The Bechdel Cast - Manhattan

Episode Date: October 23, 2017

Breaking: Every man in entertainment is scum! JK we have known this forever, but in light of recent events and in support of all the victims coming forward, Caitlin and Jamie dig into the daddy of all problematic movies that men are still recommending to us at crummy parties: Woody Allen's Manhattan.(This episode contains spoilers)For more Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone on Twitter!   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. 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 Bechdelcast. Hi! Welcome to the Bechdelcast.

I already sound so excited. I guess this isn't really. So, uh, bonus episode alert. Yeah. We're doing an episode that's, and it's a bonus, but it's, it's grim. It's a grim, it's a grim bonus. It's still the scariest month of the year. True. And truly the news has been proving it is the scariest

month of the year. Woo! So, we are doing a bonus episode. Obviously if you're clicking on it you know what it's about. It's about the 1979 Woody Allen movie Manhattan. And why have we chosen to do this movie?

Oh god. I mean we really dug deep inside. No we literally like woke up and looked at the screens that we sleep next to and it said that you know everything is a nightmare which we knew yes Harvey Weinstein Harvey Weinstein Woody Allen dozens of others right it's been it's been I mean I would say a deeply troubling a couple of weeks for all the allegations that are coming out it's it's very positive that they're being

brought out to the world but it it's hard. Right, especially because victims who are coming forward are receiving some backlash, especially Woody Allen saying things like, oh, I don't support what Harvey Weinstein did, but, you know, let's not start a witch hunt. You know, witch hunts, those things that men used to do to women for no reason other than they were threatened by women existing in the world around them. Right. So we thought it would be perhaps useful to look back on an example of a very predatory movie made by an allegedly very predatory person and talk about it because it is wild watching this movie now came out what 38 years ago now is while watching this movie and ever thinking that this was like this is a this is amazing like this isn't

a hard movie to watch at all right i saw it for the first time probably in college probably around 10 years ago and that was the only time i had seen it but i didn't remember even what it was about i didn't remember that a 42 year old man was in a relationship with a 17 year old girl i just didn't remember that that's what the story was because 10 years ago you know i guess i just wasn't i mean i probably was like oh that's a that's weird and then i just forgot about it whereas today well and i think that a lot of work is done by the movie itself to really glaze over any problems that are there where i mean we'll get into that too, where no one at the movie really raises a stink other than a passing joke

at the fact that there are crimes happening in front of them. Right. So I think that the world Woody Allen creates, and, I mean, we weren't alive for it, but it seems like the general society at that time did not point stuff like this out, and so the movie doesn't point it out, and that's bad. I first saw this movie in college as well but it did bother me quite a bit because I saw this movie

this would have been late 2013 which is when allegations about Woody Allen were first starting to surface. It like really exploded in early 2014, but late 2013 there was rumblings and I had to take a class to graduate school. And so I ended up having to take this class about Charlie Kaufman, Woody Allen, and Billy Wilder films. So we had to watch a lot of Woody Allen films and I recall not liking them, not doing well in the class, and getting in trouble for specifically being like this is gross why is he fucking a kid like that in particular got me in trouble in that

class see i so i took a directing class uh because you know i did go to film school twice and i was given like the script to a scene in manh Manhattan to be like okay let's see how you would direct this and it's the scene between Woody Allen's character and Tracy's character the 17 year old girl no kidding the one where they're in bed and he has just moved into his new apartment and he's talking about like the water being brown and the the noises from the his neighbors and stuff like that yeah and like at the time I was just like oh I'll just direct this scene like it didn't really occur to me like how gross and problematic that and that was a school assignment like I had that's great yeah I mean it was like yeah I what was my professor thinking I had literally had no choice but to watch these 20 or i couldn't graduate like

it's just great and also i i not to say this was a benefit in any way but i i was armed with a lot of a lot more information in late 2013 of like this guy was basically being i mean not that there was no way to tell as he had already married his daughter. But there were serious allegations coming out and it just felt wrong to be idolizing this work in any way. Especially when it's just like he really is just laying it out in front of you of like, I'm a predator. I fuck kids. I did like, you're just like, oh. He's unapologetic about it, and it's nuts. Not even unapologetic. Like, he's victimizing himself. Right.

About, like, it's just, okay. So let's talk about the movie. Yes. Manhattan comes out in 1979 after Annie Hall, after he's sort of said that, I guess we're doing this now, you know. We're watching Woody Allen do the same fucking thing 95 times great yeah i'll do the recap uh manhattan is about a woody allen type character about woody allen about woody allen

his character though is named isaac and he is in a relationship with a 17 year old funny and everyone's like wow she's beautiful and he's like she's 17 in public in public she's in high school she's 17 isn't this funny isn't this weird and the characters respond by saying yeah that is weird that is funny where it's just like i i you know we weren't there in 1979 but i find it very hard to believe that there's two characters responding, oh, that is so weird. Because it was a crime. Toward the end, she's like,

I turned 18, so I'm legal now. Acknowledging that the sex they were having before was not legal, which it wasn't, and no one gave any shit about it. No. Not even the characters in the movie. Who?

Woody Allen and another straight white guy whose name eludes me at this point. Oh, it's Yale? No, no, no. Like the co-writer for the movie. Oh. Marshall Brickman. Marshall Brickman. So they write this movie together.

They're writing all these female characters. Meaning they're directing, you know, like Diane Keaton's character. Who on paper and in i think several parts of the movie is a good character i would agree he's given a background and it's like man i hate that there's a good female character in this movie but i mean she has she is armed with all the information she is intelligent she is she's very outspoken very outspoken doesn't seem to care doesn't seem to care, doesn't seem to care. And it's like how fucking convenient that you're very empowered female character just

also doesn't seem to notice that you're fucking a kid. And if she mentions it, mentions it as like, so weird that this is going on. At one point, so there's a character named Yale, which is Woody Allen's character's best friend, and he's married to Emily. At one point, Emily says, oh no, I don't think character's best friend. And he's married to Emily. At one point, Emily says, Oh, no, I don't think 17's too young. That's like in the first 15 minutes of the movie. And I know, and to all you flaming hot trolls out there

who are like, the women in the movie, yeah, but the women in the movie, those words weren't put there by a woman. They were put there by two men. So it's like these relatively realized female characters spouting nonsense like it's just oh yeah anyways sorry i love how worked up we are it's infuriating movie to watch it's at times deeply uncomfortable we laughed at two different parts and that was upsetting too yeah we were like i hate that i found that funny i hate the chuckle i hated it it was just oh god okay anyways so okay so isaac is dating a 17 year

old woman his friend yale is married but he starts seeing this woman mary played by dan keaton woody allen meets mary and he's like, Oh, I actually, I like her too. There's another thing in here where it's like, Oh, we're going to forgive him for these heinous crimes he's committing because he's awkward. Again, the use of an awkward personality as an excuse to do fucking insane things. I'm going to go ahead and coin the term stuttercore. This is a stuttercore movie.

All Woody Allen movies are stuttercore this is a stuttercore movie all woody allen movies are stuttercore and which just to say you can shave 15 minutes off the top of the fucking movie right so he meets mary and they get off to a rocky start but then he starts to like mary and mary starts to likes him so he's conflicted oh do i stay with this 17 year old girl or do i hang out with mary even though she's also dating my friend yale there's like kind of all this back and forth also he's writing a book he's writing a book he quits his job as a tv writer he's an artiste which comes into play later he surrounds himself with affluent white fucking pretentious people which and it's dumb which i know but like it's very intentional what woody allen chooses to satirize in this movie and what he does not choose to satirize in this movie because i think he is satirizing bullshit intellectualism quite a

bit by being like look at these people they're so smart. They're at museums and observatories and planetariums all the time, but they don't have it together. He's commenting on that. The things he is not commenting on are just as glaring such as he is fucking a kid. This is barely commented on. And in the way

it's commented on, Tracy Marielle Hemingway's character is being developed at the expense of the protagonist. Which is like another... Sorry, continue. I mean, I'm almost done. I don't really know what else happens. It's not an exciting movie. No!

So at some point he breaks up with Tracy, the 17-year-old girl. He starts to go in sort of full force with Mary and their relationship. And then Mary, meanwhile, is like, actually, I think I still love Yale. So she and Yale kind of get back together. And then Woody Allen's character is like, hmm, well, I'm lonely. So I better go back to the girl, to the child. But here's the twist. She's not a child now. She's 18, so she's legal.

Fucking crazy. Fucking crazy. Having gaslit her throughout the entire movie, because she's like, I might want to go and study in London. And he's like, yeah, you should. Actually, we probably shouldn't be together. You're young, but not to any point where he's going to really do anything about it. at the end she's like okay i'm gonna go to london like you said i should and he's like actually no i'm lonely now no i don't have anyone to validate me and then she you know but

what what does six months matter if we're in love which is you know a very 18 year old thing to say and it ends with him like smiling and be like oh yeah maybe there's no there's never even the looming threat of a consequence for treating this situation the way he does for committing a crime over and over and over it's openly discussed between the two characters you can't even call it an open secret it's not a secret he's taking her out in public yeah we don't know that much about her parents or or we're gonna say nothing we know nothing we really know nothing about her character apart from her age and that she apparently is interested in acting and going abroad to study that right and she you she goes to high school.

This trope we've talked about before, and it applies more to sci-fi characters generally, but it did want to bring up the born sexy yesterday trope. Oh, yeah. And that with Tracy and Isaac, it's like the dynamic in what we sort of are led to believe is appealing about it for Isaac, is that he's teaching this girl.

He's teaching her intellectually. He's teaching her, teaching her. He's raping her. But he's teaching her sexually. Or that's his impression or whatever. Just the fact that there's no point in the movie where it's brought up as anything but a funny thing. It is never addressed it as a crime it's indirectly addressed as a crime where it's a joke that she's legal now right and there's no there's no threat

that he'll he will receive any punishment and in fact he doesn't and he still hasn't so great for woody allen fuck off i was at a bar last night and i was like yeah brag and i was like oh sorry i'm late i had to watch manhattan we're doing it tomorrow on my podcast and my friends were like what why and i'm like well what better way to introduce all the fucking problematic shit that's happening in hollywood right now and that has always been happening. Then a widely regarded movie where a major plot point is repeated rape. Amazing. There, for anyone who is like, but wait, okay, let's think. Top of the dome. Cinematography. Sure, great. There is a scene in a planetarium where lights are used.

George Gershwin, very talented man, also deeply problematic. You can go into that Google Hall yourself. New York, a city that exists. The technical merits of this movie is not what we're here to discuss. So if that's where you're coming from in terms of like, but the rapes look so good. no fuck off enjoy your life also i don't like this movie like it's not it's oh yeah i hate that it made me chuckle i hate it same i have a i have a deep mistrust for anyone who's like yeah manhattan's a great film fuck off goodbye we No, it's not. Goodbye.

We have to be going. So we've discussed... Tracy is obviously the glaring major, major, major issue in this movie. But the other two main female characters are Mary, Diane Keaton's character, and Jill, who is Woody Allen's second ex-wife. Correct. I didn't mention her in the recap. She's played by Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep.

And she's depicted as this, like, angry shrew. It's a shrewish character. Yeah. So the plot point there is, unless I'm mistaken, she is writing a memoir about her marriage. What a shitty partner Woody Allen was. Like a tell-all kind of memoir thing. Yeah.

She is also now living with her girlfriend and raising woody allen's son that's she has primary custody of woody allen's and her son right and woody allen is very uncomfortable with two women raising his son oh yeah which is brought up as a joke and sort of there's the scene we see like one longish scene between Isaac and the son where you mentioned he hits his son

because his son's trying to get his dad to buy him like a toy boat and he's pointing to the bigger more expensive one and then Woody Allen just like strikes him in the head so there's that and him in the head. So there's that. And then in the next cut, they're at some sort of restaurant.

And Isaac is saying, like, oh, we could, like, you know, basically presents his son with, like, I know you're being raised by two women, but don't forget about toxic masculinity. Like, it's just insane. Where he talks about picking up women as, like, a joke to his kid. Yeah, he's like, if you were quicker, we could have picked those women up. Just, you know, teaching him how to be a fucking creep. Tee hee. Also, it doesn't take too much of a leap to say that Woody Allen is kind of villainizing Jill Meryl Streep's character's sexuality as well.

Oh, definitely. Like, he's just saying, like, this shrewish gay woman. And it's also presented, and I thought this was interesting, I was reading Roger Ebert went back and watched this movie and had more come about it in 2001. He writes about this character specifically in a way that I think was weird, where he says, Isaac's former wife, Meryl Streep, left him to live with a woman and write the best seller, ridiculing their marriage and love life.

We doubt her new relationship is sound if it leaves her so obsessed with the previous one. That is, I mean, and maybe that is how that reads to another straight white man. But that, I mean, i mean that's also just pure speculation because you don't see that much of their relationship on screen but i think we are led to believe that you know it's like well jill can't get over it and she's trying to capitalize on what a shitty partner he was and now she dates a woman where i feel like almost the implication is woody allen was such a bad husband that he turned her gay that was what i took away that's sort of how he i think he

character yeah i think that that's what the movie thinks you know regardless of the integrity of this character who deserved better i don't know i mean, and that is an individual's read. But I think the fact that a professional movie critic's read was like, well, she's still so hung up on him. It's like, you can't conflate trauma with being in love. Right. And still being hung. Like, being angry about someone abusing you does not equal,

she's still in love with him. But I think that that is what the movie would have you believe in that bob oh sure well i made a list of all the things or not even i probably didn't even hit all of them but many of the you have a comprehensive list let's not shortchange this list but i'm saying that there were so many that i probably missed some because this is such a fucking again stuttercore movie that i can't even not to shame people with stutters no stutter shaming no stutter shaming here i'm just saying that woody allen should fall off the edge of the planet sure so i made a list of all the things that uh he says either to or about women in the movie the first one is he's talking to tracy this is after she's like

i think i'm in love with you for the first time pretty early on in the movie and he says don't get carried away you're a kid as long as the cops don't burst in we're gonna break a couple records and then later he's like get dressed like i'm gonna fuck a kid more than anyone's ever fucked a kid jesus christ and then he's like get dressed because you got to get out of here. I don't want you to be comfortable here. You can't stay here. Right. Does all he can to make Tracy's character not feel like she is a permanent fixture in his life. Totally. That and this is like sort of the beginning of him gaslighting her because constantly throughout the movie he's saying you're too young. You don't understand what

love is because she keeps being like I love you she literally says over and over take me seriously listen to me yeah and but and then he's just like you're not old enough like you don't know what love is you're too young yeah but that criticism has never turned inward of like maybe this is the wrong thing to be doing because it ends with oh maybe i will get to fuck this kid again. Okay, sorry, continue your list. Later, he says to Jill, his ex-wife, Meryl Streep, of the two of us, I was not the immoral, psychotic, promiscuous one. Oh, is that a reference to her sexuality? I think probably so.

Excellent. Great. Later on, to Tracy, and this is after she's like, oh, you know, maybe people aren't meant to just like be with one person forever. It's kind of gone out of date. Again, more gaslighting because he's like, don't you tell me what's gone out of date. You're 17. You were brought up on drugs, television, and the pill.

Gaslighting, belittling her experience. He knows better. Yeah. Because he has less hair. And then after, this is after he meets mary he says about her what a creep she was overbearing she was terrible she was all cerebral if she said one more thing about bergman i would have knocked her other contact lens out so i don't like that she's smart i want to hit her okay i'll just i'll just talk to translate, please. This is good. Shortly after

that, he says about Jill, I got a divorce because my ex-wife left me for another woman. Mary says, that must have been really demoralizing. Isaac says, I tried to run them both over with a car. Mary says, that's incredible sexual humiliation, and I think that's enough to turn you off of women, which I found to be a very bizarre scene because Mary has been set up and later on the movie continues to be the smartest and most rational in her thinking and all of that but because this character was written by two men she's just reinforcing what Woody Allen actually thinks which which is, yeah, for me to have been left by a woman for another woman, how humiliating.

Well, I think that this is sort of something that comes up in a lot of Woody Allen's movies, where I wish I had a snappier title for it, but a feminist character written by a man, so not really a feminist character, but one that in appearance and behavior in profession there's enough there that you're just like oh you know like you you would trust diane keaton's character but she's still being written by a villain basically right

and so when she glosses over the fact that woody allen's fucking a so when she glosses over the fact that Woody Allen's fucking a kid, when she glosses over villainizing queer people as an audience member, you know, if you're not, you know, you're sort of being told, don't think about it. The character you trust thinks that, you know, right. Queer people's lives don't matter either. And stupid people with no critical thinking skills would just be like, yeah, I agree. Right. Or people who have not encountered alternate ways of thinking. Because Woody Allen's, all of his work is, we're told is so intellectual and so smart that it's like, where are you supposed to be questioning? Where are you not supposed to be questioning? Yeah. He directs your focus in very deliberate ways and also directs your focus away okay translation i tried to kill gay people who hurt my feelings

response that sucks for you and i can understand why you would have done that i get it would have done the same thing myself fuck that moving on later on he says to Mary, well, first Mary's talking about Tracy and she's like 16 years old. No possible threat at all. Isaac says she's 17. You know, sometimes you have a losing personality, Mary. Uh, what do you want? I'm honest. I say what's on my mind. And if you can't take it, then fuck off. Isaac. i like the way you express yourself too it's pithy yet degenerate you get many dates i don't think so a very witty exchange in which women being smart is stupid and people calling woody allen out on his bullshit is stupid yep there's more don't worry oh good this is about Jill. He's talking to Mary. He says, my son is being raised by two women.

Mary says, I've read studies. You don't need a man. Two mothers are absolutely fine. Isaac says, I feel very few people survive one mother. This is Woody Allen saying, probably something happened to me a very long time ago that was emasculating and now for the next 60 plus years i will take it out on any woman i come into contact with yes and then again about his mother later on isaac says i wrote a short story about my mother the castrating zionist uh this is woody allen saying uh i'm trying to make this seem like a fun Jewish caricature,

but what it actually is is I hate every woman I've ever met. All of these exchanges, by the way, happened in the first half hour of the movie. Yeah. So this is when I got very frustrated and maybe stopped paying as close attention, but there's a few more. Later to Jill, he is gaslighting her and saying i did not try to run you and your lover over with my car even though he's confirmed that earlier in the movie exactly and she's like well what were you doing by the cabin anyway and

he's like i was spying on you uh the there's no there's no words i think he just uh he just he really hit the nail on the head on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No translation needed. Oh, we talked about this one. We talked about that one. Yeah, that was the one where he's next to two women in the restaurant and he's explaining to his son how they should have picked them up and fucked them. You know, his son, a six-year-old boy.

And obviously, again, haters haters it is written as a joke but i would argue that that is just as much of a problem that he's like hey here's a terrible way to think about women and then like a little winky to the audience like this is funny he's never gonna learn like it's not funny nope and then uh later on to Jill, this is after her book has come out about their relationship. He opens the door and says, I came here to strangle you. Well, sure. Very funny. Great joke. Um, so the three main characters, Tracy is just totally, like, you're right, I didn't even realize how little we know about her other than she. She sometimes has exams. Which we are to believe, you know, probably Woody Allen's character doesn't know a lot about her either.

Because they don't discuss parts of her life very often. It's almost like he's never asked. Then we have Diane Keaton's character who is just maybe the most troubling of all because she's just a bunch of smoke and mirrors in terms of a fully realized female character where all, you know, all the elements are there but it's hollow and rings totally hollow and that just sucks. Yeah. There are a few moments where I'm like, okay, I'm glad that she did this thing or says this thing. Yeah, well, let's talk about that. Well, there's a moment where she's talking to a director friend of hers. And he's talking about this movie he's directing about a man who's such a sexual dynamo.

Oh, right, right, yeah. Anytime he brings a woman to orgasm she dies and she's just like this is horrid so she calls him out she calls out yale for saying like oh does your love for me always need to express itself sexually because he's all like let's go to a hotel and fuck and well to be fair hailey he says make love oh he's sorry let's make let's make love anyways and then she's just like what about other values like warmth and spiritual contact so she's like value me in other ways besides you being able to have sex with me sorry make love to me but again i i feel these like which i agree that like her character is is right in all of these issues,

but even though she sees the more aggressive behavior of men as something she doesn't want to deal with, the world totally writes out any of the predatory behaviors with the person that she, you know, with Woody Allen's character where, okay, so this character is written to see very aggressive masculinity you know where it's like when i fuck a woman she comes so hard she dies great but that but there's a total blind spot set up for that same character of someone she's close to fucking a kid you know like yeah it's just and that's what's troubling to me about it is with this, and I think it extends to a lot of, like, Woody Allen's female characters, even the very well-written ones or the ones that are, you know, hailed as well-written.

He directs your focus in such a specific way, and I feel like these moments of, like, oh, she's smart, she knows what she's talking about, they're put there very deliberately for for the sake of the story in the movie but also so that you notice less when she's ignoring things and that and her whole pursuit i mean she's working on things professionally she's a journalist we know what she does for a living that's good she's writing. She's working on different projects. Right. But her, seems like her main pursuit throughout the whole movie is landing a man that she wants.

You know, it's between Yale and Woody Allen's character. And she just keeps going back and forth. And she keeps saying, like, I deserve better. Da da da. But, like, she's trying to stand up for herself. But, like, really. She's insecure. Sure, but it boils down to, like, her pursuit in this

movie if you're just like looking at her character and her character's goals and what she's trying to achieve it's romance it's a romantic relationship and right it's i mean sure this is like a romantic movie where i mean with every character in this movie every main character is bouncing between two people at least yeah but i think her character is is a little different in that the two male characters so isaac and then yale which like oh god hit me we get it he's smart they both spend a lot of their movie trying to break up with women where the women spend a lot of time in the movie trying to convince the man that they are worth staying with. That was what was more of an issue for me, because everyone is going between multiple people, and I think that in theory that's a part of the point of like, oh, love is a clown game.

But there are scenes, there's a scene between Yale and Mary where Mary is basically just like, no, this is fine, I'm totally fine, it's great. And then we sort of see her try to convince him that she's worth staying with. And in the end, he does end up staying with her. Well, and then as soon as they break up, she bounces right back to Woody Allen. Right, where they are each other's second choice. Yeah. Pretty decisively.

Which is, whatever, plot point. But there's two different scenes where Woody Allen, which is whatever plot point but there's two different scenes where woody allen i mean woody allen's trying to break up with mariel hemingway pretty much every single scene yeah and then she especially is constantly trying to convince him like listen to me i i these are the reasons that you should stay with me and he's constantly trying to leave her so even though it's like every character here is bouncing between multiple interests there's never a pressure on the man to prove to the woman what his worth is it's assumed that they have value where the female characters are kind of constantly trying to prove themselves yeah which is not at all surprising from a movie that is like i mean woody allen is the king of like self-indulgent

i'm the writer director actor hero of my own stories every single time and he makes a point to say like several times and i'm not sure you could argue that these are like these are the jokes but he's like look how good i am at fucking his character says it in this movie and i'd imagine i think it's a joke if Ryan Gosling says it. It's not a joke if it's clearly, like, you know, not as stereotypically alpha male as constantly. Like, it just doesn't read, especially if you're writing those lines for yourself.

Right. Like, it's a joke if someone writes that line for Woody Allen, maybe. Mm-hmm. And there's also a few different, there's, like, that scene with mary where she's like you have a pretty good sense of humor he's like well you don't have to tell me that i know that oh right he's like i make a fucking living off it you dumb idiot right right right it was like but yeah so anyways do you want to fuck me like there's just like i'm great at fucking too yeah there's no

pressure on the male characters to prove themselves really in any regard excellent point and there's no consequences presented to them except that they won't get fucked those are the only consequences right there's no uh well there's a joke about going to jail but that's never never a present threat another female character i wanted to talk about who doesn't get much screen time at all but emily yale's wife right basically every time she's on screen she's like how about we have kids so our whole whole thing is like let's have kids i want to have kids which it's all women can think about i mean if a woman wants to have children so much power to her but when you write a female character that that is apparently the only thing on her mind and we know virtually nothing else about that character

and is also presented as this is why i want to leave this lady right because he's cheating on his wife with diane keaton's character yeah she's like nag nag nag kids kids kids and he's like oh how about i go and fuck other women instead? Number one, sexist. Number two, bad writing. Which is how you could really characterize this whole movie if you wanted to. It's sexist and it is bad writing. Do we have anything else to say about the movie?

Another thing I wanted to talk about is how Manhattan and I would guess a lot of Woody Allen movies based on the ones I've seen are extremely white. Yeah. Woody Allen's characters always seem to be friends with only white people. There are no people of color with any you know significant screen time or story beats or lines of dialogue in this movie. I think you only see two people of color in the entire movie who are helping him move into his new apartment, but they don't have any lines or anything like that. Right. And Woody Allen is Jewish, so he's not, you know, your waspy, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon type of white. And I want to acknowledge the persecution and prejudice that Jewish people have faced throughout history and also today but the fact remains that Woody Allen has a habit of

populating his movies with only white people and it's especially crazy for this movie called Manhattan set in Manhattan New York City where are all the people of color? The other thing I wanted to bring up is the age gap that exists in this movie and then across most Hollywood movies. I mean, this one is egregious, but then I think is almost the only pro that we could say for the massive age gap between Tracy and Isaac is that at least it is pointed out. Where in most movies, I don't think it's even pointed out. You're, yeah, absolutely right. So I'm taking some stats from an article from Vulture in 2013.

I'm sure things have gotten better since then. They've gotten so much better. The title of the article is Leading Men Age But Their Love Interests Don't pointing out that, you know hollywood stars who are men get older because that's how time works but their female counterparts the love interests of their characters pretty much the same age which tends to be late 20s early to mid 30s um harrison ford he just started in that new movie blade runner for 2069 uh and they're yeah i mean it's just all these sorry it took me a second to notice

what you said and he's still allowed to star in movies get harrison ford out of movies he's still allowed to star in movies. Get Harrison Ford out of movies. He's not allowed anymore. Get him out. Retire, bitch. Harrison Ford, bitch, retire. I'm fine with Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford, bitch, retire.

But he is listed in this article as someone who has love interests that do not get much older and that he usually has a pretty huge age gap with. The closest one, it seems, was when he was in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was 38. His love interest, Karen Allen, was 29. Harrison Ford, bitch, retire. A crazy age difference was when he was in Six Days, Seven Nights and Anne Heche was 29 and he was 55. So he got older. His love interest was still in her late 20s.

Other examples. Ooh. So Johnny Depp is a heinous piece of shit, but... Yeah, Johnny Depp, bitch, retire. Yeah, I agree with that one. Bitch, literally go to jail. However, he is in one of my favorite movies, Chocolat. He is 37.

I hate that Alfred Molina had to even meet him. I don't know if they have any... Do they have scenes together? Maybe they don't. I don't remember. We'll do it. We'll rewatch it. But he is 37 in that character, in his love interest, Juliette Binoche.

She's 36, so there's only one year age difference, which is... You don't get a trophy for that no no no because in transcendence he's 49 and rebecca hall is 30 so that's you know full-on we're we're at daddy status at that point yeah totally it's tom cruise also bad tom cruise pretty bad bradley cooper oh brother where Thou another one of my favorite movies. He's 39 and his wife played by

Holly Hunter in that movie is 42 so she's three years older than him. Amazing. Richard Gere's

another one. Richard Gere Dribble Butt Theory look it up. Brad Pitt Liam Neeson Tom Hanks actually

they point out that he tends to be with age appropriate women in his movies well there's that there's one there woody allen i mean yeah what um there's no way you can spin that the relationship between he and mariel hemingway's character to make it good but the age difference is acknowledged and we're in most movies it's not even. It's an assumed thing.

Right. It's just like, oh, of course this handsome older man would have a young 20 or more years younger than him love interest. And then I think that in movies very commonly, if the inverse does occur, it is immediately acknowledged. Oh, right. And made as a point of like, why would a handsome young man want to be involved with an older woman? I rewatched Nightcrawler last night. Oh, I haven't seen that. It is very good.

It reeks of toxic masculinity, but I like it a lot. So Jake Gyllenhaal's character, who we're supposed to think is in his late 20s, early 30s, is interested in Renehaal's character who we're supposed to think is in his late 20s early 30s is interested in renee rusa's character who's i think supposed to be in her 40s or 50s and he pursues her and it's constantly their age difference is constantly brought up because she's like why would you want to be with me i'm too old and he's like i'm i'm secure enough to be with an older woman where that's never the issue in the inverse. Like a younger woman never has to say,

I'm secure enough with myself to be with an older man. It's just assumed that it's going to happen. Well, so, okay, Cupid, you know, they do all their like analytics of dating patterns and stuff like that. Stealing our thoughts and feelings. And they compiled a graph. It's it's like oh a woman's age versus the age of the men she's attracted to and it's basically they tend to be attracted to men very close to their same age it's generally like i mean a direct correlation old men are gross i think

not uh true because spinning any heads the and this of course is you know very hetero this is you know for hetero relationships but a man's age versus the women he's attracted to is no matter how old he is we don't crack 25 we do not crack 25 all the way up to you age 50 yeah 50 because they asked what age of women are you most attracted to and no matter how old a man is, they almost always say either between 20 and 23. Pretty much fucking kids. Which... I guess I'm not allowed to say 15, so 21?

Just... And it makes... So I wonder, is this because men are conditioned to seeing depictions of older men in media with younger women. And also kind of a complete omission of any woman their age. Right, of course, yeah. This is a thing we talk about a lot on the podcast, where rarely do we see women on the screen who are, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s. So often, you know, women in movies are super young the implication we can draw

from that is no one wants to see an older woman on the screen no one cares about their stories and of course that's not true but we're conditioned to think that because we see so much we consume so much media where women of a certain age are ignored. Ignored. Ugh. Well, this is deeply troubling. And to everyone who's like, oh, well, men are attracted to younger women because they have a biological imperative, because younger women are more fertile, and they want to put babies in them.

Fuck. We have population issues. Bitch, retire. Grow up. So, basically, the point we want to make is that in recent days, weeks, a lot of women have come forward calling out different men specifically. So it started with Harvey Weinstein in this most recent sort of news cycle. Although at this point I've honestly lost track.

I believe the founder of Just for Laughs was forced out of his position. The sitting CEO of Amazon Studios was pushed out of his position. It's interesting because it's like we have people like Woody Allen, like Johnny Depp, whose names are very recognizable to us. And then there are people whose names we don't know because they're manipulating behind the scenes whose names are coming out as well. It's a lot. It's a ton.

Screen junkies i don't know exactly who but someone affiliated with screen junkies several allegations brought against him it's everywhere it's everywhere it's encouraging that women are coming forward and actions being taken against many of these people harvey weinstein being fired people losing their jobs and not being allowed to work in Hollywood anymore. Right. There's a lot of work left to do. And it's painful to have to read these accounts, but it feels, you know, important. We hope everyone's looking out for yourself, taking care of yourself through all this. And we, you know, obviously applaud all the victims who are coming forward

because that is so hard to do. So hard to do. And all the writers who have been able to get those stories out, because that's also so hard to do. And not to say that, you know, there are, I'm sure, plenty of victims who are not ready. Things have happened. They're not ready to come forward about it. And so it's not to say that they're not brave no you know they're like oh and then oh it drives me nuts just the emotional labor that any victims have to go through to be like this thing happened to me and i you know i'm revealing it and i'm i'm coming public with it and then just the burden shouldn't be on victims to come like the burden should be on sexual predators to not fucking be sexual predators right but that's never gonna that's never gonna happen and so it falls upon the people

who are these just awful things are happening to them to also then be the ones to have to relive it over and over and over in order for any consequence to happen. Which brings me to just some food for thought, because I feel like for years and years and years, since the Woody Allen allegation service, since the Bill Cosby allegation service, there's always a lot of talk of like, how can we separate the art from the artist? Can I still enjoy Bill Cosby's stand-up?

Can I still enjoy this movie about Woody Allen fucking a kid? Honestly, and I have heard a lot of, mostly men, some women, mostly men, explain to me their views on why they think that, you know, but I personally am at a point where I think separating art from artists at this point is just like a dangerous precedent to set. I agree. It allows predators to continue making art without consequence. We are not at a lack for artists in the world. There are a lot of artists with a lot of important things to say. And I think that saying that, you know, if you're an artist and a predator, you can't, you can't. There are a lot of voices that need to be heard

that will gladly occupy that space. You aren't sexual predators. We're not predators. There should be consequences for everyone. There's no way Woody Allen should be allowed to be making movies. There's no way that Bill Cosby should be on any stage at any time unless that stage is a court and he's being sent to jail. Don't see Louis C.K.'s new movie, which is the clearest homage

to Manhattan that you will find. Just bad. Bad, bad, bad. Hey, Caitlin. Yes. Does Manhattan pass the Bechdel test? Manhattan does pass the Bechdel test. But it passes in the most disturbing exchange of all time. So the scene, it's Mary, Isaac, Yale, and Tracy all walking down the street. Mary and Tracy, when they meet, they say like, hi, hello. That barely counts as a conversation.

Right. But then later on. Technically, yeah. Later on, Mary says, what do you do tracy tracy says i go to high school he he ha ha ha oh really so you know three adults and then one teenager are just hanging out and mary's like hey what do you do for a living? And Tracy's like, I study for my English fucking exams. Yeah, that, what a pass. Good for you.

Oh, well, we hope you enjoyed this bonus. I would call, I would say this is an emergency bonus. Yeah, this is an emergency episode of the Bechdel cast. Thanks for listening. If you want a regular bonus episode, you can sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com slash bechdelcast where we do two bonus episodes a month that are, you know, they may be as painful as this one. They may not be. You'll have to sign up to find out.

They'll probably be a little less us screaming in anger. But also if you don't like that why are you listening to this show? Grow up bitch. Retire. So yeah check us out. You can go to our website. You can

pledge us $5 a month on Patreon to get exclusive content and that helps us out with our production costs and all of that. You can follow to our website. You can pledge us $5 a month on Patreon to get exclusive content, and that helps us out with our production costs and all of that. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Fuck off, Woody Allen. Fuck off, Woody Allen. Fuck off, Harvey Weinstein. And fuck off any sexual predator in Hollywood and everywhere.

If you're a man, be fucking helpful. Be helpful. Everyone else, keep your head up. Listen and believe women and value women. Love you, 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. News record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

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