Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Bad Moms
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
- 0:03Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
- 0:07Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef and Best
- 0:12Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bell Cast. Hi, mommies, how's
- 0:20Speaker 1: that good? That was great? Mommies. Welcome to the back
- 0:26Speaker 1: door gass mommies and non mommies. But you know this week,
- 0:30Speaker 1: mommy has come to the front of the line. That's right.
- 0:34Speaker 1: I make no mistake, not just good mommies, but bad
- 0:38Speaker 1: mommies to bad mommies as well. Welcome bad mommies to
- 0:42Speaker 1: the bad Mommies episode of UM. I was almost gonna say, like,
- 0:47Speaker 1: this is how traumatized I am at this point where
- 0:50Speaker 1: I was almost gonna say, like, Caitlin, we can be
- 0:52Speaker 1: bad podcasters, but you know that that's just giving an
- 0:54Speaker 1: asshole like a template of a mean iTunes review. So
- 0:58Speaker 1: I'm like, better not do it. Okay, So this is
- 1:01Speaker 1: this is our annual Mother's Day episode. I miss I
- 1:04Speaker 1: miss my Mom. Yeah, I miss my Mom. She's doing okay,
- 1:08Speaker 1: although her health is not. She has lime disease I think,
- 1:13Speaker 1: and she has a lot of pain from that. But
- 1:15Speaker 1: then she's like well, what if it's COVID nineteen, So
- 1:18Speaker 1: no one knows anything. But my mom's health is a
- 1:21Speaker 1: little precarious at the moment, but I think she'll be fine.
- 1:26Speaker 1: I think my mom Yeah, similar deal. My mom has
- 1:29Speaker 1: rheumatoid arthritis and it's been I think it's just like
- 1:33Speaker 1: if you already have chronic pain, being cooped up in
- 1:35Speaker 1: your house NonStop just doesn't do it any favors. So
- 1:39Speaker 1: like she and and she's also I'm shout out to
- 1:42Speaker 1: Jill because I'm pretty sure she's been a loyal listener
- 1:44Speaker 1: throughout the choir. Oh Jill, because she has been teaching
- 1:49Speaker 1: her second grade class still um through through Zoom through Zoom,
- 1:55Speaker 1: which I'm like, I shout I mean shout out to
- 1:58Speaker 1: where this is a weird started the episode, but it's
- 2:01Speaker 1: a quarantine episode so that doesn't matter, but shout out
- 2:04Speaker 1: to like all the parents and teachers right now who
- 2:08Speaker 1: are making school happen over zoom. I truly cannot wrap
- 2:13Speaker 1: my head around that students too, Like it's just who
- 2:18Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. Not to brag or anything, but I
- 2:21Speaker 1: teach online screenwriting classes, which I always forget to plug
- 2:25Speaker 1: on the podcast. But if anyone's interested in learning screenwriting
- 2:28Speaker 1: from yours? Truly someone with a master's degree in screenwriting
- 2:32Speaker 1: that I absolutely hate to bring up. But um, I
- 2:36Speaker 1: teach classes through Zoom but I only have like a
- 2:40Speaker 1: cap it at five students per section and they're all,
- 2:44Speaker 1: you know, adults, so and I'm like, I can barely
- 2:47Speaker 1: handle that. Well, it's like that's the thing is, Like
- 2:50Speaker 1: I've been in our writer's room like during the days,
- 2:53Speaker 1: and I'm like, I am an adult woman. Who I
- 2:57Speaker 1: It's so hard to pay attention. It's so hard. I'm like,
- 3:00Speaker 1: why am I on eBay? Like I this is my job.
- 3:04Speaker 1: I hope no one for I don't think that. But anyways,
- 3:06Speaker 1: I've been on eBay and I'm doing my job. But
- 3:09Speaker 1: I'm like on eBay so you know, we can all
- 3:12Speaker 1: be It feels good to be bad, the wise person
- 3:15Speaker 1: What's told me? Well, that's sort of the theme of
- 3:18Speaker 1: the movie. It feels good to be bad. And we're back.
- 3:23Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bechtel Cast. This is uh, this is
- 3:27Speaker 1: if you're a new listener, what a weird start. This
- 3:30Speaker 1: is our podcast about the representation of female identifying characters
- 3:37Speaker 1: in movies. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping
- 3:42Speaker 1: off point for discussion. But what is the Bechdel test? Well,
- 3:46Speaker 1: I asked myself each and every week. I'm happy to
- 3:49Speaker 1: answer your question. It is a media metric originally developed
- 3:54Speaker 1: by cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace test,
- 3:59Speaker 1: and it requires ars that the narrative have two female
- 4:03Speaker 1: identifying characters with names who speak to each other about
- 4:08Speaker 1: something other than a man. And the specific metric that
- 4:12Speaker 1: we use is it has to be a two or
- 4:14Speaker 1: more line exchange of dialogue. And a lot of movies
- 4:19Speaker 1: cannot manage this simple metric. And interestingly, and we'll be
- 4:25Speaker 1: talking about this iconic duo. I mean when people say,
- 4:29Speaker 1: like Caitlin and Jamie, name a more iconic duo, I
- 4:32Speaker 1: automatically say John Lucas and Scott More. Uh. But you know,
- 4:37Speaker 1: many movies that the writers of this movie have have
- 4:41Speaker 1: written in no way past the Backtel test. We've got
- 4:44Speaker 1: a weird We've got a weird one today. There's pros
- 4:46Speaker 1: and there's cons, but we're here. There's discourse. I wanted
- 4:50Speaker 1: before we get into it, because it's where it's just
- 4:52Speaker 1: the two of us today. Um, So I was curious
- 4:56Speaker 1: I have. I've just been interested in hearing like other
- 4:58Speaker 1: podcasters that I listened to, just like, what is like
- 5:01Speaker 1: a thing in quarantine that you've gotten into, or like
- 5:07Speaker 1: a show or a thing that you're like. I have
- 5:10Speaker 1: been rewatching, Um a show that I really enjoy that
- 5:14Speaker 1: I had only seen once. But Over the Garden Walls. Oh, yes,
- 5:19Speaker 1: you recommended that to me? Yes, I I can't recommend
- 5:21Speaker 1: it enough. It's short, it's fun, it's cookie um. It
- 5:26Speaker 1: was originally on Cartoon Network, it's on Hulu now. I
- 5:29Speaker 1: really enjoy it. Um so fun. Any any over the
- 5:32Speaker 1: Garden Wall heads out there, you let me know. I'm
- 5:36Speaker 1: going to recommend a show that I've been watching really
- 5:39Speaker 1: because I've also been like working three jobs in the core,
- 5:42Speaker 1: which is like it doesn't make anything like it's very lucky,
- 5:45Speaker 1: but it also is like just really fuss with your
- 5:48Speaker 1: head a little bit. But I watched the first season
- 5:52Speaker 1: of On Becoming a God in Central Florida, and it's
- 5:57Speaker 1: really good. Kirsten Dunst is gray nice and I love it.
- 6:02Speaker 1: So that's our cor Rex. Yeah, cor Rex, let's talk
- 6:07Speaker 1: about bad moms. Let's do it. So, yes, we don't
- 6:09Speaker 1: have a guest today, but I did. I wanted to
- 6:13Speaker 1: get some you know, opinions of moms and whether or
- 6:17Speaker 1: not this movie resonated with moms. So, um, I have
- 6:21Speaker 1: a few little, you know, tweets to share and stuff
- 6:24Speaker 1: like that, mom tweets. What what was your history? Do
- 6:28Speaker 1: you have a history with this movie? Uh No, I don't.
- 6:30Speaker 1: I had never seen it, nor it's sequel A Bad
- 6:34Speaker 1: Mom's Christmas. Didn't. I just skipped them. I based on
- 6:38Speaker 1: what I knew about them when they came out and
- 6:41Speaker 1: like who was making them and stuff. I was like,
- 6:44Speaker 1: I don't think these are going to be for me. Yeah,
- 6:50Speaker 1: I was right, say not because of the premise, more
- 6:54Speaker 1: just because of the writing style and the like the
- 6:58Speaker 1: comedic sensibilities of these writers and stuff like that. I
- 7:01Speaker 1: just like the bloated big budget comedy genre asthetic, like
- 7:06Speaker 1: this specific aesthetic and like don't, I don't, it's not
- 7:10Speaker 1: even really I guess it's kind of a genre. It's
- 7:12Speaker 1: also not for me. Uh yeah. So this movie came out,
- 7:15Speaker 1: I mean fairly recently. I had seen I've seen Bad
- 7:19Speaker 1: Mom's Christmas. I watched it because Christine Baranski was in it,
- 7:24Speaker 1: and I didn't love the movie. But I did love
- 7:28Speaker 1: Christine Branski and and Susan Surrandon's in it. She's pretty,
- 7:31Speaker 1: she's good in it as well. It's I honestly, I
- 7:35Speaker 1: will say I really preferred Bad Mom's Christmas to Bad
- 7:39Speaker 1: Moms Interesting. But I think that that might just be
- 7:43Speaker 1: because you get like twice the amount of twice the moms.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Twice the moms. You have Cheryl Hines, Christine Baranski and
- 7:51Speaker 1: Susan Stain like those, they're all like, you know, knocking
- 7:55Speaker 1: it out of the park, even though the writing still,
- 7:57Speaker 1: stay with me, stinks, But you have like twice the
- 8:02Speaker 1: amount of fun performances. So it's it just was more fun.
- 8:05Speaker 1: But sure, yeah, I saw, I watched watched Bad Moms.
- 8:09Speaker 1: I it's it's frustrating because it's like, and we'll talk
- 8:11Speaker 1: about this a lot, because it's like a really good
- 8:14Speaker 1: premise and like a really strong cast, and everything I
- 8:20Speaker 1: dislike about the movie has to do with the way
- 8:22Speaker 1: it's written and directed. And then when you're like, oh,
- 8:25Speaker 1: it was written and directed by the Hangover guys, of
- 8:28Speaker 1: course I don't like it. Yeah, So it's it's kind
- 8:32Speaker 1: of a bummer because I'm sure that it would have
- 8:34Speaker 1: been impossible to make this movie without their co signing
- 8:39Speaker 1: of it, which is frustrating in itself, and then everything
- 8:42Speaker 1: I don't like about the movie is them getting in
- 8:44Speaker 1: the way of a good premise and a good cast. So, um,
- 8:48Speaker 1: I'm glad it exists, but uh, you know, generally was like,
- 8:52Speaker 1: we gotta be able to do better in this come
- 8:53Speaker 1: on there, we most certainly can we and I think
- 8:57Speaker 1: that we have. That was another thing that before we
- 9:00Speaker 1: super jump into it, I did a little research, as
- 9:04Speaker 1: I've been known to do, wow brag perhaps some context.
- 9:07Speaker 1: I was just looking into like where moms have been
- 9:12Speaker 1: represented in comedic movies, and there's really not that much.
- 9:17Speaker 1: There is not a ton There's a lot of movies
- 9:21Speaker 1: that have moms in them but are not about moms.
- 9:25Speaker 1: So it's like this movie was a huge hit. It
- 9:27Speaker 1: made a hundred eighty million dollars off a two million
- 9:30Speaker 1: dollar budget, So to me that indicates, you know, like
- 9:33Speaker 1: this is clearly a market. People want this movie, and
- 9:37Speaker 1: it was like reasonably well received. But yeah, because they're there,
- 9:42Speaker 1: there's just not really moms represented as like a central
- 9:46Speaker 1: focus in movies where you do see a lot and
- 9:49Speaker 1: I think, like a lot better than what this movie
- 9:51Speaker 1: has to offer is there's a lot of TV that's
- 9:54Speaker 1: come out in the past couple of years that is
- 9:57Speaker 1: comedy focused around motherhood. And so it's just I hope
- 10:02Speaker 1: that and I mean, god knows how or if movies
- 10:05Speaker 1: will be made anymore. Um that this is the end
- 10:09Speaker 1: of the industry as we know it, probably, but it's
- 10:12Speaker 1: like Christine Baranski is going to be in like a
- 10:14Speaker 1: plastic bubble. You know, it's gonna be a whole thing.
- 10:17Speaker 1: But but I hope that, you know, I was encouraged
- 10:20Speaker 1: at least to see. I mean, there's a ton of
- 10:23Speaker 1: comedy shows of all different like genres of comedy. There's
- 10:26Speaker 1: like network comedy, there's niche about mothers, but it just
- 10:30Speaker 1: is not represented in movies. So this is just kind
- 10:35Speaker 1: of like what there is right now. Wild But you know,
- 10:41Speaker 1: if you're if you're a mom looking for all, Um,
- 10:44Speaker 1: when this episode comes out, I'll try to do a
- 10:46Speaker 1: little thread of like TV recommended watching because it seems
- 10:49Speaker 1: like that's where the options are. Yeah, that'd be great.
- 10:53Speaker 1: And with that, should we do the recap and go
- 10:54Speaker 1: from there? Let's do it. So the story of bad
- 10:58Speaker 1: Moms bed Mummies. Um, we meet bad Mummy number one,
- 11:02Speaker 1: although she's not bad Mummy yet. She's good Mummy. But
- 11:06Speaker 1: they're but they're they're bad. Sometimes they're all like good moms.
- 11:10Speaker 1: But they also go through really long montage sequences that
- 11:13Speaker 1: I fast forwarded like shot truly, like we I can't
- 11:18Speaker 1: talk about visual jokes in the because I just and
- 11:21Speaker 1: they're all three minutes long. It's too every These guys
- 11:25Speaker 1: they just love a long, expensive montage and I just
- 11:28Speaker 1: don't care about it. That are like in slow motion.
- 11:31Speaker 1: There's like some you know, poppy bop in the background
- 11:35Speaker 1: and it's just like this, you get one of those.
- 11:38Speaker 1: Don't have fourteen in your movie? Yeah, And like can
- 11:42Speaker 1: you be three characters that we at least know? Like there?
- 11:46Speaker 1: But by the time the first like at length cameo
- 11:50Speaker 1: comes in, I'm like, I think I know one thing
- 11:51Speaker 1: about Kristen Bell's character. How am I supposed to be
- 11:54Speaker 1: like reveling in this? Like wow, like you don't know?
- 11:58Speaker 1: You really only know? I would you really only get
- 12:00Speaker 1: to know Mila Kunas in this movie. I think you
- 12:03Speaker 1: know one thing about Kristin Bell, which is that her
- 12:06Speaker 1: husband sucks and that I mean that's just John Lucas
- 12:11Speaker 1: and Scott More No matter who they're writing for, they
- 12:14Speaker 1: only know how to write broad stereotypes for sure. So
- 12:20Speaker 1: you just don't get to know Kristin Bell and Catherine Han.
- 12:22Speaker 1: You just don't. But first we barely get to know
- 12:26Speaker 1: Amy Mitchell. That's uh Mila Kunis's character. Were you were
- 12:31Speaker 1: you frustrated? Okay, so I'm sorry, I'm like this movie
- 12:34Speaker 1: was really Were you frustrated in the first scene where
- 12:39Speaker 1: they're introducing her, when she's like, uh, I sweat and
- 12:43Speaker 1: workout class and You're like, you're Mela kuni is. Give
- 12:47Speaker 1: me a break there, don't I don't like when movies
- 12:50Speaker 1: are like Melacunas is so awkward and you're like, no,
- 12:55Speaker 1: she isn't she? I think she was miscast in this role.
- 13:03Speaker 1: But also who would have been cast in a such
- 13:06Speaker 1: a broad stereotyped role like this? I mean, who would
- 13:10Speaker 1: this be good for? Really? I think Mela Conics is
- 13:13Speaker 1: so talented. We've seen her be amazing and I feel
- 13:18Speaker 1: like she is. Yeah, she is very miscast in this movie. Yeah,
- 13:21Speaker 1: so is Kristin Bell. I think that true. Like of
- 13:25Speaker 1: the main cast, I think that like Christina Applegate and
- 13:29Speaker 1: Catherine Han are pretty well cast, but it's only because
- 13:32Speaker 1: they're playing characters that they've been forced to play before
- 13:35Speaker 1: that are not fair to them. Where it's like, oh,
- 13:37Speaker 1: Christina Applegates is going to play like an uptight, rude
- 13:41Speaker 1: person and she's been she's had to do that forever,
- 13:43Speaker 1: and like Catherine Hans going to play like a very
- 13:45Speaker 1: you know. It's like and I hope they had fun
- 13:46Speaker 1: and they did a good job, but it's even when
- 13:49Speaker 1: it's properly cast, her like this still is like not
- 13:51Speaker 1: very nice. I don't know. Okay, where were we we have?
- 13:57Speaker 1: We men ate me more egg. She's boring, she's she's overworked,
- 14:03Speaker 1: she's underappreciated. She had her first kid when she was twenty.
- 14:08Speaker 1: She is now thirty two. She has two kids, Jane
- 14:11Speaker 1: and Dylan. Um, they do a bunch of extracurricular activities,
- 14:15Speaker 1: but she's always trying to you know, make it to
- 14:17Speaker 1: like go to the you know events in the games
- 14:20Speaker 1: and the recitals and whatever. But um, she's always late
- 14:24Speaker 1: to everything. That's her thing. She's late to everything. She's
- 14:28Speaker 1: such a bad mom. She has a part time job
- 14:31Speaker 1: at a hipster coffee company, working in sales. I think
- 14:37Speaker 1: we'll talk about that but this is a piece of
- 14:39Speaker 1: WRITINGGG that is so like roll your eyes into the
- 14:42Speaker 1: back of your head, okay, boomer that I was so
- 14:45Speaker 1: annoyed by it, where it's like just clearly two out
- 14:49Speaker 1: of touch dudes being like millennials in the workplace. They
- 14:53Speaker 1: take two weeks off when John snow dies and you're like,
- 14:59Speaker 1: mel coolness is a millennia? What are you taught? Like?
- 15:02Speaker 1: They're they're so like avocado toe, like they're just they're stupid.
- 15:07Speaker 1: They're stupid, and that anytime the workplace thing came up,
- 15:11Speaker 1: I was just deeply annoyed because it just made it
- 15:14Speaker 1: made no sense. It was very frustrating. Yes, but that's
- 15:18Speaker 1: her job, and um, she just always has so much
- 15:22Speaker 1: going on and she's worried that she might be a
- 15:25Speaker 1: bad mom. There's also this group of judgmental moments that
- 15:29Speaker 1: shame Amy for like having a job and being so busy.
- 15:32Speaker 1: The queen bee of them is Gwendolen, which is Christina
- 15:36Speaker 1: Applicates character. And then she has two friends played by
- 15:39Speaker 1: Jada Pinkett Smith and Annie Mamlo. Give Jada Pinkett Smith
- 15:43Speaker 1: more lines what she was fairly a character. I want
- 15:48Speaker 1: to think best case scenario. There's like a whole like
- 15:50Speaker 1: there are scenes with Jada Pinkett Smith that just like
- 15:53Speaker 1: had to be cut for some reason because I'm just like,
- 15:55Speaker 1: why would you go through the trouble of getting someone
- 15:57Speaker 1: who is like truly awesome in a movie where it
- 16:00Speaker 1: is like very very white and then get this like
- 16:04Speaker 1: iconic black actor and then give her no lines. It's
- 16:08Speaker 1: so it's annoying on many levels, truly, yes, uh. And
- 16:13Speaker 1: then like Annie Mamalo who co wrote Bridesmaids, like she's
- 16:18Speaker 1: just like pigeonholed into this like idiot type, but like
- 16:22Speaker 1: she's funnier than that, like give her opportunities to shine.
- 16:25Speaker 1: And also well, that's like seeing Annie Mamalo in this
- 16:28Speaker 1: movie is super frustrating because you're just like, why didn't
- 16:30Speaker 1: you let her write this movie? Right? She's we like,
- 16:34Speaker 1: she's she is infinitely more qualified to do it, and
- 16:38Speaker 1: you're just gonna make her like again, another like very
- 16:40Speaker 1: talented person in this movie who has three lines, and
- 16:43Speaker 1: you're like, what, I hope she got a boat. But
- 16:46Speaker 1: like any Mamalo is a parent. She is the same
- 16:48Speaker 1: age as like the writer directors of this movie. She
- 16:51Speaker 1: already had Bridesmaids under her belt with this game out,
- 16:54Speaker 1: Why couldn't she have written it like great questions, great
- 16:57Speaker 1: questions all around. It's it's be fuddling yep. Um, so
- 17:03Speaker 1: that okay. So Amy has a her husband, this guy
- 17:06Speaker 1: Mike infuriating storyline. Yes, um he his whole thing is
- 17:11Speaker 1: that he's pretty immature. He's kind of a doof he
- 17:14Speaker 1: like doesn't really do anything to help around the house.
- 17:18Speaker 1: And then one night Amy catches him masturbating to a
- 17:22Speaker 1: cam girl. Um, which she apparently has been doing for
- 17:26Speaker 1: ten months. So she kicks him out of the house.
- 17:30Speaker 1: The next day, she has a terrible day. You know,
- 17:33Speaker 1: she spills coffee on herself, she spills spaghetti on herself. Oh,
- 17:38Speaker 1: she's such a clutz, Caitlin, She's such a clutz. She's
- 17:43Speaker 1: such a bad mom. Her dog has vertigo because modern
- 17:49Speaker 1: parents be having vertigo dogs. You're like, I'm just like,
- 17:54Speaker 1: there's some things in this that You're just like, this
- 17:56Speaker 1: is more of a rich person thing. Dogs on vertigo
- 17:59Speaker 1: medication sounds kind of like a rich person thing. Uh.
- 18:03Speaker 1: They're like there. I also, I mean, there is like
- 18:07Speaker 1: a storyline with the husband, but it was like another frustrating.
- 18:10Speaker 1: I feel like the writer directors John and Scott are
- 18:15Speaker 1: are kind of like both cutting themselves like and telling
- 18:19Speaker 1: on themselves through the husband character, because it's kind of
- 18:22Speaker 1: like a character we've seen before of like, oh, he's
- 18:25Speaker 1: not a bad person, he's just like kind of a
- 18:28Speaker 1: du fist. He's just dumb. He would never hurt his
- 18:32Speaker 1: wife on purpose. I mean, I think it's like goofy
- 18:35Speaker 1: and fits the tone of the movie, but it also
- 18:37Speaker 1: just means like, oh, no, guy is gonna like super
- 18:40Speaker 1: recognize themselves in that character or interrogate anything about themselves.
- 18:43Speaker 1: They're like, Oh, he's dumb, I'm an amazing husband, I'm
- 18:47Speaker 1: a good dad. That was annoying. So Amy has had
- 18:52Speaker 1: this horrible day, and at the p T eight meeting
- 18:55Speaker 1: that night, Gwendolen, who is the PTA president, is like me,
- 19:00Speaker 1: you're on the like police force at the bake sale
- 19:04Speaker 1: or some poor just like she's a star. Why does she?
- 19:11Speaker 1: I mean yeah, but yeah, her her character is like
- 19:16Speaker 1: bitchy obstacle. So Amy is like, no, I'm not gonna
- 19:21Speaker 1: do your thing, suck it. I quit, And we're like
- 19:25Speaker 1: quit what being a mom? What's happening? So then, but
- 19:29Speaker 1: then she's like, yes, the Christie, I yeah, I like
- 19:34Speaker 1: the Another major writing flaw in this story is that
- 19:38Speaker 1: the writer's bravely instead of examining where do these pressures
- 19:44Speaker 1: on mothers come from, like what systems are enforcing it,
- 19:48Speaker 1: they instead make the reason that things are difficult for
- 19:52Speaker 1: all mothers be Christina Applegame. It's her fault that that
- 19:58Speaker 1: every modern mother fields pressure and feels insecure, inadequate, it's
- 20:03Speaker 1: actually Christina Applegate's fault. And by ruining Christina Applegate and
- 20:09Speaker 1: and by that, I mean to say, pit women against
- 20:11Speaker 1: women for really no reason. You can solve that. Yes,
- 20:17Speaker 1: But before all the really transpires, Amy decides to be
- 20:22Speaker 1: a bad mom. So basically she goes to a bar
- 20:24Speaker 1: to blow off some steam fun and there she sees
- 20:28Speaker 1: Carla Catherine Han's character, who is this horny, irresponsible single
- 20:34Speaker 1: mom type, and Kiki Kristen Bell's character, who is an
- 20:40Speaker 1: isolated stay at home mom with four kids and no
- 20:44Speaker 1: friends type. So you can see there's an attempt here
- 20:48Speaker 1: to show different kinds of mothers, but then the writing
- 20:52Speaker 1: doesn't really do anything to subvert or expand on those types,
- 20:56Speaker 1: and it just ends up being types exactly there's like
- 21:00Speaker 1: no nuance. They are these one dimensional characters. No thought
- 21:05Speaker 1: was put into them aside from just like identifying them
- 21:08Speaker 1: as these stereotypes and writing them as such. And it's
- 21:13Speaker 1: I guess to be fair is the wrong preface to
- 21:17Speaker 1: this sentence, but like that is all John Lucas and
- 21:20Speaker 1: Scott Moore know how to do with characters of any gender.
- 21:23Speaker 1: If you look at the hangover, you also see like
- 21:27Speaker 1: three types of bro that like they're not challenging in
- 21:32Speaker 1: their writing, um to put it lightly, and so yeah,
- 21:37Speaker 1: you just end up like it's nice that you have
- 21:39Speaker 1: three different types of mothers. You have like a working
- 21:42Speaker 1: mom in a relationship, you have stay at home mom,
- 21:45Speaker 1: you have a single mom. This all sounds like cool,
- 21:48Speaker 1: all right, different kinds of moms. Let's explore it. But
- 21:51Speaker 1: then we just don't explore it, and we kind of
- 21:53Speaker 1: just like that that they got to step one. So
- 21:57Speaker 1: at the bar they talk about how hard it is
- 22:00Speaker 1: to be a good mom in this day and age,
- 22:03Speaker 1: how there's so many rules and expectations to be perfect.
- 22:06Speaker 1: So then Amy is like, screw it, let's be bad moms.
- 22:11Speaker 1: Parentheses two thousand sixteen, written and directed by Josh Lucas
- 22:15Speaker 1: and Scott More. That's the name of the movie there.
- 22:18Speaker 1: That was when my boyfriend walked in during that scene
- 22:21Speaker 1: and it was just like oh boy, and then he
- 22:24Speaker 1: just like left after that line. He's like, I'm gonna
- 22:26Speaker 1: go get lunch yep. Um, all right, let's let's take
- 22:32Speaker 1: that moment to take a quick break because we're at
- 22:36Speaker 1: break time, and then we'll come back and keep going.
- 22:44Speaker 1: We're back, um okay. So the good moms have decided
- 22:48Speaker 1: to be bad moms. Now they're bad. They're bad moms.
- 22:51Speaker 1: They said it. It was the end of the first act,
- 22:52Speaker 1: and we're like, all right, they are bad moms. They
- 22:55Speaker 1: get drunk at the bar, then they go wild at
- 22:59Speaker 1: the rosary store. The next morning, Amy is all hungover
- 23:05Speaker 1: from her wild night and her kids are like, what
- 23:08Speaker 1: the hick And she's like, I'm a bad mom. Now
- 23:11Speaker 1: make your own freaking breakfast. She takes her kids to
- 23:15Speaker 1: school and her husband's muscle car. She skips work and
- 23:19Speaker 1: goes to the movies in lunch with her new friends
- 23:22Speaker 1: Kiki and Carla. Then we've got the bake sales scene there.
- 23:27Speaker 1: Amy flirts with Jesse, this hot widower dad, but then
- 23:34Speaker 1: Gwendolen comes over and she's like, Amy, if you don't
- 23:37Speaker 1: stop being a bad mom, I'm gonna make your life
- 23:41Speaker 1: a living hick. Then a scene happens off screen where
- 23:46Speaker 1: Amy learns that her husband is staying with his internet girlfriend.
- 23:50Speaker 1: This information happens in a scene that does not play
- 23:53Speaker 1: out on screen, right, and then you're just like, h like,
- 23:57Speaker 1: that's not good writing. It's not good writing. And then
- 23:59Speaker 1: I was just like, I also don't care, Like, yeah,
- 24:03Speaker 1: I don't care. I'm not rooting for them to get
- 24:05Speaker 1: back together, but I'm also not rooting for this random
- 24:08Speaker 1: widower character comes in. I like, it's almost like their
- 24:12Speaker 1: shoehorning or romantic plot into the movie where no one
- 24:15Speaker 1: cares about it and it doesn't really belong perhaps but anyway,
- 24:21Speaker 1: so um, this scene happens off screen. But then the
- 24:24Speaker 1: aftermath is Carla being like Amy, you need to get laid,
- 24:28Speaker 1: and she's like, yeah, I do. So the three of
- 24:31Speaker 1: them go out to a bar. But not only is
- 24:34Speaker 1: Amy a bad mom, now she's also a bad flirter.
- 24:39Speaker 1: She's bad at flirt montage. Yeah, another montage, another long,
- 24:43Speaker 1: horribly edited, might I say, montage showing her being bad
- 24:49Speaker 1: at flirting, but then Jesse, the hot widow or dad,
- 24:53Speaker 1: shows up and they start flirting and then they have
- 24:58Speaker 1: a little kiss a little and we're like, Okay, she
- 25:01Speaker 1: got what she wanted. I do want to talk about
- 25:03Speaker 1: that kind of romantic storyline a little later on UM,
- 25:06Speaker 1: because I there's some interesting things there. But anyway, so
- 25:11Speaker 1: the next morning, Amy wakes up to her husband having returned,
- 25:15Speaker 1: and she's like, get out of here. And we're like,
- 25:18Speaker 1: all right, he was a character for a minute. Yeah,
- 25:21Speaker 1: I wasn't sure, just because like they're not good writers.
- 25:24Speaker 1: I'm like, I wonder if he's just never gonna be
- 25:26Speaker 1: mentioned again. But he has mentioned again, but I still
- 25:29Speaker 1: don't care about him, So it just ended up kind
- 25:32Speaker 1: of being like a moot point. I was like, well,
- 25:35Speaker 1: I guess that that's what's happening, right. They could have
- 25:37Speaker 1: written him out if they wanted me to want to
- 25:39Speaker 1: see him, They could have written a better character. Then
- 25:44Speaker 1: Amy finds out that her daughter Jane got benched for
- 25:47Speaker 1: her soccer game because Gwendolen like blackmailed the soccer coach. Basically,
- 25:53Speaker 1: so Amy is like, okay, well then I'm gonna run
- 25:57Speaker 1: against you for pta president. And we're like, Okay, I
- 26:01Speaker 1: guess this is this the plot now everything. You're just like,
- 26:05Speaker 1: I know the shift because she says like, I'm going
- 26:07Speaker 1: to be a bad mom, and then she's like I'm
- 26:09Speaker 1: going to be the PTA president, and you're like, I
- 26:11Speaker 1: feel like these goals are at odds with But when
- 26:15Speaker 1: she says she's going to be a bad mom, she
- 26:17Speaker 1: doesn't really this is just like it's it's I mean,
- 26:20Speaker 1: we're not moms. It goes without saying. But I was like, Okay,
- 26:24Speaker 1: she says I want to be a bad mom, but
- 26:26Speaker 1: I think that I mean, what she's actually saying is
- 26:28Speaker 1: I want to be a mom and my own person.
- 26:31Speaker 1: But like, why can't I just say that, Like I
- 26:33Speaker 1: know that that's not as punchy, but it's confusing for
- 26:35Speaker 1: her to keep saying I want to be a bad
- 26:37Speaker 1: parent when what what she means something like it still
- 26:41Speaker 1: is very clear that she like they all love their
- 26:43Speaker 1: children very much, but they're flawed people. So like that's fine,
- 26:47Speaker 1: you know, I don't get it. I mean, I get it,
- 26:50Speaker 1: but I don't like it. Like I want to be
- 26:53Speaker 1: a mom who doesn't have to live up to such
- 26:56Speaker 1: rigid expectations and high standards. That are placed upon me
- 27:00Speaker 1: by society and the patriarchy. That doesn't fit in onto
- 27:03Speaker 1: a movie poster. But bad moms, when you say when
- 27:08Speaker 1: you say society and patriarchy, I think you mean Christina Apple.
- 27:12Speaker 1: Oh right, I'm so sorry. It was actually her. This
- 27:15Speaker 1: is all happening, So that's why we have to defeat
- 27:18Speaker 1: her in the election question mark unclear, unclear. It also
- 27:23Speaker 1: seems like she doesn't like, logistically, does Mila Kunas have
- 27:27Speaker 1: the bandwidth for this? Sure? Whole thing is like I
- 27:30Speaker 1: don't have bandwidth for anything. And then she's like she's
- 27:33Speaker 1: already too busy. The goal is she's like, I'm her.
- 27:36Speaker 1: She says she don't think she means this, but she's like,
- 27:39Speaker 1: I'm going to be a worse parent because I am
- 27:41Speaker 1: too bogged down with the expectations for work and parenthood
- 27:45Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. But then the focus shifts
- 27:48Speaker 1: and she's like, I actually want to take on an
- 27:50Speaker 1: additional responsibility to prove something too that I don't know
- 27:55Speaker 1: what it is, right, Okay, okay, just making sure at
- 28:00Speaker 1: what's happening is we don't make sense. Um. So, now
- 28:07Speaker 1: that she's running for pt president, she throws a meet
- 28:10Speaker 1: the candidate party that no one shows up to it first,
- 28:13Speaker 1: but then people start to arrive because they've got free
- 28:16Speaker 1: wine and it turns into this wild party. And then
- 28:20Speaker 1: Jesse shows up at the end as it's winding down,
- 28:24Speaker 1: and then they have a little kiss and a little
- 28:27Speaker 1: and they have a little sex and we're like yeah.
- 28:33Speaker 1: And then there's another scene where Amy's husband is back
- 28:37Speaker 1: again and they go to a couple's counseling with Wanda
- 28:41Speaker 1: Sykes again her talents are wildly underused. Yeah, I had
- 28:46Speaker 1: just watched, and this is like really embarrassing. I just
- 28:51Speaker 1: watched as a joke. We were doing her on Zeitgeist
- 28:55Speaker 1: Movie Club, which we've already done in this show, and um,
- 28:59Speaker 1: listeners are will know we don't love it. We don't
- 29:03Speaker 1: love it. Um, But I watched. So I watched Jecksy
- 29:06Speaker 1: instead as a joke that Adam Divine movie. It's really bad,
- 29:10Speaker 1: and Wanda Sikes is also inevitably in that movie being
- 29:14Speaker 1: wildly underused. And so I was like, just two days
- 29:17Speaker 1: in a row of seeing Wanda pikes enormous talent just wasted.
- 29:23Speaker 1: I just I just hope that she's just like they
- 29:26Speaker 1: offered me so much money that I could not say, no,
- 29:30Speaker 1: I can't imagine that's true. Though it wasn't that big
- 29:33Speaker 1: of a budget. It was only what I was twenty
- 29:37Speaker 1: one million of the dollars. Oh fingers crossed hope, so
- 29:41Speaker 1: let's headcanon. But yeah, she's very under You're just like,
- 29:45Speaker 1: this is a waste of Wanda Sikes. But I'm glad
- 29:48Speaker 1: she's there. Um, but she's like, wow, you guys should
- 29:51Speaker 1: just get a divorce, which is like, we know. It's like, uh,
- 29:56Speaker 1: this is all to say that we're reaching the low
- 29:59Speaker 1: point of the movie. Amy's marriage is crumbling. She gets
- 30:02Speaker 1: fired from her job that she has not been showing
- 30:05Speaker 1: up to and she's like, why are you firing me? Sure,
- 30:08Speaker 1: I've skipped work for the past week in a row,
- 30:10Speaker 1: but like, I don't get it. And then they're like
- 30:13Speaker 1: our avocado toast is dry and there oh god that
- 30:18Speaker 1: whole Yeah, so it's something. It's not her fault that
- 30:23Speaker 1: she didn't show up to work, it's Millennial's fault. What
- 30:30Speaker 1: And then to top it all off, um Gwendolen has
- 30:33Speaker 1: planted weed and Amy's daughter's locker and gets her kicked
- 30:36Speaker 1: off the soccer team. So everything's just crumbling in Amy's world,
- 30:41Speaker 1: and her daughter gets really mad at her and calls herselfish,
- 30:45Speaker 1: and then she's like, I'm gonna go stay with dad.
- 30:48Speaker 1: So things have fallen apart. So it's the night of
- 30:51Speaker 1: the p t A election. Amy eventually shows up late
- 30:56Speaker 1: because she's always late, that sort of thing. She's not
- 30:58Speaker 1: like the other girls, and she gives this speech where
- 31:02Speaker 1: she's like, hey, most of us are bad moms and
- 31:05Speaker 1: that's okay because being a mom is really hard. Vote
- 31:09Speaker 1: for me, and everyone's like whoo. And she wins the election.
- 31:15Speaker 1: Then there's like a little bit of a reconciliation between
- 31:17Speaker 1: her and Gwendolen, her kids come back, she gets rehird
- 31:21Speaker 1: at work. The movie takes a very long time to end.
- 31:24Speaker 1: I was like kind of like, did you feel that
- 31:27Speaker 1: as well? We were just like the writing gets kind
- 31:30Speaker 1: of scattered in the second act, and then they still
- 31:34Speaker 1: managed to tie up every kind of random storyline they
- 31:38Speaker 1: had set up in the very long second act, but
- 31:40Speaker 1: it takes a while where they're like, Okay, there's a
- 31:43Speaker 1: climactic third act scene which is like the third act
- 31:46Speaker 1: he is, I don't even really mean this as a
- 31:47Speaker 1: bad thing, but you know, she goes up, she says
- 31:49Speaker 1: the title of the movie. She says the statement of
- 31:52Speaker 1: the movie, and everyone's like, woo who you win the
- 31:55Speaker 1: big game. But then it's like seeing where you find
- 31:58Speaker 1: out what happened with her and her kids, seeing you
- 32:00Speaker 1: find out what happened with the widow scene where you
- 32:02Speaker 1: resolved Christina applicate thing, scene where Katherine Han's character gets resolution.
- 32:06Speaker 1: You didn't realize that you were supposed to want. There's
- 32:09Speaker 1: just like there's like five Dano mont scenes that you're
- 32:12Speaker 1: just like, all right, listen, I don't know, I don't
- 32:16Speaker 1: like this movie very much. And then yeah, that's pretty
- 32:20Speaker 1: much it. And then we get this kind of like
- 32:23Speaker 1: not post credits, but like as the credits are rolling,
- 32:26Speaker 1: we get all of the the actors in the movie
- 32:29Speaker 1: just them with their moms in real life having conversations,
- 32:33Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, this is more endearing than the
- 32:36Speaker 1: entire movie. I was saying this before we started recording.
- 32:39Speaker 1: Katherine Hans mom is funnier than the whole movie. Katherine
- 32:44Speaker 1: kept watching the scenes with Catherine Han and her mom
- 32:47Speaker 1: and Jada Pinkett Smith and her mom were so delightful.
- 32:51Speaker 1: I also think that Jada gets more screen time during
- 32:54Speaker 1: the credits than she does in the movie. I found
- 32:59Speaker 1: Kristen Bell's mom to be a little threatening. Um, it
- 33:03Speaker 1: was just like, something about Kristen Bell's mom is not
- 33:05Speaker 1: rubbing me the right way. Mela Kunas's mom seems like
- 33:08Speaker 1: a delight saying for Christine and Apple Game. That's my
- 33:10Speaker 1: review of Everyone's mom. Something about Kristen Kristen Bell's mom
- 33:17Speaker 1: has a bit of a sinister energy. Can't quite place it.
- 33:19Speaker 1: Sure I see that. Yeah, well, let's take another quick
- 33:24Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and really do a
- 33:27Speaker 1: deep dive and we're back. So we've been chatting a
- 33:36Speaker 1: little bit already throughout the recap of things that have
- 33:40Speaker 1: you know, bugged us. I think I just wanna start
- 33:45Speaker 1: out the official discussion by saying, um, like, I can
- 33:50Speaker 1: see why this movie would resonate with people, especially moms,
- 33:55Speaker 1: because it does a little bit to recognize how difficult
- 33:58Speaker 1: it is to be a mom, how mothers are often underappreciated, overworked,
- 34:03Speaker 1: how they how they often have to do a lot
- 34:05Speaker 1: of the household and emotional labor to keep a family going.
- 34:09Speaker 1: And this movie is about a group of women who
- 34:11Speaker 1: are just fed up with those expectations. That are placed
- 34:14Speaker 1: upon them to be perfect moms, and then they say
- 34:16Speaker 1: fuck it to those expectations. Absolutely, Like I, I really
- 34:20Speaker 1: do appreciate that there is like and again, for movies
- 34:24Speaker 1: that have come out even remotely recently, this is the option, um,
- 34:29Speaker 1: a movie that expresses these like really commonly held frustrations.
- 34:34Speaker 1: So it's like, I'm glad this exists for that reason,
- 34:39Speaker 1: and and I'm glad that it like resident I'm interested
- 34:41Speaker 1: in your mom tweets yes, because yeah, this is the
- 34:44Speaker 1: only movie of its kind, for better and for worse. UM.
- 34:48Speaker 1: I'll read a few of the responses I got from moms,
- 34:51Speaker 1: and for our listeners who were moms, feel free to
- 34:54Speaker 1: reach out on social media and let us know how
- 34:57Speaker 1: much or how little this movie resonated with you, because
- 35:01Speaker 1: we are very curious. UM. But anyway, here are a
- 35:05Speaker 1: few takes gave me that sweet mom intel. They were
- 35:08Speaker 1: a bit mixed, but basically my tweet just asked, UM,
- 35:12Speaker 1: are you a mom? Have you seen Bad Moms? Did
- 35:15Speaker 1: it resonate with you thoughts? One of the first responses was, UM,
- 35:20Speaker 1: I am a mom and I loved it. I also
- 35:22Speaker 1: saw it in a theater full of moms and it
- 35:24Speaker 1: was an awesome bonding experience. Another one said, big fan,
- 35:29Speaker 1: I relate to Mila Kunis and Catherine han U. My
- 35:32Speaker 1: husband left me for another woman, and I had to
- 35:34Speaker 1: struggle to figure out how to keep my household to
- 35:37Speaker 1: float with two kids aged three and five at the
- 35:40Speaker 1: time while shedding my wife slash mother identity and figuring
- 35:44Speaker 1: out who I was. Another response was saying that she
- 35:49Speaker 1: is a mom. She did not finish the movie. It
- 35:52Speaker 1: did not resonate with her at all, So again mixed responses.
- 35:56Speaker 1: I guess it made a lot of what you hear.
- 35:59Speaker 1: And then I think around the original coverage of this movie,
- 36:01Speaker 1: because this movie was reviewed mixed as well. UM, and
- 36:06Speaker 1: I was happy to see that a lot of the
- 36:08Speaker 1: reviewers of this movie we're not just women, but also
- 36:11Speaker 1: we're mothers, UM. And it seems like moms are also
- 36:15Speaker 1: split on this. But I mean, even the responses that
- 36:17Speaker 1: you've shared, and thank you too to those people for
- 36:20Speaker 1: for sharing UM, seems to indicate that like this is
- 36:23Speaker 1: the first time they've seen those kinds of problems represented
- 36:25Speaker 1: in a big movie and in a way that isn't
- 36:28Speaker 1: And and I think we've we've talked about this with
- 36:31Speaker 1: a number of different identities that are held primarily by women.
- 36:36Speaker 1: Of like, it's nice to see a mom struggling in
- 36:39Speaker 1: a way that isn't framed as like this is the
- 36:42Speaker 1: most tragic thing in the world. This is like and
- 36:44Speaker 1: then it's just a sad because I feel like there's
- 36:46Speaker 1: a lot of movies about like sad moms, but this
- 36:50Speaker 1: movie is about bad moms my Yeah, And and I
- 36:56Speaker 1: could definitely see how seeing this movie in theaters with
- 36:59Speaker 1: other moms would be really cathartic and fun. Totally. I
- 37:04Speaker 1: just think we can do better, yes, for sure. And
- 37:08Speaker 1: that that's my thesis statement of the film, which is that, like,
- 37:14Speaker 1: it's a movie about being a mom and the pressures
- 37:17Speaker 1: of being a mother, and it's written and directed by
- 37:19Speaker 1: two sis hit men who are known for being cruel
- 37:23Speaker 1: to women. Yeah. Yeah, and I know that we we've
- 37:28Speaker 1: done research into what these guys were saying on the
- 37:32Speaker 1: press tour for this movie, which was like, look just
- 37:36Speaker 1: very like. My my suspicion going into researching the production
- 37:43Speaker 1: of this movie was that John Lucas and Scott More
- 37:46Speaker 1: wanted money, right, Okay, that is what a lot of
- 37:51Speaker 1: directors want, right, but by sixteen you can't necessarily just
- 37:57Speaker 1: make another hangover. You can't like broke comedy is really
- 38:00Speaker 1: not as much in demand, you know, and and so
- 38:04Speaker 1: it just seems kind of like it just seems like
- 38:07Speaker 1: someone reached out and was like John Lucas got more.
- 38:10Speaker 1: Women are so hot right now, so we need you,
- 38:14Speaker 1: like don't don't like get out of your comfort zone
- 38:17Speaker 1: or anything, but we need a movie with some ladies
- 38:20Speaker 1: and no, you can't kill them. Uh, and it just
- 38:25Speaker 1: it just feels like a studio note like it just yeah,
- 38:28Speaker 1: I have like I have some of these interviews, and
- 38:30Speaker 1: I like I want to play some clips from them
- 38:33Speaker 1: because they're so frustrating to hear these guys talk. It's
- 38:36Speaker 1: just I'm frustrated by them, Like they should have just
- 38:39Speaker 1: known better. They should have been like, well, we're not moms.
- 38:42Speaker 1: Why would we write a movie about moms? But what
- 38:44Speaker 1: if they done in their career that would indicate that
- 38:46Speaker 1: they would pass money on to a marginalized creator, Like
- 38:49Speaker 1: there's nothing that they've ever They got offered the money
- 38:53Speaker 1: and they took it, which also makes me very frustrated
- 38:57Speaker 1: at the you know, the studio who was like, hey, men,
- 39:01Speaker 1: write this movie about ma, Like yeah, yeah, I am.
- 39:05Speaker 1: I am at least mildly encouraged and appreciated by Like,
- 39:10Speaker 1: I guess that Kristen Bell had a lot to do
- 39:12Speaker 1: with this project existing as well from the research I've
- 39:15Speaker 1: done in the production. She was like, I think the
- 39:18Speaker 1: star attached that made the movie get made, and she
- 39:21Speaker 1: was the one that convinced me Lacoon has to do it.
- 39:23Speaker 1: And so there is like more women behind the scenes
- 39:28Speaker 1: of this movie then your average John Lucas got more movie.
- 39:32Speaker 1: But that's saying literally nothing. So well, let's hear a
- 39:35Speaker 1: little a few things they have to say, shall we know? Yes,
- 39:40Speaker 1: So this is an interview with the co writers and
- 39:45Speaker 1: co directors, John Lucas and Scott More about just sort
- 39:49Speaker 1: of their experience developing and directing Bad Moms. And here
- 39:54Speaker 1: are just a few choice quotes from them. I am
- 39:58Speaker 1: on a YouTube channel called film is Now Movie Bloopers
- 40:03Speaker 1: and Extras just to cite this source as properly as
- 40:09Speaker 1: I can. So here's the first clip. Uh yeah, well,
- 40:13Speaker 1: I think you know the movie. The genesis of the
- 40:15Speaker 1: movie was looking at our wives lives. We're both dads
- 40:17Speaker 1: and our wives or mom's and uh, seeing how intensive
- 40:22Speaker 1: world it was and how ripe it was for comedy,
- 40:23Speaker 1: and so we figured it was we've written our share
- 40:26Speaker 1: of exactly what you said, guys having a good time.
- 40:28Speaker 1: And we figured also we went to enough like mom
- 40:31Speaker 1: events that got a little off the rails that were like, oh,
- 40:34Speaker 1: this is like we're not actually entirely making this up.
- 40:36Speaker 1: This is something that actually happens, you know, the three
- 40:38Speaker 1: Martini play ate or whatever. It is not my wife,
- 40:42Speaker 1: by the way, she's a very well behaved but other
- 40:44Speaker 1: moms of course. But we just thought it was like
- 40:46Speaker 1: it was a world full of really intense social interactions
- 40:49Speaker 1: and it was just a world that was like sort
- 40:50Speaker 1: of hadn't been in our minds done to the to
- 40:53Speaker 1: the nth degree yet, and so we thought we could, Ah,
- 40:57Speaker 1: there it's very and I mean, and the quotes get
- 41:00Speaker 1: worse from this like it it just I really don't
- 41:03Speaker 1: like it. There. It's so I mean, it's like I
- 41:06Speaker 1: feel like that quote alone, just like you're like, yeah,
- 41:09Speaker 1: this was a studio note. They were asked to write
- 41:10Speaker 1: a movie about women. Uh, they asked their wives three
- 41:13Speaker 1: questions a piece and then just wrote the movie like
- 41:18Speaker 1: I and I really don't like this the like okay,
- 41:23Speaker 1: let me know if if I'm like getting off the
- 41:25Speaker 1: rails here. But I do feel like there is especially
- 41:28Speaker 1: in this genre, Like there's this repeated media narrative of
- 41:32Speaker 1: like women should be allowed to be raunchy too, and
- 41:35Speaker 1: like it just comes off a little like condescending, like
- 41:40Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well then like let them. And also
- 41:43Speaker 1: you don't need to write like there's just no I
- 41:47Speaker 1: hate I just there couldn't be two people I would
- 41:49Speaker 1: want behind a project about motherhood less men. I'll play
- 41:56Speaker 1: a couple more little clips from this, but like, so,
- 42:00Speaker 1: there's this monologue that Amy Melakuna's character gives in the
- 42:04Speaker 1: movie when she's talking to her son about how her
- 42:06Speaker 1: son needs to do his own homework, and she basically
- 42:10Speaker 1: she's like, you're entitled, which means mommy and daddy have
- 42:13Speaker 1: been spoiling you, and now you think the world owes
- 42:16Speaker 1: you something, but it doesn't. And if you don't learn
- 42:18Speaker 1: how to work hard, now you're going to grow up
- 42:20Speaker 1: to be another entitled white dude who thinks he's awesome
- 42:23Speaker 1: for no reason. And then you'll start a ska band
- 42:26Speaker 1: and you'll be mean too girls, and you'll grow a
- 42:27Speaker 1: mustache to look interesting. But you won't actually be interesting,
- 42:31Speaker 1: and I'm not okay with that, so please do your
- 42:32Speaker 1: own homework. So she's like talking about basically the directors
- 42:37Speaker 1: of this movie who are entitled and think they can
- 42:40Speaker 1: just do anything, but then they also like but then
- 42:42Speaker 1: they also do that thing where they make it sound
- 42:45Speaker 1: goofy and not like themselves enough that they just sort
- 42:48Speaker 1: of managed to slip out of it. They're like, like,
- 42:51Speaker 1: I feel like that's the same the same issue I
- 42:53Speaker 1: have with the way they wrote her husband, where um,
- 42:56Speaker 1: I agree with our listener that it's it's like there
- 42:59Speaker 1: is some visit ability and like a shitty husband that
- 43:03Speaker 1: cheats on their spouse with not a lot of guilt.
- 43:06Speaker 1: I mean, that's unfortunately a pretty common thing that happens.
- 43:10Speaker 1: But the way that they write the character makes it
- 43:13Speaker 1: seem like he's just not smart enough to be able
- 43:16Speaker 1: to be a loyal husband. It has nothing, It is
- 43:19Speaker 1: barely a reflection on his character, and and I feel
- 43:23Speaker 1: like that is a way that they let themselves and
- 43:26Speaker 1: other men off the hook by just writing a character
- 43:29Speaker 1: that really no one is going to see themselves in.
- 43:31Speaker 1: And we've had this discussion in different genres to where
- 43:33Speaker 1: it's like we've had discussions about like when a man
- 43:39Speaker 1: is and I guess trigger warning, but like when a
- 43:41Speaker 1: man assaults a woman in a movie, it's very often
- 43:44Speaker 1: by a character that is so brutally evil that no,
- 43:48Speaker 1: like no average person would recognize themselves in it, And
- 43:52Speaker 1: so then it just becomes like, well, what are you
- 43:55Speaker 1: supposed to take away from that? You know, and this
- 43:57Speaker 1: is a much less version of that, But I do
- 44:00Speaker 1: think it is like kind of a flavor of like
- 44:03Speaker 1: these guys are not actually writing. The one thing that
- 44:07Speaker 1: they could do and use their lift experience to do
- 44:10Speaker 1: is right a dad character that isn't so ridiculous, and
- 44:15Speaker 1: they can't even do that just without getting like to like, oh, well,
- 44:22Speaker 1: I'm not like this, this guy's dumb. Like it's like okay,
- 44:25Speaker 1: but like they just can't self examine. Also John Lucas
- 44:30Speaker 1: being like my wife though she would never misbehave, she
- 44:35Speaker 1: is perfectly behaved, and it's like, did you miss the
- 44:39Speaker 1: point of your own shitty movie? Like it sounds like
- 44:43Speaker 1: based on like, uh, there there was a piece I
- 44:49Speaker 1: came across from I was just like looking through some
- 44:52Speaker 1: of the coverage in in both directions, the pro and
- 44:55Speaker 1: con um from when this came out in and there
- 44:58Speaker 1: was a piece I found in late that I actually,
- 45:01Speaker 1: uh quite liked, and I thought it was someone who
- 45:04Speaker 1: like a writer named Alyssa Strauss who enjoyed the movie
- 45:08Speaker 1: but kind of had all of the same points that
- 45:12Speaker 1: we have about why it's like, well, this isn't really
- 45:15Speaker 1: She was like, it's a fun movie, but it's not
- 45:16Speaker 1: really like the mother's experience, whereas I just wanted to
- 45:21Speaker 1: share a quick passage from that that I think like
- 45:23Speaker 1: ties in a lot of things that we've been talking
- 45:25Speaker 1: about so far. Um, she says, in real life, a
- 45:29Speaker 1: harried mom like Amy seeking some relief would probably recognize
- 45:32Speaker 1: that her unhelpful husband and unrealistic boss are her main problems.
- 45:36Speaker 1: The annoying mom at school would be nothing more than
- 45:38Speaker 1: a pebble in her shoes, something that bothers her for
- 45:40Speaker 1: a moment but can easily be resolved. Personally speaking, I
- 45:43Speaker 1: know few moms who have been exhausted or wounded by
- 45:46Speaker 1: inter mommy tension. I asked other moms I know, including
- 45:49Speaker 1: those with office jobs and those who are their family's
- 45:51Speaker 1: primary caretaker, and they all felt the same. Moms are
- 45:54Speaker 1: not at war with one another. We concluded, and most
- 45:56Speaker 1: of us don't care about what parenting or employment decisions
- 45:59Speaker 1: other moms are making. We might become irritated with a
- 46:02Speaker 1: mom thinks she is better for making a particular decision,
- 46:04Speaker 1: But the crime there is hubris, not how they are
- 46:06Speaker 1: feeding their baby or how many extracurriculators their kid is
- 46:10Speaker 1: enrolled in, which I feel like is a big flaw
- 46:13Speaker 1: of this movie, where it's like the way the problems
- 46:17Speaker 1: that Melacuna's character chooses to address versus what she doesn't like. Yeah,
- 46:23Speaker 1: they make the villain another woman we don't know very
- 46:26Speaker 1: well as opposed to any system that being her job,
- 46:32Speaker 1: which is like even that like gets conflated because of
- 46:36Speaker 1: the shitty writing where it's like with her workplace, it
- 46:39Speaker 1: would be very i think smart and the most logical
- 46:43Speaker 1: choice to make it a workplace that is not welcoming
- 46:46Speaker 1: to mothers. It's not offering flexible scheduling and and that
- 46:51Speaker 1: should be a clear but they don't do that. They
- 46:53Speaker 1: make it like, oh, these millennials and their coffee beans
- 46:55Speaker 1: and their Game of Thrones, Like the problem is like
- 47:00Speaker 1: people who are five years younger than Mila Kunas. It's
- 47:03Speaker 1: not the fact that workplaces are unwilling to accommodate mothers
- 47:08Speaker 1: and maternity leave and stuff like that. Like, yeah, it
- 47:11Speaker 1: doesn't even come it barely comes up, so that is
- 47:15Speaker 1: like conflated. And then the clear issue of like her
- 47:18Speaker 1: husband is cheating on her, she wants to divorce her husband.
- 47:21Speaker 1: It finally gets resolved way later. But men are not
- 47:27Speaker 1: like obstacles in this movie the way that other women are. Well,
- 47:32Speaker 1: that brings me to perhaps another little clip even all that,
- 47:37Speaker 1: because it's like one of those media interviews where it says,
- 47:39Speaker 1: like John Lucas on why women should be allowed to
- 47:43Speaker 1: be raunchy. Even like the introduction to their clips is
- 47:46Speaker 1: pretty the movie doesn't really get into a lot of dating.
- 47:49Speaker 1: I mean consciously chose to like every time we felt
- 47:51Speaker 1: as guy writers ourselves injecting guy stuff in. We sort
- 47:55Speaker 1: of wanted to treat men in this movie a lot
- 47:57Speaker 1: like how women are generally treated in guy comedies, which
- 47:59Speaker 1: is sort of like love objects and a little bit
- 48:02Speaker 1: of comedy here and there, But we really want to
- 48:04Speaker 1: get it not about like the relationships, like the struggles
- 48:07Speaker 1: between moms and dads. This is a mom movie. This
- 48:08Speaker 1: is not a movie about the two things Okay, I mean,
- 48:13Speaker 1: I don't even disagree that that's like a fun inversion.
- 48:16Speaker 1: But then it's like that sentence continues with like, also,
- 48:20Speaker 1: I don't know what it's like to be a mom.
- 48:22Speaker 1: I didn't do a lot of research, and I don't
- 48:24Speaker 1: know what I'm fucking talking about. So the whole movie
- 48:28Speaker 1: comes off a bit weird. There. They're so lucky they
- 48:33Speaker 1: had like three talented leads who are mothers to make
- 48:37Speaker 1: this movie remotely convincing, truly, and the writing doesn't do
- 48:43Speaker 1: them justice of what they are capable of. Anyway. Um,
- 48:48Speaker 1: here's another clip, and this is Scott Moore talking now.
- 48:52Speaker 1: So so John may have said this, but we didn't
- 48:55Speaker 1: so much as write this script as listen to our
- 48:58Speaker 1: wives and the moms around us and write down they
- 49:00Speaker 1: were saying. And so really a lot of it is
- 49:02Speaker 1: just observing the moms around us and putting it into
- 49:05Speaker 1: a movie. And I have to say, you're talking about
- 49:07Speaker 1: sort of cutting loose. I know my wife would love
- 49:09Speaker 1: to cut loose every day, but there's so much responsibility
- 49:12Speaker 1: placed on her that eventually she gets to the today
- 49:14Speaker 1: and it's like midnight and she's got to go to bed,
- 49:16Speaker 1: and it's that frustration of not getting to do anything
- 49:18Speaker 1: that she wants all day, and so this movie is
- 49:22Speaker 1: what if she got to just like do whatever the
- 49:25Speaker 1: hell she wanted. Can we start like a go fund
- 49:27Speaker 1: me for these wives? They're like, we need to get
- 49:30Speaker 1: them out of there. There. The way they talk about
- 49:33Speaker 1: their wives is literally like their possessions, Like my, my
- 49:37Speaker 1: wife would love to cut loose, but unfortunately I'm making
- 49:40Speaker 1: a ton of money like off of her experiences. So
- 49:43Speaker 1: I can't really like do much to contribute because I'm
- 49:47Speaker 1: writing bad moms, Like you're just like do you hear
- 49:51Speaker 1: your do you hear yourself? So and then I have
- 49:54Speaker 1: one last clip to share I know it's and then
- 49:58Speaker 1: and then I'm done. I'm promised. I think there are
- 50:00Speaker 1: less pressures and less expectations on fathers. It seems like
- 50:03Speaker 1: if you show up at an occasional soccer game, you're
- 50:06Speaker 1: a hero for being there. But moms sort of have
- 50:08Speaker 1: to be at every soccer game and make sure they
- 50:10Speaker 1: brought the treats and make sure the kids around time,
- 50:12Speaker 1: make sure they have all the gear and that they
- 50:14Speaker 1: have the shin pads. And there's just a lot that
- 50:17Speaker 1: I feel like our society has placed a lot more
- 50:19Speaker 1: pressure on moms to be perfect that dad's uh for
- 50:24Speaker 1: right or wrong, probably for wrong. Are just expected to
- 50:27Speaker 1: be at work and occasionally show up, but moms are
- 50:29Speaker 1: expected to do everything. I personally feel like I get
- 50:32Speaker 1: a lot more applaudits for doing very little, and my
- 50:35Speaker 1: wife does a lot and doesn't get very little and
- 50:37Speaker 1: I do very little consciously. Uh no, but I think
- 50:39Speaker 1: there's I think that's we can get into a really
- 50:42Speaker 1: deep philosophical conversation to why it is. But whatever, whatever
- 50:45Speaker 1: it cause you want to point to it, it is
- 50:47Speaker 1: reality that moms are held to a far higher stand
- 50:49Speaker 1: and it's not there. Yeah, okay, but what have you done?
- 50:54Speaker 1: But what have you done? But what have you done?
- 50:57Speaker 1: You know? They just they're like, um, I think I've
- 51:00Speaker 1: heard of this thing called the patriarchy. Um I'm not
- 51:03Speaker 1: really sure what it does or who it is, but
- 51:06Speaker 1: it seems really shitty. I would be so pissed if
- 51:11Speaker 1: that were me. So I guess what I'm saying is, wow,
- 51:16Speaker 1: really sucks. And by these are the duface is who
- 51:23Speaker 1: tried to write like an empowering mom movie. Yeah they
- 51:27Speaker 1: did not succeed. Um that then that's all I have
- 51:30Speaker 1: to say about it. They just did not succeed there.
- 51:34Speaker 1: I really hope that in a couple of years we
- 51:36Speaker 1: like look back on this episode when eight I would
- 51:39Speaker 1: love around Like it's not don't misunderstand us. We would
- 51:43Speaker 1: love a raunchy comedy starring moms written by anyone else there,
- 51:50Speaker 1: written by like someone with experience, someone who has at
- 51:53Speaker 1: least researched like it just there couldn't be a more cynical,
- 52:00Speaker 1: like Hollywood choice for someone to be in charge of
- 52:02Speaker 1: this movie. It just shows a complete distrust in lit.
- 52:06Speaker 1: I mean, and having Annie Mamalo there really was like
- 52:09Speaker 1: a knife to the gut for me of like you
- 52:11Speaker 1: have cast someone in a shitty tiny roll of someone
- 52:15Speaker 1: who could be doing circles around. It's just ridiculous. Yeah,
- 52:21Speaker 1: and and especially because like to have these two men
- 52:25Speaker 1: write this movie about motherhood and it's like them being like,
- 52:29Speaker 1: but like, you know, it's it's bad mums. It's mums.
- 52:33Speaker 1: Like what if mums could be bad and runchy and
- 52:36Speaker 1: drunk and have sex and like all this stuff, And
- 52:39Speaker 1: it's like, great, Yeah, that would be cool to see.
- 52:42Speaker 1: That would be a subversion of what we normally see
- 52:46Speaker 1: on screen. But like again, it always it just comes
- 52:49Speaker 1: down to, like, these are not the people to tell
- 52:51Speaker 1: this story, because these are guys whose comedy relies almost
- 52:55Speaker 1: entirely on punching down and writing dialogue. In a way,
- 53:00Speaker 1: it like I really don't like women. It's very like
- 53:03Speaker 1: Catherine Hans character, the way that she's always like, oh
- 53:05Speaker 1: my cooter, my couch, my pussy. You're like, that's how
- 53:09Speaker 1: fifty year old men talk about women. That is not
- 53:11Speaker 1: how women talk about themselves, Like, unless there's something I'm missing,
- 53:18Speaker 1: but like, I've never known any one of my generation
- 53:24Speaker 1: or my mom's that has spoken of themselves in that way.
- 53:27Speaker 1: And my and that's not to say that my mom
- 53:29Speaker 1: and her friends don't talk about themselves in gross ways.
- 53:32Speaker 1: They do, but not, but they don't talk about them
- 53:34Speaker 1: So like I feel like there is this weird Sometimes
- 53:38Speaker 1: there are semi good monologues that I theorize were rewritten
- 53:44Speaker 1: later on because they're just like this is too. Like
- 53:46Speaker 1: Melacunas will occasionally have a good small monologue that is, yes,
- 53:50Speaker 1: extremely on the nose, but at least it's making a
- 53:53Speaker 1: competent point, like when she's at the bar and she's like,
- 53:56Speaker 1: there's so much pressure on this blah blah blah blah,
- 53:58Speaker 1: like and you're just like, okay, yes, I agree with this. Cool. Nice.
- 54:00Speaker 1: But then it's like, for the most part, it's moms
- 54:03Speaker 1: talking to each other the way their husbands talk about
- 54:07Speaker 1: them and not how they talk about themselves because of
- 54:10Speaker 1: who's writing the movie and so so, And I just
- 54:16Speaker 1: want to clarify something. I want to clarify what we mean.
- 54:20Speaker 1: I don't think that men should avoid writing movies about
- 54:25Speaker 1: women or avoid writing female driven stories. I think oftentimes
- 54:31Speaker 1: it's awesome when men want to write compelling female characters.
- 54:35Speaker 1: Like I have a lot of students in my online
- 54:38Speaker 1: screenwriting classes. Wow, another plug. Incredible. It can be done
- 54:44Speaker 1: really well, Like, it can be done for well as
- 54:46Speaker 1: long as you're you know, doing it with empathy and
- 54:49Speaker 1: you're informed, Like that is the key. And these writers
- 54:52Speaker 1: have a very trackable history of that not being the case. Yeah,
- 54:57Speaker 1: Like there's a way to do it respond posibly, and
- 55:00Speaker 1: there's a way to do it not responsibly. And like again,
- 55:03Speaker 1: like the students in my class, if I'm not mistaken,
- 55:06Speaker 1: every single one of them is writing a screenplay with
- 55:10Speaker 1: a female protagonists. Like they are. I know they like
- 55:12Speaker 1: they want to be contributing to inclusivity, and that's awesome
- 55:17Speaker 1: and we encourage that. But yes, it's it's a matter
- 55:20Speaker 1: of like these specific filmmakers is who we are railing
- 55:24Speaker 1: against John Lucas and Scott More. They have this terrible
- 55:27Speaker 1: track record, and I think I'm also like we just
- 55:30Speaker 1: came off of that Hangover episode that we did, I mean,
- 55:33Speaker 1: on the major very like we have very fresh memories
- 55:36Speaker 1: of how bad these writers are at writing women. And
- 55:40Speaker 1: I think that it also speaks to I mean, if
- 55:43Speaker 1: you're writing I mean, I think it's wonderful that like
- 55:46Speaker 1: where I mean as writers opening up more inclusivity. But
- 55:49Speaker 1: it's like women should be allowed to the front of
- 55:51Speaker 1: the line on this story for sure, and and it's
- 55:55Speaker 1: and it's i think another example of like the jilliant
- 55:58Speaker 1: time that and all male uh screenwriting duo gets a
- 56:04Speaker 1: million chances to do something well and never does it well,
- 56:09Speaker 1: and here we are talking about it right like they
- 56:14Speaker 1: don't deserve another chance. That's what I'm saying, they don't.
- 56:16Speaker 1: And the other like another thing I think is worth
- 56:20Speaker 1: talking about is that like this isn't to say that
- 56:24Speaker 1: people can't change, and like writers can't grow over time,
- 56:28Speaker 1: and that like people don't deserve redemption because like a
- 56:32Speaker 1: lot of Hollywood screenwriters should be trying to change and
- 56:36Speaker 1: should be growing and should be trying to course correct.
- 56:38Speaker 1: But and I like, you know, I do admire that
- 56:41Speaker 1: when people do put in the effort, but still like
- 56:43Speaker 1: these guys, but it's not these guys. Yeah, they don't
- 56:46Speaker 1: qualify for that conversation. It's not these guys. I just
- 56:50Speaker 1: am insulted by them trying to write this like female
- 56:55Speaker 1: driven story that I think is attempting to be empowering
- 56:58Speaker 1: for moms, but it's just like falls flat on its faith.
- 57:02Speaker 1: And if that's true, I think that that interview with
- 57:05Speaker 1: them is for me, that interview is the nail in
- 57:08Speaker 1: the coffin of like this was a very cut and
- 57:11Speaker 1: dry cash grab. The story does not mean anything to them.
- 57:15Speaker 1: They like reference their wives as if it's like the
- 57:18Speaker 1: nineteen fifties like that. I don't think that this. I mean,
- 57:22Speaker 1: it's very hard to believe that they went into this
- 57:25Speaker 1: project more wanting to make women feel seen than they
- 57:29Speaker 1: did just want millions of dollars. Right, Yes, that's just
- 57:33Speaker 1: one of the examples of how to write a female
- 57:37Speaker 1: driven story. Irresponsibly and not doing it responsibly, which is
- 57:42Speaker 1: what we are encouraging people to do. You know, if
- 57:45Speaker 1: you're a man who wants to write stories about women
- 57:48Speaker 1: and that include women, great, please do that. Just do
- 57:52Speaker 1: your fucking homework. That's doing it. Just do your homework
- 57:56Speaker 1: and and ask yourself, you know, like, who else do
- 57:59Speaker 1: I need to include in this process in order to
- 58:02Speaker 1: make it an authentic story? For sure? I d k
- 58:05Speaker 1: my BF of Jill, remember that, Oh my gosh, you
- 58:10Speaker 1: is your best friend, sush mom, my gildfriend. I've truly
- 58:14Speaker 1: in quarantine. I think I think I've told you this
- 58:17Speaker 1: a little bit. So I like digitized all my family's
- 58:20Speaker 1: home tapes and there's like sixty hours of them, and
- 58:23Speaker 1: so I feel like I've been with them NonStop. And
- 58:25Speaker 1: the way my mom narrates things is just like I'm
- 58:29Speaker 1: going to edit this thing down and she's gonna win
- 58:32Speaker 1: an Oscar for cinematography. Her slow zooms and her omniscient
- 58:37Speaker 1: narration is unmatched, incredible. I've seen a few of the
- 58:42Speaker 1: little clips you've posted on Instagram. There's I'm currently getting
- 58:46Speaker 1: through this really long video of my parents on their
- 58:49Speaker 1: sixth anniversary. My mom like puts her wedding dress on,
- 58:54Speaker 1: and my dad is like, this is weird. And then
- 58:56Speaker 1: my Mom's like, it's actually fun. And I'm like, now,
- 58:59Speaker 1: this is what we need in a movie. Whatever is
- 59:03Speaker 1: going on here? Where is bad Jill, bad Chills? We
- 59:10Speaker 1: need bad bad Jill's bad Jill and bad Lorie. I
- 59:13Speaker 1: would watch that movie. That would be so fun. And
- 59:16Speaker 1: then and then Jada Pinkett Smith would be also be
- 59:19Speaker 1: there and actually get to have a line this time. Yes, yes,
- 59:22Speaker 1: my mom not to brag, but my mom would let
- 59:24Speaker 1: Jada Pinkett Smith talk. In fact, she would only my
- 59:28Speaker 1: mom would not talk at all. She's like, Jada, you
- 59:30Speaker 1: have the floor, I know. And then my mom would
- 59:33Speaker 1: go around talking about, like telling everyone for the rest
- 59:35Speaker 1: of her life how Jada Pinket Smith is her best
- 59:37Speaker 1: friend in the world. It would be a whole thing. Oh,
- 59:41Speaker 1: moms are great, if only they had a better movie
- 59:43Speaker 1: to watch. It's true. Um, okay, here are some things
- 59:47Speaker 1: that I didn't hate about the movie. Um and again,
- 59:51Speaker 1: like I just I know, there's a lot to like
- 59:54Speaker 1: about this. There is some small attempt, even if it's
- 59:57Speaker 1: by the wrong people, to to explore certain aspects of
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: being a mom. It tries, it does try, So I
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: do want to include some things that I like. I
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: do enjoy that between Amy's two children, more focus is
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: given on the mother daughter relationship than the mother's son
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: relationship with the whole like soccer storyline, and they go
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: to the spa and they bond at the spa and
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: they have a nice little time. Um. I enjoyed that.
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: And then what little we do see with Amy's son
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: is her basically saying like, don't grow up to be
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: an entitled white guy. And because she's like, you need
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: to do your own homework, you need to cook your
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: own breakfast, he teaches himself how to cook, so you
- 1:00:45Speaker 1: see makes time. So you see a boy learning a
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: domestic skill, which I feel like you almost never see
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: in a movie. And he's not mocked for it either,
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: which I feel would have been another easy writing trust
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: that they didn't go with. I like for sure too.
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: I liked I liked that her daughter was also on
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: a sports team, and that the main tension with the daughter.
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: I mean, there was mother daughter stuff, but it was
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: also like, my daughter really wants to be on this
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: sports team. So they didn't relegate the daughter to like
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: traditional you know stuff there either she's an act right,
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: they also do she takes Mandarin classes and then says
- 1:01:24Speaker 1: some racist stuff about Mandarin and then also and then
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: Milo Cunas also says, wow, that's a little racist, and
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: you're like, this is not a funny joke for this year,
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: Like you know, that's in response to um her daughter
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: like worrying about whether or not she's going to be
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: able to get into an Ivy League school, and she's like, yeah,
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: they they're rejecting Asians these days. And then Mila Kunas
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: is like, oh, that's racist. But it's like, yeah, that's
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: another like having it both waysy and as that you're
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: decided that's not that doesn't if you just like that's
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: such just another like dumbass like directors of the Hangover thing,
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: they're like, well, if we say it's racist, you're just like, no,
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: that's not how that works. Yeah. I won't go through
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: my whole list, but there's a lot of like punching down. Yeah,
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: I mean, substantially less than you would expect from a
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: movie from these guys, but still bad. But it's still
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: present for sure. Some other stuff I did, like I
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: actually really enjoyed although I did not think it needed
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: to be there, but since it is there and we
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: have to talk about it, I liked the romantic subplot
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: between Amy and Jesse. If it had to be there,
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: they could have done a lot worse. They could have
- 1:02:36Speaker 1: done worse. And the reason I like it is that
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: he treats her far better than Certainly we've seen these
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: writers and directors having male characters treat women. I know,
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: I know, but that it's also like I like that.
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: It would have been worse if he treated her badly, obviously,
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: but then I'm also like, these guys went out of
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: their way to treat a male character kindly that they
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: would never have done for a female character. That's true
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: in the same position, but I am glad. I mean,
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: I liked, I liked. I know nothing about him, but
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: he's nice. He has for consent. There's like he's doing
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: a bare minimum on a very level. That's true. Yeah,
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: he he asks if she's okay when he learns about
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: like her husband having just cheated on her. He he
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: doesn't neg her. Right, We're mostly saying things that he
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: doesn't do it as opposed to think he does I
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: which just like speaks to the sad state of the
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: way women are treated, especially in like romantic context, because
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: we've so we're so accustomed to seeing men being so
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: shitty to women and like negging them and stalking them
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: and wearing them down and surprise kissing them. In this movie,
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: she surprised kisses him, which you know was also not
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: good good but different different. Um. He compliments her on
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: her parenting skills. You know, again, this is just bare
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: minimum the decent thing to do. But because we're so
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: conditioned to see men treating women terribly, we're like, wow,
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: give this man a medal. They also they objectify men
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: far more than they do women in the movie to
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: the extent it is often a joke where like when
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: we meet Jesse, he's introduced in this like slow mo
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: gazy shot that's like you know, panning up his body
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: um to you know, draw the audience's attention to the
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: fact that this is the guy that the moms think
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: is hot. There's the like movie, the fake movie that
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: they watch in the movie theater where like this man
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: is like in space with this woman. He's like love
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: is stronger than space, and he like rips his shirt
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: exposing his chest and stuff. So it's like okay, yeah,
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: I mean and again this movie, I mean, like every
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: movie and this kind of very bloated genre, it can't
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: possibly happen if everyone in the movie isn't pretty well off. Absolutely,
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: and by extension, there's very little diversity in the movie
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: at all. You just see a lot of different kinds
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: of rich white moms. Yes, this is a hundred percent
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: of movie about like middle class two upper middle class
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: white women. I mean Amy's house, Yes, I would say that,
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: like I mean, like Carla is more like middle class,
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: but like, yeah, Amy, it seems quite well to do.
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: And this is something that we see in media where
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: moms are allowed to be boozy and like distant and
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: irresponsible as long as they are financially stable white women,
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: because that when that's the case, it's funny, it's a joke,
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: it's hilarious. But like, if you're a black mom or
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: a low income mom and you like step out of
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: line as a mother for one second, there's a million
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: other ways that you're going to be stigmatized and treated
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: poorly totally. And it's not to like lessen you know,
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: it's like it there is pressure on the bad moms,
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: but it's like there's really no like indication that the
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: writers are aware that like this is on the low
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: end of difficult, you know. Also, like another thing the
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: movie does again it makes the ever so slightest attempt
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: to try to hold men more accountable, to be good fathers,
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: but which is like something a movie could and should do,
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: Like I would like to see more movies with those themes,
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: but like it's really glossed over. There's just not enough
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: of an attempt to actually hold men accountable. Like the
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: closest thing we get, I think, is that little through
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: line with Kiki's husband, Kent, who we see him being
- 1:06:52Speaker 1: really controlling and border line may be abuse of two Kiki,
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: And then she has a cathartic moment at the end
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: where she yells at him, and that's like the only
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: thing we know about her, And it's also just like
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: that's the lowest level of resolution you can possibly get
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: for the very little we know about this character. Is
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: like she told off her husband one time to go
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: to a PTA meeting, Like that's like but then and
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: then like the scene we get after that is like
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: I don't know his behavior has change and he's like,
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: oh mom, I'm so sorry. I forgot the backpack. I'll
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: go back and get it. And meanwhile she's like, there's
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: a weird the way Again, these directors, like their visual
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: language that they use to indicate certain things is really
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: off because like in this scene, Kristen Belle is wearing makeup,
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: and before she hadn't been wearing makeup. So now that
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: she's a middle part and then at the end she
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: doesn't have a middle part. Love this love this arc
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: for her, Like, now that she's in control of her life,
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: she she's makeup. Now she's wearing his makeup. Now there, Yeah,
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: you're like, sure, great, and like I like make up
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: just as much as the next person. But like these
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: filmmakers are like, oh well, um, makeup equals confidence, right,
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: And I feel like that's just such an oversimplified male
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: understanding of being a woman. And it's like, who let
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: you make this movie? Oh? I mean who wouldn't let them?
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: Who with influence and power would not let them make
- 1:08:30Speaker 1: this movie? Unfortunately? Um, so yeah, I mean moms deserve
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: I'm glad that this this is this is I feel
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: like kind of a classic example of like a tiny
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: step in the right direction. So that's good, but it's
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: also infuriating to be like, wow, progress or is slow,
- 1:08:50Speaker 1: isn't it? But yeah, I don't know. I I personally
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: blame this all on Christie to applicate, it's actually been
- 1:09:01Speaker 1: her fault all along. She invented patriarchy and if she
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: hadn't done that, none of this would be happening. I
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: think my final thoughts are just that like, this is
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: unfortunately because this is like one of the only examples
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: of a like female mom driven narrative that is also
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: like a romp, because there's other there's a few other
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: like movies that explore motherhood that came around out around
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: this time. And I mean there's there's narratives about this
- 1:09:29Speaker 1: all throughout film history, but like some more recent ones
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: were things like Twenty Century Women, Tully, the Bubba Duck.
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: You know, you can't beat the Babba Duck from a
- 1:09:40Speaker 1: psychon the Babba Duck. But these and Queer Icon the
- 1:09:43Speaker 1: Babba Duck absolutely true, but they these aren't romps. So
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: the fact that like kind of the one example of
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: like a mainstream broad comedy mom romp is a movie
- 1:09:55Speaker 1: made by people who don't know what it is firsthand
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: to be a mom is just such a frustrating misstep.
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean like, if you like this movie,
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: I can see why. There are some things about it
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: to take away that it would be very relatable and
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: that that would resonate with moms. But I long for
- 1:10:14Speaker 1: the day that we get moms writing mom movies and
- 1:10:18Speaker 1: directing mom movies because I think that they will resonate
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: with moms even more. Believe it or not, I wholeheartedly agree.
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: But it does pass the Vactel test. So there's a
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: fair amount affair amount. There are whole scenes where they're
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: just talking about Dick, but there's also whole scenes where
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: they're not that's true. Sometimes they're talking about their couiters.
- 1:10:44Speaker 1: Sometimes they're talking about their sugars. The most feminist thing
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: that we do, we do it all the time. I
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: think it is funny that you're just like, yeah, they're
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: talking about their vaginas. So it like it passes the
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: Vactel test, but I don't want it to because of
- 1:10:58Speaker 1: the people who are writing deadlines. But it does. It
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: does pass. It does pretty handle. It does, and I
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: think it might not pass the reverse Spectel tests. I
- 1:11:09Speaker 1: don't think we would see men interacting really at all
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: except which is kind of nice. And it's kind of nice.
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: I think there's one. There's a few exchanges where Amy's
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: husband and son just have like a quick exchange. But
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: other than that, yeah, I think it is not men
- 1:11:27Speaker 1: talking to each other really at all. So hey, so
- 1:11:32Speaker 1: there's that thankful for small miracles. What would you rate
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: this movie on our nipples scale? Uh, you know, from
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: zero to five nipples based on how well you feel
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: it portray women in a movie. I will give it
- 1:11:50Speaker 1: to I was feeling the same way because, and again,
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: I want there to be much more representation of moms
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: from all walks of life, not just rich white women,
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: the whole spectrum of people if they are parents. I
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: want to see that. We don't really get much of
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: it at all, and when we do see it, it
- 1:12:13Speaker 1: is very limited the types of moms we are allowed
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: to see on screen. I've never seen any mom like
- 1:12:21Speaker 1: my mom, Lorie. I've never seen anything remotely resembling my
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: mom on screen, which means I need to write a
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: movie about my mom. Yeah, I I agree. I I
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: kind of like and just based on the way that
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: we've had to tiptoe around ourselves kind of throughout the
- 1:12:42Speaker 1: discussion of this movie because that's the only movie of
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: its kind. I kind of I kind of resent a
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: little bit that we have to you know, keep you
- 1:12:51Speaker 1: like but it's okay, the movie's okay, because it's just
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: like that's just such a clear indicator that there are
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: not enough options in this genre. It is the only option.
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: I don't think it's a good movie. I'm glad that
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: it portrays a few different types of moms in a
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: very specific area of the world, and not that every
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: movie needs to represent everything, but it's like, this is
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: a movie written by people who don't know how to
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: write female characters. It just this movie just feels like
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: so focused, grouped, and I'm glad that there are elements
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: of it where moms feel seen, but it's I mean,
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: it's like it's so frustrating that it's like, oh, we
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: have to like give us movie points because it has
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: mom representations. But then it's like, but it's not a
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: good movie, Like moms deserve a good, thoughtful movie that
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: can still be raunchy and funny, but like just let
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: someone who knows what they're talking about right it and sorry,
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: And that's the police coming to arrest John Lucas and
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: Scott Moore. Yeah, I live in their neighborhood. Uh no,
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: but yeah. And then then just like like we talked
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: about just how how intensely like whitewashed um this movie,
- 1:13:59Speaker 1: and there's genre is to the extent where you can
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: have Jada Pinkett Smith in the movie and not give
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: her a line like outside of like yes, Christina Applegate.
- 1:14:09Speaker 1: Just I don't know. I feel like there's a lot
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: of broad stereotypes that these guys are known for perpetuating
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: for all genders races. They only know how to write
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: in stereotypes, and that doesn't really service what I feel
- 1:14:24Speaker 1: like is needed in the terms of portraying moms in
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: a cool and funny way. I feel so, I don't know.
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: For now, watch TV instead. Two nipples, one to Catherine
- 1:14:38Speaker 1: Hahn and one to Jada Pinkett Smith. Nice, I'm going
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: to give one to wand to Sykes, and one to Vertigo,
- 1:14:46Speaker 1: dog feminist, very good dog, the best character in the film. Truly,
- 1:14:54Speaker 1: I felt like I have Vertigo this whole movie. Well,
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: there you have it. Bad Moms. Happy Mother's Day to
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: all the bad moms, the good moms, the whole, the
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: whole beautiful spectrum of moms. We love you all and
- 1:15:09Speaker 1: thank you for what you do. And yeah, and then
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: just for everybody, we hope you're doing well. You hope
- 1:15:15Speaker 1: we ever stand safe? Are What a time to be alive?
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: Truly right? And then I guess we should say word
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: we can be. You can find us on Twitter and
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: Instagram at becktel Cast for starters. For starters, you can
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: subscribe to our Patreon a k a. Matreon if you
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: have not already and if you are able the fun time,
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: it's a fun time. It's May. So it's my birthday
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: months we're doing fun, which we're doing some fun. We're
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: doing um Sean of the Dead and Monty Python and
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: The Holy Grail. Just so much feminism, just who is
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: the kind of these films that I'm very excited. Unfortunately,
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: they are some of my favorite movies and that's my
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: cross to bear. Those are my picks for my birthday
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: May Treon Treon. But we've been we've been really I
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: think cranking out the hits over in the Matreon recently.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: So yeah, head over there during the community have some
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: fun with us. You can get to get some merch
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: at t public dot com, slash the Bechdel Cast. They're
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: selling masks now. We're selling masks now. So that's if
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: I mean, we all need one one another now from
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: Molena mask. Get a Molena mask. You know, go cucku um.
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: And if you are interested in taking my online screenwriting class,
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: you can go to Caitlin Durante dot com slash classes
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: for more information, or feel free to just tweet at
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: me at Caitlin Durante uh and let me know that
- 1:16:54Speaker 1: you're interested. And with that, have a happy Mother's Day
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: or happy be bad moms Day, very bad Mom's Christmas,
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: Bye Bye's Day. In a way, it is just bad
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: Mom's Christmas. Okay, that's true. Bye bye