The Bechdel Cast - Spy Kids with Katherine Leon

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

Spy Jamie and Spy Caitlin track down special spy guest Katherine Leon to chat about Spy Kids. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @katherineleon on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 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. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

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

and of course, the culture. 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. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Should you choose to accept this mission for kids? My name is Jamie Loftin. And my name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our feminist podcast about movies, about spies, and about kids.

We're pivoting. Exclusively just those things. Caitlin, the podcast bubble has burst. You have to be more niche than ever. It's too broad we can only talk about spies who are also kids and the media they're in directed at them so that means we can talk about agent cody banks too you and one oh i mean i meant like t.o.o as well yeah i guess that that is is there any other kids who are is posse miss girl kids whom is spies well harriet the spy harriet oh my god there's actually quite a lot of media in this sub sub sub genre we should have done spy september

there is so many spy movies for kids. I like that. Also, Nancy Drew is kind of a spy. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I loved Nancy Drew so much. I love those books. Isn't Barb Nancy Drew now? There's a new Nancy Drew and now it's Barb from Stranger Things. Am I making this up? Oh, I didn't think it was Barb, but there was a movie that came out that was in theaters for, I think, two days. Starring Emma Roberts? Or was that a different one? That was a movie that came out that was in theaters for, I think, two days. Starring Emma Roberts? Or was that a different one? That was a different one.

That was my, I think that was my era, Nancy Drew. Yeah, 2007. There was one that came out in 2019. There was? Okay, I'm not crazy. Got like brushed under the rug. Oh! I know.

Unbelievable. Anyway, so we talk about the representation of women and kids yes yeah yes and uh we use something called the spy test to determine whether or not the kids in the movie are watching our spies the spectral test it's this is our wildest episode yet hopefully this isn't your first episode um yeah we talk about the betrayal of women in movies especially when there's both spies and children uh-huh and then we use the bechdel test uh as a jumping off point and that of course is a media metric created by cartoonist allison bechdel also it's known as the Bechdel-Wallace test. Yes. And it requires that two female identifying characters or two spies in a movie.

Spies of any gender, really. Talk to each other about something other than a man or a spy man. Right. A man who's spying. Alison Bechdel, you know, is she a spy? Not that we know of. Or maybe she's just that good. Wow. I hadn't

considered that. What if we found out Alison Bechdel was both a great cartoonist and icon and in the CIA? That would be... What a cover she's got. I used to want my parents to be spies so bad because of this movie. Because of this movie? Yeah. Oh my god. I got so

into spy culture after this. I'm so excited. Okay. So let's get into it. We're covering Spy Kids. We are. And we have a guest, as we always do. She is a dear friend of ours.

She is a photographer. She's a producer of many comedy shows around Los Angeles. She's helped out at various of our live shows, including the show we did at San Francisco Sketch Fest and the New York Comedy Festival. People often confused her for our super producer Sophie, when it is actually Catherine Leon. I loved getting mistaken for Sophie. It was an honor. Oh, it was an honor. You're welcome. this episode has truly been i think years in the making i think before you established you were having a podcast before we were even friends the only thing i knew about you is that you love spy that's the only thing i needed you to know

that's a good spy yeah wow yeah that's really throwing me off your, you know, a real, a spy probably wouldn't love a spy movie so much. Right. Because it would, you know, give people. Give away all the secrets. Yeah, it would be a dead giveaway. But they're kids. I'm not a kid. We're not kids.

But are you a spy? Maybe. Okay. That's what, that was my way of telling you. There should have been a spy, there should be a spy adults spinoff. I agree. Well, there's sort of a spinoff called Machete starring Danny Trejo. I don't think we established that as a real spinoff.

It's not a real spinoff, but it is. There's a whole Machete series directed by the same director of Spy Kids, Robert Rodriguez. A movie franchise starring Danny Trejo playing a character, think named Machete who is also his character's name in Spy Kids. We all want it to be a spin-off of Spy Kids. But we can't be sure. I wouldn't be surprised

if Robert Rodriguez snuck in a little reference in Machete just for people's headcanon. Yeah, because that is his code name so in that series is that his real name or is that a code name i don't know no one's ever seen machete so this is like we're just really guessing maybe it's a direct spin-off it's really clearly established at the beginning and we just don't know we just truly don't because we did not watch

it right but this is i mean this was my intro to danny trejo for sure this is my intro to a lot of famous actors yeah to the point where like watch when we were watching it back as a group last night i didn't realize how many like i recognized tony chaloup but i didn't like when i was a kid i was just like oh oh, that's Alexander Minion. Yeah, I didn't know who Alan Cumming was. I was like, that's fluke. That's just. Was this everyone's first Alan Cumming movie? It was definitely mine.

No, I saw this movie for the first time when I was 32. So, no. My first Alan Cumming was Josie and the Pussycats, I think. I mean, there's no bad way to be introduced to him. Absolutely not. He's the greatest of all time. And I think this was the first time, unless I had already seen, yeah, I'm pretty sure this would have been the first time I had seen Antonio Banderas, although maybe I'd

seen Zorro. I'm not sure. I probably saw Zorro. Like, I'm sure I've seen Zorro, either the first or second. I don't know if the second one had come out yet, but I definitely saw the first one. I don't know. I don't remember the order, but there's so many famous. Terry Hatcher is in this.

Yes. I probably didn't even know who Cheech and Chong were. Cheech Marin is in it. Yeah. Mike Judge is in this. Yeah, definitely didn't know who Mike Judge was. All I cared about was carmen and oh yeah like i just wanted to be carmen and junie i think really an iconic siblings movie that was my whole thing with caitlin was trying to prove to her that

spy kids was a perfect movie was that i was like this is the most accurate representation of me and my brother in any movie depicted anywhere okay was. Was your age gap similar with your brother? I think so. It was four years, which seems kind of similar. Yeah, my brother and I, this was, I remember seeing this movie, and maybe this is bad, but, like, the kids in this movie, it is, like, very realistic how much they beat the shit out of each other. Like, you don't usually see that in movies.

You see maybe a light verbal argument, but Carmen and Junie. Junie throws a dumbbell at his sister. After she kicks him off of a jungle gym. Like she kicks him off of a jungle gym. He falls to the ground. He falls on like hard, like stone.

She like swings off. And then when she turns around, he picks up a weight and tries to throw it at her and hits a plant or something. Which I don't know. I remember seeing this movie and being like, oh, my God, kids are supposed to hit each other. Thank God I've been doing this to my brother. But it was like this would probably have been 2001 would have been around the time because my brother and I have like the same age gap where my brother got mad at me and this is when I was like losing teeth left and right and he planned a sting operation well I was he a spy he's definitely he's no he's just a devious young man where he he must have been like

four or five and he like crawled up onto my bed and he slammed his butt onto my head and i lost two teeth because i went and because i forget what he's like you stole my pokemon card oh my god but slammed my head and then i got ten dollars from the tooth fairy oh wow maybe your brother was the tooth fairy he was so mad and my parents thought it was really like we got in trouble but my dad was like so you sat on jamie's head he's like yeah really hard yeah i would have been in like second second or third grade or something when this movie came out so you guys were the target demo the right age yeah yeah so officially katherine what is your history with this film your relationship etc I can't remember seeing it in theaters I know that like I don't recall seeing it in theaters

but I definitely have the VHS it is currently on my dining room table because I tried to give it you keep showing it to me I tried to give it to you um but I just watched it a lot as a kid and like a big thing for me I think was being able to see like Hispanic representation. And I was like, oh, these kids are like they kind of look like like I guess Judy doesn't look like my brother. But I was like, Carmen kind of looks like me as like a child. And I kind of saw a lot of my family and like their family. And that was like cool. And that was probably one of my first like earliest movies.

Your uncle is Danny Trejo? My uncle is, I have an uncle that is Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin and Antonio Banderas and Alan Cumming and Tony Shalhoub. My mom's Terry Hatcher. It's a whole thing. Wow. Spy Kids was based off of me and my brother. Wow. That's my way of telling you.

There's a lot of secrets you're revealing to me. It is as if you are a spy um no i think i just watched it a lot when i was a kid like it was just i found it enjoyable i thought it was super funny and i think like jamie was saying like i was like oh i think i want to be a spy like i got into i remember scholastic book fair stuff had like spy books and spy gear that you could like order. And I can't remember anything I bought, but there was nothing really to it other than the fact that we just liked it as a family. And I think because my parents knew who like Antonio Banderas was, they were like, oh, yeah, we like this movie, too, because we know these actors, which is a big thing.

Because my parents don't really know. They don't really watch movies and they only really know like big name people. And I think Antonio Banderas was like clearly a person that they were like, we know him. This movie's allowed. Jamie, what about your relationship to this movie? I love this movie. I remember seeing it in theaters with my cousins very occasionally. There's like a few movies I remember seeing with all 10 of my cousins very clearly.

And this was one of them. We were just like a herd of sweaty kids. Sounds like my family too. Yeah, just like a herd of sweaty kids and like two adults. Not enough adults, two adults. But I remember this, my auntie Bunny brought us because she had a huge crush on Antonio Banderas. And she was like, she was like, just like a weird aunt thing where she was, I remember her being in like the van and being like, there's something for everyone in this movie. And you're like, ew.

This is a movie where we had like we were still like poor so it's like for 10 of us we had like a tube of starburst and we would pass them down to each other but I thought for some reason I this was like an embarrassing moment I think I know this story yeah where like they were passing them down the row and for some reason i thought my cousins were unwrapping them for me so i was eating them with the paper on and i was like why does it taste weird and they were just like you suck and i got june weed but i loved this i like it also got me really really interested in spying and i i never i didn't see harriet the Spy when I was a kid. I don't think I did either.

That was my, that was my like, I want to be a spy because I've seen Harriet the Spy. I must have, I don't, I don't know. But yeah, and this was definitely the first movie about spy kids that I'd seen. Yeah. And like, I had like a picture of Alexa Vega in my room. Like I just, I loved it. And I remember, I think that we saw two and three in theaters too definitely three because you had 3d glasses yes oh maybe i did too the 3d glasses definitely sounds familiar but i couldn't tell you what the plot was of three i three i i remember

three better than two because three takes place inside of a video game. Is that the Sylvester Stallone one? I think so. That actually sounds familiar. I'm so excited. I gotta go home. It's a really good... And all three of them are on Netflix, too. There's a Spy Kids 4, too. With Joel McHale.

With Joel McHale and Jessica Alba. Weird. I don't think any of the original people are in it. But I think the second one is about donagan who's the guy that gets kidnapped in the first one played by mike judge played by mike judge i think because judge is in the second one yeah because he's the main like bad guy i think because his kids start becoming because like they're like okay spy kids are okay now now it's like a weird family competition between donagan's family and the Cortez family.

Because I think they're, I just remember one scene in particular where they're at like a banquet and all of the parents get poisoned. And they're like, the kids have to save them. And whoever's the best spy kid becomes like the spy kid or something like that. All right, I guess I'll watch it. Incredible filmmaking. Incredible. Aristotle, you've been nodding along. Are you also a huge fan of these movies?

Yes, I knew it. I knew I could count on Aristotle. I was going into it being like, he'll at least be on my side. Are we all this, are the three of us the same age? Okay, so yeah, just truly one of those prime demo. 92. 92. 92.

You're all born in 92 92 babies i'm an 86 baby and that's why i've never seen this movie it is so weird like when we cover this like specific like run of 10 years that like being born even a couple years apart like will decide whether you've seen it or not like someone born in like maybe night like i don't know like yeah my younger brother i he probably doesn't remember seeing this movie for the first time or anyways spies kids i love it should i jump into the recap yes let's do it okay so um there are two kids they're not spies yet, don't worry. Junie and Carmen.

Carmen wants her mom to tell her a bedtime story about two spies who fell in love. She tells a story. The lady spy's mission was to kill the man spy, and his mission was to kill her. But instead of killing each other, fall in love and they get married and it turns out that those two spies are carmen and junie's spy mom and spy dad but they've retired from being spies they're now consultants and they've started a family their names are gregorio cortez that's antonio banderas and ing, the mom played by, what is her name? Carla Gugina.

So meanwhile, Junie, the little boy, he loves this TV show called Floops Fuglies. Fuglies. You say that like we haven't been saying that over and over again for the past 24 hours. Oh, Floops Fuglies. It's such a tongue twister. Okay. Even now, watching now, Floops Fuglies, I would say is scarier than when I first saw it. There's like body horror in this show.

I have, now I'm like wondering. The graphics are wild. Now I'm wondering, I'm like, maybe this was like the first movie movie where I'd seen body horror in? Maybe. Because it's now one of my favorite things. Maybe I'm not giving Spy Kids... I forgot how much of it... It was an impressionable film. Yeah, the Tony Shalhoub quadruple head at the end. And his hands for some reason. The thumb people. The thumb thumbs. Also, Catherine, hands for some reason the thumb people the thumb people the thumb also katherine you pointed out

that on netflix oh my god the thumbnail for this movie is of thumb thumb so it's a thumb thumbnail someone at netflix has a sense of humor uh okay so juni watches this the show Floops Fooglies. We see a scene where we meet Mr. Floop, played by Alan Cumming, my king, in his lair. And then the bad Terminator from Terminator 2 is also there. And he's giving a lot of exposition. His name is Mr. Lisp. Yeah, that I never understood. And then Tony Shalhoub is also there as

Floop's minion. Named Alexander Minion. But that's a reveal that we don't find out until later on. He has to take his glasses off before. I mean, Alan Cumming is subscribing to She's All That logic where Tony Shalhoub

takes off his glasses and Alan Cumming is like to like She's All That logic where like Tony Shalhoub takes off his glasses and Alan Cumming's like, oh my God, I know you. I've seen you before. We're enemies. I don't like the implication that in order to become powerful, Tony Shalhoub has to take his glasses off as a frequent glasses wearer. That's fair. That was not good. To be fair, you're not wearing them now. Only because I mess with the headphones.

It's a whole thing. But I will say, I don't even think this was done intentionally, but it was fun to see that trope inverted for once. It's never a man who takes off his glasses and then everyone's like, oh, you're our boss now Alexander Minion

oh such a goofy name because Alan Cumming and Antonio Banderas have to say that name dead serious it's a very serious situation he is the bad guy like he's the deep seated villain in this movie and both of

them do have to say it in such like a way where you're like oh i'm scared i have to be scared of this man the antonio vanderis reed was like pretty he's like alexander minion and then tony shalhoub's like yes it's me great okay so before all that happens uh we learned that floop is both i guess the host and executive producer of his own children's show and an inventor oh sure is peewee you mean yes yeah so floop is also an inventor who we learn has been trying to make an army of super secret agents, but they turned out all weird and mutated. And now the only use he has for them is to put them as characters on his

show. Fuglies, which sounds like it's almost saying something else that is like, Hmm, that should, that word shouldn't be in a children's movie. Oh, I think I know what you mean.

Fugly. A junior high insult that hurt my feelings once. Yeah, a lot of weird choices in this movie overall. But so Floop also has this army of thumb thumb robots, which are like sort of useless. And then he also has these highly trained killer robots that are designed to look exactly like specific children which floop calls spy kids that's the name of the movie and he does it with jazz hands when he says it they're called spy kids ellen cummings performance in this movie is the best part of this movie. It's so good. And in that scene, I think between the two of them, they say Spy Kids four or five times.

So tell me more about these Spy Kids. Like Robert Rodriguez, you goof. The only problem with these Spy Kid robots, though, is that they can't talk and they don't have brains. No. can't talk and they don't have brains no meanwhile spy daddy gets called on a mission because several oss agents have disappeared and oss is like the secret spy agency that they used to work for the spy parents so spy mom decides to go with spy dad but she has to seduce him in order to do so first yeah we'll talk about that scene so they call uncle felix played by cheech marin to babysit the kids but a bunch of bad guys show up and then felix is like by the way your parents are spies i'm not your real uncle and you need to

deliver a message to the oss tell them that the third brain lives felix fights off the bad guys and then the not yet spy kids escape in a spy vehicle to a safe house meanwhile the spy parents get captured by floop and we learn that floop is after something that he thinks the OSS destroyed and he wants spy daddy to rebuild it for him and then the not yet spy kids have equipped themselves with some spy gear so they're getting a little closer to becoming spy kids they're training themselves they're training themselves they're being proactive and training themselves to be spies yes it's great and then terry hatcher shows up never a good sign never the i forgot about the terry hatcher body body horror scene and that like because i hadn't seen this movie in maybe like five years at least yeah and it was like

oh my god like they they really do her dirty in this anyways yeah it's wild uh she shows up pretending to be oss but it turns out that she and all the people she's with are also bad guys and they trick the kids into giving them the third brain which is the thing that spy dad had created that floop is after so the kids chase after the bad guys and they get the third brain back. And now they're even closer to becoming actual official spy kids. But meanwhile, back at the Floop house. Floop? Floop house. Minions.

It's a shoe. Floop also lives in a really cool castle. It's a shoe. It's a shoe. It's a boot. It's a boot shaped. With a castle on the top. Floop house.

This movie is so silly. So Floop's minion named Alexander Minion is like, hey, I made your spy kid robots look like Carmen and Junie and then those evil doppelgangers go after the real Carmen and Junie and steal the third brain back.

And then the kids go to this guy Machete, as we discussed is danny trejo's character for help and that they learn that he is their actual uncle but he's like i don't want to help you because i hate my brother so they steal his spy plane and fly it not his spy plane foophouse but danny trejo is also like fine with it like i think he set it up yeah and then he's like ha ha ha you you guys are wild right i love seeing danny trejo's smile it's always so disarming you're like yeah you're a sweet man so they're at the floop house now where tony shalhoub has promoted himself to the evil mastermind behind this whole plan.

And he's making copies of the third brain and putting it into the army of spy kid robots. And then Alexander Minion turns Spy Daddy into a Fugly. And then Carmen and Junie rescue their parents with the help of Floop, who is now a good guy because he cares more about his TV show than about building an army. Which, what a wild precedent to set. I can't quite wrap my head around that one. But I love that conversation. And Catherine, you were saying the one shot. Oh, that shot where Floop is like in the clouds and he's huge for some reason.

And Juni is so little. And then it cuts back. And at one point he's sitting cross-legged, just totally thinks that this is real. That shot is so funny. Because first he's standing because he's supposed to be scary. And then he gets closer to Juni. And then he's just lounging in the clouds. They're like talking about their feel they're having a little therapy session they really are they really are and juni's the one that makes him realize that he's good inside

he doesn't need an army of robots it's so that scene i mean re-watching it i was just like oh wow like juni harnessed the power of, like, Sensi Boy to save the day. It was like his super spy power was expressing his feelings. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Yeah. So now that Floop is a good guy, with his help, they all turn Minion into a Fugly.

But he's like, I'm back. He's like, I like it. Yeah. He has five heads and he's having a great time uh and then the spy family they're about to fight the evil robot doppelganger spy kid children but then floop has reprogrammed them all to be philanthropic or something he he's he switches their brain to think that what's right is wrong and what's wrong is right which is all it takes apparently yeah so then they go after like minion and terry hatcher

and the evil terminator from terminator 2 and then they're like we're a spy family now and then they live happily ever after. Yay. There was that great Alexa Vega who Miles went to high school with, I just found out. Miles went to high school with goddamn everyone. But Alexa Vega gives that powerful speech to camera to close out the movie where she's like,

listen, there's spies and there's kids there's but sometimes spies should be a part of a spy family and family is the most important spy kid of all and then she turns the tv on right ends the movie so that's the story let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

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

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week, we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind.

Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludie.

Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

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Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Time to get into deep canon. I mean, this requires analysis. Yes, yes, it does. For me, having never seen this movie, having not grown up with it, seeing it through the adult eyes that I saw it through, you know, an objective observer will say, to me, it seemed like the female characters and the male characters are presented as being generally equally competent and smart and good at their jobs.

And I think it's mostly because Carmen is older, but she is presented as being far more competent than her little brother, Junie. Yeah. So we see this a lot. This is like a thing and we talked about a little bit in Jurassic Park. This is something we've seen in a lot of movies where it's like an older sister, younger brother, and the older sister is presented as being more competent, which I guess makes sense for their age, but it's also good for us because we too often see women who are not competent. Yes. I mean, I love, I still stan Carmen to this day. Like there's there and like something that I mean, it is like a more realistic sibling portrayal than you see in most kids movies moody and like kind of mean sometimes but it's not like the the movie is never like and you should be angry like it's she's being a kid yeah uh she's being a really smart kid and a really like capable kid and a really spy kid and a really spying and she's spying the whole time and and like even when she's mean to her brother like it's she cares

about him and she protects him and he helps her and i just i don't know i i really like they they didn't do anything i didn't think to make her the girl spy like she was just one of the spies which i love big sister energy love it yeah that was great. I also enjoyed that you get to see a little boy expressing fear, being afraid, kind of being sort of the more sensitive one. Yeah. And then the little girl being brave and like kind of taking initiative because you usually don't see either of those things or the roles will be reversed where it's like the boy gets to be brave the girl is scared uh so it's nice that you see that little flip and junie child warts i was thinking my little cousin the whole time i was like because child warts visibility man and his little neon band-aids so oh it's my little cousin uh and then i liked that they both had for juni it's

his his warts and then for carmen it becomes a critical plot point that she wears a diaper at night and like has bedwetting issues which is just like something you never see in a movie from a kid who's also really cool and you're supposed to like them yeah so i was like you know like power to the child bedwetters there's such but there is i mean it's it's like there is such a stigma especially when you're a kid of like you know this kid still wets the bed and like the hero of our movie still wets the bed and yeah her brother like makes fun of her for it but then they also land a submarine into through shark infested water exactly like moments later so i'm like well i guess the bed wedding's kind of a wash i don't know that was a cool and that was also i thought that that was going to

be a one-off joke because it's said between the parents one of the many times they're trapped and i like i don't know if this was but i assumed it was junie because he was younger and had right warts or something i don't know but but then you find out later that it's carmen and it's actually an important plot point because it makes them crash the submarine because she's like she's mad yeah she's like mad at him for knowing yeah i don't know like. Those little details that would... I remember that from being a kid because you're like, oh, bed wetters. Bed wetters not being made fun of?

Sick. I'm making it sound... Now I'm going to double down and be like, I didn't actually wet the bed. Okay, Jamie. Sounds like you did. I actually wasn't wetting the bed in 2001. I did for some reason the bed in 2001 i did for only in 2001 when i skipped over that year but 2002 baby back in business pp every night

did you ever wet the bed as a teenager uh no i didn't guys i've peed in my pants like at the door as an adult like totally like a hundred percent like i got so used to not when i would drive an hour each way to go to work like i just would get in the habit of not peeing before i drove so when i'm at the door i'm like i'm gonna pee if i don't open this door and i've done it countless times I can't even I don't even know anymore I remember my first breakup in high school I was being so dramatic that I just wet the bed one day I'm like I'm not leaving my bed I'm too I'm too depressed I just pissed myself and I was like wait that was a bad idea oh this has been a nice sharing time i think this has been healing not too anyway so yeah i think this movie which is clearly directed towards like children and like families uh it does a lot of good things in terms of representation that so many kids movies many of which we've discussed on

the podcast do not do and in fact a lot of them have done more harm than good but yeah this one as we've said normalizes bedwetting and warts it shows girls and women being just as competent and smart as the boys and men it shows katherine you touched on this but so we were trying to figure out where this takes place and what exactly ethnicity this family might be yeah because it's not specified but we think it might be mexico that it takes place because i was saying that growing up i just assumed it was california i don't know it's because i'm from here and i was like oh that could could be like in San Diego or like a coastal part like up north. Like it just never occurred to me to think of where they were.

But we were trying to figure out like, oh, you brought it up. We were like, do you think they're in a different country? And I was like, I never thought about that. And then rewatching it, we found so many context clues that it was like, oh, they're definitely in a different country like how in the beginning spy mom and spy dad say how they were from two different countries and now they're in one so we're gonna assume that maybe spy mom is from the united states because she's got an american accent yeah because she's i think either ambiguous or like she's supposed to be american and then like throughout the movie all the texts that we see is in Spanish. Right, which I didn't notice this.

And you see various characters speaking Spanish. Speaking in Spanish, which, and like the school, there's like that scene in the school where you're like, well, none of the kids are speaking Spanish. And like, you can't really tell. It could be like easily an American school, but there's a scene where he almost hits, he like breaks the car really hard and the lady holding the stop sign

yells in Spanish. But I think it was mostly the text on the wart remover bottle. The text was in Spanish. One of the billboards was all in Spanish. All the stores were like... They go into that clothing store and it says like niños and bebés. Yeah, it's all the text is in Spanish. And then when they're at the park as well uh there's everyone in the background is speaking in spanish yeah so it's a spanish speaking country we can assume we there's no necessarily clear identifiers specifically what country it is there was also that clue when the wedding scene you're saying how on the cake they

have like the dia de los muertos like right skeletons and i'm i might be wrong but i'm pretty sure that's like clearly mexican of mexican culture yeah i think so for that specific imagery right and robert rodriguez we is mexican so like you can kind of assume that and a lot of these movies take place in mexico i was trying to figure out where this movie was shot, and I didn't have much luck. They do say Santa Cecilia or something, and that's a place in Mexico we looked up. But like Antonio Banderas. I think they're purposefully trying to be vague.

And it's like this is a Hispanic culture that we're trying to show, and we're intentionally trying to be vague. Because Antonio Banderas is from Spain but then like Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin they're all Hispanic the two of them are Mexican so at least at the very least it's an ethnically ambiguous family a mixed

family we're not sure exactly where Antonio Banderas is supposed to be from or what ethnic group he belongs to but it's some like latinx or hispanic we can safely say that it's like hispanic yeah and a huge movie like taking place outside of america um in a non-english speaking country is like a big deal yeah for sure katherine you were saying that like to be able to like see yourself represented or feel as though you're represented, that's a huge thing. Because so many kids' movies are just like white kids, white kids, white kids.

And as a kid, you don't realize that that's what's happening until you grow up. And so to be able to be like, yeah, Spy Kids. I saw myself in Spy Kids. That's how I was with all those Disney movies. It's like I could only be Pocahontas because she had brown hair. I can only be Mulan because she had black hair. So it's like, but you don't think about that context as a child. You're just like, well, she kind of looks like me. I guess that's who, that's the princess that I have to pretend to be or whatever. Right. Which is cool. Yeah. Another point for Spy Kids. Love it. I guess this kind of ties into carmen but um we were

talking about this last night as well of the way i i really liked how the fighting works in this movie because this is like there's there's a lot of action elements to this movie some that got more violent than i remembered terry hatchatcher's head gets basically burned off, but then we see later that her wig is just kind of damaged. Well, she becomes the baldest woman in charge because she's mostly bald, but then she's got some long, straggly hair. She does seem to have more power once she is balder.

It's true. But one of the cool things is, I think we see very often in action movies, especially action movies of this era, that women are only allowed to fight women and men are only allowed to fight men. And that is not a rule that applies to this world. We see Ingrid fighting hand-to-hand with guys. I don't remember. Do we see Antonio Banderas fighting women at any point? I don't think so, but just because there aren't any other women spies to fight?

I think the only other adult is Terry Hatcher, woman. Yeah, that's true. I think. Right. Because all of the agents who got turned into Fuglies, those were all men. Yeah, those were all men. So I think it truly is just Ingrid and Terry Hatcher's character. But then Carmen also fights her brother. Robot brother, yeah.

Robo brother. And I don't know, it is kind of rare to see. There seems to be parody in fighting in this movie, too. It doesn't seem like, like you were saying, Catherine, I think the only reason Antonia Banderas uh doesn't end up fighting a female spy is because there's not enough female spies in the movie but I mean it it is cool that it's not like I feel like it's always like the guys are fighting and this is the big part and then we cut to also there are some women fighting over here yeah the women are fighting yeah it would have been a very easy choice for when the two evil doppelgangers show up for it would have been an easy narrative choice for the girl to

fight the girl and the boy to fight the boy i think here's my best guess i think that they probably didn't do that because it would have been much easier to shoot if the girl and the boy fight each other and then the girl and the boy fight each other it just probably would have been too hard to coordinate like parent trap style exactly fighting like kid fight choreography would have been nearly impossible but also catharsis right like you were saying you've always wanted to fight your sibling there's like a whole scene where they're in the park when they first meet the robot doppelgangers and she's like i've always wanted to do this and she like punches him in the face which is not saying that like obviously that's not great but there's like a sibling thing in you where you're just like man sometimes we just want to fight our brother

your brother as a as a sibling this movie appeals to my worst instincts as an older specifically as an older sister with a younger brother that is like the worst pairing of all time and then the other thing that I think I think that in a lesser movie Carmen I think she's

supposed to be like maybe nine or ten maybe yeah ish because Juni's supposed what is our best guess for these ages i think yeah i think carmen's like maybe 10 and then juni's like seven i feel like carmen might be like closer to junior high almost she might even be 11 or 12 like 12 or 13 and i feel like juni's probably in like second grade Alexa yeah Junie's like I would guess older no I guess like fourth grade fourth fifth grade so Alexa Vega was 12 when this movie came out and Daryl Sabara aka Mr. Meghan Trainor uh was nine so yeah I guess like that's about right

yeah so I think that and anyways in a lesser movie especially if she is aged up to be 11 or 12 um i feel like they would have like tossed in some love interest yeah for her too because that's about the age where you're like oh i mean if we get a female character we're gonna you know there's got to be a boy for her to kiss um but this movie also opts out of that and just gives you 500 more scenes of tony shalhoub which I'm all fine with all four better use of time sure there's a nice little moment and Catherine you pointed this out when we were watching it but as as they are taking the initiative and it's mostly I would say Carmen who's taking the initiative to train themselves to be spies safe house right yeah she picks up a spy manual by unknown author very funny she's reading from

it and says a good spy puts himself and then she adds into the text herself yeah in the mindset of the opponent so she's reading this patriarchal text that's excluding women all together and she's like it's not just himself it's herself too yeah she has to like self-correct through the whole thing right she's also the i mean she to like self-correct through the whole thing right she's also the i mean she i like that they both have moments where they figure out what's going on um but i think carmen does get a few more of those moments because she's more motivated less emotional than juni and just like generally more badass because she's 12 and he's nine right doy oh okay so i just thought of another so compare this movie to jumanji the first one where kirsten dunst is the older sister

and then she's got a younger brother and then all of the like emotional weight and all that's like the kids figuring things out that's all given to the boy yeah so. But it's like Carmen figures out who Danny Trejo is through like context clues. Right. And then like Junie's the one that is like, it's a tracking device. And then Carmen looks at the bracelet. She's like, you're right.

She's like, blink, blink, it is. And she goes, I hate that. And she just throws the tracking device in the park. I just love that there are teams. And then she saves him several times she has to save him when the like she also drops him she drops him but then saves him again that was a really scary shot yeah there i don't know how to describe the cinematography in this movie but it is insane i love it so much shout out to guillermo navarro who is the cinematographer in this movie

it's like there are times that it's all live action but it looks like a cartoon sometimes like when she drops juni like to his death it looks like a cartoon but it's still like really intense and scary and oh it's just so cool yeah that cinematographer he's worked a lot with guillermo dotoro and like does some really cool stuff. Oh, he did Pan's Lab. Oh, got it, got it, got it. We've got to take another quick break, but we'll come right back. Don't you worry. He also did Night at the Museum.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid 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?

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Here's a couple things that I didn't like as much or that I found a little like, okay. First one, whenever the mom is retelling the story of spy mom and spy dad meeting yes and Antonio Banderas like they come face to face when they were like about to supposedly kill each other he reaches in to her top and pulls out the photo of him to be like oh I was your target but it's like okay why are you reaching into her clothes right near her boobs

not okay to show children or anyone I keep forgetting I don't think we've even said the character's name yet Antonio Banderas' name is supposed to be Gregorio but we've just name yet. Antonio Banderas' name is supposed to be Gregorio. But we've just been calling him Antonio Banderas. Or Spy Daddy.

Spy Daddy. Spy Daddy. There is a scene also where Ms. Grudenko, that's Terry Hatcher's character, she comes into the safe house. She says she's with the OSS. And then she and Carmen have this sort of bonding moment where Carmen gives her the information she wanted. And she's like, oh, you've just joined the league of like awesome women spies. You know, it's like this like women got to stick together moment. But then it turns out that she cannot be trusted.

She's working with the enemy so this like what otherwise could be like a nice like yeah women do have to stick together moment is completely nullified because she is an evil devious woman right which again it's like and there are i think that issue more speaks to the lack of female characters in the movie in general because you really have carmen ingrid and ms grudenko and that's basically it because there there are a ton of male characters in this movie. There's a ton of kids. There's girls, but they don't do anything. They don't talk. And there are characters similar to Ms. Grudenko who are men,

like Alexander Minion, who turns out to be this double agent, but there's enough male characters that it's not your general impression. Right. But because you only have three one coming in and being like girl power and then being like just kidding bitch like that doesn't maybe um doesn't bode well doesn't bode well and something there there are a few things with ingrid that um i felt like her character like was i don't know, in general, we touched on this before, but there's that moment when Spy Daddy is wanting to take on this mission, right?

To go save my judge or whatever. And he's kind of been working on it behind her back. And then he's like, oh, I got to go save my judge. And Spy Mommy comes in and he's like oh i gotta go save my judge and you know spy mommy comes in and and he's he's pretty dismissive of her and he's like no no no like you you stay you she's like i want to go with you like i'm like raring to go on another adventure she's like all about going and becoming a spy again and he says no you are mom you stay at home yes and then the way she convinces him is she has to like seduce him.

Yeah. Which, and, and then it works. It was just like, Oh, that was pretty lazy writing. Yeah.

I mean, Gregorio, spy daddy. Gregorio, do better. Is not a feminist icon. He just wants, he thinks women should stay home in the kitchen,

taking care of the kids. And that is not okay spy daddy but when they are working together it's equal but i just oh that that scene i was just like man come on right because like shortly after that they've been captured and they're tied up in like the floop house and she like uses her ring she uses her ring to like laser the ropes off of them and like so she's the one who kind of saves them and like releases them. And then they immediately, first of all, they go into the reality room or whatever, or the virtual, I don't know, some weird, like augmented reality space.

Like cloud. Yeah. Cloud room. Yeah. And then it is always revealed to be a green screen at the end. Right. It's really funny. And then they end up in the Floop house dining room where Mr. Floop himself is eating this like green sludge.

Yes, he's eating Nickelodeon slime basically. It's so weird. With a spoon very slowly. And he like expects them to eat it also. But they like land on the table. On the table. Yeah. Onto like a pile of gummy worms. Like candy.

Very weird. The other thing with Ingrid that this is like more of a story thing versus like how she's treated. But it is like, I mean, I can see this both ways. But you do get a lot more information about Spy Daddy's background than you get about her. We find out about Danny Trejo and I'm thrilled to find out about the Danny Trejo secret. But we find out like his family background. And then we also find out about his secret scientist background in a room full of all-male scientists. Yes.

And so, like, his character gets a couple of cool subplots, and we don't really get that for Ingrid. Right. We get that the way she relates to it is she's like, you didn't tell me. Like, she doesn't really have the upper hand in their relationship very much. And he is then made kind of more important to the story because he was the one who developed the third brain he's the one who didn't destroy it so like he's why they are the like target of floop and later minion just making him more integral to

the story whereas she's just essentially tagging along because they're married and she's by couple his spy wife his spy wife so yeah it would have been nice like if we do learn more about maybe his backstory in terms of like his family history and connections and stuff like that and i want that all to stay yeah keep that but then make her the one who was developing the third brain and like give her that integral component to the story. Like it's it is like way imbalanced in terms of what we know about him versus what we know about her. Which is yeah. And it's a yeah, it's a bummer. But it's like I wouldn't remove any of the spy daddy backstory for the world. It's all great. But it's like she could have been included more meaningfully in that story or or like you said like if she's involved in the third brain then

they kind of have an equal subplot right power and for sure then sure then we would have had a woman in stem which right you know important you hate to see it i wonder if that imbalance is due to how famous either of them were because jamie you brought up a good point about like what level of fame was antonio banderas during this movie was he like too famous to be doing this right or i'm just curious about like what level of like they maybe put more on antonio banderas because he was like the recognizable face but i don't i truly don't know i can't i feel what anyone's fame level was at that point like what did Alan Cumming do at that point what was Tony was Tony Shalhoub Monk yet like what

what there's no way to know that's an action that's an actionable question I'm like it is so hard to be like when was peak Antonio Banderas I think it was like late 90s although who can say we've accidentally thought that Tom Hanks wasn't famous before he was cast in toy stories so right we don't know anything we didn't i think we were just tired that day but i knew that and i hadn't even seen any of those movies this is the year before monk so shalhoub i think is paying the bills. Spike has made him get a long time. There are people who are, I mean, the George Clooney cameo, I think, is treated as if he is blatantly too famous to be. And did you also know Richard Linklater's in this movie for a second?

Really? Oh, yeah. They're really good friends because they're both from Texas. Wait, what is he? Is he like one of the bodyguards or something? He's credited as cool spy. He's probably one of the guys that like attacks the safe house or something. Oh, yeah.

There is like a, yeah. That's funny. Well, I mean, Rodriguez must be an awesome friend because I feel like everyone always like regardless. Likes working with, yeah. Yeah. Like he must just be like a really cool, nice guy or I hope he, I mean, it seems that way. I know very limited information about Robert Rodriguez

except that he made Spikas um I've seen quite a few of his movies I've seen the like um Desperado trilogy I've seen Sin City is I think still one of my favorite movies I don't know I haven't seen in a while but Mike I'm sorry I'm just like looking at the credited character names to see if there's any female characters that we didn't talk about. But there's so many male characters. But they all have such silly names. Alexander Minion, Donegan Giggles. What?

I didn't realize Mike Judge's character's last name is Giggles. Cheech is Felix Gum. Gum. Mr. Lisp, Cool Spy, Agent Johnny. Like who are these? Who wrote this movie it was rob rodriguez uh well to what you were saying katherine about like um did the like the level of the actor's fame play into like how important their character was i mean maybe but also like it just tends to be the default for especially male writers. And just I mean, especially of this time where the men were just given more important things to do.

We know more about their characters. That's just been the default throughout all of history. Yeah. So that's not great. Yeah. Also, I think Carla Gugino is she's only uh 29 in this movie really too yeah she's only um so they really pushed her into mom roles kind of early because huh interesting but yeah when this when this movie was uh released she was only 29 years old no kidding yeah and antonio benders was

like 40 ish okay well that checks out standard ho Standard Hollywood age gap. Love it. At it again. We've been talking about how there aren't that many female characters, but we're forgetting about the female-coated Thumb Thumb, who is wearing a sexy nurse outfit. And her nail was painted. She has, like, very femme

fingernails, and they're painted. And she has, like, a very, like, the other Th thumbs are like these like oafish shapes and then but the female thumb thumb was like a very like curvy sexy shape i want i want to i guess in general i would say the thumb thumbs are genderless but then there was such a clear gender signifier of lady finger, finger lady, lady finger that I'm like, maybe they are supposed to be male coded because they're unpainted thumb thumbs. I choose to interpret them as genderless. But I.

Well, the spies. And then the only female thumb-thumb we see is thrust into this like caregiver nurse role. And like made to be sexy, but she's a singer. Yes, I agree. I think I'm just like going with my own headcanon on this one. Even if Robert Rodriguez doesn't understand that the thumb thumbs are doing their own thing, they're identifying as they choose. That's how I feel. I just have several very quick notes, things I noticed about the movie. One, Carmen in this movie looks exactly like how joseph gordon levitt looked in third

rock from the sun they should have cast him as her evil doppelganger whoa the sound effects in this movie are wild so funny the music and the sound is so so... Okay, the music. There is a song that Floop sings toward the middle of the movie. And you're like, did this get cut from Nightmare Before Christmas? It is such a Danny Elfman, Tim Burton-y. And then... Big reveal. It is Danny Elfman music. And then we learned that Danny Elfman did write some of the music for this movie now I'm going to question what I'm

thinking about when I say this seems like a Tim Burton movie maybe it just sounds like a Danny Elfman movie and I'm not giving Mr. Elfie his someone was saying I'm just on such a Will Poulter kick that if someone makes a movie

about Oingo Boingo that Will Poulter should play Danny Elfman. I'm just putting that out into the world to all of our listeners who are developing the Oingo Boingo movie. Which is all of them? All of them, yeah. Incredible. Speaking of a sound effect, my favorite sound effect in that entire movie is Floop's cape. You hear it. Oh, what does it sound like? It just is a very distinct whoosh,

like whooshing sound. And he does it so drastically. He like, every time he gets up, he like sweeps it back and it's the loudest sound in the whole scene. I love his character. I love him so much. I think Aaron Cumming is my favorite actor of all time.

He's terrific. He's my Alfred Molinaina this is like i also think no disrespect to shalhoub that alfred really could have knocked that part out of the park but you know he he was busy being in chocolate also floop is trying to figure out what's missing from his children's show because it's it's rated number two and he wants to be number one. And he keeps pondering this. And I think the answer is probably a few women in your writer's room, buddy.

I'm guessing you don't have any. That's what's missing from your show, Mr. Floop. And we did touch on this briefly before, but I really I thought it was so i kind of forgot this i remember the vision how that scene with floop and junie looks visually because it's blazoned onto my brain forever but the fact that like a young boy expressing his feelings and trying to empathize with an adult and the adult being responsive to that like solves a major plot thing you're just like oh whoa i never like because i feel like we were sort of saying like that is normally it would be like the girl's role sure is to use the power of feelings and if that had happened with carmen i

would have been like rolling my eyes at it but because it's junie and he is kind of like even towards the beginning spy daddy is kind of like junie you're too soft stop drawing stop watching alan coming on tv and and junie is like i like it and then like later i mean he proves himself that like empathy is a good thing to have and you know spy daddy he's he's gotta untangle some of his you know toxic masculinity and he can learn from his son hopefully he does that in spy kids two through four or whichever ones he's in i don't know is antonio antonio banderas is in two right i don't remember aristotle confirms yes yes but is he in three i don don't think. I know Juni's in three. He is in three.

He is. Everyone's in three. The gang is back. So I think it's four is when it goes crazy. Phase two of Spy Kids lore. Nobody wants to do this anymore. One of my favorite parts in the movie is when they go to the safe house and Carmen finds the drawer of like the stash of emergency cash

and then she's like wow emergency cash from every country and there are 10 wads of cash and it's like yes all 10 countries in the world I did uh look very hard and studied the flags and figured out that the countries represented are Canadaada germany mexico guatemala colombia the uk the u.s south korea italy and argentina did robert rodriguez just pick his top 10 he's like these are my favorite travel destinations yes um just getting into the trilogy a little bit just looking at the list of names so i guess in three and i have no recollection besides video game of what happens in three but apparently we meet mike judge's donagan giggles his whole family oh wow and emily osment plays his daughter right gertie giggles yes um matt

o'leary and salma hayek plays his wife francesca gigglesiggles, in the third one. Francesca. Wow. Which I'm like, a weirder couple than Mike Judge and Salma Hayek, I cannot think of in my brain. Like, what did they talk about? I don't know. Wait, okay, but isn't Sharkboy and Lavagirl like a spinoff of something that has to do with Spy Kids? I feel like it's stylistically. Isn't Sharkboy and Lav lava girl like the two characters

in the game for the third one and then there's a spin-off right there's definitely a spin-off taylor lottner and cha-cha lounge regular is he really well i did docs taylor lottner i saw him there twice two years ago and now i just say he lives there and he works there. Oh, I had one last thing. The Terry Hatcher scene when she comes into the safe house makes no sense. Here's why. So she finds out that the third brain exists only after Carmen tells her this.

Up to that point, all the bad guys think that the third brain had been destroyed whenever we see the flashback of Antonio Banderas crushing a walnut instead of the third brain. So Carmen's like, no, the third brain lives. And then Terry

Hatcher says, oh, well, it must be here then because it wasn't at the Cortez house. Why were they searching for something that they think was destroyed? Huh? I should be a spy. Caitlin, you should be the spy when you think about it. Anyway, does anyone have any other thoughts about the film?

I am just impressed of a lot of the comedic physical gags in this movie for being an insane movie there's a lot yeah like geared towards kids but i feel like a lot of the like weird comedic writing things and a lot of the jokes are like for adults or like kids won't understand almost i don't know it was just a good example of like gags i was seeing in the film like visual gags and i was like oh i didn't know that you could do this and move like the george clooney oh he pulls off like what it's so funny pulls off the eye thing and then puts it back on i don't know i really paid a million dollars i was just so impressed with a lot of those silly i mean i the silly things.

I really admire Robert Rodriguez for making something so extremely silly. That just feels like using all the clout he built up to this point. This was his seventh movie, Post from Dusk Till Dawn. He was a well-established director at this point and just went for it. He's like, I'm going to make a movie, spy kid movie. Like a spy kid's movie. Like a weird body horror spy kid's movie. I just am like, man, that is a responsible use of power. I really, like, that's the coolest.

Because it's so different from most of his other work, which is, like, pretty, like, I mean, some of it's pretty like campy violence but like he he's like tarantino and that like a lot of his movies are just like this like wild chopping of heads and blood squirting everywhere and just like crazy violence and then he made spy kids and incidentally spy kids 3d game over which uh did direct, comes out the same year as Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Okay. He contains multitudes. What a working man.

A movie where Johnny Depp's eyes get gouged out. Spy Kids Game Over? Yes, yes, yes, yes. But, I mean, I just think it's, like, really cool. And, like, even though these aren't the movies he's, like, for by most people except for the three of us yeah um it's like he developed like this really distinct visual style for kids movies that no one else has ever done it's just it's so cool and he directed all four spy kids movies and shark boy and lava girl commitment wow yeah And the whole machete. And I mean, and also the spinoff of Spy Kids called Machete. I just, I don't know.

This rewatching this, I was like, just increased my Rodriguez respect by even more than I already did. He's pretty dope. He's cool. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? It does. Or the spy test? It does. It does. Both. It passes both of them.

I had it passing at least twice. There's the opening scene with Carmen and Ingrid. And there's a moment where Junie's off covering his warts. And they have a brief conversation about, like, are they going to bed? Are they not going to bed? Did you brush your teeth already? did yeah everything okay at school it's fine yeah and then this is kind of a duplicitous pass but it does pass between carmen and miss uh grudenko as well even though they're talking about girl power but the subtext is

girl power is fake yeah um. But it does pass. Yeah. Does it pass again at all? I forgot to pay as close attention as I should toward the end whenever the kids reunite with the parents. I don't think so. Because Carmen does. I feel like Carmen does most of the talking, but she's talking to George Clooney. Like, she's talking to the TV. Oh, OK.

What about in the Floop House? Does it? I couldn't remember. I think I noticed. George Clooney. She's talking to the TV. What about in the Floop House? I think it's a lot of Antonio Banderas talking. I think the main thing is that there's just not enough. There's three female characters in the entire movie and it's completely outweighed. I think in little parts

it passes pretty easily with the interactions, but I think it's mostly like when they're as a family it's antonio banderas kind of leading the charge of like we're a family we're gonna do this as opposed to ingrid and carl totally unless i'm missing a missing a scene or something that i can't remember i mean given the fact that we only have three female characters that have any significance all of them do have conversations with each other at very least there's a sort of pass between uh gradenko and ingrid that you could i mean it's when they're like when she's like on the tv or something yeah

when she's on the tv in the car but the subtext of flirting with antonio banderas yeah yeah so the subtext doesn't work on paper it technically works yes we've you know the Bechdel test is a flawed metric and arguing about it is basically pointless sure yeah no I mean at very least the female characters we are given we know who they are they care about each other and it's not always about the majority men in the movie true yes let's read the movie on our nipple scale shall we it's zero to five nipples based on its representation of women i'm gonna give this i suppose i would give it like a three because it is handling the way women and girls are represented in media better than a lot of media targeted toward children at least of the films we've covered so far you know there's there's parody among the genders that we see but the fact that there are far more men than there are

female characters the fact that an Banderas hates women and just wants them to be mommies who stay at home but uh no I mean I think it does a lot of of good things and um especially the fact that it's like a representation of a Latinx mixed family like that on screen being the driving force of the narrative. Yeah, I love Alan Cumming, and all of my nipples go to him. I'm going to go, and I'm probably overshooting it a little bit, but I'm going to go three and a half. I love Carmen, and I love hearing your connection to her, Catherine, which it was, I mean, something that didn't because I was, you know, as a little white girl and had truly an embarrassment of riches of problematic characters to latch on to. But the fact that I mean, it's like Carmen is a really cool character.

She's not a problematic character. She's like a really cool and also realistic, like example for a girl that age, like she kicks her brother's ass, but she loves him and like, she's good at stuff and she's observant. And like that character alone is just like, I don't know. Like I,

it feels like a miracle that that character avoids so many of the pitfalls that a preteen girl character written by a man would normally fall to. Right, because it's usually that precocious, genius child trope. Like the wise beyond her years child. Or sexualized too early. Or any number of horrible things. But she's truly treated just like a character and has flaws she still wets the bed sometimes like there it's i don't know i just i really love how the spy kids are written in this movie and i think that like juni is a really um really cool

example of like not a hyper masculine little boy and having that be part of like what makes him cool and like part of like what makes him good at being a spy so i think it's great yeah and uh i just just a fun fact i'd like to throw into the ring robert rodriguez walked alexa vega down the aisle uh at her wedding. Shut up. Oh, my God. He has to be so nice, right? Like, he seems great. Well, we did ask, I did pose the question, was Alan Cumming at the Meghan Trainor, Daryl Sabara wedding?

I guess the real question is, was Robert Rodriguez and Alan Cumming at the Meghan Trainor? Did they officiate? Did they, like, what did they do? What was their role? I hope that being Junie and being an empathetic young male character is what taught Daryl Sabara that it's okay to be Mr. Meghan Trainor. And also just something that I kept meaning to bring up last night and then I think I either got embarrassed or tired and kept forgetting to say is Alexa Vega, who now goes by Alexa Pena Vega because she she and her husband combined their last names, which is a whole thing. But she has found a very successful second life in Hallmark movies. She's been in six in a row. So, oh, my goodness.

Yeah. She's coming for all of the full house ladies uh in home on their trail anyways and i do have a few issues with the way that ingrid's characters presented i just mainly wish we knew more about her yeah and that there were more female characters but carmen i don't know carmen is such a victory uh for for all and so is juni so three and a half for me i'm gonna give all of them to shalhoub all right yeah wonderful for all of his heads he's gonna need as many nipples for each of his yeah for sure how about you katherine i i think i'm gonna give it a four out of five only because i'm just jumping off of jamie point of Carmen being such a victory.

And it's like the movie set out, I think, what it wanted to do, which was show these kids in like a really cool way. And I think it successfully did that because in my head, the movie is more about the two kids learning about themselves rather than the parents. And I think it successfully did that. And I think like what you were saying was that like carmen is well developed and she's to me like the lead like i think her and junior equally the stars of the movie but i feel like watching her kind of bumped it up being like no she's cool

i want to be like her like she's a she's a spy but she's also like weird and like she can be made fun of and it's fine i think that's why i pushed it up a little bit but um i agree i think there's not enough female characters and the other two adults just weren't developed enough and i think they could have been easily but i think it i think it does more good than it does harm so i'll give it I'll give it that. And as a movie in general, 10 out of 10. Forever. Flawless. Flawless movie.

So many good things. We also forgot to mention that we learned that Carmen skips school to go off to Belize sometimes. So somehow she manages to go from wherever they live again, never clear, but wherever they live to Belize to just, I don't know, hang out. Twice a month. Was it twice a month or something? Yeah. She was like, she skips school twice a month.

I'll give one nipple to that scene where Junie has the, what is it? The handcuff. The little safe handcuff to his hand and he wants to get it off and he smacks it on the rock or the wall and it bounces back. It is the funniest thing. It hits him in the head. It hits him in the head. It's the funniest thing in that movie.

And I will give the rest of that rating to the entire safe house. Because that is the best thing. The little packets that turn into a big mac yeah those little they're clearly pop tarts right they're clearly pop tart packaging it's a perfect product plate that mcdonald's thing you're just like it's like the i really wanted a big mac i know but i've got sludge so i can't eat one i'm pretty sure i had coming sludge

yeah the green yeah also maybe stolen from Nightmare Before Christmas I was telling you I was like that scene where Sally is eating that green soup I don't know there's some weird crossover that I think we're missing well anyway Catherine thanks for coming on the pod I'm so excited I finally convinced you to watch it

after years it's so fun to watch everyone should watch this movie in a group too. It's so much fun to watch in a group. It's wild. Yeah. So yeah, thanks for being here. What would you like to plug? Oh, I don't know. Where can people follow you online? Twitter, I guess. That hellhole. It's just my name, at Catherine Leon. They do a UCB show every Friday. It's at 11 called JV Throwback Friday. Rod Stewart Live is every Wednesday in Highland Park. It's a stand-up show.

Atlantic City is a sketch show at UCB every second Thursday at UCB Franklin, 8 p.m. Yeah. I think that's it. All right. Well, if you live in L.A. or if you're visiting, come to all those shows. Come to the damn queen. Some say hi. She runs this town town i'm probably there uh you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast uh we've got a patreon aka matreon

that you can give money from any of the following countries south korea argentina there are only 10 countries the uk the us there's only 10 countries. The UK, the US. There's only 10 of them. If you don't live in one of those countries, I'm sorry, but you don't have money. Also, they listed countries that I think share a currency. Hang on, let me look up this list again. It's like Guatemala and Colombia, right?

Yes. Do they all? I don't know which countries use what. Oh, but like Germany and Italy are on the Euro. But also I did some extra research and I think in 2001, Italy was using another type of currency in addition to like they hadn't fully adopted the Euro yet.

I don't know. Anyway. If anyone can send us fun facts about Robert Rodriguez to prove that he's a nice man, please. Yeah, please. Any all, like, let's turn this into, like, Keanu Gate again of just a million nice Robert Rodriguez.

I mean, the fact that he walked her down the aisle, you're just like, oh, that's so nice. Okay. Well, Patreon, yeah. Patreon. It's $ nice. Okay. Well, Patreon. Yeah, Patreon. It's $5 a month. Gets you two bonus episodes every month, plus our entire back catalog of bonus episodes.

We've got merch for sale. Feminist icon. Queer icon. Feminist icon. Alfred Molina feminism is the law now a whole slew of options maybe I'll make a spy daddy spy mommy

design to throw in the store fun or just spy parrot spy parrot would be such a confusing shirt can I request a commission of floop and Minion, but wearing like the spy gear that like Carmen and Juni wear at some point?

Yes. Well, okay. And then do you want Minion with many heads or just one? I don't know. Or glasses. Or the glasses. Oh,

wow. There's so many options. Better design them all. Anyway, yeah, buy our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast. You can visit our website for various things. Bechtelcast.com has episodes, has a link to our merch store, has upcoming live shows.

So check those out. Okay, 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, 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. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only,

Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.