The Bechdel Cast - Holes with Korama Danquah

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Korama Danquah dig deep into the movie Holes (2003)! Follow Korama on social media at @koramadramaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello, Bechdel cast listeners. Hello. Jamie and Caitlin here. A little plug at the top. It's all coming together. It's all happening. I am going to be going on a book tour for the paperback release of my book, Raw Dog, the Naked Truth About Hot Dogs Ever Heard Of It.

It is coming out in soft cover this May. If you're hearing this, it is out right now. If you are the kind of person that doesn't want to spend $28 on a book fair enough We have a more affordable option and if you haven't purchased the book and you know, maybe you're able to now You know, it's also a great gift. I sound so desperate The thing is it's a soft cover book and people love those and I love a flaccid book Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also a brand new forward that I wrote. And also

the acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists. So I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a thrilling edition there as well but there is new stuff in the book and it costs less and we love that. I will be going on tour throughout the country to promote the new book and if you're a Bechtel head and you're in the area this is a really great chance to come and hang out. I'm at bookstores. I did kind of bigger shows the first time around, but this time we're just chilling. So that for you, Katelyn, with your permission, I'm just going to rattle off some dates. What if I was like, no, no click. I'm going to go pee. No, please, by all means tell us. Okay, May 13th, 2025.

It's almost my birthday. It's so, I know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence. I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles, hosted by Friend of the Cast, Julia Clare. May 14th, I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. On May 15th, I will be at the Cambridge Public Library

in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own Tori Bedford. On the 19th of May, I will be in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of the cast, Maya Williams. I am very, very excited. On the 20th, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

My home state. They're gonna be begging. They're like, where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on May 21st, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia. And on May 22nd I will be at Copper's Field Books in Petaluma, California. And finally on May 31st I will be at Marin Country Mart, which is also with Copper's Field's book in Larkspur, California.

So if you live in those areas, please come out. I would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk Bextel cast. Let's do whatever. And there will be dates announced later in the summer. So if you would like a show

or a signing to happen in your town Please reach out and I will send it to my publisher and be like see I Should go there. Anyways, that's a great it's begging works sometimes yeah, and we'll link this full thing in the description but See you soon. I'm I'm making a little outfit and that's the Jamie Loftus promise. I can't wait to see. So if you click the link in the description, it will take you to the full page where you can register to go to these events. They are all free events. So come and hang out and provided that I get my shit together in time There will also be speakers from local unions at all of these signings

So come out make some friends come hang out and let's eat some hot dogs beautiful We'll throw that link to be able to access Registration for the events on our link tree as well link tree slash Bechtel cast So there's no excuse not to come. It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit. Come buy the book. Yay.

Enjoy the episode. The Bechdelcast. Dig it out, oh, oh, dig it. Oh. Dig it out, oh, oh, dig it. I, wow. I rewatched the music video and it's seared into my brain. Oh wait, I didn't know about the music video. Oh, Caitlin.

Sorry. You didn't know about, should we pause the show? It just started, but it's so good. They're having such a nice time. The boys are having fun. Okay, I believe it. That's the most important thing about the music video. And also the song is great.

And oh my gosh, 2003, what a time. School of Rock and Holes? Whoa. Be serious. Wait, sorry, you singing that song just really put me in a great mood and I forgot what I was gonna say. Oh, well. Oh, I was gonna say, we need to bring back movies

where there's a song during the credits that summarizes the movie you just watched. Yes. You need that. We need to bring it back. Maybe it is back in kids movies and I'm just no longer a child. I hope it never stopped.

I find it difficult to believe that there is a credit. This is like a Will Smith grade credit song. True, Wild Wild West, Men in Black. Yeah, the list goes on, I think, I'm not actually sure. Might be just those two. It might be, but they're impactful, impactful. Welcome to the Bechdel cast to, I think, one of our longest holdouts for a beloved movie.

Hole-out? Hole-out? Hole, ugh. Okay. Yep. Hole-out. And we have our holes-out on this episode. During this children, yes, we have our holes-out

during the children's prison industrial complex movie episode. My name's Jamie Loftus. My hole's not in a way. It's a way. So are mine. Talking about the hole in my damn face. It's gonna be flapping.

Yeah, and it's like that line from Titanic when the. If you don't shut that hole in your face. Yeah. All right, well things are already off the rail. Anyway, chaos is already erupting. What's your name? My name is Caitlin Durante. Awesome.

And this is the Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it though? Well, I'll tell you, the Bechdel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel-Wallace Test, created as a test in response to the fact that queer women were never in movies at all.

It has since been sort of more generalized into what we use. Our version of the test requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names talk to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. This is an interesting case. This is an interesting case where spiritually this, you know, this movie passes the Bechtel test to me.

Sure. But it is, there's, I think there's two women and one is dead. They don't exist on the same timelines. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge. Patricia Arquette and Sigourney Weaver are separated by generations.

True. And political differences. Yes, all of the above. Yeah, we'll talk about that further, but we'll also talk about so many other things because this is a rich text. Yes, because it is a perfect movie. It's so good.

And joining us for this discussion is writer, actor. She's in an upcoming horror comedy movie called Bad Karaoke.oke. You know her from our past episodes on Us, Get Out, and Cheetah Girls. It's Karama Dankwa. Hi! Welcome back! Thank you for having me again. I would like to just issue a correction right off the bat. There's like five women in this movie. That's true. Because there's a lawyer,

Stanley's mother. Yes. What else we got? There's the former student of Kiss and Kate Barlow whose name is said. Oh my god. And I think it passes in that scene because they talk about how she used to be a student. Right. Yeah. Okay, we're good. They talk about the treasure. So legally it passes. Not just to you, Jamie, not just spiritually. Okay, that is that is a relief. But it was a it was tight. It was very close. And they made us wait to the very end. They did. But I think maybe the lawyer and the warden also talk. I think they're talking about Stanley. Yeah, they're talking about the boys at all times.

We're talking about the crime. Is a boy a man? Is a boy a man? No. Women and children. This is getting complicated. Thank you, Karama, for solving the podcast right at the top. And now we can just talk about the movie itself

because this is a rich text. Thank you for coming on to the Holes episode. Can you tell us about your history with this movie, the book, The Holes Expanded Universe? I'm gonna start with something that sounds like it's not related. I promise it is related. So recently I was at a family friend's house and one of her neighbors came over and she was like, why do I know you? And my friend Jackie was like, oh well Karama used to come over all the time when we were little and she didn't have cable at her house so she would come over here. And so I had like a cable friend as many kids who didn't have cable had and I watched this at my cable friend's house when I was

growing up and I would see the Dig it music video on Disney Channel all the time. I still knew all the words. I don't know if I can say them on the podcast. I don't want to get you guys in trouble for singing too much of it but when he started spelling like A-R-M-P-A-T-U-T-E I was like yes yes this is rap music. This is real rap music. Migos, step aside. Yes, it's all happening on radio Disney. They even had a band named Detent Boys. Yes, they did.

Wow. Yeah, this was a single. They were, I mean, this was run ragged on radio Disney in the early 2000s. And I was a radio Disney kid. When I moved to Ghana when I was little, my dad would send me cassette tapes of just hours of radio Disney because I missed it so much.

That's really sweet. I know, but also scary that the mouse had that much of a hold on me. Yeah, the mouse will find you wherever you go. But this is a rare, I'm excited to talk about the production of this movie, because this seems like a very rare Disney movie, where it seems like they were relatively hands off with this,

and the director said it was basically like creating an independent movie with Disney money, which is cool, I'm excited to get into it, because I was surprised at, because I reread, I got mostly through the book to reread it before and it's they've changed so little because for once they let the author write the screenplay they never do that. And also the main thing that they changed I actually am for it because the main thing that they

changed for people who either haven't read the book or don't remember the book is that Stanley is a pretty chubby kid in the book and through digging he actually loses a lot of weight but they didn't want to put Shia LaBeouf in a fat suit and they didn't want to subject a child to a major like Christian Bale weight shift. So I think that that is actually like I'm all for fat representation in film. I love that representation in film. I think that this was the better choice in this instance because I don't like fat suits. I think that they're dehumanizing and I don't like torturing children. So they still torture the children a little bit, but mostly with heat. But yeah, no, I totally agree. I forgot that that was the most major change. And I felt like rereading the book that it was,

I don't think meant to be a cruel outcome, but it sort of lent this morality to Stanley's weight loss and sort of presented it as a, well, at least he's not chubby anymore in a way that I felt like was not good representation if they had adapted it in that way on top of what you're saying. The thing that was changed that I wish had stayed was there was more context for Stanley's arrest. I get why they have to keep it focused on Zero, but he was like really severely bullied in school and they show like how his bullying very much factored

into his arrest and like fear of standing up for himself stuff. But other than that, it's basically all there. They're dropping dams, they're cussing, the adults are a series of unfortunate events level evil. Like, it's great. So, okay, so you watched it at Cable Friends House? Yes, that was a frequent rewatch

because they would run it on Disney Channel a lot. And I was a big fan of Louis Sackert,cker the author I was a Wayside Stories girl because I was a story from Wayside School loved it. Wayside School gets a little stranger my favorite of them. Oh okay yeah I gotta reread. But I was a big fan of like that sort of universe of like wacky but real and I remember distinctly Louis Acker had like three kids in the Wayside School that had the same name and I don't remember their name but he would describe one of them as being tall and fat and it was the first time it occurred to me that somebody

could be tall and fat but it was always like a very neutral descriptor it was just like these are the way the kids look and I was like whoa people can look all kinds of ways. That's wacky! So opened my mind up a lot and a lot of luck for this movie. I had a lot of love for adaptations specifically. I know that you guys probably remember, but our listeners maybe don't, that I used to be a co-host of a podcast called Popcorn Book Club where we talked about page to screen adaptations and I would constantly talk about holes on that podcast. We never covered it, but I was like, guys, holes is the perfect adaptation film. It is so true to the original text.

And when it is not true to the text, it is true to the spirit of it. It is amazing. And one of our co-hosts had never seen it. And I was just like, I don't know how you're breathing air on this planet being an adult woman of a certain age who has never seen holes. It is like a, it is weird.

It does feel like it's such a beloved millennial classic, but I wonder, I don't know if kids are still finding it. I hope they are. Probably not. I mean, unfortunately the Shia LaBeouf of it all does make it a harder sell because he's a fucking monster. I think he's like 14 when this was shot. I, you know, child stardom should be illegal.

But that's a conversation for another day. But okay, I also was a huge fan of the book and the movie. I forget when, I think this was just like at every school I also was a huge fan of the book and the movie. I forget when, I think this was just like at every school in the early 2000s, like every kid read these books, read Wayside School. There's a kind of, I had to look it up to be like, was that Louis Sikar?

He wrote, it's a B-side, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes. I remember reading Dogs Don't Tell Jokes because it is about a child stand-up comic who pees his pants. And I was like, wow, aspirational, me someday. And I guess that Dogs Don't Tell Jokes had an impact on me, because he's like, I had to check the plot.

Gary Boone, who calls himself Goon, is the self-proclaimed clown of his seventh grade class. He never stops joking, despite the fact that nobody laughs much, and he has no real friends. So he joins a talent contest as a stand-up comedian, and he roasts everybody. And he hurts a lot of feelings. And then he learns that being a stand-up comic, parentheses

evil, is not the way to go. At least a roast comedian. It's true, yes, he literally goes full roasting at the store and then learns that people don't like that. I think we need to wallpaper men's bathrooms in comedy clubs with the pages of this book. With Dogs Don't Tell, don't be like Gary. It did not help him make friends, just like you.

But yeah, Big Lewis the car fan. I mean, like you're saying, Karama, the Wayside Schoolbooks were so silly and like fantastical. And the fact that he wrote holes as well, I mean, the range, incredible. I loved the book, loved the movie. Of course, being 10 when this came out, I had a crush. I had a crush on Zero.

Zero was my big time crush, Cleo Thomas. I had a picture of him in my room. Yeah, loved the song. But then, I mean, it's a great movie to come back to. Not only because there are more crushes for you as you age. Duleil Hill. Like Duleil Hill, who I know we're going to be talking about quite a bit, he can fix that.

But just like what a beautiful, like you're saying, what a beautiful adaptation it is, how it weaves together five storylines in this really effortless way. And that it is an anti-carceral children's book that is for kids but adapted in a way that doesn't talk down to them and yeah it's an amazing movie I'm so excited to talk about it. It's a real testament to the fact that people are like oh kids can't understand that kids can't understand that. Kids can't understand that. And no, you just can't explain it.

Right. You're just not good at explaining. There is a way for kids to understand literally everything. Like, sorry, there are kids who are soldiers in war in some parts of the world. Like they can understand things. The way to explain it to them is the issue. And I think that this is a really good way to explain the school to prison pipeline. Absolutely. Yeah.

Issues with incarceration and just institutional racism. Just all of this stuff is very clearly outlined in a way that is developmentally appropriate. Totally. Yeah. is developmentally appropriate. Totally. Yeah, and like puts a face and a name to these issues. And I think the, like maybe the only unhoused character that I saw in movies as a kid that is not played as a joke or as a personal failing or, you know, how often we see unhoused people, like it's just,

it's so good. It's doing so much. And then it has the audacity to be a really good movie I know and what a cast anyways Caitlin what's your history with holes okay I read the book in the late 90s because it was published in 98 I probably read it in 99 I would have been a tween at the time and I loved it and then the movie came out a few years later and I saw it in theaters.

I would have been, I think, a junior or senior in high school at that point. So I was old enough that my big crush was Dule Hill and still to this day. You're not made of stone. But yeah, I thought it was such an incredible story and then we got the movie on DVD and I watched it with my sister on repeat and I chose this movie for my, not to be a bitch, but it is my birthday episode. Oh. Yay, happy birthday. be a bitch, but it is my birthday episode. Oh.

Yay, happy birthday. What a bitch. So this is like my birthday pic, that's how much I love this movie. I don't think it's without its flaws, but I think the flaws are few and far between, especially considering it's a movie from the early 2000s. And that was just-

A flawed time yeah so yeah I I deeply love this movie and I'm so excited to talk about it I will say embarrassingly I was 12 when it came out so um my crush was Shia LaBeouf which has has not aged well. A part wouldn't convict you. It made sense at the time. He was on Even Stevens. Loved Even Stevens. My dance teacher choreographed Even Stevens' influenza. I remember when she had to miss class because she was doing Even Stevens' influenza.

And I was just like, that's so cool. Wow. That show was cooking I think about the song about going to space a lot we went to the moon in 1969. Not 1970 the year before. Uh-huh. It's a millennial circle jerk episode. Well here's the thing I was one of the friends without cable as well. So I've never seen a single episode of Even Stevens. And I think I probably was aged out of it anyway. But yeah, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I don't think there's any need to return. It was just the age of the musical episode. Even Stevens had a musical

episode and it was iconic, memorable. Yeah, it was called Influenza because one of the main characters had the flu. And so she was like having a fever dream and everybody was singing in the fever dream. Yeah, okay, fine. But this is, I think this is Shia LeBeouf's first movie. It said introducing in the credits. I was like, oh, I was a little emotional. I was just like, wow, that's where it all started.

Yikes. I know, it's like, that's where it all started, yikes. I know, and oh, that it had gone another way. But the kids, I mean, it's very famous adult cast and then a bunch of kids outside of Shia LaBeouf, I think mostly unknowns. I think Cleo Thomas had done some stuff. I saw he was on Kids Say the Darndest Things. So he was child starring out, but Sigourney Weaver,

John Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler. I remember my mom being like, that's the Fonz because we will watch Happy Days on Nick at Night. And I was like, why isn't he cool anymore? And Eartha Kitt. Eartha Kitt, oh my God. Queen. One of her final film performances,

Delay Hill, Patricia Arquette, and they managed to make the movie for $17 million. Don't know how that worked. But yeah, they brought a bunch of kids to the desert and made one of the greatest movies of all time. Yes. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

["Earth a Kid"] I'll come back for the recap. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake Gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives

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and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Had spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight.

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You're so wrong on that one, Rod. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GO BOY on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The ima ven, I'm La Gata, the culture's favorite reggaeton historian, musicologist, public scholar and recording artist. Yes, that means I've done the work. On my show, The Reggaeton con La Gata Podcast, I'm not only talking to Flor Menon, who has the number one reggaeton track in the world right now, I'm also going to be on Perreo

to speak with music innovators like Rainao, who is known for her media roquera tracks and collaborating with artists like Bob Baldy. We're also giving you the culture breakdown straight from the source. Listen to Reggaeton con la Gata on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The Paper Ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree.

It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tearthepapersealing.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. And we're back. Okay, here is the story of holes. We open on a place that we will learn is a juvenile detention facility where teenage boys are out in the hot sun digging holes in the dirt. One of them purposefully gets bitten by a rattlesnake

so that he can be sent home and that's gonna open up a spot at this facility. And you're all like immediate, I hadn't seen this movie in a couple of years and I was like, oh, from moment one, they're not fucking around. No. I was like, this is a dark cold open.

That kid is like, I would rather potentially die, literally die, than dig another hole. Which was added for the movie. That does not happen in the book. They're just like something something barf bag. But they started as a full-on like active desperate. You're just like okay okay director of the fugitive. Let's go. Let's go. Also one of my favorite movies. I've never seen it. I just thought it was like, what a, this is, I think his first and only children's movie. I think so. Yeah. Cause he had been known for action movies, collateral damage came out. Like it's so weird. It does happen in the book that barf bag gets bitten, but it happens off screen. Like you don't see that scene play out. They just reference it after the fact. But in any case, we cut to Stanley Yelnats IV,

played by Shia LaBeouf, who is on his way to this facility because he was wrongfully accused and arrested for stealing a pair of shoes that seemed to have fallen from the sky and land on his head. And he goes on to say that he has bad luck and he always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time which his family blames on a 150 year old family curse. we meet his mom played by Siobhan Fallon Hogan and his dad played by Henry Winkler who is an inventor trying to find the cure for foot odor. We also meet his grandfather,

all of whom Stanley has to leave behind when a judge sentences him to 18 months at the detention facility called Camp Green Lake where there used to be a lake but it dried up long ago and now it's a barren wasteland as far as the eye can see. At Camp Green Lake Stanley meets Mr. Surr played by John Voight who tells Stanley that he's expected to dig one hole in the dirt every single day. It has to be five feet deep and five feet in diameter. And this will build character, quote unquote. I love how instantly, yeah, like how instantly it is clear to kids and anyone how ridiculous this is.

Or it's like that line where it's like, yeah, you bring a boy to camp and you make him dig a hole every day and he turns it to a good boy. And that's our belief. You're like, ah, that's, that is just describing prison. Yeah. I'm just like, yeah, holes.

They make you so wholesome. They didn't even try. That didn't even try. It was right there. You're like, no, dig a hole, be a good boy. You're like, okay. Right. No, dig a hole, be a good boy. You're like, okay.

Right. Mr. Sir also tells Stanley to beware of yellow spotted lizards who are highly poisonous and lethal. And if one bites you, you will die a slow and painful death. Really good 2003 CGI on the lizards. Oh my goodness. You're like, there was a tennis ball there. You can almost feel the lizards. Oh my goodness. You're like there was a tennis ball there. You can almost feel the tennis energy. It's great. You just wanna bat it with a racket.

So then we meet Stanley's counselor Dr. Pendansky played by Tim Blake Nelson who assigns him to detent where Stanley meets other incarcerated teens who he'll be digging holes next to. They all have nicknames like X-Ray, Zigzag, Squid, Armpit, Magnet, and Zero. Zero, who Dr. Pendensky is especially cruel to because he thinks Zero is unintelligent and worthless. Dr. Pindesky is such a fascinating character. Again, just like another adult pretending to be good,

who is actually fucking awful and talks shit about the kids he's supposed to be taking care of behind their backs the first second he gets. I think again, I've only seen it in series of unfortunate events, like adults who are as bad as it seems. And also from Jump we get that he is very much about calling the kids by their government names even though they have names that they'd like to be called and I'm like, it's giving what your name is Toby, what's your name? I don't like that. And except for Zero, he keeps calling Zero Zero.

And it's like, there's nothing going on up there. You little dumb dummy. And he like explicitly says that he feels comfortable doing that because no one is looking out for Zero. And so he doesn't matter. Like he, it's just like, it's, I don't know. I thought it's a good performance too. Cause he's really putting on the hateful guidance counselor

vibe big time. And then you find out at the end, he never got his degree. And you're like, fuck this guy. Right. So Stanley settles in and starts to learn the ropes. He reveals that the shoes he was accused of stealing belonged to Clyde Livingston a Famous baseball player who had donated those shoes to be sold at a charity auction

To raise money for an unhoused shelter. And so that's why it was like such a huge deal that Stanley Is presumed to have stolen them and why he's sent to this. And he, like, the famous baseball player literally calls a child a horrible person in court. I was like, easy, man, easy. He's like 12. So then we flash back to Stanley with his mom, dad, and grandpa who talk about the family curse,

how Stanley's great grandpa made a fortune in the stock market, but was robbed by a famous outlaw, kissing Kate Barlow due to the family curse and his bad luck. We'll find more about the curse soon. But back to the present, Stanley starts digging his first hole.

He's told that if he finds anything that the warden thinks is interesting He could get to the rest of the day off so he starts digging and it's hot and difficult and grueling and Then we flash back to Stanley's no good dirty rotten pig stealing great-great grandfather good dirty rotten pig stealing great great grandfather, Elia Yelnats, who lives in a small village in Latvia. He's in love with a woman named Myra Menke, who he wants to marry, but her father wants her to marry a different man because that guy is offering

him his biggest pig in exchange for his daughter because women equal property. So Elia goes to a fortune teller named Madam Zaroni played by the legend Eartha Kitt. Who I only knew at the time as you're like, it's Yzma from the other movie. And then later you find out she is a legend. Yeah. Like the president was scared of her at one point,

like legend. Oh my Like the president was scared of her at one point. Like legend. Oh my god. So good. Yes. And she tells Elia to carry a baby pig up a mountain and let it drink from the stream while he sings to it over the course of, I don't know, a few weeks or something. And it will make the pig grow. And then he'll have a pig to offer Myra's father. And then Madame Zroni says, okay, when you're done with that, now you have to carry me up the mountain so I can drink from the stream and get strong. And if you fail to do that, I will put a curse on your family for always an eternity. That line read really stuck with me, always an eternity. Like it's such a good read.

Yeah. And Elia forgets to honor this promise before he immigrates to the US. Hence the Yelnats family curse. Back to Stanley, he finishes his first hole and then it's either the next day or a few days later But Stanley finds a fossil in his hole and shows it to Pendanski Hoping that the warden will find it interesting and that he'll get the rest of the day off

But the warden is not interested in fossils Now x-ray who's kind of the leader of the boys who live in detent who's kind of the leader of the boys who live in detent, tells Stanley to give him anything else he finds since X-Ray has like seniority. Then we flash back to a hundred or so years ago when there was a lake in this location. We meet Sam, played by Dule Hill, who is an onion farmer and he sells all kinds of medicinal onion based remedies. And then we also meet a school teacher who makes spiced peaches. Miss Catherine, played by Patricia Arquette. And you're like, these actors are hot. I wonder what will happen.

I wonder what will happen. Yeah the two of them are vibing and they exchange you know onions and peaches. Then we also meet this rich prick named Trout Walker who has taken a liking to Miss Catherine and we'll return to this storyline but in the meantime back in the present, Stanley's peers finally give him a nickname, Caveman. So he's like one of them now. Then he learns that Zero, the kid who mostly keeps to himself, he only seems to talk to Caveman slash Stanley,

and we find out that he cannot read. So Zero asks Stanley if he'll teach him to read, but Stanley says that he's too tired at the end of every day and he just wants to chill. The next day, Stanley finds something peculiar while he's digging his hole. It's this like small golden cylindrical tube that looks like it might be a bullet or a shell casing of some kind and it has the letters KB engraved on it. So Stanley gives it to X-Ray,

per his request, who shows it to Pendansky, who calls the warden, and we finally see the warden on screen who turns out to be a, whoa, whoa, whoa, woman? No! Bim, bam, bam, bam, bam! What women can be bad to? Louis Icaro's not afraid to say it. Oh, her nail polish, that is such a good detail at, oh, that scene in the book really stuck with me where she puts on her evil lady nail polish

and then slaps John, backhands John Voight. She's doing it, I didn't even, never realized, she's also wearing a sports bra on that scene. You're like, this is nuts. This is, like, she just finished doing yoga on Zoom and then she almost kills John Voight. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. That happens a little later.

First, we meet her, it's Socorny Weaver. She gives X-Ray the rest of the day off for finding this interesting item. And then she orders everyone to dig around X-Ray's hole, thinking that that's where the bullet thing came from, but we all know that it came from a different hole of Stan Lee's. Then we flash back to Miss Catherine and Sam.

He helps her fix up the schoolhouse. If there's a leaky roof or a broken window, he says, I can fix that. And they're falling in love. And meanwhile, that rich fuck, Trout Walker, wants to take Miss Catherine out for a picnic, but she declines and he does not handle rejection well. And one night he sees Miss Catherine and Sam kissing

in the schoolhouse. Because he sees her crying and says, "'I can fix that.'" No. It's really good. That would work on me, I fear. I fold like a lawn chair, like I'm done. Let's close the windows, we're having a party.

One of the most popular letterbox reviews, will someone tell Mr. I can fix that, that my pussy's broken? And you're like, yeah. Oh my God, that's amazing. I also love that there is this, And you're like, yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. I also love that there is this, it's like not,

it's a whatever, like one of a million themes in this movie, but that even in the flashbacks, there's this theme of literacy and gatekeeping education because she also teaches night classes to the same men who are fucking creeping on her. But it's like the movie isn't, I don't know, the movie is saying like these guys are awful but also they are you know like at a disadvantage as well. And she she believes that despite the fact that they are awful, they deserve the, you know, privileges that literacy affords one in society. And on top of that, she's reading the kids,

like an Edgar Allan Poe poem, and Sam- Can recite it from memory. It's just a poem, and I'm like, oh, scholar, we love it, we love it, he's so fine. I think it is, I think it is one of those Edgar Allan Poe poems that is like about fucking his cousin But but the spirit of it. It's the spirit of it. It's fine

Annabelle Lee was redeemed by Dulé Hill It's right there yeah, it's good that's your ear doing Justin Timberlake in the social there. Yeah, it's good. That's your ear to Justin Timberlake in the social now. And then just stomp out of the room. Right. So yes, this is a white woman and a black man kissing in Jim Crow, Texas. So trout Walker sees this he alerts the town people who start a riot. They burn down the schoolhouse. They go after Sam. Miss Catherine tells the sheriff who has no intention of stopping any of this. No he just like hits on her. He harasses and prays on her. I've been called slurs in my life. I gotta say Onion Picker was scarily slurry. When he was like, oh you kissed the

Onion Picker. I was like, whoa! Onion Picker with a hard R, that's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And right after this, the racist mob catches up to Sam. They kill his beloved donkey, Mary Lou, and they murder Sam. We cut back to the present. The boys are still digging collectively while the warden supervises and clearly expects them to find something. But nothing else is found because, to quote, raiders of the lost ark,

they're digging in the wrong place. So thank you so much. There's a little Seinfeld edge to that. That's just how they say it in the movie. That was unintentional. But the warden has them return to digging individual holes when no other items are found. Back to the past, Miss Catherine pays another visit

to the sheriff and kills him for not preventing the racist mob murdering Sam. And this is the start of her becoming the famous outlaw kissing Kate Bartlow. Wow. We cut back to the present. Magnet steals Mr. Sur's sunflower seeds from his truck. And Stanley takes the blame for it.

And so this is the scene, Jamie, that you were talking about, where Mr. Sur takes Stanley to see the warden, but rather than getting in trouble, the warden smacks Mr. Sur's face while she has wet rattlesnake venom nail polish on. Ooh, ooh, mwah. It is a very like feminine, you know,

you could make your arguments against it, but it's just such a good idea that I will not be hearing criticisms of the snake venom nail polish. Fair. And Mr. Sir responds by saying, all I do is give you love and affection. Yeah, it's implied that he has a crush on her

because he's always like fixing his hair when he's about to see her and stuff. It's also, it's another, I mean, John Voight, another bad man who gives a really great performance in this. It's true. Yeah. So Stanley returns to his hole and he discovers

that Zero finished digging it for him. And so Stanley offers to teach Zero to read after all. And in exchange, Zero will help Stanley dig his hole every day. So they start lessons and Zero is like, "'By the way, my real name is Hector Zaroni. And we're like, hmm, where have we heard the name Zaroni before? So then Hector tells Stanley about his past, how he and his mom moved around a lot, then they became unhoused. And one day his mom

had to leave him somewhere and she didn't come back and Hector never found out what happened to her and he says if I could I would hire a whole team of private investigators To find her. We'll put a pin in that The other boys meanwhile resent that Stanley is getting help digging his hole and a fight breaks out And it culminates in Hector hitting Pendanski in the head with a shovel and running off. That Zero is the best character. Oh, he truly beats the shit out of you.

Oh, he's so great. There's a quote from, cause there was a, there was a, I think it was like two years ago, there was a short oral history for the 20th anniversary and Cleo Thomas says, Zero is not the most Disney friendly character. Like he was grabbing eight balls ready to fight. He hit a guy with a shovel. He choked somebody out.

I keep thinking about how this character I'm playing might be the biggest gangster in Disney history. It was crazy. And I kind of forget how like Zero, I mean, he stands up for himself. He's the coolest. It's awesome. So Zero, AKA Hector runs away from camp. The warden, Mr. Sur and Pendansky discuss

deleting Hector Zaroni's files and pretending like he was never at Camp Green Lake because he's a ward of the state. There's no known family looking for him. So they're like, we can just basically delete his existence from ever having been here. So Stanley's thinking about Hector now being out in this barren wasteland with no water, no food, no shelter from the elements kind of thing. And he recalls his grandpa telling him about his great grandpa, the one who Kiss and Kate Barlow robbed and left stranded in the desert for 16 days,

and how he apparently found refuge on God's thumb, whatever that means. new kid named Twitch arrives to take Hector's spot at the camp and he helps Stanley steal Mr. Sur's truck which Stanley drives off to find Hector. He almost immediately drives it into a hole but Stanley keeps going. He runs off away from camp and he finds an overturned boat in the dirt where Hector is hiding out. Hector offers Stanley some sploosh which is the 100 year old spiced peaches that Miss Catherine made and gave to Sam because this is Sam's boat. It's all connected. It's all connected. Also I think the worst part of this movie slash book story in general is the word sploosh. Yeah. Yeah.

They really needed to do a second draft on that. But anyway, I think that's a fun word for kids, but like as an adult, I'm like, it sounds too much like things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to think about Hector Zaroni drinking things. That's so dope.

I also was like, I feel like I have looked this up on past years, like can peaches like last like that? I think if they're preserved properly. Right. Maybe. I just assume it's a little magic. Also, to be fair, he gets immediately ill from eating. That's true. He just starts throwing up and passing out. From eating sploosh for days.

That's true. That's true. So Stanley and Hector try to figure out what to do next. In the distance, they see a mountain that's sort of in the shape of a thumbs up and they think maybe that's what Stanley's great-grandpa meant about finding Refuge on God's thumb. So they head there. They climb the mountain. It's a long difficult journey Hector gets sick along the way from drinking the sploosh. So Stanley carries Hector's Erroni aka Madame's Erroni's great-great-great-grandson up the mountain to drink from the water they find there, which effectively lifts the Yelnats' family curse. They find a bunch of onions and eat them because also this was Sam's secret onion garden. Again, it's all connected.

And then also at this exact moment, back at Stanley's house, Stanley's dad finally invents the cure to foot odor and the secret ingredients, peaches and onions. I don't, yeah, again, there you have to magic it a little bit to be like onions cure, or does it just make a louder smell? They were boiled, I don't know, I believe that.

I believe that the Fawns cured foot odor. I'm not a chemist, I don't know what's in the onion that interacts with the peach that makes it smell neutral. Cause a caramelized onion has a very sweet, nice odor and taste. Is this beautiful that the legacy of their love cured foot odor? I wanted to cry a little bit. It's really nice. Yeah. So while Hector and Stanley rest and recover,

Hector reveals that it was him who stole Clyde Livingston's famous baseball shoes. And it's his fault that Stanley got arrested and sent to Camp Green Lake. But Stanley is not upset. He's just like, this is destiny. And he suggests they go back to camp and dig one last hole in the spot where Stanley originally found that gold tube, which he thinks is probably a tube of lipstick and that the KB stands for Kate Barlow. Meanwhile back at camp a lawyer that Stanley's family hired played by Roma mafia shows up to collect Stanley but the warden kind of shoes her away and tells her to come back with a signed

court order obviously because Stanley's not there. He ran away, so she has to make up an excuse. And now the warden and Mr. Sir and Pandanski are panicking because they assume Stanley is dead out in the desert. Yeah. And he quote unquote matters because his family has secured a lawyer. Right. We flashback to Kiss and Kate Barlow being approached by Trout Walker and his wife wanting to know where she buried all the loot she stole. She somehow found turn of the century like hair bleach. She's got a she's got a new wig. Well she's she's out in the sun all the time. That's true. It looks good. It looks good. Yeah. But Kate is like,

you and your family can dig for the next 100 years and you will never find my treasure. And that's what Camp Green Lake is all about because the warden is a descendant of Trout Walker and she is using unpaid child prison labor to dig holes to search for Kisten Kate Barlow's treasure. Stanley and Hector return to camp and they start expanding the hole where Stanley found the lipstick tube and they find a treasure chest. But just then the warden, Mr. Sur, and Pendansky show up and catch them, but they can't really do anything because they realize that the hole is filled with a dozen of those highly lethal yellow spotted lizards that are crawling all over, but not attacking Stanley and Hector because

they've eaten all those onions, which are a natural lizard repellent. Hey, for a movie about holes, there's not a single hole in the plot of the movie. There's, Oh, true. Everything is explained. Yeah. And it all is like a cross-generational, oh, it's so good.

A few hours later, Stanley's lawyer returns. The warden makes up a story about how Stanley broke into her cabin and stole her trunk, but Hector is like, no, this trunk belongs to Stanley, it's got his name on it. And sure enough, the name Stanley Yelnats is carved into the trunk because this is the treasure that belonged to his great grandfather. This means Stanley and Hector are free, as are all the other boys,

because Camp Green Lake is shut down, and the warden, Mr. Sur and Pendansky, are arrested. It also starts raining in this area for the first time in a hundred years, in a scene that felt a lot to me, like a movie that we have either just released or we're covering soon, The Shawshank Redemption, where when, and now, okay, now I always mix up Tim Robbins and Tim Robinson.

But anyway, Tim Robbins. Very different guys. So different, but their names are too similar. Anyway, Tim Robbins, when he, spoiler alert, finds freedom and it's pouring rain and he's like, ah. So it felt like that to me. Anyway. Wow, Kailin, I was gonna watch that movie.

So yeah, sorry for spoiling. Now, it's ruined. A 30 year old movie. It rains and he goes, ah. Okay, so we cut to Stanley and Hector at the Yale Nat's house, they open the trunk, it's full of gold and jewels and stocks and bonds, question mark. I don't know what those papers are.

And for some reason Stanley is the one that knows about how money has appreciated over the last century, because his mom's like, Stanley, what do you think? I was like, what does Stanley know about banking? He's in middle school. I don't know, but he knows. He takes math class, I believed it. He's like, it's worth at least a million dollars.

I was like, good math on your feet, man. And I really, it makes me, so much of the end of this movie makes me tear up, but the fact that even before they know Zero is a Zeroni and connected to the history of their family, they agree to give him half of whatever is in there. And it's like, collective. I know.

That's great. And no fight. The parents were like- Nothing. Yep. Half of it goes to Hector. One for us, one for Mr. Zeroni. One for us, one for Mr. Zeroni, one for us, one for Mr. Zaroni.

And then the grandfather embraces Hector and kisses him and I'm just like, oh. It's really nice. It's so nice. And then Hector uses some of his money to hire a team of private investigators to track down his mom, which he does and they reunite and embrace and that's also very sweet and tearful. And then the movie ends with all of the boys from detent at Stanley's nice new house with a pool. They gather around the TV to watch a commercial where that baseball player Clyde Livingston is the spokesman for Sploosh, which is Stanley's dad's product for treating foot odor.

The end. And you're like, sure. He's also, I didn't know that, I guess that that guy, the guy who plays Clyde Livingston was- Rick Fox. Yeah, but he played for like the Celtics and the Lakers and like was a pro athlete. Didn't know, I don't know enough about sports

Why didn't they make him a basketball player? So because because like Mike had just come out there like there's two basketball shoes of it's played out in children's Honestly my guess But I have no idea. Yeah Anyway, so that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss. ["I'm Not a Woman"] I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now

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rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers And we're back. I wanted to say just the one thing about this movie and I didn't finish rereading the book so I don't remember or I don't know like how this is dealt with in the book. There is like in a movie that is shockingly not Disneyfied in most ways the ending does feel a little Disneyfied to me but only in the one scene where you know it's so critical of justice and of the school to prison pipeline and all of these things that you never see discussed in media, much less children's media. But at the end, you know, it's like, oh, well, it's just that the state didn't

know that this is how the prison was being run. But now that they know, they're gonna take care of it. And that was the only sort of Disney-fied plot point for me was because that is sort of what you're taught of. Oh, well, if they're doing something bad, it's only because surely nobody knows. It's not inherent to the system that it's a part of. I did fully reread the book. Brave. A couple days ago, yeah.

I mean, me reading a book, wow. Good, good. Thank you. But I tend to agree, there is a moment in the movie which it does feel very cathartic when the warden and Mr. Sur and like the officials at the camp are arrested and humiliated and all this stuff. That doesn't really happen in the book. There is a reference to how Camp Green Lake gets shut down and will be

converted into a Girl Scout camp. Yeah, which at one point was going to become a Disney Plus series. I think it might it's still in development I'm sorry what? Isn't that bizarre? I was kind of like yeah, I'd watch it. I don't know. They could have just kept making bunked. I don't understand. They canceled bunked a show about camp. And also this is my listen if you are a Disney executive Call me because I think that we I know that everything's a reboot, even fascism right now.

But I think that we need to reboot Bug Juice. And I don't- I was gonna say a great camp show. I don't know why, cause like it's unscripted, it's gonna be super cheap to produce. It's, you know, get those kid influencers started early, I guess. Oh my God.

Bug Juice was so awesome. Kids shows were really gross. Like I, cause that was like baby survivor kind of. It was great. I have never heard of this. I don't know what you're talking about, but yeah. You would have been into it. It was like a camp reality show.

It was like kids at summer camp. And it was like the trials and tribulations of the drama of summer camp. So I'm like, if you wanna make a camp show, either bring back the scripted camp show that you literally just canceled, or, except you know, you'd have to renegotiate everybody's contract, blah, blah, blah,

or bring back Bug Juice, a show that needs to be brought back. I think about this all the time, because you know. And you're totally right. It like, it fits influencer culture absurdly well. Yeah. Huh. So the Disney Plus TV adaptation that's, I think still in development, I don't know much about it, but basically it's an adaptation of the book.

So it's not necessarily about like fun summer camp. It's about like prison labor camp. Yeah. But it is like a quote-unquote all female reboot, which I don't know how that will go exactly. That's what makes me think it is not going to be made because I feel like that time has come and gone and so has Disney Plus making like original content. I think space ruined it. Yeah. I think both all Lady Ghostbusters was the start of the like death knell and then Katy Perry space journey

is like the final nail in the coffin. Yeah, there was a wave of feminism that ended when Katy Perry went to space because it was just like, what feminism, what are you even, what are you saying? Hate it. Woman should space tourism. Anyways.

Yes, and then I would say the other big adaptation change from the book in general and especially at the end is that Stanley feels a lot more confident at the end and he likes himself now and now he has friends and this is part of a larger adaptation change that we alluded to at the beginning of the episode, which I would like to talk more about, which is the fat erasure of Stanley's character.

So basically in the book, Stanley is fat. In the movie, he is thin. In the book, it's mentioned that Stanley is teased and bullied at school by his peers for being fat. Sometimes his teachers will kind of subconsciously fat shame him. He doesn't have much self-confidence or friends as a result. Over the course of the book, he does lose some weight due to strenuous activity of digging holes every day. It doesn't ever say how much weight he loses, but it does say that by the end of the story, he has more confidence, he has friends, he likes likes himself It is not super clear in the book exactly how much of his confidence boost if any

correlates to his weight loss, but well even so Yeah, I do remember that readers of the book they appreciated their being representation of a fat protagonist who is They appreciated there being representation of a fat protagonist who is likable and compelling, who is at the center of this really interesting and layered story, who has an arc. And I remember a lot of the criticism about this movie when it came out that audiences were disappointed that that aspect of the character was completely erased.

They wanted to see onscreen representation of a fat protagonist, but instead the movie cast a thin actor in Shia LaBeouf. And I know that the choice to cast a thin actor in this role and to not have to have, you know, like someone wear a fat suit or anything like that, totally valid. But also it's like they could have just

cast a fat actor. Right, because the thing is like if they wanted to omit something, why did it have to be his fatness? If anything, they could have omitted his weight loss. Right, because- That was the, yeah, that would be ideal, right? Like- At the end of the day, it is about the confidence, and the thing about being fat

is that for the most part being fat is not actually in my opinion as a fat person that bad. I'm hot. I am fine with the way that I look. The problem with being fat is society and the way that society treats fat people and the problem with Stanley being fat is the fact that he's getting teased. He has no confidence because adults and children alike are making him feel bad about his body and like the 90s was also peak heroin chic the early 2000s was like low rise jeans also experiencing another unfortunate reboot yeah the rise of like skinny talk is terrifying. It's like

Anna Mia Tumblr all over again. It really is like very disconcerting to encounter and like I find myself having thoughts that I haven't had in 20 years and I'm just like stop it! But I'm okay, I'm good, but every now and then I'm just like like I'll read the can of a La Croix and I'll feel bad about myself. Cause La Croix cans actually are really weird and fat shamy cause they say. Yeah.

They say zero carbs, zero fat, zero calories. Zero guilt or something like that. It says equals innocent. Right. Oh my God, it It says equals innocent. Right. Oh my God, it does say equals innocent. Yeah, it's really weird. Whoa. And sometimes it gets to me.

Polar would never, polar would never. Yeah, a spin drift couldn't catch them. No, absolutely not. No, Caitlin, that's a great point. Like, because I did feel, I guess what, I agree with you, Karama, that, you know, putting child above in a fat suit would have aged the movie terribly. For sure. But I did feel like in the portion of the book that I finished that there

was, it was like one of the faults of the book to me, I thought anyways, that Louis Icar was sort of putting some morality towards the weight loss in a way that just felt kind of out of step with a lot of what the book is doing. Totally and right, if there was again anything to omit from the adaptation, it could be the weight loss or at least the implication that his boost in confidence correlates in some way to his weight loss or at least the implication that his boost in confidence correlates in some way to his weight loss. I do also think that like we are looking at this very much with 2025 eyes

and I think that having a kid that was fat on screen be made fun of for being fat was something that was like also going to be considered like damaging like putting this fat kid in the public eye and I think that it ultimately would have been damaging for that kid. Sure. And I know that like Heavyweights was a movie that came out in a similar era. I can't remember exactly what year Heavyweights came out. Yeah late 90s I think because this is Kenan Thompson in it so it's like yeah Kenan era. I think it's baby Kenan's in it. Yeah, but the thing about Kenan is,

it was always okay for him to be fat because he was funny. Do you know what I mean? Whereas with Holes, it's more of a dramatic turn and you're sort of like the hero of this drama. And I think that, I think that I would have loved if it were different, but I also kind of understand why it was the way that it was with the time that it came out. And adding that to, I mean, I think I'm sure that I'm,

but the only young fat actors that I remember knowing of as a kid were Keenan Thompson and Laurie Beth Denberg, and that was it. And so if the directive is to cast Stanley Yelnats as a known actor, that might have been hard also because of how prejudiced Hollywood is in the first place where most well-known child actors are thin, totally. This is before Nikki Blonsky changed cinema.

It was a few years away in just three years. So the filmmakers spoke to this adaptation change in an interview in 2003. So it was Louis Sacker and director Andrew Davis were interviewed by Phase Nine. Sure. I don't know exactly what that is. Some kind of film publication but anyway. Better than Phase 8, worse than Phase 10. They were asked how they searched for the right kids, like the right child actors for the characters. Lewis Sackar says, well the character of Stanley in the book is overweight. Shia is not. But this wasn't integral to the story. The point was more that he felt like an outsider, that he could display

vulnerability and Shia conveys the right amount of emotion and vulnerability and quirkiness. So the overweight thing wasn't important. Unquote. To that I say, did you read your own book, Lewis? Like, what are you talking about? That is a misguided take, I would say. I can pretty much bring any topic back to how much I dislike Lea Michele. But for me, Funny Girl, the adaptation, I thought that Beanie Feldstein was better casting because the whole thing about Funny Girl is that Fanny Bryce is supposed to be not conventionally attractive and while Lea Michelle because she is half Jewish does have similar features to say like Barbara Streisand in the original the way that that was written for 2024 or whatever year it was 2022. She's conventionally attractive.

She's like a hot lady. Our beauty conventions have changed, but we still hate fat people. And I think that Beanie Feldstein's casting was far more in line with who Fanny's supposed to be as an outsider. So I think that on the one hand, Lewis is right in that what matters most is that he's an outsider who gains confidence. But we don't get that from Shia LaBeouf in any way. Like they didn't write something in that made it happen. Like he didn't have a list. He didn't have some sort of like physical disability or something that like, that wouldn't help with the holes. But you know what I mean? helped with the holes, but you know what I mean. Yeah. Or even if it's just like, he has a lack of confidence for a reason that has nothing to do with his appearance or ability or anything like that. And it's just that-

Yeah, it wasn't replaced with anything. Yeah. Yeah, so that just, that whole part of his character is erased and maybe Louis Sacard is saying something like, well, you know, Stanley's fatness does not define him as a character, which is true, but it doesn't sound like that's what he's saying. He's just sort of like, I need to make an excuse

for why we didn't cast a fact actor. Yeah, it feels like a very like Hollywoody thing, which to at least to Louis Sacar, I'm sure that Louis Sacar is not the one making the final casting decisions. No. Right. I know that he, I think he was a producer on the movie. I think that that is like a better suited question for the director than the writer. Which the director answers a question, a follow-up question, which was, didn't you consider a fat suit? And director

Andrew Davis says, yes, we did. But in the book, he loses weight as the story evolves, and as he digs the holes, etc. And we shot the movie out of continuity, so that wouldn't have worked. That's the reason? Yeah, you're right. And I think that was like, I remember that also being a reason that they gave for not casting a fat actor to begin with, because it's like, well, movies are shot out of chronological order, so if a character is losing weight progressively, but the movie is shot out of order,

then how do we manage that? It's all very 2003. I mean, I will say that, like, not to give this movie a pass, but that this feels very thoroughly in step with how fatness was treated in movies at this time. For sure. but that this feels very thoroughly in step with how fatness was treated in movies at this time. For sure. And Shallow How.

Oh yeah. Right, like the same couple of years. God, I still have managed to never see Shallow How. Oh, I won't see that movie because I love myself too much. Yeah. That's one of those movies where it's like, I know we'd have a lot to talk about,

but I don't want to subject anyone to watch it, including myself. Fair, it's horrid. I have seen it and- It's like been free on YouTube for a thousand years because no one would watch it on purpose. But in any case, yes, I wasn't aware that they had been asked about it directly.

And then the other thing is that there is a fat character in the movie, armpit, played by Byron Cotton. A-R-M-P-I to the T. Well, yes, of course. What is that you're smelling? Dog, that's me. Okay, well that's the thing though. And that was a lyric, that was a lyric.

The main thing we know about him is that he has body odor, he doesn't, he's implied to not have very good hygiene, everyone teases him about this, and also the movie goes out of its way to show, at least once, to show him struggling with a physical task of some kind. So basically the only fat character on screen is attached to all these very harmful reductive tropes associated with fatness. Which sucks for a lot of reasons.

The actor, because I don't think, a lot of these kids didn't go on to perform, at least in movies very much, but Byron Cotton is so good, he's so charming, and also, it also just doesn't, it's so clearly fatphobic because you gotta think all these kids are stinky. They're not being taken care of.

And it's not their fault. They all share a single shower stall. They're, of course, hygiene is poor. And they only get four minute shower tokens or something. Yeah, and add that to the average hygiene habits of a young boy in the best circumstances. Like, yeah, all these kids are stinky. Yeah.

And they're all, they're wearing the same work clothes three days in a row. Right. I did want to talk a little bit about the production of this movie, cause there is a child, okay. One of the hills that I love to die on day in and day out is child labor laws. I think that this movie technically followed child labor laws, but to me, child labor laws are not restrictive enough because obviously the kids have to go to school, all this stuff,

but they were literally in the middle of the desert in heat as much as 115 degrees shooting for 10 weeks. And I have a couple of quotes from that. It was a business insider oral history where they didn't speak to everybody. And there's certain like, I don't wanna know what Shia LaBeouf says. He's not in it, but it's like Louis Sakaararkar, the director and then a couple of the cast members,

I think Tim Blake Nelson and then a few of the boys, including Miguel Castro who plays Magnet and my crush Cleo Thomas. Who I met once actually. What is he nice? He was very nice. I was like, is he tall now? Zero.

He was very nice. I was like, is he tall now? He's zero. He was really sweet. I was on a show on Hulu called Reboot and at the premiere of Reboot, he was there. And I was like, what are you doing here? I'll say you're great in Reboot. I think I like gasped it and like messaged you immediately like, how could you not have told me? I actually had a really sweet interaction last night with somebody at gasped and like messaged you immediately like how could you not have told me? I actually had a really sweet interaction last night with somebody at like an actor mixer thing for my agency and this like younger actor at my agency she's like in her 20s she's not like a child but she came up and she's like I really loved you and reboot and you made me want to go to UCB and I I was just like, I'm literally going to cry right now.

Thank you so much. I do not feel good about my career. And that made me feel so much better. Like moments like that find you when you need it. That's really cool. Yes, a hundred percent. But yeah, Cleo was very nice. He introduced himself and I'm like, I know who you are.

I know, I'm aware. I know the classics. But I would lose it, I would lose it. Still crush worthy, I would say. Hey Cleo. Yeah, I followed him on Instagram today. I was like, he's still got it. I was gonna say, slide in his DMs

and I remembered you're like a fully engaged adult. He would get it. Cleo Thomas has been promoted to my hall pass. But so this is a quote from Miguel Castro, who also talks about how the casting process and how they really did. I think that being unwilling to cast a fat actor as Stanley is the standout bad thing that they did,

because it seems like they tried to really find young actors who fit the role, and also that the movie was not being aggressively whitewashed in a way to really find young actors who fit the role and also that the movie was not being aggressively whitewashed in a way that I would not put past 2003. I do think ultimately centering a story about the school to prison pipeline around a white character is a little sus, but we'll get there.

But just in terms of the production, Milo Castro said, he's also very funny, but he said, I remember one day was 119 degrees. I thought they were gonna cancel the filming, but we all agreed to knock it out. I was hallucinating and I started seeing water, a swimming pool. The production team gave us thermometers

to check the temperature of our holes. If the holes hit over 125 degrees, we had to get out of there. That day, some of our thermometers broke 130. And it's like, you can't make kids do that. You can't make kids. They just sent, and they had to do like a boot camp, basically reenacting the movie holes

so that they would be able to do it on the production. So it ended up being like three to four months of them sort of just having to go method, which is like, do that if you want as an adult. Like I just, you can't make kids go method at a prison camp. Like that's- We all agreed is bad.

Yeah, it's giving me a GSD. It's giving, it's giving Mikey Madison saying that she and Sean Baker decided together not to have an intimacy coordinator. And I'm like, I don't think that that's your call as a no. I think it's your call as a yes, but it can't be your call as a no. That's like not having a stunt coordinator. Like even Tom Cruise, as dedicated as he is to doing these outrageous stunts has a stunt coordinator.

Right. Right. Yeah, it feels like adults knowing that they have power over children and being like, no, we gotta keep going. The show must go on. Let's go, let's go kids. Don't you wanna make the movie? Don't you want all of your friends to watch this cool movie?

Right. It's just, I don't know. I don't understand production risk. Even if you're heartless and you don't care about putting a child in a 130 degree hole, that production insurance, I don't know. I was curious. I was like, I wonder how they kept the whole school.

The answer, they didn't. They didn't. So that is unfortunate. What I will say that is positive about the production, just something that I admire, is that Andrew Davis, the director, who mostly had done action movies up to this point, was really set on keeping the story,

basically not dumbing the story down for kids, and that Disney, after I think a a few initial like, are you sure you want to include A, B and C? He was like, no, I will not make the movie if you keep bugging me and, and really pushed to have Louis Succar write the screenplay. And basically along with a producer taught Louis Succar how to write a screenplay so that they could preserve the integrity of the story. And I don't know, just like any, you know, Karama, you're a writer. Like, it's just like that.

I don't know how they pulled it off and I'm so glad that they did. Well, I feel like he has a really strong understanding of story to begin with. So I feel like it was like, he was at the water. They just had to show him how to drink. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's what they were sort of like, they were like, he's a great writer. He just needs to like understand the format. And I guess throughout production, like Louis Ciccard had a lot of input. And if he wanted something changed or adjusted, like Andrew Davis had no questions. And I was like, wow, no one respects writers.

That's cool. Yeah, right. That's, that was my takeaway. He's also in the movie. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, right. That's what I, that was my takeaway. He's also in the movie. Yeah, Mr. Bald. Yeah. Oh, that's him. Yeah.

Oh, cute. Sweet. I wish they had shown him with like a bust down wig later. You know, like. Right, cause the onion juice. It worked. The onion juice cured his baldness. Yeah, I just want wanna know if it works

or if it's like a Sweeney Todd situation, Mr. Pirelli. No, I think Sam's onion remedies worked 100%. RIP, Sam, you would have loved Erewhon. Oh my God. Oh, he would have been making billions at the Erewhon. Wow. Yeah, I love cameos like that. And not to keep going back to series of unfortunate events,

but it is my favorite. And that is a terribly adapted movie that the author was very upset about. So it's just like, there are so many examples of, heavily sanitized, like all the dark themes in that movie are basically played for comedy instead of, because the, I think it was Nickelodeon productions in that case

were like, it's too scary for kids, they won't be able to handle it. And that's how you get Jim Carrey count all off. I met the boy from that movie. I didn't know it was him. I just happened to be sitting. All my childhood crushes. I just happened to be sitting next to him.

We're Instagram like mutuals now. I happened to be sitting next to him last summer when Instagram like mutuals now. I happened to be sitting next to him last summer when I went to New York City and I decided to use my free will and my adult money to go see Cats the Jellicle Ball. And he was there. And he was there in the front row right next to me. Oh my God.

He had a friend who was in it. He had never seen Cats before. I had seen Cats before. Of course. I will just say, I think that Cats the Jellicle Ball was actually genius and a really amazing production because they used ballroom culture.

And I was like, oh, this is actually the only way this show makes sense. That is actually a great adjustment. Yeah. So it's like Paris is burning plus cats. Yes, it's gay cats. I'm in. That's so good. Yeah. So it's like Paris is burning. Yes. Plus cats. Yes. It's gay cats. I'm in. That's so good. Yeah. And you're sat next to Liam Aiken. Yes. He's so and like I'm a yapper. So I'll talk to anybody that's unfortunately sitting next to me and he was such a trooper about it. And I was like, Oh, your friends in it. Who was your friend playing? And he was like, Oh,

she's skimbleshanks. And I was like, the railway cat. The best cat is a thing. That's what I said. Oh my God. Best number. I was like, that's a good cat. You've got tasted friends. I can't believe you're hanging out with skimbleshanks. Oh my God. Yet another like horny child's thing on my wall. I had like Aiken for Liam. That's so funny. That's so funny. Wow, I'm glad that he's, and he did turn into my dream adult in that he was friend to friend Ro at the Jellicle Ball.

And like, I never, it never, it came up that he was an actor because we were just talking and I was like, oh I'm an actor too, and blah blah blah. And I didn't know until I like looked him up after he walked me to the subway because I was like, I don't know where I'm going. And I looked him up to see if his star meter was better than mine. It was. And I was like, oh snap! This is the guy from Stepmom,

one of my favorite movies of all time! Oh yeah! And then I was like, oh I had a series of unfortunate events, a movie that I did not care about. But Stepmom! Good for him, good for him. Have you guys done Stepmom? Sorry, we should talk about the movie. No, we haven't. It's on our list. I would be down. I've seen it, because Jenna Malone is in it too, right? Baby Jenna Malone?

Yes. Wild. Well, I guess back to holes. I mean, speaking of a movie that doesn't sanitize the more serious themes, or at least not extensively, yeah, this movie, it addresses a number of social issues such as race, class, incarceration, in all of the storylines, I think, that are intersecting. So there's these two main storylines from the past, one from the present. In one of them, it's Stanley's great-great-grandfather,

Elia Yelnets. He is seeking out the help of Madame Zaroni. In the book, Madame Zaroni is described as being a word that is used as a slur to describe Romani people. She's played by Eartha Kitt. Yeah, she's, I believe, Egyptian in the book too. They explicitly say that she is an immigrant from Egypt. Right, and curious what your thoughts are, but I couldn't help but feel that there are hints of like the magical Negro trope at play here because she's presented as being this mystic type of person. She places a curse. I agree there's a little magical Negro happening, but I don't mind it. And I don't know if I'm supposed

to say that out loud, but I don't because also I feel like it's a lot of the time like when curses are happening it's like oh man we got cursed for no reason and nobody at any point is like oh man we got cursed for no reason they're like my no good dirty rotten pig stealing great great great grandfather it's like this was a deserved curse. Everybody's mad at the great great grandfather for not doing what he promised he would do. And it's like, you got the help that you wanted. You ended up not getting with the girl

and now you're butt hurt and you're gonna go on a boat to America. You realize on the boat to America, oh snap, I forgot to take the old lady up the hill. And you don't take a boat back. I would have been on the next boat back, personally. Right. I did, yeah, that is, I guess I hadn't registered that, that at very least the family is not like,

fuck Madame Zaroni, they're like, he made a deal and he didn't keep his end of it. Yeah, at no point were they like, oh, Madame Zaroni was the worst. They're like, yeah, no, that's fair. It's like a European white guy neglecting to pay a black woman for services rendered and he gets cursed about it and it is fully deserved. Well and I also think that you know the the curse being broken because finally the services that were promised were rendered

in a way with this new generation. It's very much speaking to like the promise. I think that with them being explicitly black, even though it's like somewhat ambiguous in the book, like if she's Egyptian or she's Romani, it's very much about like, oh the promises that America has made to black people and sort of like how those have been broken. And there, I think that there is going to be a curse on this country has made to black people and sort of like how those have been broken and there I think that there is going to be a curse on this country until something happens to make it right whether it's reparations whether it's something else

I don't know and like I don't even think that I would be entitled to reparations because my parents are immigrants like I'm not saying it for personal gain I'm saying it for justice reasons. For justice. Right. Like the movie is very clear in teaching kids like, hey, if you promise something to somebody and then you don't do it, that's a bad thing. And then later we were all like, yeah, no, it makes sense that they're cursed. And then later it's like, oh, I'm going to make this right. And he didn't make it right to do things better. Like, he didn't make it right because he's like, oh, this will lift the curse. It was completely selfless. His friend was hurt and he wanted to make him better.

Totally. And like, when you do the right thing for the right reason, good things happen to you in movie land. Unfortunately, not always in real life, but I think that if more people tried it, we'd find out in real life. Right. Yeah. Right. So yeah, that's that storyline. And then it also intersects heavily

with the Stanley Hector Zaroni storyline in the present. And then the third storyline is the Miss Catherine, AKA Kiss and Kate Marlowe and Sam, in I think it's like turn of the century, like late 1800s, early 1900s. Again, it's Jim Crow era Texas. She is a white woman, he is a black man. They fall in love, they kiss during an era

when that was illegal in Texas and in many other states in the US. They are seen, this racist mob forms, all this violence is inflicted, they murder Sam. The sheriff does nothing to stop them. In all likelihood, the sheriff was a Klan member. And then this leads to, you know, Katherine, AKA Kate, becoming an outlaw, getting revenge. She kills the sheriff. It makes you wonder why she doesn't kill Trout

Walker also, but I guess it's because the story needs him to live long enough to produce offspring so that the warden can be a character since Trout Walker is her grandfather. Also, I think that there's sometimes, there's power in letting someone suffer. Oh, true. Because by the end of his life, he is miserable. Yeah. He's obsessed. He's a man completely possessed by the idea

of finding this treasure, where he's torturing his granddaughter to dig these holes. And she's, you know, the TikTok sound that has spawned a million videos. I'm tired of this grandpa, well that's too damn bad. I thought that like that was an interesting, again, like this movie is good at like providing context

for the villains without overly empathizing with them. Because what she does to deal with the trauma of the holes is that she becomes like a prison warden and opens a prison and outsources the labor to disenfranchise children. So it's not like it's an excuse for anything that she's doing, but little beats like that I feel like are sort of what elevate this movie a lot children. So it's not like it's an excuse for anything that she's doing, but I like little

beats like that I feel like are sort of what elevate this movie a lot of because I think that's like helpful for kids to have context but not excuses for how you know oppressors become oppressors. Well and it speaks to the way that white women will pass on the violence enacted upon them by white men to black people. Because, you know, not everybody is black in the camp, but they do make it a point to have a fair number of black kids because that is unfortunately who is getting these harsher punishments. And even if you think about Hector and Stanley, Stanley is getting this punishment because he stole from, allegedly stole shoes from a homeless shelter

and they were like this famous guy's shoes and this crime was like more egregious in that way. Hector got nabbed for stealing shoes from Payless. Right. Shoes that probably cost $20 kind of thing. Not even! In 2003, Payless shoes? 15 at most.

Right, right. I miss Payless every day. RIP. RIP Payless every day. RIP, RIP to a real story. The Payless where I used to buy my Easter shoes is now an axe throwing place. Oh my God. Yeah.

It's like gentrification on gentrification. I thought it was interesting that Payless got shouted out by name. I'm like, did they pay for that? I don't know. Shoes worth stealing, Payless. There is, I mean, name. I'm like, did they pay for that? I don't know. Shoes worth stealing. Pay less. There is, I mean, I guess I am curious what you both think of this. Like Camp Green Lake is a diverse, but I would say mostly non-white body of people, which I think makes a lot

of sense if you look at prisons, unfortunately, especially the school to prison pipeline, I do feel like while I do love Stanley Yelnat's centering this story on a white character does, not to say that this does not happen to white kids, but it happens disproportionately less. And so while I think you could make the argument that Zero is a dual protagonist by the end of the movie, but he's not at the beginning. And so, I don't know, I don't know.

It's a pick. And then there's all of these kids that you get a little bit of their story. I don't know, I think you get a little more in the book, which is kind of to be expected. But you get, like, you don't really know why most of the kids have been put there. I thought it was a really, uh, they do add that magnet is there because he was trying to literally free a dog from a breeder, which is great proxies. Shout out magnet. And that there is,

I think it's zigzag maybe is there because he has mental health issues that are not being treated. Which is another thing you see all the time, is someone in mental health crisis being sent to prison instead of being given help. And so you are given, I think, kind of a sampler platter for lack of a better descriptor, but I do wish that we got a little more than one line

for a lot of characters. Cause I don't know, I mean, do we know why armpit is there? Do we know why x-ray is there? Like we get, some characters get the context, others don't. Yeah, I don't think we know. This doesn't provide any more context in that regard, but I will share a quick paragraph from

the book quote Stanley was thankful that there were no racial problems X-ray armpit and zero were black he squid and zigzag were white Magnet was hispanic on the lake. they were all the same reddish brown color, the color of dirt." Unquote. So that's pretty much the only thing the book has to say

about any racial or racialized dynamics. In that timeline, at least, because I mean, certainly, yeah. And I couldn't help think about another movie as I was rewatching Holes, which is the movie Nickel Boys that I saw recently. So as far as a book slash movie about young men or teen boys being incarcerated and sent to a work camp,

there is a version of this story that is written and made by white people, a la holes, and then compare that to a version of this story that was written by black people, a la Nickel Boys, which is a novel from 2019 by Colson Whitehead adapted to a 2024 film written and directed by Rommel Ross. Very different movies obviously where Nickel Boys, I don't know if either of you have seen it but Nickel Boys is tonally much heavier, it does a lot more to shed light on the horrors of the racism, exploitation, violence, abuse present in a detention facility like this, versus Hull's, which acknowledges these things

to some degree, but it centers whiteness. It's framed more as this like, almost a fun adventure folk tale type of story that is largely about a white boy, kind of like his redemption arc of like, oh, I have to carry Yazzurone up a mountain kind of thing. So I just think it's interesting to kind of note the differences

between two similar premises written by two very different perspectives and how they kind of manifest at different times too. For sure, for sure. I think that sometimes the messenger matters as much as the message. And I do think that in 2003 for a kids movie to send this message, I think you need to see this happen to a white kid who was just

in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because when black kids are in the wrong place at the wrong time, people are like, well, what were they doing there? Why weren't they there at the right time? Why weren't they in a different place? And I think that it's kind of similar for me to my favorite movie about racism, Pleasantville. Yes. It's a movie about racism with not nearly a single black person in it.

Only white people. Yes. However, however. Wild that they did that. But like wild that they did it and did it well. Yeah. One of my favorite movies. It's a great movie.

It's a really good movie and I think that there are people who would not have gotten the message if it were a straight, and maybe wouldn't even have watched the movie, if it were straight up like, hey, this is about segregation in the 1950s, which is what it is. It is a movie about segregation in the 1950s. But the colored people are literally in technicolor. And I love that, and I love that that was an idea that somebody had, and it's like sometimes what if this happened to white

people is the way to get the message to people who are like, hey, wait a minute. And it's like the last few lines of that poem that's like, oh, and then they came for me and there was nobody to stand up for me. And it's like, what if this were to happen to you? You need to think about if this happens to you. Not to say that all of the audiences are white, but in filmmaking, for better or for worse, white is seen as the default. And you can put any experience on top of it. And I do think also, there are things that are true about this story, I do think that even with the expensive lawyer, if it were Hector or if it were another black kid, it would have taken

longer than literally a day after hiring a lawyer to get him out of there. Definitely. No matter how hard that lawyer was working, I feel like the judge would be like, no I'm not overturning this, I don't care, he's already there. Definitely. No matter how hard that lawyer was working, I feel like the judge would be like, no, I'm not overturning this. I don't care. He's already there. Right. Holes are good for character, whatever. Do you know what I mean?

Cause like, while I was watching, when they sentenced him to 18 months, I was like, that is six times as long as Brock Turner got. Ah, yup. Well, when you put it that way. Yeah. It was an unreasonably long sentence and I don't even know how long

those other kids are sentenced to. I was gonna say, I would be really curious what the other sentences looked like because it didn't seem like that was a default sentence by any means. Right, and like X-Ray had already been there for six months. Also, X-Ray's nickname is my favorite because it's because he's got the big glasses,

but also his name is Rex. Rex. And X-Ray's nickname is my favorite because it's because he's got the big glasses but also his name is Rex and X-Ray is Rex in Pig Latin. I was like genius. Yeah that is like peak kid brilliance. Yeah. Yeah I that's that's a good point especially where like you're saying in children's media often still but like especially in the 2000s you you know, you're taking the like default protagonist for a movie like this and making the worst possible thing happen and demonstrating that it was through no fault of his own. And then it's sort of, I don't think this is like intentionally done. I would guess more that this is just a Louis Sikar

self insert to begin. I'm not totally sure, but you know, the director and the writer, if you, if you don't know, they're, they're both white, but yeah, that, that it's almost like by seeing that happen to Shia LaBeouf, it creates this runway to understand that this is happening to every single kid in this place. And I think like what you lose there that I don't wanna come down too hard on this movie because it's doing so much I have literally never seen in kids movies, but that it doesn't bring up the fact that the black kids at this camp would have

a far worse time. And that I guess the closest you get to understanding that is through Zero, but Zero, I mean, has compounded issues. I think that the movie sort of makes it out to be more that he is unhoused and award of the state, and therefore they don't have to care about him. And they don't really touch race, which is bizarre because this movie is willing to discuss racism. That's literally the whole Sam and Kate story. But I think it's very much a colorblind 2000s. Like wow,

racism used to be so bad. Now any kid can go to jail. I will say just cause we talked about kissing Kate Barlow and Sam, I'm really glad that they didn't hang him. I know that they said they were going to hang him which would have been I think more historically accurate, but I'm so glad that they did not show him getting hanged. And that it wasn't shown not to. Yeah. I think that that was handled very gracefully and I think that not just for the kids, for me and my little

heart, I couldn't have handled it. Yeah. And then the other thing I was going to say was, we were just talking about the kids at the camp. And at the beginning, at the very beginning, in the cold open, when Barfbag sacrifices himself to the snake, they are singing Dig It at the beginning. And it feels like the song 16 Tons to me. There was a very similar vibe. And it was sort of like, you know, same deal as like working and you're never gonna get out of it.

But they're also joking around. And like the background music is Dig It, the kids are not singing Dig It in universe. And the kids are joking around and it really gives us a sense that they are kids and at every point it shows them being kids and it's not like this sort of hardened criminal thing. Like the only kid that you really get that sense from is the kid who's like watching tv in the like mess hall or wherever who gets into a fight. Yeah. And even with that he's like a slightly older kid. He's visibly a little bit older. And God only knows how long he's been there too. That part. Right. But yeah, I think that there's a norm of adultifying particularly incarcerated kids and especially black kids where it's like, oh they're not normal kids, they're criminals. And like

some of the kids did do things that are crimes. Like I mean technically, you know, Magnet did a crime, although innocent, let him go, right? Yeah. And let him take the puppy. He literally saved a puppy from a horrific practice. Like, come on! And like, Twitch stole a car, but he's a little boy. Yeah.

And he's like, I just want to go Zoom. And it's like, okay, well, maybe we should take this kid go-karting. There are so many, like, okay, well maybe we should take this kid go-karting. Like. Wait, wait, there are so many like ethical salutes, I mean, which is the story of incarceration, but it's just, ugh. It's so, and I love, I do, I, this was the first time I was watching the movie

that I really was like, I guess, paying closer attention to Pendansky. Same. Specifically, I think it's like such a well-written character where he is being presented as the nice guy, but over the course of the movie, it is so clear that he's not the nice guy. He like tortures Zero because he doesn't think

that he will get in trouble for not being kind to him. And he's right. And the whole, you the whole government name thing, he explicitly ties your government name to your, that's the name you will contribute to society under, so that's your name. And same when they're doing group or whatever and that's where we find out about Magnet

and his puppy is that, you know, he is repeating these, I think very like, it's giving DNC to me. Like he is saying like, no, what you did was a crime, it's against the law and therefore it's bad. And it's just like, you know, the place he works for doesn't work if you challenge an institution.

And so he, well, he is like, I think that like Mr. Sur calls it like that, like touchy feely fuzzy stuff, blah, blah, blah. But all Pendansky does is pretend to care. Like we don't see him ever defend any of the kids. We don't see him protect them. Like he folds the second that someone with more power than him asks him to do something.

He's a coward. Yeah. And also just his response when like everybody's like, don't teach Hector to read, which is wild. That arc I was like, whoa, hold on, hold on. Why don't we want Hector to read? Like I get why you don't we want Hector to read? I get why you don't want him to dig the hole,

but let him read. It's another great, it's so good. There's a really good video essay that I was rewatching by, I believe, Yohara Zaid, or I hope I'm saying her name right, Yohara Zaid, holes in the prison industrial complex. And she like ties that explicitly to like, the kids aren't doing anything wrong.

They're being told that they're going to improve themselves. So why would you get in trouble for literally reading? But again, it's like the institution is based on barring zero from the education he deserves. Because then it's easier to exploit him. And like just, ah. The darkest thing about the theme of literacy

is that they keep the shovels in a shed that says library. I thought that was a good touch. I had to pause it when that happened. I was like, oh no, I didn't notice that before. That's very upsetting. Yeah, and also that the oppressors of this movie, it is kind of a funny, like a woman can do it too, and you're like, it's true, but it's, you know,

the people at the top of this operation are white, and they're all sort of representing different kinds of oppression, where like Mr. Zerr and Pindansky are equally bad, but they are presenting a different approach to being pro incarceration. Like I, again, it's just, it's so well written. And then the snake nail polish, I mean, hello. I love the snake nail polish.

I love the idea of of the women in this story having these weapons, Kiss and Kate Barlow is known, yes, she shoots people, but then she kisses them, and that's what she's known for, is this red lipstick mark that she leaves behind as her sort of signature. And then the warden has her nail polish that she then uses to put put these men in line.

And this idea of like poison being traditionally a preferred method of like violence for women. I thought that was really interesting. And you know, there aren't a lot of women in here, but they make it count. Yeah, when they're hurting people, they make it count. And I don't even mind that they're not that many women in this movie. Well, I mean, it's about especially because it's about like a gendered incarcerated like it makes sense. I do think that you know, it is good. I guess we got Orange is the New Black, you know, there was media down

the line about incarcerated women, which is equally important to talk about. But and maybe more with this Disney Plus reboot, which I wrote down the joke. I'm calling it. It's not happening. Well, if it does, they should call it Girl is the New Boy. And that's the amazing joke I wrote down. Anyway, really good.

I hope that it gets greenlit and I hope that they hire me. And then I want to write the episode about when one of the girls gets her first period in the middle of digging her hole and everybody else has to help her finish digging her hole because she has cramps and that's womanhood and that's solidarity. Hire me. That is Disney solidarity.

Yeah, as long as they bring back Sigourney Weaver. Because that character would get out of jail in lickety split. I guess the other, just contrasting the women, yeah, because you really only get one woman in each timeline, because you have Madame Zeroni in one timeline, Kiss and Kate Barlow in another timeline, and Sigourney Weaver. I mean, Stanley Yellenet his mom is barely in it.

I like, I do like that they go out of their way to show, again, that like all of these kids, we are led to believe are from poor backgrounds to different degrees. But like Stanley is from a family that's just scraping by, they're almost getting evicted. And you still see that there is, like he is emotionally cared for and loved, which I think often, you know,

like poor parents are made out to be negligent. I think you could say, although we don't get to know Zero's mom at all, I did appreciate that, again, like an unhoused character, literally the two unhoused characters you get in children's media, if you're a kid at this time are Zero and Aladdin. And they are, they're both characters who when they take,

we know why they're doing it is like because they need to survive and the movies, their respective movies don't pass judgment on them for doing that. And I appreciated that I wish we could have known her more, but that the movie takes care to say that Zero's mom wasn't negligent. It was all of these systemic issues that separated them from each other.

And again, that's just like, I wish that that had almost been emphasized more by letting us get to know her because you know like unhoused characters are so rare outside of punch lines and getting the full context for and also that like Zero took the shoes because he was living at the shelter and you know I don't know I just I kind of forgot about that portion of his character and I really thought it was handled quite well. Also, he probably wouldn't have taken the shoes if he could have read.

So the failing- Right, so he could have. Because he said that he did not know that they were Sweetfeet's shoes. He just liked them and he took them. And I think that the weight of taking those shoes would have been different. Could he have read the little thing that said, oh, Sweet Feet, whatever his name is, shoes. Because he just needed shoes. Yeah, like you were saying, he got arrested for taking from a payless.

The kid just needed shoes and he wasn't being provided for. I just, I love Zero's character. And the shoes were donated to the shelter. So he was living at the shelter. Those shoes were in his mind for him. Right. Yeah, totally. I also think it's interesting that there is acknowledgement

that even though Stanley's family is poor, they are still more socioeconomically privileged over Zero and his family because there's that moment that Zero's describing, oh yeah, my mom would sometimes have to leave me at a park. I would go to Laney Park and Stanley's like, oh yeah, I used to go there all the time, parentheses, for fun with my family. And Zero says, yeah, I used to sleep in the tube

under the swinging bridge or something. And you see the look on Stanley's face is like, whoa, his privilege is checked. And I just appreciate that the movie acknowledges that class difference. And I also think it's really effective in the Pendanski character finding Zero so worthless. Part of the reason he has it out for him is that Zero can't read and Pendanski treats that as though it's a personal failure of Zero's. Oh, if he can't read, he must not be smart. But it's so clearly that-

He says because he can't, and it's like Pendanski acts as if because Zero can't read, he also cannot hear. because Zero can't read, he also cannot hear. It is just, it is so, oh, he is like, to me, to me on this viewing, the most evil character in the movie, because he's a fucking coward. Like, he does think he's a good person. I at very least don't think Mr. Sur or Sigourney Weaver are like, I'm an amazing, they're like, yeah, I'm a piece of shit and I don't care if children die. I think Padansky goes home at the end of the night is like, I'm,

I'm doing right by these boys and they're, I'm making them better. And there's, I mean, I feel like every kid encountered a teacher like that, who is like cruel to and not to no disrespect to the teachers. But I mean, I clearly remember the art teacher at my elementary school who would pick on kids and say it was like for their own good and clearly had no issue with, I'm like the art teacher, come on.

Teaching is a tough job. And I'm so glad that there are people who are committed to doing it and doing it well. Fewer and fewer people because administrators at schools are making it so much more difficult and the turnover is getting outrageous. But there's always one teacher who is like, I just want to be able to have beef with children. Yeah. And you're like, why? And so often I feel like they're in administrative positions. Now I'm just projecting my mom's entire career. But like, it's, yeah, I don't know,

Pendansky piece of shit. And then I do like, they add the bit at the end of like, he doesn't even have a degree because what teacher would agree to work there that isn't fraudulent? Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of that I found to be very effective in the movie.

There is a joke that rubbed me the wrong way at the very end where whatever officials show up with Stanley's lawyer, I don't know if it's like DAs or something, but it's like people with some kind of authority. And one of them recognizes Mr. Sur. And Mr. Sur gets arrested because he's in violation of his parole. And there is a reveal of his real name,

Mr. Sur's real name, which is Marion Savio. And the boys are like, Marion? I didn't know that was a man's name. And he's like, it isn't. And it's meant to like emasculate him and be one more layer of humiliation for him because he has a quote unquote woman's name. And it just felt like a cheap joke that was below the movie in general, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't love it. And it's like, it's genuinely not funny. No, yes, not for nothing. I'll admit when a joke is like, oh, this is problematic, but also. But I laugh. I giggled a little despite myself.

But like the Marion joke is not even, there's nothing funny about it. It's not even like a silly sounding name. It's a very normal sounding name that is just, oh, girls have it. Yeah, it's just, yeah. As a Jamie, he's fine. He's fine, all right?

It's actually, it's great having a gender fluid name. It's fun. Yeah, that was not great. But I think, you know, a comparatively small scene. Totally, yeah. One of the few blemishes on an otherwise perfect movie. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think that's everything I have. I wanted to say something about the music. Oh yes. Obviously we've talked about Dig It. There is a lullaby. We didn't really talk

about the lullaby very much. Oh yes. Because when Elia was taking the pig up the mountain, he had to sing to the pig and it was like if only if only the woodpecker sighs the bark on the trees were as soft as the skies there's something about wolves I don't remember the rest of it hungry and lonely yeah wolf waits below yeah and you know he's supposed to sing it when he takes Madame Zeroni up which as we all know, dropped the ball on that. Should have turned around, taken the next boat. I stand by that.

And then I think that it's really sweet that Stanley does sing this song when they get to God's thumb and when Hector is drinking the water and it makes him strong and that's kind of like the last piece of sort of breaking the curse and the other thing is they did a like studio song version of that song and in the end credits if you stay till the very end of the credits there they do that song is the last one and then there's a scene of Zero saying like Madame Zaroni's line that if you forget to come for Madame Zaroni your family will be cursed forever and always. Love Eartha Kitts voice. So he does a line reading of that and it's very cute but the song actually kind of slaps and it's giving like very early 2000s, late 90s, like

soft alt rock sort of like a matchbox 20. Moby! There's a Moby song in it. I did not know that. That's up the time. There is bravely a Moby song. But so I looked at, I rewound the video and I looked at who, because I always like reading the little music things and I wasn't paying attention, and I saw that it was by somebody called like Fiction Plane or something like that. And, uh, hold on, I wrote it down. I don't know why I'm pretending that I can't read. Um, yeah, Fiction Plane, they sang the song, If Only, and the lead singer of Fiction Plane is a man named Joe Sumner, who is Sting's son.

No way! Yeah! Wow. How random is that? And Sting was in the Disney Expanded Universe because of Emperor's New Groove. Oh yes. I wonder if he pulled some strings. Or pulled some stings.

Stings some stings think some stings there if anyone ever I think it's it like is occasionally re-uploaded to YouTube there is like I don't know why I find it so compelling well it's an interesting documentary about production but sting was originally like the Emperor's New Groove the production of that movie is fascinating but it was originally a much more serious story and then turned into a David Spade comedy. But Sting wrote this really, like he thought he was doing Elton John and the Lion King.

So he wrote all of these serious stories and his wife was making a documentary, assuming like, oh, you're gonna be like Elton, you're Elton Johning. So I should document this. And you just see the production completely fall apart. There's so many shots of Sting being bummed out in his mansion because he's like, they deleted it in another one of my songs. I think he's British.

Yes, yeah, he's British. But it's so interesting and specific watching Sting slowly realize all of his music is going to be deleted deleted and it's actually a David Spade comedy. If you ever wanted to see Sting become really depressed in the space of 80 minutes, it's an interesting documentary. Why would I want them to do that to Joe Sumner's father? My theory is that Disney was like, we got to toss Sting a bone. We got to toss Sting a bone. We did him so dirty on Emperor's New Groove.

Another Eartha Kitt joint. Yeah. It's all connected. It really is. But yeah, seeing that, and like the song was actually really interesting because I found it to be very moving and it was just sort of like,

what if the bark on the trees was the soft of the skies? What if things were easy? What if life was different? And I was just like, yeah, what if? What if Joe? And just the sting reveal was very surprising to me. Just when you didn't think Sting was going to get his way into the whole expanded universe. There he is. And then I like did some digging. Whoa. I didn't mean to do that. I did some digging on Joe Sumner and I saw that he later invented an app

in like 2010 or 2011 that enabled people who go to concerts to upload their videos to this app. And all the people that went to the concert would upload their videos that they took and it would basically create a concert movie with the different angles that people did. And the app existed until like 2016 and I was like, bring it back.

That's cool. That would do so much better now too. Right, I was like, bring it back. Joe, if you're listening, bring it back. He's our Joe. Biggest fan. We're big fans. I'm sorry to make fun of when your dad was upset

about Empress New Groove. I would have been upset too. But yeah, I just wanted to bring that little factoid because I thought that was fascinating. Very interesting and unexpected. Yeah, does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? No, I'm good. I got it all. I don't think so.

Yeah, I'm going to reread Wayside School. That's my... I love those books so much. I haven't read them in like 30 years. So they're so silly. Well, as we discussed, the movie does pass the Bechtel test, albeit briefly, but it passes. It passes a pass. As far as our nipple scale, though, where we rate the movie based on a scale of zero

to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh, boy, I don't know. I'm not sure it applies. Our scale is kind of tricky to apply here. I mean, I think in terms of intersectionality, this movie does well in that it brings up issues I've never seen brought up in a children's movie about justice and oppression and the school to prison pipeline.

And this movie is doing so much. I agree. I feel like the nipple scale is like difficult to apply here. It is. It broke the nipple scale. Yay. The thing about it is, oh go ahead. I was gonna say, I gave it five holes.

Five holes, okay. So not the nipple scale. Today is the hole scale, zero to five holes. Oh, five holes. Okay, so not the nipple scale. Today is the hole scale, zero to five holes. This is the movie holes, so I'm giving it five holes. Yeah, same, I'm giving it five holes, the end. If I had to give it on a scale of zero to five holes, holes, yes, five holes. Yeah.

Six holes even. Oh, I know, an extra hole, because they dig one last hole. One last job. The bonus hole. Who could forget? If I genuinely had to do it on a nipple scale, I think I would actually give it like surprisingly like three and a half nipples. Like a lot of nipples for a woman free movie basically. One woman per decade. Just because like when we talk about intersectionality, yes we're talking about women and representation of women, but the things that matter at the end of the day are deconstructing these systems and it's talking about how these systems are flawed

and bringing attention to these systems that do affect women and even though they're showing it in the context of it affecting teenage boys unless you're Disney Plus, it still is something that is I think a net positive for intersectional feminism. So like I because there aren't that many women I can't give it five nipples. But, and because, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, this camp was the problem, not like the whole system, the state's not the problem, the camp is the problem. But like three and a half nipples, still pretty solid showing there for a movie,

again, with like half a woman in it. Truly, I mean, and yeah, I hope that, I wish that this movie led to more media like, or just kids media that addressed issues like this, but it is still 20 plus years later, pretty singular for the issues that, because I mean, like if a story like this, because I loved Nickel Boys, but it's very much not a movie for children. And well, if you count Paddington 2. That's, I mean, I mean, Paddington and Paddington 2 are again,

indictments of the prison industrial complex of like anti-immigrant hate and racism. So it's true, the Paddington movies do it. So that's two. Uh, but yeah, no, I mean, I, I don't know. It's, it's a very special movie. I agree. Like it kind of broke the nipple scale in my head,

but I, I think your, your rationalization makes a lot of sense, Karama. Totally. Thank you for engaging with the show in a way that we were not willing to. That's what I'm here for. I asked the hard questions. How many nipples does this movie really deserve? Thanks for poking holes in our system. I will also say Zootopia tries. Not like this particular set of issues, but Zootopia does

try to be like... We but Zootopia does try to be like, we can fix- Where's Zootopia haters? Yeah, I would say it tries and it fails. Yeah, I didn't say it succeeded, but it tried. There's some deep flaws there where it's like, okay, but yeah, some people are predators. I don't know, like, no.

But like, they tried to fix racism with animals. They're like, we didn't quite, Disney was like, we didn't quite do it with holes. Let's try the animal copaganda movie. There, I do appreciate ultimately. And I feel like I'm talking a lot of shit. I'm trying, I am trying to get work. But anyways, that Disney was very hands-off with this movie.

Cause I think if Disney had been hands-on with this movie, we would have gotten whatever this movie's version of Jim Carrey's Count Olaf was. I think that it is critical to this story working that you are scared for these kids and that you understand where they're coming from and that their antagonists are elevated. Mr. Sur is goofy in some ways,

but not so goofy that he ceases to be scary. And yeah, totally. I think that it's really a testament to the fact that, like, you know, we talk a lot of shit, generally we, not the three of us, but we society, talk a lot of shit on these major corporations, and it's proof that they are capable of making these thoughtful movies and they they can do it if they want to.

Right, so why aren't they doing it? And it is also sometimes commercially successful when they do it and I think that it's a good reminder like hey remember when you did this thing and you did it the way that the creatives asked you to and it was wildly successful and it had a lot of A-listers in it and people are still talking about it 20 years later as a shining example of the way to do things? What if you rebooted that?

What if you rebooted that spirit? And they're like, no, let's do CGI dogs for Lady and the Tramp. Let's do that one. That would work. That's a joke, right? That's a joke? Oh no, that came out five years ago, unfortunately.

It's very scary. It's a scary watch. It's scarier than Mr. Sir. I did think of Lady and the Tramp earlier because the boy dog is another example of unhoused representation in children's media. That's true. Never forget.

I believe Lady and the Tramp. I think Lady is Tessa Thompson? Sure. I never saw it. I clearly didn't. I think I was the only person that's. Yeah, it's Tessa Thompson and Justin Theroux. And you're like, wow.

I was too busy gearing up for the live action Pinocchio Disney reboot. So shout out to the Pinocchio wars on the matriarch. When speaking of which, OK, let's wrap up. I'm hungry. Let's wrap up the show. I just want to say one last thing. Disney has been good to me personally.

And I do think that all of the checks and I I'm just going to say another thing and I forgot. So it doesn't matter. Disney is good to me in that it made Andor my favorite show. I will say Disney is still making cool, weird stuff. Like, I mean, you mentioned Bunked as a great example. I just finished work, I hope it gets renewed

for all manner of reasons, but like on a super silly kid's show called Stugo. So if you have a kid in, I think, I would say like the seven or eight range, that's a very silly, fun show that's on the Disney channel right now. It's like speaking to your point, Grandma, they can do it, so why not do it more?

Because people like it. This movie did make its money back in then some. It made, I believe, $71 million off of a $17 million budget. But as is the way with many movies that have a lot of author involvement and Disney being hands off, it does seem like the price for that

was that everyone took a pay cut, because you cannot have a stacked cast like this for $17 million without a serious pay cut because you cannot have a stacked cast like this for $17 million without a serious pay cut and throwing kids into 130 degree holes. So while it is amazing that this is successful, I do feel like there is always some sort of exchange of like, oh, you wanna make your perfect art? Here's $4, bitch.

But I'm glad that this cast, I mean, I just feel like it's a perfectly cast movie. It's so good. It's very well done. I hope they do more holes is in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Karrama. Thank you so much for coming back. You've covered such an interesting wide variety of movies on this show. I'm saying on the record, bring me back for step mom, if you ever get around. Yes, absolutely. And then so it'll be it's two Disney movies, two Jordan Peele movies. Oh yeah.

And then step mom. Now and step mom. In the future. We're starting a new chapter. I'm gonna be like Tarantino. He said he was gonna like do eight movies and then never come back, which like can't wait for that part. Right?

I'll do those five. He's really dragging out the last one. I'll be those five and I'll never come back. No, you can come back after that. Please do. Come back. If you want. Anyway, where can people check out your stuff,

follow you on social media, et cetera? Yeah, at Karama Drama on all the platforms that you might use. I started talking about libraries recently on my TikTok because I'm a big big slut for libraries. Love them. I have four library cards. Wow. Hell yeah. You can have a lot of library cards and get a lot of different things with them. I highly encourage you to go get, do it for Hector Zaroni. The Hector Zaroni Memorial Library. Yeah, go get a library card.

Where can you guys be found using your library cards or not? You can find us on mostly just Instagram these days at Bechdelcast. You can follow our Patreon, AKA matreon, at patreon.com slash bechdelcast. We have shouted out the Pinocchio Wars one of our best series But we've had it since 2017 so for five dollars a month You get two bonus episodes every single month and access to our back catalog which goes back almost ten years

So there's a lot of spicy content. That's actually where you will be able to listen to Discuss the prison industrial complex for a second time if you so choose, because we are covering Shawshank Redemption over on the matriarch on this month, which is Holes for Grownups. Yes, I basically decided that for my birthday month, I wanted to do Holes, Shawshank Redemption, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou,

which is a movie about three men escaping from prison. And one of them is Tim Blake Nelson, who's also in holes. So it's all connected just the way the plot of holes is. And both movies feature down in the river to pray, right? Yes. Oh, wow. Except they change it to valley because there's no water. Yes.

So that is what's happening over on the matriarch. As it is my birthday this month, it would be a nice little gift to me and to the podcast in general, if you subscribe to the matriarch, if you haven't already listeners. And with that, let's go to the yell and that's pool and watch a shoe commercial with our best friend,

a basketball player playing a baseball player. Okay, bye. Bye bye. The Bechtel cast is a production of iHeartMedia hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus, and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechtelcast. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly

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