The Bechdel Cast - Neverending Story with Jana Schmieding

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Jana Schmieding journey to Fantasia and discuss The Neverending Story! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @janaunplgd on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee 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. Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending podcast. That's a lot of them.

That's some of ours i mean episodes that never end and then the podcast itself never ending i'd be lying if a few different titles didn't come to name when you said the never-ending podcast there's oh care to share no of course not okay okay but um but i that was beautiful singing i kind of miss and i really enjoy when a movie starts with a whole entire song playing yeah and you just know who everyone's name is for some reason that's very satisfying i feel like i'm being like lowered into a warm bath it's nice well this was also the era when there would be a like three or four minute credit sequence where it's just the credits and maybe some like vague images from the world but really just people's names on the screen yeah kind of we don't do that anymore the the first tim

burton batman movie similar vibe it's just the bat signal and four minutes of credits and music. And you're like, yes, for some reason. I think maybe I'm just like my brain is just slowly shrinking. And I'm like, wow, less stimulation. That was awesome. I loved that. It was really good. I'm so excited for today's episode.

Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation. Sure is. But Jamie, what is the Bechdelchdel test well it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel originally in her comic dykes to watch out for started kind of as a one-off bit but has since become a commonly accepted media metric sometimes it's called the bechdel wallace test a lot of versions of the test, I'm like kind of feeling good about how this sentence is going. You're on a roll, Jamie.

A lot of versions of how this test go. Here's the one we use. We require that there are two characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of impactful dialogue. What does impactful

mean? Well, like it just not been to interpretation, not nothing, maybe, you know? Yeah. And today, oh, we got a little bit of a head scratcher today. But we have an incredible movie and incredible returning guest. And I'm very excited to get started. Yes, we are covering The NeverEnding Story with our guest who is a writer and performer. You know her from Rutherford Falls and more famously our episode on The Vovich. It's Janice Schmieding. Hello and welcome back. Oh, thank you. Thank you. i love this podcast and i am so delighted and honored to be a guest again oh my goodness we're so honored to have you back especially for one of my childhood hits yeah quite honestly i'm so excited to hear yeah what what's your like history and experience with this movie um deep it's deep history i grew up i was born in 81 so i grew up in the 80s with you know i think

i might start a podcast about this because i am so fascinated i'm still fascinated by like how macabre and and dark and like sci-fi fantasy-ish the 80s were in terms of cinema, like, especially for kids, like, for children's content, trusting that kids can deal with serious content and, and grand, grandiose content, like, high concept stuff, high concept, like, and like the practical effects of the 80s. Like, I mean, so like, I was born and raised in that era of just like throwing all kinds of insane shit at kids. And this was one of my favorites. It was sort of like always in the library along with Willow and The Last Unicorn and, you know, Legend and other weird freaky things from the era. I was getting pretty strong Labyrinth vibes as well as

Princess Bride upon re-watching this. God, that is a lot of weird 80s kids movies. I feel cheated. Oh, as a child of the 90s, you mean? Yeah, it just got a bunch of really loud cartoons. Not that I, but I do love a really loud cartoon sure i do feel like the 90s sort of switched in terms of like children's media i feel like it made a hard turn into like why a social drama like i don't know it just it wasn't as like fantastical as the 80s were and i'm so interested this is why i need as the eighties were. And I'm so interested. This is why I need to do a podcast about this because I'm so interested in why it was this way.

And it has to have something to do with, you know, Reagan era politics and, you know, the space wars and, you know, all of that. What is it called?

No, cold war. The cold. Same thing. But also I feel like there was probably some space wars and you know all of that right what is it called no cold war the cold same thing but also i feel like there was probably some space wars happening there's there's like sputnik there was certainly star wars happening yes space war space race space wars yeah i kind of am wondering i'm like i wonder when that's going to come back around too because that does seem like the sort of thing that will come back around if it hasn't already and I just um don't know any children right same um so so Jana you just this is one of the movies that was just like in your rotation as a child yeah yes watched it once a month probably oh nice

Jamie what about you what's your history I had nothing I knew the song I knew the kind of the basics of like it was like a fantastical 80s kids movie but I didn't grow up with this one um I don't know why like I lived in a sci-fi avoidant house I resent that um and and I've had to like sort of do the sci-fi um work on my own as an adult. But yeah, I just never came into contact with this one. And, you know, normally it takes a couple hours to prepare for a Bechtelcast episode, but it took up like an entire day because I watched it two times and then I wanted to know about the writer and the writer had this like kind of really beautiful and inspiring marriage that was making me cry. And I just like really went to another.

I went to my Fantasia. Did you go to Fantasia maybe? Wow. Yeah. Yeah. In a way I did, Caitlin. In a way I did. Beautiful.

But I just had like the best time. I journaled about it. It was like a whole thing. I'm so excited to talk about this movie. It really affected me. Oh my goodness. So I'm a new but enthusiastic convert caitlin what about you i did see this movie as a child but it wasn't in my rotation really i think i saw it like probably once or twice as a kid but if i'm remembering correctly, Falcor freaked me out. I could not.

That track. I do see that. And I was reminded of this when I was re-watching it to prep for this episode. And I was once again freaked out by Falcor. Yeah.

He's a little freaky. If it's not Falcor, it's the rock biter. If it's not the rock biter, it's the bat guy if it's the oracle who shoots lasers out of her tits like this movie is terrifying it is I think it would have been the bat guy for me if I was a kid yeah Falcor though it sort of like I had a moment where I'm like they don't make them like this anymore and maybe that's for the best where like they where atreyu is like really getting in

there scratching falcor and falcor is making these kind of like yes he's making orgasmic he's enjoying it um too much and it just kind of goes on for a little while and then later when he gets like that like shot that huge shot or whatever. Oh, my God. Yeah. And there's like a cracking noise. I was like, oh, Falcor is in it. Yeah. I don't know. But I did love Falcor.

But he was a little too into the scratches. Not my business. Yeah. Agree. And I also did not enjoy that they basically made no effort to have his mouth movements match up with his dialogue it's just like a very slow like opening and closing of his mouth and but he's like speaking in full complex sentences and i was also like i don't like this i was i was kind of very charmed by that that's like oh there's like a needlessly detailed piece about that somewhere.

Because I used to be, Caitlin, I feel like I've talked about it on the show before. I feel like animal mouths and how they move in practical effects or CG stuff has such, because it's like Falcor, there's no sync. And that doesn't scare me. In the 90s, it kind of changes and there's like an era where it's like real looking animals that never blink but their mouths are going like and that really scared me i remember telling my uncle i needed to leave a screening of cats and dogs i was just gonna say i was like freaking me out i was so disturbed by that overly active mouth I felt yeah and now you

have CG mouths that are kind of like people mouths and that's also kind of like this no one's quite gotten the whole mouth thing correct no one can figure it out or then you have like yeah the live action remake of the lion king where you have these like photorealistic animals who are just also kind of like flapping their mouths open and closed and just oh no one seems wrong the only talking animal in a movie that looks awesome is paddington so and even then sorry caitlin not always like how dare sometimes especially when he's wet so i feel like i'm like being on i'm just being honest with you i don't like how paddington looks when he's wet i choose um best animal i choose t-rex from jurassic park okay well because t-rex isn't speaking and then speaking and that's how it should be. Yeah.

He's roaring and it matches up and it looks good. Excuse me. Don't you mean she is roaring? Oh, yes. Yes. Clever girl. Okay. Shall I recap?

So, Kayleigh, you were afraid of Falkor. Yes. And that's your history with it that is my history and i and i haven't seen there are two sequels which we all kind of learned within the past 10 minutes before recording and i haven't seen those and there is a novel that this movie is adapted from which i also have not read. So there's like source material. There's a whole trilogy of movies, but I have pretty limited experience.

I would like to talk about the, I mean, I did a little bit of research on the novel. I'd love to talk about it with you both once we've recapped the movie because it's really interesting. Yeah. Can't wait to hear it. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the 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 Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, 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 and I just was like, who is this person? I gotta 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, must flock your 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. 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jimei 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. And we are back. Okay, we meet Bastion. He's a little boy. He tells his dad about another

dream he has had about his mother, who has died recently. And his dad is like, Bastion, it's time to move on. Stop daydreaming. Stop thinking about unicorns and start facing your problems meanwhile bastion is like eight years old yes and his dad like i know i resent this term even though i've used it so heavily but like his dad is a girl boss it's hard to explain He's like, get your ass to work, Bastion. Yes. Do math homework. He's Kim Kardashian-ing. Yeah. Well, then his dad... Get up and work.

Then his dad proceeds to drink a bunch of raw eggs that he blended in the blender and then just drinks as a drink. Now, that is what scares me. The dad and the raw eggs. That has always, always gotten my goat. Since I was a kid, I was like, what the hell is he making? What is this?

Who eats that? He's into Jordan Peterson now. Wherever that dad is, he found Jordan Peterson and is eating raw meat somewhere. Yeah, that was like, I had to rewind to make sure that is what in fact happened.

It is. There is like something so, I think like, I had to rewind to make sure that is what in fact happened. It is. There is like something so, I think like, again, just like there's so many elements of this movie that feel like rare of like, oh, you never see anything like that. Like a parent that just like, or just an adult who's like refusing to grieve in a way that is like alarming, which is so common. But you're like, oh, oh and this guy it's manifesting in going to work and drinking eggs like yeah all right okay and potential homophobia i was getting i like had never read read into this deeply but when i was watching yesterday i was like bastion is showing some very clear signs of being like a young gay boy who is really into fantasy and not to like position him as that but like the dad being like come on what about sports right yeah you're not

going to gym class anymore it's like oh god yeah why aren't you drinking eggs with your pops like yeah i did feel like he was like really pushing like a hyper masculine yes like I was trying to articulate in that my notes because I was just like it's not that like reading books or an interest in fantasy is feminine but that's the way the dad was framing it so it was bizarre yes yeah well it also seemed in my sorry to harp on this but to me like when I was watching it yesterday, I was like, oh, I get it. Like the death of the mom is sort of like the death of the imagination of the household, like the death of dreams, the death of like self-acceptance, like all of these magical sort of ethereal things. Like, yeah, I had I had even forgotten that Bastion's mom had died and that that's what was going on in his life. Right. It's so quickly skimmed over in this movie that like it is glossed over but then it comes back hard yeah right because

he's like my mom had a name and that's gonna be the new name of the empress and then it's like his mom's name was moon child that's so cool that's awesome is that what it is yeah because that's what he yells out he yells moon child i've never known what it is all my life i have never known what the name is i can't understand what he's saying and the in the subtitles did not say they just said yelling i had to google it i feel like maybe they keep it intentionally low so you can like project whatever you want onto it because i couldn't understand it either and then I googled it and it said moon child and then it was like earlier he was like my mom had the most beautiful name I was like damn bastion you're right yeah that's an awesome name child moon child yeah I watched it twice and the first time I think it was on maybe HBO max but since

then within the past like week it has been taken off of that platform. But whatever platform I watched it on initially, the subtitles are there and it says Moonchild. So, yeah. I think I watched it on, I rented it on Apple. And it almost seemed like I was reading another dialect's interpretation subtitles. Yeah yeah some movies do that so anyway so point is bastion's mom has passed away i think we're to understand that like his immersion in like books and fantasy is like a way that he's coping with his loss not totally sure but anyway he reads a lot of books and his dad hates it um he's like math and eggs and gym class so on his way to school some bullies chase bastion and he goes into this building to hide

where he meets a man who is reading a particular book. It's his Santa, basically. Because it's like the role. And maybe it's just because we just did our like holiday segment. I'm like, oh, mysterious older man with white hair who gives you a critical prop and then never shows up again. It's his Santa. Yes. Totally.

Exactly. never shows up again it's his santa yes totally exactly and so santa is like kid the books you read are safe and yeah sure you can escape into the story but you can close the book and become a little boy again but the books i read aren't like that and bastion's like what and then the man gets up to answer the phone and bastion takes a closer look at this book he's reading called the never-ending story hey that's the name of the movie and then bastion steals the book and runs off he heads to school but he's late for the math test so he just skips it and goes to the attic and starts reading the never-ending story what a legend legend iconic i wish i would i would never but it's because i'm not i'm not as brave as him

he's so brave once he starts reading we are transported into the world of Fantasia. We are in this dense forest where a couple peculiar people and creatures are gathered round a fire. And then this huge guy made of stone comes crashing in. But he's friendly and he wants to join them. And he eats rocks. And he's describing how a nothingness is spreading across the land where like a place used to exist but now there's nothing there so he is going to the ivory tower to talk to the empress about it and then the other people are like we are on that exact same mission let's go right fucking now so they get on their racing snails and their bats and they set off and arrive at the ivory tower only to learn that the empress has fallen ill so now their only hope of stopping this spreading of the nothingness is a warrior named Atreyu who lives among the plains people who hunt purple buffalo. Arguably you know some heavy cultural appropriation that as a native person

I'm gonna go ahead and just uh ignore it. Right. I'm gonna I'm gonna forgive it immediately. Okay because as the characters are describing Atreyy you we cut back to bastion and he looks at his like book bag or something and then there's like a native person hunting a buffalo and he's like it's the same yeah and it is yeah it's interesting it's i i forgot i've always there's so many things about this movie that i forgot about or just truly it just didn't ever ring any alarms growing up but i also like have recently been having this like really annoying discussion in my peer group my native peer group about like avatar and the way that like native indigenous people are like mythified

and sort of like romanticized in media yeah and this is like a fucking direct example yes for sure yeah it's but you know what Atreyu is you know what uh atreyu is um you know lakota warrior i whatever i don't care who

what italian country you hail from or your ancestors do you're in as far as i'm concerned i kept looking for like any um like the author of the book mich Michael Endy, who is German, making any like clear like, and this is where I was pulling from, but he didn't seem to ever say anything specific. And so any credit, like any like reviews or in positive or negative of the book are just like, Endy appears to be pulling from what he may have once heard or possibly remembered about indigenous americans and you're like yes yeah it sounds like a vague remembering appropriative i don't know well this is something that you might find very interesting jamie and um listeners is especially the lakota nation like the lakota nation has so much lore like pop like media lore around it

especially because I think they're depicted in a lot of westerns and what have you but in the 70s and 80s German people like weird sort of hippie fringe groups started I don't know how the transference happened whether it was somebody who came over and was invited to sundance or something but german people started putting on powwows full regalia uh singing in drum groups like completely and they started putting on sundance which is like a very like sacred ceremony that like a lot of native people have never been invited to Sundance like it's just like so exclusive and it's exclusive to like the plains nations and there's this really big language Lakota language issue happening right now with this organization that is founded by a German man

who basically took stories and language from Lakota elders and re like patented it and sold it back to the tribes. Oh, it's fucking insidious. And you can find videos of German people like on YouTube, like German people doing specifically Lakota practices in their way. Of course, it's completely bastardized and they don't have any you know but there is this really weird link especially in the 70s and 80s where indigenous people have been truly like romanticized by german folks especially that's so i didn't know any of that that's really either fucked and like uh and would totally line up kind of with michael i mean this the book was published in 79 so that makes total sense oh my god hmm okay well i then and then i find it kind of even more baffling than he that he never said anything specifically that's oh my god wow yeah it just like might have been in their in their zeitgeist a little bit like it just was something that they kind of cared about maybe not predominantly but like it was

there weirdly interesting because i know that endy was like a humanist like he and his wife were really into the heat like it seems okay so like maybe it wasn't just like a vague like it's possible that he actually had attempted to learn about indigenous culture in an insidious fucked up way maybe or it just might have been in his or it might have just been around kind of like osmosis yeah kind of thing that's so bizarre wow i want to know more about that interesting well so atreyu shows up to the ivory tower and he is a child and everyone's like we weren't expecting a child but i guess we have no other options so hey atreyu go find a cure for the empress and save our world from the nothing so atreyu sets off on his quest and he searches high and low and can't find any

cure or solution. So he decides to seek out Morla, a wise being who lives on Shell Mountain in the Swamp of Sadness for help. And along the way, his horse artax succumbs to the sadness of the swamp and sinks and dies in a really devastating moment yeah saddest uh 80s cinematic moment uh short of et almost dying yeah holy shit and that happened so early in the movie yeah it's like the satin and and it's like there's plenty of sad moments later but i was um i was not prepared for it i i mean i like it's weird to be like i loved that but like it's just so miraculous and wild to me that they put that in the movie at all because it feels so clearly like an allegory for like losing someone to depression and like to suicide and then you're just like but it's a horse what I'm and I'm crying so much like it

it that was a beautiful really dark fucked up I know yeahna you should make this podcast i'm like how did they do that how is that allowed i know the shit that they were showing us kids what in the 80s was wild the horse gets to i was like i wrote down in my notes like horse gets so depressed it dies question mark like yeah oh and then you and then atreyu is like like, please don't give in to the sadness. Like, keep going. You can do this. And then it doesn't work. You expect in a kid's movie, sure, there's going to be tension.

You think maybe, oh, no, the horse might die. But you know in the back of your mind, like, probably not, though. Probably it's going to be fine. Probably they're not going to kill an animal in a children's movie, but nope. No. Artax the horse dies. In the first act or early in the second act.

Yeah. And also like in talking in like opening it up to the idea of, you know, depression and suicide and like the, the evil force at play here is called the nothing. And like the fact that what they are fighting is this unstoppable wave of nothingness, lack of meaning, like lack of meaning is going to overcome us and dislocate us and like destroy everything in its wake. And it is such a huge allegory you know for i think like a lot of different things like i think there's so many interpretations my kind of like first and possibly the most simple one that occurred to me was like a coming of age allegory and this idea of

you know maintaining your childlike imagination and curiosity being a good thing even though society encourages you to lose those things as you get older and more mature there's like a shades of like climate change and you know like sure climate crisis and these bigger concepts that i i didn't read into when i was a kid. I just accepted like the nothing as like, ooh, yeah, the nothing creepy. A villain. Yeah, I mean, I liked how the movie, I don't know, maybe this is like why it like

knocked me on my ass. It was like, oh, the movie can kind of like meet you wherever you're at. And like, it's very open to interpretation where I was reading it as like a grief story and like Fantasia as like representing the memory of his mom and so when the empress is calling out to him at the end it's like if he doesn't actively engage with her memory then it disappears it goes away and like you

have to rebuild it and oh there's so many crying crying crying shit it's heavy it's heavy okay so atreyu finds shell mountain in the swamp but morla doesn't live on shell mountain morla is shell mountain because he's a giant turtle also we are periodically cutting back to bastion in the attic as he's reading this book. And when Bastion learns about the giant turtle, he screams. He's like startled and scared and he screams. And it seems like Atreyu and Morla can hear Bastion's scream. What's all that about, do you think? And then they just kind of go back to what they were doing morla's like anyways i'm allergic to young people which is sometimes how i feel and

morla is grumpy auntie oh my god morla i was not a fan of morla i i love her i mean it's like such a bitch she is a huge bitch and it was clearly ruining her life to be such a huge bitch all the time but i also felt seen wait morla okay i i thought morla was a male turtle. I guess I misinterpreted that voice. No, Morla was definitely a gal. A lady turtle. Gender non-specific, in my opinion. Either way, bitchy energy was like, well, I certainly can help you because even being near your youthful optimism is making me physically ill

if morla is a man he's giving gay grandpa who never wanted to have kids and still doesn't good for morla but also you know their loss in life i guess um okay so atreyu is like hey morla can you help morla is like no but i guess you could go to the southern oracle for help but the southern oracle is 10 000 miles away so good luck with that but really you should just give up but atreyu is not about to give up he sets off again and unbeknownst to him this scary wolf creature gamork is tracking him along the way atreyu is struggling he's about to sink into the swamp of sadness gamork is about to eat him but just then a dragon dog thing that really upset me as a child named falcor the luck dragon flies in and scoops atreyu up and then he wakes up a few days later and falcor is like hey what's up i will take you to the southern oracle slash we're already almost there but first atreyu meets these

small people a married couple who hate each other named engewook and ergel get out of my light wench is kind of like how he enters the story yes he calls his wife his wife a wench so many times they hate each other they hate each other yes and they eat worms i think which i'm more in support of there i feel like it's very very possible that i was, I liked her so much that I was like overly like trying to be like, this is awesome. But I liked that like, okay, was it Engiwook and who? Urgel? Urgel.

Urgel. So like Engiwook's whole thing is he's like, I'm a scientist. Get out of my light wench. And she is like like she makes home remedies she's making medicine so they are doing the same thing they are both doing science and she appears to know that her husband obviously doesn't and she's like that's a waste of time to explain it to him whatever and I I I was like I wonder i don't know i want to believe that that was like pretty intentional of like they're doing the same job he just thinks his work is worthy of respect and

hers isn't yes yeah that's the vibe i get he yeah has always in my mind even as a child i was always like why does this guy think he's such a the the fucking cock of the walk like uh she's the one who's holding the shit down all you did was make a telescope like yeah i mean not that i could do that but also like she makes like she she heals falcor she gives him that big scary shot that cracked his spine open or something she heals atreyu and and also it seems like in the scene atreyu is very much more like with her of like yeah this guy like anguil's kind of ridiculous but hear him out he's got this plot telescope that you need right that he needs to spy on people who are trying to cross the southern oracle but do nothing for them

just look just watch how is that science just watch as they get electrocuted and then gets excited about it either way and then he got mad because he couldn't watch someone get electrocuted I'm like what is your what is your life like

relax wiki book or whatever the fuck your name is inky dick inky dick humper dinks but also interesting that um also in um princess bride there's like a a curmudgeon-y couple too yes you know played by billy crystal and um what's that comedian's name that i love um i know exactly i'm never gonna remember uh carol kane carol kane yes carol kane amazing i was getting similar similar vibes there as well um okay so we've got enkiwook and urgle and enkiwook is all like okay atreyu you're gonna have to pass through these gates to get to the southern oracle and atreyu is like

cool i'm gonna try it even though he just saw another guy get zapped by the first gate but he's like i got this and he goes to the first gate and these two like sphinx statues with huge boobs nipples hot hot yeah smoking hot they're very sexy statues yeah i know it's like again good for you 80s those are really sexy statues you put in the kids movie oh god and as a kid i was just like oh my god there's some boobs big real ones they're huge and atreyu manages to get through the first gate because he stays confident then at the second gate the magic mirror gate atreyu has to face his true self and atreyu seems to see bastion in the reflection which freaks bastion out and he throws the book across the

room but then he's like you know what i'm gonna keep reading let's see what happens it's already 7 p.m i've already missed dinner i know my dad doesn't care about me and i'm gonna spend the night in this school attic my dad is chugging a dozen eggs at home like he's like not that's how he's handling the grief somehow that means he's not sober um i just think it's like he doesn't drink but he gets really fucked up on the eggs i that was one of my questions i was like does bastion stay there all night reading this book and if so does his dad not care where he is that's the implication i feel like and honestly based on how bastion's dad was coming off at the beginning i wasn't like super bumped by that i was like yeah this is the kind of parent

that um yeah is not really thinking about where their kid is and also i was like oh maybe that like it's a it's a like late 20th century thing where your kids could just kind of be out and around you're like they'll be back oh yeah i mean i was a latchkey kid kind of so there's there's a heavy sort of latchkey vibes going on with bastion sure yeah so he keeps reading the book and atreyu finds the southern oracle which are two more statues also with big boobs who tell atreyu that in order to save the empress she simply needs to be given a new name but no one from fantasia can do that they need a human boy from earth to give her a new name bastion's like they should ask me my mom had an awesome name then atreyu heads back to the ivory tower on falcor but on the way the nothing blows atreyu off falcor's back and he ends

up in like the land of the rock biters which we saw one of the rock biters at the beginning. He talks to one of them. And then Gamork, the scary wolf thing, is there. And he's about to eat Atreyu. And he's like, yeah, Fantasia is this human fantasy. And it's dying because humans started to lose their hope. And that's why the nothing is erasing everything yeah he he states the themes of the movie he's like this movie was in a way about authoritarianism if you didn't pick that up i'm a wolf puppet it was about fascism and its dangers so like i love that scene and and gomorik is like an agent of the nothing so atreyu is like well fuck you and he stabs gomorik in another scene that i was surprised is in a child a children's

movie because it's violent it's bloody you see like lots of blood badass it's badass caitlin have have i not been saying for years now i was like we we should be allowed to kill the evil villain if they're truly truly profoundly evil in the way that gomork is it's so satisfying yeah yeah it's like we don't need it we don't need a like a redemption arc for gomork no that's why i can't stand like marvel movies and shit i'm like kill these motherfuckers yeah sorry it's fantasy that is a bad dog horrible yeah also i just want to say before the gmork slaughter we could call it a fight it's not a slaughter um gmork attacks and then he just happens to be holding the knife um but when he has the um

conversation with the rock biter it's also another tear jerky moment in the movie I found when the rock biter this big unstoppable beast of made of stone is like all of my friends are gone like all of the people I love are gone and there's nothing left of us. Like even the rocks have disappeared. It's just like, Oh God, why? Oh,

I, yeah, that, that scene really fucked me up. It's, it's so like, it's so heavy and it's, and it's like Atreyu is fully engaging with it.

And it's just like, there's no real solution to the scene they're both just like talking to each other about like how they feel that they have failed others and how the world has failed them and that's just like the whole scene it yeah yeah it's really beautiful i really i love the rock eater i mean i i think yeah me too because it's big fan he really did everything he could he did his damn best and i hated to see him down at the end i mean he'll be spoiled he'll be back he'll be fine yeah riding his big stone uh wheelbarrow power wheel

like trike yeah it reminded me of like it when you're like if you're ice skating as a kid it's like the little penguin that you hold so you don't fall over i thought of it like that i thought of it as you know as an 80s kid a big wheel oh yeah like a rock big wheel yeah that is way more likely than the very obscure ice skating thing i was describing. Well, again, that's the beauty of this movie. There are so many ways to interpret it. Truly. Anything is possible. Yeah.

Okay. So Atreyu has killed Gamork. Falkor shows back up and Atreyu and Falkor return to the ivory tower. And Atreyu is like, Hey, Empress, I'm so sorry, but I failed.

And she's like, no, you didn't't you brought the human earth boy with you and he's like what I did and Bastion's like what are they talking about me and the ivory tower is crumbling and there's chaos and Atreyu is like well where the hell is this boy and Bastion finally realizes that he needs to do something he needs to give the empress a new name so he like goes to the window it's like lightning and storms and he screams something that's pretty indiscernible but everyone's like my mom's name like i feel like that's why you can't hear it well, is you're supposed to be projecting something else onto it. I guess, yeah. But canonically, he says moon child. So he screams it out.

And then we cut to a scene with Bastion and the Empress in darkness. Fantasia has disappeared, but it can be reborn from Bastion's wishes and dreams and imagination. So he uses that to rebuild Fantasia. And so then we see all the characters that we've seen throughout the movie, Atreyu and his horse, the rock biter, Deep Roy and his snail, etc. And then we see Bastion riding on Falkor and he's like, what else do you wish for? And Bastion's like, I want to go and fuck up those bullies from the beginning of the movie. So he does that.

I do think he has a realistic child impulse. He's like, I want to ride a dragon and murder everyone who's ever been mean to me. And you're like, yeah. Yup. And that's the movie. So let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss.

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Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Before we get into the discussion, can I tell you what happens in the rest of the book? Please. I would love to hear. It was really, really interesting to me. So I'm pulling heavily from an article by a writer named Helen DeCruz. The article is called What We Can Learn from the NeverEnding Story,

Authoritarianism, Fascism, and the Power of Imagination. Holy shit. Wow. It's like. Buckle up. Wait, you said the book was written in the 70s? It came out in 79 and was a big hit in Germany and then was like translated. And so the kind of production history

is that Michael Endy the author was originally very very excited that they wanted to make a movie of his work he sold the rights to the work for $50,000 which is not enough nothing even in 1980s

money that's nothing for the amount of like times i feel like that's just my viewing that he's earned back is my solo viewing it's so uh and i feel like we've covered i'm trying to think of a comparable example but it's like writers get screwed all the time in ways like that or people with life rights or like any sort of adaptation stuff like you hear so many stories like that but he was originally like this is great like a a German director wants to adapt my work this is amazing not realizing I think what happens in a lot of those cases which is that once you have sold the rights you have very little control over what they do with it. So he's assuming his whole book is going to get

adapted. He's thrilled, as is his wife. He has like, this is like, very ancillary, but I enjoyed reading about it. He had this like, long, it seems like kind of very beautiful relationship with a German actress named Ingeborg Hoffman, who was a pretty successful German actress and had a huge hand in kickstarting his career. I feel like you often hear the story in the reverse, but she like used a lot, she thought he was a really talented writer and used a lot of her connections to like kind of get him his start writing and they had a very close collaborative relationship so even though nd is the credited author he would always say like well but like none of my work would exist if i wasn't in this relationship with this amazing person which i thought was very nice but

anyways he grows to really hate the fact that this movie is being made because they're like, okay, it makes the most sense for the three act structure and for like the ethos of Hollywood in the eighties to just adapt the first half. So the movie we see is just the first half of the book, which I think kind of leaves it ending on this very optimistic note of like, you know, Bastien is going to rebuild Fantasia which is called fantastica in the book who knows why but i just want to quote helen de cruz's recap of the second half of the book because it's quick and it's good so the differences in the book as far as as i can tell

it's very very similar except a big difference that it seems like endy was very intentional about was that bastian was bullied because he was fat and because he was like considered to not be traditionally intelligent so in the book like it's constantly referenced especially that like bastian has extreme issues with his own body and how people talk about him including his father and including his bullies wow that's like inherent to the character in a way that is not adapted in the movie um so here's the recap quote in the second half of the book Bastien creates Fantastica anew he can do what he wishes oh the other difference is that when people in Fantasia or Fantastica die or are lost to the nothing, they turn into lies in the human world. It gets very philosophical, and I'm like, I'm not smart enough to understand what he's trying to say here.

But if you are a dragon that is consumed by the nothing you turn into a lie that is told on earth that is how you so there's like a direct consequence to the real world like you become fake news you become a tucker carlson episode in the real world it's really like it's clear that like andy'sy's trying to, like, do something. But anyway, okay. So, Bastion creates Fantastica Anu. He can do what he wishes, protected by the amulet Aran, which gives him amazing strength and ability.

It also gives him the physical shape he believes he wants. He is no longer short or fat, but tall and athletic. Clearly, Bastion loathes himself as he truly is and this self loathing distorts his relationship to fantastica his wishes are clear wish fulfillment that slowly erode his sense of true identity each wish he makes he loses part of his memory soon bastion falls under the spell of a cunning witch who aims to use him for her own purposes. He loses his friends, including Atreyu and the luck dragon Falkor, as he turns against them. Bastion's lack of memories and proper self-respect ultimately propel him to almost crown himself the emperor of Fantastica.

After the childlike empress disappeared without warning, has him the Orin and all of his wishes came true he believes this is a sign that he is her successor so it totally undoes the work that happens in the first movie and it becomes this like I think that the way it's written about is that this is an authoritarian kind of like cautionary tale the way that it's written and the moral as i've read it it goes on it goes on for a while but like bastion by acquiring power and then like altering himself to look the way that he believes he should and like exerting power over others ends up ruining fantastica a second time and it's not until he can accept himself as he truly is and love himself as he truly is physically emotionally and everything

else that he's able to truly like engage with this fantastic world he's created responsibly so the book it's a real kardashian tale it's wild yeah and i i mean i read i was like that's really interesting i'd be interested to read it but i get why that's not in the movie that's so depressed like it's really um yeah i don't know yeah the second half of the book is wild so nd was really um angry that they only adapted the first half and he believes that uh seeing the movie killed his wife which is another wild his his wife did see the movie and went home and went to bed and never woke up are you fucking kidding me no it is so bizarre yeah she saw a screening of it and she was like i didn't like it and then she died oh my god

first of all how could you not like it first and most importantly ingrid in grid uh but yeah fascinating um i very bizarre to and then to supplement your research jamie and i'm pulling this from scholarly journal wikipedia oh hell yeah the second half of the book was eventually used as a rough basis for the second film never Neverending Story 2, The Next Chapter, released in 1990, I have not read the book nor have seen that movie, so I can't speak about how that adaptation goes. I have watched, I have seen the second movie, and I have very few memories of it. It certainly was not as impactful as the first i remember feeling like jonathan brandis is trying to take the place of my bastion played by uh barrett oliver and i i couldn't handle it i hated it i it's like when when uh the older sister in roseanne uh comes back

as a different actor i i would just like rejected it sure sure yeah you're like I refuse yeah no I I enjoyed reading about Barrett Oliver because he is like one of the kind of child stars that he was like in a bunch of stuff in the 80s and then he was like wait a second oh my god I'm an adult okay highly recommend that everybody watches another movie that Barrett Oliver Barrett Oliver is like of my time like the movie Daryl is another one of these 80s mind fucks

it's terrifying and strange I've never heard of it wait what is it about I think it was like a Disney made for TV movie but it's about this kid that he he's found and abandoned in a mountain by a family. And they sort of like take him to scientists because he has all these

special abilities. And I can't remember why he has special abilities. Perhaps he's like psychic or just like, he's just like a kid who is magical. Okay. And it's just a very strange orphan fantasy. don't know okay he was also in cocoon yes yeah this kid this kid was prolific i just love when a child star is extremely prolific and then they're like i'm out of here because then what he does is he then becomes a really specific

scholar he's like a scholar on in like 19th century photography processes now that's what he's up to yeah that's awesome he's hey he's just chilling yeah good for him i know yeah i i didn't know any of that until like doing a little bit of prep for this episode about all of that adaptation stuff and how the author of the source material got screwed over and then his wife died after this movie did kill his wife that he loved so much and then but i would say i mean honestly i think that like the the worst part of this is that he got so financially fucked over because it sounds like they continued to use his work in future adaptations i don't imagine he was paid again but as far as like the portion of i

feel like the store the half of the story they adapt is like it works i don't know it's beautiful what studio what produced it like what where did it good question it was like it was shot in a lot of it was shot in germany because it's german it's a german director it's a german film peterson yeah because he directed a movie i've only heard said out loud das boot uh-huh yeah what boot is very famous german film yeah i was like that's the germanist film i could think of isn't it a war movie i think so yeah so i'm like why did they give him the never-ending story i don't really understand but he did a great job oh and then he went on to i didn't realize that he's the director of air force one and outbreak and so he like seems transitioned at least partially into

like american cinema he also directed the perfect storm oh and troy okay poseidon yeah yeah there was a time a lot of action adventure yeah the the perfect storm goes down in history for me as one of the worst movies i have ever seen it was so bad that i was laughing aloud for the entire second half of the movie in the fucking theater. Like, oh, my God. Horrible. I'm just fascinated by people with the first name Wolfgang. That's cool.

How'd you get here? Also, every time I confuse Wolfgang Peterson and Wolfgang Puck all the time. So I'm like, oh, yeah, Wolfgang Peterson. He has some restaurants. He has a line of really heavy duty cookware. Yes. And I have some. I love it.

I used to have a boss named Wolfgang Hammer. And I was like, that's not a real man. How is he standing before me when that couldn't be true? But he's real you know the real award in never-ending story i think goes to the production design and the costumes and the makeup my god and i think that the beautiful the youth performances are really good in this like i thought atreyu was really amazing and as as was bastian i really i mean and the childlike empress she's pretty good for the four lines she has yeah those gigantic like those plate-sized eyes i was like oh she i looked her up as well she's like a professor and then she

later became like a lyrical dancer everyone in this movie seems to like have gone on to like live their truth i appreciate it amazing amazing interesting as far as what we tend to focus on discussion wise um i couldn't help but not that much in the way of women or girls and if they are present in the story they're like the empress who is not on screen until the very end of the movie yeah there's she's dying and she's dying and she yeah she like kind of needs to be rescued like yeah that's yeah yeah for sure that's yeah that's the kind of like the thrust of the narrative i keep saying thrust in recent episodes and i we've yeah can't explain it i don't know which of us started it but one of us needs to stop well it's not gonna be me i'm gonna keep thrusting i said that out loud yesterday

in our shrek 3 episode and i was like why are we saying thrust right now this is not okay look what's not okay is that the term has been you know really manipulated to mean something true you know it's true inappropriate I saw an old I don't know what I was watching but I saw like an old timey clip of something of like a grown man talking to a child where he's like where he said I'm so thrilled I might bust

you used to just be able to like say kind of whatever yes I don't think bust meant the same no probably not i hope i hope not he was like an adult man talking to shirley temple or something i don't know what the fuck i was watching but he's like i might bust and you're like oh my god she's seven don't say bust gross anyway so sorry for my vocabulary but But yeah, the premise of the movie is that Atreyu needs to save, you know, this young girl. Who, for our purposes, literally a female character that needs a man to give her a name.

Yes. To be fair. Which I think does remove a lot of important context. But on its face, that is true. Yes. So there's her. Then you've got the, what is her name? Urgel, who is the his wife character of this science guy who is given much more. I wouldn't even say he's given more narrative significance because like all he really does is show Atreyu where the gates are

to get to the Southern Oracle. But he's given way more screen time because there's just a few moments where this married couple are on screen together. They're horrible to each other. They clearly hate each other. He is throwing very gendered insults her way. And he calls her a wench several times, like we mentioned mentioned and then she's not allowed to be in the movie after that because the movie kind of values his knowledge and skills more than hers yeah he just seems like more eager to be on screen than she does he's like slamming her out of the way to be like am i science yeah which i was like kind of i was honestly kind of like a little surprised that that happened because the way they're introduced he looks like the buffoon and she looks like like

oh well i actually keep shit running here i'm just not respected due to society also in fantasia apparently yeah still a very patriarchal society there yeah but then it like kind of changes and then by the end she's the one that is like yeah very out of frame and then engelwook is like stating themes of the movie in a very profound way and i'm like i wish that ergel was saying this and not him because it's like she was positioned as the person who was like smarter and but then I was also was I not moved when I heard you know Anguic described the like mirror of like who you truly are like kind people find they are cruel like courageous people find they are cowards um I just felt like he didn't earn it in the way that she did I wish wish she had had those lines. I agree.

It's like a white man's fantasy. To me, so much of what we know about fantasy, especially in film and cinema, is from a white male patriarchal point of view, so you really rarely get

you know, I feel like we see it as recent as like game of thrones and shit yeah it's like oh you still cast the brown people as wild and like stupid and savage and you know like the black people as slaves like come on oh yeah it's pervasive yeah and and also like like you're saying, Jenna, like has not gone away in a way that is like fucking infuriating. Yeah. That goddamn series. I will say that the movie had more diversity than I would have expected, especially from a movie from the 80s, at least for the first like 25 minutes of the movie because you've got

deep roy playing the guy with the snail whose name according to imdb is teeny weeny okay that seems respectful they never refer to each other by their names on the movie. I didn't think so. Okay. Deep Roy is extremely iconic, though. I mean, like, legendary. I love a character actor. I salute him forever and ever. Though his voice is dubbed over by another actor doing, I think, I couldn't remember

if it was an American accent or british accent so so deep roy's voice was not used in the movie and his voice got dubbed over i wonder why yeah i'm not sure and then you have the character of i also don't know if this was this character's name was spoken aloud but chiron karen not sure played by moses gun he's the character who's like we summoned a trey you to the ivory tower like the spokesperson for the empress yeah exactly right and i believe he does not come back right like he no i don't think so i i don't know why like i don't usually do this for best of class episodes but like i went really deep because I just like hadn't seen most of these actors before. Like I recognize Deep Roy, but that might have been it.

Yeah, it's giving like Canadian TV movie casting. And so I ended up kind of like doing some some reading on everyone. And the actor who plays Kyra, I think it's like Kyra and Karen, whatever it is. Yeah. He's really fucking fascinating. Like he was like,

I think kind of like a forgotten character actor who, once I looked at his filmography, I was like, Oh yeah. Like for some reason I watched little house on the Prairie when I was, um, home alone when I was a kid. And he does have kind of a very memorable arc on little house on the Prairie. i was um home alone when i was a kid and he does have kind of a very memorable

arc on little house on the prairie he plays like a boxer but now he's a farmer and he's hanging out with the kids and like he's his name is moses gun he won like an ob award he was like a very famous theater actor and then he pops up in this movie for not enough time but like he just was kind of a an overlooked character actor as many character actors are so shout out moses gun i think i remember him from either little house as well or i don't know the cosby show i think he was also on the cosby show yeah which i mean i was like i I was a Nick at night kid. I watched, I did.

I mean, it's like, we don't talk about it now, but I did watch the Cosby show when I was a kid. Yeah. He was in, he was kind of like a, he was in everything.

Right. Um, he was in, you know, Hawaii five. Oh, the original one. He was in roots.

He was in little house. He was in Amityville horror to the possession. You know, he was in roots he was in little house he was in amityville horror 2 the possession you know he was in everything he was in shaft yes no way a legend alleged so like shout out to moses gun um and i think that he was like even more regarded on stage than he was in movies and tv yeah i mean it's like and again it's like that's not a lot of diversity at all and those characters could be removed from the story right but i am happy that they're there i don't like i i was i'm curious what you both think because i was kind of like struggling with the many different reads you can have of this story where there's no need for it to be so driven by young white boys and men which it absolutely is and and so sometimes I'm like okay

like the whole kind of arc for Bastien is like he needs to become confident enough in himself and like stand in his own sort of identity enough in order to be like, I am the protagonist, which is like not really a problem that white men have historically had. However, I was like, with with the read of like, this is a grieving child who is not being given the support that he needs from anyone in his support system and anyone who's supposed to be looking out for him there was also a read of it where I was like good for that kid you know like he the way that the movie sort of laid out made me think a lot about like oh this kid really needed to like see himself somewhere as someone who could be empathetic and impactful and navigate

a difficult situation and survive it which is like what bastia needs to do and he doesn't have that support from his dad or from his math here test i think that's his entire support system is yeah his bully is his dad and his math test and so there's ways i don't know like i i was seeing in all these different ways it's a puzzle yeah i mean i think it would be far more impactful if it had been a character who is largely under or unrepresented in media and literature reading this book and seeing that or being able to plug themselves into the story or seeing themselves in the story and then like developing that confidence but yeah like you said jamie that has never been a problem for cishet white boys and men so right it's uh it's not as impactful as it could have been certainly no and i feel like ultimately this is a movie about how reading is good and cool and since we famously don't read on

this podcast i don't support the message wait i have a was this like I was like a vague I have like very very vague memories of like maybe some of the only imagery I saw of the never-ending story as a kid because I didn't see the movie was like posters at the library about how reading is awesome would that have happened oh yeah yeah yes I think that there was like in the early 80s I remember being I again I'm so interested and fascinated by what was happening in the 80s with sort of this uh I think the Reagans had a lot to do with it because you know Barbara was or not Barbara um Nancy Reagan was such a pro like family person so she was really into like literacy and parenting kind of stuff and so there's a lot of like propaganda about how to raise your kids correctly and right in like in like a very like rigid family dynamic yeah and a very republican uh way and i think that we see a lot of media from this time

that is about the loss of imagination and like the like princess bride for better or worse it is also the some a similar sort of setup and concept where it's a boy being told a story by his grandpa and it's about this adventure and and and he's he's in the beginning of princess bride he's playing a nintendo he's playing at nes and like is and his grandpa comes in he's like gosh you know you don't you don't know what real stories are about you know just like never-ending story of santa he's like my books yes beat me up and you're like and that makes them awesome meanwhile it's like sir have you ever played zelda breath of the wild because that's truly some of the best storytelling

is happening uh via video games now yeah exactly jokes on you fuckers but i also do think that like i attach myself to that messaging because I was raised with it like there's a part of my brain that is like actually like ignited by that kind of messaging it like I was indoctrinated with that messaging that like video games are bad they teach you how to kill they rip away your imagination books are where the real answers are and and i believe that it's so fucked up but i like i bought into it and sure yeah of course i still played video games but like i i like but it's like it's both it's almost as if yes there is some great storytelling in video games in movies and television and books i guess but i'm kidding books are cool. I know how to read. Okay.

But there's also like bad storytelling across all of these mediums. So it's just like, it depends on the quality of the story. Yeah. Book, book heads really kind of obscure how many terrible books there are out there. Much like there's a million terrible movies and video games. Like if there's, if there's an art form form there's a lot of bad versions of that art form yeah if you've been to a stand-up show you understand that um but yeah i'm gonna i was so while i do think it is like very you know it's like hard to even say of the era because it still very much happens all the time where it's like there is a you know little white boy who is put into like the role of protagonist who needs to believe he's the protagonist when there's so many people and and groups who are

never told they're the protagonist and it's like reinforced over and over and over and so on that end you're like well there's actually not very much being challenged right but I also do like have a lot of love for and like really felt I don't know just like watching a kid find a character that they're like I you know if this character can do it then so can I because I remember feeling that way a ton when I was a kid and like I was like going back to my lemony snicket books where I always all roads lead back to my lemony snicket books where it's like oh yeah like just a specific character or book or memory that you know exactly where you were at in your kid squishy brain life when you were going through it and

it was like a moment or whatever it was that like helped you push through it and it was like a moment or whatever it was that like helped you push through it and it's like those are some of the most i don't know like intimate and like formative memories you can have and it's cool that there's a movie that like tracks that exactly of like totally yeah and tells bastian at the end like you are important to your favorite character too like that's who makes me emotional it's very nice yeah i really love it yeah on top of that this is a story where i mean it's kind of hard to say who's the protagonist if well it's like obviously like it's bastion's story like mad max fury road who is it's bastion's story. Like Mad Max Fury Road. It's Bastion's story. And then he's sort of like living vicariously through the other protagonist, which is Atreyu.

Both characters are little boys who are openly expressing emotion, openly crying. They are struggling. They're being vulnerable. They're struggling. They don't feel emasculated by their struggle. They're failed by people around them who have good intentions constantly, which is always something that I feel like is underrepresented in kids media is like, it's always like villain, the guy who's failing you intentionally and maliciously when I feel like it's far more

common for kids to be what happens with Bastien's dad with like someone that I'm sure that if his dad could show up for him the way that he needed to he would want to but he can't right and so like Bastien's totally isolated yeah and so and with Bastien specifically again he's this little boy who is a gentle, book-loving boy who gets very emotional with the art that he consumes. And then it's the relationship that he had with his mother and the grief that he's feeling toward his mother's death that like kind of saves the day where he's like oh my gosh like my mom's name was moon child and that's your name so like the kind of child and that man end up getting married like that's what that's what i'm saying like when when moon child died that house went to shit

yeah why did moon child marry this guy who guzzles raw eggs every morning? He's like, God, I think Moonchild used to make this for me when she was alive, but no. But how did she cook them? I don't know. She probably scrambled them and didn't drink them raw. Just a thought. But anyway, but yeah, so it's like his connection. And, you know, we were just were just talking Jamie about like we're

always talking about so many movies being about a relationship between father and son and while this is that to some degree it's about how Bastion's dad is failing him and he cannot look to his dad for any type of support where a lot of movies about fathers and sons the father is failing the son but the movie is saying like this dad is teaching his boy how to be a man and how to repress his feelings and isn't that awesome like celebrating the resilience of a child because the child has to be resilient right totally and this movie doesn't go in that direction um it shows like this father is like failing his son in his like moment of most dire need and and he has to turn to books for comfort so yeah i just i liked that i think it's it's so rare to see a story where the protagonist is a boy or a man and have that character be vulnerable and crying on screen and like things that you that are perceived by society to be like emasculating and.

Yeah. And have those qualities be like celebrated. And I love that. Exactly. I mean, I love that he gets to stab gomorrah atreia does yes but that the sort of like i felt like the underlying message there and i guess like i i'm like currently kind of in like grief mode so i was like really leaning heavy into the the grief reading of this movie but i really i really appreciated how it seemed like bastian was being encouraged by the book and atrereus as well to just like look it in the face and confront it.

And as painful as it clearly is, it's like, that's why, I don't know, I was back and forth because it's like, I rarely want a male protagonist. But I thought it was rare to see like a young boy encouraged to confront an extreme emotion as a positive. And that's just not common. I liked it. I think for me, as much as I want women and girls at the center of stories that I consume, I also want boys who are challenging masculinity for sure I also I have the desire like knows no gender it's sort of like this the same for me like that journey feels the same because perhaps it is the same that like a woman as central is the anti-masculine, you know. Right.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Thrust, if you will. Oh, okay. You've got another person on board. Woo. Yeah, I totally agree. Like I, I don't know. And I feel like the central, as much as it's like the childlike empress which what a character name um

but the childlike empress she is so not a part of the story until the very end but then she ends up being this embodiment of his mom's memory and that was something again i think it was just because we covered a million holiday movies where dead mom is so part and parcel to every holiday movie that's ever come out oh my god i never thought about that but yes like disney renaissance and every holiday movie ever mommies they're gone they're gone and it's big because santa isn't a mommy santa is a daddy figure. So we can't be having mommy figures. Yes. So I think I was like that trope has been on my mind recently anyways.

And so at first I was like, oh, dead mom trope. Like, what are what are we going to do with this? But I think I again, I'm just like it ended up kind of working for me because so often, even though Moonchild, the the dead mom is extremely vague and we don't know a lot about her I thought it was like really I don't know like I just it really like hit with me I feel like so often when you see a parent who's passed on and like specifically a mother it's always very like gentle and I'm thinking of I think Casper where like the mom comes back as an angel and she tells sexy Bill Pullman and little Christina Ricci, like,

I just want you to be happy and I want you to like move on. And it's still a very like maternal, like, don't worry about it. Yeah. I died at like 34. It's, it's it's all good like and it's very like unselfish in the way I think that mothers are often kind of typecast as like the unselfish mother sure but with the childlike empress who like I think like symbolizes his mom she is like

begging him to remember her and I was like that was i don't know as far as dead moms go that felt very very active of like no don't just fucking never speak my name again because all your dad can do is not have a feeling and drink eggs like if you don't yeah like it it feels like cocoa where you're like if you don't talk about me, if you don't remember me, I disappear. So fucking say my name and talk about me and like rebuild this. I don't know. Wow. I was really into that scene.

Yeah. And then they get to be together and it's like he's with his mom and she just is able to tell him like, it's not too late. Just like, you know, lovingly get your shit together kid like deal with your feelings and you can rebuild everything wow but then when he does in the book and it turns him into a fascist so it's yeah it's complicated a athletic fascist scary oh my god well i just like just let the movie be the movie author like you did something weird you did something weird that god does anyone have anything else to say about the flim uh i feel like i could go on and on about this movie, but I want to spare my stupid thoughts and let people enjoy it. Because also like,

there is something about like breaking this movie down and how hard it is that I'm like, yeah, the intentions were so simple. We're pulling, we're trying to pull things from it that are like very much clearly in the book. Yeah.

Like something was lost in translation between the book and the movie. They aren't matching up here. But was also so moving as a kid. Yeah. Truly swept me away every time I watch it. And even when I watched it yesterday, high as a kite, way shoveling popcorn into my mouth was transported by the stupid costumes makeup and practical effects it some of which when you're talking about falcor scary to me falcor was it was it that falcor did falcor blink i was trying to fair i was like what about falcor

maybe it was the mouth i was focused on the eyes because they seemed really wet and they weren't blinking and i was like buddy they were but i was like wait it's not real i feel like they were blinking but maybe not necessarily in unison maybe it was maybe that was another thing maybe what it was it was like blinking like a chucky cheese animatronic wood where it's like blinking really loudly where it's like like you know yeah or there's like eyelashes that are like sort of like snuffle up against on Sesame Street. Yes. You can hear it from 10 feet away and you're like, I shouldn't be able to hear someone blink like that. behind the scenes Falcor on YouTube because I believe that there is footage of Bastion writing or Atreyu writing Falcor against a green screen or like a movie it's kind of cool whoa oh that's amazing I would love to know how more because it's like there is some very like you know dated

green screen effects but for some reason like not to the point where i was like taken out of it to an absurd degree i was just like yeah that's i guess it's 1984 like who who care i don't know it's still the story was good enough that you're just like whatever and i did kind of laugh when bastian at the end he's like he just had this profound like breakthrough in his life and then they're like what do you want to do next he's like ride a dragon and kill some kids and you're like yeah cool love that for him the disney channel had to show up somewhere exactly well does the movie pass the bechdel test? Oh, no. I really don't think it does.

It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. But, you know, we're in a pickle. If only Falkor was a girl dog. Well, that's what I'm saying. A girl shoes you. There was no reason that almost every character that Atreyu encountered needed to be male or male coded

so the only one aside from like the empress is morla the turtle who again i was not sure the gender of the person who voiced morla and morla i do think was coded as a woman okay all the all the summaries i found used she her pronouns yes got it okay maybe it was just like a very grumbly smoker's voice that yeah i was always sort of um i used to put her and ursula the Sea Witch in the same sort of like smoking anti-character. A celebrated, a celebrated character. I love that character.

My favorite. I just am like, yeah, you're wrong to hate children, but I like how you do it. You sneeze on their face. It's kind of a wash. Are you wrong?

Sneeze in my mouth, mommy. Like, great. But yeah. And then mommy like great um but yeah and then so there's morla and then there's the wench basically uh according to her husband and yeah i mean again like i i i wonder how much more impactful this movie could have been if like the bastion character and the atreyu character were like a little black or brown girl rather than a little white boy, which is what so many children family movies historically have been. So anyway, no, does not pass the bechdel test uh but our nipple scale in which we rate the movie

on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens um it's hard because it's like i've only said nice things but for i guess this is gonna be i'm gonna use the bechtel cast cheat code which is to split down the middle give it two and a half because while i do appreciate that it's a story about a boy who loves reading and he expresses his emotions and he like wants to grieve or he's trying to figure out how to grieve and his like toxic egg dad is like no son focus on math class and uh it's egg daddy he's bad and it's it's like about like young boyhood vulnerability to some degree and i appreciate that but there also is no reason that more of the characters couldn't be girls women female coded also no reason more characters couldn't be people of color there also could have been more body diversity especially

since in the source material bastion is fat and you almost never get to see a fat kid as the hero of a movie. I think there just could have been more diversity across the board. So I don't know. It's tricky. This is a complicated one, but I'll stick with two and a half and i will give one to deep roy i'll give one to deep roy's racing snail and i'll give my half my half nipple to moon child moon child i i mean i'm honestly like for our metric i'm tempted to go more like two which bums me out because I do think that there I mean if I was doing it on a personal enjoyment how it made me feel and how much I want to watch it again it

would be like four to five like it really really hit for me but I mean in terms of like intersectionality there's not a lot of it I think that like the strongest thing that this movie has going for it was what you were describing so well a couple minutes ago jenna which is like encouraging young boys to confront not just like traditional expectations of masculinity but like confront their own emotions and have that be a positive way to move through your life and have that become a heroic quality because I think that that is like a really really powerful thing that and and also it's like Bastien I don't think we've like talked but I think that Bastien like more so than a lot of like little white boy protagonists that I've encountered throughout my life feels very like plug in a bowl

of like, he's, I don't know, like, it's just like, I found it easy to like, put myself in him because you don't know that much about him until the very, very end. So he is kind of like, like, I can't think of a better term than avatar, which is poor cultural timing. But like he is a good character to kind of plug yourself into. But I mean, in terms of like how much this movie is pushing back, I think it pushes back on masculinity, but kind of not very much else.

And like you were saying, Caitlin, there was no reason this movie had to be as white as it was and as male dominated as it was I do kind of in general think that Bastien as a boy character really did work for me but outside of that character I like it would have been really cool to see Bastien see himself in a character of another gender or like there were all these different ways it could have gone um and I really loved the movie and I can't wait to watch it again.

And I want to share it with people. So multitudes for this one. I'm going to go to, I'm going to give one to Urgel, who was a woman in STEM. True. And you can't tell me different. That's right. And then I'm giving one to the, to the, the titty statue that could kill you if you, if you didn't believe in yourself.

That's how I like to feel like I am in relationships. I do now recall that the lasers come out of the eyes, but boy, do they seem like they come out of the tits though, right? Because the tits are so present. That would have been too far. That would have been too far. That would have been PG-13. Totally. Oh, God.

I give it 1.5, I think. And for all the reasons that you've already said, I don't even need to expand upon it. I'm taking a half a point for Atreyu, unfortunately. I have to do that. Now, do I love this movie? Yes. But on that scale, you know,

and a lot of the 80s movies that i grew up with boy don't hold up really really celebrating young boys young white boys in a way that is uh unnecessary um but that was the i guess important thing to discuss at the time for some fucking reason yeah but also helped to develop what i believe to be the active imagination that i have now was highly encouraged by the never ending story and movies of its in its genre and of the time and of its caliber like i really felt like i was raised by these movies and they were so strange and bizarre and wild uh but I love them yep I want this podcast Jana yes I know I'm gonna make it I want it I know I'll do it I'll do it and please come back anytime to our show with love and uh thank you so much for being here where can people find you check out your stuff follow you online etc well i have for the most part laid off twitter because it's just

understandable hard to be there now but um i'm on instagram still and you can see me on rutherford falls you can see me on the tv show reservation dogs which is on fx on hulu and also you can see me on Rutherford Falls. You can see me on the TV show Reservation Dogs, which is on FX on Hulu. And also you can listen to my podcast that I'm going to be making about the macabre media content of the 80s for children. I can't wait. I cannot wait. You can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon, where you will get two bonus episodes every month,

plus access to the back catalog of well over 100 bonus episodes, all at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast for $5 a month. And if you can believe it, we are covering 9,000 different adaptations of Pinocchio this month. Due to a bad idea I had. Oh, yes. High demand from the listeners.

Two things can be true at once. And you can also grab our merch if you should so choose over at tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast we've got some new designs that that jamie designed such as shrekian that's it such as feminist icon paddington such as the flubber mambo by danny elfman one of the greatest compositions of our time. Absolutely. And with that, should we jump on our horny puppet dragon and get out of here? Yeah, baby. Let's go. 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 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,

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