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American Fiction Ronald Young, Jr. · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast. The questions asked if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women and them are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zeph and Beast
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, Hey, Caitlyn. I was thinking that we should
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: change the name of the podcast to to what fuck?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Wait, that's so pertinent, that's.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: So the fucktal Cast, the FU Cast.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's certain episodes that have sort
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of devolved into the cast over the years.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: True, why not just commit anyway? That was the brilliant
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: idea I had for the intro of this episode. Welcome
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Or sorry, welcome to fuck Welcome to the fuctal Cast.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I yeah, I was gonna do a play on the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: ending of the movie and keep making us to retake
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it over and over and over and then how as, oh, sure, sure,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this is why we should we should we should really
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: circle up with uh with our intros. Look, this is
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the fuck Deal Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, my.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Name is Caitlin Deronte. This is our show where we
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Test as a jumping off point and Jamie, what's that well.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: The Bechdel Test is a media metric created by friend
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: of the show Alison Bechtel. It was originally appeared as
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a joke in her comic collection dis to Watch Out
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: For as a commentary on how there were never romantic
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: relationships between women in movies, but has since been adapted
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to a more mainstream metric. There's many versions of this test.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: The one we use requires that there are two characters
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: other about something other than a man for a meaningful
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: exchange of dialogue and spoiler alert that doesn't happened many
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: times in this movie, but there's one exchange in particular
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that I find very delightful.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I think I know one. You're talking.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a great Bechtel test pass in the movie
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we are covering today, which is twenty twenty three's American Fiction.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like, I don't know. Over the years, I
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: think that like, we don't cover a ton of recent
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: movies anymore. But once we get over like the two
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: year past the two year mark, it's time, it's fair game.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And so here We are directed by core Jefferson in
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, adapted from the novel Erasure by Percival Everett.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: And we have a wonderful returning guest to talk about
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: it with us.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: We certainly do. He's an audio producer, host of the
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: podcasts Wait for It and Leaving the Theater, and you
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: remember him from our episode on Hitch. It's Ronald Young Junior.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Welcome back.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: be here for this one. I am going to roast
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: white folks a lot over the course of the amount
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: of time.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: I hope everyone is ready for that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Feeling great, feeling great. And I also love when we
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: have a guest come back for the second time with
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: like an extremely different movie, like.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: This is not a romantic comedy.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: This is not a romantic comedy. And there's not a
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: single moment of Kevin James. There's not a single hitch
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in American fiction.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: No, we're so thrilled to have you back.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Glad to be here. I was excited. I had such
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: a good time in our first conversation. Is one of
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: those things where when it was over, I was like, hey,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: I'll talk about anything y'all want to talk about one.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: I love talking about movies, and I love the way
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: that y'all talk about movies. So I'm glad that you
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that you you let me back in here.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: And I hope there's a third time. Depending on how
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: this time goes.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: We could find a weird third one.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Let's schedule it right now. Yeah, done?
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: All right, we're gonna do Tonny Tarco see the.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Actually we haven't done Donnie Darko. I feel like it
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: would have happened by now, but I've always wanted to
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: do like a Patreon theme of like Harvey and Donnie
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Darko back to back, just imaginary ragers or something interesting.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: I was like, wait, what's Harvey again?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know why. I saw it a lot when
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I was a kid. Anyways, anyways, Yes, we're here to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: talk about American fiction. Ronald. What is your history with
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: this movie?
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: I saw it when it came out. I was unfamiliar
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: with Core Jefferson's work. This was my window into it.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Huge fan of Jeffrey Wright. So I saw the preview,
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: and the premise of the preview is what got me
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: into the movie theater seat and sitting down and watching it,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I realized it's so much more than the premise. And
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: watching it the second time to get ready for this episode,
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: I realized that there's when I realized that the premise
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: is kind of not the whole purpose of the film.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: It made me lean in for the part to the
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: movie that I really really enjoy which is more of
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: the commentary about being a black creative by a black creative,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: which I just I enjoyed. I'm so ready to talk
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Mmm, hell yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Uh, I guess similar for a recent movie. I saw it.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I saw it, and I really enjoyed it when it
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: came out. Yeah. I also, this was like my introduction
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to I think I think I've read Cord because Court
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Jefferson like started as a journalist and then worked in
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: TV and then worked and then became a director, and
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I like from I think I've read him on like,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: oh he was on Gker one point out bekay, I'm
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: looking at his Wikipedia page, So I think I read
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: him in college. He has a kind of incredible TV resume.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: He wrote on Season of Succession, The Good Place, Station
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: eleven Watchman, So I had experienced his work without realizing
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: it was his work, and then saw this, and then
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: this movie also got me into personal Everett as a writer.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So I went and read this book, Erasure, and a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: couple of his other books he wrote James last year,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and I also randomly read one of his books from
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. I am not Sydney Poitier, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: he's just like an amazing writer. And this is a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: very fascinating adaptation of a book that I think Eraser
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: like it would be a really difficult book to like
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: straight ahead adapt and I think Coort Jefferson did a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: really awesome job of sort of like honing in, especially
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: on more of like the family stuff that sort of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: populates this story. Anyways, excited to talk about it, Yeah, Caitlin,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: what's your history with American fiction?
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I also saw it when it came out. It was
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies of that year. It was
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the movie that I was hoping would win Best Picture
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: that year because it was nominated. Did not win Best Picture,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: but I think it won for a Best Adapted Screenplay.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: I remember did Yeah, and he gave an incredible speech.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: Incredible speech.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: It's about financing films, which I thought was fantastic.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh right, yes.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: And also this is how I learned that Cord Jefferson
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: is hot, so hot.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, people are talking about this by people.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: Do you bekately talk.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It's come up. It's come up. And that's kind of
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the most important takeaway from the film, that Cord Jefferson
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: is hot.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I think it is important that hot people are winning Oscars.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I meane actors obviously, but like hot writers.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's important. Let writers be hot. I've been seeing
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: it for years. Yeah, but they won't let us.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: That's why we look like this.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: I actually have to dial down my hotness in order
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: to actually try to become a successful writer.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Seriously. To be seriously, you have to look like a shit.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah when I can.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: That's why I tell myself on bad days, I'm like,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: people are gonna really respect.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: You today, exactly.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: You will. You will not distract. No.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: But in all seriousness, I love this movie. I thought
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: it was so funny and I cannot wait to talk
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: about it. It's such a rich text. And I guess
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: for the recap.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're back.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, here's the recap. We meet Selonious Ellison, who goes
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: by Monk in reference to Thelonious Monk played by Jeffrey Wright.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: He's a literature professor who is suspended for it seems
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: like several incidents and mostly calling out white students for
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: their white fragility. Seems to be the case. He's also
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: a published author and has written several novels.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Which I think, I don't know if this is like
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: from the book or not, but whenever you catch one
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: of his fake book titles, like his fake pretentious book titles,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: they're really great. I think the one you see the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: most is the has Conundrum, and you're like, the hell
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: is that? And it's like huge, awesome.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, I wanted to note that
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: the suspension at the college. What I wanted to point
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: out was how frustrating that scene was for me to watch.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: But then on top of that, it was presented in
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: a way that felt real world frustrating, which is how
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: I know it was well done, because I said, that
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: is exactly how that conversation would go and has gone
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: in a lot of ways. But it made sense that
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: this would be the man that is who does not
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: believe in race step much but is also writing very
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: pretentious tomes called the Wouldn't You Say?
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: The Husk Connu the conundrum here, just like it looks
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: like it's seven hundred pages and you're like, yeah, he's
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: kind of awesome, but he's also well, we know this guy. Yeah,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: that scene was That scene was great, especially like how
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: it is very clear that one of the other writers
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in the room is extremely jealous of him. And yeah,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that the airport swipe, You're like, oh, it's just so good.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: That's the I think that's the same actor who's in
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: He's in like the elevator scene in Speed Whoa, And
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: he's the one who like keeps pushing pull button. I
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: think he might also be in Oh God, it's like,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: you know, it sounds like, you know, he's in a
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: lot of things. I think he's also been in a
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: few like David Lynch movies. Anyway, a quick appearance by him.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So anyway, Monk, he's a published author. He has also
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: written a recent novel that he's having a hard time selling.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: His agent, Arthur played by John Ortiz, tells him that
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: publishers are looking for books by black authors that are
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: about very stereotypical black American experience is like tragedy, porn
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff, and they find that Monk's writing is
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: too smart, sophisticated, academic, that kind of stuff. Monk then
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: goes to Boston for a book.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: This is a great New England piece of cinema. Underrated.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: The dunkin Donuts representation. You see it almost right away.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: It's my first note as like authenticity, authenticity, and you
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: know that coffee is rash, it's so bad, but he
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: needs it.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: He needs it well because the book I didn't I
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: have not read the book that this is adapted from,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: but I read the Wikipedia Scholarly Journal. It's synopsis in DC.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh that would have been interesting.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that, I guess. I don't know
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: why it was changed. Yeah, because Cord Jefferson is from Tucson,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: which does come up with like via the Sterlingah. I
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: don't know why they chose Boston. I forgot that was that.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: My other connection to this movie is the some of
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the scenes were shot in the like two tons over
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: from my mom, and so her and all her friends
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: were doing slow drives to see if they could catch
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: a look at Jeffrey Wright. They're all wordy for Jeffrey Wright.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: They were not successful.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Damn, I'm so sorry to hear that. So Monk goes
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: to Boston for this book festival to be on a
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: panel with other authors. Also at this festival is Centaura
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Golden played by Ray, who has written a book called
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Weese Lives in the Ghetto that seems to be about
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the stereotypical black characters that these publishers want. Monk goes
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: to an event where she reads a passage from her
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: book and he is rolling his eyes. Monk then visits
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: his family, who lives in the Boston area. We meet
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: his sister, Lisa, played by Tracy Ellis Ross.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: My favorite character, and one of the only things I
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: don't like about this movie is how quickly and mellow
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: dramatically she exits the movie. I'm just like, she's such
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a good character, and I feel like even if she
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: had to die to advance the protagonist narrative. I didn't
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: like the piano music heart attack. I was like, come on,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: you got Tracy Ellis Ross, don't do this to her.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I will also say I think that I had the
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: same issue because she brought for me. I love Tracy
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Ellis Ross. I've loved her since girlfriends. But what bothers
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: me is that she sews up here and she brings
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: so much to the film, and I'm settling in ready
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: for a whole.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: Performance from her.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: And the only thing that I felt okay about is
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: that when she dies is the handoff from her to
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: Sterling K Brown in terms of the relationship between Cliff
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: and Monk was done so well on the beach, in
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: that scene with them cussing out their neighbor Philip, it
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: was done. That's the only part that might that makes
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: it okay that she's gone was watching them team up
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: to be like.
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: You, Philip, get out of here. We hate you.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, okay, so these are real brothers.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: They like really they really understand each other. But that
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: was the only thing I agree with you.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: I hated that she was gone from the movie.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Well talk, I guess that was like a not a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: huge change from the book, but the change that was
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: made was kind of interesting. I don't know, it's so
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I love adaptation talk.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: We'll get to it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I was like, she she's so compelling and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: she's so clearly embodied like an eldest daughter. Yes, And
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: then in that same scene where you're like, whoa, this
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: is so cool, and then she dies right and she
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: drops dad right in front of you, and you're like,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: this is a nasty piece of work. Yes, I mean
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: there's there's many women. There's many like well written women
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in this story. That's not even the issue. I just
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: she was immediately my favorite character. And then in the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: same scene she dies, Oh.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: My God, like her Roe versus Wade joke and the
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: fact that she wrote her own eulogy, yes, at her
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: funeral and it's about how she wanted to fuck Iatris
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Elba and Russell Krau like.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: So funny thrusts.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Elba such a funny character.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: It was like, come on, couldn't she have lived like
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: twenty more minutes? Come on? Always Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Anyway, we meet Lisa. She's a doctor who has recently
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: gotten divorced. We meet monks mother, Agnes played by Leslie
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: is it you Gams Oogams. She seems like she might
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: be showing signs of dementia. We also meet their housekeeper,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Lorraine played by Mara Lucretia Taylor. Monk and Lisa we
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: get a better sense of their relationship. They talk about
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: various family dynamics some past family drama, including how their
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: father was very closed off, and will learn that Monk
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: tends to sort of follow in those footsteps. They also
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: try to figure out what to do about their mother's health.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: That's another thing I really appreciate about this movie is
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: how like, without bonking you over the head with it,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it feels like a really well written example of how
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: like every kid has a different set of parents, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like all of the sibling alliances and I don't know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: like whatever, like everyone recognizes their version of that, but
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: how both of his siblings are like rolling their eyes
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: or like, oh you thought our dad was faithful?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: What the hell are you talking about?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's probably because he was your face, like you
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: were his favorite. Yeah, I just yeah, I was like, oh,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: oh I feel seen and I don't like it.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: There was a line that he said too, he said
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: enemy see everything and friends only see what they want
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: or something along those lines. That's Uh says to Monk
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: at that point, and I thought it was.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: Very very well.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: There's several good lines in here, and I'll highlight them
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: as we get through them, but this was starting there.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: I'm just like, man, you are some bars in here.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Mister Jefferson.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Sterling K. Brown is so good in this movie. I
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: forget if he was nominated for Supporting Actor, but if
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: he wasn't, he should have been.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: He's so good in this I don't think he was.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know, though I know he's great in it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Oh he was nominated, Yes.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: Sterling K. Brown was nominated for an Academy Award. He
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: did not win.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't like that.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: So they're talking about what to do about their mother's health.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: They think maybe they should hire a nurse, but that
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: would be expensive. They would have to sell their beach house.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And then Lisa suddenly suffers a heart attack and dies.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Can I say how she dies in the book because
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: it does feel I think it does, because this is
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: one of the plot points in the movie that feels
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: so jarring, and even people who love this movie are like,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: why did that happen? In the book, she works at
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: a women's clinic, which I forget if she works at
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a more general hospital.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: In the movie.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: It's a clinic.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a family planning clinic.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: So in the book, which is published in two thousand
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and one, she is killed when an anti abortion person
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: comes in with a gun and she's shot at work,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: so it is like an equally sudden death, but it
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: is a more shocking like she's murdered. It's not a
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: freak like, oh my gosh, I had a heart because
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I'm stressed. Question mark, which is like, I don't know.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk about adaptation because I think it
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: just works. I don't know, because I understand that that
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: would like really kind of bring this movie to a
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: grinding halt very very early on, because her death is
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: sudden no matter what. So that is that is like
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: a pretty big change, even though it doesn't really affect
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the later events of the movie, it's a pretty big change.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I think hearing that definitely would have put more emphasis
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: on her death in a way that was not necessary
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: for the movie to move forward. But I would also
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: argue that I don't think. I think, except for the
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: ways in which that she was holding the family together
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: and the way that the family then splits apart with
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: her death is probably the most important part about it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: So you had to remove that, like a pin from
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: the wheel, if you will, in order for things to
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: kind of go in the direction that they're going. But
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: if it would have been like a more dramatic because
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: if you think about it, even the way that she died,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: like when we watch her feet on the gurney and
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: he's looking through the hospital window, is already traumatic enough.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it would have been like if
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: it had been more like grizzly and political in that way.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I wonder, and this is pure speculation from my part,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: but I wonder if coord Jefferson just didn't want to
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: show violence against a black woman on screen.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Also that yeah, right in the very early parts of
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the movie.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hm, because, as various characters comment on throughout the movie,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: like these heavily stereotyped portrayals of black characters in movies
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: and books experiencing pain and suffering and violence and being
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: shot by the police and things like that. So and
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: even though that does happen at the end of the movie,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: it's Monk's imagination of what's happening, So it's not real.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: So you don't actually see real violence against black people
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: on screen. So that's my guess as to why Cord
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Jefferson made that change. But I don't know.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't able to find comments on like specific
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: changes made, but I just thought it was interesting because
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, personal ever writes like really
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: intensely political book or like in this case, wrote a
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: very intensely political book. And I also like, I don't know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: it's I would be so interested to hear like Coreg
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Jefferson's thoughts on like, well, you know, is that a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: studio note? Is that his choice? Like I just wonder
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what the process is when you're adapting a novel to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the screen of like, well, if you want X amount
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of budget, we need you to change this, this and this,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: which is right? You know happens? I don't know, so
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: hard to say, but ri ip, Lisa, you were the
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: best character. I think that. Yes.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: So the family holds a small funeral for her, which
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: is on the beach near the family beach house. So
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: we're kind of like going back and forth between this
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: beach house among's mother's house. Also, I think he goes
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: back to la sometimes I track of like where people
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: were in space and time. But anyway, there's a funeral,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: and this is when we meet Monk and Lisa's brother,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Cliff played by Sterling K. Brown. He and Monk have
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: mostly lost touch, but they start to reconnect. Throughout the movie,
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Cliff is also recently divorced from his wife and he
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: has come out as gay. Then Monk meets a neighbor woman, Coraline,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: played by Erica Alexander.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Of Living Single.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I just want to point out that we
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: have three very prominent black sitco or black led i'd
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: say female led shows in here. We have is Array
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: of Insecure, we have Tracy Alis Ross of Girlfriends, and
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: we have Erica Alexander of Living Single. Oh my god,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: we could have gotten them in one scene.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Do you not understand that's a holy trinity situation.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Flying Colors, it would have passed the Bechdel test
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: if they could have just had a conversation about it,
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: literally anything else and it would.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Have just been such a dull. Yeah, the women are
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: pretty a cordoned off from from each other sequence to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: sequin and you know, we could talk about that, but
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: uh but I didn't. Yeah, I didn't even make that connection.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But there is like a sitcom holy trinity situation going
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: on here.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because you have Living Single that was first, it
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: predated friends. Then you have Girlfriends that comes later, which
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: is referenced Insecure, that would come even later, I was
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: in hog Heaven, Like, how did you get all of
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: them in one movie?
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: This is amazing.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Next time, let's get him in a scene.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, let's get him together.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Come on, seriously, Okay, So we meet coreline. She and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Monk start chatting. She invites him inside for some wine,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: and then a little bit later she asks Monk out
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: on a date. Then Monk takes his mother to a
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: doctor appointment. She is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which means that
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: she will likely need round the clock care. And with
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Lisa's passing and Cliff being broke from his divorce, it's
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: sort of up to Monk to kind of bear this
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: financial burden. But he also doesn't really have the money
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: for that. So he decides to sit down and start
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: writing a book called My Pathology under the pseudonym stag
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: r Lee. And it is the very stereotypical narrative about
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: black people that these publishers are like gobbling up. So
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, there's deadbeat Dad's guns crack. And as he
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: writes this book, two characters come to life. One of
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: them is played by Keith David, And there's this really
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: fun scene where like Monk is kind of talking to
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: them of like negotiating some of the dialogue that they
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: would say in some of the descriptions. It's very very funny.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And in the in the in Erasure, like he writes
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the whole book like my Pathology just appears in the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: middle of Erasure, and it is like, well, really really
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: really intense. And I think, like, and this isn't a
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: criticism of the movie, because it's like you, how would
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you do that? And also would you really want to?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I think that he like adapts it really really well.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: But the like amount of horrific stuff that happens in
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the book within a book that is then responded to
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: really positively by like the white literary crowd, is like,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: it is pretty horrific.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: There are so I don't want to get too far
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: ahead of the recap, but I just want to point
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: out that right after the scene where he is talking
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: to his characters from the book, he is sitting on
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: the bed playing on his phone, and it's just before
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: he talks to his agent, but he's sitting on there
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: playing on his phone and a TV shows it says
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: black Stories Month, and it then shows a preview of
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: the stories that month, and these were actual movies, and
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: they showed scenes from Boys in the Hood, Twelve Years
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: of Slave, k New Jack City, and Precious, and I wrote, Yikes,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: seeing all of them as clips together is actually kind
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: of wild because they picked them in a certain way
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: that shows like, you know, the brother getting shot in
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Boys in the Hood, Precious running with her baby, twelve
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: years of Slave running from the slave masters, all of
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: that together and it's like Black Stories Month, which is
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: just such a good little punctuation on what the story
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: that Coor Jefferson is telling here. It was just like
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: just a little bit of an easter egg. I really enjoyed.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what the senior talking about.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: And the one clip that I recognized the most was
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: from Precious, Yeah, because I was like, wait, is that
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: from Precious, which is the movie that I kept thinking
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: of over and over again when characters would reference black
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: tragedy porn movies. Yes, and like white audience's response to
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: that being like, oh my god, it's the most important
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: film of a generation, and Oscar's Oscars Oscars.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: It's also what the book is kind of written in
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: conversation with originally, because the like push but wait the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Precious based on the Novelshire was just like printed on
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: my brain. But the novel by Sapphire, which was called Push,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: came out in nineteen ninety six, and I think was
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: like part of what inspired Perceval Everett to write this
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: in the first place, was like like not taking issue
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: with the novel's existence, but with its embracing Like I
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: think that that's it's It seems like that's a lot
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of where the character Satara comes from. Is Satara Sapphire,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I think it was an amalgamation. But yes,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: I think that because I was thinking as soon as
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: you said Precious, immediately thought about for colored girls. I'm
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: just thinking about there's just like a list of these
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: kind of very traumatic works that have come from multiple
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: authors that have all of a sudden been celebrated in
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: a way that never made me quite feel that good.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: I remember there's a there's a there was a film
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: that came.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: Out a few years ago.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I completely forgot the name of it, but it was
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: about a black guy getting shot by the cops. And
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: I remember several white folks was like, have you seen
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: this film to me? And I was just like, no,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: but I've seen the countless amount of videos of black
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: people being shot by the cops, So I certainly don't
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: need a dramatization of it. I don't, and I don't
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: think that's an important film for me to see. So
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: I hope you enjoy it, though, and I hope that
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: it pushes you forward in your politics.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Or whatever are you talking about? Was it called the
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: hate you give?
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: Yes? The hate you give? Yes? Thank you. That's exactly
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: what it was.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: That you knew what I was talking about. Yes, But
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: I remember everyone's like, have you seen the hate you Give?
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, never, will, won't read the book.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: I get it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: I don't need to see a play about like the
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: famous life from Euphoria. Is this play about us?
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: Like I don't. I don't need, I don't need to
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: actually see.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: It, right, yes? Okay. So Monk finishes the book My
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Pathology and sends it to his agent Arthur to send
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: out two publishers. Not because Monk wants to sell the book,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: more to show the publishers how ridiculous and racist they're
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: being with their expectations of black writers. But a publisher
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: loves the book and wants to buy it and offers
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Monk a huge advance.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: Before you proceed, Can I say one thing? Yeah?
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: So o.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: He's talking to his agent, and his agent says that
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: his agent is resistant to him about this. He says,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't do this. I don't think this is a
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: good idea. Monk has tried to push ahead. Monk says
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: something like, you know, I want to show them. I
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: want to rub their faces in it is. An agent
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: says back to him one of the hardest hitting lines
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I've ever heard about white folks. He says, white people
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: think that they want the truth, but they don't. They
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: just want to be absolved. And I I said, this
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: is canon. They need to put it everywhere. They need
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: to put it on billboards. This is like to me,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: it's practice. You could teach college courses just about this,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: because it's the hardest thing. As matter of fact, you
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: could fill in this with any sort of marginalized spectrum.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: If you go to one side of it, you could
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: replace white people with a lot of things. You say,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: men think they want the truth. They don't, but they
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: just want to be absolved. There's so many ways that
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: this fits. Because everyone thinks that they're the exception to
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: the rule. They never assume that they're also part of
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the problem, and they want to be told. They want
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: to read works like this and be told that they're
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: not part of the problem, that they're not the bad gentrifier,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: that they want to be told that over and over again,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: that they're they're the right man, you know what I mean.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: So I've read that, I was like, oh my god,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: this is and I still don't understand how that line
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: is not like laminated and put in like schools and
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: like and god we trust.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: No, just that there's still time, there's still time, You're sorry,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, And I feel like it's that's in conversation
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: with like why are so many stories about marginalized people
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: taking place in the distant past, And I think that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that is like there it is kind of this like
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: anesthetizing effect of like, well, people used to be so horrible,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: but you're fine, you're great, or like we talk about
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: all the time on the show like the like patriarchy
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the guy kind of character, which is like showing a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: man who's the worst man. So if you're a man
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: watching it, you're not as bad as that guy, so
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: you're probably fine. You know. It's like it's it's like
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: we see you, we see what you're doing, and Core
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Jefferson does too.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this movie does a really good job
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: of showing, you know, well meaning but ultimately clueless white people.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Who even know if they're well meaning. Honestly, I think
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: it's like they're capitalists.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: For sure on the publishers. I guess what it is
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: is this movie shows does a good job of showing
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: the difference between white people caring about equity and black
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: liberation and white people not wanting to seem racist. Right,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: All the white people we see in this movie fall
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: in the latter category.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, and they're all getting a cut too, Like I
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: don't think like no one is doing this out of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: the goodness of their heart. They're like opportunistic and like
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I can appear to be not racist
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and make ten percent of like you know, it's just
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: it's ugly.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: It's I think it's brilliantly nuanced in this film, because
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: later in the film there is a line about nuance
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: that comes up, and there is a line about listening
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: to black voices that comes up, which we'll get to.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: But this film just stays firmly in the conversation of saying, Hey,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: there's this thing that we're doing with race that is
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: becoming as problematic as all of the original problems that
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: you think that we resolved about race. And I feel
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: like for this movie to say this in twenty twenty
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: three is kind of all of these kind of parallel
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: narratives that happen during what we assume to be progress,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: especially in the United States, and the people are writing
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: and saying, Hey, this other thing is happening, and everyone's like, ah,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: we're not really worried about that so much. So I
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: really appreciate when a movie like this or any like
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: creative work just plainly states it in this way, even
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: though it doesn't always necessarily get heard.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: For sure, Yeah, absolutely so.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Monk is offered this huge advance for this book. He
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to sell it because he knows that it's trash,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: but his mother's medical bills are piling up, so he
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: takes a call with a publisher, and at the encouragement
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: of his agent, Arthur, he puts on this different persona
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: to make him see more like hood to match the
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: vibe of the book. The publisher doesn't know that stagg
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: r Lee is felonious Ellison, and then Arthur adds the
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: detail that Stagg can't use his real name because he's
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: a wanted fugitive from the law. Meanwhile, Monk has started
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: seeing Coraline. He invites her over for dinner to meet
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: his mom. This is my favorite becdo test passing moment.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this is the one that you
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: were talking about, Jamie, where Monk's mother, Agnes says, I'm
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: so glad you're not white, and Coraline says.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Me too too, and you're just like wow. That is
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: a very powerful exchange.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Because we learned a little a little bit later that
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: other women that Monk has dated were white, and his
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: family had some thoughts about the women. Yeah, so that
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: line gets contextualized a little bit more, but it's still
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: so funny.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: It's also like meta commentary on like the type of
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: black person that the Lonius Ellison is without being super overt.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: In those conversations, we're learning more about him because we
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: only see him with a black woman in this film.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: We don't see him with any other race of woman,
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: which is just funny to hear other folks talk about it,
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: because it just it tells us who he was or
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: how he's been perceived in the past was just another layer,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: because this is also a black man that says, I
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: don't even really believe in race, which immediately.
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: I'm like, I know who you are. I know you are,
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: and I hate you, but I know who you are.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: You're very smart, but I hate your guts.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the author of the has conundrum correct.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, So one night Agnes goes missing. They quickly
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: find her walking around on the beach, but it's a
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: sign that she needs constant supervision, so Monk puts her
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: in an assisted living facility. Then Monk gets a call
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: from a guy from something called the Literary Awards saying
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: that they realized their panel of judges is not very
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: diverse and they're trying to fix that. So they want
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: to know if Monk will be one of the judges,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: and he reluctantly agrees and finds out that Centaura Golden
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: is one of the other judges and Monk is like her.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Then Monk has a meeting with this guy Wiley played
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: by Adam Brody, a Hollywood director who's interested in adapting
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: his book. So Monk has to put on the stag
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Lee persona again for a meeting with Wiley, and Wiley
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: is super impressed with him. He thinks he's the real deal.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: So Wiley offers four million, Right, what does that mean?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Adam Brody has had a very fun kind of filmography
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: in the Cult where he just kind of pops up
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: every once in a while and you're like, all right,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: he pops up.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: He usually plays an abhorn.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember. It was he and promising young
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: woman like who was he was a piece of shit
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and something else.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: Recently, think nobody wants this. I think that's the big
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: I think you would get on.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I don't want it. I'm not interesting, but I do.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he he's great at playing a piece of shit.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It's nice when an actor knows how punchable their own faces.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: My question for that though, was like, do you do
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: you think that I assume that he's aware of the
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: character that he's playing, But then it makes me it
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: goes back to say, do you think that he's like, well,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: I'm not this guy. Do you think that he has
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: to be in touch with that guy a little bit
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: in order to actually.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Embody that guy?
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a part of me that's like, humm, but
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I only think that to say, he played the role
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: very well, and I just hope that it's not in
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: him he did.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a really good I don't know, I
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: was thinking about that on this viewing where it's like
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: most of the white characters we encounter are so highly
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: satirized and so like completely brain unplugged that you do
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: kind of wonder, like how are the actors engaging with
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the material and like, and I also like wonder about
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: white audience members seeing this movie and being like, oh, well,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not that so I'm I'm probably fine, you know.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But also there are so many white people who
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: are exactly like every single white person we see in
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: this movie, so like, right, it's not even satire. And
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: then for the actors, well, you hear about actors who
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: often play villains or assholes, and then they turn out
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: to be a monstrous person themselves, and you're like, oh, yeah,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: you weren't really even acting then, you were just kind
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: of being yourself.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: But right, well, it's like it's like Jeremy Iyern.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: It's like that. But then there are also actors who
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: usually play a villain, but by all accounts, they're like
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: the nicest person you've ever met, and it's just that
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: they're a really good actor. For example, Alfred Molina often plays.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: A villain Malina, but and he's a friend to all,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: including us.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: He's our best friend, so I call him mal al Yeah,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Freddy Freddie Molina our best friend.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I love so much, Freddy Freddie Molina our beloved.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, so who knows Adam Brody. We don't know
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: if he's a nice or not in real life, but anyway,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: he is so impressed with stagg Lee and thinks he's
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: so authentic, and he offers four million dollars for the
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: movie rights. Then Monk and Arthur talked to the publishers
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: again about selling the book and like marketing it, and
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Monk is like, I can't believe they like this shit.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: This is so absurd, and so to fuck with them,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: he says that he wants to change the title of
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: the book to simply the word fuck, and the publishers
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: are like, yeah, okay, that's a great idea, that's so brave,
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: let's do it.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, So the book Fuck is published and debuts at
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Monk
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: discovers the core line has a copy of it and
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: that she has read it and liked it, and he's like, well,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: what did you like about it? It's reductive slop because
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: he has not told her that he is Staglee and
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: that he wrote the book. Pretty much no one knows
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: except for his agent. And then they get into an
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: argument and she calls him out for being like pretentious
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: and cold and shut off and for acting like an asshole,
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: and it seems like they break up. Then Monk receives
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: a copy of Fuck, which had been submitted to the
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Literary Awards, which means that he and the other judges
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: will have to evaluate it, and he's like, God, damn it. Meanwhile,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: the family's housekeeper, Lorraine, is getting married to this guy
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: named Maynard. They have their wedding by the beach house.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Monk walks Lorraine down the aisle. It's very sweet. Also,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Monk's brother Cliff is back in town. He's on this
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: like horny bender because this is his first time having
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: gay relationships, so he's making up for lost time. Yes, exactly.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Quick side note could ask a question, of course of y'all.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: As soon as I saw the scene with the judges
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: of the Literary Award. I knew who Monk was on
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: that judging pedal. I we already understand whose character is.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: We're learning who Sintaura is. However, the three white characters
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: are all to me, I felt like excellently picked and
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: portrayed in terms of the spectrum of whiteness and how
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: whiteness would interact on this panel and what it would
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: look like for them to build this panel. And I'm
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: curious for y'all to see these three white people. Did
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: any of them? Did any of them stand out to you?
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: They have a white woman and two white men, and
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: I'm curious, were any of you did they ping your
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: brain at all? Seeing these three white folks in particular?
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, I mean I guess when I was
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: referring to like sometimes well meaning white people, et cetera,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: et cetera, I had that the white woman in mind
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: for that, because you know, she seems like a pretty
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: typical like liberal white woman.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah who, And let's be honest, like we've been this
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: white woman before. Like absolutely, I think like I think
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that there is an element to that character specifically, even
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: though it's like broadly drawn and like, oh yeah, that's
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: like I've there's been notes of me in that before,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and it's like, I think that's like part of what
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: makes the movie effective is like you should be seeing
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: shades of yourself in characters like that. And then like
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the one of the older white guys too, was like,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I don't even know like how to describe what it is,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: but it feels very like, oh, like a professor who
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: is like trying to relate with a black student and
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: being overly familiar and the vocabulary is weird and like
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and you're just like, whatever this is, it's not working.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And yeah, no, I mean they all felt familiar. And
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: then in the case of the white woman, I was like, oh, no,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: is this me in twenty sixteen? I know, yeah, yeah,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: maybe some early Bechdel Cast episodes.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is very true. And then there
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: was the third person, the other white man who seems
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: to be like a libertarian.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's exactly what he was, That's exactly what Yeah.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, well that's the guy who calls Monk, and
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: it's pretty blunt about like, hey, we're asking you to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: do this because you're a black writer, and like Monk
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: is like awesome, cool. That feels no that's a different guy.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, they all blurred together.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Abo.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, because that guy.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Those two guys blurred together for me.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, no, totally different guy. The guy who like
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: runs the Literary Awards is the one who calls Monk,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and he's the one who's like, we just noticed that
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: our panel of judges has never been diverse, so can
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you be on it, Monk? And I love his response.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: He says, I'm honored you'd choose me out of all
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: the black writers you could go to out of fear
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: of being called racist. And Monk is being very facetious
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: in that moment, but the white guy does not pick
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: up on it at all, and he's like, yeah, you're
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: very welcome.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Well, And I also love how particular to like who
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: we know Monk to be. Is that what sells him
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: on it? Is like, well, yeah, we can't pay a lot,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: and we are like making it clear to you why
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: we're asking you to do it, but you'll get to
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: talk as much shit as you want. And he's like,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I'll do it, Yes, I'm.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: In the I just want to point out the other
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: part that this movie does well is I just and
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: you probably you'll probably know like being as the originators
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: of the Bechdel Cast podcast, you probably know that there's
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: a movie out there that will show you all the
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: different types of men that if you were to interact
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: with all of them in one day, you would definitely
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: go home being like, I don't ever want to see
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: a man again in my life. And the thing is,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: each of them individually aren't that bad. But if you
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: had to talk to all of them in one day,
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: you'd be like, no, get him out of here. This
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: movie does that for white folks, because if you go
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: from beginning to end and talk to each one of
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: these individual white fil I'm talking Philip on the beach,
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: the three professors in the beginning of the Junges at
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: the end, all, if you go through all of them,
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: you'd be like, oh, I will be hanging out with
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Coraline by the beach and not talking to a white
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: person ever.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: Again.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: I think that's that's very hard to manage, that type
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: of like nuance and saying hey, individually, I love all
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: these folks together, y'all gotta stop, right.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I Mean, I'm just like and I don't know, like
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: what the adaptation is there, but just even like looking
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: at core Jefferson's career. It's like I would wager, I
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: guess that there's a lot of his own experience in
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: those exchanges, because it's like this guy was in the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: room for Succession, you know, like there, you have to
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: imagine that you're like and I'm a succession lover, I'm
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a succession booster. But you have to imagine being a
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: black writer on Succession was maybe not the easiest job
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: one of the whitest shows ever committed.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: To the good place then Succession in both of them
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: in terms of and I'm saying, like you, these are
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: both good. I love both of these shows, to be clear,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: I think they're great. But to be a black person
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: in the room for either of those I imagine. Because
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: then he follows that up with the watch with Watchman.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: With Watchman but which is run by Damon lindelof which
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I mean famously famously and.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: So like, I just I don't know.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, I want, maybe they exist. I didn't
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: have time to listen to a ton of core Jefferson interviews,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: but like I want, I want the memoir.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: Really, I have a ton of follow up questions for
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: him on this.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: He most recently wrote on the New IT series too.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I was like Range, Range, which was supposed to be
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: really good. I didn't watch it.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah me either Welcome to Dairy or something, which I
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: always get confused with Dairy Girls. I'm like, oh, is
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: it set in that same place? And it's not.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a crossover.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I'll watch anything with Bill Scar's card. I'll do it.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: I'll do it.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: I'll do anything for that man. Scary clowns included.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: To be clear, it's not a crossover. I just if
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: this makes the podcast please.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: People are hitting the reddit like, wait a second, wait
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: a minute, Welcome.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: It's called a joke. Okay. So Lorraine and Maynard's wedding happens.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Then the five judges for the Literary Awards gather to
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: figure out who to like give the main award to,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: and they discuss the book Fuck and the white judges
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: love it. Sintaura and Monk are like, no, it's bad.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: And then there's a scene where Monk and Sintaura talk
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: about her book and like literature in general, I want
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: to more closely look at this scene during our discussion
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: because I like wrote out the entire thing and I
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: want to talk all about it. But basically, she makes
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: some points that he perhaps hadn't fully considered, and then
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: we see him call his agent and set up another
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: meeting with that Hollywood guy Wiley because Monk has a
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: new idea, which we will soon find out about. In
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: the meantime, despite Monk and Centaur's protests, the three white
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: judges for the literary awards decide to give Fuck the
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: first place, like Book of the Year or whatever award.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Can I ask something bizarre and annoying? Sorry? What was that?
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: I was trying to remember? And I couldn't find it
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: in my notes because my ever note has now been
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: dominated by AI and I can't find shit. What was
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: the name of the husband's book in Past Lives? And
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: was it also fuck?
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it was like Boner or something.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: It was called like peep? Like what was it called?
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I was not able to figure it out because it
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: only appears in a couple of shots. But I remember
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: that we really appreciated, like, He's like, it's my debut novel.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: It's called Boner.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: Wow?
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, wow?
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Were there two novels named called fuck in twenty twenty three? No,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: there was Fuck and Knowner.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I celebrate that.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Something to note when they when they are having this conversation,
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: and this was like kind of like the when I
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: was thinking about the different types of white folks. It
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: says they when they decide that they are going to
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: do it. And this is first of all genius the
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: way they set this up. The black folks are sitting
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: on one side of the table, there's two of them.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: The white folks are sitting on the other. And as
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: they decide that it's that fuck is going to win.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Way to decide that that's the winner. The woman judge
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: I forgot her name, she turns to the table and
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: she says, it's not just that it's affecting. I just
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: think that it's essential to listen to black voices right now.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: And the camera shot just shows the three white people
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: looking at the two black people who just said, we
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: don't want to pick this book.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: I write Chef's Kiss beautiful. That's how you that.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: It was incredibly frustrating. I don't feel any resolution there,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: but thanks for at least they put it in a
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: way that if you're white and you saw that scene,
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: you had to be like, oh no, am I in
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: this picture?
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: No, The irony in that moment is I mean, it's
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: a it's a it's a funny visual joke, and then
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: it's also just like damn, yeah, this this is how
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: white people are, so yeah they they Despite Centaura and
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Monk's protests, the three white judges decide to give Fuck
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: the Book of the Year award. Monk is like, ugh,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I guess and he he invites Coraline to be his
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: date at the awards ceremony, but she does not respond.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: She has not been replying to his texts. Then we
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: cut to the ceremony. Coreline shows up. Fuck is announced
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: as the winner, and Monk goes to the stage and
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: is presumably about to reveal himself as stag r Lee,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: but then we cut to black and we realize that
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: this is part of his screenplay that Monk has written
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: and is showing Wiley, and Wiley is like, well, that
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: can't be the ending. This is unresolved. You know, the
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: character of Monk should say something.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: It almost this is like obviously very very different material,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: but it is kind of giving the end of Greta
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Gerwig Little Women too, where oh my gosh, yeah where
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: It's like, wait, how should it end? I don't know?
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't. I don't know why I
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: didn't connect that the first time I saw it. But
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh wait, that's actually very similar, very similar,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: hunting to very different movies.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: You talk about what guy was very confused by the
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: ending of Little Women, a movie that I very much enjoyed,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: but I had to google eight thick pieces before I wait,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: what does that mean?
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: That was? I have to I haven't seen since it
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: came out, have to return. I do remember the think
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: pieces back when? Do you remember we were still publishing things,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty nineteen it was a sim more time.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: I missthink pieces, bring them back.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were people, weeople were gettingaid upwards of fifty dollars.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: First.
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: Remember when we used to publish things. I was gonna say,
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: you remember when we used to think.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Vaguely?
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: It's true. Now we just thinking rooms by ourselves and
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: say never mind, never mind.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Or people have chat GBT think for them and we
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: need to see it and chat GBT says, no more thinking,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: no more thinking, no more, no more. But no, I
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: didn't make that connection at all. But yeah, at the
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: end of Little Women twenty nineteen, Yes, it's sir, sha
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Ronan's character, Oh my gosh, who just play Joe pitching
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: her book to a publisher and he's being like, no,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: I don't like that ending. Make it. I think he
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: wants it to be like more like neatly resolved.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's like to justify why the actual ending
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of Little Women is like, and then Joe got married
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: and she was pretty happy, right, that's like so like
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: you're like, wait, Joe March, who we understand is clearly
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: a queer woman.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, she marries a man. Okay, yeah right. Anyways, anyway,
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: so Wiley is like, this ending is no good. So
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Monk pitches this ending at the awards ceremony, where Monk
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: runs out and he goes to Coreline's house to apologize
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: and try to make up with her, and Wiley is like, nah,
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: that makes the whole movie feel too much like a
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: rom com. That's not what we're going for. So then
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Monk is like what about this. At the awards ceremony,
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Monk the character goes up to accept the award, but
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: just then the FBI comes in because they've been after
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: stag Leave since they heard that he was a wanted criminal,
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: and they shoot and kill Monk, not realizing that Staglee
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: is not a real person.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: He's also holding a transparent trophy in his hand that
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: is clearly not good and they say.
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: Which I was like, Oh that's beautiful. Yes, it's going
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: to go Cord.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: You did it, You did it.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: So then we cut back to Wiley and he's like, yes,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: this idea is perfect, let's shoot it. And then the
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: movie ends with Monk on a studio lot. They're gonna
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: make the movie that he wrote, and he gets in
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: the car with Cliff and makes a joke about Tyler Perry.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: The end, Cliff has a different haircut, which made me wonder.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't know if this was production or storytelling. Is
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: this you lost Stirlely Kate Brown. We had to do
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: a reshoot and he had a different haircut, and we
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: were just like, oh, that's fine, or is this storytelling?
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: Are you telling me that there's other parts of the
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: story that weren't as we knew them. I remember I
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: thought that for a moment and I just put it
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: out of my mind. I was like, maybe it's nothing.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know what y'all thought.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: Here's here's my head cannon. Because I noticed the different haircut.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: So he has been making new gay friends and lovers. Yeah,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: and I feel like one of them is like, let's
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: give you a makeover.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Gotcha new haircut, name name that works. Yeah. I guess
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I was just I wasn't thinking about the haircut. That
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: was a failure on my part. I was just like, wow, yay,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I loved.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Him anyway, Well that's the movie. Let's take another quick
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: break and we'll come back to discuss.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: And we're back back.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: I want to pick up where we left off about
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: him talking to the producer. There's a line that Wiley
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: says where he basically says, when he's talking about the endings,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: he says, Nuance doesn't put asses in theater seats. And
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: that felt incredibly meta because this is a very nuanced film,
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: a very nuanced film, and I feel like even the
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: way that he ended, I remember at the time that
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: I originally watched it thinking, is this a bit of
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: a cop out? Are you not just going to tell
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: us how this story ends? Or is it a safe
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: is it a safety move for you to just be
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: like So I just walked out of the awards, never
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: talked to Coroline again, and now I'm pitching a movie
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: to you. All the problems here are solved. We're driving
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: off into the sunset. But I remember watching it this
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: time and feeling a lot more satisfied, probably because I
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: had nothing to expect. I kind of already knew where
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: it was going, so I had no more expectations of
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: the film. But that line, nuance doesn't put asses in
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: theater seats. I was just like, Yeah, that's that's true.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: That's that's production right now in Hollywood.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: That's like, no, we can't. We can't do the risky
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: nuance thing. We have to someone has to win or
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: lose at the end.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Even though like whenever someone does do the risky nuance thing,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: people go to see it, which is like the lesson
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: we learned over and over and over and over. But
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: you know, you're just like told repeatedly people don't want this,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and it's like, well, then why do they keep exactly
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: going to see it?
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Thinking about although I mean this, like you said, Ronald,
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: this is a nuanced film and it only earned twenty
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: three million dollars at the box office on a ten
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: million dollar budget.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: So like with an Oscar campaign, the point is kind.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Of being proven, right, I mean It got tons of awards,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: recognition and nominations, but a lot of people didn't see it,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: at least not in theaters.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: I wonder how wide the release ended up being too.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I live in Burbank, where there's a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: million AMCs. I'm living a very spoiled lifestyle. I can
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: see whatever the hell I want. I saw. I saw
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Peter Hujar's Day by accident. That's how good things are here.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Wait what you saw?
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: What? Literally? There's well, it's a Ben Wishaw movie about
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: a historical figure. I was not aware of a queer
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: photographer named Peter Hujar. I forget what movie I was
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: trying to see, but I went into the wrong movie
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: theater and then I just randomly saw Peter Hujar's Day,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, what perfank?
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: Why did I just imagine you sitting there eating your
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: popcorn being like, man, this slaps?
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: What is this? I was? It was definitely you know,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: like when you just like have a Sunday and you're like,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just the world's gonna happen to me today. Yeah,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: because I forget what I might I think I was
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: trying to see Blue Moon, and then I still I
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: feel confident that I was directed to the wrong theater
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: because I've never done this before. And then like ten
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: minutes in, I was like, I don't think Ethan Hawk
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: is coming. I think this is a But then I
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: stayed and then you're saying, good, Yeah.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: That's great. I went to go see Nickel Boys and
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: theaters and turns out I walked into the wrong theater
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: because suddenly Tofer Grace was on screen. And then I
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: realized I was watching that movie. I think it was
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: called flight Plan or something.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: It's called flight Risk. Flight Risk, Yes, WHOA what a
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: different film.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: And then I was like, I don't think tof for
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Grace is in Nickel Boys.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, that is an abrupt shift.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Mark Wahlberg shows up Bald and you're like, what's
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: going on?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mark Wahlberg Bald movie, The Bald, the Mark
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Boldberg movie a Berg.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: I got like three minutes into it, I was like,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm in the right movie. And then
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: I got up and walked into the correct movie and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: saw on Nickel Boys.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: But I took it as a sign from the universe.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: I was like, the universe wants me to see Peter
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Hujar's Day and it didn't make it.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say the universe was taking care
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: of you probably, and like they were like, eh, you're
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: not in a blue Moon mood.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Come see the oone and I will say, like I
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: did see Blue Moon later, and I like Peter Hujar's
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Day better. I would recommend it if anyone wants to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: learn about Uh. And it's great. It's Ben Wishaw and
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Rebecca Hall and they're the only two people in the movie.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, nice anyway, Anyways, American fiction.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I wanted to just really quickly close the loop on adaptation. Yeah. Uh.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Personal Everett was like, uh, it was interesting. I was like, oh,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: what a scary thing that Core Jefferson like did a
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: special screening for Personval Everett and was like it was
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: the scariest thing that has ever happened, like being like, hey,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I adapted your you know, and Personal Evert was not
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: really involved in the production and there are a lot
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: of changes made and he like didn't really say anything
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: about it. Personal Evert's like he's fun to read his
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: interviews because he's he's a weird He's a weird man.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Where he's like, I don't know, it's like sort of
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: it's twenty five years later. It's kind of removed. I
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: feel removed from it. And then he just like spends
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the rest of the interviews showing the writer a bunch
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: of paintings he's working on, so he's an artiste. But
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the changes that are made are generally ones that move
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: focused towards the family, because the book is like a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: bit a good chunk of the book is fuck or
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: my pathology, and like, the family elements are all preserved
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: from the book, but they're definitely expanded on in a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: way that it was interesting reading different critics and writers
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: takes on. The one thing that I did want to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: point out that was like a significant change that I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: like don't quite understand is the changes with Lorraine's character,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: where in the book there is a pretty significant class
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: tension between Lorraine and the Ellisons that is mostly done
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: away with in the movie. And again it's like not
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that I'm like I want to see a like an
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: unhappy class dynamic in this family, but yeah, like it's
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: the story with Lorraine I think is like far there's
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: not really as much friction in it as there was
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: in the book in a movie that otherwise is like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: very down to deal with class.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: It felt like they season the movie with kind of
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: the spectrum of blackness, which I appreciate, saying like there
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: are different types of black people. These are one type
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: of black people, and here's a different type. And I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: feel like it was you have to be paying attention
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: in some porsches to really get that, whether it's the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: interactions between Lorraine and the family, the fact that she
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: works for them and they are calling her family, and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: also the way they are treating her as someone who
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: works for them is almost like an auntie. It's very
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: anti coded, it's very Grandma Codedy. It feels very familiar.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: But there's an interaction that happens between Maynard and a
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: monk that I want to point out where Maynard is
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: basically he does something that I've seen black folks do
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: when they know that you are doing well and they
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: then make a suggestion to you about what you should
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: do with your career, and the suggestion denotes no knowledge
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: of how any of this works. When he looks Disband
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: in his face and says cis and he goes it's
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: a pretty popular show.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: You should write for it, and I want it to
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: be like, I don't.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: Know what y'all think happens at the successful levels of
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: being a writer, and he is a moderately successful writer.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't mean that you could just walk into
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: a TV writer's room and start writing for television.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Hello, I would like to write for ncis exactly.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I'm like, if you got that job, he'd probably love it,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: to be honest with you, but I remember thinking about
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: that as being a notable distinction about what types of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: black folks these are, which for me, it's like, if
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: you're around a lot of black people, you would notice that,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: but it might not be something that is kind of
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: as highlighted as you mentioned that it was.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: In the book.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that the closest it got
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: to really calling out the class dynamic word like they
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: are very close, but also they are her employers, and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: like the lines are clearly very murky, even though everybody
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: loves each other. It's during one of Monk and Cliff's
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: many like tense interactions about money, so again it's like
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: they need enough money to send their mother to a facility,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: and there is the class dynamic of like part of
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: why Monk you know, compromises his creativity so severely is
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: because he needs money, and like you know, it's very present.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: But there's like that little exchange where Monk is like,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: can you, like, can you contribute so that we can
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: take care of mom? And he's like, well, I don't know,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: like you could always just fire Lorraine, And I was like, uh, okay,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: So there's the line. So it's like acknowledged and never again.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I understand like why those decisions
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: are made. But it did make sense to me that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: that was like expanded upon in the book, like that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: tension of like, yes, we do consider you a member
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: of our family, but there are these like dynamics where
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: she was spoken about behind her back as expendable.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Basically I will say he did respond and say she's family. Yeah,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: I put a button on that like which which which?
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: Try? I put it down real quick and it's funny.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Well, then the other part if you think about the
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: fact that she marries Maynard and then no longer is
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: living in this life of servitude because marriage is the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: thing that gets her out of that life, which I mean,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: there's something to be said there about the terms of
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: like her class changed, Yeah, my marriage, which is an
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: old school way of thinking, but it's also very true
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: for a lot of women generally, and especially in some
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: cases for black women.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Right, And it's like again, I'm like, it's so And
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: maybe it's because like Percival Everet's writing style is so
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: like uh like pointy. That's a terrible adjective, but like
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: very like blunt. That having those plot points like present
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: but not quite as blunt was like interesting because yeah,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I mean it's we live in a society, and I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: was like, God, I just wish we knew a little
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: bit more about like Lorraine's interior life. I love that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: she gets a love story and that she is like
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: celebrated and like surrounded by people who love her. But yeah,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I think that was like really the only thing in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: this movie that I was like, I wonder why we
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: didn't get into that a little bit more because money
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: in class are like very much on the table for
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: this whole movie.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, I was gonna say that. I
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: did really appreciate the movie sets aside time to show
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: a romance between Lorraine and Maynard, because you almost never
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: see an on screen love story between two older people,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: let alone to older black people. So the fact that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: that's there was very refreshing. Yeah, the class situation there
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: did feel skimmed over.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, like one movie can't do anything, but I
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: just because it was dealt with in the source material,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: felt worth mentioning for sure.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: Also, there's a part where they're talking about what it's
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: going to cost per month for Agnes to live in
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: assisted living, and different numbers get thrown around, but it's
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: going to cost at least like five thousand dollars a month,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: which is so much money, and Cliff says something like, well,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't Medicare take care of that? And Monk goes like, well,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: that's not how it works. You're a doctor, shouldn't you
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: know that? And he's like, man, I know. But like
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: that also felt so real for me because the number
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: of doctors I've talked to who don't seem to understand
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: how like insurance and billing works, and they completely they're like, oh,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: you can't afford this, well darn, I don't know. Can
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: you call your insurance company? And it's just like, why
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: don't you know this?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're very That's.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: A tiny, tiny moment, but yeah, I wanted to point
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: that out for sure, I.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Mean, and it is. It is a nice facility. And
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: I did appreciate that they put actual numbers in there too,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: because for people who have never I mean including myself,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: like I've never had been involved in the finances of
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: helping a relative get into a facility, and like having
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: those numbers, like as blunt as they are, I feel
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: like it's always a good thing. Yeah, because it's terrifying.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: You're like, Yeah, who the fuck can afford that? Everyone
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: would have to sell out their morals and write their
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: version of fuck to be able to afford that.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Truly. Yeah, can we talk about the other women in
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: this story, Jamie? You alluded to this already, but to me,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: it felt like I don't think the characters were undercooked,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: but it felt like a lot of the storylines either
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: kind of went unresolved or they just sort of tapered off,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: or we didn't get as much emphasis on the characters
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: who are women as I would have liked. But as
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: we said, like, Lisa's such a great character, I know,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: but then she has an untimely death corline. I also
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: really enjoy her as a character, and I don't mind
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: that she doesn't that like she and Monk don't make
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: up because he was being a fucking asshole and she
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't owe him anything, she doesn't have to forgive him,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: and in the scope of this story that we see
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: on screen, she doesn't forgive him and there isn't any
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: closure there, which again is fine, but also then that
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: means her character just sort of disappears.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Well. It's also when we get information about her at
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: the beginning, like in her introductory scene basically where like
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: she is a lawyer. She talks about like how she
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: feels about the ethics of defending, like being a public
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: defender defending guilty people. We find out that she is
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: in the process of like either a long term relationship
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: or a divorce like happening. But I wouldn't say any
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: of that information is relevant in future scenes, Like I
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: appreciate that we learn things about her, but it is
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: not really plot relevant information, which is always kind of
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: like a tiny red flag for me and writing women
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: characters in the modern day, where it's like, oh, we
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: can't tell you nothing about her, Let's just tell you
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter. You're like, okay,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: it's a little thing. But I was like I liked
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: getting to know her at the first scene and then
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: but then she does sort of just become a girlfriend
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: for the remainder of the movie, I.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: Think for me, in contrast to Tracy Ellis Ross, who
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: comes in strong and is abruptly taken away from us,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: the way that Rika Alexander is introduced is kind of
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: is a little bit more. It's she's she's mixed in
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: a little bit more like we get some of her,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: we get more of her, and we get more and
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: more of her until we get basically get less of
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: her towards the end.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: And I feel like there's and maybe this is.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: Because I love these women so much in terms of
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: their bodies of work that for me, I'm like, I'm
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: just every time they're on screen, I'm happy to see them,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: which kind of made me not think nearly as much
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: about the ways in which they were, in some cases
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: used or underdeveloped as plot devices for the journey that
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: Monk is going on, because there's there's no reason for
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: you to make a movie like this and not be
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: able to have fully fleshed out women characters that are
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: doing something. But it seemed like all of the women
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: were doing one thing collectively for Monk, whereas it was
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: about his relationship with his mother, his relationship with Lorraine,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: his relationship with his sister, and his relationship with Erica,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: and all of those served one purpose as opposed to
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: breaking them out and making them a lot more unique.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: In terms of a feat of casting, watching this film,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: I loved seeing all of these women, But in terms
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: of the story, it is a little bit like, hmm,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: there could have been more here, But I don't know
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: how I would fix it if I were him, because
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: that's not the story that he wanted to tell, right Well.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: I mean a lot of movies that do what this
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: movie is doing, which is, you know, examining some societal
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: issue or satirizing something or you know, putting some societal
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: ill under the magnifying glass. A lot of movies that
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: do that will criticize it, but then ultimately still end
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: up doing the thing because of the way the story
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: is told or whatever. This movie doesn't do that because,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: in addition to providing the commentary about underdeveloped and stereotypical
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: Black characters in media, it also avoids the stereotypes and
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: develops its characters and gives all of those characters interior lives.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: And arcs, even though you know some of them are small,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: but that's the thing, Like they're little subplots in a
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: larger story that is about Monk and his work. Right,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: So I feel like this is one of the few
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: movies I have seen actually that like doesn't criticize or
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: satirize the thing and then also end up doing the
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: bad thing. So it can be done for sure. I
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: feel like we've come up We've talked about a lot
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: of movies like that on this podcast, where it's like, well,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: it's like criticizing the thing, but it's also still doing
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: the thing. But this movie doesn't do that, and I
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: appreciate that. And so yeah, the fact that we get
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: like we get a little arc for Cliff a queer
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: black man, we get an arc for for Coraline, and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: it's in the context of her relationship with Monk, but
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: you know, there we get to know her character a bit.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: We get a small arc for Agnes kind of again,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: that's that feels like it goes sort of unresolved.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: But well, I think they assume that money money solves
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: that problem, so right, they're like, if if he has
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: more money, then obviously this problem is solved, which is
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: we we don't get the full resolution, especially because we
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: think about the same between Agnes and Cliff with they're
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: dancing in the in the home and she says she
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: says to him, I knew you wasn't queer or something
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: like that where I was just like, oh my god,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: and and and sterly Kate Brown acts it so well
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: as he wells up with tears and leaves, but we
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: don't really get a resolution there either. But you also
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: get an understanding of why maybe he doesn't want to
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: be around his mother, even if she does have Alzheimer's.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: But you're right, it's not since we don't see her anymore.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: Even though she has these like lines where she's like
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: saying such profound things like she talked about her husband
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: and says and says like that, there's a story in
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: there when she says I knew he was cheating on me,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: and he goes, why did you leave her?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: Leave him?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: And she says, I do, he would be too lonely
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: if I left. I was like, Yo, that is wow,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: I know so much there.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: You know, Boomers, Boomers, what we do see in these
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: characters feels so familiar with what we all experience as
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: humans in our relationships with our family and our romantic relationships,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: and even if they seem like they go unresolved in
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: the context of a story, that's also how a lot
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: of relationships end up like they There isn't like a neat,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: tidy resolution. There isn't like this amazing closure. So because
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: we get so much insight into these characters and their
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: philosophies about life and their feelings and their regrets. There's
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: also that scene where Cliff is talking to Monk and
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: he's saying, how he he resents that that their father
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: died before Cliff came out to him.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's that's the Oscar nomination scene, right,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: It's a great scene.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: And Monk is saying like, well, what if he rejected you?
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: And Cliff's like, well, I would have rather him reject
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: the real me than him not knowing who I actually am.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: Well, okay, so with that though, and I am gonna
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: like a little I still feel like and again it's
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: like because of it's being adapted from another source, it's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: difficult because it seems like the structure of the story
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: being adapted is like there is a woman involved in
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: like each area of Monk's life, and Monk is the
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: main character, so it's just like there's not a lot
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: of women in rooms together because they tend to either
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: want like I have no issue with like, you know,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: like not every thread being completely tied up by the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: end of the movie, because that's life and it feels
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: very in step with what the movie is. But I
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: do feel like, you know, that scene with Cliff is
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: so profound and so good, and I wish that there
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: were more scenes like that with the many women who
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: we meet throughout this movie. I think, I mean, I
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: think Ronald like echoing what you were saying about Agnes
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: is scene talking about putting up with her husband's infidelities
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: for like this very like I don't know, like heart
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: wrenching reason like those are. That's a really strong moment,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: and I you know, I just think that this story
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: in general does favor those kinds of realizations for its
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: male characters. Yeah, which is like, you know, not unusual,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: but it's just I think it stands out to me
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: here because we have not just a lot of women
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: in the story, but a lot of like heavy hitters
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: where I'm like, I wanted that scene for you know,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: Eric Alexander, I don't know. I did feel like we
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: there had to be a way to get these women
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: in the room with each other more. But I mean
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: we also have Sinara, who we haven't talked about yet.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, ooh uh. Like I mentioned that, I wrote out
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: pretty much that entire scene where she and Monk are
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: talking as they're like evaluating the different books for the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: Literary Awards, and you know, she says, I think that
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: the book Fuck is pandering and soulless, and Monk is like, exactly,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: but no offense. How is that different from your book
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: We's Lives in the Ghetto And she's like, well, I
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: did a lot of research from my book, and I
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: pulled from real people's interviews and experiences, and even though
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: that's not my personal experience, I write about what interests people.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: And he's like, well, you're catering to like these white
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: publishers who are obsessed with black trauma porn. And she
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: defends her choices about she says, that's.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: That's what the market wants. And that's where I thought
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: the line of hypocrisy existed here because for me, the
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: biggest I think the As that conversation is happening, she says,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: what the market wants. But she ends up putting a
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: button on that scene by saying potential because he says,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: I just think black people have more potential than that,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: and she says potential is what people saying when people
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: think what's in front of them isn't good enough. And
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: it was a dunk line, but I remember saying, you
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: don't deserve that line because you can't even see. If
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: you could see that his book is pandering, then you
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: have to see out your book, even if it was
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: well researched, is also pandering. But I think both of
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: them were such imperfect vessels to deliver the point that
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: they end up talking past each other in this incredible
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: way that again ultimately made me more frustrated than satisfied.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: But it was interesting.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I watched that scene like a couple times, and I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: totally agree with like you're like, okay, no one is
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: like definitively right, Like they're both like, which is like awesome,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: And I just I hope that like audience members like
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: register that because you're like, there are so many great
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: lines and you're like, well sure, but like, are you
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: the ideal person to be saying that? It's because they're
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: both at the end of the day, and it's like
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: this is something that we should all talk about and
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: be aware of. It's like, at the end of the day,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: they're both trying to make a living doing this, and
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: so like, I don't know, yeah, Centaro was so interesting
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: and I really liked that, you know, you see, and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: it's mostly like just in Jeffrey writes performance of like
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: just watching him listen to her of like, oh fuck,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: I like her, you know, like even though clearly like
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: they are not on board with what the other is
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: doing and they find each other to be pandering in
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: different ways, but like, yeah, I mean, Cintaura is clearly
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: like a really smart, really good writer who it's just like,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: all right, come on, like, admit you're doing it a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: little bit too, like everyone is complicit in and it's
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: like in this capitalist art structure.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: It's a great scene though, it's so good. She's saying
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: the right things.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: Did y'all notice also that this is just a small thing,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: just like like, as a black person, I got really
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: excited the fact that they don't disparage each other in
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: front of white people, like they were disagreed that there.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: But as soon as the white woman came back into
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: the room, they stopped talking, and then also when they
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: pick up the conversation again, they are still united that
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: this book should not win, which even though they they've
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: dug into it for the right, for the wrong reasons, whatever,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: they both agree on that thing, and that's the front
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: that they present, which I'm like, that is that is
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: real being black. There are something just so many times
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: but I'm just like, I don't like this thing, but
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna tell y'all the reason why, or I'm
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: not gonna They're certainly not gonna dunkle my brother here
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: because we we we we have work to do here
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: or whatever.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: But I really appreciated that.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the button on that scene is so funny because
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: you know, they've they've just had this very intellectual and
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: very nuanced conversation. The white woman comes in like completely clueless, like, oh,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: so what are we talking about?
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Another moment where were like, oh no, is that me? Hi? Everybody?
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: I know, I'm like, oh no, has this been men
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: statistically very it's been like that.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that scene is really really Uh. I feel like
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Ray's performance in this movie is very to rate it
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: very good because that to me. I'm like, that's an
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Oscar nomination scene just as much as the Sterling K
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: brown Wood is. It's it's really really good.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: Also the moment as they're talking when he's saying like,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: your writing is reductive and it like flattens black people
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: as a whole, and she says, well, do you get
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: angry at Brett Easton Ellis or Charles Bukowski for writing
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: about the down trodden? Or is your ire strictly reserved
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: for black women? And then he's like no, and she's like,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: you're directing your frustration at the wrong people. It sounds
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: like you have a problem with white people trying to
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: uphold the status quo rather than me and my work.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: So just a few other because again, there's so many
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: good lines of dialogue or just great moments in this
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: movie that I want to shout out. The scene where
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: Monk goes into probably like a Barnes and Noble or
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: something and he discovers that his all of his novels
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: are in the African American studies section, and uh, he's
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: like kind of badgering the sales clerk and he's just like,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't choose where the books go, and
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: then Monk takes all of his books and I think
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: just like categorizes them in like the regular fiction section.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's so good, it's so good again. I feel
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: like applies to a wide variety of experiences too, where
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: it's like, why is this book being categorized as not
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: well whatever? Like how generally white authors and white male
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: authors specifically are the ones who are categorized as like
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: general fiction. But if you are marginalized in any way,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're in a Monk situation where
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: you're being put in African American fiction. You're being put
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: in like women's studies. I've once found my book about
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: hot dogs in women's studies. It was like, excuse me.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: Like adults, what are you talking about?
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: It's just you're like, it's it's niche, because your niche.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: And I've loved that scene of him stomping around with
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: forty copies of the has what what was it called again,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: being like this is for everyone, this is great.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, loved that. Loved just all the scenes with the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: the white people at the publishing company when they're like, yeah,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: we're this book is so important and so brave, and
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: we're going to release it on Juneteenth, and yeah, it
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: should be called fuck. That's actually that's a great title
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: for a book.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: Like literally, I mean, there's one line where one of
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: the guys is like, honestly that this would be a
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: great time to capitalize on white guilt and that'll help
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: move copies. And it's like, even though they're so cartoony
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: in certain points, like what they're saying is very self aware.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: They know exactly what they're doing, and yeah, it's ugly.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: Also, the movie that Wiley character is currently directing called
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: Plantation Annihilation or my God.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: They got went in on Ryan Reynolds were talking about
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: it was one thing me seeing it on the chairs,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: I was like, this is hilarious.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: This is hilarious.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: It was great, I mean, and it's super fast. But
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: they were like, oh and Ryan Reynolds, isn't it because
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Ryan Reynoldsn'tlake Lively famously got married on a plantation and
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: will never have to stop apologizing for it because that's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: fucking unhinged.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: I will say, white folks at the time that they
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: got buried out of Plantation, a lot more white folks
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: than just them were getting married on plantations, and no
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: one saw it as an issue until someone was like, Hey,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: why y'all get married on Plantations, And then everyone immediately
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: was like, oh no, we definitely.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: He's in like twenty twelve. It was shockingly recent. Anyways,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: I just I liked that, especially like in I don't know,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I just thought that was like really ballsy and cool
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: to take a swipe at one of the world's most
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: famous actors in your first movie rocked. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: Also, the plot of Plantation annihilation sort of sounds like
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: the plot of Titanic two or no Titanic three, sorry,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: Titanic six six six, Oh yes.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: Starring another member of the girlfriend's cast, I believe, unfortunately
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: for her. Oh my gosh, Keisha Sharp Yeah right. In
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: Titanic six x six what can you look? Look?
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a movie about the ghosts of all the people
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: who were killed on the Titanic coming back and murdering
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: the passengers of a ship called Titanic.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Three to the original, I believe.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yes, really fine filmmaking. We can all agree.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Hy Look, look, I had a good time. I think
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: about it more than many good movies I've seen, So.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: That what you will, that's metric?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Am I thinking about it?
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's always top of mind.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: I think more about memes that that I do about
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 4: Oscar winners.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yeah. Does anyone else have any any other
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: thoughts on American fiction?
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: I think we did it.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, just that, Like, I really appreciate
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: what this movie is doing, criticizing the stereotypical narratives about
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: Black Americans that white people and the media keep insisting
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: on perpetuating and trying to capitalize on their obsession with
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: stories about black suffering, the expectations that they put on
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: Black creatives that they can only tell certain types of
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: stories about certain types of characters, and monk being like,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: let me let me write my books about like that
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: are at aations of Greek tragedies or whatever I mean.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Truly, it's like it's there's whatever I mean, something we've
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: talked about in the show many times of like how
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: any marginalized community, but very often black writers and creatives
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: specifically are like expected to write autobiographically or from the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: perspective of their own community and aren't just able to
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: write stories whatever the fuck they want to write about,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: which is what actual creative equity looks like, is what
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: do you want to write? About what are you interested in?
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: And there's the book. And I really appreciate Monks even
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: though it's like the way he expresses it is often misguided,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: but like I agree with that, Like that that's what
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: is creative equality if like you know, write about write
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: from you know, your own perspective if you want to.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: But like that shouldn't be the expectation for any artist,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: for sure. I just wanted to shout out also that
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: there's unusual. I was looking at the behind the scenes,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: the crew, and there are a lot of women and
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: women of color involved behind the scenes in a way
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: that you don't normally see in movies. We have a
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: woman's cinematographer, edited by a woman, scored by a woman.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: So just shout out because that is still so rare
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: in big movies. Totally.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think generally it's this is a movie that
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed it when it came out. I enjoyed the
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: Oscar run, and I really felt like it was all
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: capped by Core Jefferson's speech, which was again he says
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: it was something along the lines of, Hey, have y'all
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: ever considered that you could just give a little money
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: to someone to make a better movie, rather than giving
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of money to someone to make a
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: terrible movie, like what if you broke that budget up?
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: Like basically, that was the speech that he gave, which
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: I felt like to use his platform at that moment
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: for that was just excellent. And I think a lot
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: of this movie, the way it was made, the way
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: it was written, the way it all comes together, was
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: just very indicative of who I assume that Core Jefferson
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: is as a person. And ultimately it was a very satisfying.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: Film for me.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really hope that he makes more movies and
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: gets the funding to make more movies.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: He's not asking for much.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: He really isn't.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: He really isn't.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: But it's like, thinking of that, I was like, God,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: how many butts were clenched when he was like, you
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: you don't need to spend three hundred million dollars on
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: a piece of shit.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: I'm almost like, no, we do? We really do? We
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: have to make more Marvel movies?
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Oh, speaking of which, y'all. Oh, no, I'm sorry.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 4: I went to fred Bode not work Bow, but watch
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: wonder Man.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: The oh.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: I watched the first two episodes so far, and I'm
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: really enjoying it two years of TV to.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: Catch up on Jamie. Prioritize it, Okay, prioritize it to
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: put this on the top.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: I just got sick. This is a great time for
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: me to watch TV.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, this will make you feel better.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: This will heal.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: The movie does pass the Bechtel test in that scene
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: that we mentioned earlier between Agnes and Coraline where they
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: are both happy that Coraline is not white.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Which is an excellent, excellent, excellent pass. It could have
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: passed more, but we've kind of talked through that at
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: this point.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: As far as our nipple scale, where we rate the
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I think
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: because this movie accomplishes so much in its examination of
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: how black characters and black stories are represented in mainstream
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: media in the US, and has so many interesting and
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: poignant things to say about it. Not me being like
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: the like white judge on the panel or like that
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: white publisher lady. This is such an important film and
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: it's so brave.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: It's like it's giving the blour person.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry, Ronald, can you can you be quiet? Will
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: I am saying this, but no, I do truly love
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: this movie, and I think it's so awesome and funny
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: and it's accomplishing a lot. So I will give it
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: four nipples, I think again docking it a little bit
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: for not I think including the characters who are women
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: and their relationships with each other as much as I
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: feel like it could have, it feels like there was
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: room for it. But yeah, it's it's also it's doing
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: so much else. So four nipples, and I will distribute
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: them among Tracey Ellis, ross Issa ray Erica Alexander. I'll
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: give a half nipple to Keith David and his brief
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: cameo in the movie, and I'll give my other half
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: nipple to Sterling K. Brown, my longtime crush.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be slightly pedantic and do three point seventy five.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: I'm taking the little nipple slicer out just very saw,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: which is very Jigsaw of me to do.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: I've like, I don't know.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: My two gripes with this movie are, yeah, that we
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: have so many great women characters and we learn about them,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: But I think I'm most specifically thinking about Coraline, where
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: we do learn a lot about her, but kind of
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: for no reason, and I just wish that she, you know,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: had a little more to do that wasn't girlfriend dot
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: jpeg coded. But yeah, that said, there are a lot
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: of really rich characters throughout this movie. You can't give
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: everyone an arc. I get it, I'm just being picky.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: That and the Lorraine class element are the two things
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: that like stuck out to me. But also, like you're saying, Kaitlin,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: this movie is doing so much. It is not the
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: job of one movie to address every single intersection of identity,
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: and this movie is doing a ton while being what
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: movies rarely are, which is very funny and like all
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: the performances are so like every character gets a great
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: comedic moment, and yeah, it's a good movie.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: It was fun to revisit for this and I hope
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: that people keep talking about it so Core Jefferson can
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: make more movies. Indeed, so I'm going to give it
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: three point seven five and I'm giving I'm giving them
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: all to doctor Lisa Ellison, my favorite character.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: Oh rip, I would give it four nipples as well.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: There's parts of it, even watching it a second time
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: where I was just like, there's some some pacing issues
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: sometimes where it slows down and I kind of like
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: begin to say, where are we going? Can we speed
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: this up? Can we bring this more tightly together? It's
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: about a two hour movie. I don't know if it
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: needed all two of those hours. It's an hour and
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: fifty six.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 4: I was like, you probably gonna cut that down somewhere
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 4: a few of these scenes that.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: Which is many such movies.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm just a guy that like when I
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: think about timing, I always think about Diehard, where it's
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: a Swiss watch. Everything that starts is something that ends,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: and everything that if you start a beat, you ended here.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: All of that. I want that. But that being said,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: great movie for nipples. I would evenly distribute the nipples
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 4: amongst everyone black in this film.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: As Lisa Ray says, I'm rotty for everyone black. And
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: I think everyone that showed up clocked in and did
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: their jobs. And I think there was not one person
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: that I was not happy to see on screen, even
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: down to Maynard and Lorraine, where I'm just happy to
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: see them, happy to see them find each other, even
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 3: when he's wearing his uniform at the wedding. Like it
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: was just very very cute and adorable, and I just
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: everyone did a great job. They really clocked in, came
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: to work, And it's an argument for we should be
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: saying more Erica Alexander, more Tracy Ellis ross uh and
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: the fact that we're not more Issa Ray even in
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: acting in roles like this, Three women who still have
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: so much to give us, give them more opportunities to
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: give us more of this. I will never have to
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: say that about Jeffrey Wright or still in Kay Brown.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: Those men have been working and will continue to work
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 3: for for years to come. But these are three women
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: that I would love to see more of in mainstream
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: hits like this.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: Also, he was he was a sheriff.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's kind of worse than a cop.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: He was a sheriff.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Dang.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: Granted it was a black community and he's a black sheriff,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: so it might be a different interaction. He also seemed
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: way more folks see around them, but still we don't
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: talk to the cops. Sorry, I don't talk to the cops.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: I was like, Lorraine, you can do better, but yeah, yeah,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: we gotta get laps.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: Anyways, Yes, Ronald, thank you so much for joining us again.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: Come back anytime.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: What was your suggestion for a third Oh, Donnie Darko, Yeah,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's create the most unhinged trifecta of
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: movies that has ever been covered on the.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 4: Show Deep Dive on Donnie Darko. Yes, thank you so
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: much for having me.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, thanks for coming back. Where can we find you?
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: And you've got an upcoming show?
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, you could find me on Instagram, threads, letterbox at
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: Oh It's Big Round. That's at h I T S
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: B I G R O N. If you're in the Washington,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: DC area, you should come to my live show on
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: February twenty first at the Barracle Theater. It's called Heartbreaker.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: I will be talking about my love life through the
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: lens of growing up as a child in the church,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 3: seeing the love of my parents, having an expectation of
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: love as an adult, and continuously failing in relationship after
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: relationship after relationship. I'll be talking about my last three
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: relationships in particular, and I'm very excited to share those
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: stories on stage live at the Miracle Theater February twenty
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: first here in Washington, DC. Please come if you can,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: Damn bring it to LA.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: That sounds so good, Hey.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 4: If it's good in DC and someone will give me somebody,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 4: then yes, well, thank you so.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: Much for joining us again. Come back soon. We'll start
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: brushing up on Donnie Darko.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: Awesome if we will.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: And in the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: at Bechdel Cast, and you can subscribe to our Maytreon
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where you get
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: two bonus episodes a month, always on a just genius
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: theme that is awesome and so good.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Where else are you gonna get episodes on Titanic six
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: sixty six? Fucking nowhere? And I'm like, maybe it sounded
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: like a negative when but I met that as a positive.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it's actually an important part of filmed.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: Course is our episode on Titanic six sixty six.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: So we'll see you. We'll see you over there. And
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: in the meantime, let's go tell Adam Brody how this
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: episode's gonna end, so he can disagree with us in
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: three different pitches.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, bye bye.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: produced by me Jamie Loftus and.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: And edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of them? That's
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Me and our logo and merch and all of our artwork,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her?
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: With vocals by Catherine Vosskrasinski.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Aristotle Acevedo.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: Ashpectel Cast