The Bechdel Cast - All About Eve with Sara June

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Caitlin and Jamie fasten their seat belts for this bumpy episode on All About Eve with special guest Sara June!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Check Sara out at www.heysarajune.com.Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline 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, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Caitlin.

Yes, Jamie? Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy podcast. Funny. Now that's the level of writing that gets you nominated for an oscar wow i wasn't expecting that jamie you didn't see the twist coming did you you thought i was gonna say ride i know i didn't night no night you thought i was gonna say night oh it is a bumpy night because she's she's just saying like i'm gonna get so fucked up and ruin everyone's night and she's right

i've never heard someone promise that in advance and quite the same like it's it's oh it's gorgeous iconic she's an icon so uh welcome to the bechdel cast this is our movie podcast where we analyze the representation of women in movies using the bechdel test as a jumping off point and that of, is a media metric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. And it requires that two female identifying characters who have names, they have to speak to each other. And that conversation has to be about something other than a man. For instance, ruining each other's lives is a topic that passes handily. I'm so excited to be covering this movie today. We do not very frequently cover movies of

this era, but it is a pretty common request as far as older movies go. It's one of my faves. We're covering all about Eve today. We are, and we have a special guest. Again, we're still in the quarantine, but we're all videoing in from different locations. I don't remember life before this anymore. Who does? But we're very excited for our guest today. She is an amazing comedian and director. It's Sarah June. Hello.

Wow, thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's our pleasure. It is tough to be on Zoom, but thank you so much for continuing to do this podcast. Oh, you know, what else are we going to do right now? What is your history and relationship with the movie All About Eve? I probably first watched All About Eve when I was in high school and I was in this phase where I found out you could get DVDs from the library and my library had a great, great DVD selection. So I watched a lot of movies that were really good

that I did not understand. Hell yeah. Because I was a child. And then I watched some movies that were really good that I did understand, even though I was a child. And one of those some movies that were really good that I did understand, even though I was a child. And one of those movies was all about Eve, baby. Nice.

This is like a good movie to first see when you're a teenager. I feel like it hit, like, and it probably, I would guess, like, hits different at different stages of life, too. It also informed, like, everything I thought I knew about the theater. I was like, the theater is crazy, sexy, is crazy sexy dangerous British right and they hate television I like I I think that like I mean you're always

supposed to think that Eve is like pure evil but I my first like viewing of this I do remember being like Eve Eve's got a good head on her shoulders she's I mean it's like i love i always love margo to death forever but i didn't have as much um empathy for her the first time as as i do 10 years on i'm now closer to margo's age than eve's age so i'm like eve that slimy little rat i'm mar. Is single white female in her there. It's, it's yeah. Yeah. This movie came out both before single white female and before mean girls.

So if you need modern references, those are them. But, and the favorite, I think the favorite is like, I have, I have some, one of the writers of,

of the favorite was like, yeah, this is like a lot. There's a lot of all about even this. I remember I read that interview where they were like it's like if all about eve was um and then there was it was also based on like uh sorry i'm getting off topic but it was also based on an actual historical event which was yeah the queen making this random maid attendant of hers her the purser just like out of nowhere pretty cool pretty cool stuff you love to hear it love to hear it all right so uh yeah that's my history with all about eve

nice jamie what's your history i love this movie a lot i think i saw it i think i probably this probably is a movie i saw like my freshman year in college this seems like around the correct time just to have seen this movie um that's a guess but i've seen this movie many times now it's weird i haven't like thought about it from a i mean it's weird it's like you can't not think about this movie from a feminist standpoint which is kind of great because it's like mostly women interacting with each other so you can't not but this was my first time watching it with like a Bechtel whatever helmet is it a helmet that we wear um with that I mean in the in the quarantine yes but yeah it's one of it's one of my favorite um I think probably one of my favorite

movies ever but one definitely one of my favorite older movies uh I love I was like uh when I was a kid I was like a TCM head and Judy Garland and Betty Davis were like my gals I love I was like when I was a kid I was like a TCM head and Judy Garland and Betty Davis were like my gals I love Betty Davis and her performance in this is fucking incredible I mean everyone's performance in this is great I love this movie it's so weird because you're like okay the fact that you know someone is

so powerful that they can just be cruel and awful to everyone is not a good thing but I do like it when it's Betty Davis doing it when Betty Davis is cruel and terrible to everyone is not a good thing but I do like it when it's Betty Davis doing it when Betty Davis is cruel and terrible to everyone she's ever met I love it I think it's cool Caitlin what's your history with this movie I too saw it probably around freshman year when I was in you know I was a starry-eyed film student much like Eve Harrton you know trying to just consume as much cinema as i could and what that meant for me was i would watch like three dvds that i borrowed from the library a day and absorb none of them literally oh okay okay you're not even i was like you're literally

updated eve like 2000s era Eve would be watching DVDs. She would be like, I'm going to figure this out. Right, right, right. So this is one of those movies that I had on in the background and didn't apparently retain anything about it, which is a shame because it's a really good movie and there's lots to talk about. I am very excited to talk about it the dialogue in this

movie is so smart and sharp and tight and clever and so well written it's incredible mankowitz yeah he got it i mean there's there's we'll we'll talk about the shortcomings of the story at lark but like the fucking script is it's so good it's like every character is so distinct even like smaller characters that normally i feel like movies of any era would just kind of make a throwaway like even marilyn monroe's character has like a small arc and she says funny stuff and like it's just so good i love it yeah let's dive into the recap. The movie starts with a young woman named Eve Harrington. That's Anne Baxter. She is a big fan of the theater and an even bigger fan of an actress named Margot Channing. And that is our queen, Betty Davis, who is, you know, a star of the stage. And one night, Karen Richards, that's a friend of Margo's. They are friends because her husband, her husband, Lloyd Richards,

is the playwright of the production that Margo is currently starring in. But this woman, Karen, sees eve outside of the theater and had noticed her there like waiting night after night so she decides to invite her in and introduce her to margo right which is like okay this is the first act of kindness from a woman to a woman in the movie and she'll live to regret it i love that that that's like, she's like, oh, let me do something nice. And then the movie is like, biggest mistake, you ruin everyone's lives.

Yeah, let this be a lesson that women shouldn't be nice to each other. Right. Never mix with the commoners. Right. Right, that too, it's a classist thing. No women in trench coats shall enter.

So they invite her in. They're all chatting and Eve tells them her story about how she came to love the theater, about how she had this husband who died in the war, and how she started following Margot's career. And Margot is very smitten by all of this and by eve and she has eve move into her house and start working for her as an assistant more or less i will say a second assistant she already has an assistant right birdie oh my god birdie is like the feminist icon of feminist icon birdie coonan right well because it isn't like birdie the main, she's her main gal. And then Eve is, yeah, like she's doing, it doesn't even, like Eve is doing more than she's asked. Eve is acting the way we're told as 18 year old interns that you should ask.

Right. They're like, invent tasks for yourself. Make yourself seem useful, even if you're not doing shit. And that's kind of what she's doing. A million percent. Yes. And this is kind of the start of her beginning to cross some boundaries in her relationship with Margot.

And then after that, we see Eve maybe kind of flirting with Margot's boyfriend, Bill Samson, who Bettyis was having an affair with on set and would marry and was married to for 10 years yep yep yep excuse me yeah they got they they like dumped their spouses at the time for each other and he was her last husband i know they have great chemistry too it's like that relationship is I mean fucked up stuff but but it's like I mean they got they got chemistry you know what they do he daddies her from the very first scene he does yeah he doms her so hard and so immediately she's like what do you do and he's like let me tell you about the theater kid like and she just cowers and that's after he has come into the room

and called margo like a trash heap or something like that yeah he's like you look like shit i have a flight in 45 minutes it's like peak 1950s writing it's like peak black and white movie where they're like what are you doing woman you look like look like garbage. And she's like, oh, garbage, poo-poo. And then she just does what he says. But yeah, and then he ignores Eve a couple different times. I mean, these are as close as you can get to being like, oh, that sucks. But I don't know. Eve is smart.

Honestly, when I saw that scene this time, I had never thought about this dynamic before. But the fact that he comes in immediately talks to Margo and only Margo even though he's like you look like should I have a flight let's go and like sees the other girl barely says hi to her and then fully only

pays attention to Margo I think is a smart guy who's in a relationship with a narcissist that's a guy who's like if I say hi to this other woman in the room she will have my head yeah i mean there i i wonder i wonder yeah like their relationship is just like bizarre all around but there's like watching that scene with eve this i haven't seen this movie in maybe two years or so but watching that scene it's like i feel like everyone has been even that situation

too we're just like someone more powerful than you walks into a room and it's like who is this okay great anyways the other most powerful person in the room I'm gonna be mean to you and then leave and you're like oh yeah I've yeah and like I'm talking to you but also kind of performing for everybody yeah yeah well and then Margo's doing that too to the point where Birdie has to be like this is making me physically ill i'm leaving i have to go into the bathroom that's what i love is they're all doing this like you there no you there and then she's just like oh brother she's doing like yeah she's doing like a like old-timey brooklyn like character actor bit in the middle of this transatlantic accent scene and you're just like

yeah well yeah sure this is what they're like sparkling with sparkling wit i'm like this sparkling it's amazing and then birdie is like what a load of bullcrap i'm like she's right oh she's the best birdie is amazing she is and she uh i wish that she wasn't like written out after whatever the beginning of act two but what can you do when i was researching the production of this movie they said that they had to cut like 50 pages from the script. So hopefully there was some birdie that hit the cutting room floor. And originally she was supposed to, she was going to be instead of that girl. What was it like Phoebe at the end?

It's birdie. And she comes. What a twist. Crown. Yeah. So it's at this point in the story when margot starts to get increasingly more and more annoyed with eve because of all the boundaries she is crossing methodically it's she's a master manipulator but we don't know that yet quite as as an audience we're only

starting to see hints of it we start on the side of like everyone's calling margo paranoid and we're like margo is paranoid right oh but the tide will turn um so one night right before a homecoming slash birthday party um that is being thrown for bill margo and bill have this big fight about eve because margo is insecure about her age and she's worried that um eve who is considerably younger than margo will replace margo and then cut to the party. We get the famous line, the fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night. And we're like, woo. We're like, and then it is.

Love it. Yeah, she delivers on the promise. Oh, yes. She gets wasted. My girl gets shit-faced. She gets shit-faced. And then she still gives the most articulate pithy put downs of the entire like oh what everyone wishes they sounded like when they're blackout drunk is how

she sounds that's how everyone like feels like they are talking when they're being a mean drunk but they're actually like throwing up do not say this to me i am as witty as benny davis i'm like i think i sound like this after 500 white claws and i'm just like hey everybody really cool but also like i don't care but also leave me alone i have to ask the dj to play the same song five times in a row i love that like and and the way that and this is also like the costume designs in this movie are Edith Head, so they're fucking amazing. And the way that they, like the old Hollywood way to indicate that a woman is drunk is just like slide her sleeve off her shoulder and tussle her hair. And you're like, oh, she's wasted. And like holding a very full martini glass perfectly and never spilling it while being like darling and like

you know slurring your retorts she's a star she's a star right and then eve weasels her way into being margot's understudy unbeknownst to margot and then there's this audition that happens with Marilyn Monroe's character, a young actress named Miss Caswell. Eve shows up instead and reads opposite her in this audition. It turns out that Eve is an amazing actor who blows everybody away, including this theater critic named Addison DeWitt. Which is another perfect old timetimey theater critic name. Right? Never has there actually been a person with a name like this. It's great.

You get it? You get what he does? You get what he's like? His name's DeWitt. Do you guys get it? He's DeWitt. Mankiewicz is like Sorkin-style jerking himself off. And he's like, oh, there it is. DeWitt.

So Eve being awesome at acting makes Margot very jealous. And she shows up at the theater after this audition. And she has this outburst. Lloyd is like, you're a horrible actress. And then Bill is like. Lloyd literally compares. He objectifies her to the point where he's is like you're a horrible actress and then bill literally compares he like objectifies her to the point where he's like you're a piano look okay wait i i will say this he doesn't say you're a horrible actress he says something almost worse which is you're too old to play the part that i wrote and that you've been playing for like at this point weeks months now

you know just to say like it's not that you're bad you're just not young enough I think I hate Lloyd the most out of everyone in this movie because Lloyd is just he's so infuriating to me I feel like he kind of gets off like like he's made to look so egotistical yeah like I feel like this okay so like men in this movie are like bad but it's more it's written more that they're clueless rather than they are making the rules but like lloyd could write a part for margo that's her age he just won't do it he's acting like my hands are tied i can only write about 20 year olds and you're like you have the power to not do that i hate lloyd so much yeah also like if you know

if you are lucky enough to know what kind of an actor you're going to be working with then you should write a part for that actor you know right why would you not oh whatever i hate lloyd karen karen defense force karen can do better for sure yeah so he sucks and then bill is talking to margot and he's like you know you're being paranoid i love you but this is the last straw i gotta say goodbye and then he leaves her which i think is healthy i i do think he's kind of like acting i i like bill some of the time a lot of the time he does gaslight her quite a bit or at least he he does cause her paranoid without um ever really truly listening to her and her feelings so i think that bill is like

cut too much slack but but i do agree sorry that him getting out of their relationship when it becomes that volatile i don't really fault him for it and neither does Margo yeah it's like it's like oh yeah that's a good boundary to have you know like they're not married you know and he's like I agree that he's like he calls her paranoid which is like not okay but at that point like when somebody is like lying to you as much as Margo does and refusing to listen to you as much as you're refusing to listen to them it's like all right I'm out I don't know it's yeah there's a we'll talk about Bill because I have like mixed feelings towards him and I feel like maybe I cut him too much slack because I really like the actor and

the fact that he and Betty Davis got married oh well we'll get there also he like violently throws margo down on a bed which is obviously not okay but like pretty typical for an old hollywood film to see a man being violent toward women like we also see addison slap eve in the face you know which is very yikes right but anyway um so we're at the point where you know margo's boyfriend has left her friends are upset with her and then a short time later when margo is returning home from a weekend getaway with karen and lloyd some car trouble causes her to miss her show that night and it's implied that karen drained the gas out of the tank of the car on purpose so that margo would miss the show right to help eve so with margo being gone eve her understudy steps in performs the part and dazzles the crowd and wouldn't you know it a bunch of theater critics just happened to be at the show

that night and they're also all very impressed with eve including addison do it yes so now that eve is making her way into the spotlight she tries to seduce bill sampson but he's like wait a minute i'm still in love with Margot and then he goes back to Margot. Karen has also forgiven Margot and feels super guilty about what she did to make her miss the performance and then Addison DeWitt has written this review about how awesome Eve was in the play how awful Margot is and in review, Eve talks about how pathetic it is for older actresses to play parts for younger women and how, you know, older women are bitter and they don't want to support younger actresses. Then everyone's like, oh, I guess maybe Margot

wasn't being paranoid. Right. Right. Except Lloyd is still being a piece of shit because he's, he defends Eve. I hate Lloyd. Lloyd's just horny. I hate him. Lloyd is horny. And I also hate him. So Lloyd is defending Eve and he's like,

oh, well Eve claims that Addison put those words in her mouth. And then he's like, and what if Eve is in my new play performing the lead role of Cora? And then his wife, Karen, is like, listen, Eve is a rat scumbag and you will not cast her in your play. play yeah then that night when margot bill karen and lloyd are out drinking some wine at a like rich people establishment eve is also there a club the club in fact the club was it what is it betty davis is like where the elite come to meet you're like yeah sure great sure whatever bitch you are drunk again eve is also there and she sends over a note asking karen to meet her in the ladies room and she does very titanic right make it count meet me by the clock and then they actually go

and have a really cool party below deck no um what happens instead is that eve and karen chat and eve starts out by apologizing but then her tone shifts and then she starts blackmailing karen because ann baxter is so good in that scene she's oh yeah she when she puts her cards on the table every time it's just like oh so good because she knows that karen had something to do with Margot missing the show that night. And it turns out all Eve wants from Karen is for her to tell her husband, her husband, Lloyd, to cast Eve in his new play. And that apparently happens because we cut to Lloyd and Eve rehearsing for the play. Bill is directing it. Passionately.

Right. And then it seems like Eve is trying to get close to Lloyd and she's like, hey, Addison, did you know that Lloyd is going to leave Karen and that he and I are going to get married? And Addison's like, oh, actually, no, that's not going to happen. You're not going to marry him because you belong to me. I know about your real past. Ugh. And others, it's so overdramatic, it shouldn't work, and yet it does.

Right. Like, it's so much. So then he blackmails her because it turns out she's been lying about a bunch of stuff and then we cut to her accepting this award for her acting but like everyone hates her margo is there karen is there they're like this fucking asshole and everyone else in the room is a very old man who is clapping heartily right they're just like yeah it's so good and then else in the room is a very old man who is clapping heartily right they're just like yeah it's so good and then eve wins the award and and and margo's mean to her one last time oh and eve gives a speech where she thanks karen and lloyd and margo and then they're just like stony faced. I love it. And then Eve goes home and a young woman who is obsessed with her, much like Eve was obsessed with Margot at the beginning of the movie.

This young woman is in her house, has like snuck in, broke into her house. And then she's like, oh, my gosh, Eve Harrington, I love you so much. You're so awesome. And we're like, oh, no, the cycle is going to repeat itself. Oh, I have so many thoughts on the ending. Oh, I have so many thoughts on the ending. So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and then we will come right 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, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. 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 100% 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, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself.

Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God.

I would love it. I have to watch Lost. 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 a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi. Not hawk the 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 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can we start by talking about the ending? Is that too much? Let's do it. Okay, so this was the first time I had really given some critical thought to the ending of the movie because i feel like screenplay wise it's great because he brings you all the way back to one and the quote-unquote villain of the movie is getting her comeuppance

and it like i never really questioned it before but my main criticism of this movie that i still am gonna love forever and ever but i think my main criticism of it is that like that ending heavily implies that like the problem the whole time is eve and it's am it's ambitious women uh ambitious women are the problem and ambitious and women are like naturally inclined to be catty towards one another and to be vicious towards one another and it's not like they're this movie does not really interrogate the system that they are put in and the positions they're put in and the fact that they are told they can't be useful after a certain age and the fact that there's only so many stars that can exist that are women so one

does have to displace another just because of the way it's been set up and so at the end by having that other woman come for eve and you're like oh oh, Eve's going to get what's coming to her. It's like but, you know, for for all the men of the story. I mean, I think this is probably this is realistic for its time. But for all the men of the story, things stay status quo. Right. And will for forever. Yeah. There's never the implication that like Lloyd or Bill are rivals. Right. Right. They don't have their friends.

They're like BFFs. Yeah. Right. They don't have to be. They're friends. They're like BFFs. Yeah. They're like great collaborators and close friends. I mean, I guess the difference is one is a writer and one is a director. But seriously, it's still not. I mean, and this is one really great thing about the movie. We don't hear almost anything about those guys and their careers outside of this. Right.

Which is good because it's like, who care? Like they're yeah they're not the interesting i didn't even think of that yeah like we know bill goes to direct a movie but we don't know if the movie is good or anything yeah we don't know anything about that movie yeah we don't even know what it's about it doesn't matter because margo's not in it so it doesn't fucking matter because she's the center of the universe it's very clear i mean and it's like i don't even really want to knock the writing too much for creating this reality because it was very reflective of the time and still now it's like it doesn't really matter how good the stuff they do is we don't actually know if Floyd is a

good writer but like the world is always going to make enough space for them so it doesn't even like they don't even have to be good the only male character I want to know more about is Addison I would watch a fucking franchise about Addison DeWitt just like Frazier yes he really is what if he was Frazier's no he's not Frazier's dad that's Martin I would buy him as one of Frazier's cousins for sure yeah I can't believe I just insulted Martin Crane like that I'm so sorry oh but yeah come on but yeah this was the first time i ever thought of the ending as like i mean it is like it's just kind of it's the thesis statement of the movie of like this thing that's happening with these women is cyclical which might be true but it doesn't examine really why that is i mean

i want to describe the the literal final shot which is the young woman phoebe the young woman who we are meant to interpret is going to replace Eve, wearing Eve's cape and holding her award and looking at herself in the mirror and pretending that she's accepting the award and that it's her cape and her crown. And Eve has this three-way mirror so that you see all these endless rows of Phoebe's accepting the award and bowing.

It's a beautiful shot. And you might as well just write in text on the screen such is woman because it's like look at this endless literally endless infinite cycle of not only identical but disposable yeah am i reading too much into this no no i think that is what the intention is probably oh it's i love this movie okay that's what i had to say that's what i had to say about the ending i just had never thought of it uh from yeah from that angle before yeah it's it's pretty funny because like she that girl phoebe is like hey i'm president of the eve harrington fan club and eve's like yeah okay she's at no point is she like how did you get in here no

but but it's it is cool that i mean eve gets so defensive right away when that was her lit i mean a year ago how much time passes in this movie it's unclear it's less it's less i think some of the voiceover the voiceover is like wow it was just last april or last october like it's it implies that it's only been like i think less than a year 10 months yeah it's been like kind of a short amount of time i mean you gotta hand it to eve um part of me wanted to interpret the ending as kind of like a cautionary tale of like this is what happens if you're a woman who exploits and tramples on other women. But you're right, Jamie. It's not fair that ambitious women are shown as being the villains.

Because, and there's so much to talk about, but there's this theme that only pops up every so often in the movie. But with Margot, you have this powerful woman who has a solid career. She is very successful. But every once in a while, she'll be like, well, here's the thing, though. A woman is not complete without a man. Yeah. There's a conversation toward the end when she and Bill have gotten engaged.

And she's like, I'm going to be a married woman. And Lloyd's like, well, what does that have to do with anything and Margo says you know it means I've I'll finally have a life to live I don't have to play parts I'm too old for just because I've got nothing to do with my nights and it's like right oh my gosh that's so bleak like I know it's like is that is that what you were doing right it's so and it's like they're my understanding is that that attitude was kind of reflective of betty davis's feelings she never had a desire to like leave performing but it like she also historically in her life had like would try to fill areas of her life through marriages and stuff like that and like there i don't know i read a whole thing that was just

like drawing comparisons from Betty Davis's life to Margo. There's a lot of one-to-one things. That part, like that gave me a little bit of pause too. I don't know how to feel about it because I do think that it ends up being maybe a little bit too far of like, it's like a deeply heteronormative,

like a woman is not a woman without it. I mean, you know, we're like, we're basically, we're quoting the script here where she goes, woman is not a woman without i mean you know we're like we're basically we're quoting the script here where she goes you're not a woman if you don't have a husband essentially right um she says that you you can be a lot of things but you're not a woman so like in one sense she doesn't discount her accomplishments but she doesn't see them as

being compatible with her sex yeah and also and we you know we assume her gender you know she's she's perfect she's like until you perform the heteronormativity of being a woman in a relationship with a man you're not a woman you're just like essentially a a laborer but like one without sex you know she's she's masculinized yeah but also desexualized heavy yeah no i totally very heavy and and the the way that i mean and it's also like she decides to she's she's like full-on oprah and stedman she's like i don't want to marry you like i love you i don't want to marry you which is a kind of like radical idea up until like pretty recently and he couldn't handle it and he ends up getting

his way with that and that's never really interrogated that much and it's implied that her making that change of heart improves her life a lot is her kind of yes you know conceding to his wishes there is a little part of me where i feel like and i don't i don't want to like give mankowitz more credit for thinking than he's actually doing but he's a really good writer I don't know but I've kind of viewed part of that of like Margot only has so many options in her time even though she's the most powerful as powerful as a woman could be in this time she only has so many alternatives to being an actress and it doesn't even seem like she doesn't want to be an actress

she just doesn't want to put up with all the bullshit that she's going to be subjected to as she gets older and so I there's a way I can see it I still don't like the way that they go with it but there's a way I can see it where she's like okay well what's my alternative this okay then I'll throw myself into this 100% and hopefully it will end better for me which is bleak it's a really shitty choice that she has to make but you understand why she makes the one she makes right because it's like I mean there's unfortunately there in 1950 there's no way that her acting career was going to get easier as she gets older you mean yeah yeah like I mean eve or no eve and that was true for Betty Davis like I mean right because so this movie is largely about a woman who is very insecure about aging

who worries that she will be replaced by a younger woman both in her romantic life and her professional life then her fears are actualized when a younger woman shows up exploits those insecurities and then like weasels her way in and tries to replace her and then you know the various consequences of that so it's another movie that focuses on an antagonistic relationship between two women who are in competition with each other i I do think that this, especially for the time this came out in, I think the movie does a fairly decent job of exploring like why women be in competition with each other because of the through line of like Margot's insecurity about aging. But I also agree, Jamie, you know, you suggested that the movie doesn't really go so far as to say well why would a woman be insecure about aging

well because like men run society and men don't deem women getting older as something that's socially acceptable she's like why doesn't lloyd write her apart like why doesn't lloyd write her apart it would be so easy why doesn't lloyd just fucking write her apart that would take eve out of the equation entirely they're like oh well this is an insurmountable problem that betty davis has to look 20 yeah she's like i have to say this though upon this most recent reviewing i was really really struck by how good eve is at doing what she wants to do because like the the opening scenes where they meet her i mean you know like basically one of the first scenes where karen meets her outside the theater takes you know says hey you

know i've seen you outside the theater every night and she's like yeah you know i watch the play every night and then i stand outside the dressing room so i can maybe see margo go in and out and it's so pathetic and it's fucking raining and it's she's all wet and karen is like oh my god and then she gets to come inside and meet margo and margo mainly doesn't pay attention to her for a while and then when she finally and eve doesn't say anything she's invisible she's just like a fly on the wall and then finally when there's like a time where everybody's been introduced to eve she gives this big fucking monologue that we later find out is full of lies about her upbringing. And Bertie calls it out right away.

Bertie's like, wow, what is that like character actor line she gives? It's like everything but the Kittren. The bloodhounds nipping at her. Everything but the bloodhounds. Yeah, it was great but the thing that she does in these early scenes that i hadn't really noticed up until now how perfectly she does it is she targets what she knows about those people and their insecurities and she gives it to them so like margo is insecure about her own power. And so Eve defers to her.

She's like, you're the queen. I'm obsessed with you. I'll do anything you say. Run me over with a car. And Margo was like, I kind of like this girl because that's like who Margo is. She wants somebody who is like Margo is the most important person in the universe. So like Eve fucking works to get everybody on her side before she really starts fucking up their lives. And like Bill, you know, she's like, hey, let me ask you a question about theater.

He jumps down her throat. She immediately is like, that's OK. I don't mind. I like it, daddy. And he's like, hmm, I kind of like this girl. Like everybody she meets, she is exactly what they want her to be. And, you know, that's a lot of work when she tells the story of her life she sets it up so that margo and the play aged in wood literally saved

her life and who doesn't want to hear that who doesn't want to hear i was at my lowest point and you and your art saved me right like i it's just it's so she is incredibly smart and she's like determined in a very funny old-timey way but she's very determined to change her like station in life which a lot of us are and it's like you she's trying to live out the american dream and she's willing to ruin people's lives over it and it sounds sounds like I mean, we don't know what Margot was like as a young woman. But we do know that Margot also started as like a lower middle class girl and escalated to the huge star that she is. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that Margot was once using this playbook, which I think it would be kind of interesting to know. But I think like Eve, I mean, I know Eve is the quote unquote villain of the story.

But even watching it, even if you don't interpret Eve as the villain of the story, it is like cool to see, like you're saying, Sarah, how she uses that playbook, which it's like in many ways. And it's like frustrating to watch her have to kind of like convince these mostly male figures and Margot that she is worthy and to get the information she needs to get to where she wants to be. But then you kind of see at a much lower, less scary level, Marilyn Monroe's character has to do the exact same thing where she's like brought out and told immediately, like, you have to be nice to this old man. If you want to be successful, do it. And then people get

frustrated with her because she's good at it but it's like you told her that that was the only option she had like what else is she supposed to do yeah like Addison DeWitt brings her to Margot's party to flirt with Max yeah to flirt with Max because Max is a producer and Max is just like oi my stomach you know like he's that hollywood producer we all know and love from the 40s i guess uh he's like i need i need digestive aids you're like yeah get this man some tums yeah you're like what the fuck does this guy do and then addison just as goes okay well here's max go basically you know pull your dress down off one shoulder and go you know hang out with him a little bit and she's like okay just go show me your tits okay but it's like

she's not given and and it's also what i like about i mean there's not too much to say about marilyn monroe's character she's only in two scenes but she does have that little arc where i think she tells him like outright she's just like oh why are all of these guys so gross like she basically says i hate that i have to do this. And he's like, well, you have to do it. So that's showbiz baby. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I appreciate that the screenwriting goes to like demonstrate that like these women aren't idiots. They know that like what is being asked of them is unreasonable, but there doesn't at this time seem to be an alternative. Right. Well, because like, I mean, we talk about what women sometimes have to do to get ahead in the world because the world is set up so that it's harder for women to, you know, make a livable

income or to get promotions or be leaders of industry or anything like that. And this was, you know, even more true for 1950 than it is now. So that means that, you know, women sometimes have to turn to other avenues just to be able to survive or get ahead in the smallest way. And sometimes that means women having to use their sexuality to get ahead, which is what we see Marilyn Monroe do. Well, and Eve's willing to do it, too. She tries to sed it too. She tries to seduce Bill. She tries to seduce Lloyd. Okay, so question about even Lloyd.

Do you think she's bullshitting Addison at the end? I can't tell. I feel like just knowing her, yes. I think she is. But I'm always down to hate Lloyd more. But it doesn't seem like, that just seems like it happened too fast to be true i don't think it's like we don't see and you know the fact that they apparently cut 50 pages of script kind of

makes this make more sense i'm like we never we as viewers never see them together which is a thing that we need to have to you know what i mean right in this film the camera is objective so if we had seen lloyd and eve make out i would believe it but when eve says something i don't necessarily believe it right which is like you're supposed to feel that way too so you're just like but but is that an artistic choice i don't know to like to imply ambiguity or is it just cut for time i'm not sure but i mean so we have like women using their sexuality to get ahead we we or like women marrying a man who will provide financial security. And that's maybe like what Karen does with Lloyd.

Because like she's always framed as like, I don't have any part of the theater except for my husband. He is a playwright. And she does half his job for him, which we see over and over. Like she makes a lot of the high level decisions. She makes casting decisions like i'm just like yeah put her on the bankroll lloyd jesus yeah yeah yeah yeah and then another thing that women might have to do to again like change their station in life is to trample on other women to get ahead which is what eve is. But again, like there are a lot of situations where women might feel like they have to compete

against another woman for something. And it's often because they're operating within an industry or an institution that is, again, controlled by men. And men have only allotted a small number of spaces for the women to occupy. Right. So, of course, like women then feel like they have to compete against each other for these very finite number of spaces especially when society gives women like an expiration date and like doesn't value older women which is margo's whole insecurity right um and i

feel like a lot of a lot of movies that we've talked about do have this through line of women being in competition with each other and some and to varying degrees of success will they explore why that might be but the fact that it attempts it i feel like is like kind of impressive for kind of impressive for 1950 yeah um especially a movie that was you know written and directed by a man um because a lot of these movies like the ones that we've covered so far in the podcast that have been about kind of antagonistic or competitive female relationships. You know,

we've got death becomes her working girl and the favorite. Those are some of our matrion episodes. We've got black Swan. We've got single white female. We've got my best friend's wedding. And I think all of these movies are written and or directed by men. So I'm like, if Mankiewicz can do it 30 years before you did what's the problem or just like let a woman write a movie women's interiority was not invented until the 90s but i also wonder like how many of these

men are just like well uh women be petty and women be competing against each other i have no idea why they might be like that but that's how they be so like they just make movies about it i there the other thing with this that is not even mentioned in the film's credits which seems kind of fucked is that um joseph minkowitz adapted this from a short story written by a woman yes um which may explain i don't know how faithfully adapted it is i think that he like it was a pretty short story and he really fleshed it out and it was mainly the eve character that he took but it was a short story written by a writer named mary orr who i guess was hanging around hollywood and had had seen some All About Eve situation

and wrote about it, but she's not credited at all in the movie. She's not credited. No. He just stole her story and didn't credit her. Well, I mean, I think he didn't steal it. She was paid. She was paid, but she wasn't credited,

which is bad. We've got to take another quick break, but we'll come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture

of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

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like resume specialist Morgan Santer. 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 100% 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. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing.

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. Not hawk the 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 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While we're talking about Eve, I wanted to talk, Caitlin, we talked about this briefly yesterday but um there has been a fair amount written about um how eve may be queer coded it's never been said by mankowitz whether this was intended but um it's been speculated that the characters of addison dewitt and eve

are both queer coded characters and they are also the two villains of the story um which seems to be you know a very um regressive old-timey hollywood thing that happens all the time but there's been i mean it's weird there's stuff written about it kind of both ways i'm pulling brilliantly from the wikipedia page here but um brave brave jam. Thank you so much. I can't wait for to read our iTunes reviews of like, these dumb broads should die! Okay. Professor Robert J. Korber, who has studied

homophobia within the cultural context of the Cold War in the U.S., posits the foundational theme in All About Eve is the defense of the norms of heterosexuality, specifically in terms of patriarchal marriage, must be upheld in the face of challenges from female agency and homosexuality. The nurturing heterosexual relationships of Margot and Bill and of Karen and Lloyd serve to contrast the loveless relationship, predation, and sterile careerism of the homosexual characters even addison um okay so question what is the basis for reading eve as queer coded i guess because she never she's like

doesn't have a real boyfriend i don't know right okay so this basically the same thing with addison is like he's kind of effeminate and he doesn't have a girlfriend. That's it. Well, I've also seen people cite the line. And it's like either way, they don't explicitly. Like Addison for sure feels old timey queer coding to me. But I'm like, maybe that's not true. I don't know. But there is that one line.

I definitely think so. But sometimes that's all there is. You know what I mean? But that doesn't mean that it's not a thing you know what i mean the line i saw people citing in writing about this movie as like possibly commenting on queerness was at the end where addison says that he like actually doesn't want to fuck her and he thinks she's gross and then he says you're an improbable person eve so am i we have that in common. And so different people have interpreted that as some like very production Cody admission of otherness.

But it was never said. And interestingly, Mankiewicz has said in interviews later, I don't think he was asked about this outright, but that he is not homophobic, which is, I mean, imagine. He said that he thinks that society should, quote, drop its vendetta against homosexuals, unquote, which is a very old timey way to be an ally. Can I give a different reading? Yeah. And I'm sorry, I just, I've been too exposed to bdsm culture

via i'm hooked via a close friend to not be able to read so many scenes in this as highly sexual power dynamics so one way that i read addison and eve is like he shows up and he's like hey what if i own you and she's like um no thanks and he's like i'll blackmail you if you don't let me own you because that's what he wants to do and and while i see that as a reading of like he's gay and he wants a beard you know if that's like the queer reading it's like be my girlfriend in public and i'll not reveal your secret life to anyone also want to mention her real name gertrude slavinsky there might be some other types of coding going on here that's true we're not careful there might be a little bit of a little bit of anti-semitism here if we're if we're thinking about it and i mean you would think that in this

i mean i think that this movie is supposed to take place around 1950 that used to be a super common hollywood practice would be if you had a name that sounded to other in any way you just have to change it but not mankiewicz not mankiewicz not mankiewicz true but if mankiewicz was a woman maybe he would have possibly yeah you know i think i think it's a it's a it's an interesting way of commenting on, like, whitewashing in Hollywood. I mean, the whole Rita Hayworth story. There's so many things like that. So many stories like that. It's an interesting point.

But anyways, back to Eve and Addison. It really feels like it's a very master-slave type relationship. And that may not be what is implied. But I think if you if you wanted to read it that way, you could. And it just I don't know. It really jumps out at me. That's a fun read. I like that read.

Their dynamic is like so so sex. You know, as you said, as you quoted from that, basically the queer theory reading of it their relationship is very sterile sexless ambitious it's all about getting ahead he wants to be with her not because he wants to fuck her ew no it's about my career like right your body disgusts me i only love power let's use each other yeah and then eve is like but like once eve eve immediately uses addison before before that part she uses addison from the beginning to get ahead like she's like come watch my audition oh i'll hang out with you like and she uses him in his column i don't know it's it's a very it's a tale of like two people who are both very strong-willed and trying to manipulate each other

and then addison is like i have out manipulated you now you're the sub i don't know i like this theory and it should be added to the wikipedia page thank you please add it jamie add it to the page i'll do it but yeah that there that's the that's the queer theory reading before we we get to Margo, I mean, Margo's the one to watch here. But I had a few things to say quickly about Karen, a.k.a. the his wife of the story. I could talk about Karen for hours. Karen is, again, it's like most movies of this time and of this time would not make Karen such a like a character with such depth because she's

presented to us as like she is the good wife Juliana Margulies like she she's very polite she's very respectful she is doing what society is expecting of her but later you get to see that she's like frustrated she's frustrated and insecure in her marriage because she's married to an egotistical asshole narcissist who doesn't recognize how much she's contributing to his career. She, like Margot, is constantly told that she's being hysterical when she is simply stating what is happening in front of people. Right. And I like that her her friendship with Margot is kind of complicated, too, because Margot

is condescending to her for being a good wife. So like Karen is being put down for doing what society's asked of her. And Margot, I kind of interpret like takes out her insecurity on Karen and be like, oh, you're such a good little wife. And then that motivates Karen to kind of fuck Margot over a little, which like I think a lesser writing would make that seem like women be fucking each other over but with Karen it's like no one isn't shitting on Karen and she's only like doing what she thinks that she's supposed to do and so I just like I think she's fascinating and I mean oh I just like her between margo bill lloyd and eve everyone in karen's life is a narcissist yeah like except birdie except for birdie who is so awesome birdie is absolutely my favorite

character she's karen is like caretaking everybody constantly catering to these huge egos that are pummeling her from every direction like can you imagine being friends with margo the world's biggest leo right like just somebody who's always like it's all about me me me like literally the star of the show on stage and off she's exactly the same everybody is like margo's famous for being nutso like she's just a very classic drama queen she's literally betty davis like it's just yeah and she's like she's like karen's my best friend like who do you think that best friend is not somebody who's ever gonna try and take the spotlight away from her yeah someone who's

compartmentalizing the fuck out of her life is yeah no threat to margo whatsoever and someone who's very very very happy being being totally behind the scenes. Yeah. Oh, Karen deserves better. But also, then she drains the gas tank and is like, I'm going to fuck over my friend. I like that. I like that. I love Karen, but Karen's not smart. Ooh.

I think, I mean, Karen's smarter than people give her credit for, but I guess that that's kind of relative. But she's not that smart. Everyone treats Karen like a fucking idiot and she is like average. I think she's smart. I just don't think she's conniving the way that like Eve is or I don't think she is. She does like one mean thing and then immediately feels endless guilt about it. Right. And I mean, it was a really shitty thing.

Like, I think what Karen does is almost worse than things that that Eve did. Like, and she never comes clean to Margo about it. I mean, that's the part that gets me. Margo would murder her. But Margo would murder her. And so she doesn't tell her. And so she is kind of, in a way, lying to her best friend. She is.

Yes. To protect her life. these people need therapy so much so bad yeah a therapist why would i have a therapist when i get it sorry when i can have a bottle of scotch ha ha you're just like oh my god therapist right here on the barcock oh but then i feel i mean i do feel bad for margo who again is like a pretty egomaniacal narcissist who maybe you could argue kind of drums up drama now and then. But also, like, she is, you know, the victim of Eve exploiting and manipulating her. And she keeps saying, like, I don't trust this woman. She's annoying me.

She's like pushing boundaries. Like, there's a lot of issues here she's lying all this stuff and you know bill is like you're paranoid none of this is happening you know lloyd is over here being like having you in my place is a compromise your performances are lackluster but it's only because he's not writing the right parts for her he calls her a piano it makes me so mad oh he like it's it's one of those funny ones where you're like oh men objectify women and then you hear that line you're like that's a bit much like there yeah like that's a little too on the nose dude we get it you think women are objects yeah exactly oh brutal i love in the party scene where addison is like kind of drunk and he's just like

blathering about like we're all freaks in the theater and like talking about how they're all they all go to the theater because they have nowhere else to go man it's like this fucking breakfast club ass moment and he's like that's why we're all here dude and everyone's like yeah yeah we're all a little random here and you're like stop it it's so xd bitch i do agree kayla i think that like marco i mean marco is that's why she's so amazing it's like she it like there are times where she is being a straight-up brat she's being a diva at different times but then there's other times where it's like no she this concern she has is legitimate

legit and people are ignoring her and she's just defensive about it because everybody is constantly telling her like hey don't you think you should maybe think about retiring so she's kind of like no fuck off yeah there's a few there's a few moments that I mean like all of her moments are great,

but there were like two in particular that I was just like, that always blow me away. The first one is, it's a scene with her and Bill. It's been mentioned that she's like gained a little bit of weight and she's being shamed for it.

And she's in the same, she like is almost eating a chocolate, the whole scene, which is a miracle because we don't see women eat in movies ever uh and bill is calling her hysterical he's saying it gently but he's like you gotta relax with all this stuff blah blah and she's like resisting eating the chocolate and resisting eating the chocolate and then once he gaslights her for the fourth or fifth time she's

just like shrugs and eats it and it's like it's such a good moment you're like yep everyone's been in that situation and then there's that scene with her and karen in the car which is like heartbreaking and so like that scene where like margaret like if if it wasn't already clear you know that she's like very self-aware of like she doesn't want to be loved for her image she wants to be loved for herself but how can she expect someone to love her for herself when she can't even distinguish herself from her image and you're like whoa that's heavy oh yeah and then she has that that monologue where she's like funny business a woman's career like that whole woman's career speech oh yeah i have it here uh she says funny business a woman's career the things you

drop on the way up the ladder so that you can move faster you'll forget you need them when you get back to being a woman that's one career all females have in common whether we like it or not being a woman but then she goes on to be like and you're not a woman unless you have a man who is married to you you haven't performed your gender until you have a heterosexual partner. It's so heartbreaking because it's like you can see why she wants to give up. And it's the same with Betty Davis. It's not that Margot doesn't want to act. It's that she just is tired of having to act in that she just like is tired of like having to act in

a very specific way that no longer makes sense and like having to put up with all this stuff. Like, no wonder she's like, fuck it. Yeah. How many actors, how many actors and actresses in Hollywood right now do you think basically feel the exact same way? Sure. I mean, it's like, I think you see a lot of women who who I mean, usually they start lifestyle brands, but I'm thinking of someone I think of because we just recorded our my best friend's wedding episode yesterday is Cameron Diaz, where like she was so famous and she always played a variation on like the same role. And then when she turned 40, she was like, you know, from show. And I mean, I don't want to speculate on Cameron Diaz.

I don't know why she chose to like retire from acting but i mean it's it's like you know there there just aren't as many options and it's like you can go on abc and play a lawyer but like what else you know there's not the options aren't always there and it's like you you have to like empathize i don't know margaret oh that that car speech fucks me up it makes me so sad yeah it's like you have to like empathize. I don't know. That car speech fucks me up. It makes me so sad. Yeah, it's that ultimate moment if she's like, man, I know I've been a bitch, but shit. Can you blame me?

You're like, no, I can't. And it's so relatable to me to be like, ah, fuck, well, I guess I was really shitty to everybody. Yeah, I mean, she says something like, I've been oversensitive to the fact that eve is so young so feminine so helpless like she is like admitting to her insecurities about like eve's youth and all this stuff and then like karen is sitting right beside her being like well being being feminine in this context is being helpless like right margo is less feminine because she is not totally helpless she definitely is struggles with things but she doesn't she doesn't need a man you know like right or at least she or at least she acts like she doesn't

for a while and then goes yeah i do i don't know like that was kind of a with with her and bill it's like there are a lot there are issues in that relationship but I was kind of I'm like does she like need a man or does she want one and like like I think maybe she doesn't need one but she does want one and there's like conflict in her feelings of like she wants a man in her life but she only wants it on very specific terms of like she's like you are a Stedman and Bill's like I don't want to be Stedman and she's like well I don't know what to tell you because I want Stedman and yeah I mean it's it's really interesting because it's I mean I think that it would be kind of like the easy choice to make with Margot and I don't like the way that they end up sort of being like and then she was a wife and the end but I think it is an interesting

choice to give Margot the dimension of like yes she's very powerful she guards her power she's very talented but she does want someone to love her for herself and is worried that that's not going to happen yeah that's very understandable and if she wants companionship in a man like totally fine many many people do but it feels like such a weird inconsistency for her to start out being like no i don't want to get married if we got married right now it would just be to prove a point and i don't want that like we don't need to be married and then like suddenly out of nowhere there's this shift in her character where she's like well i'm not a woman unless i marry this man so let's get engaged

and it's like where is this coming from well it reminds me a lot of like katherine hepburn movies where in the beginning she's like i don't need a man fuck everyone and then halfway through the movie someone goes katherine you've been putting on this persona where you're a bitch and we know that deep down you want love from a man and then she goes i do and i love those movies and i love katherine hepburn and and she knew this and she even talked about this as an actress that she was typecast as you know this this huge gorgeous like amazon sort of lesbian you know who had as many lines and as much screen time as the man that she was in a romance with. But, you know, it's kind of how I feel about the Philadelphia story. Like, I love that in the beginning of that movie, she's so hard and so strong about maintaining her identity. And like,

in this movie, Margot is like, hey, I love you, but I don't want to subsume my literal identity into yours. And Bill is like, come on, come on, just a little. And she's like, no, I don't like that. And then by the end, she's like, you know what? I really love Bill. I guess I could subsume my identity for him a little, which is a thing that millions of people do every fucking day. But yeah, it sucks.

Yeah, it sucks to like watch someone make that choice. But it makes sense that she like of the time it makes i don't know well you know i'm just saying like it feels it feels relevant to now you know yeah there are just people who are like who either you know sometimes it's marriage sometimes it's moving in with a partner sometimes it's just you know your fucking boundaries or whatever but yeah i don't know i feel like there are there are people now who who are in kind of the same situation and this movie's pretty old and that is yeah i mean it is like and and i mean even speaking to what you're saying about katherine hepburn movie is like that like taming an independent spirit thing is such a thing and it's also like yeah like the

the almost like weird fantasy of like male writers being like, oh, the only reason that a woman would act independently is because they want to get the attention of a man. And then once they do, they can chill, you know. And yeah, the way I do, I kind of against my better judgment, I like Margot and Bill for each other in, in a lot of moments. And I do appreciate that he shows up for her in a way that, that no one does in the movie. Cause he's like one of the only people in the movie who doesn't really betray her at any point. So I do appreciate him on that level of like,

he does seem to be, I mean, for all the you're hysterical and not like, we see the same scene with multiple female characters in this movie where it's a woman talking to a man and he's like, you're being hysterical. And she's like, no, it's, you're talking to me that way because of my gender. And they say, what? And then that's the whole scene. Yeah. what and then that's the whole scene um yeah and bill is bill is just as guilty uh of that attitude as the other men in the movie but i do appreciate that he shows up for her and does seem to love her

and there's like when that bullshit addison dewitt article comes out he's there right away and like i appreciate that element of bill i do think that like Margo and Bill are a very good pair because Margo really wants somebody who only wants her. And, you know, for all of Bill's other faults, that is something that he is, you know. He loves her. He wants, yeah, he loves her. And I know like for the cultural context of the time, there are things that, you know, we would interpret as like clingy or weird that at the time were like, this is what someone does when they're in love and respect a woman, you know? Right. It's weird. And this movie is very often compared to Sunset Boulevard, which comes out around the same time.

And there was like just a period. I'm sure that someone's written a thesis on this, but like a period of time where like the aging actress was a part uh that was available to women over 40 and they were like look at this amazing opportunity for you you're playing yourself and how you feel insecure and they were supposed to be like and you're a monster yeah and it ends horribly for you but I but I think I mean I used to really like Sunset Boulevard I mean it's a very well-written movie but I think watching them both I've seen them both this year now and I mean Sunset Boulevard is is not very kind to women and I think that like Margot I guess Margot's strength at the end of the movie is that she has the respect and love of the people in her life.

Still, she's still, even though Karen is lying to her, she has Karen, she has Lloyd, she has bill and she has like her support system is intact. And, but that's at the expense of her career.

Sort of, I don't know. It's just all very right. Well, I think, I think what the film like wants to portray by the end is like, sure, Eve got what she wanted, material gain, power, success, fame, but at the expense of she can't break up with Addison DeWitt

or else he will destroy her life. Right. So she's got this partner who she's with not because she loves him, but because he's literally blackmailing her. And Margot has this partner who is with her because he loves her yeah and that's it he's not with her because she's famous he's not trying to get anything out of her he really does just want to be with her even if she's not an actress anymore so in that way like margo basically not being an actress anymore is shown as like a a positive thing yeah like for her identity yeah it's implied

that she's able to be more comfortable and more herself not acting but again that lets i mean that lets lloyd off the hook in a major way because it's like yes why would you want lloyd in your life still it's like oh i mean ultimately watching it through this time, it just felt very clear that like the villain of the movie is the industry that they're in and not Eve specifically. Whether the movie recognizes that, I kind of don't know. I don't think so, actually. I don't know. I don't know how hard Nick Woods is thinking about this. I don't know.

I think it does. I think it touches hard on, you know, like with the with the Miss Caswell stuff on just the disposability of young talent. Yeah. And how the industry will take somebody from nobody to super famous receiving industry's highest award within a year. And who knows what the fuck will happen to Eve within a year. You know, she's like a she's like a child star, basically, you know. Yeah. And child stars often have a very rough time when they stop like a child star basically you know yeah and child stars often have a very rough time when they stop being a child star it's true yeah i mean i i think that at very least bankowitz is he's making comment he's making pretty brutal commentary on theater specifically which like so i'm like okay you know he's got some vendetta against the theater what but like

yeah it it does seem like he has an awareness that this is but but i can't tell that if he's got some vendetta against the theater what but like yeah it does seem like he has an awareness that this is but but i can't tell that if he's just framing of like this is how this industry works i can't tell how critical he actually is of it i don't know um but either way it's a fucking well-written movie it's really good i have can i share some of my favorite lines of dialogue because there are lots. I'll try to pare this down. Starting with, I mean, there's among the many, many conversations that Margot has about age and aging and her insecurities around it. At one point, we learned that she is 40 and Bill is 32. So she's eight years older than him and she says he's 32 he looks 32 he

looked at five years ago he'll look at 20 years from now i hate men i know yeah still 100 another one is toward the beginning when margo says to lloyd be a playwright with guts write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband and we're like yes they really knew how to like write amazing insults and like snide remarks in old hollywood betty davis i guess she had like a reputation for rewriting a lot of her own lines in movies and this was supposed to be one of the only movies she was ever in that she like didn't rewrite a single line amazing interesting well because there's an exchange about that where lloyd is talking about the words he's written in his plays and he's like just when exactly does an actress decide they're her words that she's saying her thoughts she's expressing and margot responds right back with

usually at the point when she has to rewrite and rethink them to keep the audience from leaving the theater right which is like literally what betty davis would do wait really really quick before i forget so i guess claudette colbert was originally supposed to play the part of margot and in i think the most old hollywood depressing reason of all time she could not play the part and the part went to benny davis because claudette colbert hurt her back in a rape scene in a movie literally the movie was about her getting raped and her back was hurt and so she couldn't play this role of a lifetime most depressing thing i've ever heard in my life anyways um continue holy shit isn't that so fucked up also um mankiewicz said that ann baxter he said it was such a weird old-timey sexist compliment he said that ann baxter he chose Anne Baxter to play Eve because she had bitch virtuosity.

Yeah, I read that somewhere too. I mean, he's right. I feel like women should be allowed to use that phrase among themselves. Yes. Eve has extremely high level of bitch virtuosity. And okay, Caitlin, did you write down that part where eve is talking about applause and she's like applause applause it rushes over you like waves oh no i didn't write that one down it's so good she's just like i can only get horny when people are applauding that

whole scene is just her monologue about like i need attention i love it and i can't live without it and that's why i feel like with her and addison it's just about power she's like i need the power and he's like i got you the power you're my slave and she's like okay horny for power oh here's a fun one that marilyn monroe's character says to eve about addison dewitt because eve is like oh i don't want to we should you shouldn't talk to me i'll just I'll just bore you and Marilyn Monroe says you won't bore him honey you won't even get a chance to talk and oh it's like such a great burn that she I don't even think she realizes is a burn Marilyn Monroe is so good at that at like just being like acting so dumb but saying it so perfectly yeah man she's great and then i think my final favorite line

that i will share is lloyd talking to karen while they're arguing about eve he says that better cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you've left radcliffe and karen says that cynicism you referred to i acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys. And we're like, oh, feminist icon, Karen. Karen is right. Every time a woman has intuition in this movie, she is treated as if she is making things up. Right. And she's always right.

She's like, like being a woman is about knowing shit that men don't know. Oh, good grief. The men in this movie are pretty dim it's true does anyone else have any other final thoughts to share i don't think so this is oh god this was so much fun yeah this is i mean i'm so glad i got to talk about this movie with someone yeah thoughts about it um the scene where eve is in the bathroom with k Karen and is blackmailing her she's wearing this incredible costume that has a really high neck and has like sort of a scalloped neckline and the actual neckline is very low but the neck is very high and in between is like a fine mesh and it's so perfect

for a scene where somebody who has acted extremely modest up until this point is suddenly is shown to be extremely false and have been lying good costumes good costumes edith head has anyone ever said that also jamie there is a rasputin reference did you catch it when margo i love i mean as if the work couldn't be elevated more. It's so good. Oh, God. I wish Alfred Molina were alive for this. Oh, really quick Quar update. So I've been following Alfred Molina's finsta really carefully through the Quar.

He has a finsta? He has a finsta, and he's been sewing his own masks. Oh, my God. He has a finsta and he's been sewing his own masks. And he did a little. So is my mom. He did a little jokey post yesterday where he was like a message to everyone out there in the quarantine. And it was just him wearing his mask. And he was like, and everyone's like, ha ha,

Freddie, you crack me up. He was great. What a delight. I love that. Oh, I was going to tell you guys i saw alfred melina in a play wait did you see the one in pasadena yeah i saw the father i saw the daddy

it's so sad oh it's good the daddy was so good and so sad i was not prepared for it to be so sad well i was i was also led to believe that the woman who played roz on fraser was going to be in the play and that turned out to not be true so I was a little disappointed from the get-go that's so funny my friend was just wrong she was like Roz from Frasier is in it and I was like okay with Alfred Molina for sure yeah well this conversation about Alfred Molina unfortunately does not pass the book well I know it actually does pass the Bechdel test because we have said that any conversation about Alfred Molina does pass and speaking of the Bechdel test does all about Eve pass the Bechdel test oh yeah with flying colors oh yeah first scene all the time there's a lot of combinations of characters who talk to each other that pass between Eve and Karen between Eve and Karen, Between Eve and Margot, Margot and Karen, Margot and Birdie.

The list goes on. It's a lot of passes. Yeah. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on its representation of women. This one is a little tricky. And I was nervous. I'll be honest. I was a little nervous to talk about this movie because, you know, it's classical Hollywood cinema.

I don't know an awful lot about old Hollywood. So I was like, oh, no, there's like going to be all this context and stuff that I don't know about. And like information about the way, you know, movies were made and the way stories were told back then. And I just don't know enough about it. But I do enjoy this movie. I do still struggle with movies that are about antagonistic relationships between women I do think this movie has like a lot of nuance to its female characters I do enjoy that it is female driven

but I still if given a choice I will almost never choose a movie that is about an antagonistic female relationship, because even though they do exist in the world, I far prefer to see, you know, if there's a story about an older, more distinguished, successful woman, taking a younger woman under her wing and being her mentor. I would rather see that story play out that they like have a great relationship and they conquer the world and take down the patriarchy together. And I just like, I wish for more stories like that. But I do, of course, I see a lot of value in this story. I think it explores interesting themes. And I think that all the female characters are really interesting and far more fleshed out than we see

in more contemporary movies which you wouldn't necessarily expect but I think that just between the the examination of Margot and her insecurities about aging I do think that could have been explored a little bit more fully in terms of like, why is she insecure about aging? Why do women end up in these competitive antagonistic relationships? But I think it does a fairly good job for a movie, you know, written and made in 1950. But there's a lot to love about this and find very interesting and compelling. I'll give it like a three nipples, I think. Of course, it's an extreme. I don't you know, they didn't let non-white people be in movies back then. And if they did, they were in the most horrific, tropey, stereotypical, reductive roles imaginable. And this movie just erases people of color altogether.

Yeah, it's probably better that there were no people of color in this movie just erases people of color all together yeah it's probably better that there were no people of color in this movie right because they would not have been treated respectfully in any no it would have made it so much worse but you know i i think it does uh by today's standards i think this movie holds up pretty magnificently um it's not without its issues and then also just like the weird message of like yes women can be strong and awesome and great and they shouldn't be antagonistic toward each other but also a woman isn't a woman unless she's in a heteronormative relationship with a man and married to him so that feels a little bit like a conflicting message but overall yeah I think three nipples uh I'll give

two to Birdie and I'll give one to Betty Davis uh I'm gonna give this uh I want to give it 3.75 I guess I'll go 3.5 I don't know I want I want to yeah I I also like you know I I'm sure I have blind spots with this movie because I love it so much. But I just I think especially for its time. OK, I think with the context, given its time, I'm going to give it three point seven five, because there is like I do. I agree that the like implication that Margot's better off as a wife than as an actor. But but it's also not that simple. I don't know.

I think that there's so many different kinds of women in this. My main issue with the movie, I think, is that it's not... I mean, Eve is the clear-cut villain, and it's not the system that they're inside of, but that is so inherent to the movie that it's hard to take yourself out of it. I just think that I mean, this movie is about women and a way that for the most part and not 100% but for the most part

is not condescending to their needs, wants, desires, or relationships with anyone around them. I just Betty Davis is is so amazing I do wish that it examined the aging more than just this is how women feel and not examining why do women feel this way um but just the performances are so good and the relationships between women are so interesting like they're they're more detailed than just like women pulling each other's hair for two hours there's more like I just I really like it uh so I'll hair for two hours. There's more, like I just, I really like it. So I'll go 3.75. Maybe that's too nice.

Give two to Birdie, one to Eve and 0.75 to Margo. I'm going to go all out and give it four full nipples. Do it. See, I think something that we might want to do, Jamie, for like really old movies like this is like do sort of like an adjusted for inflation nipple rating where like if we were doing this podcast in like 1950 and like this movie came out it would be like wow five nipples across the board but like obviously this movie was made 70 years ago i will i will also say this

this is this is one of those movies where you're like oh this is like a play like this is just like a play there's nothing visually that exciting about it it's it looks great but it's really just like you watch this movie for the acting and for the writing like there's nothing going on visually that is you know that that exciting you know even for the time you know even adjusted for inflation this is a fucking talk is you know that that exciting you know even for the time you know even adjusted for inflation this is a fucking talkie you know yeah uh so you gotta you gotta sit down you gotta be ready for like you know there aren't there aren't a lot of like fistfights or action sequences or anything in this movie no no big gags like that i think you got to go into that with that

mentality to enjoy it for sure who who would you like to give your four nipples to one to every drink that margo had on the bumpy ride night perfect amazing uh well sarah thank you so much for joining us for this incredible discussion. It's been a delight. Thank you for letting me talk about All About Eve for so long. This made my day. I love talking about this movie. I know, and I feel like, I'm like, did we even cover everything?

I feel like there's so many layers. There's so much. Yeah, I feel like we kind of only scratched the surface. But thank you so much for being here, Sarah. Where can people follow your stuff follow you online all that good stuff uh you can go to my website which is hey sarah june.com and you can sign up for an email list which is a thing that i will do if people sign up for it it's not a thing yet but i don't have social media anymore and i don't know what to do oh i mean that's the ultimate

act of self-love yes for the best yeah you can you can go to um if you are on social media anymore and I don't know what to do. I mean, that's the ultimate act of self-love. Yes. For the best. Yeah. You can, you can go to, um, if you are on social media, please follow a means TV. Sometimes it's means underscore TV. It is a streaming network and YouTube channel that I make videos for, and I'm going to have a series come out in a couple of months that I'm really excited about. Awesome and jamie's in one yeah check that out everybody check it out i'm excited yeah jamie's gonna be in an episode yeah i can't believe i forgot that for a second we've been in here for so long there was no life before this it's true yeah honestly um it feels like 1 million years ago that we shot it all right well thanks for getting on the phone with me guys

this is like you know some much-needed social interaction as i'm sure you can tell yeah thank you so much for having me yeah of course um come back anytime we need to discuss more older movies yeah we do uh you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon which is at patreon.com slash bechtel cast it's five dollars a month and it gets you two bonus episodes and what better time to consume more content than right now during the quarantine so check us out on uh the matreon if you're able it's true you can get our merch on t public uh we're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff in the coming months on the matreon if you want to join us and uh we we uh love you so much i hope this has been a sufficiently bumpy podcast yeah everyone, unfasten your seatbelts because

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