Speaker 1: On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy Zef and
Speaker 1: Best start changing it with the beck Del cast. Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I just wish that Jamie got her miracle? Are you
Speaker 1: talking about you, Jamie? I'm talking about or I'm talking
Speaker 1: about Jamie Sullivan, Jamie, you know, the one with the
Speaker 1: brown hair. Okay, so you. I hope that she got
Speaker 1: her miracle. I hope that Jamie got her miracle too,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about you specifically. Well she did, it's you.
Speaker 1: I'm your miracle. Oh my god. I this I liked, Okay,
Speaker 1: of all that, there's so many corny moments in A
Speaker 1: Walk to Remember, which is today's episode, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to what this show is in a second. But I
Speaker 1: really some of the like flourish of bad writing, where
Speaker 1: there's like moments in this movie where the line is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's like corny, but it's not bad. But then they'll
Speaker 1: add more to the line and it gets worse, like
Speaker 1: they could the priest should have just said she did,
Speaker 1: but then he said she did dot dot dot and
Speaker 1: like assuming. People in the audience were like, what does
Speaker 1: he mean by that? Because it was you? And and
Speaker 1: then Shane west cost Oh it was me. It was me, Okay, me,
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm never going to stop going to church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bachtel cast a k A church. Uh,
Speaker 1: my name's Jamie Church Church. Oh God, just for for
Speaker 1: one week only. Welcome to the Bechtel Church. My name
Speaker 1: is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Darante. And this
Speaker 1: is our little podcast where we we talked about your
Speaker 1: favorite at least favorite and also other movies using an
Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens, and we use the Bechtel test as
Speaker 1: a jumping off point. It initiates a larger conversation that
Speaker 1: will have and the Bechdel Test, of course, is a
Speaker 1: media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes called
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Wallace Test. Our variation on the test requires
Speaker 1: that two people of any marginalized gender have names speak
Speaker 1: to each other about something other than a man. For
Speaker 1: ideally it's a meaningful, narratively relevant conversation yea which which
Speaker 1: does come into play with this movie in particular, where
Speaker 1: not to blow it. But there are women do speak
Speaker 1: to each other in this movie, but it's never very important.
Speaker 1: It's not very important when they're talking, unless I mean
Speaker 1: they're bullying Mandy Moore. The women are talking to each other,
Speaker 1: they're like, Mandy Moore sucks, and then other girls like,
Speaker 1: I know, I hate her sweater, and you're like, I
Speaker 1: guess that's sort of Narratively, it's relevant. I suppose it is.
Speaker 1: It's relevant because but also for some reason, bullying doesn't
Speaker 1: affect Jamie, because Jamie's are famously impervious to bully. I
Speaker 1: know this from experience, having constantly tried to bully you,
Speaker 1: and it never works. I always just go I do
Speaker 1: with Mandy Mordez, I guess I go, they're so mature,
Speaker 1: they need God. That's what I do whenever someone tries
Speaker 1: to bully me. I said, you should come to my
Speaker 1: dad's church sometime. Yeah. Well, we're doing a walk to
Speaker 1: remember today and we have an incredible guest. That's right.
Speaker 1: She is a comedy producer. You can see her stuff
Speaker 1: at Naked Comedy dot org. It's Sam Farella. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome to me. I don't want to spoil anything either,
Speaker 1: but I do have to say, I think I think
Speaker 1: there was one instance of the bully, of the of
Speaker 1: Jamie being cracked by the bullying, which might also be
Speaker 1: something relative to the name of this podcast. That's true.
Speaker 1: That is true there because Belinda, I believe this movie.
Speaker 1: This movie is so like it's just like bizarre in
Speaker 1: so many ways where I it's the book takes place
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. The movie takes place allegedly in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, but it seems like it's still Everyone
Speaker 1: still looks like it's the nineteen fifties. Everyone's still dressed
Speaker 1: like Greaser's but they have Missy Elliott c ds. It
Speaker 1: was really bizarre, But yeah, there was. There was a
Speaker 1: Becktel test pass where Belinda says want a tik tak
Speaker 1: and Jamie says, no, thanks. There it is right there.
Speaker 1: It is it. If you argue that's not impactful, I
Speaker 1: have an whole essay high completely. This is one of
Speaker 1: those movies that I just simply forgot to pay attention
Speaker 1: to whether or not it passes the Bechdel test. But
Speaker 1: I do remember that exchange, and it's it's crucial to
Speaker 1: understanding the film. Right before some very two thousand and
Speaker 1: two photoshop bullying, which is one which is one of
Speaker 1: the main which I think is one of again one
Speaker 1: of the only things that firmly roots that movie in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, because I swear to God, like I
Speaker 1: think most of the movie could convincingly take place in
Speaker 1: any year in the second half, any decade of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, except they have photoshop, and they have switch
Speaker 1: Foot and they have like that's about it, right, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, Well I this movie. I'm gonna this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a challenge. Uh Sam, what is your history
Speaker 1: with a walk to remember? Well, I have a very
Speaker 1: particular history. That is that I this movie I think
Speaker 1: was one of my first boyfriend's favorite movies. I think
Speaker 1: he was the one that brought it to me, brought
Speaker 1: it to the table, and you know, in high school
Speaker 1: seduction classic move I of course memorized only hope and
Speaker 1: saying it I think a few times, you know, to
Speaker 1: get in the mood. It's very complicated. I have a
Speaker 1: complicated romantic past. But um, definitely on the rewatch, you know,
Speaker 1: toxic Romance definitely made a lot more sense to my
Speaker 1: personal connection to this movie. So you would sing, wait,
Speaker 1: how does the song go and my hands and pray
Speaker 1: to be only yours. I pray to be only yours. No, no,
Speaker 1: you're oh, oh my god beautiful. If I ever had
Speaker 1: an SNL audition, it would be that one song, because
Speaker 1: I rememorized it that like, I've taken singing lessons since
Speaker 1: and tried to learn to sing that song, and they're
Speaker 1: like pointing out the issues. I'm like, but that's how
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore sings it. That's how I know how to
Speaker 1: sing it. That is the beauty of Mandy Moore in
Speaker 1: many ways, where she was a pop star who was
Speaker 1: not necessarily a great singer, but she was like a
Speaker 1: solid high school sopranos, so her songs are like not
Speaker 1: hard to sing if you were in choir, Like anyone
Speaker 1: in choire can sing Mandy Moore's entire discography no problem.
Speaker 1: Though I didn't know till this one, and my you know,
Speaker 1: subsequential obsession of googling a bunch of stuff. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I didn't know the Switchfoot story, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know this was originally a switch Foot song, which
Speaker 1: really blew my mind. It sounds weird. If you wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would guess it's the other way around. They're covering her,
Speaker 1: but no, no, she's covering them. Who is switch Foot?
Speaker 1: What is that? Are they of? Like for real Christian
Speaker 1: band or they This was one of my googles. So
Speaker 1: they have come out as they are Christian and Faith
Speaker 1: not in format. They are not. They do not consider
Speaker 1: themselves Christian music. But it's highly debated online. But Faith
Speaker 1: not in format. Wow, that's good dodgy language. I like that.
Speaker 1: But I guess Mandy Moore was obsessed with them and
Speaker 1: turned the music supervisor of this production onto them, and
Speaker 1: they were like, we gotta have switch Foot. This is
Speaker 1: the sound of the movie. So there's four or five
Speaker 1: songs from Switchfoot on the soundtrack, which in an interview
Speaker 1: so that I watched again, I went real deep. Shane
Speaker 1: West said it might have gone platinum the album for this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. I couldn't um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess Only Hope was a song that they
Speaker 1: had written even before the movie. This was just a
Speaker 1: song of theirs and they were like, that's her song
Speaker 1: for the movie. So at least if you hear a
Speaker 1: man singing it, it does read more Christian than in
Speaker 1: this movie where It is like some sort of sexual
Speaker 1: power play song. Also, the song gets performed in its
Speaker 1: entirety in the movie during a high school production of
Speaker 1: like twenties Mobster. What is that play about? What's going
Speaker 1: on in that play? Why would you sing that at
Speaker 1: a nightclub? Right? I went back to like rewatch the
Speaker 1: set uppre scene, and I still can't make answer tells
Speaker 1: of what sets up that song or why this mobster
Speaker 1: would be her only hope. I he was trying to
Speaker 1: remember a dream and then he got shocked by her
Speaker 1: body and then he just was like the song you
Speaker 1: messing for me? Yeah? Blew, my mind doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the play is about. There's a
Speaker 1: really long montage also where they're rehearsing for the play
Speaker 1: that's like edited in a way where you're like, what
Speaker 1: on earth am I watching? So? Yeah, the play is confusing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Sam, you have a you have a maybe a
Speaker 1: torrid history with this film, Jamie, what's your relationship in
Speaker 1: history with it? Um? It's not quite that level, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty intense where this I I loved this movie
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I don't think I saw
Speaker 1: it in theaters, but there. I remember my cousin telling me,
Speaker 1: which is in retrospect, it was like, this was not nice.
Speaker 1: She was like, she's like, Mandy Moore is in a
Speaker 1: movie and she has your name, and she has the
Speaker 1: same color hair as you. You have to see it.
Speaker 1: What she did not say is that she dies there,
Speaker 1: so so she and so I guess if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen A Walk to remember, Mandy Moore famously dies in
Speaker 1: the movie. But I but I remember like going to
Speaker 1: the movie not being like whenever like nine, not realizing
Speaker 1: that Mandy Moore was doomed, and being like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is so me. I'm not like the other girls.
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie, I have brown hair. And then
Speaker 1: in the like when it becomes clear that she's doomed,
Speaker 1: I was like, this sucks. No one's ever no one's
Speaker 1: And then I've really turned on the movie hard. I
Speaker 1: was like, why would you have why would this be
Speaker 1: the only movie character named after me? And then she
Speaker 1: dies that said, I really I've seen this movie. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in easily ten years, but I saw
Speaker 1: it a lot when I was younger. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I I really I feel like this movie. I was like,
Speaker 1: not raised particularly religious at all, Like we went to church,
Speaker 1: but it just felt like, I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up especially religious, and once I was
Speaker 1: like twelve, we just were like, well, I feel like
Speaker 1: we've done the whole religion thing and we left. But
Speaker 1: this was as close to being religious as I ever got.
Speaker 1: Was being like A Walk to Remember is a really
Speaker 1: powerful story, you know, like it I really loved. I
Speaker 1: had a huge crush on Mandy Moore and Shane West
Speaker 1: and I just I really and oh oh. The other
Speaker 1: thing about this movie was that when I was little,
Speaker 1: I had like a one of those pull out of
Speaker 1: a magazine posters of Mandy Moore, and I forgot I
Speaker 1: feel like I might have brought this up on the
Speaker 1: show years ago, but I had this poster of Mandy
Speaker 1: Moore hanging in my room and I thought that she
Speaker 1: could see me and watch me, and I was so
Speaker 1: scared of the poster. So this would be in that
Speaker 1: time too, where I was like I was, I loved
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore and I wanted her on my wall, but
Speaker 1: I also was really scared of her because I thought
Speaker 1: she knew what I what I was doing amazing, And
Speaker 1: so eventually my mom took the poster down and I
Speaker 1: got mad, but she was just like, let's end this,
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore can't see you. It was it must have
Speaker 1: been one of those like bizarre pictures where it just
Speaker 1: like it. I felt like the eyes were following me.
Speaker 1: That was the thing. It was like a Mona Lisa
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um, so maybe Moore is my Mona Lisa.
Speaker 1: That's my history with the movie, Caitlin, with your history
Speaker 1: with a walk to remember, I don't have an extensive one.
Speaker 1: This movie came out when I was a sophomore or
Speaker 1: junior in high school sometime around then, so I was
Speaker 1: like peak demographic for this movie. But this was also
Speaker 1: when I was very firmly like I don't like girl things,
Speaker 1: no things. So this movie came out and it was
Speaker 1: a huge hit among my friends, and I saw it
Speaker 1: because of that. Probably it's like a sleepover or just
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're hanging out and we watched it
Speaker 1: and I was like, this movie is not for me.
Speaker 1: And that was really the only time I saw it.
Speaker 1: Part of Stone, I am my truly. My heart is
Speaker 1: a lump of coal in my chest, and I have
Speaker 1: no feelings. I'm sure I was like moved by it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know this. That's my history with it
Speaker 1: that I was like, Okay, this movie exists, I'll watch
Speaker 1: it once in two thousand two and then never again.
Speaker 1: So but watching it back was interesting, and I will
Speaker 1: say that it is while it's still has its issues,
Speaker 1: it's less full of issues than I thought it would
Speaker 1: be for a teen movie that comes out in two
Speaker 1: thousand two, I would agree with that. Yeah, it had
Speaker 1: it held up better than I was expecting, which isn't
Speaker 1: to say that it super holds up, but it for
Speaker 1: what it was. Where I like Christian E teen movie
Speaker 1: Nicholas Sparks early two thousand's, you would think that it
Speaker 1: would be much worse than it actually did. I think
Speaker 1: this is my favorite of the Nicholas Sparks adaptations I've seen.
Speaker 1: This remains my favorite one. I um took it upon
Speaker 1: myself to just here's what I'll suggests the listeners do
Speaker 1: google Nicholas Sparks movies, and I think like eleven different
Speaker 1: things come up because he's had many adaptations of his
Speaker 1: novels into movies, and all of the posters will just
Speaker 1: like be right there in front of you all side
Speaker 1: by side every poster is identical. Wait, this is funny.
Speaker 1: You can also google the Nicholas Sparks collection that just
Speaker 1: has all four has like four matching posters as its cover.
Speaker 1: Two straight white people with their heads really close together. Yes,
Speaker 1: either facing away from each other or facing towards each other.
Speaker 1: Like some of them they're like face to face. Other
Speaker 1: ones like the man is behind the woman. They're all
Speaker 1: in some kind of like warm pink or yellow. A
Speaker 1: lot of heads are being grabbed to a lot of
Speaker 1: grabbing of heads. Richard Gear is grabbing Diane Lane's head
Speaker 1: for Knights of Road, Danty. He's like like a real vice.
Speaker 1: Same thing with safe Haven, which is I think Josh Dumel,
Speaker 1: And then I don't know who the lady, who the
Speaker 1: woman is in it. I don't know what half of
Speaker 1: these are. Yeah, I don't know safe Haven. I don't
Speaker 1: know the best of Me. I don't know the Lucky One.
Speaker 1: I don't know the longest ride these there's so many.
Speaker 1: I've seen the Lucky One because I will watch to
Speaker 1: anything that zac Efron is in. Do you guys know
Speaker 1: if the other Nicholas Sparks movies are as religious? I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a clear answer on the Internet. I think
Speaker 1: it's not really because I've I've seen probably half of
Speaker 1: these and the only one I've seen multiple times is
Speaker 1: The Notebook and now A Walk to Remember. But of
Speaker 1: the other ones, I think they're not. The religious over
Speaker 1: or undertones are not quite there the way they are
Speaker 1: in the Walk to Remember, at least for the ones
Speaker 1: I've seen. I kind of wonder where that comes from,
Speaker 1: like because I don't I might have read the book
Speaker 1: when I was in like junior high or something. I
Speaker 1: don't remember anything about it. I know a lot was changed,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if like the book is as like
Speaker 1: bonking you with the like have faith in people message,
Speaker 1: because I know that she was religious the person that's
Speaker 1: based off of, and she did have a Bible she
Speaker 1: gave away kind of thing. But I tried all the Googles.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything to be like, why is this
Speaker 1: movie so not just religio just but like like it's
Speaker 1: hammering you with the moral elements of religion. I was like,
Speaker 1: who paid for this? Like what's happening? Well? I did
Speaker 1: a like google of Nicholas Sparks and his life to
Speaker 1: see if there's been anything of note, and it seems
Speaker 1: like he personally is quite religious and founded a Christian
Speaker 1: school which tried to form an l g B t
Speaker 1: Q club, which he then tried to ban, know what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then students were protesting that, and then he banned
Speaker 1: the protests of it, so like he can't ban protests.
Speaker 1: What did you see his quote about it? Yeah? Oh
Speaker 1: my god. And then sometime later he backtracked on all
Speaker 1: this and he's like, no, wait, I'm an ally, and
Speaker 1: the reason that my school has no diversity in it
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything to do with the school. It's these
Speaker 1: other flimsy reasons. So he like saying all this problematic
Speaker 1: stuff in like I don't know or something, and then
Speaker 1: he's walked it all back and been like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm actually an ally. Please let me still have a career. Like,
Speaker 1: but did you see the quote where he was like,
Speaker 1: we don't need this. He was the reason he said
Speaker 1: the reason he banned those organizations was because essentially it
Speaker 1: was we don't need these out and open these kind
Speaker 1: of clubs like they have always been gays in Catholicism.
Speaker 1: They just handled it more delicately and like that was
Speaker 1: his stance on it was like, stay in the closet
Speaker 1: and we'll all get along. Yikes, that's such horseshit, especially
Speaker 1: because it's like this, this movie is directed by an
Speaker 1: openly gay man who was openly gay at the time
Speaker 1: the movie was directed. I believe, like it's like, yeah, god,
Speaker 1: that's so. I mean, I guess I'm not surprised that
Speaker 1: Nicholas Sparks fucking sucks, but I did not know that
Speaker 1: portion of his life. That's horrible. Yeah, his his history
Speaker 1: isn't great, but now he's an ally so everything's fine.
Speaker 1: All's well, that ends Well, we just need a movie
Speaker 1: poster of like the same sex couple holding their heads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need we need someone grabbing someone else's head. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's a queer movie this time. That'll fix everything.
Speaker 1: That one everything, You know what would really fix everything?
Speaker 1: If we gave Nicholas Sparked more money. I think that
Speaker 1: would fix everything. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Why don't we
Speaker 1: take a quick break and then come back and do
Speaker 1: the recap and we're back. Okay, all right, so let's
Speaker 1: shall we shall we get into it. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: So we meet Landon Carter. That's Shane West. He's with
Speaker 1: his friends, who are these popular kids who are mean,
Speaker 1: and Landon gets in trouble after a classmate of theirs
Speaker 1: gets hurt because of a prank all the popular kids
Speaker 1: pulled on him, brutal. Just quick quick reminder at the top,
Speaker 1: Shane West is a stage name. Shane West's actual name
Speaker 1: is Shannon Bruce Snaith. I did not know that. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite celebrity facts is his name is
Speaker 1: Shannon Snaith, And so they were like, that's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: We need I think it would be fun if he
Speaker 1: was just allowed to be Shannon Snaith. I also think
Speaker 1: I wonder if anyone else picked up on this, or
Speaker 1: if I'm just being tall girl syndrome. I also think
Speaker 1: that Shane West is shorter than Mandy Moore. His height
Speaker 1: fluctuates throughout the movie, and I think that the movie
Speaker 1: does not like the movie is very rigid and its values.
Speaker 1: And I think that they also must have said, we
Speaker 1: can't have a male lead who is shorter than our
Speaker 1: female lead due to societal pressures, because anymore is five ten.
Speaker 1: Shane West is six ft allegedly, but but that's impossible
Speaker 1: because he's shorter than her in anything where you can
Speaker 1: see his feet, he is shorter than her. Any scene
Speaker 1: where you cannot see his feet, he is taller than her,
Speaker 1: meaning that he's wearing some sort of acting shoes acting
Speaker 1: shoes or they they stuck him on like an apple box?
Speaker 1: Is that what those are called? And yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to go rewatch the dance scene. It's the dancing where
Speaker 1: it's most obvious because she's teaching him how to dance,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, he's shorter than her. I never
Speaker 1: see that in movies. Why didn't I notice that? And
Speaker 1: then it cuts to the next scene and he's taller
Speaker 1: than her in the next scene, and I was like,
Speaker 1: why can't men just be five seven? Sometimes it's fine, relax,
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry I have so many deep dive facts.
Speaker 1: But fun fact, along with other parts of this set,
Speaker 1: a lot of the sets were from like Dawson's Creek
Speaker 1: and other highly popular areas or a filming zone. But
Speaker 1: so whatever that water basins that they did this first
Speaker 1: prank at, apparently it was full of like algae and
Speaker 1: eels and they had scula divers clearing the water for
Speaker 1: the stunt. So like, just to put us in Shane
Speaker 1: West and whoever that guy's names had. They're diving and
Speaker 1: swimming and eels, their belly flopping straight into an eel. Holy,
Speaker 1: that is dangerous. Once you I, I did know about
Speaker 1: the Dawson's Creek stuff, and like, once you've I watched
Speaker 1: two seasons of that when I was sick, like two
Speaker 1: years ago, And once you know it's the same high school,
Speaker 1: you can't unsee it. You're like, oh, I've I've seen
Speaker 1: drama in these halls before. Okay, So then we meet
Speaker 1: Jamie Sullivan, who is Mandy Moore. She's very religious, her
Speaker 1: father is a reverend. She sings in the church choir,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. She is also popular, unlike Landon Carter,
Speaker 1: and she gets mocked by Landon's friends because she's not
Speaker 1: stylish and she wears the same sweater every day, which
Speaker 1: is also for one of the that was from the
Speaker 1: real person. Okay, so the real person is based off
Speaker 1: of Nicholas Sparks's sister, right, Yes, who in my favorite
Speaker 1: power move never read his book. It did. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: said she didn't want to know how it ended, which
Speaker 1: I feel like he took as a sweet sentiment and
Speaker 1: I took as a burn she's just like, um, look,
Speaker 1: I've only got so much time and I'm not wasting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was. I didn't realize. This was my
Speaker 1: first time realizing that it was at least based on
Speaker 1: a true story. But there are deviations where I believe
Speaker 1: his sister was thirty when she passed away, and then
Speaker 1: in the book, I guess that it's not specified that
Speaker 1: Jamie eyes that. It's just it says. This is what
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia page says. I'm like, I don't really know
Speaker 1: what this means, but it said that it is ambiguous
Speaker 1: whether Jamie died or simply disappeared into the shadow world.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know what hang on, wait, wait, hang on, Now,
Speaker 1: that is not unlike the ending of Titanic, where Rose
Speaker 1: was it a dream the shadow world. I did, in
Speaker 1: fact make some notes about the similarities between this movie
Speaker 1: and Titanic. Amazing spoiler Switchfoot says the word Titanic. Yes,
Speaker 1: they do, amazing. I have some parallels I would like
Speaker 1: to draw between A Walk to Remember and another movie,
Speaker 1: which I will I will reveal. I guess now it's
Speaker 1: like there's no reason to hold back any longer. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone else noticed this or thought this.
Speaker 1: But the way Shane West looks in this movie, to
Speaker 1: me is identical to the way Robert Pattinson looks in Twilight.
Speaker 1: He looks exactly like Edward Cullen to me, I get
Speaker 1: I see it for him to like notice this pale,
Speaker 1: brown haired, bookish girl, be really mean to her at first,
Speaker 1: and then be like, hey, maybe we could be friends,
Speaker 1: and then they start dating and fall in love. Except
Speaker 1: that's basically Twilight. Jamie Sullivan, I will say, in defense
Speaker 1: of Jamie Sullivan, she at least has some semblance of
Speaker 1: a backbone, unlike Bella Swan who just does whatever Edward
Speaker 1: Collin tells her to do. At least Jamie Sullivan is like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't be my secret friend, get out of here. True,
Speaker 1: that was like good for her. Most movies in two
Speaker 1: thousand two were not doing that. That's true. They're like, okay,
Speaker 1: we can be friends. This is a secret, Like fuck you,
Speaker 1: Shane West. But I was the whole Both times I
Speaker 1: rewatched this movie to prep for this episode, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, am I just watching Edward Cullen right now.
Speaker 1: The resemblance is simply uncanny. True, I see it anyway. So,
Speaker 1: because Landon has gotten in trouble for this prank, he
Speaker 1: has to do a bunch of community service, which includes
Speaker 1: tutoring underprivileged students at a nearby sychool. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the coding there is yikes. And then also he has
Speaker 1: to participate in the school play, which he gets cast
Speaker 1: as like the lead of. And I'm just like, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in trouble with the law and your punishment
Speaker 1: is to be the lead in a high school theater production,
Speaker 1: which also, like, aside from the fact that that is
Speaker 1: completely absurd and like it just makes no sense. On
Speaker 1: top of that, that sucks for all the theater kids
Speaker 1: who told in the first scene it's like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: really into it. Like it's not like they're desperate for
Speaker 1: people to audition for this part. There's a room full
Speaker 1: of people who want this part, and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: Shane West, you have to do a really bad job
Speaker 1: as punishment, Like why does everyone need to suffer through
Speaker 1: Shannon Snaith's acting, Because like he committed a crime, he
Speaker 1: also committed a crime, didn't you guys? Have that um
Speaker 1: drama teacher who she cast her children as. All the stars.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's not that uncommon for school the
Speaker 1: high school theater to be corrupted by those in power.
Speaker 1: I had we had, like our our high school drama
Speaker 1: instructor with like cast football players to like try to
Speaker 1: get to like yeah, yeah, I mean like that. That
Speaker 1: is like definitely, at least in my experience, something that
Speaker 1: happens Jamie. That is what happened in this movie right
Speaker 1: right there, just like oh, jocks, you get to cut
Speaker 1: the line in every area of life apparently, and it's well, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess the rest of us will just die. I
Speaker 1: I like that. In the play, Mandy Moore, Moore is
Speaker 1: wearing a prom dress underneath a trench coat. What an
Speaker 1: interesting reveal. That wasn't a trench coat, that was like
Speaker 1: a cult coat. That was a cloaked like weird ass
Speaker 1: CULTI cloak, and underneath it it's like a two thousand
Speaker 1: and two prom dress and you're just like, all right,
Speaker 1: oh gosh. So Jamie is also involved in these activities,
Speaker 1: so she and Landon keep running into each other, and
Speaker 1: one day she gives him a ride home after the
Speaker 1: school play rehearsal. She tells him about this to do
Speaker 1: list that she has, but she won't tell him what
Speaker 1: number one on the list is. Then he wants her
Speaker 1: to help him run lines for the play and she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll help, but you have to promise not to fall
Speaker 1: in love with me. Oh my god. Okay. That that
Speaker 1: really sent me back because I think that that was
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever heard that line in a movie,
Speaker 1: even though it's in so many movies, And it's the
Speaker 1: funniest thing anyone can say to another person because how
Speaker 1: many if people have said that in real life, how
Speaker 1: many times has the other person actually been interested in them?
Speaker 1: I feel like zero. That's gonna be a really funny
Speaker 1: bit that I'm going to start doing where a friends
Speaker 1: just like, Hey, I haven't seen you in a while.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go get coffee? And I'll be like, okay,
Speaker 1: but you have to promise not to fall in off
Speaker 1: with him. Oh my god. She said. There are parts
Speaker 1: of JV's character that I don't like, dislike, but they
Speaker 1: feel a little dissonant where she's like made out to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, she's like a misfit, but she acts
Speaker 1: with such confidence in moments like that where I'm like
Speaker 1: this is cool girl ship, Like what's going on where
Speaker 1: like I feel like the like uncooled girl at school
Speaker 1: doesn't say you have to promise not to fall in
Speaker 1: love with me, but I appreciate that she does. She
Speaker 1: takes a stand for all uncool girls. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that at least one person who saw that movie who
Speaker 1: wasn't cool then said that at school and humiliated themselves.
Speaker 1: So I know that they made a really big effort
Speaker 1: to avoid like some character tropes, um specifically the glasses.
Speaker 1: They insisted no glasses. Yeah, I just feel like her
Speaker 1: charisma is like the taking off of the glasses, like
Speaker 1: whenever she turned, whenever she's like unusually flirty for this
Speaker 1: like Bible girl, it's like, okay, that's the glasses coming off, right.
Speaker 1: And I don't dislike that she is confident in herself.
Speaker 1: It just like I guess maybe it was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have expected like the least cool girl at
Speaker 1: school to be like fuck you and then or like
Speaker 1: or like on the date where she they have that
Speaker 1: like erotic temporary tattoo moment that I totally forgot about,
Speaker 1: like Titanic hot car scene, hot Carr, the Christian version
Speaker 1: of the Titanic scene where they're like, it's temporary. It's temporary.
Speaker 1: He's going to blow on it, but he's not touching her.
Speaker 1: When he blows on it, it's hot. It is hot
Speaker 1: when he blows on the temporary tattoo. Okay anyway, So
Speaker 1: she's like, don't fall in love with me, and he's like, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that won't be a problem, and then they start running
Speaker 1: lines together at her house. Her dad, by the way,
Speaker 1: does not like this landing fellow. No um, Also, isn't
Speaker 1: it it's Peter Coyote too, Yes, who I like sometimes
Speaker 1: learn who that is and then I promptly forget. He's
Speaker 1: an iconic. I feel like he's he has that experience
Speaker 1: a lot. He's just a famous character actor. He is
Speaker 1: an ET. He's in He's in a lot of ship.
Speaker 1: He's an Aaron Brockovich. He's in all sorts of ship.
Speaker 1: And then you see him, you're like, oh, that guy. Anyways. Also,
Speaker 1: Landon's mom is played by Daryl Hannah in the worst
Speaker 1: way I've ever seen in my life. By the way,
Speaker 1: you read the Wikipedia, you saw the savage commentary on her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then wait about her that she got like lip injections
Speaker 1: and that whole thing, and they're really focused on her wig.
Speaker 1: They really well because it's I saw like a bunch
Speaker 1: of different explanations for that. I thought, I like what
Speaker 1: my takeaway was that they the wig was bad, but
Speaker 1: I guess that she was so like famously blonde that
Speaker 1: they're like, I guess they made a lot of famous
Speaker 1: blonde women into Brunett's in this movie, because Brunette equals
Speaker 1: dramatic turn or it did in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Brunette equals agency, right, Brunette equals a little little more serious. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Jamie and Landon are hanging out their running lines together.
Speaker 1: It seems like maybe they could be friends. But then
Speaker 1: he's a jerk to her at school so that he
Speaker 1: can seem cool in front of his cool friends, and
Speaker 1: Jamie's like, you're a jerk, and we cannot be friends.
Speaker 1: Love that for her, she's really taking a stand for now,
Speaker 1: for now. But then Landon starts to get serious about
Speaker 1: the school play, about his role as a tutor, and
Speaker 1: then the school play happens. Jamie a k a. Mandy
Speaker 1: Moore sings that song and she's so breathy. I love her,
Speaker 1: I love her, and and she loves switch Foot and
Speaker 1: she loves switch I'm like, that's the those teen girl
Speaker 1: because she's, like, I think, like a rare example of
Speaker 1: a teen girl playing a teenager in a movie, even
Speaker 1: though no one, I don't think any of the other
Speaker 1: teenagers are actual teenagers, but Mandy Moore is. No. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys are going to mention
Speaker 1: it later, but you know, Shane West was twenty three
Speaker 1: at the time of filming and Mandy was seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like eight full years older than her, which
Speaker 1: is uh not not great good based on what happens
Speaker 1: next in the story, which is they're on stage together
Speaker 1: in the play and they kiss, and then they kissed
Speaker 1: a bunch of other times throughout the movie they sure do,
Speaker 1: but this but this first kiss is forced because it's
Speaker 1: not in the play. It's not in the script. It's
Speaker 1: a surprise kiss, yes, which they had to rehearse on
Speaker 1: their first day. Yeah, I and it's it seems like
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore and Mandy Moore has uh I mean, she
Speaker 1: she came out with a bunch of me too stuff
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago that isn't relevant to the
Speaker 1: content of this episode, but she seems to still be
Speaker 1: friends with Shane West. I feel like that that's more
Speaker 1: of a fault of the production for like putting them
Speaker 1: in this scenario in the first place, Like that's just
Speaker 1: especially for a teen actor and then an adult, like
Speaker 1: that's that's just irresponsible on the productions. And they knew
Speaker 1: that they had crushes on each other, and the production
Speaker 1: knew they had crushes on each other, and he I
Speaker 1: don't again, I didn't see anything about anything you know,
Speaker 1: storied taking place. It's they were had to crush on
Speaker 1: each other. They never dated um and Shane was, you know,
Speaker 1: teaching her how to act because she didn't know how
Speaker 1: to act. So it's a little there's a little a
Speaker 1: little weird, there's a little I yeah, I read that
Speaker 1: he taught her what a what a mark was and
Speaker 1: how to hit it. He was like, oh, poor Mandy Moore,
Speaker 1: she didn't know. I guess that this movie was shot
Speaker 1: before The Princess Diaries because that's like her first credit,
Speaker 1: but it was shot after. Yeah, yeah, okay, which is
Speaker 1: I I liked it. In the early two thousand's there
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore was given us more range than a lot
Speaker 1: of teen actresses because she played sweet Girl and she
Speaker 1: played bully right, because she's she's mean and Saved and
Speaker 1: Princess Diaries, but she's an angel from heaven in this movie, right,
Speaker 1: And then in both Saved and A Walk to Remember,
Speaker 1: she plays a very devout Christian character, but on two
Speaker 1: very different ends of a of that spectrum. And now
Speaker 1: she's on a TV show that my mom talks about
Speaker 1: on the phone all the time that I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: watch this is us, Yeah, exactly. Okay, So they kiss
Speaker 1: on stage and then Landon's like, wait a minute, do
Speaker 1: I like Jamie? Do I want to be with her?
Speaker 1: He's breaking the one rule. He's falling in love with her,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't supposed to a rule breaker. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a bad boy. He's canonically a bad boy. He
Speaker 1: almost kills a student in the first scene. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he does go visit him in the hospital and say sorry,
Speaker 1: so that redeems him question mark um, even though the
Speaker 1: student is like not understandably not very receptive to the apologies, like,
Speaker 1: get the funk out of here. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I want to be your friend. You like push me
Speaker 1: off of a cliff, or like whatevers a bed of eels.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Jamie is like rejecting him and pushing him away,
Speaker 1: and she's like, you don't know how to be a
Speaker 1: good friend. So then he tries harder. He gives her
Speaker 1: a new sweater. He stands up for her when his
Speaker 1: friends play that photoshop related prank on her at school, which, truly,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen the movie, just like look up
Speaker 1: that scene because it's even like, even though it's like
Speaker 1: from a plot standpoint of like, oh my god, your
Speaker 1: heart goes out to her and and maybe that would
Speaker 1: be a horrible thing to happen to you in two
Speaker 1: thousand too, but if that happened to me now, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, uh so, what is the joke here? It's
Speaker 1: such a bad photoshop. It's like it's more embarrassing for
Speaker 1: the person who photo shopped it than for her. But
Speaker 1: I do feel like that scene really captures the like
Speaker 1: cruel scene laugh that like still haunts me to this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you run into that in real life. Oh boy, all
Speaker 1: logic goes out the window. You're scarred, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he defends her and stands up for her when
Speaker 1: this happens, and then he asks her out on a date,
Speaker 1: but her dad doesn't let her date, so then Landon
Speaker 1: asks her dad permission to take her out, which he
Speaker 1: relents to. So then they go out to dinner, they dance.
Speaker 1: It is revealed that Shane West is shorter than Mandy Moore. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't know it in that scene. It's then we don't.
Speaker 1: It's after we find out she's sick, and then he says,
Speaker 1: you too, to dance, and that montage that's where you
Speaker 1: learn he is. He is a couple inches shorter than her,
Speaker 1: hasn't He asked his mom to teach him how to dance? There, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dances before because the leukemia reveal is like, to me,
Speaker 1: where the movie totally shifted. Well, sure, yea once our
Speaker 1: protagonist is doomed, yes, but yeah, maybe I'm messing up
Speaker 1: the order. It's whatever. In there's a scene in the
Speaker 1: middle of a montage where she teaches him how to
Speaker 1: dance and you can see both of their full bodies
Speaker 1: and then you're like, he's shorter than her because you
Speaker 1: can't wear your acting shoes in a full body shot.
Speaker 1: You're right, yeah, because she teaches his mom. He asked
Speaker 1: his mom to teach him when they later dance on
Speaker 1: the balcony with no door, right right right right the
Speaker 1: balcony door. Yes, it's that's fascinated me for years. I
Speaker 1: didn't pick up on it, just like you're gonna make
Speaker 1: this sickly girl climb out a window to look at
Speaker 1: her stars all the balcony with no doors. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's like if it's like a an Aladdin kind
Speaker 1: of deal where it's just a curtain that leads into
Speaker 1: a room. No, it's it's just four windows. They also
Speaker 1: are looking through a telescope that he builds right in
Speaker 1: front of her, Like you would think that he would
Speaker 1: have done that as like a surprise gift, but he
Speaker 1: just like sets up a workshop outside of her house,
Speaker 1: and it's like, don't look, I love it what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: This movie is so goofy and corny in so many
Speaker 1: ways where you just have to be constantly suspending your logic.
Speaker 1: Where there's like one scene where you find out what
Speaker 1: Jamie's ambition in life is, which is to like witness
Speaker 1: a miracle. But you find out because Shane West happens
Speaker 1: to be going through the yearbook at home alone, Like
Speaker 1: why is he doing that he's just we're to believe
Speaker 1: he's just sitting at home, like to day night, better
Speaker 1: look through my yearbook, like I don't want to break
Speaker 1: your mind, But I feel like that might be one
Speaker 1: of a few instances in this film where traditionally he
Speaker 1: would then in a real world start checking off. And
Speaker 1: that can't be alluded to at all. Know, he's just
Speaker 1: like a plot point. She wants a miracle, does she?
Speaker 1: She wants for it all. Wait, I'm gonna klen as
Speaker 1: you continue to summarse, I'm gonna just just to put
Speaker 1: my own mind at ease. I'm going to screen cap these. Uh,
Speaker 1: these shame west height toscripancy is to share with the
Speaker 1: class because I swear to God, I swear to God,
Speaker 1: it's the thing. Yes please um. So, meanwhile, they go
Speaker 1: out to dinner, they dance. He helps her knock some
Speaker 1: stuff off of her to do list, like to be
Speaker 1: in two places at once and to get a tattoo.
Speaker 1: That scene is really sweet, It is pretty nice. It's
Speaker 1: so corny, but the I remember the two places at
Speaker 1: once seemed really vividly because Maddie Moore gets so excited,
Speaker 1: She's like, who so cute? And then they kiss and
Speaker 1: he tells her he loves her, and she's like, I
Speaker 1: told you not to fall in love with me. Are
Speaker 1: we going to know? He had one job? And then
Speaker 1: her dad is like, Jamie, you have to be fair
Speaker 1: to him before things get worse, and we're like, huh,
Speaker 1: what does that mean, which we find out shortly. But
Speaker 1: before that, Jamie and Landen Star gaze together and then
Speaker 1: she tells him the number one thing on her list,
Speaker 1: which is to get married in the church where her
Speaker 1: parents got married. And then the big reveal, which is
Speaker 1: that she tells him that she is sick with leukemia
Speaker 1: and that she has stopped responding to treatment, the implication
Speaker 1: being that she does not have long to live. And
Speaker 1: then he broods for a while. God, but then he
Speaker 1: goes to his Okay, this scene is just story logic wise,
Speaker 1: it is so silly. Where he goes to his He has,
Speaker 1: of course, because every movie has to be about fathers
Speaker 1: and sons for some reason. Yes, he has a bad
Speaker 1: relationship with his dad, who's like a doctor, but he
Speaker 1: left and it's all very like vague divorced parents stuff.
Speaker 1: But he goes to his dad's house and it's like,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend is dying of cancer? Can you save her?
Speaker 1: And his dad's kind of like, well, no, there's not
Speaker 1: a cure for cancer that's known, and Shane West responds
Speaker 1: by being like, you were never there for me, Like
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, but these two, these two things
Speaker 1: are sort of unrelated, you know. Also, his dad's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not an oncologist. I'm a cardiologist. For someone who
Speaker 1: wants to be a doctor, he really did not understand
Speaker 1: anything about medicine at this point. True, it's so funny
Speaker 1: that whole scene because then it's like a million years
Speaker 1: of brooding and Shane West driving around in his cool,
Speaker 1: cool car and it's like, dude, listen, like, your dad
Speaker 1: is not the right kind of doctor. Like the situation
Speaker 1: is still very sad, but like, of the many things
Speaker 1: that maybe your father's faults, this is not one of them.
Speaker 1: Is not one of them. So yeah, he's brooding for
Speaker 1: a while, he's driving around in his Camaro, and then
Speaker 1: he comes back around and he's like, Jamie, baby, I'm
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. And then one day she collapses and
Speaker 1: is rushed to the hospital and Landon stays by her
Speaker 1: side until she's able to go home. Because Landon's dad
Speaker 1: arranges to pay for her private home care, which is
Speaker 1: really nice, and I guess a more realistic thing that
Speaker 1: he can do instead of knowing the care for cancer
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. I forgot about that plot point and
Speaker 1: I liked it. I thought that was very nice. But
Speaker 1: I also feel like that whole dad plotline, like I
Speaker 1: don't really care about it at all, except for the
Speaker 1: moment where at the wedding that's about to happen. The
Speaker 1: way that his dad looks at him at his wedding
Speaker 1: is so she looks like he's about to burst into tears.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't even know who this man is.
Speaker 1: Like what am I looking at? Anyways? I'm getting handed well,
Speaker 1: so then, uh, what's his name? Landon asks Jamie to
Speaker 1: marry him so that she can accomplish the number one
Speaker 1: thing on her list. So they get married, and then
Speaker 1: Landon's voiceover explains that they have a beautiful summer together
Speaker 1: and that she passes away a few months after their wedding,
Speaker 1: and then we get a flash forward to four years
Speaker 1: later where Landon pays a visit to Jamie's father. He
Speaker 1: has gotten into medical school. Hopefully, He's like, he's hopefully
Speaker 1: made amends with his dad to be like, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how doctors worked when I was seventeen. Whoops,
Speaker 1: I overreacted my back. And then Jamie's father is like Landon,
Speaker 1: by the way, Jamie did find her miracle and it
Speaker 1: was you. And then there's some more voice over about
Speaker 1: how Landon will always love Jamie and he'll always feel
Speaker 1: their love. So that's the story. Let's take another break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to discuss, and we're back. M hmmm,
Speaker 1: We're I feel like we've we've actually covered a fear
Speaker 1: amount of ground. Actually the recap, yeah, we have. Since
Speaker 1: we were briefly talking about like the fathers and sons thing,
Speaker 1: I wanted to just say a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: which is to me, it feels like the big emotional
Speaker 1: beat of this movie. That's like the big like tear jerker.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the audience is crying. Is that moment where
Speaker 1: Landon goes to his dad to say, thank you for
Speaker 1: paying for my girlfriends like private home care. Because he's
Speaker 1: he's crying. They hug each other. The music swells like
Speaker 1: lingers on this moment for quite a while, and the
Speaker 1: cinematic language tells you that that's the big crime moment,
Speaker 1: and then a short time later, couldn't care less Jamie
Speaker 1: dies off screen. We only know about a via voiceover.
Speaker 1: It is not played for like that big tear jerker
Speaker 1: moment the same way, which I'm kind of surprised I
Speaker 1: watching it back. I guess it would have really emotionally
Speaker 1: wrecked me at any age to like I didn't want
Speaker 1: to like see her die, But they do wrap it
Speaker 1: up so quick. I guess. I don't know the argument
Speaker 1: there is, like it goes out on a high note,
Speaker 1: like you see her like she's accomplished her life's goal
Speaker 1: of getting married, and and then it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how I feel about
Speaker 1: that choice. Yeah, I just I found it really kind
Speaker 1: of bizarre that the big tear jerker beat of the
Speaker 1: movie is the like father son reconciliation rather than the
Speaker 1: death of the woman that the main character loves. I
Speaker 1: feel like the tormal shift I was saying with the
Speaker 1: leukemia was actually like more I feel like when the
Speaker 1: movie kind of became what I understand might be more
Speaker 1: like the book, where you know the book is like
Speaker 1: clear that it's coming from Landon's perspective, and the book
Speaker 1: is kind of well Nicholas Barks's Uh. When Nicholas Barks
Speaker 1: spoke about writing the book, it was like he equally
Speaker 1: wanted to like it wasn't really about Jamie. Like when
Speaker 1: he read the book, his thoughts are like her husband
Speaker 1: was such a miracle, Like who would marry a girl
Speaker 1: they know is going to die? Like this guy needs
Speaker 1: to be celebrated. Like that's kind of where he was
Speaker 1: coming from. And so I feel like that would make
Speaker 1: sense then why his big emotional opening is what's important.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, Jamie taught him how to feel, and
Speaker 1: now he feels with his dad. I agree, And I
Speaker 1: feel like that is like the big true or or
Speaker 1: one of the biggest trophy issues with this movie. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like it in I mean, I think even from
Speaker 1: like a screenwriting sampoint, it's clearly Landon's story, but it
Speaker 1: but it like uses the trope that that has been
Speaker 1: in a lot of movies and stories over the over
Speaker 1: time of like a woman dies to like teach a
Speaker 1: guy how to kind of be a better person. Like
Speaker 1: that is ultimately the narrative function of like Jamie in
Speaker 1: this world at these And I don't mean to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because because I know that Nicholas Sparks's sister
Speaker 1: inspired this, but it's not her life story. She was
Speaker 1: a different person living at a different time, who was
Speaker 1: in her late twenties, not in high school, you know.
Speaker 1: And I like the way this movie was adapted clearly
Speaker 1: falls into that trope of like Jamie, while I feel
Speaker 1: like Jamie is like a better developed character than most
Speaker 1: young women who are put in that role, and like
Speaker 1: there are things that I was kind of not like
Speaker 1: impressed as a little bit strong, but I was surprised
Speaker 1: that there was a lot about Jamie that like she
Speaker 1: didn't do the the grease thing or the what the
Speaker 1: like she's all that thing where she totally changed and
Speaker 1: at the end she's popular, like she does stay. She
Speaker 1: she changes a little bit, but like for the most part,
Speaker 1: she's pretty consistent and like she's always church girl and
Speaker 1: she's not gonna like change what her values are. And
Speaker 1: for the for the most part, like I thought that
Speaker 1: was like, oh, that's a little bit different, but she
Speaker 1: still ultimately is like sacrificed and what the takeaway feels
Speaker 1: like And now Shane West knows that he can go
Speaker 1: to med school and he doesn't need to be a
Speaker 1: high school bully. And it's like, well, was it worth it?
Speaker 1: Was it really worth it? I don't know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is such a trope where the function of a
Speaker 1: lot of female characters, whether or not they die depends
Speaker 1: on kind of the story, but the function of a
Speaker 1: lot of the of characters. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: burden is on women to teach men how to be
Speaker 1: a good person and like how to feel feelings and stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know too much, Like I I do recognize
Speaker 1: this trope, I don't know too much about it, like uh, scholarly.
Speaker 1: But I also feel like this kind of has to
Speaker 1: do with the religious overtones too, because I feel like
Speaker 1: the tone it's basically like it feels like this movie
Speaker 1: is celebrating the mercy that land In bestows upon Jamie,
Speaker 1: and it's really about like his like not only his transformation,
Speaker 1: but like how much he put into this relationship by
Speaker 1: being with a person with leukemia, which feels very ablest,
Speaker 1: but also like the idea of mercy. Like even in
Speaker 1: the Bible, you know, women are often literally just plotlines
Speaker 1: for male characters in the Bible. Um, so I feel
Speaker 1: like there's also that aspect of it that, like I
Speaker 1: guess only hearing you talk about the trope really connected
Speaker 1: the two for me. And when I was googling, like
Speaker 1: I was trying to find out what the genre is
Speaker 1: of like Christian movies, and the only thing I could
Speaker 1: find that was like scholarly was connecting them to the
Speaker 1: religious melodramas like plays and stuff. Um, So it feels
Speaker 1: like this, even though I could not find any confirmation
Speaker 1: why this was so Christian or that this is even
Speaker 1: seemed to be considered a Christian film, it's not on
Speaker 1: pure Flix. I just feel like it's definitely that we
Speaker 1: have to do a pure Flix. I only found that
Speaker 1: from this it's oh yeah, there. I think I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Maggie may Fish has covered a couple of movies on
Speaker 1: her YouTube channel that are I think they were originally
Speaker 1: on pure Flix. But like Rob Schneider appears in a
Speaker 1: lot of pure Flix movies, there's like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like. It's Christian Netflix, but it
Speaker 1: just sounds absolutely wild, which I did watch again, I
Speaker 1: went on too deep of the dive. I did watch
Speaker 1: a YouTube clip of the VHS commercials from the VHS
Speaker 1: release of this film, um, and they did include a
Speaker 1: preview for a movie that is on Pure Flix. So
Speaker 1: again I'm like, where is this Christian money coming from?
Speaker 1: And why is it unngogle able? Like it's very strange.
Speaker 1: I it is. I mean, I guess I I didn't
Speaker 1: go back and do the full like recap. I feel
Speaker 1: like for a very mainstream, successful movie, this movie is
Speaker 1: unusually Christian, where, if you know, the further you go
Speaker 1: back in American movies, I like, the more Christian outwardly
Speaker 1: Christian they get, and more you like you see the
Speaker 1: themes of mercy and faith come up more often. But
Speaker 1: by the early two thousands, I feel like it is
Speaker 1: kind of a usual. I don't know but that, but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but you think like Saved came
Speaker 1: out after this and that is very critical of Christianity,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that was more common by that point.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I will say that, and this is
Speaker 1: coming from someone who was raised as an atheist and
Speaker 1: tends to shy away from Christian media or any like
Speaker 1: entertainment that has strong Christian under or overtones. I didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily I didn't mind the Christianity in this or like
Speaker 1: the I didn't mind the religious themes in this because
Speaker 1: none of the characters who have a strong Christian faith
Speaker 1: are using their faith to justify toxic attitudes and ideologies
Speaker 1: that some Christians have, such as you know, homophobia, transphobia, racism,
Speaker 1: anti choice, anti bodily autonomy, you know, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And when I'm critical of religion, it's those displays of
Speaker 1: toxicity and intolerance that I'm critical of. But we don't
Speaker 1: see any of that in this movie. The characters aren't
Speaker 1: doing anything like that. They're just you know, living their
Speaker 1: lives and not hurting anybody or being prejudiced towards anybody.
Speaker 1: But there's not really anyone to be prejudice of, you know,
Speaker 1: because everyone is straight at this high school. Well, but
Speaker 1: there's also there maybe people of color, and that's not
Speaker 1: counting if they reuse background actors, Like I think, to me,
Speaker 1: it's like I could get into the headspace of this
Speaker 1: being like, I agree with you, it's not used. When
Speaker 1: you were talking, it made me think of Josie and
Speaker 1: the Pussycats, Like I feel like religion in this movie
Speaker 1: is like product placement in that where it's like almost like, no,
Speaker 1: we get it, like we're putting it in front of there,
Speaker 1: but then because it's religious and like, but wait, maybe
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know, it feels sinister, but that
Speaker 1: might just be because the church is weird. I kind
Speaker 1: of I I agree with with what you're both saying
Speaker 1: where I felt like the way that Christianity was presented
Speaker 1: in this movie was pretty inoffensive. But then I was like,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's not good, you know, because because this
Speaker 1: movie I don't I don't know, And ultimately it's it's
Speaker 1: I get kind of like lost in the sauce there
Speaker 1: because it's like either someone is not really thinking about
Speaker 1: it very hard, or someone's thinking about it really hard.
Speaker 1: Has it in the way that like Christian and He's
Speaker 1: presented in this movie, because I feel like it is.
Speaker 1: It's you know, like less harmful tenants that are being
Speaker 1: used in this movie of like forgiveness and like give
Speaker 1: people a chance, And I mean the way that that's
Speaker 1: kind of implemented does lend itself to a lot of
Speaker 1: Shane was toxic behavior kind of being forgiven a little
Speaker 1: to christ Like maybe, but but it does I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like ultimately I'm like I do. I do remember recognizing
Speaker 1: that there were christian elements to this story, but I
Speaker 1: think because someone else pointed it out to me. I
Speaker 1: don't think I would have gotten there on my own,
Speaker 1: but there was like a parent or someone who was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, it's like churchy ship makes me sick
Speaker 1: or like whatever, But like, how did we not pick
Speaker 1: it up as a kid? It was just kind of there. Well,
Speaker 1: how how old were the two of you? Because like
Speaker 1: that was the only thing I remembered about this movie.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, it's the movie about the girl
Speaker 1: with cancer and she's very devoutly Christian like that. That
Speaker 1: was like the main thing I remembered about this movie.
Speaker 1: I was your age, but I was, you know, not
Speaker 1: aware of my bisexuality at the time, So I was
Speaker 1: just horny this whole movie, and that was all I
Speaker 1: could see. I was nine, so I didn't know shit
Speaker 1: about shit. I just wanted people kissing and singing. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but I do I mean, it's like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that there's definitely arguments for both sides of
Speaker 1: the way that Christianity is presented in this movie, where
Speaker 1: I'm glad that the negative aspects of Christianity didn't enter
Speaker 1: the plot, but also it feels bizarre to just ignore
Speaker 1: them as if they don't exist, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's completely uncritical presentation of Christianity to the point where
Speaker 1: I feel like they almost like reverse a priest trope
Speaker 1: that you like. When you start watching the movie, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know her, her dad is by nature of his job,
Speaker 1: very religious, so he's going to be very a Steve
Speaker 1: and he doesn't want her to date. But it turns
Speaker 1: out the reason that he doesn't want her to date
Speaker 1: is not just because he's a priest. It's because he
Speaker 1: doesn't like she's also sick and there's like other things
Speaker 1: going on that we don't know. So I feel like
Speaker 1: that the movie kind of makes the priest look better
Speaker 1: as the movie goes on, because you're like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: not being mean because of religion. He's being mean because
Speaker 1: his daughter is really sick and he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to do, like which kind of I don't know. For
Speaker 1: me on this rewatch made me not be like, oh,
Speaker 1: he should be restricting his daughter's behavior, but at least
Speaker 1: it gave some context and it wasn't just the trope
Speaker 1: of like religious dad equals controlling and oppressive. The more
Speaker 1: we talk about this, I wonder because the first time
Speaker 1: we see the father, who is the pastor at the
Speaker 1: only church in town where all the bad kids go, no,
Speaker 1: but when we meet him, it's the mom. The line
Speaker 1: right before is the mom saying you need a father,
Speaker 1: and she's talking about how he doesn't talk to his dad,
Speaker 1: and then it us to him. And now I'm just thinking, like,
Speaker 1: because Mandy Moore didn't know how to act. Apparently Shane
Speaker 1: West taught her the Marker thing, but she was very
Speaker 1: natural and this was her first film. Like I wonder
Speaker 1: if the like not intention but like I wonder if
Speaker 1: it hadn't been her, would we be reading more into
Speaker 1: like how the pastor kind of becomes his father figure,
Speaker 1: and like how their relationship is actually more about like
Speaker 1: both of them men, like learning how to have a son,
Speaker 1: learning how to have a father, learning how to be
Speaker 1: family with boys. And Mandy Moore was just so good
Speaker 1: at the role that she was given that that kind
Speaker 1: of got pushed aside for more of like us caring
Speaker 1: about Jamie. Like I feel like we as the audience
Speaker 1: care a lot more about Jamie than it feels like
Speaker 1: the script in like intended or pushed for. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean she really is, Like I think Mandy Moore's performance
Speaker 1: does hold up in this movie. She's so Mandy Moore,
Speaker 1: Like she's just so Flee and you're even when the
Speaker 1: character is like kind of all over the place, You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for I wanted to hit her mark. I
Speaker 1: wanted to take off her scary cloak and sing a song.
Speaker 1: Um I I agree with you, Sam, I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are certain I hadn't even it hadn't even occurred
Speaker 1: to me that the priest kind of ends up taking
Speaker 1: on this fatherly role. I mean, what is the Bible
Speaker 1: but yet another story about fathers and sons true, the
Speaker 1: ultimate one maybe the Father's son and the Holy Spirit
Speaker 1: is Mandy wo wow. I bet that's Cannon. That's gotta
Speaker 1: be Cane. I mean, that's Catholic. Nicholas Sparks is Catholic.
Speaker 1: Print It all makes sense. And I do think that
Speaker 1: there's like it's implied or I feel like the story
Speaker 1: is suggesting that the reason that Shane West character is
Speaker 1: such a rebel, bad bad kid, you know, like on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of the tracks at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie is because his parents are divorced. There is
Speaker 1: a part where Daryl Hannah says to Shane West's character,
Speaker 1: She's like, you need a father, because she's trying to
Speaker 1: get him to forgive his dad, who he's estranged with,
Speaker 1: and she's like a boy needs us dad kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and which I think is like kind of mean to
Speaker 1: her character because she seems to be a really good
Speaker 1: mom who really cares about her son, and like, we
Speaker 1: don't really the only thing we know is that something's
Speaker 1: going on over their lips. Her hair is a mess,
Speaker 1: but she loves And the other thing you know is
Speaker 1: that she loves and is very supportive of Shane West.
Speaker 1: Like the way he's acting out would not suggest that
Speaker 1: he like that the parent he lives with is very
Speaker 1: doting and caring about him. I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: thought that was like he ends with an evil boy
Speaker 1: he's friends with, like a truly evil boy. That boy
Speaker 1: was really evil. Yeah. I don't know that character's name,
Speaker 1: but I don't need it. We're talking about the guy
Speaker 1: that like later in the cafeteria, he's like, get away
Speaker 1: from me, man, Like we're through. He's the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that broke up with Shane West and You're like, who
Speaker 1: are you? Yeah, I was like, who the hell is
Speaker 1: this man? No idea. UM. What I want to make
Speaker 1: clear here is that and I don't know a whole
Speaker 1: lot about the teachings of Christianity, not having grown up
Speaker 1: in the church but sick, but like, I want to
Speaker 1: make it clear that, like, there are many Christians, including
Speaker 1: many listeners of this podcast, who because I want to
Speaker 1: avoid making any sweeping generalizations about religious people and Christians specifically,
Speaker 1: because again, there are a lot of Christians who are
Speaker 1: very tolerant and very progressive and who are the opposite
Speaker 1: of that kind of stereotypical Bible thumping religious right that
Speaker 1: I think some people have come to associate Christianity with.
Speaker 1: And this is this is like kind of one of
Speaker 1: the best depictions of Christianity because it does like you said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any opportunities for the bad stuff. It's
Speaker 1: all just about kindness and love and coming together. It
Speaker 1: is very Christian in the true sense of the word.
Speaker 1: I think my my fascination with it just comes from
Speaker 1: not the religion and not the um, not people who
Speaker 1: are religious, but from the way that the Church operates
Speaker 1: specifically the Roman Catholic Church. So that's kind of where
Speaker 1: my perspective comes in of like, it's not the word,
Speaker 1: and it's not the people that are in my opinion,
Speaker 1: that's not really where the problem lies as much as
Speaker 1: the people who are administering things and the specific you know,
Speaker 1: we all know about the Roman Catholic Church. There's lots
Speaker 1: to be suspective, right, It's more, Yeah, it's the institution
Speaker 1: of religion that or the people who use Christianity as
Speaker 1: an excuse to perpetuate their own bigotry. Like that's obviously
Speaker 1: what there is to be critical about, not the things
Speaker 1: that Jesus taught and promoted according to the Bible, and
Speaker 1: not the idea of the religion itself kind of thing. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more like the indoctrination, which could be said of
Speaker 1: any organization. To me, that's always what's fascinating and any
Speaker 1: organized religion too. Yeah, but there's always some sort of
Speaker 1: indoctrination process for different organizations, and that always fascinates me,
Speaker 1: Like how do you take a nonbeliever to a believer? Right?
Speaker 1: And it's I mean, in Jamie's case, it's almost certainly
Speaker 1: that she's just like indoctrination since birth stuff. Um either
Speaker 1: that or she is like there is a lot of
Speaker 1: argument for and again it's like, yeah, the the the
Speaker 1: elements of Christianity that are presented in this movie are
Speaker 1: not bad things necessarily. It's like Jamie is presented as
Speaker 1: this as this very like almost like a very christlike
Speaker 1: figure who is extremely forgiving of the people around her,
Speaker 1: to the point we're coming from a teenager, You're like, huh, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, is very forgiving, has faith in people's ability
Speaker 1: to grow and change in a way that most teenagers
Speaker 1: do not. Uh, and on and on and then and
Speaker 1: then she's sacrifice at the end of the movie, and
Speaker 1: then her love exists in the wind, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: she's basically the Jesus of the movie. And I don't
Speaker 1: hate It's like I do like Jav's character. I like her.
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for her. I like when I don't know,
Speaker 1: even just like remembering seeing the movie as a kid
Speaker 1: and like watching for all of its flaws, Like as
Speaker 1: a kid seeing the like girl who's like a little
Speaker 1: different be asked like you don't care what people think
Speaker 1: of you? And she just says no. I was like
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool, Like, even though it's maybe not
Speaker 1: the most realistic reaction, that's a cool thing to see
Speaker 1: in a movie if you're like a kind of weird
Speaker 1: kid where you're like, wow, this girl doesn't give a
Speaker 1: ship and like, I don't know, there are things to
Speaker 1: be said for for the way her characters presented. It's
Speaker 1: not hyper realistic teen chit, but like, nothing in this
Speaker 1: movie is she's a superhuman Christian angel sent from God
Speaker 1: to sing choir songs in the play. Yeah, she's not
Speaker 1: a real person. I guess what I'll say is like
Speaker 1: that is how I viewed the movie too, and I
Speaker 1: feel like it would still be that movie without the
Speaker 1: religious element. So that's my only question is like it
Speaker 1: feels layered on in a way that I wonder why.
Speaker 1: I wonder how religious his sister was, like, or how
Speaker 1: big of a part of her story that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all I could find was that she did carry a
Speaker 1: Bible around. But like they even took the Bible out
Speaker 1: of this film. They made it a book full of
Speaker 1: quotes like Dolly Parton. I like Dolly Parton. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: Jesus thought Dolly Parton was really smart, because that's what
Speaker 1: Jamie said, did Dolly Parton fund this movie? Oh my god?
Speaker 1: What if Dolly Parton Christian? Yeah? Okay, I did not.
Speaker 1: I was like, I guess I don't know anything about
Speaker 1: her relige. I don't know. I just other than the
Speaker 1: fact that she's Miley Cyrus's godmother. Miley Cyrus another Nicholas
Speaker 1: Sparks star. Oh that's true. Which one is that? That's
Speaker 1: the last song? Question mark? I'm pretty sure I saw
Speaker 1: that in theaters. Is that the one Channing Tatum isn't
Speaker 1: or is that a different movie? I think so? Oh no, wait,
Speaker 1: he's I hope not. Wait he's like kind of old
Speaker 1: for her, isn't he? No? I think that it's Isn't
Speaker 1: that how she met her? The guy that she married
Speaker 1: was through that Nicholas Sparks movie. And it's Chris Hemsworth's brother.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's it's Liam Hemsworth. Okay, so the okay,
Speaker 1: what's the Channing Oh the Channing Tatum one is Dear John?
Speaker 1: Which is him? Cyphrid God? So many white actors? Uh? Wild?
Speaker 1: I wanted to I wanted to talk really quick about
Speaker 1: another character slash storyline that I found baffling and maybe
Speaker 1: I'll say it not necessary to the movie, which is
Speaker 1: Langdon's ex girlfriend or Landon. I keep wanting to say
Speaker 1: Langdon as in Robert Langdon from another Christian text, the
Speaker 1: Da Vinci Code. Oh my gosh, we did bring up
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa earlier, so I always have Da Vinci Code
Speaker 1: on the brain Baby, I'll never stop. But the whole
Speaker 1: thing was so so the deal with I don't think
Speaker 1: she even came up really in the summary because she
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be in the movie. I left her
Speaker 1: out of the of the summary. So her deal is
Speaker 1: what's her name? Her name is like Barbara, have no idea, Josephine, Belinda, Belinda, Belinda,
Speaker 1: so Belinda, which again I'm like, what year is this
Speaker 1: movie taking place in. Belinda is Shane West's ex girl
Speaker 1: friend who wants to get back together with him, but
Speaker 1: he's not interested. She is really forcing the issue. She
Speaker 1: gets very jealous of Jamie when it becomes clear that
Speaker 1: Shane West is interested in Jamie. She does the photoshop
Speaker 1: praying Jamie's hurt, and then Belinda later apologizes to Shane
Speaker 1: West about that, but not to Jamie, who is in
Speaker 1: the adjacent I think she's like, right, there isn't she like,
Speaker 1: doesn't she apologize to Shane West for what she did
Speaker 1: to Jamie in front of Jamie's house, And it's like,
Speaker 1: you need to apologize to her? Oh okay, I was like,
Speaker 1: she needs apologize to Jamie. All of those guys none
Speaker 1: of them apologized to Jamie. They all apologize to him, right,
Speaker 1: No one apologizes to the right people in this movie,
Speaker 1: because we'll get to this later. But when we talk
Speaker 1: about like the relationship between Landon and Jamie, but she
Speaker 1: apolo gize is to him after he gets mad that
Speaker 1: she has cancer and she's like, I'm so sorry that
Speaker 1: I have cancer. I should have told you sooner. And
Speaker 1: he's like it's okay, Well that's like he's not. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: you doubt you're perfect, You're eighteen, and then she runs away.
Speaker 1: He doesn't chase her. Instead, he drives to a mysterious
Speaker 1: city where his dad is and then he drives into
Speaker 1: the night, and then the one person of color main
Speaker 1: character in the film, Eric comes to check and Rand
Speaker 1: the most like the most hyper sexual racist depiction and
Speaker 1: also the best, the most complex of the group, and
Speaker 1: the best friend of them all. It seems yes, so
Speaker 1: quick sidebar about that character. So that's Eric. He easily
Speaker 1: he falls into the black best friend trope because he's
Speaker 1: Landon's best friend. He has characterized in a very harmful
Speaker 1: trophy way in which he in basically every scene he's
Speaker 1: in is making comments that are extremely like sexually aggressive,
Speaker 1: and that's really all we know about that character. So
Speaker 1: that's bad. It's really frustrating. Yeah, it's like falling into
Speaker 1: all of the tropes of the black best friend is
Speaker 1: like we know nothing about him other than he is
Speaker 1: there to deliver, you know, Devil's advocate views on what's
Speaker 1: going on to Shane West. Like he'll come in and
Speaker 1: be like, well, well, what if Jamie isn't the love
Speaker 1: of your life? And Shane West is like, never she is,
Speaker 1: and he's like all right, like there, he's just like
Speaker 1: there to like he's only there to demonstrate at various
Speaker 1: scenes in the movie that Shane West is changing as
Speaker 1: a character, like that's the only and Eric, I guess
Speaker 1: you could argue changes a little bit where he becomes
Speaker 1: less of an asshole unless of a bully about the
Speaker 1: fact that Shane West is dating Jamie, But that's such
Speaker 1: a small change. That's only in relation to his friend,
Speaker 1: Like you know nothing about him outside of that it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it sucks because I don't I don't think I've
Speaker 1: seen that actor in anything else. But I enjoyed his performance.
Speaker 1: I thought it was fun. I read that he and
Speaker 1: Shane West made up that really long handshake that they do,
Speaker 1: which I was like, well, that's fun. I guess that's
Speaker 1: the only time in the film that smoking is alluded to,
Speaker 1: which I thought was an interesting bad boy trope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do a little like smoking weed thing. That actor's
Speaker 1: name is al Thompson. He's been working pretty steadily, it seems,
Speaker 1: over the years, So good for him. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: I just saw his Wikipedia page was a stub so
Speaker 1: and that was where my research ended. I think he
Speaker 1: does a lot of TV in mostly kind of like
Speaker 1: small bit roles kind of thing, got it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so I thought like his performance was really fun and
Speaker 1: there was room to include him more meaningfully where he like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like why not get rid of
Speaker 1: the like girlfriend ex girlfriend, like evil girl side plot,
Speaker 1: and like make room for the best friend. I like,
Speaker 1: all of his scenes are enjoyable, but he only exists
Speaker 1: in relation to Land in right, Like, I agree that girl.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know she was an ex girlfriend until
Speaker 1: I looked on Wikipedia. Um, I just knew that she
Speaker 1: was some girl who wanted to be with him somehow.
Speaker 1: One thing I noticed that I don't. I might just
Speaker 1: be drawing a string to nowhere. But did you notice
Speaker 1: how when she does apologize, she's wearing a pink sweater,
Speaker 1: just like the one that he gave Jamie. WHOA, I
Speaker 1: didn't not notice that. I don't know if that's like
Speaker 1: her signal like now she's a good person too or whatever.
Speaker 1: Everyone who wears a pink sweater is a good person.
Speaker 1: Amazing God. So back to the Jamie does apologize to Shane.
Speaker 1: That so after that scene where he's talking to Eric
Speaker 1: and they like have a little bit of a reckon
Speaker 1: silly and I think that's the that part of the movie.
Speaker 1: But then Jamie comes up to Landed as he's like
Speaker 1: fixing his Camaro and she's like, I'm sorry, I should
Speaker 1: have told you sooner, and he's like shrug, let's kiss,
Speaker 1: and it's like, why are you apologizing Jamie? Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: it was That's like another one of the more obvious,
Speaker 1: like ablest scenes where it's like you ditched her, you
Speaker 1: didn't support her when she was like coming out with
Speaker 1: this big news, and now you're like, she makes a
Speaker 1: joke like something about dying. Does anybody remember? Yeah, she says.
Speaker 1: He's like, are you scared? And she says to death
Speaker 1: and then he's like geez, and she's like, lighten up.
Speaker 1: I'm the one who's dying. I can joke about this
Speaker 1: if I want. She's like, can you can chill for
Speaker 1: a second. So and so that was on a tangent
Speaker 1: of no one apologizing to Jamie right when it's she's
Speaker 1: owed several apologies, but everyone's like, oh, she's she's so
Speaker 1: christ Like, she'll forgive. I guess I'll just apologize to
Speaker 1: a random person who has nothing to do with the situation,
Speaker 1: or I'll make her apologize to me for some reason,
Speaker 1: Like it is. It is frustrating, and I feel like
Speaker 1: that is like one of the something we haven't really
Speaker 1: gotten to yet is just like, especially in the early
Speaker 1: days of this relationship, just like how toxic and fraud
Speaker 1: this relationship is from the jump, and how Jamie's extreme
Speaker 1: willingness to forgive and believe that people can change absolves
Speaker 1: him of this behavior in a way that he never
Speaker 1: really meaningfully apologizes for. Where at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: like for the whole first half hour of the movie
Speaker 1: before he's like, Okay, I want to be in this
Speaker 1: play and I want to work with you. Up unto
Speaker 1: that point, he is like mean to her. He's like,
Speaker 1: I know I've known you my whole life, but I
Speaker 1: don't I don't give a shit about you, essentially, and
Speaker 1: then once he realizes, oh, I do like her, he
Speaker 1: comes the most Like the moment that I didn't remember
Speaker 1: in the movie that I was like, how dare you
Speaker 1: was when he goes to her house and asks her
Speaker 1: to be his friend but in secret so you can
Speaker 1: still be popular. And I was like, the fucking nerve
Speaker 1: like that for me is where I'm like, no matter
Speaker 1: how forgiving a person I am, I'm tapping out right there.
Speaker 1: That is that is a horrible thing to do, to
Speaker 1: even attempt to do. It's also like you said, like
Speaker 1: what time period are you in? Like I could see
Speaker 1: in the fifties a guy asking that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: how it is I'm the popular guy. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what voice that was, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the popular kid. We all know the rules of
Speaker 1: the high school. Like, I feel like that would have
Speaker 1: been much more nineteen fifties, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: this relationship, it's so common to us, but not in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yeah, and it's like, I'm glad that Jamie
Speaker 1: tells him to funk off in that moment and she's like,
Speaker 1: you know, but but the fact that he still gets
Speaker 1: a second chance without really apologizing and just by being like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've decided to be your friend publicly, like that is
Speaker 1: very warranting of a second fuck you. But she's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's try it, you know. But she's Jesus, so it's hard, right,
Speaker 1: And he's like, but I got you this sweater. Everything's
Speaker 1: fine now, right. Um. We talked about this on the
Speaker 1: Beauty and the Beast episode and other episodes. But like
Speaker 1: the the idea of like the burden of forgiveness, often
Speaker 1: in a like hetero romantic context, is often placed on
Speaker 1: the woman to forgive the man for his often toxic
Speaker 1: bad behavior, which again we see a lot of in
Speaker 1: this movie, where for the first several of their interactions
Speaker 1: he's really mean to her, he makes fun of her,
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, you're carrying around this bible, you loser
Speaker 1: with your one sweater, you like stars and planets. Gross,
Speaker 1: Like he's like bullying her for the random ist ship.
Speaker 1: He's like, how dare you have an interest in astronomy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I've never seen someone bullied for this before.
Speaker 1: This is interesting and I like that. She's like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I'm the pastor's daughter, but but science does exist as
Speaker 1: like okay, movie not not not too bad. And then
Speaker 1: there's that scene where he, even after he starts to
Speaker 1: fall for her, he comes at her after school and
Speaker 1: like tells her how she feels. And then plot wise,
Speaker 1: that ends up being that he's right where he's like,
Speaker 1: you're hiding behind religion and astronomy and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Like he just names all of her interests and it's like,
Speaker 1: and that's what you're doing instead of admitting that you're
Speaker 1: in love with me? And then and then she's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe he's onto something. And we're like
Speaker 1: what you just like you can like things and have
Speaker 1: a crush on an asshole. I was gonna say again,
Speaker 1: coming from the horny lens that I first viewed this in,
Speaker 1: it was like I don't care he's hot and now
Speaker 1: he's into me, Like I feel like my my horny
Speaker 1: brain doesn't doesn't register. And I do feel like this movie.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I want to talk about it
Speaker 1: was just because, like the thing you're saying about forgiveness
Speaker 1: coming from the woman, I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: tropes that are in this movie can contribute to like
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity in the way that a boy would interpret it.
Speaker 1: And I know with the guy who my that first
Speaker 1: boyfriend that was obsessed with this movie, you know, had
Speaker 1: of a lot of the toxic romantic kind of ideas
Speaker 1: of like, no, I'm making the romance for you know,
Speaker 1: I broke up with him and he did not take
Speaker 1: it well like I guess trigger warning. But nothing happened.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, just like how this is the
Speaker 1: perfect this the way the tropes are in this movie
Speaker 1: are like the perfect timeline and the perfect way it
Speaker 1: could go. But a lot of the habits that are
Speaker 1: being reinforced, you know, can be used in a toxic
Speaker 1: way in other situations. Yeah, and then another one that
Speaker 1: I mean we haven't specifically defined, but something that happens
Speaker 1: is that he basically he just wears her down the
Speaker 1: way that we've seen in tons and tons of movies,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be a Nicholas Sparks thing that
Speaker 1: he recycles over and over again. Because he's writing very
Speaker 1: popular heterosexual love stories, there's probably a lot of that
Speaker 1: going on. But that's like the Notebook, Oh gosh, one
Speaker 1: oh one. So we see that with the Landing character.
Speaker 1: She keeps saying, no, we can't be friends. You've treated
Speaker 1: me badly, leave me alone, and then he keeps coming
Speaker 1: back around and basically trying to sweeten her up with
Speaker 1: gifts and friendship. And it's like what get away quick
Speaker 1: comment was when he was first trying to get back
Speaker 1: in her good graces after I forget what thing he did,
Speaker 1: but where he was like bringing her flowers obviously every day.
Speaker 1: I was just like, Okay, you know this girl is
Speaker 1: dying and now you've made her house to look like
Speaker 1: a memorial. Like take a step back, maybe, thinking through Landing,
Speaker 1: like she's not dead yet, She's not right because they're okay.
Speaker 1: So there are kind of two separate times where he
Speaker 1: needs to or he's trying to redeem himself. The first
Speaker 1: time when he realizes he likes her and he's actually
Speaker 1: trying to get with her. Then they get together and
Speaker 1: they profess their love for each other, and then when
Speaker 1: she tells him I have leukemia, I'm dying, and he
Speaker 1: flips his ship about it and is like, why didn't
Speaker 1: you tell me this sooner? You owed telling me this?
Speaker 1: And then he like storms off, and then we don't
Speaker 1: even know how she reacts to that, because the movie
Speaker 1: does not check in with her at all during this period.
Speaker 1: We just watch him brooding for like and minutes of
Speaker 1: screen time that it is dead for not knowing the
Speaker 1: cure to cancer right. And then when he finally does
Speaker 1: come back around, he talks to her dad. He doesn't
Speaker 1: even talk to her at first. He's just like, don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere. Tell Jamie, can you pass along
Speaker 1: the message? It's like, well, can you talk to her
Speaker 1: face to face and apologize to her? But instead of
Speaker 1: that happening, when they do finally come face to face,
Speaker 1: she's the one to apologize to him, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: are you joking me right now? So bless Her dad
Speaker 1: was also in that, like telling her like, you gotta
Speaker 1: tell him before it's too late. Like obviously that messaging
Speaker 1: was not just coming from Landed, it was coming from
Speaker 1: the people around her, right. Well, That's like part of
Speaker 1: what I find frustrating about the love story in this movie,
Speaker 1: because it's not like I don't know I it's not
Speaker 1: like you can't in life start with like, you know,
Speaker 1: how do I want to phrase this? I feel like
Speaker 1: this this movie could have been an interesting opportunity to
Speaker 1: write someone someone's behavior meaningfully changing and a way that
Speaker 1: could have felt authentic, and also could have like been
Speaker 1: sort of a character map for young for young people
Speaker 1: who especially young men watching this movie, because it's not
Speaker 1: like even in the context of the movie, I don't
Speaker 1: doubt at any point that Landon cares about Jamie, and
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that you know that teenage boys very
Speaker 1: often are deflective towards people that they're attracted to, especially
Speaker 1: in a hetero context, and like whatever. It's like that's
Speaker 1: something that I experienced in high schools, Like so when
Speaker 1: I had a crush on not being nice to me
Speaker 1: and then like having to apologize and over time like
Speaker 1: maybe of a friendship build, but it's like you have
Speaker 1: to especially with like movies for young people, I feel
Speaker 1: like there is some responsibility to like really track that
Speaker 1: journey in a way that is responsible and not just
Speaker 1: like randomly putting the onus on Jamie to be the
Speaker 1: world's most forgiving person. And I don't think that it's
Speaker 1: like impossible if this story were written differently or a
Speaker 1: little more deliberately, I don't think it would be impossible
Speaker 1: to get Landing from the beginning of the story to
Speaker 1: a place where maybe he has meaningfully earned Jamie's trust.
Speaker 1: But that's just like not how we see the story
Speaker 1: play how or is or is very choppy, uh in
Speaker 1: the way it plays out. I do wonder how much
Speaker 1: how much that has to do with her maybe not
Speaker 1: being available, Like I know that she's a teen so
Speaker 1: she can only work ten hours a day, and they
Speaker 1: shot this in thirty nine days, So I wonder, Like
Speaker 1: at first, I was like, I think this has to
Speaker 1: go back to the you know, kind of Christian ethics
Speaker 1: that they're displaying in this where it doesn't make it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for that storyline to really get into Jamie.
Speaker 1: But also maybe Mandy Moore decided to mount one day
Speaker 1: because it does seem like after her leukemia diagnosis, like
Speaker 1: she has that scene in the bed, but really she's
Speaker 1: kind of gone from the movie at that point. She's
Speaker 1: like not an active heart, Like she only says like
Speaker 1: thank you for thank your dad, and like a look
Speaker 1: at this comment. And then does she She doesn't mean
Speaker 1: to say I do. She just like hugs him and
Speaker 1: then they're married, right, yeah they don't did they even
Speaker 1: get married? Uh we don't know? Yeah, why aren't we
Speaker 1: checking in to see like how she feels about like
Speaker 1: she knows that she's dying, Like, and there's a part
Speaker 1: where she says something like I don't need a reason
Speaker 1: to be angry with God, Like can we explore that's
Speaker 1: a cool Like that's an interesting thing to bring up
Speaker 1: of like a crisis of faith for a priest daughter,
Speaker 1: like and it's all set up, but instead, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: fel like the movie diverts and ends up focusing on
Speaker 1: boring land and side plots and and gives a shit
Speaker 1: about because it should be a movie that's about her,
Speaker 1: not about him. I hate to keep bringing up religion,
Speaker 1: but again, like that is very Jesus, Like like Jesus
Speaker 1: had crisis of faith, but he never lost a faith.
Speaker 1: He would just be like, Dad, what's this God? Damn it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I don't know. It's it's like Jamie is
Speaker 1: perfect to a fault. But the moments that you see
Speaker 1: her human side and the movie doesn't seem interested in
Speaker 1: exploring when it's like watching it back this time, those
Speaker 1: are the most interesting moments where she is affected by
Speaker 1: how people treat her and she is angry that she
Speaker 1: is dying, and like there there are like she does
Speaker 1: have these really human emotions. But then she Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess like in the christ like way you're describing Sam,
Speaker 1: she just kind of like transcends them off screen. Then
Speaker 1: it's like and it's all and it's all good, and
Speaker 1: Shane West went to medical school the end, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's but I still like it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. And there's um I wanted to go through
Speaker 1: the product ship the people behind this production. So there
Speaker 1: is people we've discussed on the show before. There is
Speaker 1: a female screenwriter here. Her name is Karen Jansen. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is another Denise dn Novi movie who I know
Speaker 1: has come up on the show a lot. She seems interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was like a millennial childhood shape er big time.
Speaker 1: She I think we talked about her kind of extensively
Speaker 1: because she got both Little Women's the Winona one and
Speaker 1: the Greta Girlwig one made but a quick rundown In
Speaker 1: case you forgot who, Denise says, uh some of some
Speaker 1: of the hits Edward says, her Hands Nightmare before Christmas,
Speaker 1: both of the Little Women's, Practical Magic, Walk to Remember
Speaker 1: What a Girl Wants, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, New
Speaker 1: York Minutes, Failed, Mary Kay Nashley movie Uh, and Crazy
Speaker 1: Stupid Love, which we just discussed on the show. So
Speaker 1: she's behind a lot, a lot, a lot of big movies,
Speaker 1: and even I mean in a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: them are movies that are specifically marketed at teen girls.
Speaker 1: But I feel like a Watch to Remember even stands
Speaker 1: out in her catalog because it seems like the only
Speaker 1: kind of aggressively Christian movie in this in this catalog.
Speaker 1: And then I just try to shout out that the
Speaker 1: director of this movie, uh and openly gay director who's
Speaker 1: who was openly gay at the time of this movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: Started as a choreographer, then switched into directing. Also directed
Speaker 1: The Wedding Planner, which we've covered on Marion. Yeah. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the Hairspray, the two thousand seven one. Uh, he just
Speaker 1: directed What Men Want, which everyone didn't like. And uh,
Speaker 1: he's also directing something that I wasn't aware existed, which
Speaker 1: is a sequel to Enchanted starring Ammy Adams. The final
Speaker 1: fun fact about the director, whose name is Adam Shankman,
Speaker 1: which I don't think I've said um, is that he
Speaker 1: officiated Sarah Michelle Geller and Freddie Prince Jr. His wedding.
Speaker 1: I know they're also still married. They've been married for
Speaker 1: twenty years. Dishwasher commercial what there's a dishwasher commercial where
Speaker 1: they're like making a bunch of innuendoes about doing it
Speaker 1: every night and then it's like, yeah, we run our
Speaker 1: dishwasher every night. It saves water, and like that, I
Speaker 1: and this. I don't hopefully this is but like I
Speaker 1: think I can. I confuse their marriage with Carson Daly
Speaker 1: and Tera read a lot, because it's like brunette guy,
Speaker 1: blonde lady and Carson whatever. That other relationship definitely didn't last,
Speaker 1: but it was a big deal. Freddie Prince Jr. And
Speaker 1: Sarah Michelle Geller three names, you know, six names between
Speaker 1: the two of them. It's destined to last. Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: I hope they're washing dishes right now. Also, that's really
Speaker 1: I'm like, they have how many years has it been
Speaker 1: since they've done a dish. Let's be real, seriously, use
Speaker 1: a dishwasher. That's true, that's because they use the dishwasher.
Speaker 1: Another quick behind the scenes thing. This movie was edited
Speaker 1: by a woman, Emma E. Hiccox's shout out to Emma. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: the last thing I wanted to say. We called attention
Speaker 1: to this, I think in the recap. But there is
Speaker 1: a surprise kiss in this movie. That's a really really
Speaker 1: sneaky surprise kiss because I didn't even realize it was
Speaker 1: a surprise kiss until my second rewatch. But it's when
Speaker 1: in the play Landing kisses Jamie after she sings her song.
Speaker 1: And I originally just thought that that was like a
Speaker 1: scripted part of the play that the high school student
Speaker 1: playwright wrote into the thing. But then I picked up
Speaker 1: on a line that the playwright says on my second
Speaker 1: rewatch where he's like, oh, interesting, rewrite you did their landing,
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh, he's referring to the kiss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's surprise kissed her on stage in front of everybody.
Speaker 1: Feel like Mandy acted out the way you would a
Speaker 1: actual surprise kiss, Like she didn't seem psyched. There is
Speaker 1: a look of shock and surprise on her face, which
Speaker 1: I I guess just chalked that up to like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is probably her first kiss ever and that's why
Speaker 1: she's reacting that way. But then I was like, oh, wait, no,
Speaker 1: that was a surprise kiss and she wasn't expecting it
Speaker 1: and he just used the school play as an excuse
Speaker 1: to kiss her. Also, I feel like the cringe eest
Speaker 1: part of this movie for me is when he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: when she takes off her cloak. To me, that was
Speaker 1: the most uncomfortable moment. He forgot all of his lines,
Speaker 1: so ridiculous this whole I mean the fact, and that
Speaker 1: was like, I think one of the closer moments to
Speaker 1: like a true trophy, Like wow, I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore is very like Western beauty standards beautiful before
Speaker 1: she removed this colloak like what are you doing? Um? Anyways? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: does anyone have anything else they would like to talk about?
Speaker 1: I have to click things. I just I appreciated that
Speaker 1: the music. They used the music to indicate bad kids,
Speaker 1: you know, in a very old man kind of way.
Speaker 1: The first the first the whole first scene up until
Speaker 1: when the bullied kid gets there, I could barely hear
Speaker 1: because the music was blaring so loud. And then that's
Speaker 1: a recurring theme with Landon wearing blasting headphones, and it
Speaker 1: just seemed like a get off my lawn kind of person.
Speaker 1: That indicated that part of the script that made me
Speaker 1: and you laugh, right because the bad boy kids, like
Speaker 1: they're heavy metal rock and roll music. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of the with that
Speaker 1: scene where they're flipping the radio thing, it's like no mercy,
Speaker 1: like just like still biblical, but like the best side
Speaker 1: of it, right, he's yeah, he's listening to his devil
Speaker 1: music and she's listening to her god music. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then the only other thing was that, oh two things.
Speaker 1: One also in the VHS commercials, there was a commercial
Speaker 1: for a O L online and in the trailer for
Speaker 1: this film it does have like below the rating like
Speaker 1: a O L keyword a walk to remember for when
Speaker 1: we still didn't know how to search things. I just
Speaker 1: thought that was a nice time capsule. It was a
Speaker 1: simple time. My last thing was that I kept reading
Speaker 1: about how this film was released in theaters, but then
Speaker 1: also released in a family edited version, and I could
Speaker 1: not find what that means, Like what was edited out
Speaker 1: of this version for the family edited version. Maybe the
Speaker 1: handshake between Landon and Eric where they reference smoking weed.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if they just edited out that guy
Speaker 1: and made it a fully cast right, because he's always
Speaker 1: making again, very sexually aggressive comments and jokes. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they just eliminated that character altogether. I guess just
Speaker 1: if your fans can sound off that was it still
Speaker 1: bugs me. I just want to know what is what
Speaker 1: was edited out? Yeah, it's true. I'm curious. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: has to be the kind of movie this this movie,
Speaker 1: I can't I wonder, it's hard. It's hard to describe
Speaker 1: how it's like that, like I know it when I
Speaker 1: see it kind of thing. But you can tell when
Speaker 1: a movie when a lot hit the cutting room floor,
Speaker 1: and this movie seems like the kind of movie where
Speaker 1: a lot hit the cutting room floor. They did say
Speaker 1: that they did a lot of cuts to make sure
Speaker 1: it was PG not PG thirteen, one of which was
Speaker 1: cutting Shane singing to Mandy in the hospital only Hope,
Speaker 1: which I would like to hear. How did that make
Speaker 1: a PG thirteen. Is that too sexy? Made it too depressing? Oh?
Speaker 1: It was too sad? Okay. I thought it was like
Speaker 1: in a PG the movie you can only say shit
Speaker 1: or fuck once, and you can also only sing only
Speaker 1: hope one, oh my god, or it's adult. Yeah that
Speaker 1: was all I had. All right, Well, I believe the
Speaker 1: movie on some technicalities, passes the Bechtel test, but I
Speaker 1: think that the bullying, it's only it only passes in
Speaker 1: scenes where Jamie is being actively bullied, which, now that
Speaker 1: we've talked it through, is a like narratively significant thing
Speaker 1: that happens. It's just sad, Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think the passing is literally just a photoshop scene
Speaker 1: when Belinda has to like get her to follow her
Speaker 1: to the cafeteria, right, and then like we see Jamie
Speaker 1: almost make a female friend and then actually, no, she's
Speaker 1: not allowed to have any female friends. Sorry, James. I
Speaker 1: remember the lines now. It was like, Jamie, you would
Speaker 1: look really pretty with makeup here, come with me? Do
Speaker 1: you want to? Oh my god? It really is like
Speaker 1: the one of the worst passes we've ever had is
Speaker 1: even an egg. Right. She's basically like, your face is bad.
Speaker 1: Your breath is bad. Come with me so that I
Speaker 1: can keep bullying you. Yeah, come to the table so
Speaker 1: I can keep bullying you with all my cool friends.
Speaker 1: Also like to like fourteen people go to that school
Speaker 1: that just all of it's so bizarre. I feel like
Speaker 1: I saw fourteen kids that went to the entire school
Speaker 1: and all of them hate Jamie. You know, Jamie does
Speaker 1: seem to have a friend who is the other co
Speaker 1: star of the school play. Oh yeah, but we don't
Speaker 1: know that character's name. I don't even think we don't
Speaker 1: know anything about her. She barely says anything. Let Jamie
Speaker 1: have a friend. Seriously, I did love how her friend
Speaker 1: was like the perfect drama nerd. Yeah, you know, highly identifiable.
Speaker 1: And it's like that seems like and you would think that,
Speaker 1: like it seems like Jamie is kind of like well
Speaker 1: liked by the drama club. We have no reasoning that
Speaker 1: she isn't. So it's like, why can't we see her
Speaker 1: thriving outside of this relationship with Shane West a little bit?
Speaker 1: And also you would now that I'm like, wouldn't they
Speaker 1: have visited her as she was dying? They appeared to
Speaker 1: be her friends, right, I will say it sounded like
Speaker 1: she had kept her diagnosis secret from everyone from outside
Speaker 1: of her father. That's true. So by the wedding, did
Speaker 1: they know she's sick? I don't know. I mean they
Speaker 1: know because of the gossip, Like Shane West kind of
Speaker 1: blew up her prophecy, right because all all his friends
Speaker 1: find out about it. Damn they all come around and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I'm sorry, I was such a jerk before.
Speaker 1: I know that. My personal experience, not with cancer, but
Speaker 1: with like major injuries and stuff is like I did
Speaker 1: have a tendency to isolate. I still do. Also could
Speaker 1: be depression and stuff, but like that's like me inferring
Speaker 1: that is her reasoning, It isn't the Only thing we
Speaker 1: know for the movie is that she was like I
Speaker 1: found out two years ago. I didn't want people to
Speaker 1: treat me weird and I was cool until I met you. Right. Ah,
Speaker 1: so much unexplained, right, But if yeah, but if we
Speaker 1: knew more about her character or saw things more from
Speaker 1: her point of view, we would have a better sense
Speaker 1: of what the circumstances were there. So we just don't know,
Speaker 1: because we don't even know. She was really unpopular. The
Speaker 1: popular kids just didn't like her right, but it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's you can be disliked by popular kids and
Speaker 1: still be the coolest kid in the drama club, like
Speaker 1: or that star club that she ran that we saw
Speaker 1: that one. See. Well, that kind of like brings us
Speaker 1: to the nipple scale because I feel like, ultimately, for me, uh,
Speaker 1: this movie would have worked a lot better for me
Speaker 1: if it had been centered around her and not Landing.
Speaker 1: You don't even need to get rid of Landing for
Speaker 1: my I'm like, okay, it's a heteroteene romance whatever, like,
Speaker 1: but but there's no reason other than the movie the
Speaker 1: story is being told by Nicholas Sparks's authorial voice, that
Speaker 1: the story is being told by Landon at all, Like
Speaker 1: I don't it shouldn't be told by him. He can
Speaker 1: be there, but it can't be his story. I don't
Speaker 1: know which. Again, it makes her her burn his sister's
Speaker 1: burned so much like I don't want you telling the
Speaker 1: world about my life. I'm not going to read this
Speaker 1: interpretation you had of me. So shall we shall we?
Speaker 1: Shall we bust out that nipple scale. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens. I'm going to give this movie,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like a one and a half, maybe
Speaker 1: a two, maybe somewhere split in the middle of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's not high. It really adheres
Speaker 1: to a lot of the tropes of like the teen
Speaker 1: romance genre of like a boy nigging and being cruel
Speaker 1: to a girl and wearing her down when he does
Speaker 1: decide that she's worthy of him, and then falling in
Speaker 1: love and still being shitty to her a lot of
Speaker 1: the time. And yeah, the fact that, like you said, Jimmie,
Speaker 1: it's that it's told from his point of view, even
Speaker 1: though he doesn't have an interesting perspective on this narrative
Speaker 1: at all. And I would much rather learn, like know
Speaker 1: about what a like very devoutly Christian girl how she
Speaker 1: feels about having a terminal illness. That's a way more
Speaker 1: interesting story. I don't give a shit about landing like anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think there's a lot of missteps, at least,
Speaker 1: though it doesn't fall into the territory of like a
Speaker 1: million racist and homophobic jokes that get made in a
Speaker 1: lot of comparable movies of this era. But like, obviously
Speaker 1: that bars so low that like, the movie doesn't deserve
Speaker 1: to be congratulated for not doing that, but that but
Speaker 1: that's why I was like, Oh, it's not as problematic
Speaker 1: as I thought it was going to be. They compressed
Speaker 1: it all into that one person, into Eric. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: um for justice for Eric. So yeah, that it's it's
Speaker 1: not the worst example we've seen, but it's certainly not great.
Speaker 1: So I'll give it. I'll give it one and a
Speaker 1: half nipples. I'll give one nipple to Jamie Loftist. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say this episode has been very stressful for
Speaker 1: me overall. You guys, I keep being like, um, and
Speaker 1: I'll get I'll give one nipple to you Jamie, and
Speaker 1: my half nipple too. And wait, how does the song go?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking of listening to this and we're all
Speaker 1: singing it in wildly different keys, and they're like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to like edit it so it like actually
Speaker 1: sinks up because I think, could you please pitch correct
Speaker 1: all three of us that were singing. Of course, I'll
Speaker 1: put some auto tune onto at least my voice, because
Speaker 1: I have the worst singing voice. Um. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: amazing song gets my half Nickel and uh yeah one
Speaker 1: and a half. Yeah, I'll do one and a half
Speaker 1: as well. I feel like, and I agree with We're
Speaker 1: coming from Caitlin. I feel like this movie like shouldn't
Speaker 1: be congratulated for what it dodges. I think the truly
Speaker 1: the one thing that I felt like, oh, this movie
Speaker 1: seems to be intentionally dodging this trope is the fact
Speaker 1: that Jamie doesn't get this big makeover at any point
Speaker 1: for core. You know, she doesn't do ah like Sandy
Speaker 1: from Grease thing. She just like her personality changes, and
Speaker 1: I think all of the asshole popular kids think she's
Speaker 1: cool and you're like, why are we here? Um? But
Speaker 1: you know, like Jamie retains her core values and qualities
Speaker 1: and is loved for them, which I feel like is
Speaker 1: a generally more positive message than most teen movies we're
Speaker 1: giving us at that time. That is, I think like
Speaker 1: the main strength of the movie, which I think I read,
Speaker 1: was the director's hard choice, Like he made that a
Speaker 1: strong rule, like I don't want to do a reveal.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do shank Man, all right, Yeah
Speaker 1: that makes me really happen, Like yeah, I I totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've we've I think I criticized this movie
Speaker 1: pretty from a lot of ankles, um Ultimately, I it
Speaker 1: holds up way better than I thought it would. This
Speaker 1: will not be the last time I watched this movie.
Speaker 1: It feels it's just like a very comfort movie to watch.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, her dream is to get married
Speaker 1: will Gross whatever her right. I wish that we had
Speaker 1: seen a more a better characterization of Landon's character and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't so centered around him, because outside of
Speaker 1: the fact that it's not really fair to Jamie's character,
Speaker 1: it also like everything else going on in Landon's life
Speaker 1: is really boring to me, and I don't care about
Speaker 1: him and his father, except I love the scene where
Speaker 1: he's mad at his father for not knowing the cure
Speaker 1: to cancer. That's hilarious, but I don't care. It's also
Speaker 1: another example of like a male redemption story, and not
Speaker 1: that those can't be done well and aren't valuable, but
Speaker 1: I don't think this was done well, nor was this
Speaker 1: redemption earned to me, so I think it could have
Speaker 1: been earned, which is kind of frustrating. It could have
Speaker 1: been earned, but it wasn't. The way that the story
Speaker 1: plays out, but iconic Mandy Moore performance. Love her, love
Speaker 1: her high school soprano voice. That is literally a voice
Speaker 1: you would hear on stage in a high school as
Speaker 1: Mandy Moore style, like she is not singing from the
Speaker 1: diaphragm at all, like it is it is. I love it.
Speaker 1: Those were some of the things my voice teacher was
Speaker 1: trying to correct right there, like trying not to sound
Speaker 1: like Mandy Moore. But it's so easy to sound if
Speaker 1: you just I don't know. I highly recommend Mandy Moore
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite karaoke go toos because it's
Speaker 1: so easy and it's so effective. I'm sure something to
Speaker 1: give it one and a half and I'll give one
Speaker 1: to Jamie Sullivan and then I'll give the other half
Speaker 1: to Darryl Hannah's wig. Oh yes, good Sam, what about you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I still on this viewing where I also
Speaker 1: did you know an obsessive deep dive? Um. I'm really
Speaker 1: just taking away and wanting to rewatch the film again
Speaker 1: from the lens of you know, the brother of a
Speaker 1: dying woman who's obsessed with her husband who's going out
Speaker 1: of his way to marry a dead person. I feel
Speaker 1: like that are dying person. Um, I feel like that
Speaker 1: really makes everything make a little more sense. Um. And
Speaker 1: I you know, I am gonna go high. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it to nipples, and I'm going to give those
Speaker 1: nipples to every person who got horny during this movie
Speaker 1: as a kid or as an adult or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: because I do feel like, you know, I I don't
Speaker 1: know how I feel as an adult in the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry about they're being real chemistry between a sixteen seventeen
Speaker 1: year old and a twenty three year old, but it is,
Speaker 1: it is palpable, and for me it was a big
Speaker 1: bisexual awakening. And I can't imagine I'm the only one
Speaker 1: sure you're not. Yeah, It's like, it's just that the
Speaker 1: industry should not present opportunities for that to be the
Speaker 1: case for a under a age actor and a of
Speaker 1: age actor. That should never be a thing where they're
Speaker 1: on screen together in a romantic context and where the
Speaker 1: crew is you know, aware there, everyone's aware of a
Speaker 1: romance forming I r L and not inhibiting that because
Speaker 1: it helps the performance, right, So if you had an awakening,
Speaker 1: it's not your fault, it's but it is the fault
Speaker 1: of the production for making those casting choices you're so anyway,
Speaker 1: maybe it will make you feel better to know that
Speaker 1: this movie made Mandy Moore get back into her religion.
Speaker 1: So if you're feeling guilty about her horny nous, it
Speaker 1: seems like she might have. She got she got to horny,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, I need to go, I need
Speaker 1: to find God again. She wasn't. The horny nous didn't
Speaker 1: take her down a wicked path. I love great Andy Moore.
Speaker 1: I hope she's not shitty is because I just I
Speaker 1: love her. Although she was famously for a while watching
Speaker 1: Me Asleep, which I didn't care for. That's kind of
Speaker 1: that's kind of mean, and she's never apologized for that,
Speaker 1: which I do think is very telling of her character.
Speaker 1: I did very briefly meet her one time. She did
Speaker 1: a show at Nerd Melt and I saw her and
Speaker 1: showed her where the green room was. So she was
Speaker 1: very nice, she seems to me in that moment, So
Speaker 1: that means she's nice to everyone all the time forever.
Speaker 1: That is how that works. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here, Sam, This was such a blast. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad we did this movie. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so honored. To be here. This is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite podcasts and I love having these discussions. I
Speaker 1: r l or on pod and I appreciate you guys
Speaker 1: giving me the opportunity to kind of process this home
Speaker 1: now as an adult. Oh anytime, any time, come on back.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I had one more connection to Titanic. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we have the hot car, we have somebody dying
Speaker 1: slowly and yeah switch Foot mentions Titanic that those are
Speaker 1: my three got it? Yeah it's Cannon. Well there's I
Speaker 1: would say there aren't enough Titanic connections in this movie,
Speaker 1: but that's just me. Yeah, I could have I could
Speaker 1: have staid to have a couple more and there was
Speaker 1: room for it. And yeah they were they were like
Speaker 1: weren't they seaside or somehow? There were boats there were
Speaker 1: there were both. There's water, they go into the water.
Speaker 1: They belly Some characters belly flop into the water in
Speaker 1: both movies. There is there are there are near near
Speaker 1: fatal belly flops, and there's a and there's a wearing
Speaker 1: down relationship that we're rooting for and who is Belinda?
Speaker 1: But cal Hockley played by Billy's Andrew makes you think,
Speaker 1: makes you think Billy Zane should have been in this movie.
Speaker 1: Alfred Molina could have played the priest Dad no offense
Speaker 1: Peter Coyote, but he's already played. He was a priest
Speaker 1: in Chuckle Law, so I guess he was like no, wait, no,
Speaker 1: he was the mayor in Chuckle Law. He was a
Speaker 1: priest in the Da Vinci Code. Back to Da Vinci. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh my god, langdon, langdon. The Da Vinci code is Apple.
Speaker 1: Never forget code was the word apple. I'm never I'm
Speaker 1: never going to get over that. Sorry, Uh Sam? Where
Speaker 1: can people follow you online and check out your stuff? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do live events online events this last year, but
Speaker 1: you know, as things start to open, maybe more live
Speaker 1: events in New York and l A as it's safe
Speaker 1: my shows. My website is naked Comedy dot org. My
Speaker 1: Twitter is at Naked Underscore Comedy. My Insta is at
Speaker 1: Naked Comedy and yeah, support me if you can. I
Speaker 1: try to do inclusive shows of people from all backgrounds.
Speaker 1: I try to make sure that my performers are paid,
Speaker 1: and I just am a solo entrepreneur trying to make
Speaker 1: a modest, very modest living while supporting my fellow comedy friends.
Speaker 1: Because comedy inspires me one of the greatest in the game. Also,
Speaker 1: to be clear, just to set the record straight, I
Speaker 1: named Naked Comedy after Naked Juice, so it's like authentic.
Speaker 1: So just so if you're like, who's this naked comedy
Speaker 1: chick like criticizing Christianity and talking about being horny, actually
Speaker 1: it's not. That's not the vibe of all my stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find us on mine on all of the platforms,
Speaker 1: on Twitter, on Instagram, not on TikTok, and probably never
Speaker 1: on TikTok. Honestly, I don't. I used to download another application,
Speaker 1: so complan. You can find us on Bechtel Cast on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter. You can sign up for our patreon
Speaker 1: ak Matreon, in which you will get to bonus episodes
Speaker 1: a month for only a mere five dollars, And there's
Speaker 1: almost a hundred episodes hanging out there on on the Matreon.
Speaker 1: There's a lot. There's a lot going on. I appreciate
Speaker 1: when you guys release a few Matron episodes to the
Speaker 1: free feed. I didn't know that that Matreon was primarily
Speaker 1: recorded in bed. I feel like that's a big selling point.
Speaker 1: I hopefully we can get back. We can get back
Speaker 1: there because we it's been a year since we've recorded
Speaker 1: Matreons in Caitlymb's bed specifically. Yeah, like you know, we'll
Speaker 1: get back. It's been a really long time, but it's
Speaker 1: been eighty four years. It's been eighty four years and
Speaker 1: we can still smell the fresh paint. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Everyone will be here next week. Bye bye. Yeah