Upstream - S4E18.5: Sam

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Check out the whole thing on our reasonably-priced patreon! ------ I saw the TV Glow. The People's Joker. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. All titans of transgender cinema that capture three very distinct modes of being transgender. Today, Katie Tightpussy has joined us to offer us a fourth: Mel Brooks' adult son Nicky has pulled in every favour he had to create what I can only describe as a pitch-perfect silver screen adaptation of a fictionmania story.  If you know what that is, let me assure you that you read that correctly. If you don't? Well, we've got just under two hours of us yelling about it. This... is Sam. Check out Katie's shop here: https://tightpussy.shop/en-gbp Check out Katie's reviews here: https://letterboxd.com/katherinetea/ ----- We've been nominated for Podcast of the Year at the ITV bCreator Awards! It’s public vote, so vote for us here under “creator shortlist”. should take about a minute, you don’t have to live in Britain to vote! www.bcreator.co.uk/awards/ ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can. -Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity -Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla https://www.waterislifegaza.org/ -Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secured and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848 -Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food made with replanted veg patches https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza ----- WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app accounts

KillJamesBond fans, your podcast needs you. We have been nominated for an award for the ITV Be Creator Awards Podcast Creator of the Year. I know. And we need you to help us win this. It's a public vote. You don't even have to live in the UK. You can go to becreator.co.uk awards, which will of course be in the description, and vote for us. Do you like the podcast Kill James Bond? Do you think it would be funny for us to say award-winning podcast Kill James Bond every time we say the name of the show from here on out? Hello and welcome to award-winning podcast Kill James Bond. Do you think that it would be exciting for us all to walk directly into a room full of industry professionals, go straight onto the stage, cunt it up to the nines, get handed

an award and tell them all to fuck off and free Palestine? I certainly do, and you have the opportunity in your hands to make it happen. Becreator.co.uk slash awards, it will take less than a minute. I leave this in your capable hands. I am here to teach you to be a girl. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined as always by my friends, Abigail, Thorne and Devon. Hello. What's up? What's up? What's up? And we have a guest. We have brought you Katie tight pussy from online. Casey, how's it going? Hello. Thanks so much for joining us. That's me, I'm Katie Taipazi from online. That's right. That's all I have. From posts, from Twitter, from Blue Sky, from movie reviews, you name it. And you've brought us a movie which-

Generously described as a movie. Jesus fucking Christ. Boy did I. I would describe it as high art and avant-garde experiences. This is the first time I've watched a movie on the podcast, and I've thought to myself, I don't think I can get through this. Which, and listeners, I remind you, we've seen Rambo 4, which opens with real footage of human beings being actually killed. Yeah.

I think that says a lot about society with the desensitization of gore and violence. You're willing to see a Burmese civilian get like sawn in half with an M2 machine gun, but you're not willing to see a beautiful touching film. I'm not willing to see misogyny. A beautiful film from someone who absolutely is not cis under any circumstances. No, no, no, no. We said this.

We'll touch on that. So the movie is Sam, brackets 2017. Brackets 2015, brackets 2016, because it's completely different literally everywhere. I've looked all over, like every different site, it doesn't list a single year. And it's kind of a running joke now. Released at some point. Roughly in the middle of the decade. ALICE They make it every year. ALICE The production, the release of this was a little interesting, as you make a sense of, when you see the opening titles, and discover that this is made by Nicholas Brooks, and

you go, huh, who's that then? And then you see Executive produced by Mel Brooks. Ah, right. Mm hmm. This is the the like child vanity project. I mean, I say vanity project. It's a vanity project about being trans. So really, it's a trinity project. But like, thank you. I was really proud of that one. Do you want me to take that one again so you guys can laugh more because it really deserves more? It's about being trans, but also it's very, it's like, no, it's definitely not about being trans. It is about being trans, and there's a lot of history here that goes into it.

This is like, I didn't see the TV glow, and if anyone says I did, they're lying. I would agree with that. Because I try to look into this as much as I could just to get an idea of everything going on. And I could find literally nothing about the director other than a single interview saying that they go by Nikki, which really just fueled the fire in my head. This is the only thing with just Nikki Brooks. And I was like, what's going on here? Because there is nothing about this.

Not even just nothing about this. There's nothing about Nikki Brooks just as a concept at all. There's no news articles, there's no Wikipedia, there's no anything. In the last ten years or so there's been nothing. And my copium, hope, is that Nikki transitioned and just sequestered into silence and just disenjoying the life. ALICE Just did the really trad, like, deep stealth, you move to, like, a new town, like, witness protection, and you don't tell anyone. NICHOLAS That is, that, I truly hope that. I really, really hope that. Because the alternative is so depressing. NICHOLAS Shout out to you, Nikki, if you're listening.

We love you. ALICE Because, like, I have a similar fact about Nikki Brooks that I discovered. I'll do that at the end, right, because it really depressed me and it changed the way that I felt about this movie. But so we begin with woman noises, like from On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the kind of like, like a feminine crosstalk that's like, yeah, exactly. You're getting good at that. Yeah. Thanks. We did that in voice training. Seattle Voice Labs.

That's pretty good. And a title card that says receive with simplicity. It's also a card that defines a yachner, like a pushy woman, right? Like, yeah, it's just a dirty untidy slot, basically. It's like, I don't think... I don't love that, I'm gonna be honest. And that's how it opens. No. That is how it opens immediately. And we open in, ostensibly a bar, right, this is... we're gonna talk about the filming later. Yes. Oh yes. We open in a bar where two women are making the women noises and are talking to each other, and there is a guy sitting at the bar with the sharpest chin I've ever seen off of someone

who's not Jim Carrey, and the look of jealousy, I would say, on his face, that I think is meant to be resentment, but it just comes across as jealousy% is intense. He has little sideburns down to here because this was 2015 or 16 or 17. Yeah. Yes. And he is like, uh, women, right? To the bartender. Mm-hmm. An interaction which takes three distinct cuts, none of which match up well at all. The editing is really bad and it's kind of shameful because there's some hysterical comedic beats that if the editing was a little sharper it would be like just a real riot and it's just not. Cross-phase galore. Yeah he's like, he's there, he can't tell what these women are saying because women

always be talking shit about this. There's like a romantic movie on the telly at the bar and there's a bunch of women crying and he's like hey bartender, can we not put on some sports or something? ALICE What bar are they showing the rom-coms at? LIAM I don't know. I don't- ALICE My friend, you are in the women's bar! ALICE The lesbian bar doesn't have a fire actually. LIAM Death trap, ladies. ALICE He's joined by his friend, who is similarly temporally displaced, because while my man has sideburns in 2015, Doc is wearing the short sleeve t-shirt over a long sleeve t-shirt

in 2015. ZOE Yeah, Doc is a time traveler from the year 2025. He's ahead of the curve. ALICE I'm a time traveler from an antique land. I mess with traveler from an antique land. Far away place. I don't know anyone who wore the kind of like long sleeve under short sleeve who is not now a trans woman so just bear that in mind going forward. Alright you got me there. Damn you got me. Fuck. That was a wallop.

So that's a wallop. This bears out. Based on the data 100% correlation There's still time Sam tells his buddy doc women are demented. I can figure out any female in one minute, especially my my nympho X I'm banging models getting STDs and it's like cool dog. Cool. Yes dialogue. We love it Yeah, the dialogue is really something the so this doctor thus the name doc takes and it's like, cool dog, cool. Yes. Dialogue, we love it. Yeah. Yeah, the dialogue is really something. So this doctor, thus the name Doc, takes, creates a script, right, I think, like, takes

care of his STDs. Yeah. Yeah. And has done so in the past. He's a gynecologist. Yes. And there's a line there, he's like, he's the only guy in New York City with a gynecologist. Like, brother, you're not even the only person on this block with a gynecologist

like come on not even the only dude here. Yeah I think it's funny to have a best friend that you've known since childhood but you're calling them doc because they're a doctor like at a certain point you have to swap to that right? Yeah maybe it was like a life partner. Because the guy's name is Andrew and it's said like twice in the film by like his fiance it's, and they just call him Doc all the time. ALICE Speaking of his fiance... WILL I don't understand. WILL Oh, his bitch fiance.

ALICE Doc's deal is that he is kind of henpecked by his fiance, who calls him and we cut to her on the phone, she's getting her toenails done and is being kind of like, Karen-ish to the woman doing her thing. WILL Snapping her fingers. WILL I would describe it as racist in class, that's how I had Janet in my notes, just to be very clear. ALICE She's materialistic, she's like, where are you taking me for dinner? He's like, somewhere expensive, she's like, right answer.

ZACH And it's like a three second cutaway on the phone call, so that's how they open with her, like, this woman is evil, and it doesn't change for her. ALICE This bitch. ALICE Mmhm. Yeah. ALICE We will get further into this. further. She doesn't like Sam. She calls Sam a whore monger. Yeah, we're just accurate. Yeah, he is somewhat accurate. That is accurate. The thing about male Sam and sorry spoilers. Sorry, sorry, spoilers gender. I jotted down on my notes that the best way to describe him, I felt like in my head, is that he's doing a cross between the Heath Ledger's Joker

and then also Patrick Bates. Like, that's what the actor is doing in all of his blocking and like how he's kind of walking and like and talking and just communicating where it's like this this guy, his entire direction is just, can you do those guys just like be like a tough guy? Yeah, that's it. A lot of face as well. a lot of like eyebrow movement and stuff. So much face.

She's serving face. Yeah. He does threaten to commit revenge porn. He does. Like a revenge porn event? It did happen, yeah. Just in passing, about a woman that we have not seen and do not see. I think about his ex. They're gonna go to a stag do. They've got their buddy's stag do coming up. And he's like, oh, I've got some pictures of me and the blushing bride. Maybe I'll leak them on the

internet. It's like, fuck you, you piece of shit. Kill yourself. It's illegal. It should be illegal. It should be more illegal. Like, we gotta kill this guy. I don't know what to tell you. He works in a modeling agency. Yeah. His job, he's got a business factory. It's sort of like lingerie, I think. Alright, alright, listen. You know the deal. You know the deal at this point. It's 10 minutes into a free preview. If you want to hear the rest of this,

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