The Bechdel Cast - Ghost World with Julie Klausner

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Jamie and Caitlin take an out-of-service bus to Ghost World with special guest Julie Klausner, featuring a segment with Princess Weekes!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @julieklausner and @WeekesPrincess 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.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free. Subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple 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, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. Hi, everyone. We wanted to include a quick content warning for this episode regarding a discussion we have about something in today's film that can easily be interpreted as sexual misconduct. Thanks for listening.

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. Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Shami Loftus. And this is our movie. This is our movie. Nope. This is we made a movie. This is our movie. Welcome to our movie. This is our podcast. It's been on for four years. I don't know why I said it was a movie. Well, I thought you were gonna say like, this is our movie podcast. This is our movie. Oh, I could have saved it in that way. You could have just really seamlessly fixed it without anyone being any wiser.

Well, I only do one take. That's something I famously do. We're talking about Ghost World today on our podcast, which is about movies that, yeah, it's been on for many years. Oh, our podcast is about, oh, I thought you meant the Ghost World is about movies that uh that yeah and it's been on for many years oh our podcast is about oh i thought you meant the ghost world is about movies i'm like am i i just like sorry i just got out of a lobotomy so that's why i'm sounding this way it's difficult it's a difficult day um 500 degrees today my brain is just boiling in my head um is this a podcast? This is a podcast. It's a podcast about movies in which we examine the story through an intersectional feminist lens. It's inspired by the Bechdel test by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, That requires, for our purposes, that two characters that are not coded male with names speak to each other about something other than a coded male character for two lines of dialogue.

Doesn't happen a lot. Yeah. But it does happen. Should we test it out? Yeah, let's do it. Hey, Jamie. Yes, Caitlin. Yep.

No, I was going to pull a quote from the movie and nothing fits. So never mind. That's okay. I have no problem with that. And that passes the test. Yep. Things that aren't good dialogue pass the test all the time. It's true.

Let's introduce our guest. Yes. She is the creator and star of Difficult People. She is the co-host of Double Threat Podcast. It's Julie Klausner. Hi. Hello. Hi.

Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Absolutely. So we're talking about Ghost World. Julie, what's your relationship with this movie? I love Ghost World. This is one of my favorite movies.

And I'm excited to talk about it in the focus of the film being on the relationship between Enid and Seymour as opposed to Enid and Rebecca. And I completely understand that. I think of them as two completely different works, but I think it's really interesting to talk about that in the context of female coded characters speaking to each other about things besides a man or a crush and while I think that you know this is definitely a step in the in the failure of that test direction I just think it's such an outstanding movie in its own right exclusive of the source material that I'm just always excited to talk about Ghost World. So are you familiar with the source material that um i'm just always excited to talk about ghost world so are you familiar with the source material have you read the comics yes oh cool okay nice that's helpful for us don't quiz me because also i didn't re-watch this for the podcast i just figured i've

seen it so many times that i'll you know for sure just don't just don't quiz me i'm gonna fail you know what fuck it quiz me no let's do it quiz me i'm ready let's do it on page 47 come on come on how dare you jamie what's your relationship with this film uh very short i had not seen this movie before i um i don't know i've been it's been recommended to me for years and years and it was just one of those movies that I had not gotten around to seeing. And I don't, it's like one of those movies that when I finally did watch it, I don't know what I thought it was about, but it's not, whatever it was, it is not what the movie is actually about. I feel like there's a ton to

talk about here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very conflict like I think that if I if I had seen this movie when it came out and or like when I was a teen I would feel probably different about it than just coming in to watch it for the Bechdel cast but yeah I'm excited to talk about it what about you Caitlin had you seen this before I had um I saw it I think when I was a freshman in college um and that would have been a few years after it came out that would have been in like 04 05 I was about the same age as the characters and I I was also going to be like I'm sure if I had seen this when it came out I would feel differently about it but I kind of did see it at that age and i um do not i can't say that i like this movie and i have reasons i also am not a fan of this

movie uh it's i don't know i mean but i i know it's value and i oh so okay so it's a huge it's a big cult classic yes it is very meaningful and very valuable to a lot of people such as yourself julie i want to acknowledge that but again yeah i think because like jamie and i we're watching it mostly through the lens of our podcast it it's it there's some issues oh i'm oh certainly there's some issues even not yeah there's issues exclusive of the podcast absolutely true yeah i think the thing that bumped me the most on this watch and like analysis of it was how much this movie attempts to deal with race for an exclusively white cast and like in front of the camera and behind like it's just it just is the whitest

movie on earth no there's no there's no race in this world there's no race in this world but it also tries to address race through like a lot of different plot points and side it shouldn't yeah i guess what i'm saying is it's it is very bizarre i think that yeah the most surprising thing to me about the story like i was kind of i was like okay i'm sure that it will be dated in a number of ways uh in in the way it treats its characters but i was surprised that this movie even attempted to address race. And I felt you mean in terms of the of the poster of the old poster. Yeah. Yeah.

But Seymour has. I think that's more about the lens of like a white person dealing with what art is, because after this, he made art school confidential, which is about being an artist in art school, obviously. Yeah. And that sort of debate that you have internally these four walls and how different that is from the world outside but the the race of it i think is just a total prop for the white characters to have a point of departure it could

have been almost anything right which means like it shouldn't have been race yeah it's like so they should have just i feel like they just should have chosen something something else that they were qualified to tackle yeah they could have they could have chosen anything else that's from olden times that's not okay absolutely and we'll talk more about that in a little bit but um should I just dive into the story and we'll we'll go from there yeah let's do it all right so we meet Enid and, played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson, respectively. They are graduating from high school. They are a little... They're not like the other girls.

They're a little counterculture. They're not like the other girls. Not like the other girls. They think that everything sucks, which I personally can relate to. So in that way, I get it. It's peak like 17 year old, which is in a way that is like sometimes painful to look at. Sure. Yeah. Enid discovers that she has to go to summer school and retake an art class. We learn just a little bit about their backstories as well. They are not going to go to college.

They plan to just enter the workforce and get an apartment together and move in together. Then they see an ad in the personal section for a guy who is looking for this striking blonde woman who he had met at an airport shuttle. And he thought he had a connection with her. So they call him to more or less prank him. They pretend to be the striking blonde and tell him to go to this diner called Wowsville. Which is great. Love it. Great name.

So Enid and Rebecca wait for him there, and they bring their friend Josh Josh played by Brad Renfro who will find that like Enid maybe has a crush on and so does maybe Rebecca not totally sure not totally clear and then in I don't know there's some context for that too in like the ways that studios were trying to push this script to go. There's versions of this script where he takes on way more significance than he does in the finished, in the version that was released. And then the man from the ad shows up to Wellsville, and you'll never believe who it is. It's Steve Buscemi.

Steve Buscemi. And he sits there, he waits, and they take pity on him and decide to follow him home. He is selling records at a garage sale because he's a record collector and he's a music enthusiast. And they decide to go talk to him. They find out his name is Seymour. Rebecca thinks he's a loser, but Enid is like, I don't know, I think he's kind of cool. So Enid listens to the record that she had bought from him. She really likes it. She goes back to see him and they talk about music. And then she

and Rebecca go to a party at Seymour's. David Cross is there and he tries to hit on Rebecca. And then Seymour is like, Enid, I can't believe you came to this party I'm such a loser I haven't even had a girlfriend in four years and she's like well I'll help you find a girlfriend and then meanwhile we see Enid in her art class we see her teacher criticizing her art projects that she brings in hates cartoons yes you draw a cartoon this is like like Daniel Clow's grinding a very personal ax, and I think a very obvious way where he's like, you know how art teachers think cartoons are fucking stupid? Well, guess what?

They're not. Like that's kind of his whole ax to grind in the beginning of this storyline. If you draw a cartoon, you suck. So I guess he had a teacher that felt that way at some point and he's, uh, he's not over it. Right. Yeah.

Because the, the teacher in this movie is often telling Enid that her projects are not thoughtful or political enough. Um, meanwhile, Rebecca has gotten a job at a coffee shop. We will see Rebecca kind of becoming adhering more and more to like societal conventions and expectations and that she

starts dressing a little bit more kind of conventionally and she gets a job and she wants to have her own home and things like that while Enid is still sort of trying to live the counterculture life. And then Enid and Seymour go to a bar to watch music and she tries to set him up with this random woman there. It doesn't work out. And then they go back to Seymour's house and she finds this old poster from a chicken fast food restaurant where he works as an assistant manager at their corporate headquarters. And this poster shows a very racist name and image that the restaurant used to use. So she takes it with her, this poster, and brings it into her art class as a found art project and she says that with this piece she's making a statement about racism and how it's whitewashed in our culture

and everyone in the class is like wow that's pretty fucked up but the teacher is like wow what a remarkable achievement then we see um enid celebrating seymour's birthday with him and while this is happening, he receives a call from the real striking blonde woman who he had placed the ad about. Dana. Dana, yeah. Enid convinces him to call her back,

and he meets her. And they turned out to not have anything in common, but they start seeing each other anyway, to Enid's dismay. Now, meanwhile, her art piece of the racist poster is put on display at a student art show. But people are demanding its removal. Enid isn't even there to defend herself because she goes over to Seymour's and she's like, hey, let's hang out. And he's like, I don't think it's a good idea that we hang out anymore.

It's like, OK, this is just occurring to him now. Yes. And he's like, I don't think it's a good idea that we hang out anymore. It's like, okay, this is just occurring to him now. Yes. And it's like, he's like, wait, hold on. I'm Steve Buscemi and my best friend is 17. The optics of this are not so good. Yes. Another huge issue I take with this film.

It's very bizarre. Yeah. And then she's like, okay, fine. I won't bother you anymore. And then Rebecca is like, hey, you clearly don't want to live with me anymore so fuck you and it also lives loses out on her scholarship opportunity for this art academy um so this is what we would call the low point of the film and she's sad so she goes over to seymour's again and she's like how come you never asked me out when i was trying to find you a girlfriend what if i just moveour's again and she's like how come you never asked me out when i was

trying to find you a girlfriend what if i just move in with you and he's like shrug and then they have sex which i truly did not think was gonna happen was gonna happen in the movie i didn't think it was gonna happen and then and then there it is and it happens and i was just like oh okay and then steve buscemi pivots so many times he's like we shouldn't hang out anymore because you're 17 he's like i thought about it and we should actually get married because you're 17 i'm like okay okay yeah and then so enid seems to regret this decision to have sex with him immediately and starts blowing him off and then decides to move in with Rebecca again. Meanwhile, Seymour finds out from Rebecca about the prank that they played on him at the beginning of the movie. And he thinks that she is in love with Josh, their friend who shows up every 45 minutes.

Right. So Seymour goes to confront him ends up in the hospital enid comes to visit seymour in the hospital and she apologizes and she's like actually you're my hero you're the coolest person i know but then enid leaves it seems like although she and rebecca have made up their kind of lives are headed on different paths we see seymour in therapy he's talking about his breakup with enid and then enid gets on a bus that is out of service and it might be a metaphor for her dying it's a matter it's a metaphor the whole metaphor bus guy that you're like oh right this was a book first yes metaphor. Metaphor boss equals it was a book.

So that's the story. 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 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one Strange and Violent Summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this?

We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that stood out to me about this movie was what you were saying earlier, Julie, was that I thought that this movie was going to be way more about Enid and Rebecca

but Scarlett Johansson is actually not in this movie that much no yeah Rebecca's not a very fleshed out character in the movie yeah I I guess I it's interesting because I I wish that and I'm assuming in the books that there was more focus on Rebecca because this movie I mean it's not really taking this side of either one of them on their approach to life and I kind of appreciate that it's like okay they are taking different paths and that is neither a good nor a bad thing but but it is it is so like just I don't know there's so much about this movie that you're just like oh 17 year olds are so frustrating where like enid is constantly mad at rebecca of like how dare you have a job for to support and i'm like you fucking brat i just got so frustrated with enid every step of

this movie because she's i i she is very isolated by her own mentality and by her own approach to life. But then it's like there's so much privilege tied up in the ways that she's frustrating. She's mad that her friend has to have a job to survive, which is like, yeah, that's frustrating for everybody, but more so the people doing it than their friends and like I don't know yeah I we don't I guess I don't really know enough about Rebecca to really be attached to her but of the two I was team Rebecca team Rebecca yeah team grow up and get a life sure again like I see the value in this movie in that there weren't that many thoughtful or subversive portrayals of teen girls in media at this time. And I think that's why a lot of people latched on to it so much. And again, I appreciate what it's doing. In many ways, I relate to Enid and Rebecca.

Like I was similar to them in some ways when I was a teenager. There are other ways in which I can't and don't relate to them, but isn't that the way with characters? For me, it's just like, as subversive as it is, the things that it tries to subvert,

in many cases, it mishandles. It's hard because I was thinking a little bit about when we we and they're they're extremely different movies but i guess as an example of when we talked about carrie a couple of years ago where that is like the experience of a teen girl in a very different genre but it's told through the lens of so many different people who did not and could not possibly share the experience of a teen girl that it all kind of like it feels like there are things that are true and relatable and like very emotionally poignant about it but then it kind of gets lost

because it's like okay you know a man originally wrote this book and then a different man they're both you know I'm sure emotionally sensitive and wonderful people but there's some stuff that just feels a little off and rings a little hollow and I think that part of it can be attributed to that um where it's like two wait wait Brian De Palma is not a sensitive person no I just I just want to get that in there. But as far as like Terry and Daniel go, they seem to be like a well-intentioned writing team that want to portray these experiences honestly, but I just kind of wish that they had like spoken to

and credited more women in that process and the whole work probably would have been elevated if that were the case. The same thing goes for the, I think, kind of big misses they make with the comments they try to make on race it's like you know it's just they are not qualified to be making these statements and I think that where it does succeed is where they're trying to communicate how clueless both Enid and Seymour are about racism and how they are saying a lot of things,

but clearly not understanding them to the point where Enid is literally trying to like advance herself off of the work of other people and off of the idea of racism without really doing any critical thinking or introspection about it. And reads pretty clearly but then what like you have to have a black person involved in the production and you have to have a black character otherwise you're just saying like i don't understand racism here it is here like i don't know it just doesn't it just felt very strange to me i agree i think too that so the comic book was written by Daniel Klaus. He co-wrote the screenplay with Terry Zweigoff, who directed the film. So those are our people who are telling this story. I feel like this is another case of like, men observing women in the world and thinking, I get it. I see how women be. So I'll tell their story. And to me, we see a lot of this, like, you know, these girls are not like the other girls, which I want to clarify something about that. Because every time I teach my screenwriting class,

my students are always like, I just want to make sure my girl isn't like one of the girls who's not like the other girls. And I'm like, because I think it can maybe be easily misinterpreted. What we take issue with is the idea that a woman will behave a certain way because she does not want to be perceived as being like other women because other women equals bad. Because like femininity or womanhood or anything like that is a negative thing. Right. And they're trying to disassociate themselves with that. That is what we mean by this when we comment on this trope.

Right. And this is kind of what the characters are doing, especially in how they view other female characters in this movie. Because even though Enid and Rebecca a what feels like a strong relationship at first although it deteriorates over the course of the movie right there are various other characters like a classmate of theirs named malora who they who just seems to want to hang out with them and they're like she's so awful enid hates her like i guess former stepmom or like an ex-girlfriend of her dad's who he starts dating again. We're not really sure why she hates her.

I think the way that the art teacher and the star art student is also kind of telling, too, where it's like the star art teacher is very. I mean, again, I'm just like I think that it genuinely is Daniel Klaus grinding some old acts that he has from high school. But but it is it's like this woman who only wants to see art about like abortion and vagina. And the student who gets rewarded is a like I think she's like made out to be this overly serious artist who only makes things about abortion and vagina. And that is rewarded. And so it's like, yeah, the way that other women are characterized it is a little like you know enid and rebecca are the outliers what i do appreciate is that enid and rebecca are clearly flawed and it's made clear to the audience that their way of life is not sustainable or like quote unquote right, but it is given the most focus. Right. I think like kind of piggybacking off of that,

the way that feminism is represented in the movie is made to seem like foolish and like that feminists are ridiculous because like the art that this student is making that the teacher is really praising is like feminist art that's pro-choice and that's you know about there let me find the quote here it's something about a shocking image of repressed femininity right and then there's also this moment where Rebecca they're looking for apartments in

like the in the newspaper and she's like oh here's one oh wait a minute you'd have to live with a feminist and her two cats um so it's again it's like i it's a weird because it's like i understand what they're critiquing and it is kind of funny in moments where it's like i feel like the art teacher character and the star art student are critiquing like the overly serious art world of like here's a cup and it symbolizes this serious issue and i get that that is silly and like it is funny to poke fun at that mentality but it does seem to but the the again it's it's similar to the fact that they choose race as a topic to make this critique they're not qualified to make it doesn't quite read very well for like two straight male artists in collaboration to be like we're gonna poke fun at

feminist art specifically like why why is that the art they specifically choose to pick on there's so much overly serious art that you could you know choose and tell a more effective joke i don't know yeah for sure um well julie curious because we so far we've only heavily criticized the movie what was it that drew you to this movie into this story and these characters like why i was exactly like enid in high school i've never seen a character that's more represented exactly who I was at that age and at that point in my life. And I find it to be such a true representation of what it's like when the person that you fit in with because you're on the outskirts of everything is no longer someone that you can connect to and how completely rootless that is. And during those

transitional moments, like the summer between high school and college being lost and then everyone else seemingly, you know, just falling into place and not feeling like you have anywhere to go. And your sexuality is like overwhelming. You know, she talks about like being so horny and hating everyone at the same time, which I think is such a like a perfect encapsulation of that particular age where you're like, fuck you get away from me, but also fuck me because I'm desperate to connect. That she that she looks forward in other places such as like connecting with Seymour and, you know, trying to trying to, you know, trying to do things with her with her art and her work and her sketchbook. But at the end, she doesn't fit in anywhere. She doesn't fit into the art world. The Seymour thing she realizes was like misguided and she feels gross about. She can't go home anymore because

Maxine is back and she has a, you know, kind of a strange relationship with her sort of semi cuckolded father to begin with. And we don't know what her history was with Maxine, but it was ugly. We don't know where her real mom is. And then she just stopped connecting to Rebecca. And I've been in friendships like that where you have this best girlfriend and it's you against the world.

And then one day things are just different. And she wants to like pick tumblers at Crate and Barrel. And you're like, I am not on board. We used to like, we used to sit at diners and Barrel and you're like I am not on board we used to like we used to sit at diners and make fun of everything together and there's such these like there's these like beautiful little hat tips to you know the the times that they've spent they spent so much time together in high school and all of the things that they've been through and one of them is when Enid is doing that like little tag sale in her front yard. And Rebecca's like, Oh,

I remember this. This is from your little old lady phase. Yeah. Right. And of course Enid like had a phase where she was dressing like a little old lady. And of course Rebecca was there for it. Rebecca's definitely always been like the sort of beta friend.

Enid is definitely the more colorful of the two. It's definitely Enid's story that Rebecca sort of always been like riding sidecar on at a certain point, like they stopped connecting or Rebecca realizes that she wants to drive the car and Enid suddenly fits nowhere. And she, she fulfills her fantasy of getting on a bus out of town and disappearing because she doesn't know where else to go or what else to do.

Yeah. And I think those are effective themes to explore in terms of like identity disappearing because um she doesn't know where else to go or what else to do yeah and i think those are effective themes to explore in terms of like identity and where do i belong and who am i and who do i want to be now that i'm freshly an adult and like watching watching them fuck it up and like you know not ready to be an adult because she can't get rid of she can't get rid of that toy and the and the little tag sale she tag sale. She's not ready to move on, but she doesn't want to go back either. Yeah. Right.

And I think, I mean, well, here's where the quiz comes in because I imagine that this is, and you hinted at this, but I imagine this is what more the comic books are like a focus on the friendship between Enid and Rebecca. Yes.

To me, a more interesting movie would have been an exploration of that kind of deteriorating friendship. And, you know, as you grow up, you grow apart and you discover your interests and your priorities. And if they don't align with the person you thought was your best friend,

like, how do you reconcile that? It's so sad. And there's like the last panel. And I mean, well, first of all, you're going to love the book because the book's just like all that and her just sort of seeing Rebecca having moved on and saying like you've become such a beautiful young woman and it is heartbreaking like to watch a friendship dissolve like that um it's just so specific that is not

what the movie is and I do think that a lot of that has to do with casting I think Scarlett Johansson is incredibly talented. I don't think that she really breathed that much life into this particular character. And so much of that is how it's written and directed, obviously, but you get Steve Buscemi attached. You're going to want to hang out with Steve Buscemi.

And also the chemistry between the two of them and that relationship being as weird as it was. And also I'm coming from a background where I've had relationships like that, where I was very precocious and I was hanging out with older men that were really interesting to me even though they were nerds and weird and didn't fit in and they were like why are you interested in me you're so young and I was like I don't really know I just I'm looking for a friend at this point in my life because I'm I'm just trying to figure out where I belong

because I don't feel like I belong anywhere and part of it is tied up in sexuality but another part of it is just because you're reconciling something that's that's gone even though you need it so badly and it's like the breakup of your best friend and taking these leaps that you're just not ready to take um so the movie like I said it's completely different um I love both of them but everything I think I think a lot of what you're describing can be like met with the comic book good to know I it makes me want to check out the comic because I I do have like more interest in their friendship than I really do I mean even though it's like I I totally like understand the dynamic that like exists between Enid and Seymour and it's like

if you haven't had a friendship like that yourself, you know, someone who has, and it's very complicated and bizarre and worth exploring, but it's just the way it takes over this story. And when I was doing some research on the production, I guess that the way that the writing was split up was that Daniel Klaus focused on writing the friendship portions and then Terry Zweigoff focused on Enid and Seymour because Seymour was kind of an avatar for him where like every record that Seymour has is Terry Zweigoff's record and like he designed Seymour's space because it was kind of a projection of himself yeah no Terry Zweigoff is not putting himself out there

being like, I can tell other people's stories. He literally holds up a copy of Terry Zweigoff's band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders, and he's like, is that one any good? And he's like, no, it's a hilarious joke. But it's very clear who he is and what he's connected to. But I don't know anything about splitting up the script. That's new to me.

Yeah, so the production, as I was able to find, was, I mean, obviously, they collaborated on the final product, and it wasn't like, this scene was written by Daniel, this scene was written by Terry. But as far as developing the story, those were kind of where their focuses lied,

where, I mean, it sounds like Daniel Klaus was kind of continuing to develop the book portion, and then Terry Zweigoff was expanding on a subplot that kind of ends up taking up the bulk of the movie. And I do, I mean, I think their friendship is really complicated. what I,

some things that like resonated with me that I like are, are in there. And I kind of wish were explored a little more where like they Rebecca and Enid have this really really close friendship but you still see those like little resentments that pop up in a friendship that close where there are certain moments where like Rebecca is being flirted with by someone and Enid gets kind of annoyed and like is like fuck this like I'm I'm I'm not here for this and like there there's some tension that exists between them with brad renfro's character like there's little

moments where it felt very authentic to like a teen friendship where you're like i love you and you're my entire life but like fuck this and i also hate you right now right for like this moment i'm so pit like that stuff is great and i feel like there's there's kind of a tendency sometimes to um flatten out friendships like that and be like girl friendships are perfect they have no flaws they're blah blah blah which is obviously not true and it was cool to see that represented and and to see the like way you grow apart from people and this like really painful confusing way shown yeah i guess i just like i i i guess i just need to read the book because that was what

i was more interested in yeah because instead the movie focuses on the the movie quickly shifts focus to the relationship between edith and seymour which um let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to discuss it. 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.

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These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.

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This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRad listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back uh should we just jump into the steve buscemi stuff yes the buscemi section of of the podcast this yes someone pointed this out to us on I think it was twitter that um so

Julie we use this metric that I made up called the Buscemi test which is basically just uh if you sub in a like traditionally hunky guy with Steve Buscemi is the interaction normal or is it way creepier for example in the notebook yes when ryan gosling is heavily pursuing rachel mcadams and basically threatening to kill himself on a ferris wheel unless she goes out with him sub in steve buscemi for ryan gosling and if and if suddenly it's creepy sure and someone pointed out to us they're're like, I think that Ghost World fails this very Steve Buscemi related test. And I'm inclined to agree. This movie.

What do you mean? How does it fail that? Well, I think that Steve Buscemi in this movie is playing a kind of creepy character at times and that it reads that way. I don't know. I think that, yeah. I mean, for that way i don't know i think that yeah i mean for me i don't know about everybody else i take a lot of issue with this relationship between enid and um steve buscemi yeah absolutely i mean look the last scene is the most humiliating

retribution that he's like his mother's picking him up from therapy and like she's asking him what he wants for dinner and rolling his eyes and they shut the door that's humiliating that character gets come up and said i frankly like i i love seymour and i love busami's seymour i i'm not saying that like it's okay to like you know be him and and you know have had sex with enid but i also like I don't think he's a I don't think he's like a villain by any stretch I don't but I also don't think that the but the movie doesn't dodge him being creepy I think it's like very very open about that yeah I guess I I get kind I get kind of lost in how the movie where the movie is trying to have you land on that

because there are moments where it's obviously like Enid fucks with a lot of people and manipulates a lot of people and makes a ton of mistakes and Seymour is very affected by these manipulative choices she's making but I did feel like the the fault fell pretty heavily on her of like how dare you be so like manipulative towards this sad man as as if like steve buscemi is not you know whatever 45 years old in this and can't wait so you think the movie's like cutting him a break for what he's doing i think a little bit it feels that to me as well yeah i mean i think he's definitely like a sympathetic character like i think that i think that like as an audience member you're definitely like falling in love with Seymour but

that's that in my opinion that's because I think this is Enid's story and she's the protagonist and she's the person that you're meant to align with so when she's falling in love with Seymour you're kind of falling in love with Seymour and then you fuck him and the next day you're like what the fuck did I do and then you realize like oh my god he is so much older and he doesn't have like the same frame of reference to me that like sex could be something that's like something that is meaningful and he takes it the wrong way and he gets obsessed which happened and that just was like what did I I fucked up um from her point of view just knowing that like he's a mess and she's like I should have known that the whole time but I don't think she's like I don't think it's saying that she's doing anything wrong and that he's a mess. And she's like, I should have known that the whole time. But I don't think she's like, I don't think it's saying that she's doing anything wrong

and that he's like an innocent, vulnerable person necessarily. I guess for me, it's not made clear enough one way or the other. My whole thing is the age gap here. She is presumably 18 because she's just graduated. Although some people are still 17 when they graduate high school. I like turned 18 on the day that I graduated. So like either way she's barely

out of high school. Her emotional brain is still developing. And then she's befriending this man who is... But that's all her decision. She's the leader of that. That's her choice. Yes. But I think that if if you're a 40 something year old man and an 18 year old young woman is trying to befriend you and initiates

sex with you you got to run the other way well she she finally she finally does at the very end she does but mostly they're just friends and it's like a little even so like i don't know i think i feel like it is kind of on and I guess that part of where I really started to like Seymour started to lose me was when you see his friends as well and you're like oh this is just a creepy group like this is yeah but he's better than those guys he's better than those guys when he when that when that dude yes because when that that scene with his neighbor who like farted and he was like thanks for the talk uh yeah no i think you're setting i think you're setting him up to see like he's from this world and there's a lot

of people around him that fucking suck but like i think with the right like people around him he could be as you say like different from the others i don't know i think when you're a 40 year old man and even though like she's arguably cooler than him and like it's not absolutely cooler right and it's not as though he has like fame or clout that he's exploiting to sleep with her but to me like with an age gap like that and it's not even the concept of an age gap that i take issue with like if he were 50 and she were 27, I would notice, but I wouldn't think much of it. It's the fact that she is a teenager and her emotional maturity still needs at least a few years of development. Like even just looking at the way she meets Seymour, she plays this really

childish and immature prank on him like that's how they meet and then like yeah just overall with their current ages and that situation there's an imbalance in that dynamic there's a certain power that comes with I couldn't agree more I think that I think the film is totally acknowledges that I yeah I I mean mean, the fact that they don't end up together is better than... Not only they don't end up together, he's punished. He's punished.

She gets on a death bus maybe. Who knows what... No, no, no. She's not dead. She's not dead. She just leaves town. Yeah, yeah. She's leaving town.

She's disappearing. Yeah, I just... I really... I guess I just... I feel as though the movie doesn't challenge this relationship enough. I think that. Well, and I think that a reason that that may be is because the character that, like, we're talking about is a stand-in for the person making the movie.

So that may be one of the reasons that it doesn't come down. I think that Enid is the protagonist. I think that the creators aligned with Enid, for sure. I mean, Enid's definitely the protagonist. Yeah. Even so, it's, I don't know. I still feel like, I mean, even though Enid is the protagonist, I just, the amount of sympathy that the movie dishes out for Seymour

was like, I don't know. So you don't like Seymour at all? I do. The thing is, like, I don't dislike Seymour. I appreciate the way he's painted. I appreciate that it's made clear that he is an insecure guy. Yeah. He feels like he's at a dead end in life. He doesn't have a lot of people. He's not like trying to fuck her like he like that. I think he's just like, OK, you're like my friend now. But what the hell would she like? It doesn't even occur to him. Like, what would you even want with me? I guess that just wasn't my read of it. I believe that they are friends and they have a connection that is not explicitly sexual. But I do feel like, Caitlin, like you were saying, that it's like him as someone who's, you know, whatever, two and a half times her age. It's on him to make a clear boundary.

To not be friends with her. Yeah, to not engage it. So he shouldn't have been friends with her? Really? Yes, I think so. Yeah. All right. He's been working at Cook's Chicken for longer than she's been alive.

Yeah, but they have something in common, and they're both incredibly lonely. I don't know. I've had friendships with people that were much older than me at that age, and I didn't feel like they were sexually predatory. I felt like I was so desperate for connection that I was, and this was before the internet, I was looking for people that like I could talk to about anything because I just hated everyone so much and the people around me just couldn't connect to. And I wanted to find some version of someone that maybe I could one day be I mean I don't have an issue with them being friends per se like I I think that but where the story lands like that's why I was so frustrated when he does say okay let's have sex let's do

this because yeah but he never really like he's he resists the whole time like he's like everything she does that sexual embarrasses him like putting on on the mask and that like X rated like video shop and like, but then he still has sex with her and says he'll drop everything to, you know, marry her. So it's like, well, that's because he loses his mind.

He loses his mind. So she comes over and she's like, have sex with me. And then the next morning he like loses his mind. Cause I also get the sense that Seymour hasn't had sex for like 30 years well i just i yeah i guess that if it was explicitly like a friendship between an older person and a younger person that you there wasn't a trace of sex to be found i mean i'm not saying that older people can't be friends with younger people sure like i've had older friends when i was a teenager too. Like that's all good.

Right. But, but the fact that, you know, for a lot of the movie, I was like, what is this friendship? And I was trying to figure out what is this friendship.

And then where it goes, I feel like speaks to the fact that there was something vaguely sexual about it the whole time, because that's how it pays off. And then all of a sudden he's gonna drop everything to stay yeah he loses his mind he but he loses his mind so he pays the price for it for sure i i do i yeah but jamie i think you're like there's always some like sexual undercurrent with just with the fact that she's like i'm gonna help you find a girlfriend right

yeah bring me to this sex shop no one is like i've wanted to go forever and no one's been able to take me which does that imply that she's not old enough to go into a sex shop like i don't know when you were a teenager didn't you want to go into those sex shops and be like oh my god i can't believe this dildo and like laugh about it with your friend yeah well that's kind of why again i was like oh i wish that there was more enid and rebecca because rebecca is so frustrated when enid like rebecca's like wait you went without me and enid's like yeah well they used to try to do that shit together yeah now they're not connecting yeah that's something that i totally did with my friends and like but totally but it's like

you know it's a it's on it's again it's like seymour is the adult in this situation and he doesn't have to be the guy that's like, oh, no, this is so awkward for me. But I guess I'll go in. It's like he has to be the one to draw the boundary, I guess. And he doesn't have the ability to do it. I understand. I've seen like and this is not an excuse to be like, I've seen so much worse. But like the power, the power balance between the two of them is way more fluid than it is in something like manhattan yeah and she's definitely like the higher status partner the whole time and i do and i and i don't want to sound like shitty but like she i think she definitely comes

over and like kisses him like i'm not gonna say like seduces him as much as she decides when she goes over there i'm going to kiss him I'm going to like I want to make out with Seymour that's to me there's no question that she shows up and that's where she is at and I don't think he would have ever initiated that with her I really don't sure she does um initiate basically every aspect of their yeah the relationship on her they're on her terms absolutely um even so just the whole the the imbalance even though it's not necessarily that exploitative arguably on his and there's still a just you know the experience and the wisdom and the perceptions you gain along

the way of being older and he has that and she doesn't and there's no substitute she can't read a book or you know listen to a record and then suddenly be wiser like she had like yeah he has if they hadn't fucked would you be fine with it i would be better with it um but the fact that they end up having sex is like just enid not knowing that it's a bad idea to pursue this man as a potential romantic partner that's like 20 plus years older than her when she is again just freshly graduated from high school like that is proof that she doesn't have the wisdom and experience and emotional maturity that she would need to be his equal and why doesn't seymour think it's a bad idea to be hanging out with a teenager well lonely and wants to feel cool and all this stuff well and she's

also very persistent like it's very clear that she won't leave him alone but i don't know when anytime she was like take me to the sex shop girlfriend let's get you a girlfriend let's get you and he should have been like this is inappropriate we need to draw a boundary here and the fact that it just goes on seymour should have also drawn that boundary like before he moved in with his mom again like i mean i did i did like that they show at the end that he like realizes that you know he had crossed the line he had reached this low point and at least responds to that by being like i have to get help i need to like make changes in my life like that yeah that, that never happens in movies. Seeing a man in therapy in a movie is incredible. Like you don't see it a lot. Yeah, but that stuff with the mom

and the therapist is really mean. Like I think it's really cruel. I don't know. I mean, she's just there to like pick them up from this therapy appointment and maybe she has some boundary issues but like i didn't that none of that struck me as like being that cruel i guess rebecca is the only person in the movie that doesn't have boundary issues she's she's very clear with her boundaries even with enid where she's just like are we doing this or are we not and like stop being a flake and if you're gonna keep being a flake i can't be in this friendship anymore right right yeah she's a grown-up in that way she's yeah she's i mean i guess we don't really know that much about her life and we don't really know like what the reasons may be for why she is growing up and maturing very differently than her friend um no we don't but she's she's the

only person in the movie with boundaries. I don't know. Yeah, that friendship felt very... I mean, it's definitely strange, and none of us are calling that into question. I just feel like Steve Buscemi's character is lent, even though he doesn't have a happy ending, per se, I feel like his, I don't know, the amount of sympathy that the movie extended to him I thought was

strange everyone has an unhappy ending except maybe Rebecca we don't really know yeah she goes and buy she goes to Ikea she buys her plastic cups she she's working at Starbucks which brings me to you know just a few things that we have to call out in terms of language that gets used comments that get made that are super reductive i mean the the r word gets said several times throughout the movie which is very 2001 very 2001 you've got your uh rebecca saying that a man in the wheelchair doesn't even need that wheelchair that he's totally just lazy you know like making accusations like that there's some weird there's like a yeah they're not woke they're not they're definitely not they're not woke teens no so just you know very of the time i mean who was a woke

teen in 2001 yeah uh does anyone have any other final thoughts um i want you guys to ask me more questions because i think i have such a different like notion of this but i don't know where to jump in um you know what i mean i don't well what are your thoughts on it like what are your feelings i love it i love it i think it's an amazing movie Like I relate to it so powerfully as a, as a human woman. Like, I think that like Enid is like one of the best characters of all time. I've like, there've been so few times when I've seen myself on screen, the way that I see myself with Enid. And I remember like, even my mom, when that came out like, oh, my God, like that was what you were coming from. Like there was just something. So I just I think that Enid is such a three dimensional character.

I think her like I totally get her all the stuff that you're saying about them not being woke. Like that's her trying to figure out what funny is and like trying to be shocking and like and then and then like, you you know kind of pressing the boundaries of it and then she meets with that like pat healy character who's like in the subculture but he's a piece of shit because he's got all those anti-semitic jokes and she's like oh wait no fuck that guy that guy sucks i'm not that guy and she's kind of like dipping her toe into different subcultures and am i that am i that they live in the suburbs they live in hell you know they like they they decide like one day to like follow the satanist couple and like that's a day um or or just like you know that they're watching they're goofing on that stand-up comedian and they're like uh instead of like that's a loser they're

like we should marry him like yeah they're like he sucks i want to fuck him that that shit there's so much specificity to that that i've never seen before and um it's just like I just think it speaks so uh it's like as clear as a bell to like mentally where you are when you are stuck and you are trapped and your bet you and your best friend are going through shit and you don't know what to do I've just I've just never seen a character like that that I've connected with on that level. Especially because so many teen movies of that era, especially like the late 90s, but even into the early and mid 2000s,

they were these stories that are usually about like a teen girl having some kind of like sex bet against her or a prom, like, oh, I bet you can't turn this girl into a prom queen or you know some other horribly manipulative thing that often would strip any agency away from the female character the teen girls so the fact that this story does give these characters a lot of agency does explore their interior lives more than a lot of agency, does explore their interior lives more than a lot of other teen movies were doing.

And this movie, these characters subvert some of that stuff. Yeah, I like that they're given the space and agency to make mistakes, which they do constantly, which is what teenagers do constantly. I like that one of them has to get a job. You never see that in a teen movie where usually it's just like yeah they're it's it's a lot easier to put a teen movie in an affluent

neighborhood so that the plot can just happen and no one has to go do something to survive like there are aspects of this movie that i'm like you know it's way more than you're getting from teen movies at this time specifically and it's i think a bigger it's bigger than a teen movie the blues hammer scene is super funny that i liked that yeah sure i just mean like teen movies and it revolves around teenagers and i was just gonna say also that like i think it it subverts the bechdel stuff because when seymour is like oh she's in love with josh it's like enid's head could not be further away from josh like even the even the fact that like rebecca may or may not be like dating him it doesn't matter

like enid's not thinking about josh no enid's thinking about like what the fuck is she gonna do who the fuck is she she doesn't have her art scholarship she like doesn't know you know where her place in the world is she has one friend that it's seymour she's like she talks about being horny as hell and like not knowing where to put it and she wants to make this like mistake and then she doesn't know what else to do but the in other words the idea that like those two were you know and you mentioned before about the two of them talking about josh enid's not jealous because rebecca's hanging out with josh enid's jealous of josh right like she wants to hanging out with Josh Enid's jealous of Josh right like she wants to hang out with Rebecca Seymour is obviously more important and I love that line when Rebecca's

just like I'm so sick of Seymour yeah because he is getting in the way and she is seeing her friend disappear but also like I feel like Enid's always been like that and Rebecca's changed but that's because the movie aligns you with Enid to see from Enid's point of view that's like oh you've changed you both changed but the situation has changed and to have to figure out what to do with that when the world is like hell and you're trying to choose between like oh like there's this like weird old guy and I do there's so many things in that where they're just like so beautifully stated where he's like do you like him is he a nerd it's like well he is sort of like the exact opposite of everything I hate you know just is like I do hate sports and then him in traffic uh have some more

kids why don't you yeah I don't know like I've just I've never I've never really like seen myself quite so vividly on screen as I have in this uh especially like from that I guess point of my life yeah I also like the kind of there's almost this idea of like the inevitability of selling out is something at least for some of the characters where like yeah you know we have yeah growing up right I mean growing up means to sell out because you have to have a job to support yourself. Yeah. But like there's that one character who she's, I think, buying VHS tapes from or something. And he's really awful to her. And then he says something like, oh, you want to like take down society? Go to business school and, you know, work a good job at a corporation and take them down from the inside.

That's what I'm gonna do and like so 2001 too that's like that mentality of just like yeah no no participate in capitalism to the fullest extent and and that's how we're gonna get rid of it oh yeah it's just like so many different shades of nightmare around her like you could be this nightmare person you could be this horror show it's so yeah there i don't i mean i guess i'm so i i like that i'm i guess i kind of appreciate that i'm conflicted about certain aspects of uh of enid and of rebecca because it's like i respect the hell out of enid's like commitment to being like i'm not going to participate in all of this bullshit. And also that the movie pretty clearly illustrates like, well,

then you're just going to be pretty lost if you're, if you're not willing to have a job, if you're not willing to put in an effort. And if you're disillusioned with everything, you're left with very few options of how to live your life. You're fucked. You're broken. You're,

you're alone. And you're also fucked if you do participate, which is what we see through Rebecca of like she's playing the game but she's not totally happy well I don't know if she's fucked as much as she's just kind of grown up in a specific way that Enid hasn't you know that's where she's like you've changed it's it's just that Rebecca can like move forward and Enid can't in that particular way she's a different kind of person they're just different kinds of people sure and they met each other's needs for the time that they were together but it's time to move on

and it's just heartbreaking yeah it's heartbreaking and i just uh again i just wish that the story was more about their characters and their friendship you're gonna love the book yeah i'm so excited for you to read the book i'm serious i'm serious it's one of my favorite i i just love these characters so much i love the book book. I love the movie. And Thor Birch is so great. She's awesome. She's amazing. Yeah.

And she's a teenager playing a teenager, which never happened. And like, there is not a shred of inauthenticity to anything she does in that movie. Even just the way she carries her body, the way she like tries to figure out like, is this my look now? Like green hair. And then someone insults her body the way she like tries to figure out like is this my look now like the green hair and then someone insults her for the green hair so then she dyes it back to

black yeah and those moments too were her whole like her whole thing that she'll tell you is like i don't care about fitting in like fuck this blah blah blah fuck you fuck you fuck you but then she is very insecure and very sensitive because teenage like it's like she's she doesn't know who she is she wants to be accepted somewhere but if there is pushback she's trying to find who she fits with yeah she's absolutely trying to find a soulmate because she lost so much with rebecca and seymour's the closest thing but it can't work can't work can't work doesn't work can't work yeah so i was interested in because this is like such a cult classic of like were there any other uh endings was there a studio interference what was the whole situation there and there was a fair amount so part of what i found out is that

yes why goff was uh focused on developing the seymour and Enid storyline where Klaus focused on the Enid and Rebecca storylines but I also found out a lot I guess part of the reason that Rebecca ends up not being in the final script as much is because Thora Birch was I guess legally an adult when they were shooting it and Scarlett Johansson was only 15

so oh really she's only 15 when this movie is shot so she like whoa couldn't physically be there as much so they had to plan around the fact like i guess her storyline got pared down partially just logistically like kids can only be on set for a certain amount of time a day so that's wild that they would cast an even younger because normally they're casting you know 29 year olds to play 18 year olds that's wild that they cast someone a few years younger than the character's age okay

um and in one version of the ending uh Zweigoff had Seymour die by suicide at the end of the movie but that got written out as well and then the studio this one made me laugh that I was like there has to be a ridiculous studio suggestion and the studio suggestion was that the movie ends in a double wedding where enid marries seymour and rebecca marries josh which i think that was the studio's pitch that was a studio pitch and then they were just like absolutely not which uh good that's ludicrous yeah so that did make me appreciate at least that like i mean this was not an easy movie to make it took a long time to get produced and no one ends happy which is obviously like i mean a really unusual thing to be able to get past a studio anyways it's like

all these people are deeply flawed and kind of sunk in a lot of ways and no one ends up particularly happy which is just you know uncomfortably close to what real life is like um so i appreciate that and the double wedding ending suggestion is very funny to me because what what a typical studio note what uh i know they're like what if they all just got married at the end has a studio ever known what's good for a story or ever known what an audience actually wants? Like, I feel like no. Yeah, I don't know.

I do want to mention that I disagree with you about the Roberta, the art teacher character. I think that like as a comic actress, like that's like mana from heaven. Like Ileana Douglas had so much to do. That character is so funny when she shows that short film mirror father right and then at the end if you watch the credits like her parents are like the producers and like it keeps repeating like her last name it's like special thanks to like produce and it's like so clear like her parents funded it and she's not just like they're not just taking pot shots the tampon and a teacup thing like they make fun of that that guy

like with the who had the like clearly like serial killer that's like oh it's the mutilator and then it's like and there's that scene that ends with like i know that this is phillips or whatever it is sure so like yeah there's definitely like a lot of comedy in like those art school scenes that i think are like beyond you know just like goofing on feminists sure a lot of basically all the art gets made fun of um also just shout out to mirror father mirror which i'm sure is a feminist text um oh for sure yeah i mean that's that those i mean those points about like rich art kid nepotism shit like i love that shit that's like i wish that it was it was more focused on on that and

iliana douglas does an amazing job in that role i don't know there's just certain points of it i'm just like why you know why that aspect um well that brings us to a conversation with friend of the cast, past guest on our Space Jam episode, brilliant writer, all around terrific person, Princess Weeks. Hello. Hi, guys. Hi, guys. Thank you for having me on again. Welcome back. welcome back yes so we wanted to hear your thoughts kind of just general thoughts overall about the movie but to start just kind of focusing specifically on how you felt the movie handled race so terribly um i i just i i found it was so weird because i literally wrote in my notes the coon's chicken thing is weird af because it feels so arbitrarily put in there to just give sort of like a third act conflict to the story and not something that felt very organically put in

especially because the the cast itself is so white yeah that it's like there is no black opinion except for that one girl who's like it's not cool you know at and during the during the art presentation and it just feels so ignorant and there's a larger conversation that could be had about that because i know just recently we had a conversation about like aunt jemima i know like in lovecraft country which is airing right now even in the first episode you see the aunt jemima, I know in Lovecraft Country, which is airing right now, even in the first episode, you see the Aunt Jemima poster in juxtaposition to a bunch of white kids mocking black people. So there is a very big history of racist characteratures in the way that the United States, Canada, UK have done food products.

But Enid is not a character who cares about that kind of stuff. Exactly. She's not even like a Daria type because I know people have compared like this to Daria but Daria would actually care. Daria would at least She would read a book. She has the pretense of care. She's like

or would at least ask Jodi to be like hey Jodi do you want to like tag team on this this just seems like enid trying to get out of doing a project which is weird because she already is an artist so i don't really know why she needs to like literally be like i found this art and put it in an art show it it's so arbitrary it's so weird it's clumsy and it only serves to put Steve Buscemi's character, Seymour, and Enid in a position of conflict for like five minutes. It's really useless. Yeah, because it's like you said, Enid is this white woman who, as far as we know, doesn't seem to care about racial injustice or racism she just finds this image and she's like oh this will actually help me get a leg up in my art class because she basically brings it in because her

teacher has been saying you need to be more provocative and political with your art and she's like oh well that this might do that and she goes like full like Richard Prince and she's like yeah I didn't do anything this is someone else's work but does it make you feel something like it's just and it's so weird because it's like they establish her getting called you know anti-semitic slurs so it's like why wouldn't that connect to it or why wouldn't she have anything else to pull from it yeah yeah because it feels like she brings it in just to like show up that other girl in her class who's been bringing in all that provocative art and it's just like so you're just there's just like no real conversation like no it I guess watching certain scenes back you're just like I

does the movie think she's like it seems like the movie generally comes down on her side of like yeah you know what this was a cool thing to have done and the art because the art teacher has already been set up as like this cartoon and has already been set up as like this is not someone you need to take seriously her approval and like i don't i don't know it's just it it's such a mess in the way that it's presented and princess like you were saying there's, there's no black character in this movie who isn't an unnamed student or an unnamed parent to provide any sort of comment on this that would be relevant. It's just so bizarre. I don't know. Sometimes you watch a movie and you're like, this is 2000s. And like, you know, I was like, oh, first four minutes, we get an R word, we get some casual ableism and how we frame

characters. Yeah, you know, like, just, I feel like I feel like it's just so hard, because like, she's always saying these weird homophobic things, like when she's like, Oh, yeah, we're gonna have to get checked for AIDS after he this girl gets date raped I'm just like what is this for and it feels so of that era you know what this this movie made me think of two movies that I felt like Booksmart and Jennifer's Body because Booksmart I think is very much like the like great great great grand aunt of like it like you know the descendant of this kind of film because it's like two women who are like not popular but still, but I think Booksmart, again, because it's, you know, written by women, I believe, directed by a woman, it's, like, you get more of this intimacy of,

like, a friendship, like, when it comes down to it, Edith spends more time with Steve Buscemi than she does with Rebecca, so I really have no context for why they're friends, besides they're both just mean, and that doesn't, that's not a personality, and it's like with jennifer's body you know which is again written directed by women not a perfect film in terms of like the dialogue oh the dialogue is very dated but you get like a very intimate look at the friendship and tension between these two girls going into these different transitions in their life like there's just there's just not enough time spent with these two young girls transitioning to this new phase of life for me to feel like this is like really about them like i did not realize how much steve buscemi was going to be in this movie because like all you ever see is like scarlett johansson and and enid and i'm just like but

it's not about them and i found that to be really disappointing yeah yeah I was I was curious about your feelings on that friendship too because we have had I mean like a lot of discussion about that as well of uh like I you know when I was younger I definitely had friends with older people but it was I don't know just the the gray areas of that relationship that there's endless discussion but I was curious on what your what your take on that was it's like I have like two brains about it like I have like honestly like my my feminist brain and then I have like my just storytelling brain and like as a storytelling device I think that it's handled in a way that i think is as

respectful as it can be for something so like odd like i think that they do a good job of not having seymour be predatory in like how he treats enid i feel like for the most part throughout their relationship he's very respectful of enid like he and even and even with dana when he's like stopped hanging out with i'm like he's doing a lot of the right things but my feminist brain has a problem with it because then it's putting all of the autonomy of instigating the sexual relationship on enid who is like 18 max right because she just graduated high school, who is like drinking, who is like, I feel like there's like, it's Steve Buscemi's character who should be setting these boundaries. Yes. Like when Dana comes in and is like, why are you friends with someone this young?

It's a legitimate question. You know, like, why are you friends with someone this young? And like, I can't like I've had relationships with much older men and like do i think that all of them were correct no and i think that it's one of those things where if it was like this was something that she did and we had more time to even spend with her being like i regret it i rushed into this thinking that i was being empowered but i really wasn't because i i'm just with him because i need to feel something with somebody, that would be interesting. But instead, because Steve Buscemi gets fired and he's sad about it, it becomes all about her having to go and say,

I think that you're great. You're my hero. And I'm like, girl, what? It becomes all about her uplifting him and making him feel better. Even the things that could be interesting about exploring this relationship between them is really limited because it's all about him yeah it's it is like a very bizarre treatment of the i don't know like we we sort of discussed kind of the mindset you're talking about like being both minds about it like

it doesn't make i i don't know i i don't know i don't know this movie is difficult difficult yeah and i think also like you said like it's not there are so many things in the movie where i'm like if we could just spend more time with enid in this moment it would be so much more meaningful i think like she spends all this time trying to get seymour a date which girl why i don't understand why and then like he does with someone who she doesn't approve of and then instantly she's like jealous but she doesn't do what does it have to default to you having sex with a much older man like why why does it have why can't you just just go on that bus right without having to cross that line or maybe even doesn't just be a kiss why does it have to be sex you know like why does it have to be that thing which like and

have it be her who's like not even discuss it just like oh i rushed into this and he's like so you're gonna move in with me and it and it frames him to be the victim yeah and in so much of that and i'm not saying that he's a villain but i am saying that he is old enough to have better judgment about what this relationship is. You know, like even if they are going to have sex, he really genuinely believes that she's going to move in with him or that he's going to break up with his like appropriate girlfriend to be like, you know what I mean? It's just like you do just I'm like, I do wish that she had someone in her life to talk to who wasn't Steve Buscemi in this moment. And then the Steve Buscemi character. I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of even like the details around Steve Buscemi's character where, you know, Seymour is like, you know, I don't think an aggressively bad person but he he gets away with a lot including kind of ending up with this victim narrative when he is friends with a teenage girl and needs to be the adult in this situation and then in the same way when he is like i don't know just the way that he is like he has this

racist art at his house he loves black music and and is like hanging out with all his old guy white friends and there's there's no self-awareness around that there's no real accountability applied to him in terms of like well if you know you're working for such a racist company why you know why and and that that was another thing that it seems like the movie might try to like attempt to address, probably not well, but attempt. But then it's just kind of dropped of like, well, he just has this. He just has this. And it's just the thing he has. Right.

And it's the same thing with like when Enid brings the art in and she's trying to justify why she thinks it's this like profound piece of art and she really stumbles through her answer and gives what's essentially a non-answer but her art teacher white art teacher is like this is remarkable and i'm like okay is the intent of this movie to show how cavalier white people tend to be about racism but i'm like if that is the intention it's again it's so poorly handled because we're only seeing this through white characters perspectives like the couple black characters you see who are like protesting at the little gallery show or like the the character who is credited as black student in the art classroom is just like, Hey,

that it's not right. And that's the only perspective you get on it from any black people. And it's just like, so much of this stuff that we're talking about apparently is not what the graphic novel includes. Right? No, there's not a lot of Steve Buscemi.

Yeah. He's not in it a lot. It is much more about Enid and Rebeccabecca's friendship so things that make you go home to quote lindsey is like why is it when you made this movie about these two teenage girls going through this you know transitional space did it all of a sudden have to have like a male character have such a giant role in this film like that's yeah that's us to me like and after reading that i was like even more disappointed because you can tell at the beginning that they're supposed to be these elements of like how close they are together like from what i read there's definitely more discussion about them being perceived as queer

together and i'm like oh yeah that's definitely there they don't explore it at all rebecca's barely there yeah she's barely there and there's supposed to be this whole issue of like rebecca being the attractive one that everyone wants and it's just like they don't really do anything with it it's supposed to be this whole thing with Josh. They don't do anything with that. So it just feels like a lot of missteps in attempts to make it more, I don't know, cynical, male focused. Like, it feels like, it feels like they're like, we need a guy to sell this movie. And they're like, let's get Steve Buscemi. Right.

And it's like, and it's like, I can tell that this movie, because it is very beloved, and I can see that because I think that any time that a movie comes out with two teenage girls where they're just very mad, it's because usually it's the mean girls or the cluelesses, and it's like, oh yeah, finally a movie for the other kinds of girls but i hate that dichotomy anyway yeah is is there anything else you wanted to uh to touch on no i just i remember like when they sleep together i like wrote on my ipad i was like underline underline underline underline underline underline i was so like gobsmacked i really wish i enjoyed it more because i think that the performances are really good like i actually like scarlett johansson in a movie wow

surprise but she was really i thought she was goodness i actually liked her character more i thought steve buscemi was you know very good like he was i i really connected to his performance it made me like probably enjoy seymour much more than i would have otherwise the last thing i wanted to share so i read this piece by my friend megan keister she wrote a profile on terry's wygoff a couple of years ago in yeah 2017 and she includes a picture of thora birch and scarlett johansson in World. And they like wrote a little message to Terry Zweigoff and, uh, you know, interpret as you will,

but Scarlett Johansson, who is 15 when this movie came out or 16, um, she writes next to her name, Terry, as much as I would like to think you wouldn't, please don't hang this picture on your bedroom ceiling, Scarlett.

So, you know, for everyone's consideration jesus there is that scene where like david cross's character is like hitting on her and i'm like she's obviously a child like truly yeah i was equally like jump scared to see david cross in this movie as i was jump scared to see David Cross in this movie as I was jump scared to see Bob Odenkirk in Little Women like you just don't see either of them coming you're like what

him? the twist oh my gosh well thank you for joining us princess special little segment we'll return to the the regularly scheduled episode uh but first um where can people follow you online and check out your stuff so they can follow me at weeks princess

on twitter and they can find my youtube channel melina pendulum as well well thank you again so much. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Back to the episode. So as far as the Bechdel test goes, it does pass handily. It does. Mostly between Enid and Rebecca. There's also just a lot of different combinations of characters, female characters speaking to each other. But let's put it to our nipple scale so a nipple scale of zero to five nipples is this this is the bechdel cast nipple scale uh so uh zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares from an intersectional feminist lens so on one hand you do have

a different version of teen girls than we have seen prior to this in most movies geared towards teenagers and young adults. So I think there's a lot of value in that. I do see how relatable Enid is for a lot of people, me included. Both Enid and Rebecca, like I saw parts of myself in Enid and in Rebecca, maybe even Josh you know I also was making ice cream for children as a teenager so you know and just like teenagers torturing each other at their jobs is a very universal experience yeah because I have no nostalgia or attachment to this movie and I'm coming at it strictly from the lens of really just having, like seeing it as a young person only that one time,

and then watching it through my current lens, it's really, I'm able to sort of separate things in a different way than someone who did grow up with this movie and does have more of an attachment to it, I guess. And that's just sort of the nature of what this show is like, got it? How does the media we saw as young people? How did that affect us? How did that affect culture at large? You know, all that kind of stuff. So like, yeah, what is it like to revisit it? And right. So with all of that in mind,

that plus the things that I take a big issue with, which is the way it reallyymour is not the most emotionally mature man in his 40s ever. But like, he has a better sense of who he is. He knows what he likes. He has established an adult life for himself. Whereas Enid is still figuring out who she is and what she wants. And again, she's just so newly out of high school. She has not lived as an adult and her emotional maturity is still developing. And the whole

situation just gave me a lot of pause and just made me overall feel pretty uncomfortable. So with all that in mind, I guess I would give it, for me, it just kind of goes right down the middle. Like a 2.5 nipples is what I will give it. And we also award our nipples. So if you'd like to do that, that is an option to you. So I will give one of my nipples to Enid. One to Rebecca. And I will give one of my nipples to Enid, one to Rebecca, and I will give one to the art teacher.

To Roberta? Yeah, Roberta gets a half. I'll go two and a half on this one as well. I like how much agency the characters have. I like how much they fuck up. I like their trying to fit in, failing failing to fit in trying to fit in again like all of that is so like I feel like almost any teen girl could see parts of themselves in that process of trying on a personality oh this isn't working fuck this I'm gonna try this and and all that is

so cool and universal and and I think well told and I and I I feel like the Seymour relationship could be a component of that of like here is that it that is sort of like a friendship you know Enid is trying that friendship on saying is this where I belong but then it just ends up taking up so much space in a way that I'm like I would have rather have seen her continue to have that like kind of pinball struggle instead of really honing in on this one relationship and friendship. I just kind of wish that they had chosen a different target to stay focused on. Sure. There.

So I have so much compassion for adolescents. I swear to God, like the way that your brain grows and at what rate and the hormones like I really do. I have so much compassion for people like who are going through that phase of life and showing that discomfort is like really powerful it's so challenging it's so challenging yeah i think we as humans are all permanently traumatized by our adolescence oh right yeah for sure um except for people like melora and that's why you're like oh fuck off why are you so goddamn chipper oh malora also malora how do you not know we don't like you all we're doing is being bitchy you've never once gotten the hint hey guys we should hang out sometime malora

malora she's not perhaps the most self-aware she's no not a shred of self-awareness about her no laura move forward but yeah there's like the the focus on i mean kind of similar to you caitlin i think that the way that they treat race in this movie is very weird and and doesn't this was not a movie where they could have handled that responsibly without bringing in other people which they didn't and so that whole storyline to the point where like the only black characters who speak are kind of made to seem over sensitive for being unhappy with the choices that enid is making so they're like great stuff on it zero nipples really bad negative yeah um so i'm gonna go i'm gonna go 2.5 as well yeah i want to eat it one to rebecca and a half to the girl who put the tampon in the cup yeah good for her good for her good for her julie how about you i don't know

i give it one me at 18. fair enough how's that well julie thank you so much for being here what an interesting discussion this movie has spawned i know yes and thank you for continuing to challenge you know my ideas about intersectional feminism and and to you know give me things to think about and other people things to think about and you know things to think about. And, you know, generationally, I'm just very appreciative of all approaches to, you know, feminism and just thinking about things the way I haven't been conditioned to. And I just, I really, I really appreciate those insights to kind of like throttle me from my little comfort seat of things that

i've believed since i was you know like i don't know i just i just appreciate the more conversation the better so yeah it's a journey it's a journey that we're we're there there's things we have to learn these there's things we have to unlearn it's a process so we're all we're right there with you yeah yeah but good luck with those diploma movies yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah wow wow we might be a while till we return good luck there's no urgency where can people follow you check out your stuff plug away i am uh on twitter unfortunately yes uh listen to double thread it's a podcast i do with tom sharpling and subscribe and it's really fun and i do that every week and then i created a show called difficult people that i co-star in with billy eichner and all those are

on hulu so i'm very proud of those you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon which is $5 a month, and it gets you two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog of bonus episodes. That's available at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. We've also got our merch at tpublic.com slash The Bechtelcast. You can get shirts, pillows, masks, even all kinds of stuff. Also, thanks again to Princess Weeks for joining us for that special segment. Be sure to check out her work and follow her on social media as well. And that's it. media as well and uh that k hasn't heard from her sister in seven years i have a proposal for you come up here and document

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