The Bechdel Cast - Watermelon Woman with Chrystel Oloukoï

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

On this episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Chrystel Oloukoï make a documentary about their discussion about The Watermelon Woman.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @_Onikoyi on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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, They're just dreams. 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. On the Bechdel cast, 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. Okay, it takes a little narration. So imagine I have a camcorder and I just turned it on and I'm sitting in front of it and I say um so I'm thinking about doing a podcast uh-huh and then it cuts to you and me

and we're in the podcast studio does that make sense yeah it does this is not my best intro that I've ever had I was just referencing the format of the movie, which if you haven't seen The Watermelon Woman, I guess that would make no sense to you. Did you have an idea for an intro? This can all be, this is an open forum. I was going to do, Loving you is easy because you're beautiful. I, oh, that seems so good.

That was one of my favorite scenes just because you keep thinking it's going to end and then it just keeps not ending. And she, oh God. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante and this is our podcast in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. It sure is. Using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. It's a way to just inspire us to have a larger conversation about representation in film. Jamie, what is the Bechdel test? Well, I'll tell you. The Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,

sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, that there's many different versions of it. For this show, we require that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names talking about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. And hopefully it's a meaningful exchange, not just like, hey, you dropped your toothbrush. OK, like one of those one of those classic interactions. Yeah. I mean, the the old dropping the toothbrush trope. It's a meet cute. It's a meet cute.

You drop your toothbrush and then see if anyone hot picks it up. Oh, I'm going to have to try that. Yeah. Also, just a reminder that the original context of the Bechdel test was that Alison Bechdel's characters in the 1985 comic Dykes to Watch Out For, the context was those characters are examining movies to see if women talk to each other about something other than a man, because if they don't, then Alison Bechdel's characters can pretend like the women in the movie are queer women who they can like ship together

because of course there was virtually no representation of queer women or queer romance of any kind in movies back then so just a reminder that that's the context of the Bechdel test. The 80s was a bleak time. It sure was. We're so excited to be covering the movie that we are covering today. We're covering The Watermelon Woman today. It has been a listener request for some time now, and the time is now. The moment has arrived, and we have an incredible guest here to discuss this movie with us. We sure do. They are a writer and freelance video editor. It's Christelle Alukoi. Hi.

Hello. Welcome. Nice to be here. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. Of course. So we found a piece that you wrote for the 25th anniversary of Watermelon Woman for the British Film Institute. We'll of course link to it in the show notes, but the piece is entitled The Watermelon Woman at 25, the black lesbian classic that wears its brilliance lightly. So we were like, oh, let's get Christelle on the show. And here you are. So we're so excited to talk to you. You cover it a little bit in your piece, but could you tell us about your history with this movie? And yeah, your connection to it? Yeah, of course. So it's kind of one of my favorite movies that made it all the more difficult to write about it but i encountered it

at a time where i wasn't necessarily i wasn't necessarily asking a lot of questions about my sexuality like am i am i a hero or a queer wasn't like really a question i had i was just i don't know and i would figure that but it wasn't like something I was thinking with deeply and so I just liked it aesthetically at first and I just enjoyed it and then I re-watched it way later with a group of friends a group of queer friends at a time where I had much more clarity about being queer and it was like a group of black French queer people in Paris where I'm from and it was just such a different experience watching it like collectively yeah in that way and I just have so many fond memories attached to it because of that like how affirmative it was in coming to terms with

my sexuality and yeah that's beautiful that's so nice movies are magical you know i i miss watching movies with friends that's so that sounds so lovely and it's like it's so special for like the movies that can like help us understand things about the world, help us understand things about ourselves. It's beautiful. And just be really funny too. This movie is so, so funny. Yeah. something collectively like so many things just went way above my head the first time I saw it by myself and then you watch it with friends and like you understand all of those references um yeah cool Jamie what's your history with the movie I had not seen this movie before I it's been recommended to me for some time and it is available on Showtime right now in the US so I was like oh this is this is great so I watched it a few times to prepare for this episode and I was really blown away by

it it's such a it's just it's so good in so many ways I didn't have a lot of context for what it was about what the format was all the different sort of connecting pieces of this movie are also fascinating and incredible. And it's like it's so 90s in a really fun way as well. Like, oh, my gosh. I love the like experimentation with like form and the history that is. I don't know. I feel like. And Christelle, you mentioned this in your piece as well, like,

there are so many movies that talk about really important stuff that are coming out right now, that feel really heavy in the way that the information is presented, and The Watermelon Woman just does everything so effortlessly, it was just such a, such a pleasure, it's, and watching it back the second time, I caught a bunch of stuff I didn't the first. It's just so good. If you haven't seen the movie yet, pause this episode and go watch it.

It's so wonderful. For sure. Yeah, so I'm a recent convert. What about you, Caitlin? I don't have a long history with it, but I did see it for the first time last, I think last summer. It was appearing on a lot of lists of like, hey, here's black cinema that you probably haven't seen. And here's some movies that you should check out.

So Watermelon Woman kept appearing on lists like that. So I watched it and I thought it was really fun. And I really just enjoyed the tone and the humor and the characters. And yeah, so not a long history, but it is pretty cool. It's so cool. Yeah, should we just get into it? Let's get into it with the recap. So it's sort of like a half narrative, half mockumentary style where we open on Cheryl, who is played by writer-director Cheryl Dunier. She and her friend Tamara are videographers who shoot like weddings and things like that.

They also work together at a video rental store. Remember those? It's so 90s. Do you remember like they had like the empty cases and then you had to take the case to the counter and they'd be like... The keeper of the VHSs. Yeah. Oh, those were the days. So Cheryl is also an aspiring filmmaker and she has been watching a lot of movies from the 30s and 40s with black actresses whose real names are often not listed in the credits of these movies. And there's one movie in

particular called Plantation Memories, where this beautiful black woman is in the like mammy role. And she's only listed in the credits as the watermelon woman. So Cheryl is very curious about her and wants to make a film about her, like figuring out who she is, what her real name is, what her life was like, everything about her. Then Tamara invites Cheryl out with her new girlfriend and a blind date for Cheryl named Yvette. and this is when we get that amazing karaoke scene this scene is a lot like we have to get into it we really do it's iconic it's so good I like it it was such a I like getting used to how Cheryl Denier um paces these scenes is so fun because I was in my, I guess I was just in my Hollywood movie brain where I was like, oh, it's going to be bad and then it's going to stop. But they let her sing

the entire song. It's so funny. Yeah, that character is so funny because she's like, I'm a singer and I almost got a role in a Spike Lee movie. And that just goes to show how amazing of a performer i am and then she gets up there and she's just like it's incredible uh shout out to the the actor who who like was able to keep a straight face through that entire scene because it was a beautiful terrible karaoke performance yes um so then cheryl starts making her film and investigating who the watermelon woman is she asks different people on the street if they know anything about the watermelon woman and then she interviews her mom who at first is like i don't know that is. But then she recognizes her as someone who used to perform at clubs. Shout out to Cheryl Dunye's real mom.

Real mom, Irene. Yeah. Yes. So good. Meanwhile, Cheryl meets a cute lady at the video store, Diana. She's played by Guinevere Turner. And they flirt a little bit a little bit and it's video store flirting too it's such a specific brand of flirting that no longer exists

yeah she's like here watch this roman polanski movie and we're like no yeah um then cheryl interviews a man who tamara knows uh who's like basically like a black film buff uh he's very knowledgeable about early black film but he is not familiar with the watermelon woman he says like, women are not my specialty. Tamara is like, yeah, we know. Another very funny interaction. And then Cheryl and Tamara go to the library to do some research on both the watermelon woman and Martha Page, who is the white woman who directed the Plantation Memories movie. But there's very little info about anything they're looking for. And then Cheryl finds a woman named Shirley Hamilton,

who knows the Watermelon Woman as Faye Richards. And that turns out to be her stage name because her real name was Faith Richardson. She was a singer. She used to perform at nightclubs in Philadelphia. And Faye and Martha Page used to hang around together a lot. And it's clear that they were together romantically. So Cheryl is now very excited because she's like, oh, like me, she was a Black lesbian. And then Cheryl gets her hands on more movies starring Faye Richards. And she watches them with Diana. They kiss, they have sex. Diana starts helping Cheryl on the Watermelon Woman project. And while this is happening, there is a strain on Cheryleryl's relationship with tamara uh because she doesn't

like that cheryl is dating diana well because diana inserts herself so quickly into the project yes like what and we've a really strange ownership uh relationship to that whole project yeah yeah i'm excited to to get into that discussion because it is like i even as a viewer there's kind of whiplash where there i think it's like at that dinner scene with tamara and stacy and cheryl and diana and diana's like oh our project and yes tomorrow's like what are you talking about like cheryl's been working on this for months and months you you just got here like relax yeah and then cheryl and her co-worker annie go to new york city ever heard of it to the center for lesbian information and technology aka clit hilarious incredible and they find a bunch of photos of faye richards one of which has a

handwritten note on the back to someone named june walker so now cheryl has another lead they also interview martha page's sister who is still living but she is racist and homophobic and refuses to believe that her sister was a lesbian and was lovers with Faye Richards. But then Cheryl gets in touch with June Walker and discovers that she was in a long-term relationship with Faye. So Cheryl and June arrange to have lunch, but when Cheryl gets there, she learns that June was just taken to the hospital. But she did leave a letter for Cheryl, which talks about Faye's life and how it was so much more than her relationship with Martha Page. And how Martha has nothing to do with how people should remember Faye. And then the movie ends with Cheryl reflecting on her experience,

her relationships, her friendships, and what the watermelon woman, aka Faith Richards, aka Faith Richardson, means to her and how she feels hopeful and inspired. And then there's a title card at the very end with text that says sometimes you have to create your own history the watermelon woman is fiction which the first time i saw this movie the whole time i was like oh faye richards like she must be a real person like the watermelon woman this this is all real and then it turns out, nope, this was completely fiction. A full-on Shyamalan twist at the end. So that's the story.

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And we're back. Where do we want start here there's there's so much to to talk about uh yeah christelle does does anything jump out to you right away i think yes uh that question of the video store and that specific aesthetic because i think there is that that side the video store where she meets and where she where she works also with Tamara but there's also the video aesthetic that comes in and out at some point in the movie that's really interesting how she like records herself the camcorder yeah I don't know what you're making of this I mean I just thought it was a really cool way to introduce this again she's like making what we think is almost like when you watch the movie you're like oh this is kind of like a

documentary like this is like part narrative part documentary and unless you already know that the watermelon woman is not a real person I again i just assumed i was like this this is like a real person that cheryl because she's also like playing herself more or less and it really like really kind of it just like gets you to think that this is like something that she's really searching and investigating and like that kind of grainy video footage helps to like set up that expectation and then you find out oh no this is just cheryl dunye taking like obviously the historical context is there because a little context corner here is that like the journey that Cheryl the character goes on in the movie of like watching old films from the 30s and 40s and seeing actors who are Black women in these mammy roles, but noticing

that they're not often credited by name, that's basically how the development of this movie started, where writer-director Cheryl Dunier was like doing research for a class on Black film history, realized that a lot of Black actors were not credited in these early movies, and decided that she wanted to tell a story about Black women in the early days of Hollywood. Thus was born the concept for the film The Watermelon Woman so you know she took kind of like an amalgamation of a bunch of actors from that time and sort of invented The Watermelon Woman and just like the way it was shot gets you to be like oh this this is real oh wait no it's not yeah i really like i mean i think she's she's like playing this like game of like 4d chess that you don't even understand until the movie is almost over because it's you know she's setting it up by wanting to educate her audience

about black film history which she is doing and then she also says at the beginning of the movie, like, I want to put black women at the front of my work, which she is also doing by like chronicling her own fake process in introducing all these really different characters with all these different views on the same topic. And it just, I don't know, watching this movie a second time was even more fun, like sort of knowing what she's doing going in and just

seeing how like elegantly it's done and like she's just doing so so much at once with with it seems like like a kind of classic 90s low budget vibe that is just like so fun for sure yes there's like a real sense of like freedom in the way she's just like let me just pick up a camera and document yeah the way in which i'm searching for that lost ancestor which i don't know it feels really like particular to that time in the 90s and like i don't see like i don't know there's something so 90s about it. And even the way it starts, like, so like the first few minutes of the film, the first time I watched it, I was like, what's happening? I don't understand why we are at a wedding.

Like, what is she trying to set up? But yeah, it's like, it just feels really free in a way that I feel like feels very like a product of its time and this democratizing of camera and video work um yeah I just love it yeah and I know you wrote about this in your piece about like new queer cinema and how it like the restraints of like heteronormative Hollywood cinema, like new queer cinema basically just like breaks those restraints off. And a lot of films from that time were like, we're just going to do whatever we want. We're going to tell the stories the way we want. Like a lot of rigid conventions of like cinematic storytelling we're not gonna abide by those and how this is just a pivotal movie in that movement of new queer cinema yeah and it's very it's very gender too because um

like i'm not a specialist of new queer cinema but like my understanding of the kinds of dynamics that were operating at the time is um the directors like the cis men directors were had a tendency to like use more film which is much more expensive to film with and the women directors usually were using like video and other genres so there's also that aspect of like yeah what you said like the low budget which i feel like if you're time to do something that's cinematic in a way and that looks that correspond to like a certain normative idea of like what's beautiful i feel i feel it like much strongly now which is why like there's something really free about how she like, just doesn't care about what people deem beautiful or what people deem

cinematic. And just like, you have this like student film aesthetic that's completely assumed. Like she's not trying to like cover it. Yeah. She's like, I want real people to be in my movie and I want something that feels like a real story like everything just feels incredibly authentic in the way that few

Hollywood movies can deliver that sense yeah and I liked that I mean something I another thing about the format that I didn't see coming but when it happens you're like oh that that is so cool and never happens in popular movies is like they're just little vignettes where it's just like Cheryl and Tamara just like hanging out for a minute and they're just like on a building dancing and you're like what's going on and then after 10 seconds you're like no I think I like this and it's just them having fun like I don't even know if that was like scripted or anything but like yeah there seems to be like a lot of also like distance from any kind of like rules or like plan of what's going to happen yeah i'll be honest like the first time i saw the movie because i come from like a screenwriting background so i was like oh there's

like a lot of screenwriting rules that are broken here because like the inciting incident happens off screen where she like discovers the watermelon woman when she's watching that movie like that happens off screen she just talks about it after the fact there are a few scenes where it seems like tension is about to like ramp up and then it just cuts away to the next scene like that's that scene where diana enters uh with that argument that uh that chery Cheryl and Tamar are having about her. And Diana's just like, hi. And then the scene's over. And they're like, did she hear?

Did she not hear? Right, yeah. So I was like, I found it a little jarring the first time I watched it. Because I was like, oh, all these conventions are being ignored. And all these rules are being broken. But these like rules are being broken but then you just you're like but it's fine like we still understand what's happening you're still emotionally engaged with the story you're still rooting for Cheryl to like find out as much information about the watermelon woman as possible and it all works I feel like those things of like you not seeing every single plot

point fold out on screen it's like part of why I completely fell for it being part documentary the first time because it's like not every document like most documentaries don't catch every critical moment and so when she's like describing something that happened a little earlier that day I the first time I watched it I was like oh this feels completely like a documentary because you wouldn't get every single second of everything. So I feel like it also like lends itself to the format that she's messing around with too. And we, I mean, we, there was such a low budget to this where I think the budget was $300,000, which was a combination of grant money, fundraisers, and donations from Cheryl Dunier's friends. So she's working with very little money.

So it makes sense that she would, like you were saying, Christelle, about she shot on a lot of video because film is too expensive. It just was like very clever to me that she, with the resources she had, she was like, oh, like, what can I do with this? And like, what will lend the best sense? So like, just shooting on video as if she's making like a very low budget documentary, it just like, it works works because i feel like so often you see a movie where you get footage of like a home video in this like huge budget like major hollywood production and it's like oh this home video was clearly shot by a professional cinematographer because it just looks too good and then like it's like run through an editing program to be like no this was a cam

quarter and it's like why didn't you just do that in the first place but i think that's that's one of the very beautiful aspects to the watermelon woman that's like i find denier in that work and even in like her earlier shots like so resourceful in like doing things with what you have even if you don't have access to like big budgets and this like even the fact that like faye richardson is like a fictional character and like how much of that is due to like not having access to like actual archives but also not being able to pay for those archives, even if they exist. So yeah, I just like there's so much creativity in what she's doing. That's like, yeah, it's just feels like a bricolage of sorts. But that works really well. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Another thing that I

really liked that we sort of started talking about was how she is able to get a lot of history across but do it in this kind of effortless way where i feel like a lesser filmmaker could have made it like and here's the historical portion of of the movie but she like creates this really like kind of bizarre character who's like got a house full of memorabilia and like they're like messing around with him and he's giving like a lot of interesting solid information but it doesn't i don't know like they're they're when movies i feel like try to weave in history sometimes it becomes like lecture mode and she's able to avoid it completely while still educating her audience on on like a lot of stuff like I don't know I learned stuff from that scene with with the film buff but also

at the end it ends in this really funny way I don't think I've really seen someone pull it off that effortlessly before yeah and that scene plays into a pretty common like motif or theme throughout this movie because that film buff guy he's like women are not my specialty I don't know anything about women and women in film I don't know who the watermelon woman is which again part of this sort of bigger theme of there being very limited access to information and Christelle you talk about this in your piece where there are all these like gatekeepers who Cheryl comes up against that are either kind of like withholding information or there's just a general limited access to information because things were not properly documented or properly archived because you've

got that librarian man who just keeps being like well did you check the reference section did you do you even know how to use a library and they're like yeah we know how to use a library but you don't have any information in your library and then there's like the lady at clit who won't let them get footage of these photos of fey because she's like it's confidential and well and not just that but like she has like any any box full of information that is about black film stars. She just like dumps out on the table in this really callous way where you're like, oh, my God. Cheryl even has to like rescue one of those boxes at some point. Like catching it before it falls.

Right. Yeah. History is a mess in that movie. And I think that's like, I love what you said about how effortless it comes across. And I think it's so like biased and so full of erasures that it's actually like it's more of a testament like the i look at the film more of a testament of like what's possible beyond the confines of history rather than trying to like bring those forgotten black actresses back into the canon of the mainstream of history yeah yeah because i think there's like there are real actresses who get mentioned in the movie or

like mentioned in the credits like butterfly mcqueen and hattie mcdaniel which are names that like people obviously still remember today but there are like just as many actors from that era who like this fictional character of the watermelon woman have been completely forgotten and completely erased because like records were never even kept in the first place of them and their work so and and i like how again like cheryl dinier uses the the kind of like free-for-all format of this movie to challenge the way that this history is kept where i forget what person she's talking to but it's someone who is saying like oh it's impossible that uh that faye and mar Martha could have been in a relationship. That just absolutely wouldn't have happened during this time.

And as they're talking, Cheryl edits in like a million photos of them together, clearly dating and just, I don't know, like, yeah, not only like addressing how the gatekeepers are acting towards Cheryl and acting extremely dismissive or disorganized or whatever the situation is in the 90s but also that the history like you're like you're saying Christelle the history that she's accessing needs to be combed through as well because there's just so much bias in how Faye's life was documented in the first place. And it's so significant that in the end, like most of the crucial information she gets is like not from all those like libraries

or like official repositories of knowledge, but like literally the queer community in Philly and like those older black lesbians. Like that's also something I really appreciate about this film is like seeing older black lesbians on screen is something that's so rare yeah and like reflecting about like like the memories of Faye that kind of like clash a bit with Cheryl's own narration and what she wants to remember but I don't know I thought that that generational aspect and the way in which people preserve memories that are not deemed worth preserving in libraries and museums was really interesting. about Faye Richards in like books and archives and stuff all focus on her relationship with

Martha Page this white woman and then when she goes and gets information from June Walker who is like Faye Richards life partner for 20 years 20 years yeah June is like what like why are you focusing on this Martha Page lady? She has like nothing to do with Faye's life. That was only like a small sliver. And like, but and then like, Cheryl, her sort of like conclusive thought is like, well, you know, it's all kind of important. Like it's just helpful to see the whole scope, the whole picture of it all. But yeah, it just goes to show that like, what little is available in like the quote unquote history books still frames Faye Richards in terms of her relationship to a white woman, where like, again, that was only a small sliver of her life and the rest of the time she was like singing in black clubs in philadelphia

to i think what does the one woman say she's like yeah all of us stone butch lesbians loved her and we she sang to all of us she sang for us that was so beautiful but yeah i feel like that that focus on um that white woman marta page is not just the doing of the of official history but it's sherry is herself and what she wants to like like it's interesting this that ending um and this trying to hold complexity and trying to hold all of the parts of someone but also like you're not actually holding all of the parts you're still focusing on some of them more than others and I feel like she was really like walking through her own relationship also with Diana through Faye which like explained a bit the emphasis and a bit of your session on Martha Page but yeah it's

it's like it talks to like what again that disregard for history and official history and even like collective memory but that sense that anyone is free to an extent with like respect of course but to like take from the past what allows them to like find a sense or like find meaning in the present and the fact that like there is going to be tension between different generations of black lesbians around what happened what did not happen but it doesn't mean that she has to completely abide by that holder generation sense i just found that that portrayal of that tension was really interesting because you don't necessarily entirely side with cheryl but you also understand her desire to hold all of those pieces and affect together

yeah yeah i didn't see that like the the like shades of gray in the ending coming i thought it was is so interesting the the choice that she makes because when you hear you know june's thoughts i was like oh yeah of course like that's nothing would be more infuriating to someone's partner of 20 years than for them to be defined by a way in the past relationship that was way overblown in terms of its importance in the love of your life's you know lifetime and then also seeing like where Cheryl is kind of navigating all these ways of keeping history and all these roadblocks that she encounters and then at the end sort of being like okay i've talked to everyone i could possibly talk to here's how i'm choosing to keep this history and like she is presenting it the way

that is most significant to her and not necessarily like what june would want and we don't know what faye would want and and and again it's like it's done so smoothly without feeling like you're being bashed over the head with like history it's so complicated which it is but the way that Cheryl does it is just so effortless and and in the way that these characters are written too it's like everyone I don't know like no one is completely right or wrong in their perception of anything and it's like you're able to connect even if you don't agree with the character's perspective on something you can understand where they're coming from and like it it's just i don't know the characters are are and the way

they relate to each other is written so it just feels so real in the way that how people deal with each other in this movie june reminds me a lot of Tamara in some ways. Yeah. And as much as like you have this parallel between Faye and Cheryl and Diana and Martha Page, I feel like Tamara also kind of resonates a lot with that perspective of like this kind of hostility or tension in relationship to friends or like partners who give a lot of time and space intra-community space to their white friends or

their white partners and the kind of dynamics or tensions that that can create. And there's something in the energy and the hostility in these two characters that feels very similar. Like the tone, the ending tone of that letter and the anger in June's voice. Why do you want, like, okay, that question, why do you want to make it about Martha Page? It's reminding me of Tamara asking, like saying to Cheryl yeah

once again you're dating a white woman who wants to be black right yeah there's definite parallels and another thing that Tamara says like Cheryl has ordered a bunch of these like 30s and 40s movies where the black characters in those movies are all like the mammy archetype and tomorrow says like i can't stand most of the shit that hollywood puts out today let alone that like old mammy shit like why are you so obsessed with these old terrible movies that do not represent black people well which is a fair question yeah it's like it's very easy to see why like i don't know it makes it like where tamra is like why are you subjecting yourself to this like what is in it for you? Go outside. There's just this very perverse pleasure

that Cheryl takes into those movies that just like... Sometimes I have questions. I don't know if you see that scene where you have the TV screen where you see Fayeaye uh richards playing into plantation memories and like comforting the white mistress i think at that moment and then you have terry's face right next to the screen that's imitating yeah the voice and it's like there's

so much pleasure in like you can see like she's enjoying it so much and like trying to get into face skin and i'm like what's happening we need a bit of therapy she's like jamie and i when we watch titanic and recite the entire movie along with the characters yeah she's like doing that she also is kind of like wearing the costume and she's like really getting into it and she knows all the dialogue and it's like and it does make you wonder like cheryl uh you know why but then it's like watching that bear out it's like i don't know yeah like there are moments where you're like cheryl what are you doing but then she does but then it's like it I don't know. Yeah, like there are moments where you're like, sure, what are you doing?

But then she does. But then it's like it wasn't for nothing because she does end up digging into and like preserving a piece of history that wouldn't have been preserved otherwise. And so it's like at some points you're like, I think she's just like torturing herself for no reason. But then at the end, it's like, well, it wasn't for no reason. There was no effort to document this person's existence and their life and who they really were or even like their name. It was like really hard to find out who Faye was. And I loved how Tamara and Cheryl came at that issue completely differently because both of their outlooks, you're like, oh, I get it. But Cheryl's just cheryl's doing the the weird cosplay um stuff with it yeah and talking about like hattie

hattie mcdaniel and some of those other actresses i think it's also significant to me i'm not sure what to make of it but it's significant to me that the mommy in those films was often a plus size or like a fat black woman that didn't like necessarily conform to like standards of like beauty like even in terms of like futurism and, like, skin color. Like, it was often, like, a very dark-skinned woman. And, like, Faye Richardson is, like, so... It's the complete opposite of that. Like, she's, like, this very thin... She's not light-skinned, but she's not dark-skinned either. And, like, in terms of features, she's, like... She doesn't have what has been associated

with, like, African features, quote unquote. Like, I don't know, it's significant that Cheryl would choose that specific actress to play that role and to play that mystery. And I don't know what to make of it because it's just interesting to see all of a sudden the figure of the mummy being sexualized in that way and not just being like a site of like comfort for like white children or like white families but like also like a sexual being and like a queer sexual being but then i'm wondering like is it only possible because she was made thin and like good looking in that way I don't know I have so many questions yeah it is very

curious because like Faye Richards the fictional person slash character is embodying this mammy role but didn't look like the other actors who played those mammy roles yeah so it's like that that is i don't know what to make of it either we gotta get cheryl on the pod we've got questions yes because it seems like everything i don't know that it watching it back a couple times it seems like she's making all of these decisions really intentionally and i wonder if she's ever if she's ever spoken to it because it's like clearly she she knows her shit you know she's built out this yes the film scholar character she has all of the memorabilia acts like so i'm like well well she knows what she's talking about i wonder why that was the way she chose to go with with with the story. I don't know. I wish it was like spoken about a little more explicitly now that we're

talking about it. Cause then you also have that character slash real life person, Camille Paglia, who I had to do some research on. Cause I did not know. Okay. Cause the thing with like Camille Paglia is like every time I'm supposed to learn why she's problematic I start to learn and then I get really tired and I don't actually

learn so I know she's messy but I don't know the context of why but like I forgot the details but I think I is it okay I don't want to like defame her in any ways but I think, is it, okay, I don't want to, like, character that cheryl goes to she's like a professor slash culture critic who cheryl interviews seeing if she knows anything about the watermelon woman and like typical typical of like the watermelon woman and the documentary style like she's playing her herself and her own role in the movie. And it's been commented that Camille Paglia is doing a parody version of herself. But then when you read about her, you're like, I don't think this is parody because. Yeah. So basically, she's giving very strong opinions in this interview,

basically saying that Black people's opinions about the tropes in old old hollywood are wrong that the mammy character has been misinterpreted and it's actually a really good thing that like the image of a little black boy with a watermelon that's actually a really good positive thing in the world she keeps bringing up her italian family for like no reason like yeah yeah and then she's the character who's like interracial relationships what that couldn't have possibly been a thing that was her okay that was her and cheryl's cutting in like uh clearly it was and then you read about her on Wikipedia and real life Camille Paglia is a libertarian. I'm pretty sure she's a TERF. In the 90s, she supported NAMBLA and supported lowering the age of consent to 14 years old.

Oh my god. Among other things. So she has some real dog shit views. So I don't think this was a parody of her i think this is probably who she really was yeah irl and also like parody has always been used to like mask actual racist feelings so it wouldn't be the first time exactly so uh i don't like camille palia uh no hard pass every time i learned something about her i was like i need i need to go on a walk i was surprised to see her in this movie but there are like there's a few again i'm like cheryl's got to come on the pod i want to understand like the decision making going on here because there was another person sarah shulman plays the

clit archivist who's dumping shit out of boxes and she's like been a queer activist and like an aids activist specifically for decades and decades and it's again it's it's like it's very easy to confuse this as an actual documentary at the beginning because there's real figures um from academia coming into this it's cheryl's real mom like all of these people that that actually existed the camille polly i think threw me for threw me for a loop it was unpleasant but also like so exactly it like it was like such an accurate representation like especially being in academia at the moment i'm doing my phd of like the way certain scholar would speak with such authority right and arrogance about things they don't know shit about because this is the same people who are like perpetuating what version of history we learn and we see and it just makes you really unsettled to know that people like uh that lady are uh teaching the youth of america

and are still pretty prominent figures too i was like surprised to see how prominent camille paliglia still is i uh this is post episode jamie and cait wow love it hello um so I wanted to just drop in here because I've learned a lot about Camille Paglia's work since we recorded this episode several weeks ago because quick plug I'm working on a podcast about Kathy comics and so and so like that comic was coming out between the 70s and the 2000s. And so I've been doing research on the different feminist waves of those times. Right. And so in a book I was reading that I recommend movement that is very imperfect, but the gains of the feminist movement in the 1970s were backlashed in the pop culture and politics of the 1980s and the Reagan years. It's very interesting. It's very long. But Camille Paglia is brought up in that book a number of times as kind of the scholar who kind of exemplifies that backlash where Camille Paglia was famous for writing stuff like that women who

report date rape and anyone who reports date rape like it the onus is on them to not get raped summarizing there there have, and I think you mentioned this in the episode, there have been more recent scandals with her comments on trans people, on the Me Too movement. She's just, I'm not aligned with her politics at all.

So yeah, I don't recommend reading her work. I found it very unpleasant. But the context of her history and kind of how Susan Faludi suggests that she came to prominence through the backlash movement made a lot of sense and kind of made me understand why this libertarian Camille Paglia had such swing in her day and still does to an extent. So gross. Don't love it. Back to the episode. Oh, another really funny joke from the movie is as Cheryl is doing her research, she comes

upon she's like, oh, there's this new book I found at the gay and lesbian bookstore. It's called Hollywood Lesbians by Doug McGowden and then she was like I wonder if he's a lesbian which is just another example of like how like a guy named Doug probably not a lesbian is writing a book about Hollywood lesbians and um you know probably not the best person to write that book and it's all like white women on the cover of the book too is like something that pops up right away so it's just yeah it's like another like i guess a more subtle nod in in that specific joke but just of like who is keeping the history who is being put at the front of these histories? And like, is the person who's presenting it to you even reliable in terms of what their biases are? Let's take another quick break and we'll be right back. 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free,

subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple 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. 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.

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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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. 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. And we're back. What else? I wanted to just shout out that this is the first feature-length narrative film directed by a Black lesbian. The first we know of. The first we know of. Yes, true. Right. Like Faith Richardson, maybe there's like other uncovered histories. That's true i also this is just such an interesting movie to cover on our podcast it just feels especially relevant because it's a movie about how representation in media or a lack

thereof how it affects people how it affects the main character of cheryl how it affects the main character of Cheryl, how it affects Cheryl the filmmaker, and how it inspires her to make a movie about Black women. And there's a part in the movie early on where Cheryl the character, because I feel like we have to distinguish Cheryl the character from Cheryl the director. Cheryl the character, she's doing like a talking head interview kind of thing in front of like the video camcorder. And she's talking about the project she's wanting to work on. And she's like, I, you know, I want to make a film, but I don't really know what I want to make a film on. I just know it has to be about Black women because our stories have never been told, which is like the impetus for her to make this documentary about the Watermelon

Woman. It's Cheryl Dunier, the director's impetus for like wanting to make this narrative film, the Watermelon Woman. There's just like all these layers but it's just all about a lack of representation inspiring her to tell her own story and to you know tell a story about black women and black queer women yeah i was interested to i i'd never done like a deep dive on cheryl dunye's's work prior to The Watermelon Woman before prepping for this episode. And it seems like there is a fair amount of overlap between the character and the actual filmmaker there, where most of her early work is centered around the black lesbian community. community there's a lot of um and i would i didn't get to watch her short films before this episode but there's a lot of uh it seems like she's exploring the theme of like interracial lesbian

relationships a lot and yeah like how i would say if you've seen the watermelon woman you've seen her earlier shots no it's it's unfair it's unfair it's unfair i'm just being i'm just being provocative here but it's it's a lot of like repetition of that trope of um the black lesbian dating it's like typical bourgeois white woman and like having to deal with like microaggressions like racism um and like deciding if that relationship is even worth it right it's i don't i have questions for cheryl as a person and like like how she's like working out like i understand like as an as a person she's like working out something here through all of those shots and movies because even like some of her features after also deal with that film.

But it's just the insistence on that specific film is very striking. There's one that I mentioned quickly in the piece. There's one shot that's, oh no, I don't mention it actually, the potluck and the passion, which is basically like Cheryl with her friends, like having like, like a dinner at home and you have this like canonical white woman and like the kind of tensions emerge in the friend groups from having that white woman present in like this intra-community space and then there is another

one where the title itself is like it's called like greetings from africa yeah yeah and it's basically like uh this white woman that like she dates briefly and then she's like oh i'm doing all this ngo work in africa and like when they like it oh, I'm doing all this NGO work in Africa. And like when they like it's just like a one thing and they like separate. And she receives this card from this white woman who is now in Africa. And he's like, hey, which is kind of hinted at in the watermelon woman, because I think Diana also has some NGO work. Right. Yeah. And then she also she's like, I was born in Jamaica. Isn't that cool?

Yeah. And Tamara is like... Yeah. And then Cheryl and her friends, because Tamara is dating a woman. Is it Stacy? Is that her name? Yeah. And they're all just like,

okay, why are you here again and this also feels very 90s like i feel like that's a time where people were like really hashing out all of those questions which also like explains the kind of i don't know irritation or like the fact that like we can feel like we're like over it now and it feels like very passive but like yeah i think it's also like a product of its time uh in that sense yeah for sure totally yeah i mean the the way that the the cheryl diana relationship plays out is it does like as i was reading about her older work i was like oh this is this is a theme that comes up for her a lot and it was this is a side note but I was like wait I recognize the lady who plays Diana it's because she's like co-wrote American Psycho anyways yeah and Anne is in it she plays a

character in it and the n-words yeah yeah she was she's like this iconic queer red yes and so i was like oh that's just like her when she was really young interesting um but yeah the the way that cheryl writes diana to i mean that dinner scene is so cringy for so many reasons but diana's kind of instinct that no matter what anyone at the table says she just immediately finds a way to make it about herself and like you know kind of like hijack the conversation no matter what is being discussed and then she's like oh look i'm so cool oh i've lived everywhere oh i've done this i've done that and it's like we were talking about not not even remotely that and she just like her instinct is to center herself and the the push and pull in that i feel like it i don't know i mean it kind of gets resolved but it kind of doesn't by the end of

the movie with cheryl and tamra where cheryl's kind of like i hope we'll figure it out like we don't really know what happened but it's clear that tamra is uncomfortable with how passive cheryl becomes in those situations which is like an interesting tension to set up and then but it doesn't really resolve by the end of the movie either that was another one of those like screenwriting things i was like but where's the what's the closure there i want i want know, are they friends again? No closure. Does anyone have any other thoughts? Yeah, I think it's interesting to me that the thing that, like, the last role for Cheryl is really this family visit and the fact that Diana is not defending her. And, like, not even, like, trying to trying to react to like how her relatives behaving and

like the racism like even like a black maid passing through during that visit and it's just interesting like that question of interracial relationships and like working it out for yourself as an individual but then like also when the family gets involved and when your friends also, and like what your friends are ready to accept or not was also interesting. Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the scene where Diana,

like you're kind of like, because it's the interview with the racist homophobic sister of the white lady director, Martha page. I keep wanting to say Martha Plimpton. Is that a real person? Martha Plimpton. But Martha page,

you know, you keep, I was kind of waiting for Diana to like say something and she just kind of doesn't, she freezes up. And like, I don't know that again, that's just like a relationship that I would,

I would like to hear Cheryl Denier talk about of like how she where she was crafting that where that was coming from because it's it's it's a lot and it's really interesting and but but then it's it kind of it's not that it goes nowhere it's just that you don't really know where they're at at the end or like exactly how Cheryl Denier feels about all of it. Like she's presented all these different perspectives on this relationship, but we don't really know like where she landed on it. Which again is like interesting. It doesn't happen in movies a lot.

And then maybe and then I was I got into my own head. I'm like, Jamie, you're such a baby. You expect people to spoon feed you the moral of the story. Well, that's another interesting thing about this movie, which is the queer cinema that makes it to more like Hollywood mainstream is often about like centering on a queer relationship and like a queer romance as it begins and in its early stages in a way that and we've talked about this on different episodes where it's like a male gaze fetishized version of lesbian romance whereas this movie you know it's about a woman who is working on this project who you know happens to meet a woman and start dating her. But that's not the focus of the movie.

It's just presented as a normal part of the main character's life. and her friend group, which, by the way, are mostly other lesbians, which I feel like is very common in real life where lesbians are friends with many other lesbians, but you don't often see that on screen. So I appreciate that this movie just does a really nice job of normalizing a lesbian's life with things like being in a relationship, but that not being the driving force of her life. It's just an aspect of her life. And we see her interact with her friends and especially Tamara, whose main subplot in the movie is that she's really horny and her girlfriend is not having sex with her. And she keeps being like, I'm trying to get some.

My girlfriend keeps not putting out and i'm really horny about it charles like she's in grad school can you like cut her some slack like yeah she's getting her mba like she's busy she's stressed out so it's just like it's a really cool thing to see that all normalized which is what you get when there's a lot of like, it's a forbidden love. It's a forbidden old timey love between two willowy white ladies. And like, you know, there's a lot of, I don't know, this movie is just presenting a reality. It like feels like a slice of life movie that like documents a person's community and life in a very specific place too. I love how prominent Philly at multiple points in history is and that feels effortless in terms of like how important the location is to the movie

and it just i don't know this movie's doing so much without like like you said in your piece like without making it seem like it's doing so much. It's really interesting. Yeah, it says like, there's a real, like, sense of pleasure and playfulness. You don't, like, it never gets heavy in any way. It was interesting about that Philly part,

like, when she says, when June says that, like, kind of revives that whole history of bars and places where lesbians used to hang, and specifically black lesbians, and how those have disappeared a bit already by the time Cheryl started making the movie. And, like, thinking even now how it has even more disappeared. It's just like, yeah, there's something really sad about that aspect of queer life in the city and the space that don't exist anymore yeah uh one thing we haven't talked about yet is there's a there's a

there's a hot sex scene in the movie i just wanted to shout it out not only there's a hot sex scene but i just think cheryl denier really likes showing her butt in movies I just I just like noticed that re-watching some of her films several times like first of all she has a really nice butt but like it

comes out a lot in the watermelon woman and other shorts and yeah if I had such a nice butt i would also show it we do see her but we see her nips we see guinevere turner's nips as well yeah i mean kind of hearkening back to a discussion we had on the portrait of a Lady on Fire episode where a lot of movies about a lesbian romance that are directed by men, aka blue is the warmest color.

Oh my God. It's like they're so fetishy and so like male gaze-y. Whereas this one, it's like, yeah, the people behind the camera are Cheryl Dunier and also in front of the camera and in a lot of more interested in showing what lesbian sex actually looks like rather than like a very sorry didn't charlotte denier edit it am i missing oh she i think she edited it herself which is maybe why her butt comes up so much sorry I was pulled I don't know where I let me check yeah I I thought I saw on maybe was it Wikipedia either way there was a woman editing uh editing it and it's I don't know I thought it was a good sex scene yeah she's the editor okay so maybe I have no idea who

Annie Taylor is I don't know where I got that information. Sorry. Oh, wait. Film editing by, this is on IMDb, Annie Taylor. That's where I got that. Mystery. Mystery. Maybe Annie Taylor is Cheryl Dunye's pseudonym for when she's an editor.

Her editing pseudonym for when she's an editor editing pseudonym uh yeah i thought that like that the sex scene was enjoyable and it also felt i don't know what makes a sex scene 90s but the sex scene also felt very 90s where it's like a lot of like tight shots and like it just felt like it was like being cut around kind of like a music video. And you're like, yeah. The music too. I can't remember exactly what song is playing, but I was like this. It's a time machine and I am transported right back to the mid 90s. Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? I think that was it.

Yeah. Cool. Does the movie pass the Bechdel test? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Almost the whole time. Yes.

And also passes the Vito Russo test. Just want to give that a shout out. Also, a number of other tests like the DuVernay test. So we've got our nipple scale, which is zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. And, you know, I would probably give this, I mean, it's nearly a five, if not a five. I mean, it's a movie about representation and a lack thereof. And then a like correcting of that. But it's like basically Cheryl Dunye is like, well, there are no movies about black lesbians.

Well, guess what? Now there is. you're welcome and yeah it's just it explores some really interesting themes that it poses some interesting questions uh there there's representation that we rarely see that we weren't seeing prior to this where that we're still barely seeing especially in mainstream because yes you know even though this is a pivotal movie in like new queer cinema in black cinema most people still haven't seen this movie like it is not something that a wide audience has seen or maybe even knows about yeah that's also what makes it a bit sad to me because like

if you look at least for like black queer cinema there isn't like there is some significant films that have come out but like in terms of like black lesbians there isn't that much more and it was 25 years ago right yeah it was kind of discouraging when when we because it's like we wanted to cover more black queer cinema and the fact that it was like the what you know this is I feel like is presented kind of as as the pinnacle and yeah it happened you know when we were all children like and I don't know it I'm glad that some progress has been made but it's like well we have a problem here if if the you know if the pinnacle was in 1996 yeah hopefully listeners who are listening to this episode if you haven't already seen it go see it rent it

you know it might also be available on canopy like your your library i'm not sure but i think it is i just i can't find my library card either way it is accessible so check it out tell your friends about it because it's well i mean we talked about gatekeeping a little bit which is like something that cheryl the, comes up against a lot in trying to access information. There's also like this pretty major Hollywood gatekeeping thing where it's hard for anyone to get a movie out there and in front of a wide audience. But especially if you're a black woman, if you're a queer woman, if you're a queer black woman, like, you know, the odds just you're a queer black woman like you know the odds just keep getting stacked more and more against you just in terms of like we cheryl denier like

particularly like the way she navigates the low budget of this movie so well to the point where it seems very intentional and like but the fact that she had to do that at all i think this came up last year when we were covering a girl walks home alone at night where especially when there's women of color directing stories that that center women of color it's you always hear these stories about like they had to scrape together the money to get this made it was really hard to find distribution and even now the watermelon woman is more widely accessible but it doesn't seem like that was the case for a long time for like the early history of this movie and

meanwhile you know you hear like stories about white male auteurs who barely know how to hold a camera and they're like i have faith in him he'll figure it out like it's here's here's a hundred million dollars to make your movie like yeah right so the odds are stacked we're stacked against cheryl dunye and yet she managed to make a really cool funny movie that is extremely important and extremely pivotal and for those reasons i'll give it five nipples this is this is rare on the on the show we we do not often do this so i'm i'm excited to give the watermelon woman five nipples and uh i'll distribute them to cheryl tamara i want to get uh what's her name, Yvette, who sings the terrible karaoke.

You know, she was just doing her best. I hope Yvette finds love. Yes. Yvette finds a karaoke partner. She deserves it. I'll give one nipple to Faye Richards and all the women that she symbolizes. And I'll give my, is that, am I up to five nipples now? I don't know.

Yeah. I feel like I've got one more. And June. And June, yes. June gets my last nipple. Absolutely. So yeah, that's me. Yeah.

I'll meet you at five. It's a rare pleasure. I think that there's definitely, I mean, like we were talking throughout, it's like there's still just questions that I would want to hear Cheryl Dunye's perspective on just in terms of like plot choices and character choices and just like the themes that she really focuses on for this movie. But in terms of our show,

it's like this movie is like firing on all cylinders where, yeah, it's a movie about how representation affects people. It's about historical gatekeeping. It's also like a fun romp through Philadelphia in the nineties. Like it's just, I wasn't like, I don't know, I didn't know what to expect going into this movie. But having it be like this really light, but fascinating 90s movie. And it's cool that I mean, Cheryl Dunye is very much still working. It seems like she's mostly

working in TV these days. But she directed an episode of lovecraft country last year all rise which i think was a court show she's been she's she's directing she's out there she lives in oakland queen sugar also yeah yeah she directed several episodes of queen sugar yeah she's like i mean and it's i'm I'm glad that the watermelon woman kind of launched her into this successful directing career. But I also am like, why haven't we given her $100 million to make whatever the fuck she wants? You know, like, I think it's worth, you know, scrutinizing these pipe these movie pipelines where, you know, Cheryl Dunier is is killing it. And she's clearly I mean, it seems like doing work that is important to her. And it's really good work. But it's like, why? Where is Cheryl Dunye's blank check? That is my question. But anyways, this movie is incredible. If you haven't seen it, highly recommend and watch it with friends. I can't wait to be able to watch movies with friends. This is like such a, I don't know. It was so fun. And I learned, I learned stuff. And usually I resent learning

things in movies, but this made it just, it went down easy. It was, I just, I loved it. So I'll, I'll go five nips as well. Two to Cheryl Denye, one to June, one to Faye, and one to june one to fay and one two i forget there was like a separate director or artist who like curated all the images of fay richards and yeah i want to give my last nipple to her yes yes yeah she was a director of photography oh okay wait that's so i i just love the the thoroughness of creating this history of faye richards and i saw through some research that that ended up becoming like an art exhibit that like went to mocha like the history of this fictional character also has this entire like art exhibit built around her and and it was also auctioned off to friends and that's part of the film's budget actually whoa wait i didn't know that yeah yeah they

auctioned off some of the images and the money they got from that went to making the movie so something we didn't mention but i think that's quite significant it's also like um i think with tongues untied it's the watermelon woman and toes untied are the two movies that were funded with like public funding and there were like a huge debate uh in congress around like funding films and like conservatives being like oh like we're funding like this awful and like unethical and immoral stories and um i think after that like they completely restructured the way films were funded and the specific pockets of money that made those two films possible were no longer accessible so wow oh i didn't know that yeah yeah but it's

significant that they were discussed like thinking about films such as this being discussed in progress and pissing off conservatives which is always a pleasure exactly christelle uh what what Christelle what is your nipple rating of this movie so I'm hesitating between 4 and 5 nipples and I think I will stay with the hesitation especially like I think there's some things to be said about how

mental health comes into and like some jokes that are very like 90s but i would give one nipple to cheryl donye as a director one to cheryl donye as an actress one to her butt one one to tamara who's like i just love Tamara's character so funny and the final one to June because it's just so nice to see all the black lesbians on screen and I hope we see more of that yeah I think there's there's something around generations and like queerness that's really missing for me in filmography and seeing different generations of queer people together on screen yeah there's even

i think it's in june's voiceover toward the end she's saying to cheryl you know I just I hope you realize that like Faye was a part of basically like a movement that allows your lifestyle to be possible like she we like our generation paved the way for you and Cheryl I don't remember if she responds to that directly, but just the fact that it's like in the movie and like that is put out there is something that is important to remember. Well, Christelle, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure. The pleasure is all ours. Where can people follow you on social media is there anything you'd like to plug uh i'm on twitter i'm very active on twitter

at uh onico and i'm also on instagram um crystal.mix nice and you can follow us at Bechtelcast on Twitter Instagram we have a Patreon aka Matreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast yeah there's over a I think there's almost like a hundred bonus episodes there if you have run out of stuff on the main feed. We're going to cover Stuart Little this month for reasons. And then our tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast for all of your merchandising needs.

Other than that, should we all go to karaoke together? Bye! Bye! Should we all go to karaoke together? Yeah. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.

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

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