Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Eight Crazy Nights with Alex Danton-Klein
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have women
- 0:04Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
- 0:08Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zeph and Bast
- 0:12Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:16Speaker 2: How is it?
- 0:16Speaker 3: It's like it's like Hi, I'm Jamie, him Jamie, and
- 0:20Speaker 3: then like hi, I'm Ji, Like how do you There's
- 0:24Speaker 3: so many scenes that are like three different out of
- 0:26Speaker 3: Sandler voices, and.
- 0:29Speaker 4: They're all annoying their way.
- 0:32Speaker 3: Well, yes comes with the territory, Yes, indeed, and meanwhile
- 0:35Speaker 3: bringing New Hampshire into like, leave New England out of this,
- 0:39Speaker 3: Leave New England. I have so many thoughts I leave
- 0:41Speaker 3: New England.
- 0:41Speaker 4: Out of this. I was.
- 0:43Speaker 3: I was mad they called it Dukesbury. I think that
- 0:46Speaker 3: they were I Alex, let me know what you think. Sorry,
- 0:48Speaker 3: we're just gonna the episode started. They're like I thought
- 0:52Speaker 3: they were like making a weird reference to Tuksbury, which
- 0:55Speaker 3: is not in New Hampshire. My dad used to work
- 0:58Speaker 3: at a mental hospital in Tooks, so I was like,
- 1:00Speaker 3: you leave ticks Burry out of it.
- 1:02Speaker 4: I don't know.
- 1:03Speaker 5: I actually spent a long time googling what potential town
- 1:06Speaker 5: this could be in New Hampshire, because I was like, so,
- 1:10Speaker 5: I'm obviously we're skipping. We'll tup back to the introductions later.
- 1:14Speaker 5: I am a Jewish person. I grew up in New
- 1:16Speaker 5: York City, which obviously has a very large portion of
- 1:20Speaker 5: Jews are there, like many many people are Jewish there,
- 1:23Speaker 5: and if you're not Jewish, you obviously.
- 1:24Speaker 6: Know many Jews. So it's just like infused in the
- 1:27Speaker 6: culture of New York.
- 1:28Speaker 5: I'm a fourth or fourth generation Brooklyn Night so hardcore
- 1:33Speaker 5: like Brooklyn Jewish history here. And then I moved to
- 1:36Speaker 5: New England around two thousand and eight, so I have the.
- 1:40Speaker 6: Jewish experience in New York.
- 1:42Speaker 5: And then also this like cultural whiplash of being in
- 1:44Speaker 5: New England and being Jewish in New England, which is
- 1:46Speaker 5: really different than being Jewish in New York. So the
- 1:48Speaker 5: whole time watching this movie, I spent a lot of
- 1:50Speaker 5: time googling life but what town could this be?
- 1:53Speaker 7: Though?
- 1:53Speaker 5: Like there aren't enough Jewish, like what town in New Hampshire?
- 1:56Speaker 5: Like it's I have a whole list of notes, It's
- 1:58Speaker 5: just not true.
- 1:59Speaker 3: Like like I thought it was such a weird place
- 2:02Speaker 3: to set it. Yeah, I mean, and they made it
- 2:03Speaker 3: sound like there's a very small Jewish population in this town.
- 2:07Speaker 3: But I'm like, why are we setting it there, because
- 2:09Speaker 3: then Hanaka doesn't really happen, Like it's just confusing.
- 2:14Speaker 2: Yes, it's confusing, and that is the whole movie what
- 2:18Speaker 2: we're talking about today, which is eight Crazy Nights. Hello,
- 2:22Speaker 2: and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. It's us here, we are,
- 2:26Speaker 2: and the voice you heard is that of our guest.
- 2:29Speaker 2: She is a Jewish leftist fiber artist. She works in
- 2:33Speaker 2: fundraising and is the tech director of a middle school
- 2:36Speaker 2: theater program. It's Alex Stanton Klein. Hello and welcome.
- 2:40Speaker 6: Hi. I'm so glad to be here.
- 2:42Speaker 2: Tell us more about your fiber artistry to start, and
- 2:45Speaker 2: then we'll get back into dumping on Crazy Nights.
- 2:49Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 2:50Speaker 3: And also just like, if you don't know what the
- 2:52Speaker 3: Bechdel Test is or what this show is, just look
- 2:54Speaker 3: it up. It's fine, we've been on for eight years.
- 2:56Speaker 3: Like do your homework.
- 2:58Speaker 6: Yeah, very happy to be here.
- 3:01Speaker 5: I do a lot of embroidery and textile art and
- 3:05Speaker 5: like I said, I'm in New England. I sell in
- 3:07Speaker 5: New England markets. You can find me on Instagram at
- 3:10Speaker 5: Zinia Socialist Supply company just co ginnya socialist supply co
- 3:16Speaker 5: on Instagram. Also in addition to making leftist art and
- 3:19Speaker 5: make an embarrassing amount of musical theater themed stickers and
- 3:23Speaker 5: postcards and so on. So if you need something that
- 3:26Speaker 5: is a very very specific reference to just one line
- 3:29Speaker 5: in Rent, I'm your girl.
- 3:32Speaker 2: Love that. I love that.
- 3:34Speaker 3: We still haven't we actually still have not covered Chris
- 3:37Speaker 3: Columbus's Rent two thousand and five, if you like to return,
- 3:41Speaker 3: as someone would ay, I still like I because I
- 3:44Speaker 3: didn't see the show before that. I'm like, that movie
- 3:47Speaker 3: is good, and then you watch it You're like, no,
- 3:49Speaker 3: it's not. But even as I'm watching it like it's perfect,
- 3:52Speaker 3: it's great.
- 3:53Speaker 5: No, I have the deepest amount of love and hate
- 3:55Speaker 5: for that movie. Like it's like they're both there in
- 3:57Speaker 5: my soul. And I'd be happy to talk more about it.
- 4:00Speaker 5: And you know that we have a whole group of
- 4:02Speaker 5: friends in a little chat that would be delighted to
- 4:04Speaker 5: join in us as well.
- 4:07Speaker 4: So thrilling too.
- 4:10Speaker 3: I remember that I for a listener context, Alex is
- 4:15Speaker 3: a dear friend of mine, and the night before I
- 4:19Speaker 3: moved to La so like almost ten years ago, Jake
- 4:24Speaker 3: was driving me from I forgot something, I'd like lost something,
- 4:28Speaker 3: Jake being her husband or her husband refer to him
- 4:31Speaker 3: as nothing else. But Jake and I were driving somewhere
- 4:36Speaker 3: and we were listening to the Rent movie soundtrack, like
- 4:40Speaker 3: just screaming and reaching the conclusion that maybe this is
- 4:43Speaker 3: not very good and it was just the best.
- 4:48Speaker 2: Wait, is Jake not who you saw I Frankenstein with?
- 4:52Speaker 3: Yes, Jake actually has deep Buchdel castlere like Jake and
- 4:56Speaker 3: I saw I Frankenstein, I would say easily three times.
- 4:59Speaker 3: And this was before the AMC stubs days, so we
- 5:02Speaker 3: were paying twenty bucks a pop, which we were really
- 5:05Speaker 3: heavily investing in the I Frankenstein lore universe. Always have,
- 5:12Speaker 3: always will, same with the Master of Disguise.
- 5:15Speaker 6: Yeah, not to keep bringing like mad into the Backdel
- 5:18Speaker 6: cast because.
- 5:19Speaker 2: Wow, but sorry, we're talking about We're talking about Jake,
- 5:22Speaker 2: We're talking about Frankenstein.
- 5:23Speaker 5: But we're gonna talking about Grant too, because Jamie and
- 5:25Speaker 5: Jake forced me and Grant to watch I Frankenstide like
- 5:30Speaker 5: all of us, very late at night one night pretty
- 5:32Speaker 5: recently actually, like within the past six months or so,
- 5:35Speaker 5: and we had to sit down and watch it.
- 5:38Speaker 3: It was actually pretty violent, because yeah, it was already
- 5:41Speaker 3: like one in the morning, was like, we have to
- 5:43Speaker 3: start watching I Frankenstein and pause and rewind the part
- 5:47Speaker 3: where he's swinging nunchucks at nobody on the top of
- 5:50Speaker 3: a mountain, which is still my favorite part.
- 5:55Speaker 4: I am a demon Prince.
- 5:57Speaker 5: Jammie bought our baby a demon prince, Onesie. So before
- 6:00Speaker 5: is going to continue to.
- 6:01Speaker 3: The next generation, Kitlin, I forgot to tell you I
- 6:04Speaker 3: did order a custom I Frankenstein baby once for.
- 6:10Speaker 4: Baby kline.
- 6:11Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing. So okay, sorry your fiver art right slash.
- 6:19Speaker 2: Tell us about your relationship with the movie Eight Crazy Nights.
- 6:24Speaker 6: Okay.
- 6:24Speaker 5: So Jamie texted me and said, would you like to
- 6:27Speaker 5: come on beckdelcast and talk a little bit about this movie?
- 6:30Speaker 5: And I said, oh, yeah, I think I've seen it before.
- 6:33Speaker 5: And then it horrifically like played before my eyes in
- 6:36Speaker 5: slow motion as I was like re experiencing this event.
- 6:39Speaker 5: So let me take you back to like two thousand,
- 6:44Speaker 5: let's say five or six, and I'm in college and
- 6:48Speaker 5: it is an unnamed liberal arts college wherein it is
- 6:52Speaker 5: the perfect blending of both the era and then the
- 6:54Speaker 5: type of college I went to where everybody was really
- 6:56Speaker 5: into ironic racism, which, as we all know, is just racist,
- 7:00Speaker 5: but white people get to be like, oh haha, it
- 7:02Speaker 5: was funny when I said it, and that's it.
- 7:06Speaker 4: What a time.
- 7:07Speaker 5: It was really lovely, and I was one of smattering
- 7:10Speaker 5: of Jewish people on campus, and I can't remember it
- 7:14Speaker 5: was my roommate or someone who like lived in my door,
- 7:16Speaker 5: my near us, but at the time they were like,
- 7:18Speaker 5: you have to watch this movie.
- 7:19Speaker 6: It's really funny.
- 7:20Speaker 5: And I'll say, similarly to the I Frankenstein watch, it
- 7:24Speaker 5: was inflicted upon me, but unlike I Frankenstein, I didn't
- 7:28Speaker 5: laugh at all. And I remember just sitting there letting
- 7:32Speaker 5: them watch me watch this movie. And it was like
- 7:35Speaker 5: the weirdest experience of like a group of non Jews
- 7:39Speaker 5: of boys just like sitting there watching me experience a
- 7:42Speaker 5: movie that they thought was like the epidity of Jewish culture.
- 7:45Speaker 5: I was just like, why, why, why is this a
- 7:49Speaker 5: part of my life? Yeah?
- 7:51Speaker 4: Unfair, unfair.
- 7:53Speaker 3: I am curious because this is the second I believe
- 7:58Speaker 3: Hanuka movie we have on the show. Both movies, as
- 8:03Speaker 3: Kaylin and I both have in our notes, ultimately end
- 8:06Speaker 3: up being more about youth basketball than Hanukkah. So I'm curious,
- 8:11Speaker 3: is there Do you have a favorite and it doesn't
- 8:12Speaker 3: have to be a movie, but do you a favorite
- 8:14Speaker 3: piece of Hanukkah media?
- 8:17Speaker 6: Yeah?
- 8:17Speaker 5: I mean I think before we talk about that, I
- 8:20Speaker 5: will just say because it would be weird for me.
- 8:22Speaker 6: I feel like my grandmother would be really mad if
- 8:24Speaker 6: I didn't say.
- 8:24Speaker 5: This, Like, Hankkah is only it's not one of the
- 8:28Speaker 5: major Jewish holidays, which often surprises people who aren't Jewish,
- 8:31Speaker 5: like there are many other holidays that actually are of
- 8:34Speaker 5: greater significance, and so Hannaka is just it's it's in
- 8:37Speaker 5: the winter time. It has this weird sort of competitive
- 8:41Speaker 5: thing with Christmas sort of.
- 8:44Speaker 2: Which is why people like place so much emphasis on it,
- 8:47Speaker 2: because it's actually just like, well it's Christmas time, but
- 8:50Speaker 2: we'll acknowledge all their holidays that are happening around this
- 8:54Speaker 2: ends up, but ultimately it's just very Christmas centric, right, Yeah.
- 8:58Speaker 5: I feel like a lot of Hanukka material relates like
- 9:01Speaker 5: exists only in relationship to Christmas. It doesn't have its
- 9:03Speaker 5: own thing, which is just sort of Obviously, we live
- 9:06Speaker 5: in a fairly Christian society, even if we're not legally
- 9:10Speaker 5: yet just pure Christian society.
- 9:13Speaker 2: Not quite a christ sho fascist regime yet.
- 9:17Speaker 3: But yeah, just take note of when this is released,
- 9:21Speaker 3: because by the time you listen to it, we may be.
- 9:25Speaker 8: So.
- 9:25Speaker 5: All that said, knowing that Hankkah is like a major holiday,
- 9:29Speaker 5: I think there are other Jewish movies that are awesome
- 9:31Speaker 5: and amazing and are about Jewish culture and are really
- 9:33Speaker 5: fun and exciting.
- 9:35Speaker 6: Crossing Delancey is a delight.
- 9:37Speaker 5: It's a rom com and this woman gets set up
- 9:39Speaker 5: by like a matchmaker with a man who sells pickles
- 9:43Speaker 5: at a deli, and it's very, very cute, and it's
- 9:45Speaker 5: a woman director too. I think that one's lovely, not
- 9:48Speaker 5: a Hanuka movie, but a very lovely Jewish movie. I
- 9:51Speaker 5: honestly have a really problematic as hell, but I have
- 9:54Speaker 5: a really large soft spot in my heart for.
- 10:00Speaker 6: Hanka. Oh my god, sorry, pregnancy brain.
- 10:02Speaker 5: The big like Honega, like the juice ploitation type Honka
- 10:04Speaker 5: movie that came out with Adam.
- 10:07Speaker 4: Is it the Hebrew Hammer?
- 10:09Speaker 3: Yeah?
- 10:10Speaker 6: Yeah, my dad and I watched that all the time.
- 10:12Speaker 6: We love it.
- 10:13Speaker 5: Yeah, it's problematic as hell. It is supposed to be
- 10:15Speaker 5: like a black exploitation movie. But with Jews, and it's sexist.
- 10:19Speaker 5: I mean, it's like, got terrible problems with it, but
- 10:22Speaker 5: I find.
- 10:22Speaker 6: It very funny.
- 10:23Speaker 5: And the idea is that he has to save Hankah
- 10:25Speaker 5: again from some like evil kind of Christian fascist type
- 10:30Speaker 5: played by Andy Dick.
- 10:31Speaker 4: So yeah, I was like.
- 10:33Speaker 3: Yeah, this this this cast so Adam Goldberg, Judy Greer,
- 10:39Speaker 3: Andy Dick, Mario Van Peebles, Peter Coyote, I mean of
- 10:44Speaker 3: e t Fame, of et No No, of the Hebrew
- 10:48Speaker 3: Hammer fame.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Sorry, So yeah, that's a.
- 10:51Speaker 6: That's a fun one.
- 10:52Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 10:53Speaker 5: I'm not saying it's good. I want to stress it's
- 10:55Speaker 5: not good. It is fun, sure, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 10:58Speaker 2: What was the name of the dcom that we covered
- 11:00Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, Jamie, that's also about youth basketball.
- 11:03Speaker 2: It was called Full Court Miracle, right.
- 11:06Speaker 3: We had fay or Love on for that, And I
- 11:08Speaker 3: think at the time we discussed I mean, I am
- 11:12Speaker 3: not Jewish, and I grew up with such limited exposure
- 11:17Speaker 3: to Jewish culture because, as we've alluded to, I did
- 11:20Speaker 3: not grow up in a community where there were a
- 11:23Speaker 3: lot of Jewish people, and so I think my main
- 11:26Speaker 3: understanding of this holiday specifically would have been an episode
- 11:30Speaker 3: of Rugrats, and honestly.
- 11:33Speaker 6: That pretty accurate. I would say I grew that.
- 11:36Speaker 4: I was like, all right, yeah, that.
- 11:37Speaker 6: Gives you a good working knowledge of the basics of
- 11:39Speaker 6: the holiday.
- 11:41Speaker 5: What's weird is there's iconography in the movie vaguely that
- 11:44Speaker 5: relate to Hankah, but like, you never see him. I
- 11:47Speaker 5: don't think lighting a manora or doing like none of
- 11:49Speaker 5: the characters are doing Honkkah right, unless I'm misremembering.
- 11:53Speaker 4: No.
- 11:54Speaker 8: I also was a little bit confused at like at
- 11:58Speaker 8: the beginning, I'm like, maybe, honestly, I found it very
- 12:01Speaker 8: hard to focus on this movie and I refuse to
- 12:03Speaker 8: watch it twice, so there may be And.
- 12:04Speaker 2: It's only eighty six minutes long, not even it's like
- 12:07Speaker 2: seventy six minutes long.
- 12:09Speaker 3: It definitely has like Master of Guy's syndrome, where it's
- 12:12Speaker 3: so short but it feels unbelievably long, grueling. Yeah, but there,
- 12:17Speaker 3: I think at the beginning, Whitey aka also Adam Sandler
- 12:24Speaker 3: says that he is not Jewish, but then by the
- 12:26Speaker 3: end they invite everyone over for Hanukkah, and I was like, wait,
- 12:30Speaker 3: didn't this start with this character stating he like he
- 12:34Speaker 3: doesn't celebrate Hanukkah.
- 12:35Speaker 2: Right, and then also, but is his sister not extremely
- 12:38Speaker 2: like Jewish coded Yes, in an offensive and stereotypical way. Yes,
- 12:43Speaker 2: but they're not a Jewish family, so you really just
- 12:46Speaker 2: wonder what's happening there.
- 12:48Speaker 3: So why did they go so far out of their
- 12:50Speaker 3: way to be like, these siblings are not Jewish, but
- 12:52Speaker 3: then by the end they are.
- 12:55Speaker 4: It was like, I don't know, this movie's a mess.
- 12:57Speaker 4: It's all ye, and.
- 12:58Speaker 5: I'll say I even at one point when they showed
- 13:01Speaker 5: the exter of Whitey and his sister's house, I've paused
- 13:05Speaker 5: it because you can see I think that there are
- 13:08Speaker 5: Christmas and Hanuka decorations just to add extra confusion, so
- 13:11Speaker 5: like they have a large amount of Christmas decorations and
- 13:14Speaker 5: also some Honica decorations too, Like I saw some blues
- 13:17Speaker 5: white in there.
- 13:18Speaker 3: Ultimately, this family is considering celebrating Hanukkah, and it's unclear why.
- 13:24Speaker 2: They just appreciate a whole cultures question.
- 13:28Speaker 4: Mark, Yeah, there, I mean unproblematic, simply duo.
- 13:34Speaker 2: So wait, Jamie, what's your history if any with this movie.
- 13:38Speaker 3: I hadn't seen it, I although I've heard it like
- 13:41Speaker 3: referenced so many times I've heard there's I don't know,
- 13:46Speaker 3: like I wouldn't have seen this, Like I was too
- 13:48Speaker 3: young to see this when it came out, but I
- 13:50Speaker 3: do remember like later on, just like boys doing impressions
- 13:54Speaker 3: of the Whitey character. I do have like probably around
- 13:58Speaker 3: the same like Borat impression era, just like a really
- 14:01Speaker 3: difficult time to be in middle school. But I mean
- 14:03Speaker 3: I guess that there's just so there's always going to
- 14:05Speaker 3: be an annoying, offensive character and middle school boys are
- 14:08Speaker 3: going to do an impression of it ad nauseum.
- 14:11Speaker 4: So I knew about Whitey weirdly.
- 14:14Speaker 3: And that is all I knew about this movie. I'd
- 14:16Speaker 3: never seen it before. What about you, Caitlin.
- 14:19Speaker 2: I did see it for the first time only like
- 14:21Speaker 2: probably two or three years ago. I don't know what
- 14:24Speaker 2: compelled me exactly to like it's time take it upon
- 14:28Speaker 2: myself to watch it, but I was just like shot
- 14:31Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night.
- 14:33Speaker 4: Yeah, I must do this.
- 14:35Speaker 2: I mean, we've been talking about potentially covering this movie
- 14:38Speaker 2: on the podcast for years because around this time we
- 14:41Speaker 2: almost always do like a very Christian centric Christmas movie
- 14:45Speaker 2: slate of movies, and we were like, let's diversify the
- 14:50Speaker 2: slate of movies. So because this is one of the
- 14:53Speaker 2: few mainstream, you know, Hollywood movies that centers Hanukkah or
- 14:59Speaker 2: that at least has Honkah as a backdrop, because this
- 15:02Speaker 2: movie is kind of not about Honkah at all, that
- 15:06Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, I should watch this. I've heard
- 15:08Speaker 2: about it. And at the time, because we were well
- 15:11Speaker 2: into doing the Bechdel Cast, I was like, oh, this
- 15:15Speaker 2: is one of the most problematic movies I've ever seen.
- 15:18Speaker 2: It's not funny at all, not a single joke lands.
- 15:22Speaker 2: And I know that comedy is subjective, but this movie is,
- 15:26Speaker 2: I would say, objectively not even remotely funny. So I
- 15:31Speaker 2: was like, gross, But it'll make for a good conversation
- 15:35Speaker 2: when we inevitably cover it. And here we are doing
- 15:38Speaker 2: just that, and I can't wait to really just do
- 15:44Speaker 2: us a slam dunk to use some basketball terminology to
- 15:49Speaker 2: dunk on the movie.
- 15:50Speaker 4: Wow, incredible.
- 15:52Speaker 3: And also the animation sucks. Sorry, Like I said, the
- 15:57Speaker 3: like sync between the mouth and the the vocal performances.
- 16:01Speaker 4: Is never SINGCD.
- 16:03Speaker 3: And then there is something I kind of like. I
- 16:05Speaker 3: was bothered by it at first, but then I kind
- 16:07Speaker 3: of grew to like it.
- 16:08Speaker 4: Over time.
- 16:09Speaker 3: Anytime there's a group like a wide shot of everyone singing,
- 16:12Speaker 3: no one's mouth this movie, I think they like were
- 16:14Speaker 3: not able to.
- 16:15Speaker 4: Like afford to make everyone sing.
- 16:19Speaker 3: But it's just like you hear, especially like that big
- 16:22Speaker 3: number towards the end and they pull out, it's like
- 16:24Speaker 3: the whole community center singing and dancing. Everyone's mouth is
- 16:28Speaker 3: totally shut like like it's I found it scary at first,
- 16:33Speaker 3: and then they do it again in the end end
- 16:35Speaker 3: scene at the mall. Still couldn't afford to open the mouths.
- 16:38Speaker 3: Why make it a group scene if that is you know,
- 16:41Speaker 3: it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.
- 16:43Speaker 4: It's a perfect movie.
- 16:44Speaker 6: No, that's.
- 16:48Speaker 3: No.
- 16:48Speaker 5: I think that I do at some point want to
- 16:50Speaker 5: talk about the music from it because like some of
- 16:52Speaker 5: us talking are very musical theater kids at our hearts,
- 16:57Speaker 5: and like the music is so bad it's like hurt
- 17:00Speaker 5: my I was like, this isn't how music, Like, like
- 17:03Speaker 5: I understand they're supposed to be funny and the songs
- 17:05Speaker 5: are funny, like I'm not I did not get that part,
- 17:08Speaker 5: but right it just like like to me, I was.
- 17:11Speaker 6: Like, but this is it.
- 17:12Speaker 5: Like when you think about an animated movie that has
- 17:14Speaker 5: music or musical or something else that where people sing
- 17:18Speaker 5: like none of the there weren't reasons for them to sing.
- 17:20Speaker 5: He was just like, I guess the musical number will
- 17:22Speaker 5: go here, and then another one will go here, and
- 17:24Speaker 5: like they just don't function well as musical numbers.
- 17:27Speaker 6: And that was, yeah, honestly very stressful for me.
- 17:30Speaker 4: Why technical.
- 17:31Speaker 3: I think it was the song technical foul that broke me.
- 17:34Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, where and it was stuck in my head.
- 17:37Speaker 3: That's why I had to go see Wicked immediately after,
- 17:40Speaker 3: because I was like, I can't go to sleep, but that's.
- 17:42Speaker 4: A technical foul, like stuck in my head. That song was.
- 17:47Speaker 3: I mean, none of the songs are really necessary, but
- 17:49Speaker 3: that one just comes out of nowhere. It's so long
- 17:52Speaker 3: and has nothing to do with anything. The best song
- 17:55Speaker 3: in the movie is a decade old song they use
- 17:58Speaker 3: in the credits, the Honka song Like, which is also
- 18:01Speaker 3: clearly why the movie exists, because the line eight crazy
- 18:04Speaker 3: nights appears in the song and it's a classic.
- 18:07Speaker 4: It's super funny.
- 18:08Speaker 3: Like Adam Sandler does is not He's not one of
- 18:11Speaker 3: my guys, but I get why people like him. When
- 18:16Speaker 3: I listen to the Hankkah song. I don't get why
- 18:18Speaker 3: people like him. When I watch Eight Crazy.
- 18:20Speaker 5: Nights, do you know that the big joke among at
- 18:22Speaker 5: least someone of my friends and family about the Hanka
- 18:25Speaker 5: song is just like our whole family would.
- 18:28Speaker 6: Just go, I mean, Adam, what are you doing? Why
- 18:31Speaker 6: are you just giving people a list of Jews?
- 18:33Speaker 5: Nobody needs that that secret like, don't make a list
- 18:35Speaker 5: of us, It's not safe. And yeah, I would have
- 18:41Speaker 5: actually kind of enjoyed a movie if it featured eight
- 18:44Speaker 5: Crazy Nights and eat Crazy Night or like sorry, if
- 18:47Speaker 5: the the Hanka song had been like a part of
- 18:49Speaker 5: the story.
- 18:49Speaker 6: In some way.
- 18:50Speaker 4: Why not? Really, yeah, why just do that?
- 18:53Speaker 6: I would have had fun with that. You know, that
- 18:55Speaker 6: would have been a really enjoyable movie.
- 18:56Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, Well, let's take a quick break and then
- 19:01Speaker 2: we will come back and do the recap of this
- 19:05Speaker 2: seventy six minute long feature film.
- 19:08Speaker 4: Bear it back and we're back, and we're back.
- 19:21Speaker 3: Yes, this does have another feature of a movie that
- 19:25Speaker 3: just couldn't make it to feature length, which is that
- 19:27Speaker 3: it also has an incredibly long credit sequence.
- 19:30Speaker 4: So it looks like it's eighty minutes long, but it
- 19:32Speaker 4: is not.
- 19:33Speaker 3: It just they play the Hanakah song all the way through,
- 19:38Speaker 3: but it's like a new improvised version, so it's like
- 19:41Speaker 3: six minutes long.
- 19:42Speaker 2: As soon as you get the title card where it's
- 19:44Speaker 2: like directed bye blah blah blah, I turned it off.
- 19:46Speaker 2: I couldn't listen to another second, so I missed that
- 19:50Speaker 2: the whole credit song, unfortunately, but oh no, it would
- 19:55Speaker 2: darn it missed it. Okay, So here's the recap. We
- 20:02Speaker 2: open on voiceover narration from Rob Schneider. And if that
- 20:08Speaker 2: doesn't tell you everything you need to know right at
- 20:10Speaker 2: the top, I.
- 20:12Speaker 4: Just also the narrator.
- 20:13Speaker 3: I know that they're trying to like do like a
- 20:15Speaker 3: holiday movie pastige there, but also anytime the narrator talks,
- 20:19Speaker 3: it just makes it sound like the movie is insecure,
- 20:21Speaker 3: that you don't understand what's happening.
- 20:24Speaker 4: You're like, I know, I got it.
- 20:25Speaker 3: I know he's walking around, and then cut to Rob
- 20:29Speaker 3: Schneider doing an offensive accent. Yes, first spoken line of
- 20:33Speaker 3: dialogue is Rob Schneider.
- 20:35Speaker 5: This movie is so firmly rooted in two thousand and two,
- 20:39Speaker 5: like in particular with the racism, the offensiveness, the weight jokes,
- 20:43Speaker 5: the joke. We'll get to all of that, but like
- 20:45Speaker 5: you when you open, when the movie opens with Rob
- 20:47Speaker 5: Schneider doing something offensive, you're like, it's really two thousand
- 20:50Speaker 5: and two.
- 20:51Speaker 4: In here, it stinks in here.
- 20:53Speaker 3: It's wild that this is like this is also this
- 20:56Speaker 3: is the same year as my favorite Adam Sandler performance
- 21:00Speaker 3: in Punch Drunk Love. Oh yeah, and then he just
- 21:05Speaker 3: had to end the year like this, no accounting.
- 21:09Speaker 2: For it, you know. He he has range from something
- 21:12Speaker 2: that's pretty good to something that's really.
- 21:14Speaker 4: Fucking terrible, too horrible.
- 21:16Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. So the voiceover is explaining that Christmas
- 21:21Speaker 2: is right around the corner and that tonight is the
- 21:23Speaker 2: first night of Hanukkah, although some people aren't excited about
- 21:27Speaker 2: the holidays, including a man named Davy Stone. This is
- 21:32Speaker 2: the main Adam Sandler character who is designed to look
- 21:37Speaker 2: like Adam Sandler. Yes, very much.
- 21:40Speaker 3: I will be calling him Adam Sandler. I can't be
- 21:42Speaker 3: bothered to call him daddy.
- 21:46Speaker 2: So he is a down on his luck guy. He's
- 21:49Speaker 2: at a Chinese restaurant getting drunk. He leaves without paying,
- 21:54Speaker 2: so the cops start chasing him, but not before he
- 21:58Speaker 2: drunkenly makes with his car. For some reason.
- 22:03Speaker 5: That is a note on my many list of things
- 22:05Speaker 5: I don't like. I just said, do not like him
- 22:07Speaker 5: making out with his car at all? Not a good
- 22:10Speaker 5: joke comment not good bad.
- 22:14Speaker 3: Is well, you're you're correct, it is not good and
- 22:17Speaker 3: it doesn't even crack the top fifty percentile of bad,
- 22:21Speaker 3: which is which is wild.
- 22:23Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 22:23Speaker 2: So then he starts like snowboarding around town on the
- 22:28Speaker 2: lid of a trash can or something. He's singing a song, Oh.
- 22:33Speaker 3: My God, and the songs are even the song's titles
- 22:36Speaker 3: are lazy. Davy's song is the first song, and he's like,
- 22:40Speaker 3: I don't like Hanukkah or Christmas. I don't like this
- 22:45Speaker 3: time of year. And you're like, oh, all right, this
- 22:48Speaker 3: thinks I don't like it.
- 22:50Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the whole song.
- 22:51Speaker 2: The chorus is I hate love, I hate you, I
- 22:55Speaker 2: hate me, and you're like, cool, go to therapy, sir.
- 22:59Speaker 3: There's I mean, it's like there, that is a reasonable
- 23:02Speaker 3: starting point. I mean, he's like, he's scrooging around. Okay,
- 23:06Speaker 3: but what is this going to build to? And the
- 23:08Speaker 3: answer is not very much.
- 23:11Speaker 5: I do want to know in the opening bits, and
- 23:13Speaker 5: this is something that I noticed when I moved to
- 23:15Speaker 5: New England, is that they had this the Ice Santa
- 23:19Speaker 5: and the Ice Manora side by side, and they are
- 23:22Speaker 5: of equal height and of equal importance in this town
- 23:25Speaker 5: that supposedly of Jewish people, right, Yeah, the percentage of
- 23:31Speaker 5: the percentage of the Jewish population in New Hampshire is
- 23:34Speaker 5: around zero point eight percent.
- 23:36Speaker 6: So I don't think I googled it after living because
- 23:39Speaker 6: it's eight.
- 23:40Speaker 5: Yeah, it's small, and I think there's like a few
- 23:43Speaker 5: towns that have like concentrations, but it's not like there's
- 23:45Speaker 5: a huge you know, So it doesn't make sense to
- 23:47Speaker 5: Jamie's point earlier to have it set in New Hampshire.
- 23:50Speaker 6: But also my point is living.
- 23:53Speaker 5: In New England, it's very rare to see Honeka be
- 23:56Speaker 5: treated with the same level of decorative important as Christmas.
- 24:01Speaker 5: And I just like straight from the beginning, I was like, well,
- 24:03Speaker 5: that doesn't feel right to me. Like the last like
- 24:06Speaker 5: like I right, my husband and I went to a
- 24:10Speaker 5: mall and the whole you walk into the mall and
- 24:12Speaker 5: the whole entryway is all Christmas stuff And then we
- 24:15Speaker 5: walked like down the side to the area that had
- 24:17Speaker 5: actually there was like they were renovating it and it
- 24:19Speaker 5: was ripped off with caution tape and there was like
- 24:21Speaker 5: one small manora of side over there, like that's that's
- 24:26Speaker 5: kind of how we expect honna going to be treated
- 24:28Speaker 5: in places where there are not a lot of Jews, right,
- 24:30Speaker 5: It's not the main focus.
- 24:31Speaker 6: So it just felt so not accurate.
- 24:34Speaker 5: Like right from the beginning, I'm like, ad a buddy, like,
- 24:37Speaker 5: what what are you doing? This isn't how this is
- 24:40Speaker 5: not an authentic to me anyway, based on my experience
- 24:43Speaker 5: and how I experienced a hanika.
- 24:45Speaker 6: In New England or outside of a major metropolis.
- 24:49Speaker 3: I was very confused at the choice to set it
- 24:52Speaker 3: in New England if they were not going to make
- 24:54Speaker 3: it a point that like Christmas is so dominant in
- 24:59Speaker 3: New England and like have that be sort of like
- 25:02Speaker 3: a plot point or something that's referenced in more than
- 25:04Speaker 3: a couple of passing jokes. But it just feels like
- 25:06Speaker 3: an excuse for the movie to not actually be about Hanakah.
- 25:10Speaker 4: It's really bizarre. I was like, what is this movie about?
- 25:13Speaker 6: Is Adam Sandler? Is he from New England? Is that
- 25:16Speaker 6: I'm kind of guessing he's from New York?
- 25:19Speaker 5: Okay, I just assumed he was, Like, let's just set
- 25:21Speaker 5: it up in New England for the.
- 25:23Speaker 6: Hell of it.
- 25:23Speaker 3: Oh, I guess he moved to Manchester when he was
- 25:25Speaker 3: a kid. Okay, Okay, so he did go to high
- 25:28Speaker 3: school in New Hampshire. I guess that explains New Hampshire
- 25:32Speaker 3: at least.
- 25:33Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but the like vibe seems very off. As
- 25:38Speaker 2: you said, Alex, in any case, he's snowboarding around, he's
- 25:42Speaker 2: singing about how he hates everybody, and he's just being
- 25:45Speaker 2: cruel and awful to everyone he encounters. And like you said, Jamie, like, sure,
- 25:51Speaker 2: if he's like a gringe type, fine place for a
- 25:55Speaker 2: character to start, assuming he'll have an arc. But they
- 25:59Speaker 2: like went way too far in that direction of just
- 26:03Speaker 2: being so horrible that he is like irredeemable.
- 26:06Speaker 5: I think I couldn't find myself rooting for him. No,
- 26:10Speaker 5: in anyway I.
- 26:11Speaker 3: Felt that, especially the second we meet Jennifer, I'm like,
- 26:14Speaker 3: I can't believe she has to end up with this guy.
- 26:16Speaker 4: This is so unfair to her, like I know this
- 26:20Speaker 4: is the only woman. And also I mean, we'll get
- 26:23Speaker 4: to it, but just the animation style.
- 26:25Speaker 3: We talked about this a lot in animated movies in general,
- 26:28Speaker 3: but just how like the tropes in how women are animated,
- 26:32Speaker 3: and then the love interest just looks like a hot lady.
- 26:36Speaker 3: You're just like And then any woman who the Adam
- 26:39Speaker 3: Sandler character doesn't want to have sex with is designed
- 26:43Speaker 3: so wildly differently, so like offensive that the lady with three.
- 26:47Speaker 4: Boobs, I'm like, what are what is? What is that?
- 26:51Speaker 3: And she comes out of nowhere in nax and I
- 26:54Speaker 3: was like, wait, we haven't met this character before. She
- 26:59Speaker 3: shows up so late in the movie.
- 27:00Speaker 4: She's like, here's me.
- 27:02Speaker 9: I was like, what is this?
- 27:03Speaker 2: She is established early on, but like for what reason?
- 27:07Speaker 2: It's it's so annoying anyway. So he's being awful to everyone,
- 27:12Speaker 2: and then he gets arrested and goes before a judge
- 27:15Speaker 2: who is about to give him a harsh sentence because
- 27:18Speaker 2: he has a history of like just being awful and
- 27:21Speaker 2: disruptive in the community. But then a man named Whitey
- 27:25Speaker 2: Duval who is also voiced by Adam Sandler, is this a.
- 27:29Speaker 4: Whitey Bulger joke?
- 27:30Speaker 7: Like?
- 27:31Speaker 4: What? What?
- 27:33Speaker 2: I don't I don't know.
- 27:34Speaker 4: If so, it doesn't make sense.
- 27:38Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense. He interjects and suggests that Davy
- 27:42Speaker 2: do community service in the form of helping Whitey referee
- 27:47Speaker 2: youth basketball games. That's because that's gonna set him straight.
- 27:52Speaker 3: That's a that's a hefty dose of white privilege right
- 27:55Speaker 3: at right at the top where it's like, oh, you've
- 27:58Speaker 3: been sentenced to not even community service, you've been sentenced
- 28:03Speaker 3: to a part time job, right like he got a
- 28:06Speaker 3: job out of almost getting a dy Yes.
- 28:11Speaker 2: And then Davy reluctantly agrees to this after saying a
- 28:16Speaker 2: whole string of very ablest things to Whitey. But he's like, fine,
- 28:22Speaker 2: I'll do it because otherwise he's going to be sentenced
- 28:24Speaker 2: to like ten years in prison. So he's like, I
- 28:27Speaker 2: guess i'll referee youth basketball instead ten.
- 28:30Speaker 4: Years in prison, or we'll give you a job. I'm like, uh,
- 28:33Speaker 4: huh huh. Justice system makes sense.
- 28:36Speaker 2: And meanwhile, there's a subplot where Whitey is hoping to
- 28:41Speaker 2: win the All Star patch at the youth league basketball
- 28:45Speaker 2: banquet that's coming up.
- 28:46Speaker 3: I will say I was I was a little invested
- 28:49Speaker 3: in the patch. I wanted him to get the patch
- 28:52Speaker 3: that makes one of us because I didn't give a shit.
- 28:56Speaker 4: Now I was rooting for him.
- 28:58Speaker 5: I think it like Jamie is saying, there's a movie
- 29:01Speaker 5: that appears to like middle school boys, and then they
- 29:05Speaker 5: do the voice, and like, the Whitey voice just made
- 29:07Speaker 5: me like physically tends up because I was like, oh,
- 29:10Speaker 5: it's every boy from my middle school. It just like
- 29:13Speaker 5: as you just that, it just brought it all back,
- 29:15Speaker 5: and I just couldn't.
- 29:16Speaker 6: I couldn't support Whitey because of that.
- 29:18Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally understand. I don't know.
- 29:21Speaker 3: I mean, I I he's the only character that I mean,
- 29:24Speaker 3: he's just so abused when he's put in the in
- 29:27Speaker 3: the shit statue.
- 29:28Speaker 2: Oh, he is a sympathetic character. Yeah, because you feel
- 29:32Speaker 2: sorry for him, you feel pretty for it. We'll talk
- 29:35Speaker 2: all about it.
- 29:36Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not like,
- 29:38Speaker 3: why don't you guys like Whitey. I understand, I understand.
- 29:41Speaker 3: I just wanted him to get the patch. I mean,
- 29:43Speaker 3: he gets spoiler or he gets five of them.
- 29:48Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. So it's the first basketball game that Davy
- 29:53Speaker 2: is meant to be refereeing, but he's not really doing
- 29:57Speaker 2: his job. He then makes another string of extremely fat
- 30:02Speaker 2: phobic remarks to one of the players on one of
- 30:05Speaker 2: the teams, and the game ends and Whitey is upset
- 30:10Speaker 2: about the way Davy is treating people, so he takes
- 30:14Speaker 2: Davy to the mall.
- 30:16Speaker 3: Maybe that's why I like Whitey. I like going to
- 30:19Speaker 3: the mall because he I find it comforting.
- 30:21Speaker 2: To the going to the dunkin Donuts in the mall.
- 30:24Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm doing that too. I'm hitting up the dunks
- 30:28Speaker 3: at the Glendell Gallery. I'm unknown entity there. So maybe
- 30:31Speaker 3: that's why I connect with him.
- 30:32Speaker 2: I don't know, I understand.
- 30:33Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a technical file. It's sucking my head again
- 30:38Speaker 4: much anyway.
- 30:40Speaker 2: So Whitey is teaching Davy a lesson at the mall,
- 30:45Speaker 2: of course, and he's telling Davy he needs to be
- 30:48Speaker 2: more respectful. And there a woman named Jennifer Friedman who
- 30:54Speaker 2: is voiced by Jackie Sandler aka Adam Sandler's his wife.
- 30:59Speaker 2: Although I don't think they were married at the time.
- 31:01Speaker 2: I don't know if this is how they met or what,
- 31:03Speaker 2: but this is pre their marriage, I believe.
- 31:06Speaker 4: Interesting. Yes, I did not realize that it's true.
- 31:12Speaker 3: That is baffling that you could fall in love during
- 31:15Speaker 3: the production of this movie.
- 31:18Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 31:18Speaker 4: Yeah, they got married the next.
- 31:20Speaker 3: Year, So I feel like it's kind of safe to
- 31:21Speaker 3: say that eight Crazy Nights, I mean, something good came
- 31:26Speaker 3: out of it.
- 31:26Speaker 2: So they brought them together there good for them anyway.
- 31:31Speaker 2: So Jennifer and her son Benjamin are there at the
- 31:35Speaker 2: mall because I believe she works at Dunkin Donuts. She detonomically.
- 31:39Speaker 3: I looked into it because I Caitlin, as you know,
- 31:42Speaker 3: I love keeping track of product placement. There is so
- 31:45Speaker 3: much of this. What I learned though, is that they
- 31:48Speaker 3: got permission for none of it. None of it, well
- 31:50Speaker 3: none of it, so there's not even a reason for it, Like,
- 31:54Speaker 3: but you've got which because at first, when Whitey was
- 31:57Speaker 3: showing Adam Sandler every store at the mall, first reason,
- 32:00Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this must have been how they
- 32:01Speaker 3: funded the movie, right with this product life. It turns
- 32:04Speaker 3: out they were just doing that for no reason at all.
- 32:06Speaker 3: Sharper Image, Body Shop, GNC, Tyrax, Spencer's Sabarro, Dunks Sees Candy,
- 32:13Speaker 3: Panda Express, Victoria's Secret Italian Eatery, Hot Dog Gonna Stick,
- 32:16Speaker 3: and seven to eleven. They got no money to do that.
- 32:18Speaker 3: They just they were just like, here's this.
- 32:21Speaker 4: Do you like this?
- 32:22Speaker 6: It's just for the love of them all. Yeah, they
- 32:24Speaker 6: just had to. I mean, I like, how did you feel,
- 32:28Speaker 6: how did you.
- 32:29Speaker 5: Feel about the Dunks situation? Because I know your feelings
- 32:32Speaker 5: on Dunks.
- 32:33Speaker 3: But like representation matters, like it's I I liked that
- 32:38Speaker 3: there was a Dunks in New Hampshire.
- 32:41Speaker 4: That makes sense to me.
- 32:42Speaker 3: And I like Jennifer all one thing I know about her.
- 32:47Speaker 3: I'm I'm rooting for Jennifer to somehow bust through the
- 32:53Speaker 3: fourth wall.
- 32:53Speaker 4: And be in a different movie. But I do.
- 32:56Speaker 3: I like a girl who works at Dunkin Donuts. Yeah,
- 33:01Speaker 3: hell yeah, working class hero, exactly.
- 33:03Speaker 4: Exact single mother.
- 33:05Speaker 3: But then she ends Honestly, she ends this movie worse
- 33:09Speaker 3: off than when she started because now she has like
- 33:12Speaker 3: a second.
- 33:13Speaker 4: Son, not even a boyfriend.
- 33:15Speaker 3: She's a single mother to a man child, ten year
- 33:18Speaker 3: old and a thirty three year old.
- 33:20Speaker 4: It's just it's unpleasant. Yeah.
- 33:23Speaker 2: In any case, Jennifer and her son are there and
- 33:26Speaker 2: they bring donuts to Whitey. This is something she does regularly,
- 33:31Speaker 2: and Davy is like, you know, noticing her and sexually
- 33:36Speaker 2: harassing her and insulting her son. But then he realizes
- 33:41Speaker 2: that he knows her because they went to school together
- 33:45Speaker 2: and they used to be friends. But he's been an
- 33:48Speaker 2: asshole for the past twenty years and so he probably
- 33:51Speaker 2: doesn't have a chance with her. Just kidding. Jennifer is
- 33:55Speaker 2: Davy's love.
- 33:56Speaker 3: Interest I for some reason, I mean not that I mean,
- 33:59Speaker 3: I like, there's never a point in the movie where
- 34:02Speaker 3: I'm on Davy's side, but it like make me extra
- 34:06Speaker 3: angry that he didn't even recognize her. I was like,
- 34:09Speaker 3: she like of all of the like he didn't even
- 34:12Speaker 3: remember who she was his best friend from childhood.
- 34:16Speaker 4: Like that's it makes no sense.
- 34:19Speaker 2: They dated, like they were like tween boyfriend girlfriend, you
- 34:23Speaker 2: had a little kiss in the flashback.
- 34:25Speaker 3: You would recognize that person. It doesn't matter how different
- 34:28Speaker 3: they look, you would recognize them.
- 34:30Speaker 5: That's like he's just too busy bullying her son, like
- 34:33Speaker 5: he loves bullying children.
- 34:36Speaker 3: That I found that like so wildly off putting, Like
- 34:40Speaker 3: on top of everything else. I was like if I
- 34:43Speaker 3: if my childhood sweetheart didn't recognize me, I would be
- 34:46Speaker 3: like fuck this guy, Like I know.
- 34:49Speaker 2: Also worth noting that Jennifer and her son are seem
- 34:52Speaker 2: to be the only other two Jewish characters besides Davy
- 34:56Speaker 2: in the story, because Benjamin is describing the Hanuka give
- 35:00Speaker 2: he has received so far, so it's established that Jennifer
- 35:04Speaker 2: is also Jewish. So then Whitey takes Davy home, but
- 35:11Speaker 2: gets stuck in the snow outside Davy's house and Davy
- 35:15Speaker 2: doesn't care or do anything to help, So Whitey's just
- 35:18Speaker 2: like out there for hours until he gets unstuck with
- 35:21Speaker 2: the help of some plot deer that keep showing up.
- 35:26Speaker 6: The deer also played by Adam Sandler.
- 35:28Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so when they.
- 35:30Speaker 6: Go that's important.
- 35:32Speaker 2: That's Adam Taylor's voice.
- 35:34Speaker 4: Another fun fact.
- 35:36Speaker 3: From Scholgarly Journal Wikipedia is that in the test screenings
- 35:42Speaker 3: of this, Whitey's voice was originally even more high pitched
- 35:48Speaker 3: and they brought it down, and that Sandler was begged
- 35:53Speaker 3: to remove some of the deer shitting jokes, but he
- 35:56Speaker 3: was like, that's a bridge too far.
- 35:59Speaker 4: I will not.
- 36:01Speaker 3: I'm keeping them, all of them, all of them, all,
- 36:03Speaker 3: forty of them. I think though you honestly see deer
- 36:07Speaker 3: shitting on screen more than you hear Jennifer speak.
- 36:11Speaker 2: I think that's accurate.
- 36:13Speaker 4: Anyways, this movie wrong.
- 36:19Speaker 2: So in Davy's house, he is drinking and also looking
- 36:24Speaker 2: at a picture of his parents, who are implied to
- 36:28Speaker 2: have died. Then Whitey finally gets home and we meet
- 36:34Speaker 2: his sister, Eleanor, who he lives with. Eleanor is also
- 36:38Speaker 2: voiced by Adam Sandler and we'll talk more about Eleanor.
- 36:44Speaker 2: But then we get voiceover narration that says that Whitey
- 36:50Speaker 2: tends to do odd jobs around town to make ends meet.
- 36:54Speaker 2: The next day we see him doing this type of work,
- 36:57Speaker 2: which includes cleaning out some port of Davy is there
- 37:02Speaker 2: puking in one of the porta potties, and he comes
- 37:05Speaker 2: out and then he shoves Whitey into one of the
- 37:08Speaker 2: stalls and pushes it down a hill. So now sewage
- 37:12Speaker 2: gets all over Whitey.
- 37:14Speaker 4: And that's I think we can all agree. That's a
- 37:16Speaker 4: technical owl.
- 37:17Speaker 2: That's a technical that's a technical fowl. That's comedy, baby,
- 37:21Speaker 2: you know. That's does hilarious jokes and we love it.
- 37:25Speaker 2: And then Davy sprays him with a hose which freezes
- 37:29Speaker 2: because it's winter in New Hampshire. And then the deer
- 37:32Speaker 2: help Whitey again by licking the shit ice off of him,
- 37:36Speaker 2: and we're just like, why is this movie like this.
- 37:39Speaker 4: It's also implied that he gets like sort of a blowhop.
- 37:43Speaker 4: Dear o sorrow.
- 37:44Speaker 3: I'm sorry, that's referenced in a one off joke Crazy.
- 37:47Speaker 4: Day licked my balls or whatever.
- 37:50Speaker 2: This is.
- 37:51Speaker 4: This is a movie for ten year old boys.
- 37:57Speaker 2: That night, Davy Whitey and Benjamin Jenniferson are at the
- 38:04Speaker 2: basketball courts where a few adult men are playing pickup,
- 38:09Speaker 2: and Davy's like, I could beat all you guys at basketball.
- 38:12Speaker 4: Oh this pissed me off. This pissed me off.
- 38:15Speaker 3: When it's implied that he does nothing but drink beer
- 38:19Speaker 3: and then he's shirtless and like ripped, I was like,
- 38:23Speaker 3: this is this is ego gone wild? This character canonically
- 38:29Speaker 3: and this is not a judgment, but it just felt
- 38:31Speaker 3: like Adam Sandler being like, oh my cartoon avatar has
- 38:35Speaker 3: to be hot ripped. Like yeah, it just it felt
- 38:39Speaker 3: like it was an email.
- 38:41Speaker 2: Also, I formed a theory in this scene where I
- 38:44Speaker 2: was like, oh, I wonder if the reason this is
- 38:47Speaker 2: animated is because Adam Sandler wants to be portrayed as
- 38:50Speaker 2: being way better at basketball than he normally is. But
- 38:52Speaker 2: then I saw some clips of him playing basketball. I
- 38:56Speaker 2: he seems all right. I guess he could probably have
- 38:59Speaker 2: done it live.
- 39:00Speaker 3: ASHI played those at those like famous oh my gosh,
- 39:04Speaker 3: what am I thinking? Those famous Gary Shandling basketball games.
- 39:08Speaker 3: He was like a common attender. I know that he
- 39:10Speaker 3: really likes basketball. I think that this is only animated
- 39:14Speaker 3: because he was trying to which again like doesn't worry.
- 39:17Speaker 4: It was trying to.
- 39:18Speaker 3: Like visually parody old animated Christmas Specials. But I don't
- 39:25Speaker 3: know where the thirty four million dollars went here because the.
- 39:30Speaker 4: Mouths don't even move. It's just I don't know.
- 39:34Speaker 5: And did it look to you like the old Christmas
- 39:38Speaker 5: Specials animated example, Yeah, I didn't get that feel like
- 39:42Speaker 5: the the the animation style didn't feel like it was
- 39:44Speaker 5: connected to a specific era and was like in conversation
- 39:49Speaker 5: with that era if you welcome, right.
- 39:51Speaker 3: I didn't feel like it was like referencing anything in particular,
- 39:54Speaker 3: which I guess I find somewhat explained by the fact
- 39:57Speaker 3: that like ten animation studios ended up working on this,
- 40:01Speaker 3: so I don't know like what was going on behind
- 40:03Speaker 3: the scenes, but like.
- 40:04Speaker 4: There's no there's no cohesive creative vision going on here.
- 40:09Speaker 2: Yeah. It kind of reminds me of Sausage Party, which
- 40:12Speaker 2: also had a lot of like animation stuff going on, and.
- 40:17Speaker 3: I was like they were like breaking union, like they
- 40:20Speaker 3: were crossing picket lines to do Sausage Party.
- 40:24Speaker 4: It's awesome, Yeah, worth it?
- 40:26Speaker 2: Oh gosh, Okay, So Davy is like I can beat
- 40:30Speaker 2: all you guys a basketball. So he plays two on
- 40:32Speaker 2: two first with Whitey, who gets immediately injured, and it's
- 40:37Speaker 2: supposed to be a hilarious.
- 40:38Speaker 4: Joke technical foul.
- 40:40Speaker 2: It was a technical foul. Then Davey plays with Benjamin
- 40:44Speaker 2: as his teammate and they win. We'll talk more about
- 40:49Speaker 2: that in the discussion, but I'll just breeze right past
- 40:52Speaker 2: all the fat phobia inherent in this scene. But Jennifer
- 40:56Speaker 2: then comes by to pick Benjamin up up and she
- 41:00Speaker 2: sees Davy and her son playing together, and she's like hmm.
- 41:04Speaker 2: But then she's also like mmmmm, yeah, because she hates Davy,
- 41:10Speaker 2: but also maybe she's starting to like him.
- 41:12Speaker 3: I wouldn't want my kid around Davy, to be perfectly honest,
- 41:15Speaker 3: he's a bad guy, yes, And then anytime she's like, hey,
- 41:20Speaker 3: get away from my kid. You're a bad guy, he's like,
- 41:22Speaker 3: what do you mean by that?
- 41:25Speaker 5: He spent the beginning of the movie bullying other children
- 41:28Speaker 5: and then also bullied.
- 41:31Speaker 10: Yeah.
- 41:32Speaker 5: Right, Like it's very reasonable for her to be like,
- 41:34Speaker 5: based on my past experiences with you, I don't think
- 41:38Speaker 5: that you'll treat my son well, you know, Like that
- 41:40Speaker 5: seems like a very normal Jennifer, that's very normal.
- 41:42Speaker 3: Right, She's got to do it, She's got to do
- 41:44Speaker 3: And meanwhile, like Adam Saylor is standing next to an
- 41:46Speaker 3: unconscious old man and is like.
- 41:48Speaker 4: What is wrong with me? And it's like, dude. Anyways.
- 41:54Speaker 2: Then there's another song where Davy and Jennifer reminisced about
- 41:59Speaker 2: their youth. There's a whole flashback sequence. They used to
- 42:02Speaker 2: be friends and like young lovers as tweens, and but
- 42:08Speaker 2: obviously everything has changed. Then Davy comes home to discover
- 42:12Speaker 2: that the men that he had just beaten at basketball
- 42:16Speaker 2: are lighting his house on fire. So now his home
- 42:21Speaker 2: is gone, and Whitey offers Davy to let him stay
- 42:25Speaker 2: with him and his sister Eleanor.
- 42:27Speaker 3: Things get very dark in the back half of this movie.
- 42:30Speaker 3: The most and this is like not the most, the
- 42:32Speaker 3: most depressing thing is yet to come, which I was
- 42:34Speaker 3: truly shocked by.
- 42:36Speaker 2: Yeah, So then Davey comes to stay with them for
- 42:40Speaker 2: a while, and this is where we get the it's a.
- 42:43Speaker 4: Technical foul motivated by anything. No, it's just like farting.
- 42:48Speaker 3: Yet that that's a technical foul, Like it's just this
- 42:53Speaker 3: in my mind, technical foul is half the run time
- 42:57Speaker 3: of this movie, it.
- 42:57Speaker 4: Just felt like it would not stop.
- 43:00Speaker 2: It goes on so long. Yeah, it's basically just Whitey
- 43:03Speaker 2: explaining the rules that Davey has to follow because he's
- 43:06Speaker 2: so disrespectful. And it seems to actually kind of work,
- 43:11Speaker 2: because the next time we see Davy, he is behaving
- 43:15Speaker 2: a little bit more respectfully. He seems to be like
- 43:19Speaker 2: kinder and more sensitive.
- 43:22Speaker 4: Kind of like that's what worked on him. The song
- 43:25Speaker 4: is technically.
- 43:28Speaker 2: Right, it doesn't make sense. But then sometime passes and
- 43:31Speaker 2: I think it is now the eighth day of Hanukkah,
- 43:35Speaker 2: and now you're realizing, oh, this movie is called Eight
- 43:37Speaker 2: Crazy Nights. You have an expectation that it's going to
- 43:40Speaker 2: be about eight crazy nights, and yet most of it
- 43:43Speaker 2: happens off screen, and none of the nights are actually
- 43:46Speaker 2: crazy quote unquote.
- 43:48Speaker 3: And so a couple of like vaguely eventful days. But
- 43:53Speaker 3: because this, like because the main character doesn't celebrate Hanukkah
- 43:58Speaker 3: anymore for a reason, where about to learn? And because
- 44:01Speaker 3: it doesn't seem like anyone except Jennifer and Benjamin celebrate Hanukkah,
- 44:06Speaker 3: and we never see them celebrate Hannakah because we don't
- 44:09Speaker 3: care about them. The fact that it's Hanakkah is very
- 44:14Speaker 3: easy to forget because you only see Christmas decorations and
- 44:17Speaker 3: no one is celebrating Hankah.
- 44:19Speaker 5: So I saw because I went deep down a rabbit
- 44:24Speaker 5: hole reading like reviews from that time, and then I
- 44:26Speaker 5: ended up on like a Reddit talking about this movie,
- 44:30Speaker 5: and somebody from many years ago wrote in that this
- 44:33Speaker 5: was their favorite movie to watch during the Christmas season
- 44:36Speaker 5: and it just really exemplified Christmas.
- 44:38Speaker 6: For them, which I thought was just a really great point. Like,
- 44:43Speaker 6: it doesn't it's not a Hanukkah movie. I don't know
- 44:45Speaker 6: what to say. It's not.
- 44:46Speaker 5: There's no Ronica's not present. It's not a character in
- 44:50Speaker 5: the movie. It's not it's just not there.
- 44:53Speaker 3: It's a whole movie about why this one character no
- 44:57Speaker 3: longer celebrates Hanukkah due to brutal childhood trauma, which is
- 45:03Speaker 3: a story, but not really a Hanakah story.
- 45:07Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So we are now at the eighth day
- 45:12Speaker 2: of Hanukkah. Davy is hanging out with Whitey and Eleanor
- 45:16Speaker 2: and white He tells the story of how Davy learned
- 45:20Speaker 2: that his parents had been killed in a car accident
- 45:23Speaker 2: when he was a kid. Like twenty years prior, and
- 45:27Speaker 2: this grief and traumatic loss is what has made Davy
- 45:33Speaker 2: so horrible to everyone around him.
- 45:36Speaker 3: I was not prepared for something that heavy that the
- 45:40Speaker 3: movie is, like, you know, the second you learn that
- 45:42Speaker 3: his parents died in this horrible way, you're like, well,
- 45:44Speaker 3: this movie isn't equipped to have this conversation remotely.
- 45:48Speaker 4: Why even try?
- 45:49Speaker 3: Oh but yeah, I was like, wow, it's a dark
- 45:52Speaker 3: turn at the very end.
- 45:53Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they put it in. I mean it
- 45:55Speaker 5: felt to me very strongly like they put it in
- 45:57Speaker 5: there just to be like and that, uh, that excuses
- 46:01Speaker 5: every single thing he's ever.
- 46:02Speaker 6: Done so far. Right, You're right, that's the solution.
- 46:05Speaker 5: And it's just you know, I used to teach it
- 46:08Speaker 5: at preschool and we used I mean we used to
- 46:11Speaker 5: say a.
- 46:11Speaker 6: Lot of like that may explain the behavior, but it.
- 46:14Speaker 5: Does not excuse it. And I feel like that phrase
- 46:16Speaker 5: works really well here for Davy, Like that might give
- 46:19Speaker 5: some explanation for why he's he acts like an asshole,
- 46:22Speaker 5: but like, ultimately it's on him to still be a
- 46:25Speaker 5: good person in the world, right, Like, we still participate,
- 46:28Speaker 5: we live in a society, Davy, Like, come on, get
- 46:31Speaker 5: it together. You can't just put people import of bodies
- 46:33Speaker 5: and throw them off a cliff, like, we don't do that.
- 46:35Speaker 4: It won't bring your parents back. Davy, to throw an
- 46:38Speaker 4: old man off a cliff.
- 46:40Speaker 2: Well, that's the lesson he learns by the end.
- 46:43Speaker 4: I guess that's what he learns by the end.
- 46:45Speaker 3: I shouldn't have thrown that old man off of a cliff. Okay, girlfriend, please, son, please,
- 46:53Speaker 3: I learned to my lesson.
- 46:54Speaker 4: Where's my reward?
- 46:55Speaker 2: Where's my reward in the form of a human woman
- 46:58Speaker 2: who I now get to claim as my property anyway? Okay.
- 47:03Speaker 2: The reminder of this story about the loss of his
- 47:05Speaker 2: parents sets Davy off. He lashes out at Whitey and
- 47:09Speaker 2: Eleanor and he storms off. He gets drunk again and
- 47:13Speaker 2: then breaks into the mall because ninety percent of this
- 47:16Speaker 2: movie either takes place at the mall or at a
- 47:18Speaker 2: youth basketball game. And he goes to the mall and
- 47:23Speaker 2: he's there to try to talk to Jennifer at Dunkin Donuts,
- 47:26Speaker 2: but it's like very clearly after hours and no one
- 47:29Speaker 2: is there, and he just like breaks in and he's
- 47:32Speaker 2: belligerently screaming into the void until all of the stores
- 47:37Speaker 2: in the Mall come to life, question.
- 47:40Speaker 7: Mark really interesting, you know, And then they sing to
- 47:45Speaker 7: Davy and they tell him to cry and to let
- 47:49Speaker 7: it all out because he has never dealt with his
- 47:52Speaker 7: grief over the loss of his parents in a way
- 47:55Speaker 7: that is like healthy or effective or anything like that,
- 47:59Speaker 7: and he's really didn't to cry.
- 48:00Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be amazing if that message came from a
- 48:03Speaker 3: character we've met before and not.
- 48:07Speaker 2: Some weird like foot Locker animated like hallucination or something like.
- 48:13Speaker 3: I know we could talk about this in the discussion too,
- 48:15Speaker 3: but like you can't even get away from the misogyny
- 48:18Speaker 3: in the mall.
- 48:19Speaker 4: Like it's Tyra Banks as an.
- 48:21Speaker 3: Empty dress which from Victoria's Secret that still gets sexually
- 48:25Speaker 3: harassed by a jar of vitamins or like protein powder
- 48:29Speaker 3: oh from Chance, Yeah yeah, Tyra Banks as an empty
- 48:32Speaker 3: dress that is still getting hit on really sums up
- 48:35Speaker 3: the movie's views on women to me.
- 48:40Speaker 5: And I love again that you were saying that he didn't.
- 48:42Speaker 5: It wasn't like he was sponsored by this movie. He
- 48:44Speaker 5: was just like what if corporate? What if like the
- 48:47Speaker 5: embodiment of corporations told me how to have feelings?
- 48:50Speaker 3: It's so good that, like I became all the more
- 48:55Speaker 3: confused by this movie when it when I found out
- 48:57Speaker 3: that he was like sort of doing something like illegal
- 49:01Speaker 3: by having done that, because you're supposed to get the
- 49:04Speaker 3: consent of but it's really weird.
- 49:07Speaker 4: I don't know. But yeah, they're like, well, okay, we've
- 49:09Speaker 4: introduced five thousand characters for some reason, but at the
- 49:12Speaker 4: emotional peak of the movie, let's have none of them
- 49:15Speaker 4: there and it'll just be logos from the mall.
- 49:19Speaker 2: Yeah. Awesome, good storytelling.
- 49:21Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 49:22Speaker 2: Anyway, so they're telling him to let it all out
- 49:25Speaker 2: and to open up about his feelings, and he's reluctant
- 49:28Speaker 2: to do so, but then he opens the Hanaka card
- 49:32Speaker 2: that his parents wrote for him and that he received
- 49:35Speaker 2: the night that they died, and he finally cries. And
- 49:39Speaker 2: then some cops come into the mall because he's broken in,
- 49:43Speaker 2: and he's like, you know, trespassing, and they're about to
- 49:46Speaker 2: arrest him, but Davy escapes and he gets on a
- 49:50Speaker 2: bus to New York City. Ever heard of it? But
- 49:54Speaker 2: then he has a change of heart and heads to
- 49:57Speaker 2: the youth league basketball banquet, the one where Whitey hopes
- 50:02Speaker 2: to win the All Star patch.
- 50:04Speaker 3: You're like, oh, right, that plotline, still rooting for him, and.
- 50:11Speaker 2: He does this because Davy wants to apologize to Whitey
- 50:14Speaker 2: for his behavior. And then we cut to the banquet.
- 50:19Speaker 2: Whitey does not win the patch, so he is devastated.
- 50:23Speaker 2: It goes to sub guy voiced by John Lovetz. I think, yeah, sure,
- 50:29Speaker 2: So Whitey and Eleanor leave because Whitey is so upset
- 50:34Speaker 2: that he didn't win. And then Davey comes into the
- 50:37Speaker 2: banquet and the cops are right behind him and they
- 50:41Speaker 2: arrest Davy, but before they take him away, he makes
- 50:44Speaker 2: this impassioned speech via song about how Whitey should have
- 50:51Speaker 2: won the patch because he does so much for the
- 50:53Speaker 2: community and no one appreciates him. But Whitey cares about people,
- 50:58Speaker 2: and Davey regrets it's being so cruel to him. And
- 51:03Speaker 2: this is where I just like basically zoned out, and
- 51:06Speaker 2: I didn't write the rest of the recap because I
- 51:09Speaker 2: was just like my brain turned to mush. But basically
- 51:12Speaker 2: I think what happens. So everyone goes back to the
- 51:14Speaker 2: mall and.
- 51:16Speaker 4: But their mouths are they're lockdobs.
- 51:20Speaker 2: Okay, First, first, it's just Whitey and Eleanor at the mall,
- 51:24Speaker 2: and Whitey is crying because everyone in town thinks he's
- 51:27Speaker 2: a joke and I didn't vote for him for the patch.
- 51:31Speaker 2: But then Davy and the whole rest of the town
- 51:34Speaker 2: show up, and the mayor is like, here, Whitey, here's
- 51:38Speaker 2: the patch after all. And then everyone who had previously
- 51:42Speaker 2: won the patch from the past thirty five years also
- 51:45Speaker 2: are like, yeah, Whitey, here's my patch because you're the
- 51:48Speaker 2: best guy in town. And then there's like a moment
- 51:52Speaker 2: where Davy and Jennifer like kind of reconnect, and that's
- 51:57Speaker 2: the end of the movie. Yay, So let's take another
- 52:03Speaker 2: quick break and we'll come back to.
- 52:05Speaker 3: Discuss, and we're back. My first, I'd like to open
- 52:19Speaker 3: the conversation by saying, why isn't David Spade in this movie?
- 52:23Speaker 4: Were they fighting?
- 52:25Speaker 2: Wow?
- 52:26Speaker 4: I feel like he's.
- 52:27Speaker 3: The one, you know, Sandler verse guy who who's not
- 52:30Speaker 3: popping up. True, that's all the thoughts I have in
- 52:34Speaker 3: the movie.
- 52:34Speaker 4: Everyone else, take it away, Yeah, take it away. Episode.
- 52:41Speaker 2: I guess the context for this movie. I couldn't find
- 52:43Speaker 2: a whole lot on the development of it. But the title,
- 52:45Speaker 2: as we've referenced, is taken from the line of the
- 52:49Speaker 2: Honkkah song that Adam Sandler wrote and performed and so
- 52:54Speaker 2: that's they were like, Hey, there's a line in the
- 52:57Speaker 2: song it says eight crazy nights if that was a
- 53:00Speaker 2: movie where most of the nights take place off screen
- 53:03Speaker 2: and the ones we do see are pretty tame.
- 53:06Speaker 3: I mean, they've they've built SNL spin off movies on less,
- 53:10Speaker 3: so that's not even disqualifying.
- 53:13Speaker 2: Yeah, necessarily right, but uh, it just like is a
- 53:17Speaker 2: bummer that one of the few American movies that centers
- 53:21Speaker 2: a Jewish holiday is like also one of the worst
- 53:24Speaker 2: movies ever made.
- 53:26Speaker 3: And also not about the holiday that it's advertising that
- 53:29Speaker 3: it's about, right, Yeah, Alex, Alex, what was it like
- 53:34Speaker 3: for you to, uh to revisit this this gem?
- 53:39Speaker 5: Well, well so again, I think I said to Caitlin
- 53:42Speaker 5: before we started, it is really something to watch a
- 53:46Speaker 5: purported comedy just in complete silence, Like Jake and I
- 53:50Speaker 5: were sitting I were sitting there.
- 53:51Speaker 6: We just sat there like the whole time.
- 53:54Speaker 5: Like, I don't think either of us laughed at anything
- 53:57Speaker 5: pertaining to the movie. I think during the corporate day scene,
- 54:00Speaker 5: I might have just blacked out, Like I almost don't
- 54:02Speaker 5: remember it at all because I was just like, what
- 54:04Speaker 5: is happening here? Yeah, utterly bizarre.
- 54:10Speaker 6: I you know, the message of Honicah is really it's you.
- 54:13Speaker 5: Know about the I mean every I don't want to
- 54:16Speaker 5: speak for every disperson, but I feel like there are
- 54:19Speaker 5: a lot of different ways that you can interpret it
- 54:22Speaker 5: and talk about it, and none of them were present
- 54:24Speaker 5: in this movie.
- 54:25Speaker 6: I don't even think we ever saw a minora being
- 54:27Speaker 6: lit at all.
- 54:29Speaker 4: I don't think so.
- 54:30Speaker 6: And again, as you said, it wasn't eight crazy nights.
- 54:33Speaker 5: It was eight mostly during the days, and nothing to
- 54:36Speaker 5: do with Hankah really, and we're in New Hampshire.
- 54:40Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it just felt I mean like I feel
- 54:44Speaker 3: like because yeah, I was also had a hard time
- 54:46Speaker 3: finding any sort of meaningful background on this. But given
- 54:49Speaker 3: the number of like credited writers and credited animation companies.
- 54:55Speaker 4: I feel like it's it's safe to say that.
- 54:57Speaker 3: Maybe this was coherent at one point being generous, but
- 55:01Speaker 3: it definitely did not like end that way.
- 55:08Speaker 4: I don't know why.
- 55:09Speaker 3: It seems like Adam Sandler was really you know, like, no,
- 55:13Speaker 3: we will not like he had a lot of creative
- 55:15Speaker 3: control to the point where he could be like, you
- 55:18Speaker 3: cannot take out the deer shitting scenes, so like, I
- 55:22Speaker 3: don't know, I don't know what to make of this.
- 55:25Speaker 3: It's like it's so bad and like you were saying earlier, Alex,
- 55:29Speaker 3: like is just sort of like this charcutory board of
- 55:32Speaker 3: like offensive early two thousands jokes where we have not
- 55:36Speaker 3: one but two characters that are strictly there to be
- 55:40Speaker 3: fat shamed, one child, one adult, incredible variety. The callback
- 55:47Speaker 3: with we didn't I don't think this came up in
- 55:48Speaker 3: the recap because it has no bearing on the.
- 55:50Speaker 4: Plot, But there's a child who.
- 55:54Speaker 3: Just like Adam Sandler's fat shaming, who is crying, and
- 55:59Speaker 3: I feel like that plays into bullying and also plays
- 56:02Speaker 3: into like tropes around bad people being really sensitive I guess,
- 56:07Speaker 3: and like overly emotional. And then we cut to like
- 56:12Speaker 3: a joke of like he Adam Sandler's like, kid, you
- 56:15Speaker 3: gotta get a bra, like just middle school bullying as a.
- 56:20Speaker 4: Thirty three year old character.
- 56:22Speaker 3: Yeah, and then when we go to Victoria's secret apparently
- 56:25Speaker 3: against Victoria's secrets, Will not that that's a great company,
- 56:29Speaker 3: but it's just so weird that he didn't ask. But
- 56:32Speaker 3: then we see like that kid trying on. It's a
- 56:35Speaker 3: very like incoherent joke.
- 56:38Speaker 2: Yeah, not only are the jokes incredibly problematic and reductive
- 56:42Speaker 2: and punching down to marginalize people. They often don't make
- 56:46Speaker 2: sense and are very sad.
- 56:49Speaker 3: And then it never comes back, which is not like,
- 56:51Speaker 3: oh I wish there was a third beat of that joke,
- 56:54Speaker 3: but like it's still You're like, why is why is
- 56:57Speaker 3: any of it here?
- 56:58Speaker 4: I don't know right.
- 56:59Speaker 2: Similarly, the adult who is relentlessly fat shamed is shown
- 57:04Speaker 2: on screen. The brief moment that he's on screen, he's
- 57:07Speaker 2: depicted as being like very uncoordinated and clueless, and then
- 57:14Speaker 2: the losing players of the two on two game have
- 57:16Speaker 2: to eat his jockstrap because that is like the worst
- 57:19Speaker 2: punishment conceivable, You have to eat a fat person's undergarment.
- 57:24Speaker 3: Like, but it's also like that should be true if
- 57:28Speaker 3: anyone's undergarded.
- 57:29Speaker 2: That shouldn't for.
- 57:30Speaker 3: The punishment for anybody, Like body type should not be
- 57:33Speaker 3: a factor in why you wouldn't want to do that.
- 57:36Speaker 4: They're like, well, if it was.
- 57:37Speaker 3: If it was like a guy, I would need to
- 57:39Speaker 3: cuss jockstrap if it was his, if he had a
- 57:42Speaker 3: different body type.
- 57:43Speaker 2: Well that's the joke. It's just like it's especially gross
- 57:47Speaker 2: because it belongs to a fat person. So it's just
- 57:50Speaker 2: like nonsensical jokes like that. There's, as we referenced already,
- 57:56Speaker 2: the anti Asian racism in a care who works at
- 58:01Speaker 2: a Chinese restaurant who is voiced by Rob Schneider doing.
- 58:05Speaker 3: His definitely not the only time Rob Schneider's done this,
- 58:09Speaker 3: I cannot I could pull a second example out of
- 58:12Speaker 3: my head, but I know he's done this before.
- 58:14Speaker 7: We know.
- 58:14Speaker 2: We talked about this on I think it was our
- 58:16Speaker 2: fifty First Dates episode. There are like the whole pieces
- 58:21Speaker 2: written about the long list of often anti Asian racist
- 58:27Speaker 2: jokes and characters that he does in movies like I
- 58:30Speaker 2: Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is an example. He
- 58:32Speaker 2: does it in fifty First Day, every movie, it's almost
- 58:35Speaker 2: every movie he's in, honestly, So he's just doing another
- 58:38Speaker 2: example of it in Eight Crazy Nights. And then there
- 58:42Speaker 2: are a whole slew of ableist jokes that are directed
- 58:47Speaker 2: toward Whitey and Eleanor.
- 58:49Speaker 5: I have a real problem with how they treated Eleanor
- 58:53Speaker 5: in the movie. I mean it just it starts bad
- 58:56Speaker 5: and then it gets so much worse. And then the
- 58:58Speaker 5: thing with the like she her hair is a wig,
- 59:00Speaker 5: and that's a big funny joke for a while that
- 59:03Speaker 5: she loses her wig, and it just felt like everything
- 59:07Speaker 5: they were doing to Whitey but made it worse because
- 59:09Speaker 5: she's a woman, you know what I mean, Like they're
- 59:11Speaker 5: like it's already bad. And then we added in a
- 59:13Speaker 5: lot of misogyny too.
- 59:15Speaker 2: Because they seem to have they're like fraternal twins, they
- 59:19Speaker 2: seem to have been born with the same physical disability,
- 59:24Speaker 2: and so there's a ton of ablest jokes made about them.
- 59:28Speaker 2: But like you said, yeah, it's even the offensive jokes
- 59:31Speaker 2: that are leveled at Eleanor are even more so because
- 59:35Speaker 2: she is a woman and she's like voiced with this
- 59:39Speaker 2: very like shrill, annoying voice that Adam Sandler is doing
- 59:43Speaker 2: that's like very intentionally annoying.
- 59:45Speaker 4: And apparently could have been worse, which is so wild.
- 59:49Speaker 2: Yeah, and then for those two characters, the character design
- 59:54Speaker 2: is way more cartoonish than every single other character. Every
- 59:57Speaker 2: single other character you see at least resemble like human people,
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: But for these two characters, Whitey and Eleanor, they're very
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: very very cartoonish looking, like they they don't resemble human
- 1:00:13Speaker 2: beings the way that humans look. So it's just another
- 1:00:18Speaker 2: way that the movie doesn't take them seriously, that the
- 1:00:22Speaker 2: movie is disparaging toward these people. And then meanwhile, like Davy,
- 1:00:28Speaker 2: as we said, has like chiseled pecks and abs, and
- 1:00:31Speaker 2: it's like, give.
- 1:00:32Speaker 3: Me a bit break doesn't make Yeah, that's I feel
- 1:00:36Speaker 3: like that's an Adam Sandler email, like hold on, hold on,
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: make me way.
- 1:00:41Speaker 10: Yeah, he's a loser, but he's got to be sexy
- 1:00:45Speaker 10: because he looks like me, Like, I don't know, I
- 1:00:50Speaker 10: don't know how much creative control should one person be.
- 1:00:53Speaker 9: Permitted to have, do your dumb man, this guy would
- 1:00:58Speaker 9: not have chiseled abs like and the fact that like
- 1:01:01Speaker 9: that is sort of used to justify why he's like
- 1:01:04Speaker 9: treating other characters so fat phobic, like is well.
- 1:01:08Speaker 3: Because he's got You're like that doesn't make narrative sense
- 1:01:13Speaker 3: given his the only.
- 1:01:14Speaker 4: Thing we see him consume the entire movie is.
- 1:01:16Speaker 3: Beer anyways, right, I don't even know? And yeah, I
- 1:01:21Speaker 3: mean going back to Eleanor a little bit, I mean
- 1:01:23Speaker 3: I just found it. Really I felt like she was
- 1:01:25Speaker 3: treated I mean, she's treated horrifically, but it also felt
- 1:01:28Speaker 3: like she was like they were leaning on like Jewish
- 1:01:31Speaker 3: stereotypes with her, but her character was. It was very unclear.
- 1:01:35Speaker 3: I mean, not that it would make it okay either way,
- 1:01:37Speaker 3: but I was like, I'm pretty sure we were told
- 1:01:39Speaker 3: at the beginning of the movie this character isn't Jewish,
- 1:01:41Speaker 3: and then they layer all of these horrible stereotypes on her.
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: It's just like another thing where it's like both offensive
- 1:01:47Speaker 3: and confusing.
- 1:01:48Speaker 5: He's doing it like a stereotypical Jewish old lady voice,
- 1:01:51Speaker 5: and like we picked up on that right away when
- 1:01:54Speaker 5: I was watching it. I was like, that's so weird
- 1:01:55Speaker 5: because like, again, they're not they're not Jews away.
- 1:02:00Speaker 3: Right, like the first thing we learned about those, right
- 1:02:04Speaker 3: And like you said, like even if they were Jewish characters,
- 1:02:07Speaker 3: to then lean into that stereotype is just lazy and reductive.
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: Problematic and confusing. Every joke in this movie.
- 1:02:16Speaker 5: I was pleasantly surprised that, I mean, are we ready
- 1:02:19Speaker 5: to talk about We're ready.
- 1:02:20Speaker 6: To talk to Jennifer.
- 1:02:21Speaker 2: Let's let's do it.
- 1:02:22Speaker 5: I was pleasantly surprised that Jennifer didn't seem to fulfill
- 1:02:25Speaker 5: any Jewish like women's stereotypes. Really, I mean, in all
- 1:02:29Speaker 5: of that, I'm saying it as if it's a compliment,
- 1:02:32Speaker 5: but also as I angrily texted Jamie, we know like
- 1:02:34Speaker 5: six facts about Jennifer, Like, what do we really know
- 1:02:37Speaker 5: about Jennifer. She's not a well defined character. She's a woman,
- 1:02:41Speaker 5: she's a brunette.
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: She's a mom, she works at Dunkin Donuts, she's Jewish,
- 1:02:46Speaker 2: she's generous.
- 1:02:47Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she's a nice person.
- 1:02:49Speaker 2: And she doesn't put up with Davy's shit a lot
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: of the time. And until that very it makes you
- 1:02:55Speaker 2: wonder why she's willing to like get with him, because
- 1:02:58Speaker 2: has he redeemed himself because he's so irredeemable that like
- 1:03:03Speaker 2: he doesn't do enough.
- 1:03:04Speaker 3: I think No, it's she's treated as a trophy at
- 1:03:07Speaker 3: the end, I mean, which I think has made pretty explicit.
- 1:03:10Speaker 4: By how like and they make eleanor do it where it's.
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: Like, if you guys don't, Kish shall kick you in
- 1:03:16Speaker 3: the teeth.
- 1:03:17Speaker 4: And then Jennifer is like, yep, makes sense. I guess.
- 1:03:20Speaker 4: I guess you're my son now too. You're like Jesus, come.
- 1:03:24Speaker 5: You know, honestly, Then I'm going to retract my previous
- 1:03:26Speaker 5: statement that it was nice that she wasn't treated with
- 1:03:28Speaker 5: Jewish stereotypes, because the reason they probably didn't imbue her
- 1:03:32Speaker 5: with Jewish stereotypes is because she was a trophy at
- 1:03:35Speaker 5: the end, right, Like a lot in a lot of
- 1:03:36Speaker 5: movies like that, the Jewish woman character really does only
- 1:03:40Speaker 5: exist to be sort of mocked in a number of
- 1:03:43Speaker 5: different a variety of different fun ways. And so I
- 1:03:46Speaker 5: feel like you can you can have one or the other.
- 1:03:48Speaker 5: But Adam Sandler would not want his prize to be
- 1:03:50Speaker 5: kind of, you know, mired in Jewish stereotypes, right, like
- 1:03:53Speaker 5: he would he would separate those two out.
- 1:03:55Speaker 2: It's very bleak, right, especially because the like the woman
- 1:04:00Speaker 2: trophy in so many movies is like very waspy. Everything
- 1:04:05Speaker 2: is bad in the movie.
- 1:04:07Speaker 4: It's like where does ivid?
- 1:04:08Speaker 3: Yeah, the I guess I don't have anything to say
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: about the Dead Parents except like, what a wildly serious
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: plot point to deploy with like ten minutes left in
- 1:04:19Speaker 3: the movie. But yeah, I think, like Alex you said
- 1:04:22Speaker 3: it perfectly earlier, where it's like it's that is presented
- 1:04:25Speaker 3: as a justification for all of his behavior, which obviously
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: it isn't, and then when he makes the smallest bit
- 1:04:32Speaker 3: of progress as a person, he's immediately given trophy. Jennifer
- 1:04:37Speaker 3: who like stands up for him kind of in a
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: weird vacuum. I think it's like the only real justification
- 1:04:44Speaker 3: is like they have a connection from the past and
- 1:04:46Speaker 3: she's nice. There's also oh gosh, I want to take
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: sure I mentioned that there's also just like a again
- 1:04:53Speaker 3: like expectedly bad presentation of an unhoused person in this too, yes,
- 1:04:59Speaker 3: where like I don't even want to get it, but
- 1:05:01Speaker 3: it's like all of the stereotypes you would expect are present,
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: and it's again a character that doesn't do anything except
- 1:05:09Speaker 3: be there.
- 1:05:10Speaker 2: So it's like they just either to be made fun of.
- 1:05:12Speaker 3: Yeah, right, the same as you know, mister Chang and
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: like yeah, they're just like oh yeah, these are like
- 1:05:19Speaker 3: this is the joke we always make in the Adam
- 1:05:21Speaker 3: Sandler movie, so we have to make it here too,
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: and it's just like lazy and bad what else.
- 1:05:29Speaker 2: They're similarly a very brief but noticeable transphobic joke in
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: one of the songs in Songs song Form emblematic of
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: the type of stuff that this movie thinks is funny.
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: The protein powder hits on the victorious decrodrazy. You're just
- 1:05:44Speaker 3: at the point you're like, all right, I'm just like
- 1:05:46Speaker 3: I've I've stopped.
- 1:05:48Speaker 2: Feeling I didn't even write that down because I had
- 1:05:50Speaker 2: like checked out so hard at that point that I
- 1:05:53Speaker 2: was like, I can't My brain is mush, I can't even.
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: It's honestly like, yeah, listeners, let us know if we've
- 1:06:00Speaker 3: forgotten anything, because I found it so hard to lock
- 1:06:03Speaker 3: in on this movie, and I kept pausing it to be.
- 1:06:05Speaker 4: Like, yeah, we'll do an earlier point.
- 1:06:09Speaker 2: Like It's one thing. If there is a character who
- 1:06:12Speaker 2: hasn't properly dealt with grief, who is like turning to
- 1:06:18Speaker 2: substance use to cope, and who like with the help
- 1:06:24Speaker 2: of their community perhaps is able to like turn things
- 1:06:28Speaker 2: around and deal with things in a healthier way. There's
- 1:06:32Speaker 2: a lot of movies about that. Also. I was thinking
- 1:06:34Speaker 2: about how there's like a whole subgenre of movies about
- 1:06:39Speaker 2: a like down on his luck man, often someone who
- 1:06:43Speaker 2: is like dealing with alcoholism, who is either by like
- 1:06:47Speaker 2: community service, like is sentenced to community service, or something
- 1:06:51Speaker 2: that he has to coach a like youth team. Yeah,
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: there are so many movies to this effect. I'm starting
- 1:06:59Speaker 2: a lit boxed list, and so far I have. There's
- 1:07:02Speaker 2: a movie, there's a Ben Affleck movie called The Way Back.
- 1:07:04Speaker 2: I think Hoosiers has this premise. I want to say,
- 1:07:10Speaker 2: is Mighty Ducks one of them? Yes, Mighty Ducks?
- 1:07:13Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely a.
- 1:07:14Speaker 2: League of their own. Like it's the Tom Hanks character.
- 1:07:18Speaker 4: Okay, that's half like TV pilots too. He's back.
- 1:07:23Speaker 2: So if anyone has any other I know I'm missing
- 1:07:26Speaker 2: so many. Oh there was actually a movie that I
- 1:07:28Speaker 2: was an extra in called The Winning Season starring Sam
- 1:07:31Speaker 2: Rockwell and Emma Roberts, that I think never got a
- 1:07:34Speaker 2: theatrical release.
- 1:07:36Speaker 4: But like that sounds like a mad lib.
- 1:07:38Speaker 2: I'm basically the star of it as I walk through
- 1:07:41Speaker 2: one cafeteria scene with no speaking role. But it's like, yeah,
- 1:07:46Speaker 2: Sam Rockwell like gets community service and has to coach
- 1:07:49Speaker 2: a girls basketball team. So like, there's just so many
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: movies to this effect, a Crazy Nights being one of them. Anyway,
- 1:07:56Speaker 2: if there's a movie where like it's a similar premise
- 1:07:58Speaker 2: and the character like learns through like the love and
- 1:08:03Speaker 2: companionship of the people around him and that's his arc
- 1:08:06Speaker 2: and that he like treats people better because of it, fine, whatever,
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: Like this is also the premise of many many holiday movies,
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: but like this one is just so half baked in
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: its execution, and the character starts out so irredeemable that
- 1:08:25Speaker 2: you're just like, why do I care? Why am I
- 1:08:27Speaker 2: watching this? It's horrible, it's so tropy. Yeah, and it's
- 1:08:32Speaker 2: an absolute mess.
- 1:08:33Speaker 5: I think that his character, like I was saying, a
- 1:08:36Speaker 5: lot of his behavior, I mean, there's no coming back
- 1:08:39Speaker 5: from some of the things he did, Like when you
- 1:08:42Speaker 5: throw you know, when you throw an old man off
- 1:08:44Speaker 5: a cliff inside a porner body and let him get
- 1:08:47Speaker 5: covered in shit, like there's really I mean, there's no redemption.
- 1:08:52Speaker 6: There's no redemption to be how No, And I think
- 1:08:54Speaker 6: that even and I think that's probably why they drop
- 1:08:56Speaker 6: the dead parents in at the end. They're like today
- 1:08:59Speaker 6: and it.
- 1:09:00Speaker 5: Just doesn't that doesn't make it better. And I also
- 1:09:03Speaker 5: think that is redeeming himself by saying maybe white he
- 1:09:07Speaker 5: should win the Patch Award, Like that's not.
- 1:09:11Speaker 6: Is that redemption? Is that enough? Did he balance the
- 1:09:13Speaker 6: scales of justice? I feel like he did not right.
- 1:09:16Speaker 2: We've talked about this before, but male redemption arcs and
- 1:09:19Speaker 2: stories like this is something we see all the time,
- 1:09:22Speaker 2: where a man will be really awful to people and
- 1:09:26Speaker 2: do things that are arguably irredeemable, but because he does
- 1:09:31Speaker 2: one tiny little thing he does not even the bare minimum,
- 1:09:33Speaker 2: He does less than the bare minimum, but still gets
- 1:09:36Speaker 2: a redemption arc because culturally we just allow bad male
- 1:09:41Speaker 2: behavior far more than we permit or tolerate any kind
- 1:09:46Speaker 2: of bad behavior from marginalized genders.
- 1:09:50Speaker 3: Well, yeah, like the thresholds for a man's redemption is
- 1:09:53Speaker 3: far lower, and the threshold for punishment of anyone who's
- 1:09:57Speaker 3: not a man.
- 1:09:57Speaker 4: Is also a far lower.
- 1:09:59Speaker 3: Like, you know, we see women get punished all the
- 1:10:02Speaker 3: time for existing and then like you know, characters like
- 1:10:06Speaker 3: this do the most horrific shit possible and then are
- 1:10:09Speaker 3: nice one time, and then it's like, no.
- 1:10:12Speaker 4: You're right, you're right, here's your woman property after me too.
- 1:10:17Speaker 5: There were all those apologies that came out, and I'm
- 1:10:19Speaker 5: thinking in particular of I want to say Mario Batali
- 1:10:22Speaker 5: and he was like, I'm sorry I sectually harassed people.
- 1:10:25Speaker 6: Here is a cinnamon role recipe. Everything's good, And it was.
- 1:10:28Speaker 2: Just like, what, Well, that's the thing. Yeah, Like, if
- 1:10:33Speaker 2: you're a white man in society and you do something horrible,
- 1:10:38Speaker 2: you have a shot or redemption.
- 1:10:40Speaker 3: Caitlyn, I keep forgetting to bring this up. I think
- 1:10:42Speaker 3: about it every couple of months. I want to do
- 1:10:44Speaker 3: a Matreon theme that's like white male O Tour post
- 1:10:48Speaker 3: Me Too movie, because there were so many of them
- 1:10:50Speaker 3: that were like, I get it, guys, I get it,
- 1:10:54Speaker 3: my bad and then it's like the only movie they'll
- 1:10:56Speaker 3: ever make that centers a woman and it makes no sense. Listeners,
- 1:11:00Speaker 3: please drop your your Like I've been meaning to make
- 1:11:03Speaker 3: a letterbox list of like Maleo term my b post
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: Me Too movies because some are okay, most of them
- 1:11:11Speaker 3: are incoherent and forgettable, but I feel like there was
- 1:11:15Speaker 3: they were like, oh, we gotta get Brad's in here
- 1:11:16Speaker 3: and like and it.
- 1:11:18Speaker 4: Like doesn't work. I actually think one of the better
- 1:11:20Speaker 4: ones is The Last Duel. Oh, the Last Duel is
- 1:11:23Speaker 4: a good example that men.
- 1:11:25Speaker 3: For example, is a that's the Alex Garland post me
- 1:11:28Speaker 3: to movies.
- 1:11:30Speaker 4: There's just a lot of them.
- 1:11:31Speaker 2: It's Bombshell, directed by j Rod.
- 1:11:35Speaker 3: Yes, that's that might be bottom of the barrel for me.
- 1:11:39Speaker 3: That movie is dog shit And at the time I
- 1:11:42Speaker 3: was and they tried to kill me.
- 1:11:43Speaker 4: At the time I got called by the newspaper.
- 1:11:46Speaker 3: When I said the Bombshell was like dog shit and
- 1:11:49Speaker 3: bad for women.
- 1:11:51Speaker 4: They're like, what do you mean you hate you hate women, Like.
- 1:11:56Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's exactly what that means there is that it.
- 1:12:00Speaker 2: Does anyone have any other thoughts about Eight Crazy Nights?
- 1:12:07Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I forget when we last
- 1:12:09Speaker 3: had this conversation, but I do want to just sort
- 1:12:12Speaker 3: of like take a second for us to acknowledge Adam
- 1:12:16Speaker 3: Sandler's politics, which are actually quite relevant to this movie
- 1:12:19Speaker 3: in spite of it not really being about Hanakah.
- 1:12:23Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, So Adam Sandler has a history of
- 1:12:29Speaker 2: having a very pro Israel stance. A couple examples of
- 1:12:34Speaker 2: this seems like a lot of it happened in twenty fifteen,
- 1:12:37Speaker 2: at least publicly, where he was reported as saying, quote,
- 1:12:42Speaker 2: I will always stand with Israel. I can't tolerate people
- 1:12:45Speaker 2: who criticize Israel without walking in their shoes. I hate
- 1:12:48Speaker 2: the lies they spread and their lack of knowledge. I
- 1:12:51Speaker 2: am proud to stand up for the Israelis unquote. And
- 1:12:55Speaker 2: then also in that year, there was this whole thing
- 1:12:58Speaker 2: where the frontman of Pink Floyd Roger Waters, you know,
- 1:13:03Speaker 2: he's a proponent of the BDS movement, he said he
- 1:13:08Speaker 2: would not play shows in Israel. Howard Stern then went
- 1:13:12Speaker 2: on like a long rant about this on his show
- 1:13:15Speaker 2: in October of twenty fifteen, and then Adam Sandler went
- 1:13:19Speaker 2: on The Howard Stern Show and said something to the
- 1:13:24Speaker 2: effect of like, I'm disgusted when they single out Israel.
- 1:13:27Speaker 2: I'm very pro Israel. He goes on to say like
- 1:13:30Speaker 2: he doesn't like it when musicians won't play concerts in Israel,
- 1:13:35Speaker 2: and then he's like, I love what you had to
- 1:13:37Speaker 2: say about it, Howard Stern, which was like some of
- 1:13:40Speaker 2: the most vile, racist, horrible stuff. I don't even want
- 1:13:44Speaker 2: to repeat it, but if anyone's interested in looking that
- 1:13:47Speaker 2: up on their own time, and that's why I was curious, like, Okay,
- 1:13:51Speaker 2: this is you know, nearly ten years ago. Has Adam
- 1:13:54Speaker 2: Sandler's stance changed at all? And it seems like he
- 1:13:58Speaker 2: hasn't said a whole lot about it in the past decade,
- 1:14:02Speaker 2: aside from after October seventh of twenty twenty three, he
- 1:14:06Speaker 2: did post on Instagram saying that I've been heartbroken by
- 1:14:10Speaker 2: the horrendous attacks on Israel. I pray for peace ands
- 1:14:14Speaker 2: the safety of innocent Israelis and Palestinians everywhere. So now
- 1:14:18Speaker 2: he's sort of like both sides in it, which is
- 1:14:23Speaker 2: it's a choice. It's a choice, and I don't think
- 1:14:26Speaker 2: he said much about it publicly since.
- 1:14:29Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's a different choice I think than he
- 1:14:32Speaker 5: had been making in the past. And part of me
- 1:14:35Speaker 5: wants to the optimistic part of me wants to see
- 1:14:38Speaker 5: that as a sign of progress. I mean, I think
- 1:14:41Speaker 5: going from supporting Howard Stern's vile statements that are incredibly
- 1:14:46Speaker 5: racist to saying Palaestins are also people who deserve safety
- 1:14:50Speaker 5: is like, you know, again, that is it's a step.
- 1:14:53Speaker 4: We can call it.
- 1:14:53Speaker 5: Let's just call a step. I don't think it needs
- 1:14:55Speaker 5: to be complimented. I don't think it needs to be
- 1:14:57Speaker 5: like celebrated. It's just like a hey, so we did
- 1:14:59Speaker 5: do and that's cool, you know. And I think that
- 1:15:02Speaker 5: like a lot of the support for Israel is generational.
- 1:15:05Speaker 5: So Adam Sandler just want to note what generation is
- 1:15:07Speaker 5: he and he's how old is he?
- 1:15:09Speaker 4: Gen X?
- 1:15:10Speaker 5: Yeah, so there's actually been a real shift in like
- 1:15:13Speaker 5: millennials and gen z around Israel. And I think a
- 1:15:16Speaker 5: lot of it is that there's social media and that
- 1:15:17Speaker 5: you can really see the harm that is being done
- 1:15:21Speaker 5: into Palestindian So I think that there's that component of
- 1:15:23Speaker 5: it that younger people are just a little bit more
- 1:15:26Speaker 5: in the know about that sort of thing and a
- 1:15:28Speaker 5: little more involved in that way. So I'm not trying
- 1:15:32Speaker 5: to give him a pass at all, but I am
- 1:15:34Speaker 5: like contextualizing that, like older Jews tend to have stronger
- 1:15:38Speaker 5: opinions and stronger support for Israel. Then sure, and again
- 1:15:41Speaker 5: and painting with a very brudbrush, because everybody has their.
- 1:15:44Speaker 2: Own thoughts, of course, of course, yeah, so I guess, yeah,
- 1:15:48Speaker 2: unsurprising that he has these various stances over the years.
- 1:15:54Speaker 2: But it feels like what so much of Hollywood is doing,
- 1:15:59Speaker 2: which is just like remaining mostly silent on the.
- 1:16:02Speaker 4: Matter, right, which which is? Which is? Which is still
- 1:16:06Speaker 4: saying something? Which is very.
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: Point to say something, because when a genocide is happening,
- 1:16:13Speaker 2: and when a decades long subjugation of an entire population
- 1:16:19Speaker 2: of people is not being acknowledged, that is being complicit
- 1:16:26Speaker 2: and that is very much part of the violence.
- 1:16:29Speaker 5: I'm I'm a member of Jewish Voices for Peace, which
- 1:16:33Speaker 5: is a nonprofit that's anti Sionist. I feel like that's
- 1:16:35Speaker 5: important to say, and a big part of Jewish Voices
- 1:16:39Speaker 5: for Peace is talking about how so many Jews have
- 1:16:43Speaker 5: just like a deep understanding of what state sanctioned violence
- 1:16:47Speaker 5: looks like and what a genocide looks like, because this
- 1:16:50Speaker 5: is unfortunately, a big part of our history, from programs
- 1:16:54Speaker 5: to blood libel claims and so much more all the way,
- 1:16:57Speaker 5: including the Holocaust. And I mean Jews, I feel like,
- 1:17:01Speaker 5: unfortunately are uniquely qualified to say this is a genocide.
- 1:17:05Speaker 5: And that's where Jewis Voices for Peace really comes into plays,
- 1:17:07Speaker 5: saying like we can see what we can call it
- 1:17:09Speaker 5: for what it is, like, we see what's happening, and
- 1:17:12Speaker 5: that is I think what is so heartbreaking to be
- 1:17:14Speaker 5: a Jewish person watching this happen is that, like, I
- 1:17:18Speaker 5: know what this is. I am familiar with the name.
- 1:17:20Speaker 5: I'm familiar with what a genocide is, and to see
- 1:17:22Speaker 5: it be perpetrated by people who call themselves Jewish like
- 1:17:25Speaker 5: me is just it's it's deeply heartbreaking.
- 1:17:29Speaker 4: I can't.
- 1:17:29Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I have felt so like heartened bias
- 1:17:33Speaker 3: seeing work like the La branch of Jewish Voices for
- 1:17:37Speaker 3: Peace is wonderful.
- 1:17:38Speaker 4: I've been going to a lot of events.
- 1:17:40Speaker 3: Actually, one of our previous guests on the show, Sammerfera,
- 1:17:44Speaker 3: recently did an event with writers against the war on
- 1:17:46Speaker 3: Gaza out here, and like it does feel, and I
- 1:17:50Speaker 3: just like I've been tremendously educated by groups like these,
- 1:17:55Speaker 3: and particularly by Palestinian writers, and I am glad for
- 1:17:59Speaker 3: like and younger generations that there has been such movement
- 1:18:05Speaker 3: because we have, you know, flawed tools, but tools to
- 1:18:08Speaker 3: be able to better understand that makes the propaganda less
- 1:18:11Speaker 3: powerful kind of, I guess taking it back to Adam Sandler,
- 1:18:15Speaker 3: I've the silence. I don't know, It's like, again, everyone
- 1:18:19Speaker 3: is on an individual journey. Who knows how his kids feeled.
- 1:18:22Speaker 3: I know that there's a lot of families that are
- 1:18:24Speaker 3: fractured by younger generations being against Israel, you know, But
- 1:18:30Speaker 3: silence is a business decision is something that I find
- 1:18:35Speaker 3: particularly vile and unsettling because it's like, I don't not
- 1:18:41Speaker 3: particular to Adam Sandler, but it's like there's you can't
- 1:18:44Speaker 3: not have a feeling about it. So the silence is
- 1:18:49Speaker 3: just it's it's a very pointed choice.
- 1:18:53Speaker 4: So we don't know, but something.
- 1:18:55Speaker 3: That I have seen just again of how this continues
- 1:19:00Speaker 3: to affect. I mean, obviously we should be centering the
- 1:19:04Speaker 3: Palestinian people first and foremost, but as sort of we
- 1:19:09Speaker 3: see these issues continue to be discussed less and less
- 1:19:12Speaker 3: in media. I was really surprised. There's a recent story
- 1:19:17Speaker 3: where Gladiator Too just came out I'm going somewhere with this,
- 1:19:20Speaker 3: and there was originally an Egyptian Palestinian actor, I hope
- 1:19:25Speaker 3: I'm saying her name correctly, Mae Kalamawi, who was originally
- 1:19:30Speaker 3: I believe Paul Mescal's love interest. It's Gladiator, so I'm
- 1:19:35Speaker 3: sure it wasn't a great part, but like all of
- 1:19:37Speaker 3: her scenes were shot and then her entire part was
- 1:19:41Speaker 3: cut out of the movie in post production, which was
- 1:19:44Speaker 3: taking place after she had been vocally supportive of Palestine
- 1:19:49Speaker 3: because of course she's a Palestinian actor. And just the
- 1:19:54Speaker 3: fact that this is still really deeply affecting, particularly Palestinian artists,
- 1:20:00Speaker 3: and it is like becoming less and less and less
- 1:20:04Speaker 3: discussed as time went on.
- 1:20:05Speaker 4: I'm so like surprised. I guess at this point that
- 1:20:09Speaker 4: that is like.
- 1:20:10Speaker 3: Not a story that seems to have broken through in
- 1:20:12Speaker 3: any meaningful way, in spite of the fact that like
- 1:20:14Speaker 3: the movie is out and doing very well.
- 1:20:17Speaker 4: So yeah, I don't know, it's.
- 1:20:20Speaker 2: Just I mean, it's just indicative of medias of Hollywood's
- 1:20:25Speaker 2: of society's apathy. Yeah, if not outward cruelty and violence
- 1:20:33Speaker 2: toward Palestinians, and it's so disheartening, and that's why we
- 1:20:37Speaker 2: must continue.
- 1:20:38Speaker 3: That's why we must talk about eight Crazy Nights on
- 1:20:41Speaker 3: the Betel cast.
- 1:20:42Speaker 2: If it's a vehicle for us to then also talk
- 1:20:45Speaker 2: about Palestinian liberation.
- 1:20:47Speaker 3: Then yeah, we're also in the in the new year,
- 1:20:49Speaker 3: going to be covering a few Palestinian films as well.
- 1:20:53Speaker 3: Like we want to keep the conversation going. But yeah,
- 1:20:56Speaker 3: we wanted to talk to you about it because I
- 1:20:57Speaker 3: know you're you're involved with Jewish voices for peace and
- 1:21:01Speaker 3: just in general are the best. I've learned so much
- 1:21:05Speaker 3: from you. You've You've educated my whole family truly, Yeah about.
- 1:21:10Speaker 4: What well my brother lived with you.
- 1:21:12Speaker 5: Yeah, it's trying to radicalize your brother.
- 1:21:15Speaker 3: And then my dad visited you guys on the stoop
- 1:21:18Speaker 3: during the pandemic and he learned things too.
- 1:21:20Speaker 4: He was like communist. Alex Is added again.
- 1:21:23Speaker 5: He called he called me the world's friendliest socialist.
- 1:21:28Speaker 2: I think he.
- 1:21:30Speaker 4: Gave me that feels like an attack on me.
- 1:21:35Speaker 3: As opposed to my daughter, who's the world's bitchiest socialist.
- 1:21:39Speaker 4: Because I just say in a really friendly way.
- 1:21:40Speaker 6: I'm like, wouldn't that be neat if?
- 1:21:44Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, anyway, thank you for talking with us
- 1:21:50Speaker 2: about this, and yeah, does does anyone have anything else
- 1:21:53Speaker 2: they want to talk about?
- 1:21:54Speaker 3: This movie sucks ass, it's quite bad. And if you
- 1:21:58Speaker 3: think it's good, considered, did you see it when you
- 1:22:00Speaker 3: were ten? And if not, there's something seriously wrong with you.
- 1:22:04Speaker 4: This is the time. Usually it's like, you love what
- 1:22:06Speaker 4: you love.
- 1:22:06Speaker 3: If you love this movie, you're sick and need you
- 1:22:10Speaker 3: need help?
- 1:22:11Speaker 5: Oh, we didn't talk about this, but very briefly did
- 1:22:14Speaker 5: a woman talk to another woman ever in the course
- 1:22:16Speaker 5: of the movie.
- 1:22:17Speaker 6: Because I tried to keep track of that.
- 1:22:19Speaker 5: I think that the closest it comes is when Eleanor
- 1:22:22Speaker 5: tells them to kiss. But she's not just talking to Jennifer.
- 1:22:25Speaker 5: She's also talking today, she's.
- 1:22:27Speaker 3: Talking to the royal Yeah, right, the collective we.
- 1:22:30Speaker 2: And the context is like, have a heterosexual kiss, please?
- 1:22:33Speaker 4: Yes?
- 1:22:34Speaker 2: Yeah, don't think it passes the Bechdel test even remotely. Yeah,
- 1:22:38Speaker 2: Jennifer doesn't have any friends. Also, like if she was
- 1:22:43Speaker 2: like on a basketball team with Davey when they were kids,
- 1:22:47Speaker 2: Like she's a basketball player, why doesn't like there could
- 1:22:50Speaker 2: have easily been a thing where like she's playing basketball
- 1:22:54Speaker 2: with her son or shooting hoops or whatever like, but
- 1:22:57Speaker 2: the movie doesn't care at all about characterizing her except
- 1:23:00Speaker 2: to have her be like an attractive person that Davy
- 1:23:04Speaker 2: can win as a trophy at the end.
- 1:23:08Speaker 3: Yeah, which is too bad because they give her like
- 1:23:11Speaker 3: some potentially interesting characteristics but have no interest in exploring
- 1:23:17Speaker 3: any of them, any of her interiority, Like she is
- 1:23:20Speaker 3: just a cardboard cutout at them all, and I will give.
- 1:23:25Speaker 2: It to her that she's kind of the she's one
- 1:23:27Speaker 2: of the few people who will call Davy out for
- 1:23:30Speaker 2: his cruel awful behavior light he does it too, But
- 1:23:36Speaker 2: that feels.
- 1:23:37Speaker 3: Very like attempted feminism of the time, where it's like
- 1:23:41Speaker 3: they say one thing and then they do another. Because
- 1:23:44Speaker 3: she still ends up with them at the end, like
- 1:23:46Speaker 3: there's there is no real consequence other than a delay
- 1:23:49Speaker 3: of less than a week, it seems like.
- 1:23:52Speaker 2: Well, also, there's a fine line between a character who
- 1:23:57Speaker 2: we are not meant to like making reductive and problematic
- 1:24:02Speaker 2: remarks to people and the movie framing that as being wrong,
- 1:24:07Speaker 2: And there is some degree of that in this movie,
- 1:24:10Speaker 2: because he does get called out quite a bit. But
- 1:24:12Speaker 2: then the movie also relies on jokes that are like,
- 1:24:17Speaker 2: for example, any time Whitey has a seizure or a
- 1:24:22Speaker 2: lot of Whitey's behavior is like the movie making fun
- 1:24:25Speaker 2: of him from a very ableist point of view. So
- 1:24:28Speaker 2: even though the Davy character will be called out for
- 1:24:31Speaker 2: being ablest, the movie then turns around and makes the
- 1:24:35Speaker 2: same ableist jokes. So it's like, then, then why are
- 1:24:40Speaker 2: you even calling him out? If this is how you
- 1:24:42Speaker 2: feel about people with disabilities, or if this is how
- 1:24:44Speaker 2: you feel about fat people or whatever. So it's just
- 1:24:48Speaker 2: so disgusting. I'll give the movie zero nipple. I give
- 1:24:53Speaker 2: the movie negative five nipples.
- 1:24:56Speaker 3: Nice the end, I think I will do the same,
- 1:25:00Speaker 3: and I have nothing else to say about it, like, honestly, yeah,
- 1:25:05Speaker 3: what about.
- 1:25:06Speaker 4: You, Alex?
- 1:25:07Speaker 5: Yeah, I think negative five feels fair. Can I give
- 1:25:11Speaker 5: it like negative stars of David too? Maybe like half
- 1:25:14Speaker 5: a half a star of David? Just because like, where
- 1:25:17Speaker 5: is the Hanukah? I saw some menorahs in the background.
- 1:25:20Speaker 5: They were ice sculptures. That's it, basically, So I'm gonna
- 1:25:24Speaker 5: give it half a star of David.
- 1:25:25Speaker 6: Hmm, That's all I got.
- 1:25:27Speaker 3: It's brutal I also, I think, as we've talked through this,
- 1:25:31Speaker 3: I think now that in an earlier draft of the
- 1:25:36Speaker 3: movie that Whitey and Eleanor were Jewish, and that's why
- 1:25:41Speaker 3: the ending doesn't make sense. But then they changed it.
- 1:25:44Speaker 3: Why they changed it is anyone's guess, but I would
- 1:25:48Speaker 3: guess that they added that because they say it's in
- 1:25:50Speaker 3: that one line that we that unfortunately introduces Whitey where
- 1:25:53Speaker 3: he they're like, Whitey, you're.
- 1:25:55Speaker 4: Not even Jewish. He's like, I know. But so I
- 1:25:58Speaker 4: don't know why they added that. They could have just
- 1:26:00Speaker 4: taken it out.
- 1:26:01Speaker 3: Anyways, I have nothing else to say.
- 1:26:06Speaker 2: Well, Alex, thank you so much for joining us for
- 1:26:09Speaker 2: this discussion.
- 1:26:10Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
- 1:26:11Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
- 1:26:14Speaker 2: Tell us more about your your art and your work
- 1:26:17Speaker 2: and where people can find you and plug away.
- 1:26:21Speaker 6: Excellent.
- 1:26:21Speaker 5: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, Zinnia Socialist Supply Company.
- 1:26:26Speaker 5: I make radical art stickers, all sorts of stuff like that,
- 1:26:30Speaker 5: lots of rent theme stickers as we discussed before, but
- 1:26:33Speaker 5: don't worry, other musical theater stickers as well.
- 1:26:37Speaker 4: Thank god.
- 1:26:39Speaker 6: Yeah, I know we got to keep the all.
- 1:26:42Speaker 4: We need it all.
- 1:26:44Speaker 6: So you can find me on there and yeah, yeah, that's.
- 1:26:49Speaker 2: That you can get our stickers on our merch store.
- 1:26:53Speaker 2: So but the best way to support our show is
- 1:26:56Speaker 2: to go to patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast and
- 1:27:01Speaker 2: subscribe to our Matreon where you get two bonus episodes
- 1:27:05Speaker 2: every single month, plus access to the back catalog. Also,
- 1:27:09Speaker 2: we have live shows coming up in La San Francisco
- 1:27:14Speaker 2: and Portland, so if you go to link tree slash
- 1:27:18Speaker 2: Bechtel Cast, you can grab tickets to those shows. We'd
- 1:27:21Speaker 2: love to see you. They as well as some of
- 1:27:24Speaker 2: them will be live streamed, so even if you don't
- 1:27:26Speaker 2: live in those cities, the La Show and the Portland
- 1:27:29Speaker 2: show will be live streamed, so you can still watch
- 1:27:32Speaker 2: those if you grab tickets.
- 1:27:35Speaker 4: And yeah, that's Alex.
- 1:27:38Speaker 3: We owe you a good movie, so come back with
- 1:27:41Speaker 3: your favorite movie and we will cover that next.
- 1:27:45Speaker 6: That sounds amazing.
- 1:27:46Speaker 3: Come on board, all right, gang, and yeah, with on
- 1:27:51Speaker 3: that note, let's.
- 1:27:53Speaker 2: This movie has been a technical foul.
- 1:27:57Speaker 4: Perfect Bye bye.
- 1:28:02Speaker 2: The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin
- 1:28:06Speaker 2: Derante and Jamie loftis produced by Sophie Lichtermann, edited by
- 1:28:10Speaker 2: Moe laboord Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
- 1:28:13Speaker 2: with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is
- 1:28:17Speaker 2: designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo.
- 1:28:22Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
- 1:28:26Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast