The Bechdel Cast - Showgirls with Crystal

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

This week, showgirls Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Crystal paint their fingernails and discuss Showgirls! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @crystalwillseeu 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. Hey, Jamie, darling. Hey, Caitlin, darling. Will you paint my nails for me?

I don't know. Do you like looking like cheap trash? Because if so, I guess I'll do it. Me and my awesome boobs that everyone loves. Well, my boobs are awesome too. This movie gave me body dysmorphia again, again. Oh my gosh. It's not fair. How do boobs look like that? Anyways, I think my takeaway from watching Showgirls is, wow, I think my boobs are weird. Oh, Jamie, your boobs? That's not true. Is that the lesson of the movie?

Yes. It's a brilliant satire about boobs. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. Look, we've got Gina Gershon. And yes, she's kissing ladies again it's a time-honored Gina Gershon observation on this show but this time in a very different movie yes indeed because today is our showgirls episode often requested hello I'm I'm showgirls number one, Caitlin Durante. I'm showgirls number two. I work at the Cheetah.

My name is Jamie Loftus. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes, this is a highly requested episode. We've been getting requests for this since the show began. Yeah. For some reason, we did Starship troopers and basic instinct before this um this is our third this is kind of wild because i i don't think that we often i'm trying to think of a director that has appeared on the show three different times i feel like for hoven

for some reason he he pops up on this show quite a bit yeah there have been a few but Paul is really showing up I mean on the Bechdel test say what you will about Paul he really generates a discussion he does and I love that about Paul all right well that didn't pass the Bechdel test but no what even is that Jamie well the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace Test. Many versions of this test, it was originally created as a bit for a comic strip that Alison Bechdel wrote. But now it's sort of used as a metric for us specifically to use. Here's the one we use. Our version of the Buckle test requires that there be two characters of, oh my God, sorry, there'd be two characters, the end, two characters of a marginalized gender with names that speak

to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue or more. Not a perfect metric, which you know because it showgirls passes it almost immediately and so many of the conversations that pass during this movie are about fingernails it's like yes it's almost as if chips i love the chips oh sure dog food doggy chow dog food okay that was relatable for me i used to eat dog food on stage all the time. That's right. Wow, you really are a showgirl, Jamie. I am the showiest girl.

I really loved the chip con. I mean, there's so many iconic exchanges in this movie. But yeah, the like giggling being like, did you eat the chips? I was like, wow, I should do that more. Yeah. Do you want to come over and replicate that exact conversation with me? Yeah. Wake you up and be like,

where's the chips? Anyway, so we use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for a larger conversation because we here on the Bechdel cast examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. And today is no different and the movie is showgirls and the guest oh we have today a legend you've seen them on rupaul's drag race uk season one they host the podcast the things that made me queer it's crystal hello hi welcome oh my god I've I've really enjoyed that intro so many things to say already

we're already all completely flummoxed about how we're gonna manage talking about this movie I can tell it's so hard it's interesting I feel like there's certain movies where depending on like you just have to like take the temp on how everyone else feels about it before you can speak your mind. Well, people feel a lot of ways about this movie. So they really do. Many opinions to choose from. Well, let's not to put you on the spot, but let's start with yours. Perfect.

Great. What's your history with showgirls? Okay, I have to be honest and say I think this has at one point in my life been my favorite movie. So it has occupied that place for me. And it's probably the movie I've watched the most times in my life. Yeah, which is a lot to say. So this is your Titanic for us, basically. Uh-huh. Yeah. Titanicanic which i've seen one time what yeah blasphemy shocking yeah and you guys always reference titanic i'm like who are they

talking about i don't even know who these characters are crystal i know well prepare to hear me reference chips and nails a lot because i could probably quote this entire movie from start to finish which I don't think is like healthy for me but um it is where we're at I saw this movie probably when I was like 12 or 13 with like when I was still in the closet and had like a straight best friend and he would he probably was like showing me it on his parents tv after midnight like it was that kind of vibe. I don't really remember it from that period, but I knew I saw it in that kind of era. And then I watched it again in my early 20s with my then boyfriend who was like,

you need to watch Showgirls. It's a camp masterpiece. And from then it's basically been in my life in multiple different ways up until the point where I'm now a drag artist called Crystal who dresses like a slut on stage so it's really taken me places so is is your stage name based on or inspired by Crystal from this movie it's definitely partially responsible I would say the other reason is when I when I started doing drag I was working for Swarovski ever heard of it so it just felt like uh it felt like a meeting of of worlds because

yeah it was a bizarre job selling crystals to people and uh it just felt like the right the right name for me at the time. I personally do want to come off. Rocks, Crystal, okay, hang on. Unlike Nomi, I do want people to think I'm a whore. So I felt like the name Crystal was really going to help them get to that point a lot faster. Yeah. Love it.

I just love Gina Gershon so much. I know. Incredible. She's in, I feel like she's in on it and not like not everyone is oh yeah she may be the only person who appears to be in on it absolutely which is wild because kyle mcclaughlin is in this movie and i feel like he's always in on it but by his own account he was not in no he didn't know i'm he see how they did his hair? But his hair was wild. Incredible. The only other thing I would say about it is that since

it being my favorite movie in my 20s and me thinking it was the greatest thing that had ever been made, I have since re-evaluated things and I now see it as a very problematic movie, which I have a complicated relationship with. And that's, I think, probably what we're going to spend the next hour talking about wow oh you think it's only going to be an hour I think again um Jamie what is your

history slash relationship with showgirls shockingly sparse i had never seen this movie all the way through um i i do i feel like i've mentioned a few different movies on most memorably requiem movies i caught my dad watching at night um requiem was the most memorable of them because that movie is horrific but i do remember uh catching and watching showgirls once and being like uh ding dong daughter alert and he was like actually I think he he tried to do the the now very popular reclaiming argument um to justify why he was watching it he was like you know people came down pretty hard on this movie when it came out myself included but now that I'm sitting with it I think it makes some interesting points i was

like all right all right nice save i guess you're not technically wrong um but i have never really sat and like watched the whole thing and then i ended up watching it twice all the way through because i feel like for this movie especially you need a fun watch and then you need a critical watch because you just need to let it wash over you and i totally like watching it now i don't know i mean i liked it a lot i want to go to a rowdy screening of this like it is so problematic in so many ways we're going to talk about it it's just but it's so like the camp levels are just like off the chart yes there's so much and this is true of this writer always but the guy who wrote this movie i'm just like what does he think women talk like it's chips chips dog food

it's so weird and every other conversation is you're a whore no i'm not you're a whore i used to play a drinking game with this movie where you would drink every time someone mentioned nails being pushed down the stairs or accused nomi of being a hooker and you were drunk within the first five minutes of the movie it was it's really it's it's like it's so the water is so hot that it's cold again um there's just like everything that happens is problematic and you're just like and it's so like sincerely done and i just i don't know i am baffled by it i'm fascinated by it i would like to see a rowdy screening of it and i also like don't really i was reading through the god so much has been written about this movie I was reading through a fraction of it and I don't necessarily come down on the like

which this is I think we we encountered this with Starship Troopers as well which is which is obviously trying to be satire but there's like this big argument that like this movie is actually good and it's playing 6D chess. And I don't I don't believe that. But I think that's all right. I think Gina Gershon somehow is the only person in the entire production who knows what's going on. I don't even think Paul Verhoeven knows what movie he's making. But for some reason, Gina Gershon does. And I celebrate that.

She reads a script and she knows what's up I know just unbelievable and yeah there's some stuff in this isn't it that's horrific and reading the um that I mean this it's so unfair that this tanked Elizabeth Berkley's career I think that was like one of my big takeaways and I mean the way that this movie handles race holy shit um but we'll get there yes Caitlin what's your history with show girls I similarly have a very sparse history I think about what's wrong with us I don't know about a year ago I was like I can't believe I've never seen show girls I am going to watch it. And I thought that I, in that sitting, watched the first half of the movie, and then got sidetracked and then forgot to go back to it. And then when I started prepping for this episode, and I was like, oh, I've already seen the first half. So,

you know, it's, I know what it's about. Turns out I had only watched the first 10 minutes, but so much happens in that first 10 minutes that I that it felt like an hour's worth of cinema. Nomi is living. Yeah. She's living on turbo mode all the time. I would describe her performance in every scene as thrashing. She's just doing a lot of thrashing about i want to have she hates cars in a pool like that she hates cars she will if there's a car in a scene with her she's gonna hit it

yes yeah oh that didn't occur to me she does a lot of um storming out the way she enters and exits scenes is just like it's something to behold she kind of reminds me her entrances do you remember that scene in i frankenstein where i frankenstein like there's a door available but he crashes through a window instead because he's just dramatic nomi malone as kool-aid man exactly it's so great and i really enjoyed like i don't know i really enjoyed reading about how reclaimed and revered know me is and that there's literally i didn't have time to watch it but there's a whole documentary called you don't Know Me. It's great. Really? Yeah.

The best. Yeah. The best. It's really great. This is also sadly, like, I knew how conflicted I felt about this movie. So I consumed so much additional media in the past week about this movie. And it hasn't helped. But I now know far more than anyone needs to know about showgirls. So, you know. Any fun facts you want to share

by all means I'll try and keep them to like a minimum because otherwise we'll be here a while bring it baby well shall I do the recap and we'll go from there let's actually take a quick break first and then come back for the recap

twist Actually take a quick break first and then come back for the recap. Twist. 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'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music.

I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugey. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner.

The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

to listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad free subscribe to the iheart true crime plus channel available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Okay, the recap of Showgirls. And before I begin, I will place a trigger warning for something that happens at the end of the movie. Trigger warning for rape and sexual assault. Okay. We meet Nomi. That's Elizabeth Berkley. Also, apologies in advance if I call her Elizabeth Hurley. I feel like I'm going to, and it's on accident. Oh, I do want that alternate universe movie, though.

I do want to see that one. The names are too similar and i do think i will mix them up but elizabeth berkeley plays nomi malone uh we see her as she's hitchhiking to las vegas ever heard of it oh she gets a ride from this guy jeff she's like i'm gonna go to vegas to be a dancer he is very sleazy he says he's going to help her get a job but he ends up taking off with her suitcase so now she only has the clothes on her back she's obviously very upset and this is when she meets molly uh played by gina rivera who sees nomi in distress and offers her to adopt her questioner yeah pretty wild when you see a girl in a leopard print top throw up and almost get hit by a car you think

she should move in with me yes saint molly truly i never in a million years thought that jeff would return jeff right comes back oh yeah no bow unbowed with this movie things you didn't want to resolve because you didn't know you wanted resolved are resolved oh you thought there was going to be a loose end with jeff yeah right no we're gonna cut back to jeff jeff's getting his yeah i really hope the sequel had there been one would have opened with them driving into la and the car is still swerving all over the road oh crystal i've got news for you there is a sequel to this movie oh i know okay but but it's a different story that sequel yeah it Yeah, it doesn't follow Nomi. It follows Penny. What?

It follows Penny, yeah. Oh. And the actor who plays Penny in the first movie reprises her role and wrote, directed, and edited the movie, I believe. Oh my god. It's like that Celine Dion biopic I really want to watch. Oh. Oh, I do recommend that, actually. Have you seen it? Yeah. I want to see oh oh I do recommend that actually have you seen it yeah

I want to see it so bad it made me cry twice oh what's that movie that at the time of this recording is in theaters it probably will have left by the time this episode comes out but it's the movie that Celine Dion plays herself in and it's about oh I think a woman loses her boy like her boyfriend dies but she still has his or someone something there's a phone number and another guy she texts her boyfriend's phone number there's a movie okay it's a woman who her boyfriend dies and she texts his phone number to be like, I miss you. And another guy ends up with that phone number like a year or so later. And so he's getting all these text messages being like, she's saying like, I miss you.

I'm going to go to our special spot. And so then he shows up and then they meet and then they fall in love. And Celine Dion plays his like, his mom. I don't know. I'm filling in the blanks. This is a real movie. This is a dream you had.

This is a real movie. I swear it. And I think we should cover it on the show. I think we should too. I don't know. Why are we talking about Celine Dion? Oh, because I derailed it. I was in Montreal the other day.

Brag. So we were like, for every You're Wrong About tour show, we would like try to put like a local hero over the like intro slide. And so we're like, let's put on Celine Dion. And I was like, oh, probably that's the most obvious Canadian to pick. Everyone's probably sick of like, it's like, you know, doing a show in Boston and putting Mark Wahlberg on the screen. Boy, was I wrong. Yeah, they're not sick of like it's like you know doing a show in boston and putting mark walberg on the screen boy was i wrong yeah they're not sick of celine dion no they love her

they were like we they love her i was also in montreal last week and i went to a karaoke bar and it was a very francophone karaoke bar and it was just back-to-back celine dion songs it was it was great I love that they love her so much I thought it was gonna be hack but I was like no it they one person stood I was like wow what a wild um well shout out to Celine Dion for some reason she wouldn't be out of place in this movie no no I mean it's I mean, she's had a residency. Yeah. Anyway, so back to showgirls, I guess. Okay, so we've met Nomi. She meets Molly, who offers her a place to crash.

We cut to six weeks later. Nomi is still living with Molly. Nomi goes with Molly to work. Molly works in the wardrobe department for a show called Goddess, which is a, I guess like Broadway style show. There's a lot of dance. There's also a lot of nudity. And Nomi is watching it and she loves it and she feels inspired because of all the dancing and she wants to be a dancer in this type of show. Have you ever been to one of these shows in Vegas?

No. No. I have. Tell us. It was called Bite and it was vampire themed. Oh my God. But otherwise it was essentially the same. There were a lot of sexy topless ladies.

Okay. And there was problematic scenes they used a lot of like 80s hair rock okay it was a lot of like you know middle-aged midwestern couples there to like feel a little bit sexy with each other while they were watching like a vampire lady without a top on called Ice doing Foreigner Cold as Ice. You gotta mix. You gotta mix things up. Marriage is a long haul. So all that is to say is these shows are real. And it's confusing to me that someone would aspire to like the lead in one.

Like that that could be the goal of your career because i feel like it's i feel like we should all have a little bit higher aspirations than that that was my next question was like is is like headlining a show like this a huge gigantic like best thing in vegas the way that it's presented no i don't think so but I guess maybe in this world, yes. Like maybe, I guess there are big Cirque du Soleil shows, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe in this world, it's like a Cirque du Soleil level show.

But even that doesn't have a headliner. Right. So I'm not sure. Yeah. Anyway. I, you know, Nomi wants to be the star of a show like this and good for her. True. True.

That's what I say. Dream on, baby. Exactly. The current star of the goddess show is Crystal Connors, played by Gina Gershon, who meets Nomi and immediately insults her when she tells Crystal that she works at Cheetahs. And Crystal is like, that's not real dancing. And Nomi is like, you don't know shit. And she storms off as she is wont to do.

I love her. She's so dramatic. Your friend has nice nails. There's like a look that comes over Elizabeth Berkley's face whenever she's about to storm away. I think it's genuinely very good where you can just tell I'm like, oh, oh, Nomi's about to blow. Yeah, it's great. It is. it's great it is uh then nomi and molly go to a club and one of the bouncers goes up to nomi and starts dancing with her the dance moves they're doing they're erratic they're peculiar and he's like you're not very good at dancing but you've got potential and I could teach you. And she doesn't like this.

So she kicks him in the nuts. Oh, right. Which so much happens in this movie. Right. And this instigates a big brawl at the club and Nomi gets arrested, but then gets bailed out the next day by the bouncer. And he continues on this, like, I could train you, I could teach you. But she rejects him again.

Also, we will eventually learn his name is James. He's played by Glenn Plummer. But you don't learn his name for a while. And I think you only hear it on screen like once or twice, maybe. So but that's James then we finally see Nomi at work she is a dancer at a strip club called Cheetahs we meet some of her colleagues like this woman Henrietta and Penny we We also meet her boss, Al. He's a very sleazy guy. He is also played by one of the Fratelli brothers from the Goonies. Oh my god. Yeah. Wow. Twist. That night, Crystal Connors comes into the club with her boyfriend slash their relationship is maybe unclear but his name is zach kerry that's

kyle mclaughlin he is the entertainment director of the hotel where the goddess show is at the hotel is called i think the stardust the stardust and he has bangs i feel that bangs should be a separate cast member yeah um it's weird that they're not credited as such and so he's got like a side part and the bangs are like swooped over sometimes they're in his eyes sometimes not proto bieber kind of thing i have to admit that one of the few things i remember about watching this as a pre-teen was finding kyle mclaughlin hot i mean it's kyle mclaughlin he's still no but even with the hair and potentially because of the hair yeah it's the hair has angles i will say the hair does have angles it looks so clean constantly as well it's really shiny

he's he's being groomed um he it's also hair that's quite similar to Jack Dawson it's true think about that it's true it's a it's it's a haircut that takes place out of time yeah um okay so they so zach and crystal go to cheetahs to watch nomi dance or i don't know if they go specifically because she's there but they show up and nomi is there dancing and then they hire her to give zach a private lap dance while crystal watches and they basically invented the phrase hey we saw you from across the bar and we really like your vibe the vibe flailing around we loved it when you licked that pole we love it when you thrash and please thrash on me yeah and that's exactly what she does and zach and crystal they love it question mark i'm not really sure but zach comes he does come yeah yes who wouldn't who wouldn't had to have been a painful scene for him right i don't know i don't know hard to say but james the bouncer is also at the club because he is perpetually

stalking nomi and leering at her and things like that then james shows up at nomi's house on his bullshit again being like you have so much natural talent as a dancer let me teach you and then he also implies that she shouldn't be wasting her talent quote-unquote by being a stripper and she rightfully tells him to fuck off right she's very morally i mean the this movie is like attempted a morality tale gets very very um murky anti-sex work and confusing yes for sure and our girl nomi seems to change her mind about what her version of morality is every 25 seconds which doesn't help it's true yeah that's the big discussion point for me later on is the movie's attitude towards sex work but we'll get there it really is just like two guys feeling their way around in the dark and you're just like yeah

and then every interview they're like no we went to vegas and we talked to like 20 people i was like guys we went to vegas and hired hookers as research and they thought the script was great i was like i don't know like i none of these real life sex workers they allegedly talked to ever seemed to come out of the woodwork almost like they're making it up yeah right i guess what the thing to remember the whole way through is whenever nomi's upset that someone's just called her a whore or a hooker or whatever they've called her. It's because she's trying to leave that life behind. Which is the reveal at the end of the movie, right?

Spoiler alert. So it kind of makes sense a bit for that character. But it's almost like the movie is Nomi deciding whether or not she like how much she's willing to sell. I think that is kind of an interesting idea. Sooner or later, you're going to have to sell it, which is like one of the first lines in the movie. And I think that rings true for all of us. I mean, we're selling it right now. Right now.

Speaking of which, subscribe to our Patreon. It's really fun over there yeah buy some merch alfred melina feminist icon merch you need it god our selling is so embarrassing that's my morality tale okay so at work at cheetahs a guy shows up to tell Nomi that they are holding auditions for the show Goddess the following morning and that she should come and audition. So she goes, but the producer, Tony Moss, is an asshole. And it seems like she blows the audition.

So she confronts Crystal being like, you got me this audition, didn't you? Like, this was your doing. And Crystal is like, yeah, I like the way you dance. And Nomi is like, well, I hate you. And then she storms off again. Then she bumps into James and he brings her to his house to show her some choreography that he's working on. He's like, I wrote this for you because I'm trying to put a show together with you and some other dancers. So he starts teaching her the choreography, which immediately leads to them making out and they almost have sex.

The scene is so wild. She's like, we can't. I have my period. And then he's like, yeah, right. I don't believe you. And then she's like, check. And so he puts his hands down her pants and confirms that she does have her period. And then she's like, OK, bye.

And she's like, I'm out of here. It's like, wow, that's I mean, there's so many ways to have the last word and this is one of them i i i kind of liked that scene she's so wild and and there's the way that this reader writes about periods it's so bizarre it never occurred to me the connection between this and romeo and michelle where she says sorry i cut my foot earlier and my shoe is filling up with blood it's it's not it's not a dissimilar way to end a conversation if you say you're bleeding you might get out of that awkward conversation she does something similar with her boss i think maybe in a scene that happens before this but

al is like where were you last night and she was like i was having my period and then he's like oh well okay he goes full like male gym teacher about it and which is great but then it's i don't know there's just like lines in this movie it It's delightful. They just keep going. And you're like, why is this line still going? She's like, I had my period. You wouldn't want me to get blood all over everything, would you? And you're like, no way. Why is a woman bleeding so scary to men?

Well, I mean, to the stocky guy's credit, question mark, he's like, I've got towels. I'm like, yeah, that really is all that you need. Yeah, fair. Anyway, so Nomi gets a call from the producer, Tony Moss, saying that she has been cast in the Goddess show. So she quits her job at cheetahs she goes to tell james the good news because i guess they're friends now but he has another woman over penny who would go on to star in the sequel and he's telling her like oh i want you in my show now and Nomi is I guess jealous and she basically storms off again then she goes to give her like name and background info to the production for like employment

records but she's vague and she doesn't seem to know her social security number. And it's possible that she's hiding something about her past. Terrific. Yeah. Then she starts training and learning the choreography for the show. She bumps into Zach, a.k.a. Kyle McLaughlin. And he's like, wow, you look beautiful. And so there's like some flirtation brewing there and then her first show is that night because she somehow learned all the choreography in a single day and she's dancing her ass off i love the dance scenes in this movie

even when they're confusing they're very impressive what do you think is the narrative of the show goddess question number one question number two does it pass the bechdel test i have always imagined that goddess is like topless fantasia where they're just little vignettes i like it about different goddesses and but like sexy yeah there's a motorcycle you've got them yeah the the motorcycle rape dance scene doesn't really fit with the the title of the show yeah it was not getting goddess energy from that particular selection i'm wondering so i i know that there's like rocky horror style performances of this show and now i really want to see them because it this is a show i would like to see live i feel like

it's almost like why isn't there in vegas like the show girls experience like there's an actual coyote ugly bard oh yeah you know i feel like you should have access to goddess you're so right absolutely it would destroy well yeah let's get to work on it together okay okay so then so nomi has her first show it goes well zach sends her flowers and then james shows up after the show and he's like i still want you to be in my show who cares if i'm having sex with other people and she's like uh i bye again and but he'll be back again again yes then crystal takes nomi to lunch this is where they talk about eating doggy chow. The conversation is, I don't know if any point of this movie is actually horny.

The level of horniness, I guess, is open to interpretation in this movie, but there's like sexual tension between them. They're having a conversation that's quite, again, the issue with this whole movie is swurfy getting into like swurf territory and one example is this conversation the point is like we're establishing a lot of tension between them they almost make out but then they don't and crystal is, we're all whores. And so are you.

And Nomi is like, fuck you. And she storms off again. And then Nomi gets offered this gig to dance on a yacht at a boat convention. And Molly, who has kind of dropped out of the movie reappears and she's like don't do it and Nomi realizes why because she discovers that she is expected to have sex with like one of the casino's high rollers so she says fuck you and she storms off as she always does and then she tells zach about this zach pretends to be appalled but the guy who sort of orchestrated this whole thing this guy phil does not actually get in trouble it seems like this is very par for the course for like them for lack of a better term

like pimping out the performers of this show. Yeah. And one of the many times where Kyle MacLachlan's character acts shocked by something that he obviously knows exactly what's going on and is actively working to uphold it. It's one of the parts of the movie that actually works pretty well. Yeah. Because this happens in a different capacity later on, which we'll get to. This is also the first time we hear the reference to Caesar singing,

which becomes a stand-in for are you willing to sell your body, which I also really like as a euphemism, because Kyle says it later, Kyle MacLachlan says it later, we're going to take you and hear Caesar sing, and then at the end of the movie she does hear Caesar sing, and it's like oh this is this is it it's happening yeah there's parts that are

good there's no they really close every loop whether you like it or not they do anyway that's what I call sex now Caesar singing yeah do you want to hear Caesar sing tonight or yeah

yes okay so then nomi goes home with zach and they have sex in his pool which is once again mostly just nomi thrashing and flailing around yeah also at some point nomi has has gone to James's show that he originally wanted her to be a part of. The audience hates it, even though it seems like it's a fine show and people are doing a fine job. But like the audience is like, boo, you suck. It's so there's I was like, what happened right before she got here? Yeah, right. Yeah.

Did he throw things at them? It's confusing how this show is different to goddess right i don't know and then james is like by the way penny is pregnant and oh right after he says go get me a beer bitch and then is like anyways she's pregnant and i gave up on my dreams and that's fine for this woman who dances like a truck that's a good insult and also she was dancing fine it's just every choice in this movie is so bizarre yeah um okay so then crystal's understudy gets injured during the show because of this rivalry between two of the performers, which we don't really know why that's happening.

But this one performer causes another one to get injured. So they hold auditions to cast a new understudy for Crystal, and Nomi gets the part. But Crystal figures out that Nomi and Zach had sex slash they heard Caesar sing because that's again a brilliant euphemism. And Crystal does not like this and she seems jealous or you know there's unclear but the next thing Nomi knows she does not have the understudy part anymore but Nomi is still performing in the show and her like rivalry frenemy thing with Crystal continues to escalate to the point where Nomi pushes Crystal down the stairs. And she's badly injured. And the producers are freaking out because Crystal is the star. And what if people don't come to the show because Crystal isn't there?

But they take a gamble and put Nomi in the leading role. Big Phantom of the Opera energy to this. Oh, that's right. Except, well, there's so, I can't wait to talk about like the dynamic between those two characters because we've seen this exact dynamic in so many cautionary showbiz tales and i just want to lay them all out this is so yeah such a thing anyways but yes now she is the star yep but molly, Nomi, you pushed her, didn't you? And Nomi is like, teehee, no. And Molly is very suspicious until she's not anymore for reasons.

Plot reasons. Because Molly is a kind and trusting person. I mean. She's a pure soul. She bends over backwards so many times to accommodate nomi also at this point like nomi i think we're to assume is making pretty good money and still has not moved out right get a life nomi seriously you're imposing yeah there's only one bed in that trailer yeah and it's a single and there aren't enough chips

to go around between the two of them okay so they end up at the same party molly and nomi and nomi introduces molly to this musician guy named andrew carver who whose name has like come up throughout the movie prior to this. But now he's in Vegas to perform. And Molly is a big fan of Andrew Carver. But then and I'll place another trigger warning here for sexual violence and rape. But Andrew Carver and his cronies gang rape Molly and she is hospitalized. Nomi goes to call the police but Zach is like don't do it Polly yeah I know that your real name is Polly Ann Costello and that your father killed your mother and then killed himself and you ran away from foster care and then you've been arrested several times for soliciting sex

and possession of crack cocaine and assault with a deadly weapon so much happens in this movie i have all this dirt on you polly and nomi is like who cares about all that what about my friend but zach is more concerned about protecting andrew carver's reputation so nomi takes matters into her own hands she goes and beats the shit out of andrew carver it's showtime then she pays molly a visit in the hospital to like tell her what she did for her and then she also pays crystal a visit and crystal is like i know why you pushed me i did the same thing to get where i'm at now so there's no hard feelings between them and then they make out for a little bit it's such an intense kiss yes so, so intense. I know that the kiss is legendary, but Crystal is so fine when being pushed down a flight of stairs. She's like, it happens to every performer.

I'm like, does it though? You reach a certain age and you get pushed down the stairs and don't even worry about it because I got a huge settlement. There's this thing where basically any character that Nomi interacts with becomes completely obsessed with her. And yeah, you can get pushed down the stairs by her and you're still on Team Nomi in this world. Yeah, it's so wild. Doesn't matter what she does. It's true, yes.

You just threw up on my car, time to move in. You push me down the stairs how about a big kiss she can do no wrong oh you need me in the nuts let me bail you out of jail absolutely yes i forgot about that one wow it's wild okay so then Nomi has, you know, tied up her loose ends. And then she hitchhikes out of Vegas. And she gets a ride from the same guy that she got a ride from at the beginning. This guy, Jeff, who doesn't recognize her at first because she's incognito mode. But then...

She's moon mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This must be a different hot, tall, blonde lady in a leopard print top. Right. But her leopard print top from the beginning, it's become like sheeny. So it's like she's got money now. So he couldn't have recognized her. Sunglasses too.

Sunglasses. She takes off her sunglasses and he's like, oh my God, it's you. And she's like, give me my fucking suitcase and then it's implied that she's headed to los angeles ever heard of it the end incredible so that's the movie let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss hey everybody this is matt rogers and bowen yang we've got We'll be right back. 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'm so behind.

Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad.

I felt Bjork's music and I just was like, who is this person? I gotta hawk this

slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean

when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. 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 Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.

Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. Okay, where to start um crystal what jumps out to you where would you like to start wow wow that is a big question

yeah besides everything what jumps out yeah cool well i think i'm gonna throw it to that documentary you mentioned earlier which is you don't know me which says that there are three different ways to watch this movie which is it's a piece of shit it's a masterpiece or it's a masterpiece of shit and i think i think that third category is where i've also landed where there is so much to love about it so much that is completely baffling and there is so much that's deeply, deeply wrong. And to enjoy this movie, you have to accept kind of all of those things at once. And like cherry pick the parts you love and like be critical of the parts you don't. You mentioned wanting to see this live.

And as a gay man and a drag artist, I've had the pleasure of seeing this live many, many times. What I would say is, for an example, often when drag productions of this movie are done, they'll cut out the rape scene because it's so incongruous with the camp-ness of the rest of the movie. I very much prefer that. Yeah. I'm glad that happens. Or I've seen it where they've cut it and then brought out a great stripper to give a great strip routine. We're like, we're going to spend this next three minutes just being like look how great live

sex work is awesome like there's lots of fun ways to do it but that isn't it's almost like it feels a bit like cheating to pretend that that scene isn't in the movie because it was obviously very intentional and it's part of the of the narrative that they're really trying to tell about this movie which is like you know how far are you willing to go for success and for fame? And like, what is the cost of the American dream? Right. You almost have to decide if you're going to watch the fun version of Showgirls or you're going to watch the serious version of Showgirls. Right.

So at the time when this movie came out, it was horribly received, tanked at the box office. It was poorly reviewed. Kyle MacLachlan saw the movie and he's like, this absolutely sucks. Ruined Elizabeth Berkley's career completely. Yes. Joe Estrahouse, who wrote the screenplay, was like, mistakes were made. Paul Verhoeven was like, damn damn i guess i made a bad movie but he also like embraced that people started appreciating it as like camp trash and he like went to the razzie's

awards and accepted his razzie for worst director which is like sure i guess sure yeah might as well also camp because like i don't know exactly the kind of trajectory of like critics being like this sucks but then a bunch of audiences being like but it's so bad it's good and it's fun and the dancing and you know that kind of stuff because at some point it achieved you know the cult status uh that it still has and then Because at some point, it achieved, you know, the cult status that it still has. And then also, at some point, there were a lot of people who kind of re-evaluated this movie and said, it's actually brilliant satire. And that satire was intentional, obviously. And then there's Paul Verhoeven movies you can make that argument for. Just not this one. Just not this one. But I also like I see that to some extent because this is a movie about how a place like Vegas and an industry like the entertainment industry commodifies people and it commodifies sexuality and particularly women's sexuality and women's bodies and it sells it as a

product and there's also like a hierarchical element to that where some people are quote unquote more valuable as a commodity than others because you have these stars like crystal and like that guy andrew carver who make the venues a lot of money and the producers a lot of money. And so they have to be protected, but they can also be replaceable to some extent because they are treated as a commodity, which is like, I think best demonstrated. There's a few different scenes that really clearly demonstrate this. I'll cite two in particular.

It's like parallel scenes, basically. There's one scene at the beginning of the movie with Crystal and then another scene toward the end of the movie with Nomi, where I don't know if he's like the owner of the Stardust Hotel or what this guy's job is. But he's kind of like interviewing both of them and he's giving this like speech verbatim saying like we could have gotten anyone for the show paula abdul huge for paula abdul he's like but we needed this star and she's perfect and talented and so sexy and blah, blah, blah. And it's the same speech about two different people who occupy this starring role at different parts of the movie. Because again, they're selling these women as a commodity. And as long as they have certain traits and certain talents,

it doesn't matter who it is, according to this industry that they're working within. And it's this type of commodification that makes people feel like they have to be very competitive of each other. And again, whether that's intentional in this movie or not, like intentional commentary or not, that is what's happening where you see all these different rivalries. The main one, one of course being between Nomi and Crystal this movie has been like cited as being like pretty much a ripoff or a remake or whatever of all about Eve which it's like definitely I don't know I was thinking about this specific dynamic which is like so complicated for a lot of reasons a lot of which you just said of like the

inherent competition i feel like this movie kind of does an above average job it's not doing you know all about eve numbers of making this dynamic a little clearer for the kind of because i feel like you know in we've seen this dynamic a lot of times all about Eve. I feel like you also see a version of it in Black Swan. You see it in Chicago. You see it in The Favorite. And it's like there's a new girl in town and you better watch your back because there can only be like this industry, institution, whatever it is. It's often show business. There's often a like Kyle MacLachlan type character where

it's like now he's my boyfriend because I'm new and young and cool and like the tacit implication there is like there's only room for one of you so you will have to tear each other down in order to be that one because there's only one spot and it's very fleeting and like it's a story we've seen so many times and it's so clearly based in how I think especially women or and also just performers in general although I feel like we see it most frequently between women are like conditioned to see each other and like how institutions like this and like the city of Chicago question mark and ballet and like how you're conditioned to turn against each other and conditioned to be competitive over supportive and that's the only way you can survive and it's like it's so tricky because I think that when those stories are written poorly it makes it seem like this which this movie kind

of is but i feel like it does well we should talk about it um like how i think when it's poorly written it makes it seem like an inherent quality of like because there are two women and one is 10 years older they have to hate each other and this is just like the natural order of things and it is not an institutional symptom of like how they've been conditioned to view each other and how they've been conditioned to view themselves and i feel like this movie actually does above average at that we've definitely seen it done much worse yeah um which i guess is a bar on the floor kind of thing. Right.

It's weird because the movie feels like a movie that... Oh, like a go-to-the-theater type film for sure. It's a movie written and directed by men who, again, don't seem to know how women interact. Yeah. But, which is really funny. It's so funny. It's like, no one tell him silly goofy let him keep making these movies god can you imagine being that guy's like partner and being like you think i'm doing what when i'm with my friends you think we're talking about what exactly? Yeah. Dog food, right? It's dog food. Dog food, chips. And you go shopping at Versace together, et cetera.

Okay, I thought the Versace bit was good class commentary. Yeah? Yeah. I've done shit like that. Oh, the last thing I want to say is, yeah, I think this movie does an above average job and every time i see this dynamic it does like it really sucks how i think that this is still something very very present in a lot of industries and it reminds me of how i was sort of spoken to and like encouraged to feel and kind of like came in with this attitude when i started doing stand-up of like well there's not a lot of space for you and you're gonna have to like you know don't bother making

friends and in a way that quickly was like oh fuck this you know like I'm losing money every time I walk out the door I'm gonna make a friend yeah but but I feel like there were like I had early experiences in comedy where you know it's like either you're like a threat uh because you're new and there's only so many spots and and it's I don't know I think that that has certainly lessened as in the last you know in the 10 years I've been performing but it still felt like I was like oh god yeah they're like the early to mid 2010s it felt very very present in a culture yeah I had a lot of similar experiences in my early stand-up career where I couldn't tell you how many shows I did where I was the only woman or femme on the lineup and I was kind of conditioned because this was like 2010-ish. I was at the time conditioned to think that that's something I should be proud of where it's like, well, we have one spot for a woman.

And you got it. And you got it. And we filled our quota because that's all the more any booker wanted to put on the show is one woman. And I would be like, wow, I got it. I got the spot on the show is one woman and i would be like wow i got it i got the spot on this show i get to talk to all these guys that suck losers who like verbally assaulted me throughout the entire fucking show i got so i think i've talked about this on the show before i got so not so many but like a couple and one very memorable one like when the me too movement um first started I think just like men in Boston that were like oh fuck and like a guy that I mean

he you remember yeah yeah he sent me this long message that was like sorry I talked about you disgustingly every time I was around you and I was like wow I actually didn't know that was happening uh a lot of the time and now I do so thank you for telling me that you're horrible I didn't really know um yeah but I mean that that goes both ways where it's like when I started performing there was like a show I did where there were two women. Very thrilling. But it was like the middle of summer. It was like 100 fucking degrees. And I was wearing shorts on stage.

And the only other woman on the lineup was like, you can't dress like that on stage. Like, take it from me. I'm 30 and you can't wear shorts. And so you pushed her down the stairs. I did. But she was fine with it. And then we kissed. I think what you were saying about this like antagonistic relationship between two women, though, I think it's one of the things that I've struggled with, with loving this movie, because it's something that typically gay men have loved to watch in movies. You know, from Mean Girls to this,

to Black Swan, to All About Eve. Like, these camp movies have a place in gay culture. Death Becomes Her. Yeah. And it's definitely problematic, and it's definitely something to do with, you know, misogyny within the gay scene, where it's fun to watch women be shitty to each other. And it's something that i find

less and less appealing now but it's you can still go on twitter today and watch you know gay men pit gaga against taylor swift or beyonce and you know it's it's not something that's gone away um i think what you say about this movie doing a better job of it than most is actually true because it there is nuance and it's not just two women involved there's what i like about this movie is that there's so many different women and none of them are saying things that really make any sense but but they all have distinct and different motivations and goals and like some of them suck and some of them don't and some of them are trying to figure out where they fit and i like that for this movie yeah right this is very much a women's rights and women's wrongs kind of movie yeah yeah so i guess the bottom line is women have historically sometimes had rivalries and tension among them or between them.

But there's almost always context for it. And it's like institutional, patriarchal context. And it's a matter of, does the story recognize that context and comment on it? Or is it, you know, men who have just seen women be petty toward each other and not understand why and just assume, oh, well, this is just how women are. Women are petty with each other. And so I'm going to put that in the movie. And it seems like, yeah, this movie does understand the context because it examines like, you know, the way that like the entertainment industry doesn't value aging women yeah it's

actually the whole point of the movie it's like the basically the whole message of this film is the show business industry choose women up yeah i would say if it has one point of view it's that i remember i think i remember you talking about this on your death becomes her episode where the motivation for their animosity is you thought i was cheap yeah and and you and you stole my man uh-huh you stole bruce willis motivation yeah yeah those are weak motivations to kill each other and push someone down the stairs which also happens in that movie it does wow gina gershon's head should have twisted all the way around like it doesn't because wouldn't have felt out of place in this movie um there uh it's so and then i also had like a whole and then i was like jamie too much too much um

but uh i was like how connected is this to like this movie comes out like a couple years after like tonya harding and Nancy Kerrigan. And like, I was like, oh, I wonder if that was on the writer's mind or if he really was just like, no, no brain for this one. Just women be pushing each other down the stairs. But there is, it's always contextualized. And I like that it's like, I think that this is, even though it's like bizarre, it makes no sense that Crystal is like, it's all good. This was going to happen to me anyways so i'm glad it was someone i had a crush on who pushed me down the stairs whatever but i feel like it i i like that the movie makes a very deliberate decision to

end things well between them i mean like really well you get that whole kiss in a way that like i think the only version of that ending that i like better is Chicago but I'm such a Chicago head where it's like well we don't really like each other but we got to take this show on the road because that's the only way we could retain our value to society and they're showgirls too they are oh I that's another show I would love to see live anyways yeah i like that the movie wants however bizarrely wants crystal and no me to end in a good place that feels rare true i think another thing the movie does that's interesting and accurate is that it presents every male character working within this you know very despicable industry that again commodifies people and women and women's bodies and all this

stuff shows the men as being manipulative sleazyazy, gross, very aggressive, like all these things. Predatory, all this stuff. Rapists. Rapists, stalkers, rape apologists, just horrible people. Again, hashtag not all men. Wow, I said it. Someone's going to clip this out and be like, they've changed.

Oh, I wasn it. But someone's going to clip this out and be like, they've changed. Oh, I wasn't going to. It's so common, especially the people who have any power in an industry like this, to treat women as commodities and to exploit them and exploit their labor and all this stuff. So we see that in this movie. What do you think the movie's point of view is about James? Oh, so confusing i don't like the movie thinks james is a good guy yes i agree i think that like he's presented as the least bad of them even though he's continually stalking her yeah he's awful he's awful yeah to her yes he's so and yeah i felt especially in the last scene i wonder how this felt to watch in

1995 because i'm like oh are we supposed to think he's like the one that got away i think so right but he just called his pregnant girlfriend a bitch in front of us. And we're like, wow, she should have ended up with him, question mark. He also does that thing where he's like, I bailed you out. So you owe me. Like, I did something for you. And now you owe me sex. And he's very awful. But yeah, the movie does not frame him as being the same type of like bad as all the other

men it is it's confusing yeah i think we've talked about this in some way i forget in what context on the show before but like i think he's definitely like the best worst guy or that's what they want us to think it's like he's the best man we meet in the story but everyone is awful so the fact that like he and i don't even know if this is true like he's the i don't know we're i think we are supposed to think he's good in comparison to how all the men around him behave but like he's still awful i can't believe that we're supposed to be like he's the one that got away when he's like go get me a beer bitch you dance like a truck um right yeah while we're on his character something that the movie does that i found a bit nefarious is the movie tricks you into thinking it's going to be more diverse than it actually is because molly and james are introduced early on and are presented as being important characters or characters who you think are going to

be in the story as important characters throughout but the movie to quote our favorite song from a star is born they fall by the wayside as the story progresses i was like by the wayside iconic song from a star is born 2018 and what is showgirls but a story about a star who is born you know from a volcano from it's true wow it's true goddess there is an interracial relationship which is not something you would commonly see on screen for like a major motion picture in 95 and if an interracial relationship was in a movie in that era there was a lot of attention called to it like called to the fact that a black man is kissing a white woman how scandalous how you know whatever but this movie very normalizes it yeah it's very matter of fact the relationship is awful and he's manipulative and a stalker

but at least it normalizes people of different races kissing each other and checking if they have their period. That should be normal. Yeah. Kind of amazing. And then I think it also is very, I don't know, like telling of the movie sort of,

I don't know. Like, I mean, obviously there are two white women at the center of this story and the fact that molly who's the only black woman who gets any meaningful space in the story is chosen as the one to be violently assaulted feels very pointed and um i don't know i was reading about how like the experience for Gina Rivera of filming that scene it sounds like it was really traumatic yeah especially for such an unnecessary exploitative

scene yes that she's only seen the movie one time because and and left during the premiere during that scene because she's like I don't need to see that again and like your body doesn't you know you can know you're acting but your body doesn't really know the difference when that is done and I wonder I wasn't able to find out maybe you know Crystal like if there was any sort of intimacy coaching or any sort of anything I'm assuming there wasn't I'm assuming there wasn't as well and that's so I mean it feels very pointed in how comfortable people are just exploiting black women in movies. And also it's only done to advance Nomi's story. Of like to present her with the big problem.

And the fact that a writer couldn't conceive of another way for that to happen is just like gross. I mean, yeah, it's by far the worst part and it happens at the 11th hour it's like why is this really comes out of nowhere yeah like they could have um well paul verhoeven loves shocking graphic violence like every one of his movies has like vomit people getting blown up disgustingly and there seems to be a rape scene in every one of his movies as my husband said i think i think paul verhoeven's a pervert and it's kind of hard to argue with that like it's like why does this need to happen in every one paul like we can we can experience the horrors of rape and rape culture without actually needing to visually

experience the horrors of it absolutely and i think his his point of view is people should be confronted with how awful this is we've been kind of dancing around this whole movie what this industry is all about and i'm gonna make sure you understand what it's really about here at the very end i can see what he was trying to do um but the way the scene is framed and shot and it's just extremely triggering for the audience and for the actor i want to share some quotes from gina rivera the scene took nine hours to film and it seems like it was just pure torture for her the entire time. She says, quote, when you do a scene like that, your body doesn't know it's not real.

Jamie, you already alluded to that. I don't know if I would have taken the movie if I had understood that. She then adds, I took the rape scene very seriously because when you see rape on film, you know you're representing people who have lived through it.

I thought, I'm going to do this scene so the girl who goes to that party and gets asked to that room doesn't go into it. I was willing to do this scene for that person because this is a real moment in the world, unfortunately. Women are victims of this violence unquote which i appreciate that she seems to have taken that moment of the story with like you know she handled it with as much care as she could but again the way that it unfolds on screen and the fact that it unfolds on screen at all is completely unnecessary which is something that joe esterhouse later admits he says that rape scene was a god-awful mistake in retrospect a terrible mistake i mean truly the least he can do right um given there yeah i mean and and then yeah even from like a narrative

perspective it happening that late in the movie is like what the fuck are you doing yeah like truly yeah i i i think it's one of the worst and the the biggest crimes of this movie is the effect that that scene had on the actress who who did it and i think that's it's probably the most unforgivable thing about this movie the other thing i would say is what it did to elizabeth berkeley's career like those are the two like real world impacts that this movie's had and and despite it trying to make a movie about how show business destroys women it ends up being a vehicle to destroy women yeah yeah which is really really troubling and strange and ironic, I guess. I also read something, you know, to just kind of further dig that hole,

that Gina Rivera was meant to have a topless scene in the trailer as well, which for no reason, but she was going to just be coming out of the shower in one of the scenes. And she said, I don't want to, I don't see how this is necessary for my character. Or you've already got a movie that's full of breasts. Like, why do you need mine? And she apparently had to have a real fight with Paul Verhoeven about not doing a topless scene. It's just, and again, it's like, what point would that have served? Other than if you're a woman in this movie, we should be able to see your breasts.

We have to see your titties. Yeah. And it sucks that, I mean, like gina gershon i'm really glad she spoke up for herself and also i'm sure that not every actor in the movie felt like they could advocate for themselves like that because they're viewed as replaceable which like you're saying is what the movie is about yeah right but i felt i mean yeah i feel especially because of where elizabeth berley was in her career. I think she was like 20 when this movie was filmed.

She was very young. She had been on Saved by the Bell. And I think this opens a huge can of worms that we probably don't have time to get into today. But this was like her role of like, I am an adult now, which I think is something a pressure that's put most often on young women in Hollywood. We saw I mean, we've seen it a million different versions of it, I feel like, you know, Zendaya doing Euphoria is like, now I'm doing the adult thing. And it's not just like, I'm going from being a child's entertainer, which I have a ton of thoughts about anyways, to like now I am a sexual creature. And like, I don't know, like it's it really depends on how the actor actually feels about it.

And if you want to like take a part like that, fucking go for it. But I feel like there's also just like an implied pressure to take a part like that to declare like i am no longer a child i am super no longer a child i will be you know and elizabeth berkeley taking a huge swing by taking this part and then being like mocked for it is just so yeah ugly yeah she it is a very flaily performance but paul verhoeven says years later i don't know why he doesn't say it at the time that that was like a result of his direction like he was like go big in every scene so it like it was just made out to be like oh she's a terrible actor how embarrassing that she was in this exploitative movie and like who does she think she is blah blah blah was like the framing

of the framing of her and like obviously that has a huge effect on you when you're 21 years old yeah like it's i don't know yeah she's been really consistent as well about how she loved making it she loved making the movie like if you watch the clips of her doing the interviews during the filming she's having the best time and even 20 years later she attends a screening and she talks about how she felt like when she was making this movie that she was living her dreams she was having the no me moment she was making something that was you know going to be career changing for her but she also loved doing. And so I think in a way, if it hadn't tanked, and if it hadn't ruined her acting career, it would really solve a lot of the problems around this movie. But the fact that it did chew her up and spit her out is really sad.

I wanted to go back to what you were saying about race as well though because yeah there's i think three black characters in the movie there's crystals understudy there's nomi's love interest and then there's molly and all three of them are again destroyed essentially right in one way or another what i would say that this movie is trying to do i think it is trying to make that point. And I have read that Paul Verhoeven said explicitly that, yeah, the portrayal of these characters is representative of the way black people are treated in America. And so again, I think it's interesting that then the spin-out effect was actually, again,

to traumatize a black actress through a rape scene. Right. Again, kind of doing what he said he's trying to highlight and if you want to advocate against right if you want to make commentary on that you can't do the exact same thing that you're making commentary on that's the whole that's this whole movie is just i don't even know the word, ethos? No. But like, it's also like a movie about how women's bodies are commodified and exploited. And then every single scene, and not to say that nudity is inherently exploitative, but there's so much unnecessary, you could argue, nudity in this movie and it and there's for example there's full frontal

female nudity no nudity really at all for for men that's what i was like i i because this is i mean and this is like a very fraught conversation that i feel like that like we've sort of changed over the years and i think i used to view sexed movies a little like prudishly perhaps um and it's like i'm pro erotic movie uh but i i yeah it's like when it's not equal opportunity it feels very glaring where i'm like why you know kyle mclaughlin we see but up. We see, oh, we do see his butt. Great butt. But for like a few seconds and then he goes into a swimming pool and no more butts. There's a lot of chances to see his butt because you see his butt in Sex and the City quite a bit as well.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Twin peaks? Twin cheeks. Oh, wow. Yeah. Twin cheeks. I don't think you see his twin cheeks in twin peaks but i don't think so the reason it feels exploitative in this movie is that it's such a heavy focus on

female nudity and none whatsoever and again you could yeah they would probably like the filmmakers would probably argue well men's bodies aren't as exploited as women so where so that's actually commentary that's why we're showing so much female nudity but it just feels definitely not to make a movie for 14 year old boys to have a to jerk off to after their parents have gone to bed surely not make that movie surely not this is a this is a hard-hitting look at the exploitation of women right we only traumatized most of the women in the movie to do it and what a noble sacrifice like blah blah right so polverhoven is just chaos what i want to make clear is that i i have no problem with nudity in movies.

As long as it's happening on the terms of the actor and the actor is comfortable with it. And it's not gratuitous and exploitative. But this movie often feels as though at least some of the nudity is gratuitous and exploitative which again goes against what doing the movie says it's trying to yeah yeah and i think that's what i was trying to say is that elizabeth berkeley says she didn't feel exploited and she had a great time which wonderful and and she's like she looks super hot oh my god and like how fun to like if you're feeling really hot and you're 21 and you've got that body like if you want to show it off like great yeah how fun right but while we're talking about bodies um i mean this there's very little body diversity in this movie you do have one character who is fat in henrietta she's one of the performers

at cheetahs comedian right she doesn't do the same like striptease act as the other performers she does more of a and there is nudity in her act but it's more like comedy vaudeville is that what vaudeville is turns out i don't know yeah she's very vaudeville-y yeah but with with boobs with boobs so her body and like i understand that a venue like that a strip club like that would treat a body like that differently than they would treat the other performers who have these like, you know, Victoria's Secret model type bodies. But again, the movie is not really commenting on that very much. I don't know. What are your thoughts? I also felt I mean, that poor actor who had to play that part. I mean,

she did a great job with what she's given like it i don't i don't know what is what is her weirdest line where she's like you're the only one that knows how to what is that line yeah know me you're the only one who could get my tits popping right that's a iconic moment in cinema but yeah the fact that I mean, it's not surprising to me that and I'm sure is like reflective of that scene that there's not a lot of body diversity. But I don't I think that on some topics, this movie goes out of its way to make a point. It didn't feel like it quite got there at all. I think the closest were like comments made at the beginning of the movie or the beginning of Nomi's career about what she's allowed to eat and what she's not allowed to eat that was as close to like any

sort of attempt at commentary is like not only is there no body diversity and if you are fat or just not a victorious secret model your act will be different you will be treated differently and you are your body is the joke but also that the victoria's secret model dancers are like starving and are not allowed to eat normally except for nomi who eats subsists strictly on chips and champagne and cheeseburgers which is another oh gosh this is something that it's tricky to but like it feels very like gilmore girls syndrome to me where it's like this girl can eat whatever she wants but she still has a victoria's secret body you know like you do and it's like you it feels like a very weird half step. I mean, she's 21, so maybe, but it just feels, I don't know.

There's certainly a media trope where the only women who are allowed to stay or allowed to be seen eating something like a hamburger on screen are women who are extremely thin. Right. Because if a woman who is not extremely thin is seen eating a hamburger, that immediately becomes either a joke or a judgment call is being made on her choices.

Exactly, yeah. It felt like it was something that you would think this movie would attempt to make more commentary on. It doesn't. I don't know if I'm like, I don't know how to feel about it because I'm like, well, if they'd tried it they probably wouldn't have gone great but i don't know i guess i would be

interested in what the attempt would have been um similar well again they would have really traumatized yeah people yeah another a whole other group of people they would have figured out a way to traumatize someone else by trying to make a comment on something else they weren't really equipped to talk about they would have fumbled it the way they fumbled sex work which can we get into that yeah yes so several characters and the movie as a whole seem to have an attitude that sex work is not legitimate work. If you are a stripper, that's not real dancing. You're wasting your talents. So it completely delegitimizes, wow, words, they're hard, deleg D legitimizes sex work as work,

but in different ways with different characters. Where, for example, James, he's like, oh, Nomi, you want to be a showgirl? Why? Like what you're doing at Cheetah's is at least honest, because he said something like, people want tits and ass and you give them tits and ass at goddess they pretend it's something else but you still show them tits and ass so he seems to be

again like legitimizing sex work more than other people in the movie are but then he'll turn around and say like you're wasting your talents by being a stripper and giving lap dances and you know fucking him without fucking him yes yes he's all over the place there then you have crystal's attitude which is like if you work at cheetahs like if you work at a strip club that's not real dancing which really upsets and offends no me but then later Crystal will be like you're a whore and I'm a whore and I don't love the word whore but they say it so often in this movie that unavoidable right so she's like I'm a whore you're a whore we're exactly alike just acknowledge what you're doing and Nomi gets very defensive anytime a conversation like this is happening,

and she's saying, no, I'm not. Maybe you are. I know you are, but what am I? That kind of thing. Yes, very Pee Wee Herman energy. And sometimes in her physical choices. Yeah, but I do think, Crystal, you made this point earlier we're like in the context of what we later learn about nomi i think it is like an interesting and like ultimately somewhat

fumbled attempt for like nomi processing the stigma of having been a sex worker i don't think that these guys have the juice to make any like clear uh they don't they definitely don't stick the landing but i thought it was i don't know i would be curious to know what our listeners think as well but i felt like it was what they were trying to do which only makes sense if you watch it back i do feel like we should have known that a little sooner to really appreciate like the the struggle that she's having because it's like i'm sure that i mean everyone around her is telling her that sex work is not legitimate work which is you know certainly not an unpopular take in the 90s she has been a sex worker in the past and it seems like has you know absorbed a lot of the stigma that comes with that and doesn't want it's it's interesting because it seems like has you know absorbed a lot of the stigma that comes with that and doesn't want

it's it's interesting because it's like she does I mean she enjoys being a stripper and she like she likes it and she's defensive of the fact that she likes it and I don't know I I think it's interesting uh theoretically to watch a character of this era, like struggle with stigma and like say, no, I'm not like I'm doing something legitimate. And like, what does legitimate mean? What has she been told in the past is and isn't legitimate.

And that's an interesting journey to take. It's just like, this movie is not, is ill equipped to, to take you on that journey. But I think, I think the movie is trying to say that essentially there isn't anything legitimate within the american dream yeah and if you're going to participate in that as a concept you are selling out and you are selling yourself to

one degree or another and i i do kind of like that because and it it's often a foreign filmmaker who's going to make that point who can come into America and be like, wow, this is a really weird like concept you all have that there's this like, you can somehow attain all of the success without it costing you something. And I like that point of view. I think it's, I think it's interesting. But I don't think it particularly, yeah, like you say, nails the landing where it's like like you're all selling out and that is sometimes okay or not okay or whatever like sex work can be good it's it's unclear what it actually thinks about that it's its point of view is you're all selling out and right you should be honest with yourself about that which i feel like is so much of paul Verhoeven's work for me where it's like he definitely has

he's he's always on to something but I feel like he never really at least for me like I haven't seen all his movies I still haven't seen Robocop um my boyfriend saw Robocop recently and he was like wow he really I guess he maybe stuck the landing on that one but in general I feel like he definitely is always on to something. He's nibbling at something, but never quite sticks the landing. In a way, that's always interesting to watch. The execution might not be quite there, but the attempt is watchable. He gives it a hundred percent

yeah and but the other thing is like so often sex work is framed as something that people are trying to like desperately escape from or are only engaging in out of desperation. And while that might be true for some sex workers, it's rarely presented as something that is happening on the person's terms. It's rarely presented as something that the character or, you know, the person is proud of. And again, this movie kind of does a little bit of both where Nomi gets very defensive when Crystal insults her and says like, if you're working at Cheetah's, that's not real dancing. And, you know, Nomi says, you don't know shit. But she also anytime someone suggests that Nomi is a whore,'s like no I'm not and like again there's this trauma that she's

probably working through there's you know there's all kinds of stuff that the movie doesn't quite know how to handle so it ultimately it comes down on the side to me at least and you know other people might have different interpretations but um where the movie lands, it feels like sex work is something that you might do on the path of like something more legitimate. And it's treating sex work as though it's not legitimate work. And it's something that you might do as like a stepping stone to get to the stardom that you want to get to by doing it. But I would say that Crystal's character also knows that she's realistic.

She's saying, I've chosen sex work. Right. But she's presented as a bit of a cautionary tale in her own way. You don't necessarily want to end up like her because she chose to sell out. She chose to sell herself she she made that deal with the devil and look where it's ended her up she's bitter and alone right yeah it's so I feel like at least Crystal's character at least for me was more open to interpretation than that stock character usually is yeah because it is i mean it is interesting watching how

thoroughly jaded most of the women in this story are except for nomi who is just like i don't know who knows what's going on with nomi a lot of the time but there there does seem to be this like understanding that most people are very frank about to the point where i mean it's tragic in itself that crystal is like it makes sense that you would push me down the stairs I'm like Crystal I find you to be a confident character why would you say that um but but like that or a line that stuck with me was that I thought was like interesting that they added in was the um costume designer and how she's presented and she's like well you know like i it's like

implied she used to be a show girl but then she like quote unquote passed her prime and she had to have a plan and a man in place and oh the choreographer the court yes oh the character whose name is gay who's gay which is incredible but like she she like it's also implied that it's like you're very naive if you don't have an exit plan because you will be chewed up and spit out. And yeah, like you don't want to be crystal. You want to have a plan and a man of what you're going to do, like when you're inevitably discarded. And the way it's like the way the game presents that, very frankly um i thought was an interesting choice again it's like hard to tell exactly how the movie feels about it but i think it's just presented as like if you

want to survive in this very patriarchal fucked up space you have to be protecting yourself years in advance it's like i don't know i've been talking about this a lot lately on the tour I've been on but like the idea that you know if you're marginalized in any way really that you need to be exceptional in order to deserve to survive and like that whole concept is so normalized where it's like for for the most part like you know like the kyle mclaughlin's of the world are always going to be fine and they don't need to be really exceptional to have power and hold power and maintain it but if you are um i mean in this case mostly if you are a woman you need to be constantly like gold star on patrol or something horrible might happen to you and it will be implied by the world

that you brought it on yourself somehow yeah yeah and your only other option i guess is to do what nomi does at the end which is just opt out entirely yeah but then go to la i feel like the implication is like well i conquered vegas so now it's time to go to hollywood do you think so i didn't feel that way i mean it's maybe I'm just reading between the lines, but there's a sign that says like Los Angeles, 240 miles. Yeah. I think if there had been a sequel, which they obviously like put that sign there as like a potential,

like we could revisit this idea. And then Nomi would go do LA in the exact same way that she'd done Vegas for sure. But I think that line that they say at the end which is she gets back in the truck and and he says to her did you gamble and she says yes and he says what did you win and she says me yeah and that's her saying like i've decided that you know i can't i can't be bought or sold I'm you know I I had everything offered to me and I'm walking away from it because the cost was too high yeah yeah I thought I thought it was very I mean and and maybe she does go to LA and like that's a whole that feels very like

Paul Verhoeven-y of like the big at least it felt like in some ways, I don't know, maybe I just feel this way about Vegas in general, where it's like, yes, the entertainment industry in Vegas is extremely seedy and exploitative. But there is kind of this element of it where it's like, but it knows what it is. And it's not pretending to be like, I think that that's why like, the LA industry is so frustrating sometimes because it's like everyone is pretending that we're not doing the thing that we're doing.

But in Vegas, they're like, no, we're doing the thing. Obviously, it's happening to you right now, and I don't care. And you're like, well, at least I know. Here, they're like, no, nothing is happening. Ignore the man behind the curtain fucking you over. Smile better. I don't know. What am I saying? it must be weird not having anybody come on you oh my god oh my god and that character also

i mean we don't even have time like that guy sucks oh my god so much yeah he sucks but that line i mean there's no denying that line yeah there's no denying it iconic could we talk about the queer overtones yes between i mean more obviously between nomi and crystal but also i was reading between nomi and molly yes as well possibly others yeah thoughts i guess i'm just like is this i feel like you could make the argument that it's queer baiting i think that you could make the argument that these are queer characters who are into each other but you only ever see heterosex happening on screen. Yeah. It's very confusing.

I don't know. What is that? I think what we have here is a predatory bisexual woman and a naive young straight woman. That's what I get from these characters. Which is also Paul Verhoeven canon. I mean, that's yeah basic instinct all over exactly and i don't think that's necessarily great no but it's been done worse it's been

done worse by paul verhoeven so yes in a much better received movie yeah right it's very yeah he definitely has a playbook and refuses to learn a lesson which is we'd love that for him yeah i guess it's really um i don't know it's it is fraught because i do think that like the other predatory bisexual woman is on display here and i also like the kiss so it's hard for me in that way it's a great kiss and i i do i it does seem like this movie is trying to do the like every like quote unquote everything that's scandalous in 1995 has to happen in this movie yeah and so them saving like a really sexy kiss between women for the very end i'm like yeah i guess that's the last thing on the list you already had a brutal horrific exploitative rape scene a ton of nudity a ton of sex and it's like now the cherry on top a gay kiss and it's like yep that's everything that people would have yelled

at you for but without like any i mean it's not obviously anywhere near as bad as the way that the rape scene is handled. But just like, it just seems like they're checking boxes of like scandalous thing and not thinking through anything. Which at this point in the episode, could you be shocked? Basically, it doesn't seem like any bisexual person I know. Right. Same. It's very clearly a bisexual woman written by a straight man. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not great representation. What? But I'm not, as a queer person, I'm also not offended by it. I guess that's where I land on queer issues in this movie. Same with the,

the dancer who asks for a punch anally. It's like, okay. Yeah. That honestly may be my favorite exchange of dialogue in the movie. There's too many good lines. Someone's like,

you want a knuckle sandwich? And he's like, yeah, can I have mine anally? I literally paused the movie. I was watching it with my husband. I'm like, do we feel okay about this? And we were like, yeah. Yeah, we're fine. It is so campy that you're just like, do we feel okay about this? And we were like, yeah. Yeah, we're fine.

It is so campy that you're just like, sure. You're just really watching a straight man feel his way around in the dark entirely. He's like, hmm, how would a gay man reply to this? I know. Oh, wait. No. Okay. Here's my actual favorite line of the movie uh zach aka kyle mclaughlin is talking about

how he's like i got an mba for this and noemi's like what's an mba and he responds with an mba is a degree you pick up in college that's not quite true if we're like college being like a four-year undergrad thing mba is a master's i should know i have a master's degree in screenwriting i would never mention it but he's acting like it's something like you go to undergrad and you get an mba no and then he says and it's mostly worthless in the real world also no he's what he means is a master's degree in screenwriting. That's the thing that's worthless in the real world. I mean, I thought that was somewhat intentional,

because he sucks. He sucks. And he's also being, especially after the Versace debacle, he's also being just condescending to her. He's like, why bother explaining it to you you wouldn't get it i don't think you're smart right absolutely um if we're doing favorite lines please mine is when henrietta says she says to the sleazy guy about nomi that she looks better than a 10 inch dick yeah oh and for all of the problems with this movie the fact that we got this line

really really does go a long way to to make me feel a lot better about it yeah yeah it's very good mine i'm going with the classic must be weird not having anybody come on you i mean yeah just perfectly delivered and then the cut to elizabeth berkeley's reaction is what it's so confusing but also the scent the sentimental music while he says it it's delivered so sincerely it's that poor actor where i'm just like they could he couldn't have known how they were going to edit that feels so aggressive uh goodness loved it loved it loved it yeah this i mean this is just like it's it's so interesting talking about camp movies on this show because it's like in some ways our show is simply not built for it um yeah right right but i feel like over the years we've we've developed

a way to talk about camp movies yeah i don't i don't know i mean what is there anything else that y'all wanted to touch on? I'll just share a couple fun facts. These are pulled from Scholarly Journal Wikipedia for the most part. I think they're still true, although these might be a bit outdated. But as far as I know, this is the highest grossing NC-17 production of all time. So even though it was a flop at the box office, because it got a wide theatrical release, its budget was also $45 million. And it only ended up grossing, I think like 37 or 38 worldwide. But even though it was a flop because of the size of its budget, theatrically, it was still a high-grossing NC-17 movie.

It went on to gross over $100 million in home video sales and rentals. Oh, I wonder why that could be. Ask your dad. People wanted to watch this movie privately shocking um it was nominated for 13 golden raspberry awards aka 13 razzies i was like wow what a so formal of you yes which was a record at the time and might still be the record number of nominations i think it's been tied by that lindsey lohan movie uh where she also plays a stripper right are you referring to i alone i know who killed me that movie is really, really fab. I haven't seen it. Come back. And that movie.

So Showgirls got 13 nominations and won seven of the awards, which at the time was a record. It was beaten by I Know Who Killed Me, which won eight. And then Jack and Jill from 2012, which I think is an Adam Sandler movie. Yes, that movie is genuinely horrible. It won 10 Razzies. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So those are just my fun facts.

Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Well, folks, it does. It does. It passes a lot. They're talking about chips. They're talking about nail polish. Dog food. Dog food. Dog food. The three t lot. They're talking about chips. They're talking about nail polish. Dog food. Dog food.

Dog food. The three. Tits. The four things women talk about. Oh, it is just such a treat watching this writer try to. It's so weird. And also that he was, I mean, talk about the that uh straight men are permitted to flop around for their entire careers the fact that like he was like one of the most high highest paid writers

in Hollywood at the time yeah god this always infuriates me it's like learning about why Wes Anderson's career took off where he just sort of came in and he was like I have this idea what do you think and they're like here's five million dollars best of in and he was like, I have this idea. What do you think? And they're like, here's $5 million. Best of luck. And you're like, wow, absolutely kill me. But the same deal. I mean, at this point, Joe Esther has had hits under his belt. It makes sense that he was able to sell a movie.

But the fact that he wrote this down on a napkin where he's like, women, Vegas. And they're like, we'll give you $ where he's like women vegas and they're like we'll give you two million dollars to figure it out you're like are you joking like unbelievable um but anyway i mean it's what i i can only be so mad because i'm happy that this movie exists he also wrote flash dance um and he also wrote Basic Instinct. And his career did actually take a hit for having written this movie. So even men suffered consequences.

This movie was considered such a failure, if you can imagine. Whoops. Oh, but no, but this was he was in his prime because he he got three million dollars to write basic instinct then he got two million dollars for writing down a vague idea that sounded sort of like showgirls on a napkin in hawaii yes and then they were like figure it out and then the movie he made he wrote after this was called jade another erotic thriller i mean that's his wheelhouse which is bizarre for someone who seems to struggle with basic mechanics of sex whatever um for jade he is paid 1.5 million

dollars for a two-page outline wow and then in 97 they make him work for it he's paid 2.5 million dollars for a four-page outline so but it's like wow wow wow imagine people having that much faith in you i really cannot relate no i like i can't wrap my head around it probably feels great and he's like why would you learn how sex works if you were just like paid 2.5 million dollars to be like um flailing around dangerous hot lady yes wow well it does pass the battle it really does on to our nipple scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining the film through an intersectional feminist lens. And I would say, based on the movie's really murky framing of sex work, based on the way it treats characters of color,

which I wanted to include just one last quote from Gina Rivera, who has spoken about her role being cast as the black best friend trope character. Yeah, she said, quote, it's the Hattie McDaniel role where you take care of the needs of the white woman and you don't have a storyline of your own. It was a difficult decision for me. But it was also one of the white woman and you don't have a storyline of your own. It was a difficult decision for me, but it was also one of the first movies I was ever going to do. A lot of black girls have to do that job and I had to start somewhere, which is just like so common for black actors to have to take roles like this because it's all that's available. It's all that anyone cares to write, especially in an era where Hollywood, and this is still obviously very true, but like

the industry is run by white people who don't care to tell the stories of people of color and things are slowly changing and improving. But in the mid-90s especially, like it was just so bleak and the opportunities and roles available to black actors were so frequently this type of role where you're the best friend of the lead, you're catering to their storyline, you are kind of disappeared from the story for large swaths you're assaulted it's just all these horrible things that tend to happen to characters like this and and that on top of that she was brutalized at length in the movie and had lasting i mean and the effects that that had like it's just yeah which kind of like i mean for me it's like if paul verhoeven was attempting to comment on race at all like he failed if that is how his leading black actor feels about her experience like working on this movie right also even in the world of the movie poor molly her friends just left town she's still in

the hospital she's fucking unconscious right i don't even think she's fully conscious when nomi visits her in the hospital no exactly she's just gonna wake up and be like what happened yeah it's awful i guess my friend abandoned me i didn't even think of that yeah then she just leaves she beat up that guy for me i guess so i'm fine right like it's just so so there's a lot of things the movie isn't handling well as we've discussed i think it does do a better job than most movies do when they're when examining the reasons why women might be in conflict and it contextualizes it and provides this commentary on the often exploitative nature of the entertainment industry the movie has a still a pretty narrow scope of that and it could dig a little bit deeper but it is kind of the one thing that i think the movie is doing more successfully as far as like commentary goes would i say that it's brilliant satire

not necessarily for me at least i think it's gonna be like one and a half or two nipples because i do like know me and i do like that she's very she doesn't take shit from anyone she stands up for herself constantly i like to see this in a female character but the movie's a mess so it's a mess a glorious mess a glorious mess two nipples i will give one to nomi's fingernails and i'll give i thought she was good the other to her constant thrashing about yes i'll meet you at two i think that there is a series of failures to launch commentary in this movie there are definitely attempts i want to like honor those attempts and also i mean particularly the rape scene and the treatment of molly's character in particular just is so glaringly wrong and like even in 1995 was glaringly

wrong i i think i think it's so fascinating what you're saying crystal about how you need to like circumnavigate that scene and that plot point in order to feel like you are celebrating this movie in a way that feels okay and so the presence of that is just like well that's an indefensible thing, especially that it had such a real life impact. It's so bizarre. I mean, I guess I'm also taking into account the history of the movie where it's like they're trying to do the thing, but then they're also like doing the thing that they claim to be commenting on, which is always kind of messy. I feel like that's true of many movies that are attempting to comment on showbiz where they're like wow the world's greatest showbiz commentary and they didn't pay their editors and you're like well what's the

point of this then so there is like a little bit of that syndrome going on um but yeah i i am pretty into know me i love know me i love crystal i love the dancing. And I love, I mean, it's problematic in every way you can imagine. And I also, like, it's so easy to understand why people love this movie and want to continue to celebrate it. And there are things that make it hard to do. And these things are both very true. So I'm going to go to nipples and I'm going to give them both to cars that know me. Kicks, hips, slaps. Those poor cars. Those poor cars.

Non-binary icon, those cars. Crystal, how about you? What do you say? I think that there is an alternate universe, as you both described, where this movie did not destroy a bunch of women's careers and it doesn't have a brutal rape scene. And we could give it three or four nipples. That is not the world that we live in. And I think I'm going to be harsher just because I have my own residual guilt about how much I have previously unquestioningly loved this movie and I'm going to give it one nipple and where am I going to give it um

different places where are you from Nomi different places different places well Crystal thank you so much for joining us this has been an absolute treat come back anytime i really really loved it thank you so much for having me oh you've both become my strange parasocial friends so well that's quite weird for me now we're real friends now we're real friends friends yay it came true um where can people check out your work follow you on social media etc is it too soon to do another different places joke or no keep going um you can listen to my podcast uh the things that made me queer wherever those podcasts can be found but it's a i interview different special guests about pop culture things that help them understand their queer identities so things like show girls come up

a lot if you want to hear us talk about cat woman or jean-claude van damme doing the splits all these kinds of things it's it's it's the podcast for you and other than that uh yeah go check out my instagram or my twitter or wherever else I'm sharing nonsense. It's crystal. We'll see you now on all those platforms. Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on again.

This was so much fun. Oh, where is the, where's the coming joke? What is it again? Yeah. Is it weird to, it was,

yeah, it was weird not having anyone come on me, but I'm glad I was here. If we can promise one thing on the beckle cast we will not come on people we've just never we've just it's just never it's it would be unprecedented on the show you can follow us on twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. Also, we always forget to plug this, but our link tree has things such as our Letterboxd account. Oh, I was like, do we plug a link tree?

Is that a thing? No, but it is an avenue by which you can find other things of ours, such as our Patreon. That's a in the tree. Yeah. Where you can get two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the back catalog. We do fun themes, or I think they're fun. Hopefully, other people do too. I was like, is that an attack on me?

No, no, no. I'm maybe being too confident i'm not sure not this i think they're fun unlike this bitch over here go get me a beer no i won't say that's how that was triggering for me because that's how caitlin talks to me yeah you have no idea what happens off mic, listeners. It's shocking. Anyway, patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, $5 a month. Do it. Well, how do we end this? Let's get in a car.

Car merch also. Oh, yeah. Get merch. tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast. Honestly, we don't get a lot of money from that, so you do whatever you want. True. Again, we're not good at selling ourselves. If you want it, you should get it.

If you don't want it, you're basically just handing money to iHeartRadio, which is interesting. Oh, yeah. And on that note. Yeah, let's get in the car that we've hit and then hitchhike with Jeff to different places. Different places. That is a very cursed, I mean, there's a cursed 90s rom-com in there somewhere.

They keep passing this suitcase back and forth. When are these two kids going to figure it out? The only thing they have in common is they both don't like Garth Brooks. And yet we're going to spend the next two hours telling you that they were made for each other. Okay, bye. Zoom, bye. Okay, thank you, 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, Catherine 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 Catherine 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 Maury Tahiripour.

If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the estate.