Latest / The Bechdel Cast / It's a Wonderful Life

Transcript

It's a Wonderful Life · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: On the Bechde Cast, the questions ask if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: bast start changing with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Hello, Bechdel Cast listeners.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin and my name is Jamie, and
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: this is the Bechdel Cast. You know what you love it?
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: If this is your first time catch up, maybe because
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: it's an unusual week, been an unusual months on the cast,
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: and I celebrate that. This week we are releasing a
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: live show, and not just any live show, a live
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: show we just recorded in Los Angeles as of this
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: recording less than twenty four hours ago.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, and speaking of live shows, so we'll get in.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: We'll get to the episode in just a moment, but
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: before we do, we want to take this opportunity to
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: let you know about more live shows that we are
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: going to be doing, because we have a tour planned
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: for February twenty twenty four. We are going to the
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Bay Area. We'll be doing a show in San Francisco
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: and Sacramento. Then we are heading to Texas for shows
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: in Dallas and Austin, and then we were swinging back
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: around to California and doing a show in San Diego. Now,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: at the time of us recording this, we're still finalizing
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: some of the details, but a few ticket links are
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: already live and up on our link tree link Tree
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: slash Bechtel Cast.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Which is also linked in the description. And yeah, we're
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: super excited to be back on the road. We hear
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: you Bechdel Cast listeners that we need to get off
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: our asses and get off the West coast. So you'll
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: see a lot of that in the coming months, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: we're excited. We were particularly excited to go to Austin
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: because we had a show in Austin that was sold
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: out scheduled for April twenty twenty and you'll never believe
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: what happened next. So we are excited to finally, almost
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: four years later, make it back to Austin and head
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: over to Dallas as well. So and we're just pumped
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: to be back on tour. Yes, and for this live show,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: you'll know from the title we covered, it's a wonderful life,
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: is it? We spent some time pondering deciding, and another
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: important element of this show is that half of the
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: proceeds from this show went to ANARA and PCRF. These
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: are both nonprofits that are contributing to aid taking place
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: in Gaza right now. Of course, if you're listening and
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: you are a person in the world, you're very likely
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: aware of what's going on in Gaza right now. There
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: is not a lot of aid reaching Gaza because of
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: the horrific uenocytal practices that are taking place around Gaza. However,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: we wanted to do what we can not just by
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: making our politics very clear on the show. I know
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: we've referenced it, but for the sake of just being
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: explicit about it on the feed. Yeah, So half of
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: the money from the show went to the PCRF is
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: short for Palestine Children's Relief Fund. An ERA is short
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: for America Near East Refugee Aid. So that money has
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: been donated and sincerely hope that the aid that is
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: being sent is able to actually reach the people of
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Gaza as soon as possible. Free Palestine. America is the
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: worst place in the world. So that was what we
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: are doing, in addition to continuing to raise awareness as
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: we can. That said, we really appreciate everyone who came
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: out to the show. We had a really great time.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And who watched the live stream blog? Yes, bought tickets
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: to the live stream. Yes, really appreciate you supporting us,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: supporting this fundraising effort. Thank you so much.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, we recorded. It was our first show at Dynasty
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Typewriter in Los Angeles, so huge shout out to Dynasty
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: and their team. God, it was so cool. The live
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: stream setup there is wonderful. The vibes are immaculate, and
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: we had the best time.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: We really did.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: If you caught the live stream, thank you. If you
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: were there, it got to hang out even better. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: we're excited to hit more cities and see more listeners soon.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So true.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: But for now we've got business to do.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Well and then one more live show for you to
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: plug Jamie.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yes, if you're in the Los Angeles area, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: you should be, please head out to the Allegian Theater,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: where we've also done live shows in the past, the
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Allegiant Theater in LA we will be doing a live
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: reading of the first and most recent, certainly not last,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: installment of Santi University. If you're listening to the Bexxel
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: cast and you don't know what Santi University.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Is get with the program.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Shame on you, Shame on you kind of Santi University
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: is a bit, but is it.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: That it's real? It's okay, it's a documentary.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: It's hundreds of pages I've written at this point, so
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: I feel like it has to be real. It's a
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: scream a six hundred allegedly six hundred page screenplay that
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: we've been doing every holiday season. I'll write a new
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: twenty to thirty pages, depending on how much time I
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: give myself to write it each year. It's super jokey,
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: it's super goofy. We can link an example in the description.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: But it's like my favorite thing to do in the world,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: because besides the Bechel cast, of course, it's like the
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: most it's the most brain My favorite brain dead activity
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: and the entire planet is writing Santa University. I don't
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: use one brain cell. I have six panic attacks and
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: it's not good, so you should come. Caitlyn will be
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: reprising their treasured holiday role of Sully.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, best character scene, steal it. Where's the spin off?
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Six seasons in a movie for Sully, Sully High School,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Sully High. Oh my gosh, I'll fine I'll write it.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: You don't have to twist my arm.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Just to give you an idea of the kinds of
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: characters found in this world. Sully is a character who's
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: from Weston, Massachusetts, who fired the protagonist Dan Santa from
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Lydd's and generally, wait, Kitlyn, will you do Sully's iconic line.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're so fucking beautiful?
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: So it's also a feminist test. Sully appreciates women and
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: he cat calls all the right reasons. Anyways, you should
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: come hang out. We're donating all the proceeds from that
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: show to a nonprofit that I love very much. I
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: volunteer with them, CILA that supports the unhoused community in
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: La So, even if it's the worst show on the planet,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: and it might be, your money is going to a
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: wonderful place, So come out. We'll link that as well.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: But you know what, show definitely wasn't the worst show
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: in the world. It was, in fact one of the best,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: and maybe in fact the best.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: The one that you're about to hear. So, without much
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: further ado, please enjoy our live episode of It's a
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Wonderful Life.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Hi, Welcome to the Bechdelcast.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Hello La it's us and we live here and you
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: live here.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe we went shopping together this morning to get these
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: fits together.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I have a very cool shirt under this, and maybe
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: I'll take this sweater off at some point.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: We haven't done an LA live show in a bit,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: and I think that one of the last ones we did.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: At least you did an actual strip tease because we
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: were covering magic mic.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, round of applause if you were at that show. Wow,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: so you saw that was.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: One of the most wait Titanic quote. It was the
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: most erotic experience.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Of my life up until then, at least last March.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: You and I start making out right now, we start
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: making out and then you start drawing me. Yeah, yes,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: that's how that would work. Yes, anyways, thanks for coming.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Things were coming at four pm. Two We're like, do
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: people come out at four pm? Let's find out. It's
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: a little scary. It's it's dark out though, so that's
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: and it feels like night. And that concludes our kind
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: of warm up portion.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Of the show. Shout out to anyone watching the live stream. Yes,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I oh yeah, say whoo for them.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: They're so mad they're not in the little seats, aren't
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: they there? Okay, give it up if you have if
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: you have listened to the Bechdel Cast before, we like
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: to take a chance. Okay, free applause. Give it up.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: If you have been dragged here by someone who listens
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: to the Bechdel Cast and you're scared and you don't
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: know what's gonna happen. Oh oh my, the lights went
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: up and I just saw one guy like, whoo if
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: you're a god his eyes but he was ready. He's good.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: We're scary, Yeah.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: We're scary. We're scared, but we're wearing nice little outfits.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: So it's all about aesthetics, that's true. So the movie
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: we're covering today, if you can't tell from our our
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: very festive apparel, is a movie that we have. I
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: feel like because our show has been around for so long,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: we have covered so many holiday movies, yes, right down
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: to the one that came out on Netflix last year
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: where Lindsay Lohan gets bonked on the head, right, But
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: we hadn't covered one that is considered a classic, which
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: is It's a Wonderful Life. So just to take the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: temp once more, give it up. If you have seen
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: and enjoy a wonderful life, all right, and if you
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: haven't seen it, okay, brave, brave, I had it. I
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: don't know. I haven't seen shit. I watched The Godfather
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: in March and I was like, it's pretty good. You guys,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: they're kind of the Godfather's kind of a slave.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: These these frank sees know how to direct a movie.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: That's a reference to this movie directed by Frank Capra
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: and Francis Ford Coppola, who maybe was also called Frank.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: We don't know. There's no way to know, because he's alive.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: I just remembered so we could ask him to get
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: to get started. Caitlin, Yes, what is your history with
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: the movie? It's a Wonderful Life? Nineteen forty six.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So I saw the movie for the first time. I
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: was like probably eighteen or nineteen. I did not grow
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: up with this movie, so I have no nostalgic attachment
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: to it, and I controversially.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Do not really like this movie.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Sorry, thank you. I have good reasons. I find Jimmy
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Stewart irritating. Sorry, thank you again. He's irritating.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, I disagree with that.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: A lot of people do. I am in the minority.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: I do think, but I find his character to be
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: mostly unlikable, and yeah, I just I'm not a fan,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: but I'm gonna set that aside and look at this
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: movie objectively for this episode, I wink.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Can I just say, I would just want to start
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: by commending you for your bravery, thank you for watching
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: the movie on Oh I want Okay, wait, my history
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: with this movie, Lease tell me is that I had
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: not seen it. Like most movies we've covered on the show,
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: it's usually my first time watching it, unless it's like
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: the Lindzie McGuire movie. I'm like, yeah, I've seen this
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: movie five hundred times. I've seen bad movies five hundred times.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: This one I hadn't seen, and I started watching it
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: for It's available for free on Roku tv right now asterisk.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: They couldn't afford the music, so they've replaced it with
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: like Baby Einstein music, And I would really recommend that
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: experience because it's so jarry. If I hadn't been watching
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: the movie with someone that was like, hold on, something
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: is very wrong because in the Roku TV one, every
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: time Clarence not the elf in my mind, Okay, the
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: thing is, I'm gonna fuck up repeatedly in this episode.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna call them Clarence the Elf, and I'm gonna
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: call Bedford Falls New Bedford, Massachusetts, and that will keep happening,
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: and I will not apologize for That's fine. But yeah,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: anytime like in this, I don't even know what happens
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: in the original score, but they add in this royalty
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: free alphabet song. Every time is on the screen, it
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: goes bloom bloom bloom bloom bloom boom boom boom boom boom,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: like and you're just like, this could Twin beIN a
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Little Star ABC DFG. It's the same tune.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Oh that is it, Caitlin a bct twin? Okay, yeah,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I see it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: The lack of trust between us, it's the I only
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: learned that from like clickbait in twenty twelve or something.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: I don't know. It's like, did you know some crack
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: dot comshit on their on their crack dot comshit. Anyways,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: I had not seen it before. I started watching it
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: with the wrong music and I got scared. H And
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: then I watched it for a second time with the
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: correct music, and I liked it better.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: I I have complicated feelings towards this movie because I
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: didn't grow up with it. My family never showed it
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: to me, and I asked my mom why and she
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: answered with one word, which was boring.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: She's not wrong.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: She's not wrong. The thing is, like, I think this
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: is I well, actually, round of applause. If you grew
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: up with this movie and watched it as a kid, weirdos.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: This is such a depressing, like weird long movie. It
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: opens with with a man about to take his own
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: life because he's been told by society that he's worth
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: more dead than alive, and you, as a six year old,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: were like, let them cook, Like that's that's interesting. I yeah,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: I think that if I saw this when I was
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: a kid, I would have left the room and been like,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: could we turn on SpongeBob?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: But like, you know, not that Christmas Carol the only
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Christmas movie, right, I like, because we're babies and so anyways,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it. I watch it for the first
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: time to get ready for this episode, and I have
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: like complicated feelings towards it because I think in some
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: ways there were parts where I felt very emotional. I
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: was like, wow, I like, I am surprised that these
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: sort of values are being shown in a movie from
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: the forties. And then in other ways, I'm like, why
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: is he yelling at his wife in every scene there?
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Why is he yelling or aggressively forcing a kiss on.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: To Donna Read in every single scene? And so I
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: would say, I don't know. I'm willing to be swayed, okay,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: And I am afraid and and I will also qualify
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: that with I am actively afraid of fans of this movie.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to get yelled at, but I
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: but we have a job to do, and we're and
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: that is why you're here. And we've famously never been
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: wrong before, so true. Why start now?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: All right? Shall I do the recap.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Caitlin's famous recap? Let's do it?
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Okay? Here we go? Wow, thank you?
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: So we're gonna place some content warning for suicide right here, which.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Is a wild way to have to open a holiday movie.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: That's like, yes, okay, so we open in Bedford Falls.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Ever heard of it? I think it's an upstate New
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: York is my best guess.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: That's what upstate New York is really like, I was reading.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: I went in so deep on the parts of this
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: movie that don't matter. There's been arguments for the better
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: part of a century of like were they referencing this
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: town in upstate New York or was it just a
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: guy being like there's a town hm, hm, will never matter,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. It's New Bedford. Yeah.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: So there are a bunch of voices praying asking that
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: George Bailey be helped. Then we see some stars in
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: the night sky or is it heaven.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: The heavens even maybe they're talking because the stars are
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: actually angels and they hear people's prayers about George Bailey,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: and they send an angel named Clarence to help George, not.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Before insulting Clarence, Oh my gosh, being like where is
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: I feel like Clarence has big Dan Santa energy to me,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: and that they're like, this angel looks like shit, he
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: can't even read, can't even read. We don't like him,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: we don't respect him. But and that shows what the
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: heavens feel about George Bailey. They're sending him their very worst.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: So true. Okay, so the reason Clarence is going to
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: go help George is because he is thinking of ending
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: his life. Clarence has not gotten his wings yet, his
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: angel wings. So the other angels say that if he's
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: able to help George, he will get his wings, So
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: ulterior motives they're there. It's true, he doesn't get about
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: actually helping someone. He's just like I want my wings, right, And.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: We could argue, you know, the level of like how
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: well does Clarence actually do it his job? I mean
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: it's kind of up for you know, it's up for
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: this guy. And I hear that there's some Clarence heads
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: and that are.
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: Like he did what he had to do, Clarence, I
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: think ultimately spoiler alert at the end, when Clarence does
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: get his wings, I just like wanted like a centerfold,
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: like a nude centerfold.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: With Clarence and his wings.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, and you want him to be nude for that?
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: For me, he would have to be nude for that there. Okay,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: can you imagine the cover like December nineteen forty six,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Clarence gets his wings and then you open the magazine
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: it is nude Clarence, huge wingspance.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Wow. And this would be where in like in Playboy
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: magazine magazine Okay.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Horny Sex God magazine.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Well anyway, so the other angels start
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: telling Clarence about George, and so most of the movie
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: is flashbacks to George's life, starting with George Bailey as
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: a kid. He saved his little brother Harry when he
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: fell through some thin ice.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Then George, who works at a drug store child labor alert.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: He prevents someone from getting poisoned because the druggist mister Gower,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: accidentally tries to give someone poison capsules instead of medicine.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Because his son died. Caately, I'm his son died, so
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: he was crying so he couldn't see the huge jug
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: of poison. He got confused. He was having a bad day.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: It could have been any of us among us hasn't
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: accidently poisoned the child.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, So we also meet mister Potter. He's played by
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Lionel Barrymore. He's the richest man in town. He's very mean,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: he's very evil, and he's always trying to put the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: building in loan that George's father and his uncle Billy run.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Mister Potter is trying to put it out of business
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: all the time.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Mister Potter very much the villain, however, I think one
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: of the most like I haven't seen a more iconic
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: movie wheelchair than mister Potter. I mean he's had it
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: retrofitted into a full thrown throne. Yes, and I respect
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: that about him and nothing else.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Okay, So we cut to George Bailey as
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: a young man. He's now played by James Stewart. His
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: whole thing is he can't wait to get out of
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: his town of Bedford Falls aka New bed Massachusetts.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants much more than this provincial life.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: I literally wrote that in my Yes, That's why he
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: keeps fucking saying it.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: I'm like, have you not seen Beauty the Beast nineteen
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: ninety one, bitch?
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he can't wait to get out explore the world.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: He has a trip coming up that he where he's
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: gonna go to Europe and then he's gonna go to
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: college after that. So then we meet some townspeople such
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: as Ernie the cab driver, Bert the cop, and then
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: we're like okay, Burt and Ernie.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: And then and then we're like, oh no, Wikipedia is
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: ahead of us on this, and it's a coincidence. Sorry, yeah,
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: right there, we're gonna start a conspiracy. Jim Hen's a
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: you fucking liar.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Okay. Then we also meet Violet. She's blonde and she's hot,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and she's an icon. I love Violet. I mean I
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: wish we so dirty in this movie. Well we'll get
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: back to. Yeah. We also meet George's mother, another woman
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: we barely know anything about anyway.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: What's her first what's her first name? Mama?
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Missus? Okay. George heads to his brother Harry's graduation party.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: This is where he reconnects with Mary played by Donna Reid,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: and they see each other and they are both like
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: uh wooga, and they start dancing, and then there's this
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: whole thing where they fall into a swimming pool.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: This is a like, I'm okay with a swimming pool
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: jump scare. That's gonna be good for me in every movie. However,
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: this whole sequence, and I know that, like I don't know,
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: there's no good way to do this other than truly
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: casting a younger actor to play the character when they're younger.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: But there's a whole twenty minute chunk of this movie
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: where a visibly forty year old Jimmy Stewart is supposed
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: to be twenty one. Yeah, and it's so confusing, it's
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: unbelievably confusing, because you have to like go through all
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: of these layers of dissonance, which is, first of all,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: like even Riverdale wasn't pushing like this. Yeah, you know,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: it's like he looks his age and that's great, but
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: he keeps being like how old are you? And I'm
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: like how old are you? And he's like twenty one
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: and You're like, no, you're not, you fucking liar. And
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: then and then on top of that, you have to
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: like weave through the fact that the age gaps between
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: hetero Hollywood couples have always been so huge that Donna
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Reid does look closer to the age she's supposed to
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: be and Jimmy Stewart looks forty, and like, is this
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: canonically predatory or is it just casting predatory And anyways,
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: it's casting predatory and Jimmy Stewart's definitely twenty one.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so confusing. Also another movie where at least young characters,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: maybe not young actors, but young characters are in a
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: swimming pool thinking fully closed, just like say it with
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: me now, Leonardo DiCaprio, fake fans on fuck believable, look
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: No, yeah, people fully clothed in the pool, having a
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: coming of age moment. Yeah, it's a timeless trope, it is.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, normally the young people having a coming of
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: age moment are in there, like swimwear.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're Leonardo DiCaprio, you're fully clothed every time,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: and we don't know why, yes, exactly.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, So they fall in a swimming pool, and then
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: we cut to later that evening, they're walking around, they're flirting,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: they walk past this old rundown house that Mary loves.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Will put a pin in that, and she's wearing a
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: robe because her clothes got wet from falling in the
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: swimming pool. And so there's this part where her robe
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: falls off and she's naked and she's hiding in the
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: bushes and we will just have to talk about that
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: later because it's too much right now. Then George gets
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: word that his father had a he dies from it.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: So George feels obligated to cancel his trip to Europe
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: and to take over his father's business, the Bailey Building
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and Loan. The evil mister Potter, who is a board member,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: tries to dissolve it, but George makes this impassioned speech
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: and the board votes to keep the building and loan
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: going as long as George is in charge, which like
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: messes with his plans to go to college and explore
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: the world. So now he's stuck in Bedford Falls.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: He's a forty year old college freshman. He's way behind.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: He keeps like it really is so watching this movie
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: for the first time in the past week was so
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: jarring because he's talking to his father and he's like,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: I have to go to college. I'm like, yeah, man,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: hurry up, you're running out of time.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he feels stuck in his town at least
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: until his brother Harry, finishes college so that Harry can
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: take over the family business. But four years later, when
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Harry returns from school, Harry's wife's father has offered Harry
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: a job, so George has to stay with the building
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: and loan. Then George's mother urges him to get with Mary,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: who has also been away at school until now, but
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: George doesn't want to compete with his friend Sam Wainwright,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: who was very much like all the adults in the
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: graduate who are like, you got to get into plastics.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: That's Sam Waynwright huge.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he started the trend. Yeah.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's also in love.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: With Mary well, but is he though, because you cut
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: to him on the phone and you're like, well, he
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: seems to be cheating on her today.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he more calls for a business proposal than
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: like a social calling to talk.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: To George, which is interesting because the house he calls
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: George does not live at. I know, but you know,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: I think that that is just like Hollywood coding for
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: he's a dog. We don't care, yeah about this Sam
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: waying Wright character. George is a good guy. But then
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: you're like, is he is it a wonderful life even
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: we don't know?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Anyway, So George goes over to Mary's house and she's
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: very excited to see him, but he is such an
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: asshole to her in this scene, and she gets visibly
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: upset about it, and then he grabs her and screams
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: on her face. But don't worry, they will get married.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: In the next scene.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Cut to their mary wedding. I was watching this with
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: someone near dear to my heart, and they were crying
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: through that entire scene. I was like, I don't understand
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: what is beautiful about the scene. But but you know,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: life comes at you fast.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, Okay. So then George and Mary are headed to
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: their luxurious honeymoon with a stack of cash.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Which is really cool of them, I think. I mean,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: is that what happened in nineteen forty six, Like, here's
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: my budget, Like it's just in your hand. Scary.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like pre Venmo certainly I know that.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, then the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine happens.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: I think that happens in Titanic too. Did it happen
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: in real life? But sound up in the comments?
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Uh huh Okay. So everyone's rushing to take their money
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: out of the bank. So George turns around and goes
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: to the building a loan where a bunch of people
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: are demanding their money. But uncle Billy had given away
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: all the cash to the bank to pay off a
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: loan or I don't know.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: What I love about uncle Billy is that he's professionally
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: known as uncle Billy. You never hear anyone call him billy,
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: whether they're his peer, his relative, his client, they're all like,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: uncle Billy, you fuck up? Yes, get that bird out
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: the way, okay.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: So they don't have any cash on hand to give
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: to the customers, and mister Potter is threatening to steal
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: all of the customers and close down the business. So
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: then George has to shell out his own personal stack
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: of cash that he was going to use for his
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: honeymoon and he gives it to all the townspeople in
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: order to save the business. Then he's like, oh, right,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: it's my wedding day. I have to call my wife.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: He's like, oh, yeah, I left my wife in a
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: running car six hours ago. Better check in.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: And she's like, come to this address. So he shows
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: up and it's the old Rundown house that Mary has
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: always loved, and now it's their house. I think they're
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: squatting in it.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: I actually think I have Uh well, I was gonna
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: say this later, but like I think that that is
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: like if that is because I wasn't able to find
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: any maybe some listeners understand the plot reason why that happened,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: But if they really did see an unclaimed house and
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: then just reclaimed it, I think that that is like
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: one of the more radical things that happens in the movie.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Truly. Yeah, I'm fine with it.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that happens now and it's like necessary
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: and cool because there's so much housing that's just like
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: left empty. So I'm like, yeah, this mansion you've been
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: throwing rocks at for twenty years. Clearly no one lives here.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Move the fuck in see who yells at you?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but she has prepared a little honeymoon for them
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: at this house. We cut to sometime later. George Bailey
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: has set up this place called Bailey Park where a
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: lot of his customers have built homes. People who used
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: to live in mister Potter shitty houses and you know,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: pay rent to him because he's an evil landlord, but
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: now they're homeowners thanks to George. Then mister Potter offers
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: George a job, I think in an effort to like
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: eliminate him as a competitor, and he's offering George much
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: better pay, which would give him the freedom to travel
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: around the world. But George is like, no, I just
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: remembered that I hate you, so no thanks.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I I do like that scene though, because he's like offer,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: you know, like he has like a carrot dangled in
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: front of him of like, isn't capitalism the best? And
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: George is like, yeah, I want a nice shoe. And
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: then there's this like great slash weird acting choice from
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart where he shakes mister Potter's hand, and then
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: he pulls it away because he's decided that capitalism is bad. Actually,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: but he's played away like there's something on the.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Hand like peepee and pooh pooh.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: It's like they're like, wait a second, mister Potter has
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: shit on his like or come or jelly or just
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: something unpleasant to find on a hand. Yeah, and that's
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: what changed. That's what made him realize capitalism was bad. Yes, yes,
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: it was come on that.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: We can all agree with that, yes.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Added to the Wikipedia.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So George then goes home and his wife tells him
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: that she's gregnant.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then she just starts t shirt gunning him out.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, right, great, great, great, four greg's in total.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: But also there's a war on there is so before that,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: you know, they have a couple of kids. Mary fixes
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: up their house, George continues working at the building and loan,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: and then World War two begins. A bunch of men
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: go to fight in the war. Did that happen in
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: real life? I wonder, I don't know.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: It's concept once again, what is this USO they spoke?
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: But George stays behind because of a hearing impairment, that
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: when he saved his brother from falling through the ice,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: he lost hearing in one ear. Then his brother Harry
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: comes back a war hero, if there's any such thing
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: as a hero of war.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Again, very brief, thank you so much.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, it's Christmas Eve now and Uncle Billy is
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: about to make a deposit to the bank of eight
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash. I did the math. That is
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in twenty
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: twenty three money just for inflation.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Not to come down too hard on uncle Billy. But
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: if you saw how many squirrels are in this man's office,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: would you give him that amount of money cash to deposit.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: He's simply too eccentric to get that amount of money
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: in cash.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It's true. And what he does is absent mindedly tuck
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the cash into a newspaper that he then hands to
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: mister Potter, who realizes Uncle Billy's mistake but doesn't tell
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: anyone and just steals the money spoiler alert.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Even with the happy ending of this movie, mister Potter
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: gets away with this. It's really interesting, I mean realistic.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: I think, well, yeah, it's another part of the movie.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: I like, not that that happened, but that, like, you know,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: it's realistic. Rich people get away with sheet all the time.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Yep, oh too real for you. Okay, wait does that happen?
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Sound up in the comments?
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, So Uncle Billy is obviously freaking out about having
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: lost this money. George is freaking out. If they don't
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: come up with it, they'll go bankrupt and maybe even
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: end up in prison. So George goes home. He screams
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: at his wife and his children. He kicks some furniture over.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: We'll also talk about this scene.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: In more details, like what why are you upset?
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Then he leaves and goes to mister Potter asking for
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: a loan of eight thousand dollars, and mister Potter wants
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: some collateral, so George offers up his life insurance policy
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: worth fifteen thousand dollars, and he realizes he's worth more
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: dead than alive, so George leaves. He gets drunk at
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Martini's bar. He crashes his car into a tree, and
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: then he goes to a bridge and is about to
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: jump and end his life when suddenly someone else jumps
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: in the river. It is Clarence the guardian angel who
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: was sent to help him. So George jumps in to
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: save Clarence, and we cut to them in some place.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: That part of the movie is like where the Baby
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: Einstein gets especially scary, where through this whole like really
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: intense not just emotionally charged, but like socially charged scene
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: because we're talking about how suicide is perceived in the
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: culture at this point, and it's just Baby Einstein, Twinkle
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: Twinkle Little Star playing beneath the whole thing. It's interesting.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: You should check it out. Superior cut.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go to Roku dot com. Uh, okay. So as
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: they're in this like office, I don't know, they're drying
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: off and warming up, and George is like, ough, everybody
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: would be better off if I was never born, and
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Clarence is like, oh really, because let me show you
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: how things would be if you were never born.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: You're like, wait a second, there's only twenty minutes left
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in the movie. He's starting the Christmas Carol now, yeah,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: and he is doing that.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I also liken it to the second half of Back
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: to the Future two, when Marty goes back to nineteen
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: eighty five and like Biff is the president or whatever.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: I haven't seen it. Oh my god, I'm so young. Sorry, guys.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, so Clarence takes George around town to show him
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: this alternate reality if George never existed.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Hot take it looks fun.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: It looks so much more fun Pottersville.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: They're like, we replaced the loans office with a strip club.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: You're like, great, nice, but that's not what the movie
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: would have you think. It's like, oh my god, look
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: how disgusting this place is now.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: More municipal buildings here.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, First of all, the town is no longer called
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Bedford Falls, it's now Pottersville.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: That's bad. Fine.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Most of the businesses are bars, nightclubs, strip clubs, casinos.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: None of George.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Fine, Potter, you're the cool guy in yes kind he
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: knows how to party.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: None of Georgia's friends recognize him. Everyone is just kind
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: of like mean and in a bad mood. Mister Gower,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: the druggist is an ex con and an alcoholic. Because
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: George wasn't around to stop him from accidentally poisoning someone brutal.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: George is like, what the fuck is going on?
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: His brother is dead?
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but I kept.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: Well, this is like way too far in the weeds.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: But I was like, but really, if we thought about it,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: if George never existed, would his brother have even been
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: invited to that ice hang that day? Probably not, and
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: maybe the world would be better. Makes you think, yeah,
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: maybe it would be better if he didn't exist. But
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: that's not the point of the movie.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Sorry, maybe it does not explore that at all.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: Everyone's upset at that idea. Sorry.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, So George goes to his house, but it's not
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: the nice house that his wife his wife fixed up.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: It's still abandoned like it was when he was a teenager.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: His family isn't there because Mary never got married. She's
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: a quote unquote old maid who became a librarian.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, and this this scene is so iconic, it's so
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: awesome where they're like, what if you were thirty one
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: years old wearing Warby Parker lenses with a job, and
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: you're like, I would fucking kill for that dude. That's like,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: of course, that's great news for her there, and she
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: reacts appropriately because there's a man chasing her around, which
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: is also how he acted when he was her husband.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: She arguably got a better deal in the dystopia. Absolutely yes,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: because she could just go to bars and strip clubs
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: with her own money.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: M M.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, George is like chasing her and then she I
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: think faints because women be fainting.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: She's also more brunette in a way that felt aggressive, but.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: You know, the movie acts like her like never getting
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: married is the is a fate worse than death. Also,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: George's mom does not recognize him. He learns that his
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: brother Harry died as a child because George wasn't there
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: to save him when he fell through the ice. And
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Clarence is like, see, George, you've touched so many people
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: in your life. And if he's referred to all the
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: times that George Bailey violently grabs someone, then yes, he
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: has touched so many people his ass. But Clarence is like, George,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: You've had such a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: and that's the name of the movie, and it would
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: be a mistake to throw it all away. So George
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: is like, Okay, you're right. So he runs back to
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the bridge and he prays to be alive again, and
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: that happens, and then Bert the cop shows up. Parentheses
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: ACAB and.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ACAB includes Bert and I and I would say
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: like in an obvious way.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And when you think about it, yes, all
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: cops are bastards, but all cops are burt.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Wow, it's a wonderful life. The Wonderful Hive is gonna
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: come for us for this one. Okay, wait for like
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: hot take George shouldn't have been born?
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Okay. So Bert the cop is like, hey, George, I
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: remember I know you. And then George is like, wow,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: you recognize me. So then he runs back through town.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: He's like, Merry Christmas. He goes back home and then
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: some men are there to arrest him for this eight
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars deficit, but he doesn't even freaking care because
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: he because.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful life. It turns out.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then all of his friends show up and
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: give him a bunch of money because they heard he
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: was in trouble.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: Which is what the minions do with grew Wow, Indespicable
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: Me one twenty ten. I've been sitting on this information
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: for days. The end of It's a Wonderful Life very
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: much mirrors the end of Despicable Me, to the point
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: where it may be a direct influence. Wait which part
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: where Grew is trying to crowdfund his effort to go
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: to the moon, and then the minions give them gives
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: Grew their money because at this point it appears that
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: the millions are paid, which goes away in later installments. Wow,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: but it installment won. They have money and they crowdfund
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Grew's effort to go to the moon.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. Anyway, so his friends show up. I liked
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: it like the because I feel like they only each
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: give like one dollars, so I think he has like
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy four dollars at the end.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: But anyway, two hundred and seventy four friends, I mean, wow,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: that's I mean, not that many people came to the show. Like,
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: that's really cool. You have two hundred and seventy four friends.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: I mean not as a cop for you know, George Bailey.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: But that's so true. But then his rich friend Sam
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Wainwright is like, here's a bunch of money, and then
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: so he saved the end. That's the movie.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Woo. I think it's fun that Sam was like, remember
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: when you when you aggressively quote unquote stole my girlfriend.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: Doesn't matter, man, here's a million dollars that's great.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: That's progressive.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: I love that. It's almost like the movie cares what
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Mary wants.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it doesn't. All right, So we're gonna before
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: we get into the discussion, we're gonna do a little
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: fun little thing and it's a I'm gonna give you
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: the rules to a drinking game that you can play, okay,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: at a later time when you're watching the movie if
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: you want.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: I'm excited.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, So here are the rules. Is everyone ready?
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Okay? So you drink every time? And that one's you're
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: right to say this. You're right to say this.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks, so okay.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: I love that. I also find myself wandering around the
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: city being like, can I have a million dollars? Hot Dog?
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: I thought it was great.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Also I realized I didn't say it. And this this
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: is a podcast, it's an audio medium people will want
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: to know. So it says, drink every time George Bailey
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: says hot Dog parentheses by raw Dog by Jamie Loftus. Okay,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: and you're right to say it, and I'm right to
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: say that. Next side, please, so drink every time. Every
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: time someone insults Clarence the Guardian Angel, the other Angels
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: insult him, and then so does George Bailey later on relentlessly.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: It is very like, yeah, they're like, dude, you look
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: like shit, no wonder you don't have wings? Yeah, you
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: have three brain cells that are currently operational. How are
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: you going to stop me from my problems? IQ of
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: the Rabbit is how he's literally introduced.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Literally yes, yes, next line, so drink. When George Bailey
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: as a child says he's going to have harems and
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: multiple wives. That only happens once in the movie, but
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: you should still. But it's a worth it.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: It's a heavy sip, take a heavy zip, finish your
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: drink even it's impactful.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, okay, next line, so drink. Every time the
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: plot is contingent on you understanding how a building and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: loan operates. But unfortunately you I don't understand, and you
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: don't know what that is.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: You're just like, shouldn't it be one or the other?
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: I read about it, and I still don't understand how
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: it works. So this is not a reading podcast. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: we've said that many times. We hate books except for
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Rad Doug, but we love that Mary becomes a librarian,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: so we contain multitudes. Okay, next slide. Please, so drink
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: every time you're reminded that houses used to cost ten
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: dollars and that we are all dying of capitalism. Also,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: there's mention of like a house being worth five thousand dollars.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I also did the math for that. That is the
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: equivalent of eighty five thousand dollars more or less in
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. And once again we are recording this
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: in La, where houses cost at least a million dollars. Yeah,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: and that's if they leak, and that's if they're kind
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: of shitty and in the valley. No disrespect, Oh my god,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: to the valley.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: I do not stand by the colon. Sorry, we just
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: lost fifty Patreon subscribers. How dare you.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Round of applaza if you live in the valley.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: I'm know your audience games, I'm so sorry, and he
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: enjoyed the drive home.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, next line, Okay, drink. Drink every time there's an
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: enormous jar of poison at a pharmacy for some reason. Okay,
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: next line, drink every time Violet Bic and George Bailey
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: are so horny for each other that they nearly pass out.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: We'll get back to that. Yeah, Yes.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Next slide, drink every time George and his mother kiss
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: on the lips. It happens at least twice.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: It's nuts how much this happens. She's like, and I
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: feel like it is indicated in this slide that she
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: is an issue. I don't know which version is worse.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: I'm like, is this just like a nineteen forties things
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: did did adult?
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Wasn't the Hayes Code in action by now?
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Why can you French kiss your mom? I priorities
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: all over the place at this time, truly.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, we can't have gay people on screen,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: but you can kiss your mother on the lips.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: And in fact, you should do it twice.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, Next slide, drink every time there's a random animal
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: at the Bailey building and.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Loan that's really I have something to say about that.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, later on, Yes, we see a crow or something
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: pictured here, it's.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: The raven but thank you, sorry, that's my friend.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Next slide, please drink every time Uncle Billy is horrible
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: at his job.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: This squirrel is so they okay, well this squirrel. The
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: squirrel is like the best actor in the movie, and
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: the squirrel is hitting their mark. The second that Billy
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: is sad. This squirrel is like, like, it's really exciting,
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: and let's the next slide please, it's just a close up.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the squirrel. Okay, we agree, Yeah, okay, next
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: slide and then drink every time. Annie is the best
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: character in the movie.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: Annie did not appear in the recap because she's not
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: relevant to the plot at all, but she is the
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: best character. We will talk about her later. Yes, that's
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: the end of my drilling game.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay. Contexts about this movie. So, this movie came
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: out in nineteen forty six, just after the end of
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: World War Two. It is directed by Frank Capra. We'll
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: talk about his whole history because it's weird and complicated.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: But this was a movie that was adapted from a
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: short story called The Greatest Gift. The Greatest Gift was
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: published in nineteen thirty nine. There were a lot of
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: writers that worked on this movie because it went through
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of rounds of casting and basically like every
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: famous old Hollywood person was considered for every role, but
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: it went to Jimmy Stewart. It feels right for Jimmy Stewart,
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: whether you like him or not, like it feels like
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: a very classically Jimmy Stewart role. But I think what's
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: interesting about it is that a lot of the writers
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: for this movie were later accused of being communists. Awesome,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: but there were a lot of leftist writers associated with
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: the production of this movie, although none of them were
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: finally credited. The final credits on this movie credit the
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: screenplay to Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Frank Capra, with
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: some work from Joe Swirling. The two leftists that worked
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: on this movie were Dorothy Parker and Dalton Trumbo, who
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: is like, you know, one of the one of the
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: one of the big ones that makes a movie about him. Yeah,
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: and it sucked. I didn't see it, and that's too bad.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: It's for free on Rogu TV and they played Twinkle
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: a Little stuff the whole time. What's interesting to me
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: about that because this movie flopped when it came out
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: in forty six and I.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Know you do you have, yes, I have some information
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: about that. Yeah, a box office failure in the sense
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: that it needed to earn twice the production costs, and
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: it only earned about the same amount that it costs
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: to produce and make the movie. So It was considered
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: a flop, so much so that when the copyright of
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: this movie lapsed in nineteen seventy four, everyone was like,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: no one liked that movie, no one went to go
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: see it, and so we're not even gonna bother to
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: renew the copyright, which means it fell into the public domain,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: which allowed TV stations TV networks to broadcast it basically
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: for free. They didn't have to pay any licensing or
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: royalties on it, which is why it was broadcast so relentlessly.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like decades and like in every Christmas Eve? Was
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: it like broadcasts or something like that.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: I use something like that. There's an Adam Ruins everything
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: about this if you want to look that up. All
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: this to say it was a box office failure.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: Which is interesting because it got like a fair amount
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: of attention outside of people who went to see it,
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: which was not too many people. There's all these stories
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: about how this movie got famous so long after it
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: came out that some of the child actors who played
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart's kids, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reid, because she
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: will be a raised throughout this movie. There are kids
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: like didn't even see it. Until it came out on TV,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: so it didn't become like really popular until yeah, the seventies, eighties, nineties.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: But at the time when it came out, it was
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: interrogated by the FBI for espousing communist values, which is,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: you know, Jaedgar Hoover is gonna Jadgar Hoover, right. But
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: there's this is I found a piece from Tribune magazine
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: by Reese Hadley and that was published in twenty twenty
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: one that sort of unpacks the ways. There's a whole
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: FBI file for It's a Wonderful Life for being too Communists,
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: and the reasons that they lay out are very interesting.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: The first one is that the quote values or institutions
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: judge to be particularly anti American or pro communist interesting
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: are glorified in a movie examples failure, depravity, the common man,
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: the collective, and the FBI hate that we can't be
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: having that in a movie.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: Horrible.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: Another reason the FBI had an issue with this movie.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: They argued that the movie may have portrayed mister Potter
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: as quote following the rules as laid down by the
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: state bank examiners in connection with making loans.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I didn't even understand that sentence, the.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: FBI was like, what's wrong with predatory loans? Oh?
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's what this country was built on.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: It, It's true, okay. And then finally the FBI said
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: that It's a Wonderful Life is a problem because it
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: espoused quote values or institutions judged to be particularly American
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: are smeared or presented as evil in a movie. Examples
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: the free enterprise system, industrialist wealth, the profit motive, success,
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: the independent man. Wow, And that like speaks to basically
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: everything I like about this very same is that is
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: and I know we'll talk about it, but like the
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: whole the message of this movie that I like is
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: encouraging people to work in favor of their collective versus
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: the individual, which I think is really cool and like
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: not something you see often, especially in American movies. But
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: it's it's interesting that this movie specifically was taken down
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: for being potentially communist because both Jimmy Stewart and Frank
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Capra were lifelong Republicans, hugely Jimmy Stewart had just I mean,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart served in World War Two and wasn't sure
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: if he was going to come back to a movie
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: career and Frank Capra, who has a very very interesting background.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: He immigrated from Italy when he was very young. He
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: worked his way up in the movie industry and then
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: just kind of got America killed in the way unfortunately
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: people do. And even though his movies were most popular
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: during the Roosevelt era and are very associated with that era,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: he was a lifelong Republican to the point where he
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: skewed fascistic where he was, you know, he worked with
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Dalton Trumbo, but he was also like, what about this
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: Mussolini guy, seems like he has some good ideas. I'm
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: truly like, I'm not being I'm not you know, it's
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: interesting he came like his most famous movies I think
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: would be it Happened one Night, mister Smith goes to Washington,
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: also with Jimmy Stewart and this movie. And in spite
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: of you know, he came to the US as an
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: immigrant and then he kind of became a nationalist over time,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: as did Jimmy Stewart. And so the main two creative
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: voices in this movie are very far from communists. And
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: I mean that as an insult, but it's just like
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: this weird back and forth because I like that FBI
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: File a lot because they're like, why is this movie awesome?
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Let's kill them. It's just like a weird kind of
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: web because it's like you, I think that the FBI
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: File is very funny and that those values are very
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: clear in the movie. But then the fact that the
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: director has praised Mussolini, just like, what do we do
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: in this? But that I guess from what I've gathered,
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: And I'm not a Frank Capra expert by any means,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: but that Frank Capra, who skewed pretty right, I mean Mussolini, Yeah,
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: would most often collaborate with leftist writers and they would
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: end up with this fucking weirdo in between ay things
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: that I feel like is clear and it's a wonderful life.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Number one, I hate Jimmy Stewart even more now
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: I did not know that he was a Republican. Number two.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: So one of the credited writers, Francis Goodrich, who is
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: a woman nor oh gosh. She worked on a draft
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: of this script with her husband Albert Hackett, another credited writer,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: but there was a pretty big dispute between them and
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: Frank Capra. So Francis Goodrich is quoted as calling Capra
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: a horrid man and a very arrogant son of a bitch.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: So we love to see it.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: We love to see pro Misolini people characterized that way.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: So that's the background. Yeah for the movie. Should we
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: start by talking about miss Mary Bailey?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Let's do it? Okay, So what do we know about her?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a short list.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we know that she is his wife. We know
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: that she has loved George Bailey ever since she was
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: a child for what reasons, I don't know. She is
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: a talented artist and interior decorator.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: This is something that like I think is really I mean,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: so much of Mary Bailey's story is erased in this
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: in spite of the fact that she does have like
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: a pretty significant like she goes through a lot, but
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: you just don't see any of it, including she goes
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: through a full extreme home makeover of this busted ass
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: house that she's like, we are reclaiming this house that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: is broken and we are a part of the problem
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: because we were throwing rocks at it, and she fixes
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: the entire house over the course of years. She does
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: like what happens on ABC every week night, and we
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: don't see any of it. I mean, because I feel
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: like the labor that Mary does is assumed that this
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: is just what a woman does, and so it goes
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: unseen and praised, unacknowledged. But she's doing a fucking lot.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: She's doing a lot. But the main thing we know
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: about that, as far as like fixing up the house,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: is that George is really ungrateful about it, because he's
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: screams and has a whole monologue about how he hates
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: this house and it's cold and drafty and all of that.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: Well, she didn't. I Well, that's the other thing, because Mary,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: as far as we know, like Mary, they grow up together.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: I think she's the age of Harry, his younger brother,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: so she's like about four years younger than him, which
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: is very confusing when he's forty and she's twenty three,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: and you're like, I don't know, is this okay?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: But you know, like she she goes to college in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: I think New York.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: Ever heard of it?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: She has a whole sex in the City era. Yeah,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: and we don't hear about fucking any of it. We
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: don't know what she majored in. And we only know
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: because I feel like the character of Mary in a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: way that I find frustrating because I like her, but
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: she ultimately always comes down to these very like American
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: white feminine values of the post war era, which is like, Okay,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: you had your moment, you got to get some education,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: you got to run the USO for a little bit,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: and now you know it should be your priority to
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: settle down to.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Be a wife and a mother.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: And that's right. And we don't know about her ambitions
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: beyond that, right.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like she's done a very big
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: disservice by the narrative and also by the character of
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: George Bailey.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: I would like to wait, wait, wait, m M. I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: want to talk about an important character, Billy Brick.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I just.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Was like ranking the most important characters to me that
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about versus Mary. The second was
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: the Crow. Oh do you know about the Crow? Okay, Okay,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: you guys, I have a slideshow presentation I would like
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: to do. It's about Jimmy the Raven if we can
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: get him up. Bokay, wow, Jimmy the Raven feminist ally
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: or agent of patriarchy. Now, Caitlin, let's start it like
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: a by cast episode. What was your experience with Jimmy
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: the Raven.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I had never seen him before.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: Oh yousilly podcast host Jimmy the Raven is the most
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: famous movie bird of all time. I also didn't know
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: this before three days ago. But no, Jimmy the Raven
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: is very famous movie bird. One of his most famous,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: but not even his most famous appearance is in It's
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: a Wonderful Life. Let's go to the next slide. We
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: see here Vincent Price with Jimmy and a movie that
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: he is co starring in. It's called The Raven.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: Uh, he's an icon. He's a legend. Did you know
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: that ravens lived thirty years? Because I didn't. His movie
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: career spanned eighteen years. So whoa, here's the Okay, someone's
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: laughing at the lifespan of a raven. It's not funny.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing about Jimmy. Okay. So, Jimmy was born
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: in the Mojave Desert in the nineteen thirties. He was
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: found by a cowboy named Curly Twyford.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Because of course he was.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: Now, don't laugh at the name Curly Twyford. He was
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: found by a cowboy named Curly Twyford, who was a
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: world War one veteran who decided that he was going
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: to make Jimmy a star. Uh huh. Interestingly this worked.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't expect it, and I was really spread. I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: did not know about Jimmy the Raven. And I say
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: this as a big fan of famous birds. If you
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: get to the next side, my favorite famous bird is
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: Andy the Goose, who he's wearing shoes. You'll notice, Yeah,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: he was a actually known as Andy de Goose with
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: no feet, but then this guy put shoes on him
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: and he was Okay. If you go to the next slide,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: there's me with Andy de Goose. I drove to Nebraska
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago to go visit his grave site.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: Andy the Goose. At the time, he was a real
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: icon in the eighties. If you go to the next slide,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: there he is riding a bike. He was really special.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: And then unfortunately, next slide he was murdered.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: And you can google that on your own time. Next slide,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: back to Jimmy the Raven. I just want to plant
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: Andy the Goose in your mind because he's a fascinating
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: cultural figure. But we're talking about Jimmy the Raven today.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: He was a star, and he was a star from
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: the beginning. Next slide, here's a news clip jim the Raven,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: a new flicker Hollywood. One of the hottest stars and
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: pictures is a quaint character named Jim. He is only
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: twenty two but has a life expectancy of one hundred
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: and forty years. Not true? What thirty? Jim, who has
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: stolen every movie scene in which he has appeared, is
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: a raven and boys are true. But is Jimmy the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Raven a feminist? That's the question I wanted to ask.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: He's had a really intense career, you know. Here we
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: have the next slide, is he was in The Wizard
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: of Oz. Yeah, playing, you know, a star turning part
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: as a crow when in fact he is a raven.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: The next slide, Betty Davis, they're about to fuck. I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: don't know if that's obvious, but to me it's obvious.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Next slide him and Vincent Price and he's drinking wine
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: and cheers to that. The next one, the scariest side
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: of all, in which he is wearing a little soldier's uniform.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: And then there's one. There's one more. It's him and
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: Curly twy Ford and Jimmy witnessed the birth of Curly
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: Twyford's baby. He became a part of the family. Okay,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: we're just gonna sort of go through the next few
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: because there's just so many pictures of Jimmy. Okay, the
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: next one, and the next one that's him on TV
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: he's wearing a suit, and then the next one, Okay,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: that's him and Jimmy Cagney. Finally, I want to go
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: to the next slide, because when the question came down
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: to is Jimmy the Raven a feminist? I was looking
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: into his personal history and he's problematic. Oh no, so
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: I know, like Mussolini is awesome, not that far. He
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: wasn't frank, but he was a problematic guy. You know. Jimmy,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: he was a very trained actor. He could do things
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: like opening mail, operating a typewriter, letting a cigarette, flipping
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: magazine pages, and dealing a hand of poker. Okay, Jimmy Stewart, Okay,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: this was kind of fun. Okay. In on the set
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: of It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart could not be
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: called Jimmy because Jimmy the Raven would respond. So he's
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: also a bit of a diva. He's the first Jimmy
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: in the college sheet.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: I love Jimmy the Ravens so much. He was insured
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: for ten thousand dollars by the Red Cross question mark.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: We don't know why. He got a Presidential Medal of Honor.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: Also don't know why.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: Oh and and people like people talked about Jimmy in
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: ways that we're not always mind.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Curly Twyford, for for example, his father explained that Jimmy
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: had no fewer than twenty one stand ins, most of
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: whom were women Ravens, and it has been speculated since
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: that maybe Jimmy was a woman and that there was
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: gender confusion. There were there was uh, you know, we
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: don't know because Jimmy's been dead for a hundred years.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: But Curly Twyford said, do you guys like this there?
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: Curly Twyford said, I was like in my bed making this,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I'm like, well, people play. I think it's interesting. Okay.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: Curly Twyford, who plumped Jimmy's egg from the Mojave Desert,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: said Jimmy is a great egotist. He likes variety, and
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: what he means when he says that is that Jimmy
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: would have a different woman delivered to his cage every day,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: and that Jimmy was insatiable sexually.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, when you say a woman, are you talking
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: about a female raven or you talking about well when
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: you say woman.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: Betty Davis, did you go to his cage?
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: I know that human women don't have probably I hope
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: don't have.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: You don't know.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: The use of the word woman when referring to female
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: ravens was just confusing.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: Jimmy needed a different woman in his cage every day.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, he was an polyamorous king, exactly, exactly. Maybe
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: he was simply ahead of his time, but at the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: time he was referred to as an egotist in a diva.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: He also wouldn't eat meat strips delivered to him after
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: he'd been in movies for a while because again because
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: they said he was going to live for one hundred
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: and forty years. They're like, Jimmy was in over a
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: thousand movies. He was in thirty, okay, but including The
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz and It's a wonderful life. So a
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: great career. Nonetheless, not meaning to cut down Jimmy, but
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: by the end of his career, when he was very,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: very successful. He wouldn't eat strips of meat that were
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: delivered to him unless they'd been sprinkled with sugar.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: And one of his human co stars said, I'm disenchanted
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: by him. I think he's got a star complex. Wow.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart said, the Raven is the smartest actor on set.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: They don't have to do as many takes for him
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: as the rest of us, so he's also kind of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: a genius. He's the Daniel dan Lewis of birds. Frank
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: Capra was especially a fan, and as we don't like
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: Frank Capra, however, Jimmy was basically like Scorsese, de Niro,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: Frank Capra, Jimmy the Raven. Okay, he's in all of
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: his movies. It's really bizarre. Ultimately, with Jimmy, I was like,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: is Jimmy a feminist? You know? It was unclear given
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: the information I had, Okay, and I'll tell you I
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: was not able to figure it out. However, the Raven
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: you see in this scene, that is not Jimmy the Raven.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: Oh scandal, That is Coco the Raven. Who's that one
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: of Jimmy's stand ins, Caitlin of course?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: And so I found this blog from two thousand and
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: nine brag that is strictly around character actors that have
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: been forgotten, called the Unsung Joe, that explains who Coco
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: the Raven is. I'm gonna quote from it. And then
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: there was Coco. More than a stand in, less than
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: a performer. Coco was a slightly older but less versatile
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: bird who deputized for Jimmy in those scenes that called
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: for the presence of a raven, but not for any
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: of the tricks which Jimmy alone was capable of. The
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: only drawback that arose from the lack of activity in
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: Coco's job was a susceptibility for that old actor's complaint
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: cleague eyes. I didn't know about that old actor's complaint.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you what it is. Coco would find himself
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: fascinated by the huge, bright studio lights and would stare
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: into them, hypnotized until his eyes became inflamed, turning from
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: their inky black to a dark green, whereupon he would
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: become distressed and curly. Twyford would have to remove him
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: from the set. He never learned, though he loved those lights.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: I love Coco, and I think There's an important scene
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: in the next line where Coco is present, and it's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: the scene in which Uncle Billy is once again banned
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: his job and there is a raven on the desk.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: This is not Jimmy the Raven, and don't credit him
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: as such. That is Coco the Raven, because Coco the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: Raven was good at one thing, and that was standing still.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: So in conclusion, was Jimmy the Raven and Ally? And
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: I know you were all wondering that when you walked in.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: The answer is final slide, Jimmy a bitch, Justice for Coco. Okay,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: that's all I have to say for the show. But
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: if you have anything else to say, feel free. No
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: I think that I've been working on this for seven months.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, no, I just have a few more things
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: to say. We are running out of time, but I'll
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: you know, I'll go through.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't that take twenty five minutes.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: Look, I have a section called George Bailey and his Crimes.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: Allow me starting with exhibit A the robe scene. Yes, yes, exactly. So,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: just to recap this a little further, this is the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: scene where George and Mary are walking around after the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: party they had fallen into the pool. So they put
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: on other clothes and Mary put on a robe and
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: she's presumably naked underneath. They're walking around, they're flirting. There's
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: a guy in the neighborhood who is yelling at George
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: and being like kiss her, and George is like, fine,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: I'll kiss her so freaking hard, and then Mary runs
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: away at that, but George was standing on her robe,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: so it falls off as she runs away, and now
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: she's naked, so she hides in the bushes. When George
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: realizes this and realizes that he can exploit this situation,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: he absolutely.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: Does immediately until he finds out his father died.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: That's right, because he's like, She's like, please, I beg
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: you give me my robe back, and he's like no.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: She asks him so many times he refuses. She says
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: she's going to tell his mother and tell the police
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: parentheses acab.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: Well, then he says, you know, I think the police
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: would be on my side, and you're like, that's kind
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: of an a cab line because they probably would.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: It would be yes, unfortunately, But the point is she
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: is like feeling very vulnerable and naked, and he's like,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna just like tease you and exploit this situation
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: in a very cruel awful way.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that that the two pivotal moments in
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: their early relationship are defined by that dynamic. Right where
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: when they're kids, you can almost write it away by
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: the fact that Mary leans over he says, George, you know,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: but we know because he cannot hear out of that.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Ear, he cannot hear her.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: And so when he comes up and says I'm gonna
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: have a harem, he's just being weird and he's not,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: you know, being necessarily antagonistic. But that scene that you're
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: describing where he is actively taking advantage of power over
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: but then also in the scene immediately before cut to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: them getting married, I think that dynamic is equally present.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: Like Mary's agency is cut out of this narrative at
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: every possible opportunity. It's cut up by the fact that
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: she's hiding in a bush naked. It's cut out by
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: the fact that her mother is watching, her boyfriend is
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: on the phone, and George has her in his hand.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've broken down that scene as well, where so
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: he I don't know why he's in a bad mood,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: he's just kind of a bad guy. Sorry, but he's like,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: you know, lumbering around all pissed off, and he clearly
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: deliberately goes over to Mary's house to try to run
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: into her, but he acts like he was just passing by. Well.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: He also makes it very clear that she was not
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: his first choice because he tries to hook up with
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: her friend, but then gets annoyed when her friend doesn't
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: want to climb a mountain.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: Right yeah, So he's like, oh, I guess a.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: Little okay girl who's not gonna climb a mountain.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: You're like, okay, So and he goes over to Mary.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: Got a bumble, I can't and he keeps, well, Jamie,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: this was pre bumble, just like it was pre venmo.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: Nothing to come in.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: So he goes over to Mary's house and he keeps
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: being like, I don't even know why I'm here. I
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: wasn't even planning to come here, even though like it
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: was very a very deliberate choice on his part. Mary
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: is trying to give him a warm welcome. She like
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: displays the little drawing she made for him. He doesn't
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: like notice or appreciate anything that she has done. He
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: spends the whole interaction just like feeling very so for
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: himself and being a complete asshole. Then he's jealous that
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: that other guy, Sam calls and is like interested in Mary,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: so he storms out. He comes back in Sam is
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: like what about plastics? And then George throws a fit.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: He grabs Mary. He says, I don't care about plastics
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: and I don't want to get married to anyone ever.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Do you understand that smash cut to them getting married,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: So that's Bill, and then.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: He also like there is a forcible kiss because she's crying.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: She's crying, she's crying of how mean he's being.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: I just I yeah, I mean I there comes a
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: point in that dynamic where I don't even understand what's
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: going on, because with Mary it does. It's just like
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: her agency is always undercut by at least one person
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: in the scene, but often multiple people. In this scene,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: the scene right before they get married, you know, it's
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: it is clear that Mary is interested in George, but
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: he's only terrible to her. In that same scene, we
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: know that she's gone to college, but we are not
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: allowed to know anything other than the thing that I've
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: seen repeatedly written about with Mary and how I feel
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: like her character plays out, is that like, Okay, fine,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: she went to college, she's a modern woman, but ultimately
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: she just wants to be a mother in her hometown,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: which is not an inherently bad thing, but I feel
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: like it was reinforcing what the encouraged norm was at
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: that time for a woman who had education, especially you know,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: coming out of World War Two, where women for the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: first time had just been encouraged to be working and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: encouraged to be out there. And it because this movie
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: coming out in nineteen forty six feels really prescient because
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, let's reel it in, you know, like
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: know your role. And I feel like the way that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: that white womanhood specifically moved ahead with Donna Reed sort
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: of at the helm the nineteen fifties. And that's not
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: even a slight to Donna Reed, because it's not her fault,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: but her show, I feel like, is the most commonly
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: cited in terms of like what a white housewife was
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: perceived as being in the nineteen fifties, in spite of
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: the fact that behind the scenes she was producing her
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: own show and doing all of these things that were
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: not encouraged for women to do. To perpetuate this view,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: it's just I don't know, it's really it's really really frustrating,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: especially because at the end of the movie, it's Mary
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: who pulls the community together to give George this experience
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: that makes him want to live again. And so we
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: have this whole sequence with Clarence that is impactful. It's
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: very well staged, you know, Like I don't want to
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: take that away from fans of the movie, but everything
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: that happens off screen is Mary and his family pulling
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: together the community to reward you with the final shot
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: of the movie, right, Mary does all of that, and
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: I feel like that really goes underappreciated and under examined.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: But she did all that shit. She did so much.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, she like renovated a mansion.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: And he is so ungrateful about it, he hates it.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: And then she's she like pulls him off the edge.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: And that is also unacknowledged by the plot. It's made
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: to seem like, well, Clarence got his wings and that's
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: why George, you know, believes in life again. But it's
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: like Mary did all the fucking organizing to make this happen,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: and she's cut out of so many scenes earlier where
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: it like, I feel like it's always presented as or
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: it's most commonly presented in the movie as like George
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: gave away all of his money to the community from
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: his wedding and that's all him, him, him, and it's
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: like that's Mary's money as well. Yeah, And she is
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: not invited into those scenes. She's not and I think
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: those scenes would be improved by her presence, and she's
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: like not even welcome until the end where George is like, oh,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: where the fuck is Mary at? And you're like, you
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: left her outside? Man? You know, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then there's like there's two other scenes where
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: George in a pretty major way, is being extremely cruel
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: to a loved one. There's the scene where he's like
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: screaming at Uncle Billy after he's lost the money, and
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: then there's the Christmas Eve scene where George comes home
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: after the money has been lost and he is just
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: being extremely cruel to his wife and his children, and
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: then he storms out. So when George Bailey is being
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: pleasant in the movie, which does happen occasionally, it's almost
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: always to his customers. When he's being awful, it's almost
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: always to his family member or to mister Potter. So
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: he basically treats his family the same way he treats
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: the villain of the.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: Movie, which I don't like. And it's because like the
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: closest I can get to playing Devil's advocate, there is
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: like the way that George's life is shown is so
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: inconsistent that you see him at his worst a lot, yea,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: and so he does not come off well as like,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: I don't understand why people are like this guy's awesome.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: We're like, well, I've seen him yelling as much as
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: I've seen him being nice, Right, I don't know. I
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: mean the things that I know, we are running out
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: of time. The things that I think this movie does
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: very well, or at least very well for nineteen forty
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: six is the commentary on collectiveness and on individualism, like
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: American individualism, which is something that is very very much
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: pushed to this day, to our detriment to working towards
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: the collective. I think that like part of what makes
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: this movie work for me, in spite of its many,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: many many flaws, down to Capra being like Mussolini. What
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: we think is the core idea of you know, the
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: American dream is inherently rarely achievable, and George's life is
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: not valueless because he spent it making sacrifices for his community.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really beautiful idea. It's a complicated idea,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: and we could talk about it more. I mean the scenes.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: I literally broke down my George discussion into like scenes
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: I liked Georgian versus scenes I don't ye scenes I
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: don't most of them with his wife he goes out
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: of the way to like beret female teacher on the phone, Like, yes,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: he clearly does not have a lot of respect for women,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: not to mention that Mary is barely characterized. And then
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: the two mothers we see in this movie, Mary's and George's.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: Their only interest is husband, and then our mad children
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: getting married. That's all the scenes I liked Georgian and
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: were the ones that were more politically minded and so
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: it like ultimately, I was like, Wow, he's like very
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: dsa bro coded Yeah, like where his politics are awesome,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: but he hates women.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: Some scenes I.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: Like Georgian and I say that as a Doe's paying member. Okay, no,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: but I'm right. And scenes I like Georgian include when
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: he's a kid, and he defends his dad against Potter.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: The scene where he his I mean, like, he does
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: make a series of sacrifices in order to hold some
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: like to sort of hold the line to prevent capitalism
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: from completely demolishing his hometown. That is sort of what
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: he's doing throughout. And there's a scene where he i
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: mean early on where he just fucking mows Potter down
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: and tells him that he's treating people like their cattle,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: and like, I mean that that's really really powerful, and
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: as well as when he turns down Potter for taking
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: you know, the sellout contract for like you could live
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: comfortably forever if you just shut the fuck up about
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: housing people who don't have money, and like, I think
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: that that is like a really cool, core minded thing.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: As well as the fact that his community in the
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: scenes that we see them in are also like of
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: the same mind, where when George is like, hey, you know,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: Potter is gonna you know, he's offering you money now,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: but he is buying you and you will be fucked
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: in the long term, and they listen to each other
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: and they collectively decide we're not going to be okay
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: with this, And then at the end, they pay it
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: forward to George because of Mary, which no one cares about.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: So I think that like politically it's a really cool
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: movie and everything else basically not as much.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know why I did an evil laugh there,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: but anyway, so we have to wrap up. There's more
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: to talk about, but you'll just have to listen to
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: the episode because we will just record some pickups later. Yeah,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: and here are those pickups.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: So look at us future us.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: I know it sounds. It reminds me of YouTubers from
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: like we should be. I guess we are wearing you know,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: like when you're watching a YouTuber and then they add
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: in a note when they're editing and they're wearing a
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: hoodie and they're like, hey future mom, me here, And
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to add a note. It's what we're doing.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: That's nice. Yes, no offense to YouTubers, but they all
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: do it anyways.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, so just a few things that we didn't have
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: time for in the live show, and so first I
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: just want to kind of we already hinted at this
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: a little bit and made a few references, but just
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: wanted to play little more attention to the way the
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: movie frames his community, his town, George's town, you know,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: New Bedford, which actually becomes Pottersville, right if George had
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: never existed, and just sort of like the implications there, Right,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: it's like, look how unsavory this town is. I feel
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: like Violet is implied to be a sex worker of
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: some kind. Yeah, did you get that sense too?
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: I did as well, or like in as explicit a
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: way that you could at that time. Yeah, I noticed,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: and this was something that was supported in I guess
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: like a round table talk that I encountered from Smithsonian magazine.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: Ooh ever heard of it about? Yeah, the implications of Pottersfield,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: because as we said at the show, Pottersville seems like
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: kind of a good time for a weekend. But I think, yeah,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: like the signifiers and like speaking to the in spite
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: of you know, this movie very much having its moments,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 3: there is like an element of rigid like rigidity in
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: terms of like what is considered appropriate society and what isn't.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: And it feels like this that Pottersville is associating it
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: with sin capitalism. Well, well, it's like TV is like
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: two things where it's like explicitly capitalistic, which I which
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: is as close as I could get to understanding. But yeah,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: it's like sin meeting sex work and jazz music, which
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: seems like proximity to blackness and like and that is
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: let me just pull up the quote I have here
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: from this piece that was compiled by Christopher Wilson. Quote
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: Capra's hints at the degradation of the town come in
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: the form of the black music jazz heard pouring out
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: of the taverns in Diamond dance halls. Higgins, one of
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: the roundtable participants, also noted that Mary's fate as an
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: old maid in this alternative universe, portrayed as hideous and sad,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: is presented as perfectly fine, appropriate and desirable for Annie
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: in the real world. Unquote right, It's a world where
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: things that are completely normal and should be socially accepted
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: are presented as a dystopia, which is a sex work
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: and jazz and being a single woman over thirty and
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: having a nice time with your life exactly.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So again with like Violet implied, because I think
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: you see her coming out of a strip club or
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: something that's implied to be a strip club. It's just
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: all very sex worker shamey. It's shamy of yeah, like
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: unmarried women, and of course, like that reflects the values
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: of the time. And is it strange, you know, to
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: be applying a like twenty twenty three lens to a
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: nineteen forty six movie. Sure, but but I.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: Feel like it's it's like I get frustrated when, like
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: in caunturing that criticism of like, well, what did you
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: expect it's nineteen forty six. It's like, yeah, we're not
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: saying we expected better of nineteen forty six, but it's
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: like we're having it's still I think the more relevant
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: discussion is it's still wildly popular in twenty twenty three,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: and that's why it's the relevant discussion.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, these archaic and shamy and patriarchal
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: values haven't gone away, no, so and you know they
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: were perpetuated by movies like this and reinforced by movies
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: like this, and those ideals have lasted for.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: Millennia, and so are the I mean, I think we
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: talked about this a fair amount during the live show.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: But also I think that the more the more, like
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: the cooler areas of this movie, which is like the
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: idea of it being a life well lived to work
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: for your community and serve your community instead of working
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: towards individualistic and personal gained, which is such an inherently
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: American value that the bottom falls out of all the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: fucking time. And that's not to say I mean, I
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: think that it's I kind of like where it falls,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: because the takeaway from George's experience with Clarence is like
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: the best message that the movie has. Of course, this
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: is only a message that is accessible by a white guy,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: even though he's a white guy that's suffering a lot
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: of poverty and personal distress. Like that's I don't mean
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: to discount that, but you know that the narrative is
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: only accessible to him, not Mary, who has organized and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: made this all fucking possible. He wouldn't have a damn
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: roof over his head, and he wouldn't have the money
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: if it wasn't for Mary. We know this, But I
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: think that it being important that George worked for his
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: community and served as community, and that presenting it that
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: they're also like, it's not devaluing his life as an individual,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: because that's the whole clearance thing is that like, you
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: as an individual are an important part of your community,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: and without you very passively over emphasizing George's importance. But
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: the message, the message a lot, I think, right, like,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: but the message feels relevant. That's like one of the
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: more I think that's my guess of like why this
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: movie is other than just being you know, really pummeled
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: over the head. If you live in the US, I
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: understand why that message is still really powerful, that like you,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: that serving the collective is valuable, and that you are
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: a valuable part of that collective.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: That's beautiful, and that's fine if a movie, you know,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: kind of like exaggerates that. But the movie, like especially
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: that section it credits George for like saving women, all
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: the women in the town from these quo unquote horrible
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: fates of you know, sex work and being a quote
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: unquote old maid who's a librarian, who's so undesirable because
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: she wears glasst.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: Like and that also feels like I don't know. I
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: mean we've talked about this within period pieces too, where
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: like obviously we can't apply a twenty twenty three lens
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: to nineteen forty six. But I think even so, if like,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: if this movie had any interest in Mary, it could
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: present her. I mean, I think it's very like flat
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: in the way that her being a quote unquote old
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: maid and wearing Warby Parker glasses is presented where it's
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: like the value of the movie is that happening to
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: you is bad, Whereas I think there's a way to
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: present it of like, that's what happens to her, that's
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 3: her life, that's her choice. She's happy with it, but
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: society isn't happy with her, you know. And I think
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: that there's a way to present a historical reality of
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: the mid twentieth century, which is that, you know, especially
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: post World War Two, it totally makes sense we're like
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: heading towards one of the most sort of rigid housewife
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: eras in the US. It makes sense that you would
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: be treated poorly for wanting to have an independent life.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: But this movie doesn't show any shade of gray. It's
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: just like, yeah, this happens to you. You're fucked. So
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: thank god George Bailey was born. And you're like, I
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: Right, because there were movies, like classic Hollywood movies from
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: this era that do examine and like subvert gender roles
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: and sexism and patriarchal values, but this movie just simply
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: is not one of them.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: It's just like presents it as fact.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's rather frustrating. Let's talk about Annie,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: yes please. So she is the I believe, only person
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: of color in the entire movie with any kind of
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: speaking role, and just kind of the only person of
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: color you see on screen period.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: There are a few background actors who are people of color,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: but it's certainly the only speaking role by a country mile.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, she's played by Lillian Randolph. So she is the
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: character who works for the Bailey family as like a
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: maid or a housekeeper. So she's in a very you know,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: stereotypical role for black actors to be in. At this time,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: roles for black actors were often relegated to service roles
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: helping white people, and that's also a trend that continues
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: still to this day. Still.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that she's she's also presented as
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, she's presented as comic relief, yes, and speaking
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 3: to like Lilian Randolph's performance great. And I was reading
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: more about Lillian Randolph and it she played the comedic
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: relief role many many times because those were the only
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: roles that were made available to her throughout her career,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: and she does it incredibly well. She's clearly a very
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: talented actor.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: She has all the best lines in the movie.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think if they're not delivered with her performance,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: they would be weird. But like she makes it work
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 3: and she's not given really anything to work with. But yeah,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, she's presented as the help, she is presented
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: as the comic relief, and she's also presented as less
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: smart than the people that she works for. Where I mean,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: the first exchange she has is with George's mother, who,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: as we talked about in the live show, also has
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: nothing to do other than my husband, my son, my husband,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: my son. Right, yeah, but one of the few exchanges
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: they have is I mean, it's so well presented by
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: Annie that you're like, I'm on Annie's side, but it's
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: like presented that like she doesn't understand and why it
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: because she says something like the only girl children, and
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: you're like, George.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: And Harry are upstairs rough housing, even though they're like
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: adults by this point.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: It sounds like they're well they're both forty, but you're like, oh,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: I guess you're eighteen. I know, I know, but you're
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: still like it's distracting, it's distracting.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: Anyway, they're making a lot of commotion and Annie is like,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: you know, hitting the broom against the roof, and then
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: she says something like, oh, this is why all children
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: should be girls. And then missus Bailey responds with something like,
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: but if all children were girls, then never mind. Is if,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: like I think, Annie doesn't understand it, like procreation works
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: like Annie.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: In the world of the scene, it's delivered as if
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: she is making a joke and the mom doesn't get it.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't seem like it's written that way because
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: the whole movie is written so disrespectfully towards her. And
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: then shortly after we see her assaulted by Harry, and
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: that's presented as a joke too. I went back to
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: the original script to see if that was in the
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 3: original script, and Dick was it says quote as he
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 3: pushes her through the kitchen door, he slaps her fanny,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: she screams. The noise is cut off by the swinging door,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: like it's presented as a button to a scene. Yeah,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: so that is also and she's I mean, not the
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 3: only woman in the movie to be sexually harassed. I
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: think that that is a pretty evenly. That is an
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: evenly distributed crime throughout the movie. But it's I mean,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: with a character who is on screen for all but
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: two minutes only in service to white characters and as
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: comic relief, she still is sexually assaulted on screen as
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: a joke.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: Horrifying. She does have my favorite line of the movie
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: at the very end, when all the community are like
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: pitching in and giving money to the Bailey family, she says,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: I've been saving this money for a divorce, but you
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: and then like you can have it though, And I'm like, okay,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: first of all, Annie, keep your money, don't give it
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: to George Bailey.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 3: Any get your damn divorce. Whatever he did, whatever he did,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 3: he's a dog.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 5: No.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: I read it as like she doesn't even have a
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: partner yet. She's the way that some people will be like, oh,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: I'm saving up for a wedding. She just like knows
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: that inevitably she will get divorced. I mean, I don't know.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: I thought she was married. Well that speaks to how
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: little we know about this character. We don't know if
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: she's got a husband, we don't know anything about her.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds me of the doctor Ian Malcolm quote
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: from Jurassic Park when he says, oh, I'm always on
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: the lookout for a future ex missus Malcolm, and I'm like, yeah,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: breakups happen, and we all know it anyway.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 3: You're prey, you're preve it's true. And then we I
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 3: guess we didn't really get to talk about Violet very
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: much because we just we didn't have a lot. We
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 3: were just goofing around so much you wouldn't understand. But
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: speaking to Violet, I mean another character we don't get
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: a lot of screen time with. She does get certainly
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 3: more of an arc than Annie does, but it's a
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 3: very charged arc where she's presented as I feel like
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: it is kind of a Madonna horror situation that we're
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: presented with.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like the quote unquote town fluozy.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 3: She's Samantha Jones coded. She's like really the Samantha Jones
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 3: of New Bedford and good for her and good for
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 3: Hut and so she's I think the way that Platt
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: treats her as very very inconsistent to me, because it's
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: clear that Mary is presented as the you know, angelic
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: alternative to a woman like Violet. However, they are friends
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: and they as far as I can tell, remain friends,
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 3: although we don't. We would certainly never scene with them together.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: Well that's the thing. They're friends or maybe even kind
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: of friend of these as children. Yeah, but we don't
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: because we don't see them in any scenes together as
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: an adult, we have no way of knowing if they've
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: actually remained friends.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: That's true, and that also demonstrates how disinterested the plot
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: is in Mary, which we already know. Yeah, when we
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: see Violet presented as an adult, I mean, she's really
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 3: slaying in a lot of these scenes. Jimmy Stewart George
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: is always like kind of leering at her in certain
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 3: like towards the beginning of the movie, like he goes
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: Hammahammadhamana when she walks past the car, she gives a
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: great one liner keeps walking. This in a run of
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: scenes that really troubles me. It's the scene first where
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: I think it's a holiday party, and as we discussed,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart does kiss his mommy on the mouth hard.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: During that conversation, she's talking about the one thing that's
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: on her mind, which is her son, and she is like,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: why don't you marry Mary? And he's like I don't
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: want to. And then he's like, but I'm gonna go
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 3: fuck tonight is basically the takeaway. And he stops away,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: being like I'm gonna go fuck mom, and she's like
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: you kids, and I'm like, this sucks, this is weird.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: And then he goes into town spots Violet. She is
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 3: interested in him. Arguably the whole movie. You're just like,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: why didn't you two get together? I think it bumps
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: me up because it presents Violet as kind of a floozy,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: but also like whatever. They're both horny and walking around,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: so sure, yeah, have sex. But and then he wants
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: her to climb a mountain and she's like what no,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: and then he yells at her, which is a very
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: george thing to do experience slight resistance from a woman specifically,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: and starts screaming at her.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: He's so fragile. Oh my god.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: He does that and stops away, as he does in
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: many scenes with women. Yes, and then we see him
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: go to Mary's house and have a scene we talked
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: about in the live show, but like it not only
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: doesn't paint a flattering picture of Violet, because I think
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 3: we're supposed to leave that scene with a negative picture
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: of Violet, like she doesn't get him right, you know.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: And then it also presents Mary as not his first choice,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 3: and that sucks for a character that we like, like
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: it sucks.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Well, well, then I think she would be his first choice,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: except that again because of his fragility, he's like, well,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: I can't Mary belongs to another man. She should belong
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: to me. But Sarah right, it's already staked his claim, right.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, in a monogamous relationship, sure,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: don't actively pursue someone else's partner, but also don't treat
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 3: them cruelly because you're attracted to them. That is uh,
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: what most men do, and worse and so much worse.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: And then at the end with Violet, we get a
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: very again weirdly already seed with her and George, but
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: you do get some closure that is taken back. You
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: think you're about to get a cool arc where she
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: goes to George for a loan, a building and loan.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: We're not sure.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: I think she doesn't intend to build because she's moving
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: to New York City.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: I ever heard of it in a move I was
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: not expecting from this story. George is very supportive of that,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, good, get the fuck out of here.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: Sucks here, best of luck. Weird kiss fine, not even
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: on the he kisses his mom on the lips, but
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 3: well he's married by that. I was like, she shouldn't
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 3: kiss her on the lips, but like a long, lingering kiss.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 3: And there's like a kiss mark left on his cheek.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: And then the bank inspector's there and he's like, hello,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: I've come here to arrest you. But anyways, like that
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 3: for me would have been great closure for Violet. She
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 3: gets out, but instead we first of we first see
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: the flash forward where oh no, if George wasn't born,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: she might be a sex worker, which is implied by
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 3: the movie as the worst thing that could happen to someone.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: And then in the present day by the end, she
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 3: comes back and is like, actually, I've decided to stay,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 3: and you're like a fate worse than death.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: We don't know why she decided to stay. We don't
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: know what she was intending to do in New York
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: or why she was moving again. She's characterized so little
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: beyond just like the very tropy. Oh she's the you know, hot,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: busty blonde who walks around town and all the men
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: like Wolf whistle at her like that's just the trope
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: that she adheres to and she's given no interior life
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: or interests or anything like that.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it sucks, And I feel like that is one
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: of the clearer presentations of what this movie's values are,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: because on one hand, yes, it is a life well
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 3: lived to serve your community. But I feel like there
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 3: is an undertone of this that is like city folks
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: are sinful, don't go there, you know, never leave the
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: place you were born in, which erases so many reasons
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 3: why you would leave, which in violence case might be
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 3: because everyone treats her like shit. So there's that.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: There's that I want to talk really or just mention
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: really the There's another female character who hasn't come up yet,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: and it's cousin Tilly, who works at the Building and Loan.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: She's George's cousin, presumably Uncle Billy's daughter, not that you
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: really ever see them interact.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: She also calls him uncle Billy.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: Oh so oh why is that?
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: So?
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: Who knows?
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 3: I think that's his government name because everyone part.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: Her first name, uncle, last name Billy name.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: Also that means his name is Billy Bailey.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: That's fun. I love him. I love him and his
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: tiny brain and his little squirrel, his little squirrel and.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: His little you know, strings around his fingers so that
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: he doesn't forget things, but he still forgets them all
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: the time. Love that anyway. Cousin Tilly, she has like
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: three lines in the movie, and I mean justice for Tilly,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, because she's another
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: person we don't know anything about.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 3: I'm ashamed. I didn't even remember, Like she's not I
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: didn't even though it's like, yeah, she's absolutely, she sure
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 3: is there and she has a whole story that we
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 3: don't know about, the fault thing that we alluded to
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 3: in the live show. But it's good to have noted
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: explicitly is that we do have in mister Potter. And
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 3: also how distracting is it to have a character named
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 3: Harry and a guy named mister Potter in the same movie.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 3: His name's Henry Potter. His little truck says ahe Potter,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 3: and you're like, this sucks. Anyways, they should have known
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 3: that in the future something terrible would happen. But mister
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: Potter is a disabled character and We've talked about this
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: on the show many times of how people with disabilities
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: are extremely frequently coded in fiction and in movies by
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 3: extension as inherently villainous. Yes, and the counterpoint to that,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 3: I think in this movie would be that George himself
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: has a disability. He can't hear out of one ear
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: because of an accident when he was a kid, and
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: it is explicitly stated in the movie that that disability
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 3: prevents him from serving in the military. So I feel
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: like the at very least, while that trope is present,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: our hero who's an asshole, also has a disability, and
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: it is not presented. It's presented in a very different
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: way than mister Patters.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's true, but the fact remains that the movie
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: does attribute a disability to the villain. The villain who
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: is played by Lionel Barrymore, who is the great uncle
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: of Drew Barrymore.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 3: Wow, iconic strike disrespect her well anyways, No, but it's
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 3: that's a whole other story because if I'm remembering correctly,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 3: the Barrymore family in general has been very very good
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 3: historically of respecting strikes. So it was a noted, you know,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 3: step away from Barrymore family values for Drew to be
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 3: a piece of shit.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: Like that, what the hell Drew?
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 3: Well anything else?
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: I just I don't think this got brought up in
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: the live show. But in the Christmas Eve scene when
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: George is absolutely throwing a fit and not communicating to
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: his I understand why he wouldn't tell his children this maybe,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: but why would he not tell his why his wife?
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: What had happened like this? This missing money? He just
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: comes in acts like a complete terror. She's like, what's wrong,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: what's going on? He does not openly communicate anything to her.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: He just screams at her. He says, you call this
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: a happy family? And then he's like, why do we
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: have to have all these kids? He says that within
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: earshot of his children, and he says all these other
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: things that I think we did mention in the live show,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: But I just like, how are we supposed to like
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: this guy? When he screams at Mary tells her that
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: the house and home that she built for this family,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: sure that the house sucks. He hates it, and why
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: did we have all these kids? Saying that within.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 3: You I understand that we are seeing George at the
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 3: lowest moment in his life. And I know that theoretically
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: you do not judge someone from the worst moment of
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: their life, but he's really swinging for the fences with
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 3: being a piece of shit here. He apologizes for it,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 3: and then he disappears. He does apologize for it, but
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 3: then he disappears.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: Well, he apologizes, and then he gets mad again because
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: his family is like appropriately reacting to how awful he's being.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: And then he yells again, and then he leaves, and.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 3: To Mary's credit, she says, why are you torturing the children?
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 3: And I was like, thank you, Mary, Why is he
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: torturing the children? I know that he's at the lowest
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 3: part of his life, but I just.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: Come and give him an excuse to be horrible to
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: his family.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not suggesting that, I'm just I'm just saying, like,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 3: I think that the issue with his quick to anger
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 3: is that we have seen him not at the lowest
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 3: moment of his life also quick to anger. It is
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 3: not a it is like an escalation of behavior we've
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 3: seen from him already. And so that's yeah.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And I think that is all I had.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: Did you have anything else?
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 3: No, let's let's return to the stage.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Yes, so this brings us to the
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: Bechdel test. So yeah, we're gonna go back to the
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: live show and see if this movie passes the Bechdel test.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 3: No, there's no, it definitely doesn't. The only scenes we
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 3: get are between Mary and her friend and they're like,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: are boys cools? The answer?
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: So well, missus Bailey, George's mom and Annie briefly talk
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: about how they're going to be old maids. But then
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: Anne is like, speak for yourself. I'm saving up for
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: a divorce and I'm happy about it.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 3: Which is like great, yes, but presumably divorce from a man, yes,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 3: due to the pology of the time. Yeah. Yeah, So
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna say it doesn't. I mean it doesn't spiritually
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 3: pass certainly.
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think definitely that one. Yeah. But our nipple
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: scale the perfect scale, the perfect metric where we rate
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: the movie based on a scale of zero to five
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: nipples and examine the movie through an intersectional feminist lens,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: and I think I have to give the movie. I'm
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: gonna give it one nipple for its like rejection of
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: the capitalist ideas ideals that mister Potter is projecting. And
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: everyone's like, no, it's actually awesome if we're a community
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: and we like band together and say boo to you,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: mister capital because, like mister Potter, is capitalism the guy.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: In any case, I like, from a class perspective, I
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: think this movie is pretty cool. From an everything else perspective,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's very cool. And George Bailey is
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: not nice to his wife. His wife, so I'm only
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: giving it one nipple the end, and I'll give it
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: to I'll give it to Annie, who is played by
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: Lillian Randolph.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna, I'll meet you. I'll give you. I'll give
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 3: it one nipple. Yeah, I think this movie for women
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: is not good for women. Is is maybe in fact
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 3: bad and reinforcing a lot of negative stereotizes women at
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: the time, which is that when your husband is on screen,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 3: get out of the scene. I don't care for that,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: and that happens in almost every scene in this movie. However,
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 3: I agree with you. I mean, I think that the
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: class politics of this movie are at least in step with,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 3: if not ahead of its time, in spite of the
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 3: politics of the director and the star, which feels like
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 3: really interesting. And I think that like it's endured for
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 3: a reason. I think that it is really nice to
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: have classics in American canon that are not rooted in
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: individualism and like really remove themselves from the whole idea
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 3: of the hero's journey. Where like, if there's anyone that
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: goes through a hero's journey in this story, it's George's brother,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 3: and you don't see any of it where he goes
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 3: from humble beginnings to being a war hero and going
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 3: through all this stuff. You don't see that. You see
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: his brother who is actively remaining kind of trapped in
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 3: the class and the place that he is born in.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 3: And like, I think that there's a lot of value
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 3: to that, and there's a lot of value to being
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 3: to a preciating that and to seeing the value in that,
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 3: because I think that you know, like in most movies
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: and a lot of media in the Western world, you're
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: encouraged to only see success in your life as having
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: ascended in the traditional sense, and that the idea of
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 3: remaining within your community and serving your community is not
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: valued at the same rate. And I think that you know,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful life does that on its face, and
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 3: that's really nice. It does that for George. It does
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: not do that for Mary, even though she's doing the
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 3: same shit and it's all offscreen, and for some reason
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 3: they're like, what if there was an old ass angeling
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 3: Tom Sawyer, you know, like Mary is doing the same
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: thing the whole movie, but they just don't want to
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 3: show that. At its core, I think that the movie
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 3: has a good message. I'll give it one nipple. It's
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: bad for women, it's bad for people who aren't white,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 3: and they're and I'm going to give it to Jimmy
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 3: the Rain and obviously.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, and Coco almost split it with Jimmy and Coke. Okay,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: do we end the show now?
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: I think I feel like, well, yeah, I mean, I
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 3: just I just feel like Kaitlyn, Like I was wondering
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: as I was watching this movie with Clarence the flop angel. Yeah,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 3: what would the world be like without the Bechtel casts?
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, what would the world be like without the Bechdel cast?
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 3: Certainly we don't have anything prepared.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I was thinking about, wait, actually.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 3: Wait that Dax, could you softly play Dominic the donkey?
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much? Just as we discussed this important topic.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: Uh huh, Okay, So I was thinking about this too,
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: and uh, if the Bechdel Cast had never existed, what
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: would the world be like. Well, first of all, Michael
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: Bay would be President of the United States of America.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 3: That is, you're so right, you know, you're so right.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 3: I was thinking that if the Bechdel Cast didn't exist,
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 3: Alfred Molina would never have learned what an MRA meant
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 3: true and he would have gone down that path himself.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, I know, I know, I know.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: I was thinking if the Bechdel Cast never existed that
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: the Minion's Kevin, Bob, and Stewart, Yeah, would have broken
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: up and we wouldn't have been there to get them
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: back together.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 3: I was thinking that in a world without the Bechdel Cast,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 3: I would have ended up working at the job I
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 3: was working at when we started the Bechdel Cast, which
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 3: was as a fact checker at Playboy magazine Question Work,
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 3: and I would have worked there forever, and I would
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 3: have married Hugh Hefner and I would have killed him
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 3: instead of just him dying. Wow, that would have been
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 3: so scary if that happened.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad it didn't. And also, I think that
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: if the Bechdel Cast had never existed that James Cameron
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: would have never directed Titanic because he specifically made it
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: for Jamie and myself. Yeah, twenty years before we started
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: the podcast, and that's what the world there would be
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: no Titanic. Sorry.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 3: And in conclusion, I would like to say in a
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 3: room without the Bechdel cast and then I just wrote
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 3: in asterisk Manian joke as risk and so would like
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 3: to say thanks for coming to the live show.
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: And that was the episode everyone, Thank you for tuning in.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: Thanks once again to everyone who came to the live
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: show or bought tickets to the stream and watched the stream.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: Really appreciate you doing that and supporting live podcasting.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 3: Wow. What is tree? Yeah? And if you enjoyed that
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 3: and you live in the following cities San Francisco, Sacramento, Austin, Dallas,
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 3: San Diego, We're coming to a venue near you soon.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 3: Check our link tree right now. Tickets to your city
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 3: maybe live soon. If not, they will be very soon
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 3: and we will make a specific post to the feed
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 3: when that is the case. The live shows are so fun.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 3: We always do meet and greets afterwards. We have exclusive
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 3: march and it's just a great community event I know
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 3: of at least two serious relationships that have come out
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 3: of meeting at a backtal cash show. It's a great
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 3: place to meet a friend or a love And also
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 3: if you live in LA please come to Santa University
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 3: at the Allegion on December twenty first at seven thirty pm.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: That ticket will also be on our link tree. Again
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: it's just link tree slash Bechtel Cast. And speaking of links,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 2: you can click on the link patreon dot com slash
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: Bechtel Cast and subscribe to our Patreon. This month it's
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: Zoe Saldonna in Space September.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 3: And we swear that the Matreon's voted for that. The
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 3: matrons voted for that to happen. And there's also over
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 3: one hundred episode backlog, close to one hundred and fifty.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 3: We've had the patreon going for many years and it's
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 3: a blast. We get goofy, We have a nice time.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 3: And also if you want to, you know, gift a
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 3: subscription to someone for the holidays, it's only five bucks
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 3: a month and that gets access to everything.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of gift ideas, if you need them
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: for either yourself okay, treat yourself or gifting to a
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: friend or lover, you can go to teapublic dot com
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: slash the Bechdel Cast and grab some merch. All of
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: it is designed by a one Jamie Loftus.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 3: Ever heard of her? Uh? And we also if you're
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 3: coming to our tour, we sell exclusive tour exclusive posters
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 3: and uh. Just so you know, on the tour, we
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 3: will for the most part in most cities be covering
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 3: the movie Barbie.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 5: Ye.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 3: So if you want to hear us talk it since
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 3: people have been shouting that at us, we were saving
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 3: it because we want to wear little outfits. Uh, and
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 3: we will be doing that. So with that, that's an episode, folks.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 3: See uh, see you on the flip we got uh.
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 3: We we have one or two more episodes coming this
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 3: calendar year and we'll see you next week.
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: We sure will. Bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Drante and Jamie Loftis, produced
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Moe laboord. Our theme song
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 2: a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast