The Bechdel Cast - Breakfast at Tiffany's with Gaby Dunn

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Durante invite special guest Gaby Dunn over to eat pastries outside a jewelry store and to discuss Breakfast at Tiffany's.(This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @gabydunn 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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All episodes are available now. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search true story of the fake zombies, and start listening. 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 effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name's Jamie Loftus. And my name's Caitlin Durante. And before we get our episode started today, we wanted to welcome all our new listeners.

This is our first episode on the How Stuff Works Network. We are so thrilled to be here. Yes. So if this is your first time listening to our podcast, we'll just give you a quick explainer on what we do here. That's right. So we, again, are the Bechtel cast. We talk about the portrayal and representation of women in movies through an intersectional

feminist lens every thursday we bring in a special guest who brings in one of their favorite movies a movie that's really affected them and we tear it apart based on the way that it treats women in that movie uh sometimes it does really well other times not so much. Yeah, Hollywood kind of has a long history of not representing women well at all. Um, what? Yeah, hard to believe. Hot take. That's why we're here. We use the Bechdel test as a sort of jumping off point to initiate this larger conversation

about representation of women. What on earth is the Bechdel test, Caitlin? Why, Jamie, I'd be happy to tell you. Okay. It is a test that originated from cartoonist Alison Bechdel in the 1980s. It requires that a movie has at least two women in it who have names. Check. They have to speak to each other.

Check. And that conversation cannot be about a man at all. Oh my word. I know. Shall we demo it? I'd love to. Let's demo it for the people. Okay.

Begin test. Hi, Caitlin. Hey, Jamie. Did you know that this is our first episode on the HowStuffWorks network? I did know that. Oh my God. But like for people who are like new to the podcast, like what should they listen to? Are there other episodes?

There are because we've operated independently up until now. Good for us. I know. We're such strong, independent women. Yes, queen, go off. We have over 80 episodes backlogged of a ton of different movies. So check those out. Chances are we've covered one of your favorites. Yeah, we've got a lot of hot, spicy backlog with some hot, spicy discourse. We've covered Star Wars.

We've covered Black Panther. We've covered Gigli. For some reason, we covered Gigli. We sure did. So did that conversation pass the Bechdel test? Well, except for Gigli, because Gigli is a man. But up until the very end of that conversation I would say we passed with flying colors good for us I know and uh so toward the end of every episode after our

discussion after our heavy but also fun discourse sometimes it's heavy sometimes it's light yeah we will determine whether or not the movie passes the Bechdel test, and we will rate the movie on our special rating system, which we will get to. But yeah, other than that, we're so happy to be here on How Stuff Works. We're happy you're joining us. And today's episode, we are talking about Breakfast at Tiffany's. Yes. And we have a wonderful guest. So let's introduce her.

Yes, absolutely. She is the host of Bad With Money podcast, and she is the writer of I Hate Everyone But You, Gabby Dunn. Hi. Hi, thanks for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. We're going older than we usually go today. We haven't done a lot of movies before 1980, I would say. Agree. Yeah, but this is a big one. This is a classic.

Yes. I did notice that you guys don't do a lot of very old movies which is why i suggested this one i think probably one of the reasons we tend to steer more toward modern and contemporary movies is that our conversations are about how we influence media media influences us so for today's world not as many people are watching the older movies anymore maybe i don't know my grandmother on on turner classic movies i used to be a tcm right addict yeah it's really good but like especially like with today's younger generation who are the most easily influenced they're watching you know marvel stuff like what's

in theaters right now and they're not a lot of them unless they're like film buffs aren't necessarily going back to older movies or pretentious i mean but also the thing is is with this one is that like young women have this aesthetic about it and they also like have you know the poster of audrey hepburn and like they're aware of this as like a classic that keeps keeps coming back kind of as like a cool thing right without possibly even understanding the movie or having seen the movie i hope that we do more old movies it's it's for me i just sort of assume that anything before 1980 even though i've seen a lot of them but like a lot of pre-1980 is just straight up a wash where you're just like yeah that's not gonna do well that's not gonna do well and most movies after 1980 and also most movies that come out now but yes in

particular before that but sometimes they're really sneaky feminist yeah like they get away with a lot of stuff like i was just saying i love the movie gentlemen prefer blondes and that is like very they get away with so many things like Marilyn Monroe's characters they're both like so overtly sexual and it's just like completely fine so I think there's like a lot of stuff that I don't know it's not all like oh this is terrible and women suck and there were a lot of really great like leading parts yeah women back and I don't know where we steered wrong but yeah i would say it's probably the um well this movie came out in 1961 while the production code was still in full effect so i would hazard a guess and i don't know a whole ton about this but the production code was in effect between 1934 and i think 1968 or 9 and

this was like all the censorship of like you could like there was no overt sexuality you couldn't swear there couldn't be graphic violence there couldn't be sneaky yeah there was like tons of innuendos and that gave birth to things like screwball comedy and like a whole bunch of other things but like yeah because of the production code and all the censorship that came with that i think reinforced more like rigid gender roles but they have think they i think like limitations made people a little more i don't know made them made them a little more creative about rather than just going for like the easy in some movies yeah yeah yeah i just am always shocked by how overtly sexual they're like allowed to be with these kind of innuendos or like having to write around these sort of things. Like I was saying to Jamie too before this that I read that they had the Paul character, they added more sexual stuff for him in the script so that the censors would go after him

and censor more of his things and leave Holly Golightly alone. Which is smart, which is like an interesting trick. Yeah, that's a cool misdirect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I, I well let's talk about your history with the movie when did you first see the movie and like what is your history with it up till now when I was in high school I was like a very pretentious asshole um and so I

was kind of doing this thing where I was like I like old music I like old movies I'm wearing silk gloves to prom whatever that kind of girl And so I would start watching these old movies because I just, I don't know, I was trying to be like a person who knew about things that other kids at school didn't know about, which, you know, people loved, obviously, and like super wanted to be friends with me. And so like I took a lot of pride in being like, I know about all this media that you don't even know about. So I think I watched it just because I had seen all these photos and I knew about the picture of her with the tiara, but I had no idea what it was about.

So I think I watched it in high school because I watched a lot of Elvis beach movies. I watched Hard Day's Night all the time. I liked Marilyn Monroe's stuff. So this was like your era that you were into. Yeah, I got into it. Like late 50s, early 60s. Got it.

Like got into it. And then when I watched it, I was like, wait a minute. They're both sex workers. Like this is crazy. Like this movie that is built up as being this classy, kind of like beautiful thing. That like in Audrey Hepburn especially who's viewed as kind of like untouchable and like a porcelain doll right and it's like not explicitly stated in either in in the story or the movie but it's so like Truman Capote I liked this phrase a lot when he was asked if Holly Goletly was a sex worker like years later he's like I like to think of her as an American geisha yeah okay okay

so you're saying it but you're not going to say it. Got it. In the press for the film at the time, they were saying she was a party girl or that she, they also used the word kook a lot. They were like, she's an eccentric kook. Right. And it's like, okay, this is some really wild coded language we're pulling out, but it's like no one will actually say, but it is clearly what's, you know.

Yeah. I mean, there's, it's not subtle. I mean, he gives her money for the quote unquote powder room. The interior decorator, quote unquote, leaves Paul $300 like on the nightstand. Like it's not subtle at all. So then I was like, oh my God, this is the same movie that people laud as this classy sort of thing that like women, you know, dress up for as Halloween. Like in, you know what I for as halloween like and you

know what i mean i put the poster in their dorm and i was like we do we does anybody else understand what this movie is about and then i loved it because i always loved sort of subversive stuff so i was like this is great um and then i i would watch it every so often as like a you know to fall asleep as like a soothing because now it's kind of like this comfort movie which a lot of audrey hepburn stuff is for me yeah like just very comforting so it's been with you for a long time yeah yeah it's sort of similarly i had the poster before i saw the movie yeah i had the poster hanging in my room i think my mom gave it to me and i had it for like a full year before i was like oh yeah i should probably watch this because I love old movies my era was I was like wartime MGM movies okay I had a stack of tapes and like DVDs full of TCM

Judy Garland movies like every Judy I was a full-on Judy person which is also one of the many reasons it's so painful to watch Mickey Rooney in this movie because he's in all the Judy Garland movies. But so I finally got around to watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and then read the book as well. And I really, really, really love Truman Capote, who did not like this movie. But I think it's really nice. There was so much. I haven't seen it in at least two or three years. Like it's sort of the thing that whenever it's on Netflix, I'm like, oh, this is a good background thing. But I totally forgot about some of the very like moving, sad things that happened

in this movie. And I think that that's true. There's just like this weird dissonance with this movie where you remember what Audrey Hepburn looks like. You remember sort of how she behaves. You remember that there's parties and you remember there's a kiss in the rain at the end and everything else I it's you're sort of just like oh yeah she's arrested there's a character named Sally Tomato there's like her brother dies I totally forgot her brother died yeah it's like an incredibly sad movie and then it's recreated like I keep thinking of the scene of in Gossip girl where they recreate it um and and leighton meester is her and then it's just played as this very romantic thing right and people like don't know what the movie is about which i can see why truman capote would freaking hate that he uh we'll get into this in a bit but there's like the context that he wrote

this story and also that in the short story, Paul is coded gay, which obviously they completely scrap in this movie. But there's just like a lot of interesting stuff. But yeah, this movie was with me since I think high school as well. I have a really embarrassing MySpace profile pic with that poster in the background, and it's black and white, and it's really horrible. No, it's really bad.

But I don't know. And then watching it this time, I don't dislike this movie. I still enjoyed it, but there was just like a lot that stuck out to me and just stuff I'd forgotten. Yeah. What about you, Caitlin? I saw it for the first time in college. During that period of time, because I was, not to brag brag but I was majoring in film so I was

trying to watch as many movies as I could so I would sometimes watch like two or three movies a day and then like from that period of time my brain didn't store anything about the story or like any of the important things about the movie the only thing I would remember about the movies I watched back then is whether or not I liked them and what I remembered about Breakfast at Tiffany's is a very visceral hatred for this movie I hate this movie you hated it the first time you saw it so much yes oh wow and you hate it now I hate it I hate this movie um were you reluctant to have me on because of that no really because it's fun i think it's fun a lot of times yeah we love talking about movies that we hate and it's more fun i think we

we do our best at least to try to not let our personal feelings about the movie influence our like critical analysis of the portrayal of women in the movie okay so i do my best to keep that separate anytime it's an old movie caitlin it. Anytime it's a movie with aliens, I hate it. We all do our best. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of old movies. This just isn't an example of one of the ones that I like. Yeah. So, um...

Do you like Audrey Hepburn? She kind of plays a similar type of woman a lot. I think the only other thing I saw her in was My Fair Lady. Oh, okay. I liked that movie okay, and I had read Pygmalion and I liked that. I haven't seen it for over a decade, so I don't know if it holds up at all. But the reason I don't like this movie is I find the Holly Golightly character absolutely insufferable. I didn't read the novella, so I'm not super familiar with the context.

But just there's barely a plot and I hate the characters. Sorry about that. But from here on out, I'm going to be happy and nice. Anyway, so I'll do the recap. Let's do it. We are introduced to Holly Golightly. She's living in New York City. Wow, city where dreams come true.

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of. Okay, so it's the early 60s. She's, you know, living a life in New York City. Although it's never explicitly stated, there are different innuendos and hints to suggest that she is a sex worker escort. American geisha. And early on, she meets her new neighbor who moves in named Paul, but she keeps calling him Fred because he looks like her brother named Fred. And we know that it's a red flag because he is a blonde male adult. Still one of the biggest human red flags you can encounter is an adult blonde male very dangerous. Do not interact with them. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. So Paul also seems to have a certain arrangement with a woman named Mrs. Phelanson. I love Mrs. Phelanson. Patricia Neal. She's amazing. She's so got her husky voice.

And then she just she like appears in a room. I'm like, oh, she's going to fuck him. Yeah. It's such oh she's so great she's married to roald dahl or she was really yeah oh i didn't know that oh that's so cool fun fact cool so they have an arrangement where he he's a a writer but a struggling writer he's written one book of nine short stories but other than that he needs some financial security which mrs valenson seems to provide so paul and holly are in similar careers and they relate to each other yeah so they kind of they start to become friends early on like holly throws a party and she meets a few different rich guys who get invited. One's named Jose de Silva Pereira,

and the other one is Rusty Trawler. Rusty Trawler. These men eventually become two men that Holly tries to pursue and seduce so that they will marry her so that she can marry a wealthy man. Then Holly's husband, we find out that she was previously married when she got married when she was okay so this is going on 14 so 13 so this is crazy so so she and her brother were poor their parents died they were stealing turkey eggs from this guy's yard he was like a full-grown man he was like oh my god i'll adopt you so she so he adopts her and Fred. And then when she gets to be 13, he's like,

and he has kids from a previous marriage, he's like, oh, I want to marry you. So then he marries her. And then they, like, are raising the brother and the kids together. What? It's so weird. And then the way that the movie presents him to me is also very bizarre. Like, because they present him as, like,

you understand why she doesn't go back with him obviously but also he's presented it's like this really like sympathetic yeah sweet simple man but he loves her and you're just like no this guy's like a criminal yeah he's a statutory rapist who shows up with his big blue eyes he's like come back to the farm you're just like no yeah she's in the right but it's played as that like he's in the right and also she says like well i was i was only 13 so the marriage wasn't old yeah yeah i bet it was yeah that tracks like this and also paul pissed me off in that scene and this is i think in a lot of ways just revealing of the era where doc shows up he's like hey that girl

you have a crush on I raped her and and like I need to see her because I'm her husband and Paul without checking without giving Holly any manner of heads up just knocks on her door and he's like hey found your rapist outside I was like you fucking loser you just sold her out so hard and then holly has to deal with it she does not get mad at paul she's not even mad at doc she's like doc's just a sweet guy yeah and just like we we can be upset with doc yeah i just that scene was so like there's a few different moments in the way that paul treats holly that the story doesn't address that is clearly just like okay yeah at that time if a man says I'm this woman's husband it doesn't matter how the woman feels you bring him to her right and his like this person you just met his needs matter more than

the person you're falling in love with sure right right so that is a fun story beat uh but ultimately uh he's like trying to lure her back home with a promise of like hey your brother paul's getting out of the army said fred fred fred so she's like no i can't go back uh and then he like sort of threatens he's just like well if you don't get on this greyhound bus with me maybe you'll never see fred again it was like what fred's an adult yeah he's a man but so then she's like oh i have to marry a rich guy so that i can bring fred to me to new york city so i can take care of him again this adult man who has been in the army for presumably a few years she kind of insinuates that fred is not smart yes it's she's it's not stated but yeah she says at the beginning that he's very slow

and tall maybe he's like uh john malkovich in of mice and men yep that's what that's the canon i'm going with uh so she's trying to seduce these different rich men first she starts with rusty trawler but then she finds out that he has married someone else and then she starts to go after jose and meanwhile like she's spending time with paul and they're really connecting and he's catching some feels for her but she you know she doesn't know if she is or not because she doesn't like to be tied down to anyone she's she's free as a bird she's not there's a cat it's a metaphor right right the cat doesn't have a name and the cat will get a name when she feels like she can settle down right yeah but these different pursuits don't work out because she gets arrested for her oh right she there's also sally tomato there's sally tomato i can't believe i forgot to mention sally tomato feminist i can't sally tomato he was like a known gangster this like

drug scandal surfaces and because she was visiting him in prison to give him information basically yeah um she gets arrested i guess yeah i don't really understand that whole i read about it and in in the write-ups i read they believe that she really didn't know like she really thought it was a weather report but i don't know if she's that stupid yeah she's she's gotten through life pretty cleverly yeah but so then she uh she's like about to go to brazil to marry jose and then she gets arrested for her involvement with sally tomato and then she is this before after she finds out that her brother has died in a vehicle accident. Before, before. Right before. Because Jose's still there. Doesn't Jose leave after?

Oh, yeah. He leaves because she's. Because she got arrested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. Oh, right. So she finds that out, and then she trashes her room, and then she is in a cab. Paul has, like, picked her up from prison.

Yeah. And then he's just like, I love you, Holly. You need to get out of your cage that you built for yourself. You belong to me. He tells her that because he loves her that she belongs to him yeah he won't let her go in the library and then he's like he's got her in a vice grip it's very romantic and then she flings her own cat out of the cab oh she's like find a home here yeah there's also that one shot. This is like, I think it's the scene we find out where Fred died, where someone, it's clear

it's not Audrey Hepburn, throws a cat at the wall. Yeah. And you see the cat fly through the frame and hit the wall. It's like, you can't do that. You can't just. And the cat lands on the window. Yeah. You see like, I'm like, you just imagine like a first AD being like, okay, I'm just going

to throw this cat really quick. Oh, my God. Also, cats do have eight nipples. This is Cat Facts with Caitlin. Woo! Thank you so much. Yeah, so basically in the cab ride at the end of the movie, Paul is confessing his love for Holly. Miss whoever you are.

And then she's like, wait a minute, he's right. I do need to let people in i need to let love into my life i do need to go back and get my cat so she gets out of the cab and they look for the cat together they find it and then there's a kiss in the rain and that is the end of the movie okay let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with.

But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. all right and we're back there's a lot that happens in this movie yeah there's a lot of plot yeah there's a lot on top of plot to me it's like there's no like really distinct desire that she's given she has a few like micro goals but i. I think that Fred and security are her two motivations. Like she wants to be with her brother and she also wants to like live a comfortable life without having to commit to someone at first. And then later decides she does want to commit to someone because of comfort.

Yeah. And Paul wants to be a writer. They're both kind of trying to get out of sex work. Yeah. And Paul wants to be a writer. They're both kind of trying to get out of sex work. Yeah. So this just for context of the book, which is very different. So Holly Golightly was pulled from two different sources in Truman Capote's life. One is his mom, who literally did basically the Lula Mae thing where when Truman Capote was very young his mom and this is like they lived in Alabama blah blah blah Truman's mom boots out she's like actually I'm gonna go to New York and like find us a cool life changed her name the whole like the whole Holly Galatly story

except she had a kid and then eventually moved Truman Capote to New York with her. It didn't work out. They ended up moving back to Alabama. But so his mom, who he had like a weird relationship with his whole life, basically lived this sort of Holly Golightly adjacent lifestyle for a while. Wait, are you telling me a gay creative had a weird relationship with his mom? With his mom. I can't believe it but it gets better okay because paul in the story is holly's neighbor but is not like an explicit love interest at all and is coded gay or that is like what was speculated uh by a lot of critics so it's like truman capote wrote this novella where he as an adult became friends with his mom at his age and then they have this like

it's it's great and then the other one is um a neighbor of his right a woman who lived downstairs from him exactly yeah um so it's like interesting self fanfic in some ways and then he also pulled on like he i guess he was like i want to write a female Gatsby character, which you can see a lot of in Holly Colette as well as like the self-made. Yeah. Is she a phony? The thing is, she's a real phony. Exactly.

Yeah. She is a prototype manic pixie dream girl. Yeah. For sure. The way she's introduced when he, like, comes in and she's just talking over him so manically and, like, doesn't even. Find my shoes. Yeah. They're alligator. And it's and it's just very like oh of course i'm doing this like and he's sort of blown away by her and she's like you know just being super quirky her being able to call a taxi

like her catching her on the balcony just improvising this beautiful twee song on the acoustic guitar. Which is Moon River, which was written for the movie. Yeah. But I feel like that trope is, I mean, it's not even fully a recognized trope at this point, but it's commented on more than other manic pixies where we are given the context of her background and why she puts on this persona to survive and like it it makes sense and is explained and commented on enough that it almost doesn't bother me really too much yeah it doesn't yeah it doesn't bother me that much either especially because nobody is like shaming her for her flaw or no way or like her being a sex worker is not even the problem.

Do you know what I mean? And so that's like a twist on it for me where it's not like someone had to save her necessarily. She had to figure – she had to come to this on her own that she doesn't want. I don't know. I guess Paul does a lot of the work, but she makes the choice to get out of the cab. Right. I mean, she has a lot of agency. The ending rings where it was

my favorite part when I was younger. It rings a little bit hollow for me now because the way Paul behaves at the end of the movie is so entitled. Yeah, he's very entitled. You belong to me. She says people don't belong to each other. Right.

And she's right. Right, but then cut to five minutes later. Right. She belongs to him now. And the cat, you know. Yeah, it's weird that we hear her say those lines that like definitely stuck with me when I was younger. And then minutes later, she goes back on it entirely. Or the story has her go back on that entirely and now she's

gonna be in uh you know a normal relationship with paul which is apparently all she ever wanted even though that's never really what she said that she wanted right which is why like i don't know if she has that much agency she's not that active of a character like i said she's like yeah she's has a few different goals and motivations but she's the worst person why don't you like her okay why i have a list oh why you don't like her yeah she treats people around her horribly uh most notably her neighbor mr yun yoshi who will get into, that is a whole thing. A horribly problematic thing there. But there's a lot of people she doesn't seem to care about. She uses people.

She is superficial and has terrible friends. And she only cares about status and money. She is hyper-materialistic. She never says anything of substance. She only ever talks about the rich man she wants to marry. She's unaware of her surroundings, and she accidentally lights a woman's head on fire. She is calling people ugly and fat all the time. She doesn't own any books.

She's never been to a library before. She thinks that South America is a country. I disagree on a lot of those. Almost all of those. She does think that South America is a country. I disagree on a lot. Almost all of us. She does think that South America is a country. Okay, I'll give you that. I think that, you know, those things in a void are issues, but it's like she's a, she's a, I think she does have a clear motivation. And a lot of those qualities, especially I would argue the materialistic stuff, is so rooted in that she has had to find ways to survive for so long. And it's not like these men with money that, you know, like, I guess you can make the argument that she is manipulating them, but they're doing the same thing to her. They don't give a fuck about her.

They want, you know know like a piece to bring to events like it it is and like fitting in with her like background as a sex worker even though no one's gonna say sex worker like it's transactional in a lot of ways and i don't know like the whole thing with her loving tiffany's just seems like in her life given what we know of her the only consistent thing you can count on are material things because she's been let down by so many people with the exception of her brother who she is genuinely fighting for but everyone else in her life like who else can she point to as like oh here's a person that is worth more than material security.

And I don't think that there is any. I mean, like, her husband, like, well, we already went through that, where, you know, the statutory rape and the, you know, it's... Like, what choice? She didn't have a choice but to marry him. So it's really, like, because there was no way out of that situation. It's similar, like, this is, like, a downer, but my grandmother survived the holocaust and she's incredibly materialistic now and like when I was younger I used to judge

her for that and now that I'm older I'm like oh of course like of course she wants to surround herself with like finery. The background on that is so dark that like she's just like I want all the jewelry I want all the stuff I deserve this right like I like that completely makes sense to me like that tracks as like motivation totally yeah I don't know it makes I think we're given the context for it to make sense I get that she's like not likable in a lot of ways and that definitely like the manic pixie stuff is like present and like used as oh it feels almost like a shortcut at some points to like get us from point A to point B. Especially in terms of like, why is Paul in love with her? Manic pixie behavior is so easy for it to be like, and that's why he loves her.

And also she's totally messed up and has a lot of problems, but flawlessly beautiful the whole time. Yes, yes. Like sleeping with makeup on. Like she's like, when she's like got the pigtails and the sweater on and she's like, we have to go somewhere

where I can get in looking like this. I'm like, bitch, shut up. Are you joking? You look top 10 most beautiful. Are you kidding me right now? Better than any of us all over like in our entire lives. Great, thank you.

So there is a thing of like romanticizing trauma and like making trauma beautiful, which is definitely at play here. Yeah. And then there's there's multiple points where I think it's like three different men in this movie call her crazy. And that is always like red flag. And there's one of my favorite ones just of like, you know, like when you watch an older movie, there are just like some clueless ways that it will interact with its characters. Where Doc says to her, you're talking crazy, Lula Mae.

And she says, don't call me that. And I'm thinking crazy. And then she's like, don't call me Lula Mae. I guess that's the bigger issue here. Because people call her crazy all the time. And it's just something she has to deal with. She's a kook. She's an eccentric kook.

And then what the hell is Paul? You know what I mean? Right. Yeah, I don't know. I was like, interesting choice that she's never been to a library before. But then I mean, there are so many details of this movie I forgot. I was like, oh, but she goes back later. And she's like, oh, maybe there is something to this whole library thing.

He's never been to Tiffany's. True. Everyone's never been places. Yeah, I think it's much more common to have never been to a Tiffany's than to never have been to a library. And I kind of liked, I don't know, the whole Tiffany's and like stealing and that whole sequence is like, this is a bit long.

We get it. They like each other. But the Tiffany's. Well, do you know that new york city is the third character there's oh god everyone i just want for the listeners at home jamie and caitlin both very much hated that no he collapsed did not like that at all i need to be revived there's that's something that happens when we have male guests sometimes where male guests love to say that locations are also characters and you're like thank you so much for telling me that there's oh i i mentioned in the beginning i'm an old movies asshole right like

that was clear to everyone yeah karina longworth over here oh god i wish there's i know she's the guy i listen to that i listen to that show and it's real good it's really good oh yeah the tiffany thing i liked that comment that she makes inside of tiffany's that like just reminded me of being poor of like oh yeah i don't buy anything i just like you know i just like stare at nice things and it just like calms me down and that fits into the character very well of just like the the atmosphere of materialism is more comforting than like other people and there's a lot of class stuff too that they like get the crackerjack ring engraved yeah like it's just a lot of like you know the way that the sales guy looks at them and is judgy and that they like keep going with the bit.

And also in this world, it makes no sense that he would look at these two gorgeous, well-dressed people and be like, seems sus. It's like, no, they look like they have money. Yeah, for sure. He's being a full on asshole. think we had a similar discussion on like the Moulin Rouge episode where if you really boil down this story it is sort of about a woman who's a sex worker who maybe is trying to get out of this lifestyle how active she is in that pursuit is kind of up for debate but ultimately it's about a man who comes in and sort of rescues her from it in the sense that he is willing to provide her with actual love unlike the other men that she's interacting with in her profession so in that sense this is a story like the one that we saw in Moulin Rouge and like we see in Pretty Woman and

just a lot of like oh you're a sex worker that must mean that you just need love from a man i the counterpoint to that is that he is also a sex worker yes and that he gives up mrs phil weffler he gives up her and he gives up he starts writing again because he's like i need to make money on my own and he kind of also is rescuing himself and she's rescuing him a little bit. But it's not his story. It's her story. So I feel like I wish she had more agency and more. She was more active in the pursuit of whatever she wants, which, again, I would argue we don't like.

Again, some things are sort of defined, but I think there could be a much clearer definition of what she actually wants out of life. Well, he's very entitled, but there is the there is the thing that he leaves her alone for a long time and then she calls him to come back to the apartment, which is good. Yeah, I agree with with both of you on that. I think it's weird that, again, it's like a Hollywood third act problem where I think all the work is done to make Holly a realized enough character that the movie does not have to end the way it does. She could act with way more agency towards the end of the movie and it would make sense with her character because we've been given the context and the background

that she would have the motivation to do it. But because of how these stories are structured she's not allowed to there's one line that Paul says when he's breaking things off with Mrs. Phelanson where he is that really I was just like oh come on she can't help anyone including herself the thing is I can help her and that's a nice feeling for a change and so we know that he's going into it thinking that he is rescuing her and like that is even though we know that she has a lot to offer him as well he pretty explicitly articulates what his mindset is which is that like i can help her and that makes me feel good and i care about her so

i'm going to and also because i love her then she belongs to me right right so that is like a third act issue i have and then there's also like one the other thing where they're both sex workers right and her motivation is so deeply rooted in survival we also see her you know because she is a woman like treated worse like at the very beginning the motivation for their first hang is that mel blank fucking bugs bunny is like chasing her out of her own apartment to the point where she has to leave out the window these men are getting violent and like there's an implication that he's gonna rape her like oh yeah right she's just like oh another day at the office exactly she's like he's nice when he doesn't drink

and you're just like, yikes. Okay. Yeah. So she has so, so much more shit. Even though they're both sex workers, it's clear that she has to take more shit. And Paul is sort of given the luxury that I don't think she really has in this movie of he has one provider. Yes. And is allowed to have a creative pursuit and has the time to be able to do that. And that doesn't seem as possible for Holly.

Right. I also think the belong to each other thing is interesting because it's phrased terribly. But what he means is and what she ultimately takes away from it and what the cat provides is that. What the cat provides my new podcast is that put down roots you have to put down roots you have to commit to something you have to name your cat and that's why i like that she goes after the cat when she gets out of the car because it's yes belong to each other is phrased poorly but i do think he has a point in that like she's she's

always going to be running and as is this dr seuss wherever you go there you are oh it might be let me try i feel like that's a dr seuss thing but maybe not but basically like you you have to you're always going to be stuck with yourself so she can't keep running like in the cab she's like well i'm going to go to brazil anyway I'm just going to try to go anyway. And he's like, you love New York. You love me. You love this cat. Like deal with it.

So I do think there is, if she was like, actually, I do want to be this free person. And he was coming from no evidence and no information, then I can see it. But also it is hard to swallow a guy being like, here's what you need. But it is what she needs. Well, but it's just it sucks that he has to make her see that and she doesn't come to that conclusion on her own. But she does when she gets out of the car because she could have just gone to Brazil and been like, nah, fuck you, dude.

Well, it's only because the long speech that he has delivered. Yeah. Like it was still like his actions and his words poorly phrased, though they may be, that gets her to realize what, I mean, but yeah, that's why it would have been great if Jose had been waiting for her.

Like if she had actually, nevermind. And then she would have a choice. Then she would have made a choice. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Yeah. I don't hate aside from his very horrible phrasing of saying that she belongs to him, I don't hate the message that he's saying, which is basically just like, you need to be emotionally vulnerable if you ever want to connect with anyone and be happy. Which she realizes that it just, yeah, I wish that she had come to that conclusion on her own through her own, you know, journey, rather than to have him very explicitly teach her that lesson. Yeah. And also would have liked to see maybe a bit more of her throwing that back at him and being like, you do the same thing. You don't fucking write. You say you're a writer, but you don't write. You're kind of a prototype of a guy who's just privileged and just being like, I'm good looking, so I'm going to let women, you know what I mean? Right. She doesn't give it back to him. Yeah, she doesn't really challenge him at all.

As hard as- Or anyone. I wanted her to yell at him so much when she was like, why did you bring Doc to my house? But that's just, I don't know why that was the part I most strongly objected to, but I was so mad at him. Because you're right. I was so mad at him. He ambushes her with her rapist he's

just like yeah you're gonna want to get on a greyhound bus with this guy i'm like what is wrong with you oh yeah anyways are there any the other women at the party is that one boisterous woman that she hates mag wildwood wildwood who she hates and thinks is bore. And then who passes out and everyone just lets her hit the ground. Oh, yeah. That's another reason that she's a terrible person. Is that, like, she knows that she's about to fall. And instead of Holly helping her fellow woman, she goes, Timber. Also, no one helps her.

No one helps her. No one likes her. People, in fact, clear out of the way. It reminds me of that scene at the beginning of School of Rock where Jack Black tries to do the stage dive, but everyone's like, he's a jerk, and they just let him hit the floor. But that one, she would be dead. You know what I mean?

Like, that's all, like, she hits her head. Like, that's not okay. She would have at least broken her nose. Right. She falls face first. And then there's, like, other women at the party irving who's like the guy the the oj the agent is trying to get with yes oh yes and then who's he's kind of like chasing her around and then there's uh one asian woman yes who does not does not speak uh is i mean

not the worst part of the way asian culture is portrayed in this movie for sure but this reminded me a little bit of a few episodes ago when we did the Royal Tenenbaums and just like the use of Asian culture as set dressing correct and characters that are never given any yeah and she's dressed a very specific way yes I mean it was interesting that she was included in the socialite scene I thought that was interesting but also dressed a certain way and doesn't talk. Yeah. So we just have no context of like who she is, why she's there. And then also there's like an interesting thing where with Jose, it seems like his family

is like very important politicians in Brazil. And so there's like an implication that he can't marry a white woman, which is very interesting too. Oh, I didn't catch that. I mean, that he's like bringing her around and she's like, implication that he can't marry a white woman, which is very interesting, too. Oh, I didn't catch that. I mean, that he's like bringing her around and she's like, we're going to get married with all his family there. And it's like very clear that that's not going to happen. I wasn't sure if that was because she was a call girl. Oh, I got the impression that like she's trying to like she was learning to cook and like trying to learn portuguese and like fit in with his family and i think there was like an implication that he can't marry someone who's not part of like the

brazilian political family or whatever that makes sense i thought that they were just like hey don't marry a sex worker but then she has a line well yeah and then she has a line where she says oh our kids will have dark skin but green eyes. I was like, okay, okay. Holly Galilea Eugenics. Yeah. Well, I was like, what do you mean, Holly, you don't have green eyes? Like, what are you talking about? Who here has green eyes?

What are you talking about? Where are they coming from? Right. But, yeah, it's very weird. And then, of course, Mickey Rooney. Yeah, I mean, we – Should we just do it? Yeah, we got very weird. And then, of course, Mickey Rooney. Yeah, I mean, we... Should we just do it? Yeah, we gotta do it.

I'd recommend an article that was in the Wall Street Journal from a few years ago by Jeff Yang, who talks about this role at length. So this is something that's been talked about for years. People have protested different screenings of this movie because of Mickey Rooney's portrayal of the character of Mr. Yunioshi. Which, of course, 2008 comes out with a big old defense of doing it. Earlier, earlier he had said he regretted it, he's sorry he did it, he didn't know, blah, blah, blah, he did this whole thing.

And then he got older i assume more senile and then in 2008 was like nah fuck y'all yeah i i never in defense of mickey rooney here but mickey rooney the last couple years of his life uh pretty much anything he says is not lucid so it's a bummer that he was even allowed to make a statement about it because i think he was like still lucid when he was like oh that's incredibly offensive well i think he he believed yeah he believed it was offensive but i think he got upset when screenings were canceled and that's when he was like went full defense of it he's like no one's ever complained about this role before and it's like oh they have bad. Mickey Mooney has never seen a computer before.

It's really bad. It is him straight up in yellow face. He's got a terrible accent. He's treated terribly by Holly Golightly. It's such a weird, horribly offensive character character it's like one of the worst like the most racist characters ever committed to film for sure they put buck teeth in his mouth

they like taped his eyelids yeah it's really bad every horrible irresponsible thing you can think of every insensitive thing

incredible attention to detail like it's just fucking crazy cause we did an episode recently also about aliens and we talked about the character of vasquez being a brown face at the very least

again not to defend any you know whitewashing or anything like that or any racist characters but at least that character of vasquez is treated with respect by the other characters and the movie itself. Yeah. This is just like the worst example. And it also doesn't add anything to the story. Like I've tweeted about like loving Breakfast at Tiffany's and I've been like, my kingdom for someone who will just cut a version of the movie without his character at all and the movie would make complete sense. Yeah. You don't need it.

There's a few different elements of this movie just from a story perspective. You don't need it. There's a few different elements of this movie, just from a story perspective. You don't need that character. You don't really need Sally Tomato. Like, there's not, there's some, there's certain things that just like, you're just like,

this is some weird fat trimming. Sally Tomato comes into play because her arrest is what leads Jose to leave her, but it would make even better and just as much sense if she decides on her own to leave Jose and be with Paul. Right. She loves him. Yeah. Yeah. I think the cat has is more of an important part of the story plot wise than any of those other things.

Right. Right. Yes. So, yeah, check that piece out. And then also it warrants saying that, you know, while this is one of the most egregious examples of a yellow-faced character in film it was happening you know as recently as emma stone right um so it is something that still happens in in film and will anyone ever learn ever yeah i just watched dr strange and tilda swinton's character is supposed to be Asian as well. It's like, what? There's so much whitewashing. It's horrible. Yeah. Especially I think like, I think

because it's yellow face, people are willing to give it more of a pass than like, if he was straight up in black face, people would be like, well, obviously that's not, I mean, some people would say it's bad, but because it's yellow face, people are like, no, it's like, okay. You know what I mean?

Like they view it as not as bad when it very clearly is. Right. And similarly with Aliens too. I think they're like, that's not so bad. Yeah, it is. No, it is. It is so bad. Yeah.

And it sucks because it's otherwise like a good feel good movie. And then you're like, oh, like I really do please someone out there edit together the movie without those scenes and it would be just as good. Right. It's really it's really frustrating. And at the time I was trying to like figure out like, OK, what did this add to this movie at the time? And it's just like I think it was intended as like a slapsticky, like, oh, wouldn't it be funny? Which is just makes it even worse. And it's also tonally a shift from the rest of the movie.

It's like a completely different, it's taking place in a different movie. Right. It's not good. It's bad. Can you imagine if you just like lost your keys all the time and then you woke up your neighbor? I think you don't have to imagine that. I do that a lot. You have 26 keys made to your apartment that you can get in.

Yeah, but do you like consistently like buzz your neighbor and wake him up all the time? And then in order to like appease him for a moment, you say, yeah, you can take nude pictures of me sometime. I did that with my roommate, Jorn, yesterday. No, I'm kidding. Just a moment in praise of Emily Eustace Falenson. Oh, for sure. Patricia Neal. I just think that she is so cool, and

for this time, she's so confidently cheating on her husband that it is fun to watch, and then you see this breakup scene between her and paul which i thought was like kind of sad but also kind of i don't know i was surprised yeah because we only see her three or four times she's sort of very like practical minded about it she's not like yeah she doesn't like also but it's a little sad too where it's like the way that she exerts her control over the situation with her and Paul is with her money.

And so when he makes the emotionally based decision of like, I'm falling in love with someone. I need to break this off. I can't do this anymore. She's like, oh, how do I retain my power in this situation? And she tries to give him money. And that was just like i don't know my assumption was that she was i thought i always think that she's giving him the thousand dollar check to go on a trip because she thinks that they will spend time together realize they're not in love and that he'll come back yeah okay

i always thought that she was like saying like go for it then like i'll even pay for it because this isn't gonna work out so you know what I mean exactly yeah like enjoy your trip realize you're both people fall out of love you'll come back you know what I mean and then he goes into his closet and he's like find another fuck boy goodbye hopefully he has the same length of arms as me

so you don't even have to go to a tailor scarf toss out it's great so she'll be fine she'll find another young strapping man yeah there's a lot of men who want to be writers there's a lot of men who yeah i really like that character she's a feminist icon i love her calls paul while her husband is in the room this is like hey my husband came home early uh gross uh so i guess we can't see each other today he's right there yeah so i mean i don't know why she's the icon of this movie for me we don't know what the husband's

deal is is she just like she's just like i want to pay for sex and i don't care maybe they're in an ethical non-monogamy relationship yeah and that's why she is able to make the call while he's in the room my god i don't i guess i sort of just assumed like well it was a marriage in 1961 so it probably was bad and uh she could not get out of it without being disgraced yeah and likes likes her younger men yeah good for her yeah she's also yeah she's like an older woman who's just, oh, I just, I like her a lot. Yeah. Well, speaking of marriage and that, like the fact that Holly is trying to pursue two different men who are rich and she thinks that she's going to be able to marry into

money. I get that that is maybe a logical next step for someone in her profession. Even so, the fact that she is trying to marry for money and not actually pursue any of her other talents or anything like that to just try to get a job and earn money for herself. Where would she work? I don't know. She could go to work at Tiffany's. Not really. You're looking down on her.

Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. Well, they... She doesn't have a lot of options. You know? She's a bumpkin. She doesn't really have a lot of other options. I don't have many options, and sometimes people give me money.

But it's not 1961. It's not 1961. Shit's hard. There's not a lot of avenues for women. You really only had... You had to get married. Right. It's like... like well and that's the sex work does seem like one of really the only routes for holly to live the life that she wanted to live at that time because it it seems like if her motivation her ultimate

motivation is she's waiting for her brother to get out of the army so that they can go off and live together and she's trying to save. So she doesn't want to be tied down because that means when Fred gets out of the army, then they can't go through with the plan. And so, yeah, she has so few options. She doesn't have an education. She's never been to a library.

Yeah. Yeah. And she's, like, coming from a trauma background, and I just don't think she has a lot of. And honestly, like that was that was like a valid career path. Like marrying rich is like a valid career path to get out of shit. So that you can like try to move up in class, move up in your station. It's already pretty wild that she got out of, she's in Alabama, right? I think they say Texas. She's from Texas. Capote's from Alabama.

Okay, yeah. That she got out of there anyway to go in the 60s to be in New York. Yeah, like it's a miracle that she, and like a testament to her own, you know, like cleverness and tenaciousness that she is able to live the life she has even though it is unsustainable and requires constant like hustling etc i don't know i i think i i left this viewing with a better understanding of holly i still like that i still like the movie It's darker and sadder than I remember. And I think that's like a super common thing to forget. I know, it's sadder and darker than I think people who only look at it for the aesthetic give it credit for.

Yeah. You know, and it goes without saying, but we should say it is a very white movie. It is the most prominent non-white character is played by a white person so there you go that is just a version of new york that only exists in fiction and is frustrating to see and and of you know as we come up upon on almost every movie we encounter a very hetero movie. And I think had the movie, like, adapted the character of Paul as, I mean, but then we, like. Then you don't get the love story?

Well, which is fine for me, but I also don't necessarily want, like, I mean, and this is, you know, early 60s, so if there is a gay character, they would have to be coded gay because of the production code like you know that wouldn't have flown but i just oh man i haven't read the book is he still fucking the the wife even though he's gay he's coded as gay um i don't know i haven't i didn't reread the book before this i just went to read the he is definitely still like coded as a sex worker so i think that yeah it's possible that he was having sex with Phelanson because she is a character in the novella.

I'd have to double check. Yeah. How explicit. Because it seems like even more so in the book than in the movie. There's I don't think it would say explicitly that he's fucking her. Yeah. So my guess is it would be more implications. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. my guess is it would be more implications okay yeah interesting it would have been a cool movie if if he was coded as gay and they they just helped each other as friends that's interesting or it would have been even cooler if he was just allowed to be explicitly gay and then they were just well yeah i'm talking about 1961 right right now you remake it now he's just like played. Who's he played by? Billy Eichner? Well, even in the book, he does say in the book that he's in love with Holly Golightly, but it is open interpretation of like what kind of love. Or he's bisexual. Right.

We don't know. We don't know. Capote's dead. He cannot tell us. And on that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a sec 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,

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and the piña colada from Puerto Rico. So all of these... We have, we think, Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century B.C. B.C.? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever and here we are we're back we're back okay does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie no i mean i'm trying to remember if it if it passes the bechdel test but we'll get there the only other female character that gets to speak i pretty sure, is that female police officer.

Yeah. Who, when Holly's arrested, she goes, knock it off. And I was like, oh, a woman spoke. Female police officer, though. Guys, hey. Progressive. Very progressive.

There's no female detectives, but a female arresting officer, yes. There's also a female librarian who keeps yelling at Holly because she's never been in a library before and doesn't know that she needs to keep her voice down. So yeah, let's talk about if the movie passes the Bechdel test or not. There are very few scenes where women interact. Mag Wildwood and Holly. At the party.

The party. party i had that that conversation is not passing because they mention mr yunioshi and the two the mag brings to the party jose and rusty so and she's talking to them and audrey heppern says you're being a bore and that's kind of the only right so i didn't have that scene as passing but Jamie you said I had Holly, Mag darling you're being a bore Mag says shut up that does pass that does pass I guess and then she talks to Emily Eustace whatever what's her last name

Falenson they talk in the beginning with Paul when they meet outside does that pass well I didn't write that exchange Paul introduces them. Holly says, how do you do? Mrs. Valenson says, how do you do? But doesn't look at her.

She looks away because she hates her so much. Then he says, oh, this is my interior decorator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's all they, that's, that, it was just like, how do you do? How do you do? We see a few women interacting at Holly's party, but we don't know any of their names.

Holly does talk to that librarian, but we never learn her name. Or the police officer. Or the police officer. Knock it off. And I don't think she and the police officer actually interact. It was more like a side-by-side. So yeah, I guess there are a couple two-line exchanges that technically pass the Bechdel test. But given the movie, it should do a lot better.

You would think. Yeah. And I think Mickey Rooney's character should just decimate. That's like negative 1,000 points. Yeah. For any test of tolerance. So whatever points you've earned, yeah, it's negative 1,000. Yeah.

Well, shall we rate the movie on our nipple scale? For new listeners, we have a special rating scale that we've devised to judge the movies that we've talked about yes uh it is called the nipple scale get used to that phrase you'll be hearing it a lot it is where kayla myself and our guest all rate the movie we just discussed on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how the movie treats its female characters not on how much you like the movie the best part of the n on how much you like the movie. The best part of the nipple scale is you get to describe them. In fact, you have to describe them.

And you get to give them two characters in the movie. Or Alfred Molina if you want to. Right. So that's our nipple scale. For me, I think I'm going to give it one nipple. I think it's interesting to explore a story about a woman who's a sex worker who falls in love with another sex worker. I think that this movie though, and it could be due to some restrictions of the era and the production code and things like that. But I think it doesn't do a whole lot to explore all the interesting facets of that premise. Number one. Number two,

I think that Holly Golightly is a bad person who is careless and who mistreats people. And she's like a prototype of the very annoying manic pixie dream girl trope that we've come across several times and that I don't especially care for. I think that her desires and her motivations are arguably not that well defined. And everything we do know about her and what she wants is tied to a man in some way. She wants to marry a rich man so that she can take care of her brother. So at least that motivation isn't entirely selfish, but men are still the source of her desires, her motivations. And pretty much all she does on screen is talk about men. And then also after her

brother dies, she just goes right back to wanting to marry a rich dude. So it feels like just kind of inconsistent and sort of like negates the motivations that had been established for her earlier. Then finally, it takes a different man, Paul, to basically fix her and to inspire her character arc. Also, and we didn't really talk about this that much, but her relationships to the other women in the movie are generally like very petty, very catty. It's like women feeling though they have to compete against each other, women not treating each other with kindness and respect. So it just kind of reinforces those stereotypes of like women are always fighting women are catty toward each other and i understand that this is a movie that came out many decades ago things were

very different back then historical context was very different back then but i still find that there's not that much redeemable about the character of ho, about the movie itself. I just think that it could have gone in much more interesting directions, explored her experience in a more interesting way, had it so that everything that she does and wants to do isn't tied to men in some way. So one nipple from me and I will give it to Mrs. Fallinson because she is pretty dope. Feminist icon Fallinson. Yes. I, man, I hope that I'm not being too generous.

I'm wanting to give it a two or two and a half. Yeah, I'm going to go with, it doesn't matter. The thing is it's a metric and it doesn't matter, but I'm so stressed out right now. I'm going to give it two and a half. I mean, it goes without saying that the way this movie treats race, especially in regards to Mickey Rooney's character,

is abhorrent and terrible and bad, and there's no excuse for it. I agree that this movie should have it cut entirely, and it wouldn't have much of a difference on the movie. Hardly. But as it pertains to the treatment of women specifically i do think that holly colightly i think she does have a motivation and i think that she it is clearly she comes by her faults in a way that is clearly explained by the movie and is grounded and she loses points for the manic pixie dream girl stuff and the movie

loses points for how it sort of botches the the third act I think in a lot of ways in the way that the message of being emotionally vulnerable is communicated as ownership to a man and you know the the last 15 minutes I have a lot of issues of how her character's treated. But in the way that she's built, and the portrayal of sex work, even though it can't be explicitly stated in movies at all, at this point, she's treated with respect. I think she's called out for faults in ways that for the most part with the exception of her being called crazy with the exception of her being chased out of her own apartment with the exception of her romantic interest bringing her rapist to her door with the exception of those things she she is for the most

part treated as if not with respect because she's not necessarily treated with respect, but I do think she is treated as like a capable character who, for most of the movie, has agency in how she lives her life, given the restraints that are put on her by the world and the era. Yeah, I think I'm ignoring the time period and the socioeconomic cultural situation of the early 60s. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of stuff that she doesn't do here. But at the time, I think it's like implied just because this is the world that it came out in that she couldn't do that. That like wasn't an option for her really at all. So I'm going to give it two and a half nipples. I do like Holly and I love Mrs. Falenson. And so I'm going to give a nip to Miss Falenson, a nip to Holly,

and then I'm going to toss half a nip to the one who goes, knock it off, because I liked her a lot. I agree with everything Jamie said. You put it really well. And I just think it's so cool in a lot of the old movies that I I really love I'm constantly surprised by the way women are portrayed and that they are just speaking purely in terms of being sexual beings like the way that they're portrayed as like being allowed to be that way and I guess I had this idea in my mind of women kind of only being these

like 50s or early 60s kind of like housewives. And so I'm constantly or even like that premarital sex might be seen as bad. But like that there's so many characters, and especially typified by Holly Golightly. But just in a lot of these older movies, there's so many female characters whose motivations are sex or who like are having sex and when I started watching old movies I was really surprised by that because it's today seen as such a thing like women like movies where women are sexual are like given like a standing ovation and I'm like but we've been doing this I don't know why like we have this I think people haven't watched a lot of these old movies so they see it a certain

way and they think that this movie is about like a upscale woman in a tiara who just buys things from Tiffany's and like they haven't watched it so they don't know that it's actually about like class and trauma and like sex work and you know all these things that. And that she doesn't buy anything from Tiffany's.

She doesn't buy anything from Tiffany's She doesn't buy anything from Tiffany. She makes no purchase. She doesn't even eat breakfast inside, you guys. Although, fun fact, this is like the first time Tiffany's allowed anyone to film inside of Tiffany's. Oh, no kidding. That's cool. So, yeah, so I just... And we never...

We almost never see male sex workers treated with respect or like, you know, male sex workers who are with women. Although I guess that show hung. But like. Wait, who's in that show? Thomas Jane. Wow. If I got that right, that would be incredible.

And so I just think it's surprising. Like maybe I'm giving it to maybe I'm going to give it three nipples and maybe I'm giving it too many nipples because I was just so shocked by how chill the movie was about so many things. Yeah. And for its era and how like misunderstood it is

by like anyone who's ever had a poster of it in their dorm room. It is Thomas Jane, by the way. Wow, guys. Take me on your trivia team. I know so much useless stuff. And so, and I think it's trying as hard as it can for its time. I will give it negative 5,000 nipples for Mickey Rooney.

Yes. And I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking i guess they thought it was it was a comic relief even racism aside which it never is but it tonally does not fit with the rest of the movie it takes away from the movie even if it even if the role was played by an asian actor even if the role was toned down by 50%, it would still tonally not fit in with the rest of the movie. For sure.

As a screenwriter, it doesn't make any sense to me. There's no point to it. The party scene also seems tonally inconsistent because there's some slapstick-y physical humor there. I was like, is this supposed to be funny?

I think this movie was supposed to be a a rom-commy thing of its time but the rom and the com feel so separate that it's just yeah there's no there's no overlap yeah yeah so some of the characters feel very grounded and then some of the characters are in a different movie right and that is either poor screenwriting or poor directing. Or a fun mix. Who are you giving your nipples to? Two to Falstein. Falstein. She rocks.

One to Holly Golightly, I guess. The nipples only go to women. They can go to anyone you want. You can own to men, animals, people who aren't even in the movie. Inanimate objects, concepts. I want to give one to the cat. Ideas. I want to give one to the cat.

Absolutely. The cat is wonderful. It did its own stunts. That was such good acting by that cat. That cat ruled. I mean, the scene where the cat's playing with the cigarette. I mean, that cat was trained so well. I loved it.

That cat was wet and didn't freak out. Yeah. You're just like, what is, this cat's a star. What is, a cactor? A cactor. Yeah, cat actor. Anyway. All right.

Well, Gabby, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Of course. And thanks for doing a movie that you fucking hate. You're so welcome. I'm happy to make the sacrifice for this podcast and for you, Gabby. Aw. I just, I wanted to try to get, like, something super old in here.

Yeah. Just for your fans that are, like, 70 to 80. Like, really, your demo. Which we have so many of. Yeah, I'm sure. So shout out to our older fans. Thank you so much for listening. Gabby, where can people follow you online?

Do you have anything you'd like to plug? Oh, sure. My podcast, Bad With Money, is currently on season three. It's out now and it's about money, but it tries not to be stressful. Just trying to break the taboo, guys. It's so good. Thank you. And I'm on Twitter

at Gabby Dunn and on Instagram at Gabby Road because I don't understand branding. Yeah. And then I had a book come out last year called I Hate Everyone But You. And it was a New York Times bestseller. And it's a YA novel, but also like a novel regular and you can get that wherever books are sold yay oh yeah not at tiffany's though they don't sell books not at tiffany's you could go to a lot you could go to a library though but you should buy you should buy gabby's book bring it to tiffany's get it engraved yes you can find us we are now in the how stuff Works Network. Wow. Exciting. We're network girls. We're little bitches. But you can also still find us on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Bechtelcast.

Five bucks a month gets you two extra episodes. Wow. Amazing. For our new listeners, you can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast on both Twitter and Instagram. And we also have a Facebook page just called The Bechtelcast. Nothing tricky. Nothing tricky.

You can find me on Twitter.com at Jamie Loftus Help. And you can find me at Caitlin Durante. And then for our existing listeners, thanks for always being here. Thanks for all of your support. Thank you guys for doing this show. It's so fun. I love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you. We love doing it. And we're glad you could be here. Thanks for all of your support. Thank you guys for doing this show. It's so fun. I love it. We love doing it and we're glad you could be here. That's on your upgrade.

Thank you so much. And I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany's? And I said, I think I remember the film and as I recall we both kind of liked it. Well you recall correctly because I did not like it.

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