Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism, the patriarchy, zeph and best start changing it
Speaker 2: with the Bechdel.
Speaker 3: Cast, Get a Good get Away, Get a good to
Speaker 3: the This is the words, right, I'm trying to speak
Speaker 3: your I'm trying to speak the secret language I know,
Speaker 3: but I can't speak it.
Speaker 1: It was reminding me of I did you ever watch
Speaker 1: Zoom on PBS? No, because it's one of the shows
Speaker 1: you could have watched, So I was curious. Zoom was
Speaker 1: like this kid's show that actually friend of the show
Speaker 1: Taylor Garren was on when I was a child. Sure
Speaker 1: where they would speak they would speak pig Latin. Maybe no, wait,
Speaker 1: because I can do that, And also like that sounds weird.
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand what they were saying. I really appreciated
Speaker 1: in their secret language that they're subtitles. There were subtitles.
Speaker 1: I thought that was like so charming. What is our
Speaker 1: what is what is our secret langue? I feel like
Speaker 1: our secret language is like trying to get out of
Speaker 1: a social situation as a group, but you're usually just
Speaker 1: like we should go.
Speaker 3: I'm leaving now bye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're really good at leaving your room. I'll all
Speaker 1: be there three hours longer than necessary.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I was gonna say our secret
Speaker 3: language is maybe a dialect of minionies, but.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes that is below below below. Oh uh, well,
Speaker 1: banana is an English word. I guess there's there's so
Speaker 1: there's so many options for us. How do you feel
Speaker 1: about I know we have a lot to talk about today,
Speaker 1: but are you do you want to go see Minions
Speaker 1: and monsters at midnight? I know that everyone I just
Speaker 1: wanted to. I was going to text you about this
Speaker 1: off pod, but everyone did seem upset with me when
Speaker 1: I brought them to just we all fell asleep. A
Speaker 1: despicable for at midnight. But I think it's worth a shot.
Speaker 3: It was a midnight screening. Yeah, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 3: I'm too old for that, but I'm definitely not young
Speaker 3: enough for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're bowing out, you're bowing out.
Speaker 3: I won't say that. Okay, I'm just gonna be a
Speaker 3: little wishy washy about committing. At the moment, I'm building
Speaker 3: my day around it.
Speaker 1: I'm planning the next day so that I can go
Speaker 1: to bed and sleep till like elevens I can I
Speaker 1: can really like drink a Celsius and see minions and monsters. Sure,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately all the minions are men, and that didn't
Speaker 1: pass the Bechdel test, which brings us to Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where
Speaker 3: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 3: Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which is
Speaker 3: what now, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Well. The Bechdel test is a media metric created by
Speaker 1: friend of this show Carteonus, Alison Bechdel, originally a one
Speaker 1: off joke in her comic dex to Watch out For
Speaker 1: in the eighties to draw attention to the fact that
Speaker 1: there was never a queer romance between women in movies.
Speaker 1: It has since been adapted into a more generalized media metric.
Speaker 1: The version we use requires that two characters of a
Speaker 1: marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something
Speaker 1: other than a man for a meaningful exchange of dialogue,
Speaker 1: and today's movie really kind of puts this to the test.
Speaker 1: In a really interesting way. But there's also just so
Speaker 1: much to talk about, because yeah, this is another I
Speaker 1: think the trend of this year, our tenth year. I
Speaker 1: don't know what anniversary that is.
Speaker 3: Oh, like is it like gold or there's like also
Speaker 3: shitty wooden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you don't last very I think I've only
Speaker 1: ever made it to like the paper, the paper, and
Speaker 1: like the bad ones. Anyways, for our tenure, we've been
Speaker 1: covering a lot of movies that have been on our
Speaker 1: requestless for most of those ten years, that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: we just haven't covered. And today is one of those movies.
Speaker 1: It is Slums of Beverly Hills, which was released in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. And
Speaker 1: we have an incredible returning guest, one of the best.
Speaker 3: I would say, we sure do. She is a YouTuber
Speaker 3: and video essayist host of Rehash podcast, and you remember
Speaker 3: her from our episode on Forrest Gump. It's Maya aka
Speaker 3: Broie da Channel.
Speaker 4: Welcome back. Thank you for having me. I didn't I
Speaker 4: never thought I'd make it back a second time. Here
Speaker 4: I am again. Oh my god, I'm so pleased to
Speaker 4: be here with the both of you.
Speaker 3: You're welcome to come back anytime you want.
Speaker 1: The honor is all ours, truly. Yes, two wildly different
Speaker 1: nineties movies we've covered.
Speaker 4: You could not be more different, And I can't stop.
Speaker 4: I couldn't stop thinking about in the run up to
Speaker 4: those how hilarious it was that this is the movie
Speaker 4: we we're covering on the techdelcast. It is. It is
Speaker 4: one of the most complicated movies I've ever seen, so
Speaker 4: it'll be fun to dissect.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, tell us your history, your relationship with this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I watched this movie for the first time
Speaker 4: during the pandemic my roommate and my podcast co host,
Speaker 4: actually Hannah suggested it and we had this like nightly
Speaker 4: ritual of knitting and eating a treat and watching a
Speaker 4: movie like almost every night that or six episodes of
Speaker 4: Love Island. Of course, this night was this movie, and
Speaker 4: I kind of fell in love with it, and I
Speaker 4: think on the second watch, I fell a little bit
Speaker 4: less in love with it, but I still like it
Speaker 4: a lot. I think I just have a lot of
Speaker 4: nostalgia for like seventies movies, but I also feel like
Speaker 4: it also occupies this place of like nineties indie fascination
Speaker 4: with like pathetic families, like the downwardly mobile imaginary that
Speaker 4: I find so fun, kind of like Todd Salon's style filmmaking.
Speaker 4: I think it has this kind of like nineties like
Speaker 4: indie absurdity and like Matt or a Fact tone that
Speaker 4: I also really like. And every day of my damn life,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to look like Marrissa Tome in this movie.
Speaker 4: And you know, God, oh, one day maybe we will.
Speaker 4: She's hilarious. Yeah, I think I think generally was just
Speaker 4: struck by how like morally difficult it is of a movie,
Speaker 4: and like that I couldn't really wrap my head around
Speaker 4: how I felt about what the characters get up to.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, it was on my favorite movies list
Speaker 4: for a while and then I kind of like swapped
Speaker 4: it out over time. But yeah, I'm a big fan
Speaker 4: of this movie even still nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's lots to unpack, truly. Yeah, Jamie, what's your
Speaker 3: relationship with it?
Speaker 1: I had not seen it before. I'd seen another Tomorrow
Speaker 1: Jenkins movie. I'd seen Savages before, which I believe was
Speaker 1: her next movie in two thousand and seven. Because I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed listening to and reading Tomorrow Jenkins interviews and
Speaker 1: getting ready for this. I think she has a lot
Speaker 1: of really necessary stuff to say about how difficult it
Speaker 1: is for women to be otur's. But anyways, i'd seen Savages.
Speaker 1: I don't remember why. I think it was on IFC
Speaker 1: or something when I was in high school and really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. But this has been on my list to
Speaker 1: watch forever. And I mean casting wise, it's like made
Speaker 1: for me. The cast in this movie. David chrome Holts,
Speaker 1: isn't it for crying out loud?
Speaker 3: I mean Bernard the Elf himself.
Speaker 1: One of my most formative crushes. And Kevin Corgan, which
Speaker 1: indicates the kind of choker that I have, Kevin every
Speaker 1: I saw a letterbox review for this movie that said
Speaker 1: every man in this movie deserves at least a fork
Speaker 1: to the leg, and that is definitely true. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this movie. I found it challenging. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I think, probably because we're in this like ten year
Speaker 1: space that I think I would have reacted to this
Speaker 1: movie very differently to it's the beginning of the backdal
Speaker 1: cast versus now.
Speaker 3: I had the same thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that there's a period in my life
Speaker 1: where I would have rejected a lot of what this
Speaker 1: movie is discussing, however messily, but I think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting stuff going on. I like it
Speaker 1: a lot. There are moments where I think, honestly, the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that bumped me in this movie that wasn't
Speaker 1: like super specific in a way we'll talk about is
Speaker 1: the score in this movie is so funny to me
Speaker 1: where there's something that I just want to have a
Speaker 1: word with the composer because there would be a like
Speaker 1: a crime that would be presented as like or like
Speaker 1: what is on paper a crime would be presented on
Speaker 1: screen with I thought like a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: nuance and lack of like how was I supposed to
Speaker 1: feel about this? And then like accordion music will start
Speaker 1: to play, and I found it so out oft with
Speaker 1: what I thought the director was doing. The music was
Speaker 1: so silly to me. The tuba music following the assault
Speaker 1: of a minor was really something else, especially when Kevin
Speaker 1: Corgan was like I assaulted a minor just now, and
Speaker 1: I'm aware of that, and then tuba music starts playing immediately.
Speaker 3: It's wild.
Speaker 4: It's a generic clusterfug for sure, Like there's like it's
Speaker 4: it's something's happening on screen, and then the movie's kind
Speaker 4: of like atmospherically throwing something else at you, and you're.
Speaker 1: Like, it's so yeah, there were so many scenes I
Speaker 1: had to be like, I have to take that back.
Speaker 1: But like you're saying, Maya, I think it's like it's
Speaker 1: a look into both the seventies and the nineties and
Speaker 1: the sensibilities in both of those decades in a very
Speaker 1: specific way that I think is going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to talk about. Caitlin, what's your history?
Speaker 3: I had never seen this movie either. I've known about
Speaker 3: it for a long time, and I was familiar with
Speaker 3: what the poster looked like. But I was mistaking Natasha
Speaker 3: Leone for Brittany Murphy. So I spent my whole she
Speaker 3: does kind of look like her on the poster. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not in the movie, but on the poster.
Speaker 1: She looks like Natasha Leone.
Speaker 4: Otherwise Yeah, right, she said her most Natasha Leoni for sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh is it Leoni?
Speaker 4: Or I don't? Oh no, no, I meant like Leon
Speaker 4: and then dash, why Leoni?
Speaker 3: I see, I see, I see the flavor, the flavor
Speaker 3: of Leoni. So I spent many years thinking that a
Speaker 3: different actor was the star of this movie, and then
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, it's Natasha Leone and I was
Speaker 3: excited to watch it. And I similarly found it challenging.
Speaker 3: Still don't know quite what to make of it. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna rely heavily on our conversation to process it, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't wait to dive into it.
Speaker 1: I will say this movie keeps you on your toes
Speaker 1: until the very last second, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that is thematic. But also it's a jump scare.
Speaker 1: Rita moreno appearance that no one could have seen come
Speaker 1: that I certainly didn't see coming.
Speaker 3: Wait, who is it? I missed it.
Speaker 1: Rida Morano plays the aunt at the end.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, yeah, the end, Yeah, Rida Morano. She's
Speaker 4: like the wife of Carl Ryan. Gosh, yeah in the
Speaker 4: airport lounge.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. Yeah, did not catch that?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, were you fright? How did you feel
Speaker 4: when you saw Rita Morena? Like, what was the feeling
Speaker 4: that overcame you, Jimmy.
Speaker 1: Oh, ease, comfort, safety.
Speaker 4: It was like a jump, a jump soothe.
Speaker 1: Yes, a jump. It wasn't a scare, it was a
Speaker 1: sooth yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Also, Mino Souvari. Mina Souvari is also in.
Speaker 3: This as a tiny baby Jessica Walter.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a cast. And Jessica Walter does
Speaker 1: the Lucille blue scream and everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's actually how she got her role in Arrest
Speaker 4: of Development. I'm just making that.
Speaker 1: Up, Yeah, I know. But because when she sees the
Speaker 1: blood though, that's a lucile scream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she goes the way that she screams right before
Speaker 3: she sees Jeane Parmesan. Yeah, when she's like exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: I love the way that the kids are kind of alsome.
Speaker 4: Just don't think that she's good enough for the dad
Speaker 4: because she's kind of old. Like when she's talking about
Speaker 4: metopause and stuff, and I'm like, this dad is a scrub.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I know, it's.
Speaker 4: I think she might be too good for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so much going on. Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: like check the I had to do a quick like
Speaker 1: birth date check, and you're like, no, Alan Arkin is
Speaker 1: indeed half a decade older than Jessica Walter's. Let's focus up,
Speaker 1: let's be serious, let's be real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do like when she starts pulling the pads,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, we're about to discusses. But when she starts
Speaker 4: pulling the pads and they're like archaic, ancient pads.
Speaker 1: This movie did something that I kind of forget to
Speaker 1: do sometimes, which is empathized with my mother, where I
Speaker 1: think my mom would have been around this age at
Speaker 1: this time, and you're like, you know she was really
Speaker 1: in the trenches.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, the.
Speaker 3: Way I understood it is that the reason she has
Speaker 3: this very archaic menstrual pad with the belt is because
Speaker 3: that's what Jessica Walter's character would have used she when
Speaker 3: she was menstruating. I feel like by the mid to
Speaker 3: late seventies when this movie takes place, pads had like
Speaker 3: adhesive bottoms that like stick to your underwear the way
Speaker 3: they do now. But I think so, but like those
Speaker 3: are just the pads that Jessica Walter had left over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like a primitive pad. Yeah, yeah, from
Speaker 4: her like from the ancient times of like nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Empathize with those older ladies they're going through it. Every
Speaker 4: time I see one kind of acting of a public
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is misogynistic, but I'm like,
Speaker 4: she might be overheating, like let her cooks like she's
Speaker 4: probably so misalis it's coming from a place.
Speaker 1: Of empty I was like, there's empathy in there.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's within.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, Well, why don't we take a quick break
Speaker 3: and we'll come back for the recap and we're back.
Speaker 3: Before we dive into the recap, I will provide a
Speaker 3: content warning. This movie is mostly a comedy and it's
Speaker 3: tonally light generally, but there are moments of sexual assault
Speaker 3: and incest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tube of music doesn't always know where it's dropping.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't. Okay, So it is nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: We meet Vivian Abramowitz played by Natasha Leone. She is
Speaker 3: about to be a freshman in high school. Her dad,
Speaker 3: who is a single father, Murrie played by Alan Arkin,
Speaker 3: is taking her shopping for her first ever bra and
Speaker 3: the experience is very uncomfortable and humiliating for Vivian. And
Speaker 3: this will be a motif and theme throughout.
Speaker 1: I do like that the Vivie isn't shy about what
Speaker 1: it's about, because it starts with them talking about her
Speaker 1: breasts literally behind her back, as if she isn't there,
Speaker 1: and that is kind of most of the movie as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we are about to see a different pair
Speaker 3: of breasts, because what happens next is we cut to
Speaker 3: a woman running barefoot along the road at night. We
Speaker 3: will eventually learn that this is Rita played by Marisa Tome,
Speaker 3: and we'll find out that she is Marie's niece and
Speaker 3: Vivian's cousin, but we don't know that quite yet. Anyway,
Speaker 3: she is trying to hitch a ride to Beverly Hills,
Speaker 3: and she flashes her breasts to a truck driver to
Speaker 3: get him to stop and give her a ride. So
Speaker 3: again the motif is present early on.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that there are a number of I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, for Natasha Leo and their body doubles for
Speaker 1: reasons that we'll discuss, which is that she's wearing prosthetic
Speaker 1: boobs the whole time. I don't know how I feel
Speaker 1: about the word breasts. We can talk about it.
Speaker 3: It has always made me feel weird.
Speaker 4: They use them exclusively in the movie, too, Like every
Speaker 4: time I'm going to say something so much grosser, actually
Speaker 4: I go to say memory gland every time, like your chest,
Speaker 4: the chest is discussed, breast is the word it's used,
Speaker 4: and I actually kept putting it in my notes too,
Speaker 4: but that's a good flag, right to try and swap
Speaker 4: that out.
Speaker 1: Or it's like an absence where it's like, oh, she's stacked,
Speaker 1: and it's like just implied is stacked. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: this is period accurate, but it was like breasts, I've
Speaker 1: just always associated more with illness than with boobs, and
Speaker 1: breasts feel different to me and I and someone can
Speaker 1: write a doctoral thesis about why that is.
Speaker 3: But and tits feel different than both of those things
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 1: Well, it depends on who's saying it though, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Context is important and who's around.
Speaker 4: It's so context dependent. But yeah, breasts, I feel like
Speaker 4: an old creepy man when I say breasts. I don't
Speaker 4: like it. But also boobs feels.
Speaker 1: Like kind of juvenile boy, Yeah, kind of like boobs.
Speaker 1: You know what was well, okay, because this is kind
Speaker 1: of the theme of the movie. What word were you
Speaker 1: brought up with? Because I think I was just brought
Speaker 1: up with boobs.
Speaker 3: My mom said breasts constantly.
Speaker 1: She was always talking about breasts, my god.
Speaker 3: But I was like, I cannot say that word. To
Speaker 3: this day, I still say boobs or tits or titties.
Speaker 3: Titties is fun, but boobs is my default. I will
Speaker 3: talk about my boobs as my boobs.
Speaker 4: I think my mom said boobies, and I don't like
Speaker 4: that either, really really don't like it.
Speaker 3: That really sounds like a twelve year old boy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was mortifying.
Speaker 1: As a child, like it really is, like I mean.
Speaker 1: And then I was also I think that, well, this
Speaker 1: is also relevant, and so I'm just gonna survey the
Speaker 1: class and you don't need to answer. I did not
Speaker 1: grow up with the word vagina. I grew up with
Speaker 1: the term peep area, which was which which I'm like,
Speaker 1: really like makes my body contract to think of how
Speaker 1: long I was like your peep area, of course, like,
Speaker 1: which kind of just felt like something that my mom
Speaker 1: kind of made up.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never I And imagine my surprise when I
Speaker 1: learned that this is not a term that.
Speaker 4: Is used peat area. My mom was referred to it
Speaker 4: as a pummy and I not send shivers on my spine,
Speaker 4: but in my head I called it a vagina because
Speaker 4: I thought your butt and your vagina were the same thing.
Speaker 1: And were you wrong? You know you're wrong. Yeah, Their neighbors,
Speaker 1: their neighbors, their.
Speaker 4: Friends, their friends.
Speaker 3: I don't remember exactly what I called I think I
Speaker 3: called it my crotch a lot.
Speaker 1: That's very vague. Yeah, sex education is so important. Listeners
Speaker 1: weigh in in the comments.
Speaker 3: Yes please anyway. So the point is breasts, boobs, tits,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call them. They feature heavily in the.
Speaker 1: Movie, and they heavily feature mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we cut back to Vivian. Her dad wakes
Speaker 3: her up in the middle of the night and tells
Speaker 3: her they're moving like right now, and to gather her
Speaker 3: things so that they can high tail it out of
Speaker 3: this apartment. It's clear that Murray is trying to skip
Speaker 3: out on paying rent. They live in Beverly Hills, but
Speaker 3: they are not rich, unlike many people who live in
Speaker 3: that neighborhood, or like the associations with Beverly Hills and wealth.
Speaker 3: They are lower income, working class. Murray is a struggling
Speaker 3: car salesman, but he wants to keep his kids. Vivian,
Speaker 3: her younger brother Ricky, and her older brother Ben played
Speaker 3: by David Crumholtz keep them in Beverly Hills because of
Speaker 3: the good schools. Now. Before they arrive at their new apartment,
Speaker 3: they go out to Eat Shout out Sizzler. Strong Sizzler
Speaker 3: representation in the film, which I wonder if this was
Speaker 3: before because I associate Sizzler with like a buffet style restaurant.
Speaker 1: This made me want to because because we go to
Speaker 1: the Olive Garden together and like we should have a
Speaker 1: Sizzler night.
Speaker 4: So what is Sizzler as someone who is Is this
Speaker 4: like a West coast it changed?
Speaker 3: I think it's a West coast I think so. I
Speaker 3: never saw it on the East coast. Yeah, me either.
Speaker 3: It is a restaurant where you go in from from
Speaker 3: my recollection because I've been there a few times. Parentheses brag.
Speaker 3: You can opt to like order a steak or a
Speaker 3: slab of meat or something like that, and then with
Speaker 3: that you get the buffet so it's like a salad
Speaker 3: bar and soup and all that kind of stuff, or
Speaker 3: you can just do the buffet style without the slab
Speaker 3: of meat.
Speaker 1: I just did a quick fact check and I think
Speaker 1: that that was what it was like in the seventies
Speaker 1: as well, and I think that like with that context,
Speaker 1: I feel like the comp for it today would be
Speaker 1: kind of an Olive Garden where where it's I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a signifier for the lower middle class right
Speaker 1: where it's like it's not you know, gas station food,
Speaker 1: it's not drive through food. But it also kind of is, right,
Speaker 1: like it's an aspirational venue to be consuming what is
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of cheap food.
Speaker 3: When I was growing up in a working class family,
Speaker 3: to eat it alive garden was to have a fancy,
Speaker 3: exact dinner.
Speaker 1: I mean, but that's how they view Sizzler. That's what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like for like the lower middle class.
Speaker 1: I think that that like signifier kind of shifts, but yeah,
Speaker 1: like I associate it with like in New England, it
Speaker 1: was like there's this place called like the ninety nine
Speaker 1: or like Old Country Buffet, and yeah, places that were
Speaker 1: like it's a sit down meal, it's nice. You know.
Speaker 4: In Toronto we have a place called Mandarin. It's also
Speaker 4: like it's like a like a buffet, a Chinese restaurant,
Speaker 4: a chain and similar. It's it's kind of like an
Speaker 4: outing for the downwardly mobile. Like you wear your nice clothes,
Speaker 4: you go there and you're like we're at Mandarin tonight,
Speaker 4: like but it's not like outrageously expensive.
Speaker 1: It's like accessible, right, I think of it as because
Speaker 1: I think we're all from like somewhat similar like socioeconomic
Speaker 1: backgrounds of like it's like a report card restaurant or
Speaker 1: a like yeah, your cousin just got baptized kind of restaurant.
Speaker 4: Totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they go to Sizzler, where Vivian is humiliated
Speaker 3: once again because her dad is being racist. Her brother
Speaker 3: Ben is making gross remarks about her appearance and about
Speaker 3: women's bodies in general, and so is her dad, and
Speaker 3: so is her dad. He's, you know, he disapproves of
Speaker 3: what she's wearing. She's wearing this halter top. He tells
Speaker 3: her to put on the bra he just bought her
Speaker 3: because she's like spilling out of her top and says
Speaker 3: all these horrible things about her body. Then Murray calls
Speaker 3: his rich brother Micky to ask for a loan, and
Speaker 3: Mickey is like, I can't. My daughter, Rita escaped from
Speaker 3: a rehab center. And so then we connect the dots
Speaker 3: that this is the Mursa Tome character we saw earlier.
Speaker 3: And Mickey mentions that he would pay someone if they
Speaker 3: knew what to do with Rita, and Murray is like,
Speaker 3: what's that you say? You would pay someone? So Murray
Speaker 3: hatches a plan. He picks Rita up from jail and
Speaker 3: now she's going to be staying with Murray and his kids.
Speaker 3: But they need to show Murray's brother Micky that Rita
Speaker 3: has a plan for her future so that Mickey will
Speaker 3: continue to support her financially and basically support the entire family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely. He's never in it just to be
Speaker 1: kind to his niece.
Speaker 4: No, certain, he's a scammer of the nth degree to
Speaker 4: the Instagram, yes for sure.
Speaker 3: And so Rita and Murray decide that she will go
Speaker 3: to school to be like a nurse slash medical assistant. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the family has moved into their new apartment in Beverly Hills. There,
Speaker 3: Vivian meets the next door neighbor, this guy Elliott, played
Speaker 3: by Kevin Corrigan.
Speaker 1: I love Kevin Corrigan so much. He's such a nasty
Speaker 1: piece of shit in this movie that which we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: But I just have always smiling my head off when
Speaker 1: I see Kevin Corrigan.
Speaker 3: His characters are usually like despicable but also likable in
Speaker 3: ways I can't entirely explain. I also love his character
Speaker 3: in the show Community. I don't know if anyone remembers his.
Speaker 1: I remember watching reruns of Grounded for life and being
Speaker 1: and because he's the scumbag uncle in that show and
Speaker 1: being like something happening.
Speaker 4: He's so some guy that a girl who's a tween
Speaker 4: would be so into.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he takes advantage of that from every way
Speaker 1: you could possibly imagine. But I just I love Kevin Corgan. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was not a feminist observation. We can continue.
Speaker 3: It's quite all right. We contain multitudes. Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 3: this is Elliott. He is a weed dealer. He's I guess,
Speaker 3: like kind of an anarchist type. He loves Charles Mayers.
Speaker 3: He's a poser though. He's such a poser. So they're
Speaker 3: hanging out. Vivian is still trying to figure out what
Speaker 3: it is to have breasts, and she asks him if
Speaker 3: he wants to touch hers, and he really really does,
Speaker 3: so he touches them. They have a moment in the
Speaker 3: laundry room, and then she's like, Okay, get away, this
Speaker 3: is a building thing. We're containing this to the building
Speaker 3: kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I have a question, Jin, because I was not I
Speaker 1: was seeing different answers and very vague answers. Maybe intentionally.
Speaker 1: So we know that Vivian is about to start high school.
Speaker 1: I've seen her characterize as either fourteen or fifteen. We
Speaker 1: know that she is firmly a minor, it's stated in
Speaker 1: the movie. Do we know how old Kevin Corrigan is
Speaker 1: supposed to be? I know that he's an adult, but like.
Speaker 4: I think it's twenty But I could be wrong because
Speaker 4: like the actor is like thirty.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know how old he was supposed to be.
Speaker 4: Okay, Wikipedia is telling me twenty something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was what I was seeing, and so you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make a difference in terms of the power dynamic,
Speaker 1: but I was having a difficult time tracking how old
Speaker 1: everyone was supposed to be throughout.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they never make it explicitly clear in the movie.
Speaker 1: Except for Vivian, right, Vivian. I feel like it is
Speaker 1: the only character in the movie that we definitively know
Speaker 1: how old she is.
Speaker 3: Which, oh oh, and Murray is sixty five.
Speaker 1: And that Rita is twenty nine. We only know how
Speaker 1: old women are because that's the only age metric that
Speaker 1: is actually relevant in this world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, we know, I mean Murray A lot
Speaker 3: is made of Murray's age of sixty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure he's over the hill.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Mostly women and girls, but yeah, okay, So we get
Speaker 3: the scene where Elliott touches Vivian's breasts in the laundry room,
Speaker 3: and then there are once again more boobs in the
Speaker 3: scene directly following that, because Vivian walks in on Rita
Speaker 3: taking a shower, and we get this shot of Rita's
Speaker 3: boobs again, and then the two cousins start to reconnect.
Speaker 3: We learn about their secret language that I was attempting
Speaker 3: to do at the top of the episode, which they
Speaker 3: did when they were younger. And the thing about Rita
Speaker 3: being there now is that she offers this feminine presence
Speaker 3: in Vivian's life that she was lacking before, and it's
Speaker 3: a nice change of pace from her constantly being around
Speaker 3: only her dad and brothers. And with all the money
Speaker 3: that Mickey, Rita's dad is giving the family, the family
Speaker 3: moves again, this time into a luxury building across the
Speaker 3: street with better amenities, more space, a swimming pool, etc.
Speaker 3: And the family talks about what this means for them
Speaker 3: class wise. They're like, are we rich? Are we middle class?
Speaker 3: You know? They talk about Mickey being a business owner
Speaker 3: and that's how he has amassed wealth. And then Murray
Speaker 3: tells a story slash. We get a flashback from when
Speaker 3: he was a business owner. He owned a restaurant where
Speaker 3: they served these expensive steaks, and he suspected that one
Speaker 3: of his employees was stealing steaks and smuggling them out
Speaker 3: in his pants. So Murray stabbed the guy in the
Speaker 3: thigh with a fork to confirm his suspicions that there
Speaker 3: was a steak in his pants. And this is going
Speaker 3: to be Chekhov's stab in the thigh with a fork.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that calls.
Speaker 3: Then there's a scene where Vivian and Rita are hanging
Speaker 3: out where Rita is unpacking her stuff and she pulls
Speaker 3: out a vibrator. Vivian has never seen one before, so
Speaker 3: they start kind of goofing around with it and tossing
Speaker 3: it around and dancing, and then Murray walks in and
Speaker 3: Vivian doesn't know how to turn it off. So it's
Speaker 3: another humiliating moment that her father's involved in.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of thrilling to know that that particular
Speaker 1: area of vibrator technology has made stunningly little progress in
Speaker 1: the ensuing half century since this movie is set where
Speaker 1: you're like, yes, yeah, it is still kind of difficult
Speaker 1: to just turn one off and they're loud. There's like
Speaker 1: this and like laser jet printers, Like how have we
Speaker 1: not made more progress in these areas? But the scene
Speaker 1: was so we'll talk about it, but it was. The
Speaker 1: scene is such a puzzle to me because I find
Speaker 1: it cathartic and fun and silly in one reading of it,
Speaker 1: and then very bizarre, like it's so long, they're dancing
Speaker 1: for so long, and the joy.
Speaker 4: Is centered around a big vibrating Yes.
Speaker 1: It's so weird and that Alan arkin Is there's like
Speaker 1: I think that honestly, like one of my biggest things
Speaker 1: with this movie that I felt like, and I say
Speaker 1: this lovingly, like sometimes characters behave like cartoons and other
Speaker 1: times they don't. And this was definitely more of a
Speaker 1: Looney Tune scene where you're like Alan Arkins just standing
Speaker 1: there for like twenty seconds wordlessly.
Speaker 3: He has basically no reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that that is like a I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's more of a ViBe's scene, that.
Speaker 3: Vibes rader.
Speaker 1: Scene that ends in like a protracted Looney Tunes humiliation.
Speaker 1: It's like it's such a weird little scene.
Speaker 4: It does kind of feel like, oh my god. Not
Speaker 4: to make this comparison on like a qualitative basis, but
Speaker 4: like it does feel like when Sam Levinson does these
Speaker 4: really indulgent musical breaks, like like musical montage breaks and
Speaker 4: euphoria inter a character just like dancing. She's so confused
Speaker 4: and she's in this like wood paneled basement and there's
Speaker 4: music and it goes on for so long because he
Speaker 4: just didn't know what else to do with the time.
Speaker 1: That he had. So but this is like like, yeah, but.
Speaker 4: This kind of feels like a dead art almost of
Speaker 4: like the joyful musical break where they're like, the audience
Speaker 4: needs a bit of levity. Let's just throw this in here.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, how do you guys? How do you like that?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like there is a world where I
Speaker 1: would buy into this scene like no one's business. But
Speaker 1: it's like because at this point in the movie, and
Speaker 1: arguably kind of threw out the movie, the relationship between
Speaker 1: viv and Rita is so kind of vague and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, very intense and then over that
Speaker 1: it's like it feels like this, like this scene almost
Speaker 1: feels like a climactic like, yes, we're hanging out, we
Speaker 1: have a vibrator. This is so fun, question mark. I
Speaker 1: don't know. So there were certain sequences where I was like,
Speaker 1: where is at where is her head at? Yeah, in
Speaker 1: this moment, and it.
Speaker 4: Felt like another instance of kind of and I will
Speaker 4: talk about this, I'm sure, but teaching womanhood and like
Speaker 4: learning womanhood and rita kind of like bestowing these elements
Speaker 4: of like female sexuality onto her like newly quote unquote
Speaker 4: sexual like teenage younger cousin. And I guess I kind
Speaker 4: of read it like that, like as a triumphant like
Speaker 4: here's another thing you'll just learned, you know. But then
Speaker 4: they're being goofy with it, so it's and they're all actually,
Speaker 4: thank God using it. So you're kind of like, I
Speaker 4: don't know, Yeah, it's it's all it's a confusing scene.
Speaker 1: It's confusing. Yeah, it's just kind of there.
Speaker 3: Well, I also think that we're conditioned to expect the
Speaker 3: moment that the dad walks in and oh no, she
Speaker 3: can't turn off the vibrator, and it's humiliating that he's
Speaker 3: gonna like have an outburst where he's shaming both Vivian
Speaker 3: and maybe Rita for having such a device and shaming
Speaker 3: them for having sexuality and sexual desire and things like that.
Speaker 3: But if that reaction has had, we don't see it
Speaker 3: on screen.
Speaker 1: No, he just looks like he's buffering there.
Speaker 4: I think, like what I read at the dad throughout
Speaker 4: the movie much to discuss, Yeah, but was that. I
Speaker 4: think as the movie goes on, he kind of starts
Speaker 4: out kind of like on Viv's ass about everything, and
Speaker 4: then I think the more he kind of spirals out
Speaker 4: of control and the more he seems kind of exhausted.
Speaker 4: Midway through when I think he just gets distracted and
Speaker 4: almost stops being a father, because at the beginning you
Speaker 4: can kind of see this attempt at being like a
Speaker 4: single dad where he's like awkwardly trying to kind of
Speaker 4: like talk to his daughter but like really badly about
Speaker 4: what it means to be a woman, et cetera. But
Speaker 4: then as the movie goes on, that relationship just kind
Speaker 4: of dissipates a little bit, and it seems to me
Speaker 4: like maybe the correlation between his like struggles personal struggles
Speaker 4: and being a dad.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, maybe he also thinks that when Rita
Speaker 3: shows up, he's like, oh, well, I'm kind of off
Speaker 3: the hook of having to like definitely teach teach my
Speaker 3: daughter anything.
Speaker 1: I felt like that and this wasn't like super clear
Speaker 1: to me on my first viewing, but I'm on my
Speaker 1: second That is like one of the I think kind
Speaker 1: of very loaded, trickier through lines in this movie. Is
Speaker 1: it does seem like that, yeah, that the dad is
Speaker 1: looking for someone to offload having kids, but also very
Speaker 1: specifically having a daughter onto. He tries that with Rita,
Speaker 1: and Rita is a mess. It doesn't work. He tries
Speaker 1: that with Lucille, it's a mess. Doris, Yeah, but also
Speaker 1: come up, but also Lucille Blue, Yes, she tries. He
Speaker 1: tries that with Doris, it doesn't work. And then the
Speaker 1: end that we'll and we'll talk more about it. But
Speaker 1: at the end it seems almost like viv resigns herself
Speaker 1: in a way that's like framed pretty positively that she's
Speaker 1: just going to raise herself and that is okay, and
Speaker 1: it's an interesting way to And I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: talk about the ending of the movie because I think
Speaker 1: there's so many ways to look at it all of
Speaker 1: which I find quite depressing. But maybe you're supposed to
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can't wait to talk more about all
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 4: I must just say on this san yes.
Speaker 3: But in the meantime we power on through the recap.
Speaker 3: So the next thing that happens, speaking of Doris, Murray
Speaker 3: takes his family to dinner with her. This is a
Speaker 3: woman he met when he sold her a car. She
Speaker 3: also lives in a fancy building in Beverly Hills. It
Speaker 3: seems like he and Doris are kind of dating, but
Speaker 3: she makes it clear that she only wants a companion.
Speaker 3: She does not want to be touched. She does not
Speaker 3: want to have sex anything like that, and that's something
Speaker 3: that Murray is struggling with. They're at dinner, Vivian gets
Speaker 3: her period and has to sneak off to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: This is the scene we're talking about where Doris gives
Speaker 3: her this old timey pad and then Doris discovers blood
Speaker 3: on her chair, which she had like crosstitched the the upholstery.
Speaker 1: Oh, and she says, oh, Jeane, she goes, And the
Speaker 1: way older women are characterized in this movie we could
Speaker 1: talk about as well. But I was delighted to hear
Speaker 1: Jessica Walters scream regardless of context.
Speaker 3: She's like, there's blood up my chair. So they leave
Speaker 3: Doris's place. Then Rita reveals to Vivian that she is
Speaker 3: pregnant from a guy she met in rehab. He does
Speaker 3: not know this. She is freaking out because she's about
Speaker 3: to start her nursing program and she has to give
Speaker 3: a urine sample. But if the school tests her urine,
Speaker 3: they'll know that she's pregnant and that could jeopardize her
Speaker 3: future in this training program. So she has Vivian p
Speaker 3: in a cup for her.
Speaker 4: It's a very older cousin behavior.
Speaker 1: Yes, like this is some hijinks, some fun hijinks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so when Vivian is doing this and looking for
Speaker 3: a roll of toilet paper, she finds Rita's vibrator and
Speaker 3: uses it to masturbate. And I feel like it's implied
Speaker 3: that she is masturbating for the first time at least
Speaker 3: with a vibrator, and she loves it. She has the
Speaker 3: best time. Then there's a scene where Vivian meets a
Speaker 3: girl in her building. This is the Mina Suvari character
Speaker 3: who has just gotten a nose job, and she gives
Speaker 3: Vivian the business card of her cosmetic surgeon and mentions
Speaker 3: that the surgeon also gave her mother a breast reduction and.
Speaker 1: Stay, it's that And again this is where the movie
Speaker 1: feels both seventies and nineties and its sensibilities, and also
Speaker 1: twenty twenties, where she's basically like, big tits are out,
Speaker 1: big tits are considered trashy and out of style, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just a very depressing circle is
Speaker 1: presented in this scene.
Speaker 4: Yet for sure.
Speaker 3: And so Vivian hears about this breast reduction surgery and
Speaker 3: she's like, hmm, that is very interesting, and so that'll
Speaker 3: come back later. Then Vivian takes Rita to her first
Speaker 3: day of nursing school via Elliott giving them a ride,
Speaker 3: but first Rita wants to pay a visit to the
Speaker 3: man who got her pregnant, this guy Danny, but he's
Speaker 3: not home, and then when she finally does get a
Speaker 3: hold of him on the phone, he finds out she's
Speaker 3: pregnant and it seems like he will completely bail on
Speaker 3: her forever. Meanwhile, Elliott is teaching Vivian how to drive
Speaker 3: and they end up having sex in his car and
Speaker 3: we'll talk all about this scene. But basically, he's upset
Speaker 3: when he realizes that she has never had sex before
Speaker 3: and that he was the one to quote unquote take
Speaker 3: her virginity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is the victim here.
Speaker 3: Yes, the sure acts like it. Then they go to
Speaker 3: pick up Rita, but she's not at the school, so
Speaker 3: they rush home and find her unconscious and unresponsive, and
Speaker 3: chaos ensues. When Murray is shouting and insisting that she
Speaker 3: just needs a cup of coffee. Doris is freaking out.
Speaker 3: Ricky has called the paramedics and they come bursting in
Speaker 3: the room. Mickey calls Murray on the phone, saying that
Speaker 3: he will be flying to La the following day.
Speaker 1: This scene is tonally nuts. This scene is so like
Speaker 1: every possible emotional interpretation of this scene is presented. David
Speaker 1: Crumbholds gets into guys and dolls in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: Like it's just like every tone is happening in this scene.
Speaker 4: True. Yeah, it's only like the havoc of this like
Speaker 4: claustrophobic family life. Yeah, you're like you're really like, oh
Speaker 4: you're done. Yeah, it's nuts, You're done with these folks.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, truly it's wild.
Speaker 3: And then the medics revive Rita, and a little later,
Speaker 3: as she's recovering, she and Murray are kind of consoling
Speaker 3: each other and he gropes her chest, which Vivian, sorry,
Speaker 3: there's a loud machine happening now right outside my window
Speaker 3: the way, and.
Speaker 1: Looked was that someone was like, don't say gropes chests,
Speaker 1: yelling at you off camera like you were.
Speaker 4: Kind of shy.
Speaker 3: Okay, So he assaults her, which Vivian sees through a
Speaker 3: crack in the door, and of course we will talk
Speaker 3: about this as well. We cut to Vivian at the
Speaker 3: cosmetic surgeon, who the girl in her building had recommended.
Speaker 3: Vivian resents her breasts and wants to get breast reduction surgery,
Speaker 3: but then she chickens out and runs out of the
Speaker 3: doctor's office. Meanwhile, Mickey has arrived. He's played by Carl Reiner.
Speaker 3: He and his wife, who I just learned at the
Speaker 3: top of this episode is played by Rita Moreno are
Speaker 3: at a diner with the rest of the family, and
Speaker 3: Rita is about to make this big entrance to surprise
Speaker 3: her dad in her nurse's uniform.
Speaker 4: I think they're actually still at the airport. Oh, because
Speaker 4: I think they're like, they're like musch meet up at
Speaker 4: the airport. We're not gonna. I don't wanna. I have
Speaker 4: nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: This family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're like airplanes in the background. I think the windows.
Speaker 4: I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: No, I think you're right. They don't go to a
Speaker 1: second location because they Yeah, when this scene ends, as
Speaker 1: we're about to fight out, they are leaving, like on
Speaker 1: the tarmac.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yes, okay. So so Rita is about to
Speaker 3: make this big entrance in her uniform, but she's in
Speaker 3: the bathroom freaking out. Vivian comes in and confronts Rita
Speaker 3: about what happened the night before between her and Vivian's dad,
Speaker 3: and Vivian is furious at Rita again. We'll talk about
Speaker 3: how her anger is misplaced, but they eventually reconcile and
Speaker 3: they go back out to the table. It's a tense
Speaker 3: meal at the airport diner, and then Murray offers to pay.
Speaker 3: He wants to look good in front of his kids,
Speaker 3: but Mickey is like, what difference does it make. It's
Speaker 3: my money. You never learned how to handle your finances
Speaker 3: or budget or anything like that. I've been paying for you,
Speaker 3: for your whole life, and you're sixty five, so grow up.
Speaker 3: And Murray is humiliated, so Vivian stabs her uncle Micky
Speaker 3: in the thigh with a fork, a callback to the
Speaker 3: story that Murray told earlier. So Mickey is like, fuck this,
Speaker 3: and he and his wife and Rita leave and head
Speaker 3: back to the East Coast. Mickey cuts off Murray financially,
Speaker 3: So now Murray and Vivian and her brothers have to
Speaker 3: move out of that expensive building and back into the
Speaker 3: slums of Beverly Hills. But this time Vivian feels less
Speaker 3: humiliation and a greater appreciation and fondness for her family
Speaker 3: and their situation.
Speaker 4: The end. I loved the incorporation of the title Wow,
Speaker 4: thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Approach a press.
Speaker 3: So let's take another quick break and we'll come back
Speaker 3: for the discussion and we're back.
Speaker 1: Where to start here, my let's stuck out to you.
Speaker 1: Where would you like to start? Guests? Privileged, guest burden.
Speaker 4: Well, I broke my thoughts up into themes, so I
Speaker 4: guess I'll just begin with the first thing theme that
Speaker 4: really sticks out, but kind of the concept of sexual agency. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so this movie really reminds me of another movie that's
Speaker 4: set in the seventies, another movie directed by a woman.
Speaker 4: Do you guys know Diary of a Teenage Girl?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I know of it.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it.
Speaker 4: Oh, that would be a good to talk about it
Speaker 4: on sectual cast. Actually, so yeah. It's this twenty fifteen
Speaker 4: movie by maryel Heller, and it basically is depicting I
Speaker 4: find it's similar because it's depicting kind of like a
Speaker 4: sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies and the way
Speaker 4: that that kind of tipped over into like sexual exploitation
Speaker 4: of women very much paralleling like the time that it
Speaker 4: came out, and in twenty fifteen it was like the
Speaker 4: SlutWalk era and stuff going on.
Speaker 3: Then.
Speaker 4: I feel like both of these movies are capturing this
Speaker 4: kind of like post sexual revolution eras that were like
Speaker 4: hyper sexual and like sexually permissive but like sometimes at
Speaker 4: the expense of women. And Diary of a Teenage Girls
Speaker 4: about like a fifteen year old girl similarly who has
Speaker 4: a statutory affair with her mother's boyfriend and it also
Speaker 4: leaves you very uneasy, but it's more of a drama
Speaker 4: and this is more of a comedy. But I think
Speaker 4: the major scene like I was pulling out was just
Speaker 4: like the idea of a teenage girl grappling with her
Speaker 4: own sexual agency and like the constant push and pull
Speaker 4: of navigating, like how much agency you actually have in
Speaker 4: a world that sees you as prey. Yeah, I was
Speaker 4: thinking a lot about how Viv doesn't have any like
Speaker 4: positive role models. She kind of has to learn things
Speaker 4: on her own. But yeah, I don't know. The movie
Speaker 4: had me thinking a lot about the ways that, like
Speaker 4: I have never been more sexualized in my life than
Speaker 4: when I was age fourteen to eighteen, Like I get
Speaker 4: cat called way less as an adult woman than I
Speaker 4: did as a teenager, and the ways that kind of
Speaker 4: like I related so much of this movie with the
Speaker 4: way that like a girl's like pubescent body is kind
Speaker 4: of made public when she enters womanhood, Like your body
Speaker 4: becomes grounds for like anyone to comment on. I remember
Speaker 4: I had female relatives who would just grab my boobs
Speaker 4: like yeah and be like oh, like oh they're coming in,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, And it wasn't like malicious, but it's
Speaker 4: like why why is my body all of a sudden
Speaker 4: this like springboard for discourse when like I'm so uncomfortable
Speaker 4: in it, and I don't know what to make of it.
Speaker 4: I don't have sexual feelings yet, but like I have
Speaker 4: a sexual body now, and I think that the movie
Speaker 4: really tackles that's subject matter in an interesting way. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that was a major reason why I liked it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but obviously it's like a really difficult topic and like
Speaker 4: very touchy. Yeah, but yeah, I was thinking I wrote
Speaker 4: down breasts as a sight of tension.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, in so many I totally agree where
Speaker 1: I feel like one of the things that this movie
Speaker 1: really does successfully get you too is to understand why
Speaker 1: by the end of this movie, Vivian is like, I
Speaker 1: don't want these breasts. I don't want them because they
Speaker 1: have not only caused her severe discomfort and scrutiny very
Speaker 1: suddenly in a way that because of how her life
Speaker 1: is structured and her family structure, she has no real
Speaker 1: protector from and no one to even contextualize why it's happening.
Speaker 1: She also like the inciting reason that she actually goes
Speaker 1: is because she sees her cousin I think, in her
Speaker 1: fourteen year old mind, like sees her cousin suffer as
Speaker 1: a result of having like boobs whatever it's I hate
Speaker 1: that we have not settled on a word that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel weird. But yeah, I totally feel like I think that,
Speaker 1: like everyone has their version of this too, where I
Speaker 1: think about because this is like, this is a movie
Speaker 1: that sort of set at the time of my mom's adolescence.
Speaker 1: The director is my mom's age, and the stories that
Speaker 1: you know over not until I was an adult was
Speaker 1: I sort of aware of, like how the way that
Speaker 1: my mom perceived herself and the way that people perceived
Speaker 1: her body when she was coming of age like informed
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues I had, right, but just
Speaker 1: how this is like very intentionally a period piece because
Speaker 1: it's drawing directly from Tamorrow Jenkson's experience, and I think
Speaker 1: does seem to do very well with drawing how people
Speaker 1: would talk about girls' bodies specifically at this time, but
Speaker 1: also in a way that feels so familiar where.
Speaker 3: Not much has changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like Maya, I love that you said, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: your body is like used as a conversation topic and
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to say anything about it. And I
Speaker 1: feel like for her dad, it almost seems like he
Speaker 1: thinks he's being supportive by even acknowledging her body, and
Speaker 1: by criticizing her body, that's how he feels he's able
Speaker 1: to like participate in her life in this way that
Speaker 1: is like so dark and sad, and you can see
Speaker 1: exactly how I mean. That scene at the sizzler at
Speaker 1: the beginning was so frustrating, probably because it felt just
Speaker 1: familiar enough where you could see not just her dad criticizing,
Speaker 1: like you can't wear that top. I vividly remember being
Speaker 1: told by any number of family members to put a
Speaker 1: bra on in a top that made it one hundred
Speaker 1: percent more embarrassing to be where that was so specific
Speaker 1: and so good. But then but then to see her
Speaker 1: brother mimic that behavior for the dad's approval. I think
Speaker 1: that like really hit for like it, because that's the
Speaker 1: whole David Crumhold's character. And I remember that from like
Speaker 1: my older boy cousins, like seeing what how other men
Speaker 1: would act and then projecting that same you know stuff
Speaker 1: at me and my cousins or whoever else, and then
Speaker 1: looking to their father for approval. Like I think she
Speaker 1: like illustrates that cycle really well and doesn't really present
Speaker 1: a solution for it, because yeah, we haven't figured that out.
Speaker 4: I think like what I do appreciate so much about
Speaker 4: the Like I it's tricky the way the movie depicts it,
Speaker 4: and like doesn't always necessarily work. But I do think
Speaker 4: what I appreciate is, like it really evokes a feeling
Speaker 4: of disgust, yeah, that you don't know what to do
Speaker 4: with because there's nothing that can be done in the scene,
Speaker 4: Like no one's advocating for her because it's like the
Speaker 4: time and the place right, and so you're kind of like, oh,
Speaker 4: like you just feel foul watching a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And I think like doesn't let other women
Speaker 1: off the like I think whatever the kind of most
Speaker 1: sanitized version of this story offers, Oh, she just needs
Speaker 1: a woman in her life, and like if if she
Speaker 1: talks to a woman, this will be resolved. But I
Speaker 1: think that this movie does is like open to women
Speaker 1: being also fucked up and having a lot of like
Speaker 1: internalized hatred of an acceptance of behaviors, which is so
Speaker 1: much I think, and like Rita's more lucid, less carteit
Speaker 1: because there are moments with Rita where I'm like, I
Speaker 1: have no idea what the hell she's doing, but in
Speaker 1: her more like grounded moments, it's like, yeah, like Rita
Speaker 1: is has a lot of internalized acceptance of how she's,
Speaker 1: how she's been treated, and how she is, how she's
Speaker 1: accepting of being treated in a way that isn't going
Speaker 1: to be helpful to viv in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like it's it's frustrating for the character, but
Speaker 1: also feels very real, like there is no real off ramp,
Speaker 1: even when people are trying. I think women try to
Speaker 1: show up for viv but like, no one is quite
Speaker 1: able to do it right.
Speaker 3: Vivian having this new presence in her life of this
Speaker 3: guardian esque, not quite mother figure, but like, you know,
Speaker 3: a familiar person who she grew up with and who
Speaker 3: is older and wiser than her, but is, as we're saying,
Speaker 3: harboring a lot of you know, internalized misogyny and like
Speaker 3: body image issues. There's all these There are several moments
Speaker 3: where Rita talks about how fat she thinks she is
Speaker 3: and how she needs to lose weight, and that's a
Speaker 3: whole other topic of conversation. But you know, she is
Speaker 3: not fully equipped to be a parent or like a
Speaker 3: role model.
Speaker 1: She's Vivian like asking to be a parrot.
Speaker 3: Either, no you know, and then we see Vivian constantly
Speaker 3: reconciling I have these again, breasts. It's such a It's
Speaker 3: the same way that I hate the word penis because
Speaker 3: it just feels so clinical. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: the correct term.
Speaker 1: I like the way that Natasha Leone says it. It
Speaker 1: sounds casual when she says it.
Speaker 3: It's that raspy voice. Can even do an impression well
Speaker 3: I'm getting over right now.
Speaker 4: You can do it.
Speaker 1: Someone smoke a cigarette and then try it.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna sound like gollum if I do it
Speaker 3: like breasts. But anyway, so Vivian is reconciling all these
Speaker 3: conflicting feelings about, you know, I'm developing into this adolescent body.
Speaker 3: I have breasts now. She resents that because she's seen
Speaker 3: the way that women are so heavily objectified for their
Speaker 3: physiques and for their breasts. So she resents that, but
Speaker 3: it seems like she's also trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: to navigate that, in the sense that, like, my breasts
Speaker 3: aren't going to go away, So what can I do
Speaker 3: about this? How can I reclaim some agency? To your point,
Speaker 3: Maya about like can I sort of like take my
Speaker 3: power back? And take control of the situation, which we
Speaker 3: see in that scene in the laundry room when she
Speaker 3: asks Elliott if he wants to touch her breasts and
Speaker 3: he says yes, and then he starts to unbuckle his pants.
Speaker 3: She was very clear about do you want to touch
Speaker 3: my rests? He interprets that, however, as do you want
Speaker 3: to fuck me right now in the laundry room, and
Speaker 3: she has to say, like, no, I was clear about
Speaker 3: what I wanted, and he completely misinterprets it in the
Speaker 3: way that so many men willfully do in situations like this.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to like launch the conversation forward
Speaker 1: too much, but that was one of the many scenes
Speaker 1: where I guess I'm trying to figure out how I
Speaker 1: feel about how this specific issue is landed within this movie.
Speaker 1: I think the theme is definitely present of like and
Speaker 1: this is like sort of what we've all been talking
Speaker 1: about to some extent, of girls like developing bodies and
Speaker 1: how that affects how men, how everyone, but how specifically
Speaker 1: men treat them and talk to them, and how objectively
Speaker 1: to be. In this scene, it is obviously on Kevin
Speaker 1: kringan character to say no when a child offers themselves sexually.
Speaker 1: We know that Vivian is canonically fourteen years old, and
Speaker 1: he knows that too, and he's aware of this. That
Speaker 1: is one of the first things he learns about her,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh wow, you look older, which is
Speaker 1: so important, and how he treats her the whole time.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting at a number of points
Speaker 1: in this movie is that we do cannot It's not
Speaker 1: a question of like, do the characters know what they
Speaker 1: need to know? They always know what they need to know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I feel like plot wise, they get off
Speaker 1: the hook a little bit. Where do I believe that
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six that the Kevin Corgan character would
Speaker 1: absolutely get away with this and no one would think
Speaker 1: anything about it. Yes, but I guess I was like
Speaker 1: kind of bumped and like hah a number of times
Speaker 1: that like, why is the movie not? The movie doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be pushing back on it as much as
Speaker 1: I was, I guess wanting it too. I agree, because
Speaker 1: we know at every single step of the way that
Speaker 1: he knows. But at the end, I don't think that
Speaker 1: we're meant to dislike him. I don't know, well, and.
Speaker 4: I think this is the ultimate kind of like distinction
Speaker 4: to me between like when let's say, Diary of a
Speaker 4: Teenage Girl was made in this because Diary of a
Speaker 4: Teenage Girl is like very much a drama, Like there
Speaker 4: are funny elements, but it's like quite tragic and like
Speaker 4: extremely disturbing as lighthearted as it sometimes maybe, whereas this movie,
Speaker 4: like tonally yeah, really contrasts with some of its subject
Speaker 4: matter and really does make you think about what Tamara
Speaker 4: Jenkins thinks of the subject matter because you can see
Speaker 4: what she's trying to do. But even and like I
Speaker 4: don't know if this was gonna come up later, but
Speaker 4: like thinking of the concept of the male gaze, Like
Speaker 4: I've seen a lot of people online talk about how
Speaker 4: this movie is like can perpetuates the male gaze. I
Speaker 4: don't necessarily know if it does, but I do think
Speaker 4: there are elements of it. Like one of my like
Speaker 4: the ways that I diagnose a male gaze in a
Speaker 4: movie is like when the camera like severs ahead of
Speaker 4: the woman and like isolates different body.
Speaker 3: Parts headless women of Hollywood vibe.
Speaker 4: Headless women of Hollywood, Yeah, isolates the woman from her
Speaker 4: personhood and like will isolate the body parts. And this
Speaker 4: movie does do that obviously, but with the scenes it's because.
Speaker 1: Of body doubles too.
Speaker 4: For body doubles, but then inadvertently kind of severs the
Speaker 4: character from the personhood as well. And you're like, hmm,
Speaker 4: And that's why I think it's so complicated, because there's
Speaker 4: so many kind of like angles you could look at
Speaker 4: it from, but I could. I definitely think it lets
Speaker 4: the male characters off the hook via tone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like in a way that the seventies would.
Speaker 1: But I don't understand why the director does. And I
Speaker 1: was looking for this and I wasn't able to find it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get it for the twenty or the thirty year,
Speaker 1: god the thirty year anniversary of this movie, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to find a lot of Tamara Jenkins speaking
Speaker 1: on this theme specifically, because I would be really curious
Speaker 1: again because I'm projecting my mom onto her to some degree,
Speaker 1: as like they were born the same year, and I
Speaker 1: know that my mom's feelings on what she viewed as like, well,
Speaker 1: that was the world then, blah blah blah in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight versus now is wildly different because she watched
Speaker 1: me grow up and experience a lot of those same things,
Speaker 1: and so I would I would just be really curious
Speaker 1: if her perspective on this has shifted over time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it has, but I would. I just am like,
Speaker 1: I want more info on how she thinks about it now,
Speaker 1: because she was in her thirties when this came out.
Speaker 1: But like the sexual politics of the nineties, like like
Speaker 1: you we're saying, Maya, are also really fraught and in
Speaker 1: terms of like what women and young women are expected
Speaker 1: to accept and internalize.
Speaker 4: Well, it was like the height of like the Nymph
Speaker 4: you know movie, Oh yeah, Stone like that was that
Speaker 4: was that like reaching all time peakle like you talk
Speaker 4: about in Lalite.
Speaker 3: I was like, where did I learn that?
Speaker 4: I learned it from your podcasts, you see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the year. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: the year after the the Jeremy Irons Lolita adaptation. Like
Speaker 1: the nineties is the verse full of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: very rarely from women, which is why I think I
Speaker 1: went into this expecting a little more pushback and not
Speaker 1: quite finding it. And that's not even a criticism of
Speaker 1: Tamura Jenkins necessarily. It's just like, I just I just
Speaker 1: want more info.
Speaker 3: It is it is emblematic of the attitude of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I also think that the movie thinks that that
Speaker 3: relationship between Vivian and Elliott is quote unquote okay, because
Speaker 3: it is mostly Vivian behind the steering wheel, determining what's happening,
Speaker 3: initiating sexual contact, et cetera. Make no mistake, the scene
Speaker 3: where they have sex in the car is statue tory rape.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like also starts that way too, Like the
Speaker 1: scene is initiated by him shoving weed into her pants,
Speaker 1: Like it starts as an adult, you know, like assaulting
Speaker 1: a kid, and then evolves into statutory rape off screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this gets into like Lolita stuff quite a bit, where
Speaker 1: it's literally fourteen year old girls regardless of like if
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old initiates or attempts to initiate sex
Speaker 1: with an adult, the adult says no, like it's just
Speaker 1: it's just not And I do think that the this
Speaker 1: is not a murky age difference between the two of us.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about a fourteen year old and a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old or like, you know some of the
Speaker 1: trickier conversations here where it's like, how do we interpret
Speaker 1: the letter of the law. This guy is like potentially
Speaker 1: ten years older than her, you know, and Natasha Leone
Speaker 1: and Kevin Corgan are for contacts ten years apart in age.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly how old he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: in the movie, but it's old enough that like it
Speaker 1: is absolutely on him to say no. And it's just
Speaker 1: so I don't know, I really struggle with it.
Speaker 4: What I've like and I keep bringing up Diary of
Speaker 4: a teenage Girl, but there's just so many parallels. But
Speaker 4: like what that movie does is like similar to viv
Speaker 4: Like that the main character learns sexuality from the older
Speaker 4: women in her life who have experienced this kind of
Speaker 4: sexual revolution, like who are hyper sexual maybe kind of
Speaker 4: embodied some of the misogyny of the time or like
Speaker 4: absorbed it. And it's like the younger, this like teenage
Speaker 4: girl not fully understanding what's going on and like trying
Speaker 4: to seize control of her own sexuality because she's like,
Speaker 4: well everyone else is liberated, like I can be too.
Speaker 4: But in that movie, like it's very much condemning the
Speaker 4: mother's boyfriend for like allowing this, even though she initiates
Speaker 4: almost all of it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: He like allows her to do so, but in slums
Speaker 4: of Beverly Hills. Yeah, you can look at it and
Speaker 4: be like, oh wow, that's really progressive thinking about like
Speaker 4: the way that it's kind of like taking this lens
Speaker 4: of viv learning from Rita this type of like hypersexuality,
Speaker 4: and then being like, Okay, I'm going to also be
Speaker 4: like this. But then yeah, when when it kind of
Speaker 4: turns it around and you're supposed to kind of empathize
Speaker 4: with the guy because she didn't tell them she's a virgin,
Speaker 4: it's like, ooh, I don't Yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 4: he was going for there.
Speaker 1: The seventies was so close, really truly like and it
Speaker 1: feels like a weird time capsule of like thinking from
Speaker 1: the nineties of like women of the nineties reflecting on
Speaker 1: coming of an age and the seventies. And this is
Speaker 1: also insanely specific, but it's also like, but that's our moms,
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, Yeah, it really stuck with
Speaker 1: me where I'm sure that like women in their thirties
Speaker 1: right now are doing the same kind of rationalization in
Speaker 1: all of these How there's so many movies happening in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands right now, right where it's like
Speaker 1: everyone is meditating on their childhood, everyone's meditating on their
Speaker 1: coming of age and trying to make art that rationalizes it.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, I think, I don't think
Speaker 1: that this exact story would have come out of sis man,
Speaker 1: Like it just wouldn't have. And it's so specific and
Speaker 1: it almost just to me feels like her processing and
Speaker 1: it again, it just reminds me of how I've heard
Speaker 1: my mom talk of how I've talked in the past
Speaker 1: about my own formative sexual experiences, where I give myself
Speaker 1: more agency than I actually had at the time to
Speaker 1: be okay with whatever it was, to feel like I
Speaker 1: was maybe more in control than I was. Because there
Speaker 1: are moments to me and I know that like everyone
Speaker 1: is different, everyone has a different background, but there are
Speaker 1: moments where I feel like the way that Viv is
Speaker 1: setting boundaries very firmly and clearly felt to me a
Speaker 1: little out of step with how fourteen year olds behave.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think fourteen year olds say I'm
Speaker 1: not looking for anything serious right now, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 4: Like, right, I think there is it's like an element
Speaker 4: to it where she's almost like grown up, grown up
Speaker 4: too quickly because of this like nomadic environment where she
Speaker 4: kind of has to be like the wife and the
Speaker 4: daughter because her dad is such a manchild and like
Speaker 4: a mess. And I think there is that element of it,
Speaker 4: but no, definitely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I remember several instances from my teen years
Speaker 3: and like formative sexual experiences and feelings and things like
Speaker 3: that where technically I was consenting, but I was only
Speaker 3: doing that because I felt some coercion, whether it was
Speaker 3: like directly from someone else or just like peer pressure
Speaker 3: for societal pressure. So I feel like that's a lot
Speaker 3: of what Vivian is experiencing, and where it lands in
Speaker 3: the story, I guess this isn't even where it lands,
Speaker 3: because she sees Elliott again after this as she's like
Speaker 3: moving out of that building. But the scene in the
Speaker 3: car and that ends with him be rating her and saying,
Speaker 3: you didn't know I'm the victim here. You didn't even
Speaker 3: think about me. Yeah, has put so much pressure on
Speaker 3: is He's saying.
Speaker 1: Like you tricked me into assaulting adizing a minor quote
Speaker 1: unquote right, yeah, which.
Speaker 4: Is fourteen year old's a virgin.
Speaker 1: Right. He's like, he's so full of shit, And I
Speaker 1: do feel like the movie knows he's full of shit,
Speaker 1: but then the tuba music hits, and I like him
Speaker 1: dissociate because that scene was about to be so like
Speaker 1: it feels like there are some scenes that ends like
Speaker 1: five lines of dialogue to soon before I wanted them to, yeah,
Speaker 1: where that scene ends. Really, I was like, my god,
Speaker 1: like I'm.
Speaker 4: A complicit tuba.
Speaker 1: It's the complicit accordion player being like and let's keep
Speaker 1: it moving, like it felt like truly the studio does
Speaker 1: accordion coming in at certain moments before I could get
Speaker 1: the resolution I wanted, because I do think and like
Speaker 1: this is I'm fully guessing here, but that if the
Speaker 1: line of dialogue was written down, it feels like it
Speaker 1: is written that he's supposed to look like a fool
Speaker 1: in that moment. But then the music in the movie
Speaker 1: and the remainder of the movie seems to be fighting
Speaker 1: with that well.
Speaker 4: And he's such a loser, like with his like Mansion
Speaker 4: Manson shirts, and I thought it was so relatable the
Speaker 4: way he just talks at her about Charles Manson and
Speaker 4: his music, and like, you know, it's so the movie
Speaker 4: is like satirizing him. He is such a like kind
Speaker 4: of guy, but I love what you said about Tamar
Speaker 4: Jenkin's processing through writing this, Like, I don't know if
Speaker 4: any of these experiences within this movie are like exactly hers.
Speaker 4: I know that she mostly just talked about like the
Speaker 4: experience of being nomadic, growing up in Beverly Hills with
Speaker 4: like a lower middle class family.
Speaker 1: And having an old dad too, because that's what having
Speaker 1: an old savage, that's what Savage is about. It's about
Speaker 1: having a really old dad.
Speaker 4: Having an old dad, I said, really, but yeah, she
Speaker 4: hasn't talked a lot about whether or not these sexual
Speaker 4: experiences are her own. But I would love to see
Speaker 4: like a spiritual follow up to it, because I'm all
Speaker 4: for a movie just kind of representing the culture of
Speaker 4: its time. But yeah, but yeah, I would also be
Speaker 4: curious to know what she would say about all of
Speaker 4: this years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and then the other big scene to talk about,
Speaker 3: or at least one of the other big scenes to
Speaker 3: talk about, is the scene where Marie assaults his niece
Speaker 3: and how that's written and what pans out in that
Speaker 3: scene where you know they're having this tender moment of
Speaker 3: consoling each other. She's coming around after having overdosed and
Speaker 3: having to be revived by paramedics. You know, this has
Speaker 3: been a traumatic day for her already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of tonal dissonance for us the viewer. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole character of Rita. I felt like we were
Speaker 1: said between like a lot of comedic beats and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden abject tragedy. And then in the
Speaker 1: next scene she's back to being cookie. Yeah, which is like,
Speaker 1: I see how that it didn't quite work for me.
Speaker 1: I think I understood what she was going for, but
Speaker 1: it just like it felt a little weird to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is this is definitely one of the abject
Speaker 1: tragedy scenes for sure.
Speaker 4: My reparative reading of this scene, like, yeah, I didn't
Speaker 4: even know how to feel about it. The first time
Speaker 4: I watched it, I felt complicated and I was I
Speaker 4: was really intrigued that it was depicted. I do feel
Speaker 4: undecided about the way that the scene happens. And then
Speaker 4: it kind of follows up, like the next time we
Speaker 4: see the dad, he's kind of framed within this empathetic
Speaker 4: lens of like, you know, a father who's like struggling
Speaker 4: with emasculation as he like struggles with class and like
Speaker 4: the kind of correlation between those things, which you know,
Speaker 4: like I grew up with dad who struggled on occasion financially,
Speaker 4: and it was it was hard to watch. And so
Speaker 4: I really really like liked that scene the dinner where
Speaker 4: the dad's trying to pay. I think it's like a
Speaker 4: really interesting depiction of fatherhood. But yeah, I guess am
Speaker 4: I repairtive reading of this scene would just be like
Speaker 4: what do we do with the people we love when
Speaker 4: they do bad things? And I think when she confronts
Speaker 4: Rita in the bathroom, you're kind of like I could
Speaker 4: read it like as probably what it was, which is
Speaker 4: the nineties kind of condemning women for quote unquote seducing
Speaker 4: men or like driving men mix. Yeah, but I also
Speaker 4: read it as like Viv trying to kind of reconcile
Speaker 4: or deal with this like new image of her father
Speaker 4: that she's just not ready to she's not ready to
Speaker 4: kind of accept, and taking it out on Rita, taking
Speaker 4: it out on her cousin. And I do think that
Speaker 4: the movie really puts us in that position of like
Speaker 4: what do we do with this man who like we
Speaker 4: have kind of come to like as the movie goes on,
Speaker 4: like he's funny whatever he's he can be a tender father.
Speaker 3: Elan Arkin is so likable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Alan Arkan has mad riz so like, yeah, what
Speaker 4: do we do with this character and the movie? I
Speaker 4: think in the emasculation scene is kind of letting him
Speaker 4: off the hook, which I feel complicated about. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a tough one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for me because I know that that
Speaker 1: scene specifically is where just having gathered some rough, letterboxed
Speaker 1: data and going through just how this movie has been
Speaker 1: talked about over the years, this is the scene where
Speaker 1: the movie loses a lot of people, I have complicated
Speaker 1: feelings about it. Similarly, I have a bigger issue with
Speaker 1: how the movie ends than that plot point being introduced.
Speaker 1: I think I think that what's important to me is
Speaker 1: how the movie deals with the fallout of that. And
Speaker 1: I thought that felt more. The ending felt so neat,
Speaker 1: and it felt like in a way that was presented
Speaker 1: too cleanly. Of like, and now this girl who is
Speaker 1: still fourteen years old and more fucked up than when
Speaker 1: she started, and her father has not changed at all.
Speaker 1: He's doing exactly what he did at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie. She has now accepted that this is how
Speaker 1: the world is and now she understands that and she
Speaker 1: is taking on the role of being the daughter and
Speaker 1: the mother of this family. And I mean, we're kind
Speaker 1: of told this in I think, pretty like straightforwardly in
Speaker 1: the closing like voiceover, that's all, it's all good, baby,
Speaker 1: it's life's about the journey, and you're just like that
Speaker 1: was not my takeaway for the last half hour of
Speaker 1: the movie. I think we're presented with a lot of
Speaker 1: really complicated things. And now I don't know how I
Speaker 1: would have felt half a decade ago watching it. Now,
Speaker 1: I think that, like you're saying, by you, it's not
Speaker 1: as if it is an option for Viv to abandon
Speaker 1: her family. Where the hell is she gonna go? Right?
Speaker 1: And I think in this time and the time the
Speaker 1: movie is made, I wasn't like offended or shocked that
Speaker 1: Viv considered her cousin Rita to be equally culpable, and
Speaker 1: that Rita it seems like everything about how Rita's life
Speaker 1: has gone has led her to consider herself culpable as well.
Speaker 1: And like the fact that she apologizes to Viv like
Speaker 1: broke my heart in a way that I think that
Speaker 1: I don't know and maybe I'm like overthinking it. But
Speaker 1: I felt like the movie understood that it wasn't Rita's fault.
Speaker 1: But the way that that scene plays out from there
Speaker 1: does not reflect how I read the performance. How I
Speaker 1: read this scene like, to me was like Rita's saying
Speaker 1: something pretty complicated there, like that line that she says, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes a person gets so hungry, and she's saying this
Speaker 1: in another in like Minionise, but she's speaking as she
Speaker 1: says this, but she says, sometimes a person gets so
Speaker 1: hungry he might do something not so proud of. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry you had to see it. I love you? Do
Speaker 1: you still love me? It's like it makes me so sad.
Speaker 4: And I thought it was kind of a sad like,
Speaker 4: kind of tragic encapsulation of Rita's character as someone who's
Speaker 4: absorbed kind of the comments around her, Like she is
Speaker 4: almost I don't want to say cautionary tale because I
Speaker 4: don't I like Rita, but she is almost like a
Speaker 4: bit of like what Viv could be like in her
Speaker 4: future if she kind of like believed the stuff men
Speaker 4: were saying to her, almost, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And I feel like that line almost feels like a
Speaker 4: tragic I don't know a tragic example of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the scene is it's so hard because
Speaker 1: I feel like it approaches saying something and then like
Speaker 1: kind of doesn't end up sticking the landing, because it's
Speaker 1: like even in that dialogue, Rita is not saying this
Speaker 1: is my fault. I think she is more saying, like,
Speaker 1: this is how things are. I'm sorry that you had
Speaker 1: to see how I believe in how I accept that
Speaker 1: things are in a way that is like opening her
Speaker 1: up to this abuse. We know that very likely her
Speaker 1: uncle is doing this because he feels emasculated and is
Speaker 1: taking it out by sexually abusing his own niece, and
Speaker 1: that like none of this is okay, but like this
Speaker 1: is Vivian's first time encountering this and she has to
Speaker 1: decide can I accept this? And it weirdly feels like
Speaker 1: she decides that she will accept it in a way
Speaker 1: that I think many women of her generation did, and
Speaker 1: that was I think what I really made me sad
Speaker 1: about the end of this, And I hope is like
Speaker 1: a in process either studio notes being like wrap it up,
Speaker 1: or is like Tamar Jenkins like processing this in real time,
Speaker 1: because again, like I think there's a lot of women
Speaker 1: of my mom's generation who found or like sought empowerment
Speaker 1: by accepting it and just being like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: move through the world anyways, in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that this is how I will be treated in a
Speaker 1: way that kind of like lacks you know, collectivity, and
Speaker 1: you know, but.
Speaker 3: It's just so tough, right, I mean that we see
Speaker 3: Vivian confronting Rita about being assaulted and placing the blame
Speaker 3: on Rita and not at all blaming her father for
Speaker 3: his actions. It's reflective of the pervasive attitude of the seventies,
Speaker 3: of the nineties and largely still today that if a
Speaker 3: man assaults a woman it was her fault, she was
Speaker 3: asking for it, whatever. So it's reflective of the attitude, but.
Speaker 1: It's not really commenting on it, I guess.
Speaker 3: Not commenting on it. And so when we watch this
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty six, we long for any kind of
Speaker 3: commentary on it, or for someone for Rita to be like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't like it didn't have to be
Speaker 3: this big on the nose moral lesson or anything like
Speaker 3: that necessarily, but some nuance to to that situation.
Speaker 1: But I guess I didn't even need Rita to recognize
Speaker 1: what was going on. I just, I guess wanted some
Speaker 1: indication that the movie recognized that what had happened was
Speaker 1: not either of their faults, because I think that there
Speaker 1: is something too, like one of the shades of gray
Speaker 1: in this movie that you don't usually see is that often,
Speaker 1: because women are socially conditioned to accept this kind of behavior, generationally,
Speaker 1: they're not able to show up for people that you
Speaker 1: would think they could exact or that they should, And that, like,
Speaker 1: that's so clear in Rita and Viv's dynamic is that
Speaker 1: vivi and has also just been assaulted with a very
Speaker 1: different dynamic. But we know, based on what we've seen
Speaker 1: this entire movie, that there's no one in her life
Speaker 1: who would be able to recognize that or even talk
Speaker 1: to her about it in a way that would be
Speaker 1: constructive for her or like help her whatever it is
Speaker 1: she needs to process there or around her body. There's
Speaker 1: just no one there who can help her with it.
Speaker 1: And we see that because it's like this horrific. That's
Speaker 1: why I was like, I do feel like that moment
Speaker 1: where I'm not and I totally understand for any number
Speaker 1: of reasons that that's the moment in the movie where
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to check out. I
Speaker 1: do think it had narrative importance and that we cut
Speaker 1: directly from that moment to Viv saying I don't I.
Speaker 3: Want to risk reductions anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is so clear and intentional that like and is
Speaker 1: like a very you know, like a kid's conception of like,
Speaker 1: I want to get rid of quote unquote the problem.
Speaker 1: I want to get rid of what I'm perceiving makes
Speaker 1: people treat me poorly and how they didn't treat me
Speaker 1: a year ago.
Speaker 4: I do think the breast reduction is almost the movie's
Speaker 4: attempt to kind of comment on the situation, because I
Speaker 4: was thinking about like how it could have done so,
Speaker 4: and I guess instead of Viv forgiving Rita as she
Speaker 4: does in the movie, like maybe she could oh have
Speaker 4: a moment of like, oh no, you know, I actually
Speaker 4: like understand where you're coming from, or like or have
Speaker 4: like a change of opinion kind of after Rita says
Speaker 4: that thing in Pig Latin about hunger. But I do
Speaker 4: kind of see the breast reduction as the movie commenting
Speaker 4: on the ways that yeah, like a childlike way to
Speaker 4: comment on female sexuality. I mean, like I've taken the
Speaker 4: movie to really the biggest theme I've extracted from it
Speaker 4: is this idea of like learned womanhood or like compulsorily
Speaker 4: compulsory womanhood, and like this, you know, you get to
Speaker 4: a certain age and you almost have you typically have
Speaker 4: like an older woman mentor you through being a woman,
Speaker 4: and that can mean like, oh, learning how to do
Speaker 4: makeup and like you know, stepping your way into kind
Speaker 4: of like patriarchal society. And I do think that this
Speaker 4: movie is very much about that, And I don't know
Speaker 4: what the ending is necessarily trying to say about it.
Speaker 4: I don't think that she steps out of it at all. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I do think I did feel that commentary strongly
Speaker 4: through it. And I guess like that's why I didn't
Speaker 4: check out at that moment either, because I, to me,
Speaker 4: it like really piqued my interest. I was intrigued. I
Speaker 4: also think Marisa Tomei's acting in the scene with the
Speaker 4: dad is incredible, Like the wins on her face and
Speaker 4: the amount of like complicated emotions that just like run
Speaker 4: across it in like a split second is unbelievable. But yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I feel complicated about the scene but I actually appreciated
Speaker 4: the movie for attempting to go there. I just think
Speaker 4: it could Yeah, it could have been a little more
Speaker 4: explicit for sure about its own yeah feelings about it.
Speaker 4: It's so interesting.
Speaker 3: I feel like we've talked about this on past episodes.
Speaker 3: Our episode on The Women is coming to mine. But
Speaker 3: how so many past generations of women and like mothers
Speaker 3: or mother figures or just older women teaching younger women
Speaker 3: how to navigate the world. So many of those conversations
Speaker 3: and lessons are just like, this is men, this is
Speaker 3: how men are. Here's how to do your best to
Speaker 3: navigate it. Because there's a scene in The Women where
Speaker 3: her mother's just like, well, yeah, all men cheat. Rather
Speaker 3: than like being like they shouldn't do that and we
Speaker 3: should hold them accountable, it's more just like, well that's
Speaker 3: gonna happen. Is here's how to navigate it, or like learn.
Speaker 4: How to like don't wear headphones at night, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. My mom, I remember
Speaker 4: when I was coming up that age, she started being like,
Speaker 4: don't sit with your legs open like that, because I
Speaker 4: would sit in my panting with my legs wide open.
Speaker 4: Because I was a kid and that's all I knew,
Speaker 4: and I didn't really you know, kids are in some
Speaker 4: ways genderless in a way, and she would tell me that,
Speaker 4: and she wouldn't explain why. And so for years I
Speaker 4: didn't understand why I couldn't sit with my legs open.
Speaker 4: And then even when I came of age, she'd be like,
Speaker 4: don't forget of a beer bottle, like in front of
Speaker 4: your older family members. Like it just it was just
Speaker 4: it's so many like learned gender dynamics that you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but why.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's like if you ask them, but why.
Speaker 1: I think this like kind of one of the scarier
Speaker 1: moments of growing up is realizing that probably your mom
Speaker 1: doesn't have a very coached answer. It just is. And
Speaker 1: like that's so much about this movie. Something I think
Speaker 1: this movie does really well in a way that like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I want to rewatch Diary of a
Speaker 1: Teenage Girl now and we definitely should cover it. So good,
Speaker 1: it's really good. I love Mary al Hiller, But like,
Speaker 1: I think something this movie does really well that a
Speaker 1: lot of movies about coming of age across the gender
Speaker 1: spectrum don't is like presents a lot of very scary
Speaker 1: behavior from men that you would see in your everyday life.
Speaker 1: And like again, I am gonna take the tuba music
Speaker 1: and the accordion out of the because that, to me
Speaker 1: is like this movie's biggest issue as the accordion music.
Speaker 1: But like creepy neighbor guy who is you know, like
Speaker 1: who a teenage girl might be attracted to, who will
Speaker 1: do absolutely nothing to do anything but take advantage of them.
Speaker 1: This is a person who we like probably conjure someone
Speaker 1: to mind for everybody, whether it's a father, uncle, like
Speaker 1: male relative, usually.
Speaker 4: Friend's older brother's friend of always.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I mean, like I feel like and it
Speaker 1: seems I almost want to like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know very much about Alan Arkin as
Speaker 1: a person, but I think it is really cool that
Speaker 1: he took this part on because it is like intentionally
Speaker 1: in opposition with what his public image is in a
Speaker 1: way that I think is like really smart, Like we
Speaker 1: are socially conditioned to like Alan Arkin, and then he
Speaker 1: does these horrific things and I think it really does
Speaker 1: like do a good job of putting you in the
Speaker 1: character shoes of like, oh I thought he was this
Speaker 1: person and he's not. What do I do, and I
Speaker 1: just wish that it was a little murkier at the
Speaker 1: end of like what do I do, because it felt like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that's why I love the movie, Like
Speaker 4: it is a bit of a It lets you sit
Speaker 4: with discomfort, which I find really fascinating, But then I
Speaker 4: also find it challenging because it's generically like a romp
Speaker 4: kind of it's a bit of a sex romp, and
Speaker 4: that's complicated and that is confusing as a viewer, but
Speaker 4: it's like it I think it just gets me thinking,
Speaker 4: which I appreciate about.
Speaker 1: It, which is a lot of like seventies movies too,
Speaker 1: is like sex romps that when you want that are
Speaker 1: kind of dubious when you watch them back totally. But
Speaker 1: I also feel like this is and maybe this would
Speaker 1: be overthinking, but like especially because that assault of Rita
Speaker 1: happens at the very end of the movie pretty much,
Speaker 1: very very late and already I mean I didn't know
Speaker 1: that happened, and I was very taken off guard when
Speaker 1: it does because to that point, I noted several times
Speaker 1: of like, this family has very poor physical boundaries with
Speaker 1: each other, and maybe that's me being a Republican or something.
Speaker 1: But I was like, this family is naked around each
Speaker 1: other so much, so much, I think specifically with Rita,
Speaker 1: who is like every family has a different level of
Speaker 1: naked that they are at the house. I get it,
Speaker 1: like with your siblings, with your family that everyone's it varies, right.
Speaker 1: I think that that reads a lot differently once we
Speaker 1: know the kind of guy the father is at the end.
Speaker 1: But what bumped me more than anything was Rita returning
Speaker 1: to this extended family dynamic and just like that cartoony thing.
Speaker 1: I felt like it undercut a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: happens with her later in the movie where I'm just
Speaker 1: like what world are we in that? Like a thirty
Speaker 1: year old cousin is like oops, I'm naked in front
Speaker 1: of everybody all the time. Like that that confused me,
Speaker 1: Like some early Riada moments.
Speaker 4: It's the extended familiness of it that's a little like okay,
Speaker 4: uh yeah yeah. I think that's like where the farce
Speaker 4: comes in. Like she does feel like a character out
Speaker 4: of like a Monty Pipe, like I don't know something
Speaker 4: something of that era. For sure. It's interesting though maybe
Speaker 4: the movie is trying to kind of like critique that
Speaker 4: archetype when it brings it into the more realism element
Speaker 4: of it at the end, maybe not gracefully, but I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'm curious to know.
Speaker 1: I feel really curious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whether she's introduced as a farce or like a
Speaker 4: romp character and then ends up being a little more
Speaker 4: like three dimensional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, though, I like drilled myself into
Speaker 1: a hole trying to understand how Rita is characterized at
Speaker 1: the beginning versus where her character goes at the end,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, are we supposed to And I do
Speaker 1: think I was over thinking it, but I was like,
Speaker 1: are we supposed to think?
Speaker 3: Like be?
Speaker 1: Because this woman is comfortable enough around her family to
Speaker 1: be like seen that that is what makes the uncle
Speaker 1: feel entitled to her later Like I but I just
Speaker 1: like could not quite make one plus one equal to
Speaker 1: with her, like with the through line of Rita's behavior,
Speaker 1: specifically VIVI, I could track almost everyone else I could track,
Speaker 1: but Rita kind of confused me at different points.
Speaker 4: I think it's like the confused line between revolution exploitation, right,
Speaker 4: Like I think we talk a lot in my podcast
Speaker 4: about like the twenty fifteen era. I felt like when
Speaker 4: I was in high school there was like a mini
Speaker 4: sexual revolution with like that whole SlutWalk era of like yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm a slut, you know what I mean? And coming
Speaker 4: of age during that era was really complicated because I
Speaker 4: feel like that and like the kind of Indie Slea's
Speaker 4: like Terry Richardson era was this time where women were
Speaker 4: feeling sexually liberated. They were feeling like, oh, it's socially
Speaker 4: acceptable now to like have sex. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: get called a slut or be oustracized socially. But men
Speaker 4: then on the other side of things really taking advantage
Speaker 4: of that and being like, oh, well, per now is
Speaker 4: my opportunity, you know what I mean, Like, oh, you
Speaker 4: want to be a slut, Like, let's.
Speaker 1: Go, and now they can call themselves feminist while doing it.
Speaker 1: What a fun period of time that way, Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And like in Diary of a Teenage Girl
Speaker 4: once again bring it up, but like, actually, I don't
Speaker 4: want to spoil the movie, but yeah, I think that's
Speaker 4: that's a major element of it as well. Well.
Speaker 3: Just going back to how Rita is characterized and the
Speaker 3: kind of all over the place nature of that when
Speaker 3: she's first introduced and like running down the highway and
Speaker 3: flashes the truck driver who's about to run her over
Speaker 3: and where to believe would have completely plowed into her
Speaker 3: had she not flashed him. Yeah, but she flashes. She
Speaker 3: opens up her gown and flashes him. And then when
Speaker 3: he stops, she's like she's doing this, like oh, she's
Speaker 3: like making sex mone sounds as she's like running and
Speaker 3: getting into his truck, and I'm just like, what is
Speaker 3: what is going on with her?
Speaker 4: It's very like she's crazy, right.
Speaker 3: And then when she like when well, okay, why does
Speaker 3: Vivian burst into the bathroom when she thinks that it's
Speaker 3: her brother in there potentially masturbating in the shower, So
Speaker 3: she like barges in, it's not her brother, it is
Speaker 3: her cousin in the shower. But then Rita opens the
Speaker 3: door and she's just like, boobs, here they are, here
Speaker 3: are mine?
Speaker 4: She Rita does feel like some of my friends sometimes,
Speaker 4: Like maybe that's why I love her, because I'm like
Speaker 4: she is just like so some of my some people
Speaker 4: I know in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always like, I don't know, I'm overthinking because
Speaker 1: I know that we we're all like kind of projecting
Speaker 1: our experiences not to her, but I was like, this
Speaker 1: would make sense to be in maybe a college aged character.
Speaker 1: It is wild to be that she's twenty nine years
Speaker 1: old doing this, where like I think of like older
Speaker 1: cousins who like and also being that older cousin. I
Speaker 1: was not a rita. I was not really be quite
Speaker 1: hot enough to be doing what she's doing. But but
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like having a sort of like
Speaker 1: younger sibling dynamic of like, oh, I actually have this
Speaker 1: information and I and like getting to feel like you're
Speaker 1: the expert in like how to be a person, especially
Speaker 1: when you're younger, is like kind of narcotic and exciting,
Speaker 1: and even if you're often giving kind of like toxic,
Speaker 1: you know, like here's how you appease the male gaze,
Speaker 1: which is sort of what she's doing with like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have a mustache. You gotta get rid of your mustache.
Speaker 1: And I vividly remember my mom in middle school being like,
Speaker 1: we need to talk about your mustache. And it's fine,
Speaker 1: every woman in the family has one, but it's gotta go.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: I was getting bikini wax age thirteen, like because I
Speaker 4: was in dance school. Oh oh, you know, yeah, it sucked.
Speaker 3: And then and then you have the brother been you know,
Speaker 3: using an outdated term for intersex people when he finds
Speaker 3: out that has a mustache that she's bleaching, and just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the way that Ben talks about his sister's.
Speaker 1: Body is but it's so clearly learned from his dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like that is almost like because that's why I wish
Speaker 1: that there was a little more specificity with how old
Speaker 1: other characters are, because I'm assuming that Ben is an
Speaker 1: older teenager, which doesn't totally let him off the hook,
Speaker 1: but like, I think we're very much given the context
Speaker 1: for why he feels so entitled to be horrible to
Speaker 1: his sister. It's all he's seen and just like this,
Speaker 1: and I know that this was like to some extent
Speaker 1: based on Tamar Jenkins' is like being raised by a
Speaker 1: sort of single dad like this in a nomadic way
Speaker 1: that like, it's just such a horror situation to me
Speaker 1: to be raised by a man who does not really
Speaker 1: have any desire to understand you or any woman, and
Speaker 1: you're surrounded only by other young men who are going
Speaker 1: to absorb that act like she just has no ally
Speaker 1: and it's like there is a version. I think there's
Speaker 1: a version of me that like wants her and her
Speaker 1: older cousin to form a powerful bond in a way
Speaker 1: that I think if there's a version of this movie
Speaker 1: where if they bond more, it pay that, like last
Speaker 1: Beat is powerful in a different way. But also Rita
Speaker 1: is twice her age. They're not peers. It makes sense
Speaker 1: that they're not connecting. There are completely different stages of life,
Speaker 1: and so it's like viv is given sort of this
Speaker 1: like maybe tease of maybe this is someone that you
Speaker 1: can connect with, but ultimately like she can't for all
Speaker 1: these reasons.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Can I also say we haven't mentioned one character,
Speaker 4: which is the littlest brother, who I've tried to make
Speaker 4: a tally in my life now of like unprecocious children
Speaker 4: in movies because it's very few and four between. And
Speaker 4: I thought this kid did a great job. And that
Speaker 4: kid's kind of annoying in a good way, like that's
Speaker 4: little boy. Yeah, And he's just there.
Speaker 3: He's mostly just there. He has a few moments in
Speaker 3: the movie here and there where, for example, he opens
Speaker 3: the oven and there's a dead cat inside that he's.
Speaker 1: And he just holds it up like yeah, hes a chicken.
Speaker 1: He has a little he has he has some lucidity
Speaker 1: around the issue of class, which is one of the
Speaker 1: things I think this movie does really well in a
Speaker 1: very period specific way of like class is a huge
Speaker 1: thing in this movie that every character, even I think
Speaker 1: like the youngest kid bringing it up in this very
Speaker 1: like matter of fact way felt so real in a
Speaker 1: way that like, to your point, Maya could have been
Speaker 1: really precocious. Like I mean, it feels out, but like
Speaker 1: a little out Abigail, I like always think of Abigail
Speaker 1: Breslin in most of her early roles when I think
Speaker 1: of this thing, but that he he brings it up
Speaker 1: kind of matter of factly and they're all, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it presents class in this kind of cool
Speaker 1: way of like, well, yeah, what the hell do you do?
Speaker 1: And and that my head immediately is like, well, they're
Speaker 1: probably hanging out because of like proximity to family and
Speaker 1: school systems, right, And he literally states that he's like
Speaker 1: it's it's the school system, that's why. And like it
Speaker 1: I can understand from Alan Arkins point, however, misguided, and
Speaker 1: I think like he is flopping as a father and
Speaker 1: it's not totally his fault, but it is a large
Speaker 1: part his fault. And I think that murkiness is kind
Speaker 1: of portrayed really well, but that like what do you
Speaker 1: do in that situation? You want your kids to have
Speaker 1: some continuity in their life. But also he is being selfish,
Speaker 1: like it's so.
Speaker 4: And like interpolating his kids into the finances like and
Speaker 4: not not really protecting them from from anything. Right by
Speaker 4: way of yeah, class struggle, I guess.
Speaker 1: It feels like he's still kind of striving in this
Speaker 1: like very American way where I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: the kids, it's hard to know, and maybe the kids
Speaker 1: are just too young to really know, but it's like
Speaker 1: they want stability more than they want to be in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills.
Speaker 4: It seems like right totally.
Speaker 3: I read an interesting piece about how this movie is
Speaker 3: in conversation with the effects of gentrification. It's called Gentrification
Speaker 3: and the Slums of Beverly Hills, but it talks about
Speaker 3: how even though Beverly Hills is associated with extreme wealth,
Speaker 3: there has been income diversity within that neighborhood, perhaps more
Speaker 3: so in the nineteen seventies when this movie is set
Speaker 3: and present day, but there has been a range of
Speaker 3: people and families with different economic backgrounds living in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: But one of the many problems with gentrification is obviously
Speaker 3: that it tends to eliminate economic diversity within a neighborhood
Speaker 3: and prices out and displaces people. And so it kind
Speaker 3: of goes into that. We can link the piece, but.
Speaker 4: No, Yeah, one of the earliest thoughts I had when
Speaker 4: I watched it was that it reminded me of the
Speaker 4: Florida Project, just by virtue of like the intense income
Speaker 4: disparity between like these kind of pastel like motels. Obviously,
Speaker 4: this motel is a different function than the Florida Project,
Speaker 4: but like the ones in that being juxtaposed to like
Speaker 4: Disney World or Disney Disney World. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 4: this being juxtaposed to yeah, like the the upper echelons
Speaker 4: of like La and Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess it's just like economic diversity anywhere is
Speaker 1: kind of flat. And I think that, like people still
Speaker 1: talk about Los Angeles, New York about this on a
Speaker 1: whole to this day in a way that is not
Speaker 1: intentional but kind of ends up serving the interests of
Speaker 1: the very powerful. Where if you act like economic diversity
Speaker 1: does not exist. It is almost like a self fulfilling prophecy,
Speaker 1: and this family is kind of caught in that kind
Speaker 1: of net where the world kind of wants to refuse
Speaker 1: that they exist because it's not what we're told this
Speaker 1: area is supposed to be. And so they're slowly getting
Speaker 1: edged out and we don't really have a ton of
Speaker 1: con Oh. The other thing that I saw referenced, but
Speaker 1: I guess I maybe missed it in my viewings of
Speaker 1: the movie is that part of why he's struggling as
Speaker 1: a car salesman is because there is an it is
Speaker 1: like a sevent yes oil crisis.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, yeah, the oil crisis.
Speaker 1: And again the shades of gray that are introduced around
Speaker 1: class and around the dad. It's not like he is
Speaker 1: like the worst. He is a lazy asshole, like he
Speaker 1: is going to work, but he is not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, if anything, he's not like kind of willing
Speaker 1: to accept that his situation has changed in a way
Speaker 1: that's harming his family. Like he's in denial that things
Speaker 1: are changing and that he's and also that he's aging.
Speaker 1: And like all that scene with the brothers I thought
Speaker 1: was really it's the only scene I think you get
Speaker 1: with just the brothers, and I really liked it where
Speaker 1: it just made I do wish that again. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm being a Republican, but I'm like, let's put some
Speaker 1: clothes on these kids. I get it, it's the seventies.
Speaker 1: They probably didn't have air conditioning, but let's get some
Speaker 1: clothes on these children, please.
Speaker 3: They're Oh the scene where they're eating tricks.
Speaker 1: I'm like, family, come on. But anyways, I grew up
Speaker 1: at a closed family, so maybe this is just the same.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of friends who were definitely looser
Speaker 4: with the boundaries.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was like, my cousins were in a naked family.
Speaker 4: Yes they're they're naked family.
Speaker 1: Out there, they're a naked family. But it's like, but
Speaker 1: there days a creep anyways. But the scene with the
Speaker 1: brothers where the younger brother, Ricky is kind of coming
Speaker 1: to terms with the fact that he has an old dad,
Speaker 1: and that is like something that is it's an undercurrent
Speaker 1: theme in the movie that I know is like related
Speaker 1: to Tamara Jenkins's life that I just thought was so
Speaker 1: well done. I had never seen that like shown in
Speaker 1: such a specific way, and I think it's it was
Speaker 1: a really sweet moment with the Brothers where the brother
Speaker 1: where David Cromwell's has to be like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Man, that's old as shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like no, because that means my parent
Speaker 1: will die, which is like the scariest thing in the
Speaker 1: world when you're you know, eight, nine, ten. I don't
Speaker 1: know how old.
Speaker 4: I grew up with an old dad, and every day
Speaker 4: I resent him for deciding to pull me out at
Speaker 4: forty five or forty six, like come on, come on, man,
Speaker 4: you're so old. I want all the time in the
Speaker 4: world with you, sir. But you know, and now he's
Speaker 4: like a senior citizen. God love him. I hope he
Speaker 4: doesn't listen to with podcasts my dad. But it definitely
Speaker 4: there's psychological effects for sure to being a child with
Speaker 4: an old father. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never seen it done quite in that way
Speaker 1: where it like wasn't tragic and there wasn't an immediate
Speaker 1: consequence to it. It wasn't like, oh no, Alan Arkin
Speaker 1: is dead. Even though it's so hard to not compare
Speaker 1: this movie just because it is such a sun Dance movie,
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about Little Miss Sunshine when
Speaker 1: I was watching this movie because it's Alan Arkin in
Speaker 1: a movie that was like made in a lab to
Speaker 1: succeed at Sundance in a motel.
Speaker 4: He's always in the motel. He's always give and what's
Speaker 4: gonna happen?
Speaker 1: And it's maybe want to rewatch Little Miss Sunshine, which
Speaker 1: I think is a far a complicated family presented in
Speaker 1: a far more less complicated way. Like Alan Arkin couldn't
Speaker 1: be a more different character, but he is in a
Speaker 1: motel with children a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to go back to this scene where
Speaker 3: Vivian is in the cosmetic surgeon's office, and I want
Speaker 3: to talk about it because we see a shot of
Speaker 3: the character's bear breasts. Now again, the character is like
Speaker 3: fourteen or fifteen. Natasha Leone was eighteen or nineteen when
Speaker 3: this movie was being shot and when it came out
Speaker 3: and stuff. And also I'm not even sure if those
Speaker 3: are her breasts that might be a body double.
Speaker 1: They're not as far as I know from what I understood.
Speaker 1: And this like that she's wearing, I mean, they're fake.
Speaker 1: They're silicone breasts that she's wearing during the movie. Those
Speaker 1: are not her natural brass and something that I again
Speaker 1: just is a marker of both times. But I I
Speaker 1: listened to a few retrospective interviews. To my understanding, the
Speaker 1: reason that we get those headless women of Hollywood shots
Speaker 1: is because their body doubles, so like you couldn't reveal
Speaker 1: Natasha Leone's head in that shot or Marissa Tomaine's head
Speaker 1: because it's not her, but that Just reading and listening
Speaker 1: to Natasha Leone and the director talk about this, I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh my gosh, I am glad that we
Speaker 1: are living in an era where intimacy coordinators are available,
Speaker 1: because there were. Even though Natasha Leone I think was
Speaker 1: an adult when this was being shot, the way that
Speaker 1: she talked about it was like it just sounded like
Speaker 1: it might have been nice to have an intimacy coordinator
Speaker 1: as an option, just because they're talking about very like
Speaker 1: indie film running gunning shots. I think one thing that
Speaker 1: specifically stuck out to me that I heard her talk
Speaker 1: about in nineteen ninety eight and twenty thirteen that seemed
Speaker 1: to really stick with her was the vibrator scene and
Speaker 1: feeling little out of her depth with like not really
Speaker 1: I mean also probably because it is like a period
Speaker 1: appropriate prop, but like that she she wasn't really coached
Speaker 1: on what she was supposed to have been doing. She
Speaker 1: felt uncomfortable. Everyone was a little frustrated with her for
Speaker 1: like not quote unquote doing it right. But also she
Speaker 1: was like, very recently, she's still a teenager, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't I wouldn't have known what to how to execute
Speaker 1: that scene as a teenager, especially with like no guidance.
Speaker 1: And there were a few anecdotes about the making of
Speaker 1: this movie that isn't an indictment of the movie, but
Speaker 1: more just an observation about the time where it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a very young actor to put a very
Speaker 1: big scene, like a sexually charged scene on and not
Speaker 1: have anyone there to be present for them before, during,
Speaker 1: or after, and which it sounds like, I mean, in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, I'm not at all surprised to hear it.
Speaker 1: It didn't sound like Nindashelione was upset about it, but
Speaker 1: it clearly stuck with her because it came up in
Speaker 1: almost every interview about this movie that she did across
Speaker 1: twenty years.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's that, And then going back to that
Speaker 3: scene in the plastic surgeon's office, we see this character's
Speaker 3: bear breasts and even though the body double was of age,
Speaker 3: the character is fourteen or fifteen, and we should not
Speaker 3: be normalizing seeing nudity of a character that is a
Speaker 3: minor on screen. I've said it before, I'll say it again.
Speaker 3: That shot did not need to be there. You can
Speaker 3: imply it's already implied what the surgeon is doing. We
Speaker 3: don't need to we don't need to see actual nudity
Speaker 3: of a child.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of that entirey of a teenage girl. Oh,
Speaker 4: which is fascinating because it came out almost twenty years later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So just wanted to point that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know what there were a few, especially
Speaker 1: like I know that it is like capital tees the
Speaker 1: theme that we're talking about breasts, and there's certain I agree, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would not have included that shot
Speaker 1: if I were tomorrow Jenkins, And I wonder if present
Speaker 1: day tomorrow Jenkins would include it. I struggle with it
Speaker 1: when it's like, I don't know, it's like, at what
Speaker 1: point are you directing a movie that you are assuming
Speaker 1: bad actors will be consuming Like that's a tough one.
Speaker 1: I do wonder that with the portrayal of nudity, is
Speaker 1: like are you censoring yourself for the safety of any
Speaker 1: like why are you not doing it? I guess this
Speaker 1: is my question is like are you not doing it
Speaker 1: for the safety of the actor. Are you not doing
Speaker 1: it because you were concerned that a bad faith actor
Speaker 1: is going to find your movie? Which I think is
Speaker 1: definitely true here because there were certain scenes I was
Speaker 1: just looking for commentary on and I was directed to
Speaker 1: poorn websites. Really yeah, to pour specifically around the scenes
Speaker 1: of like Kevin Corrigan feeling Natasha leone up and like
Speaker 1: the more sexually charged scenes of this are definitely present
Speaker 1: on por in sites, which I found out completely by accident.
Speaker 1: And so I think it is like a very it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't disagree with you, Caitlin, Like
Speaker 1: I think that it is like I cannot think of
Speaker 1: a good reason to include it, but it's depressing the
Speaker 1: reasons that I jump to to why that is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do think it's a slippery slope when factoring
Speaker 4: and like like a director having to factor in like
Speaker 4: the worst faith interpretation or like worst faith audience of
Speaker 4: their movie. Like I do think that that can go
Speaker 4: in negative directions or that can be like a massive
Speaker 4: hindrance to art. Not that I agree that necessarily these
Speaker 4: boobs should have been in it, these boobs.
Speaker 1: But whose boobs.
Speaker 4: It's a difficult conversation because you don't know how far
Speaker 4: that can go in terms of like like every like
Speaker 4: if your movie's intended for a mass audience, it's like
Speaker 4: it can become kind of focus groupy or become kind
Speaker 4: of So, yeah, it's a tough one. That's a that's
Speaker 4: a difficult question to answer.
Speaker 1: I guess Yeah, in the case of this movie, I
Speaker 1: think it is like not necessary and a lot of
Speaker 1: the it felt very like of the time, And by
Speaker 1: that I guess I mean of both times that every
Speaker 1: opportunity we had to cut to bare breasts we did.
Speaker 1: And you know, like that's not to say that we
Speaker 1: don't see I mean we see a lot of like
Speaker 1: people not wearing clothes in this movie. Again, we appear
Speaker 1: to be in a naked family, and it's like not
Speaker 1: like we don't see the boys in this family, you know,
Speaker 1: presented in like they're not wearing clothes for a lot
Speaker 1: of the movie. But I also didn't like that.
Speaker 4: I also know, definitely not maybe I just really find
Speaker 4: that depiction to be particularly sexual, Like I think I think.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is like it's not sexualized.
Speaker 4: That's like, yeah, I think that to me didn't feel
Speaker 4: inappropriate necessarily or just I feel like a lot of
Speaker 4: movies around the time has like that's just what kids
Speaker 4: to me sometimes where it seemed like it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: they're in a a hot climate. But yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker 4: I feel like the issue with the Natasha the unboob
Speaker 4: is that like it feels tacked on because it almost
Speaker 4: feels like a reveal because the whole movie they've been
Speaker 4: discussing her boobs, and when the boobs are revealed, it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: so this is kind of like an unveiling in a way,
Speaker 4: and that's where it becomes kind of like, eh, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it isn't.
Speaker 1: Like why yeah, I didn't know what the function of
Speaker 1: it was even supposed to have been. It just felt
Speaker 1: a little huh, I don't know, it felt edgy in
Speaker 1: a way that like, but it's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to refer to like depicting breasts as edgy. It shouldn't
Speaker 1: be viewed that way. But again, it's it's I think
Speaker 1: that breasts are generally framed in a sexualized way in
Speaker 1: this movie sometimes, and I think more often than not
Speaker 1: with commentary. But in the case of this shot that
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Kaitlin, I don't think that, Like, what
Speaker 1: is the commentary? It seems like it's just doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, this is an underage teenager. To me, there's
Speaker 3: like no gray area there, Like we just should never
Speaker 3: see that on screen. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, and I guess what I'm more
Speaker 1: talking about is like, because we know these are adult actors,
Speaker 1: what do we do with like implied age versus actor
Speaker 1: age and how do people internalize that? Like we've talked
Speaker 1: about this so much on the show. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we all agree that the shot is not necessary. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is like a really complicated thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?
Speaker 4: I just wrote down Robert Roger Ebert made a comment
Speaker 4: on this movie that in Beverly Hill's money is not
Speaker 4: the only currency, and I thought, true, well observed King,
Speaker 4: well observed class and sex those are the two things
Speaker 4: that's happening in this movie.
Speaker 3: When you accidentally said, Robert, just now, Robert Redford produced
Speaker 3: this movie because of like the Sun Dance connection. And
Speaker 3: Tamar Jenkins did she write the script? During this Sun
Speaker 3: Dance the Lab, Yeah, the Lab Writer's Program.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, so rip Robert Redford, I know, r ip
Speaker 4: Roger Ebert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, an Rip Alan and Carl Reiner and Jessica Walster
Speaker 3: and so many people gone too soon and I'll just
Speaker 3: put that in there and Robert anyways, Yes, it's okay.
Speaker 3: The movie does pass the Bechdel test. Yes, quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: It is mostly between Vivian and Rita, and they're talking
Speaker 3: about all kinds of stuff. They're talking about their relationship
Speaker 3: to each other, and they're speaking in multiple languages, passing
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: Yes, And even though there's not a ton of those
Speaker 1: are the two main characters, and maybe kind of the
Speaker 1: Jessica Walter character as well, are the main women in
Speaker 1: the movie. I think that, you know whatever, the Bechdel
Speaker 1: test is a metric that we've talked about forever that,
Speaker 1: like the absence of women, I think is very intentional
Speaker 1: in this movie. I think it is like intended to
Speaker 1: further leave viv kind of out to see.
Speaker 3: I agree. But even so, we have many conversations, yes,
Speaker 3: between women and girls. Vivian and Reader are talking about vibrators, breasts, tampons,
Speaker 3: bleaching their mustaches.
Speaker 1: Mean a Savari's like, get a breast reduction.
Speaker 3: Doris is like, here's an enormous pad.
Speaker 1: Now that we're listing off the conversations, it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: as great, but they happen.
Speaker 4: No, I'm like very I was coming into this being like,
Speaker 4: oh man, my movie's gonna fail. The beck built, but
Speaker 4: I'm very impressed by it.
Speaker 1: Passes doesn't have to be a positive conversation to pass.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm wow cool.
Speaker 3: But what about the nipple scale though, the Bechdel Cast
Speaker 3: nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale
Speaker 3: of zero to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional
Speaker 3: feminist lene, Oh god, really tricky. I don't really know
Speaker 3: what to do here, because it's it is exploring, you know,
Speaker 3: what it is to be an adolescent girl, lower middle class,
Speaker 3: adolescent white girl in the LA area in the seventies,
Speaker 3: existing in a society that is constantly leering at women,
Speaker 3: objectifying women. Rape culture is abound, and how she grapples
Speaker 3: with that, and how she tries to again exercise some
Speaker 3: control over that or try to take some power back.
Speaker 3: And so I think the movie is doing really interesting
Speaker 3: things regarding that. But for other things. As we've talked about.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's not clear enough where it lands,
Speaker 3: or there's not quite enough commentary on the situation to
Speaker 3: my satisfaction. So I think I'll give it a split
Speaker 3: down the middle two point five nipples, just to make
Speaker 3: things simple. I'm going to give them all to came Jenkins.
Speaker 1: Is it Tamera?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think it's tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It is tomorrow, Tomorrow, wrong, Okay, I got scared tomorrow. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm tempted to go three and a half,
Speaker 1: which maybe feels a little high, but I ugh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm between a three and a three and
Speaker 1: a half. I think that there is a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in this movie that feels unresolved, but never means
Speaker 1: spirited and never I feel and again this is me
Speaker 1: judging by vibes, but I do think that this this
Speaker 1: movie is searching for something, and maybe it's because it
Speaker 1: is like a first time filmmaker making a very personal story.
Speaker 1: I will say the last scene in this movie, the voiceover,
Speaker 1: the way that the movie ends, I don't like, and
Speaker 1: it feels like it's kind of directly fighting with the
Speaker 1: really complicated themes that the movie is fighting, it's totally dissonant.
Speaker 1: The character of Rita never quite comes together for me.
Speaker 1: I feel like Rita and bodies that tonal dissonance pretty
Speaker 1: squarely for me. But I also think that it's finding
Speaker 1: these dynamics that I haven't quite seen before. I think, like,
Speaker 1: the lower middle class is such a weird specific thing
Speaker 1: that barely even exists now but did at one time,
Speaker 1: and is this kind of precarious, delusional place to live
Speaker 1: in that is captured really well in this movie. And
Speaker 1: the you know, coming of age and to assist women's
Speaker 1: body is it is horrifying in a way that I
Speaker 1: think is also well captured without it becoming you know,
Speaker 1: probably this premise would be a horror movie now, and
Speaker 1: I don't. Like I'm very sick of any woman's body
Speaker 1: and any marginalized body becoming the side of horror, and
Speaker 1: this movie doesn't do that. It's just presenting like it
Speaker 1: just feels like shit to be told that you're doing
Speaker 1: it wrong all the time and also be constantly surprised
Speaker 1: by your body and have no one to turn to, Like,
Speaker 1: I think it captures that feeling very well. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about all of it. I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to go three. I'm going to go three nips. I'll
Speaker 1: give one to Tamara Jenkins, one to Natasha Leone, and
Speaker 1: one to Rita Moreno, why the hell not?
Speaker 3: Why the hell not? Maya? How about you?
Speaker 4: Okay, maybe I'll deign to go three point five. I think, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm knocking the one point five off because I think
Speaker 4: that the movie has themes and plot that can't seem
Speaker 4: to agree with one another, and that sometimes the plot
Speaker 4: undermines the intended themes of the film, like you're saying,
Speaker 4: you're both saying, like it's kind of unresolved, it's searching,
Speaker 4: and sometimes that can lead to somewhat harmful depictions that
Speaker 4: the movie seems to be trying to do the opposite of,
Speaker 4: or trying to say something in the realm of the opposite.
Speaker 4: But I do really appreciate, and what's always stuck struck
Speaker 4: me is where this movie is willing to go. I
Speaker 4: think it's pretty unprecedented in its depictions of female sexuality
Speaker 4: and underage sexuality, which is really complicated and really difficult
Speaker 4: to depict. And I always appreciate when a movie is
Speaker 4: willing to do something difficult and is willing to make
Speaker 4: me uncomfortable because that makes me think. And I think
Speaker 4: we've talked about this for at this point such a
Speaker 4: long so many hours that it's like, I appreciate one
Speaker 4: of movies. Yeah, willing to raise questions even though maybe
Speaker 4: it can't necessarily answer all of them. Sure, I also
Speaker 4: just I'm a little maybe I have a libertarian film spirit,
Speaker 4: but I love a movie that I'm like, don't tell
Speaker 4: me what to do, don't tell me how to think.
Speaker 4: And I think I love a movie that doesn't tell
Speaker 4: me either of those things. And so this movie made
Speaker 4: us all Republicans and libertarians. This is a Republican libertarian
Speaker 4: zoom call.
Speaker 1: Republicans love to be told how to think. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: they actually really love.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but maybe I do too. Yeah, but I appreciate
Speaker 4: almost at the movie isn't trying to tell me what
Speaker 4: to think about what it's portraying, even though I think
Speaker 4: the ending is a little bit and I don't know,
Speaker 4: like a definitely like that. Half stars for Marissa Tome,
Speaker 4: who has my heart and I love her. I think
Speaker 4: she's so funny and weird in this even if her
Speaker 4: character is a hot mess.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, thank you so much for joining us again.
Speaker 3: Come back anytime.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys of course.
Speaker 3: Real quick. Where can people follow you? Check out your stuff?
Speaker 3: Plug away?
Speaker 4: You can find me on YouTube under the channel Broi Dationanel.
Speaker 4: You can find me on Instagram at Browie Underscore Dationel.
Speaker 4: I have a podcast called Rehash and I actually wrote
Speaker 4: a book about Eternal Sunshine at the Spotless Mind, which
Speaker 4: I've been really bad at promoting because I'm new to that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I wrote that. You can find it wherever
Speaker 4: you get your books or on ig publishing dot com.
Speaker 3: That's amazing, Thank you, And you can follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Bechdel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon
Speaker 3: aka Matreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where
Speaker 3: you get two bonus episodes every single month, always based
Speaker 3: on an incredible, amazing genius theme. And Jamie and our
Speaker 3: guest Maya had to leave right before this outro, so
Speaker 3: it's just me signing off goodbye.
Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 3: Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Speaker 3: Lichtermann and.
Speaker 1: Edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of them?
Speaker 3: That's me and our logo and merch and all of
Speaker 3: our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus ever
Speaker 3: heard of her?
Speaker 1: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way,
Speaker 1: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
Speaker 3: With vocals by Katherine Vosskrasinski.
Speaker 1: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
Speaker 1: Aristotle Ascevero.
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