The Bechdel Cast - The Blair Witch Project with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Caitlin and Jamie are led into the woods by Chelsey Weber-Smith (American Hysteria) to discuss The Blair Witch Project! Jamie insists she didn’t throw the map in the river. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @chelseywebersmith on Instagram.See 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? We'll see you next time. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit 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 effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Jamie, I'm so sorry that I made you do this podcast with me. Shut up! It's all my fault.

Put the camera down. Shut up. I have to keep recording the podcast. It is your fault. Shut up. That's basically the movie, right? Done. More or less.

Yep, yep, yep. Oh, Heather. Poor Heather. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. Or is it? No, no, yep. Oh, Heather. Poor Heather. Hello, and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante. Or is it? No, I'm kidding. Truly, I have so many thoughts about just the ethics of this movie are so wild.

I feel like the wildest thing to me is being like, no, actors, we're going to use your full government name and then market it as if you have died. Died? Anyways, my name's Jamieie loftus for now and this is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation. Hell yeah. There's a lot of different versions of the Bechdel test. It is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally as a one-off bit in her comic collection, Dykes to Watch Out For, back in the 80s,

but has since been adopted as a way of talking about gender as it's portrayed in big, cool movies. There's a lot of different versions of the test. The one we use is this. We require that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue or more.

Wow. It's so true. I forgot to pay attention to it for this movie. I think that it does though, right? Because Mary and Heather. Mary Brown. Talking about the Blair Witch. Oh yeah.

That's a super pass. All right. Well, let's end the episode. Sorry, our guest didn't get to speak. JK, we, again, we talk about this from time to time that people think our podcast is just talking about whether or not a movie passes the Bechdel test. And it's my favorite way to find out that someone has been lying to me about listening to the

podcast, which is very funny because it's like, I truly don't give a shit if people listen to the show or not. You can just admit that you don't. Yeah. But I like to imagine, I'm like, well, I guess you wouldn't like the show if you really thought it was us teasing that great mystery apart for the better part of two hours. Anyways, you're listening to this. You know that's not the case. We are covering the Blair Witch Project, and we have an incredible, long-anticipated guest wearing, you cannot see, an incredible, inappropriate shirt.

Yes, scary stories to tell in the dark. Our guest is the host of the podcast American Hysteria. It's Chelsea Weber-Smith. Hello. I couldn't be more thrilled to be here and analyze this, one of my most favorite movies of all time. So thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for being here. Truly, we're so pumped. Do you spend the whole episode trying to figure out what is so American about the hysteria? Right, yeah. I'm so glad that you suggested us doing this movie because it feels so Chelsea Webber Smith expanded universe coded. I have so many questions about how the Blair Witch mythology ties into stuff you've covered over the years. I'm just so pumped. I've like turned into some kind of weird de facto Blair Witch expert, or at least I like to think that. I've gone on a few podcasts talking about this movie and, you know, I think 11-year-old

me would be pretty thrilled about that. So shout out to the past me. Hell yeah. Well, tell us all about your relationship with the Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project. Yeah. I mean, I was 11 when it came out in 1999. And I was very much in the camp of thinking it was real. And I remember hearing about it. I have no idea how I heard about it, probably just being on the internet. And I was obsessed with the website, which I'm sure we'll get into, which was kind of part of the expanded universe of this movie, which is as important as the movie itself is the marketing behind it. And, you know, my parents were going to see it because I come from a very horror-oriented background and they were pumped to see it. And I think they probably knew it was fake at that point, but I'm not sure. But I was

pissed because they were going on a date and not taking me. And so I ended up just watching the sci-fi documentary that they made as like a supplement. Yeah. Did you watch it, Jamie? I did not know that before today. I did watch it. This movie's marketing campaign is like Barbie movie found dead in a ditch. This is the most 4D game of chess ever played by a movie's marketing campaign. It's so wild. It's incredible. And yeah, so basically what that documentary did on the Sci-Fi Channel was give a bunch of context to this movie that kind of exists without context,

which is why it's so amazing. So I got really into the lore in the background that's happening. And then finally, I got to see it. And I think by that time, I had figured out that it was not real because it was when it came to video and it kind of cat was out of the bag. And of course, you know, a lot of people knew it was fake because it's ridiculous to think that this would be in theaters right this footage but and I remembered hearing about it and I was like that's gotta be illegal like there's no way they could show this like police evidence footage of these people who went missing. But yeah, I just absolutely loved kind of digging into it because not only was it this documentary, but they had a website that had all of the

documents and all of these different interviews and information about these missing people. And yeah, it was just such a full experience. They were on message boards, like adding comments to people talking about it to try to like stir up different reactions and to kind of control the narrative that way. So I think just having that experience as an 11 year old, I just started to make the Blair Witch stick figures there's actually currently one hanging in our yard because I still make them every Halloween yeah but I started to make them and hang them in weird places to scare people like when I went camping like hang them on the trees outside strangers tents like an absolute little little stinker as you guys say. True, true blue.

That's the colloquial term. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Actually, it's the scientific term. So, yeah, I think that that kind of explains how it's been a part of my very DNA since the beginning of my interest in this type of content, like, you know, hoaxes and hysteria around some of the elements included in this it's a commentary I think on a lot of things so we'll get into it yes we will so was this sort of like close to your patient zero for a lot of the work that you do now I don't think that's wrong yeah I think it probably makes a lot of sense because I so enjoyed being like hoaxed, which is of course not always true,

but it feels like one of those hoaxes that didn't really cause any damage. Like it was just kind of a whole lot of fun. I'm sure there's, you know, I'm sure there's elements of it, but it didn't to me add to the satanic panic too much of the nins coming out in 99 as it did and that would have kind of made me have a little bit more of a sour relationship to it because i don't like demonic satanic horror movies very much uh because i think it kind of continuously keeps this satanic fear going um but you know it definitely still has those elements of even like the witch hysteria of the witch trials of the 1600s in America, which is foundational, even though we've never done an episode on it, which is funny. But yeah, I think it is very much part of the fabric of what

started my love of folklore and legends because it was such an interesting folklore whereas a lot of folklore is pretty boring but when you mix it with kind of an urban legend situation more modern then you get my attention yeah Caitlin what's your history I saw this movie in a drive-in movie theater in 1999 yeah awesome I 13. And I was so scared. I was like, this is the scariest movie I've ever seen. And I don't think I've changed my mind since then. Like I, to this day, think it might be the scariest movie I've ever seen. I know there are haters out there. But I think it's so scary i think it's such an effective horror movie and then i watched the sequel a bunch oh book of shadows book of shadows not to be confused with national treasure 2 book of secrets of course that's true yeah in player which two do they kidnap the

president the president of the united states um yeah they do not but a bunch of bummer scared i for some reason watched the sequel several times or specifically book of shadows in the early 2000s because i thought it was just like i don't know just like a cool extension of the first one and i also to prepare for this episode, watched Blair Witch, which is the third installment of the franchise that came out in 2016, which I don't remember it even coming out in theaters. It's something I feel like I should have been aware of. It was not that long ago, but I was like, what is this movie? I don't remember that coming out at all. And it had a theatrical release and everything. It made like $45 million at the box office. Anyway, I watched it. I also thought

it was very, very scary. It does rely on a few very tired, nasty horror movie tropes, such as the black guy is the first person to die. But was very scary anytime people are camping in the woods and it's dark and they're just sort of like waving a camera around the woods and you can only see little bits and pieces i'm like i'm scared the woods are scary i will never go camping under any circumstances because probably of movies like this like no camping period i refuse to go camping got it my friends are always like let's go camping and i'm like but why i like indoor plumbing i like sleeping on a bed i like having walls and a ceiling and a floor so no thank you but um yeah i thank you yes yes i did not realize how much i love this franchise until sort of like

revisiting it for this episode, but I think it rocks. So that is my relationship to the Blair Witch. Jamie, how about you? I wish I had as detailed a lore. I feel like I definitely do not remember this movie coming out. Sorry, I'm so young. But I do like I definitely do not remember this movie coming out sorry I'm so young um but I do like I wish I don't know like reading about everything that surrounded this movie and like hearing about your experiences like seeing it for the first time uh if I had been like you know nine or ten when this came out I would have lost my fucking yeah like this is so it's just it was so fascinating to read about how this was made even though it's like wildly unethical and probably would get them blacklisted today but like i was eating this shit up for the last two days i have been in the

blair witch zone i really enjoy and chelsea i I think you that Sarah also showed this movie to you recently. I love a hoax. I love a hoax. I love a goof. I love people falling for it big time. I didn't realize to the extent how like integral that was to Blair Witch marketing. I'd seen like my short story is I've seen this movie once or twice. I think that I was pre poisoned by the infinity parodies of this movie. So that I had seen this movie parodied a hundred times before I ever watched it in like high school or college. And so I was especially scary movie, right?

I feel like scary movies, the main, yeah, huge. And it just like any like low hanging fruitanging fruit for any comedy property but I definitely remember I definitely saw a scary movie before I saw this so by the time I actually saw it I was like oh this is pretty scary like but I I was so like subconsciously exhausted by it because it was so everywhere and I wish that I had gotten to experience the moment where like people were like

no these kids died and now they hired look-alike actors to promote the movie I was like oh my god 1999 was such a bizarrely innocent time that that could be true I don't know yeah I didn't have a huge connection to this movie but going back I can't imagine a more perfectly timed movie for like right before people figured out how to like hoax check shit on the internet but i just anything that involves an arg or some sort of public hoax element i'm a huge sucker for like i know that the most famous example is like the orson welles or the world one but there's also chelsea did you show sarah or did no she showed me i had never even heard of it and i was shocked i hadn't heard of it it was fantastic it was so loved so wait which

what are you talking about pre-dating the blair witch project there was it's streaming for free on tubi hashtag thank you tubi tubi heads thank you to be or not to And I say, let's turn on Tubi, babes. It's a fake documentary, a mockumentary, if you will, called Ghostwatch. It's a horror mockumentary that came out in 1992, was broadcast on the BBC on Halloween night with real famous BBC anchors at the time playing out this hoax script that basically leads you to believe that there is a real haunting with like real people dying. The haunting comes to the studio. It's like fucking amazing. It's so good. Did you, Jamie, catch all of the Fox sister references in it? Because I was seeing shit. I was like the apples hanging. They had like apples hanging from the ceiling, which is how the Fox sisters duped people i think they live on like fox something road i was just like i get the jokes i love when i get the jokes or the references yeah it's spiritualism heavy it's like absolutely fantastic if you enjoy

the blair witch project you will also love ghost watch also ghost, Ghostwatch is like very funny. It's all these like newsy anchor jokes. Caitlin, I think you would love it. Okay, I'll check it out. I just love this very specific genre of horror mockumentary. Hoax horror. Yeah, exactly. And then it was really interesting doing research on I mean, there's quite a bit written about not just like the production and the lore surrounding this movie, but how it frames and portrays its main character, Heather. There's a ton of shit to talk about there, too. I was very much in my like freshman sociology seminar bag prepping for this episode. I'm very excited to talk about it.

Hell yeah. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies.

On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Jake Storielli here from John Boy Media. I want to tell you about my podcast, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the Waking Jake. So if you're a diehard fan or looking for the latest buzz, we've got you covered. No matter your favorite sport,

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And we are back. And here is the recap of the Blair Witch Project. So we open on text on screen that says that in October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. And then a year after their disappearance, their footage was found. And then we start watching the footage, because this is famously a found footage style movie. We meet the director of the documentary, Heather, played by Heather Donahue. And she's just preparing for a trip to the woods to make this documentary on a local

legend, the Blair Witch. Then we meet Josh, played by Joshua Leonard, who's helping Heather to shoot the doc on a 16 millimeter film camera. They then pick up Mike, played by Michael C. Williams, who they are meeting for the first time. They've kind of like hired him to be the sound guy. And then they start shooting some stuff including shots of a cemetery that holds an unusually high number of graves of children many of whom died in the 1940s which is also just like anytime they're like oh a lot of kids used to die you're like yeah yeah like 50 That just used to be how it was. Also, mad nerd time, dork report. I went to Burkittsville and I took a picture exactly where Heather stood. Whoa. That's the greatest.

I went with my friend Will Rogers, who is also a big Blair Witch head who does all of our voice acting. And we just had such a beautiful time. And we really wanted to camp but we didn't have time but i will camp in those woods one day caitlin you want to come not even a little bit so we also see them interviewing a few locals in burkittsville formerly formerly known as Blair, Maryland. They're asking about the Blair Witch, and the locals share various scary stories and legends that they've heard over the years. There's mention of a man named Mr. Parr, who in 1940 murdered seven children, where he would bring them down to his basement in pairs and make one of them stand

facing the corner while he killed the other one also i guess we should have placed a trigger warning at the top of this because there will be a lot of discussion of murder the blair i this is the one time where i'm like if you need a trigger warning for the Blair Witch Project I literally do not know what to tell you that's fair that's fair yes I'm a conservative on this issue she's putting her foot down on this world culture yes just so you know everyone children aren't murdered on screen but there's a lot of like lore that is talked about in the movie and a lot of it is children dying it's the Blair Witch Project you guys it is the Blair Witch Project if I receive a single email about this I'm gonna lose

it okay so they also interview a woman named Mary Brown who has a reputation around town as being like you know not very reliable she's quote unquote a lunatic and she talks about how she had an encounter with possibly the Blair Witch when she was a child and she describes what she saw and it's scary and spooky and she's like fucking iconic. Yeah. She is. The legend. Oh, I just absolutely adore her. And I love that the movie, spoiler alert, bears out that she was completely right the whole time. And that they are, I guess, plot punished for assuming the worst of her. Yeah, true. That was also the only movie that that actor ever acted in, I believe.

Well, actually, she signed up to be an intern. They advertised in the local paper that they needed an intern. And she showed up and her house was exactly like that, including the weird stick fence. So she's very much like, I'm sure we'll get into this, but all many of the actors were just people who lived in the town who were told a rough outline of what they wanted them to say. And then they ad-libbed like the whole thing. Oh, interesting. Okay. Which is like amazing because it's like all of them are great.

Yeah. Everyone is great. The performances are incredible. Her name was Patricia Deku. R.I.P. She has passed away. So let's rip. Oh name was Patricia Deku. R.I.P. She has passed away. So let's rip. Rip in heaven.

Patti. Yeah, she was wonderful. And I also love the interview that I always remember is the mom with the kid who's like, it's just a scary story. And I guess that she also, that was like basically no instruction whatsoever it was just like Chelsea correct me if I'm wrong but just like pretend you know what the Blair Witch is and like here's sort of what you should say and she did not sign a release and so the filmmakers had to like try to find her for weeks because she just gave the best improvised interview and for

some reason that's the interview I mean like Mary Brown, but I love the mom one. It felt so real. She's amazing. And the little girl the whole time is like trying to close her mouth. She keeps being, no, no. And then she goes, it's just a scary story. It's not real. And then she turns to the camera and just goes, it's real.

And it's so, or no, it's true. And it's so funny. But I did really quick watch today an interview with them like that was made in like 2020 or 2019. And the girl's all grown up. And hear this. She is wearing a Korn sweatshirt. And I thought that was incredible. What a legend. Girl.

I love it. I want to be her friend. Which if you think about it corn was one of the big instigators unintentionally of woodstock 99 which is happening in the same year which i feel is an interesting cultural it's all connected yeah it is were we ever so young okay so then it's day two of shooting we see an interview that they shoot with two fishermen who tell the filmmakers about a girl from the 1800s who also allegedly had an encounter with a witch in the woods and then they park their car and head into the woods with these big heavy backpacks they've got all of their film equipment and they're making their way to coffin rock where as legend has it five men were bound together disemboweled markings were etched into their skin and then their bodies mysteriously vanished as if someone

had taken them each man's hands tied to another man's feet it's just the way heather talks when she's on camera i love it's so student film where she's just like clearly i don't know parroting like tv talk yeah so good it's so. Like a Discovery Channel documentary or something. It's perfect. True performance is just like, just unbelievable. So good. True. True.

Then after Cough and Rock, they set up a tent and camp in the woods that night. We cut to the next morning. So it's like day three of shooting. Josh is talking about noises he heard the night before there was like a cackling outside their tent and they're like oh yikes but let's keep going so they start hiking through the woods to find a cemetery that's supposed to be there but there's no trail they're kind kind of lost. They argue about where they're going and whether or not Heather knows where they actually are. Tension is very high

among the group. But then they finally figure out where they are. And they come upon this kind of like makeshift cemetery where it's these strange piles of rocks that someone had clearly like assembled. It wasn't just found this way in nature. And then there are like these sort of like man-made nests in trees that are also filled with rocks. And Heather's like, didn't Mary Brown say something about piles of rocks where she was like referencing the Bible and they're trying to figure out what the significance of these rocks could be. And I love how it's like explicitly said like oh i just didn't listen to her i didn't take her seriously yeah she was crazy lunatic yeah yeah yeah and then it's like well sorry bitch you gotta listen listen to our friend mary always listen to women that live in the woods that's like a basic rule yeah stick fence listen

up that's what i say this person has something to say that's rule of survival number one okay so that night they set up camp again by this makeshift cemetery they hear some more scary sounds off in the distance, but they don't see anything. Then we cut to the next morning and now they're headed back to the car, but they're deep in the woods. They might be lost again. Heather is constantly insisting that she knows exactly where they are, but Josh and Mike are both pissed at her and they do not manage to make it to the car. So they have to set up camp again and sleep in the woods that night when and then they hear the same strange noises as the night before. It sounds like large branches are cracking. They hear footsteps.

They're very scared. And every night it gets closer and lasts longer is that the general it intensifies yeah every night they wake up the following morning to discover that someone or something has made three piles of rocks right outside their tent almost as if to symbolize the three filmmakers and their graves. Anyway, so they're like, let's get the fuck out of here. So they pack up, but oh no, they can't find the map. So now they're more lost than ever. They accuse Heather of losing the map. And so they're very pissed at her again,

until Mike admits that he threw the map in the creek the day before because he thought it was useless. He kicked it. Kicked it. Yeah. What a tantrum. Yeah. A map. What a big baby.

What? Oh, I forgot because Heather's apology is so iconic that I sort of forgot that it's basically mike's fault that they're lost yeah i feel like mike you know he has his moments throughout the movie but mike he's gotta go he does and he does he does i mean fair enough he does. So they're very pissed at Mike for doing this. They get into a screaming match. They eventually calm down, but the whole crew is now extremely defeated. They find another spot where there's all sorts of scary stuff. These like sticks that have been tied together. They sort of look like stick figure drawings. They're like the iconic image of this movie. Very recognizable. But they're still lost. And so they

have to make camp again for the night. And they wake up in the middle of the night to voices right outside their tent. And then suddenly there's something kind of like rustling their tent from the outside so they take off running but it's dark and they can't really see and they're super freaked out they find a spot to hide until the sun comes up and then they return to their campsite their stuff has been fucked with josh's belongings are covered in this like weird slime some witch goo or something and they're all just like absolutely on the brink of losing their minds it also seems like they're going in circles where they spent an entire day walking in one direction they walked south but they still somehow ended up at the same exact spot

where they started that day. There's like this log that had like fallen over a creek and they end up at the same log. One of the scariest parts to me. Yeah. This isn't a spoiler, but the third installment of the franchise, simply called Blair Witch. You're like a full franchise. I'm a franchise head. It takes that concept and like really heightens it in that movie basically to suggest that the Blair Witch is capable of like either skewing people's perception of reality or maybe she's like messing with their compasses or just like doing something to kind of like alter the space-time continuum so that they are like are constantly lost. And it's not clear exactly what's happening in this movie where again they walk in one direction but somehow have still walked in a circle. So it's like what has the witch done to make that possible? Right.

This is a movie and a franchise that had to work backwards a little bit to create lore to continue the franchise. And I'm always fascinated at how you're like, oh, sure, yes, the witch can alter the space-time continuum. And that would make sense that that would happen. They didn't just get lost because they didn't have a map. It was the space-time continuum. Yeah, continuum yeah yeah yeah we'll talk about the production it is not really super relevant to the topic of our show but i just do need to talk about it because it's so fucking weird but like the actors also did not know they were going to end up in the same place at the end of the day like those are like somewhat genuine reactions it's so bizarre because i guess they hadn't i think i think they say in the movie 15 hours but it was not 15 hours but it was eight hours that they were hiking only

to be led back to the same spot i too would react would cry i would cry so hard there's so many good moments with heather where she is like really trying to keep things at bay. Clearly feels a sense of like confidence that turns into guilt as the movie goes on. And then you just like hear how she's when she's at the log. She's like, it's the same log. You're like, no. Yeah, she's like in denial for a while because Heather is like a big denial person. And she's presented in denial. And then that's kind of the moment that she breaks and doesn't want to be filmed, I believe, at that moment for the first time.

And, you know, everybody's been like, stop filming, stop filming, stop filming. What are you doing? And then they kind of all break and they start berating Heather until she basically breaks down by filming her and filming her and filming her, which I think is also a very interesting commentary on what I'm not 100% sure but it's there let's speculate later yeah I didn't find a piece of writing that I completely was like oh this this is that they but I've there's been a lot written about controlling the narrative blah blah blah like I'm very excited to talk about it yeah so they've arrived at the same spot that they were already at. So they went in one big circle. So they have to make camp again.

And they do. And the next morning, Heather and Mike wake up and Josh is nowhere to be found. But all of his stuff is still there. So they're freaking out. They decide to head east this time, but they still can't get unlost. So they have to make camp again that night. And they hear what appears to be Josh's voice

calling out in agony outside of their tent. But they, you know, again, they can't see, they don't know where he is. There's not much they can really do. They wake up the next morning, there's a bundle of sticks outside of their tent. Heather undoes the bundle and inside is what appears to be Josh's shirt and wrapped inside the shirt is blood. There's like some teeth and a tongue, maybe some fingers, little body parts,

you know? And Heather's like, let me say nothing. She does not tell Mike. She's like, if I don't say anything, it never happened. So she's like trying to keep it together

then we get that iconic scene the close-up of heather's face she has like kind of gone off into the woods alone at night she's crying she's apologizing she completely improvised speech so yes she knows she's gonna die and she's, like, I am to blame for what happened. And I'm so sorry. Then she hears something. It is a man calling out for help. So Heather and Mike reunite and go looking for him. They come upon this dilapidated house.

They go inside thinking that Josh might be in there. And they hear yelling coming from upstairs so they make their way through the rooms around corners they don't find anything then they go downstairs to the basement they're again just running through the house surrounding corners it's so scary yeah it's so good they, so they're in the basement. Mike is kind of ahead of Heather. They both have cameras rolling. She keeps kind of losing him.

So she's like screaming. Then we get a shot of Mike's camera and he drops it as if he's been kind of like attacked. Then we cut to Heather and her camera. She's still going of like attacked. Then we cut to Heather and her camera. She's still going down the stairs. Then she goes into the basement and sees Mike standing in the corner facing the wall. She screams. She drops her camera as if she was attacked by the Blair witch.

But you never actually see the witch on screen. And then that's the end of the movie. Due to budgetary reasons. It's so good. It's so much better that they didn't show. Yeah. It's the Jaws effect. It's the monster problem, right? Where you show the monster and it ruins it.

It's always going to be scarier in your imagination. And so many horror movies do that at the end. You're like, no, that sucks. What you just showed me sucks it's ruined we didn't need to see your goofy looking monster unless it's tim curry and it yeah unless it's tim curry and a weird spider at the end of it rip its heart out i read that they had someone appear and like they thought they shot footage but it didn't come out or something like that of like someone on the production wearing all white and wearing white pantyhose on their head and then they were like that no no don't need to show that that was like

i don't know it even if they meant to show it or not but they did that as part of what we'll get into the making of the film and it's the part where Heather's going, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is that? And she just turned and she had no idea that someone was going to be an all white like running beside her. So it's so wild. Oh, so scary. Let's take another quick break and we'll come 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen um dragged uh I'm NK and this is basket case so I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown I was crying and I was inconsolable it was just very big sudden swaps of different meds.

What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, everyone. Jake Storielli here from John Boy Media. I want to tell you about my podcast, Waking Jake. It's your go-to spot for anything and everything sports. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf, college, whatever's hot in the street, we're talking about it on Waking Jake. So if you're a diehard fan or looking for the latest buzz, we've got you covered no matter your favorite sport. We're breaking it down with the passion

that'll make you feel like you're in the stands with us. Plus, we've got a bunch of guests. Foolish Bailey, Jolly Olive, Chris Rose, and more. Mock drafts, rankings, whatever you want. It's the sports world and come on and join our friends in the Wake and Jake family. You will not

regret it. So, new episodes Monday and Wednesday. You can watch friends in the Wake and Jake family. You will not regret it. So, new episodes Monday and Wednesday. You can watch along on the Wake and Jake YouTube channel or listen to Wake and Jake on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back i would love to start by talking about the production of this movie just because it feels so important to do like so much i mean i guess maybe not to feminism but whatever it's so important i think there's relevant stuff yeah they're very matches this is i mean this is a movie written and i mean written quote unquote because it's heavily improvised

outlined and directed by two guys daniel mirik and eduardo sanchez and we've like heavily implied to this so far but what i didn't realize is this is like the x games of improv yes and great way to put it the actors like were actually obviously knew they were in a movie but did not know what was going to happen they did not know who was going to die or when the part that like sits least well with me about the turbo improv approach is that they were given less and less food so that they're acting like i mean the ethical issues are many but i just i had no idea that that is the way that this movie was made and i found it fascinating yeah the directors and then there's a producer named greg who were real greg behavior truly they in the cast and call let people who auditioned know that it would be a highly improvised difficult shoot and they all got

paid like 500 or something oh it's non-union with pay travel and meals three weeks in maryland extremely challenging roles to be shot under very difficult conditions and you're like god we got to be on strike forever this game can't featuring lifelong trauma yeah yeah truly yeah the bar is low but at least they let the actors know that it would be very difficult and strenuous because we've come across casting situations like this where the filmmakers did not let the actors know to what extent they would have to be i think we talked about was that the human centipede episode maybe that like the actors were not fully filled in on like what they would have to be doing physically and like the various horror things they'd have to endure.

Cannibal Holocaust did that. I don't know if that's what you're thinking of. It could be, I wouldn't be surprised if it was also the human centipede, though. It's interesting because as brutal as this shoot sounded, it doesn't sound like any of the lasting trauma for the actors which is mainly we're talking about heather donahue who has since changed her name to ray hance that was as of 2020 which i think i haven't looked into it thoroughly but i think is at least somewhat related to the fact that the Blair Witch Project uses their full names. But I didn't find very much about like being particularly traumatized by the production of the movie, but rather more like after it came out. Right. Especially for Ray Hance, Heather Donahue at the time. And that's also the name

of the character. So she's given a number of interviews over the years and i find her to be very interesting because i'm curious what you both remember about the reception of this movie when it came out it sounds like i mean all three of the actors you know because of sort of the naivete of like 1999 brain some people were like pissed off that they were actors that were not dead um which sounds stressful in itself but it sounds like heather in particular caught a ton of shit for this she got the razzie for worst actress which makes absolutely no sense absolutely no sense no it infuriates me beyond she gives the performance of the movie easily like i was completely shocked by that i want to share a quote from her yeah where she speaks to that actor formerly known as heather donahue says quote i had

actually done a student film two years before with a young female filmmaker who definitely had a lot of bravado. I had to think, what kind of woman would actually keep the camera running through horrible times? A normal person would have stopped filming, so I had to take that character to that extra driven angle. I don't think there were a lot of female characters like that in movies at the time. Definitely, I feel like things have changed a lot. There's been a little more leeway for female characters.

I won the Razzie for worst actress that year. And I think that was partly because of the character being judged rather than the performance. She was a very driven woman who didn't wear a mascara and was on camera in 1999 unquote so she's basically saying like people hated that character because of and you know we'll talk about that and the gender of it all in a bit but like the gender of it yeah she was like unfairly criticized as a performer because of the way her character is and again it doesn't help that like her full name was used which she also regrets yeah that's

like her biggest regret of the movie because she like couldn't escape the Blair Witch Project because her full name was used as the character she plays. Which I feel like that's a bad idea. But also I've read different like people are like the filmmakers shouldn't have done that. I'm like, I agree with that. But also the filmmakers could not have possibly seen this indie movie making a quarter billion dollars. Like it is just very unfortunate that that happened to all three of them. But I think it's particularly like it seems to have affected the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue, especially because as we've talked about the acting was also kind of real like she was actually very very scared right and to give a little bit more about the production basically how it went was each day the actors would get gps

coordinates to go to and when they got there they would find like a box with information, very scant information about whatever they needed to get across that day, information-wise, plot-wise. And then pretty much everything else was improvised. So ARG. Oh, yeah. It's so bizarre. And yeah, the directors, producers following them through the woods,

screaming at night. At one point, they recorded one of the director's kids that lived across the street just playing and doing whatever they did and just boomboxed it outside their tent. As we mentioned, there was the guy who was in all white. You know, there was like the baby crying. They set up all of the stick figures. None of that. None of those things were things that the cast was aware of at the time um so it's like they were very very scared they didn't know the tent

was gonna start shaking you know it's like i don't understand how i would be interested to see if the razzies i mean i guess they would have come out before Scary Movie because Scary Movie was 2000. But in Scary Movie, they just take the snot scene, which unfortunately kind of became the most famous scene in the movie. Because when Heather is crying and apologizing to Josh's mom and Mike's mom and her own mom, and it's such good acting. And she's got snot coming out of her mouth, which is amazing. Like, it makes the scene so real it's like silly but you're also like yeah that's what happens when you cry that fucking hard like having an actor cry so hard that snot is coming out of her mouth is good acting and then it was parodied in scary movies so much and it was just like so much snot coming out of her nose that was funny but

you know it's like it just it cast a pall kind of backwards on the movie and now people just think of her with snot pouring out of her nose which it's so annoying it's so unfair and i mean she also in that same interview that you're quoting caitlin like describes like the frustration of like using her real name making her essentially like ip belonging to the blair witch expanded universe which sounds infinitely frustrated again in a way that i don't think is malicious because who could have seen it but it's still like it seems like the conversation and the parodying around this movie affected her particularly in ways that feel very like of the time because we don't even see heather on screen very much because like she as we'll talk about in a bit is like for the most part

dictating what you see and how you perceive what's going on but for the few shots i guess that like people were fat shaming her or like judging her body and like which is just i'm this is a quote from i believe this is from the week oral history of this movie that came out eight or so years ago she says no size eight woman was playing the lead in dirty jeans with no mascara with unwashed hair no ingenue was willing to be so unfuckable i was the most unfuckable ingenue to ever be in a blockbuster but that was the thrill the fuck you thrill of it how could i say no to that nobody wanted me to go into the woods with a bunch of strange guys but how could i say no to improvising an entire feature without a stitch of makeup with layers of clothes and dirt

and knives and nothing but a pile of rocks to scare you with bad ass she seems really fucking cool and then she retired from acting and became a weed farmer and i'm just like god bless i con good for you also before she got cast in the movie she was a founding member of an improv company called red shag and she was in a feminist off off broadway fringe movement theater called collision theory so feminist icon actor formerly known as heather donahue in a feminist off broadway fringe movement theater it's so fucking cool but it's like just even hearing i think part of the point of, like part of what makes this movie plausible is that everyone looks like people. And like after several days in the woods, which they were, everyone looks like shit.

Because how could you not look like shit? But of course, the only backlash is like you don't hear about how Mike looks like shit after three years in the woods. You only hear how Heather looks like shit and judgments of her. Which again, it's like for this time is not at all surprising. But I was surprised at how much it seemed to really affect the actor's life moving forward. And I appreciate that she's been vocal about that through the years. And it's funny because it's like she's not even it's not that she's unsupportive of the franchise. Like she mentions that she saw the 2016 Blair Witch movie and thought it was really good and all this stuff.

But also met with the filmmakers or the producers or whoever was in control of the franchise. And was like, please just keep my name out of it. Because the franchise, like as you both know, continues with like her brother goes back to try to find out what happened. And it's like her name is connected as a dead person. It just sounds absolutely maddening. And also, I'm like, how many people in the world have ever had this problem? It must be very isolating to have this problem. It's so specific. Because as part of the marketing gimmick of this movie,

one of the co-directors, Eduardo Sanchez, set up this, what became a famous website to help promote the film. But it was basically feeding into the illusion that this was a real documentary, that these were not actors. They were student filmmakers making a documentary and that they died in the woods so much so that like those three

actors were like listed as having been deceased on imdb for like a full year or something like that and a bunch of people thought that those people had actually died and so like um so the actor's parents were getting calls being like i'm so sorry that your kid died like condolences and like what kind of weird ass person is like i've got to call up this mom give condolences it's so strange and to add to that they also like made missing posters for them and posted them in on college campuses which was so smart because that's like definitely the age i feel like that was going to go to this movie and so even at the premiere they handed out posters and i want to get my mitts on one of those original posters so bad

of all the missing people. But, yeah, it's like they really went hard. They didn't do any press before the movie, the actors, and they never showed any trailers. And that was another, you know, so they saved a bunch of money on advertising, which was just really smart by doing this like guerrilla marketing campaign. And I think that like not that like a ton of people like except you Chelsea like would have seen the sci-fi the doc on sci-fi ahead of time but that just like lends the credibility of what you're seeing. It's just uh it's so cool. They put it out three days before which was cool. It was like three days before it premiered in like wide release. Yeah so smart. And I didn't i also didn't realize just like when i was reading through the oral history that originally like the whole sort of mockumentary

aspect and like cutting out two members of the family as like and you know they die at the beginning of the movie it was not supposed to be all found footage but then it just like the filmmakers executed everything so well and the actors did such a good job at like being in the x games of improv that that was the movie it's so fucking cool so the last making of anecdote i wanted to share that has nothing to do with our show but i just thought was funny was that josh did not know that he was going to, but then like got one of their like freaky little messages and was like, Hey, wait till Mike and Heather go to bed tonight.

And then just like leave the tent. And he didn't know why he was being forced to leave the tent. And then the filmmakers were like, all right, you're dead. Let's go to Denny's. And then they brought him to Denny's. Oh,

that's cool. You're done. Denny's is perfect. Isn't that so funny? That is exactly where I would want to Denny's. And then they brought him to Denny's. Oh, that's cool. Denny's is perfect. Isn't that so funny? That is exactly where I would want to go after that. Denny's, it's an American institution. It's always there for you anytime. So if it hasn't been clear, the cast camped in the woods through basically the entire eight day shoot so they

weren't like shooting you know your standard whatever 14 16 hour day kind of thing and then like going into a trailer or going in i think they did spend one night in a hotel and it was because their campsite was basically flooded just water everywhere like an inch of water in their tents kind of thing. And the filmmakers are like, well, we can't kill them. We're only paying them $500 for any worst days of their lives. But the rest of the time, they were actually like camping in the woods during the entire shoot. So it was like very uncomfortable. And like we mentioned before, the crew was like feeding them less and less. They were like, you know, your safety is important to us.

We're never going to like put you in extreme harm's way. But we also want you to be very uncomfortable. So like they would scale back on the amount of food that they gave the cast each day so that when they were like, we're very tired and hungry, like that was coming, which is like very abusive. Yeah. As we alluded to. It just sounds miserable. Yeah. And it was unclear of like how much of that was communicated in advance.

Like I wasn't able to find like super extreme detail other than they were told in advance that it was going to be a very difficult shoot but i don't know like yeah if they were like told that they would not receive enough food kind of thing yeah but yeah i mean i think that the ethics of this movie are definitely like can and should be called into question i'm not advocating for these kinds of movies to be made more but it's pretty fucking cool they got some good performances out of it so um i want to say one last quote from the actor who plays heather donahue she says quote it's very hard for me to talk about the backlash because for me it

was so directly personal it was my mother getting sympathy cards it was people coming up to me on the street telling me that they wished i was dead saying they wanted their money back such weirdos Greek show. Weirdo. Crap. For being in a movie. Go home. Get a job. It was me in my 84 Toyota Silica breaking down in LA on La Cienega underneath a billboard with my own face on it. It was a profoundly surreal experience. She rocks. experience i feel like her treatment by the public upon this movie coming out is not dissimilar from her treatment within the movie and maybe i'm reading too much into things here let me know what

y'all think of this because as i was was watching the movie, and having not to brag or anything, but having directed a few student films myself, I was picking up on a very familiar sensation of like implicit gender bias, where obviously, the cast of this movie slash the crew making this documentary about the Blair Witch within this movie has one woman and two men. And the woman is in charge. She's the director of the movie. This is her project. It seems like it was her idea to do this and that these two guys are just helping her make it. And throughout the movie, they are constantly getting pissed at her and blaming her for everything that goes wrong. Now, are they pissed at her specifically because she's in charge and when things go wrong,

you generally blame the person in charge? Or are they pissed at her because she's a woman and they don't trust that she's capable and that they don't trust that she can get them back safely and all of these things? Is it maybe a little bit of column A and column B? Because like, they never explicitly say anything like, I don't trust you or think that you're capable because you're a woman. But also, a lot of sexism is not that explicit. It is extremely implicit. Because like, again, I've been in situations where I was like, the only femme person. And in many of those cases, like I was in charge, and I was surrounded by men, and I could tell that the men around me just like weren't taking me seriously. They were questioning my judgment. They weren't trusting that I could get

the job done. They were blaming me for anything that went wrong regardless if it was my fault or not. And no one like outwardly said, I don't trust you because of your gender. But when something like that is happening, you can just like tell that you people are perceiving you in that way. And so I'm convinced that these two men kept getting so pissed at Heather because of this implicit gender bias. Is she making mistakes along the way? Sure. But I do feel like she's the subject of this like unfair scrutiny because she's a woman in charge that's also supported by the fact that so much of this movie is improvised under duress so it's like your natural biases you know and this is not to say that the two actors hate women or anything

like that but I do feel like the instructions they're given are so vague that like of course your biases are going to sort of like bubble to the surface in those kinds of situations it feels like a very bizarre like a Stanford prison experiment kind of way to reveal those biases. I was struggling most with Mike at the beginning. And then as the movie went on, I thought Josh was more interesting because Josh starts out like he's her friend and he is defensive of her towards the beginning. But when things start to go wrong in a meaningful way, he turns her and i feel like i've certainly had experiences like that with men that like start on your side but when it's like oh no they kind of leave your side when it counts and in a way that totally blows up in josh's face because mike's the one

who fucking kicked the map into the creek so whatever whatever. But I felt I also had that same tingling sensation of just, oh yeah, of course they're going to turn on her faster and they are going to assume less competence. And all of this is complicated by the fact that none of them are experienced in what they're doing. Like they're student filmmakers. They don't fucking know what they're doing but i think it's clear especially as things get worse and worse that heather is more quickly turned on and like that leads up to the scene that we've already started talking about but i want to talk more about of

like where she's antagonized by josh and that's a you know conflict that is never resolved between them due to their dying yes well and it just like i think it would be the only way to really test it because you know heather makes mistakes there's some hubris there she thinks she knows where she's going things that would piss me off if i were one of those guys for sure but had the director been a man i don't think there would have ever been a scene where they're like berating this man and filming this man and i think there would have been like more willingness to collaborate on the problem versus just like kind of blaming heather and ganging up on her and like yeah so yeah, so I don't think Heather's like some angelic, innocent woman character who's completely unfairly treated.

But like, I just think the way that we'd be able to really see is like switching out Heather for a male director. And I don't imagine that it would have gone the same way. I think there might have been fistfights, perhaps, but I don't even know it would have gone the same way. I think there might have been fistfights perhaps, but I don't even know about that. Yeah. I think the thing that struck me the most outside of them, like accosting her was, and the first sort of inkling that like Josh is,

maybe has more of this inherent bias that he probably thinks he does, is that he is very, very quick to believe that heather lost the map he is that is like the first time that you're like oh that's your friend where where are you now but he goes with mike's version of the story over heather's seemingly for no for a reason it wasn't clear to me yeah and i feel I feel like his behavior towards her. I mean, I think it's like intentional in the way that it's written and performed, but like there is like trust that is broken between these two friends that feels,

yeah, it is like a tricky combination of leadership and like who is sort of on top of the pile, whose project are we here for probably for no money. Cause you're in college and the gender dynamics so it's so wild like I can't believe this movie exists because you're like I'm sure that there's a bit of all of the actors whether they like it or not in how that plays out but I like I think that while all of these things are true like Heather can be up her

own ass at moments. And I like that they are like, she's an arrogant film student, too. Like, she doesn't know what she's doing. None of them know what they're doing. It's the way that they treat each other once they all realize they're in way over their head that I feel like is telling. Well, to that, like you said, Jamie, I appreciate that we have a flawed female character on screen because so few movies allow a woman or a femme of any kind to be flawed. They're so often portrayed as these like one dimensional, perfect little angels who never make mistakes. They have no bad qualities, which is obviously not what being a human is right or like the expectation of like hyper competence and any woman in the front of a movie

right so i like that she is yeah she displays a lot of hubris although i do believe because one of the major sources of tension between them is that they keep blaming her for getting them lost and she keeps insisting that they are not lost and it's hard to tell what's actually true like does she know exactly where they are in the map and where they are going like she says she does and it's just the witch who is again like altering their perception of reality or whatever the witch does is it that she's like too proud to admit that she is actually lost and she wants to inspire confidence that she is capable and she does know where they're going and that she's not leading them to danger that kind of thing but because sense of direction has so many gender stereotypes attached to it in that men stereotypically are perceived as a gender that is really good at directions and they know where

they're going and they just have an inherent sense of direction and then they can just look up at the sky. Or alternatively, I think that there is like a stereotype that I find less true as time goes on, but that if they are lost, they cannot admit it. They won't stop and ask. They will not stop at a gas station. Yeah. It's so embarrassing meanwhile women are perceived stereotypically as people who have a really bad sense of direction and who just like cannot navigate where they are or where

they're going and i think that plays a large part into why i feel like there's such strong implicit gender bias among these characters is because such a huge part of the tension between them is maps and senses of direction and where they're going and that kind of stuff even when mike admits to kicking the map he blames heather by saying it was useless anyway so like i kicked it because you got us lost to the point where this map is useless so why not just fucking kick it and because you know it didn't matter anyway so furious because she's like it was useless to you parentheses because you don't know how to read it but it was not useless to me i knew exactly where we were on that map and i like believe her as she's saying

that like i think that's probably legitimately true and it's just that the witch is doing totally to them even if she's not telling the truth there like that's not the reason that he doesn't believe her so it doesn't even matter to me it doesn't matter because i honestly i was like i don't know if i believe her it seems like she was kind of bullshitting to some extent in the previous day but it's like it doesn't really matter because I think that like Mike doing that is even more telling because he doesn't know her he has no reason to not trust that she doesn't know what she's talking about he met her yesterday so this is like a bias that has nothing to do with who she is right damn i mean there's like i don't know if we have more heather but i think there is another

female character or woman character that we need to discuss and that is the witch the blair witch yeah And, you know, I think like when you do watch the Blair Witch Project, you don't get any information about kind of where, who was a witch who was accused of like drinking the blood of children. And these children in the town came or like the whole town then like tied her to a tree. She died of exposure. She had like strange symbols carved into her by this group. So it is kind of a satanic panic situation originally. But, you know, you don't know, was this witch actually doing these things? Because after she gets murdered, essentially, kids still start disappearing in the town Witch Project and then also in like all the supplementary stuff of Rustin Parr, who is the child murderer from the 1940s who. Just wild because his name is so Rest in Peace. Oh, yeah. That's my brilliant contribution.

It's based on Rasputin's name, though. Yeah. I love Rasputin's name though it's yeah i love rasputin me too yeah so ellie kedward is a close anagram to edward kelly who i forget who that is uh but child murderer yeah okay right right i was like we we have the right guest on thank you so much uh i just read about it on scholarly journal, Wikipedia, and then immediately forgot who it was. Rustin Parr is a character name or like part of the lore because the directors were like, what's an anagram for Rasputin? Wow.

Jamie? I need to correct myself really quick. Edward Kelly was an occultist. I see. I don't think he murdered anyone. Okay. for edward kelly innocent accuracy sake but all this to say and we've talked about the representation of witches in many episodes we've covered a lot of witch movies and we're fans of witch media in general true how could you not be i was making a list of everything we've covered we've done the vavitch we've done witches we've done witches of eastwick the love witch the craft practical magic hocus pocus i would even throw kiki's delivery service

in there we love a witch right and many movies that are not necessarily specifically about witches, but have witch characters such as the Wizard of Oz and things like that. Witches are very pervasive in Hollywood media and especially horror media. And if you're covering movies that center women, you're going to end up covering a lot of movie about witches. Very true. It's true. Like positively and negatively right because i mean most of these witch movies are playing into the stereotypes and the popularly held misconception that you know witches are evil they're agents of the devil they're malicious they're almost always women which like kind of lends this sort

of like, well, women equals witches equals women are evil, which is a belief that got a lot of people, again, mostly women, killed during various witch hunts and witch trials throughout history. Even though, as we've discussed on other episodes people who were perceived to be witches throughout history were usually just like empowered women or people who didn't conform to yeah unmarried women healers uh people who didn't conform to very rigid roles as far as like gender and sexuality and things like that throughout history and then people are like oh well they must be a witch and then a lot of them were persecuted this movie is doing the same shit absolutely yeah chelsea i'm curious what your

thoughts are on that because it's very interesting to me that like you see some sort of transgressive ideas with heather and by centering her but it does feel like there is like a sameness even though the way that this movie presents everything is so different but there is a sameness to like a woman crosses a boundary and like gets a little too curious i think that's another trope that is kind of present here and not really challenged and yeah the idea of the witch is just like reinforced in a way that i didn't even really almost notice the first time because you don't see the witch which i think helps but it doesn't really resolve the issue right you don't get who the witch was in the actual movie then you you get the background, which does kind of present a possible false accusation. But then kind of, OK, children are still getting murdered. This vengeful ghost is still kind of coming after children. And I think that there's a lot to do with the satanic panic in this movie, especially as it relates to women. And for anyone uninitiated into the satanic panic,

in the 80s and 90s, there were tons of accusations of satanic cults kidnapping and ritually abusing children. And this was just an idea so widely held that like Oprah, Geraldo, police departments all over the country were trained in spotting satanic ritual abuse. People were recovering memories by like dubious therapy techniques of abuses in their childhood that were so outrageous that it's so difficult to believe now that this ever happened.

And children were also being coerced unintentionally by therapists and ended up saying that all these things happened, like that their teachers in their daycares, which was like a big place, like daycares were the center of this, like their teachers were not only abusing them, but they were like putting them in kiddie pools full of baby sharks that were biting them and that their teachers were flying around on broomsticks and they were flushed down the toilet to like live in the basement. And that there was like a gorilla's arm ripped off and a horse was sacrificed in the classroom and yet no shred of physical evidence was ever found i know all of this and it is nevertheless shocking to just hear it sort of rattled off in a list yeah let's just you know baby sharks gorilla arm right right right right right you know so it is so difficult to believe now and yet it was like a widely held belief in the 90s there was

also a lot of media and like yeah children's toys and a lot of things that were blamed for perpetuating this panic yes yes rock music yeah dnd yeah absolutely everything was suspect in the 80s and 90s that fundamentalists didn't like or feminists because feminists were also unfortunately part of this as well um not necessarily for any reason other than trying to protect children and not being educated on kind of what was going on because guess what we probably all would have been like part of this because when you were in it it was so scary you don't have any evidence that this wasn't happening it's such an amazing story that there is like satanic cults in the woods. It's like, it's easy sometimes to believe these things

when police departments and the FBI are reporting this as actually happening, right? But then I think there's an interesting thing happening at the same time where like,

on one hand, the satanic panic largely blamed women. Like a lot of the people who went on trial for abuses were women who were said to be sexually abusing children in these satanic rituals. And it also had a lot to do kind of in retrospect around the fact that women in the 80s and 90s were starting to work more and more and be outside of the house and daycares were

becoming a lot more popular and so a lot of people including myself sociologists who look back on this do believe that a lot of this backlash toward these daycares had to do with the fact that they were the symbolic thing that said okay women are no longer mothers like women are coming out of this long-term position as only homemakers um and they're like kind of like fuck this more than you know like the 60s 70s you have more women working but by the 80s it was like a lot more common and it was also like very condemned by fundamentalists so you have this like weird blame that is coming like the witch trials in a way right i mean men were certainly blamed uh for some of these ritual abuses and some men were blamed for some of the ritual abuses in the witch trials as well but generally when we look

at these things we look back and say okay this was like women doing these things which is so wild but then in the 90s rattling this off you also have third wave feminism which i think is like that's why i think you get so many like good witch movies because even like the craft is still like kind of an empowerment film it's like also has sort of the hubris of of power um and the that. But, you know, I think there was a reclaiming of the witch in the 90s that came along with this new kind of feminism that was just kind of retelling these stories in a new way. So you have kind of all those influences throughout, because they're writing this movie throughout the 90s, right? It comes out in 99, but throughout the 90s, like, we're still having

the satanic panic happening and originally the movie was supposed to be more satanic they were supposed to find all these like satanic artifacts and pentagrams in the house and then they changed direction for whatever reason which i'm grateful that they did this is not quite Blair Witch adjacent but i also feel like connecting things to daycares it also feels so tied in with like the stranger danger ideas of the 80s and 90s where it was like it was popular to make children afraid of strangers and present strangers as the ultimate danger when it's statistically more likely for danger and abuse to come from someone you know and all this stuff that sort of like you don't think that there would be some level of presence to it in the Blair Witch Project but

there is like the idea of a stranger luring you out into the woods to get you like it it does feel like there's a little bit of like late 20th century stranger danger stuff tied in there as well. I wanted to talk a little bit about Heather as the visual storyteller of this movie for the most part. And I kind of wonder, I mean, I read a couple of essays about it. The one that I want to share stuff from is from 2002, written by Denica McDonald. It's called's called trespasses into temptation gendered imagination and the blair witch project i don't agree with everything in in this essay but i thought it was really interesting and sort of like gets into this in a very academic way she's quoting the shit out of laura mulvey and i like had flashbacks to my freshman year of college but both kind of talks

about how there is first of all the very samey presentation of the witch like we've just talked about but also in a way that feels like it possibly got lost when the movie came out because there's so much about this movie that's so interesting and different that it's like a little easier to forget that there are very stereotypical horror tropes present in this movie too where like a woman gets too curious and has to receive her comeuppance for crossing this invisible boundary of where you're not supposed to go so I wanted to share a little bit from her essay because I just thought it was interesting. Quote, for the first half of the film, Heather is the strongest character in the film. She's focused, organized, domineering. She refuses to be the object of both

the larger film's gaze and the documentary's gaze. She's brought her own camera to record all of the events that take place. Moreover, the project was her idea. She record all of the events that take place moreover the project was her idea she takes possession of the only map for the excursion as well as the only compass it is also heather who has scouted out the project and who leads the excursion literally she holds all the cards however out of all the characters it is heather who has the most difficulty accepting the reality of events around her thus when she realizes she is losing control of her controlled and well-planned project she frantically dismisses what she cannot explain she repeatedly refuses to accept the seriousness of the situation she finds herself in and desperately tries to hold on to

what is real by repeating phrases such as things like this just do not happen in america this is america it is impossible to get lost it is impossible to get lost. It is impossible to stay lost, which I think, I wonder how improvised that line was because that to me, I was like, wow, that's a fucking like doctoral thesis is worth of something to talk about inside of that. And then they all scream,

God bless America. Yeah. Or the two guys just start screaming that, which I think is interesting too, right? Like she says that and then they just start screaming these like American anthems yeah just because you know they've they've obviously lost it a bit but that's also interesting but the idea of like and I genuinely don't know how intentional this was in the filmmaking because of how it was made but I think it's very rare to

in general give anyone who's not a man a camera and give them narrative control i love that they give that to heather and they also take it away from her in certain moments where it's like technically most of this movie is presented by quote unquote the female gaze but it isn't because of not only the moments where you see the black and white of I think it Josh is shooting his camera yeah but also it's like inherent to the movie and I think like the website lore that two male directors were hired to edit it so fascinating I don't know even what to make of it because a lot of it feels like probably unintentional but to like have a woman at the front of a movie thinking that she is controlling you know controls the gaze of the movie but

everything about the way it happens is taken out of her control and is like sort of used to undermine her credibility as a storyteller because you know that she dies when the movie starts and you get to see all of these things that she doesn't want you to see i just think it's very interesting i can't think of another movie like it i know definitely and then the america stuff it just i don't know i feel like that's almost like a little cherry on top of what you were talking about um just now chelsea where you're it's just like sort of the exceptionalist arrogance of Americans and of like this like specific late 20th century kind of moment where like a bad thing wouldn't happen in America and you're like oh baby hang in there this is like

so similar to me to another thing and I am absolutely obsessed with which is the story of the Donner Party and they are another group of people who kind of marched into a situation believing that everything would be completely fine because sort of that maybe partially because of the halo of protection that we have as Americans or we think that we have because of this idea of like manifest destiny like this is our land this is our place like nothing bad can happen to us because like we are chosen to go westward and like it's sanctioned by our higher power and so we can act however we want because the Donner Party just they did things like stop and party for three days when they were like two weeks behind the weather. They did these things that landed them in this situation, believing hucksters who told them they'd be completely fine going in this other direction and getting lost. And there's so there are a lot of parallels between these two stories, not to say that, you know, it's the same intention behind going into the woods. But there is something like particular to me, I don't know, about like three white young people going into the woods being like, everything's going to be totally fine. You know, we're going to like go. And I would do this speaking as someone who would absolutely have done this and absolutely been the header of the situation.

I think we all would have been the header at different points. Not a judgment, just a fact. Yeah. So I think that there's still like an interesting thing about that, like hubris, because that's a big theme of this film is like you think you can go and chase like the paranormal and you can go after like these stories and you have like this idea of a halo of protection I used to travel in just such dangerous ways I used to hitchhike and do all these things and looking back I'm like yeah I absolutely had this like idea that I I was protected somehow And there is something to that as well, like that lens of some kind of privilege or some kind of invincibility that also has to do with youth, of course, like the folly of being in your early 20s. But yeah, I think that that's kind of another lens of like the overconfidence certain groups in America, included totally young white middle class yeah

people yeah right yeah and that's like so much of like what this movie shows feels just like experimental and possibly unintentional where I don't know that we've mentioned this yet but originally the directors envisioned it being three men who were leading this movie. And it wasn't until Heather auditioned and gave an amazing audition that they were like, oh, actually, we're going to put you at the center of this movie. So, so much of what is gendered about this movie is very possibly not a part of the original plan. But that's not to say that that doesn't come into the performances and into the editing

and into the marketing and into the reception. It's just so bizarre and fascinating. And the same thing of like, it's the late 90s. So I don't know. But it's like, I wonder how intentionally comes out just because of how the movie was shot and made and what it seems like the personal experiences of the actors were because so much of them had to go into the parts yeah the america's stuff i was like oh fuck i totally forgot about that part of the movie yeah wow oh yeah not them cultural commentarying at the turn of the millennium no

well one of the things heather says is when they're being like hunted in the woods and they don't really know who or what is hunting them she says something like well they can't chase us forever because this is america where we've destroyed most of our natural resources basically saying like we're gonna run out of forest eventually and like we will come upon civilization not even totally misguided thought but come on yeah that would be my logic if i was lost in the woods i'd be like well if i just keep walking in a direction there will be a road eventually but you never see the Blair Witch controlling the space-time continuum no one's ready for that exactly and i love that they just throw in this little pinch of hillbilly horror

where we have i believe josh saying oh my god i think that there's like some redneck, I can't remember what he says, but some rednecks fucking with us out in the woods, which I also really am into looking at horror movie through the lens of class and like that they're out in the woods. And this is kind of the only place where these like scary, impoverished people live who are going to get you if you go into the woods again like that like middle class college student like a deliverance type movie where it's like oh we're just gonna like canoe down this river because nothing bad will happen to us even though we have like no real plan and uh yeah i think that that's another just like interesting american moment in the movie

uh that we are kind of led to believe that that could be a possibility at least. And you can feel that in how the interviews go at the top of the movie as well, where there's especially when they come into contact with Mary Brown, which feels like a combination of they do not think she is of sound mind. I think they're also judging her because she's poor and she's old. And then also another time with the guys that are fishing. Like you could just even hear, I don't know, like you can hear in Heather's voice that she's like, I don't take these people seriously because they are poor and live rural. Yeah. They're not listening to the Harbingers. And there's like a bunch of them and they're just uh you know they're not listening

to them at all which is a you know classic horror trope and a classic college student mistake yeah josh even makes a reference to deliverance because like that's the thing like people's frame of reference for a lot of just what happens in life is the media they've consumed and he's like well probably what's happening is that there are people who live in the woods and they're the ones fucking with us in deliverance. You're like, who do you think made that, Josh? Middle-class white people, you faggot. Doofus.

Similarly, I forget which character. It's either Mike or Josh. They come upon that makeshift cemetery and one of them says, and it's just like a throwaway line of dialogue it's not a plot point or anything like that it's just like a they said something and he says oh looks like an indian burial ground right yeah which is like first of all we've also talked about on this show which is just like yeah an example of something scary or haunted being likened to

indigenous history in some way where again as we've discussed so many horror movies attribute something very scary to a native burial ground being disturbed or a native quote-unquote curse of some kind something like that that a character again just like makes a throwaway comment about i feel like there's also a similar moment another throwaway line where they talk about like voodoo or like a i think they like see the stick figures and make a reference to how they're like voodoo dolls we've also talked about this the way that princess and the frog episode yeah the way that voodoo is widely misrepresented in media yeah it's such a fascinating like time capsule of these very specific biases that still

exist but it's just like the way it's laid out in this movie is very natural because it basically is yeah yeah and these biases are coming out in like the acting because they don't have a script so i am assuming that josh did not have a script that said this is an indian burial ground you should say something about this being an indian burial ground that's like just coming completely out of the influence that media has had on him completely yeah which is just as interesting as a script it's it's basically the same thing it's still the writer slash actors bias right being expressed which i feel like those three actors should have been credited writers on the movie since it's all their dialogue but they were not credited as writing the movie the only credited writers are

the two directors daniel merrick and eduardo sanchez who wrote the outline for the movie so yeah they conceived the story and the basic plot points but it was the actors but like the most iconic moment of this movie was technically written by the actor formerly known as heather donahue those are her words yep i just wanted to point out two quick things one is that speaking of like their biases just kind of coming through in the dialogue they're improvising a few of them make some fat phobic and like body shaming comments also one of the guys is filming heather when she's trying to pee in the woods which is very gross it's illegal And they film her dirty butt. Yeah. Which is very friend, evil friend behavior, I will say. Not that it excuses it, but zooming in on someone's dirty butt.

Rude. I'll make the controversial observation that it could happen to any of us. That it's classic comedy. I would never do that. I would never film your dirty butt, Jamie. I just want you to know that. Jamie would film yours. I might film your dirty butt. I don't know. you to know that. Jamie would film yours. I might film your dirty butt.

I don't know. I don't know. It depends on how dirty it is. Truth comes out. How feisty I was feeling on that day. But you wouldn't put it in the movie. I wouldn't put it in the final cut. Thank you.

But I would maybe send it to a group text. Oh, yeah. Sure, sure. Fair. Yeah, does anyone have anything else? Yeah, I think that's good. Yeah, I think that this movie does pass the vexel test it does yeah between heather and mary brown yay and if we knew the

local that they're interviewing who's like holding the toddler in her arms if we knew her name which it spiritually passes to me yeah her real name is suzy gooch which is also like okay an incredible name i love suzy gooch i think it's also worth pointing out that there is no romance true at all in this movie so there's actually no conversation at all about a man romantically it's like the only girlfriend we have is josh saying like my girlfriend's gonna know I'm missing and that's kind of like the only line like we get it Josh we get it does she live in Canada I read in the oral history that that was originally written into the outline was that Josh and Heather had a romantic so it's like you can't even hand it to the directors because they originally wrote in that like Josh and Heather had a romantic history but then based on how the early improvised

scenes were going they're like forget it cool because their relationship was becoming so friend antagonistic that they're like let's just cut that element and have you just react to each other but yeah they weren't above it but it just was like a testament to the actors like i mean it wasn't necessary either way no definitely not their performances made it clear interesting so yes to passing the bechdel test but on to the perfect metric the bechdel cast nipple scale which is our scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. And I will give this two and a half or three nipples just because I really like the character of Heather in that I appreciate that she feels so authentically human in the way that women are not often allowed to be on screen

she's flawed and she has to deal with again what i interpret as implicit gender bias whether or not that was an intentional piece of the filmmakers or not it is how i experienced the movie as i was watching it those two men's treatment of her felt extremely familiar to me in that very kind of gendered way where totally agree they aren't coming out and saying it explicitly, but their behavior and just the way they interact with her and the way they do not really trust her at any point, again, felt as though they were harboring these sexist biases. And I think that's interesting to watch. And again, whether it was intentional or not, it is there to me. So, and it's something I never noticed until this watch of it either. But I also hadn't seen the movie since I was a teenager, probably. However, the lack of challenging of like the traditional witch narrative of, oh, of course, there was a witch who is evil,

because witches be evil murderers for no reason. That not being challenged at all, and that trope just being fully leaned into. And you don't get much backstory or lore of the Blair Witch in this movie, but in the two sequels, and I think I didn't watch that documentary that you were referring to, but it seems like there's more lore that is canon to the property and to the Blair Witch that dives more into who the Blair Witch was and what she's all about. And again, it's just like playing into those tropes of like, woman equals witch equals evil. So didn't care much for that. So with that in mind, I think I'll give the movie two and a half nipples. And I'll give one to the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue. And I'll give one to the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue and I'll give one to Mary Brown and then I'll give my half nipple to the woman who has the toddler yeah who gives a great little improvised Susie Gooch and baby famously nowoch and baby Gooch. Famously now a corn fan. And whose daughter is now a huge corn head.

Yay, baby Gooch. A corn cob, if you will. Totally corn belt. So yeah, that's my rating. Yeah, I'm going to go three. I really enjoyed getting to talk about this movie. This movie does so many things. I don't even really care if it's intentional or not

because it's like what we have. And there are so few movies like it, where it's like you're literally stress testing late 90s white middle-class biases just inherently to how this project was made. It's so interesting. I really, I have a lot of love for the character Heather and the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue

and all of the actors i mean just like absolutely wild that they survived this experience and again whether intentional or not the idea of like a woman controlling the narrative and having the narrative taken away from her after her death and also in the last day of her life I think is really fascinating and if it's a mistake I don't care it's fucking cool and then there's all those like less challenging part of this that we've talked about of the presentation of witches and how Heather is treated in certain moments I think honestly the presentation of the witch herself is the thing I have the biggest issue with because how Heather's treated does feel like a part of that stress test. And it feels very relevant to how her character works out.

And I think it's frustrating and fascinating that the apology scene is what most people remember from this movie because it is a scene that is credited as being written by two men when it was not it's a great piece of acting that was widely mocked for years and years and years and it kind of i think because it's famous which is again this isn't a fault of the movie really but i mean like let you sort of believe that heather brought this on to herself and brought this on to her friends yeah with the apology sort of being the thing that sticks with her no no one it doesn't stick with anyone that mike's the one that got rid of the map it doesn't like the other character's accountability isn't what sticks with people and so i just think the movie fucking rips hell yeah and i just really enjoy talking about it with you both i'm gonna give it three nips and

i'm gonna give them all to ray hance aka the actor formerly known as heather donahue looking forward to figuring out where i can buy her weed online i think she's out of the game now sadly oh damn she's just being a buddhist now hell yeah which is rad and i would be too if this is a stressful history that you're gonna need to balance with this has been your life yeah chelsea how about you oh okay i think that one of the most interesting themes and that makes me again like agree with you both really about the portrayal of the witch being the most egregious offense against like women and i didn't actually mention this before but there's a theme of blame which we've talked about with heather but then we can also look at the

blame that was placed if we're looking outside of the movie which i think is okay because these things existed in kind of concert with each other so it's like yeah it's the blair witch project but a lot of people were on the website a lot of people were watching the fake documentary and you learn about ellie kedwick who is blamed by the town for the disappearances of children and then murdered and then you also have rustin parr the child murderer of the 1940s who is essentially considered to have been possessed by a woman right so it's like we have this actual horrific murderer that did exist there's no lore it's like rustin parr existed he killed children they were found but it's still somehow a woman's fault like the map is somehow heather's fault right so there's this like theme of blame that isn't really analyzed in any way so let's see i

mean i think i'm gonna go up to three because mostly because of my bias and being so in love and obsessed with this movie heather mary brown ellie kedwick hell yeah and you know what maybe i'll give another well no i can't give one for marketing but i would just like to say the best marketing that has ever existed in any franchise period and like completely impossible to replicate like it's just never again so fucking cool never again chel, thank you so much for bringing this to us. I just like, there's no one I would rather talk about this movie with. That's so nice. I'm so grateful that you asked me on and yeah, it was a joy ride for sure of hubris. What a wonderful camping trip. You know, in those Maryland woods, I'm from the Northwest, not as scary. Our woods are not as

scary as those thin trees out there. Oh, it's so freaky. I want to go. So I guess we're camping, right? I'm coming. I'm coming. See you there. Here's a quick little story to end the episode with.

I grew up in the middle of the woods in rural western Pennsylvania. Whoa. There was a local legend that is like in local history books about this ghost who was haunting people and then he manifested as this eternal flame. And so the, but this flame that like popped out of the ground one day was actually just like a pocket of natural gas that ignited maybe from lightning or something. But this flame, this like eternal flame, ghost flame was right outside my house where like my dad built a little like well. Yeah. Obsessed. So there's a ghost story that existed on my property growing up okay your neighbor was the eternal flame yeah it's like the legend of the burning well i'll look into it i'll see if i can find anything i was like you have to talk to caitlin listen this is a great moment for a self-promo

here this is yeah american hysteria has been doing a new project called the urban legends hotline and you go to our website american hysteria.com and you can leave a message about an urban legend that you had growing up and then we turn it into like a very detailed and very intensive episode so i would love if you called in and talked about this ghost flame because i i love it and you never know what you're gonna find we analyze it through every possible lens. Newspapers.com. We're there. Hell yeah. I listened to the pig people episode.

That was a hotline episode, right? Yeah, it was. Cannibal pig people murdering teenagers. That's the kind of stuff you can find on our show. Tell us all about your show, where people can find it, etc. Yeah, American Hysteria. You can find it anywhere you get your podcasts. And yeah, we cover the fantastical thinking of Americans, moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, crazes, anything that kind of stirs a large amount of people. We try to cover. So a lot of the shows are written narrative, me

describing, talking, and we have clips. It's a very multimedia project. And then we also have interview episodes with all kinds of cool guests talking about all kinds of cool topics. So I hope you guys come and listen. Hell yes. And thank you again for joining us. Come back anytime. Please. Yeah. Just say the word. You can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, where you get two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the back catalog of many, many bonus episodes, all for $5 a month. And you can get our merch over at tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And with that, let's go into the freaky house and get gone. I dream. I'm down.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unnerves 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free,

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