The Bechdel Cast - Four Year Anniversary Q&A with Jamie and Caitlin

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Caitlin and Jamie do a Q&A episode to celebrate the four year anniversary of The Bechdel Cast!For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, quick plug at the top of the show. We are doing a live reading of the

Santa Claus, Disney 1994. You know it, you love it. So we're taking the script, we're doing a live reading of the Santa Claus. Disney 1994, you know it, you love it. So we're taking the script. We're doing a live reading of it. I'll be there. Jamie will be there. Grace Thomas, our guest from the Santa Claus episode we recorded and released last year, will be there. We've got a few other friends joining the cast. So don't miss it. It is Sunday, December 13th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. That's the live show. But if you can't make it to the live show, it's okay because the whole thing's online. It will stay online. You can watch it whenever if you buy a ticket. Here's how you buy a ticket. We have a link that will give you instructions on exactly what to do. But basically, we are doing this show to raise funds for Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community.

There's currently a GoFundMe for it. So we are asking that you make a donation to Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community. You will attach a screen grab of your donation receipt on this link that we'll be sending out. It's just a simple Google form where you'll submit your donation receipt. That's effectively how you buy a ticket for this show. So you'll send us the receipt in exchange. We will email you a link to the live stream. But again, if you can't make it to the live stream, we still encourage you to buy a ticket if you want to see the show because we'll send you the link to the stream if you can't make it to the live stream, we still encourage you to buy a ticket if you want to see the show, because we'll send you the link to the stream, and you can watch that at any time. So, just again, real quick, the Santa Claus live reading, Sunday, December 13th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. A link with more information and all those instructions will be on our Twitter. We'll put it on our Instagram.

I will put it on my website, caitlyndurante.com slash shows. It'll be around. Just check our social media. And we're really excited. It's going to be a blast. It's going to be a romp. We're doing it for a terrific cause. So check out the show. We hope to see you there in the comments because that's how online shows work. All right check out the show. We hope to see you there in the comments because that's how online shows work. All right, enjoy the episode. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hi everybody, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus.

My name's Caitlin Durante. And we're celebrating four years of the MF Bechdel cast. Wow! The MFTBC, or no tmfbc oh yes the mud i was like wait a second math letters math letters alphabet davinci code let's cover it which brings us to our episode today no i promise we'll never cover the da vinci code it wasn't even in it i know but it's like i feel like he i i mean i feel like he would be like that's okay you don't have to cover that one i could that that's kind of fun if i wonder what movies alfred molina was like don't watch that one maybe don't yeah uh welcome to the bechtdel cast. This is a celebration episode. So if it's your first episode, you know, probably shouldn't be.

Yeah. But or unless you want to just get to know us really well before verifying if we have any skills or not. Well, some of these. Well, OK, so we're doing a Q&A episode. Some of these questions, I think, will elicit a really interesting discussion. So that's our plan. We're just doing a celebratory four year anniversary Q&A episode. We've done a few of these in the past. We've done at least one or two on the main feed. And then I think two on the Matreon as well. Yes, which is where these questions are coming from. They are coming from our Patreon, aka Matreon, where you can, I guess, I'm like, I just started plugging it instinctually. But essentially, that's our Matreon community. And that's where we sourced the amazing questions that you're going to be hearing us stumble our way through today. That's right. So thank you to everyone on the Matreon who did submit a question.

We're unfortunately not going to be able to get to all of them. We won't have the time. We've got dozens of questions. And some of them are questions that we have answered on previous Q&A episodes. So we'd recommend going back and listening to those. If you're like, why didn't they answer how how did jamie and caitlin meet and why did you start the podcast we've already answered that on other episodes in a past season of our friendship this these questions the reveals have happened

mid-season uh but but there were a lot of amazing questions in this um in this batch our listeners well they're very perceptive smart brilliant geniuses a million percent all feminist icons yeah yeah yeah five you all get five five nips five nips all around um so yeah it's been four years i still i mean we did not start the podcast because the Trump administration was starting, but it was, it just timed out that way. And baby, we're going to be in office longer. Four more years for the FactoCast. Exactly. We're going to outlive the Biden administration. Who was it? Was it FDR who had like four four year terms was that

that president i don't remember it was this is a this is a history podcast wait i think it was fdr right i think so so we're gonna we're gonna do fdr's legacy we're gonna 16 years is that's too long 12 12 years that's too long wow that's That's too long. That's three terms. Hey, he shouldn't have done that. Well, they put in term limits because of him. Right. I think so. Yeah. We're like we're getting close to like dictator territory here. Let's let's give it a limit. Yeah. You're like, OK, knock it off, sir. I don't know anything about that. But what we do know is the answers to the questions that you're about to hear. Okay. So here we go.

Our first question comes from Jacqueline. The question is, what has been the most surprisingly positive find during the show for each of you especially movies pre-2005. Does anything jump to mind for you immediately? Well as far as the positive find implies to me as though it's a movie that we hadn't already like known about or been on our radar I guess which is a lot of them for me and none of them for me because i've seen every movie no just kidding but but um because there are plenty of pre-2005 movies that i think are worth watching and checking out but um like for example thelma and louise comes to mind but i had already seen that many times so it wasn't as though like we discovered it via this podcast but i feel like that does count though of like uh you know your love of a movie increased or like the context of it shifted i i thought about that for josie and the pussycats because i'd seen it before but i feel like that

was a movie that when we analyzed it and it did so well and like there were so many more layers that i was like yeah like you, it just like deepened. I feel like I have more cases of that than not. If either my love for a movie I already loved deepening or it becoming tarnished. Sure. Well, a few that stood out to me, a recent one was How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Oh, First Wives Club. one was how stella got her groove back yeah um oh first wives club uh again not a perfect movie but um it's one that i really wasn't i hadn't seen it prior to starting this podcast i would say nine to five was one yes yeah yeah yeah uh sister act my love of sister act was deepened

uh when we covered that movie i'm just going through our list here i mean national treasure of course i mean well if we're gonna bring up national treasure we have to the actually the top answer for this question is obviously flubber flubber i mean when we were there i think i hopefully we've given a second life to flubber and I Frankenstein. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's there are a lot of movies who who who movies are people that my love has deepened. I think that that's more common. Josie and the Pussycats comes to mind.

How Stella got her groove back is a great example. And yeah, I think that's I think that's my answer to that question yeah same i i feel good about the movies i've already thrown out so thanks jacqueline um our next question comes from ella asks what movies were you expecting not to like and have surprised you um i hmm that's not true i was like i i can't get a flubber answer here because i was expecting to love it and then i still did um i mean i think for me it's there's the occasional action movie we'll cover that i didn't think I was going to be like captivated by but ended up being I think that actually the Terminator movies um surprised me because I just view that as like oh it's not my genre really I know that it's like feminist and cool but it's but but I was really captivated by them I liked them a lot I'm so glad to hear that because I love the first two

and the second one especially are is like one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. I think my biggest answer for this. Oh, I have two. I didn't have super high hopes for Birds of Prey based on how bad of a movie Suicide Squad was. But really really enjoyed Birds of Prey and I also I think because of the way the movie Blockers was marketed oh I thought it was and we covered Blockers on the Matreon so get on it folks but I thought Blockers was gonna be a mess just like another like gross out and it is you know kind of a gross out comedy but in in the vein of like american pie problematic and not sex positive sure feminist uh kind of messaging that it had so i also i would also add in uh frozen 2 that was a movie i did not expect to i guess i just i mean that movie is very you should just listen to the episode but

I think that was a movie that I thought I knew what the direction of the conversation was going to be when we when I started like the process of researching and it just totally went another way and I learned a lot and our guest Allie is so incredible and And like, I don't know. That was like one of the recent episodes where I was like, whoa, I, I learned shit. And it really like, I didn't go in expecting to like find a lot in,

in, in frozen too. But guess what? There's, there's some stuff in there. It's got substance. It's got substance. It turns out.

So that was, that was another one that kind of pleasantly surprised me yeah thank you ella for that question indeed uh let's see uh going next to adam who is a student of yours he's a student yeah he's a student of mine so shout out to adam thanks for taking my class thanks for asking this question adam has a good question and i'm trying to figure out if i know what the answer is or not are there any films one of you wants to cover in an episode that the other person refuses to cover that's like definitely but i i guess i just said i will never cover the da vinci code but i i'm like kind of joking uh and i'm over here like we have to cover da vinci code okay let the da vinci code stand and

it's been a big problem for in our friendship it's torn our podcast apart almost what is i feel like we talk about like well there was something that you said no to for a long time and then eventually you said yes recently but i'm trying to remember what it was i mean i was very reluctant to do like dcoms and like high school musical and stuff like that for a long time maybe that was it right but then but but then now you've seen dcoms i haven't seen for crying out loud uh teen beach movie hello best movie ever made um what else are i there's not many that we are like no i unless i remember saying that we should cover dumb and dumber and you but only not because i like that movie just because i think there's a lot to talk about because of how fucked up it is yeah there, there are. I mean, I think occasionally, honestly,

there are episodes that you're just like, ugh, do we have to get exhausted thinking about it? Yeah. But I mean, I would do Dumb and Dumber. I think it's also just sometimes you're just like, is that the top of our list? But then it's also like we just did Flubber. So that list is very, it's a very fluid list

yes if we're nothing if not eclectic in our movie choices i will say one episode that i was i mean and then there's just like certain movies that you just know are so deeply entrenched in like problematic stuff that you're just like what where are we even going to begin i felt that way about the there's something about mary episode i'm like we're gonna be here for six hours but thankfully katie's stall is an angel and that episode was really fun but it was like stuff like that i get like overwhelmed in advance sure thinking about like or like episodes where you're like i have 45 pages of notes like yeah it's not well there was a period of time where i was kind of begging you to redo the matrix episode and this actually leads to kind of a plug because here's something that happened a few months ago we removed four episodes

really early episodes that for different reasons we just kind of didn't want them in the feed mostly because we wanted to redo them yeah and we never thought anyone would notice and turns out everyone noticed we were so wrong um and the reason we did it, it was honestly, I mean, if you've ever had a podcast for four years, you'll find that some of your, like, especially they're all episodes from like early on in the show when we were disorganized and like they're all in like the first 10 we did. They are all among that cluster. So they're all, yeah. And we've done how many episodes now?

We've done over 200. Not including the Matreon. And also it's like, everyone roasts me for not watching the Matrix, but early in the show, we were truly doing the show pretty much strictly for fun and to like have a fun conversation. And I was like working two jobs.

Like I didn't always have time to do the deep dive that we're fortunate enough to have the time for now yeah so we so we took down four episodes that we just were like honestly we're just like we don't think that this is going to be very helpful for anyone uh yeah and since people tend to like scroll down to the beginning of a feed to start the show we got rid of four episodes that we're like we don't think this is a good introduction to what the show is yeah but but we are going to redo those episodes we're redoing them the plan is for january uh those that's kind of just going to be our our january episodes uh the episodes we are redoing are Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 which was our first episode of all time and you might imagine it's

not our strongest it's almost like we're flailing around in a big pool not sure what to do one of them is the animated Beauty and the Beast from 91 our second episode ever again as you might imagine not our strongest

not our best and Not our best. And then there's also The Matrix. Yes, which I am going to watch. I know it's been like a joke for years, but I'm sick of hearing about it. And I hear that the movie is pretty good. I don't know if you'll like become a fan, but I think you'll not hate it. I think you'll like enjoy it for what it is. I honestly think I'm there is so much that we didn't discuss in that first Matrix episode anyways that I'm like, I feel like there's so many more so many levels of appreciation for the Matrix that I'm excited to discuss.

And I'm a way bigger Keanu stand than I was four years ago. So I think that this is just it's it's a good vibe and then we're also redoing Mad Max Fury Road yes which since recording that one that has become one of my like top five favorite movies of all time so I I've seen it like dozens and dozens and dozens of times since then I've done a bunch of reading and research about it i have a greater appreciation for it but also some like other like different opinions that i had originally so yeah worth redoing all around i still i still resent the steampunk aesthetic for the record but i have re-watched the movie since and uh yeah i feel like we just there's

that movie deserved a better episode than we were equipped to give which i think also like ties into like our own ongoing education and growth as hosts too we're we're always learning we're trying yeah and so yeah look forward to we've got to think of a better name than redo month right what is what do we call it well where we will accept pitches from listeners on what that month should be called although we usually don't we have like very goofy names for themes for our matrion months but not usually for the main feed so maybe we don't need like a fancy name for it i don't know all right i was like redo you every thoughts sound off in the comments no uh don't because that was perfect all right well we figured it out redo you are you

okay so that all was the answer to uh question from Adam. So thank you again for submitting that question. Next question comes from Darcy. Asks, how do you feel nostalgia plays into how we view movies? It's easy to defend your favorite movie when it's your favorite. But what about when that movie has actively harmful things being said? I know y'all have had some discussion about this on your favorite movie episodes, but I'd love to hear any other takes you have on it. So thanks, Darcy. Yeah, I feel like we've had versions of this conversation in the past. I think that nostalgia, weirdly, especially for our

generation, for everyone, but I feel like we are a very nostalgia driven generation in particular yeah one of the main examples that comes to mind for me is the indiana jones trilogy and it is a trilogy because let's not i don't i don't observe the fourth one as being part of it anyway um those movies are so harmful and so bad and so sexist and so racist. And I can't stop loving them. So like nostalgia is a huge component of that because these are movies I grew up with and I watched constantly as a kid. And same thing with like the Back to the Future trilogy. Pretty actively harmful in terms of its depictions of various characters and just situations. But they're like my favorite movies. So

as we always say on the podcast, you're allowed to love whatever you love. We just always encourage critical analysis of the things you love and be able to recognize that something you love might be actively harmful and if you share your favorite like your nostalgia favorite movie with someone like have a discussion with that person afterwards about like why it's fucked up and why it doesn't necessarily hold up anymore but you still love it yeah i also feel like there is like it's such a personal thing as well where i feel like part of i mean this is this this question ties into why we do the show in the first place right is to like approach popular movies i mean in some episodes it's like approaching popular movies that have a lot of problematic elements that it's like we just want to talk about the context of it so that you can watch it with more awareness i don't

i feel like it's almost creating a shield for yourself in a way of like first we want to encourage people to demand better of the popular art that's being created but also it's like you're creating a shield against old art to be like, I can consume this and I can like take in its entertainment value if I'm comfortable doing so. And everyone, I mean, that's a whole,

it's very personal. Like I, I can also see how someone would be like, I just don't fuck with the Indiana Jones movies anymore after I realized what it, and, but it's going to be different for everyone. And I feel like it's just a matter of like crafting your oh god I sound like a marvel movie uh crafting your little

your little shield so that certain stuff you know just so you're aware and that you can watch and enjoy things mindfully I does that make sense I yeah of course yeah because nostalgia is such a tricky and sometimes pesky little emotion it does I mean it's like I I was totally torpedoed by like Disney movies and like I mean I think more of us than not honestly and and you're just like I know this is wrong but the songs are so catchy what do i do it's something that i feel like we all deal with to an extent if you have literally no problematic faves congratulations were you born in like 2017 like but and also, even so, still kind of, but I feel like it is just a matter of just creating a level of awareness. And like you were saying, Caitlin, having discussions that feel productive with people who share the same nostalgia you do.

Nostalgia, I feel like it can be, if it's uncritical nostalgia, that's a road straight to hell, baby. Yeah, that is what I would take issue with. Again, we have our list of red flag movies. If you list this as your favorite movie, maybe re-evaluate your love of fucking Scarface or whatever. Right there. Yeah. The way you said that sounded like Jeff Foxworthy. You're like, you might be a toxic person.

But if you love Scarface and have like written essays about how fucked up and problematic it is then that's another thing right but bottom line be critical of the media you consume and we are here to help with that yeah and that's why we do the show to continue to learn from our listeners which is which is great yeah and so it's like it's kind of a different it's kind of hard to have this conversation too broadly because it's like there are some it it's a very movie to movie person to person thing but right i think that's our general answer indeed so thank you darcy uh our next question comes from cy ariel and they ask for years intersectionalist critique of popular media has seemingly been relegated to indie publications academic papers and blog posts many times i've seen such criticism disregarded as

having no bearing on the objective quality quote unquote of a film for example even modern reviews for birth of a nation often call it quote a masterpiece despite all the racism unquote not even considering that the racism might have any bearing on the quality of the film itself. Blatant use of sexist tropes by male auteurs are acknowledged as an afterthought, if ever. It seems unthinkable to reviewers that analysis of racism, sexism, or cis heteronormativity could somehow be integrated into mainstream critique. Why do you think that film critics have been so slow to adopt new more self-reflective ways of thinking and talking about movies uh wow what a thoughtful question thank you so much indeed my first of all i totally see what yours i mean it's like this i feel like we often

kind of try to go to how is this movie reviewed when it was released and you see a lot of that to me I mean my gut instinct answer is that pop culture is reflective of the larger culture that you're living inside of and so I think that the reason that film critics have been slow slow to adopt more self-reflective ways of thinking is because our culture has not been welcoming or encouraging of new ways of thinking for since time immemorial i feel like it it definitely not completely but has a lot to do with, you know, Western culture in general, like, and I also really don't like when people dump on independent film critics and creators, because it's like, I feel like that's who's really doing the work and moving stuff forward. Like it's it's not Roger Ebert, honey, sorry. Like, yeah, yeah. Often when we cite writing film criticism, film reviews on our show, it's almost always from,

you know, indie publications and like feminist blogs and stuff like that, that are, you know, not the most mainstream because reviews from the New york times or from like roger ebert's like legacy you know la times and all those you know huge newspapers and publications and things like that yeah they're still they're doing what they've been doing for decades and decades which is analyzing a film only on the merit of its like story and cinematography and like important aspects of film but not at all on like representation and inclusion and and like really acknowledging say i mean i i think that the way that cy ariel describes this is really insightful of like calling Birth of a Nation a masterpiece despite all the racism like you can't like do you hear what you're saying when you say that

like whoever the fuck said that like what the fuck yeah it's it's I feel like for especially for like legacy film critics who like it almost seems like they think that that is enough they're like well i acknowledge that it's racist i said all the racism so you know check i mentioned it's racist and the racism doesn't make it bad it's still a great work of art and first of all is it it's a fucking three hour long piece of shit movie that fucking sucks kicked up the kkk in the u.s so no like we don't yeah i mean and i think it also has to do with the extreme whiteness and you know cis maleness of most of film criticism up until pretty recently and that's not to say that people weren't writing i mean that's like so much of what we've pulled from over the years

is from black writers from indigenous writers from women from queer people from people who have been doing the writing and the work for a long time it's just i feel like in terms of being put on by like an institution and being like you're our film critic now, that is like, first of all, still needs a lot more, but is something that's relatively new. And I wanted to just off the top of my head, shout out, we've had two incredible black film critics on the show recently,ley ray and jordaine searles so yes they're doing it but they like you know they they did a lot of indie writing before and so it's so frustrating i mean i i think that that's just something that even as uh fans of movies that's like something that we all as a community need to keep pushing for is like more representation in film criticism. Cause otherwise I feel like it's never going to stop this.

Like despite all the racism, despite all the sexism and then being like, all right, I'm done. Good review. Five stars. Like, fuck you.

For sure. I think that also extends to what is taught in like film schools because a lot of i imagine a lot of like film critics did something to study like you know film theory or film criticism or you know film studies in you know some form of higher education and so much and as someone who's taken many classes like that in my various degrees that I earned that I would never talk about of course there's been very very little discussion about representation or if it was it was like a specific class if you wanted to like learn about like feminism and movies you'd have to like take a

specific class and it was always like a an elective that wasn't a required part of the curriculum and and so it's just not prioritized in in schools or at least it wasn't when I was I was taking classes at university and I hope yeah and even when i feel like even sometimes when you do get to address stuff it's still in a very i don't know just a very academic whitewashed way where even like i remember in like one of my film classes there it was like and this is like it's woman day in film history class and here's all the women who have done stuff and it was like a list of like five white women and then we never talked about any women ever again and then we talked about woody allen for five years like it's like why why why why why uh we really need to get them out of the

classroom i'm sick of it so yes cy Ariel, thank you so much for that really thoughtful question. And that's a discussion we hope to continue. Yes, indeed. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back with more questions. 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.

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

on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know.

I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

I got to hawk this slalom, Rudy. I'm not hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?

Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next question comes from Jerome. Just wanted to ask specifically about the changes you've made since June and the two incredibly self-reflective episodes you posted. I'm wondering if you went back to those challenging questions you were asking yourselves in June and how you feel you are going on the journey of addressing them. Thank you for your question. That's a great question. I think first of all, I mean, that's it's not really a question for us to answer per se. I mean, we can't really say how we're doing that's really up to our black brown

and indigenous listeners so that's not really our call to make but in terms of what we have been trying to do and and the track that we've been trying to get onto and the priority switch i think we've made some progress. I think we definitely, we could always be doing more, but I think we've, I think we've made progress. I'm like, we're on the right track, I feel. Yeah. I, I, I'm of the mind that like, we could always be doing better. There's always more to learn. There's, there's always something new to address. There's something that we've overlooked in the past that we should like be careful to address moving forward there's mistakes we've made in the past so yeah as as far as like

our progress goes since like those few episodes that are being referenced that we released in june which which was released um around the height of the black lives matter protests and we i mean basically i mean if if you didn't listen to those episodes that's totally fine but what what it boiled down to as far as our show goes at least was that i feel like i mean for for i don't want to speak for you caitlin but i i feel like i had a reckoning with how few black movies and by extension how few non-white movies we had covered on the show and how that was kind of that had to do with a fundamental flaw in the premise of our show which was that we were going on this very vague you know qualifier of quote unquote influential movie without taking into account movies that are

not given the priority, the budget, the marketing that are amazing movies that people should be watching. And also the fact that we're filtering it through our white experience. And the result of that was that we were watching mainly movies directed by white people like by a huge margin and seeing that laid out was really like a fuck moment yeah for me of like well if this is what we're doing then the the premise is flawed and we need to like you know grow the show to not just be covering you know white movie like so that that was what as far as our show goes that really stuck with me of like we need to not just be covering and this is kind of like referencing our episode with kinese but not just movies by black directors brown directors

indigenous directors but like movies about black joy and yeah yeah, I mean, just covering a wide variety of movies, not just rehashing the same 2000s shitty white rom-com movie premise that we've talked about a million times, which can be fun. And like, we're not saying that like that, you know, that's a part of our whatever, what fucked us in the head uh so it's worth discussing but but but it can't just be that that's a fruitless exercise after a while we need to be you know introducing our audience to movies and just like learning more ourselves for sure

someone tweeted at us just the other day asking like like, can you cover more Latinx movies and have more Latinx guests on? And I was like, shit. Yeah, we've covered only a few and we should and will do more for sure. Yes. So like I said, there's there's always more to learn. There's always room for improvement. And that is a large, a large part of why we encourage engagement from our listeners to like, let us know suggestions for movies to cover for guests to have on the show. Articles we should read books we should read, even though we are famously anti book, just kidding. Yeah, it's always open feedback with us it's always been like that it always will be like that and then when this episode comes up we're all we'll also repost our request forum and we would love more requests for movies that are not made by white people that you

would like to see spotlighted on the show that would be that would be amazing we always want to you know give you know on top of um talking about amazing movies we want to talk about movies that you want to talk about with us and so you know we'll always be in conversation with you and we're we're we're committed to continuing to to learn and and do better yeah Yeah, we're always looking to enlighten ourselves and learn more and be as inclusive as possible. So thank you for that question. Thank you, Jerome.

Our next question comes from Ilana. Who would you cast as yourself in the movies about your life? And who would you cast for the other person if it's different? Well, the question answers itself. I want Alfred Molina to play me from the moment I'm born. Right, because in parentheses at the end of this question is, is it all Alfred Molina? And of course, the answer to that is yes i think that yeah i want movie of my life would start with my mom's c-section and and and then

it's alfred molina currently okay so she's so holding him in her arms but it's like a 60 year old man wait pitch okay it's it's alfred molina as the surgeon performing the C-section. It's Alfred Molina as your mother. Like Norbit. Alfred Molina as you, the baby. Yeah, coming out. This is my princess switch. This is my Norbit.

This is my any of the movies where one person plays everybody. I want Alfred Molina to play Caitlin as well. Thank you so much. What would would be your picks i'm curious um for some for some reason my mind went directly to winona rider oh that's yeah that would rock for my for me yeah i don't know and then obviously i agree that alfred melina should play you and everyone you know in the movie about your life. So, yeah, I don't even have a different answer for that. Okay, so thank you, Alana, for that question.

The next question comes from Donna, asks, what are some ways that one can be involved in film discourse? I love these types of conversations and find myself wanting to talk with you both on so many topics, but lesai, you cannot hear me through the headphones. Frowny face emoji. I don't have any friends who are very interested in this and also do not want to go to art school again. I would love a community where I can talk about these topics more i find it very important and stimulating listening to your podcast helped me realize just how deeply these tropes impacted me the magnitude of their effect is wild and then they say thank

you and thank you donna for this question and for your kind words this is a tricky okay so this is a tricky question i feel like because the answer to your question is the internet but that is very fraught uh because there are so many toxic i mean there are a place i i would say you know unless you know of a reddit board that is safe to avoid there. I mean, I feel like there are conversations about film discourse going on everywhere. It's just a matter,

I think of finding a space that is going to discuss film in a way that is open to intersectionality. It doesn't even need to be strictly about intersectionality, but has to be like involved in the conversation. I think, I think the closest i could come to with a recommendation here and i would also be curious for listeners to to pass along communities that you you like to participate in but i feel like letterboxd is potentially a

good a good place to go to find a i've found the letterboxd community to be generally very like cool and open to discussion and yeah it seems like kind of a a beautiful corner of the internet at the time of this recording right it could all go tits up when we least expect it but um yeah that's that's a great suggestion um well obviously this isn't a viable option right now, but we've had listeners reach out to us and say that they have like kind of put out feelers just like in whatever city they lived. I think there was one in London.

I think there's ones in other cities where people have just been like, hey, I'm a fan of this podcast. Anyone else out there want to like get together and have kind of like, almost like a book club but for Bechtelcast listeners obviously with uh this pandemic that is is not an option but if there's some kind of like I don't know our chat room's still a thing I'm kidding but uh I I do think yeah I think that hopefully we can I mean that's the thing that like I love I love when uh like fans of a show our show or any show like organize and like meet each other and

that seems like the most organic cool way to do it but unfortunately uh you can't right now I would say yeah letterbox for now and then I'm trying to think of a way we can help streamline this process. I guess we have until there's a vaccine to figure it out. But to help our listeners kind of coordinate and a place to find other Bechtel heads. Because truly the energy at live shows of fans of the show meeting each other. We have had so many. Oh, I miss live shows so much like so many cases of like people who are like in line together or like sat next to each other

or came to the show by themselves and then met like made made friends and like uh vector cast shows are a great networking tool i can't wait to go back to them i can't wait to go back to my can't wait to go to places we've never been before for shows i have such i'm like god damn it we're gonna go to austin i swear on my life we still never been to chicago to do a live show which is oh i was like i was like well we've been at all yeah but yeah to do a live show we're still gonna do chicago in chicago right but um since that's not an option at the moment um yeah i feel like letterbox and then also uh and i don't have enough insight but i know that there are discords that um are focused on film and it's a matter of finding kind of the right one for you i was gonna ask i was like what is discord is that a thing we're old i just i just

started a discord for uh lolita podcast subtle plug and it has been so lovely so far um it's been yeah it's like a a site where you can like oh my god everyone who uses discord is rolling their eyes they're like who are these old women um but you start little different channels where you're like oh here's the area where we talk about the adaptations here's the area where we talk about the book here's an area where we can just talk about anything and hang out and chat and oh that sounds so useful that yeah yeah and it's like the community can kind of self-regulate you have like you get a couple mods in the mix and it's been a very lovely conversation so far so as of this recording i'm like discord rocks cool yeah let's um i wonder if there's already some

kind of like bechtel cast or like just feminist film discourse discord out there oh that'd be fun i i would prefer discord to reddit a million percent Yeah, Reddit, I can't look at the interface of Reddit. It gives me a panic attack. I'm just scared. I have PTSD with Reddit. And I'm like, I don't want to be on this site. Get me out of here. But the Bechtelcast Reddit is lovely.

Oh, I can't look at it, I'm afraid. Just like I can't look at the reviews. But yeah, for any listeners who maybe already like facilitate or moderate some kind of or if you're interested in starting up one of your own, if there's any sort of group out there that is living on the Internet that you'd like to share, let us know. Yeah, we'd be happy to spread the word for listeners like Donna who are looking for a place to chat so hell yeah let us know wow that i think that that started as us being like letterboxd seemed cool and ends up being like we're gonna start a discord uh so stay tuned yes um our next question comes from courtney the question is when watching non-bechtcast movies, do you have a hard time turning off the podcast lens? Oh, for me, I honestly, and this might sound weird, but I

still oftentimes kind of have to actively, deliberately switch the Bechtelcast lens on to watch a movie that I know that we're not covering for the podcast. So I don't even, and it just might be like years of programming of never watching anything through like a feminist critical lens before, I still kind of have to, and like I default to a feminist lens more now than I did prior to starting the podcast. But sometimes I'm just like, I just want to watch and enjoy a movie without, uh, without having to tear it to pieces in my brain. So, so I like, yeah, part of it is watching a movie through the Bechtelcast lens feels kind of like work since doing this podcast is a job of ours.

And believe it or not, sometimes I don't want to work. So I would say I don't have that hard of a time switching it. What about you, Jamie? How do you? I feel like I, it kind of depends for me I it does I mean there are certain movies that I sort of can when I can foresee that I'm not gonna really like the movie anyways I think that I can be borderline impossible to watch a movie with because I'm like what the fuck is that what the fuck is that that's that that's like i think that when i when i go in i don't know it's hard for my partner to watch movies with me

because he's just like hey i wanted to watch this and i'm like well why is it like so it depends if it's unfortunately i think it if i'm rooting for the movie going in and like this movie is going to be good but i don't know it it has been like harder for the movie going in and like this movie is going to be good but I don't know it it has been like harder for me to shut it off even with movies that I'm like wanting to enjoy uh you know it's a blessing and a curse and then I think it's sometimes where it's like it's harder for me to turn it on for movies that I have nostalgia for than movies that I'm watching for the first time. So even when it's like a movie that I like or I'm like hoping that I like,

I feel like I kind of go in with a default Bechdel cast lens, but I struggle more in like the reverse sense of like watching an old DCOM and being like, no, that has to be feminist. How can I reverse engineer my brain to make it make it set here just like no jb it just isn't um so yeah i guess i have like a different new movies i feel like i kind of go in with the lens almost almost automatically with

some exceptions but yeah revisiting old movies it's a challenge. Thank you, Courtney, for that question. Let's take another break, and then we will come back and answer some more questions. 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. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to.

No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

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Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes! Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.

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Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Our next question comes from Lucy, who asks, how do you choose which films to cover? And has this process changed over the years

as you've covered a lot? This is a great question. I think it has changed a little bit over the years. We started by, I mean, it's still a combination of a lot of things. There's a real 4D game of chess we're playing when we choose movies at times. And then other times we're like, flubber? But what do you mean?

We very carefully and meticulously put a lot of work. That was a very long math equation. It was a flubber-like equation. It was the same one. The formula to flubber led us to realizing we needed to cover flubber we should have done this years ago um but i feel like there's the the factors we consider when choosing a movie is first of all what's most important is that it's a movie that our guest wants to talk about second of of all, it's something that there is,

and we break this rule pretty consistently, but is it a movie that there's some listener interest in? Because we have a Google Doc we have for years where listeners can make requests for movies. So we have a list of like, here are our most popular requests of movies we haven't covered yet. And we'll go back to that pretty frequently when we're giving our guests like suggestions for potential movies but the third factor that we has has always been true but has not been true enough

which kind of goes back to our conversation about our discussion on how white our movie list has been in June is, do we really like is it absolutely if it's a white movie, like or a white directed movie? Is is it really necessary? Like, so now it's also like, are we covering enough movies that are not directed by white guys? Yeah. And that's kind of where the change has come in, influenced a lot of just kind of like film discourse for a long time. And I think there is value in covering those movies. And I'm glad we did cover a lot of them just because like there are so many of those movies that like did really affect people in negative ways. And people have had to unlearn stuff that they've learned from that media that they've consumed.

So while I don't regret covering some of those movies, I do regret not placing enough focus on other types of movies. And that's where we're switching gears a bit, where we are prioritizing more directors of color, more queer directors, more directors who are women to broaden our scope and pay tribute to a lot of those movies. Because a lot of them are really cool and really good and they're lesser known. Very underrated. Exactly. They're underrated. They're lesser known. Very underrated. Exactly. They're underrated. They're lesser known. So we're hoping to,

by covering them, encourage people. A great example is one we literally just covered, Rhymes for Young Ghouls. I would hazard a guess that most people have never even heard of that movie,

let alone seen it, but it's a really, really good movie. It's a really important, a really powerful movie that I implore everyone to watch and to listen to that episode. Because it's just a very important movie that needs to be seen. So yeah. So that I mean, that Yeah, that also speaks to kind of how our show has evolved, where originally we were like, oh, we're covering popular movies of the past but that

inherently aligns itself with covering mostly cishet white male movies because that is who has been making movies on a large scale yes and and it does kind of get a little mired sometimes because if you look at our request list a lot of the movies that are right at the top are movies directed by cishet white guys um yeah the process has definitely changed and we're just i mean our in our priorities as a show have changed um so we want to always be servicing our listeners but we're no longer just the show that dunks on movies you've seen before we also uh want to direct you to movies and to guests and to you know work that you uh haven't seen but should and and deserve a bigger platform bigger budgets all that stuff yes so thanks for your question lucy next question comes from madeline uh says some of my favorite queer storylines have been

called queer baiting. Black Swan and Jennifer's Body, I would argue aren't, but for sure Cruel Intentions is. The thing is, these movies are how I realized I'm queer. Don't you think queer baiting can be good? So I guess I'm of many minds about this completely i mean i think completely valid and also not even uncommon that queer baiting scenes are kind of formative experiences i mean i i think we've heard about the cruel intentions scene specifically is cited a lot. I mean, and I also like have personal experience too of like, yeah, I don't know. Queerbaiting is harmful in a lot of ways in that, and we've talked about this in many episodes where it perpetuates that, you know, queerness is a phase or it's a shock tactic or, you know, all this stuff we've kind of talked about that said, you know, it for a very, very, very long time. And still now,

sometimes that was the only way that you would see, you know, two women on screen kissing was like, it was that. So I don't know, you know, it's like, I don't know how. I mean, whatever. We'd all figure it out one way or another. But I think that there are like certain queer baiting scenes that come to mind of like, oh, that was something that you were like, ooh, what's going on over there? And those experiences are obviously super valid. And like a lot of us have had them but i think it speaks more to like uh the fact that most of these scenes are directed by straight white guys who are framing it in a disingenuous way so it's like i don't know yeah it's it's definitely not bad that we've all you know

responded to it and that it right but i just think that there there's there are demonstrably better ways. Yeah. For a very long time, the only representation you would see of queerness or like by curiosity or something like that would be in queer baiting scenes. And like the person who poses question says, scenes like this are how a lot of people discovered they are queer right so definitely validity to that but yeah like like you said jamie it would it would be nice if there had been other options for young queer people to see that were like less baity and more just straightforward or more like like less baity more great e more great and yeah i couldn't have said it better myself less baity more great e and i think that that is again slow progress that's um starting to be made now although where i think a lot of it is lacking

looking at you disney also pay your fucking taxes is in media that is like directed at kids like kids does it i think that some areas are but like disney is still suppressing queer characters in a way that you're like, this is just a you thing at this point. It no longer even makes fucking financial sense to do this. Like get over yourself. And, you know, it's the year 2020. We shouldn't need to have to go to queer baiting scenes at this point there i don't think there's really any much of an excuse for them to still be happening but that doesn't get rid of you know the experience

the very valid experiences people had with queer baiting scenes of the past i almost like yeah is there i've i know that there's a number of video essays on YouTube about the history of queer baiting. But I think that yeah, just like having more queer characters who it's like, it just is what it is. And having that presented from an early age, it just you know, the normalizing effect that pop culture has. It's good shit if you use it for good. But yeah, I don't know i i fell you know the black swan scene you know it was just you know a lot i do i do love a good kiss uh i wonder too if if queer baiting will kind of be a thing of the past now that we have seen more normalization and acceptance and more out queer characters in a lot of media especially

media for young people i mean we were talking about blockers earlier which is an example off the top of my head of a pretty mainstream book smart movie that featured a queer teen book smart yeah lots of tv tv directed toward teens that uh features characters. So yeah, I'm wondering if that's kind of a thing of the past. And again, it is like a part of rectifying that issue is, you know, having more queer directors and people behind the scenes and writers in the mix as well. So yeah, hopefully we sort of answered that question. Thank you for sending it uh madeline yes thank you uh next question is from emily who asks i'm curious about what value if any you see in

analyzing films for not passing the reverse spectral test aka films where no two named men speak to each other about anything other than a woman i am always delighted to realize a film doesn't pass this non-existent test, aka bridesmaids, and it seems like such films are few and far between. Interesting question. Thank you for sending it. Yes. I feel like it's definitely interesting to discuss. It just like almost happens so infrequently that it's like, yeah, let's talk about this where where are they at yeah i mean it mostly happens in movies with predominantly female casts so like bridesmaids like was mentioned and you know while those movies aren't always perfect they're often like they're usually ripe for the types of discussions that we have and

because so many movies i mean you could rattle off hundreds of movies that are like a cast of 95 men and one woman is in the entire cast or maybe if you're lucky there are two women and chances are they never are in the same scene together so tons of movies are just all like are predominantly male casts but uh it's yeah far rarer that you would see a movie that is mostly women yeah so yeah i think there is value in shouting out a movie when it does when it doesn't when it doesn't pass the reverse Bechdel test. And there's a lot of negatives in there. Sure. So I'm trying to make sure my brain understands this.

Yeah. But yeah, if no men talk to each other in the movie, or if men do talk to each other, but it's only about women, that means it does not pass the reverse Bechdel test. Right. Which is a good thing. Or, you know, in theory, my head hurts. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And I also think that speaking to like, even Emily's question, that it's like, you almost manifest it, you will it into existence. If we talk more about, well, why isn't this past the reverse factual test? Maybe that's, you know, we say it enough.

And I feel like this isn't entirely true. And it's not, it's probably being mean to us. But I'm like, we've spoken a few things into reality, but most of it was goofy. We were like, oh, we've spoken. I mean, there's a few things that were that said true but i'm like maybe if we and the grand we as well make more of a show of kind of pointing out like wow isn't this amazing this movie is so good and men didn't ever have a conversation uh that might encourage you know more of that who knows i'm overestimating and underestimating our power all at once.

Well, if we manifest it enough, we can will it into reality. And that's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. All right. Few more questions. Yes. Next one comes from Alicia asks, I love how you both have expanded the lens of the show to

include more intersectionality with your more inclusive focus of today are there any films covered in earlier episodes that you would rate differently now or perhaps aspects that you wish you'd brought up um definitely for sure that's part of why we're redoing like those four episodes that we mentioned earlier um almost every episode we do people have been like oh i love this discussion great episode brag for us i was like where is this going comma but yes you didn't bring up this or you forgot to mention this or something you know and it sometimes it's just because we ran out of time and we couldn't cover everything sometimes it's because you know we we didn't consider that and we needed you, the listeners, to educate us or to bring something up.

A few examples off the top of my head. Our Mulan episode, people were like, yeah, but you didn't talk about how the male love interest is a bicon, you know, because he was attracted to Mulan while she was presenting as a man. You didn't talk about the queer coding of the villains in Birds of Prey. You didn't talk about, you know, there's so many different things that we, examples of like things we missed or something. So definitely there are a lot of things I would go back and rate differently or things I wish we had mentioned or had thought of at the time. But that, again, is why we so much appreciate everyone's comments and contributions. And we encourage you to continue to send us those comments

with those, et cetera. Yeah, I feel similar. I think that we also, like earlier in the show, especially with early episodes, we both knew a lot less than we do now. And I think we kind of fell into like the thing bad trap a lot, where we would be like things that we are more mindful of now. Like there is a way to contextualize why a movie presented as it did in a very problematic way. Sure. And be critical of it. But I feel like we we didn't.

I would say even in like our first year or so, we were not like heavy enough on the context. Oh, yeah. first year or so we were not like heavy enough on the context oh yeah and they're just uh not my favorite episodes for that reason but i think you know there's so much i would do different especially getting back into like 2017 2018 but and so even though i'm like cringing at past us i also am glad because that means you know it would be very weird if we were like no our takes were perfect wait no and i haven't learned a single thing since and i was 100 correct um so you know if you don't look on your past self your past trying self with without a little cringe you know what's what's going on what are you even doing yeah the past is cringe the future is cringe the present also cringe the present is extremely cringe

uh so thank you for that question alicia yes next up we have a question from tessa the question is are there any movies you really want to cover but just haven't done yet, either because they're not a priority or because the time hasn't felt right? Yes. I've got some. You have like some specifics? Yeah. Hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it. Some of them are just because they're like childhood or like adolescent favorites of mine

okay they wouldn't even necessarily make that much sense to cover some of these because i don't know how interesting of a of a discussion they would generate but um well actually one of my favorite movies for a while was sin city and i think it would be an interesting conversation that would be an interesting there is there's some some shit there's some stuff there yeah there's there's a conversation to be had so maybe i'll do that on one of my um as one of my matri on birthday pics uh next may i also i kind of really want to do a ninja turtles movie because again they were pretty big movies of my childhood. There's some that I really want to do just because they've been requested a million times and I do enjoy them as a movie that we just haven't gotten around to yet. For example, Pitch Perfect is one of our top requests.

Okay. I don't like Pitch Perfect. Oh, really? I enjoy it. Pride and Prejudice is one of our top requests. The Keira Knightley, I think 2005 one? Yep. Oh, yeah. I was it. Pride and Prejudice is one of our top requests. The Keira Knightley, I think 2005 one. Yep. Oh, yeah. I was there. I was talking with my dad about that movie the other day because there was like my dad.

I think my dad maybe noticed a trope in movies that is very specific. But he not to call him out, but he was yeah because my dad I made my dad because for the Pride and Prejudice this story is too long already but it was like not shown at major theaters but I really wanted to see it so my dad like drove 45 minutes to go to this like indie theater and then watched it and was like oh this is really long and he's right but uh but he was we were talking oh it's because we were talking about the crown and my dad was like why are there often these like young british women in movies who are always like hiding behind something flirtatiously which i actually think he's on to something there there's a scene in Pride and Prejudice that he

made fun of a lot when we went and I was like stop but like it's like Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett like hiding behind some ribbons and being like ha ha ha ha ha like you know and there's a very similar scene in the in the crown where Princess Diana shows up for the first time and she's like I'm like, these young British actresses do be hiding behind things flirtatiously. Wow. What's that all about? What was the question again?

I don't know, but Mike, shout out to Mike Loftus for his poignant observations. That's my favorite useless movie trope since Leonardo DiCaprio fully clothed wet you're just like i don't know if that says anything about our culture but it definitely it seems to be a thing oh you know what okay sorry this is another another quick tangent but you know how we were talking about the um breakfast rube goldberg machine trope in um a bunch of movies that we brought up on the flubber episode i i thought

of another one there's so many it's in the first paddington movie there is a marmalade making machine oh my goldberg machine and because paddington eats marmalade for breakfast it counts as a breakfast machine it's true there you have it's true something that some things that i've wanted to there's like other childhood favorites that i i would like to cover down the line but it's like they're just not the highest priority things i would generally like to do more or like to like i don't know we don't really do themes on the main feed, but I love musical movies. So I would love to do, we haven't really done that many that aren't like Disney movies.

Sure. So I love musicals. And I also think doing more international movies, which we've been, which we've been doing more recently. And then I would also love to do like a little, just a block of old Hollywood movies. Oh yeah. We've really only done that once or twice with movies that are older than like 40 years old yeah yeah just like getting

into like very influential old hollywood movies i think would be fun yeah also, we desperately need to do two separate episodes on Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL. Hustlers! Hustlers! That's like one of my top picks that like, it just, it truly like the timing just has it. It's been a timing issue. But Hustlers, it's gonna happen. Magic Mike, it's gonna happen. It's just really the question is when yes yeah and then and then of course anything that alfred molina wants to cover when he comes back yeah absolutely and the holiday date no i'm kidding uh let's pretend we didn't see that but although i so so to round out our question segment thank you to everyone on the matreon who sent questions and if you'd like to join the matreon it's a great month to do so

because we are doing our annual uh terrible holiday movies block including the three Vanessa Hudgens Princess Switch. Princess Switch switched again, I think is what it's called. But really, it's called three Vanessa Hudgenses. It's pretty much called three Vanessa Hudgenses. And then we're also doing Christmas Prince 2, because we've already covered 1 and 3. And we are releasing Christmas Prince one as a main feed episode to give ourselves a little holiday break and just sharing the christmas cheer that is christmas prince yes you're welcome everybody you're welcome once again i mean like christmas prince genuinely is

is requested oh yeah often we did that uh you know because the masses insist it that's true so that's what's going on over in the matreon so that was we have a few more questions but they're kind of more like fun silly questions we thought we'd close out on before we do that we had a few very just like very nice comments that we wanted to share we just wanted to share a bunch of compliments our listeners being nice to us and and telling us that we we rock rule and rule yeah yeah i mean we're we're spreading joy is what we're doing and um yeah or we're spreading joy fending off dread you know like it's really all the same activity these days uh but yeah we wanted to laser in on a couple of comments we received to celebrate uh because we cannot physically see each other So this first comment comes from Patty. They say,

I saw Boss Whomis Girl on an incredibly rainy evening in Edinburgh last year, and it was by far the funniest and most interesting performance of the festival for me. Aw, Jamie. One of the allies Jamie got on stage, which is a bit you do in the show, was so bumbling

that he almost made her break character several times. It was absolutely glorious. And I hope she remembers it as fondly as I do. Oh, that sounds like so nice. That I think I do remember the experience Patty is discussing because there were like some. So it's the context for this is I did I did a show last year at Edinburgh Fringe Festival where I played uh girl boss Elizabeth Holmes character

who just was like bad faith feminism uh the show was basically uh what it was and I would bring people up on stage and I would make I would make them name women and then they could never do it. I would always bring like men on stage. It's one of my favorite bits from your show. Yes, it's always so funny. I think I do remember this night specifically because it was like nights that were rainy were really hard

because it would be harder to get people to come to the show and I was performing in a shipping container so it would smell really bad when wet people came inside yeah so i my i have a very sensory memory of this night and that i don't know that's that's so lovely i miss being able to meet people and do things and be in stinky shipping containers with my friends thank you you for that, Patty. That was very, that made my day. We also have a really kind comment from Alicia,

who says, the two of you inspired me to start writing about film again, which I'm so grateful for. Somebody actually now pays me, hell yeah, to write reviews focusing on diversity. And I wouldn't have known that that was something you could do, let alone something I could do,

if not for the podcast. Thank you for oh my goodness shout out alicia holy shit that's that's for us that's like the most gratifying feedback we could get yeah that's like that's the idea and yeah that's amazing oh congrats Our listeners are so cool. That's amazing. And also send us your work. We want to plug it. Yes. Yeah. And to, I guess to all of our listeners, we say versions of this pretty frequently. But if you are seeing like there's a perspective you have that is not being discussed, like go for it. And let us know what we can do to help kind of get the word out because it does, I mean, it makes a fucking difference. And so shout out Alicia. That's so cool. Indeed. And this last comment that we wanted to share comes from Maddie,

says, just want to say thank you so much for this podcast. I was a socially anxious kid with big feelings whose only hobby was watching movies. I've realized how dangerous stereotypes in movies are and how I have romanticized toxic behaviors in my relationships because of it. Grand gestures that somehow equate to forgiveness slash stalker behavior slash boys will be boys mentality slash intense fights then always making up slash unnecessary sacrifices slash surprise kisses etc i've been i've been able to reanalyze what i really want and what is healthy for me and others a big part of that is because of this podcast thank you yay thank you thank you for sharing that and yeah i mean just so glad that you've been able to unlearn the toxic

crap that movies teach us that many of us are trying to unlearn and we still are like it's just uh yeah this comment was really cool like what we keep trying to talk about is like what is really helpful in unlearning stuff is like like once you recognize oh this is a toxic thing i need to unlearn just start the work don't wallow in you're like i can't believe how could it be you're like well it is so let's do something about it and that sounds like the approach maddie is taking and oh nice so cool yay so much yeah and then uh just a few uh fun questions to to close us out so the first one comes from someone who wanted to be identified as freddie molina fan number one so jamie i'm not sure if you'll have a response to that. Love this. Okay.

What's something non-movie related that you're passionate about? Ooh, something that I've become very passionate about in the past year and a half-ish has been local politics via a friend of the show, Nithya Raman. Yeah. Yeah. uh friend of the show nithya ramen yeah yeah i that's like when i'm not when when i'm not podding and goofing around yeah i've gotten really like excited by communities that are like in in la it's especially big i think but yeah uh learning about kind of my community, what direct action stuff is possible to do. And just like, I guess most specifically like local journalism and how important it is and how much there is to do and like what a cool community it is. I like local journalism.

Hell yeah. Boring answer. No, I love it. Something that I've always been passionate about that I think is little known fact about me is that I love anthropology. I almost minored in it. In fact, I almost majored in it in college before I really knew what I wanted to do. So I had just kind of contemplated making that my career for a while, but ultimately was like, oh, I don't want to get a PhD. So never mind. But I only wanted to get a master's in screenwriting, obviously. And honey, you did. And I did it. Baby girl. But I love

anthropology. I love reading books about anthropology i love um just kind of like human evolution in general and the way human psychology has evolved human sexuality has evolved or has kind of dictated our human evolution and just like all that kind of stuff uh i've always been fascinated about that so if anyone has any recommendations for anthropology books i've probably i've read a fair number but i'm always on the lookout for more so hit me up with your recs but yeah i love anthropology so and if anyone if anyone knows about corruption in the va in west los angeles hit me up jamie uh our next fun question comes from becky and it goes a little something like this hey caitlin and jamie you've been my running buddies for years love the show you're both from

the east coast but now in la how is that transition for you do you miss certain aspects of the east come visit pittsburgh when it's safe please uh okay we will yes fine and yeah i miss i miss the east coast a lot all the time uh yeah i mean i do like living in la but i do miss i do miss the east coast yeah i miss massachusetts so much all the time. I miss public transportation as being a more accessible and easy thing to do than it is in LA. I miss living in a walkable city. I miss bike riding around. I used to ride my bike to get everywhere when I lived in Boston. And now I'm too scared to ride my bike anywhere in LA.

Oh, God. Yeah. I miss the fall. I miss my family. I miss just like it's yeah there's there's a lot that I miss I also just I don't know Massachusetts can be so fucked up but then sometimes just I don't not to go back to local journalism but sometimes the hyper specific stories you can find in new england truly could happen nowhere else and shouldn't happen anywhere else and by that i mean something everyone should

go watch is a youtube video it's called down the rabbit hole the per cat cafe it is oh sorry i thought you were going to um talk about love bacacardi, Boston. Oh, my God. I'm also talking about Love, Bacardi, Boston, because where else can you make that film? Don't even try. The worst student film of all time. You got to watch it. But I also wanted to reference YouTube user Frederick Knudsen. He doesn't really need our plugging.

He's a very popular YouTuber, but he makes this series called Down the Rabbit Hole where he just will like rehash a scandal that is very specific and very online. And there's one that took place in Boston called the Purr Cat Cafe where it was a New England mom trying to start a cat cafe and she does a really bad job

and she gets so mad because she's from New England. She just starts cyberbullying people. It's the wildest story. And it just made me so homesick. Because I was like, what? It could only happen with that kind of angry mom. Wow. That they make in that region.

I miss it. Okay, next question next question comes from carly asks what would you call an all-female remake of the movie flubber flub her fember fember i don't think maybe not fember so just to be clear those were the two pitches that carly shouted out and also i let yeah i do love flub her serious answer it should just be flubber like they should just be called flubber and then a woman is the lead this time but in terms of what i think they might name it flub her is great what about this is a non-gendered way to do it i flubber right oh wow told from the perspective of the flubber the flubber yeah so so that would would that mean that um like maybe a spooky halloween version of flubber would be iFlubber? Flubberstein?

Like iFrankenstein? iFrankenstein would definitely, I think, work. We should get the iFrankenstein team. We also got a message from a listener the other day that was like, I'm so high. I'm under my Christmas tree and I'm watching iFrankenstein and I've never felt so at peace. And I was like, now this is the impact we've been going for. You know what? I don't care what they call it.

And I'm sick to death of rebooting old properties. Just, I mean, whatever. We talk about it all the time. Just let marginalized people make the movie they want to make. Don't make them remake a movie that was made bad the first time. What the fuck? However, with Flubber, I take an exception. what the fuck right however with flubber i take an exception we do need a reboot of flubber obviously we need it we need it yes next question

comes from maria do you believe in astrology because y'all being a taurus and a leo is t sorry for the lack of intellectualism but it really must be addressed yeah i believe in astrology how dare you yeah of course um what kind of question is that of course i do i uh don't i don't i don't really even know what astrology is i don't know how it works i'm sure if this is where everyone's sitting at home being like Taurus. Okay. Yeah. I'm too stubborn to believe in something like astrology. Um, I, I, well,

I, okay. I did buy some crystals. You did. Is that astrology? That's not astrology, but that's definitely, you know,

in the astrology extended universe. It's yeah. Astrology adjacent. Um, yeah, I, um, don't participate but i like when other people tell me they're like oh you're such a taurus therefore xyz it's nice to feel seen yeah i'm gonna be a leo and just like read out my chart okay so leo's son which you know, I was born August 18th and I'm like, I feel cuspy, but

whatever. Okay. Yeah. Aries moon, Pisces rising. Okay. Astrology heads. Tell me something I don't know because I know, I know a medium amount. I know like, okay.

Not a ton. I was gonna say, I don't know what any of that means, but I had to pull up my co-star app to give that information. Oh you go yeah Maria please advise on what just happened yeah uh two more things starting with a question from Lindsay asks if you were to focus on the films of Alfred Molina for a month would you call it Molina March or Alfred May Lena funny okay first of all funny second of all we would call it Molina March but it would fall in September that's the only way to do it yeah yeah yeah that's my favorite maybe one of my favorite running jokes we have is how we just everything in the matriarch is just insert

something march but it's never in march it's in or portman july july in really any month of the year yeah it's complicated but but if you really if you put all the strings together on the on the corkboard it does make sense. And then finally, Caitlin, this one's for you. It comes from Chris. Caitlin, have you heard of these anagrams of your name? I trend nautical.

I have not heard that one. Kurt Italian end. Not that one specifically, but I have one similar that has Italian in it and instead of Kurt, it's a much more unpleasant word if you change out one letter. Yeah, it's rude Italian bleep.

Okay, here's the next one. A Tinder lunatic. That one, yes. That one was one of the very first ones that Zach Sherwin made for me so that one does and you might have even did an illustration for it yeah i think i illustrated that yeah yeah because zach and i when zach and i famously collabed on your birthday present And then finally, this one is gross. Tinier anal duct. I have not.

I wish I hadn't heard that. Heard that one. But that one's my favorite one of these and of maybe all time. That made me feel really unwell. I feel great. I feel honestly, I'm like, wow uh i haven't eaten yet today and it's honestly it's good it's tinier i'm like tiny because it implies it was already tiny and that there's maybe there's a tiny one and then there's the tiniest one but this is the

you just have like a vice and you're just like, it has to get smaller. I don't, that's so nasty. Okay. Thank you for that, Chris. And on that note, happy four year anniversary, Caitlin. Happy four years, Jamie. Four more years. Four more years.

I've loved doing this show with you. i can't wait to do much more i love you and you're the best i love you and yeah this uh what a joy what a joy it's it is and continues to be truly i swear it's like so nice to like i don't know you know sometimes I this is like I'm not talking about anybody we know but you know sometimes when you listen to a podcast you're like I don't think these two people like each other very much I just I'm so grateful for your like friendship and I know same how this show brought us together look at us look at us go and look at us grow. Look at us here in heaven. Well, that was our four-year anniversary celebration. Heaven where Rose doesn't go at the end of Titanic. What if at the very end I try to pick a fight at the very end?

Yeah, and then we're like, actually, the show's canceled. The show's over. The last episode. So everyone, this is how we're kicking off december we're gonna be doing a lot of fun holiday movies we're gonna be doing another grace thomas santa claus episode can't wait we're gonna be doing uh an episode on this christmas we're gonna be doing what else are we doing an episode on new year's eve you know there's's just, and then over on the Patreon, however many Vanessa Hudgens as we can bear.

So thanks for listening. Yes. You can find us in all the regular places, Twitter, Instagram. We've, you know, you know what the Patreon is at this point. And there's ongoing sales if you want to get Bechtel cast merch for you or your loved ones

this holiday season feel free to do so over at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast right that's the one oh you think i would know that by now uh you and there's face masks which is cool i i just actually i need to order bechtel cast face masks because nice because why i feel like a poser on our own show yeah i'm literally i'm fit look what i'm like fidgeting right now i'm literally fidgeting with my alfred molina action figure doc ock i keep him at my work desk he calms me down good oh good wait and and and green baby boy i was just gonna ask okay boy have you told this story or do the listeners know about this okay because we need to okay we said the episode was over but it actually there's more i where i think maybe we talked about the matriarch but not this needs to

be as public as possible i need everyone to have access to this um okay so it was i've been trying to figure out which listener originally sent this to us yeah but essentially we did a matriarch episode a couple years ago at this point where we watched all of the grinches we just like drank all day and ate potatoes and watched every grinch and, you know, just talked a lot of shit. Yeah. And I love baby Grinch. We've had baby Grinch merch for years. You can get it.

This is a plug, right? Another plug for the merch. But a listener sent us a link to something just simply called Green Baby Boy. And it was a kind of like the shop looked like, like, I can't. It was a little like an online shop, something's not quite right? Yeah. Because what it said it was selling, I'm pretty sure, was a production still of the animatronic for Baby Grinch. It looked very top quality. The product that the site said they were selling looked as though it came straight off the movie set it looks like it

would have couldn't be and right because it was only 30 and it looked like it should have cost like 300 if it was what it said yeah so but so so kayla and i were back and forth of like where's the line where's the line and then i was like i had to, I spoke to God about it. And she said, she said to me, Jamie, I think this is a business. You can list this as a business investment on your taxes. And I said, oh, yeah, OK, I guess I'll do it. And I ordered it. And there was no tracking number.

There was impossible to know if green baby boy was ever going to come and if he came what would what would it be like and then the night joe biden won the presidency a fraught weird night literally moments before the speech, I received a package and inside of it was not what was in the picture. We'll post a picture of it to the feed, but it's like impossible to describe. It is technically a green baby boy, but it's so scary to look at. It has like soulless eyes. It is hollow. It's made like a dog toy that doesn't squeak but you can just

it it has a little hole in its butt and you can just make it totally flat you can squish his head uh it's made out of rubber it is technically a dog toy it's i it's definitely not worth 30 dollars no and i don't know who made this who's doing this i'm not sure it yeah you facetimed me yes with the second you received it to show it to me and i've i like nearly peed my pants laughing so hard because i'd never i wasn't expecting necessarily you don't know what to expect but i wasn't expecting that and it was it's yeah so we'll we'll do like side-by-side comparisons of like a screenshot of what the site was advertising and what actually showed up because it is the funniest thing in the world and i'm so sorry you spent 30 plus shipping and handling

the greatest return on investment i've ever i was just like it made me miss shows because i'm like oh if i could bring this to a show and really set up green baby boy and then and then pass them around oh oh that's your next one person show submit submit green baby boy the show to edinburgh in 2024 please right you think they're gonna say no please that's just good storytelling uh so so my my two guardian angels on yeah and my desk are green baby boy and doc ock amazing well okay now that's the episode there you have it um just a reminder about the live reading of Disney's The Santa Claus that we are doing on Sunday, December 13th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. Again, the link that will allow you to donate and thereby purchase a ticket to the show will be on all of our social media and again on my website,

CaitlinDurante.com. And we really hope to see you there again for A Terrific Cause, Reclaim and Rebuild Our Community. The show is going to be a blast, and we hope to see you there. Thanks for listening. Have a safe holiday season, everybody. And we'll talk to you soon. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

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

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour.

If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.