Speaker 1: On the Bedel Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zefan best start
Speaker 1: changing it with the Beckdel cast. Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlin,
Speaker 1: that is a really cool car, and that's a really
Speaker 1: cute dog. I just wanted you to know what, hay,
Speaker 1: if something happened to them. Alfie Allen should have said that.
Speaker 1: I would have liked his character so much better if
Speaker 1: he if he had just really late it on thick
Speaker 1: like that. God, I can it's so wild that, um, well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Bechdel Cast. But just a second. It's
Speaker 1: so wild that, like Alfie Allen, is I know a
Speaker 1: person that exists in the world. I watched Game of
Speaker 1: threnth and everything, but I confuse him with my crush
Speaker 1: Bill scars Guards so easily only to look up the future, yes,
Speaker 1: only to look at future John Wicks, and who is
Speaker 1: there but Bill scars Guard. I think he's going to
Speaker 1: be in the next one. Yeah, wait, okay in the
Speaker 1: fourth one. I was like, I didn't see him in
Speaker 1: two or three? They missed the vibe of the bug
Speaker 1: eyed boy they gotta bring it back, they gotta bring
Speaker 1: it back. Oh well, well, this is the Bectel Cast.
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Laftus. My name is Caitlin Durante,
Speaker 1: and this is our show where we examine movies through
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel test simply as
Speaker 1: a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it? Well,
Speaker 1: I can let you know, Caitlin Durante. The Bechtel test
Speaker 1: is a media metric created whoa Hello created? What if
Speaker 1: they did? Ah? This is here's a horrible pitch for
Speaker 1: our April Fools episode Baby Talk Pass. It is hey
Speaker 1: media metric created by Ker cartoonist Alice Becktel, sometimes called
Speaker 1: the Bactel Wallace Test. Lots of different versions of this test,
Speaker 1: Here's the one we use. The test requires that there'll
Speaker 1: be two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking
Speaker 1: about something other than a man for more than two
Speaker 1: lines of dialogue should be meaningful. Does it happen in
Speaker 1: this movie? I'm brady sure, But that's why a franchise exists.
Speaker 1: So that is that's why every movie needs at least
Speaker 1: three movies, so that by the third movie women might
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Yeah, you need three movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm not even sure if it happens by the
Speaker 1: end of the third John Wick movie. Oh, I think
Speaker 1: they all talk, but not to each other. Oh that
Speaker 1: is always so bizarre and dissonan when they're like, we
Speaker 1: got two women in a room. They're never gonna know that.
Speaker 1: But yes, in honor of the new John Wick, the
Speaker 1: Bill Scars Guard John Wick, if you will, we're covering
Speaker 1: John Wick one twenty fourteen. I didn't realize it came
Speaker 1: out so long ago. It's almost ten years ago. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while. I'm also referring to four not
Speaker 1: as The Bill Scars Guard one but the Arena Sawayama one. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that is truly. What's gonna get my ass in the
Speaker 1: seat is her? It's her acting debut, right, yes it is.
Speaker 1: It's her acting debut, and it's going to be in
Speaker 1: this major franchise. And also one of my all time
Speaker 1: favorite action stars is in. It's Scott Atkins, so I'm
Speaker 1: like losing my ship. He's the king of the home
Speaker 1: movie box office when it comes to action movies. He's
Speaker 1: constantly punching above his weight, and in this one, I
Speaker 1: fear he might be in a fat suit, but we'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I can tell from the posters. When
Speaker 1: will they not do that? I am? I am very
Speaker 1: thrilled about the arena Sawayama element to the four and
Speaker 1: I just pray that she is a pop girlie who
Speaker 1: can hoo can act? I hope we're getting We're getting
Speaker 1: a Lady Gaga situation. Yeah, time will tell. I can't wait. Um,
Speaker 1: but wait, who the hell is that talking? Is that
Speaker 1: perhaps one of our all time guests? It's just it's
Speaker 1: just our guest who is a host? It is not
Speaker 1: my best transition into introducing a guest of all time,
Speaker 1: but wait, what the fuck? No? I thought it was
Speaker 1: really good. Who is the other arena stand in the chat?
Speaker 1: She's host of the podcast Popcorn and Pixels. You've seen
Speaker 1: her on Shutters, Behind the Monsters, and you remember her
Speaker 1: from our episodes on Maide in Manhattan, Raw, Atomic Blonde,
Speaker 1: and Bound. So this is her fifth apparent on the show.
Speaker 1: It's Vanessa Guerrero. Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: I love doing the show. In the mail the five
Speaker 1: timers jacket that doesn't actually gist, but someday, someday it
Speaker 1: will be. It's a picture of the two of y'all
Speaker 1: doing a thumbs up, and it's embroidered and it's the
Speaker 1: or exactly and you give it to someone when things
Speaker 1: are getting serious. Yeah, it's a letter in jacket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're so happy that you're back. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: over time you sort of become our our go to
Speaker 1: action movie expert. I love that, especially because one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things in the universe is constantly showing up
Speaker 1: men at things that they enjoy and like it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. I love being an action movie person and
Speaker 1: knowing that there are several men that are like, I
Speaker 1: wish it was me. Oh, that does sound very powerful.
Speaker 1: It's a delicious feeling. That's I wish. I don't think
Speaker 1: I can do that. I think that I'm just like
Speaker 1: I think. I'm like, hey, guy, i'm dating, do you
Speaker 1: want to know everything about beanie babies? And usually he's
Speaker 1: like no, and he doesn't wish. Yeah, Well, the thing
Speaker 1: is he doesn't wish it was him, and maybe he
Speaker 1: doesn't even wish that he was in the room. Well
Speaker 1: screw him. Then, yes, this person I just made up Vassa.
Speaker 1: What is your relationship with John Wick the franchise, etc.
Speaker 1: I love the john Wick franchise as an action fan.
Speaker 1: The john Wick franchise is so indicative of like such
Speaker 1: a major turning point for the genre because specifically like
Speaker 1: American action, like Korea, Indonesia, Japan, China, they'd been they'd
Speaker 1: been putting out action movies that had been like consistently
Speaker 1: fantastic for years. American action had taken such a downturn,
Speaker 1: especially because of the movies like later Jason Bourne movies
Speaker 1: and Taken, where it's a lot of like frenetic editing
Speaker 1: and like twenty one cuts to get an old man
Speaker 1: over offense, like very jumpy, very like that two thousand
Speaker 1: style of like shaky cam footage, And there wasn't as
Speaker 1: much like focus when it came to like choreography fee
Speaker 1: and really like not even just getting like great choreography
Speaker 1: and it nailed down, but like how we shoot choreography
Speaker 1: and really doing it the justice that it deserves. And
Speaker 1: John Wick when that movie came out was such a
Speaker 1: renaissance for American action fans where you started seeing people
Speaker 1: care about how they shot action again. And I love
Speaker 1: that the franchise has also become very self aware and
Speaker 1: knows sort of where it stands and like American action history,
Speaker 1: which is why the casting announcements are more exciting for
Speaker 1: me than it feels like what I imagine, like a
Speaker 1: football draft feels like to someone where I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got another one. Yeah. I feel about succession casting
Speaker 1: announcements when exactly when they're like Adrian Brodie, you're like
Speaker 1: what they're like sona late, like what or like White
Speaker 1: Lotus where it's just like, oh my god, that lineup.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel about the john Wick series. Yes, Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: it taps into a very petty core of me. At
Speaker 1: while I've done so much, like work in therapy and
Speaker 1: improvement to be somebody that can like move on from grudges,
Speaker 1: john Wick taps into the part of me that which
Speaker 1: is I can do undo all of that hard work
Speaker 1: and just be a petty bitch on the trail for revenge.
Speaker 1: I do love a revenge narrative, so I love it.
Speaker 1: Jamie whats Beagles. That's my history. Now, my history with
Speaker 1: the john Wick franchise is very minimal. As I think
Speaker 1: I've said on this show time and time again, Action
Speaker 1: has never really been my go to genre, even though
Speaker 1: Keanu Reeves. I would say it's one of my go
Speaker 1: to people that I like to look at and engage
Speaker 1: with the legacy of. Oh yeah. Something I've been saying
Speaker 1: on the show for the entire run of the show
Speaker 1: is that I used to see Keanu Reeves every Wednesday
Speaker 1: at the bookstore I worked at, and he'd always get
Speaker 1: a book of Sudoku puzzles and one of the new
Speaker 1: hardcover fictions. Always hardcover, not softcover for this guy. He's
Speaker 1: a Millionaire's gonna want the hardcover exactly, come on his
Speaker 1: motorcycle and changed my life. He's a good man by
Speaker 1: all accounts. He's the most attracted that I've ever been
Speaker 1: to a sismail in my life. It's he's kind of scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love Keanu Reeves. Action movies are a harder sell.
Speaker 1: I did remember as I was preparing for this. I
Speaker 1: mean how much I loved Atomic Blonde, and there are
Speaker 1: things about John Wick that I did like, even outside
Speaker 1: of Keyanu Reeves. I liked. I really liked learning about
Speaker 1: how this movie came together and how it's like these
Speaker 1: legacy stuntman who worked with Keyanda Reeves that ended up
Speaker 1: like directing this incredible. I mean it looks beautiful and
Speaker 1: like as an action movie. Even as someone that doesn't
Speaker 1: know a ton about action movies, You're like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a beautiful action movie. This is like fucking wild.
Speaker 1: It's all that bisexual lighting. Yeah, this, I feel like
Speaker 1: this is like kind of the great stand. I can't
Speaker 1: think of a more bisexually lit movie. This may be
Speaker 1: the Golden standard or the Blue and Purple standard, whatever
Speaker 1: we're calling them. Yeah, that entire bathhouse scene could have
Speaker 1: been like a low five beats yes, yes, exactly. And
Speaker 1: then I mean, you know, watching it with a Bechtel
Speaker 1: cast lens on, I'll admit it was a challenge. But
Speaker 1: I yeah, I've only seen so I've only seen the
Speaker 1: first movie. I watched the first movie to prepare for
Speaker 1: this episode, and I'm definitely going to see the fourth
Speaker 1: for Rina Sawayama purposes, and I look forward to being
Speaker 1: sold on watching the two sequels before then. The third
Speaker 1: is definitely the better of the two. Okay, my first,
Speaker 1: the first bitchy little thing I am going to say
Speaker 1: about John Wick and everyone's could getting upset and scream
Speaker 1: boo tomato tomato open opening this movie on Deadwife dot
Speaker 1: MP four. I was struggling yea and ending the movie
Speaker 1: also on Deadwife dot MP four. I gotta say once
Speaker 1: again I was struggling. But every time I see Deadwife
Speaker 1: dot MP four, I could do that. So if anyone's
Speaker 1: trying to look for a dead wife, I feel like
Speaker 1: I can conjure that energy quite easily. Beach breeze in
Speaker 1: your hair, John, what are you doing? I was confused
Speaker 1: what you meant at first? You mean, if someone's looking
Speaker 1: to cast a role in a movie where they need
Speaker 1: a character's wife who is now deceased, you're available to
Speaker 1: play that part. Yeah, I understand. I feel like I
Speaker 1: act like a dead wife every single day. I think
Speaker 1: anytime there's like a if a boyfriend has a phone
Speaker 1: and it's on and it's at me, I'm going to
Speaker 1: act like a dead wife because you never know what
Speaker 1: do you do? What are you doing? Stop? I've romanticized
Speaker 1: white life like a dead wife. Oh Like, I wear
Speaker 1: a lot of like ponchos around the house and I
Speaker 1: hold lugs with two hands. You're like kind of like
Speaker 1: do a lot of hair work. You're like sort of
Speaker 1: playfully just like kind of rolling around under the sheets
Speaker 1: like t he he Yeah, it's morning, and I never
Speaker 1: I never sweat. I would never sweat in that circumstance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I'm at the beach, you know, my hair is
Speaker 1: just so and I'm like, stop, what are you doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. Can't then what's your history with the John
Speaker 1: Like franchise? I had only seen the first one. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I never got around to the sequels.
Speaker 1: I liked the first one, and I love action movies.
Speaker 1: I am a big action movie head. But I simply
Speaker 1: have no excuse, no reason why I had not seen
Speaker 1: the sequels, but I did watch them to prep for this.
Speaker 1: We won't go into a lot of detail, but there
Speaker 1: are a few, like noteworthy things that indicate some kind
Speaker 1: of like evolutionist the franchise goes that I want to
Speaker 1: touch on. But um, we'll focus on the first movie,
Speaker 1: and I will share a quick recap of the two
Speaker 1: sequels for anyone who wants to hear those. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I very much enjoy the franchise, especially now that I've
Speaker 1: seen the three movies. I'm excited to see the fourth one.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan and Keanu reeves absolutely National Treasure, untouchable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mister sexy. Oh my gosh, the hair, the scruff, the suits,
Speaker 1: the fact that he moves like a Judo ballerina perfect.
Speaker 1: I love the like I mean just I feel like
Speaker 1: most Keanu Reeves movies have just like X Games level
Speaker 1: stylistic choices, and I love that. But how like you
Speaker 1: can just tell John Wick is in bad boy mode
Speaker 1: when he uses hair gel, but when his hair not gel,
Speaker 1: he's good boy. He's good boy. It's it's helpful for
Speaker 1: me yea to know when he's going to be bad
Speaker 1: and when he's going to be good. When there's volume,
Speaker 1: he's going to be good. Yeah, when there's when there's volume,
Speaker 1: he is husband. He's crying, his wife is gone. He's like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I better feed the dog. When he's
Speaker 1: hair Jel, who you don't want to know. It's the
Speaker 1: equivalent of plas like standing up, ladies, get out of
Speaker 1: the room. That's what he's doing when he's got the
Speaker 1: hair Jela. It's the equivalent of the putting your hair
Speaker 1: up in a ponytail moment in Birds of Prey and
Speaker 1: ba Yeah, I think it's the hair time. Don't let
Speaker 1: your hair in the way as you're fighting. You gotta
Speaker 1: slick it back. You gotta put it in a pony something.
Speaker 1: John Wick gets it. I also didn't know that. Um,
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe and John, like Wizamo, I wish there was
Speaker 1: more John. That's maybe that's one of my big things
Speaker 1: with John Wick. Where bring John? Does he come back
Speaker 1: in future movies? He's in the second one? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's in the third one. I forget
Speaker 1: I was smiling so much. I don't remember him in
Speaker 1: the third one. But I love seeing him in it,
Speaker 1: Like Willem Dafoe, John, like zamo Ian McShane, those are
Speaker 1: like my good boys, Dean Winters. Like, yes, they put
Speaker 1: Dennis in it. That was exciting for me. Dennis Duffy, man,
Speaker 1: I really I love character actors so much, and usually
Speaker 1: I can, you know. I mean, when you look at
Speaker 1: William Dafoe, you can maybe you know, you would be
Speaker 1: like that's the Green Goblin, or yeah, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I understand how actors work. That's Willam to felt. But
Speaker 1: something about Dennis Duffy, I just like he can't not
Speaker 1: be he was too good at it. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: should we get into it. Let's get into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then we will come right back. Jamie ask
Speaker 1: me if we're back from break, Kaylan are back from break? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're just sort of like working through
Speaker 1: some stuff. I'm not sure if we're back. This is
Speaker 1: going to pay off later after the next ad break.
Speaker 1: Just you wait and see. Anyway, I see where you're
Speaker 1: going and I'm there, thank you. What if the exchange
Speaker 1: pretty early in the movie, Oh, it's with John Languizamo
Speaker 1: where Vigo calls him and he's like, hey, why the
Speaker 1: fuck did you punch my son in the face. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: because you stole John Wig's car and killed his dog.
Speaker 1: And then he just goes oh, Like this movie rocks. Excellent,
Speaker 1: excellent world building. Like I think that's my favorite thing
Speaker 1: about the John Wick lore is just characters reacting to him.
Speaker 1: Tells you everything you need to know exactly the show
Speaker 1: don't tell and this is show all the way. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so here is the recap for John Wick one. We
Speaker 1: open on a scene where Keanu Reeves recks his car
Speaker 1: into some concrete. He stumbles out. He's injured and bleeding,
Speaker 1: from what we will find out is a stab wound.
Speaker 1: He's kind of dying. And then he takes out his
Speaker 1: phone and watches a video of his wife, his wife,
Speaker 1: his wife. He opened the steadwife dot MP four. Yes, John, John,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Are you still filming? John? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? And he's loving you so damn much,
Speaker 1: and she's like, stop, you're loving me too much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're loving What if I'm gone one day? That'll never happens, okay?
Speaker 1: And then oh, but then you see you see the
Speaker 1: director's cut later of dead Wife dot MP four. I
Speaker 1: want to direct a whole movie called dead Wife dot
Speaker 1: MP four. It's just all vibes. But like you see
Speaker 1: the director's cut later on and she's like, let's go home,
Speaker 1: like classic dead wife talk. Let's go home. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: this this was her job, John, What did she do?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we don't need to know anything about her,
Speaker 1: just kidding. Her house was fantastic, so she had to
Speaker 1: have done something. Well, I know, it's like, is that
Speaker 1: like hit man money or was she like a fucking
Speaker 1: doctor or something? I don't know. Column a column baby.
Speaker 1: The house built on taking out hits and then trying
Speaker 1: to save the people that had the hits taken on them. Ooh,
Speaker 1: that's a good scam. I would love that movie. Scary.
Speaker 1: There's a case I read about called I mean, this
Speaker 1: is actually pretty evil, but like an evil doctor or
Speaker 1: like a rehab a rehab doctor who bought a hotel
Speaker 1: and would deal drugs out of the hotel to get
Speaker 1: people addicted to the drugs, and then they'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm addicted to the drugs. And he's like,
Speaker 1: funny because I own a rehab center about across town.
Speaker 1: It's very evil. They called him the candy Man. Wow. Anyways,
Speaker 1: these things happen and I would watch a movie about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's write it. Okay. Anyway, this person we've just met
Speaker 1: is John Wick. We flash back to John Wick at
Speaker 1: home shortly after his wife Helen played by Bridget moynihan,
Speaker 1: has passed away from an illness. He is devastated. He
Speaker 1: then receives a delivery. It's a puppy that his wife
Speaker 1: Helen arranged for him to receive after her death so
Speaker 1: that he still has something someone to love. The puppy
Speaker 1: is a little beagle named Daisy. It's very, very cute.
Speaker 1: She's so damned cute, the fact that it's my childhood
Speaker 1: dog's name. I wanted blood. I watched this with my
Speaker 1: mother and she looked at me and she was like,
Speaker 1: I want everyone involved to suffer, and I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what this movie's for. That's what the
Speaker 1: movie's about. That. I think the only thing I knew.
Speaker 1: I think I think it is kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this later in the episode. I think
Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting where it's like, the only
Speaker 1: thing I knew about John Wick was that the first
Speaker 1: movie's thrust was he's trying to get revenge on the
Speaker 1: people who killed his dog. But then I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, not to undercut how horrific it is to
Speaker 1: lose a pet, especially to a violent act. But I
Speaker 1: was like, mmm, it's interesting how that his wife never
Speaker 1: comes up in any of the popular descriptions of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's well, it's weird that it's a morning dog, right,
Speaker 1: It's like he's only so upset about the dog because
Speaker 1: it's like an extension of his wife. His wife. Here's dog, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: his beagle. So John Wick takes his dog out in
Speaker 1: his Cool Boy nineteen sixty nine Mustang and he stops
Speaker 1: for some gas where a group of very agro men
Speaker 1: are also getting gas, and one of them is a
Speaker 1: guy played by Alfie Allen who is like, hey, cool dog,
Speaker 1: cool car. How much would you sell it for? And
Speaker 1: John Wick is like, the car's not for sale, and
Speaker 1: then Alfie Allen insults him in Russian, but twist, john
Speaker 1: Wick speaks Russian. They're shaken to their core when he
Speaker 1: speaks Russian. Yeah, They're like, what the fuck a person
Speaker 1: speaking another language? You're like, it's Keanu Reeves. I assume
Speaker 1: that he speaks every language. He's like a poke dex
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And john Wick leaves after this interaction, and
Speaker 1: Alfie Allen is like, who does doc I think he is?
Speaker 1: And then that night, he and the other guys from
Speaker 1: the gas station break into john Wick's house. They beat
Speaker 1: the shit out of him, they steal his car, and
Speaker 1: they kill his dog. John Wick does not like that
Speaker 1: this happened at all. He's pretty he's pretty miffed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's freaking pissed. He's p oed and so, and we
Speaker 1: don't even know what he's capable of at this point.
Speaker 1: We don't we do not because we have not yet
Speaker 1: gotten the big reveal. But john Wick sets off. He's
Speaker 1: still covered in blood. He gets on a bus. He's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who these guys are and how
Speaker 1: to find them, so he goes to John Languizamo, who
Speaker 1: tells him that Vigo Tarasov's son Joseph, that's Alfie Allen,
Speaker 1: is the one who stole his car and killed his dog.
Speaker 1: So john Wick gets a new cool boy car and
Speaker 1: he takes off. We also meet this Vigo guy. He's
Speaker 1: a crime lord of some sort, like a mob, but
Speaker 1: he's your friendly neighborhood, yes, And he goes to his
Speaker 1: son Joseph and is like, you fool, you messed with
Speaker 1: john Wick and John Wick is not someone who you
Speaker 1: mess with. And this is when we learn that John
Speaker 1: Wick was a former assassin. He was very good at
Speaker 1: his job. He has a reputation for being Bobba Yaga
Speaker 1: or the Boogeyman. And Vigo is like, I saw him
Speaker 1: kill three men with a pencil one time. I love
Speaker 1: that this is eventually shown in the series. Yes, oh
Speaker 1: is it? Yes, that's very fun. It's referred to another
Speaker 1: time and then you do see him kill I think
Speaker 1: it's two guys with a pencil. Yeah, I learned shout
Speaker 1: out cross promo fellow. I heard slash Kus on media
Speaker 1: podcast Margaret kill Joy's Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: We did an episode about Bobby got just as a
Speaker 1: folk tale and Bobby Agat typically coated as a as
Speaker 1: being a woman. Um So I thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: that in this lore Bobby is I mean, Keanu Rus
Speaker 1: is more of an idea, you know, like he transcends gender. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was interesting that in this movie
Speaker 1: it translates to Boogieman. But anyways, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different sort of versions of Bobby Aga. God. Um
Speaker 1: I had something else to say there, but it's gone.
Speaker 1: What can you do that, it's Bobby Gone. It's okay,
Speaker 1: wish wish oh. I was gonna say when that whole
Speaker 1: sequence where we're slowly learning that John Wick is the
Speaker 1: scariest person in the world, it almost felt like the action,
Speaker 1: like the brooding action movie version of that sequence from
Speaker 1: Mean Girls where everyone's talking about Regina George, especially the
Speaker 1: pencils part, like that sounds you can picture a student
Speaker 1: saying that about Regina. John Wick murdered someone with a pencil.
Speaker 1: So then I murdered someone with a soul. John Wick
Speaker 1: punched me in the face once. It was awesome. That's great.
Speaker 1: Um okay, So we're learning about John Wick's reputation. But
Speaker 1: John got out of the business a few years prior
Speaker 1: because of his wife. Yeah, he's like, I'm marrying an
Speaker 1: army by guys, like a YouTuber or something. She's an influencer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why she looks so good on camera. Anyway, Joseph
Speaker 1: is like, well, no big deal. I'll just kill John
Speaker 1: Wick and then we won't have to worry about him anymore.
Speaker 1: And Vigo is like, yeah, right, except John Wick is
Speaker 1: going to come and kill you first, and you can
Speaker 1: count on that. Gives him a little kissy on the
Speaker 1: forehead to seal it. So john Wick gets his guns
Speaker 1: and prepares for a killing spree. Vigo sends like a
Speaker 1: dozen guys to kill john at his house, but john
Speaker 1: Wick murder them effortlessly. Then Vigo puts a bounty on
Speaker 1: John Wick and he goes to this guy Marcus played
Speaker 1: by Willem Dafoe, to be like, hey, will you kill
Speaker 1: John Wick for me? And Willem Dafoe is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do it even though we've learned the John Wick
Speaker 1: and Willem Dafoe are friends. There ain't my honor among
Speaker 1: thieves exaxactly. Meanwhile, John Wick checks into this hotel for assassins,
Speaker 1: The Continental, run by Lance Reddick, which is so iconic.
Speaker 1: I wish that's another I was like, I wanted more
Speaker 1: John like Wizama. I wanted more lance red Although Lance Reddick,
Speaker 1: he's gonna make a meal of whatever it is he's doing. Oh,
Speaker 1: Lance Reddick and Ian McShane in The Continental or two
Speaker 1: of my absolute favorite characters because they build so much
Speaker 1: lower in such a short amount of time of like
Speaker 1: this entire universe. It gives this illusion of like this
Speaker 1: entire universe that's happening underneath your nose, with its own
Speaker 1: set of like rules and practices, and like the Continental,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get on a soapbox for a second. The
Speaker 1: Continental specifically, is this point in the movie, similar to
Speaker 1: like Vigo, that establishes an old guard, like somebody a
Speaker 1: generation that has like learned how to do something before
Speaker 1: and had to establish a set of rules and guidelines
Speaker 1: that you have to live in to keep things from
Speaker 1: becoming total bedlam and total anarchy and it serves as
Speaker 1: this really cool foil to like Miss Perkins and the
Speaker 1: Continental is at Alfie Allen to Vigo in terms of
Speaker 1: like you have this new, younger thing that has like
Speaker 1: benefited from this older system that doesn't give a shit
Speaker 1: about why the rules are in place, and suffer because
Speaker 1: of that because they think the rules are there just
Speaker 1: to be restrictive, and it's like, no, they're here because
Speaker 1: you can't exist in this world without them. If you
Speaker 1: don't respect your elders, you're cooked, babe, You're cooked. Your
Speaker 1: membership to the Continental is revoked by thine own hand. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an excellent way to put it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I've never seen a concept like
Speaker 1: the Continental in a movie, and it's so like it's
Speaker 1: such a simple concept where you're like, this is where
Speaker 1: there are rules. If you break the rules, something bad
Speaker 1: will happen to you. And it's so good. And the
Speaker 1: scenes with the scene, particularly with Lance Reddick and Ian
Speaker 1: McShane towards the end, where I feel like in their
Speaker 1: scenes together they're not even ever looking at each other,
Speaker 1: but so good, Like it's just yeah, so Lance Reddick
Speaker 1: is the like concierge of the hotel for Assassins, and
Speaker 1: Winston played by Ian McShane is the like owner slash manager.
Speaker 1: He's reading at the bar. You're like, awesome, Yeah, he's cool.
Speaker 1: There's also this like special Assassin currency, these like gold
Speaker 1: coins that they're market are yes, And that's when you
Speaker 1: realize that one of the things about this franchise is
Speaker 1: that Assassins belong to this almost like secret society that
Speaker 1: has all these rules, that has all these members. And
Speaker 1: as the franchise goes, you learn that like so many
Speaker 1: people are part of this secret society and you're just like, wow,
Speaker 1: why wasn't I invited? Anyway? I know what if someone
Speaker 1: drops one of the Mario coins and then you're just like,
Speaker 1: what is this That looks fake and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's Assassin money, that's Assassin coins. I loved. I'm sure
Speaker 1: someone's done some sort of deep dive on like what
Speaker 1: is the coin to USD when there's a recession, does
Speaker 1: it hit the Assassin coins? So many questions, Well it
Speaker 1: seems I, yeah, I can't figure out the high value
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, get rid of thirteen bodies, that's
Speaker 1: going to be that's like thirteen thirteen coins, but also
Speaker 1: staying several nights at the Continental only costs one coin,
Speaker 1: so which is what it costs one body, So it's
Speaker 1: like a half a body at night. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's because there's just like solid gold
Speaker 1: and they just go by the weight of gold. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that would I mean, that would fit in with the
Speaker 1: old school rules that sort of seemed to run this
Speaker 1: underground world. That Actually, Vanessa, I think you cracked it.
Speaker 1: It's maybe not a per body system like I had
Speaker 1: been trying to figure out. You never know, Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: So john Wick goes to Winston and finds out that
Speaker 1: Joseph is going to be at this nightclub called the
Speaker 1: Red Circle. So john Wick goes there. There's a huge
Speaker 1: action sequence where he chases after Joseph through the club.
Speaker 1: He's killing a bunch of Vigo's goons along the way,
Speaker 1: but Joseph manages to escape, so john Wick just calls
Speaker 1: it night and goes back to the hotel for assassins
Speaker 1: and goes to bed. But then this lady assassin, Perkins
Speaker 1: played by Adrian Paliki, comes in and tries to kill
Speaker 1: john Wick on the grounds of the Continental right, which
Speaker 1: is against the rules. The whole thing with the Continental
Speaker 1: is that no business can be conducted on the grounds
Speaker 1: of the hotel for assassins, meaning you cannot kill anyone there.
Speaker 1: But she tries to kill him there, he stops her,
Speaker 1: he gets the upper hand, and then he spares her
Speaker 1: because she gives him information about a front that Vigo
Speaker 1: is running out of a church. So John Wick goes
Speaker 1: to this church and destroys all the money and all
Speaker 1: the stuff in Vigo's vault. I recently saw Highlander for
Speaker 1: the first time. Brag wow that church scene. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: like Highlander. Wow, It's like when mister Crabs shows up
Speaker 1: to church and Highlander, you know, I ter Crabs Clancy Brown. Ah.
Speaker 1: I was like, I've never seen Highlanders, So it took
Speaker 1: me a second to figure out what was happening. And
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, no, Clancy Brown gotta gotta
Speaker 1: get it. You know who else? You know who else
Speaker 1: is in John Wick four? Mister Crabs is Oh, that's right,
Speaker 1: Clancy Browns and mister Crabs is gonna are his way
Speaker 1: into John Wicks. Who's gonna and you know who loves
Speaker 1: gold coins? Mister Crabs it makes sense, Okay. So Vigo
Speaker 1: is upset that John Wick torched all of his stuff
Speaker 1: in the vault, so he captures john and he's like,
Speaker 1: good over it. It was just a car and a dog,
Speaker 1: and John is like, that dog was given to me
Speaker 1: by my wife, and your son took that from me.
Speaker 1: Then there's another fight where john Wick kills more of
Speaker 1: Vigo's goons with the help of Willem Dafoe, who turns
Speaker 1: out has no intention of killing John Wick because again
Speaker 1: they're friends. It's kind of the most beautiful part of
Speaker 1: the story. It is how Willem Dafoe is always like
Speaker 1: gazing from a window helping his buddy out. Yes, it's nice.
Speaker 1: Nice male friendship can be nice. Yeah, like when you
Speaker 1: snipe someone from a window top your boys sacked. I
Speaker 1: really did, Like, I mean, I thought that that was
Speaker 1: kind of like my favorite relationship in the movie. Then
Speaker 1: Vigo gives up his son Joseph's location, which is a
Speaker 1: safe house in Brooklyn. So john Wick goes there, finds
Speaker 1: Joseph and shoots him, and Vigo does not like that
Speaker 1: this happened, so first he kills Willem Dafoe for betraying him,
Speaker 1: and then there's a shootout between Vigo and his goons
Speaker 1: and John Wick. John Wick kills most of them, so
Speaker 1: now it's just John and Vigo in hand to hand combat.
Speaker 1: They both get stabbed, Vigo dies, John Wick gets away.
Speaker 1: Cut to the opening scene of the movie where he's
Speaker 1: bleeding out and watching Dead Wife dot MP four on
Speaker 1: his phone. But then he finds the strength to get
Speaker 1: up because she's like, come on, John, let's go home
Speaker 1: and the power of Dead Wife. Yeah, let's get ahead.
Speaker 1: And then he goes into an animal hospital that's right there.
Speaker 1: He staples his wound shut, and then there are some
Speaker 1: dogs and kennels and he takes one. This racks He's like,
Speaker 1: this dog is now the second I was hearing the
Speaker 1: yips of the dog. I'm like, God, damn it, they
Speaker 1: stuck the landing. Yeah, that's so good. So he takes
Speaker 1: a dog I think it's a pit bull and he's like,
Speaker 1: let's go home. The end yip yip. So that's John
Speaker 1: Wick one. I'll do really quick recaps of John Wick
Speaker 1: two and three just to kind of give you an
Speaker 1: idea of how the franchise progresses. Does the second dog live? Yes?
Speaker 1: The second dog Good Dogs keeps living Yes, yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. Okay, Well I couldn't. I couldn't go through
Speaker 1: that again. I couldn't let them do that to me again. Truly,
Speaker 1: not they. I mean, I know it's important to the
Speaker 1: movie that we lose Daisy. I just wasn't prepared to
Speaker 1: los hers so quickly. Yeah, you just got Oh, she's
Speaker 1: so cute and clear and that that little dog clearly
Speaker 1: just loves Keanu Reeves as a person, because if you're
Speaker 1: a puppy, of course you would love Keanu Reeves. He's
Speaker 1: so lovable, he's got a good spirit. Okay, So wait,
Speaker 1: what happens in the in the sequels? Okay? John Wick
Speaker 1: two from twenty seventeen. So, after the events of the
Speaker 1: first movie, John Wick wants to go back into retirement
Speaker 1: and hang out with the dog he stole at the
Speaker 1: end of the first movie. Nice, but another crime boss,
Speaker 1: Santino D'Antonio, approaches John Wick with a marker basically a
Speaker 1: blood oath kind of thing where Santino had done something
Speaker 1: to help John Wick in the past, and now he's
Speaker 1: returning to collect on the debt that John owes him,
Speaker 1: and Santino one John to kill his sister Gianna D'Antonio
Speaker 1: because Stantino wants her spot at the High Table, which
Speaker 1: is this like high court of assassins and crime lords.
Speaker 1: Does this have to do with the Continental also or
Speaker 1: is this a separate thing. So the High Table is
Speaker 1: like basically the government of the secrets of the assassin nation. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: got it. And then the Continental is just like a
Speaker 1: safe haven that operates within you know, this underworld. It's
Speaker 1: the Deadwood Zoe to speak. Okay, got it, So now
Speaker 1: you're speaking my language. So John Wick, knowing that he
Speaker 1: can't retire and be at peace while this marker is
Speaker 1: still active, he goes to Rome. He checks into the
Speaker 1: Hotel for Assassins Italy edition, He makes a bunch of preparations,
Speaker 1: and then he goes to Gianna to kill her. She
Speaker 1: takes her own life before he can do that. Point
Speaker 1: is she dies, and now Santino is like, well, I
Speaker 1: have to avenge my sister's death, so now I have
Speaker 1: to kill you John Wick. Even though it was Santino
Speaker 1: who wanted John to kill his sister, I don't really
Speaker 1: double cross understan Yeah, So Santino puts a price on
Speaker 1: John Wick's head and then with the help of the
Speaker 1: Bowery King played by Laurence Fishburne. But yeah, wow, you
Speaker 1: thought you thought we were done with movies starring Keanu
Speaker 1: Reeves and Laurence fishburn after the Matrix. Glad we weren't.
Speaker 1: We're not done. Okay, he's back, Okay, okay. So john Wick,
Speaker 1: with the Bowery King's help, goes after Santino. He kills
Speaker 1: a bunch of his goons. He finally kills Santino, but
Speaker 1: he does it at the hotel for Assassins. He does
Speaker 1: it at the Continental, which is again, I can't do
Speaker 1: the assassins code Ian makes Shane and said no, He said, no,
Speaker 1: don't do that. So Winston has no choice but to
Speaker 1: excommunicate john Wick from the Assassin's Secret Society, and now
Speaker 1: everyone is going to try to kill john Wick and
Speaker 1: he's going to have to deal with that in the
Speaker 1: next movie. I did watch the first five minutes of
Speaker 1: john Wick three, and I like that there is like
Speaker 1: that group of that group of women that are all
Speaker 1: wearing hot topic clothes and they just talk about who
Speaker 1: is the most wanted in the world. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie where they're all wearing like those Bizarro outfits.
Speaker 1: They're like John Wick fourteen million dollars, Ye, get his ass,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, okay, let's change our manual board.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Well, the thing about the Bowery movie take
Speaker 1: place in I think it's modern day, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot because, like as the Bowery King says in I
Speaker 1: think the third movie, computers and phones and all that
Speaker 1: stuff you can hack. But you know what, you can't
Speaker 1: hack carrier pigeons because the Bowery King's whole thing is
Speaker 1: that he has this group of like carrier pigeons and
Speaker 1: that's how he sends messages around. You wouldn't download a pigeon, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's merch and I so you've got to get
Speaker 1: on that y um. Okay. So the third movie picks
Speaker 1: up immediately where chapter two leaves off. John Wick is
Speaker 1: on the run because now every assassin in the world
Speaker 1: is trying to kill him. Meanwhile, there's an adjudicator. Guess
Speaker 1: who had to look up what adjudicate meant me? I
Speaker 1: did too. I was like, I don't know what this is?
Speaker 1: What is this word? What is it? Basically, someone who
Speaker 1: casts judgment on someone else or someone who kind of
Speaker 1: like evaluates things in a judge way, like a like
Speaker 1: a judge, like a basically a judge judge for higher
Speaker 1: Well they should just say that, yeah, but a judicator
Speaker 1: has more syllables and therefore it's fancier. Hell yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So this adjudicator from the High Table played by Asia
Speaker 1: Kate Dillon is going around to all the people who
Speaker 1: helped John Wick kill Santino and then help John Wick escape.
Speaker 1: So they're going to Winston and the Bowery King, and
Speaker 1: the adjudicator is like, shame on you. John Wick meanwhile
Speaker 1: goes to Casablanca to see Sophia played by Holly Berry.
Speaker 1: He wants her to help him get to someone called
Speaker 1: the Elder, because the Elder can reverse John Wick's excommunicato
Speaker 1: status and give him another shot at life. So John
Speaker 1: Wick goes to the desert to find the Elder, who
Speaker 1: wants John to kill Winston. But then when John goes
Speaker 1: to do this, Winston reminds him that he will be
Speaker 1: a servant of the High Table and that his life
Speaker 1: will suck, and John is like, wow, you're right, never mind,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to kill you. And then because of that,
Speaker 1: the hotel for assassins is declared deconsecrated, meaning business can
Speaker 1: now be conducted there, meaning people can come to kill
Speaker 1: John and Winston, which is what everybody does. But John
Speaker 1: Wick is like, as if you could kill me, so
Speaker 1: he kills everyone who shows up, and then there's this
Speaker 1: final showdown between him and a guy named Zero, who
Speaker 1: has been after him the whole movie. Play by Mark
Speaker 1: de Cascos. I love him so much. He's very good.
Speaker 1: There's this great scene where he's like, John, I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan of yours and we are going to try
Speaker 1: to kill each other later, but for now, big fan.
Speaker 1: I love the fanboy aspect of it, and I can't
Speaker 1: think of a better dude to play it than Mark
Speaker 1: de Cascos, who's like most dangerous looking man he knows
Speaker 1: like he like. His martial arts repertoire is absolutely insane,
Speaker 1: like if you look up his the amount of movies
Speaker 1: that he's done and the different kinds of martial arts
Speaker 1: that he's done for each movie, absolutely crazy. But he's
Speaker 1: played like Mark Dicasco's The guy is a very like
Speaker 1: I'm just really cool and high perpositive all the time,
Speaker 1: so like seeing him play him but still be like
Speaker 1: a dangerous Assassin was just such a funny character choice.
Speaker 1: I love zero. Yeah, zero is great. That's so cool.
Speaker 1: So after john Wick has killed everybody, the adjudicator is like, okay, fine, Winston,
Speaker 1: you can have your hotel for Assassin's back, but what
Speaker 1: are you going to do about john Wick? So Winston
Speaker 1: shoots and kills john Wick. But just kidding, john Wick
Speaker 1: is not dead. He and his dog go to the
Speaker 1: Bowery King and they're like, all right, let's get ready
Speaker 1: to kick some ass. And the next movie. Yes, so
Speaker 1: that's the franchise as a whole. Let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break and then we will come right back. Hey, Caitlin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: are we back from break? Well? People keep asking if
Speaker 1: we're back, and we haven't really had an answer, but
Speaker 1: now yeah, I'm thinking we're back. Yeah. It's such a
Speaker 1: good Keyanu delivery. I love how Keanu says words. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it doesn't always make sense to me, but that's a
Speaker 1: part of why I love it. It's great. There's an
Speaker 1: early that I mean that there's a couple of monologues
Speaker 1: in this movie that just fucking rip. But I think
Speaker 1: my favorite line read from him in this particular movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. And maybe it is nonsensical that
Speaker 1: I feel this way, but I love when he first
Speaker 1: gets Daisy how he's like, I'll get you some kibble later.
Speaker 1: For some reason, that line of dialogue really I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna like this movie. But
Speaker 1: then when he said I'll get you some kibble later,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna make this movie
Speaker 1: work because listen to him say that. I think it's
Speaker 1: because he sounds like legitimately apologetic, the way you would
Speaker 1: be to like a little guy do a dog like that.
Speaker 1: He's very much like, I hope this holds you over
Speaker 1: and it's fine in a way that implies that he
Speaker 1: wants the dog to understand his apology. Oh can't you
Speaker 1: some kile. The only way that that scene could have
Speaker 1: been better for me is if we saw him do
Speaker 1: what I always do before I feed an animal something,
Speaker 1: which is google can I feed dog cereal? But John
Speaker 1: Wick is an all knowing creature, so I assume that
Speaker 1: he's had to learn this before. Exactly, All right, where
Speaker 1: should we start, Vanessa? Does anything jump out to you
Speaker 1: where you'd like to start? I mean, I definitely got
Speaker 1: to have a little little soapbox about like Old Guard
Speaker 1: versus New Guard. But it's one of my favorite like
Speaker 1: through lines in this movie because like on the first watch,
Speaker 1: you only see it with like specifically Alfie Allen's character,
Speaker 1: but like there is that foil to it with Miss
Speaker 1: Perkins as well in terms of like is there honor
Speaker 1: among thieves? Should there be? Can there be? And that
Speaker 1: kind of becomes like the question of the franchise. But
Speaker 1: I think where I want to start is something that
Speaker 1: Caitlin and I were talking about before we started recording,
Speaker 1: which was the soundtrack is really unique for this when
Speaker 1: it comes to like an action movie. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a lot more like muted, soft female voices, a
Speaker 1: little bit less like bombastic than you remember like an
Speaker 1: action movie with like click clickpoom playing over it. And
Speaker 1: it's like it's a more thoughtful soundtrack. Yeah. The scene
Speaker 1: that it really stuck out to me was the Red
Speaker 1: Circle night Club bath house action set piece where Keanu
Speaker 1: Reeves is just like going through and absolutely like demolishing
Speaker 1: everyone in extremely violent ways. But it's like this angelic
Speaker 1: woman singing this like it's almost any Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a very calm, soft like you could play this when
Speaker 1: you're like doing yoga or something. And the lighting also
Speaker 1: in that scene is like very like purple, like the
Speaker 1: bisexual lighting. It's like purples and pigs and blues, and
Speaker 1: it's just like, it feels more like feminine in a
Speaker 1: weird way than so much action movie esthetics. I guess
Speaker 1: it's definitely sleeker, and it's the most in action movie
Speaker 1: cares about being at least American. It's the most an
Speaker 1: American action movie cares about being a pretty movie. It's
Speaker 1: very pretty. Well, that's something I want to touch on,
Speaker 1: just kind of in general, is action movie tropes and
Speaker 1: trends and how the John Wick franchise participates in those
Speaker 1: or doesn't, which we can kind of look at via
Speaker 1: John Wicks allies and adversaries and ask are any of
Speaker 1: them women? Well, let's take a look. So if women
Speaker 1: are in action movies, there are some common tropes that
Speaker 1: you'll see, and they're usually quite reductive. So I'm just
Speaker 1: speaking generally here, but I have a list of tropes.
Speaker 1: Bear with me. One trope is that women are not
Speaker 1: allowed to engage in the action or the fighting. They
Speaker 1: are damseled, their character isn't a trained fighter, they're left
Speaker 1: behind for some reason, or they're ejected out of the
Speaker 1: action for whatever reason. The implication of this often being
Speaker 1: women are too delicate to fight. Combat is a man's game,
Speaker 1: or another big hope, which is that women are the
Speaker 1: prize to be won by the male hero. So a
Speaker 1: woman in an action movie is often just there to
Speaker 1: be the love interest of the action hero. He will
Speaker 1: defeat the villain and save the day, and then the
Speaker 1: woman is his prize. She is usually given very little
Speaker 1: characterization and personality. She is just a hot lady by
Speaker 1: western beauty standards and is basically a trophy. And that
Speaker 1: is one of the more I think interesting subversions of
Speaker 1: John Wick is that, like he is not a hypersexual character, right,
Speaker 1: even though people grow hypersexual thinking about him. Everyone's because
Speaker 1: really hot, Yeah, he's really hot in this movie. It's
Speaker 1: like it's impossible for anyone to witness him and not
Speaker 1: be like Ouga. But let's fucking go, Yes, the James
Speaker 1: Cameron Ouga starts going off. But yeah, I did think
Speaker 1: it was I mean, because I mean, and I was
Speaker 1: like reading up like a bunch of you know, kind
Speaker 1: of comparative studies of like how John Wick kind of
Speaker 1: squares with other action heroes. And I know that you
Speaker 1: and Vanessa no far more about this than I do.
Speaker 1: But even like just thinking of like your classic action hero,
Speaker 1: like your your James Bonds, You're like on Claude van
Speaker 1: Dam's cruise, it's not even out of the question to
Speaker 1: have a dead wife situation, which I think is one
Speaker 1: of the trips that this movie doesn't really do very
Speaker 1: much with. But like it's not even that that is unique,
Speaker 1: it's more just that like it's almost I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's so assumed that an action hero is horny, horny,
Speaker 1: horny horny, and that's just not on his mind. He's
Speaker 1: going through a lot right now, you guys. He's still grieving.
Speaker 1: He's not looking to date right now exactly. He's oh
Speaker 1: my god, the Riyah messages John Wick would be sending.
Speaker 1: He'd be like, I'm just looking for something and casual, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm only here for friends all it's on bumble BF. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think John Wick is more likely to be on
Speaker 1: bumble BFF than Riyah. Like I think he's looking for
Speaker 1: like play dates for the dog more than he's like
Speaker 1: looking for an actual date himself. Definitely, Oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: he's showing up to Bumble BF dates being like, there's
Speaker 1: one rule, don't fall in love with me, and it's impossible.
Speaker 1: And if anyone knows about rules, it's everyone in the
Speaker 1: Assassin society, the Mario coins. It's all a thing. But
Speaker 1: miss Perkins doesn't give a shit because what does her
Speaker 1: main personality trait? Money? It's the first thing out of
Speaker 1: his mouth where he's like, I thought she didn't get
Speaker 1: out of bed for anything less than like whatever the
Speaker 1: amount that he said it was. Perkins has one thing
Speaker 1: on her mind, and it's money, and it's making the
Speaker 1: absolute most of it possible. He's a capitalist. I love
Speaker 1: that there's no like hidden sexual tension between the two
Speaker 1: of them is she wants to get paid, and she's
Speaker 1: gonna get paid by gilling John Wick, right. So this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that'll play into some of these other tropes I'm
Speaker 1: gonna unpack here. One is if women are allowed to fight,
Speaker 1: they are only allowed to fight other women, where women
Speaker 1: on the good guy's side fight the women on the
Speaker 1: bad guy's side, but men and women don't fight each other.
Speaker 1: That's not something that takes place in this franchise. Another
Speaker 1: trope will be that women are allowed to fight, but
Speaker 1: the fight choreography will be heavily sexualized. We've talked about
Speaker 1: the pussy slam a million times on the podcast, where
Speaker 1: a woman wraps her legs around a guy's face or
Speaker 1: the crotches. Right, there are the alternative of like saying
Speaker 1: one Quippi line and getting one kick in during the fight, right,
Speaker 1: everyone goes, whoa broking kick? So there's that trope. There's
Speaker 1: the just women are used as sexy set dressing trope
Speaker 1: where because the target audience this movie is not impervious too,
Speaker 1: it's not but it's not egregious. I would say, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a particularly bad offender, but there
Speaker 1: are I mean, there's this movie's definitely got some tropes
Speaker 1: going on. Oh yes, for sure. Yeah. And then another
Speaker 1: trope that we see in action movies is that women
Speaker 1: will get tangled up in the action and then are
Speaker 1: brutalized as a result. And often that brutalization is something
Speaker 1: that the movie really like revels in and exploits, and
Speaker 1: it treats it like it's part of this spectacle. I
Speaker 1: would say that the John Wick franchise generally avoids most
Speaker 1: of these tropes. Not entirely. But again, like as far
Speaker 1: as action movie franchises go, John Wick is doing a
Speaker 1: lot better in these regards because some of the assassins
Speaker 1: are women and they do fight John or fight alongside him,
Speaker 1: like we see Halle Berry do in the third movie.
Speaker 1: She has too two dogs and she has two dogs. Yeah, okay, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: they both live. Okay, I'm so I'm sold on three. Um.
Speaker 1: In the john Wick franchise, women are not brutalized in
Speaker 1: a way that feels exploitative. If a woman dies, it
Speaker 1: just feels like an assassin dying. Yeah, it's it's an
Speaker 1: even play playing ground for who gets marked. Right. Women
Speaker 1: are not framed as the prize to be one because
Speaker 1: John Wick never has a love of interest. As we say,
Speaker 1: he only loves his dead wife. Um, which is something
Speaker 1: will unpack further later. Yeah, it's like the guys. The
Speaker 1: movie starts with a double fridging. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it's true justice for Daisy, Justice for Daisy. And the
Speaker 1: women as set dressing. There is some of that, especially
Speaker 1: in the first movie. There is some cinematography that lingers
Speaker 1: on like a woman's butt, but this doesn't really happen
Speaker 1: in which is the later installments I noticed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm not even like, you know, opposed to
Speaker 1: like they're being hot ladies in a movie. I think
Speaker 1: it's just more I don't know, I mean, and I
Speaker 1: can only speak to the first one, right, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to hear what you both think about it,
Speaker 1: because starting with the Double Fridging, I was just like, okay,
Speaker 1: But I'm excited to talk about miss Perkins in particular
Speaker 1: because Vanessa, I think you've already said so many like
Speaker 1: really smart things about what she represents and the tropes
Speaker 1: that she avoids, and then I feel like there's other
Speaker 1: elements that are kind of unavoidable because she's the only
Speaker 1: woman who is an assassin, and so I feel like
Speaker 1: there's stuff that automatically ends up sort of projected onto her,
Speaker 1: and like she dies in such a brutal way and
Speaker 1: she's like so dishonorable, and I like that as a character.
Speaker 1: And I also because she's the only woman, it just
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I don't even think that the
Speaker 1: movie is like trying to say anything broad but because
Speaker 1: she's the only person who's not a sis man who
Speaker 1: like in this profession, it feels that way at times.
Speaker 1: Does that make any sense? Now, I get what you mean.
Speaker 1: I enjoy that she just gets to be a straight
Speaker 1: up villain, yeah, because I feel like any other movie
Speaker 1: would have taken a character like her and made her
Speaker 1: a very like sexualized villain, Like it's very easy to do,
Speaker 1: especially because she's just like a very attractive actress, but
Speaker 1: also given her like some kind of like mysterious connection
Speaker 1: to John And I like that in this universe she
Speaker 1: gets to just exist as somebody's that's completely looking out
Speaker 1: for herself, which is literally what every assassin is there for.
Speaker 1: And I do feel like her dispatching is brutal, but
Speaker 1: I think it's justified because of the way, because of
Speaker 1: the way specifically, like the rules of the Continental have
Speaker 1: been teased to like something like there is something that
Speaker 1: will happen to you if you break these rules. I
Speaker 1: feel like the movie does a good enough job of
Speaker 1: like building up and seating like there's a really really
Speaker 1: good reason you don't break this rule. And her death
Speaker 1: could have easily been very unceremonious, and the fact that
Speaker 1: there was like some ceremony to it very much was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Perkins was a formidable opponent. She's not going to be
Speaker 1: felled easily by one guy. She's not going to be
Speaker 1: felled easily like one guy. She stabbed him in through
Speaker 1: the face of the pillow. You're gonna need a team
Speaker 1: of people to take down Miss Perkins, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's something that you don't really get in action movies,
Speaker 1: where a female character is someone that is so formidable
Speaker 1: that you need to call in an entire ass crew
Speaker 1: to take out. Right. I mean that I totally agree
Speaker 1: with you. I think it's just more of my thing
Speaker 1: is like I wish that there were like the two
Speaker 1: women that we get to know in the first movie. Well,
Speaker 1: the one woman we get to know in the first
Speaker 1: movie is Miss Perkins. Yeah. And then again it's we've
Speaker 1: had like this commversation and almost every genre we've ever
Speaker 1: covered where it's like, well, if there were more women around,
Speaker 1: it would feel less. Yeah, whatever, when you don't have
Speaker 1: to be a monolith, when there's more than one, one
Speaker 1: person doesn't have to be the goddamn monolith, and like
Speaker 1: the end all be all for like what it means
Speaker 1: for that marginalized community, even when we're not trying to
Speaker 1: make a monolith when you only put one in. Congratulations
Speaker 1: you made a monolith, right right, You're like, okay, you
Speaker 1: can be evil villain or dead wife dot MP four.
Speaker 1: And those are like the two flavors of women that
Speaker 1: we meet in this movie. I think that's why I
Speaker 1: like the third one so much, is you start to
Speaker 1: see the different flavors of complicated women that exists in
Speaker 1: this universe. And I feel like with every movie they
Speaker 1: were like, all right, we're adding more. You win, you win,
Speaker 1: We're adding more. It's true. And because so the first movie, yes,
Speaker 1: basically just has one living female character. So even though
Speaker 1: this franchise generally avoids a lot of these like reductive
Speaker 1: tropes as far as action movie tropes go, it's still
Speaker 1: a very male dominated franchise. And even just looking at
Speaker 1: like John wicks allies, they are mostly men. And it's
Speaker 1: not until the third movie that he has like multiple
Speaker 1: allies who are women. Up until that point, it's just
Speaker 1: like Willem Dafoe, John Logizamo, the Concierge, Winston the Doctor,
Speaker 1: the King of the Bowery, and the bartender is a woman.
Speaker 1: Oh she is in a scene that lasts for like
Speaker 1: two minutes. Maybe she gets a name, right, he does
Speaker 1: get a name, yes, and it does have like John Wick,
Speaker 1: you are awesome. She does say something that's worth touching
Speaker 1: on in this movie, which is that he is vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and I want to unpack that further later. But sure,
Speaker 1: but she is. I wouldn't say she's like a character though, No,
Speaker 1: she's more like an NPC in a video game. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, okay, we need plot information. But does
Speaker 1: she ever come back? No? Yeah, okay, oops by sea.
Speaker 1: So yeah, make no mistake, this is a very male
Speaker 1: dominated franchise and this is something just worth mentioning that.
Speaker 1: And we've had this discussion here and there when talking
Speaker 1: about different action movies. But there's always this question, at
Speaker 1: least that I'm thinking of of, like what does a
Speaker 1: feminist fight scene in an action movie look like? Does
Speaker 1: such a thing exist? Or like what does gender parody
Speaker 1: in a fight scene look like? Especially because there is
Speaker 1: a long history in the real world of men inflicting
Speaker 1: violence against women and men exerting physical power over women
Speaker 1: because the patriarchy conditions men to be aggressive and to
Speaker 1: value physical strength and to resolve conflict through violence. So like,
Speaker 1: with that context, when you examine action movie violence and
Speaker 1: women's participation in that or lack of participation in that,
Speaker 1: Like how that float? Do you? It's yeah, I have
Speaker 1: that fight scene. As soon as you said it, I
Speaker 1: was like, I know exactly what it is. It's from
Speaker 1: a movie called Writing Wrongs, which is directed by Unbo,
Speaker 1: who's like one of like the end alb all for
Speaker 1: like Kung fu movies. Now. The actress is Cynthia Rothrock.
Speaker 1: Cynthia Rothrock is maybe one of the greatest female action
Speaker 1: stars that has ever lived. She performed mostly in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong because the US was not ready for her, and
Speaker 1: the US did not make roles in action movies for
Speaker 1: women like Cynthia Rothrock, so Hong Kong was one of
Speaker 1: the few places that could like appreciate a woman of
Speaker 1: her caliber and skill. She's in a scene with another
Speaker 1: stage fighting actress named Karen Shepherd and if you want, oh,
Speaker 1: actually I have two scenes for this if you want
Speaker 1: like feminists, this is what women look like when they're
Speaker 1: fighting women and there's nothing like sexualized about it, and
Speaker 1: it very much treats them as formidable. You have Karen
Speaker 1: Shepherd and Cythia Rothrock fighting each other in writing wrongs.
Speaker 1: Please look it up. One of them uses their belt
Speaker 1: like a goddamn lasso. It's fucking crazy. It is one
Speaker 1: of the most It is one of the most incredible
Speaker 1: on screen fights grace to screen. And then the other
Speaker 1: one is a scene between three women and it's one
Speaker 1: of the longest fight scenes in the movie in a
Speaker 1: movie directed by Timo Tjanto called The Night Comes for
Speaker 1: Us and Julia Estella is a former ballerina that learned
Speaker 1: how to on screen fight for this movie and she
Speaker 1: is outstanding and fighting to lesbian lover villains great and
Speaker 1: it is this extended, gory, wild fight scene that is
Speaker 1: so good. So those are if you're looking for fight
Speaker 1: scenes between women that actually have like a lens that
Speaker 1: isn't like sexualizing them and treats them as formidable. Look
Speaker 1: up those two scenes. They are outstanding. Okay, Oh I'm
Speaker 1: so well, we'll link that in the description slash. I'm
Speaker 1: going to watch it the second we finished recording, because
Speaker 1: that's very exciting to me. Not Rocks. I always go
Speaker 1: to the Charlie Starren Tom Hardy the first sight fight
Speaker 1: scene that they engage in in Mad Max Fury Road.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it feels like I don't know, it feels
Speaker 1: like gender parodies as far as like action fight scene
Speaker 1: with a man fighting a woman. It's definitely tricky, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like I mean, I almost feel like for
Speaker 1: me again, this is like not my genre, but it
Speaker 1: feels like a you know it when you see it
Speaker 1: kind of situation, right, because it is like, especially when
Speaker 1: it's like a sis man fighting any marginalized group like
Speaker 1: that is not another sis man. Like I understand why.
Speaker 1: It's like a historically loaded thing to be and I
Speaker 1: think for a long time in movies they would just
Speaker 1: instead choose to not depict it because you just didn't
Speaker 1: at least in American movies, it just seemed like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really know how to handle this, so we're
Speaker 1: just not going to do it and act like this
Speaker 1: never and like sort of in an unintentional way, I
Speaker 1: act like this never happens in the world, right, And
Speaker 1: I like that there is franchises like john Wick and
Speaker 1: others in the past, maybe like twenty years where it's
Speaker 1: like you do see you you see movies not shying
Speaker 1: away because it is like even if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to depict you know, a man beating
Speaker 1: the shit out of a woman. That happens a lot
Speaker 1: in the real world. And like, but but then in
Speaker 1: doing that, you are like sidelining huge groups of people
Speaker 1: who deserve to be seen in action movies as well.
Speaker 1: It just shouldn't be separated from fighting. Keanu reeves like,
Speaker 1: everyone should get a chance to fight this man, and
Speaker 1: I generally, I mean in this way it again, you
Speaker 1: really do have miss Perkins. Yeah, but I like that
Speaker 1: she gets a really solid fucking fight scene where you
Speaker 1: see what she can do. And I don't know if,
Speaker 1: like in my brain, I was like, well, you know
Speaker 1: when you see it, and that felt like a fight
Speaker 1: that felt like it was treated like a fight between
Speaker 1: two formidable assassins in a way that wasn't super gendered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why I wanted to watch the other two
Speaker 1: films of the franchise to see if more women were
Speaker 1: included or you know, like what if any evolution there
Speaker 1: was there. And it feels a little slow. But by
Speaker 1: the third movie there like you do have halle Berry
Speaker 1: in a very extended fight scene where she is fighting
Speaker 1: alongside John Wick. Because she's an ally, she holds her
Speaker 1: own she survives. Yeah, she's not killed Ruby Rose, because
Speaker 1: in the second movie, john Wick fights Ruby Rose's character
Speaker 1: toward the end. Again, it's like a drawn out scene,
Speaker 1: like there's it's because a lot of him fighting someone
Speaker 1: is just him shooting them in the head and then
Speaker 1: they're dead. So I appreciate that the scenes that are
Speaker 1: some of the more extended, like choreographed fight scenes where
Speaker 1: he's fighting the same person for a while, tend to
Speaker 1: be with the one woman in the movie. It is
Speaker 1: cool that, like even just based on hearing how subsequent
Speaker 1: john Wick adaptations have gone in terms of including women,
Speaker 1: and how it seems like based on the trailer for
Speaker 1: the fourth movie, that that is going to be even
Speaker 1: more so in the next installment. It seems like it's
Speaker 1: a general upward trajectory and this is all happening in
Speaker 1: the last ten years. Like that is pretty fucking cool.
Speaker 1: It makes me very excited for the action genre because like, honestly,
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, it feels like it's why
Speaker 1: A Mortal Kombat pissed me off so much, because I
Speaker 1: was like, you picked so many nonfighting actresses and we
Speaker 1: actually have like the most on screen like female fighters
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, and we've had a really
Speaker 1: long time, like again not counting Hong Kong because again
Speaker 1: so many, but like it's frustrating whenever I see, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm all for like an actress getting a role,
Speaker 1: but whenever I see like an actress that can't fight
Speaker 1: being selected for something now, and I'm like, do you
Speaker 1: know how many women are trained to do this? Like
Speaker 1: it was something that I would see happen a lot,
Speaker 1: specifically with Zoe Bell in the late nineties and early
Speaker 1: two thousands, where she was like always the stunt double
Speaker 1: but never the on screen fighter, like she was Uma
Speaker 1: Thurman's stunt double and kill Bill, and she actually like
Speaker 1: finally got to be on screen as herself in the
Speaker 1: Grindhouse double feature and then most recently in Malignant in
Speaker 1: one of the prison scenes. And I'm also very much
Speaker 1: for like bringing the women that have only exist as
Speaker 1: like doubles in the background to the foreground and we're
Speaker 1: finally seeing like more of that happening now, which is incredible.
Speaker 1: Actually highly recommend a movie called Fury Start. It's Vietnamese
Speaker 1: starring an actress named Veronica No It's if taken actually
Speaker 1: was like good at fighting her her daughter gets taken
Speaker 1: so she's like on a mission to get her daughter back,
Speaker 1: and it's just her like crushing dudes and trying to
Speaker 1: find her daughter on a motorcycle. It's oh, it's so good.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's amazing. I would love to see good
Speaker 1: taken with women. Yeah, instead of like a million cuts
Speaker 1: to get an old man over a fence and to
Speaker 1: convince me that he can actually fight, it's Veronica know
Speaker 1: who like can fight and is just demolishing nice. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go back to um to Miss
Speaker 1: Perkins a little more because she's she's not in a
Speaker 1: ton Oh so I just I wrote down very twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen hairstyle. Oh yeah, where you're like it's just a
Speaker 1: little too black hair on a clearly blond woman. But
Speaker 1: that was twenty fourteen, that was happening. We were there,
Speaker 1: We did it, but we did it greatly. But I
Speaker 1: do like that, Yeah, she was put in again. It
Speaker 1: feels kind of weird to be like, wow, this movie
Speaker 1: could have really sexualized this character at so many points
Speaker 1: and doesn't. Yay movie, But I do think it is
Speaker 1: like relevant where we get a pretty solid fight scene
Speaker 1: between her and John Wick and then she sort of
Speaker 1: left in the custody of this guy Harry, which is
Speaker 1: a classic Keanu Reeves moment where he's caught doing something
Speaker 1: horrible and he's like, oh, hey, Harry, and like everyone
Speaker 1: loves John Wicks so much, and he's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: oh hey, John Wick. What can I do to help?
Speaker 1: Got a Mario coin for me? And John Wicks? Like,
Speaker 1: I sure do. And again, I feel like in a
Speaker 1: lesser movie, or even a movie that maybe came out
Speaker 1: ten years before this, the scene between Harry and Miss
Speaker 1: Perkins would have had a different dynamic in terms of
Speaker 1: like sexualizing her or like making it seem like because
Speaker 1: the way that again, I think it's like the dynamic
Speaker 1: between Harry and Miss Perkins is more what you were
Speaker 1: describing earlier than us about like Old Guard. Yeah, New
Speaker 1: Guard is very much what's in place where Harry's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're fucking around with the rules of the Continental.
Speaker 1: I can't be having that, and I want my Mario
Speaker 1: coin and she's like, well, jokes on you, I just
Speaker 1: want Mario coins. I think that that's the actual dialogue
Speaker 1: in the scene that was verbad, the exact dial Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then what happens is that she escapes because again,
Speaker 1: she's skilled, she's a formidable opponent, she escapes from her handcuffs,
Speaker 1: she does murder Harry. I like Harry. I like Harry
Speaker 1: a lot. It made me sad. I was sad to
Speaker 1: see him go. I wish that we I wish I
Speaker 1: knew a little more about I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: part of John Wicks thing is his mystique, but I'm like, woh,
Speaker 1: what what did you What did you and Harry get
Speaker 1: into back in the day. Yeah, just give me it,
Speaker 1: Just give me a little something, give me a little
Speaker 1: taste of what you guys did once. I feel like
Speaker 1: we need a spin off series. But um would watch
Speaker 1: it's coming. Oh yeah, it isn't Ballerina, right, it's called
Speaker 1: The Continental, I think. So it's going to be specifically
Speaker 1: about the Continental, and it's going to be a prequel.
Speaker 1: And I can't hear that title without remembering that SNL
Speaker 1: series of sketches with Christopher Walkin. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? No? No, he would be the Christopher
Speaker 1: Walkin played this like ladies man, or he would like
Speaker 1: try to be a ladies man, but then he would
Speaker 1: just like end up insulting the person he was trying
Speaker 1: to seduce, but you never saw You didn't see her
Speaker 1: ever because the camera was like her point of view,
Speaker 1: and then he would just like see him like being
Speaker 1: a buffoon and then like drinks being thrown in his
Speaker 1: face and stuff. But it was called The Continental and
Speaker 1: it had this like weird intonation where it was just
Speaker 1: like the Continental. No. I was like, okay, well link
Speaker 1: to that too, there's all they're okay. I was like,
Speaker 1: have I lost it? Um? Ballerina is a movie that's
Speaker 1: coming out in the John Wick universe. It's filming right now.
Speaker 1: It takes place between John Wick three and John Wick four,
Speaker 1: whoa ballerina assassin Rooney the murderers of her family. Oh
Speaker 1: you john Wick three heads, we'll know what that means.
Speaker 1: But I guess that the character was played by an
Speaker 1: actor named Unity Phelan, so an actual ballet dancer. I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, because John Wick's backstory is that he was
Speaker 1: a ballerina. Hold on what yeah? Oh right, okay, So
Speaker 1: something I left out of the John Wick three recapa.
Speaker 1: See that's how you get me to care about John Wynn.
Speaker 1: It was black swan, Are you joking? I was? I
Speaker 1: think misunderstood what was happening, So he seeks refuge in
Speaker 1: this theater, like this ballet theater where Angelica Houston. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should not have left her out, Sorry about it.
Speaker 1: She's in. She's in Ballerina as well. Yeah, it's so,
Speaker 1: but they did. The only difference is they recast the
Speaker 1: ballerina as on a da armis, which I'm like, does
Speaker 1: let the ballerina be the bo whatever. So he had
Speaker 1: his training at this theater and she's his kind of
Speaker 1: like mother figure almost. I don't know enough about his backstory,
Speaker 1: but I thought that, like she was running a ballet
Speaker 1: school and an assassin school. Like I just assumed that
Speaker 1: he learned how to be an assassin at this ballet school.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I was thinking. Yeah, he became
Speaker 1: a ballet assassin like Vanessa with he a ballerina. Yeah
Speaker 1: he danced. Oh he was a ballet assassin. This isn't
Speaker 1: john Wick three. Yeah, I honestly am prepared to skip
Speaker 1: john Wick two and go straight to three and then
Speaker 1: it's fine. Three is my favorite of the franchise, honestly, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I was like, halle Berry has two dogs and
Speaker 1: Keanu Reeves is a ballerina like that's something that I
Speaker 1: would watch no matter the tone, no matter the year,
Speaker 1: no matter like that's a timeless concept. I'll give you
Speaker 1: my favorite fun piece of trivia about the third movie.
Speaker 1: All of the scenes with the dogs in Morocco took
Speaker 1: a goddamn eternity because there were so many feral cats
Speaker 1: in the area that the dogs were constantly like losing
Speaker 1: their shit. So filming with the dogs took a really
Speaker 1: long time because of just like there were people assigned
Speaker 1: to just shoot away feral cats from the scene because
Speaker 1: like the dogs just kept getting distracted by like cats
Speaker 1: swarming them. That does sound like the sort of anecdote
Speaker 1: that ends with like and then Keanu Reeves adopted all
Speaker 1: was he is. So this has nothing to really do
Speaker 1: with Bechtel cast discussion, but I thought that this was
Speaker 1: like just I was reading about how this movie kind
Speaker 1: of came to be. This movie was like written by
Speaker 1: a writer named Derek Colestad who had been at it forever,
Speaker 1: had not had like written a million screenplays no one
Speaker 1: had really bitten, and then eventually sold this movie. But
Speaker 1: apparently he has an aunt who is like a popular
Speaker 1: historical fiction author named Lorie Wick. And that's why John Wick.
Speaker 1: It's John Wick. It's a little nod to his more
Speaker 1: successful aunt. I love that. So that's fun. Wow, a
Speaker 1: good piece of trivia. Thank you so much. Should we
Speaker 1: unpack the dead his wife? Oh, the dead wife of
Speaker 1: it all? The dead wife of it all? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I don't really know how much I
Speaker 1: have to say about it outside. I'm surprised that they
Speaker 1: went in so hard on it. I mean, like it
Speaker 1: is kind of like, even in twenty fourteen, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's such a known trope that people would like
Speaker 1: even talk about then, like the term fridging existed by
Speaker 1: that point. But I don't know. I mean, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I guess in the movie's defense, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you could classify that as fridging because she dies of
Speaker 1: an illness and not a brutal like murder. I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess I think of fridging for I have, like
Speaker 1: I use a more loose version of it, where it's like,
Speaker 1: if a woman needs to die for the plot to begin,
Speaker 1: that's a fridge to me. I mean, I guess it's like,
Speaker 1: she doesn't die in a violent way, but the movie
Speaker 1: doesn't start until she's dead. Yeah right, I mean, and yes,
Speaker 1: there is the classic action movie trope of a woman
Speaker 1: existing in the world of this story, usually a wife, girlfriend,
Speaker 1: or daughter. Sometimes she's alive, sometimes she's dead. But the
Speaker 1: function of that character is to be motivation for the
Speaker 1: male hero. We've talked about it at a million times, yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes motivation for the villain. But in this case
Speaker 1: it's it's John Wick's wife who died of an illness.
Speaker 1: My wife, my dadda, my wife, my daughter. It's like
Speaker 1: time what I think is more interesting about this? And
Speaker 1: again there's still very much this trope at play, but
Speaker 1: it makes it so that the John Wick character is
Speaker 1: compared to other action movie heroes, who in most franchises
Speaker 1: are sis head men who are extremely agro and this
Speaker 1: whole like, oh, here's the ideal quote unquote version of
Speaker 1: what a man should be, and this is how to
Speaker 1: be cool, and you're supposed to suppress your emotions and
Speaker 1: you're supposed to disrespect women and all this stuff. John
Speaker 1: Wick doesn't. It's cements him as a wife guy, right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's which is like I don't know, he's just
Speaker 1: he's more vulnerable than his like, you know, male hero
Speaker 1: action counterparts. Is he dealing with his emotions in the
Speaker 1: healthiest way. I would say no, because he's murdering a
Speaker 1: lot of people. But John, Yeah, you're right, but like
Speaker 1: his grief is and he's like actively trying to grieve,
Speaker 1: and he he's so attached to the dog because that
Speaker 1: was a way for him to experience grief and his
Speaker 1: support animal, right exactly, they killed the support animal. I'm like,
Speaker 1: they two, that's yeah. So I don't know that there's
Speaker 1: just like something soft about old John. He's a ballerina
Speaker 1: wife guy and the fact that he was a ballerina
Speaker 1: the whole time twist of the century. Like I I
Speaker 1: wonder if Helen knew that side of him, his ballet side.
Speaker 1: Um also did she know? I mean, I just have
Speaker 1: Maybe these are answered in subsequent installments, but like speaking
Speaker 1: to your point, I do think that like that is
Speaker 1: like a cool subversion on the action hero that this
Speaker 1: movie does, is like that they don't shy away from
Speaker 1: the grief. And it's like, well, if you're going to
Speaker 1: kill off the wife for the action to begin, don't
Speaker 1: just forget about her immediately or just you know, invoke
Speaker 1: her name or her memory when it's like plot convenient
Speaker 1: basically like it does you do feel her presence in
Speaker 1: every decision that he makes, and like in his behavior
Speaker 1: towards other people, Like he's I think almost like like
Speaker 1: as actively grieving as I've ever seen like a character
Speaker 1: where this trope is at play, Yeah, grieving. Even other
Speaker 1: characters are like aware of that, right, everyone knows that
Speaker 1: he lost his wife, and I think that, I mean,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. And again it's like the element of
Speaker 1: mystery is so important to this character because the more
Speaker 1: mysteries about John Wick, the more John Wick movies you get,
Speaker 1: it's all it's all connected and all that stuff for me.
Speaker 1: But I was I was just like, oh, I wish
Speaker 1: that like you got a little like even just to
Speaker 1: like push the subversion of those decisions a little more,
Speaker 1: just like some sort of indication of like did Helen
Speaker 1: know that he was an assassin? Did Helen know that
Speaker 1: he was a ballerina? Was their relationship built on a
Speaker 1: bed of lies? What is one thing about her that
Speaker 1: isn't that she was sick and then died, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: loved John Wick so much? Like there, I feel like
Speaker 1: you can retain the like mysterious elements of the character
Speaker 1: and still like, give her some characterization, Yeah, give her something.
Speaker 1: Knowing more about Helen doesn't make us have to know
Speaker 1: more about John Wick exactly exactly what was their relationship,
Speaker 1: like even if it was fucking boring, Like, yeah, us
Speaker 1: knowing what Helen's job was, or like how they met,
Speaker 1: or just or something about her, you know, God forbid
Speaker 1: outside of that relationship would have I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it just would. It would have helped every I mean,
Speaker 1: like we always say in these conversations, it would have
Speaker 1: helped everything because it if you know why he loved
Speaker 1: her so much, that makes you feel for John wickmore.
Speaker 1: It makes you understand why he like quit his entire
Speaker 1: lifestyle for her, right right? Like what was what was
Speaker 1: so fucking I mean, I believe that this woman who
Speaker 1: doesn't exist was awesome, but like, what was so awesome
Speaker 1: about her that you bailed on your whole life to
Speaker 1: hang out with her? Good questions? But the movie doesn't
Speaker 1: care enough about her? Do you find out more about
Speaker 1: her in subsequent installments? No, no, come on tragically, which
Speaker 1: I wish were. I wonder if we're going to get
Speaker 1: more on the in four, But I guess I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna have to wait until I have that two hours
Speaker 1: in fifteen forty nine minutes to spare. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of time. I also thought it was funny that they
Speaker 1: like Bridgie A. Moynihand's like a very like a pretty
Speaker 1: successful actor to put in the part of deadwife dot
Speaker 1: MP four. I was kind of like, what, you think
Speaker 1: that she's gonna be doing more? You would think, but
Speaker 1: I see that she's credited in all a Hole. That's
Speaker 1: so wait, that's actually so funny. Okay, she's credited in
Speaker 1: john Wick, in john Wick chapter two, In john Wick
Speaker 1: three and four, she's credited as Helen Wick parentheses photo.
Speaker 1: So they probably tend to venmo her seven hundred dollars. Oh,
Speaker 1: because you don't even get flashbacks. Probably it's right, you
Speaker 1: don't even get dot she is now dot jpeg. She's
Speaker 1: been somehow cast into an even smaller role dead wife
Speaker 1: dot jpeg, an even smaller file. Yeah, brutally compressed justice
Speaker 1: for come on, that sucks truly. Yeah. Something I want
Speaker 1: to touch on is gun violence. Yes, in American action movies.
Speaker 1: This is something that I don't think we've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about on the show, but gun violence in American
Speaker 1: action movies is very pervasive, and it's rare to have
Speaker 1: an action movie from the US that does not have
Speaker 1: a lot of gun violence in it. We are not
Speaker 1: experts on this topic of like, oh, is it that
Speaker 1: guns are so readily available in the US and that's
Speaker 1: why they're so prevalent in our media and in action
Speaker 1: movies in particular, just because it's like tragically a part
Speaker 1: of American culture. Is it that the pervasiveness of gun
Speaker 1: violence in American media? Does that contribute to actual gun
Speaker 1: violence in our culture because people are famously influenced by
Speaker 1: the media they consume. Is it both? Like what's the
Speaker 1: causation slash correlation happening here? Again, we're not experts. It's
Speaker 1: a much larger conversation that we can't really cover in
Speaker 1: the span of a single little episode. But I just
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch on it because again, we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about it really before. And I noticed that as
Speaker 1: a long time consumer of American action movies, excessive gun
Speaker 1: violence in these movies has just been so normalized that
Speaker 1: I have gotten to the point where I don't even
Speaker 1: notice this alarming trend of how pervasive it is. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, that's how action movies are well, I
Speaker 1: guess finish. That's a question that I have for you
Speaker 1: because you do watch so many international action movies, like
Speaker 1: is this a uniquely American thing? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about how violence is sort of portrayed across the genre.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's uniquely American because it is something
Speaker 1: that I see across like the international borders of action.
Speaker 1: I'd say, at least for John Wicks specifically, a lot
Speaker 1: of its influence is specifically taken from John Wu because
Speaker 1: the gun violence in John Wicks specifically isn't like typically
Speaker 1: American action movies when it handles gun violence, it's just
Speaker 1: very much like a very like bullet spray, a hold gun,
Speaker 1: infinite bullet kind of thing. The John Wick taking from
Speaker 1: John wu influence of gun violence is it treats it
Speaker 1: almost like an extension of the arm if you if
Speaker 1: you notice in John movies versus other American action movies,
Speaker 1: it's treated almost like it's an extension of like a
Speaker 1: punch in it of itself to where it's it's part
Speaker 1: of the choreography, and usually American like gun violence doesn't
Speaker 1: include guns as part of the choreography unless it was,
Speaker 1: like John Wu with his very like hyperstylized version of it.
Speaker 1: But it is something that I see that isn't so
Speaker 1: much just like if you watch like The Raid or
Speaker 1: The Raid too, it's very much pervasive through it, even
Speaker 1: though there's like a lot of like hand to hand
Speaker 1: combat in it. So I wouldn't say it's intrinsic to Americans,
Speaker 1: but I will say, especially in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: we did it more okay, because that is I mean,
Speaker 1: like I again, I because that's like it's not my
Speaker 1: genre and I just come to expect it. But there
Speaker 1: were I mean some I think maybe it is like
Speaker 1: a uniquely American conversation because there is such an issue
Speaker 1: with gun violence in America where I feel like there
Speaker 1: is like this genre is especially right now and in
Speaker 1: the last ten years, going to affect people a little differently.
Speaker 1: I know that there's a huge, huge, huge debate on yeah,
Speaker 1: the causation and all this stuff, and that I've certainly
Speaker 1: read a lot saying like, you know, that is like
Speaker 1: to say that the presence of guns in media will
Speaker 1: turn you into like a murderous like you know, like
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a way overblown, far more nuanced
Speaker 1: conversation than I've generally seen had about it. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's interesting like bringing your own
Speaker 1: and hearing other people bringing their own sort of experiences
Speaker 1: of gun violence to the table, and like how you're
Speaker 1: able to consume these movies, like because if there's like
Speaker 1: no wrong way to kind of come at it, but
Speaker 1: there are, I mean, and I think for me is
Speaker 1: particularly in the like club scene where people are just
Speaker 1: you know, they're killing each other and it's all very targeted,
Speaker 1: like they're not taking out random people like you do
Speaker 1: see sometimes in action movies. But I think that was
Speaker 1: as close to for this scene, just because of my
Speaker 1: own personal experience of I don't know, like active shooter
Speaker 1: threats in a crowded space. Like you're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: can be a really like sudden and kind of triggering
Speaker 1: thing to see. But yeah, you're right, for sure, it's
Speaker 1: a little more willful. Yeah, Like it's a little more thoughtful.
Speaker 1: It makes it makes an assassination feel more calculated, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that like that sense of just like
Speaker 1: bullet spray catching strays that you might see in like
Speaker 1: a crank movie, right right, Yeah, I never know, I
Speaker 1: don't know it's like never like my favorite thing to see.
Speaker 1: But that's also just because it's like it's just that's
Speaker 1: just a personal preference. I don't know, right, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's ruining the world necessarily, Yeah, right, because for me,
Speaker 1: Like again, I love action movies and I love to
Speaker 1: see a good gun fight in an action movie. But
Speaker 1: in the real world, like I think guns should be
Speaker 1: banned outright. I think we should throw every gun into
Speaker 1: a volcano, like no one should have access to a gun.
Speaker 1: But in movies, I'm like, more fun, fun, I'm having
Speaker 1: a fun time. So it's a paradox, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted to bring it up. I want guns to be
Speaker 1: like dragons. They only exist typical movie fantasy. Yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: I want Andy Serkis to play a gun. I think
Speaker 1: he gets really method about it. He'd be good at it.
Speaker 1: I think he'd have a really fun press junket for
Speaker 1: that one. But I want him to do the gallum
Speaker 1: voice while he's doing it. Oh, the gun has a
Speaker 1: whole lore that you don't see. It's like Babu Frick,
Speaker 1: Like there's like the actor doing Babu Frick had a hole.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, there was a love thing that didn't
Speaker 1: work out for Babu Frick, and you can see that
Speaker 1: in the puppet work. And I'm like, all right, sure,
Speaker 1: thanks Shirley. Hey, bab like bless her heart. I'm the
Speaker 1: only person in the world who remembers the character of
Speaker 1: Babu Frick from Star Wars five hundred. But I'm right
Speaker 1: there with you. I love Babu Frick with all my heart. Hey,
Speaker 1: hey to all my Babu Fri kids out there. I
Speaker 1: also want to just mention the tendency in American action
Speaker 1: movies to make the villains be people from a nationality
Speaker 1: that is not American, Yeah, which this franchise definitely does.
Speaker 1: And again I just speaking to the first one making
Speaker 1: the making the Villain's Rush and felt like action movie
Speaker 1: one oh one writing where you're just like, this movie
Speaker 1: could have come out any time in the last fifty years.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, in a way that like is definitely
Speaker 1: tropy writing oh deeply. So yeah, does anyone have anything
Speaker 1: else to talk about? No? I think I I think
Speaker 1: I completely emptied the cartridge. Wow, Oh I like that
Speaker 1: you see John Wick change the cartridge too or like
Speaker 1: run out of bullets sometimes, Yeah, it's not infinite forever bullets.
Speaker 1: He's no, Like I like that this movie, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess that like of the action movies
Speaker 1: that I've seen, this is like john Wick is not
Speaker 1: my favorite, but I feel like it has a really
Speaker 1: really cool balance of fantastical world elements versus occasional, like
Speaker 1: striking real world elements, like he runs out of bullets.
Speaker 1: Someone doesn't end the scene on a quip and they
Speaker 1: just say, oh, like just like kind of grounding moments
Speaker 1: that you aren't sort of trained to expect in such
Speaker 1: a stylized action movie. Like I really really love those choices.
Speaker 1: They're they're so fundam not having kibble at your house
Speaker 1: because you got a dog yesterday. I'm also like, Helen,
Speaker 1: you didn't send a bag of kibble? Yea, Like think
Speaker 1: it through, babe. You're giving him errands. Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to give a grieving man arrand think about it. And
Speaker 1: that's how this whole thing started. If he had not
Speaker 1: gone out to go get kibble, he would have never
Speaker 1: met up with You, would have never met Joseph, and
Speaker 1: then his dog was still It's look, we can't Helen,
Speaker 1: Helen tell it to the photo and John went before.
Speaker 1: I can't believe she's parentheses photo. That's so dirty that
Speaker 1: I guess she's over it because she's been downgraded to
Speaker 1: a photo. I do want to shout out non binary
Speaker 1: actor Asia Kate Dylan, who plays the adjudicator in John
Speaker 1: Wick three. Nice. The character is never identified as non binary,
Speaker 1: but the actor is. And I think it's just cool
Speaker 1: for an action, a huge action franchise to cast a
Speaker 1: non binary actor in that role and then just like
Speaker 1: have that character just be their existence being normalized within
Speaker 1: the world of the story. Yeah, yeah, which is something
Speaker 1: that very like hetero rigid gender binary action movies generally
Speaker 1: don't do. No, they're too scared of it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, But yeah, I think that's all. My
Speaker 1: cartridge is now also empty. My cartridge is empty as well.
Speaker 1: I guess the last thing I have to say is
Speaker 1: that I, you know, even though we're technically covering the
Speaker 1: first movie in this episode, even in the space of
Speaker 1: this conversation, I've been very heartened and feel good that
Speaker 1: it seems like as this franchise becomes more and more successful,
Speaker 1: it also becomes more and more inclusive, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: And I hope that that like remains sort of a
Speaker 1: precedent in this especially in this like kind of typically
Speaker 1: agro sis male genre in general. Like, it's really fucking
Speaker 1: cool and it continues to set the bar it does,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. And so look, I'm going to see
Speaker 1: John Wick four. It's also na writting a song for it,
Speaker 1: do we know? I hope So I hope we get
Speaker 1: like a Specter style song just for it, and then
Speaker 1: she could win an Oscar I just the arena Sawayama
Speaker 1: to Oscar pipeline. It just feels right to eat out.
Speaker 1: I want to see her live so bad. It's also
Speaker 1: this franchise, I would say, is also pretty inclusive from
Speaker 1: a racial diversity point of view, where totally where it
Speaker 1: doesn't cent her whiteness the way that a lot of
Speaker 1: action movies and action franchises do, which is insane to
Speaker 1: me because they pull from so many, like specifically Asian genres,
Speaker 1: but are scared of casting Asian people. Right. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: we have? We arrived at the Bechtel test portions of
Speaker 1: No way, this damn movie passes. I'm sorry, I know
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It does not pass, but future installments pass
Speaker 1: maybe too, Maybe I think three does it does? Okay?
Speaker 1: I think three passes. I would have to rewatch and
Speaker 1: pay more attention. I was not paying attention. I want
Speaker 1: to believe. I want to believe. Um, but one certainly
Speaker 1: not um. I. You're hard pressed to get two women
Speaker 1: in a room that aren't set dressing correct or or
Speaker 1: terrified victims number three and four or exactly is being
Speaker 1: forced to lead a vault when Keanu Ree's got that boy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot about them. So yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: I mean, featured extras being like. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: is that our nipple scale will really say something about
Speaker 1: the movie, which is our scale of zero to five
Speaker 1: nipples based on looking at the movie through an intersectional
Speaker 1: feminist lens. I'm going to give this two and a
Speaker 1: half nipples a split down the middle because even though
Speaker 1: it subverts a lot of very reductive, harmful tropes when
Speaker 1: it comes to women in action movies, it's just a
Speaker 1: very male franchise. Still, there's no reason why more of
Speaker 1: John Wicks allies and adversaries couldn't be womens non binary characters.
Speaker 1: Since the franchise now has set a precedent for including
Speaker 1: non binary actors, although again with the subsequent sequels it
Speaker 1: is getting more inclusive when it comes to gender. But
Speaker 1: this first movie especially is just one dead wife and
Speaker 1: then one lady assassin and four seconds of a bartender
Speaker 1: right right, and a pretty good you know, I like
Speaker 1: not to undercut miss Perkins. I think that she's like
Speaker 1: a well written character and that you get the same
Speaker 1: amount of background for her as you would get for
Speaker 1: any other assassin in the movie. And I agree with you,
Speaker 1: like what Vanessa is saying earlier, of like she is
Speaker 1: formidable enough to like warrant a ceremonial takeout, like it
Speaker 1: takes whatever a circle full of respected assassins to take
Speaker 1: her out. She is certainly one of them, but yeah,
Speaker 1: she's just kind of the only the only one of them, right.
Speaker 1: And then again, like when you compare John Wick and
Speaker 1: his like vulnerability and his emotional forthcomingness that is present
Speaker 1: in his character far more than your typical hyper masculine,
Speaker 1: hyper agro male action movie hero, it's just an easier
Speaker 1: franchise for me to get behind. Yeah, because of these
Speaker 1: various subversions. So I'll give it two and a half,
Speaker 1: maybe even a three. I'm biased because again, I love
Speaker 1: the genre and I like movies enfranchises that do subvert
Speaker 1: a lot of the harmful things that make this genre
Speaker 1: not so easy to enjoy these days. But John Wick rules.
Speaker 1: I love Keanu Reeves. I love all of the dogs
Speaker 1: the dogs, so that's who I will award my three
Speaker 1: nipples to the dogs and Keanu Reeves. I think I'm
Speaker 1: also three nipple. I think the franchise overall is a
Speaker 1: four nipple for me. The first movie is three nipples
Speaker 1: and miss Perkins is doing most of the heavy lifting
Speaker 1: taking it to the third nipple. I think it would
Speaker 1: have been two two and a half if not for
Speaker 1: miss Perkins, so she brings it to a three for me. Cool.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna be a total kill
Speaker 1: joy and go a two on this one, only because
Speaker 1: I really like the I think Dead Wife dot MP
Speaker 1: four really really got me, and it happens at the
Speaker 1: beginning and end, and I was just like, ah, even
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, this is not awesome. I do. I
Speaker 1: do like miss Perkins. Um, I totally agree with what
Speaker 1: both of you are saying. And also I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit biased against this Sean ref for whatever reason, because
Speaker 1: it scares me and it's loud and it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to pay attention. So yeah, but I love I
Speaker 1: love Beagles, and I do love them. I think mainly
Speaker 1: my two nipples are going for the strength of Miss
Speaker 1: Perkins character and how she is like such a you know,
Speaker 1: she's just an equal, which is not asking for much
Speaker 1: and this movie does do that. And the subversions of
Speaker 1: the john Wick character of like he's not yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not the my wife died, but I'm ready to find
Speaker 1: love today like kind of you know, brain breaking action
Speaker 1: hero we're used to. So uh yeah, I'm gonna go too,
Speaker 1: and I'm giving them both the daisy God, damn it,
Speaker 1: you're back. Her ghost should visit him in john Wick four. Oh,
Speaker 1: I agree. She should have like a really beautiful, like
Speaker 1: Smoker's voice. I imagined her. I have a very buttery,
Speaker 1: raspy voice. Oh. I'm trying to think of who would
Speaker 1: voice her. Miley Cyrus. Oh, I was gonna say, Andy serkis,
Speaker 1: oh my andys Miley Cyrus, Andy serkis you know same Cadence.
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: our that's our john Wick episode. There it is. Vanessa,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming back. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. I had a wonderful time. The five timer
Speaker 1: jacket is in the mail. Heil yes, and come back
Speaker 1: for a sixth time whenever you want. I am more
Speaker 1: than happy to Where can people check out your stuff?
Speaker 1: Follow you online? Plug away, I'm a Ness Guerrero on
Speaker 1: Twitter and S and S Guerrow on Instagram. And then
Speaker 1: I produced a show called ten Minute Power Hour for
Speaker 1: the game Grumps that comes out every other Monday on
Speaker 1: the Grums channel on YouTube. And then every other Friday,
Speaker 1: I host a show called Popcorn and Pixels in which
Speaker 1: we talk about storytelling across video games and movies and
Speaker 1: how a ludo narrative storytelling device might be different from
Speaker 1: milleniear narrative storytelling device, but how they tell similar stories together.
Speaker 1: And I hope that with my co host Emily Jacobson,
Speaker 1: and definitely check it out if you like video games
Speaker 1: and movies cool hell yeah? And you can follow us
Speaker 1: on social media at Bechtel Cast. You can go to
Speaker 1: our Patreon aka Matreon on patreon dot com slash backtel Cast.
Speaker 1: You get two bonus episodes every month, plus access to
Speaker 1: the back catalog of well over one hundred bonus episodes
Speaker 1: and that's all for five dollars sorry, five Assassin coins
Speaker 1: per month, Mario coins, five bodies, way the gold, who knows,
Speaker 1: and you can go. If you want merch, go to
Speaker 1: tepublic dot com, slash v backdel cast and with that,
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I have a good I have a really
Speaker 1: good dismount. Okay, fine, so you do your Sorry. I
Speaker 1: did not mean to interrupt. No, it's fine. Mine would
Speaker 1: have sucked anyway. I was gonna say, hey, Vanessa, Hey, Jamie,
Speaker 1: be seeing you, be seeing you, John, be seeing you.
Speaker 1: Five five