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The Birdcage with Manuel Betancourt · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: On the Bechde Cast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: have individualism? The patriarchy zeffi beast start changing with the
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We are family. I am a Republican official. I mean
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: certainly not us, but certainly Gene Hackman. What an iconic.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Oh god, I'm so excited to talk about today's I've
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: already just started the episode by accident, but just like,
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: there's so many beautiful parts of this movie, and ultimately
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: it's like, how can we as a community help this
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Republican avoid a scandal? And you're like, oh, what if
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: we didn't, What if we didn't Callista Lockhart would live,
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: She'd be fine.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: Anyways, Anyways, welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: Welcome. Indeed, my name is Kaitlin Durante.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: My name is Jamie Loftus, and this is the podcast
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: where we talk about all of your favorite movies from
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: an intersectional feminist perspective. And today we are covering a God.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I feel like this is one of this qualifies as
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: a movie. We have almost covered like six or seven
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: times at this point, and we just never had the
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: right guest come along until to today.
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, let's bring them in. Our guest today is a
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: film critic and writer. It's Manuel Bettencourt.
• 1:29
  Speaker 6: Welcome, thank you for having me. I love talking about
• 1:32
  Speaker 6: this movie. So I'm very excited about today.
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: We're so excited to have you. I forgot we didn't
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: tell anyone what the Bechdel Test is?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Well, what is it?
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Well?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 1:41
  Speaker 5: Well, here's what it is. It is a media metric
• 1:44
  Speaker 5: created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: Wallace Test. It is a media metric that has many
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: different versions. Ours is do two characters of a marginalized
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: is there cover about something other than a man. We
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: particularly like it when it's a substantial conversation and not
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: just throw away dialogue. And also, this is something that
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: we bring up now and then. Important context that often
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: gets left out of the conversation around the Bechdel Test
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: is that the comic that it appeared in Alison Bechdel's
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: Dikes to Watch Out For showed characters talking about whether
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: or not movies past this test because they were specifically
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: looking for women in movies talking to each other about
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: something other than a man, because if they weren't talking
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: about a man, the characters in the comic could ship
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: those characters together. Because there was so little lesbian representation
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: on screen, right, we're a representation on screen in general.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: We've mentioned this on this show over the years, but
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I feel like, especially like it's worth bringing up every
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: once in a while because Alison Bechdel was truly playing
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: a game of five D chess that I don't think
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: the general public gives her credit for. Like it's just
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: reduced to, you know, people of marginalized genders talking about anything.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: But it's like, no, she she had a reason, she
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: had a motivation.
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: So that's all the context. Menuel, thank you for being here.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: Of course, tell us about your relationship with The Bird Cage.
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: I feel like I don't know a world in which
• 3:26
  Speaker 6: The Bird Cage was not part of my life. It's
• 3:28
  Speaker 6: one of those nineties movies that were so played in
• 3:32
  Speaker 6: my house. I think it's one of those that it
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: was in constant rotation. I don't remember that we had
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: a VCR, A VHS of a Baby just played on
• 3:39
  Speaker 6: TV all the time, and every time I was on.
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: I just watch it, and it has to have been
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: one of the first mainstream Hollywood films that I remember
• 3:49
  Speaker 6: watching that was about gay men, and it was about drag,
• 3:53
  Speaker 6: and like they were not punchlines, like this was before
• 3:56
  Speaker 6: Will and Grace, Like it was a sort of a
• 3:57
  Speaker 6: round sort of time. It was like Robin Williams, who like,
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: of course I knew, and Nathan Lane, who I then
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: fell in love with. But it just I've always watched it.
• 4:08
  Speaker 7: It was so central in.
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: My like teenage years, and I always loved it, and
• 4:13
  Speaker 6: it's it was only until I sort of went to
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: college and you know, reading something like fun Home and
• 4:18
  Speaker 6: reading Bechdell and sort of reading queer theory and sort
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: of then going back to it and being like, oh,
• 4:22
  Speaker 6: this is a movie that at its time it was
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: both so radical and so traditional. And I think that's
• 4:29
  Speaker 6: where the for me has always been the crux of it,
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: because it is, you know, how do we help those
• 4:33
  Speaker 6: Republicans Cenator not have a controversy, have a scandal and
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: also let celebrate family, but also do it with.
• 4:40
  Speaker 7: The power of drag and the power of you.
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: Know, battling against toxic masculinity, And how do we value
• 4:46
  Speaker 6: femininity and gay men, and the fact that I could
• 4:49
  Speaker 6: do both those things at the same time has always
• 4:52
  Speaker 6: fascinated me. So I think about it a lot. I
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: laugh about it every single time. I quote it infinitely.
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: And also everyone's you have Robin Williams, you have Nathan Lane,
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: you have Christine Baranski, you have you have. I mean,
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: it is Hank Azaria doing a very very problematic quant character.
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll talk about that, Hank Azaria being you know,
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: Hank azarias.
• 5:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: The thing is, I like the bit about the shoes
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: so much.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It's funny.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: The bit about the shoes gets me every single time.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Like the shoes bit would have carried me for a
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: six hour like a whole Lord of the Rings marathon.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I could have watched the shoes bit. It's so funny.
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Jamie, what's your history with the movie.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I've seen this movie so many times.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: I feel like it is one of the more quotable
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: movies that exists.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: There's people who quote this movie all the time and
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: don't even know that they're quoting this movie. And that
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: is the power of a good Elaine mayscript. And I'm
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: very excited to talk about her and Mike Nichols as well.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But I just I love this.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: My mom this is one of her favorite movies ever.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: She had it on a lot.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: I remember very clearly my mom being like, Jamie, this
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: is the movie where the Genie and Timone are married.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: And I was like, awesome, and she's like, yeah, it
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: is awesome.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: So I think, I, yeah, I've probably been watching this
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: movie since I was like ten, maybe I don't even
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: maybe even sooner, like it's just a great movie to
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: have on.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: And I don't know, I didn't even realize.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: I think, Manuel, it's like a great way to put it,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: is like this movie is both very subversive and very
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: like grounded in more traditional values than you would think
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: when you like go back to look at it.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: It's so interesting and it was wildly successful.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, this is like a v This
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: was a VHS standby.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I spent a.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: Lot of you know, sick days watching The Birdcage alone
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: and in my whatever, eight nine, ten year old brain,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: it was the movie where the Genie and Timone were married,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: and it will always be YEA, yeah, Caitlin, what's your
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: history with the Bird Cage?
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: So I bring this up on the podcast every now
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: and then where there's a movie that I've seen a
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: few clips of before I actually saw the movie. And
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: I saw the clips by playing the movie trivia game.
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: Seen it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, right this movie got play.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Whoever did see it was a big bird Cage fan.
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: The bird Cage because I would see the clip where
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: Robin Williams is teaching or kind of like demonstrating to
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: this dancer for an upcoming performance, different dances that he
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: can do. He's like Madonna, Madonna, Twila, Twila.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: You know that part is so like when I was
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: rewatching it, I was like, oh, that's just a moment
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: where they were like Robin Williams, just do Robin Williams
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: think here and he and boy did he?
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: He sure did. And so it was that scene. It
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: was the scene where Robin Williams is telling Nathan Lane
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: to keep his pinky down and that men's smear, you know,
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: iconic scenes, and I would watch them and I'm like,
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: what is this movie? What movie is are these scenes from?
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: And then I eventually saw the movie, I think when
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: I was probably a freshman in college, and I was like,
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: oh my gosh, I get why it was so heavily
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: featured and seen it. It's such a fun, funny movie,
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: and I watched it every few years after that. Again,
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: not one I grew up with, but one I've appreciated
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: as an adult. And I'm glad we're finally covering it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: There's so much to talk about.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: It's an awesome It's also just like I love a farce.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I love a damn farce.
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize, because i'm, you know, uncultured swine, that
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: this was based on a French play. And I love
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: finding out something like that because it makes me feel
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: like I'm secretly, like so smart. And that's actually why
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: I watched The Bird Cage one hundred times, is because
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: I love French theater culture exactly exactly.
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: back for the recap. And we are back, and here
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: is the recap for The Bird Cage. We open in
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: South Beach in Miami, Florida. Ever heard of it on
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: a drag club called the bird Cage. That's the name
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: of the movie.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: We're Cheering, We're Cheering, Woo.
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: It is run by armand played by Robin Williams. We
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: also meet his partner Albert played by Nathan Lane, a
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: drag performer whose stage name is Starina and Armand and
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: Agadoor played by Hankazaria, who is Armand and Albert's man servant.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Cool boy.
• 10:20
  Speaker 8: Yeah really, I'm like, there's so many things to talk
• 10:25
  Speaker 8: about with that character, but one of them was like,
• 10:27
  Speaker 8: I hope he's getting paid in more than rent.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I hope he's getting paid money.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: Right, We're not sure, but anyway, Armand and Agador are
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: trying to convince Albert to get ready and go on
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: stage for the performance. But Albert is too upset because
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: he thinks Armand is cheating on him.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: There's nothing like Nathan Lane sobbing, like no one sobs
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: like Nathan Lane.
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: Him sobbing him, gasping, him, squealing, It's incredible. Yeah, So
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: he thinks that Armand is cheating on him, and we
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: the audience are kind of led to believe that that
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: might be true.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: This is a very weird fake out. I will say
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: every time I see this fake out, you're just like,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: why did they?
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: But whatever, It's it's farcie, but you're still like.
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: Okay, unclear why this was done. So what happens is
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: a young man comes to see Armand, but twist it's
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: his son, but not his secret lover. So his son
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: Val played by Dan Futterman, is there to ask for
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: his dad's blessing because he wants to get married to
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: his girlfriend Barbara, and Armand is like, you're twenty years
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: old and you're too young to get married.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But and he was right to say it. He was
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: right to say it. I'm just not wrong.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: I was seeing a lot of letterbox reviews of this
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: movie that put in words something that I was like, Oh,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: that is sort of because we're told they're twenty repeatedly,
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: but like in nineteen ninety six, twenty year olds looked
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: thirty five. Like it's just I don't know if it's
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: like a dressing thing. I don't know if it's like
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: a skincare thing. I mean, they're dressed like adults. But
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: I just kept being like, they're yeah, they're too young,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: but they also look like, you know, they're in their thirties.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: They probably have I don't know.
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: It's confusing, yeah, but they are twenty. And Armand is like,
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: what are you doing? But I guess go ahead and
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: have your hetero wedding. Then we meet Barbara played by
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: Klysta Flockhart and her family. Her dad is Kevin Keeley
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: played by Gene Hackman. He's a conservative senator and co
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: founder of something called the Coalition for Moral Order. Her mom,
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: Louise played by Diane Weist, is a very like wife
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: of a conservative senator type, you know, very like in
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: Pearl Clutching. Yeah, and her parents are not thrilled with
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: the idea of Barbara getting married so young either, but
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: they kind of warm up to the idea when Barbara
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: says that VAL's dad is a cultural attache to Greece
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: and his mom is a housewife. But we know that
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: VAL's dad is the owner of a drag club and
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: his quote unquote mom is Nathan Lane.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: So way better. But they did they didn't better.
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: They didn't realize, they didn't know how good they had.
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: It, I know. So then Senator Keeley gets embroiled in
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: a scandal where his colleague and the other founder of
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: the Coalition for Moral Order was found dead with an
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: underage black sex worker. And we will unpack that later. Yeah,
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: but her parents are like, hmm, maybe our daughter's wedding
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: to vow can rehabilitate our image especially because they think
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: Val comes from this very traditional, wholesome, heterosexual family, and
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: especially because right now the press is having a field
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: day with this scandal and Senator A. Kiley's reputation is
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: on the line. Then we get that famous scene where
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: Albert is rehearsing and Armand is directing, and Albert says,
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: he blew a bubble with gum at me while I
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: was singing. He can't do that while I'm singing, And
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: then Armand does that demonstration of all the dance moves
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: the other.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Preferred culturally impactful indeed.
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: Then Val takes Armand aside and tells him that Barbara
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: and her parents are coming for dinner the following day
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: and how they're very conservative, and that Barbara told them
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: all that stuff about VAL's parents being a cultural attache
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: and a house life. So Val asks his dad and
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: Albert to play that part, which will mean hiding all
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: of their penis art and quote unquote so much dick art.
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: It's hilarious.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: I honestly like it's I And you don't realize how
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: much is there until they have to remove.
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: It, until they're packing it up, and you're like, hmm,
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: that's quite a bit. Yeah, so they have to hide
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: all of that. They have to quote unquote act more straight,
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: which includes sending Albert away for a few days. He
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: can't even be present.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: And this is where I mean, like, I don't know,
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited to talk about I think, you know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: evil villain.
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: Val, like Val, Oh my gosh, yes.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: How ungrateful.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: His mother is literally Nathan Lane and look how he's
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: dealing with Like ugh, Val, Yeah, we'll talk about it.
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: So Val makes all these homophobic demands, and Armand is like,
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: fuck that, I'm not going to pretend to be somebody
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: else for this conservative asshole. But then Armand changes his
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: mind and agrees to play along for the sake of
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: his son, because ultimately, every movie is about fathers and sons.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, and see it's like that's where it's like, it's
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: it's subversive and it's traditional. It's still about fathers and sons,
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: so people can be comfortable.
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: Yes, exactly. So Armand suggests to Albert that he go
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: away on a trip, because again, Albert is quite effeminate
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: and doesn't fit this image that they're trying to create
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: a vow coming from this traditional hetero family, and Albert
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: is very very understandably hurt by this, and Armand tries
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: to comfort and reassure him, and then Albert's like, well,
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: what if I pretend to be a relative who drops in,
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: you know, Uncle al I could play it straight. And
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: this is the scene where Armand tries to coach Albert
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: on how to you know, quote unquote act straight, how
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: to keep his pinky down, and how to smear condiments
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: like a man, and walk like a man and chew
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: tobacco like a man. Yes, but like a man.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I was hoping this was taking a turn for Titanic.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes, of course, naturally. And meanwhile, Barbara and her
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: family have snuck away from the hordes of press surrounding
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: their house. They drive from Ohio to Florida over the
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: course of I think a single day, and it takes
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: longer than that, but anyway, who's counting. They make this
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: quick trip to Florida to meet VAL's family, but there
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: are a couple journalists who saw them escape and now
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: they are following the family back in South Beach. Val
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: finds out that Armand told Albert that he can stay
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: and pretend to be uncle al Val is freaking out,
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: and really, this is the peak of him being a
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: little shit and our mom's like, okay, well what we
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: really need is a woman to pretend to be your mother.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: Hey wait, let's just ask your actual birth mother. Who
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: turns out to be Christine Baranski.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Which, if you have to choose a birth.
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: Mother, you like, that's like you couldn't do better.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's truly about as good as you can do, truly.
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: Her name is Catherine Armand goes to see her. They
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: reminisce about how they met, that one time that they
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: slept together where she got pregnant and had vowel.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's a great scene.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I also love the like like this is the very
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: nineties two thousands contrivance. I'm sure it's still around, but
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: like she's just vaguely business like, like you don't like
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: she has an office, and you're like, good for her.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: We like whatever it is.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: She's like too, she's girl bossing.
• 18:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah, or like woohoo executive realness.
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes, the SHEEO of a company. And Albert walks
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: in on them being kind of handsy slash. It's Christine
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: Baranski who's like really touching Armand in a way that
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: we're not sure that he's comfortable or consenting to it.
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: But anyway, Albert sees this, he gets upset and he
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: threatens to leave. Armand comforts him once again gives him
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: calamony papers saying that he has like rightful ownership of
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: the club, and Armand decides to tell Catherine not to
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: come to dinner after all. Meanwhile, Val is continuing his
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: little homophobic meltdown. Then Catherine calls to be like, wait,
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: so you don't want me to come, and Val is
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: like no, no, no, no, we do want you to come,
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: because again he's just too ashamed of Albert. So Catherine
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: makes her way to the house. Albert, who is upset
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: that he's not effectively passing as straight, locks himself in
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: his room. Then the Kiley family arrives to the house
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: for dinner, and Armand and Val are doing their best
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: to pretend that Armand is straight. The whole situation is
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: awkward and uncomfortable and funny. We have Hank Azarias slipping
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: all over.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: This is where the iconic shoes bit comes in and
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: I just love, like whatever, Gene Hackman, who knows he's
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: I don't even know where I would rank him in
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: the you know, he's in the bottom half of this cast,
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: which is saying something because I think he's awesome, right,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: But like the second how he like instantly connects with
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Albert without knowing, Like it's just it's so funny.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: It's like they're they're just killing it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: It's great, right, because before that the dynamic is extremely awkward,
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: and Gene Hackman goes on this long, boring ti rae
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: about the foliage in Virginia or something like that, and
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: everyone's like.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Uh huh.
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: And then the big moment comes where Albert, dressed as
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: a woman, comes in pretending to be VAL's mom, who
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: is a conservative housewife, and then yeah, Gene Hackman's character
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: immediately takes a liking to her, which also like kind
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: of threatens Barbara's mom and she's like.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: You like her better than me? And low key he does.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Like they hit it off.
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: Especially because Nathan Lane in drag pretending to be VAL's
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: mother is like spewing some of the most like the
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: wildest conservative rhetoric where it's like, no, I don't even
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: I don't think we should kill abortion doctors. We should
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: kill the mothers who are trying to have abortions.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Just like ugh, it's like it's I don't know.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: It's part of why I love this movie is so
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: much because it works on it. Like he, you know,
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Albert's playing five D chess.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: He's like doing conservative drag too, like he's intellectual drag
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: on top of like it's amazing.
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: It's so funny.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: So meanwhile, the journalists have lost track of the Kighleis,
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: but they're taking what information they do have to try
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: to figure out where they've gone. And they find out
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: about the Birdcage nightclub owned by someone named armand Goldman,
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: and there's this mix up of like are they the
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: Coleman's or the Goldmans because another component of it is
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: that they're pretending not to be Jewish in order to,
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: you know, impress this conservative Christian family. So that's part
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: of it. Now it's time for dinner, and this is
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: where things really start to fall apart because there are
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: these gay horny bowls. Albert's wig is falling off. Catherine
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: shows up because she still thinks they need her to
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: be there, and then Senator and Missus Keeley are like
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: who is this and why do you have two moms?
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: So Val finally reveals the truth, which is that Armand
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: and Albert are together as a gay couple. They run
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: the drug club downstairs. They are his parents. The Kilis
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: are horrified and they're about to leave, but the journalists
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: are on the doorsteps, so they're kind of trapped there.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: The press have gotten wind about the senator possibly being there,
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: so then they get the idea to sneak the Kihlis
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: out through the club by dressing them in drag so
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: that they will escape undetected, and that works, and then
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: we cut to Val and Barbara's wedding and it's all
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: of you know, like Barbara's conservative friends and family looking
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: over at VAL's queer friends and family being like, what
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: what's going? And that's the end of the movie. So
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: let's take another quick break and we will come back
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: to discuss. Okay, there's a lot to unpack.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Where did they get Yeah, and then well what stands
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: out to you?
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Where would you like to start, guests, Honor.
• 24:26
  Speaker 7: There are so many places to start.
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: I always like starting in a conversation about this movie
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: with Nathan Lane because I think he I mean, we
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: can talk about Nichols and May sort of being the
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: DNA of the film, but I think the film lives
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: and dies on Lane's performance and the way that he
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: really keys into the tone. And I think in that
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: dinner scene when he is doing this like conservative drag
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: to the m degree is working on so many levels
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: for audiences who are keyed into what he's doing. Najie
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: Hackman obviously not senator to Chilly, who's always only seeing
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: the little stuff in front of him, which is like,
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: this is what a woman looks like, this is what
• 25:02
  Speaker 6: a woman's supposed to think, this is what I want.
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: She's only agreeing with me, she's only right, like she's
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: of course, he takes a liking to her. Yeah, And
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: I think the farce of the movie, which I think
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: is what Lane does so well, is what helps for
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: me sand down a lot of the problems, right, So,
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: like the fact that Val is an asshole, right, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 6: the fact that he's like really an ungrateful son. The
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: only reason that works is because this is a farce
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: and not a melodrama. If this were a melodrama, then
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: we would be encouraged more to like examine why, like
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: the whys of what he's being such a little bastard
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: of a son, and like why he's being so ungrateful.
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: But because this is a farce and because we know
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: this is sort of this plot that's going to put
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: into motion all of these like hilarious antics, I think
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: it makes me a little bit softer on valid because
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: I think the movie actually ends it pushes us to
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: disagree with him. I think there's no if you walk
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: out of the bird cage thinking that, well Val I
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: was asking was normal or acceptable, Like, I think you've
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: not read the film, because the film really just wants
• 26:06
  Speaker 6: to get you to the point to be like this
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: never should have happened, right, And so it indicts Val.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: And it does that by giving Lane and giving Albert
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: so much power in those funny scenes in like you
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: you're so drawn to him and drawn to what he's doing,
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: and those right as we were talking at the beginning,
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: like he can sigh and it's funny, he can squeal
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: and it's funny. He can gasp when it's funny. He
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: can like look as scans and it's funny. His wig
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: can be like coming off and it's hilarious. And he
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: does so much with every single line reading that of
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: course you're falling in love with them in every single
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: version of them, so I think in that sense, like
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: that's where I always begin.
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and in an ideal world or you know, an
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: alternate universe, the plot of this movie wouldn't even have
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: to exist because val would have just been like, yeah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: these are my parents, armand and all, and they are
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: happily together as a gay couple. Okay, right, but that's
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: not the world we live in. And so you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: the movie hinges on them pretending to be a straight
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: couple to appease a conservative senator. And you know, we
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: can talk about the way that culminates as far as
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: like and the conservative family learned their lesson not to
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: be so homophobic and.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Right, And it's like if we don't even I mean
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: not until like head can it. We don't even know
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: that they like probably they didn't learn their lesson. I
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: don't I don't think that this leads like this leads
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: to Senator Kelly, you know, proposing legislation that's friendly to
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: queer people.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I just don't see it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It feels almost like, I mean sorry to immediately go here,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: but almost like a like a Donald Trumpian thing where
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: you know, as someone who has a ton of queer
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: people and in their life, but would never in his
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: life put forth any legislation for them to be treated equally.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I think minimiir to your point,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Like if we're viewing this movie and I feel like
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: we have to because of the culture it was released into,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: as like nineteen ninety six, in general, a movie will
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: be successful if it is presented in the US to
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: a straight audience, and the.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: Fact that this movie's resolution is.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Hinged on letting Armand and Albert be who they are
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: is meaningful and that like Val, like you were saying, man, well,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: like Val did the wrong thing by asking his parents
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: to which feels so obvious now right, like obviously, you know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: From a twenty twenty four perspective.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Like he is a villain, and like Albert should be
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: allowed to legally kill him if he chose.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I That's just how I feel.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: But but like, yeah, for in the culture that this
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: movie was released into, I feel like it really tracks.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: And it's like, while there is a part of me
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: that wants this movie to push even more, I also
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: know that, you know, it's very likely because we've talked
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: about this in a lot of movies that have queer protagonists.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: How it's so easy to be totally screwed over in
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: terms of ratings, in terms of distribution, and in terms
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: of just getting your work out there, especially the further
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: back you go in history, if things are if whatever
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: invisible line is crossed, and I think for the time
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: this movie came out and the cast and just like
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: all of these incredible things that it goes way further
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: than most movies at this time were, and it like
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: definitely doesn't hurt that it's so fucking funny, no, right.
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: And like we said, it centers a story that, at
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: least at this time and especially in mainstream American media,
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: was acknowledging something that was not often brought up, which
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: is that, you know, in order to survive, queer people
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: often had to hide significant parts of themselves. They had
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: to you know, code switch in a number of ways
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: just to be safe out in the world and not
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: be you know, quote unquote detected. And we see all
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: those scenes where Armand is teaching Albert how to quote
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: unquote act straight, smear, pinky down, walk like John Way
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff, and then that brings
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: up this concept of performing gender and what society's idea
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: is of what it is to be a man or
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: to be a woman, which generally speaking is a very
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: you know, rigid, binary, heterocentric view from society.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and well that's like perfectly demonstrated by how like
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Senator Keeley is immediately taken in by Albert's conservative drag,
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: like it's it couldn't be clear, and that like gender
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: is constructed based on how immediately he's like this lady
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: rocks yea, like she looks and sounds like I need
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: her to.
• 31:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah. I think so there's two things.
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: I think, Yes, this that the context in which the
• 31:10
  Speaker 6: movie was made is sort of very important, I think
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: sometimes gets cossed over. But I think also the fact
• 31:14
  Speaker 6: that it takes place in South Beach, because I think
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: it reminds us that there are and were places where
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: gay folks queer folks created a community.
• 31:23
  Speaker 7: Where they didn't need to coad switch. Right.
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: So that scene where Arman and Albert are walking to
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: the restaurant where he's going to teach him how to
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: smear like a man, they passed through so many gay
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: men and they say hi, And the film really paints
• 31:36
  Speaker 6: South Beach, you know, as you know, Fire Island, or
• 31:39
  Speaker 6: as Province down or as pump Springs as these like
• 31:42
  Speaker 6: havens of queer community that live in isolation, right, Like
• 31:46
  Speaker 6: this is a place where they've created a community and
• 31:49
  Speaker 6: a space and a business and a life that doesn't require.
• 31:52
  Speaker 7: Them to coad switch.
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: And I think, right, that's that also can key us
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: into sort of like, oh, this is what happens when
• 31:58
  Speaker 6: val leaves. Right, val grew up in but as soon
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: as he's needing to interact with the with the outside world,
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: with Achilles of the world, like, he has no way
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: of doing that because he's never had to. And I
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: think to me, that's also fascinating. Thing is like it's
• 32:10
  Speaker 6: usually queer folks who have to be like being like, oh,
• 32:13
  Speaker 6: this is what the world expects of me, But in
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: this case, it's Valve being like, I don't have the
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: language I have, I have no way of doing this,
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: so of course I'm going to retreat into what I know.
• 32:23
  Speaker 6: And in terms of this, like the gender performance, I
• 32:25
  Speaker 6: hear this is also like farce. Like if we've seen
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: Shakespeare in comedy, it's like it's always men dressing as
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: women and like everyone So I think it's it's fascinating
• 32:33
  Speaker 6: that Nicholson may sort of like really be like, this
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: is the genre in which to do that, and this
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: is what allows us because this is what we've always
• 32:41
  Speaker 6: seen in comedy and it's and it and it doesn't.
• 32:43
  Speaker 6: What does it differently is like it never does it
• 32:45
  Speaker 6: at the expense of drag performers.
• 32:47
  Speaker 7: It never does it.
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: At the expensive it's queer characters. It's really so reverential
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: to them, Like it really is an awe of what
• 32:55
  Speaker 6: Storrena can do and what Albert can do, and they can,
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: you know, create a character of nothing while they're in
• 33:01
  Speaker 6: their bedroom. Like I every time, I'm like, oh, he
• 33:04
  Speaker 6: had that wig, and he had those pearls, and he
• 33:06
  Speaker 6: had that dress like just in his closet, So what
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: many other women could he have like drum up in
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: five minutes while he was you know, crying and wailing
• 33:15
  Speaker 6: about I would.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Love to see the other options.
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: The incredible that's a trying on clothes montage that I
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: would have loved to see.
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: I mean, its dout fire like moment right like is
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: this wig?
• 33:29
  Speaker 7: Is this? As these these nails?
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: I also, I mean just from uh whatever, having first
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: seen this movie when I was a kid, I think.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: If you don't count Timone and Pumba, which arguably you could.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: This was the first movie at least that I had
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: ever seen where there were gay parents and and and
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: really I mean, while you know, being flawed in all
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: the way people are are flawed, both really really good,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: loving kind parents and and it feels like crumbs now,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: but I know for sure if you don't count Timon
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: and Pumba as adoptive fathers, which again I do, but
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: but that, yeah, that Albert narmand are we're probably the
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: first example in a in a movie I saw of
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: queer parents, which is wild because it's like I had
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: uncles who were parents, but I had just never seen
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: it in a movie before. And and yeah, I mean
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: as much of a you know, sort.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Of like a fearful dipshit that Val can be. You know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: he had amazing parents and he knows that.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: And that's like part of the frustration of watching that
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: character go through this is like, you do know that
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: at his core he knows that his parents love him
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: so much, and he's trying to like fit himself into roundhole,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: square peg whatever that metaphor is, right, Yeah, which like
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: one of the things that I mean, I don't know,
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: it's sort of like, I don't really I don't actually
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: feel like, man, I wish Callista Flockhart was in this more.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: No disrespect to her, but it's just like I don't
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: want to take a second of screen time away from
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Nathan Lane.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. I was kind of curious about
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I guess why.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Even in the space of a farce like I would
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: have loved to see her be more willing to push
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: against her parents, right, I feel like that would have,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: you know, characterized her a little bit more and also
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: just like would have honestly for you know, would have
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: made sense to be more because I'm just like Val.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: If Val grew up in a queer flirty in Paradise,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: why her?
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Why her?
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: If she's absolutely unwilling to move like It's just I
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: don't know, I was a little confused and put off
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: by her character, and I mean that's just personal, but
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: also I mean, if we're looking, like looking at the
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: women in this story as well, like I was just
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: kind of like baffled that even by nineteen ninety six standards,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: that she wasn't at least challenging vals, you know, because
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: that's an interesting dynamic too, is if Val.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Is like here's what I'm gonna do.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: I'm going to do the most evil thing of all
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: time in an attempt to be accepted by your family. Like,
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: what is the response to that? And she's but she
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: sort of is just like, yeah, it makes sense to me.
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: I wonder if that's why those characters are written to
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: be the age that they are twenty and eighteen, because like, because.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: They're still basically kids. Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: I also think as soon as you see her mom,
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: you maybe sort of understand why she would be such
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: a wilting flower, because for most of the movie, Senator
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: Achilly's wife his sort of mum and submissive and it's
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: only through the moment of a dinner and again it's
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: a credit to Weese's performance that she's sort of blossoms. Like,
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: if we're going to head canon the future of the couple,
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: I think like she's one who will have emerged from
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: this being like, oh, not only are queer people I
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: don't know people, but maybe I should not be so
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: subservient to my idiot husband because she she is the
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: one who like sort of pushes back the most out
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: of her and Callista sort of in the film.
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: But I wonder if that's only because she's feeling threatened
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: by how much Gene Hackman seems to be taking a
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: liking to you know, Albert in Conservative Lady Drag, which
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: is kind of like a misogynist trope of like, oh
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: I find this other woman threatening, and so women are
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: in conflict now because of it. The movie doesn't really
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: examine that very thoroughly, but I was like, I wonder
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: if that's kind of why there's any pushback from the
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: Dian Weiest character.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: But I do think like her performance like brings a
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: ton and I don't know, I mean an ultimate like
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: this is not a women's movie necessarily, Like I feel
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: like to some point it's like that is a lot
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of what we talk about. And I do think that
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: there is even in like nineteen ninety six by nineteen
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: ninety six standards like questions I had.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: I don't know how much of that is lost in adaptation.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: I'm not familiar with the source material because I'm not
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: actually that smart. I've just seen The Birdcage, but I
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: mean clearly like this is a story that is centered
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: on the Goldman family. But I did, yeah, there were
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: a few questions I had just about how it felt
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: like the women were characterized less thoughtfully, but I mean,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's because two out of the three women
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: we see in this movie are kind of these like
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: conservative stock characters, which makes sense in the space of
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: a farce. And then we have Christine Baranski, who's just awesome.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Like one thing I was really happy about in this
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: space of this movie is that I feel like, you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: so often when you see a mother character, whether it's
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: just like a biological mother or someone who's taken on
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: the role of a mother, you know, someone who has
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: a child but is not a mother to that child,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: like there's just an inherent like how dare you? Or
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: a woman who gives up a child for adoption, you know,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: like it's there's a how dare you aspect to it
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: that this movie just completely foregoes, Like it's there's not
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: a moment of shame placed on this character, which I
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: was I mean, again, just I think maybe it's like
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: something that you're sort of conditioned to expect in a movie.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: It's like, you know, if if someone gives.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Birth and then the child is adopted, there is an
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: expectation of shame, of regret, and that the adoptive parents
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: could not possibly be sufficient and that's just not entertained.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: By the end, it makes total sense in the story,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: but it's like this was the arrangement. She doesn't regret it,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: No one regrets it, and she's just like happy to
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: see Ramand again, I think it's really nice.
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: I made that note too, that it's so rare to
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: see in a movie where if like people had a
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: one night stand and a pregnancy happened because of it,
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: you would typically see the mother raising the baby, you know,
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: possibly as a single mother, and then the father may
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: or may not be in the picture. But in this case,
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: it's the father who raises the baby, and that's just
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: something you rarely see in movies.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: Knocked Out came out like twelve years after this, and
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: it's like far more conservative and its view of one
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: night stands.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: Like we have kind of mentioned the context a bit,
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: and I like to go through it more thoroughly because
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: it is super interesting of you know, how this movie
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: came to be and the backs here. So I'm pulling
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: most of this from a video essay from Matt Baum
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: entitled The Bird Cage and uh oh French words coming
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: The Cage of Full The Inside Story, No, No, thank you.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: It's perfect.
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: Okay, I recommend you know watching this video essay. It
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: does a really deep dive into the history of how
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: the movie The Bird Cage came to be. This is
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: a very kind of summarized version of that. But basically,
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: two French theater performers, oh more French coming, Jean Pirot
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: and Michelle Serol, they write a play in I believe
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: nineteen seventy three called The Bird Cage but in French,
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: which more or less has the same plot as the
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: movie The Bird Cage and was kind of loosely inspired
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: by a British play from the late nineteen sixties called
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: The Staircase, not to be confused with the true crime
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: docu series The Staircase.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: Which we have actually talked about extensively, extensively. We've been
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: on a real journey. We don't have time. But yeah,
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: he probably did do it.
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: He probably did do it. Or maybe it was an
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: owl owl.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah that was how that was how I knew my
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: brain was fully developed. Where prior to my brain's full development,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I was like, it was the owl. And then the
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: second that shit was locked in, I was like, no.
• 42:20
  Speaker 7: He obviously did it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah it yes, So this staircase is about a gay
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: couple who, even though they bicker a lot, they love
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: each other and they're together and they face the world together.
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: So La caage a Full was then adapted to a
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: French movie in nineteen seventy eight, and both the play
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: and the film were loved by audiences straight and queer
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: audiences alike because of its nuanced depictions of the queer
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: experience and queer relationships. So the French film got a
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: very small distribution in the US and it screened at
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: a couple dozen art house theaters in the late seventies,
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: but it got rave reviews and I think at least
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: one OSCAR nomination, So it was appreciated by the audiences
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: who did see it, although it wasn't a large number
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: of people, and it was one of the first films
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: about a gay couple to get a theatrical release in
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: the US. So an American producer, Alan Carr saw the
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: movie and wanted to adapt it to an American film,
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: but no one took him seriously, but they did sell
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: him the rights for the stage play, so Alan Carr
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: went to work putting a musical stage production together for
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: an American audience. He hired Mike Nichols, among other people,
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: but he fired them all and then hired another team,
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: including Arthur Laurent and Harvey Feierstein.
• 44:00
  Speaker 7: Yeah, oh yeah, he brought brought the big guns for lag. Yeah.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, okay, not fucking around, not fucking around.
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: And so they developed the script together. There were artistic
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: differences in vision throughout the development, but eventually the musical
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: debuted in Boston. Okay, hello, I ever heard of it,
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: and I believe nineteen eighty three, and they were really
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: concerned about how especially Boston audiences would receive it. But
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: the audiences loved it. And so the musical.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Boss is full of surprises. And I say this as
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: someone currently sitting in it. Yeah, it's it's you never
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: know what you're going to get, but often it's love
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: and acceptance.
• 44:49
  Speaker 6: I know.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: It's so nice. Okay. So then because of the success
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: in Boston, the musical opened on Broadway and it was
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: a huge hit. It was nominated for eight Tonies. It
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: ran for several years, It toured around and an American
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: film adaptation was the next logical step, but they still
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: didn't have the film rights at this time. There was
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: also a bunch of like messy stuff happening in Hollywood
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: with MGM, the studio that would have been the one
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: to produce this movie. But eventually the film rights were secured.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: This is like the early nineties now that we're talking about, okay,
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: and Mike Nichols came on board to direct after being
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: fired from the stage production like a decade earlier. There
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: was apprehension on the part of the studio because a
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: major studio doing a mainstream broad comedy about a gay
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: couple was pretty unheard of at the time, and no
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: one was really sure how American film going audiences would
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: respond to this, especially around this time and you know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: throughout much of history. But there was so much homophobic
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: rhetoric from conservative politicians who were like running on the
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: platform of homophobia.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: The Senator Achilles of the actual world.
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: Of the real world exactly.
• 46:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah, this is in the context we had Jesse Holmes.
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: But also, I mean we should also say, like this
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: was also don't Ask, don't tell, So it is Clinton here.
• 46:20
  Speaker 6: So it's not just the right wing people that are
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: sort of presenting a homophobic front.
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: For sure, it was conservative and you know, democratic politicians alike,
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: but Mike Nichols was just like very adamant about making
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: this movie. He cast Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Hankazaria
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: among the other cast members, and many of them and
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: the studio were nervous about how the movie would be
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: received by audiences. Ultimately, it was a huge box office success.
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: It was made on a thirty million dollar budget. It
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: made one hundred and eighty five million at the box
• 46:58
  Speaker 5: office or less, saved MGM, which was absolutely flopping as
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: a studio at the time, and it paved the way
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: for more queer characters and queer relationships to be present
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: in mainstream media.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: So and it also reunited I mean as like a
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: comedy had it reunited Nichols in May, which is like
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: so beautiful and so cool. I mean, they were like
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: a truly like still modern comedy defining a duo in.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I think the fifties.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: And they eventually went their separate ways in the sixties.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And you know, Nichols went on.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: To direct a lot of theater and direct movies, and
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: May also went on to direct and write a lot
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: of movies.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Although I think she is still.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Comparatively underappreciated and she's still with us shout out Elaine May.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: But this was I mean, they hadn't worked together in gosh,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: I mean I think it was decades. I mean it
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: had been easily twenty five years since they had worked together.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: It wasn't like a bad blood situation, but they just
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: hadn't worked together in a really long time. And to
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: come back together in this collaboration is like what a dunk?
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: Like that's so great.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:14
  Speaker 6: This is also where I should say, like if you
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: have not watched the Broadway show, because it is fantastic
• 48:21
  Speaker 6: and it is sort of you know, looking back in
• 48:23
  Speaker 6: the nineteen eighty three if you think of Hiri Feirestein
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: doing the show, writing the show, and in the Tony
• 48:31
  Speaker 6: broadcast having there's this big number called I Am What
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: I Am, which is sung and dragged by the character
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: about this. That's the number that the producers chose to
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: do on the Tony broadcast, which they knew would be
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: watched by like, you know, millions of people. That in
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: itself was also kind of like groundbreaking to see drag
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: performers on stage at the Tony Awards, you know, on
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: network television. So this is the kind of like ip
• 48:55
  Speaker 6: if you will, that has really been breaking ground sort
• 48:58
  Speaker 6: of for decades and being away and you know when
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: we talk about you know, as you said, you know,
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: it is one of the first examples of like a
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: queer couple in a mainstream comedy. And then I was like,
• 49:07
  Speaker 6: where are those films today, Like in twenty twenty four,
• 49:10
  Speaker 6: I think we're still struggling that that would be, right,
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: Like The Bird Cage was number one in the box
• 49:14
  Speaker 6: office three weeks in a row, right, and it was
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: like in box and I was like, how are we
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: doing that in nineteen eighty six, And how are we
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: struggling to even get independent queer cinema in twenty four?
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: Like sometimes it's just so baffling.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Waffling, it's so and it's like that we learn this
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: in so many different with so many different marginalized communities
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: where you know, like you have stories about like, oh, well,
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: no one wants to see movies with women over a
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: certain age, and then the First Wives Club comes out
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: and everyone's like, oh, never mind, but it's still going
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: to be another twenty years before we get something like
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: that with an equal success rate. I mean, it's like
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: we went through that level of discourse when Black Panther
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: was a billion dollar movie, Like it's just like crazy
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: rich Asians like it just all it happens over and
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: over it over, and people just never learn.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: It's so frustrating.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: And I feel like the nineties, I mean there were
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: more Yeah to your Apartment, Well, there were more movies
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: about queer people that starred mainstream, you know, huge actors
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: than happens now.
• 50:18
  Speaker 7: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 50:19
  Speaker 6: I mean I always think of bird Cage, Tu Wang Fu,
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: thanks for everything, Julie Newmar and Priscilla Queen of the
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: Desert at this sort of like this tripartite like moment
• 50:27
  Speaker 6: where like drag was having a moment, so every time
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: right now we're having comfortable conversation with like, you know,
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: RuPaul's Drag Race bringing Dragon to the Masses. I was like, yeah,
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: but also, twenty five years ago, we had Guy Pearce,
• 50:40
  Speaker 6: we had Patrick Swayzee, we had John Agisma, we had
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: Robin Williams and Nathan Leen, all these films that were
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: really capturing the zeitgeist. And then it still tags decades
• 50:49
  Speaker 6: for us to do it again, and I'm just waiting
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: for it to ebb again and flow, And it's kind
• 50:55
  Speaker 6: of frustrating to keep having these same conversations and either
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: Hollywood learning the wrong less or belatedly learning them, or
• 51:02
  Speaker 6: then just forgetting them once in you CEO comes in,
• 51:06
  Speaker 6: possibly taking over Warner Brothers, I mean, or someone else,
• 51:09
  Speaker 6: but like, right, it's always it's just.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, like so much of it, in
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: my mind has to do with.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: Like the rise of studio takeovers and how like you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: Disney is far less likely to make this movie than
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: whatever other studio, and then you have like whatever, even
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: if even if you like a handful of them, Marvel.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Movies just like fabreezed the entire landscape of like what.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: A blockbuster movie could look like, because this is a
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: blockbuster movie, like and also just like a hostility towards
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: original stories, like this is an original story.
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: But also I mean, Caitlin just hearing the fact that it.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Took you know, the better part of twenty years to
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: get this from the front on stage in France to hear.
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, even when we have a story that
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: centers queer.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: People, it has to be tested for twenty years before
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: it can be considered a viable American movie, and even
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: then it has to be sort of like couched in
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: these very careful ways in order to get the proper
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: rating and get the proper release, and the stars and
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: just like all this stuff like it's for the fault
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: that this movie has. It's like one that you're just
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: like it's a miracle that it came out and that.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: It's so good.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: And I just wanted to shout out really quickly as well,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: because Elaine.
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: May is a Jewish writer, and also she.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Sort of intersects like it's not just the fact that
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Senator Keeley is homophobic, which he overtly is, but also
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: that he's anti Semitic, and like, you know, I don't
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: think he would as openly or proudly say that as
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: he would I'm homophobic, but clearly there is also a
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: like cultural code switching on that level too, and just
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: to see, don't know, I just feel like it speaks
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: to Elaine May's skill as a writer, that like, this
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: family is being forced to hide a lot of things
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: about themselves, and of course their queerness is at the center.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Of that, but there's also like there's just a.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: Lot and I don't know, in some ways it it's
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: like VAL's a villain, but it's also like kind of
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: tragic that he has grown up in such an accepting
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: environment and still is so affected by the greater cultural
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: forces that he is tempted to become hostile towards the
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: people he loves most.
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: Senator Keeley is also deeply racist. He says different things
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: about the Agador character as does armand says racist and
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: xenophobic things about the Agador character. And then the Agador
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: character himself is Hanka's Area playing a from Guatemala. Hanka's
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: Area is not a Guatemalan or LATINX actor. He's doing
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: one of his hank Azaria accents.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Hank Azaria.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've kind of forgot that this was like
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: on his list of crimes.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Honestly, Yeah, because.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of discussed, popularly discussed crimes with hank Asaria,
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: and this one, I feel like is maybe because there's
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: whole documentaries on his performance as Uphu.
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: Yes, we will refer you to a documentary called The
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: Problem with a Poo, where comedian Hari Kuonbalu examines the
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: representation of South Asian characters in Western movies and TV
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: and how a poo from The Simpsons, which is voiced
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: by Hanka's Area, significantly set that representation back, he's doing
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: a very similar thing with the Agador character in this movie,
• 54:55
  Speaker 5: and it's just incredibly frustrating to watch.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: It's like the part of this movie that very clearly
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: ages the absolute worst.
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: And then also there is like precedent for this prejudice
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: and quiet brown face in comedy and in farce, and
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: like he's certainly not the first.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: To do it, but it's like it's so agreedious.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: And otherwise close to in my close to perfect, like
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: wonderful movie sticks out like a sore thumb.
• 55:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, And especially because like this movie is set in
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: South Beach. So it's also when I was like, oh,
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: why we would need one Latin character, right, like Latino
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: Latin character, because that would make sense for the time,
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: wouldn't make sense with the geography. And so I could
• 55:38
  Speaker 6: see that there was a reason to like have an
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: Aggador like character, but he didn't have to be this way,
• 55:43
  Speaker 6: and it didn't have to be like this, and it
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: didn't have to be played by Hanka's area. I used
• 55:47
  Speaker 6: to to wonder, like who might have been able to
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: sort of do a much more interesting job or a
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: much more nuanced but this is very much this. It
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: is the lowest hanging through jokes of the entire film,
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: and they're hard to They do make it hard to watch,
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: just sort of like the Nicky Rooney part of Requisitiphanies,
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: which is like, oh yeah, I can't there's no I
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: don't know how to reconcile I just because there's no way.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: To, right. Yeah. I mean, in the fact that this
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: Naday is shot partially in Florida and partially in Los Angeles,
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: there are so many talented Latin comic actors, Like, there's
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: absolutely no excuse for Castingcazaria in this not to mention
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: it's like it's not like Hanka's area is the reason.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Like he's like the tenth most famous person in this movie.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Like just don't cast him.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: You don't need him in that way. This movie is
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: still very much a reflection of the kind of standards
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: of the nineteen nineties where, you know, as we've been saying,
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: it's mostly white characters were white actors. It's all sis
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: actors and characters. There are physical embraces and like pecks
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: on the cheek between Armand and Albert, but there's no
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: significant like romantic kiss things like that that you're like, oh, yeah,
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: This movie came out in the nineties, but as I
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: was touching on in the kind of context corner of
• 57:13
  Speaker 5: this movie, it was very groundbreaking in many ways, and
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: I think the reason it has such a lasting legacy
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: from its, you know, kind of conception as a French
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: production in the seventies is that it did present queer
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: characters with far more nuance than audiences had seen. And
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: part of that is because there's an exploration of how
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: these characters feel while being forced to fit this like
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: you know, rigid mold of heteronormativity and masculinity and to
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: pretend to be someone there not. You have different monologues
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: from Armand and from Albert saying like, I know who
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: I am. It took me twenty years to get here,
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: but I'm not gonna let some idiot senator destroy that.
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: Fuck the senator. I don't give a damn what he thinks.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: Like he is embraced who he is and he doesn't
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: want to backtrack from that. Albert, you know, when he
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: learns his family wants to send him away, he's like, oh,
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: I get it. You think I'm some monster. I'm a freak.
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: And he's you know, saying something like I'm not gonna
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: stay where I'm not wanted, where I can be thrown
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: out on a whim without legal rights. So these characters
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: are advocating for themselves, and they're very steadfast in who
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: they are. And yes, they're in this community of you know,
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: South Beach where they don't have to deal with the
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: same level of homophobia as other parts of the country.
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: Not to say that this is the first time they're
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: dealing with this, but I imagine if they've been in
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: South Beach for a while, this is the first time
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: in a while that they've had to kind of retreat
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: back into the closet and hide their authentic selves. So
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: as we discussed, yeah, like interesting to see vow make
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: these demands, I chalk it up to him being again
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: this child, twenty year old child. All this to say
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: that I appreciate that part of this is letting the
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: characters express how they feel about this harmful societal expectation,
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: showing how traumatic it is for the characters to have
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: to deal with. Those scenes were some of the most
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: powerful to me, and I'm glad the movie took the
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: time to show that those were some of my favorite
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: moments in the movie.
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: And also everyone in Drag. At the end, I think
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: just the shot of Gene Hackman in Drag is worth
• 59:47
  Speaker 6: the price of admission.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: And just like, yeah, Gene Hackman is again and like
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: I would rank him like fifth in performances I.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Love in this movie.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: But like he is showing this like simultaneous, like I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: don't think I've ever quite seen a facial expression that
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: both demonstrated like wow, this is so exciting and like
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not supposed to like this, it's not actually awesome,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: like and just seeing that in a space of express
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: like one expression is really lovely.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: For sure. I want to unpack the scandal, like the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: you know, Senator colleague, the.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: Other thing that ages inexcusably poorly.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: Right where it's you know, the co founder of the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: Coalition of Moral Order, this very ultra conservative, you know,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: family values guy being found with an underage black sex worker,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: and the way she has talked about the way she
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: is framed by the movie to some extent, I see
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: what they're trying to do, which is that they're trying
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: to emphasize the irony that this you know, Christian Crusader
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: would cheat on his wife, the irony that she is black,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: when this politician is very likely racist, but also the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: sex worker being black feels like it's a thing that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: makes it all the more scandalous. Also, her being underage
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: is not addressed.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: And what I found.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Most frustrating about all of this because yeah, I think
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: it is like an attempt at satire of like, here
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: is a person, like an underage black sex worker is
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: someone who this politician would absolutely have a vested interest
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: in disadpranchising and you know, not someone that you think
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: he would ever want to meet, right, and so like
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: not only are they, you know, exposing him to be
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: a child sex abuser, but also you know, obviously it's
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: but it's like the way that that character is then
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: presented by the movie, which is also as a joke,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: kind of undercut any attempt for sure at satire where
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean, I think in a modern context,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: like it's basically impossible to make this attempted joke work,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: especially from completely in a movie that is otherwise completely
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: white and with one character that's Hanka's area and brown
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: face not for the first time.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: But the fact that we do see this character.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: And she is presented in a bronze stereotypical way to boot. Like,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: it's just like if there was any doubt that this
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: movie was not equipped to even attempt that satire, I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: feel like that really kind of sealed it for me
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: on this viewing.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: For sure.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, I like to think it was like it almost
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: narratively made more sense for it to have been a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: gay affair, Yeah, right, like it would have set up
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: it would have been so much cleaner and neaterer and
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: sort of but then maybe that in itself would have
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: been a little bit too much or too obvious because
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: it is about the hypocrisy. But yeah, the choice of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: target and that hypocrisy feels weighted in a way that
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 6: the film kind of like never really deals with for sure.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the way that like you see how prejudiced
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: Senator Keeley is.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: The people that he's prejudiced against.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: At least narratively, who we know, we have a deeper.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: Knowledge of, we have a lot of empathy for, we
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: know them, and that is the one character that you
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: don't get that treatment for. It's like you're just presented
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: with a broad stereotypical reaction and a broad stereotypical character
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: that I think like unintentionally almost reinforces what the movie's
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: trying to criticize.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know, is like that was just.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: And also like minimal Narratively, it does.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Make way more sense for sure, because then it's like, oh,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: not only is Senator Keeley afraid of any scandal, He's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: specifically afraid of this type of scandal.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that it would have been a far more logical
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: choice to make in the movie rather than what they
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: do well nineteen ninety six. Meanwhile, I wanted to ask
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: your thoughts, and I know this might be opening kind
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: of a can of worms, and this is a much discussed,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: complicated question, but I was just curious on your thoughts
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: of the straight actors playing gay characters in Robin Williams
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: and Hanka's area. I know it's a different scenario for
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: Nathan Lane. Obviously he was out to his friends and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: family at the time of this movie. He came out
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: publicly a couple years later, I think in ninety nine.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: But yeah, curious of your thoughts on that it is.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 6: A can of worms, and it is. You know, it's
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: a conversation that I've had a lot over the past
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: few years. I feel like if you were a queer
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: critic writing, you just constantly run into this. What I
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: always say is that I don't have a moral or
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: an esthetic about straight actors playing gays, so long as
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: they're doing it with care, with curiosity. To me, this
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: has always been a labor issue more so than an
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: aesthetic one. Like I don't it's not my place to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: say that an actor can or can't play X or
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: Y or Z, because I think then it becomes very murky.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: But it is a labor issue when if Hollywood studios
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 6: and casting executives and directors are only offering these parts
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: to straight actors, I think we should interrogate why. And
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: I think we should interrogate that why at a larger
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: sort of systemic level, in terms of who is getting paid,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: who is getting promoted, who is getting distributed, who is
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: getting project screenlt why that rarely happens for out queer actors.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: And so that's always how I want to frame it,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: that this is a labor concern more so than an
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 6: aesthetic one.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 7: Because I do think.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 6: I mean, I look at Robin Williams and what he's
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 6: doing with armand doesn't feel a caricature, doesn't feel mockery,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: it doesn't feel like it's coming from a place of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: hre or of condescension. It's actually coming from a place
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 6: of love. And I think, you know, you see that
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: also in his really tiny bit part in Tuwong Fu.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: You really buy it, and you're really buy it for
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: the chemistry that he has with with Nathan Lane writer,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: Like I watch Brooke Bag Mountain and I'm like, I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: love Heath and Jake. I think they get at something
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: very real, and I think this is sort of the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: point of the actor. This is exactly what they're supposed
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: to be doing, tying into the humanity of the other.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 6: I don't want any kind of actor, including queer actors,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: to solely be cast according to their very limited identity.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 6: Like I want queer actors to be able to play
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: straight roles. I want transactors to be able to play
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 6: siss roles. Like I don't because I think as soon
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: as we do it from one side, it has to
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: come to the other side. But you know, in a
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: perfect world, we wouldn't be needing to have this conversation
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: because queer actors would be queer, and transactors would be
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 6: given the kinds of opportunities that are solely given right
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 6: now or mostly given right now to SIS straight actors,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 6: and I think that's for the conversation needs to be happening,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 6: which is it's a harder one to have than to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 6: just say, oh yeah, straight actors are not a lot
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: because they don't get us and they don't understand us
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 6: or but so that's that's that's always my like tiny
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 6: little soap box.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, no, no, We've had similar conversations on the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: podcast before when this comes up, and it does boil
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: down to this happens because the pool of out queer actors.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: It's not that they don't exist, it's just they aren't
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: given the same opportunities as their straight CIS counterparts. It's
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: that they don't have the same kind of often rise
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: to fame as they're SIS straight counterparts. So yeah, a
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 5: labor issue, it's a cultural issue far more than anything else.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 5: So great, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Of course,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: So the movie does pass the Bechdel test. I think
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: I mean.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 7: Very loosely right. I was trying to track that.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 6: I was like, there are like loosely about sort of men,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: but not a man.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 7: I don't know.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: It's one of those, Yeah, between Barbara and luwise, and
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I'm like, it's passing it best. But again, I feel
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: like I have PTSD about how poor, like how the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: Bechdel test is like weaponized when there's movies that center
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: queer characters in a way that Alison Bechdel almost certainly
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: and like I think in fact has confirmed.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, that's not how you're supposed to use it.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: I wrote as a joke because I remember that, like
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: when during Fire when yeah, when Fire Island came out,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: they're like, well, this movie isn't everything you think because
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: but and you're just like fuck you, like you know,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: it's like this is I don't. I think this is like,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: at best a soft pass, but it's also like doing
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: so many things that most movies are that it's like,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: would it be great if it passed?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: Am I going to think this movie is inherently hostile
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to women in marginalized communities because it doesn't fuck you?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: You know not. The more relevant test here is the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: Veto Russo test, which we bring up now and then,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 5: which examines the representation of queer characters in media and
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: asks if they have any kind of interiority, asks if
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: you removed those characters from the story, would it affect
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: the plot, and in this case, obviously very very much so.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: The entire story centers these characters, So a high pass
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 5: to the Veto Russo test. Bechdel test not super relevant here,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: but the nipple scale, the Bechdel cast nipple scale the
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: most relevant test of them all, where we examine the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: movie on a scale of zero to five nipples. Looking
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: at it through an intersectional feminist lens, I would say,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: because of its legacy and the kind of aftermath paving
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: the way for more queer representation, I want to give
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 5: it like three and a half nipples. I'm taking some
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 5: off for the Hanka's area of it all, for the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: framing of the scandal with the black sex worker, different
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: things like that that make the movie not hold up
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: as well as it could. But as we've discussed, there
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: is so much the movie is doing right. It's a
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: critique on traditional ideals of masculinity. It's a celebration of
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: characters living their authentic selves. Because of that, I want
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: to give it three and a half nipples, maybe even four,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: I don't know. I'm somewhere around there. Also worth mentioning
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: the movie is rated R and it still was as
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: much of a box office success as it was, because
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 5: it's kind of rare for our rated movies to do
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: quite so well at the box office. But why is
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: it rated R? We ask? Sure, they say fuck a
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: few times, but other than that, there's nothing that Warren
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: it's an R rating about this movie. I'm speculating that
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 5: it's because it does center a gay couple. Yeah, that
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: they're like, yuckie, oh, this is gonna.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: Corrupt adults, contain adult.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Themes like just fucking ridiculous.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: Yes, So all that to say, I'll land like on
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 5: a three point seventy five and I'll give my nipples
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: to Christine Baranski and Nathan Lane.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: Yes, I'm going to go four. I think that this
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: movie is has its flaws. I'm glad that we discussed them.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I feel like they're not often discussed the context of
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: this movie. And for all of its wonderful parts, it
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: is still a movie that's ultimately written by white people
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: in a Hollywood that did and does cater to white people.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: And so there's two glaring racist plot points that take
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: place with in this movie, But its legacy is undeniable.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: The performances are undeniable, Like Nathan Lane is I forget.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: I didn't have I couldn't find the quote that I
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: found in my research.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: But there was. I believe it was like either Gene.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: Hackman or Robin Williams that was like this movie was
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: about just like getting out of Nathan Lane's way and
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: just like giving him room to do it because it's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: like a career defining performance and he's had so many
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: sinse like he's just unbelievable and then randomly he's series. Yes,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: we just cited the same thing. Yes, we're big Dick's
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: the musical heads on this show. But also I just
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: think about like like he's just his range is incredible,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: He's awesome, and this is just like a perfect Nathan
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: Lane role.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: And yeah, the legacy is wonderful.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: And speaking to what you were talking about earlier, Manuel,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: like we to this day don't regularly get movies that
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: center queer couples, queer parents.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: And the rating thing is very, very glaring.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought it up.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: But even in.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: Spite of the rating, I mean, I have to imagine
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: if this movie was rated PG thirteen, it would.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Have done even better.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: And absolutely the fact that it became such a widely
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: beloved movie, and especially in today's climate, like this was
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: a movie that heavily featured drag, that everyone watched, and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: so people have only gotten more mentally sick as time
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: goes on.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: And I love that for the world, and that's awesome. Yay.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: So I'm going four nipples and I'm giving four nipples
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: to Nathan Lane.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: If I had more, i'd give one to a Lane May,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: but I don't.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Have any more. So that's just kind of.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: The situation that's understandable. Menuel, how about you?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 6: I think, yeah, I fall sort of on the three
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 6: seven five for I think it's as we've discussed, it
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 6: does so many things simultaneously that feel radical and traditional,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 6: but keeping them always so funny. I think the fact
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 6: that it does that with humor, without punching down, without
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 6: going for the low hanging fruit agador and you know, black.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 7: Sex work or aside.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 6: I think it's so it's so smart and it feels
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 6: I watched it in twenty twenty four, and it still
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 6: surprises me that this cup made in ninety six, that
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 6: this was a hit in ninety six, that it had
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 6: had the character actors that it had ninety six, that
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 6: you know Nichols and May who you know. Nichols had
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 6: been you know, making amazing movies for decades at this point,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 6: and you know he was able to sort of do this.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: And I also love the Nathan Lenham at all. But
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 6: also because this was an out gay actor at the
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: heart of it, right, I think I think that's also
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: it's a great showcase for a queer performer who has
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: only proven with time that he deserves every and all
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: flowers we throw at him.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 7: So yeah, I would. I would also give my nipples
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 7: to him.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: Oh beautiful, Thank you so much for joining us. This
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: has been such a treat. Comeback anytime time.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, this is a joy.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, thank you. Where can people follow you
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: on social media? Check out your writing? Also, we forgot
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: to mention that you penned an amazing piece on Rotten Tomatoes.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: I ever heard of it on this movie, so we'll link
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 5: that in the description of this episode. But yeah, where
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 5: can people check out that and your other writing?
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you can find me on both Instagram and x
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: formerly honest Twitter and it's at b Manuel so B
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: M A n U E L.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: You'll find my writing there.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 6: Also my recent book The Mail gazed on Hank's Hearthrops
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: and what pop culture taught me about desiring men just
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 6: came out in paperbacks. If you're looking for a nice
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 6: pool side or beachside read, I highly recommend it. It's
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: all about men and desiring men and asking myself whether
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 6: I want him, where do I want to be him?
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 6: Which is a queer essentral queer concern of my also
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: have a lot of queer folks.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 7: But yeah, that's that's where you can find.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: Me amazing and you can find us on Instagram at
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 5: Bechdel Cast. You can follow our Patreon aka Matreon at
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where we release two
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: bonus episodes every month on a hilarious, amazing, brilliant genius
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 5: theme that always makes so much sense, and that's five
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 5: dollars a month. You can check out our merch at
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 5: tea Public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast and grab
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 5: lots of T shirts and pillows and buttons, all designed
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 5: by Jamie. And with that, should we dress in drag
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: and run out a nightclub.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 7: To the tuner your family?
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: Yes, exactly, yes, okay, see you there by bye. The
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 5: Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Kaitlin
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 5: Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: Moe laboord our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 5: designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo.
• 1:17:16
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  Speaker 5: Bechtelcast