The Bechdel Cast - A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night with Anna Hossnieh

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This week, Caitlin and Jamie and special guest Anna Hossnieh walk home alone at night... together... to talk about A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @annahossniehon Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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On the Pectocast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Caitlin. Yes, Jamie? If a girl walks home alone at night and no one is there to see her do it, does she walk home alone at night at all?

Wow. Just an incredible thought. Let me answer your question with another question. If a girl walks home alone at night and there's no one there to talk to her because she's alone does it pass the Bechdel test well I guess it depends on whether you consider the girl to be a name or not I guess we'll have to talk about it oh yes we will welcome to the Bechdel cast my name is Jamie Loftus my name is Caitlin Durante and this is our our podcast that in which we look at popular movies using an intersectional feminist lens. Bechtel, which asks, do two named people of any marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man? And that has to be at least a two line exchange. So we use that test,

just use it as a jumping off point for discussion. And then we go wild. We bite off the heads of everyone around us using the test. Of various perps. I'm really excited to talk about the movie. I think we've gotten a fair amount of requests for this movie over the years. Yes. And it was my first time watching it

but it's not my first time talking to our incredible guest. Oh my goodness. Perfect transition. Amazing, Jamie. Our guest today is an iHeart producer. She's a co-host of Ethnically Ambiguous and Deckheads podcasts. And you know her from our episodes on She's All That and A Star Is Born. So she is joining the elite tier of three-time Bechtelcast guests. It's Anna Hossier.

Hi. Hi. I forgot we did Star Is Born. Wow. I can't forget. I think about it every day. That was beautiful actually. Could you- Thank you. Go on. I can't forget. I think about it every day. That was beautiful, actually. Thank you. Go on. I can't tell the difference. Go on for the rest of the episode, please. The reason that we're having you back on the cast is that

I just wanted to take another look at you. Oh, okay. Do you think my nose is not marketable? i felt like that was the thesis of the movie is is my nose marketable oh a white rich man said it was okay then it is that's all i remember for that movie wow and also remember feminist icon gail yeah which we made merch about and only ever referred to that one time yeah it never came up again i have that merch i wear that shirt around good i love it i still have mine too and i'm like if i wear this outside will anyone know what i'm talking about it's so i was thinking about this the other day like all of lady gaga's new music sounds exactly like the music in A Star Is Born that was supposed

to be bad and so I think that A Star Is Born ultimately anti-pop because the music is not bad and I think one of the songs besides Shallow I listened to in the soundtrack the most is uh why would you do that do that do that do that do that to me uh-huh it's good yeah wow well that's not what we're talking about we are talking about a girl walks home alone at night 2014 film written and directed by anna lily amirpour so anna what's your uh relationship with this film? Do you want me to do what my dad would do if someone, if I pronounced an Iranian name not good enough? He goes, Annalili Amirpour. And you're like, OK, chill, bro. It's fine. You're yelling.

He does that with every Persian word or name I say that he does not feel is, I said it, like, Iranian enough. He's, like, screaming at me. Just a legend in every way. That's the Persian thing is to correct your, like, dumb Iranian-American kid of, like, you are not saying it correctly, Anna. And I'm like, okay, well, you didn't even watch the movie dad this is all uh hypothetical that's how deep the the terror of his reign is into my blood but I'm sorry you asked what did I think of the movie or what is my um just what's your relationship with it well I actually I know I don't personally know the director but I know of the director and she's an Iranian American director

and I've always kind of followed her work but for some reason I never watched this movie and that's because I am scared of anything that says horror in the description I just don't I don't know how to take it in I'm not a very good like I'm just not a very good horror movie watcher I'm too scared I'm too jumpy I cover my eyes for most of it and I always feel like that's not a very good horror movie watcher. I'm too scared. I'm too jumpy. I cover my eyes for most of it. And I always feel like that's not a good way to watch a movie. So I just tend to stay away from them. So I never watched this. But like I've watched the director's other work.

Like I've seen her other movie, The Bad Batch. I've seen all the like TV shows she's directed. You were saying she's Twilight Zone? Yeah. Yeah. She's a Twilight Zone. She did like castle rock uh cool what was the other one there was another like oh legion that's right legion she directed an episode

legion so like i've watched um those but this was the one i never got to watch even though it's interesting because it's like the actual one i would connect the most to because it's all in farsi uh and it's supposed to be about like these like Iranian characters. I'm glad I actually like after watching it I really liked it. Yeah nice. Like a lot a lot. Cool. And I'm glad I finally got to. Me too. Well you're welcome. Thank you yes thank you for like putting putting it on me and being like it's time and me being like you're right master. I don't know what that was supposed to be but you're like my master and i was like you're my movie master that you told me to watch it i'm not comfortable with that you are my movie master and when you tell me to

watch a movie i watch it i mean if you mean that i have a master's degree in screenwriting from boston university a fact that I would never bring up, then yes, you're correct. Yes, I am a master in that way. That's exactly right. And that's why I think of Caitlin as my movie master, and Jamie as my friend. Incredible. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay, so Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie? I hadn't seen it. I also, I get, I like watching horror movies, but I don't watch them in theaters usually because I just worry about reacting too hard. And I don't like to react too hard in public. It makes me nervous.

So I remember missing a screening of this movie while i was in college i think because i'm a coward and then i watched it for this episode and i also i really really really enjoyed it and i it's weird i mean this movie is and we'll talk about i mean it's so many cross genres but it is not a gory movie really i mean it's and and it's not like super scary either i don't know like where to classify it but i think that's part of the point um i really i really liked it yeah i mean it is many genres and i would say horror is present but it's also like of all the genres that it is like it is horror the least it's more like i mean this movie's been described as like a iranian spaghetti western horror vampire love

story is like all the things that it is um but yeah there's not that there's very little gore there might be like one jump scare and it's pretty mild so but it's interesting it seems like like a lot of the genre labels associated with this movie are not put there by the director and so while this movie was like labeled a horror movie that's not necessarily true and it's like labeled a western movie but that's not necessarily true. And it's like labeled a Western movie, but that's not necessarily true. I don't know. There's, there's so much to, to talk about.

There's also, oh, I forgot to mention, um, noir. There's some noir elements to it. So it's just. It's in black and white for crying out loud.

Good grief. So my history with it, uh, my relationship is that I didn't see it when it first came out, but I did watch it a few years ago, um, because it had been it was pitched to me and I forget exactly who all recommended that I watch it but I remember people pitching

it as like it's like a feminist horror movie about a vampire who rides around on a skateboard I was like what that sounds awesome I have to watch that immediately and i watched it and i did like it i'll i'll say that it is a little slow and meandery for my taste it definitely goes like art art at some like there's some long arty it's yeah moments for sure and a part of that is also like the vampire vibe like vampires are kind of like weird scary quiet types and you're like okay move it along vampire we get it you're brooding yeah right um but overall i think it's it's a really cool film um i love the soundtrack it has a really awesome like score and soundtrack lots of fun themes for us to talk about yeah i'm excited to to discuss yeah i think it's

interesting i mean i this movie i saw and again it's like this is a i mean a pretty fairly recent movie six years ago it came out and even so it's it's i don't know like most in most of the reviews i was reading they're kind of drawing you to they're like oh she I always find this frustrating with especially like new and particularly female filmmakers where in the like lead for the review it references it gives you three reference points of male filmmakers to be like yes no no no before you say you're not gonna watch it david lynch jim jar moosh jim any anything it could be anything jarmish jarmu i don't know jim jar jim josh jim jar jim jar but there but i mean i i do see where those i don't

know about jim jar because truly i don't know about Jim Jarre because truly, I don't know what his, I've never watched his work. I understand the David Lynch comparison and I feel like that is like maybe where the long brooding moments comparison is, but it's still, I just always find that frustrating. Anyways. Yeah. Those were a few of the comparisons I saw. I also saw Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez comparisons as well. So yeah, I definitely took note of that too. Like everything I read, it was like, well, because you don't know who this woman is, let's compare her work to 47 men who you are familiar with. And it's like, all right, well, that's annoying.

Yeah. Well, should i do the recap and then we'll go from there sure sure so we open we're in a ghost town called bad city in iran it's really funny to me it's actually i didn't even think about it till now but how like in farsi we just say bad we don't actually have a word for like, we don't have a direct translation for the word bad. So we go, eh, bad-eh. Oh, interesting. Just bad. Just like add a little eh.

Shara bad. It's like, okay. So yeah, we're in bad city. We meet a young man, Arash. He has a cat, which you don't think necessarily is going to be that important but then it ends up the cat is actually the star of the film the cat is a metaphor the cat is probably one of the greatest actors of the movie so that cat took direction so well emotive cat yeah so many opportunities for that cat to um leave the scene because it's a cat

right not once i really enjoyed the cat and the cat the fact that the cat's significance just continues to escalate and then the twist at the end is the cat it's good it's like it's Chekhov's cat. It's incredible. Okay. So we've met Arash. His father is a heroin addict who owes money to this pimp drug dealer guy. He's wearing a sweatsuit, which is cinematic language for not nice. For bad. Bad city. And the pimp steals Arash's car. Then we see Arash at work.

He works for this rich family. He steals some earrings from the daughter. Then we cut back to the pimp who picks up a sex worker named Ati. And he treats her poorly. He refuses to give her her earnings. He coerces her to perform a sex act on him. And then while this is happening, we see someone looming in the background who is watching the pimp mistreat this woman. Then we start to follow this person who had been lurking, and it turns out to be a young woman and that young woman turns out to be a

vampire she stalks the pimp and then she goes home with him and then she bites off his finger and kills him i do want to point out that the pimp had the phrase josh on his head and that just means pimp so he literally had pimp tattooed on his head. Yeah, I thought that was an interesting choice. That is very funny. He also has just the word sex written across his, like, tattooed across his neck. There's an interesting thing about, like, Iranians, and I'm speaking just out of experience of knowing my own cousins, where, like, very simple, like, things like a marijuana plant or the word sex is like the edgiest thing in the world so like if you saw a guy like in america if we saw a guy who had sex tattooed on him we'd be

like i don't know i don't take this guy very seriously but like if you see a guy like that in iran you're like iran it's like oh my god like who is this terrifying man like to a point where like in iran based on my understanding of what my cousin has told me if you have tattoos you need a like a psychologist's note like claiming that you are mentally fit to get things like a driver's license so because they like in that culture like why would you ink up your skin that's a person who's unwell if they did something like that so the guy who got the sex face tattoo had to get a doctor's note for that well he might have had to get a doctor's note i don't know obviously in the context of what goes on in bad city but if he lived in like a city like tehran

and he looked like that like yes there are chances unless he went through like other routes that if he went to like a dmv of iran they'd be like sir you are clearly mentally unwell because you have pimp tattooed on your head so which you know that's that makes i would understand that but like my favorite choice yeah Yeah. But like, yeah, you would have to prove that you are like a stable human being who can like handle having a driver's license. Because clearly you've made this really weird, mentally unstable choice of having a tattoo. But like that's that's like the level like the culture is very strict like that. So like that's what it's like. I don't know so the vampire who is known only really known in the movie and on imdb as the girl she leaves the

pimp's house after killing him and she crosses paths with arish who is there trying to get his car back and arish discovers uh the dead pimp when he goes inside. He steals his briefcase full of drugs, which he then starts selling. Caitlin, I'm going to stop you there. It's Arash! Oh, I'm so sorry. Please apologize to your father.

It's fine. I have the name Arash tattooed on my thumb because it's my cousin's name. Oh, no kidding. It's a pretty common name in iran but yes it's all ash sorry sorry to bring my dad for you do you want me to just do that for everything yeah yeah i'll say it my way and then i'll pause so that you can correct me and i'll scold you in a yelling way like my dad always does and i'm like oh my god i will say that i

was often i found myself very distracted while watching this movie because Arash is one of the most handsome people I've ever seen. I was like, oh, my God, he's so hot. He's pretty attractive. So I just, you know, I had to not pass the Bechdel test in that moment. I do think they did kind of, you know, they nailed the casting of like this kind of quintessential young Iranian man. Because that's like what a lot of like my young cousins or just like the young men I've known in Iran kind of look like. Got it.

They're like kind of like cool guys in a way. Not all of them, but like. Got a James Dean kind of aesthetic going. Well, a lot of their influences are european in that sense so a lot of thing i don't know i do think like there's kind of like they enjoy this kind of like older style but it's like very classy but like what i've seen they did kind of nail the casting right on aesthetically and they're like let's get the hottest guy we can find. And then they did. Caitlin getting horny on the pod.

I'm so horny for him. I just can't stop thinking about it. And he has a cat, a really cute cat. I mean, he's the perfect man for me. He does rescue a cat in the opening shot. So you're like, okay, I'm listening. I was confused by that. I'm like, are you like taking home a stray cat? Or is that your cat that you were just sort of like letting roam around outside?

I don't know. It is an interesting thing to find such a well-behaved stray cat. Right? Very rarely is that the case. That's why I'm like, I think he just like takes his cat outside and like kind of lets it roam around. And then he puts it back in his car and then drives home I don't know anyway so our vampire friend there's this kind of little kid who's like in the neighborhood that we've seen in different scenes and she kind of stalks him a little bit and then confronts him and she's like are you a good boy you better be a good boy i'm gonna be watching you for your

whole life to make sure you're good and you're well behaved and it scares the shit out of him and he runs off and then she steals his skateboard and starts riding it around meanwhile arish is at a costume party dressed as a vampire and then he does a drug that i think is ecstasy but again i'm a square and i don't understand drugs i think it was ecstasy i think it's okay yeah good good yeah and then later that night he crosses paths with the vampire again not knowing that she's a vampire uh she invites him over to her house and then we're like oh no is she going to kill him with her vampire teeth but she doesn't and instead they like kind of just nuzzle against each other a little bit and we're like oh they're they're vibing it's hot

is she going to bite no she does a good job of resisting. Yeah? Yeah. Because she also thinks he's really hot. Okay, so then later she starts to follow Ati, the sex worker from earlier, but it's not because she's preying on her. It's because she's actually looking out for her. Then Arish and the vampire meet up again outside of a power plant very romantic spot

and you were like yeah okay they like each other uh he gives her the earrings that he had stolen previously but she doesn't have her ears pierced so she's like pierce my ears and he's like if you want me to okay and then also we're like what is this two lindsey lohans in the parent trap yeah i was thinking i was like in terms of ear piercing in popular media i think this one is more fun to watch and i love the i love the two lindsey lohans but i'm like this is but this is cool this one is cool but this is hot this is a sexy ear pierce yeah lindsey lohan ear piercing decidedly unsexy we're like is this a metaphor you know the penetrative act of getting your ears pierced idk anyway uh and then they're about to kiss but she's like no i've done bad things i'm

bad and he's like we've all done bad things no big deal they live in bad city i was like yeah and you're all bad people anyway she runs off and then later arash and his father who is now going through heroin withdrawal get into an argument and then arash kicks him out of the house and he's like take your cat with you so then the father whose name is uh hossein by the way played by hossein you got it you got it right um played by notable actor marshall manesh yes character actor yeah the ages. So he leaves. He takes the cat with him. He picks up Ati, who he also mistreats, like forces her to take heroin. So you'll never guess who shows up.

Our friend, the vampire. She kills Hosein. Then the cat comes into her possession. And then the little boy from earlier sees the vampire and ati dumped the body then arash is like who killed my father and then the little boy is like idk well because the little boy is afraid of the vampire the girl yes who is like i am watching you every moment exactly for the rest of your life so he's like i'm not about to like to toot this yeah whistle he's to toot this train that moment was a bummer say bat chair bad hasty bat chair bad hasty i was like bitch get

out of here you're traumatizing this child for life i know i felt there there were like a few moments in the movie where i'm like the girl needs to really choose her targets a little more, a little better. And one of those moments was, but that said, good child actor. Great. Terrifying. I would be as well. Scary. with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to goes to the girl who uh he still does not know that she is a vampire who killed his father and he's like let's get out of here let's leave this

place together but then he notices that she has his dad's cat and he's like oh shit my new girlfriend did she kill my dad and steal his cat but then he's like shrug let's go anyway and then they do and that is the end of the film so let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate My name is Manuel Delia I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts

separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.

One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent, revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange

and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're allowed to be doing this we passed the review board a year ago we're not hurting people there's nothing dangerous about what you're doing they're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back where is a good place to start with this movie there you never know where to start where to begin on is there anything that like what what jumped out to you the most about this movie well i think i don't know there was something interesting to me like this this place called bad city where like everyone's kind of like just drifting through life and there was like weird like metaphors to like what it's like to be in iran when i mean i shouldn't say too much because i do want to go back to iran one day but uh just like this this kind of life where

you find your thrills where you can. And I'm speaking of my experience having gone to Iran and hanging out with family members and being like, it's a very strict country to live in, but you just, you take what you can get when it comes to like true like adventure. And so like, to me, it's like this young man, Arash, who like finds this drug dealer having been murdered is like, fuck it, I'm just going to start selling the drugs because I got to do what I got to do. And it, like, made sense to me. Like, at no point was like, why would you do that?

You're ruining your life. Like, I was like, yeah, I mean, like, this guy's dead. This drug dealer who's been, like, haunting your family. Now he's not around to, like, sell it to your dad. So you could possibly help your dad get off heroin but at the same time like make money on the side to like survive this yeah i don't know that that stuck out to me as like a theme of like doing what you can to survive because like no one else is going to help you like you're on your own and like i saw that within the vampire

like she's completely on her own and then there's also this kind of amazing thing where like i thought it was cool that like a girl walks home alone at night which you know usually is not the most comfortable safe choice for a woman but then it's kind of like flipped on its head where this woman is like she's the one you should be fearing yeah because she will literally kill you uh and take your blood so that was like a really cool thing to be like yeah for once it's not like this sad story of like i walked home alone at night oh no i'm so scared it's like our forever narrative as women it was nice to like not see that for once of like a woman holding like her keys between her like hand to be like maybe this will do something you know like that fear you have

in you and like every time i walk my dog at night the back of my mind i'm like just any shadows you know like be careful and yeah it was like a relief to see that yeah i did not know i knew the vague descriptors that are kind of like stuck on this movie going in where they're like feminist western horror like 17 words in a row but even based on i mean i felt i fell for the title entirely i thought i mean just because of like the you know presumptions you were just talking about, Anna, of like, oh yeah, something bad is going to happen to a woman on her way home, but she is the danger. And of all the many subversions this movie makes, that's one of my faves. I'm like, damn, I got tricked in the title.

I've got to pull it together. That's one thing I really like about this movie, because in general horror movies thriller movies they are often showing women being the prey being the victims like being the targets of violence and scary people usually scary men or like coded male figures. And while that is a reflection of many real life circumstances, unfortunately, I just I really appreciate any story that kind of flips that narrative fantasy, though it may be that it shows the woman as a predator, because usually a woman doesn't get to be like a predatory

character in any kind of horror movie. And when I say like, a woman is a predator. They're not predators the way that male men are predators, the animal style. Right? Yeah, exactly. Like predator prey, like, right. Because when men are predators, predators in real life and often in movies they are predators because they're like exploiting their power over people yeah whereas when women are predators in stories it's almost always either like a revenge narrative or like a vigilante justice story well i would argue that this is in some ways a vigilante justice story. Yeah That yeah like there and and but again It's like this movie is so tricky and complicated because it isn't we've seen you know

Stories where women are enacting vigilante justice before on this show with teeth and with Jennifer's body Yeah, hard candy hard candy. But this movie is like, it's not super straightforward because sometimes the prey is very logical and then sometimes the prey is not, I don't know. I just, this movie like keeps you on your toes

in so many ways and I really like it. Where it's like the moral code isn't completely clear. Right. But that's Bad city, baby. That is bad city. That is something that I wish had been handled a little differently because I think she has three victims total and then she scares the shit out of the little kid.

Two of her three victims are men who we see mistreating a woman and it's the same woman both times it's aughty she is the uh the smurfette of bad city right right the only human woman that appears besides the girl well yeah but she's a vampire you're right but she's a vampire right but then the third victim is a person experiencing homelessness, which I don't know if like that was the director kind of saying like this person's life is expendable or it was more saying like her moral code. Sure. Maybe she's like a vigilante justice fighter most of the time, but also sometimes she gets

hungry. vigilante justice fighter most of the time but also sometimes she gets hungry and like that was i didn't like that choice just because of i mean how it just kind of reinforces popular stereotypes about unhoused people right my my interpretation of that scene was a breaking of moral code for the girl which is like fine i mean i understand that that plot point makes sense at at that point in the same way that i mean other characters break like it's really just her and arash who are breaking their moral codes because they're kind of the only people in bad city that have moral codes to break so i i get why that choice had to be made i just wish that it was not at the expense of an unhoused person right there's i don't know

there there were other ways to make that same plot point yeah but but it's i don't know it's it's definitely supposed to make the viewer uncomfortable in ways that felt at least i don't know i still don't like the choice because it just dehumanizes unhoused people scenes that i could think of that i've encountered before that have a similar crime taking place were slightly different at least where it's like that scene in american psycho or yeah that's the first one i thought of too i believe in house of cards which is a show i watched one season of when it came out but but basically like a showing of like a very privileged rich white guy exerting his power on someone with significantly less privilege than him so but it's the same crime and it's never i don't know it there was a different way to make that choice yeah I agree I would have much preferred honestly not that much happens in the movie because it is paced

quite slowly I wish that we had maybe seen more targets of hers that were like men being awful yeah and then like just really emphasizing that kind of theme. Yeah, but that does kind of push against the morally gray stuff. And then, I mean, I'm kind of devil's advocating here, but wouldn't it just then be teeth of a character that is strictly doing this to enact revenge on men who are mistreating women which is sometimes the case for the girl but other times it isn't and i don't know yeah let morally gray women exist on screen

that's true i mean it's it makes it more nuanced than your more like neat and tidy like hollywood film yeah that probably would have more of like a, well, let's just make her Batman kind of, right. But so, yeah, I, I appreciate like the nuances of that, but. But are we, do you think that maybe she only, and again, a part of me was like, well, I shouldn't like, yes, she goes back and forth. She kills this homeless man.

Cause maybe she just assumes that like this person you know because they're unhoused that they don't matter to society or whatever in her own what i assume is like a skewed mindset part of me was like maybe it's because it's bad city and that's what bad city is like like they truly don't bad city baby i don't know the murder of an unhoused person was just very strange to me. Then a part of me is like, but does she actually have morals? Or is she just doesn't kill you if she finds some sort of kinship with you? Because a part of me was like, maybe she would have killed Ahti, but somehow felt like maybe she related to her in some way.

Or maybe she just felt this feeling with her. Because I feel maybe she related to her in some way or maybe she just felt this like feeling with her because i feel like she she comes to you because like if she didn't want to hurt our ash why would she kill his dad you know like if it you know it's like you would either did she know that was his dad i was kind of it seems like she knows everything in bad city like she just kind of this omniscient character yeah she knows what people are feeling and thinking and so it wasn't totally i mean i guess it wasn't stated in text but she had to have known that was his dad right i yeah i wasn't sure i don't know i because she's either she stalked him before she stalks him at one point when he's bothering

ati asking for like i guess for her her to like pleasure him in some way. And she's like, come back when you have money. The girl was there like watching him. Yeah. I don't know. So I have kind of a feeling on that. I think you're kind of right on it where it's like I. OK, so this movie was labeled like this is like an overtly feminist movie.

And then and we'll talk about this in a bit. But the director kind of pushes back on and like resists that and all labels that are associated with this movie. So it's not a specific, you know, like indictment of feminism. But it's kind of she's like, don't label it as anything. Just watch it. Which fair enough. Right. it's kind of she's like don't label it as anything just watch it which fair enough yeah right but i think that a lot of the reason that people interpret this as a feminist film and and i

think that this is kind of taking the female predator out of the conversation but it's because she like pretty it looks valiantly defends a woman but but it's the only woman in town. So is it feminist? I mean, it's she and, and other choices she makes are kind of great where I kind of thought that the people that she will defend are people who are also experiencing a lot of like loneliness and like,

which is everybody in the movie, but it's like lonely people who are not murdering other you know and not like right we're not harming others it seems like and and and lonely people who are willing to almost like for her own purposes like lonely people who are trying to connect with other people which kind of to, explains the two people that she spares are people who talk to her and people who don't push her away and people who are kind of open with, like, I don't know what to do, I don't like it here, I feel very isolated, and she,

it seems like that is the connecting factor of who she spares versus a gender-based moral code but i don't know because if there was another woman in town i guess we would have more of a control group but yeah because i mean there's not she doesn't kill based solely on gender it's not like she's just like i'm gonna kill every male yeah it's not teeth and i love teeth but it's not teeth right because she's like well i see this boy here and i i this vampire clearly has a deep mistrust of or distrust what's the difference doesn't matter uh of men so she's like you're a boy you're a young child you haven't done anything

wrong yet but you have the potential to so don't become bad and i'll be watching you so she like doesn't attack the boy she doesn't attack ati she kind of helps her and looks after her and protects her and then she doesn't attack our ash because he's hot and she falls in love i personally really like their like romantic subplot i think it's awesome and it's complicated and hot and i liked it so do i and i'm normally not a big fan of most like romantic storylines and movies but i'm like let's see more this is what like Twilight should have been hell yeah team Arash also I feel like she feels this sort of kinship with people who like try and feed her but like she can't eat technically but like Arash tries to give her food oh yeah Ahti tries to make her take a what I think is a plum plum yeah which is a very like Iranian culture like everyone's trying

to feed you at all times and they want you to eat, especially fruit that they put out for you. That really took me back to home. My mom being like, I put this fruit out. Don't you want the fruit? Do you not want a fruit? Do you want a banana? Do you want this fruit?

Oh, is that fruit not good enough for you? Well, what about this fruit? Would you like this fruit? And you're like, oh my God, I just got here. So it's like, maybe this like, she finds comfort in someone who's like trying to like take care of her in a way like not even just take care of her but like reach out like it's like this like kind of a peace offering of like hey i brought you this um obviously ati at the time didn't realize she was a vampire and i don't think arash realized until the way end or if he ever does realize

that she can't eat but like they're they're giving her something and i feel like she because remember she she goes and sees ati because she's following her around and this is way before uh jose and arash's father comes through to try and like hurt her and she doesn't do anything she just talks to ati she's just like you know i don't think you're happy and and ati's like i honestly don't know anything anymore because of what I've seen and done. And that I feel like in that moment when she offered her the plum, there was kind of like a change in her. Like she was like looking at the plum like, oh, this is almost like this offering to me. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden like she became like a like someone who was watching over Ahti to make sure she was safe. Like it was as if I don't even know, like somehow the cat informed her. She became someone who was watching over Ati to make sure she was safe. It was as if, I don't even know, somehow the cat informed her. She was able through the cat to see that Ati was in trouble and she showed up to help her. I'm telling you, the cat is the most important character. There are some themes in this movie where I'm like, I don't know if I'm smart enough. Yeah, me too. Where when she can see through the cat, it seems, I'm like, there is this, and again, I'm like, I wasn't sure what the ultimate point

of what they were trying to say was, but it was like some through line of surveillance and being watched and an omniscient all-seeing element to this story that i don't know that kind of for me didn't fall here nor there because it's like we we like the girl and to an extent we're kind of rooting for her to get pulled out of this loneliness but she is this kind of like omniscient surveillance character that it knows everything about everyone too. So, and she can see through cats. I don't know.

I'm like, maybe that's just something fun in the movie. I don't know. Well, I looked it up and it said vampires are traditionally either cats or wolves, like in like lore or whatever. Wait, what about bats? I thought vampires were bats. Yeah, I guess bats. I mean, I only looked at, I literally Googled vampires and cats.

So it could go either or. Yeah. Is it the movie Ghost where like there's a cat that like senses the presence of Patrick Swayze's ghost? Am I remembering that correctly? Cats are just supernatural little creatures i also i felt so i'm if i'm assuming how a vampire exists based on my own like kind of basic knowledge of vampires and in popular culture and movies and all that they are old souls because we don't know how long the girl has been a vampire like we don't know how long she's just existed in this form and a part of me was like maybe she's a lot older than we

realize because she wears a chador which is you know the the black cloak she puts on herself which is traditionally in iran only kind of worn by older women because it's kind of like a it's from a different era if you will of iranian culture like now the women all kind of wear like more like stylish kind of like head wrap scarf situations uh hijabs if you will but like her aesthetic was very like almost like older iranian woman like she was very like her simple she always had one shirt the striped shirts jeans whatever shoes and then the chador didn't even have her ears pierced yeah didn't have everything about her was very like dated in a way so which makes me think like she like even the music she listened to of course i don't know what era this is supposed to be taking place right because our ash did kind

of have like this james dean style with but like all the tech was you know like the tech and like uh saeed the pimp's house was also very current so it's like this kind of a mash-up of eras but she listened to like what felt like kind of like new wave yeah american music so like i was trying to get like maybe she's a lot older than we realize so she just kind of has her sensibilities about it like she has her her way of doing things which is i guess unhoused people whatever kill them who cares or whatever so she could also have that kind of dated view on that of like you know versus us who are like okay you know those are also people and you need to respect them just because they don't live in a home like a classical situation of what you think a person

should live like in order to be respected like she just might not have that because she's from a different era or generation she's like a boomer vampire yes exactly like she could be a boomer in that sense of like she just doesn't respect life unless you're like i don't know living with a roof under your head or over your head or something like i that's what i was thinking possibly that she might just be yeah not that it's an excuse but yeah i was curious about your thoughts on that because there there were like as i was reading through just kind of i mean it's interesting because because this movie is like classified as horror people write about it every october uh and we are releasing this episode in october

and several pieces by iranian writers as well and a lot of different writers have a lot of different takes on what the symbolism of her wearing the chador seems i mean and from what i could find the director never really stated it because that she doesn't really want to influence people's opinions but i found a read of it that was suggesting that it might be a sign of protest because i and i didn't know this but i guess that in like the late 60s early 70s the shador could be worn as a sign of protest i saw the read you're talking about, Anna, where it's like she is representing a prior generation. And yeah, I don't know if everyone has a different take

on what her wearing it means. I read that it could be seen as political, but a part of me was like, I would understand that because maybe in the 60s, because the revolution happened in 79. So in the 60s and 70s it was a very westernized country under the shah uh palavi who he was in the pocket of the american cia like he if you paid him enough money he would do as you he would do what you wanted so um i could

see that like maybe the more religious people who are like iran has lost its way we're muslim and we're out here the people are just doing whatever they want would potentially still continue to cover up because they felt it was to be more modest but later on after the revolution happened and it became an islamic republic you have to cover up so that's kind of this interesting thing of like i don't fully understand the political statement necessarily in this movie and of course it could be because I am not smart enough I am fully willing to give that over I don't know fully because it's like is your statement that we as a people went too far and we were corrected or are we still trying to correct I don't know see i don't know i'm not

smart enough sorry and it sounds like anna lily amirpour would be like laughing maniacally at this discussion because she'd figure it out because i have a quote here from a wired article that kind of profiles the director they're discussing the film setting which is this again fictional ghost town bad city so bakersfield is while i read that right it was shot in california yeah but she grew up in california yeah yeah yeah anyway so a quote from this article talking about Bad City as being, quote, a place full of loners, gangsters, junkies, and the lovelorn, and a vampire known only as the girl. The thing tying them all together is that they're on the margins of their respective societies. This is particularly true of the character Rockabilly, who never speaks but serves as a silent watcher in drag and then here is a quote from the director herself saying if there's one political thing in the movie it's not the chador it's

rockabilly because it's not okay to be gay in iran end quote and we can talk about this rockabilly character kind of on a separate discussion but she the point here is that it was not intentional for the use of the chador to be like a political statement like that was not her intention i i was watching an interview where she just like got her hands on one and she's like oh this would just be a really cool thing to put a vampire character in right especially if she's like riding around on a skateboard so it was more like yeah almost like an aesthetic choice than a any sort of like symbolic or political statement that she was trying to make i was wondering because like the chador has a very

cape like aesthetic to it yeah and it somewhat mimicked our ashes like dracula cape yeah right earlier in the movie of like oh it's it's he's Yeah. Earlier in the movie of like, oh, it's, it's, he's like trying to create the style of like the vampire. And she just has her own cultural version of it, which is the Chador. It's almost like she's just like a caped crusader,

you know, like, like a certain, uh, yeah. Yeah. I, I,

I really, I don't know. I would like respect the shit out of how you know she like kind of like rolls her eyes at some of the because it is i mean it's like and we are not spared from this of like the way that people interpret movies in ways they were like that was just a choice of necessity or like i liked how that looked um oh like how um alfonso cuaron was like i just like the color green it has no symbolic purpose in a little princess i just like green and everyone's like but what does it symbolize but then there's 40 essays on like the use of green and and like this is movies it's literature

it's everything we're just i don't know i i like when directors are like shut up like no i just like the way it looked. It looked the way I wanted it to look. But there are limitless takes on a lot of things that the director is very firm on. Like, that was not in my head. That was not my intention. But go on, I guess. So I like that.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back for more discussion yeah Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back i wanted to kind of just speak briefly because i've only i would need to do a deeper dive about vampire lore and like the the history of the representation of vampires in media and then kind of specifically for our purposes of like representation of vampires in popular movies

but like but in general just like with my peripheral knowledge about it vampire lore is generally like about vampires who are coded as men who generally prey upon and or brutalize women and even like updated contemporary like pop culture versions of vampire lore like twilight for example right it's still like a male vampire preying upon and emotionally abusing a human woman and that just seems to be the trend or even like way vampires even more insidious that there are female vampires present in all of these stories but they are always in the way, way, way, way back of the story. Like it's, I feel like it's like a sub, sub, sub Bechdel test kind of thing where it seems pretty common that it's like, oh, and here's his female vampire assistant, sister, mother. Like you see female vampires around.

I mean, even in Twilight, like you're like, there are a ton of women, but like, did they get to do anything no not much or like in Interview with a Vampire where like tiny Kirsten Dunst is like a child vampire but she's just like you love to see her but

same with one of my other favorite vampire flicks The Little Vampire not familiar with that one oh my god I really want favorite vampire flicks the little vampire uh not familiar with that oh my god i really want to cover it on the matriarch i am remembering um but an iconic kids vampire movie where there is a another little sister vampire who's there to be like he he but like you know there's not a larger story so you know you know, justice for female vampires. This is, because this movie completely turns that all on its head. And I really appreciate that about this film.

Women as predators. We love to see it. Yeah. We've been talking about the girl quite a bit. And I wanted to, I guess, discuss, there's a lot of overlap her relationship and and the other female character in the movie so ati so there is uh i would say of the relationships i feel like there's i guess three relationships in this movie that we see in more depth, which is the girl and Ati,

the girl and Arash, and Arash and his father. And Arash and his cat. And Arash and the cat, and the girl and the cat, and Hussein. The cat has an important relationship with everybody. Yeah.

The cat gets around. Is it possible that the cat with no name... Stares meaningfully at a vampire woman? Yes. Yes, it does. And they don't mention a man. Interesting.

But Ati is the Smurfette of Bad City. She's the only human woman we see. Actually, besides Arash's employer. Who got a nose job, coincidentally enough. I was like, is that the most Persian thing ever to just show up and have like a post nose job? I was like, what? She got a nose job? Are you kidding me?

That was the one thing I was kind of offended by. I was like, come on. We don't need a Persian woman with a nose job. We all have our cousins who tell you when they sue you. You're so lucky you don't have to get a nose job like yeah so just my cousins will say that to me but you are so lucky you don't need a nose job and i'm like you don't either right you actually don't either you're just being like you're being mind fucked into believing that you need to meet a certain standard but in reality

you don't need a nose job so i don't know that was i didn't i mean it's very persian but i didn't think they needed to include maybe other than to show that shadah was like a very like she's very into her looks what does that work she's oh she's vain yes they're trying to show her as like a vain person but like to me i was like god damn it i was curious about that too because it for i guess i mean let's talk about shadah for a second because she's in the movie briefly. But I feel I was wondering, I'm like, is was the fact that she had gotten a nose job for these like restrictive kind of cultural reasons? Like I felt like it was supposed to make you not like her, which sucks. Like I thought that choice was strange to me. There's a lot of interesting things that go on in Iran that are totally like, like okay like having facial work done like a nose job is actually like no one even remotely like will

look down on you not like here where you're going like no no it was a deviated septum i had to and everyone's like oh my god sure you know like there it's like it's like a rite of passage you're like offered a nose job. I remember when I was young, my dad said, well, just let me know if you ever want a nose job. And I was like, what the fuck? That's a very common thing to have done. And I have multiple cousins who've had nose jobs done. And it's just not looked down upon.

It's culturally completely okay. A lot of women tattoo their eyeliner on. A lot of women tattoo their eyeliner on. A lot of women tattoo their eyebrows on. There's nothing, I don't know why, but it's just completely culturally acceptable to do such things. So while it is like a very strict culture, like these things within like the more affluent communities, it's almost normal to get such things done.

Like I remember I was in Iran recently, and my cousin every morning had eyeliner on, and I just, like, it wasn't computing to me that it was tattooed on, and I was like, how do you do your makeup every morning? Like, you have kids, like, you just look so, like, ready to go every morning, and she's like, no, these are, this, like, wingtip is tattooed on my face like i don't do anything and i was like oh to me that was like shocking but to her she's like what a weird question no i would not do my makeup i just had it permanently put on yeah and like you could do like you could tattoo your lips and get like right forever lipstick on if you wanted and it's okay sounds like it saves a lot of time but yeah i i felt

like and i don't let me know if you agree but i felt like the way she does nose job was presented was in a way to be like oh she's so vain and we don't like her which didn't feel very yeah fair right i didn't like that i didn't like that they were trying to be like this girl so into herself and she sucks and i was like oh okay well all right yeah okay i interpreted her character as almost like the function of her was to characterize arash a little bit more because we see her twice in the movie the first time is when he is in her bedroom because her like TV is on the fritz. And he's like, it's going to take me a while to fix this.

So let me stay here and fix your TV. You should go because it's inappropriate. Like your parents are going to think it's inappropriate. If like me, a man is alone in your bedroom with you here. So I think it's like showing that he kind of has this moral compass uh at least when it comes to like respectability of of women or but then he steals her earrings but that is very common for men and women to not be alone together in iran unless there's like family so

that was while it was used as a tool to like steal from her, that is like, he, he took this like cultural thing that goes on and used it for his own like dark reasoning, but it's very real. But I also just want to point out that I think they were trying to make Shada look shitty or like vain and just like annoying to almost give Arash the okay to steal from her. You know what I mean? Like they're using it as a tool.

To justify that choice. Yeah, justify that's what I was trying to think. Or like make you feel because, yeah, I guess that that is kind of like, because we like him and we're not supposed to like when people steal. So how do you get around that? Make the person he's stealing from unlikable. But then he also used a cultural stereotype for his own dark needs yeah i don't know there's there's so many like uh what is it like uh

god i'm so i'm like losing all my word states because i haven't had enough coffee but like he's an antagonist in a way because it's like i i didn't trust him from the beginning of when he like the second he took the drugs to start selling them, I was like, this is just not a good person. Well, that's the thing is that like he like the girl, the vampire, his like moral code is like pretty murky. It's pretty gray area because like so in that at the end of that scene when he's in Shado's room, he's like, you know, you better leave. It's inappropriate. And then she kind of like flirts with him him like makes this almost like mini pass at him and then leaves and then later the second time we see here in the movie is at that costume party where he's dressed as dracula yeah he has taken the ecstasy at her suggestion but she only also has ecstasy because he gave it to her but then also like he's like tripping on e or whatever you do when you're has ecstasy because he gave it to her but then also like he's like

tripping on e or whatever you do when you're on ecstasy again i don't understand drugs but he then tries to surprise kiss her and she's like no no no no like what are you doing and i think a lot of the at least for part of the movie the tension comes from the audience being like wondering whether or not the vampire is going to like deem him worthy as a victim of hers because he has engaged in some kind of sketchy behavior. So it's like, is that enough for her to want to eat him and kill him? Right.

Cause you know, he almost, he tries to surprise kiss a woman he like kind of springs a random hug on the vampire because he's like you're so cold not knowing that she's a vampire and he's like let me hug you to warm you up with the reason of being like he's high or like that right right right so it's like it almost seems like he's he's crossed a line or he's going to cross the line several times and that and it's right right so it's like it almost seems like he's he's crossed a line or he's going to cross the line several times and that and it's like oh no is she gonna is she gonna kill him but instead they fall in love so like i've to me like shader's function in this

story was mostly to like give him opportunities to kind of display some of this like moral gray area behavior i i guess yeah my read of her was more of like saying something about class but doing it in a way that was kind of cruel to iranian women like women because she is the only, I mean, unless you count Mr. Tracksuit, she is the only character of means that we see in this movie. And so I felt a little bit of like, I don't know, just like kind of a stock-ish rich girl character being shown through her. And, you know, we're not on the side of that character for the most part. And I think it kind of sucks that the way that that statement

that people generally agree with is made through saying things that are, like, disparaging about women making choices about their bodies, whether it's a nose job or a no-nose job or, like, wanting to kiss someone or not wanting to kiss someone. Right. So, yeah, I don't know. That just was for me, like just not incredible writing choices. Yeah.

Yeah. I think she was going for a statement on class there. I don't know. She wouldn't tell us probably. Yeah. But yeah, I just felt like saying one thing that I agree with at the expense of, I don't know, I just felt like bizarre one thing that i agree with at the expense of i don't know i just felt like bizarre the bizarre right because like when asked if like she intentionally made a

feminist film or like asked like do you find your film to be feminist uh the director was like uh no these philosophies are a disease for which they claim to be the cure and like some basically i mean i think like you said jamie she's not necessarily coming down against feminism as a concept it's more that like my intention to make this movie was to just show characters doing their things and and living their lives she says, quote, I would have become a teacher or activist or something if I was trying to tell you stuff. I get more excited when people are asking their own questions and seeing their own stuff, end quote. So she's just encouraging more like active participation as a movie going audience and just encouraging people to kind of

think for themselves and interpret things how they want and because many people have interpreted this as a feminist text which like I very much see that I would I would classify that this movie as such but it's less that like the director made this movie with that intention and more that she's just like these are the things that I wanted to happen in my movie this is the character's story that I wanted to tell interpret it however you want so that was interesting to me um yeah I really I really I don't know at first I was kind of like whoa but the more I read of what she was saying I think I agree with her more than I don't where yeah i think a lot of

the pull quotes that are taken from her are kind of frame her in an unflattering light where if you read the full quote there's actually quite a bit there where yeah like that quote continues to say like i just am resistant to categorization in general she she says a film is like a mirror what i connect with when a movie is my own stuff. Everybody in the world in the film, in my mind, is much more than what you see on the surface. All people underneath have strange, weird secrets inside. And when you get to those things,

it makes you reevaluate the outside and reevaluate your assumptions. That's what I'm interested in. It's not an ism. All of those things can find your thinking because they tell you this is what it is and then it's done. I think everything just has to be considered in its own individual space and time, which I think is fair.

And I think that that speaks to pressures that marginalized filmmakers undergo in general of like, you know, like these are not questions that you would hear asked of christopher nolan and i think right resistance to being put in a box because you are who you are even if it's well-intentioned and even if it's like being presented as like no i'm trying to say something positive about your movie i can see why that would be frustrating of like well fuck you evaluate my movie the way you would evaluate anyone's movie right right right so yeah i i there were some pull quotes that i'm like i wonder what she would say about this now but in general her reaction to those questions made me think a little bit about my approach to stuff too and like my approach to movies in general where yeah i want i mean it's I like the quote about like whatever the movie is a

mirror which is very like you know freshman year film school but we are coming into this wanting to see feminism in horror and so we see that you know if certain elements are there so I don't know I thought I've just been in a real thought bubble about this director and about this movie. Also the irony. She, I mean, she mentions a mirror,

but the irony of vampires not being able to look in the mirror because they don't have a reflection, which is why she puts that scene where she's putting on eyeliner and lipstick. She, she's not doing it in front of a mirror because there's no point. She doesn't have a reflection. She's just having to like i don't know free ball it or whatever i didn't even notice that yeah i didn't notice until they i watched an interview where they

pointed it out but still pretty cool yeah oh there's i wish i didn't have time to do it. But I want to see like a map of like what her I guess it's her apartment. But I'm like vampire. So it's her lair. Right. But I liked her lair a lot. The one thing I was able to find of like because I was watching I was watching it on my computer. So I'm like, I can't really see what this is. But there was like a picture of Margaret Atwood styled to look like a Madonna album cover.

Like there's a lot of like fun, weird touches in there that I'm sure tell you more about who she is, what time she's set in, where I guess that the Madonna aesthetic feeds into the new wave, like 80s era. I don't know. Is she an 80s vampire? Well, speaking of just watching a bunch of interviews

and finding out information, Anna Lily Amirpour says in an interview that the girl is, I think she said, 187 years old. Oh. We don't learn this in the movie at all. Like Edward Cullen's specificity yeah right right so she's basically as old as i frankenstein um but incredible incredible um so yeah i mean maybe i don't know like there's the girl the character of the girl is just fascinating to me.

She's hard to discuss. I like it. I like it. Cause it's not, I think that sometimes we come into stuff and in general, like we're like, okay, a feminist film has this, this, and this. If this is the villain, this is what should happen. And when these things happen, I'm smiling. But which in some ways is great and for some

movies that works perfectly but i also get how that's like limiting in a lot of ways like there i like that she's like hard to talk about like it because she makes good choices and bad choices like right people like a person and she's not even a person i know right because like in vampire mythology vampires like don't have a soul which you know interpret what a soul is how you will but you know most people would interpret that as some kind of like moral compass sure i mean i guess that's how i would interpret a soul but yeah i mean she she has what seems like an agenda most of the time she's like out there protecting women from or protecting a woman woman from a couple bad guys but do you think that she would hesitate to kill a woman if it came down to it. Because I don't think she would.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't think she would. Yeah. It's hard to say. I think. Right. Because she does just sort of seemingly at random because she's hungry.

Kill that unhoused man. Like so. And she apropos of nothing terrifies an adorable skateboard child yeah like she does fucked up stuff yeah i feel like she would kill our ash if she ever witnessed him do something truly tragic right in fact like the movie fades out when they they're driving off like with the cat in the car the cat is present oh my god great actor but like i don't know maybe 10 minutes later he like says something fucked up or like tries to kiss her and she's like you know what i've had enough of you and then kills him we don't know

well we don't know what he's going to do with her because he's clearly figured out that she killed his father yeah and it's like whether or not he has come to terms with it and decided it's actually a good thing is unclear like he he gets out of the car at one point looks very stressed out but then gets in like fuck it let's just go but we don't know if his mind's gonna change within a few minutes of like wait no fuck you you killed my dad right so because he like because he does love he loves his dad and there i don't know it's like we don't in movies in general you don't often see like a kid with an addict parent and all of the complications and like horrible moments that come with that and

this is like escalated because we're in bad city but Arash I thought like I think he like loves his dad he was protecting him even when his his dad's addiction was really hurting him and there's that small like another cool moral moment is like I had the smallest bit of like I don't know you see Hossein do something he commit a crime something completely unconscionable where he forces ati to take heroin he you know sedates her it seems like he's going to fully assault her sexually but the movie has established him as someone that our protagonist loves and so there's like the smallest part of me that when he was killed, you're like,

okay. Like that makes sense that like the girl that's, that is someone that the girl would kill. And it makes sense why she's doing it. But you're like, Oh, but it's Arash's dad. And he loves his dad.

And like, I don't know. That was another like complicated brain. Fuck. Yeah. Wait, here's something that just occurred to me i feel like our ash figured out right away that she was a vampire because she like comes down

the stairs after killing the pimp and she i think she like still has blood all over her like all over her mouth but even if that's not the case he like goes up into his house and then the pimp is dead so like all he has to do is just like connect two dots and be like i think she's a vampire because then later i mean why do you think he dresses as dracula to the to the party because he knows and then he when he writes that note on her door and he's like meet me by the power plant at 10 p.m because he knows that she can only come out after dark well i think i that were just reminded me of titanic when i saw it i was like oh someone passing a note to say meet them somewhere at a time that's titanic culture make

it count meet me by the clock it should have said make it count i'm docking it should have said made it count meet me by the clock at the power plant. Anyway, I think it just occurred to me that I think maybe he either, maybe not consciously knew, but I think he subconsciously knew that she was a vampire this whole time. And then when he's like, oh, wait, my cat is here. That was my dad's cat who's dead now. Why do you have my dead dad's cat? Then that really solidified his thinking.

But I think he knew the whole time. It's interesting that no one ever acknowledges, like there's never a thing like there's people dying and they're always puncture wounds on their neck. No one ever really acknowledges the CSI of it, if you will. Yeah, where's the crime scene investigation happening in Bad City? Isn't this weird?

A lot of people are dying with puncture wounds on their necks well must be a dog right oh gee whiz um there's also a whole ditch full of dead bodies that's you're right oh my god i forgot all about that no one r ash in the first scene walks right by it like hey yeah you know dead body ditch. You know how that is. That's bad city, baby. Anyway, I feel like the movie kind of demonizes addiction in a way that I don't think is really fair. I think a lot of people misunderstand drug addiction and, like, don't treat it as, like, the mental illness that it often is. And, you know, and it kind of goes with the stigma of mental illness that it often is and you know and it kind of goes with the stigma of mental illness anyway so i feel like the movie kind of mishandles that a little bit but i see that but

i also think that we get good moments with hossein where he's not universally characterized as a villain necessarily like there you see the manipulative forces in his life you understand you know i don't know i the movie certainly doesn't say explicitly that it's a disease and it's not perfect but i i don't know i i thought it was better than a lot of portrayals of addiction that you see because you see his family life you get background you see that he's you know he he doesn't have the resources to escape this he's not being given the resources to escape which is the problem with addiction so much of the time is that right right you know it's not insurmountable in all cases but it but it's just a lack of access and there's no you know it's bad city I thought it was a very interesting portrayal of like an older family man who becomes addicted to heroin.

Because it's like you hear a lot about it. People start doing opiates because of their pain, whatever. They become addicted. And then, you know, because it's cheaper to just do heroin straight. That's what happens. And that's kind of what leads to a lot of death and whatever outside of like the cutting of fentanyl into these drugs. But like I thought that was an interesting portrayal because I wasn't expecting the dad to be just a full blown heroin addict. Like that actually took me by surprise because you don't you if you would see a man like that on the street, you'd be like, OK, in my case, that's an older Iranian man.

He's a family man. I would never guess that he was on heroin. Like there was kind of this kind of like stereotype breaking aspect of that. Like I wasn't expecting it. It could be like, it was almost like it could be your father. And that was kind of like, I mean, it hit home because I've had like family members who have gotten caught up in things like this. And it's like, you never, you never know what someone's going

through. And that was very interesting to me. Like, you don't know, you don't know what this man's doing, what he's shooting in between his toes at night. Like you just genuinely don't know. And he could just look like any other old Persian man. And he would just be like, oh, what I didn't, what I didn't, didn't i guess the the the plot point that i didn't like was conflating his addiction with being a sex criminal like that right that's what i'm that's what i'm talking about when i'm saying it's mishandling going from i mean and it's yeah like including those two plot points in the same character like wasn't necessary i thought the father-son aspect of like seeing a parent who is struggling with addiction and in a very immediate way and the tension and

the complications that come with your own child like that didn't bother me as much um yeah but but it was it was the second he is, you know, kicked out by his son. And you understand, at least plot wise, why Arash is doing that. I don't know. It made sense to me in the story. But but the fact that he immediately goes and assaults the only woman that he's been harassing for the entire movie. Yeah, those plot points, I don't think needed to be connected and that's i mean that is like a difficult scene to watch because we getting back to a t in that scene i mean she she is repeatedly mistreated by men in bad city we first see her with saeed who just is really giving her

a laundry list of like oh yeah sexist things to say he's like how old are you i'm 30 oh you're getting pretty old bet you want kids just every like lazy sexist thing you can think of to say right he you know kind of demands sex from her then refuses to pay her when she gets upset about this he assaults her he pushes her to the ground yeah then later on the other person that you see her with who is i mean it seems like because hossein has been given some money by arash yeah he's paying her as well but then he crosses the line and she says no i don't want to have sex with you over and over and over. And he responds by grabbing her, pulling her down and sedating her.

So it's just like a direct assault. And I thought it was that she didn't want to do heroin with him. Like he was trying to be like, let's do heroin together. And she kept being like, no, I don't want to do heroin. He kept saying, like, let's have a good time. Let's have a good time. Like, yeah.

And I thought that was him being like, let's do heroin together. I think it's open to interpretation. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. I feel like Ati just is brutally put through the ringer in this movie. And yeah,

I, I thought it was i i guess i don't really know where i land on how she's treated i mean i think that it's like saying one thing that it's it's sex workers are certainly frequently mistreated and their boundaries are crossed and they're not respected and seeing that reflected it was like okay that is you know certainly something that exists uh i don't know and then and then the girl comes into her life and i don't know this is another thing where i'm just like i don't know how to feel or i kind of know how i feel where yeah the girl and auntie meet formally right and they hang out because the girl is following her around

because that's her thing that she loves to follow she is a camera she is a dolly she is following Ahti she's big brother but Ahti like Arash doesn't

react with like terror she just says like what are you doing do you wanna talk But Ati, like Arash, doesn't react with like terror. She just says like, what are you doing? Do you want to talk? Like, yeah. And appeals to her need for company. So they hang out. And then, and this was a point where I wasn't totally sure if the girl like truly knew how people felt.

Or if she was just, because there's a a scene that's the first scene with them she basically tells ati how she feels about her life and about her profession and in some ways that i think are perpetuating negative stereotypes about how sex workers view themselves in their profession where it's i don't know I guess portraying it as the norm of like, you couldn't possibly enjoy this job. You couldn't possibly feel pleasure if you have this job. And all these kind of common stereotypes that the girl is presenting to Ati as fact and Ati is like, wow, I feel seen. Right. Which a part of me was like, is that the like boomer iranian culture that uh the

girl is coming from like that's because in any other case if you're interacting with iranians who are kind of deeply embedded in their culture they're just not like if you will woke in that manner like i have friends who are my same age who would probably be like you would never want to be a sex worker like they would talk down about something like that versus someone like me who's more involved in like social justice work if you will i hate to say such words like woke and social justice right now but like i i have maybe more of an open view of such things but if i were to today today call my dad and be like what do you think of sex work he's a culturally boomer iranian man he'd be like why would you even ask me about this that's not a good thing like they i think i feel like she comes from that era and and so does kind of ati and it's like

all viewed from this like iranian cultured lens of like kind of less open-mindedness that's like how i was kind of seeing it because i think as soon as i watch a film that's in farsi i immediately assume that things might not be as open-minded and as progressive as i would hope they'd be but i don't know the the director is like a iranian american woman so i don't know exactly of course she's just waiting for us to like dig too deep. So I'm so yeah, that was another that I wasn't I just wasn't because plot wise, what we know of Atee's experience in sex work, it stands to reason that she doesn't enjoy what she's doing. And it's because we've only seen her get abused. Right. But again, it's like, you know, you didn't need to make that plot choice,

but it would also feel, I guess, kind of off-center for a sex worker to feel very safe and respected in Bad City. So it's just kind of another thing where I just, I don't love how that scene plays out, especially because it's like one of the only scenes where women are talking to each other. And it does pass the Bechdel test,

but it's like, don't you just hate your life? And the other woman's like, yes, I do. Which now when I say it out loud, I have that conversation every day. But you know what I mean? That was like a loaded scene in a lot of ways and I can see a lot of different interpretations and again if um any listeners that are sex workers I'd love to know your take yeah indeed another thing I wanted to talk about a little bit that we

already referenced from a quote uh that i read earlier but the rockabilly character and that is the character who who we see in a few different scenes they we don't know exactly how they identify because this character does not speak words they don't speak they're seen dancing around at some point i i thought it was interesting to include that character because there's no real function they serve as far as i can tell i'm like kind of a surface level in the narrative yeah uh maybe it's some sort of like allegorical thing or a symbolic thing that i just wasn't super picking up on it felt to me like an an art movie choice yeah i just i and and like with the quote that we read earlier i mean um well she she

basically said explicitly that um where so many reviewers and viewers were saying that um this movie was an outright political movie, that the only thing she viewed as a political statement was rockabilly because of how queerness is dealt with by Iranian culture, which is something we want to know more about from you, Anna. I mean, I kind of only know the basics. I wish that we got to know this character better

and had, like, a fully developed queer character, but I am happy for Rockabilly's presence. Yeah, same. I agree. I kind of wish we saw more of Rockabilly, because, like, the first shot, I believe, they were just standing around when Arash was walking by, or maybe it was Said, I'm blanking now we see them

pretty it's a quick shot and i think like in the moment i didn't really register who that was right and then later when we we kind of see them pop up around the movie but we don't get like a full interaction until they're dancing for us i kind of wanted more like i was like maybe this character will interact with the girl or maybe this character will interact with arash but like or even like hossein the father or even ati but like it was almost as if it was this this character that was placed there's like all knowing they see everything as well they know what's going on and they're just kind of like they're just like almost like reveling in like all the the madness around them right of like bad city but i was kind

of hoping for more because i was like okay oh all right now this character is dancing for us but then they just we don't really know why i was hoping that something was gonna like pay off there you know where i was like yeah we were seeing this character kind of in almost seems like being used as like a transitional tool to get you from sequence to sequence yeah yeah I was hoping because I was I mean I did really enjoy this movie I was like oh maybe that is just like a very long con of a plant and then there's going to be a payoff and that this character will get to do something at some point. But that just doesn't happen. Yeah, that's what I was hoping as well. Right. Especially because like we see the girl, the vampire, interact with most other characters we meet.

Or every character we meet interacts with someone else that we meet. Except for Rockabilly, who doesn't seem to interact with anyone so we because of that we don't really get any context for who they are why they're there what they're doing are they also a vampire who knows that'll be fun i mean rockabilly seems i mean just based on how they're framed we only see them alone, really. So it's like you would think this would be a prime candidate to be friends with the girl. Here's another isolated person that needs someone to talk to, hang out with. That's the girl's bread and butter.

Yeah. She loves lonely people. It's her addiction. Well, I found an abstract on the Internet. I did, too. And then I'm like, I don't have. internet. I did too. And then I'm like, I don't have, yeah,

I didn't. So I requested it for, for, for free. Oops. Um, and I have not heard back from them as of this recording. Yeah.

Wait, what, what is this that you requested? So it's, it's a academic piece of writing entitled queerer Utopias and a Feminist Iranian Vampire, a critical analysis of resistive monstrosity in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. And the abstract, sorry, I don't know what an abstract is as it turns out, but the abstract of this academic piece of writing says this.

In 2014, the black and white vampire spaghetti Western, a girl walks home alone at night, follows the narrative of the girl, a forlorn to door wearing feminist vampire vigilante in the fictional world of bad city in this queer utopia. The girl preys on immoral men so that she can protect the female residents of bad city from the violence of patriarchy.

We explore themes of monstrous feminisms and queer doublings to consider how So that she can protect the female residents of Bad City from the violence of patriarchy. We explore themes of monstrous feminisms and queer doublings to consider how the film uses the trope of the vampire to manifest queer utopias and reflect Iranian and Iranian American feminist themes. So that's what this academic paper is about. We do not have access to it. We wish we had read it. If and when it comes Caitlin's way and it changes our whole perspective and read, we will do a follow-up. But I was glad that there was at least something out there to address that. Because I understand that not every movie can address

every societal issue, right? Right. And this movie tackles a lot but it would not have been difficult to include rockabilly in a meaningful way and in a way that would have elevated the movie i think and like could have fleshed out the characters we already know but i yeah there from what i could tell no one has really asked that question of the director and so we don't really know if that if it was a decision made very deliberately to have the only character that she has specifically stated as queer be non-speaking. And we don't even know.

You don't know what Rockabilly's name is unless you like look at the IMDb page. Like it's right. The character is not referenced. Right. At all. So it's, the character is not referenced at all. So it's like almost, yeah. I have a question. So it sounds like that like article is saying that she protects the women from the men,

which means that she was just assuming that unhoused man would be a danger at some point. That is my, okay. So that actually kind of like, that, that's something there is is there are so many reads of this movie yeah that it makes my head explode a different read i read of this movie in several

different places was that okay get ready for symbolism that the girl and the vampire is a stand-in for society because we live in a society so what it sounds really corny the reasoning against it is fairly sound but based on what i've read of what the director says i doubt it's true but the read goes as such that the girl is always killing. You could perceive the girl killing someone in a way that could be perceived as them kind of like succumbing to a societal ill or a societal disadvantage. So the moment she kills Hosein is when he is at the absolute bottom of his addiction. So her killing him could be seen as him succumbing to untreated addiction. And the same goes to the read of her murdering an unhoused person where there is a read of this that is, well, this is a person who is succumbing to being completely neglected by society. I don't agree with it, but I did at least think it was worth mentioning because it's brought up quite a bit in reviews and the initial wave of think pieces about this back in 2014. Because I also don't really see how that plays into the death of the pimp, because he seems to be thriving sexism uh right toxic masculinity killed

i don't know succumb to full just shitty behavior yeah i mean but like men get away with that all the time and society allows them to do that so yeah yeah i don't know i think how much i agree with that read i don't agree with it i I didn't think it was like an interesting, I don't know. I, this movie is so fascinating and the way that the filmmaker treats her own film is so fascinating that I feel like you get all these reads that kind of go on challenge.

Cause the filmmaker is like, whatever you think what you think. And that like, this is like my movie is a mirror to how you think. And so you kind of have a wide array of reads on what happens because there's just not, there's no, you know, no training wheels, baby. Yeah. But yeah, vampire, more like we live in a society.

Yeah. Society is always biting my neck and trying to kill me. Ain't that the truth and yet society refuses to look in a mirror and see itself for what it is either way i am like never going to be like yeah totally i understand violence against unhoused people that's the one part that really throws me because i could get behind like any sort of like yes she's a protector of women until she's like yeah but you know vampire got a feed and then you're like oh okay i'm just like well i'm not like really rooting for you anymore is there a single character you guys find yourself rooting for in my my case, I found it to be Ati. Yes.

Yeah. Yes. I was rooting for Ati and then I was mostly rooting for Arash even though there were things he did that were not good and that he should be held accountable for, such as, you know, surprise kissing women

while he's high and just kind of, I mean, he does make a series of missteps but considering the amount of while he's high and just kind of i mean he he does make a series of missteps but considering the amount of shit he's up against yeah i was generally rooting for him and auntie just whole i'm all in i want the best for her and the fact that she basically still protects the girl after this murder which she didn't have to do like yeah i just love it because they like she helps ati helps the girl like dump hossein's body and like she's like we got to get you out of here we got to deal with this so like you know they're they're they're helping each other out i mean i am rooting for the girl most of the time is just that one moment where it's it's a scene that is maybe 20

seconds where she kills a person experiencing homelessness get it out of the movie like that little moment just like really makes me lose a lot of like empathy for her and again it's like we don't know if that was intended and like did the director want us to lose empathy for her in that moment? Right. Or was it that she just genuinely made a bad or choice I really don't like in her movie when she could have made that plot point of like, the girl loses her moral code in a number of different ways. Right. her moral code in a number of different ways right no she could have smashed a skateboard which she would never do no or if we just see another scene where we see a different man

i mean not that i'm advocating that we see men harassing women or anything like that but if there was something that a man did to behave badly that justified him getting killed i would have much rather but then that wouldn't have broken her that that wouldn't have broken her code though really because she would she was gonna do that anyways sure i don't know there's there was definitely maybe i'm a simple maybe i'm simple minded or something but i'm just like i just want her to be a good following her moral compass the whole time that ain't bad city i know you're right is there any thing anyone else wants to talk about uh jamie you brought something up which was about like

uh queerness in like the iranian culture and i i never really say anything about that but to expand on that it is definitely looked down upon it is not considered normal in their eyes that's how iranian culture like yes there are queer people there is an lgbtqia you know plus community in iran do they live out like are they able to be comfortable no obviously not um i think they kind of there's certain ways they have to live their lives in order to um stay hidden and out of you know the government's eyes and you know it's not ideal but the iranian culture is not i mean it's a mus mean, it's a Muslim republic. It's a republic of Islam.

And while I don't personally think, and this is always up to interpretation, that the Koran specifically says that you cannot be gay. A lot of people have different interpretations of it. I personally, certain parts that I've read and researched that I've done for like ethnically ambiguous, like I don't think there's any clear wording that says you can't do it any like I don't know of course you know there will always be debates about this um because like this movie the Quran is up and for interpretation you know like the bible or whatever like you take it how you want it and certain people take it in a more negative evil sort of route and how they treat people and other people are like i don't see it that way i don't think it's explicit that you can't be gay but because it's such a strict culture in society they just they don't i think the big thing is they don't understand why and they don't

they will never go out of their way to understand why because to them it's like in a lot of iranian culture and you'll see this kind of in other middle eastern cultures or south asian cultures is it's all about giving the outward expression of everything is great and you want to keep everything great and everything's about your reputation so like my family like whatever i mean my brother were in trouble like my parents would no one would ever know like my parents always be like they're doing great everything's great everything's lovely like to point where you know you're like white knuckled like gripped on something like everything is great and so that culturally is what they do it's very accepted to hide negative aspects of your life and for them to be like okay well why would you be gay it would just make your life harder

and it's not about well it's not my choice this is who i am and this is what makes me happy they're like well why would you choose something that makes you happy that would make your life harder and it's like always this constant roadblock that i've seen with you know like speaking with family members even my own parents who now live in america but have come a long way in regards to like cultural things in this country and like leaving behind those like that mindset they had for so long like my mom is a muslim woman devout practicing you know praise five times a day but it took her a very long time and now she's fine she's like you do whatever you want with your own life but i would say like up until like 10 years ago, like I was still having these discussions with her. Like, you know, you really can't be judging people like that.

Like you yourself always constantly preach, never judging and always having compassion. Because my mom's actually surprisingly very chill Muslim. She doesn't care what you do with your life. She's come a long way. And I think that's also because she lives in the Bay area and it's like that whole Berkeley, like hippie vibe Muslim. It's a very,

you know, interesting type of Muslim where they're like, you know, we sing our own meditation songs. And you're like, what you'll find those CDs around my parents' house. It's very funny to hear my mom being, well,

we'll get into another episode, but so like, but she had to come a long way and my dad even further like with racism just like how things work there like it's so deeply built in them to to basically want to go towards like the white supremacist agenda because that's what they're told from like movies and culture and like westernized anything that that to be the whitest is the best so when they come to america they're like well we have to work to prove ourselves to be white and it's like everything is like ingrained in them from like systems that were built by old white rich men so like they're constantly trying to understand

and be like but this is what i know and you have to be like no that's what you thought you knew and actually you can have different feelings towards this once you like meet a person who could be gay and then you're like oh you're right their life is like i shouldn't be worried about how hard their life is going to be or whatever like what choices they're making and i and i think the unfortunate thing is the culture has to see outside of themselves and in a lot of these experiences they don't they don't have the experience to do so because it's very hard to leave iran like it's very hard to get visas like getting a visa to europe like my cousin would be like we're going to italy in three months and i'm like what three months okay like when we get our visa if our visa comes through and you're like, OK.

And then, you know, then they're able to go see another culture. Like I have a cousin who was born and raised in Iran and he recently went to college in Australia. And like looking at his Instagram, I'm like, oh, you just discovered the world. Like you, your Instagram is you just being like, guys, I'm at the club. And you're like, yeah, OK. And it's just like this intensity of like, look at this whole other place that I never experienced because I just never got to see outside myself. And it's kind of a weird metaphor.

I've been seeing his Instagram a lot and being like, dude, he's always at the club. What, he's never been to a club before? And then it's like, no, he never went to a club before. No, he hasn't. Like alcohol is illegal in iran like you don't see these sorts of things you know yeah so like i mean even i'm curious about him i actually want to talk to him like how he's seeing maybe more um marginalized

communities now that he actually has the ability to interact and interact with them in open and like talk to them and hear their experiences and it's i don't know it's a tough culture and while i do think the iranian culture is beautiful there's a lot of walls built up because they just aren't able to see outside themselves or outside the culture and they just will never have the opportunity to understand or experience why someone is the way they are because again you know queer communities can't live out loud in Iran does that help break things down I don't know I feel like it just went like a 30 minute oh yeah it totally does I mean and even just like in contextualizing bad city of just like the thought patterns that people are trapped in there too.

That's yeah. Yeah. That's, that's incredibly helpful. I mean, so then for, to look back at the rockabilly character who seems to be openly like expressing themselves and expressing their queerness and to like have that be in the open sounds like something

that wouldn't necessarily fly. Yeah. In Iran, but maybe bad city is or maybe and then maybe this is what this academic paper is talking about it's basically like the girl is just like killing anyone who might have a problem with queer expression or queer identities to like create this queer utopia for for people like the rockabilly to live in so i'm guessing that's what or you can see it as this is a character we only ever see on the outskirts of town alone like there's that's true there's so many and then the last thing i wanted to bring up was even this movie is shot in california it's also made explicit that bad city is uh somehow associated with oil yeah um where we see like a number of shots that are like this is an

oil town which also feels i mean again i couldn't find a pull quote from the director addressing this directly but certainly you know this is an iranian american director who is you know that is a huge component of the of how those cultures intersect at least um economically so and again i mean i just want to acknowledge what a huge fucking thing it is that not just this movie did so well and is kind of already regarded pretty early into its life as a film as a cult classic but also that it was released at all I mean it's so I mean making this movie and getting it funded was a long and difficult process for Anna Lily Amirpour you read, there's a ton of interviews

where she kind of detailed how long it took to get this movie made at all. And so the fact that it is out there and incredible and already kind of has this life of its own is incredible. She also won the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Film Festival. So she's got like a little bit of, what do you

call when you have an award on the shelf? You call it an award on the shelf. Some clout, some credibility. You've got some institutional shit behind you. And it's also worth mentioning that this is one of the very few movies written and directed by a woman of color that we've covered on this show, which is certainly partially on us.

And we need to be continuing to cover these movies because they're good fucking movies. But on top of that, I mean, I think it also is kind of symptomatic of who is given money and confidence and the ability to get a wide release in Hollywood. Yeah. And let's make it a point to cover more movies on this podcast that are made by women of color. Hell yes. And speaking of women, amazing transition. Do they talk to each other in this movie? Does the movie pass the Bechdel test? I think it does. Yeah.

Between the girl and Ati. And you could argue the girl doesn't have a name, which I would counter argue. I think she does. She is the girl. Yeah. In the same way that mom is sometimes mom well also like that kind of caveat of the test i think applies specifically to characters who we would only see for a few seconds and they are not important enough to be given a name but obviously the girl is the protagonist and the one of two of the most important characters in the movie. Yeah. So, like, that caveat, I think, doesn't apply in this scenario.

So I don't even care about that. Right, because it's the main character. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She also has, like, so much agency. Like, just my read is that she, this is, like, a feminist character. And it would pass the vectal test, right?

Yeah, because she and Auti talk in a few different scenes. And they are not talking about men. They're talking about their feelings. And she's like, you don't like what you do. And you don't even remember what it's like to want something. Talking about loneliness. Yeah. So as far as our nipple

scale goes zero to five nipples based on an intersectional feminist analysis i would give this a pretty high rating i'm inclined to give it like a four or maybe even a four and a half. Where I think it falls short is the couple things that we've already discussed in that it almost feels to me like the girl killing the unhoused person. I don't know what the intention is there. I'm not convinced there even is a specific meaningful intention. Whatever it is, it's not clear enough and i don't like that it happens um and i would have liked to see a more meaningful inclusion of rockabilly and understand why who they are and what their circumstances are, how they feel about things, etc. So I'll give it a 4.25.

Generally, I think this movie is doing a lot of really cool things. I think it is a feminist text, just in it being a movie about a woman who is a vampire. Because also women don't get to be vampires that much in like lore uh it's usually you know your your dracula's and your nosferatus and all of that you have to like beg a guy to turn you like come on babe i'm bella swan and i'm gonna be a baby make me one right yeah i mean the fact that it and this might be an oversimplification of the movie but it's about a vampire woman who goes around and for the most part protects women and or protects a woman and who um fucks up toxic men so i like that about it i will give it 4.25 nipples.

I'll give one to the girl. I'll give one to Ati. I'll give one to the director, Anna Lily Amirpour. I'll give one to Elijah Wood, who produced this movie. And then I'll give my 0.25 nips to the cat and i guess now would be a good time to bring up cat facts with caitlin which i really want to dissociate myself from so i'm not even going to say what the cat fact is i'm gonna just leave it at that anyway uh i'll go i'll go 4.25 as well I'm docking it for the treatment of unhoused people and also conflating addiction with sex crimes yes yes yes so that is what I'm docking it for however I

really like this movie I think it was like really challenging and cool in a lot of ways the more I researched about it the more I kind of like questioned myself and cool in a lot of ways the more i researched about it the more i kind of like questioned myself and um what the assumptions i made and i don't know i just on top of everything you've been talking about caitlin i just like really felt like challenged in a positive way by this movie also this is the first iranian american movie we've ever covered you know she's a first-time director if you look into the production behind this movie, she had to crowdfund a good part of it. This was not an easy movie to make,

which, you know, goes into a number of things of why is it so hard for filmmakers that are not white men and will, you know, I'll reference that Wes Anderson anecdote again about how he submitted, you he submitted 60 pages in longhand and was like, is this a movie? And then they're like, it's Bottle Rocket, where Anna Lily Amonpour,

she had been at it making shorts for years and years and years before she got the opportunity to half crowdfund her own movie. And it's still fucking amazing. That is so cool. And so I really fucking amazing. Like that is so cool. And so I really admire all the work that went behind this. I want to shout out the actress who plays the girl, Sheila Vand. I did more look into her body of work as an actress and as just like an

artist. She's done a ton of like really cool work in the art space. So I recommend checking that out. She's really, really cool. And yeah, I just, I really loved this movie.

I thought, I thought it, it, it dresses so much, but in a way that doesn't feel like it's, you know, bashing you over the head with it. It's fun.

The ending scene really fucked with me. And yeah, I really liked it. So I'll give it a 4.25. Give 2 to the girl, 2 to Ati, and then 0.5 to the cat. Nice. Or 0.25, whatever. Who cares? All right.

Well, before I give my nips, I do want to say you guys should watch Not Without My Daughter, Alfred Molina film, where he plays an Iranian man. Someone brought this up to us recently. I like the movie because I saw it when I was young. So I was like, whatever. This is it's like one of those nostalgic things. But I haven't seen it recently. And I am curious if it holds up.

But like thinking to like they cast Alfred Molina to play an Iranian man. You're like, what? What a time. The early 90s. Bring him back on the cast. like thinking to like they cast alfred molina to play an iranian man you're like oh what what a time the early 90s bring him back on the cast he also he plays an armenian character in that movie called magnolia magnolia yeah oh i would never watch magnolia frankly it's it's simply too long it's very long i do have it on dvd embarrassing anyway um so yes anna what what's your nipple um i'm gonna go 4.5 nips hell yes and that is because i had you know i struggle when a movie is like filled with symbolism and then the director's like figure it out because that always

just annoys me in a way because i'm like i'm not smart enough to figure it out because that always just annoys me in a way because i'm like i'm not smart enough to figure it out i don't know what's going on in this movie it feels like there's symbolism that cat felt like symbolism everything feels like symbolism yet you want me to figure it out myself just give me a hint what were you thinking just tell me what you were thinking um it takes me back to like inception when like whatever his name is christopher nolan's like it's a movie set and i'm like you're wrong about your own yeah the dreams are actually me making a movie but like it's like at least give us something so i can figure out if i see that or not give me even a little bit of a taste of what you were thinking so i can decide

myself if i was able to see that and then when when they don't and you know and look i like anna lily amirpour like i love her work i think she's a great director i think she has such an interesting eye like this movie was wonderful but like don't be too cool you know that always bugs me when they get too cool. When, you know, the Vice News logo or whatever comes up and I'm like, or Vice Entertainment. I'm like, oh, man, she's too cool for us. But again, yes, I didn't care for the kind of lack of explanation as to why the girl attacked an unhoused man. That really threw me, because I really thought I'd figured out

what the girl's thing was, and that threw me for a loop. Yeah, I wish there was more on Rockabilly incorporating that character into the plot a little more versus this side character as this kind of political statement, but at the same time not really giving that character any like ground to like make more of a political statement versus just kind of being this

like little haunting figure around the just around you know but yeah that's kind of other than that like i love the film i love the direction um i would give one nip to the whites of Arash's eyes. Oh, my God. He's so cute. So milky in those eyes. That scene where he's, like, realizing that she might be involved in his father's death, and his eyes are just, like, moving back and forth. Like, I felt like I was swimming in some lactose. But, yes, I would give two nips specifically

to that god damn actor of a cat holy shit can we get that cat nominated get this cat a franchise for crying out loud and then I would give one to Sheila Vand the girl she's great

her just the quiet she brought I thought was very well done what i learned from this movie is that i want to be friends with sheila man yeah yes sheila call us baby that's what i wish she's like no i don't and then um my half nip actually like this was a very interesting thing to me of like portraying an iranian sex worker rarely do you ever see an iranian sex worker because again in most iranian films they'd rather not ever like be like this woman's a sex worker because they don't even like to acknowledge that that would be a thing in their culture sure in their society and i I think seeing that, I don't know, there was something so

like refreshing about it for me to be like, yes, Iranian sex workers exist. They're people. They do what they have to do to get by. They make their own choices. They have their own agency. And that was, I don't know, it was really cool. Like, I don't even know how to explain it other than like, I don't think I've ever seen anian sex worker in any movie i've ever seen from iran out of iran by any sort of iranian related filmmaker so yeah that's that's how i distribute my 4.5 nippy tippies my tippy and my nippies hell yes well anna thank you so much for being here where can people follow you online and check out your stuff uh i'm at anna hosnier a-n-n-a-h-o-s-s-n-i-e-h what a persian last name uh on twitter and i have a podcast all about like kind of middle eastern culture and news and uh we interview a lot of people of color to kind of give them like like, spotlight them a little and be like, hey, man, it ain't all just the whites.

But I host that with Shireen Younes, who's this amazing Syrian-American filmmaker, artist. Friend of the cast as well. Very funny person on Twitter. Follow her as well. Yes, friend of the cast. She's been on here. Go check out her episodes.

Our show's called Ethnically Ambiguous. I don't know for the title. You can tell we are ethnically ambiguous uh and i also host on the complete opposite spectrum of any sort of knowledge uh is this show called deckheads which is all about uh bravo's below deck and i host that with comedian nick turner and we cover every episode of the TV show and we just rip apart rich people limb by limb and their behavior and how terrible they can be. And there's something very interesting about it because it's made me a reality TV about rich people really hits the right sort of mark right now for me, because I just think it proves how much we need to like work towards income and quality and like just like equality across all boards because

boy do you not look good when you go on a yacht and lose your mind and say a bunch of terrible things and treat people poorly yeah i was like and then you let this be on a reality show because that's the other thing it's like you're so okay with that behavior you're fine with it being aired on tv that's the problem we shouldn't be allowing that that shouldn't be okay we should all be very empathetic towards other people and self-aware that how our behavior hurts or destroys other communities uh and other like income levels and other you know just everything and uh we must defund the police okay and that's uh that's kind of what I've learned from watching Below Deck. I know you're all thinking, how?

But I'm like, I watch it with a very critical eye. I get it. So, yeah, check that out if you're into that. Yes, please do. And thanks again for being here. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon, at patreon.com at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. It's $5 a month and it gets you two bonus episodes every month,

plus access to the entire back catalog of all of our Patreon episodes. You can also check out our merch store at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast for all of our merchandising needs. And thanks for listening and watch out for vampires. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

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