The Bechdel Cast - Little Miss Sunshine

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Little Miss Bechdel Cast contestants Jaime and Caitlin discuss Little Miss Sunshine!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus.

And it's my birthday episode. It's your birthday episode. And so we're celebrating accordingly with one of your favorite movies, as is the birthday tradition in these here parts. Indeed. If you've never celebrated a birthday with us, we get to pick movies for our birthday episode. It's that simple. It's that simple. So we're doing Little Miss Sunshine for my birthday this year. It's just the two of us. We're going to have just a romp of an episode. Just a fun, flirty conversation about Little Miss Sunshine. If you're new, first of all, congratulations for coming in on a birthday episode. What a treat for you.

Yeah, seriously. It's a gift you can give yourself. But we are a feminist movie podcast that examines popular films using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion about how the movie portrays female identifying characters. Jamie, what on earth is the Bechdel test? Well, since it's your birthday, I guess I'll finally clue you in on the little secret. Yeah, thanks. The Bechdel test is a media metric invented by cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called

the bechdel wallace test that requires that a piece of media has the following two female identifying characters with names that talk to each other about something other than a male identified character for two lines of dialogue oh my goodness it doesn't happen enough what in this movie or most rude how dare this it's my birthday all movies should pass the bechdel test for your birthday indiana jentz passes the bechdel test uh that's just it's just about one day a year but yeah so that that's the that's the Bechdel test we pass it all the time every freaking day in fact yeah should we test it out right now should we should we pass it yeah okay um hey Jamie what I wasn't expecting that response um uh well my name's caitlin thank you for asking oh it passed no i just wanted to let you know jamie that i have poured myself a birthday margarita wow

well a cheers to you thank you so much with my little glass of franzia over yonder on the zoom call and i if i'm not mistaken both my margargarita and your Franzia identify as women. Oh, she absolutely does. She can't stop talking about it. All day long, I'm discussing women's issues with my various glasses of Franzia. Did you see that clip? And this is I'm about to stop passing the Bechdel test. But did you see that clip from a recent episode of Rick and Morty that a bunch of people sent us I bravely have never seen that show they do a little Bechdel test bit that oh do

they yeah there are some wonderful um female writers and allies on that show so I'm I'm thrilled to hear it yeah it was pretty a funny little clip if I may say you know we we we here at the Bechtel cast love a funny little clip my feelings towards Rick and Morty are complicated but that's for it's simply not what the podcast is about and I couldn't be happier about it yeah yeah it's my birthday yeah we gotta steer the conversation away from Rick and Morty and steer a different male helmed project so uh we're talking about Little Miss Sunshine. Jamie, what is your history and your relationship with this film? I am honestly so surprised that I had never seen this entire movie before.

Wait, what? I know. It's right up my alley. If I had seen it when it came out, which I was at the right age to see it, I truly don't understand how I had seen it when it came out which I was at the right age to see it I truly don't understand how I missed this movie when it came out I just never I don't know I just haven't I've seen clips of it I basically knew what happened in the movie but I had never seen the whole thing in one sitting so it was like truly a pleasure to sit down and watch it because it's a great movie I really love it it's so good

i know yeah so thank you and and i'd like to also thank your birthday for finally bringing the whole of this movie into my life it was i cried so many times during this movie i got real emotional it was who what a journey i love it what's Oh my gosh. What's your history? First of all, my birthday says you're welcome. And secondly, oh, we should do a little context, I guess, which is that, so on the Matreon, for our Matrons, I did a little poll, which I often do, because not only do we do a regular main feed birthday episode for each of us, we also dedicate each of our birthday months yes we here's the here's the fact we like our birthdays okay we simply like our birthdays and every year we make a big fucking deal about it and that's we're within our rights to do so that's

true so what i did was on the patreon aka matreon I did a little poll of a few of my favorite movies that we have not yet covered. And I was basically the top two most voted on movies were going to be the two that we covered on the Matreon this month. And Little Miss Sunshine blew the other ones out of the fucking water. It really did. And we sort of knew that. We knew people wanted this episode. But that really, it was an unprecedented response. I think the most overwhelming response in the history of the Matreon.

I believe so. Because oftentimes there will be a pretty even split between like a few movies. A lot of election 2000 going on in the Matreon. But not this time. Not this time. We had a clear winner so we decided hey maybe we should move this up to the main feed and then do something else on the matriarch so that's what we did so this was originally going to be a matriarch patreon episode but i said hey it's my birthday i can do what i want i want to share the joy of little miss sunshine i don't want to put this behind the paywall it's available to everyone and here we are

okay to be fair the other two birthday movies you chose it's a whole pile of men it's monty python and sean of the dead. Yes. Oops. Oopsies. Listen, it's, it's, these are, we're constantly, you know, I'm very glad that Little Miss Sunshine has moseyed her way onto the main feed. It feels right. Yes. Yes. I also realized that those three movies, my three birthday picks are all like journey from point A to point b movies like it's just

all about like a quest i love i love a good quest movie i feel like quests and romps if done well go hand in hand really absolutely yes i love it so that's just me anyway so my history with the movie is it came out when i was 20 i I saw it in theaters when it came out. Like I instantly loved it. I'm so jealous. I was like, Oh my god, these performances are incredible. I remember thinking that this family in the movie was the closest thing to my family that I had ever seen on screen. And they aren't even that close. But like it was still the most accurate depiction of my family that I had ever seen. I just loved how you know, realistic and genuine all the characters felt. Yeah, I was obsessed with the score. I was in the middle of my undergrad

film school education when the movie came out. and every short film i made that year i used songs from this score in my student films uh very cool no way so this this was one of my boyfriend's favorite movies and he i guess that there was a i don't even know which comic it was but there was a comic that was using the score from this movie in their show and my boyfriend like I think was kind of being kind of like you probably haven't heard of this so you know like are you having trouble finding it and he's like yeah it's the score from Little Miss Sunshine I've heard it and the guy was like mortified because he thought he had like galaxy brained everybody and everyone's like no we know what this is it was a very popular movie

unrelated I want to see your student films from underground oh you don't want to see them like, sea-brained everybody. And everyone's like, no, we know what this is. It was a very popular movie. Unrelated, I want to see your student films from undergrad. Oh, you don't want to see them. Please, please, please. For my birthday, I can wait. Oh, okay. All right. I do have a few on DVD.

I have a few. They're so embarrassing. I would be mortified. I've got some, too. We can swap. Okay. All right. Let's have a screening party that we'll probably have to do again from afar.

Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I interrupted. So you use the music. I use the music. I was just obsessed with the movie. I loved it.

I bought it on DVD as soon as it came out. I watched it many, many times. Absolutely loved it.'t it's not one that i've revisited in recent years i'm not quite i don't know why because i like it's not that i stopped loving it or anything like that i just i don't know paddington came along you know you only have so much real estate for favorite movies right there i feel like this is like i feel like the 2000s were a big year for indie movies, but more so the indie movie aesthetic. And this movie is like canon. But I think that why I didn't see this movie the year it came out was that my intro to movies that were sort of indie but kind of not was Juno.

And so I think this movie came out a year too soon uh sure but this was like this was like golden age quirky white families on a mission to do various things 2006 baby we were all there should i do the recap and we'll go from there let's do it okay caitlin's birthday recap of Little Miss Sunshine. Okay. So we meet Olive. That's Abigail Breslin. Cutie.

Oh, so cute. And if you're a listener of the podcast, you know that I'm not the biggest fan of many child actors. Not the actors themselves, but their inability to be good actors. The acting style. The acting. Let's blame it on the instructors the acting style can be very grating indeed but abigail breslin is an incredible child actor she's a natural and she's from a family of good child actors because her brother spencer

was on even stevens as beans oh another show that I have not watched. Ground Floor Shia. I don't know if it was actually good, but I know that I watched it. Great. So Olive is a seven-year-old girl who loves all things beauty pageants. We meet her dad, Richard, played by Greg Kinnear.

He is a motivational speaker with this nine-step refuse to lose program. He loves winners. He hates losers. Then we meet her brother, Dwayne. That's Paul Dano. Paul Dano. Oh, boy. We learn that he has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the air force because he wants to fly jets uh he is also obsessed with nichi sure i mean you're just like all right he's supposed to be what a 16 year old boy we all knew a version of the paul dano character yeah yeah i'm thinking i'm thinking of a very specific kid in the percussion section. Okay. Yeah. Could just be the haircut.

Not sure. Oh, sure. Then we meet her grandpa, played by Alan Arkin. He is a heroin addict. And then we meet her mom, Cheryl. That's Toni Collette, our queen. Oh, I know. I kind of forgot she was in this movie.

When I think of this movie, I think Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin and kind of forgot she was in this movie when i think of this movie i think abigail breslin and alan arkin and kind of steve carell so i was i i kind of half forgot she was in it and then was thrilled oh my gosh she's she's present she's not as present as she should be and we'll talk about that well i was gonna say i think that i sort of forgot she was in it because she doesn't have enough good scenes but yes um so anyway she is picking up her brother olive's uncle frank played by steve carell she's picking him up from the hospital because he has just attempted suicide they sit down to dinner together as a family we realize that there is a lot of tension in this family. A lot of the people don't really like each other or are only pretending to like each other.

Things like that. And then Olive listens to a message on the answering machine saying that she has been given a spot in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. And she is very excited about this. The only trouble is that it's in Redondo Beach, California. Ever heard of it? And they live in new mexico yes new mexico is the perfect place for this family it really is yeah and their house is so i i've for some reason been to new mexico for various reasons many times wow brag uh thank you so much i've been to albuquerque five or six times i went to a strip club in albuquerque on my road on my road trip when i moved from boston to la well albuquerque

is in my experience i mean limited but also weirdly statistically a lot uh it's a weird place it's a weird place where weird things happen i like that they live in albuquerque yeah which i guess was not originally this was originally supposed to be from i think maryland to california and they're like um what about albuquerque we can only afford to get you as far as new mexico but if it works perfectly yeah um my quick little because it's my birthday i can do what i want my quick little anecdote about my time in New Mexico was I was traveling across country. My best friend JT was my travel companion. And we were just kind of walking around the streets of Albuquerque.

And we happened upon this strip club. And if you were a couple, you got in for free. So JT and I pretended to be a couple. Oh, I know this story. This is a good story, yeah. Thank you. We really oversold it. I feel like everyone in that position does.

We were like, babe, babe, come on. Let's go to the strip club. And then we were making babe babe come on let's go to the strip club and then we're like making out with each other um and it was really cool really cool thing and then we went into really cool well i i'm congratulations thank you so much um it was i will say weird albuquerque was the i think the last time i was there was in like the month of May. And it was so hot that I never want to know what it's like there in not May. To all our listeners in New Mexico, you're very brave. You are.

It's simply too hot there. Yes. So we have to also take into account that every character in this film is constantly affected by heat stroke so that just the fact that they're making irrational decisions at times can we we can assume that their whole life has been at 99 degrees and they're driving in this vw bus which we'll get to in a moment but i have to imagine the air conditioning was either non-existent or not very good in that vehicle so right so they're sweating all over each other it's it's no wonder things fall apart don't blame capitalism or the system i think we can just blame the heat of new mexico yes oh okay anyway so this is the trip they have to make and

the pageant is two days away and And based on some specific circumstances, they realize that for this trip to work out, for them to be able to get Olive to the pageant on time, the entire family has to go. And they are going to go in this old Volkswagen bus. Yes. So they set off there's a scene in a diner where olive and her dad talk about ice cream we will discuss that at length important scene later an important scene then they discover that the clutch in the bus is shot they take it to like a mechanic and they find out they can still drive the vehicle as long as they get out and push to kind of skip over the first gear or two um quirky alert yeah it's true okay so they

set off again after having pushed the vehicle but they soon have to pull over again because richard gets a call from someone named Stan Grossman. It's Bryan Cranston. It's Bryan Cranston, as we will soon find out. He's the guy who's helping Richard to facilitate this book deal on his nine-step program. And he learns that the deal didn't go through. And everyone's upset about this whole thing. And then they accidentally leave without Olive.

But then they realize it. And then they swing back around and grab her in one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I remember that scene in the trailer of the movie. Oh, it's iconic. It does not end up being as big of a problem as the trailer would lead you to believe. They remember immediately and she is fine. Yes. But it is a fun scene.

Indeed. Yes. immediately and she is fine yes but it is a fun scene indeed yes so then that night they check into a motel and richard and cheryl fight a bunch and richard is like screw this i'm gonna go fix it so then he drives to scottsdale where he knows stan grossman is at the moment and confronts him and then we're like oh my gosh yeah there's brian cranston he's looking really like pretty fucking hot in i like in turn because brian cranston is like often alters himself physically and you're kind of like oh yeah he's kind of like a traditionally hot daddy that was my takeaway from that okay i think he's hot in this movie that's great um i did not have those

same feelings i was like he's scruffy he's i was about if he wants to be scruffy he can be scruffy but not i'm used to seeing him you know all head shaven off in his underwear selling drugs or something i don't know i didn't watch the show just saw the posters that's more or less it um so basically nothing gets resolved with this confrontation and richard storms off and then the following morning grandpa won't wake up so they take him to the hospital where he is pronounced dead but they can't leave him there and they can't take him with them because the body can't cross state lines without a permit. Right. So they decide to sneak him out of the hospital and head the rest of the way to Redondo Beach with his dead body in their trunk.

Great scene. Hilarious. Loved it. Really loved it. And of course, what happens next is they get pulled over because that's comedy writing baby um and the cop that pulls them over is hank from breaking bad and we're like wait a minute is everyone from breaking bad in this movie that's out of my breaking bad breadth of knowledge well he wasn't on the poster so if he wasn't on the if he's not the two guys on the poster i don't know who he is

um that scene is is weird there is this is like more of a writing note or just like not even a writing note but like the props should have been shifted differently in that scene there's a very clearly a corpse right in front of the police officer and he's like like it's funny but the places the props are put you're just like he would see the corpse he would see the corpse it is right there in front of him this is script notes with jamie oh cute thank you i guess the idea is that he's just so horny for porn that he doesn't notice the dead body right there in front of him also uh nothing bad happens when white guys are pulled over right yes i feel like it's a white guy or even like a white person like a white woman as well getting pulled over is more often played

for comedy and when it's a non-white character that is like not the case as often but like this is a very like it is haha funny this man has a corp like like greg kinnear you know even though his family is adorable they are breaking the law uh but you you never really think they're gonna get like caught and then it's like oh haha the police officer's horny right bye-bye yeah um that's i mean that's not even a critique of the movie as much as just like kind of a a trend that reflects an unfortunate reality because fuck the world true yep so anyways the police officer poses no threat to them true um surprise so he lets them go and now the family is only 45 minutes away from their destination but the check-in deadline is also in 45 minutes so time is of the essence here

but they have to pull over again because duane has an outburst because he finds out that he's colorblind and that means he will not be able to fly jets. No, Paul Dano. Paul Dano. He wanted to fly the plane so bad. I just need to make a quick note just because I feel like this happens in movies a lot. I mean, Paul Dano is kind of a notoriously baby- faced man, but he is 12 years younger than Tony Collette.

Yes. And I would like to say I object. He is not. He is technically he's old enough to be Greg Kinnear's son. If Greg Kinnear had a son when he was 21 years old, he is not old enough to be Tony Collette's son son um which is you know i mean she's she's a chameleon what can't she do but also i was like wait a second right this paul dano business you're just like who do you think you're fooling anyways we don't know maybe he's adopted we don't know maybe she adopted him when she was 12 when Oh, right. That also makes sense.

Well, no, but if she like was like, maybe she adopted him when she was, let's full blow canon this. If she adopted him when she was like 25 or 26 and he was already like 10 years old. Yeah. Like if she adopted him when he was like, not when he was an infant, when he was older. But that is in no way implied in canon. We're just, they're like, nope, Tony Collette was 12. Yeah, I guess they're relying on you assuming that Paul Dano is much younger than he actually is in this movie. He looks 16 in this movie.

I think his character is supposed to be like 16 or something. Yeah, 15, 16. Anyways. Yes. So he has an outburst. And then another one of my favorite scenes follows where they don't know how to like comfort him or kind of get back on track on this trip. But then Olive goes and just like puts her little arm around his and then he's like, Angel. And then he's like, Okay, let's go. Because moments before this then he's like okay let's go because moments before this he was like

fuck you guys you're not my family i hate all of you you're losers just leave me here i never want to see you again but then he's like oh wait all all of us are losers she's a she's the best it's great uh so they get back in the car again they make it to the pageant just in the nick of time then olive prepares for the pageant and it quickly becomes obvious to olive and her family that olive isn't competing at quite the same level as the other contestants and there's a whole conversation to be had about pageants and all of that although the movie does not go super deep into it which i which i kind of like having never seen this movie all the way through was kind of i mean i guess i don't really feel one way or another about that choice but i

thought that the movie was going to be way more about the pageant than it ended up being sure it's a pretty brief part yeah it's mostly i mean they don't even get there till the beginning of the third act um what a screenwriting master's degree does she have one yes i'd never bring it up though um so yeah the pageant isn't really the focus of the story, really. But they arrive at the pageant, she goes on stage, you know, they're doing their, you know, talents and things like that. And then Dwayne and Richard are like, Olive should not do this. Everyone is going to laugh at her. But then Cheryl is like, you know, this is what Olive wants. And we're going to let her do it. We're going to let her be her. And then you're like, I see where they're both coming from. I know.

And then I did like the touch of like Cheryl does offer her a last minute out. Like you don't have to do this if you don't want to. So it does. It is like clear that it's Olive's choice to do it. I like that. Yes, indeed. And she does make the choice to go through with it. So it's time for Olive to perform her talent. And this is what she had been working on with Grandpa kind of in the backstory. But we haven't seen this routine before. We, the audience

and the family, no one has seen it before. And it turns out to be this. Just as horny as his magazine. Yeah. It's this creepy, like, striptease-like dance to Super Freak that Grandpa choreographed. And everyone is horrified. People start leaving. Her family is like, oh, my God, what's happening? It is a funny. It's so funny. Because her family is like oh my god what's happening as like her family it's it is a funny it's so because her family is also fully horrified but they're like we've already we've come such a long way yes like grandpa died we should just just let her do the weird dance

yeah they're just like fuck it we're here to support olive so can't yell at grandpa about it he died right the pageant people are like get her off the stage and they're like no and then like the dad tackles the mc of the pageant then the whole family gets on stage and starts dancing with her full romp and then oh so rompy it's a good movie moment i love it yeah but then we cut to them being reprimanded by like the hotel security and they're told that they are never allowed to enter olive into another pageant in the state of california again and they're like that's actually totally fine by us because maybe beauty pageants suck and then they do one last push to get the car going. And then they drive off back home. And that's the end of the movie.

It's fun. It's so fun. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back for a birthday discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes! Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do. Like resume specialist Morgan Saner.

The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know, we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week, we're taking

it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you.

Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi. I'm not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back oh there's so much good stuff to talk about yes in this movie would it make sense to talk about the stuff that didn't hit for us quite as well to start because they're they i feel like we're we're majority love yes this movie yeah i think that works yeah i i think that my one real gripe if you can call it that but like if this were like truly for me the perfect most perfectest movie to ever exist you would get a more fleshed out specific arc for Tony Collette's character.

That was like what I felt missing. For sure. Because it's like there, I mean, it's so rare to have like a family movie where you know deeply who every character is. And also everyone in the movie is played by like an incredible actor. Like no one has to pick up slack for anyone in this cast. It's so good that I like felt Toni Collette not having a full arc. Like she's the only character that doesn't have a,

I mean, she does have an arc, but it's related to the people in her family. There's not really a piece of the story that's that specific to her or her inner life and i can see you know she fills the caretaking role in the family she seems to be the glue of the family trying to keep everyone in check which is a common role for a mother to have but it i mean that doesn't mean that she doesn't think about other things and have other you know thoughts goals ambitions etc and I feel like this is a movie that definitely has

room for that right where we know exactly what everyone else in the family wants or wanted or what their struggle is and it was just like not as clear other than keep the family together right especially because like she is established to be the breadwinner of the family yeah she is supporting them because there's a like little exchange where richard is like we can't afford this trip it'll eat into our seed money and then cheryl's like well if i had any help bringing it in so we know that she's a working mom we know that she has a job and that she is earning the bulk of their income of this family but we never find out what her job is no we don't okay i was making i was like did i miss that i don't think we find out

what she did we don't find out if she likes what she does it's very possible she the job she's breadwinning with she loves she's been very successful but like we have no idea we have no idea the best i could get and then this is purely a guess based on a few context clues because when she's picking frank up from the hospital we can assume that she has left her job because she's still wearing a name tag so she's wearing a name tag and she is dressed in like business casual so i was like she probably works in like customer service maybe at like a bank or something like that i was i was even like maybe she's like a retail manager or something like but it's they don't tell us and

it seems like this movie went through a lot maybe there's a version of the script or of the movie where you do know but in this yeah we don't know exactly what she does we don't know what her relationship with her job is we're only given insight to her as she relates to her family which isn't true for basically everyone else in the family we know right about i mean in richard's case it's all about his job his nine-step program right and for paul danno we know what he wants to do and like we know how like he's got this like discipline complex and olive wants the pageant and you know like frank is recovering from this like romantic and professional failure. But like, we just we just don't get that

for for Cheryl. He's the number one Proust scholar in the United States. Or is he number two? Not anymore. And it's killing him. We even know more. We even know about grandpa's backstory. You know, he was at this. Yeah, he's a veteran. He's a veteran. He was at this like, retirement home that he got kicked out of a lot of women he fucks a lot of ladies and he tells everyone that they should also do the same thing and he has an addiction struggle like that's just yeah that's I mean five times the amount that we know about Toni Collette and he dies halfway through right she gets more screen time than him and we still know the least amount about her but then i was like so i i kind

of cataloged all of that but then i thought about okay yes her role in the story is relegated to you know being the mom and that's really all we know about her whereas the predominantly male cast we know a bunch of stuff about them, specifically their like professional pursuits. But they're all kind of failures at it in some way. Whereas she's a really, really good mom. And I was like, OK, well, that's something. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, no, I don't think that she could be a failure at something.

We just don't know. Maybe she, but yeah, no, I don't think that excuses. She could be a failure at something. We just don't know. Maybe she's, maybe she is a huge failure. We have no way. We just haven't concluded. Let Toni Collette be a failure. Let Toni Collette fail for once. She can't. Yeah, but I, I, I don't know.

I wonder, because I mean, Michael, how do you say his last name? Arndt? Arndt. Too many consonants. Michael, Michael Arndt. wonder because i mean michael how do you say his last name aren't aren't too many michael michael aren't i i like respect his work a lot and i'm a fan of most of it even cars too an extremely carzy movie i i mean that's the one thing where i kind of struggled to find an excuse for him i feel like that is very, and I don't even really mean this as a severe criticism of him,

but just a writer who doesn't have a ton of insight into how an adult woman thinks. Right. And because he is the sole writer of the movie, you just kind of don't get a lot more than that. And then kind of, I guess, that same, and again, this is pure speculation, but I feel like that same kind of I guess that same and again this is this is pure speculation but I feel like that same kind of you know soul credited male writer auteur type that he sort of has become

known as you can sort of trace that to the like I was expecting going into this movie way more Toni Collette Abigail Breslin one-on-one or like connection than you get you really don't get a lot with the two of them you get like that moment towards the end but I mean they're all together for most of the scenes but her primary connection with an adult character is with her grandfather not her mother which is fine you know that's true of some families but it also kind of stood out to me of like oh we really don't really know much about the mother-daughter connection and they're the only two female characters right those i mean that was like truly like the only thing that it's not even i mean i just i just missed it same it doesn't cheapen the product, but I just missed it.

And as I was watching it this time around with a more kind of critical eye, I was trying to figure out who the movie frames as the protagonist. To me, it feels like there's no one character who is really, it feels like more the family unit is the protagonist of this film rather than any one single character. So I was like, okay, we have all these different characters in theory contributing equally or like being equally important to the story as any other one character. So for that to be true of this narrative, but then to give especially Cheryl, the mom character, the least amount of backstory,

the least amount of interiority, no other thing we know about her besides her being, you know, the supportive mom character was just especially frustrating. I agree. So a little bit of context corner for this movie. I mean, just the main context for the context corner

is just it took a very long time for this movie to be made. It took me about seven years for the story being basically done to it coming out. Because I guess Michael Arndt was like at the time he wrote this, he was like Matthew Broderick's assistant. Like he had a real glow up narrative over time. He's a pretty interesting person. But all that to say, so originally, this movie ended up selling to I think it was like Focus Features, they sold the script somewhere, but studio interference got it just became too much. So the studio executive suggested that the

protagonist shift to being Greg Kinnear, which is where you get that whole thing with him going to Scottsdale, that originally like wasn't there, but added and then basically Michael Arndt was kind of a real one and was like if you want to shift the focus to be about him then I'm gonna pull the project and take it somewhere else so it's still about the family but there are I mean I would argue the movie leans a little heavy on Richard at times for sure but then it's like it was interesting to learn like why that was yeah his arc with the whole I mean there are entire scenes dedicated to just his specific pursuit of this like book deal and his you know nines and he's always talking about the nine steps and like he's he's given a ton of dialogue about it. Because he's also kind of like a walking metaphor too.

For like he's like the walking American dream metaphor character. Right. Which we should make a list of at some point. Right. So he I would say his subplot is given more focus than I think any other subplot. It's like him and Olive basically get the two most plot impact well actually but then it's like grandpa dies I don't know right Olive isn't super the focus until they get to the pageant the end right she she kind of I mean she's there but she's not involved

for kind of stretches right I don't know I mean it's but they're well i guess i guess that that's a lot of what the movie kind of like obviously failure is a huge focus on what this movie tackles and i think it does it like mostly in a pretty cool and like thoughtful way of how does failure affect people and the majority of the movie does focus on how does failure affect men and then at the end we sort of you sort of get a peek at like because it's made clear to the family and all of that like who she is and her body and all these parts of her do not conform to the beauty pageant quote-unquote rigid standard that she has somehow failed as well and it's about this family coming to terms with their various

failures and like what does failure even mean who decides whether you succeed or whether you fail every character sort of has a different definition of what it means to be quote a winner or a loser and And like, right. Yeah. And what is Toni Collette's? Don't ask me. I don't know. Yeah, I guess we don't really know because we hear like grandpa's. Grandpa is like, you know, losers are just people who are so afraid of not winning that

they don't even try. And he's like, but you're trying. You're going to. But even grandpa, I mean, it's this family feels very real in a lot of ways. And so there are these moments where I feel like it's kind of, I want to give Michael aren't the benefit of the doubt and say, it's kind of intentionally done of like, it seems like grandpa is the only character that comes in having already

kind of rejected the system and rejected this, this idea of uh what does failure mean what does success mean to the point where he knows that he has an addiction problem he doesn't care he's like i'm living my life blah blah blah like which is a take on addiction that is wild uh true but even he like it's interesting that this movie kind of is pushed along by this pageant because you see grandpa even though grandpa is nice guy quote unquote he also subtly like regulates olive's body and behavior a little bit as well because during the ice cream scene i thought it was like such a i like watched that scene a couple times

just to make sure because there's just so much going on in there but yeah in the ice cream scene grandpa is one of the driving forces that says like no olive eat ice cream don't worry and his first reason for doing so is he says i like a woman with some meat on her bones, which in the moment is like, oh, that's sweet. But then it also reinforces that men dictate how women should look. And if he likes how a woman looks, then how could it be wrong? And so it's like there's all these like little, I don't know. It's really smart because that's what a grandpa would say. That's what a grandpa trying to make you feel better would say.

Something a little fucked up. Right. You're just like, well, I see where he was going with it. And it's like simple enough for her to understand because, again, she's only seven. So, you know, there's all these sort of different things at play. Yeah. But I do. OK, so I want to talk about the ice cream scene.

And I think that'll just sort of be maybe a part of the larger beauty standards it's one of the big scenes yes so basically what happens is that uh they stop for breakfast i think at a diner and olive orders her waffles a la mode adorable a la mode so she's going to get ice cream. But before the ice cream comes, her dad, Richard, is like, probably shouldn't have ordered ice cream because if you eat it, it's going to make you fat and you should try and stay skinny. Yeah. And then body positivity icon Cheryl, Olive's mom, says it's OK to be skinny and it's OK to be fat if that's what you want to be whatever you want it's okay and then her dad is like well yeah but you know those miss america pageant women are they skinny or are they fat and olive is like well yeah i guess they're skinny and he's like okay well it's probably because i don't eat a lot of ice cream yeah so this is the beginning of Olive feeling really bad about herself, her body, her looks, because we see a few scenes after this where she asks Grandpa in the motel room, she says, you know, am I pretty?

And I want to I just don't want to be a loser because Daddy hates losers. And she starts crying right and then there's that like devastate that's the scene that was like the ice cream tangential scene that like hurt me the most because there's so many layers to it is when she goes to miss california and is like do you eat ice cream and miss california says yes but you're like no she doesn't like you're there's so many layers to that where that brought to mind for me like instagram pizza girl where it's like a supermodel holding a slice of pizza being like omg i love pizza so much i'm literally addicted which is like a larger entertainment trope of oh yeah we're going to allow women to eat junk food as long as it's quirky fun and they still look the way we want them to look

which is so that I mean that scene was like triple devastating to me because I'm like Miss California is I think lying to her but it's also like she's seven and it helps but then you're like oh no this that's gonna suck in 10 years when you find out Miss California was lying to you um I mean I don't know maybe she does eat ice cream sometimes but then she's also like yeah but my favorite flavor is actually frozen yogurt i mean who got i mean yeah the the way that beauty pageant winners bodies are policed is like so well documented that i'm like i don't know she eats ice cream maybe she has in the last year i don't know yeah but yeah the scene in the diner i really it's it's hard to watch in a good way and i i like that like the other three members of the family are like we're

not going with this like uh richard is such a like flaccid patriarch like he's a failure as a patriarch as well because no one listens to what he says everyone thinks he's an asshole but he's in their family so they deal with it but I I really like the choice that like Richard I thought really did think he was saying something helpful to his daughter which I feel like a lot of those scenes aren't framed that way and there should be in scenes that are like body shamey in that way I feel like it is usually an easier writing choices made where it's just like they're saying this to be mean and they're saying this because they hate you and it's sometimes a character we don't really know that well it's just like bully number three but this is like a character that we know and you can tell he believes he is like doing the right thing by body shaming and like policing the food of his daughter.

And he thinks that by policing his daughter's body, she will become a winner. And I think that that is like something that like real people can see in themselves and kind of I would imagine that some people specifically like men who make comments like that because I've gotten comments like that before I feel like you know many people in general have gotten comments like that before people who make comments like that I think think they're doing you a favor even though they're being a fucking asshole right and I've never seen a scene quite like it where like it just ends up making a person who thinks they're doing the right thing look stupid and they don't get it totally but then that comes back to at least for me the Cheryl character and

even in that scene when she does have a rebuttal to what Richard says and like Richard's assholery where she's like, you know, you can be skinny, you can be fat, you can be whatever you want to be. It's okay to be whatever you want. And so she has that little moment. But I feel like in a lot of the scenes where Richard is saying something really awful and toxic, which he does a lot. For example, he's like, don't apologize. It's a sign of weakness. Don't do anything unless you know you're going to win at it. He also equates mental illness and suicidal ideation to being a loser and being a quitter.

So like he's saying all this horrible stuff all the time. And I feel like most of the time Cheryl is just like, Richard, stop or Richard no like she's like she doesn't have I want her to have more intelligent and thoughtful kind of rebuttals to him and she just isn't given that a lot of the time I wish there was more of that that I kind of understood a little more than the not giving her a story thing but I guess that's just like in my head I was just I I interpreted that as a her choosing her battles thing sure because she does push when when she's like hat when his book deal falls through she fucking gives it to him and it's like that is true you know your failure blah blah so I sort of saw that as her I mean kind of like playing off of the only things we really know about her is she's

trying to keep the peace in the family and that she's kind of choosing her battles with her deeply insecure husband who i'm assuming she loves because i cannot think of another reason to be with him i have a feeling they're like on the brink of divorce like i hope that like six months after like the events of this story, they are like getting a divorce and that like Olive has quit doing pageants by then. Oh, I feel like I hope for sure that this experience that she's just like, I'm going to do literally anything else. Yeah. But but yeah, I mean, Richard, I think it's a kind of true to life too that it's like Richard definitely grows from this experience and like in the space of a day he has like lost his father and his dream so that that is you know that's hard uh sure but but it but I like that the movie is kind to him

in the general sense but you don't get the feeling that he has like learned this great thing like you can picture this character just complaining about the events of this movie for the rest of his life and never really learning anything right which also feels like uh you know people that pop up in one's life uh we've got to take another quick break but then we'll come right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

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

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Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody.

This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. or wherever you get your podcasts. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

And on camera, yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Richard was, I mean, I think that the movie maybe

gives him a little bit too much real estate over the events of the movie, but I mean, he to maybe gives him a little bit too much real estate over the events of the movie. But I mean, he, he to me seemed like a pretty clear American dream fallacy type of character where totally context corner, I guess that Michael aren't came up with the idea for this story's themes in the general sense.

When he saw a quote from arnold schwarzenegger i think from the 90s where arnold schwarzenegger was talking to a group of teenagers and said if there's one thing in this world i hate it's losers i despise them and he kind of thought that that quote was gross which it is yeah and built out this story around it and i think you know richard is the character that could be most clearly traced to that quote down to the first line in the movie. And I like, it's, you know what? Sometimes you're like, all right, we get it.

The American dream doesn't exist. We get it. But it is kind of cool to see someone so firmly grasped to it and understand why but also still not like him like i feel like that's a really tight like a really like thin line to walk where you don't totally hate richard but you mostly hate him and but you also know you're like okay this is a lower class family and the scam the pyramid scheme of success is is really appealing because it gives you the illusion of control it gives you the illusion of

upward mobility that probably is not actually accessible right in most cases because of the way that things are lined up and he just has no understanding that the american dream is not actually accessible to him and that it's even less accessible to his daughter like he doesn't right he just doesn't understand it he's like a bootstraps guy yeah i feel like he voted for gary johnson you know oh my that's my headcanon he voted for gary johnson i barely remember who that is he wore khakis and he was a dumb ass so maybe that's where i'm pulling from yeah i mean this is one of those movies where a lot of the characters are not people to admire that they have a lot of you know toxic views or issues that make them characters that you didn't you might not necessarily

want to be friends with but they're still they're written so well they're written so realistically the nuance that these characters are given make it so that you can't help but feel compelled by them even if they're kind of shitty all around. I mean, like the grandpa character too. Not a great guy. He's not a good guy. You get the sense that he's a pretty heavy misogynist. He's homophobic. He's homophobic stuff. Yep.

He's grandpa-ing hard. Yes. Yeah. But I don't know. I would hazard a guess that a lot of people have a grandpa like him, like out of touch, you know, know racist misogynist grandpa but my grandpa's 90 years old and woke just kidding my grandpas are dead and they died when i was five so i have no idea what kind of people they were brave um but i don't imagine probably not good

you're like white, probably bad views. It's just math. But yeah, I mean, he also sucks. I mean, that was another character where I'm just like, is this movie cutting this guy too much slack? He's not a good guy, but he's Alan Arkin, so you're already like, I love him. And he loves his granddaughter, so we're like, I love him and then he's and he and he loves his granddaughter so we're like yes i love him but um you know but that is kind of the beautiful part is every man in this story is narcissistic

and self-involved and fragile in very different ways which is cool yes and it's uh you get a lot of i mean there's a lot of different types of fragile masculinity on display here right and we've barely talked about frank right so frank steve carell he's an academic he's an academic he has this kind of tragic backstory that he is open about you know he is okay to tell his seven-year-old niece about i was also having an inner battle in that scene i'm just like that's such a family to family thing i'm like my family for sure would not have told me but then it's like i don't know it's a family to family thing i don't know right i'd like to hear what what our listeners think but for me that scene where more or less he comes out to his

niece right by saying yes i fell in love with someone and i was very much in love with him and olive goes him it was a boy you fell in love with a boy and he's like yes i did very much and she's like oh that's silly but we don't get the sense that it's she's like hateful or anything like that this is just the first time she's heard of a man being in love with another man and like you know there's always the debate of like well how are we going to explain homosexuality to children right and it's like turns out it's pretty easy like they might not totally yeah i thought it was thoughtfully done and sure kids might not fully understand immediately or they might have a reaction like oh that's silly i mean at least at this time where there's not i mean and this ties to media of like there just is not a lot of queer media for children to even introduce like if you don't have a queer person in your immediate life as a

kid right the media doesn't do much to educate you on it so right and then like i mean they turn on the tv in the motel and like george w bush is giving a speech and we're like oh right this was during the bush presidency bad bad dad yeah i and another just good writing as it pertains to i mean there's a lot of good writing going on with Frank, just almost in every, and Steve Carell is so good in this, like he's so good, but the movie does not define Frank by his queerness, which I feel like is a bad writing choice that is made all the time. And it also doesn't explicitly tie his like suicidality to queerness because i feel

like there's it is also very common to other a queer character and and make that their entire arc has to do with their sexuality and frank's arc really doesn't have much to do with his sexuality it has to do with a failed relationship and it has to do with a professional failure which i feel like it's just it's just like having an openly queer character who has proceeded to be written like a person which is like what everyone should do i just i was really because in 2006 you just never know what people are but but it just it is like i i thought really i thought was really well done of like frank is not really othered or defined by his sexuality in the way that i feel like a lesser 2006 writer would do for sure for sure and i like the michael arndt writes different types of toxic

masculinity or just like male fragility in general clashing with each other in such a good way where like the way that Richard and Frank's fragility brushes against each other is so like oh I see it like they have the same problem and they don't even realize it where where you know they think like oh this other person's like such an asshole and I don't like them and like I think that like it's sort of implied that Richard thinks that like Frank is like an academic and he's just like pretentious and Frank thinks that Richard is a fraud and they're both kind of right but it like boils down to they both feel like professional failures but they don't want to admit that to

themselves and therefore we'll never talk about it and therefore they'll hate each other forever and you're just like oh it's so i mean with people of all genders where it's just like oh they're enemies but they don't understand they have the same problem they should just see a therapist and i and i really i thought it was pretty thoughtfully done how frank's the beginning of frank's story is handled as well where he um has tried to take his own life and survives and his sis tony kles his sister yes their sister and brother I kept I was like I kept forgetting who was related to but he so so she goes to get him and brings him to the house and just the way that just like pulling from my own experience it is kind of like fun I mean it's not funny

but in a way it kind of is where it's like when you bring someone home who has attempted to take their own life they don't want to like be with you and they don't want to like sit with an open door and like your like sister's house smells weird and just it's just like the whole situation sucks and no one knows how to deal with it and it was not I mean I and I'm in no way implying this is funny but just like based on my own experience of coming home after something like that and like being left in like rooms with the door open and my dad would kind of just walk in and be like, like, it's like, no one really knows how to handle it. And I thought that that situation was handled in a way that wasn't, I mean,'s just like it isn't tragedy porn it's dealt

with in a grounded way and you know it's like the family is doing their best they they are not equipped to handle this I also thought it was a really thoughtful touch how they added in that throwaway line of dialogue about insurance yes how they said like you know we'd love to keep him longer but we can't because of insurance which happens in these situations more often than not. And yeah, I just thought that that whole storyline was dealt with very well. Yeah. And I mean, I don't get me started on health care, health insurance, all that stuff. Listen to sludge for that. But yeah, I was i was really impressed by at this time in cinema history and basically throughout all time you know mental illness mental health was not handled well in most media it was still deeply deeply stigmatized maybe i'm missing something but it didn't feel

to me as though anything about frank's mental illness to me it felt like there was no real stigma that the movie subscribes to maybe certain characters namely richard yeah who can't deal and doesn't that man needs therapy yeah it's just yeah which but i feel like he's reflecting like the opinion of okay about to get galaxy brain the opinion of capitalism like he's just regurgitating the american dream take on struggling with mental illness which is that it's unproductive and therefore for losers it's not serving capitalism yeah just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and uh just like deal with it exactly yeah so stuff like that i yeah i thought it was really like no one knows how to handle that situation no family's gonna deal with it perfectly but everyone is trying i

like i really liked that quick scene with paul dano and steve carell where he writes on his notepad like please don't kill yourself yeah because it's again it's just like the specifics of that situation is like you can tell paul dano is like i love my uncle and i don't want him to die also that would be a very stressful thing to happen in my room like you know like i it's just it's really well done i don't know yeah it just it's so rare to see a situation like that there were a number of times in this movie where i thought about the royal tenenbaums and how much better this movie is than the royal tenenbaums oh yeah because that's another movie that has a long opening montage where you meet the whole

family and you have a character who attempts to take their own life and just i feel like everything that the royal tenenbaums does well almost everything because we still need as we said more tony collette information but but like the royal tenenbaums are huge thing with that opening montage was that we only find out about the female characters as they relate to the male characters and the way that the suicide plot line was handled in that movie was pretty atrocious right and you see similar themes pop up in this movie that they that is just done far more thoughtfully and yeah i agree a couple other just kind of quick things that i had uh well i guess i

want to talk about more about just the idea of pageants, beauty pageants, all that stuff. We've done a lot of pageant movies. We have. Almost all of them. More or less. We have done Miss Congeniality on the main feed. And then let's not forget about Pageantuary. Which we did a few Januaries ago.

And we covered... Drop Dead Gorgeous dead gorgeous and dumpling two great movies there's a lot of it's it's kind of like it's bizarre because we we don't really fuck with pageants but we generally fuck with pageant movies right but only because they're usually making a larger point yes and like you already mentioned the pageant isn't necessarily really what this movie is about it's more about this family and the family dynamics and them having to get through a bunch of kind of traumatic things that happened to several of them over the course of this trip to a pageant. And then the story does conclude with Olive competing and stuff like that. And then there's a little bit of examination of like, well, it's pretty fucked up that we have little girls compete in these pageants. We are encouraging like the

sexualization of children in these like children pageants. You know, I don't think, again, the movie goes into great detail about. I think it doesn't say a ton, but I feel like it says enough. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's not subtle. It's definitely not subtle. But it's not overbearing. It's not like the agenda of this movie isn't to indict or like heavily critique pageant culture.

There's a little bit of that. There's like a little sliver of it, especially most notably when Dwayne and Richard go to Cheryl backstage. And they're like, they basically said basically said like we're not in Kansas anymore this is a whole different ball game all of like everyone is going to laugh and ridicule people have like remortgaged their house to be here like yeah like and I thought it was interesting that they're uh I guess all the the girls in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant are actual pageant kids yes I read that as well and that they're like i guess i think this was like a kind of a smart thing to do that the pageant parents who came with with the girls were asked what do you think and they were like well it's a little

over the top but not too much and you're like oh boy but i've but i've also seen toddlers and tiaras so i don't ask me why. I got sick once and I watched a lot of it. I embarrassingly watched several, many, many episodes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Oh, I forgot that that was where Honey Boo Boo came from. Yeah, I think so. I think she was a Toddlers and Tiaras kid. Well, I'm glad that we at least, we very rarely have like an overlapping guilty pleasure.

That's a fun one. Yeah. So bottom line is like, I mean, we could have a whole discussion, which I think we've already had on various episodes of the podcast, just generally speaking about like, maybe beauty pageants aren't that good because, you know, there's this emphasis on adhering to western beauty standards and all those problems that we foist upon women and young girls like from a very early age like and it's it's the same thing of of richard being like you have to be skinny don't eat ice cream we want you to stay skinny and like just all these all these expectations that we foist

upon women and girls about like the your beauty is your most important quality and let's make a whole industry around exploiting that via beauty pageants and like how fucked up all of that is but then also like feminism says like you can can do whatever you want. So if you want to compete in beauty pageants, like do it. If you, if that empowers you. There have been like, I don't know. Beauty pageants.

It's like a very complicated discussion that we've had in various capacities. Yeah. I'm not wholesale condemning them. And it's like, you know, there, there are different ways to look at. I'm,

I'm not a fan, but I'm like also not petitioning to have them shut down i don't know i like this this movie is not you know making a new point about beauty pageants but but i don't think it's necessarily trying to and and i think it is kind of nice that the movie does firmly come down not on the side of it uh which is kind of nice because that's like a point that like miscongeniality doesn't get there she wins you know miss congeniality and she's like well maybe this was nice i think i'll stay hot you know like the that whole thing so it's like at least little miss sunshine you know firmly is like we don't fuck with this which is which is refreshing yeah

i i think like generally for the time we spend there the points that are made are good ones yeah there was uh did you see the the behind the scenes note that abigail breslin um wore like a padded suit to play this character oh no that is a thing that took place oh interesting i guess that the olive character was described in the script as, quote, plump. And that Abigail Breslin was asked to wear a padded suit. I see. Throughout filming. Okay.

So I will say, I think that that's a bit weird. I think that that's a bit weird uh i think that that's weird in general when a woman is asked to wear a padded suit that does not have to do with like needing to appear pregnant for a role right i generally don't like it right to me the idea is like if your story calls for a character that is yeah plus size then cast that an actor who fits that description. Which is not slight against Abigail Breslin in any way. She's, you know,

a very small child doing a great job in this movie. But I did think that that was kind of a, you know, I don't think that that would currently happen. Sure. So, hmm.

Sound off in the comments, gang. I don't love it. Here's another thing I didn't love. Again, in this movie where I do think there's a lot to love. It's a very white movie. Yes. As per most movies. I think the only woman of color we meet is Linda, the bereavement liaison or whatever her job title is.

Yeah. To me, she felt as though she was presented as a bit of a like bitchy obstacle type because it's like. Yeah, I think so. Her that the character has to sneak past to get dead grandpa out of the hospital. And she's kind of presented as an obstacle and things kind of there's a conversation between her and Richard that quickly escalates and to me it's because like he's being unreasonable and like trying to be this like entitled white guy who wants to bend the rules and thinks the rules don't apply to him and she's like no that's not how we do things there are you know rules and laws we have to abide by um so i'm like on her side during that scene but i think the movie frames her a bit more again as an obstacle i agree with

that you're saying i just think that that's maybe not a to get to the great scene where they smuggle a corpse out of the hospital i feel like it's not the best writing in the movie to like i feel like there's almost a little bit of like all right we can't just have them take a corpse we have to do something and so I feel like the way that her character acts and I I'm kind of curious if that part was written with a gender in mind uh when it was done I I could see that part being played by almost anybody but the way that that character talks to someone whose father has just died doesn't seem very realistic where i agree that richard is being entitled but like i mean that's not how people talk to someone who just found out

that their father overdosed on heroin like so in general i was like i don't i don't think that that scene was in a very like grounded movie that that scene and the cop scene you're just like all right i'm like i don't really this doesn't seem like a person who exists but whatever right yeah but i mean yeah it is an extremely white movie we're spending the whole time with this white family and then which just leads to the only people of color being you know in very small roles or used you know just in the background where there are some girls of color in the pageant but we don't know who they are we don't know what they're doing they're just you know and there's people at the pad but it's just background right which is also kind of inherent to this like wave of indie aesthetic

movies that came out in the 2000s it's all about white families right you know and and I think that the the revelation was that there was acoustic music and that the white families weren't always rich uh but it it wasn't like and the movies were too long not this one but a lot of them sure so it was just kind of like that thing we talk about all the time where it's like the smallest step out of the norm for a comedy and they're like well wait wait wait wait the white people are they're not millionaires and we're supposed to be like we did it you know right yeah yeah so for sure oh i'm forgetting about um miss california oh yes miss california frozen yogurt icon miss california um is also a woman of color feminist icon and fro-yo aficionado

fro-yo icon um also feminist icon kirby the guy who um puts olive in the system after they were four minutes late to register he was i also think that they made the the woman i don't remember the name of the character the woman who ran the pageant i'm saying pageant official jenkins she was written full shrew uh there was no that was another character that you're just like okay this is a i and we only have 20 minutes left but this is a bit you know but then to kind of contrast that we get feminist icon stage manager lady yeah she cracks a smile at the end yeah she's like yeah maybe pageants aren't good um one last thing i wanted to just touch on and I don't know why I like this is a thing I have fixated on throughout the course of the podcast, but I'm always noticing women's

relationship to cars and driving. Oh, yes. I had this too. Yes. So there is, believe it or not, folks, there's a stereotype out there on the streets that women be bad at driving. It comes from me. It comes as you, you invented it. I started it. You started it. I suck at driving. I, not to brag or anything. You're a good driver. But I'm an incredible driver. Thank you so much. And I have at different points in my life made a career out of it. Hooters delivery girl.

Yes, I was a Hooters delivery driver. Anyway, so we see the mom not being able to drive the stick shift. But okay, that didn't super bug me. Because well, the car was broken. The car was broken. She's willing to try. We also don't see, like, the version of this stereotype where she's, like, driving super recklessly and, like, causing, like, a trail of destruction in her path or anything like that. Because we see that in a few movies where, like, some, like, this oblivious, like, a woman is just, like, oblivious when she's behind the wheel of a car and it's just like oops and clueless not the sharing right right i was like wait what yeah and clueless um we get something like that in cameron diaz's character in my best friend's wedding like we see this um now and again so we don't see that version of this stereotype and also like i don't know i i tried to learn how to drive a stick shift most people don't know also could not learn so i'm like okay it is like one of the few things we learn about her character is that she can't drive stick and it's like oh god the

fact that we have to cling to that piece of information but that also i kind of like how that ended up too where like she makes an attempt to drive and the clutch isn't working and like richard is like well you just gotta like press down on the clutch and you just gotta it has to be on the floor and she's like it is on the floor he's explaining it to her right and then when they switch and he's trying it she's like just push down hard like she's sarcastic and then like earlier she's like you know I should try I can drive I'll try to drive I gotta learn you know you're doing it how hard can it be to Richard who she clearly hates and I can't wait for them to get divorced the end yeah yeah I just I mean more Toni Collette that's just it's it's that simple

more Toni Collette and we haven't really it's that simple. More Toni Collette. And we haven't really talked that much about Paul Dano. I like, I don't know. I like his character. I feel like it's a good expansion on the like broody teen boy character in a way that, and I guess this just applies to every character, like every character, no matter how, because it's like to an extent, Dwayne on paper sounds a little silly,

where he is very determined to get into the Air Force Academy. And you can also sort of see in that way is that his dad's logic has affected him of like he is trying to be a winner. He doesn't like his dad, but it's still, you know, parents fuck with your head. It's just canon. I also think, I think he's his stepdad. I think his dad, but it's still, you know, parents fuck with your head. It's just canon. I also think I think he's his stepdad.

I think his step. Yes. Sorry, because Tony Clark had a baby when she was 12. And then and then Greg Kinnear came into her life. Right. Either way, you can see that Richard's winner loser mentality has also kind of taken seed in a different way with Dwayne even though even though he doesn't like him that it's just such a pervasive mentality and has a lot to do with his masculinity and I just like every character in this family is dealt with with like really thoughtful empathy

so that things that I feel like a lesser writer and a lesser movie could easily make that Paul Dano character seem really silly, but it doesn't, I don't know just, I mean, and that's true with almost every character of like, you could make them into a caricature or you could like really give some insight into where they're coming from.

And it gets to that point where it's like that, that scene where he finds out he's colorblind is devastating. It's so, it's so sad. And I like that even when he basically, Paul Dano gets the thesis statement of the movie where he says like, you know, fuck beauty pageants. Life is like one beauty contest after another, which is even that like he's right. And it's the thesis statement of the movie but it's so like teen boy with a bowl cut like he's just like it's such a system man this sucks and then you're just like

oh shut up like you're right but shut up like it's just so well written i love it right it's such a like a 15 year old boy way of saying that he just he says it like he's the first person to have ever thought of it like it's just funny also, I don't know if you had this thought, but I was like, oh, man, like if this character like starts hanging out with like the wrong group of friends or if he like discovers Reddit, like he is an incel haircut. He is an incel. Like he will become an incel. Yeah.

He really I hope that I hope I feel like he like the one like the family relationship that I think will improve from this movie is that Frank and Dwayne will become close. I think that Frank will be a good... I think that they have a lot to learn from each other and I'm happy for them. I hope they go on a different road trip. Maybe Dwayne will also end up studying proust he i mean he's already into uh he loves nichi or nicha yeah those guys you're like that's all the same guy basically boring old guy as a job european writers yeah from a different century than the one we're in it seems they make

sense as relatives yeah anyways do you have anything else i also didn't know so michael aren't i mean he's just he is interesting to me because he's uh this has nothing to do with feminism this is just a like interesting there is like such a well-tracked pattern of like screenwriter writing one really well-received good thing and then being offered infinity money and they're then they're writing blockbusters for the rest of their career where michael arndt wrote little miss sunshine that was like his first major release it was a huge success and his biggest writers writing credits since then are Toy Story 3 he was the one that put Woody in the incinerator yep he is a credited writer on The Force Awakens and so he's only really done like big movies since

then and he'll sometimes rewrite big movies and the hunger games catching fire hunger like really a brave he did some work on brave oh wow how brave of him he's very in with the pixar crew it would seem and he's done he the one thing i mean he's done some indie stuff since then but it's like oh i hope that here's michael arndt if you're listening he's our biggest fan it seems like you have enough money for now and uh make another fun movie for us to watch thanks yes well that brings us to the um the directors which this movie was co-directed by a woman valerie ferris along with jonathan dayton they are a husband wife duo. This was their first feature. They had made a career of directing, I think, primarily music videos before this.

Music videos. They did that iconic Smashing Pumpkins Tonight Tonight video. They directed a lot of Mr. Shell. They're cool. They did that new show where... I didn't watch the show, and the premise of it is annoying to me, but maybe it's good. The new Netflix show where Paul Rudd is twins. Oh, that is not even really on my radar.

I think that that's fine. I don't know. Who knows? You never know with these things. And we've kind of touched on this before where it's like, okay, if a woman does get to like write or direct or co-direct or co-write a movie it's usually because like she's a part of like a husband-wife writing or directing duo because I feel like you know the system is such that no one wants to take a chance on just a like one woman without a partner as your creative partner, it's much less likely that anyone will take a chance on you and hire you.

Yeah, which has been true since the beginning of movies. Right. Where like some of the first female screenwriters, like they were extremely talented, but they were able to get in on the ground floor because of a position that their spouse held. Yeah. So, I mean, we don't know what the story is with this directing couple they're great

like i like their stuff yeah same maybe i mean maybe they don't want to work separately but i would be i would be interested to see you know it's hard i mean it's like yeah we just don't know what her exact input was no but uh valerie come on the cast and let us know she's also our biggest fan she's our other biggest fan so she's listening so she's she's everyone involved in this movie listens paul danno used to come to the coffee shop that i lived near oh no way yeah and one time melissa lazada oliva friend of the cast was staying with me and he she was like reading a book because she's like that she's reading a book at the coffee shop oh whatever books and and then paul dana was like that book's good and she was like oh it was very exciting and then she like ran back to my house

and was like paul dana read a book it was really really exciting stuff incredible thank you but yeah i think that's all i had did you have anything else i think that that's everything yeah no i um i really like this movie but does it pass the bechdel test it does again not as much as you would necessarily think i think it goes back to the i want a stronger relationship between uh olive and cheryl thing and you do get some tender moments you know you get that moment when they're in the hospital and you know she gives this whole speech about like we're gonna have a family meaning and you know we have to stick together and i just love you guys so much and then we get the duane is like writes on his little you know notepad like go hug mom i know which is such a sweet older sibling thing to do too you're just like oh but what i really want is more screen time between olive and cheryl and for that relationship to be explored more and for cheryl as a character to just be given more of an interior life and because

there was room dedicated to all the other characters at length yeah and i mean it would have been a real like i mean a super issue if we were not getting enough olive on top of that but it's like you know the women in this van are already outnumbered don't shortchange one of them unfortunately i mean yeah i think the bechdel test problem this is this is actually a movie where i feel like the bechdel test is a very useful metric to use which isn't true for but but for this one i think it is yeah because it just it passes but but not as much as it should given who's in it i think the one the conversation that i was like really locked on to was um toward the end when Cheryl is like,

basically gives all of an out. If she wants it, she's like, you know, if you sat this one out, cause, cause she also, I think senses that all of is apprehensive about competing.

Cause she is looking at the other girls and she's, she knows that she is scared. There's that scene where she like looks at herself in the mirror. She's examining her body. She's wearing the swimsuit. Why do we have to have little girls parade around in swimsuits to be judged by pageant judges? It's horrifying. But anyway, so like Cheryl's like, you know, Olive, if you want to sit this one out, you can totally do that. But Olive's like, no, I'm competing. So that whole exchange was one that I really enjoyed.

And shall we rate it on our nipple scale we shall uh zero to five nipples based on its representation of women even though i would give this movie like i would give it a 10 out of 10 on the rompometer i would give it like a five out of five on just like movies i love but as far as our nipple scale i would i would go down to maybe like a three and a half or maybe like an even like a 3.25 because even though the female characters we do get to know i really love them i i love chery Cheryl's character even though we're not given a whole lot of additional information about her just aside from her role in the movie as the mother just especially because like it's clearly established that she has a job and we just don't find out what it is

we don't know anything about her and it was frustrating yeah but even so i do i do love her character i'm so on her side all of the all of i'll get it all of the time ha well that brings me to olive who i also really love like she's such a sweet little girl and yeah i just this is a movie that i guess is about a family unit that I think should give more focus to the female characters and that relationship between those two female characters. So them as individuals and them as a like mother-daughter dynamic. I would have loved to see that explored more. But even so, I think I'll go with a 3.5. Because it handles a lot of other things. Well, as we've discussed the portrayal of mental illness, the fact that we have a queer character, which by

my point of view, and again, you know, I might be coming in with some blind spots here, but it felt to me like that was handled pretty responsibly. And yeah, it's just a sweet, I love a dark comedy. You know, I love I love that climactic sequence when the entire family gets on stage, which is like, kind of signifies every character arc that we see, even though again, Cheryl isn't really given much of an arc, all the other the men get to change, but the woman stays pretty static throughout. But only because she's already such a good mom. I don't know. Three and a half nipples.

I'll give one to Toni Collette. I will give one to Abigail Breslin. I will give one to the Volkswagen bus. And I'll give my half nipple I'll give it to Uncle Frank I'm gonna give this a 3.5 as well for for much the same reasons I feel like there is an opportunity for I mean of all the male relationships we get to explore in this movie whether it be between i mean there was a moment where i was like oh yes every movie is about fathers and sons when alan arkin tells greg kaneer like i'm proud of you you tried that's good you're just like okay i don't really care

uh the like you find out about that relationship you find out a little bit about you know the tension between richard and frank you find out about the tension between Dwayne and Richard like you get a blossoming friendship between Frank and Dwayne and you just that there's not that many versions of relationships for women to have because there's only two and we don't really get it so that was a little disappointing and I feel like is just kind of single male writer you know culture of you know they're they're writing what they know and they don't know how to make women talk to each other at length and so they just don't so that was a bummer but I do I agree that I like that I mean Toni Collette can do a lot with a little which I think she does here uh yes I like that she is the breadwinner like i mean

the the frustrating thing is everything i know about her i like and i wish i knew more and i wish that the movie almost had like the confidence it has in its male characters to allow her to fail a little bit outside of her maternal role but ultimately it is a wonderful movie i laughed to cry it's great olive is a wonderful character i feel like she would be our friend as an adult um i like she she's the best i also think it's so i mean it is kind of nice to see demonstrated how pervasive beauty pageant culture is where I feel like sometimes you get the idea from media of like oh only you know young women who have pageant families or only young women who look a certain way are interested in pageant culture but it it is so pervasive that it gets to everyone one way or another and all of of, you know, is in by no means a pageant pushing family.

And she still develops, you know, a want to participate. And I think that that's something that you don't really see acknowledged a lot. So I liked, I liked that. I like her. I want to know what she's like when she's older.

And yeah, this is the beautiful sequel. Where's that? Actually, you know what? I think that that sounds good and then when you would see it you're like i actually don't want it like just write a different movie maybe but yeah i think it's a wonderful movie three and a half

nippies wished that there had been more of the female relationship but i'll give one to Tony Collette, one to Abigail Breslin, and one to the lady who held Abigail Breslin's hand on the way to the stage. Oh, yeah. And then a half nipple to Alfred Molina, who should have been in this movie. I wonder what he was doing. I wonder what he was up to. I feel like Alfred Molina should have been. He would have been really – I won't recast any of the family because I feel like it is the perfect cast for the family.

But maybe if they made Alfred Molina in the audience of the pageant as a really intense pageant parent, that would be great. Well, please and thank you. Let's recut the movie. Let's put him in there. In 2006, he was in the da vinci code oh that's a bum that's not even a good that's a bad excuse it's probably a better paycheck though listen he's got children that's true anyways but yeah three and a half nipples and and a lovely movie happy birthday caitlin oh my gosh thank you so much yeah i i'm so glad we we finally got

around to talking about this movie oh here's something we can plug so we're you know our social media uh twitter and instagram follow us there at bechtel cast my actual birthday is on may 17th hello i'm a tourist thank you so much on my birthday, we are going to do just a Instagram live hangout, the two of us. Yes, it's going to be fun. A chill hang. We're going to be encouraging donations to your local food bank if you're able to donate if you're in a position to do that. And yeah, come hang out with us. That's going to be at 2 p.m pacific time sunday may 17th and then in addition to that you can subscribe to our matreon our may treon get it there's no better time there's no better month there's literally no better month and then of course our merch can be found on tpublic.com

slash the bechtel cast where you can get all of your merch needs I think that'll about do it yeah we cherish you we hope that you're you're safe and and doing well and we'll talk to you soon we love you we all won the pageant oh my gosh we all won little miss sunshine wow that was that is what I would say if I actually hadn't wanted the movie. I'd be like, um, and then she wins. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadson. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn

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