The Bechdel Cast - Eve's Bayou with Bridget Todd

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Bridget Todd discuss the film Eve's Bayou. Trigger warning: child sex abuse, incest. If you prefer not to listen to the segment discussing these topics, skip approximately minute 26 to minute 72.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @BridgetMarie on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar,

emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream 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, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles

Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname 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 iHeartTrue Crime Plus, only on Apple 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 Bechdelcast. Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. Hello and welcome to the Bechtel cast my name is Caitlin Durante my name is Jamie Loftus Caitlin I thought you were going to say

this summer I killed my podcast co-host I was 34 years old oh that would have been okay just to get things off to a really sinister beginning that well you know what we close enough honestly i would watch that movie even if even if i had to die at the end you know i've in fact i might welcome it uh i jamie rest assured that i will never kill you. But what if you, you know, what if in your mind you've set off a chain of events that leads to like someone else? Like what if you say something to someone and then it gets around to so-and-so and then Jack O'Brien kills him? And then you're like, it's my fault. But Jack O'Brien pulled the trigger so sure i would

definitely feel responsible and guilty about it but i also don't i hope that i never like accidentally or on purpose do anything that might like trigger a chain of events that leads to your murder thank you so much ultimately i do think um it would be funny if Jack O'Brien murdered me just because I'm like, I just don't see it happening. But it would be it would be a wild twist. It sure would. That conversation did not entirely pass the back. I think maybe areas of it did. It did. I should have said I should have said Jack O'Brien. You should have said on a host. Yeah. My house kills me said Jack O'Brien. You should have said. Anna Hosnier came to my house and killed me. And then it would have been completely above board.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the Bechdel cast. This is Caitlin and my podcast where we talk about your favorite movies and your least favorite movies from an intersectional feminist lens. Using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point, which is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, there are different variations of the test. Ours is that two people of any marginalized gender have to have names, they have to speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than a man for at least a two line exchange of dialogue.

Not many movies can do it, but I think you're in for a treat today. Yes, you are. So with that, I say we introduce our guest and get the ball rolling. She is the host of the podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet, as well as the miniseries, Disinformed. It's Bridget Todd. Hi. Hello. I'm so excited to be here. Being on this podcast has been a little bit of a dream of mine. So I'm so happy that it's finally a reality. The time is here. We've been trying to make it happen for so long. And the stars have finally aligned.

And Jamie, if Jack O'Brien happens to kill you, I'll always happily take your place. Just FYI. There you go. Perfect. See, there's a greater plot. Wow. You know what? Honestly, in the event of my untimely death please do not avenge me and

instead just begin to host the Bextel cast yes you be you can bequeath it to me is that the right word yeah yeah yeah yeah I'll uh I'll start my will tonight and just just to make sure everything is all set yeah nice and legal exactly exactly is that is that something that would be really funny if you could leave not funny is not the word but interesting if you could leave your job to another person maybe someone's done that someone has to have done that right i try to i feel like that's just like rich people dynasties could do that but it would be funny if you're like i'm a second grade teacher at the kennedy school and i leave my job to my 12 year old son like wild well there's sounds like there's a movie plot there

exactly uh okay so bridget we're so excited to have you here thank you for being here tell us what your history your relationship with today's movie which we forgot to say is Eve's Bayou yes tell us all about it yeah so it's a movie so I had to really like think hard about my relationship with this movie I realized that my parents had it on VHS. And so I think I watched it when I, when it first came out, I was like a child because my parents just had it. And it was one of those movies, my parents didn't have a lot of movies on VHS. So it was like one of those movies that I had seen a couple of times just by virtue of my parents having it. Another, another one of those movies would be Nell.

You know, those movies where it's like, oh, my parents randomly just had this on VHS for some reason. And I remember distinctly my brother, who was a bit older, being like, oh, I tried to watch that movie and nothing much happens in it. And so really thinking like, oh, it's a movie that's like not good or it's boring,

really just based on this offhand comment my brother made when I was a child. That's the best. And I could also, I could definitely see how a child watching this movie would think that nothing really happens in it. Yeah. A lot of it as a kid, I think most of the plot and subtext went right over my head. I didn't like, I could not have, even though I've seen, I had seen it, most of the major plot points I could not have articulated. And also, something I have to say is that this is a bit embarrassing,

but when I was young, I went through a phase where I was doing some, like, child acting and, like, child modeling and child pageantry. And I don't know if y'all know this, but the main character, Eve, the titular character, Jurnee Smollett, she was, I guess, she was a bit younger than me, but, like, our era of doing that stuff overlapped. And so I once went to an audition that she was also auditioning for. But she was, like, the it girl.

Like, she was on A Full House. She was in that movie with Robin Williams' Jack. Like, she was, like, a certain kind of young it girl in young girl in a window of the 90s. Whoa. That's that you've had interactions with Journey at like I mean, I guess there's really no. The great thing about Journey Smollett is there's no such thing as peak Journey Smollett. She's had so many like phases of her career that you could argue right now. Like Birds of Prey Journey Smollett is peak Journey Smollett. She's had so many like phases of her career that you could argue right now, like Birds of Prey Journey Smollett is peak Journey Smollett.

You just, she's been, it's so weird. I feel like she like isn't brought up a lot as like an iconic child actor, which is strange because she has been so consistently really good. Yeah, and very recognizable. Yeah. And it's been fun to see her like her work on lovecraft country like it's been interesting to see her have this staying power oh i she is

like unbelievable in this movie like yes good lord so good a child actor i can get behind uh jamie what uh what's your relationship uh i am i ashamed to say i only recently learned that this movie uh existed i knew uh about the uh writer director cassie lemons like i'd seen a lot of her later work, and I recognized her from her acting days, but I hadn't heard that much about this movie until I was working on Lolita podcast plug a couple of months ago, and I was looking up iconic movies that addressed child sex abuse in one way or another, and Eve's Bayou popped up, I was like oh we've gotten requests for this and kind of like learned about the movie from there so I I don't know I it was strange too because it like this movie came out in 97 and appears to have been snubbed for all of the major like most major awards which is really frustrating but it was like a popular movie at the time like

I asked my mom if she had seen it she's like oh yeah I saw it like a lot of people saw that movie and I was like why don't I ever hear about it I don't know it was just kind of I'm I'm like bummed out and like surprised that I didn't know about it till recently but I holy shit there's so much to talk about with this movie. I'm really excited to talk about it. The fact that this is her first movie is like, like the bar is so high. It's so, so good.

For sure. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie? It was on my radar for a while, but I hadn't seen it until we started prepping for this episode. And yeah, it's, I did not know how challenging of a movie it was going to be. And I'm very like, I'm nervous to talk about it. It just like deals with some very challenging subject matter. And I'm like, Oh, no, I'm gonna fuck this up. But um, yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. I'm nervous to talk about it.

There's a lot to unpack. And yeah, yeah, that's, that's pretty much it. Yeah, yeah. I was really looking forward to one of the reasons why I'm looking forward to our conversation is because when I was watching it, I kept saying, like, I forgot that, you know, I guess we'll get into it. But I was really excited to hear, Jamie, since of your work on Lolita podcast, about some of the themes in the film. I think I must have just, like, blocked out that as a plot device in Eve's Bayou. Or I guess because I saw it when I was young. I think it just, like, went over my head. But, yeah, I was like, oh, I bet Jamie's got some interesting insight from doing so much research for lolita pod yeah yeah there's there's a lot I'm I'm

excited isn't the word but I think it'll be like an interesting conversation for all of us to to talk about because I thought that like I mean there are so many movies that hand handle it so like extremely poorly and I also can imagine like if I had seen this movie when I was too young I wouldn't have I don't know like the way it's presented would have been confusing to me but I like I think generally like it's done like really really thoughtfully and like in a way that I I don't know yeah that I don't really see very much so I'm excited to talk about it yeah should i do the recap and we'll go from there let's do it okay so this would be i think a good time just for a trigger warning for child sexual abuse and incest um so the movie opens with some voiceover from the titular character Eve as an adult. She's talking about memories, and she says

that line that we referenced in the beginning of the episode that she killed her father when she was 10 years old. We are in a place called Eve's Bayou, which is a small Creole community in Louisiana in the 1960s. We cut to the Batiste family throwing a decadent party, and we meet a 10-year-old girl, Eve. That's Journey Smollett. Her father is a respected doctor. That's Samuel L. Jackson. Her mother, Roz, is Lynn Whitfield. She's the prettiest woman in town. And she also has a younger brother, Poe, played by Jake Smollett. And you can tell that they are real life siblings. They're so related. So much alike. Like poor Megan Good. These two kids are so related. Also, I didn't realize that this was young Megan Good. And I didn't know that Megan Good was a child actor.

I was I'm a fan of adult Megan Good. Didn't know she's been at this for so long. Yeah, because, yes, she Megan Good plays Eve's older sister, Cicely, who has just turned 14. We also meet Eve's grandmother and her aunt, Moselle, played by Debbie Morgan. So at this party, Eve gets jealous because her dad always is dancing with her sister Cicely and never with her. And this is also where she catches her father having sex with another woman, Maddie Moreau, played by Lisa Nicole nicole carson and later that night eve tells her sister cicely what she saw but cicely doesn't believe her and she kind of fabricates this uh more innocent alternate version of what eve must have seen yeah the gas it's the the rapid succession of gaslighting uh that happens to eve in the first hour of this you're just like oh eve right and then later that night eve has a premonition that her aunt moselle's husband harry

dies and it comes true um so eve has this kind of ability of foresight as does her aunt moselle and she works as a psychic counselor and in some cases she incorporates voodoo into her practices meanwhile lewis continues on with his dalliances with different women around town flagrantly by the way I'm just like I eat his eyes what are you doing like there's one scene when he takes her on his like doctor house calls and like there's a woman who's like in a nightie in bed like oh I need I need some healing and he just like closes the door on his daughter it's like why bring her she's like wink wink go outside i'm like she's like she's 10 not oh my god right yeah so that's his mo and eve's mother roz is either growing suspicious of this or perhaps already fully aware not it seems like she knows. And then which Eve also starts to figure out is happening on a pretty regular basis.

So one day, Roz and Aunt Moselle stop by a market where a woman named Elzora, played by Diane Carroll, is giving fortunes. And Roz gets her fortune told. And Elzora says, you're in pain, but you should just kind of stay quiet and wait. Sometimes a soldier falls on his own sword. And in three years, you'll be happy again. Look to your children. Look to your children. And this is like very ominous.

And Roz is kind of freaking out about it. And then Moselle has a premonition that a child gets hit by a train and Roz is terrified because she thinks it might be it'll be one of her children so she coops them up in the house for several weeks well also you missed the part where Elzora is so mean to yeah Moselle it's like a psychic on psychic like right roast battle i was like oh my god she's like like i don't need no cat bones to tell you that you're the black widow and any man who lays with you is gonna die and she the scene is actually upsetting because she's like you old witch and she's a jar that this woman has been like cutting her money in she throws it and it breaks yeah i gotta say i probably if i met a creepy old voodoo lady i probably would like

not be so rude to her i probably wouldn't i know i would like i was a little concerned that she was being so openly hostile to this woman who seemed so scary right yeah it's it's it's fun because there's um there's a number of actors in this movie mostly female actors who had really established themselves in soap operas and it seems like that they're like oh these are two soap opera like legends being like i'm not cursed and like throwing a you know shattering glass yeah oh i love the soap opera act like you just there are so many like amazing actors who started in soaps but when they get to like go back to their roots it's exciting i'm so glad you brought that up because i mean diane carroll is an icon from dynasty like i don't know if y'all watch dynasty i was definitely like young watching it

when my grandma was re-watching it but like her role on the old Dynasties where she would always, you know that expression, like, oh, I have the receipts. That comes from her. She originated that. There's an amazing scene from an old Dynasty episode where it's, like, her and she's wearing a fur. And she's like, I have the receipts. And she's, like, throwing them. Honestly, shout out to a fucking icon legend. Like, so happy that she's in I have the receipts and she's like throwing them uh honestly shout out to a fucking icon legend like yeah so happy that she's in this movie and I think that she does pump up the drama

the soapy drama in an amazing way it's so the way that like when she like does the like the you're like oh my god that is like I I had to go i forgot that she was on dynasty and i was like oh my god what was her because i remember watching reruns i was like what was her character's name it was dominique devereaux it was right dynasty oh and then debbie morgan uh was on uh all my children for a really long time and she was the first uh black woman to win an emmy for soap opera but yeah there the soap opera energy in that scene was really just palpable exciting also moselle screams you're a horrid lying old witch which almost passes the bechdel test except except that the fortune was about men and her husbands who will die.

So, yeah, I skipped over that part because there's a whole subplot where like then Moselle like meets a man and like, but all of her husbands have died. And she like explains all of this to Eve. And then but this other this new man comes in and they fall in love and she's like afraid that he's gonna die if they get married i just kind of i basically skip over that in the recap but that is a part of the movie i just was like that was like one of my favorite scenes in the movie yeah oh the reenactment of that the part where she's talking about her um where mozella's talking about her ex-lovers and it's like that that reenactment scene of her ex-lover, her husband getting shot by her ex-lover.

I was like, my heart was like racing. It is like, it's very soapy, but the way it's acted out, you're like, oh, this is like a play. Like the way that it's like appearing in the reflection. I was like, oh yes, this is like, this is a Broadway award-winning play. Like it just, just yes so good yep

um okay so then moselle has her premonition about a child being killed so roz coops all her children up in the house everyone is getting very restless eve has an outburst which is also like i think that's my favorite scene where she like is this like screaming and she's like calling everyone out on their shit and like giving everyone attitude. And I was like, damn, that is again, very good child acting and I'm here for it. And then it was like, I was like, oh my gosh, now she's going to talk to Moselle and Moselle is going to believe her. And then Moselle does believe her, but she's like, I i do believe you but if you speak your truth i will kill you you're like no i will do harm to you oh right so then one day cicely leaves against her her mother's like explicit instructions to stay home and she goes to visit her dad and then she also goes to the beauty parlor and her mother is really upset because

cicely disobeyed her and she hits her and then that night roz and lewis argue and then moselle's premonition comes true a child gets hit by a bus but it was not one of the batiste children so they're like so weird they throw a party when a kid is killed by a bus you're like yeah thank god it wasn't one of mine i do appreciate the grandma in that scene she's not in the movie very much but she's just like you guys yeah a child has died and they're like they're like not my problem we can go outside it's also a child that they know they're like oh it's like so-and-so's boy and it's like you you know this family like wow it is like i it's funny isn't the word but i'm just like wow it's in a i don't it's just like there's not room in the movie to mourn this

fictional child but it's like oh this kid was probably friends with the Batiste kids. They're just like, woohoo, let's eat a hot dog. They know the child by name. They obviously know him. He's in their community. Oh, my God. I appreciated Grandma advocating on behalf of a fictional bus kid. Yes, truly. But they're very excited that they can go outside again and then

eve goes to tell cicely the news but cicely is very upset and she has kind of shut down and it might be because she has just gotten her period it might be because roz had hit her not long ago and she lashes out violently at Eve. And then she continues to like stay like just emotionally and mentally shut down for a few weeks. And then she tells Eve what's really going on, which is that a few weeks ago, the night that her parents had a big fight, it was like the night of this big storm. Cicely went to go comfort her father, but he abused her sexually and physically. And upon hearing this, Eve wants her father dead for doing that to her sister. So Eve goes to Elzora, who practices voodoo in hopes that she can help Eve kill her father and it's around this time

also that Eve heavily suggests to Maddie Moreau's husband that Maddie is cheating on him that's another really good journey Smollett scene where you can like oh it's especially with child actors I'm like wow you can really see the gears turning in her head of like, should I do it? Should I do it? Should I do it? And then it's like, yeah, it's really good. And obviously, like, it was effective.

I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe not in the way that she wanted, but like, you know, part of me was thinking like, imagine being an adult, an adult man, and a child is telling you what is going on in your own household like yeah yeah yeah that that was brutal and then the second that would like this story is so well crafted that it's like oh the second that happens I'm like oh like I sort of saw the end coming but it was like satisfying because of how full circle like every everything that's planted has this significance.

And yeah, if you think you know what's coming, you might be right. So then Eve goes back to Elzora and the voodoo that Elzora had performed was not what Eve had expected, and she's not sure if it's going to work. And then Eve has second thoughts about wanting her father dead. So she goes to him, who is at that moment with Maddie, and then Maddie's husband shows up, figures out what's going on, and shoots and kills Louis, which plays out the way that Moselle's premonition had played out earlier, where it seems like someone had got hit by a train. So the family grieves the loss of Louis, and then Eve finds a letter that Louis had wrote to his sister Moselle, who had apparently accused Louis of abusing his daughter.

And in the letter, Louis explains his version of what happened, that Cicely was the one to come on to him and that he fought her off. So Eve confronts Cicely, accusing her of having lied about what happened. And it's a very heavy emotional moment. They're both in tears. And Cicely says, I don't know what happened. And they decide to just get rid of the letter. And then the voiceover comes back in repeating that line about memory being a selection of images, some elusive others imprinted indelibly on the brain. And that is the end of the movie. So... The last shot is like... Haunting.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president

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now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast

from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy Award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her. It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned,

of the, would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So I think it would probably be best to start with kind of the most sensitive aspects of this conversation and then lead into the kind of uh more fun parts so uh yeah i mean i'll i guess start there i've been unfortunately like researching child sex abuse for like seven or eight months at

this point and so there's like a lot of thoughts I had watching this movie that were I mean okay so I guess like trigger warning for this whole section and we can even like time code out in the description like if you want to skip over this conversation you can pick up here but yeah I thought that this was like, especially for its time, like a pretty authentic portrait of how abuse plays out. And I really appreciated just kind of like how it was showed for the kind of mess that it is and how it affects families in such specific ways so first of all like this this movie shows it shows the sexual abuse of a young black girl which is i think for for like by and large in movies it is shown to be abused towards cis white girls which absolutely does happen very frequently but not at the same rate that it happens in black and indigenous communities. So it like, I feel like it's an important story to tell on that end. And another thing that it kind of

touches on that I feel like is really not still kind of not understood in any meaningful way is that nine times out of 10 sexual abuse experience as a child happens by someone that you know, at least somewhat, but most often it is someone that you know well. And so like we're, we were raised, you know, because this happens in the 60s. So first of all, we don't even have these resources commonly available. And they were even less available in the 60s and like we're generally taught as kids that we should be afraid of strangers and there's no education and there's no kind of like attempt to raise awareness that there could be a threat from someone that you know and then if that happens who do you talk to and that's just like not a conversation that is had even now and definitely wasn't had in the 60s. And so I, I don't know. I mean, it's, I thought it was a really interesting approach, especially to set up the idea of like how memories are so complicated and like it's just science that the more often you visit a memory

the more often it tends to sort of change and shift a little bit but I think with Cicely what it comes down to is like she's uh like a girl who she knows and we know by watching the movies she has no one to turn to who's going to believe her. And she's, it's there's, I mean, we'll talk about kind of like the generational trauma aspects of this movie in a bit,

but she's well aware that there's really not anyone in her life except Eve who is going to receive this information in a way that is not blaming her. And so I really, I don't know I mean it's so depressing to see it laid out that way but I feel like this movie the the points that Cicely's story touches are it's so common and it's like you never see it happen yeah I mean and and and even if like best case scenario for cicely at this time in history in particular like even if she had told her mother her grandmother her aunt and everyone believed her and everyone was like we're here to support you there were still no resources legally that she would have had because it's still such a patriarchal structure and you know particularly being a black family like dealing with the legal system in the 1960s like there

would have just been so few options for her and i feel like it so where it's interesting seeing this from eve's perspective especially because she's trying to understand where her sister is coming from but yeah I don't know it just it's like it's heartbreaking and shitty and then also seeing that I didn't see the um the letter from the dad coming through at the end of just abusers truly going to the grave being just completely unable to see themselves for who they are and like to spend their entire lives deflecting deflecting deflecting because you know it's like her father knows that her word won't be believed over his where for most people and that he is you know he is the most powerful person in that family and and he's a very powerful member

of that community that town like everyone looks up to him everyone respects him yeah so at the end where like cicely says i don't know what happened based on like conversations i've had with like psychologists and specialists in that field it's like she's very likely being completely honest there like this happened to her really recently um by someone that she loved and trusted uh she doesn't have anyone to talk to about it she doesn't really have many people around her who can help her understand and there were no systems at this time to be able to talk to a kid about something like that and so yeah I don't know it's like heartbreaking but I thought it was like so well written and so well

performed by, by Megan Good. So I have to say, and I don't know if this is like, so when I watched this movie last night and I watched it with my partner and then I reread the Wikipedia entry, I, I had the same read on the ending that you did. My partner like oh his take was like he was like oh it seems like she was confused about what happened and that you know it's inconclusive it's like a like a i hate to use this phrase but like he said she said wikipedia did not help the the on the wikipedia entry on like the the like plot it says at the end eve confronts cicely and uses her second sight to discover what really happened it ends with the sisters holding hands gazing into the sunset and so i had the exact same reading that you did that like obviously the father wrote this

letter you know being like i didn't do this how could you think i would do this and that we're supposed to by the end at least i finished that movie thinking something like that like the way that Cicely described it is the way that it happened right I think it's interesting that like there might be a read of the movie where there's where it's more ambiguous to me I had the same reaction where I was like oh well clearly you know clearly he did this and it was funny because when that so I have a I have a very a very like visceral reaction when sexual violence is part like a plot device in a movie where I'm almost like it's almost like disorienting and I kind of can't it challenges so much of like what I have seen before and so

the beginning of the movie go they go to such great pains to show that the father is like so doting of a father particularly to cicely and so it's one of those things where you know it's exactly what you were saying jamie where i was like was he were the signs always there that he was an abuser and i just miss them i'm i'm remembering them as charming but actually they were creepy that there's that there's a scene early on when they're at that lavish party and he's dancing with Cicely and he's like, Oh,

you guys can't, my, isn't my daughter a beautiful dancer? And scenes like that where you're like, well, wait, it was that indicative of something more sinister going on. And I'm,

and I'm, and I missed it because I was so caught up in this idea of like, what a good dad. I think this movie does a good job of challenging our understanding of memory and challenging our understanding of like how we put a puzzle together to really show what's actually happening. Because I do feel like toward the end, it's not clear to me what I have seen, right? Is this a doting father where like his daughter got mixed up or is this a sexual abuser I think like the movie and I think that when these things play out I think abusers oftentimes

can use that that same dynamic of like well you know they're everyone's gonna think I'm just a good dad like who's gonna believe this I think that it can kind of work on multiple levels I guess is what I'm saying totally yeah that. So that is my thing with this movie. It feels to me as though there is too much ambiguity. And I wish that ambiguity had been just more squashed by the end or something. So I also read it that she is a survivor of abuse and he is an abuser. I think the three of us are all just the type of people who are inclined to believe survivors, believe women. That was our read.

But both times I watched this movie, by the end, I was like, there's just there are ways to interpret it differently than our read. And I think that's a dangerous thing, especially when dealing with a subject like child sex abuse, which is something that if you're going to tell a story about it, there shouldn't be ambiguity, because if there's ambiguity, that gives people a chance to say, I don't think it happened like that, or I don't believe them, or it's all a big misunderstanding, especially because like, we had seen that other scene earlier where Cicely kind of is like, no, Eve, that's not what you saw. You saw this version of the truth. And the fact that we have seen Cicely distort the truth before, I think would also be grounds for an interpretation that she

is distorting the truth this time too. I don't think that's what happened or that was not my read of it but again there's so much ambiguity there and or at least for me there was that I can I can see different interpretations of it and then after like having all these thoughts i came upon an interview with the cast as well as the director of this movie casey lemons that was like the 20th anniversary special and when asked about that scene that plays out two different ways one as an adult abusing a child and then the the second version which is a child having like a misguided i don't even know how to just what to call it exactly yeah but the second version this is what casey lemons said about this moment in the movie quote my intention was what if you explode this moment? It's actually a very

innocent relationship that they're having. He loves his daughter. She adores her father. They adore each other. And what if one night they crossed a line and were both completely traumatized, but it spun everything else out of control. So to me, it wasn't controversial. It was the story. It was strange for people to ask me, why do you have that's a little man that that's a little weird i mean whatever it's her movie yeah i can't i can't be like huh but i you know we can sort of be like huh i i guess it's it's i don't know i feel like a number of ways about it i do agree that any movie that depicts child sex abuse should be pretty clear about that like it's the easiest thing in the world to condemn like why wouldn't you more clearly condemn it i guess the argument that i can see for the i mean it's just like i it's i don't even i'm not even totally bothered

by the fact that we are told that he doesn't see what he was doing as abuse that is how abusers feel all the time sure but it's just like going that one step further to make it clear how the movie feels i guess that the only count and this is like not even how i feel but i i do i don't know when movies end like this it almost not to bring doubt into the conversation but similar to doubt 2008 shout out a story that movie it's iconic uh and it does address child sex abuse and i i feel like it's like almost i don't know like if this is just a kind of a a movie thing that happens sometimes but it's like a movie that's supposed to start a discussion where it's like Bridget with you and your partner you both interpreted the ending really differently and then by discussing how you felt like differently about the ending I don't know like

I do see value in like ambiguous endings that can start conversations I just don't know that like this topic is the one to have the, this much ambiguity with. Cause I remember like leaving the theater, seeing doubt. My mom was like, so do you think he did it? Which is like, should not be the question you're asking. It's like,

we need to be asking a more sophisticated question than that. That like, yeah. Well, just something I want to say is I think that like, you know, movies like doubt and used by you. It,

I mean, and Jamie, you can probably speak to this as well, it is exceedingly rare for anybody, but especially children, to lie about sexual violence. It's exceedingly rare. And I think that movies like Doubt and movies like Yves Bayou, even though I enjoy them both, I do think it presents a universe wherein maybe it's not rare, but we know it's rare., even though I enjoy them both, I do think it makes it it presents a universe

wherein maybe it's not rare, but we know it's rare. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. And I might have been giving this movie maybe a little more credit than it totally deserves on that end. It's just I where I'm coming from is I've seen so many movies that have just absolutely missed the mark that don't even present the possibility that a child could be telling the truth about something like this that the fact that we are presented clearly with the fact that whatever happens that Cecily is like extremely traumatized by it and then it like alters the course of her life you don't usually even get that much uh and and she like shuts down she becomes like she is like displaying all these kind of like classic symptoms of of a child who has suffered abuse and doesn't know who to turn to about it and you don't even usually get that much which is really really bleak um right yeah and it's i i do think that there is some value in in kind of

reminding audiences that like abusers are gonna you know generally defend themselves to the grave and like but yeah i i don't know it's that's so interesting i think yeah i'm in like a weird head space for it but i for me i was like oh the ending is like even based on like the images they chose to show Eve's, you know, like vision at the end. I thought for me, I was like, oh, I think that that corroborates in her reaction based off of that vision is like it seemed like she was like, I believe you. I'm sorry. I came at you believing are like demonstrably deceitful, abusive father. It's her reaction. And I'd probably have to go back and rewatch the vision that Eve has at the very end. But I feel like the specific images that were chosen to be included in that vision

still contribute to the ambiguity of it well at the end okay so at the end of the day here's how i feel about like uh this is like something that i've been thinking about a lot the last couple of weeks but um i think that we're like often like when we're talking about stories like this and crimes like this the thing is like even if what Samuel L Jackson's character is saying is true he's still a child sex abuser like it doesn't matter do you know what I mean like I think that there's like in the case of like I'm just like fully Lolita brain but like in the case of Lolita a lot of like how people have discredited her character is by saying like well she had a crush on him and so somehow like displaying any attempt to experiment with power as an adolescent means

that you deserved whatever happened to you when it's like at the end of the day whether you know whether cecily's presentation of the crime was true or whether Samuel L. Jackson's was either way even if it was you know a kid trying to experiment with power with an adult that they trust it's still abuse for him to reciprocate for even a second and then to physically abuse her afterwards so I but I but the problem is I don't think that a lot of people understand that that even if even if like someone initiates with you that the power imbalance is that large and it's incestuous and all these other things that it is still on the powerful adult and that is still who the so so I, yeah, I don't know. I've just like, I've talked to a lot of survivors who have felt guilt and have felt, you know, what happened to them was somehow less valid because they had been curious about what that experience would be like. And then when an adult took advantage of them, you know, it, it was abuse and it confused them and it, you know,

caused all these negative repercussions in their life and so I feel like it it sucks because like no matter what happened in that scenario even with Samuel L Jackson's character painting himself in the best possible light he is still an abuser yeah and so it's like yeah yeah and I want to add one thing to that so I completely agree with you and I want to take it a bit further and this might I mean this might be colored by my own you know whatever I'm I'm bringing to this conversation but I agree with you and I also would say even if the moment between him and Cecily during the storm never happened. You and I have already talked about the beginning of this movie where,

you know, he at a party in his home with his wife and his children, he takes a woman that is not his wife into a back room of his home to have sex with her, right? And his daughter happens to be there and sees it. He takes his daughter on these house calls where he's very clearly there to have sex with women. So even if the thing with Cecily never happened, he is still a grown man introducing a very adult level of sexuality

into the lives of his children who are very young and too young to understand what's going on. And so that is not how healthy, mature adults engage with their children. So I would say that he you know has cultivated a vibe in his household with his children where it's no wonder they're confused about sexuality i would say that this movie wants him to be a lot more blameless than he is for some of the other behavior because i feel like of course like his kids can't feel

safe and healthy in an environment where he is irresponsibly sexualizing things in a way that that is far too advanced for them to understand because they're kids you know what i'm saying yeah absolutely yeah yeah it's it's weird because it's like i think that like we're like heavy like i i now knowing that quote from from casey lemons i'm just like how much of this was intended it's yeah i know who even i mean it's like i i mean i guess i if we're being generous like you could interpret her saying that's just how the story goes of like you know have the conversation i'm not going to answer your questions for you which is like valid but i'm just like well you could denounce child sex abuse that would be that would be that would be just you know even if it's just that that would be great um but yeah i mean it's like

yeah we we all and i think most listeners of this show, we believe, Cicely, that a gigantic trauma was caused. And even with the most support possible, it's still kind of a lifelong journey for many people to reckon with this kind of abuse. But yeah, I just wanted to say, no matter what happened in that situation, no matter whose account or somewhere in between is true, he's a child sex abuser. Period. End of story um and there's and especially with children it's like there's there is no like perfect victim and yeah i think that like it's that's just like something that we even like you know like feminists and people who are like very inclined to believe survivors like need to work on is like the way that these like dynamics play out are not cleanly like i said no and then he did this like it is often very ambiguous and it comes down to power dynamics and all these other things so yeah sure and i wonder if like the intention was to explore like that version of the ambiguity, but.

I wish she told us. I know. I just, I know. And we also like, you know, just considering standards, toxic masculinity, a rape culture that tends to believe the perpetrators of these crimes rather than the survivors. This is our rape culture. Every generation has their own rape culture. This is our rape culture. So to tackle a story that deals with this subject matter again it has to be done so carefully and that ambi i really feel that that ambiguity needs to be removed if you're going to tackle it responsibly and i just i can't and it's like sure this is us 2021 you know post me too but even like oh god that's what that that's this is why this i was like so

nervous to talk about this movie and that why i think it's so challenging and well the other thing too is um the other thing that really bothers me about this movie is the abuse that we see happen on screen is us seeing actor samuel l jackson a full adult male kiss that's Megan Good on screen who was 15 or 16 at the time of shooting this movie underage yeah I just it it could have and should have been framed in such a way where this child actor did not have to kiss and be kissed by an adult man oh yeah oh i don't like it like i was gonna say like i don't like it i think there are ways to even if you are trying to depict like a scene you're trying to depict on screen an an underaged girl and a grown man you want you want to depict them together there are ways to get around having a the actors

actually portray this right like there are ways to do it I just don't like it I mean I don't know if you have ever seen that movie um it's the it's the it's kind of billed as like a sequel to do the right thing the Spike Lee movie I'm gonna blank the name oh um, Red Hook Summer. It's a like wild movie, but I do not recommend it. But it also deals with childhood sexual violence. And something about that movie that really sticks with me is that the way that it's depicted, it seems it's so egregiously like, you know, as a filmmaker, you don't want to be depicting a child and an adult having a physical sexual relations on screen. And I feel like sometimes films can get, maybe they're trying to critique it or attack it or what have you. But at the end of the day, you don't want to be depicting it on screen, at least in my book.

I just think that there's got to be a way to handle it differently I think yes I agree yeah I I this is this episode is a long plug for lolita podcast uh there's there's like a whole there's a whole I I completely agree and there's it's frustrating because what I think just knowing 1997 is when the second lolita movie came out so i'm very intimately familiar with what the laws were with child performers in this specific year um so first of all i i feel like it is always not even if you have like there's a number of stories of like movies that that well this is part of the reason that i was frustrated that there isn't a ton of information about the production of this movie or there wasn't as much as I would have liked on the subject matter I was interested in. Because at this time, there was a law for movies that were

shot in 1996. At least there was a new law introduced, where there couldn't be any, like you had to guarantee this movie went past a lawyer to be allowed to be released because there was a child pornography act passed in 1996 that severely restricted what you could show on screen. And it was like generally a pretty good law. But then you find kind of all these stories that are people trying to skirt around this law. So I would guess that in many of the shots that you don't see Megan Good's face, that is not her. That is an adult body double. That seems to be the most popular workaround. That said, you do still see the actress underage Megan Good kiss Samuel L. Jackson. And I just two things is like, first of all, no matter how much like there is sometimes like a director will be like, well, I had a, you know, a child psychologist on call so that if the actor didn't feel comfortable talking to me, they could talk to this person. It's just not worth the risk at all, like for anyone.

And it's like if you need evidence that that's true, talk to almost any child actor who has been like Natalie Portman has talked about it extensively there's like a number of child actors who have done scenes like this who are like I just didn't feel comfortable like I felt like I felt like there's a hundred people around me whose jobs depend on me doing this I and I was 10 what was I going to do you know and then on top of that one of the the the I guess the the one of the main notes i had for just like how this because i do think that for 1997 eves bayou handles csa in a movie like better than almost any other movie of this year or this series of years did which is not to say it's perfect but it is definitely better because this is the year that lolita came out right well i actually have a question for you i don't not to keep making you talk about lolita but so i've seen that 1997 version of lolita several times there are scenes

where um jeremy irons and dominique swain kiss there's like a scene where like she's sitting on his lap is that a body double or is that actually her when there's it's it's a bunch of different stuff the amount of time and it's like it ultimately obviously like was not worth it right but yeah for them it was anytime she appeared to be nude it was a body double anytime that she kissed him they had to run it by a lawyer her parents were on set and there was a child psychologist on set anytime she sat on his lap there was a pillow between them so there are like more measures than would be taken even a decade before, but it's still not enough. Going off of that, I had a conversation with friend of this podcast, Eva Vives, who is a survivor and has, you know, incorporated just kind of the lasting effects of CSA into a lot of her work.

And she pointed out, and it's totally true, that in stories about CSA, the movies and projects that tend to be more recognized are movies and projects that explicitly show the abuse. And she feels strongly that that is a very telling bias and also something that just doesn't need to happen like you can show the effects of csa without showing it and that's even true for this movie you could not have those scenes and still have that plot point be effective right like you don't need to show it but the movies that are most successful that deal with this topic always always always show it and the movies that just show the effects of it are more likely to kind of get swept under the rug so that's like another that's just i mean like it's it's so exploitative yeah and i think it really it i mean i think we should be asking the question whether or not

physical depictions of childhood sexual violence were making that profitable and why because it sounds like from what you just said it sounds like we are we are and it's it's frustrating because it's like i don't know it's there it's a really complicated question to even broach because i don't, I wasn't able to find out if Casey Lemons was a survivor of this kind of abuse herself. But I know of like, several survivors of abuse who have made movies about CSA that show to an extent, what that abuse is, whether it's in montage or whatever. And so it's like, I don't even really feel comfortable being like, no one can do do it I think that when you're when you have a child actor you it's kind of unconscionable to do um but in terms of like I don't know I mean it's like

there was that um it was like a really popular HBO movie a couple years ago uh I think it's called The Act uh or is is that what it was it was by Jennifer Fox, and it was starring Laura Dern, and it was about Jennifer Fox's childhood sexual abuse. And it actually, it reminded me a lot of Eve's Bayou to the point where I'm certain that she has seen it, where it is about her revisiting her child's sexual abuse and revisiting the memories. And the more she talks to people in her life from that time the more the memories kind of change and shape and end up kind of landing on what she believes the truth is and yeah sorry it's the tale it's not the act oh yeah that movie the tale which is like i feel complicated about it that's not what the episode is about, but it is, it takes on similar stuff where it shows you the abuse in a way that just,

uh, it's, it's weird. Cause it's like, I don't want to tell a survivor, like you shouldn't have done this, but in terms of like having a child actor in that scene, I don't think that they should have,

like it's extremely complicated. But, uh, I personally, like i personally think that you could if i could change stuff about eve's bio i would get rid of the physical depiction of those scenes yeah and i think that honestly it could be more impactful to hear the child and the abuser describe it in their own words you can have the same effect without having to show that and just kind of make it a little clearer caitlyn like you were saying like you were both saying at

the end that no matter whose recollection is corrected she is a survivor of abuse and that that's like something she's going to need to you know continue to deal with throughout her entire life well from that same interview with the cast and some of the crew megan good spoke about like these specific moments in the movie and here's what she had to say again the actor who plays cicely says quote we had to shoot it probably 15 times oh god we had to shoot it probably 15 times. Oh, God. We had to shoot my perspective, his perspective, and then the actual perspective of what really happened. Now, I'm going to pause from the quote here for a moment because it is not specific. What does she mean by that? It is not specific what the quote actual perspective of what really happened is.

They're playing around with us. Yeah. I don't like it yeah i don't like it i don't like it because it's possible that that was even cut from the movie like whatever she's talking about might not even appear because i know there's like a director's cut of this movie too that's like a little different yeah i'm not sure but um so here's the rest of the quote i remember the day before the scene, everyone was so anxious. You OK? You OK? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. Sam was as equally nervous. That was kind of the defining moment. That's the moment that brought the movie together and what it was based on. I felt a huge responsibility to do a good job, but I was nerve-wracked for sure end quote that is just to hear that like they had to shoot it so many times everyone was feeling very uneasy about it like those are indications that like don't fucking put it in the movie yeah and it really it really speaks to what you were just talking about jamie about like natalie portman saying you know so many people's

jobs and so much money depends on me just being able to do this and I maybe I didn't want to do it but like I just had to I just had to do it right I don't think that we should be putting children in positions who they're already so vulnerable putting them in positions where they feel this way and they feel an immense like the fact that Megan Good said she felt pressure to get it right that just kind of breaks my heart it's and it's this it like drives me like she's not even the only child actor that had to deal with this exact issue this calendar year like that is so absurd that it's like there are just young teens and kids being put in this position in the first place where like yeah it's it's an unfair ask it's also like the fact that it's also a financial

transaction on top of that where so even like you know it's like if you have even one parent who's kind of acting in bad faith and doesn't want to rock the boat and wants to make sure that the check is gotten then it's not even a guarantee that like i mean this movie proves not all parents are good and like and certainly you know child actors parents have a very sordid uh record of acting in the best interest of their children and so i don't even necessarily trust like a 14 or 50 year old's mother to say like yeah no she can do it like that may not be true like or you know there's can and there should and i don't know that that quote reminds me a lot of yeah the actor who played lolita this this girl Dominique Swain, that was like a very similar thing of like, yeah, it was really nerve wracking. And everyone was really nervous. And like Jeremy Irons was like crying during the scene. And just everyone was really stressed out about it. And I

just did my best because I knew I had to do it. And like, everyone, I don't know, I just, I think that there are ways to tell these stories because they're stories worth being told. But in live action, it's not worth the risk towards the underage performer period. Like, I feel like there's not to like hand it to, you know, Tarantino or anything, but like how in Kill Bill, like the most traumatic scene towards a kid happens in animation instead of making it happen you know instead of putting a child actor through the grueling brutal violent sexual violence that takes place in that scene I feel like if you really really really as a director feel that this needs to be shown you have to work around like you you can't make a kid do it because you think it needs to be done find another way and I think there are like like you just said there's so many ways around it

I've seen so I've seen it done listen there are ways to do it where it's like no one is going to be confused that you're watching a scene that's meant to be about childhood sexual assault or something right there are so many ways around it and I just think like just depicting it on screen, I think is the least imaginative when there are so many different ways. Like if you're a storyteller, I always feel there's a way to show something in a way that's respectful.

And especially for something that is as fraught and sensitive as this topic, you have to like be willing to work to find that solution absolutely yeah yeah i wish i wish that casey lowman's had said more on on that because it's like i do think that this is like one of the better told csa stories of this decade and it still makes a series of very common missteps that end up you know kind of putting definitely putting a child actor in danger and under undue pressure for a kid yeah yeah so it's i don't know i think like it's it's fucking hard like i it's i i am glad that a story like this was was being attempted to be told but it's certainly not told perfectly um so yeah yes

i mean it's it's challenging yeah yeah yeah i mean it's like there's so few like i can't really think of many movies that i'm like yeah nailed it like the uh the closest like this is this like you couldn't think of a more different movie but like one of the only movies that i feel like was really praised was heaped upon it and it had a lot to do with these themes but didn't show abuse is like spotlight like that's one of the only movies that is centrally involves child sexual abuse and doesn't show it and i guess doubt does it too but uh the central question around doubt is like did it happen when it's like that's not the question that's not the question at least in spotlight it's like yeah it obviously happened and happened but we don't need to show

it on screen yeah but rest assured that it definitely happened and you're like we don't need to show it on screen yeah but rest assured that it definitely happened and that works i am glad that movies like that exist yeah and it can be like effective and you can come out you know if it's framed to you a certain way you can even have characters in the story that doubt the truth of what happened and take you through like the journey of like discovering oh like i should have just believed these survivors the entire time and like it can be done right because that's part of the narrative of like a lot of people who are survivors of abuse they face other people not believing them or they face their own like did this happen how did it happen it all happened so quickly i don't

exactly know the like especially when you live in a culture that is inclined to not believe you and to kind of gaslight you into alternate versions of reality like yeah that's part of many survivors experience but again that's why it has to be handled so responsibly and so carefully if you're going to tell a story about it yeah it's where it's weird because i feel like they're outside of the fact that i mean we all agree that the actual scenes should not have been shot but it's like to a 2021 viewer who is inclined to believe survivors i feel like it's all there but it's but for people who are not inclined to believe survivors and then also just like straight up I I can't really put myself in the mindset of like

an adult in 1997 I don't I mean I'm curious of like what the conversations were in 1997 because I'm like you know they were certainly different and I different. And I bet that there were a lot of people that left with like, well, you know, I love Samuel L. Jackson. So shrug. Like, you know, it's just unclear. Yeah. Especially when you cast like huge, really famous actors in roles like that. I feel like audiences are very often like, I love Sam Jackson. I love Jeremy Irons.

So I guess no harm, no foul. Like, yeah. Yeah. I honestly, like, I almost feel like I'm bringing a lot of my own baggage into this movie. But, you know, the scene in the movie where Moselle, I'm blanking her name, Lynn Whitfield, the mom and the grandmother are all talking and it's clear that they're having a very adult conversation about infidelity. And Samuel L. Jackson comes home and Cicely is like, you need to go down to the bar because

the women are mad, mad, like get out of the house. You know, again, sort of this idea of like, I think Samuel L. Jackson's presence in their household was very disruptive to the to the young to the girls to his young daughters I think that like he in cheap brought his sexuality into his home in a way that made it made it his children's business it made it was like on their minds and I think you know it's clear to me that there's a lot of ambiguity in the universe of the film but there's a scene in the film that I feel like for me is for it's kind of like case closed after he is shot and they have his funeral there's this scene where the mom and all the kids are in bed together and it's sort of almost this like picturesque like a frame and it seems to me like

Samuel L Jackson was the cause of a lot of disruption in their household now that he is dead their household is one of like stability and and like they're on this process of becoming healthier and healing and so like it's like obviously you know eve is sad that her father is dead and like the funeral scene is very is very rough but it see it it seems to me that the universe of the film is suggesting that his presence being removed from their, their domestic life is what gives them the ability to like have this kind of chance, a little more stability and a little more like,

you know, a little more like a, I don't even know the word for it. Like domestic, just not having. Yeah. Yeah. True.

Yeah. It's what the, it's what the fortune tellerer says too she says just wait of three years and you'll be happy right you'll have peace yeah that's why i am like uh i am frustrated and kind of like it to some extent like inclined to be like it's all there in the writing and it's like if you didn't see it you you didn't see it, you know? But it's like, you know, but in 1997, a lot of audience members didn't see it. If there's still people in 2021 that are like, I don't know. But I feel like, you know, I don't know.

It gets so tricky because you, I just don't like, I feel like everything you need to know is in the story, right? But it's like some of it is pretty subtle. Some of it you need to like really be paying attention or some of it you just need to kind of have like, I don't know, like a particular perspective that is going to believe the children because I feel like if you can get yourself

into that mindset, all the information you need is there. But the fact that, I don't know, it i don't know it's yeah it's you can't put it entirely on the artist to be like you have to spoon feed to every male audience viewer that this is a bad thing like it sucks that it's like that that is still kind of a reality do you know what i mean like i wish that we could make more subtle films about topics like this but it's just such an under-discussed issue that people don't fucking get it and it's like you need movies like fucking spotlight where it's literally taking the little applesauce and putting it in your mouth of like this is a crime this is bad eat your food don't do crimes you know like it's just so there's no like uh like in the way that there

for for other issues there has been more you know room for subtlety in art there isn't on this issue and i think that that you know sucks for artists who have experienced it and want to speak to it and there are like it kind of sucks it's like if the worst thing you've ever been through you want to make some sort of artistic expression of that and then you're like but i have to make it really fucking obvious right or people are gonna think i'm endorsing the worst thing that's ever happened to me like it's such a catch-22 of the like oh I know it's really frustrating it's really frustrating like I don't think it's necessarily like I I think you can hold uh Casey Lemons personally accountable for allowing that scene

to be shot and that that is like ultimately on her but in terms of like how people misinterpret her work when all the answers are there like i mean it's like i i think that it is like it would be better served if it were made extremely clear but i also don't want to be like and casey lemons is wrong for not having done that because it's like she clearly knows you know like she gave us all the you know it's like what what was that what was that ridiculous movie that was like mr policeman i gave you all the clues that's literally casey lemons in this script like she gave you all the clues you did not solve the case and that is on society yeah right like yeah um well how about this let's take a quick break and really collect ourselves and then we'll come back for more

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

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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. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy award-winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her. It became a theme in my life, the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the, would they say this to a man?

No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. All right. Where shall we pivot? I know. I feel poor Jamie. It's like all talking about childhood sexual assault all the time for you now, right? It is my new area of expertise. I hate it.

But there's so much else to talk about with this movie as well. Yes. Where should we start? Well, first of all, one thing that is very much worth noting is that this is a coming of age story for a black girl, which is something that we almost never see in Hollywood cinema. It is a kind of narrative arc that is reserved almost exclusively for white children so the fact that a black girl is the focus is awesome that it is a story fraught with such like turmoil and trauma is i guess what i'm saying is i would love to see more coming of age stories about black indigenous people of color that are less steeped in so much trauma and are focused on more, you know, some that it is one of the few coming of age stories about a black girl and black children. So, yeah. And I think like, you know, we've talked a lot about some of the heavier aspects of this film, but there are, you know, the film, it's not it's not entirely heavy, right? Like, Eve has a good relationship with her sister and brother. You get

to see, like, there are some scenes of Cicely and Eve interacting that I really liked. It's like, oh, you get to see, like, the tenderness of girlhood when she puts the snake on her brother pose pillow. Like, you get to see the, like, you know, mischievousness. Yeah, it's like, you know, I, there were parts of it that I thought were nice to be depicted. Yeah, it's like, you know, there were parts of it that I thought were nice to be depicted. Also, it's like, I mean, I'm a sucker for, like, Louisiana, kind of that, like, languid, like, you know, oh, like the bayou and the weeping willows. Like, it's quite a picturesque movie,

and, like, it depicts the outdoors in a really beautiful way and like we we don't get a lot of movies where it's about black girlhood on the backdrop of outdoor beauty that's something that like i love and you don't get a lot of um so this movie there is a lot of like in in addition to the heavier aspects of it that we've talked about there is some like joy there is some like beauty you know and i think it really does a nice job of depicting some elements of of black girlhood that we don't necessarily get to see explored on screen very often for sure yeah there are the scenes that like are scenes of levity i love and are probably my favorite scenes in the movie especially that kind of chunk where they're all cooped up in the house and everyone's just like playing pranks on each

other or um again that scene where eve is just sort of lashing out and yelling at everyone and yeah like you said i mean you see these really interesting relationships between women and girls you see this relationship between the two sisters you see mother-daughter relationships uh you see even her aunt moselle all these female relationships being explored again in a way that like most movies don't bother yeah and with eve eve specifically i mean she's just like a really cool character i feel like it's like people very i don't know writers really often kind of miss the mark on like making a highly motivated and like fun child character who is also clearly constricted by the limits that childhood imposes on you and i feel like the

way that casey lemons writes eve really like toes that line in a cool way because it's like eve honestly like when i first read the kind of synopsis of this movie i thought this whole movie was going to be like eve being successfully gaslit by her family that this never happened and i was pleasantly surprised that she for the most part it's like she retains her truth of what happened pretty consistently. And she is like frustrated and confused that the people in her life are trying to tell her it didn't happen. Like her dad immediately is like, don't worry. That was nothing. That was nothing.

And then she goes to Sicily, which I honestly read of like Sicily probably not like, I don't know I I think with some of Cicely's storylines I plugged myself into like big sister mode and thought like oh you know if my little brother came to me saying that he had seen you know my dad doing something awful that I already knew about I probably would you know at that age would have like defaulted to be like no no no no no don't worry because you don't want your younger sibling to take on the same like psychic weight of how fucked up your parents are that you do and so it's like but eve still knows pretty consistently like she tells the same story every time she's like and it's more like i know what i saw but everyone keeps telling me it's not true and the question is more like why is that as opposed to like i must be wrong like i like how confident she is in what she saw and it's like more navigating her confusion

of like why are people avoiding this uncomfortable truth right yeah and she doesn't avoid it as soon as cicely tells her she's like let's kill dad like she's like let's straight up kill him yo we gotta kill him like amazing and i think importantly you know cicely makes up that story of like oh you know uh the woman fell into dad and they were laughing blah blah blah and then later she's like i i as soon as you said it i believed you you know so right you know, it's clear that, like, you know, Cicely, deep down, knows she's telling the truth. And really, it is Eve's unfaltering ability to see the truth and speak the truth throughout the movie.

And I think that you're right. It's important to note that she doesn't falter, that she's like, no, I know what I saw. I know what's going on. I'm going to continue to speak on it. Right. Right. no I know what I saw I know what's going on I'm going to continue to speak on it right right yeah that that which kind of like brings to this the like the cycle of like gaslighting that it's I don't know like the yeah the cycle of gaslighting that takes place with the women

in this family and kind of how that is structured it like felt somewhat familiar to me in a lot of ways especially I mean this is taking place in the 60s right so we are to sort of assume that her mother Roz like there's not a ton of career options there's not a you know a lot of welcomeness to the idea of being divorced of being a single parent and like her autonomy is fairly limited by being married to this powerful man in the community and she seems to be very aware of that um and so it like broke my heart at all these different points in the movie to see these relationships between women kind of be like i don't know like passing on this generational guilt and this generational trauma onto each other because it's like i don't i don't know i was like trying to

think of how to phrase this correctly but i feel like at times like roz is a shitty parent at a bunch of different points she locks her kids in the house for no reason really when eve confronts her with the truth she can't handle it and so instead she punishes her kids who are trying to understand what's going on in their own household but you know that it's coming from this place of deep trauma that she holds and instead of i don't know it's just so hopeless in some ways because it's like well who could Roz turn to that could really help her like she knows that she doesn't really have anyone who can help her and so instead like she's kind of to some extent protect that she I think she thinks she's

protecting her kids but in a lot of ways she's like taking it out on her kids it's just uh I just really see the ways in this movie that the adults are making their traumas, their hangups, their issues. They're just putting them on their kids and they're really things that are just too heavy for their kids because they're kids. Right, right, right. There's that scene too where Roz and Moselle

are like taking a stroll and then they like come up on that market. But before that, Roz is like complaining, like confiding in Moselle about her like crumbling marriage and how you know her husband who's unfaithful and Moselle's just like well um just wait around and you know one day he'll finally see what he already has and he'll stop chasing for it and it's like that's not good advice but i in seeing that like i also believe that mozelle knows that's not true like i don't know it's i guess maybe like this was my inter but it just felt like most of the like the grown

women in this movie were all pretty aware that like lewis was not a good father or a good husband he was just a good provider and that that was like there wasn't much they could do about it and like it's just uh I don't know it made me so sad and and the relationship between Cicely and Roz as well like i feel like speaks a lot to why cicely reacts the way she does in some moments where like her attempts to rebel and challenge her her mom's pretty like irrational ways of of dealing with her kids are met with like violence and like threats like she is like hit by her mom and then when it seems like Roz might be trying to kind of like reconcile with her she's like I understand like I see a lot of myself in you but if you do something like that again you're fucked and it's like well then why would Cicely feel comfortable going to

her mother with this abuse that she experienced like her mother's kind of made it clear that she's not open to hearing it like she's very closed off and you understand why too so it's just like oh it's yeah yeah there's the scene when Roz slaps Cicely you know something that I think is important to note is that Cicely that you know Roz has had all the kids trapped in the house fucking version suicide style like they can't leave and that's like what I was thinking the whole time I was like this is reminding me of the version suicides it really is yeah it's it's similar there's some there's some interesting you know and also I was like oh like shout out to that quarantine life I know all about it right yeah um but so so when Cicely goes to the hairdresser this is something that like i

picked up on as a like black girl who was raised by a black mom you know in the whole movie cicely has very long hair and when she goes to the beauty parlor she comes back and her hair has been cut and so i know that like that like my mom and i have that exact same argument where I like I think it is a symbol of a certain kind of black girlhood to have like long, straight hair past your shoulders. And Cicely being like, you know, I'm I'm I'm asserting my own body autonomy. I'm going to cut my hair when she takes off that rain hood and her mom sees that her hair has been cut. That's like that's like a shift, right? She's like, you know, this girl thinks she's grown. And I think like that is another part of the dynamic

I think is there between them where Cicely is really trying to figure out what it means for her to be like, go from girlhood to like young womanhood. And her mom is clearly not able to shepherd her over that threshold in a way that you would want any you would want your mom to be it's like you were saying like like her mom is not able to be there for her not not open to hearing what she has to say and I think that yeah it's not surprising to me that Cicely would be completely

not able to open up to her mom about what's actually going on in her life because her mom has made it clear that what's important to her is not how her kid is doing what her kids needs it's about kind of trying to maintain some sense of order in this increasingly chaotic household yeah absolutely and the way that like i don't know i thought that this was like this was like such a story of like women and girls processing guilt and like taking on so much guilt for things that it's like no no no like there's so many moments and i feel like it happens with by the end it happens to eve as well but it's like you know moselle is really guilt-ridden for feeling that she is responsible for the death of

her first husband when it's like she did not pull the trigger right three yeah but i'm talking about specifically the one that got shot in the chest oh sure sure sure but like she yeah she's kind of taken on this guilt and is like i am a murderer when it's like it is not ideal to cheat on your spouse but that does not make you responsible for their murder you know what i mean and like there's that guilt we see roz take on guilt when cicely becomes more withdrawn and is like is it because i did this i. And in that way, she's kind of right because she did hit her daughter. But like, it's just like you see every woman and girl in this story to some degree, whether they're right to be doing it or not, just take on a massive amount of guilt.

And you don't see any man in this story. No, like Samuel L. Jackson's whole narrative is his ability to deflect guilt and deflect the idea that he could do something wrong where meanwhile he's surrounded by women who are taking on that guilt for him and then also taking on additional guilt for things that they they have nothing to do with their own actions yes like that one guy shoots samuel l jackson that's a friend of his you never like he like you just never hear from him again it's like oh yeah i shot him and killed him like they don't even like explore it that's why i'm really happy that at the end moselle who has taken on all this guilt she meets her like long hair jeans wearing

painter lover who like i'm just assuming all they're doing is fucking and she's getting portraits of herself painted. And like, by the end, she's like, yeah, I'm marrying him. I don't care what that old witch said. I'm going to marry him and like, maybe we'll die together. Like, I'm happy that by the end of the movie, she has had a trajectory where she's like, yeah, I can continue to, I'm deserving of love. I can continue to seek out love and marry, marry a man who loves me, you know, and like spend the rest of my days, like getting my portrait painted. I love that she like chooses joy at the end and like almost, I don't know, I kind of,

I would really be curious of like what Casey Lemon's thought about kind of that plot point, but I felt like that's almost like a severing of this like quote unquote curse that it seems like is haunting this family when it's like no it's she's gonna assert what she wants she's gonna like that's nice i want i want the best for her and i thought it was really interesting with moselle as well that i don't know she's like first of all like the performance by debbie morgan is like it's so good but on top of that like where i thought it was interesting that she is you know samuel l jackson's sister and to watch her it felt very like of this time that she is like kind of defensive about him like if something comes

up with him whether it's from Roz whether it's from Eve whether it's from Cicely she's always like we're not talking about that I can even believe you and we're not talking about that but then you find out at the end of the movie you know it's not enough right because she should be taking these women who she loves seriously and at their word over her brother who she we know knows is an abusive person how much power she has to stop it is kind of up for question but like she could i just thought it was interesting at the end that the movie kind of goes out of its way to tell you that there was a confrontation between them that where where Moselle said explicitly like how could you have done this to my niece what the fuck it like it's clear that

they came to blows about this and that Moselle did believe Cicely the entire time and that like I don't know it's just like again it just like felt familiar in a really frustrating way of like just how imperfectly and and frustrating these things can fall out where you can like talk to someone and be like I don't think that person believed me when in fact they may have but they didn't know how to deal with it and so then they go to yell at someone else and just like this whole I don't know the way that like trauma can be passed on through this whole chain of events and interactions and like it's all done so imperfectly and I don't know it's just all so messy but you also sort of at least can understand where most people are coming from even if you disagree like oh it's a lot but like isn't that how it is like yeah I mean that that quote that

that Caitlin opened the episode with is like so it's so spot on like isn't that how it is? Like, I mean, that quote that Caitlin opened the episode with is like so spot on. Like, isn't that how it is? Like, there are so many things from my childhood where I'm like, oh, like this thing happened and, you know, I didn't like it, but, you know, I can understand why they're coming. I can understand why she did this. She was trying to protect me, whatever. Like, I think that when you go back and you deconstruct your memories that were so complicated and fraught, I think that it's always like this sort of frustrating and unsatisfying, but

also kind of, you can sort of see where they're coming from, if that makes sense. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, that's like, I don't know, it's like, I definitely feel that way about my parents a lot of the time of like god i the execution was extraordinarily bad but i can like acknowledge what they were going through while they were making those decisions and still think they were wrong for a b and c and just like that especially the the fact that this movie you know it takes place in the 1960s where like the power dynamics are even huger and like the disparity of how much power these women would have had to get away from this guy it seems like that

they're you know it's the only reason that moselle is kind of like making her own living is because she doesn't have another option well that might bring us to a quick discussion on the way voodoo is represented in the movie. So we talked about this on our Princess and the Frog episode about how voodoo is often very wildly misrepresented in Hollywood. And that really extends to any African diaspora religion. But you know, voodoo is the one that is most popularly depicted in Hollywood. The representation usually paints these religions as being just like rooted in evil.

It's like dark magic. There's violence. And the demonization of these religions has everything to do with racism. So I was like, I was curious about just like how voodoo in this movie is represented because it's a pretty big component of the story. We see practice. I don't know how authentic theisiana voodoo is represented specifically in this film and i don't know enough about the religion to comment on it but i did read that casey lemons said she didn't really do any research on voodoo before writing the movie and it shows i was like it does

i was just like yeah i guess that this is like it does seem kind of like off the top of your head like rehashing of things that we've seen of like how how voodoo has been represented in other movies right yeah I honestly didn't do a ton of research on this end and kind of went in with the assumption that because I looked into like Casey Lemons is like back history like okay so I can't find any reason that she would know and then I was like I'm just assuming that it's wrong every time you see like voodoo represented in American movies I just kind of I'm like I'm assuming this is way off but I don't know I feel the same way I mean I couldn't tell you if this is like an authentic depiction of Louisiana voodoo I'm going to assume

not because it was 1997 and I think that like you know there are certain like visual signifiers that I think are there that I'm like oh yeah she probably and like no offense to her she probably was just like yeah put her the the like voodoo practitioner in a certain outfit and call it a day right like there's that scene where she's got her face painted white. I think she was like, I want to have some clear visual markers so that people are like, yep, this is voodoo happening. I don't know that I would say that she went too deep into it. That's my read.

Yeah. I would say at the very least, there are some things that the movie manages to avoid that we've seen play out in other movies where like Eve goes to Elzora and she's expecting in return a voodoo doll and Elzora is like no that's not a thing I did another thing to try to kill your father but not a doll because like the voodoo doll is not an actual thing in the real voodoo religion or at least not the way that is right the way we see voodoo dolls in hollywood that's not accurate and i at least appreciate that the way that samuel jackson's character dies

is because he gets shot by a man who was pretty explicitly or implicitly told that his wife was cheating on him and not because like voodoo killed him right so at least the movie avoids those types of things but it's just that eve thinks that that's what happened like there i don't even yeah i was confused i was like for a second i like almost got galaxy brain about it because i thought you know it's like okay maybe it's like because you know like there's a lot of people who present as like oh you know like i am a psychic and they're actually not and they're kind of just like being touristy i was like maybe that's what elzora is supposed to be is kind of like, because that's what Moselle says. It's like, oh, she's just like a tourist.

Like she comes to the market. You know, she's a sideshow attraction because we see that misrepresentation all the time, kind of at any large carnival-y event of like this fraud. But then we're kind of led to believe that she is not a fraud. But then also, I guess that was the question I left the movie with. I believe that she is not a fraud right but then also i guess that was the question i left the movie with i'm like was she a fraud or not because there were

certain elements of her that kind of reminded me of like that scene in the wizard of oz where the wizard is going through dorothy's basket while her thing is closed like sometimes i was getting that vibe but then other times i was like is she a fraud like i i don't know i don't know because she gets it right with ross right she's like wait a wait a while but i guess she doesn't need to wait three years does she like she well maybe it takes three years for them to like just fully recover or like heal from their grief i just it's like it's clear to us that mozelle and eve's like i don't even know like their ability to see the future is authentic and that is like in text true but i still was not clear on whether elzora was legit or not i wasn't sure let's also keep in mind that elzora charges eve twenty dollars to to kill a man. $20. That's, I mean, come on.

In 1960s money? I actually looked it up. The inflation, it will be $216 thereabouts today. That's the price to kill a man. She grifted a child. What are the ethics of her accepting money from a literal child

to kill a man? Like I just have a lot of questions. It's murky. It's murky. I would be curious. Yeah. I'd be curious of like listeners who have seen this movie what your impression was. Because by the end I sort of felt like she's the Wizard of Oz.

Like she only because the people who can genuinely see into the future to some extent. We are like told visually explicitly that that is true and you don't ever get that for elzora so i wasn't sure i wasn't sure i know that definitely the presentation of voodoo is like off in this movie it's definitely not like a faithful you know thing but but i wasn't sure if like we were supposed to go through this being like, oh, you know, Elzora is kind of like doing this touristy act that Eve believes because she's a kid, you know? I don't know. She gave this woman $200.

Oh, my God. Stressful. But yeah, I'm curious to hear from any listeners who have a more in-depth understanding of actual voodoo practices, just how you feel about this movie's depiction of voodoo. Yeah. Does anyone have any other thoughts on the movie? I wanted to add a few things. I wanted to just kind of shout out the team behind this movie uh we do not i mean it goes without saying that black women writing and directing their own movies is such a

huge i mean especially in 1997 it just was not happening very much and so in terms of like the background of this movie you will not be surprised it's like the uh i feel like and this is true with female directors kind of generally you get a lot of that actor to director pipeline because casey lemons was already an established director and i feel like you mean established actor or sorry an established actor yeah and then she doesn't direct her first movie to her late 30s and i can think of like five women off the top of my head who that's true for right now um and how like that is kind of it seems like the most not to say i mean there's plenty of female directors who that is not

the case for but it seems like the most efficient current pipeline for female directors and that's where uh casey lemons comes from and then she makes like an amazing but she was like an established actor who started writing and directing because she makes like an amazing, but she was like an established actor who started writing and directing because she was dissatisfied with the roles she was getting as an actor. These like very, you know, like, Oh,

I'm the black best friend, or I'm just like this kind of like sidelined character. And so she just took it upon herself to start writing stories from her own perspective, which is is amazing. And I also, every time I see the actor-to-director pipeline, I'm like, why can't women just be directors? Why is that pipeline not available?

That said, I'm very glad that Casey Lemons was able to create all these amazing media roles that she wasn't able to play originally. We also have a few different kind of rarities behind the scenes, which I feel like sometimes we get great representation in front of the camera and then behind, it's like more white guys.

We have a female cinematographer, Amy Vincent, who you have almost certainly seen a lot of her work. She did two of my favorite youth movies she also did jawbreaker and the lemony snicket movie but she's like love jawbreaker y'all it's so good we've got to cover jawbreaker sometimes she's done she's done she's done a lot more like she's like i think one of kind of the iconic female cinematographers um she's done a whole lot. She did I Heart Huckabees, if you care, I guess. And oh my god, and that horrible Seth MacFarlane movie, A Million Ways to Die in the West. Oh, wow.

So you know, she has a wide variety of things she's done. We also have a black female editor, which is like, I feel like there's's of all the positions in hollywood that are overwhelmingly white guys editor like may in fact take the cake and yeah there's a black female editor of this movie her name's tarolyn shropshire i hope i'm saying that right um she also edited love and basketball when they see us secret life of bees and like there's all these like amazing projects in i think one of the like most white male dominated areas of movie yeah love and basketball another black classic right yes that is a classic so she seems like she's just you know kind of an icon in that field just like a lot of great representation behind the camera as

well and like the tea i mean everything in this movie gels so well. And also, I didn't know Casey Lemons studied cinematography in college as well. So you have to imagine she's bringing some stuff to the cinematography, too. And it's all you're like, wow, more movies should be made like this. There's also, it's a man, but a black composer, Terrence Blanchard, composedence blanchard yeah he's like a jazz legend and he uh god but he plays the trump oh and then he he won an academy award for black klansman a couple years ago oh that's right that's why i know that name yeah he and then i guess he and i found he and casey lemons also wrote an opera together or they were supposed to and then COVID hit and now they're going to release their opera later.

I love when collaborators like working together and then they do a bunch of like weird shit. Like I'm like, yeah, sure. Write an opera. Why not? Like Casey Lemons opera, I guess, you know, if it's safe to see, I would see it. So I just, I was, I really loved just how, like, how much representation there was behind the camera. Definitely. Especially in those, like, those are like three very major roles that are, you know, what is it?

They call it like the top, like this, this top six title card, whatever roles. And like, they're almost always given to white men in hollywood productions so yeah yeah that was awesome and for 1997 i mean for 1997 i'm like okay pretty good the other so shooting started on this movie and casey lemons was either pregnant pregnant um or she had just given birth to her first child. I couldn't really figure out exactly what the timeline was there. But I was like, that is cool. Because like society has this image of women that if like you're a mother, you can't, especially like a new mother.

Or if you're pregnant, you can't work. Or if you're a working woman, you can't be a mother. So like she was just like, no, like I'm going to make this movie. And I'm also a mother. and two things can be true. I love that for her. I think you're so right that we have this misconception that if a woman has a baby, she may as well just like crawl into a grave and die for a few years. Right. Yeah, that's I didn't know that.

That's really cool. The last two production slash reception things are notes about men but i i thought that they were interesting this i think as is also very common in this case a woman and particularly like a woman of color making her first movie she needed a very powerful man to co-sign on the project before it could be made so this project was kind of like languishing the script it existed for some time and it wasn't until Samuel L Jackson was like I'll star in the movie okay and then it could get made so it's like you know it's it's definitely not ideal it's something that needs to keep changing but I do

like to see powerful men using that power to like bring new talent into the folds and so that was cool this was also this is kind of neither here nor there i just was like genuinely really surprised because we are always talking about is this roger ebert yeah i was like because we have like been dragging roger ebert non-stop correctly for years because he just like sucks he generally has no idea what any like any story that is not for him explicitly he's like confusing hated it negative stars hated it for losers but uh in in kind of a shocking heel turn here uh roger ebert named this movie hit the best film of 1997 oh wow that that is surprising to me that is very surprising to me because he i have my own feelings about him that i find that surprising yeah i did too i was like wow okay at least he's a casey lemon stan i like it's not you know it's

something that might have been chas ebert his wife's doing that might have been Chaz Ebert, his wife's doing. That might have been Chaz in the mix. She's like, give me this one thing. But I wonder if his sort of championing this movie led to another fact about this movie, which is that it was the highest grossing independent film of 97. So I wonder if his like ringing endorsement, like encouraged more people to go see it because it had a four million dollar budget and it grossed 15 million at the box office which again doesn't feel it doesn't sound huge but for an independent movie 15 million dollars at the box office pretty significant in 1997 money too like that's that yeah that's big i do wonder yeah i do because i feel like for all of its issues that we have talked about at length at this point i am surprised that this movie is not like that not everybody

knows about it it seems like a real like classic of its genre and it does so much that not many movies are doing and so i guess i was glad that ebert pushed it it just i don't know ultimately i'm like i just wish more people knew about this movie i wish it was like more taught i wish it was more discussed like and i wish that i think that honestly it's the sort of thing where at the time had the fucking i know that we're always like the golden globes are for losers right oscars are for losers like it almost goes without saying but being recognized in some way by those institutions does sort of i feel like have an effect on solidifying certain movies as like definitely movies worth remembering and movies worth recognizing. And I just wish that this movie had been recognized more by those

institutions. And I wonder if, if they had like, would it be a movie that we would just be hearing more about now? Like, yeah, I wish I'd seen this movie sooner for, for all of its flaws.

I really, it's doing so much that movies of its time were not attempting. Well, if you'd grown up in my house, he would have had it on VHS and it would have been one of five movies like in a little cabinet that one could watch if they wanted the movie

cabinet my mom had the fucking CBS Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast on VHS and that was talk about a classic. Wow. A horny classic. Linda Hamilton and Ron.

We will not be covering it on the show, but boy, have I seen a lot of it. Oh, goodness. Is there anything else anyone wants to discuss? I mean, the episode's longer than the movie at this point. I don't. I mean, the episode's longer than the movie at this point. I know. Isn't that true of literally all of our episodes within the past two years? It's true. Speaking of which, my Chicken Run poster is coming in the mail today.

I'm very excited. I love that movie. Ginger's on her way. Hell yeah. Yeah. Well, it probably comes as no surprise that this movie does pass the Bechdel test. Women are interacting. Women and girls are interacting in this movie with each other a lot.

And the DuVernay test as well. Yes, indeed. The female characters are talking a lot about men in a lot of scenes, either like about Louis or about Moselle's husband. But there are still quite a few scenes that pass the bechdel test yeah i guess that brings us to our our nipple scale where we examine the movie based on just intersectional feminism and i think this movie is going to break my brain trying to assign it a nipple number um i think i want to give it three or three and a half because as we've discussed that like the information is there that allows for a pretty clear interpretation that cecily is a survivor of abuse and that her father is an

abuser. And I appreciate that this movie is trying to tackle this subject matter. And I think that the intent was to approach it responsibly. However, I do still feel that the movie ends in a way that allows room for interpretation and for a different reading, which again, I think is a very dangerous thing to do in regards to child sex abuse. That said, it's still an important piece of Black cinema and of cinema in general. I don't know. Oh gosh. Yeah, I guess three and a half and I'll kind of distribute them evenly to Casey Lemons, Journey Smollett, Lynn Whitfield, Megan Good, Debbie Morgan, just all the women in the store. And all star cast. Yes. Yeah, so that's that.

I'm going to go, I'm tempted to, i'm definitely doing a three and a half i'm tempted to even go for a four but i'm gonna go i think with a three and a half because i do agree that for its time is i mean it's it's so hard right because i i think that in terms of 1997 talking about child sex abuse on screen i feel like I can say pretty confidently that this movie does more than anyone was even attempting to do it the same at this time. While also making a lot of the same fuck ups that movies at this time were doing. It is like as far as I'm concerned, like never going to be worth the risk to put a child performer in a position like that. I feel a little differently about the ambiguity because I do feel like she gave us all the clues,

Mr. Policeman. And so I don't want to necessarily punish the movie for that because I do feel like Casey Lemons does give us all the information. I do just wish that like, I guess we didn't even talk about this but the the line that I think was cross like crossed a line for me was when uh Moselle told Eve like your dad says he wishes he had gotten that last dance that for me kind of crossed the line of like so we're gaslighting beyond the grave is like for real like is that necessary and so i i do think that the movie gives samuel l jackson's

character more than he deserves in terms of ambiguity i am i don't know i just for sure the conversation was not sophisticated enough in the general public then or now clearly for people to inherently believe cicely i think if we were living in this fantasy world where we were as a society inclined to believe survivors that a lot of the choices in this movie wouldn't bother me as much and so i'm like i'm it's kind of confusing because i don't want to punish casey lemons or the art for society not being where it needs to be on this issue but it isn't and so i just don't really know i do know that i really dislike the fact that the scene was filmed in the medium that it was yeah everything else i'm kind of like oh I don't know uh stories about uh generational trauma I

think are really rarely done well and thoughtfully and this movie kind of ticks a lot of boxes in terms of like showing you you know kind of the effects of generational trauma and showing you like yes Roz is wrong a lot of the time, while also showing her empathy in other moments in a way that felt really like, I mean, you can't ask for like a harder task as a writer to show all of this stuff. I don't know. I mean, I've like, am genuinely, I'm just glad that Casey Lemons did it. And like, for all of of its failures I feel like it's a triumph that it happened and that it was released and that it had this cultural impact and I don't want to punish it for society being worthless I don't know I don't know I guess I'm gonna go three and a half

and I don't know how to feel uh and we're all broken I'm giving all of my nipples to Debbie Morgan because she really she really did it with this one oh yeah Bridget what about you I think I would put this it's a tough call for me I would say between 3.5 and 4 nipples I say for the the heavy you know female led talent both on camera and behind the camera I think it's I can't go lower um I don't know that I can give it a solid four but I'm so I'm somewhere in there sure cool yeah totally agree well thank you so much for joining us I what a what a treat it's been what what a memory this will be for all of us thank Thank you for bringing us this movie, truly. I'm so happy that we got to talk about it.

Yeah, I'm happy that this was on the agenda because it's nice to have a reason to rewatch it. And it's just nice to have a throwback of kind of a time capsule of how we were dealing with representing Black girlhood, Black womanhood on screen. It's nice to look back to see kind of where we were at then and where we've come now. So I appreciate having the reason to rewatch.

Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. And tell us where people can check out your stuff, listen to your podcast, follow you on social media, etc. Well, thank you for asking. So if you want to hear more from me, please, please check out my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet on iHeartRadio.

Right now, we're doing this great mini series all about disinformation called Disinformed, and really elevating some narratives around marginalized people, women of color, women, how we've all played a role showing up online and how we have gotten to this very kind of particular social and political moment that we find ourselves in. So if you're interested in that, please check it out. It's called There Are No Girls on the Internet. And you can follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. or on Twitter at Bridget Marie. Hell yeah.

Awesome. And Bridget, truly, come back anytime. Oh, it's been a pleasure. I'll be back. Y'all will not be able to get rid of me. Wow. Well, you can check us out on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon.

Speaking of Chicken Run, I believe that episode will have recently dropped among many others and that's socialist classic chicken run oh my goodness um that's at patreon.com slash bechtel cast it's five dollars a month and you get two bonus episodes plus access to the back catalog uh oh and you can also get t-shirts i always miss my q here uh you can also get t-shirts at tpublic.com slash v bechtel cast we have masks amongst other wares so um you know log on in see what you like yeah and um until next time um this is just a memory now. Oh, wow. And it's imprinted indelibly on your brain. Through the MP3 file.

Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one woman wiki leaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country

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