Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy and beast
Speaker 1: start changing it with the cast.
Speaker 2: Jamie, I'm so sorry that shut up, shut up podcast
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 3: Shut up, my camera down't shut up. I know you
Speaker 3: recording it is your false shut up. That's basically the
Speaker 3: movie rights done more or less.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep, Heather, Poor Heather, Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Durante or is
Speaker 2: it truly?
Speaker 3: I have so many thoughts about just the ethics of
Speaker 3: this movie are so wild. I feel like the wildest
Speaker 3: thing to me is being like, no, actors, We're gonna
Speaker 3: use your full government name and then market it as
Speaker 3: if you have died. Died anyways. My name is Jamie
Speaker 3: Loftis for now.
Speaker 2: And this is our podcast where we examine movies through
Speaker 2: an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as
Speaker 2: a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, there's a lot of different versions of the
Speaker 3: Bechdel test. It is a media metric created by queer
Speaker 3: cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally as a one off bit in
Speaker 3: her comic collection Dicks to Watch out For back in
Speaker 3: the eighties, but has since been adopted as a way
Speaker 3: of talking about gender. Is it's portrayed in big cool movies.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of different versions of the test. The
Speaker 3: one we use is this, we require that there be
Speaker 3: two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking to
Speaker 3: each other about something other than a man for two
Speaker 3: lines of dialogue or more.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's so true.
Speaker 3: I forgot to pay attention to it for this movie.
Speaker 3: I think that it does though, right because Mary and
Speaker 3: Heath Mary Brown. Yeah, that's a superpass. All right, Well,
Speaker 3: let's end the episode. So didn't get to speak JK.
Speaker 2: We again. We talk about this from time to time
Speaker 2: that people think our podcast is just talking about whether
Speaker 2: or not a movie passes the Bechdel test.
Speaker 3: And it's my favorite way to find out that someone
Speaker 3: has been lying to me about listening to the podcast,
Speaker 3: which is very funny because it's like, I truly don't
Speaker 3: give a shit if people listen to.
Speaker 2: The show or out, like you can just admit that
Speaker 2: you don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like to imagine I'm like, well, I
Speaker 3: guess you wouldn't like the show if you really thought
Speaker 3: it was us teasing that great mystery apart for the
Speaker 3: better part of two hours. Anyways, you're listening to this,
Speaker 3: you know that's not the case. We are covering the
Speaker 3: Blair Witch project, and we have an incredible, long anticipated
Speaker 3: guest wearing you cannot see, an incredible inappropriate shirt.
Speaker 2: Scary stories to tell in the dark. Our guest is
Speaker 2: the host of the podcast American Hysteria. It's Chelsea Weber Smith. Hello.
Speaker 4: I couldn't be more thrilled to be here and analyze
Speaker 4: this one of my most favorite movies of all time.
Speaker 5: So thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3: Truly, we're so pumped out this is Do you spend
Speaker 3: the whole episode trying to figure out what is so
Speaker 3: American about the Hysteria? Right? Yeah, I'm so glad you
Speaker 3: suggested us doing this movie because it feels so Chelsea
Speaker 3: Webber Smith expanded Universe Coded. I have so many questions
Speaker 3: about how the Blurwitch mythology ties into stuff you've covered
Speaker 3: over the years. I'm just so pumped.
Speaker 4: I've been like turned into some kind of weird, de
Speaker 4: facto blair Witch expert, or at least I like to
Speaker 4: think that. I've gone on a few podcasts talking about
Speaker 4: this movie, and you know, I think eleven year old
Speaker 4: me would be pretty thrilled about that.
Speaker 5: So shout out to the past me.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, tell us all about your relationship with the
Speaker 2: blair Witch Project.
Speaker 5: The blair Witch Project. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was eleven when it came out in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety nine, and I was very much in the
Speaker 4: camp of thinking it was real, and I remember hearing
Speaker 4: about it. I have no idea how I heard about it,
Speaker 4: probably just being on the Internet, and I was obsessed
Speaker 4: with the website, which I'm sure we'll get into, which
Speaker 4: was kind of part of the expanded universe of this movie,
Speaker 4: which is as important as the movie itself is the
Speaker 4: marketing behind it. And you know, my parents were going
Speaker 4: to see it because I come from a very horror
Speaker 4: oriented background and they were pumped to see it, and
Speaker 4: I think they probably knew it was fake at that point,
Speaker 4: but I'm not sure. But I was pissed because they
Speaker 4: were going on a date and not taking me, and
Speaker 4: so I ended up just watching the sci fi documentary
Speaker 4: that they made as like a supplement.
Speaker 5: Yeah, did you watch it, Jamie?
Speaker 3: Know that before for today, I did watch it. This
Speaker 3: movie it's like marketing campaign is like Barbie movie found
Speaker 3: Dead in a ditch. This is the most four dy
Speaker 3: game of chess ever played by a movie's marketing campaign.
Speaker 5: It's so wild, it's incredible.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so basically what that documentary did on the
Speaker 4: Sci Fi Channel was give a bunch of context to
Speaker 4: this movie that kind of exists without context, which is
Speaker 4: why it's so amazing. So I got really into the
Speaker 4: lore in the background that's happening. And then finally I
Speaker 4: got to see it, and I think by that time
Speaker 4: I had figured out that it was not real, because
Speaker 4: it was when it came to video and it kind
Speaker 4: of cat was out of the bag. And of course,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of people knew it was fake
Speaker 4: because it's ridiculous to think that this would be in theaters, right,
Speaker 4: this footage. But and I remembered hearing about it, and
Speaker 4: I was like, that's got to be illegal, Like there's
Speaker 4: no way they can show this like police evidence footage
Speaker 4: of these people who went missing. But yeah, I just
Speaker 4: absolutely loved kind of digging into it because not only
Speaker 4: was it this documentary, but they had a website that
Speaker 4: had all of the documents and all of these different
Speaker 4: interviews and information about these missing people, and yeah, it
Speaker 4: was just such a full experience. They were on message
Speaker 4: boards like adding comments to people talking about it to
Speaker 4: try to like stir up different reactions and to kind
Speaker 4: of control the narrative that way. So I think just
Speaker 4: having that experience as an eleven year old, I just
Speaker 4: started to make the Blair witch stick figures. There's actually
Speaker 4: currently one hanging in our yard because I still make
Speaker 4: them every Halloween. But I started to make them and
Speaker 4: hang them in weird places to scare people, like when
Speaker 4: I went camping, like hang them on the trees outside
Speaker 4: strangers tents, like the absolute little little stinker.
Speaker 5: As you guys said, true true.
Speaker 3: Blue the colloquial term.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. Yeah, actually it's the scientific term. So I yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that that kind of explains how it's been
Speaker 4: a part of my very DNA since the beginning of
Speaker 4: my interests in this type of content, like you know,
Speaker 4: hoaxes and hysteria around some of the elements included in this.
Speaker 4: It's a commentary I think on a lot of things,
Speaker 4: so we'll get into it.
Speaker 3: We wi So, was this sort of like close to
Speaker 3: your patient zero for a lot of the work that
Speaker 3: you do now?
Speaker 5: I don't think that's wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it probably makes a lot of sense
Speaker 4: because I so enjoyed being like hoaxed, which is of
Speaker 4: course not always true, but it feels like one of
Speaker 4: those hoaxes that didn't really cause any damage, Like it
Speaker 4: was just kind of a whole lot of fun. I'm
Speaker 4: sure there's you know, I'm sure there's elements of it,
Speaker 4: but it didn't to me add to the satanic panic
Speaker 4: too much of the nineties coming out in ninety nine
Speaker 4: as it did, and that would have kind of made
Speaker 4: me have a little bit more of a sour relationship
Speaker 4: to it, because I don't like demonic satanic horror movies
Speaker 4: very much because I think it kind of continuously keeps.
Speaker 5: This satanic fear going.
Speaker 4: But you know, it definitely still has those elements of
Speaker 4: even like the witch hysteria of the witch trials of
Speaker 4: the sixteen hundreds in America, which is foundational even though
Speaker 4: we've never done an episode on it, which is funny.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think it is very much part of
Speaker 4: the fabric of what started my love of folklore and
Speaker 4: legends because it was such an interesting folklore, whereas a
Speaker 4: lot of folklore is pretty boring. But when you mix
Speaker 4: it with kind of an urban legend situation, more modern.
Speaker 5: Then you get my attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Caitlin, what's your history?
Speaker 2: I saw this movie in a drive in movie theater
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine. Oh yeah, I was thirteen, and
Speaker 2: I was so scared. I was like, this is the
Speaker 2: scariest movie I've ever seen. And I don't think I've
Speaker 2: changed my mind since then, Like I to this day
Speaker 2: think it might be the scariest movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: I know there are haters out there, but I think
Speaker 2: it's so scary. I think it's such an effective horror movie.
Speaker 2: And then I watched the sequel A bunch oh which
Speaker 2: shadows Book of Shadows, not to be confused with National
Speaker 2: Treasure two Book of Secrets.
Speaker 3: Yes, of course that's true. Yeah. In Flaywash two, do
Speaker 3: they kidnap the president.
Speaker 2: The President of the United States? They do not, but
Speaker 2: a bunch of scary. I for some reason watched the
Speaker 2: sequel several times, or specifically Book of Shadows in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, because I thought it was just like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, just like a cool extension of the
Speaker 2: first one. And I all so to prepare for this episode,
Speaker 2: watched Blair Witch, which is the third installment of the
Speaker 2: franchise that came out in twenty sixteen, which I don't
Speaker 2: remember it even coming out in theaters. It's something I
Speaker 2: feel like I should have been aware of. It was
Speaker 2: not that long ago, but I was like, what is
Speaker 2: this movie. I don't remember that coming out at all,
Speaker 2: and it had a theatrical release and everything. It made
Speaker 2: like forty five million dollars of the box office. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I watched it. I also thought it was very, very scary.
Speaker 2: It does rely on a few very tired, nasty horror
Speaker 2: movie tropes, such as the black guy is the first
Speaker 2: person to die, but it was very scary. Anytime people
Speaker 2: are camping in the woods and it's dark and they're
Speaker 2: just sort of like waving a camera around the woods
Speaker 2: and you can only see little bits and pieces, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm scared. The woods are scary. I will never go
Speaker 2: camping under any circumstances because probably of movies like.
Speaker 5: This camping period.
Speaker 2: I refuse to go camping. My friends are always like,
Speaker 2: let's go camping, and I'm like, but why. I like
Speaker 2: indoor plumbing, I like sleeping on a bed. I like
Speaker 2: having walls and a ceiling and a floor. So no,
Speaker 2: thank you, but yeah, I thank you. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 2: did not realize how much I love this franchise until
Speaker 2: sort of like revisiting it for this episode. But I
Speaker 2: think it rocks. So that is my relationship to the
Speaker 2: blair Witch. Jamie, how about you.
Speaker 3: I wish I had as detailed a lore. I feel
Speaker 3: like I definitely do not remember this movie coming out.
Speaker 3: Sorry I'm so young, but I do, like I wish
Speaker 3: I don't know, like reading about everything that surrounded this
Speaker 3: movie and like hearing about your experiences, like seeing it
Speaker 3: for the first time. If I had been like, you know,
Speaker 3: nine or ten when this came out, I would have
Speaker 3: lost my fucking yeah, Like this is so It's just
Speaker 3: it was so fascinating to read about how this was made,
Speaker 3: even though it's like wildly unethical and probably would get
Speaker 3: them blacklisted today. But like I was eating this shit
Speaker 3: up for the last two days. I have been in
Speaker 3: the blair Witch zone. I really enjoy And Chelsea, I
Speaker 3: think you that Sarah also showed this movie to you recently.
Speaker 3: I love a hoax. I love a hoax, I love
Speaker 3: a goof, I love people fallen for a big time.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize to the extent how like integral that
Speaker 3: was to blair Witch marketing. I'd seen, like my short stories,
Speaker 3: I've seen this movie once or twice. I think that
Speaker 3: I was pre poisoned by the infinity parodies of this movie. Yep,
Speaker 3: so that I had seen this movie parodied a hundred
Speaker 3: times before I ever watched it in like high school
Speaker 3: or college, and so I.
Speaker 4: Was especially scary movie, right, I feel like scary movie's.
Speaker 3: The main Yeah, huge, and it just like any like
Speaker 3: low hanging fruit for any comedy property. But I definitely
Speaker 3: remember I definitely saw a scary movie before I saw this.
Speaker 3: So by the time I actually saw it, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is pretty scary, like but I was so like
Speaker 3: subconsciously exhausted by it because it was so everywhere, and
Speaker 3: I wish that I had gotten to experience the moment
Speaker 3: where like people were like, no, these kids died, and
Speaker 3: now they hired look alike actors to promote the movie.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god. Nineteen ninety nine was
Speaker 3: such a bizarrely innocent time that that could be true.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, I didn't have a huge connection
Speaker 3: to this movie, but going back, I can't imagine a
Speaker 3: more perfectly timed movie, for like, right before people figured
Speaker 3: out how to like hoax check shit on the internet.
Speaker 3: But I just anything that involves an arg or some
Speaker 3: sort of public hoax element, I'm a huge sucker for
Speaker 3: Like I know that the most famous example is like
Speaker 3: the Orson Wells were the world one, but there was
Speaker 3: also Chelsea. Did you show Sarah or did so? No?
Speaker 5: She showed me.
Speaker 4: I had never even heard of it, and I was shocked.
Speaker 4: I hadn't heard of it. It was fantastic.
Speaker 2: It was so loved. Which what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Pre Dating the blurir Witch project, there was It's streaming
Speaker 3: for free on tub hashtag thank you to be you
Speaker 3: be heads to be or not to be? And I say,
Speaker 3: let's turn on to b babes. It's a fake documentary,
Speaker 3: a mockumentary if you will, called ghost Watch. It's a
Speaker 3: horror mocumentary that came out in nineteen ninety two, was
Speaker 3: broadcast on the BBC on Halloween Night with real famous
Speaker 3: BBC anchors at the time, playing out this hoax script
Speaker 3: that basically leads you to believe that there is a
Speaker 3: real haunting with like real people dying, the haunting comes
Speaker 3: to the studio. It's like fucking amazing. It's so good.
Speaker 4: Did you, Jamie catch all of the Fox Sister references
Speaker 4: in it? Because I was seeing shit. I was like
Speaker 4: the apples hanging. They had like apples hanging from the ceiling,
Speaker 4: which is how the Sisters stooped people. I think they
Speaker 4: live on like Fox something Road, And I was just.
Speaker 5: Like, I get the jokes. I love what I get
Speaker 5: with Jo it was for the references.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's spiritualism heavy. It's like, yeah, absolutely fantastic. If
Speaker 3: you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project, you will also love Ghostwatch. Also.
Speaker 3: Ghost Watch is like very funny. It's all these like
Speaker 3: Newsy anchored jokes. Kaitlyn, I think you would love.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, I'll check it out.
Speaker 3: I just love this very specific genre of horror, mockumentary,
Speaker 3: hoax horror. Yeah, exactly. And then it was really interesting
Speaker 3: doing research on I mean there's quite a bit written
Speaker 3: about not just like the production and the lore surrounding
Speaker 3: this movie, but how it frames and portrays its main character, Heather.
Speaker 3: There's a ton of shit to talk about there too.
Speaker 3: I was very much in my like freshman sociology seminar
Speaker 3: bag prepping for this episode, so I'm very excited to
Speaker 3: talk about it.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 2: come back for the recap. And we are back, and
Speaker 2: here is the recap of the blair Witch project. So
Speaker 2: we open on text on screen that says that in
Speaker 2: October of nineteen ninety four, three student filmmakers disappeared in
Speaker 2: the woods near Birkettsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary, and
Speaker 2: then a year after their disappearance, their footage was found.
Speaker 2: And then we start watching the footage because this is
Speaker 2: famously a found footage style movie. We meet the director
Speaker 2: of the documentary, Heather played by Heather Donahue, and she's
Speaker 2: just preparing for a trip to the woods to make
Speaker 2: this documentary on a local legend, the Blair Witch. Then
Speaker 2: we meet Josh played by Joshua Leonard, who's helping Heather
Speaker 2: to shoot the dock on a sixteen millimeter film camera.
Speaker 2: They then pick up Mike played by Michael C. Williams,
Speaker 2: who they are meeting for the first time. They've kind
Speaker 2: of like hired him to be the sound guy, and
Speaker 2: then they start shooting some stuff, including shots of a
Speaker 2: cemetery that holds an unusually high number of graves of children,
Speaker 2: many of whom died in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: Which I is also just like anytime they're like, oh
Speaker 3: a lot of kids used to die, You're like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, like fifty.
Speaker 4: That just used to be how it was also mad
Speaker 4: nerd time Dork report. I went to Burkettsville and I
Speaker 4: took a picture exactly where Heather stood.
Speaker 3: WHOA, that's the greatest.
Speaker 4: I went with my friend Will Rogers, who is also
Speaker 4: a big Blair Witch head who does all of our
Speaker 4: voice acting, and we just had such a beautiful time and.
Speaker 5: We really wanted to camp.
Speaker 4: Well we didn't have time, but I will camp in
Speaker 4: those woods one day, Caitlin, I want.
Speaker 2: To come, not even a little bit. So we also
Speaker 2: see them interviewing a few locals in Birkettsville, formerly known
Speaker 2: as Blair Maryland. They're asking about the Blair Witch and
Speaker 2: the locals share various scary stories and legends that they've
Speaker 2: heard over the years. There's mention of a man named
Speaker 2: mister Parr who in nineteen forty murdered seven children, where
Speaker 2: he would bring them down to his basement in pairs
Speaker 2: and make one of them stand facing the corner while
Speaker 2: he killed the other one. Also, I guess we should
Speaker 2: have placed a trigger warning at the top of this
Speaker 2: because there will be a lot of discussion of murder
Speaker 2: the Blair.
Speaker 3: This is the one time where I'm like, if you
Speaker 3: need a trigger warning for the Blair Witch Project, I
Speaker 3: literally do not know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm a conservative on this issue.
Speaker 5: She's putting her foot down culture.
Speaker 2: Yes, just so you know everyone, children aren't murdered on screen,
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of like lore that is talked
Speaker 2: about in the movie, and a lot of it is
Speaker 2: children dying.
Speaker 3: It's the Blair Witch Project, you guys.
Speaker 2: It is the Blair Witch Project.
Speaker 3: If I receive a single email about that, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: lose it.
Speaker 2: Okay. So they also interview a woman named Mary Brown,
Speaker 2: who has a reputation around town as being like, you know,
Speaker 2: not very reliable. She's quote unquote a lunatic, and she
Speaker 2: talks about how she had an encounter with possibly the
Speaker 2: Blair Witch when she was a child, and she describes
Speaker 2: what she saw and it's scary and spooky.
Speaker 5: And she's like fucking iconic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she is the legend.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 5: I just absolutely adore her.
Speaker 3: M hm. And I love that the movie spoiler alert
Speaker 3: bears out that she was completely right the whole time
Speaker 3: and that they are I guess plot punished for assuming
Speaker 3: the worst of her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. True, mm hmmm. That was also the only movie
Speaker 2: that that actor ever acted in. I believe.
Speaker 4: Well, actually, she signed up to be an intern. They
Speaker 4: advertised in like the local paper that they needed an intern,
Speaker 4: and she showed up and her house was exactly like that,
Speaker 4: including like the weird stick fence. So she's very much
Speaker 4: like I'm sure we'll get into this, but all many
Speaker 4: of the actors were just people who lived in the
Speaker 4: town who were told a rough outline of what they
Speaker 4: wanted them to say, and then they ad lived.
Speaker 3: Like the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, okay.
Speaker 5: Which is like because it's like all of them are great.
Speaker 5: Everyone is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 3: Her name is Patricia de Coue Rip.
Speaker 5: She has passed away, so let's yeah rip rip in heaven, Patty.
Speaker 3: I Yeah, she was wonderful, and I also loved the
Speaker 3: interview that I always remember is the mom with the
Speaker 3: kid who's like, it's just a scary story. And I
Speaker 3: guess that she also. That was like basically no instruction whatsoever.
Speaker 3: It was just like Chelsea, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: but just like pretend you know what the Blair witches
Speaker 3: and like here's sort of what you should say. And
Speaker 3: she did not sign a release and so the filmmakers
Speaker 3: had to like tried to find her for weeks because
Speaker 3: she just gave the best improvised interview and for some reason,
Speaker 3: that's the interview. I mean, like obviously Mary Brown, but
Speaker 3: I love the mom one. It felt so real.
Speaker 4: She's amazing, and the little girl the whole time is
Speaker 4: like trying to close her mouth. She keeps being no, no,
Speaker 4: and then she goes, it's just a scary story. It's
Speaker 4: not and then she turns to the camera and goes,
Speaker 4: it's real. So no, it's true, and it's so funny.
Speaker 4: But I did really quick watch today an interview with
Speaker 4: them like that was made in like twenty twenty or
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, and the girls all grown up and hear this,
Speaker 4: she is wearing a corn sweatshirt, and I thought that
Speaker 4: was incredible.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, girl, huh, I love it.
Speaker 2: I want to be her friend.
Speaker 4: Which, if you think about it, Corn was one of
Speaker 4: the big instigators unintentionally of Woodstock ninety nine, which is
Speaker 4: happening in the same year, which I feel is an
Speaker 4: interesting cultural all connected incidents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're we ever so young.
Speaker 2: Okay. So then it's day two of shooting. We see
Speaker 2: an interview that they shoot with two fishermen who tell
Speaker 2: the filmmakers about a girl from the eighteen hundreds who
Speaker 2: also had an encounter with a witch in the woods.
Speaker 2: And then they park their car and head into the
Speaker 2: woods with these big heavy backpacks. They've got all of
Speaker 2: their film equipment, and they're making their way to Coffin Rock,
Speaker 2: where as legend has it, five men were bound together, disemboweled,
Speaker 2: markings were etched into their skin, and then their bodies
Speaker 2: mysteriously vanished, as if someone had taken them.
Speaker 4: Each man's hands tied to another man's feet. It's just
Speaker 4: the way how the talks when she's on cameras.
Speaker 3: It's so student film, where she's just like, clearly I
Speaker 3: don't know, parroting like TV talk. Yeah, so good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like a Discovery Channel documentary or something.
Speaker 3: It's perfect sure. Performance is just like, ah, just unbelievable,
Speaker 3: so good, true true.
Speaker 2: Then after Coffin Rock, they set up a tent and
Speaker 2: camp in the woods.
Speaker 3: That night.
Speaker 2: We cut to the next morning, so it's like day
Speaker 2: three of shooting. Josh is talking about noises he heard
Speaker 2: the night before. There was like a cackling outside their tent,
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, yikes, but let's keep going. So
Speaker 2: they start hiking through the woods to find a cemetery
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be there, but there's no trail. They're
Speaker 2: kind of lost. They argue about where they're going and
Speaker 2: whether or not Heather knows where they actually are. Tension
Speaker 2: is very high among the group. But then they finally
Speaker 2: figure out where they are and they come upon this
Speaker 2: kind of like makeshift cemetery where it's these strange piles
Speaker 2: of rocks that someone had clearly like assembled. It wasn't
Speaker 2: they just found this way in nature. And then they
Speaker 2: are like these sort of like man made nests in
Speaker 2: trees that are also filled with rocks, and Heather's like,
Speaker 2: didn't Mary Brown say something about piles of rocks where
Speaker 2: she was like referencing the Bible, and they're trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what the significance of these rocks could be.
Speaker 3: And I love how it's like explicitly said, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I just didn't listen to her. I didn't take her seriously. Yes,
Speaker 3: I thought she was crazy politic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 3: then it's like, well, sorry, bitch, you gotta you shouldn't
Speaker 3: listen to our friend Mary always listen to women that
Speaker 3: live in the woods. That He's like a basic rule.
Speaker 4: Stick fence, listen up. That's what I say.
Speaker 3: This person has something to say.
Speaker 2: That's rule of survival number one. Okay, So that night
Speaker 2: they set up camp again by this makeshift cemetery. They
Speaker 2: hear some more scary sounds off in the distance, but
Speaker 2: they don't see anything. Then we cut to the next
Speaker 2: morning and now they're headed back to the car, but
Speaker 2: they're deep in the woods. They might be lost again.
Speaker 2: Heather is constantly insisting that she knows exactly where they are,
Speaker 2: but Josh and Mike are both pissed at her, and
Speaker 2: they do not manage to make it to the car,
Speaker 2: so they have to set up camp again and sleep
Speaker 2: in the woods that night when and then they hear
Speaker 2: the same strange noises as the night before. It sounds
Speaker 2: like large branches are cracking, they hear footsteps. They're very scared.
Speaker 3: And every night it gets closer and lasts longer.
Speaker 2: Is that the general it intensifies? Yeah, every night, hmm.
Speaker 2: They wake up the following morning to discover that someone
Speaker 2: or something has made three piles of rocks right outside
Speaker 2: their tent, almost as if to symbolize the three filmmakers
Speaker 2: and their graves anyway, So they're like, let's get the
Speaker 2: fuck out of here. So they pack up, but oh no,
Speaker 2: they can't find the map, So now they're more lost
Speaker 2: than ever. They accuse Heather of losing the map, and
Speaker 2: so they're very pissed at her again until Mike admits
Speaker 2: that he threw the map in the creek the day
Speaker 2: before because he thought it was useless.
Speaker 3: He kicked it, kicked it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what a tantrum.
Speaker 3: Yeah a map? What a big baby?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: Oh ooh?
Speaker 3: I forgot because I had There's apology is so iconic
Speaker 3: that I sort of forgot that it's basically Mike's fault
Speaker 3: that they're lost. I feel like Mike, you know, he
Speaker 3: has his moments throughout the movie. But Mike, he's got
Speaker 3: to go. He does, and he and he does, he does,
Speaker 3: he did, I mean fair enough, he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they're very pissed at Mike for doing this.
Speaker 2: They get into a screaming match. They eventually calmed down,
Speaker 2: but the whole crew is now extremely defeated. They find
Speaker 2: another spot where there's all sorts of scary stuff, these
Speaker 2: like sticks that have been tied together. They sort of
Speaker 2: look like stick figure drawings. They're like the iconic image
Speaker 2: of this movie, very recognizable. But they're still lost, and
Speaker 2: so they have to make camp again for the night,
Speaker 2: and they wake up in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: to voices right outside their tent, and then suddenly there's
Speaker 2: something kind of like rustling their tent from the outside.
Speaker 2: So they take off running, but it's dark and they
Speaker 2: can't really see, and they're super freaked out. They find
Speaker 2: a spot to hide until the sun comes up, and
Speaker 2: then they return to their campsite. Their stuff has been
Speaker 2: fucked with. Josh's belongings are covered in this like weird slime,
Speaker 2: some witch goo or something, and they're all just like
Speaker 2: absolutely on the brink of losing their minds. It also
Speaker 2: seems like they're going in circle where they spent an
Speaker 2: entire day walking in one direction. They walked south, but
Speaker 2: they still somehow ended up at the same exact spot
Speaker 2: where they started that day. There's like this log that
Speaker 2: had like fallen over a creek and they end up
Speaker 2: at the same log.
Speaker 5: One of the scariest parts to me, Yeah.
Speaker 2: This isn't a spoiler, but the third installment of the franchise,
Speaker 2: simply called Blair Wait like a full Franchi a franchise head.
Speaker 2: It takes that concept and like really heightens it in
Speaker 2: that movie basically to suggest that the Blair Witch is
Speaker 2: capable of like either skewing people's perception of reality, or
Speaker 2: maybe she's like messing with their compasses or just like
Speaker 2: doing something to kind of like alter the space time
Speaker 2: continuum so that they are like are constantly lost. And
Speaker 2: it's not clear exactly what's happening in this movie where
Speaker 2: again they walk in one direction, but somehow I've still
Speaker 2: walked in a circle. So it's like, what has the
Speaker 2: Witch done to make that possible?
Speaker 3: But this is a movie and like a franchise that
Speaker 3: had to like work backwards a little bit to create
Speaker 3: Lord to continue the franchise, and I'm always fascinated at
Speaker 3: how you're like, oh, sure, yes, it's the Witch can
Speaker 3: alter the space time continuum, and that way the sense
Speaker 3: that would happen. They didn't just get lost because they
Speaker 3: didn't have a map. It was the space time continuum. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about the production. It is not really super
Speaker 3: relevant to the topic of our show, but I just
Speaker 3: do need to talk about it because it's so fucking weird.
Speaker 3: But like the actors also did not know they were
Speaker 3: going to end up in the same place at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. Like those are like somewhat genuine reactions.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre because I guess they hadn't. I think
Speaker 3: I think they say in the movie fifteen hours, but
Speaker 3: it was not fifteen hours, but it was eight hours
Speaker 3: that they were hiking, only to be led back to
Speaker 3: the same spot. I too would cry.
Speaker 2: I would cry so hard.
Speaker 3: There are so many good moments with Heather where she
Speaker 3: is like really trying to keep things at bay. Clearly
Speaker 3: feels a sense of like confidence that turns into guilt
Speaker 3: as the movie goes on, and then you just like
Speaker 3: hear how she's when she's at the log and she's like,
Speaker 3: it's the same log.
Speaker 4: You're like, Yeah, she's like in denial for a while,
Speaker 4: because Heather's like a big denial person and she's presented
Speaker 4: in denial. And then that's kind of the moment that
Speaker 4: she breaks and doesn't want to be filmed. I believe
Speaker 4: at that moment for the first time, and is you know,
Speaker 4: everybody's been like stop filming, stop filming, stop filming, what
Speaker 4: are you doing? And then they kind of all break
Speaker 4: and they start berating Heather until she basically breaks down
Speaker 4: by filming her and filming her and filming her, which
Speaker 4: I think is also a very interesting commentary on what
Speaker 4: I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it's there.
Speaker 2: Let's speculate later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't find a piece of writing that I
Speaker 3: completely was like, Oh, this is the they, But I've
Speaker 3: there's been a lot written about controlling the narrative blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, like I'm very excited to talk about.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they've arrived at the same spot that they were
Speaker 2: already at, so they went in one big circle. So
Speaker 2: they have to make camp again and they do and
Speaker 2: the next morning Heather and Mike wake up and Josh
Speaker 2: is nowhere to be found, but all of his stuff
Speaker 2: is still there, so they're freaking out. They decide to
Speaker 2: head east this time, but they still can't get unlost,
Speaker 2: so they have to make camp again that night, and
Speaker 2: they hear what appears to be Josh's voice calling out
Speaker 2: in agony outside of their tent, but they you know, again,
Speaker 2: they can't see, they don't know where he is. There's
Speaker 2: not much they can really do. They wake up the
Speaker 2: next morning there's a bundle of sticks outside of their
Speaker 2: tent undoes the bundle, and inside is what appears to
Speaker 2: be Josh's shirt, and wrapped inside the shirt is blood.
Speaker 2: There's like some teeth and a tongue, maybe some fingers,
Speaker 2: little body parts.
Speaker 3: You know. And Heather's like, let me say nothing.
Speaker 2: She does not tell me Nick She's like, if I
Speaker 2: don't say anything, it never happened. So she's like trying
Speaker 2: to keep it together. Then we get that iconic scene,
Speaker 2: the close up of Heather's face. She has like kind
Speaker 2: of gone off into the woods alone at night. She's crying,
Speaker 2: she's apologizing, she.
Speaker 3: Improvised speech so amazed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mm hmm. She knows she's gonna die, and she's
Speaker 2: basically saying like, I am to blame for what happened,
Speaker 2: and I'm so sorry. Then she hears something. It is
Speaker 2: a man calling out for help, So Heather and Mike
Speaker 2: re night and go looking for him. They come upon
Speaker 2: this dilapidated house. They go inside, thinking that Josh might
Speaker 2: be in there, and they hear yelling coming from upstairs.
Speaker 2: So they make their way through the rooms around corners.
Speaker 2: They don't find anything. Then they go downstairs to the basement.
Speaker 2: They're again just running through the house, rounding corners. It's
Speaker 2: so scary.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Good.
Speaker 2: Then they so they're in the basement. Mike is kind
Speaker 2: of ahead of Heather. They both have cameras rolling. She
Speaker 2: keeps kind of losing him, so she's like screaming. Then
Speaker 2: we get a shot of Mike's camera and he drops
Speaker 2: it as if he's been kind of like attacked. Then
Speaker 2: we cut to Heather and her camera. She's still going
Speaker 2: down the stairs. Then she goes into the basement and
Speaker 2: sees Mike standing in the corner facing the wall. She
Speaker 2: screams memes. She drops her camera as if she was
Speaker 2: attacked by the Blair Witch, but you never actually see
Speaker 2: the witch on screen. And then that's the end of
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 4: To budgetary reasons, it's so good, it's so much better
Speaker 4: that they didn't show. Yeah, it's it's the monster problem.
Speaker 4: You show the monster and it ruins it. It's always
Speaker 4: gonna be scarier in your imagination, and so many horror
Speaker 4: movies do that. At the end, you're like, no, that
Speaker 4: sucks when you just show me sucks ruined.
Speaker 2: We didn't need to see your goofy looking.
Speaker 4: Monster unless it's Tim Curry in it.
Speaker 2: On a weird spider.
Speaker 3: At the end of it, rip it's hard out. I
Speaker 3: read that they had someone appear and like they thought
Speaker 3: they shot footage but it didn't come out, or something
Speaker 3: like that of like someone on the production wearing all
Speaker 3: white and wearing white pantyhose on their head, and then
Speaker 3: they were.
Speaker 4: Like that, well that it was like, I don't know
Speaker 4: it even if they meant to show it or not,
Speaker 4: but they did that as part of what we'll get
Speaker 4: into the making of the film.
Speaker 5: And it's the part where Heather's going, what the fucky
Speaker 5: is that? What the ucky is that?
Speaker 4: And she just turned and she had no idea that
Speaker 4: someone was going to be an all white like running beside.
Speaker 2: While scar Let's take another quick break and we'll come
Speaker 2: back to discuss.
Speaker 3: And we're back. I would love to start by talking
Speaker 3: about the production of this movie, just because it feels
Speaker 3: so important to do like so much. I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess maybe not to feminism, but whatever, it's so important.
Speaker 2: I think there's relevant stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're very much is this is I mean, this
Speaker 3: is a movie written and I mean written quote unquote
Speaker 3: because it's heavily improvised, outlined and directed by two guys,
Speaker 3: Daniel Merrick and Eduardo Sanchez. And we've like heavily implied
Speaker 3: to this so far. But what I didn't realize is
Speaker 3: this is like the X Games of improv. Yes, and
Speaker 3: way to put it, the actors like were actually obviously
Speaker 3: knew they were in a movie, but did not know
Speaker 3: what was going to happen. They did not know who
Speaker 3: was going to die or when. The part that like
Speaker 3: sits least well with me about the turbo improv approach
Speaker 3: is that they were given less and less food so
Speaker 3: that they're acting like I mean, the ethical issues are many,
Speaker 3: but I just I had no idea that that is
Speaker 3: the way that this movie was made, and I found
Speaker 3: it fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the directors and then there's a producer named Greg.
Speaker 3: Who were real Greg behavior.
Speaker 2: Truly, they in the cast and call let people who
Speaker 2: auditioned know that it would be a highly improvised, difficult shoot, and.
Speaker 3: Then they all got paid like five hundred dollars or something.
Speaker 3: Oh it's non union with pay, travel and meals. Three
Speaker 3: weeks in Maryland, extremely challenging roles to be shot under
Speaker 3: very difficult conditions, and you're like, God, we got to
Speaker 3: be on strike forever.
Speaker 5: This can't during lifelong trauma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, truly.
Speaker 2: Yeah the bar is low, but at least they let
Speaker 2: the actors know that it would be very difficult and strenuous,
Speaker 2: because we've come across casting situations like this where the
Speaker 2: filmmakers did not let the actors know to what extent
Speaker 2: they would have to be I think we talked about
Speaker 2: was that the Human Centipede episode. Maybe that, like the
Speaker 2: actors were not fully filled in on like what they
Speaker 2: would have to be doing physically, and like the various
Speaker 2: I think horror things they have to endure.
Speaker 5: Cannibal holocaust. Did that? I don't know if that's what
Speaker 5: you're thinking of. It could be. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 5: if it was also the Human Centipede.
Speaker 3: Though it's interesting because as brutal as this shoot sounded,
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like any of the lasting trauma for
Speaker 3: the actors, which is mainly we're talking about Heather Donna Hue,
Speaker 3: who has since changed her name to ray Hans. That
Speaker 3: was as of twenty twenty, which I think I haven't
Speaker 3: looked into it thoroughly, but I think is at least
Speaker 3: somewhat related to the fact that the Blur Witch Project
Speaker 3: uses their full names. But I didn't find very much
Speaker 3: about like being particularly traumatized by deproduction of the movie,
Speaker 3: but rather more like after it came out, especially for
Speaker 3: Ray Hants Dona Hue at the time, and that's also
Speaker 3: the name of the character, so she's given a number
Speaker 3: of interviews over the years, and I find her to
Speaker 3: be very interesting because I'm curious what you both remember
Speaker 3: about the reception of this movie when it came out.
Speaker 3: It sounds like, I mean, all three of the actors,
Speaker 3: you know, because of sort of the naivete of like
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine Brain some people were like pissed off
Speaker 3: that they were actors that were not dead, which sounds
Speaker 3: stressful in itself, but it sounds like Heather in particular
Speaker 3: caught a ton of shit for this. She got the
Speaker 3: Razzie for Worst Actress, which makes absolutely no.
Speaker 4: Sense, absolutely no sense. No, it infuriates me beyond shit.
Speaker 3: Gives the performance of the movie easily, like I was
Speaker 3: completely shocked by that.
Speaker 2: I want to share a quote from her yeah, where
Speaker 2: she speaks to that actor formerly known as Heather Donna
Speaker 2: Hugh says quote, I had actually done a student film
Speaker 2: two years before with a young female filmmaker who definitely
Speaker 2: had a lot of bravado. I had to think, what
Speaker 2: kind of woman would actually keep the camera running through
Speaker 2: horrible times A normal person would have stopped filming, So
Speaker 2: I had to take that character to that extra driven angle.
Speaker 2: I don't think there were a lot of female characters
Speaker 2: like that in movies at the time. Definitely. I feel
Speaker 2: like things have changed a lot. There's been a little
Speaker 2: more leeway for female characters. I won the Razzie for
Speaker 2: Worst Actress that year, and I think that was partly
Speaker 2: because of the character being judged rather than the performance.
Speaker 2: She was a very driven woman who didn't wear a
Speaker 2: mascara and was on camera in nineteen ninety nine, so
Speaker 2: she's basically saying, like people hated that character because of
Speaker 2: and you know, we'll talk about that and the gender
Speaker 2: of it all in.
Speaker 3: A bit, but like the gender of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was like unfairly criticized as a performer because
Speaker 2: of the way her character is. And again it doesn't
Speaker 2: help that like her full name was used, which she
Speaker 2: also regrets. Yeah, that's like her biggest regret of the
Speaker 2: movie because she like couldn't escape the Blair Witch Project
Speaker 2: because her full name was used as the character she plays.
Speaker 3: Which I feel like that's a bad idea. But also
Speaker 3: I've read different like people are like the filmmakers shouldn't
Speaker 3: have done that. I'm like, I agree with that, but
Speaker 3: also the filmmakers could not have possibly seen this indie
Speaker 3: movie making a quarter billion dollars, Like it is just
Speaker 3: very unfortunate that that happened to all three of them.
Speaker 3: But I think it's particularly like it seems to have
Speaker 3: affected the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue, especially because
Speaker 3: of how particular and like it seems gender that backlash
Speaker 3: was towards her.
Speaker 4: Well. Also, to speak to the Razzie again, it's like
Speaker 4: really absurd to me because as we've talked about the
Speaker 4: acting was also kind of real, like she was actually
Speaker 4: very very scared, right, And to give a little bit
Speaker 4: more about the production, basically how it went was each
Speaker 4: day the actors would get GPS coordinates to go to
Speaker 4: and when they got there they would find like a
Speaker 4: box with information, very scant information about whatever they needed
Speaker 4: to get across that day, information wise, plot wise, and
Speaker 4: then pretty much everything else was improvised.
Speaker 5: So urgy, yeah, yeah, so bizarre.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, the director's producers following them through the
Speaker 4: woods screaming at night. At one point they they recorded
Speaker 4: one of the director's kids that lived across the street
Speaker 4: just playing and doing whatever they did, and just boom
Speaker 4: boxed it outside their tent. As we mentioned, there was
Speaker 4: the guy who in all white. You know, there was
Speaker 4: like the baby crying. They set up all of the
Speaker 4: stick figures, none of that. None of those things were
Speaker 4: things that the cast was aware of at the time.
Speaker 4: It's like they were very very scared. They didn't know
Speaker 4: the tent was gonna start shaking.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, I don't understand how I would be interested
Speaker 4: to see if the razzies, I mean, I guess they
Speaker 4: would have come out before Scary movie because Scary Movie
Speaker 4: was two thousand. But in Scary Movie they just take
Speaker 4: the snot scene, which unfortunately kind of became the most
Speaker 4: famous scene in the movie because when Heather is crying
Speaker 4: and apologizing to Josh's mom and Mike's mom and her
Speaker 4: own mom, and it's such good acting and she's got
Speaker 4: snot coming out of her mouth, which is amazing, Like
Speaker 4: it makes the scene so real. It's like silly, but
Speaker 4: you're also like, yeah, that's what happens when you cry
Speaker 4: that fucking hard. Like having an actor cry so hard
Speaker 4: that snot is coming out of her mouth is good acting.
Speaker 4: And then it was parodied in Scary Movie so much,
Speaker 4: and it was just like so much snock ever knows
Speaker 4: that's funny, but you know, it's like it just it
Speaker 4: cast a pall kind of backwards on the movie and
Speaker 4: now people just think of her with snot pouring out
Speaker 4: her nose, which it's so annoying.
Speaker 3: It's so unfair her. And I mean she also, in
Speaker 3: that same interview that you were quoting, Kitlin like describes
Speaker 3: like the frustration of like using her real name, making
Speaker 3: her essentially like Ip belonging to the Blair Witch expanded universe.
Speaker 3: Which sounds infinitely frustrated again in a way that I
Speaker 3: don't think is malicious because who could have seen it,
Speaker 3: But it's still like, it seems like the conversation and
Speaker 3: the parodying around this movie affected her, particularly in ways
Speaker 3: that feel very like of the time, because we don't
Speaker 3: even see Heather on screen very much, because like she
Speaker 3: as we'll talk about in a bit, is like for
Speaker 3: the most part, dictating what you see and how you
Speaker 3: perceive what's going on. But for the few shots, I
Speaker 3: guess that like people were fat shaming her or like
Speaker 3: judging her body, and like, which is just I'm This
Speaker 3: is a quote from I believe this is from the
Speaker 3: weak oral history of this movie that came out eight
Speaker 3: or so years ago. She says, no size eight women
Speaker 3: was playing the lead in dirty jeans with no mascara,
Speaker 3: with unwashed hair. No Angenoux was willing to be so unfuckable.
Speaker 3: I was the most unfuckable Angenoux to ever be in
Speaker 3: a blockbuster. But that was the thrill, the fuck you
Speaker 3: thrill of it. How could I say no to that?
Speaker 3: Nobody wanted me to go into the woods with a
Speaker 3: bunch of strange guys, But how could I say no
Speaker 3: to improvising an entire feature without a stitch of makeup,
Speaker 3: with layers of clothes and dirt and knives and nothing
Speaker 3: but a pile of rocks to scare you with bad ass.
Speaker 3: She seems really fucking cool. And then she retired from
Speaker 3: acting and became a weed farmer, and I'm just like, God,
Speaker 3: bless hi cod good for you.
Speaker 2: Also, before she got cast in the movie, she was
Speaker 2: a founding member of an improv company called Red Shag,
Speaker 2: and she was in a feminist off off Broadway fringe
Speaker 2: movement theater called Collision, So feminist icon actor formerly known
Speaker 2: as Heather Donahue and a feminist off Broadway fringe movement theater.
Speaker 3: It's so fucking cool, but it's like just even hearing.
Speaker 3: I think part of the point of this, like, part
Speaker 3: of what makes this movie plausible is that everyone looks
Speaker 3: like people and like and after several days in the woods,
Speaker 3: which they were, everyone looks like shit, because how could
Speaker 3: you not look like shit? But of course the only
Speaker 3: backlash it like, you don't hear about how Mike looks
Speaker 3: like shit after three days in the woods. You only
Speaker 3: hear how Heather looks like shit. And judgments of her,
Speaker 3: which again it's like, for this time is not at
Speaker 3: all surprising, but I was surprised at how much it
Speaker 3: seemed to really affect the actor's life moving forward. And
Speaker 3: I appreciate that she's been vocal about that through the years.
Speaker 3: And it's funny because it's like she's not even it's
Speaker 3: not that she's unsupportive of the franchise, Like she mentions
Speaker 3: that she saw the twenty sixteen Blair Witch movie and
Speaker 3: thought it was really good and all this stuff, but
Speaker 3: also met with the filmmakers or the producers or whoever
Speaker 3: was in control of the franchise and was like, please
Speaker 3: just keep my name out of it, because the franchise,
Speaker 3: like as you both know, continues with like her brother
Speaker 3: goes back to try to find out what happened, and
Speaker 3: it's like her name is like connected as a dead person.
Speaker 3: It just sounds like, yeah, absolutely maddening. And also I'm like,
Speaker 3: how many people in the world have ever had this problem?
Speaker 3: It must be very isolating to have this problem.
Speaker 2: It's right because as part of the marketing gimmick of
Speaker 2: this movie, one of the co directors, Eduardo Sanchez, set
Speaker 2: up this what became a famous website to help promote
Speaker 2: the film, but it was basically feeding into the illusion
Speaker 2: that this was a real documentary, that these were not actors,
Speaker 2: they were student filmmakers making a documentary, and that they
Speaker 2: died in the woods. So much so that like those
Speaker 2: three actors were like listed as having been deceased on
Speaker 2: IMDb for like a full year or something like that,
Speaker 2: and a bunch of people thought that those people had
Speaker 2: actually died and so like, so the actor's parents were
Speaker 2: getting calls being like, I'm so sorry that your kid died,
Speaker 2: like condolences, and like, what kind.
Speaker 4: Of weird ass person is, Like I've got to call
Speaker 4: up this mom give condolences.
Speaker 5: It's so strange.
Speaker 4: And to add to that, they also like made missing
Speaker 4: posters for them and posted them on college campuses, which
Speaker 4: was so smart because that's like definitely the age I
Speaker 4: feel like that was going to go to this movie.
Speaker 4: And so even at the premiere they handed out posters
Speaker 4: and I want to get my mits on one of
Speaker 4: those original posters. So bad of the missing people. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's like they really went hard. They didn't do any
Speaker 4: press before the movie, the actors, and they never showed
Speaker 4: any trailers, and that was another you know, so they
Speaker 4: saved a bunch of money on advertising, which was just
Speaker 4: really smart by doing this like gorilla marketing campaign.
Speaker 3: And I think that like not that like a ton
Speaker 3: of people, like except you, Chelsea, like would have seen
Speaker 3: the sci Fi the doc on Sci Fi ahead of time,
Speaker 3: but that just like lends the credibility of what you're seeing.
Speaker 3: It's just ugh, it's so cool.
Speaker 4: They put it out three days before, which was cool.
Speaker 4: It was like three days before it premiered in like
Speaker 4: wide release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so smart, And I didn't I also didn't realize
Speaker 3: just like when I was reading through the oral history
Speaker 3: that originally like the whole sort of mockumentary aspect and
Speaker 3: like cutting out to members of the family as like
Speaker 3: and you know, they died at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 3: It was not supposed to be all found footage. But
Speaker 3: then it just like the filmmakers executed everything so well
Speaker 3: and the actors did such a good job at like
Speaker 3: being in the X Games of improv that that was
Speaker 3: the movie. It's so fucking cool. So the last making
Speaker 3: of anecdote I wanted to share has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with their show, but I just thought was funny, was
Speaker 3: that Josh did not know that he was going to die,
Speaker 3: but then like got one of their like freaky little
Speaker 3: messages and was like, hey, wait till Mike and Heather
Speaker 3: go to bed tonight and then just like leave the tent.
Speaker 3: And he didn't know why he was being forced to
Speaker 3: leave the tent. And then the filmmakers were like, all right,
Speaker 3: you're dead, Let's go to Denny's. And then they brought
Speaker 3: him to Denny's. Done.
Speaker 5: Denny's is perfect.
Speaker 3: That's so funny.
Speaker 5: That is exactly where I would want to go after that.
Speaker 3: Denny's.
Speaker 2: It's an American institution.
Speaker 5: Is always there for you anytime.
Speaker 2: So if it hasn't been clear. The cast camped in
Speaker 2: the woods through basically the entire eight day shoot, so
Speaker 2: they weren't like shooting, you know, your standard whatever fourteen
Speaker 2: sixteen hour day kind of thing, and then like going
Speaker 2: into a trailer or going in I think they did
Speaker 2: spend one night in a hotel, and it was because
Speaker 2: their campsite was basically flooded, just water everywhere, like an
Speaker 2: inch of water in their tents kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And the filmmakers are like, well, we can't kill them.
Speaker 3: We're only paying them five hundred dollars for the worst
Speaker 3: days of their lives.
Speaker 2: But the rest of the time they were actually like
Speaker 2: camping in the woods during the entire shoot. So it
Speaker 2: was like very uncomfortable, and like we mentioned before, the
Speaker 2: crew was like feeding them less and less. They were like,
Speaker 2: you know, your safety is important to us. We're never
Speaker 2: gonna like put you in extreme harm's way, but we
Speaker 2: also want you to be very uncomfortable. So like they
Speaker 2: would scale back on the amount of food that they
Speaker 2: gave the cast each day so that when they were
Speaker 2: like we're very tiired and hungry, like that was coming,
Speaker 2: which is like very abusive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as we.
Speaker 2: Alluded to, it just sounds miserable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was unclear of like how much of
Speaker 3: that was communicated in advanced Like I wasn't able to
Speaker 3: find like super extreme detail other than they were told
Speaker 3: in advance that it was going to be a very
Speaker 3: difficult shoot. But I don't know, like, yeah, if they
Speaker 3: were told that they would not receive enough food kind
Speaker 3: of thing. Yeah, But yeah, I mean I think that
Speaker 3: the ethics of this movie are definitely like can and
Speaker 3: should be called into question. I'm not advocating for these
Speaker 3: kinds of movies to be made more, but it's pretty
Speaker 3: fucking cool. It's got some.
Speaker 2: Good performances out of it. So long, I want to
Speaker 2: say one last quote from the actor who plays Heather
Speaker 2: daughter you. She says, quote, It's very hard for me
Speaker 2: to talk about the backlash because for me it was
Speaker 2: so directly personal. It was my mother sympathy cards. It
Speaker 2: was people coming up to me on the street telling
Speaker 2: me that they wished I was dead, saying they wanted
Speaker 2: their money back.
Speaker 3: They're such weirdos, freak show show.
Speaker 2: For being in a movie like Go Home. It was
Speaker 2: me in my eighty four Toyota Silica breaking down in
Speaker 2: La On Losianaga underneath the billboard with my own face
Speaker 2: on it. It was a profoundly surrendal experience. I feel
Speaker 2: like her treatment by the public upon this movie coming
Speaker 2: out is not dissimilar from her treatment within the movie.
Speaker 2: And maybe I'm reading too much into things here. Let
Speaker 2: me know what y'all think of this, Because as I
Speaker 2: was watching the movie, and having not to brag or anything,
Speaker 2: but having directed a few students films myself, I was
Speaker 2: picking up on a very familiar sensation of like implicit
Speaker 2: gender bias, where obviously the cast of this movie Slash.
Speaker 2: The crew making this documentary about the Blair witch within
Speaker 2: this movie has one woman and two men, and the
Speaker 2: woman is in charge. She's the director of the movie.
Speaker 2: This is her project. It seems like it was her
Speaker 2: idea to do this and that these two guys are
Speaker 2: just helping her make it. And throughout the movie they
Speaker 2: are constantly getting pissed at her and blaming her for
Speaker 2: everything that goes wrong. Now, are they pissed at her
Speaker 2: specifically because she's in charge and when things go wrong
Speaker 2: you generally blame the person in charge. Or are they
Speaker 2: pissed at her because she's a woman and they don't
Speaker 2: trust that she's capable and that they don't trust that
Speaker 2: she can get them back safely and all of these things.
Speaker 2: Is it maybe a little bit of Column and columb
Speaker 2: because like they never explicitly say anything like I don't
Speaker 2: trust you or think that you're capable because you're a woman.
Speaker 2: But also a lot of sexism is not that explicit.
Speaker 2: It is extremely implicit because like, again, I've been in
Speaker 2: situations where I was like the only fem person and
Speaker 2: in many of those cases, like I was in charge
Speaker 2: and I was surrounded by men and I could tell
Speaker 2: that the men around me just like weren't taking me seriously.
Speaker 2: They were questioning my judgment, They weren't trusting that I
Speaker 2: could get the job done. They were blaming me for
Speaker 2: anything that went wrong, regardless of it was my fault
Speaker 2: or not. And no one like outwardly said I don't
Speaker 2: trust you because of your gender. But when something like
Speaker 2: that is happening, you can just like tell that you
Speaker 2: people are perceiving you in that way. And so I'm
Speaker 2: convinced that these two men kept getting so pissed at
Speaker 2: Heather because of this implicit gender bias. Is she making
Speaker 2: mistakes along the way, sure, but I do feel like
Speaker 2: she's the subject of this like unfair scrutiny because she's
Speaker 2: a woman in charge.
Speaker 3: That's also supported by the fact that so much of
Speaker 3: this movie is improvised under duress. So it's like your
Speaker 3: natural biases, you know. And this is not to say
Speaker 3: that the two actors hate women or anything like that,
Speaker 3: but I do feel like the instructions they're given are
Speaker 3: so vague that, like, of course, your biases are going
Speaker 3: to sort of like bubble to the surface in those
Speaker 3: kinds of situations. It feels like a very bizarre, like
Speaker 3: a Stanford prison experiment kind of way to reveal those biases.
Speaker 3: I was struggling most with Mike at the beginning, and
Speaker 3: then as the movie went on, I thought Josh was
Speaker 3: more interesting because Josh starts out like he's her friend,
Speaker 3: and he is defensive of her towards the beginning, but
Speaker 3: when things start to go wrong in a meaningful way,
Speaker 3: he turns on her. And I feel like I've certainly
Speaker 3: had experiences like that with men that like start on
Speaker 3: your side, but when it's like ooh no, they kind
Speaker 3: of leave your side when it counts. And in a
Speaker 3: way that totally blows up in Josh's face because Mike's
Speaker 3: the one who fucking kicked the map into the creek,
Speaker 3: so whatever, But I felt I also had that same
Speaker 3: tingling sensation of just oh yeah, of course they are
Speaker 3: going to turn on her faster, and they are going
Speaker 3: to assume less competence. And all of this is complicated
Speaker 3: by the fact that none of them are experienced in
Speaker 3: what they're doing, like they're doing filmmakers. They don't fucking
Speaker 3: know what they're doing. But I think it's clear, especially
Speaker 3: as things get worse and worse, that Heather is more
Speaker 3: quickly turned on, and like that leads up to the
Speaker 3: scene that we've already started talking about, but I want
Speaker 3: to talk more about of like where she's antagonized by
Speaker 3: Josh and that's a conflict that is never resolved between
Speaker 3: them due to their dying.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, and it's just like I think it would
Speaker 4: be the only way to really test it, because you know,
Speaker 4: Heather makes mistakes.
Speaker 5: There's some hubris there.
Speaker 4: She thinks she knows where she's going, things that would
Speaker 4: piss me off if I were one of those guys. Sure,
Speaker 4: But had the director been a man, I don't think
Speaker 4: there would have ever been a scene where they're like
Speaker 4: braiding this man and filming this man, And I think
Speaker 4: there would have been like more willingness to collaborate on
Speaker 4: the problem versus just like kind of blaming Heather and
Speaker 4: ganging up on her and like, yeah, so I don't
Speaker 4: think Heather's like some angelic, innocent woman character who's.
Speaker 5: Completely fairly treated.
Speaker 4: But like, I just think the way that we'd be
Speaker 4: able to really see is like switching out how they're
Speaker 4: for a male director, and I don't imagine that it
Speaker 4: would have gone the same way. I think there might
Speaker 4: have been fist fights perhaps, but I don't even know
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the thing that struck me the most
Speaker 3: outside of them, like accosting her was And the first
Speaker 3: sort of inkling that like Josh is maybe has more
Speaker 3: of this inherent bias that he probably thinks he does,
Speaker 3: is that he is very, very quick to believe that
Speaker 3: Heather lost the map he is. That is like the
Speaker 3: first time that you're like, oh, that's your friend, where
Speaker 3: are you now? But he goes with Mike's version of
Speaker 3: the story Overheathers seemingly for no for a reason it
Speaker 3: wasn't clear to me. Yeah, And I feel like his
Speaker 3: behavior towards her, I mean, I think it's like intentional
Speaker 3: in the way that it's written and performed, but like
Speaker 3: there is like tru that is broken between these two friends.
Speaker 3: That feels. Yeah, it is like a tricky combination of
Speaker 3: leadership and like who is sort of on top of
Speaker 3: the pile? Whose project are we here for? Probably for
Speaker 3: no money because you're in college, and the gender dynamics,
Speaker 3: so it's so wild, like I can't believe this movie
Speaker 3: exists because you're like that. I'm sure that there's a
Speaker 3: bit of all of the actors, whether they like it
Speaker 3: or not in how that plays out. But I like,
Speaker 3: I think that while all of these things are true,
Speaker 3: like Heather, it can be up her own ass at moments.
Speaker 3: And I like that they are like she's an I
Speaker 3: mlegant film student too, Like she doesn't know what she's doing.
Speaker 3: None of them know what they're doing. It's the way
Speaker 3: that they treat each other once they all realize they're
Speaker 3: in way over their head that I feel like is
Speaker 3: telling well to that.
Speaker 2: Like you said, Jimmy, I appreciate that we have a
Speaker 2: flawed female character on screen because so few movies allow
Speaker 2: a woman or a fem of any kind to be flawed.
Speaker 2: They're so often portrayed as these like one dimensional, perfect
Speaker 2: little angels who never make mistakes, they have no bad qualities,
Speaker 2: which is obviously not what being a human.
Speaker 3: Is, right, or like the expectation of like hypercompetence in
Speaker 3: any woman in the front of a movie, right.
Speaker 2: So I like that she is. Yeah, she displays a
Speaker 2: lot of hubris, although I do believe because one of
Speaker 2: the major sources of tension between them is that they
Speaker 2: keep blaming her for getting them lost, and she keeps
Speaker 2: insisting that they are not lost, and it's hard to
Speaker 2: tell what's actually true, Like does she know exactly where
Speaker 2: they are in the map and where they are going
Speaker 2: like she says she does, and it's just the witch
Speaker 2: who's again like altering their perception or a reality or
Speaker 2: whatever the witch does. Is it that she's like too
Speaker 2: proud to admit that she is actually lost and she
Speaker 2: wants to inspire confidence that she is capable and she
Speaker 2: does know where they're going and that she's not leading
Speaker 2: them to danger, that kind of thing. But because sense
Speaker 2: of direction has so many gender stereotypes attached to it,
Speaker 2: and yet men stereotypically are perceived as a gender that
Speaker 2: is really good at directions and they know where they're
Speaker 2: going and they just have an inherent sense of direction
Speaker 2: and then they can just look up at the sky.
Speaker 3: Or alternatively, I think that there is like a stereotype
Speaker 3: that I find less true as time goes on, but
Speaker 3: that if they are lost, they cannot admit it. They
Speaker 3: won't stop and ask, yeah, it's so embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, women are perceived stereotypically as people who have a
Speaker 2: really a sense of direction and who just like cannot
Speaker 2: navigate where they are or where they're going. And I
Speaker 2: think that plays a large part into why I feel
Speaker 2: like there's such strong implicit gender bias among these characters,
Speaker 2: is because such a huge part of the tension between
Speaker 2: them is maps and senses of direction and where they're
Speaker 2: going and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Even when Mike admits to kicking the map, he blames
Speaker 4: Heather by saying it was useless anyway, So like, I
Speaker 4: kicked it because you got us lost to the point
Speaker 4: where this map is useless, So why not just fucking
Speaker 4: kick it in because you know it didn't matter anyway.
Speaker 2: So furious because she's like, it was useless to you
Speaker 2: parentheses because you don't know how to read it, But
Speaker 2: it was not useless to me. I knew exactly where
Speaker 2: we were on that map, And I like believe her
Speaker 2: as she's saying that, Like, I think that's probably legitimately true,
Speaker 2: And it's just that the witch is totally to them.
Speaker 3: Even if she's not telling the truth there, Like, that's
Speaker 3: not the reason that he doesn't believe her, So it
Speaker 3: doesn't even matter to me. It matter because I honestly
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't know if I believe her.
Speaker 3: It seems like she was kind of bullshitting to some
Speaker 3: extent in the previous day. But it's like it doesn't
Speaker 3: really matter because I think that like Mike doing that
Speaker 3: is even more telling because he doesn't know her. He
Speaker 3: has no reason to not trust that she doesn't know
Speaker 3: what she's talking about. He met her yesterday, So this
Speaker 3: is like a bias that has nothing to do with
Speaker 3: who she is, right Damn.
Speaker 4: I mean there's like, I don't know if we have
Speaker 4: more Heather, but I think there is another female character
Speaker 4: or woman character that we need to discuss, and that.
Speaker 5: Is the Witch, the Blair Witch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Blair Witch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think like when you do watch
Speaker 4: The Blair Witch, you don't get any information about kind
Speaker 4: of where or who this Blair Witch actually was. When
Speaker 4: you watch the documentary, you learn about the character of
Speaker 4: Ellie Kedwick, who was a witch who was accused of
Speaker 4: like drinking the blood of children, and these children in
Speaker 4: the town came or like the whole town then like
Speaker 4: tied her to a tree. She died of exposure. She
Speaker 4: had like strange symbols carved into her by this group.
Speaker 4: So it is kind of a satanic panic situation originally,
Speaker 4: but you know, you don't know was this witch actually
Speaker 4: doing these things, because after she gets murdered, essentially kids
Speaker 4: still start disappearing in the town, right, So that's when
Speaker 4: it takes on this sort of paranormal dimension. And what
Speaker 4: I think is so interesting is we get the character
Speaker 4: in the Blair Witch Project and then also in like
Speaker 4: all the supplementary stuff of Rustin Parr, who is the
Speaker 4: child murderer from the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: Who just a wild because his name is so rest
Speaker 3: in peace. Oh yeah, that's my brilliant contract.
Speaker 4: It's based on repute's names.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Ellie Edward is a close anagram to Edward Kelly,
Speaker 2: who I forget who that is, but child murderer? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: righter right.
Speaker 3: I was like, we have the right guest on Thank
Speaker 3: you so much.
Speaker 2: I just read about it on scholarly journal, Wikipedia and
Speaker 2: then immediately forgot who it was. Rustin Parr is a
Speaker 2: character name or like part of the lore because the
Speaker 2: directors were like, what's an anagram for resputant? So wow, Jamie.
Speaker 5: I need to correct myself really quick. Edward Kelly was
Speaker 5: a an occultist.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, I don't think he murdered anyone you know
Speaker 4: for Edward Kelly intact.
Speaker 2: But all this to say, and we've talked about the
Speaker 2: representation of witches in many episodes. We've covered a lot
Speaker 2: of which movies.
Speaker 3: And we're fans of which media in general.
Speaker 2: True, how be I was making a list of everything
Speaker 2: we've covered. We've done the Avich, We've done Witches, We've
Speaker 2: done Witches of Eastwick, The Love Witch, The Craft, Practical Magic,
Speaker 2: hocus Pocus. I would even throw Kiki's Delivery circollowen, we
Speaker 2: Love a Witch, right, And many movies that are not
Speaker 2: necessarily specifically about witches but have witch characters, such as
Speaker 2: the Wizard of Oz and things like that. Witches are
Speaker 2: very pervasive in Hollywood media, and especially horror media.
Speaker 3: And if you're covering movies that center women, you're gonna
Speaker 3: end up covering a lot of movie about witches. Very true, true,
Speaker 3: like positively and negatively right, because.
Speaker 2: I mean, most of these which movies are playing into
Speaker 2: the stereotypes and the popularly held misconception that you know,
Speaker 2: witches are evil, they're agents of the devil, they're malicious.
Speaker 2: They're almost always women, which like kind of lends this
Speaker 2: sort of like, well, women equals witches equals women are evil,
Speaker 2: which is a belief that got a lot of people,
Speaker 2: again mostly women, killed during various witch hunts and witch
Speaker 2: trials throughout history, even though, as we've discussed on other episodes,
Speaker 2: people who were perceived to be witches throughout history were
Speaker 2: usually just like empowered women or people who didn't marry
Speaker 2: formed of yeah, unmarried women, healers, people who didn't conform
Speaker 2: to very rigid roles as far as like gender and
Speaker 2: sexuality and things like that throughout history, and then people
Speaker 2: are like, oh, well they must be a witch, and
Speaker 2: then a lot of them were persecuted. This movie is
Speaker 2: doing the same shit.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, Chelsea, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that,
Speaker 3: because it's very interesting to me that, like, you see
Speaker 3: some sort of transgressive ideas with Heather and bicentering her,
Speaker 3: but it does feel like there is like a saminess
Speaker 3: even though the way that this movie presents everything is
Speaker 3: so different, but there is a sameness to like a
Speaker 3: woman crosses a boundary and like gets a little too curious.
Speaker 3: I think that's another trope that is kind of present
Speaker 3: here and not really challenged. And yeah, the idea of
Speaker 3: the witch is just like reinforced in a way that
Speaker 3: I didn't even really almost notice the first time, because
Speaker 3: you don't see the witch, which I think helps, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't really resolve.
Speaker 4: The issue, right, you don't get who the witch was
Speaker 4: in the actual movie.
Speaker 5: Then you get the background, which does kind of present a.
Speaker 4: Possible false accusation, but then kind of, Okay, are still
Speaker 4: getting murdered. This ventual ghost is still kind of coming
Speaker 4: after children. And I think that there's a lot to
Speaker 4: do with the Satanic panic in this movie, especially as
Speaker 4: it relates to women, and for anyone uninitiated into the
Speaker 4: Satanic panic. In the eighties and nineties, there were tons
Speaker 4: of accusations of Satanic cults kidnapping and ritually abusing children,
Speaker 4: and this was just an idea so widely held that
Speaker 4: like Oprah Heraldo, police departments all over the country were
Speaker 4: trained in spotting Satanic ritual abuse. People were recovering memories
Speaker 4: by like dubious therapy techniques of abuses in their childhood
Speaker 4: that were so outrageous that it's so difficult to believe
Speaker 4: now that this ever happened. Children were also being coerced
Speaker 4: unintentionally by therapists and ended up in saying that all
Speaker 4: these things happened, like that their teachers in their daycares,
Speaker 4: which was like a big place like daycares or the
Speaker 4: center of this, the teachers were not only abusing them,
Speaker 4: but they were like putting them in kittie pools full
Speaker 4: of baby sharks that were biting them, And that their
Speaker 4: teachers were flying around on broomsticks and they were flushed
Speaker 4: down the toilet to like live in the basement, and
Speaker 4: that there was like a gorilla's arm ripped off and
Speaker 4: a horse was sacrificed in the classroom. And yet no
Speaker 4: shred of physical evidence was ever found.
Speaker 3: I know all of this, and it is never less
Speaker 3: shocking to just hear it sort of raveled off in
Speaker 3: the list. Yeah, let's just you know, right, baby sharks,
Speaker 3: gorilla arm right.
Speaker 5: Right, right, right right, you know.
Speaker 4: So it is so difficult to believe now, and yet
Speaker 4: it was like a widely held belief in the nineties.
Speaker 2: There was also a lot of media and like, yeah,
Speaker 2: children's toys and a lot of things that were blamed
Speaker 2: for perpetuating this panic.
Speaker 4: Yes, rock music, yeah, D and D Yeah, absolutely everything
Speaker 4: was suspect in the eighties and nineties that fundamentalists didn't
Speaker 4: like or feminist, because feminists were also unfortunately part of
Speaker 4: this as well, not necessarily for any reason other than
Speaker 4: trying to protect children and not being educated on kind
Speaker 4: of what was going on. Because guess what, we probably
Speaker 4: all would have been like part of this because when
Speaker 4: you were in it, it was so scary. You didn't
Speaker 4: have any evidence that this wasn't happening. It's such an
Speaker 4: amazing story that there's like satanic.
Speaker 5: Cults in the woods.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's easy sometimes to believe these things when
Speaker 4: police departments in the FBI are reporting this as actually happening,
Speaker 4: right right, But then I think there's an interesting thing
Speaker 4: happening at the same time. Where Like, on one hand,
Speaker 4: the Satanic panic largely blamed women, like a lot of
Speaker 4: the people who went on trial for abuses were women
Speaker 4: who were said to be sexually abusing children in these
Speaker 4: satanic rituals. And it also had a lot to do
Speaker 4: kind of in retrospect around the fact that women in
Speaker 4: the eighties and nineties were starting to work more and
Speaker 4: more and be outside of the house and daycares were
Speaker 4: becoming a lot more popular, and so a lot of people,
Speaker 4: including myself, theologists who look back on this. Do believe
Speaker 4: that a lot of this backlash toward these daycares had
Speaker 4: to do with the fact that they were this symbolic
Speaker 4: thing that said, Okay, women are no longer mothers, Like
Speaker 4: women are coming out of this long term position as
Speaker 4: only homemakers, and they're like kind of like fuck this
Speaker 4: more than you know, like the sixties seventies you have
Speaker 4: more women working, but by the eighties it was like
Speaker 4: a lot more common, and it was also like very
Speaker 4: condemned by fundamentalists. So you have this like weird blame
Speaker 4: that is coming like the Witch Trials in a way, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, men were certainly blamed for some of these
Speaker 4: ritual abuses, and some men were blamed for some of
Speaker 4: the ritual abuses in the Witch Trials as well, But
Speaker 4: generally when we look at these things, we look back
Speaker 4: and say, okay, this was like women doing these things,
Speaker 4: which is so wild. But then in the nineties rattling
Speaker 4: this off, you also have third wave feminine, which I
Speaker 4: think is like, that's why I think you get so
Speaker 4: many like good witch movies, because even like the Craft
Speaker 4: is still like kind of an empowerment film, it's like
Speaker 4: also has sort of the hubrius of power and the
Speaker 4: problems with that. But you know, I think there was
Speaker 4: a reclaiming of the Witch in the nineties that came
Speaker 4: along with this new kind of feminism that was just
Speaker 4: kind of retelling these stories in a new way. So
Speaker 4: you have kind of all those influences throughout because they're
Speaker 4: writing this movie throughout the nineties, right, it comes out
Speaker 4: in ninety nine, but throughout the nineties, like we're still
Speaker 4: having the Satanic panic happening, And originally the movie was
Speaker 4: supposed to be more satanic. They were supposed to find
Speaker 4: all these like satanic artifacts and pentagrams in the house,
Speaker 4: and then they changed direction for whatever reason.
Speaker 3: Which I'm grateful that they did. This is not quite
Speaker 3: Blair Witch adjacent, but I also feel like connecting things
Speaker 3: to daycares. It also feels so tied in with like
Speaker 3: the stranger danger ideas of the eighties and where it
Speaker 3: was like it was popular to make children afraid of
Speaker 3: strangers and present strangers as the ultimate danger when it's
Speaker 3: statistically more likely for danger and abuse to come from
Speaker 3: someone you know, and all this stuff. That's sort of
Speaker 3: like you don't think that there would be some level
Speaker 3: of presence to it in the Blair Witch Project, but
Speaker 3: there is like the idea of a stranger luring you
Speaker 3: out into the woods to get you. Like it does
Speaker 3: feel like there's a little bit of like late twentieth
Speaker 3: century stranger dangerous stuff tied in there as well. I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk a little bit about Heather as the
Speaker 3: visual storyteller of this movie for the most part, and
Speaker 3: I kind of wonder. I mean, I've read a couple
Speaker 3: of essays about it. The one that I want to
Speaker 3: share stuff from is from two thousand and two written
Speaker 3: by Denica McDonald. It's called Trespasses into Temptation, Gendered Imagination
Speaker 3: and the Blair Witch Project. I don't agree with everything
Speaker 3: in in this essay, but I thought it was really
Speaker 3: interesting and sort of like gets into this in a
Speaker 3: very academic way. She's quoting the shit out of Laura
Speaker 3: Mulvey and I like had flashbacks to my freshman year
Speaker 3: of college, but both kind of talks about how there is,
Speaker 3: first of all, the very sey presentation of the Witch
Speaker 3: like we've just talked about, but also in a way
Speaker 3: that feels like it possibly got lost when the movie
Speaker 3: came out because there's so much about this movie that's
Speaker 3: so interesting and different that it's like a little easier
Speaker 3: to forget that there are very stereotypical horror tropes present
Speaker 3: in this movie too, where like a woman gets too
Speaker 3: curious and has to receive her come up and for
Speaker 3: crossing this invisible boundary of where you're not supposed to go.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to share a little bit from her
Speaker 3: essay because I just thought it was interesting. For the
Speaker 3: first half of the film, Heather is the strongest character
Speaker 3: in the film. She's focused, organized, domineering. She refuses to
Speaker 3: be the object of both the larger films gaze and
Speaker 3: the documentary's gaze. She has brought her own camera to
Speaker 3: record all of the events that take place. Moreover, the
Speaker 3: project was her idea. She takes possession of the only
Speaker 3: map for the excursion, as well as the only compass.
Speaker 3: It is also Heather who has scouted out the project
Speaker 3: and who leads the excursion. Literally, she holds all the cards. However,
Speaker 3: out of all the characters, it is Heather who has
Speaker 3: the most difficulty accepting the reality of events around her. Thus,
Speaker 3: when she realizes she is losing control of her controlled
Speaker 3: and well planned project, she frantically dismisses what she cannot explain.
Speaker 3: She repeatedly refuses to accept the seriousness of the situation
Speaker 3: she finds herself in and desperately tries to hold on
Speaker 3: to what is real by reheating phrases such as things
Speaker 3: like this just do not happen in America. This is America.
Speaker 3: It is impossible to get lost, it is impossible to
Speaker 3: stay lost, which I think I wonder how improvised that
Speaker 3: line was, because that, to me, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's a fun in like doctoral thesis is worth of
Speaker 3: something to talk about inside of that.
Speaker 5: And then they all scream God bless America.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or the two guys just starts screaming that, which
Speaker 4: I think is interesting too. Write like she says that,
Speaker 4: and then they just start screaming these like American anthems. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just because you know they've they've obviously lost it a bit.
Speaker 5: But that's also interesting.
Speaker 3: But the idea of like, and I genuinely don't know
Speaker 3: how intentional this was in the filmmaking because of how
Speaker 3: it was made, but I think it's very rare to
Speaker 3: in general, give anyone who's not a man a camera
Speaker 3: and give them narrative control. I love that they give
Speaker 3: that to Heather, and they also take it away from
Speaker 3: her in certain moments where it's like, technically most of
Speaker 3: this movie is presented by quote unquote the female gaze,
Speaker 3: but it isn't because of not only the moments where
Speaker 3: you see the black and white of I think it
Speaker 3: Josh is shooting, but also it's like inherent to the movie.
Speaker 3: And I think, like the website lord that two male
Speaker 3: directors were hired to edit it so fascinating. I don't
Speaker 3: know even what to make of it, because a lot
Speaker 3: of it feels like probably unintentional, but to like have
Speaker 3: a woman at the front of a movie thinking that
Speaker 3: she is controlling, you know, controls the gaze of the movie,
Speaker 3: but everything about the way it happens is taken out
Speaker 3: of her control and is like sort of used to
Speaker 3: undermine her credibility as a storyteller because you know that
Speaker 3: she dies when the movie starts, and you get to
Speaker 3: see all of these things that she doesn't want you
Speaker 3: to see. I just think it's very interesting. I can't
Speaker 3: think of another movie like it, I know, definitely, and
Speaker 3: then the America stuff just I don't know. I feel
Speaker 3: like that's almost like a little cherry on top of
Speaker 3: what you were talking about just now Chelsea, where it's
Speaker 3: just like sort of the exceptionalist arrogance of Americans and
Speaker 3: of like this like specific late twentieth century kind of
Speaker 3: moment where you're like a bad thing wouldn't happen in America,
Speaker 3: and you're like, oh, baby, hang in there.
Speaker 4: This is like so similar to me, to another thing,
Speaker 4: and I am absolutely obsessed with which is the story
Speaker 4: of the Donner Party. And they are another group of
Speaker 4: people who kind of marched into a situation believing that
Speaker 4: everything would be completely fine because sort of that maybe
Speaker 4: partially because of the halo of protection that we have
Speaker 4: as Americans, or we think that we have because of
Speaker 4: this idea of like manifest destiny, like this is our land,
Speaker 4: this is our place, like nothing bad can happen to us,
Speaker 4: because like we are chosen to go westward and like
Speaker 4: it's sanctioned by our higher power, and so we can
Speaker 4: act however we want. Because the Donner Party just they
Speaker 4: did things like stop and party for three days when
Speaker 4: they were like two weeks behind the weather. They did
Speaker 4: these things that landed them in this situation, believing hucksters
Speaker 4: who told them they'd be completely fine going in this
Speaker 4: other direction and getting lost, and there's so there are
Speaker 4: a lot of parallels between these two stories, not to
Speaker 4: say that you know, it's the same intention behind going
Speaker 4: into the woods, but there is something like particular to me,
Speaker 4: I don't know about like three white young people going
Speaker 4: into the woods being like everything's gonna be totally fine.
Speaker 4: You know, we're gonna like go and I would do
Speaker 4: this speaking as someone who would absolutely have done this
Speaker 4: and absolutely been the heather of the situation.
Speaker 3: I think we all would have been the heather at
Speaker 3: different points in a judgment.
Speaker 5: Just a fact.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think that there's still like an interesting
Speaker 4: thing about that, like hubrisk, because that's a big theme
Speaker 4: of this film, is like you think you can go
Speaker 4: and chase like the paranormal and you can go after
Speaker 4: like these stories and you have like the site of
Speaker 4: a halo of protection. I used to travel in just
Speaker 4: such dangerous ways.
Speaker 5: I used to hitch II. You can do all these things,
Speaker 5: And looking back, I'm like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I absolutely had this like idea that I was
Speaker 4: protected somehow, And there is something to that as well,
Speaker 4: like that lens of some kind of privilege or some
Speaker 4: kind of invincibility.
Speaker 5: That also has to do with youth, of course, like
Speaker 5: the folly of being in your early twenties.
Speaker 4: Sure, but yeah, I think that that's kind of another
Speaker 4: lens of like the overconfidence certain groups in America myself, including.
Speaker 2: Totally young white middle class yeah people.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, And that's like so much of like
Speaker 3: what this movie shows feels just like experimental and possibly unintentional.
Speaker 3: Where I don't know that we've mentioned this yet, but
Speaker 3: originally the directors envisioned it being three men who were
Speaker 3: leading this movie. And it wasn't until how they're auditioned
Speaker 3: and gave an amazing audition that they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: actually we're going to put you at the center of
Speaker 3: this movie. So so much of what is gendered about
Speaker 3: this movie is very possibly not a part of the
Speaker 3: original plan. But that's not to say that that doesn't
Speaker 3: come into the performances and into the editing and into
Speaker 3: the marketing and into the reception. It's just so bizarre
Speaker 3: and fascinating and the same thing of like it's the
Speaker 3: late nineties, So I don't know, but it's like I
Speaker 3: wonder how intentionally they were cast for Race for Appears.
Speaker 3: I Mean, it's all kind of unclear, but it comes
Speaker 3: out just because of how the movie was shot and
Speaker 3: made and what it seems like the personal experiences of
Speaker 3: the actors were because so much of them had to
Speaker 3: go into the parts. Yeah, the America stuff. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh fuck, I totally forgot about that part of the movie. Wow,
Speaker 3: not them cultural commentarying at the turn of the Millennium.
Speaker 2: No, Well, one of the things Heather says is when
Speaker 2: they're being like hunted in the woods and they don't
Speaker 2: really know who or what is hunting them, she says
Speaker 2: something like, well, they can't chase us forever because this
Speaker 2: is America where we've destroyed most of our natural resources,
Speaker 2: basically saying like, we're gonna run out of forest eventually
Speaker 2: and we will come upon the civilization.
Speaker 3: Not even totally misguided thoughts, but come.
Speaker 2: On, yeah, that would be my logic. If I was
Speaker 2: lost in the woods, I'd be like, well, if I
Speaker 2: just keep walking in a direction, there will be a
Speaker 2: road eventually.
Speaker 3: But you never see the blur witch controlling the space
Speaker 3: time continuing. No one's ready.
Speaker 4: For that exactly, And I love that they just throw
Speaker 4: in this little pinch of hillbilly horror where we have
Speaker 4: I believe Josh saying Oh my god, I think that
Speaker 4: there's like some redneck I can't remember what he says,
Speaker 4: but some rednecks fucking with us out in the woods,
Speaker 4: which I all say, so really, I'm into looking at
Speaker 4: horror movie through the lens of class and like that
Speaker 4: they're out in the woods and this is kind of
Speaker 4: the only place where these like scary, impoverished people live
Speaker 4: who are gonna get you if you go into the woods. Again,
Speaker 4: like that like middle class college student, like a Deliverance
Speaker 4: type movie where it's like, oh, we're just gonna like
Speaker 4: canoe down this river because nothing bad will happen to us,
Speaker 4: even the way of like no real plan. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that that's another just like interesting American moment
Speaker 4: in the movie that we're kind of led to believe
Speaker 4: that could be a possibility at least.
Speaker 3: And you can feel that in how the interviews go
Speaker 3: at the top of the movie as well, where there's
Speaker 3: especially when they come into contact with Mary Brown, which
Speaker 3: feels like a combination of they do not think she
Speaker 3: is of sound mind. I think they're also judging her
Speaker 3: because she's poor and she's old. Yeah, and then also
Speaker 3: another time with the guys that are fishing, Like you
Speaker 3: can just even hear I don't know, like you can
Speaker 3: hear in Heather voice that she's like, I don't take
Speaker 3: these people seriously because they are poor and live rural.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not listening to the Harbingers and there's like
Speaker 4: a bunch of them and they're just a you know,
Speaker 4: they're not listening to them at all, which is a
Speaker 4: you know, classic horror and a classic college student mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Josh even makes a reference to Deliverance because like
Speaker 2: that's the thing, like people's frame of reference for a
Speaker 2: lot of just what happens in life is the media
Speaker 2: they've consumed. And he's like, well, probably what's happening is
Speaker 2: that there are like people who live in the woods
Speaker 2: and they're the ones fucking with us.
Speaker 3: Like in Deliverance, You're like, who do you think made that, Josh?
Speaker 3: Middle class white people you feel defice.
Speaker 2: Similarly, I forget which character it's either Mike or Josh.
Speaker 2: They come upon that like makeshift cemetery and one of
Speaker 2: them says and it's just like a throwaway line of dialogue.
Speaker 2: It's not a plot point or anything like that. It's
Speaker 2: just like a they said something, and he says ooh,
Speaker 2: looks like an Indian burial ground, which is like, first
Speaker 2: of all.
Speaker 3: We've also talked about on this show, which is just.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, an example of something scary or haunted being
Speaker 2: likened to indigenous history in some way. Where again, as
Speaker 2: we've discussed, so many horror movies attribute something very scary
Speaker 2: to a native burial ground being disturbed or a Native
Speaker 2: quote unquote curse of some kind, something like that that
Speaker 2: a character again just like makes a throwaway comment about.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's also a similar moment, another throwaway
Speaker 2: line where they talk about like voodoo or like a
Speaker 2: I think they like see the stick figures and make
Speaker 2: a reference to how they're like voodoo dolls. We've also
Speaker 2: talked about this the way that Princess and the Frog, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that voodoo is widely misrepresented in media.
Speaker 3: It's such a fascinating like time capsule of these very
Speaker 3: specific biases that still exist. But it's just like the
Speaker 3: way it's laid out in this movie is very natural
Speaker 3: because it basically is yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And these biases are coming out, and like the acting,
Speaker 4: because they don't have a script, So I am assuming
Speaker 4: that Josh did not have a script that said this
Speaker 4: is an Indian burial ground. You should say something about
Speaker 4: this being an Indian burial ground. That's like just coming
Speaker 4: completely out of the influence that media has had on
Speaker 4: him completely. Yeah, which is just as interesting as a script.
Speaker 4: It's it's basically the same thing. It's still the writer
Speaker 4: slash actors bias being expressed.
Speaker 2: Which I feel like those three actors should have been
Speaker 2: credited writers on the movie since it's all their dialogue,
Speaker 2: but they were not credited as writing the movie. The
Speaker 2: only credited writers are the two directors, Daniel Merrick and
Speaker 2: Eduardo Sanchez, who wrote that outline for the movie. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they conceived the story and the basic plot points, but
Speaker 2: it was the actors.
Speaker 3: But like the most iconic moment of this movie was
Speaker 3: technically written by the actor formerly known as Heather Donihue.
Speaker 3: Those are her words.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to point out two quick things. One
Speaker 2: is that speaking of like their biases just kind of
Speaker 2: coming through in the dialogue they're improvising. A few of
Speaker 2: them make some fat phobic in like body shaming comments. Also,
Speaker 2: one of the guys is filming Heather when she's trying
Speaker 2: to pee in the woods, which is very gross.
Speaker 3: Illegal and they film her dirty butt, yeah, which is
Speaker 3: very friend evil friend behavior. I will say, not that
Speaker 3: it excuses it, but zooming in on someone's dirty butt rude.
Speaker 3: I'll make the controversial observation that it could happen to
Speaker 3: any of us.
Speaker 5: It's classic comedy.
Speaker 2: I would never do that. I would never film your
Speaker 2: dirty butt, Jamie. I just want you to know that
Speaker 2: Jamie would film me.
Speaker 3: I might film your dirty but I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't know. It depends on how dirty it is.
Speaker 5: The ruth comes up, how.
Speaker 3: Feisty I was feeling on that day.
Speaker 5: But you wouldn't put it in them.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't put it in the final cut, think, but
Speaker 3: I maybe send it to a group text.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, fair? Yeah, does anyone have anything else?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that this movie does pass the Baxel test.
Speaker 5: It does.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Between Heather and Mary Brown, yay. And if we
Speaker 2: knew the local that they're interviewing, who's like holding the
Speaker 2: toddler in her arms, if we knew her name, which.
Speaker 3: It spiritually passes to me. Yeah, her real name is
Speaker 3: Susie Gooch, which is also like, okay, an incredible name.
Speaker 3: I'd love Susie Gooch.
Speaker 4: I think it's also worth pointing out that there is
Speaker 4: no romance true at all in this movie, So there's
Speaker 4: actually no conversation at all about a man romantically. It's
Speaker 4: like the only girlfriend we have is Josh saying like,
Speaker 4: my girlfriend's gonna know I'm missing, and that's kind of
Speaker 4: like the only.
Speaker 3: Line, Like we got that, Josh, we get it.
Speaker 5: Does she live in Canada?
Speaker 3: I read in the oral history that that was originally
Speaker 3: written into the outline was that Josh and had There
Speaker 3: had a romantic So it's like, you can't even hand
Speaker 3: it to the director because they originally wrote in that
Speaker 3: like Josh and had There had a romantic history. But
Speaker 3: then based on how the early improvised scenes were going,
Speaker 3: they're like, forget it cool because their relationship was becoming
Speaker 3: so friend antagonistic that they're like, let's just cut that
Speaker 3: element and have you just react to each other. But yeah,
Speaker 3: they weren't above it, but it just was like a
Speaker 3: testament to the actors, like, I mean, it wasn't necessary
Speaker 3: either way, right, Definitely, their performance has made it clear.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So yes to passing the Bechdel type, but onto
Speaker 2: the perfect metric. The Bechdel cast nipple scale, which is
Speaker 2: our scale where we rate the movie zero to five
Speaker 2: nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 2: And I will give this ooh two and a half
Speaker 2: or three nipples just because I really like the character
Speaker 2: of Heather in that I appreciate that she feels so
Speaker 2: authentically human in the way that women are not often
Speaker 2: allowed to be on screen. She's flawed and she has
Speaker 2: to deal with again what I interpret as implicit gender bias.
Speaker 2: Whether or not that was an intentional piece of the
Speaker 2: filmmakers or not, it is how I experienced the movie.
Speaker 2: As I was watching it. Two men's treatment of her
Speaker 2: felt extremely familiar to me in that very kind of
Speaker 2: gendered way where totally they aren't coming out and saying
Speaker 2: it explicitly, but their behavior and just the way they
Speaker 2: interact with her and the way they do not really
Speaker 2: trust her at any point again felt as though they
Speaker 2: were harboring these sexist biases, and I think that's interesting
Speaker 2: to watch. And again, whether as intentional or not, it
Speaker 2: is there to me so and it's something I never
Speaker 2: noticed until this watch of it either. But I also
Speaker 2: hadn't seen the movie since I was a teenager probably However,
Speaker 2: the lack of challenging of like the traditional witch narrative
Speaker 2: of oh, of course there was a witch who is
Speaker 2: evil because which is be evil murderers for no reason,
Speaker 2: that not being challenged at all, and that trope just
Speaker 2: being fully leaned into. And you don't get much backstory
Speaker 2: or lore of the Blair Witch in this movie, but
Speaker 2: in the two sequels, and I think I didn't watch
Speaker 2: that documentary that you're both referring to, but it seems
Speaker 2: like there's more lore that is canon to the property
Speaker 2: and to the Blair Witch, that dives more into who
Speaker 2: the Blair Witch was and what she's all about. And
Speaker 2: again it's just like playing into those tropes of like
Speaker 2: woman equals which equals evil. So didn't care much for that.
Speaker 2: So with that in mind, I think I'll give the
Speaker 2: movie two and a half nipples, and I'll give one
Speaker 2: to the actor formally known as Heather donaghue, and I'll
Speaker 2: give one to Mary Own, and then I'll give my
Speaker 2: half nipple to the woman who has the toddler, Yeah,
Speaker 2: who improvised Susy.
Speaker 5: Gooch and famously now a corn.
Speaker 2: Fan whose daughter is now a huge cornhead baby gooch
Speaker 2: a Corn Cob if you will, totally corn.
Speaker 5: So yeah, that's my reading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go three. I really enjoyed getting to
Speaker 3: talk about this movie. This movie does so many things.
Speaker 3: I don't even really care if it's intentional or not,
Speaker 3: because it's like what we have and there's so few
Speaker 3: movies like it where it's like you're literally stressed testing
Speaker 3: late nineties white middle class biases just inherently to how
Speaker 3: this project was made. It's so interesting. I really I
Speaker 3: have a lot of love for the character Heather, and
Speaker 3: the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue, and all of
Speaker 3: the actors. I mean, just like absolutely wild that they
Speaker 3: survived this experience. And again, whether intentional or not, the
Speaker 3: idea of like a woman controlling the narrative and having
Speaker 3: the narrative taken away from her after her death and
Speaker 3: also in the last day of her life, I think
Speaker 3: is really fascinating. And if it's a mistake, I don't care.
Speaker 3: It's fucking cool. And then there's all the less challenging
Speaker 3: part of this that we've talked about, of the presentation
Speaker 3: of witches and how Heather's treated in certain moments. I think, honestly,
Speaker 3: the presentation of the Witch herself is the thing I
Speaker 3: have the biggest issue with because how had There's treated
Speaker 3: does feel like a part of that stress test, and
Speaker 3: it feels very relevant to how her character works out.
Speaker 3: And I think it's frustrating and fascinating that the apology
Speaker 3: scene is what most people remember from this movie because
Speaker 3: it is a scene that is credited as being written
Speaker 3: by two men when it was not. It's a great
Speaker 3: piece of acting that was widely mocked for years, in
Speaker 3: years and years, and it kind of I think because
Speaker 3: it's famous, which is again, this isn't a fault of
Speaker 3: the movie, really, but I mean, like, let you sort
Speaker 3: of believe that Heather brought this on to herself and
Speaker 3: brought this on to her friends. Yeah, with the apology
Speaker 3: sort of being the thing that sticks with her. No,
Speaker 3: no one, It doesn't stick with anyone. That Mike's the
Speaker 3: one that got rid of the map. It doesn't like
Speaker 3: the other characters. Accountability isn't what sticks with people. And
Speaker 3: so I just think the movie fucking rips hell, and
Speaker 3: I just really enjoy talking about it with you both.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give it three nips, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to give them all two Ray Hants aka the actor
Speaker 3: formerly known as Heather Donna Hugh looking forward to figuring
Speaker 3: out where I can buy her weed online.
Speaker 4: I think she's out of the game now, sadly. Damn,
Speaker 4: she's just being a Buddhist now, which is rad and
Speaker 4: I would be too distressful history.
Speaker 3: You're going to a balance, seriously, this has been your life, yeah, Chelsea,
Speaker 3: how about you? Ugh?
Speaker 4: Okay, I think that one of the most interesting themes.
Speaker 4: And that makes me again like agree with you both
Speaker 4: really about the portrayal of the witch being the most
Speaker 4: egregious offense against like women. And I didn't actually mention
Speaker 4: this before, but there's a theme of blame, which we've talked.
Speaker 3: About with Heather.
Speaker 4: But then we can also look at the blame that
Speaker 4: was placed if we're looking outside of the movie, which
Speaker 4: I think is okay, because these things existed in kind
Speaker 4: of concert with each other. So it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: the Blair Witch Project. But a lot of people were
Speaker 4: on the website, a lot of people were watching the
Speaker 4: fake documentary, and you learn about Ellie Kenwick who is
Speaker 4: blamed by the town for the disappearances of children and
Speaker 4: then murdered, and then you also have Rust and Parr,
Speaker 4: the child murderer of the nineteen forties who is essentially
Speaker 4: considered to have been possessed by a woman. Right, So
Speaker 4: it's like we have this actual horrific murderer that did exist.
Speaker 5: There's no lore.
Speaker 4: It's like Rust and Parr existed, he killed children, they
Speaker 4: were found, but it's still somehow a woman's fault, like
Speaker 4: the map is somehow Heather's fault. Right, So there's this
Speaker 4: like theme of blame that isn't really analyzed in any way.
Speaker 5: So let's see.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think I'm going to go up to
Speaker 4: three because mostly because of my bias and being so
Speaker 4: in love and obsessed with this movie.
Speaker 5: Heather, Mary Brown, Ellie Kedwick, hell Ya.
Speaker 4: And you know what, maybe I'll give another Well now
Speaker 4: I can't give one for marketing, but I would just
Speaker 4: like to say the best marketing that has ever existed
Speaker 4: in any franchise period.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, completely impossible to replicate. Like it's just never again,
Speaker 3: so fucking cool, Never again, Chelsea, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for bringing this to us. I just like, there's no
Speaker 3: one I would rather talk about this movie with.
Speaker 5: That's so nice.
Speaker 4: I am so grateful that you asked me on and yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a joy ride for sure.
Speaker 5: Of Hubris.
Speaker 2: What a wonderful camping troop.
Speaker 4: You know, in those Maryland woods. I'm from the Northwest,
Speaker 4: not as scary. Our woods are not as scary as
Speaker 4: those thin trees out there.
Speaker 5: Oh it's so freaky. I want to go. So I
Speaker 5: guess we're camping, right.
Speaker 3: I'm coin, I'm cone see you there.
Speaker 2: Here's a quick little story to end the episode with.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the middle of the woods in
Speaker 2: rural western Pennsylvania. There was a local legend that is
Speaker 2: like in local history books about this ghost who was
Speaker 2: haunting people and then he manifested as this eternal flame
Speaker 2: and so the but this flame that like popped out
Speaker 2: of the ground one day was actually just like a
Speaker 2: pocket of natural gas that ignited maybe from lightning or something.
Speaker 2: But this flame, this like or eternal flame, ghost flame,
Speaker 2: was right outside my house where like my dad built
Speaker 2: a little like well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sessed. So there's a shit.
Speaker 2: Ghost story that existed on my property growing up.
Speaker 3: Okay, your neighbor was the eternal flame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, it's like the legend of the burning Well,
Speaker 2: I'll look into it. I'll see if I can find anything.
Speaker 2: I was like, you have to talk to listen.
Speaker 5: This is a great moment for self promo here.
Speaker 4: This is American Hysteria has been doing a new project
Speaker 4: called the Urban Legends Hotline, and you go to our
Speaker 4: website Americanassria dot com and you can leave a message
Speaker 4: about an urban legend that you had growing up, and
Speaker 4: then we turn it into like a very detailed and
Speaker 4: very intensive episode. So I would love if you called
Speaker 4: in and talked about this ghost flame because I love
Speaker 4: it and you never know what you're gonna find. We
Speaker 4: analyze it through every possible lens, newspapers, dot com.
Speaker 5: We're there.
Speaker 3: I listened to the pig People episode. That was a
Speaker 3: hotline episode, right, Yeah it was.
Speaker 4: It was cannibal pig people murdering teenagers. That's the kind
Speaker 4: of stuff you can find on our show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us all about your show where people can
Speaker 2: find it, etc.
Speaker 4: Yeah, American Hysteria, you can find it anywhere you get
Speaker 4: your podcasts. And yeah, we cover the fantastical thinking of Americans,
Speaker 4: moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, crazes, anything that
Speaker 4: kind of stirs a large amount of people.
Speaker 5: We try to cover.
Speaker 4: So a lot of the shows are written narrative me
Speaker 4: describing talking, and we have clips.
Speaker 5: You know, it's very multi media project.
Speaker 4: And then we also have interview episodes with all kinds
Speaker 4: of cool guests talking about all kinds of cool topics.
Speaker 5: So I hope you guys come and listen.
Speaker 2: Hell yes, and thank you again for joining us. Come
Speaker 2: back anytime.
Speaker 5: Please, yeah, just say the word.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on social media at Bechtel Cast.
Speaker 2: You can somebscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com
Speaker 2: slash Bechtel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every
Speaker 2: single month, plus access to the back catalog of many
Speaker 2: many bonus episodes, all for five dollars a month.
Speaker 3: And you can get our merch over at teapublic dot
Speaker 3: com slash the Bechtel Cast. And with that, let's go
Speaker 3: into the Freaky house and get gun.
Speaker 5: I Dream.
Speaker 2: I'm down. Bye bye,