Speaker 1: Burn attention Beck to cast listeners.
Speaker 2: We're going on tour.
Speaker 1: We really are. And it's not just any tour. It's
Speaker 1: a tour in the UK and it's a tour where
Speaker 1: we are covering Titanic and.
Speaker 2: Shrek brilliantly titled the Shrek Tannic Tour. Yes, Shrek Tornic.
Speaker 2: We're working on it. There's a couple there's a couple
Speaker 2: months before the tour, but yes, we're really excited. We're
Speaker 2: currently doing five shows in the UK, with more shows
Speaker 2: to be added. Stay tuned at the end of May.
Speaker 1: Yes, starting with two shows in London on May twenty second,
Speaker 1: once at six point thirty that's a Shrek show, one
Speaker 1: at nine pm that is a Titanic show. Then we
Speaker 1: are scooting over to Oxford on May twenty fourth we
Speaker 1: are covering Titanic. Okay, Then we're scooting up to Edinburgh
Speaker 1: on May twenty sixth and doing Strek.
Speaker 2: If you're a Scottish Titanic fan, you are going to
Speaker 2: have to commute. And I know that that's not but listen, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you live in Edinburgh recovering Shrek.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but also you're welcome. And then
Speaker 1: if you do want to see Titanic, you can head
Speaker 1: down to Manchester. We're doing a show on May twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: and that's a Titanic show.
Speaker 2: So as your Bechdel Cast allies in the US can
Speaker 2: attest to. Our live shows are super fun. It is
Speaker 2: like a live episode plus a bunch of fun stuff.
Speaker 2: We dress up, we bring audience members on stage sometimes
Speaker 2: we do. It's just it's big and goofy and silly.
Speaker 2: And we're covering two of our favorite movies that are
Speaker 2: Bechtel Cast canon, so we want to have a good time.
Speaker 2: We'll be bringing exclusive merch and we will be doing
Speaker 2: meet and greets before and after the show. We want
Speaker 2: to meet everybody and we're really really excited. So if
Speaker 2: you if you live in those areas, get those dang
Speaker 2: tickets because these shows will sell.
Speaker 1: Out, Yes they will, So head over to our link
Speaker 1: Tree link Tree slash Bechdel Cast. All the tickets are
Speaker 1: posted there. And like we said, we're working on at
Speaker 1: least one more show in a different city, so stay tuned.
Speaker 1: We're hoping to announce that soon. And otherwise, grab your
Speaker 1: tickets for the Shrektanic.
Speaker 2: And enjoy the episode on the Bechdel cast.
Speaker 3: The questions asked if movies have.
Speaker 4: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 4: husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephi
Speaker 4: bast start changing with the Bechdel cast.
Speaker 1: Hey, mister Jamie, Yes, mister Caitlyn, I'm mister Caitlin to you,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yes, mister Kaitlin, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Need you to give me the key to your apartment
Speaker 1: so I can fu a bunch of people there, and
Speaker 1: then I'll give you a promotion.
Speaker 2: Maybe Okay, Well, here's the thing. You'll never see me
Speaker 2: change the sheets. It's maybe implied that I did, but
Speaker 2: it's not really implied that I did. So if you're
Speaker 2: cool with me getting promoted and maybe sleeping on your com,
Speaker 2: that's okay with me, mister Caitlin. Is Jack Lemon sleeping
Speaker 2: on his boss has come the whole mooks? So he
Speaker 2: comes home and he's so tired, and I like his
Speaker 2: posture isn't that of someone who has the energy to
Speaker 2: change their sheets?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, yeah, so he's sleeping and come and I
Speaker 1: don't care about that. I just care that you buy
Speaker 1: me a bunch of alcohol.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you're not paying me enough to keep the
Speaker 2: var stocked. But like you know, fingers crossed for a promotion,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to boy boss my way to the top
Speaker 2: of insurance.
Speaker 1: I don't understand the logistics of the sex apartment economy,
Speaker 1: but what I.
Speaker 2: I love it. It's so movie where who knows why
Speaker 2: they need to fucket his apartment but he's sleeping, got
Speaker 2: his bosses come that. Really, I couldn't stop thinking about
Speaker 2: that the whole time because then Shirley McClain, I'm like,
Speaker 2: now she's in the cum sheets on the worst day
Speaker 2: of her life. Come on, I know, I hope he
Speaker 2: changed the sheets for her. Doubt it, Jesus doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like it, because the scenes moved so quickly. I hope
Speaker 2: the doctor insisted. I feel like he, of anyone in
Speaker 2: the movie, would be like, hold on, maybe we should
Speaker 2: change the sheets. Anyways. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My
Speaker 2: name's Jamie Loftis.
Speaker 1: My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where
Speaker 1: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 1: Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate
Speaker 1: larger conversations but the Bechdel Test, Yes, what is it?
Speaker 2: Well, Caitlyn, I can tell you, as I've said close
Speaker 2: to five hundred times before. Isn't that scared? Anyways, They're Bechdel.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to fuck it up. The bechel Test
Speaker 2: is a media metric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often
Speaker 2: called the Bechdel Wallace Test because she co created it
Speaker 2: with her friend Liz Wallace. Originally appeared in Alison Bechdel's
Speaker 2: iconic comic collection Dykes to Watch out For and was
Speaker 2: originally about a more intersectional test than it tends to
Speaker 2: be used, as it was pointing out that women rarely
Speaker 2: speak to each other in movies as a way of
Speaker 2: talking about how queer women are never in movies and
Speaker 2: never have relationships with each other. In any case, it
Speaker 2: was written as a bit and then became a metric
Speaker 2: that people used to this day. The version we used
Speaker 2: to start the discussion is or end the discussion, really
Speaker 2: is we require that there be two characters of a
Speaker 2: marginalized gender with names who talk to each other about
Speaker 2: something other than a man for more than two lines
Speaker 2: of dialogue, and it should be meaningful dialogue. For example,
Speaker 2: if you are the doctor's his wife and you're talking
Speaker 2: about chicken soup with Charlie McClain.
Speaker 1: That may be a.
Speaker 2: Pass wow, but today we are continuing. It's been a
Speaker 2: Billy Wilder year for us. It really is.
Speaker 1: It's true because we just covered Sunset Boulevard not long ago.
Speaker 1: Looks like we will be covering if we haven't already
Speaker 1: by the time this episode gets released. But it's a
Speaker 1: classic movie march on our Matreon and it appears as
Speaker 1: though the two movies that are going to win the
Speaker 1: poll are Singing in the Rain and Billy Wilder's Some
Speaker 1: Like It Hot.
Speaker 2: And today we're covering the Apartment with an incredible guest.
Speaker 2: Let's get her in the mix.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. She's a comedian, TV writer, and host
Speaker 1: of the upcoming Jeopardy podcast entitled What Is a Jeopardy Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also check out her Comedy Central special Ice
Speaker 1: Thickeners and her album Pasta. It's Emily Hiller. Welcome back.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me so excited
Speaker 3: to be talking about this, especially as someone who I think,
Speaker 3: prior to this past year, had seen zero Billy Wilder
Speaker 3: movies and now I think I've seen like five wow.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So it's like it's been a Billy Wilder year for
Speaker 3: me too nice.
Speaker 2: What brought it out? It feels like he's back. He's
Speaker 2: with us again.
Speaker 3: What he's not?
Speaker 2: Like he's Jesus, He's back. What threw you into the
Speaker 2: Billy Wilder expanded universe?
Speaker 3: So I'm like, famously not a movie person.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: I should not be here.
Speaker 3: I so it like it kind of takes a lot
Speaker 3: for me to like get into watching movies, but I
Speaker 3: recently sort of decided I want to learn how to
Speaker 3: write a farce movie, and so I just have been
Speaker 3: watching a ton and so I've been getting recommendations for
Speaker 3: people and like working my way through lists, and it
Speaker 3: just so happens that Billy Wilder is like a master
Speaker 3: of that genre also, and so we watch some like
Speaker 3: it hot, we watch Midnight.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 3: It's so good and so farcy and so wild is
Speaker 3: it Wilder?
Speaker 2: Though? Thank you for taking that. I was like, are
Speaker 2: we going to leave it on the floor?
Speaker 1: No, I'm going to pick it up and put it
Speaker 1: where it belongs.
Speaker 2: They're professional.
Speaker 3: It's like the most complicated farst plot ever, where it's
Speaker 3: like this like woman gambler drifter comes into town and
Speaker 3: sneaks into this high society event and she gets sniffed
Speaker 3: out by this guy who then hires her to seduce
Speaker 3: away the man who is culding him. Whoa, And she's
Speaker 3: pretending to be like a duchess the whole time. And
Speaker 3: meanwhile there is this like taxi driver who has fallen
Speaker 3: in love with her, who's like hunting her down, and
Speaker 3: it's just the it culminates in this like incredible ballroom scene.
Speaker 3: It's just it's really it's really great. But then yeah,
Speaker 3: we also watched Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment was one
Speaker 3: of the ones where it had been kind of recommended
Speaker 3: for the farce list. But it's not a farce. It's
Speaker 3: absolutely not a farce.
Speaker 2: No, it's like, I love how like ambiguous it is
Speaker 2: in genre too, because it like switches a couple of
Speaker 2: different times.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are some like real hard cuts between like
Speaker 3: genre scenes too, where you're like it'll go from the
Speaker 3: most dramatic moment of the movie to like one of
Speaker 3: the funniest visuals of the whole thing. But it does
Speaker 3: have like a lot in common with his other like
Speaker 3: farce films or just it's just like the very tight
Speaker 3: writing and the very efficient character intros and stuff like
Speaker 3: he's just so good at that for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so excited that you've done so many I
Speaker 2: want to much Midnight now, right.
Speaker 3: It's so good. Yeah, it's kind of a b side
Speaker 3: of his Yeah, it was really. It was like one
Speaker 3: of those ones where it was like a bunch of
Speaker 3: the movies on the list, like something like it Hot.
Speaker 3: It was very easy to find where to stream that,
Speaker 3: but Midnight I feel like we ended up watching it
Speaker 3: like streaming on some like weird Russian like YouTube or something,
Speaker 3: so it's harder to track down because I mean the
Speaker 3: ending I don't I think is like maybe not that good.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's not like a classic. But yeah, there
Speaker 3: are some others on the list that I can recommend
Speaker 3: as well. But yeah, I'm still watching farce as. I'm
Speaker 3: still enjoying them. But it has gotten me to watch
Speaker 3: more movies, which like, for some reason it needs to
Speaker 3: be part of a series like TV's really easy for
Speaker 3: me because I'm like, I understand where this fits in
Speaker 3: with everything else I'm watching, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: But for movies, it just feels like, I don't know
Speaker 3: why it's so hard for me to like get hard
Speaker 3: for a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. I'm like, give me just a
Speaker 1: single isolated story that I don't have to keep watching
Speaker 1: these characters again.
Speaker 2: The things Caitlin has seen in theaters who would turn
Speaker 2: your head around three hundred and sixty years it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I saw stump the yard and theaters twice hell yea wow,
Speaker 1: you know, and others. But anyway, well, before we talk
Speaker 1: much more about Billy Wilder and the Apartment, tell us
Speaker 1: about your podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm starting a new podcast with
Speaker 3: my friend John Colin called What Is a Jeopardy Podcast,
Speaker 3: which was sort of born out of the fact that
Speaker 3: like John and I became friends because we are Jeopardy.
Speaker 2: Fans, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was like I was just like on
Speaker 3: Twitter looking for someone to say something about something that
Speaker 3: was like grinding my gears about a certain Jeopardy contestant,
Speaker 3: and I found John tweeting about it. And we also
Speaker 3: realized that there are no Jeopardy podcasts. There's just the
Speaker 3: official one and that's it.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: There are no like good I mean there have been
Speaker 3: like a few that have like no listeners. Wow, burn
Speaker 3: I listened to like one or two of them, and
Speaker 3: they sound like they're being done at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: That is always I'm always, like really delighted to find
Speaker 2: that there are podcasts that still do not exist, and
Speaker 2: especially because now I get to listen to you talking
Speaker 2: about Jeopardy.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no comedy podcast about Jeopardy. Forgive me.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I'll get corrected if I'm wrong, but work
Speaker 3: on your pr if that's the case, because I didn't
Speaker 3: find you.
Speaker 2: Come on the show.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm very excited, especially just because weirdly, Jeopardy
Speaker 3: has gone through a few changes in the last few years,
Speaker 3: aside from just like the death of Alex Trebek, which
Speaker 3: led to that like very tumultuous search for a new host,
Speaker 3: but they also have new executive producers who have been
Speaker 3: developing this like sort of more tournament forward culture there
Speaker 3: I guess where they're really sort of fostering more like
Speaker 3: Jeopardy celebs, like personalities who they keep bringing back for
Speaker 3: various tournaments and stuff, so you get more familiar with
Speaker 3: the people who are on the show, and it just
Speaker 3: feels like, there is a lot to talk about, and
Speaker 3: we're launching with the start of the Tournament of Champions,
Speaker 3: which was delayed because of the writers strike and is
Speaker 3: the biggest pool of contestants that they've ever had in
Speaker 3: the Tournament of Champions. Also, for the first time in
Speaker 3: Jeopardy history, the winner of Celebrity Jeopardy is competing in
Speaker 3: the regular Tournament of Champions.
Speaker 2: Wait, they're throwing a celebrity out into yeah, among the normies.
Speaker 3: The winner of Celebrity Jeopardy for season thirty nine was
Speaker 3: Ike Barenholtz, and they invited him to compete in the
Speaker 3: Tournament of Champions.
Speaker 2: Wow, Ike Barenholtz, that skins. Oh yeah, he has the
Speaker 2: vibe of someone who would excel at Jeopardy. I'm calling
Speaker 2: him a dork.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, he had auditioned for Jeopardy before he
Speaker 3: was famous.
Speaker 2: H that's cool.
Speaker 3: So he was like, he trained, he was excited, he
Speaker 3: was ready and yeah. So he's competing and like he's
Speaker 3: matched up against one of like the top five seeds
Speaker 3: of the season, so he's gonna get his ass handed
Speaker 3: to him. And it's very exciting, amazing. But it's like
Speaker 3: the guy who's probably gonna beat him is like one
Speaker 3: of clearly the nicest people who you will ever see
Speaker 3: on Jeopardy. And he's also the guy who helped not
Speaker 3: scab for the TOC.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, okay, I was curious because I know
Speaker 2: that that was a huge thing with Jeopardy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a huge thing this year where they
Speaker 3: were going to proceed with the Tournament of Champions even
Speaker 3: as the Jeopardy writers were on strike, and they were
Speaker 3: going to do it using reused clues, so they were
Speaker 3: going to do it without the writers. And ray La Land,
Speaker 3: who is a professional set decorator from Canada, went online
Speaker 3: and was like, as a union man, I cannot in
Speaker 3: good conscience compete in the Tournament of Champions if it's
Speaker 3: going to happen without the participation of the Guild writers.
Speaker 3: And all of the other top seeds of the tournament
Speaker 3: were like, we're with you, ray I love that, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, it was like a beautiful nerdy snowball that
Speaker 3: really warmed my heart. And that's the guy who's probably
Speaker 3: gonna kick Ike's ass in the first round.
Speaker 2: Good for him. I hope that, you know. I Barenholtz
Speaker 2: is like, you know, I mean if you got to
Speaker 2: get your ass handed to you by someone. It might
Speaker 2: as well be a good person.
Speaker 3: Might as well be ray La Land, the sweetest man
Speaker 3: in Jeopardy history. But yeah, so I'm I'm very excited.
Speaker 3: Our first episode is going to air the week after
Speaker 3: the first full week of the Tournament of Champions, so
Speaker 3: we're going to get right into it. Two very big
Speaker 3: Jeopardy fans who are not smart enough to be on
Speaker 3: Jeopardy just talking shit about everyone's favorite game show.
Speaker 1: Love it.
Speaker 2: Hell, yes, Oh, I'm so excited to listen. I also
Speaker 2: like it's always like when I'm listening to a podcast
Speaker 2: about a show, I'm always fifty thousand times more likely
Speaker 2: to actually engage with the show and like have a
Speaker 2: ritual and oh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: Oh good. Yeah, we're hoping that it will still be
Speaker 3: like appealing to people who haven't watched every episode from
Speaker 3: the week before. Like it's gonna be fast moving, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be basically covering the games from the week before,
Speaker 3: but there's always stuff that John catches that I missed,
Speaker 3: and like hopefully there are things that I catch that
Speaker 3: John missed, And then there's just like general Jeopardy chat
Speaker 3: and like we end every episode with some like deep
Speaker 3: dive on one of the topics from Final Jeopardy, just
Speaker 3: so we can learn more about it and hopefully be
Speaker 3: better at trivia in the future. So hopefully there's enough
Speaker 3: in there even if you aren't like a diehard Jeopardy fan.
Speaker 2: Loveully, I'm excited.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Well, back to the Apartment, I guess seamless seamless?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, wonderful dismount.
Speaker 2: What is a nineteen sixty movie that was marketed as
Speaker 2: a comedy but also takes a hard turn in the
Speaker 2: second act?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is the Apartment? Anyway? So, Emily, you had not
Speaker 1: seen it until pretty recently, is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I watched it on Monday, Okay, well there you go.
Speaker 3: Or Tuesday, Yeah, I watched it very recently. Yes, I
Speaker 3: watched it this week. I'm very excited to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the folds.
Speaker 3: And weirdly, I watched it on Tuesday night and Tuesday
Speaker 3: in the morning, I was like talking to one of
Speaker 3: my coworkers and I was like, how's it going, what
Speaker 3: did you get up to last night? And he was like,
Speaker 3: I watched The Apartment was so good, And I was
Speaker 3: like Oh my gosh, I'm about to watch it.
Speaker 1: What a coincidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something's in the air. Billy Wilder is like, I've
Speaker 2: been seeing that a lot of my friends are watching
Speaker 2: his stuff on letterbox. I'm like, I don't know what
Speaker 2: it is, but he's back. He's back, He's.
Speaker 1: Back his ghost.
Speaker 2: I hope the farce is back. I feel like it's
Speaker 2: been a slow push and return to farce appreciation.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of reason to think that Farce
Speaker 3: is coming back.
Speaker 2: God that would fucking rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope. So, not to brag or anything, but
Speaker 1: Jamie and I moderated a Q and a panel for
Speaker 1: bottoms and bottoms feels very farcy to me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I've got to see it. I still haven't seen it,
Speaker 3: but that is a good argument for me to see
Speaker 3: it now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's aesome.
Speaker 3: One of the things that my you know, not to
Speaker 3: defer to what a man says, but one of the
Speaker 3: things that my that my husband said that as we've
Speaker 3: been talking about Farce just sort of incessantly for the
Speaker 3: last year and a half, is he was like, I
Speaker 3: feel like the fact that maximalism is so big now
Speaker 3: means that it is the right time for first to
Speaker 3: come back, because fars movies are about like just so
Speaker 3: many plots coming in and coming together, like it's things
Speaker 3: piled on things. But again, this movie is not a farce.
Speaker 1: Right, But we'll cover more farces in the future on
Speaker 1: the podcasts. We will, Jamie, what is your history with
Speaker 1: The Apartment?
Speaker 2: Oh, I have a pretty extensive history with this movie.
Speaker 2: I know that because we just covered Sunset Boulevard. I
Speaker 2: will glaze over it quickly. But I took a class
Speaker 2: in college bravely called Wilder, Allen and Kaufman, a concept
Speaker 2: that has aged really well across the board. But where,
Speaker 2: oh my cat's here? Where everyone Casper is present? Casper? Okay, listeners.
Speaker 2: Casper's newer to the mix, so you might be on
Speaker 2: a first name basis with him, as you are with Flea. However,
Speaker 2: Casper's superpower is that he can watch whole movies with me.
Speaker 2: He can sit motionless for two hours, eyes locked like Casp.
Speaker 2: I made him a letterboxed account because he is watching it.
Speaker 2: His system is five stars if he did fall asleep,
Speaker 2: one star if he did And that's his system. But
Speaker 2: we watched The Apartment.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I took a class where there was
Speaker 2: a whole sort of like section. We talked about Billy
Speaker 2: Wilder movies for a month and I really really loved it.
Speaker 2: The Alan portion of the class I got in trouble
Speaker 2: a couple of times, but the Wilder part was my favorite.
Speaker 2: I really kind of fell in love with Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker 2: I really loved the Apartment. I mean we were sort
Speaker 2: of covering the hits. I wish we had been encouraged
Speaker 2: to watch the b sides. Maybe we were and I
Speaker 2: was drunk, I don't know, like I was twenty, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the.
Speaker 2: Apartment was one of my favorites that we covered. I
Speaker 2: really loved it. I had never seen a movie quite
Speaker 2: like it at the time, And yeah, I have watched
Speaker 2: it a couple of times over the years since then,
Speaker 2: and it very least cemented my permanent and enduring love
Speaker 2: of Shirley maclain. Just such a rare, wonderful like every
Speaker 2: era of her career is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: I mean, especially for me, who, like, for the first
Speaker 3: thirty years of my life, the only thing I knew
Speaker 3: about Shirley McLain I knew from the Animaniacs opening theme
Speaker 3: songs that she maybe uses a crystal ball that was
Speaker 3: all about her that for many years, it's still the
Speaker 3: first thing I think about when I hear her name,
Speaker 3: because I was just the exact right age for the
Speaker 3: animaniacs to imprint on me that same Shirley McLain was
Speaker 3: like a woo woo psychic god bless.
Speaker 2: I remember that now, but I haven't thought about that
Speaker 2: in like twenty years. That's so before college. I wasn't
Speaker 2: familiar with anything she had done when she was younger.
Speaker 2: And she's incredible in this movie. I really love. I
Speaker 2: feel like, for its time, it's doing so many things
Speaker 2: that no movies are doing, which is how I feel
Speaker 2: about most Billy Wilder movies. And yeah, I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: this movie. I was really excited that you wanted to
Speaker 2: revisit it with us, And there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's stuff that this movie does that feels
Speaker 2: very dated, but there's a lot of stuff this movie
Speaker 2: does that I feel like rarely shows up in movies.
Speaker 2: Now it's wild It's Wilder, we have to do that.
Speaker 3: Every time we do.
Speaker 1: Or or Billy Wilder's ghost who is just haunting the
Speaker 1: world and compelling us to watch all of his movies
Speaker 1: will kill us.
Speaker 2: He's so back. Yeah, it's true. We are being haunted
Speaker 2: by Billy Wilder's ghost. That's just like a new marketing
Speaker 2: thing we're trying. Long story short, I really love and
Speaker 2: appreciate this movie. Can't Live was your history with The Apartment?
Speaker 1: I had only seen it once before in my span
Speaker 1: of the two or three years where I was in
Speaker 1: undergrad getting my first of many degrees in film. I
Speaker 1: don't talk about it as much because it's not nearly
Speaker 1: as impressive as my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University.
Speaker 1: It is exceptional, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Never done anything like it.
Speaker 1: In any case. When I was in undergrad, I took
Speaker 1: it upon myself to just try to watch basically every
Speaker 1: movie that was ever referenced in any of my textbooks
Speaker 1: or just that had any historical significance. So I would
Speaker 1: watch like three movies a day. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I managed it, because these days it takes me three
Speaker 1: days to watch a movie. And so I watched The Apartment,
Speaker 1: and it's not my favorite among Billy Wilder's OOVRA. I
Speaker 1: think it's because I find Jack Lemon's character to be
Speaker 1: a spineless pooh poo head wow, get his ass, I will.
Speaker 1: I just he rubbed me the wrong way. And I
Speaker 1: love Shirley McLay, but her character, I just wish she
Speaker 1: was more active or just was given the opportunity to
Speaker 1: be more active in this movie. There were things about
Speaker 1: it that didn't appeal to my sensibilities very much. So
Speaker 1: I think it's a good movie, and I think it's
Speaker 1: well written in everything. But if I have to choose
Speaker 1: a movie that I want that I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: fun time watching, it's probably not going to be The Apartment. Sorry.
Speaker 2: Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone's coming to
Speaker 2: this movie for a fun time necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's chocolate Block with characters where you're like you want
Speaker 3: to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and
Speaker 3: be like what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, CC In particular, you're just like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we are still caping for like mister Pep at this
Speaker 2: late hour in the movie, we're still like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: mister Pep is a good guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, CC Baxter more like Pep Baxter.
Speaker 2: See, I wouldn't go that far. I don't hate CEC.
Speaker 2: I like CC. I feel like he grows a lot.
Speaker 2: I don't think that the end line of the movie
Speaker 2: is good. The ending of the movie is very movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of like it belongs in the sort
Speaker 3: of like historical canon of the like nice guy protagonists
Speaker 3: like nice Guy are slash nice guys.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: But I felt like it was weirdly like a better
Speaker 3: take on that than like even more modern films like
Speaker 3: you root for him more than you do for like
Speaker 3: Ducky from.
Speaker 2: Like Yes, I was thinking about Pretty in Pink a
Speaker 2: lot during this movie. Okay, I mean, I guess partially
Speaker 2: just because this movie is now my dad's age, dosing
Speaker 2: him much like CC docs and stocks fran Oh god. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I mean it's like old and it's hard to
Speaker 2: not watch this movie by like not comparing it to
Speaker 2: other movies. But yeah, I feel like CC is at
Speaker 2: least a more well. He is deeply imperfect, and I
Speaker 2: feel like let off the hook for things that a
Speaker 2: modern good movie would not let him off the hook for.
Speaker 2: I still think he's like doing laps around the quote
Speaker 2: unquote underdog loser characters of the eighties who are like,
Speaker 2: you know, Revenge of the nerds, like murdering and assaulting
Speaker 2: women and still coming out on top where it's a
Speaker 2: bad yardstick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get the feeling that he doesn't feel as
Speaker 3: entitled to anything like Yeah, he still wants it to
Speaker 3: go a different way, but it feels like he takes
Speaker 3: no for an answer a little bit better than other
Speaker 3: movie characters. Still not as well as he should but better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Better.
Speaker 2: We'll get into CC.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much to talk I mean, this movie
Speaker 2: has shades of gray that are like challenging in ways
Speaker 2: that I'm like, I don't know if they were intended
Speaker 2: to be challenging at the time, but I'm excited to
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: come back for the recap. And we're back, okay, So
Speaker 1: here is the recap for the Apartment. I will place
Speaker 1: a content warning at the top here for suicide. So
Speaker 1: we are in New York City. Ever heard of it?
Speaker 1: And it's about the same time that the movie came out.
Speaker 1: The movie came out in nineteen sixty I think the
Speaker 1: movie takes place in late nineteen fifty nine. We are
Speaker 1: getting voiceover from C. C. Baxter play by Jack Lemon.
Speaker 1: He works at a large insurance company, and he often
Speaker 1: stays late at the office until it's all right for
Speaker 1: him to go home because he rents out his apartment
Speaker 1: the titular apartment too, and then from his company who
Speaker 1: are having extramarital affairs and who need a discreete place
Speaker 1: to fuck.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: But he's kind of like renting for aspirational cloud, Like
Speaker 2: he is not charging for this service, right while he
Speaker 2: is fully stocking, like he's providing the services of the Marriotte,
Speaker 2: but he is not being paid. It seems like he's
Speaker 2: working ahead a loss. It's like doing stand up comedy, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of the rotisserie chicken at Costco where
Speaker 3: you're like, it's a lost leader, but it gets people
Speaker 3: in the door, exactly same with the hot dogs.
Speaker 1: I was curious if he was charging or what. But
Speaker 1: I'm also like, I don't think so. These men are
Speaker 1: all higher above him in this like hierarchy at the office.
Speaker 1: They presumably get paid better. They're like, you know, middle
Speaker 1: or up or management. Why don't they just like go
Speaker 1: split se on an apartment that they would have more
Speaker 1: easy access to. I don't know. I had some logistical questions.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about that the whole movie, and I
Speaker 3: think it really it ultimately boils down to the fact that, like,
Speaker 3: it probably just started with one guy and then it snowballed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I think at if the movie took place over
Speaker 3: a longer period of time, we'd eventually get to the
Speaker 3: point where it's like, you guys, just get your own place,
Speaker 3: you know, seriously, But we're at a moment in this
Speaker 3: guy's life where it has just sort of gotten a
Speaker 3: little out of control, and it was maybe a more
Speaker 3: manageable number of people before.
Speaker 2: I was wondering about that, and I was also like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think probably ultimately the apartment thing is
Speaker 2: just a you know, a movie thing to keep you
Speaker 2: in the story. But logistically, yeah, logistically it's troubling, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, are we.
Speaker 6: To believe, which I do believe that all of these
Speaker 6: upper executives are like not firing enough sign aps to
Speaker 6: understand that they should all share a spot if this
Speaker 6: is the case, And.
Speaker 2: Also that CC probably wouldn't point that out to them
Speaker 2: because he wants to be promoted, and that's like his
Speaker 2: whole journey is that it takes him so deep in
Speaker 2: the movie to give up this idea of professional advancement
Speaker 2: regardless of like who gets hurt or deceived along the way.
Speaker 2: They should just all rent an apartment, Like it seems
Speaker 2: like they can afford it.
Speaker 1: That's what I kept thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess I was like location is everything
Speaker 2: or something?
Speaker 1: Right, the apartment is one of the characters.
Speaker 3: Well, I do think that they are also probably I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was explicit or not, but like
Speaker 3: some of these men do sort of pretend like like
Speaker 3: it's their apartment. Yes, that too, Like there is an
Speaker 3: amount of deception there are, Like I think some of
Speaker 3: the women who end up there are people for whom,
Speaker 3: like going to a hotel would maybe raise alarm bells
Speaker 3: that these guys don't want to raise.
Speaker 1: True, right, I was wondering.
Speaker 2: I was like credit card statements? Was that a thing
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixteen? Credit cards?
Speaker 3: Their wives would not get to see what they were
Speaker 3: spending their money on, like that part of it where
Speaker 3: I was like, no, that would they would very easily
Speaker 3: be able to do that.
Speaker 1: But in any case, so we've got the sex apartment
Speaker 1: that CC Baxter is like borrowing out, not even renting
Speaker 1: out his neighbors, including a doctor. Dreyfus are always like, hey, Baxter,
Speaker 1: what's going on in there? It sounds like you're constantly
Speaker 1: fucking you sneaky little slut.
Speaker 2: And he's also like that's me. He's like, yep, mister
Speaker 2: fuck I thought that was a really funny runner. I
Speaker 2: mean it is. It ties into like the greater thieves
Speaker 2: of masculinity that surround this movie, but the fact that
Speaker 2: he at every opportunity even when it gets you know,
Speaker 2: in sometime he's being valiant about it, but other times
Speaker 2: it's like he doesn't mind being thought of as mister
Speaker 2: fuck right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay. So then Baxter arrives home after one
Speaker 1: such night where he has let a guy use his apartment.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's Al Kirkby, someone from upper management
Speaker 1: at his company, and Kirkaby is like, yeah, I'll put
Speaker 1: in a good word for you for this possible promotion.
Speaker 1: Later that night, another guy who Baxter works with this
Speaker 1: is mister Dobish, calls and he's like, hey, I met
Speaker 1: this woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe and I need
Speaker 1: to fuck her immediately, get out of bed, even though
Speaker 1: it's eleven o'clock, and let me use your apartment.
Speaker 2: Right, which is like a winky nod to the fact
Speaker 2: that Billy Wildser just worked with Marilyn Monroe the previous
Speaker 2: year and some like get hot and also seven year itch.
Speaker 1: I don't know when the seven year itch came out.
Speaker 1: I think it was before this could be anything.
Speaker 2: I think it was the fifties. Anyways, like it would
Speaker 2: seem more misogynousts than it is if you didn't know
Speaker 2: that they had this working relationship.
Speaker 1: True in any case, Baxter gets out of bed, he
Speaker 1: goes and waits outside, but mister Dobish leaves the wrong
Speaker 1: key after he leaves, so Baxter can't get back into
Speaker 1: his apartment, and he catches a cold. So the next
Speaker 1: day at work, he's like all sniffily and he chats
Speaker 1: to the elevator operator fran Kubilick played by Shirley maclain,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about colds, and it's like kind of flirty,
Speaker 1: or at least he's trying to be flirty with her.
Speaker 2: It's flirty, it's friendy. I feel like he is like
Speaker 2: many men before him, and people of all genders, but
Speaker 2: I will single out men in this regard, interpreting friendly behavior.
Speaker 1: As romantic interest.
Speaker 2: She's obsessed with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that does tend to happen, doesn't it. And
Speaker 1: then Al Kirkaby, the guy from the night before, is like, oh, Baxter,
Speaker 1: I saw you talking to miss Kouba. Look, I'd like
Speaker 1: to take her out, but she always refuses my advances
Speaker 1: for some reason. And it's like, yeah, maybe because you
Speaker 1: regularly assault her.
Speaker 2: We just saw you assault her. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then Baxter cancels the sex appointment that night for
Speaker 1: this other guy because he wents to stay home and
Speaker 1: rest because of his cold. So he has to make
Speaker 1: all these adjustments with the sex apartment schedule to shift
Speaker 1: people around, and then he gets called to the office
Speaker 1: of mister Sheldrake played by Fred McMurray, who we talked
Speaker 1: about in the Double Indemnity episode. Oh yes, yes, in
Speaker 1: any case. So he's the head of personnel at the
Speaker 1: insurance company, and Baxter's like, Hm, is this about my
Speaker 1: promotion that's been floated? And then mister Sheldrake is like,
Speaker 1: I know all about your little arrangement with your sex apartment,
Speaker 1: and I want in on it too.
Speaker 2: He's a dog. I think that one of the great
Speaker 2: bait and switches this movie does is like, really, expose
Speaker 2: mister Sheldrike for how slick he thinks he is versus
Speaker 2: how slick he actually is, where he's like, I'm not
Speaker 2: like the other men that have no respect for my wife.
Speaker 2: I'm built different and like he isn't And the movie
Speaker 2: knows that. And I think the way that that rolls
Speaker 2: out is really smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they really misdirect what his feelings are going to
Speaker 3: be about the apartment, Like you feel like he's in
Speaker 3: trouble at first for what he's doing, which sets him
Speaker 3: up as a person with like integrity even though he's
Speaker 3: immediately about to be like I also want it right,
Speaker 3: Yeah right.
Speaker 2: I mean it's clear that he thinks he's better than
Speaker 2: the other men, who are also like deceiving both. I
Speaker 2: feel like this movie does a good job of the
Speaker 2: twohander like deceiving their their wives and also deceiving the
Speaker 2: women that they are with by just lying out their
Speaker 2: asses all the time. True, but shell Drake kind of
Speaker 2: the worst of all because he thinks he's smart. At
Speaker 2: least the other guys don't seem to be suffering that delution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to tell. We don't get to know them.
Speaker 2: Very well, but their comic relief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. So then Baxter catches on and he gives
Speaker 1: shell Drake the key for that night in exchange for
Speaker 1: two tickets to see The Music Man. So Baxter is like, hey,
Speaker 1: miss Kuberlic, do you want to go with me to
Speaker 1: the play? And she agrees to meet him there, but
Speaker 1: first she's like, I have to go meet an old
Speaker 1: boyfriend for a drink. And it turns out to be
Speaker 1: mister shell Drake, who she had had an affair with
Speaker 1: over this summer. But again, he's married, and it seems
Speaker 1: pretty clear that that relationship was never going to go
Speaker 1: anywhere between Fran and shell Drake, but he's also trying
Speaker 1: to rekindle things and he's like, no, I am gonna
Speaker 1: divorce my wife actually, And Fran still loves him and
Speaker 1: she wants to spend time with him, so she bails
Speaker 1: on the date with Baxter to see the Music Man,
Speaker 1: and she goes off with shell Drake two Baxter's apartment,
Speaker 1: not knowing it's Baxter's apartment. We cut to Baxter being
Speaker 1: stood up at the theater and he's all sad and
Speaker 1: he doesn't know either that you know, Fran is at
Speaker 1: his apartment with another man.
Speaker 2: You know it's the worst. I had this sort of
Speaker 2: instinct like when have you ever been watching TV? And
Speaker 2: then you do the very like annoying modern thing where
Speaker 2: you like swipe at something that cannot be swiped at,
Speaker 2: be like next thing. I was like, she should have
Speaker 2: texted him, And I was like, now, hold on, my
Speaker 2: father is an infant, Like there is no way for
Speaker 2: her to reach out. Never mind.
Speaker 1: It's true. So then at work, Baxter has gotten his
Speaker 1: promotion that he's been promised, and he moves into his
Speaker 1: own office, but he also starts kind of withholding access
Speaker 1: to the sex apartment for those like four men who
Speaker 1: helped him get the promotion, and he's withholding this access
Speaker 1: to everyone except for mister Sheldrake. There's this scene where
Speaker 1: Baxter's like, hey, Sheldrake, I think your lady friend left
Speaker 1: this broken compact mirror at my apartment.
Speaker 2: And Chekhov's broken compact mirror. That is exactly and also
Speaker 2: it doubles as a little metaphor for the state of
Speaker 2: the human condition. Hello what I'm cheering, and that.
Speaker 3: She probably considers herself permanently damaged by this relationship in
Speaker 3: a way that cannot be repaired.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, I was like, Wow, that's the moment Billy Wilder
Speaker 2: won his oscar for this one broken mirror to represent
Speaker 2: damaged character. Boom, what what critics are calling it subtle?
Speaker 2: It's wild it's wilder, It's really wilder.
Speaker 1: Yes, So Baxter doesn't know that shel Drake's lady love
Speaker 1: is Fran still until the holiday party a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: where Fran lends Baxter the same broken mirror so that
Speaker 1: he can look at his ugly bowler hat. Got sorry
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: That bowler hat really cracked me up. He's like, I'm
Speaker 3: a big shot. Now check out my new hat. And
Speaker 3: it's like, you look like Charlie Chaplin.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, yeah, I wrote down red flag there when
Speaker 2: a guy gets really drunk, He's like, check out this
Speaker 2: cool hat I bought.
Speaker 1: Should we go out run away?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, is like a sign of hubris to be
Speaker 3: like I'm trying a new kind of hat. It's a
Speaker 3: sign that the character is like on a decline morally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's gotta like let someone else fix him and
Speaker 2: you know, circle back in a couple of years see
Speaker 2: how he's doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But Baxter sees the broken mirror that
Speaker 1: Fran has and he puts two and two together. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Fran is very sad because mister Sheldrake's secretary just told
Speaker 1: Fran about the several other women who he has had
Speaker 1: affairs with over the years and who he has lied
Speaker 1: to about how he's going to divorce his wife for them,
Speaker 1: so Fran is really upset. Baxter is really upset because
Speaker 1: his crush is sleeping with his boss, so he leaves
Speaker 1: the party and he goes to a bar and gets
Speaker 1: super drunk. Meanwhile, at Baxter's apartment, Fran is there with
Speaker 1: shel Drake and she's crying because of his shitty behavior.
Speaker 1: He has to leave to catch a train to be
Speaker 1: with his wife, and Fran stays behind. We kind of
Speaker 1: cut back to Baxter, who's coming back to his apartment
Speaker 1: with a woman he met at the bar. He discovers
Speaker 1: Fran in bed. She has taken a lot of sleeping
Speaker 1: pills and she's not waking up, so Baxter panics. He
Speaker 1: goes and calls the doctor neighbor over to his apartment.
Speaker 1: The doctor saves Fran's life, and Baxter calls shell Drake
Speaker 1: and tells him about the incident, but shell Drake doesn't
Speaker 1: really want to be bothered with it, especially it's Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: spending the day with his family, And finally Fran wakes
Speaker 1: up and Baxter tends to her. He gets her fed,
Speaker 1: they play cards together, but she still feels awful, both
Speaker 1: physically and emotionally, and she's still in love with and
Speaker 1: heartbroken over shell Drake. Meanwhile, Fran's family is worried because
Speaker 1: they haven't seen or heard from her in a couple days.
Speaker 2: Which I'm like, that's one of the things with me.
Speaker 2: For Baxter, I'm just like, you gotta like I understand.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, you know, don't call people while you
Speaker 2: are like before you kind of get your head back
Speaker 2: on straight sort of. But then at some point it's
Speaker 2: starting to like before her brother in law arrives and
Speaker 2: he sucks as well, but like before her brother in
Speaker 2: law rise, it's starting to feel somewhat hostile. Yes, where
Speaker 2: it feels like like a baby it's cold outside style hostage. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where he's like, well, you know, you're not quite ready.
Speaker 3: I mean he's covering Sheldrake's ass, like exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He knows that the discretion of the situation will affect
Speaker 3: his relationship with Sheldrake, so it's not purely like him
Speaker 3: taking care of her. It's him being like, I have
Speaker 3: to keep her quiet about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I kind of On this watch it was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: Baxter is like a cad deeper into this movie than
Speaker 2: I remembered.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't like him very much anyway, So
Speaker 1: her family's worried about her. Her brother in law, Carl,
Speaker 1: finds out where Fran is and he shows up at
Speaker 1: Baxter's apartment assumes that Baxter is a sleazy guy who's
Speaker 1: taking advantage of Fran, which isn't exactly right, but you know,
Speaker 1: Baxter is no saint in this situation and any case,
Speaker 1: Carl punches Baxter and takes Fran home, and Baxter is
Speaker 1: all like, damn, I'm in love with Fran. So the
Speaker 1: next day he goes to work prepared to confront shell
Speaker 1: Drake and tell him that he should forget about Fran
Speaker 1: because Baxter wants to be with her. But shell Drake
Speaker 1: is like, actually, my wife left me because she found
Speaker 1: out about all my affairs, So I'm going to be
Speaker 1: with Fran. By the way, here's another big promotion for
Speaker 1: all your trouble.
Speaker 2: This scene is so fucked in, so many different directions
Speaker 2: that it's wild but like it's wilder, wilder. I'm sorry, sorry,
Speaker 2: it's wilder, but yeah, I mean particularly, I was like
Speaker 2: sort of surprised by the sort of like nakedness that
Speaker 2: mister Sheldrake presents, like, well, obviously, if I'm alone, I
Speaker 2: will die, so because I've been rejected by someone rightfully,
Speaker 2: I must enter this new relationship under false pretenses, and
Speaker 2: like he just presents it like of course, of course said.
Speaker 3: It's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What I really appreciated about this scene too, is that,
Speaker 3: like you get into it with watching CC practicing the
Speaker 3: speech she's gonna give to Sheldrake of like, I'll take
Speaker 3: her off your hands for you. And whenever you see
Speaker 3: someone practicing a speech they're about to give, you know
Speaker 3: that they're not going to successfully give the speech, right,
Speaker 3: good trope, and so you kind of watch that being like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I get it, we're not going to hear this, like,
Speaker 3: but then you do hear the speech, it's just that
Speaker 3: shell Drake says the exact same words. He's like, I'll
Speaker 3: take her off your hands, And I thought that that
Speaker 3: was like an impressive way of like subverting that trope
Speaker 3: to make it feel new, and I was just like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's really skillful, because I was kind of rolling my eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no, I'm not anymore.
Speaker 2: Totally, I mean, and I feel like it gets at
Speaker 2: something that I think this movie's doing really well, which
Speaker 2: is like drawing your attention to the fact that they
Speaker 2: both view her as meat. But yeah, they view themselves
Speaker 2: somewhat differently. They both think that they're ultimately good people,
Speaker 2: and neither of them are consulting with the woman that
Speaker 2: they are laying claim to, like she is property in
Speaker 2: both of their eyes, and both of them think, well,
Speaker 2: the way that I view her as property is good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, which is obviously a major reflection of the
Speaker 1: mentality of the time and how women were viewed by
Speaker 1: most men. Totally, but it's frustrating to watch. Nonetheless. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Baxter takes the promotion that shell Drake offers, but sometime later,
Speaker 1: Baxter bumps into Fran at work. She's gotten back together
Speaker 1: with shell Drake, who is making arrangements to divorce his
Speaker 1: wife and to marry Fran allegedly, and Baxter's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just using shell Drake this whole time to
Speaker 1: get a promotion, I don't even care about you being
Speaker 1: with shell Drake, and also I have a big date tonight.
Speaker 1: We find out he's lying about all of this. Then
Speaker 1: there's a conversation between Baxter and shell Drake where shell
Speaker 1: Drake wants to borrow the key to Baxter's apartment again
Speaker 1: so he can take Fran there. But Baxter has finally
Speaker 1: had enough so he quits. He goes home and packs
Speaker 1: up the apartment. He doesn't know what he's gonna do,
Speaker 1: but he just knows he has to get out of
Speaker 1: this place. Meanwhile, Fran is at a New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: celebration with shell Drake, and he's all like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go to Atlantic City to go to a hotel tonight
Speaker 1: because Baxter won't even give me the key to his
Speaker 1: apartment anymore, especially if I'm taking you there the apartment
Speaker 1: his the apartment. And she's like, wait a minute, does
Speaker 1: that mean that Baxter loves me? So she runs through
Speaker 1: the streets as everyone is ringing in the New Year,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay. When Harry met Sally certain saw
Speaker 1: this movie and has some homage to pay. And Fran
Speaker 1: goes to Baxter's apartment and he's like, Wow, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you're here. I love you, and she's like uh huh.
Speaker 1: And then they finished their card game from earlier, and
Speaker 1: then I guess they're gonna be together the end.
Speaker 2: Woooooooo see.
Speaker 3: I actually interpreted her hearing that Baxter had quit his
Speaker 3: job less as like, oh, my god, he loves me.
Speaker 3: I feel like she knows he loves her throughout. I
Speaker 3: took this to me and her being like, oh, he
Speaker 3: decided to stop being complicit in this horrible scheme.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's giving the movie too much credit, but to me,
Speaker 3: I sort of felt like the movie was not like
Speaker 3: sympathetic to Baxter's complicity in it. It's like, only once
Speaker 3: he decides to stop being complicit in it does he
Speaker 3: get what he wants.
Speaker 1: True. I think that interpretation works well. I was interpreted
Speaker 1: interpretating wow, okay, awesome job, Caitlin with your brain interpret well, Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the word is interpreting likes okay.
Speaker 1: So I thought that because because you see her face
Speaker 1: like lighten up as he's like, yeah, he won't even
Speaker 1: give me the key anymore, especially if I'm taking you there.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's like a combination of both because she's like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, he doesn't want me to be with another man.
Speaker 1: He wants to be with me. But I might just
Speaker 1: be having too simple of an interpretation.
Speaker 2: Yeay, Kaitlyn. I feel like both reads, if it makes sense.
Speaker 2: And I also think that it feels kind of intended
Speaker 2: that it's left a little bit open ended, because if
Speaker 2: it it wasn't intended to be open ended, I feel
Speaker 2: like you would have gotten, you know, like a kiss
Speaker 2: or something. All we really know is that she is
Speaker 2: like willing to I think the most generous read I
Speaker 2: was able to get to on the ending, which I
Speaker 2: didn't love, but the ending shot is such a banger,
Speaker 2: Like it's hard to not love the ending shot, but yeah,
Speaker 2: the most generous read I was able to get to
Speaker 2: is that at very least Shirley McLean's character is really
Speaker 2: happy that he did not sell her out. Further, I
Speaker 2: think like, I think that it could be seen as like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is the first time in at least the course
Speaker 2: of this movie and possibly her adult life, that she
Speaker 2: has not been put out as property and as an
Speaker 2: opportunity versus a person. And I feel like that connects
Speaker 2: back to like the be men, sh be a human
Speaker 2: being theme that the movie seems to want to do.
Speaker 2: But I also think you're supposed to think they get
Speaker 2: together at the end of As with many movies, I
Speaker 2: sort of hope that the ending to this movie is
Speaker 2: that they hook up for a month and then break
Speaker 2: up and remain friends. That's my wish for most couples
Speaker 2: in most movies, is that they fucked for a month
Speaker 2: and stay friends for their whole lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean to me, I'm like, the happy ending
Speaker 3: of this movie is not that they get together. It's
Speaker 3: that she is allowed to consider that there is something
Speaker 3: else that's possible outside of the system that she has
Speaker 3: been sort of ground down to accept.
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, I agree. Let's discuss further after this break.
Speaker 5: Woo and we're back where back Emily, where would you
Speaker 5: like to start the discussion?
Speaker 2: What's jumping out to you?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: My gosh, I don't even know where to start. I mean,
Speaker 3: the first thing that I want to say about this
Speaker 3: movie is that I just I really appreciated how everything
Speaker 3: was paying something off, Like there was nothing new introduced
Speaker 3: that was like important that we didn't already know about,
Speaker 3: Like even the sleeping pills, where it's like they're introduced
Speaker 3: when he's like, I can't give you the Apartment tonight.
Speaker 3: I'm sick. I already took a sleeping pill, like, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel clunky. It feels like, oh, it's serving
Speaker 3: a purpose there. You don't expect it to come back.
Speaker 3: But then when it does come back, when she takes
Speaker 3: the full bottle, You're like, oh, that was just so efficient,
Speaker 3: so well done, very good writing. Yeah, and the mirror
Speaker 3: coming back.
Speaker 2: This wilder, he's got a big future ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I also love the like that's how it crumbles
Speaker 3: cookie wise, Oh my.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I was thinking, was anyone anyone in the chat
Speaker 2: a big fan of Bruce Almighty?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't call myself a big fan.
Speaker 2: I've seen it, Okay, for all my brust almighty heads.
Speaker 2: That's how the cookie crumbles is very much the Jim
Speaker 2: Carrey character's slogan throughout the movie. And I believe that
Speaker 2: it is a clear reference to The Apartment.
Speaker 1: Oh it could be the end.
Speaker 2: Brussel Mighty heads shout out wow. But I was feeling
Speaker 2: the Brusse Almighty the movie. Had seen Apartment the movie.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of movies have seen the movie
Speaker 1: The Apartment when Harry met Sally.
Speaker 2: Movies are people, and that's how we engage with them.
Speaker 1: One thing that I appreciate about this movie is that
Speaker 1: I think it's a good example of how men fail
Speaker 1: upwards and get promotions that they don't deserve, and how
Speaker 1: women are often overlooked for promotions and opportunities in general,
Speaker 1: because men are obsessed with looking out for each other
Speaker 1: when they engage in bad behavior. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the many reasons that the patriarchy has perpetuated
Speaker 1: itself for centuries. I don't think the movie is commenting
Speaker 1: on that, but it is presenting it.
Speaker 2: I think it is like presenting it pretty effectively. I
Speaker 2: don't know how I would suggest it be shifted, but
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, you're given many elements of this
Speaker 2: like workplace patriarchy, and as a viewer, like you're sort
Speaker 2: of expected to put it together yourself. The movie doesn't
Speaker 2: really do that, and then at moments I think it
Speaker 2: kind of fails its characters. But it's weird because I
Speaker 2: feel like there is like all these shades of gray
Speaker 2: where it's based on what we see of CC Baxter,
Speaker 2: Like it's not that he is bad at his job,
Speaker 2: it's that he recognizes that the only way to get
Speaker 2: ahead is to cater to everyone around him's basest, worst,
Speaker 2: most manipulative instincts to the people around them, and he's
Speaker 2: fine with that. So it's like a lot of male
Speaker 2: characters we've talked about over the years, he is both
Speaker 2: subject to the patriarchy because he's so in the middle,
Speaker 2: and he's also being uplifted by it at the same
Speaker 2: time and is okay with that.
Speaker 3: Right, And you see the alternative. He has that coworker
Speaker 3: who works at the next desk over, who's been there
Speaker 3: longer than him, who has done probably more better work
Speaker 3: than him, because he's so distracted taking care of the
Speaker 3: apartment anyway, we.
Speaker 2: Don't see him work ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that guy is never going to get a promotion,
Speaker 3: and he begrudgingly congratulates Ceci when he gets the promotion
Speaker 3: that he earned through dubious means. And you recognize that, like,
Speaker 3: the alternative to participating in the sort of corrupt hierarchy
Speaker 3: of this institution is just languishing in the position that
Speaker 3: you're in. And so it both like lets Baxter off
Speaker 3: the hook for his choices in some way, but it
Speaker 3: also indicts the institution.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and then I feel like, on Frand's side,
Speaker 2: I'm curious what everyone thinks about it, because I didn't
Speaker 2: remember that they tell you that she did have higher
Speaker 2: career aspirations but was held back, which it seems like
Speaker 2: she I mean, I would guess that she and Baxter
Speaker 2: are like they're intellectually matched, but Baxter has the credentials
Speaker 2: the fact that he is a white man and the
Speaker 2: fact that he because he's a white man, he has
Speaker 2: the opportunities to advance. And they were like, well, sorry,
Speaker 2: you like can't spell well enough, so you're stuck in
Speaker 2: this very feminized working class position of this time indefinitely,
Speaker 2: which seems to be I mean, among other things. But
Speaker 2: it does seem that like part of her depression comes
Speaker 2: from the fact that the world that she's in does
Speaker 2: not offer her opportunities for advancement, like nefarious or otherwise.
Speaker 3: I mean, I also wonder what the implication was supposed
Speaker 3: to be of the fact that, like, Baxter's neighbors are Jews,
Speaker 3: and there was like a class implication there that like,
Speaker 3: even though that guy is a doctor, they live in
Speaker 3: this like kind of shitty apartment building with this bachelor
Speaker 3: and there is like for him and for why can't
Speaker 3: I remember her name, Shirley McLean's character, Why can't I
Speaker 3: go for Fran Yeah, that they both don't have the
Speaker 3: same privileges that other people around them do, and so
Speaker 3: they are kind of like scraping to get by. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was curious about that too. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: that Billy Wilder was a Jewish writer and included other
Speaker 2: Jewish characters in his films. I don't know. I mean
Speaker 2: that sort of brings me into like some of the
Speaker 2: context for the way that this movie was produced. There's
Speaker 2: not a ton of it that I think is super
Speaker 2: relevant to talk about. But the things that I guess
Speaker 2: I would want to talk about is the fact that
Speaker 2: like Billy Wilder had like started in noir and you know,
Speaker 2: like did Double Indemnity in the fifties. He does all
Speaker 2: of these wacky comedies, and then in the sixties. It
Speaker 2: seems like this is the first example of him getting
Speaker 2: two ideas he wanted to produce in the forties but
Speaker 2: wasn't allowed to because of the Hayes Code until the sixties.
Speaker 2: So this was like an idea he'd been noodling around
Speaker 2: with since the forties, but this was the first time
Speaker 2: he actually got clearance to do it, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to find a lot about the writing
Speaker 2: of the movie itself. It was co written with a
Speaker 2: common collaborator, Il Diamond. This movie takes place in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, but it also feels like a little bit
Speaker 2: out of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it feels really modern in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways, and it's sort of like cynicism about sex
Speaker 3: and everything, which I think is a little bit of
Speaker 3: like a Billy Wilder homemark, Like his movies are a
Speaker 3: lot about like cynical people finding joy in spite of
Speaker 3: themselves and in spite of like them feeling sort of
Speaker 3: above the morays of the time. But I also kept
Speaker 3: thinking about, like what it would be like to watch
Speaker 3: this movie if I hadn't already seen mad Men. Ooh, right,
Speaker 3: because I feel like mad Men was so like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this was so normalized and we're blowing your
Speaker 3: mind with that, and it feels like this must have
Speaker 3: felt a bit more radical to see before that was
Speaker 3: like the common understanding of what these types of businessmen
Speaker 3: were up.
Speaker 1: To, especially because the production code was still in effect
Speaker 1: when this movie was being developed and released, the kind
Speaker 1: of parameters of it were getting more lax as time
Speaker 1: went on, and I think it was in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: that the Hayes production code was like officially dissolved and
Speaker 1: replaced with the rating system, but it was still enforced
Speaker 1: to some degree when this movie came out. And so
Speaker 1: I was surprised that there were things that this movie
Speaker 1: got away with that I wouldn't have expected. Did it
Speaker 1: to be able to talk about and like pretty directly
Speaker 1: and explicitly addressed, such as suicide and suicidal ideation and infidelity, slash,
Speaker 1: sex out of wedlock and abortion? Oh wait, what's the
Speaker 1: abortion component?
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's not as explicit as talking about
Speaker 3: the suicide, but there's a moment when her brother in
Speaker 3: law comes to the apartment to retrieve her and he
Speaker 3: introduces Dreyfus. He's like, this is her doctor, and the
Speaker 3: guy like almost punches him and he's like, not that
Speaker 3: kind of doctor.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Okay, I did not connect that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the implication being that like she's recovering from an
Speaker 3: abortion versus and obviously they don't say it, but it
Speaker 3: is strongly implied that like, oh yeah, that would be
Speaker 3: the other thing that the doctor would be there treating
Speaker 3: her for at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that totally makes sense. God, that did not register
Speaker 2: for me at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I barely caught it.
Speaker 2: This Vivie is really good, folks. But getting back to
Speaker 2: your original point, Emily, Yeah, I thought it was interesting
Speaker 2: that the only character that I think, like we know
Speaker 2: is Jewish is also the moral center of the movie.
Speaker 2: And also yeah, like of a higher class and profession
Speaker 2: than our protagonist. Yeah, but I really liked I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like doctor Dryfus.
Speaker 3: And his wife.
Speaker 2: His wife, I hate that, like we have his her
Speaker 2: name is Mildred, we do hear her name, so for
Speaker 2: Bechdel test purposes, she just skates through, although she is
Speaker 2: mostly referred to as his wife. But I also was
Speaker 2: like pleasantly surprised that Jack Krushian, who played doctor Dryfus,
Speaker 2: was nominated for an Oscar for that part. Jack Lemon,
Speaker 2: Charley McLain, and Jack krushn are all nominated for Oscars.
Speaker 2: This movie was nominated for a million Oscars and won
Speaker 2: a bunch, not for acting. But in any case, I
Speaker 2: felt like doctor Dryfus, I don't know, he was interesting
Speaker 2: to be because in some ways he and certainly Mildred
Speaker 2: are allies to Fran based on what they know about
Speaker 2: the situation, but they also have very like nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: views of sex and promiscuity in general, which I feel
Speaker 2: like this movie is sort of playing around with and
Speaker 2: referencing how older generations versus younger generations view sex and
Speaker 2: promiscuity at this time.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean they're not as disgusted with him
Speaker 3: as they could be, I suppose because they were like,
Speaker 3: not in a position to be, but you are like, oh,
Speaker 3: they have sympathy for her, even if they don't have
Speaker 3: sympathy for Baxter, right, which I.
Speaker 1: Was surprised about because so much of slut shaming and
Speaker 1: like promiscuity shaming is directed toward women. And there's of
Speaker 1: course the famous double standard of oh, if you're a
Speaker 1: man who's fucking all the time, you're awesome, and if
Speaker 1: you're a woman who's doing that, you're a horrible, dirty,
Speaker 1: disgusting person.
Speaker 2: Or it's just like fundamentally assumed that you're being deceived
Speaker 2: versus participating, right.
Speaker 1: Right, that too, and so for like doctor Dreyfuss's his
Speaker 1: wife Mildred, She's like, yes, I'll fix some breakfast for her.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do anything for you, CEC Baxter, because you're
Speaker 1: a dirty, rotten scoundrel.
Speaker 2: He's a dog.
Speaker 1: But for her because I think she almost views Fran
Speaker 1: as a victim, almost of like CC Baxter's constant parade.
Speaker 1: What they perceive is like a constant parade of like
Speaker 1: women coming and going out of his apartment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she's assuming that Fran has overdosed as a
Speaker 2: result of CC. She is going off of right.
Speaker 3: She knows right, Yes, who knows where her sympathies would
Speaker 3: be if there wasn't a suicide attun true exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something that was on my mind because
Speaker 2: this is the first time and I let like doctor
Speaker 2: Dreyfus does not hesitate to intervene. It's not like he's
Speaker 2: unwilling to help someone who he has moral questions about,
Speaker 2: which is what doctor should do, not necessarily what they
Speaker 2: always do. But I wondered how Mildred's opinion of Frian
Speaker 2: would change if she was not in this position. Right,
Speaker 2: But I also think it's fair to assume that Ceci's
Speaker 2: a liar because he is, So that's something to keep
Speaker 2: in mind.
Speaker 1: Can we explore the romance between Baxter and Fran a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we should.
Speaker 1: Because I find it fascinating. So she's introduced in the elevator.
Speaker 1: You know, he's trying to be flirty with her. He
Speaker 1: asks her for lunch. She like smiles but doesn't express
Speaker 1: any interest and like kind of shoes him out of
Speaker 1: the elevator.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would say it's friendly, but it's not. Yes, mortatious
Speaker 2: as he interprets it right.
Speaker 1: As fire as my interpretation, Wow, I did it without
Speaker 1: even trying. I said the word. She is being cordial
Speaker 1: and professional, and maybe that's why she's like not being
Speaker 1: flirtatious in return, because she's like, we're colleagues, you know
Speaker 1: that would be inappropriate. But in any case, she's showing
Speaker 1: no romantic interest. Not long after that, he asks her
Speaker 1: to go to the theater. She declines, saying that she
Speaker 1: has another date with another man, but Baxter kind of
Speaker 1: like wears her down a little bit, and she's like, Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll go with you. It's right here. When we get
Speaker 1: the I Know where you live conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the part of the movie that for
Speaker 2: Vah is the worst, real bad, it's bad.
Speaker 1: One of their earlier conversations in the movie is Baxter
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, you know, we're gonna go to this play,
Speaker 1: then we'll go out dancing. I know this great spot
Speaker 1: right around the corner from where you live. And she's like,
Speaker 1: oh sounds great. Wait a minute, how do you know
Speaker 1: where I live? And then rather than him being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's right, is creepy that I know where she lives
Speaker 1: and that I just told her that and acted like
Speaker 1: it was no big deal that I told her that.
Speaker 1: Instead he's like, not only do I know where you live,
Speaker 1: I know who you live with. I know where and
Speaker 1: when you were born. I know your height, your weight,
Speaker 1: your Social Security number, and your entire medical history because
Speaker 1: I looked up your file at the office. And she's like,
Speaker 1: uh huh.
Speaker 2: She's like, hah okay, this, yes, I remember this for
Speaker 2: the first time I watched it, being like, well, that's
Speaker 2: certainly disqualifying, yes, you would think, and yet well that's it.
Speaker 2: I feel like, well, I think that there is so
Speaker 2: much to love about this character and will continue talking
Speaker 2: about her. I feel like there are moments of inconsistency
Speaker 2: where there is like naivete I think like ascribed to
Speaker 2: her character that feels wildly unreasonable, where it's like, yes,
Speaker 2: she is young, she's in her early twenties, but like
Speaker 2: people in their early twenties know, it's scary to do that.
Speaker 2: Like that's maybe not the guy, particularly if you are
Speaker 2: already famously not attracted to them. Like it sort of
Speaker 2: lends itself to the wearing one down thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he's benefiting here from comparison to the
Speaker 3: men who are physically assaulting her in the workplace. Right, Yes,
Speaker 3: he's the least bad guy. Yes, And like I think
Speaker 3: also like in that first scene where she gets spanked
Speaker 3: by that guy and she's sort of like tells him
Speaker 3: off a little bit, you are kind of like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: she's someone who will like stand up for herself if
Speaker 3: you're doing something wrong to her kind of. And then
Speaker 3: so when she doesn't do it to him, you're like, well,
Speaker 3: she's not just placating him. Maybe she's okay with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he must be the guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But at the same time, I'm like, as creepy
Speaker 3: as that is and as not okay as it is
Speaker 3: that he does that, I do think that the film
Speaker 3: is sort of like not necessarily like judging him or
Speaker 3: holding him accountable for it, but it is sort of
Speaker 3: presenting the fact that he is an observer of the
Speaker 3: lives of others and not a participant even in his
Speaker 3: own life, Like he doesn't even occupy his own apartment, right,
Speaker 3: and that is like the main problem that he needs
Speaker 3: to sort of rectify throughout the movie. So it is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is like kind of a messed up way to
Speaker 3: like see what life.
Speaker 2: Is all about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by like reading people's insurance files. But yeah, that's
Speaker 3: giving him a lot of credit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, that was a tricky
Speaker 2: one for me. I do like feel like that moment
Speaker 2: has potential to be I was like sort of hoping
Speaker 2: it would be called back on in a more meaningful
Speaker 2: way later, because it's like, if this guy is our
Speaker 2: the guy we're rooting for, and that's the way that
Speaker 2: he understands how to interface with people where people are
Speaker 2: kind of numbers and obstacles to be overcome to get
Speaker 2: to where he wants to be. I just wish that
Speaker 2: that specific PLoP boy was called back to because it's
Speaker 2: just like age is bad.
Speaker 3: I mean they did call back to it, they do,
Speaker 3: but not in a super meaningful way.
Speaker 2: Not No, way that felt critical of him.
Speaker 3: Really, yes, they call back to it when she's like,
Speaker 3: you know, she calls back like, oh, you don't want
Speaker 3: people to get the wrong idea about how I know
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 2: Like right, It just felt like a flirtatious callback versus like, Hey,
Speaker 2: that thing you did earlier was fucking weird. Like yeah,
Speaker 2: which is weird because she does selectively call him out
Speaker 2: on certain things, but it's everything that you know, we
Speaker 2: have to keep him our lead, So yeah, right.
Speaker 1: I think it boils down to I just wish that
Speaker 1: she had been afforded more agency and perspective throughout the movie,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I also want to talk about how
Speaker 1: she's presented in comparison to the other women who are
Speaker 1: in the movie, mainly the women who the men are
Speaker 1: having the affairs with, because she's like the one respectable
Speaker 1: woman quote unquote. It's like the nineteen sixty version of like,
Speaker 1: she is not like the other girls. But I still
Speaker 1: find the way their romance plays out to be, you know,
Speaker 1: not great, because it's a lot of her politely declining
Speaker 1: or not showing any interest him kind of barreling past
Speaker 1: that and wearing her down. And then there's the scene
Speaker 1: where he has put the two and two together about oh,
Speaker 1: the person who my boss is taking to my apartment
Speaker 1: is fran He finds this out at the holiday party,
Speaker 1: and he gets so upset about it. And I feel
Speaker 1: like it's maybe some combination of like, oh, well, I'm
Speaker 1: jealous that the woman who I want to belong to
Speaker 1: me can't belong to me because another man has claimed
Speaker 1: ownership of her, and this is maybe me reaching a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I'm also just like pulling from the
Speaker 1: context of this era of like, oh, she's like a
Speaker 1: tainted one. She's damaged goods. You know, she's not this like.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, I didn't read it that. Okay, I
Speaker 2: read it as it's still not a super charitable interpretation
Speaker 2: of Baxter. But I read that as like, oh, now
Speaker 2: I care that people's lives are being affected because I
Speaker 2: like this person, and I like that was how I
Speaker 2: read that seen, where it was like people are just
Speaker 2: numbers and bimbos and this is just how the world
Speaker 2: works until suddenly someone that you like is involved, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it matters, and yeah, well
Speaker 2: that's not a negative thing inherently to realize that if
Speaker 2: someone is being emotionally, like deceived or harmed is an
Speaker 2: important thing. It does sort of reveal him to be
Speaker 2: like someone who is kind of selfish, and that is
Speaker 2: who he is, Like, he's like, well, I only care
Speaker 2: if someone I like is affected, which is part of
Speaker 2: what he has to get over that. I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, you could argue whether he actually makes that
Speaker 2: journey fully but yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, but yeah, it's left a little ambiguous, like what
Speaker 3: it is about.
Speaker 1: That that affects him, right, Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say.
Speaker 1: But he gets so upset about it that he goes
Speaker 1: to a bar and gets drunk and picks up another woman.
Speaker 1: Which I'm not casting any judgment on any of that
Speaker 1: because it sounds like something I would do.
Speaker 2: No, they're lonely and hanging out. I always remember just
Speaker 2: the image of them, like soul loosely dancing cheeksh to cheek,
Speaker 2: Like it's so funny.
Speaker 3: It's so funny, And it is that hard cut from
Speaker 3: her making her suicide attempt to them dancing cheek to cheek,
Speaker 3: and you're like, the darkest moment and the funniest moment
Speaker 3: in this movie is just like back to back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that stark image of like loneliness and like,
Speaker 2: I feel like it could have been way more. I
Speaker 2: think that in general, women who are not Shirley maclain
Speaker 2: are made out to be kind of well a few
Speaker 2: are made out to be kind of like bimbos that
Speaker 2: are like, what do you mean You're not gonna blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. But I think the exception to that sort
Speaker 2: of trope is Shell Drake's secretary. I feel like we
Speaker 2: do get some interiority for her, and I liked that
Speaker 2: in the scene at the holiday party, we have Shell
Speaker 2: Drake's I forget what her name is, we do get
Speaker 2: a name for her, Miss Olsen, miss Olsen. I was
Speaker 2: calling her Elizabeth Olsen in my mind because that is
Speaker 2: a famous person I've heard of. But miss Olsen, I
Speaker 2: thought the way that she presented that information to Fran
Speaker 2: while it was like drunk and like not super well,
Speaker 2: presented the way you wouldn't when you're drunk. I thought
Speaker 2: that that was like more than I expected, because I
Speaker 2: feel like it would have been very easy in this setting,
Speaker 2: in this time to have it turned into a rivalry
Speaker 2: and a shameful thing, where I think like miss Olsen's
Speaker 2: anger is well placed. It's at shell Drake. She knows
Speaker 2: he's a piece of shit, and she literally says to
Speaker 2: Fran like, there's nothing to be ashamed of. He is
Speaker 2: we've seen him do this, like you are not. And
Speaker 2: as someone who has been young, naive and in that
Speaker 2: position being told by someone like hey, this guy you're with,
Speaker 2: he's a piece of shit. I've been in your position too,
Speaker 2: it never feels good. And seeing it written by two
Speaker 2: men is never quite on. But those like hey, just
Speaker 2: so you know, I see what you're going through, and
Speaker 2: this guy's a piece of shit.
Speaker 3: You're part of a pattern. You're not special. This is
Speaker 3: like he's going to do this again. Yes, totally, it
Speaker 3: is a true warning. She's not saying it to be
Speaker 3: like fuck you, like yeah, she is saying it to
Speaker 3: be like I am the ghost of Christmas past.
Speaker 2: And totally yeah, Having now been on both sides of
Speaker 2: that equation, that is a very meaningful interaction that we're
Speaker 2: seeing there. And the fact that that is what puts
Speaker 2: her over the edge and sends her into suicidal ideation
Speaker 2: is like, we should talk about that also, something that
Speaker 2: certainly happens. I don't know. I was surprised by that
Speaker 2: moment watching it this time, because I feel like in
Speaker 2: a movie in nineteen sixty I would assume that it
Speaker 2: be like a woman shaming another woman of like, how
Speaker 2: could you be so naive? How could you blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, But instead it was like a callous,
Speaker 2: imperfect moment of recognition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tend to agree that her intention is, you know,
Speaker 1: looking out for her fellow woman who is going through
Speaker 1: something that she already went through. But that character is
Speaker 1: also established to be someone who seems like kind of
Speaker 1: devious in the sense that she's like always sneaking around.
Speaker 1: She's very nosy, she's trying to like stir things up.
Speaker 1: Because we also see her call mister Sheldrake's his wife
Speaker 1: and you know, arranged to get together for lunch to
Speaker 1: tell her about all of shell Drake's affairs.
Speaker 2: I don't think the movie judges her for that.
Speaker 3: Though now I felt like that was it was like
Speaker 3: a twist to reveal that she had had a relationship
Speaker 3: with Shell Drake, because at first you are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's one of those nosy people and that's why they
Speaker 3: need to hide it, and then it sort of is
Speaker 3: like a reveal of like, oh, he's talking about her
Speaker 3: like she's nosy, but really she's scorned, and like it
Speaker 3: is a situation that he created, not a situation that
Speaker 3: she created.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I.
Speaker 1: Was just because so many of the other women were
Speaker 1: presented as being like ditzy, fluozy or like naggy in
Speaker 1: some way that I just sort of carried some of
Speaker 1: that into that character, because I do feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of those other I think.
Speaker 2: The women who are brought into the apartment are right, yeah,
Speaker 2: there is.
Speaker 1: It seems a lot of judgment cast on them by
Speaker 1: the movie. And maybe I was just carrying some of
Speaker 1: that and projecting it onto the Miss Sulsen character.
Speaker 2: I will wave a flag for miss Olsen. I think Missulsen,
Speaker 2: you know, she she did it imperfectly, but all of
Speaker 2: her motivations to be made sense, Like it wasn't just
Speaker 2: like she was a spiteful, nosy person, like she was
Speaker 2: fucked over by her bot, like she was presumably harassed
Speaker 2: at work, ended up in this relationship, and then for
Speaker 2: her own livelihood, forced to stay and watch him do
Speaker 2: this to other women. And then we see her make
Speaker 2: a drunken attempt to acknowledge one of those other women to.
Speaker 3: Break the cycle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, unfortunately, what happens like that I don't think
Speaker 2: can be pinned on miss Olsen. Again, this is all
Speaker 2: traced back to Sheldrake and him thinking that he is untouchable,
Speaker 2: which I feel like made it hit even harder and
Speaker 2: more frustrating that at the end, you know, he's always
Speaker 2: going to be fine even though he doesn't end up
Speaker 2: with Fran and Fran escapes his fucking evil spiral. You know,
Speaker 2: like he will continue to be fine indefinitely, which is
Speaker 2: true of the time and true basically still now.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like anyone who decides like I have a
Speaker 3: moral conscience about what's happening and I'm going to tap
Speaker 3: out is lost from the company. Yeah, like they are
Speaker 3: all exiled, and she's one of those people who's like,
Speaker 3: I'm out. I guess because I exposed what's happening.
Speaker 1: Right, which tracks because men are obsessed with getting rid
Speaker 1: of anyone who will not comply with their horrible behavior.
Speaker 2: I had a little bit about because like we've sort
Speaker 2: of been talking about for a while now, like how
Speaker 2: this movie was marketed successfully as a comedy and also
Speaker 2: prominently features a suicide attempt. I think, I mean that
Speaker 2: was certainly like hinted at in many movies. I think
Speaker 2: this is one of the more famous examples of a
Speaker 2: suicide attempt being a major plot point. There was a
Speaker 2: really good retrospective piece that came out in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: remember that in The av Club Bike Caroline Seed that
Speaker 2: touches on sort of how the theme of suicide is
Speaker 2: touched upon. I think that in some ways, fran makes
Speaker 2: what appears to be like an unplanned attempt on her
Speaker 2: life after mister Sheldrake leaves in truly the most horrific
Speaker 2: way possible, like he's a He's just like such a
Speaker 2: fucking piece of shit. And as she is recovered from that,
Speaker 2: I felt like the movie didn't judge her in the
Speaker 2: way that I would expect a movie of this time
Speaker 2: to judge her. I think that where I get a
Speaker 2: little trick is like she is portrayed as so naive
Speaker 2: during her recovery. I want to be generous with her there,
Speaker 2: because she is recovering from something extremely traumatic and extremely
Speaker 2: horrific and she's still sort of coming back to who
Speaker 2: she is. The moment that really sticks with me is
Speaker 2: that she's not judged by Baxter and I'm not like
Speaker 2: Team back, but I think the way that he handled
Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath was thoughtful, especially in the scene where
Speaker 2: he I think that up until this point in the
Speaker 2: movie that I don't know how to correctly phrase this,
Speaker 2: but that you wouldn't see this scenario with a man
Speaker 2: because of how we have been trained by this movie
Speaker 2: and by society at the time to think that men
Speaker 2: are knowingly dogs and women are unknowingly deceived, and that
Speaker 2: is like the binary we've been presented with. And so
Speaker 2: when Baxter comes to her very honestly and is like,
Speaker 2: I once almost made an attempt on my life, also
Speaker 2: over a relationship, and I'm so glad I didn't, and
Speaker 2: here's why, and all of this, and having that be
Speaker 2: like a moment of healing and recognition, even though you know,
Speaker 2: I think realistically she's still not out of the woods
Speaker 2: with navigating her feelings on this. I thought that scene
Speaker 2: is really beautiful and nice.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I also found it surprising, again based
Speaker 1: on the context of the time and the just sort
Speaker 1: of cultural mentality toward suicide and it's misunderstanding of mental
Speaker 1: health and all of that. So yeah, I found the
Speaker 1: movie to be like very generous with its handling of that,
Speaker 1: especially for the time.
Speaker 2: I love friend, and I also think that someone showing
Speaker 2: up for you in that moment does not mean that
Speaker 2: you have to be their girlfriend. That's where I have
Speaker 2: a hard time.
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, she does go back to
Speaker 1: shell Drake for reasons. I mean, who among us hasn't
Speaker 1: gone back to a bad relationship, even though we you know,
Speaker 1: logically you know better, but emotionally at that exact moment,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't. So we won't blame her for that.
Speaker 1: But the very jarring thing to me about the recovery
Speaker 1: of the suicide attempt is the scene where the doctor
Speaker 1: is like treating her and then like I think, giving
Speaker 1: her smelling salts or something to help her getting consciousness,
Speaker 1: and then he slaps her across the face multiple times
Speaker 1: to try to wake her up. I'm sure that was
Speaker 1: standard medical practice four the time, a little.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, necessary to show, I would say.
Speaker 1: No, it was not necessary to see a man slapping
Speaker 1: a woman across the face like six times in a.
Speaker 2: Row, especially as he was about to become the moral
Speaker 2: compass of the movie not two minutes later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know. Nineteen sixty Although when I had
Speaker 1: my gallbladder surgery in twenty nineteen, and I was like,
Speaker 1: coming out of the anesthesia, I was woken up to
Speaker 1: a doctor slapping me across the face. What so maybe
Speaker 1: it is Yeah, it was like traumatizing and I was like,
Speaker 1: excuse me, is that necessary? But a doctor was slapping
Speaker 1: me in the face to wake me up because they
Speaker 1: thought I was dying because my heart rate was low.
Speaker 1: And then they're like.
Speaker 2: Went vampire mode.
Speaker 1: They were like, they're like, are you a runner? Like
Speaker 1: do you exercise? I was like yes, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: your heart rate is alarmingly low. But if you're a runner,
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of normal. But if you're not, we
Speaker 1: thought you were dying. So they slapped me just in case.
Speaker 3: And medical slap sometimes I mean like, and we know
Speaker 3: the medical system is so fucked is sobody ways.
Speaker 2: But sometimes I don't know, Like there were times over
Speaker 2: the summer where I was with a doctor. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you're describing like witchcraft. You're just being like, ultimately, we
Speaker 2: don't know, we're gonna throw some leaves at it, and
Speaker 2: guy knows what happens. I'm like, I don't feel secure
Speaker 2: in your abilities. I don't trust you live off love.
Speaker 2: I think, Okay, the last thing I have to say
Speaker 2: about Baxter, yeah, is that again I think that this
Speaker 2: is done unevenly throughout the movie. But I appreciated where
Speaker 2: we talk so much on this freaking show about patriarchy
Speaker 2: the guy, and there's one guy who represents all the patriarchy,
Speaker 2: and if we vanquished this one guy, the world will
Speaker 2: be solved, and we will. We've also seen racism the guy,
Speaker 2: and you vanquished racism the guy or it racism the
Speaker 2: lady Brave, and then racism is helved, you know. So
Speaker 2: it's like very clean movie solutions. I like that this
Speaker 2: movie does not subscribe to that. I think that the
Speaker 2: tricky thing is that in the guys who aren't Shell
Speaker 2: Drake who go to the apartment, as well as the
Speaker 2: women who go with them, are made to be comic
Speaker 2: relief in a way that is funny but kind of
Speaker 2: ultimately a little dissonant. But with Baxter, I really like
Speaker 2: that he is I think the movie knows he is
Speaker 2: like an agent of the patriarchy because he's quite literally
Speaker 2: an agent of the patriarchy. He is like sharing his
Speaker 2: bed sheets with them for advancement. He is knowingly benefiting
Speaker 2: from this and doesn't give a shit about anyone in
Speaker 2: the equation until it's someone who he cares about who
Speaker 2: is being negatively affected by it. I feel like we
Speaker 2: don't really see characters like that very frequently in a
Speaker 2: knowing way. I think where that gets tricky is the
Speaker 2: ending implication that possibly like it almost like positions Shirley
Speaker 2: mcclan as the reward for realizing he was an agent
Speaker 2: of the patriarchy, where he's like, now that he has
Speaker 2: abandoned the toxic workplace, that he has walked away from it,
Speaker 2: he can have girlfriend and at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: isn't that what it was all for? Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: So that that's a little you know, and again that's
Speaker 2: open to interpretation. We've talked about different interpretations of that,
Speaker 2: but I just appreciated that, like normally, when we see
Speaker 2: characters like that, the movie completely absolves them of everything,
Speaker 2: and it's like, at the end, he does get the
Speaker 2: promotion and he's gonna solve insurance from the inside, and
Speaker 2: this movie is smarter than that, right, And I love
Speaker 2: it for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it still does reward him with at least
Speaker 1: like a woman's tension for that night, unclear if they'll
Speaker 1: like get together romantically. But again it begs the question
Speaker 1: to me, what does she like about him? Besides the
Speaker 1: fact that he's respectful enough to take off his hat
Speaker 1: in the elevator, like, she's given no indication that she's
Speaker 1: romantically interested in him. And I don't know. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can make the argument that through this journey of her
Speaker 1: relationship with shell Drake and she finally comes to realize, Oh,
Speaker 1: this man doesn't respect me or care for me the
Speaker 1: way a person should. And it seems like Baxter, based
Speaker 1: on the way he took care of me after my
Speaker 1: suicide attempt, he's the better option. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what the implications all are.
Speaker 2: I like that it doesn't tell you what it is, too,
Speaker 2: because then it makes it easier to love this movie
Speaker 2: on a longer timeline, which I want to.
Speaker 1: That is fair, I because I don't have as much
Speaker 1: of an attachment to it, and I don't feel like
Speaker 1: at this point, or at least at the point where
Speaker 1: the movie ends, that Cec Baxter earned the redemption that
Speaker 1: he appears to get by being able to hang out
Speaker 1: with friend.
Speaker 3: I mean, he he did give up everything he had,
Speaker 3: He did this is jet including the apartment, and he
Speaker 3: did get punched really hard and gave up his apartment
Speaker 3: and his job and his career and like literally has nothing.
Speaker 1: I guess I just think that, yeah, I'm like, men
Speaker 1: should give up that and more to deserve any redemption.
Speaker 2: So I think that again, it is very connected to
Speaker 2: that moment of human connection between the two of them
Speaker 2: when they are sharing this experience of like they have
Speaker 2: both been at an extremely low point and like, please
Speaker 2: let me share my experience with you, that you might
Speaker 2: take something from it to get through this difficult experience
Speaker 2: for me. Honestly, I think the movie is heightened if
Speaker 2: they don't end up, or even it being implied that
Speaker 2: they end up together. But the generous interpretation at the
Speaker 2: ending for me is that again he says I love you,
Speaker 2: I love you so much, and she says, okay, let's
Speaker 2: play cards. I feel like it is like weird thinking
Speaker 2: they are going to get together. But I just what
Speaker 2: I would have loved is just yeah, like another moment
Speaker 2: of like the moments of human connection between the two
Speaker 2: of them. I like, I've had moments of human connections
Speaker 2: with guys who kind of sucked that have been impactful.
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't think that his life should
Speaker 2: be totally but his life even he's like also not
Speaker 2: for nothing. He is fucked and like that that's not
Speaker 2: what movies are interested in, nor should they be. But like,
Speaker 2: you know, he's fucked, Like he what is he gonna
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's a guy. He'll bounce bounce back though,
Speaker 2: and I do believe that she will as well. Something
Speaker 2: I like about her character as we're not led to
Speaker 2: believe that like I'm just doing this job until I
Speaker 2: find a husband, Like it seems like she wants to
Speaker 2: have a career like it that's never brought up as
Speaker 2: something that is like a temporary thing for her, and
Speaker 2: judgment isn't passed on her for it. I don't know
Speaker 2: I'm becoming defensive of this movie, but I think that
Speaker 2: like C. C. Baxter, I'm friends with people like C. C. Baxter,
Speaker 2: and the trick is never fuck them. M that's the yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do think that this movie is more
Speaker 3: critical of the sort of social understandings of the time
Speaker 3: than it has to be, yeah, to tell the story,
Speaker 3: and I think that it is like it doesn't let
Speaker 3: this guy off the hook, even though he's not the
Speaker 3: one cheating on his wife, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like he gets all of the consequences that are coming
Speaker 3: to those guys that they never experience because he's standing
Speaker 3: in and saying like, yes, I'm fucking all these women,
Speaker 3: Like he doesn't get to, you know, correct the record
Speaker 3: about like I wasn't actually fucking all those women. Other
Speaker 3: men were doing that in my bed, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And he still pays the price for it,
Speaker 3: and it is still like, well he does owe something, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Anyway, I think that the one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: that Shell Drake gives to Fran that she should have
Speaker 1: kept it because uh men, oh women money you read
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: I would have. I mean, if if I were a friend,
Speaker 2: I would not have made a statement by not keeping
Speaker 2: the money. I'd be like, thank you and goodbye forever.
Speaker 1: This is mine. I deserve this one hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties money that is one thousand dollars roughly in
Speaker 1: today's money.
Speaker 2: Buddy, let's freaking go to be fair.
Speaker 3: She thought she was going to be dead, that's true,
Speaker 3: so when she left the money, she had no use
Speaker 3: for it. The only use for the money was to
Speaker 3: say I don't forgive you feel bad that I'm dead,
Speaker 3: which I'm like, Yeah, if she knew she was going
Speaker 3: to live, yeah keep the money. But she didn't, and
Speaker 3: so she got to use it as a fuck you,
Speaker 3: which is cool.
Speaker 2: Another example of Baxter big pro shell Drake where he's like,
Speaker 2: I got one hundred dollars for you, where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: just let her have, you know, like.
Speaker 1: When she survived. It seems like the money gets returned
Speaker 1: to chldreake again, but it's like, no, like, you're alive,
Speaker 1: keep it, use it. It's one thousand dollars in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four men.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he didn't really know what the money was
Speaker 3: at that point.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: Uh, this movie passes the Bechdel test, folks.
Speaker 1: It does good for it.
Speaker 2: It passes primarily between Mildred and Fran when they are
Speaker 2: talking about her recovery, which I feel like is very
Speaker 2: you know, plat relevant, So it passes. I do think
Speaker 2: that Fran again, like most women we see in movies
Speaker 2: to this day, like it would be really cool if
Speaker 2: she had a female friend. Yes, there's no shortage of
Speaker 2: women in this workplace who are marginalized in much the
Speaker 2: same way she is for her to talk to, And
Speaker 2: I feel like that is the way in which it
Speaker 2: sort of plays into a very like sparse story character
Speaker 2: wise but also just how I think. So often, like
Speaker 2: iconic women characters in older movies are often in a
Speaker 2: bubble where they are the woman, where we know that
Speaker 2: she lives with her sister, We assume that she has
Speaker 2: some sort of close relationship with her sister, even though
Speaker 2: it's like the only thing we know is like, your
Speaker 2: sister thinks you're a lady. So it's like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: her sister would slut shame her for being a person
Speaker 2: who knows, But we're surrounded by all of these potential
Speaker 2: women for her to be allied with. We don't really
Speaker 2: see those conversations, and when we do, like with ms
Speaker 2: Olsen and Friend, it's strictly, you know, centered on the
Speaker 2: shell Drake issue, right, but it does pass. So there
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 1: Well, because this movie's only interested in Fran to the
Speaker 1: extent that she has a blossoming relationship with C. C. Baxter,
Speaker 1: and outside of that, the movie doesn't really have any interests.
Speaker 2: And I disagree, I disagree.
Speaker 3: I disagree that's not true at all.
Speaker 1: Then why don't we see her at home, having an
Speaker 1: interior life, having friendships, Like what.
Speaker 2: I don't think that she's the protagonist, but I don't
Speaker 2: think that means the movie is disinterested in her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's interested in her outside of
Speaker 3: her relationship with Baxter, because I think that it's like
Speaker 3: it understands that there's things about her that Baxter doesn't
Speaker 3: understand because of his preoccupation with a relationship with her,
Speaker 3: that she has all these other dimensions that he's not
Speaker 3: seeing even though he has access to her insurance file,
Speaker 3: Like he gets surprised with information about her that we
Speaker 3: as the audience know, And I think that it's like
Speaker 3: that shows that the movie has more of an interest
Speaker 3: than he does in her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I wish we just saw more of
Speaker 1: her life outside of what we see in the movie.
Speaker 2: I very much would have liked to see her and
Speaker 2: I don't think it would even take away from where
Speaker 2: the focus of the movie seems to want to be.
Speaker 2: To see her interact with other people at work and again,
Speaker 2: like have a friendship. That seems like a fault of
Speaker 2: the movie, especially because it's Billy Wilder movie. It should
Speaker 2: be operating at a higher level, we are introduced to
Speaker 2: a lot of women, So for the interactions between women
Speaker 2: to be so sparse feels telling about like where his
Speaker 2: interests lie. But I don't think that that means that
Speaker 2: the story is disinterested in her.
Speaker 3: And I also think that thematically the movie is like
Speaker 3: it's about this collection of some people who are who
Speaker 3: when Christmas comes around, they're not needed anywhere, Like that's
Speaker 3: part of why, Like he is an observer of other
Speaker 3: people's lives who just like is doing like the insurance
Speaker 3: information about like people who actually have families and things
Speaker 3: going on, but he doesn't have that for himself. And
Speaker 3: she is literally an elevator operator who's like she takes
Speaker 3: people who have somewhere to go to the places that
Speaker 3: they need to go, and she herself doesn't have those things.
Speaker 3: And so I think even the fact that she has
Speaker 3: a family the reason, Like it would be great to
Speaker 3: see her with her family. But I feel like what's
Speaker 3: important about her character in this movie is that like
Speaker 3: she is being kept on the outside of life in
Speaker 3: the same way that he is, and that like she
Speaker 3: is unable to develop those relationships that you're asking to
Speaker 3: see because of being held in this limbo with this
Speaker 3: relationship with Sheldrake and just like being sort of an
Speaker 3: intermediary in other people's lives, Like that's part of what
Speaker 3: she's struggling with in the movie.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, with that mind, let's get to our metric,
Speaker 2: the nipple scale. Yes, how you feel about the movie
Speaker 2: on a scale of one to five nipples based on how.
Speaker 1: Zero if sorry, wow, Jamie, we've had five hundred.
Speaker 2: I'm so tired. You don't understand. So based on how
Speaker 2: it deals with intersexual feminist themes.
Speaker 1: Ooh, this is going to be a tricky one for me. Again,
Speaker 1: of the women we do see on screen, it feels
Speaker 1: like they're is like one or two respectable women, and
Speaker 1: everyone else can't be taken seriously because they're the flings
Speaker 1: of the men who are having these extra marital affairs.
Speaker 1: And I just feel like a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: tropes that were popular of women of the time are
Speaker 1: present with a lot of these characters. I do like
Speaker 1: fran as a character a lot. I just wish we
Speaker 1: knew more about her, and maybe I think I also
Speaker 1: just like don't have the language to understand what movies
Speaker 1: from this era are trying to telegraph. To audiences as
Speaker 1: much as I should, because there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that I just don't really pick up on and that
Speaker 1: I don't interpret correctly. This happens every time I watch
Speaker 1: an older movie. I'm just like, what are they even
Speaker 1: trying to say? What are they telling me? Because I
Speaker 1: just like my brain doesn't operate that way, I think. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about this movie. I
Speaker 1: do want to say that, as is very typical of
Speaker 1: movies of this era, which is a major reflection of
Speaker 1: the rampant racism of the time. This is an entirely
Speaker 1: white cast. There, I think, is one black man you
Speaker 1: see on screen in the entire movie that's like the
Speaker 1: only person of color that you would clock throughout the
Speaker 1: entire movie. And again, as is typical of the movies
Speaker 1: of this era, he's in a service role. He's shining
Speaker 1: the shoes of mister Sheldrake. Aside from that, it's an
Speaker 1: entirely white movie.
Speaker 3: So, and there's the guy playing piano oh at the
Speaker 3: Chinese restaurant who they do have a like his record
Speaker 3: which is called Rickshaw Boy.
Speaker 2: Uh not great, not good, not good.
Speaker 1: There's a number of scenes at a Chinese restaurant. That right,
Speaker 1: you do see some other people of color in the
Speaker 1: background of those scenes. Again, no one really has any
Speaker 1: significant speaking roles or anything like that unless you're a
Speaker 1: white character in this movie. So I'll give the movie.
Speaker 1: I honestly have no idea. I'll give it three nipples,
Speaker 1: question Mark, two nipples, one nipple, four nipples. I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I don't know how to watch movies from
Speaker 1: before nineteen eighty the end.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go three Okay, nice, Yeah,
Speaker 2: who would you like to give your nipples to.
Speaker 1: I'll give one to Shirley McLain, I will give one
Speaker 1: to missus Dreyfus, and I'll give my final nipple to
Speaker 1: miss Olsen because again I feel like I projected some
Speaker 1: stuff onto her and that was not fair of me
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: It's good to be honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll settle on three nipples, and I have no
Speaker 1: idea if that's actually how I feel or not, because
Speaker 1: again I don't know how to watch old movies.
Speaker 3: I think you're overthinking it. I think you're like wondering
Speaker 3: what this movie is trying to telegraph, and it's not
Speaker 3: trying to say something like it's trying to make you
Speaker 3: think about questions. I think it's like it feels like
Speaker 3: it's trying to challenge, like who's getting left behind? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and make you think about that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like it's talking about what's happening at the margins, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Which I enjoy stories the center, those characters and that
Speaker 1: type of narrative. But I don't know, like, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, while I do think the movie
Speaker 1: is well written, I just it's just not really for
Speaker 1: me and I have nothing else to say about it.
Speaker 2: I'm going for a nipples. Yeah, I have nothing else
Speaker 2: to say because I have to pee and leave, so
Speaker 2: I and I'm going to give one to you Fran,
Speaker 2: one to miss Olsen, and I'm gonna give one to
Speaker 2: missus Sheldrake while I'm at it, because I hope she
Speaker 2: was on to bigger, better, less piece of shit flop
Speaker 2: husband type activities hell yeah, following this movie, and those
Speaker 2: are where my nipples are gonna go.
Speaker 3: Nice Emily, I'm gonna give it three nipples. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: give one to Fran and then I'm going to give
Speaker 3: the other two to that woman whose jockey husband was
Speaker 3: being held hostage in Cuba because she was supposed to
Speaker 3: have sex that night and she didn't get to have sex.
Speaker 2: And she was appropriately pissed off about it, where she
Speaker 2: was like, we made the lonely person's packed.
Speaker 3: How could you? What the hell is going on here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she was so excited that she was gonna
Speaker 1: fuck the guy who's like, I'm a sex pot. She's like,
Speaker 1: you're a sex pot.
Speaker 2: Woo. Yeah, which I feel like the movie's and on
Speaker 2: the joke, like the number one indication that someone is
Speaker 2: not actually a sex pot is if they cannot stop
Speaker 2: saying that. Yeah, it's always who you least suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, well that's the apartment Everily, thank.
Speaker 3: You so much for joining us, my gosh, thank you
Speaker 3: for having me, and thank you for getting me to
Speaker 3: watch this movie that I probably wouldn't have watched us
Speaker 3: quickly because I loved it.
Speaker 1: Any time? Where can people check out your podcast? Follow
Speaker 1: you on social media, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I'm at mister Emily Heller on all social media, and
Speaker 3: you can subscribe to what is a Jeopardy Podcast wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts oooh.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on social media as while at
Speaker 1: Bechdel Cast. You can go to our link tree link
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Speaker 1: plus access to the Beck catalog for five dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Wow, And you can get our merch over at tipublic
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Speaker 2: our upcoming tour in the UK if you haven't already
Speaker 2: on our link tree. And with that, let's give up
Speaker 2: our apartment and wander into the unknown.
Speaker 1: Woo Hi Hi. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
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