The Bechdel Cast - Empire Records with Shelli Nicole

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

We observe Rex Manning Day by sitting down with special guest Shelli Nicole and analyzing Empire Records.  (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @HiShelli on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP.See 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. 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

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and I have been professionally podcasting for 10 years. The podcast game Apple Podcasts, or anything that catches my attention. Listen to the I Am Rapaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Jamie.

Hey, Caitlin. Guess what? What? It's Rex Manning Day on the Bechdel cast. How are you going to celebrate? I'm going to get the ugliest self-tanner i can possibly find and and uh and and uh i don't is there a full music video for that because i want to see it it seems like they shot a full one yeah i was kind of in like until like you get to know him better i was kind of into rex manning's

like sound i was like you know i was like you know I I know he is he's there for the moms, but I would show up. What's the song? Say no more. More and more. It's really good. I was like, you know, I could I could put that in my morning rotation. No problem. Sure. How are you going to be observing Rex Manning Day? I am going to I was going to say, remember when he punches a teenager? I was going to say, I'm going to punch a teenager, but I'm not going to do that. Remember when the protagonist of the movie also punches a teenager? Yeah, Joe punches a teenager.

But they're like, no, but it's a paternal thing. You're like, well, that does make it worse, but okay. So much happens in this movie, and yet not that much happens in this movie to me the main character is Liv Tyler's crop top and that is very important to me the true protagonist yes I love it I want it I can't pull it off uh it's the Empire Records episode of the Bechdel cast yes so this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point for our discussion Jamie can you remind me on this bright and sunny Rex Manning me what the bechdel cast nope no

the bechdel test is i was like caitlin wake up wake up you're dreaming oh gosh everything's going great i ate some weed brownies and now I'm in a GWAR music video. Oh, I was like, Caitlin, you can't, you don't do that. I ate fruit and nuts this morning and I got like, great. I started like, I got mad at, I don't know, sometimes when I make healthy choices, I'm like, who the fuck do you think you are? I was like, looking at my fruit and nuts, like, oh, oh, you're really going to make a change.

Get a grip anyways the Bechdel test is and those internal monologues pass the Bechdel test uh wow true yeah because my rage at myself is uh about women uh so the Bechdel test is a media metric created by Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test uh Many different versions of this test. But the one that we use on the show requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names must speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. And as you will learn in our Empire Records episode, it doesn't matter how weird or chaotic

that dialogue is. True. So that's the Bechdel test. We're covering Empire Records today. It's been a request for quite some time. And we have an amazing guest to observe Rex Manning Day with. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait.

So she is a culture editor at Autostraddle she's also written for thrillist bitch media and vogue magazine she is shelly nicole welcome hi we were toying off mike with introducing i mean we were all in on it but uh possibly bringing you in as Shrek-y Nicole. And just seeing how far into the episode we could... At the end, that is exactly what I'd like to be referred... I will change my Twitter handle if I have to. I promise you, I will. You'll be like, Shrek-y, what's your history with episode records? I think someone, Caitlin, was talking um taking weed brownies in a guar video before you mentioned the guar video i was just like so that's what kind of podcast this is i

knew it all i wish i could do weed every time i consume any amount not do weed caitlin what do you say you sound like you're in the. What do you say? You sound like you're in the CIA when you say stuff like that. Hello, fellow kids. Want to do some weed and listen to some gore on our Walkman? Like on the clock at work while I'm literally supposed to be like working. Is that before or after he low-key assaults a woman by grabbing her foot and kissing her foot? I think that was after when she was just trying to do ballet and mind her own business. And he kisses her feet.

Yeah. And he tries to kiss her head also. Yeah. It's not a good look, Mark. It's not a good look. Mark is a disaster there there i'm so excited to talk about this movie especially just like learning about the production of this movie is so wild yeah and some of the result of that is you just get like bizarro disembodied shots like that that you're like what is happening yeah what am i what is

the takeaway and sometimes they're like that was just kind of a vibes based shot that we chose we just kind of felt like doing it and it's 1996 so we're gonna do it let's party let's party the narrative trajectory in this movie is so hard to track and fall i was getting so much whiplash. I got a nosebleed. It was wild. I'll save it. But okay. Shelly, I'm sorry. Shrekky. Shrekky. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tell us about your history, your relationship with Empire Records. It literally started with Liv Tyler's crop top. And I'm convinced. So when you said that, I was like, yeah, that's it. I watched this movie. So when you said that, I was like,

yeah, that's it. I watched this movie in middle school and found it when I was in blockbuster. I used to go to blockbuster with my dad. Sorry. I used to force my father to take me to blockbuster every Friday. And I would always spend like an insane amount of time,

like trying to pick out one video. And it was to the point where he would eventually start waiting in the car and then i would bang on the blockbuster window and be like i'm ready to check out like that's how long it would take me to like pick a movie but i found this movie i go through still like spurts of like i only want to watch movies about this specific subject and at that time i was obsessed with school girls to me, that meant that anybody wearing a plaid skirt was clearly a schoolgirl, right? Yeah, that's incorrect. But I saw this movie, like, on one of the shelves, and I grabbed it because of her crop top and because of the skirt but also I grabbed it

because I recognized her from and this was in like 2000 when I saw it right I recognized her from the Aerosmith video as the other girl who was with Cher because I just knew this yeah I just knew Alicia Silverstone as Cher. And I had never really seen her in anything else. But that video is also kind of a queer route for me. So I saw that and I was just like, so if she's in this, I don't know, maybe Cher might show up,

but also maybe it'll be a little gay. I obviously wasn't using the word gay at that time in my life, but I thought maybe I would get a crossover. And I saw it. I rented it. And then I proceeded to rent it, like, maybe every week for the next, like, two months instead of just asking to fucking buy a movie. You, like, sunk $50 into the Empire Records industrial complex. They needed the money.

They lost a lot of money. They absolutely lost a lot of fucking cash, but I made up for it, at least within two months of blockbuster video fees. And I rented it over and over. I watched it, and I just loved it because at the time, I was trying to insert myself into movies. I've always loved films and stuff like that but at that time in my life i was trying to like insert myself in some way into that world of whatever

movie i was watching specifically teen films and i have an obsession still to this day with movies that take place in one day because it's easier for me to put myself inside of that world if it's just one day like what would I wear? Which one of these characters would I be friends with? So like in Ferris Bueller, 200 Cigarettes, The Breakfast Club, Mallrats, all those movies one day. And same with Empire Records. And then I just got obsessed with the storyline. And then I was like 13 or something when I tried to like go and work at this record store in Ferndale, Michigan.

I'm from Detroit. And they were like, you're 13. And I was like, yeah, but I've been watching this fucking movie, man. And I like really want to work at a record store. And they were like, you're 13. You can't work here. So you were like the Warren. Yeah, I was absolutely warren and i warren is a wild

character but he's probably like my second favorite character in the movie that's my connection with it and i love it to this day and then you wrote a wonderful piece on the film in which you discuss your connection with it and the friendship between Gina and Corey. And yeah, we'll, we'll, uh, very excited to get into that. We'll talk about that. But, um, yeah, well, we're so excited to discuss further. Jamie, what's your relationship with this movie? No history with this movie. I had not seen it before, which I don't know. I guess I'm having kind of a tricky time knowing I'm like, how popular is this movie? I know that it was like a flop on release. And then it has become kind of a cult classic. But I don't I'm like, I don't know how many people I know have seen this movie if I'm unusual for having not seen it. There are so many famous people in it also. So I hadn't seen this movie.

I got such intense whiplash watching it. But there were parts I really enjoyed and learning about. I think I maybe liked learning about the production of this movie even more than I liked the movie itself, because it's just such a wild story. And once you know, like, basically, for listeners who are not familiar with it it's this movie was just like hacked to death by studio executives it was originally 40 minutes longer i guess they cut three major characters i have some guesses is it what they are that lady jane i feel like had to have had something else like you can just see like there was a really really like good script at some point

and then they just cut out whole chunks of it so then you get stuff like Liv Tyler is addicted to pills and it's like there's only 10 minutes left in the movie what are you talking about um etc I just thought it was a chaotic weird wild, wild ride. I'm very excited to talk about it. Caitlin, what's your history with Empire Records? I also had no history. I thought I had seen this movie. I thought this was one of those movies that I watched in college because I was like, I have to watch all these cult classics and all this stuff. And I think I had just seen a bunch of similar movies, such as Reality Bites, Mallrats, High Fidelity, Dazed and Confused, maybe.

Like I'd seen all those and I just thought. That's just a lot of Renee Zellweger movies, really. Yeah. But then I started watching the movie and none of it was familiar. And I realized I, in in fact had never seen it so um hmm I don't want to be the villain of the episode but I do not like the movie especially from like a screenwriting standpoint and we'll talk about how the story that unfolds and is kind of like muddled and random and like whiplashy as it often gets it's like not the

fault of the screenwriter because like you said jamie there's a lot of studio notes and changes and also like post-production changes that made the from a screenwriting point of view the story really right which which shelly you like laid out really clearly in in your piece as well of just like how much was yeah hacked out of this. A lot of stuff went through it. Because I got to talk to Carol Hypenen. That's so cool. So I got to talk to, like, the writer and everything about it.

And it was really cool. And she was telling me just, like, and we'll get into it, obviously. But, like, just how hacked up the movie ended up being. Like, for the audience when it actually came out versus the cult classic when like maybe 10 years later when people like me found it and like still loved it but it went through a lot it went through a lot yeah so just like watching the movie with having no nostalgia attached to it having never seen it watching it for the first time in 2022 as a person in my mid 30s i don't have quite the same attachment to it caitlin was rooting for mitch it was i was rooting for mitch i was like yeah

music town she's like make it a bidet store again music sucks tower records me that's what i want capitalism give it to me yes i do love i mean that 90s convention where they're like capitalism is one guy exactly capitalism is just this one person in 1996 and he wants to sell toilets and he's not that bad and you're like what is happening i love it so the movie isn't necessarily for me but there's a lot to talk about so i'm excited to get into it yeah i guess i will attempt to recap the movie oh good luck i was gonna say i think will be the greatest challenge of my career. Shelly, jump in whenever.

You know the text. I refuse because I've been listening and I've been being like, okay, during the recap, shut the fuck out. And I will probably chime in two to seven times. But other than that, I don't think this is going to be a very long recap. It's longer than you think. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But there's all these things that happened. And then it's like, well, it's never referenced again. But it did technically happen. It did kind of happen. Yeah. So I'll jump in occasionally. Okay, cool. All right, here we go. So we meet Lucas, played by Rory Cochran.

He is one of the employees of Empire Records, which is an indie record store in, we're not sure what part of the country. He briefly chats with his colleague Gina, played by Renee Zellweger, about how tonight is a big night for him because their boss Joe is trusting Lucas to lock up which means counting the money dropping it in a safe all that stuff and as he's doing that Lucas notices some paperwork about a corporate buyout of Empire Records by this conglomerate music town this is all like narrated by lucas in this opening sequence which is it's just one of the many bizarre things this movie does that makes me laugh that kind of

comes and goes and you're there's not really any rules about it where he's like narrating it like he's fucking hunter s thompson he's like oh oh no we're being bought out and then he's like sometimes I'm like is he talking to camera and then sometimes people are talking to camera but then most of the time they're not sometimes they're just talking to themselves it's so confusing right it doesn't happen enough to make it a consistent motif yeah but it does it does happen off often enough that you notice it so yeah so that I wish it happened more because it's whenever I do like when someone turns to camera I'm like that's such a goofy choice and I always like it it's my favorite thing right and it's even more of a thing when it's unnecessary and then inconsistent

it's even better if it's a mess I want it. So anyway, clearly the store is in financial trouble because of this like corporate buyout that's about to happen. So Lucas gets the idea to take the money that they earned that day, I think, or I don't know if it's like all the money in the safe. I'm not sure, but it's $9,000. Take it to Atlantic City and gamble with it to try to earn enough to save the store. Capitalism. Unfortunately, Lucas loses all of the money and then heads out of town the next morning on his motorcycle. But don't worry, he'll be he'll be right back. But the boss, Joe, comes into the store. He can't find the money. He's freaking out. Meanwhile, we meet the other staff as they come into work that day. AJ, played by Johnny Whitworth. Mark, played by Ethan Embry. AJ is

like this artsy, sensitive type. Mark is like a stoner doofus. We also meet Corey, played by Liv Tyler. She's like, little Miss Perfect, I'm going to go to Harvard. And she's wearing that crop top. Yes. She is. Just wanted to shout it out. It's important. Feminist icon, blue crop top sweater.

And then we see Gina again. Again, that's Renee Zellweger. She's like, the slutty one, quote unquote. They all come into work they are all teenagers question mark we're not sure how old these people are really except for Liv Tyler who seems to be a senior in high school right I feel like they're like between 18 and like 23 4 yeah yeah I think so too because it's really only clear that it's her because she's going to harvard she's going to harvard right yeah other than that i think everyone's like under 25 i think yeah

right because it's like implied that some of them are like working at empire records instead of going to college or something yeah don't worry there's not gonna be a talk about loans or any people in movies don't have college loans it's just not a thing no right uh but they're just like i don't know like do i want to keep chilling out here or do i want to go to art school in boston i'm like honestly as someone who did that don't go to art school in boston keep your record store job you're wasting your fucking money and your life okay don't do it wow zero out of ten would not do again in so much debt for no fucking reason didn't learn a single thing yeah no i um as someone who went to screenwriting school and got a screenwriting

master's degree i mean you use it every week caitlin i use it every single week every single week can i tell you how much i wanted you to say that you bring not that you bring it every week, Caitlin. I use it every single week. You use it every single week. Can I tell you how much I wanted you to say that? Not that you bring it up a lot, you know, no bigs. I would never. I would never bring it up. You would never. You're not that kind of person. But I'm so excited and hoping that you would.

Just occasionally. Just a little bit. There it is. And it's true. It's all true. It's all true. Okay. So we meet the staff. And that day is rex manning

day at the store so a pop star named rex manning who kind of had his heyday in the 80s it seems is coming into the store to sign autographs and promote his new album i think they're mapping him on like barry manilow i was trying to is it Barry Manilow? Okay, because I was like visually he's giving Barry Manilow and I do love that he's so furious that all of his like listeners are his age. I'm like, what did you what did you expect sir leave these mothers are paying your rent show some respect i have a whole thing about his fan base in the movie and like what that telegraphs to the audience we'll get there yeah that well i mean it's like classic gen x movie like people over 30 should die like very oh god the most annoying generation sorry to our listeners who are a member of it. I mean, whatever. Our generation takes plenty of shit. I mean, maybe every generation is bad.

Just putting it out there. Yeah, wipe out the species. Done. We've had our chance and we blew it as humans. Whatever. Millennials, we have ugly pants. Like, it's fine. Whatever.

All right. Our generation never figured out pants and I stand by that i really just don't i think we tried like several times to like get down pants that would work on more than one body type conceptually and we just like kept fumbling it in new and interesting ways excuse me my boot cut flare legs from american eagle were awesome no i'm wearing skinny jeans that I glued to my body. And I think that they actually look and feel really comfortable. All right. We fucked up pants.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we established that it's Rex Manning Day. Corey wants to lose her virginity to Rex Manning while he's there. We also learn that AJ is secretly in love with Corey. And today is the day that he plans to tell her. We meet another employee who comes in, Debra, played by Robin Tooney. She comes in.

She shaves her head. She has a bandage on her wrist, which some of the other staff notices. She also has a pretty antagonistic relationship with many other members of the more frustrating things about this movie where it's like there's there's clearly was so much more to Deb's story or Deborah's story at one point and it it just feels so obvious that so much of it went away and it's like I want I want this context of why you struggle to connect with other women because I feel like it would have landed so much better when she's it seems like she has issues with her mom yeah and I just I was like oh there was a story in there but we didn't we didn't get to see it nope anyways um then lucas shows back up the guy who had taken the nine thousand dollars at the beginning of the movie joe is like where's my money and lucas tells joe that it is recirculating

in atlantic city which is very funny then joe is like well okay well what the hell and he considers calling the cops and pressing charges against lucas but he does not do that no because fathers and sons can't do that and then joe explains that he had gotten together enough money to buy the store from the owner this guy mitch aka mr capitalism mr capitalism and this would have allowed Joe to stop Mitch from selling the store to Music Town. But now he can't do that because this $9,000 is gone because apparently it costs only $9,000 to buy a store. I'm like, where do they live?

And that's the thing, especially because he comes back so fast. Like even if he gets back the next day, like where are they? But then also they're like on this like really pretty seaside because when Mark goes out to take a break, you see that. And then when they go pick up Corey, you see all that. I don't know. But it only costs $9,000 to save a record store in 1996. So not to save, but to buy. Right. That has like beachfront property.

Yeah. And three floors. So much square footage. So much square footage. It's downtown. There's three floors. It's beachfront property. It has a beautiful smoke break section and a place for staff to live because Burkle lives back there. Oh, wait, I didn't even realize that. Yeah, he like comes from that. And so I don't it's a very good live workspace for $9,000. So that is so funny. It gets I and again, I'm just like I also like Gen X don't yell at me. I love you guys. It's all good. But like, like i'm just like what are you guys so upset about it costs nine thousand dollars to have a three-floor house downtown like enjoy it while it lasts bitch like what are you so mad about anyways i don't know man it's all man the

man sucks the man the man mr capitalism is peeing on my floor like all right oh yeah okay so because lucas lost this nine thousand dollars joe has no choice but to transition the store into a music town very soon which means that they would have to again answer to the man they'd lose the cool indie vibe of the store they'd have to follow all these strict rules so no one who works at empire records is happy about this which is true i mean i like that like this is like all based on tower records and like that whole story and like saving indie like that end of stuff i'm like oh that's like very compelling and cool and sure places like that truly do not exist'm like oh that's like very compelling and cool and sure places like that truly do not exist anymore like tower records i think went out of business

in like 05 or something yeah i mean it reminds me of working at like an indie alt comedy venue which i did for several years and like the vibe and the camaraderie with your fellow staff and that was my favorite aspect of the movie but um yeah so i get i get that yeah so what's the next scene that happens because it's truly just like and then another scene happens it's so hard to keep track of but i think it's that lucas stops a shoplifter warren who is trying to steal a bunch of CDs. The staff shames Warren. And then they make him stick around just sitting on a couch while they wait for the cops to show up. I was just like, there is this weird, like, no exit vibe to that room.

Like, it's just kind of like Empire Records purgatory where it's like if you're in trouble you just have to sit in this room and you could leave at any time but for whatever reason you don't you don't right yeah yeah because joe is like lucas you stole nine thousand dollars from me well gosh darn it you better sit on this couch and don't you dare get up from that couch and then lucas just stays on the couch for like the first half of the movie yeah i mean daddy said so okay so then so the people are lining up for rex manning day rex manning shows up with someone who might be his assistant it might be his publicist we're not really sure what jane's job is i'm convinced this is one of the characters that got super super cut down because she seems like she belongs there

yeah yeah and it's uh debbie mazer too which is just fucking like incredible who i'd like to nominate for the eyebrow hall of fame to this day yes yes like if you see her on younger where she plays like i don't know the the coolest guy in the world. The eyebrows are still like, I'm like doing a rewatch of Younger right now. But she has like incredible eyebrows. But also in 1996, she had beautiful 1996 eyebrows. She did. Yeah, she's, it took me until like her second appearance in Empire Records to be like, she's from Younger.

Yeah. Younger, underrated baby. Underrated show. She's so great. Yeah, that character, like, again, I mean, so many characters are full chaos, but her in particular, where she's like there and then she has a scene and then she's like, I quit. But she says, I quit to Joe. And I'm like, do you work for him?

And then later she comes back and she's like, OK, Joe, I want to go on a date with you. And I was like, how old are any of these characters? I don't understand. How do they know each other? I thought that they were meeting at the beginning of that scene. I thought so too, yeah. But apparently Empire Records is going to Empire Records in that I don't know what the fuck is happening at any given point in the movie. Oh, gosh. Okay, rex starts signing autographs he seems very resentful that his fan base is largely middle-aged women mostly everyone who works at empire records thinks that rex manning sucks

and jane is like oh yeah i guess he does suck. I quit working for him, but I'm going to tell Joe and not Rex. You can tell someone unrelated. Then another employee shows up, Berko. He and Debra seem to have some history. There's also been other scenes scattered throughout the movie of things like staff putting on music and dancing around the store, quick conversations between various characters to establish more of their like relationship dynamic other random things here and there those scenes are fun i love the concept of veto that was my like one of my

favorite i was like oh that is such a record store like thing it is so cool and definitely something i tried to like implement in drama club and in high school. Except no one fucking knew what I was talking about. So I just had to eat my bag of Skittles. And I was like, it's fine. Just because you guys don't know film doesn't mean that that has anything to do with me. But whatever. They're like, what is Shrek-y talking about?

Shrek-y, please sit down. And I was just like, you know what what in about 10 years i'm gonna have my day about this movie so it'll be fine oh my god but also quick side note the guy who played burko was live tyler's stepdad at the time yes oh coyote shivers is his name yeah and of course okay first of all of course live tyler has a stepdad named Coyote Shivers. Coyote Shivers. I guess I've never been less shocked in my life. Liv Tyler's had such a wild life.

I was going to say, yeah, if you ever have an opportunity and you just want to go for a quick ride on Wikipedia, go to Liv Tyler's Wikipedia page. It's a roller coaster. Sometimes it's like sometimes I get annoyed at nepotism stuff and then you read live tyler's wikipedia page and it's like she deserves everything she has because she's been through enough there is so much weirdness in that poor woman's life and and if you want a real journey of the spirit watch live tyler's architectural digest video Liv Tyler's Architectural Digest video. Because it's like, she's a weird lady. Do you?

Okay. This is taking, I love a good kismet moment. Sorry, Caitlin. No, please. Can you all shut? This is my seventh and final interruption, by the way. Don't limit yourself. But I just was making my partner watch Architectural Digest videos.

We've been watching them all morning and it started because i was like let's watch live tyler's lake and we've been watching it all day it's my favorite one because i want it i want it all right sorry back to the insane plot that is empire records i don't know where we are in it but i don't know either tyler and dakota johnson two weird nepotisms giving the architectural digest tours of a lifetime you're just like oh no one's ever uh told you that you're weird before because you're so beautiful and you grew up with so much money but you're being so weird right now man yeah oh i love it okay so um the next thing that happens is mitch the guy who owns empire records shows up to pick up yesterday's money joe decides not to rat lucas out for stealing it and instead joe stuffs the like money pouch thing full of scrap paper to make it seem

like it's full of cash and then he gives that to mitch then cory insists on fixing lunch for rex manning because that's going to be her opportunity to seduce him which she tries to do and he's basically like okay well you can suck my dick and then she realizes she's like oh no yeah she feels humiliated she runs up to the roof where she bumps into aj who finally professes his love for her chaos but she is distraught and she wants to be alone. So he leaves feeling very rejected. Then Gina tries to comfort Corey about this Rex Manning thing. But Corey ends up aggressively slut shaming Gina. So then Gina decides to seduce Rex Manning and she has sex with him while that's going on Corey goes up to AJ and says I'm sorry I freaked out before but I just don't think of you like that you're my best

friend and I'm like that's news to me because I thought your best friend was Gina or what like are you friends at all we haven't seen you talk on screen yet. I'm sure. I was like, I'm sure that they I thought that I feel like the movie was like, and she doesn't even know I exist. But then she's like, you're my best friend. I was like, she doesn't like she knows she just wants nothing to do with you. Not very Mandalorian enough for her, apparently, I guess.

But yeah, I know. And then it it was like she at the end i mean whatever things are about to get so out of control but she's like you're such a talented artist and i was like have we seen him do any art do we know what his art looks like what is he any good like glued some quarters to the floor called that art we do see him like sketching some things here and there and he does seem to be a pretty talented artist so I'll allow it okay good for him that scene did remind me of

what is it when like Steve Zahn cat from Stuart Little or someone's like you're my best friend you're my best friend Steve Zahn's greatest role move over everything he's ever done Steve Z zahn as cat from stewart little is so funny snowball you're my best friend oh my god it's so funny he should he could have been he could have been in this movie he would have fit into this world alfred melina could have played

joe oh yeah true uh-huh yeah because what's his name uh joe is played by anthony lapaglia yeah lapaglia uh i did not know who this man was but i did figure out halfway through that he is definitely australian because he kept forgetting that his character wasn't australian right he just like it was a little thing when he was like i forget he was like talking to lucas about something and he's like you give the money back you're like whoa wait hold on where are we oh my gosh i kept being like i know that's not bill pullman but is it bill pullman yeah big bill pullman wasn't available vibes i mean yes okay so cory has told aj she thinks of him as her best friend and that's why she's not interested in him romantically and he's like that's bullshit

and he storms off and then we see cory take a pill which i think is the first time we've seen her do that the implication being that she is like dealing with addiction or you know drug abuse issues something so then there's a scene where uh the entire store starts dancing to rex manning's song while rex manning and gina are having sex in another room but then joe comes down into the store and he's like well well, enjoy this while you can, because this time next week, this is going to be a music town. He just like runs downstairs and is like, steaks. And you're like, oh, my God, there's enough steaks. We need to like finish a storyline.

Don't start another one. And this is when he gets really angry at Lucas and punches him. Father's sons. He beats him up from a screenwriting standpoint this movie the inciting incident happens like three minutes into the movie which it's more standard for that to be like 15 minutes into a feature-length film so it all it happens right away before there's any exposition before we know anything about anyone we get the inciting incident then there are there's a full i would say 60 to 70 minutes of after this conflict of compelling conflict being established of like we have to save this store but oh no the money is lost what do we do to recoup that money and save the store that conflict basically goes away for like

60 to 70 minutes and then at the very end which we're getting too soon he's like remember the movie and i was like no no i don't but i'm having so much fun being confused uh okay so but before we get to the very end so um joe assaults lucas but their fight quickly blows over and then everyone finds out that gina is having sex with rex manning including cory who feels especially betrayed so then aj attacks rex manning and then aj gets punched another another teenager or like young person getting punched by a full adult man. Then they kick Rex out of the store. Gina and Corey get into a screaming match.

Gina outs Corey's drug abuse. Corey starts trashing the store, but then her co-workers stop her. She calms down. And then Debra provides some emotional support to cory they have a nice moment together then several random scenes where we see mark eating weed brownies and fantasizing about being in a guar music video out of uh we see nowhere it almost just feels like sometimes this movie just does stuff where i feel like they're like, so that was pretty heavy, right? Here's a little palate cleanser.

And I remember watching that the first time. And I actually, every time I rented it, and honestly still when I watch it to this day, I fast forward through that scene. And now a little bit, it's a little bit more blended as like, I guess now that I do like culture writing and critiquing of films and stuff like that. But honestly, most of it is just because I hate it. It makes no sense. It doesn't need to be there. And I hate every moment of that. It's the worst shot out of everything they cut out of everything that's on the cutting room floor.

That makes the final cut. Of this movie. They were like, now that stays. don't you touch it and i was like okay i guess well probably because they like paid guar oh yeah i guess yeah that's it and then they're like well we can't just have wasted that money so i bet that that is it yeah yeah what a mess i'm that i'm laughing but what a mess so So then Jane comes back. She asks Joe out for dinner. And he's like, sounds great. Then the staff has a mock funeral for Deborah, during which everyone, you know, divulges some personal things. They bond with each other. And this is also whenina shows back up and she and cory make up

i love a good plot resolution via well-timed eavesdrop where she just happens to walk in the room and live tyler's like i miss gina i love her so much she's so she's a she's the woman i can never be and then gina's like no and then gina says what her stakes were the whole time apparently where she walks in she's like i don't want to be says what her stakes were the whole time, apparently, where she walks in. She's like, I don't want to be like my mother. You're like, who's your mother? And she's like, I want to be a singer. I was like, you do?

And then one scene later, she's a singer. And we're like, good for her, I guess. Yeah. So then Warren, the kid who had tried to shoplift from the store, comes back with a gun and starts shooting the store up. But it's OK because they're blanks. It is. It turns out he just wanted to work at the record store the whole time. What is happening?

Like, which is like the most white teenager with a gun thing ever to just have it be like oh he was just having a bad day it's all good let's give him a job at the record store and that'll help you're just like no no don't do that it's mind-boggling but yeah he he gets taken away by the cops again sort of but they're just like well the gun was filled with blanks and he's a minor so we can't really do anything and then in the next scene he's back at the store working and also drinking too and drinking even though he's like 15 or something yeah he's real little like i just don't know what was happening like there did reach a point where i was just like my brain is smooth like i anything could happen and so when it goes to like she's on pills the store is gonna close down i love you i don't want to be like my mom we're doing a fake funeral now someone's shooting up the store you're

just like uh-huh yeah okay yeah okay i guess awesome what a weird day that was me watching it i was like yeah okay cool like when i first saw it i was like there's tracks i'll do it i want to go work at a record store actually so lauren could he's 13 apparently so why can't i yeah right yeah who can't who can't get a job at this place and you'll never get fired despite all the really wild things joe needs to be daddy oh gosh okay so warren coming back with a gun actually becomes plot relevant because then news anchors show up to report on the story so then mark jumps into the newscast to promote a fundraiser event that the store is going to hold that night, which I guess Mark just decided, oh, let's do a fundraiser. So they put it together, a bunch of people show up, they have a big party. Gina, Berko, and some other guy play live music,

everyone's dancing, they're drinking. they raise a bunch of money and then mitch the owner shows up again and he's like what is going on and then joe takes the money they raised and buys the store from mitch for again ballpark of nine thousand dollars a solid maybe 274 dollars i don't know yeah because there's not there is not $9,000 in that. They're not like bucket thing. Yeah, there's no way. Maybe a grand top maybe. But he buys the store from Mitch nonetheless. And so everyone is celebrating. Corey goes to AJ and screams at him and pushes him and hits him telling him, you're so talented and you need

to go to art school and he's like okay I'll go to art school and I'm gonna go in Boston so I can be near you when you're at Harvard and she's like awesome and then they kiss and she goes really and then they kiss and you're like I did I forgot that they knew each other. And then the movie ends with everyone dancing on the roof. Which is fun. So that's the story. Let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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. What is... Hello? Like, what do... Well, She do well shelly yeah shelly kick us out what do you what do you want to talk about because i'm like i mean here's the thing like as i watch this movie like i've watched this with completely different eyes at first and that's why when i talk about the movie i know every single one of its faults that it has.

Like, don't get me wrong. But there are certain movies that I'm not excusing some of them. A lot of the faults on this. I am like, it's fine. I don't care. It's perfect. But other ones, I am like, oh, what? Like, you know, with like Corey and Rex Manning and all that kind of stuff. But as chaotic as it is, I think it for me, I love it because, again, it's one day and

it makes so much sense to me up here that even the cut of it so much can happen in a day. Like if we were to cut up our own one day, my Friday, like we were talking about all the craziness that I had with like breaking my computer and then I could all this stuff. It's a bunch of smash cuts. And this film is a bunch of essentially a bunch of smash cuts of stories with a really good soundtrack. And a lot of it can be excused. But other ones, I just kind of live in that film world when I watch it.

And I'm like like everything's fine that one gift that little cat or whatever sitting with the flames behind them that's me watching this movie and i'm like it's fine it's fine totally and i like so we've been dunking on the like plot of the movie pretty hard throughout the recap and stuff but at its core it's a movie about like a ragtag group of misfits who come together they found a community at this store they have fairly interesting relationship dynamics among them and that's a very relatable story for many many people and that's the reason this movie has developed such a cult following. It's, you know, it really speaks to anyone who might feel like an oddball or anyone who is drawn to the idea of a chosen family.

Exactly. You know, stuff like that. So I totally get that. I enjoy that aspect of the movie. And then there's also like the anti-corporate, we have to maintain the integrity of this cool in the space you know screw the man down with the establishment which right in the form that it takes in this movie is a very like 90s gen x like that's exactly it version very that of like you know as long as i can work in this indie record store without the man breathing down

my neck i don't really care what else is going on in the world i don't have i don't have time for more pressing social issues yeah i just want to fucking listen to guns and roses man and why and i just want to eat skittles and burn cds and i just want to live on this couch and carry it around with me and i don't care about anything else that's happening in the world. But my whole world is this store. This 9 to 5 that I... Wait, open till midnight. Sorry.

Yeah. Empire Records, open till midnight. Can I tell you how many times I answered my house phone like that? And so my dad was like, we're done. We're finished. I love it. We're not doing this anymore. Also, I would answer my phone. like, Oh, we're done. We're finished. We're not doing this anymore. Also, I would answer my phone. Hello, faulty towers, any show that had a pickup. I was just

like, nice. Yeah. Weird time in the household with me. Anyway. But yeah, I think it was just like, so 90s based. And I was always obsessed with the 90s. Like you can be like born in a time but not be an adult in that time and I was like that's how it is and that's how it's gonna that's how it was that's what I missed and that's what it's gonna be like when I'm a grown-up too so that's why I just was like this is dope yeah sure yeah I mean it it does feel so like of its time in a way that is like kind of fun and nostalgic where I'm just like you know with these characters it's it's so funny it was what is the i always forget the name of it the matthew willard movie about selling out and it's about the man slc punk yes yes slc punk i feel like it's a more self-aware version of this

storyline where it's like very clear by looking at like it also just like knowing how generations tend to pan out of like yeah half of these kids are going to be like wall street bankers and cause the recession but this is their moment cory's going to harvard like right you know like no yeah it's not things are like not gonna you know and then you know aj or is that yeah like he's gonna like change to a business major one semester in and they're gonna be the most boring people to ever ever live and you know whatever no offense to business majors except actually i don't think i actually think i i offense to them yeah offense to business yeah what what do you yeah you should go to art school like

yeah why don't you get a master's degree in screenwriting hello yeah we're the moral authority of the fucking planet anyways yeah it's just it's it's so 90s and i i mean but so much of like you reference this in your piece shelly of like how it seems like this story had really good bones and those bones were just like repeatedly like a crowbar was taken to the bones by editors and like I was fascinated to find out that in the original draft of this movie Corey was not trying to lose her virginity at all she was just a big fan yeah of Rex and I think what kind of like blew me with that too, like all the different changes that I could find.

And also when I did interview Carol, I didn't, I didn't want to interview her in a sense of being like, how did this end up this way? You feel me? I did, but I had so many of those questions that I wanted to ask, but she kind of just like let it out anyway and told me a lot of different

things. But what was a big part of a lot of the changes to this movie honestly was clueless like there was already so many high school movies either in production and posts being made scripts had already been bought that they were trying to like stand out in some way and this is already a movie about a ragtag bunch of emo kids in i don't know east jesus nowhere seattle like and they couldn't figure out what to do with it and so they cut it up they tore it apart and then what i think they tried to bring it back on was the music because who would watch this movie right the kids that think they hear certain songs first the kids that think that they're the only one who knows like one band and things like that but even

that couldn't save it at the box office yeah it had to wait years for us to find it or for me to be like this is the most important movie of all time so right yeah well i'm also interested to hear more about something you talk a lot about in your piece which was published in marie claire entitled empire records helped me understand my queerness and uh you cite the friendship between gina and cory you kind of like yeah i don't know if it was like a shipping thing necessarily but like you drew inspiration from that in terms of like that powerful friendship and that was sort of like the basis of what you were yeah kind of looking for in romantic relationships and yeah just I'd love to hear you speak more about that yeah no it was because like when I was watching at that time

this is like middle school and like all of us right had a shitty time in middle school but i always say like my middle school experience is fucking terrible right and i use uh i was ready to get out and but you're in sixth grade you have two more years left you know you're like but the only way out was through movies like this and the teen movies that i would watch about high school because i would be like this this is what's coming next for me. And this isn't only what's gonna come next to me with friends. Maybe this is what comes next to me for like, romantic kind of shit too, you know, but I was never really attaching. I wasn't looking for queerness in this film. I was just looking. I loved watching movies where girls were best friends.

Because like, I didn't have really like a best friend that was just like that close, you know. And then when I started to grow up and I went to college and stuff like that, I learned about the lesbian or queer girl trope where they're like all lesbians or queer girls like end up falling in love with their best friend. You know what I mean? Whether it's reciprocated or not. And I had never fallen in love with any friend except for one girl in like elementary school where I realized that I was queer. But when I was watching this specific movie, this was the first one where the two best friends had like a hell of falling out. And it made me really sad because I thought they were never I thought it wasn't going to get back together. And I thought they weren't going to have a friendship anymore, which for me was breaking down my little cute world of, of what friendship is and what queerness could be with another girl.

Cause in Clueless, they were always best friends in Jawbreaker. They didn't like each other from me to begin with. And then like, and can't hardly wait. That was an unrequited love, but it was between a cis male and then like and can't hardly wait that was an like unrequited love but it was between a cis male and then a cis girl and stuff so this was the only movie where i saw two outcasts essentially be best friends and then fall out and then come back together in a stronger way

and that's all i thought i wanted in friendships and then eventually relationships when I grew up so I found clearness in it even though that wasn't a queer relationship at all but at the heart of so many queer girl relationships is friendship so that's how I connected clearness to it yeah yeah and that's I mean that's what's really cool about a movie like this where again even if I'm like dragging it from a screenwriting point of view, you can still latch on to really meaningful things like that. And clearly so many people have because of this movie's cult fan base and everything. Yeah, I think that's just a wonderful thing. And I'll try to stop making fun of its lack of three-act structure.

No, please don't. The film is chaotic and crazy and unorganized and all this. But there was just so many things that I found in it. Like from a screenwriting standpoint of you, from a culture critic point of view, like even if I was watching this movie and trying to take my personal feelings out of it would i rip it apart no but i would not be giving it four stars on letterbox like i do now most of those stars are because i loved it you know yeah also another good thing that i saw in this movie that i connected with was a character we lost a lot of is gina with her i'm not gina um deborah deborah deborah yeah. And she was clearly, like, cutting, right? Because she talks about it with, like, a ladybick and stuff.

And at that time in my life, I was also self-harming, you know, when I was doing it. So I was seeing, I saw that, something I hadn't seen in a movie, that had a happy ending, you know, essentially. But a happy ending that was so true to the character. Like, that character having that funeral and stuff it wasn't like outlandish it was one of the only things that kind of made sense a little bit um but when i saw that i thought that was cool because i was just like damn she's like going through something she's not telling everybody about it she's private she's cutting her wrist is messed up but then she's like all right i want these

girls to be best friends again so i'm gonna put myself and my shit on the table and hope they do too and then they did and they'd be friends again and that was another thing that made me be like i don't care that this record store costs only nine thousand dollars this movie is incredible that whole i want to like get into that like nest of relationships between the the girls in this movie or the women i don't know how old they are uh i don't know yeah uh these young adults uh but the gina corey stuff it's again it's like i feel like you almost have to like headcanon your way through it a little bit but i I don't know. I was able to get there. And having a friendship like that, that I mean, the slut shaminess was very true to that time.

And while I would have liked to see more like apologies of like, I shouldn't have talked about you like that. That was me being because it's clear they're projecting onto each other in a way that is like just talk it out like just have a conversation yeah because cory is feeling insecure about like she thought she was ready to lose her virginity and then it like she had this traumatic experience and she's like i'm not but instead of talking that out she is projecting onto her friend who she is jealous of and is like well you have sex all the time and you're a slut and then yeah Renee Zellweger I mean she I appreciated how how Gina was like fuck you like you can't talk to me like that I did too that was a cool moment yeah and then Debra I struggle with similar stuff as well and like I wish that it's and you're given these nuggets

of like oh there was a real story in here at one point there was so much there yeah because it's like you get the smallest bit of context of because it's like we talk about this in the show all the time of like why are women randomly turned against each other which i think in this movie it kind of comes off a little like they're randomly turned against each other because of how much is cut out but it seems like there was enough context at one point in the final draft not really but you have that one scene with Debra and Joe where Debra's doing Joe's taxes and like I was like I don't know quarterly taxes yeah yeah she's literally doing the taxes in like the recording little phone booth thing like yeah why can't she go to the office i know why can't

she be in that room where everyone's room is full actually yeah that's right too many people can't focus on taxes yeah but like joe goes in and joe is daddy and he's like i'm worried about you are you okay should i call your mom and she says like well i can't find my mom like she it's implied that she has a very very strained possibly like abandonment related relationship with her mom which would contextualize why she struggles to connect with other women sure but you don't ever fully get there and that would have worked for me too it's like if if you had just been able to get there and then there's an implication that like gina has an issue with her mom too it's only referenced once and it seems like the screenwriter like had a plan for how these relationships were

going like and how these women were going to like resolve their issues and connect yeah yeah and it just like you I wish we had gotten to see it I would love to see like a director's cut of this movie hell yeah does it exist especially like I don't know I think did I ask that because I was gonna go back and watch like you know how you have the interviews and stuff but so much gets cut out. But we because I interviewed Carol through Zoom. Yeah. And I think I did ask that. And I think the answer to that is like, yes. But will we see it?

Probably not. You feel me? But yeah, because I think if we had gotten more story to it would have on her, it would have made sense as to why she was so helpful to her in the bathroom to live Taylor in the bathroom, because that was so personal to her in the bathroom to live taylor in the bathroom because that was so personal and so like sweet but the way like if you didn't really pay attention to that character you wouldn't have been like oh that makes sense for her to do that but i would like to see how they even got that and also her situation with burko like what was going on there like right

there's like half contact because she's like deborah and burko who i always forget burko is even a character because he like shows up halfway is he wearing a wig i don't think so i think it's just 1996 that's just really bad hair i was like is that what's going on on his head like i don't like it but i feel like it's implied that they have some kind of like romantic history and he's like are you okay and she's like what do you care you didn't care last night and then he's like well i don't know and then she's like you know this isn't about you but i i thought about what happened last night and last week and last year and i just like what happened right and we don't know we're thinking

about it too and then she just says like but this is i already told you this isn't about you and it's like okay but also like what is the context of this relationship and like does that inform anything and there's just like isn't enough information given there which i feel like is kind of a dangerous thing to do especially when you're trying to talk about suicidal ideation yeah the movie's handling of that felt pretty irresponsible and like didn't know how to handle it yeah and also like how they introduced her to the other two girls like when they came to trade uh cash drawers and stuff like that and she was like shock me shock me shock me but it's just like why is she so hateful to these other two girls is it because

they're so girly girl and she just happens to be like a punk kind of girl who just hates those kind of girly girls or is it like more than that or is that just how they're playing i don't know they put all the girls so against each other and also with like debbie maser's character too low-key a little bit like yeah how the girls saw her because she was hanging out with rex and she was right it just they put everybody so against each other but i wasn't paying attention that so much of that i was always so focused on horry and gina like throughout all of it And they put them against each other, too, though. where it made more sense but i do like i agree with what you're saying as well caitlin of like when you're dealing with a narrative about self-harm it's like you have to have all of the context there or it becomes potentially harmful and the cut of this movie that was released like it's not intentionally harmful but it could come off as like a little bit

romanticizing like alt girl who doesn't fit in does this because that was how like, I mean, I think we've talked about this on the show before, but like, I learned how to self harm from an episode of Degrassi, which I don't think was their intention at all. But it was like, that was something that was like, I wouldn't have known how to do that. And but when my favorite character on a TV show started doing I was like oh that's something I can do and then it like became a problem immediately like it's just you get you gotta be real careful you have to be careful especially also another way they had they kind of really should have explained a little bit more why was the Tyler's character so I mean I know they changed it obviously she went to

this originating but not really but even like why was she such a fan of this this older man and the way that she talked about her dad too she was like my dad pressures me and he just wants me to like go to Harvard and he wants me to do all my work there's 24 usable hours in every day the way they made her talk about the older men in her life but didn't really explain why she wanted to do that it could it made it look like it was like romantic until he was like i don't want to make love to you you can definitely just suck my dick or whatever but i really wanted because for a second i was like, oh, that's when I was watching when I was younger, I was like, that's kind of hot that she just like thinks this guy is so hot and she wants to like do all this stuff with him.

Because the movie frames it that way. Yeah. It frames it that way. Oh my God. The way the camera moves on Liv. And Liv Tyler is a teenager in this movie. And it's like the camera movements on her air is really exploitative and gross yeah yeah i'm like let this leave this girl alone let's get her into the lord of the rings

movies let's give her some sleeves let's let her live her life let's get it going let's get her out of here let's get her keep the crop top but let's get her into lord of the rings like yeah it's and and i would say the same thing with um and it's so abrupt that i i think that the deborah uh the issue of of self-harm was a bigger red flag to me but the way that live tyler's character's addiction storyline is dealt with very abruptly was also i mean it's like that one was so clearly half-baked in the way it's presented in the movie that i was like we barely had time to deal with it but it's like she's not really offered any resolution in that like it's you're told very abruptly she is addicted to it seems like Adderall yeah or like a speed like some kind of stimulant

yeah some kind of speed yeah and then she is outed by her friend. Another traumatic thing. She has like a small like fit or like a break. She panics and she like lashes out and then she gets a boyfriend. And I'm like, this doesn't right. Like heterosexuality saves her or something like like what are we going to do about the addiction stuff? Well, when she goes to Harvard, he's's gonna take care of her because he'll be really close by so he'll definitely just take care of her and take care of everything and she doesn't have to worry about anything and she'll be okay because now she's in love with this boy but her friend was the one who saved her well not saved her but not even her friend was the

one who saved her it was another girl who helped her. Who used to hate her, but then. Who used to hate her. Yeah. But then we got on the rooftop and everything's fine. But also what I kind of, another thing that I kind of think was good. Don't, yeah, quote me. It's a podcast. You have to.

But it'll be out here forever and ever. But another thing that I kind of thought that the movie kind of did a bit right was, and I mean, light, right? Was Renee Zoegger kind of being like, yeah, I love sex. I am this girl. Because she didn't apologize a lot for it. She did. She should not have done that to get back at her friend and stuff like that but it didn't seem like she had an issue being a sexual cool person and i think she was of age i think we don't know i think i think it's implied that she's a little bit older than that i don't

even know why i think that but yeah i think they just wanted to make it clear that she's at least 18 when she was fucking like Rex Manning. I think that's why they didn't have her talk a lot about school and stuff. But I kind of dig that they were just having her like not be apologetic for it. She didn't want to be like her mom. So I'm assuming that was coming from like the job aspect of it. And maybe just like it was with sex to some some of it but she didn't seem to have an issue with it and i kind of thought that was kind of cool a little bit not like

hella a lot but it was kind of cool yeah it seems that the it's far more the other characters who shame her for her who have an issue with it yeah then then the movie itself right um having any issue with like her being a sexually liberated person who's interested girl right so yeah that i thought that was interesting too it's so but then it's like again the movie you can just like see the studio notes happening in the last 10 minutes of the movie because she kind of doubles back on that at the end where she like enters the funeral and is like, no, I'm not a cool, sexually liberated girl. This is actually I'm going to be just like my mother. And we don't know what that means. Because we know nothing about Gina's family. We're like, that could mean anything. Yeah. And so she kind of like, I feel like she she was like,

holding her ground the whole movie of like, how fucking dare you shame me. And then at the end, she's like, but really, I'm just having sex because I'm afraid to be a singer. And I'm like, you can be a singer who has sex. Like, you can be a singer who has sex. Why is it like this weird binary of like, blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah, but I did. That said, I did love that Liv Tyler line read where it was said, like, there's just like like there's a few of these lines that I just they're so teen movie in a way that really warms my heart no matter if I know what's going on or not where like Liv Tyler was like you're not going to be like your mother if you don't want to be like your mother and I'm like oh I wish that was true but it but what a 17 what an 18 year old thing to be sure of to be like yeah i don't i don't want

to be like my mom so i'm not going to be i'm like that's just not how generational trauma works but go off yeah it's messy it's messy i think it's like it's it's a very messy show or a film but i just feel like there was maybe that's another reason why i'm so attached to it because i feel like there's a cut where there's reasoning behind some of it and it doesn't i think it leaves all the actual like connections on the cutting room floor and i think if we had a chance to pile those up and if the studio and stuff wasn't so scared about oh here's just another teen movie with another girl like nowadays i don't think they would have given a fuck they would have been like there's another movie coming out that's exactly the same as this but we're gonna put it out anyway

but they did it you know they were just like too scared and i bet it would have done well it would have done well yeah i really liked this the um there's like an anecdote about how the executive who like bought empire records because there was like which is always exciting especially for a female screenwriter there was like a kind of like a small bidding war over the empire records original script which i would really love to read i want to know how this movie was supposed to go yeah because it was less about capitalism and virginity and the first one it was all about like found you know chosen family yeah which I love um but there was an executive the executive who like bought it and like greenlit empire records was then the next day approached with the script for clueless and he was like I

don't need clueless I already have a teen movie and i'm like oh you fumbled so hard what an l that's so embarrassing that he's like i don't need it i got i have a hit on my hands i'm like i already have live tyler and renee zellweger i don't know who they really are yet but i'm i'm doing this one instead i mean I see where he was going with that, but he was wrong. He was incorrect. Yeah. Especially because Clueless was such a surprise box office hit. In itself, yeah. Empire Records had a $10 million budget and only grossed like $300,000 or something like that.

But it was because the studio killed it. It wasn't because people didn't want to see it it's because the studio made it impossible for people to see because they fucked it up so hard yeah that they then had to kill it themselves and it's like and everyone lost as a result because carol was also telling me like they started pulling theaters like they were just like okay well maybe not Maybe. And then the run was also very short. I think it was only in theaters for like maybe a month. Two weeks or something. Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah. And in such a small amount of theaters, you didn't, they didn't even give it a chance. They just, and then, yeah,

they just so happen to like later it'd be like this like big hit or whatever with like the people who it really wasn't meant for but at the time yeah they killed it yeah oh fucked i don't like it yeah i because there is a really cool coherent movie here it's just not the one that ends up on the screen it's not the one on the screen but like there's so much potential for a movie to be about what it's about which again is like misfits coming together as this chosen family having issues resolving those issues like finding ways to bond all that stuff all that stuff that is like very emotionally compelling and extremely relatable and human it's just that it's so bogged down by

so many weird random like tonally incongruous like scenes here and there and just other kind of weirdness and i feel like characters being rewritten to make weird choices or things like suicidality and like drug addiction not being handled well i mean the overall cultural emotional intelligence of the mid 90s was like yeah not equipped to deal with this kind of stuff yeah but i appreciate that they were trying they tried and there's a lot of potential in this premise i mean again from a teenagers watching this in the mid to late 90s and like finding so much to latch on to like that is very cool and i can understand why and i'm sure i would have if i had I seen this as a like I would have loved tween in like 98 or something like that exactly like I would have had a different response

but it's just yeah I understand that like seeing it for the first time four days ago as a 35 year old person living in 2022 yeah I mean it it's easier to criticize from that vantage point. Yeah. We got to take a quick break, but we will come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free,

subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple 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. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified.

Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this?

We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie i just think like on top of that i just think it's we have so much to talk about about the relationship between the girls and then with the guys i'm just like sometimes i forgot which

guy was which i'm like these are all the same goofball there's no conflict between uh except between like daddy and son like that's the only real but like there's no frick there's only universal support between these goofy boys like they're all just like oh you're fucking wild man like in a way that it's like it's goofy because they should maybe be in conflict a little more with each other but also it just is like such a stark contrast to like the the women in this movie are constantly in conflict only in conflict really and then the guys are just like yeah whatever man like yeah right it's so stark it was just like bizarre which is complicated because it's like the

implication being women being in the same space together well they're obviously gonna hate each other you know obviously they'll fight conflict yeah but then it also means that those are the far more interesting and nuanced relationships in this movie whereas like all the relationships with the men are just like who are you again who is this they just want to smoke they want to eat pizza they bring each other snacks like and they don't and that's the weird thing because the major the biggest conflict is like he stole nine grand from him. But like, that doesn't even create conflict in the story. Yeah, it's like what's to fight about is the fact that I want to lose my virginity to this guy. And for some reason, we're going to fight about it on our break at this really cute little cafe.

Like, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. And they're fighting over a disgusting creep who wants to do sexual things with a high school student so absolutely fuck that guy and then also real quick the rex manning fan base thing so obviously he's resentful that only women over the age of like 35 who he doesn't deem to be quote-unquote fuckable like they're not sexually viable to him they are the main demographic of his fan base and he hates that that's who likes his music yeah yeah and then there's a scene where jane is talking about how rex manning's music tested well

with teen boys actually and then lucas says something like oh well did you compare the teen boys who like rex manning's music to the incidence of homosexuality among teen boys so fucking 90s homophobic like yeah and that's like very but also i feel like the movie is saying the fact that older women and gay men, that's who likes this guy. And that is part of why we're not supposed to like Rex Manning as a character. For sure. And it's like,

look, older women and gay men have a lot of disposable income and, and put some respect. Good taste. Yeah. Good taste. They're paying your rent. Like he just didn't care because i think

the main point of it that they wanted us to take away was the fact that he didn't see them as fuckable which is again another trope of being like older women or whatever are no longer hot after what 25 or something like that and he's just like after that even though like that is his whole fan base is literally those were that when you looked at the line outside those were the people that showed up and we would have under i don't think that's why i wanted more understanding of like why live tyler loved him so much like she didn't fit it and i think we would have knew that if we would have talked about more about the stuff with her dad. Because she clearly had issues with him.

But we didn't. They skipped over all that. Yeah, it was weird. It was weird. It's very bizarre. This movie is just so weird. Does anyone else have any other stuff? I just don't understand why Lucas didn't clearly explain to Joe or anyone else what his intentions

were with taking the money. Like, he could have just been like, I saw that we were in trouble, and I tried to save us. But oops, I lost all the money gambling. I'm so sorry. But he never says that every time. Lucas only provides exposition to himself. He doesn't provide it to other characters. And he came back with a bunch of quarters instead which just get glued to the floor for the sake of art for art oh gosh but every time he tries to like explain why he did what he did it's just so like metaphorical and cryptic and it's like your intentions were pure you can just tell them what your intentions were pure you can just tell them what your intentions right you were trying to help daddy like you wanted to help say that you know but he can't he's an agent of chaos like lucas is such an annoying character but i i bet i like couldn't help but love him i'm like his heart's

in the right place but he just like he just will not say the right thing at the right time to save his life yeah what a what a sweetie what a what a weird kid and i and you get a little glimpse into his past too that i assume was originally a bigger part of the story where it sounds like um he was put in like foster care he took him in yeah right he took him in daddy so daddy can't punish the kid. Oh, he took in. Yeah. Right. Because he's like, well, I got this kid like out of a bad situation. I'm not going to put him back into one. But it's just like movie wise, it would have been nice to have that scene and, you know, get Lucas to communicate at some point in the movie. But he just kind of never does about what's going on. And then at the end, he's like, Daddy, I'm happy for you. And he's like,

thanks, son. Yeah. But instead of any any of that like further context or development that we needed instead we get a scene where mark is dusting near a woman who's just you know jamming out she's closing her eyes she's like listening to the music and then he tries to assault her. Like, he's just trying to kiss her. And the movie plays it off as, isn't this funny and quirky and cute? Isn't that a funny thing for Mark to do? You can just cut Mark from the movie, honestly. Like, that's the character that is most go-able. Why didn't they cut Mark?

They cut three people. They didn't cut Mark. Come on. This is unrelated, but just like in a post-pandemic era not that you could even get covid from a pair of those headphones but i was like oh that's so gross that we used to do that that we used to just go to record stores and put yeah it's so it's so nasty why oh god wipe us out like it's just like nasty anyways i think that that's my last comment is those headphones are so gross. You couldn't pay me to put them on. My last comment is at the very beginning when Lucas goes to Atlantic City and gambles and the first time he's playing craps,

right? And he doubles his money or he wins money the first time he wins yeah and then the like sexy lady that's next to him is like you know kind of cuddled up against him and then she's like you are sex is a thing that she says to him you are sex like i i don't know about that, but go off. Oh, it's so funny. I know exactly about that. Yeah, so that was amazing. And you are sex. We're all sex. We're all sex, especially Gina, apparently. That's what they wanted us to be.

Especially, right? Yeah. But how does she feel about it? We'll never know. We'll never know. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test, huh? Yeah. Not a lot, though. Yeah, but not as much as you would think I was gonna say yeah my I think my favorite exchange is when Debra

says hey Miss Teen America here's a button I made for you don't worry I didn't spit on it yeah and then Corey reads what it says and it just says dishonesty so she's like dishonesty and that passes the there's a lot of sinister yeah there's a lot of sinister passes in this movie but it does pass which i accept yeah i love that and i didn't know i that's the one i choose to like that one amongst this odyssey and it's like well we passed so we did it ladies we did it feminist win oh gosh and then as far as our nipple scale on which we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I guess my takeaway from this is that I appreciate that so many people have been able to latch onto this movie for its relatable premise of like misfits being represented on screen, finding a community, finding a chosen family, because not many movies were about that especially in this

era so i understand why it was so appealing to people who had so little representation that said the movie is extremely white it is extremely hetero it is extremely like middle class even though some of these characters like it's suggested that a lot of the characters are struggling financially we don't actually see it see any manifestations of that it's just like because we just see them one day in a record store and we're just kind of assuming everyone's like everyone's fine so it's just it only represents a very small demographic of people. It leaves a lot of people out. It does not handle a lot of serious topics such as suicidal ideation and addiction, does not know how to approach handling those things, executes those things not well but it's extremely valid for you know the people who saw themselves represented in the movie and like well like you were talking about shelly like even though there's there's no explicit queerness even though you know there's you're still able to see yourself in it and

and see parts of like what you long for in it. And like, that's extremely valid. And with all of that in mind, I will give the movie two nipples. Whoa. Maybe is that too many? I thought you were going to go lower than that.

I'll wait till Jamie. I thought I was two. Jamie's like, I got you. Okay. I love it. I do like that. A lot of the most interesting relationships in the movie are among women and a lot of the most interesting arcs are afforded to the female characters

there's still a lot of tropes present there yeah but what are you expecting from 1995, I guess? Yeah, I think this is maybe too high. And on a like, did I enjoy watching this movie from a zero to five scale? I would give this movie zero nipples. But sorry. But from a, you know, is it doing some interesting things? Sure, I guess. Yeah yeah two nipples fair and i'll give one to live tyler's crop top and i'll give one to the line of dialogue you are six i'm gonna do something weird here and I'm going to give a nipple rating

to the actual movie and a nipple rating to the movie that I think it was going to be prior to being released okay yeah yeah yeah the actual movie I'm going to give one nipple to

because it's so messy and it's like I there are the like seeds of so many interesting things but because of the way the movie was edited and marketed and rewritten outside of like the writer's original vision, I feel like it does miss the mark a lot of the time. And I like totally echo I mean, the 90s, like extreme, you know, white middle class

heterosexuality, which is true of basically the whole genre at this time but even on top of that like it's so it's like i see i would say i had a five out of five nipple experience watching this movie because we were you were just like i was paying such close attention waiting for something to make sense and like it was so fun to be like huh what he's got a gun? Like, what is happening? So, viewing experience was incredible. It's always, like, you know, kind of disappointing in a way, again, that it's, like, not the writer or the director's fault

to see a teen movie try to approach serious issues that could have been impactful if they had been given some room to breathe and then see a kind of undercut. So, I'll give one nipple to the movie that came out. I'll give that to Liv Tyler's Crop Top. I'm going to give three nipples to the movie that I think was in there,

maybe even three and a half. If you had gotten Debra's full backstory and gotten to fully realize a self-harm narrative that had a positive ending for the character in a teen movie, I think that that could have been a really cool, impactful storyline if it was done thoughtfully. Same goes for the Liv Tyler storyline. Same goes for the slut-shaming storyline with Gina.

And like Carol was saying in her interview with you, Shelley, like it sounds like the Gina Corey friendship was so much more integral to the movie she wanted to make. Yeah. And I would have loved to have seen that. So I'll give three and a half to the movie that I that I think it was at one point. And I'll give those nipples to you are sex. I'll give them to the dirty headphones. I'll give them to the newscaster. Who's like the news is on live. And I'm like,

yeah, we know. And I'll give my last half to the eyebrows. Oh, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie,

Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie,

Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, the eyebrows oh debbie mason's eyebrows yeah yeah i think like with everything that y'all were saying about you know the cisness the whiteness everything a part of it putting all that in and also taking all that apart and being like yeah there's this there was more here than meets the eye or that's on the cutting room floor somewhere or in someone's basement and rating the movie that we actually got i would definitely just give it

like two stars and i or sorry two nipples what am i on letterbox i'm sorry shrekky how could you sorry that wasn't me actually that was Shrek. That said stars. I apologize. Yeah, Shrek just came out in that moment. I would give it two nipples. And the one nipple, of course, goes to Liv Tyler's crap top like that will forever get one. And the other one, I think goes for like, what it was trying to think goes for like what it was trying to do like everything that it was trying to do what it could have been all the holes in the story and stuff like that because i think they're saying something if you can not only find the holes in the story but then be like oh there's more to this i think if your mind when you're watching

it is like instead of just being like oh that doesn't make sense and then throwing it aside if instead when you're watching a movie and you're like wait a minute there was something actually there and something just got fucked up then you can be like you can appreciate it a little bit more so that's what my nipple reading scale is but in a universe where none of this happened and i'm in middle school and i'm watching this this movie that was not meant for this like black girl midwest middle class like weirdo i mean i give it like five because it made me fucking happy like it made me happy it made me happy and i made memories with it i danced around my

room to it i would like act it out in certain scenes when i would watch it different times like and then i got to like write about it for its 25th year anniversary and stuff and talk to the person who made it so for that i give it five in that world but that's it yeah amazing yeah i'm so good thank you for bringing us this movie because it really was like of course thank you just a fun wormhole this is like one of my favorite chaos conversations on the show and sometimes so fun yay awesome truly yeah come back anytime. Oh my god, I will. Bring anything you want. And tell us where people can follow you on social media,

read your writing, anything else you want to plug. Well, if you just type in Shrek-y on Twitter, you'll find me. If you just type that in, you'll find me. It's totally fine. No, I'm mostly on twitter at hi shelly and then i'm on instagram at a yo shelly on twitter i just talk a lot of shit about movies and tv that i want people to watch that i think they should be watching um nice and on instagram i just post cute pictures of myself uh but yeah and then I write cultural writer at Autostraddle and I write a lot of pieces there, but I also

just edit a lot of really dope new and emerging writers over there too, especially black and brown queer writers. And then other than that, I write at a few other places. Anybody that wants to let me talk about a movie and pay me for it, I pretty much do it, so I'm there.

You're real good at it please keep doing it thank you thank you but that's it truly come back anytime yes oh dope i love you guys this is such a dope podcast i remember when i found it and i really dig it ever since and yeah it's just dope oh thank you so much we're so happy you could come on yeah and uh yeah i guess you can follow us on social media twitter and instagram at bechtel cast we've got our patreon aka matreon that gets you two bonus episodes every single month it's five dollars a month and you can hear such episodes as uh the stewart little one where steve's on who again should be in this movie says you're my best

friend how about you my best friend they're man some of my favorite matreons who are like you'd think there's nothing to talk about in stewart little but there's a whole gina davis feminism conversation to be had so that's that's where if you want more chaos uh you can also get our uh merch at tpublic.com slash v bechtel cast if you're so inclined follow us on instagram follow us on twitter or don't all right or don't or do or do also give us five nipples on Apple Podcasts or whatever. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, because people were getting really mad about the Zootopia Hive came for our comment section on Apple Podcasts. So if you could help out there, that would actually rock because I didn't realize how much people love animal cops.

Anyways. All right. Well, that concludes Rex Manning Day on the Bechtelcast. Let's close up. It's midnight, so we gotta go. Time for the fundraiser. Bye. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.

Crooks Everywhere unnerves 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. 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. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before. Tried to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson.

26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts.