The Bechdel Cast - Bring It On with Maggie Maye

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

Brrr...it's cold in here! There must be Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus and special guest Maggie Maye discussing Bring It On in the atmosphere! (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @maggiemayehaha 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.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are two cool moms. We are Two Cool Moms.

We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network? That's right. We're an official iHeart podcast, and I'm super excited about it. I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier.

That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeart Radio app. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose.

This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfections, being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. 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 Bechdelcast. Hi, welcome. Welcome to the show. I feel so comfortable. I'm feeling really alive. Hey, thanks for being here. My name's Caitlin.

My name's Jamie, and this is the Bechdelcast. Thank you so much for being here. For those of you who have never heard the show before, why don't we tell you a little bit about it? We talk about the representation and portrayal of women in movies using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point to initiate that larger conversation. Hey, Jamie, what the hell is the Bechdel test as a jumping off point to initiate that larger conversation. Hey, Jamie, what's the, what the hell is the Bechdel test? Okay, calm down. I'll

tell you. It's, it's a media test invented by a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel. It is a test that requires in a piece of media that there be two female identifying characters who have names, who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. That's the way we define the test. You'd think it would be easy, but all

1,200 hours of Lord of the Rings do not pass. So it is, and that said, it is still very easy. We're psyched to be back at the Ruby. We love the Ruby. Give it up for the Ruby in Los Angeles. And we've got a real treat tonight in terms of movie and guest.

Yes, so let's bring her out before we get any further. We're turning to the Bechdel cast. She's a very funny comedian. You've seen her on Conan, and you know her from our Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone episode. It's Maggie Mae. Maggie Mae! Hi! Yay!

Hey, what's up? Hey, guys. How are you? Good, pretty good. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Hey, we's up? Hey, guys. How are you? I'm pretty good. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Hey, we can't wait.

So we're talking about Bring It On. Yeah, clap if you have not seen Bring It On. Wow. Everyone did their homework. Wow. Okay, we love good pupils. You are rewarded with whatever trash is in our pockets at the end of the show so thank you so much for coming yes

bring it on what a film 2000 you know and if you've listened to episodes about movies that come out between 1998 and 2002 it's a precarious time for passing the Bechdel test and acting ethically it's a very precarious time for passing the Bechdel test and acting ethically.

It's a very precarious time. So we'll figure out what side of that late 90s, early aught spectrum we fall on tonight. Yes. So Maggie, we'll start with you. What's your history, your relationship with the movie Bring It On? Okay, so I love the movie Bring It On. I was a cheerleader. we didn't even know that when we asked you to be our guest yeah i was a cheerleader like all the way through um i went

to a magnet high school that did not have sports but i insisted on doing independent cheerleading for like a year wait were you like a lone operative? Yes. It was not beneficial. I was like to all the rest of the nerds, because this school was like number 77 in the nation. It was number seven in the nation at its heyday. And I was like, hey, everybody trying to get into Harvard, who wants to cheer? And they were like, if you don't get the fuck out of this computer lab right now.

So you had nothing to cheer for but you pursued it cheered for like you know masterminds and math squad you went to like math competition like mathlete competition they did not let me go but i cheered from home i cheered from home that's so cool amazing so you're a fan of the movie you were a former cheerleader yes hell yeah and it came out the year that I was a senior. So I was able to watch it and be like, I would have been going through all this bullshit if I would have gone to a regular high school. I was like, what if?

Great. Jamie, what's your history? I remember the first time I saw this movie was at a sleepover that I was not cool enough to be invited to in middle school, which is a real treat. It was because Ryan Cheatham, who was one of the coolest girls in school, liked me when I was seven,

and she just decided to, like, she was one of those merciful, cool girls who was like, no, I know Jamie sucks, but we're going to let her hang out with us. Like, she would be negging me me constantly but would also let me come and I was honestly so grateful to her that she would let me be there so I was thrilled to be there and they're like we're watching a movie about cheerleaders and I'm like awesome yes cool let me study so I don't remember much about watching it the first time because i was so nervous to be at that sleepover i was just like very aware of my posture um and like whatever

was going on with my body i just was like maybe this is my big chance it wasn't but uh so i truly like i'd seen it i vividly remember watching it and I didn't remember anything that happened okay okay so yeah I'd seen it a few times uh and had a weird traumatic memory attached to okay what about you uh I saw it only one time um before prepping for the episode i was in high school i think right around when it came out i don't think i saw in the theater but i do have a vivid memory of the scene where eliza dushku wipes her fake tattoo off and then does a bunch of gymnastics for some reason that is like emblazoned into my memory and then i remembered nothing else about the movie so it's a good moment yeah that was the main point in the movie i mean it's it's iconic so i you know this this movie is fun it's super

fun yeah there's a lot of stuff to love here there's a lot of stuff to love there's a lot of stuff to be like uh uh there is more to love than I thought there would be going in, which is always nice. And also, watching this movie, I understood parts of the Thank U, Next music video I hadn't previously understood. I was like, why is Ariana Grande brushing her teeth for five minutes? It was a reference to this movie.

Don't you love seeing a reverse reference or understanding what a reference to this movie don't you love seeing like a reverse reference or like like understanding what a reference is yeah and then being like tee hee

I get it and then five months later being like I see that was a lot of the Simpsons yeah growing up

I was like oh that was even funnier now I used to sneak watch Frasier at my house when I was in like elementary school it's my little personal rebellion that i do and crazy i wasn't invited to sleepovers

but i would always be like haha i understand i'm. I know these Baroque musicians they're joking about. I probably still wouldn't understand. But I love, it's weird how young you can be when you condition yourself to pretend to understand what's going on. Yeah.

It's a defense mechanism. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You just laugh when everybody else is laughing. Or they kind of have pauses where you're like, I bet you that was a joke.

Yeah, you're like, okay, yeah, sure. I bet you that's some shit I didn't you're like, okay, yeah, sure. That's some shit I didn't understand. I'll start giggling. I'll do the recap? You'll do the recap. Okay, I will.

I certainly will. That's how it goes. So, we meet Torrance Shipman. Tor. Yeah, Tor. Tori, as she's called. Why is her name like Torrent? What's her name?

And then also the team is called the Toros. That had to have been on purpose by the screenwriter i'm guessing but it was it was a weird choice anyway so kirsten dunst is torrent's shipment she's just isn't torrent's a place in california do is it isn't it yeah i was just like there's a lot of weird i was like where are they going with this? This movie was real on the nose. Yeah, yeah. California, what do we know? Her boyfriend's name is Sam Diego. No one used that. I want to use that.

Yeah, it's yours. It's yours. Okay. So she is a cheerleader in high school. Like I said, her team is the rancho carne toros rancho carne what can i just say rancho carne what the fuck okay go ahead go ahead yeah we open she's cheering in front of the whole school about how awesome cheerleaders are and then suddenly she's naked and it's like oh my god it was a dream and you know it's a dream because we're learning all of the women by name which

would never happen in real life that was i was like of course this is a dream sequence we know what their names are yeah true and then we meet her boyfriend aaron he's about to move away for college and then it's the start of torrence's senior year of high school and the cheerleading squad is voting for the new team captain because big red i guess has graduated even though she's still there that is very true that i mean but like that's true of cheerleaders and like dan i was on a dance team in high school brag thank you so much wow like i feel like there are like people who are like too into high school sports and activities that go to nearby colleges and they're like i'm just gonna come by and you're like don't like it's weird it always makes you look weird but i i don't

know that tracked for me big red she just she was clearly not you know adapting very well freshman year because she was always lurking around she was around high school she was clearly not adapting very well freshman year because she was always lurking around. She was around. High school, she was around. Didn't she show up still in her cheerleading uniform a couple of times? Yeah. I was like, man, she needs to move on.

Yeah. You are not going to make it, Red. Go to class. What are you doing? In between anatomy and physiology, I'm going to go scare the hell out of my high school. Watch this. So then Torrance gets voted new squad captain. Yes, Kirsten Dunst,

who is in every movie between 1998 and 2004. Yes. Okay, so then this new boy moves to school, Cliff. She is vibing with him he loves Cliff Pantone all the names are so weird

because Pantone is like the name of a color company yeah and I was like and then Cliff okay so she's vibing with him

and then there's a spot on the squad because someone gets injured and now they have to hold tryouts for

great opportunity for an audition montage oh and we get one everyone because someone gets injured and now they have to hold tryouts for... Great opportunity for an audition montage. Oh, and we get one. I thought this was the thing for Pippin. It's a great audition. Wouldn't you believe it? Everyone who tries out isn't the right fit until we get to Missy.

That's Eliza Dushku. And she is rough. She is tough. And she's like, I think cheerleading's stupid, but your school doesn't have a gymnastics team, so this is my last resort. And we know all the hard, tough people

are on the gymnastics team. That's the logic this movie subscribes to. They're like, you know what know the gymnastics team is terrifying all right sure they're all like goth kids dominique mochiano just shot somebody okay don't fuck with us she vaulted off the beam and shot someone in the kneecap that's upside down like the Matrix. And then stuck the landing. I would love to see that movie.

Incidentally, this screenwriter also wrote Stick It, that gymnastics movie that came out in 2006. Yeah. This writer

had two interests. And they're very related. They're flips and more flips with pom-poms so torrence sees missy's potential but the other cheerleaders are like oh gross she's a goth yeah but tor she's a goth with like hair that like vaguely resembles dreadlocks, but not quite. Yeah.

That hairstyle toes the line. The toes the line. So Torrance goes and tries to convince her to join the team, and she's like, fine, I'll do it. And then we learn the twist that Cliff and Missy are brother and sister. And then, so Missy goes to practice and she sees

the burr. It's cold in here. There must be some toros in the atmosphere. I said burr. It's cold in here. There must be some toros in the atmosphere. Shoot.

For the listeners at home. My cheerleading days. you can really see that solo work coming out the independent study work when you do it by yourself you don't have to be on rhythm because it's yes for the listeners you find your own beat maggie just got up and started dancing and it was glorious choreography it was incredible It was incredible. Y'all missed it. You should have been here. Yeah. So she sees that, and she's like, hey, you guys stole those cheers. Let me prove it to you. And she drives her from San Diego to Los Angeles.

That's a three-hour drive, by the way, on a school night. And shows her the Clovers from East compton doing the exact same cheer and we learn that big red had been traveling to this school taping three hours yeah putting in a lot of effort and it's like if you're if you have all that time you might as well just choreograph your own what are you doing yeah yeah she was going to wait even know about them? Yeah. I'm like, in 2000, where would you have found out? Yes. They don't have a web page. No.

I can tell you that much right now. Yeah, I was like, okay, I guess we're just here for the ride. Yeah. So they go and watch it. And the Clovers, the team captain is Isis. That's Gabrielle Union's character. Also in every movie from 1999 to 2004. And Isis is like, hey, white ladies, you stole from us.

That is the line that she says. But it ends now. And this year, we're winning nationals. And Torrance is upset. She didn't realize that the cheers had been stolen so now she's like hey squad we got to come up with something else a new a new thing for regionals that's right around the corner isn't it always always that's how i hope in every conversation like regionals is right around the corner well then she says like we have to get a new routine and the squad is kind of like no right

we know burr we're doing burr it's still cold in here i'm in a jacket okay we're doing it burr works for us but then then the clovers show up to one of their football games and like hey the cheer that you're doing we also invented that that one. That's a great scene. That was a good scene. Watch it twice. Just watch that scene. That's the whole movie you need to see. Also in that scene, this has nothing to do with anything,

but I think that the movie keeps making a play to be like, Cliff is a little different. He's an intellectual. So he's at that football game reading The Human Ape. I didn't notice that. I looked up the book. It's like a famous sociology book about evolution. So they're like, no, Cliff, no, no, no. He's not a sports boy.

Rather, he's a Darwin boy. I was just like, what is the point of this? He's going to voluntarily show up to a football game no one asked him to be at. No one invited him. And do homework that no one asked him to do. Everything with Cliff is a reach for me, but that was one of the reachiest reaches of just like, no, no, no, he's smart. Check this shit out. But he loves the Ramones.

He's not like the other boys. He's not. He's not. It's so weird. He reads books. Yeah, he's a book Ramone man. You know the type. They're so little.

Okay, so then Torrance's boyfriend, Aaron, who is actively cheating on her, recommends that the squad hires Sparky Palastri. Another winner of a name. Spirit Fingers! Just that name sounds suspicious. Yeah.

Sounds suspicious as hell. Sounds like he's gonna try to sell them knives and shit. It also sounds like Sparky Palastri sounds like you've already had to sell them knives and shit well it also sounds like sparky palastri sounds like you've already had to change your name more than once because that would that wouldn't even be like someone's first choice for an alien they'd be like well sam diego

gonna go for sparky Palastro. Okay, so then they hire him, but he's expensive. He costs $2,000. No. So they do a car wash fundraiser, which is an excuse to show a bunch of teen girls in bikinis. I didn't find that gratuitous at all. Meanwhile, Cliff and Torrance, they're vibing.

They're vibing pretty hard. I swear to you, you can cut Cliff entirely out of this movie. Get him out of the movie. The movie is no different. I've always said he does not help the movie in any way, shape, or form. No. He helps the movie nothing. He just, yeah, cut Cliff. He's trimmed the fat.

Yeah. Him and his damn books. Get him out. I bet you they forced that into it. Like in Hunger Games when they forced Gale in, they're like, we need a love interest.

They probably were like, let's put in a complex bad boy with no leather jacket. It totally does seem like he's like a studio, like a sentient studio now. Yeah, yeah. Because he's like put

in a convenient place and they're like, oh, what if Missy had a brother who didn't play by the rules? The Pantones are a family of badasses. The Pantones are also a parentless family. They're in this

huge ass house and then she, at one point Missy's like, oh, they're at a benefit. They'll be fucked up for days. I was just like, what is going on with your parents? They seem like very wealthy alcoholics. And good for her. Cut the Cliff storyline and make the advanced chemistry class that she has to take, make that a storyline where she learns about chemistry and finds out that she loves it.

Women in STEM careers. Exactly. That's right. We need women in STEM who also are cheerleaders. That's my new hill to die on. Who don't need no damn bad boy. Cut the bad boy. He wasn't even bad. He just brought a book to a football

game. It's not bad. It's pretty good. He's a good student. Your bad boy is on a roll. He's he's like yeah this is kind of bonus work so then sparky shows up he criticizes everyone on the team oh my god very creative body it was necessary i felt sure he's like everyone develop an eating disorder or stop eating altogether. And that whole scene. That's super helpful.

Yeah. Oh, it totally helped the team. Young women. That was helpful for me to see. It was a good reminder to stop eating. Yeah, that's great. And then he whips Missy with a towel. Oh, yeah.

And he isn't fired. He is not fired. He is very bad at his job. He's obsessed with spirit hands. Fingers. And everyone's... I heard a few angry... Yes, and there were a few people

who were like... I'm so sorry. Spirit fingies. I'll go ahead and cancel myself. I like this dude in the front row when you said spirit hands, he went, he twinkled his fingers like,

girl. True, you're right, you're right. It's true. Okay, so spirit fingers, and then, and they do end up with a routine that no one's really excited about, and then we cut to regionals. It's not a good routine.

Just as a cheerleader, it's not a good routine. Sparky's a hack. You would know. He's simply a hack. The Toros are at regionals. The Clovers are at regionals. And then the team that goes right before the Toros

does the exact same fucking Sparky Polanski, whatever his name is, routine. They're double dipping. He's double dipping. He got $4,000. Imagine the damage he could do. Well, the judge says he did it to six different squads so that's twelve thousand dollars and the judges are like we don't know

what to do about this you're not disqualified but like make sure you come back with a new routine at nationals right also the clovers do a great routine at regionals. Yes. And then there's a few different short confrontations between Gabriella Union and Kirsten Dunst, and this is one of the good ones where they're all laughing at the Toros, and they are right. It's funny.

Yeah. Yes. And then Erin, who for some reason is still Torrance's boyfriend, tells her, you're not Captain Material, and just give it up. And then Cliff finds out that she has a boyfriend, and he gets mad. Rude. Well, because she was leading him on, dude.

Him and all his books. Courtney and Whitney try to mutiny her and withdraw from Nationals altogether but Torrance is like no this is our chance to show that we are the original people that we thought we were but actually we're not but we can do it and then they practice really hard they come up with a new routine Torrance breaks up with Aaron and then they're all ready to go to nationals until they learn that the East Compton Clovers aren't going because

they couldn't raise money for the trip. Right. Torrance is hell bent on them going because she's like, they're the stiffest competition. And if we want to show that we're the best, we have to beat the best. And then she gets her dad to sponsor the clovers big daddy moment yeah but isis tears up the check they refuse yes yeah yeah i love that part too yes great take that savior yeah white knight into our school shit i didn't even go there. And then the Clovers end up getting sponsored by a talk show host that's from their neighborhood. And then they are able to go to nationals. So both teams are there.

Isis says, bring it. Doesn't say bring it. And then we're like, ah. But she says most, two thirds of it. And so we're like, oh, yay. And we appreciate her restraint. Yeah. And both teams make it to the very final round, and they both put on a great show.

They have great sets, solid tight fives, you know, da-da-da-da. And then the Toros get second place. The Clovers win first place nationals. Congratulations to the clovers win first place nationals congratulations to the clovers and then a kiss because we can't close out the movie without a cliff kiss wait hold on i'm just realizing did cliff go to daytona beach yes he got on a flight last minute from san diego to San Diego to Florida. Sam Diego. He should be in school, right? His parents really were fucked up. They're like, where are our children?

Why did they have to move? We don't know what the story is. All right, so that's the story. Give it up for the Clovers. Okay. I like the live shows where we're like, clap for the story. Give it up for the Clovers. Okay. I like the live shows where we're like, clap for the plot now. It works as a seamless transition whenever I need to insert the ad break is what that's all about.

I love it. 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, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. 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. Gus. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President

Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where to begin? Oh, well. Let's start with Torrance. Okay. So Torrance is the main character. She's played by Kirsten Dunst. I didn't realize until more recently,

kind of like this stock character that Kirsten Dunst plays where she is very popular, but she's also nice. I feel like she takes up a similar role in Drop Dead Gorgeous, in Spider-Man, where it's like she always is like this like white blonde girl who's very well liked by everybody. And she has a code of ethics that she abides by. And we're like, all right, sure. You know, but then surrounding her are like popular girls who are bitchy and mean and out to get her like, all right, sure. But then surrounding her are popular girls who are bitchy and mean and out to get her, like Denise Richards in Drop Dead Gorgeous

and in this movie, Courtney and Whitney. Yes. But she plays this very sweetheart, virginal, snaggle-toothy little thing. She has snaggle-tooth? Yeah, it's her thing. Am I like crazy? She brags about it.

She needs to be in a bra. Here's the thing. Call out. Someone told us she has small teeth. Yeah, she's called out as a small tooth. She needs to be cast in a Bruckheimer joint to get those veneers. Those Bruckheimer veneers those bruckheimer

veneers that i love yeah but yeah so she's surrounded she's like the nice popular cheerleading captain surrounded by wretched people for the most part yeah but she always plays sort of like this person with a moral center and that like sort of translates throughout a lot of her roles and this is like a really good example of of one of them i mean it's weird she's kind of all over i feel like in general this movie shows more sympathy towards tor than is necessary a lot of the time where there's a lot of like empathy that should be placed with isis and with east compton that is instead given to tor and wait like during the scenes every time she realizes she's accidentally plagiarized again

we're supposed to feel terrible for her and it's like someone just has to be fact checking this like when tor and missy go to east compton Missy's like, look, this was a stolen routine. Tor's like, no! Oh, my God. This is such a, I'm so embarrassed. And, like, we're supposed to be like, no, Tor, don't be sad. It's okay, girl. But it's like, no, we should be, like, upset for Isis.

Like, there's just a lot of moments where we're supposed to feel bad for Kirsten dunst where i'm kind of like whatever fix it like you know that's that is the big thing about this movie for me is that it touches on like race and appropriation because it is effectively about a group of largely white upper class teens stealing from a community of I think everyone on the Clovers is a person of color so they're stealing from people of color yet the movie is told from the point of view of the white people and right for most of the movie the Clovers the people of color are poised as the bad guys that were raiding a rooting against because we're supposed to be kind of rooting against because we're rooting for the white people.

Because they're the protagonists, which this is like the common story. You know, white women steal from us all the time. That's like how that is. But the fact that they put, I always found it weird that the Clovers were seen as the bad people when they were getting ran amok the whole movie right reimagine this movie from the clovers point of view because then it's about like

isis and her squad working very hard creating original cheers then they see like two white girls snooping around on their practice who belong to a squad of all white people. Three hours away, which still blows my mind. Yeah, it should not be told from the point of view of the white people. Yeah, we should be rooting for the people whose chairs were stolen and appropriated. It's so weird, yeah.

And it also sort of feels like a weird cop- out for Kirsten Dunst's character to never know. And so we have her as sort of like this channel of like, Oh, I hope that she makes it right. Like let's, because I feel uncomfortable with that. And I really hope that Kirsten Dunst and her dad figure this out.

and yeah, there's, there's a lot of moments that there's just like some dissonance and like you know we watched it in 2019 and it's like that's not how hopefully most of us feel but the movie so clearly feels certain that you're gonna feel that way uh that like kirsten and her dad are gonna solve solve like white women stealing from like black women. It's just bizarre. A white man is going to solve the problem of white women stealing from black women. Daddy is actually the missing piece here.

What if daddy were here? Well, I was so worried that it was going to become a white savior movie where she's like, I took money from my dad and I'm giving it to you. And I'm so glad that that's not what happened. But I can't help but to think, and this is a theory. Let me know how you think about it. But I feel like Isis rejecting the money

was not the writer of the movie's deliberate attempt to be like, hey, I want to make sure this is not a white savior story. I think it was more to make Isis and the Clovers seem like more scary, mean adversaries. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I know it was 2000, but who the hell named her Isis? Also crossed my mind. Yeah. Did not appreciate it. I was like, Isis. This movie just really is bad at naming anyone.

Yeah. Really bad. Let's put the other team, ISIS and Al-Qaeda. ISIS is an Egyptian goddess? Question mark. Wow. Master's degree, okay. Yeah.

So I'm hoping she was named after that. I think this was pre-scary ISIS. I think, right? By a long time. But I mean, they could have gotten with Kim. Yeah. Kim wasn't off the table. They're like, no, Torrance versus ISIS.

It's just like, oh my God. This movie comes on really strong. I don't know i don't really know like here's here's why i think that because the movie frames the clovers as quote the bad guys and the and like adhering to for a large chunk of the movie the stereotype of the angry black woman so i feel like that her tearing up the check wasn't, you're like, oh, this isn't a white savior story. It was more that like, we're mean, and we're not gonna take your money because we're mean. Like we're not gonna try to reason with you,

and we're not gonna try to let you make it right. We're just gonna be mad about it. That's how I interpreted it. But I think there, I don't know. I mean, I guess the only counterpoint i would have today is there's for so much of the movie it was like i was like when are we going to get to learn anything about like the individual characters on the clovers because it's it's so deep into the movie that you find out even remotely anything and the and the closest you get is that scene

where they're writing the letter to the talk show host where they're like vaguely describing their economic background. They're vaguely describing what their plan is. It's clear they have a plan to get to nationals no matter what. So because that scene came right before, like the only moment we got with them

came right before that, I'm hoping that the writer was trying to at least give isis a moment and and try to help the audience understand where she's coming from it doesn't go nearly far enough in just like developing the interior lives of anyone on the clovers which is like such why is like why do we waste so much like real estate in this movie on fucking Cliff? When half the cast is being ignored for the whole movie. Cut Cliff and let's learn about ISIS and all of her. And the girl group Black,

who are the only other teammates on, did anyone else listen to that group in 1999? One of them is on Real Housewives of Atlanta nowanta now yes okay i've got someone with me uh we've got a fact checker in the audience i've got a fact checker who's constantly googling everything we say uh but we don't get to know anything about about those characters and it's uh the closest we get at the scene that comes right before that i feel like it's clear at least that tor was deeply misguided to do that. I don't think it goes far enough, but I hope that that's the implication.

Well, we'll never know. I mean, yeah, everyone involved with this movie is dead. There's no one to check with. Okay. I was like, we should tweet at them right now but they did

to keep going on tour there's a lot to talk about going on tour like we're gonna do to the east coast plugs are later I mean we know more about tour than anyone else in the movie

we arguably know too much about her to the point where I don't care there was one scene with her mom that I liked which is weird it's weird that there's this whole scene with Tor and her mom that is generally positive but we never really go back to her mom again

so it kind of ends up not mattering but they're doing the back and forth of tor's mom is like you cheer too much take a math class and then torrence is like you hate that i'm not a genius you hate that i'm an idiot i like that i like that mediocrity visibility we need more of that yeah there's mediocre people everywhere and they're not we don't see them on screen i mean we do we do do a lot form ever sure we do a lot to like champion like you know women's education and stuff like that but torrence was just like i don't really care about school i only care about cheerleading and you're just gonna have to accept that mom

and then she was like and then her mom's like, take a science class. And Torrance is like, fine. And that's the whole scene. And that should have been a subplot, not Cliff. Right. That's another great use of the time that we waste on Cliff. Yeah. But let's talk about, well, we're on the subject of Cliff.

Might as well. There is, of course, a vague, poorly constructed love triangle in this movie with Aaron, Tor, and Cliff. I've never cared less in my entire life. Yeah. Oh, God. So Aaron is a male cheerleader who Tor is in a relationship with. The use of queer jokes in this movie is just horrible.

Yeah, we'll get there. But Aaron is cheating on her with a bunch of girls in college, basically, and he's just a dick. He tells her he doesn't believe in her, and that's juxtaposed with this creepy scene on a swing where Kirsten Dunst... Okay, I just

want to walk you through this scene with Cliff. Please. Kirsten Dunst, okay, I just want to walk you through this scene with Cliff. Please. Kirsten Dunst is on a swing. She's just had a conversation with Eliza Dushku.

She walks off. She's going to do some cheerleading thing. And then all of a sudden, Cliff swoops down, twist, he's been on the swing set the whole time.

And you're like, oh my God. He starts to push her on the swing. This is a sinister thing that like oh my god he starts to push her on the swing this is a sinister thing that perverts do to children before they kill them and Cliff's pushing her on the swing and then just like pulls the swing back

and then whispers in her ear for what it's worth I believe in you and then she's like really he's like yeah he's just the fuckiest of fuck boys and and then she that is supposed to like give her the motivation to not plagiarize anymore like it's so ridiculous she should very obviously arrive at this point like this conclusion on her own just cliff they're using him to like motivate her to be a better cheerleader but he's

just like there plays the guitar and then he like feels very entitled to her like whenever he makes the mixtape he has the flowers and then he finds out that she has i mean it's not makes the mixtape, he has the flowers, and then he finds out that she has a boyfriend. I mean, it's not really a mixtape. It's a fully produced original song. Oh, yeah. Good point. It's like Rebecca Black's Friday. It's like someone was paid to do production on that.

He just charged it on his parents' charge card. Like, he did everything else. They're drunk. Doesn't matter, dude. When did we go to the studios? Oh, well, we were at a benefit. We're still fucked up. There's, like, a full, there's, like, drums.

Either he plays all those instruments, or he, like, hired a band. He hired a band. He hired the Rebecca Black people to do it. It's so funny. And it's, like, one of my favorite things that happens in movies is when someone composes an original song and you can tell the movie is like,

this is gonna be a fucking hit. And it's just like not. That's what the song is like. Where he's like, you're a cheerleader, I want to kiss you and finger you. And Kirsten does this jamming, and she's like, this song is really good.

And we're like, you're not fooling us. She's jumping on the bed without a bra. All the stops are pulled up to make this song seem presentable. And she conveniently picked her pom-poms up to dance to this bullshit song. I was like, I did independent cheerleading to the chagrin of everybody. Everybody's chagrin.

And I have never once, while dancing, picked up my, well, let me get my pom-poms and really turn this up right now. Listen to some shitty music right now. Never happened. this up right now listen to some shitty music right now it's never happened i forgot how i forgot the music that uh the toros and the clovers uh performed to at the end and i was so i was like wracked with anxiety of like she's gonna dance to the song they're gonna do a cheer to the rebecca black friday song like but thank god they just used jock jams. But I mean, yeah, my main thing with the Cliff thing

is he's there, he's entitled, he's kind of random in terms of, he's all over the place in terms of what his character is. He feels like a studio note, and he shouldn't be there. There's just no need for that subplot. He's a PSA to future parents to tell their daughters that they love them so they're not susceptible to these random I believe in you kind of bullshit.

Tell your child you believe in them so they're not out here falling in love with people making stupid ass songs for them at the mall and shit. Tell your child that you believe in them. Any man who composes original music for you, that's a red flag. Somewhere on the internet, there's a couple of mixtapes about thinking...

This was, like like early 2015, I was dating the fuckboy-iest fuckboy ever, and he wrote a song about how he liked me, and then I rejected him, and then he wrote three songs about, and he wrote one of the songs I think I've played for you before, it's called Your Body is Dumb.

Maggie left? Okay. Just out of here. Can't even be here for that anymore. Your body is dumb. Give me this fool's email address. Send a letter to his mom. Anyways, he's a father now.

Oh, no. Oh, no. All right. 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, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged.

I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months.

These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.

This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Should we get into the just enormous list of horribly problematic things that get said and done. Yeah, let's do your power listicle. Yep, all right. Let's do it.

It's very 2000. Get ready for it to be very 2000. Oh boy. Starting with, there's a scene in a locker room where, by the way, teen girls are undressing. They are in bras and underwears.

I thought that that was more tastefully done than most movies. I mean, the worst one that comes to mind is Carrie whenever Sissy Spacek is just fully nude. That doesn't, yeah, that locker room scene has never taken place on Earth. Ever. Everyone's fully nude, groping their own titties

in the shower. I'm like, yeah no i guess there are stalls i guess i just don't 90 of high schools have stalls i don't see the need to show teenage girls in next to no clothing i agree in a movie Especially when it's a cheerleading movie. You don't need to add that extra layer of like, ooh, sexualized, and it's cheerleaders, and oh, they're taking their clothes. Come on, man. You can do better.

At least there's no, I guess what I'm saying is that there's no gratuitous, like it's not as gratuitous as most of these movies tend to be. Sure. But it's still needless all the same. So in that scene, we have a number of girls calling each other sluts, whores, bitches. They're fat shaming each other.

There are the fun lines that, as a wordsmith myself, I appreciated. Like, she puts the itch in bitch, and she puts the whore in horrifying. Does pass the Bechdel test. It does. Spoiler. Good pass. Good pass, gang.

And then there's also a weird moment where they're talking about Big Red and how much of a bitch she is. Oh, and they call her, yeah. Courtney and Whitney say, she doesn't have feelings, just testicles. Right. Which is just like bad writing,

as are most of these bad girls. What does that even mean? I don't know. You know when you don't wear your feelings? She doesn't have anger. She has wisdom teeth. It's like, you know this invisible thing? It's actually a body part

well since it's testicle specifically i guess they're saying like oh she's mannish she's manly because she is not emotional yeah yeah yeah so it's just i didn't know what to do with that line either i just put question marks i i have a lot of those as well. Yeah. Then they're doing some cheer practices and there are some male cheerleaders.

On every team there's male cheerleaders which I thought and there's a few bad jokes about it but not half as many bad jokes as I thought there would be.

Sure. Except for one big one that is oh boy. Oh yeah. I do like that the male cheerleaders are like they're present but they're like mostly sidelined like this is a very female driven yeah movie so i like that they're around too and they're they're like on the team and and on every team it seems like i don't know shit about cheerleading i don't know if that's

normal i just i didn't know i you know i didn't know yeah i'm learning so here's some lines that some of them say pinch some panties someone's slacking again what does that mean it doesn't sound good though and then do i look like a milkmaid because someone feels like a cow this is in reference to one of them lifting up one of the women on the team right so that's some body shaming stuff right there body shame these women just because he's weak yeah yeah like i wasn't in the gym i didn't lift myself my job is to lift right and it's five extra pounds and i can't do that like this is your problem philip or whatever phil yeah i'm good to go with that name. Sounds like some Philip shit. The names are Jan and Les of the male chauvinists. What are these names?

Come on, man. This is a mess. This is just a word jumble. Let's see. There's the scene where during the tryouts, one of the girls is trying out to sweet cherry pie scene. She's doing a very sexy dance, One of the girls is trying out to sweet cherry pie scene. Oh, yeah. She's doing a very sexy dance.

And there's a lot of male gaze shot. The camera is in her asshole, I think. Well, not just that either. The women in the scene are horrible. One gags. I'm like, you know what a woman's body looks like. But one goes like, ugh. And then the guys are like,

ooh. Oh, Bonar. Yeah, me have Bonar. I was like, we don't need this. Cut it. We don't need that. Also, during the tryout scene,

there are various jokes made about people with disabilities and competing in the Special Olympics and things like that. There's also the pipping guy, though.ics and things like that there's also the pippin guy though you gotta there's the pippin guy so it balances that was like the only line i remember for the movie is this not the audition for pippin you know it's not bruh yeah in the gymnasium dude come on he's on fucking bath salts he doesn't know where he is he also looked 40 too like where do you think you are

suspicious a 40 year old dude like is this not the audition for pivot i'm supposed to be here i'm a student i go here trying out for pivot i another great place if we cut cliff we could really explore that you know exactly exactly Where's his spinoff? Yeah. So also in the tryout scene, there is a girl named Jamie who is Whitney's younger sister. Thank you.

A lot of the cheerleaders on the team want her to be on the squad because of how small she is and how easy she would be to lift up, which again has some body shaming implications. And then... Just being weak implications yeah yeah and then i think it's jan who makes like a blow job gesture toward like jamie which

again i don't know what i don't know what's even implied but no he makes that 12 like what is he saying that was another thing that was unclear, because he's making it at Tor, and I thought maybe he was being, like, nepotism. But, like, what does nepotism have to do with dick-sucking, I hope? Well, in a... In the few lines right before that, he makes a comment about how, again, this, like, 12- or 13-year-old girl goes down

or, like, does sexual stuff to get what she wants i don't know like that she's she's visibly 12 yeah it is i didn't even think she went there i was like whitney went and got her nine-year-old sister yeah so there's a lot of there's like problematic stuff but like it's confusing it's like it's like uncanny valley stuff where you're just like i think that i'm not okay with this but it doesn't fully make sense it was like at that time where it was like we are this kind of a movie but we're gonna be talking about other stuff we're gonna push it to the limit in every possible way and it's like well because this movie is like pg-13 or something so i think it's trying to like navigate around like it's trying to do some

innuendos that just like didn't age well or never made sense like i'm not trying to show that line of the r because they know no one is gonna go see that if it's an r right you know like it's not gonna so they're like we want to get as close to an R, because this movie is for 13-year-old girls. Right, and that was like who saw it, and who, you know, had to sleep over it. Edgy for a 13-year-old. Yeah.

Don't worry, there's more. Okay, we've got Courtney saying about Missy that she looks like an uber insert slur for queer women here. And then she uses that word several times in a hateful way throughout the movie. Mary 2000. Yep. Torrance's

brother to Torrance says, it's not my fault you're in love with a big gay cheerleader who doesn't return your calls. Torrance says, he's not gay. And then he says, oh, so someone just made him big gay cheerleader who doesn't return your calls torres says he's not gay and then he says oh so someone just made him become a cheerleader okay unnecessary yeah it's not necessary she's like he's just busy and he's like yeah busy scamming on guys and then that's and it's like actually he's actually scamming on girls lots of them every girl because there were all these like i mean and i wasn't sure

that this movie wasn't above that cheap joke of just being like he's a male cheerleader he must be gay you know but then you see aaron wake up at his dorm and he has both a sugar ray and a match box 20 poster and you're like no no he no, he is straight. And a very bad kind of straight. He's the most sinister heterosexual there is. He's got both of the devil's posters.

He's a take a guitar out at a party kind of motherfucker. He's that kind of straight. And then they put a villainous turtleneck on him later on. I was like, no, no, no. Oh, yeah. Bright red. He's a kind of straight. And then they put a villainous turtleneck on him later on. I was like, no, no, no. Oh, yeah. Bright red.

He's a bad man. He's just bad. Also, that scene ends with Torrance's brother calling her a bitch. So that was very cute. They put the little brother. Okay. One point in the movie where I did laugh is where the brother is like, it's an emergency. and then he farts.

You gotta admit, that's a funny joke. I laughed. Okay. It's crazy how sometimes a fart is better than anything you could write in 500 years. I should have never gotten that master's degree. No, you could have just been like, I don't know what to put here.

Write a kid named Justin and he farts. Okay, next comes the big one for me, where they're all in a car. The car scene, yeah. The male cheerleaders, Jan and Les, are talking about their sexuality.

And then Missy's like, well, what is your sexuality? Which is maybe not of her business. And then Les says, Jan's straight. Well, I'm controversial. Missy says, are you telling me you speak, insert slur, here? And then he's like oh fluently and then missy proceeds to call courtney and whitney a slur and then okay so to prove his straightness yes jan is jan the straight guy yeah jan goes on to describe how he molests cheerleaders he's like no i'm super straight i am a rapist like you're just like oh my god like he describes well do you have the specifics

written down i was horrified it's like i'm so straight I should be in jail like yeah it's and then everyone in the car is like ha ha ha you're out here molesting her friends no Courtney is straight I know this because she doesn't wear underwear

and I can't help if my digits slip occasionally okay number one your digits ain't gonna slip doing a chairlift. That is not a thing that's you intentionally doing it. Two, if you would be concentrating more on your form, you'd be able to lift more and not worry about if anyone gained an extra pound.

So maybe keep your hands in the right position for maximum. I'm gonna just tweet this at him. The finger? Tweet it at the actor it is so like weirdly on the nose though to be like no i like it feels like a weirdly like it sounds like modern satire to be like no i'm like a cishet white dude. I'm a fucking criminal. You're just like, this is not helping anyone. This is not.

It's so weird. A car full of people are laughing about it. And then, because it's basically saying like, oh, she doesn't wear underwear, so she's asking for it, is what the movie is trying to say here. And then a few scenes later. And it's also not logical that she wouldn't wear underwear, too. It just, like,

goes out of the way to make one of the female characters look dumb as fuck. It's like, if you're cheerleading and you know, like, you're wearing underwear.

Right. Not only are you wearing underwear, you're wearing bloomers on top of the underwear. So that part never matched for me. It's like, your digits are gonna slip. It's gonna slip in through,

or, like, come on, man. Like, what are you doing, Jan? Right. Yeah, Jan. Also, Jan, your digits are gonna slip. It's gonna slip in through or like, come on, man. Like, what are you doing? Jam. Right. I'm gonna tweet that. Also, Jan, what's that short for?

Well, we see it play out. We see it play out a few scenes later at the football game where he's doing the lift and then we see her reaction and she's like, it almost seems like

she's enjoying it, which is like, it almost seems like she's enjoying it, which is like very fucked up. It's psychotic, yeah. But then she like, he lets her down and then she kind of hits him. But we see him on screen assault her while they're cheering.

And then there's another scene where I think it's Missy and one of the cheerleaders, male cheerleaders, is like stretching her leg out. And there's two guys that pass. The two football jocks who have been harassing the male cheerleaders the whole movie. Right, and then they're like,

maybe we should join the team. Because they're looking at, oh, they're touching girls. And then the other one, just as a gay slur to the other one and then the scene is over and that's a scene that exists forever yep i probably missed some and there's i'm just gonna do a few more okay so uh there's the car wash scene where we see like a close-up of eliza dushku's chest and then it's because it's her brother ogling her until he realizes it's his sister and then he's like, oh, no. But it means we have this very male gaze shot of just a woman's breasts.

I mean, that whole sequence is just getting allegedly teen girls wet, even though. As with most of these movies that Kirsten Dunst is in, Kirsten Dunst is the only legitimate teenager. It's Kirsten Dunst and a bunch of 27-year-olds. Also, quick fact check. A car wash is not a good fundraiser oh it's not did you do one all by yourself caitlin dorante savage moments part three. Holy shit. I've been attacked. I remember, like, in, like, elementary and then junior high, and even, like, my friends who, like, cheered at, like, normal high schools and stuff. Like, that was just never.

No one wants a bunch of teen girls washing their car for $20. No, and they're never in. Like, it's so movie. This implied that all car washes are hot teens and bikinis because i did i did that with the key club yeah and we were wearing like three shirts we were wearing extra you probably didn't make much money did you no no i got 160 dollars and it was like a 12-hour day right and it was all y'all's moms coming through. To be nice. Yeah. It was like moms and neighbors being like, okay,

but don't touch it. That's enough washing. Yeah. Bad idea. Bad for business. That's just a fact check. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And their children. And so please stop looking at them. Yeah. Yep. And then the last one I'll say, there are more, but we're running out of time, is the choreographer,

Sparky, whatever the fuck his name is. Literally everything he does. Everything he says. Everything he does. Everything he says. Is just wildly horrible. Here's the thing with all of these moments. In some cases, the characters who are using the homophobic slurs

or who are using the language that's like body shaming or slut shaming, they are framed as being like bad, wrong people. Like when it's the football players who are harassing people and stuff like that. But in other cases, these things are being said by the characters who are supposed to like and supposed to be rooting for like whenever missy uses the various like homophobic slurs or when they're all laughing along when the guy is admitting to assaulting his teammate yeah teehee and there's there's not much to just because i do want to get to the Clovers. But as for Missy, it's, and again, I feel like she, her character suffers because of Cliff's presence.

So many suffer at the hands of Cliff. So many, because she starts out as like a pretty interesting, you know, it's like she's a goth and I'm like, I'm on board. But, you know, it's like, and she and Tor form a friendship. It's an unlikely friendship. But once's like, and she and Tor form a friendship. It's an unlikely friendship.

But once Cliff starts to get too involved, she almost gets sidelined. And she's only serving as like, oh, Cliff said that you got nice boobs. And you're just like, man, this is a waste of Elijah Dushku, first of all. And then it's like their friendship gets sidelined kind of until the very, end which is a bummer yeah yeah uh and with that let's talk about the clovers yeah which i mean again it's uh we really only know isis in any meaningful way played by gabrielle union

and she's i mean she's really fucking cool cool. I love that character and it's frustrating that you don't get to know her better because there's space in the movie to do it and the movie just literally chooses not to do it. Yeah. It would have been so much emotional depth if you had really concentrated on the story behind them. There was really an opportunity for that

that they just let fall. really concentrated on the story behind them. Like, there was really an opportunity for that, that they just let fall. Right. Because, like, I mean, in most cases when you're seeing, I mean, fucking varsity blues and shit like that, if you see the cheerleaders, they're like, it's a bunch of, like, suburban white people. So, like, just to give visibility to this group of cheerleaders

who are all people of color, and then like, what's their experience like? I want to know more. And then the movie just like glosses over that whole thing. Yeah. I mean, but there are a few lines from Isis. When we do get to see her, we get to see her almost always in control of the situation.

Sometimes that's framed as her being the villain, and then later on, you can see her and Tor starting to form this captain's respect, which, you know, captains will know. She basically has a... There's a line where she's like, hey, you guys have been stealing from us, but no longer. I'm the captain now.

It's a Captain Phillips. I'm the captain now. They also say do the right thing over and over, and I'm like, are they talking about this Mike Lee movie? Where Kirsten Dunst keeps being like, I want to do the right thing. I was like, do you know what you're saying? She just looks at the camera. I want to do the right thing. I was like, do you know what you're saying? She just looks at the camera.

I want to do the right thing. And then she does a little wink and flashes her snaggle tooth. You're like, what is going on here? And then she goes to East Condon, drives, once again, three hours.

I'm like, there's got to be a phone number. Yeah, but also... She drives three hours, goes to see Isis and all the Clover cheerleaders, and offers her white savior daddy check, and says once again, I'm trying to do the right thing. And you're just like, what the fuck is going on in this script?

It's so fucking weird. There's also a fun moment where one of the Clovers calls Missy and Torrance Buffy's, which is fun because Eliza Dushku played Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer right around this time. Fun fact. But her saying, I want to do the right thing, that further makes her into the good person. She's very verbally saying she's trying to do the right thing.

She's trying to be the right person, and you're not letting her do the right thing. Yeah. It's just a microaggression. Yeah. I do like, Isis gives a pretty concise response that I really like. She says, when Kirsten Dunst comes with her white guilt check, Isis replies, like, what is this, hush money?

Oh, right, it's guilt money. You pay our way in and you sleep better at night knowing how your whole world was based on one big old fat lie and then she tears the check up. And that's like a great cathartic moment where you're like, you're right, fuck Kirsten Dunst's dad who we just saw for the first time and the last time in the movie. Fucking daddy, like, get out of here.

And then she, you know, pulls out the captain speak. She's like, I'm trying to be strong for my squad. I'm a captain. We're like, we know. The captain talk is strong in this movie. But I mean, it's so weird because I feel like I don't know, like we were talking about earlier, I don't know how the movie is supposed,

it wants us to feel about this scene. watching it now you're you're i mean i feel like we're all like tear the check up yeah fuck that right but i think in 2000 the way everything was then the movie frames all the clovers as the mean adversaries that are causing problems and being mean yeah there is a quote about uh from uh gabrielle union about being in bring it on that i wanted to read to you as sort of like an insight of where she was at around this time she's also 28 in this movie which you're like how is that possible it's black don't crack extremely it's wild okay so she says about uh getting cast in bring it on uh she says i wanted this cheerleading movie sugar and spice but they didn't go black on any of their roles i couldn't even audition for bring it on the story is about

cultural appropriation and how the hard work of african-americans has been repackaged with blonde hair and blue eyes the social justice of it appealed to me which is great that that is what she saw it but the fact i mean just even bringing up that she wasn't allowed to audition for this other cheerleading movie because they didn't quote unquote go black is like such an insight to where casting was then and just like what her options were. Like, I mean, I'm so glad she was in Bring It On, but that quote, I was like, oh, fuck. This is such a problem.

Like, it's a problematic movie with problematic parts, but this was the best option. Right, yeah, right. This was the option. Right. It was an appetizing looking option. Right, yeah, right. This was the option. Right. It was an appetizing-looking option on top of that, which is, like you said, it just speaks to what was going on at the time

and what the reality of the film industry was back then. Yeah, and so it's like, it's hardly gotten better. Yay! It's fixed. 100% fixed. I'm so sorry. Everything's good.

Thankfully, in 2019, we've resolved it. Everything is great. We got a check from Daddy, and it's fixed. It's fine. I mean, in general, I'm very glad that the Clovers win and that the screenwriter had the foresight to, because in every way they're the superior team

because they've never plagiarized anyone. They've earned everything they've gotten and, like, they're a better, I mean, they have the better routine

every single time. So I'm glad that they got, in my head, I was like, they got School of Rocked where, where, like, the ragtag team of young white people

lose and and it's fun to watch uh but i wish that there were more to criticize because i wish we knew more about these characters in general but there's just like not we just don't know enough about the movie should be told from their point of view like they yeah it should have been a different script different story told from a different perspective. On that note, we don't know a lot about them and she didn't know a lot about them. But the check, when she got the

check from her dad, she bullied her dad into getting the dad's company to write a check. So what could she possibly have told him to tell them to write the check oh like hey i need a check for some some black girls that my daughter was stealing from cheerleading wise can you give me eight thousand dollars so they can get to four like what could you have told them

like and that's just another like you just walk like this guy just has the privilege to walk into his employer and be like i need money to get a team of people to nationals and his company was just like is your kid in it no i guess no follow-up questions for like this is not my child squad this is random kids three hours south and they were still cool with it and that like tor was expecting to just come in with a check that clearly isis would have no idea where this money is from she doesn't know who kirsten dunst's dad is we don't know who kirsten dunst's dad is and that kirsten dunst was coming from this place of just like well you're gonna want it right and then like she's like no what is this who is? Like, I feel like her dad would, like, work for Enron or something.

Yeah, something like that. Does someone just awe for Enron? An interesting choice. I would say if I was in Isis's position, I would have crumpled up the thing in front of her and thrown it. And then when she left, God. Smoothed it out. Take the money.

Deposited it. Like, like well i made my point like she won't know like what is she gonna know like yeah i'm fine with taking everyone's not gonna miss eight thousand dollars they're not she's never gonna find out if i did it or not that's fine uh one thing i did like about this movie and it also brought up different, I mean, it liked it, didn't like, was that you so infrequently get to see young girls being athletic in any way on screen and getting to see, there's a lot of really athletic routines and there's a lot of behind the scenes talk

of all the main cast of this movie had to go to cheer camp together. There's some really cute behind the scenes pics of like kirsten doesn't gabrielle union stretching and like being friends and it's cute but um but you know getting to see girls be athletic is not something you get to see in a lot of teen movies really ever yeah and so it's cool because i i mean i remember in junior high seeing like these routines being like, oh, that's so cool, and going home and fucking loser dancing it out at my house, which is like these movies do affect you,

and it made me wish that there were more movies that you got to see girls be athletic in different ways because you're only, you know, when I was younger, I really wanted to be a dancer and i'm sure that a lot of that reason was because that was how i had seen girls be athletic and like popular culture is that you're dancing you're cheering you can only do a few different things and it's like man like there should be more movies about girls playing sports and like doing other athletic shit because there's so few options for for for stuff like that so there's like 5 000 movies about men playing football and like winning the game 10

movies about women's sports teams period i love movies about when the boys win the game at the last minute yeah they're the best good genre on that note i like that the game at the last minute. Yeah, they're the best. Good genre. On that note, I like that the movie showed the athleticism of cheerleading. Yes. People a lot of the time think of cheerleading as just like, oh, you're just shaking pom-poms and dancing and shaking your butt or whatever. But my senior project was on cheerleading injuries. And cheerleading is the number two catastrophic sport.

It's after football. And football, they wear a ton of like, there's like a ton of athleticism required with cheerleading. And I like that this movie really showcased that. Yeah. I mean, like, and getting to see, I appreciated getting to see full routines, too. Like, that was really cool. And there, I mean, like, and getting to see, I appreciated getting to see full routines, too. Like, that was really cool.

And, I mean, there's still so much, if you want to fall down the rabbit hole of how professional cheerleaders are treated now, it's, like, such a wild thing where most of them aren't unionized, most of them are paid, like, minimum wage, and, like, professional team cheer, like, for football, like, major American football, you know, where the football players are making millions and millions of dollars, there are some cheerleaders. For football, major American football,

where the football players are making millions and millions of dollars, there are some cheerleaders out there who are making nothing and getting injured at a comparable rate. So it's still a sport that isn't being taken seriously. I don't know. It is cool to just see women being athletic and kicking ass. They don't require a cheerleading coach to have any kind of training. That was demonstrated by Mr. Spirit Fingers.

Yeah, they just let Sparky McGorican or whoever his name was show up and tell people what to do. That escaped convict that they gave $2,000 to. Don't do that. My name is Spanky. They're like, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. We'll get the $2,000. Kirsten's dad is getting it for us. Daddy's got it.

Do you have anything else, Kaylee? Not really. I feel like we've only scratched the surface of this wild, wild movie. There's so much here. Yeah, I guess it is cool that you see the athleticism of cheerleading that you see cheerleading as a sport being taken seriously you see a female driven story where the women are driving the narrative there's you see a lot of different personality types among the women that you see which is like usually not something that you get there's women in conflict and you

understand why which almost never happens. Because it usually is just. Sometimes, and then sometimes it's Courtney and Whitney being mean for no reason. Right, right. I mean, I guess I was more talking about like the Tor and Missy, Tor and Isis. There are some female conflicts where you're like,

these people are very different, and I understand why they do not agree. Such as Tor is stealing constantly. And she's like, I don't very different, and I understand why they do not agree. Such as Taurus stealing constantly. And she's like, I don't know why everyone's so mad at me. She didn't know. It's like, I do. Yeah, I think that was all I had. Sick, right?

Yeah. Maggie, do you have anything else? I think that we covered all the points and aired all of my grievances with this movie. That's why we're here. This movie definitely passes the Bechdel test. Oh yeah, a lot. A million billion times over, which is great.

A lot of the exchanges are like, you're a stupid slut, you dumb bitch. And then the other girl's like, yes. And we're like, well, technically passes. Slaught metric happens all the time. But also a lot of the conversations are, you know, about cheerleading and training and their goals. You should take a science class.

No! Right. So handily passes. Yeah. Let's rate on our nipple scale let's do it zero to five nipples based on the representation of women um i think i'll go i mean yes we know it's from 2000 and all the problematic things that come with that so i'm it's like a two I suppose docking a lot of points for all the problematic shit

that happens and the fact that it should have been an entirely different movie told from the point of view of Isis and her clover squad

basing it on the movie that we are presented with I'll give it two nipples didn't mention the pretty nice moment at the very end

with Les and uh another like unnamed male cheerleader at nationals and they're like hey good job out there and the other one's like yeah you too cool and then it's like I guess they're gonna kiss later I don't know but like but that comes at the end of such a long string of homophobia and just horribleness that I was like, well, that's a nice moment. But remember all the other stuff you did earlier in the movie? So two nipples. And I'll give both to Gabrielle Union.

Yeah. I'll go two and a half. Yeah, I think that there needs to be such a move towards the women of color in this movie because that is not just the right, the doing the right thing, if you will, but it's the more interesting story is on the conflict between these two teams. Like, fuck the romance subplots,

they get shoehorned in later. The interesting parts of this movie are these white girls are stealing from these black girls because they feel entitled to do so and the conflict that ensues there. Like that is the interesting part of the movie. I think that there's so much more there

and there's more interesting story, there's more message there and just getting to know the black characters in this movie is such an important thing that just didn't happen there was a couple of lines and then we get 45 minutes of cliff like give me a fucking break it doesn't focus on the characters we need to be focusing on it doesn't give the screen time to the characters that we need to know i would like to know you know it's like we know isis sort of but we don't like the characters that we need to know. I would like to know, you know, it's like we know Isis, sort of,

but we don't, like the characters that she's surrounded by are basically indistinguishable because we only meet them once or twice. And so it, yeah, I mean, on that front, it's very frustrating. I am glad that you get to see women in conflict in a way that makes sense a lot of the time.

I'm glad that you get women with different opinions, different personalities. You get to see them being athletic. There's a lot of good things going on, but there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed in favor of a story that is better and more interesting and just makes more sense for this movie to be.

So I'll do two and a half. I'm going to give one and a half to Isis. I'll leave her hanging with the last half. And then I'm going to give the last one to Tora's mom because she should take a science class. I will give this movie, I would say two nipples

and like a hair. I like this. This is new. Two nipples and an ingrown hair. That's like 1.95. I did like that it was a cheerleading movie.

It was relevant to all my interests. I did like that it had a lot of women and more women than men and I did like

that it was a movie where ultimate, like if you watched it you could see that the women of color were in the right. Like if you really

like waded past you know, their little narrative you could really see what was going on and of color were in the right. Like if you really like waited past, you know, their little narrative, you could really see what was going on. And then they won at the end. I liked that to no end. But, you know, for a lot of the reasons why we've already discussed, like if you, I mean, it doesn't hold up.

You look back on it and you're like, wow, this was, this movie was trying to be something and missing that mark 100%. And I'm going to give all my nipples to the Clover Squad. I'm going to go ahead and do that. The ingrown hair, everybody else can fight over that. Hell yeah. I hope what happens with this movie

is it becomes one of those stepping stone movies of it did not do what it thought it was doing and let whoever makes the next cheerleading movie learn from it learn from its strengths and weaknesses and then we can just move on you know yeah because it still kind of did characterize cheerleaders in a certain kind of way as dumb which is like yeah you need to like you have academic benchmarks you have to pass. Right. You still have to pass high school.

You can't be, like, fucking stupid and be a true, like, that's not a thing. Right. Totally. Well, Maggie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Give it up for Maggie. Hey. Thanks.

Where can people follow you online? Do you have anything you would like to plug? Yes. I am on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Maggie May Ha Ha's. Maggie spelled normally M-A-G-G-I-E

and then M-A-Y-E-H-A-H-A. Plan C. Yeah. At the Yark, Jamie and I. Come to the live show. Yeah. That they put on

right here in Los Angeles. That's right. Yeah, that's my... I mean Oh, yeah. With the live show. That they put on right here in Los Angeles. Yeah, that's my... I mean, Sam Angeles. Sam Angeles! That was not that funny. Yes, it was. That was even funnier. With other past guests of the show,

including Avril Maynard and Otzko. Yes, hell yeah. Thank you again so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Give it up for yourselves. Give it up for Aristotle. He's here. Aristotle's here.

And give it up for The Ruby. Thank you to everyone at The Ruby. And yeah, thanks so much for coming. Have a great night. Thank you. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne.

We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network? That's right. We're an official iHeart podcast, and I'm super excited about it.

I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier. That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart.

Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeart Radio app. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfection, it's being able to toggle between

these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one.