The Bechdel Cast - The Matrix (1999) with Emily VanDerWerff

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

On this episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Emily VanDerWerff get unplugged from the simulation and discuss The Matrix (1999).(This episode contains spoilers)Here is our guest Emily VanDerWerff's Vox piece, "How The Matrix universalized a trans experience -- and helped me accept my own" - https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/30/18286436/the-matrix-wachowskis-trans-experience-redpillHere is the Will Smith video "Why I Turned Down The Matrix": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2szuXKgL8Here is the Gap Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ735krOiPoFor Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcastFollow @@emilyvdwn on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream 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 bechdel cast jamie hi caitlin hi sorry it's not caitlin it's morpheus oh shit i just want to tell you that you're the one me yeah you but i'm so sexy and regular well that's just it you're too sexy to be regular oh my god therefore you are the one that is how movies work isn't it wow well um okay i i accept i accept this call to adventure accept uh that you're gonna have to get kidnapped for reasons that are a little confusing to me

and the stakes are going to continue to rise from there. Sure, sure, sure. Oh, wait, I have one more condition. Yes, yes. I need to get a little kiss at the end. Oh, okay. Well, hey, Jamie, it's Trinity now. Hi. Okay. Hi. And I just wanted to tell you that the Oracle told me that I would fall in love with somebody and that somebody would be the one. That's me. And I'm in love with you further that somebody would be the one. That's me. And it's and I'm in love with you further confirming that you're the one. So can I have a little kiss? Yeah, here you go. Wow, thank you. Well, that was a very smooth intro. I think my intro is going to be very somber. Oh, because I feel well, let's introduce the show. And then I have to make an apology. And then I think we can get the episode started. Sure, sure, sure. I have a serious apology to make. So hi, it's me, Caitlin Durante.

It's me, Jamie Loftus. Little tail between my legs and this is the Bechdel cast. It is our show where we examine film through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel-Wallace test. There are many variations on the test. This is the one that we are currently using, where two people of any marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to each other, And that conversation has to be about

something other than a man. Ideally, it's a meaningful conversation that is like narratively relevant. Yes. Okay. Do you mind if I just... Please, you've got the floor. I have a prepared statement really quickly. Hello, listeners. This is Jamie Loftus. You might remember that almost exactly five years ago to the day, we released an episode about the movie The Matrix on this very podcast. The guest was comedian

Matt Donagher, a lovely man who we still have a friendship with. However, if you try to listen to this episode today, you will not be able to find it. And that is because as of December 29th, 2016, I didn't actually watch The Matrix before we recorded the episode. I was very busy that week. It was the holidays. And I was drunk at the recording. Off of Mike's Hard Lemonade? Off of off of mike's hard lemonade as was my custom

at the time yes i would learn years later that's actually not adorable to do um so i just wanted to uh paul i've been receiving criticism for never having watched the matrix when i was 23 for years now it's been it's something that's, you know, a common criticism has been brought up to me. It shows, it's been tweeted at me repeatedly. It's on our Wikipedia page that I've never seen The Matrix.

Wow. And it took five years, but we're course correcting. I'm a new person. I've been living, laughing, loving, and learning.

And I really liked The matrix and i'm excited for today's episode so sorry one last time for not watching the matrix five years ago and if i could editorialize for just a second sure i think it's very weird how mad everyone was at me we didn't make any money off the podcast then there was people people were mad some of them but there are i would say just as many people who think it's awesome that you didn't see it and still released an episode about it. But I didn't prepare for it. Well, you could be mad now because now it's our job. But back then it was our hobby.

And I was, I don't know, who knows. It doesn't matter. We are doing the episode now and we have a wonderful guest. So let's get her in here. Indeed. She is the critic at large for Vox. She's the co-creator of the podcast Arden. It's Emily Vanderwerf. Hello. Hello. It's so good to be here. And if you're wondering who the skywriter was above your house that said, please watch The

Matrix, Jamie, that was me. I learned how to fly a plane just for that. You flew the plane and everything? Yes, I did. It's the personal touch. It really is. And that hurt me extra deeply as a result. Yeah. Well, you're also leaving out that you learned to fly the plane by just like having a training software uploaded immediately into your brain a floppy disk they plugged it into my brain and i was like now i can fly a 1920s biplane cool oh i'm so excited for this episode and we're so stoked that you're here to talk uh about the movie with us emily um so this is this is our the so i guess whenever we cover a franchise, we're covering the first movie. This episode will be released lining up with the new Matrix movie, which I just, I guess, right at the top.

I'm curious if y'all think it looks any good. I can't tell. I can't tell. I think so. I think it's going to be great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I just had my ass handed to me no i i am uh but i'm a wachowski uh home homer you know i think they're great uh you know they've made a couple movies i don't love like i think the third matrix is their weakest film but i still watch it all the time so you know it's uh i'm excited for it i'm excited that it's very colorful from the trailers i'm excited for keanu reeves to that it's very colorful from the trailers. I'm excited for Keanu Reeves to have a little rubber ducky on his head. That seems fun. Oh, my gosh.

Well, because I watched the trailer dozens and dozens of times, mostly because I was like, well, first, I think it's very fun and it's great. And I think it makes the movie look great. I'm excited to see it. But also I was trying to figure out a Halloween costume for this year. And I was like, hmm, my hair length is about the same hair length as Keanu's in the trailer. Maybe I'll dress up as Keanu, like from the new Matrix movie. But he doesn't have like necessarily a consistent look in the trailer and also he like doesn't necessarily look like neo famously looks with all of his like kind of has his like john wick hair a little bit yeah

right and then he's just wearing like scarves and like just regular clothes and like not his at least in the trailer again like you don't see him with his like black trench coat and sunglasses and all that stuff so i just like kind of picked a random look and replicated that there's like you see him for like 17 frames or something like that and I was just like well this is this is my costume this year so I will share that on our Instagram but um it was a solid costume it was was good. Thank you so much. Yeah. So, Emily, tell us, what is your relationship, your history with the Matrix slash the whole franchise? Yeah. I saw this movie in theaters when it came out, but like very late, like after the buzz had kind of died down. Because it was huge for a while. And I remember I was like very irritated by the marketing because I was someone who cared about that at that time.

It was like, what is The Matrix was like all the marketing was. And so I saw it several weeks after it opened with my then girlfriend. And I remember it just, it spoke to me in a way I didn't entirely comprehend but I just I loved it and then I watched it you know probably dozens of times when it was on DVD and I saw it again a few years ago in the theater um I think it's it's one of the most perfect movies ever made like there's not really anything in it that doesn't work. I agree. I kind of prefer the second one because I am a weird woman who likes imperfect babies

and just like holding them up and being like, your head's a little dented, but I still love you. I think the third one, I've seen this argument that the third one and the second one should be considered one big movie. And in that case, the third one is better, but it is an isolated thing. I do think it's the Wachowski's weakest movie, but like, it's not bad. I enjoy watching it. But the second one, I think is my dented little baby. I really enjoyed the second one as well. I would say I mildly enjoyed it. I far prefer the first one. I agree that it's a perfect movie and I don't know what it says about me that I like

perfect things. No, like liking perfect things is fine. You know, it's just you know, it's you look at that dented little baby and you're like, no, get rid of that one. Throw that one away. I am not like that. So yeah yeah that's

actually a huge flaw of yours let the baby have a dent oh goodness um Jamie what is your well you what you did read your prepared statement I just I just gave a really long-winded I should have saved it for here uh I have never seen it I lied about it five years ago and then I have now seen it twice and I loved it I really like I wish I hadn't been so glad to performatively not watching it as a bit because it is such a good movie and I've really enjoyed I don't know I feel like with some certain movies you're like I don't really want to engage with the fan culture around certain movies but I've really enjoyed reading more about the Matrix culture around certain movies but I've really enjoyed uh reading more about the matrix and learning more about it and I liked the sequel

and I'm interested in what the new one is like and I skipped the third one because I didn't have the stamina but I yeah the first matrix movie I can say with a whole heart I loved it yeah yeah. Caitlin, what about you? I am a long, long, long time matrix fan. I saw the movie at a drive-in movie theater when it came out. I was like 13. I a hundred percent didn't understand it at all. The first time I saw it, but I think on subsequent viewings,

I did understand. I don't know if it was cause like I'm 13 and I don't understand. I don't like this is confusing or if it's just because I was like distracted and with my friends. Anyway, I think I had it figured out by the second watch and I've seen it like probably 50 times since then. I watched this movie multiple times a year. I love it.

I think it's perfect. And it holds up so surprisingly well for a movie from 99 because we've covered a lot of movies from 1999 on this podcast and yeah I would say almost none of them hold up but the matrix does very much does yes I'm really I mean just one of the hottest casts ever assembled. Also, just a gorgeous, just everyone is so incredibly beautiful in this movie. That's my contribution to the discourse today. I mean, honestly, I was going to make a joke about Joe Pantoliano, but he's never been hotter. He's really hot in this movie. He really hasn't.

Joey Pants is hot. His goatee even. hot. He really has it. Joey Pants is hot. His goatee even. Fine. I'll take it. I like, you know, the thing is with Joey Pants' goatee, I like when someone makes a strong choice. And that's what Joey Pants is doing with the goatee. Love that for him.

All right. Should I recap the story? And we'll go from there. Let's do it. And Emily, jump in whenever during the recap. We're fast and loose here. It's an open forum. For sure. Great. Okay. So we open on some images of some kind of computer code. Then we meet Trinity, who's played by Carrie Ann Moss. Some cops have her surrounded.

Hugo weaving in a suit, a.k.a. Agent Smith, is also after her. There's a fight. They chase her. She seems to be able to defy gravity during a lot of this fighting and running away. She also takes control of the cinematography for like just a couple seconds. So yeah, that is the opening scene is so good. It's just yeah, immediately the style and yeah, it's amazing. I love it. And then she escapes finally by answering a pay phone and seemingly disappearing.

And we as the audience seeing this for the first time in you know 1999 or 2021 monday whatever earlier this week yeah we're like what what is going on oh my gosh then agent smith mentions an informant he's talking to his other agent friends there are these like white guys in suits he mentions an informant and also the next target, someone named Neo. Then we cut to Keanu Reeves, who in this world goes by Thomas Anderson. Someone has hacked into his computer and is sending him messages. There's mention of the Matrix. I love hearing Keanu Reeves just read something off of

the screen. It's very compelling to me. It's very calming. I like it. Yeah, it's nice. His performance in this movie is incredible. I love him so much. Keanu is a national treasure. Okay, so the person on his computer tells Keanu to follow the white rabbit, which ends up being a friend's tattoo, which leads him to a club where he meets Trinity face to face. She's like, I know that you're trying to figure out what the Matrix is. By the way, you're in danger and you're being watched. And then the next day at work, Keanu gets a cell phone delivered to him and then immediately receives a call from Morpheus, who gives him instructions on how to escape Agent Smith and the other agents who are after him. But Keanu is unsuccessful and he gets captured by the agents who want his help in

finding Morpheus, who they see as a terrorist. I liked that. I felt like this movie could have come out almost whenever, but a uniquely 1999 thing about this movie, I felt like was like the office job sequence. I was like, oh, this is such a late 90s, like, Gen X, I hate my job. The man is killing me. It feels like it was made just mike judge just had some office space outtakes just laying around it was like here you go yeah they just like color corrected it green and they're like and now it's these are scenes from the matrix this is um this is the scene with with the bug in it right the little bug that goes in yes belly button um when i saw this movie in 99 i saw it with my my then girlfriend who had enormous Reese Witherspoon energy.

And she was so disgusted by this. She was just horrified by it and like hiding her face. And I was watching it like, yeah, this is just how life is, right? Somebody just traps you and puts a bug in you and then you have to just walk around with it inside of you. And yeah, that was when I was like, this is one of my favorite movies ever because it's the only one that understands what it's like to have a little bug it inside of you. And yeah. That was when I was like. This is one of my favorite movies ever.

Because it's the only one that understands what it's like. To have a little bug crawling around inside you. To this day. I cannot watch the bug. Either going into his belly button. Or coming back out of it. I don't know. I have like a belly button thing.

Where I just. It's so gross. I loved watching it. I thought it was so interesting. I thought it was interesting to watch. I'm stuck on the phrase enormous Reese Witherspoon energy. That is like, you said it as immediately. I was like, I know exactly what that means.

Yes, yes. I dated the girls I wanted to be at that time. But yes, this is the scene where Neo refuses to help the agents, so they bug him and then release him. And then Neo gets another call from Morpheus and Morpheus is like,

you're the one. And he's like, what does that mean? And then Trinity and a couple other people, Switch and Apoc, pick Neo up. They debug him in the other scene I can't watch. And then they take him to meet Morpheus, who we see in the flesh for the first time. He's played by Lawrence Fishburne.

Morpheus gives Neo the opportunity to choose between taking a blue pill and a red pill. Now, the blue pill will let Neo to continue on with his life as he's been living it and forget all about Morpheus and the matrix, but the red pill will give him access to the truth. Right. And nobody ever thought about that idea again. Like that never came up. No one has ever.

That's a fun scene. Yeah. No one has used that. Now that's fun imagery. For nefarious reasons, even a little bit. No. Okay. So Neo takes the red pill and then Morpheus shows him what the Matrix is.

Basically, the Matrix is a computer simulation that most humans are plugged into so that they don't know what's actually happening, which is that it's 200 years in the future and the artificially intelligent machines grow humans-like crops and use them as batteries to power their post-apocalyptic machine world. So all the humans are plugged into this simulation, which basically simulates reality or some version of reality. And that's what the Matrix is. So Morpheus and his crew unplug Neo from the Matrix. So we see him in this like pod thing that's full of goo. I love when he's in the goo. I'm a simple person. I like when he's in the goo. Yeah. This is another scene where I was like, well, this is just what life is like. Somebody goo i love when he's in the goo i'm a simple person i like when he's in the goo yeah this

is another scene where i was like well this is just what life is like somebody unplugs you and you wake up in a pile of goo like it's just yeah that didn't even like registered for me how matter-of-factly that is presented where it's like well now he's in goo and then cut to the next scene he's out of the goo now yeah it is what it is and, so they take him out of the goo and they bring him aboard Morpheus's ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. We meet the rest of the crew, which is Cipher, that's Joey Pants, Joe Pantoliano, Mouse, Tank, and Dozer, who have all either been unplugged from the Matrix or in the case of Tank and Dozer, they were born in a human society called Zion and were never plugged in to begin with. So Neo learns all this stuff and has difficulty accepting the whole situation at first, but then he comes to accept it and starts learning more about the matrix, how to manipulate the laws of physics inside of it, how to do kung fu. He learns how to jump really far, things like that. And then Morpheus also explains that the agents, like Agent Smith,

aka Hugo Weaving, are these sentient programs that can kind of move throughout the Matrix, and they're basically designed to keep order order and they are the main antagonistic force against the people like Morpheus and his crew while they're inside the Matrix. Morpheus also tells Neo about a prophecy that the Oracle made about the One. Basically someone would be able to destroy the Matrix and the war against the machines and bring freedom to the humans. And as it's already been suggested, Morpheus believes Neo to be the one. Yeah. That's a really short walk. You just have to move O in front of N and E. You don't have to do that

much work. I feel like it shouldn't have taken them that long. Right. It's true. It's written in the stars. I do appreciate that Neo is an anagram for one, not unlike my name, Caitlin Durante is an anagram for such things as Latin dancer UTI, nine tit Dracula, and my favorite, Lauren D. Titanic. Lauren D. Titanic. I got to look this up. I'm looking myself up. We haven't done it in a while.

Wait. I think I always get cranky when anagrams come up because all mine suck. But you have all of the vowels in your- Do you use your middle name? No. Okay. Yeah. Mine suck. I think that's cheating. Okay, yeah, mine sucks. Don't.

I think that's cheating. That's okay. It is cheating, yeah. But yeah, let me know if either of you discover any impressive anagrams of your name. In the meantime, we learned that Cypher is a traitor. He's the informant who has been working with the agents and who is going to sell out Morpheus because the agents want the access codes to the mainframe of that human city,

Zion, to destroy the human population there. After getting a load of Joey Pants' facial hair, I'm like, well, I don't know what I expected in regards to whether he was going to be a hero or a villain. Like, okay. Right. He just looks like a sad dad who came home from his office job and is like, my office job is fighting the machines and I just want to join the machine.

The machines have such good meats at their machine restaurants. He's like, I actually get along with the machine software guys much better so i'm just gonna go hang out with them i think about this all the time if the matrix is real and we are all plugged into a simulation but then we learn about how it is actually a prison for our minds if given the opportunity to be freed from it but then to live a life that seems very dangerous and like the quality of living doesn't seem that great seems cold and and dark and you have to eat like goo

all the time like i'm like i don't know what i want to live in the matrix i did think it was interesting that the like i mean the world is so carefully built out and i feel like we get all these like little questions that i would have as a viewer that they just like answer in text of like, you know, it's dangerous to tell people about the matrix when they're past a certain age, which was something that I thought of, of like, oh, yeah, that's like, if your brain is fully formed, do you want to learn that everything you've ever known is a lie? Right? Probably not. Probably not. You probably couldn't handle it. And, and that's also why I like Mouse so much. I also like Mouse because he kind of looks like Will Poulter

but I also like Mouse because he's like, I mean, he's outside of the matrix, but he's like, the food sucks here and I want to have sex. And I'm like, yeah, I'd feel the same way. I designed a lady computer program for me to have sex with. And that's cool. What a little rascal. And then he like explodes to death.

I know we're not bringing the sequels in really, but the second movie suggests everyone in Zion just, just fucks all the time. Fucks all the time. Yeah. So maybe it was a more of a personal issue for Mouse. He just happened to not be fucking. Yes. Oh, poor Mouse. of a personal issue for mouse is he just happened to not be yes poor mouse

but i just uh that scene where he turns to neo and he's just like this food is bad i'm horny i was like i love this kid classic mouse okay so then morpheus takes neo into the Matrix to see the Oracle to hopefully confirm that Neo is in fact the One. But the Oracle tells Neo that he actually isn't the One. And it's implied that it's because he does not yet believe that he's the One. On their way back out of the Matrix, where they have to answer phones in specific places to get safely disconnected, agents ambush Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and the rest of the crew, and they kidnap Morpheus. So Neo, Trinity, and everyone else tries to get back, but Cipher is sabotaging them, and he kills apoc and switch and also this is shortly before this mouse gets shot by the agents unceremoniously nuked because he was too horny to live that mouse he had to go makes me sad anytime anyone i mean they really do an amazing job of building out the side characters

that i'm like oh i think i've maybe heard this character speak three or four lines of dialogue, but I'm still absolutely gutted when they're killed. Totally. So much of it is the is the visuals like they're such distinct looking characters. They don't blend into each other, especially for 1999. It's it's a somewhat diverse cast. So you have like a really strong feeling for who everybody is, even if you've only heard them talk two or three times. And mostly they just talked about how they were horny. to get access to these codes to Zion. They're basically like trying to hack his brain. And since keeping Zion safe is the most important thing that any of these characters can do, Neo, Trinity, and Tank consider pulling the plug on Morpheus so he doesn't give up these mainframe codes to Zion.

But then Neo is like, no, there's got to be another way. So he and Trinity go back into the Matrix to try to save Morpheus and fight the agents. And then what follows is a couple fight sequences where Neo is dodging bullets. Trinity is flying a helicopter. They manage to save Morpheus. You can picture what it looks like. You've all seen. Because you've seen it referred to in every piece of media since then. Then Neo gets stuck in the Matrix and has to face off one on one with Agent Smith. They fight and then Agent Smith gets the upper hand and shoots Neo a bunch of times and he dies but trinity who is back in the real world on morpheus's ship is like neo you can't be dead because the oracle told me i would fall in love with the one and i

love you so you're the one and that means that you can't be dead and that brings neo back to life this is so often written off as like you know the obligatory the woman falls in love with the male love interest and i like textually that's true but it's such a fucking lesbian moment it's so much it's just so much like oh i know i've known you for a couple days but i'm pretty sure we're gonna get married and like you know nine months from now they're gonna break up but right now yes. It's true love. I mean, I never really questioned it. I always bought it. I was just like, yep, she loves him. And I mean, who wouldn't love Keanu Reeves when he shows up and is all hot and amazing. Neo and Trinity are just two girls who

met at a party at Barnard and just like hit it off uh spent the next week together and now they've been together for 20 something years yeah similar to how Rose and Jack of Titanic fame of the Titanic of the Titanic famously historically is another iconic lesbian romance. Absolutely. Absolutely. Actually, this is a total tangent, but the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire,

Celine Sciamma, I did an interview with her at Vox. If you find it, she talks about how she modeled her movie on Titanic. Yeah. Yeah. We referenced that. We talked about that.

Yeah. On that episode on Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. I like when i oh god i just love when like quote unquote art filmmakers are like no of course i watch fucking titanic like don't be ridiculous come on so anyway so The Matrix, he is able to finally defeat

Agent Smith and proves that he is the one. And then the movie ends with Neo talking to someone on a payphone. It seems to be that he's like talking to The Matrix itself. He hangs up the phone, Rage Against the Machine machine starts playing and then he flies away i didn't know that the movie ended on rage against the machine and anytime i was watching it with caitlin i was like anytime rage against the machine comes on i'm instantly like in the backseat of my uncle's car like it's just instantaneous we're late to school he's mad he's singing the lyrics we're fucked i love it i love that i love that ending it is also the most 1999 thing about the movie it is yeah it is literally just like what if we had what if we had a 1999 in this movie that and the scene where neo has like followed the white rabbit tattoo lady to the

club and rob zombie is playing those are the two like yes this movie is extremely from 1999 and it's it's obviously like all the tech the cell phones and stuff is very the nokia phone that like comes out down yeah every time nokia got a shout out i was like good for them good for them they they don't know that they're living in the best year that they're ever gonna have right now let's just let them have it i feel like matrix 4 should bring nokia back like they should just yeah they do if anything could it would be the fourth matrix movie it will completely revitalize the Nokia brand. One of my great dreams is to interview Lana Wachowski.

She's famously press shy. It's never going to happen. But I would just ask her about Nokia. I'd just be like, hey, Lana. That's one of the things I had. Lana, I want to know how you feel about Nokia. Do you want to bring back the brand? Are you concerned about their market share?

I think we have a lot in common. Let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

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President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours.

BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything?

You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. All right, where shall we begin, friends? Where do we want to start? Well, so in recent years, kind of in lieu of both Wachowskis coming out as trans women, The Matrix, especially the first movie, has widely been interpreted as a trans allegory, which, Emily, you have written about. And I was just wondering if you could speak to that more, speak to your interpretation of the film

as a trans metaphor. We'll be linking to your essay, so no pressure to completely reiterate your essay. But yeah. Actually, I'm just gonna pull it up and read it right now. Yeah, goodness, that would actually be amazing. It's true, not wow be amazing i mean the basic idea

of it is that in 1999 if you were trans or even just like gender non-conforming gender curious whatever going online was like this revolutionary new way to explore like who's your real self who's the person that you actually want to be and and for many many many many years it's been rumored that the wachowskis wanted switch within the film to be a woman within the matrix and a man within reality and warner brothers was like no and keanu reeves i think actually like just confirmed that that's true this sort of long-standing rumor no kidding when when i wrote my piece i had like tracked it down to a couple people where I was like, okay, I feel like it's probably true. But like, I could never 100% verified and like

Keanu now has confirmed it. Thank you, Keanu. Yeah. But yeah, it is it is a movie about, you know, living a dual life. It is a movie about feeling like one person while you're perceived as another. And it is very much driven by these ideas of duality. And there are just little things like when Neo finds Trinity in the club, he says something like, I wasn't expecting you to be a woman. And she says, most guys don't and uh at the end when agent smith is you know beating up neo uh he continues to call neo mr anderson and uh neo says my name is neo it's you know pretty classic dead naming allegory and of course there's the famous thing of like at the time the movie was made out the pills that contained estrogen were red so taking the red

pill was estrogen or whatever i think and i say this as like the person that brought a lot of this into the mainstream by writing that essay i think it is a little overstated the wachowski's like lily wachowski has given an interview where she was like i was not consciously thinking about that at the time now i see how it filtered in but like creating this idea that like everything in it is an intentional allegory, I think kind of cheapens the movie and also cheapens trans storytelling in a lot of ways.

But the thing that I think is, is most trans about it is that the second that Neo learns that this one thing about his life is a lie, he becomes a communist. So he, he, he's just like, I'm'm gonna tear down modern society and blah blah blah blah like it is the thing i think gets lost a little bit in discussions of this film

is how incredibly incredibly leftist it is especially for 1999 and the sequels go even further in that regard but yeah like i i think it is inescapable that there is a huge trans allegory read of this film i'm just always very cautious of is a huge trans allegory read of this film. I'm just always very cautious of like, it's not the only read of this movie that is valid. Just because two trans women made it doesn't mean the only way you can interpret it is as a trans allegory. That's just one of many readings that sits alongside others. And that's not me saying that to you. That's me saying that to the internet now which is now like if you go on

twitter they're like here's this is a this is a thing all trans people know is if you go on twitter and you say did you know the matrix was a trans allegory made by two trans women and here's the reasons you will get 3 000 retweets in like an hour because cis people this blows their fucking minds they're just like, what? The Matrix? I've seen that movie. Am I trans now? And then hopefully that opens a door in their brain and they think about it. But yeah, it is a thing.

And I worry that it's the same thing that happened with the red pill thing, which I'm sure we'll get into, where the whole thing is like, this is what the movie's about. And no movie this good is about one thing. So yes, trans allegory but don't i wouldn't just boil it down to that except on twitter if i want to get retweets i mean if you need some engagement it's always going to be there in your back pocket and yeah exactly i cannot take that from you uh thank you thank you for for um for kind of unpacking that and i think that it is like, been interesting to watch the,

I mean, even in truly the five years that I was not watching this movie, the, the conversation around this movie has changed so significantly. And a lot of it is because of your work. And I think it is like fascinating how many different ways there are to look at this movie and how the, the leftist read really stuck out to me this time as well and which makes it i think even more baffling and like awful that the red pill

discussion went the way it did because it's like well he's clearly being radicalized in a very particular direction did you watch the movie yeah yeah yeah i remember when that piece published the matrix piece on the 20th anniversary of the movie so it'd be march 31st 2019 i just know when the matrix came out that's a thing that i just know um there were so many people who tweeted that piece out who like very prominent names within journalism within within the media, etc. Who were just like, I thought this movie was a conservative screed, because it had been like taken over by the red pill people. And you know, they'd seen The Matrix, but they hadn't seen it in 20 years or whatever. So it had like calcified in their mind based on who was obsessed with it.

So I do like the fact that there is this trans reading of it now, because it has liberated the movie from this sort of fate it was going to meet that would be similar to something like Fight Club where it is now just totally defined by its bad fans even though you know it is not necessarily the movie they're selling it as right sure and I think I think it's been really cool to um I don't know I'm curious of in your thoughts on this as well emily how lana and lily wachowski have kind of engaged with the trans reading of the movie where it feels like i i like their i like their style of like responding to stuff like this a lot because it seems like they never bring up new reads of the movie but it's brought to them and they're like

oh yeah yeah that's like that is like um i don't know i think that the way that they engage with fans of the matrix is so smart because it's not like they're resisting doing so at all but they're all also not like i don't know going the other way that directors do sometimes where they're over engaging and creating new canon and i don't know i just they're so fucking cool it's wild clearly Lily Wachowski works on this really great showtime show called work in progress and I got a chance to talk to her I got a chance to talk to her a couple years ago for that show and I was like how do I not just make this interview about the matrix because she had the other people that work on that show with

her there so I had to like also ask them questions. And I finally came up with how is this, you know, this tiny little TV show that you make basically independently? How is that on any continuum with the matrix? And her answer was basically just like, I'm always trying to talk about the same things. And it doesn't matter the size of the story. And I was like, Thank you, Lily Wachowski. That's a great answer to that question. So yeah, I just to kind of go back to the idea that a piece of media like this, especially because the director's intent was not specifically at the time to make this trans allegory, because they're both trans women, it stands to reason that they might have written certain just little details or themes or something like that. Yeah. Into the story kind of unconsciously almost or subconsciously.

But as you stated, because it wasn't like deliberately created as this specific allegory from a very intentional place, because there are some movies that are like whatever what's his fate Darren Aronofsky being like yeah mother exclamation point is he's got like charts behind him he's like the allegory is very precise you're like yeah and then you watch the movie and you're like what are you even what are you trying to say here but like the thing with a lot of metaphor and allegory found in art and in narratives is that it wasn't necessarily intentional, which does mean that it is open to interpretation. And I think that's just like a really cool thing about this movie and about the franchise. And not only that, the movie explores all these like philosophical things i remember i took a class as a freshman in college and wrote a paper about the matrix so i'm sure you can imagine how brilliant of a piece of writing that was but it was a class called like philosophy art and film and you had to

like watch a movie and then take like a philosopher's philosophy and then apply it to the movie so i don't even know what philosophy i was trying to like attach to the matrix but i remember i was i was like oh my god i'm so freaking deep right now i'm so smart this movie is about choice and it's about duality and it's about fate or what if there's not fate and like just like all this stuff and i don't know i feel like this movie is just so rich in that way that it is open to a lot of interpretations and a lot of analysis from many different perspectives so our 18 year old selves would have totally vibed is what you're saying. Just like hung out and just talked, talked to matrix and be like, you know,

it's kind of about every philosophy, right? That's like part of what makes this movie so cool. And, and why I feel like there, there are so many different lenses to view it with is like, there is a trans allegory in here. There is a like leftist radicalization in there.

And it's because it's so unique to who these filmmakers are so it's like of course all this stuff is showing up and i like i mean they're two of the most distinct filmmakers in the entire world like and i i really i mean just truly as a new convert to the matrix fandom i was so blown away and impressed with how many i mean you said now aronofsky stuck in my mind because this is what i struggle with with him in certain cases it's like you know the wachowskis are able to take so much complicated stuff and make it fun and engaging to watch and it's moving the story where like other filmmakers are like really getting bogged down

and trying to let you know that they've read a book and you're like, it's fine. Like, I believe you, but I'm so bored. And I don't know, they're just,

they're so fucking smart. You know, I think this is famously a movie that blends a whole bunch of influences. It blends in anime, it blends in wuxia, also known as kung fu movies. There's a lot of James Cameron in this movie, which I don't know that

every time I rewatched it, I'm like, this is very on a line with Aliens or True Lies or some of those movies. And I think that people miss how many like intellectual influences are also in there and like so like the trance stuff is in there the philosophy stuff is in there but also just like they clearly had read a lot of you know noam chomsky and stuff

and like that just gets dropped in there but it's all in the package of this huge big budget action movie that totally works as an action movie you can detach from all of that and still enjoy this it's and i think that's why it's so perfect is because it works on like 16 levels at once i read on our favorite scholarly journal wikipedia that the lily and lana wachowski required the cast to be able to explain what the Matrix is. And they made them read, and I'm not going to pronounce this correctly, but Simulacra and Simulation from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard or something. We're so smart. Again, I'm so sorry.

I do not speak French. Yeah, the Wachowskis were like, Keanu Reeves, we're going to require that you understand a lot of heavy philosophy to be able to be in this movie. And I love that. And now just like knowing what sort of person Keanu Reeves is, at least in the public facing way you're just like he was so down for that i don't know there we talked about this in the matrix episode that no longer exists but uh i i used to work at a bookstore it was my first uh i worked at book soup in la and that was my first job when

i moved here and kianu reese would come come every Wednesday night on his motorcycle and get a new book and Sudoku puzzles. And he's a book head. I think it's so cool that they gave him homework. I also just like, as someone who does not have the confidence to give someone homework, I love that the Wachowskis were like, yeah, you're going to need to get a library card and really put in some hours because the test is on Monday. Before I would agree to come on the show, I required you both to read Jacques Baldiard's Simulacrum and Simulation.

So I'd like to leave like a 10 minute discussion of that right now and what your thoughts were. Yes. Yeah. So I thought it was really good. I liked it. What was your favorite plot twist i thought it was a derivative if you're asking me i liked when simulacra and simulation met for the first time i thought it was so cute i love when they kiss at the end so romantic i know and you're like simulation loved simulacra so much the whole

time and simulacra had no idea but then when they heard it they were oh it was just i thought it was beautiful another iconic lesbian romance exactly i did think it was a little weird when it was revealed that they were the same person but that's also iconic lesbian cinema so yeah i i you know i, I liked the duality. I liked the tone. I liked the ideas. And I loved reading the index also. We're all going to have somebody with hire a sky writer above our houses to say read simulation, you assholes.

I dare you. Oh, my gosh. I yeah, I just oh god I love I mean there is a part of that anecdote that makes me feel like I'm being like I was like oh yeah this is this is kind of just a simulation of being in the DSA where everyone's like have you read this book and you're like I haven't I just want everyone to have health insurance. I'm sorry. The thing that this is, this is a, I've tweeted about this several times. The thing that like, like most makes me stand out at like, when I hang out with other leftists is like,

I have super normie pop culture taste. I'm just like, yeah, well, you know, I like, you know, these extremely mainstream HBO shows and they're like, what about this? And I don't know. That's fine, too. You want to talk about Succession, everybody? Right, right. I know.

The leftists, I mean, I love them to death. And make room for us basic gals, because we have something to bring to the table, too. Yeah. You want to listen to Taylor Swift together? You want to recruit people into the movement? You got to be able to talk about what happened on Succession last week. Sorry. Let's take another quick break,

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Oh, please, yes. That section ends with Carrie Ann Moss commented that she had difficulty with this process. Keanu is like, yes, more books. And she's like, I did not sign up for this. I thought I was going to be wearing a jacket and fighting i mean i don't know how much of her fighting in the movie is like stunt people but it seems like a lot of the actors were like trained in martial arts and doing a lot of their own stunts and fight choreography which i was very impressed by uh so she was probably just busy learning like martial

arts and she didn't have time to read a book much like us i remember lawrence fishburne was on hannibal and um i talked to brian fuller a lot around that show and he was like sometime between season one and season two lawrence fishburne came to him and was like listen brian i have all this kung fu training from the matrix can i get in? And like, there's an amazing fight in season two that was inspired entirely by him being like, Brian Fuller, I know how to fight. Please let me fight. So yeah, they did a lot of their own stuff. Yeah, that's so cool. I guess if I knew how to do kung fu, I would just try to work it into whatever I did for the rest of my life also. That's so cool. Really hard to do in an audio medium is the thing. But yeah, I would definitely try and work it into season three of

art. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just just again, leak leak the zoom call, you know. Our hair looks great. We have kung fu skills to show off what are we doing i wanted to talk about the film itself the the narrative the characters because i think we've got an interesting cast of characters here and i think one of the reasons the movie holds up as well as it does i think one of the reasons that i was so attached to it as a young person is like the badassery of trinity and this was like the bulk of our conversation on the again first version of this episode that no longer exists but um at least the tapes come on we should we should drop we still have the audio file in our google drive we should drop a little because that was fun for our listeners to go back and be like,

wow, Jamie didn't make a definitive statement the whole time. Interesting. Yeah, maybe on our Patreon we'll leak a couple minutes or something. My deepest shame. Anyways. But I feel almost like simple being like, trinity's so cool and badass and like watching her fight competently and like know how to hack and like no she just she's equipped with a with a lot of skills but i never felt that she fell into like the mary sue type i think it's implied that

she's had extensive training too. Like the more you get to know her character, it's like, you know how, why, why she can do what she does. Right. Yeah.

Different characters. And it's often like the villains are constantly underestimating her also, where there's like the movie opens on that sequence where there's like a cop who's like, Oh, on that sequence where there's like a cop who's like oh we can handle one little girl and then agent smith who knows who trinity is and like understands the extent of her capabilities is like no lieutenant your men are already dead and that was an amazing hugo weaving impression thank you so much that was really good that was good that was really good he pouted those gorgeous lips just like just like mr hugo does hugo leaving

weavings lips are so distracting in this movie and i like in a good way but i was just like i just wasn't expecting those beautiful lips out that whole time wow there's a part at the very end it's like the final battle between him and neo and again he's constantly calling neo mr anderson throughout the whole movie and his voice gets really gravelly at one point and he's just like mr anderson it's incredible and then like neo does like good gaitlin neo kind of like flexes and like you see dust come off of his shirt and then he just like starts to beat agent smith's ass oh it's so good anyway my point is people people are often underestimating Trinity, which is something that many women can identify with. Even Neo, like you mentioned, Emily, there's that scene where he's like, oh, you're the Trinity who cracked the IRS database.

And she's like, yes, but that was a long time ago. I'm humble. And then he's like, oh, I just thought you were a guy. And she's like oh I just thought you were a guy and she's like most guys do I don't know just like those little nuggets in there they're kind of like yeah not like throwaway moments really but just like little details that I found made that character just like especially relatable and and I like that it's like they're not I don't know there are certain movies where it's like those moments come off as extremely over the top and like I feel like we've talked about a lot of

action movies where there's like the like you're a good good good girl like right in the middle of a scene but it's just like it even though that moment happens it's just a natural part of the scene and it's not like the reaction from Neo isn't like i found out that like a woman is an incredible hacker and i'm upset about it he's just like oh i guess my assumption was wrong and then the scene continues and it's like oh i didn't realize what a relief that is to watch someone react like that the sympathy of that moment in that scene is with trinity and that's why it works because you're like yeah you're like oh she's been underestimated that fucking sucks because i already know she can kick people in the face you know or whatever you mentioning how much hacking is in this movie reminds me this is other influence in the film

that's totally been forgotten which is mid-90s movies about the internet that tried to like personify like this is just sondra bullock's the, but like a little bit better, you know? Yeah. Oh, The Net. We should cover The Net. We should cover The Net. We've covered Hackers. I'll come on to talk about The Net anytime.

Please come back and do The Net. Oh my God. There's another small moment that's like, again, very fleeting, but just like relatable. And I really appreciated it where neo has taken the red pill they're kind of like preparing him to be unplugged from the matrix and like trinity is hooking him up to a bunch of like apparatus and neo is just like you did all this to trinity and she was just like so like it was just like a nice moment where he like recognizes that she probably put in all of this effort and like did all this work and like set up this whole thing. Especially now that he knows that she's the one who like has all these amazing like hacking and computer skills. And then she's just like, uh-huh.

Yeah, I did that. Like very matter of factly. And he's just like cool and there's like so many movies like you said jamie there would be if we saw a woman like doing something impressive or we saw like you know kicking or hacking or something the guys would be like what boner right right yeah and then they'd like instantly fall in love with her and they were like jaws would drop and they just like wouldn't know how to turn into that horny cartoon wolf right and they just like wouldn't know how to turn into that horny cartoon wolf and they just like wouldn't know how to comprehend that like a woman is capable of something especially something that they assume would be something that only a man could do so

yeah just these like little moments that we like learn things about her character we learn about her abilities and it's just presented very matter- factly and in a way that like Neo immediately accepts. And there is, I think, some of those moments where people are like, whoa, Trinity, you can do things. They feel so much like studio notes. They feel so much like somebody at the exact level was like, well, if she's with all these computers, someone has to note that she did that. And that's unusual because she's a girl. And so they put that in the script. And like most directors would make a big moment of that.

But like the Wachowskis, even if they were not aware of their transness at the time, their sympathies are always with Trinity because they are, in fact, women. And like that makes those moments play, because you're not like sitting there and being like, Oh, my God, this is so condescending, because it's, it is like a thing that would have been condescending in any other movie with the exact same dialogue. It's just like how they wait that scene. I was, I was, I was kind of challenged by a lot of moments in the movie for that exact reason, where it's like on paper, if you hear like similar thing with Joey Pants, when you find out that Joey Pants has been lusting after Trinity. I was at first it being my first time encountering this plot point. I was like, oh, cool. We're adding in a spiteful ex-boyfriend character to the one woman we're going to get to know during this movie.

Like, where is this going to go? But the way I don't know, I generally felt like the way that that storyline played out. I just feel like almost any other director would have implied that Trinity had somehow brought this upon herself that she could have handled rejecting Joey Pants in a different way that would have prevented this outcome. But this movie doesn't go for that at all. It presents the spiteful Joey Pants ex-boyfriend, of which there are unfortunately many in the world, and does not blame the woman who is being raged at for what is happening, which again is just like, I feel like that just wasn't happening a lot in movies at

that time and i was i ended up being kind of pleasantly surprised by i mean and again it's like that's scraps but it i was surprised that that was how that story kind of played out what if every shitty spiteful ex-boyfriend turned into a clone of Joe Pantoliano, like Agent Smith overtaking someone in the Matrix. Now that's a movie. I hope that's Resurrections, that they just aren't showing it. I did want to talk a little bit about the romantic subplot between Trinity and Neo, because that's the one aspect of this movie where I get a little

I don't know I'll be honest I mean yeah entering it in 2021 I feel like it was it stood out to me a little bit more because I didn't have any nostalgia for the movie and also because we recently covered speed in this movie which ends with Keanu getting a little slurp at the end, a plot resolving slurp, if you will. Sure. Yeah. My main gripes, I don't even hate that it's there. You know, movies be movies and movies have hetero romantic subplots in them often. So what i don't there there are heterosexuals one i know is that still a thing god i'm actually writing stand-up material about this as we speak but um my gripes with it are that neo being brought back to life by like tr's love and kiss. To me, that almost read as like, because it's a surprise kiss of Trinity kissing Neo while he's unconscious. Yeah.

Like the prince in Snow White bringing back to life, like that whole fairy tale thing. It's like, why? Like, don't kiss an unconscious person they cannot consent and stop showing that in movies also um my other question i'm interested to hear people's thoughts about this is so the oracle prophesied that or is that a word prophesied prophesied made a prophecy she did a prophecy she did she did a prophecy that trinity would fall in love and that that man would be the one and then that ends up being true my question is does it feel like that kind of removes agency from trinity or is that not how prophecies work no i just know what i mean i don't know i my feeling on that was like

if were i trinity receiving my prophecy of which you seem to only get one i would be sort of let down that uh the prophecy seemed to have actually not that much to do with me and more like a second prophecy for a different person like i i do think that there is like that trope that you see a million times of like a woman's love will, you know, it's like Helen of Troy shit. You know, a woman's love will resolve the plot or the war or whatever it is. That's definitely present here.

I don't know. I mean, in terms of agency, I guess I hadn't really considered that, but I think that that's more of a testament to like it feels so clear in the plot that Trinity and Neo should be together that if I felt like there wasn't chemistry between those characters um and that I wanted them to kiss so badly maybe maybe that would have hurt me I don't know that it does then i mean when you think about the prophecy that morpheus received which was you're going to find the one right neo's prophecy is you are the one as long as you believe that you're the one and once you believe that you're the one then you're

the one those are prophecies that have to do with them right and then trinity's prophecy is you're going to fall in love with a man which feels feels like a very gendered choice but again i don't even hate that the love story is there but it does no i mean i like the love story i do think that the two sequels really do a lot to further sell it and i'm always like reading who those two characters become back onto the first movie but i remember in 1999 i was very much like yeah i don't know this love story i i think they have good chemistry but i'm not sure it was needed right but like matrix reloaded especially has some great stuff for those two characters uh to sort of bounce off of each other but yeah like if it wasn't for their chemistry i don don't think it would work. Fortunately, they have amazing chemistry.

Yeah, I do. I do feel like there are there are some kind of and Emily, once you brought up studio notes, now I can't stop thinking of like, well, at what you know, I now I want to blame everything I didn't 100% love about the movie on studio notes, but who knows? I do feel like it would have been just as easy and it wouldn't have impacted the story for them to not get together in that way and be like a team. And I think that that would have been just as strong a choice and would have worked completely fine. And the love story didn't have to be there. I didn't hate that it was there. But I felt like yeah, my main thing was like we especially because the movie starts with just a long introduction to how fucking cool and capable

and brilliant trinity is for her to get a message like that from the oracle and then just have it bear out and not have trinity i mean she it's i thought it was interesting because in the movie she seems kind of annoyed that that is what she was told or like very conflicted of like, that's what I have to learn? Like, because it just, we know, like, we've seen how much she can do. It doesn't quite make sense that her fate would be so limited in the way that it's presented. did there's a great piece on the sadly defunct website the dissolve by um tasha robinson about this very thing about how many movies have a basically a trinity character who's badass and capable and can do anything and then her story ends up being but also she falls in love with the guy and the matrix actually does a pretty good job with that idea and it's sort of the innovator of

that trope which is i think why in some ways it gets away with it. But then by the time she wrote it in 2015, it's just like everywhere and it's not doing anything. It's just like sitting there, taking up space and having the illusion of strong women characters while never actually having to create a strong woman character. They're creating the trappings of one without actually having to make a full character. By the way, do you think people go to the Oracle and get just like really boring prophecies? Do you think the Oracle's ever just like, Jamie, you've seen the most beautiful duck you'll ever see already? Like, do you think that ever just comes up? And then I would just walk into traffic afterwards.

I'd be like, well, thanks a lot i hope so i though we'll get to the oracle whole whole discussion to be had there i god that's my that's my worst fear is to encounter someone who's just like uh yeah your best days are very much behind you so just ride it out but yeah i mean jamie you pointed out the movie opens with this like whole sequence showcasing trinity and her skills like for this action movie to open on an action set piece which is not uncommon for an action movie but for that action set piece to center around a woman and a woman who's not even the protagonist because you would expect that from something like laura croft tomb raider or something like that but right we get this whole set piece

where we see a woman fighting and kicking ass and she doesn't even end up being the protagonist of the narrative i think it's like I don't know where else I've ever seen that I don't think really anywhere it's amazing yeah I think just to kind of jump back to how yeah before this and especially like action movies and action franchises the one woman character who we get to know pretty well would be framed only as the romantic interest who maybe gets like dragged along for the ride but isn't participating in any of the action or the plot herself and is just kind of like present for the man to eventually kiss at the end whereas this movie and I'm sure you know there are other examples before this but like I feel like this is one of the ones that like kind of popularized or like actually gave the woman more agency, more to do, more skills, and actually allowed her to participate in the plot in more meaningful ways.

But still couldn't quite stick the landing on giving her the full story. Right. stick the landing on giving her the full story right there's there's really before this movie there is if you're a woman in a movie you are just an incredible badass a woman in an action movie you're just an incredible badass usually there's not a man around like the kind of the one exception i'm thinking of right now is um linda hamilton in terminator 2 right but even like in the first terminator she falls in love with this guy and has sex with him, you know, whatever. Or you are the love interest, you know?

So this is the first movie that tries to blend those two, but is very much like at the end, they have to pick one of those two corridors and they pick the wrong one to my mind. It's messy. And it's like we're, it's not even like we're suggesting that women who can execute perfect fight choreography and hack a computer don't deserve love if they want

love and they want a relationship but it's like more the way that it's executed and how what we're told in the first half of the movie is what makes her special isn't what makes her special or relevant to the plot by the end and that is like i don't know if that all like played in and she wants a boyfriend amazing great love that but yeah i don't know definitely a little bit messy but still i mean i keep every time i like feel the need to qualify it at every turn as like, but it's doing way better than any other movie was doing at this time by quite a bit. So I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of product of its time-iness to that choice. Along the lines of this being a product of its time, this is a movie from, as we stated, 1999. And like 1999 is just clogged

with movies that are about, well, we've reached the end of history. Capitalism won and everything's great. Why do I feel hollow inside? And like, there's like five or six that come out in 99, then like even more if you include 98 and 2000. But The Matrix is the one that's held up best to my mind because it has this larger critique of everything feels empty because you have been misled by corporations and governments and all these systems to think that you do not have any actual human connection. And the truth is you should have human connection. You should move to a city at the center of the earth and just fuck everyone you see. Like that is the message of these movies but like you know you compare it to something like american beauty which won best picture that year and it's just that that vision of like what it means to be alive is like so shallow and this

movie's vision of what it means to be alive is so rich and fascinating and and weird and complicated and i think that is to the credit of the wachowskis, whatever stumbles they may have made along the way. Sure. I totally agree. Yeah, I just love Trinity. And I also love how they're, I don't know, the way that the characters are presented in this movie, I know it's just like a part of the aesthetic of this world as it is, but the women in this world are not aggressively sexualized. You know, everyone is basically wearing the same exact outfit. Everyone has a variation on the same exact haircut. And everyone has the jawline to pull off that haircut. And don't get us wrong.

Trinity is very sexy. But yes, I agree that she is not sexual. Everyone is extremely sexy but yeah not overtly sexualized yeah it's kind of that it is kind of that 90s internet aesthetic where it's like well online everyone's the same everyone just kind of looks the same has the same vibe on the internet no one knows you're a dog whatever that cartoon was at the time like um and i when i've watched the trailer for this there's a lot more less homogeneity uh you know within that world and i think it's because now we understand the internet can be as terrible as real life too

if not worse right i wanted to uh we haven't talked too much about Morpheus yet. I wanted to talk about Morpheus a little bit. I mean, first of all, because he's amazing. He's great. But there was, as I was going back to, so I was doing the always interesting but sometimes unpleasant task of going back to the original round of criticism for this movie in the late 90s going into kind of like movie blogs of the early 2000s and there was a I think especially in the earlier years of this movie a fair amount of criticism around mystical black character tropes used in the writing of Morpheus's character as well as the oracle um so i kind of wanted to uh open the floor on on that topic too i mean the criticism that i was seeing and we can um link this in the description as well is that

and we've discussed this i mean we we just discussed this on the show in our full court miracle episode where that trope couldn't be more different movies but the trope is at play to varying degrees in both of these movies that are made by you know made and written by white filmmakers in which essentially a black character appears as this mystical fairy godmother plot advancement character for the chosen white protagonist whether that be be Neo, or the kid in Full Court Miracle, you know, just, it just all depends. And I mean, I think that it's absolutely a valid criticism of the way that those characters are written, not the worst example, but certainly is present. I think originally, I mean, the term was originally used by Spike Lee in 2001

and I have an old Salon um article up here which really takes me back but the characters being cited when this term was first coined was Cuba Gooding Jr. in What Dreams May Come which is a movie I haven't seen that's about a spirit guide helping Robin Williams rescue his wife from hell question mark Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lawrence Fishburne in The Matrix which is described in this as Obi-Wan to Keanu

Reeves as Luke Skywalker and Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile in which he plays a man on death row who has healing powers and heals white characters. Do you want to know the surprise twist of what dreams may come? What is it? Cooper Gooding Jr. is playing Robin Williams' son in disguise to lead him through the afterlife.

Because if it was his actual son robin williams wouldn't like go along with it i don't know it's very weird i have never heard of this movie and i hate everything i've heard for visual effects but yeah um yeah so i just i just want to you know just bring that criticism up because it it's uh something that comes up quite a bit in movies still, but I think in a high density of movies of this kind of stretch of years in the late 90s into the early 2000s. Sure. It does. One thing I like about the casting of the fourth movie is it seems, yes, they have Yahya Abdul-Mateen playing, who is obviously the Morpheus character, but they have a bunch of other actors of color in different roles that look like they're going to be all kind of over the map.

And I think that will help with this issue. I do think that this is obviously a valid and important criticism of the film. I do think that there is the thing of, you know, they considered a lot of different actors for the role of morpheus they settled on lord's fishburne should they when they settled on him did they settle on him because they had certain you know racist stereotypical ideas that you know were in their heads already you know we can't know that but i do think once you've cast a black actor in a role like this you do have sort of the burden of going back over the script and being like okay are there ways we can complicate this

are there ways we can make it more interesting that said i think that morpheus is nowhere near kuba cutting junior like he's a fully realized human being and like sometimes the tropes are bad because they we just lean on the tropes and sometimes the tropes exist because we need certain tropes to tell stories we're not saying we need this one but morpheus is a fully realized human being and i think that keeps him from falling into the worst examples of this the thing that and again it's like we're we're three white women here and extra i want to be clear, extremely white. When I said big Reese Witherspoon energy,

I was describing myself. But I did. I mean, the only thing that, this isn't even like pushing back at all, but like Will Smith almost played Neo is another thing that I kind of took into consideration when I was just kind of going through this criticism is I think that I totally agree with you, Emily, where it is

on the filmmakers, once they've made their casting decisions to consider, you know, whether intended or not, what might be coming across and take that into consideration with how characters are presented and how their storylines unfold. But it does seem like the cast, I mean, reading about the casting process for the matrix outside of this discussion is just very interesting will smith uh has made so many youtube videos about he how he almost took this part he's still mad about it he's still mad about it there's one in particular that like involves some animation and he like really it's so funny he's spending money telling people that he was almost in the Matrix. Like, it's funny.

It's amazing. So I think that, you know, where the casting did land, it's a valid criticism. And, you know, I think were it be made now, like if this movie was coming out now, it would be something that would be taken into account. More carefully. Because Spike Lee made this criticism of all of these movies so yeah and I definitely think the oracle does fall a bit more into that trope for I mean because we know nothing about her right she's in one scene and yeah everything we know about her is that she seems to have these like kind of otherworldly clairvoyant

capabilities that no one else has so yeah she is presented as this very like mystical figure i love that performer though yeah i just want to gloria foster so good and so there's something so warm about her yes and like i wish we'd gotten 10 million more performances from her. She's so good. Yeah. She's also in Matrix Reloaded. And then I believe that actor died. Died, yeah.

Before they shot Revolutions. But the character is still there. And they actually comment on like why she looks different. Because she gets, a different actor gets cast to play the Oracle in Matrix Revolutions. But yeah, that actor was incredible. And like funny too, in a movie that doesn't have a ton of like very light, calming scenes.

It's just, I don't know. And, and the set design, the kitchen, the green kitchen that she's in is so, I don't know. She's, she's good is so i don't know she's she's good she's very good but i do

think also cleanly falls into that yeah yeah yeah i uh i just saw that will smith turned this movie down to do wild wild west yes and i see why he's so upset yes isn't that so that's why he's so mad about it and he'll never get over it is because he didn't just turn it down to do a different good movie he turned it down to do one of my favorite bad movies yeah we'll send you the link to the video where he like lays out the whole story it's very funny he was just kind of like skeptical of the script i think and he also didn't i think he didn't want to be typecast as like the sci-fi action guy because he had already been in Men in Black and Independence Day yeah so yeah it's we'll we'll share the link to everybody uh of that video but it'll make sense on paper but then when you know that he turned on the matrix that is funny and I think it would have I mean I wouldn't trade

Keanu as Neo for anyone, but I do like to think of like Will Smith and Laurence Fishburne would have been, I mean, it would have been very different, but it would have been cool. It would have been good. Well, that's the thing. It wouldn't have been Laurence Fishburne. They had Val Kilmer in mind to play Morpheus had it been Will Smith that got cast as Neo. I have to go back and watch Will Smith's cursed YouTube video about this.

I forgot about that. But even though these tropes are present in this movie, I would say that this is a surprisingly diverse cast for a late 90s action movie. And I think gets even more diverse as the movies go on because in the two sequels, a ton of new characters are introduced maybe even too many i would argue but most of them are people of color especially the characters who are like fighting for the resistance like who are like inhabitants of zion are like mostly people of color do you think it bugs will smith because jada pinkett smith is in the two sequels

i'm like she just holds it over him all the time also i did consider oh my gosh and they have they we know that they have some some issues that they need to work out in public they have to oh there i just wanted sorry i i know we're having a very an extremely academic discussion i just wanted to like go through the other casting stuff. Cause I always forget how kind of wild it was. So yeah, Will Smith said, I would rather do Wawa West. One of the, taking one of the biggest L's in all of casting history. Nicolas Cage turned it down due to family obligations. Who knows what that means?

Leonardo DiCaprio originally accepted the part, but then said that he did too many visual effects in Titanic and he didn't want to do it anymore then the studio was like Keanu Reeves who got the role over Johnny Depp who I guess is who the Wachowskis wanted for this

role and then there was a side quest where they sent the screenplay to Sandra Bullock and were going to rewrite Neo to be a woman which I guess didn't happen. But I was like, oh, that's interesting. There's just really the net. It would just have been the net. It could have been the net.

I yeah. So, you know, that this a lot where there are a bazillion chosen one narratives as movies and very few of them are about a woman so that would have been very cool but at the same time i love keanu as neo i know and and for trinity sorry it's just it's really interesting jan Janet Jackson was considered for Trinity and Salma Hayek and Jada Pinkett Smith were also considered and then didn't do it. But then Jada came in later anyways.

Janet Jackson is such a fucking good movie actress and she's only made just a handful of films and she's just really good. Like, come on, Janet. I want Hollywood to cast Janet more often. Or, I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like she was pretty bummed about not getting to do The Matrix.

Yeah. But, yeah, again, American action franchises have usually a pretty big problem with casting mostly white actors. But again, The Matrix, even the first movie, is doing better than most. Between the protagonist, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, who is coded white, I think, a lot of times in movies. He is of European, Chinese, and Polynesian ancestry. So he's multiracial. So between Keanu, Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, the actors who play Tank and Dozer, the actor who plays Apoc, Julian Arhanga is Maori. Again, just a more diverse cast than most action movies of this time, and more representative of what a futuristic leftist society would look like. So it makes narrative sense and world building sense in a way that a lot of movies ignore. It's true. And like this is this is nothing to do with the film's racial

diversity. But I think in terms of gender presentation diversity, obviously, this movie is very androgynous across the board, but Belinda Magloria, which the character who was originally sort of intended as trans, like nobody was styled like that in an action movie at the time. Like she's just so, there's just such an androgynous,

non-conforming energy just sort of pouring off of her. Totally. And I really, I mean, I just, and this is kind of just like a compliment to the movie, but the way that the crew of the ship, which I'm not going to try to say because I'm not going to say it right,

but the way that the crew works together, I just really like how they interact with each other, where, like you were saying earlier in this episode, Emily, like everyone has a distinct personality, even when you don't hear them speak very much. Everyone knows what their role is. But I just I don't know the way that the movie is written and they're used so thoughtfully of like, oh, this person's talking behind Morpheus's back a little bit. Or like the way that Trinity clearly has this deep respect for Morpheus but is sometimes like well he's wrong about that though like he's wrong and he's being short-sighted and just like

I don't know I I really love when there's a group of characters who clearly hold a lot of love and respect for each other but also are constantly talking shit about each other um in a way that is just like very effortless and in this completely bizarro world feels like real and like actual dynamics that you would see in a group of friends who you know the fate of the world is not hinged on is it fair to say that part of the trans allegory is that like this group of people is like each other's chosen family yeah that's i think that that is very um there is a queerness to it that is very i think interesting and i don't know how intentional but definitely subconsciously intention uh intentional i'm thinking about how they're making so many tv shows set in like movie universes now and like a show just sort of set on any given ship in the matrix

universe where they're just like hanging out and like complaining about each other and occasionally fighting spider robots yeah that'd be rad i'd watch that i would 100 watch that that'd be incredible yeah the one thing i didn't watch in preparation for this was animatrix which i haven't seen at all and i i've heard it's good and, I think I just need to sit down and commit to it, but it's like really hard to see now. I think it's on HBO max. It's on HBO max. I believe so.

I just, for a long time, it was hard to see. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to be accessible now. So I'm going to go check it out. But,

um, Oh, I was going to say going back to the discussion of gender expression and presentation of certain characters, Trinity's character design and aesthetic is also not what you would expect as the main female character in an action movie, who also plays the role of the love interest of the male hero. Her clothes and haircut are, I say pretty gender neutral you know she doesn't have this long flowing hair that's completely impractical to fight bad guys with and she's not like made up in a bunch of makeup the way that again a lot of women would be in an action franchise because

the the function that a lot of women serve in an action franchise is to like be eye candy for what the studios assume is going to be a mostly hetero male audience. But they don't stylize Trinity that way. And it wouldn't make sense that she would like be all made up when she's like flying around in the Nebuchadnezzar. But they also don't make her up that way when she's like in the matrix either which i thought was right interesting and cool they in fact even make her a little less glamorous in the sequels like if that's at all like i love how stripped down the visuals of this just just constantly are in terms of not trying to make anyone movie pretty they're of course incredibly attractive but they don't like overstate that attractiveness right right yeah and again it's just like the wachowskis are so

confident when they make a choice they make it so hard that it's like yeah we're just gonna let the hot people be hot and not you know they're all gonna wear the same outfit we don't need to embellish it like we're just gonna let the jawlines do what they do and fall where they may. And it's going to be sexy because it is like, I don't know. Right. I was just thinking about the bullet time thing where the camera swings all the way around. And like the other early major use of this technology was for a Gap commercial. Really? That came out at the holidays. Yeah.

It was like they were doing a swing dance or something. Oh, yeah. I remember that. I cannot remember if the Gap ad predates the Matrix or the Matrix predates the Gap ad. Because I don't think that bullet time was like invented for the Matrix. But I think it was like a thing that they pulled in that other people had also come up with but i would not be surprised if it would be great if the gap ad came first and like everyone in the matrix was like we missed it by like two months um but i do think the matrix came first so i would love sitting in a movie theater in 1999 and have here's someone lean

over and be like they're just ripping off that gap commercial i saw so derivative of that gap commercial unbelievable yeah yeah um i wanted to really quickly touch on just because uh and we can kind of blow through this but because the red pill discussion snowballed out in the way that it did i just wanted to quickly touch on not even um i mean i'm assuming if you listen to the show you're aware of the wild misinterpretation that uh the term red pill had taken where it's intended to be some reveal of a great truth and then was co-opted by right-wing weirdos who were like, yeah, and the truth is that straight white guys are oppressed.

And you're like, that's not the one that was being referred to. But I did just want to quickly, it seems like the Wachowskis, I mean, the Wachowskis have responded to this, but I think the best exchange was from Lily Wachowski back in May 2020. Because that's when Elon Musk tweeted, take the red pill. And then Ivanka Trump retweeted it saying, taken.

And then Lily Wachowski replied by saying, fuck both of you, which I think is really all you need to know. Yeah, that's the story in a nutshell. An icon. I remember I covered the early days of Gamergate, which is the reactionary movement that basically evolved into the Trump campaign. And they were all talking about the red pill. And I was like, I feel like you haven't actually watched The Matrix. And like at the time I was like, this will dispel this. If I just am like, no, The Matrix is a very different theme, but it didn't work for some reason.

To this day. The Gap ad does predate The Matrix. Oh, wow. I can't believe it. Okay, I don't like The Matrix anymore. Derivative. The tech that made up bullet time has been around since like the dawn of cinema. People have been like, if we put a bunch of cameras around something and film it from all those angles, but like computers were required to like actually simulate moving around. And the Gap ad just like

got there first. But the term bullet time specifically was coined for the matrix so wild god i want to see that gap commercial now i don't think i've ever seen it yeah i i mean i'd have to we'll link it in the description i say that 500 times an episode and then i have to go find it and it's awful i'm posting i'm posting the bullet time ad in chat oh thank you so much okay thank you um does anyone have anything else they would like to talk about in regards to the matrix that's all i had i believe yeah i just wanted to state that i have found my anagram and it's a warden fever filmy wow cool that's really okay get the merch get the merch going yeah amazing mine i couldn't find mine all suck i don't know what's wrong my i got the wrong letters jamie just come up with a

hacker name for yourself and then i know i used to do a whole show about hackers but i didn't know what i was talking about so i've had to stop doing the show but maybe that name will be more anagrammable it's true it's just a thought i'll work on it yeah yeah yeah um we've had this conversation before on the other matrix episode that has been lost to time about whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. Yeah. And I feel I don't remember what we concluded and I did not remember to pay attention to whether or not it passes when I was watching it this time around. I think it's a barely pass situation due to a quick exchange that Trinity and Switch have in the car.

Right. quick exchange that trinity and switch have in the car right when neo's got the the bug all scooting around in his guts it's possible that he's the subtext of that conversation but i'm inclined to just want to give this movie anything we can but i did know that they have like one or two exchanges that are just between the two of them that i believe are about the bug they're about the bug but the bug is in Neo, so I don't know about it. I mean, we've all got a bug inside of us somewhere, so technically.

That's true. The bug, and the bug famously genderless. Genderless icon, the bug. The bug. Yeah, and then I remember talking about how there's a conversation where when Cypher is sabotaging them and when he kills switch and apoc he's talking to trinity and he's like if there's

anything terribly important you have to say to switch say it now and then before trinity can say anything to switch and then maybe pass the bechdel test uh cypher kills switch so he really doesn't want women to talk to each other yeah that's why he's not an ally not because he's murdering people now technically you're right this movie does barely pass because the bug is genderless but when you consider that neo and trinity are both trans lesbians then it passes so much It just passes all over the place. Flying colors. Let's go with that. I just want to give this movie nice thanks.

Jamie, I'm so glad you like it. I was not sure if you would, because I know you're famously not an action movie fan. But it's not just an action movie. There's so much going on. There's so much more. And they have a little horny Will Poul character i'm like you know what i like the movie it's good no i really loved it there this on um the website that exists in service of the bechdel test which is i think wrong quite a bit of the time but bechdeltest.com there is such an extensive conversation arguing about

whether this movie passes the Bechdel test no one seems to agree interesting I just pulled it up and people do talk about that scene in the car and people are arguing about what we were just talking about of like well the bug in the blah blah blah which honestly if you have to get I feel like our rule of thumb is like if you have to get that far in the weeds about it, it probably doesn't pass the Bechdel test if you have to split hairs like that. But I think under Emily's qualification, it does pass and let's not worry about it. I'll just go on that site and I'll be like, no, listen, everyone in this movie is a trans lesbian. It passes every test. The whole movie passes.

Yeah. Also, as we always say, the Bechdel test is not the end-all be-all for anything. It's just a jumping off point. What is the end-all be-all? Is the nipple scale. Yes. Which is our metric. Zero to five nipples.

I really appreciated your visceral reaction, Emily. Hear us out. Technically, this movie has, obviously I know what we're going to do here, but I was just thinking about how this movie has a whole bunch of other nipples on your back. Like those are just kind of, got some back nipples.

They've got back nipples. You've got arm nipples. You've got the back of the head nipple. There's a lot. Wachowskis know what we want and it's nipples. It's like hard plastic black nipples. The Wachowskis know what we want and it's nipples. It's like hard plastic black nipples. The Wachowskis saw Joel Schumacher nipples and were like, we can do more. We can do more.

Okay. So zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Gosh, me loving this movie so deeply might cloud my judgment a bit here. But I love that there are multiple different reads of this movie, one of them being this really interesting trans allegory. I love that this is a major franchise directed by trans women, which hopefully paves the way for there to be more trans visibility on screen of actual trans people and not just it all being a metaphor that features all cis people.

You know, that's like the goal that we're aiming for, right, is just like more visibility and hopefully things don't have to be coded and um steeped in metaphor and and things like that but it was 1999 trinity being a character who i always loved and admired and that was so cool and i love just everything about the damn movie. I'm going to give it four nipples plus maybe also a half nipple on top of that. Is that too much? We do give halves

and sometimes even quarter nipples. Get into the decimals if you need to. You know, it's.333 repeating. Whatever it needs to be i mean maybe i'm being too generous uh but again i love this movie i think it holds up and i'm gonna go four and a half nipples done love it who are you giving your nipples to uh i'm going to give one to kanu Reeves, who is the best man alive. I'm going to give one to Gloria Foster, who plays the Oracle.

I'll give one nipple to Belinda McClory, who plays Switch. I'll give one nipple to Lawrence Fishburne. And I'll give my half nipple to the little black cat who we see twice in the deja vu scene flea yeah little flea looks just like my cat yeah so four and a half nipples boom uh i'm gonna go four and a half as well mostly because i'm like i like this movie so much what a what a long-standing edging experience of saying i was gonna watch this movie never doing it lying out my ass and then learning that I loved it and I'm excited to watch it again and I'm excited to watch the new one too

Jamie let's go together oh yeah let's go because I know it's coming out on HBO Max but it seems like something that you should see I would love to see a Matrix movie in theaters so yeah I'll echo what you're saying there Caitlin there are certainly like dated 1999 elements to certain things of the plot.

But, you know, as far as movies from this year goes, I mean, what more can you ask for? And it's also just I don't know. It's like such a movie. Does that make sense? You know, it's such a movie movie. And I was just interested in every second and everyone was so unique even though they all kind of like looked the same but also they didn't and there was a lot of diversity and they're like I just it's so fun I'm excited to watch this movie again and not have to take

notes this time it's gonna be fun yeah yeah uh so I'm gonna give it four and a half nipples i'll give one to trinity i'll give one to the oracle i'm gonna give one to mouse sorry uh no mouse deserved one loved mouse loved mouse is great i think we really should have paused more to he was he wanted a cheeseburger and he was horny love him uh i'll give half a nipple to Hugo Weaving's lips. And I'll give my last nipple to the Wachowski sisters. Hell yeah. Hey. Emily, how about you?

Well, listen. Listening. It sounds, you know, if I come back on here and do the net and I'm like, if I give the Matrix anything less than five, I'm going to feel like I'm insulting it when I come on here and do the net. And I'm like, I don't know, like two and a half. You know, like, so I'm giving it, I'm giving it the full five. I'm giving it the full five. I think especially for its era, it is groundbreaking and impressive.

And that it mostly holds up today. And you can like quibble with some of the casting choices. You can quibble with like of the casting choices you can quibble with like its presentation of transness etc but like it still holds up in a way that like most other action movies of this era don't like you think about this came out the same just a couple months before um star wars episode one and you're just like those are those movies are from different planets entirely yeah so uh i'm gonna give a nipple to Carrie Ann Moss because she's the best. I'll give one to Keanu.

Yeah. Keanu deserves. He only has one nipple. I know he needs two. He needs two. He needs two nipples. Yeah. That's good for him.

You know what? I got to give one to the Wachowski sisters who are just the best and some of my favorite filmmakers of all time. And, you know, I just want to hang out with them. I think they seem so freaking cool. They seem so cool. I want to give a nipple to Bill Pope's cinematography, which is legitimately groundbreaking, change the world, etc. I'm going to give a I'm going to split my last nipple in two. I'm sorry, I'm breaking the rules. I i'm gonna give a half nipple to the bug because we love the bug yes i'm gonna give my other half nipple to producer joel silver not because i actually like i'm like oh wow great joel silver

though he did get this movie made when like a lot of producers wouldn't have but because i like the image of someone like knocking on his door in the middle of the night and he comes and looks down and there's just half a nipple laying on his doorstep. I think I just like that image. So Joel Silver, you get half a nipple. Oh, I bet he appreciates it. Yeah. Yeah. He'd first maybe view it as a threat. But then once you gave him the context he needed, I think he'd come around. He'd be so happy. It's like that part in the matrix when like neo is rejecting this whole thing and he's like i don't believe it let me out of here and then he barfs all over the floor and then he collapses face first into his own barf but then like in the next scene he's like okay i guess it's fine perfect he's an agreeable guy that neo uh emily thank you so

much for joining us and for being here come back for the net come back for anything you want thank you I'd love to come back I had a blast yeah oh good where can people check out your writing follow you on social media plug anything you want to plug I'm on twitter at twitter.com slash emily vdw I get up to all sorts of nonsense there actually less because i'm mostly locked out of twitter but i do tweet every so long for the best look at me and say yeah my writing appears at vox.com i also have a newsletter where i just write some of my weirder ideas that's emily vdw.letterdrop.com i uh co-create write show run etc occasionally play a whale in the scripted fiction podcast Arden. It is about two women

who solve cold cases and try not to fall in love. It is a comedy, but it's also about my weird drama. So... Love that. Hooray. And you can...

I published a book a couple years ago that I still bring up. It's Monsters of the Week, Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files. You can find it at a book a couple years ago that I still bring up. It's Monsters of the Week, Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files. You can find it at various booksellers. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Truly, you're one of my favorite writers in the world.

Thank you. I'm so glad that you could be here with us. Thank you so much. Truly. I love this show, and I'm glad that I could make it and talk about nipples. Amazing. Come back for the net. I would love to.

You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Spectalcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. You get two bonus episodes every month, plus access to the entire back catalog of over 100 bonus episodes. And that's all for $5 a month. We're doing some cursed holiday favorites this month. Surprise! And you can get, speaking of holidays, if you're capitalizing, you can go to tpublic.com slash The Bechtel cast and pick up some merch or not.

We won't know. And it's up to you. And what's a good way to end this episode? Oh, what is Neo? Okay, Neo at the very end, he's just like, yeah, okay. Oh, I know you're out there. And I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. And then he hangs up the phone

and it's like, can you add in the rage against the machine at the end of this episode? Yes. How many seconds can you get away with of like an audio clip before you get sued for copyright stuff? We'll take it off, Mike.

Who knows? All right. Click. Click. you get sued for copyright stuff we'll talk we'll take it off mike who knows uh all right click click Come on! come on k hasn't heard from her sister in seven years i have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart Podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. 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. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds. But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress,

I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.