? That's me
Speaker 7: and our logo and merch and all of our artwork
Speaker 7: in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever heard of her?
Speaker 3: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
Speaker 3: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
Speaker 3: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
Speaker 3: Aristotle Ascevero.
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