The Bechdel Cast - Slap Shot with Mike Loftus

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

In honor of Jamie’s birthday, we invited her dad to cover the episode he’s been asking about once a year for all seven years of the show! Mike Loftus, hockey writer extraordinaire, joins Caitlin and Jamie to discuss SLAP SHOT! Here's the article about Residential School Hockey, "A Disciplined Game" - https://www.indigenoushockeycanada.com/copy-of-indigenous-youth-hockey See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Happy birthday, Jamie. Thank you so much.

Boom, slam, punch. Slap. Insult. Shot. Divorce. Oh, jeez. So many themes. Homez. So many themes. Homophobia.

So many themes. Pittsburgh. Mm-hmm. I was really excited that this movie took place. I was like, where is Caitlin going to connect with this movie? There's got to be somewhere. And I was like, Pennsylvania. It's the Pennsylvania connection.

We did it. So, okay. Welcome to the Spectral Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate much larger, much grander conversations. It's true. And the Bechdel testdel test of course is a media metric created by allison bechdel as a joke as a goof back in the 80s in her comic dykes to watch out for it started as

just a one-off joke but has since become a way to um talk about how and if women are uh represented in movies and people of marginalized genders in general a lot of versions of the test the version of the test that we observe to start our conversation is the test requires that there be two characters with names of a marginalized gender talking about something other than men for two lines of dialogue or more or more preferably more often but not it doesn't happen that way usually but there's there's so much to talk about it's not the be all and end all of any movie and today it's exciting it comes but twice a year a birthday episode where caitlin and i really get to go absolutely hog wild on uh on our, on our choice of movie,

on our choice of guests. It's a fun time. And this has been an episode that has been, it's not an episode that's ever been requested by one person. And it's no coincidence that that person is also our guest. Yeah. But I would say it's been, well,

how long have you been asking me about this? It's been a couple years. Well, how long have you had the show? Just kidding. Seven years. No, it hasn't been seven years. I would say at least four years. Well, we've talked about this, I mean, in your other podcast life when you did the Kathy podcast.

You know, it was a thought that I had that you know there was this comic it wasn't for everybody um but the more I thought about it it was kind of it was unique for its time you know it was like there really weren't in the comic strips you know women were moms or girlfriends uh maybe teachers but there was never like a single businesswoman. So I tossed that to you. And I guess in the case of Slapshot, you know, I sort of was thinking of a Kathy thing too, because, you know, there are interesting to me, you know, representations of women and their stories.

And that's what your cast is all about, you and Caitlin. So I thought, well, you know, throw it out there and see what they think. And here we are. And sure enough, we're doing it. We're covering a slap shot. And the guest you just heard, Caitlin usually introduces the guests, but they have generously offered me the opportunity. It's your time to shine, Jamie. shine jamie our guest today is a a former hockey writer current hockey fan has been covering hockey

since the 80s been playing hockey since the 70s when this movie comes out uh he's also a proud father to to two wonderful children uh lifelong brockton residents a brockton legend it's mike loftus welcome welcome to the cast dad well jamie good good to see you and good to see you too caitlin thank you for listeners uh i'm currently in brockton at at my dad's house and he's he's downstairs with my equipment i'm upstairs with my phone we've we have a very professional setup it's like we're not even but he did drive me to dunkin donuts right before the episode so that oh well you know you gotta have your birthday dunks yeah it's true it's yeah it's i i'm feeling the birthday love i'm feeling thrilled about the

birthday so yeah the my memory of I don't remember when you first brought this movie up to me for the Bechdel cast, but you every time you're like, I think it would just be like, if I happen to be talking about work, you'd be like, you know, Flapshot is written by a woman. That was just kind of the pitch and uh it stuck with me and you pitched it to me jamie multiple times as well and i was like yeah and years later here we are which to be fair it's not a personal attack that's how most of our episodes end up happening we we think it over for a good two years and then eventually we cover it i feel like that has become kind of our habit it's true anyways yeah we're covering slap shot it is a 1977 film

is directed by george roy hill it is written by nancy dowd it stars paul newman amongst caitlin is oh i learned this i learned this is wearing that caitlin's horny for paul newman i mean he's very handsome oh my gosh it's kind of the only thing i'm going to be able to contribute to this episode okay my my thirst for paul newman yeah unbelievable focused on men my dad and i having discourse i'm just gonna be like Paul Newman oh wooga I don't like his character but I very much enjoy looking at his face well I guess let's let's get into it I guess dad uh well actually let's get ours out of the way Caitlin what's your history with the movie Slapshot I only know about this movie because of the various times, Jamie, you've said,

my dad wants to come on the podcast and cover Slapshot. And that is the reason I know this movie exists. Jamie, what's yours? I know this movie exists because my dad has told me about it. But I also have, we've had Hanson brother glasses at the house for I remember where we have like, I think they're on the table next to you, Dad, but they're like the Hansen brother, like taped glasses. It is like that's the only part of this movie that I really knew about. I had not watched it until the other day to prepare for this episode. episode because you know i criminally have never been very into hockey and so it was not a movie that really appealed to me but i knew the hansen brothers because they are so ingratiated into hockey iconography that uh we have like glasses that were given out at a game with the tape in the middle and the hon brothers specifically are very iconic

in hockey culture I think this movie is too but like more I think the Hanson brothers are kind of the most enduring is that right would you say yeah yeah oh absolutely I mean it's uh okay you know you brought up some other hockey movies last night there aren't a lot of them yeah you know there are a lot of baseball and football and basketball movies hockey's i think hockey fans of a certain age say it's it's slap shot and then you know maybe another generation would be the mighty ducks and you know i think we would say more so the mighty ducks and then current current generation i don't know if they have a hockey movie oh i could yeah tell you of a hockey movie um but um is it good it's goon yes oh i i have heard of this one sean william scott is in it if i'm not mistaken i i don't know actors that

well but i i think it is i actually i know the gentleman that that film was based on okay um it's a true story about a guy who and and the and the movie does not really tell the story of the actual person but um classic movie that was okay he knew he knew that was going to happen and he was he was all right with it you know i hope they paid him well for the book rights that might have happened but yeah slap shot has not been a huge part of my life, but hockey certainly has. Grew up around hockey culture, hockey ideas, hockey labor. Yeah, I like hockey, I think, as much as someone who doesn't follow it can. I mean, you're Mrs. Zamboni. I have a Zamboni tattoo.

And I didn't notice until the end of the first movie, the movie Slapshot, zero Zambonis. Zamboni visibility at an all-time low. My favorite ice sports movie, as you know, is I, Tonya. I love I, Tonya. Not a single Zamboni in that one either. What the hell? I know. It's pretty fucked up.

It's interesting to me that you know when i sat down to watch it again the other night like and watch it in a different way i didn't realize it was it's a two-hour movie yes it sure is pretty long so so you know there was plenty of time in there for you know zamboni tomfoolery. And yet, and yet. Dueling Zambonis? Well, even just, you know. Spitballing? I mean, I don't know if we, I don't know if this is the part where we even bring in little things about the film.

Oh, wow. But, you know, little things, little things that the, you know, the team does to really, really continue to whip people in a frenzy, right? Like, you know, parking an ambulance outside of a game, you know, before it starts. You couldn't have had somebody dress up crazy and just like, you know, drive the Zamboni. Naked person driving a Zamboni. It's a perfect, it's a perfect raunchy comedy idea. Okay, nevermind. But you know, an oversight. I agree, Jane. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. I felt strongly about that. I feel like Zambonis are rarely included to the point where i wonder if the company simply objects to it because it just seems like such an

easy win uh but they're a very kind of litigious italian family the zamboni family so i've heard when i've tried to contact them so i i like hockey i'd never seen Slapshot all the way through. And I watched it twice to prepare once with my dad, once without. And I have, I mean, it's so weird. Cause I feel like the reason that I didn't like this movie as much as I was hoping to,

it just has mostly to do with the fact that I historically don't love like super raunchy comedies. Like they just have never really appealed to me but the more that i learned about the production of this movie there's a lot of stuff to talk about certainly a lot of it doesn't age well we were getting dinner with my aunts last night and my auntie kate my dad's sister we've all been you know hockey pilled over the years and she's like oh yeah i've seen slapshot it's kind of hard to watch now because it's long and a lot of it ages really badly and i was like all right so we're all on the same page here but it is interesting we don't cover a lot of movies

from the 70s and uh i think for a movie that a lot of it ages not well uh there were more women in the story than i was expecting i think more women than your average sports movie in general. I would agree. So lots to talk about. Dad, what's your history with the movie Slapshot? Do you remember when you first saw it? Well, it actually came out the year I graduated high school. Nice.

1977, which is when I was wrapping up my super average career as a player. Okay, give us the rundown. What position did you play generally? I was a defenseman. One goal, career statistics, one goal, one assist, multiple penalty minutes. Knee injuries. Yes. One knee surgery, one broken nose. Um, went from there to, I coached youth hockey with a buddy of mine for a couple of years. That was fun. Nice. When I was in college, I started officiating games as a way to make a few bucks. Uh, and then that all dried up and I went into the, the, you know, there was no future in any of that for me. But I still just kind of couldn't quit the game.

And love newspapers, love the sports section, sports guy. So there I am in like the, you know, kind of the teeth of the late 70s. When there's a lot of people going into journalism because of like all the president's men. And, you know, everybody wants to be a journalist. Interesting. Movies are so influential. Did it really feel like there was an uptick after all the president's men? That makes sense to me.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Because a person like me who would show up and say, yeah, I want to be a sports writer was like, what? That doesn't count. What's wrong with you? Be serious. Yes. Yeah. So that's how that's kind of where it comes from. And the interesting little side story is the reason that I even played

in the first place was that when she was young, before she got married, my mom was a huge hockey fan. She loved the Bruins. I think she really liked the fights a lot. But, you know, she got married, she had three kids in four years. And at around that time, the Bruins in Boston, who had been terrible for a while, all of a sudden they got very good. They had a great team, a lot of personality, a lot of fun. And she couldn't contain herself. She just signed me up even though I told her I didn't want to play. And, you know, by the end of my first season playing it was kind of

all I wanted to do nice so there's my is that now pressure I don't think my mom watched slap shot with me um but but you know myself obviously and my my hockey friends I mean you know certain aspects of that movie just from having played on a team and everything like that just kind of, you know, cracked us up. And then just just for listener context, how long did you work in in sports journalism, covering hockey, specifically covering hockey, I would say, I started like in 1989. Halfway through that season, I became like the full-time, you know, Bruins beat writer at my paper. And I held that job through the 2019-20 season. The last, the bubble season, the pandemic season. So it was a good, it was like 30-something years.

And I, and also, you know, as my newspaper changed, the industry changed, and I had to, you know, I always said the Bruins, but I found lots and lots of other hockey stories to do. You know, here in New England in the Boston area, so lots of college stories, lots of stories about minor league players, you know, draft picks. We had, you know, coaches. And one of the more interesting things was over my time was the growth of like the women's hockey game which i'm not even sure

it really existed when i started you know i just realized i know nothing about it nor nor did i even realize there was a women's hockey and on non-white hockey leagues and just like all all this um cool i don't know you know it is definitely a predominantly uh white male sport as our most north american sports but women's women's hockey leagues are really really interesting and i feel like there is i'm kind of surprised that there isn't a movie about maybe maybe, I mean, listeners feel free to let us know if there is one and we just don't know about it. But I don't think I've ever seen a movie or show explicitly about women's hockey, which feels weird. I feel like there's movies about, at least one movie about women's sports in most major sports. Yeah, I mean, but it was, I mean, it's around here, and I guess, you know, in other places where hockey's a thing, you know, the youth and

high school and college level, you know, women's hockey is a thing, you know, almost every, almost everybody has a team now in college. And the interesting thing to me was it has struggled to really get off the ground and stay established. But I will say for like the last five or six years has been a women's professional hockey league, you know, where women, you know, it's professional. They got paid to play. As the 2019-2020 season was winding down before everything shut down because of COVID. I always, I think about how interesting it is that the last athlete that I interviewed face-to-face, one-on-one, was a women's professional hockey player, which I thought was, you know, I didn't know it was

going to be the last one. I thought I would be going to work the next day but right or you would have talked to a man no i was there specifically to do this okay so all right you're killing it everything's going great no no that's that's really i i am obviously a fan of my dad but um i think it's i think i do think it's cool that you've covered so many local stories that no one that that are not ordinarily covered especially with i mean like i mean caitlin what you just said is kind of proof of that it's just like women's like women's hockey is absolutely a thing but it's not covered in any sort of broad way right like i've never seen a women's hockey game on tv not that i'm like actively seeking out sports games you you would more likely find it during like the Olympics. It's a, it's a, it's a significant thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, and an issue

is that the United States is great at it. Canada is great at it, but there's, you know, they need more international competition. It's, it is, you know, it's not like there's generations of Swedish, Norwegian, you know, European players. I was going to say like Sweden, what are you doing? Hello. Yeah, I know. Right. But I mean, it'll come. It will come.

It will when I write my awesome women's hockey movie. So let's take a quick break and then we will come back for the recap. First period's over over you could say 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 han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music and I just was like, who is this person? I gotta hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean

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And we're back and now it's the second period. How many are there? Three periods. Okay. There's three. period. How many? Are there three periods? Okay. There's three. So this kind of works perfect. Wow. Yeah. So the thing that I thought was halftime, it's probably not actually halftime.

There's like two breaks in the middle. Yeah. There's not really any like manner of halftime show for hockey. There's like, well, to gas my- The Zambonis. The Zambonis are kind of how you know like yeah they come out twice and they resurface the ice because that's their kind of one purpose and and sometimes uh you know kids and also local celebs will come out on the zamboni and sometimes it's me at the stapleples Center in January 2020.

It was me one time. I think we should definitely post a picture of it to our Instagram, actually. Oh, absolutely. I think it's pretty important that we do. But there's, well, there's also, I feel like there's, because there's no cheerleading element to hockey because it's on ice but they they have like what do they call like it's a group of it's it's now a gender inclusive group but it's like a they kind of assist the zambonis it's not really as festive as cheerleading or dancing it's really just like excited sweeping yeah and there are there are some teams that will employ people to,

you know, stand in the stairways and everything and cheer. Okay. I want that job. It seems like a fun job. I wonder if there, I feel like traditionally those jobs are really low paid. I wonder what the deal is in hockey,

but I was like, you know, I would sweep, I would sweep in shorts. Why not? Yeah, let's do it. Anyways,

let's, what happens in the movie? Slapshot Caitlin, let us know. I would be delighted to. Why not? Yeah. Let's do it. Anyways, what happens in the movie Slapshot, Caitlin? Let us know. I would be delighted to tell you. Okay. We meet a minor league, right? There you go. Minor league hockey team called the Chiefs from the fictional town of Charlestown, Pennsylvania.

Not to be confused with Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is where the movie The Town famously takes place. Oh, that is kind of the famous town. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so the most seasoned player and also the coach. I did not know that the coach of a hockey team was also a player. Fascinating to me. Can that happen in minor leagues? Is that a thing? Yeah, there's been player coaches. The lower you go, you never know what you're going to see. So the coach slash a player is Reggie Dunlop, played by Paul Newman, hubba hubba and then we meet some other players like ned braden there's a goalie named denny who is french and everyone makes fun of him for english not being his first language i really like his opening monologue that ends like with him just poetically describing the penalty box

and then he's like and then you get free i was like he's like, and then you get free. I was like, well, you feel shame and then you get free. And you're like, whoa. Denny. We also meet Joe McGrath, who is the team's manager? Because he's not the coach. So he's the manager. Is that right, Mike? Yeah, general manager is what you'd call him. Got it. He has the team do fashion shows to promote the games because people aren't coming out as much to the games anymore because the Chiefs kind of suck and they've been losing a lot. Also, a local mill is going to be closing soon in the town and it's going to potentially mean that charlestown

will sort of dry up and then the team might have to fold so that's looming over everybody we also meet the hansen brothers they have just been signed over to the chiefs they're characterized as being a bunch of dipshits who bring their toys with them even though they're adults they're yeah they're young adult i don't know i was like it didn't shock me that uh like what they're like 18 20 and 21 something like that and then you're just like yeah i guess they would bring their race cars i don know. I was about to say they're not hurting anybody, but that's actually kind of their whole thing. They are super violent on the ice.

And then they would later go on to form a boy band and sing. I know it's so confusing. Like I, God, that is, that's a good generation gap. It was like, who are the Hanson brothers to you?

Right. Because I'm going oom-bop every time. I didn't know that boomers had their own Hanson brothers. It's true. Okay. So we also meet a few of the players' wives. They're his wives. Such as Brayden's wife, Lily.

She hates this town. She seems to just kind of generally hate her life and possibly her husband. We also meet Francine who is Reggie's ex-wife who he is trying to win back to no avail. My hero, my favorite character, Francine. Francine rocks. So the team, they wonder who owns the team because

they don't know and reggie is like i don't know it's just a corporation and then their general manager that guy joe reveals that this is the chiefs last season and the players are worried that they won't be signed to another team some of them feel like they're getting too old to like be a valuable asset to another team uh reggie thinks that they might get sold and get transferred to a new city he's thinking somewhere in florida reggie is such a mess I it is no secret to anyone on this call that I don't care for the character of Reggie not a fan of his I think it's so like we'll talk about him more obviously later in the episode but I really like especially the second time when I was watching it it was because he's such a piece of shit to everyone and it's it's really interesting

to me that like his only redeeming moments happen privately like he's never publicly nice to anybody privately he will say nice things about people behind their back never to their face and it's just like it made me I don't know it was an interesting character I mean it's tricky because it's like I don't think the movie is fully I don't know I mean I I think he's like a he's a piece of shit and also kind of tragic to me in a way because he just seems like someone who needs a friend so badly but like can't stop getting in his own way enough to ever like have a friend like there's so many characters in this movie that he almost forges a friendship with but then turns on them or is a piece of shit to them or like feels insecure for a second and says something cruel to them and you're just like

this person is so like it's it's he's a mess he's an asshole But it's also like it's sad. Like it's like this guy just needs to get out of his own way and make a make a friend. But but he but he can't do it. And it's it's very frustrating to watch him sabotage himself over and over. Truly. Yeah. So he's insecure about the future of the team, and he goes to this sports writer, Dickie Dunn, a.k.a. basically Mike Loftus. Yeah, Dad, did you feel represented by Dickie Dunn?

I do like that he's often, well, just trying to catch the spirit of the thing, you know? He says this a lot, yes. Yes, I mean, you know, whatever. Reggie Dunlop plays him, you know, obviously. You know, kind of plants this a lot, yes. Yes. I mean, you know, whatever. Reggie Dunlop plays him, you know, obviously. You know, kind of plants this story about, oh, I hear we're getting sold when, you know, that never was going to happen. Right. So Dickie's failure to, like, maybe follow up on that.

He's not doing very good journalism. Yes. Because he's doing no research. But, you know, he's probably selling some papers. And, you know, it's funny how he just sort of fell right into Reg's trap there. Well, he is charming. He is, like, charismatic. So people are like, wow. He is hot.

So you should probably believe him. He's so hot. So everyone listens to him and that's a great line too where they're you know paul you know reggie's reading the story hey dickie dunn wrote it you know it's true right also uh it's it's stereotypes uh sports writers as as bad parents his daughter ran out and her brother was bullying her and he's like, all right, resolve it among yourselves.

Talking to Paul Newman. I'm doing business right now. I'm Mr. Business. It's bad representation. I think there might have been a drink or two there too. Oh yeah, yeah. He said, go away kids

and then he starts drinking again. There's a lot of drinking in this movie. So much drinking. Yeah, dad, you'll have to explain the 70s um so dickie dunn is like that's ridiculous no one's gonna buy a fifth place team and reggie is like well that's about to change meanwhile reggie is having an affair with an opponent's wife, his wife, Suzanne, and she tells Reggie that she's been sleeping with other women recently, which Reggie

uses when he plays his opponent the following week, this guy named Hanrahan. Hanrahan, yep. yep that will we'll talk about that that'll be a whole thing because that's uh it's like that's something that this movie is so constantly infuriating mostly because of reg yeah where you're like oh wow i i would guess that that wouldn't be something that would be like commonly discussed in a popular movie in the 70s and then in the next scene you're like well what was the next scene, you're like, well, what was the point? Like, if you're just going to do that, what was the point? Exactly. Yeah.

So Hanrahan is the goalie for the other team. And Reggie is taunting him and saying, you know, your wife is a lesbian, but he's using a lot of slurs and it makes Hanrahan so mad and distracted that he gets scored on a bunch and the chiefs win also partly because they get very violent and start beating the shit out of the other team which is sort of like becoming their new calling card yeah yeah yes um meanwhile we have a scene with lily she's still having a really hard time it seems like brayden is cheating on her and then reggie tries to comfort her but in a very sleazy way where he's like come over i'll give you a foot rub he's so frustrating i'm just like she she uh that's whatever i mean i i guess the choice is consistent with reggie's character but i'm just like ah these two characters they both need a

friend why can't they be friends to each other but it's because reggie can't because he's a creep yeah because he can't not be a creep but he's not even the most creepy guy on the team because that's a guy named morris that's oh he's a he's a disaster yeah anyway so um on the team because that's a guy named Morris. That's oh, he's a he's a disaster. Yeah. Anyway, so so the team sees this story in the paper that Dickie Dunn had printed about how the Chiefs are going to get bought and transferred to Florida, which they're very excited about. And so with the team morale higher than ever the chiefs start winning a bunch although again they're playing way rougher than normal there's lots of punching and bloody faces and stuff although braden is opposed to playing dirty he thinks it's cheap and not the right way to win

which feels sort of like built into he's like i went to college i'm not none of this nonsense i went to college yeah i'm still a piece of shit who's cheating on my wife but i have morals but i went to college um but reggie is very pro all of this hockey violence and he starts putting the hansen brothers in the game whose entire strategy is just to punch the shit out of their opponents. I kind of love the Hanson. It's kind of hard not to love the Hanson brothers. They're so goofy. They're extremely goofy.

Wait, my dad's got a real sleigh of a context corner for them. But I love the Hanson brothers. They're fun. Yeah, they're awesome. Anyway, so the team continues to speculate who the owner is. Meanwhile, this thing is happening where Reggie just like keeps lying about the team getting bought and sold to keep the morale up. And also maybe he's just like deluding himself because he knows that he's about to reach a point where he's probably going to have to retire.

And he's so insecure, and he can't deal with it. It's so I read this incredible essay about how Reggie is a metaphor for the men of Pittsburgh in the 70s. And I'm just like, I'm excited to talk about it later. Okay. later okay um okay so then reggie sees francine with another guy and he's kind of like following her around and calling different places that he knows that she frequents to try to like see who she's been there with very stalker behavior yeah he's doing i mean he does the same thing to lily he like jumps in her car at one point like he's just he has no no issue really inserting being around yeah yeah and he bumps into her at some point and francine tells reggie that she's moving to long island which i'm like yes please get away from him then there's an upcoming game against syracuse so reggie goes on the radio for an interview and

he says that he's putting a bounty on i don't know if it's that team's coach or just kind of like one of their star players this guy tim mccracken and he's like i'm paying a hundred dollars of my own money you're money for someone to kill him? Such a low bounty. It's kind of fun. Right. And then there's this player who has given himself the nickname Killer. And he's like, I'll do it.

I'll kill Tim McCracken. Anyway, Lily shows up at Reggie's place with her huge St. Bernard dog. She seems to have left Brayden and she has a new lease on life. He doesn't know it yet. He doesn't know it yet. Let's see. Then Reggie takes Lily to Francine's hair salon and she gets a bit of a makeover. I have some complicated thoughts about that scene because i feel like that that scene's heart is in the right place but it's kind of broadly done

but i'm excited to talk about it yeah yeah yeah then reggie finally figures out who the owner of the chiefs is and he goes to see him just kidding it's It's a woman named Anita McCambridge. And he wants to know how the sale of the team is going. But she tells him that she plans to fold the team and take a tax loss rather than sell it because she won't make enough of a profit if she sells the team. It's like every single decision every streamer is making right now. They're like, no, actually, we're deleting your entire life and career because

it suits me today. Fuck you. Yikes. And so this news infuriates Reggie, and he brutally insults her son and then storms out. Classic Reggie.

He's like, well, I'm feeling a little insecure and angry. Let me insult someone who's not here in the cruelest way I can possibly think of. Truly. It's kind of his whole thing. Then Reggie comes clean to his team. He admits that there's no deal for them to be bought and moved to Florida, that Ned was right all along, they shouldn't be resorting to all of this violence as a way to win games. And this is Reggie's last game, and he's going to play it straight and try to win that championship, honestly and legitimately. But this is when they're playing Syracuse and that team is ready for a bloodbath

so the game starts and the Syracuse team are fighting but the Chiefs aren't fighting back and they're losing and then it's not halftime it's either after the first or second period but they're like in the locker room and their general manager joe is like hey there's a bunch of nhl scouts in the crowd so you have to put on a good show for them and reggie's like okay forget everything i said we're gonna play dirty and then we just like cut to everyone punching each other um francine and lily show up to the game and brayden sees his wife and he's like wow this part is where this this is where like the whole lily story falls apart for me where i'm like what happened here so confused about what happens with lily's character yeah not i don't know sure and i

also don't know exactly what prompts this but brayden goes out on the ice while everyone while everyone's just punching each other and not playing hockey even a little bit and brayden starts doing a strip tease and everyone in the crowd and all the players are like wow and for some reason this solves all of the problems in his marriage you're just like it's very cinematic but you're just like it doesn't make sense but it's a very movie behavior yeah and he does the strip tease and it somehow wins the game i don't know if the other team forfeits i don't know what happens here i could i could tell you please please yeah so as as ned is doing his strip tease one of the player one of the it might be tim mccracken

is furious and he's like you know during the middle of this bloodbath he starts to yell at the official like that's disgusting make him stop and the official's like what do you mean it's disgusting look at this and they end up with an argument and McCracken or the you know the opponent yeah hits the official he which is no matter how low the minors or whatever you know you can't hit an official. And he hit him and the official says, that's it. The game's over. You forfeit.

Got it. Okay. Okay. Nice. Okay. It reminds me of an airbud when they're like, there's nothing in the rule book that says a dog can't play basketball. It's like, there's nothing in the rule book that says a player can't come out and strip to win the game right you can maybe get a penalty for it play play was stopped at the time you know it doesn't

right it's true so he's basically just doing it's like that that could have been the the ice sweepers it could have been could have been anything and he happened to do that i don't yeah i'm so the way that this movie it's so bizarre we were talking about it when we were watching it a couple nights ago where it's like this movie in the last half of it like i'd be on board and then it would lose me for 10 minutes and i'd be back for a couple minutes and then it would lose me for 10 minutes and then i kind of liked the ending and it was like i didn't see i i don't like well whatever we're at the end basically yeah but like it lost me during this whole game because you're like why does ned stripping on ice solve the issue of infidelity and them hating it each other and then it seems like well whatever

like i'm i didn't dislike the scene between lily and francine even though it was like whatever channeled into the idea into a makeover i think you can make the argument that it was like she was getting a makeover to feel better about herself it didn't seem like it was overtly for her husband or for anyone except for herself because she had already left him by that point yeah it seemed like she was she was doing it to feel more confident about herself i don't have an issue with that but it just seems like it's like implied that something happens between lily and francine off screen that leads because i'm like i don't even know why they show up at that hockey

game it's confusing to me because it seems like lily or francine's like getting lily gassed up to like get out into the world and start her life like whether that's dating or moving or whatever it is kind of unclear but then it's like the next time we see them they're at the hockey game you're like when did you guys decide to go to the hockey game why it seems like the opposite of what lily was trying to do right they should have gone out to dinner they should have gone out to a singles bar. Right. The Aces.

And then they could have started a book club together. You know? I don't know. Anyway, so we cut to a parade. The team, I think, has disbanded, but the players, it seems like they're getting contracts to go play on other teams.

Reggie is going to go play in Minneapolis. He tries to get Francine to come with him, but she's like, um, pass. But Lily and Brayden do get back together in an infuriating moment. I know. And then everyone. I've never been so split on different characters endings where it's like I'm thrilled for Francine and I'm completely confused by Lily yeah but anyway but everyone's celebrating at the parade and that's how the movie ends so let's take another break second period is

over is there a big is there a big buzzer in hockey to signify the end of a period? I think it's a siren, you know? Oh, okay. So, awooga. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang.

We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you.

Oh my God, I would love it. stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Honkin's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. And on camera, yeah, what's your song?

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

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We're back and it's time we're back for the third period and the third period can go on for a while there's no time limit if things are tight you know sometimes sometimes it just it keeps going sometimes we go into overtime overtime yes on the bechtel cast yes oh oh that's okay i wonder that's that's when we do the our scoring that's oh yeah that's like the penalty shootout kind of thing yeah so dad i before we get into the full analysis i'm curious do you feel that the sport of hockey is is like does this feel authentic to because you I mean like we're reporting like on the road with teams and reporting from locker rooms for decades does this movie feel close for the era does it feel overblown and movie five like how does it square with your experience in this arena you

know hey you know it's it's a good question. I mean, I think, you know, when I watched that movie, everything in it from the hockey standpoint is just an exaggeration, you know? It's like, you know, yes, there is locker room talk, but to some of the extent that these guys, you know, no, I don't mean i never heard the the violence in games you know yes it's a very very physical game and i would say back in that era

that was more of a factor that was more of a strategy than it is now and and also too the nhl it's like any major sport, people who follow them, there's like the top level and then there are different tiers. In hockey, the lower that you go, you know, you're probably not going to make it. You know, you might, you know, move up another level or two. So the crazier things, I guess, you know, would tend to happen, you know, in the lower minors, smaller towns, you know, smaller franchises, things like that. I mean, and that's, you know, that's kind of where the movie came from. Now, Nancy Dowd's brother, Ned. Nancy Dowd is the writer of the movie. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah. So her brother played college hockey in Maine, and then he played two years of low minor professional

hockey league. And he would, he, you know, he would tell his sister stories about the, you know, the things that happened, and thus the movie, you know, so a lot of it, there's a lot of things that are based on things that actually did happen. And I think that, you know, for film purposes and everything, you know, it's, it's amplified and exaggerated. That's something, I mean, I guess that's like a place that I would be down to start is just talking a little bit about the behind the scenes process of this movie, because I didn't, I know that, I mean, the one fact I knew about this movie, other than it's where the Hanson Brothers glasses comes from, is what my dad told me 5,000 times,

which is that a woman wrote the movie. It was the fact that I knew, but I didn't know. I actually really liked, I don't know. It's like it, I was like, Oh,

I kind of do stuff like that sometimes where Nancy down. Yeah. Like she heard that her brother was involved in this. What was the name of the team that the chiefs are based on? The Johnstown jets.. Okay, in Pennsylvania. So that was a team her brother was on. He called basically with the premise to slap shot that this, you know, team was not going to be around for much longer. And so she followed them around for a month. And she like shadowed them and did

basically like Gonzo style following this minor league team around and so a lot of what she saw went directly into the movie and the script which i think you can argue works for and against it because it's like if she's presenting this the late 70s that authentically a lot of it doesn't age well because it was you know almost 50 years ago yeah but it does seem like that was sort of her goal in writing it and what she was trying to present and so i went back to the way that this movie was originally covered because it was like a hit it was a box office success people liked it paul moorman was in it and it was also like i thought it was interesting that it was drawn attention to when

the movie came out that these were like quote i'm just trying to think if there's like a contemporary example of this where they were like quote unquote like respectable filmmakers making this raunchy comedy um because the director of this movie george roy hill like he directed butch cassidy he'd done all of these like you you know, really sensitive, thoughtful, prestige movies. And then later in his career makes this super, super raunchy comedy. And then you have Nancy Dowd, who is from Framingham, Massachusetts, representing Massachusetts, but grew up, you know, like a pretty like upper crusty Massachusetts life. She went to Smith College like she was like no one. And this was like her first success.

She went on after this. Two years after this, she won an Oscar for a movie called Coming Home about. Did you see that, Dad? I did. Did you like it? It was it was a little challenging to believe. It was very serious. It was kind of like a Vietnam War movie.

Right. And it's, you know, John Voight. Well, that works against it. Yeah. It's no national treasure. But no, I mean, it's like... Speaking of not aging well. Yeah, because John Voight is truly evil.

Yeah, but it felt like these prestigey stars serious writers and and directors making this really raunchy goofy comedy but it was also like my dad the news talked a lot about how like a woman wrote the movie in a different context that i'm not criticizing this uh but i just like most, most of the coverage of Nancy Dowd at this time was like, it's the raunchiest comedy of the year. And a woman wrote it? And, like, which I think that we still see stuff like that. And it's still, like, the majority of raunchy comedies that come out are not written by,

I don't think that there's really parody. I mean there's not parody in film in general but I think especially in this genre it still feels super male driven I feel like Joyride is the only exception I can think of this year right but I I read some of the coverage because I was like, well, how did Nancy Dowd kind of field this? And I thought she was cool. I thought she was really funny and really cool. She says this in a New York Times article from 1977. This is how it's set up. It's set up.

Obscenity, hockey, a woman? Miss Dowd has been meeting so many people lately who can't believe that she actually wrote this screenplay that she is beginning to lose her patience. And she says, quote, The world has a weird view of women. People seem to believe that we have to write about divorce or suicide or children, so-called women's topics. But we've been around. Women aren't sequestered anymore and kind of just goes on to um talk about how it reminds me of like how you still see a lot of women writers being like well i wish this wasn't the story right shut up like watch the movie and like it or don't yeah but this movie was even in its time considered to be pretty sexist i think paul newman called it honestly sexist which i think is an interesting way to come about it and

i think i think what he's trying to say i don't know let me know if either of you feel differently is that it feels like it's more speaking to like how nancy dowd was not transcribing dialogue but like just sort of saying authentically how guys she was hanging out with were talking and not sanitizing what they were saying so it's like she was hanging out with were talking and not sanitizing what they were saying. So it's like she was hanging out with sexist guys. The movie is honestly sexist because she's not like, you know, sugar more appealing. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I would say, too, that, you know, when it came out, you know, and I was whatever, 18 years old, I don't recall knowing that a woman wrote it at the time. I mean, we just, you know.

You should have been reading the New York Times. They couldn't shut up about it. I was reading the Brockton Enterprise and hoping to one day work for the Patriot Ledger. But we were just excited because there was a movie about hockey, you know, and it was our thing. Really didn't take it that much farther. You know, I was surprised when I like looked a little bit more into it later on, you know, just finding out like little, little things about people who were in the movie, you know, that, that got me to look, you know, behind this, not behind the scenes, but behind the story. And it was like, you know, the only thing was like, oh oh a woman wrote it i i guess you know my not reaction to that but like the way i i might come off that way is like like if her brother wrote the movie it'd be like oh yeah of course you know like all that dialogue

this and that and it just it just you know it just wouldn't have seemed, you know, it's so raunchy. Like, I'm not saying like anybody can't be raunchy, but it's like, you know, that one character, you know, Caitlin, you brought up Morris is like, it's gross. You know, it's like, it's hideous. You know, I was saying to Jamie, it was not like I never heard some of those terms before, but like so, so rare, you know, and, you know, I mean, I don't know, I guess on a, in an office, you know, on a team, there's always that one person that, you know, takes it a little bit farther or just like is, is extreme. Yeah. And, and as I was, as I was watching it the other night it was like i didn't catch you know in my earlier viewings of it that a lot of his teammates are kind of grossed out by him too which

is like well you know thank god for that you know yeah i mean i think it's well we'll get into this too i like i i don't know it's i think that it seems like her goal in writing the movie was like writing obviously like a movie that people would like that was funny but was also like authentic to what she'd experienced which i don't really have a problem with i think it's more like especially because this movie has been out for almost you know 50 years now like it's interesting watching like what parts of this movie are its legacy because i feel like the parts that i thought were interesting about the movie are not parts of the movie that are famous and also it's like the writer has no control over what becomes known about their work

or not but it just i don't know i just think it's there was more to this movie than I thought, but like the, the nuancy parts of it aren't what it's known for. That plus like, yeah, she was observing the team and who knows, like if she was like transcribing like stuff that they said and putting it into the script or if she was embellishing some of it, but it seems like for the most part, she was like, well, the way that Dickie dunn just tries to capture the spirit of the thing i'm guessing because she's trying to do that yeah nancy dowd was just trying to capture the spirit of the thing and it seems like the spirit was a lot of like pretty loserish guys who are either creepy or stalkery or they don't treat women well etc that's just the vibe those were the

vibes she was getting so that's what she put on the page my concern is that a lot of it is presented uncritically and or just framed like morris saying all of his gross comments about women's bodies and stuff like that is usually just framed as a joke like haha look at the look at the team creep isn't he funny aren't we laughing at him yeah so but again it's like you know it's the 70s a lot of horrible things were not presented critically it was just this is what's normal and and it's normal so that's fine yeah i i i don't know it's it's movies of this era are always uh i feel like tricky in in that way yeah the i sorry i have one more quote from her from this new york times piece the piece goes on she's generally frustrated that the movie

was considered to have strong sexist overtones this was something that was talked about in original reviews of the movie but uh she was annoyed with that. She said, quote, The only thing I thought twice about writing was making the team's rich, uncaring owner a woman. I worried about people saying I had made a sexist statement, but I've seen that woman's attitude so many times. Quote, I never let my children see a hockey game, unquote. So it seems I mean, whatever whatever she felt she felt differently and i don't know it's like i i feel i i i respect what she's trying to do and i also agree with what you're saying it's like it just depends on like how your movie is received and how like i think if you're looking for nuance in this movie you can find it but because of the genre you might

not necessarily be looking for it i don't know you know and i think too like that you know that the fact that the owner is a woman you know as i was you know pitching this idea to jamie it's like i don't think this will pass i think this is like the worst possible but she's a she's you know use the description rich uncaring it's also it's it's a she's a ruthless bottom line business person right and like any guy would have done that you know yeah I mean in the same you know but so I don't I don't know that you saw a lot of that back then where the I don't know is it called girl boss I don't know that you saw a lot of that back then where the, I don't know, is it called Girl Boss? I don't want to step in anything here. Well, yeah, you've seen my show.

I mean, I think it kind of, I think that it does fall into that thing. I don't know. I think it's interesting that that was what was on her mind in 77 because I, that was one of the characters that I didn't think really I didn't have an issue with I had an issue with how Reg treated her versus like how she was portrayed because it was like at that point for me I don't know how you felt at this point in the movie Caitlin but it was like you had seen different kinds of women throughout this movie that it's like I feel like sometimes if there's only one woman in the movie and she is like a ruthless, cruel person, then it's like, well, I have no idea how this writer feels about women. This seems like how they're presenting all women.

But because it's like this one character who comes up late in the movie, I feel like she represents more of a class thing than any sort of commentary on gender. And I was I was fine with that like it's same you know she and reggie in this scene both suck in in very very different ways and yeah that that worked for me i thought it was interesting that that was the thing that stuck with her because i think the thing that stuck with me really was i agree like there there's not any pushback on how men talk about women in this movie i agree with you dad that like there there there were some that you know you would but you would have to kind of be looking for it of like someone being like because they do like the the i think

that the character that is most clearly written in a way that the movie is conscious of being sexist is i don't know do you know what the name of that character is like the one that is who only says sexist stuff um morris morris yeah yeah morris's whole thing is that he views women as objects and it's like that's the joke with this character yeah and you know and to go back to go back to the point that it's a two-hour movie, if you cut Morris out, right? It becomes an easier movie to digest, for sure. Yeah. And, I mean, it doesn't really add anything, I don't think.

You know, it's just, it's like a, you know, again, the scene with the owner and Paul Newman, you know, as I think about it now, that's like Reg Dunlop, you know, the shoe's on the other foot now. Because, you know, not because she's a woman, but she's the owner and she's telling him, like, yeah, I could help you and your players, but, you know. But there's nothing in it for me. There's no money in it for me. And when he says, you know, we're human beings, you know, that's maybe about as, you know, for all the other scenes where like, he's sort of vulnerable, and he wants, you know, Francine back, you know, that was a, it's a small scene. But that's probably his most, his most human vulnerable moment, maybe, you know. And it could have been a much more effective just scene in general or commentary or whatever it's trying to do as far as like, yeah, rich people conduct and them not caring about human lives and only caring about the bottom line.

But then the scene ends with him going on a homophobic tirade about her young son and then it's just like well that undercuts everything that could have been interesting about that scene right caitlin as you said earlier the scene where you know he's with the opponent's wife you know i mean you know she she explains a very you know personal thing to him and he seems to be listening and have some you know respect and everything yeah but then you know right two seconds later and that sets his character everything he can use he will use against others you know yeah so that's that's something that i maybe i mean if it works for everybody i mean that maybe is a good opportunity to slip over to just Reg as a character. I wonder, I'm trying to think, I couldn't think of like a modern day analog for this character, because I do think that there is value in presenting a character like this, who is, you know, like, I struggle to call him like a complicated guy.

But someone who responds to insecurity by being hateful. Like that is, I think, something that exists in the world. It exists in a lot of men, but a lot of people, but mostly men, if we're being honest. But, you know, in general, these are people who exist in the world. I don't think it's off the table to present that but presenting it as your movie star hero is a very difficult sell for me because then it's like I think that the element like Paul Newman I think gives a good performance in this movie but he's Paul Newman you know he's like you're gonna love him because he's Paul Newman and he's charismatic and he's handsome. And even when he's saying horrible things, especially in the late 70s, where people said horrible things more openly than they currently do. Like it's just it's even if there is something to be said about presenting a character like this,

I feel like the combination of positioning it as your main character and your hero and also like combining that with he doesn't really i mean i guess like he doesn't get what he wants in the way that we see in some movies where like someone fucking sucks the whole movie and then for some reason they get exactly what they want at the end it's it's a mixed bag for reg at the end but i wouldn't say he like he doesn't get his uh really like he gets to continue to work in hockey like he gets part of it i think the main thing he loses is the relationship that he very obviously still wants right and deservedly so and not i think is one of the better done parts of the movie for sure but yeah i don't know I struggled with how his character was framed.

I don't know. Especially because he learns nothing. He shows no growth. And even at the end when it seems like, you know what? I don't want to win this way by, you know, pummeling the other team. I want to play hockey and win that way. And then as soon as he's like, oh, there's here it's like oh never mind yeah yeah it's like okay so you have absolutely no code of ethics that's interesting and and again i mean i don't know if we're supposed to be

where we're supposed to be in the discussion but you know again the more i thought about it i remember reading a piece several years ago about the movie as you know kind of a not a hockey movie or a good but like a sort of a snapshot of america kind of at the time late 70s and i you know i i can't really remember what the economy was like you know but but things you you know, long-time businesses, you know, long-time industries were really taking, you know, a hit back then, like the steel industry. And one of the things that kind of struck me watching it, it's like with everybody depicted in there, even if they're not characters in the movie, but like, you know, the fans, right? They're all looking at losing their jobs because they're, you know, their jobs are going to disappear. And the players, will they get signed?

You know, will the team fold? Will it, you know, they were believing it would get sold. To me, there's like this low level desperation, you know, to survive on the, on the parts of everyone there. And in the case of Paul Newman, Paul Newman being the oldest one, being not really that successful, I mean, whether this is him all the time or not, he's kind of the worst one. He's like, I will do anything.

I'll do whatever it takes you know to be able to continue my career someplace else or here and if it has to do with you know kind of manipulating my players or manipulating people who are involved my players you know means to an end pretty much ever all the way through. Yeah, the closest I can get to rationalizing Reg's character, I read an essay, an academic essay. I was on google.scholar.com. Of course. Yes, this was published in Athlon, A-E-T-H-L-O-N, Athlon,

the Journal of Sport Literature, volume 37, issue one, from 2019, written by John Soares. So take everything he says with a grain of salt. But I did really appreciate his retrospective view on this movie. And I think it offered,

because he did a more class-driven view of the men on this team, which i do think is a valuable way of of looking at this movie but he basically makes the argument that reggie's character like doesn't shy away from the fact that reg is a despicable character and i do i guess it's like we don't have 1977 goggles to put on and i wonder how clearly that read at the time but i think that the argument that he makes that i think is interesting and kind of speaks to like the parts of this movie that did work for me was that you know i think the setting is very relevant here where they're like encapsulated in this fictional steel town where jobs are falling left and right

there's this huge sense of insecurity about the future and you see in these men on the team a level of like people acting desperately when their future is insecure and i think reg is a really extreme kind of like monstrous version of that where he is so desperate to preserve what he wants for his version of the future that he will undercut almost anyone in his life even if he likes and respects them he is not above completely selling them out in order to preserve the future that he feels entitled to. And John Soares kind of makes the argument that this movie illustrates well, I guess something that is historically true. I didn't know this, but I was delighted to learn it,

that in times of economic insecurity and in recessions and depressions, women are like statistically more likely to move with the time and men are more likely to cling to how things were and be unwilling to change their situation. They're less likely to want to move. They're less likely to want to change the way that their day-to-day life is versus women are far more likely to be, I guess, like just kind of more realistic about what's happening. Yeah. More adaptable. You know, there's a line in the movie and in the scene where, you know, Reg and his opponent's wife are in bed and it closes with, I think he's telling her, you know, the team's going to fold

or the team, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do. And she says to him, you know, just, just use your imagination. That's what I've been doing. So it's, you know, and I think he uses that line himself later on, yeah, on somebody else. But you know, but he's still I mean, it's like, but I think that that's part of like, what is frustrating about the men in this movie for me is like they even at the end. And I think the movie is conscious of this, like Reg has not really changed because his last line is him lying about whether his wife is leaving him or not. Because, you know, Lily is like, oh, is she coming? And he's like, yeah. And we know she's not. And it's like this.'s kind of like a i think viewed a certain way and this is not the way that this character is regarded in pop culture but i i liked looking

at it that way of like this guy is kind of tragic and he can't accept that things are changing and that his life is changing and that is something that i think is like very relatable and everyone has experienced that to some degree and also it's like if you whatever because we as the audience know that he is just like really committed to having the upper hand in his life in a way that's impossible and i just thought it was interesting um but yeah i think that viewed from that sort of perspective the men in this movie are not flexible uh they are completely inflexible and they refuse to accept a future that is uncomfortable to them and the women in this movie are not like that they will i mean i think that the well and we'll

talk about really shortly because it's like her character is so frustrating because I feel like she was inconsistent with this but with the characters of Suzanne who is um Suzanne Hanrahan I'm assuming um and and Francine they are both women who are like look I was either uncomfortable unsafe and so I got the fuck out and I moved on with my life. And that's like, that's what you have to do to survive. And I think it's especially effective with Francine because she knows that she's right to leave him. I honestly was, I thought that the movie would end with them getting back together. And I was so thrilled that it didn't. Absolutely. It feels like a good fake out. Yeah. She turns her car around and joins the parade. Yeah.

I mean, and that was, you know, again, that was a thing that sort of struck me about the movie. In a lot of other movies, that's what would have happened. You know, they would have gotten together at the end, you know. Yeah. She would have been like, wow, you won the trophy at the championship game. Well, here's me, trophy trophy number two baby well you know happy endings in movies right that's the hollywood does love a happy ending but but the last shot of this movie is her driving in the other direction and i feel like that it's great

that was my favorite sort of thread in the movie is I felt like because of the time and I mean, this still happens in movies that they would somehow end up reconciling when she showed up at the game at the end. I'm like, well, yeah, that's curtains on Francine. She's gonna be fucked over. But rewatching it again, knowing that she leaves, it's even kind of like cooler. Yeah. She was my favorite character because she consistently, like she has affection for her ex-husband, but also like doesn't want to get back together. And I think like in their interactions, it was really interesting because Paul Newman's character is constantly

trying to like manufacture a need that she would have for him where he's on. He's constantly like, well, if you need money, you can call me. And she's like, I don't buy like you know she doesn't need him and he can't like he knows that at his core because he says it behind her back he never says it to her face but he says behind her back like oh yeah since my wife broke up with me she her life has been way better like he says that to lily so it's like he knows it but he can't really admit it and it's just it felt like an interesting like complicated relationship dynamic that feels like something that happens in the real world and and i just like that specific subplot i think kind of worked for me

especially because francine was like you know touched that he seemed to recognize that when she heard it from a third party but he's right and she wants to move on with her life and she does and i thought that that was cool yes but for some reason that same nuance and generosity is not extended to lily which i found to be so weird i'm like was that a studio note like two women can't leave their husbands. It can just be the one. Like what happened there? Because Lily, I think, again, is set up in an interesting way.

But then it kind of goes away by the end of the movie. It seems like she's being set up to that her arc will be like she's mustering up the courage to actually leave her husband which is something that she seems to want to do for a while she's like very vocal about how miserable she is in this town she seems very miserable in the relationship she's watching her husband flirting with other women and she eventually i don't know if there's some catalyst that gets her to finally leave him or if it just kind of happens but one day she shows up on also the fact that she goes to reggie i guess he's the only person who has like extended any kind of olive branch or or anything i sort of found that to be an act of desperation because we've seen her fail to make friends and

connections inside of this small world that she's been forced into kind of right because we see her hang out with other hockey wives for lack of a better right term right who to be fair and i think this is like a class thing where she and her husband ned because they're like from you know well-to-do families and they're both college educated she is positioned as like smarter hotter better than the other hockey wives which didn't feel fair right yeah and she's not able to connect with them so anyway she leaves brayden for a while and goes to reggie and she's like i'm moving in i guess and then he takes her he introduces her to francine and what i would have liked to have happened was they become friends they have a lot of common ground you know they're both which is

like established in the one scene they have together it's like right like there's a lot to learn for sure like they're in either like current or former relationships with hockey players who don't know how to treat women well at all and the women are sick of it and i thought it was gonna be a situation where francine empowers lily to like you know strike out on her own because there's just like i well but it's that's what was so confusing because it felt like you know i you can i i don't know like the makeover thing didn't bother me at all really because it's also like we're seeing suzanne or no sorry we're seeing francine at her job so okay i think a lesser movie would have reg be like we gotta make this girl over and you know but like reg it's right there and francine and like whatever it's a dated way of doing it but i was like okay but then when but then when they go to the hockey game like

what happened because i really liked that conversation where Lily is. And again, it's like in the context of like, what, I mean, we're well into second wave feminism by the late seventies, but leaving your husband in the late seventies is different than currently. Right. And there are different dynamics to that. And so I understand why like Lily is nervous about it. It's a nerve wracking experience to leave your spouse, no matter what year it's happening in. But I liked how Francine, like she said, it's lousy at first. You think you're dying, but then it's fabulous.

You become a new woman and you're like, this is such an interesting dynamic to set up, but then it just goes nowhere it goes back nowhere yeah yeah and the interesting you know caitlin too i mean you like and jamie um yeah uh-huh that's your name right yeah um yeah i i agree like lily you know that whole character sort of confuses me because you know she makes very clear she doesn't like that life. They could go back to, you know, something easier with with money. And she leaves her husband, but stays in the life. You know, she stays in the town, she goes to another hockey person,

you know, so it's like, I do wonder, I mean, i mean but i wondered like if that was just like temporary and then she because it was like i mean i guess it took francine we don't know how long she and reg have been separated or how long francine had to save or whatever it would take for her to start her restart her life somewhere else but it's i don't know it seems like the movie was setting us up for like oh francine couldine could inspire or give Lily the confidence to do something similar. Yes, coach. I agree. Like I empower her, coach her. So that that part was a little bit hard not to justify it. It was like, oh, I didn't think that was going to be the result of this, you know?

Right. Because then it's like ned ned does not change at all i know that like symbolically him doing the strip tease is supposed to mean something but it just like that did nothing for me at all i found his character frustrating throughout i mean as you know that i just like did not take to that character at all i didn't like him i thought he was both snobby and exactly all of the things that he claimed that he was above like yeah yeah i just i just didn't i thought he's like such a snotty little asshole who is horrible to his wife didn't know how to communicate with her again a legitimate relationship dynamic to explore but like it felt like at the end he's like now i got my wife back and she's

got this cool new makeover and it's like but you did nothing you did nothing and the last thing he did before he did his weird little routine that i didn't like was like talk shit about her on the radio and it was like oh is anyone gonna tell her about that is anyone gonna tell her that he like called her a hot piece of ass who's an alcoholic that hates him on the radio because i i would not be thrilled to hear my spouse saying shit like that true but then i'd be like but he's exactly right i am a hot who hates him and i'd stop drinking if i if i just left him yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when Francine and Lily show up to the game at the end, one of them says, what am I even doing here?

And I'm like, yeah. That's a good question. What are you even doing there? I wish that I knew the answer. Well, I think if Lily wanted to go to that last game, she did not really have a lot of friends among the other wives. True. You know, so, you know, like as an ally maybe.

And there is another scene and, you know, we've talked mainly about the same two, three women, but there are some scenes with the other wives. Like there's a scene where the wives are all in their car waiting for their husbands to get home from a bus trip. And I thought it's a sort of a sad scene, but in the same way they kind of like have to kind of, you know, form their own little group and rally around each other and support each other

because they clearly are not, you know, too psyched with the life either and their, you know, what their husbands are doing and, you know, that they're gone and this and that. I wish, since this is mostly an ensemble cast, you've got Paul Newman as the main character, but you've got a lot of little subplots with various other characters that there was more focus on the wives of these hockey players

because to me they're in more interesting situations than, especially because so many of the men are characterized as either just being like hotheaded or trying to prove something about their masculinity or their sleazy creeps or they're wildly homophobic, you know, all of this stuff that i don't want to see and then the women are in this position of you know it's a time where uh a lot of people in like hetero couples the women were still relying on on their husbands for sustainable like for his income and yeah women in the workplace were not as welcome as they are today so it was hard to be a single woman or to be you know someone earning your own way as a woman at that time and so they're relying on these men who are not treating them well at all but it's also very like normalized culturally but they still are like

heavily drinking about it there's a scene where i well actually i i liked the scene i think you're gonna reference because i yeah it's i'm trying to like put this through because it's like it's not like there were not movies that had women protagonists in the 70s but in sports movies i know that that was i i feel like i don't know i i feel like i i feel a little defensive of nancy dodd because i will say i do think that in this movie the men with the exception of reg who at least you see a few layers of, even though I kind of dislike all of them, but you do see different layers of this character. So there's like nuance in how he's written. But I think that the women that are presented far more broadly than the men are, because most of the hockey team, except for like Ned and Reg, are like, just like, here's this guy and this is what he does and how he reacts like

here's a sexist guy here's a violent guy here's a homophobic guy and you're like there's all these guys and they're written in the very very broad way that men in raunchy comedies are which is kind of why i don't like the genre but i will say that like i mean i even think back to like raunchy comedies that came out when we were the target audience and i'm thinking like early hangover movies and like jot apatow movies and shit like that and i feel like in this movie you get women like more different kinds of women than you did like 30 years later in some cases but true i think the hockey wives are the most broadly written women that appear in the movie and i didn't love that because i feel like it in the same way that i didn't like when ned was like a snotty like i went to whatever fucking

school he went to and so i'm better than most of the guys on this team like it's just like a moral superiority and lily kind of takes that into how she treats the hockey wives where i think she treats them kind of as like bimbos who aren't as smart as her and it seems like that is a part of the reason that she doesn't hang out with them because it seems like the other hockey wives who i don't know if we get names for them they seem like they i mean they have a lot in common a lot of what they have in common sucks is like they are sort of along for the ride of their husband's career and it seems isolating and depressing and frustrating and i thought it was she's made

a joke up but we see the same hockey wife a few different times who's constantly like kind of referencing like johnny either like johnny yes johnny's wife who's johnny i have no idea which player johnny is but he's one of them one of those but i thought johnny's wife like she's played for laughs mostly but i thought it was like i don't know i didn't i liked her like she was she was like trying to make the best of what she seemed to know was a bad situation but she was like i'm trying to get my husband to read a book or like i'm trying to get my husband to do anything except be a fucking goon which is like whatever what like all the guys in the team are and it's you know it's not is it the most progressive thing ever no but i did feel like there is like she was like an

interesting character that i i wish they had been played for more than laughs because when um one of the fights that lily and ned have in public you know lily basically ends by being like me and ned are better than everyone here bye and like leaves right and johnny's wife God, I wish she had a name, responds to that by being like, oh, I really feel for her. And you're like, that's, I don't know. Whatever. Like, I guess I understand. It seems like it's broadly in a way that it would have been because i i appreciated that the movie made time for women at all which again

it's like i like sports movies almost never do and if you if you do it's like the supportive wife like grabbing their husband's hand being like go go coach him baby or whatever the which is like so boring but it's like how a lot of women appear in sports movies at all but there was especially because it's like nancy does seem to want to include women but it felt like well to an extent like i'm happy to include educated women, but like it seemed like the hockey wives were I just feel like there was room for them to be played off as more of kind of one liners. But I liked that scene in the car where it was like, even though these women don't get along, they do have a common struggle and they are pushed aside and expected to put up with all of this shit. And it's like leading to addiction issues for them and yeah they all seem to be self-medicating to fight the just either loneliness or abuse that

they're putting up with right can we talk about suzanne because let's talk about Suzanne. So Suzanne is the character. I think she's only in one scene. Yeah, which is wild, because the the actor who plays her is like, so successful and won an Oscar like this same year. Oh, wow. Wait, what's her name? I didn't even look it up. Melinda Dillon, you probably my dad picked up on this i was like oh she is she i think most iconically plays the mom in a christmas story but she she or no sorry she was nominated this same year for playing um i think the mom character in close encounters okay but whatever she's like a very very successful actor but she's only in this movie for one minute for one scene and it's the scene where she's in bed with reggie and she's talking about how her husband hanrahan when he was like out on the road for a game, how she and another hockey wife,

they would get together and talk about how depressed and lonely they were without the men. And then also how they lamented that they never did much of anything themselves, which I feel like is also maybe what Lily struggles with to some degree where she's like I'm not doing anything but like supporting my husband in his career but like what about or maybe this is just like headcanon that I'm assigning to Lily but anyway Suzanne's talking about how like oh I never did anything for myself and then she goes on to describe how one night when she and this other hockey wife were hanging out, they were drinking and they started fooling around. But then they kept getting together and having sex sober, and that they were like, engaging in this like, sexual relationship that they were both into.

And she's like, Hey, Reg, have you ever considered sleeping with men? And at first he says no. But then he's like, who knows? Maybe I'll start sleeping with old goalies. And then I'm like, OK, he's I don't know. That scene is like almost. And then it's so frustrating. But it's also like I feel like that's like Reg sucks. And it's like it's so frustrating to see a character that in their more private moments

seems to be a better person than they are in their public yeah right because again the whole reason this scene even happens narratively in the movie is that so he now has information that he uses against his opponent in a in a way that like outs um guy's wife, like disparages her for her queerness. And he's like using that as ammunition to try to win the game and like for his own personal benefit. He does something similar with the general manager, that guy Joe, where he's like, hey, remember that night that you i walked in on you and you were wearing like women's lingerie and then you came on to me well i don't have to tell anyone about that as long as you give me so he basically like blackmails him to learn the owner who the

owner of the team is that's something that yeah and then that's like i I do think Reg is a supervillain because I do almost believe him when he says that he like, he's like, I get it. It's the 70s. Queer people exist. Like, I do believe that he understands that. But the fact that he understands that and is not above exploiting societal homophobia against people that he knows and says he likes. It's like that's that's extra evil. That's that's extra evil. And in that scene, you know, like, first of all, the scene where he, you know, kind of baits the opponent, the goalie.

Right. You know, with this information that he has about his wife you know from a hockey perspective you know nobody nobody stands on the ice and shouts at someone and then moves over you know they're not shouting plot points at each other on that no no so that that was like annoying because some of the you know some of the stuff with the Hanson brothers, the hockey, the skating, the this, that, the hitting, you know, is legit. Those guys were really hockey players. But so Reg Dunlop enrages the goalie who attacks him finally after a goal. And it's a big fight. Now, does anybody know at first like what caused this big fight did anybody hear what reg

was saying i don't think so just the goalie yeah so he he could have left it there on the ice right but then he comes but then he comes in and tells his whole team like when they ask him what'd you say you know and he he says the whole thing he out you know someone else that he was you know i don't know that that is diabolical yes it's evil like it's and it's so fresh because it's i didn't hate their scene together before i saw the scene after because it felt like these are themes and just like queer people like just appearing in movies at all in a way that was like it seemed like they both accepted each other in that scene and like the language is not great but it's like for the time it was like wow this i it seems very unlikely that this was appearing in

like popular summer comedies at the time so okay like you know i can navigate around the dated elements of it but yeah it's uh it yeah he he was so evil about that and i feel like she because that character never comes back it doesn't come back around in a satisfying way but in the same way i i love i mean i love her i like that scene i think the last thing that we were talking about, Dad, that I think is extra evil about Reg in that situation is that she mentions in that scene that when her husband found out that she had had sex with women, he was so abusive her husband that he knows to be abusive and and she says that like she's hiding out from him like it's just it sounds like she was in this tremendously abusive relationship which again i believe it like seems you know whatever that that still happens uh but the fact that like our movie star hero then does that i feel like it did undercut it the fact that the movie went out of its way to say like that her having a queer relationship not only was he upset

about being cheated on but also this thing that felt i don't know i mean that i guess you can tell us for the time like there seemed like there was talk among the men of just confusion and like hateful confusion in henryrahan and the whole team's case. They're like, well, if my wife has a relationship with a woman, then am I gay and I can't be gay? And like just like stuff that makes no sense. Yeah. That was a stretch, I think. I don't know that that, you know.

I was like, people did not think that. Did people believe that? Right. Yeah. I think I don't know that that, you know, I was like, people believe that. Yeah. I'm not sure that, you know, when I was a kid, I don't really think that that is what somebody, somebody thought. Yeah. I was like, it doesn't make any sense. But yeah. Okay. I was, I was curious about that, but it, it, yeah. I mean, just again, Reg, Reg sucks. I love Paul Newman and and i love salad but i hate reg and yes and it is what it is but i did think that it was again it's like this this movie feels like it's doing incremental stuff in

this genre that you don't see decades later so i do appreciate that it's like there is a queer character who is like open about it is cool is performed in a way that felt authentic and and cool but also the 70s element of it is that they're immediately put in danger and then never appear in the movie again so the and you know she's she's talking about her sexual relationship with a woman but the scene we're seeing on screen is her in a sexual situation with a man because heaven forbid we see like queer romance or sexuality actually on screen at that time sure or and and it's like i sort of chalked that up more to like well how did people talk about uh bisexuality in the 70s did they know how did they have the tools i don't think

i just sort of assumed they didn't but also like the way that raunchy comedies of like the 90s and 2000s would have which i think are worse than this movie honestly they are they yeah and we've talked about i think i've like speculated as to to why but the way that those movies will have visibility of queer characters or of people of color but they're only there to then be like punching bags to the the main characters who are just saying horrible things and like making jokes at their expense of like what in whatever way they are marginalized that's that's why they're there and it's so jokes can be made at their expense so and i felt the same way for suzanne like yes she's a queer character who's talking openly about

her queerness to someone who seems receptive to it but we learn that that scene is only in the movie so that this guy can use that as ammunition to win a hockey game and then boast about it. He's like, yeah, team. The reason we won is because I outed this woman who has an abusive husband. Anyone who had listened. Yeah, that's I think that's like that's not that it justifies any kind of behavior. But the fact that he does it a second time, like he shouts it at her husband, which is putting her in danger in one way. But then he does it a second time right after. It's like, he stinks. He's the worst.

How are you doing, Dad? I don't have much else to say except that their bus driver is wearing a helmet with a swastika on it. I noticed that as well. I never caught that the first several times i watched the movie you know walt walt who just goes from walt the bus driver and you know he's another one he gets all swept and swept up in the you know chief's mania and starts you know hammering the bus you know to make it look meaner and then the swastika you know but then you're just like is that yeah that that was a

kind of jump scare in the movie and it's like if it was i think maybe the most generous reading of that was like oh this team is getting more and more evil but you're like there's so many there's no world where that was necessary no yeah there's also an Indigenous player during the final game. I want to talk about that. Yes. I mean, I know obviously you do because you brought it up. Yes. In general, because the team in this movie are called the Chiefs.

And there's a lot of... And I think that that's an ongoing conversation in sports is is teams that are named and characterize indigenous people as mascots. And that's that's an ongoing conversation also in hockey specifically because the Chicago Blackhawks. I mean, I know you know this, you know, this whole conversation of representing Indigenous people as mascots and the issues and conversations that have taken place. And also that team is still called the Chicago Blackhawks. They did not make any changes after that conversation was had. I was trying to, it happened in the mid 2010s but i thought so this team is named the chiefs and there is a character in the um on the syracuse team yes what is his clarence swamp town screaming

aka screaming buffalo who is played by a real hockey player named Joe Nolan, who is First Nations. I was worried that I was really worried that it was a guy in brown, a white guy. Yeah, but this is a real indigenous person, a real hockey player. However, the way that the costuming and the just characterization of that character is still relying heavily on stereotypes of indigenous and first nations people so whoops yeah that's a tough one you know i mean all the way down to, like I said earlier, so much of the hockey parts of it are like, you know, an exaggeration, you know, like almost like a caricature. You know, that scene, that's one of the things in the movie, it's like, that never would be allowed, you know, he just, he, that's a, you know, and again, it's, you know, we've talked, you know, if you could snip this guy out and this guy out, it really changes things. That was like, all right, you've made your point, you know, that the Syracuse team is loaded up on rugged guys, you know, to pay you back. You know, like how many did you have to have, right?

Well, and it's also like, I don't think that the solution to that is cutting out that character it's just presenting this real life uh first nations hockey player in a way that wasn't you know inherently connected to the fact that he was a first nations player like i don't know i have no objection to like having a because because like you've mentioned that there's so many real life hockey players that appear in this movie and joe nolan like played on a number of teams including the johnstown jets he's from a hockey family he is uh this is according to hockeylegends.com scholarly journal yes exactly he is ojibwa he is the uncle of Buffalo Sabres coach Ted Nolan and great uncle of Jordan Nolan of the LA Kings. So he's like from a like legacy hockey family. There's no issue with him being in this movie. It's just like presenting him as not inherently connected to his like, it's just like it's obviously written by a white writer of the time disrespectful and just being like well this is his heritage so this is going to be the whole character and we're going to write it in the way like we're going to write him for a white audience

yeah in the most tropey way possible and it would have been cool like it would have been cool if joe nolan was cast in a role that was not that like was just like he could have played. He could be a guy on that team, but just it's obviously racist the way it's right with more than 15 seconds of screen time. You know, yeah, I also this is like separate, but I learned about it on my trip at the Hockey Hall of Fame. So I wanted to mention it and we can link it in the description of this episode but um just the history of native american and first nations players within hockey there's a lot to be discussed and learned about um where there are still a number of i mean like there are a number of native players in professional hockey today but there's also a history of hockey in reservation

schools and hockey has a role in Canadian reservation schools there's been a lot written about it in the last couple of years that I think is very relevant to what we're talking about very interesting and when especially when this Joe Nolan character came up it was like oh there's actually a lot of troubling and like relevant indigenous history within hockey that um if you're if you're interested we can link a piece that i read below and i learned about it i don't know why i keep plugging the hockey museum i thought it was really interesting uh and we'll link it yes indeed ironically i have never been to the hockey hall Hall of Fame. I know.

I was just like texting you pictures the whole time. Where is it? Toronto? Yes. In Toronto, the Hockey Hall of Fame. I saw the Stanley Cup from a healthy distance, and then I did not pay $10 to have my picture taken next to it. Nice, nice. Fair.

I took a picture of it from far away. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss well just because i did all the research no i mean one of the one of the one of the interesting things i mean the people who know this movie would be very frustrated it was like how could you not talk about you know the interesting things to me are that there really were like so they the three Hanson brothers there really were three brothers on that Johnstown team their last name was Carlson they were all supposed to be in the movie one of them got called up to a better team so they had to replace him with somebody who looked similar his last name was Hanson yeah and that's that's how

they named the three the Hansons but got it just there's a there's a lot of little interesting things there the um the one character that um the he's like I want to collect that bounty who is another person that Reg Dunlop you know manipulates because he's you know kind of like a a peacenik and a meditator and everything like that and all of a sudden he becomes Dave Killer Carlson. Well, Dave Killer Carlson was a real player and he replaced the Hanson that had to leave. There's a lot of funny things in there.

So he thought he was going to get to play himself but instead he had to become like a surrogate brother and be in a movie where someone played him. My last favorite thing is, you know, I'm no actor, but throughout the movie, there are references made to this player that everybody's fearful of, you ogi oglethorpe right yes ogi finally shows up in that last game never says a word scowling at everybody in that scene scowling and then fighting that is ned dowd whose sister wrote the movie oh okay nancy dowd's brother yes so so ogi is you know but i I just, that scene just cracks me up just the skating out with the, you know, chewing the gum and looking either way. It's, you know, but for that amount of screen time, just you, you know, to sell it. I'm like, all right, nice mean, I like I think that that's like just the I don't know, element of just like how she did this sort of immersive approach to researching and then seemed to include a lot of people that she'd come across or learned about in that research in the movie.

Like that's I just I don't know. I think that's cool. elements of truth in it too and then i'll stop talking but you know the the charlestown chiefs slash johnstown jets that 1977 season that concluded so they could make the movie the jets didn't go out of business but their league folded oh okay you know so this this this was a thing that was happening and that league had only been around for four years the other thing that's interesting is like you know know, how outrageous it was that like, why would anybody buy this hockey team to what was going on in their community and how like it was just like acknowledging i don't know it felt like because it was done off of this very specific reporting in this region or this research i guess in this region it like does reflect the socioeconomic problems in the pittsburgh area in the late 70s and connects it to this hockey team

in a way that feels, I don't know, like class conscious in a way that a lot of sports movies either aren't or feel like overly sort of melodramatic about. It just felt like it fit very cleanly into this world. And like, not only like it wasn't like the town and the team, because it was a minor league team, the team is a part of the town. And so they're all sort of sharing the same kind of issues. you know it's like desperate times call for desperate measures and under capitalism when you know your livelihood is being threatened a lot of people do have to act out of desperation and and do things that they would maybe not otherwise do to survive but and so in that manifests in reggie as like manipulating people in a way that's like extremely harmful. So I guess my point is like, you can do things out of desperation, because capitalism is killing us all, without also being extremely homophobic. And, you know, all the other things that he does, like, it would be one thing if all he did was just, like, lie to his team and, like, plant that story in the sports writer to be like, I heard we were getting bought by Florida.

And if he tells his team this and his objective is just to get morale up so that they can win and, like, actually maybe have a shot. Like, I wouldn't have any problem with that really because it's like i'm not of not a diabolical lie it's a victimless crime yeah yeah but the fact that he's doing that plus all manner of like blackmailing homophobia outing people all this stuff like that's where I can't. Yeah. So you're not just going to call him, oh, that old rascal Reg, huh? Not today.

Okay. Not today, baby. So, okay, let's get through it. This movie does pass. It does, yeah. Well, I was so surprised to hear that yeah he kept checking with me to make sure that i and he was like wait what so it doesn't well it's a flawed metric it doesn't just because it passes doesn't mean it's a feminist movie no okay because lily and francine talk about lily's hair and cheekbones. And Cher.

They mention Cher. And then there's the other scene where it's Lily and then the two other women who I don't think have names, so by that caveat, it would not pass. But they are talking about drinking alcohol. They're talking about

addiction problems. Yeah. So it's it's by the by the skin of its teeth but it does technically pass and i feel like i i want to i want to hand it to this movie as passing because of it feels like in many ways the odds are stacked against any sports movie about a men's team in passing i was really surprised that it technically passes i mean if i can close mean, when I thought about it and, you know, the theme of your cast,

I really just thought that this was a movie that, you know, crass and guys, but that the women kind of like stuck up for each other, helped each other, didn't always. I mean, Francine's great. I mean, she tells them, like, right off the bat, one of their first scenes, like, you know, you're a terrible coach, your team stinks, you know.

I mean, just pulls, you know. She really has no faith in him and does not hide it. Right, you know. So, and I, you know, and I love, like I said, I love most of the last scene. I still can't figure out, you know, how Lily and Ned end up together. And I agree with you, Caitlin.

I thought that the scene with Francine was going to empower her to really go. But the Francine goes her own way. I mean, it's sort of her own path because she, you know, cuts through, cuts through the parade and goes down the, you know, down the road by herself. I just thought it was, you know, that that was an element to the movie that shouldn't really, you know, be overlooked for sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I do think for, especially for its time and also for this genre, even now, it is like unusual for women to be included also as

much as i hate ned he was in twin peaks so that's kind of fun he played hockey at the university of new hampshire as well and we can't take that from him either of course and it's big time hockey oh is it yes see okay now i'm now i sound like an asshole. I didn't know that. This movie surprised me in ways I wasn't expecting it to. But? But we should talk about the most important metric on the face of the planet, which is our nipple scale. Yes, a scale of zero to five nipples in which we rate the movie. That's true.

You heard correctly. Yes, we need to break it down. Zero to five nipples rating the movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Yeah. I'll give this movie one nipple for its handful of female characters who obviously I wish the movie had done a lot more with, given more just real estate in the story to, Suzanne only being there so that her situation could be used as ammunition against her husband is obviously gross, but if she had been a more meaningful character, so i guess i'm giving

it one nipple for the potential that the movie mostly squandered i do appreciate that francine stands her ground in not being willing to get back together with her shitty husband i i agree that like most movies would have like framed her as like the he's trying, he's trying. And at the end, he finally gets her back and she's the other trophy he wins. But this movie doesn't do that. And that does count for something. Wow, the bar is so low. But everything else the movie does as far as it's just like rampant homophobia, ableist slurs are getting tossed around casually.

The treatment of the one indigenous character that we see on screen, all that kind of stuff. is looking for a movie that features mostly men that is about men who are affected by a steel mill closing might i recommend the full monty because it handles themes of toxic masculinity and and things like that in a much more thoughtful way, I would say. Not about hockey, though. It is about men stripping. Although, wow, similar ending because Slapshot does end in a strip tease. So anyway, I'm glad, I guess, that this movie, at least for like Jamie, yours and my generation and younger generations, it is not

something that most people are super aware of it has not like it hasn't ended up as like this like piece of classic hollywood cinema that you must revisit it's it doesn't have much of a lasting legacy in that way well i mean except for hockey fans where it has a massive like like it in a niche way it has a huge legacy in the a niche way, it has a huge legacy. In the general way, not as much. True, true. Yeah, so one nipple, and I will give it to my favorite character, Francine. I'm going to give this movie two nipples because it's my birthday.

And I know, but I do think that, like, I agree. I mean, we've we've talked about it at length now where this movie is not generous in so many ways. It is wildly homophobic. The one native character it represents, which is also I think that Joe Nolan is the only nonwhite character who really appears in this movie meaningfully in any way. Yeah. Which, again again is not necessary especially because of the region you're in it's like there's plenty of diversity to be found in this region i know that hockey is predominantly a white sport but it's a movie you can do whatever the fuck you want but i do think that this movie is i don't know i mean a sports comedy in the 70s having women included at all feels kind of like a miracle to me and having a successful sports movie written by a woman feels kind of like a miracle to me for this

era and so i want to miracle another hockey movie yep there's one but that's like the exact kind of corny ass movie i'm talking about where all the girls are like you've got this baby and you're just like oh my god like i do think that this movie has incredible faults it's like at the end because because we've talked about so many broad comedies on this show and all of the swings are huge and when they hit they hit and when they're bad they're awful they're almost worse than you can find in any genre right and I think the same is true in horror or like any like broad niche genre that tends to be true. And so this movie is wildly dated. I understand why it is not popularly watched. I'm not even recommending it really. I just was surprised by the fact that women were presented in, for the most part, an empathetic way, even though I did not agree with how everyone's arc was resolved.

So I'm going to go two. And I'm going to give one to Francine because she rocks and one to Lily because she deserved better. And I hope that she, you know, divorced Ned six months later or whatever. Fingers crossed. Dad, what would you give this movie? Oh. Based on his portrayal of of women intersectionally boy i have to i have to do this i'm not i'm not trained i'm not sure whatever feels right in your heart yes i i guess two just because two. Oh, because nipples.

I see. Well, no, just because two. And I have to pick characters too? You can do. You can distribute them or you can keep them. Whatever you want to do. I mean, I like, I don't know. I just, like Francine is a great character. I like that part of how she of you know how she's like you know i don't

care if you you know i know you you know i know you as a person and you know uh you know you might be able to fool everybody else you know but you can't fool me anymore and goes around the way and you know again mrs mrs hammerhand i never remember her first i just think that's a touching kind of a but that's that's a, but that's quite a scene with her, and it's serious and funny. I just really thought that that was probably back in the day, it was like, oh, that's a gratuitous thing. You know, like look at this thing.

But, you know, looked at now and her story and everything like that, I think that's, you know, I don't know what to say. I can't say, like, I think that's great. But, you know, I mean, it's one that, like, sticks with me anyway. I know what you mean. It would be a fine scene if the thing that happens after it didn't happen. Exactly. Right, right.

That's why it's like this movie is just, like, frustrating in that way, where you're like, wow, this is representation or, like like a character you would not normally see in a broad comedy. But then they're treated so poorly that you're like, well, why? Why did you go out of your way to do that if you were just going to treat them as a plot point and never show them again? Which I think is also inherent to this genre in the ways that I don't know. I found it especially frustrating, too, because it's like I thought Suzanne was in the one scene she had was presented with empathy and she was cool. And it was like, oh, this is really. And then like we were talking about, like she's treated horrifically and we never get to see her again. We don't know what happens to her and the movie doesn't really seem to have interest in it because she was ultimately just a plot point to get Reg to the next step.

So a more complicated movie than I was expecting. And I'm glad we talked about it. Yes, indeed. Thanks for joining us, Mr. Mike. Oh, hey. Thanks for having me along. Happy to do it. Dad dad do you have anything you want to plug yeah where can people follow you on twitter i don't have a there's no need to follow

me on twitter my uh my days are done my days of mouthing off and i just uh you know which i didn't do that much i was not i was not the king of hot takes, and now I am the king of the silent take. I'll just read along with you all. Nice. Well, I could plug this podcast, a certain book about hot dogs. There's always something. You simply must.

Just Google book about hot dogs. Yeah. All right. Well, Dad, I uh thank you for for coming on the show and i really can't believe you let us you badgered us into doing this i'm so glad we did though i don't know i it's my birthday and so i'm a dictator and i get to do whatever i want yeah happy birthday jamie thank Jamie. Thank you. This was a- Way to go, Jamie. Happy birthday.

I remember it. He remembered it. And that's- No, I- This episode was very special to me, both of you. So thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm really glad we got to do it.

Yay. Love you, Jamie. Love you, too. Way to go. Way to go, team. We did it, team. Wow, we won. We won the championship game we won we

we randomly did a strip tease and somehow we won the best podcast in the federal league yeah yeah we are kind of and i say this with love we are kind of a minor league podcast and and yet our fan base is intense and they fill the stands. And we appreciate that. We really do. Because to be a big podcast, you have to talk about murder in a dishonest way. And we don't do that. We don't.

Or you have to be like a fascist. So it's fine. Or you have to know a lot about sports. And we don't. We clearly demonstrated that today that we do not know. Yeah. If there was any reason. Now you know. You both did.

You both did great. Thank you. Thanks, Dad. So much. You can find us on Twitter. I know. Yeah. We are nothing without the validation of men.

It's true. Oh, geez. Of dads. Oh, no. I tried so hard. I only tease. He's crying. You can find us online

at Bechtelcast on Instagram and Twitter. You can sign up for Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, where you get two bonus episodes every month for a mere $5, and also get access to about 150 episodes of back catalog on the patreon wow and it's my birthday over there this month too we really

value birthdays on this podcast so it's true we'll be covering little shop of horrors and a second one that on the day of this recording i have not yet decided my second evil pick for the Patreon but I will think of something and it will be annoying so head over there for that. And Caitlin when it comes happy birthday to you too. Thank you so much it will be in about eight months

something like that so just keep that in mind. It's coming I don't want to miss out my chance thank you so much. And you can also get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast for our glorious items available for purchase at any time. And with that, why don't we get on this local parade float and lie about our wives leaving us? Let's do it. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

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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,

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