The Bechdel Cast - The Post with Lizz Winstead

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

Publishers Caitlin and Jamie made the very difficult and high-stakes decision to publish this episode about The Post with special guest Lizz Winstead!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @lizzwinstead on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay 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 or wherever 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. Boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hi, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name's Caitlin Durante.

Oh, I'm still getting used to the last name thing. We started out, early episodes, we were saying our last names. Then we dropped them. Then we got really casual. And then I was about to say, I haven't done this in, like, I think four or five episodes now. I do have a Mike S Hard Lemonade with me today. Yes, congratulations. Thank you so much.

I do think this was a cute bit when we were recording most of the episodes at night. However, it's 3 p.m. And buying a Mike's Hard Lemonade at 3 p.m. is a bad look. People get worried. Yeah. I panicked, and I also grabbed oatmeal raisin cookies to be like, no, but I also care about my health. Sure. Yeah. Balanced lunch, Jamie. Great job. Yeah. To address the Mike's Hard Lemonade ongoing storyline on the Bechtel cast. They have followed us on Twitter. Have we DM'd them yet? We have not. Oh, God. I know. I guess we should do that. Mike's Hard Lemonade. That's a full name, right? Yeah. Mike H. Lemonade.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's the state of affairs. I think our guest is horrified with your choices. I'm just waiting to say something about your choices and tell you want me to. So I'm literally sitting in my chair going, the only other time I've ever seen anyone drink Mike's Hard Lemonade is on Dateline Predator. It's literally the drink of Predator's Choice.

Every time. Every time. I used to be obsessed with that show. And it would be like, the fake adult would be like, I'll be down in a minute. And then the creepy Predator would be like, I stopped and got some Mike's Hard Lemonade. And so I kind of feel like the crew of Dateline and got some Mike's Hard Lemonade. And so I kind of feel like the crew of Dateline Predator love Mike's Hard Lemonade, so the way that they got it for free was

to tell the person posing as the person who was going to be predated, that's not a word, who was going to be datelined, to tell that guy that she liked Mike's Hard Lemonade. He gets hauled off to jail. They're like, here's our Mike's Hard Lemonade! Woo! We are nailing it.

That's super sneaky. I love, I mean, maybe that maybe it's, there's some sort of people who love Dateline, people who love Mike's Hard, because I love Dateline NBC. I know. And I've been known to crack a Mike's Hard and enjoy an episode.

The correlation is obvious. I'm a Lester head. It's Mike's and it's hard. Give me the Lester. It's a lemonade. And it's obvious. I'm a Lester head. It's Mike's and it's hard. Give me the Lester. It's a lemonade. And it's lemonade. I know. So it's got all of the ingredients of a Dateline Predator episode.

A dude, something that's hard, and a non-alcoholic beverage for your underage teen. But then the hard makes it, I don't know. You know what? I just ruined your sponsorship. Mike H. Don't listen to the haters. Any kind of possible sponsorship. Don't listen to the haters.

I think it would be a wild. I just ruined your sponsorship. Mike, don't listen to the haters. Don't listen to the haters. I think it would be a wild, I mean, if Mike's Hard Lemonade wants to clean up their image a little bit, sponsor a feminist podcast, you know? That's right. We do not have an actual sponsorship. No, we've just been harassing them for years. Also, Predators probably like, you know, chocolate and soft pillows, too. So it's not like I'm not trying to, like, deem this the beverage of Roy Moore. It is. Roy Moore's choice is a Mike's Heart lemonade and a goblet.

All right. Anyway. What's the podcast about? So we are the Bechdel cast. We talk about the portrayal of women in movies. Sure. We use the Bechdel test created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel as sort of a yardstick, a jumping off point. The Bechdel test requires that two women in a movie have names, they talk to each other, and their conversation has to be about anything besides a man. Do you want to do a

demo? I'd love to. Oh, it's going to bring up Mike's heart. I can't. How about that oatmeal cookie? The oatmeal cookie is bad. We just passed. Yeah, perfect. Well, you've already heard her voice, but let us actually give a formal introduction to our wonderful guest today. She is the co-creator of The Daily Show. Ever heard of it?

NDD. And she is the founder of Lady Parts Justice, Liz Winston. Hi. Hi. You'd think I was also the producer of Dateline Predator. It was. Great roundabout plug. Pushing it hard.

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. Yay. So you brought us the movie The Post. I did. Tell us why you chose this movie. Well, I, as you would maybe guess from my CV that you just said, I'm a big political junkie and a media junkie.

And when I heard there was going to be a movie about Catherine Graham sort of taking over The Post from her husband in an era where, you know, women weren't running media anythings and women weren't really even working in the media that much. And it was just 20 or 25 years that women even covered Washington. You know, it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, when I do press conferences, I will only talk to women, which forced every single newspaper to have to hire women reporters because they didn't have any. It was genius. That's awesome. I didn't have any it was genius and so i didn't know yeah that was in like you know the late 30s so that means that this was in 1972 i think and so you know 40 years of just having this woman take over the paper it was owned by her family they gave it to her husband not her right and then her husband does it so and i just love news and media and all that stuff and i really love water Watergate and the Nixon administration and all that.

So it was exciting for me to have a story that told of how the Pentagon Papers came to be and the introduction of the Times and how the Washington Post kind of had a comeback. So that's why I picked it because I thought it was going to be really great, and I didn't find it really great. I was so ready to enjoy this movie right it was because it has and this will be i think this is like my main thing with it it's like it has all the ingredients for a great movie but it's not it's extremely mediocre it's it was really frustrating because it's like they have this it's an amazing story. They've got the actor, you would think, but. The all-star cast, you've got Steven Spielberg at the helm.

Stars are out for this one. Yeah, I just saw it about two hours ago. So, Jamie, you had already seen it, and I only saw it today. So it's like, we're switching roles. I was ready. I mean, I love, or I have loved, like, journalism movies. I think that they can be great, very exciting. But this one wasn't. No, and it's, I was reading that they can be great very exciting but this one wasn't

no and it's i was reading that they wanted to get it out this year because of the parallels of journalism and controversy and government overreach and all of that and it was so thrown out and i'm a historian and so i knew who all the players were. Yeah. But I can't imagine. And I don't know if you guys are like news nerds or anything, but like they didn't really tell me enough about who Daniel Ellsberg was as a backstory, what the Rand Corporation is as a backstory. The first time you meet Ben Bradley, you don't even know, you know, a guy named Ben. You don't know like that he is, you know, running the Washington Post. So it was all even Robert McNamara. They kept calling him Mr. Secretary in this opening scene that introduces his role as the Department of Defense secretary who crafted this incredible dossier that we now know as the Pentagon Papers that showed that we knew we were losing the war and we sent men anyway, and then our government covered it up. But you don't learn that he's McNamara.

So to me, I felt like you need to give people a context. When All the President's Men was made, it was made just under two years after Watergate happened. So everybody had the information and they knew. This is 45 years later. Count us a break on the story. And then when I saw David Cross is in it and Bob Odenkirk,

the first time I watched it, I thought that they were Woodward and Bernstein. Oh. And they're not. No, they're absolutely not. They're not. I was like, I thought they were going to be Woodward and Bernstein.

That would have been more fun. Yeah. Why wouldn't you have David Cross and Bob Odenkirk not play Woodward and Bernstein? I was like, that's a failing on everybody's part. Yeah. This was tricky. It was like, because I am like aware of everything that happened and know all the main, you know,

players, but it was confusing with the way the movie treats a lot of the characters. Like it does assume that you're going to make a lot of connections that there's no reason that you would unless you knew everything where yeah like that's the secretary connection took me I think until almost halfway in the movie like oh that's who they're talking that makes way more sense where it's like sometimes they're using like mr so-and-so sometimes they're using their title sometimes they're just using their first name and there's never any connection and I'm not surprised to hear that there was like a timeliness thing to it because that that felt like a little like we're being kind of hit over

the fucking head with it too or there were like two scenes i wrote down like tom hanks may as well break the fourth wall and look to camera and like wink like hear that mr prezzy like it's just like it was a little like he was forgetting his accent a lot. He just kept being like I'm sorry, who are you right now? What accent was he meant to be doing? I don't know. It sounded Boston sometimes and other times I'm just like, what is happening? Also, the protest

scenes were so cheeseball-y. It looked like they gave every extra a sharpie and said write something that sounds like it was back then. I mean, there was so many fringe vests and so many dudes with long hair singing. Everybody played the guitar. It was like there was four people in a pod playing guitar and singing a peace song. And other people had Molotov cocktails.

It was like, is everything that happened at Abingdon once? It was so dumb. There was a lot of uncanny valley qualities to this movie. I'm just like, what is it? The era had been described to the set dresser, but not like she actually heard it. And Meryl Streep just kept sleeping in her own paper. She'd have a notebook, and every scene of her was waking her up from narcolepsy moments that she was having. And I keep calling her Meryl Streep.

Catherine Graham, the Catherine Graham character. We usually end up just calling people by their actor. I know her as Meryl Streep. Listeners of the Pulp Fiction episode might recall that, according to me, her name is Meryl Streep. Anyway, the other part that I thought was so lame is whenever they would cut to the Nixon lookalike on the phone. Like you see him through like a window of the White House and he's like talking on the phone. He's like making these insane hand gestures. Not a particularly good impression.

No, and just like not shot well. Like I was just like, what is this? I don't know. So I've taken history classes. I've learned about the Vietnam War. I read a whole book about it. And somehow I don't remember a single thing about it. I don't know almost anything about the historical events that were depicted in this movie. For some reason, American history goes in one ear and out the other. I just cannot absorb it or remember it for the most part. For our purposes, that's helpful because this movie must have been truly insane to watch.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, not really, not knowing any of the major players of this story, not remembering or knowing much about it to begin with. I would say I was watching the movie for about 45 minutes until I even understood what was happening. Well, it's true. And that's the part that, and for somebody who does understand it, all I kept doing was getting more frustrated that they weren't filling other people in on what was happening. And for me, like, I got, so I'm old as fuck. So I, when Watergate was happening, I was around 11 or 12 or I don't know. I was like, yeah.

But I got like preteen chicken pox one summer. So I couldn't go out. And I watched the Watergate hearings every day. I was this crazy loony kid who watched the Watergate hearings every day and I was sort of fascinated by it. So I loved it. And I was kind of like, I don't

know, what a nerd. That's life-changing chicken pox. That's amazing. And so i was like this 11 year old kid talking about sam irvin and john dean and like i kind of knew what was happening and then i would ask my dad to kind of fill me in and then i realized my dad was like a total right-wing kook and so um that was problematic and so i had a whole bunch of older siblings who were like protesting the war and so our dinner was always like a shit show of screaming at each other so i wanted to see this part of because we always heard about the new york times and then we saw like protesting the war. And so our dinner was always like a shit show of screaming at each other.

So I wanted to see this part of, because we always heard about the New York Times and then we saw all the President's Men and I just wanted to hear this take on what happens when a woman takes over a paper. And all I did was see somebody going, have you talked to Bob? What does Bob say? Is Bob waiting?

Bob, are you on the phone? Is Bob here? Where are my glasses? How's this gonna, I don't know. And it was like, what the hell? Meryl is Meryling out in this movie, too. Oh, man. She's like Feral Street.

She is. Like, honey, what is happening? She's like, she's doing, like, I was, because I went back and watched interviews with Catherine Graham. I was like, why did she make these choices that she made? It didn't make, like, she was doing sort of her Julia Child voice. But like if Julia Child was very tired. That's what her Katherine Graham sound was like. I'm trying to make bimbo vignoles, but I can't find my glasses.

There's a few different times where she went, Ben. It was crazy! Tell me, Ben. It was crazy! Totally! Ben. And then Bob Odenkirk's character's name was also Ben. So that was also problematic. Too many Bens. Too many Bens.

Too many Bens. I would argue that in a cast, a pretty amazing cast, almost no one does a good job. It's kind of amazing how how bad everybody does steven spielberg i would say did a pretty horrendous bang up job tonally it just really bothered me of like even in the first scene where it's like okay we start with the flashback and then we go to um the the story being put together and it's all this it's all like swelling music cross fading in of headlines spoken exposition it's like there has to be

a more could this scene be faster why is this scene slow it's the most important part it just was driving me crazy I'm going to say a line and you guys are going to repeat what the next line is okay I'm a little kid you want some lemonade?

What is it? Like, no? How much is it? No, no. Is there vodka in it? Oh, yeah. Whoa! Okay. I'm disappointed in the both of you. We were not, like, taken by the, is there vodka in it?

I have a question about... That was one of the female lines. Does that count? That's when a child selling lemonade says, yeah, is there vodka? Well, it is to a woman talking about drinking. Do we find out what the kid's name is? I think we do, right? No. I feel like there's a lot of female characters in this movie whose names we do not know.

Also, speaking of lemonade, you are drinking lemonade with basically vodka in it. You know, who knows what's in this can? Could be anything. Could be anything. Taking years off my life, but not sure what is in it exactly. Couldn't tell yet. No, no, no. In the theater, I saw this movie for the first time last week.

And so we've all seen it in theaters, right? Yes. Okay. In my theater, every time the Nixon impersonatorator was on screen and the movie closes with him too there was audible laughing like what the fuck is this like when it closed on him being like i forget where like the closing line but he's just like hopefully nothing else bad will happen and then his little cheek noise like whatever his jowls are clattering together like cymbals. And everyone was like cackling.

And then it was like, oh, the movie's over? What? Oh, okay. Great. They could have literally cast a Great Dane to play Nixon. I mean, that's how bad it was. And it was shot so lame. It was just like, oh, another part where there was audible laughter in the theater

was when they cut to the picture of Tom Hanks and his wife and the Kennedys. And it was a really bad Photoshop of that framed photo. Everyone was like, what the fuck is this? This is so stupid. Oh, boy. Bang up. Also, it was, for me, I guess, you know, this is like a marginal detail that drove me insane, but Ben Bradley was married three times. And this was his second wife.

Amazing waist of Sarah Paulson. Yes. In a role. And so it was like his last wife, Sally Quinn, also wrote for the Washington Post. And so if you didn't know the history, but you maybe knew about her, because the cool thing about Sally Quinn and Ben Bradley is that they bought the Grey Gardens house from crazy

little Edie and Big Edie. From the 80s? From the Beals. And they redid the whole thing. Oh, I'm a treasure trove of useless bullshit. Like, for real. You're sad I don't live here. That's a little bit of gristle. That's good. I know. You're welcome. live here a little bit of gristle that's good thank you yeah uh-huh yeah so i was like that's not sally quinn that's got to be her name was like antoinette p show i think i literally think her name is antoinette p show she was like and he

called her teen you know that's like going like some doing some. Oh, so I guess we're going to do the research and find out her nickname was Teen. And then she's really only in, I mean, she appears in it several times, but usually she's serving food. She's facilitating whatever. And then she's in that one near the climax of the movie. Do you want some sandwiches? Yeah. That scene? Yeah, the do you want some sandwiches scene, which is all of her scenes.

And then the scene where she explains to Tom Hanks, actually, being a woman hard sometimes. And he goes, oh, never thought about it. Also, her sister was having an affair with JFK. And so Ben Bradley used to be really good friends with James Jesus Engleton, who was the head of the CIA then. And they did a whole giant investigation because the CIA was trying to do all of this crazy, much more interesting story, is this crazy covert operation where the CIA was trying to manipulate and control what the media was reporting. So they were really good friends. And then when it was revealed that his sister-in-law was having an affair with JFK, they had a big breakup around all of it. There was a lot of palace intrigue around the CIA and Ben Bradley and the Kennedy administration. So many interesting things that would have made the movie more fun to watch were they acknowledged.

Ben Bradley's wives would have been a better movie. Just cover those three wives. They met in Paris. It's like a whole thing. There's some good shit. But we got the garbage heap. Tom Hanks, I mean, and maybe there are exceptions to this rule that I'm not thinking of. But Tom Hanks has pretty exceptionally bad taste in period movies.

Yeah. I think because he's in one of my least favorite movies of all time, Charlie Wilson's War. A movie that is 10 years old and yet is like, how did this movie come out? And people were like, it's so cute how this like,

political official is harassing women for three hours. It was, oh God. But wait, can I just talk about one more thing

about the movie? Yes. Okay. So, when Bob Odenkirk's character, Ben, Ben, goes to, goes to meet, I'm, goes to meet Daniel Ellsberg, and he goes to his hotel room, and there's literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of stacks of paper everywhere.

And then he compiles it into two file boxes and brings it on the plane. To deliver a trailer moment. To deliver that trailer moment. To deliver that trailer moment. I don't know. Government secrets. Okay, trailer guy. Easy job for you. Government secrets.

Ben. We're all laughing. And also there was so much weird bumbling for no reason. Like when Ben has to make a phone call. Every time. And he's like, he drops his notebook and the quarters are falling. And I was like, why is he bumbling? What does that have to do with Ed?

Is that a choice? I wrote that down because every time he's at a payphone, which is like three or four times, there's some sort of fit there. Like, let's let Odin Kirk do some physical improv. Like, no. Why? That's not what this movie is. What are you? It builds the tension of the scene.

Oh, God. One of my, God, scene no god one of my god in a movie full of my least favorite scenes at some point jesse plemmons and zach woods show up and it's like are they woodward and bernstein no they're not but there's that scene at the end and this is like another time where i don't know why but in so many recent episodes like the way music is used in movies has really been like bugging me and it's so it's just lazy in this where it's just like yeah let's just throw in some swelling strings and hopefully people won't notice you know but there's like that scene at the end where a woman in the office is getting a call and she's like oh my gosh it's so and so and the

ruling is in and they say that journalism is good and journalists are good. And then like the music is like, yeah, I was like, fuck this. What are you, how dumb do you think we are? Exactly. Not to mention like the way that all went down.

I can't imagine that's how it goes down. Right. A screamed line of exposition. Yeah. Journalism wins. And it's like, and it's like, just make eye contact with the camera

like that's oh boy I know should I even attempt a recap I don't know if I'm gonna we can help fill in the gaps this is a hard movie to recap it sure is it's 1971, 72

we're in the middle of the Vietnam War Nixon is president K. Graham, the publisher we're in the middle of the Vietnam War. Nixon is President. Kay Graham, the publisher, I guess, of the Washington Post. Yes, Catherine. Again, I don't even know what the first 45 minutes of the movie are. Oh, it opens with this scene in the Vietnam War where this journalist, he's observing, he's checking things out, and then he reports back to Bob McNamara. And he's like, actually, things in the war aren't really good. And they're like, well, we can't tell anyone this. We have to lie. So it becomes this like

huge study that becomes these top secret documents. And then Daniel Ellsberg is like, I should I should steal and leak them. So the New York Times gets a hold of them first and leaks a little bit of it. But then the Supreme Court's like, no, you can't do that. Yeah, they're setting up for a long leak. Right. Well, no, the Supreme Court didn't say you can't do that. What happened was there was an injunction because of the White House.

So the White House tried to get this from not happening, saying that it would be a national security risk. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm going to give all the details. You're killing it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm going to get all the details. You're killing it. You nail it. And meanwhile, Catherine Graham and Ben, one of the Bens, they're like, oh, crap.

Like, oh, this paper, we should take it public. And no one takes that seriously. And they're all upset about that. And then. And people are like, there's like the implication of like, well, we can't have a woman running a paper. It's a liability. Right. Exactly. Yeah. No one uh is confident in her abilities and she's really

good friends with the guy who wrote the pentagon papers right so that's a problem oopsies and she fired she fired al friendly like they're they had in such weird specific details i'm like who is this for yeah anyways so the washington post via another of the bands uh the bob odenkirk band Yeah. Anyways. Like it's our journalistic responsibility to let the American public know that the Vietnam War is actually not good and that the government knew that we couldn't win it from the very beginning. But we still keep sending soldiers over there to die in this war. And but then they're like, oh, but what will it do to our newspaper? It might, you know, will collapse and all this stuff because of the injunction so they were trying to decide whether or not they would be shut down because of whether or not the supreme court would rule right that it was illegal this do you know i did not check this but um was like the timeline of like because the timing of this part of the reason that she that uh k is like i don't know if we should leak the papers is because there is some

sort of like week-long thing when they were going public. Yeah. So what happens is the newspaper was a family-owned paper and they were hemorrhaging money and they were in debt. So what they were going to do is go public so people could go buy shares and the newspaper could stay afloat. Right. There's a window of time when you go public and you have shareholders, there's a window

of time where if you do something that is highly illegal or unethical, the deal can fall through and the shareholders can back out of the deal. So that window of time was when they were deciding whether or not they were going to defy what could possibly be a Supreme Court ruling that said freedom of the press does not mean that you can take government acquired whistleblowing papers and expose them to the public. And the Supreme Court ruled that it is in the public's good to know that this is happening in their name. But this was the timeline where this was happening during that window where the deal could have fallen through. Okay, cool. Yes, yes, yes. So after a lot of like,

Catherine Kay being like, should I publish or should we not publish this story? What do we do? She finally decides to go ahead and run the story, publish. And then she goes, I'm going to bed. Yeah. She's sleeping for a lot of this movie. That's right. She's so tired. She's exhausted.

And so they're like, oh, no, what's this going to do? Because there's another like extra obstacle at the last minute where the lawyers were like, oh, wait, your source was the same source as The New York Times. And that could really, like, you could go to prison for this. Like, the stakes were very high. Catherine's like, fuck it. Publish the damn paper. And they do. And everyone's like, oh, my God.

And then all the other papers follow suit. And they're like, wait, we saved the world. And then there's a 45-minute sequence of Steven Spielberg filming newspaper presses. Which I actually kind of liked. That was the most visually interesting part of the movie because the rest of it's just talking heads. Just watch Citizen Kane then. Way better and has that in it too.

I can give you a million papers where they spin around and it's a headline or a million movies. That visual effect, that is they spin around and it's a headline like a million movies that have that visual effect that is not insufferable time you'll never get back. It's just like can we

reallocate the time spent looking at newspaper presses explaining what's happening in the fucking movie. Especially newspapers that aren't yours.

It's a movie about the Washington Post and we just keep reading the New York Times. It was wild. The majority of revelations come from the New York Times. Which is weird because eventually the Washington Post does get a story

but that is not really focused on what actually happens. I don't know. I don't know. What is happening in this movie? Is that everything though? And then finally the supreme court rules that freedom of the press is freedom of the press yeah and then could we have seen that could we have seen that instead of hearing someone scream it out to the office on a phone yeah that would have probably been more appropriate and then the movie ends with the Watergate scandal robbery thing happening.

That was the breaking in. And then we're all like, oh, wow, Nixon is going to not be the president anymore. Yeah, that's when I realized it wasn't Woodward and Bernstein because they hadn't been hired yet. It's like, oh, right. They're breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, which they did. Yeah. And all that craziness. Right.

Fun. It was, I mean, it was such a cheeseball ending to the movie. Like, yeah, audible laughter. You literally don't need to say it. You don't. Yeah. Listen, I know we've been talking about it for a while now, but skip the post. You don't gotta see it.

I know. Are we saying it too early in the podcast are there well well stay with us though yeah keep listening because we haven't even told you if it makes the grade yeah right it's true i mean let's get into the female characters discussion because who boy i mean yeah who boy so. It's all just missed opportunity after missed opportunity. Right. I feel like until the third act, Catherine Graham is not very much an active character in the story. She's not really doing any. I mean, she's making decisions, but we don't actually see her doing much like she's not. I mean, I guess. And that's like not necessarily her role as the publisher to be like like in the middle of the excitement and like reporting on stuff.

But well, part of what bothered me from like very early in the movie is that I don't even know if like the way the movie portrays her and kind of a little bit the way Meryl Streep plays her. It's not super clear to me that she is extremely competent at her job. Yeah. Which in real life she was. And so it was like weird where they were just like, well, we don't know if she's able to do the job. And I'm like, I don't know if I'm I'm sure she's able to do the job because she's always just waking up and being like, I miss my husband. Yeah. Where's my Adderall?

Right. But I feel, too, it's like this was her family's business. Right. But I feel, too, it's like this was her family's business, right? So you were the newspaper of record through monumental things. You grew up in a newspaper family. Do you have passion about information? Do you have passion about freedom of the press, caring about what the public thinks or was your family just like these rich publishing people who were hobnobbing around with lbj and all the way that they sort of dropped that stuff about yeah she and her husband but forget about the husband she her dad owned the paper so i was like do you care about this shit

it's not clear i mean i feel like she is far more like her motivation in in regards to working for the paper like her character always connects it back to like i want to make my dead husband and father proud like it never really has to do with like journalistic integrity or or breaking stories and and i and i haven't done a deep dive on k graham and i don't know what her actual interviews would say. I think she loved it. I mean, I think she loved the newspaper business. Yeah.

This movie's weird because it made me like her. I had more excitement and respect for her as a historical character before I went into the movie than when I left. Because the way the movie portrays it is weird and there's that scene with her and her daughter towards the end of the movie where it's like I feel like Kay like the movie sells out the character entirely in like one of the last scenes where she's just like you know she's saying like it was very stressful and but she's only talking about I want to make my dad proud I want to make my husband proud I want to to make my husband proud. I want to da-da-da-da-da. And just going on and on. And to the point where she's saying, oh, and when my father wanted to give the paper to my husband and not me, I thought that made total sense. Yeah.

I was like, what is, what? She also says something weird, like, people always say that whenever they see a woman doing something, I forget what verb she used, but it was like, when a woman does this thing, it's like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. It's bad and it's weird. Dog shaming. Don't shame a dog. Also, it was like, when they were going public, they were saying, oh, you know, maybe you could try

to think about expanding and becoming more than just like a local paper in Washington. And she was like, I don't know. I kind of just want to reach for the top shelf. I'm not really reaching for the moon or the stars. I just want to keep it going and pay people. And even the opening scene was just like, she was all consumed with making sure

that the paper was covering Richard Nixon's daughter's wedding. Right, yeah. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, yeah. That was the hill she was ready to die on. Yeah. For some reason. Yeah, die on that hill, girl.

Well, another early scene is when, I don't know the guy's name, but she was kind of being coached by this guy of what to say whenever they go into this big board meeting about when they're discussing what the stock prices are going to be. I kept writing it down as like Meryl Streep's friend. Yeah, I mean, he worked for the paper, but I don't know what his name is or what his role is. Bradley Whitford? Maybe. No, Bradley Whitford, the mean, he worked for the paper, but I don't know what his name is or what his role is. Bradley Whitford? Maybe.

No, Bradley Whitford, the actor. Isn't he the guy who played the character? Oh, is that him? The older guy? Yeah, maybe. And every role he's in recently, I'm just like, wow, that was, because he's in Get Out, too, and I'm like, that's, he isn't getting out.

Yes, he was in West Wing. West Wing! Yeah. That was a West Wing guy, wasn't it? Oh, my God. He was the West Wing guy. So him, he's like coaching Catherine Graham on like what to say. And she seems flustered.

She's like, I feel like I don't know this stuff. And then you see a scene where like immediately following that, she's in the board meeting. She's the one woman out of like 20 other men. And they're all talking about, oh, I thought the shares were going to be $27. And there's like an opportunity for her to reveal the knowledge that she was practicing with this guy, and she's going to say, well, you know, quality drives profitability. And then she totally chokes, and then her friend. See, I actually kind of liked that scene if it were paid off on in any way later on, but it's not.

Like if she gets a chance to redeem herself maybe is that what you mean yeah because i feel like the way that that scene plays out like we as an audience know it's like ah what a missed chance and you know she's in this huge room full of men who don't want to listen to her but then the movie kind of i mean like sputters out in terms of keeping that going in terms of like developing her as someone who you want to see succeed like i don't know right i was hoping that that would come i was hoping we'd see her in a meeting later where she would you know have one of those movie moments of like actually i have something to say and but you know that never happens no sweat we do well we do i mean she does

i kind of redeem herself by the end when she's like i know the stakes i know i might go to jail over this i know that the paper might totally fail, but I say publish anyway. And we're like, yeah, you made the right decision. I'm going to bed. Going to bed. But that character arc, we don't see the actual arc happen. Like it's just, she like flubs up at the beginning. And then we don't, like you said, yeah, we don't really see her character grow and develop and build over the course of the story that leads to that point where she like suddenly has strong decision making skills. Right. She has a few moments that I'm like, you know, there was like there was one scene she had with Tom Hanks, Ben, where they're sort of challenging each other on.

Nepotism. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the way that Tom Hanks' character treats Meryl Streep is a mix of respect and condescension. But there are scenes where they're challenging each other and it is a lively discussion. We have no idea,

if you don't know the exact particulars of the history, you have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. But they're challenging each other. And so she has these few moments of like, oh, she does know things. We just don't see her demonstrate knowing things in the way she does her job. Right.

So, I don't know. Also, there was a scene, and I'm sure that it was put out there for discussion, but it was just angering, where there's a dinner party, and then somebody starts to talk about some there's a dinner party and then somebody starts to talk about some kind of

smart thing and then the woman says well that's time for us to move and all the women and Catherine Graham go into one room

and talk about outfits or some shit and the men talk about politics yeah yeah that scene was fucking infuriating

and to keep our discussion about Titanic always going forever i was thinking the same far more effectively done in titanic 1997 but there i mean but this is like sort of you know the the women go to one room the men stay in the room and smoke cigars and you know what's the line politics wouldn't interest you anyway yeah exactly the famous billy zane performance shout out billy zane every day always but the way this he says that to jack he's like you're too poor to know about cigars and things feminist icon jack dawson's like i'm going with the ladies yeah see you later

i just want to watch titanic again um but in the post the way that rolls out it challenges nothing they're like oh yeah the women are not going to talk about anything but clothes. We don't know what any of their names are. And one literally goes like, Kay, that that dreadful day job of yours. Are you fucking kidding me? They are. You know, according to the post, women are that dumb. I mean, honestly, it was just an endless. And it felt like they were wedging things in to remind people how sexist things were by like shit like that, where it's like, I get that. You can't show me in demonstrable ways, any redemption at all. You know, even her decision to change the course of journalistic history was like, is Bob on the line? Bob, are you on the line? Bob, are you there? Are you on the line?

Ben, are you on the line? Is everybody on the line? Who's on the line? Are the Russians on the line? I don't know who's on the line. So many climactic scenes in this movie take place over the phone. It's very frustrating. I'm like, what's actually happening?

Also to the point of all the women talking about, oh, gowns and whatnot. There's a scene at the end after the climax and we're like, wow, we won. Journalism saves the day. And there's a group of people gathered around a woman's desk in the newsroom. And she says something like, no more articles about dresses or shoes. And but it's just like a throwaway line that you probably. It's just like, subtle great job but there's also that scene where she goes and challenges robert mcnamara and she's just like how could

you do this like you knew all this stuff you kept it secret and bob bob bob how could you do me dirty bob so my son my nephew bob i think i might take back what I said about like not really seeing her arc because you do see those times where she does go and like challenge people. And it seems like she's getting more confident in her abilities and decision making and whatnot. And I also think it's cool that you do see kind of the stakes of the country and different parts of the globe kind of resting on her shoulders in terms of like do we leak this information do we let the public know about this like very important thing that was happening at the time i like that you get to see a woman in that position where she's making such a crucial decision yeah was it told interestingly i don't think in this movie i felt like this movie was not

interesting which is crazy given the story it's telling but i also feel like it just like does a huge injustice to the story and its characters like it just yeah if i knew nothing about the pentagon papers or any of that going into this movie i'd be like oh so this was kind of a a drag kind of a boring thing that had which is crazy is crazy because there's so much and they just do nothing. One of my main things with this movie was like, I feel like this exact movie in every single way could have been made 15 years ago. It just feels like it could have come out at any time.

Especially because they're like, oh, it's a timely movie. It's a timely story. If you told me this movie came out in 2002, I would believe you. Because of how he treats his characters and how he treats the source material, it could have come out fucking whenever. Well, and also, like, as somebody who created a TV show that wanted to shit all over the nepotism in the media, which is how The Daily Show came to be, its driving force was observing the media and watching all these shows. The storylines for me of literally when Catherine Graham is challenged by Ben Bradley, the editor of the paper, and he says, wait, Robert McNamara has literally written this massive dossier

that shows there's electioneer fraud. We've covered up the war. We send people to die knowing we were losing. And she goes, oh, he's been having kind of a bad time lately. Yeah. And it's like, so it's like that is the point. You know, even the journalism that's supposed to be the best journalism we have in this country is so full of bullshit.

And Tom Hanks sort of touches on it by like, everybody wants to go to the same parties with this one and that one and those stories of like of how those things intersect and how people finally do the right thing like I think that's really important and so it was like a shit bath up until she finally pulls the trigger but like how much do you have to be

convinced when there's thousands and thousands and thousands of paper and thousands and thousands and thousands of paper and thousands and thousands and thousands of dead people and made young people. And you're like, oh, my friend, I don't know, he's got restless leg syndrome and he's just trying to make it work and I can't.

His wife and him had a fight. Yeah, you know. They're having a hard time. It's really tough. So, yeah, I mean, all of it was just sad. By and large, yeah, I feel like Kay's character is underserviced and kind of largely just like unexamined as a person. It's just kind of all over the place. She doesn't get that much screen. I mean, this is an ensemble cast.

I don't really know if we're supposed to identify any one character as the protagonist of the movie because it seems like it's her and Tom Hanks' character. But she doesn't get that much screen time. Okay, if they were doing a movie called The Bechdel Cast and you were hardly in it. Right. That would be weird. And they made one of us significantly dumber than we were in real life. Yeah. That would be, yeah.

I would be like, what the fuck? It's called The Post. Right. That would be, yeah. I'd be like, what the fuck? It's called The Post. Right. And I don't know. I just kind of feel like, I mean, I know that like, there's not like 200 people that work on your podcast.

So I know that's different. How dare you reveal our secret. Your strength is so clearly amazing that you don't need 200 people. That's right. That's what I'm saying. That would be funny if there was a Bechtelcast movie

and I was in it for three minutes and I was only drooling. All you did was drink Mike's lemonade. I'm just like, what are we doing? Where are we? What's happening? And my name was Bob.

Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben.

Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben.

Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. So who else do we have for female characters? We have Judith, who is the... She was the person who was maybe going to report on the wedding, but then they were like, you're not allowed. Right, but she said that Trisha Nixon looked like trash. No, she said she looked like a vanilla ice cream cone. A sick freaking burn. Get that money.

Vanilla ice cream cone. You're fired. That's too sick a burn. So she's in it. There's another woman who appears to be a journalist or reporter of some kind. The one who at the end was on the phone and kind of like dictating what the Supreme Court ruling.

I wasn't sure she was a journalist or Tom Hanks' secretary. Oh, yeah. I was unclear about her role. Yeah. There was the daughter. The daughter. Did she have a name? I don't know if we learned her name.

I was struggling with that. I was like, did I miss it? Did I miss it? Because those were the scenes that I thought, I'm like, well, this. And it sucks because there's two extended scenes with Kay Graham and her daughter. And there are some exchanges that you're like, this could maybe pass the vital test, but I'm not sure what her name is. I don't think, from what I could tell, you don't learn what it is. We know her maiden name is probably Miss Graham, but we don't know her first name. I'm not cutting this movie any slack.

I don't think we learned her name. No. And the little daughter's name, did we learn her name? I don't think slack. I don't think we learned her name. No. And the little daughter's name, did we learn her name? I don't think so. I don't think so. Although it would be hilarious if this movie passed the Bechdel test strictly on that lemonade stand interaction. I think it might. Lemonade vodka?

Yeah. Is it got vodka in it? Catherine also has an assistant or secretary. Oh, she's walking up the steps in that scene. I don't know if we know her name either. No, she was like, you have to be at this place at five. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you so much. So yeah, there was that scene. And then there was the scene with the daughter. We don't know the daughter's name. And then was there an exchange between, who wants sandwiches? And there was one woman in that room. Was that Judith or not Judith?

I think it was not. Oh, yeah, it was Judith. Was it Judith? There are 80 billion characters in this movie, so I don't know who's who. I couldn't tell you the name of literally anyone if I didn't recognize them by the actor. Hey, Judith and Tin. Or Tin and Twinette. Twin, Tin.

Actually, Tom Hanks, being lady not easy. Oh, my day was, being lady not easy. Oh. Oh, my day was fine. Thanks for asking. There is a scene. Whoa, feminist icon. Look out. There's a scene where a woman, and I don't know who it is,

says to Kay, I got a cake. Is that OK? And Kay says, as long as no one counts the candles, because it's her birthday. What's her name? I don't know. She's walking towards the door to answer it when Ben Bradley is there to say, I'm at your party. Oh, my God.

I have to tell you something. Ben Bradley comes to her house at the beginning of 45 scenes of this movie. He's like, me again. And to the point where the movie even starts calling it out of like, wow, Ben, you keep showing up at my house. It's like, yeah, almost like there's a more interesting way to do this scene. I know. And I also just feel like we have to ask some old people. If you just went over to people's houses on announcement before the times of phones and things.

Did people just show up at your house all the time? I remember when I was a kid, like my dad's friends would just pop over. Maybe people just came over. But to your boss? I feel like that's. Maybe not. I'm kind of glad that that trend has died out. Whenever someone is like, hey, I'm just popping in.

I was like, no, you have to leave my home. I'm not home. No matter of how many clear indicators that I'm home. Yeah. My grandfather would do that when we were little. Maybe it is like an old were little. It would drive, maybe then it is like an old person thing because it would drive

my mom fucking crazy. She was just like, why is he, he's got a phone. Like, there's no need to just show up places. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Feminist icon. Feminist icon. Your grandfather. No, he's actually a pretty bad person. Yeah,

so are all my grandparents. Okay, so as far as the movie Passing the Bechdel Test, I couldn't identify any scene where... There were quite a few scenes where women were interacting, but they were either talking about men or we did not know. It's usually Catherine Graham talking to someone else,

but I don't think we know the other character's name in almost all of those scenes. I'm with you. If not all of them. I don't think... I was the same way because I was like super, because I did the same thing.

I watched it three weeks ago and then I watched it again for the podcast and I was really looking through the lens and I have notes of like, this happened at this and I took a note of every scene

and I was like, do I know that person's name? Like, do I have to go back and rewind it four times to see if maybe, and I was like, I don't know any of these people's names. right this is and and something else that i noticed that really bugged me especially on the second viewing was how many times there are several women in the

same room and their characters don't interact in any way at all yeah and that to to me it says like i don't think that was done intentionally but to me that's even worse of just like oh this filmmaker it wouldn't even occur to them to have female characters interact. Like it just, there's so many scenes where Meryl and her secretary are in the same room the whole time. They do not speak. Men speak to them, but that's it. Well, and there's that scene when she walks in to talk to all the stockholders and she walks up these steps and all of these women are standing out there and they open the door for her and she walks in.

And I was like, are they the secretaries of all the men in there? Like, who are all those women on the stairs? Yeah, and they all have these weird 40-yard stairs. I'm like, what are they thinking? What were they all standing there for? They were like smiling at her. They're like, good job.

We're all so ladies. Right. It's just like a very vague, standing there for they were like smiling at her they're like good job yeah we're also ladies there's right it's just like a very vague over like women other women but it's like why would you know who she is there's that scene i forget why exactly she's in court at this point but there's that scene where she's speaking to a young woman and the young woman's like i hope you win and then she sees that woman's boss mistreat her and be like you're late even though traffic or something and that was another weird scene that i'm like i think that steven spielberg thought he was being a feminist just then but it was ultimately just a weird scene that no and it never comes back yeah oh yeah she worked for the judging she was

like work for the judge one of the judges yeah yeah yeah it was She was like, work for the judge. One of the judges. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I was like, Oh, okay. Like that was the one who was like, she's like, my brother's still over there. Yeah.

And I hope you win, but don't tell my boss. I said that, or even that I talked to you. I can't. Well, I'm really glad that I, um,

because I came in here fucking hating this movie and I was like oh my god these women are like I'm so happy you guys were just like oh my god I was always worried that you picked it because you liked it no I was like man this is the smartest person in the world how could she like this movie oh no

I will never let you down I will never let you down I might let you down by telling you this right now. Can we hold hands when I tell you? Yes. I haven't seen Titanic. Cast. No, that's, you know, you're going to have an amazing night.

I'm going to watch it, and then I'm just going to call you both and be like, I watched it. It's like, I'm really happy I did it. It does so much better than you would ever in your life think it would do. It does. In terms of the way it treats female characters. However, it's not necessarily a great movie. However, another counterpoint, it is the greatest movie of all time. I know.

And I don't know why I haven't seen it. I think it's one of those movies where, do you ever meet those people who like, they didn't have sex in high school and then they didn't have it in college and then they're virgins and by accident they're like now I just am keeping it as a point of pride and maybe I'm just getting, you know, and I feel like that way about Titanic where it's like I just didn't see it and then I was gonna

and then I haven't and then like do I not see it? But I feel like I should just fuck Titanic. Just have sex with Titanic. Just fuck the Titanic. I'm the same way with it but i feel like i should just fuck titanic yeah just have sex with titanic yeah usually just fuck the titanic yeah i'm the same way with the godfather i've never seen it and then i think it's like extremely cute when i tell people i haven't seen it and then they go and unhinge their jaws i'm like that's right yeah it's not on purpose but yeah it becomes on purpose after a while let's see how far into my life i can make it without seeing The Godfather.

Yeah. It's good. You should see it. It's kind of an amazing movie. I've heard good things. Yeah. And Godfather 2 is largely considered to be a better movie than the first one. I agree.

Similar with Paddington 2 and how it is the other best movie ever made along with Titanic. All right. Paddington 2, love it. Anyway. I'll see it. I can't contribute. love it. Anyway, I'll see it. Everyone's upset with me. I'm like, I haven't seen even a Paddington 1. I think it's a bear. I'm assuming it's a bear. It's a bear with a

raincoat? He's got a duffel coat and a red hat. I had to kill two hours yesterday and so I saw about 70% of Jumanji. Oh, I want to talk to you about that oh uh i stayed until nick jonas showed up i'm like well uh i guess i'm out i guess i'm done i guess i'm good and i'm gonna just go do what i have to do but you know not as bad as you think no it's no it's

like a board game right i hadn't seen the first one oh i'm very familiar with Jumanji 1990, whatever the hell. Yeah, I don't know a Jumanji. I know something. I don't know. The new Jumanji, there's a lot of colors. It's kind of like a sensory overload. Is it a cartoon? No.

No, it's Jack Black, Kevin Hart. The Rock. The Rock. Nick Jonas. Nick Jonas. A woman from Doctor Who whose name escapes me. Karen Gillian. I feel like you deserve better.

Thank you so much. I feel like your time deserves better. I just didn't have enough time to go home so I'm like I guess I'm going to just see part of Jumanji. Did you pay money? I used MoviePass. Is that free? Yeah. You can see one movie a day for

like $10 a month. So it's not free. It's not free. But if you go to the movies a lot. Movie pass is much like freedom. And you know what else isn't free? And that it is not granted to everyone. You have to ask for it. You know what else isn't free is the press for a little bit in this movie that we're talking about.

Thankfully, they saved journalism. I love tying it back to the relevant topics. You're a master of segues. You are the segues. Shall we rate the movie on our nipple scale? Okay. So Liz, we have a scale of zero to five nipples

by which we rate the movie based on its portrayal of women. I'm going to have to say it's not like this isn't the worst one we've ever done, but it's certainly not the best. I'm going to have to say, it's not like this isn't the worst one we've ever done, but it's certainly not the best. I'm going to give it like maybe a two and a half nipples. We've talked about how disserviced Catherine Graham was in the movie.

I feel like we're not really ever on board with her, and that might be because she doesn't get a lot of screen time or opportunity for us to get to know her. I feel like the story could have just come from a different angle and told her version of it much better. Of the other female characters there are, we never even get to learn their names. We don't even know what their situation is.

We see 80 billion men on screen at all times, and that's frustrating. I don't know. It could have done better. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Who are you giving your nipples to, though? The most important question. Yeah. I'm going to give two of them to the lemonade.

And the half nipple will go to Kay Graham. I'm going to give it two. And I would like to see what this movie would look like in the hands of a female director. Yes. Because I feel like a lot of missteps would not have been. But I mean, and I know that we're commenting on how women are treated by the movie and not the movie itself. But this movie is just so lazily done in every single way. And I feel like just the way it treats its female characters is one of the very lazy components.

John Williams composed the music for this and it's the worst. Like it's the worst. No one is doing a good job. I think that they give us a female protagonist and they're given the source material for a very interesting, nuanced character and we just don't get it. Women be serving sandwiches. Women be providing exposition.

Women be talking about shoes. It's just all so fucking lazy and is a bummer on many levels because there is a good movie to be had about this subject matter and this was not it it's like there is a movie called the pentagon papers which have you seen it is there i haven't seen it years ago oh okay i should have done more research on it sorry everyone if you know about the movie the pentagon, please tweet at us. It's not someone's favorite movie.

The movie was co-written by a woman, Liz Hanna and Josh Singer. So you feel like it would have been a better movie, but just kidding. Not this time. No. Not this time. But yeah, I give it two nipples. I'm going to give one of the nipples to Zach Woods because I like him a lot, but he didn't belong in this movie. And I'm going to give the other

nipple to Sarah Paulson because she also deserved way better. Sure. I mean, I guess I would give it two grudgingly. Because really, what did you want me to walk out of this movie knowing and feeling?

I don't know the answers to those two questions. There's a biography about Catherine Graham that I would say we should all probably read. Because if Catherine Graham was a fraction of how she was portrayed in this movie, and Bren Bradley saved that paper, then that's the movie. And why are you making that movie

trying to act like she did something if he pushed her into everything? You know, I just feel like everything about this movie was sexist. If she was not awesome then why did you make the movie? Right, right. You know, it's like

and if you wanted to make a movie that was about Ben Bradley and how awesome he was and that Catherine Graham said I inherited this newspaper I didn't want to be in the newspaper business, but you're really smart and I'm willing to put my family business on the

line because you are willing to fight for democracy. That's a movie. But I don't know what this movie was other than I felt insulted by Catherine Graham's ineptitude. I felt insulted by the fact that I thought I was going into a movie that was going to tell me a little bit about her journey

in this historical context and didn't. And I just feel like every woman in it, I don't know who they were. It was just... Sometimes you literally cannot tell them apart and you don't know their names ever. So I'm going to give my two nipples. I'm going to give, I guess, one

to Judy for wanting to have some Mike's Hard Lemonade. Hell yeah. When it mattered. Hell yeah. And the other nipple I'm going to give to, I don't even know who deserves it. I guess Sarah Paulson for having to suffer through that bad Photoshop picture. God, yeah.

We all had to. We were right there with her. Yeah. I feel like Steven Spielberg or whomever tied to him, we were like, we We were right there with her. I feel like Steven Spielberg or, you know, whomever tied to him, we were like, we want to make a journalism movie. Give me five ideas for a journalism movie. And he arbitrarily was like, oh, women are hot right now. Make the woman journalism movie.

And it's just like, it's just so thrown together and wishy-washy. And the movie doesn't know what it thinks about itself. And then it ends on that horrendous, like, a bad SNL sketch of Richard Nixon impersonator. But, like, here's the thing, though. Like, after knowing they made this movie because of the parallels of the times, like, they chose this subject matter. Right. But also, of the times is now.

You know, it's like, then do a movie about women in journalism who we don't know about because they got fucked over by creepy bosses. Like, who are the women we don't know? Like, where's the journalism version of Hidden Figures? Make that movie. Yeah. Yes. That's what we need. We need the Hidden Figures version of everything in the world.

Just do it's Hidden Figures of and call me later. It's the new Hidden Figures extended universe of forgotten women through history. I mean, it's just unbelievable. There's like way too many cool people who did really cool shit like that. I can't even. Yeah. And we don't know about them because yeah history has buried them the post has got to go yeah it's got to go not don't like it good and it's going to be it's

nominated for everything to the point where i don't think that anyone who like nominated the post for an award has actually seen it no i don't either because it's not winning no no way did it win anything no good no it's also you have to nominate Meryl Streep or a ninja comes after you Meryl Streep's ninja army that's right

you mean Meryl Street I'm sorry you're right Meryl Street well Liz thank you so much for being here this was so much fun I'm so glad

that you invited me yeah this was a blast I loved it can I come back of course do you have those one guest rules like there's people

who can come back no you can't come back for like five years. Oh my God. Whenever you want. Okay, good. Open door policy. Where can people find you online? Is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh my gosh, yes.

You can find me online at Liz Winstead on all platforms. I spell my name with two Z's because I'm an asshole. And then maybe what you want to do, because this is going to be super fun. On February 1st, Lady Parts Justice, which is my reproductive rights crazy comedy organization, is doing a big live stream telethon at ladypartsjustice.com.

It's Rachel Bloom, Sarah Silverman and I are hosting it. And it's a whole fun evening, two-hour broadcast of comedy and learning about what's happening to reproductive rights and abortion access and how you can join in and have fun. You can pledge. Mark Hamill is going to be sitting for two hours

making crafts that are going to be auctioned. Oh my god. It's going to be so fun. Wait, does Mark Hamill make crafts? Yes, he doodles and he does crafts and he does a bunch of stuff. Oh my god. You had me at Mark Hamill doodles. Yes. So go to ladypartsjustice.com for all the info.

It's going to be a blast. That's so cool. There may or may not be a pinata that is the patriarchy with garbage inside. Oh my God. That's so great. My blood pressure is rising.

Yeah. Well, hey, on that, you can follow the Bechdel cast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You can go to our website, bechdelcast.com. Tweet at us. Rate and review us on iTunes.

Pledge to our Patreon. Speaking of pledges. Yeah, yeah. Coming up on the Patreon in February, it's Oscar, what did I call it? You called it Biopic March. Oh, okay. But it was actually February. Yes. And it was actually not even biopics.

It was Oscar Watch February. I accidentally called it Biopic March about 45 times. But this month on the Patreon, we're doing I, Tanya and the Disaster Artist. Which are biopics. I understood your mistake. Unfortunately, it was not for March. I don't know why I spent the whole day thinking it was. But subscribe to the Patreon.

Five dollars a month gets you two extra episodes a month. You betcha. Pretty good. And yay, journalism is alive and well, especially print journalism. Swelling John Williams score. It's doing great. Alright, bye!

Bye! Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.