The Bechdel Cast - Clue

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

The crime of patriarchy has been committed, and Jamie and Caitlin have to figure out whodunnit on this episode about Clue!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon a...t 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.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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,
Starting point is 00:00:54 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
Starting point is 00:01:12 There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism?
Starting point is 00:01:45 The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. I know who did it. Who was it? It was Caitlin in the bedroom with the microphone. Yeah. By it, do you mean recorded a podcast? Because if so, then yes, it was me who did it.
Starting point is 00:02:10 Yes, and I passed the Bechdel test. Whoa! Well, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our feminist movie podcast where we use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point to analyze famous movies.
Starting point is 00:02:27 We're in the quarantine zone, as is everyone at this point. So, you know, I don't know. I don't remember life before this anymore. I don't either. Yeah. So we had hinted at possibly doing this movie during our National Treasure episode. Right. Because we're just trying to stick to the romps.
Starting point is 00:02:48 We're trying to stick to the romps. I feel like it's particularly fitting in the quarantine because it's a movie pretty much exclusively taking place in one location, one house. No one really leaves. Some people come in and then they die. They're self-care. Yeah. And that's what you get.
Starting point is 00:03:05 It's a metaphor. They weren't wearing masks when they came in. And they didn't wash their hands. They did not. They didn't. No one. You don't see anyone wash a single hand. And the house looks not, you know, it's old.
Starting point is 00:03:17 It's inherently dirty. And there's a doctor present. He should know better. He should be telling people. There's literally someone from the World Health Organization there and and he's not like scrub scrub big issues big problems obviously there that's just a beginning of the critique we'll be talking about today and these are like our first whodunit so this will be a fun episode yeah um but first we should tell you what the bechdel test is sure caitlin do you remember what it is oh no it is slipping my mind if memory serves it is a media metric sometimes called the
Starting point is 00:03:56 bechdel wallace test it requires that two female identifying characters have to have names such as Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, Mrs. White, the cook. Yeah, the nameless cook. They have to speak to each other. And that conversation cannot be about a man. I want to see if we can figure out the the bechdel test version of the of crimes here here's a pitch okay please yeah if two women with names commit a crime that has nothing to do with a man it passes the bechdel test crime edition crime edition yeah i'm into that right i don't
Starting point is 00:04:39 think that any of the the crimes would pass the Bechdel test crime edition in this movie yeah in this particular movie where it's it's usually connected to a husband oh yeah or something like like with Miss Scarlet it was like men were always tangential to what was happening for sure you know we've got to do better we've got to do better crimes. Although if the crimes are committed against men who are behaving badly, that that's OK to me. I know. I think men should be stolen from and like. That's true.
Starting point is 00:05:14 But then most of the women in the movie, everyone in this movie is basically bad. True. So you're like, OK, everyone's rich. So that's not, you know, except for the cook who and we don't even get to know what her name is, you know? She's the only woman of color in the movie too. Yeah, and she's killed and made fun of. Fuck. Oh, Jonathan Lynn, goddammit.
Starting point is 00:05:38 All right, well, we have a lot to talk about and no guest today. Just us today, so. Just the gals. Jamie, what is your relationship history with the movie Clue? I like this movie. I didn't see it when I was growing up or anything like that. But I've seen it. I think it's a good comfort movie.
Starting point is 00:05:57 I love whodunits and thrillers and stuff like that. So a comedy whodunit is right up my alley. I think I've seen it like yeah like three or four times I re-watched it most recently after seeing Knives Out which I think that I mean I was not alone here but I watched or re-watched a ton of whodunits after Knives Out came out because I really really liked Knives Out same I loved it so yeah there I'm a I'm a clue head i'm a whodunit head what about you i also didn't grow up with it but i saw it sometime i think in like my late teen years for the first time and i think it was just that once that i saw it i remember thinking it was fun but like i also i didn't play
Starting point is 00:06:41 the game really at all ever growing up I think maybe I did play the game not heavily it's more of an operation kid yeah I was a scrabble kid myself smart that's smart kid culture well it's why I went on to later get a master's degree in screenwriting which I hate to bring up but there it is us one degree heads were just poking at the guy's like liver and operation and they're like he's dead i forget how i don't forget how that game works that's more or less it if you lose operation does he die oh that's yeah what are the stakes i don't know if you lose does a man die that's really dark i actually don't remember I haven't played in so long. Oh, Jamie, I played a Shrek version of Operation. Oh, I forgot about that.
Starting point is 00:07:30 It was right before I had my sludge surgery. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, get with the program. There's a whole podcast about it. Grow up. But I had my gallbladder removed, but i was told that i had sludge in my gallbladder anyway it was a whole thing but the shrek so you perform operations on shrek yeah and right around where a person or ogre's gallbladder would be it said like slugs wow so it looked not unlike sludge wow and you had to remove the slugs out of his gallbladder area and it was like
Starting point is 00:08:06 so the shrek operation game was kind of like an oracle for you yeah exactly well i never forget shrek actually i don't now that we're talking about it i think i've only played the clue board game proper a few times but i did my cousins had simpsons clue oh and so that was i just like you could be like mr burns did it that's it it was fun it's a fun game and it's a fun movie i'm excited to talk about it yeah and this whole genre i do love whodunit indeed and and also um i i know we'll probably go through all of them but for in case you're not familiar with the shtick of this movie, there's three different endings. And so if you went to theaters in 1985, you would have seen one of the three endings. But in the cut that they distribute now, you just see three endings in a row and kind of like none of them make sense or are satisfying.
Starting point is 00:09:03 True. So that's part of the thing yes indeed so should i recap it somehow i don't this is this is a difficult movie to recap but i'll do what i can i think yes same we have no guest mucking up the place today so we should be fine no disrespect to all of our wonderful guests what if this was the what if we did have a guest and they tried to murder us oh wow things my i don't know about everyone else but my mental state is unraveling. Oh, I'm deteriorating rapidly.
Starting point is 00:09:51 Really having some weird thoughts. Weird, weird thoughts. Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, bear with us. Okay. Yep. So the movie Clue starts.
Starting point is 00:10:00 We're in New England. Ever heard of it? Yes. It's 1954, the year that my mother was born. Oh out to laurie hi laurie yeah it's a dark and stormy night and wadsworth the butler played by tim curry our king an icon also the the second most popular tim curry movie that starts on a dark and stormy night in a mansion wait the other one being oh rocky horror oh my gosh yeah yeah he's all about that dark and stormy mansion yeah tim curry he does just kind of look like he belongs in a dark and stormy mansion that's true it makes
Starting point is 00:10:37 sense it does make sense yeah yeah um so he arrives at said mansion because there's a dinner party that night. He and other staff members are making preparations. He checks in on the maid, a.k.a. Yvette. Then he checks in with the cook. Guests start arriving. They've all received a letter from a man who lives at the mansion, question mark, and has invited them to this dinner party he has given them all an alias so when the guests arrive they are addressed as colonel mustard he gets there first that's uh martin mole yeah icon gene parmesan from uh arrested development uh so good Arrested Development. So good. Next to arrive is Mrs. White. That's Madeline Kahn.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Then Mrs. Peacock, played by Eileen Brennan. For a second, you're like, Susan Sarandon? Because you're so used to seeing her in Tim Curry movies about dark and stormy nights, but it's not her. See, I think Miss Scarlet looks like Susan Sarandon a little bit. Oh, wait, that's who I was talking about.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Never mind. Mrs. Peac's who I was talking about. Never mind. Mrs. Peacock has the feathered hat. It is very hard to keep the character's name straight. It truly is. My notes might be jumbled. Also because most of them I would say except for Mrs. Peacock have a name
Starting point is 00:12:00 that is related to a color. Either a color specifically or mustard. Yellow yellow of course there's Mr. Green he shows up next there's Mrs. White Miss Scarlet that's a color and then Professor Plum Plum purple purple but no one wears the color of the name that they are given which is um rude so then mr green shows up that's uh michael mckean and then outside down the road we have uh miss scarlet that's uh leslie ann warren she has car trouble and then professor plum played by christopher lloyd who was having a great year in 1985 because this is also when back to the future came out yeah I think that if Back to the Future
Starting point is 00:12:45 had come out before this, he probably wouldn't be in this movie. So this is like the last chance you get Christopher Lloyd in like a supporting, supporting role. You know what I mean? So he drives by, picks up Miss Scarlet, and they both arrive at the mansion. And everyone sits down for dinner,
Starting point is 00:13:02 but no one knows what's going on, really, who anybody else is, but they all start chatting, and they figure out that everyone has ties to Washington, D.C. And it's also like the McCarthy era, so it took a while for me to click in what they were doing with the historical setting, because I was like,
Starting point is 00:13:21 why were they going through the trouble of having this in 1954? But it's all vaguely, I'm'm like is this movie trying to say something if so i don't know what it is but i think they might be sort of trying to say something by setting it in the mccarthy era and it's like a bunch of washington elite in the mccarthy era well because a little later on we find out that this mr body guy is blackmailing everyone because they're like, you're un-American. And instead of reporting you to the like House Un-American Activities Committee. I'm gonna make money because capital. It's like it's very campy commentary where that's the one moment where you're like, oh, that's what they're trying to say. Okay, like, yeah yeah and then in all three endings you find out that communism was a red
Starting point is 00:14:08 herring and it's like what are you talking about right it's so campy that i'm like i don't know i don't know how much of it is like camp and how much of it is like good americans you know like also jonathan lynn is british so he might just be making fun of americans in general we don't know we don't watch this movie for the message okay speak for yourself jamie i'm looking for incisive political commentary and clue the movie it's an allegory for the red scare no okay so then the seventh guest arrives mr body and wadsworth is like hey everyone the reason that you're all here is that you're being blackmailed and then we find out the various reasons each character is being blackmailed such as uh professor plum is a former psychiatrist who
Starting point is 00:15:01 lost his license because he assaulted his female patients yikes yep and that's a joke yeah huh uh-huh so we'll talk about that um mrs peacock takes shady political bribes on behalf of her politician husband her husband her husband um miss scarlet runs an escort service colonel mustard is a client of that escort service mrs white probably killed her husband and then you later find out probably killed five several husbands mrs white's character gets better and better as the movie goes on for sure she's fine and then mr green is gay and has to stay in the closet to keep his job in the state department so those are all the reasons they are being blackmailed i do at least appreciate that mr green opens by saying i am not ashamed of it but it is
Starting point is 00:15:59 basically he's like i'm not ashamed of it however 1954. Right. That's more than I expected of a 1985 movie. True. So I'll give a little tip of the hat. Yeah, there's a whole conversation to be had about the way all of that is framed. Yeah. Yeah. And then we learn that Mr. Boddy is the one who is blackmailing everyone. But Wadsworth is like, good news.
Starting point is 00:16:21 The police will be here in 45 minutes. And you can tell the police that you're being blackmailed and Mr. Body can be brought to justice. Then Mr. Body gives everyone a weapon, which are a candlestick, a noose, pipe, wrench, gun and dagger. And he's like, here's the thing. If you expose me, you're also exposing yourself for whatever it is that you're being blackmailed for crime but if one of you kills wadsworth then this whole thing can be over
Starting point is 00:16:53 so mr body shuts off the light then there's a thud a gunshot and a scream and when the light is turned back on it's mr body who has been killed your body's a great character name i don't know why it's so like it's so icky um yeah you can't kill tim curry this early in the movie it doesn't happen certainly not no tim curry is such a champion in this movie we're like if you think about like how much more dialogue he has than everyone because he's just like paragraphs of exposition at a time just on it you're like what a professional right ah incredible everyone starts freaking out uh no one knows who killed mr body or with what weapon then wadsworth reveals
Starting point is 00:17:39 his motive for wanting mr body to be brought to justice, which is that his wife, his wife, was being blackmailed by Mr. Body, which led her to end her life. And this is where we get the whole like, Mr. Body thought you were all doing something un-American. Right. So everyone's bad. No one's good. No one is good. And that's part of what makes whodunits fun is that people everyone is usually everyone's a suspect and it's well i can't wait to talk about whodunits in class anyways continue oh really um okay then they find another dead body the cook has been killed in the kitchen with the dagger yes the only woman of color the only person whose name we don't learn and then she gets like one or two lines of dialogue before she is murdered yeah yeah this movie is not thoughtful in terms of um non-white characters really at all true um so then they all come back into the room which and
Starting point is 00:18:51 i was losing track of what room was what in this movie but i think they're in the study and mr body's body is gone but then they find it again and this time it is bloody and he is definitely dead right then a motorist shows up at the doorstep and needs to use the phone because his car broke down so they lock him in the lounge i think there's so many it's a mansion you're just like too many fucking rich people in their many many rooms and they all they're like oh a library a study a billiards room a lounge especially right now where we're all like locked in small spaces to various capacities i'm like how dare you right have multiple floors grow up not fair uh um so they lock him in the lounge and they decide that they should search the rest of the house to make sure there's no one else who might be in there who is just like popping
Starting point is 00:19:49 up to commit a murder and then like go back into hiding. So they split into pairs and search the house and everyone still suspects everyone else of being the murderer. We don't know who's done it. We don't know. They also like kind of uncharacteristic for a whodunit like they don't the movie doesn't super try to convince you it's any specific person i feel like usually whodunit movies are like oh this guy's looking pretty suspicious but you're kind of just
Starting point is 00:20:19 like watching people walk around a really nice house but But it's fun. That's true. I'm surprised there's not a character named, like, Mr. Red Herring. Oh, yes. He was the Red Herring, of course. But communism is the Red Herring, I guess. What? I'm like, sure. And then by the time this comes out,
Starting point is 00:20:39 it's the Reagan administration, so God only knows where everyone's values were at. So it's a disaster. Oh, yeah. So they're searching searching the house and while they're searching we see the motorist get murdered with the wrench in the lounge but by whom who done it whom done i don't know whom done it whom's done it then colonel mustard and miss scarlet discover a secret passage which was how the murderer snuck into the lounge to kill the motorist and then a random cop shows up and searches the house and they have to pretend to like make out with the dead bodies i forgot about
Starting point is 00:21:19 that part i always forget about it and it makes me laugh so much it's such a funny scene where they're like making out with the corpses, especially the one where they're holding like the cook between two people. And you're just like, oh, it's so it's so gross. It's so funny. Then Mustard and Scarlet find another secret passage that leads from the kitchen into the study. Then the murderer turns the power off in the house. And then in the dark, I know, spooky.
Starting point is 00:21:53 And in the dark, whoever the murderer is, kills Yvette, the maid, with the rope in the billiards room. Then kills the police officer with the pipe in the library i think there's a book in there there's a book so it's a library it could be possible um and then the murderer shoots the singing telegram lady who shows up. So now there are six murders total. And then Wadsworth is like, guess what? I know what happened and who's behind it. He's figured out
Starting point is 00:22:32 who done it. How does Tim Curry not get a golden globe for this ending performance? Oh my gosh. The writing is like not really doing much, but he's like he's like Sebastian Maniscalco like running around it's so it's so good he's zipping he's dashing um yeah basically what happens is in order for any of
Starting point is 00:22:56 this movie to make sense he's like i have to take you through the events of the evening step by step and then he basically goes into a caitlin's famous recap where he just recaps the entire movie that we've already seen if you like fell down every five seconds of the recap it's basically the same thing yeah it's just like prop fall after prep oh it's so i should start doing that you should yeah you'll get a golden globe thank you um but here's the thing some new information gets revealed during this recap which is that when they first found mr body dead he was only pretending to be dead and then we also find out that yvette and the cook were mr body's accomplices that helped
Starting point is 00:23:40 him collect info on the people who he would later blackmail then wadsworth figures out that yvette killed the cook and then killed mr body um but who killed yvette and the others who done it well it was miss scarlet in this one for reasons that i've already forgotten right in this ending so this is ending a yeah there's i also was reading about an elusive fourth ending that they shot but cut from the movie because it was they were like it was too stupid i'm like oh it would have had to have been really stupid because the three that you get are total nonsense yeah mm-hmm yeah um the second one ending b like the movie says that's how it could have happened but what if this happens and it's that mrs peacock is the murderer again for reasons i forget what her whole
Starting point is 00:24:33 motive was her husband something about her husband and some nuclear physicist some plan for a fusion bomb or something yeah it's all very 1950s you're like sure but then we get how the movie claims is what really happened which is that so basically everyone each person killed one other person so plum killed mr body mrs peacock killed the cook colonel mustard killed the motorist mrs white killed yvette miss scarlet killed the cop wadsock killed the cook. Colonel Mustard killed the motorist. Mrs. White killed Yvette. Miss Scarlet killed the cop. Wadsworth killed the singing telegram lady. That's so, it's so funny when they killed the singing telegram lady. She's just like, ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba.
Starting point is 00:25:19 It's so funny. And then it turns out that Wadsworth is Mr. Body. Yeah. So Mr. Green shoots Wadsworth because he's an FBI plant. And then all of the FBI guys come in and they're like, woohoo, we saved the day. We're like, woo, cops. So that's the story with its various endings. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th
Starting point is 00:25:55 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang.
Starting point is 00:26:44 We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.
Starting point is 00:27:04 I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing.
Starting point is 00:27:18 Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom.
Starting point is 00:27:37 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
Starting point is 00:28:03 When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties
Starting point is 00:28:21 you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the
Starting point is 00:28:52 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, you know what? I think this is a good challenge feminism in clue the movie i i guess i wanted to start with uh just a little like women in whodunits at large please yes um because i've seen many many many of them there's pros and cons uh to the portrayal of women in whodunits so obviously our most recent whodunit that did really well was Knives Out. I really enjoyed that movie. I feel like hopefully we'll probably do an episode on it
Starting point is 00:29:32 at some point, probably. But yeah, I think that the female characters in that story are fully fleshed out. Like the hero of the story is a woman and not a person that's in this like, I don't know, 900% of these stories concern wealthy white people. A lot of it comes down to like, and I think that in some way, I hope that we get whodunit to take place outside of that world. The closest thing I could find is identity, which is technically a whodunit. And that's like a gritty whodunit oh yeah I saw that John Cusack is in it I think yeah and that at least doesn't like
Starting point is 00:30:11 concern rich people it's still all white people but it's not all rich people and it's supposed to be great I don't know it's like a fine movie but in general it concerns wealthy white people trying to figure out who murdered a wealthy white person. And the answer is always another wealthy white person. So that is kind of the history of the genre. It's definitely capable of more, but that's basically what it's been so far. Kind of including and like with some, even though Knives Out has twists, it's still concerned to wealthy white family. anyways as far as women go more women write whodunits than men in literature where there is like a huge legacy of female mystery authors that go into the present obviously agatha christie is the most famous one who wrote whodunits specifically but there is a huge legacy of
Starting point is 00:31:01 female mystery writers female whodunit writers and female detectives in media like your nancy drews and murder she wrote and on and on um and even though hercule poirot is a guy he was written by agatha christie's so there's a lot of female representation in on the novel side, there is no female representation in the movie adaptations of these female penned stories. None of this super applies to Clue because it is being adapted from a board game. Was written and rewritten by like four different men before the director ended up getting the writing credit. But there was like so many. Anthony Perkins did a draft of this script. Stephen Sondheim did a draft of this script Steven Sondheim did a draft of this script Tom Stoppard like the famous playwright did a draft of this script didn't John Landis also work on it or see like he has like a story by credit
Starting point is 00:31:57 he'd yeah he he was involved in it in the beginning he was originally supposed to direct but it's uh with the exception of feminist icon deborah hill um who also produced we've talked about her on the show before because of her um spearheading the halloween franchise yeah but with the exception this movie it's it's like the original stories are written by women and in hollywood they've only i mean down to ryan johnson basically only been adapted by men so that's kind of the thing I think I'm curious in your opinion on this Caitlin they still definitely work misogyny into this story and they work misogyny into most of these stories a lot of times when you see the room full of rich white people the women in the room are someone's his wife or
Starting point is 00:32:46 they're defined by their sexuality they're never defined by their job they usually take place in the past which I think people use as a justification for them to not have a job but what I like about this is like a but like just because of how a whodunit has to work I like that for the story to work you have to give the female characters agency. Otherwise, you're not going to suspect them. That's true. So in that way, I feel like it's one of the only movie genres that like empowering your female characters to a certain extent is like a necessity. And so that is partially why I like whodunits they're just fun
Starting point is 00:33:28 but that makes sense i don't know that's my that's uh my context corner for the whodunit genre appreciate it thank you it also reminds me of we've had this conversation not a ton but i've noticed in various slasher movies i've watched that there seems to be gender parity yeah in the cast of usually teenagers but it's because they need women there to have sex with the boys that are there uh so that the women can then be killed for having had sex so that they can um yeah yeah this is i this is weirdly i mean it's not a very horny movie and i and i like that for this movie this movie does feel like it could have very easily been a cartoon and i mean that as a compliment it is quite cartoony yeah um so that's the this is by far i think like the goofy like it's basically a parody of whodunit movies, which is kind of weird to watch now because they're not very popular anymore or they just became popular again.
Starting point is 00:34:32 So you're like there are certain tropes that they're making fun of that you're like, oh, is that a thing? I guess so. Whatever. Yeah, I feel like it was far more popular in like the film noir era. And I have a whole thing, a whole spiel on femme fatales but um it has a resurgence in the 70s as well there's a bunch of like solid ones from the 70s the best one imo being the last of sheila which is a which is a boat whodunit and it's really oh it's really it's super super fun and and anthony perkins uh was involved in writing that which is
Starting point is 00:35:05 why they asked him to write clue uh but he was just like no it's a lot of people quit clue no one could crack the story and some could argue they never did they never did i love when movies are adapted from a board game or a disney park ride like and then sometimes they have the audacity to be fun movies. But it's no wonder when the stories are often flimsy at best, because the source material is a game or a theme park ride. But yeah, in the 70s, you had Murder on the Orient Express, the original one. You had The Last of Sheila.
Starting point is 00:35:43 You had, what else did you have? The Beast Must Die. That's a weird one. Death on the Nile. That's a good one. So this would be coming off of, people would have more of a frame of reference than they do for it now. We basically just have Knives Out as really the only whodunit of our generation.
Starting point is 00:36:00 The more contemporary one. Sure. Well, that brings me to a section of my notes that i have entitled women be murdering so i'll start there hit it and this kind of focuses on the endings of the movie so we've got the three endings so in ending a which is the one where yvette kills the first two victims and then Miss Scarlet kills the rest. Right. So that's ending A.
Starting point is 00:36:29 Ending B is when Mrs. Peacock has killed everyone. In all versions of the story, Mrs. White is thought to have killed various husbands of hers. So when you include Mrs. White, between these first two endings, there are four people who have committed murder in either the backstory or on screen. And they are all women, which reminded me of sort of the femme fatale archetype, which is something we haven't talked about a lot because we haven't really covered any film noir or neo-noir i think the closest we got to really talking about it was in our who framed roger rodbett episode yeah which is behind the paywall on the matriarch but yeah yeah we haven't discussed it much yes so i felt as though at least
Starting point is 00:37:19 a few of the female characters in the story have some femme fatale traits especially miss scarlet miss scarlet for sure mrs white i feel like there's some things there yeah um i would like to cover a film noir sometime soon because i think it would be really interesting to talk about the femme fatale for sure trope get on our karina longworth wave oh yeah what's the what's the really famous one double indemnity i haven't seen that since film school where i only went once in any case i was like oh this is a you know it feels like there's these femme fatale like characters present in the story which i couldn't help but notice that like at least in the first two endings it's like oh there are like four evil women who be murdering everybody
Starting point is 00:38:12 my main thing is because it's like we have to believe like it is i i kind of wonder and they've never leaked what the fourth ending was i'm like was there murder parody if you had all four endings because it definitely does lean female heavy i'm like because there's a fourth one maybe it ended up being closer but yeah with the way it ends my my issue is i kind of like that they end up doing the murders because at least i'm like well at least they're doing things you know at least they're active. But my main thing is more how they're like, just in a movie that's so goofy, and you can write anyone as anyone, they're still relegated to being wives, with the exception of Miss Scarlet, who I feel like, you know, she she runs a business, but I feel like she even is like
Starting point is 00:39:02 shoved in a corner of like, well, of course course she wouldn't work for the government like all the men in the room you know she runs I don't know I mean I like all the female characters and I like they're all so cartoony and fun and it's kind of a bummer that all these male writers couldn't imagine past them being wives or sex workers like that is i feel like very telling of the authors because i don't think that there's clue i don't i actually i'll look that up i don't know if there's board game canon of like the people that these are supposed to be because they're given like board game canon names but the characters like the washington dc-ness is totally inherent to the movie. So they could be anybody. So I was bummed out by the endless choices. And then they were still relegated to the same kind of stereotypical roles. For sure.
Starting point is 00:39:54 And I have a feeling like the writers and the filmmakers would have justified that by being like, well, we said it in the 50s when, you know, women were housewives. And it's like like first of all not every woman and uh secondly you didn't have to do that and you didn't have to set it in the 50s right yeah like oh yeah that's always such a weak excuse to me i'm just like no one has a gun to jonathan lynn's head being like you better set it at a time that was difficult for women that you could have easily said that in the 80s and you're right like women were in the workforce in the 50s plenty of women had careers in the 50s it's why not right it's just kind of it's just a bummer choice in general because it could be more satisfying to see them do the murders if they were given i mean just like comparable motives to
Starting point is 00:40:47 to the male characters i guess the only like the it's i feel like it's a total waste of mrs peacock and also there's like mrs and ms and like they're always given these very like feminine you know identifiers of like is she married or is she not married exactly exactly which is i mean that's not a problem inherent to clue but right whereas like there's professor plum there's colonel mustard you know they have these like they're defined by their jobs their jobs jobs right so i was disappointed in that i still i i mrs white i i feel like mrs white is at least like there is some i guess i wouldn't call it like commentary necessarily but at least with her i feel like they are like poking fun at a trope that is seen in these movies of like i feel like
Starting point is 00:41:42 she's almost like a little bit of a like satirical femme fatale because she femme fatales in the same way over and over and over and over um which is kind of funny she has a line of dialogue when she says um husbands should be like kleenex soft strong and disposable yeah and we're like yes feminist icon mrs white because like it's right in that moment when we find out she's had five husbands who she has presumably killed them all and someone asks her like how many husbands have you had mrs white and she's like mine or other women's or something like that and it's like oh so she also like fucks a bunch of other people's husbands as well right and then
Starting point is 00:42:25 she tries to like seduce wadsworth at the end and you're just like or one of the ends i guess i don't even remember which one there my favorite mrs white quote is when she goes it's a matter of life after death now that he's dead i have a life and you're like it's also right around then that she says life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage and it's like she is literally like a kathy comic like she is such a like she's like a magnet on your mom's fridge like oh do you think she's just like really horny and she marries a man and once they get married they like don't want to have sex with her anymore so she just kills them so she can like marry the next guy i i kind of like that it's not specified i feel like it would have been a very easy throwaway joke for them to like
Starting point is 00:43:15 label her as like a gold digger or like something like that but we don't know why she kills all her husbands we're like that's just her thing that's what she does i really i i stand mrs white hard i really like her and that um i found out that that this was like a very heavily scripted movie but at the end though like one bit of improv that made it into the movie was whatever the ending is where she's like explaining why she did it and she's like the flames are in my face the flames the flames i guess she just like made that up and it stayed. You can tell that's improvised because it's not very tight. Because it makes no sense.
Starting point is 00:43:53 Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back. Woo! Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.
Starting point is 00:44:27 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.
Starting point is 00:44:55 We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you.
Starting point is 00:45:19 Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music
Starting point is 00:45:40 and I just was like, who is this person? I gotta 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.
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Starting point is 00:46:48 The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah. I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take? Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. All right. So my main issue or one of my main issues with the movie is the violence that is enacted against women which be so okay so this is a movie where there's a lot of cartoony but still pretty brutal violence that happens to a lot of different characters of of all genders such as a bunch of
Starting point is 00:47:34 people are murdered but but the way it's done to women is different it's different women are assaulted physically or sexually to a greater extent. And it's sometimes like not even as a murder. Sometimes it's just as a sight gag. Exactly. Where there's a few examples. Yes. So I have a list of examples.
Starting point is 00:47:54 Hit it. Professor Plum grabs Miss Scarlet's ass at the very beginning. Gets its own insert shot. Why? It's I guess to establish that he is horny because we later find out his backstory of having his medical license being revoked because he assaulted his female patients which again like you mentioned jamie is played as a joke for mr body grabs yvette's ass at dinner mrs peacock is screaming after she thinks she's might have been poisoned and mr green slaps her across the face and then he goes like what i had to get her to stop screaming yeah and then later
Starting point is 00:48:40 wadsworth slaps her again when he's recreating that moment with his like little recap. Yeah. With Caitlin. And Caitlin has never slapped someone during a recap for the record. It's true. But yeah, I mean, I think that there's a few moments there where it's just like the joke is like women be hysterical.
Starting point is 00:49:01 Right. There's a lot of like moments of i mean and there's a few moments where men are screaming but it's far outnumbered by like usually mrs peacock but also it's it's the um yvette at one point but it's just like you know women be hysterical is is alive and well in this movie right women be overreacting women be uh women be fainting we have several different it's and i think it's mostly mrs peacock but she faints a number of times then we see the cook she pretty early in the story gets murdered her dead body is lugged and dragged around dropped trampled on they also like mock her body as well like they make it seem like she's really difficult to lift and just it's so like i mean there's only two
Starting point is 00:49:53 people of color in this movie and they are both killed almost instantly and to add insult to injury yeah the cook does not even get a name and they like make fun of her they body shame her corpse and you're just like what on earth totally because she's a plus-size woman and the movie goes out of its way to show how difficult it is for the other characters to like lift her and carry her yeah and she's like yeah she's totally body shamed even after her death and it's horrible yeah but it's a very body normative casting process so it's very like it's very egregious the way that that's presented for sure a few more examples on this list is that um the characters are looking at colonel mustard's compromising sex photos and mrs white says no one can get into that position and professor plum's
Starting point is 00:50:47 like sure they can let me show you and then he like grabs mrs white kind of pushes her down on a couch and then like gets on top of her to demonstrate this thing and she's like oh get off of me oh we see professor plum rest his hand on the cook's butt again after she's dead yeah for no reason just just to a visual joke i guess there's a yeah i mean i think most of the like assaults on women and and that i mean none of them are not jokes they're all they're all jokes it the logic is very like this is how you treat women but at an 11 right yeah uh and then there was i think one more that i noticed which is that um colonel mustard and miss scarlet are searching the house together they like go into a dark room
Starting point is 00:51:32 and he's like what room is this and she says search me as in like i don't know but then he starts groping her and she has to be like get your mitts off of me. So, yeah, it's just women being assaulted constantly. And then I would argue and there's a whole conversation to be had about Mr. Green's sexuality. But except for in the third ending when they they like undo him being a queer man. Right. You assume for most of the movie that he is gay because he identifies himself as such. Yeah. for most of the movie that he is gay because he identifies himself as such yeah um but i would argue that he is also more brutalized than the other straight male characters there's a bunch
Starting point is 00:52:12 of scenes where he like there and again there's a lot of scenes where like a lot of the characters are being rough with each other right but i feel like mr green gets the worst of it because you see that scene where you know wadsworth is is dragging him around and throwing him down on the floor during the recap. And then he's also slapped twice by two different men at the end of this, like at the second ending. I feel like that is supposed to like directly imply that you would treat a queer man the way you would treat a woman. It's just, yeah. The only part of, I mean, it's Mr. Green's character. I mean, it's just, it's complicated. It's character. I mean, it's just, it's complicated.
Starting point is 00:52:47 It's weird. I mean, there's one, yeah, you're right. There's one ending where they totally undo it and they're like, just kidding, no homo. And that's like the ending joke of that version of the movie. Because he says like, I'm an FBI plant and I'm going to go home and have sex with my wife. Because like.
Starting point is 00:53:06 I couldn't tell if that was like if that was undoing it or if that was him like lying to his coworkers. I wasn't sure what. Oh, I didn't even consider that. I thought maybe that the way I interpreted it, although like I think that it's easily interpreted your way as well, was that he because he says at the beginning like I am a gay man I am not ashamed of this but if my workplace finds out I'll be fired and at the end he's in front of all his co-workers so I thought he was like gotta go have sex with my wife bye that very well could be the case my interpretation of it was that like and this is maybe just like my Bechdel goggles like clouding my vision a little too much sometimes and me being very cynical but I was like oh because he's allowed to be the hero
Starting point is 00:53:51 in this version of the story they're not going to allow him to be gay his declaration of being a gay man is was fake like revoked listeners sound off yeah I think that there's different ways to look at it i guess i'll optimistically hope that he is like just kidding i'm going home to my communist boyfriend i hope i hope that too um but yeah no i i do agree that he's like treated physically different than the um identified hetero guys in in the story um it's it's frustrating because it's like 1985 we have a queer character who it's not coded they state it there's no shame involved with it but even in that scene where he says like i'm not ashamed of it you cut to three different characters who clearly think it's gross for sure um where everyone's like oh what and then and then
Starting point is 00:54:46 it's kind of like i mean like every every like suspect character you don't just there's too many you can't spend that much time with them but then it just kind of like disappears i don't know i don't like i like that choice for a character and like in the era they choose to set the movie in which they did not have to but like they do i like that there's some queer representation i just don't like that how it unfolds and how it's really handled so it's it stinks the first like 30 seconds of it is like really cool and then it becomes not cool anymore because in addition to him saying like i feel no guilt or shame about that the movie allows him to come out himself
Starting point is 00:55:26 like because wadsworth is he's outing everyone else's wrongdoings or whatever it is that they're being blackmailed for and then finally it comes to mr green and he stands up and he's like here's my thing so like no one outs him he's the only person that's done nothing wrong. Also. Exactly. Totally. Right. Yeah. But yeah, he like he comes out himself. No one outs him because like, Wadsworth was, you know, revealing everyone else's secrets, but Mr. Green comes out himself. So the fact that he was the movie allows him to do that was interesting and unexpected for me. I kind of wonder, because there were so many drafts of this script, it's kind of impossible to track who that belonged to. But Anthony Perkins was a queer writer.
Starting point is 00:56:14 I'm like, maybe that's an Anthony Perkins thing. I don't know. I wonder. Queer visibility in the movie clue. But yeah, I'd be interested to hear what our queer listeners think about that and if you have any additional insights let us know yeah we already touched on the very limited number of of people of color in the movie the cook the cop are the only two they are not given actual names they're both minor characters who were
Starting point is 00:56:46 killed not long after we meet them they didn't need to kill the cop like that i was like bummed i was bummed out um and i always am bummed out that they because he's of such a fun character he enters and it's kind of fun to have like a bumbling cop character who's like everything looks fine to me and everyone's like you know humping corpses and it's funny and he's like they're just having a good time right it's so it's so funny he's like this man's drunk like dead drunk dead right yeah there's there's so much dumb wordplay in this movie i like it um yeah there was no i don't think that that character needed to die and he like that's a fun character to keep in the mix for the rest of the movie. Sure.
Starting point is 00:57:27 Yeah. Yeah. And then let's not forget the reveal that Mrs. Peacock's favorite recipe was monkey brains, quote, though popular in Cantonese cuisine are not, you know, often found in Washington, D.C. or whatever. Yeah. So just a racist little detail that absolutely didn't need to be there yeah this movie it's weird because it's like this movie is very of its time and then it's also very of the 1950s so it's just like two eras that uh don't fare well for most people that are not straight white guys in one movie. Tim Curry, can't say it
Starting point is 00:58:08 enough, though. He's great. Oh, love him. Things, things, facts about there, there was like a pretty good oral history style piece about Clue that came out, I think in 2013. That just kind of tracks. There's not, I mean, there's not a lot of, you know, wildness behind the scenes of this movie. It was written and rewritten by a bunch of different men. A bunch of writers quit to the point where the director had to finish it. The closest thing I could find to any controversy behind the scenes was the costuming. I guess that Jonathan Lynn definitely needlessly had his female actors wear really constrictive corsets during the course of,
Starting point is 00:58:52 which is like, wasn't even a thing in the 50s really. So no, what is this? Titanic? Right. Doing up Rose's corset. So they all had to like wear these brutal corsets and they just like laid out these like diagonal boards so that if the women like felt short of breath, they could just lean against the board and catch their breath and keep shooting. So that's that's not very thoughtful.
Starting point is 00:59:19 Meanwhile, I read that like between takes because there's the billiards room where there was an actual pool table and stuff. The men would play pool and the women had to like, you know, lie down because of their painful costume. Yeah. That's cool. Well, then speaking of costumes, we've got Yvette's French maid costume. Yes. Which and she's like a French character I don't even know what to even say about that besides like that's ridiculous her whole character is essentially a
Starting point is 00:59:53 visual joke in many different ways where it's like her her boobs are very much out it's a very short like it it's more of a French maid costume that you would see in like a soft porn than yeah or like on like halloween like people being like i'm a sexy french maid right and it's like the the the actress who who played um yvette let me get her name like colleen camp she was like completely on board with it um she thought it was funny it wasn't like it wasn't the situation where she like she didn't want to be presented in that way she was you know fine with it but i mean it is just it's such a male gazey like there's that really long shot from the top of the stairs down onto her cleavage that is just it's a long shot strictly because you're supposed to be ogling her boobs like that's just a they
Starting point is 01:00:42 make they make a visual joke of her a lot and i mean i guess that the only argument for it is that the actress was in on the joke and okay with it but it's still it's just like it's just juvenile and dumb right yeah i mean if she wanted to wear it and she was cool with it you know more power to her body her choice but but yeah i mean i think in the costuming department and because it's clear that the character was written as being presented that way it's like a pretty clear like male gaze visual joke but yeah she's cool so oh also so let's talk about the weapons shall we i was wondering okay are there because we talk so much about women's weapons,
Starting point is 01:01:30 are there any actual weapons given to women? I couldn't track which weapon went to which person. Here's what I remember. I didn't write down exactly who was gifted what, but from memory. Because there are some household objects, but then there's also some weapons. Professor Plum receives the gun. Okay. Mrs. Peacock receives, I think she's the one who gets the dagger. Oh, okay. Ms. Scarlet gets the candlestick. So she is a woman who gets the household item. At the very least, this is board game canon, but. That's, yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:56 Mrs. White gets the rope. Okay. Colonel Mustard gets, I think, the wrench. Okay. Sort of a weapon. I don't know. A tool more than anything mr green which one does he get oh the pipe so the main one that's a like domestic you know like kind
Starting point is 01:02:15 of more i guess none of them are very gendered items except maybe you could argue that like the candlestick is like a more decor than anything else. And if we're. Yeah, that's. I mean, I guess we do see it in various. And again, I'm like, I can't track the endings of this. But we do see Yvette shoot a gun. Like there's like women do get to use weapons in this movie. And especially because in two out of the three endings, they are the culprits for the most part. Yes. We get to see weapons in this movie and especially because in two out of the three endings they are the culprits for the most part yes um we get to see them using them we see yvette also stab the
Starting point is 01:02:51 cook with the dagger yes yeah that one ending we also but then we see yvette kill mr body with the candlestick which is again of those items it's the one that's the most sort of like domestic item. Right. But then Professor Plum uses it to, can we also revoke him of his professor title? Because he's a fucking rapist. Well, it's the 50s. He'd never get fired for being a rapist. Mr. Plum, I'll call him.
Starting point is 01:03:21 He uses the candlestick. So, yeah, it feels like there's kind of like it doesn't feel to me that the movie subscribes to anything like the women have to use like quote feminine items and the men get to use like actual weapons that's a relief okay because i i was i liked that in i mean i don't really like all the endings kind of suck but but the fact that you do get to see women like they're not relegated to certain weapons that is that's a pro yeah feminist icon lead pipe yes you i love to see a lead pipe connecting um that's good that's good yeah carrie fisher was supposed to be miss scarlet in this
Starting point is 01:04:01 movie and then um she wasn't able to do the movie so that makes me sad she would have been so good in this i know well speaking of miss scarlet i don't remember exactly how much we touched on this or not but so she's like a sex worker she runs she runs her own business yes she runs an escort service and she seems to be like proud of her work um so whether or not other characters are obviously other characters think that her work is unsavory because she's being blackmailed for it but um there's no shame that she feels attached to her work i like i mean i guess my i'm like and this is like asking more of clue than i could possibly give you but it, some of the endings get into like, oh, this was a former employee of hers and blah, blah, blah,
Starting point is 01:04:46 where I'm like, cool, she has her own business. She is like sex worker representation. But then I'm always like, but if she's the boss, like I need some more information. How does she treat her employees who are also all women? Is she protecting them? Is she selling them out to well yeah because and that brings that'll bring me to some like motive things i want to talk about but um i think
Starting point is 01:05:13 it's the like ending a the first one we see she says the line like all members of the oldest profession i'm a capitalist right so apparently she loves capitalism she well everyone in this movie loves capitalism so much um yeah so i'd like i like it's like some representation but i don't think it's it's particularly right everyone everyone in this story except for mr green is a horrible person just canonically their whole bad bad bad what is it isn't it colonel mustard you find out that he like took like radio parts from different like world war ii um like fighter jets and then a bunch it killed a bunch of like american soldiers and he's like what i love money i was confused about that i love i mean that actor martin mole like shout out to him he's he is Jean Parmesan he was he's been he was um Willard Craft
Starting point is 01:06:07 on Sabrina the Teenage Witch oh wow uh he was on Danny Phantom and he was on my favorite obscure 70s um soap opera Mary Hartman Mary Hartman not familiar with that one he's a he's a camp icon he's wonderful everything he does is so goofy um so yeah i i want to talk about a little bit about um the various women's like motivations for committing murder because again in various endings we have some of the female characters being murderers or not um but the ones that we do find out about like in ending c for example we learn that mrs white's motive for killing yvette was like jealousy like yvette and her husband had had an affair so see i thought about i thought about that too but i ended up landing on being like i kind of it kind of ended
Starting point is 01:07:01 up being a wash for me because she at least it's not that situation where it's like the woman will just kill the woman who cheated with the husband and the husband gets no comeuppance. True. Because she kills all of her husbands too. Yeah, good point. So, I mean, I don't like the jealousy motive, but at least if it had to be any of the female characters killing someone out of jealousy, at least with her her character it bugs me less because you know she's already killed five men that's true yeah so let's examine some of these other ones we've got miss scarlet killed the cop in ending c so that one doesn't really mrs peacock killed the cook so that's a woman killing a woman but i forget even why she was the informant
Starting point is 01:07:47 or something i mean no one's motivation for murdering makes sense the plot is often nonsensical and it is very difficult to track so yeah maybe i mean the one that did stick out to me the most was like the jealousy one in ending c at least um and endings a and b you have yvette and miss scarlet killing everyone or miss mrs peacock killing everyone i really have to go back and re-watch what all the motives were for those women to kill the other women so maybe this conversation is just moot it is kind of hard to track in terms of the endings like what is like somewhat success and what is just simply bad writing um i don't know i don't know i don't know let's see i wanted to point out that okay so a lot of attention is brought to the fact that tim curry steps in dog shit at the beginning of the movie and i kept thinking that was going to pay off in some way. It doesn't. It doesn't. Not at all.
Starting point is 01:08:45 There's a few insert shots in this movie that you're like, why did you draw our attention to that? Right? Is that another red herring? Is that supposed to be a red herring? I don't know. But then if it never, but it can't be a red herring if it never comes up ever again.
Starting point is 01:08:57 Exactly. It's just like a thing. It's just bad writing. Yeah. I was like, oh, there's probably going to be like a poopy footprint that like is a clue but that never happens no yeah i also didn't i mean i didn't love another like mrs white choice was i didn't love when they had her like try to seduce wadsworth at the end i didn't think that that was
Starting point is 01:09:19 super necessary but it's i don't all the endings suck i'm like i just the endings are just a full like i don't know maybe this goes back to the kind of femme fatale conversation but um in the beginning of the movie colonel mustard quotes kipling yes bad person saying the female of the species is more deadly than the male and it's like okay is that foreshadowing of some of those endings i feel like maybe that's as close as the movie gets for you to be like oh suspicion but it is weird how little the movie tries to get you to suspect anyone they're just like don't know also just another fun fact i learned was that mr bean almost played tim curry's part but he wasn't Mr. Bean yet and
Starting point is 01:10:06 people said he wasn't famous enough Rowan Atkinson yeah yeah yeah Mr. Bean visibility very low in this movie very low in this movie you know but Frank Conferter visibility high I love Tim Curry I was thinking about I I think I'm gonna watch the Tim Curry it soon I have never seen it oh my god oh it's pretty good i have some issues with it but tim curry as it i know it's like oh it has to be great amazing you'll love it i'm excited um yeah i think that's about all i had to say do you have anything else jamie no i mean it's the rompometer i mean caitlin what do you say I say it's pretty high it's a 10 out of 10 on the Caitlin romp-o-meter it's right everyone's romping away um especially act three when Tim Curry is dashing around the house it gets so so so so rompy then yeah I don't
Starting point is 01:11:00 know I mean it's like this movie is so fun it puts me in a good mood i love whodunits and i love whodunits that don't take themselves super seriously and this is like on the far end of that spectrum yeah but like there's i mean whodunits that take themselves very seriously can be such a drag that movie gosford park it's like three hours long and you're just like oh i need to re-watch that i barely remember that one. It's not great. I mean, I think it was like critically acclaimed, but it's deeply boring. It's so boring. Like, you know, whodunits, they got to be fast and they got to be fun.
Starting point is 01:11:33 And this is Clue Does It. It's great. There's a movie I think you would like. It's not really a whodunit, but it takes place in the context of like a rich family. And it all it mostly takes place within their mansion. But that movie Ready or Not. Oh, I haven't seen that it was fun i liked it a lot i'm down i'm like i'm looking for for fun like thrillers and whodunits are my shit like it puts me in a good mood yay yeah so does this movie pass the bechdel test honestly i have no idea because I was too busy trying to follow the plot to pay attention to that.
Starting point is 01:12:07 I was also a little unclear. I think that there are passing things where there's a few times where like Mrs. Peacock will say something to Scarlet and Scarlet will respond. But there's no scene between two women. There is only like women talking to each other in passing in the crossfire but the but often the subtext of the conversation is who killed this man uh right so or there's a man will respond to a quite like right i would say soft no there might be some barely passes but i would say probably not right because even though there is like pretty even there's like gender parity generally some of the side characters who come and then get murdered right away if you include everybody you see on screen there are probably more men but as far as like the core
Starting point is 01:12:55 cast it feels like there are it's pretty split down the middle but anytime like characters have to pair off together it's always like a man paired with a woman. There's there are no. Which is kind of a bummer. Yeah, definitely no extended conversations between women. Yeah. Like you said, it might just be like a two line thing here and there. But again, I didn't even notice there were.
Starting point is 01:13:17 I wrote down my favorite exchange between two women. Hit it. This is Miss Scarlet asking Mrs mrs peacock at dinner i think this is in response to professor plum mr plum yes saying that he doesn't practice medicine anymore and miss scarlet says i think most men need a little practice don't you mrs peacock but of course that doesn't even pass because she says yeah men right in the damn sentence. She sure does. But yeah, I kind of stopped. I forgot to keep paying attention after the dinner scene of like women talking to each
Starting point is 01:13:52 other. But there are a few like, again, two line exchanges between women. But they're always like, hey, Mrs. White, what does your husband do? That's like Mrs. Peacock asking her things like that. So it's basically a no i would say no and i guess let's just jump on over to the nipple scale yeah so this is our nipple scale on a scale of one to five nipples how well do we zero zero to five zero sorry zero to five uh i've been on this show before uh the zero to five, based on how well we feel it represents women.
Starting point is 01:14:27 I'm going to give it, I think between how often we see women be assaulted, and even if the women push back against the man who is assaulting her in that moment, the movie always frames it as a visual joke. And just between everything we've talked about i'm gonna give it maybe a two because some of the women like the women do often like you said jamie have agency they have motivations for murdering each other and also murdering men they're doing stuff. They're active participants in the story. I feel like of the discoveries that get made or the clues that get found and like the characters piecing things together. I feel like it's mostly men doing that.
Starting point is 01:15:17 And it's honestly mostly Wadsworth. Like Tim Curry seems to be doing a lot of it. But even like when they discover like the secret do okay i remember what's his name colonel mustard discovers the one secret passageway do you remember if it's miss scarlet that does the other one or is it him both times i took that as a note i as well that i forgot to bring up earlier but yeah all of the plan making after them as the murders are being committed all of the plan making is initiated by male characters are being committed all of the plan making is initiated by male characters and all of all of the major discoveries unless there's something we're
Starting point is 01:15:49 missing um are made by male characters but it's like colonel mustard at one point says okay this is what we need to do and then wadsworth takes over and it's like okay we're gonna do the short stick thing and blah blah blah like right women don't really initiate the plan ever okay in that case i'm gonna drop it down to one and a half nipples then it is a really fun movie that i enjoy but yeah women aren't given enough to do they're not given any sort of like skill because like with the colonel mustard thing being like i'm military so i have a good strategy like he's given a background that enables him to like do stuff whereas all the women have her husbands and that's how they are identified except for miss scarlet and even just
Starting point is 01:16:32 ends up using her sexuality to like try to seduce people sometimes but then she also gets assaulted it's a mess one and a half nipples uh and i'll give i guess i'll just divvy them up between mrs peacock miss scarlet and mrs white but also yvette and also the cook no just kidding i'm gonna give all one and a half nipples to the cook she deserved far better than she got before i give well i'm also gonna give it a one and a half but i think alfred molina could have played tim curry's part very well yeah he would have really been, if there was ever a clue reboot, bring him in, he would kill it. And Alfred Molina is never allowed
Starting point is 01:17:11 to be identifiably British. So it would be a great opportunity for him. True. I think Alfred Molina could have played every single part. Yeah. Like this is a movie made for him. It's like kind of disappointing
Starting point is 01:17:24 that he was not in it. And I don't mean every character would a movie made for him it's like kind of disappointing that he was not in it but and i don't mean every character would have been good for him i'm saying he should be cast in every single role a la nutty professor eddie murphy yeah yeah like when deep roy was every oompa loompa in the factory yeah it's yes that's what i mean and all alfred molina reboot of i swear to god mark my words one day alfred molina is going to star in my rasputin movie That's what I mean. An all Alfred Molina reboot of Gloop. I swear to God, mark my words, one day Alfred Molina is going to star in my Rasputin movie and then it's over for everybody. I'm going to give this movie one and a half as well.
Starting point is 01:17:54 I think that the whodunit genre has a lot of potential for women because you have to empower all your characters on a fairly even keel. But I don't think this movie does the best of um making use of that freedom and necessity um i think if there had been a female writer involved or more women involved in general um that would probably not be the case but i like i mean i just all the performances from female actors in this movie are great uh for sure i i agree that the cook deserved better the cop deserved better uh it's a very i mean it's a very white movie and it's a very white genre um that is due for you know like some just different perspectives because it's like
Starting point is 01:18:37 i'm sure that there's ones i don't know about but like all the major whodunit canon is straight white guys yeah listeners if you have any suggestions for ones that deviate from that mold uh let us know that would be great yeah i mean it's like and i love ryan johnson but including ryan johnson um yes anyways uh yeah 1.5 i'm gonna give mine to mrs white because i like that she's a stone cold killer yeah yeah that's the episode gang that's all folks thanks for listening uh you can follow us on social media on twitter and instagram i'm about to disable our facebook page because i we don't check it so if you want email us instead if you want to send us a message on facebook or something, instead we have an email address that we always forget to give out, but it's thebechtelcast at gmail.com.
Starting point is 01:19:32 It's infinitely more likely that we would see that than anything on Facebook. Sorry. So RIP Facebook in general. But yeah, contact us. And then now is also a great time to get on the matreon wave if you haven't uh we've been welcoming a lot of new members to the matreon um but that's patreon.com slash bechtelcast there are i think over 60 episodes at this point um just additional movies a lot of popular requests that haven't been on the main feed are over there. And this month is gathering before a wedding month.
Starting point is 01:20:08 And we did bridesmaids and we are releasing our hangover episode soon. So yes, all that and more over on the Matreon. Indeed. You can also get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Oh, here's another thing I would like to plug. Remember when I talked about Sludge earlier? Oh, yeah. Listen to my Sludge podcast.
Starting point is 01:20:31 For crying out loud. Season two is great. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Yeah, it's a focus on the first season is a focus on my personal experience operating within the broken health care system in the US where I was diagnosed with sludge, aka gallstones, and all the hoops I had to jump through to get any sort of treatment. Season two is an exploration of other people's stories with a particular focus on the bias they
Starting point is 01:20:59 have been on the receiving end of when it comes to healthcare professionals being biased towards various marginalized people and how certain patients have had a more difficult time accessing healthcare because of the patriarchal system that we live within. So check that out. And listen to My Ear and Mensa as well. It's been out for a while, but hey, if you didn't, now you could. It's not against the law, and you should give it a shot. Not like murder is. Not like murder. Yeah, so, you know.
Starting point is 01:21:38 It's great. I love it so much. Listen to My Year in Mensa. Listen to Sludge. And thanks for tuning in. Take care of yourselves. Yeah. Do what you can for people and take care of your brain and your body.
Starting point is 01:21:52 And we love you. We love you. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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.
Starting point is 01:22:15 Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Farrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just
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