The Bechdel Cast - Chicago

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Caitlin and Jamie got released from prison just in time to cover Chicago for Jamie's birthday episode! Happy birthday, Jamie!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious

as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's

Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked

if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast hey jamie hey caitlin you know how we are both in jail right now for murdering our lovers classic us yes well here's what i'm thinking okay when we get exonerated because we're so hot we're so sexy and preganin it yeah exactly so when we get exonerated would you like to start a podcast together oh my god can you imagine a velma kelly roxy heart puck okay that is like the best

worst basic cable sitcom reboot i've ever heard of in my life like oh my god yes you're the answer to your question is yes yes oh amazing can't wait so horrible wait who would they cast as velma kelly and roxy hart doing a murder podcast oh my god they'd be like kristen ritter and kristen bell are roxy and velma and oh my gosh sign me up honestly cbs call me i've got the worst idea ever oh my god it would be on cbs and there would be like laugh tracks and stuff yeah oh my god it would be an absolute nightmare and millions of people would watch it would be america's number one show anyway hello and welcome to the bechdel cast jamie it's your birthday episode. It's my birthday. Happy birthday, Jamie.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I can't believe it. Another year, another year has passed. I've spent half of my 20s on this podcast. Wow, oh my gosh. We're coming up on the five-year anniversary. We are, which means i've spent half of my 30s on this podcast it's i mean we look at god look at god uh when god invented podcasting

she really had us in mind uh thank you thank you for the birthday wishes on the actual day of my birthday when this comes out i'll be in boston i think that i'll buy i'll do uh i'll do the jamie classic boston special which is that i will get a large cold brew drink the whole thing then i will go to a bar and have a beer and then they'll cancel each other out and i'll be kind of tired and then i'll do the same thing again and then I'll sleep for 12 hours I think that's probably gonna be how I'll spend my birthday I did that for so like why live your life like that but that's what I did I mean it's your life your choice I'm just sad that I'm not there to spend it with you because I'm still in la i would oh my god i would peel all of my skin off to be back in la but you know what i love i love boston i love my family so it's fine yeah so so no i i'm

so excited to finally be covering a movie that i feel like we were okay so we're covering chicago 2002 yes a modern classic one of my favorites and i feel like we were originally putting off covering this movie because we wanted to do a live show in chicago and cover chicago yeah was that the reason i believe so well so uh with all due respect to chicago i could not wait any longer i couldn't I couldn't wait another second yeah of course and uh you know the way things are going right now who knows when we'll be performing regularly again so we're doing Chicago and I'm so oh my god I okay I can we can we like oh well wait this is a main feed episode okay yeah so this is the Bechdel cast. This is our, it's my birthday. I don't have to be good at my job today.

Do you want to take a load off and let me do this so you can just sit back and relax on your birthday? Oh my God. I'm going to have a sip of lean in food kugels. Summer shandy. Oh, yummy. Yeah. Take a swig.

And I will tell the listeners that. What is the show again? We examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which is, of course, a media metric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. That requires, for our specific purposes, because we've made some, you know, slight variations to the test here and there. Our version is, do two people of any marginalized gender have names? They have to speak to each other about something other than a man for what is hopefully a meaningful conversation in the movie or work of fiction right and oh boy is chicago an incredible movie to cover for these purposes although they are talking about i feel like you know we we've been adding asterisks to this test i feel like this asterisk canonically on this show may already exist that if you're talking about murdering a man who's an

asshole it's actually it's actually a pass it does pass the test i agree this okay not that we are condoning murder murdering men but like in the fictional space it's cathartic okay it just is there this movie gets me so fucking pumped for what i don't know but it basically just like anytime i think about this movie i then have to drop everything and listen to the soundtrack and like go on like a three mile walk and just be like wow how did they do this how did this come together it doesn't sound like it should work but it does but it does it's so good would you say that this movie gets you jazzed it gets me jazzed it gets me so fucking hyped and this is the kind of movie i feel like this really um defines what makes a movie fun is that you know like when you're I don't know when you really love a movie you like picture yourself as all of the different characters or like one specific character where

you're like that one's me yeah yeah in Chicago I picture being all of the characters like you're just like you've got your days where you're like I'm being I'm being such an Amos today I'm just getting run over you have your Roxy days where you're like I'm being i'm being such an amos today i'm just getting run over you have your roxy days where you're like i am just like living on another planet and i'm not connected with reality at this time then some days you're just hot and you're velma kelly and you're like sure and then some days you're billy flynn and you're and you're feeling sneaky and it's just i love this movie i love all the characters they're all terrible people they're all the worst yes and i i really like when oh my i'm sorry i'm just like jamie it's

your birthday it's my birthday i really enjoy movies i'm trying to think of other movies that kind of take this tack movies that are like really fun and high energy but also have a pretty low opinion of humanity i love movies like that and this is like this like it like scratches that little spot behind my ear yeah it's so good that is like i tanya kind of like man it kind of like goes in yeah there too there there's a little more empathy at play in that movie than there is here i mean everyone in chicago is a nightmare they're they're all so bad but you like understand i don't know i just love it but i'm rooting for all of them honestly why am i yeah that's the other thing i'm like why am i rooting for these motherfuckers they're just they're all except with and i do kind of like i don't know i'm just gonna make a million exceptions for this movie because i don't know. I'm just going to make a million exceptions for this movie because I don't like

when the only truly unquestionably sympathetic character is some guy. But for some reason, when it's Chicago and it's John C. Reilly, I'm like, whatever. Whatever. His performance in Mr. Cellophane, you think I'm going to argue with that? No way. No way. It's too good. I think you could also make the argument that he's not that sympathetic or redeemable i'm not saying he's a great guy i'm saying that it's it's very easy to feel for his predicament sure to be kind of someone who is not equipped to handle a situation that includes scrutiny nuance or public attention sure but yeah i mean no everyone in this movie in this story like sucks to some degree yeah except for velma kelly who i

think is kind of above criticism um but also but like i don't mean that also christine baranski oh my gosh amazing she's so good she's just oh my god this is i and sorry to all the mamma mia heads out there but this is christine baranski's best musical movie sorry which she has a tiny line a few tiny lines here and there in the song about they both reached for the gun but other than that i don't think we see her sing right no but that verse with richard gear and they're dancing around and then renee zellweger does that little shing smile i love this movie so much did you see it when it first came out or no i wasn't allowed to see it i was um was movie came out in oh two yeah I was like eight or nine when this movie came out so I wasn't allowed to see it but I remember very clearly my grandma R.I.P. Pat Loftus the best

she her whole like deal was that she would tell you things you weren't supposed to know when your parents weren't around and then your parents would be like why the fuck did you tell her that um so I remember very clearly we were at uh she brought me out for like a report card lunch and she described everything that happened in Chicago she told me the whole movie and she was like it's so good I saw it with my friend May and it was just the best thing I've ever seen and she told me about the whole movie and then I think I think I would have seen it when it came out on DVD so like I was pretty young when I when I saw it I just didn't see it in theaters and was just like so hooked on it this was my first this was my introduction to richard gear oh wow because i still haven't seen pretty woman what wow i know but this was my introduction to richard gear and

he went on to become a very formative childhood crush of mine sure off of this movie as did katherine zeta jones and so i just uh i love this movie and it's interesting to watch back in 2021 because unfortunately i feel like a lot of the themes and like messages in this movie are timeless in a way that people are always bad right but i don't know just i mean this is like a very low-hanging fruit angle to to take but i was like oh watching Chicago you know carefully after the last five years in the U.S. you're like well shit it's wild yeah yeah what's your what's your history with Chicago I didn't see it right away I don't think I saw until until after it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. And then I was

like, oh, I guess I should see this. I was in high school at the time. And as listeners of the podcast might know, I am generally not a fan of live action movie musicals. But there are a handful of exceptions. And Chicago is one of them. Okay. When I did see it, I liked the movie enough to buy it on DVD. It's a romp. It's a romp. But for some reason, okay, so friend of the cast, Catherine Leon, Spy Kids episode, of course. She and I used to, like, she would come over, we would sit in my bed. I would show her, like, quintessential movies that she had never seen.

I was like, you haven't seen Star Wars. Here are the Star Wars movies. You haven't seen this, blah, blah, blah. That's so nice. I would, we would like rifle through my huge binder of DVDs. And she's like, oh my God, you have Chicago. I love Chicago. And then for some reason.

Of course, Catherine loves Chicago. She has impeccable taste. She's got great taste. But for some reason I course katherine loves chicago she has impeccable taste she's got great taste but for some reason i was like do you want it i never watch this movie here you can have my dvd and now i regret it because i'm like i would like that back katherine katherine are you it's not that she refuses like have you asked uh yeah she's not it's not like she's refusing to give it to me I just uh she doesn't know that I um also it's like streaming so who cares but I know but I I purchased I really made I made a lifelong commitment and I purchased Chicago Diamond Edition wow to watch whenever I wanted it's remastered and it has all these fun features and I had such a fun time watching them.

The production of this movie looked so fun. Like do you ever, anytime I would watch a, first of all, Rob Marshall directed this movie and is further proof that the choreographer to director pipeline is immaculate and needs no adjustment. Seeny ortega i was gonna say yeah and i think that's the only other example i'm sure there's others but that's two that's two pretty strong choreographers good examples rob marshall choreographed and directed

this movie and all the behind the scenes it just looks like a bunch of celebrities went to summer camp to put together a school play oh my gosh and then one of my favorite movies came out of it like it was so cool oh I love it wow well should I do the recap and yes but I need to tell you something about Rob Marshall first okay please I was wondering if you located this fact. This is something that like, okay, much like my other fun fact that has nothing to do with this movie, but we talked about the other day. This is a fact that I know in my bones, but I forget and I relearn once every couple years and I love it.

It's about director Rob Marshall. And it's that he began as a dancer then became a choreographer makes sense but the thing that launched him into choreography and directing and got him out of the full-time dancing game is that he suffered a herniated disc while performing in Cats so the only reason that Chicago 2002 is as amazing as it is, because I feel like that choreography and like the understanding of stage language is so much of what makes this movie awesome. Right.

And why I like it more than a lot of other live action movie musicals. Yeah. Because it actually like understands cinematic language and like how to put together a musical in a way that's like tonally I can suspend my disbelief for the things that are happening etc it's so yeah it's so good and and if he hadn't suffered a herniated disc while being a full-body cat it wouldn't have happened wow imagine it is interesting to me how it's like I guess that I'm I still haven't seen in the heights and like whatever

there's that steven spielberg west side story coming out and i wonder if it's going to be any good because i feel like big directors are given popular broadway musicals and very often like don't know what to do with them right and there's so i mean it's like you've got joel schumacher phantom of the opera a lot swings. He didn't know what he was doing. Chris Columbus did Rent, which is one of the worst like director to project matches I could think of. Like there's just so many examples

of people getting it wrong. And it's like, yeah, you just need to. Cat. Whatever. I forget his name, but the guy who did Cats. What's his name?

Tom. Tom. Tom PP. Yeah, who also fucked up Les Mis, but everyone gave him awards for it for some reason it's like oh can you make every famous person sing out of key and cover them in dirt like i don't get but but yeah like this this whole what i think is so interesting about this movie because it's like this movie and moulin rouge came out very close together and i feel like yeah people sort of thought oh there's going to be this big resurgence of

the movie musical. But then there kind of wasn't because then they just like hired all these famous directors who didn't understand musicals. But Moulin Rouge, one of the few other live action movie musicals that I can fully get behind. It's amazing. I feel like I don't know if i've ever said his name correctly baz lerman i think that's right he definitely has like an understanding of like movement and pacing

and like that's so much of his style and that's why it works yes anyways pisses me off stop giving really famous people who make like war movies war war horses, like musicals. What are you doing? Anyways, um, maybe we should take a quick break before we get into the recap, because we've just been chatting for so long about how great Chicago is. All right. So let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts 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, this week, we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East.

That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing.

Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludie. Not hawk the slalom.

I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.

This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, let's summarize the movie. I promise to not keep talking about... Oh, wait, but I have one more fun fact. No, please.

We talked about it the other day. I'm sure it's connected to Chicago tangentially because... Oh, because the two people in this fun fact were both living in Chicago. We're very famous in Chicago. Roger Ebert and Oprah used to date in the 80s. That is a Chicago fact. That is just Chicago canon. Chicago canon includes this musical and the fact that Roger Ebert and Oprah briefly dated. Which i didn't know about until you told me i don't know why that's not more common knowledge i know but they were but it's like at first you're like but he's like so much older than her and she's so much cooler than him and stedman is such

a you know stedman is so canon right right but yeah like he was basically her last boyfriend before Stedman came into the picture one of the last ones wow wild well that's just that's here imagine I'm Richard Gere putting my hat on and that's Chicago oh my gosh and that's gonna be one of those facts that I will forget and then relearn in a couple months or years or whatever. And then be like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. It's just like Rob Marshall getting a herniated disc in Cats. It's just a delightful thing to learn over and over again. So what happens in this movie anyways?

OK, let me tell you. It's the Roaring Twenties in Chicago. There's jazz music. There are fla flappers there are speakeasies it's the whole nine yards hey digs is in charge oh my gosh i was so delighted to see him who this is my first tay digs movie too was it really yeah tay digs going five six seven eight and then what you're 10 and you're like what is happening squeeze me who's that exciting just a reminder tay digs now follows me on twitter thanks to our how stella got her groove back episode so incredible um tag him in this i will and another uh celebrity connection i have to this movie is that john c reilly i saw at a roller skating rink in glendale california right so oh my gosh and he's like a regular and not to

dox his hobbies but yeah isn't he like a regular there and he's like really good that's what i've heard he was a pretty good roller skater it's true and uh i i don't know how frequently he he attends this roller rink but um i'm so glad that john c reilly exit i feel like there's so many dads that have been able to connect with their children over a mutual appreciation of john c reilly yeah what Yeah. What a beautiful thing. Dads are obsessed with John C. Reilly. The deeper the cut, the better. And I understand why. I get it. Okay. So we're in the jazz age in Chicago. We meet Velma Kelly. That's Catherine Zeta-Jones. She shows up at this jazz club to do her vaudeville act which she normally does with her

sister but her sister isn't there and velma is washing blood off her hands and we're like hmm what's what's going on and and then it's one of the best openings of any movie ever oh yeah she's so hot she's so it's like i in our defense she like her whole she's obviously hot. She's so, it's like, I, in our defense, she, like her whole, she's obviously very hot, but like her whole attitude is like hot.

Like she's just hot at a very profound, like in this confident way. You're like, I'm never going to feel that way for a second of my entire life. It's so amazing to just behold. It truly is. It's great. And as you mentioned, Tate Diggs is also there playing the piano and 5678ing all over the place. Also there is Roxy Hart. That's Renee Zellweger. She is in the audience watching Velma. Then she goes home with this guy that she's having an affair with who i forgot to write his

name down fred casely fred casely yes who's fred casely my ex-boyfriend why'd you shoot him i was leaving etc right yes she finds out that fred casely has been lying to her about being able to help her break into showbiz, which is her dream. She wants to be just like Velma Kelly, basically. Yeah. Fred Casely is basically a guy who will drive you to an open mic and say that he can get you up at the open mic.

But then it turns out he's just an open mic-er. He can't even get himself up at the open mic. And you're like, hold on. And then you understand her motive for shooting him because i wish i could type a guy that kind of guy you know the kind of guy yeah so he then gets really aggressive with her and physically assaults her so she shoots and kills him yeah roxy then tries to get her husband amos that's john c reilly to take the fall for it saying that this guy was a burglar and that amos shot him in

self-defense another amazing number it's so funny honey rocks not one of my favorites but still pretty good i love i love it i love when renee zaliger is just casting looks at john c reilly and he's like but what but what but what and you're like oh my gosh someone helped this guy out and then she pushes him right because he is slowly realizing that this guy who has been shot is someone who roxy knows and is having an affair with. So Roxy ends up getting arrested and getting sent to Cook County Jail. And the DA wants to see her hanged for her crime. Right. That's like a big, big deal, which I guess, which I didn't realize like how like historically

accurate that was at the time too of just the kind of bloodlust that came with normalized hangings and death penalties in the u.s yeah scary so the stakes are high yes and in jail roxy meets mama morton that's queen latifah who i want to see an entire movie about her character i wish like i've never seen the stage production of this i do like in the movie i feel like i definitely want to know more about mama morton like how did she get start working there what is her background like what does she do when she's not working like i don't know there's i have a bajillion questions and i wonder if there's more to her in the stage production I've never seen it on stage I would love to but yeah like Queen Latifah just I mean she was nominated for I think like everyone was

nominated for an Oscar for this movie but Queen Latifah was I think I mean Catherine Zeta-Jones ended up winning and she was also amazing but I think Queen Latifah for me kind of takes it because she just kills it it's so good and yeah it's like because of how good she is you just want to watch this character forever and she's funny when she has the blonde wig oh my gosh it's also good i read that there was a musical number that she and katherine zeta jones sang in the movie called class that they cut from the movie yeah it's in the credits instead so yeah we maybe learn more there but yeah I feel like we and we'll talk about this but yeah we do not get a lot of background on her but her role in the so she is also a

prisoner right but she has taken on this role of helping out other prisoners in exchange for money ever heard of it so we meet her and she gets a great song which i think is my favorite in the movie which how does it go when you're good to mama when you're good to mama mama's good to you oh my god it's so wow good that whole number and then in the behind the scenes they show you how they shot it and i guess they shot it like the first time they shot it in the like stagey version where she's wearing the flapper outfit yeah yeah um the first time they had her stay on stage the whole time and then rob marshall's like let's try it and this time like go into the crowd and interact with people and they ended up using stuff from both versions and it's so i was like oh i love that it's oh it's so good it's great so roxy meets mama morton

she also meets velma kelly who has since been arrested for murdering her husband and her sister who were having an affair with each other. And then we also get introduced to the six Mary murderesses of the Cook County Jail who have mostly murdered men because they were cheating on the women or the women were annoyed with popping bubble gum. I found that to be pretty funny as a motive for murder. It's so good. that to be pretty funny as a motive for murder. So Roxy asks Velma Kelly for advice on how to avoid being hanged. But Velma like kind of blows her off. So Roxy goes to Mama Morton, who tells Roxy that she needs a good lawyer. Yeah. Enter Billy Flynn. Well, yeah. And I also,

Mama Morton is not a prisoner she's not oh no she's not she's like the superintendent she's like the warden of the prison she's employed by okay so that's why that's where her power comes from so she's i feel like she is kind of like a stand-in for how the prison system is extremely corrupt because she is like taking money from prisoners and accepting bribes in order to communicate with the outside world because she has access to it so yeah she's like a prison warden got it i couldn't tell because the prison staff were dressed very similarly to they all have the same prisoners so i was like is she a prisoner no she's not got it because I've seen Shawshank Redemption a million times I thought she was like the red character of that movie who plays a very similar role in like

procuring things for the other prisoners but red is a prisoner as well so I just kind of assumed it was the same situation mama isn't she is yeah she's the warden and that's why she is able I think it's like when she takes money she's the warden and that's why she is able i think it's like when she takes money she's able to like contact the press contact billy flynn contact whoever that makes more sense okay so mama morton tells roxy to hire billy flynn who is very good at defending women murderers but he's also a very sleazy money grubbing lawyer guy it's like a cartoonish yeah criminal defense lawyer yeah so billy flynn already represents velma and uh he eventually takes on roxy's case as well thinking that he can spin her as this like sweet reformed southern bell

type because the whole thing with these murderesses is that they have to get like the public and the press to empathize with them like empathize with this persona that they cultivate in order to clear them of charges so this is what both velma and roxy are trying to do for their like defense. Right. And the public falls in love with Roxy Hart. Billy Flynn is paying a lot of attention to her case, which makes Velma very jealous. And Roxy is also trying to capitalize on her fame as a murderer and turn it around

into a successful show business career, assuming she gets out of prison. Right. Which she is like directly stealing that from velma kelly who's in the middle of right doing it and it's oh roxy is so naive oh my god and then velma who the public is starting to forget about tries to suck up to roxy she pitches that they do an act together when they're released from prison but right number oh tay digs being like velma kelly and an act of desperation and we're like tee hee hee it's so good and then katherine zeta jones i've oh god it's so good

seeing like a really well executed like song and dance number. But also like, you know, that the character is like really at the end of their rope and she's like so desperate and sad. Oh, I love this movie so much. So Velma pitches this idea, but Roxy, who remembers when Velma was really mean to her, like um pass but then people momentarily lose interest in roxy when a new murderess takes chicago by storm yep lucy lou saying i have three for you go to hell is like just oh my god pulitzer yeah uh her character character's name is Kitty Baxter and everyone's obsessed with her for a while. So as a publicity stunt to get back in the spotlight, Roxy pretends to faint and then says,

oh no, I hope the fall didn't hurt the baby, aka she's pretending to be Gregnant. Gregnant. She's pretending to be heavy with Greg. Ugh, that, Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant shitty person thing to do in that moment. Truly. She would make a great influencer. Yeah. TikTok personality today. She essentially is. Yeah. She is like a flapper influencer where she's like a flash in the pan. She's not doing anything special, but she's like cutthroat in a way that you're like oh my god this woman is terrifying to me or just i mean person in general terrifying influencers no no gender it's it's it's

everybody yeah truly um and this publicity stunt works but then amos figures out that he couldn't be the father based on this like fabricated due date. So he plans to divorce her. Mr. Cellophane comes on and we're like, Oh, it's so sad and good. And then my dad's like, maybe I do like musicals,

you know? Well, that happened. Yeah. Because I, that's, and that's the power of John C. Riley to get my dad to watch a whole movie musical and be like, Hmm, I kind of like that. Wow. Mike, I like John C. Reilly to get my dad to watch a whole movie musical

and be like, I kind of like that. Wow, Mike. I like John C. Reilly's song. Shout out to Mike Loftus. Shout out, Mike. Meanwhile, one of the lady murderers in jail loses her appeal and is hanged, making her the first woman in Illinois to be executed.

Also, we have met a reporter named Mary Sunshine. That's Christine Baranski, who we see throughout the movie. She's reporting heavily on all of these cases of the women in Murderous Row. Yeah. Just to shout her out. She's incredible. The outfits that she wears. I mean, iconic. yeah just to shout her out she's incredible the outfits that she wears i mean iconic this was i think my first time when i saw this movie it was my first time seeing so many famous people this definitely would have been like my richard gear renee zellweger kathryn zeta jones queen latifah

john c i mean i wouldn't have seen any of these people before because I was nine. But the only person I had seen before was Christine Baranski because she was in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Right. Martha Mayhew. Wow. So her influence, she had a stranglehold on millennial children. What a career she's had. What a career. So then it's time for Roxy's trial, which goes well at first.

It seems like this defense that Billy Flynn and Roxy have created is working on the jury. But then Velma is called in to testify and she lies about some information that makes Roxy look bad. But then Billy works his magic and Roxy is ultimately found not guilty. But the moment she is exonerated, another woman commits a murder on the courthouse steps. So the public frenzy moves on to her and no one cares about Roxy anymore. Or Lucy Liu. Or Lucy Liu or Velma. So one day Velma approaches Roxy and she's like, hey, remember that double act I pitched?

Let's do it, baby. And then Roxy's like, well, I hate you, but. Oh, my God. Fine. That's my favorite. One of my favorite line reads in the entire movie where she's like, should we do it? And then Roxy's like, no. And then she says, why?

And she goes, because I hate you. you i hate you and then she walks away it's and then velma's like there's only one business in the world where that doesn't matter and then we're like show business the way that katherine zeta jones speaks is so like wealthy i don't know how she she makes words just they just keep going. There's this on one of my favorite podcasts, Who Weekly, which is a celebrity gossip podcast that is I do recommend it. It's really good. But they've been covering Catherine Zeta-Jones quite a bit recently because she is starting all of these small businesses that don't make any sense

but she recently posted a tiktok with these like gourds that she had grown in her garden okay picture this katherine zeta jones holding an enormous gourd right and she says it's extremely large like she's just like talking about gourds, but she's Catherine Zeta-Jones. And so it just sounds like so theatrical. It's that's the energy she's bringing to like, there's one business where that doesn't matter at all. You're like, oh my God, she sounds like a long cigarette.

Like it's wild. I mean, she was perfectly cast. She really was. So then the movie ends with Roxy and Velma performing on a big stage for lots of adoring fans. And that's the movie. Yeah. So let's take another quick break and then we'll come 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

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I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.

I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I wanted to just start this conversation by acknowledging something that is by far one of the worst elements of this movie which is the fact that it's uh produced by the Weinsteins oh yes having and and this is I mean we've talked about it on the show before I don't think that there's really occasion to rehash everything now but obviously the fact that the Weinsteins are attached to this production is horrific and it and it just

you know it takes kind of a little bit of the wind out of a really amazing production fortunately it as far as i can tell it doesn't seem as if the weinsteins were like around in an onset capacity um it seems like the production of this movie was relatively smooth there was some um news items i was seeing about, I believe, Goldie Hawn almost being in an adaptation of Chicago by the Weinsteins in the mid-90s, and then she was harassed by Harvey Weinstein, and the project ended up not happening. We'll link to that in the description, but obviously want to acknowledge their involvement, and I mean, it goes without saying but they're fucking monsters yes but the the production team on this movie i mean it's kind of interesting where this movie uh is written and directed by men they are both gay men and openly

gay men in uh in hollywood and in the early 2000s that was still a pretty um unusual thing to be an openly gay director directing movies of you know that were this huge so shout out to rob marshall and his hopefully recovered disc for that yes and and they're um queer directors who have gone on to have huge careers afterwards this is i don't think rob marshall ever you know returned to the height of chicago but you know he directed into the woods which i didn't see he he directed the emily blunt mary poppins he's directing the new little mermaid and then the screenplay was written by Bill Condon who started as a writer and is now a huge director he uh wrote Chicago but he also wrote and directed Dream Girls another

fave of mine from this time directed Two Twilights directed whoa I didn't realize that was him both breaking dawns mr bill wow was was there um and also directed the uh what he he wrote the greatest showman okay that's a point against him yeah boo but and then he directed the uh emma watson beauty and the beast that sucked all that to say okay uh the the two kind of top brass here are queer men who went on to have very successful careers yeah so shouts out there good for them yeah should we do a little context yeah the context for this movie rocks i knew i knew some of this but going back and like finding out how much of this movie, well, this musical is pulled from actual history is so wild.

Do you want to take it? I can take whatever you prefer. How about this? Take another swig of your, your beer. I ran out. Oh no. I'm so sorry. But yeah,

I mean, I'll take the reins on this one, but if there's anything I messed up or that you'd like to add, by all means. I'll just chime in. I'll just chime in when it is. stage musical of the same name, which had a revival in 1996, which became the longest running American musical in Broadway history. Woohoo! Bob Fosse, baby! That's that Fosse magic!

Yes. That musical was based on a 1926 Broadway play by Maureen Dallas Watkins, who we will be talking more about. And that play is about two real life jazz era murderers. These names I might get wrong as far as pronunciation. These names sound to me like you're forgetting Velma Kelly and Roxy Hart. like they just sound like you're like um belva gartner and you're like no velma kelly yeah so belva gartner who velma kelly is based on and bula bela anon who roxy hart is based on so basically in the 1920s in chicago i don't know if there was like an unprecedented number of women in jail for murder in this time and place, or if it's just that women being in jail for murder

in Chicago in the 20s was especially publicized, and that's why we know a lot about it. I have a tiny bit of insight here that connects to, quick plug cast oh my just still being released right now you can listen to it and you can hear caitlin's voice in it as well my voice is in it but so my understanding of of this is or at least in the way it was covered in the media which is like what that whole play was satirizing right is that this kind of comes at the tail end like the crimes that this is based on comes a couple years after women get the vote

uh it comes at the tail end of the first wave feminist movement and so the whole flapper era i mean it was and we'll discuss this as well it was very still centered on middle class and above white women right uh which this story is no exception to but uh what what i learned in researching for this show is that usually periods of success for really any social movement but in this case the feminist movement is then met uh in the years following with a wave of backlash and increased focus on the negative aspects of literally anything a woman is doing that is negative. And so my read on this with that lens is that this sort of came in the kind of fallout of this huge success for the feminist movement and uh by really putting media scrutiny on women who were murdering their sexual partners whether they were you know

in roxy's case you know she's cheating on her husband or velma kelly like she's you know portrayed as kind of this loose woman who's like living her own life and so demonizing those people in the fallout of a big feminist win in in women's liberation kind of closely matches up with how those things tend to go so i wasn't super surprised to know that you know it's very i think it would have been very easy in the early 20s to be like well look feminism fucked everyone out like women are are murderers now we gave women the right to vote and now they're killing people they're murdering everybody yeah that was like that was kind of my my read on this period but i mean for sure but i you know that's not for sure but that that was. Yeah. Yeah. Either way, it seemed like women being murderers was.

So hot. It was so hot at that time. And especially in Chicago specifically for some reason. So that was what was going on historically in the Cook County jail in Chicago in the 20s. There was a section called Murderous row where more than a dozen women were it's like all the coolest most recent woman murderers were all kept we're just yeah just we're all hanging out being detained there wild waiting to stand trial for murder most of them had been accused of killing their husband or lover then so there were these two women in particular who

were getting a lot of media attention because they were traditionally by western beauty standards attractive right so this was bula bula bula let's go with that bula anon and belva gartner these women they were receiving fan mail. They were giving each other makeovers in jail. I thought that was more interesting. Like that was something that I wish that they kind of focused more on in the adaptations. I feel like in the adaptations, definitely Velma and Roxy are put into conflict, which makes sense in the story. But it sounds like the the

people they're based on were friends and like close friends and I kind of am more interested in that angle of them being kind of allied in this like similar fucked up situation from the beginning but yeah so you know all these women were like giving each other pedicures and stuff, basically making themselves as pretty and popular as possible, knowing that it was rare for the all male juries at the time to convict women, especially attractive women of murder, even though even if there was like mountains of evidence against them. I will say, yeah, it seems pretty it seems like Beulah and Belva did it. It seems like they're extremely guilty. Like almost certainly they did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then Maureen Dallas Watkins, who was one of the few women reporters at the Chicago Tribune at the time,

was assigned to report on murderous Roe. And it was assigned to her specifically because her editors thought that that particular subject of covering women awaiting trial for murder would be too boring for men to report on. How wrong they were. Right. so kind of with the help of all of this press from maureen dallas watkins on beulah and belva they were not convicted of murder they were set free and they did this because they kind of leaned into the defense of having been corrupted by jazz music and booze. So that's something that we'll talk about a lot. Yeah, like all things that are associated with personal freedom, which was not cool for women to be having. Right. And then they kind of, as we see in the movie, they put on these personas of oh no i'm reformed now i'm i'm i was a sinner but now i'm i'm sweet and innocent and i even have a baby on the way because this fake pregnancy thing that we see

roxy hart do in the movie is based on what beulah anon actually did in real life to try to garner sympathy from the public so i was truly shocked at how close the right the velma kelly stuff seems to be like somewhat fictionalized like the whole sister thing i think is shocked at how close the right the velma kelly stuff seems to be like somewhat fictionalized like the whole sister thing i think is is made up but the um yeah roxy heart and beulah anon are like one and the same like down to like the mechanic husband who wasn't totally sure what was going on right right exactly so i have a quote here that I'll share, which unless you have any other additional preliminary context that I think will lead into a discussion about kind of what's thematically happening in this movie. Maureen Dallas Watkins. So she like covers a story in her 20s and releases it. I thought it was interesting. Like the play and the musical,

but the play started out as like a pretty like heavy handed satire because it was a play that was running in Chicago about murders that had taken place in Chicago two years prior. Like everyone was watching it. Like it was, I mean mean obviously like an iconic well crafted story but it was like everyone knew exactly what this was about and it was interesting to I read a little bit about her life I didn't do a super deep dive but just how her attitude towards her this play kind of changed over time where I think she started to feel as time went on and she she like

left public life in the 40s but lived to I think the late 60s early 70s something like that but as time went on she sort of uh didn't want the play to be continued to be adapted even though it was adapted into a movie with Ginger Rogers, I believe, in the 40s called Roxy Hart. But I think she started to feel like people are taking the wrong message away from this famous play I wrote. And I don't know if I really want to keep perpetuating this story. And so Bob Fosse approached her in the 60s and was like, I need to make this into a Fosse hands musical. It's an emergency. You need to let me do it. And she said no. Yeah. And it wasn't until after she died that he was able to get the rights because I think that money plus estate plus not living

creator equals Oh, whoopsie daisy, I have the rights. i think that it is like i mean am i glad that bob fossy scammed his way into the rights to this kind of but it is but the ethics of that i was like well that's kind of fucked up she said she said no bob she said no yeah um i don't know it's bizarre right that was that was the only other thing that i had that I was like, that's something. Yeah. And that it kind of relates to this quote that I will share from an article on sci-fi.com. Hot. Entitled The Real Story Behind Chicago's Merry Murderces, Roxy Hart and Velma Kelly. And this is speaking to the general atmosphere and what Maureen Dallas Watkins was reporting on. So, quote,

The press and the public ate up the gossip, the details on dresses, and the sob stories about bad men, booze, and devilish jazz. Prosecutors began to think you couldn't convict a pretty woman in this town. As for Watkins, she believed her influence was key to the acquittal of both the merry murderesses. As she felt the pair were guilty and likely lying through their teeth, she had mixed feelings on that. So she wrote about it. In 1926, Watkins went from reporter to Broadway playwright with Brave Little Women, a satirical stage play that would later be retitled Chicago. It was she who transformed anon

gartner their victims husbands lawyers peers and reporters into characters like roxy hart velma kelly billy flynn mary sunshine and go to hell kitty she hoped this dark comedy would highlight how appearances and sex appeal had become too important in the justice system unquote so i think that's really interesting i mean that's like that is such a bizarre journey for all of this to go on and i think it's an interesting way to and i i think you know the ethics are certainly up for debate. Because you could argue this is not necessarily her story to tell. But I'm sort of like, I don't know, it doesn't bother me that much. I like it's because it's she's not claiming that it's the story of Beulah Anand. She's, you know, changing things.

She's like, I don't know. Right. I think that it's really interesting how this got made and how, I mean, I'm always interested in like how creators' opinions change towards their own work once it's sort of out of their hands. And the fact that like Mary Sunshine was, I didn't even realize this until I was doing this research segment, but that Mary Sunshine was like this kind of amalgamation of reporters that Maureen Dallas Watkins thought were too easy on and kind of you know eating up this bullshit from clearly

guilty people right and also like a way of poking at herself uh for how she covered the story at the time and almost like a way of I don't, like giving the finger to herself in her own work. It's very, it's like this complex shit. Because Mary Sunshine is noticeably the only woman reporting on these cases in the movie. So, right.

That's very funny. Yeah. I don't know. But to me, that kind of just, it's sort of the cornerstone of what this movie is about which is that and this is something that's come up on different episodes for different movies that we've discussed in the past but it explores the lengths that women sometimes have to go to in order to survive, which in some cases means like flaunting their sexuality, capitalizing on their, quote, feminine wiles, but also kind of simultaneously demonstrating that they are exactly what society expects of a woman, especially at this time, where, oh my gosh,

yes, I was seduced by, you know, these sinister things like jazz and booze. Right. And like putting on like that veneer of weakness that wasn't actually there. Yeah. And then, but what I've always wanted was a stable home where i can darn my husband's socks and iron his shirts and and have a baby and take care of the family and like these are all things that are like very obviously fabricated because that's what the public will eat up because of society's expectations of women yeah but i i guess i'm just like i there is commentary on that in the movie i just i i don't know i don't well i don't even know really how i feel about it because i'm like but then but these women were murderers so right like it's not made up so which makes it kind of harder because there are other examples of this type of thing

where like women have to kind of exploit societal expectations or kind of exploit their own sexuality to survive because they have no other choice but they are otherwise you know morally upstanding people and not murderers kind of thing but i'm just like well these people are also they're doing that but then they're also murderers so they're a little harder to sympathize with but i again i'm still rooting for them so it's complicated i have complicated feelings about it that's what and i'm like here i am in my little chicago 2002. But like, yeah, and I feel like what saves it and the fact that the source material was written by a woman tracked for me

for kind of this reason where what saves this for me is that it's based on something that truly happened. And so it's not, I mean, it's not really a morality tale because it is kind of just like satire on something that was happening at this time right and everyone in this is terrible like there's no one of any gender in this movie except for some people would argue amos and the woman what is her name in katarina who is truly profoundly innocent like those are the only characters that you can you know freely and i think katarina is kind of like she's the character you can freely

empathize with because she didn't do anything and she's being eaten up for because of this language barrier because she's not really able to defend herself and because she doesn't have any money and so it's like that is like the purity character but everyone else fucking sucks right and is like doing what they need to do to get from point a to point b and it's not like commendable behavior at all and i don't think that the movie is like endorsing the behavior either right like i i do appreciate that the movie i don't like you can't help but root for roxy and velma at different points even though you're like they definitely did it but the way that they have to navigate get it because it's like first of all you need to consider why did they do it and how

you know completely inhospitable and i don't even think that this is something that maureen dallas watkins would even agree with because she seems to feel bad that she kind of like built up their personas in the way that she did and clearly wasn't happy that they got away with murder right but but it's like contextually it's like okay why would women kill at this time? And whatever, there's a bajillion documentaries and podcasts about that exact subject. But both Roxy and Velma's, and I mean, the whole cell block tango number, with the exception of the one person who's innocent, is all about women trying to live their life

the way they want to, being thwarted or deceived or lied to by men who feel entitled to their bodies or their time or their marriage or whatever it is and then killing them like so i feel like the context is very clear of like it's not endorsing murder but it is telling you like this is a period of time where i mean, it's like what options does Roxy have? If her dream is to be a famous cabaret singer, but she's got no money, just got to vote a couple of years ago. And, you know, it's like, what are her options? I don't know.

And the same goes for really, I mean, every woman in the story. And what I really wish is that because in Cell Block Tango, and I think historically in the play as well, there are black women and women of color included in the cast, but you don't get to spend a lot of time with them and you don't get to examine how there is I think that there is pretty solid commentary in this story of white women weaponizing how white women reviewed at this time they're weaponizing white fragility by the bursting into tears and just the things that you would commonly associate with you know traditionally attractive white girls at this time, but you don't really get to see the other side of that. And how, you know, how would a black woman put on murderous isro in Chicago be treated, you would imagine quite differently. And I feel like there's there. It sucks, because there's, I think that there's room for more of those stories especially you have do you remember the pop star maya she's in this movie i know uh i remember maya yeah maya we were all there i hope she's well

don't really know what she's enough to but but you know it's i i don't know what my original point was i just i think that you are given the context for why they're murdering without saying hey go out there and murder someone which is a difficult line to toe but i feel like the you are given the context for why they're murdering without saying, hey, go out there and murder someone, which is a difficult line to toe. But I feel like the movie does it pretty well. Sure. Well, that's my main criticism of the movie, where there is this focus on these attractive white women. Yeah.

Because that was the focus of what the press and the public and what they were obsessed with at the time. And still now, like, and still now. Yeah. I mean, the precedent has long been set for this. I would have liked to have seen and maybe were this to be adapted again today we would get more focus on the women of color who were on murderous row yeah who again we see in the movie but it's not explored at all it's not explored at all okay so there's there's one woman who her story is that she stabbed her jealous husband 10 times because in like a fit of jealous rage, he was like, you're screwing the milkman. He ran into her knife.

He ran into her knife 10 times. That character is played by Deidre Goodwin. And then there's the character who is played by Maya, who had murdered a lover because he cheated on her. Even within that song, those little snippets of their story take up less screen time than yes the white women's absolutely um so we get less about them so i was like okay who are these women is there uh are they based on real women who were on murderous row during this time i tried as hard as i could to find some information about that but every article i found which was you know a lot a lot has been written about this those articles even ones that are written in you know within the past few years

still only focus on beulah and belva. Right. So I couldn't find any information about who were the other women on Murderous Row? Were there women of color present? What were their stories? What were their names? What were their crimes and situations? So I was just disappointed that there is just not a lot of information on that out there, probably because good records were not kept at the time about it or if they were kept they weren't widely reported on in the same way

that these stories would be yeah i totally agree and i think that that also connects back to what we were talking about earlier where mama morton is this incredibly dynamic awesome character and we don't know anything about her backstory which is like such a frustrating and persistent trope surrounding black characters in a supporting cast where it's like why do we never see their backstories and it's because these majority white writers and directors and creators and i mean this story from its origin all the way down is controlled by white people they're not caring enough you know and they're and and so I totally agree with you and and I think that it's doubly shitty and a big missed opportunity first because clearly there should

be people of color who are involved behind the camera with projects like these and certainly were not to any significant degree for this movie. But also because with Velma and Roxy, you see like a master class in weaponizing white fragility, which would have made it all the more impactful to the story to really like call that out for what it is because I feel like we can watch this now and be like oh that is like a classic white fragility thing for white women specifically to do in these situations but it's more characterized I think at the time it was more characterized as this is something women do and not specifically white

women who are traditionally attractive so yeah i mean it's it's shitty because the talent is obviously there and the story has room for it and you know all you need is a fucking halfway decent archival researcher and these stories exist so where are they you know where are they there were even so i not to brag or anything was a guest on a podcast entitled women who kill hosted by friend of the cast kai choice kai choice yeah my episode was on a serial killer named Tilly Klimek, a.k.a. Mrs. Bluebeard, who was living in Chicago in the 1920s. I think her crimes were committed like two years before Beulah and Belva were murdering their people. Yeah, she was ahead of the curve she came from a poor polish immigrant background she was not considered attractive which the papers commented on when they were telling her

story like so basically anyone who wasn't like a middle class or upper middle class conventionally attractive white woman was like, I guess, demonized in the way you would expect a murderer to be demonized by the press. But because these two women were, again, considered attractive and came from backgrounds that you know allowed them some privilege they just exploited that and left everyone else in the dust basically there's a first of all that story is wild i'm gonna listen to that that and and i love Kai's podcast. It's really good. It's one of my favorite walking pods. I have kind of a reverse story to that, that I wasn't able to super confirm this, but it does seem like the, sorry, her name is Katerina in the movie, the young Hungarian woman who was hung so it seems like that story was at least pulled in part with a very different ending from a woman named sabella nitti who was

an italian immigrant who didn't speak a lot of english and much like you were just saying uh she was not considered traditionally attractive this was also also, and I'm like, I don't know, deep in the hole in Kathy podcast research. So whatever. At this time, you know, recent immigrants, even if they were white, were often considered unattractive in the 1920s and would be kind of demonized for not having literally like wasp features. Anything that wasn't wasp was not attractive so uh sabella nitti was an italian immigrant um who was accused of the murder of her missing husband and she it doesn't seem like she did it there was no evidence she had no motive there was no proof but it was the kind of case where it's like these prosecutors need a

win so we're going to and she she got sentenced to death she doesn't end up getting executed though because she gets a lawyer uh kind of comes to her rescue and saves her by giving her a makeover because she was characterized in the press as look you know she's not attractive she she doesn't speak english you have all this all this stuff that is just like aggressively othering her in order to convict her of a crime she didn't commit and uh she's saved by a makeover makeover and being and so that i mean that feels super duper billy flynn of just like bat your eyes at the jury they're not smart enough to you know if if you look the right way and you act the right way you can manipulate their behavior which is like i don't know i mean like like we've been

talking about that's a really complicated topic because it's not like people should be able to get away with murder necessarily right um i think unless there's an abuser involved and then i don't really care but right um but but but but the fact that it's there are so many real life examples from that era of that working and so it's like well how toxic does a culture have to be to literally be able to get away with murder pretty reliably and consistently as long as you look the part? Right. And that, I mean, yeah, that is something that I think this story does pretty well. Although I do agree that it's not, it doesn't go far enough in terms of like showing different women's stories at all.

Right. doesn't go far enough in terms of like showing different women's stories at all right um i did want to say really quickly this is unfortunately the second time this year we have to talk about this but speaking of looking the part this is yet another movie that renee zellweger does a fabulous job in where so much of the coverage that she got around the time of this movie was hyper focused on her body. We talked about this in our Bridget Jones episode earlier this year, for the opposite reason where Renee Zellweger, I feel like I don't I mean, to some degree, it just seems like unlucky timing on her part but she's just been so aggressively scrutinized for every part of her body it feels like at some point where

during the early 2000s it was very much a focus on her weight because she had a normal body when she played bridget jones but everyone called her fat she lost weight to play Roxy Hart and everyone said she looked sick. And no matter what she said herself about how she felt about her body and how she didn't like having her body commented on, like no one listened. And so I wanted to just share there, there is a whole, a very well sourced, uhced Vulture article that came out a couple years called A History of People Commenting on Renee Zellweger's Face, because that was what it became later, were people aggressively scrutinizing her plastic surgery, which is just like, let her live.

The woman has two Oscars. Can you chill out? Like, anyways, I wanted to share this quote from her. This is from around 2001. When she was playing Bridget Jones, she said, quote, when the film was coming out, the question I was asked the most was regarding my weight. I was followed around Heathrow Airport by a guy who wanted to take pictures of my backside. I don't understand the obsession. And then on the flip side, because Bridget Jones came out in 2001, Chicago came out in 2002, and Renee Zellweger, I mean, she's very thin in this movie. And people, like in the reviews for this movie, people were saying, you know, she's shockingly gaunt

and she's setting a dangerous precedent and all this stuff. And no one ever asked her how she felt about it it was just like baseless comments and yeah whatever and so she you know disputed the claims that she was unhealthily thin at the time and it just I don't know it's just another example of like she gave an incredible performance like what is your like shut the fuck up man truly so i just wanted to uh say that again just leave renee alone she does a good job she seems like a good person she's very talented she's got two oscars just let her just let her chill she has like a i heard i learned this on who weekly as well she has a normie boyfriend right now and they're just hanging out on balconies together i'm like

good for renee them love it it's is this irony or i'm not sure how to classify this but like the movie chicago being about how women's appearance is so heavily commented on and publicized and like the topic of so much press. Again, that's one of the main components of this movie. And then for a bunch of people to turn around and then do that very thing to the actor's body. Like, do you not do you do you hear yourself hello it's i'm like maybe maureen dallas watkins was right maybe she's like people clearly aren't getting what i'm trying to say here because it's like the same breath no one's learned a damn thing in 80 years yeah yeah it's like and unfortunately watching i mean these murder cases are nearly 100

years old at this point and we see this same dynamic exists between the press and the public and the spectacle like it's still alive and well and like with the exception of like the communication channels basically unaltered which is so depressing and i'm like god of all it's it sucks that this is a timeless story but it like kind of is yeah i wanted to shout out one i mean this shout out is not the correct thing here but just one one last sort of point on how whiteness and traditional attractiveness is clearly weaponized in this story. The phrase that came to mind, and I had to sort of go back in my head and be like, where did I hear this? Where did this come from?

Was the too pretty for prison? Have you heard that phrase before? I don't think I have. It's a phrase that I couldn't remember when I first heard it, and I sort of, and basically it ties into, I think you see it very present in Roxy's behavior, where she's like, you can't sentence me to death. I can't be in prison. I'm too pretty for prison. And it's this very, given that Roxy is a murderer, I'm not pro-prison at all, but given that she's a murderer, you know, she's trying to get away with it on the basis of being traditionally attractive white woman right yeah and so the too pretty for prison phrase comes from 2005 it's based on a case that is absolutely horrific and i don't want to rehash it here but it

essentially comes down to a female teacher who sexually abused a student. And while on trial, that was the phrase that was, I don't know if it was evoked in the courtroom, but that was the phrase that was connected to this case. But all that to say, like, Chicago's based on cases from the 1920s. This phrase, too pretty for prison, was ascribed to similar behavior that was happening 80 years later. Like it's yeah, it's depressing. That's some real Karen shit.

Yes, Karen and then some, you know, it's white privilege. It's hot privilege. What's the phrase for that? You know what I mean? Yeah, we don't talk about hot privilege enough i think as a as a culture it is discussed i don't know that we've we've discussed it on the show in depth but it definitely does seem like it's at play in this story yeah it is weird because like well it also kind of speaks to the one of the double standards that are foisted on women where you're expected to be extremely attractive and really it's like you like you have you have to like

you know look a certain way and adhere to every western standard of beauty but you also have to be a loyal and devoted wife and you have to be pregnant with a baby and be ready to make a home for your husband and for your children and to iron his shirts and to do all that stuff. And that to me is like the most effective thing that this movie accomplishes in terms of just like pointing that of, oh, these these delicate women were seduced by these evil forces of of such evil things is a genre of music and alcohol, which, yeah, just again, the these such rigid gender roles and standards that are placed on women in terms of like you can never misbehave you can never drink an alcohol you have to also be really pretty and attractive but you only can have eyes for your husband and just like all of these standards it's like the classic it's an impossible bar to clear so many of their expectations are at odds with each other because it's like you have to be demure but you also have to be wildly sexy and depending on the situation you can be punished for being either of those

things and right and how yeah like and how hot i mean whatever like being traditionally attractive like there's sides to that coin as well, where it's, it's, I think that, I mean, obviously in some of the cases we just described women who are considered to not be attractive, uh, apparently you can just, uh, kill them, uh, for not doing murders. Um, that's an oversimplification, but, but then on the other side it's you know women who who do kind of fall into that traditionally attractive whatever are often hyper sexualized against their will and and harassed and right right so it's just um it's impossible uh there's just so many ways to lose in

this world uh there's it's interesting i just learned something that made me smile please sure sorry my flea's still yelling um well he's wishing you happy birthday he's like i love you mama uh anyways uh jerry orbach played uh billy flynn in the original broadway production how fun is that wow the 1975 one in the 1975 one oh my goodness and uh cheetah rivera played velma kelly like icons wow icons so i was just happy to learn that jerry orbach and richard gear played the same part i like that i like that too um richard gear kills it as billy flynn he really is amazing and that's really him tap dancing oh no kidding that's really him tactics yes i watched all the featurettes and he said it was kind of funny because it was like he had sung he he like had sung before um and so and i

think that he and john c riley were i, the main members of the cast that didn't have dance training that needed to dance. And they both tried so hard. And they both were talking about how they're like, it's intimidating being in the same room with Rob Marshall. He was in Cats and I can't even tap and like all this stuff. And then there's videos of like Rob Marshall, like taking it really slow with John C. Riley. And like, it's just such wholesome footage. Wow.

That's so, I don't know. I just love when choreographers direct because it's like when you, once you see like footage of a choreographer directing a musical movie, you're like, Oh yeah. How else would you even do that? Like what you're going to be like,

you're like, if you can't do it yourself don't tell me to do it but rob marshall like he's fucking on it he's doing all that jazz right next to catherine zeta jones and it's exciting there there is like a whole half hour making of documentary that's on youtube as well that if you're a chicago head I'd recommend it because it's just such a blast who do you think Rob Marshall played in Cats when he got injured do you think it was like Mr. Mistoffelees or Rum Tum Tugger well this begs the question which of the cats is doing the kind of movement I mean they're all kind of doing wild movement but like who's

most likely to herniate a disc i feel like that's some rum tum tugger shit to be herniating a whole disc who's your favorite one again with the pants and the suspenders oh my god skimble shanks i feel like it could have been marshall skimble shanks could have done a good skimble shanks i wonder oh it doesn't his uh his wikipedia page is very vague about it they're just like he was in cats and herniated a disc no we're not taking any more questions at this time we need more information i'm like okay he was a jellicle i need more info what which one which one it matters which jellicle cat was he though uh he could have been monkey strap you know like

oh sure i don't know there's a lot of cats that are at high risk for herniating a disc uh so it doesn't really it's so funny it's like oh members of the cats cast that could have herniated a disc that really doesn't narrow it down at all they're all over the place um do you have anything else for this movie i mean we we touched on it briefly but just the relationship between roxy and velma being highly antagonistic for most if not all of the movie because even at the end when they are working together, we... I mean, by the end, I get why they don't like each other. Right. Yeah.

So Velma is mean to Roxy at first for what appears to be a petty reason. She's... Well, I don't even know. Maybe it's not even any reason. She's just mean to her because she's like the newbie there. Unless I'm misreading or misremembering something. I don't think you are. i think that it's it's i was really interested to learn that the two like the two real life people seemed to get along just fine because it seems like the the logic that this story is

subscribing to and maybe i'm making too many excuses for it. I mean, it's like they are just, our two female leads are being put at odds. The way I guess I had like solidified it in my head over the years, that maybe I need to question a little bit, but like was that, I don't know, the reason that women are often put in these antagonistic situations and the internal logic of this story is

there's only room for one woman in the headlines at a time sure and so it's like this it almost feels like they're viewing it as a competition and like why would i you know it's almost like reality show logic of like i didn't come here to make friends i came here to be the most famous murderer ever or whatever right that was kind of but it was like but that's not even what happened in real life like if that was what happened in real life i would sort of let it go but that's not so why add that in nor is it what happens at the very beginning of their antagonistic relationship i could maybe understand if right when roxy got there and she was like already the hottest like

the talk of the town kind of thing right she's not at first yeah where then velma would feel threatened and that would motivate her being cruel to roxy but that's not what happens uh roxy doesn't take velma's spotlight until later right so at first velma is mean to roxy for no reason. When Roxy is like mean back, that does seem more motivated because that's sort of like a retaliation thing. Like, well, you were mean to me. I'm going to be mean to you now. But you're right. Yeah.

The beginning is not very motivated by much. Yeah. And then they continue to not get along. But then it's all just it's I see what you're saying in terms of because we you know we've we've talked about this too a lot where like especially when men write women being extremely antagonistic and like petty to each other they never consider the context of why that would be because if that does happen the context is usually well women are only afforded so many spaces or spots

or there's only room for one woman. So women do feel like they have to be competitive and antagonistic toward each other to, again, like just secure their survival. But that isn't what's happening. It at least doesn't start that way. Right. It does become that way with,

because yeah, like Roxy takes Velma's spotlight and then so they're kind of like constantly battling for the spotlight. And then when- And then Roxy starts like steal Velma's like court deceptions or whatever, like the garter and yeah, the handkerchief. Like I get why they become enemies but but that is a good point that it's not super motivated especially because velma is like who roxy wants to be at the beginning and you do see like yeah i mean i think that velma is like being i don't know

i mean i think there's like there's multiple ways to look at it where it's like yeah velma is kind of is like pretty arrogant at the beginning of the story because she is the famous one at the beginning of the story. And why would I talk to you? I'm the famous one, which Roxy then does the exact same thing to her later on. It doesn't feel good. Right. That's sort of Velma's arc of like, this is very temporary.

And I am a fool if I think that, you know, I can just, you know, be a famous murderer forever. So, and I, and I do like how it ends because in real life, it's like kind of a bummer. I think like Beulah died of like tuberculosis, tuberculosis, like pretty soon after getting like, so I'm glad that they didn't do that. But I do like, I mean, just to tie up the story, how they end up working together and realizing that they, it's like they're still terrible people, right? Like they're still murderers, but that they're stronger as a unit than they were separately

and that they needed to, just in the way that it's like the world very much wanted to forget them and move on to the next thing. And they had to find a way to remain relevant so they could continue to live the kinds of lives they wanted to live where it was like it you know roxy could have gone back with amos uh velma could have settled down and and you know lined up with the societal expectations of the time neither of them want that and so they find a way to put their differences aside and make that happen for themselves and i think that that is like interesting it doesn't make it noble necessarily because they still fucking suck yeah but i but i

like and and then the end i mean it's almost like a little ham-fisted watching it now but we're like roxy's like this couldn't have happened without you because it's like yeah no one would give a shit about them if you know if the media circus wasn't the way that it is yeah so i don't know yeah their relationship i i think that i think that the story would be kind of generally improved and would work could you could you could say the exact same things that this story is trying to say and have them get along and so adding in that conflict even if like you're saying like even if they i don't know betray each other and piss each other off later which makes sense in the context of the story in the in the historical period seeing them get along i don't think you lose anything and in fact it might even raise the stakes if they start as friends.

Right. And then it's like this media circus of, well, only one of you can be famous enough to not be convicted of murder. Like, that's higher stakes. It doesn't seem like Roxy has any female friends in her life. And it seems like Velma's only friend she killed because that was her sister. And so there's I was like, OK, maybe that is actually a stronger story choice because then you're not just losing you know your your life you're losing your only friend your friend that's

basically the plot of all about eve where yeah that's true they start out on good terms and then i don't even remember the character's names now but one of them starts to get jealous of the other one. And then the start, well, one of them's definitely Eve. It's the one that isn't Betty Davis. Right. And I,

I just don't remember which one is Eve. Is Eve Betty Davis or she was the younger woman. Okay. Right. Right. Right. I'm butchering remembering, but I love that movie.

And yet I don't know what the characters names are. Yeah. Story of my life. But yeah, I mean that now that we're kind of talking that through that would be a more interesting choice and then it would and then you can keep the ending as is and have them reconcile and get that friendship back by being like oh that media circus was bullshit let's take this on the road and make money off of all these losers who vaguely remember that we've murdered people like yeah whatever that rocks fine i like that better yeah this just felt like the writer was like it's a movie we have to throw more tension in it where could a source of tension be oh of

course between two women because women are petty and jealous and bitter right and it's not like this story lacks tension like i don't like there's kind of no need for it's like there's an incredible amount of tension between roxy and basically everyone that she's ever met because she's a pretty selfish and abrasive person um that said in i mean it's again it's like she's such a tough character because she fucking sucks but like you're like okay i you know to an extent i get it and and i do like like the moments where roxy is it works against her but she's so quick to call out billy flynn for being a charlatan asshole and it blows up in her face but it is kind of cathartic to see you know someone who's so clearly in it for money and clout and doesn't actually care

about the women that he's defending to see her just be like what fuck you you know yeah you're fired i don't know um speaking of people who are in it for the money i thought because i didn't super remember this movie until going back to prep for this episode mama morton she is sort of presented at first as like a big hard ass and i thought oh i wonder if there's going to be a lot of antagonism between her and the prisoners because that also would have felt like a unexpected choice to introduce tension into the situation but i was kind of surprised that there isn't much tension there like she at first she's like oh is something bothering you well i don't give a shit also i love money but then after that like she seems pretty willing to like help the people

who have money so she's like a capitalist and we don't love to see that super capitalist i feel like she i mean i feel like she's just kind of a stand-in for like i'm on the side of whoever is paying me right she's she's not really on the side of the prison industrial complex because she's accepting money from murderers but she'll take a check from the prison industrial complex like yeah she's just like a she she's lawless it's interesting that they cast a black woman in that role i agree considering the prison industrial complex disproportionate yeah affects and abuses black people so that was confusing yeah i do think that it is uh telling and bizarre i mean it's it's what i mean it's like can I picture anyone in this movie except Queen Latifah in this role?

I know. Like, she's fucking incredible. And what is interesting, based on a rapid Google, we just paused the podcast to do that. This role was generally played by white women up until Queen Latifah was cast in this role. And since then, the role is generally played by Black women. I believe that the same actress has been playing Mama Morton on Broadway for some time. Yeah, a famous Black Broadway actress. I don't know Broadway actresses.

I'm sorry. But all that to say, yeah, that that doesn't seem to be in the dna of the part but then gradually because of queen latifah's casting and performance became kind of integral to the part yeah as of so for the last 10 years or so mama morton has been played by black actresses on broadway um Broadway. Yeah, not an ideal part to... Right. I mean, I love Queen Latifah. She steals every scene she's in. That part where like, So good. She's telling Roxy, oh, we're actually taking you to this special section, Murderous Row. And then Roxy's like, oh, is that nicer?

And then she gives a look to Mama Morton, like looks over her shoulder to like a prison guard or something. And it's just like this bitch, basically. Right. And I mean, yeah, I do. As far as that character goes, and I think that your point is extremely valid,

but her like lawlessness of like she buys into the roxy hype but then the second it's not working in her favor anymore she's like the blonde wig is in the trash and yeah you know her allegiance is with whoever can make her the most money yeah so yeah yeah do you have anything else i think that is this movie does pass the bechdel test i'm sure of it yes oh it super does they're often they're often talking about killing men but for us that passed the test but but even without it i mean it it does pass plenty of times between velma and roxy between roxy and mama morton between velma and Roxy, between Roxy and Mama Morton, between Velma and Mama Morton,

between, actually, this is a good question. I don't know how many of the prisoners are actually named. I don't think that many. Yeah. If any, because I'm racking my brain and I don't know if we get names for any of them. Let me fact check that. I mean, it's possible that it exists in the state. I don't know in we get names for any of them let me fact check that i mean it's possible that it

exists in the state i don't know in terms of adaptation but i don't believe you learn their names in the um in the movie yeah so but but that said it does pass i think it also passes between mary sunshine and roxy like there are a number of dynamic, highly motivated female characters who talk to each other about all sorts of shit in this movie. while it is commenting on and providing satire on these like double standards that are foisted upon women it makes the same mistake of only focusing on the narratives of middle-class conventionally attractive white women which is also what the media was doing at the time so i like again the precedent was set so i understand that that's sort of why the adaptations went that way as well but i don't like it i would it would be more interesting to me, for example, if dynamics were explored in terms of, yes, there are these attractive white women who are exploiting the privilege didn't have those same privileges to exploit and how what like what are their outcomes i'd like to know so i think that um you know in an ideal world

the movie would have explored that more but that's also not what um people in 2002 were really concerned about doing yeah it's it's a bummer, but if this were to ever be adapted again, and, you know, it seems like this movie gets adapted every 40 years or something. Right. Against the wishes of the person who wrote the play, Go Figure. Right. Because it was also a 1927, I to say cecil b demille silent movie yeah

who i wasn't able to track down it seems like kind of a rare i don't know i didn't i wasn't able to find it yeah i mean it's like a super popular story and unfortunately it's like i mean it's still relevant but i but i completely agree that it's, you know, kind of begging to be updated and, and modernized. And the issues that it's like, you know, whatever,

it's extra frustrating because it's like all either the, the source material and the characters are there. You're just not using them. You're not exploring. They're right. Exploring them. They're just kind of left there. We only know that a woman stabbed her husband 10

times and another woman and good for her and good for her. But I need more information. Yeah, exactly. So for those reasons, I'll give the movie a three. It's getting some extra points because it is a movie I very much enjoy. It is very watchable. The song and dance numbers are spectacular. So three nipples. And they go to the women whose stories have been unrepresented, revolving around this like microcosm of lady murderers in the jazz era of Chicago what about you Jamie I'm going for uh I think that this movie is and this story are doing so much I completely agree with you that for for all this story does to examine, you know, kind of weaponize white fragility, it does not examine the issues

that women of color were facing during this time specific. And it does come down, you know, particularly because this story is commenting on the prison system to some extent. And the prison system in the US, especially disproportionately affects black people specifically black men and there's and it's not like we know anything about Tay Diggs's character and he's the only black man who appears in the whole movie so I do think that

there's absolutely issues there that if this were to be updated again and as much as I don't really care for like the rebooty culture I would be I would be down for another an updated version of Chicago yeah because there is so much there and um I think that uh particularly if people of color were included in in the production behind the camera there's so much to work with and there could be a lot more examined so that I mean and that and the Weinstein involvement, I think, are the main things that are going against this movie for me. But I just think that this movie is doing so much cool stuff

in terms of showing us some truly, like, despicable across-the-board female protagonists that you still deeply understand why they're doing what they're doing you're given the proper historical context for who they are and what they're doing and and it's I mean I I don't think that there's a lot of movies that are like fun to watch that are massively successful that examine topics like this, that examine topics like this effectively, that examine topics like, you know, why were these women driven to commit murder? And I think that it's pretty clear what drives them.

It's the, you know, oppressive expectations of the men that run the world around them. I can't really think of a movie that better kind of indicts this inflammatory american media culture that has just gotten worse you know a hundred years out from this in a really engaging funny smart way and i and i like that uh that velma and roxy end up uh it's kind of it's like a depressing but positive ending where they are able to, they have to kill and lie and do all this fucked up shit to do it, but they are able to finally kind of live their lives the way they wanted to

and in a way that they should have just been able to, but in order to do it, all this fucked up stuff happened, had to happen. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it truly is for me mainly that women of color are not given the narrative importance that they deserve in this story but i think that you see also lucy lu like she's in the movie for three minutes basically a cameo yeah but i do think that there are a lot of different kinds of women that are highly motivated that are making

their own choices that are fucking up that are succeeding that very thoroughly understand the tools of oppression being used against them and spinning them in their advantage to get away with some fucked up stuff and you don't see that kind of story with women very often I feel like especially in like historical movies and so I just I think this movie is doing so much that in this musical in general I like that it's adapted by um that the source material is from a woman and that the story is still generally honored uh I like that there's a lot of queer representation in the production of this movie although it is very white um i just i don't know i think that this movie is doing a lot that even current movies aren't able to do and i just like enjoy when a movie is able to say a lot without feeling like you're getting bashed over the head

with a frying pan and i think that this movie is a good example of of that um certainly and any movie that is fun and funny and musical and draws the conclusion that humanity is a lost cause is my favorite kind of movie so I'm going to give it four nipples and I'm going to give a nipple to Queen Latifah I'm going to give a nipple to Richard Gere because he's my crush I'm going to give a nipple to Queen Latifah. I'm going to give a nipple to Richard Gere because he's my crush. I'm going to give a nipple to Catherine Zeta-Jones because she's my other crush. And I'm going to give the final nipple to Lucy Liu. Hell yeah. Yep.

Well, Jamie, happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you for watching this movie for me. I love it so much. Of course. Where can people follow you, Jamie? Wow, I get my birthday plugs. Listen to ACKcast.

Listen to ACKcast. It's still coming out right now. And I think it will be releasing its final episode, if I'm working on schedule, next week. It's an in-depth look at the Cathy comic strips and kind of what they say about the time they appeared in. And I was able to use a lot of research I did for that podcast to have this discussion today. And there's episodes about movements of feminism and how deeply flawed and centered on middle class and above white women they were there i just finished working on an episode that's all about the formation of american

beauty standards and how mired they are in imperialism and colonialism and white supremacy and all i mean it's a fun podcast because it's about Kathy comic strips, but it's also a lot of depressing serious shit as well. So yeah, that's if you want to give me a birthday present, give the Bechtel cast five stars on iTunes and listen to ActCast because I worked hard on it. Yes. And give ActCast five stars as well. While you're at it.

Might as well. Could it hurt? Wow, Jamie. Well, I love you dearly i wish you the happiest of birthdays i'm so glad that we do this show together yeah me too almost five years baby i know i hope to i hope that we're in the same city again soon so that we can actually see each other and hang. Beginning of September. Woohoo! Um, you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can go to our Patreon, aka Matreon, subscribe for $5 a month.

It gets you two bonus episodes every month at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. Hell yeah. And then we've got merch. Tell us about the merch, Jamie. Well, you can buy it. It's at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Go over, get some merch if you're so inclined. It's a blast. It's a blessing. It's a gift. For you to have merch to consume products because we live in a society then you know get some or don't we won't know the difference we truly won't we truly profoundly won't and that's chicago bye

daphne caruana galicia was a maltese investigative journalist who on oct October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Catherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas that's right the queen of comedy herself get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful tune in for all the laughs

the stories and of course the culture don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network

on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts 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. about what you're doing. They're just dreams.