The Bechdel Cast - A Walk to Remember with Sam Varela

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

On this episode to remember, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Sam Varela examine A Walk to Remember.This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @Naked_Comedy on 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.

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the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast caitlin i just wish that jamie got her miracle are you talking about you jamie i'm talking about or i'm talking about jamie sullivan jamie you know the one with the brown hair okay so you i hope that she got her miracle i hope that jamie got her miracle too and i'm talking about you specifically well she did it's you i'm your miracle. Oh my God. I, this, I liked, okay. Of all the, there's so many corny moments in A Walk to Remember, which is today's episode. And we'll get to what this show is in a second. But I really, some of the like flourish of bad writing where there's like moments in this movie where the line is like, okay, that corny but it's not bad but then they'll add

more to the line and it gets worse like they could the the priest should have just said she did but then he says she did dot dot dot and like assuming people in the audience are like what does he mean by that and he goes it was you and and then shane west goes oh it was me it was me okay it was me and that's why i'm never going to stop going to church welcome to the bechdel cast aka church uh my name's jamie church welcome to the bechdel church oh god just for just for one week only welcome to the Bechdel Church. Oh, God. Just for one week only. Welcome to the Bechdel Church. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante.

And this is our little podcast where we talk about your favorite, least favorite, and also other movies using an intersectional feminist lens and we use the bechdel test as a jumping off point it initiates a larger conversation that we'll have and the bechdel test of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test our variation on the test requires that two people of any marginalized gender have names speak to each other about something other than a man for ideally it's a meaningful narratively relevant conversation yeah which which does come into play with this movie in particular where not to blow it but there are women do speak to each other in this movie but it's never very important it's not very important when they're talking unless i mean they're bullying mandy moore most of the time women are talking to each other

they're like Mandy Moore sucks and then other girls like I know I hate her sweater and you're like I guess that's sort of narratively it's relevant I suppose it is it's relevant because but also for some reason bullying doesn't affect Jamie because Jamie's are famously impervious to bullies. I know this from experience, having constantly tried to bully you, and it never works. I always just go, I do what Mandy Moore does. I go, they're so immature. They need God. That's what I do whenever someone tries to bully me.

I say, you should come to my dad's church sometime. Yeah. Well, we're doing a Walk to Remember today, and we have an incredible guest that's right she is a comedy producer you can see her stuff at naked comedy.org it's sam varela hello welcome welcome to me uh i don't want to spoil anything either but i do have to say i think i think there was one instance of the bully of the jamie being cracked by the bullying which might also be something relative to the name of this podcast that's true that is true there because belinda i believe this movie this movie is so like it's just like bizarre in so many ways where I it's the book takes place in the 1950s.

The movie takes place allegedly in the 1990s, but it seems like it's still everyone still looks like it's the 1950s. Everyone's still dressed like greasers, but they have Missy Elliott CDs. It was really bizarre but yeah there is there was a Bechdel test pass where Belinda says wanna tic-tac and Jamie says no thanks there it is right there it is if you argue that's not impactful I have a whole essay I completely this is one of those movies that I just simply forgot to pay attention to whether or not it passes the Bechdel test but I do remember that exchange and it's it's crucial to understanding the film right before some very 2002 photoshop bullying which is one which is one

of the main which I think is one of again one of the only things that firmly roots that movie in the late 90s, because I swear to God, like I think most of the movie could convincingly take place in any year in the second half of any decade of the 20th century. Except they have Photoshop and they have switch foot and they have, that's about it. Right. Oh my gosh.

Well, this movie, I'm going to, this is going to be a challenge. Sam, what is your history with A Walk to Remember? Well, I have a very particular history that is that I, this movie, I think was one of my first boyfriend's favorite movies. I think he was the one that brought it to me, brought it to the table. And,

you know, in high school seduction, classic move, I of course memorized only hope and saying it. I think a few times, you know, to get in the mood whoa wait it's very complicated i have a complicated uh romantic past but um definitely on the rewatch you know toxic romance definitely made a lot more sense to my personal connection to this movie.

So you would sing, wait, how does the song go? And I hold my hands up to her And I lift my hands and pray To be only yours, I pray To be only yours, I pray. To be only yours, I know now. You're my only hope. Oh my gosh. Wow.

Beautiful. If I ever had an SNL audition, it would be that one song. Because I memorized it that. I've taken singing lessons since and tried to learn to sing that song and they're like pointing out the issues I'm like but that's how Mandy Moore sings it that's how I know how to sing it that is the beauty of Mandy Moore in many ways where she was a pop star who was not necessarily a great singer but she was like a solid high school soprano so her songs are like not hard to sing if you were in choir like anyone in choir can sing mandy moore's entire discography no problem though i didn't know

till this watch and my you know subsequential obsession of googling a bunch of stuff i didn't know that the i didn't know the switchfoot story and i didn't know this was originally a switch foot song which really blew my mind it sounds weird if you wait yeah you would guess it's the other way around they're covering her but no no she's covering them who is switch foot what is that are they of like for real christian band or are they this was one of my googles okay so they have come out as they are christian in faith not in format they are not they do not consider themselves christian music but it's highly debated online but faith not in format wow that's good dodgy language i like that but i guess mandy moore was obsessed with them and turned the music supervisor of this production onto them. And they were like, we got to have Switchfoot. This is the sound of the movie.

So there's like four or five songs from Switchfoot on the soundtrack, which in an interview that I watched, again, I went real deep. Shane West said it might have gone platinum, the album for this. I don't know if that's true. I could not confirm. But yeah, so I guess Only Hope was a song that they had written even before the movie. This was just a song of theirs. And they were like, that's her song for the movie.

So at least if you hear a man singing it, it does read more Christian than in this movie where it is like some sort of sexual power play song. Also, the song gets performed in its entirety in the movie during a high school production of like 20s mobster. What is that play about? What's going on in that play? Why would you sing that at a nightclub right i went back to like rewatch the setup for that scene and i still can't make heads or tails of what sets up that song or why this mobster would be her only hope i he was trying to remember a dream and then he got shocked by her body and then he just was like this song you must sing for me yeah blew my mind doesn't make any sense i don't know what the play

is about there's a really long montage also where they're rehearsing for the play that's like edited in a way where you're like what on earth am I watching so yeah the play is confusing okay so Sam you have a you have a maybe a torrid history with this film Jamie what's your relationship and history with it um it's not quite that level but it's pretty intense where this i i loved this movie when i was a kid i don't think i saw it in theaters but there i remember my cousin telling me which is in retrospect i was like this was not nice she was like she's like mandy moore is in a movie and she has your name and she has the same color hair as you you have to see it what she did not say is that she dies there is so so she and so I guess if you haven't seen A Walk to Remember Mandy Moore famously dies in the movie but I but I remember

like going to the movie not being like whenever like nine not realizing that mandy moore was doomed and being like oh my god this is so me i'm not like the other girls my name's jamie i have brown hair and then in the like when it becomes clear that she's doomed i was like this sucks no one's ever no one's and then i like really turned on the movie hard i was like why would you have why would this be the only movie character named after me and then she dies that said i really i i've seen this movie i haven't seen it in easily 10 years but i saw it a lot when i was younger it's like oh i i really i feel like this movie i was like not raised particularly religious at all like we went to church but it just felt like i don't know it was i didn't grow up especially religious and once i was like 12 we just were like man well i feel like we've done the whole religion thing and we left

but this was uh as close to being religious as i ever got was being like a walk to remember is a really powerful story. You know, like it. I really like I had a huge crush on Mandy Moore and Shane West. And I just I really and oh, oh, the other thing about this movie was that when I was little, I had like a one of those pullout of a magazine posters of Mandy Moore and I forget I feel like I might have brought this up on the show years ago but I had this poster of Mandy Moore hanging in my room and I thought that she could see me and watch me and I was so scared of the poster so this would be in that time too where I was like I was I loved Mandy Moore and I wanted her on my wall but I also was really scared of her because I thought she knew what I what I was doing

amazing and so eventually my mom took the poster down and I got mad but she was just like let's end this Mandy Moore can't see you it was it must have been one of those like bizarre pictures where it just like it i felt like the eyes were following me that was the thing it was like a mona lisa kind of thing um so mandy moore is my mona lisa wow that's my history with the movie caitlin what's your history with a walk to remember I don't have an extensive one. This movie came out when I was a sophomore or junior in high school sometime around then. So I was like peak demographic for this movie. But this was also when I was very firmly like, I don't like girl things. No thanks. So this movie came out and it was a huge hit among my friends. And I saw it because of that.

Probably it's like a sleepover or just, I don't know, we're hanging out and we watched it. And I was like, this movie is not for me. And that was really the only time I saw it. Heart of stone i am my truly my heart is a lump of coal in my chest and i have no feelings i'm sure i was like moved by it but i don't know i this i don't it that's my history with it that i was like okay this movie exists i'll watch it once in 2002 and then never again so uh but watching it back was interesting and i will say that it is while it still has its issues it's less full of issues than i thought it would be for a teen movie that comes out in 2002.

I would agree with that. Yeah, it held up better than I was expecting, which isn't to say that it super holds up. But for what it was, where I was like, ooh, Christian-y teen movie, Nicholas Sparks, early 2000s, you would think that it would be much worse than it actually did. I think that this is my favorite. Of the Nicholas Sparks adaptations I've i think this is my favorite of the nicholas sparks adaptations i've seen this remains my favorite one i um took it upon myself to just here's what i'll suggest the listeners do google nicholas sparks movies and i think like 11 different things come up because he's had many adaptations of his novels

into movies and all of the posters will just like be right there in front of you all side by side every poster is identical wait this is funny you can also google the Nicholas Sparks collection that just has all four has like four matching posters as it's dvd cover two straight white people with their heads really close together yes either facing away from each other or facing toward each other like some of them they're like face to face other ones like the man is behind the woman there's they're all in some kind of like warm pink or yellow a lot of heads are being grabbed too a lot of grabbing of heads richard gear is grabbing diane lane's head for a night's of rodanthe he's like like a real vice yeah same thing with safe haven which is i think josh dumel and then i don't know who the

lady who the woman is in it i don't know what half of these are yeah I don't know safe haven I don't know the best of me I don't know the lucky one I don't know the longest ride these are so many I've seen the lucky one because I will watch anything that Zac Efron is in do you guys know if the other Nicholas Sparks movies are as religious I couldn't get a clear answer on the internet i think not really because i've i've seen probably half of these and the only one i've seen multiple times is the notebook and now a walk to remember but of the other ones i think they're not the religious over or undertones are not quite there the way they are in a walk to remember at least for the ones i've seen i kind of wonder where that comes from like yeah because i don't i i might have read the book when i was in like junior high or something i don't remember anything about it i know a lot was

changed but i wonder if like the book is as like bonking you with the like have faith in people message yeah because i know that she was religious the person it's based off of and she did have a bible she gave away kind of thing but i i tried all the googles i couldn't find anything to be like why is this movie so not just religious but like like it's hammering you with the moral elements of religion i was like who paid for this like what right yeah it's happening well i did a like google of nicholas sparks and his life to see if there's been anything of note and it seems like he personally is quite religious and founded a christian school right which tried to form an lgbtq club which he then tried to ban. No, what?

Yeah. And then students were protesting that and then he banned the protests of it. So like he can't ban protests. Did you see his quote about it? Yeah. It was so upsetting. Oh, my God. And then sometime later, he backtracked on all this and he's like, no, wait, I'm an ally.

And the reason that my school has no diversity in it doesn't have anything to do with the school. It's these other flimsy reasons. So he was like saying all this problematic stuff in like, I don't know, 2013 or something. And then he's walked it all back and been like, no no i'm actually an ally please let me still have a career like right but did you see the quote where he was like we don't need this he was based the reason he said the reason he banned those organizations was because essentially it was we don't need these out in the open these kind of clubs like there have always been gays in catholicism they just handled it more delicately and like that was his stance on

it was like stay in the closet and we'll all get along yikes that's such horseshit especially because it's like this this movie is directed by an openly gay man who was openly gay at the time the movie was directed i believe like it's like oh god that's so i mean i guess i'm not surprised that nicholas sparks fucking sucks but i did not know that uh portion of his life that's horrible yeah his his history isn't great but now he's an ally so everything's fine all's well that ends well we just need a movie poster of like a same sex couple holding their heads. Yeah, we need someone

grabbing someone else's head. But it's a queer movie this time. That'll fix everything. That will fix everything. You know what would really fix everything? If we gave Nicholas Sparks more money. I think that would fix everything. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Yeah. Why don't we take a quick break and then come back and do the recap.

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.

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Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music.

I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network

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So we meet Landon Carter. That's Shane West. He's with his friends who are these like popular kids who are mean. And Landon gets in trouble after a classmate of theirs gets hurt because of a prank all the popular kids pulled on him brutal just a quick quick reminder at the top Shane West is a stage name Shane West's actual name is Shannon Bruce Snaith I did not know that it's one of my favorite celebrity uh facts is his name is shannon snaith and so they were like that's not gonna work we need i think it would be fun if he was just allowed to be shannon snaith i also think i wonder if anyone else picked up on this or if i'm

just being tall girl syndrome i also think that shane West is shorter than Mandy Moore. His height fluctuates throughout the movie and I think that the movie does not like the movie is very rigid in its values and I think that they also must have said we can't have a male lead who is shorter than our female lead due to

societal pressures because Mandy Moore is 5'10". Shane West is 6 feet, allegedly, but that's impossible because he's shorter than her. In any scene where you can see his feet, he is shorter than her. Any scene where you cannot see his feet, he is taller than her,

meaning that he's wearing some sort of acting shoe. Acting shoes? Or they stuck him on an Apple box. Is that what those are called? meaning that he's wearing some sort of acting shoe, acting shoes, or they, they stuck them on like an Apple box. Is that what those are called? Yeah. I want to go rewatch the dance scene. It's the dance scene where it's most obvious because she's teaching him how to

dance. And you're like, Oh, he's shorter than her. I never see that in movies. Why didn't I notice that? And then it cuts to the next scene and he's taller than her in the next scene. And I was like,

why can't men just be five, sometimes it's fine relax also i'm sorry i have so many deep dive facts but please fun fact along with other parts of this set a lot of the sets were from like dawson's creek and other highly popular areas it was a filming zone but so whatever that water basin was that they did this uh first prank at yeah apparently it was full of like algae and eels and they had scuba divers clearing the water for the stunt wow so just like just to put us in shane west and whoever that guy's name's head yeah they're diving and swimming and eels they're belly flopping straight into an eel holy that is dangerous once you i i did know about the dawson's creek stuff and like once you i've i watched two seasons

of that when i was sick like two years ago and once you know it's the same high school you can't unsee it you're like oh i've i've seen drama in these halls before uh okay so then we meet jamie sullivan who is mandy moore she's very religious her father is a reverend she sings in the church choir the whole thing she is also not popular unlike Landon Carter and she gets mocked by Landon's friends because she's not stylish and she wears the same sweater every day which is also for another that was from the real person okay so the real person is based off of Nicholas Sparks' sister, right? Yes. Yes. Who, in my favorite power move, never read his book. It did, yeah. She said she didn't want to know how it ended, which I feel like he took as a sweet sentiment and I took as a burn.

She's just like, look, I've only got so much time and I'm not wasting it. Yeah, I thought it was, I didn't realize, I think this was my first time realizing that it was at least based on a true story. But there are deviations where I believe his sister was 30 when she passed away. Yeah, she's 33. And then in the book, I guess that it's not specified that Jamie dies, but it's just, it says, this is what the Wikipedia page says. I'm like,

I don't really know what this means, but it said that it is ambiguous whether Jamie died or simply disappeared into the shadow world. Now I don't know what, hang on, wait, wait, hang on now.

So that is not unlike the ending of Titanic. Right. Where Rose... Was it a dream? The shadow world? I did, in fact, make some notes about the similarities between this movie and Titanic. Amazing. Spoiler, Switchfoot says the word Titanic.

Yes. They do. They do. Amazing. yes they do they do amazing i have some parallels i would like to draw between a walk to remember and another movie which i will i will reveal i guess now i was like what there's no reason to hold back any longer okay i don't know if anyone else noticed this or thought this, but the way Shane West looks in this movie, to me, is identical to the way Robert Pattinson looks in Twilight. He looks exactly like Edward Cullen to me. Ooh.

Yeah. I get it. I see it. I see it. pale brown haired bookish girl be really mean to her at first and then be like hey maybe we could be friends and then they start dating and fall in love except that's basically twilight jamie sullivan i i will say in defense of jamie sullivan she at least has some semblance of a backbone unlike bella swan who just does whatever edward cullen tells her to do at least jamie sullivan's like no you can't be my secret friend right get out of here yeah true so i was like good for her

most movies in 2002 were not doing that that's true they'd be like okay we can be friends just as a secret like fuck you shane west but i was the whole both times i re-watched this movie to prep for this episode i was like oh my gosh am i just watching edward cullen right now the resemblance is simply uncanny true i see it anyway so because landon has gotten in trouble for this prank he has to do a bunch of community service which includes tutoring underprivileged students at a nearby school yeah uh yep yeah the coding there is uh yikes and then also he has to participate in the school play which he gets cast as like the lead of and i'm just like okay you know when you're in trouble with the law and your punishment is to be the lead in a I'm just like okay you know when you're in trouble with the law and your

punishment is to be the lead in a high school theater production which also like aside from the fact that that is completely absurd and like it just makes no sense on top of that that sucks for all the theater kids who I know we're told in the first scene is like oh they're really into it like it's not like they're desperate for people to audition for this part there's a room full of people who want this part and they're like no shane west you have to do a really bad job as punishment like why does everyone need to suffer through shannon snaith's acting because like he committed a crime he also committed a crime right didn't you guys have that um drama teacher who she like cast her children as all the stars i feel like it's not that uncommon

for school high school theater to be corrupted by those in power i had we had uh like our our high school drama instructor would like cast football players to like try to get oh like in glee yeah yeah i mean like that that is like definitely at least in my experience something that happened jamie that is what happened in this movie right right they're just like oh jocks you get to cut the line in every area of life, apparently. And it's like, well, okay, I guess the rest of us will just die. I like that in the play, Mandy Moore is wearing a prom dress underneath a trench coat. What an interesting reveal. That wasn't a trench coat.

That was like a cult coat. That was a cloaked, like weird ass culty cloak. And underneath it is like a 2002 prom dress and you're just like all right oh gosh so jamie is also involved in these activities so she and landon keep running into each other and one day she gives him a ride home after the school play rehearsal she tells him about this to-do list that she has but she won't tell him what number one on the list is then he wants her to help him run lines for the play and she's like okay i'll help but you have to promise not to fall in love with me oh my god okay that that really sent me back because i think that that was the first time

i'd ever heard that line in a movie even though it's in so many movies and it's the funniest thing anyone can say to another person because how many if people have said that in real life how many times has the other person actually been interested in them i feel like zero oh that's gonna be a really funny bit that i'm gonna start doing where a friend's just like hey i haven't seen you in a while do you want to go get coffee and i'll be like okay but you have to promise not to fall in love with me oh my god she said there are parts of jv's character that i don't like dislike but they feel a little dissonant where she's like made out to be like oh she's like a misfit but she acts with such confidence in moments like that where i'm like this is cool girl shit like what's going on we're like i feel like the like uncool

girl at school doesn't say you have to promise not to fall in love with me right but i appreciate that she does she takes a stand for all uncool girls and i'm sure that at least one person who saw that movie who wasn't cool then said that at school and humiliated themselves so i know that they made a really big effort to avoid like some character tropes, specifically the glasses. They insisted no glasses. How about a sweater? Sweater, not glasses. I just feel like her charisma is like the taking off of the glasses.

Whenever she's unusually flirty for this Bible girl, it's like okay that's the glasses coming off right and i don't dislike that she is confident in herself it just like i guess maybe i was just like oh i wouldn't have expected like the least cool girl at school to be like fuck you and then or like or like on the date where she they have that like erotic temporary tattoo moment that I totally forgot about. Like Titanic hot car scene. Hot car. True. The Christian version of the Titanic scene.

Where they're like, it's temporary. It's temporary. He's going to blow on it, but he's not touching her. When he blows on it, it's hot. It is hot when he blows on the temporary tattoo. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so she's like like don't fall in love with

me and he's like yeah right that won't be a problem and then they start running lines together at her house her dad by the way does not like this Landon fellow no um also isn't it it's Peter Coyote too yes who I like sometimes learn who that is. And then I promptly forget. He's an iconic, I feel like he's, he has that experience a lot. He's just a famous character actor.

He is an ET. He's in, he's in a lot of shit. He's an Aaron Brockovich. He's in all sorts of shit. And then you see him, you're like, Oh,

that guy. Anyways. Also Landon's mom is played by Daryl Hannah. In the worst wig I've ever seen in my life, by the way. You read the Wikipedia. You saw the Savage commentary on her. Yeah. Yes, I did.

Wait, about her. She got like lip injections and that whole thing. And she wears a wig. They're really focused on her wig. I saw a bunch of different explanations for that. What my takeaway was that the wig was bad, but I guess that she was so famously blonde that they're like,

I guess they made a lot of famous blonde women into brunettes in this movie because brunette in this movie because brunette equals dramatic turn or it did in 2002 brunette equals agency right brunette equals a little little more serious yeah okay so jamie and landon are hanging out they're running lines together it seems like maybe they could be friends. But then he's a jerk to her at school so that he can seem cool in front of his cool friends. And Jamie's like, you're a jerk and we cannot be friends.

Love that for her. She's really taking a stand. For now. For now. a stand for now for now but then landon starts to get serious about the school play about his role as a tutor and then the school play happens jamie aka mandy moore sings that song she's so breathy i love her i love her and and she loves switchfoot and she loves switch i've like that's the most teen girl because she's like i think like a rare uh example of a teen girl playing a teenager in a movie even though no one i don't think any of the other teenagers are actual teenagers but mandy moore is yeah no i mean i don't know if you guys are going to mention it later but you know shane west was 23 at the time

of filming and mandy was 17 yeah he was like eight full years older than her uh which is uh not not great uh good based on what happens next in the story which is they are on stage together in the play and they kiss and then they kiss a bunch of other times throughout the movie they sure do but this but this first kiss uh is forced because it's not in the play it's not in the script it's a surprise kiss yes which they had to rehearse on their first day oh yeah i and it seems like mandy moore and mandy moore has uh i mean she she came out with a bunch of me too stuff a couple of years ago that isn't relevant to the content of this episode but she seems to still be friends with shane west i feel like that that's more of a fault of the production for like putting them in this scenario in the first place like that's just especially

for a teen actor and then an adult like that's that's just irresponsible on the productions right and they knew that they had crushes on each other and the production knew they had crushes on each other and he i don't again i didn't see anything about anything you know sordid taking place it's they were had a crush on each other they never dated um and shane was you know teaching her how to act because she didn't know how to act so it's a little there's a little a little weird there's a little i yeah i read I read that he taught her what a mark was and how to hit it. I was like, oh, poor Mandy Moore. She didn't know. I guess that this movie was shot before The Princess Diaries because that's like her first credit.

But it was shot after. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Which is, I like that in the early 2000s, Mandy Moore was given us more range than a lot of teen actresses because she played sweet girl and she played bully. Right. Because she's mean in Saved and Princess Diaries, but she's an angel from heaven in this movie. Right. And then in both Saved and A Walk to Remember, she plays a very devout christian character but on two very different ends of a of that spectrum and now she's on a tv show that my mom talks about on

the phone all the time that i'm never gonna watch this is us yes yeah exactly okay so they kiss on stage and then landon's like wait a minute do I like Jamie do I want to be with her he's breaking the one rule he's falling in love with her and he wasn't supposed to but he is a rule breaker you know he he's a bad boy he's canonically a bad boy he almost kills a student in the first scene yeah but he does go visit him in the hospital and say sorry so that redeems him question mark um even though the student is like not understandably not very receptive to the apology he's like get the fuck out of here i don't know why i wanted to be your friend you like push me off of a cliff or like whatever.

Into eels. Into eels. A bed of eels. So yeah, Jamie is like rejecting him and pushing him away. And she's like, you don't know how to be a good friend. So then he tries harder. Yeah. He gives her a new sweater.

He stands up for her when his friends play that Photoshop related prank on her at school. Which truly, if you haven't seen the movie, just like look up that scene. Because even though it's like from a plot standpoint, I'm like, oh, my God, your heart goes out to her. And maybe that would be a horrible thing to happen to you in 2002. But if that happened to me now, I'd be like, so what is the joke here? It's such a bad Photoshop. I feel like it's more embarrassing for the person who Photoshopped it than for her. 100%. But I do feel like that scene really captures the cruel teen laugh that still haunts me to this day.

Yeah, yeah. If you run into that in real life oh boy all logic goes out the window you're scarred that's true yeah so he defends her and stands up for her when this happens and then he asks her out on a date but her dad doesn't let her date so then Landon asks her dad permission to take her out which he relents to so then they go out to dinner they dance it is revealed that Shane West is shorter than Mandy Moore no no no we don't know it in that scene it's the scene we don't know it in that later it's after we find out she's sick and then he says oh you teach me to dance in that montage that's where you learn he is.

He is a couple inches shorter than her. Hasn't he asked his mom to teach him how to dance there? Yeah. The dance is before the, because the leukemia reveal is like, to me where the movie totally shifted. Well, sure.

Yeah. Once, once our protagonist is doomed. Yes. But yeah, I, maybe i'm messing up the order it's whatever in there's a scene in the middle of a montage where she teaches him how to dance and you can see both of their full bodies and then you're like oh he's shorter than her because you can't wear your acting shoes in a full body shot you're right yeah because she teaches his mom he asked his mom to teach him when they later dance on the balcony with no door right right right okay the balcony with no door yes it's that's fascinated me for years

i didn't pick up on it just like you're gonna make this sickly girl climb out a window to look at her stars oh the balcony with no doors i wonder if it's like a if it's like a an aladdin kind of deal where it's just a curtain that leads into a room no it's it's just four windows they also are looking through a telescope that he builds right in front of her like you would think that he would have done that as like a surprise gift but he just like sets up a workshop outside of her house and is like don't look i love it at what i'm doing this movie is so goofy and corny in so many ways where you just have to like be constantly suspending your logic where there's like one scene where you find out what Jamie's ambition in life is which is to like witness a miracle but you find out because Shane West happens to be going through the yearbook at home alone like why is he doing that he's just we're to believe he's just sitting at home like

Tuesday night better look through my yearbook like jamie i don't want to break your mind but um i feel like that might be one of a few instances in instances in this film where traditionally he would then in a real world start jacking off and that can't be alluded to at all no he's just like oh plot, plot point. She wants a miracle, does she? Brutal. Wait, I'm going to, Caitlin, as you continue to summarize, I'm going to just, just to put my own mind at ease, I'm going to screen cap these Shane West height discrepancies to share with the class. Because I swear to God, I swear to God it's a thing. Yes, please. discrepancies to share with the class because i swear to god i swear to god it's a thing yes please um so meanwhile they go out to dinner they dance he helps her knock some stuff off of her to-do list like to be in two places at once and to get a tattoo that scene is really sweet

it is pretty nice it's so corny but the i remember the two places at one scene really vividly because mandy moore gets so excited she's like it's so cute and then they kiss and he tells her he loves her and she's like i told you not to fall in love with me and we go, no, he had one job. And then her dad is like, Jamie, you have to be fair to him before things get worse. And we're like, huh? What does that mean? Which we find out shortly. But before that, Jamie and Landon stargaze together. And then she tells him the number one thing on her list, which is to get married in the church where her parents got married.

And then the big reveal, which is that she tells him that she is sick with leukemia and that she has stopped responding to treatment. The implication being that she does not have long to live. And then he broods for a while. Oh, my gosh. But then he goesods for a while oh my gosh but then he goes to his dad okay this scene is just just story logic wise it's so silly where he goes to his he has of course because every movie has to be about fathers and sons for some reason yes he has a bad relationship with his dad who's like a doctor but he left and it's all very like vague divorced parents stuff.

Yeah. But he goes to his dad's house and it's like, my girlfriend is dying of cancer. Can you save her? And his dad's kind of like, well, no, there's not a cure for cancer that's known. And Shane West responds by being like, you were never there for me.

And I'm like like I was like yeah but these two these two things are sort of unrelated you know also his dad's like I'm not an oncologist I'm a cardiologist for someone who wants to be a doctor he he really did not understand anything about medicine at this point. True. It's so funny. That whole scene. Because then it's like a million years of brooding and Shane West driving around in his cool, cool car. Yeah. And it's like, dude, listen, like your dad is not the right kind of doc.

Like the situation is still very sad. But like of the many things that may be your father's fault this is not one of them this is not one of them so yeah he's brooding for a while he's driving around in his camaro and then he comes back around and he's like jamie baby i'm not going anywhere and then one day she collapses and is rushed to the hospital. And Landon stays by her side until she's able to go home because Landon's dad arranges to pay for her private home care. Which is really nice and I guess a more realistic thing that he can do instead of knowing the cure for cancer that doesn't exist. I forgot about that plot point and i liked it i thought that was very nice but i also feel like that whole dad plot line like i don't really care about it at all

except for the moment where at the wedding that's about to happen yeah the way that his dad looks at him at his wedding is so he looks like he's about to burst into tears i'm like i don't even know who this man is like what am i looking at yeah anyways i'm getting ahead well so so then uh what's his name landon asks jamie to marry him so that she can accomplish the number one thing on her list so they get married and then Landon's voiceover explains that they have a beautiful summer together and that she passes away a few months after their wedding and then we get a flash forward to four years later where Landon pays a visit to Jamie's father he has gotten into medical school he hopefully he's like he's hopefully made amends

with his dad to be like i'm so sorry i didn't know how doctors worked when i was 17 whoops i overreacted my bad and then jamie's father is like landon by the way jam Jamie did find her miracle and it was you. And then there's some more voiceover about how Landon will always love Jamie and he'll always feel their love. So that's the story. Let's take another break and we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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,

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And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do. Like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah. I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take? Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I feel like we've actually covered a fair amount of ground in the recap.

Yeah, we have. Since we were briefly talking about the fathers and sons thing, I wanted to just say a little bit about that, which is to me, it feels like the big emotional beat of this movie. That's like the big like tearjerker. Everyone in the audience is crying. Is that moment where Landon goes to his dad to say thank you for paying for my girlfriend's like private home care right because he's he's crying they hug each other the music swells it like lingers on this moment for quite a while and the cinematic language tells you that that's the big cry moment and then a short time later couldn't care less jamie dies off screen we only know about it via voiceover it

is not played for like that big tearjerker moment the same way which i'm kind of surprised i i watching it back i guess it would have really emotionally wrecked me at any age to like i didn't want to like see her die but they do wrap it up so quick. I guess, I don't know. The argument there is, like, it goes out on a high note. Like, you see her at, like, she's accomplished her life's goal of getting married. And then it's like, well, you know, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that choice. Yeah.

I found it really kind of bizarre that the big tearjerker beat of the movie is the father-son reconciliation know, the book is like clear that it's coming from Landon's perspective. And the book is kind of, well, Nicholas Sparks is, when Nicholas Sparks spoke about writing the book, it was like he equally wanted to, like, it wasn't really about Jamie. Like, when he wrote the book, his thoughts are like, her husband was such a miracle. Like, who would marry a girl they know is going to die? Like, this guy needs to be celebrated. That's kind of where he was coming from. And so I feel like that would make sense then why his big emotional opening is what's important. It's like, oh, Jamie taught him how to feel. And now he feels with his dad. I agree. And I feel like that is the big, or one of the biggest trope-y issues with this movie.

I think even from a screenwriting standpoint, it's like it in i mean i think even from like a screenwriting standpoint it's clearly landon's story but it but it like uses the trope that it that has been in a lot of movies and stories over the over time of like a woman dies to like teach a guy how to kind of be a better person like that is ultimately the narrative function of like jamie in this world at least and i don't mean to like you know because because i know that nicholas spark's sister inspired this but it's not her life story she was a different person living in a different time who was in her late 20s not in high school you know and I feel like the way this movie was adapted clearly falls into that trope of like Jamie well I feel like Jamie is like a better developed character than most young women who are put in

that role and like there are things that I was kind of not like impressed is a little bit strong, but I was surprised that there was a lot about Jamie that like, she didn't do the, the grease thing or the, what the, like, she's all that thing where she totally changed. And at the end she's popular. Like she does stay,

she, she changes a little bit, but like for the most part, she's pretty consistent and like, she's always church girl and she's not going to like change what her values are. like for the most part she's pretty consistent and like she's always church girl and she's not gonna like change what her values are and for the for the most part like i thought that was like oh that's a little bit different but she still ultimately is like sacrificed and what the the takeaway feels like and now shane west knows that he can go to med school and he doesn't need

to be a high school bully and it's like well was it worth it was it really worth it i don't know right yeah that is such a trope where the function of a lot of female characters whether or not they die depends on kind of the story but the function of a lot of the of characters it's sort of like the burden is on women to teach men how to be a good person and like how to feel feelings and stuff i don't know too much like i i do recognize this trope i don't know too much about it like uh scholarly but i also feel like this kind of has to do with the religious overtones too because I feel like the tone it's basically like it feels like this movie is celebrating the mercy that Landon bestows upon Jamie and it's really about like his like not only his transformation

but like how much he put into this relationship by being with a person with leukemia, which feels very ableist, but also like the idea of mercy, like even in the Bible, you know, women are often literally just plot lines for male characters in the Bible. So I feel like there's also that aspect of it that like, I, I guess only hearing you talk about the trope really connected the two for me. And when I was Googling, like I was trying to find out what the genre is of like Christian movies. And the only thing I could find that was like scholarly, it was connecting them to the religious

melodramas, like plays and stuff. Um, so it feels like this, uh, even though I could not find any confirmation why this was so Christian or that this isn't even seemed to be considered a Christian film. It's not on Pureflix. I just feel like it's definitely that. We have to do a Pureflix block. I only found that from this. It's oh, yeah, there.

I think I'm pretty sure Maggie Mae Fish has covered a couple of movies on her YouTube channel that are, I think they were originally on Pure Flix. But like Rob Schneider appears in a lot of Pure Flix movies. There's like, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's Christian Netflix. But it just sounds absolutely wild. Which I did watch. Again, I went on too deep of a dive. Christian Netflix, but it just sounds absolutely wild. Which I did watch. Again, I went on too deep of a dive.

I did watch a YouTube clip of the VHS commercials from the VHS release of this film. And they did include a preview for a movie that is on Pure Flix. Oh. So again, I'm like, where is this Christian money coming from? And why is it ungoogleable like it's very strange i it is i mean i guess i i i didn't go back and do the full like recap i feel like for a very mainstream successful movie this movie is unusually christian where if you know the further you go back in american movies i feel like the more christian outwardly christian they get and more you like you see the themes of mercy and faith come up more often but by the early 2000s i feel like it is kind of unusual

i don't know but that but i could be wrong but you think like saved came out after this and that is very critical of christianity like i feel like that was more common by that point i could be wrong but you think like saved came out after this and that is very critical of christianity like i feel like that was more common by that point i don't know i will say that and this is coming from someone who uh was raised as an atheist and tends to shy away from christian media or any like entertainment that has strong Christian under or overtones. I didn't necessarily, I didn't mind the Christianity in this or like the, I didn't mind the religious themes in this because none of the characters who have a strong Christian faith are using their faith to justify toxic attitudes and ideologies that some Christians have, such as, you know, homophobia,

transphobia, racism, anti-choice, anti-bodily autonomy, you know, all that stuff. And when I'm critical of religion, it's those displays of toxicity and intolerance that I'm critical of. But we don't see any of that in this movie. The characters aren't doing anything like that. They're just, you know, living their lives and not hurting anybody or being prejudiced toward anybody. But there's not really anyone to be prejudiced of, you know. Because everyone is straight at this high school well but there's also there maybe 20 30 people of color and that's not counting if they reuse

background actors like i think right to me it's like i could get into the headspace of this being like i agree with you it's not used when you were talking it made me think of josie and the pussycats like i feel like religion in this movie is like product placement in that where it's like almost like no we get it like we're putting it in front of there but then because it's religious i'm like but wait maybe they're like i don't know it feels sinister but that might just be because the church is weird i kind of i i agree with with what you're both saying where i felt like the way that christianity was presented in this movie it was pretty inoffensive but then i was like but maybe that's not good you know because and because this movie i don't i don't know and ultimately it's

it's i get kind of like lost in the sauce there because it's like either someone is not really thinking about it very hard or someone's thinking about it really hard as it in the way that like Christianity is presented in this movie because I feel like it is it's you know like less harmful tenets that are being used in this movie of like forgiveness and like give people a chance and that I mean the way that that's kind of implemented does lend itself to a lot of Shane West's toxic behavior kind of being forgiven a little too Christ-like maybe but but it does I don't know yeah like ultimately I'm like I I do I do remember recognizing that there were Christian elements to this story but I think because someone else pointed it out to me.

I don't think I would have gotten there on my own, but there was like a parent or someone who was just like, oh, it's like churchy shit makes me sick or like whatever. But like, how did we not pick it up as a kid? It was just kind of there. How old were the two of you? Because like that was the only thing I remembered about this movie. I was like, oh, it's the movie about the girl with cancer and she's very devoutly Christian. That was the main thing I remembered about this movie. I was your age, but I was not aware of my bisexuality at the time. So I was just horny this whole movie and that was all I could see.

I was nine, so i didn't know shit about shit i just wanted people kissing and singing uh but but i do i mean it's like i don't know i think that there's definitely arguments for both sides of the way that christianity is presented in this movie where I'm glad that the negative aspects of Christianity didn't enter the plot but also it feels bizarre to just ignore them as if they don't exist and it's like it's it's a completely uncritical presentation of Christianity to the point where I feel like they almost like reverse a priest trope that you like when you start watching the movie you're like oh you know her

her dad is by nature of his job very religious so he's going to be very oppressive and he doesn't want her to date but it turns out the reason that he doesn't want her to date is not just because he's a priest it's because he doesn't like he she's also sick and there's like other things going on that we don't so i feel like that the movie kind of makes the priest look better as the movie goes on because you're like oh he's not being mean because of religion he's being mean because his daughter's really sick and he doesn't know what to do like which kind of i don't know for me on this rewatch made me not be like oh and he should be restricting his daughter's behavior but right at least it like gave some context and it wasn't just the trope of like

religious dad equals controlling and oppressive. The more we talk about this, I wonder, because the first time we see the father, who is the pastor at the only church in town, where all the bad kids go. How do people live here? What year is it? No, but when we meet him,

it's the line right before is the mom saying you need a father and she's talking about how he doesn't talk to his dad and then it cuts to him and now i'm just thinking like because mandy moore didn't know how to act apparently shane west taught her the marker thing but she was very natural and this was her first film like i wonder if the in like not intention but like i wonder if it hadn't been her, would we be reading more into, like, how the pastor kind of becomes his father figure? And, like, how their relationship is actually more about, like, both of them, like, learning how to have a son, learning how to have a father, learning how to be family with boys and mandy moore was just so good at the role that she was given that that kind of got pushed aside for more of like us caring about jamie like i feel like we as the audience care a lot more about jamie than it feels like the script in like intended or pushed for yeah i mean she

really is like i i i think mandy moore's performance does hold up in this movie she's so Mandy Moore like she's just so lovely and you're even when the character is like kind of all over the place you're like I'm rooting for her I want her to hit her mark I want her to take off her scary cloak and sing a song um I agree with you, Sam. I think that, yeah, there are certain, it hadn't even occurred to me that the priest kind of ends up taking on this fatherly role. I mean, what is the Bible,

but yet another story about fathers and sons. True. The ultimate one, maybe. The father, son, and the Holy Spirit is Mandy. Wow. Wow. I bet that's's canon that's gotta be canon i mean that's catholic nicholas sparks is catholic cut print it all makes sense and i do think that there's like it's implied or i feel like the story is suggesting that the reason that shane west's character is such a rebel bad bad, bad kid, you know,

like on the wrong side of the tracks at the beginning of the movie is because his parents are divorced. There is a part where Daryl Hannah says to Shane West's character, she's like, you need a father because she's trying to get him to forgive his dad who he's estranged with. And she's like, a boy needs us dad kind of thing and which i think is like kind of mean to her character because she seems to be a really good mom who really cares about her son and like we don't really the only thing we know is that something's going on with her lips her hair is a mess but she loves and the other thing you know is that she loves and is very supportive of shane west like the way he's acting out would not suggest that he like that the parent he lives with

is very doting and caring about him i don't know i just thought that was like he just friends with an evil boy he's friends with like a truly evil boy that boy was really evil yeah i don't know that character's name but i don't know no one knows we're talking about the guy that like later in the cafeteria he's like get away from me man like yeah we're through he's the guy yeah that broke up with shane west you're like who are you yeah i was like who the hell is this man? No idea. What I want to make clear here is that and I don't know a whole, because, again, there are a lot of Christians who are very tolerant and very progressive and who are the opposite of that kind of stereotypical Bible-thumping religious right that I think some people have come to associate Christianity with. And this is kind of one of the best depictions of Christianity because it does, like you said, it doesn't have any opportunities for

the bad stuff. It's all just about kindness and love and coming together. It is very Christian in the true sense of the word. I think my fascination with it just comes from not the religion and not people who are religious, but from the way that the church operates, specifically the Roman Catholic Church. So that's kind of where my perspective comes in of like, it's not the word and it's not the people that are in my opinion that's not really where the problem lies as much as the people who are administering things and

the specific you know we all know about the roman catholic church there's lots to be suspect of right it's more yeah it's the institution of religion that or the people who use christianity as an excuse to perpetuate their own bigotry like that's obviously what there is to be critical about not the things that jesus taught and promoted according to the bible and not the idea of the religion itself kind of thing yeah yeah it's more like the indoctrination which could be said of any organization to me that's always what's fascinating and any organized religion too yeah like but there's always some sort of indoctrination process for different organizations and that always fascinates me like how do you take a non-believer to a believer right right and it's i mean in jamie's case it's almost certainly that she just like indoctrination since birth stuff.

Either that or she is like there is a lot of argument for. And again, it's like, yeah, the the elements of Christianity Christ-like figure who is extremely forgiving of the people around her to the point where coming from a teenager, you're like, huh? Like, you know, is very forgiving, has faith in people's ability to grow and change in a way that most teenagers do not. And on and on. And then she's sacrificed at the end of the movie, and then her love exists in the wind. And I'm like, she's basically the Jesus of the movie. And I don't hate, it's like, I do like JV's character.

I like her. I'm rooting for her. I like when, I don't know, even just like remembering seeing the movie as a kid and like watching for all of his flaws like as a kid seeing the like girl who's like a little different be asked like you don't care what people think of you and she just says no i was like that's kind of cool like even though it's maybe not the most realistic reaction right that's a cool thing to see in a movie if you're like

a kind of weird kid where you're like wow this girl doesn't give a shit and like i don't know there are things to be said for for the way her character is presented it's not hyper realistic teen shit but like nothing in this movie is right she's a superhuman christian angel sent from god to sing choir songs in the play yeah she's not a real person i guess what i'll say is like that is how i view the movie too and i feel like it would still be that movie without the religious element so that's my only question is like it feels layered on in a way that i wonder why i wonder how religious his sister was like or how big of a part of her story that was yeah all i could find was that she did carry a bible around but like they even took the bible out of this film they made it a book full of quotes like

dolly parton dolly parton i like the dolly parton quote i was like wow jesus thought dolly parton was really smart because that's what jamie said did dolly parton fund this movie oh my god what if is dolly parton christian yeah okay i did not know i was like i guess i don't know anything about her religion yeah i don't know just other than the fact that she's miley cyrus's godmother miley cyrus another nicholas spark star oh that's true which one is that that's uh the last song question mark I'm pretty sure I saw that in theaters is that the one Channing Tatum is in or is that a different movie I think so oh no wait he's I hope not wait

he's like kind of old for her isn't he no I think that it's isn't that how she met her the guy that she married was through that nicholas sparks movie and it's chris hemsworth's brother oh yeah that's it's liam hemsworth okay so the okay what's the channing tate oh the channing tatum one is dear john which is him Amanda Seyfried. God, so many white actors. Yeah. Wild. I wanted to talk really quick about another character slash storyline that I found baffling

and maybe, I'll say it, not necessary to the movie, which is Langdon's ex-girlfriend or landon i keep wanting to say langdon as in robert langdon from another christian text the da vinci code oh my gosh we did bring up mona lisa earlier so i always have da vinci code on the brain baby i'll never stop uh yeah but uh the act the whole thing was so so the deal with the i don't think she even came up really in the summary because she doesn't need to be in the movie yeah i left her out of the of the summary so her deal is what's her name her name's like barbara like i have no idea no jose. Belinda. Is it Belinda?

Belinda. Yeah, it is Belinda. So Belinda, which again, I'm like, what year is this movie taking place in? Belinda is Shane West's ex-girlfriend who wants to get back together with him, but he's not interested. She is really forcing the issue. She gets very jealous of Jamie when it becomes clear that Shane West is interested in Jamie. She does the Photoshop prank. Yes.

Jamie's hurt. And then Belinda later apologizes to Shane West about that, but not to Jamie, who is in the adjacent. I think she's like right there isn't she like doesn't she apologize to shane west for what she did to jamie in front of jamie's house and it's like no that was his house you need to apologize to her oh okay i was like she needs to apologize to jamie all of those guys none of them apologize to jamie they all apologize to him yeah right no one apologizes to the right people in this movie because we'll get to this later but when we talk about like the relationship between landon and jamie but she apologizes to him after he gets mad that she has cancer right and she's like i'm so sorry that i have cancer i should

have told you sooner and he's like it's okay well that's like no he's not that's like, no, he's not. He's like, yeah, no, you don't. You're perfect. You're 18. Right. And then she runs away. He doesn't chase her. Instead, he drives to a mysterious city where his dad is. And then he drives into the night.

And then the one person of color, main character in the film, Eric comes to check on him. The most, like the most hyper sexual racist depiction and also the best the most complex of the group and the best friend of them all it seems yeah so yeah quick sidebar about that character so that's Eric he's the he falls into the black best friend trope because he's Landon's best friend he is characterized in a very harmful tropey way in

which he in basically every scene he's in is making comments that are extremely like sexually aggressive and that's really all we know about that character so that's bad it's really frustrating yeah it's like falling into all of the tropes of the black best friend is like we know nothing about him other than he is there to deliver you know devil's advocate views on what's going on to shane west like he'll come in and be like well well what if jamie isn't the love of your life and shane west is like never she is and he's like all right like there he's just like there to like he's only there to demonstrate at various scenes in the movie that shane west is like never she is and he's like all right like there he's just like there to like he's only there to demonstrate at various scenes in the movie that shane west is changing as a character

like that's the only and eric i guess you could argue changes a little bit where he becomes less of an asshole and less of a bully about the fact that shane west is dating jamie but that's such a small change that's only in relation to his friend. Like, you know nothing about him outside of that. Right. It's, yeah, it sucks. Because I don't think I've seen that actor in anything else, but I enjoyed his performance.

I thought it was fun. I read that he and Shane West made up that really long handshake that they do. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which I was like, well, that's fun, I guess. That's the only time in the film that smoking is alluded to, which I thought was an interesting bad boy trope they avoided.

Right. Yeah, they do a little, like, smoking weed thing. That actor's name is Al Thompson. He's been working pretty steadily it seems over the years so good for him okay i just i just saw his wikipedia page was a stub so and that was where my research ended i think he does a lot of tv in mostly kind of like small bit roles kind of thing got it but yeah so i thought like his performance was really fun and there was room to include him more meaningfully where he like, I don't know. It's like, why not get rid of the like girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, like evil girl side plot and like make room for the best friend.

I like all of his scenes are enjoyable, but he only exists in relation to Landon. Right. I agree. The girl. I didn't even know she was an ex-girlfriend until I looked on Wikipedia um I just knew that she was some girl who wanted to be with him somehow um one thing I noticed that I don't I might just be drawing a string to nowhere but did you notice how when she does apologize she's wearing a pink sweater just like the one that he gave jamie whoa i didn't not notice that i don't know if that's like her signal like now she's a good person too or whatever

everyone who wears a pink sweater is a good person amazing god so back to the jamie does apologize to sh Shayna so after that scene where he's talking to Eric and they like have a little bit of a reconciliation I think that's the that part of the movie but then Jamie comes up to Landon as he's like fixing his Camaro and she's like I'm sorry I should have told you sooner and he's like shrug let's And it's like, why are you apologizing, Jamie? Yeah, anyway. That's like another one of the more obvious like ableist scenes where it's like, you ditched her. You didn't support her when she was like coming out with this big news.

And now you're like, she makes a joke like something about dying. Does anybody remember? Yeah, she says, he's like, are you scared? And she says to death. Yeah yeah she says he's like are you scared and she says to death yeah and then he's like jeez and he she's like lighten up i'm the one who's dying i can joke about this if i want she's like can you chill for a second so anyway so that was on a tangent of no one apologizing to jamie right when it's she's owed several apologies but everyone's like oh she's she's so christ-like she'll forgive i guess i'll just apologize to a random person who has nothing to do with the situation or i'll make her apologize to me for some reason like right

it is it is frustrating and i feel like that is like one of the something we haven't really gotten to yet is just like especially in the early days of this relationship just like how toxic and fraught this relationship is from the jump and how jamie's extreme willingness to forgive and belief that people can change absolves him of this behavior in a way that he never really meaningfully apologizes for where at the beginning of them like for the whole first like half hour of the movie before he's like okay i want to be in this play and i want to like work with you up into that point he is like mean to her he's like i know i've known you my whole life but i don't i don't give a shit about you essentially and then once he realizes oh I do like her he comes the most like the moment that I didn't remember in the movie that I was like how

dare you was when he goes to her house and asks her to be his friend but in secret so he can still be popular yeah I was like the fucking nerd like that for me is where I'm like no matter how forgiving a person I am I'm tapping out right there that is that is a horrible thing to do to even attempt to do it's also like you said like what time period are we in like I could see in the 50s a guy asking that like you know how it is I'm the popular guy I don't know I'm I don't know what voice that was but uh you know I'm the popular kid we all know the rules of the high school like I feel like that would have been much more 1950s where it's like you know this relationship it's so common to us but not in the 90s yeah and it's like I'm glad that Jamie tells him to fuck off in that moment and she's like you know but but the fact that he still gets a second chance

without really apologizing and just by being like hey i've decided to be your friend publicly like that is very warranting of a second you but she's like okay let's try it you know yeah but she's jesus so it's hard right and's like, but I got you this sweater. Everything's fine now. Right. We talked about this on the Beauty and the Beast episode and other episodes. the woman to forgive the man for his often toxic bad behavior which again we see a lot of in this movie where for the first several of their interactions he's really mean to her he makes fun of her he's like oh you're carrying around this bible you loser with your one sweater you like stars and planets gross like he's like bullying her for the randomest shit he's like how dare you have an interest in astronomy i'm like i've never seen someone bullied for this before this is interesting and i like that she's

like yeah sure i'm the pastor's daughter but but science does exist i was like oh okay movie not not not too bad and then there's that scene where he even after he starts to fall for her he comes at her after school and like tells her how she feels yeah and then plot wise that ends up being that he's right where he's like you're hiding behind religion and astronomy and all this stuff like he just names all of her interests and it's like and that's what you're doing instead of admitting that you're in love with me and then and then she's like wait a minute maybe he's on to something and we're like what right i'm just like oh you can like things and have a crush on an asshole. I was going to say, again, coming from the horny lens that I first viewed this in, it was like, I don't care.

He's hot. And now he's into me. Like, I feel like my my horny brain doesn't doesn't register. And I do feel like this movie, one of the reasons I want to talk about it was just because, like, the thing you're saying about forgiveness coming from the woman i feel like a lot of tropes that are in this movie can contribute to like toxic masculinity in the way that a boy would interpret it and i know with the guy who my that first boyfriend that was obsessed with this movie you know had a lot of the toxic romantic kind of ideas of like no i'm making the romance for you no i broke up with him and he did not take it well like i guess trigger warning but nothing happened but um you know just like how this is the perfect this the way the tropes are in this movie are like the perfect timeline

and the perfect way it could go but a lot of the habits that are being reinforced, you know, can be used in a toxic way in other situations. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And then another one that, I mean, we haven't specifically defined, but something that happens is that he just wears her down the way that we've seen in tons and tons of movies. And this seems to be a Nicholasolas sparks thing that he recycles over and over again because yeah he's writing very popular heterosexual love stories there's probably a lot of that going on but that's like the notebook oh gosh 101 so we see that with the

landon character she keeps saying no we can't be friends you've treated me badly leave me alone and then he keeps coming back around and basically trying to sweeten her up with gifts and friendship and it's like what get away quick comment was when he was first trying to get back in her good graces after I forget what thing he did but where he was like bringing her flowers obviously every day i was just like okay you know this girl is dying and now you've made her house look like a memorial like take a step back maybe think it through land like she's not dead yet she's not dead yet right because there are okay so there are kind of two separate times where he needs to or he's

trying to redeem himself the first time when he realizes he likes her and he's actually trying to get with her then they get together and they profess their love for each other and then when she tells him i have leukemia i'm dying and he flips his shit about it and is like, why didn't you tell me this sooner? You owed telling me this. And then he like storms off. And then we don't even know how she reacts to that because the movie does not check in with her at all.

During this period, we just watch him brooding for like, 10 minutes of screen time. He's mad at his dad for not knowing a cure to cancer. Right. And then when he finally does come back around, he talks to her dad. He doesn't even talk to her at first. He's just like, don't worry, I'm not going anywhere.

Tell Jamie, can you pass along the message? It's like, well, can you talk to her face to face and apologize to her? But instead of that happening, when they do finally come face to face, she's the one to apologize to him. And it's just like, are you joking me right now? So plus her dad was also in that like telling her like, you got to tell him before it's too late. Like, obviously, that messaging was not just coming from Landon it was coming from the people around her right well that's like part of what I find frustrating about the love story in this movie because it's not like I don't know I it's not like you can't in life start with like

you know I how do I want to phrase this I feel feel like this movie could have been an interesting opportunity to write someone's behavior meaningfully changing in a way that could have felt authentic and also could have been sort of a character map for young people, especially young men watching this movie. Because it's not like, even in the context of of the movie I don't doubt at any point that Landon cares about Jamie and I don't doubt that you know that teenage boys very often are deflective towards people that they're attracted to especially in a hetero context and like whatever it's like that's something that I experienced in high schools like someone I had a crush on not being nice to me and then like having to apologize and over time like maybe a friendship builds but it's like you have to especially with like movies

for young people I feel like there is some responsibility to like really track that journey in a way that is responsible and not just like randomly putting the onus on Jamie to be the world's most forgiving person and I don't think that it's like impossible if the story were written differently or a little more deliberately I don't think it would be impossible to get Landon from the beginning of the story to a place where maybe he has meaningfully earned Jamie's trust but that's just like not how we see the story play right out there or it's or it's very choppy uh in the way it plays out i do wonder how much how much that has to do with her maybe not being available like i know that she's a teen so she can only work 10 hours a day and they shot this in 39 days so i wonder like at first i was like i think this has to go back to

the you know kind of christian ethics that they're displaying in this where it doesn't make it doesn't make sense for that storyline to really get into jamie but also maybe mandy moore just had to bounce one day because it does seem like after her leukemia diagnosis like she has that scene in the bed but really she's kind of gone from the movie at that point she's like not an active part like she only says like thank you for thank your dad and like oh look at this comet and then does she she doesn't even say i do she just like hugs him and then they're married right yeah they don't or did they even get married uh we don't know yeah why aren't we checking in to see like how she feels about like she knows that she's dying like and there's

a part where she says something like i don't need a reason to be angry with god like can we explore that's a cool like that's an interesting thing to bring up of like a crisis of faith for a priest's daughter like and it's all set up but instead yeah i feel like the movie diverts and ends up focusing on boring land and side plots that no one gives a shit about because it should be a movie that's about her and not about him right i i hate to keep bringing up religion but again like that is very jesus like like jesus had crisis of faith but he never lost the faith he would just be like uh dad what's up with this god damn it yeah uh yeah i don't know it's it's like jamie is perfect to a

fault but the the moments that you see her human side, the movie doesn't seem interested in exploring when it's like watching it back this time. Those are the most interesting moments where she is affected by how people treat her. And she is angry that she is dying. And like there are, like she does have these really human emotions

but then she yeah i guess like in the christ-like way you're describing sam she just kind of like transcends them off screen then it's like and it's all and it's all good and shane west went to medical school button right so yeah i don't know it's it's but i still like it i don't know and there's um i wanted to go through the uh production the people behind this production yes so there is people we've discussed on the show before there is a female screenwriter here her name's karen jansen uh this is another denise denovi movie who i know has come up on this show a lot she she seems so interesting yeah she was like a millennial childhood shaper big time she i think we talked about her kind of extensively because she got both little women's the winona one and the greta

gerwig one yeah made but a quick rundown in case you forgot who denise is uh some some of the hits edward scissorhands nightmare before christmas both of the little women's practical magic walk to remember what a girl wants sisterhood of the traveling pants new york minutes failed mary-kate and ashley movie uh and crazy stupid love which we just discussed on the show right so she's behind a lot a lot a lot of big movies and even i mean a lot of them are movies that are specifically marketed at teen girls but i feel like a walk to remember even stands out in her catalog because it seems like the only kind of aggressively christian movie in this yeah in this catalog and then i just wanted to shout out the the director of this movie uh an openly gay director who's who was openly gay at the time of this movie uh started as a choreographer

then switched into directing also directed uh the wedding planner uh which we've covered on the matrion yeah yeah oh yes yes yes yes the hairspray the 2007 one uh he just directed what men want which everyone didn't like and uh he is also directing something that i wasn't aware existed which is a sequel to enchanted oh hang on starring amy adams wow the final fun fact about the director whose name is adam shankman which i don't think i've said um is that he officiated sarah michelle geller and freddie prince jr's wedding isn't that fun i know they're also still married they've been married for 20 years they're in that dishwasher commercial they're what are they yeah there's a dishwasher commercial where they're like making a bunch of innuendos about doing it every night and then it's like yeah we run our dishwasher every night it saves water and like that i and this i don't

hopefully this is but like i think i can i confuse their marriage with carson daly and tara reed a lot because it's like brunette guy blonde lady and carson reed whatever that other relationship definitely didn't last but But it was a big deal. Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Three names, you know, six names between the two of them. It's destined to last. Yeah, of course. I hope they're washing dishes right now.

Also, that's really, I'm like, they have, how many years has it been since they've done a dish? Let's be real. Seriously. They use a dishwasher. That's true. That's because they use the dishwasher uh another quick behind the scenes thing this movie was edited by a woman emma e hickox shout out to emma yeah oh the last thing i wanted to say, we called attention to this, I think, in the recap. But there is a surprise kiss in this movie that's a really, really sneaky surprise kiss. Because I didn't even realize it was a surprise kiss until my second rewatch. But it's when in the play, Landon kisses Jamie after she sings her song.

Yeah. And I originally just thought that that was like a scripted part of the play that the high school student playwright wrote into the thing. But then I picked up on a line that the playwright says on my second rewatch where he's like

ooh interesting rewrite you did there Landon. And it's like oh he's referring to the kiss. Yeah he surprise kissed her on stage in front of everybody which i do feel like mandy acted out the way you would a actual surprise kiss like she didn't seem psyched yeah there is a look of shock and surprise on her face which i i guess just chalked that up to like oh this is probably her first kiss ever and that's why she's reacting that way but then I was like oh wait no that was a surprise kiss

and she wasn't expecting it and he just used the school play as an excuse to kiss her also I feel like the cringiest part of this movie for me is when he's like when she takes off her cloak to me that was the most uncomfortable moment he forgot all of his lines so ridiculous this whole i mean the fact and that was like i think one of the closer moments to like a true tropey like wow i didn't realize that mandy moore is very like western beauty standards beautiful before she removed this cloak like what are you doing um anyways yeah um does anyone have anything else they would like to talk about i have two quick things. I appreciated that they used the music to indicate bad kids, you know, in a very old man kind of way. The whole first scene, up until when the bullied kid gets there, I could barely hear because the music was blaring so loud. And then that's a

recurring theme with Landon wearing blasting headphones. And it just seemed like a get off my lawn kind of person that indicated that part of the script that made me laugh. Right, because the bad boy kids like their heavy metal rock and roll music. Yeah. And a lot of, you know, a lot of the, with that scene where they're flipping the radio thing, it's like, no mercy. Like, just just like still biblical but like the bass side of it right he's listening to his devil music and she's listening to her god music

yeah and then the only other thing was that oh two things one also in the VHS commercials there was a commercial for AOL online and in the trailer for this film, it does have below the rating, AOL keyword, a walk to remember for when we still didn't know how to search things. I just thought that was a nice time capsule. It was a simpler time.

2002. My last thing was that I kept reading about how this film was released in theaters, but then also released in a family edited version. And I could not find what that means. Like what was edited out of this version for the family edited version? Maybe the handshake between Landon and Eric where they reference smoking weed. I was wondering if they just edited out that guy and made it a fully white cast. Oh, right. Because he's always making, again, very sexually aggressive comments and jokes. So, yeah, maybe they just eliminated that character altogether.

I guess just if your fans can sound off, that was it still still bugs me i just want to know what is what was edited out yeah that's true i'm curious yeah this has to be the kind of movie this this movie i can't i wonder it's hard to describe how it's like that like i know it when i see it kind of thing but you can tell when a movie when a lot hit the cutting room floor and this movie seems like the kind of movie where a lot hit the cutting room floor they did say that they did a lot of cuts to make sure it was pg not pg-13 one of which was cutting uh Shane singing to Mandy in the hospital only hope which I would like to hear well how did that make it pg-13 is that too sexy no they said it made it too depressing oh it was too sad oh okay i thought it was like in a pg-13 movie you can only say

shit or fuck once and you can also only sing only hope one oh my god or it's adult yeah i think that was all i had all right well uh i believe the movie on some technicalities passes the bechdel test but i think that the bullying it's only it only passes in scenes where jamie is being actively bullied which now that we've talked it through is a like narratively significant thing that happens it's just sad yeah i think it is i think the passing is literally just a photoshop scene when belinda has to like get her to follow her to the cafeteria right and then like we see jamie almost make a female friend and then actually no she's not allowed to have any female friends yeah sorry Jamie actually I remember the lines now it was like Jamie you would look really pretty with makeup here come with me do you want to tic-tac

oh my god it really is like the one of the worst passes we've ever had tic-tac is even a neg right she's basically like your face is bad your is bad. Come with me so that I can keep bullying you. Yeah, come to the table so I can keep bullying you with all my cool friends. Also, like, 14 people go to that school. That just all of it's so bizarre. I feel like I saw 14 kids that went to the entire school and all of them hate Jamie you know Jamie does seem to have a friend who is the other co-star of the school play oh yeah but we don't know that character's name I don't even think we don't know anything about her she barely says anything let Jamie have a friend seriously I did love how her friend was like the perfect drama nerd yeah you know highly identifiable and it's like that seems like and you would think that like it seems like jamie is kind of like well liked by the drama club we have no

reason to think that she isn't so it's like why can't we see her thriving outside of this relationship with shane west a little bit and also you would now that i'm like wouldn't they have visited her as she was dying they appeared to be her friends right i will say it sounded like she had kept her diagnosis secret from everyone from outside of her father that's true so by the wedding do they know she's sick i don't know i mean they know because of the gossip like shane west kind of blew up her privacy. Right, because all his friends find out about it. God damn it.

Because they all come around and they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I was such a jerk before. I know that my personal experience, not with cancer, but with, like, major injuries and stuff, is, like, I did have a tendency to isolate. I still do. Also, it could be depression and stuff. But, like, that's, like, me inferring that is her reasoning. like i did have a tendency to isolate i still do also it could be depression and stuff but like that's like me inferring that is her reasoning it isn't the only thing we know from the movie is that

she was like i found out two years ago i didn't want people to treat me weird and i was cool until i met you right right ah so much unexplained right but if yeah but if we knew more about her character or saw things more from her point of view, we would have a better sense of what the circumstances were there. So we just don't know. Because we don't even know she was really unpopular. The popular kids just didn't like her. Right. But it's like, yeah, it's you can be disliked by popular kids and still be the coolest kid in the drama club. Like, or that star club that she ran yeah that we saw that one scene well that kind of like brings us to the nipple scale because i i feel like ultimately for me uh this movie would have worked a lot better for me if it had been centered around her

and not landon you don't even need to get rid of Landon for my, I'm like, okay, it's a hetero teen romance, whatever. Like, but, but there's no reason other than the movie.

The story is being told by Nicholas Sparks, his authorial voice that the story is being told by Landon at all. Like I don't, it shouldn't be told by him. He can be there, but it can't be his story. I don't know. Which, again, it makes her burn, his sister's

burn so much. Like, I don't want you telling the world about my life. I'm not going to read this interpretation you had of me. Aye, aye, aye. So, shall we bust out that nipple scale? Let's do it zero to five nipples based on

examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. I'm going to give this movie, I don't know, like a one and a half, maybe a two, maybe somewhere split in the middle of that. I don't know. It's not high. It really adheres to a lot of the tropes of like the teen romance genre of like a boy negging and being cruel to a girl and wearing her down when he does decide that she's worthy of him and then falling in love and still being shitty to her a lot of the time and yeah the fact that like you said jamie it's that it's told from his point of view even though he doesn't have an interesting perspective on this narrative at all and i would much rather learn like know about what a like very devoutly christian girl how she feels about having a terminal illness that's a way more interesting

story i don't give a shit about landon like anyway so yeah i think there's a lot of missteps at least though it doesn't fall into the territory of like a million racist and homophobic jokes that get made in a lot of comparable movies of this era but like obviously that bar is so low that like the movie doesn't deserve to be congratulated for not doing that right but that but that's why i was like oh it's not as problematic as i thought it was going to be they compressed it all into that one person of color into eric yeah exactly um justice for eric justice for eric so yeah that it's it's not the worst example we've seen but it's certainly not great so i'll give it i'll give it one and a half nipples i'll give one nipple to jamie loftus i was gonna say this episode uh has been very stressful for me overall because

i keep being like what um and i'll get also i'll give one nipple to you jamie and my half nipple to and i wait how does the song go i'm thinking of listening to this and we're all singing it in wildly different keys and they're like i'm gonna have to like edit it so it actually syncs up. I think we're like, could you please pitch correct all three of us that we're singing? Yeah, of course. I'll put some auto-tune onto at least my voice because I have the worst singing voice. Yeah, so that amazing song gets my half nipple. And yeah, one and a half. Yeah, I'll do one and a half as well.

I feel like I agree with where you're coming from, Caitlin. I feel like this movie like shouldn't be congratulated for what it dodges. I think truly the one thing that I felt like, oh, this movie seems to be intentionally dodging this trope is the fact that Jamie doesn't get this big makeover at any point her core you know she doesn't do a like sandy from greece thing where she just like her personality changes and at the end all of the asshole popular kids think she's cool and you're like why are we here um but you know like jamie retains her core values and qualities and is loved for them which i feel like is a generally more positive message than most teen movies were giving us at that time for sure that is i think like the main strength of the movie which i think i read was the director's hard choice like he made that

a strong rule like i don't want to do a reveal i don't want to do adam shankman all right yeah that makes me really happy like yeah i i totally i mean we've we've i think criticized this movie pretty from a lot of angles um ultimately i it holds up way better than i thought it would this will not be the last time i watched this movie it feels it's just like a very comfort movie to watch and yeah you know her dream is to get married well gross whatever right i wish that we had seen a more a better characterization of landon's character and that it wasn't so centered around him because outside of the fact that it's not really fair to jamie's character also, like everything else going on in Landon's life is really boring to me.

And I don't care about him and his father, except I love the scene where he's mad at his father for not knowing the cure to cancer. That's hilarious. But I don't care. It's also another example of like a male redemption story. And not that those can't be done well and aren't valuable, but I don't think this was done

well yeah nor was this redemption earned to me so i think it could have been earned which is kind of frustrating uh it could have been earned but it wasn't right the way that the story plays out but iconic mandy moore performance love her love her high school soprano voice that is literally a voice you would hear on stage in a high school is mandy moore style like she is not singing from the diaphragm at all like it is it is i love it those were some of the things my voice teacher was trying to correct right they're like try not to sound like mandy moore but it's so easy to sound if you just i don't know i highly recommend mandy moore is one of my favorite karaoke go-tos because it's so easy and it's so effective i'm sure so i'm gonna give it one and a

half and i'll give one to jamie sullivan and then i'll give the other half to Daryl Hannah's wig. Oh, yes. Good. Sam, what about you? Yeah. I mean, I still on this viewing where I also did, you know, an obsessive deep dive. I'm really just taking away and wanting to rewatch the film again from the lens of you know the brother of a dying woman who's obsessed with her husband who's going out of his way to marry a dead person I feel

like that or dying person um I feel like that really makes everything make a little more sense um and I you know I I am gonna go high I'm gonna give it two nipples and i'm gonna give those nipples to every person who got horny during this movie as a kid or as an adult or whatever um because i do feel like you know i i don't know how i feel as an adult in the entertainment industry about there being real chemistry between a 16 17 year old and a 23 year old but it is it is palpable and for me it was a big uh bisexual awakening and i can't imagine i'm the only one sure you're not yeah it's like it's just that the industry should not present opportunities for that to be the case for a right underage actor and a of age actor that should never be a thing where they're on

screen together in a romantic context yep and where the crew is you you know, aware, everyone's aware of a romance forming IRL and not inhibiting that because it helps the performance. Right. So if you had an awakening, it's not your fault. But it is the fault of the production for making those casting choices. Your Sue, anyway. A walk to to remember maybe it will make you feel better to know that this movie made mandy moore get back into her religion so if you're feeling guilty about her horniness it seems like she might have she got she got too horny and then she's like i need to go i need to find God again.

Yeah. She wasn't, the horniness didn't take her down a wicked path. I love Mandy Moore. I hope she's not shitty because I just, oh, I love her. Although she was famously for a while watching me sleep, which I didn't care for. That's kind of, that's kind of mean. And she's never apologized for that, which I do think is very telling of her character I did very briefly meet her one time she did a show at nerd melt oh and I saw her and showed her where the green room was so was she nice she was very nice she seems so nice to me in that moment so that means she's nice to everyone all

the time forever that is how that works thank you so much for being here sam this was such a blast i'm so glad we did this movie thank you for having me i'm so honored to be here this is one of my favorite podcasts and i love having these discussions irl or on pod and i appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to kind of process this film now as an adult oh gosh anytime anytime come on back oh wait i had one more uh connection to titanic oh yes so we have the hot car we have somebody dying slowly. And yeah, Switchfoot mentions Titanic. Those are my three.

Okay, got it. Yeah. It's canon. Well, I would say there aren't enough Titanic connections in this movie, but that's just me. Yeah, I could have stood to have a couple more. And there was room for it in the plot they were like weren't they seaside or somehow there were boats i mean there were there were boats there's water they go into the water they belly some characters belly flop into the water in both movies there is there are there are

nearly near fatal belly flops and there's a and there's a a wearing down relationship that we're rooting for. And who is Belinda but Cal Hockley played by Billy Zane? Wow. Makes you think. Billy Zane should have been in this movie. Alfred Molina could have played the priest's dad. No offense Peter Coyote.

But he was a priest in Chocolat. So I guess he was like I've done that. No, he was the mayor in Chocol played a he was a priest in shakala so i guess he was like no wait no he was the mayor in shakala he was a priest in the da vinci code back to da vinci yes oh my god langdon langdon the da vinci code is apple never forget the da vinci code was the word apple god i'm never i'm going to get over that. Sorry. Sam, where can people follow you online and check out your stuff?

Yeah, I do live events, online events this last year. But, you know, as things start to open, maybe more live events in New York and L.A. as it's safe. My shows, my website is nakedcomedy.org. My Twitter is at naked underscore comedy. My Insta is at naked comedy. And yeah, support me if you can. I try to do inclusive shows of people from all backgrounds. I try to make sure that my performers are paid and I just am a solo entrepreneur trying to make a modest very modest living while supporting my fellow uh comedy friends because comedy inspires me one of the greatest in the game also to be clear just to set the record straight I named naked comedy after naked juice so it's like

authentic so just so if you're like who's this naked comedy chick like criticizing christianity and talking about being horny actually that's not that's not the vibe of all my stuff yeah uh you can find us online on all of the platforms on twitter on instagram not on tiktok and probably never on tiktok honestly i don't i refuse to download another application so you can find us on bechtel cast on instagram and twitter you can sign up for our patreon aka matreon in which you will get two bonus episodes a month for only a mere $5. And there's almost 100 episodes hanging out there on the Matreon. There's a lot going on.

I appreciate when you guys release a few Matreon episodes to the free feed. I didn't know that the Matreon was primarily recorded in bed. I feel like that's a big selling point. Hopefully we can get back there because it's been a year since we've recorded Matreons in Caitlin's bed specifically. Yeah, but you know,

we'll get back there. It's been a really long time. It's been 84 years. It's been 84 years. And we can still smell the fresh paint. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We'll be here next week. Bye-bye.

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. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers.

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

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