The Bechdel Cast - National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Caitlin Durante Gates and Jamie Loftus Gates solve the clues and unlock the secrets of National Treasure 2. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Mori 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. into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechtelcast, 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 we're back at it again jamie a clue that leads to another clue that leads to another clue that leads to us finally reuniting with helen mirren because wasn't that really the full thing we had to do the whole time? Yes. Yes, it was.

It's true. Hi, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is our podcast where we talk about important entries in cinema and talk about how they relate to an intersectional feminist perspective. And, Boyd, we have a feminist text for you. A humdinger. So on the 4th of July, because, you know, we're reasonable people,

we don't feel that there's a ton to celebrate. However, the movies, they feel different. The movies really want you to think that there's a ton to celebrate. So we try over the years to line up this week with a movie that is very American coded. For better or for worse, really. Last year we did idiocracy, uh, a, uh,

an attempt at, um, I forgot we did that for like a 4th of July episode. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, last year we did,

uh, Mike judges valiant attempt to, uh, comment on the state of America that just ended up revealing that he hated poor people. This year. We're going for. The millennial generation's attempt.

At Indiana Jones. We're heading back in. To the national treasure. Expanded universe. And I've got to say. This movie has more to say than idiocracy. For me. Sure.

This movie. Caitlin Durante. Made half a billion dollars it really did and we celebrate that we celebrate and and what do americans celebrate more than something ridiculous making half a billion dollars yeah it's something that we we love to see over here um but first we should talk about what this podcast is. Yes, we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. It is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the

Bechdel-Wallace test. It originally appeared in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985 as just like a bit, a one-off joke that appeared in a strip of hers and has since been kind of co-opted to be this grand metric. There are many versions of it. The one we use is this. Two people of a marginalized gender have to have names. They must speak to each other. And their conversation has to be about something other than a man. And we particularly appreciate it when it is a narratively substantial conversation. However, we decided a few caveats. It's true, such as it does pass the Bechdel test when Nicolas Cage declares that he is going to kidnap the President of the United States, which is a huge relief, because the movie may not in fact pass the Bechdel test without,

without that important caveat that we made to save this feminist text from unfair criticism. Well, there's another caveat that we agreed upon, which is that it also passes the Bechtel test when Nicolas Cage screams at a male child. Yes, because that feels like a real close study of different generations of masculinity in combat with one another in a lighthearted yet impactful way. It was cinema at its finest. I really hope that entire, I mean, I know it wasn't because that child actor, I mean, not to put the child actor on the spot, but it would have been very hard for the child actor to improvise that dialogue exchange. But it felt so organic. Those are my founding fathers.

Nicholas Cajun, that kid. So today we're covering, I think, maybe one of our generation's most uh jingoistic franchises national treasure we've covered national treasure one yes not that you asked but we've already done it so before i mean caitlin what's your what's your history with national treasure book of secrets yes book of book of secrets i and we can't forget the really really important oh my gosh and really great subtitle it's it's about a secret book book of secrets oh my gosh I kind of forgot what the book of secrets was I had been watching it um so my my history with this movie is that I

watched it when we covered the first National Treasure movie which i think was our the first episode we released after lockdown in march 2020 yeah because we're like this is going to be over in a second we're let's have a little bit of fun yeah um and then it turned out it's still happening we're not going to harp on it today yeah uh but yes yes national treasure uh was a movie that came to us during a time of need yeah and so i watched the sequel then so that was about three years ago and i haven't really thought about it since but then i i re-watched it with our good friend bryant like 10 days ago which is part of why i pitched we do this now. Yes, and I'm glad you did. Yeah.

And now more than ever. More than ever, we need to discuss National Treasure Book of Secrets. So I've seen it a handful of times now. I think it's not a good movie, but I also love it. So shrug. Yeah, I feel about the same way. I saw this movie in theaters for sure wow uh brag i remember i even this is one of the things where uh i remember i vividly remember a trailer moment when it happened

in the movie trailer moment when justin bartha says it's a little golden man and then classic bartha trailer moment oh and bartha is on for this he really is he once again steals the show we love to see him and again we i feel like we constantly have to qualify as of this recording as far as we know justin bartha is a is a normal man um true but uh yeah, I remember seeing the trailer. I was 14. I was stoked to see National Treasure 2 with my friends, which I did. And I loved it. Even at the time, I feel like and listeners let me know. I feel like even at the time as a 14 year old, I registered this as whatever a 14 year old would call something campy. Like I recognize that this was not a triumph,

which is not how I felt about national treasure one. I thought national treasure one triumph. Sure. National treasure two. I thought silly, but you know, I'm going to see it with my damn friends and I'm going to love every second of it.

And, um, and so it was, I, uh, yeah, I did not remember this movie as well as I remember the first one. I haven't seen it as many times.

It's probably my third viewing of it ever. Okay. Um, I also still have yet to see, there was a mini series, I think, uh, maybe misguided mini series that was released around the national treasure

franchise on Disney plus. I have not watched it either. I think Bartha came back. Yeah. Let me, did Bartha return? me investigate um bartha was on uh season four of atlanta don't know if you saw his appearance i have not made it that far into the show hang on national treasure oh and he's in the good fight i haven't seen it okay so national Treasure Edge of History is the series from-

Another good subtitle. Yes. From 2022. Let's see who is in the cast. Justin Bartha is there. I can't tell how important of a character he is. He's just a guest star though. It's kind of like David Krumholtzoltz and the santa clauses which is utter bullshit

yeah it's yeah that's why we don't watch disney plus miniseries because we did watch the santa classes and we need a break katherine zeta jones is in this damn thing she is and then a bunch of people who i do not recognize jake austin walker sure that's a person okay we'll see about that um anyways yeah i don't know who's in there oh harvey kytel comes back for a guest spot that's fun no cage harvey loves i mean this franchise he's he really does and even though he's barely in this installment which i guess we'll get to not that he's really it's so weird that he's even in this one because you're just like why is he there why is he there I mean glad to see Harvey Keitel get a check I guess why not um but yeah I I saw it I enjoyed it I think I've seen it one other time and I forgot so many elements I will say well this movie is definitely not good in the traditional sense.

And it is certainly not good for the purposes of this podcast that we've been doing for seven years. Yes, definitely not. I will say that this does deliver as far as a sequel goes for me because it's such a high concept franchise. Nicolas Cage has to steal an American artifact that is you are not supposed to steal and find a map on it. And you're like, how does he do that twice? I feel like this movie effectively raises the stakes. In the first one, he has to steal the Declaration of Independence. Famously. That's difficult. The second one, he turns up the difficulty level and he does several things.

But he, most importantly, another trailer moment, I'm going to kidnap the president of the United States. Yeah. Which he does. Yeah. And the president, not for nothing, loves every second of it. Spoiler alert. The president loves being kidnapped by Nicolas Cage. Can't get enough of it.

Have a blast. He loves him instantly. He's like, don't get him in trouble i love this guy yeah yeah and then he finds a city of gold underneath mount rushmore now we have to get into what the hell's going on there but i do think on its face they managed to do it again he is finding maps places you wouldn't believe yeah he goes from stealing a piece of paper to stealing a human being. He steals a whole guy. And then on top of that, keeps being like, I'm not kidnapping you, which he is. And then there's a book of secrets.

Also, Riley in this movie, I was like, wow, Riley also has close friends who haven't read his book yet. Okay. That's very me coded. I was really wow Riley also has close friends who haven't read his book yet that's very me coded I was really relating to Riley I think the president should give me a really nice car tax free what a weird post credit scene Riley was on all cylinders

here Abigail once again done dirty no justice for Abigail not that we expected it but we get a second woman Helen Mirren that's another sequel thing we gotta get a second woman in there but don't worry we're not gonna let her do anything nope I just I think that this movie is such a a sequel for better and for worse it does the same thing but more and twice it's incredible I truly laughed out loud the shot where again spoiler alerts for those who haven't seen national treasure 2 book of secrets the shot where they pan down from the eiffel tower

and then zoom in on the tiny statue of liberty it was such a hard fast zoom oh and the music is like like oh my god americans are so sick in their heads everything's about them it's just disgusting and hilarious in this movie i just ben gates i swear and and not i mean whatever benjamin franklin gates it's like right up there with larryely and all time worst character names for anything. And then another horrible Justin Bartha movie. Quick Justin Bartha thing. Yeah. Yeah.

We're talking about it. I didn't know because I was just I was on set this weekend talking my talking, talking, talking about Justin Bartha and how I was thinking about him. And someone was like, oh, yeah. Don't you remember when he dated Ashley Olsen? I didn't. We always forget this. We've history much like what was going on with Thomas Gates.

History does not, American history doesn't want us to remember Justin Bartholomew's relationship with Ashley Olsen. However, I loved, I sent it to you. I just looked up because I was like, when did they even date?

They broke up in 2011. The alleged reason for the breakup was that Justin Barthel was partying too much on the set of Hangover 2. Gee whiz. Which is a very 2011 reason to break up with someone. Couldn't have happened any other year. No. It's like we go through this series of clues and puzzles to discover that Justin Bartha and Ashley Olsen dated. And it's such a revelation each and every time we learn this. I kidnapped Bob Iger to get this information. I was like, where's the book?

That was one thing. I've tried to fact check a number there have been a number of articles that have you know attempted to fact check the the historical you know value of national treasure too not that it really matters you know because most of american history is fucking made up right yeah how do you even fact check revised history? Exactly. So you might, sure. Why not?

To, to a lot of this bullshit. But I, I, I couldn't get a straight answer on whether the president does indeed have a book of secrets where every secret from American history is written longhand including crammed into this like leather bound book also if I was Riley I would be absolutely beside myself because Riley is this close to knowing whether Kennedy assassination conspiracies are true and Nick Cage

is like there's no time I'm like we gotta we got to find a second. Like, come on. Yeah, seriously. The moon landing. Come on. We have to know. What was the whole thing with page 37? Was that just like setting up a sequel? Or did we actually find anything out about it?

Page 47. I don't know. I wonder if that comes back in Edge of History. Page 47. Yeah, I think that that was setting up a sequel because there was for sure supposed to be a third one because this movie made half a billion dollars i don't really know why there wasn't a third one in in the moment um maybe nicholas cage got too busy with what would he have even been doing also these movies it is like kind of sick to me that alfred bolina did not

make his way into this franchise this feels like yeah we talked about this on the last episode yeah I mean it's like it's so Indiana Jones coded to begin with yeah that like he'd he'd fit right in um I know let's find out why there wasn't a sequel there was there was a novelization and I also love that there was a there's a whole section of the Wikipedia page called historical accuracy like be serious um okay so okay in may 2008 john turtletaub confirmed that there would be additional national treasure movies but acknowledged the creative team needed time on the second sequel i don't know why because the first sequel was awesome i guess it just like kind of went to production hell. Damn it. Yeah.

It's, it's a damn shame. Cause I remember like, okay, January, 2020, the last time we discussed this movie in 2020, the third one was on the way.

And then it turned into the series, a bullshit series, which no one watches those. And it's, they always suck, unfortunately. But, um, no one watches those and it's they always suck unfortunately but um the fun thing is that there is a second one and that everyone in the world saw it because it made half a billion dollars in 2007 that is so wild should we i love this movie sorry should. Should I recap it?

For sure. Okay, let's take a quick break first and then we'll come back to recap. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself.

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

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.

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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting

out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 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. 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. turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so at the very beginning, I think if with your permission, please, because the beginning is sort of front loaded with all the history stuff. Yes. So I will try to share what I know. Okay.

Part of which I independently researched. But I would also like to share the very defensive historical accuracy section of the Wikipedia. Which mostly clarifies small points that don't make much of a difference to me. But you can let me know. I kind of on the historical accuracy side, surprisingly fall very much in leave National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets alone in some ways. Okay. At least in the opening sequence. Sure.

All right. Okay. So here's what we see in that sequence. We are in Washington, D.C. Ever heard of it? It's 1865 a mysterious man who we will find out is john wilkes booth along with another man they made him hot john is sexy in this he and another man approach Thomas Gates and his young son. Now, John Wilkes Booth wants Thomas Gates to decode a cipher.

It's a family tradition. They all see this is there is a version of this franchise that is just like a family curse where all these women throughout history have to deal with this. These fucking guys who see maps where there shouldn't be maps but then they're right and what a nightmare that must be yeah you're you're really signing up for a lot when you marry a gates man they're gonna you're gonna be like enough with the maps i've had it and then sure as shit there's a damn map yeah okay so as old tommy gates is solving this cipher john wilkes booth leaves to go into a theater and he assassinates president lincoln on screen famously i know again disrespectful who gives a shit um So I wanted to acknowledge the guy sitting with Thomas Gates is revealed. If you, like me, got a public American education and would not be told about things like this, is a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

This is a real thing. Okay. So I'm going to share from scholarly journal wikipedia what it says it feels very weird and defensive to me uh okay the knights of the golden circle had actually disbanded in 1863 it was based in ohio where its founder resided though a native of virginia bickley the founder had actually been known for being an adventurer his main focus was not on preserving the Confederate States of America, but restoring slavery in southern neighboring countries

that he wanted to make a part of a proposed nation dubbed the Golden Circle. While some members of the group would join the Confederate Army, Bickley was more focused on colonizing parts of northern Mexico as slave states. And you're like, well, as far as the purposes of this movie is concerned

that's still an exceptionally horrible horrific person yeah i don't know why we need it clarified like i think um actually he was horrible in a different way um actually you should have been more specific about it you're like no i think that they did a fine job and he was a real, like he was evil. He was the, he is, I mean, you can't get more bad guy than the couple of sentences I just read. Yeah. But anyways, I just wasn't aware that the Knights of the Golden Circle, I like that was not as at least in my memory, it was not a part of my knowledge of the Civil War. So already I'm learning. I did not learn about that either.

So Thomas Gates realizes that these men who have approached him are members of this Knights of the Golden Circle. He knows that they're bad guys. And one of them shoots Thomas Gates, but not before Thomas rips pages out of John Wilkes Booth's diary, including the page with the cipher on it. Very confusing sequence. Throws those pages into the fire. The bad guy pulls the papers out of the fire, or at least one of them, and runs off.

And then in Thomas Gates's dying breath to his son, his son, he says, the debt that all men pay. And then, blah, dead. Right. And you're just like,

okay, the beginning of the National Treasure movie is always confusing. Yes. And it's always one of these damn guys solving a puzzle. And then it's, ugh, fucking whatever. But yeah yeah so that whole period there's also like some people kind of uh getting really particular about um i'll just run through

stuff um yeah about john wilkes booth you're like who what uh there there is a secret basement under George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, apparently. Okay. So something to think about. I don't know. I'll keep going. Oh, and there may have been cipher solvers just like Thomas Gates working during the Civil War. So this is basically...

And John Wilkes Booth's diary did have multiple pages missing from it. So this is in many ways a documentary. Yeah. Except for all of the jingoistic parts that take place in 2007. Those are not canon. Yeah. But the whole beginning I think is historically accurate.

Okay, perfect. Love to hear it. Love to see it. Okay, so then we flash forward to Benjamin Franklin Gates, a.k.a. Ben Gates, a.k.a. Nicolas Cage, who is giving a TED Talk or something about the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Booth Diary. He brought his dad to school, and you're just like, this family needs to get over themselves.

The Gates family hubris, I think, is very on the table for discussion. Because it's like, get over yourself. What have you accomplished? And then they kidnap the president. So they accomplish a lot. Fair point. So someone attending this presentation, Mitch Wilkinson, played by Ed Harris. I totally forgot Ed Harris was in this movie yeah

but what a what a treat interesting jump scare to have him be like actually actually my great great granddaddy aka a confederate general who's awesome and everyone's like yeah wow what a respectable person i know yeah that's one of the first things where you're just like jesus fucking christ it reminded me of i guess this was sort of something that was popular in 2007 those videos where it was like stand-up comedian owns audience member but it's like random man at ted talk owns nicholas cage that's exactly what happens because mitch is like what do you think happened to those missing pages of the booth diary well i have them right here and they prove that your ancestor thomas gates it was his idea to assassinate president lincoln and you're like huh what and then cut to the next scene the whole audience is gone we don't get to see how people react to this right for some reason

the information seems to remain fairly contained for a while it's baffling but i but but i'm fully engaged yeah i'm sitting my ass down and i'm listening you're like okay what's next tell me more yeah so thomas gates's name is on one of these pages of the booth diary yes and it makes it seem like he was the mastermind behind the assassination and so now ben gates and his daddy patrick gates played by john hoyt again have to prove that their ancestor thomas gates was innocent and not the mastermind behind lincoln's assassination and it's like get a life job but they don't need to get a job because they have all the national treasure from the last movie which were reminded by this big ass house that he and abigail live like a full ass estate also i

know he's about to come into the mix but i felt that okay very first of all very 2007 choice to have ty burrell in in this movie but all but but disrespectful i think as someone who had a big crush on ty burrell oh i love a guy with big old eyebrows but to put him in two scenes not very nice yeah he's really disappeared well modern family hadn't come out yet so he wasn't he wasn't big enough to be putting... He probably made $17 doing it. Poor Ty. Poor Ty.

They just made him horny and weird, and then they're like, all right, I think you served his purpose. Let's get him out of there. Anyways, we'll get back to that, because that is connected to the zero movement on making Abigail, letting Abigail have. They let her drive a car in this one. That's true. That's about as far as it gets, though. Yep. Bars on the floor.

Okay. So then we cut to Riley Poole. And we're like, that's Justin Bartha. Best character. We're screaming. We love him. We're crying. He's at Borders. Okay, crying. He's at Borders.

Okay, 2007. He's at Borders because he has written his own book of secrets about the Templar treasure, a.k.a. the plot of National Treasure 1. But no one is buying his book. And his car gets towed. And he owes all these back taxes. And he's not doing so hot with the ladies. Classic Riley.

These are hashtag Riley problems. I love him so much, even though he is canonically kind of a creep and always feels bad for himself. It's yeah, all these all these women coming up being like why aren't you nicholas cage and i'm like open your eyes ladies before you stands a real hunk justin barth is right there barth is right there he's about to party so hard on the set of hangover 2 it's gonna end his relationship he's gonna party so hard he gets dumped okay so riley helps ben break into his own house because ben's girlfriend aka abigail chase played by diane kruger i always forget is german yes correct yes she has kicked ben out of the house out of their enormous estate good for her he's annoying he's so

oh my gosh i can't wait to talk about their relationship wildly obnoxious i would also kick him out yeah um so ben needs to steal abigail's work badge because she still works at the archives or maybe she works at the library of congress now literally i don't know she has like a plot job like she has an id that can get them to the next map yeah without fail correct yeah that was a bad that that was the first kind of i mean riley doesn't fuck up super often in this movie but the fact that his real first act is helping ben break into um a house where he's no longer welcome and then nicholas cage we'll get to this but he goes on this whole tirade about women why she kicked him out and then riley says something like oh women you can't live with them especially

when they change the security code or whatever and we're just like hilarious hilarious george bush is the president like oh yeah did not like that sequence very much so ben is stealing the work badge because he wants to take another look at this page from the booth diary because they think that if they can find a cipher on it it will lead to a treasure map that will prove thomas gates's innocence somehow it's a real understand the connection i am so team abigail on this because you're just like because she i mean i think i've gotten into the habit of doing this where i'm like pitching a sundance movie based off of a blockbuster where she's just like she loves Ben, but he just like will not give up the idea that there's a map on fucking everything. And it ends up like completely deteriorate deteriorating his life and their relationship because she's just like it's over man you had your moment in the sun you found the map there's not maps everywhere but that's not how this world

works no there are maps everywhere his obsession with maps being on everything should be the him partying too hard on the set of hangover 2 which it should be a way to end that relationship but it should it should be yeah abigail i'm sure she that relationship. But it should. It should be. Yeah. Abigail. I'm sure she has a last name. Not that we hear it. Chase. Chase. Oh, yes. Because she's always chasing after treasure with her boyfriend.

And Riley is always pooling up with his friends. And Ben Gates is always unlocking the gates. Think about think about it the secrets that will find him the treasure oh and then helen mirren's character's name is emily appleton because apple was the da vinci code it all makes sense whoa i wouldn't put it past this movie to give a character the last name appleton because I had a ton of fun learning that the Da Vinci Code was Apple. I also think that every clue and the mysteries in the National Treasure movies are more fun, engaging, and make more sense than the da vinci code mysteries 100 but but i think we should keep covering the movies in that franchise and do a whole angels and demons yeah oh my god

how many people saw angels and demons was it like one or two i bet it made at least 200 million at the box office. Well, that's... So it's certainly not doing National Treasure 2 numbers. That's for damn sure. No. Embarrassing. Are you looking it up? Yeah.

I was like, wait a second. Hold the presses. I need to find out what the global box office take of Angels and Demons was. Now, what... Okay. It came out in 2009. Directed by Ron Howard. Oh, I have horrible news.

It made half a billion dollars. So a lot of people saw it and we should cover it. Okay. Then that is the global impact. We do need to talk about it. It, in fact, made 30 million more than National Treasure 2. Wow. Disgusting.

Disgusting. Embarrass embarrassing for book of secrets okay uh this is okay this is very well this movie is not uh really uh doing anything for women i will say that the two female leads in this movie are both doctors dr abigail chase and dr emily appleton gates we've got a pair of phds we've got a lot of education between these two ladies who we don't get to see do very much they don't do anything that they are both damsel so that's yes important they also have more at least in the way of academic credentials than any of the men because even though they're constantly like better keep giving them my id and following them around i'm like just let you know well no i i do think this just let ed harris kill john voight you know like what are we doing here what's the worst that could happen?

Okay, so Abigail, once Ben is like, there's a map on the thing. She's like, that's ridiculous. But then Ben, Riley, and Abigail look at the diary page under infrared, and they do, in fact, find a cipher, which Ben, of of course needs to decode but they need a five letter word first which ben okay figures out it's not apple which is pretty scary how could this be true i was on the edge of my seat waiting for it to be apple it's not so this happens in a scene where ben is like dad what's the story your granddaddy told you and then john voight very conveniently remembers how thomas gates's dying words to his son which is john voight's grandfather right the dying words were the debt that all men pay and i'm over here like what about the debt that all

women pay hello they weren't No one cares about that. This is also, I do think we probably talked about Jon Voight's politics in the first episode, but this movie comes out on the cusp of Jon Voight going full Republican. Like, it's during the 2008 election that he says, because he, I guess, had held pretty liberal views for much of his life. He, like, protested against the Vietnam War.

And then does a hard switch during the 2008 election in a way that certainly feels quite racist. Yeah. And I'm not a big fan of Obama. But, like, yeah yeah it's racist uh he uh and then went like really rode for romney really rode for trump has pretty despicable politics i'm pretty sure that has some of the reason why angelina jolie and he are not on good terms but in any case i'm just like do any of these despicable political views. What was he talking about on the set of National Treasure 2?

Because it seems like he really underwent a pretty gross political shift. And now I need to check. Maybe he was like, ooh, Knights of the Golden Circle. Sounds interesting. Oh, God. Let's fucking hope not um and then meanwhile nicholas cage i guess this kind of makes sense for his whole vibe and i mean this is an insult uh you know nicholas cage was an andrew yang guy it's just all a mess it's just all kind of a disaster

but i just wanted to because i know that we talked about it the first time but it feels like this movie comes out this like the summer or like the, this is a Christmas movie. This comes out just, just months before John Voight comes out as a, whatever gross fucking Republican guy. Yeah. So that's just some interesting context to to chew on and why i will be uh really really

letting it fly with my opinions of john voight throughout this understood yeah okay so ben is like deciphering this code he figures out that the debt that all men pay means death so that's the five letter word i guess um and the cipher ends up being laboulet lady which refers to the statue of liberty so i thought that was actually a pretty hot clue like these writers again same writing team as the first movie cormac and marianne wibberly yes married couple Is that right? Yes. They really fired up Google for this. I was like, what the hell are they talking about? But it is pretty historically accurate that Laboulaye had the idea for the Statue of Liberty.

Was not the one who actually designed it. But Laboulaye lady, that's a hot clue if you ask me. Okay. It's no apple apple but it's pretty good the wibberleys are doing their research yes okay the clue is la boule lady it refers to the statue of liberty so ben thinks there must be a clue or a map or something on the statue of liberty but not the one in new york city ever heard of it because there are three statues of liberty and the one they need is in Paris, France. Ever heard of that? This shot rips.

We've already described it, but it's time to shout it out again. It's just an unbelievable shot. The cinematography. Panning down from the Eiffel Tower, zooming in to tiny Statue of Liberty, where Riley has a drone question mark. I also just love a Justin Bartha hacking scene. He's on a flip phone. He's bitching.

I just love these scenes with him where he's like making little comments at the computer i love his little quips also anytime he mentions his book is legitimately good comedy there i said it's so funny no one has read it it's so except wait who did there's one person in the movie who did oh harvey kytel yes oh that was that was the best moment for harvey kytel in the movie it was like okay he just earned his check by reading justin bartha's little book but also justin bartha i would be i don't know riley needs self-esteem because he has so many of the answers yeah but no one gives a shit no one cares he knows about this book of secrets there's a whole chapter yeah yeah on the book of secrets there's that scene where he's like he's trying to explain the book of secrets to

nicholas cage and he's like if it were you trying to convince me you'd have less evidence and i'd already believe you by now and you're like yeah riley because you have really low self-esteem and we need to work on that because you're a smart guy oh riley anyway uh speaking of harvey kytel he is in the movie for some reason and he he's back he gets wind of the news sandusky or sadusky sadusky he gets wind of the news that his best friend question mark ben gates is the ancestor of a guy who might have been responsible for abe lincoln's assassination so now he takes an interest in this case and i think he's kind of working to sort of discredit ed harris i think is what's happening but i'm not sure it's it's really like his character is for sure not necessary in the movie.

Because, yeah. And it also just like, yeah, I was also a little confused on like whose side he was on. Because it just seems like he's there to like ultimately be on Nicolas Cage's side, but then kind of fuck with him. Right. Because he's like sort of the one who tries to arrest him at the Library of Congress later on. Which he does in the first one, too. Yeah. They love to fake arrest him.

But then this time the president's like, it's all good. I loved being kidnapped. I loved the kidnapping. I love that you looked in the Book of Secrets, page 47. It's our little secret. I love the shot at the end when the president, what's his name? President. Oh, what is his even name?

Bruce Greenwood is the name of the actor. The name of the character is President of the United States. Don't worry about it. Do not worry about it. So when Nicolas Cage says, I'm going to kidnap the President of the United States, he's just using the President's full name. But I love when the president of the United States turns around and goes what book I was like oh he got so good what book indeed truly um okay so now Ben and Riley go to Paris to the little statue of liberty near the Eiffel Tower and there is in fact a clue

engraved on it with a reference to twins that stand resolute and Ben figures out that this means two twin desks okay one resolute desk is in the Buckingham Palace so they go to London I really enjoyed the London sequence and also history check these are these are real desks these are real ass desks okay they exist were they made from the timber from a ship called the Resolute they sure were wow they sure were it is a documentary uh I they the desks are not puzzles that I was able to find out. Okay, well. But there was a hidden door in the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The reason it was there, history fact, is that Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to have a hinged front panel installed so that people could not see his wheelchair when he began using a wheelchair.

So that is why the panel was there. Which they referenced in the movie. Yes. And so this movie, you can learn a lot by watching this movie. It's a history book, basically. It's mostly just trivia. I wouldn't say you learn much about the themes. You don't learn much about you know harping constantly harping and obsessing over

founding father related history uh how it crumbles a society relationship yeah and and how uh building entire franchises around white americans really hyper fixating on their ancestry is maybe not the best use of time or money um but they were real desks and so that's not nothing perfect yeah okay so um meanwhile mitch wilkinson again that's the ed harris character he finds out about the progress that Ben is making. And he taps Ben's phone so that he can run surveillance on Ben and like spy on him and keep track of where Ben is and what he's doing. Yeah. Now back in London, Ben and Riley and Abigail, who shows up for reasons plan a little heist they break into the queen's office they solve the little puzzle on the desk and inside they find an old piece of wood with writing on it of an indigenous language yes we will talk more about this but this is just i mean that is i think one of the movie's greatest

gigantic flaws is how because the second you or at least i might in my notes the second that you learned that this convoluted secret is um related to indigenous americans i'm like well they're for sure gonna fumble this oh Oh, yeah. Massively. And sure enough, they do. They really, really, really do. Yes. We'll discuss this more in a bit. But in the meantime, Ben, Riley and Abigail escape the palace with this piece of wood. But Mitch and his goons chase them. They're shooting at them. And then there's this ridiculous thing where Ben runs a red light knowing that a traffic cam will take a photo. So he holds the piece of wood up for the photo.

Then he throws the wood in the river. Then he gets Riley to hack the traffic cams to get a copy of the photo, which is somehow high resolution enough where they can still read the writing on it. And I what part of that was challenging for you? Because I was like, makes sense. Basic order of operations that was so the wooden panel they find reminds me of like star wars 9 where they have a similar thing where you have to like hold it against the horizon and that's how you figure out you're in the right place and again i will give national treasure to the edge of handling the edge of history there well i'm not enough to watch it. But I was intrigued.

That sequence felt like having a heart attack. It felt like watching Uncut Gems. Like, I was just like, what the hell am I looking at? Because he throws it into the river and Mitch's goons easily retrieve it. Why is it so easy for them? Like, yeah. And they just have it i guess nicholas cage did that to get them off their tail like to get the bad guys off their tail but there

had to be a better way than throwing the one clue they have right now into a river a body of water it's also like it's the type of thing that like white people would be like oh let's steal this and put in a museum like it's this like incredible ancient artifact and then ben is just like carelessly handling it and then like throwing it oh into a river like it's this ben gates the thing is like ben gates i don't even think gives a shit about american history he just gives a shit about his family specifically yeah and money like which is a very uh i think like jingoistic white american trait it's like it feels like a very like american individualist character for like well i care about myself and my money and my guys and that's it i don't actually give a shit about other people i don't

care about historical accuracy as it pertains to anyone outside of my immediate family he is a very uh narrow-minded man that benjamin franklin gates the stakes in this movie and him right the stakes in this movie are my family name has been besmirched and i have to fix it like a guy who's been dead for a century might have a bad reputation but because he's related to me let it and i can't go handle that with my ego let i have to go find treasure which somehow will you know who is fix the reputation you know who is uh the uh relative of a very old timey serial killer. Maggie Mae Fish. Is she stealing the president trying to clear his name?

No. She let it go. Yeah. Oh my God. That's what you got to do. People should learn from her. Exactly. Yeah.

She's been. I mean, what has she done? She has instead spent her her time on earth healing the fish name by being herself people should what's the expression like take a page out of maggie's book of secrets yeah wow yeah take a look at maggie's page 47 because it looks a little different yeah okay okay so she's talked about that publicly it's fine yeah yeah yeah i i also knew this because i think she mentions it on behind the bastards oh that's right that's right okay so they now have this photo of this piece of wood with you you, Riley. With the Indigenous writing on it. They take the photo to Ben's mom, who is played by Helen Mirren and who is a professor of something.

We don't know what. It is stated. It is stated. It did seem like they went at least, not that this is a big compliment, but they did say what it was. It was just kind of too smart for me. It was like archaeology something. Okay. I missed that.

This is a puzzle family. Her puzzles are ancient languages, which seems like a better use of time than what the gates are doing yes the way her character is introduced which we'll also get into later but oh my god it is just john voight being like oh yeah this broad that is very much the vibe quit nagging me wait till you order a couch with this broad and you're like enough stop i understand where benjamin franklin gates gets his attitudes on women standing up for themselves as being annoying and disrespectful meanwhile riley pool man of the century single awful doesn't make sense makes no sense okay so anyway they take the photo to helen mirren who translates

it but it's only half of the message because they still have to go to the other resolute desk which is in the white house because it's the president of the united states. So they sneak into the Oval Office during the White House Easter egg hunt. This is a type. I mean, that is a real thing. Right. I remember because I have seen pictures of. Why have I seen pictures of that? Oh, gosh.

Who cares? This is such a weird, awful place to live. Why do I know that? I did know that. But that's related to ty burrell yes ty burrell is the reason they have the in at the egg hunt because that's we we haven't brought him up yet except to say that spoiler alert this is the last time you'll ever see him uh right but he's ab i i did like the detail that Abigail moves on instantly. Were I Abigail, I would do the same.

And also Ty Burrell, vibe-wise, over Nicolas Cage, vibe-wise, in a relationship, seems like a better bet. Huge upgrade. Yes. But they're like, oh, this guy sucks. He's in charge of the egg hunt. Right. So Abigail had been seeing this guy, Connor. That's Ty Burrell. No last name.

No. So they call upon him to help them get into the Oval Office. Yeah. They're like, let's not use Abigail's credentials or skills. Let's use her body. Yeah. To accomplish this. Yes. And it body. Yeah. To accomplish this. Yes.

And it'll be funny. Mm-hmm. And that's just kind of the internal logic of this scene. Right. And then, so Ben solves the puzzle on the desk, but the other piece of wood with the rest of the treasure map on it, which they think is going to be in the desk is missing and in its place is a seal stamped into the wood which they think is the presidential seal but it's slightly different and this is where riley's time to shine comes because he's like no that's the symbol for

the president's secret book which is a collection of documents for presidents by presidents. Honestly, okay. I think that we've reached a point in history where our generation has witnessed so much absurdity. I would believe that there's a book of secrets. I think there's probably a whole library's worth of secrets. I think that that would be a better movie than a book of secrets. And I also wouldn't be shocked just out of the sheer incompetence of the American system that it would be in a public library yeah i i don't know much like this book of secrets oh what was on page 47 john turtle top we'll never know

tell us what was on page 47 i love oh it's one of my favorites it's setting up a sequel that never happens oh chef. Chef's Kiss. It's like the end of I, Frankenstein. You're like, what the fuck are they talking about? We'll never know. Damn. We'll never know. Hey, there's no sequel to I, Frankenstein yet.

It's going to be the 10-year anniversary of I, Frankenstein in about six months. And I am going to rent out a movie theater. And you, of course, are invited. It's going to be huge. It's going to rent out a movie theater and you of course are invited it's going to be huge it's going to be major incredible yeah so we learn about this book of secrets that only the presidents know about but also so does Riley Poole somehow so does Harvey Keitel a lot of people know about this secret book and they assume that that's where the other half of this map is but how are they gonna get to the president's secret book and this is when ben pitches his incredible idea wherein he says i'm gonna kidnap him i'm gonna kidnap the president of the united states and then everyone goes yes

everyone loses it because we love when ben goes off the rails because it always works out for him uh-huh then john voight i will say does a hell of a line read here where he goes i'm your father how am i supposed to react to that? You're just like, okay, fair. But he secretly loves it because two seconds later Ben has to do so little to get his dad on board for the worst ideas ever because his dad is also secretly into it the whole time. He's like, I'm going to kidnap the President of the United States. And John Vo he's like i'm gonna kidnap the president

of the united states and john voight's like oh my gosh no we can't do that and then nicholas cage is like well there's a map he's like oh well then okay if there's a map and that's why if we're kidnapping him for a map this family loves map we're a map we're map guys god yeah i hate them so much but it's like it's so weird having a character that you can't stand who is never wrong. It's like just, it breaks me. It's infuriating. Also, they should rename this franchise Map Quest because they're always going on quests to find maps. And one map leads to another, leads to another.

Which does eventually lead to treasure. They're right about that. And then you get a half a billion dollars. It's so, it is, I mean, Nicolas Cage knows what he's doing when he says the line, I'm going to kidnap the president of the United States. No way did they need a second take on that. That was really special. And as we pointed out in the first national treasure episode it's basically the same exact line read like the same intonation as when

he says i'm gonna steal it i'm gonna steal the declaration of independence he just copy paste same thing except now it's a human person who is the president of the united states he is in fact the president of the united states oh and then the movie gets goofy it becomes an extremely goofy movie before that it was a goofy movie and now it's an extremely goofy movie we've cranked it up to an 11 we're like yes this is no more thinking for the rest of the movie. So what happens next is Ben, Riley, Abigail, and Patrick orchestrate another heist where they infiltrate the president's birthday party at a hotel called Mount Vernon, which they're able to do because they like book up a bunch of other hotels as if an event for the president they couldn't just be like sorry i don't care that your retirement party is here i'm the president my plans override yours right move the retirement party yeah but they're acting like oh my god this is already booked up we need to find another place for the president's birthday party so as stated earlier the wibberleys

once again are googling up a storm because there is a secret basement beneath mount vernon where you could for example kid briefly kidnap the president of the united states uh-huh yes great so i love that and this president was an architectural history major from Yale. Also, you're like, this guy sucks. Boo. Where's your credentials? Right. It's like, you know when you major in architectural history and then you become the president of the United States?

What's next? An English major? A failed real estate heir? Be serious. That was a little topical humor from me. Ha ha ha. Anyways, yeah, I think it is just, that was just a weird

detail to add for a character they didn't even give a first or a last name to. Why do I know what degree this man has, but I don't know what his name is? You know, government name is. Yeah, not sure. sure anyway so ben goes up to the president at the party at mount vernon and tricks him into following ben into the basement to find this secret underground tunnel and then ben is like i need to know where your book of secrets is, Mr. President.

And then the president is like, tee hee, what are you talking about? But then after some like impassioned speech about something, something American history, who knows, the president is like, okay, fine. The book does exist. And it's in the Library of Congress. And here's a bunch of numbers that you'll need to know. The way he buckles is just shocking. It's so fast. Like, also, how quickly he agrees to go into the basement

with Nicolas Cage is hilarious. It's so funny. Like, Nicolas, I mean, he is a very charismatic guy. But he's just like, I don't know. Can I come to the basement? And he's like, sure. Let's do it. Like he's had like a couple white claws and he's like, let's do it. Let's go down to the basement.

Whatever. Happy birthday to me. And then he's like, Secret Service guys, get the fuck out of here. I'm with my new friend. Oh, my God. There is one guy. None of the Secret Service agents get names. But there's one guy who is like

acting. He's like, I need a sledgehammer. I need a gun. I need, you're like, oh my God. He's like really going for it. It was so funny. Anyways, but yeah, this president is just a real dunce like he is just giving away he just says okay fine there's a book of secrets and then literally like nicholas cage's character

benjamin franklin gates famously untrustworthy famously he's sneaky addicted to breaking the laws does not believe consequences apply to them. And they don't in this world. Never do. Why would you, as the president, who knows who Benjamin Franklin Gates is and that he famously doesn't listen to anybody. Yeah. Be like, OK, honor system promised to not read all of the secrets. Like, what are you talking about? He's using the.

And then. Not only that, he's like, look at an extra secret. Take a gander at page 47. He's like, don't look up whether the moon landing happened. Promise. But, like, check out page 47 and clear your, and like, I don't know. It is truly like such American such american like white supremacy exceptionalism this conversation they have in the basement where the president is like i really admire how you want

to clear your dumbass family's name again blah blah like here's every secret in the entire world promise you'll only read the one about your grand poppy or whatever you're just like this fuck this is just i mean it's camp because it has to be yeah but this president is just like such a trusting man yes also i feel like the actor who plays him who i like bruce greenwood he's in the star trek he's been in a ton of stuff, yeah. I feel like he's who they call when Sam Neill isn't available. Oh, I do. But he does have very TV president face.

Yeah. Yeah, he's been in a lot of stuff. I really liked him in the 2000s, the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. The Star Trek, yeah, same. I think he's a fun guy and I'll say it he did he was the president of the United States for me

and then at the end the fact that he has the audacity to say what book of secrets you have no vested interest in people not knowing about this damn book of secrets you told the first notorious thief who asked like what is uh we're fucked yeah it's true uh okay so

oh we're still doing the recap um ben okay so ben now has the information he needs to access the Book of Secrets. So he runs off and heads to the Library of Congress with Riley and Abigail. They find the Book of Secrets and inside is a photograph of the other half of the map, along with an entry from President Coolidge with a reference to mount rushmore and ben is like borglum carved mount rushmore to destroy the map's landmarks to protect the city of gold so they figure out that the city of what the fact that they managed to turn it up turn up the heat from kidnapping the president i was genuinely impressed because it's like like, at that point, you've got to go City of Gold. There had been some references prior to this about Cibola,

which is this legendary lost city of gold. But if you have two brain cells like I do, you need Nicolas Cage to be like, there is a city of gold underneath Mount Rushmore. And I was like, oh, that's where this has been happening's and that Mount Rushmore was a cover-up to protect the whereabouts of the city of gold you'll never think to look underneath Mount Rushmore just like you'll never think I mean that's sort of like what this whole franchise is predicated on like you would never think to pour a bunch of Aquafina water bottles on Mount Rushmore to find the city of gold.

You just wouldn't. You would never think to look on the Declaration of Independence for a map to the Templars treasure. For a bunch of old white supremacists. No, I don't think you would think that. But but someone is thinking that and he's constantly being rewarded for it. For some reason, it made me just, I was absolutely delighted that, because, whatever, we're about to get to this,

when they go to Mount Rushmore, they have to pour water on, to find the, whatever. But the movie had the foresight to get a water bottle company to do product placement. Like, well, Awkwafina, do you want to be the most American water bottle? And Awkwafina said, sure thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Dasani found dead in a ditch. National traitor. Wow. Dasani water bottle. Yeah. Makes you think.

Yeah. So Awkwafina reveals the, at this point you're just like what the fuck is even happening cut to the city of gold like what's going on yeah so the fbi are closing in on them on account of ben having kidnapped the president of the united states but they escape meanwhile mitch pays helen mirren a visit and shows her a letter from the queen of England to his ancestor. Once again, a Confederate general that contains a clue that they need to find the city

of gold. But he burns the letter and he's like, now I'm the only one who can find Cibola. And then he kidnaps Helen Mirren and takes her to Mount Rushmore, where Ben, Riley, Abigail, and Patrick already are, because they figured out that they need to go there. And then they kind of like reluctantly all team up to search for this city of gold. And they're pouring Aquafina onto the rocks nick cage does a hilarious

fake out where he's like ow my hand just kidding oh i was laughing so there's a few moments that i feel like we're kind of borrowed from jurassic park in this movie because again not to bring up sam neill again he does that with the like t-rex gate that he pretends to be electrocuted and he gets in several arguments with children it's true in that movie nick cage only does it once but he does it so it's so funny yeah because it's like nick cage is doing things that sam neill would do but he's just doing it in a way that's so annoying to watch and that's the magic of Nick Cage I prefer it uh we have we haven't gotten to Nick Cage argue I mean it happened a while ago because it doesn't matter to the plot but it mattered to our culture yeah exactly yes so based on Mitch's clue they pour water all over the rocks, which reveals an eagle engraved into the rocks. And then there's a secret latch that opens a secret door and they go inside this like cave catacomb type place where most of it immediately collapses and they get trapped inside. So they have to keep moving onward into the cave.

There are various obstacles like this like platform that's tilting all over the place. Then they get into a room with a bunch of water that they think is a dead end, but they stop the flow of water and then are able to go downward. And then that's where they discover the city of gold and as they are oohing and awing over the city the water starts bursting through again and it starts flooding the city so now they have to find the drain but mitch is a bad guy again suddenly and he's like we're not leaving until you agree to say that i discovered the city of gold because he's also obsessed with like family legacy shit yeah but he's ed harris so he is gonna like lose but the uh i i just wanted to quickly shout out the platform scene because i

remember seeing the platform scene in theaters and i think it's a really well done scene. I still get a little bit of anxiety watching the platform scene even today. Where, again, the team is very quick to agree that Riley would be the first to die. Poor Riley. This poor man needs to like go to a trivia night. Like he needs to like make new friends. Period. to like go to a trivia night like he needs to like make new friends period he's gotten you know he's got at least gotten something out of this you know kind of emotionally abusive friendship

he's in with nicholas cage he got a red ferrari out of it he got a red ferrari he got his book deal get the fuck out of there man seriously he doesn't care about you he doesn't care about you no he didn't even read your book he didn't even open your book from its packaging. And Abigail also, you know, for all the disrespect she's given, she doesn't give a rat's ass about Riley either. She leaves him for dead instantly. Because this movie also does, I noticed, and I think that this is like an action movie trope that we've discussed in the past. There's a very like unspoken women and children first ethos to this movie. It's always a very hyper-masculine, like, I'm John Voight.

I better check this swinging vine before I bring Helen Mirren on the... You're just like, fucking whatever. Abigail has to be the first to get off the mysterious platform. Meanwhile, Justin Bartha dead. Clearly, he's the weakest link you're just like leave this poor man alone although justin bartha has big justin long wasn't available vibes have we talked about that i think we have yeah yeah yeah i mean justin long wasn't available for this and that's good because justin bartha made the part his own we We love him in this role. We do. Okay.

So the city is flooding. And Ed Harris is like, I need to be the one to discover this. Boo. But then some stuff happens. I don't even quite track it. There's a crank. There's some cranks. There's a flood. There's a door.

It's flooding. And then who gives a shit? Basically, it culminates in Mitch getting left behind slash he decides to sacrifice himself so the others can escape. And so he dies. Yes. Then they get out of all the, like, leave the cave. Harvey Keitel is there to arrest Ben. But then the president is there and he's like i love this guy he saved my life he did not kidnap me don't believe the rumors

t he and he says to riley what book there's definitely not a book of secrets wink you're just like this guy sucks this guy is so bad at being the president. Then we cut to people excavating the city of gold. Yeah. Yikes. And then some shit happens. Riley meets a fangirl of his. Ben and Abigail get packed together and they kiss and it's disgusting. And then pan up to Mount Rushmore.

Do, do, do, do, do, do. The end. Let's take another break and we'll come back to discuss. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

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

I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. 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. 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. 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?

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 bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.

Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 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. 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. 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. And we're back.

Shall we begin by discussing the women of this movie before we get into the blatant indigenous history fumbling yes yes because this just feels sort of like a continuation and an addition to our discussion of national treasure one where a huge thing with national treasure one as well as because i would like lump in you know the da vinci code kind of into this discussion because it came out in the same stretch of years and has many of the same issues even though i think national treasure franchise as far as watchability far and beyond way better yeah but um that a big issue we have with national treasure one is that abigail it feels like a very 2000s era writing convention to give Abigail a lot of academic credentials.

She is not written as just like, I think the way that often Indiana Jones characters are written of just like a lady. And here's a lady. She doesn't have any skills, but she's going to be around. And so it feels like a very superficial advancement of those writing conventions where it's like, no, now she's very qualified. And like they're but but still ultimately the way that these characters are used within the plot of an action movie is not much different. Yeah. They're not allowed to contribute the knowledge that they allegedly have

they're not allowed to do really much of anything to push the story forward except for like little crumbs here and there i took inventory of the handful of things that abigail does that pushes the story forward i felt like she's mostly treated as like i mean she it just felt like it was she's almost used as like a narrative device to be like oh well how would ben get in there um abigail's id and that's like sort of yeah like she's not doing very much she's just giving them access to a lot of things for sure or she's like doing something kind of careless and it pushes the story forward in that way for example she's meeting with ed harris for some reason i don't know why they're like getting drinks together but then she gets a call from ben

who is like we figured out the clue and then so now she's like loudly talking about the clue within earshot of ed harris so he like figures things out because she's just like being careless right so it's technically her doing something to push the story forward but not in the way you'd want not in a informed or intelligent way right which is like you know like characters can make mistakes but it just it yeah it just felt like she that was just like well someone had it didn't feel unique to her in any way exactly and like it's not really something that you would expect her character to do yeah something that had to happen exactly so it doesn't even track but that's a scene that takes place um like you mentioned she drives a car so she helps ben escape from

the library of congress she knows where the special books are in the library of congress she does use her like quote-unquote feminine wiles to distract this man she's stringing along ty burrell so that the male protagonist of the movie can do the important things aka solve the desk puzzle yeah i hated that that was that felt like a regression on the 2004 movie where yeah yeah and then there's like a really protracted joke about like oh i'm making out with ty burrell so that nicholas here's just like oh this i don't know it felt like super dated for 2007 yeah it really did um yeah she is the one who finds the bird on the rocks but only because nicholas cage had figured out the clue of like

oh we need to pour these aquafina water bottles on the rock that was yeah that was like chance that it was her exactly and then she does get damseled when ed harris holds her at knife point when he's trying to escape the flooded room it's it's so close to the end of the movie too where i was like well because because at this point helen mirren has been damseled already yes also john voight has kind of been damseled so i'm like maybe it's a generational damseling in this one but it's like no it happens to abigail the last second too yeah and then she kind of like she doesn't really join the group in their like map quest if you will, until Ben and Riley are in London. And then she kind of gets involved because Ben picks this fake fight with her. And we'll talk about their relationship also.

But they're arguing and she doesn't even realize they're arguing. But then at some point she does. Maybe that was lost in the performance too. But I was like, didn't scan for me at all. There's no indication that she gets what's happening. Yeah. So that was shitty. But then he tries to go look at the queen's desk without her.

He's like always just trying to exclude her from things. He's like, no, it's too dangerous. She does go along and she does suggest that the code on the desk might be a year, but she doesn't figure out which year. It's Ben who figures that out. So all this to say, her contributions in the story are either like by pure coincidence

or her making a mistake or her she maybe like contributes five to ten percent of the thing while ben is doing the majority of it it's all stuff like that right i i think and that was similar to the first one and it also really reminds me of marion cotyard in the da vci Code another woman we're told is hyper-competent but is not actually allowed to behave that way within oh you mean Audrey Tatu oh my gosh I'm being anti-French yes I do mean Audrey Tatu um yes yes uh which sucks and is a convention that I think we still see in movies now where it's like I feel like there's like a tacit understanding where it's like well we can't just have like you know but it's I don't know it's

we've talked about it before I find it really frustrating to go out of your way to write a confident character and then be like but don't worry she's not gonna do anything right I felt like for me the highlight for Abigail in this movie was come in during the car during the car chase that was a cool sequence i like that she and riley were just like on kind of a side quest together and that they almost killed a cop that was fun true that was a treat the rest yeah she wasn't really allowed to do very much i thought it was very interesting and by interesting i do mean lazy that they wrote basically an identical character to abigail to be ben's mom uh yeah let's go through her because it's first of all it's disrespectful to write helen marion a shitty part yeah don't waste this woman's time she's a legend i know but they did they wrote her emily appleton gates

much in the way that we learn how ben views abigail which is like i love her but this ball and chain she doesn't get me she's so annoying she's always nagging me. Blah, blah, blah. Right. And then we see an identical dynamic between, presented uncritically, really, between John Voight and Helen Mirren. I felt like it was marginally more self-aware in that relationship, which isn't saying very much. But I don't know. Like, yeah. So Helen Mirren is playing this like archaeologist she specializes in ancient language like something something plot translations yes and so she does do a number of things throughout the movie to help them true and she does I did appreciate and again this is like

crumbs but I did appreciate that in most of the moments where Jon Voight would criticize her, she would not accept that criticism. Yeah. And would be like, no, you were seeing puzzles everywhere. And I had to raise our son by myself. Yeah. And like, I also wanted to go on quests, but no one was raising our son due to your puzzle issue. Like, and her character is pretty consistent on that issue and i i liked it like and i liked that she was doing stuff i liked

her relationship with ben there is no relationship with abigail but they hug for some reason i liked how riley introduced himself to her at the end of the movie. That was fun. Yeah. He's like, by the way, I'm Riley Poole, author of The Templar Treasure. Boo. But I felt like certainly an underwritten character, but better written than Abigail, unfortunately. Yeah. But that's why it made it so confusing to me that uh she randomly gets back together with john voight at the end of the movie because we are led to believe that she would never do that

yeah here's my theory so as she says in the movie when john voight first shows up in her office she's like we didn't love each other it was just excitement adrenaline and tequila which is a pretty sick burn good honestly to tell your ex-husband and she keeps calling back the tequila yeah yes um so she basically says like i never loved you i was just horny and we were going on adventures and that was exciting. So maybe it's just that because they went on this other adventure, she's horny again for him and that's why they kiss. But then she's like, that was another mistake. I'm going to go back to my university and keep ignoring you.

And you know that information is actually like what would have happened to them. That is written somewhere. But unfortunately, it's page 47 of the president's book of secrets and so we'll never know what happens and if the gates i was just like why did we need a nicholas cage parent trap in this movie was that necessary like i would say no he's in his 40s and it's not necessary for him to have a parent trap at this late stage and he doesn't even have a twin to help him it doesn't yeah first of all he couldn't pull it off although i think riley could help sure he could hack his parents to make them love each other again

yeah but yeah i thought that that was a very like callous undercutting of like not a great well thought out character but the best written woman character we've seen in national treasure so far and then they totally undercut her at the end by being like and she kind of apologizes to john voight a little bit she like is a secondary party to the adventure uh Just like she said she always hated being and then she kisses him at the end and you're just like well we certainly lost track of this character in the third act. She's also damseled as is Abigail.

She does do one thing. Well what did you think of this? I guess I was sort of neutral on this as a plot point where Ed Harris is like you better not tell John Voight what this means or I'll kill him. And he shows he has an old-timey pistol,

and you're like, huh, okay. Interesting plan. And so she has the knowledge but can't give it to John Voight, and then she insults him and then is like I wish I hadn't drank that tequila I hate this man I didn't hate that scene because it wasn't like she she had the information but she couldn't due to the old timey pistol so here's my interpretation and problem with this scene okay so she doesn't tell him the truth she gives him like a fake translation that has something to do with a hummingbird yeah and she tells that to john voight john voight brings that

information to nicholas cage which he realizes off screen is a clue and he's like wow mom good work with the hummingbird clue but we don't understand what it is what that's a reference to so we can't bad writing it's just bad writing because and so like if we could see her logic and we understand why she gave this particular clue and what it refers to and blah blah blah then we could see like oh she's smart because yeah she secretly gave the right answer yeah something like that but i honestly didn't even register that because this movie i just feel like at some point my brain's just like, like it just turns to goo. And I'm just like, he's going to find the city of gold. I better just sit my ass down and watch.

I do think the movie is relying on your brain, like everyone's brain doing that so that you don't question the very bad logic that's always happening. That's why they make Nicolas Cage periodically argue with children and do other things that don't matter. So that you're just like, whoa, that was funny. And it is. And they are correct. But that would have been so much more satisfactory if we understood the clue that she gives that is actually like helpful, but we don't understand. So it's just like a blah nothing thing and what's more we get the really frustrating convention that we see in movies all the time where it's like sequel time we got a second woman uh but she's not gonna be talking to the one from

the first movie even though they're constantly in the same scenes and in the same rooms um i believe that i mean this is getting a little ahead of her but it's like they say hello to each other at one point they hug a couple times but they never talk which is so wild because it seems like the movie has lazily like the only way you could for me justify this writing two very similar characters which i mean to be fair Patrick Gates Benjamin Franklin Gates very similar guys yeah so okay if that's not you know a lazy gendered choice I think that you owe it to those characters to let them talk to each other do I think if these women had had a scene together they would talk about anything other than the puzzle guys probably not but I But I think that even having any scene between these two characters makes a lot of sense.

And the movie is just not interested in a scene that I think would have been really good. And firmly, firmly fits within the context of this world. But of course, we don't get that uh in this jerry bruckheimer movie because why would we why would we frustrating can we talk a little bit more about abigail's relationship to ben which is very reflective of what it was like in the first movie where he spends most of the first movie being like shut up you're so annoying quit being so angry at me that i stole the declaration of independence you're overreacting blah blah blah this is now canon to their relationship and she's fine with it question mark well until she kicks him out of the house. And he says something like, oh, she kept

saying stuff like, oh, Ben, I guess you think my opinion doesn't matter. I guess you always know what's best. So I guess I'm invisible. And so what he's describing is him being a shitty, condescending, inattentive partner. And as he's relaying this information to Riley he's framing it like what a bitch how dare she think I'm dismissive of her and her feelings which could be a legitimate story choice if he grows and changes in any way right throughout the course of the movie and then even then she doesn't need to take him back uh-huh right but that doesn't you don't even get the chance to consider that because benjamin franklin gates like many people will never change he will never

improve he will never stop seeing puzzles and he will never stop telling his girlfriend to shut the hell up and so that is the someone that you leave but um yeah it was really really frustrating where when that happened because i didn't remember the ins and outs of the emotional journey of national treasure 2 whereas like is there any chance that he or john voight who i like think is like a fraction a millimeter millimeter ahead of Ben's character in like, at least he is criticized to his face and sort of takes it. He ponders it. It doesn't mean that he changes very much, but he doesn't, you know, say, shut up, you know, in the way that Ben tends to when criticized by anyone, especially Abigail. Yeah.

But Ben doesn't change at all he does the whole movie from the first one over again but more and then at the end she's and i feel like it also played into this was just like i think this was just bad writing but i feel like it played into this like trope that surrounds women of like well well actually i don't know what did you think of this like there was this like thing that came up a couple of times where they're having this argument in England and she says I think like not the worst point where he like makes assumptions about her and then acts on those assumptions instead of having a conversation with her and she's like even if you think you know the answer to what I'm going to say and even even if you're right, you still have to have that conversation with me.

Yeah. Which is basic emotional intelligence. But like, okay, interesting that they had that conversation. He does not learn from this and he does not change. Because in the last shot of the movie, he makes an assumption about what she's thinking and feeling because she says the word so. And he's like, well, when you say the word so you're mad and then she sort of repeats a more convoluted version of what she said earlier in the movie which is no you can't just tell me what i feel based on a weird assumption you're making what i meant to say is i love you and move back in with me and so i feel like it

like is like almost like i i was like where is this going is this gonna go anywhere of course it's not because i feel like the weird conclusion it reaches like women don't actually say what they mean which is like right and again he does not earn this invitation to move back in with her because he has demonstrated zero growth so it's just like and not for nothing what does this mean for ty perrell ty perrell thinks he's about to get married yeah he just got hardcore made out with in the oval office he's got a raging boner for weeks from that probably he and riley should hang out because they just like I think that they just need to like start getting drinks on the weekend and like being being buds because yeah they're just

being disrespected right and left um yeah no I mean it's it's like hard to talk about Abigail and Ben's relationship because it's like she much like the first movie and i think even more in this one like just behave so irrationally or like not in a way that makes sense and i feel like it's a little if i'm remembering correctly it's a little tighter in the first movie because you're meeting her for the first time and so she pushes back more but now it's just like well obviously she's in love with nicholas cage so we could kind of have her do anything they're gonna end up back together and that feels like maybe why the writing in helen mirren's character is a little more coherent because we're meeting her but it just their

relationship absolutely sucks she should take his big old house and dump him dump ty burrell do whatever just don't get back together with this guy yeah this is bad i agree you've got your puzzle treasure from movie one leave it at that which brings us to the treasure yes we had a different version of this discussion in our first episode i believe yeah like we were talking about earlier, the second that they bring indigenous American culture into this, you know that this Jerry Bruckheimer funded movie is going to absolutely fumble, erase, disrespect, not care about indigenous people

or indigenous history or redistribution or anything that would make logical sense in this situation. Right. So here's the information I've gathered. And keep in mind, listeners, that I'm not a historian or an anthropologist. You're not Helen Mirren. I have a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University, a fact that I would never mention never those are my credentials so the information I have is uh mostly from wikipedia scholarly journal awesome um or just like things I already knew with my brain because with your brain and everything because like this movie makes so many missteps that even if you have the slightest

understanding of geography or time you would know that everything that happens in this movie doesn't make any sense so they find the piece of wood that has markings on it that appear in, they keep referring to it as like an ancient Native American language. Different ideas are floated. They're like, oh, it looks Incan or Aztec. Later on, they say that they think it's Olmec. So they're sort of speculating. They think they identify one symbol on this piece of wood that means Cibola. So they look up Cibola in a history book of secrets. Not sure. But what it says there is that in 1527, a Spanish ship wrecked off of the coast of Florida, there was one survivor who was a slave named Esteban who saved a tribe's dying chief. And as a reward, he was taken to the tribe's sacred city built of solid gold.

And then later when Esteban tried to find the city again. He never could, but the legend grew and explorers came to the new world in search of the city. And so that's like the information that Ben and Riley and Patrick and all these characters are working on. But they're like, we still don't know what this message means. So they take it to an expert in a language that they refer to as, and I quote, ancient Native American, as if there is one language shared among all indigenous Americans, and that language is called Native American.

Which unfortunately, I mean, I don't think I had any institutional knowledge to severely question as a 14 year old like well no based on what little we learn about indigenous people yeah in American schools I think there are many elements to this is gonna sound ridiculous but like there are elements to the national treasure movies that just like really clearly illustrate like how vague americans general understanding of american history is yeah um yeah and this is like a really really damning example absolutely so they go to helen mirren who is you know an expert in the language of quote-unquote ancient American. And they're like, oh, we think it's Olmec. And she's like, yeah, I think so. After all their puzzles and

clues, blah, blah, blah, they find the city of gold under Mount Rushmore, which is in South Dakota, famously. So just to recap and put all of this information together, a slave was taken to a place off the coast of Florida, which is somehow also South Dakota, to a secret city of an unspecified indigenous tribe, which may or may not have been Olmec, which does track for the Mesoamerican architecture that we see of the City of Gold at the end of the movie. But South Dakota and Florida are famously not near each other. They're not near each other, nor are they Mesoamerican. Also, the Olmec people did not inhabit either of those places of Florida or South Dakota. And the Olmecs existed from 1500 BC to about 400 BC, meaning that they were not around when the conquistadors were coming to

this region of Mesoamerica to colonize and steal land and steal materials and gold and all that stuff. Brain rot. So when this Spanish ship crashed off the coast of Florida in 1527, the Olmec people had not been around for about 2000 years. So thank you for doing this research because I knew it was wrong, but I didn't know it was that wrong. This many flavors of wrong. Yeah. And like you said, this is all very indicative of the way white American culture and our like education system, number one, treats indigenous cultures as a monolith because they are like jumping around in time, they're jumping around geographically. And they're just saying, well, it's Native American. So it doesn't matter that

we're referring to a tribe from like millennia ago, who were in a completely different geographic region. Yeah, like doesn't acknowledge any of the diversity within indigenous culture speaks about indigenous Americans as if they no longer exist exactly um yes and that like white american treasure hunters therefore are entitled to whatever they find which is one of the most colonial pieces of thought that exists is that you can just steal and claim it as your own and that this is an act of valor and this is an act of like um that you should be proud of and profit off of is stealing it it's like almost hard to talk about because the story you just described is so fucking convoluted but like i mean and in 2007 making this for a white American audience, which this movie very clearly is written in gibberish.

Like, there is no doubt in the way the movie is presented and in the way that in most public American schools is taught that there's anything wrong with this that like a white american guy finding a treasury that belongs to a culture that is not his own finders keepers it's mine and this is like just colonial logic and the reason that you know many museums exist the way they do the way the wealth is distributed and stolen i mean it's just like i'm sure we're not saying anything that listeners of this show don't know already, but it's just like presented so blatantly. Yeah. In a way that I don't even know would be possible to do now. But this movie came out 15 years ago. Like it's not an old movie at all.

And it's so like, I don't know. I mean, I was really curious, not optimistic of how it would be handled or even if the iconic character, the president of the United States, the upholder of American white supremacy would react to this piece of information. And like, we don't really know. It's unclear what's going to happen at the end. But we know that the Gates family will once again profit off of it absolutely so i'm glad you brought that up because there's that scene when ben gates is kidnapping the president and the president is loving it and it's getting horny but then he's like why would i tell you where my book of secrets is and ben

says because it will probably lead to the discovery of the greatest native american treasure of all time a huge piece of culture lost you can give that history back to its descendants and you're like okay right if you do find this treasure it absolutely should go back to the native people you're trying to steal it from but he's talking about himself right yeah the the the ethos of this movie is oh well you know um native people in the new world they did have this rich culture but it got left behind somehow i don't know how that happened but right it's ours now to find and to take because native people are a thing of the past and they don't exist anymore okay and we're honoring them by taking this right they're part of history so this treasure is ours to turn into a fun

adventure there's no i mean there's no talk of redistributing i mean not to mention much like the first national treasure it is like essentially an all-white cast oh yeah there are a handful of black actors in minor roles including a black government worker who's kind of bullied for bringing up that this is during the the hotel debacle but there is a black government employee who brings up to a white government employee like there's a rumor going on that the hotel that the president of the united states wants to hold his birthday at used to be a place where the clan would meet right and the white government employee says well is it true and like immediately just starts like giving this guy shit yeah and the black government employee response it doesn't really matter if it's true we should move the party yeah and

all the white government employees get so annoyed they're making like it's just like this movie yeah it's doing absolutely i mean less than nothing there's another black character who kind of teams up with ed harris who again is the descendant of a confederate general who the again the movie nor any of the characters care about question at all they're like oh wow a general and an army good for him the same thing with the way that they like very much excuse the queen of england for being like for being sympathetic to the confederacy they're like well she just didn't want a division in america so and you're like no she's racist like it's a very easily illustrated argument that the queen of england is racist like what are you talking about yes so it really adds insult to

injury in this movie in particular with the treasure being this indigenous treasure, this indigenous city on stolen land, where the people going after this treasure are all white. And many of them are from a family who was descended from people who were actively colonizing the New World and taking the land and lives of the indigenous people who centuries later would steal this treasure from because like we cut to like i guess the government excavating this city and they don't even seem to be doing it properly because helen mirren's like are you cataloging this and they're just like nope and so you just like have all of these like white american federal government people like infiltrating this place and then it's turned

into this weird joke where it's like instead of acknowledging that the american government does not give a shit about indigenous history it cuts to john voight the king of republicans being like you should have tried buying a couch with this lady i was like oh my god what the hell are we doing here yeah what's going on yes so all of that absolutely sucks yeah and that's all i have to say about this movie. Yeah. I mean, in terms of any sort of progressivism, this movie is doing less than nothing. It is truly, I think, one of the most jingoistic franchises of our generation. And in that way, I think if we're being, you know, like just sort of legacy wise, it makes it worse that they're not straight up bad movies. It makes it worse that they're fun to watch. Cause it's like,

if these movies go down easy and they're, the romp is undeniable 10 out of 10 on the romp-o-meter, you can't deny it. Then it's much easier to accept and glaze over, which like we have done in the course of this episode, because it is a fun movie to watch and its core message is empty and baseless it's not saying anything new in terms of like the emptiness of how american history is viewed um it feels like it's ill as just illustrates how how ingrained the sort of white supremacist line of thinking is in america that you can build a big goofy action

movie around it and at least at the time there was not a big questioning of the way that history is presented where it's like understood that it's not a documentary as i've argued it is but it's also like not presented but the the things that it was picked apart for i went through some of the original reviews the historical inaccuracies that it's pulled apart for are not the ones we just discussed right they are like well actually this guy that believed in the confederacy actually believed in this version of the confederacy and you're like that's not the thing we should really be putting a big old hell in mirror magnifying glass to remember the scene where she has a big old magnifying glass oh wow anyways yeah this i mean and and and it doesn't pass the bechdel test not for nothing doesn't pass the bechdel test no and i have to

give it no nipples i think i think i have to give it none yeah i agree zero nipples on our nipple scale in which we examine the movie uh on a scale of zero to five nipples based on looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. But based on everything we've discussed as far as the piss poor treatment of the characters who are women. The blatant disregard for history. There's not a single native person in the movie that revolves around a native treasure. We can't give you more information because as you just explained, Caitlin,

it doesn't make any fucking sense. And unfortunately, it's a very fun movie to watch in many ways. There's really not, I don't know. I really, it's true. I hope that our listeners enjoy listening to these episodes. These movies are so incoherent. They're very goofy. But also like we want to acknowledge the kind of ideology that they're reinforcing. Yeah, because that does still happen in movies. For sure.

And I feel like the action genre is sort of a very common offender of this specific kind of misrepresentation. Especially this subgenre, because we've... Treasure hunting. Yeah, the treasure... Treasure hunting. And even in like the Dora episode, it like does a slightly better job at handling this, but it still fumbled a lot of stuff. So these like, yeah, adventure, go on a quest to find treasure movies almost always completely is taken from another culture that the movie has no interest in. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So zero nipples. No nipples. A million Bruckheimer teeth. 47 pages of secrets in a book. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? Anyways, we hope that you enjoyed this episode.

Not annual, because unfortunately it's all over the place in movies, but our jingoistic nonsense movie of the year, National Treasure 2, Book of Secrets. If you know it was on page 47, hit us up, please. And the places you could hit us up, for example, are Twitter and Instagram. If you know it's on page 47. Where you can follow us at Bechtelcast.

You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. You get five, sorry, you get two bonus episodes every month for $5, as well as the back catalog of something like 100 and almost 150, 50 or so. And yeah, we're having a hell of a time over there.

We just wrapped up, um, June month, which is, uh uh our union themed episodes we do an in-depth explainer of the wga strike and we also covered newsies and there's there's more some of fun to come over on the matreon so please join us over there and And in the meantime, I'm going to go to Borders to get a copy, a store that's definitely open, to get a copy of my man Riley's book. He's got to move copies.

Someone's got to read it. Someone's got to read it. What's on page 47 of Riley's book? Literally no one knows. No one's ever gotten that far. Except for Herbie Keitel. What a good friend. I'm going to crack open a bottle of aquafina

and pour it on the nearest rock god that there is the moment where like these movies at the midpoint they just it's so brain dead that you're just like oh they're gonna pour water on a rock yeah brilliant sure god fucking damn it well i guess they ran out of good ideas yeah this which this movie is full of um oh i would like to just quickly one more time shout out nicholas cage arguing with the child added nothing to the movie but added a lot to my life oh and hey while we're speaking of books you should read raw dog everyone if you haven't already yes it's true it is um what secrets are in that book of it looks secrets page 47 of raw dog oh baby you don't even want to wait actually let's find out i've got a copy right here. Amazing. Okay. Page 47.

This is what they don't want you to know. 47. Oh, it's a whole page about an anthropomorphized pickle named Garlic Joe. Yes. I remember reading about Joe. That's my book of secrets. Wow. Check it out. You can get it wherever books are sold and it's pretty anti-America.

Hell yeah. And with that, happy summer. Bye. Bye. 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.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine 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. 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.