Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, z Eff and Beast start
Speaker 2: changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Hi, everybody, this is Jamie. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Just a quick liner note before this week's reairing of
Speaker 3: an episode we recorded and released last year around my
Speaker 3: birthday about the feminist masterpiece slap Shot. The guest is
Speaker 3: my dad, Mike Loftus, and we're re releasing it this
Speaker 3: week because my dad passed away this week.
Speaker 4: I really hope you enjoyed this episode. It was really
Speaker 4: really special to me that we got to record it
Speaker 4: last year, you know, unbeknownst to you the listener at
Speaker 4: the time. I mean, my dad was battling with lung
Speaker 4: cancer for three years before he passed. And the reason
Speaker 4: that we were together last summer was because he was
Speaker 4: going through chemo and you know, a very stressful time
Speaker 4: and I was hoping to both manufacture a distraction for
Speaker 4: us and selfishly, I just wanted to share what an
Speaker 4: awesome fun person my dad is, and especially with one
Speaker 4: of the topics that he's most passionate about, which is hockey.
Speaker 4: You'll hear him talk about it in the episode. He
Speaker 4: was a local hockey reporter on the Bruins beat for
Speaker 4: the better part of forty years. I'm so proud of
Speaker 4: him and all of this. I mean, everything that I've
Speaker 4: done is because he's made me believe I can do it.
Speaker 4: And whatever you know, you can none of your business.
Speaker 4: All right, I'm gonna save that for the wake. The
Speaker 4: point is, I'm really sad and I am so grateful.
Speaker 4: Although I don't think I can really listen to it
Speaker 4: right now. You should to have this kind of document
Speaker 4: of who my dad was and what he's like, and
Speaker 4: most importantly, kind of how willing he was to do
Speaker 4: one of Jamie's little projects. Just an endlessly supportive person
Speaker 4: that he came on our Radical FuMB in his podcast
Speaker 4: to talk about a hockey movie that we did not
Speaker 4: like very much, but just really special. I'll link in
Speaker 4: the description to a little more about my dad and
Speaker 4: if you're interested, weird as his family accepting donations to
Speaker 4: the American Red Cross because my dad was weirdly obsessed
Speaker 4: with donating blood and all the nurses were like Michael
Speaker 4: has great veins and you're like, okay, whatever, anyways, if
Speaker 4: you're interested in donating to the Red Cross, that was
Speaker 4: something he was very passionate about. And yeah, recording this
Speaker 4: in a hotel room. And I also just quickly wanted
Speaker 4: to shout out my amazing common law spouse and dear
Speaker 4: friend and coworker, Caitlyn Tourante, who has been just so
Speaker 4: endlessly supportive and patient with me and with my family
Speaker 4: as we've been navigating this pretty quietly for the last
Speaker 4: to three years. There's been so many different times where
Speaker 4: I've had to record from a weird place. Fun fact,
Speaker 4: the Birdcage episode, for me, I was in a hospital
Speaker 4: bathroom the whole time. But Caitlin has just been unbelievably
Speaker 4: patient and supportive and I just love them so much.
Speaker 4: And I know you do too because you're listening to
Speaker 4: this show. But special shout out to Caitlin for just
Speaker 4: being themselves and always being a place of respite and patience.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I love this show and so did my family.
Speaker 4: So yeah, rest in power. Michael Patrick LOFTUS nineteen fifty
Speaker 4: nine two twenty twenty four. Not long enough, but we
Speaker 4: have this episode. We have an hour with him, So
Speaker 4: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 5: Happy Birthday, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Boom, slam, punch, slap, inside shot, divorce. Oh,
Speaker 1: so many themes.
Speaker 5: Homophobia, so many themes.
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh.
Speaker 5: M hmm.
Speaker 1: I was really excited that this movie took place. I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, where is Kaitlyn going to
Speaker 1: connect with this movie? There's got to be somewhere. I
Speaker 1: was like, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: It's the Pennsylvania connection.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, okay, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is
Speaker 1: Jamie Laftus.
Speaker 5: My name is Kaitlin Dernte, and this is our show
Speaker 5: where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
Speaker 5: the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping off point to
Speaker 5: initiate much larger, much grander conversations.
Speaker 1: It's true, and the Bechdel Test, of course, is a
Speaker 1: media metric created by Alice and Bechdel as a joke
Speaker 1: as a goof back in the eighties in her comic
Speaker 1: Likes to Watch Out For. It started as just a
Speaker 1: one off joke, but has since become a way to
Speaker 1: talk about how and if women are represented in movies
Speaker 1: and people of marginalized genders in general. A lot of
Speaker 1: versions of the test. The version of the test that
Speaker 1: we observe to start our conversation is the test requires
Speaker 1: that there be two characters with names of a marginalized
Speaker 1: gender talking about something other than men for two lines
Speaker 1: of dialogue.
Speaker 5: Or more or more preferably more often. But it doesn't
Speaker 5: happen that way usually.
Speaker 1: But there's so much to talk about it. It's not
Speaker 1: the be all and endol movie, and today it's exciting.
Speaker 1: It comes but twice a year a birthday episode where
Speaker 1: Kitlin and I really get to go absolutely hogwild on
Speaker 1: on our on our choice of movie, on our choice
Speaker 1: of guest. It's a fun time. And this has been
Speaker 1: an episode that has been It's not an episode that's
Speaker 1: ever been. It's been requested by one person and it's
Speaker 1: no coincidence of that person's guest.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1: Would say it's been Well, Dad, what do you how
Speaker 1: long have you been asking me about this? It's been
Speaker 1: a couple of years.
Speaker 6: Well, how long have you had the show?
Speaker 1: Seven years? Now?
Speaker 6: It hasn't been seven years.
Speaker 1: I would say at least four years.
Speaker 6: Well we've talked about this, I mean in your other
Speaker 6: podcast life when you did the Kathy podcast, you know,
Speaker 6: it was it was a thought that I had that,
Speaker 6: you know, there was this comic. It wasn't for everybody,
Speaker 6: but the more I thought about it, it was kind
Speaker 6: of it was unique first time. You know, it was
Speaker 6: like there really weren't in the comic strips. You know,
Speaker 6: women were moms or girlfriends, maybe teachers, but there was
Speaker 6: never like a single business woman. So I tossed that
Speaker 6: to you, and I guess in the case of slap Shot,
Speaker 6: you know, I sort of was thinking of a Kathy
Speaker 6: thing too, because you know, there are interesting to me,
Speaker 6: you know, representations of women and their stories, and that's
Speaker 6: that's what your cast is all about, you and Caitlyn.
Speaker 6: So I thought, well, you know, throw it out there
Speaker 6: and see what they think.
Speaker 1: And here we are, and sure enough, we're doing it.
Speaker 1: We're covering a slap shot and the guest you just
Speaker 1: heard allan Kitlyn usually introduced the guests, but they have
Speaker 1: generously offered me the opportunity.
Speaker 5: It's your time to shine.
Speaker 1: Jamie, our guest today is a former hockey writer current
Speaker 1: hockey fan. Has been covering hockey since the eighties, been
Speaker 1: playing hockey since the seventies when this movie comes out.
Speaker 1: He's also a proud father to two wonderful children, lifelong
Speaker 1: Brocton residents. A Brockton legend. It's Mike loftis welcome. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the cast.
Speaker 6: Dad, welcome, Jamie. Good to see you, and good to
Speaker 6: see you too, Caitlyn.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listeners. I'm currently in Brockton at my
Speaker 1: dad's house and he's he's downstairs with my equipment. I'm
Speaker 1: upstairs with my phone. We've had a very professional setup.
Speaker 1: It's like we're not even. But he did drive me
Speaker 1: to Dunkin Donuts right before the episode so that I'll
Speaker 1: know on.
Speaker 5: You got to have your birthday dunks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, it's yeah, it's I'm feeling the birthday love.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling thrilled about the birthday. So yeah, my memory
Speaker 1: of I don't remember when you first brought this movie
Speaker 1: up to me for the Bechdel Cast, but you every
Speaker 1: time you're like, I think you would be like if
Speaker 1: I happen to be talking about work, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, Slapshot is written by a woman that was
Speaker 1: just kind of the pitch and it stuck with.
Speaker 5: Me, and you pitched it to me Jamie multiple times
Speaker 5: as well, and it was yeah later.
Speaker 1: Which, to be fair, it's not a personal attack. That's
Speaker 1: how most of our episodes end up happening. We think
Speaker 1: it over for a good two years, and then eventually
Speaker 1: we cover it. I feel like that has become kind
Speaker 1: of our habit.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 1: Anyways, Yeah, we're covering slap shot. It is a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven film is directed by George roy Hill. It
Speaker 1: is written by Nancy Dawd. It stars Paul Newman amongst
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Is. Oh, I learned this. I learned this this
Speaker 1: wearing dad. Caitlyn's horny for Paul Newman and he's very handsome.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh. It's kind of the only thing I'm
Speaker 5: going to be able to contribute this episode. I am
Speaker 5: my thirst for Paul Newman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unbelievable. Focused on men that night, having discourse.
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna be like Paul Newman. Oh woo ga.
Speaker 5: I don't like his character, but I very much enjoy
Speaker 5: looking at his face.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess let's let's get into it. I guess, dad. Uh, Well, actually,
Speaker 1: let's get ours out of the way, kill it. What's
Speaker 1: your history with the movie slap Shot.
Speaker 5: I only know about this movie because of the various
Speaker 5: times Jamie, you've said, my dad wants to come on
Speaker 5: the podcast and cover slap Shot, And okay, that is
Speaker 5: the reason I know this movie exists, Jamie, what's yours?
Speaker 1: I know this movie exists because my dad has told
Speaker 1: me about it. But I also have we've had Hansen
Speaker 1: brother glasses at the house for I remember where we
Speaker 1: have like I think they're on the table next to you, Dad,
Speaker 1: but they're like the Hanson brother like glasses. It is like,
Speaker 1: that's the only part of this movie that I really
Speaker 1: knew about. I had not watched it until the other
Speaker 1: day to prepare for this episode, because you know, I
Speaker 1: criminally have never been very into hockey, and so it
Speaker 1: was not a movie that really appealed to me. But
Speaker 1: I knew the Hanson brothers because they are so ingratiated
Speaker 1: into hockey iconography that we have like glasses that were
Speaker 1: given out of a game with the tape in the
Speaker 1: middle and the hands, and brothers specifically are very iconic
Speaker 1: in hockey culture. I think this movie is too, but
Speaker 1: like more, I think the Hanson brothers are kind of
Speaker 1: the most enduring would Is that right?
Speaker 6: Would you say absolutely? I mean it's you know, you
Speaker 6: brought us some other hockey movies last night. There aren't
Speaker 6: a lot of them. Yeah, you know, there are a
Speaker 6: lot of baseball and football and basketball movies. Hockey's I
Speaker 6: think hockey fans of a certain age say it's it's
Speaker 6: slap shot. And then you know, maybe another generation would
Speaker 6: be the Mighty Ducks. And you know.
Speaker 1: I think we would say more so than Mighty Ducks,
Speaker 1: and then current current generation. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: have a hockey movie.
Speaker 6: I could tell you of a hockey movie.
Speaker 1: But is it good?
Speaker 6: It's goon?
Speaker 5: Yes, Oh, I have heard of this one, Sean William Scott.
Speaker 5: Isn't it? If I'm not mistaken?
Speaker 6: I don't know actors that well, but I think it is.
Speaker 6: I actually I know the gentleman that that film was
Speaker 6: based on. Okay, it's a true story about a guy
Speaker 6: who and and the and the movie does not really
Speaker 6: tell the story of the actual person. But classic that
Speaker 6: was okay. He knew, he knew that was going to happen,
Speaker 6: and he was he was alright with it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I hope they paid him well for the book.
Speaker 6: Rights that might have happened.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a slapshot has not been a huge part
Speaker 1: of my life. But hockey certainly has grew up around
Speaker 1: hockey culture, hockey ideas, hockey labor. Yeah, I have I like.
Speaker 1: I like hockey, I think as much as someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't follow it can.
Speaker 5: I mean, missus Zamboni, I.
Speaker 1: Have a Zamboni tattoo, and I didn't notice until the
Speaker 1: end of the first movie the movie slap Shot Zero.
Speaker 1: Zamboni's Zamboni visibility at an all time low. My favorite
Speaker 1: ice sports movie, as you know, is Ititania. I love Itania.
Speaker 1: Not a single Zamboni and that one either, What the hell?
Speaker 6: I know, it's pretty and you know it's interesting to
Speaker 6: me that, you know, when I sat down to watch
Speaker 6: it again the other night, like and watch it in
Speaker 6: a different way, I didn't realize it was it's a
Speaker 6: two hour movie, yes it.
Speaker 1: Sure, it feels pretty long.
Speaker 6: So so you know, there was plenty of time in
Speaker 6: there for you know, Zamboni, tomfoolery.
Speaker 1: And yet and yueling Zamboni's.
Speaker 6: Well even just a you know, I mean, I don't
Speaker 6: know if we I don't know if this is the
Speaker 6: part where we even bring in little things about the
Speaker 6: the film, but you know, little things, little things that
Speaker 6: the you know, the team does to really really continue
Speaker 6: to whip people in a frenzy, right, like you know,
Speaker 6: parking an ambulance outside of a game. You know before
Speaker 6: it starts, you couldn't have had somebody dress up crazy
Speaker 6: and just like you know drive the zamboni.
Speaker 1: Naked person driving a zamboni. Well, it's a perfect it's
Speaker 1: a perfect rhyme comedy idea. Okay, never mind.
Speaker 6: But you know, an oversight. I agree, Jane good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt strongly about that. I feel like Zamboni's
Speaker 1: are rarely included, to the point where I wonder if
Speaker 1: the company simply objects to it, because it just seems
Speaker 1: like such an easy win. But they're a very kind
Speaker 1: of flatigious Italian family, the Zamboni family, so I've heard
Speaker 1: when I've tried to contact them. Sure, So I like hockey.
Speaker 1: I had never seen Slapshot all the way through, and
Speaker 1: I watched it twice to repair, once with my dad,
Speaker 1: once without and I have I mean, it's so weird
Speaker 1: because I feel like the the reason that I didn't
Speaker 1: like this movie as much as I was hoping to
Speaker 1: it just has mostly to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: I historically don't love like super raunchy comedies, like they
Speaker 1: just have never really appealed to me. But the more
Speaker 1: that I learned about the production of this movie, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff to talk about. Certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of it doesn't age well. We were getting dinner with
Speaker 1: my aunt's last night and my Annie Kate, my dad's sister,
Speaker 1: we've all been you know, hockey pilled over the years,
Speaker 1: and she's like, oh, yeah, I've seen Slapshot. It's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to watch now because it's long and a
Speaker 1: lot of it ages really badly. And I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, so we're all in the same page here.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting. We don't cover a lot of
Speaker 1: movies from the seventies, and I think for a movie
Speaker 1: that a lot of it ages not well. There were
Speaker 1: more women in the story than I was expecting. I
Speaker 1: think more women than your average sports movie in general,
Speaker 1: I would agree, So lots to talk about. Yeah, Dad,
Speaker 1: what's your history with the movie Slapshot? Do you remember
Speaker 1: when you first saw it?
Speaker 6: Well, that it actually came out the year I graduated
Speaker 6: high school nice nineteen seventy seven, which is when I
Speaker 6: was wrapping up my my super average career as a player.
Speaker 1: Okay, give us the rundown. What position did you play? Generally?
Speaker 6: I was a defense defenseman. One goal career statistics one goal,
Speaker 6: one assist, multiple penalty minutes. Knee injuries, yes, one knee surgery,
Speaker 6: one broken nose. Went from there to I coached youth
Speaker 6: hockey with a buddy of mine for a couple of years.
Speaker 6: That was fun.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 6: When I was in college, I started officiating games as
Speaker 6: a way to make a few bucks. And then that
Speaker 6: all dried up and I went into the the you know,
Speaker 6: there was no future in any of that for me,
Speaker 6: but I still just kind of couldn't quit the game,
Speaker 6: and newspapers loved the sports section sports guy, so in
Speaker 6: the in the there I am and like the you know,
Speaker 6: kind of the teeth of the late seventies or when
Speaker 6: there's a lot of people going into journalism because of
Speaker 6: like all the president's men, and you know, everybody wants
Speaker 6: to be a journalist.
Speaker 5: Interesting movies are so influential is that it didn't really.
Speaker 1: Feel like there is an uptick after all the presidents.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense to.
Speaker 6: Me, Oh yeah, definitely, because a person like me who
Speaker 6: would show up and say, yeah, I want to be
Speaker 6: a sports writer. Was like, what that doesn't count? What's
Speaker 6: wrong with you? Yeah? So that that's how That's kind
Speaker 6: of where it comes from. And the interesting little side
Speaker 6: story is the the reason that I even played in
Speaker 6: the first place was that when she was young, before
Speaker 6: she got married, my mom was a huge hockey fan.
Speaker 6: She loved the Bruins. I think she really liked the
Speaker 6: fights a lot. But you know, she got married, she
Speaker 6: had three kids in four years, and at around that time,
Speaker 6: the Bruins in Boston, who had been terrible for a while,
Speaker 6: all of a sudden they got very good. They had
Speaker 6: a great team and a lot of personality, a lot
Speaker 6: of fun, and she couldn't contain herself. She just she
Speaker 6: signed me up, even though I told her I didn't
Speaker 6: want to play so and you know, by the end
Speaker 6: of my first season playing it was kind of all
Speaker 6: I wanted to do.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 6: So there's my does that do now? I don't think
Speaker 6: my mom watched Slapshot with me, but but you know,
Speaker 6: myself obviously and my my hockey friends. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: certain aspects of that movie just from having played on
Speaker 6: a team and everything like that, just kind of you know,
Speaker 6: cracked us up.
Speaker 1: And then just just for listener context, how long did
Speaker 1: you work in sports journalism covering.
Speaker 6: Hockey, specifically covering hockey. I would say I started like
Speaker 6: in nineteen eighty nine. Halfway through that season, I became
Speaker 6: like the full time you know, Bruins beat writer at
Speaker 6: my paper. And I held that job through the twenty
Speaker 6: nineteen twenty season, the last the bubble season, the pandemic season,
Speaker 6: So it was a good It was like thirty something
Speaker 6: years and I and also, you know, as my newspaper changed,
Speaker 6: the industry changed, and I had to you know, I
Speaker 6: always said the Bruins, but I found lots and lots
Speaker 6: of other hockey stories to do. You know here in
Speaker 6: New England and the Boston area is so lots of
Speaker 6: college stories, lots of stories about minor league players, you know,
Speaker 6: draft picks we had, you know, coaches. And one of
Speaker 6: the more interesting things was over my time was the
Speaker 6: growth of like the women's hockey game, which I'm not
Speaker 6: even sure it really existed when I started.
Speaker 5: You know, I just realized I know nothing about it,
Speaker 5: nor did I even realize there was a women's hockey league.
Speaker 1: It's cool. I mean that that you know, obviously you
Speaker 1: know a million times worry about it than me. But
Speaker 1: when when I went to Toronto a couple of months
Speaker 1: ago to do a show with your rock about I
Speaker 1: went to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and it's like
Speaker 1: this big, cool, sprawling museum that has exhibits on women's
Speaker 1: hockey and on non white hockey leagues, and just like
Speaker 1: all all of this cool. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: it is definitely a predominantly white male sport, as our
Speaker 1: most North American sports, but women's women's hockey leagues are
Speaker 1: really really interesting, and I feel like there is I'm
Speaker 1: kind of surprised that there isn't a movie about maybe.
Speaker 1: I mean, listeners feel free to let us know if
Speaker 1: there is one and we just don't know about it.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I've ever seen like movie or
Speaker 1: show explicitly about women's hockey, which feels weird. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's movies about at least one movie about women's
Speaker 1: sports in most major sports.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, but it was, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 6: around here, and I guess, you know, in other places
Speaker 6: where hockey is a thing, you know, the youth and
Speaker 6: high school and college level. You know, women's hockey is
Speaker 6: a thing. You know, almost every almost everybody has a
Speaker 6: team now in college. And the interesting thing to me
Speaker 6: was it has struggled to really get off the ground
Speaker 6: and stay established. But I will say, for like the
Speaker 6: last five or six years has been a women's professional
Speaker 6: hockey league, you know where women you know, it's professional,
Speaker 6: they got paid to play. As the twenty nineteen twenty
Speaker 6: twenty season was winding down before everything shut down because
Speaker 6: of COVID, I always I think about, how interesting is
Speaker 6: that the last athlete that I interviewed face to face
Speaker 6: one on one was a women's professional hockey player. Cool,
Speaker 6: which I thought was you know, I didn't know it
Speaker 6: was going to be the last one. I thought I
Speaker 6: would be going to work the next day.
Speaker 1: But you would have talked to a man.
Speaker 6: No, I was there specifically to do this.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, you're killing it. Everything's so great. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's that's really I am obviously a fan of my dad,
Speaker 1: but I think it's I think I do think it's
Speaker 1: cool that you've covered so many local stories that no
Speaker 1: one that that are not ordinarily covered, especially with I mean,
Speaker 1: like I mean, Caitlin, what you just said is kind
Speaker 1: of proof of that of just like women's like women's
Speaker 1: hockey is absolutely a thing, but it's not covered in
Speaker 1: any sort of broad way.
Speaker 5: Right, Like I've never seen a women's talkie game on TV.
Speaker 5: Not that I'm like actively seeking out sports games.
Speaker 6: You you would more likely find it during like the Olympics.
Speaker 6: It's a it's a yeah, And an issue is that
Speaker 6: the United States is great at it, Canada is great
Speaker 6: at it, but there's you know, they need more international competition.
Speaker 6: It is you know, it's not like there's generations of Swedish, Norwegian,
Speaker 6: you know, European players.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, like Sweden, what are you doing? Hello?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know, right, But I mean it'll come.
Speaker 1: It will when I write my awesome women's hockey movie.
Speaker 5: So let's take a quick break and then we will
Speaker 5: come back for the recap.
Speaker 1: First periods over, you could say.
Speaker 5: And we're back, and now it's the second period. How
Speaker 5: many are there periods? Okay?
Speaker 1: Three? So this kind of works perfect.
Speaker 5: Wow. Yeah, So the thing that I thought was halftime,
Speaker 5: it's probably not actually halftime. There's like two breaks, there's
Speaker 5: the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not really any like manner of halftime show
Speaker 1: for hockey, there's like, uh, well, to guess my zanoni's.
Speaker 1: The Zamboni's are kind of how you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they come out twice and they resurface the ice because
Speaker 1: that's their kind of one purpose. And and sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kids and also local celebs will come out
Speaker 1: on the zamboni and sometimes it's me at the Staples
Speaker 1: Center in January twenty twenty, it was me one time.
Speaker 1: I think we should. I think we should definitely post
Speaker 1: a picture of it to our Instagram.
Speaker 5: Actually absolutely, I think it's.
Speaker 1: Pretty important too. But there's well, there's also I feel
Speaker 1: like there's because there's no cheerleading element to hockey because
Speaker 1: it's on ice. But they have like what do they
Speaker 1: call like it's a group of it's now a gender
Speaker 1: inclusive group, but it's like a they kind of assist
Speaker 1: the zamboni's. It's not really as festive as cheerleading or dancing.
Speaker 1: It's really just like excited sweeping.
Speaker 6: And there are there are some teams that will employ
Speaker 6: people to you know, stand in the stairways and everything
Speaker 6: and cheer.
Speaker 5: Okay, I know that job.
Speaker 1: It seems like a fun job. I wonder if I
Speaker 1: feel like traditionally those jobs are really low paid or
Speaker 1: what the deal is in hockey. But I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I would sweep, I would sweep in shorts.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 5: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Anyways, let's what happens in the movie slap Shot. Then
Speaker 1: let us I.
Speaker 5: Would be delighted to tell you. Okay, we meet a
Speaker 5: minor league, right, minor league hockey team called the Chiefs
Speaker 5: from the fictional town of Charlestown, Pennsylvania, not to be
Speaker 5: confused with Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is where the movie The
Speaker 5: Town famously takes place.
Speaker 1: Well that is kind of the famous town. Wow.
Speaker 5: Okay, so the most seasoned player and also the coach.
Speaker 5: I did not know that the coach of a hockey
Speaker 5: team was also a player. Fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: Can that happen in minor leagues? Is that a thing?
Speaker 6: Yeah? It has been. Player coaches. The lower you go,
Speaker 6: you never know what you're going to see.
Speaker 5: So the coach slash a player is Reggie Dunlop played
Speaker 5: by Paul Newman Albahabbah. And then we meet some other
Speaker 5: players like Ned Brayden. There's a goalie named Denny who
Speaker 5: is French, and everyone makes fun of him for English
Speaker 5: not being his first language.
Speaker 1: I really like his opening monologue that ends like with
Speaker 1: him just poetically describing the penalty bucks and then you
Speaker 1: get free. I was like, whoa, you feel shame and
Speaker 1: then you get free and.
Speaker 5: You're like, whoa, Denny. We also meet Joe McGrath, who
Speaker 5: is the team's manager because he's not the coach, so
Speaker 5: he's the manager.
Speaker 6: Is that right, Mike, Yeah, general managers what you'd call.
Speaker 5: Okay, got it. He has the team do fashion shows
Speaker 5: to promote the games because people aren't coming out as
Speaker 5: much to the games anymore because the Chiefs kind of
Speaker 5: suck and they've been losing a lot. Also, a local
Speaker 5: mill is going to be closing soon in the town
Speaker 5: and it's going to potentially mean that Charlestown will sort
Speaker 5: of dry up and then the team might have to fold,
Speaker 5: So that's looming over everybody. We also meet the Hansen brothers.
Speaker 5: They have just been signed over to the Chiefs. They're
Speaker 5: characterized as being a bunch of dipshits who bring their
Speaker 5: toys with them even though they're adults.
Speaker 1: They're yeah, they're young adults. I don't know. It's like,
Speaker 1: it didn't shock me. That like when they're like eighteen,
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty.
Speaker 5: One something like that, and then you're.
Speaker 1: Just like, yeah, I guess they would bring.
Speaker 5: Their race cars.
Speaker 1: I was subout to say they're not hurting anybody, but
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of their whole banger.
Speaker 5: But they do kind of they are super violent on
Speaker 5: the ice, and then they would later go on to
Speaker 5: form a boy band and sing bop.
Speaker 1: Know, it's so confusing, Like, I God, that is that's
Speaker 1: a good generation gap. It's like, who are the hands
Speaker 1: and brothers to you? Right, because I'm going to umbob
Speaker 1: every time. I didn't know that boomers had their own
Speaker 1: handsome brothers.
Speaker 5: It's true. Okay. So we also meet a few of
Speaker 5: the players' wives. They're his wives, such as Bryden's wife Lily.
Speaker 5: She hates this town. She seems to just kind of
Speaker 5: generally hate her life and possibly her husband. We also
Speaker 5: meet Francine, who is Reggie's ex wife who he is
Speaker 5: trying to win back to know of it.
Speaker 1: My hero, my favorite character, Francine.
Speaker 5: Francine Rocks. So the team they wonder who owns the
Speaker 5: team because they don't know, and Reggie is like, I
Speaker 5: don't know, it's just a corporation and then they're general man.
Speaker 5: That guy Joe reveals that this is the Chief's last season,
Speaker 5: and the players are worried that they won't be signed
Speaker 5: to another team. Some of them feel like they're getting
Speaker 5: too old to like be a valuable asset to another team.
Speaker 5: Reggie thinks that they might get sold and get transferred
Speaker 5: to a new city. He's thinking somewhere in Florida.
Speaker 1: Reggie is such a mess. It is no secret to
Speaker 1: anyone on this call. And I don't care for the
Speaker 1: character of Reggie. Not a fan of his. I think
Speaker 1: it's so like we'll talk about him more obviously later
Speaker 1: in the episode, but I really like, especially the second
Speaker 1: time when I was watching it, it was because he's
Speaker 1: such a piece of shit to everyone, and it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me that like his only redeeming moments
Speaker 1: happen privately, Like he's never publicly nice to anybody. Privately,
Speaker 1: he will say nice things about people hid their back,
Speaker 1: never to their face, and it just like it made me,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was it was an interesting character.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's tricky because it's like I don't think
Speaker 1: the movie is fully I don't know. I mean I
Speaker 1: I think he's like he's a piece of shit and
Speaker 1: also kind of tragic to me in a way, because
Speaker 1: he just seems like someone who needs a friend so badly,
Speaker 1: but like can't stop getting in his own way enough
Speaker 1: to ever like have a friend. Like, there's so many
Speaker 1: characters in this movie that he almost forges a friendship
Speaker 1: with but then turns on them or is a piece
Speaker 1: of shit to them, or like feels insecure for a
Speaker 1: second and says something cruel to them, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: this person is so like it's it's a mess, he's
Speaker 1: an asshole, but it's also like it's sad, Like it's
Speaker 1: like this guy just needs to get out of his
Speaker 1: own way and make a make a friend, but he
Speaker 1: but he can't do it, and it's it's very frustrating
Speaker 1: to watch him abotage himself over and over truly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So he's insecure about the future of the team
Speaker 5: and he goes to this sports writer Dickie Dune aka
Speaker 5: basically Mike loftis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dad, did you feel represented? Dicky done?
Speaker 6: I do like that he's often well just trying to
Speaker 6: catch the spirit of the thing, you know.
Speaker 5: He says this a lot.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, I mean, you know whatever Reggie Dunlop plays him.
Speaker 6: You know, obviously, you know kind of plants this story
Speaker 6: about here we're getting sold when you know that never
Speaker 6: was going to happen, right, So Dickie's Dickie's failure to
Speaker 6: like maybe follow up on that.
Speaker 5: He's not doing very good journalism, yes, because he's doing
Speaker 5: no research.
Speaker 6: But you know he's probably selling some papers, and you know,
Speaker 6: he just it's funny how he just sort of fell
Speaker 6: right into right right into Reggi's reggis trapped there.
Speaker 5: Well, he is charming, he is like charismatics, so people are.
Speaker 1: Like, he is hot, so you should probably.
Speaker 5: Be so hot. So everyone listens to him.
Speaker 6: And that's a great line too where there. You know, Paul,
Speaker 6: you know reggis reading the story. Hey, Dickie Dunn wrote it.
Speaker 6: You know it's true, right.
Speaker 1: Also, Uh, it's it's stereotypes. Uh, sports writers as bad parents.
Speaker 1: His daughter run out and her brother was bullying her,
Speaker 1: and he's like, all right, resolve it among yourselves. Talking
Speaker 1: to Paul Newman.
Speaker 5: I'm doing business right now, I'm mister business.
Speaker 1: Bad representation.
Speaker 6: I think there might have been a drink or two
Speaker 6: there too.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, he said, he said, go away, kids,
Speaker 1: and then he starts drinking again. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: drinking in this movie.
Speaker 5: So much drinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dad, you'll have to explain the seventies.
Speaker 5: So Dickie Dunn is like, that's ridiculous. No one's gonna
Speaker 5: buy a fifth place team, and Reggie is like, well
Speaker 5: that's about to change. Meanwhile, Reggie is having an affair
Speaker 5: with an opponent's wife, his wife, Suzanne, and she tells
Speaker 5: Reggie that she's been sleeping with other women recently, which
Speaker 5: Reggie uses when he plays his opponent the following week.
Speaker 5: This guy named Hanrahan Han Rahn. That will we'll talk
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 1: That'll be a whole thing, because that's it's like, that's
Speaker 1: something that this movie is so constantly infuriating, mostly because
Speaker 1: of regg Yeah, where you're like, oh wow, I would
Speaker 1: guess that that wouldn't be something that would be like
Speaker 1: commonly discussed in a popular movie in the seventies, and
Speaker 1: then in the next scene you're like, well, what was
Speaker 1: the point, Like, if you're just going to.
Speaker 5: Do that, what was the point exactly? Yeah, So Hanrahan
Speaker 5: is the goalie for the other team, and Reggie is
Speaker 5: taunting him and saying, you know your wife is a lesbian.
Speaker 5: But he's using a lot of slurs and it makes
Speaker 5: hanrah Han so mad and distracted that he gets scored
Speaker 5: on a bunch and the Chiefs win, also partly because
Speaker 5: they get very violent and start beating the shit out
Speaker 5: of the other.
Speaker 1: Team, which is sort of like becoming their new Emma
Speaker 1: ohing card.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yes. Meanwhile, we have a scene with Lily.
Speaker 5: She's still having a really hard time. It seems like
Speaker 5: Brandon is cheating on her, and then Reggie tries to
Speaker 5: comfort her, but in a very sleazy way where he's like,
Speaker 5: come over, I'll give you a foot rub.
Speaker 1: He's so frustrating. I'm just like, she h, that's whatever
Speaker 1: I mean. I guess the choice is consistent with Reggie's character,
Speaker 1: but I'm just like, ah, these two characters, they both
Speaker 1: need a friend. Why can't they be friends to each other?
Speaker 1: But it's because Reggie can't.
Speaker 5: He's a creep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he can't not be a creep.
Speaker 5: But he's not even the most creepy guy on the team,
Speaker 5: because that's a guy named.
Speaker 1: Morris's Oh he's a disaster. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Anyway, so the team sees this story in the paper
Speaker 5: that Dicky Dunn had printed about how the Chiefs are
Speaker 5: going to get bought and transferred to Florida, which they're
Speaker 5: very excited about. And so, with the team morale higher
Speaker 5: than ever, the Chiefs start winning a bunch, although again
Speaker 5: they're playing way rougher than normal. There's lots of punching
Speaker 5: and bloody faces and stuff. Although Brayden is opposed to
Speaker 5: playing dirty, he thinks it's cheap and not the right
Speaker 5: way to win, which.
Speaker 1: He'll sort of like built into He's like, I went
Speaker 1: to college. I'm not none of this nonsense. I went
Speaker 1: to college.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm still a piece of shit who's cheating on
Speaker 5: my wife, But I have morals.
Speaker 1: I went to Colin.
Speaker 5: But Reggie is very pro all of this hockey violence,
Speaker 5: and he starts putting the Hansen brothers in the game,
Speaker 5: whose entire strategy is just to punch the ship out
Speaker 5: of their opponents.
Speaker 1: I kind of love the hands, Like, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard not to love the Hansen brothers.
Speaker 5: They're so goofy. They're extremely goofy.
Speaker 1: Wait, my dad's got some some a real a real
Speaker 1: sleigh of a of a context corner for them. But oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I love I love the hands and brothers. They're fun.
Speaker 5: I yeah, they're awesome anyway, So, uh, the team continues
Speaker 5: to speculate who the owner is. Meanwhile, this thing is
Speaker 5: happening where Reggie just like keeps lying about the team
Speaker 5: getting bought and sold to keep the morale up. And
Speaker 5: also maybe he's just like deluding himself because he knows
Speaker 5: that he's about to reach a point where he's probably
Speaker 5: gonna have to retire and he's so insecure and he
Speaker 5: can't deal with it.
Speaker 1: It's so I read this incredible essay about how Reggie
Speaker 1: is a metaphor for the men of Pittsburgh in the seventies. Wow,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, I'm excited to talk about it later.
Speaker 5: Okay, Okay, So then Reggie sees Francene with another guy
Speaker 5: and he's kind of like following her around and calling
Speaker 5: different places that he knows that she frequents to try
Speaker 5: to like see who she's been there with. Very stalker behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's doing I mean he does the same thing
Speaker 1: to Lily. He like jumps in her car at one point,
Speaker 1: like he's just he has no issue really inserting me around.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and he bumps into her at some point,
Speaker 5: and franccene tells Reggie that she's moving to Long Island,
Speaker 5: which I'm like, yes, please get away from him. Then
Speaker 5: there's an upcoming game against Syracuse, so Reggie goes on
Speaker 5: the radio for an interview and he says that he's
Speaker 5: putting a bounty on I don't know if it's that
Speaker 5: team's coach or just kind of like one of their
Speaker 5: star players, this guy Tim McCracken. And he's like, I'm
Speaker 5: paying one hundred dollars of my own money for someone
Speaker 5: to kill him.
Speaker 1: It's such a love bounty. It's kind of fun, right.
Speaker 5: And then there's this player who has given himself the
Speaker 5: nickname Killer, and he's like, I'll do it. I'll kill
Speaker 5: Tim McCracken. Anyway, Lily shows up at Reggie's place with
Speaker 5: her huge Saint Bernard dog. She seems to have left
Speaker 5: Bryden and she has a new lease online.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know it yet.
Speaker 5: He doesn't know it yet, let's see. Then Reggie takes
Speaker 5: Lily to Francine's hair salon and she gets a bit
Speaker 5: of a makeover.
Speaker 1: I have some I have complicated thoughts about that scene
Speaker 1: because I feel like that scene's heart is in the
Speaker 1: right place, but it's kind of broadly done, but I'm
Speaker 1: excited to talk about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then Reggie finally figures out who the
Speaker 5: owner of the Chiefs is and he goes to see him,
Speaker 5: just kidding. It's a woman seemed wit Anita McCambridge, and
Speaker 5: he wants to know how the sale of the team
Speaker 5: is going, but she tells him that she plans to
Speaker 5: fold the team and take a tax loss rather than
Speaker 5: sell it because she won't make enough of a profit
Speaker 5: if she sells the team.
Speaker 1: It's like every single decision, like every streamer is making
Speaker 1: right now. They're like, no, actually, we're deleting your entire
Speaker 1: life and career because it suits me today. Fuck you.
Speaker 5: Yikes. And so this news infuriates Reggie and he brutally
Speaker 5: insults her son and then storms out.
Speaker 1: Classic Reggie, He's like, well, I'm feeling a little insecure
Speaker 1: and angry. Let me insult someone who's not here in
Speaker 1: the cruelest way I can possibly think of. Truly, it's
Speaker 1: kind of his whole thing.
Speaker 5: Then Reggie comes clean to his team. He admits that
Speaker 5: there's no deal for them to be bought and moved
Speaker 5: to Florida. That Ned was right all along. They shouldn't
Speaker 5: be resorting to all of this violence as a way
Speaker 5: to win games. And this is Reggie's last game and
Speaker 5: he's going to play it straight and try to win
Speaker 5: that championship honestly and legitimately. But this is when they're
Speaker 5: playing Syracuse and that team is ready for a bloodbath.
Speaker 5: So the game starts and the Syracuse team are fighting,
Speaker 5: but the Chiefs aren't fighting back, and they're losing. And
Speaker 5: then it's not halftime, it's either after the first or
Speaker 5: second period. But they're like in the locker room and
Speaker 5: their general manager Joe is like, hey, there's a bunch
Speaker 5: of NHL scouts in the crowd, so you have to
Speaker 5: put on a good show for them, and Reggie's like, okay,
Speaker 5: forget everything I said. We're gonna play dirty, and then
Speaker 5: we just like cut to everyone punching each other. Francine
Speaker 5: and Lily show up to the game, and Braiden sees
Speaker 5: his wife and he's.
Speaker 1: Like, wow, this part is where this is where like
Speaker 1: the whole Lily story falls apart from me, where I'm
Speaker 1: like what happened here? So confused about what happens with
Speaker 1: Lily's character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know sure, and I also don't know
Speaker 5: exactly what prompts this. But Braiden goes out on the
Speaker 5: ice while every sudden, well everyone's just punching each other
Speaker 5: and not playing hockey even a little bit, and Brandon
Speaker 5: starts doing a strip tease, and everyone in the crowd
Speaker 5: and all the players are like tee wow, and for.
Speaker 1: Some reason this solves all of the problems in his marriage.
Speaker 1: You're just like, it's very cinematic, but you're just like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, but it's a very movie behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he does the strip tease and it somehow
Speaker 5: wins the game. I don't know if the other team forfits.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happens.
Speaker 6: I could tell you. Yeah, So, as as Ned is
Speaker 6: doing his strip tease, one of the players, one of
Speaker 6: the it might be Tim McCracken, is furious and he's like,
Speaker 6: you know, during the middle of this bloodbath, he starts
Speaker 6: to yell at the official like that's disgusting. Make him stop,
Speaker 6: And the officials like, what do you mean it's disgusting?
Speaker 6: Look at this, and they end up with an argument
Speaker 6: and McCracken or the you know, the hits the official.
Speaker 6: He is no matter how low the miners or whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, you can't hit an official. And he hit him,
Speaker 6: and the officials says, that's it. The game's over. You forfeit,
Speaker 6: you know, got it?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 1: Okay, nice, okay.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of an airbud when they're like, there's
Speaker 5: nothing in the rule book that says a dog can't
Speaker 5: play basketball. It's like, there's nothing in the rule book
Speaker 5: that says a player can't come out and strip to
Speaker 5: win the game.
Speaker 1: Right, you can maybe get a penalty for it.
Speaker 6: Play was stopped at the time, you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's true, so he's basically just doing it. It's like
Speaker 1: that that could have been the the ice sweepers, it
Speaker 1: could have been, could have been anything, and and he
Speaker 1: happened to do that.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I so the way that this movie it's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: We were talking about it when we were watching it
Speaker 1: a couple of nights ago, where it's like this movie
Speaker 1: in the last half of it, like I'd be on
Speaker 1: board and then it would lose me for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: I'd be back for a couple minutes, and then it
Speaker 1: would lose me for ten minutes, and then I kind
Speaker 1: of liked the ending and it was like I didn't
Speaker 1: see I don't like, well whatever, we're at the end, basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like it lost me during this whole game, because
Speaker 1: you're like, why does Ned stripping on ice solve the
Speaker 1: issue of infidelity and them hating it each other? And
Speaker 1: then it seems like, well whatever, Like I'm I didn't
Speaker 1: dislike the scene between Lily and Francine, even though it
Speaker 1: was like whatever channeled into the idea and to a makeover.
Speaker 1: I think you can make the argument that it was
Speaker 1: like she was getting a makeover to feel better about herself.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like it was overtly for her husband
Speaker 1: or for anyone except for herself.
Speaker 5: Because she had already left him by that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like she was she was doing it
Speaker 1: to feel more confident about herself. And I don't have
Speaker 1: an issue with that, but it just seems like it's
Speaker 1: like implied that something happens between Lily and Francine. Off
Speaker 1: screw that leads, because I'm like, I don't even know
Speaker 1: why they show up at that hockey game. It's confusing
Speaker 1: to me because it seems like Lily or Francine's like
Speaker 1: getting Lily gassed up to like get out into the
Speaker 1: world and start her life. Like whether that's dating or
Speaker 1: moving or whatever, it is kind of unclear. But then
Speaker 1: it's like, the next time we see them, they're at
Speaker 1: the hockey game. You're like, when did you guys decide
Speaker 1: to go to the hockey game? Why? It seems like
Speaker 1: the opposite of what Lily was trying to do.
Speaker 5: Right, they should have gone out to dinner.
Speaker 1: They should have gone out to a singles bar.
Speaker 5: Right, and then they could have started a book club together.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know anyway, So we cut to
Speaker 5: a parade. The team I think has disbanded, but the
Speaker 5: players seems like they're getting contracts to go play on
Speaker 5: other teams. Reggie is going to go play in Minneapolis.
Speaker 5: He tries to get Francine to come with him, but
Speaker 5: she's like pass. But Lily and Branden do get back
Speaker 5: together in an infuriating moment.
Speaker 1: Everyone I've never been so split on different characters endings
Speaker 1: where it's like I'm thrilled for Francine and I'm completely
Speaker 1: confused by Lily.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but anyway, but everyone's celebrating at the parade, and
Speaker 5: that's how the movie ends. So let's take another break.
Speaker 5: Second period periods over the big Is there a big
Speaker 5: buzzer in hockey to like signify the end of a period?
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's a siren, you know.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, so a woga will be right back. We're back,
Speaker 5: and it's time for the third period.
Speaker 1: And the third period can go on for a while.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. There's no time limit.
Speaker 1: If things are tight, you know, sometimes sometimes it just
Speaker 1: keeps going.
Speaker 5: Sometimes we go into overtime.
Speaker 6: Overtime, yeah, on the Bechdel cast.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh oh that's exact. Okay, I wonder that's that's
Speaker 1: when we do the are scoring.
Speaker 5: That's oh yeah, that's like the penalty shootout kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Dad, I before we get into the full analysis,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, do you feel that the sport of hockey
Speaker 1: is Like does this feel authentic to because you, I
Speaker 1: mean like we're reporting like on the road with teams
Speaker 1: and reporting from locker rooms for decades. Does this movie
Speaker 1: feel close for the era? Does it feel overblown and
Speaker 1: movie fied? Like how does it square with your experience
Speaker 1: in this arena?
Speaker 6: You know? Hey, you know, it's it's a good question.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think, you know, when I watched that movie,
Speaker 6: everything in it from the hockey standpoint is just an exaggeration.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, yes there is locker room talk,
Speaker 6: but some of the extent that these guys, you know, no,
Speaker 6: I don't think I never heard the violence in games.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's a very very physical game, and I would
Speaker 6: say back in that era that was more of a factor,
Speaker 6: that was more of a strategy than it is now.
Speaker 6: And also to the NHL, it's like any major sport,
Speaker 6: people follow them. There's like the top level and then
Speaker 6: there are different tiers in hockey, the lower that you go,
Speaker 6: you know, you're probably not going to make it, you know,
Speaker 6: you might, you know, move up another level or two.
Speaker 6: So the crazier things, I guess, you know, would tend
Speaker 6: to happen, you know, in the lower miners, smaller towns,
Speaker 6: you know, smaller franchises, things like that. I mean, and
Speaker 6: that's you know, that's kind of where the movie came from. Now.
Speaker 6: Nancy Dowd's brother Ned.
Speaker 1: Ncy the writer.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, So her brother played college hockey
Speaker 6: in Maine and then he played two years a low
Speaker 6: minor professional hockey league, and he would he you know,
Speaker 6: he would tell his sister's stories about the you know,
Speaker 6: the things that happened, and thus the movie. You know,
Speaker 6: so a lot of it, there's a lot of things
Speaker 6: that are based on things that actually did happen. And
Speaker 6: I think that, you know, for film purposes and everything,
Speaker 6: you know, it's it's amplified and exaggerated.
Speaker 1: That's something I mean, I guess that's like a place
Speaker 1: that I would be down to start, is just talking
Speaker 1: a little bit about the behind the scenes process of
Speaker 1: this movie, because I didn't I know that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one fact I knew about this movie other than
Speaker 1: it's where the hands and brother's glasses comes from, is
Speaker 1: what my dad told me five thousand times, which is
Speaker 1: that a woman wrote the movie. It was the fact
Speaker 1: that I knew, but I didn't know I actually really liked.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like it I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I kind of do stuff like that sometimes where Nancy down, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like she heard that her brother was involved in this.
Speaker 1: What was the name of the team that the Chiefs
Speaker 1: are based.
Speaker 6: On, The Johnstown Jets, Okay in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: So that was a team her brother was on. He called,
Speaker 1: basically with the premise to slap shot that this you
Speaker 1: know team was not going to be around for much longer,
Speaker 1: and so she followed them around for a month, and
Speaker 1: she like shadowed them and did basically like Gonzo's style,
Speaker 1: following this minor league team around. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of what she saw went directly into the movie in
Speaker 1: the script, which I think you can argue works for
Speaker 1: and against it because it's like if she's presenting in
Speaker 1: this the late seventies that authentically a lot of it
Speaker 1: doesn't age well because it was, you know, almost fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, but it does seem like that was sort
Speaker 1: of her goal in writing it and what she was
Speaker 1: trying to present. And so I went back to the
Speaker 1: way that this movie was originally covered because it was
Speaker 1: like a hit, It was a box office success, people
Speaker 1: liked it, Paul Newman was in it, and it was
Speaker 1: also like I thought it was interesting that it was
Speaker 1: drawn attention to when the movie came out that these
Speaker 1: were like, quote, I'm just trying to think if there's
Speaker 1: like a contemporary example of this where they were like
Speaker 1: quote unquote, like respectable filmmakers making this raunchy comedy. Because
Speaker 1: the director of this movie, George roy Hill, like he
Speaker 1: directed Butch Cassidy, he'd done all of these like you know,
Speaker 1: really pristine, sensitive, thoughtful prestigie movies, and then later in
Speaker 1: his career makes this super super raunchy comedy. And then
Speaker 1: you have Nancy Dowd who is from Framingham, Massachusetts, representing Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: but grew up you know, like a pretty like upper
Speaker 1: crusty Massachusetts life. She went to Smith College like she
Speaker 1: was like a no one and this was like her
Speaker 1: first success success. She went on after this. Two years
Speaker 1: after this, she won an oscar for a movie called
Speaker 1: Coming Home about Did you see that? Dad?
Speaker 6: I did? Did you like it? It was? It was
Speaker 6: a little challenging to believe. It's very serious. It was
Speaker 6: like a it was kind of like a Vietnam War movie, right,
Speaker 6: and it's you know John Voyd.
Speaker 1: So well it works against it. Yeah, it's no national treasure,
Speaker 1: but no, I.
Speaker 6: Mean it's like speaking of but yeah, because John Boyd.
Speaker 1: Is truly evil. Yeah, but but it felt like these
Speaker 1: prestigee stars, serious writers and directors making this really raunchy,
Speaker 1: goofy comedy. But it was also like my dad. The
Speaker 1: news talked a lot about how like a woman wrote
Speaker 1: the movie in a different context at I'm not criticizing this,
Speaker 1: but I just like most of the coverage of Nancy
Speaker 1: Dawd at this time was like, it's the raunchiest comedy
Speaker 1: of the year and a woa wall will woman wrote it,
Speaker 1: and like which, I think that we still see stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and it's still like the majority of ron
Speaker 1: Gi comedies that come out are not written by I
Speaker 1: don't think that there's really parody. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: parody in film in general, but I think, especially in
Speaker 1: this genre, it still feels super male driven. I feel
Speaker 1: like joy Ride is the only exception I can think
Speaker 1: of this year. But I read some of the coverage
Speaker 1: because I was like, well, how did Nancy Dowd kind
Speaker 1: of feeld this? And I thought she was cool. I
Speaker 1: thought she was really funny and really cool. She says
Speaker 1: this in a New York Times article from nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: This is how it's set up, set up obscenity hockey,
Speaker 1: A woman missed out. Has been meeting so many people
Speaker 1: lately who can't believe that she actually wrote this screenplay,
Speaker 1: that she is beginning to lose her patients, and she says, quote,
Speaker 1: the world has a weird view of women. People seem
Speaker 1: to believe that we have to write about divorce or
Speaker 1: suicide or children so called women's topics. But we've been
Speaker 1: around women aren't sequestered any more, and kind of just
Speaker 1: goes on to talk about how it reminds me of
Speaker 1: like how you still see a lot of women writers
Speaker 1: being like, well, I wish this wasn't the story. Shut up,
Speaker 1: like watch the movie and like it or don't. But
Speaker 1: this movie was, even in its time, considered to be
Speaker 1: pretty sexist. I think Paul Newman called it honestly sexist,
Speaker 1: which I think is an interesting way to come about it.
Speaker 1: And I think I think what he's trying to say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me know if either of you
Speaker 1: feel differently, is that it feels like it's more speaking
Speaker 1: to like how Nancy Dowd was not transcribing dialogue but
Speaker 1: like just sort of saying authentically how guys she was
Speaker 1: hanging out with were talking and not sanitizing what they
Speaker 1: were saying. So it's like she was hanging out with
Speaker 1: sexist guys. The movie is honestly sexist because she's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, sugar making out more appealing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know I would say too that, you know,
Speaker 6: when it came out, you know, and I was whatever,
Speaker 6: eighteen years old. I don't recall knowing that a woman
Speaker 6: wrote it at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just you know, you should have been
Speaker 1: reading the New York Times, well they couldn't shut up
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 6: Reading the Brockton Enterprise, and hoping to one day work
Speaker 6: for the Patriot Ledger. But we were just excited because
Speaker 6: there was a movie about hockey, you know, and it
Speaker 6: was our thing. Really didn't take it that much farther.
Speaker 6: You know. I was surprised when I like looked a
Speaker 6: little bit more into it later on, you know, just
Speaker 6: finding out like little little things about people who were
Speaker 6: in the movie. You know that that got me to look,
Speaker 6: you know, behind this, not behind the scenes, but behind
Speaker 6: the story. And it was like, you know, the only
Speaker 6: thing was like, oh, a woman wrote it. I guess,
Speaker 6: you know. My not reaction to that, But like the
Speaker 6: way I I might come off that way is like
Speaker 6: like if her brother wrote the movie, it'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: of course, you know, like all that dialogue, this and that,
Speaker 6: and it just it just you know, it just wouldn't
Speaker 6: have seemed you know, it's so raunchy. Like I'm not
Speaker 6: saying like anybody can't be raunchy, but it's like you
Speaker 6: know that one character, you know, Kaylin you brought up
Speaker 6: Marris is like it's gross, you know, it's like it's hideous,
Speaker 6: like his h you know, I was saying to Jamie
Speaker 6: it was not like I never heard some of those
Speaker 6: terms before, but like so so rare, you know, and
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, I don't know. I guess in
Speaker 6: an office, you know, on a team, there's always that
Speaker 6: one person that you know takes it a little bit
Speaker 6: farther or just like is extreme.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And as I was as I was watching it the
Speaker 6: other night, it was like I didn't catch, you know,
Speaker 6: in my earlier viewings of it that a lot of
Speaker 6: his teammates are kind of grossed out by him too,
Speaker 6: which is like, well, you know, thank God for that,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it's well, we'll get into this,
Speaker 1: like I I don't know, it's I think that it
Speaker 1: seems like her goal in writing the movie was like
Speaker 1: writing obviously like a movie that people would like that
Speaker 1: was funny, but was also like authentic to what she'd experienced,
Speaker 1: which I don't really have a problem with. I think
Speaker 1: it's more like, especially because this movie has been out
Speaker 1: for almost, you know, fifty years now, like it's interesting
Speaker 1: watching like what parts of this movie are its legacy
Speaker 1: because I feel like the parts that I thought were
Speaker 1: interesting about the movie are not parts of the movie
Speaker 1: that are famous. And also that's like the writer has
Speaker 1: no control over what becomes known about their work or not.
Speaker 1: But it just I don't know. I just think it's
Speaker 1: there was more to this movie than I thought, but
Speaker 1: like the nuanced parts of it aren't what it's known for.
Speaker 5: That Plus like, yeah, she was observing the team, and
Speaker 5: who knows, like if she was like transcribing like stuff
Speaker 5: that they said and putting it into the script or
Speaker 5: if she was in Belle some of it, But it
Speaker 5: seems like for the most part she's like, well, the
Speaker 5: way that Dicky Dunn just tries to capture the spirit
Speaker 5: of the thing, I'm.
Speaker 1: Guessing she's trying to do that.
Speaker 5: Yes, Nancy Dowd was just trying to capture the spirit
Speaker 5: of the thing, and that seems like the spirit was
Speaker 5: a lot of like pretty losersh guys who are either
Speaker 5: creepy or stockery, or they don't treat women well, et cetera.
Speaker 5: That's just the vibe. Those were the vibes she was getting,
Speaker 5: so that's what she put on the page. My concern
Speaker 5: is that a lot of it is presented uncritically and
Speaker 5: or just framed, like Morris saying all of his gross
Speaker 5: comments about women's bodies and stuff like that, is usually
Speaker 5: just framed as a joke like ha ha, look at
Speaker 5: the look at the team creep. Isn't he funny? Aren't
Speaker 5: we laughing at him? Yeah? So, but again it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's the seventies. A lot of horrible things
Speaker 5: we're not presented critically. It was just this is what's normal,
Speaker 5: and it's normal, so that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, it's movies of this era are always,
Speaker 1: I feel like, tricky in that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sorry. I have one more quote from her from this
Speaker 1: New York Times piece. The piece goes on she's generally
Speaker 1: frustrated that the movie was considered to have strong sexist overtones.
Speaker 1: This was something I was talked about in original reviews
Speaker 1: of the movie, but she was annoyed with that. She said,
Speaker 1: quote the only thing I thought twice about writing was
Speaker 1: making the team's rich, uncaring owner a woman. I worried
Speaker 1: about people saying I had made a sexist statement, but
Speaker 1: I've seen that woman's attitude so many times. Quote I
Speaker 1: never let my children see a hockey game, unquote, So
Speaker 1: it seems I mean, whatever she felt, she felt differently,
Speaker 1: And I don't know. It's like, I feel I respect
Speaker 1: what she's trying to do, and I also agree with
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Gayalen is like it just depends on
Speaker 1: like how your movie is received and how like I think,
Speaker 1: if you're looking renuanced in this movie, you can find it,
Speaker 1: but because of the genre, you might not necessarily be
Speaker 1: looking for it.
Speaker 6: I don't know, you know, And I think too like that,
Speaker 6: you know, the fact that the owner is a woman,
Speaker 6: you know, as I was, you know, pitching this idea
Speaker 6: to to Jamie, it's like, I don't think this will pass.
Speaker 6: I think this is like the worst possible. But she's
Speaker 6: she's you know, use the description rich uncaring. It's also
Speaker 6: it's a she's a ruthless, bottom line business person, right,
Speaker 6: and like any guy would have done that, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, in the same you know, but so I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't know that you saw a lot of that
Speaker 6: back then where the I don't know, is it called
Speaker 6: girl boss. I don't want to step in anything here,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you've seen my you've seen my show. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it kind of I think that it does
Speaker 1: fall into that thing. I don't know. I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that that was what was on her mind in
Speaker 1: seventy seven, because I that was one of the characters
Speaker 1: that I didn't think, really I didn't have an issue with.
Speaker 1: I had an issue with how reg treated her versus
Speaker 1: like how she was portrayed, because it was like at
Speaker 1: that point for me, I don't know how you felt
Speaker 1: at this point in the movie, Caitlin, but it was
Speaker 1: like you had seen different kinds of women throughout this
Speaker 1: movie that It's like I feel like sometimes if there's
Speaker 1: only one woman in the movie and she is like
Speaker 1: a ruthless, cruel person, then it's like, well, I have
Speaker 1: no idea how this writer feels about women. This seems
Speaker 1: like how they're presenting all women. But because it's like
Speaker 1: this one character who comes up late in the movie,
Speaker 1: I feel like she represents more of a class thing
Speaker 1: than any sort of commentary on gender. And I was
Speaker 1: fine with that, Like it's you know, she and reg
Speaker 1: and is seen both suck in very very different ways.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that worked for me. I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting that that was the thing that stuck with her
Speaker 1: because I think the thing that stuck with me really
Speaker 1: was I agree, like there there's not any pushback on
Speaker 1: how men talk about women in this movie. I agree
Speaker 1: with you Dad that like they're there. There were some
Speaker 1: that you know, you would but you would have to
Speaker 1: kind of be looking for it of like someone being
Speaker 1: like Hugh because they do like the there. I think
Speaker 1: that the character that is most clearly written in a
Speaker 1: way that the movie is conscious of being sexist is
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you know what the name of
Speaker 1: that character is, Like the one that is who only
Speaker 1: says sexist Morris Morris. Yeah, Yeah, Morris's whole thing is
Speaker 1: that he views women as objects. And it's like that's
Speaker 1: the joke with this character.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And you know, and to go back to go
Speaker 6: back to the point that it's a two hour movie.
Speaker 6: If you cut Marris out right, it becomes a it
Speaker 6: could have been.
Speaker 5: An easier movie to digest, for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I mean, it doesn't really add anything. I
Speaker 6: don't think, you know, it's just it's like it, you
Speaker 6: know again, the scene with the owner and Paul Newman.
Speaker 6: You know, as I think about it now, that's like
Speaker 6: Reg Dunlop, you know, the shoes on the other foot
Speaker 6: now because you know, not because she's a woman, but
Speaker 6: she's the owner and she's telling them like, yeah, I
Speaker 6: could help you and your and your your players, but
Speaker 6: you know, but there's nothing in it for me. There's
Speaker 6: no money in it for me. And when he says,
Speaker 6: you know, we're human beings, you know, that's maybe about
Speaker 6: as you know for all the other scenes where like
Speaker 6: he's sort of vulnerable and he wants you know, France
Speaker 6: scene back. You know, that was a it's a small scene,
Speaker 6: but that's probably you know, his most his most human
Speaker 6: vulnerable moment maybe, you.
Speaker 5: Know, And it could have been a much more effective
Speaker 5: just scene in general or commentary or whatever it's trying
Speaker 5: to do as far as like, yeah, rich people conduct
Speaker 5: and them not caring about human lives and only caring
Speaker 5: about the bottom line. But then the scene ends with
Speaker 5: him going on a homophobic tirade about her young son,
Speaker 5: and then it's just like, well, that undercuts everything that
Speaker 5: could have been interesting about that scene.
Speaker 6: Right, Caitlyn, as you said earlier, the scene where you know,
Speaker 6: he's with the opponent's wife, you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: she explains a very you know, personal thing to him,
Speaker 6: and he seems to be listening and have some you know,
Speaker 6: respect and everything. But then you know, right two seconds
Speaker 6: later and that sets his character everything he can use
Speaker 6: he will use against others, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's that's something that I maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it works for every I mean that maybe has
Speaker 1: a good opportunity to slip over to just read as
Speaker 1: a character. I wonder I'm trying to think I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of like a modern day analog for this character,
Speaker 1: because I do think that there is value in presenting
Speaker 1: a character like this, who is you know, like I struggle,
Speaker 1: like a comp splicated guy, but someone who responds to
Speaker 1: insecurity by being hateful like that is I think something
Speaker 1: that exists in the world. It exists in a lot
Speaker 1: of men, but a lot of people, but mostly men
Speaker 1: if we're being honest. But you know, in general, these
Speaker 1: are people who exist in the world. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's off the table to present that, but presenting it
Speaker 1: as your movie star hero is a very difficult self
Speaker 1: for me because then it's like, I think that the
Speaker 1: element like Paul Newman, I think gives a good performance
Speaker 1: in this movie, but he's Paul Newman. You know, he's
Speaker 1: like you're gonna love him because he's Paul Newman, and
Speaker 1: he's charismatic, and he's handsome, and even when he's saying
Speaker 1: horrible things, especially in the late seventies where people said
Speaker 1: horrible things more openly than they currently do, Like, it's
Speaker 1: just it's even if there is something to be said
Speaker 1: about presenting a character like this, I feel like the
Speaker 1: combination of positioning it as your main character and your hero,
Speaker 1: and also like combining that with he doesn't really I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess like he doesn't get what he wants in
Speaker 1: the way that we see in some movies where like
Speaker 1: someone fucking sucks the whole movie and then for some
Speaker 1: reason they get exactly what they want at the end.
Speaker 1: It's it's a mixed bag for reg at the end.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't say he like he doesn't get his
Speaker 1: uh really, like he gets to continue to work in hockey,
Speaker 1: like he gets part of it. I think the main
Speaker 1: thing he loses is the relationship that he very obviously
Speaker 1: still wants, right and deservedly so, and not I think
Speaker 1: is one of the better done parts of the movie
Speaker 1: for sure. But yeah, I don't know. I struggled with
Speaker 1: how his character was framed.
Speaker 5: I don't know, especially because he learns nothing, he shows
Speaker 5: no growth, and even at the end when it seems like,
Speaker 5: you know what, I don't want to win this way
Speaker 5: by you know, pummeling the other team. I want to
Speaker 5: play hockey and win that way. And then as soon
Speaker 5: as he's like, oh, they're scouts here.
Speaker 1: And it's like never mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's like okay, so you have absolutely no
Speaker 5: code of ethics. That's interesting.
Speaker 6: And again, I mean, I don't know if we're supposed
Speaker 6: to be where we're supposed to be in the discussion.
Speaker 6: But you know, again, the more I thought about it,
Speaker 6: I remember reading a piece several years ago about the
Speaker 6: movie as you know, kind of a not a hockey
Speaker 6: movie or a good but like a sort of a
Speaker 6: snapshot of America kind of at the time, late seventies,
Speaker 6: and you know, I can't really remember what the economy
Speaker 6: was like, you know, but things, you know, longtime businesses.
Speaker 6: You know, longtime industries were really taking you know, a
Speaker 6: hit back there, like the steel industry. And one of
Speaker 6: the things that kind of struck me watching it, it's
Speaker 6: like with everybody depicted in there, even if they're not
Speaker 6: characters in the movie, but like you know, the fans, right,
Speaker 6: they're all looking at losing their jobs because they're you know,
Speaker 6: their jobs are going to disappear. And the players, will
Speaker 6: they get signed, you know, will the team fold? Will
Speaker 6: it you know, they were believing it would get sold.
Speaker 6: To me, there's like this low level desperation you know,
Speaker 6: to survive on the on the parts of everyone there,
Speaker 6: you know, and in the case of Paul Newman's you know,
Speaker 6: Paul Newman being the oldest one, being not really that successful,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, whether this is you know him
Speaker 6: all the time or not, you know, he's he's kind
Speaker 6: of the worst one. He's like, I will I will
Speaker 6: do anything. I'll do whatever it takes, you know, to
Speaker 6: be able to continue my career someplace else or here.
Speaker 6: And if it has to do with you know, kind
Speaker 6: of manipulating my players or manipulating people who are involved
Speaker 6: my players, you know, means to an end pretty much
Speaker 6: all the way through.
Speaker 1: You know, I yeah, I the closest I can get
Speaker 1: to rationalizing Regi's character. I read an essay, an academic essay.
Speaker 1: I was on Google dot scholar dot com.
Speaker 5: Of course.
Speaker 1: Yes, this was published in athlon A E. T. H.
Speaker 1: L O N. Eighth Lawn, The Journal of Sport Literature,
Speaker 1: Volume thirty seven, issue one, from twenty nineteen, written by
Speaker 1: John Source. So take everything he says with a grain AsSalt.
Speaker 1: But I did really appreciate his retrospective view on this movie,
Speaker 1: and I think because it offered because he did a
Speaker 1: more class driven view of the men on this team,
Speaker 1: which I do think is a valuable way of looking
Speaker 1: at this movie. But he basically makes the argument that
Speaker 1: Reggi's character like doesn't shy away from the fact that
Speaker 1: reg is a despicable character, and I do. I guess
Speaker 1: it's like we don't have nineteen seventies than goggles to
Speaker 1: put on. And I wonder how clearly that read at
Speaker 1: the time. But I think that the argument that he
Speaker 1: makes that I think is interesting and kind of speaks
Speaker 1: to like the parts of this movie that did work
Speaker 1: for me was that, you know, I think the setting
Speaker 1: is very relevant here where they're like encapsulated in this
Speaker 1: fictional steel town where jobs are falling left and right.
Speaker 1: There's this huge sense of insecurity about the future, and
Speaker 1: you see in these men on the team a level
Speaker 1: of like people acting desperately when their future is insecure.
Speaker 1: And I think reg is a really extreme, kind of
Speaker 1: like monstrous version of that, where he is so desperate
Speaker 1: to preserve what he wants for his version of the
Speaker 1: future that he will undercut almost anyone in his life,
Speaker 1: even if he likes and respects them. He is not
Speaker 1: above completely selling them out in order to present the
Speaker 1: future that he feels entitled to. And John Stores kind
Speaker 1: of makes the argument that this movie illustrates, well, I
Speaker 1: guess something that is historically true. I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I was delighted to learn it that in times of
Speaker 1: economic insecurity and in recessions and depressions, women are like
Speaker 1: statistically more likely to move with the time, and men
Speaker 1: are more likely to cling to how things were and
Speaker 1: be unwilling to change their situation. They're less likely to
Speaker 1: want to move, they're less likely to want to switch professions.
Speaker 1: They're less likely to want to change the way that
Speaker 1: their day to day life is versus women are far
Speaker 1: more likely to be I guess, like just kind of
Speaker 1: more realistic about what's happening, yea.
Speaker 5: More adaptable.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a line in the movie and in
Speaker 6: the scene where you know, redgch and his opponent's wife
Speaker 6: are in bed, and it closes with I think he's
Speaker 6: telling her, you know, the team's going to fold or
Speaker 6: the team you know, I don't know what I'm going
Speaker 6: to do, and she says to him, you know, just
Speaker 6: just use your imagination. That's what I've been doing. So
Speaker 6: it's you know, and I think he uses that line
Speaker 6: himself later on ye on somebody else, but you know.
Speaker 1: But he's still I mean, but I think that that's
Speaker 1: part of like what is frustrating about the men in
Speaker 1: this movie for me is like they even at the end,
Speaker 1: and I think the movie is conscious of this, Like
Speaker 1: reg has not really changed because his last line is
Speaker 1: him lying about whether his wife is leaving him or not,
Speaker 1: because you know, Lily is like, oh, is she coming
Speaker 1: and he's like yeah, and we know she's not, and
Speaker 1: it's like this it's kind of like a I think
Speaker 1: viewed a certain way, and this is not the way
Speaker 1: that this character is regarded in pop culture. But I
Speaker 1: liked looking at it that way of like, this guy
Speaker 1: is kind of tragic. He can't accept that things are
Speaker 1: changing and that his life is changing, and that is
Speaker 1: something that I think is like very relatable and everyone
Speaker 1: has experienced that to some degree. And also it's like
Speaker 1: if you whatever, because we as the audience know that
Speaker 1: he is just like really committed to having the upper
Speaker 1: hand in his life in a way that's impossible, and
Speaker 1: I just thought it was interesting. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that viewed from that sort of perspective, the men in
Speaker 1: this movie are not flexible. They are completely inflexible and
Speaker 1: they refuse to accept a future that is uncomfortable to them.
Speaker 1: And the women in this movie are not like that.
Speaker 1: They will I mean, I think that the well, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about really shortly because it's like her character
Speaker 1: is so frustrating because I feel like she was inconsistent
Speaker 1: with this. But with the characters of Suzanne, who is
Speaker 1: Suzanne Hanrahan, I'm assuming, and Francine, they are both women
Speaker 1: who are like, look, I was either uncomfortable safe, and
Speaker 1: so I got the fuck out and I moved on
Speaker 1: with my life. And that's like, that's what you have
Speaker 1: to do to survive. And I think it's especially effective
Speaker 1: with Francine because she knows that she's right to leave him.
Speaker 1: I honestly was I thought that the movie would end
Speaker 1: with them getting back together, and I was so thrilled
Speaker 1: that it didn't. Absolutely, it feels like a good fake out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she turns her car around and joins the parade. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, and that was you know again, that was
Speaker 6: a thing that sort of struck me about the movie.
Speaker 6: You know, you know a lot of other movies, that's
Speaker 6: what would have happened. You know, they would have gotten
Speaker 6: together at the end.
Speaker 5: You know, she would have been like, wow, you won
Speaker 5: the trophy at the championship game. Well here's me another trophy.
Speaker 1: Trophy.
Speaker 6: Well, you know happy endings and movies, right, that's.
Speaker 5: The Hollywood does love a happy ending.
Speaker 1: But the last shot of this movie is her driving
Speaker 1: any other direction, and I feel like that's great. That
Speaker 1: was my favorite sort of thread in the movie is
Speaker 1: I felt like, because of the time, and I mean
Speaker 1: this still happens in movies, that they would somehow end
Speaker 1: up reconciling. When she showed up at the game at
Speaker 1: the end, I'm like, well, that's curtains on Franccene, she's
Speaker 1: gonna be fucked over, but rewatching it again knowing that
Speaker 1: she leaves. It's even kind of like cooler. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was my favorite character because she consistently like she has
Speaker 1: affection for her ex husband but also like doesn't want
Speaker 1: to get back together. And I think like in their interactions,
Speaker 1: it was really interesting because Paul Newman's character is constantly
Speaker 1: trying to like manufacture a need that she would have
Speaker 1: for him, where he's he's constantly like, well, if you
Speaker 1: need money, you can call me, and she's like, I
Speaker 1: don't bat like you know, she doesn't need him, and
Speaker 1: he can't, like he knows that at his core because
Speaker 1: he says it behind her back. He never says it
Speaker 1: to her face, but he says behind her back, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: since my wife broke up with me, her life has
Speaker 1: been way better, Like he says that to Lily, So
Speaker 1: it's like he knows it, but he can't really admit it.
Speaker 1: And it's just it felt like an interesting, like complicated
Speaker 1: relationship dynamic that feels like something that happens in the
Speaker 1: real world. And I just like that specific subplot I
Speaker 1: think kind of worked for me. Especially because Francine was like,
Speaker 1: you know, touched that he seemed to recognize that when
Speaker 1: she heard it from a third party. But he's right,
Speaker 1: and she wants to move on with her life and
Speaker 1: she does, and I thought that that was cool. Yes,
Speaker 1: But for some reason, that same nuance in generosity is
Speaker 1: not extended to Lily, which I found to be so weird.
Speaker 1: I'm like, was that a studio note, like two women
Speaker 1: can't leave their husbands? It can just be the one
Speaker 1: like what happened there? Because Lily, I think again, it's
Speaker 1: set up in an interesting way, but then it kind
Speaker 1: of goes away by the ant of the movie.
Speaker 5: Right, it seems like she's being set up to that
Speaker 5: her arc will be, like she's mustering up the courage
Speaker 5: to actually leave her husband, which is something that she
Speaker 5: seems to want to do for a while. She's like
Speaker 5: very vocal about how miserable she is in this town.
Speaker 5: She seems very miserable in the relationship. She's watching her
Speaker 5: husband flirting with other women, and she eventually I don't
Speaker 5: know if there's some catalysts that gets her to finally
Speaker 5: leave him or if it just kind of happens. But
Speaker 5: one day she shows up on. Also the fact that
Speaker 5: she goes to Reggie. I guess he's the only person
Speaker 5: who has like extended any kind of olive Brancher or anything.
Speaker 1: I sort of found that to be an act of
Speaker 1: desperation because we've seen her fail to make friends and
Speaker 1: connections inside of this small world that she's been forced into.
Speaker 5: Kind of right, because we see her hang out with
Speaker 5: other hockey wives for lack of a better term.
Speaker 1: Who to be fair, and I think this is like
Speaker 1: a class thing where she and her husband ned because
Speaker 1: they're like from you know, well to do families, and
Speaker 1: they're both college educated. She is positioned as like smarter, hotter,
Speaker 1: better than the other hockey wives, which didn't feel fair.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, and she's not able to connect with them.
Speaker 5: So anyway, she leaves Bryden for a while and goes
Speaker 5: to Reggie and she's like I'm moving in, I guess,
Speaker 5: and then he takes her. He introduces her to Francine,
Speaker 5: and what I would have liked to have happened was
Speaker 5: they become friends. They have a lot of common ground,
Speaker 5: you know, they're both.
Speaker 1: Which is like established, and the one scene they have together,
Speaker 1: it's like.
Speaker 5: Right, like there's a lot to learn for sure, like
Speaker 5: there are neither like current or former relationships with hockey
Speaker 5: players who don't know how to treat women well at all,
Speaker 5: and the women are sick of it. And I thought
Speaker 5: it was gonna be a situation where Franccene empowers Lily
Speaker 5: to like, you know, strike out on her own, because there's.
Speaker 1: Which it's like, I well, but that's what was so confusing,
Speaker 1: because it felt like, you know, you can. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the makeover thing didn't bother me at all really
Speaker 1: because it's also like we're seeing Susanne or no, sorry,
Speaker 1: we're seeing Francine at her job. So okay. I think
Speaker 1: a lesser movie would have reg be like we gotta
Speaker 1: make this girl over and you know, but like Reg
Speaker 1: right there and Francine and like whatever, it's a dated
Speaker 1: way of doing it. But I was like, okay, but
Speaker 1: then when but then when they go to the hockey game,
Speaker 1: like what happened? Because I really liked that conversation where
Speaker 1: Lily is and again it's like in the context of
Speaker 1: like what I mean, we're well into second wave feminism
Speaker 1: by the late seventies, but leaving your husband in the
Speaker 1: late seventies is different. Than currently, right, and there are
Speaker 1: different dynamics to that, and so I understand why, like
Speaker 1: Lily is nervous about it. It's a nerve wracking experience
Speaker 1: to leave your spouse, no matter what year is happening in.
Speaker 1: But I liked how Francine like she said, it's lousy
Speaker 1: at first you think you're dying, but then it's fabulous.
Speaker 1: You become a new woman and you're like, this is
Speaker 1: such an interesting dynamic to set up, but then it
Speaker 1: just goes nowhere, it goes back nowhere.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and the interesting you know Caitlyn too, I mean,
Speaker 6: like and Jamie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh.
Speaker 6: That's your name, right, Yeah, I agree. Like Lily, you know,
Speaker 6: that whole character sort of confuses me because you know,
Speaker 6: she makes very clear she doesn't like that life. They
Speaker 6: could go back to, you know, something easier with money,
Speaker 6: and she leaves her husband but stays in the life,
Speaker 6: you know, she stays in the town. She goes to
Speaker 6: another hockey person, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like, I do wonder, I mean, but I wondered,
Speaker 1: like if that was just like temporary and then she
Speaker 1: because it was like, I mean, I guess it took Franccene.
Speaker 1: We don't know how long she and REGI been separated,
Speaker 1: or how long Francine had to save or whatever it
Speaker 1: would take for her to start her restart her life
Speaker 1: somewhere else.
Speaker 5: But it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like the movie was setting us up for like, oh,
Speaker 1: Francine could inspire or give Lily the confidence to do
Speaker 1: something similar.
Speaker 6: Yes, coach, I agree, like I empower her coachure so
Speaker 6: that that part was a little bit hard not to
Speaker 6: just off it. It was like, oh, I didn't think
Speaker 6: that was going to be the result of this, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, because then it's like Ned, Ned does not
Speaker 1: change at all. I know that, like symbolically him doing
Speaker 1: the strip tease is supposed to mean something, but it
Speaker 1: just like that did nothing for me at all. I
Speaker 1: found his character frustrating throughout. I mean, as you know that,
Speaker 1: I just like did not take to that character at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't like him. I thought he was both snobby
Speaker 1: and exactly all of the things that he claimed that
Speaker 1: he was above. Like I just I just didn't. I
Speaker 1: thought he's like such a snotty little asshole who is
Speaker 1: horrible to his wife. I didn't know how to communicate
Speaker 1: with her. Again, A legitimate relationship dynamic to explore, but
Speaker 1: like I felt like at the end, he's like, now
Speaker 1: I got my wife back and she's got this cool
Speaker 1: new makeover, and it's like, but you did nothing, You
Speaker 1: did nothing. And the last thing he did before he
Speaker 1: did his weird little routine that I didn't like, was
Speaker 1: like talk shit about her on the radio. And I
Speaker 1: was like, is ay, I'm going to tell her about that, Say,
Speaker 1: we're gonna tell her that he called her a hot
Speaker 1: piece of ass who's an alcoholic that hates him on
Speaker 1: the radio, because I would not be thrilled to hear
Speaker 1: my spouse saying shit like that.
Speaker 5: True, But then I'd be like, but he's exactly right.
Speaker 5: I am a hot who.
Speaker 1: And I'd stop drinking if I if I just left him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. I mean when fran Scene and Lily show
Speaker 5: up to the game at the end, one of them says,
Speaker 5: what am I even doing here? And I'm like, yeah, your.
Speaker 1: Question, what are you even doing there? I wish that
Speaker 1: I knew the answer.
Speaker 6: Well, I think if if Lily wanted to go to
Speaker 6: that last game, she did not really have a lot
Speaker 6: of friends among the other wives. True, you know, so
Speaker 6: you know, like as an ally maybe and there is
Speaker 6: another scene and you know, you know, we've talked mainly
Speaker 6: about the same two three women, but there are some
Speaker 6: scenes with the other wise. Like there's a scene where
Speaker 6: the wives are all in their car waiting for their
Speaker 6: husbands to get home from a bus trip, and I
Speaker 6: thought it's a sort of a sad scene, but in
Speaker 6: the in the same way, they kind of like have
Speaker 6: to kind of you know, form their own little group
Speaker 6: and rally around each other and support each other because
Speaker 6: they clearly are not, you know, too psyched with with
Speaker 6: the life either. And there you know what their husbands
Speaker 6: are doing, and you know that they're gone and this
Speaker 6: and that.
Speaker 5: I wish, since this is mostly an ensemble cast, you know,
Speaker 5: you've got Paul Newman as like the main character, but
Speaker 5: you've got a lot of little subplots with various other characters,
Speaker 5: that there was more focus on the wives of these
Speaker 5: hockey players, because to me, they're in more interesting situations
Speaker 5: than especially because so many of the men are characterised
Speaker 5: as either just being like hot headed or trying to
Speaker 5: prove something about their masculinity, or their sleezy creeps or
Speaker 5: their wildly homophobic you know, all of this stuff that
Speaker 5: I don't want to see. And then the women are
Speaker 5: in this position of you know, it's a time where
Speaker 5: a lot of people in like hetero couples, the women
Speaker 5: were still relying on their husbands for sustainable like for
Speaker 5: his income, and women in the workplace were not as
Speaker 5: welcome as they are today. So it was hard to
Speaker 5: be a single woman or to be, you know, someone
Speaker 5: earning your own way as a woman at that time.
Speaker 5: And so they're relying on these men who are not
Speaker 5: treating them well at all. But it's also very like
Speaker 5: normalized culturally, but they still are like heavily drinking about it.
Speaker 5: There's a scene where.
Speaker 1: I will actually I liked the scene. I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna reference because I yeah, it's I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: put this through because it's like, it's not like there
Speaker 1: were not movies that had women protagonists in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but in sports movies, I know that that was I
Speaker 1: feel like, I don't know, I feel like I feel
Speaker 1: a little defensive of Nancy Dad because I will say
Speaker 1: I do think that in this movie, the men, with
Speaker 1: the exception of reg who at least you see a
Speaker 1: few layers of even though I kind of dislike all
Speaker 1: of them, but you do see different layers of this character,
Speaker 1: so there's like nuance and how he's written. But I
Speaker 1: think that the women that are presented far more broadly
Speaker 1: than the men are, because most of the hockey team,
Speaker 1: except for like Ned and reg are like just like,
Speaker 1: here's this guy, and this is what he does and
Speaker 1: how he reacts. Like here's a sexist guy, here's a
Speaker 1: violent guy, here's a homophobic guy. And you're like, there's
Speaker 1: all these guys and they're written in the very, very
Speaker 1: broad way that men in raunchy comedies are, which is
Speaker 1: kind of why I don't like the genre. But I
Speaker 1: will say that, like, I mean, I even think back
Speaker 1: to like raunchy comedies that came out when we were
Speaker 1: the target audience, and I'm thinking like early hangover movies
Speaker 1: and like John Appatown movies and shit like that, and
Speaker 1: I feel like in this movie you get women, like
Speaker 1: more different kinds of women then you did, like thirty
Speaker 1: years later in some cases. But I think the hockey
Speaker 1: wives are the most broadly written women that appear in
Speaker 1: the movie. And I didn't love that because I feel
Speaker 1: like it in the same way that I didn't like
Speaker 1: when Ned was like a snotty like I went to
Speaker 1: whatever fucking school he went to, and so I'm better
Speaker 1: than most of the guys on this team. Like it's
Speaker 1: just like a moral superiority. And Lily kind of takes
Speaker 1: that into how she treats the hockey wives, where I
Speaker 1: think she treats them kind of as like bimbos who
Speaker 1: aren't as smart as her, and it seems like that
Speaker 1: is a part of the reason that she doesn't hang
Speaker 1: out with them, because it seems like the other hockey wives,
Speaker 1: who I don't know if we get names for them,
Speaker 1: they seem like they I mean, they have a lot
Speaker 1: in common. A lot of what they have in common sucks.
Speaker 1: Is like they are sort of along for the ride
Speaker 1: of their husband's career and it seems isolating and depressing
Speaker 1: and frustrating. And I thought it was she's made a
Speaker 1: joke of but we see the same a few different times.
Speaker 1: Who's constantly like kind of referencing.
Speaker 5: Like Johnny either like Johnny, Yes, Johnny's Who's Johnny. I
Speaker 5: have no idea which flayers Johnny is, but he's one
Speaker 5: of them, one of those.
Speaker 1: But I thought Johnny's wife, like she's played for laughs mostly,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was like, I don't know, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I liked her like she was she was like trying
Speaker 1: to make the best of what she seemed to know
Speaker 1: is a bad situation. But she's like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get my husband to read a book, or like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get my husband to do anything except be
Speaker 1: a fucking goon, which is like whatever, what Like all
Speaker 1: the guys in the team are, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not. Is it the most progressive thing ever? No,
Speaker 1: But I didn't feel like there is, Like she was
Speaker 1: like an interesting character that I wish it had been
Speaker 1: played for more than laughs, because when one of the
Speaker 1: fights that Lily and Ned have in public, you know,
Speaker 1: Lily basically ends by being like me and Ned are
Speaker 1: better than everyone here, bye, and like leaves right and
Speaker 1: Johnny's wife, who God, I wish she had a name
Speaker 1: respond to that by being like, oh, I really feel
Speaker 1: for her, and You're like, that's I don't know, I whatever,
Speaker 1: Like I guess I understood like those it seems like
Speaker 1: it's implied in the movie that those women don't connect
Speaker 1: with each other because of class differences, But I felt
Speaker 1: like the Hockey Wives I thought were played broadly in
Speaker 1: a way that it would have been because I appreciated
Speaker 1: that the movie made time for women at all, which
Speaker 1: again it's like, I like, sports movies almost never do,
Speaker 1: and if you do, it's like the supportive wife like
Speaker 1: grabbing their husband's hand being like go go coach a
Speaker 1: baby or whatever the fuck, which is like so fucking boring.
Speaker 1: But it's like how a lot of women appear in
Speaker 1: sports movies at all. But there was especially because it's
Speaker 1: like Nancy Dad seemed to want to include women, but
Speaker 1: it felt like well to an extent, like I'm happy
Speaker 1: to include educated women, but like it seemed like the
Speaker 1: hockey wives, I just feel like there was room for
Speaker 1: them to be played off as more of kind of
Speaker 1: one liners. But I liked that scene in the car
Speaker 1: where it was like, even though these women don't get along,
Speaker 1: they do have a common struggle and they are pushed
Speaker 1: aside and expected to put up with all of this shit,
Speaker 1: and it's like leading to addiction issues for them.
Speaker 5: And yeah, they all seem to be self medicating to
Speaker 5: fight the just either loneliness or abuse that they're putting
Speaker 5: up with. Can we talk about Suzanne because.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Suzanne.
Speaker 5: So Suzanne is the character. I think she's only in
Speaker 5: one scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is wild because the actor who plays her
Speaker 1: is like so successful and won an Oscar like this
Speaker 1: same year.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, what's her name? I didn't even look it up.
Speaker 1: Belinda Dyllon You probably my dad picked up on this.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, she is she? I think most
Speaker 1: iconically plays the mom in a Christmas Story. But she
Speaker 1: or no, sorry, she was nominated this same year for
Speaker 1: playing I think the mom character in Close Encounters. Okay,
Speaker 1: but whatever. She's like a very very successful actor, but.
Speaker 7: She's only in this movie for one minute, for one scene,
Speaker 7: and it's the scene where she's in bed with Reggie
Speaker 7: and she's talking about how her husband Hanrahan, when he
Speaker 7: was like out on the road for a game, how
Speaker 7: she and another hockey wife they would get together and
Speaker 7: talk about how depressed and lonely they were without the men,
Speaker 7: and then also how they lamented that they never did
Speaker 7: much of anything themselves, which I feel like is also
Speaker 7: maybe what Lily.
Speaker 5: Struggles with to some degree, where she's like, I'm not
Speaker 5: doing anything but like supporting my husband in his career,
Speaker 5: but like, what about or maybe this is just like
Speaker 5: headcanon that I'm assigning to Lily. But anyway, Suzanne's talking
Speaker 5: about how like, oh, I never did anything for myself,
Speaker 5: and then she goes on to describe how one night
Speaker 5: when she and this other hockey wife were hanging out,
Speaker 5: they were drinking and they started fooling around, but then
Speaker 5: they kept getting together and having sex sober, and that
Speaker 5: they were like engaging in this like sexual relationship that
Speaker 5: they were both into. And she's like, hey, Reg, have
Speaker 5: you ever considered sleeping with men? And at first he
Speaker 5: says no, but then he's like, who knows, maybe I'll
Speaker 5: start sleeping with old goalies. And then I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: he's I don't know.
Speaker 1: That scene is like almost and then it's so frustrating.
Speaker 8: But it's also like I feel like that's like Reg sucks,
Speaker 8: and it's like it's so frustrating to see a character
Speaker 8: that in their more private moments seems to be a
Speaker 8: better person than they are in their.
Speaker 5: Public Yeah, right, Because again, the whole reason this scene
Speaker 5: even happens narratively in the movie is that so he
Speaker 5: now has information that he uses against his opponent in
Speaker 5: a way that like outs this guy's wife like disparages
Speaker 5: her for her queerness, and he's like using that as
Speaker 5: ammunition to try to win the game, and like for
Speaker 5: his own personal benefit. He does something similar with the
Speaker 5: general manager, that guy Joe, where he's like, Hey, remember
Speaker 5: that night that you I walked in on you and
Speaker 5: you were wearing like women's lingerie and then you came
Speaker 5: on to me. Well, I don't have to tell anyone
Speaker 5: about that as long as you give me. So he
Speaker 5: basically like blackmails him to learn the owner who the
Speaker 5: owner of the team is.
Speaker 1: That's something that yeah, And then that's like I do
Speaker 1: think the Reges is a super villain because I do
Speaker 1: almost believe him when he says that he like he's like,
Speaker 1: I get it, it's the seventies, queer people exist, Like,
Speaker 1: I do believe that he understands that. But the fact
Speaker 1: that he understands that and is not above exploiting societal
Speaker 1: homophobia against people that he knows and says he likes,
Speaker 1: it's like, that's that's extra evil. That's extra evil.
Speaker 6: And in that scene, you know, like first of all,
Speaker 6: the scene where he you know, kind of bates the
Speaker 6: opponent the goalie, right, you know, with this information that
Speaker 6: he has about his wife, you know, from a hockey perspective,
Speaker 6: you know, nobody, nobody stands on the ice and shouts
Speaker 6: at someone and then moves over.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, they're not shouting plot points at each
Speaker 1: other on the.
Speaker 6: Oh no no, So that that was like annoying because
Speaker 6: some of the you know, some of the stuff with
Speaker 6: the Hanson brothers, the hockey, the skating, the this that
Speaker 6: the hitting you know is legit. Those guys were really
Speaker 6: hockey players. But so Reg Dunlop and rages the goalie
Speaker 6: who attacks him finally after a goal and it's a
Speaker 6: big fight. Now does anybody know at first, like what
Speaker 6: caused this big fight? Did anybody hear what Reggie was saying?
Speaker 6: I don't think so. Just the goalie? Yeah, so he
Speaker 6: he could have left it there on the ice, right,
Speaker 6: But then he comes in and tells his whole team
Speaker 6: like when they asked him, would you say you know?
Speaker 6: And he he out you know someone else that he was.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know that that is diabolical.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's evil, like it's and it's a first because
Speaker 1: I didn't hate their scene together before I saw the
Speaker 1: scene after because it felt like these are themes and
Speaker 1: just like queer people like just appearing in movies at
Speaker 1: all in a way that was like it seemed like
Speaker 1: they both accepted each other in that scene, and like
Speaker 1: the language is not great, but it's like for the time,
Speaker 1: it was like, wow, this it seems very unlikely that
Speaker 1: this was appearing in like popular summer comedies at the time.
Speaker 1: So okay, like you know, I can navigate around the
Speaker 1: dated elements of it, but yeah, it's yeah, he was
Speaker 1: so evil about that. And I feel like she because
Speaker 1: that character never comes back, It doesn't come back around
Speaker 1: in a satisfying way, but in the same way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love her. I like that scene. I think the
Speaker 1: last thing that we were talking about Dad that I
Speaker 1: think is extra evil about Reg in that situation is
Speaker 1: that she mentions in that scene that when her husband
Speaker 1: found out that she had had sex with women, he
Speaker 1: was so abusive to her that she was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, Reg clearly doesn't care about that,
Speaker 1: because he then taunts her husband that he knows to
Speaker 1: be abusive, and she says that like she's hiding out
Speaker 1: from him, Like it's just it sounds like she was
Speaker 1: in this tremendously abusive relationship, which again I believe it
Speaker 1: like seems, you know, whatever that still happens. But the
Speaker 1: fact that like our movie starting Hero then does that,
Speaker 1: I feel like it did undercut the fact that the
Speaker 1: movie went out of its way to say like that
Speaker 1: her having a queer relationship. Not only was he up
Speaker 1: said about being cheated on, but also this thing that
Speaker 1: felt I don't know, I mean that I guess you
Speaker 1: can tell us. For the time, like, there seemed like
Speaker 1: there was talk among the men of just confusion and
Speaker 1: like hateful confusion in handra hand and the whole team's case,
Speaker 1: They're like, well, if my wife has a relationship with
Speaker 1: a woman, then am I gay and I can't be gay?
Speaker 1: And like just like stuff that makes no sense.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was a stretch. I think I don't know
Speaker 6: that that, you know.
Speaker 1: I was like people people believe that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm not sure that, you know, but when I
Speaker 6: was a kid, I don't really think that that is
Speaker 6: what somebody thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, it doesn't make any sense, but yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I was. I was curious about that, but it Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just again, reg Reg sucks. I love Paul
Speaker 1: Newman and I love salad, but I hate reg and
Speaker 1: it is what it is. But I did think that
Speaker 1: it was Again, it's like this this movie feels like
Speaker 1: it's doing incremental stuff in this genre that you don't
Speaker 1: see decades later. So I do appreciate that it's like
Speaker 1: there is a queer character who is like open about
Speaker 1: it is cool, is performed in a way that felt
Speaker 1: authentic and cool. But also the seventies element of it
Speaker 1: is that they're immediately put in danger and then never
Speaker 1: appear in the movie.
Speaker 5: So and you know, she's she's talking about her sexual
Speaker 5: relationship with a woman, but the scene we're seeing on
Speaker 5: screen is her in a sexual situation with a man,
Speaker 5: because heaven forbid we see like queer romance or sexuality
Speaker 5: actually on screen at that time.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, or And it's like I sort of chalked that
Speaker 1: up more to like, well, how did people talk about
Speaker 1: bisexuality in the seventies? Did they know? How did they
Speaker 1: have the tools? I just sort of assumed they did.
Speaker 5: But also like the way that raunchy comedies of like
Speaker 5: the nineties and two thousands would have.
Speaker 1: Which I think are worse than this movie on us.
Speaker 5: They are they Yeah, and we've talked about I think
Speaker 5: I've like speculated as to why, but the way that
Speaker 5: those movies will have visibility of queer characters or of
Speaker 5: people of color, but they're only there to then like
Speaker 5: punching bags to the main characters who are just saying
Speaker 5: horrible things and like making jokes at their expense of
Speaker 5: like what in whatever way they are marginalized, That's that's
Speaker 5: why they're there, and it's so jokes can be made
Speaker 5: at their expense. So and I felt the same way
Speaker 5: for Suzanne, like, yes, she's a queer character who's talking
Speaker 5: openly about her queerness to someone who seems receptive to it.
Speaker 5: But we learned that that scene is only in the
Speaker 5: movie so that this guy can use that as ammunition
Speaker 5: to win a hockey game and then boast about it.
Speaker 5: He's like, yeah, team, the reason we won is because
Speaker 5: I outed this woman who has an abusive husband.
Speaker 9: And anyone who had listened, yeah, that's I think that's
Speaker 9: like that's a good not that it justifies any kind
Speaker 9: of behavior, but the fact that he does it a
Speaker 9: second time, like he shouts it her husband, which is
Speaker 9: putting her in danger in one way, but.
Speaker 1: Then he does it a second time right.
Speaker 5: After, and it's like saying, he's the worst.
Speaker 1: How are you doing that?
Speaker 5: I don't have much else to say except that their
Speaker 5: their bus driver is wearing a helmet with a swastika
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 1: I noticed that as well.
Speaker 6: I never never caught that the first several times I
Speaker 6: watched the movie. You know, Walt Walt, who just goes
Speaker 6: from Walt the bus driver and you know, he's another one.
Speaker 6: He gets all swept and swept up in the you know,
Speaker 6: Chief's mania and starts you know, hammer and the bus,
Speaker 6: you know, to make it look meaner, and then the swastika,
Speaker 6: you know, but that you're.
Speaker 1: Just like, is that? Yeah? That that was a kind
Speaker 1: of jump scare in the movie, and it's like if
Speaker 1: it was. I think maybe the most generous reading of
Speaker 1: that was like, oh, this team is getting more and
Speaker 1: more evil, but they were like, there's so many there's
Speaker 1: no world where that was necessary.
Speaker 5: No, there's also an indigenous player during the final game.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that. Yes, I mean, I
Speaker 1: know obviously you did get spread it up. Yes, which
Speaker 1: in general, because the team in this movie are called
Speaker 1: the Chiefs and there's a lot of and I think
Speaker 1: that that's an ongoing conversation in sports is it is
Speaker 1: teams that are named and characterize Indigenous people as mascots.
Speaker 1: And that's an ongoing conversation also in hockey specifically because
Speaker 1: the Chicago Blackhawks. I mean that I know you know this,
Speaker 1: you know this whole conversation of representing Indigenous people as
Speaker 1: mascots and the issues and conversations that have taken place.
Speaker 1: And also that team is still called the Chicago Blackhawks.
Speaker 1: They did not make any changes after that conversation was had.
Speaker 1: I was trying to happened in the mid twenty times.
Speaker 1: But so this team is named the Chiefs, and there
Speaker 1: is a character in.
Speaker 5: The on the Syracuse team, Yes, what is his Clarence
Speaker 5: swamp Town aka Screaming Buffalo, who is played by a
Speaker 5: real hockey player named Joe Nolan, who is First Nations.
Speaker 1: I was worried that, I was really worried that it
Speaker 1: was a guy in brown.
Speaker 5: A white guy. Yeah, but this is a real Indigenous person,
Speaker 5: a real hockey player. However, the way that the costuming
Speaker 5: and the just characterization of that character is still relying
Speaker 5: heavily on stereotypes of Indigenous and First Nations people.
Speaker 1: So whoops, Yeah.
Speaker 6: That's a tough one, you know, I mean all the
Speaker 6: way down to like I've I said earlier, there was
Speaker 6: so much of the hockey parts of it are like,
Speaker 6: you know, an exaggeration, you know, like almost like a caricature,
Speaker 6: you know of that scene. That's one of the things
Speaker 6: in the in the mood, it's like that never would
Speaker 6: be allowed. You know, he just he that's that's a
Speaker 6: you know. And again it's you know, we've talked to
Speaker 6: you know, if you could snip this guy out and
Speaker 6: this guy out, it really changes thing that was like,
Speaker 6: all right, you've you've made your point. You know that
Speaker 6: the Syracuse team is loaded up on rugged guys, you know,
Speaker 6: to pay you back, you know, like how many did
Speaker 6: you have to have? Right?
Speaker 1: Well? And it's also like I don't think that the
Speaker 1: solution to that is cutting out that character. It's just
Speaker 1: presenting this real life First Nations hockey player in a
Speaker 1: way that wasn't you know, inherently connected to the fact
Speaker 1: that he was a First Nations player. Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have no objection to like having a because because
Speaker 1: like you've mentioned that, there's so many real life hockey
Speaker 1: players that appear in this movie, and Joe Nolan like
Speaker 1: played on a number of teams, including the Johnstown Jets.
Speaker 1: He's from a hockey family. He is uh this is
Speaker 1: according to Hockey Legends dot com scholarly journal. Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: He is Ojibwa. He is the uncle of Buffalo Sabers
Speaker 1: coach Ted Nolan and great uncle of Jordan Nolan of
Speaker 1: the La Kings. So he's like from a like legacy
Speaker 1: hockey family. There's no issue with him being in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's just like presenting him as not inherently connected to
Speaker 1: his like it's just like it's obviously written by a
Speaker 1: white writer of the time, disrespectful and just being like, well,
Speaker 1: this is his heritage, so this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: whole character, and we're going to write it in the
Speaker 1: way like we're going to write him for a white audience.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the most trophy way possible.
Speaker 1: And it would have been cool, Like it would have been
Speaker 1: cool if Joe Nolan was cast in a role that
Speaker 1: was not that like was just like he could have
Speaker 1: played a he could be a guy on that team.
Speaker 1: But just it's obviously racist the way it's sounded.
Speaker 5: Right, with more than fifteen seconds of screen time, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also this is like separate, but I learned about
Speaker 1: it on my trip at the Hockey Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to mention it and we can link
Speaker 1: it in the description of this episode. But just the
Speaker 1: history of Native American and First Nations players within hockey,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be discussed and learned about where
Speaker 1: there are still a number of I mean like there
Speaker 1: are a number of Native players in professional hockey today,
Speaker 1: but there's also a history of hockey in reservation schools,
Speaker 1: and hockey has a role in Canadian reservation schools. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot written about it in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years that I think is very relevant to what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, very interesting, and especially when this Joe
Speaker 1: Nolan came character came up, it was like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: actually a lot of troubling and like relevant Indigenous history
Speaker 1: within hockey that if you're if you're interested, we can
Speaker 1: link a piece that I read below and I learned
Speaker 1: about it. I don't know why I keep plugging the
Speaker 1: Hockey Museum. I thought it was really interesting and we'll
Speaker 1: link it.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 6: Indeed, ironically, I have never been to the Hockey Hall
Speaker 6: of Fame.
Speaker 1: I know it's just like texting you pictures the whole time.
Speaker 5: Where is it Toronto?
Speaker 1: Yes, in Toronto Hockey Hall of Fame. I saw the
Speaker 1: Stanley Cup from a healthy distance, and then I did
Speaker 1: not pay ten dollars to have my picture taken next
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 1: Nice, I took a picture of it from far away.
Speaker 5: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss?
Speaker 6: Well, just because I did all the research, one of
Speaker 6: the one of the one of the interesting things. I mean,
Speaker 6: the people who know this movie would be very frustrated.
Speaker 6: It was like, how could you not talk about?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 6: The interesting things to me are that there really were
Speaker 6: like so the three Hanson brothers. There really were three
Speaker 6: brothers on that Johnstown team. Their last name was Carlson.
Speaker 6: They were all supposed to be in the movie. One
Speaker 6: of them got called up to a better team, so
Speaker 6: they had to replace him with somebody who looked similar.
Speaker 6: His last name was Hanson, and that's that's how they
Speaker 6: named the three the Hansons. But god, it just there's
Speaker 6: there's a lot of little interesting things there. The one
Speaker 6: character that he's like, I want to collect that bounty.
Speaker 6: Who is another person that reg Dunlop, You know, manipulates
Speaker 6: because he's you know, kind of like a peacenik and
Speaker 6: a meditator and everything like that, and all of a
Speaker 6: sudden he becomes Dave Killer Carlson. Well, Dave Killer Carlson
Speaker 6: was a real player, and he replaced the Hanson that
Speaker 6: had to leave. It's just there's a lot of funny
Speaker 6: things in there. So he thought he was going to
Speaker 6: get to play himself, but instead he had to be
Speaker 6: a you know, become like a surrogate brother and be
Speaker 6: in a movie where someone played him. My last favorite
Speaker 6: thing is, you know, I'm no actor, but throughout the
Speaker 6: movie there are references made to this player that everybody's
Speaker 6: fearful of, you know, Ogie oglethorpe Right. Ogie finally shows
Speaker 6: up in that last game, never says a word, scowling
Speaker 6: at everybody in that scene scowling and then fighting. That
Speaker 6: is Ned Dowd, whose sister wrote the movie.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, Nancy Dowd's brother.
Speaker 6: Yes, so Ogie is you know, but I mean, I
Speaker 6: just that scene just cracks me up, just to skating
Speaker 6: out with the you know, chewing the gum and looking
Speaker 6: either aways, you know, but for for that on a
Speaker 6: screen time, just you you know, to sell it. I'm like,
Speaker 6: all right, nice job guy, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I like I think that that's like
Speaker 1: just the I don't know, element of just like how
Speaker 1: she did this sort of immersive approach to researching and
Speaker 1: then seemed to include a lot of people that she'd
Speaker 1: come across or learned about in that research in the movie.
Speaker 1: Like that's I just I don't know, I think that's cool.
Speaker 6: You know, and you know, there are there are elements
Speaker 6: of truth in the two. And then I'll stop talking about.
Speaker 6: You know, the Charlestown Chiefs slash Johnstown Jets that nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy seven season that concluded so they could make the movie.
Speaker 6: The Jets didn't go out of business, but their league folded.
Speaker 6: Oh oh okay, you know, so this this was a
Speaker 6: thing that was happening, and that league had only been
Speaker 6: around for four years. The other thing that's interesting is like,
Speaker 6: you know how outrageous it was that like, why would
Speaker 6: anybody a hockey team in Florida. Well, you know, there
Speaker 6: are professional hockey teams in Florida now, and it's you know,
Speaker 6: it's gone pretty well in a couple of the places.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well I guess that's The last thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to say was that I appreciated that the movie
Speaker 1: went out of its way to connect the struggle of
Speaker 1: this hockey team to what was going on in their community,
Speaker 1: and how like it was just like acknowledging I don't know,
Speaker 1: I felt like because it was done off of this
Speaker 1: very specific reporting in this region or this research I
Speaker 1: guess in this region, it like does reflect the socioeconomic
Speaker 1: problems in the Pittsburgh area in the late seventies and
Speaker 1: connects it to this hockey team in a way that feels,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like class conscious, in a way that
Speaker 1: a lot of sports moviees either aren't or feel like
Speaker 1: overly sort of melodramatic about. It. Just felt like it
Speaker 1: fit very cleanly into this world, and like not only
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like the town and the team because
Speaker 1: it was a minor league team. The team is a
Speaker 1: part of the town, and so they're all sort of
Speaker 1: sharing the same kind of issues.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, that and we you know, were talking about
Speaker 5: this earlier. But how Reggie like, does a bunch of
Speaker 5: you know, like desperate times call for desperate measures and
Speaker 5: under capitalism when you know your livelihood is being threatened
Speaker 5: a lot of people do have to act out of
Speaker 5: desperation and do things that they would maybe not otherwise
Speaker 5: do to survive. But and so in that manifests in
Speaker 5: Reggie as like manipulating people in a way that's like
Speaker 5: extremely harmful. So I guess my point is, like you
Speaker 5: can do things out of desperation because capitalism is killing
Speaker 5: us all without also being extremely homophobic and you know
Speaker 5: all the other things that he does, Like it would
Speaker 5: be one thing if all he did was just like
Speaker 5: lie to his team and like plant that story in
Speaker 5: the sports writer to be like I heard we were
Speaker 5: getting bought by Florida, And if he tells his team
Speaker 5: this and his objective is just to get morale up
Speaker 5: so that they can win and like actually maybe have
Speaker 5: a shot, Like I wouldn't have any problem with that
Speaker 5: really because it's like a not a not a diabolical.
Speaker 1: Lot, but it's a victimless crime, ya.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But the fact that he's doing that plus all
Speaker 5: manner of like blackmailing, homophobia, outing people, all this stuff,
Speaker 5: like that's where I can't.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So you're not just gonna call him all that
Speaker 6: old rascal red show today.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's get through it. This movie, does it
Speaker 1: does well.
Speaker 6: I was so surprised to hear yeah.
Speaker 1: He kept checking with me to make sure that and
Speaker 1: he was like, wait, what so it doesn't. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a flawed metric. It doesn't. Just because it passes doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's a feminist movie.
Speaker 5: Right, because Lily and Francine talk about Lily's hair and
Speaker 5: cheek bones and share and they mentioned share. And then
Speaker 5: there's the other scene where it's Lily and then the
Speaker 5: two other women who I don't think have names, So
Speaker 5: by that caveat it would not pass. But they are
Speaker 5: talking about drinking alcohol and.
Speaker 1: They're talking about addiction problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like yeah, so so.
Speaker 1: It's by the by the skin, it's teeth. But it
Speaker 1: does technically pass. And I feel like I want to
Speaker 1: I want to hand it to this movie as passing
Speaker 1: because of it feels like in many ways the odds
Speaker 1: are stacked against any sports movie about a men's dem
Speaker 1: in passing. I was really surprised that it technically passes.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I can. I mean when I thought
Speaker 6: about it in the you know, you know the theme
Speaker 6: of your cast, I really just thought that this was
Speaker 6: a movie that, you know, crass and guys and thee
Speaker 6: but that the women kind of like stuck up for
Speaker 6: each other other helped each other, didn't always. I mean,
Speaker 6: France scene's great. I mean she tells them like right
Speaker 6: off the bad one of their first scenes, like, you know,
Speaker 6: you're a terrible coach, your teams stay you know, I mean, yeah, right,
Speaker 6: you know so and and you know, and I love,
Speaker 6: like I said, I love most of the last scene.
Speaker 6: I still can't figure out, you know, how Lily and
Speaker 6: Ned end up together. And I agree with you, Caitlin.
Speaker 6: I thought that that the scene with Franccene was going
Speaker 6: to empower her to really go but yeah, you know
Speaker 6: that fran scene, you know, goes her own way. I
Speaker 6: mean it's just, you know, it's sort of her own
Speaker 6: path because she you know, cuts through, cuts through the
Speaker 6: parade and goes down the you know, down the road
Speaker 6: by herself. I just thought it was, you know, that
Speaker 6: that was an element to the movie that shouldn't really
Speaker 6: you know, be overlooked for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, and I do think for especially
Speaker 1: for its time and also for this genre even now,
Speaker 1: it is like unusual for women to be included. Also,
Speaker 1: as much as I hate Ned, he was in twin peaks,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of fun.
Speaker 6: He played hockey at the University of New Hampshire as.
Speaker 1: Well, and we can't take that from them either, of course.
Speaker 6: And it's big time hockey.
Speaker 1: Oh is it?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: See? Okay, now I'm nice, sound like an asshole. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. This movie surprised me in ways. I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting it to. But but we should. We should
Speaker 1: talk about the most important metric on the face of
Speaker 1: the planet, which is our nipkele scale.
Speaker 5: Yes, a scale of zero to five nipples in which
Speaker 5: we rate the movie. That's true, you.
Speaker 1: Heard, Yes, we need to break it down zero.
Speaker 5: To five nipples, rating the movie based on examining it
Speaker 5: through an intersectional feminist lens. Yeah, I'll give this movie
Speaker 5: one nipple for it's a handful of female characters who,
Speaker 5: obviously I wish the movie had done a lot more
Speaker 5: with given more just real estate in the story to Susanne.
Speaker 5: Only being there so that her situation could be used
Speaker 5: as ammunition against her husband is obviously gross, but if
Speaker 5: she had been a more meaningful character. So I guess
Speaker 5: I'm giving it one nipple for the potential that the
Speaker 5: movie mostly squandered. I do appreciate that Francine stands her
Speaker 5: ground in not being willing to get back together with
Speaker 5: her shitty husband. I agree that like most movies would
Speaker 5: have like framed her as like the he's trying, he's trying,
Speaker 5: and that at the end he finally gets her back
Speaker 5: and she's the other trophy he wins. But this movie
Speaker 5: doesn't do that, and that does count for something. Wow,
Speaker 5: the bar is so low, but everything else the movie
Speaker 5: does as far as it's just like rampant homophobia, ablest
Speaker 5: slurs are getting tossed around casually, the treatment of the
Speaker 5: one indigenous character that we see on screen, all that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff. If anyone is looking for a movie
Speaker 5: that features mostly men that is about men who are
Speaker 5: affected by a steel mill closing, might I recommend The
Speaker 5: Full Monty because it handles themes of toxic masculinity and
Speaker 5: things like that in a much more thoughtful way. I
Speaker 5: would say, not about hockey, though it is about men stripping,
Speaker 5: although wow, similar ending because we go slapshot does end
Speaker 5: in a strip tease. So anyway, I I'm glad. I
Speaker 5: guess that this movie at least for like Jamie yours
Speaker 5: and my generation and younger generations. It is not something
Speaker 5: that most people are super aware of. It has not like,
Speaker 5: it hasn't ended up as like this like piece of
Speaker 5: classic Hollywood cinema that you must revisit. It's it doesn't
Speaker 5: have much of a lasting legacy in that way.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean except for hockey fans, where it's not
Speaker 1: a massive leg like in a niche way. It has
Speaker 1: a huge legacy in the general way, not as much true.
Speaker 5: True. Yeah, So one Nipple and I will give it
Speaker 5: to my favorite character, fran scene.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give this movie to Nipples because it's my
Speaker 1: birthday and I know, but I do think that like
Speaker 1: I agree with I mean, we've talked about it at
Speaker 1: length now where this movie is not generous in so
Speaker 1: many ways. It is wildly homophobic the one native character
Speaker 1: it represents, which is also I think that Joe Nolan
Speaker 1: is the only non white character who really appears in
Speaker 1: this movie meaningfully in any way, which again is not necessary,
Speaker 1: especially because of the region you're in. It's like, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of diversity to be found in this region. I
Speaker 1: know that hockey is predominantly a white sport, but it's
Speaker 1: a movie. You can do whatever the fuck you want.
Speaker 1: But I do think that this movie is I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean a sports comedy in the seventies. Having women
Speaker 1: included it at all feels kind of like a miracle
Speaker 1: to me. And having a successful sports movie written by
Speaker 1: a woman feels kind of like a miracle to me
Speaker 1: for this era. And so I want.
Speaker 5: To miracle another hockey movie.
Speaker 1: Hate it, but that's like the exact kind of corny
Speaker 1: ass movie I'm talking about where all the girls are like,
Speaker 1: you've got this baby, and you're like, oh my god. Like,
Speaker 1: I do think that this movie has incredible fault. It's
Speaker 1: like at the end because because we've talked about so
Speaker 1: many broad comedies on this show, and all of the
Speaker 1: swings are huge, and when they hit, they hit, and
Speaker 1: when they're bad, they're awful. They're almost worse than you
Speaker 1: can find in any genre, right, And I think the
Speaker 1: same is true in horror or like any like broad
Speaker 1: niche genre that tends to be true. And so this
Speaker 1: movie is wildly dated. I understand why it is not popular.
Speaker 1: We watched I'm not even recommending it really, I just
Speaker 1: was surprised by the fact that women were presented in
Speaker 1: for the most part, in empathetic way, even though I
Speaker 1: did not agree with how everyone everyone's arc was resolved.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go too, and I'm gonna give one
Speaker 1: different scene because she rocks, and one to Lily because
Speaker 1: she deserved better. And I hope that she you know,
Speaker 1: divorced ned six months later or whatever.
Speaker 5: Fingers crossed?
Speaker 1: Dad, what would you give this movie?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Based on his portrayal of women intersectionally.
Speaker 6: Boy, I have to I have to do this. I'm
Speaker 6: not trained. I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: Whatever feels right in your heart.
Speaker 6: Yes, I guess two just because too, well, no, just
Speaker 6: because too. And I have to pick characters too.
Speaker 5: You can do you can distribute them or you can
Speaker 5: keep them whatever you want to do.
Speaker 6: I mean, I like, I don't know, I just like
Speaker 6: for inscene is A is a great character, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean I like that part of you, know how
Speaker 6: she's like, you know, I don't care if you you know,
Speaker 6: I know you, you know, I know you as a person,
Speaker 6: and you know you know you might be able to
Speaker 6: fool everybody else, you know, but you can't fool me
Speaker 6: anymore and goes the round the way and you know again,
Speaker 6: missus missus Hanrahan I never remember her first. I just
Speaker 6: think that's a touching kind of a but that's that's
Speaker 6: a you know, that's quite a scene with her, and
Speaker 6: it's it's serious and funny, and I just really thought
Speaker 6: that that was a you know, probably back in the
Speaker 6: day it was like, oh, that's a gratuitous thing, you know,
Speaker 6: like look at this thing, but you know, looked at
Speaker 6: now and her story and everything like that, I think that's. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't know what to say. I can't say that
Speaker 6: I think that's great, but you know, I mean, it's
Speaker 6: it's one that like sticks with me anyway, you know.
Speaker 5: I know what you mean. It would be a fine
Speaker 5: scene if the thing that happens after it didn't happen exactly.
Speaker 1: Right, right. That's why it's like this movie is just
Speaker 1: like frustrating in that way where you're like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is representation or like a character you would not normally
Speaker 1: see in a broad comedy, but then they're treated so
Speaker 1: poorly that you're like, well, why why did you go
Speaker 1: out of your way to do that? If you were
Speaker 1: just going to treat them as a plot point and
Speaker 1: never showed them again, which I think is also inherent
Speaker 1: to this genre in the ways that I don't know.
Speaker 1: I found it especially frustrating too, because it's like I
Speaker 1: thought Suzanne was in the one scene she had was
Speaker 1: presented with empathy and she was cool, and it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is really and then like we were talking about,
Speaker 1: like she's treated horrifically and never get to see her again.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happens to her, and the movie
Speaker 1: doesn't really seem to have interest in it because she
Speaker 1: was ultimately just a plot point to get read to
Speaker 1: win to the next step.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So complicated, a more complicated movie than I was expecting.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad we talked about it.
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, and thanks for joining us, sad mister Mike.
Speaker 6: Oh hey, thanks for having me along.
Speaker 1: Happy to do it. Yeah, do you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to plug?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Where can people follow you on Twitter?
Speaker 6: I don't have us. There's no need to follow me
Speaker 6: on Twitter. My uh, my days are done, my days
Speaker 6: of mouthing off, and I just uh, you know which,
Speaker 6: I didn't do that much. I was not I was
Speaker 6: not the king of the hot takes and now I
Speaker 6: am the king of the silent take. I'll just I'll
Speaker 6: just read along with you all. Nice well, well, you
Speaker 6: know I could, I could plug this, you know, this,
Speaker 6: this podcast, a certain book about hot dogs. You know,
Speaker 6: there's always something, but simply.
Speaker 1: Just google a book about hot Yeah. All right, well
Speaker 1: well Dad, I really thank you for for coming on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 6: And I really can't believe you let us. You badgered
Speaker 6: us into doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we did, though I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: my birthday. I'm a dictator and I need to do
Speaker 1: whatever I want.
Speaker 5: Yeah, happy birthday, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 6: This was a way to go, jam Happy birthday.
Speaker 1: I remember he remembered it, and that's no I this
Speaker 1: this episode was very special to me, both of you,
Speaker 1: So thank you. I appreciate it, and I'm really glad
Speaker 1: we got to do it.
Speaker 5: Love you, Jamie, Love you too.
Speaker 6: Way to go, Way to go. Team We did.
Speaker 5: We won, We won the championship game. We won.
Speaker 1: We we randomly did his strip tease and somehow we
Speaker 1: went there.
Speaker 6: The best podcast in the Federal League.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we are kind of and I say this
Speaker 1: with love, we are kind of a minor league podcast.
Speaker 1: And and yet our fan base is intense and they
Speaker 1: fill the stands and we appreciate that we do because
Speaker 1: to be a big podcast, you have to talk about
Speaker 1: murder in a dishonest way and we don't do that.
Speaker 1: We don't. Or you have to be like a fascist,
Speaker 1: so it's fine, or you have to be I know
Speaker 1: a lot about sports and we don't.
Speaker 5: We clearly demonstrated that today that we do not know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, if there was any reason that you both did,
Speaker 8: you both did great.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: You can find us on.
Speaker 5: We Are Nothing without the validation of men.
Speaker 1: It's true of dad.
Speaker 6: Oh no, it's so hard.
Speaker 5: I only I only he's crying.
Speaker 1: He's crying. There. You can find us online up at
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Speaker 1: We'll be covering Little Shop of Horrors and a second
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Speaker 1: not yet decided my second evil pick for the Patreon
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Speaker 6: For that, Caitlin. When it comes, happy birthday to YouTube,
Speaker 6: thank you.
Speaker 5: So much, it will be in about eight months.
Speaker 6: Okay, something like that, so just keep that in mind.
Speaker 6: It's coming. Yeah, I don't want to miss out my chance.
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Speaker 1: And with that, why don't we get on this local
Speaker 1: parade float and lie about our wives leaving us.
Speaker 5: Let's do it. Bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a
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