The Bechdel Cast - Saved! with with Ellie Brigida and Leesa Charlotte

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

Caitlin and Jamie chat with Ellie Brigida and Leesa Charlotte of Sweetbitter Podcast about Saved! Exclamation point!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @elliebrigida and @leesacharlotte of @sweetbitterpod on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, 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,

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The patriarchy is effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast this i honestly thought about opening this episode by singing the song from a walk to remember which is another iconic moment in christianity right do you think that's where Mandy Moore did this movie to like, I switch her rep. We will talk about it. Cause I have a whole, I'm like, I think so.

Right. Cause there, she's, I mean, she's surprisingly versatile. She plays Christian angels and Christian devils. So that's range. We have to go over the evolution of Mandy Moore.

Evolution and devolution. Okay. Anyway, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. I couldn't think of a fun intro. I wanted to sing the song from A Walk to Remember. Do you remember the words?

I don't know. The song to remember from A Walk to Remember so yeah my head back down and i lift my hands and pray yes and she's like singing this at school and you're like oh my god this girl would be toast if this were real life and that's the magic of mandy moore this is our saved episode this is not our walk to remember episode but i'm sure that that's uh imminent it's coming it's just. It's coming. It's just walking. It's walking, not running into your feet. It's walking. Yeah. It's slowly moseying its way into the Bechtelcast catalog.

But today, what is already here is saved exclamation point. Yes. I love gratuitous punctuation in a movie. Only if it's an exclamation point. I don't like like this year when it was like emma period i'm like let's skip that i loved the movie but i didn't need the punctuation i didn't realize that the title of that movie came with a period yeah it's it's not it's not oh i saw emma it's i saw emma you're'm a full sentence and i just don't think that's necessary my favorite unnecessary

exclamation point is of course the one included in the title of mother exclamation point the darren aronofsky oh sure i like the comma in i tanya but you you just need it well sure that's just a mess that's necessary well are you leaving out the comma in I Frankenstein, Jamie? What do you, like, what about that one? That's another iconic movie comma. Gotta rate the best movie punctuation. I like, I like the exclamation point. I like exclamation point movies.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of other ones, but before we get too far down this rabbit hole, let's introduce our guests um oh wait wait first oh my gosh i'm so out of whack exclamation point because i we spent too much time talking there's a lot of colons they're sorry okay first we have to talk about what this show is and yeah okay so this is the Bechtel cast we talk about movies using an intersectional feminist lens we use the Bechtel test just as a way to jump start a conversation and that of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel that requires two people of any marginalized gender have to have names they must speak to each other and it has to be about something other than a man

and that conversation has to last at least two lines of dialogue by our standards so that's our rendition of the test there's also there's a question mark. There's sometimes movies will be a question like who's afraid of Virginia Wolf. And then I think the movie with the most punctuation is the Chronicles of Narnia colon, the lion comma, the witch comma and the wardrobe and the wardrobe. So that's basically what we talk about on the show. The punctuation in titles of movies.

It's a movie grammar podcast. Yes. Okay. Well, that gives us something to think about, you know? Yeah. The punctuation. It does make you think, oh, brother, where art thou? Oh, yeah.

Oh, brother, comma, where art thou? Question mark. Where art thou? Airplane! Exclamation point? Exclamation point. This is just the rest of the episode sorry sorry ellie and lisa feel free to jump in with your favorite movie i'm sorry i was like i

was like do i have to wait i was you know how hard it was for me to not sing the song from what i remember i saw i was like i'm gonna wait for them to introduce me. I'm going to be a good podcast guest. And I lay my. Damn it. Ellie, we'll do a TikTok later. It'll be fine. Later, yes. We'll do a full cover and it'll be great. Because you're like a legit singer.

You are a trained, skilled. Jamie. Kind of bitchy to lead the podcast with. We both are. Yeah. Honestly honestly your rendition was gorgeous it was beautiful I thought you were a train singer so absolutely you know I'm not a train well I mean as Caitlin said for some reason I'm not a train singer but okay well you know what I'm the Mandy Moore of this episode I'm the bitchy mean girl you're being a real Hilary Faye so rude full of Christ love

do you sing on TikTok Ellie? yes I do if you want to check out my TikTok I actually do like vocal lessons on my TikTok teach people how to riff so if you want to learn how to riff just check it out

yeah hell yeah i've learned a lot from your instagram as well so yes i put i basically just take my tiktok and put it on instagram but yes okay well let me let us introduce you properly so our guests today are co-hosts of sweet bitter a new podcast about Sappho, who is the first known woman in European literary tradition and also where the word lesbian comes from. It's Ellie Brigida and Lisa Charlotte. Hello. Hi. We're officially here. Everything I said before, it doesn't matter. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks for being here. Of course.

And Ellie, welcome back. You were one of two guests on our episode about Debs. Yes. More punctuation. So much. So much punctuation. Yeah, that's like a heavy punctuation. Four periods?

Yeah. After every letter. Wow. It is a joy to be back oh wait we're back exclamation point a dinosaur story okay yeah yeah yeah because that's one too anyway uh the informant you're you're encyclopedic knowledge of punctuation movies is so impressive i have a listicle in front of me god damn it i thought this is from your head yeah i was like there's oh to say another bitchy comment there's

no way jamie's just pulling these caitlin is just being a mega bitch today i uh mastering commander what if i mean that implies that i've seen all these movies i'm like i gun to my head could not tell you who's in is matt damon the informant i believe so question mark i have no idea birds of prey colon and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn there it is it's surprising there's only one piece of punctuation in that very long title it's so long so many words no exclamation isn't when harry met sally that's like dot dot dot right oh really i don't know i'm pretty sure is that wait okay let's fact check yes yes really nailed it yeah when harry met sally ellipses no kidding i never knew that it's because it

shouldn't be like that yeah unnecessary don't need it but what can you do saved you need it saved it's necessary so let's talk about saved um what is your relationship, your history with the movie? Ellie, why don't we start with you? So this is, I've seen this movie a very, very long time ago. And I barely remembered it, to be honest. I was like, I know it's hilarious, but I can't really remember it. And then Lisa and I did a rewatch where we watched it and basically like live, we're live texting each other and as an adult watching this film I saw so much more than I ever remembered so it was great yeah I

could appreciate the satire a bit more I think of course what about you Lisa um I think this came out in my last year of high school and I loved it my um my dad used to rent videos and we used to get like the preview movies you know ahead of time on like VHS so cool yeah I know envy of everybody um and so I was a massive fan I really loved Jenna Malone from um Life as a House of all things I don't know why I loved that movie as a teenager, but I really did. And I was into Hayden Christensen and I have to live with that. You know, we were all there. There was a time. Jenna Malone has very like Kristen Stewart before Kristen Stewart was Kristen Stewart energy for me. Yes. How is she not gay? I just I keep looking

it up to see if she's gay because it feels like she's gay is she not no she's not gay she's had a lot of lesbian love scenes apparently she's she's really gay energy yeah i keep i keep checking wait i i'm looking it up because i had to it says she's bisexual online oh yes by con and she also was raised by two moms amazing so that's why you just feel it coming off of her absolutely yeah she was raised by two moms and then she was also what is that term um she she was also emancipated emancipated from her two moms oh interesting i didn't know any of this backstory hers her i i up Jenna Malone's life story before researching for this episode, if you can believe it. And she's had a very interesting life.

She's been through a lot and she's out on the other side starring in indie movies. Love it. Good for her. Caitlin, what's your history with Saved? My history with Saved is I'd seen it, I think, twice before this. Once in college. Must have been not long after it came out. I think I was like a freshman or sophomore.

So I think I saw it around the time it came out. And then I think I just caught it again at some point a few years later. I enjoyed rewatching it. I'm excited to talk about it. And, yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with it? I think, like Ellie, I hadn't seen it in a really long time. But I saw it a couple times in, like, middle school and high school at, like, sleepovers and with friends and stuff. I feel like it was a good sleepover movie

and i really liked mandy moore so i would see the her entire oeuvre whether it's music whether it's movies i was engaging with the whole mandy moore canon at this time so i definitely thought i don't remember i think that this was for some i didn't So I definitely thought, I don't remember, I think that this was, I didn't grow up with Home Alone. I don't even know why, but I remember that this was the first movie I saw Macaulay Culkin in, and everyone was like, oh my God, Kevin. And I was like, who's Kevin?

And then my friends laughed. As we all laugh now, bringing back bad memories. And here my friends are again a million years later still laughing um but yeah no i hadn't seen it in at least 10 years i feel like a lot of it holds up i think that what's most interesting for me is what this filmmaker has done since because i feel like his work has since gotten quite bad where this movie i mean there's parts of it that are very steeped in their time but i i generally liked it no yeah well should i recap it and then we'll go from there yeah let's do it oh wait did you who found the fun nepotism in this movie i did yes go, go. Susan Sarandon's daughter is Eva Amori.

And that is who plays Cassandra Edelstein. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then like once you know it and you see her again, it all makes sense. You're like, I see it. That is. She looks like Susan Sarandon. Very much.

Absolutely flawed. And Jenna Malone played, I think, Susan Sarandon's stepdaughter. Absolutely flawed. And Jenna Malone played, I think, Susan Sarandon's stepdaughter in Stepmom. Oh. I saw Stepmom a lot because my crush was in it. Mandy Moore? Again? Mandy Moore was one of my crushes.

This was Liam Aiken. I don't even know who that is. Who? He played the boy in a series of unfortunate events deep cut problem um anyways interesting there's all sorts of weird connections i thought that that was fun nepotism and she was good so i didn't even care yeah she's one of the best parts of the whole movie absolutely she's incredible all right so the story of saved we meet mary that's jenna malone she comes from a devout born-again christian

family her mother is lillian played by mary louise parker who i, isn't that another crush of yours, Jamie? Yes. Isn't she a crush of everybody's? Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. She's so thirsty in this movie. I love it. She is really. This is like an interesting moment for Mary Louise Parker where she, I just want all of

her tank tops and I want to give her a little kiss. She's also coloring her hair the whole film. Yes. It's very funny. So many different. and i feel like my mom had each and every one of those hairstyles at one point minus the blonde but like all the different like layerings like moms were layering in 2004 they couldn't be stopped. It's true. Okay, so Mary is about to be a senior at a Christian high school. Everything seems great for Mary until her Christian boyfriend, Dean, tells her that he thinks that he is gay.

And she, like, reacts. She bumps her head. And then she sees a vision of Jesus telling her that she needs to save dean which falls into something we talked about yesterday caitlin which was the the coming of age movie about a young woman must always feature her underwater having some sort of realization about the fragility of her own life specifically in a swimming pool yes yes in a swimming pool and this one cuts right to the chase i'm like okay this is a coming of age movie confirmed from the first scene yeah yes so as she's like underwater she sees this vision of jesus and she thinks the way that

she's going to be able to save dean is to have heterosex with him, which they do. And she thinks it worked. And obviously it doesn't. And then she goes about her life as if everything is fine. She heads to school with her friends, the fellow, you know, her fellow Christian jewels, who are Hilary Faye, which is Mandy Moore, and Veronica, played by Elizabeth Tai. And then we also meet Hilary Faye's brother, Roland, and that's Macaulay Culkin. But Dean, her boyfriend, doesn't join them at school because his parents found out, found like a gay porn mag in his room and he gets sent to mercy house which is

basically like a like gay conversion therapy place that always works so well i know also mercy house i feel like is like a and a catch-all they're basically like if your kid is doing anything bad send them to mercy house yeah they mention like drugs uh alcohol use teen pregnancy stuff like that yeah i think the word they use is de-gayification yeah yes yeah it always works especially when you put gay people together to make them not gay in the same Yeah, and have them bunk together. It always works. Turns them immediately straight, JK. So Mary's disappointed by this.

They get to school and we also meet Cassandra Edelstein. And she is the only Jewish student at this Christian school. She smokes. She's punk rock. She doesn't follow the rules. She misbehaves. She's not like the other girl. She's not like the Christians because she's not a Christian.

Yeah, because she's Jewish. Therefore, like it's like it's honestly so many of it's all satire. But so many of the things in this movie, you just want to like hit your head. Yeah. Oh, God. She's Jewish. Therefore, she smokes. Therefore, she's a cigarette.

Yeah. You're just like, huh? Right. Yeah. There's also this new kid at school, Patrick, played by Patrick Fugit. And he is the son of the new principal, Pastor Skip. And Mary is like, ooh, who's that? Patrick Fugate. Did anyone in the middle of the movie be like, oh, almost famous? Yes. It took me a minute to. I was the whole time just like, wait,

who, who, who, who, who? It's literally the same haircut. I was like, there was no excuse for me not figuring that out. Yeah, I had the same experience so but mary takes an interest in him and he takes an interest in mary um i know and then one day mary finds out that she is gregnant she with a little greg with a little Greg. Oh, no. Stand out line, please let it be cancer. Like how horrible. She would rather have cancer than be pregnant because of Christianity. Because Christianity. I love her. That was a very funny moment.

Because she's watching this lifetime movie about this woman who thinks she's pregnant, but it turns out she has cancer. And then Mary is just like, please let it be cancer please let it be cancer yes valerie bertinelli in that movie right we see valerie bertinelli many times recurring character she's a looming presence yeah yes um okay so so m Mary has found out that she is pregnant with a Greg. And around this time, Hillary Faye has outed Dean to the school under the pretense of like, well, we have to pray for him kind of thing. And all of this causes Mary to start to question her faith. It's also around this time that Patrick asks Mary out on a date.

She declines. And then Cassandra and Roland start dating. And then Cassandra catches on to Mary being pregnant. And she's like, you know what? I'm going to help you. She takes her shopping for clothes that will help her conceal her pregnancy. And makes Hilary Faye pay for it yes which is great i do love how like it turns everything on its head of okay like the hillary fey this perfect christian is actually a really mean person who outs people who does all these

things and the one person at school who's supposed to be the bad girl is the one who's helping yeah yeah who's helping this girl who needs help like she's actually a good person yes iconic i love cassandra yeah so they they become friends along and roland there it's like a nice little trio. And meanwhile, Hilary Faye is horrified by all of this. She doesn't know that Mary is pregnant yet, but she's still trying to perform exorcisms on her and constantly trying to save her and save Cassandra. So Cassandra, annoyed by this, spreads this old unflattering photo of hillary faye around the school which she is mortified by so hillary faye to retaliate vandalizes the school and frames it on cassandra and roland and mary by planting the spray paint cans in their lockers and then when mary's locker gets searched they also find the ultrasound

of her baby greg and then everyone so everyone finds out that she's pregnant scandal so scandalous so then cassandra and i think also mary gets expelled or maybe just cassandra gets expelled but they're all they're all punished and they're not allowed to go to prom. But Mary's like kicked out of the group. Yeah. Yeah. And then like pastor skip, like wants her to go to mercy house.

And then like Mary Louise Parker's like having a whole thing where she's like, should I send her? Should I not? That ultimatum. How dare you? Right. Well,

also pastor skip and Mary Louise Parker. I i'm like i don't know her actual name i think her name is lillian lillian yeah we're dating before that right and even though pastor skip has a wife right right talk about a couple i couldn't be rooting for less yes i'm rooting for lillian like to be her own independent woman i want her to be laid is what i want yes yeah and not bypassed or skip i want her to be like a not shitty parent there's a lot of yes she needs some support yeah i'm like you she just fully was like oh my daughter is pregnant didn't notice didn't notice better send her away i'm like excellent parenting really 10 out of 10 so our friends are not allowed to go to prom but they decide to go anyway because they figure out that it was hillary faye who bought the spray paint so So Cassandra and Roland as a couple, and then Mary and her date

Patrick all go to prom, as do some kids from Mercy House, including Dean. So at prom, Pastor Skip is like, you, you can't be here. God is judging you. He doesn't like what you're doing with your lives. And then Mary and Patrick are like, Pastor Skip, you need to loosen up, dude. Like your standards are too high. God made us all different and that's okay. Meanwhile, and this is the most fun part of the movie, if you ask me, Hilary Faye is freaking out and then she drives her van into the big like jesus statue thing outside the school then mary starts to go into labor cut to the hospital she's given birth and then in her voiceover at the end she's like yeah i probably

misinterpreted god's message to me about saving Dean, but I do think there is a God or something out there or something inside. I can feel it. And that is the story. Beautiful. So let's take a quick break and then come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, 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. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it.

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They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where to begin with Saved? There's so much interesting stuff in here. I feel like I was looking into just religious satire in general

because I feel like there's definitely not a lot of like teen like uh religious satire directed at teenagers specifically right um and that it kind of happens more on tv than in movies and then i went to the religious satire wikipedia page scholarly wow and also found that this is kind of neither here nor there, except to mention that the religious satire category is just overwhelmed with white guys. Just so like half of the entries are like, and then Trey Parker and Matt Stone did this. And everyone was like what like so um you know there's definitely room for other people in this

in the religious satire genre so if you're listening and you're not a white guy you know think about it not surprising that that's the case on the wikipedia page um especially because like watching this movie one of the biggest things was there for sure could be more diversity it's an entirely oh yeah white cast obviously like some of the students in the background parts are people of color but they don't have names well and there's um veronica i'm like veronica and there's veronica veronica yes and she know almost nothing about i mean, I feel like we know a little bit more about her than we would about, like, some non-white characters, which is...

The bar is on the floor, especially if we're talking about 2004, because we know a little bit about her background, but, like, you could cut her out of the script in a second and nothing would change. Nothing would change. And everything we know about her, you could say in a sentence, which the movie also says in a sentence. It's like she was adopted from Vietnam by parents who were there doing missionary work.

Like, that's it. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Well, that kind of relates to another sort of, I guess, preliminary note about this movie, which is it is unlike a lot of teen movies, which are not religious satires. There's an interesting intersection here with it being a teen comedy slash like religious satire, which I enjoy that about the movie. Yeah. But it's also it does fall into a lot of other kind of teen movie tropes.

Still, for example, you've got the mean girl who's mean. You've got a hetero teen romance being a major subplot. You've got the movie ending in prom and prom being like where the climactic sequence takes place. You've got... Well, at the point where once they were at prom, I'm like if we're doing this trope she better she might as well have the baby at prom and then thankfully she goes into labor at prom because i'm like if you're really gonna bring a very pregnant teen to prom she better go into labor like we've gotten foreshadowed that why subvert that yeah the only thing that's missing is like everyone bands together and votes her prom queen.

But like, yeah, that's the only thing. That's the only thing that's missing. You're right. Justice for Mary. Yeah. Why didn't she get prom queen? Also, in addition to it being a very white cast, it's also another thing that we see in a lot of teen movies is they're all middle to upper middle class.

Yeah. Well, they're like a private school too right like yeah i mean yeah if it's a christmas a religious school then yes yeah it is fully troped out with a lot of that like even that and even it's weird because there are like some subversions inside of this movie but there's like subversions that still exist inside of the trope like it adheres to the trope but it also for example there's a clothes trying on montage but it's not so that the teen girl can look really cute or like find the cutest prom dress it's so she can find clothes that will conceal yeah yeah i like or that i mean this was i i mean i'm curious as to what everybody thinks this was like

a romance subplot that i didn't think overwhelmed everything else and i didn't hate it i didn't like dislike patrick wheeler i'm like patrick skateboard or what i was like patrick skateboard um like i thought patateboard was at least like a pretty respectful sweetheart towards Jenna Malone and that's you know in a 2014 movie you never know how the insert hetero love

interest is going to behave and I was like well Patrick is at least a sweetheart and he's like unproblematic king. My favorite is when he he falls over and his friend hands him the skateboard. And he's like, how's it going? Like, he's still really cool about it. Yeah.

And, like, shout out to his friend for helping him recover there. His friend is a sweetie. Exactly. Yeah, he's never really, he's never displaying any, like, of that kind of machismo, toxic masculinity that a lot of teen boys are like have on constant display and even i really enjoyed that he like challenges his dad at the end and is constantly just kind of challenging the institution of christianity and and like still identifying as christian but like but he doesn't judge. He doesn't like judge Mary for her pregnancy when she tells him to like back off and she's not interested. He does back off.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. He respects her boundaries. He is nice to her. He treats her well, which all of these things should just be standard behavior. But considering that like so many teen movies show teen boys being so horrendously cruel and awful to teen girls. Like I always think of I think my like go to example for like how horrible a boy can be to a girl in a teen movie is Heath Ledger to Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. Which is like a super villain.

Like Buscemi test that but I did I generally found Patrick to be a nice boy who and I for that reason I didn't mind that love story because uh he treats her well yeah I think I mean I I do think you could probably take him out of the movie but I also like it did seem like Mary wanted to be with someone who she was genuinely into and like was sweet and respectful to her so I'm like alright you know what Patrick's a

sweetie date Patrick he's gonna raise he's gonna help you raise your child they're gonna be like this cute little like cause Dean also like after was like I wanna be in the kids life and it's like the four of them is this cute little like because dean also like after was like i want to be in the in this kid's life and it's like the four of them is this cute little like yeah i have hope for the future of like that foursome i want a sequel sort of like co-parenting that baby has four parents yeah yeah right because

dean's boyfriend also is like i'm here too yes he's in the picture at the end he poses i'm like if you're posing for the picture you're you're one of the parents that's it that's the rules of parenting yeah that kid has 500 parents yeah i love it it's gonna be just fine little greg who is um a girl i think a girl yeah yes Yeah. Yes. Gregina. Exactly. So, I mean, yeah, at very least, even the stuff that fell into tropes wasn't so outrageously, like, the worst of the trope. Mm-hmm. The same, kind of the same. I mean, Hilary Faye, there's a lot there. Oh, yeah. In terms of her arc, I did at least appreciate that by the end she got some kind of comeuppance. And it was clear that she was not the world's worst person in a way that sometimes, I mean, if we're talking just in strictly category Mandy Moore villains, at the end of Prince's Diaries, Lana, you know, who knows?

She's burning in hell, maybe. Like, we don't really know never know she isn't necessarily alert like she doesn't get any sort of redemption of like oh well this is where she was coming from like and hillary faye for all the problematic parts of her story that we'll get to at least at the end i feel like she has like a humbling moment. She has to admit that she's wrong. And she like accepts the help of people who don't need to be nice to her, but are AKA her brother and Cassandra. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like she also has the punishment of that hair. So the hair is so bad. Most of my comments to Ellie throughout the film, which is like, I just can't. Her hair. It's just. Is it a wig? It has to be.

I cannot imagine Mandy Moore having that hair in real life during the filming. I don't know. It was 2004. She might have. I don't know. I'm on the fence. You need to know. Mandy Moore.

I just. I don't. I'm. First of all, I've had a crush on her since seven so there's that i used to have a poster of her i think i've said this to you caitlin before i had used to have a poster of mandy moore on my wall when i was like in elementary school that i thought was like looking at me while i was asleep oh my gosh no so mandy moore was your guardian angel well i got scared of it and i took it down or or the ghost haunting your house either or she was looking at me too hard and i had

to take it down but was a big fan um did i tell you that i met her at she did a show at nerd melt like what no i didn't know that yeah she was really nice and she did it confirmed she's amazing oh my god she seems amazing she i like i mean and and this is like a very interesting time in her career where she was singing like bubblegum pop she was like in the britney spears is an available position kind of pop wise but then she started then she did a walk to remember iconic Christian movie canon where she played a character named Jamie and then she did princess diaries where she established that she knows Heather Matarazzo and that she's a bully and then she pays up on that again in saved yeah she plays a bully and

a christian really well and i feel like i wonder if the director brian danley was like i've seen her as a christian i've seen her as a bully what if let's put them together simply mash up we know she can do both yes she's so versatile so what was right after princess diaries that she did saved in the timeline uh no it was a couple years after because princess diaries is oh one this is oh four i don't know what she was doing in between that and possibly more incredible pop music i'm sure more pop music get it because her name is mandy moore she i don't know what she was doing. Oh, she was in a movie. Oh,

I did see this movie. She was in two movies that I saw. Yikes. So she did Princess Diaries, then A Walk to Remember. So sorry, she did Bully, then Christian. Then she did something called How to Deal, which I saw, but I don't remember what it was.

And then Chasing Liberty Liberty which she played the first daughter unlike first daughter which came out the same year and that was Katie Holmes oh right and then she did Saved a wild couple of years for Mandy wow and and her part was a spot was supposed to originally be played by Anne Hathaway this save is just like the princess diaries whoa wait anne hathaway was gonna be hillary fay yeah yeah until she dropped out to do possibly ella enchanted i couldn't figure out what she dropped out to do honestly i'm so happy that that happened sorry anne but mandy's just perfect in this she's perfect and anne has range as well but i'm happy that mandy moore isn't no disrespect

to anne but mandy yeah we wouldn't have the mandy moore god only knows which is just perfect yes right is that the ending credits it's the beginning oh yeah it's like this is a mandy moore film we just want to let you know i remember when we were watching it i was like because it's just her voice and you don't see anyone i was and i literally was like voice of an angel that's manny more i knew it was her she was well in the original posters for this movie she is like in the center even though that doesn't even make sense for the movie like it was built like mandy i probably because she was still a pop star in an indie movie maybe the most she was maybe the most famous person at that point. She's always in the center of every movie she's in.

Right. That's true, yeah. But speaking to the Hilary Faye character, that does bring me to a plot point that I forgot about. She ages very poorly and has a very strange place in the Brian Danley film career canon which is the extremely uh played for laughs fat phobic plot point slash prank this sucks so this comes up and again it's so frustrating because it could so easily have been anything else or not even

happened right and the movie would be no different but they essentially have this plot point where roland macaulay culkin's character tells cassandra and mary oh well she as a like as a young teen, was fat, and she was sent to fat camp, and she doesn't want anybody to know that. They do a big joke about it, and then they prank her. Our heroes pull a very fatphobic prank, and we're supposed to be like, woohoo. This, across the board, doesn't work. Super dated and embarrassing to watch now. It also plays out in Brian Danley's film canon because he goes on to direct a bunch of episodes of Insatiable, that like famously fat phobic Netflix series. Oh, right.

Starring Debbie Ryan. So this is like a, he has a very checkered film. Like a lot of the projects he's worked on in various ways, usually as a director, sometimes as a producer, are problematic. They're just. Yeah, that whole part just like made me feel so icky it's gross it's gross yeah it's just really really bad and i agree ages horribly truly it reminds me a lot of

i think the closest like pop culture touch point to that is like a joke from friends that went the entire series that was the exact same joke about courtney cox about monica and it's the exact same joke and it played out the exact same way every time that like oh this like extremely skinny woman used to not be how embarrassing let's laugh at her and with the assumption that the audience is laughing with us because we're monsters and it's 2004 yeah so yeah also some of their language choices as well yes i'm not i don't remember what where it was but they said the r word it's like right in the first scene a couple times in the first scene and then i think at least once later on as well there's definitely some some language that gets used it's obviously there's like homophobic slurs as well

like there's a lot of the time and this is not in defense of the language but i think that that will get used in this movie to kind of let you let the audience know which characters we're supposed to be rooting for and not because it's usually yeah hillary fey and her posse who is saying a lot of problematic stuff uh whether it's homophobic whether it's ableist and that's to let the audience know oh we don't like her she's mean she's bad which again makes the fat phobic plot point so yeah frustrating because the heroes do it yeah and we're supposed to be like yay like jenna malone and susan sarandon's daughter like yeah right 2004 man i do want to talk about the disability aspect of the film because we have Roland, who is a disabled character. He uses a wheelchair.

So we have visibility of disability. But as we've seen in a lot of media throughout the years, that character is played by a non-disabled actor. And I found a few quotes from a review of the film from Disability Studies Quarterly by Beth Haller that focuses on disability representation in this movie. Let's see. So here we go. Quote, this independent film from 2004 does a good job of upending the usual disability stereotypes in film. Although it uses a non-disabled actor for the role of wheelchair user Roland McCauley-Colkin in a well-acted performance, it shows the character as an average teenager. Another quote, Roland is established early as a sarcastic cynic, but not in the vein of a bitter disabled person,

because he doesn't buy into the extreme version of Christianity practiced by his sister and others at the high school. So part of this review is commending the film for making Roland an average teenager who just happens to be in a wheelchair. Not just an average teenager teenager not like the other boys yeah also like a cool teenager i would say like he's actually pretty awesome yeah that was my other my two crushes in this movie mandy moore because of course legally had to but then like like roland's character because he's so good a boy. He's like, I don't know. I feel like in 2004, you're like, atheism.

What? Sexy. Yeah. I also don't like going to youth group. And then just a couple more quotes from this review. The Roland Cassandra relationship is a step forward in disability imagery he is never pathetic or pitiful and although she is a rebel cassandra makes it clear she is not with him as a form of rebellion when mary asks her if it bothers her that roland can't walk cassandra

explains he gets me and i get him the roland cassandra relationship shows a deep connection that is emotional and physical which is rarely seen with disabled characters in film and television. Macaulay Culkin plays Roland well, handling the wheelchair with finesse and giving the character a growing sense of self as he settles into a romantic relationship and a supportive friend relationship, unquote. So this review was written in 2004, so it is, or 2005 or 2005 i think so it's at least 15 years old um i'd be interested to see a more contemporary perspective on this film so for any of our listeners who use a wheelchair how do you feel the representation of um this physical disability

was in this film i'd be interested to know. But as far as I could tell, like this review said, I appreciated that Roland is, like he's given a romantic storyline. The best one. The best one, yes. The one I'm like rooting for the most.

This is, again, something that you rarely see in popular media. And his story isn't about being in a wheelchair like he is in one exactly it's not like a struggle he's overcoming or whatever yeah it's just a human person definitely i and i mean i certainly i think that like i mean i think it's kind of a generally held opinion that more disabled actors should be playing these parts definitely in context in 2004 being that they did not cast a disabled actor i feel like macaulay did a good job and they i mean again i'm like interested in disabled perspectives on this but

it seemed like he did his homework uh by like from all the research i did on like what his process was and this was kind of like the beginning of a comeback for him as well because he took like a 10-year break from acting i think this was like one of his first big film roles as like an adult and yes he's great when was potty monster was that around this time it was i think the year before this yeah yeah oh macaulay Culkin, an icon. I love him. He's so great.

Yes. I mean, I do think he did a great job with the role. Absolutely. And that love story with Cassandra rocks. I know. It's so sweet. Actual tears. Right.

Because they have this nice moment toward the end where he's saying, like, he about like him trying to figure out oh are we together because like i was depending on you and no that's not it and that's not what i want i'm with you because i i like you and we get each other and she's like i want i i like you too i want you too and it's like this this is so nice and she and i like that this is like a little inversion but like she has to like go after him which almost which I feel like it's usually the opposite. And it's so I I forgot how much I was like affected by their like love story when I was like in junior high. But it's so nice. And then prom outfits just. Yeah're matching so good they're sweet

and they're and and i like because i mean generally i like cassandra's character a lot too it's like i it is i don't know i'm like i'm not christian i didn't grow up particularly religious at all. I like went to church, but I didn't, I, a lot of this, the hyper Christian plot points in this movie didn't super hit for me because I wasn't really entrenched in anything other than Mandy Moore and pictures of her on Google images. But it was, I mean,

Cassandra's character. I like Cassandra's character i like cassandra's character a lot because she's introduced as like a stock rebel character that ends up having like all this depth and a lot more and like part of what ends up making her not like the other girls is that like she has more compassion than most of the people right at the school and i i really liked where it was like mary for so much of the movie seemed to have like all these had a a number of women in her life but no one who she was really like connecting with and and then that person ends up being cassandra and it's so nice to watch their friendship kind of like develop when Cassandra it seems like

Cassandra's about to bully her which is what Mary's used to right then she hugs her and then I cry I know well going back a little bit to the religious point of it I personally like I went to a Catholic school when I was younger but I'm from Boston and I feel like Catholic schools in Boston are like Catholic schools in Boston are like Catholic schools in Boston but they're not like this school like if that makes sense at least mine right I don't know it's not exactly the same however in college my roommate when she got to college was not very religious and she wasn't very religious when she got to college because she was raised super, super conservative religious in Raleigh, in North Carolina, went to a Baptist school. Her brother was gay. He came out in high

school and they expelled him. And this was in 2013. So like the stuff that they're talking about, it's like from 2004, but it also like is people's lived experience. And I think that's what's so great about the film in that they're showing you this is a real lived experience. And like, let's make fun of it because it's absolutely ridiculous that this is happening. And at the end, let's like make sure we're pushing home the message that God made everyone different. And that's beautiful. But it is also still like it hits you different when you know that this is stuff that still happens. Yeah.

I read that the director and co-writer Brian Danley based everything that happens in the film off of things he either witnessed while attending a I think he went to a Baptist high school or had heard other people's experiences so he didn't like make anything up this was all just like this was like stuff that he saw or stuff that he that other people had seen and also he's a queer director who like came out and like got disowned by his parents and like went through and then was later accepted by his parents and it was i did i i had never watched this movie with that context i was like when i was in high school i wasn't like who directed this i was just like look at at all the pretty people um But yeah, watching it where it's like, I mean, I would guess I don't have like a specific quote for him, but I would guess that a lot of like Dean's character is like him relaying

some of his own experience or like cathartically revisiting it where he came out in high school in a very religious family and was disowned and then like went on to have this very successful career later so i was like oh i viewed dean in a in a i mean i always liked dean because what's not to like but it was cool to know that that was kind of like a director like pulling from his like direct experience too. That was cool. One thing I was hoping for more of in the movie was like us cutting back to Dean at Mercy House and like seeing what he was going through there. I would have liked to see more of that. I guess that's what the movie,

but I'm a cheerleader is for. So if you're like, I want to see more of that, like watch that movie. I was getting big, but I'm a cheerleader vibes from mercy house in general but i just love what we got but just he plays it so well like the hi mitch it was so cute and then there i forgot i don't know why i but i forgot that they come to the

prom at the end and that great like i don't know any movie that comes out in the early 2000s you're like this could go really badly at any second but then it doesn't and it goes like beautifully and you're like yeah dean and dean is like oh you're pregnant wow we're so fertile or like whatever i'm a daddy like I'm so happy yeah and then everyone and then they hug you're like oh this is so nice I love that this this kid has so many parents it's overwhelming and that all of these like 17 year olds are just ready for it yeah all these 17 year olds are like let's be parents let's do this yeah let me raise another man's child this is gonna go great like macaulay culkin and susan sarandon's daughter they're like we are had nothing to do with any of this

and yet we're also the parents here we are they're the godparents maybe yes maybe i could see that oh my gosh uh let's take another quick break and then we'll come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, 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.

And on camera. Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie.

Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum.

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Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

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Right. Everything else, all the side plots. Yeah. I've not talked about Mary that much, but I love Mary. One thing I really appreciate about her is that she looks like a normal teenager. And I just think we don't get enough of that. She's got acne. Her hair is sometimes greasy.

And I'm just like, yes, this is how teenagers are. So refreshing. It was really cool to see acne on screen. I remember that from watching it for the first time because like when the way that they like and i wonder if this was like an intentional thing but like the way that they covered up jenna malone's like chin acne was like the way that i would have which was like with a concealer that was not my shade i think it was an intentional choice. Yes. I hope so. Otherwise, I'm like dragging the makeup department. But I would always like cover up my chin acne with like a shade that was like lighter than my shade.

So it was almost like an arrow being like, check out what's going on down here. That was something that struck me about 8th grade, too. That like they did Kayla in that movie has visible acne. And there's like no attempt to buy the production by the makeup department to cover it up. Because guess what? Teens have acne. And something behind the scenes fact that I found that really just like warmed my heart was so Jenna Malone and Mandy Moore are the same age. But they're coming from a pretty different place where like

Jenna Malone at this time is like an indie darling and Mandy Moore is like this international pop star so they're like same age but from different worlds and there was like this Jenna Malone quote that was like I was really skeptical and I was like kind of frustrated that they cast a pop star in this movie but then mandy and i are friends and she was so nice and she like asked me for tips on acting and was like trying to become a better actor and liked jenna malone's work i was like that's so wholesome it made me so happy i love that so hillary faye in real life, they're actually friends. They're actually friends. Or they at least were for the one month this movie was shooting.

It's still sweet. Made me smile. But I mean, yeah, I like Mary as a character a lot. I like her arc as well, where, you know, she starts out not really questioning anything about kind of the religious institution that she was raised in. And then when a few things happen, like her boyfriend being disowned for being gay and her getting pregnant, she starts to question her faith and not in a way that she ultimately ends up not believing in her religion anymore, or not believing in God anymore, or anything like that. It's more that she just becomes more of a critical thinker about it. Because what I like about this movie,

and even though I was raised as an atheist, I'm still an atheist. So I appreciate anything that is critical of organized religion, because I think there's a fair amount to be critical of. But the message of this movie is not like, don't be a Christian. It's more just calling out the hypocrisy that sometimes coincides with some Christian people's behaviors and attitudes. And I think this movie is very helpful in that way because it still gives people permission to believe whatever they want to believe. It just encourages people to be analytical about what they believe and to practice compassion over judgment and things like that.

Yeah. And like as someone who was raised with like in Catholicism with Christians, I agree that it is like who was raised with, like, in Catholicism with Christians, I agree that it is, like, when you're in that community, like, for me, my community was always accepting. So it's like, you can still have all of the positive things about Christianity, which is what Mary's trying to say. Like, if God tells us to love everyone, why don't we love Dean? Right.

And it's like, more questioning, okay, well, why are the people around me telling me these things? And why are these messages of love being distorted? And then it's like, even if you don't believe in Christianity or you don't believe in a God, that's fine, but you can believe in loving other people. Right. That's universal.

Yeah. Mm-hmm yeah i really appreciated that angle where it was like almost like a i feel like in some movies and this isn't even really a criticism because i don't like dislike this choice but sometimes it's like the the lead character is so headstrong and so unlike the others that you're like it's almost like an intellectual Mary Sue situation where you're like boy how did they arrive at this conclusion like I agree but I'm like old so how did they get there at age you know 15 where it was kind of refreshing and cool to watch Mary challenge things in a very kind of like realistic way and at the end I mean like who knows maybe you know by the time she's like 20 she's completely disavowed Christianity and she's not into it at all but like it felt all of her choices made sense to me more so than in a lot of teen movies where it was just

kind of clearly the writer making like a value statement about like this is how i feel people should act so my teen lead is going to act this way where it was like because i mean because brian danley's writing from his own experience he's like well I feel like he does a pretty good job of putting himself in the shoes of like well how would a girl who grew up so entrenched in these values like what would be her process of working through this and it like I really liked it I thought it was really sweet and like had a weird amount of like love for Christians. Right. Like most movies would not extend. Because you see enough perspectives from different characters where you have a character like Hilary Faye, who has taken her religious beliefs to the extreme, to the point where a lot of what she says and does is very problematic.

Then you have Mary, who seems to identify as Christian the whole way through the movie, but her relationship with Christianity changes throughout the story because of, you know, different things that happen. Then you have Dean, who also remains a Christian throughout the whole movie, despite different fellow Christians thinking that he's living in sin for his sexuality. Then you have Roland, who probably was a Christian earlier in his youth, but then decided he wasn't anymore. And I don't know if he specifically identifies as atheist in the movie,

but he says at one point, I'm not a Christian. Then you have Patrick, who is like the pastor's son, who again still identifies as christian but does more of like kind of the critical thinking that mary comes to do toward the end and patrick too who like challenges like he challenges his dad yeah and he also said one of the like when i don't know one of the lines that like really took me off guard on this viewing was like him talking to jenna malone and being like well i think my dad is wrong about how he like basically like he says i think it's wrong how my dad views gay students like that's nice yeah i think he says i don't

think dean's sick yeah like oh yeah like it's the people who are sending him there that have the problem, not him. And yeah, wait, what's I wrote that quote down? Because I liked it a lot. Let me find it here. Oh, yeah. Patrick says I started to root for Patrick definitively. He says Mercy House doesn't exist for the people who get sent there. It exists more for the people who do the sending.

And it's like yeah absolutely go patrick yeah go patrick team patrick but i think that even if you're not religious because i grew up in an atheist house but i think that every child kind of goes on that journey with their parents i mean like my parents have pretty conservative values about a lot of things and there is a lot of stuff that i said as a teenager or thought as a teenager that I just didn't know was any different and I went on my own sort of journey of discovery with that as well and I think even that's relatable in its own way definitely absolutely same can we i honestly totally forgot her entire plot in the 10 years that i hadn't seen this movie yeah i do think that she is like a pretty

exceptionally shitty parent and i was not rooting for her at all and and i and i also think mary is way too nice and forgiving to her she is too christian about it she should have been like mad at her mom or i would have been mad at mary louise parker if she was my mom where like she didn't notice that her daughter was pregnant and on top of that when she found out her daughter was pregnant, she punished her and made it about herself or like allowed her to be persuaded by Pastor Skip that like her daughter's pregnancy was somehow about her. And that she was going to punish her pregnant daughter because of something that she had done that she was not going to. I was just like, I can't believe this movie made me be mad at mary louise parker but yes there it is i also think like i'm on the other side of it i do think they were what they were trying to do which i could understand is like this is a single mother

did she get pregnant when she was young as well is that what we're inferring but she was married i don't know i know that she was like widowed when her daughter was young, but I don't know if she was like, if she had a baby young or what, what that, what the implication was there. I'm not sure. Wait,

Lisa, what were you going to say? I just think she had her young and then was widowed. But either way, it seemed like she just was a, she is a woman who just could not handle her daughter. And then her daughter basically became her caretaker. has to dye her hair a lot yeah she has a lot to do yeah she's a lot to do no but you can i just think she she seems like she's very overwhelmed yeah and just and then her daughter

was more mature than her and basically started taking care of her and she's like oh this is how our relationship is great and like never changed it which is not like she should definitely change it but right that's definitely like where i saw it yeah i don't think i saw it so problematic because my biological mother is a narcissist so i was like this is fine depends where your bar is yeah my bar is really low i think i got mad because i have a very narcissistic parent that i was just like no i've i like wanted mary to like push against it more than she did ultimately it's mary louise parker so it's fine but i can understand she does go like this baby needs to be raised by a mother and a father and And it's like, you mean two teenagers?

Do you really think they're going to be the best candidates to raise a child? Like, what are you talking? Because she's like contemplating sending her away to Mercy House, I guess, to raise this baby with Dean. And it's like, what? That would be the worst possible idea. What are you talking about? Right. I was just mad at her well she also like

she definitely like was had complete blinders on with pastor skip too i'm just like there's a man who's paying attention to me for like she was getting the day that's all that mattered yeah pastor skip sucks yeah well also there's the whole part with pastor skip which everything in this film is like exposing the hypocrisy right you have pastor skip who is committing adultery according you know like the christian values and he's the one who's like oh your daughter is needs to go here when it's like just right take a look at yourself like no one should be judged in my like it's like just yeah so and i like that i mean patrick pushes up against him a little and it's like mom wanted a divorce you seem to want to not be with her why are you doing this and he's like well because jesus christ and so literally she'll live abroad for 20 years and they'll still be married right and it

will bang Mary Louise Parker that'll be what's best for your son like what are you doing but yeah I think the Mary Louise Parker character is not like the way that she's presented in the movie is not like bad writing I think it's more just another indication of like here's how sometimes people are hypocritical or they'll claim you know they'll yeah be like i'm christian but then they don't they don't do the christian thing or they don't actually be there for their daughter when they need her and you know things like that so i hope she steps it up as a grandmother yes yes i felt like there was an arc towards the end. Maybe a little. Yeah, she's the one who gets into the ambulance.

And then she's like, I love you, daughter. And then in the hospital, she's like, I'm a grandma. I think, again, maybe I'm like bringing too much personal baggage to the table. But whenever like a mother-daughter like conflict is resolved by being like you know what I thought about it and I don't regret having you that is not a satisfactory resolution for me I'm sorry is that not love I've come to understand that's love and in fact that is seems to be like another bar is on the floor of like you know what i actually don't regret that you are currently alive you're just like thanks that is actually anything else i've completely forgot that line it's so that's so bad that's how their plot resolves or she's like

i know it i made it seem like i wished you were never born but actually I don't feel that way I I'm glad you were born and that happens kind of like not infrequently I can't think of another example off the top of my head but it was like I feel like teen sometimes like teen parent stuff especially when there's like a young parent it plays out that way quite frequently like well I would have done this this and this if you weren't born and they're like oh and then you know 45 minutes later they're like i'm glad you were born and then they hug i'm like that's eye roll that's not fair laugh track you're like wait what but like as someone who is a result of teen pregnancy that is literally my life so i like the representation

we're talking about representation here. Exactly. It's true. It's true. Does anyone have any other things they want to talk about? I want to talk a little bit about Tia. I feel like she's an undervalued character. She's so great.

We love Heather. Heather Madaroff,, underrated person. Queer icon. Endorsed Bernie every time. Wow. Married to a comedian. Like, really no notes. But I like, I thought that was an interesting character.

Because she, we've seen this character before of like wanting to be in the popular group and kind of doing whatever it takes and she works like several jobs so that she can earn money to buy a car so she can like offer rides to the popular girls and she just wants to fit in and have like but it's a case of she is also being mistreated by hillary faye because hillary faye mistreats everyone around her uh and then she's the one to expose like oh yes you did buy those spray paints redemption for tia right yeah and then she picks up the the tiara at the end because she's like can i wear the tiara? And Hilary Faye's like, no. It's a great storyline.

I love it. I think also one of my favorite lines in the movie is when Pastor Skip is telling them they need to help their friend. And he's like, you've got to, I don't remember what he says. Something like, you've got to go and be a warrior for the Lord. And she looks at him like deadpan serious and goes, like, shoot her. Just so well done and so good yes amazing yeah she's so good heather madaraza rocks and heather madaraza mandy more collaborations rock they're just all good very when i guess maybe it's i haven't been keeping up i'm like

she should go on. This is us. Yes. And have a little arc with Mandy. Bring it back. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about Cassandra also. I think we've like we've touched on her quite a bit already, but I just really enjoy her as a character. We commented on this, too, but they're like, well, she's not she's jewish and that equals punk rock smoking getting drunk at school like yeah like that equals that equals the opposite

of religious which is like jewish is also a religion so yeah it it feels like a very like 2004 american simplistic interpretation to be like the opposite of christian is jewish jewish you're like well it's really just a different like so yeah it's like well if the writer it's just like this weird false math equation where it's like well if the opposite of christian is jewish then the opposite of what christians do is what a jewish character would do which is also like not no yeah no but like interesting attempt i don't know either way i i really enjoyed her character the part where at the beginning when she's like fake speaking in tongues and she's really just being like, my hot pussy. It's so good. That also means that Susan Sarandon for sure saw this movie and was like.

I'm sure she was proud. Yeah. Like Susan Sarandon was in Rocky Horror. Yes, I did. I'm sure she was like, yes, following in my footsteps. Like she sings to touch me. it was an homage to touch me that's true yes incredible she also has a rockin bod like that last scene when she's chasing i think that was like a moment for me when i was younger like oh god yes yeah there's definite cleavage. She manages to work past, again, another god-awful haircut of 2004.

I'm like, what is this? It's a terrible haircut. Like, what is this? May it never return. Oh, but it will. They always do. They always cycle back. Also, shout out to the scene where it's right after dean has come out to mary

and then mary googles just the word gay which is so funny and then what comes up is guys ram a lot dot com which i did go to and it like directs to i forget what podcast it is but it directs to a youtube link of a podcast talking about this movie which is really clever which means that podcast bought that domain name that is really amazing god that's wait let me let me uh do that right now they honestly deserve it it's um my brother my brother's friend and me is the oh okay the podcast so shouts out to them and their episode on saved which you can find if you go to guysramalot.com bookmarked on my browser that's my favorite thing to do is go to uh if there's a website or an email

address in a movie you better believe that i will send an email to that email address or go to and go to that or a phone number that doesn't start with 555 you're like then it was something and usually it's just like a i remember that luke on gilmore girls said a non-555 number one time and it was like donate to red cross and i was like damn it i thought that someone gave me their phone number um i wanted to talk about this when we're talking about if it passes the bechdel test oh yeah i think we're there yeah the exorcism maybe we'll start with the exorcism scene. It's amazing.

I have been contemplating, does it pass the Bechdel test? Because it's three girls in the van and they take Mary and they perform an exorcism on her. But they're talking about God and Satan in the exorcism. But are God and Satan women? I feel like that's open to interpretation yeah I think that yes it is open to interpretation but I think these particular people's interpretation of God and Satan is that they are men Mandy Moore thinks that they're men that God is a man but it's also just a ridiculous scene i'm filled with the power of christ and throws a bible at her it's just so good mandy moore really i feel like shines in this scene she's wearing like not a juicy couture tracksuit but essentially a juicy couture tracksuit and

she's with the halloween outfit with the with the angel wing she's like the opposite of a walk to remember whipping a bible at someone's head like it's oh it's incredible a great scene a great scene and they're also what are they what soundtrack are they playing there i felt like oh they like parody is it halloween it's something very spooky yeah it's like parodying like a horror soundtrack for sure abduct their friend to throw a bible at her head yeah I maybe my instinct was Halloween but I also could be quite wrong I don't remember it's something very ominous and spooky whatever it is 70s horror movie is being parodied and i'm like i'm so young i have no idea um i think it passes the bechdel test in other cases though between yeah yeah heaps i

honestly like many times recently forgot to pay attention to the bechdel test it definitely i mean it definitely passes yeah quite a bit I mean I think that most of the interactions in this movie are between women I mean there are a lot of you know women aren't getting along they're not seeing eye to eye quite a bit but that doesn't mean that they're talking about men like it definitely it passes between Mandy Moore and Jenna Malone passes between Jenna Malone and and Mary Louise Parker passes between Jenna Malone and Susan Sarandon's daughter didn't use one character name no it passes a lot yeah yeah I like trying to pay attention to it and there was one scene where they're watching Valerie Bertinelli and I was

like oh this passes it was just them talking about the movie but i was like oh yeah yeah yeah it's her and her mom just sitting on the couch this works you love to see it it does and for a mood you know for a movie written uh by a man that's not nothing yeah and we'll take it true or yeah when they're when her and cassandra are talking about her being pregnant in the bathroom yeah almost that entire scene passes i guess the where it does get murky is god comes up a lot and they seem to all be like pro god and jesus are talked about a lot the ariana grande song had not yet dropped and so it hadn't been introduced the zeitgeist uh but yeah yeah it passes um let's let's take a look at the film with via the nipple scale zero to five nipples based on an examination of the film through an intersectional feminist lens um this one it's a little tricky because there are some things as we discussed that are

quite of the time of 2004, like problematic language that gets used by characters who we are meant to be rooting for the whole fat shaming storyline done by characters who we are meant to be rooting for, um, Things like that, that obviously age terribly. On the other hand, you have this movie that's satirizing, like, religious fundamentalism, specifically, like, Christian attitudes towards queerness and towards premarital sex and things like that, that the takeaway is takeaway is like think critically about these things and don't just do whatever your religious leaders tell you to do because sometimes those things are harmful and hypocritical and they're doing it anyway so right yeah so yeah i think

there's there's a lot of things to like about the movie. I think that it does still fall into some, you know, teen movie tropes and and stuff like that. But overall, I enjoy this movie. I think it handles most of the things that it's trying to tackle pretty well. There's disability visibility, although it's not perfect. They didn't cast a disabled actor to play the part i also want to point out that roland is on the poster of this movie but he appears to be standing along with the other main characters who also appear to be standing upright so he's not in his wheelchair on the poster which feels like deliberate erasure of his disability. And that is messed up and confusing. Yeah. So, you know, there are missteps like that when it comes to the disability representation in this movie. But it also feels like it's going in the right direction in other regards,

especially the movie giving Roland a romantic relationship. I wish we could have gotten to know the queer characters better. Different things like that where I felt the movie was a bit lacking. But overall, I do appreciate that this movie is providing commentary on some of the more problematic and hypocritical and homophobic attitudes that unfortunately some christians have yeah uh i would give this probably like somewhere between a three and a three and a half maybe i'll just kind of split it down the middle 3.25 uh because love a decimal love a quarter nipple um yeah i don't know or maybe it deserves more than that i don't know the nipple

scale also doesn't matter perfect metric the perfect metric never made a mistake no people all the time are like what you give this movie that nipple rating and i'm just like i don't know i don't i don't know you just need to listen to the previous part. Yeah, just listen to the episode. Bang. If you're listening for the end, I don't know what to tell you. I'll give it a 3.5. And I'll give one nipple to Mary, one nipple to Cassandra, one to Roland. And I'll give my half nipple to Dean.

And that's how I distribute my nipples today. All right. Please. And thank you. Yeah. I'm going to do three and a half as well. I agree with your interpretation, Caitlin.

I feel like it is like, uh, especially for 2004, it's doing a lot, right. That most teen movies were not doing right at the time. I'm glad it was successful. I'm glad that it got,

for such a pretty low-budget movie, it has so many really popular actors and performances that are really good. It's a super, super white movie. I feel like it's one of its most glaring flaws, which is also extremely 2004 of it to do. There's a lot that it does right. And I feel like kind of in,

I'm trying to think if a teen movie has done what Saved did as well since, and I can't really think of one. So it's kind of in a league of its own in that way and I really enjoyed re-watching it um and I still have a crush on Mandy Moore and three and a half nipples one to Mary Louise Parker one to Mandy Moore one to Macaulay Culkin one all my crushes and then the other half uh goes to jenna malone who i hope is doing great yes yeah um i feel like i want to be a different nipple just because just to be different even though i feel like a 3.5 is pretty fair but i'm just gonna go with four nipples so I can give full nipples to everyone.

Sure. I agree with all of the problematic stuff about it, which is why I can't really give it more. But I also feel like 2004, it's like judging it by the time. The year of national treasure. We were different people. Yes. I also feel like we haven't really talked about

this as much but i give it points for having like a teen lead who is pregnant like we didn't really talk about like like that's the big thing with the movie that i feel like we we didn't talk about Mary as much. So that being said, I'll give a nipple to Mary, to Dean, to Tia, who hasn't gotten a nipple yet, and to Valerie Bertinelli for being on screen sometimes during the film. Hell yeah. Yes. Nice. And you're totally right ellie we did not talk about this but teen pregnancy is something that we have a difficult relationship with as a society it is generally very shamed

by society and then more recently by the media kind of exploited with like the whole teen mom expanded universe and stuff like that. Totally, totally. And, you know, while it's not an ideal situation, I think it's like very much worth reframing how we think about teen pregnancy because it usually happens because teenagers are not provided with the education and resources they need about how to prevent pregnancy because comprehensive sex education is not a thing that is commonly taught in schools in the U.S. And no matter how many times proving that sex education lowers the rates of teen pregnancy and by withholding information and resources and tools, you are perhaps doing people a disservice.

Just imagine. Right. Especially because like in a Christian school, like the one featured in the movie, they are almost certainly doing, if they do have any sex education at all, it's probably abstinence only sex education, which is like basically what i

got when i was a in high school which which kind of extends to fear-mongering it reminds me of the scene in mean girls of like if you have sex you will die right there so i mean i think yeah if you want to hear a more a longer uh conversation about how teen pregnancy are treated in movies i would direct you to our juno episode on the matreon, I think is maybe the longest conversation we've had about it. Indeed. But yeah, I think it's worth just kind of reevaluating. I've had to do some of my own kind of reevaluating how I feel about teen pregnancy. Because, you know, it's our broken education system that's really mostly at fault for why teen pregnancy is a thing one of the issues that in particular that shaming the individual does

worse than nothing and i and i like that i mean in the case of this movie it kind of like ends ideally but that yeah that like the the teen in question had a wonderful support system and not all teenagers are that lucky but it but it is nice to see that shown of um that a baby needs a support system not the nuclear american family that were shown so often for sure yeah uh anyway uh lisa what about you for your nipple rating? I definitely had 3.5 as well. So I'm going to just go back to being a sheep and following the trends. I mean, it's a good rating. It's popular because it's right, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Like a popular thing, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm also going to give one to Tia. I'm going to give one to horny Mary Louise Parker. I think she deserves it. I'm going to give one to Save the Musical'm gonna give one to horny mary louise parker i think she deserves it uh i'm gonna give one to save the musical which we didn't discuss but that exists on youtube which is um

like john dossett is in it like um trip vanderbilt from gossip girl he played dean are you talking about erin tovate yes yes yes i'm like, Aaron Tveit also is Aaron Tveit. Like, he was on Broadway before he was in Gossip Girl. I know, but I don't know his name. I just know him as Trip Vanderbilt. All right. Wild. And then I'm going to give half to the guy who gives Patrick his skateboard,

because he's a real friend. Yes, that's good. I love that his last name is wheeler and therefore a skateboard like all of the we didn't really talk about it but the way characters are named is so like goofy silly satire names like obviously mary but then you know patrick skateboard is a character um and you gotta hand it to patrick skateboard he has a skateboard uh pastor skip just sounds like a youth pastor and i was just like fully on board with like yep that sounds like a youth pastor to me tia the name of my uh boyfriend's childhood dog so coincidence impossible definitely not definitely not lillian i'm sure is a reference to something that is out

of my pay grade intellectually isn't lillian the um original evil woman in the bible or is that lilith it's lilith i'm thinking of but still probably close that might be probably she's the temptress everyone who listens to our show who's like into mythology is like it's like you know nothing stop talking probably it's a myth I don't know

also I'm gonna take my nipple away from Mary and give it to Veronica because she deserved way more than what she got she deserved anything she got nothing sigh but uh thank you ellie and lisa for being here what a treat thank you for having us where can people check out your stuff and tell us about the pod yes lisa do you want to take it or you

want me to take it i was just gonna let you take it all right so we're really excited about our new podcast it's called sweet bitter it's all about sappho who to be honest like as a feminist not enough people know about sappho just like as a literary figure who was a woman you know about homer like you learn about all of these ancient Greek poets and we don't really learn that much about Sappho so Lisa heard an episode of Buffering where our other host Elise was on and they were talking about Sappho and Lisa do you want to take it from there that you were like I stalked her on the internet and was like, can we make a podcast about this, please? Because I want to listen to one and it doesn't exist.

And it's such a cool story and I can't believe I didn't know it. So yeah, don't listen to anybody. Stalking and creeping on the internet gets you everywhere. Yes, yes. And so from there, we all just met on the internet

and put together this show because we all think Sappho is really cool and we think anyone who listens to the show will agree with us so I hope you check it out we also write and perform a song for each show so that's a fun thing that we decided to do that adds to our workload yeah because well because Sappho is a poet but actually all of her poems were meant to be sung so we take the poems and we turn them into songs but they're more contemporary pop songs what we envision they might be if Safa was around now sort of like how Mandy Moore was just a poet but her poetry is just meant to be sung exactly

bring it all around perfect exclamation point okay and mandy oh the mandy more i will say the mandy more rule in movies is if mandy more is in the movie does she get to sing a musical number to remind you that she's mandy more and this movie follows the mandy more rule yeah because she sings yes a few times and it's never too it's never like a walk to remember invasive but it is and she sings in princess diaries too she sings stupid cupid my favorite iconic she sings everything i love her so much she's so perfect is there a movie she has not had a song in it i wonder i'm like i'm trying to remember back to how to deal which looking up the poster her worst haircut of all yeah and i don't think she sings in the um in the one where she's the president's daughter but like maybe she's on the soundtrack you know maybe

you just don't know but yeah you well you can find i'm like also i don't even say no if i said where you can find it you can find our podcast at sweet bitter podcast.com correct or sweet bitter pod yes that's correct okay or at sweet bitter pod on instagram and twitter and we're in all of the podcast apps and make sure you write sweet bitter as one word because if you write it as two we won't come up oh good to know sad times yes. Yes. Got to be specific. Well, thank you again so much, both of you, for being here and talking about Saved. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon. Why don't you?

It's $5 a month, and it gets you two bonus episodes every single month plus access to the entire back catalog you love to see it and then you can get our merch on tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast and we also have masks if you need a mask which you do because you're a good person aren't you so you can find those there. Yes. And I think this episode, we've all been saved. So that's... Saved!

Saved! We saved! Exclamation point. Let's change it to the Bechtelcast. The Bechtelcast! Bye! Bye! Daphne Caruana Galizia

was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16thth 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. Taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas.

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Hey, it's Teddy Mellencamp. And Tamara Judge, better known as the Twats. Yep, you heard that right. We're the hosts of Two Teas in a Pod. For all the housewife lovers out there, every week we break down every episode and give you our opinions. So join us as we stir the pot and get ourselves into some trouble. Okay, maybe a lot of trouble listen to two t's in a pod on iHeartRadio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts