The Bechdel Cast - Speed with Shereen Lani Younes

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

On this episode, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Shereen Lani Younes accelerate the podcast to 50 miles per hour and never slow down! And also they talk about Speed!This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @sheerohero666 on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELPHere are a couple articles referenced in the episode:"Black Cop Film Stories" - https://www.blackartinamerica.com/index.php/2019/11/23/the-rise-of-black-cops-and-policing-films/"How 1994's Speed Captured a Changing Los Angeles" - https://www.kcet.org/shows/kcet-must-see-movies/how-1994s-speed-captured-a-changing-los-angeles Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Pop quiz, Jamie. What? You're a host on a podcast, but the podcast can't be under 90 minutes per episode. What do you do? I give away a lot of my life to the podcast. I use moments of my precious one human life podcasting.

All right, hot shot. Sounds good to me. Are you the Dennis Hopper in that situation? Yes, I'm the villain. Okay. And you are Keanu Reeves. You're not the dennis hopper of the show i don't think our show has a dennis hopper i hope not no it's just two

two buses yeah bus number one bus number two yeah and yeah and then sometimes a third bus pulls on up and we just cruise down the 105 baby even though we're calling it the 110 it's the 105 which is for some reason not in use okay there's uh there we don't even have time to talk about all the like la infrastructure stuff i was like kind of interested in watching this movie yeah but uh i guess that's another this isn't a regional podcast but i was very interested in a lot i was like wow that's what it looked like interesting um welcome to the backdel cast wait was that the end of the intro yeah that was that was my brilliant intro you're welcome you're an iconic dennis thank you so much dennis hopper's having so much fun in this movie oh my gosh he is it's the role of a lifetime

for him he's like a melina level villain. And that's like compliment. Huge compliment. Yeah, of course. So this is the Bechtel cast. Today is our speed episode, which is exciting. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Vroom, vroom.

Okay, get ready because this podcast just got above 50 miles per hour. And it's not slowing down. And it's not going back down. Or the podcast will explode. The first time I watched this movie, I was driving back. I was in the back seat. My aunt was driving from Maryland to Massachusetts, and she was driving above 50 miles an hour,

so I felt really actively engaged oh wow with the movie i was like wow now if we stop to pee you'll explode we'll explode the subaru will explode you know anyways incredible should i have been talking this whole time or you can if you want okay i was like should i be quiet still okay we will we will give you a proper introduction you're a returning guest you You have open privileges. I was like, it's been like a couple of minutes. Should I still be quiet? Or am I supposed to be talking?

Do other guests talk now? Well, here's what we'll do. This is the Bechdelcast. My name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. And let's introduce our guest, and then we'll tell you what the podcast is. Vroom, vroom. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Here comes our guest. Third we'll tell you what the podcast is so vroom vroom vroom vroom here comes our guest third bus in the room our guest is a filmmaker half of the podcast ethnically

ambiguous it's shireen lani yunas it's me vroom vroom pulling up in my big bus oh wow so happy to have you buses used to look so cool yeah Yeah. The buses used to look way cooler. They took so many hits. Like they were made of metal. Like there's nothing stopping them. They kind of looked kind of VW bussy. They looked like an old like, right? They were pretty cute.

It looks like an old tour van. I was like, damn, they should have kept those things. They're so, they're all big and ugly now. I was just so surprised how durable they were. They crashed into everything. Such a sturdy bus yeah very sturdy very sturdy look i'm so stoked to be talking about speed it ultimately is copaganda i know however there is public transit uh in movies i feel like there's there hasn't been a bigger moment for public transit i know in and as a public transit user and lover i was like you felt seen wow wow we never see the bus it's we never see it is

underrepresented in cinema i agree i mean yeah i was really happy to re-watch this i'm glad that we went with this keanu movie because i just love him and I will watch anything with him even if it's copaganda it's which which in the 90s it really was he's in quite a few copaganda films because he was he was hired for this movie off of the strength of or the perceived strength whatever of point break right where he was also in the LAPD. Cop after cop. Okay, so real quick, the show, we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test

simply as a jumping off point. The Bechdel test, of course, is a mediometric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. Our variation on the test is two people of any marginalized gender have to have names, have to speak to each other. And that conversation has to be about something other than a man.

Ideally, it's a meaningful, narratively relevant conversation. But if it's a like two line exchange, you know, we will allow it, I guess. Depends on the situation. I understand why you're being so specific. Because I encountered that same. I was like, okay. I think it passes. I just, I think it passes.

I think it does pass between Annie and a woman we later learn is Helen. She said her name. That line saved the test, you know. Right before, moments before Helenen's death where she's like helen no i was like it does pass wow wow they did it yeah and i would argue that that exchange is narratively relevant because we need to find out that helen is a very anxious person on the road which is partially why she ultimately meets her demise and that's relevant enough for me wait did we skip ahead should we like have saved that that reveal that no i see i don't mind if we blow our

load earlier in the show yeah okay i just yeah our show is not really despite the name which we came up with five years ago our show is not about the bechdel test which um which this movie does pass which the movie does pass exactly once about road anxiety exactly what i don't think sandra bullock talks to another woman the entire movie i don't believe so well and i have a huge issue with that too because there's so many women on that bus yeah i know mostly women of color as well and it's like it was yeah yeah only the men talked only the men passengers had lines or names other than Helen right there were like five male passengers that had full arcs like and then the

women in the background are like ah I'd like that's all you get yeah not fair yes okay so Shereen what is your relationship history experience with this movie? I just remember watching it as a kid with my parents. And it's been at least two decades since I've seen it since then. And so I was really happy to rewatch it. I didn't remember a lot. So I was still pretty engaged with the plot because I was like, I knew there was, I knew the images, right?

I just, I didn't know how it ended. I forgot until I saw it, you know? Like, I remembered like I knew there was I knew the like the images right I just I didn't know how it ended I forgot until I saw it you know like I remembered like oh they're there yeah but yeah I really I was a Keanu fan very young and then I am still a Keanu fan and I really liked watching Keanu give orders when I was a kid that's all I remember he keanu is incredible god he's incredible he's an incredible person and he's like caitlin and i were texting about this earlier he's like he's so hot in this movie it's so hot he was 29 isn't that wild it's oh it's 20 and so is sandra bullock oh my god they're uh they're i mean okay is the love story shoehorned in yes do i want these characters to fuck yes so it's complicated yeah keanu reeves according to

director jan de bon jan de bon i'm not sure how to say his name um keanu reeves was cast in the movie speed because he is quote vulnerable on the screen he's not threatening to men because he's not that bulky and he looks great to women oh my end quote which is obviously an extremely like gender and heteronormative yeah way to describe somebody yeah but he's right he's extremely vulnerable and sweet and sensitive and hot extremely hot yeah i was reading about the the casting process and he was like the sixth choice oh really for this part who are the top choices so and all of these would be lesser movies except one or two that i would be interested in seeing versions of keanu ultimately wins but they wanted stephen baldwin that would have been terrible oh god yeah stephen

baldwin said no too much like die hard which isn't the worst point right but i prefer this movie to die hard because it's on a bus and it's with uh keanu reeves next they asked or they considered tom cruise and tom hanks. No, no. Wesley Snipes. I think that could have been interesting. That would have been cool. Yeah, I would be a fan of that. And Woody Harrelson, which also would have been interesting.

I do like Woody Harrelson. It would have been different. It would have been a little goofier or something. I don't know. With Woody Harrelson. Yeah. Yeah, it would have been jokier. I think a Wesley Snipes or Woody Harrelson speed would have been good. But the Toms and Stephen Baldwin, I'm like no put it in the trash not interested i can't imagine watching two

hours of them do anything um but it's so interesting that he wasn't the first choice because i feel like his biggest some of his biggest movies that like catapulted him he was not the first choice like he wasn't the first choice in this or in the matrix it was right will smith i just think that's wild that like it's wild wild west yeah the movie will smith did instead of the matrix yeah it's like wild that he's like not the first pick but then he ends up like just going above and beyond and being like well this is what i can do and then they're like oh we see you keanu you know what i mean yeah they they realize wow we should have gone to you first i can't believe we we didn't yeah our mistake jamie what's your relationship with speed i have a fun history with this movie i saw this movie for the

first time in college i did this is all very goofy but i i did a semester abroad brag but we we were allowed to take little weekend trips with just our like friends and so my friend my dear friend Kyle and I shout out Kyle decided we were gonna go to Milan Italy even though we had no money and we're like we'll just figure it out when we get to Milan which is so dangerous and so we ended up staying at this hostel that was very unsafe there were all of these rules they're like you can't leave the hostel after 7 p.m or we'll lock you out whoa it was I don't think it was actually a hostel I don't know what it was we were very scared uh we were very scared and very like whatever like 19 had no idea what we were doing I like whatever it was a long time ago yeah but they did have a really good wi-fi signal for whatever reason and we were so nervous and we

didn't have any food because it was after 7 p.m and we're just like we can't leave we won't be able to get back so we were like hungry and tired and confused and didn't speak italian and i was just like can we just like watch a movie or something i'm so nervous and kyle was like you know what movie always really calms me down and then he turned on speed and we watched it together and it's such and i loved it and it was such a nice memory and i had i only saw it that one time and then I um returned to that memory and this really fun movie it's a fun movie it's so fun it makes me want to text Kyle I'm gonna text Kyle you should text Kyle but yeah that's my that's my history with speed what's yours Caitlin this was a movie that my family had on VHS in the 90s when

I was growing up. It wasn't in my heavy rotation the same way that like Back to the Future or Jurassic Park was, but it was occasionally in the rotation. So I saw it a few times as a kid, but not since then. So there I, Shireen, like you, I had like a 20 year gap or so between screenings of this movie. And I was reminded that it is an extremely fun and watchable piece of copaganda. It is. This movie is, I forgot, very much forgot to the extent that this movie is an LAPD specific copaganda piece I also forgot that they also just made them look way cooler than they they do like their outfits

are cooler they're I don't know they're hot they're just like hot they're they're Keanu Reeves they're smart and capable they're always yelling about how they have sex I'm like right none of this is true to like let's all be all three of us very firmly i think we can all agree that fuck the lapd right yes a cab but like extra for them it's a it's a special kind of hatred that we say for the lapd and this is very effective copaganda for them yeah and i think i mean we'll talk about this later in the episode but the like exact moment that this movie came out was a time where the lapd needed some image rehabilitation let's say because this movie was written and produced the year after rodney king and oh my god so it's

that's a good point i did not put that together and it was released the week before the O.J. Simpson highway chase. So I think that when this movie came out, I was seeing that a lot of people were like, how did the movie Speed know that we were going to be really interested in highway chases? Because it happened literally the week after Speed came out. What if that inspired O.J. Simpson? What if he was like, I could do that. He's like, I saw this amazing movie. Oh, God. What if Speed was the i could he's like i saw this amazing movie oh god can you

what if speed was the catalyst for that that would be wild oh i mean movies are influential so yeah could be it could be a subconscious choice too you know he wouldn't even really realize i think he did i think he did fuck i mean r.i.p n But it's just, yeah, it's so, the exact moment that this came out was such a, I don't know, it was just a very bizarre, but also, I would guess, fairly strategic timing for the LAPD to have a really popular piece of copaganda come out around, because this movie was shot in 1993, so it would have been like less than a year after Rodney King. Yeah. that is very intentional for sure i mean that just goes to show it's like there's no really accidents with

what i mean not usually with like what gets picked up as far as like if it's political or not i think what movies get picked up i mean so that's unsettling yeah for sure it's and yet it's a romp it's god damn it yeah god damn what i think we can replace like i think and we can make a universe or like a group of people that aren't cops but are badasses i don't i can't figure out who they are but it totally would have worked it totally would have worked if like keanu was just like mr i don't know like whatever in that 90s action movie way of like i'm mr action and like he didn't i don't know i don't think it was necessary but the way the movie is written it's very like and all the cops work together and cops are amazing heroes yeah and they're like

hitting that point over and over and they're so smart and they figure out puzzles but i'm also thinking back to so many action movies of this decade of decades before and after it that have protagonists who are cops like that is yeah so many action movies so that's what i'm saying it's like a lot of movies make they need like a group of good guys you know a group of heroes you can root for and this was all before obviously marvel and like comic book movies so i feel like people just wanted a good group of guys to root for and they were happen to be cops that's why i think there has to be a different group like it doesn't have you know who it should be who it should be a group of vigilante podcasters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert might be listening. Don't say it. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, please don't leak this to Robert. I'm talking specifically about the three of us. We should be action heroes. We should be the Keanu's of our generation.

Yes. There are so many moments in this movie where I'm like, well, that's where I would have jumped out a window. that's where i would have just leapt out the bus yeah i mean i guess since we're already kind of having this conversation anyways i mean that yeah the the amount of copaganda is so wild and it sent me back into the amount of times that copaganda sneaks into genres you wouldn't even expect because in the action genre at least it's a pretty expected trope basically where right i think that really people's only criticism of this movie at the time was that it was like oh i'm seeing the diehard similarities here which you definitely do but i was going back and reading i mean pieces on

like how i mean kate lewis talked about this in a past episode how like the movie bridesmaids includes elements of copaganda right with like and just like the extent that like the good like sweet goofy cop is is built into yeah i mean specifically american storytelling is so disturbing. It is very disturbing. And the way that Keanu's character behaves in this movie, it sometimes feels like a fantasy where it's like, oh, an LAPD officer de-escalating a situation. Right. It's interesting because the director, first time directing, but he was a cinematographer of Die Hard.

I think that's also why there are so many visual similarities that's why he got brought onto the project yeah they're like you're you're an experienced copaganda filmmaker come on down and keanu reeves was an experienced copaganda actor they're like okay we'll just shave your head this time and you're you're a new man. Although some of the Keanu line reads in this movie are so iconically confusing. Oh my gosh. It was Ken's. It was Ken's. It was Ken's. And he was smiling when he said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is a line that is very clear in writing Copaganda because someone says, are they going to help us? And then the reply is, sure they are. They're the police. Yes. It was so like, was so like i don't know and i was getting like galaxy brainy at the time where i was like are they trying to say something and i'm just not like because moments like that that was like the character who says that is like the out-of-towner he like self-identifies as a yokel

and i was like oh is this supposed to be like a naive view of the police but that's definitely not what the movie thinks nope they're they're like even this man this man from minnesota knows that cops are the greatest people to ever be born like yeah i don't know if it all it all was very just so frustrating and then i thought again that i was like oh maybe there's some commentary being made when when you find out when it's revealed that dennis hopper is a former cop and i'm like oh maybe we'll get into some but it kind of it just goes nowhere they're just like he he was a he was a cop which is like i i mean it's still a piece of copaganda at that point in the movie no matter what right but i was like oh maybe they're gonna try to comment on something but then they're just but then that just is kind of

they're like he's a cop nope isn't that interesting yeah they're just sort of like they're like well you know one bad apple but the rest of them are great yeah it totally it ends up buying into that entire bad apple narrative uh right yeah i mean and then before this like in like the the golden state killer and then like a couple like of cops did become like these villains in real life right so it's right it's interesting they're just like they're just saying like there's one bad apple right and the rest are good apples versus the opposite where it's like very much true but there are a few moments in this movie where i think it was like i just kept looking for something because i enjoy watching the movie where i'm like oh maybe

they're trying to say something and it was really subtle but um ultimately that is not true not true no uh let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and recap the movie. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

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No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

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Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for

advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take?

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Beep, beep. Okay, so the movie opens on a long chunk where we are not on a bus, by the way. I forgot that there's like two different action movies at the beginning and end of this movie yeah i totally forgot about that no recollection at all i just remember it was cans and the bizarro you remember the cans line oh the cans is unforgettable kyle and i had a ball with the cans line and then i remember to my credit all the way back in like whatever year it was like 2012 2013 being like they're making out in a train car and people are just taking pictures like they're not that's what i was thinking like your friend just died and then also the way that uh we'll talk but like when sandra bullock is like flirting but also her friend the bus driver is like bleeding to death

behind her i'm like yes there's some tonal dissonance. Love is more important. You know what I mean? Love trumps everything. Even when your friend is actively dying. Yeah, I totally forgot about the cans. So just imagine me being like, what the fuck? Oh my gosh.

It was cans. It was cans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the fact that there are two action movies on either side, I mean, it's a great action film for that reason. They just combine so many different elements of action movies. It's just, I don't know. Well, also, the original script was just having the whole movie be on a bus,

but then the studio was like, audiences are going to get bored if we're just on a bus the whole time so let's do a long sequence before and a long sequence after the bus then that's when they greenlit it so originally it was just a bus i do kind of appreciate that they i mean also this movie is like one of those 90s 90s movies that you watch and you're like this looks so expensive oh my god so many explosions so many cars getting damaged an airplane exploded i'm glad that they milked i mean that shot was 500 hours long but i'm like i would i guess if i were the director of this movie i would milk that shot too what a nightmare yeah i did appreciate the like the added intro and the backstory because it did make Jeff Daniels

demise a little bit more like sad you know like their backstory of being like good friends and the weird banter they have everything's a joke but yeah the added intro isn't bad to me or the ending I liked it all I liked it all I just forgot that there was

I for some reason I was like oh at the beginning Keanu gets on a bus I forgot he was a cop i forgot there was a setup i forgot there was a second climax of the movie i forgot she got damseled all this stuff yeah for sure okay so we do open on dennis hopper putting a bomb on an elevator in an office building he then holds a bunch of people hostage on the elevator and demands a three million dollar ransom from the lapd several officers show up among them is jack travin played by keanu reeves who he doesn't really play by the rules but he's also kind of nice but like we're introduced to him like chewing gum for the first like 15 minutes like he's so cool he's also kind of nice but like we're introduced to him like chewing gum for the first like 15 minutes like he's so cool he's so laid back so chill just chewing gum i just

really liked that edition i feel like they did like take the diehard character and they like keanu reevesified him they just made him like more fun to be around right for sure his partner is harry temple played by jeff daniels and the name harry temple is funny um okay i don't know his last name was temple until you just said it i didn't catch that that's really yeah okay so they managed to save the hostages and find dennis hopper but then dennis hopper blows himself up but wait it turns out that dennis hopper is not dead i still don't fully understand that yeah right i don't understand how they said he was dead like they didn't find anything he just called he was like guess what i'm alive and it was like how i was

thinking like in my mind i was like okay it has to be believable so maybe he like left a tooth there or something like maybe he like left a body part but no he didn't do that it's really confusing dennis hopper is like low-key a magician like he has magical elements to his character where it's like his motive seems to be changing a lot of times i feel like he's almost like the joker of speed where he's you're like he just wants chaos it seems like i don't know what he wants and we know his origin story we know the origin story it's revealed to us later so right which i wish that they used that origin story more effectively in store i feel like they could have at least tried to say something with his origin story because they do provide it but then it's like then it goes nowhere anyways i agree dennis hopper's

fun to watch we talked about this on our episode on the rock where the ed harris character is like ex-military i think the marines or something and his wife is dead, Caitlin. His wife! His wife! And he didn't receive the, you know, support, whether financial or whatever, that he was expecting after having served in the military. And it was like, not that that movie was actively making commentary on like, wow, we need like better social programs and support systems for veterans and stuff like that. But that is like that was his motivation in the movie. And I feel like there's like they're kind of trying to do that or like there was a seed of that in speed, but it doesn't go anywhere. That's saying something that if Michael Bay was making

stronger commentary. Right. That is that's interesting. I mean i mean yeah but we know they get compensated extremely fairly like they make more than teachers so i'm a little confused like why they're still bitter about it you know what i mean like as these like people are writing these characters kind of thing like yeah i don't know yeah and that's like referenced repeatedly too like that the police officers feel that they're getting a raw deal because they're doing stunts every day. And it's like, well, yeah, most cops are not doing stunts every day. They're just antagonizing people. Right.

Maybe we're watching these and people are like, oh, cops need more funding. Like they should make more. So the general public is like, let's give cops more money. I feel sorry for them. Well, that was a huge plot issue that I was having where, whatever, we're not rooting for Dennis Hopper, obviously. But he's asking for, I mean, comparatively to a police station budget, he's asking for a very low amount.

He's asking for $3.7 million. The LAPD in their last round of funding received over $1 billion. They have $3.7 million so the fact that people's lives are and i and i feel like the tension there is like well we don't want to give him what he wants it's like well there's 20 lives of working class people in the balance you you might want to just give this guy what he wants and find him later you know like so the fact that the the whole plot of this movie is the lapd counting their pennies like oh we don't have enough money it's like such bullshit they have a billion dollars yeah oh god

i hate the lapd so much it's like creeping in your mind they're trying to influence you subconsciously and it works because yeah so i totally and and the fact that like and they're also implying this entire movie that the average cop is jack traven traven traven i kept calling him jack tavern which i think is a way better name especially if his partner's name is harry temple you got a temple you got a tavern yeah big miss on the last name traven yeah traven was a was an absolute mess but they're also like in that the beginning in that beginning sequence with jeff daniels and keanu like keanu's like remind me why i do this job again he's like oh for a pension in 30 years i'm like cops aren't doing this this doesn't happen yeah were they like a special unit like were they swat or like i feel like they were like bomb squad or something but still cops

yeah still cops okay so it turns out that dennis hopper's not dead he plants a bomb on a bus in santa monica right where jack tavern it's travern wait but before before that happens dennis hopper says don't fuck with daddy don't fuck with daddy i have to mention that i just have to he's daddy he's our daddy daddy i love when people say daddy in movies yeah anyway that's all i wanted to interject don't fuck with daddy oh oh god okay so uh jack just happens to be right where this bus is and then dennis hopper calls jack on a pay phone and tells him that he still wants his money and that he has planted another bomb on a different bus and once that bus goes 50 miles an hour it's going to arm the bomb and after that if the bus goes

below 50 miles an hour the bomb will detonate the most amazing concept for a movie of all time i hate that it's cops because that's such a good idea it's so creative we'll talk about later where where that idea is stolen from oh okay not so creative but i thought it was it was stolen from like a it was like i mean it was it wasn't like stolen it was like a cool like line of influence but yeah it's such an amazing concept it's really yeah i agree okay so the police are not allowed to take any passengers off the bus or dennis hopper will blow it up and they have three hours to get dennis hopper his money which is now 3.7 million dollars i guess he's charging interest for pissing him off yeah exactly i would have doubled it i was like if i

was dennis hopper uh which would be interesting i would like the fact that he only went up 700 thousand dollars was like i was i was i wrote down like seems reasonable yeah given the whole yeah elevator shaft thing yeah right and it also makes 3.7 million it's such an arbitrary number like why wouldn't he go up to like 4 million i would have spent like 10 million dollars like yeah dr evil style right there is a moment where we find out that jack eats muffins and i think that just helps us think he's like a nice guy or something i don't know i really picked up on that like why add that moment yeah i don't know this cop doesn't eat donuts he eats muffins oh my god he's not like the other cops he's he's sentimental he chews gum yeah and he eats muffins ever seen a cop like this before i guess

the cops must be good he knows the bus driver's name you know what i mean good terms on the like the one that in the beginning. Oh, yeah. Who then immediately dies. Oh, my God. The one they set up to die. Yeah. That was, I mean, but again, I was like, that was effective storytelling.

But what a bummer. Yeah. Yes. So then we cut to the bus with the bomb on it. We see Annie. That's Sandra Bullock. She gets on the bus. Sam, the bus driver,

and the other passengers have no reason to suspect anything is wrong. They have no idea that the bomb is on this bus. They're just loving life on LA Metro. Been there. That's right. They're going from downtown to Venice, which is a long trip. Okay. Keanu rushes to find the bus he eventually catches up with it he manages to get on it he communicates to everyone what the situation is and by that point the bus has gone over 50 miles an hour so now they have to make sure they never go back below 50. one of the passengers has a gun and is freaking out because he has a gun. So this is like very problematic in a lot of ways. I think that he thinks he's being arrested for something else that he's done. He misreads the situation and panics.

That was how I was reading that. Me too. Yeah. And that's a very, whatever, that's a very charged writing choice that we'll talk about yeah but i also think maybe it was the beginning of being like this is what people do when they're afraid they like people are irrational in situations maybe i'm like over analyzing it but like that's now looking back on it i'm thinking that i totally agree yeah it's like there's like this was kind of a throwaway note but i was like this movie is an interesting examination of what your average person would do if they were faced with

the plot of speed like yeah a lot of different but yeah like he he's i guess the first bus passenger to freak the fuck out panic before everyone even knows what's going on yeah right so he pulls out a gun that gun ends up going off and hits Sam, the driver. So then Annie is right there. She takes the wheel. Things are kind of back under control for a moment. Jack finds the bomb, but realizes he can't dismantle it. Annie, meanwhile, is driving the bus, speeding through the city.

It's pretty chaotic. She has to blow through any obstructions, road blockages, other cars, a baby carriage full of cans. It was cans. What a flimsy, confusing setup because it makes no sense. I feel like the ultimate implication was that one woman was going to go redeem the cans for money which implies that she doesn't have a lot of money at very least but but i i don't know that it's just such a bizarro movie setup yeah i i think that sandra bullock genuinely does an awesome job in this movie where she's like,

she does a good job of being like, ah, did I just kill somebody? And then Keanu's like, no, no. And she's like, okay. And then she keeps striving like an iconic duo. Sandra Bullock, who's also in another Copaganda movie, I think a couple years before this, Demolition Man. So yeah, yeah, yeah yeah you're right i forgot that she had copaganda prior experience i mean she goes on to play a lot of cops you know right yeah

congeniality miscongeniality that is copaganda as well yeah and the heat yeah and the heat oh my gosh sandy i guess having a woman driving and like controlling the bus the whole time is kind of badass i don't know i thought that that was like i thought that yeah we'll talk about that yeah there's a i didn't hate that choice but then the more i learned about the production and writing process of the movie the more i was like it could have been better but whatever i don't i don't hold sandra bullock personally accountable i think she did a great job right right right okay so then they get on to a freeway that is not in use and jack and annie flirt while sam is dying there was a point in the movie where

i'm like did sam die and we didn't even find out because I would have been really but but I don't know I mean I guess like we're talking loose but I'm like if I were writing this movie I would have no idea when to shift the focus to each character like because for a long swath of the movie I'm like what happened to Sam he seemed like he was pretty mortally wounded right and then they just like whenever that like whenever the writer is like oh okay now we're gonna bring him back you know i would have liked to see this movie in theaters it sounds like it would have been a fun theater experience yeah i agree so then the lapd show up alongside the bus and they're figuring out how to get the passengers off but the news helicopters that are following the bus are like broadcasting what's happening and dennis hopper

is watching the news so he knows everything that they're doing um so then jack negotiates with dennis hopper to let sam the driver off the bus but then a woman named helen also tries to get off the bus and the bomber activates a small bomb that kills her. He has all these mini bombs around. Yes. Just in case the plot of the movie Speed happens and he needs it. He's got a bomb for every occasion. So he has all these little like Tamagotchi style bombs just in random locations in case something happens

yeah right yes then up ahead there's a large gap in the freeway but they managed to jump over it thanks to some good driving that was like one of the three things i remembered about this movie was that they jump a highway so good it's so good they would have been such goners this movie 50 feet like many action movies i'm not saying anything new here but the defying of gravity and other laws of physics do not apply yeah is staggering i kind of like that this movie really goes for it though where it's like there's just like so many points in this movie where not only would they have died but they would have died like by a wide margin yes but but the movie's like no 50 feet 50 feet it is what it is yeah they're trying to make you convinced

like they're not gonna make it like the edge of your seat watching they're like they can't make that jump you know but no it worked they do i do wish i could have seen this movie in theaters for the first time like it's uh it's there's so many moments where you're like oh if you're in a theater you would have been like like the baby moment the highway jump moment oh so many it's so fun yeah why is it cop a gandum yeah so they eventually get to the airport because that is restricted airspace where the helicopters can't go. And then Jack directs Annie to drive around the tarmac for a while. He tries to dismantle the bomb but is unsuccessful.

They are leaking gas now. and then meanwhile harry temple figures out who the bomber is so they go to his house but he has rigged it to explode and harry dies in the explosion so back at lax the cops unload the passengers off the bus to safety which happens after they figure out that like there's also a camera on the bus that the bomber is watching so they have to like create this like fake loop so that he doesn't notice that they're unloading the passengers love that plot point yeah right so smart jack and annie are the last to get off the bus which is the first climax of the movie the empty bus runs into a plane on the tarmac that I guess was empty. And there's a huge explosion.

And then Jack and Annie share a horny moment together. I was surprised that Sandra Bullock's first question wasn't, were there people on that plane? Exactly. Yeah, because I watched the movie twice. I'm like, am I missing something? Did they establish that they had evacuated the that they had evacuated lax i'm sure that that's what happened or would have had to have happened so it was a courier plane so that wouldn't have passengers but there would still you would think be like personnel there was a worker there was one worker who was like shit like and yeah he

runs away right the first time that kiano and sandra tumble together is that yes there's there are two tumbles and there are two climaxes and we just saw the first of both and when i was supposed to say when they tumbled i thought that i was like well it's not ideal but it's a charismatic exchange and yeah okay i guess i'll accept this ending a romantic thing like that would happen in a rom-com or something but also i thought it was funny but the only person that ever got hurt was sandra bullock like kianu never had a scratch on it yeah right isn't that strange i was like having trouble remembering exactly what like the specifics of the movie so there's that moment where keanu is trying to disarm the

bomb on the bus and then his little skateboard thing comes out from under him and i thought his ass like his ass would have been bleeding scraped off he would have been bleeding out of his butt cheeks to death and i wondered if that was going to be like i thought i thought at least you were going to get like a shot to his pants to be like wow my pants are gone but my my cheeks are great or whatever like i don't know what would have happened like missed opportunity for a cheesy joke his ass was dragging on cement at like 60 miles an hour like his ass would have been damaged for several minutes for a while he was still without a scratch and sandra bullock was cut up like she was because she's a delicate lady and jack is a tough man but i am glad that sandy sandy drives the bus till the fucking finish i like that's kind of feminism

that it's i mean that's 1994 feminism right there baby spice girls feminism okay so the bus explodes but the bomber doesn't know it exploded and he is still demanding his money so they are basically setting up this sting operation to catch him and capture him at the drop-off location but then dennis Hopper figures out what's going on, that like that video loop was made. You know, he's one step ahead of them. He gets the money and he takes Annie, who for some reason was hanging out at this handoff location.

We'll talk about that. But he takes her hostage and brings her onto the LA Metro. So Jack chases after them them and she has a bomb on her she's got a bomb strapped to her now she's the bomb that's feminism i totally forgot about this and it i was so frustrated because i was like okay you know what it wasn't perfect but sandra bullock's character was like critical in making the entire plot happen. Okay, there's much worse movies from this era. And then I totally forgot

that she's completely damseled at the end. I was so frustrated. And it sucks because you could still have that train sequence without damseling her. Yeah. Right. But she is completely incapacitated because a bomb is strapped to her and then she's handcuffed to a pole on the metro.

So she's completely immobile. She can't do anything but just wait for Jack to find the metro, fight Dennis Hopper. They're fighting on the roof. Dennis Hopper gets decapitated. Okay, that was incredible, though. And I must have, like, rewound that shot, like, 500 times. It's very good. I loved it.

I loved it. It was really well done, where you see it coming, and then you, they, I don't know why I'm about to be like, why don't we get a satisfying, like, campy decapitation shot? But when you get it with Dennis Hopper, it's so satisfying. Yes. I'm so glad you got to see his head get boink. It falls off.

Yeah. Several jokes are made at the expense of his decapitation. It's beautiful. It took me, maybe I'm the one brain cell person here but no it took me it took me a few times when keanu kept saying like when he didn't keep saying i kept rewinding it uh he said he said like well i'm taller than you and i was like what is he talking about i was like oh i don't understand what that means wait wait tell me what it means dennis hopper lost his head so now keanu's taller i think he was implying they were once the same height but now dennis doesn't have a head so keanu's taller than him i did not understand

that at all i have all these notes that are like his comeback is unrelated to the plot it is nonsensical yeah there are there are a lot of quips but i i don't think that one's the best i i don't like that one it's possibly the worst yeah i think it's the worst kiana's delivery doesn't help either because it doesn't emphasize a single word and so you're just like what is he talking about what does that mean what does it mean well now i'm taller than you or no he's like well i'm taller than you yeah there's no like now just like i guess i thought he was always taller than him you know what i mean i was just like right i was like i thought dennis hopper was like always i don't know but i guess

that i guess that maybe that line was written before anyone was cast oh maybe and they were they didn't know i also feel like dennis hopper was four inches shorter than him to begin with i think so i feel like dennis hopper is probably like 5 10 and keanu reeves is like 6 3 so like i mean i'm get i'm this is a pure guess but i feel like i could be right about this he does have 6 3 energy he does have 6 3 energy i've seen him in real life he's very tall you've saw how where did you see him in real life we've both had personal interactions with keanu reeves jamie and i have no let's repeat them let's repeat them let's please i love them you go first caitlin okay there was a i don't know if it was like special features

for something or just like some kind of or if it was like a documentary but it was some kind of it was an interview with the two leads of Bill and Ted Keanu Reeves and that other guy whose name I always forget Alex Winters Alex Winters yes so whoever was making whoever was like producing this like video interview needed a place to shoot and I was the program director of Nerd Melt at the time this comedy venue in LA and they asked if they could shoot there and I was like absolutely yes without a moment's hesitation and so Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters show up they get interviewed I have a picture of Keanu Reeves on my phone he drove up to the interview on his motorcycle. Of course. Oh my God. It was the coolest moment of my life. Jamie, what's your story? Keanu Reeves. So when I first moved to LA, I got a job working at Book Soup in West Hollywood, which I didn't realize at the time

was the bookstore to the stars. So we had a lot of, cause it's like on the sunset strip. And so it was like, to this day, I still have not had as many celebrity encounters cumulatively as I did in like my first, like six months living there. Cause it was,

it was a very cool place to work. I liked it a lot, but Keanu Reeves was one of our regulars and like he reads books first of all he reads books and he and i was like briefed because i worked in the back most of the time at like the back counter and they were like okay so keanu reeves comes every wednesday to buy a new like he buy he would buy one fiction book and one book of sudoku puzzles oh my heart and he would do sudoku on set i guess he didn't tell that to me but like he he would come on his motorcycle every wednesday evening so if you're doing the closing shift you knew that he was gonna come and he would

always call in advance and he'd be like hi this is mr reeves um are my are my books ready oh my god and i would be like yes they're ready and then he would like come on his motorcycle and he would give him his like fiction his new fiction book and his new sudoku book and then he would take off it was so. There were so many celebrities that were very, very not nice at that store. And Keanu Reeves was like a standout icon. Keanu Reeves, Emma Roberts, Amy Adams, the three nicest. And Miranda July, all very nice celebs.

Wow. Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John. Are they mean and nice? That doesn't surprise me. They made us evacuate the stores so they could shop of course Ellen is like the worst person right Elton John I'll give Elton John a pass because I even though he did make us evacuate the store I'm obsessed with him so I don't care like I was like you know what you deserve it you deserve the store right yeah um he and Ellen

made us empty out the store for him to come in and Ringo Starr came once he was nice oh I wouldn't know what he looked like to be honest I know he just I was like this could be any old British man but he was very nice yeah wow that Keanu experience is so beautiful it's just so beautiful and all it's regular and and he reads most importantly he reads and does Sudoku he reads. And does Sudoku. He's a puzzle boy. He's a puzzle boy. I'm a puzzle boy, too. I tweeted about that once, and I got so many responses from people who had had random encounters with Keanu. I just want to really quickly list my top two, because I forget if I've said this on the show before, but they both made me very happy. The first one, someone who had worked at an L.A. movie theater and Keanu Reeves came in in the late 2000s with like, I believe the anecdote included he was wearing his motorcycle helmet when he walked in.

And he like ordered a bunch of food and got one ticket for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Wow. Oh, my God. He saw it alone. That's a Woody Allen movie, but I want to move on. The second one is that there was once in like, I think the late 90s, early 2000s, a struggling actress's car broke down and she didn't know what to do. She was broken down on the side of an L.A., like a busy L.A. street. And who comes along but Keanu Reeves.

And he knows how to help her. And he like says, get out of the car. Don't worry. Get yourself a coffee, whatever. I'll help. He knows how to fix stuff. He fixes it. And then the best part of the story at the end is,

and who was that actress but Octavia Spencer? It was pre-famous Octavia Spencer. Oh my gosh. How wild is that? Keanu. He's an angel from heaven. He is. That is an angel. He's not real.

He can't be real. He can't be real. He's a perfect person. Also, that's an amazing story. That is so amazing. Because he didn't know that was going to be a famous person she just did it for anybody he's just got a good heart yeah can you imagine like being on the road and someone's like needs help and the first thing the first thought you have

is like i'm gonna help them and then you do it i mean i feel like how i don't know how different a person anyone could be if they knew how to fix cars yeah I guess if I knew how to fix cars I would be like I'll fix any car just to show what I can do but I don't know but also like if you see a broken down car even if you know how to fix cars the probability that you could you could fix any car with any problem like that's confidence you have you have that's a lot of skills too yeah a lot of skills yeah well thank you for sharing thank you for sharing i'm so happy that was a lot of kian but yeah he's i mean we've said it multiple times in the show he's an amazing person

yes absolutely uh okay so just a little bit of the recap left um dennis hopper has been decapitated then but but the train that they're on won't stop and there's a gap in the tracks ahead the tracks are not finished there's always a gap and it seems like what do you do you gotta speed up i mean la is always under construction they got that right it's true that is true and it seems like annie might die because he can't get her loose from like being handcuffed to the pole but he's like wait a minute i'm gonna speed up and somehow that makes it so the train goes upward onto street level and crashes up from underground onto the street yes and so they're saying as a redline user i could not make heads or tails of this but also this was 1993 so maybe i don't know who knows but they are safely make it onto the

street and then jack and annie make out on the street and then the credits start rolling yeah so that is the story let's take another quick break and then the credits start rolling. So that is the story. Let's take another quick break, and then we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

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some production history notes yes on this movie some of it is just like interesting and then others are more relevant to our discussion so the i mean top to bottom this movie is a male production oh yeah directed by jean de bont who is a dutch filmmaker who shereen as you pointed out started as a cinematographer became a director went on to direct another romp that i haven't watched in 500 years twister that's his other big movie uh it was written by graham yost who is uh nepotism but also is a very accomplished writer uh he's canadian nepotism imagine he really made it he did he did uh this was his first like major production but he went on to make, I'm pretty sure, several beloved propaganda series, such as Justified, which I haven't seen. So correct me if that's not

propaganda. I'm pretty sure it is. And The Americans, which is it's a complicated several layers of propaganda, but there are elements elements of it there's definitely elements of like serving your country nationalism to a lot of his work but that said i i've seen the first three seasons of the americans and i enjoyed it but anyways this was his script he started writing the script when he heard about a movie called runaway train Train that starred John Voight. That song? Runaway Train. Is that song for that movie? I wonder if it is because there is an original song

for Speed by Billy Idol. That's the ending credits song. Really? I didn't watch it. Whoa. The lyrics are really amazing. It's Speed, give me what I need. Blast me to heaven just for loving you okay that is that's very fucked up but i agree original billy idol song yeah love it um i of course was

referring to the soul asylum song runaway train oh with such lyrics as runaway train never going back wrong way on a one-way track that song i was thinking of the ozzy osbourne song and i had the wrong title in my mind oh that's so i have nothing yes correct anyway back to runaway train the movie so graham yost heard from his nepotism daddy about this movie called runaway train that starred john voight that has a similar ish premise the premise of runaway train is from you're not going to see this coming akira kurosawa so speed owes its success to a concept by akira kurosawa so maybe that's why it's good i don't know but never think you would say that would never think that's where that was going right so it's like this kind of it's an interesting way that this

movie was conceived like part of it has to do with the screenwriter's father misremembering the plot to runaway train and in the process of misremembering it kind of conceiving of a of speed um so that so anyway i thought that that that the way that this movie was conceived of was pretty interesting and was clearly produced because die hard had been such a success and so there were uh there's a whole uh scholarly journal wikipedia section on the various changes that went on during this movie the one that i thought was particularly worth mentioning is that joss whedon was brought on to rewrite this movie yeah and we've discussed the paradox of joss whedon and male writers who present themselves as feminists and later you learned that they were actually deeply abusive towards women we've had this

discussion so disappointing yeah it's the absolute worst we're not vouching for him in any way here that they were actually deeply abusive towards women. We've had this discussion. So disappointing. It's the absolute worst. We're not vouching for him in any way here. I think that we've had, I mean, I guess our deepest discussion was on the Matreon for the Cabin in the Woods episode, but we've had this discussion in the Avengers episode as well. All that to say, Joss Whedon, I guess,

is responsible for the majority of the dialogue in this movie as what the credited screenwriter Graham Yost said is that Joss Whedon was brought in a couple weeks before production and he basically rewrote the dialogue to fit the actors who had been cast which makes sense to me like he rewrote the villain lines to sound more like Dennis Hopper lines and rewrote the Jack lines to sound more like Keanu Reeves lines. Right. And he rewrote Annie's lines to sound like a love interest, which is what I wanted to hit on there is that. Right. The casting and the writing for this movie, it seemed like deeply studio notes in how it ended the way it

ended where right originally and this is a scholarly journal uh wikipedia but also um is from an entertainment weekly article from 2014 for the speed 20th anniversary but the Annie character was originally a black woman and a paramedic right oh my god yeah and which which actually makes a lot more sense because a paramedic would understand how to get somewhere fast in an emergency right right which is why she was that character was written that way to like justify why she'd be able to like take control of a bus and drive right yeah right and so so this is like a very frustrating point where yeah the the original script had annie as a black paramedic and then the role was offered to hallie berry she said no

i don't know why but she said no and then instead of pursuing other black actors they decided to change the character entirely and the character was then rewritten to be a driver's ed teacher that was more comic relief and that role was offered to ellen degeneres speaking of book soup customers oh my god i did not see that twist. Did not see that Ellen DeGeneres twist. I don't think I would have enjoyed that. So then Ellen was offered the part, presumably Ellen passed. I don't really have info on that.

And then I feel like the final phase of studio notes took hold when they said, well, let's reimagine Annie as a love interest. And then the part was whitewashed and removed of all professional authority or knowledge and it became a random white woman played by Sandra Bullock named Annie and so essentially as far as I can understand, Joss Whedon wrote basically that entire part based off of Sandra Bullock's existing persona at that time. Right. Also, the driver's ed teacher can drive, the paramedic can drive, and Sandra Bullock has gotten a ticket for speed.

Her license was revoked for speeding, and that's why she's good at driving this bus. And that's all we know about her, too. Yeah, that's all we know about her too yeah that's all we know and that she she misses her car yeah so i found i mean i'm glad that that it's i feel like we're talking all the time about how like studio notes potentially influence scripts but this one is like pretty well documented yeah and the way that this character evolved was is just like so typical and frustrating where it was like for sure it sounds like the originally written version would have been the most effective right

and was ditched because here's one of my big issues well i mean i've got many issues with this otherwise perfect movie that's amazing sure um that her becoming the like de facto bus driver happens almost randomly where like while it is cool that like we do see a woman driving a bus and like you know for the most part keeping her cool under pressure and like keeping the bus going the speed it needs to be going and like helping everyone stay alive and stuff like that's cool to see in this like way that you know it's this prolonged part of the movie too you know she's necessary to the plot of the movie but her being the bus driver basically happens randomly where like jack is highly skilled or so we are led to believe and

that's why he's that's why it's important that he's an active participant in the story but annie wasn't given any special skills or training by the screenwriter unless you count that she like speeds and then gets pulled over for it and like yeah maybe it was like they were trying to be subtle when she first when jack first gets on the train she like stands up to him and she's like oh true trying to take charge so i mean that's i'm i'm reaching i am reaching but like i had the same thought though like she was like at least had the confidence to put herself into that rambunctious role yeah yeah right yeah i i sort of i was i feel like it would have really helped the story truly only helped the story if she had had more knowledge of driving right or just like more character like i just like we don't we knew nothing about her

really and sandra bullock is a great actress and that you still kind of like liked watching her and she was like funny and stuff. But yeah, we don't know details like she's on her way to work, which is why she's catching the bus. But what's her job? We never find her job. Also, she is not credited with a last name. I noticed that immediately. She and three okay so she doesn't have a last name which gave me very Ali from Lady Gaga A Star Is Born vibes where it's like Jackson Maine that's a part of what

everything we know about that character that's canon Ali period like that's all you know I mean I hate that movie so I'm glad it's complete garbage but i don't know fair enough hard agree but anyways like i mean the the female protagonist not having a last name is pretty glaring and then on top of that the only three passengers on the bus that don't have any name at all or even a nickname are women of color on the bus which is like that's something that i don't know i mean i guess we should we should talk about annie and then yeah get to the people on the bus but annie i mean it sucks because it's like i totally agree with you shereen that everything i like about annie has more to do with sandra bullock's performance yeah than how the character is actually written

because there's really not much there there's nothing there and this happens a lot in action movies where the protagonist is a man with action movie skills like he's good at fighting he's good at shooting guns or whatever other like action movie skills you might have and then the one female character usually is just kind of like along for the ride or if she does have a special skill it's not really anything that that allows her to participate in the action parts of this movie this movie doesn't really fall into that category because like she does end up driving the whole thing so the fact that she ends up driving the bus and like her actions are very important to

this movie but again it's kind of random but she again she's not equipped with any like special training or action movie skills she ends up needing a lot of like help and guidance from the man who does have these skills she's constantly like asking jack what she should do but if she was given if she was like a paramedic for example and like had to drive an ambulance for her job like she would just have more agency or even a driver's ed teacher she would have had a like an authoritative view of the road like yeah multiple elements like first the fact that this character was whitewashed from the first draft and then that she was also stripped of her agency or authority in the situation on top of that i thought it was really interesting and like

frustrating that the two additional action movies in this action movie at the beginning and the end yeah we're not in that original draft that included a paramedic and so I think that by the time the character had been whitewashed and stripped of agency that made it all the easier for people doing rewrites to damsel her because theoretically previous versions of the character would have been much more difficult to damsel because you knew more about her and like I feel like they almost take advantage of the fact that the audience knows nothing about Annie to make it plausible that she would be easily damseled by the Dennis Hopper character because we don't know is she a very naive person we have kind of no idea and so when that happens it's like I guess I have I don't really understand whether this is something the character I didn't

think it would be something the character would go for but also it's a police authority figure intervening and maybe she would say okay I'll go with you it just right it obscures what she's about so much that it that it makes it believable that she would be damseled like that and that sucks I know yeah another drawback of not equipping her with any special skills or training or agency like if she did have some reason that would justify her being at that like money drop-off location like if she was actively helping out with that situation the story would make more sense because right now there's absolutely no reason why a civilian would have been brought there like she probably

i don't know admittedly i don't know anything about like police procedure i don't know yeah it seems like she's like waiting for jack for like a date to get off work i'm like if i were sandra bullock yeah i'd be like bring me home i'll like look up your badge number later or whatever like if i need to date a cop well because she's in the ambulance and he's like i'll be right back and then he's not right back and she's concerned like where is jack that makes no sense she would have been probably taken to a hospital because she did sustain injuries yes they just put like nail polish remover on her they're like she's fine so it makes absolutely no sense that she is there and literally the only reason the script

brings her along is so that she can be kidnapped and damseled right yeah she's so frustrating she's an accessory for sure it stinks it stinks especially because up to that point not and this was prior to me knowing about the writing history of the Annie character, my general feeling was like, okay, it's definitely not perfect, but this could have been way worse. Right. And then the more you learn and then the more the movie goes on, you're like, oh, God. But the third act definitely reeks to me of studio notes, which is a good and bad thing. Because do I dislike the train sequence not at all i think the train sequence is awesome i love seeing

keanu be like speed it up like whatever the fuck he says you're like oh he's doing it again i love it also we never see the dead driver ever there's no remorse for the dead driver or anything in that train like get out even when they crash and tumble do we ever find out if sam is like no no i mean the driver of the train the train yeah oh yeah i mean sam is okay he got help yeah he was good we hope that he made it out alive and well but yeah a lot of people die and um there's not a sometimes a tear is shed but otherwise it's like all right let's move along even harry temple no one cried for harry temple not even keanu did have like a breakdown he went i mean he had an outburst but like yeah then annie quickly

calmed him down because she does that as a woman yeah she's very nurturing so she fixed him yeah the romantic couple in this movie do have the superpower to get over extreme trauma very quickly because sam like realistically which obviously it's like what's even the point of having that discussion for this movie but like if you were annie and it's clear that she and sam are friends they see each other every day he's shot it's very unclear at least to me as an audience member if like if it's something he will survive or not and then she's kind of up front like la la la am i going fast enough you're cute and i'm like flirting and me there is like your friend he's and then and then when you do find out that sam is going to

survive he's directly behind her like she didn't even talk to him once no yeah should we talk about the bus passengers i mean i i have a whole yes do you have anything else does anyone have anything else to say about annie's character um i'll just i mean like i do think it's so hilarious that flirting is still a thing even in the face of like certain death and like there's a moment where she takes off her cardigan and kianu's like looking at her being like oh she's taking off her cardigan like it's a pheromone hit and he's like wow yeah and it's also like trauma bonding is real yes that is true like that's there's a lot there it is real but it but this is like the most wedged in love story oh for sure i agree and disagree like of all of that like we've we've dealt with so many implausible forced love stories but shereen i agree trauma bonding could be a strong argument

for this and they even they do call attention to yeah yeah twice and then but then again they are just two hot people you know they found each other and hot people near each other will fall in love and kiss in a movie happens every time i mean the ending the last thing she says is she wants to base the relationship off sex i kind of loved that for them i was like you know what iconic yeah have a ton of sex and then maybe they stop talking a week from the end of the movie we don't know we have no idea i mean speed two didn't have keanu she is dating someone else in speed two yeah so i mean yeah i guess canonically they were fuck buddies and then they weren't oh i kind of loved that so that's annie um whatever the love story is very very

forced but that's i don't maybe it's just because that's like far from one of my my more intense criticisms of the movie that the love story like is so corny and sucks, but I don't know. It didn't bother me as much as other elements. Well, I think maybe that was on purpose because part of the reason they cast Keanu is because he's attractive to the ladies, as they said. And so maybe they added that element also to appeal to their women, what they imagine straight women watchers. You know what I mean? So it's like, maybe that's what they were going for too.

Like everyone's satisfied with this movie. We ticked all the boxes. Yeah. That is a thing in Hollywood where like executives and, you know, people who are giving all these studio notes are like, well, this isn't action movies and girls hate action. They like love and those are the rules. So we have to put love in the action movie so that women will

come to see this and it's like do you know that all genders will come for both of those themes exactly yeah yeah everyone wants to see keanu and sandy fuck like that's yeah they do that desire knows no no bounds the sequel to speed is not speed 2 Cruise Control. It is actually The Lake House. It is. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw The Lake House in theaters. Same.

So did I. Do you know that Sandra Bullock won the MTV Movie Award for Most Desirable Woman? For Speed? For this movie. Wow. Most Desirable Woman. That's a category. That was.

Or it was the mtv movie awards are like so i mean i covered that briefly in lolita podcast where there was a an adaptation of lolita that was nominated for best movie kiss like the mtv movie awards fucking suck like i'm uh most desirable woman is also the most creepy way to phrase that award truly yeah that's the award that is the award most desirable women i hope she uses it as like a toilet paper dispenser but yeah it's like every action movie you can think of i mean not everyone but like every james bond movie every mission impossible there's some type of like hotness for the guy and also uh romance for the ladies like assumed ladies right yeah but you know it's the same but yeah as far as the secondary and tertiary characters who are women as far as like the opening elevator sequence there's a woman who is really scared to get

off the elevator and she's basically presented as this like woman being quote-unquote hysterical and that being treated as an obstacle like it often is in movies right that same woman loses her shoe yeah that's what i was laughing about my shoes my shoe and it's like it's because women be loving shoes um that was so funny to me also the way that that sequence is shot okay well for i had i had uh i had written down uh feminist icon ha ha he he lady where there's a woman in in that first sequence where she's like she's got this very like she has a blonde blowout because it's 1994 and every time we see her we don't know anything about her but she's always going haha or he he or she's whispering to a man like

like she's flirting yeah she's just like we're gonna fuck later right and then when you see her pulled out of the elevator eventually it's like you see up a woman's skirt during the elevator scene you see like a woman's butt when she's being pulled out like the way that particularly in that sequence it doesn't happen quite as much in the bus sequence right but particularly in the elevator sequence there's a lot of like like very i felt like intentionally shot yes up this skirt or like skirts riding up of of the female characters for sure like they did not need to position the camera that way the wardrobe could have been different like you know women wear pants

sometimes it was very intentional to like very to show these like, this hot butt, sexualized, in this little underwear. Yeah. It reminded me of the office scene in Die Hard at the beginning, where you see a woman topless for no reason. For no reason. Other than they're like, we gotta titillate the crowd at the beginning.

Like, I think it was like very similar. Yeah. Motivations there. For sure. Yeah. And then as far as the women on the bus, Jamie, you mentioned that many of them are women of color, but they do not speak ever really. No, you just see like close up shots of them being afraid.

Right. We do not know their names or any information about them. The only thing women do is be afraid in this whole movie. Yes. And they whole movie. Yes. And they're great at it. One more like kind of secondary character. Who is given a name. And a small arc I suppose.

Is Helen. Played by Beth Grant. A notable character actor. She is made to be similarly. Quote unquote hysterical. To the point that it gets her killed because she's trying to get off the bus after being repeatedly told that she can't get off the bus or the bus will explode but she's just painted as again a very common thing in action movies this happens happens in horror movies, too, where, like, a woman will just be her,

again, quote-unquote, hysteria that has been ascribed to this character makes her abandon all, like, logic and sense of reason and... That's what women do. Like, you know, that's what they're saying women put we put ourselves in danger right it's like um no the only not hysterical woman in this movie is that one lady cop that i don't think she has a name maybe it's on her shirt or something but the one

lady cop that's like talking to jeff daniels for like one moment yeah i wrote that too and i was like well ultimately it's a copycat a piece of it's like well i guess it's a wash but yeah it's like the lady cop does all this investigative work off screen yeah and then just shows up and she's like i figured out who the bad guy is and then jeff daniels was like that's feminism and that's feminism oh my god oh yeah i wanted to just give another shout out to uh beth grant uh who is also in another movie we covered recently uh to wong fu yes she is she's in that as well she's also in little miss sunshine we on the bank of castle have a good character actor yep so there's that

uh there there are a number of good character actors in this movie but yeah i mean there's i would say that there is for me there were like four passengers that had discernible arcs and it was helen who is the only other woman we meet which is an another white woman who has killed immediately then there is ortiz yeah who the most we learned about his background is that he has a wife and he's tough the first thing kiara says to him is he calls him gigantor which i did not like that was like okay sir like at least ortiz is like my name is ortiz and he's like okay ortiz i guess i'll call you that instead of gigantor yeah that was so random to me i was like what i had to I had to rewind it. I was like, he called him Gigantor? I was like, was that established in any way? That's a Joss Whedon line.

That's a Joss Whedon line. And Ortiz has at least some sort of, he is actively involved in the plot from there on. Same goes for the Yokel guy who, I will say, that was one of the first things that I noticed once Sandra Bullock was on screen is that he's like low-key I feel like it wasn't known as like harassment like public transit harassment but he was harassing her at the beginning of that movie and she's like um I'm

and honest like unfortunately I took note of her strategy because I'm like that's not the worst thing I've ever heard she's like there's gum on my seat I have to move I was like oh I might use that in the future so that guy they gave him so much character though like he was taking pictures of the disaster part and then he was just like he had

this weird intense moment he's like I shouldn't be here and it's just like they could have spent that time making a woman talk right absolutely who gives a shit about him no the most hated character to me i yeah i didn't give a shit about him when he almost died at the end i'm like bye like whatever who cares sorry but and and then the last character that you learned something about i don't know if you ever learned his name is the guy who mistakenly shoots

sam the bus driver at the beginning of the movie which i had a lot of like issues with where it's like okay you're putting this movie on a bus which is going to imply lower income people are going to be on this and i feel like they they it's a diverse group of people on the bus. So you're like, okay, where is this going? And then immediately the first person of color you get to know on the bus pulls a gun, is assumed to have committed a crime. Yeah. And that's why he pulls the gun and then shoots somebody. And I was like, this fucking sucks like I don't know who is responsible for writing this but it was it was just like so 1994 where this setting specifically gives you such an interesting

opportunity to get to know like working class Angelenos and it just kind of it misses that opportunity and then like reinforces negative stereotypes on top of that i was just so bummed out by just every writing instinct with the characters on the bus right because instead they spend way more time on the tourist guy from who knows where but like it's like this white guy played by alan ruck he doesn't even go here he doesn't even go here he's out of town. Like, who cares? No disrespect to Alan Rock, whatever. Live your life. And clearly, Jean de Bourne liked him because he was also a twister. Oh, yeah, he was.

And then even before Keanu gets on the bus, there's a chunk of the movie where, like, Keanu commandeers a guy's vehicle to try to catch up with a bus yeah he's credited as jaguar owner uh he's played by actor glenn plumber who shows up in speed to cruise control btw he was great in this movie i liked watching him but but his license plate did say tune man it did say tune man and then he also at one point he does identify as maurice oh okay he does have a name but he's not credited as that name in the credits but then i went back and watched i'm like i wrote him down as maurice but then apparently whoever made the credits wasn't even watching the movie very carefully because they're just like jaguar owner but like so you've got keanu who's like waving his badge and gun around points a gun in this black man's face being like

i need your car and just like i was like how is this going to like because i didn't remember exactly what happened yeah during that moment well there's a moment because he says the cop comes up and the maurice immediately says this car isn't stolen like as if like that's what he's going to assume yeah with a black man driving a jaguar and then keanu's like has another quip being like well now it is it is now because i'm stealing it and then he ruins his car oh my gosh it was it was difficult to watch yeah that scene was really frustrating because it felt again like that was a scene where i was like okay this is being shot in 1993 is there going to be some attempt at commentary on how lapd officers would have very rightfully been perceived at this time especially but then it did like you're saying shereen it just like devolves into

quips and they take that really charged setup and they just they're like whoop and they and they just turn it into like t hee ha ha and well that makes me think about the casting of joe morton as mac the police captain he's also a black man and i'm not saying there weren't any like black police officers on for sure i mean absolutely there were at this time but i wonder because this is like such a copaganda piece and this was happening in the wake of the rodney king riots that was an intentional i wonder if that was a very yeah i feel like that was a very intentional choice to be like well how can the lapd be racist we've got a black police captain in the movie speed and it's like yeah yeah right i want to yeah i want to link to a few resources on that topic in in the notes of this episode as well because that definitely like is

at this point like it's been a trope that has been recognized and written about. There are a lot of black police officers and police. Yeah. In movies and TV. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like particularly now too.

Yeah. Even in like Brooklyn nine, nine or whatever, even in these like funny copaganda sitcoms or whatever. Watchman is a big one. Yeah. Watchman. Watchman was a big one yeah uh watchman watchman was a big one uh i black klansman was one that i saw brought up a lot uh i just watched mayor of east town uh that's a

yet another show where the chief of police is there are so many yeah there there is like a huge trend of casting black actors as influential cops and not and caitlin like you're like there it's not as if that doesn't happen it absolutely does but just making that choice in media and like popular media specifically it's like it comes with a lot of yeah baggage that's 100 intentional because it's because you're assuming that they have to climb up the ranks to even get to that position they have a lot of respect you know and then they can't be racist because they're being told to do by black men you know what i mean like it's i don't know oh bad boys that's another that's another big yeah yeah i mean there's there's a

really good article i read about it from black art in america by a writer named steve chambers that i want to um link in the description because yeah i don't feel like i can talk about it with any amount of authority but it definitely is like a trope that has been kind of on if not on the rise definitely continued up to like right as we're recording this episode with no real sign of stopping yeah and yeah and i feel like that is like that kind of speaks to the limitations that like having strictly a representation conversation can have at times as like the view of like well if there is a woman or a person of color or a queer person apart then i have no more questions like great we did it we did it we did our job yeah like our asses

are covered kind of thing yeah yeah where it's like well there's clearly like context is necessary as there would be for any actor and imagine if wesley snipes was the lead like i wonder like that would be a huge copaganda piece right especially after rodney king that's sure interesting to think about yeah and then on the other hand it's like yeah i would have liked to see wesley snipes in this part like it's just he would have been great i love wesley snipes he would have been fucking great. But it would be a much different movie. Yeah.

And I feel like, again, it would have been cool to see actors in the part of Jack as like renegade guy versus LAPD cop who we love and respect. I do want to shout out Joe morton who plays the police captain because he's another iconic character actor who's been in a bajillion movies i know he rules he's an iconic character actor and is uh i was looking through his um whatever his imdb yes yes and he has played cops and like high ranking cops several times in his career. And he also plays a lot of doctors. So but I'm always happy to see Joe Morton. It's this is just the fucking worst. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think the police chief would still be black if Halle Berry was cast? I bet not. I bet they'd be like, well, we filled our quota. Yeah. They tried with one black woman, the only woman they can think of that was popular. And then they moved right along. That's what makes me so... They knew no other black women. They just didn't know any other black women. That's kind of what that says to me too.

It's just like, oh, well, Halle Berry can't do it. Well, I guess we better start asking white women as if there were no extremely talented black actresses working at that time. I bet it was also like a box office draw thing too which is like literally like well you know there aren't any other black actresses who will pull like be a box office draw but hollywood that's your fault for never giving black women yeah the opportunity to be in like big budget movies and like develop a box office draw yeah right but

also sandra bullock wasn't a big a huge deal back then like she had been like demolition man but i think this really catapulted right her career in a different way so it wasn't like she was a huge box office draw that's true so yeah but they were willing to they were like more willing to see her potential as a white woman. Right. That's true. And it's very seldom that they would give the same opportunity to a black woman. 100%. Or any woman of color. And that goes back to a conversation that we've been having for years,

and I'm sure we'll be having for more years, of the fact that the entire, at least the upper production team in this movie were all white guys and and so it stands to reason that no one was even thinking to ask these questions yeah and it seems like it was a very cookie cutter 90s um okay this is our representation quota we're not going to think about the context of representation whatsoever and we'll just shift these puzzle pieces around until we've like done whatever the 1994 equation for a box office hit is and it worked is is the frustrating thing too is that yeah this movie was wildly successful it made back its budget 10 times it made 350

million dollars in 94 money on a the numbers are a little unclear it was budget was like somewhere between 30 and 37 million dollars i do think it's interesting because keanu is biracial like he's not a white guy but i think hollywood treats him as a white guy you know what i mean like i don't think that they i 100 don't think they were like we're casting a biracial person they were just like we're casting keanu reeves he's cool you know what i mean like i don't think they think that critically about uh anything right because he say he he has native hawaiian and chinese ancestry but hollywood codes him white yeah very wide passing yeah god i love kianu he also kianu was also mourning river phoenix on the set of this movie he's had a hard life i love him i love him so much that was the reason i wanted

to pick this movie just i told you in the email anything with kianu yeah i'm i'm honestly i love him so much that was the reason i wanted to pick this movie just i told you in the email anything with kiana yeah i'm i'm honestly i'm so thrilled that you did pick this movie because there's so much more to talk about than i remembered there was yeah same and um on that note we've got to speed up this bus yes yeah yeah we're gonna speed up this bus because i have therapy in six minutes oh yeah okay so we established that it does pass the Bechdel test between Annie and Helen. They talk about their commute to work, which is not a man. So amazing feminist moment. Famously, commute is genderless.

Incredible. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares, looking at it from an intersectional feminist lens. I mean, I suppose I would give this like a 1.5. It gets a little hot because there are kind of comparable 90s action movies that usually get like a half a nipple or zero nipples this one gets a little bit more because you do have a woman as a driving force of the movie pun intended and is made to be far more important than many other the single woman in an action movie is she's helping to drive the narrative again literally but she is damseled she is forced into this like very wedged in love story that didn't need to be there the few

women who get to speak at all are white women the women of color are relegated to the background and, you know, we learn nothing about them. Other women are made to seem hysterical as an obstacle for the men to deal with. So lots of problems still that are very typical of the genre. So I'll give it 1.5 i will give one nipple to kianu and i will give my half nipple to joe morton the end um i guess yeah i guess i'll give this a one nipple because it's which has nothing to do with the movie's watchability which it's like uh it it pains me to say that in spite of the fact of like all these issues we've been talking about with this movie i'll still watch it again it's so fun to fucking watch it's there are very few movies that

can like make me feel like i'm watching it for the first time again. Yeah. I don't know. Like, it's just really well. They did. They convinced us to like this movie. Like, they did their job. That's saying something. Yeah. Yeah. You're totally right.

Like, we're not prime candidates to really want to watch this movie again. But it's like. We're cop haters. And they tricked us to loving this movie. I love this movie. It's rude. It's very rude. The copaganda hit so hard. Like, it's i love this rude it's very the propaganda hit so hard like it's uh so yeah i i can't rate this movie much higher because just the more i learned about the

production about the movie the more frustrating it becomes of the fact that the female lead was whitewashed and stripped of agency in advance of shooting uh the fact that it is such a clear piece of copaganda the fact that the bus is half populated by people of color who we never get to know and yet we're like talking to this guy for this white guy from wisconsin for large swaths of scenes for some reason like there's just all this stuff that is so 90s and also the context of like when it was filmed and came out right just strikes me as so such a gross overt piece of specific copaganda for the lapd specifically that is just upsetting it's just it fucking sucks and then on the other hand it's so much fun to watch i do appreciate that like and and i do think

most of the things that i like about annie are that i just like sandra bullock and her performance is really fun and kianu is so funny and good and hot and yeah i'm gonna give it one nipple and i'm gonna give the nipple to feminist icon the bus hell yeah shireen what about you uh i want to give keanu five nipples but i won't do that um i i will give keanu a single nipple and i agree with everything that jamie said i will give half a nipple to just the fact that sandra bullock is a badass driver which i appreciated but that's about it. Yeah. It's just,

the fact that this happened so quickly after the Rodney King riots, it's just so fucked up to me. Like that is another level of copaganda. That is, that's fucked up. So, I mean,

but they still managed to make me have a good time. And that's, that is troubling that it worked so well i know it's only because of keanu i really think so if it was like that guy was stephen baldwin or whatever yeah yeah like fuck no like i wouldn't give a shit about this movie yeah right again this movie has the basically the same premise as Die Hard. And I would not vouch for Die Hard for a second. No. But it is Keanu really carries this movie.

That's a game changer. Well, Shireen, thank you so much for joining us. Yes. Thanks for having me. Of course. Thanks for having me just a fangirl about Keanu. And I love the stories that Jamie said. I'm going to think of those for the rest of my life.

There's more where that came from I mean I'm waiting for my interaction it will happen one day if there is a god it's soon Shireen where can people follow you online check out any

stuff any plug plug away I'm on twitter at shirohero666 uh s-h-e-e-r-o-h-e-r-o then 666 and i'm on instagram at just shirohero my website is in one of those bios and yeah if you you can just google me if you want to i don't i have a poetry book on amazon but i'm trying to make my second one happen because the first one is on amazon and uh it's also like very um it's like from when i was 16 to 26 so it's kind of like not my best writing so i'm uh hoping that other one comes out soon but if you want the first one you can go get it on amazon if you want to yay uh you

can follow us on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast we've also got a patreon aka matreon ever ever heard of it which has an enormous backlog of bonus episodes. Triple digits. My goodness. If you subscribe, you get two of those bonus episodes a month, plus access to that back catalog. It's $5 a month, and you can access that via patreon.com slash Bechtelcast.

And hey, while you're at it, if you're in the mood for a little slice of merch you can go to our t-public store and that's at t-public.com slash the Bechtel cast because sometimes you got to throw the the in there to really fuck with people's heads keep them on their toes remember Remember in the social network when Justin Timberlake is like, drop the the. It should just be Facebook. It's cleaner.

That's what we should have said to TeePublic, but we didn't. Yeah, we did not say drop the the. We should have gone to TeePublic headquarters, wherever the hell that is. Drop the the it's cleaner that's the only redeeming moment of Justin Timberlake's

entire life which is wild so that's where you can find us if you'll excuse us we have to go I think the bus is about to get here Caitlin yeah yeah yeah we've gotta get on the bus to go to work I'm sure it'll be fine about to get here, Caitlin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got to get on the bus to go to work. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Nothing to see here. Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers.

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