Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Babe: Pig in the City with James Stout

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Babe: Pig in the City with James Stout · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: changing it with the Bechdelcast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Attention Bechtelcast listeners, we are going on tour to celebrate
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: our 10-year anniversary.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. It is the 10-year whoops, we didn't dismantle
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the patriarchy tour. And we are headed to the Northeast
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: this October.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: With shows in New York City, ever heard of it?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: On October 12th. Baltimore, October 15th. Philadelphia, October 17th. State College,
• 0:39
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• 0:45
  Speaker 1: It's just going to be a big celebration. I'm so
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: damn excited.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You can buy tickets at linktree.com. All of our ticket
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: links are listed there.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: We will see you there, Northeast, and see you rest
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of the U.S. and also Canada very soon.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: See you there.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: That'll do, pod.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: That'll do. Yeah, that's me talking to our podcast.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: That's good. I mean, I'm always feeling that way. I'm like,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: that'll do.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: That'll do.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: That's quite enough pod for today. God, honestly, to have
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that line close the movie is borderline insulting after breaking
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: every bone and farmer hung its body two minutes in.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: They're like, let's just bring it back. Have them do
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the line. Have them do the line.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: You got to. You got to. Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bechtelcast. Yes.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: The Bechtelcast.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: The Bechtelcast. Voiced by, I think like I could, Babe
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: is voiced by Tommy Pickles in this one. And you really,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: once you realize it's Tommy Pickles, it's very hard to unhear. Sure.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: We're talking about Babe, Pig in the City. We've already
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: covered Babe on our Matreon. And we're doing Pig in
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: the City.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Huge.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Huge. We are the Bechtel cast. My name is Caitlin.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Jamie. And this is our podcast where
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: lens and the Bechdel test as a jumping off point
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: for discussion. But Caitlin, what the hell is that?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: That is a media metric created by friend of the show,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Alison Bechdel. There are many versions of it. The one
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: that we use is this do two characters of a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: marginalized gender. Have names? Do they speak to each other?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And is that conversation about something other than a man
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: or perhaps a male pig? Maybe. But also pigs don't
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: have gender.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And I think that these movies have a pretty loose
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: approach to gender, which I appreciate.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say so.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And this movie does, I mean, well, for those of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you listening for the first time, wondering if we spend
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the whole show trying to figure out if the movie
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: passes the Bechdel test, first of all, get a life.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: That show would suck. Second of all, this movie does
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: sort of, I mean, this movie does pass the Bechdel
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: test and it has like a, one of the, I
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: don't know, it has a lot of interesting sequel things
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: going on where people love in a sequel to be like,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: now we're going to the city, a classic thing to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: do in the second movie.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: We're switching our main character to... There's a lot of
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: women driving the story this time, which is kind of fun.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Pretty Hoggett-centric first movie. Did we need to break all
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of the bones? I can't get over it. Did we
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: have to break all of the bones in Farmer Hoggett's
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: body to get... mrs hoggett in the story more meaningfully
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: i don't know i don't think so i.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Like arthur hoggett but i'm not mad about this he
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: survives he's fine he was.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Supposed to die he was in the original uh version
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: of the script george miller was like so minute two
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: he dies i'm so excited to talk about what george
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: miller wanted to do with this movie because what he
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: manages to do anyways is still really fascinating but we
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: have we've got we've got it just We've just got
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to get into it.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. We have an incredible guest joining us. He is
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: an investigative journalist. He's the author of the book Against
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the State and the host of the new podcast, Natural Causes.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: It's James Stout. Hi.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Welcome.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: about this film. It was wild.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. Truly impossible to predict anything that's going to happen
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: in this movie at any time.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: What's your relationship, your history with this movie, James?
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: I think it parallels my own experiences moving from the
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Royal United Kingdom to the United States into a homogenous...
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Not so much, but what's my relationship? I loved the
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: first book called The Sheep Pig in its literary form.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Dick King Smith's books generally were a big hell of
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: a name to think about. I'd never really put those
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: two together until I said it out loud. But I
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: used to love those books when I was a kid.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: We had sheep growing up. So I've been around sheep
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: a lot. Not so much pigs. My mum worked at
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: an agricultural college and they had pigs. So I'd see
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: them and, you know, my mum would have to muck
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: them out and stuff. So I'd smell them. But not
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: so much time around pigs, I guess. Plenty, plenty of
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: time around sheep. I used to watch sheepdog trials. Wow.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: As you do enjoy a sheepdog trial.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Who doesn't want a good sheepdog trial?
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: And when I was... this is me like an old
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: man on sunday afternoons in the uk there was a
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: program called one man and his dog uh which i
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: hope they have like removed the gender limitations from uh
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: but it it focused on there are definitely women who
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: do it uh focused on sheepdog trials uh this was
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: like you know there's four channels on tv and one
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: of them is uh competitive sheep herding uh so we'd
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: always watch that and just uh been around a lot
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: of sheepdogs it was always good to see someone who
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: was you know shit hot with uh herding sheep so
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: i've always enjoyed competitive sheepdog games apparently it's a thing
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: in the u.s too but uh i've i've never.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Witnessed it here i don't know anything about it.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: I love an agricultural show so if you like sure
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: please reach out if you i'd have to when i
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: was a kid i used to go to the um
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: their market a lot, like where you could buy the animals,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: you know, and I'd save up my money and buy
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: like different poultry, like different, different types of bird, just
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: because that was a thing that was interesting to me
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: when I was a kid. So like going to an
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: agricultural show and seeing the, uh, you know, where they,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: they compete, right. To be like, uh, to be the
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: best example of the breed, I guess. Uh, it's a
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: bit problematic when you look into it further, but, uh,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: I'd love to see, I'd love to see like a
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: variety of sheep in one place.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: So.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It is like agricultural shows are so fascinating because it's like, yes,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: they are. There are eerie for the reasons that you
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: would expect. There's an ominous nature to them. But the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the pageantry, I did not grow up around that. And
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: my cousins moved to a more rural area and we
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: went to an agricultural fair. And the like, I don't know,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: it was there were teenagers like giving these incredible speeches there.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: auctioning off animals. They were like wearing prom dresses. I
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: was like, this is completely foreign to me. I think
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I love it. I need more information. Yeah.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: The American ones are fascinating because you have that whole,
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: is it 4-H thing where the kids raise an animal?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Did you guys see this one a couple of years
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: ago where the kid wanted to keep the animal and
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: then they sent the cops to seize it?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: No. No.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. One might argue that that young person received an
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: education from much more valuable than they would have received
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: if they'd sold off that animal. But still, absolutely fucking
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: tragic that they mobilized state violence to take this animal
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: away from someone who cared about it.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: That is absurd. I mean, that sounds like the third
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: act of a babe movie. Because the animals are removed
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: by the Gestapo.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's New York. I think it's many
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: cities in one. But yeah, the animal control It has
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: a strong ACAB theme going through the film, actually.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Really surprising for me.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really struck by that on this rewatch.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: So wait, you were a fan of the book. Is
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Babe Pig in the City also adapted from a book,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: or is this.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. There's too much happening here for
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: a book.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: There's not enough plot for it to have been a book.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: So you're a fan of Babe, the book that the
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: first movie was adapted from. Had you seen Babe, Pig
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: in the City before?
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I had not. I thought I took this as an opportunity. Uh,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: like I'm, I'm not like a big movie watcher, my
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: free time. I'm just not good at sitting down that long.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: So like, uh, But this one had been on my list.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: So when we were talking about what to do, I thought,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: let's watch Babe 2, Pig in the City.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Incredible. Oh, my gosh. And then, Jamie, what's your relationship
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: with this?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I really thought I'd seen this movie. But watching it back,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think– I think this movie would have had
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: a stronger impression on me if I hadn't seen it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Difficult.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's whatever.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: I'm old.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I can handle it. But I have a feeling the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: reason I didn't see this when it came out, because
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I would have been... like the right age to see it.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But I was famously terrified of movies where it's real
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: life animals and their mouths are digitally manipulated, but they
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: don't blink. Kind of really my personal childhood nightmare fuel.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: And so I think it makes sense that maybe I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't brought to this movie. Boy, if that makes you uncomfortable,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: this is going to be a fascinating watch. No, so
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I guess I hadn't seen it before. I consider myself
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: a fan of the original in spite of it all.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It is like such a beautiful, gentle story. And this
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: movie is so weird. I don't, I haven't, there's a,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Mickey Rooney plays a character named Fugly the Cloud. Like,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I really could not get my head around what was
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: going on. In this movie, and I will say it
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: still does kind of bug me to this day, especially
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: because in the Babe movies, this movie is both very
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: loud and very quiet at the same time in a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: way that I was like, this is just, it's bizarre
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: because all of the animals with the scary mouths are very...
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: soft-spoken like they they speak very gently they're not doing
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: cartoony voices at all.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Stephen wright voice is one of the chimpanzees like i'm.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Like i i guess why the hell not like i
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: just really cannot get my head around how i feel
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: about it i'm excited to figure it out with both
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of you um i also found out just a fun
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: fact if either of you happen to be a tom
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: waits fan This is his favorite movie. He's said it
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: many times. Yeah, that he just... Something about it. Something
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: about it really sticks with him. But this movie was
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: a kind of a famous flop that did, I think,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: like many George Miller sequels, Mad Max Fury Road kind
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of being the big, big, big outlier. But like a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: lot of George Miller sequels, it was too different from
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the original. It was too weird. But I... I appreciate it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I have no idea how this movie managed to get
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a G rating.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense. It should be rated R. It did. Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure this was my first viewing and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I had a hell of a time. It is a
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: movie I would describe as unbearably loud and extremely quiet
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: at the same time. Very few movies like it.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Caitlin, have you seen this before?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. This is one of my favorite movies.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: What?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, you and Tom Waits have so much in common.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I've always said that.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Kindred Spirits, me and Tom Waits. Yeah, no, this and
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: the first Babe movies were huge movies of my childhood. Wow.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: They came out, this one came out in 98, so
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I was 12, so I was... like on the cusp
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: of aging out of movies like this, but I was like,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I don't, I don't care. I babe rocks. I love,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: I love him. I love his movies.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: I've seen this dozens of times, but not very much
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: as an adult.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that makes sense.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I've only seen each of the Babe movies as an adult,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: probably a handful of times total. So there was a
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: lot that I did not remember about this movie, but
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to talk about it. There's so much, like,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the allegories you can draw from this movie. This movie's
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: parallels to Paddington 1... I was thinking that, yeah. I
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: love this movie. It makes me cry so hard during
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: the scene when they come in and raid the hotel.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: That is very sad. I feel like they're really putting
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of trauma on the pig in this one.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And it is to a narrative end, but I'm like, whew.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: We just have five-year-olds going through it.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I guess, so, to both of your points of, like,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: not expecting what ends up happening in this movie, when
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: you see this for the first time when you're 12,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: you don't really question it. You're just like, oh, of course. Yeah,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: babe goes to the city, and then he stays in
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: a hotel for dogs. The hotel gets raided by animal
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: ice agents. Like, and he becomes this, like... christ like
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: figure part way through the movie like of course all
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of that happens.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I know i think i was just i was prepared
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: for a very different movie and because it's a george
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: miller movie of course it's like there's a lot more
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: going on it is a cab it is like critical
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: of the state in a way that you're kind of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: i sort of thought he was gonna like go to
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a baseball game um or something um or like go
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to school yeah certainly not certainly not.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh So I guess, shall we take a
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: quick break and then come back for the recap?
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So I'll give a really quick recap of the first
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Babe movie. So Babe is a little pig that gets
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: rescued from a slaughterhouse. and ends up on the farm
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: of Arthur and Esme Hoggett. Babe befriends the other animals
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: on the farm, particularly a sheepdog named Fly, who sort
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: of becomes his adoptive mother. Man, I missed her in
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: this movie. I like her. She's only there for a
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: little glimpse.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: And Fly eventually reveals to Babe that pigs are eaten
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: by humans and that that's typically all they're considered to
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: be good for. But then Babe discovers that he has
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: a knack for sheep herding, though he approaches it differently
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: than the sheepdogs do because Babe simply politely asks the
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: sheep to do what he needs them to do, and
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: they are happy to comply. So Arthur Hoggett is like, whoa.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe I should enter my pig into the sheep dog,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: sheep herding competition, which he does. And against all odds,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Babe perfectly herds the sheep and wins the competition. And
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: then Babe, Pig in the City opens pretty much right
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: where that movie leaves off.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And heads into an absolute nightmare scenario.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited to hear you try and summarize this.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm ready.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: The fact that they don't even have a weekend to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: sort of bask in the success of the events of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Babe 1.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: No.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Immediately. Chaos ensues.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll let you take it. But I was like, oh,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: my God.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's wild. So Babe and Arthur Hoggett, played
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: by James Cromwell, return home after this victory at the
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: competition and the community is cheering them on. Babe receives
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: all of these invitations to participate in various fairs and
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: other sheep herding competitions. But Arthur just wants a simple,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: quiet life on his farm. So he and his wife, Esme,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: kind of just ignore those invitations. But then one day,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Babe causes an accident that leaves Arthur badly injured.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: At the bottom of a well. Yeah.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: No, we have to pause there.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: We tossed the human protagonist, Beloved, nominated for an Oscar.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Two minutes into the sequel, he's at the bottom.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Of the well.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Every bone in his body is broken.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Shattered. Shattered.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from a Lit Hub article that
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: kind of exhaustively explores the production of Babe Pig in
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the City that was published in 2024 really quickly. Because
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: just in the opening sequence, in early drafts of the script,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Farmer Hoggett was actually supposed to die at the bottom
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of that well. One of the nosy neighbors was originally
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: murdered by Esme and Miss Flume as a comeuppance for
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: being a snitch.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Beyond Dark Punchline. They actually shot, but later cut.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. So multiple people died in the original
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: draft of the script.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah. Incredible.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no one seems to die in this version.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: It's still pretty brutal, though.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes up and down the well. He doesn't
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: just fall down the well, right? He goes down, comes up,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: gets whacked by a water pump, and then falls down again.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: It really goes through it.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: That does kind of feel unique to George Miller, where
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: it's like a Looney Tunes injury, but then you're shown
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the real-life consequences to a Looney Tunes injury.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Where it's like, well, he's not going to be in
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the movie because he got like a Wile E. Coyote
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: style injury.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. But now he's in a full body cast.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: So this happens. And Babe feels really bad about it.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: He feels so guilty. And he wants to redeem himself,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: especially after the Hoggett's bills start piling up. and men
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: from the bank show up, presumably threatening to foreclose on
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: the farm. So Arthur's wife, Esme Hoggett, played by Magda Subansky,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: goes back to those invitations that Babe had received and
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: decides to accept one for a state fair where they
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: will receive a generous appearance fee, which could save the farm.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So Esme and Babe board a plane to head to
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the fair. But after a mishap at the airport where
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: a drug sniffing dog inadvertently accuses Babe of smuggling drugs. Already.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: A-Cab includes Snoop the Dog Sniff.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Yes so esme gets detained which causes her and babe
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: to miss their connecting flight and miss the state fair
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: What's more, it's a few days before the next return
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: flight home, so now Esme and Babe are stranded in
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the titular... city.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And it really is the city. Like if you're with,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: which I kind of like, cause I thought, especially with the,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: like the, the drug airport incident, I was like, okay,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: this is going to be like a scathing critique of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: like American culture specifically, but it's really the city, every,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: every city and the state violence and surveillance that comes
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: with living in most large cities.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The production design of this movie I think is awesome. Um,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And when you see like a city scape. there are
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: structures and buildings and landmarks from like a dozen cities
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: across the world. Yeah.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: It's crazy. They got Venice in there. Like they got
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: like casino Venice in there. That one really hit me hard.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: It, it is fascinating and it's lit. It's lit very,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it kind of reminded me of cats the way that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: it's lit, but it's lit.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: There is like a kind of, it's beautiful, but also again,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: just feels a little bit ominous. There's like some of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: my favorite cities in movies, very few people seem to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: be there. It's like the population in the city is 95%
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: cats and dogs, which is fun.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. So Esme and Babe are stuck in the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: city and they need a hotel that allows animals. Esme
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: eventually finds one where she and Babe can stay.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: The hotel manager, played by Mary Steen, has to pretend
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: like they don't allow animals because of all of these
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: strict city rules and regulations. But she welcomes them inside
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: and shows Esme and Babe around. We see that the
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: hotel is full of a bunch of animals. Doesn't seem
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: like humans really stay there. It's mostly just animals. Cats
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: and dogs particularly. And she warns Esme about inspectors who
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: might come snooping around the hotel, especially because she has
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: these nosy neighbors who they have to be wary of.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And then Esme steps out to make a phone call.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And while she's gone, a capuchin monkey comes into the
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: room and steals her suitcase and So Babe runs after
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: it and ends up in the room of a family
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: of chimpanzees.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And at this point, I'm like, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. The
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: way that the chimpanzees' mouths are moving is not of nature.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Honestly, though, for 98, the CGI that they're doing
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: is pretty good. Absolutely not. For 1998.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Anyway, these chimps are Easy, Zooty, and Bob. Bob is
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: the one voiced by Stephen Wright. And then there's also
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: an orangutan there named Thelonious. And these apes are all
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: pretty dismissive and unkind toward Babe.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And then their handler comes in, a human man named
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Uncle Fugly played by Vicky Rooney.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: What a fascinating choice.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there are so many names in the world.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Each word of that sentence more interesting than the last
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: because it's like not just a weird decision to make.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: It's also very obviously a very expensive decision to make.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: He doesn't really speak and is not in very much
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of the movie. I guess because a lot of the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: stuff shot was too scary to kids. There was more
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Uncle Fugly and people were like, we're not interested.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: And that's wild because what ends up in the movie
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: is also pretty.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Scary for kids.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. And also the way Uncle Fugly is characterized,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: he only murmurs. You can't really tell what he's saying,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: but that's intentional.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: He.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: only seems to eat junk food. He just has like
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: jars of jelly beans and like ice cream all over
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: his mouth. And, and also he's a circus clown.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And like, I guess semi successful.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I unclear.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I would say I don't have enough information to know
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: what uncle Fugly's whole deal is, but don't worry. He
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: won't be around for long. No.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Um, so he comes in and he locks babe up
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: in a chest.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about this.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He like kidnaps babe more or less. And then
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Esme comes back to the hotel and discovers that babe
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: is missing. And uncle Fugly lies and tells her that
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: he saw a pig leave the hotel a few minutes prior.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: So she heads out to search for babe, but she's
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: a fish out of water in the the city and
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: accidentally causes this big chaotic ruckus in the middle of
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: the city and she ends up covered in goo and
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: then she gets arrested.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: She's covered in goo for the rest.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Of the movie yeah the goo hardens and she has
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: to deal with that.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah listeners should know that they don't call babe babe
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: they call babe pig right which which is what leads
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: to a misunderstanding with the police Oh.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: That's true. She goes out into what seems to be
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Venice Beach in LA.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: As opposed to Venice, Venice, which is also there.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, Venice Beach. She goes out and starts being like, pig, pig.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: And there are cops around. And then there are also
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: rollerblading goths. or something yeah and they all think that
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: she is talking to them so that's why this whole
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: kind of fight breaks out and she gets arrested meanwhile
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: babe has been roped into the mini traveling circus that
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: uncle fugly and his apes put on And Babe is
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: willing to do this because they told him that they
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: will pay him. And again, he's trying to redeem himself
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: and save the farm that he knows is in jeopardy.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: But Babe's accident-proneness strikes again.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: It's his first day working for Uncle Fugly's circus, Caitlin.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Give him a break. He wasn't signing up for this.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: No, he wasn't. But that's one of the ways that
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: he's similar to Paddington is that he's a little clumsy
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: and he's always causing... Big mishaps with his clumsiness. And
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: so Babe messes up the performance that they're doing in
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: a hospital. And he causes Uncle Fugly to trip and fall.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: The set catches fire and comes crashing down. The sprinklers
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: are on, like everything is chaos there.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Really quick. So that scene was also, I guess, heavily
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: edited to get a lot of scarier stuff out of
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that sequence. I read somewhere that George Miller's favorite children's
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: movie is Pinocchio, which I think kind of helps this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: sequence make a little more sense because it is pretty
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: similar to like the scary circus thing, but there used
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to be, okay. So I'm quoting from the Lit Hub
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: article again. Babe nearly got pushed into the fire during
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the hospital inferno until that scene was rejigged. He was
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: also sadistically tricked by the chimps into clambering up a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: pyramid of junk and tumbling into the canal, which is
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: like another Uncle Fugly scene that went away. When the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: animals are impounded, there were rabbits smoking cigarettes, hair products
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: being tested on cats, and all sorts. James Cromwell says,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: that's a vivisection laboratory. There were animals with posts drilled
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: into their skulls and sores, cancers. It was, oh my God. What?
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: That is wild. I don't even know what... Can they
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: respond to that?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Present it without comment.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know. What a dark place to go for
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: a children's movie.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Which I guess it's like the dark stuff that remains,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: but they may just have had nothing else to cut to.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: They only had shots of a rabbit smoking cigarettes.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: It was the 90s. People did stuff back then.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: I'm now wondering, like, was that early CGI or did
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: they train a 90s rabbit to smoke cigarettes?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Well, surprisingly, I think we talked about this in our
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: first episode on Babe of just like the history of
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: animals in movies and how.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Did these movies fare?
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: With the Humane Society. And both Babe movies are Humane
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Society assured. They've got the seal of approval. But that's
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: also complicated.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, which we discuss in quite a bit of detail
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: in our episode about the first Babe movie. And we'll
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: touch on that here as well when we get to
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the discussion. But yeah, from what I understand, there's a
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: lot of fake prosthetic animals around. There's CGI. There were
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: precautions taken to keep animals out of danger. But I
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: also have some questions.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are certain things where it's like, how do
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you do that?
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: But anyway, the performance at the hospital goes awry. and defeated.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: The animals plus Uncle Fugly return to the hotel. And
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: then kind of randomly, Uncle Fugly is released. carted off
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: on a stretcher he seems to be lightly dead.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah they do go through the trouble of i'm like
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: wondering if this was like i kept trying to spot
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: studio notes i love trying to figure out like what
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: was changed because they add a little sound of the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: what is it like the boop boop boop i'm guessing
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: that they added that to assure you that he is
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: not dead But he doesn't come back. So my theory
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: is he's supposed to be dead. But they were like,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: you can't kill Mickey Rooney after one scene.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: No. Also, it would have made more sense if whatever
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: caused him to have to be taken to the hospital.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: happened during that fiasco at the hospital, during the circus thing.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: During the fire at the hospital that he called it.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Right, right. But it's an unrelated thing back at the hotel,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: which must be like something happened that was cut out
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: of the movie.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Wikipedia page, I think kind of does some
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: backflips and says it's a food coma, which just suggests
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: like he ate too many jelly beans at home.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Like a literal food coma.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, maybe he's a DKA. Maybe he has diabetes
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: and we don't know. That's true. So many holes in
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: the plot here. They went to such graphic detail to
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: take Farmer Hogget out of the plot earlier and then
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Uncle Fugly just drops.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Off screen and then we see him get carted
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: off on a stretcher. It's very bizarre. But the point is,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: now there are no humans in the hotel room. Because
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the hotel manager woman, she fucked off to somewhere else.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: So it's just a bunch of animals. And they're all alone.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Babe has no idea where his human, Esme Hoggett, is.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: And he's really hungry. And so are all the other animals.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: So the apes go out into the world in search
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: of food. And Babe follows them. But the apes continue
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: to be pretty dismissive and deceitful toward Babe. And they
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: trick him. And Babe ends up face to face with
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: a couple of vicious guard dogs. that start chasing him
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: around the city.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Ooh, and then there's like a really powerful moment in
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the middle of this scene.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Wait, which part?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I think the part of this movie I was
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: most affected by is when Babe turns to the dogs
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that are chasing him and says, why? It's like, exactly.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This is where things start to get really emotional
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: for me. So during this chase sequence, this gets the
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: attention of a bunch of street dogs and cats who
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: start following the chase that's unfolding. Eventually it's just babe
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: and the one dog whose chain gets tangled up in something.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And he's now dangling from a bridge and his head
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: is submerged in water. And even though this dog was
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: about to kill babe, the little pig is, swims over
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: and saves the dog's life. He like pushes a little
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: boat under the dog. And all of the animals witnessed this,
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: including the crowd of street animals who now revere Babe
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: as a Christ figure, including the dog who was just
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: chasing Babe, who declares that whatever the pig says goes.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: So Babe invites the group of cold and hungry animals
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: into the hotel and distributes whatever food they have, which
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: is just a jar of jelly beans. And so the
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: animals are, like, kind of fed. Babe also decrees that
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: cats and dogs have to set aside their differences and
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: try to get along.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I like that Babe does accept being elected god himself.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: But he's a fair god.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he dives right into benevolent totalitarianism with gay abandon.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: It's remarkable to see. It's like a platonic philosopher king.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: He was ready for it, though. He stepped right into
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: that role.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: He was. He was like, you do need my small-town wisdom,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: you city heathens.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he really rises to the challenge. And so he's
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: making different decrees. Then the female chimpanzee, Zutty, reveals that
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: she is extremely pregnant and then gives birth that night
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: to twins.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I have to say, I did not, that whole, that scene,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: their mouths are moving and then she reveals she's very pregnant,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: which is maybe anti-animal of me, but I was like,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that's gross. And then she kind of goes into, she
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: quietly goes into labor on screen and And her chimpanzee
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: husband is kissing her pregnant chimpanzee stomach. And I'm just like,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: this is not rated G. I don't know what this means.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm likely the problem here, but I don't want
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: to see all this. Keep that to yourself. It also just.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Happens out of nowhere. Like, it was not established that
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: she was pregnant. So you're just like, how?
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: She's at work until, like, she's doing physical labor.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is rough. Animal rights abuses, workers, you know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: labor abuses, all this kind of stuff.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Genuine question. Do chimpanzees look? pregnant like that? Do they
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: look like pregnant people like that?
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I would imagine so because humans and chimps share 98%
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: of their DNA. So I feel like they probably get, yeah,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: like pregnant bellies. James, do you know? You're our nature expert.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Do you have a pregnant chimpanzee? Growing up, I wasn't
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: around that many chimpanzees. I mean, other animals, you can
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: tell when they're pregnant, you know, they need more food
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: and stuff. Especially when they're getting ready to have their calves.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Or lambs or whatever they're having. I don't know what
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: a baby chimpanzee is called. A chimpling? I'm making that up.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I like it though. But again, sorry to continue being...
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I love animals. Don't get me wrong. But these ones
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: are scary looking. And she quietly goes into labor in
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: the middle of a scene.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: No one reacts.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, I think... think they're on the way
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and then you see talk about fugly to the scariest
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: looking like.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Those are like puppet chimp babies yes.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I mean you can tell but they look i think
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: my my parents made the right call by not bringing
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: me to see this it they remind me of the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: baby from twilight they look like renez me like the big.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Eyes they're pretty creepy looking i'll give you that yeah
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: but it's it's supposed to be nice that zutty gave
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: birth and so babe leads all of the animals in
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: a song which ferdinand the duck overhears i forgot to
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: mention him earlier.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah he's yeah he's the only other carryover animal
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: from the first one.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Right Yeah, because you see Fly and, oh, I forget
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: the Hugo Weaving Dog's name.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: Just glad he's there. Just glad there is a Hugo
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: Weaving Dog. They're in one scene at the very beginning.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: They basically encourage Babe to go and try to redeem himself.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: But other than that, you don't see most of the animals.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: From the first movie. But Ferdinand the Duck is there.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: um he flew to the city he like followed the
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: the plane that esme and babe were on and so
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: he has finally made it to the city and he
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: overhears the song and so he shows up at the
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: hotel and reunites with babe and everything seems really nice
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: but the neighbor lady across the way narks on the
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: hotel she's an And so just then, a group of
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: officers from the Animal Regulation Authority burst in and start
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: raiding the place, kidnapping animals to take to the pound.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: This is the part that really makes me bawl my
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: eyes out. And then they try to take Babe away,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: but he gets loose so that he can save a
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: goldfish whose bowl had shattered. And then the inspectors leave
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: with a truck full of animals that they have abducted.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: There's a part where a little dog named Fleelick who
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: uses an assistive wheel apparatus to help him walk. He
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: latches onto the truck and gets dragged along beside it
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: for a while and then he gets flung off And
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: nearly dies. And he's about to go to like doggy heaven.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: But then Babe kind of like.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Calls him back like a god would.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Yes. And like rescues Fleelick. And so the two of
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: them plus Ferdinand the duck set off to try to
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: save the animals who were just taken away.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: It is interesting that like the heaven that Fleelick goes
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: to kind of looks like a David Lynch movie a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: little bit. it's like a very it looks like the
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: beginning of blue velvet.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I could see it yeah.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: It's kind of fun i love i think fleelook is
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: my favorite new character i love fleelook voiced by adam
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: goldberg fascinating why not yeah exactly as with all the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: voice casting.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: Why not at every point in this film why not
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: is my prevailing like at no point if you if
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: you like took a note of where you're at and
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: then went on 10 minutes at no point could you
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: ever predicted where this shit was going no it's wild absolutely.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Not but i don't mind at least not with this
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: movie it's beautiful So the animals have been taken away
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: in a truck. Babe and friends are trying to figure
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: out where they went. And so Babe uses his nose,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: which the drug sniffing dog taught him to do earlier on.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: And so Babe kind of sniffs out and like kind
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: of tracks the animals who were taken away. And so
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: they eventually.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Babe is always learning new like dog qualities. True. That's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: something that's consistent.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. But then I remembered that Pigs, at least certain
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: pigs are like really, they do have a really keen
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: sense of smell. And then I was reminded of the
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: movie called Pig that Nicolas Cage is in. Has anyone
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: seen this?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen it.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: No.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: It is such a bizarre movie. It's a movie about,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: so Nicolas Cage has a pig that he uses to
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: like sniff out truffles. And then he sells the truffles.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: to chefs that have like really expensive you know five-star
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: michelin restaurants whatever in the city the pig gets abducted
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: and taken to the city so basically this pig is
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: also about a pig in the city yeah anyway we
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: love a pig in the city we love a pig
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: in the city but anyway i think pigs smell well They.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Can smell a truffle.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: They can smell a truffle.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's what we know.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: That's what we know.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: If there are any pig experts as our listeners, let
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: us know some pig facts, if you would. Please. Anyway,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: they eventually arrive at the Pound, Babe, Ferdinand, and Fleelick.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: They sneak inside and they release the animals from their cages.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: And speaking of getting released, Esme gets released from jail
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: and and returns to the hotel, only to discover that
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Babe and the other animals are not there. But the
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: hotel manager woman is back, and she's devastated about the
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: animals missing, and also her uncle Fugly is dead, maybe.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Really lovely scene between the two of them here, I think,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and it totally passes the Bechdel test as well.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Does the lady who owns the hotel have a name?
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're right. She does.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Halfway through, I was like, okay, we're good. And then
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I was like, but does she have a name? And
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: then no one referred to her by name from thenceforth.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: So I didn't go back and rewatch.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: It's a technicality, from what I can tell, is because
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: she's credited as Miss Flume.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: We don't get a first name, which I feel like
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: is a red flag. And we might only know she's
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Miss Flume because she is Fugly Flume's niece.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: So that's a good point. Because she's credited as having
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: a name, but I don't know if we ever hear
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: it in.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: That's a professional touch that you check the credits. You
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: didn't think to do that. Right.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: But also on IMDb, she's credited as the landlady. But also,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: I think the caveat of the Bechdel test that is like, okay,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: is it a named character? That implies like, is it
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: a character who has like a decent amount of screen time,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: who's an important character versus like a tertiary character who's
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: in one scene and we never learn their name or
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: never learn anything about them.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: But I do think that like it is a valid
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: critique to be like, she's in the movie so much
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: for us not having... A clear first name for her.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: They're having a lot of fun with names. Like, it
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have been hard here.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got Zooty. We've got Fugly.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Thelonious.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Thelonious. Oh, I love, I like Thelonious a lot.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Fleelick. Right, yeah. Yeah, give her a name. Anyway, she,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: whatever her name is, and Esme set off to try
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: to retrieve the animals. Back at the Pound, the animals
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: sneak out, make their way through a hospital, perhaps the
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: same one that had the circus mishap at, not sure,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: and then through a restaurant kitchen, which is where Esme
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: and Miss Flume link up with the animals, and then
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: chaos ensues as the animals and the kitchen staff And Esme,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: who is now wearing Uncle Fugly's clown costume.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: For reasons we can talk about later.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Yes. But they all kind of like crash this fancy
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: banquet that's happening. And they're bouncing around. They're bungeeing around.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: A chef is trying to steal Babe to, I think,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: cook him food. And eat him or serve him or something.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: At some point in the course of this movie, Babe
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: has acquired kind of like a punk toupee. He's got
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a toupee.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: He's got a spiky collar.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: A spiky collar goes hard.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yes.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: But after a lot of Esme saves Babe, and then
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: they all return to the Hoggett farm, which they were
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: able to save via the hotel manager, Miss Flume. She
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: rents out her hotel, which gets turned into a nightclub.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I think this confirms, for what it's worth, I think
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: this confirms that Uncle Fugly has passed.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's with us anymore because she leaves
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the country.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Right. Because she goes to the farm with them and
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: she brings all of the animals that were in the
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: hotel to the farm and lives there with the Hoggetts.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: and I guess shares her money with them. I was,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I was like, I don't really understand the dynamic here, but.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: It kind of, it seems like a communal living situation.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: It's nice.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: And then the movie ends with Arthur Hoggett saying the
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: famous line, that'll do pig.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: That'll do begging in the question. How long was Babe
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: in the city and how far is this flashback that
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: his whole, every bone in his body has recovered?
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Well, okay. Great question. I didn't even think about that
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: because they say that the next return flight is a
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: few days away. So it seems like they're only in.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But we do flash forward to... It's like she's... We've
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: had time for the hotel to be sold and stuff. Like,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: we could be flashing forward a year.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: They've built a nightclub in there. Right. Okay.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: But I do like that we confirm at the end.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: He's good.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: He's good for Bay Street. Which will tragically not happen.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: No.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe they're still arguing about how many really creepy, scary
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: things are going to happen. Maybe they made it. It's
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: just got too much gore.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. Well, let's take another quick break and
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: we'll come back to discuss. And we're back.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: James, is there anything that sticks out to you that you...
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: How do you want to kick off the discussion? There's
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: so many things to choose from.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. This was a wild one. I
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: did not expect this at all. I expected like pastoral,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: idyllic contrast with city. Didn't get that. As soon as
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: they arrived in the United States to stay in the casino,
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: which pretends to be Venice, I knew shit was going
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: to be weird. I genuinely don't know where to begin.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed the anti-police, anti-capital theme. Or the anti-state violence theme,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: I should say. I thought that was nice. The animal
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: inspectors were the bad guys. And the bank.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: And the bank.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: The bank, that's great.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that quote from the narrator that says... Men
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: with pale faces and soulless eyes show up at the farm.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Such men could only have come from one place, the bank.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: Fun.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a lot of, I don't know. Generally,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: this movie falls firmly anti-systems of power in general, which
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: is great. The ways they choose to do it are
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: often kind of bad.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: Bonkers.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: But I appreciate the sentiment. It is like, yeah, this
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: movie is so wild where I feel like you get
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: all of these big comedic set pieces and then you
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: have to face very real world consequences for these big
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: comedic set pieces.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it switched back and forth from like slapstick to
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: like hyper real in a very odd way. I want
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: to know how they waterboarded the dog without.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: So many things that we haven't discussed there really quick.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Cause I forgot to mention it during the recap. There is,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: there's just all of these. You can tell so much
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: of this movie was like cut at some point in
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: production because there's so many dropped threads that you're like,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: what the hell was that? And you just will not
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: find out. um i think one of my favorites was
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: at the airport they encounter a man who's half man
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: half pig question mark yes.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: He becomes a judge later he just okay yes he
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: does come that's a different guy i think that's.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: A different okay.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: There's just several sharing the same face.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: But he tells people but he's he's like oh i
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: know a place where you can stay a hotel you
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: can stay with an animal and then they reveal that
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: he is i think we're supposed to believe he's part
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: man part pig but.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: Again it just goes away oh did he just have
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: an affinity for.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Them no perhaps because he slightly resembles a pig with
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: his kind of like turned up snout i couldn't tell if.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: It was a magical thing if it was like A
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: vaguely cruel joke. I really couldn't figure it out.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know what was going on there. I
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: did not expect that when the camera panned around to
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: do the face reveal. I still don't know how to
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: feel about it.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: As with so many things where you're like, the intention
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: is so... impossible to guess at that you're like, I
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: guess we just have to accept that they, that that
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: made the final cut.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Right. Cause the same thing happens later that you just
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: mentioned that the judge who is a different, different character, different,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I think actor who plays him is lenient with Esme.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: She's like pleading her case to try to get out
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: of jail. And she's explaining, Oh, this is my, you know,
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: this is our pig and I have to go find him. And,
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: you know, recounting the whole story and, And then the
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: judge who also looks sort of like a pig is like,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: I love pigs.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: I understand.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: You can go. You're released from jail. So yeah, really
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: bizarre thing. We don't really know what to make of it.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: We just don't know. Back to the treatment of animals
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: and like, how did they, like the dog being waterboarded scene,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: the scene where Fleelick is like latched onto the truck
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: and then it's, he's being dragged along in his wheelchair
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: like apparatus, which are.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Which are real. I mean, my, my friend's dog, shout
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: out Bonnie.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, has that same.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some dogs on wheels like that.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. So I tried to find some information about
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: like these stunts, how did they do them? Because to
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: me it looks quite real and as if they were
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: using real animals. So I found from the American humane
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: society's website, Just pulling a quick quote here says, quote,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: to Animals and the Animal Trainers, no animal was harmed
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: in the making of this film. Animatronics, prosthetic animals, and
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: SPFX special effects were used to simulate all scenes which
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: seemed to place the animal in jeopardy.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Unquote.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: So they were using effects and puppets and stuff, I guess,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I hope.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: I do think so. I mean, I also kind of
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: struggled to find like clear information about this. What we
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: know is that there are about 800 animals in the
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: production of this movie. It does sound like there is like,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the appropriate amount of trainers involved. Again, I'm
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: just so interested in how this stuff is made, where
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I guess in post-production, the editors of this movie have
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: to edit out in every scene a million clicking sounds
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and incentivizing sounds to help the animals behave. So all
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: of the sound kind of has to be wiped out
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: of every shot to get the animals to look somewhere,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: whatever it is.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: I read, wait, where is this, that there were certain, okay,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: this is again from the Lit Hub article, which is
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: pretty thorough, but this fact isn't cited, so take it
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. Okay, so the cast included
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: 80 pigeons, 100 pigs, 130 cats, 120 dogs, more than
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: half of which came from dog shelters around Sydney and
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: were subsequently rehoused by members of the crew. George Miller
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: took home a Chihuahua. The half dozen mice who serve
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: as a Greek chorus kept breeding like crazy. There were
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: more than a hundred within weeks until their friskier tendencies
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: were somehow curbed. Again, not sure what that means.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what are we talking about here?
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Were they spayed and neutered? Can you even?
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of mice.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then no one had the fact that I
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm interested in the citation here. No
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: one had any idea whether chimps would get along with
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: pigs until they gave it a whirl. So there are
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: like suggestions that like I hope that that's not true.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: I hope that the Humane Society wouldn't sign off on.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's find out. That seems quite dangerous.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: For sure. I'm not sure.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: In this last year, because the Humane Society, they have
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: come under controversy over the years. And in fact, connecting
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: it to the Babe Expanded Universe, James Cromwell has renounced
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Humane Society. of the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: u.s because as we talked about in our first babe
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: episode i guess it's not as relevant here because he's
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: not really in the movie all his bones are broken
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: the whole time but that being in the first babe
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: movie radicalized james cromwell he became a like he is
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: a he goes hard with his all of his activism
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: but particularly with his animal activism i think most recently
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: he got arrested and super gluing his hand to the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: counter at Starbucks in protest of like products that were
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: being used. I believe he is a hardcore activist. He
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't fuck around. I admire it quite a bit. Um, yeah,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: he's very involved with PETA, which there's plenty of controversy
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: there as well. But I used to live across the
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: street from the, the James Cromwell center that, which is
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: a PETA owned building. But anyways, that that's to say
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: like with the humane society, grain of salt is, but
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: they also do good work. I don't know.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Well, right. Cause as we talked about on our first
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: babe movie episode in movies that have animals on screen,
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: you'll often see in the credits something like, no animals
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: were harmed during the making of this film. The American
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Humane Society monitored the production kind of thing. But sometimes
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: animals will be harmed during productions and sometimes even die.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: And they just use really.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Colorful language to get around admitting that in the credits.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: What do they say?
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: They'll say something like... For example, I forget which movie
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: it was that we talked about on that other episode,
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: but that animals didn't die while the cameras were rolling,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: but they did when a take wasn't being filmed or
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: something like that. So the language was like, animal activity
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: was monitored. No animals were harmed during the filming.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: Of the movie. Oh, sneaky. Sneaky. I see what they're doing.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Stuff like that. Okay. And listeners, if you want to
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: hear more about that, if you're already a matron, great.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: If not, you can become a matron and listen to
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: that episode.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, there was I'm pulling up the article we were
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: talking about at the time. This was published in The
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Reporter back in 2013. The article is titled Directly.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Animals were harmed. And the movies that are cited in
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the investigation are Life of Pi and The Hobbit.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I worked with the Humane Society earlier this year on
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: my movie. And I don't know.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me, and this is based on my
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: very limited experience on, I mean, the supervisors themselves were
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: completely wonderful and very helpful and like could not have
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: ensured the safety of my cat flea better. But what
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: I do find interesting and I would want to know
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: more about is we were talking to them about like, well,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: what is your kind of day to day like? And
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well. one day I'm on set at
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: your house watching your house cat to make sure no
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: one kicks him or whatever. And then the next day
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: you're on set with tigers. It just seems like there
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: is a wide range.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: Is this the feline expert or is this person just
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: operating across the animal kingdom?
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I wish I knew more because I guess I assumed,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: and maybe this is true, but just based on the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: few folks that we, because we had people from the
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: humane society on set for, I think four days total.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: And it seems like there's, I'm curious how specialized their
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: work is not to like doubt their credentials, but it
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: seems like if you, if the same person being dispatched
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to make sure my cat is okay, is this also
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the person being dispatched to, to see if two tigers
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: are going to be safe on set? I'm just, I'm
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: really curious about the inner workings of it. And yeah. Yeah.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure. Sometimes the big cats and little cats
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: are more similar. Have you ever seen when they give
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: a lion catnip and it just uses its shit? Maybe
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: that's all they do. That person has a bag of catnip.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: They have exactly one intervention they can make. It's a
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: tiger seeing someone. They just sprinkle a little bit of
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: catnip and hope for the best.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: But again, going back to this movie, there are so
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: many complex stunts. and like just, I mean, the main cat,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: like the protagonist of this movie is an animal. Most
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: of the main characters are animals. There's so much animal
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: activity happening. A lot of it involves what seems to
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: be very dangerous stunts. And I just, I wasn't able
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: to find it. much information about it except for that
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: one quote from the humane society's website. But, um, yeah,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: I just, Oh, and then also, I mean, I think
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: you can question the ethics of the use of really
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: any animal in a movie, which we also talked about
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: in the first babe episode, but I feel like especially
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: with great apes, because this movie has chimps and an
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: orangutan and, And those animals, again, they're like our cousins.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: They share 96 to 98% of DNA with humans. They're like,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: they're our kin. And then to like have them in
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: a movie and just make them do stuff. I don't know.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: I just, I feel really weird about it.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: It's weird when it's like. like I've worked with animals, right?
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Like my dad's never not had a job where his
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: dog attends. It's different. I feel like when the, like through,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: maybe we could, like if we go back thousands of
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: years and not selectively breed dogs to herd animals or
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: to fetch dead animals, that maybe we could allow them
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: more autonomy. But like when the dog is like, so
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: wired to do that. It's kind of cool to be like, yeah,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: you're better at this than me and together we're cooperating
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: to do a thing that neither of us could do
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: alone and that's sick. And we're like colleagues and each
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: of our different strengths makes us stronger as a group.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: That's not the case when you're making a chimp dress
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: up in a clown outfit. Right. It did feel a
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: little gross.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: I know. I truly don't know how to.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Because, like you're saying, James, there's such a complicated... like
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: it goes back to how animals are bred and treated
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: within society going back hundreds of years before cameras start
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: rolling on baby pig in the city. But also, I
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I think about that a lot
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: where the saying is like, don't work with kids and animals.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: And it's like, well, maybe because kids and animals should
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: not be put in the position to be the leads
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: of movies. Maybe that's like why people feel that way. Um,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I wish that we had more information. I think it's some,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: it's like bizarre that we don't in a movie where
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: you can go five minutes without seeing a person.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Which is amazing. But also, I don't know. I'm, I'm,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about it because, because this is the last,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, George Miller, continues to make animal movies, but
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: they get animated after this. He goes tap dancing penguins
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: after this.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: Happy feet. Happy feet too.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. I, it's bizarre. But speaking of the humans
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: that are in this movie, I think it's pretty significant
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: that Esme Hoggett is the main lead character who is
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: a human because this is one of the only movies
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: I've ever seen where where the main human character is
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: a middle-aged fat woman although i will say that the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: the character is aged up i think she's meant yeah
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: she's in her 30s give her a break well the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: actor is in her 30s magda subansky the character i
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: think it's aged up to be like fifties. It seems
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: maybe seems like, yeah, but even so like for this
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: person to be the human that we are seeing most
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: predominantly on screen. Now, could you argue that there are
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: jokes and perhaps whole set pieces that are there at
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: the expense of her body?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Perhaps?
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: But I also feel like the movie generally takes her
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: pretty seriously. And yeah, and while there are like other
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: characters who are unkind to her, I don't think the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: movie is especially unkind to her. Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: There, I think the moment that really stuck out to me,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: they're mostly towards the end. Cause I think it really
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: is kind of case to case where there's a few,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: like when the goo dress cracks or whatever, I'm like,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you know what? I'm going to give that one specifically
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: a pass because that would be funny if it happened
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: to any character, I think of any size. But I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: think the thing that bugged me the most was, um,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: her saying like, do you have anything that fits me?
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: And then she has to wear, you know, fugly the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: clowns clothing and, and then there's like the inflation suit
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: and yeah, that, that, you know, hopefully like, you know,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Magda Sabansky who, I don't know. I mean, I, what
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I know about her is she's a queer icon and
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of her original comedy characters
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: kind of play into this. So I'm like, if she's
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: comfortable with it, I'm not going to, you know, say boo,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: but yeah, the, the sort of like climactic set piece
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: did feel like it was poking fun at her, but
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I agree. And that it's like, we, as the audience
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: are not supposed to, I don't know. It feels like
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: the bar is so fucking low. But I think we're
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: so like when we're we're looking at a woman who
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: is not young and is not thin. I think we're
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: just like never encouraged to empathize with her or root
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: for her or really think about her. And yeah, that
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: this this movie actively asks you. And centers her. Again,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think we need to break all her husband's
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: bones for that to happen. But I am glad that
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: she is the central character in this. And that she,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: you know, like, has a ton of agency. She does
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: kind of win the day at the end. She makes
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: a friend.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Miss Flume. Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she's a great character.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: I think she gets a much better showing in this
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: one than the first one, right?
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: The first one, not so great in that regard.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: But there is a little bit of carryover. The other
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: thing I noticed that felt like a carryover where she is...
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: She's portrayed as, if I'm remembering correctly, much naggier.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: And I feel like the callback in this one... is
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: the like no one had ever heard a woman talk
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: so much in court before or a person talks like
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: she's yapping yapping yappy like they're definitely playing the hits
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: but also asking you to like love and empathize this
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: character it's i don't know right could it be worse
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: question mark i.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: Don't know it's nice that the uh the lady who
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: owns a hotel whose name is maybe miss flume like
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: I was being like oh will they do a romance
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: arc for this lady because she lives on her own
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: with her animals and they didn't and I thought that
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: was nice she got to just like be happy with
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: her animal friends in her hotel.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: And again, she is like, to your point, James, she
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: is like a single eccentric woman who lives with a
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: bunch of animals and we love her and we're rooting
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: for her and we empathize with her. There's like, I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: don't know, I guess like George Miller's working his way.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: Up to Furiosa.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: He's learning to empathize with women along the way. There's
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: definitely mistakes here, but like they don't, I guess it's like,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: it doesn't feel right. mean-spirited, even though those mistakes are
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: definitely there. And then we have the, I guess, the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: coded genders of the various animal characters, which are, again,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: this movie is so weird to talk about. Are we
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: supposed to think the pink poodle, she's a wolf. What's
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: her deal? What are we supposed to think about her?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: That one had plot holes for me. Who's grooming and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: dyeing this stray poodle?
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: Because they don't come out like that. I think maybe
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: there's an ignorance there, but they don't actually pop out
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: like that. There's quite a lot of effort.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely some Looney Tunes logic. I wanted to read
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: a quote.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: From the poodle.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: From a poodle? From the poodle?
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: I'm quoting the poodle here. Wait, where's my... Sorry, let
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: me find it. But yeah, like she is kind of
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: portrayed as like Lady of the Night question mark. And
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: then I like that she does bail on her pit
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: bull husband and kids. They go out of our way
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: to let us know that. And you're like, okay. She says, please, sir, please.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I know you're different from the others. Those that had
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: their way with me make their empty promises, but they're
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: all lies, lies. And you're like, what?
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: And then Babe is like, well, where's your human? And
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: she's like, my human left me for someone younger and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: prettier or something like that.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about that.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: And so she's supposed to be like a scorned woman.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Yes. And then she gets her revenge, question mark, later by.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I've, I've never seen a pit bull
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: portrayed as a single father before. So, you know, that's
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: a very specific kind of representation that I guess I'm like,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: why the hell not? Yeah. The, the, the, this piece
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: compares the dog to the, the pink poodle to Blanche
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Dubois and I see it, but yeah, like I guess
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: the animals are so broad and cartoony, but I would
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: say in like pretty, gendered ways and the animals that
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: tend to get arcs, more or less aggressively gendered arcs,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: tend to be the male-coded animals.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: Because we do have, we have, who's the pregnant chimpanzee? Oh,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: my God.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: Zooty. Zooty. Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm like, what is our job?
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, Zutty.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not Bob, who is the other one.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Not Bob, or Easy, I think, is the little brother chimpanzee.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They had a theme with the chimpanzees, and then
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: they diverted for Bob, I guess.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: For Bob. It's kind of a classic joke for some reason.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: One, two, Bob.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: But Zutty, I think, Zutty is, she has an arc,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: but I think it kind of takes a backseat to
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Bob and Thelonious, and she's more defined by The fact
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: that she's jump scare pregnant.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: She's a mother now. Uh-huh. Yeah. I didn't know what
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: to make of the apes in this movie because they're
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: mean to Babe.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: They're closer to humans in that they're exploiting other animals. Right.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: I felt like maybe that's what he was going for.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, again, 98% of the same DNA.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: But don't we have like 96% with a banana or something?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: I'm going to be honest here, not my area of expertise.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: Let's say yes.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know the percentage, but yeah, it does seem
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: like they are depicting the apes to have more of
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: the same behaviors as a human than of the cats
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: and dogs.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: But the humans, apes, and street animals, I guess, just
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: to like separate them. are all dealing with living in
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: a society. They're all dealing with class issues at every level.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: He read George Orwell at some point, right? And he's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: trying to do an animal farm thing here where he's
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: like trying to portray that animals are stronger when they're
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: in solidarity with one another against people exploiting them as
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: opposed to like trying to get a little level above
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: the other animals to exploit the other animals. Maybe I
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: love George Orwell, so I'm always going to fucking shoehorn.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Could be. But isn't, it's been like 25 years since
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: I've read Animal Farm, but in that book, isn't it
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: that the pigs are like the totalitarian?
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: So he's like, I'm not going to do that because
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: Babe is a sweet little boy. Yeah.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: And then they have an enforcer, like Babe has his enforcer.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: Like they have a horse. Babe has his bull terrier. Right.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Right. I wouldn't be surprised. Again, it's like with George Miller,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: any answer could be true. They're just a little more.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: I know I keep pulling from this Lit Hub piece,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: but it is helpful.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: It's wild the access these people have.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: It's like, why does just this one person know? But
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: just speaking into like the discussion. tonal weirdness, which I
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: think is why a lot of people love this movie,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: is because it is such a tonally weird thing. Both
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Siskel and Ebert put this on their best of 1998.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: They're like, this is a perfect movie.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: We love it.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Although some critics hated it. I feel like this was
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: kind of more panned than it was praised at the time.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: It has become more kind of cult follow-y status in
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: subsequent years. But But also if you look on Rotten Tomatoes,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: for example, the audience score of this movie is only 41%.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: So it seems like people by and large don't really
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: like this movie.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: I can see people being like, I wanted to calm
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: my eight-year-old down and now they're traumatized because they saw
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: a dog get waterboarded. Fuck this film. Right.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Well, I do feel like if that's the case, I
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: feel like it's because people are grading it on a
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: curve of how comparatively gentle and not chaotic the first
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Babe movie is. If you're going back for more Babe,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Babe's there, but the rest is so much kookier. Because
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: I forgot that George Miller did not direct the first
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Babe movie. A different director named Chris Noonan. directed the
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: first one. And I guess George Miller and Chris Noonan
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: had a massive falling out between the first and the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: second movie. George Miller, would you believe this? A famous
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: director is a bit of an egomaniac. And he was like,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't get enough credit for Babe One. Basically, everyone
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: else seems to disagree. They were like, no, part of
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: why Babe One worked is because Chris Noonan was so
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: gentle and not insisting on waterboarding a dog. But George
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Miller took over for the second one, kind of barred
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Chris Noonan from being involved in this one. And that
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: is how we get a dog getting waterboarded and all
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: the chaos that is in Babe, Pig in the City.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: But I think that it's impossible to separate them, but
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: they're doing totally different things. I also thought it was
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: really funny that Babe's original voice, for those of you
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: who watched Rugrats growing up, Babe in the first movie
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: is voiced by Christine Cavanaugh, who played Chucky Finster in Rugrats.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: And then in this one is voiced by E.G. Daly,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: who voices Tommy in Rugrats. And I also like that
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: it's usually, I mean, this is true a lot, I
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: think specifically in the 90s, but just in animation pre, like,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: only celebrity casting happening where there's kind of a complete
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: like disregard of gender with cartoon voices and just voice
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: acting in general that I really miss because Christine Cavanaugh
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: also voiced Dexter on Dexter's Lab. Like you'll often have
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: like adult women voicing young boys and Bart Simpson. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: What is going on with the accents in this film,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: by the way? At a point, Esme Hoggett will just
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: go Scottish.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: And then she breaks out. It's like, I don't know
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: if it's a thing that can actually happen when you
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: get a brain injury, but like, you know, there's like
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: the apocryphal stories of the person who gets a brain
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: injury and changes their accent, right? Like, what is the
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: explanation there? Other than like, are they just like, are
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: they just doing the whole UK? Because a few of
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: the characters just switch regional accents.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Wait, say more, because I didn't, I guess I wasn't,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't notice that.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: This is something that I talked about on the Babe
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: 1 episode, where growing up as a kid, I was like,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: all these characters are for sure British. This is the
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: most British movie ever made. Meanwhile, it's an Australian production,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: but no one really has an Australian accent. People have
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: American accents. There's some English accents. There's Yeah, Esme is
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: Scottish sometimes. I thought she was Scottish the whole time,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: but no, does she go in and out of it?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: Oh, she definitely, her accent, maybe she's doing the class
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: signaling thing where she suppresses her regional accent when she's
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: trying to code switch. Oh, sure, sure. It's quite possible.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe there's a more subtle commentary than I'd appreciated there.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually incredible commentary.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Every British person knows what I'm talking about, though,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: when you code switch the way you speak, unless you're really,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: really posh. but like the, uh, the other regional accents
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: seem to swing around, like the vowel sounds they make, like,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: like they, they're not fixed in one region, which I
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: would expect. And then I was, I was ready to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: be angry about being like, Oh, you've done this accent
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: from here. And like, this, this isn't really what that
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: landscape's like. Those are the wrong sheep. Uh, like I
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: was ready. Uh, and I still am like, I still
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: have the feelings, but it's, uh, It just seemed like
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: the accents were even more fluid this time. And then
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: all the animals have like, there's like, Thelonious is from
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: New York, it seems like.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Snoop the drug sniffing dog is like, I'm walking here.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: NYPD dog.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: Then there's like, I feel like, I can't remember what
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: the bull terrier's accent. Maybe it's Boston. Oh, it is.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: It feels like kind of like working class New England-y
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: or like northeast of the U.S.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: Because they had the option to use a Boston Terrier
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: for that and they didn't. They didn't. Fascinating choice.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: It's the city of it all. Everyone's from every city
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: all at once.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: The Hollywood sign pops up at one point. It's almost iconic.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: The Hollywood sign. A bunch of New York buildings. The
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: Golden Gate Bridge is there. The Sydney Opera House is there.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: I didn't see the Opera House. It's great.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: What's the, in Brazil, the big Jesus statue? That's there.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: Come at me, Jesus.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that one.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: The World Trade Center is there.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of 1998 on this movie. Yeah,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't catch the Esme dropping her accent because, yeah,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: she's an Australian actress too.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no accounting for it. I always forget that James
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Cromwell is not, in fact, British.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: He's not British. I know, that's always confusing to me.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: He's American. And then you've got Hugo Weaving, who is Australian,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: but I I don't remember if he's doing his Australian
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: accent or not. You only see him in that one scene.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: I'd have to go back and rewatch the first one.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: He's a dad dog.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: He's dog daddy.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: Adoptive dog father. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: Wow. What an awesome movie, though.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: I truly.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: It is like kind of... It's fun how difficult it
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: is to talk about because it's really hard to like...
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: put your finger on what the.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: Hell is going on.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: It's very much running on vibes. One other character that
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to shout out because, and now knowing
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: that there was some like gnarlier stuff going on with
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: the animals, we are introduced to a villain who's pretty
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: promptly kind of, I didn't know what to make of her.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: She's like the lab technician. She doesn't get a name.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, right.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: But she gets a real like villain intro.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: She's the one who's like, coaxing the little chimpanzee with
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: his like portable radio thing.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah and that's like one of the many villains
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: we're introduced to is like oh this is the villain
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: and then a clear villain never appears which is kind
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: of the way the world works i guess.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: I mean uncle fugly is kind of a villain he's
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: but he kidnaps babe lies about it and then forces
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: him into a life of Circus servitude. I agree.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: And then dies of a food coma, apparently.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Dies of jelly beans.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: Very Shakespearean.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: But there was a shot that I kept forgetting to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: bring up with Uncle Fugly that I thought showed him
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: so much empathy. I don't know if it's empathy or
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, but in the scene with the fire
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: at the children's hospital... which we just blow past, hope
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: they're okay. But there's like that closeup on Mickey Rooney
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: and like his makeup is melting off. And I didn't
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: think he looked scary. I thought it looked really like, wow,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: his life is like, he's fine. I thought it was
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: like a weirdly, like very empathetic shot to hold. It
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: didn't feel like a villainous shot. It felt like, wow,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: this man's life is, is over.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: Like, I don't know.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: And then he disappears.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: Maybe this aligns with my, he was reading everything Orwell
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: wrote theory. I'm thinking about, I'm developing this as we go.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: Like he wrote this book called Burmese Days, right? By
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: like how participating in the oppression of Burmese people, he
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: also kind of lost part of his soul by participating
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: in this colonial machine. And he spends like the rest
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: of his life somewhat reflecting on that, right? Like by
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: being a cog in the evil machine, we lose our
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: humanity too by dehumanizing other people. Maybe that's what they're
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: going for. Maybe that's a little bit generous of me.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: No, I'm like, I'm in.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: I'm in. Well, speaking of comps to other works, may
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: I talk about the parallels between Paddington 1 and Babe 2? Please.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Okay. Both movies involve a disastrous
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: event that causes a very sweet, polite, clumsy, perhaps naive
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: little animal... to have to leave his home and travel
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: overseas to a big, unfamiliar city where a lot of
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: people are cruel to him, but eventually some kind strangers
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: take him in and give him a safe place to stay,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: though hijinks ensues anyway. And then I guess the rest
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: of the plots are different. But there are also moments
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: in both movies where the animal is in an attic
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: room looking out of a circular window at a city skyline.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: It's undeniable. It's undeniable.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: Paul King saw Babe, Pig in the City.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's actually safe to assume.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. And then he's like, I'm going to kind
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: of do that except with Paddington Bear. And I also
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: think that Babe, Chicken Run... And sheep detectives all take
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: place in the same universe.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen sheep detectives.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: People keep asking me about sheep detectives.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard a bad word about it. I've heard
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: that our neighbor kid is obsessed with it. He loves
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: those damn sheep.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: It was pretty fun.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: And Chicken Run, obviously, a sacred text. One of our
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: best movies.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: History's greatest films.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah so yeah i guess the the takeaway here is
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: that the intentions of this movie are often quite confusing
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: and we don't really know what's happening but i do
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: think that and we already touched on this but a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: clear intention is the like anti-police state anti-oppressive systems stance
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: that this movie takes.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: And i I think, frankly, the anti-city stance, because the
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: resolution of the story requires a return to nature, basically.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. I don't know. I would be very curious
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: to know how George Miller conceived this movie ending. I
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: would imagine it's different because in his version, we can't
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: have that'll do pig because Farmer Hoggett is dead. Right.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe she says it at the end.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: You know, that would have made more sense for this
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: movie anyway.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: That would have been better. Yeah.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: Why does he even say it? He hasn't even been
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: privy to what Babe has been up to the whole
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: damn movie.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: There's been there is one line that I was like,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: you know what? You know what? Let's tweak it. When
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: at the at the climax, when she's wearing Mickey Rooney's clothes,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: there's too much going on. Sensory overload. But she she
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: refers to Babe as my husband's pig. I'm like, at
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: this point.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: That's your pig.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: That's your pig, babe.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: That's your pig, babe.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: And that's your pig, comma, his name is Babe.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Not that she knows that, unfortunately.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't. He can understand them, but they can't
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: understand him. It's very tragic.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, I know. That is true.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: That is how we live our lives as animals, right?
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: We think we can talk to them, but they can't
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: talk to us other than with their little noses and
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: tongues and things.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: It's true. You're like, wait, what is my animal's name?
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Every day does Sunny think, that's ridiculous. That's insulting.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: That's not my name. Quit calling me that.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my name is Uncle Fugly.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: That would be an iconic name for a dog. If
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: you adopt a senior dog.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: Uncle Fugly.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: Maybe the Humane Society should start doing it. Oh my god.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Wait, that really did get me.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you guys wanted to touch on?
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: There's so much going on. I think ultimately for me,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: it's like this movie makes me feel nostalgic for movies
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: that were chaotic in this way, where this movie is
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: kind of like a big fuck you to like structure
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: and the comfort of children in a way that big
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: budget children's movies rarely are.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: It was certainly a choice, yeah.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: But I love that about it. I mean, again, I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: saw this for the first time when I was 12.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: And I think it would be a very different experience
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: for like a six-year-old or something seeing this. But I
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: think when you're like an older kid, I appreciated movies then.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: And I appreciate movies now as an adult that are
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: directed toward younger audiences, children, you know, family movies that
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: don't condescend to the children watching them. And I feel
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: like this movie does not condescend to children at all. Well,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Okay. And then this is where I'm going to make my...
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Because ultimately, like, I think it doesn't condescend to children
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: because it also doesn't condescend to adults because maybe a
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: lot of it kind of doesn't totally make sense.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: But I mean, like, I guess what I mean is, well,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: it doesn't condescend to anyone, slash it doesn't make sense,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: but it also doesn't coddle children in a way that
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: I think a lot more contemporary children's media coddles.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it felt like one of those Fellini films where
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: you're like, what is the drug that people took in
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: this time period that one would have to be on
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: to understand this?
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to try it.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: Which in the 90s, I guess, is ecstasy and cocaine.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: I guess so, yeah. I do appreciate what this is.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: It's a big, weird swing. I like it. And speaking to, Caitlin,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: what you were just saying, I am starting to call this,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: or I'm going to try to call this, making peace
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: with the iPad culture. in um in like children's media
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: where yeah there is like a tameness to a lot
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: to not all but a lot of big children's media
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: um now that requires kind of like a um conciliatory
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: like reconciling yourself to systems of power which in toy
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: story 5 is making peace with the ipad empathizing with
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: the ipad and babe picking the city that's not what
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: it's about we're not empathizing with the ipad We're leaving
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: the city and returning to nature.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: That's so true. And speaking of empathy, I guess my
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: last point is, and we talked about this in the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: first Babe episode as well, but the fact that this
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: movie centers a very sweet, compassionate, gentle male character that
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: shows empathy toward basically everyone, you know, the dog, the
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: bull terrier that's about to murder him. He's like, He's drowning.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: He's going to die if I don't save him.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Everyone except cops and bankers get empathy in this movie,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: which feels cool. It feels right.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: This movie was not nominated for as many Oscars as
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: the first Babe movie, but it wasn't nominated for no Oscars.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel wrote an original song for this movie called
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: That'll Do that was also written by Randy Newman. Yes. What?
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't even remember any of this movie.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: Is it during the credits?
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: I think so. But that's just another, you're like, well,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: that is a very expensive, weird sentence. But awesome.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: And then Tom Waits saw all of that and he's like, exactly.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Let's read the Tom Waits quote. The Tom Waits quote
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: is really fun. He told The Guardian in 2010, you
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: know what one of my favorite movies of all time is?
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: And if I'm at home with my kids and say,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: what do you want to see? The big joke is oh, dad,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: not Pig in the City, but I love that movie.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I'd see it anytime.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: He loves it.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: This movie is co-written by a woman, by Judy Morris,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: who also co-wrote and co-directed Happy Feet. So she's... A
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: frequent collaborator with George Miller Animals Division.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to point that out as well.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: And I think we pointed this out in the first movie.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: Also co-edited by a frequent collaborator of George Miller, Margaret Sixel,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: who works on everything that he works on. And I
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: believe she won an Oscar for Mad Max Fury Road
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: for editing.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: So shout out, especially because post-production, there's just not enough editing.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: women getting big opportunities like that. So that's great.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: And this movie does pass the Bechdel test, as we said,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: especially that scene between Esme and Miss Flume.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Although I do think, James, you're right to point out
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: that we have to really, we have to sort of
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: search for a name in a way that we don't for,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: you know, baby monkeys.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, Uncle Fugly.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Uncle Fugly, who has a name that I couldn't forget
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to. And I do.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: I guess everyone has a choice between no name and
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: Uncle Fugly. Yeah.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: All the energy was gone from the naming machine once
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: they hit Uncle Fugly.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they hit the jackpot. There's nothing left.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: I'm spent. I can't. Yeah. But I would still argue
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: that characters of a marginalized gender who... are significant fixtures
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: in the story. If they speak to each other about
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: something other than a man, I'll give that a pass.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: And they're just talking about animals.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: And that character certainly has a fully realized arc. She
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: moves in with the hogget. Yes.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: Now, as far as our nipple scale goes, the scale
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Um, for
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: babe pig in the city, you know, I'm just not
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: too sure. I mean, here's what I'll say. Based on
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: the movie's clear stance of being anti-establishment, anti-bank, anti-state violence, uh,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: anti-animal cops, pro-working class, whether that's working class people or
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: working class animals, parentheses, I'm speaking allegorically here, based on
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: these stances that this movie takes, based on the characters
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: who we focus on being a male-coded character, a pig,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: who is sweet, gentle, compassionate, which are qualities that we
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: usually do not see in a male character. And then
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: a human woman who is also sweet and compassionate and,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: you know, a very determined, active character who, unlike most
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: women in movies, when a woman is allowed to be
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: in a movie, typically we see a thin, young, rigid
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: Western beauty standard woman. But Esme Hoggett is a fat,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: older character who we are meant to root for and
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: empathize with, which again is very unusual. So lots of
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: refreshing representations of characters. Everything else is just sort of like,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: what the hell?
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: What the hell?
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: So with all of that in mind, I'm going to
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: give it I think three nipples.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: That feels right.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Three seems reasonable.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. And I'm giving them all to babe.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: I think I'll meet you at three. Yeah, I think
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: that this movie is just doing so many things. I
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: would be curious what the original conclusion was because I
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: feel like we're given this whole charcuterie board of things
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: to consider. And then at the end, we kind of
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: just go back to where we started. And we start
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: at the end of the previous movie, basically, by saying,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: that'll do, pig, that'll do. And in the exact same
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: way with a character who we haven't seen the whole
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: time because his whole body was broken and maybe he
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be dead. We just don't know. But
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate and enjoyed the chaos. I like that
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: we're asked to empathize with such a wide array of characters,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: although there are some kind of gendered stereotypes along the way.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: I'll go three nips as well, and I'm giving them
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: all to Mrs. Hoggett, my good friend Esme.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: She was put in an impossible situation, and she did
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: about as well as you would think she would.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: James, how about you?
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think three seems fair. It did some good stuff.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: It could do better. I kind of like that it
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: ended where I would like my little career journey to end,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: like a collective living situation on a farm with sheep.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm going for. That biased me in its favor.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: The humans who spoke the most were both women, I think, right?
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: Like Miss Hoggett and Mrs.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: Flynn.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: Uh, not a massively racially diverse film, a whole ton
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: of white people and animals. Uh, yeah, mostly animals to
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: be fair again. I liked that the character is a
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: sweet little boy. We assume I think pig like that.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: He has empathy and feelings. Like I think, uh, sometimes,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: you know, like men in cinema, if they are guys
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: who care about things and they get to be the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: butt of all the jokes. So I like that him
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: being a kind, caring, little empathetic pig wins, even if
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: he ends up also being a dictator of a small
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: animal hotel kingdom for a while.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: A reluctant dictator, you know.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: These things will happen.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: Like what's he called? The Roman general that he bought
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: back from his cabbage packs to be dictator. Similar.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: But it does make you wonder because like the other
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: character like that that comes to mind as far as
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: like a really sweet, empathetic, polite, male coded character is Paddington.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: And that's also an animal. So it's like. can we
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: see more human men.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: Like this on screen? Not an option for us.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: We're working on it, I guess. Anyway, sorry, continue.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: No, that was my main thing. It would be nice
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: to see a human male be kind to other things
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: on a film. I think we could do it if
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: we really tried.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed seeing it in the form of a pig. Yeah,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: I would have liked to see more. I liked the
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: first film a lot. Like, I just thought it's my
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: point of reference for, like, that and like when people
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: ask what my childhood was like i can go to
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: babe i can go to uh have you seen the
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: documentary where they chase a cheese down a hill it's
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: very popular during covid no i have not okay okay
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: wow really yeah big uh okay that's on your schedules
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: uh cheese rolling that's what it's called yeah it's called
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: cheese rolling yeah there's a pub called the cheese rollers
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: and the cheese goes down a very steep hill you
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: chase it you try and catch it uh people suffer
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: life-altering injuries because it's very, very steep. That's exactly where
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: I grew up. So those are the points from which
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: you can triangulate my childhood, I guess. It has a
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: special place for me, whereas this one doesn't have as
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: much kind of sense of place, I guess.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I think three is good. I enjoyed it.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: Would watch again.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure I'd pick up some whole other subtexts
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: that I haven't... I'm sure you could watch this film
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: ten times.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 3: Great one to assign to an undergraduate class.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: There's so much happening.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: A rich text. Someone please write the thesis paper. I
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: want to understand.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's what that Lit Hub thing was.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: True.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: Someone had a deep level of access that no one
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: else did.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: What did they know and when did they know it?
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Like the first Babe movie, it starts an interesting conversation
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: about animal performers and what our responsibility is to them
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: and how we talk about the how they're treated in
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: production animals with jobs discussing you know yeah yeah all
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: right well james thank you so much for joining us
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: and congratulations on the new show tell us a little
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: more about it.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah thank you uh it's called natural causes it's wherever
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: podcasts are given away for free it is about going
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: outside and the politics and practicalities of it so uh
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: our tagline is going outside it's political but uh we
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 3: have talked about cyclospora which is the uh The diarrhea
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: outbreak currently impacting the Midwest, right? We talked about how
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: maybe mega capitalism is to blame rather than farm workers.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: We talked about fire, wildfire, and different approaches to taking
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: care of each other. I really want to get into
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: talking about how we can learn to live with fire.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: And that involves like listening to indigenous folks rather than
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: attempting to suppress fire and treating it like we can
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 3: just wipe it off the landscape. And then this week
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: we talked about the roadless rule. which is a rule
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: that impacts thousands, tens of thousands of acres of national
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: forest that the Trump administration is trying to do away with.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: I want to talk more about ag. We talked about
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: golf and how it's an affront to God. Yes, 100%.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Love that approach.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 3: And how the Javelina are leading the charge against golf
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: and how I'm very proud of them. So if a
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: touch is going outside, we're going to talk about it
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 3: once a week. You can get it for free. And
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 3: if you would like to subscribe to it, that would
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: be great because I want to keep going outside for
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: work and maybe not spend so much of my life
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: traveling to places that traumatize me greatly.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is, you deserve balance, James.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: You do.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to find it. I always go outside anyway,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: but now I can monetize it, which is great and
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: also scary.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: Don't you love 2026?
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't it cool? Whenever I go camping, now I
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: take a little fucking voice recorder. Just in case I
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: hear an animal to use for B-roll. What a cursed existence.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: We have to have Molly Conger on the show too
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: because anytime you guys are talking, it is just like the.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: Most delightful hour.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: Molly is wonderful.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: I learned a thousand horrible things and I also am
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: delighted and entertained.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: Molly is fantastic. She has her own show called Weird
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: Little Guys.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: Beautiful.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: You should listen to that one too.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: And I also want more balance for her too. Well,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us, James. This was
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: such a blast.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Yeah.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: And then you can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. We're going
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: on tour.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: We will be in the Northeast of the United States
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: of America. Ever heard of it?
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: We'll be in New York. We'll be in Boston. We'll
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: be in Pittsburgh. We'll be in State College. We'll be
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. We'll be in Baltimore. I think those are
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: all the places we will currently be with other regions
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: and cities that we will be going to later in
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: the year for our 10-year anniversary.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: Yay.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: If you live in that region, come out and see
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: a show. They're super fun.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: Tickets are at linktree.com. And with that, I mean, that'll do.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: That'll do, Pod. That'll do.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: Bye. Bye.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: The Bechtelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: by me, Jamie Loftus.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: Sophie Lichterman.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: That's me. And our logo and merch and all of
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: heard of her?
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. And our theme song, by the way,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski. Iconic.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: And a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.