The Bechdel Cast - Contact with Kelly McCormack

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

On this episode, scientists Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Kelly McCormack make contact with aliens and have a discussion with them about the movie Contact.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @kelmccormack on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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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. Hello listeners, it's Jamie and Caitlin and we're coming to you from the future. Here's the deal. We recorded this episode a while ago. We recorded it, I think, a few months ago now. And because this is an episode about space, we referenced the potential of a billionaire space race and how ridiculous

that is in the episode. But when we recorded it, it wasn't quite as full blown a thing as it is now. So if it sounds a little off, that is the reason why but well we've got you here uh future jamie and future caitlin uh yeah we just wanted to sort of bring everybody i guess up to speed you probably know unfortunately because billionaires sure do get a lot of press oh i thought we were going to be talking about space jam a new legacy is that not the space that you saw it but do you did you is it like as completely bizarre as it looks because it looks so bizarre it was the mystery machine in it why are the people from a clockwork orange in it oh right yeah because the movie is more concerned about reminding you that other warner brothers intellectual properties exist than it is about telling a

story that makes any sense the plot like is borderline incomprehensible the movie is just like one frame of sensory overload after another it's unwatchable is it good bad or is it just like no okay that's a bummer i was like i i do i want i'll still watch it because i have hbo max but like it just looked bad bad oh god so depressing it's whenever whenever a movie is like we're just um here for ip it's like well yeah jesus not not worth it was very disappointed was hoping for a fun you know because the first space jam is fun a classic this one is not yeah i i uh i think the only more depressing space topic than the fact that space jam 2 sucks is that the fact that there is a three-way billionaire white guy space race going on right

now yes it's the most just dystopian thing in the world it's between three of the biggest losers on the planet that like it shouldn't be illegal to kill them in minecraft of course um and those losers are elon musk jeff bezos and richard branson so yeah that is now officially a thing richard branson has already been to space it goes without saying that you know, we talk about this in the episode a little bit as well. But the fact that, you know, exploring space is not the problem here. I understand human curiosity. It makes sense that people want to explore space. It's the fact that these motherfuckers are going to space for PR instead of curing world hunger, which they literally could do. And so it is just like disgusting and embarrassing in every potential way. I wanted to just read a quick quote

that came out in July 2021 from a piece that I really liked that I felt like broke this down pretty well in Jacobin magazine. I've never tried to say that out loud, the writer is Luke Savage, and he says this, quote, more straightforwardly, extreme wealth in the capitalist age is by definition engaged in a constant and desperate scramble for new sources of ethical legitimacy. Billionaires need a public facing reason to exist. And for the time being, at least, owning the rights to bits of paper and expropriating surplus value still doesn't quite cut the mustard. If, on the other hand, plutocratic pursuits and the impossibly decadent lifestyles surrounding them can be packaged as extensions of a progressive human project, so much the better.

The likes of private islands, luxury estates, and Silicon Valley sweatshops are now justifying themselves with all the pomp and sober purpose of Neil Armstrong taking his first step onto the surface of the moon, unquote. And, you know, five dollar words aside, I feel like that that kind of like puts together, you know, the issue isn't a curiosity in space it's repackaging billionaires going to space for attention and also for again personal profit in the effort to literally colonize space that is the problem uh so bad time pr wise for space but bravely we're doing a contact episode anyways yeah jody foster going to space fine jeff bezos going to space no thanks that's my yeah wouldn't it be interesting if there was a little accident you'd be wild if this episode came up and then it was like it's just i feel too powerful at this point because i did call j-lo and you did Ben Affleck getting back together. So I have to be careful. So what I'm saying is, what if Jeff Bezos' spaceship blew up? Could be interesting. Look. Okay. Enjoy the episode.

Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. No, it's not Caitlin. It's your father, but it's actually also not your father. What? I'm an alien. Oh, my God. This is so confusing. I hope we're on an island that looks like a screensaver. Yes, we are. But actually, that's what it looks like to you. But actually, we're on a star.

We're near a star. We're on a planet. We're in the sky on a planet near the star Vega. Oh, okay. Get it? That makes good tracks for me for me oh and have you just you just haven't why haven't you reached out before now um i like how he's just like that's just kind of how it works here you're like sir uh excuse me i texted you 26 years ago

and you're just now responding rude that would have been that would have that explanation in that scene would have made way more sense to me of like time works so differently i i just got here it feels like but instead he pulls like kind of you know a classically male thing to do uh would just be like i don't know i just i don't know you seemed like you're fine i don't know yeah what seemed like you were fine. I don't know. Yeah, what's the big deal? This is a Bechdelcast. My name's Jamie Loftus.

My name's Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast where we take a look at your favorite or least favorite movies with an intersectional feminist lens. And today, we're taking a little pod all the way to space a little podcast this is our yeah this is what that's how the way that jodie foster feels when she gets into the pod is how i feel when we press record i go i'm okay i'm good what did she say she's like i'm good to go i'm okay to go i'm okay to go. I'm okay to go. That's what Caitlin and I are doing for like 10 minutes before every episode starts.

And we're getting like more and more afraid. And then there's people in another room that are like, that's what Aristotle was like before. You know, it's a whole thing. And then we record for 18 hours. Yeah. But the audio never saves. Yeah, it's just static thing. And then we record for 18 hours. Yeah. But then the audio never saves. Yeah, it's just static. Too soon.

Too soon. Listen, listen. Things happen, listeners. And sometimes audio corrupts and you live and you learn. But that's not going to happen today. That is not going to happen today. Today we're talking about contact. And we have an incredible guest with us here. We certainly do. Kelly is a filmmaker, actor, writer and producer and actor on the film Sugar Daddy. It's Kelly McCormick. Welcome. Wormhole, ready to go. I go.

What was it? You're okay to go? Okay to go. Okay to go. Okay to go okay to go okay to go okay to go that's quite literally how I feel entering a zoom chat at all times I'm like am I ready to go am I not ready to go yeah it's horrific like when you're in the waiting room you have to like confirm your video you're like oh I guess that is how I look I'm go. Yeah, like the series of questions it asks you where you're expecting for your video to pop up and it become your new reality. And it just says, wait, we want to know if your audio is working. And you're like, I'm okay to go. And they're like, what? We need to know if your video is working.

I am okay to go. Like, I need to go. It's truly words to live by. Honestly, yeah. You know what, Jamie? we forgot to describe what the the bechdel test is oh my gosh we were not okay to go it turns out we after all that to do we were not okay to go well we can tell them now yeah it's fortunately this isn't rocket science and it's okay if we fuck up just a little bit. Yes. The Bechdel Test is a media metric

created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace Test. I like how we have like, it's just like, I don't even have to think about it when I describe it. It's just like- I'm always okay to go. Yeah, we're, it's true. Anyway, it's a media metric that requires,

for our purposes, our rendition of the test. Two people of a marginalized gender have names have to speak to each other about something other than a man for a two-line exchange of dialogue or like for us it's a meaningful conversation that might impact the narrative in some way right so right you know not every movie's gonna pass i guess we'll just see we'll have to see how contact does i actually did i as time goes on as we talk about all the time i always like we're always forgetting to pay attention uh to whether it passes the vector test because it's you know it's like not the most important thing we discussed by a mile but i did pay i don't i was i

was on my toes for this one same yeah I think probably I think it probably is when there's only like two female characters you pay closer attention because you're like oh I just I just wonder right right yes yeah so yes today's movie is contact Kelly what's your what's your relationship with this movie what's your history with this I have a really emotional history with this? I have a really emotional history with this, which I was reliving last night when I rewatched the film for the first time, not on VHS, which was the last time I watched this film. Yeah, I, it's actually sort of special. And the more I thought about it, you know, watching the film and musing over it, I was like, I guess that is a pretty special connection. I grew up with a very large family of many, many, many cousins. And we went up to this wilderness sort of space with no electricity and no hot running water every summer. And we were

super nerds, like absolute super nerds. We played Dungeons and Dragons. We played Magic Cards. We played Fifth Age. I read pretty much exclusively science fiction and fantasy from age like 10 to now. That was all. I sort of like not. I guess I've read other things now. But that was our like the lifeblood of our family dynamic. That's what we talked about the most. And I had 11 older cousins that

were all male. I was the first like female born, like cousin of the group of people of the, of the major super family. And, uh, one of my older cousins, Kevin was our smartest, most, um, shrewd minded sci-fi obsessed cousin and and for people who have cousins like naming cousins as these like icons I feel like we'll feel familiar you know like these archetypes like everyone everyone has a sci-fi cousin everyone has and he he was the one who ran all of our fifth age campaigns and our which is sort of a hybrid of or not a hybrid an extension of dungeons and dragons that plays with the dragon lines books and he was the one who would be like the game master of all of our magic card games and he was

the guy who we all sort of looked up to for the uh sci-fi fantasy um like advice. And he was the one who was like the last word on all of it. And he started reading Carl Sagan's book, Contact. And I remember him, I was quite young, I was like 12. And I remember him reading this copy that had been up on the island in a stack of books that is probably 75 years old. And he's reading it and he's talking about it and he's talking about transcendental numbers and how much math there is in it and talking about pi and and and I was really into math and I was really into science and stuff and obviously science fiction and I kind of got this feeling that if I could understand contact if I could read contact and understand it then maybe Kevin would

like talk, you know, I was so young, but I just, I looked up to him so much. I was like, well, maybe he'll, maybe he'll talk to me and I'll, and I'll be like one of the, one of the smarter cousins. So he had this copy that he read in the corner of the cabin. And then when he went to bed or when he put it down, i would secretly pick it up and try and like understand because the yeah the carl sagan book is it's much more uh it's it's technically hard science fiction it's sort of classified in that um really logic-based math-based sort of isaac asimov school of science fiction rather than like the philosophical, well it is philosophical, but the other end of the spectrum,

which would be like Orwellian sci-fi, which is a little more digestible sociology. So I read the book or I, you know, I tried to understand it. I think I did. And then I begged my mom to rent it from Blockbuster. I think,

I think it was a Blockbuster rent. And I think we just paid that late fee so many times because I think I lost it or stole it away because I watched it so many times. And I haven't seen it since, since before last night. And last night I watched it and there was so many things I forgot, I guess, conflated from the book, mainly Matthew McConaughey. I mean, let's get into it. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm so curious to hear about, because I didn't do too much research on the book, but the Matthew McConaughey character and storyline just reeked of studio notes to me. I'm very curious of how much of that is, is the case? Yeah, well, I did read the book when I was somewhere between 12 and 15. But from my memory, there was, so first of all, let's just, I just want to say Jodie Foster, like, I just want to say, first name Jodie, last name Foster, Let's just start with that because I mean now I can look back on the book and I just see her face and that's imbuing the text with such marvel that I'm really excited to sort of revisit that book but as I remember it there are a couple weird alterations from the book. Number one her mother is not dead. And I am Canadian. So I will say I've had a couple conversations with Canadian filmmakers and American filmmakers

about how fascinating it is that American studio movies kill off mothers and Canadian movies kill off fathers. It's like a very interesting, I guess if you look at disney movies it's like the most obvious sort of big marquee version of that but there always seems to be this dead mother absent mother she dies in the first 10 minutes um and the mother in this film is sort of no different but in the book she is this constant character um of pushing Dr. Ellie, as I believe it, again, 13-year-old brain, 12-year-old brain, pushing Dr. Ellie to make a choice

between the personal and the professional at all times. And she has this, yeah, she has this father that she idolizes, but then he dies, and then her stepdad is not as good. And then the whole story, you know, know kind of follows and then there is this kind of religious element to it where she meets a theologian and he has opinions about what the mission is but he's not a love interest i don't think i think she has a lot i i think she has a love interest with another astronaut i believe or another scientist but and then five people go to the mission it's not just her um as i remember it and and also the more maddening and we'll get into it again but the more maddening

aspects of um the film i find is that this whole like you where's your proof where's your proof like yeah you didn't you crazy woman like you know that you know in quotation marks that you don't you're you're you just a delusional and you're hysterical and you don't know and this has just been one big delusion and then at the end you know you see I guess we're allowed to do spoilers here and people have seen content oh yeah oh yeah yeah I'm about to spoil the whole dang thing with this recap okay great um but there's this incredible throughline in the book which i remembered and thought was in the movie up until last night which is that in when she's young and again i'm butchering this so for all the scientists and mathematicians

and hard science fiction fans like please please don't like admonish me too much. Leave Kelly alone. I am a fairly intense nerd and science fiction fan. So I feel like I can pull my weight. But she when she's young, she has this idea that pi, you know, the 3.14159 number that goes into eternity that you sort of skip over in math class like when you're young that it's not that it's not transcendental or it is transcendental which means it's not algebraic and then something a bunch of stuff happens this is something she thinks of when she's a kid when she's young she's like i think this about pi i think this about this transcendental number and at the end of the book she figures out that the transcendental number in fact is a massive circle and somehow that circle is the proof that she actually did go and that is the made so she finds proof that she went wow okay yeah which was much more cathartic

than how we ended contact Contact the Hollywood film. But yeah. Well, Matthew McConaughey believes her, so I guess that's good enough. That moment at the end where, like, for some reason, she comes out of the courthouse or the Senate hearing or whatever, and all of these reporters aren't asking her questions, and then suddenly Matthew McConaughey's character is more famous than her in that moment. Absolutely not.

Hard no. It's so bizarre. She's all like huddled under a blanket like, oh, no, I'm I'm so weak. I just had an existential crisis. James Wood just yelled at me. And then everyone's like, you man who's right there. What do you believe? And it's just like, who gives a shit what matthew mcconaughey believes and he also like yells over a car he's like i don't know i think i believe her and he's wearing a huge scarf and you're just like what is

going on he has a scarf the size of his head like it's wild he is you know I don't like talking shit about other actors because I just feel like it's I mean I'm an actor so it's it's hard but I I think I'm gonna talk shit about Matthew McConaughey for a second because I accidentally watched two back-to-back Matthew McConaughey films um because my uh unsurprisingly my next film is a sci-fi feature so I was sort of looking at I wanted to know I had some questions so I watched um uh what the hell is it called the Christopher Nolan film oh Interstellar Interstellar yeah I had never seen it and I just don't think that I mean Jodie Foster quite literally wipes the floor with him. It's every scene that she's in and it cuts to him and he's supposed to emotionally meet her at a place.

Yeah. He just falls short. And I don't know, the whole God subplot and the faith and the fact that he outs her at the Senate when she's trying to speak for herself. Yeah. And then he's like, oh, guess what? I did think it was important that you had faith. So you represented all of humanity, which 95% of people believe in God, which is, I don't know if that's like Hollywood science or Hollywood statistics. I don't know if that's like Hollywood science but it or Hollywood statistics I don't know where that comes from but and then and then he's like oh actually I did it because I love you

and I don't want you to leave and I'm like okay so this is the smartest woman she's quite literally discovered life on other planets like let's just hold on Jodie Foster has just discovered life on other planets and she has the opportunity to go communicate with that life. Go communicate in this absolutely pure place of courage and adventure and curiosity and lust for science and all the right reasons. And is there anything you can say against Jodie Foster in this film? There is nothing. And then he's like but i love you so i want to just keep you the possession of it i and you're just like who are you again the

so his character is so annoying and i want just uh cut him out i'm furious furious. Yeah, we'll talk all about this. His hair. Also, I've never seen less chemistry between two people. Their kiss in front of the Washington, D.C. thing. I forget what they're called. They kiss in front of the Washington, D.C.

water puddle. You're just like what is can we get Jodie Foster out of here get her in the pod get her away from this man get her away from Matthew McConaughey that is everything I thought get Jodie like time to go or I'm good to go okay Jodie Foster kissing Matthew McConaughey I'm okay to go yeah I'm okay to go I to go yeah jenny foster kissing matthew mcconaughey i'm okay to go yeah i'm okay to go i'm writing that on my pad of paper beside the computer so that if i need to reference okay to go later in this podcast i will be able to quickly and you will be okay to go it it is it is shocking how little chemistry they have and then there's all these weird sustained

moments where they're staring at each other for quite longer than would be human and the kiss is that you you sort of notice it they kind of pan to the left and let them kind of they they rack focus really quickly so you're like yeah we don't need to see this and yeah every time they embrace it's just like let's get Jodie Foster's head on his shoulder so the camera can just look at her because she's so magnificent yeah it was the chemistry was bad and also he's just he's so problematic that whole character's problematic and the whole question of you know what a theologian's space is in the sci-fi world and challenging her and all of it. I mean, again, and this, I can't speak from experience because I, as I mentioned,

am Canadian and not American, but there was this, this site, this hyper sense of American, like God fearing, we are the ones we speak for this planet moment. And you get that from so much science fiction. I mean, besides the remarkable Angela Bassett in this film, this film is hell white and hell American. And I think Jodie Foster has a line that's so brilliant where she says, where the aliens talk in prime numbers. And she says something like, what, America now owns prime numbers. Like, no, it's international. Math is international.

And that was so great and a kind of uncharacteristic criticism of, I guess the American space military God complex thing. I'm going to get in trouble. Do not invite me. No, we fully agree. We'll not be of that tier. Okay, good, good, good. Okay, so Jamie, what's your relationship and history with this movie? I had never seen this movie, I think, because I was, I don't know when I would have seen it.

I think when it came out, it definitely would have been too long to hold my attention. It's a two and a half hour movie correct it is still quite long uh but i i um grew up very my grandfather was and is like a huge carl sagan head and i like growing up i watched cosmos with him we had it like the vhs tapes and i yeah so so i'm a fan of the carl sagan expanded universe but i'd never actually seen this movie and i um i was i honestly like enjoyed it and was like more touched by it than i was expecting to be it kind of took me off guard because i was like two and a half hour movie from 1997. I just don't know. That's a gamble. But I thought it was I mean, there's plenty to talk about. But in general, I was like, very captivated. Jodie Foster is like always incredible, but she like, especially blew me away. And that I'm like, wow, not again. I have a very short attention span. Not many actors can hold my attention for two and a half hours.

And she's just incredible. And I also am excited to talk about the production history of this movie because it's very interesting. Caitlin, what's your history with Contact? This was a movie that my family had on VHS. One or two. I think it was only one of them. Brave.

But it is long enough that I don't know. Now I'm not remembering. I'm not remembering because I only watched this once. So like it was a movie that like my family had. I guess like maybe my brother watched it and my mom. But for some reason I i don't know this was also the year that titanic came out so as with many movies from 97 that's what to say i mean this was it this was a year i didn't have eyes for anything but titanic i think two vhs sets

we it was definitely titanic obviously yeah But then also I think Meet Joe Black. That's the only other movie that I've never seen. I don't think anyone in my family ever watched it. I don't know if it was a gift or what. But Meet Joe Black to VHS. Huh. Interesting. Yeah.

I truly don't remember if Contact was a one or two VHS tape scenario. But no further. I do remember having it. But I was I was too busy watching Titanic all the time to pay much attention to Contact. Although I think probably when I was like maybe 13 or 14, I watched it. And there are two very distinct moments from the movie that were like seared into my brain. And then I remembered nothing else uh i remembered her dad like material like the alien materializing as her dad and talking to her i remembered that and then i remembered the kind

of twist at the end where i didn't remember that it was angela bassett but like the reveal that like 18 hours of static was recorded she She did go on the trip to Vega. That is a very satisfying moment. I mean, Angela Bassett carries it, but I was like, ooh, ooh. Because I was so, I mean, the preceding scene was so frustrating to watch. I know.

Yeah. But I'm also like, Angela, did you contact Jodie Foster and tell her, like, and confirm this? Because we never, I don't know if Ellie knows that, like, you know? It's so funny. Those are the exact two moments that I remember the most as well. Like, absolutely. The dad on the beach and then that last moment.

But did you tell you there was exactly 18 hours of static and i had the same reaction i remember finding my mom and being like did they tell her what do you think do you think she found out james woods's reaction is so bizarre too where he's like oh that is interesting and you're like and so what happened but it's like you know his character is not going to be the one to admit that they're wrong but i was like i hope angela bassett stepped up we'll never know and that could have been a scene that passed the bechdel test where you know if angela bassett calls jodie foster she's like hey i got some good news for you you were gone for 18 hours and we have the proof you know exactly yeah instead instead all they talk about

is finding a dress for some sort of i know to impress matthew mcconaughey yeah um but the that james woods's reaction his whole thing his whole screaming at her at that him getting up i mean i again i don't like talking shit about actors but i'm gonna talk shit about james woods it's like james woods i feel like is extremely fair game yeah 100% fair game he is not our target target audience or an ally so i'm gonna say we're gonna talk shit about him and he's a he's an unrepentant republican he's he's a bigot and then so you know fuck him he's awful he's awful he's awful and uh he just tried him trying to what's the word there's a word for it eat the um uh there's an acting word for

schmacting like uh chew the scenery oh yeah in that last scene he's screaming at her he's standing up he's yelling at her he's trying to james woods the shit out of it and jodie foster is just jodie fostering so hard she's just sitting there tears in her eyes standing in her strength and her purity and this like feeling of of wonder that she's trying to convey and this sort of the space between what is real and what is not real what is science what is faith what is oh it's just like i remember that scene i remember her choking back tears and having a hard time finding the words and all i wish is she would have then said and then i figured out that pie is not in fact transcendental and she did the circle and all this stuff that's in the book but uh yeah that moment with james woods where he's badgering her. Like, it's not even.

And you're like, how did you get so much screen time in this damn movie? Like, you're, who are you? Yeah, why? Like, get rid of James Woods. Bring in more Angela Bassett. Like, ugh. Anyway. Let me do the recap of the movie. And then we'll get even further into the discussion actually let's take a quick break

first and then we'll come back to recap Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. 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. 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. Oh, my God, 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. And on camera, yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a 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, Ludi. 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. Okay. So, okay. You know the very end of Men in Black where like the camera keeps like pulling out from New York City and then like the U.S. and then planet Earth and then the solar system. And then it turns out that the galaxy is one of several tiny little marbles that aliens are playing with. And then you realize how small and insignificant you are. The way Men in Black ends is exactly how Contact opens. Wow. So that's my first brilliant observation.

My point of reference there was the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas when you find out the whole movie took place on a snowflake. Wow. Jim Carrey lives on a snowflake. Amazing. That is amazing then we meet Ellie a young girl who is sending out radio transmissions and trying to see how far she can reach she lives with her dad baby Jenna Malone oh my gosh I love Jenna Malone that is who that is that did not even register for me yeah then we cut to, who has grown up to be Jodie

Foster. She is now an astronomer trying to make contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. She's working on this project called SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, with a few colleagues, most notably Kent. And then one day she meets Palmer Joss. That is Matthew McConaughey. First of all, what a name. What a name. I think that is a name from the book, though. I'm going to say that now. Palmer Joss, I feel like I read and I was like, yeah, that's a book name. Right. It's very much a book name. It's a book name. I have the book synopsis in front of me because I was so, I'm so interested in like the differences you were spotting, Kelly.

So I'll try to, I'll try to follow along. Keep us on track. Where things really go awry. So Palmer Joss is a theologian. He's trying to interview Ellie's boss, this guy drumlin played by tom scarrett who is an asshole then ellie and palmer they look at the stars together they kiss they have sex and then we learn via their pillow talk as well as some flashbacks that ellie's dad died when she was nine years old in the one of the most the melodrama of that sequence slow

motion baby general out of control oh it was a lot it's very very 90s where it's like oh the slow motion trauma scene i know this film convention yeah or the just general 90s convention of kids parents dying and kids having to deal with that that's a big 90s yeah early 2000 like let's see this kid's gonna have this kid's gonna be an orphan right right full-on orphan yeah and yet we're not going to address how she survives who raises her up how she has money i mean maybe she's just a very privileged white girl and they're sort of like it has that glean of 90s movies where they're like she's white so we don't have to explain her cultural background the middle class sort of kind of exists yeah yeah like it's just a general glean of she's

fine she's like gonna be fine she she was both of her parents died she has a huge house i don't know right that was like especially glaring to me huge house i don't know right that was like especially glaring to me where the i don't know what this character's name is he shows up in a little bit mr mr plot billionaire or like what oh yeah hadn't the plot man plot man summarizes her life to us for some reason but also skips over like how she who she lived with what she did how she survived between like age 10 and college mr plot i swear to god yeah some aunt is just like eye rolling in like just just sitting there being like i flippin raised you so you're not even gonna mention me nice family member erasure. Not nice. Right.

Or did she grow up in the foster system? The Jodi foster system? She would have had to. There's no way around it. I will say as much as I despise this Palmer Joss love thing that pops up like once every half hour or so in this movie. I did appreciate that ellie initiated their contact shall we say oh i feel like you don't you don't get a lot of that you don't get a lot of yeah initiation from a female character where she's just like do you want to get out of here

i was like all right jody good for you yeah. Let's do it. And then she has sex with him and leaves him high and dry. And he's like, what? What? What about me? That's another thing, you know, like she, she, it's on her terms. The first time it's on her terms. The second time he literally tries to possess her and stop her from living out her dreams. But the first time it's, it's great. It's great. She's like, I just want to have sex with you it's not moralized they're not like you know it's it's actually sort of breathtakingly unmoralized that she's just doing this and then she sees his number and she's like you know what I'm gonna leave this number here I don't need to I don't need to keep this in my pocket and hope for something else I'm just

gonna and you know that was those were good times before the internet and for social media where you could just forget the person's paper that wrote their number on it. And then you can just disappear them from your life. Like how easy she leaves it for the next person who's staying in that little shack. I also think there's, um, a moment where speaking of how white this film is, but when we meet Matthew Mahoney, Palmer Joss, when we meet him, he makes some sort of comment about why they're in, I think they're in Puerto Rico. I think that's where they are. mean to these people like you scientists come in here and you take up this space in these in these cultures in these communities that that the science and space exploration doesn't serve in some sort of way and he sort of sets up this very important conversation and then it's just all god from there it's just all you know ontological questions about theology from there but it's completely just

completely dropped and I didn't I forgot that moment I forgot about that whole sequence and it's never they never get back to it and I wonder if I can't I want to reread the book and find out whether or not they deal with that at the question of who is science who is space exploration for and Jodie Foster of course answers that question because she's marvelous but But who is it for? You know, it's for anyone who feels alone. That's kind of the thesis maybe of her alien dad and her.

I don't know. I mean, I also thought that he was that Palmer Joss. God, I hate saying that name. We all do. Was also very like in that same conversation is very dismissive of the people who who live locally because he's like oh they don't they don't know what the you know satellite dishes are for they think it's for they're like basically just like making this kind of like a side comment to say like oh people around here have no idea what what you guys are doing and then and then like you

said continues into this his whole God tangent. And it's like, well, if you're going to set a movie here, set it here. I feel like we talk about that all the time of using somewhere and the people that are native there as set dressing rather than including them meaningfully in the plot, which is just always frustrating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they did that with, I remember in the book when the second machine, or maybe it's the, maybe there aren't two machines. I don't remember. There's there, it's possible that the whole first machine and then the evangelical Christian who bombs it, it doesn't happen in the book. I can't remember, but I do know that the second machine or the first is built in Japan and the relationship with the Japanese government and the Japanese

scientists and engineers is much more a part of the book and you'll notice that it's just represented by these two Japanese man stand like leading Jodie Foster into this um into the pod and they say nothing and they're just they behave in this sort of you know subservient they're portrayed as this kind of subservient group of people i'm like they they don't even react to the fact that they're standing over this obelisk looking spinning thing it's just so done as like conversation worthy i would say a hundred percent yeah yeah yeah they're not they're not treating the the as you said like the places that they're shooting this with as anything other than just

set dressing which is very 90s early 2000s hollywood yes it certainly is uh okay so then drumlin pulls his funding from the project because he thinks it's a waste of time. So Ellie and Kent and some other colleagues pick up and head to New Mexico to lease some government satellites there. And Ellie helps them get funding from investors. We then cut to four years later. They are about to lose that funding or like drumlin is going to come back and try to like take over the lease of this something i think something something i don't like anytime they run out of funding honestly these scenes kind of blurred for me where it's like anytime they lose funding jodie foster throws on a turtleneck and i was like all right who do i need to talk to and then then eventually it happens. Yeah. Yeah. The funding narrative is sort of repetitive. I don't,

I didn't remember that. Yeah. But I know Hagen, the guy, the rich guy in space is a big part of the book as well, but. Oh, got it.

Yeah. But it is sort of creepy that he's like, I know everything about you. His character is bizarre in the movie. Yeah. Very, very strange. Yeah.

But yeah, the funding falls through. She gets a turtleneck all of a sudden guess what funding's back funding's back but then it seems like contact has been made by aliens from a star that's 26 light years away called vega they transmit prime numbers between 2 and 101 because math is a universal language da vinci code wow then the vega aliens send a video transmission of hitler announcing the opening olympic games in berlin because that was like the first powerful television transmission to be sent

into space from earth so the aliens recorded it and sent it back to be like, I see you. I hear you. Hello. And then everyone's like, this is not representative of what we're trying to do here. Right. Then Ellie and friends continue to decode the transmission and they discover that the Vega aliens have sent thousands of pages of data, but it's all in like, you know, alien code that they don't understand. So they have to decrypt it and they need like a primer, like a key to the code.

Meanwhile, James Woods is this, he's like the national security advisor. I don't know. Fuck James Woods. Seriously. We don't have time to unpack all the fuck james woods but yeah fuck james woods yeah uh so he he's giving ellie a hard time the press is reporting on contact being made uh there's a conversation like kind of religion versus science that's being had

between a lot of people um palmer j is on Larry King talking about his book about- Yet another Larry appearance. I feel like ever, I mean, Larry's everywhere. Larry's everywhere in the media. Still not the best Larry. Still not the best Larry because that's B movie, yes. B Larry King. Then Dr. Haddon, a.k.a. John Hurt,

the eccentric billionaire, pays Ellie a visit, and he has figured out the primer, like a.k.a. how to decode the data that the aliens sent, and with this, they are able to determine that this data is a blueprint for a machine of some

kind. They don't know what it's supposed to do at first, but it becomes clear that it's meant to be a transport to bring a human into space, presumably to make direct contact with the Vega aliens. So then some government officials have made a list of a few candidates who might be the person to go to vega one of them is ellie one of them is her former boss drumlin and he he really really wants to go oh i want to kick his ass oh and then also there's a rogue jake bucey just kind of oh yeah looping over and this is also caitlin and i were talking about this uh last night how jake bucey in the 90s, he just, he just, he wanted to be in a space movie. It didn't matter what was happening in the space movie.

Starship Troopers, Contact, he was using his particular kind of nepotism to be in space movies. I honestly want that particular kind of nepotism so bad. Like if I could just. I love that for him. I love that for him i love that for him but i want it for me that's the truth yeah so then it's time to choose who goes ellie is passed over because she's an atheist slash agnostic which palmer joss like doxes her as yeah an atheist in a public forum and because they think 95% of people on earth believe in

some form of higher power, they want to pick someone who represents most of humanity. So she gets passed over and instead Drumlin gets selected to go. And then they run a test of the machine that they have built. But this religious extremist, aka.k.a. Jake Busey, a.k.a. Gary Busey's son, breach of security, sets off a bomb, which destroys the machine and kills Drumlin, among many others. going to go to vega until dr haddon shows up again and reveals to ellie that a second machine was built in secret in japan and they want ellie to go to vega this damn plot guy he like i was just like i maybe he's a character that makes more sense in the book than he did in the movie but he really just did seem he was like giving me plot witch energy in this like where he would just show up like when when Jodie Foster was like really in a bind he would be like do do do do do from space and be like by the way here's the

plot point you need and then and then and then he just dies when he runs out of plot points. It's really sad. Real old wise man patron for a younger woman energy as well. Like very, very like, don't worry. I've seen something in you that no one else has seen. And you're my girl. Like you're my, you know. He also is like stalking her. He's also stalking her, putting stuff in her bedroom. Does he have home video footage of her as a child?

Like, I was like, where did he get that? Where did he get that? I mean, we still don't know where she grew up. So thanks, I guess. But it's true. Definitely nullifies some of Jodie Foster's get up and go agency and her like, you know, tearing this down and making this happen. I mean, there's just some wonderful moments where Jodie is the only smart person in the room or the person who knows,

like when she notices, what's his name as the evangelical? Yeah, she knows that Jake Busey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jake Busey thought he was so sneaky. And what's interesting, I will note with present day context, when the newscaster covers the story of the bombing bombing he they they call him a terrorist they call yes i noticed that too yeah you never see i mean and this is like a problem to this day of like yeah uh declaring white terrorists to be what they are yeah or white male evangelical terrorists to say christ terrorists. It was such a weird, interesting moment of like, oh, yeah, this is interesting how we've mutilated the word terrorism to mean

essentially people of color from different countries. You know, it was such an incredibly weird moment. I was like, oh, yeah, blast for the past. Yeah, I made note of that, too. Yeah, I hate I mean, I hate that we live in a world where that is like of note, but it absolutely is. I was like, I was like okay okay okay to go okay to go okay oh it took me a second i don't know why i i totally forgot okay back to the recap so then ellie prepares for the trip palmer joss is like i don't want you to go. And she's like, I'm going. But she also forgives him.

He apologizes for robbing her, like very near robbing her of her dream. But then she's like, it's cool because, you know, the whole Jake Busey thing. I feel like that was the subtext of it. She's like, well, you know, it all worked out. I was like, we need a longer conversation about this right so she is launched into space she goes through a series of wormholes she ends up on this like astro beach it looks like a screensaver it looks yeah her dad seems to materialize in front of her but it turns out that it's a Vega alien who had downloaded her

subconscious and sort of like is this ambassador who has taken on the form of her dad to more effectively communicate with her. They have a little chat about like people of earth and how they feel so lost and alone, but now they can know that they're not alone. And this is just a first of like many steps of like contact among different, you know, terrestrial beings. And then she is pretty quickly after that return to Earth. But back on Earth, they're like, Ellie, there was a malfunction. You didn't go anywhere. And she's like, um, yeah, I did did i talked to the aliens obviously like the machine opened up a wormhole and i traveled through space time i was gone for like 18 hours the aliens was my dad i went to i was on a i was on a beach five-star resort that looked like that it looks like her

painting right she she yeah yeah yeah she was like i was i went to pensacola but in the middle of space and then they're like um we don't believe you there's no evidence of this nothing was recorded except for static but how much static right yeah can we i just need to i feel like i need to pause just to talk about the expectation the expectation that that dinky little thing they put on her head to withstand wouldn't span I just I remember being like they're like okay here we go and they open up this very official suitcase with like foam in it where they're like okay we're gonna give you the device and it looks like my Walkman from 1995 it looks like something like like the Gwen Stefani mic like for a stadium door. Who is this? Through a wormhole we're supposed to get reception here. And they put it on her head

with this little silver headband and I'm thinking like they don't even put a bobby pin in to secure it. Nothing. It's just going to stay on her head during this wormhole-esque. It makes me, and then the expectation that she is responsible for the evidence. That she's responsible. He's yelling at her. Where's your evidence? You don't have any evidence. I'm like, well, that's on you, bro. You sent her with the most cracked little piece of technology right why is it

on her and her chair like blows up oh my god the chair that wasn't even supposed to be there yeah because she's like there's nothing in the design specs for this like chair and the harness and trust the aliens it's like yeah we understand why because it like just i don't implodes yeah yeah she's like trust the aliens trust my dad, because it just implodes. Yeah, yeah. She's like, trust the aliens. Trust my dad. This is going to be fine. But the evidence thing, just absolutely. That makes no sense.

Because, yeah, James Woods is screaming at her and being like, you don't have any proof. And she's like, I don't know. But then Palmer Joss is like, well, I believe her. And you're like, wow, brave. Amazing. Feminist icon, Palmer Joss. but then palmer joss is like well i believe her you're like wow brave amazing feminist icon palmer joss and we're just like and then james woods and angela bassett have that conversation where angela bassett's like yes only static was recorded from this supposed trip to vega but james woods don't you think it's weird that 18 hours was recorded and then he goes

yeah i guess yes i guess it's weird and then the film ends with ellie continuing her work on searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and that's the end of the movie let's take another quick break and we'll come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. 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.

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Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. 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.

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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. And we're back. We've talked about some stuff already, but there are some things I want to kind of dig into a little bit. I want to do a quick overview of the production history of this movie. Yes. Because there are some very 90s things that you'll notice popping out. So this is a movie that has a majority white male crew at the top directed by robert zemeckis uh screenplay is by james v hart and michael goldenberg uh but the story is by carl sagan and andrewian who uh were not married i don't think at the time of this story but they were later married. But what I didn't realize about this was that

Contact was a book from 1985 that was turned into a movie, but it was originally envisioned as a movie. And then someone was like, oh, Carl Sagan, actually, maybe if you write a book, it'll be easier for us to get it produced. So this was in production for a really, really, really long time. A female producer was the one who got it over the edge uh linda obst shout out uh she was friends with carl sagan and really you know

advocated for this project to exist carl sagan wrote the story with andrean who is like an incredible filmmaker uh scientist researcher in her own right. And I didn't know, we don't have like, you know, all the time in the world to get into Carl Sagan. But as a very prominent scientist, he did, as far as my research indicated, was a strong advocate for diversity in general in the science field. But he was an advocate for women there's like this amazing anecdote in the 80s of him approaching i it's such a silly name that i'm like this can't be a thing the explorers club apparently it's a very famous uh astronomers group and it was all

male all the way into the 1980s and he wrote wrote a strongly worded letter to say why the fuck aren't women allowed in this group? Like, what's going on? Go Carl. Yeah, so Carl, feminist icon. Also, Andrean, you know, I'm sure that she was an advocate as well, obviously. And this is his only novel. And they, you know, he and Andrean took special care to ensure that there was a female protagonist in the novel and also in the movie, which is also, you know, relatively unusual in sci-fi to this day.

Ellie Arroway was based on a real person. Dr. Jill Tarter. The SETI Institute is a real thing who knew not me uh which she founded right yes she founded uh jodie foster like worked with her um so the the very 90s thing that happens here and this will kind of get us into some of the book versus movie changes that have been made was there was a male producer, Peter Goober, which let's just get into it. He's really going to live up to his name. He so so after the book was published, apparently the mother gets killed off very early, which is just like such an American movie thing to do on top of

that peter goober was pitching all these things to like quote-unquote flesh out ellie's character more but um he was really advocating for her to have an estranged teenage son which carl and ann were like no no no uh but um peter goober says like uh quote here was a woman consumed with the idea that there was something out there worth listening to but the one thing she could never make contact with was her own child to me that's what the film had to be about which is like the most male executive note about a female protagonist that i've ever heard where it's just like oh well if it's a woman it has to be related to motherhood and deal with your mommy issues elsewhere goober take them elsewhere I'm like yeah I'm like can we like just take this to your therapist um and yeah there was just kind of a lot

of uh back and forth in terms of how Ellie should be characterized. But luckily, Carl and Anne, I think took every stand they could. I'm very I wasn't able to find information about like, at what point did Palmer Jaws become like a stud? A McConaughey, you mean? A full on 97 McConaughey. Yeah. But yeah, there there there was like a lot of changes made to the story. Some of them, the proposed changes were pretty sexist and reductive. And many of them didn't make it to the movie. Some of them did. I also read that it was pitched that Ellie, the movie would end with like her having a baby.

Yes. Yes. That was another goober pitch. That was a goober. That's forever now. That was a goober. It has goober written all over it you really goobed that one up this goober just means like anyone trying to just add goob to anything any female story they're trying to goob it up my one of my favorite things because we talk about

this quite a bit of uh particularly when it's male writers who are just writing outside of their own experience it's like, just talk to someone. Have the proper consultants on the movies that you're working on, at the very, very, very least. And that does happen in this. So Jill Tarter, Jodie Foster, and I guess the writers and Carl and Anne work with her. And she was a consultant on this story specifically,

not just for the scientific elements, but to talk about the careers of women scientists in her experience between the 50s and 70s. And I guess a lot of the kind of specific instances of Ellie being spoken over, opportunities being taken from her, her work kind of being made to seem less impactful than it actually was was pulled from jill tartar's experience so go dr jill go dr jill she said on her first day as like a phd candidate at uc berkeley in the mid 60s she was told by the head of the astronomy department that the only reason that she was there was because quote all the smart men got drafted for vietnam yep so yep unsurprisingly she had to put up with a lot of sexism believe it or not believe it or not shocker i'm really glad she was like meaningfully included i mean as much as i'm like can't we get some female screenwriters on this? I am very glad that her

experiences were like, really taken into account on the consulting level. And I feel like that it enriches the movie. Oh, absolutely. And I think you can feel how much I mean, just knowing the pedigree that is Jodie Foster, there's no way she wouldn't have absolutely absorbed everything this woman felt and said. And, and like, I think my, I mean, when I, I don't remember the religious plot. I don't remember Matthew McConaughey. I don't remember all the other stuff. What I remember is being a young girl watching this and being like, holy cow, she loves science. Holy cow. She becomes this. It was so empowering growing up. Like I remember that moment when she's outside and she's like losing her financing and she's like, screw it. I'm taking the computer box outside and I'm going to listen on my head of my

car. And then she hears it and she's driving that car like a bat out of hell. And she's, you know, she's spitting coordinates and crap. And there's like a 10 minute scene where the audience doesn't understand fuck all. Like there's just no way, unless you're a scientist, you know what the hell they're talking about. But even watching it last night, I was- It's so captivating. It's so captivating.

And what I remember how I felt as a young girl watching this. I remember her being like, I hear it. I know. And her, the constant attempt for her to believe, to have the benefit of the doubt in the aliens for her to be like, no, they wouldn't have done this if they didn't say they needed a chair there. This isn't a weapon. Like why would they, you know, and just, and that spirit and energy. And, and it's interesting because I had read that,

um, Andrew and, and Carl Sagan had written this, as you said, as a feature first. And then they were like, Oh, we can't get this feature made.

So let's make it into a book. And then he wrote the book, but it's, it's, I wonder what the differences between those two screenplays would have been because at the end of the film, it says for Carl and you're kind of like Ann Druin's participation it says it says story by the two of them but her participation is sort of I yeah I do think it's because he died

before the movie came out I'm pretty sure that that's why the movie is dedicated to him specifically okay um yeah because he died in late 96 oh wow like right when they were probably finishing probably while they're in production yeah yeah okay well that's sad okay never mind i just was like where did because i it's it's now become such a carl sagan like it's his project where the story of the two of them writing it is kind of also special but yeah especially because i mean there is there tends to be an erasure of like there will be a famous man and then he will collaborate with a woman maybe it's a romantic partner maybe it's just like a professional partner for like much of his career but people tend to only remember the man. And the woman often gets erased from the narrative. I'm thinking

with John Carpenter. And oh my god, I don't remember her name because her name gets erased all the time. Let me figure it out. Is it Deborah? Deborah Hill? Is that it? Deborah Hill? Yeah. Yeah. One of many examples of this. So yeah, especially in the science world like it's it's rampant like marie curry dealt with this the if you female scientists releasing information and and making just monster discoveries that men have taken credit for like it's just and i think they they show the heartbreak of that in the film with that guy constantly interrupting her and taking credit for her and and somehow having a press conference with Bill Clinton while he was in office,

like Bill Clinton is hello, the president at this point. And he's in the movie. How did that happen? I guess. So I, I did some research on that. Cause I was like,

he did. Cause first of all, fuck Bill Clinton. Right. But, but on, but on top of that, I was like,

did he film scenes for that movie? I don't think that he did. I think that they repurposed existing speeches he's made and wrote around it to make it work that makes sense in the movie which there was there seemed to be some controversy about at the time which is kind of like i don't know i was kind of like shut up but they were like well what if what if viewers think that it's a documentary if it includes the actual president at the time i'm like well then i guess that they like need to read a book it's very clearly a movie um but yeah he i think that like all the cnn anchors like did film scenes for the movie but bill clinton didn't they just were like

oh what are clips of him talking about stuff that sounds like it could be about aliens. It's seamless enough that it works. It works. But yes, Andrian, shout out to her. She's still working today. She's worked on the Cosmos reboot. She's been like,

had complete creative control over it, won a bunch of Emmys for it. Amazing. And she rocks. She rocks. I mean, women in science fiction is, I mean, my whole, Ursula K. Le Guin as the probably the most prominent science fiction writer in my life. And she's so remarkably female and talks about all,

most of her protagonists are women. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's, women are just so fantastic in this space. And because it's science fiction, you don't always, it's the future. It's a hope for a different time where patriarchy isn't soaked in everything we're doing. So you can have these pockets of uh you know like a escape or narrative transport in a way that really gives an opportunity to kind of

unpack gender issues in the sci-fi space so the fact that women would be detectives in that space is it makes sense to me um i also i love that you were saying that the ending of the film had like maybe she has a baby, maybe this. And, you know, he's not, Palmer Joss is not in that last shot. Like he's not watching her. Yeah. While she, you know what I mean? Like I was, I was like, oh, that's good.

Because we don't really know. First of all, I don't know how they have such an intimate relationship. When they slept together once, she doesn't see him for like five years. Years ago. Yeah. And then, and then he just kiboshes her, her dreams. She forgives him because she's just so kind, I guess. And then he's not there in that final sequence where she's inspiring young kids. And I remember that when I was younger being like, that's hella inspiring. I remember being like, this works. This

is working on me. I'm a kid. I'm watching this. This is hella working. But he's not there. Thank God. God. Yeah. Their relationship is, we touched on this, but I'm pretty sure it was like a studio notes thing. It does not appear to.

I didn't read the book, but according to the Wikipedia synopsis of the book, he is a character, but he does not appear as though there's any romantic relationship between them so for him to be introduced in this context in the movie is like this potential romantic prospect which like i mean it's she just like has a one-night stand with him and then she's just like i don't need to talk to him again like we clearly don't have that much in common he's a theologian i'm an agnostic scientist like we're not very compatible here but then he keeps like creeping up and like like i'm just like it's one thing if they like have a friends with benefits thing which is like what it

seems like ellie wants but then he's like as we've discussed like i love you i'm gonna steal your dreams away from you i am claiming ownership over you and it's just like leave her alone my crush is more important than your dreams you're like what the fuck not just your dreams but like the greatest moment in humanity's history like it's not just yeah jodie foster's dreams it's quite literally she is the one person who has to go talk to aliens for the first time in the human species existence he's like but what about my crush yeah and what's especially frustrating about that is that like yeah she too easily forgives him i feel like once

she learns once he reveals to her oh the real reason i voted for you not to go to vega was because of my little crush and and she should have been like okay thanks for telling me now i know to never fucking talk to you again right you asshole i was also i mean particularly with that studio like very studio notes your relationship i just first of all this movie just could have generally been a little shorter. And that space that Palmer Joss takes up, I feel like could have been way better used by giving Ellie a woman to talk to. And like, because I understand that, like, you know, in her workplace, it, you know, there are other female scientists.

I wish that she had someone to talk to at work. But if that is like not possible for story reasons or because of the life experience that you're pulling from from dr jill and on and on then it's like it's a movie you can include other women for her to have friendships and meaningful relationships with but i feel like instead of using the area that we're given in this movie to build out Ellie's inner life it's like dad and love interest and there's no and it sounds like I mean it's extra frustrating Kelly hearing that that her mom is present in the book and yeah there is a relationship that we have to just kind of build her out outside of how she relates to other men and occasionally Angela Bassett,

who also doesn't get enough to do. Right. The fact that she was barely in my recap speaks to like, she's not an unimportant character, but she's not so important that she's really influencing major like narrative story beats. She shows up like halfway through. She shows up. The film is just

white people until like an hour and a half in and then it's angela bassett and then that's pretty much it it's not and you don't you don't know you don't know what she wants you don't know why she's she you don't know what her job is you don't know what her opinion is in fact every time anyone expresses an opinion her her opinion is can you guys just stop arguing like can you calm down you don't ever find out what Angela Bassett's character what the fabric of her character is what makes her tick nothing you just you just know that she's like the president's mouthpiece and because we couldn't afford the real Bill Clinton we have Angela Bassett sort of like talking for him but there's no real we don't they don't give her anything and the only conversation he has with jodie foster is girlfriend i need to dress which is hella problematic which

is it's so fresh because it's it would have been so cool to build out that relationship between those two characters because they're coming from very different places you get like little tastes of it where i like when when angela bassett's character rachel is introduced she's just like oh fuck the alien sent us a clip of Hitler. And Jodie Foster's like, no, no, no, no, no. There's like, there's all this, you know, like they're coming from very different places. And it would have been cool to explore that. Like, you know, Angela Bassett is like beholden to this, you know, governmental bureaucracy.

And Jodie Foster, like, has this totally. And it's like, well, that what's going on there like let's get Matthew McConaughey the fuck out of here there's like better characters for her to be interacting okay to go yeah okay to go out of the story um yeah yeah there's a really quick moment that I think could have been just like drawn out and and explored a bit more where and maybe i'm even like misinterpreting this but it seems like rachel angela bassett's character is kind of advocating for ellie to be kept in control of the project because james woods is all like let's militarize this yeah and she's like no no no like for now ellie is in charge still yeah and that would have been I would have liked to just see more women

lifting up other women here because as we've kind of touched on already there's this like recurring motif a theme throughout the movie of men taking credit for women's work and this is especially true of Drumlin who keeps like swooping in and And when someone's like, okay, and now the person who's the lead on the project who made this discovery, Ellie thinks that she's about to get called up. She's got cue cards. We think she is. But then they call up Drumlin and he takes the credit for this discovery for the most part. And then that little speech he gives her before right before he blows up i'm like bye he's like you know it sucks that like you probably think

we live in a meritocracy but we just don't so see you about to go take your dream you're like fuck you like i was like oh man i hope he explodes and then he did he did and it's interesting it's interesting that the film sort of positions all of this like religion narrative of like you know the person who goes to meet the aliens should represent all humanity therefore believe in God but it becomes clear that Drummond only said that he was doing it for God to sort of be political and get the position and I think it was a really interesting critique of how politicians and people in power will sort of ride that party line, will sort of placate the religious base

in order to get political gains. It was sort of an interesting thing, and he kind of admits it to her. He's like, I'm sorry that I know you were honest, but sometimes, I'm butchering it, but he says something like, sometimes honesty is not how you get ahead or something like that. He not how you get ahead or

something like that. But he's basically like, don't hate the player, hate the game. Yeah. Don't hate the player. Yeah. That's yeah.

Okay to go. That's for sure. Time to blow up. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of selecting one person to represent all of humanity. And the only like topic that gets discussed is like religion, really? I know. And they're like, we want someone who believes in God.

And the person who ends up originally being selected is a white, able-bodied, upper-class cis man from America. And then it's a cis, ablebodied white woman who is highly educated, middle class, from America. So what I would like to propose, you know, people of Earth basically should have been like, okay, Vega aliens, I see your one person space transport, and I raise you a 100 person space vehicle that can carry a larger group of people who are actually more representative of the earth. Kelly, you were saying that more people do go in the book, right? Five people go in the book. And I believe it's like from a diverse representation of humanity. And each of them have, this is again, I'm going to get in trouble with the sci-fi fans, but I think each of them has their own like beach experience where they each are visited by a moniker or phantom of, of a memory that makes them feel more comfortable. Um, but yeah, it's,

it's definitely, I will say this though, and I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I do think the film does of i mean the reality is there would be so much sexism around that it would be the fanfare of it and the the news coverage of it and like whether or not a woman should go or a man like that was completely not and and what the virtues of having a female go versus a male like what the type of just diplomacy that women are by a sad default taught their whole lives to diffuse and to be, you know, be good at a sort of more maternal and imperative experience. Nurturing. Nurturing and representing the race because, and so they don't really, that's just completely not present. It's just like, yeah, it would be in America if there was a couple women who were nominated for the campaign and men it would just be all fair game well we know it wouldn't be and that's like right and i think that all the religious as you said it's all about

religion well if it is about religion and knowing how gendered the religious space can be especially when coming up with like the one messiah-esque person who's gonna talk to the aliens i don't know i feel like they kind of just glossed over that yeah jody's not sitting there going they're not picking me because i'm a woman which is would be my first thought my first like right which which i feel like is kind of partially implied in in the text too because she's being steamrolled by all her male superiors basically like i i mean it's i i get that like if it's one person who can go it's like well she discovered it so like i also this reminded me of um an amazing work by friend of the cast marsha belsky

that has to do with sexism in space travel oh yes which the 100 tampons song uh which if you haven't heard it you gotta hear it but it's based around this uh this anecdote where nasa thought sally ride needed 100 tampons to go into space for a week quote unquote just to be safe like it's there is i mean and the further back you go the worse it is but there was a clear precedent for uh sexism and just a complete no understanding of of menstruating people at all 100 tampons really um it's it's a bop we'll link it in the description uh it's really good it's a bomb yeah yeah i do i do wish that there that um it's kind of it's i don't know i mean the the sexism that she is facing is definitely present but it's like you don't really hear her talk about it very much it's interesting yeah

it's more there were women for her to talk to maybe yeah it does seem a bit more subtle because it never gets like specifically named or you never have someone like Drumlin being like, who's gonna believe you, you silly woman. Women can't do science. Which is fine, which is good, because that would be crummy writing. Right. So but yeah, it does get kind of glossed over. But I think there's also something interesting about like, no one's like's like oh you can't do science you woman and for there to be representation of that on screen where like people still take her seriously for the most part and acknowledge that she is a brilliant scientist

and don't really bring gender into it even though it might not be the most realistic thing all the time i still think there's something interesting about just like allowing that to be seen totally by people 100 yeah i guess i just wish that maybe jody annotates it she's aware of what's going on like it's like she's there there's all these things happening to her and there this is the moment where drummond takes this the podium in front of and with the president and there there is this feeling of immediate heartbreak and loss but it's that's just how it is she's just upset and that and then there's not that other female character for her for her to sort of um right trade notes with and be like yes this is how it is and da da da da and yes this is the 90s so that's kind of

the thing and and you're right there is something really remarkable where Jodi's not gendering herself she just cares her bottom line is science she identifies as a scientist she is scientist Dr. Ellie like it's she is that so um and I and I can relate to that a lot because it's like the the most um I don't know disorienting moments of sexism or when you're you're just identifying yourself as an as a as an artist or an auteur or a someone who is trying to make something happen and someone else is gendering you and you're like the math doesn't compute you're like oh yeah right I guess you're thinking this where I'm just thinking of myself as artist I'm just thinking of myself as maker. I'm just thinking of myself as maker.

And, and I love that in the film because that's her like North, not to make a, not to make a space pun, but like, that's like her North star, you know, she's just so,

and then when she's in space and she sees the galaxy thing and she's like, I have no words. It's so beautiful. Like that, the fact that she has those blinders on and that's like i have no words it's so beautiful like that the fact that she has those blinders on and that's all she cares about leads up to this incredible moment which i'll say i only noticed last night because maybe my vhs she vhs copy was a vhs copy which you know for people who know vhs it's like there's only it was mostly static it was just 18 hours of static there's this moment where she's looking at the galaxy and her face changes to her younger version of herself. Did you guys catch that?

Yeah. Suddenly her voice changes. I don't remember that happening whatsoever. And I was like, is this like a remastering? Like someone who made the Blu-ray, the Blu-ray DVD was like, let's add this weird moment because the technology almost also feels too good. Too advanced for 97. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not sure if you guys remember that sweet CG action in 97, but it was not seamless.

And there was static. It was not super great. I really, I mean, I'm so interested to hear both of your perspectives on how the sexism in this movie is treated. And I, yeah, I'm kind of of like two minds about it where it I think I would have really rolled my eyes if they came at it from a super 90s like woman can't do this. And she goes, well, guess what? I'm going to show you like that is such a convention that and and and i feel like you can really tell that uh someone who had experienced this kind of discrimination had been consulted because the examples are so like baked into the movie so it's like jill tartar's consultation you can like feel it in the way that

like even in moments that i was that were very small where there's a scene where jodie foster's trying to talk to Angela Bassett as they're doing a very West Wing walk through the White House moment. And what's his I kept calling him drumline in my head. Drumline. Drumline. Drumline just starts talking over her and like start continues her sentence as if it was his own idea. And you're like, yeah, that's such a small thing, but it like really connects and i do think that like the the most elegant way to acknowledge it without making it like a real bash over the head third wave feminism moment is to just yeah give her someone to talk to about it

even in passing like i feel like it would have helped but that said i feel like the the sexism she experiences is pretty clear i mean especially at like the the james wood screaming at her on national television of like blaming her for all sorts of shit that makes no sense you're delusional you were hysterical you hallucinated the whole thing and the way that she keeps her cool like is so it's like she's like you're saying kelly like she's a scientist first and she's like okay as a scientist i have to say like yeah i don't have any proof like maybe you're maybe you should have given me better than like a pair of five dollar headphones like attached to a little metal headband with no bobby pins no bobby pins they

weren't attached and i just love that jody even when she's like traversed dimensions and she's on some sort of like tropical beach with her dad, she's still like, are you guys reading this? Like she still has confidence. And she's like, I have to record this. I can have confidence in this little doohickey. Yeah, you're so right. It is sort of that 90s of of like a woman can't do that and like that's um detrimental and problematic and leaves such a horrible like graveyard of films where you're watching women be like subject subjectified and all that stuff so and i will

say that i would categorize this film in the canon of pre, you know, where we're at now, I guess, pre, um, me too area era where we're sort of not fine. A lot of the things we know and how the functions of these films work has not been normalized where I have to give a lot of credit to Jodie Foster and, and a lot of actresses at this time period and and from the last hundred years of filmmaking who are the sort of like last vestige or last stance of of being able to advocate for themselves on set like i constantly read interviews with with meryl streep and and actors who have been working forever who are like i literally had to sit down with the writer and say, she wouldn't do that. That's not what she would do. She cares about science.

And female actors just don't get the sort of retroactive credit that I think that they deserve for advocating for their storylines. I'm trying, I'm blanking on the film that I read Meryl Streep talking about this. The one, maybe it's the one with deer in the title. What's the title of that film deer deer hunter no deer hunter killing of a sacred deer no that's recent other deer damn it i'll have to i can't remember but there's one where she talks about like basically i had to help rewrite that film because the because the female character made no sense and it's the making of no sense

the sort of the the thing we're struggling with is it makes no sense that her relationship with Palmer Joss. It doesn't to us. It reads false because we know we know it makes her tick. We know the fiber of her character. We know what she would live and die for. She says it. She says, I believe this is worth dying for. She says, I believe this is worth dying for. She says it. So the falsities in her behavior, the choice to forgive Palmer for quite literally stomping on something that she is willing to die for.

Yeah. It reads so false. Jodi, because I can't imagine that she wasn't on set with those, with her, you know, running around looking for the writer and the producer and the director with her script in hand being like, no, she cares about science. No, she cares about science. And it's on every line she says. And it's so radiant in that way. It's such a radiant performance because it's like from the very first thing we see her in as a young girl to the very end of the film and her admitting, yes, I can't give you empirical evidence. As a scientist, I must concede that. Like her church, her God, her religion is almost more realized than any religion that is represented in the film.

Her religion is so realized in science. Shout out to jody she's i she they named an asteroid after her after this movie came out in early 1998 there's an asteroid named after jody foster i have to i'm assuming off of the success of contact but maybe just her impact is so felt that they're like well we were gonna do this anyways but yeah asteroid 17 744 jody foster is amazing one thing though that did ring more true though in the movie was and i already touched on this but like for me for example when i have been on the receiving end of sexism it hasn't most of the time it hasn't been someone being like, oh, well, you're a woman, so blah, blah, blah, you can't do this. It's just been like more subtle stuff, like me being talked

over, me being interrupted, me, like people passing me over for opportunities, like things like that, that is what Jodie Foster's character is experiencing in this movie. So I appreciate that you do have this, like, what we clearly identify as sexism, but it is not super overt or explicit. The sexism is, you know, more covert and subtle, which again, I think is a more common version of how people's sexism manifests. So that happening in the movie to Jodi's character just rang very true right it's a very good point very good point one thing I wanted to quickly shout out this was kind of my last note on Ellie was it like exists throughout the background of the film but I really liked her friendship with her co-worker Kent oh yeah I thought that that was really lovely. And it's I think it's just again, it's

like we're really looking for scraps in movies from the 90s in particular. But the fact that she had like a very just a platonic friendship that seemed to be built on a lot of mutual respect for each other with her friend Kent. And I just thought it was so nice. And then when he like shows up at the end, she's like, Oh, my God and then he hears her he's the one who hears her saying yeah okay to go I started sobbing I started sobbing I sobbed a lot last night guys I'm really trying to play cool but I sobbed hard at the end of Jodi's whole you know yeah that that relationship with Kent is really really interesting I think it's a little problematic, the portrayal of a blind man that he plays. It's a little, you're kind of, again, as you said, playing for scraps with movies

in the nineties, because it's not only that he's portrayed as blind, but almost that he's, I don't know, something to be, um, to kind of handle with kit gloves a little bit, like the portrayal of, of him as blind is sort of, I don't know. I'm not sure what you guys think about that. Yeah, I was trying to find writing about this and I couldn't find anything specifically about this character in regards to the representation

of a blind or visually impaired person. Definitely it's problematic that the character is not played by an actor who is blind. He's played by William Fichtner, who is not blind. It felt to me, and this is just kind of my limited understanding, but it felt like there were not a slew of tropes surrounding blindness that you do see in a lot of movies that are like really problematic. I feel like this movie avoided a fair number of those tropes. But I'm curious what listeners thoughts are on this, particularly anyone with a visual impairment. I also so Kent is based on a real person who was part of the SETI project who was blind so it's I I don't know I yeah I would be really curious to to hear what our listeners think on that but I was I was like

oh it is based on on a real person um who Jill Tarter knew and worked with so it seems like that they were pulling from like some sort of real life dynamic that actually existed but again it's I mean the conversation around actors who who do not have the disability of the characters they're portraying is like a you know very ongoing conversation that we want to you know be a part of and keep learning about so shout out to the real Kent Cullors I I'm seeing I'm kind of seeing this in real time but there's a documentary on him and on his career um he is the first american astronomer who was blind from birth and he continued to work at the seti institute uh until 2005 so very cool shout out to him sounds sounds like a legend i'm like with all this stuff i'm like i don't understand science but that sounds pretty cool yeah but yeah shout out shout out Kent I just wanted to address some

of the science stuff because it really bothers me at the end when James Woods goes absolutely like batshit on her like it like the the expectation that she would have evidence and it's on her to provide it is yeah it still makes me angry and it and it and speaking of like remembering what this film felt like when I was young I remember this feeling of feeling frustrated but what doesn't make sense to me is you know Palmer at one point and her have this conversation about, well, 50 years may pass. It might be 45 seconds on Earth and that might be 50 years. And he's like, are you chill with that? And she's like, I'm chill with that because this is my life's work and this is what humanity is for and all that.

But for some reason, that is not brought back into the possible explanation as to why she thinks that she had this huge experience and this, like, why is that not brought up? That the space-time continuum, the inflation of space, of time, at the end in the Senate, why isn't she like, well, as we've talked about, time on Earth is 45 seconds, but passing through multiple wormholes into, you know, lightning years away, time is going to be bloated in this way. Yeah, which they already establish as being a thing. Even a theologian who is not a man of science understands. He's like, you're going to be gone for 50 years, even though it'll only seem like maybe

four years to you. Right. So like, yeah, you already know that time is different and that is perceived differently. 45 seconds dropping through, dropping through through will be could be a lifetime. And so that's what makes me mad. And mostly the that James Wood thought that he's allowed to stand up in that Senate hearing and turn around and yell at her. And like I'm like, who told you you're allowed to stand up in those things? It seems very intentional that he's like making this show of it because it's

televised and like all this stuff. And like the nineties was so full of women's truth being discredited on live television for people to, to, to watch that. It was like, Ooh God, there was so many like other hearings like that,

that had nothing to do with space that like your head kind of goes to when you see like a really aggressive man discrediting what a woman says is like the truth and also kelly when you mentioned this earlier i was like oh yeah like the fact that james wood is like blaming equipment failure that she didn't design on her is like for what like if you would think that someone else in the room would be like hold on she didn't make those shitty headphones like sony did or whatever yeah you have no evidence you didn't bring back any evidence it's like what the hell was she supposed to do besides just experience it which she did problem yeah you know like she's like, yeah, I I'm not like a documentarian. I'm a scientist experiencing science like it was very it made me so angry.

And then I had like like flashbacks to being angry as a kid being. And I don't know, this film was more formative than I thought that I was quite aware of rewatching. And I'm like, oh, this did wire itself onto my DNA yeah those moments they're frustrating not because they're like poorly written they're frustrating because like it's representative of like again sexism that exists in the world and like him just not believing women is sexism that exists in the world for them to then go outside and people are like ellie yeah i see that you're there but hey mr palmer what do you do you believe her what do you believe and people are focused on the opinion of this man and yeah it's very frustrating because

it's sexism that is very familiar to us you know people only believing a woman if a man is validating her yeah but yeah it's something that the movie is handling very effectively i think i just hate the part where the man who is validating her is also this like wedged in love interest those i mean those those studio note scenes are so egregious and so cuttable too like it's just like oh you could cut the yeah the goobers all the goobers like I just it it's painful it's painful to watch we we have references throughout the movie but this is an extremely white movie in a way that is very unnecessary so unnecessary i mean the only black character that has any real impact in the movie is angela bassett's character rachel who as we said she

she has a strong function she's a strongly motivated character but we don't know anything about her and we don't get any look into her interior life we don't really get to know except until i mean honestly we don't know what she thinks about like jodie foster is she because we couldn't figure out is she the kind of character that's gonna want to people to know or maybe she's not maybe she's like i i am a bureaucratic person and i'll keep it quiet like we just don't know her well enough to know i wanted to shout out legendary character actor tucker smallwood who plays the um mission control guy he almost presses the red button but then he i i couldn't tell if his character was given a name or not he was like pretty like active for like a you know

the climax of the movie but i couldn't even figure out but he's just credited as mission director which is so ridiculous you're like what the what the like could you be lazier and more dismissive because he was uh he was great he was you know he was mr red button like and and then there there um was i think in the first crew of scientists there was one black scientist who says like one line and then he's gone. Right. And everyone else is just white people. You have two Japanese engineers. Yeah.

But as you said, Kelly, they say like maybe a line and that's it. They say nothing and they also sort of portray a stereotype of japanese scientists and that is sort of this kind of yeah stereotype of of uh subservience and um i find that deeply problematic because you because especially knowing in the book how much the japanese science and inventors have such a say in the in the final machine. So it's a very American lens of how Japanese people behave in a way. That's what I felt. Yeah, I think it's like, ultimately, I mean, even speaking to what the book represents, like, this should very much be a global story that is inclusive of more than white Americans.

And, and it seems like that was a very conscious, like goober Hollywood style choice is to only center cis straight white Americans in this story that should be, I mean, it's, it's like an event for humanity, not middle-class white Americans.

Yeah. And so that is, know definitely worth you know continuing to be critical of because we had a similar conversation on our episode about arrival which we covered on our on the patreon slash matron similar movies in that a woman in stem is the protagonist of the of a movie where aliens make contact with the people of earth but it is still a very like america centric oh yeah narrative as many hollywood sci-fi films are i mean i watched as i said unfortunately i watched um interstellar recently. And that one is, I missed it when it came out and it's breathtaking how little any other place in the whole goddamn world is represented besides America. Like the concept

is that earth is dying, that resources are impoverished and depleting and crops are dying. And all they show is this back country American farm. They don't show anywhere else in the world that would be absolutely far more strapped if the world was, if the, if there was wind storms and, you know, climate changes we're dealing with now, like as if it wouldn't be Indonesia or anywhere other than, or in Haiti where like the the very front lines of climate change and places where these um where that type of shift in degree in climate would be most readily felt and it's like it's literally just Jessica Chastain and Matthew McConaughey's fam who are struggling on their farm and they're you know he's going to fix the world, start a new colony with only white people.

And it's a, it's a sad tradition of, of this type of movie, but I also think it filters into this sort of American identity of being like the only ones who have ever participated in the space exploration space or the sorry, space exploration space. Like that sounds, that's, that's not the best way to say that space exploration space or the sorry space exploration space like that sounds that's that's not the best way to say that space exploration right but yeah I mean like this idea that we're like we have to be the saviors of humanity yeah it's just such as an outsider watching it I mean outsider being Canadian not American it has always been such a difficult and weird pill to swallow like the constant flags that you see American flags on on new planets that you see in every flippin movie

you know it is bizarre to me because the end the tradition of engineering and science and and technology and and stem in all forms is so diverse it It is so, Oh God. Like it just makes me want to break something in a, not in like a less violent way, but you know, it interstellar arrival has that any type of, let's say if humanity has that ilk of a, and guess who our saviors are.

Yeah. Yeah. Team America. Yeah. I also found it. Maybe this is is just me but it gets mentioned in the movie that half a trillion dollars is spent on this project and you hear like similar stories in real life about all this like federal money musk is doing right now yeah yeah private money federal money being spent on space exploration and stuff

like that which is important people who are working on that like i understand that that's important but also like a large percentage of the world's population is living in poverty so like i don't know maybe let's focus on earth's issues before we like spend trillions of dollars right now you're quoting this is what palmer was talking about the beginning of the film and it never panned out not you agree with palmer yeah it's sort of what palmer was talking about sort of like you know how do you how do you explore other places when you're not taking care of the people in your backyard and that's uh not to say that palmer had a point but he did have some

points points were made he had one point yeah it never really came up again um here's my hot take about this movie ready everyone so the you know all the the billions of dollars that they spend on this machine and this trip that ellie takes the conversation that she ends up having with the alien could have been an email. They didn't need, they didn't need to build the machine. Why, why aren't they just sending out some emails? You know, didn't have to be a meeting, could have been an email. Thank you. I mean, I think that that's, if there's any, you know, that's another thing that we've learned in the past year. There are a lot of things could just be emails could have just been an email yeah could have been an email a well-written email feels as good as a revisit from your dead dad honestly that's awesome just send it fire off a bunch of prime numbers

see if anyone responds yeah hey ellie it's your dad that's it emot Emoticon. Doesn't she? Yeah, which emojis does the alien species go with? Oh, goodness. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? No. I think it technically does, but it's not a very satisfying pass. That was my conclusion. Yeah, there were two conversations that I felt were candidates for passing. One where Angela Bassett is, she's kind of addressing a whole room full of people, but she like looks at Ellie a couple times. And Ellie responds. Ellie will remain in charge of this like decryption effort. A few men are mentioned in that conversation.

So that one's a little murky. Yeah. And then later when Ellie is like, hey, Rachel, do you know where I can find a really great dress? Because women be talking about shopping. Yikes. Technically. But I think that the context, mean i don't know maybe it is a reach to say the context is like because i want to look nice for matthew mcconaughey that was the implied

context to me yes exactly i'm gonna give this one like a barely pass yeah it's not it's not a great if it is a pass it's not it's not a great one yeah draw your own conclusion i mean and also it's a fucking two and a half hour movie the fact that we have to be the splitting hairs here is ridiculous truly so yeah uh well that brings us to our nipple scale on which we rate the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist lens on a scale of zero to five nipples. And I would say, I think this movie is ahead of its time in a lot of ways. I think that it's awesome that you have, you know, women in STEM visibility, because this is the type of representation where like,

little girls watching this movie who maybe hadn't seen themselves represented before in a like stem role can be like wow women can be scientists i can be scientists like i can go and be a scientist so um i think that that's really important and this was you know a big budget movie that was successful at the box office. A lot of people saw it. So that is a great thing. I also think it's cool that, and this is something that also I brought up on our arrival episode, but I love when a movie with a protagonist who is a woman explores like deep philosophical existential questions because like philosophy has been a topic dominated by men not because women

are not capable of philosophical debate and not because they haven't been doing the work it just hasn't been preserved and uplifted in the same way exactly and i also think i think that's like the the back side to the bechdel test is that without women taught when you have films where women are only talking about men it means all the important philosophical like bomb dropping political conversations about the film are happening by the male characters like that I always think is the interesting flip side to the Bechdel test is like for all the conversations women are having about only men the male the male conversations can be about what is this film trying to say and what is how is it trying to change the world so for for her to participate

in this discussion around like faith versus science for you know evidence versus like all you know all that kind of stuff i really appreciated because like for example a counter to this would be in our Da Vinci Code episode another Matreon episode but um you have these two men talking about like it's not philosophy but they're talking about you know history and like all all this like Christian mythology and stuff like that and then Audrey Tattoo is just like, what? I don't, like she doesn't get to contribute anything. Poor Audrey Tattoo in the Da Vinci Code. I don't know why that was the first example that came to my head. But yeah, so I appreciate that about this movie. The sexism that Ellie is on the receiving end of is definitely present.

I think it's interesting the way that it was handled and that it's like very present, but like kind of subtle or it's like not super explicit. And, you know, the idea that like she is not believed that she is kind of she is like accused of being delusional and hysterical. She is often overlooked or, you know, men are taking credit for her work uh are all like very real and present things that women experience and um i thought that was all interesting but then it's got its problems you've got this wedged in romantic subplot that i can't think of a subplot a romantic subplot that has ever been less necessary oh yeah in a movie and more obviously yeah yeah it just made me feel yucky um the extreme whiteness of the film the extreme again like u.s centric nature of the narrative.

Oh, a cis white middle class, highly educated, able bodied woman being representative of all of humanity. So, you know, it's got some like of the time 90s era problems, but I also think it's ahead of its time in other ways so i would i i want to give this like a three somewhere between like a three three and a half range nipple wise and i'll give one to jodie foster i'll give one nipple to jill tartar i will give one nipple to andrewan and i will give i'll throw in like a a quarter nipple to the phrase okay to go i'll i'll meet you there three and a quarter sounds about right um for all the reasons you described this should very much be a global story and I think that that's something that we U.S. centrism in basically all of western film is definitely a huge issue but I feel like it crops up in this genre particularly all the time in a way that like I can't really think of a space movie that I've seen and I haven't seen that but like I can't really think of like a space movie that I've seen and I haven't seen that, but like, I can't really think of like a space movie that doesn't have this kind of

underbrewing of American patriotism to it in a way that is like definitely insidious and long overdue to be challenged in like a meaningful way because it is like, cause I enjoy this genre, but there always is kind of a flag wavy element to it that this movie is not the most guilty of. That's probably Independence Day. Probably Independence Day. Maybe Armageddon.

Armageddon's pretty flag wavy too. But it is like, you know, something we should keep talking about. Even in a movie like this where it isn't the most forced on you it is still very much forced on you um i i do i i like how this um movie did you know they did their homework in a way that most movies don't they spoke to female scientists who have experienced this you know subcategory of sexism and kind of put it into the script in a way that flowed very naturally i do wish that jodie foster's character had another woman to relate to about this um or speak to and that would have been a way better

use of our time than making us look at matthew mcconaughey's scarf that said I really like I don't know I was very moved by like parts of this movie and a lot of that is just like Jodie Foster but um it does seem like this is a project that was driven by even even in a majority male uh creative team that like the key creative decisions were pushed through by female producers by andrew and by by jill tartar and and uh by jodie foster so yeah you know this should have been a more global movie but i still think it holds up in more ways than i was expecting so i'll give it three and a quarter and yeah, I'll give one to Jodi, one to Jill, one to Anne, and I'll give

the last quarter to the headphones that didn't work. I want to give a nipple to Angela Bassett. Who's on the chopping block? I'm just going to redistribute it equally. So that's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to split a number that cannot be split

into a transcendental pie. Honestly, three and a quarter is so close to pie. I'm going to give it pineapples. Whoa. That's infinite nipples. Yeah. Pine pineapples and um i'm gonna i'll distribute them evenly between the people i said plus angela bassett um what about you kelly well yeah i'm really into this pineapple i there is so much i i do have a really interesting bookend with this film as i've watched it as a young um a young girl someone who was treated like a girl with as to bring it back to my many male cousins and and the world I grew up in I I will say for all of its problems and its um America centrism which if I can provide an alternate uh Danny Boyle's Sunshine is a really good example of,

I think of an American made film that doesn't have that sort of patriotism. Tarkovsky's Solaris, Solaris is one of the most beautiful sci-fi films ever made that deals with like, you know, going up into space on a mission, a suicidal mission of hope for humanity sort of thing. But I will say for all of its problems

and its lack of representation, its lack of representing humanity and all of it, I can't disregard how this movie made me feel as a young girl and now. I cannot disregard how impactful it was and how it felt to watch that moment where she's running and the science is happening and she's spitting out all these crazy things like it's those moments where you

don't quite register or or you've registered the sexism you've experienced your whole life on such a molecular level that when it's being countered with such a brazen expression of a woman following her passion in an area dominated by men you feel it like bubbling up from your stomach and your gut being like like oh my gosh I've never how cool is it that she's racing through here and talking on the walkie so I'm gonna give it like a really I'm gonna give all four nipples to Jodie Foster and say her, and mostly Jodie Foster's eyes, like just those big welling,

truthful pools of truth looking into the stars. Like I, that's the film for me is going the rest of it. All the problems of it sort of, I think are worthy of discussion, which we have, you know, we've discussed it, but, um,

what you cannot with all the problems and the scarves and the McConaughey, even though he tries to like make the scenes about himself, nothing, nothing comes close to Jodie Foster's eyes, looking at stars. There's just nothing. And the way I felt when I was 12 watching this film or 13 or wherever however old I was versus now is uh very similar so four nipples for Jodie Foster's eyes yeah she has more chemistry with the the sky and the cosmos that she's looking at than she does with Matthew McConaughey so so true and how beautiful is that like think about how easy it would have been to make this character male. And to say, in terms of representation of a woman just following her dreams and having an interest for her life and for her heart that doesn't involve a male, even though Math McConaughey is there. It's like her love interest is the stars. End of story. Yeah, we didn't need to add anyone else. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for being here, for joining us. I can't believe we recorded for 18 hours with you. Oh, my goodness.

Pretty incredible. I know. What happened in static? We don't know. Okay to go. Yeah, I had to edit out a lot. So, you know, this is like a two-hour episode that originally was 18 hours. Thank you for being here.

Tell us where we can find you on social media, anything you'd like to plug, etc. Oh, man. Well, on social media, I'm on Instagram at Kelly and Phyllis. That's pretty much the only I'm on Twitter, too. But I'm thinking of leaving shortly. So probably for the better. Yeah. Yeah. Probably the best. Yeah, probably for the best. I don't use it really.

So if I'm on Instagram, I post a lot of photos of trees and natures. I've just got an Instagram account for the Terrence Malick fans out there. I just like nature. I have a film coming out, or no, that is out already on VOD, Anywhere You Rent Movies, called Sugar Daddy, which is about a woman brazenly trying to make art and surrounded by patriarchy and men and men trying to control her voice and her trying to find it.

So I will say that this film very much was on the origin story of this film, Sugar Daddy. So that's what I want to plug. It's not set in space it's set in a grimy apartment in Toronto but is is that not space like let's be let's be real anything could be space yeah oh thank you so much for being with us Kelly we really appreciate it and thank you for bringing us this movie it was like it was such a fun there's so much to talk about it's been a it's been a long requested movie so I'm finally I'm glad we finally got to do it oh man that's so happy and thank you for like what a speaking of dreams like how fun is it just to chat for like two hours two plus hours 18 hours 18 hours like-minded people who want it your podcast is so valuable and fun and

it speaks to a type of discussion that I could have at all times. So I'm happy to do it sort of mildly professionally with you guys. Come back anytime. And then you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast and subscribe to our Patreon where we have covered Arrival and Da Vinci Code and other movies that I didn't reference on today's episode. That's $5 a month. It gets you access to two bonus episodes

plus the entire back catalog and that's at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. And you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast. And you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast for all your various items with our stuff on

it needs. We don't have a space suit yet. Yet. But we'll see. Or a headband. Or a headband camera. No flimsy radio shack headband camera. That's radio shack. Oh oh that's so funny

that's the real merch from that film yeah for sure that was the merch opportunity and I think otherwise we're okay to go okay to go we're okay to go

bye bye bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 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. next level. The one, 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.