Speaker 1: On the Bechde Cast, the questions ask if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn
Speaker 1: bast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hello, Bechdel Cast listeners.
Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin and my name is Jamie, and
Speaker 3: this is the Bechdel Cast. You know what you love it?
Speaker 3: If this is your first time catch up, maybe because
Speaker 3: it's an unusual week, been an unusual months on the cast,
Speaker 3: and I celebrate that. This week we are releasing a
Speaker 3: live show, and not just any live show, a live
Speaker 3: show we just recorded in Los Angeles as of this
Speaker 3: recording less than twenty four hours ago.
Speaker 2: Yes, and speaking of live shows, so we'll get in.
Speaker 2: We'll get to the episode in just a moment, but
Speaker 2: before we do, we want to take this opportunity to
Speaker 2: let you know about more live shows that we are
Speaker 2: going to be doing, because we have a tour planned
Speaker 2: for February twenty twenty four. We are going to the
Speaker 2: Bay Area. We'll be doing a show in San Francisco
Speaker 2: and Sacramento. Then we are heading to Texas for shows
Speaker 2: in Dallas and Austin, and then we were swinging back
Speaker 2: around to California and doing a show in San Diego. Now,
Speaker 2: at the time of us recording this, we're still finalizing
Speaker 2: some of the details, but a few ticket links are
Speaker 2: already live and up on our link tree link Tree
Speaker 2: slash Bechtel Cast.
Speaker 3: Which is also linked in the description. And yeah, we're
Speaker 3: super excited to be back on the road. We hear
Speaker 3: you Bechdel Cast listeners that we need to get off
Speaker 3: our asses and get off the West coast. So you'll
Speaker 3: see a lot of that in the coming months, and
Speaker 3: we're excited. We were particularly excited to go to Austin
Speaker 3: because we had a show in Austin that was sold
Speaker 3: out scheduled for April twenty twenty and you'll never believe
Speaker 3: what happened next. So we are excited to finally, almost
Speaker 3: four years later, make it back to Austin and head
Speaker 3: over to Dallas as well. So and we're just pumped
Speaker 3: to be back on tour. Yes, and for this live show,
Speaker 3: you'll know from the title we covered, it's a wonderful life,
Speaker 3: is it? We spent some time pondering deciding, and another
Speaker 3: important element of this show is that half of the
Speaker 3: proceeds from this show went to ANARA and PCRF. These
Speaker 3: are both nonprofits that are contributing to aid taking place
Speaker 3: in Gaza right now. Of course, if you're listening and
Speaker 3: you are a person in the world, you're very likely
Speaker 3: aware of what's going on in Gaza right now. There
Speaker 3: is not a lot of aid reaching Gaza because of
Speaker 3: the horrific uenocytal practices that are taking place around Gaza. However,
Speaker 3: we wanted to do what we can not just by
Speaker 3: making our politics very clear on the show. I know
Speaker 3: we've referenced it, but for the sake of just being
Speaker 3: explicit about it on the feed. Yeah, So half of
Speaker 3: the money from the show went to the PCRF is
Speaker 3: short for Palestine Children's Relief Fund. An ERA is short
Speaker 3: for America Near East Refugee Aid. So that money has
Speaker 3: been donated and sincerely hope that the aid that is
Speaker 3: being sent is able to actually reach the people of
Speaker 3: Gaza as soon as possible. Free Palestine. America is the
Speaker 3: worst place in the world. So that was what we
Speaker 3: are doing, in addition to continuing to raise awareness as
Speaker 3: we can. That said, we really appreciate everyone who came
Speaker 3: out to the show. We had a really great time.
Speaker 2: And who watched the live stream blog? Yes, bought tickets
Speaker 2: to the live stream. Yes, really appreciate you supporting us,
Speaker 2: supporting this fundraising effort. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yes, we recorded. It was our first show at Dynasty
Speaker 3: Typewriter in Los Angeles, so huge shout out to Dynasty
Speaker 3: and their team. God, it was so cool. The live
Speaker 3: stream setup there is wonderful. The vibes are immaculate, and
Speaker 3: we had the best time.
Speaker 2: We really did.
Speaker 3: If you caught the live stream, thank you. If you
Speaker 3: were there, it got to hang out even better. And
Speaker 3: we're excited to hit more cities and see more listeners soon.
Speaker 2: So true.
Speaker 3: But for now we've got business to do.
Speaker 2: Well and then one more live show for you to
Speaker 2: plug Jamie.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yes, if you're in the Los Angeles area, and
Speaker 3: you should be, please head out to the Allegian Theater,
Speaker 3: where we've also done live shows in the past, the
Speaker 3: Allegiant Theater in LA we will be doing a live
Speaker 3: reading of the first and most recent, certainly not last,
Speaker 3: installment of Santi University. If you're listening to the Bexxel
Speaker 3: cast and you don't know what Santi University.
Speaker 2: Is get with the program.
Speaker 3: Shame on you, Shame on you kind of Santi University
Speaker 3: is a bit, but is it.
Speaker 2: That it's real? It's okay, it's a documentary.
Speaker 3: It's hundreds of pages I've written at this point, so
Speaker 3: I feel like it has to be real. It's a
Speaker 3: scream a six hundred allegedly six hundred page screenplay that
Speaker 3: we've been doing every holiday season. I'll write a new
Speaker 3: twenty to thirty pages, depending on how much time I
Speaker 3: give myself to write it each year. It's super jokey,
Speaker 3: it's super goofy. We can link an example in the description.
Speaker 3: But it's like my favorite thing to do in the world,
Speaker 3: because besides the Bechel cast, of course, it's like the
Speaker 3: most it's the most brain My favorite brain dead activity
Speaker 3: and the entire planet is writing Santa University. I don't
Speaker 3: use one brain cell. I have six panic attacks and
Speaker 3: it's not good, so you should come. Caitlyn will be
Speaker 3: reprising their treasured holiday role of Sully.
Speaker 2: Okay, best character scene, steal it. Where's the spin off?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Six seasons in a movie for Sully, Sully High School,
Speaker 2: Sully High. Oh my gosh, I'll fine I'll write it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to twist my arm.
Speaker 3: Just to give you an idea of the kinds of
Speaker 3: characters found in this world. Sully is a character who's
Speaker 3: from Weston, Massachusetts, who fired the protagonist Dan Santa from
Speaker 3: Lydd's and generally, wait, Kitlyn, will you do Sully's iconic line.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're so fucking beautiful?
Speaker 3: So it's also a feminist test. Sully appreciates women and
Speaker 3: he cat calls all the right reasons. Anyways, you should
Speaker 3: come hang out. We're donating all the proceeds from that
Speaker 3: show to a nonprofit that I love very much. I
Speaker 3: volunteer with them, CILA that supports the unhoused community in
Speaker 3: La So, even if it's the worst show on the planet,
Speaker 3: and it might be, your money is going to a
Speaker 3: wonderful place, So come out. We'll link that as well.
Speaker 3: But you know what, show definitely wasn't the worst show
Speaker 3: in the world. It was, in fact one of the best,
Speaker 3: and maybe in fact the best.
Speaker 2: The one that you're about to hear. So, without much
Speaker 2: further ado, please enjoy our live episode of It's a
Speaker 2: Wonderful Life.
Speaker 3: Hi, Welcome to the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: Hello La it's us and we live here and you
Speaker 2: live here.
Speaker 3: Maybe we went shopping together this morning to get these
Speaker 3: fits together.
Speaker 2: I have a very cool shirt under this, and maybe
Speaker 2: I'll take this sweater off at some point.
Speaker 3: We haven't done an LA live show in a bit,
Speaker 3: and I think that one of the last ones we did.
Speaker 3: At least you did an actual strip tease because we
Speaker 3: were covering magic mic.
Speaker 2: Yes, round of applause if you were at that show. Wow,
Speaker 2: so you saw that was.
Speaker 3: One of the most wait Titanic quote. It was the
Speaker 3: most erotic experience.
Speaker 2: Of my life up until then, at least last March.
Speaker 3: You and I start making out right now, we start
Speaker 3: making out and then you start drawing me. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: that's how that would work. Yes, anyways, thanks for coming.
Speaker 3: Things were coming at four pm. Two We're like, do
Speaker 3: people come out at four pm? Let's find out. It's
Speaker 3: a little scary. It's it's dark out though, so that's
Speaker 3: and it feels like night. And that concludes our kind
Speaker 3: of warm up portion.
Speaker 2: Of the show. Shout out to anyone watching the live stream. Yes,
Speaker 2: I oh yeah, say whoo for them.
Speaker 3: They're so mad they're not in the little seats, aren't
Speaker 3: they there? Okay, give it up if you have if
Speaker 3: you have listened to the Bechdel Cast before, we like
Speaker 3: to take a chance. Okay, free applause. Give it up.
Speaker 3: If you have been dragged here by someone who listens
Speaker 3: to the Bechdel Cast and you're scared and you don't
Speaker 3: know what's gonna happen. Oh oh my, the lights went
Speaker 3: up and I just saw one guy like, whoo if
Speaker 3: you're a god his eyes but he was ready. He's good.
Speaker 2: We're scary, Yeah.
Speaker 3: We're scary. We're scared, but we're wearing nice little outfits.
Speaker 3: So it's all about aesthetics, that's true. So the movie
Speaker 3: we're covering today, if you can't tell from our our
Speaker 3: very festive apparel, is a movie that we have. I
Speaker 3: feel like because our show has been around for so long,
Speaker 3: we have covered so many holiday movies, yes, right down
Speaker 3: to the one that came out on Netflix last year
Speaker 3: where Lindsay Lohan gets bonked on the head, right, But
Speaker 3: we hadn't covered one that is considered a classic, which
Speaker 3: is It's a Wonderful Life. So just to take the
Speaker 3: temp once more, give it up. If you have seen
Speaker 3: and enjoy a wonderful life, all right, and if you
Speaker 3: haven't seen it, okay, brave, brave, I had it. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I haven't seen shit. I watched The Godfather
Speaker 3: in March and I was like, it's pretty good. You guys,
Speaker 3: they're kind of the Godfather's kind of a slave.
Speaker 2: These these frank sees know how to direct a movie.
Speaker 2: That's a reference to this movie directed by Frank Capra
Speaker 2: and Francis Ford Coppola, who maybe was also called Frank.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know. There's no way to know, because he's alive.
Speaker 3: I just remembered so we could ask him to get
Speaker 3: to get started. Caitlin, Yes, what is your history with
Speaker 3: the movie? It's a Wonderful Life? Nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: So I saw the movie for the first time. I
Speaker 2: was like probably eighteen or nineteen. I did not grow
Speaker 2: up with this movie, so I have no nostalgic attachment
Speaker 2: to it, and I controversially.
Speaker 3: Do not really like this movie.
Speaker 2: Sorry, thank you. I have good reasons. I find Jimmy
Speaker 2: Stewart irritating. Sorry, thank you again. He's irritating.
Speaker 3: Okay, I disagree with that.
Speaker 2: A lot of people do. I am in the minority.
Speaker 2: I do think, but I find his character to be
Speaker 2: mostly unlikable, and yeah, I just I'm not a fan,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna set that aside and look at this
Speaker 2: movie objectively for this episode, I wink.
Speaker 3: Can I just say, I would just want to start
Speaker 3: by commending you for your bravery, thank you for watching
Speaker 3: the movie on Oh I want Okay, wait, my history
Speaker 3: with this movie, Lease tell me is that I had
Speaker 3: not seen it. Like most movies we've covered on the show,
Speaker 3: it's usually my first time watching it, unless it's like
Speaker 3: the Lindzie McGuire movie. I'm like, yeah, I've seen this
Speaker 3: movie five hundred times. I've seen bad movies five hundred times.
Speaker 3: This one I hadn't seen, and I started watching it
Speaker 3: for It's available for free on Roku tv right now asterisk.
Speaker 3: They couldn't afford the music, so they've replaced it with
Speaker 3: like Baby Einstein music, And I would really recommend that
Speaker 3: experience because it's so jarry. If I hadn't been watching
Speaker 3: the movie with someone that was like, hold on, something
Speaker 3: is very wrong because in the Roku TV one, every
Speaker 3: time Clarence not the elf in my mind, Okay, the
Speaker 3: thing is, I'm gonna fuck up repeatedly in this episode.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call them Clarence the Elf, and I'm gonna
Speaker 3: call Bedford Falls New Bedford, Massachusetts, and that will keep happening,
Speaker 3: and I will not apologize for That's fine. But yeah,
Speaker 3: anytime like in this, I don't even know what happens
Speaker 3: in the original score, but they add in this royalty
Speaker 3: free alphabet song. Every time is on the screen, it
Speaker 3: goes bloom bloom bloom bloom bloom boom boom boom boom boom,
Speaker 3: like and you're just like, this could Twin beIN a
Speaker 3: Little Star ABC DFG. It's the same tune.
Speaker 2: Oh that is it, Caitlin a bct twin? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I see it.
Speaker 3: The lack of trust between us, it's the I only
Speaker 3: learned that from like clickbait in twenty twelve or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's like, did you know some crack
Speaker 3: dot comshit on their on their crack dot comshit. Anyways,
Speaker 3: I had not seen it before. I started watching it
Speaker 3: with the wrong music and I got scared. H And
Speaker 3: then I watched it for a second time with the
Speaker 3: correct music, and I liked it better.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: I I have complicated feelings towards this movie because I
Speaker 3: didn't grow up with it. My family never showed it
Speaker 3: to me, and I asked my mom why and she
Speaker 3: answered with one word, which was boring.
Speaker 2: She's not wrong.
Speaker 3: She's not wrong. The thing is, like, I think this
Speaker 3: is I well, actually, round of applause. If you grew
Speaker 3: up with this movie and watched it as a kid, weirdos.
Speaker 3: This is such a depressing, like weird long movie. It
Speaker 3: opens with with a man about to take his own
Speaker 3: life because he's been told by society that he's worth
Speaker 3: more dead than alive, and you, as a six year old,
Speaker 3: were like, let them cook, Like that's that's interesting. I yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that if I saw this when I was
Speaker 3: a kid, I would have left the room and been like,
Speaker 3: could we turn on SpongeBob?
Speaker 2: But like, you know, not that Christmas Carol the only
Speaker 2: Christmas movie, right, I like, because we're babies and so anyways,
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it. I watch it for the first
Speaker 2: time to get ready for this episode, and I have
Speaker 2: like complicated feelings towards it because I think in some
Speaker 2: ways there were parts where I felt very emotional. I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, I like, I am surprised that these
Speaker 2: sort of values are being shown in a movie from
Speaker 2: the forties. And then in other ways, I'm like, why
Speaker 2: is he yelling at his wife in every scene there?
Speaker 2: Why is he yelling or aggressively forcing a kiss on.
Speaker 3: To Donna Read in every single scene? And so I
Speaker 3: would say, I don't know. I'm willing to be swayed, okay,
Speaker 3: And I am afraid and and I will also qualify
Speaker 3: that with I am actively afraid of fans of this movie.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to get yelled at, but I
Speaker 3: but we have a job to do, and we're and
Speaker 3: that is why you're here. And we've famously never been
Speaker 3: wrong before, so true. Why start now?
Speaker 2: All right? Shall I do the recap.
Speaker 3: Caitlin's famous recap? Let's do it?
Speaker 2: Okay? Here we go? Wow, thank you?
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna place some content warning for suicide right here, which.
Speaker 3: Is a wild way to have to open a holiday movie.
Speaker 2: That's like, yes, okay, so we open in Bedford Falls.
Speaker 2: Ever heard of it? I think it's an upstate New
Speaker 2: York is my best guess.
Speaker 3: That's what upstate New York is really like, I was reading.
Speaker 3: I went in so deep on the parts of this
Speaker 3: movie that don't matter. There's been arguments for the better
Speaker 3: part of a century of like were they referencing this
Speaker 3: town in upstate New York or was it just a
Speaker 3: guy being like there's a town hm, hm, will never matter,
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. It's New Bedford. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there are a bunch of voices praying asking that
Speaker 2: George Bailey be helped. Then we see some stars in
Speaker 2: the night sky or is it heaven.
Speaker 4: The heavens even maybe they're talking because the stars are
Speaker 4: actually angels and they hear people's prayers about George Bailey,
Speaker 4: and they send an angel named Clarence to help George, not.
Speaker 3: Before insulting Clarence, Oh my gosh, being like where is
Speaker 3: I feel like Clarence has big Dan Santa energy to me,
Speaker 3: and that they're like, this angel looks like shit, he
Speaker 3: can't even read, can't even read. We don't like him,
Speaker 3: we don't respect him. But and that shows what the
Speaker 3: heavens feel about George Bailey. They're sending him their very worst.
Speaker 2: So true. Okay, so the reason Clarence is going to
Speaker 2: go help George is because he is thinking of ending
Speaker 2: his life. Clarence has not gotten his wings yet, his
Speaker 2: angel wings. So the other angels say that if he's
Speaker 2: able to help George, he will get his wings, So
Speaker 2: ulterior motives they're there. It's true, he doesn't get about
Speaker 2: actually helping someone. He's just like I want my wings, right, And.
Speaker 3: We could argue, you know, the level of like how
Speaker 3: well does Clarence actually do it his job? I mean
Speaker 3: it's kind of up for you know, it's up for
Speaker 3: this guy. And I hear that there's some Clarence heads
Speaker 3: and that are.
Speaker 5: Like he did what he had to do, Clarence, I
Speaker 5: think ultimately spoiler alert at the end, when Clarence does
Speaker 5: get his wings, I just like wanted like a centerfold,
Speaker 5: like a nude centerfold.
Speaker 3: With Clarence and his wings.
Speaker 2: Oh, and you want him to be nude for that?
Speaker 3: For me, he would have to be nude for that there. Okay,
Speaker 3: can you imagine the cover like December nineteen forty six,
Speaker 3: Clarence gets his wings and then you open the magazine
Speaker 3: it is nude Clarence, huge wingspance.
Speaker 2: Wow. And this would be where in like in Playboy
Speaker 2: magazine magazine Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Horny Sex God magazine.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Well anyway, so the other angels start
Speaker 2: telling Clarence about George, and so most of the movie
Speaker 2: is flashbacks to George's life, starting with George Bailey as
Speaker 2: a kid. He saved his little brother Harry when he
Speaker 2: fell through some thin ice.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Then George, who works at a drug store child labor alert.
Speaker 2: He prevents someone from getting poisoned because the druggist mister Gower,
Speaker 2: accidentally tries to give someone poison capsules instead of medicine.
Speaker 3: Because his son died. Caately, I'm his son died, so
Speaker 3: he was crying so he couldn't see the huge jug
Speaker 3: of poison. He got confused. He was having a bad day.
Speaker 3: It could have been any of us among us hasn't
Speaker 3: accidently poisoned the child.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we also meet mister Potter. He's played by
Speaker 2: Lionel Barrymore. He's the richest man in town. He's very mean,
Speaker 2: he's very evil, and he's always trying to put the
Speaker 2: building in loan that George's father and his uncle Billy run.
Speaker 2: Mister Potter is trying to put it out of business
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 3: Mister Potter very much the villain, however, I think one
Speaker 3: of the most like I haven't seen a more iconic
Speaker 3: movie wheelchair than mister Potter. I mean he's had it
Speaker 3: retrofitted into a full thrown throne. Yes, and I respect
Speaker 3: that about him and nothing else.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Okay, So we cut to George Bailey as
Speaker 2: a young man. He's now played by James Stewart. His
Speaker 2: whole thing is he can't wait to get out of
Speaker 2: his town of Bedford Falls aka New bed Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants much more than this provincial life.
Speaker 2: I literally wrote that in my Yes, That's why he
Speaker 2: keeps fucking saying it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, have you not seen Beauty the Beast nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one, bitch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he can't wait to get out explore the world.
Speaker 2: He has a trip coming up that he where he's
Speaker 2: gonna go to Europe and then he's gonna go to
Speaker 2: college after that. So then we meet some townspeople such
Speaker 2: as Ernie the cab driver, Bert the cop, and then
Speaker 2: we're like okay, Burt and Ernie.
Speaker 3: And then and then we're like, oh no, Wikipedia is
Speaker 3: ahead of us on this, and it's a coincidence. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 3: right there, we're gonna start a conspiracy. Jim Hen's a
Speaker 3: you fucking liar.
Speaker 2: Okay. Then we also meet Violet. She's blonde and she's hot,
Speaker 2: and she's an icon. I love Violet. I mean I
Speaker 2: wish we so dirty in this movie. Well we'll get
Speaker 2: back to. Yeah. We also meet George's mother, another woman
Speaker 2: we barely know anything about anyway.
Speaker 3: What's her first what's her first name? Mama?
Speaker 2: Missus? Okay. George heads to his brother Harry's graduation party.
Speaker 2: This is where he reconnects with Mary played by Donna Reid,
Speaker 2: and they see each other and they are both like
Speaker 2: uh wooga, and they start dancing, and then there's this
Speaker 2: whole thing where they fall into a swimming pool.
Speaker 3: This is a like, I'm okay with a swimming pool
Speaker 3: jump scare. That's gonna be good for me in every movie. However,
Speaker 3: this whole sequence, and I know that, like I don't know,
Speaker 3: there's no good way to do this other than truly
Speaker 3: casting a younger actor to play the character when they're younger.
Speaker 3: But there's a whole twenty minute chunk of this movie
Speaker 3: where a visibly forty year old Jimmy Stewart is supposed
Speaker 3: to be twenty one. Yeah, and it's so confusing, it's
Speaker 3: unbelievably confusing, because you have to like go through all
Speaker 3: of these layers of dissonance, which is, first of all,
Speaker 3: like even Riverdale wasn't pushing like this. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like he looks his age and that's great, but
Speaker 3: he keeps being like how old are you? And I'm
Speaker 3: like how old are you? And he's like twenty one
Speaker 3: and You're like, no, you're not, you fucking liar. And
Speaker 3: then and then on top of that, you have to
Speaker 3: like weave through the fact that the age gaps between
Speaker 3: hetero Hollywood couples have always been so huge that Donna
Speaker 3: Reid does look closer to the age she's supposed to
Speaker 3: be and Jimmy Stewart looks forty, and like, is this
Speaker 3: canonically predatory or is it just casting predatory And anyways,
Speaker 3: it's casting predatory and Jimmy Stewart's definitely twenty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so confusing. Also another movie where at least young characters,
Speaker 2: maybe not young actors, but young characters are in a
Speaker 2: swimming pool thinking fully closed, just like say it with
Speaker 2: me now, Leonardo DiCaprio, fake fans on fuck believable, look
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, people fully clothed in the pool, having a
Speaker 3: coming of age moment. Yeah, it's a timeless trope, it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, normally the young people having a coming of
Speaker 2: age moment are in there, like swimwear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're Leonardo DiCaprio, you're fully clothed every time,
Speaker 3: and we don't know why, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they fall in a swimming pool, and then
Speaker 2: we cut to later that evening, they're walking around, they're flirting,
Speaker 2: they walk past this old rundown house that Mary loves.
Speaker 2: Will put a pin in that, and she's wearing a
Speaker 2: robe because her clothes got wet from falling in the
Speaker 2: swimming pool. And so there's this part where her robe
Speaker 2: falls off and she's naked and she's hiding in the
Speaker 2: bushes and we will just have to talk about that
Speaker 2: later because it's too much right now. Then George gets
Speaker 2: word that his father had a he dies from it.
Speaker 2: So George feels obligated to cancel his trip to Europe
Speaker 2: and to take over his father's business, the Bailey Building
Speaker 2: and Loan. The evil mister Potter, who is a board member,
Speaker 2: tries to dissolve it, but George makes this impassioned speech
Speaker 2: and the board votes to keep the building and loan
Speaker 2: going as long as George is in charge, which like
Speaker 2: messes with his plans to go to college and explore
Speaker 2: the world. So now he's stuck in Bedford Falls.
Speaker 3: He's a forty year old college freshman. He's way behind.
Speaker 3: He keeps like it really is so watching this movie
Speaker 3: for the first time in the past week was so
Speaker 3: jarring because he's talking to his father and he's like,
Speaker 3: I have to go to college. I'm like, yeah, man,
Speaker 3: hurry up, you're running out of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he feels stuck in his town at least
Speaker 2: until his brother Harry, finishes college so that Harry can
Speaker 2: take over the family business. But four years later, when
Speaker 2: Harry returns from school, Harry's wife's father has offered Harry
Speaker 2: a job, so George has to stay with the building
Speaker 2: and loan. Then George's mother urges him to get with Mary,
Speaker 2: who has also been away at school until now, but
Speaker 2: George doesn't want to compete with his friend Sam Wainwright,
Speaker 2: who was very much like all the adults in the
Speaker 2: graduate who are like, you got to get into plastics.
Speaker 2: That's Sam Waynwright huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he started the trend. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's also in love.
Speaker 3: With Mary well, but is he though, because you cut
Speaker 3: to him on the phone and you're like, well, he
Speaker 3: seems to be cheating on her today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he more calls for a business proposal than
Speaker 2: like a social calling to talk.
Speaker 3: To George, which is interesting because the house he calls
Speaker 3: George does not live at. I know, but you know,
Speaker 3: I think that that is just like Hollywood coding for
Speaker 3: he's a dog. We don't care, yeah about this Sam
Speaker 3: waying Wright character. George is a good guy. But then
Speaker 3: you're like, is he is it a wonderful life even
Speaker 3: we don't know?
Speaker 2: Anyway, So George goes over to Mary's house and she's
Speaker 2: very excited to see him, but he is such an
Speaker 2: asshole to her in this scene, and she gets visibly
Speaker 2: upset about it, and then he grabs her and screams
Speaker 2: on her face. But don't worry, they will get married.
Speaker 2: In the next scene.
Speaker 3: Cut to their mary wedding. I was watching this with
Speaker 3: someone near dear to my heart, and they were crying
Speaker 3: through that entire scene. I was like, I don't understand
Speaker 3: what is beautiful about the scene. But but you know,
Speaker 3: life comes at you fast.
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay. So then George and Mary are headed to
Speaker 2: their luxurious honeymoon with a stack of cash.
Speaker 3: Which is really cool of them, I think. I mean,
Speaker 3: is that what happened in nineteen forty six, Like, here's
Speaker 3: my budget, Like it's just in your hand. Scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like pre Venmo certainly I know that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Okay, then the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine happens.
Speaker 3: I think that happens in Titanic too. Did it happen
Speaker 3: in real life? But sound up in the comments?
Speaker 2: Uh huh Okay. So everyone's rushing to take their money
Speaker 2: out of the bank. So George turns around and goes
Speaker 2: to the building a loan where a bunch of people
Speaker 2: are demanding their money. But uncle Billy had given away
Speaker 2: all the cash to the bank to pay off a
Speaker 2: loan or I don't know.
Speaker 3: What I love about uncle Billy is that he's professionally
Speaker 3: known as uncle Billy. You never hear anyone call him billy,
Speaker 3: whether they're his peer, his relative, his client, they're all like,
Speaker 3: uncle Billy, you fuck up? Yes, get that bird out
Speaker 3: the way, okay.
Speaker 2: So they don't have any cash on hand to give
Speaker 2: to the customers, and mister Potter is threatening to steal
Speaker 2: all of the customers and close down the business. So
Speaker 2: then George has to shell out his own personal stack
Speaker 2: of cash that he was going to use for his
Speaker 2: honeymoon and he gives it to all the townspeople in
Speaker 2: order to save the business. Then he's like, oh, right,
Speaker 2: it's my wedding day. I have to call my wife.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, yeah, I left my wife in a
Speaker 3: running car six hours ago. Better check in.
Speaker 2: And she's like, come to this address. So he shows
Speaker 2: up and it's the old Rundown house that Mary has
Speaker 2: always loved, and now it's their house. I think they're
Speaker 2: squatting in it.
Speaker 3: I actually think I have Uh well, I was gonna
Speaker 3: say this later, but like I think that that is
Speaker 3: like if that is because I wasn't able to find
Speaker 3: any maybe some listeners understand the plot reason why that happened,
Speaker 3: But if they really did see an unclaimed house and
Speaker 3: then just reclaimed it, I think that that is like
Speaker 3: one of the more radical things that happens in the movie.
Speaker 2: Truly. Yeah, I'm fine with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that happens now and it's like necessary
Speaker 3: and cool because there's so much housing that's just like
Speaker 3: left empty. So I'm like, yeah, this mansion you've been
Speaker 3: throwing rocks at for twenty years. Clearly no one lives here.
Speaker 3: Move the fuck in see who yells at you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she has prepared a little honeymoon for them
Speaker 2: at this house. We cut to sometime later. George Bailey
Speaker 2: has set up this place called Bailey Park where a
Speaker 2: lot of his customers have built homes. People who used
Speaker 2: to live in mister Potter shitty houses and you know,
Speaker 2: pay rent to him because he's an evil landlord, but
Speaker 2: now they're homeowners thanks to George. Then mister Potter offers
Speaker 2: George a job, I think in an effort to like
Speaker 2: eliminate him as a competitor, and he's offering George much
Speaker 2: better pay, which would give him the freedom to travel
Speaker 2: around the world. But George is like, no, I just
Speaker 2: remembered that I hate you, so no thanks.
Speaker 3: I I do like that scene though, because he's like offer,
Speaker 3: you know, like he has like a carrot dangled in
Speaker 3: front of him of like, isn't capitalism the best? And
Speaker 3: George is like, yeah, I want a nice shoe. And
Speaker 3: then there's this like great slash weird acting choice from
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart where he shakes mister Potter's hand, and then
Speaker 3: he pulls it away because he's decided that capitalism is bad. Actually,
Speaker 3: but he's played away like there's something on the.
Speaker 2: Hand like peepee and pooh pooh.
Speaker 3: It's like they're like, wait a second, mister Potter has
Speaker 3: shit on his like or come or jelly or just
Speaker 3: something unpleasant to find on a hand. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 3: what changed. That's what made him realize capitalism was bad. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: it was come on that.
Speaker 2: We can all agree with that, yes.
Speaker 3: Added to the Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: So George then goes home and his wife tells him
Speaker 2: that she's gregnant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then she just starts t shirt gunning him out.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, right, great, great, great, four greg's in total.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also there's a war on there is so before that,
Speaker 2: you know, they have a couple of kids. Mary fixes
Speaker 2: up their house, George continues working at the building and loan,
Speaker 2: and then World War two begins. A bunch of men
Speaker 2: go to fight in the war. Did that happen in
Speaker 2: real life? I wonder, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's concept once again, what is this USO they spoke?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But George stays behind because of a hearing impairment, that
Speaker 2: when he saved his brother from falling through the ice,
Speaker 2: he lost hearing in one ear. Then his brother Harry
Speaker 2: comes back a war hero, if there's any such thing
Speaker 2: as a hero of war.
Speaker 3: Again, very brief, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, it's Christmas Eve now and Uncle Billy is
Speaker 2: about to make a deposit to the bank of eight
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash. I did the math. That is
Speaker 2: about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three money just for inflation.
Speaker 3: Not to come down too hard on uncle Billy. But
Speaker 3: if you saw how many squirrels are in this man's office,
Speaker 3: would you give him that amount of money cash to deposit.
Speaker 3: He's simply too eccentric to get that amount of money
Speaker 3: in cash.
Speaker 2: It's true. And what he does is absent mindedly tuck
Speaker 2: the cash into a newspaper that he then hands to
Speaker 2: mister Potter, who realizes Uncle Billy's mistake but doesn't tell
Speaker 2: anyone and just steals the money spoiler alert.
Speaker 3: Even with the happy ending of this movie, mister Potter
Speaker 3: gets away with this. It's really interesting, I mean realistic.
Speaker 3: I think, well, yeah, it's another part of the movie.
Speaker 3: I like, not that that happened, but that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's realistic. Rich people get away with sheet all the time.
Speaker 2: Yep, oh too real for you. Okay, wait does that happen?
Speaker 3: Sound up in the comments?
Speaker 2: Okay, So Uncle Billy is obviously freaking out about having
Speaker 2: lost this money. George is freaking out. If they don't
Speaker 2: come up with it, they'll go bankrupt and maybe even
Speaker 2: end up in prison. So George goes home. He screams
Speaker 2: at his wife and his children. He kicks some furniture over.
Speaker 2: We'll also talk about this scene.
Speaker 3: In more details, like what why are you upset?
Speaker 2: Then he leaves and goes to mister Potter asking for
Speaker 2: a loan of eight thousand dollars, and mister Potter wants
Speaker 2: some collateral, so George offers up his life insurance policy
Speaker 2: worth fifteen thousand dollars, and he realizes he's worth more
Speaker 2: dead than alive, so George leaves. He gets drunk at
Speaker 2: Martini's bar. He crashes his car into a tree, and
Speaker 2: then he goes to a bridge and is about to
Speaker 2: jump and end his life when suddenly someone else jumps
Speaker 2: in the river. It is Clarence the guardian angel who
Speaker 2: was sent to help him. So George jumps in to
Speaker 2: save Clarence, and we cut to them in some place.
Speaker 3: That part of the movie is like where the Baby
Speaker 3: Einstein gets especially scary, where through this whole like really
Speaker 3: intense not just emotionally charged, but like socially charged scene
Speaker 3: because we're talking about how suicide is perceived in the
Speaker 3: culture at this point, and it's just Baby Einstein, Twinkle
Speaker 3: Twinkle Little Star playing beneath the whole thing. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: You should check it out. Superior cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go to Roku dot com. Uh, okay. So as
Speaker 2: they're in this like office, I don't know, they're drying
Speaker 2: off and warming up, and George is like, ough, everybody
Speaker 2: would be better off if I was never born, and
Speaker 2: Clarence is like, oh really, because let me show you
Speaker 2: how things would be if you were never born.
Speaker 3: You're like, wait a second, there's only twenty minutes left
Speaker 3: in the movie. He's starting the Christmas Carol now, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he is doing that.
Speaker 2: I also liken it to the second half of Back
Speaker 2: to the Future two, when Marty goes back to nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five and like Biff is the president or whatever.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it. Oh my god, I'm so young. Sorry, guys.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Clarence takes George around town to show him
Speaker 2: this alternate reality if George never existed.
Speaker 3: Hot take it looks fun.
Speaker 2: It looks so much more fun Pottersville.
Speaker 3: They're like, we replaced the loans office with a strip club.
Speaker 2: You're like, great, nice, but that's not what the movie
Speaker 2: would have you think. It's like, oh my god, look
Speaker 2: how disgusting this place is now.
Speaker 3: More municipal buildings here.
Speaker 2: Okay, First of all, the town is no longer called
Speaker 2: Bedford Falls, it's now Pottersville.
Speaker 3: That's bad. Fine.
Speaker 2: Most of the businesses are bars, nightclubs, strip clubs, casinos.
Speaker 2: None of George.
Speaker 3: Fine, Potter, you're the cool guy in yes kind he
Speaker 3: knows how to party.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: None of Georgia's friends recognize him. Everyone is just kind
Speaker 2: of like mean and in a bad mood. Mister Gower,
Speaker 2: the druggist is an ex con and an alcoholic. Because
Speaker 2: George wasn't around to stop him from accidentally poisoning someone brutal.
Speaker 2: George is like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 3: His brother is dead?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but I kept.
Speaker 3: Well, this is like way too far in the weeds.
Speaker 3: But I was like, but really, if we thought about it,
Speaker 3: if George never existed, would his brother have even been
Speaker 3: invited to that ice hang that day? Probably not, and
Speaker 3: maybe the world would be better. Makes you think, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe it would be better if he didn't exist. But
Speaker 3: that's not the point of the movie.
Speaker 2: Sorry, maybe it does not explore that at all.
Speaker 3: Everyone's upset at that idea. Sorry.
Speaker 2: Okay, So George goes to his house, but it's not
Speaker 2: the nice house that his wife his wife fixed up.
Speaker 2: It's still abandoned like it was when he was a teenager.
Speaker 2: His family isn't there because Mary never got married. She's
Speaker 2: a quote unquote old maid who became a librarian.
Speaker 3: Okay, and this this scene is so iconic, it's so
Speaker 3: awesome where they're like, what if you were thirty one
Speaker 3: years old wearing Warby Parker lenses with a job, and
Speaker 3: you're like, I would fucking kill for that dude. That's like,
Speaker 3: of course, that's great news for her there, and she
Speaker 3: reacts appropriately because there's a man chasing her around, which
Speaker 3: is also how he acted when he was her husband.
Speaker 3: She arguably got a better deal in the dystopia. Absolutely yes,
Speaker 3: because she could just go to bars and strip clubs
Speaker 3: with her own money.
Speaker 5: M M.
Speaker 2: Yeah, George is like chasing her and then she I
Speaker 2: think faints because women be fainting.
Speaker 3: She's also more brunette in a way that felt aggressive, but.
Speaker 2: You know, the movie acts like her like never getting
Speaker 2: married is the is a fate worse than death. Also,
Speaker 2: George's mom does not recognize him. He learns that his
Speaker 2: brother Harry died as a child because George wasn't there
Speaker 2: to save him when he fell through the ice. And
Speaker 2: Clarence is like, see, George, you've touched so many people
Speaker 2: in your life. And if he's referred to all the
Speaker 2: times that George Bailey violently grabs someone, then yes, he
Speaker 2: has touched so many people his ass. But Clarence is like, George,
Speaker 2: You've had such a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life
Speaker 2: and that's the name of the movie, and it would
Speaker 2: be a mistake to throw it all away. So George
Speaker 2: is like, Okay, you're right. So he runs back to
Speaker 2: the bridge and he prays to be alive again, and
Speaker 2: that happens, and then Bert the cop shows up. Parentheses
Speaker 2: ACAB and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ACAB includes Bert and I and I would say
Speaker 3: like in an obvious way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And when you think about it, yes, all
Speaker 2: cops are bastards, but all cops are burt.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's a wonderful life. The Wonderful Hive is gonna
Speaker 3: come for us for this one. Okay, wait for like
Speaker 3: hot take George shouldn't have been born?
Speaker 2: Okay. So Bert the cop is like, hey, George, I
Speaker 2: remember I know you. And then George is like, wow,
Speaker 2: you recognize me. So then he runs back through town.
Speaker 2: He's like, Merry Christmas. He goes back home and then
Speaker 2: some men are there to arrest him for this eight
Speaker 2: thousand dollars deficit, but he doesn't even freaking care because
Speaker 2: he because.
Speaker 3: It's a wonderful life. It turns out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then all of his friends show up and
Speaker 2: give him a bunch of money because they heard he
Speaker 2: was in trouble.
Speaker 3: Which is what the minions do with grew Wow, Indespicable
Speaker 3: Me one twenty ten. I've been sitting on this information
Speaker 3: for days. The end of It's a Wonderful Life very
Speaker 3: much mirrors the end of Despicable Me, to the point
Speaker 3: where it may be a direct influence. Wait which part
Speaker 3: where Grew is trying to crowdfund his effort to go
Speaker 3: to the moon, and then the minions give them gives
Speaker 3: Grew their money because at this point it appears that
Speaker 3: the millions are paid, which goes away in later installments. Wow,
Speaker 3: but it installment won. They have money and they crowdfund
Speaker 3: Grew's effort to go to the moon.
Speaker 2: That's right. Anyway, so his friends show up. I liked
Speaker 2: it like the because I feel like they only each
Speaker 2: give like one dollars, so I think he has like
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy four dollars at the end.
Speaker 3: But anyway, two hundred and seventy four friends, I mean, wow,
Speaker 3: that's I mean, not that many people came to the show. Like,
Speaker 3: that's really cool. You have two hundred and seventy four friends.
Speaker 3: I mean not as a cop for you know, George Bailey.
Speaker 2: But that's so true. But then his rich friend Sam
Speaker 2: Wainwright is like, here's a bunch of money, and then
Speaker 2: so he saved the end. That's the movie.
Speaker 3: Woo. I think it's fun that Sam was like, remember
Speaker 3: when you when you aggressively quote unquote stole my girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Doesn't matter, man, here's a million dollars that's great.
Speaker 2: That's progressive.
Speaker 3: I love that. It's almost like the movie cares what
Speaker 3: Mary wants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it doesn't. All right, So we're gonna before
Speaker 2: we get into the discussion, we're gonna do a little
Speaker 2: fun little thing and it's a I'm gonna give you
Speaker 2: the rules to a drinking game that you can play, okay,
Speaker 2: at a later time when you're watching the movie if
Speaker 2: you want.
Speaker 3: I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here are the rules. Is everyone ready?
Speaker 3: Okay? So you drink every time? And that one's you're
Speaker 3: right to say this. You're right to say this.
Speaker 2: Thanks, so okay.
Speaker 3: I love that. I also find myself wandering around the
Speaker 3: city being like, can I have a million dollars? Hot Dog?
Speaker 3: I thought it was great.
Speaker 2: Also I realized I didn't say it. And this this
Speaker 2: is a podcast, it's an audio medium people will want
Speaker 2: to know. So it says, drink every time George Bailey
Speaker 2: says hot Dog parentheses by raw Dog by Jamie Loftus. Okay,
Speaker 2: and you're right to say it, and I'm right to
Speaker 2: say that. Next side, please, so drink every time. Every
Speaker 2: time someone insults Clarence the Guardian Angel, the other Angels
Speaker 2: insult him, and then so does George Bailey later on relentlessly.
Speaker 3: It is very like, yeah, they're like, dude, you look
Speaker 3: like shit, no wonder you don't have wings? Yeah, you
Speaker 3: have three brain cells that are currently operational. How are
Speaker 3: you going to stop me from my problems? IQ of
Speaker 3: the Rabbit is how he's literally introduced.
Speaker 2: Literally yes, yes, next line, so drink. When George Bailey
Speaker 2: as a child says he's going to have harems and
Speaker 2: multiple wives. That only happens once in the movie, but
Speaker 2: you should still. But it's a worth it.
Speaker 3: It's a heavy sip, take a heavy zip, finish your
Speaker 3: drink even it's impactful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, okay, next line, so drink. Every time the
Speaker 2: plot is contingent on you understanding how a building and
Speaker 2: loan operates. But unfortunately you I don't understand, and you
Speaker 2: don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: You're just like, shouldn't it be one or the other?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I read about it, and I still don't understand how
Speaker 2: it works. So this is not a reading podcast. And
Speaker 2: we've said that many times. We hate books except for
Speaker 2: Rad Doug, but we love that Mary becomes a librarian,
Speaker 2: so we contain multitudes. Okay, next slide. Please, so drink
Speaker 2: every time you're reminded that houses used to cost ten
Speaker 2: dollars and that we are all dying of capitalism. Also,
Speaker 2: there's mention of like a house being worth five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: I also did the math for that. That is the
Speaker 2: equivalent of eighty five thousand dollars more or less in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. And once again we are recording this
Speaker 2: in La, where houses cost at least a million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's if they leak, and that's if they're kind
Speaker 2: of shitty and in the valley. No disrespect, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: to the valley.
Speaker 3: I do not stand by the colon. Sorry, we just
Speaker 3: lost fifty Patreon subscribers. How dare you.
Speaker 2: Round of applaza if you live in the valley.
Speaker 3: I'm know your audience games, I'm so sorry, and he
Speaker 3: enjoyed the drive home.
Speaker 2: Okay, next line, Okay, drink. Drink every time there's an
Speaker 2: enormous jar of poison at a pharmacy for some reason. Okay,
Speaker 2: next line, drink every time Violet Bic and George Bailey
Speaker 2: are so horny for each other that they nearly pass out.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to that. Yeah, Yes.
Speaker 2: Next slide, drink every time George and his mother kiss
Speaker 2: on the lips. It happens at least twice.
Speaker 3: It's nuts how much this happens. She's like, and I
Speaker 3: feel like it is indicated in this slide that she
Speaker 3: is an issue. I don't know which version is worse.
Speaker 2: I'm like, is this just like a nineteen forties things
Speaker 2: did did adult?
Speaker 3: Wasn't the Hayes Code in action by now?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Why can you French kiss your mom? I priorities
Speaker 3: all over the place at this time, truly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, we can't have gay people on screen,
Speaker 2: but you can kiss your mother on the lips.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you should do it twice.
Speaker 2: Okay, Next slide, drink every time there's a random animal
Speaker 2: at the Bailey building and.
Speaker 3: Loan that's really I have something to say about that.
Speaker 2: Okay, later on, Yes, we see a crow or something
Speaker 2: pictured here, it's.
Speaker 3: The raven but thank you, sorry, that's my friend.
Speaker 2: Next slide, please drink every time Uncle Billy is horrible
Speaker 2: at his job.
Speaker 3: This squirrel is so they okay, well this squirrel. The
Speaker 3: squirrel is like the best actor in the movie, and
Speaker 3: the squirrel is hitting their mark. The second that Billy
Speaker 3: is sad. This squirrel is like, like, it's really exciting,
Speaker 3: and let's the next slide please, it's just a close up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the squirrel. Okay, we agree, Yeah, okay, next
Speaker 2: slide and then drink every time. Annie is the best
Speaker 2: character in the movie.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Annie did not appear in the recap because she's not
Speaker 2: relevant to the plot at all, but she is the
Speaker 2: best character. We will talk about her later. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: the end of my drilling game.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay. Contexts about this movie. So, this movie came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen forty six, just after the end of
Speaker 3: World War Two. It is directed by Frank Capra. We'll
Speaker 3: talk about his whole history because it's weird and complicated.
Speaker 3: But this was a movie that was adapted from a
Speaker 3: short story called The Greatest Gift. The Greatest Gift was
Speaker 3: published in nineteen thirty nine. There were a lot of
Speaker 3: writers that worked on this movie because it went through
Speaker 3: a lot of rounds of casting and basically like every
Speaker 3: famous old Hollywood person was considered for every role, but
Speaker 3: it went to Jimmy Stewart. It feels right for Jimmy Stewart,
Speaker 3: whether you like him or not, like it feels like
Speaker 3: a very classically Jimmy Stewart role. But I think what's
Speaker 3: interesting about it is that a lot of the writers
Speaker 3: for this movie were later accused of being communists. Awesome,
Speaker 3: but there were a lot of leftist writers associated with
Speaker 3: the production of this movie, although none of them were
Speaker 3: finally credited. The final credits on this movie credit the
Speaker 3: screenplay to Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Frank Capra, with
Speaker 3: some work from Joe Swirling. The two leftists that worked
Speaker 3: on this movie were Dorothy Parker and Dalton Trumbo, who
Speaker 3: is like, you know, one of the one of the
Speaker 3: one of the big ones that makes a movie about him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it sucked. I didn't see it, and that's too bad.
Speaker 3: It's for free on Rogu TV and they played Twinkle
Speaker 3: a Little stuff the whole time. What's interesting to me
Speaker 3: about that because this movie flopped when it came out
Speaker 3: in forty six and I.
Speaker 2: Know you do you have, yes, I have some information
Speaker 2: about that. Yeah, a box office failure in the sense
Speaker 2: that it needed to earn twice the production costs, and
Speaker 2: it only earned about the same amount that it costs
Speaker 2: to produce and make the movie. So It was considered
Speaker 2: a flop, so much so that when the copyright of
Speaker 2: this movie lapsed in nineteen seventy four, everyone was like,
Speaker 2: no one liked that movie, no one went to go
Speaker 2: see it, and so we're not even gonna bother to
Speaker 2: renew the copyright, which means it fell into the public domain,
Speaker 2: which allowed TV stations TV networks to broadcast it basically
Speaker 2: for free. They didn't have to pay any licensing or
Speaker 2: royalties on it, which is why it was broadcast so relentlessly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like decades and like in every Christmas Eve? Was
Speaker 3: it like broadcasts or something like that.
Speaker 2: I use something like that. There's an Adam Ruins everything
Speaker 2: about this if you want to look that up. All
Speaker 2: this to say it was a box office failure.
Speaker 3: Which is interesting because it got like a fair amount
Speaker 3: of attention outside of people who went to see it,
Speaker 3: which was not too many people. There's all these stories
Speaker 3: about how this movie got famous so long after it
Speaker 3: came out that some of the child actors who played
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart's kids, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reid, because she
Speaker 3: will be a raised throughout this movie. There are kids
Speaker 3: like didn't even see it. Until it came out on TV,
Speaker 3: so it didn't become like really popular until yeah, the seventies, eighties, nineties.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 3: But at the time when it came out, it was
Speaker 3: interrogated by the FBI for espousing communist values, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, Jaedgar Hoover is gonna Jadgar Hoover, right. But
Speaker 3: there's this is I found a piece from Tribune magazine
Speaker 3: by Reese Hadley and that was published in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one that sort of unpacks the ways. There's a whole
Speaker 3: FBI file for It's a Wonderful Life for being too Communists,
Speaker 3: and the reasons that they lay out are very interesting.
Speaker 3: The first one is that the quote values or institutions
Speaker 3: judge to be particularly anti American or pro communist interesting
Speaker 3: are glorified in a movie examples failure, depravity, the common man,
Speaker 3: the collective, and the FBI hate that we can't be
Speaker 3: having that in a movie.
Speaker 2: Horrible.
Speaker 3: Another reason the FBI had an issue with this movie.
Speaker 3: They argued that the movie may have portrayed mister Potter
Speaker 3: as quote following the rules as laid down by the
Speaker 3: state bank examiners in connection with making loans.
Speaker 2: I didn't even understand that sentence, the.
Speaker 3: FBI was like, what's wrong with predatory loans? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's what this country was built on.
Speaker 3: It, It's true, okay. And then finally the FBI said
Speaker 3: that It's a Wonderful Life is a problem because it
Speaker 3: espoused quote values or institutions judged to be particularly American
Speaker 3: are smeared or presented as evil in a movie. Examples
Speaker 3: the free enterprise system, industrialist wealth, the profit motive, success,
Speaker 3: the independent man. Wow, And that like speaks to basically
Speaker 3: everything I like about this very same is that is
Speaker 3: and I know we'll talk about it, but like the
Speaker 3: whole the message of this movie that I like is
Speaker 3: encouraging people to work in favor of their collective versus
Speaker 3: the individual, which I think is really cool and like
Speaker 3: not something you see often, especially in American movies. But
Speaker 3: it's it's interesting that this movie specifically was taken down
Speaker 3: for being potentially communist because both Jimmy Stewart and Frank
Speaker 3: Capra were lifelong Republicans, hugely Jimmy Stewart had just I mean,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart served in World War Two and wasn't sure
Speaker 3: if he was going to come back to a movie
Speaker 3: career and Frank Capra, who has a very very interesting background.
Speaker 3: He immigrated from Italy when he was very young. He
Speaker 3: worked his way up in the movie industry and then
Speaker 3: just kind of got America killed in the way unfortunately
Speaker 3: people do. And even though his movies were most popular
Speaker 3: during the Roosevelt era and are very associated with that era,
Speaker 3: he was a lifelong Republican to the point where he
Speaker 3: skewed fascistic where he was, you know, he worked with
Speaker 3: Dalton Trumbo, but he was also like, what about this
Speaker 3: Mussolini guy, seems like he has some good ideas. I'm
Speaker 3: truly like, I'm not being I'm not you know, it's
Speaker 3: interesting he came like his most famous movies I think
Speaker 3: would be it Happened one Night, mister Smith goes to Washington,
Speaker 3: also with Jimmy Stewart and this movie. And in spite
Speaker 3: of you know, he came to the US as an
Speaker 3: immigrant and then he kind of became a nationalist over time,
Speaker 3: as did Jimmy Stewart. And so the main two creative
Speaker 3: voices in this movie are very far from communists. And
Speaker 3: I mean that as an insult, but it's just like
Speaker 3: this weird back and forth because I like that FBI
Speaker 3: File a lot because they're like, why is this movie awesome?
Speaker 3: Let's kill them. It's just like a weird kind of
Speaker 3: web because it's like you, I think that the FBI
Speaker 3: File is very funny and that those values are very
Speaker 3: clear in the movie. But then the fact that the
Speaker 3: director has praised Mussolini, just like, what do we do
Speaker 3: in this? But that I guess from what I've gathered,
Speaker 3: And I'm not a Frank Capra expert by any means,
Speaker 3: but that Frank Capra, who skewed pretty right, I mean Mussolini, Yeah,
Speaker 3: would most often collaborate with leftist writers and they would
Speaker 3: end up with this fucking weirdo in between ay things
Speaker 3: that I feel like is clear and it's a wonderful life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Number one, I hate Jimmy Stewart even more now
Speaker 2: I did not know that he was a Republican. Number two.
Speaker 2: So one of the credited writers, Francis Goodrich, who is
Speaker 2: a woman nor oh gosh. She worked on a draft
Speaker 2: of this script with her husband Albert Hackett, another credited writer,
Speaker 2: but there was a pretty big dispute between them and
Speaker 2: Frank Capra. So Francis Goodrich is quoted as calling Capra
Speaker 2: a horrid man and a very arrogant son of a bitch.
Speaker 2: So we love to see it.
Speaker 3: We love to see pro Misolini people characterized that way.
Speaker 3: So that's the background. Yeah for the movie. Should we
Speaker 3: start by talking about miss Mary Bailey?
Speaker 2: Let's do it? Okay, So what do we know about her?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a short list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we know that she is his wife. We know
Speaker 2: that she has loved George Bailey ever since she was
Speaker 2: a child for what reasons, I don't know. She is
Speaker 2: a talented artist and interior decorator.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: This is something that like I think is really I mean,
Speaker 3: so much of Mary Bailey's story is erased in this
Speaker 3: in spite of the fact that she does have like
Speaker 3: a pretty significant like she goes through a lot, but
Speaker 3: you just don't see any of it, including she goes
Speaker 3: through a full extreme home makeover of this busted ass
Speaker 3: house that she's like, we are reclaiming this house that
Speaker 3: is broken and we are a part of the problem
Speaker 3: because we were throwing rocks at it, and she fixes
Speaker 3: the entire house over the course of years. She does
Speaker 3: like what happens on ABC every week night, and we
Speaker 3: don't see any of it. I mean, because I feel
Speaker 3: like the labor that Mary does is assumed that this
Speaker 3: is just what a woman does, and so it goes
Speaker 3: unseen and praised, unacknowledged. But she's doing a fucking lot.
Speaker 2: She's doing a lot. But the main thing we know
Speaker 2: about that, as far as like fixing up the house,
Speaker 2: is that George is really ungrateful about it, because he's
Speaker 2: screams and has a whole monologue about how he hates
Speaker 2: this house and it's cold and drafty and all of that.
Speaker 3: Well, she didn't. I Well, that's the other thing, because Mary,
Speaker 3: as far as we know, like Mary, they grow up together.
Speaker 3: I think she's the age of Harry, his younger brother,
Speaker 3: so she's like about four years younger than him, which
Speaker 3: is very confusing when he's forty and she's twenty three,
Speaker 3: and you're like, I don't know, is this okay?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: But you know, like she she goes to college in
Speaker 3: I think New York.
Speaker 2: Ever heard of it?
Speaker 3: She has a whole sex in the City era. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we don't hear about fucking any of it. We
Speaker 3: don't know what she majored in. And we only know
Speaker 3: because I feel like the character of Mary in a
Speaker 3: way that I find frustrating because I like her, but
Speaker 3: she ultimately always comes down to these very like American
Speaker 3: white feminine values of the post war era, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you had your moment, you got to get some education,
Speaker 3: you got to run the USO for a little bit,
Speaker 3: and now you know it should be your priority to
Speaker 3: settle down to.
Speaker 2: Be a wife and a mother.
Speaker 3: And that's right. And we don't know about her ambitions
Speaker 3: beyond that, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like she's done a very big
Speaker 2: disservice by the narrative and also by the character of
Speaker 2: George Bailey.
Speaker 3: I would like to wait, wait, wait, m M. I
Speaker 3: want to talk about an important character, Billy Brick.
Speaker 2: Okay, because I just.
Speaker 3: Was like ranking the most important characters to me that
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about versus Mary. The second was
Speaker 3: the Crow. Oh do you know about the Crow? Okay, Okay,
Speaker 3: you guys, I have a slideshow presentation I would like
Speaker 3: to do. It's about Jimmy the Raven if we can
Speaker 3: get him up. Bokay, wow, Jimmy the Raven feminist ally
Speaker 3: or agent of patriarchy. Now, Caitlin, let's start it like
Speaker 3: a by cast episode. What was your experience with Jimmy
Speaker 3: the Raven.
Speaker 2: I had never seen him before.
Speaker 3: Oh yousilly podcast host Jimmy the Raven is the most
Speaker 3: famous movie bird of all time. I also didn't know
Speaker 3: this before three days ago. But no, Jimmy the Raven
Speaker 3: is very famous movie bird. One of his most famous,
Speaker 3: but not even his most famous appearance is in It's
Speaker 3: a Wonderful Life. Let's go to the next slide. We
Speaker 3: see here Vincent Price with Jimmy and a movie that
Speaker 3: he is co starring in. It's called The Raven.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Uh, he's an icon. He's a legend. Did you know
Speaker 3: that ravens lived thirty years? Because I didn't. His movie
Speaker 3: career spanned eighteen years. So whoa, here's the Okay, someone's
Speaker 3: laughing at the lifespan of a raven. It's not funny.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing about Jimmy. Okay. So, Jimmy was born
Speaker 3: in the Mojave Desert in the nineteen thirties. He was
Speaker 3: found by a cowboy named Curly Twyford.
Speaker 2: Because of course he was.
Speaker 3: Now, don't laugh at the name Curly Twyford. He was
Speaker 3: found by a cowboy named Curly Twyford, who was a
Speaker 3: world War one veteran who decided that he was going
Speaker 3: to make Jimmy a star. Uh huh. Interestingly this worked.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't expect it, and I was really spread. I
Speaker 3: did not know about Jimmy the Raven. And I say
Speaker 3: this as a big fan of famous birds. If you
Speaker 3: get to the next side, my favorite famous bird is
Speaker 3: Andy the Goose, who he's wearing shoes. You'll notice, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was a actually known as Andy de Goose with
Speaker 3: no feet, but then this guy put shoes on him
Speaker 3: and he was Okay. If you go to the next slide,
Speaker 3: there's me with Andy de Goose. I drove to Nebraska
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago to go visit his grave site.
Speaker 3: Andy the Goose. At the time, he was a real
Speaker 3: icon in the eighties. If you go to the next slide,
Speaker 3: there he is riding a bike. He was really special.
Speaker 3: And then unfortunately, next slide he was murdered.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And you can google that on your own time. Next slide,
Speaker 3: back to Jimmy the Raven. I just want to plant
Speaker 3: Andy the Goose in your mind because he's a fascinating
Speaker 3: cultural figure. But we're talking about Jimmy the Raven today.
Speaker 3: He was a star, and he was a star from
Speaker 3: the beginning. Next slide, here's a news clip jim the Raven,
Speaker 3: a new flicker Hollywood. One of the hottest stars and
Speaker 3: pictures is a quaint character named Jim. He is only
Speaker 3: twenty two but has a life expectancy of one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty years. Not true? What thirty? Jim, who has
Speaker 3: stolen every movie scene in which he has appeared, is
Speaker 3: a raven and boys are true. But is Jimmy the
Speaker 3: Raven a feminist? That's the question I wanted to ask.
Speaker 3: He's had a really intense career, you know. Here we
Speaker 3: have the next slide, is he was in The Wizard
Speaker 3: of Oz. Yeah, playing, you know, a star turning part
Speaker 3: as a crow when in fact he is a raven.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: The next slide, Betty Davis, they're about to fuck. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's obvious, but to me it's obvious.
Speaker 3: Next slide him and Vincent Price and he's drinking wine
Speaker 3: and cheers to that. The next one, the scariest side
Speaker 3: of all, in which he is wearing a little soldier's uniform.
Speaker 3: And then there's one. There's one more. It's him and
Speaker 3: Curly twy Ford and Jimmy witnessed the birth of Curly
Speaker 3: Twyford's baby. He became a part of the family. Okay,
Speaker 3: we're just gonna sort of go through the next few
Speaker 3: because there's just so many pictures of Jimmy. Okay, the
Speaker 3: next one, and the next one that's him on TV
Speaker 3: he's wearing a suit, and then the next one, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's him and Jimmy Cagney. Finally, I want to go
Speaker 3: to the next slide, because when the question came down
Speaker 3: to is Jimmy the Raven a feminist? I was looking
Speaker 3: into his personal history and he's problematic. Oh no, so
Speaker 3: I know, like Mussolini is awesome, not that far. He
Speaker 3: wasn't frank, but he was a problematic guy. You know. Jimmy,
Speaker 3: he was a very trained actor. He could do things
Speaker 3: like opening mail, operating a typewriter, letting a cigarette, flipping
Speaker 3: magazine pages, and dealing a hand of poker. Okay, Jimmy Stewart, Okay,
Speaker 3: this was kind of fun. Okay. In on the set
Speaker 3: of It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart could not be
Speaker 3: called Jimmy because Jimmy the Raven would respond. So he's
Speaker 3: also a bit of a diva. He's the first Jimmy
Speaker 3: in the college sheet.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I love Jimmy the Ravens so much. He was insured
Speaker 3: for ten thousand dollars by the Red Cross question mark.
Speaker 3: We don't know why. He got a Presidential Medal of Honor.
Speaker 3: Also don't know why.
Speaker 4: Oh and and people like people talked about Jimmy in
Speaker 4: ways that we're not always mind.
Speaker 3: Curly Twyford, for for example, his father explained that Jimmy
Speaker 3: had no fewer than twenty one stand ins, most of
Speaker 3: whom were women Ravens, and it has been speculated since
Speaker 3: that maybe Jimmy was a woman and that there was
Speaker 3: gender confusion. There were there was uh, you know, we
Speaker 3: don't know because Jimmy's been dead for a hundred years.
Speaker 3: But Curly Twyford said, do you guys like this there?
Speaker 3: Curly Twyford said, I was like in my bed making this,
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, people play. I think it's interesting. Okay.
Speaker 3: Curly Twyford, who plumped Jimmy's egg from the Mojave Desert,
Speaker 3: said Jimmy is a great egotist. He likes variety, and
Speaker 3: what he means when he says that is that Jimmy
Speaker 3: would have a different woman delivered to his cage every day,
Speaker 3: and that Jimmy was insatiable sexually.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, when you say a woman, are you talking
Speaker 2: about a female raven or you talking about well when
Speaker 2: you say woman.
Speaker 3: Betty Davis, did you go to his cage?
Speaker 2: I know that human women don't have probably I hope
Speaker 2: don't have.
Speaker 3: You don't know.
Speaker 2: The use of the word woman when referring to female
Speaker 2: ravens was just confusing.
Speaker 3: Jimmy needed a different woman in his cage every day.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was an polyamorous king, exactly, exactly. Maybe
Speaker 3: he was simply ahead of his time, but at the
Speaker 3: time he was referred to as an egotist in a diva.
Speaker 3: He also wouldn't eat meat strips delivered to him after
Speaker 3: he'd been in movies for a while because again because
Speaker 3: they said he was going to live for one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty years. They're like, Jimmy was in over a
Speaker 3: thousand movies. He was in thirty, okay, but including The
Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz and It's a wonderful life. So a
Speaker 3: great career. Nonetheless, not meaning to cut down Jimmy, but
Speaker 3: by the end of his career, when he was very,
Speaker 3: very successful. He wouldn't eat strips of meat that were
Speaker 3: delivered to him unless they'd been sprinkled with sugar.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And one of his human co stars said, I'm disenchanted
Speaker 3: by him. I think he's got a star complex. Wow.
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart said, the Raven is the smartest actor on set.
Speaker 3: They don't have to do as many takes for him
Speaker 3: as the rest of us, so he's also kind of
Speaker 3: a genius. He's the Daniel dan Lewis of birds. Frank
Speaker 3: Capra was especially a fan, and as we don't like
Speaker 3: Frank Capra, however, Jimmy was basically like Scorsese, de Niro,
Speaker 3: Frank Capra, Jimmy the Raven. Okay, he's in all of
Speaker 3: his movies. It's really bizarre. Ultimately, with Jimmy, I was like,
Speaker 3: is Jimmy a feminist? You know? It was unclear given
Speaker 3: the information I had, Okay, and I'll tell you I
Speaker 3: was not able to figure it out. However, the Raven
Speaker 3: you see in this scene, that is not Jimmy the Raven.
Speaker 3: Oh scandal, That is Coco the Raven. Who's that one
Speaker 3: of Jimmy's stand ins, Caitlin of course?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: And so I found this blog from two thousand and
Speaker 3: nine brag that is strictly around character actors that have
Speaker 3: been forgotten, called the Unsung Joe, that explains who Coco
Speaker 3: the Raven is. I'm gonna quote from it. And then
Speaker 3: there was Coco. More than a stand in, less than
Speaker 3: a performer. Coco was a slightly older but less versatile
Speaker 3: bird who deputized for Jimmy in those scenes that called
Speaker 3: for the presence of a raven, but not for any
Speaker 3: of the tricks which Jimmy alone was capable of. The
Speaker 3: only drawback that arose from the lack of activity in
Speaker 3: Coco's job was a susceptibility for that old actor's complaint
Speaker 3: cleague eyes. I didn't know about that old actor's complaint.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what it is. Coco would find himself
Speaker 3: fascinated by the huge, bright studio lights and would stare
Speaker 3: into them, hypnotized until his eyes became inflamed, turning from
Speaker 3: their inky black to a dark green, whereupon he would
Speaker 3: become distressed and curly. Twyford would have to remove him
Speaker 3: from the set. He never learned, though he loved those lights.
Speaker 3: I love Coco, and I think There's an important scene
Speaker 3: in the next line where Coco is present, and it's
Speaker 3: the scene in which Uncle Billy is once again banned
Speaker 3: his job and there is a raven on the desk.
Speaker 3: This is not Jimmy the Raven, and don't credit him
Speaker 3: as such. That is Coco the Raven, because Coco the
Speaker 3: Raven was good at one thing, and that was standing still.
Speaker 3: So in conclusion, was Jimmy the Raven and Ally? And
Speaker 3: I know you were all wondering that when you walked in.
Speaker 3: The answer is final slide, Jimmy a bitch, Justice for Coco. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's all I have to say for the show. But
Speaker 3: if you have anything else to say, feel free. No
Speaker 3: I think that I've been working on this for seven months.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, no, I just have a few more things
Speaker 2: to say. We are running out of time, but I'll
Speaker 2: you know, I'll go through.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't that take twenty five minutes.
Speaker 2: Look, I have a section called George Bailey and his Crimes.
Speaker 2: Allow me starting with exhibit A the robe scene. Yes, yes, exactly. So,
Speaker 2: just to recap this a little further, this is the
Speaker 2: scene where George and Mary are walking around after the
Speaker 2: party they had fallen into the pool. So they put
Speaker 2: on other clothes and Mary put on a robe and
Speaker 2: she's presumably naked underneath. They're walking around, they're flirting. There's
Speaker 2: a guy in the neighborhood who is yelling at George
Speaker 2: and being like kiss her, and George is like, fine,
Speaker 2: I'll kiss her so freaking hard, and then Mary runs
Speaker 2: away at that, but George was standing on her robe,
Speaker 2: so it falls off as she runs away, and now
Speaker 2: she's naked, so she hides in the bushes. When George
Speaker 2: realizes this and realizes that he can exploit this situation,
Speaker 2: he absolutely.
Speaker 3: Does immediately until he finds out his father died.
Speaker 2: That's right, because he's like, She's like, please, I beg
Speaker 2: you give me my robe back, and he's like no.
Speaker 2: She asks him so many times he refuses. She says
Speaker 2: she's going to tell his mother and tell the police
Speaker 2: parentheses acab.
Speaker 3: Well, then he says, you know, I think the police
Speaker 3: would be on my side, and you're like, that's kind
Speaker 3: of an a cab line because they probably would.
Speaker 2: It would be yes, unfortunately, But the point is she
Speaker 2: is like feeling very vulnerable and naked, and he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna just like tease you and exploit this situation
Speaker 2: in a very cruel awful way.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that that the two pivotal moments in
Speaker 3: their early relationship are defined by that dynamic. Right where
Speaker 3: when they're kids, you can almost write it away by
Speaker 3: the fact that Mary leans over he says, George, you know,
Speaker 3: but we know because he cannot hear out of that.
Speaker 2: Ear, he cannot hear her.
Speaker 3: And so when he comes up and says I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have a harem, he's just being weird and he's not,
Speaker 3: you know, being necessarily antagonistic. But that scene that you're
Speaker 3: describing where he is actively taking advantage of power over
Speaker 3: but then also in the scene immediately before cut to
Speaker 3: them getting married, I think that dynamic is equally present.
Speaker 3: Like Mary's agency is cut out of this narrative at
Speaker 3: every possible opportunity. It's cut up by the fact that
Speaker 3: she's hiding in a bush naked. It's cut out by
Speaker 3: the fact that her mother is watching, her boyfriend is
Speaker 3: on the phone, and George has her in his hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've broken down that scene as well, where so
Speaker 2: he I don't know why he's in a bad mood,
Speaker 2: he's just kind of a bad guy. Sorry, but he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, lumbering around all pissed off, and he clearly
Speaker 2: deliberately goes over to Mary's house to try to run
Speaker 2: into her, but he acts like he was just passing by. Well.
Speaker 3: He also makes it very clear that she was not
Speaker 3: his first choice because he tries to hook up with
Speaker 3: her friend, but then gets annoyed when her friend doesn't
Speaker 3: want to climb a mountain.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, So he's like, oh, I guess a.
Speaker 3: Little okay girl who's not gonna climb a mountain.
Speaker 2: You're like, okay, So and he goes over to Mary.
Speaker 3: Got a bumble, I can't and he keeps, well, Jamie,
Speaker 3: this was pre bumble, just like it was pre venmo.
Speaker 3: Nothing to come in.
Speaker 2: So he goes over to Mary's house and he keeps
Speaker 2: being like, I don't even know why I'm here. I
Speaker 2: wasn't even planning to come here, even though like it
Speaker 2: was very a very deliberate choice on his part. Mary
Speaker 2: is trying to give him a warm welcome. She like
Speaker 2: displays the little drawing she made for him. He doesn't
Speaker 2: like notice or appreciate anything that she has done. He
Speaker 2: spends the whole interaction just like feeling very so for
Speaker 2: himself and being a complete asshole. Then he's jealous that
Speaker 2: that other guy, Sam calls and is like interested in Mary,
Speaker 2: so he storms out. He comes back in Sam is
Speaker 2: like what about plastics? And then George throws a fit.
Speaker 2: He grabs Mary. He says, I don't care about plastics
Speaker 2: and I don't want to get married to anyone ever.
Speaker 2: Do you understand that smash cut to them getting married,
Speaker 2: So that's Bill, and then.
Speaker 3: He also like there is a forcible kiss because she's crying.
Speaker 2: She's crying, she's crying of how mean he's being.
Speaker 3: I just I yeah, I mean I there comes a
Speaker 3: point in that dynamic where I don't even understand what's
Speaker 3: going on, because with Mary it does. It's just like
Speaker 3: her agency is always undercut by at least one person
Speaker 3: in the scene, but often multiple people. In this scene,
Speaker 3: the scene right before they get married, you know, it's
Speaker 3: it is clear that Mary is interested in George, but
Speaker 3: he's only terrible to her. In that same scene, we
Speaker 3: know that she's gone to college, but we are not
Speaker 3: allowed to know anything other than the thing that I've
Speaker 3: seen repeatedly written about with Mary and how I feel
Speaker 3: like her character plays out, is that like, Okay, fine,
Speaker 3: she went to college, she's a modern woman, but ultimately
Speaker 3: she just wants to be a mother in her hometown,
Speaker 3: which is not an inherently bad thing, but I feel
Speaker 3: like it was reinforcing what the encouraged norm was at
Speaker 3: that time for a woman who had education, especially you know,
Speaker 3: coming out of World War Two, where women for the
Speaker 3: first time had just been encouraged to be working and
Speaker 3: encouraged to be out there. And it because this movie
Speaker 3: coming out in nineteen forty six feels really prescient because
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, let's reel it in, you know, like
Speaker 3: know your role. And I feel like the way that
Speaker 3: that white womanhood specifically moved ahead with Donna Reed sort
Speaker 3: of at the helm the nineteen fifties. And that's not
Speaker 3: even a slight to Donna Reed, because it's not her fault,
Speaker 3: but her show, I feel like, is the most commonly
Speaker 3: cited in terms of like what a white housewife was
Speaker 3: perceived as being in the nineteen fifties, in spite of
Speaker 3: the fact that behind the scenes she was producing her
Speaker 3: own show and doing all of these things that were
Speaker 3: not encouraged for women to do. To perpetuate this view,
Speaker 3: it's just I don't know, it's really it's really really frustrating,
Speaker 3: especially because at the end of the movie, it's Mary
Speaker 3: who pulls the community together to give George this experience
Speaker 3: that makes him want to live again. And so we
Speaker 3: have this whole sequence with Clarence that is impactful. It's
Speaker 3: very well staged, you know, Like I don't want to
Speaker 3: take that away from fans of the movie, but everything
Speaker 3: that happens off screen is Mary and his family pulling
Speaker 3: together the community to reward you with the final shot
Speaker 3: of the movie, right, Mary does all of that, and
Speaker 3: I feel like that really goes underappreciated and under examined.
Speaker 3: But she did all that shit. She did so much.
Speaker 3: I mean, she like renovated a mansion.
Speaker 2: And he is so ungrateful about it, he hates it.
Speaker 3: And then she's she like pulls him off the edge.
Speaker 3: And that is also unacknowledged by the plot. It's made
Speaker 3: to seem like, well, Clarence got his wings and that's
Speaker 3: why George, you know, believes in life again. But it's
Speaker 3: like Mary did all the fucking organizing to make this happen,
Speaker 3: and she's cut out of so many scenes earlier where
Speaker 3: it like, I feel like it's always presented as or
Speaker 3: it's most commonly presented in the movie as like George
Speaker 3: gave away all of his money to the community from
Speaker 3: his wedding and that's all him, him, him, and it's
Speaker 3: like that's Mary's money as well. Yeah, And she is
Speaker 3: not invited into those scenes. She's not and I think
Speaker 3: those scenes would be improved by her presence, and she's
Speaker 3: like not even welcome until the end where George is like, oh,
Speaker 3: where the fuck is Mary at? And you're like, you
Speaker 3: left her outside? Man? You know, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then there's like there's two other scenes where
Speaker 2: George in a pretty major way, is being extremely cruel
Speaker 2: to a loved one. There's the scene where he's like
Speaker 2: screaming at Uncle Billy after he's lost the money, and
Speaker 2: then there's the Christmas Eve scene where George comes home
Speaker 2: after the money has been lost and he is just
Speaker 2: being extremely cruel to his wife and his children, and
Speaker 2: then he storms out. So when George Bailey is being
Speaker 2: pleasant in the movie, which does happen occasionally, it's almost
Speaker 2: always to his customers. When he's being awful, it's almost
Speaker 2: always to his family member or to mister Potter. So
Speaker 2: he basically treats his family the same way he treats
Speaker 2: the villain of the.
Speaker 3: Movie, which I don't like. And it's because like the
Speaker 3: closest I can get to playing Devil's advocate, there is
Speaker 3: like the way that George's life is shown is so
Speaker 3: inconsistent that you see him at his worst a lot, yea,
Speaker 3: and so he does not come off well as like,
Speaker 3: I don't understand why people are like this guy's awesome.
Speaker 3: We're like, well, I've seen him yelling as much as
Speaker 3: I've seen him being nice, Right, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: mean the things that I know, we are running out
Speaker 3: of time. The things that I think this movie does
Speaker 3: very well, or at least very well for nineteen forty
Speaker 3: six is the commentary on collectiveness and on individualism, like
Speaker 3: American individualism, which is something that is very very much
Speaker 3: pushed to this day, to our detriment to working towards
Speaker 3: the collective. I think that like part of what makes
Speaker 3: this movie work for me, in spite of its many,
Speaker 3: many many flaws, down to Capra being like Mussolini. What
Speaker 3: we think is the core idea of you know, the
Speaker 3: American dream is inherently rarely achievable, and George's life is
Speaker 3: not valueless because he spent it making sacrifices for his community.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really beautiful idea. It's a complicated idea,
Speaker 3: and we could talk about it more. I mean the scenes.
Speaker 3: I literally broke down my George discussion into like scenes
Speaker 3: I liked Georgian versus scenes I don't ye scenes I
Speaker 3: don't most of them with his wife he goes out
Speaker 3: of the way to like beret female teacher on the phone, Like, yes,
Speaker 3: he clearly does not have a lot of respect for women,
Speaker 3: not to mention that Mary is barely characterized. And then
Speaker 3: the two mothers we see in this movie, Mary's and George's.
Speaker 3: Their only interest is husband, and then our mad children
Speaker 3: getting married. That's all the scenes I liked Georgian and
Speaker 3: were the ones that were more politically minded and so
Speaker 3: it like ultimately, I was like, Wow, he's like very
Speaker 3: dsa bro coded Yeah, like where his politics are awesome,
Speaker 3: but he hates women.
Speaker 2: Some scenes I.
Speaker 3: Like Georgian and I say that as a Doe's paying member. Okay, no,
Speaker 3: but I'm right. And scenes I like Georgian include when
Speaker 3: he's a kid, and he defends his dad against Potter.
Speaker 3: The scene where he his I mean, like, he does
Speaker 3: make a series of sacrifices in order to hold some
Speaker 3: like to sort of hold the line to prevent capitalism
Speaker 3: from completely demolishing his hometown. That is sort of what
Speaker 3: he's doing throughout. And there's a scene where he i
Speaker 3: mean early on where he just fucking mows Potter down
Speaker 3: and tells him that he's treating people like their cattle,
Speaker 3: and like, I mean that that's really really powerful, and
Speaker 3: as well as when he turns down Potter for taking
Speaker 3: you know, the sellout contract for like you could live
Speaker 3: comfortably forever if you just shut the fuck up about
Speaker 3: housing people who don't have money, and like, I think
Speaker 3: that that is like a really cool, core minded thing.
Speaker 3: As well as the fact that his community in the
Speaker 3: scenes that we see them in are also like of
Speaker 3: the same mind, where when George is like, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: Potter is gonna you know, he's offering you money now,
Speaker 3: but he is buying you and you will be fucked
Speaker 3: in the long term, and they listen to each other
Speaker 3: and they collectively decide we're not going to be okay
Speaker 3: with this, And then at the end, they pay it
Speaker 3: forward to George because of Mary, which no one cares about.
Speaker 3: So I think that like politically it's a really cool
Speaker 3: movie and everything else basically not as much.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know why I did an evil laugh there,
Speaker 2: but anyway, so we have to wrap up. There's more
Speaker 2: to talk about, but you'll just have to listen to
Speaker 2: the episode because we will just record some pickups later. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and here are those pickups.
Speaker 3: So look at us future us.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I know it sounds. It reminds me of YouTubers from
Speaker 3: like we should be. I guess we are wearing you know,
Speaker 3: like when you're watching a YouTuber and then they add
Speaker 3: in a note when they're editing and they're wearing a
Speaker 3: hoodie and they're like, hey future mom, me here, And
Speaker 3: I just wanted to add a note. It's what we're doing.
Speaker 3: That's nice. Yes, no offense to YouTubers, but they all
Speaker 3: do it anyways.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just a few things that we didn't have
Speaker 2: time for in the live show, and so first I
Speaker 2: just want to kind of we already hinted at this
Speaker 2: a little bit and made a few references, but just
Speaker 2: wanted to play little more attention to the way the
Speaker 2: movie frames his community, his town, George's town, you know,
Speaker 2: New Bedford, which actually becomes Pottersville, right if George had
Speaker 2: never existed, and just sort of like the implications there, Right,
Speaker 2: it's like, look how unsavory this town is. I feel
Speaker 2: like Violet is implied to be a sex worker of
Speaker 2: some kind. Yeah, did you get that sense too?
Speaker 3: I did as well, or like in as explicit a
Speaker 3: way that you could at that time. Yeah, I noticed,
Speaker 3: and this was something that was supported in I guess
Speaker 3: like a round table talk that I encountered from Smithsonian magazine.
Speaker 3: Ooh ever heard of it about? Yeah, the implications of Pottersfield,
Speaker 3: because as we said at the show, Pottersville seems like
Speaker 3: kind of a good time for a weekend. But I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: like the signifiers and like speaking to the in spite
Speaker 3: of you know, this movie very much having its moments,
Speaker 3: there is like an element of rigid like rigidity in
Speaker 3: terms of like what is considered appropriate society and what isn't.
Speaker 3: And it feels like this that Pottersville is associating it
Speaker 3: with sin capitalism. Well, well, it's like TV is like
Speaker 3: two things where it's like explicitly capitalistic, which I which
Speaker 3: is as close as I could get to understanding. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like sin meeting sex work and jazz music, which
Speaker 3: seems like proximity to blackness and like and that is
Speaker 3: let me just pull up the quote I have here
Speaker 3: from this piece that was compiled by Christopher Wilson. Quote
Speaker 3: Capra's hints at the degradation of the town come in
Speaker 3: the form of the black music jazz heard pouring out
Speaker 3: of the taverns in Diamond dance halls. Higgins, one of
Speaker 3: the roundtable participants, also noted that Mary's fate as an
Speaker 3: old maid in this alternative universe, portrayed as hideous and sad,
Speaker 3: is presented as perfectly fine, appropriate and desirable for Annie
Speaker 3: in the real world. Unquote right, It's a world where
Speaker 3: things that are completely normal and should be socially accepted
Speaker 3: are presented as a dystopia, which is a sex work
Speaker 3: and jazz and being a single woman over thirty and
Speaker 3: having a nice time with your life exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again with like Violet implied, because I think
Speaker 2: you see her coming out of a strip club or
Speaker 2: something that's implied to be a strip club. It's just
Speaker 2: all very sex worker shamey. It's shamy of yeah, like
Speaker 2: unmarried women, and of course, like that reflects the values
Speaker 2: of the time. And is it strange, you know, to
Speaker 2: be applying a like twenty twenty three lens to a
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six movie. Sure, but but I.
Speaker 3: Feel like it's it's like I get frustrated when, like
Speaker 3: in caunturing that criticism of like, well, what did you
Speaker 3: expect it's nineteen forty six. It's like, yeah, we're not
Speaker 3: saying we expected better of nineteen forty six, but it's
Speaker 3: like we're having it's still I think the more relevant
Speaker 3: discussion is it's still wildly popular in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: and that's why it's the relevant discussion.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, these archaic and shamy and patriarchal
Speaker 2: values haven't gone away, no, so and you know they
Speaker 2: were perpetuated by movies like this and reinforced by movies
Speaker 2: like this, and those ideals have lasted for.
Speaker 3: Millennia, and so are the I mean, I think we
Speaker 3: talked about this a fair amount during the live show.
Speaker 3: But also I think that the more the more, like
Speaker 3: the cooler areas of this movie, which is like the
Speaker 3: idea of it being a life well lived to work
Speaker 3: for your community and serve your community instead of working
Speaker 3: towards individualistic and personal gained, which is such an inherently
Speaker 3: American value that the bottom falls out of all the
Speaker 3: fucking time. And that's not to say I mean, I
Speaker 3: think that it's I kind of like where it falls,
Speaker 3: because the takeaway from George's experience with Clarence is like
Speaker 3: the best message that the movie has. Of course, this
Speaker 3: is only a message that is accessible by a white guy,
Speaker 3: even though he's a white guy that's suffering a lot
Speaker 3: of poverty and personal distress. Like that's I don't mean
Speaker 3: to discount that, but you know that the narrative is
Speaker 3: only accessible to him, not Mary, who has organized and
Speaker 3: made this all fucking possible. He wouldn't have a damn
Speaker 3: roof over his head, and he wouldn't have the money
Speaker 3: if it wasn't for Mary. We know this, But I
Speaker 3: think that it being important that George worked for his
Speaker 3: community and served as community, and that presenting it that
Speaker 3: they're also like, it's not devaluing his life as an individual,
Speaker 3: because that's the whole clearance thing is that like, you
Speaker 3: as an individual are an important part of your community,
Speaker 3: and without you very passively over emphasizing George's importance. But
Speaker 3: the message, the message a lot, I think, right, like,
Speaker 3: but the message feels relevant. That's like one of the
Speaker 3: more I think that's my guess of like why this
Speaker 3: movie is other than just being you know, really pummeled
Speaker 3: over the head. If you live in the US, I
Speaker 3: understand why that message is still really powerful, that like you,
Speaker 3: that serving the collective is valuable, and that you are
Speaker 3: a valuable part of that collective.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, and that's fine if a movie, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like exaggerates that. But the movie, like especially
Speaker 2: that section it credits George for like saving women, all
Speaker 2: the women in the town from these quo unquote horrible
Speaker 2: fates of you know, sex work and being a quote
Speaker 2: unquote old maid who's a librarian, who's so undesirable because
Speaker 2: she wears glasst.
Speaker 3: Like and that also feels like I don't know. I
Speaker 3: mean we've talked about this within period pieces too, where
Speaker 3: like obviously we can't apply a twenty twenty three lens
Speaker 3: to nineteen forty six. But I think even so, if like,
Speaker 3: if this movie had any interest in Mary, it could
Speaker 3: present her. I mean, I think it's very like flat
Speaker 3: in the way that her being a quote unquote old
Speaker 3: maid and wearing Warby Parker glasses is presented where it's
Speaker 3: like the value of the movie is that happening to
Speaker 3: you is bad, Whereas I think there's a way to
Speaker 3: present it of like, that's what happens to her, that's
Speaker 3: her life, that's her choice. She's happy with it, but
Speaker 3: society isn't happy with her, you know. And I think
Speaker 3: that there's a way to present a historical reality of
Speaker 3: the mid twentieth century, which is that, you know, especially
Speaker 3: post World War Two, it totally makes sense we're like
Speaker 3: heading towards one of the most sort of rigid housewife
Speaker 3: eras in the US. It makes sense that you would
Speaker 3: be treated poorly for wanting to have an independent life.
Speaker 3: But this movie doesn't show any shade of gray. It's
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, this happens to you. You're fucked. So
Speaker 3: thank god George Bailey was born. And you're like, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Right, because there were movies, like classic Hollywood movies from
Speaker 2: this era that do examine and like subvert gender roles
Speaker 2: and sexism and patriarchal values, but this movie just simply
Speaker 2: is not one of them.
Speaker 3: It's just like presents it as fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's rather frustrating. Let's talk about Annie,
Speaker 2: yes please. So she is the I believe, only person
Speaker 2: of color in the entire movie with any kind of
Speaker 2: speaking role, and just kind of the only person of
Speaker 2: color you see on screen period.
Speaker 3: There are a few background actors who are people of color,
Speaker 3: but it's certainly the only speaking role by a country mile.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's played by Lillian Randolph. So she is the
Speaker 2: character who works for the Bailey family as like a
Speaker 2: maid or a housekeeper. So she's in a very you know,
Speaker 2: stereotypical role for black actors to be in. At this time,
Speaker 2: roles for black actors were often relegated to service roles
Speaker 2: helping white people, and that's also a trend that continues
Speaker 2: still to this day. Still.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that she's she's also presented as
Speaker 3: I mean, she's presented as comic relief, yes, and speaking
Speaker 3: to like Lilian Randolph's performance great. And I was reading
Speaker 3: more about Lillian Randolph and it she played the comedic
Speaker 3: relief role many many times because those were the only
Speaker 3: roles that were made available to her throughout her career,
Speaker 3: and she does it incredibly well. She's clearly a very
Speaker 3: talented actor.
Speaker 2: She has all the best lines in the movie.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think if they're not delivered with her performance,
Speaker 3: they would be weird. But like she makes it work
Speaker 3: and she's not given really anything to work with. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, she's presented as the help, she is presented
Speaker 3: as the comic relief, and she's also presented as less
Speaker 3: smart than the people that she works for. Where I mean,
Speaker 3: the first exchange she has is with George's mother, who,
Speaker 3: as we talked about in the live show, also has
Speaker 3: nothing to do other than my husband, my son, my husband,
Speaker 3: my son. Right, yeah, but one of the few exchanges
Speaker 3: they have is I mean, it's so well presented by
Speaker 3: Annie that you're like, I'm on Annie's side, but it's
Speaker 3: like presented that like she doesn't understand and why it
Speaker 3: because she says something like the only girl children, and
Speaker 3: you're like, George.
Speaker 2: And Harry are upstairs rough housing, even though they're like
Speaker 2: adults by this point.
Speaker 3: It sounds like they're well they're both forty, but you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess you're eighteen. I know, I know, but you're
Speaker 3: still like it's distracting, it's distracting.
Speaker 2: Anyway, they're making a lot of commotion and Annie is like,
Speaker 2: you know, hitting the broom against the roof, and then
Speaker 2: she says something like, oh, this is why all children
Speaker 2: should be girls. And then missus Bailey responds with something like,
Speaker 2: but if all children were girls, then never mind. Is if,
Speaker 2: like I think, Annie doesn't understand it, like procreation works
Speaker 2: like Annie.
Speaker 3: In the world of the scene, it's delivered as if
Speaker 3: she is making a joke and the mom doesn't get it.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't seem like it's written that way because
Speaker 3: the whole movie is written so disrespectfully towards her. And
Speaker 3: then shortly after we see her assaulted by Harry, and
Speaker 3: that's presented as a joke too. I went back to
Speaker 3: the original script to see if that was in the
Speaker 3: original script, and Dick was it says quote as he
Speaker 3: pushes her through the kitchen door, he slaps her fanny,
Speaker 3: she screams. The noise is cut off by the swinging door,
Speaker 3: like it's presented as a button to a scene. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that is also and she's I mean, not the
Speaker 3: only woman in the movie to be sexually harassed. I
Speaker 3: think that that is a pretty evenly. That is an
Speaker 3: evenly distributed crime throughout the movie. But it's I mean,
Speaker 3: with a character who is on screen for all but
Speaker 3: two minutes only in service to white characters and as
Speaker 3: comic relief, she still is sexually assaulted on screen as
Speaker 3: a joke.
Speaker 2: Horrifying. She does have my favorite line of the movie
Speaker 2: at the very end, when all the community are like
Speaker 2: pitching in and giving money to the Bailey family, she says,
Speaker 2: I've been saving this money for a divorce, but you
Speaker 2: and then like you can have it though, And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: first of all, Annie, keep your money, don't give it
Speaker 2: to George Bailey.
Speaker 3: Any get your damn divorce. Whatever he did, whatever he did,
Speaker 3: he's a dog.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: I read it as like she doesn't even have a
Speaker 2: partner yet. She's the way that some people will be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm saving up for a wedding. She just like knows
Speaker 2: that inevitably she will get divorced. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I thought she was married. Well that speaks to how
Speaker 3: little we know about this character. We don't know if
Speaker 3: she's got a husband, we don't know anything about her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds me of the doctor Ian Malcolm quote
Speaker 2: from Jurassic Park when he says, oh, I'm always on
Speaker 2: the lookout for a future ex missus Malcolm, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: breakups happen, and we all know it anyway.
Speaker 3: You're prey, you're preve it's true. And then we I
Speaker 3: guess we didn't really get to talk about Violet very
Speaker 3: much because we just we didn't have a lot. We
Speaker 3: were just goofing around so much you wouldn't understand. But
Speaker 3: speaking to Violet, I mean another character we don't get
Speaker 3: a lot of screen time with. She does get certainly
Speaker 3: more of an arc than Annie does, but it's a
Speaker 3: very charged arc where she's presented as I feel like
Speaker 3: it is kind of a Madonna horror situation that we're
Speaker 3: presented with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like the quote unquote town fluozy.
Speaker 3: She's Samantha Jones coded. She's like really the Samantha Jones
Speaker 3: of New Bedford and good for her and good for
Speaker 3: Hut and so she's I think the way that Platt
Speaker 3: treats her as very very inconsistent to me, because it's
Speaker 3: clear that Mary is presented as the you know, angelic
Speaker 3: alternative to a woman like Violet. However, they are friends
Speaker 3: and they as far as I can tell, remain friends,
Speaker 3: although we don't. We would certainly never scene with them together.
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing. They're friends or maybe even kind
Speaker 2: of friend of these as children. Yeah, but we don't
Speaker 2: because we don't see them in any scenes together as
Speaker 2: an adult, we have no way of knowing if they've
Speaker 2: actually remained friends.
Speaker 3: That's true, and that also demonstrates how disinterested the plot
Speaker 3: is in Mary, which we already know. Yeah, when we
Speaker 3: see Violet presented as an adult, I mean, she's really
Speaker 3: slaying in a lot of these scenes. Jimmy Stewart George
Speaker 3: is always like kind of leering at her in certain
Speaker 3: like towards the beginning of the movie, like he goes
Speaker 3: Hammahammadhamana when she walks past the car, she gives a
Speaker 3: great one liner keeps walking. This in a run of
Speaker 3: scenes that really troubles me. It's the scene first where
Speaker 3: I think it's a holiday party, and as we discussed,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart does kiss his mommy on the mouth hard.
Speaker 3: During that conversation, she's talking about the one thing that's
Speaker 3: on her mind, which is her son, and she is like,
Speaker 3: why don't you marry Mary? And he's like I don't
Speaker 3: want to. And then he's like, but I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: fuck tonight is basically the takeaway. And he stops away,
Speaker 3: being like I'm gonna go fuck mom, and she's like
Speaker 3: you kids, and I'm like, this sucks, this is weird.
Speaker 3: And then he goes into town spots Violet. She is
Speaker 3: interested in him. Arguably the whole movie. You're just like,
Speaker 3: why didn't you two get together? I think it bumps
Speaker 3: me up because it presents Violet as kind of a floozy,
Speaker 3: but also like whatever. They're both horny and walking around,
Speaker 3: so sure, yeah, have sex. But and then he wants
Speaker 3: her to climb a mountain and she's like what no,
Speaker 3: and then he yells at her, which is a very
Speaker 3: george thing to do experience slight resistance from a woman specifically,
Speaker 3: and starts screaming at her.
Speaker 2: He's so fragile. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: He does that and stops away, as he does in
Speaker 3: many scenes with women. Yes, and then we see him
Speaker 3: go to Mary's house and have a scene we talked
Speaker 3: about in the live show, but like it not only
Speaker 3: doesn't paint a flattering picture of Violet, because I think
Speaker 3: we're supposed to leave that scene with a negative picture
Speaker 3: of Violet, like she doesn't get him right, you know.
Speaker 3: And then it also presents Mary as not his first choice,
Speaker 3: and that sucks for a character that we like, like
Speaker 3: it sucks.
Speaker 2: Well, well, then I think she would be his first choice,
Speaker 2: except that again because of his fragility, he's like, well,
Speaker 2: I can't Mary belongs to another man. She should belong
Speaker 2: to me. But Sarah right, it's already staked his claim, right.
Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, in a monogamous relationship, sure,
Speaker 3: don't actively pursue someone else's partner, but also don't treat
Speaker 3: them cruelly because you're attracted to them. That is uh,
Speaker 3: what most men do, and worse and so much worse.
Speaker 3: And then at the end with Violet, we get a
Speaker 3: very again weirdly already seed with her and George, but
Speaker 3: you do get some closure that is taken back. You
Speaker 3: think you're about to get a cool arc where she
Speaker 3: goes to George for a loan, a building and loan.
Speaker 3: We're not sure.
Speaker 2: I think she doesn't intend to build because she's moving
Speaker 2: to New York City.
Speaker 3: I ever heard of it in a move I was
Speaker 3: not expecting from this story. George is very supportive of that,
Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, good, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3: Sucks here, best of luck. Weird kiss fine, not even
Speaker 3: on the he kisses his mom on the lips, but
Speaker 3: well he's married by that. I was like, she shouldn't
Speaker 3: kiss her on the lips, but like a long, lingering kiss.
Speaker 3: And there's like a kiss mark left on his cheek.
Speaker 3: And then the bank inspector's there and he's like, hello,
Speaker 3: I've come here to arrest you. But anyways, like that
Speaker 3: for me would have been great closure for Violet. She
Speaker 3: gets out, but instead we first of we first see
Speaker 3: the flash forward where oh no, if George wasn't born,
Speaker 3: she might be a sex worker, which is implied by
Speaker 3: the movie as the worst thing that could happen to someone.
Speaker 3: And then in the present day by the end, she
Speaker 3: comes back and is like, actually, I've decided to stay,
Speaker 3: and you're like a fate worse than death.
Speaker 2: We don't know why she decided to stay. We don't
Speaker 2: know what she was intending to do in New York
Speaker 2: or why she was moving again. She's characterized so little
Speaker 2: beyond just like the very tropy. Oh she's the you know, hot,
Speaker 2: busty blonde who walks around town and all the men
Speaker 2: like Wolf whistle at her like that's just the trope
Speaker 2: that she adheres to and she's given no interior life
Speaker 2: or interests or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sucks, And I feel like that is one
Speaker 3: of the clearer presentations of what this movie's values are,
Speaker 3: because on one hand, yes, it is a life well
Speaker 3: lived to serve your community. But I feel like there
Speaker 3: is an undertone of this that is like city folks
Speaker 3: are sinful, don't go there, you know, never leave the
Speaker 3: place you were born in, which erases so many reasons
Speaker 3: why you would leave, which in violence case might be
Speaker 3: because everyone treats her like shit. So there's that.
Speaker 2: There's that I want to talk really or just mention
Speaker 2: really the There's another female character who hasn't come up yet,
Speaker 2: and it's cousin Tilly, who works at the Building and Loan.
Speaker 2: She's George's cousin, presumably Uncle Billy's daughter, not that you
Speaker 2: really ever see them interact.
Speaker 3: She also calls him uncle Billy.
Speaker 2: Oh so oh why is that?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 3: I think that's his government name because everyone part.
Speaker 2: Her first name, uncle, last name Billy name.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also that means his name is Billy Bailey.
Speaker 3: That's fun. I love him. I love him and his
Speaker 3: tiny brain and his little squirrel, his little squirrel and.
Speaker 2: His little you know, strings around his fingers so that
Speaker 2: he doesn't forget things, but he still forgets them all
Speaker 2: the time. Love that anyway. Cousin Tilly, she has like
Speaker 2: three lines in the movie, and I mean justice for Tilly,
Speaker 2: I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, because she's another
Speaker 2: person we don't know anything about.
Speaker 3: I'm ashamed. I didn't even remember, Like she's not I
Speaker 3: didn't even though it's like, yeah, she's absolutely, she sure
Speaker 3: is there and she has a whole story that we
Speaker 3: don't know about, the fault thing that we alluded to
Speaker 3: in the live show. But it's good to have noted
Speaker 3: explicitly is that we do have in mister Potter. And
Speaker 3: also how distracting is it to have a character named
Speaker 3: Harry and a guy named mister Potter in the same movie.
Speaker 3: His name's Henry Potter. His little truck says ahe Potter,
Speaker 3: and you're like, this sucks. Anyways, they should have known
Speaker 3: that in the future something terrible would happen. But mister
Speaker 3: Potter is a disabled character and We've talked about this
Speaker 3: on the show many times of how people with disabilities
Speaker 3: are extremely frequently coded in fiction and in movies by
Speaker 3: extension as inherently villainous. Yes, and the counterpoint to that,
Speaker 3: I think in this movie would be that George himself
Speaker 3: has a disability. He can't hear out of one ear
Speaker 3: because of an accident when he was a kid, and
Speaker 3: it is explicitly stated in the movie that that disability
Speaker 3: prevents him from serving in the military. So I feel
Speaker 3: like the at very least, while that trope is present,
Speaker 3: our hero who's an asshole, also has a disability, and
Speaker 3: it is not presented. It's presented in a very different
Speaker 3: way than mister Patters.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's true, but the fact remains that the movie
Speaker 2: does attribute a disability to the villain. The villain who
Speaker 2: is played by Lionel Barrymore, who is the great uncle
Speaker 2: of Drew Barrymore.
Speaker 3: Wow, iconic strike disrespect her well anyways, No, but it's
Speaker 3: that's a whole other story because if I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker 3: the Barrymore family in general has been very very good
Speaker 3: historically of respecting strikes. So it was a noted, you know,
Speaker 3: step away from Barrymore family values for Drew to be
Speaker 3: a piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Like that, what the hell Drew?
Speaker 3: Well anything else?
Speaker 2: I just I don't think this got brought up in
Speaker 2: the live show. But in the Christmas Eve scene when
Speaker 2: George is absolutely throwing a fit and not communicating to
Speaker 2: his I understand why he wouldn't tell his children this maybe,
Speaker 2: but why would he not tell his why his wife?
Speaker 2: What had happened like this? This missing money? He just
Speaker 2: comes in acts like a complete terror. She's like, what's wrong,
Speaker 2: what's going on? He does not openly communicate anything to her.
Speaker 2: He just screams at her. He says, you call this
Speaker 2: a happy family? And then he's like, why do we
Speaker 2: have to have all these kids? He says that within
Speaker 2: earshot of his children, and he says all these other
Speaker 2: things that I think we did mention in the live show,
Speaker 2: But I just like, how are we supposed to like
Speaker 2: this guy? When he screams at Mary tells her that
Speaker 2: the house and home that she built for this family,
Speaker 2: sure that the house sucks. He hates it, and why
Speaker 2: did we have all these kids? Saying that within.
Speaker 3: You I understand that we are seeing George at the
Speaker 3: lowest moment in his life. And I know that theoretically
Speaker 3: you do not judge someone from the worst moment of
Speaker 3: their life, but he's really swinging for the fences with
Speaker 3: being a piece of shit here. He apologizes for it,
Speaker 3: and then he disappears. He does apologize for it, but
Speaker 3: then he disappears.
Speaker 2: Well, he apologizes, and then he gets mad again because
Speaker 2: his family is like appropriately reacting to how awful he's being.
Speaker 2: And then he yells again, and then he leaves, and.
Speaker 3: To Mary's credit, she says, why are you torturing the children?
Speaker 3: And I was like, thank you, Mary, Why is he
Speaker 3: torturing the children? I know that he's at the lowest
Speaker 3: part of his life, but I just.
Speaker 2: Come and give him an excuse to be horrible to
Speaker 2: his family.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not suggesting that, I'm just I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 3: I think that the issue with his quick to anger
Speaker 3: is that we have seen him not at the lowest
Speaker 3: moment of his life also quick to anger. It is
Speaker 3: not a it is like an escalation of behavior we've
Speaker 3: seen from him already. And so that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And I think that is all I had.
Speaker 2: Did you have anything else?
Speaker 3: No, let's let's return to the stage.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Yes, so this brings us to the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test. So yeah, we're gonna go back to the
Speaker 2: live show and see if this movie passes the Bechdel test.
Speaker 3: No, there's no, it definitely doesn't. The only scenes we
Speaker 3: get are between Mary and her friend and they're like,
Speaker 3: are boys cools? The answer?
Speaker 2: So well, missus Bailey, George's mom and Annie briefly talk
Speaker 2: about how they're going to be old maids. But then
Speaker 2: Anne is like, speak for yourself. I'm saving up for
Speaker 2: a divorce and I'm happy about it.
Speaker 3: Which is like great, yes, but presumably divorce from a man, yes,
Speaker 3: due to the pology of the time. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say it doesn't. I mean it doesn't spiritually
Speaker 3: pass certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think definitely that one. Yeah. But our nipple
Speaker 2: scale the perfect scale, the perfect metric where we rate
Speaker 2: the movie based on a scale of zero to five
Speaker 2: nipples and examine the movie through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 2: and I think I have to give the movie. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna give it one nipple for its like rejection of
Speaker 2: the capitalist ideas ideals that mister Potter is projecting. And
Speaker 2: everyone's like, no, it's actually awesome if we're a community
Speaker 2: and we like band together and say boo to you,
Speaker 2: mister capital because, like mister Potter, is capitalism the guy.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: In any case, I like, from a class perspective, I
Speaker 2: think this movie is pretty cool. From an everything else perspective,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's very cool. And George Bailey is
Speaker 2: not nice to his wife. His wife, so I'm only
Speaker 2: giving it one nipple the end, and I'll give it
Speaker 2: to I'll give it to Annie, who is played by
Speaker 2: Lillian Randolph.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna, I'll meet you. I'll give you. I'll give
Speaker 3: it one nipple. Yeah, I think this movie for women
Speaker 3: is not good for women. Is is maybe in fact
Speaker 3: bad and reinforcing a lot of negative stereotizes women at
Speaker 3: the time, which is that when your husband is on screen,
Speaker 3: get out of the scene. I don't care for that,
Speaker 3: and that happens in almost every scene in this movie. However,
Speaker 3: I agree with you. I mean, I think that the
Speaker 3: class politics of this movie are at least in step with,
Speaker 3: if not ahead of its time, in spite of the
Speaker 3: politics of the director and the star, which feels like
Speaker 3: really interesting. And I think that like it's endured for
Speaker 3: a reason. I think that it is really nice to
Speaker 3: have classics in American canon that are not rooted in
Speaker 3: individualism and like really remove themselves from the whole idea
Speaker 3: of the hero's journey. Where like, if there's anyone that
Speaker 3: goes through a hero's journey in this story, it's George's brother,
Speaker 3: and you don't see any of it where he goes
Speaker 3: from humble beginnings to being a war hero and going
Speaker 3: through all this stuff. You don't see that. You see
Speaker 3: his brother who is actively remaining kind of trapped in
Speaker 3: the class and the place that he is born in.
Speaker 3: And like, I think that there's a lot of value
Speaker 3: to that, and there's a lot of value to being
Speaker 3: to a preciating that and to seeing the value in that,
Speaker 3: because I think that you know, like in most movies
Speaker 3: and a lot of media in the Western world, you're
Speaker 3: encouraged to only see success in your life as having
Speaker 3: ascended in the traditional sense, and that the idea of
Speaker 3: remaining within your community and serving your community is not
Speaker 3: valued at the same rate. And I think that you know,
Speaker 3: It's a wonderful life does that on its face, and
Speaker 3: that's really nice. It does that for George. It does
Speaker 3: not do that for Mary, even though she's doing the
Speaker 3: same shit and it's all offscreen, and for some reason
Speaker 3: they're like, what if there was an old ass angeling
Speaker 3: Tom Sawyer, you know, like Mary is doing the same
Speaker 3: thing the whole movie, but they just don't want to
Speaker 3: show that. At its core, I think that the movie
Speaker 3: has a good message. I'll give it one nipple. It's
Speaker 3: bad for women, it's bad for people who aren't white,
Speaker 3: and they're and I'm going to give it to Jimmy
Speaker 3: the Rain and obviously.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, and Coco almost split it with Jimmy and Coke. Okay,
Speaker 2: do we end the show now?
Speaker 3: I think I feel like, well, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 3: just I just feel like Kaitlyn, Like I was wondering
Speaker 3: as I was watching this movie with Clarence the flop angel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what would the world be like without the Bechtel casts?
Speaker 2: Oh, what would the world be like without the Bechdel cast?
Speaker 3: Certainly we don't have anything prepared.
Speaker 2: Well, I was thinking about, wait, actually.
Speaker 3: Wait that Dax, could you softly play Dominic the donkey?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much? Just as we discussed this important topic.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Okay, So I was thinking about this too,
Speaker 2: and uh, if the Bechdel Cast had never existed, what
Speaker 2: would the world be like. Well, first of all, Michael
Speaker 2: Bay would be President of the United States of America.
Speaker 3: That is, you're so right, you know, you're so right.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that if the Bechdel Cast didn't exist,
Speaker 3: Alfred Molina would never have learned what an MRA meant
Speaker 3: true and he would have gone down that path himself.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: I was thinking if the Bechdel Cast never existed that
Speaker 2: the Minion's Kevin, Bob, and Stewart, Yeah, would have broken
Speaker 2: up and we wouldn't have been there to get them
Speaker 2: back together.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that in a world without the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: I would have ended up working at the job I
Speaker 3: was working at when we started the Bechdel Cast, which
Speaker 3: was as a fact checker at Playboy magazine Question Work,
Speaker 3: and I would have worked there forever, and I would
Speaker 3: have married Hugh Hefner and I would have killed him
Speaker 3: instead of just him dying. Wow, that would have been
Speaker 3: so scary if that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad it didn't. And also, I think that
Speaker 2: if the Bechdel Cast had never existed that James Cameron
Speaker 2: would have never directed Titanic because he specifically made it
Speaker 2: for Jamie and myself. Yeah, twenty years before we started
Speaker 2: the podcast, and that's what the world there would be
Speaker 2: no Titanic. Sorry.
Speaker 3: And in conclusion, I would like to say in a
Speaker 3: room without the Bechdel cast and then I just wrote
Speaker 3: in asterisk Manian joke as risk and so would like
Speaker 3: to say thanks for coming to the live show.
Speaker 2: And that was the episode everyone, Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 2: Thanks once again to everyone who came to the live
Speaker 2: show or bought tickets to the stream and watched the stream.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate you doing that and supporting live podcasting.
Speaker 3: Wow. What is tree? Yeah? And if you enjoyed that
Speaker 3: and you live in the following cities San Francisco, Sacramento, Austin, Dallas,
Speaker 3: San Diego, We're coming to a venue near you soon.
Speaker 3: Check our link tree right now. Tickets to your city
Speaker 3: maybe live soon. If not, they will be very soon
Speaker 3: and we will make a specific post to the feed
Speaker 3: when that is the case. The live shows are so fun.
Speaker 3: We always do meet and greets afterwards. We have exclusive
Speaker 3: march and it's just a great community event I know
Speaker 3: of at least two serious relationships that have come out
Speaker 3: of meeting at a backtal cash show. It's a great
Speaker 3: place to meet a friend or a love And also
Speaker 3: if you live in LA please come to Santa University
Speaker 3: at the Allegion on December twenty first at seven thirty pm.
Speaker 2: That ticket will also be on our link tree. Again
Speaker 2: it's just link tree slash Bechtel Cast. And speaking of links,
Speaker 2: you can click on the link patreon dot com slash
Speaker 2: Bechtel Cast and subscribe to our Patreon. This month it's
Speaker 2: Zoe Saldonna in Space September.
Speaker 3: And we swear that the Matreon's voted for that. The
Speaker 3: matrons voted for that to happen. And there's also over
Speaker 3: one hundred episode backlog, close to one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3: We've had the patreon going for many years and it's
Speaker 3: a blast. We get goofy, We have a nice time.
Speaker 3: And also if you want to, you know, gift a
Speaker 3: subscription to someone for the holidays, it's only five bucks
Speaker 3: a month and that gets access to everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of gift ideas, if you need them
Speaker 2: for either yourself okay, treat yourself or gifting to a
Speaker 2: friend or lover, you can go to teapublic dot com
Speaker 2: slash the Bechdel Cast and grab some merch. All of
Speaker 2: it is designed by a one Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: Ever heard of her? Uh? And we also if you're
Speaker 3: coming to our tour, we sell exclusive tour exclusive posters
Speaker 3: and uh. Just so you know, on the tour, we
Speaker 3: will for the most part in most cities be covering
Speaker 3: the movie Barbie.
Speaker 5: Ye.
Speaker 3: So if you want to hear us talk it since
Speaker 3: people have been shouting that at us, we were saving
Speaker 3: it because we want to wear little outfits. Uh, and
Speaker 3: we will be doing that. So with that, that's an episode, folks.
Speaker 3: See uh, see you on the flip we got uh.
Speaker 3: We we have one or two more episodes coming this
Speaker 3: calendar year and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: We sure will. Bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Drante and Jamie Loftis, produced
Speaker 2: by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Moe laboord. Our theme song
Speaker 2: was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski.
Speaker 2: Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
Speaker 2: a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about
Speaker 2: the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast