The Bechdel Cast - Broadcast News with Dave Schilling

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Breaking news! There's a brand new episode of the Bechdel Cast in which anchors Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus invite special guest Dave Schilling to cover Broadcast News.(This episode contains spoilers)Here's a link to the You Must Remember This series on Polly Platt: http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2020/7/pollyplattarchive28Here's an article about Marlee Matlin being a survivor of assault: https://www.thewrap.com/marlee-matlin-accused-william-hurt-rape-memoir/ For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @dave_schilling 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. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, listeners. Caitlin here with a quick content warning for this episode. Sexual assault and date rape are brought up in a few different parts of the episode. It's not an extensive part of the movie, nor our discussion, but again, it is discussed throughout the episode, so we wanted listeners to be aware of that. Enjoy the episode.

On the Bechdel cast, 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 Bechdel cast. Hey, Caitlin. Yes, Jamie. What do you think the devil looks like? Well, the movie would have you think, or at least the character of Aaron in this movie would have you think that it looks like William Hurt. But I think it looks like Albert Brooks's character. Oh, interesting. Because he's the devil. I think the devil looks like, in this movie, who does the devil most look like?

This is actually a challenging question. Is it Jack Nicholson? Could it be him? He's the one that refused to give up any of his salary to save anyone else's job. It was all a big joke to him. Oh my gosh. That part, I was just like, I can't wait to talk about it. Also, honestly he he

looks like how i would imagine the devil would look like just like eyebrow wise do you remember the movie witches of eastwick wherein he plays the devil yes i do and there's like some production crossover between witches of eastwick and this movie oh no way it all comes together jack nicholson confirmed the devil it's honestly here first good that he's played the devil it would have been a real waste of um waste of his vibe if he did not at one point play play that i hate to see a vibe wasted so that's right yeah well that was my little opening although i loved it this is the bechtel cast i was gonna do you want to hear what i would have done yeah sure if i were opening it i would have said breaking news and then like done some like news jingle and then i would have been like this is the bechtel cast

i like it i like it thank you i think we have two strong options I think everyone should sound off in the comments of what they think the stronger opening was and that'll be that'll be helpful for us moving forward we love feedback especially when it's unsolicited oh good grief okay well this is breaking news this is the Bechdel cast and this is our podcast in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation the Bechdel test being a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test in which our standard these days, two people of a marginalized gender have to have names. They have to speak to each other about something other than a man. And ideally, it is

a conversation that is narratively meaningful. Right. And it really cannot ultimately be about albert brooks which is where i struggled in this one uh there were some where i'm like oh and then it's like oh but that was about william hurt or albert brooks wasn't it you know that what was the name of this news station what was the name of the fictional w oh who cares w who cares we're covering broadcast news today we sure are i'm i'm i'm really excited to talk about this movie there's so much to talk about there's a lot to unpack and we have an amazing guest we certainly do he's a writer he's a host of the new polygon podcast galaxy brains it's dave schilling hello. What a pleasure it is to be here today to talk about a movie that is one of my favorites of all time. But I also do believe that it is in

fact not going to pass the test. We'll go through it later. But when I rack my brain thinking about this movie that I love that I've seen many times that I own on blu-ray i i think yep nope first of all huge flex with the blu-ray love when someone drops a blu-ray physical media baby um yeah well i i think i i have um a compulsion towards owning movies that I love because they do disappear often. They leave streaming services for years at a time, sometimes more than that, decades. So I want to make sure that when I want to see my favorite movies, I have them. For instance, the movie Crossroads, which we always get requests for but is literally not accessible to us.

It is unavailable we've even set up episodes for this and then been like wait a second this movie has been disappeared why is that i don't know erased from human existence you can buy it on dvd but the dvd is also like 60 dollars what is going on with that there's another movie that i think you two should do at some point um katherine bigelow's movie strange days which was really on my mind quite a bit last summer during during all of the the protests and uprisings over the george floyd killing because that's that movie was about you know our relationship with law enforcement and all of that stuff. And it's nowhere. You can't buy it on any physical media.

You have to find, you know, a used copy on eBay or something. I just happened to have one from college because I was a physical media collector when it mattered back then. Right. But otherwise, just unavailable. And it's a shame because that's a movie that people need to be watching right now. That is so, I,

yeah, I've, I've never seen it and now I have no options. You can borrow my pan and scan DVD. If anyone has copies of either of those movies lying around, we do have a PO box. I like crossroads was sorry to go basket to crossroad. Crossroads was written by Shonda Rhimes. Like there's just so much going on for crossroads was sorry to go back to crossroads crossroads was written by shonda rhymes like

there's just so much going on for crossroads i completely forget what happens in the movie maybe it's really fucked up and they don't want us to see it i don't remember what happens right i haven't seen it and it feels like i never will because of it being so inaccessible we might be fucked. So Dave, you said that Broadcast News is one of your favorite movies of all time. What's your history? Boy, I must have seen it for the first time in film school because that was when I first started getting into Albert Brooks movies.

You know, unfortunately, if you are a young film enthusiast of a certain age, you are and you are like me, Jewish, I'm Jewish on my mother's side. You are pushed into a the filmography of someone who we don't have to talk about. He's out there and he made a lot of movies for people of that ilk. And Albert Brooks is was never given that same amount of credibility with the film community he was never a box office success he's never won an academy award but his movies are so much more rewarding than other people playing in this kind of nebbishy jewish milieu because in every film that he is in at least the ones where he's written and directed

them or co-written them and directed them, and this one he did not do either, but it still fit into that sort of vibe. He's the villain. He's the bad guy. And I was glad that we got to do this because it does, this movie and his work in general really underlines certain toxic qualities about the masculine id. And the masculine id of people who believe themselves to be smarter or better or more self-aware. In reality, they're the least self-aware people that there is. He's kind of the fake ally in this movie. Because he says to Jane, I'm your best friend.

I'm your only friend. We have this special connection. He's gaslighting her the entire movie. He is manipulating her the entire movie and he's created this codependent relationship with this person that is damaging to her to an extreme degree. And I think it's really brave of him to have been willing to play that character in all

of these films and to write and direct movies where he's playing this unlikable character. I think the only movie that he is in that he wrote or co-wrote and directed where he's not unlikable is Defending Your Life. But the rest of them, he's kind of like, he's not unlikable is defending your life but the rest of them he's kind of like he's the reason why everything is going wrong and i think that's a really laudable wonderful thing and uh so that's one of the reasons why i love this movie is it it shines light on certain things that we don't like to talk about about masculinity yeah totally he didn't write or direct this movie but a different brooks did yeah james l brooks

which i was like maybe that's why they're friends are they related and i don't think they are they are not james l brooks though was in another film that albert brooks is in one of albert brooks's directorial efforts modern romance he plays a film director um i don't believe he's playing himself but he does play a film director in that movie um so they were kind of friends from the comedy community of that time the kind of alternative comedy scene of that moment got it and i believe that um he was also in um he was in terms of endearment before this too like right yeah there's all sorts of fun overlap it seems like james l brooks really i mean i i sort of knew this but with you know in researching the production of this movie i was

like oh he has like a crew yeah that he works with over the course of like what like 40 years at this point yeah and co-creator of the simpsons and that's one of the reasons why albert brooks was in so many simpsons episodes in the early part of the run of that show. Wow. Jamie what's your relationship in history with this movie? I like this movie. I think I also first saw it in college. I remember liking it then and I didn't revisit it for a long time after and then I't, I think it wasn't until friend of the cast, Karina Longworth, put out an amazing season of her show, You Must Remember This, last year about Polly Platt, who was really integral in this movie, worked with James L. Brooks a lot and produced this movie. And when I was listening to that series, I think like last summer or fall, I was watching kind of her filmography as I was listening.

And so I revisited this movie and was like pretty blown away by it and was really excited to revisit it for this show. I think that this would have been kind of my introduction to most of these actors when I saw these. I wasn't like a huge film buff in high school or anything. I was very, very normie in my tastes. I take no shame in it, but it was true. Before I saw this movie, I was like, literally most of these people were Pixar characters to me because Albert Brooks is the dad in Finding Nemo and Holly Hunter is Mrs. Incredible. So long story short, I've never worked in broadcast news but i have worked in news news

and it was really interesting to watch after having some experience in that space and i'm really excited to talk about it uh what about you caitlin i too saw this movie for the first time in film school and push it on you they really want film students to watch broadcast news i think it's one of the only movies they want to show that's like entertaining it's like oh this is funny we're going to show this funny movie instead of you know berlin alexander plots or something yeah maybe that's why i remember it because i was there were so many movies in film school like in the film program i was in that i was like i wow boy did i hate that i'm sure it was competent but what a drag i am going to sleep through this yeah

there would always be an intermission like okay we're gonna pause for a little bit so you guys can go to the bathroom and stuff and i would just go back to my door go to sleep i don't want to watch the blue angel by max ophuls i want to sleep yeah well i'm about to be the villain the the albert brooks of this episode and say that i wasn't as enamored with this movie and i find it to be longer than it needs to be well that goes without that's absolutely true i will not pretend that that is not true why is this movie two hours and 13 minutes it could be a breezy 95 minutes i i'm not sure why it's as long as it is and therefore i find it a boring movie punctuated by some really fun scenes it's not really my type of movie although i you know it is obviously competently made and competently written and directed and the performances are really good but it's just I don't know it's not really my jam but there are

many things to talk about I'm excited to unpack it and I I will never not be better that it's two hours and 13 minutes long. It used to be longer. There's an entire subplot that was cut out. Oh my gosh. It was a longer movie. I know. Wait. Do tell. What else could have possibly happened?

I believe these scenes were shot, because I think they're on the criterion. But the shooting script that I read had a subplot where Tom befriends a State Department official or employee. I think he's kind of a low-level State Department person. But his roommate knows a bunch of people. And so there is a transference of information for uh flirtation that occurs um and that's where tom gets a lot of the the information that he uses to then advance in his career is it's because this the state department person finds him attractive interesting and tom is kind of guileless he's just like oh yeah we're just friends but he wants to know, take things to the next level with Tom

and he doesn't understand why. On the page, it read really offensive and I'm glad they cut it out. But that was a whole, like, it must have been an extra 20 pages of screenplay. Good lord, no. Thank you. Yeah, this movie is definitely already a bit long. I feel like that's just like any auteur-y movie

is gonna be too long but i still think that there's so i don't know that i think that this is like one of those movies that sometimes like when i learn about the production of a movie i like it less by the time i've learned more this is is the opposite. The more I learned about the production of this movie, the more interesting I think it is. Cool. Well, shall we talk about the story and then go from there? Yeah. Okay, so here's the recap. We meet our three main characters when they are children. Tom, who is a nice looking boy, but who doesn't get good grades and therefore he will be a future news anchor aaron is uh like smarty pants brainiac he will be a future news reporter and jane writes letters to pen pals and like it's her job like it's her job i achieve her she cares very much about precision and therefore she is a future news producer i really loved that scene with with

little jane where she tells her dad off for like not being specific enough in his criticisms of her it's so fun yeah and then jane grows up to be holly hunter who is in fact a news producer she works with and is good friends with adult aaron who is albert brooks we see jane give a speech criticizing the state of like news reporting and newscasting. It's too soft. And afterward, Tom, who is William Hurt, approaches her and he's like, hey, great job. So she asks him out for dinner.

It seems like things might get romantic. He also is talking about how he's not good at his job and that he's basically failing upward. And she's like, well like well okay get better and try harder which upsets him and he leaves i hate tom i hate tom so i feel like we i know i know that aaron is very much a villain but i do hate tom the most out of everybody i hate i dislike both of the men

that we're supposed to be, that, I don't, I mean, I don't know that we're really supposed to be rooting for any relationship. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't even know that we are. Yeah, it's not a movie that is neutral in its moral judgments.

I think it does judge every character in time in the film. And that's one of the reasons why I like it so much is because it casts skepticism that's one of the reasons why I like it so much, is because it casts skepticism on all three of the protagonists, which is very rare in movies. I think most of the time when you watch a comedy like this, or even a dramedy, something that has, you know, gravitas, you're watching and the movie decides this is the person you're supposed to like.

This is the one that's going to make all the good decisions or is at least going to um reverse course on the bad decision at some point but i think at a certain juncture in the movie for all three characters and i think for aaron multiple times through the movie the movie points fingers at him and says you are a bad bad person you are making wrong choices you are a selfish person. You are making wrong choices. You are a selfish person. And the movie judges him accordingly. It's really, it's fascinating, like going through the moral gymnastics of this movie,

because there's multiple points where you have to like think about what someone just said and be like, okay, they said that for a selfish reason, but I don't totally disagree with what they were saying, but they're doing it to be emotionally manipulative and ultimately I don't like any of them. I wanted to read Tom's character's description on the scholarly journal Wikipedia page because it made me laugh a lot.

It says, Tom is tall, handsome, likable, and telegenic, but lacks news experience general knowledge intelligence and language skills i mean i think that that is certainly true but also i'm inclined to agree yeah yeah it's not a stretch to say that he is all those things but the one thing that makes tom a special interesting complicated character is his intense self-awareness of his faults that is a cool thing to me not that i like tom that i walk away from this movie saying boy i wish tom and jane got together because they're just great for each other and he's so cool no he's he's a manipulator he is a a figure who is really just out for himself but he doesn't know that like

he's not savvy enough to understand a hundred percent of his problem but he can but like sometimes he can point out some of it yeah that's what's cool about the movie again like yeah okay at the end he expresses this belief in what he did being okay even though jane is like this is the worst most unethical thing you could possibly do so he's self-aware to a point but when he gets something out of his naivete or his uh perceived lack of uh awareness or ability he doesn't mind yeah that's a very american thing isn't it it is it's like he knows that this is not a meritocracy and that is going to work to his advantage in every way yeah what's the line what's the exchange of dialogue where jane is like you could get fired for that and he's like i got promoted for that and we're like yeah yikes through the process of the movie he is

learning the full extent of his devious powers and that it's it's sort of like the origin story of a marvel villain yeah Yeah, it is. I'm like, what does that character look like 20 years down the line? Because he's almost ahead of the curve in where news ended up going to the point where the central ethical conversation around this movie would barely even be a discussion. Oh, he's Brian Williams.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brians did the same thing of a similar thing to what happens in his movie where he's like yeah i was you know that helicopter and boy it was scary that was a lie that was a whole lie oh yeah sigh well tom leaves jane's hotel room but then he calls her right away and he's like, by the way, I've gotten a job at your network, so I'll see you at work. And this is the beginning of a, like, will they or won't they get together kind of thing between Jane and Tom. Then we see this great sequence where Jane, Aaron, and some other staff, like this guy Bobby as well as Blair who's played by Joan Cusack. They like are putting together this segment and they have to like really quickly

get it all together and like rush the tape to the people so that it gets on air and they like have like not a second to lose. Some great Joan Cusack. I feel like Hilary Duff one day would watch that tape of the sheer pratfallery of that sequence. Beautiful. It's really an obstacle course. She made a real career out of playing that character in the 80s, this and Working Girl.

It's just like, wow joan cusack knew how to play this kind of harried low-level employee in a high-stakes work environment she's just fantastic in this movie very very funny she almost impaled herself on a water bubbler at one point i was like there was just like i was like oh my god that had to have really hurt. And the shot continued for 20 seconds after. She's amazing. So meanwhile, Tom keeps wanting to pick Jane's brain and she's like, I'm busy. But then he starts getting better as a reporter. And Jane is like, Oh, am I still attracted to Tom, even though I don't respect him? And while this is happening, Aaron is starting to feel overlooked and unappreciated. Then some like big breaking news is happening about a fighter plane. And their boss, like the network president, Paul, wants Jane to executive produce this story and

wants Tom to anchor it, even though Aaron is far more qualified. And Jane confronts Paul about this, but Paul doesn't budge. So they cover the story with Tom as the anchor. And it goes surprisingly well. Jane and Tom have a great rhythm and she's back to being attracted to him. But then he goes off with another reporter, Jennifer, and they have sex. And then she is unceremoniously written out of the story. I know you can't get deported to Alaska, but she gets deported to Alaska essentially. Because of Jane. Jane is like, we need to send her there to cover this story because she's jealous. It also should be mentioned that throughout the movie, we have seen Jane have these like very short outbursts where she just like bursts into tears for like a minute when she's by herself and then

composes herself and like gets back to whatever she's doing. She's an Olympic compartmentalizer. For sure. Yeah. So then Tom pitches a story to Jane about women being sexually assaulted on dates. And he wants to do this story and he puts it all together. And part of it is him interviewing a woman about being a survivor of date rape. And she's crying while she's telling her story.

It cuts to Tom crying as well. And after Jane watches this, she's like, well, I don't know about you like cutting to your reaction, but otherwise this was a good segment. Like it was very moving. So let's put a pin in that, shall we? We also learn that their boss, Paul, has to fire a bunch of people because of a major budget cut. Aaron thinks that he might be fired. So he wants a chance at anchoring the weekend news to prove that he can do a good job. And he begrudgingly has Tom help him prepare, who tells Aaron like, you know, you're not just reading the news, you're selling it. You're a salesman. And Aaron is like, ew. That scene is gross, but it's funny. Yeah. And then when Aaron

does that, like, weekend news spot where he anchors it, he starts sweating horribly. And the whole thing is quite sloppy. Meanwhile jane and tom are together at a correspondence dinner and they're flirting and they kiss but then jane has to go see aaron after his big night so she goes to him and she's like by the way i think i'm in love with tom and aaron is like well tom is the devil also i'm in love with you yeah so you're like oh okay so this is a completely unbiased opinion good good good um so then things kind of fall apart between jane and tom the layoffs happen jane gets promoted to bureau chief. Tom also gets promoted. He's being sent to London. Aaron quits. And Aaron is like, hey, Jane, ask Tom how he was able to get a cutaway to his reaction

during that story where we see him, you know, reacting and crying when he only brought one camera with him. So then Jane goes back through the footage and it shows that Aaron got that reaction shot after the interview that he was acting and then he edited it into the story. And Jane is just completely disgusted and appalled by this and she was supposed to go away with Tom before he left for london but she confronts him at the airport which i thought was a fun subversion of like you know people go to the airport and like make up and kiss but she goes there to to scold his ethic yeah she's like you make me sick i'm not going on this trip with you. You committed a terrible breach of ethics.

Screw you forever. It's also one of the great pre-9-11 airport scenes because she's just kind of wandering around. She's not sure if she's going to go or not. She doesn't have a ticket because he's got the tickets. He's wandering around with funny hats and like, hey, the airport's a fun place to be. This is great.

She's like, i'm gonna break up with you and then he's like okay i guess i'll just walk through this single piece of security and get right on yeah there's one uh metal detector and that is it it's just very very interesting yeah it's like walking into a JCPenney, basically. Yeah, I think people just go to the airport to have lunch. Oh, there's a Binihana in the airport? Yeah, let's go there. Can't relate.

So that's the end of them. Then we cut to several years later where Jane, Tom, and Aaron all run into each other. Jane is considering taking an even higher position as a managing editor, where she would be Tom's boss. Tom is engaged to someone else. Aaron is married and has a young son. So they've all, you know, like moved on with their lives, doing other stuff. And then the movie ends on Jane and Aaron catching up. So that's the story. Let's take a quick break. And then we'll

come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

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

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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. And we're back. Where should we start i mean i i have a lot of um info on on the background of this movie that we could maybe start by just like ping-ponging off each other about sure there is a lot of stuff that made me appreciate certain parts of the movie more just for knowing about it. So this is a James L. Brooks movie.

It's his auteur period shortly pre-Simpsons. He made this movie with Polly Platt as a producer. She is not even on the Wikipedia page for this movie, which after listening to Karina season on it is baffling and frustrating. We can fix it right now. Let's fix it now. By the time you hear this, she'll be there. I mean, it is pretty ridiculous that she's not. She had worked with James L. Brooks on his I think it was his immediate previous movie uh Terms of Endearment James L. Brooks had a pretty good uh track record

in centering women in stories particularly women in the workplace he was a producer on the Mary Tyler Moore show he centered women and women's stories at a time where it was kind of unusual to do so as a white male auteur. So that was his background. Polly Platt came on for this movie. She had previously worked on Terms of Endearment as well. She'd worked on a number of Peter Bogdanovich's best movies when they were were married but she was never credited as an actual producer and that was kind of the story of her life up until broadcast news that she had been repeatedly contributing on a producer level but was never credited that way was always overlooked was

supposed to uh direct her own movies there was like a time in I think the late 70s, early 80s, where she was projected to be like, quote, unquote, the first great female director. But she never did direct a movie for a lot of reasons. But you know, one of the big ones was how frequently she was erased from the project she did contribute to on a really high level and broadcast news was the first movie that she was actually formally credited as a producer on i have a question did she receive uh an academy award nomination for best picture for this or was she not one of the credited producers on that that's a good question let me let me check that that's a because is it the executive producer who gets the nomination for a best picture academy award is that the case possibly she she i'm not seeing

that she was i'm not seeing that she was nominated for an academy where she was nominated for an academy award for art direction on terms of endear, which was kind of her, it's so interesting, like that, and we'll just like link to that series, because I'm going to like fumble my way through the summary of her life. But a lot of the ways that she was credited, and she worked in an art director capacity, really frequently, because that was, you know, considered more traditionally to be women's work in film. And also, she was really good at it. But she was you know considered more traditionally to be women's work in film and also she was really good at it but she you know she didn't really have much trouble getting credited as an art director but when it came to the actual production she was never credited so

yeah i don't think that she was an executive producer and it doesn't look yeah like she was nominated for the academy award, which is ridiculous. Yeah, I don't know if the requirements for being a Best Picture-nominated producer have changed since then, but they certainly should have because of that. She was the executive vice president of James L. Brooks' production company, Gracie Films,

so she was involved in quite a few of the movies that he was involved with, both as a director and a producer going forward. Yeah. And if it wasn't for her, The Simpsons wouldn't exist. She introduced Matt Groening to, if that's how you say his name,

Dubious. I'm dubious. To James L. Brooks. So she's like, she is the reason that Cameron Crowe had a career, which I guess is like- Wes Anderson too. Wes Anderson too Wes Anderson she her whole career was like making things happen for men and never getting credit for it but yeah I highly recommend listening to that you must remember this

season because it will shine a light on somebody who was primarily in her career overshadowed by people who didn't deserve the limelight as much as she did right yeah because she was for the most part very much like the common thread in like their best work so it's like well you know who is here for all of your best work and especially for like peter bagdanovich which i guess film majors can jump in my mentions if they feel like it but she was involved with his two best regarded movies ever and his career you know kind of not kind of but absolutely certainly did take a downturn after he decided to divorce her uh yeah he had an affair with um sybil shepherd sybil shepherd yeah on the set of last picture show and that was kind of the swan song for him being considered a top level auteur yeah so polyplot which i just want to make

sure she gets her her due and it also sound uh it sounded like there was a really good on the ringer there was a really good piece on the production of this movie it's been written about pretty extensively at this point. But there were elements of Jane's character that were pulled from both Susan Zirinsky, who I think was like the main source for Jane's life, who ended up becoming the head of CBS News up until like this year, I guess. But there are elements of her character that were pulled from Polly Platt and James Brooks's relationship. So she's very present in the movie. She also had a take on the movie that I super disagreed with, but I thought was interesting. Because I think from her perspective, it makes a lot of sense because she, you know know her career was very much the story of like trying to quote unquote have it all and have a successful marriage and a successful career in

film and she was never able to have you know both at the same time as is a somewhat common experience especially in the you know 70s and 80s so she really really really wanted uh jane to be able to go with tom at the end of the movie even if the relationship was doomed she was really frustrated that james l brooks wouldn't let jane have some sort of romantic catharsis even if it was like not the guy for her she was she seemed really really like upset about it that but then she says in her unpublished memoirs that uh karina longworth read a lot from in her series that she's she's like i suppose i am a living example that you can have the career but you generally don't get the man so i think she wanted this ending for Jane that she didn't get for herself. And that also didn't happen in the movie.

I think that that would have sucked in the movie. But I think from her perspective, it makes sense. I think, you know, a lot of creative people will do this where they will project themselves onto the characters. And that's, I think, a function of the fact that when you become a creative person, it's usually because you have a surplus of empathy. Sometimes it's because you are a sociopath. A raging narcissist. Yeah, super narcissist. But I think, you know, for the people who really do the best work, the people who, you know, we are beginning to laud more than those narcissists. It's empathy. It's being able to put yourself in the characters

and see their perspectives. And I can see doing that. But James L. Brooks was 100% right. Jane going with Tom is a rejection of everything that Jane stood for as a character. It's just wrong. It would have been terrible. And it would have made you dislike Jane even more than you might have just through the course of the movie.

So I'm glad that it is the way that it is. And Jane does get a boyfriend in the flash forward. Yeah, she does. And I'm all for, and we've, you know, gone back and forth about on our show for forever. Caitlin, it's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like she it's clear throughout the movie that she does want some sort of companionship. And so it's like, yeah, I'm rooting for her to get companionship that is equitable and good for her. But like, I'm definitely glad she didn't end up with either of the men in this movie when i'm watching yeah when i'm watching the film i don't think of her having a boyfriend or a husband or something as the goal the real goal for her no it's to have peace you know internal peace like the feeling of of contentment and this is. And that's the part of it that I relate to. And I think a lot of people probably relate to is I need more.

I need more. I need to be more successful. I need to have more esteem from my peers, more acclaim. I need to be a bigger personality. I need to be like the most huge and loved human being within my sphere of influence. And that's what she wants. And that drives her to kind of struggle internally for the entire movie. And she thinks maybe Aaron will be the person to give me that piece. Maybe Tom will be the person to give me that piece. But she has to find it in herself. And by being able to say to Tom, no are wrong i'm gonna stand up for myself i i have

limits and then to be rewarded for her talent and her and her intelligence and her ability that's what gives her the peace at the end and i feel like she she's the one who wins the jackpot at the end tom it gets what was always coming to him because tom is the white man the handsome white man in a world run by handsome white men and aaron gives up and he decides i'm just gonna go to portland and you know start growing weed you know do local news and stuff jane is the one who gets to really feel like she's accomplished what she wanted to accomplish, and she worked for it. Tom didn't work for anything.

Tom is the scion of the American capitalist system. The way in which he fails upward and is aware that that's what's happening is just so frustrating to watch. It's infuriating. It's so frustrating frustrating to watch. It's infuriating. It's so frustrating. Yeah, but the movie is really astute about pointing that out in the 80s when we were lauding those people

more than anybody else. Those were our heroes. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's kind of, I mean, this is kind of a good opportunity, I think, to kind of pivot the discussion to Jane as a character. I guess the last thing I wanted to say about the production of the movie of pivot the discussion to Jane as a character.

I guess the last thing I wanted to say about the production of the movie was that, because again, Caitlin, like we talk about this on the show all the time of like, when men are writing female characters, what kind of research are they doing? Who are they talking to when they're preparing for a person's experience who would be wildly different from their own? And it does seem like James Brooks is pretty, at least by the accounts that I read, that he was pretty solid in this department. And I think it does come across in the movie where he researched women who were working in broadcast news in the early to mid 80s pretty extensively. He interviewed Susan Sarinsky for I think over the course of months. But he spoke to I think it was like as many as 10 women working in that field and, you know, just kind of doing the work of trying to figure out what the common threads were in the struggles they experienced at work.

And so I did. And also Susan Zirinsky was an associate producer on this movie, too. So she was also, you know, like cut in and worked with Holly Hunter. And as far as, you know, a male auteur writing a female character i was i was like i mean i guess it's like the bar is so extremely low but i was like pretty impressed i was like yeah okay he actually did his homework he brought someone into the production who is an authority on this field in this specific role who worked with the actor and like it seemed you know i was um impressed light with that.

I thought that that was cool that she was like accredited producer as well. Yeah. I can't speak for how women respond to this movie, but it always felt natural to me. Like it didn't feel as though he was making things up. And part of that probably is his own background in journalism and working in in i think it was cbs news when he first started yeah that might have helped him see how he needed to go about the process of actually making this is not to just make it up whole cloth which is i think how a lot of male writers and directors will approach a woman's story. And this is ultimately Jane's story.

He looks at it. It seems like he looked at it more from a journalistic standpoint and said, I need to bring some verisimilitude to a story that I have some understanding of, but not the full picture. I'm all for male writers doing their homework. Like it's just, it's a breath of fresh air it's really nice yeah let's talk about jane jane sweet jane she i mean some just pretty obvious stuff here she is extremely competent at her job we see this constantly which is something that i feel like in

a lot of movies that center a female character a female protagonist even that is good at her job we are mostly only like told this or like other characters talk about how good she is at her job, but we don't actually see any like visual evidence of this. So the fact that we constantly see her working and see the ways in which she is good at her job, again, bare minimum stuff here. But, you know, it's it's worth noting that that's a very important aspect of her character. We see her be appreciated for the work that she's doing. We see her being valued and recognized. There's one scene where the president of the, is it the network president? I believe the head of the network news division.

The head of the network news the head of the network news division yeah because this is a broadcast network this is this is like an abc cbs yeah right right right as opposed to like today 24-hour news channels and stuff of that nature right so their boss paul is like observing her working there's a scene where she's like screaming into the phone at someone about like a parking issue she does uh like body shame someone during that so we don't love that but she's like getting the job done and paul says something like i had no idea she was this good and then that leads to her eventually getting like a major promotion so even though it's perhaps not always the most

realistic thing, especially for a woman in the 80s to be like, really acknowledged for the hard work they're putting in and being rewarded for it. Because I mean, again, looking at Polly Platt, and how often she was overlooked. It's not uncommon for women, especially of that era, to do amazing work and never get any recognition or acknowledgement for it. But on the other hand, to see that on screen as an example of something that can happen and should happen was just really cool to see. So I appreciate that aspect of her character. The other kind of major thing about her is that she's looking for love in all the wrong places. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a little bit of the, well, this is, who is the closest person to me?

And I think that that's probably true of a lot of people, you know in in a variety of different fields but especially in these kinds of high stress um you know high impact jobs you look for someone who understands your plight who understands why you're freaking out and you're unhappy you're bursting into tears once a day every day exactly yeah it's like right so she looks for these people who are going to fulfill her but boy you know these are not the best options but they're the only options i know i was like i wanted and this is so i mean it's like so upper middle white issues that that everyone in this movie is having if not just like full-blown rich person shit going on but i'm like we gotta get jane on raya like we gotta we gotta get jane like some we gotta get her on up on a dating platform she needs to date someone outside of this industry who understands high stress

environments but not the one that she's in every day i just was like, let's get Jane into 2021 and see what's up then. Give her a yoga class, some crystals, a juice regimen. Get her some goop. Tell Jane about goop. You know what, girl? Wash your face, okay? Girl, wash your face. The thing with Jane is she is an unrepentant girl boss and like the kind it's true yeah it's true and it's like and it bears

saying that the the kind of news that's being done here which i guess it's like it's hard for me to go into like 1987 audience brain here because now i feel like there's been there's been so much discussion around news bias and mass media news bias that now when you see this kind of stuff, you're like, oh, this news has a very clear tilt. It's always going to prioritize the West. It's always going to prioritize the white West and on and on. And so in some ways, it's like, if I'm looking at Jane on paper no I don't really like her that much but I do appreciate her commitment to to ethics and I can empathize with her on I mean I guess on I I got kind of like lost in my how how I actually like fall on this because we see jane have these like literally like

power cries at multiple points in the movie and i do think it kind of becomes a joke as the movie goes on that like she's gonna just take any moment she can find to herself which is not often to like have a power cry and then she'll either pull it together or someone will walk in and she'll be forced to pull it together which i think is like you know i i don't hate that choice i don't know she she is so tricky i mean it's like there's no one in this movie that you are 100% rooting for because it's like okay i i want you know jane to i don't know i mean I guess I I like her on the okay hmm where's this going I think that Jane has a problem that I I don't think is really often seen in movies where Jane is like primarily valued for her skill at her job which I don't think we see female characters valued for primarily at least in movies very often but it also shows the offset of that and what I what I think is like a pretty

logical thing that she feels is missing from her life is like oh people value me for my ability so much but like what about me and like what about who I really am and like my desires and what I want in life. And both of the men in this like sort of love triangle we're being presented with do seem to value her ability over who she actually is. And that I thought was like a pretty interesting thing to see on screen. And I don't think that there's a lot of movies that have really done that because I think that like there is this whole current wave feminism of like it is really good to be valued for your skills which it is but also like to be valued for your skills and not yourself like that sucks and that feels bad and I I think it's interesting that that comes through in her character and her storyline i think that there's still a an element of vampirism to the relationships she has with both men is even though oh great you know they

value her her ability they want that ability for themselves right the seduction in this movie, the grand scene where Tom is like, whoa, Jane, okay, now I really notice her, is when she allows him to do the nightly news without ruining it, without saying something inappropriate or getting something wrong. She guides him to where he needs to be in his career erin similarly is constantly looking to her for approval and acceptance and some kind of um you know help in his career and he said erin is always saying you know i know you better than you know yourself or like we're best friends we're doing all this stuff because that's aaron needs her to give him this validation so they're constantly just taking from her but they never ask her how she's doing or what's going on in her mind or why she feels the way that she does it is just it's constantly like psychically

sucking the energy out of her and yeah that's why she has to pick neither of them. Because if she went with either one of those guys, they would just like whittle her into a little tiny nub. Yeah. I mean, I'm very glad that she picks neither of them. I would have been simply furious if the movie had her ended up with one or the other of them. It would have sucked. Yeah. But then you have this yet another example of a movie. And this is something we've talked here and there about on the podcast of a very like career driven woman who is very successful in her line of work and very competent,

who doesn't, it's sort of that like, women can't have it all thing, where we see her not able to, you know, she, again, she's looking for love, she has trouble finding it. And when she does find something that seems like it might be a romantic prospect she can't maintain a relationship and even at the end when she has this like boyfriend who she's known for like three months or something like that and you know we don't know how serious it is or if that's going to be kind of fleeting or whatever but but that's also like one way of looking at it where it's like you know she's she's really good at her job but that's the only thing she gets to have she can't have love because women can't have it all but then there's

also like but then you could see it like well she doesn't need a man her her passion and her love is her job and so i'm kind of torn but it's like she wants one but she wants love yeah right i think that that's such an like it's interesting and i don't think i don't know it's almost like an impossible puzzle to solve right where it's like i feel like if she if this movie resolves with like her being like oh wait there was this guy i knew from college who respects me and like fulfills me in every way like that would be i guess it's like i was struggling with that too or it's like i feel like it's idealism versus the reality of her time and her profession which which does come off as bleak because it is.

And that's why I was really interested in how frustrated Polly Platt was by how her story ends. Because we all agree that she shouldn't have ended up with one of the assholes in the movie. But it seems like Polly Platt very much wanted the more idealistic ending to this, which is that she was able to be fulfilled on every level which

i know is possible and i know that women of this era were able to have that but i would be interested to hear from our listeners of of this generation who are women uh in the workplace at this time as well because it does seem like there is kind of this very bleak realism to jane's character of or that's like one way to look at it like i can see it as like well fuck james l brooks for not giving this very motivated uh intelligent female character the happy ending she deserved but then i can also see it as like well what were very intelligent highly motivated women in the workplace at this time actually getting and what does this movie reflect of that and I don't know yeah it's it's really thorny and and tough and I mean I I like that this movie

kind of engages with that but it is like it's a bummer for I I like I feel like it is kind of a cool choice to at the end add the flourish of like maybe this is going to be the relationship that works for her and maybe she is like on the brink of having it all because she had to deal with all this bullshit and got her career in line and rejected these two assholes and moved on with her life but but we don't know I don't know yeah I I've always liked the the kind of ellipsis the elliptical nature of it where it just kind of leaves you wondering i hope she gets what she wants but you don't know because she's still herself and she still is grappling with these things because she hasn't had the complete like revelation oh this is how i solve the problem

because none of us really ever do that's the thing that i think separates great films from very good films is the acceptance of the fact that most of us will never solve the one big problem in our lives because it's hard that's work that never ends we're we're constantly trying to perfect ourselves and perfection is impossible. It is worth noting that the year after this movie came out, 1988, that was the year of Working Girl, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver.

And that movie, in contrast to this one, is about where Jane is kind of of you know um i think always destined for success upper class kind of person uh lauded for her her intelligence melanie griffith's character in that movie is considered lower class and doesn't belong on wall street which is certainly a less morally upright profession than broadcast news at that time. Neither are great, but that one's definitely, you know, Wall Street's worst. This is the worst of them all, yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, on the list, at least, you know, they were trying to tell the truth on some level, but not really. Yeah. Mellie Griffith gets everything she wants at the end she gets the corner office she gets

all the fancy clothes she gets harrison ford at the end even though harrison ford in that movie is kind of a jerk oh my god he sucks he sucks yeah exactly like but like that was the inverse of this and i prefer i like uh working girl because it's funny and it's kind of like an amusing fairy tale. But of the two, Broadcast News is far superior to me because it does paint the realistic picture of human beings constantly stepping on themselves, trying to succeed and trying to be better people and failing miserably. And that's how I feel as a human being all the time. Yeah. And it's like, and I think like, and that's part of why it's like a tough pill to swallow.

But it's like this movie doesn't present itself as the bizarro like Reagan era fairy tale that Working Girl does. And you can listen to our our episode about working girl on on the patreon that we did i think a year and a half ago even though it feels like yeah 500 years who knows when that was we've covered it but but yeah i agree that like i think that this movie has endured more and it's partially for those reasons like i i don't know it's i i like that jane's ending is pretty ambiguous and like opens up this kind of discussion it's cool to have these

discussions and you know how the discussion of a woman's career in 87 would be different than now hopefully in some ways and it does seem like a cool, I don't know, just like marker of where things were at, especially because and again, I don't want to give James Albrecht too much credit here. But he was he was engaging with very popular female characters who were in the workplace for like 15 years before this movie came out and he he or over 15 years where he was working in the mary tyler moore show which was like a huge component of second wave feminist entertainment where it was like a huge deal that a career woman was being centered in any way regardless of what she was doing even and and now it seems like piddly nothing because you're like okay a white

woman working in an office like i'm asleep but but you know like but that wasn't always the case and and it's he he seems to have been engaging with kind of this story you know that not this story but just like this social movement pretty consistently and it's interesting to watch it kind of bear out in this way where like by the late 80s it's clear that characters like Jane have benefited from second wave feminism and that she is highly respected in her profession but she's still a person and she is still experiencing sexism in this space and she is still being you know vampired and used by the people around her in spite of the successes of the past you know 10-15 years of feminism it's wild one thing I do think

that in terms of like how her character is written that I feel like there was room for that I would have liked some of the time to be reallocated i'm not advocating for the movie to be longer but i will it's it's four hours why not i wish that she had a a woman to talk to in the story i feel like those characters were present especially with junkie sex right there like i i understand probably i can imagine james bro Brooks's argument for like well she was intimidated by her and blah blah blah but it's like there was room for two women in this workplace to have meaningful conversations that would have lifted the story in general and I wish that there had been room made for that because the characters are literally there. Like it's frustrating that they don't engage with that at all.

Yeah. The conversations between Joan Cusack's character Blair and Jane are really minimal to the point where every time Blair popped up again in the story, I'm like, oh, right, Joan Cusack's in this movie. Like she's there so infrequently that you could basically write her out of the movie and it wouldn't be different at all and as much as we love to see her run through that obstacle course to get the tape in on time that kind of could have been anyone. So the fact that she's not a more important character is pretty glaring.

It stands out only because of the performance. But the female character that I want to talk about before we move on that always chaps my ass the most is Jennifer, played by Lois Childs, who is also in the james bond film moon raker and i believe was a model for many years okay interesting i didn't know that yeah i think that was her maybe her first movie but um i mean she has done no favors in this film she is there specifically to be derided and to be an obstacle of a sort for jane and i think they have one

conversation and this is i guess uh getting ahead of ourselves about the bechdel test but they have one conversation and i believe it is specifically about tom oh yeah and there is nothing else going on there they They don't have any rapport related to their unique position in a broadcast network newsroom in 1987 they don't talk about their own hopes and dreams. They don't talk about The struggles that they have or the the conflicts that they have it is just about tom and i mean she is played for um for comic relief the entire time and we're supposed to be so amused by the fact that she is uh banished to alaska um which but i feel bad i feel bad for her she just thought tom was cute she just wanted to hook up with tom the thing is like i i like jennifer i feel like jennifer is

uh i wish that she's been written out more and i wish that jane had been taken to task more for doing what she did because she derailed jennifer's life and career entirely where i thought it was like i thought i mean i i don't know and Kaylin I'm interested in your opinion on this as well but like when when Jennifer goes up to Jane at whatever that news party was and is like hey I'm interested in Tom like I wasn't sure if there's something going on with you I just wanted to check in I was like wow that's like she didn't technically have to do that they weren't friends it was like i thought that was like oh that's that's what a what a nice person does um or if not nice a conflict averse i could relate with it but she was just like hey

i'm interested in tom is there anything going on and then she gets a feeling from jane that oh jane is interested and she's like okay fine then i'll back off fine and then jane is the one who acts like you know just bizarre about it and it's like oh no go fuck him right now kind of like she's very immature about it and then yeah jennifer is like okay and then she does yeah and then she's punished for it like yeah it's it's not cool i think that like jane is written to be cool and so the fact that she is like so unceremoniously written out as a punch line rather than like it would have been like another interesting thing that could have happened is like and again i'm just like yeah tell james brooks what i think he should have done

30 years ago but like you know it there are other you know maybe there's another person in the at the news station who would have been pissed off on jennifer's behalf for the fact that she was clearly banished to alaska like did jennifer have any friends that were gonna stick up for her why is no one mad about this nobody because jane was jane was being an asshole and like that is one of the things that for me watching in 2021 i was like oh jane can be a real like you know really weaponize her insecurities against other people i mean especially because she like gets on her high horse about ethics in reporting the news. And then she's,

she makes this choice to cause she had the choice between a character named George, who we could also talk about and Jennifer as the person who they're going to send to Alaska to report on some Alaskan serial killer. And without a moment's hesitation, the second Jane hears Jennifer's name as an option, she's just like, Jennifer, send Jennifer. And it's because she's trying to get rid of her so that she can move in on Tom, who, by the way, had called his, the reason that Jane

was like, yeah, Jennifer, you can go after him. I don't care is because Tom went up to her and he's like, you look so pretty and clean because normally at the office you have this gross layer of film on you. She was like, well, then it's so it's so frustrating. Yeah, because it's I mean, it's like, I think I hope that we're supposed to, you know, that's supposed to be like, audience wise, a strike against Jane and and clearly like you know she she's like you're saying caitlin constantly on her high horse about ethics but then in practice her record is spottier than she'd like to admit right but the most frustrating thing is if jane had just been straightforward and been like no i'm interested in tom like i would appreciate if you didn't

hook up with him it sounds like j Jennifer would have been like, okay, and moved on with her life. And this never would have been a problem. Yeah, Jennifer's kind of cool. She's cool. She's a very chill lady. And she's just kind of like, yeah, I'm just living my life. Whatever.

Tom's cute. There's a scene where I felt bad for Jennifer too. I think it's pretty early on where all the reporters at the station are kind of like asking each other ethics questions where they're like oh would you yes yeah tell a source you love them to get information out of them and they were all like yep of course I would and then when when like Jennifer confirms that she would Aaron is like yeahifer didn't know that there was any other option as if to be like wow jennifer what a floozy she's out there uh loving and having sex with all of her sources i do wonder basically i do wonder if there was like in my okay two things like i wonder if

there was some sort of deleted scene where this is addressed because it does seem like jennifer is a pretty like heavily set up character to completely disappear with a throwaway joke it does feel kind of bizarre to me given the rest of the characters in this movie nothing else for jennifer she is long gone to alaska that is the end of jennifer i liked the scene i liked the other like one of her moments where after she and tom do hook up tom notices that she has like a spare room in her apartment maybe that is like for her clothes and jennifer gets defensive before he even says anything and it's like oh well i had that extra space and you know it felt like kind of you know however you feel about it

like commentary on how female news anchors have a higher pressure to look a certain way than their male counterparts to the point where she felt the need to like get ahead of his potential criticism and that was like another like pretty thoughtful moment i thought and then she just she just disappears i hope that she wins a Pulitzer in Alaska that's my headcanon for she catches the serial killer they make an incredible docuseries about it and Jane is kicking herself yeah I mean I think this is a like you said, Jamie, a very tricky movie because it isn't cleanly moralistic. It isn't cleanly one side or the other. It is very messy with the perspective. And I think that that is one, as we all pointed out, a fault of the fact that it came out in 1987, but also I think it's because this is a movie

that is conflicted about its own subject matter. It's conflicted about the idea of the news and whether or not the news is good as it is portrayed in the world. There's that whole sequence when they're involved in the war. I don't even remember what country it is. Oh, in Nicaragua. Nicaragua.

Okay, good. I'm glad that they actually had a country instead of just like, we're in a war zone and there are people that don't speak English. It's played not for laughs necessarily, but they are oddly not engaged with anything they're kind of detached from the fact that they're in a war zone that there are people losing their lives yeah it's opportunistic it is not empathetic it is not oh my goodness this is this is a a situation where people's lives are being lost that there's political upheaval and you know whose side are we on

you know why is this happening it's just here's the thing that happened and can we get a shot of the boots okay we got a shot of the boots great nobody got uh shot okay wonderful it's just very matter of fact and i think today you know now we would say you know that detachment is actually bad that the the people who are nostalgic for the days of the news being told for 30 minutes every five five o'clock every day and we're objective is not realistic or feasible you can't be objective in the news when horrible things are happening you have to speak out and you have to tell it not like it is but tell people what it shouldn't be if that makes sense um and so this movie i think has that ambivalence about the news and is satirical about

that world so it makes every character's decisions more glaringly negative um everybody is doing the wrong thing because the movie isn't sure if the thing that the the career the industry that they have given their lives to is even good yeah and i think that's that's kind of where like jane's girl boss angle does kind of come in is like yes you you are like tempted as an audience member and as someone who generally is, like, women succeeding could be good to say, like, well, look, she's succeeding at a really high level in this field. But what is she actually doing?

And, like, what are the ethics and what is the impact of what she's actually doing? It's not good. Like, it's not universally good at all. And I like that the, the yeah that the movie like that that the the scene where they're reporting in nicaragua i feel like at least now like comes off as pretty embarrassing for them too it's like they can barely communicate with the people that they are supposed to be reporting on and about and then it's ultimately kind of played as this

little romantic tension when they're in the middle of like you're saying they have a war zone where supposed to be reporting on and about and then it's ultimately kind of played as this little romantic tension when they're in the middle of like you're saying a war zone where people are dying and they're kind of like wow this is so exciting should we kiss no and it's like they're just like centering themselves in this way that looks ridiculous yeah and i think the movie to its credit does recognize how ridiculous it is right yeah yeah i do yeah i do i do like that because it's like they're you know it's what what jane is fighting for in this industry is i guess on this watch for me it was like is like she's just fighting for like a two percent better thing than what she's currently doing which is better like i agree that

jane's version of the news is better than tom's version of the news but is it better enough to justify rooting for it no yeah but is she right yes yes it's the 80s were an era of incremental progress the 90s 80s yeah you even the 2000s on some level. It's like, okay, well, you know, we've made some strides, right, ladies? Right, everybody? You know, black people can be senators now. Isn't that amazing? And the culmination of that is Obama and Hillary and, oh, you know, black people can operate drones too.

Like, this is wonderful. We can have a Korean head of the CIA or whatever it is that, to just have incremental progress to put people of color or marginalized groups into these jobs that are fundamentally bad for the planet. It is not just about having a person of color as the head of the CIA, because it's the CIA that is the problem. Those are the things that we couldn't fathom or grapple with in 1987, that now people are able to grapple with, because we don't have the illusion that the system itself is good. And I think in broadcast news, and in a lot of other, quoteunquote feminist movies from that era. Baby Boom with Diane Keaton.

You know, that's like, oh, look at how great it is that Diane Keaton is able to have a kid and, you know, be a boss. Like, that's not good. What does her company even do? It's probably like selling arms to the Contras or something. I don't know. This isn't right. But she has a baby, so we did it. And that baby is going to end up inheriting millions of dollars and probably being a bad person.

Yeah, it's just a different way of looking at the world. And I'm glad that we are outside of the expectation that incremental progress is going to save us. It is not. Yeah. Let's take another quick break and then we'll come back for more discussion. 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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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. And we're back. Is there any other stuff we wanted to talk about on Jane before we started going into it? I have like a few little things, but take it away. Oh, well, one of the exchanges that I really did like, and I watched the scene back a couple times because it was like, I don't know. Holly Hunter is really good in this scene where I do. Again, it's like this is in the context of what Jane is doing is ultimately not good for

the world I do think it's like there are a few elements of her character where she she is a huge advocate for the people who work for her um in a way that I thought was was really cool like when she's trying to get Aaron to be the anchor on the story about Libya, because he actually knows what he's talking about, has expertise in this area to an extent. And, you know, can,

unlike Tom can like do the job that Tom admits he cannot do. I thought it was, it was cool to see her really, you know, go up against a superior and advocate for someone who she knew would do a better job and that whole exchange of like you know being patronized and like she did it's that complicated girl boss thing where you're like she is being met with some misogyny but does it justify the ends not really but you know it must be terrible being

the smartest person in the room is you know being kind of patronized by her boss. And she says it's awful. And it's like she means it. I loved that. I loved it. I mean, because it's like she she's right. She is right in this situation and we know she is. There are still these like these little misogynistic ways where she's treated where I feel like with her relationship with Aaron, there's this expectation that she's going to be maternal towards him in a way that in terms of a working relationship makes no sense at all. But like that he, you know, feels entitled to barge in on her life in whatever way he pleases he feels entitled to her emotional energy at the drop of a hat for reasons you know it's like she has to go see him uh the the night that he anchors the news she has you know she adjusts his clothes she does all these little maternal things that are not her job but she clearly feels you know compelled or obligated to do for him

right that does feel like very i don't know it's interesting to see those like moments that you're like oh this is very intentionally i felt like it was like written very intentionally as like a half step towards progress of like is she technically his superior yes But look at how he still feels so entitled to her time and her energy in spite of that. This makes me think about the concept of the work wife, which is I think best left in the 20th century, but it's a thing that people still talk about a lot, maybe less so now that we are in a post COVID world where we are not going to offices and there isn't that forced camaraderie between employees and a workplace anymore.

But there was certainly for many, many years this idea of, oh boy, those two, they're like peas in a pot. That guy and that woman and they just have this great relationship. And she's my work wife and he's my work husband. And it's a blurring of the lines that people thought was funny. That was the cause of, you know, that was the launching pad for a lot of sitcoms and things of that nature. But it's really like inappropriate ultimately. And I can look back on, you know you know workplace relationships friendships where it's like this is we should just be co-workers but because we no one talked about this stuff back

then it was like oh well this is just how it's supposed to be you know we we can you know have this kind of enmeshed codependent work relationship that is allegedly platonic, but not necessarily so. And I think that holds back a lot of workplace equality is this idea that you can't have these platonic relationships with people where you don't have a line. There is no line in the sand of this is okay this is not okay and this is work and this is personal and aaron certainly has that work wife relationship with jane that has become terribly inappropriate and it is gendered as you pointed out that he is having her mother him yeah he wants her to be his mom he wants her to be his mom. He wants her to be his girlfriend. He wants her to be his best friend.

Like it's, it's really icky. Yeah. Yeah. And it wouldn't be that way if she was not a woman in this situation that she was not, you know, she wouldn't be that for him if she didn't fit the idea of what he wanted romantically.

And if she wasn't a woman, you know, if it was a man, he would probably be intimidated by him because he's very clearly intimidated by Tom and constantly trying. And Jack Nicholson. And Jack Nicholson. Yeah, every other man around him, he's constantly being like, well, I'm smarter than you you know that right and it's like which apparently he's been doing since he was a child yeah and he

rightfully gets beat up in the first scene yeah i was kind of on the bully's side i hate to say it uh in that first scene i mean to get into the air and stuff, I agree with you, Caitlin, that he's definitely the character I like the least of these three. But I don't know. But it's like also I really do hate Tom. I don't know. I have a special kind of hate for Tom. I hate them for different reasons, I guess. Yeah.

I don't know which one's more. I guess. Yeah. It's like, hmm. Maybe rankings will become clear with conversation tough choice oh i like they're both so little bad erin is i mean it's i i do feel like it's at least i i guess again the amount of intention because it's 1987 it does kind of evade me a little because i feel like there are so many characters that you know throughout history of all media that we're supposed to be like oh the lovable misogynist

guy and like sure he's a little insecure and sure he punches down to every woman he comes in contact to but he's a dork he's insecure and the 80s are like the peak of that yeah the sad sack nebbish is the hero in so many of these movies and right you realize in retrospect they are the the antagonist in all of these movies they're the cause of every problem it comes off the worst and it's it's because it's like constantly aaron is kissing his female co-workers without their consent, just like really lunging and making a go for it. He feels entitled to their time. He makes comments like that comment you mentioned, Dave, to Jennifer.

That was or Caitlin. I forget who said, but like that completely inappropriate, like, oh, you must, you know, you would tell anyone you love them yeah right uh kind of thing the way he acts when the date rape segment is at oh boy that's the moment when you know he's the worst person in the world he's if there was any doubt he is horrible and like i mean we'll we'll get into that segment because that's like very very interesting but you know he has a lot of uh dislike and and just dismissal towards women even when and i think it is kind of like i mean kayla we've talked about this all the time of uh of how it tends to be at least more narratively interesting and you know applicable to see

male characters who male audience members can see themselves in and i can i can see you know watching broadcast news the the casualness of his misogyny and the casualness that he feels entitled to feels not unrealistic and it's not like a cartoon villain of a misogynist it's someone who is just projecting onto people who he doesn't think are more powerful than him and people who he clearly doesn't think are gonna you know bring it up or or do anything and i feel like his character is so emblematic of that he's like what do you mean i'm a good guy like he's that kind of character but it's written so i don't know i i like how his character is written because it does it feels like a recognizable person who is saying despicable stuff really regularly but it's so it makes sense

that it's normalized in this world yeah Yeah, I think it's important to note that they cast a comedian in this role. Sure, yeah. And if you cast a comedian, most likely you are going to look at that person as sympathetic, especially in 1987 when that type of character was considered heroic.

So casting someone who is used to kind of begging for affection in the way that all great comedic performers do, like if you have ever performed on a stage and tried to get people to laugh, you know how kind of desperate that is and how like, he doesn't want to be loved. A story of our lives i know right and so albert brooks is able to bring that and that is i think why he was

only successful to a point playing the lead in movies like this because one he and his co-writer monica johnson were writing characters that were loathsome and satirical for him most of the time but also because even when he's trying to be likable he's kind of annoying you kind of don't like this person because he just has this um like you said this this underlying kind of menace and misogyny to his characters um that is softened in probably his most popular movie like i said defending your life where he is the romantic lead and he is trying to be a better person and he does get the girl at the end and he does kind of almost maybe possibly sort of deserve it but he still it starts the movie as this self-centered, narcissistic person.

So I think there was never a point when he was going to be a super-duper movie star on the level of Steve Martin or other contemporaries of his because he was so attracted to these parts that when a comedian had to be unlikable in a lead role in a movie, he was the one you went to. Because he could be justlikable in a in a lead role in a movie he was the one you went to because he could be just likable enough but not afraid to be completely unlikable and that is again why i love his work so much is because he project projects this awareness and this vulnerability and also this um menace that is recognizable i think for a lot of, a lot of men who are looking at

themselves and saying, I'm not so great. There's a realism and an honesty to it that is incredibly rare, even when you're playing the most loathsome character in a TV show. If you're Steve Carell in The Office, you still kind of want to be liked. Albert Brooksoks in most of his movies he's like ah you don't have to like me i stink and does he stink that scene toward the end of the movie where jane is like i'm going on this trip with tom this is my like last chance to see you let's have lunch or whatever and he and they're like kind of saying goodbye and they're like talking about their futures and stuff and then he says something like oh here's what's here's how it's going to go down we'll you know drift apart a little bit and then we'll reconnect

a few years down the road and my son will be there and he'll say something really mean to you and i'll have to jump in and be like it's not nice to say something about lonely fat women like that and it's just like really a painful scene just so saying that to your best friend i i was like and she still kind of forgives him yeah she's i feel like there is very much a vibe of like that's our erin and you're like but why why why are you friends that are erin this jackass yeah i think she feels that way i don't think the movie is saying that it's okay i do think that the movie judges him harshly and but then when they like the movie ends on what i think is meant to be this like tender moment of them reconnecting after like seven years and they're catching up and it's like jane get away from him like this guy sucks you know you've got your issues too

but you can do better and i was just i don't know i was just very disappointed yeah it would have been nice to have some catharsis for her some point where she could really tell him off yeah but the movie does not grant her that or any of the characters that really i guess the scene in the airport where jane gives it to tom and and expresses her outrage at his behavior is the only scene where any character is truly dressed down. Everybody else kind of gets away scot-free with their problems. At least their actual problems. When Aaron confronts Jane in that restaurant at the end,

he is not saying anything true about her. He's not expressing any real uh issue that she has in her personality he's just being cruel for the sake of being cruel yeah yeah i mean he just like very much projects his i mean he's just he's he's the worst and yet he is not totally wrong about everything that he says. And that is like, I feel like that kind of dovetails into the Tom discussion a little bit. Where that scene with him and Jane, where Jane is like, I think I'm falling in love with Tom. And Aaron is just being a total fucking baby about everything. He's like, but you're my mom and my wife.

What? baby about everything he's like but you're my mom and my wife what like he's like spiraling having a total meltdown and just like peeing his diaper about it but then he brings up a point that is a pretty good point about how tom approaches the news and how you know tom you know he says tom is the devil and which is dramatic. But also he does bring up a point that Jane doesn't want to hear, which is also kind of, I thought, like a pretty interesting thing that is like brought into her character of like, she knows, she's well aware that Tom doesn't know what he's doing. And she knows that because she's doing it for him a lot of the time. And sometimes Aaron's doing it for him in the case of that big story about Libya where, you know, Aaron called Jane and gave Tom the information he needed to look good.

She knows that because she told Tom off when she first met him. Like, why are you whining to me? Learn how to do your job then. Like, why are you telling me this? Like, fuck you but she's still attracted to him and she's struggling with that which I guess like if you're a comedian who's had sex with a comedian then you can understand that maybe that I was like that interaction I was just like hmm I see my life in this at times.

Relatable. Like, why doesn't anyone laugh when I talk? I'm like, that's a you problem. In any case, like Aaron's view of Tom isn't wrong in that like Tom does, it is kind of the antithesis of what Jane claims to stand for. But she thinks that maybe she could get an area of her life fulfilled that she hasn't had fulfilled in a long time through him and so she's getting to the point where she's like well maybe I can overlook the ethics of it and Aaron does bring her back to earth and is like are you sure you can see overlook the ethics of it and it's just so

like everyone in this situation sucks and is making a huge compromise of their morals and i hate that it's aaron that makes a good point but i do think he he makes a really good point there like he's simply not wrong in that case i almost wish that it had been her to like put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure it out on her own that sure tom had like brought only one camera and that he must have staged it and like yeah i don't i feel like yeah the fact that it's aaron doing it out of spite right and rage and selfishness is it takes some of the the thrill of victory away but i wonder if you know that too is the point is is you know jane is so lost in her fantasy of who tom is or could be that she

can't see so it has to be someone else but it has to be someone acting in self-interest as opposed to someone who really cares because none of them really care all of them are self-interested right at the end of the day none of them are truly altruistic in their behavior at all there is no truly good person in this movie everyone just wants love or approval or acclaim or esteem. Nobody is thinking about how can I help someone else? I guess on some level there is some altruism from Jane in regards to her coworkers a little bit, but not really. Or Aaron choosing to leave instead of sticking around

so that somebody could keep their job maybe but not really it's still about yourself uh and self-interest yeah not enough not to take the promotion she's very nice to the people who are laid off but she still takes the promotion you know in the same way that like jack nicholson when everyone's laid off he's the clearest villain where they're you know they're like oh you want to shave a million off of your salary? And he gets like, he's like, yeah, he starts hissing and spitting. And then Paul is like, I'm so sorry. That was the worst joke I've ever made.

What a silly joke I made. I would never. That is why I was not being serious. It was very much a joke. And then Jack Nicholson goes right but then it's like but but tom and jane are very involved in this too where they you know they're they're nice to the people who are laid off but they take their promotion and they're gonna go on vacation about it like i gotta clear my head oh boy i that's that was hard for me yeah okay i have a job so hard i

better go to wherever they're gonna go about it like you know if if you're if you put yourself in the in the shoes of you know joan cusack who just got laid off you'd be like fuck you you're going on vacation for what and i do like that exchange between um joan cusack and and uh jane where she's like except for socially you're my role model which I think passes the Bechdel test I think that's as close as we get oh hooray wow that's that's something right that's something it's kind of a funny path yeah I like it but I did want to talk about the the actual story that I think is like you know i feel like there's this little ambiguity of like okay so tom is self-aware that he doesn't know what his job is but how far is he

willing to go is he just going to fail upwards passively or is he going to actively fail upwards and the moment where he the story he chooses is particularly it's again it's just like this like such an ambiguous thing or it was for me when i like put my 1987 goggles on because he does a story on date rape which in 1987 was barely a term that existed it was not a popular discussion and at that time would have been a risky broadcast and i feel like that is reflected in the way that it's received i mean especially by aaron who's like this isn't news but i don't think that that is like as despicable as a reaction as it was i don't think it would have been an uncommon one um at the time if this isn't the salt to nuclear disarmament talks who

cares right that was that's the aaron altman attitude about the news and to a certain extent Jane's attitude about the news, which is it has to be about powerful men and countries and money changing hands and that kind of stuff. But in this, I mean, I thought it was really well done. The way that scene was like shot, especially where we know as an audience by the end, that Tom spotlighted this story for completely selfish reasons. He does not actually care about women who are, you know, experiencing date rape. He does not actually care about their stories. This is a side note, but the woman who appears on screen in that news item is

credited as date rape woman. So that's unfortunate. And in any case, like he's doing it for selfish reasons, but he is championing a story that would probably not have been told on the news otherwise. So that's difficult. And then also watching the way that the women in the room react to that story as they're watching it was also really interesting where like i think that was one of joan cusack's more plot relevant moments where she tells um she tells jane like oh that happened to someone i knew and there's other women in the room who are like reacting in a way of like, oh, I recognize what she's talking about. And there is this clear, like, you know, we can't know because it's fiction, right? But like, I would guess that a story like this, even though it was done for the most despicable, selfish, manipulative reasons,

which is why Tom did it, had probably a net good impact because it had the potential to start a conversation no one else was willing to have to the point where it even got to Jane, who Jane is like, well, you know, fuck you for cutting to yourself, like literally a Brian Williams move. But I was moved by the story, which is a lot from Jane, who does prioritize these stories about war and politically influential men and for for her to kind of hand it to any reporter about a story that is about something that commonly happens to women those don't seem to be the kind of stories that she champions and so I feel like that make that almost I don't know maybe I'm like reading too far into

it but I feel like that that almost from her perspective makes the betrayal of him doing it disingenuously even worse of like you know he got her to consider something as news that she hadn't previously considered as news and then it turned out to be for this really selfish reason and so not only is it unethical it was like he lot he you know he was able to like get through her bullshit meter which she can you know it seems like she can handle almost any level of bullshit but he it was it just is like a betrayal on so many levels right there's another kind of side note level to this where when this movie was being filmed william hurt who plays tom and again another trigger warning here for sexual assault but william hurt sexually assaulted his girlfriend at the time oh my god marley matlin wow i did not know that yeah i didn't either so

you have this actor playing this character who's like championing this story for very selfish reasons. And an actor who is committing these atrocities that his character is speaking out against. And the whole thing is just a huge mindfuck. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that that's the movie makes a point about our society and how we function with each other and the reasons why things happen and why people what motivates people. because you can look at this movie and say, oh, this was a movie that projected a lot of good things about gender equality and all of that into the world. But then you hear about something like that and you say, oh, well, this person,

this real human being who's in this movie was in this movie that a lot of people hold up as a step forward for feminism in entertainment he did it for selfish reasons the same for the same reason you know the character he plays in the movie puts this story onto the news and that unfortunately is why anything happens in a capitalist society that is the that is the form and function of capitalism when it is going well, which is people will do good things to satisfy themselves and their own egos,

and that is how it works, and that's good. Good things will happen if people have a financial or personal stake in it. But that's ultimately not a positive For the world it is not good for people to claim to be doing the right thing but for it to really be you know just for their own benefit and Hypocrisy grows and grows and grows because that is how we think the system should work, which is giving people praise for doing things in their own self-interest as opposed to doing things collectively or doing things altruistically or for a good reason that is centered on other people as opposed to ego. It really breaks your brain.

Yeah. ego it really breaks your brain yeah does anyone have any other things they want to talk about shockingly little black or brown faces in the movie oh this is a very very very white movie about a very white industry oh and that yeah that's there is one black reporter, George, who, similar to Joan Cusack's character, could be written out of the movie. And you wouldn't notice because he is in it so infrequently and his character is extremely insignificant to the larger narrative, which is extremely unfortunate, yet not surprising for a movie. Tokenism was certainly very popular back then, and still is to a certain extent. Yeah, and it's like of the many, I mean, of the many things that James Brooks seems to want to point out, like, hey, isn't this exclusion or change fucked up in this industry? Whiteness never comes into the equation. That's like he interrogates the gender dynamics of this workplace constantly,

but he never, never, never interrogates the race dynamics of the workplace. Yeah, I think there was a point in in american culture and we only recently got past it where there was this idea of well racism was solved in the 60s we solved it and everything's fine and there's a black person in the newsroom and isn't that cute oh boy he's got a job and everything and a little tie and a suit wow amazing and what does he do what's his life like don't worry about it doesn't matter um yeah it is not about him so move along sir uh that that is a very common problem and it is why we go from you know the the gains of civil rights to seemingly regressing so significantly to this point is because we were told the fiction that

it was solved through things like film and television and literature the news like yeah look at this look at we have diversity the united colors of benetton it's real everybody's equal and i think tokenism had the exact opposite result of what they wanted it to have, which is that it made people unaware of the prejudice that exists. It made people think that things were fine. fiction perpetuated that that deception for decades until now when it's all starting to boil over and people are finally talking about it again and saying it's not enough for there to be a black judge in a movie it's not enough for the cops to be black it's not enough for there to be you know one latino actor um and they happen to be playing a criminal and like well no diversity look we have this whole gang of of criminals and they're they're diverse a criminal. And like, well, no, diversity, look, we have this whole gang of criminals,

and they're diverse. Like, that is not how it works. And it took forever for people to see that that is just as harmful as having nothing but white faces in a movie. If not more harmful. I think it might be more harmful because it perpetuates the fiction, the lie.

Definitely. James Brooks, I feel like is just simply ill-equipped to like he's accomplished a lot, but commentary on race in any meaningful way doesn't seem to be anything he's ever even really attempted. And when he does, it seems like it is never gone. Did you see Spanglish? Oh, wait, I forgot. Spanglish did solve racism am i right correct wow um almost ended his career it was so bad i saw spanglish i think in elementary school and i thankfully don't remember a single minute of it. I've never seen it. You're fine.

You're good. Proud to say. Yeah. Let's pretend. Did he direct that? Yes. Oh, yeah. He was full on auteur still at that point.

You know, as good as it gets, it just recently come out. He auteurs Spanglish? Yeah. I think it was based on his actual housekeeper. No. Wait, this is all. Don't quote me on that. Look it up on uh literary and

academic resource wikipedia if you want to be sure i can but i believe that he said something about how it was inspired by his own life wait this is boo holy shit okay this is news to me and i'm upset this is broadcast news this is brought yet i feel a deep sympathy for james l brooks just kidding yeah well fuck folks just take this as a lesson if you are if you think you are the hero of your own story you're not okay then that is what i think movies and tv shows and and literature have done for men of all races is to say you are the hero of your story and everyone wants to hear your story isn't that great no no albert brooks was right he is the villain of his own story i am the villain of my own story and all i can do every day when i wake up is to be

slightly less bad i i don't think i'm horrible but i think that i make tons of mistakes and uh this movie is it has its heart in the right place yeah ultimately but it is very unsuccessful at a myriad of things and and i think we pointed most of them out i'm sure we missed some but uh you always do you can always be better folks that is that is the one thing i hope everybody takes from from life is, man, we're messing up all the time. We can try to be a little bit better tomorrow, maybe. You know, we're a work in progress, all of us. And some of us are progressing at a different rate than others. Or backwards.

Or going the other way. Or simply refusing and going the other way or simply refusing and going the wrong way well we've said enough about this movie haven't we i think so yeah i think it does pass the bechdel test in there like again blair is like hey jane can i tell you something jane yeah blair except for socially you're my role model. It also, I does think, passes while they're watching the broadcast of the date rape story, where Blair says, that happened to my cousin Donna. And Jane says, really?

So those are two extremely bleak passes potentially they're technical passes that again are not i think they are like impactful yeah towards this story but they're they're not particularly uh uplifting or long i would say that this does technically pass but not well can i disagree oh sure that it passes okay so two reasons why i think it it does not pass number one in that scene in question where there is the video package about date rape they are talking not just about the thing that has happened to junk you sex character's friend they're also talking about the package itself that is produced and stars tom so tom is still kind of centered in this conversation they're not able to separate the contents of the

package from the fact that it is made by tom so they never really have a true conversation about that issue it is in reference to this thing a project by a man exactly and then um she's talking about how jane is her role model except for socially you could interpret socially to mean romance uh of a heterosexual nature and so i just feel like it's so marginal and so fleeting that it would be unfair to the test itself to pass this movie. This happens all the time where we'll come upon conversations in which a man is not explicitly mentioned or talked about, but it's like implicit or the context or the subtext is still about men. D'oh. To quote a great man. D'oh.

To quote Homer Simpson, a James L. Brooks creation, perhaps. D'oh. I'll give it a light pass, but also ultimately it's a flawed metric that we barely care about with all due respect to alice and bechdel true yes yeah but but the nipple scale though is an amazing metric that's what i call it really is awesome and that's what i call a metric super matters. Volume 7. So the nipple scale is our scale of 0 to 5 nipples based on an examination of intersectional feminism as it applies to the movie or how the movie fares looking at it through that particular lens. As we've discussed, this is a challenging movie.

This is a complex movie. This is a very interesting movie that tackles a lot of things, that explores characters and develops them in such a way that they are far more just like complex and interesting than your average romantic comedy dramedy narrative and like jane especially the way that she's depicted the way in which the toxicity that the men are displaying the way that all these characters and these situations are being commented on i mean there's a lot happening um how effective it is you know it was the 80s so certain things get overlooked but other things like the commentary is very clear and present and interesting and i'm just stalling because i have no fucking idea i was like all right is there a number how many nipples i don't know i give it

yeah maybe it's just sort of like a split down the middle so maybe a 2.5 nipple situation i wish i don't know i don't even know what i wish for this movie or for movies like it i wish we could all kick William Hurt in the face. How about that? I want to kick him in the face. Yeah, absolutely. Give him a big old wedgie. Thank you for that context of him too,

because I did not know that. And that is very upsetting. I came upon that in my research. A link to, there's an article that pulls quotes from Marlee Matlin's memoir shout out marlee matlin who rocks yeah in which she details the nature of her relationship with william hurt which sounds like it was extremely emotionally physically and sexually abusive so fuck william hurt So fuck William Hurt, his character, the character of Aaron. Everyone just needs to go to therapy.

Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to give it two and a half as well. I feel like this is like a really a really I think the movie is really great. And I like every time I watch it, I get something new out of it that I didn't get before. I think in terms of commentary on women, it's pretty limited just based on the setting that we're being put in. We're really only getting to know a single woman who is very complex, but also very ethically complex. And I'm not saying that every female character

needs to be a role model. That's an unnecessary thing that's pushed on a character that's marginalized in any way. If all of a sudden they have to be a role model for fucking everybody. That's not true. But Jane is ultimately a girl boss who's in it for herself. Like, I don't think we're getting a ton of I think that we do get some really valuable insight into the ways that she has to suppress herself. And she has to suppress her own emotions she is under a lot of pressure there is a lot of pressure for her specifically to succeed if she fails it indicates something larger to this industry than an individual failure like i think

that that all comes across and the fact that like you like you mentioned earlier, Dave, the men around her are vampires. I think it is an interesting look at a character that has been somewhat liberated by the feminist movement as an upwardly mobile white woman. She has been liberated to an extent, but there are still all of these asterisks associated with her being able to function in this space she's still going to be treated like a mother she's still going to be you know

if she's valued for her intelligence it that is at the sacrifice of something else and there's still a lot of stuff at play there and she she shouldn't have done that to jennifer you know like there was an opportunity to explore the relationships between women in a workplace like this that didn't end up happening in favor of this you know love triangle-y bizarreness like there's just room for more but I do think that what is explored holds up maybe in a way that's kind of unfortunate that is like oh maybe not you know maybe James Brooks hoped that more would be different by now. I don't know,

but it's definitely like a really well thought out movie and, you know, and, and go Polly Platt. I'm glad that she got her first, I mean, like her story alone and how it intersects with this movie is a fascinating look at women in the workplace at this time too.

So give it two and a half. I'll give it two and a half i'll give one to polly i'll give one to holly and i'll give a half to joan nice give it to joan do i have to give nipples yes please oh all right i mean i i feel ill-equipped to rate this on any sort of intersectional feminist scale because I'm a guy and because I think for many years I saw this as a paragon of feminist theory in thinking. And that is because of my own lack of understanding or awareness of these things. Because we're not taught these things in school, you know, we're not taught how to look at things differently and to empathize and put ourselves in the shoes of marginalized people. We're taught to be, like I said, it's very

selfish and very self-centered and to look at the world through a white male lens. So it's hard for me to say this is acceptable or unacceptable or this is enough or this is not enough. But I will say just from my own perspective and what I took from it as a man who is of a certain age and from a certain generation and seeing the flowering of people's perception of the world and our our collective common struggle um it was enlightening to me every step of my life every time i watch it i think i learned something new like you do jamie every time i watch it and you know when i watched it the first time it was oh this is a you know this is a feminist masterpiece etc etc when i watch it now i get so much more from

the male characters because i can put myself into the shoes of these loathsome male characters and say oh here are things that maybe i thought before were okay and aren't okay and i can understand my effect on people a little bit more i can understand my effect on people a little bit more. I can understand my effect on women in the workplace a little bit more. I can understand why I want or need certain attention from women a little bit more and why that may or may not be damaging to them. That is what I take from this movie more than anything else is it forces me to be a bit more introspective about who I was raised to be and who I would like to be going forward. And I think that's, that's what makes it a movie that I keep coming back to is because it is ultimately a satire

about how we talk to each other and why the world is the way that it is from the micro level of the news and the macro level of how men and women or genders or sexuality functions in the world so yeah i i will give zero nipples but i will give it two thumbs up just like my good friend cisco and ebert um yeah i just i just don't think i could i can judge it that way i have to i have to judge it based on what I'm learning from it, I think. Totally fair. Well, Dave, thank you so much for joining us. What a fruitful discussion.

This was so much fun. I could have continued to talk about this movie for another two hours, but that's just too much. We won't do that to you listeners. We went as long as the actual movie. Right? As we're wont to do. Yes, right.

Tell us where people can follow you on social media, plug anything you'd like to plug. I am at Dave underscore Schilling on Twitter. Please, when you have time, free spare time, subscribe, follow, listen to Galaxy Brains. It is my new podcast my co-host and i jonah ray talk about movies television all of the the pop culture things that we love but from a kind of comedically analytical perspective uh hence the title galaxy brain so we we will take a an outlandish theory about a movie or a television show and extrapolate upon that to its most absurd logical or, I guess, illogical conclusion.

We've done episodes about the Zack Snyder Justice League where we talk about the nature of Superman. And I end up giving a kind of passionate speech about why Superman should be sad because he is responsible for everyone else in the world and why he should be black. We talk about Godzilla versus Kong and try to figure out what Godzilla represents in that movie. We have an episode about Mortal Kombat and why Mortal Kombat and professional wrestling are basically the same thing.

Uh, we talked to Pat and Oswalt about Star Wars and, uh, the efficacy of animation versus live action in that universe. And the episode I'm most excited about that we just finished recording is a look back at, uh, Josie and the Pussycats for the 20th anniversary. And we discuss whether or not Josie and the Pussycats is not just a feminist film, but also is it the most anti-capitalist socialist movie of all time. And our guests for that episode are the writers and directors of Josie and the Pussycats. No way! Debra Kaplan, Harry Elfunt, they were such a treat. And spoiler alert, they agreed with everything we had to say.

And they were very much appreciative of our reading of the movie. So I hope you listen to that one at the very least because I think that's the one I'm the most proud of because we got to really chop it up with the people behind the movie and hear their perspective on why they were able to and what they hoped to gain from making a movie that was so very much about collective action and socialist

thinking and feminist thinking. I mean, Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever. Join the army. We did talk about subliminal advertising too and how it clearly worked on me because i've seen the movie so many times oh my gosh it's same i have what not one but two t-shirts did you get the du jour t-shirt no but i have seen it on super yaki and i am getting ready to buy it hell yeah gotta go for it i know um well dave thank you so much for being here yeah thank you for having me you can follow us on social media at Spectlecast on Twitter and Instagram

we've got a Patreon aka Matreon to subscribe to it's $5 a month and it gets you access to two bonus episodes every single month plus access to the entire back catalog. And you can grab some merch over at tpublic.com slash the effect. I'll cast get some masks.

If you're still getting masks, get some t-shirts. If you're still wearing shirts, live your life. Not my business. And are we signing off? Oh my gosh. Good night and good luck.

More at 11. Bitch. Great way to end it. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.

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