Latest / History Harpies: Pop Culture, Past and Present / No, Sports Movies Are Never Actually About Sports (Ft. Ted Lasso, The Longest Yard, Bull Durham, and A League of Their Own)

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No, Sports Movies Are Never Actually About Sports (Ft. Ted Lasso, The Longest Yard, Bull Durham, and A League of Their Own) · History Harpies: Pop Culture, Past and Present

• 0:00
  They say we're loud, opinionated, afraid. Telling
• 0:05
  us to hush, dim our historical light. But darlings,
• 0:09
  we're the Harpies sharp and keen. Unveiling the
• 0:12
  truth behind the silvering. History Harpies hear
• 0:17
  us loud. Hi and welcome to History Harpies. I'm
• 0:36
  Lauren. And I'm Christine. And welcome to our
• 0:41
  fall... episode. We are now in October, even
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  though it is only episode two of season two,
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  it feels like a lot of time has gone by. It does.
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  And of course we are in football season here
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  in the South Florida. So in honor of football
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  season as SEC girls, we decided to do a sports
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  episode. We actually got a A request. A request.
• 1:06
  Yes, we got a request. A listener request. And
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  to honor our listeners, we are doing a sports
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  episode, which seems fitting, not only because
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  it is football season, but also because I recently
• 1:20
  visited the town of Durham. Yes, you did. And
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  one of our... movies we're going to talk about
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  today is Bull Durham. So it seemed fitting to
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  do all the fall things and all the fall sports,
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  although we aren't really covering all the sports.
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  We are not. Only a couple of them. We are sports
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  selective. We are. And I think, though, we should
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  also point out, Lauren, before we start talking
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  about our texts for this week, that you are an
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  athlete. Lauren is a very active tennis player.
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  I do nothing. I mean, I do nothing, but Lauren
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  is a very active tennis player. She plays on
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  a tennis team. I would not say team. I would
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  say teams, plural. I play on seven tennis teams.
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  I played five tennis matches last week. And all
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  of this is to say that it is a shame I'm not
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  a better tennis player. than I am for the amount
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  that I play. It's just that I'm just old and
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  that I also have like a day job and that it's
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  parents, children and like, yeah, like this university
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  job that I have. So unfortunately, I cannot devote
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  100 percent of my time to tennis, which would
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  be the preference, although I would get injured.
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  The saddest thing about tennis, and I again could
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  do a whole tennis podcast, is that it is the
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  best sport, but also the most injury prone sport
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  for women of a certain age. And it is every single
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  week someone on one of my teams. And again, I
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  am on many of them, but a lot of the same people
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  are on these teams. But someone is going to the
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  orthopedist. Someone is having surgery. Someone
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  is in a brace of some sort. And I have been there
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  too. And it is just. You just have to really
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  be careful. And that's true of all sports, but
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  the greatest thing about tennis, which is not
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  true of the sports we're going to talk about
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  today, it is a lifelong sport. There are people
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  out there that I see into their 80s that are
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  still playing. That's fantastic. That's excellent.
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  And they love it. And they've had these tennis
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  groups they've been part of for most of their
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  lives. And it's wonderful. And listeners, if
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  you have the question, do you also play pickleball?
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  The answer is no. No. No pickleball for me. As
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  long as I am able to play tennis, I will play
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  tennis. And if things deteriorate and I have
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  to play pickleball, I guess I'll do it. But no.
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  I mean, I'm glad it's a sport. I'm glad it's
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  sweeping the nation. I'm glad it makes people
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  happy. I'm not going to shame pickleball. listeners,
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  but it is not for me at this moment. Did I tell
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  you that one of my children, and you can guess
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  which one, started a pickleball club at this
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  school? I want you to guess which one that was,
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  but of course we'll, we'll. But you know what?
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  We did not watch a tennis movie. We didn't. And
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  I would have been happy to. I still have not
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  seen, what is it, Challengers with Zendaya? Excellent.
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  Excellent movie. I'm sure it's great. Although
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  the tennis of it in Challengers, and again, we
• 4:23
  can do all episodes on Zendaya or something else,
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  but the tennis of it is not as much as I had
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  hoped. That's too bad. So what about actually
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  we won't derail here, but I am curious because
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  another movie I've always wanted to see is the
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  Borg versus McEnroe film. And we also have Matchpoint,
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  one of my favorite, one of my favorite film,
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  Woody Allen films. Although as the random guy
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  sitting in front of me and my friend, Carina,
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  when we watched Matchpoint at the theater, After
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  it was over, he stood up, turned around, and
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  said, uh, it's Crimes and Misdemeanors crossed
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  with The Talented Mr. Ripley. And I was like,
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  why he turned around and said to us when he had
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  a perfectly good wife sitting next to him? But
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  I was like, yes, crimes and misdemeanors. paired
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  with a talent. Very interesting. But I do love
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  match point. I love match point. And Jonathan
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  Rhys Meyers is like delicious. I mean, Scarlett Johansson
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  looks amazing too, of course. Alright, so transitioning
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  to Delicious Men. Yes. Let's talk about Bull
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  Durham. Yes, we're going to start with the Kevin
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  Costner film. Bull Durham, which was a huge hit
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  when it came out, what, 1987? 1987, I think.
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  Okay. 1987. Oscar -winning film. Oscar -winning
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  film. And it started this parade of Ron Shelton
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  films who did a lot of, wrote and directed a
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  lot of sports films. This was the first one.
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  And I had not seen it probably since it came
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  out when I did the re -watch. And I've seen...
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  truthfully, maybe I've seen it one more time,
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  but not recently. So it really was almost like
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  a true rewatch for me too. And budding career
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  of Tim Robbins, budding career of Kevin Costner
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  and Susan Sarandon, of course, who had been in
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  other things, but really is a standout in this
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  one. And I think very much this is sort of her
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  entry into the mature Susan Sarandon era, right?
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  She would have been maybe like in her early 40s.
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  She was 41. Okay. She was 41. I looked it up
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  in the film. And I think, so I think it really
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  is this kind of moving into that sort of, you
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  know, I mean, obviously she had this incredible
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  run throughout the 1990s, right? When she herself
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  wins the Oscar. But anyway, so it's, for those
• 6:35
  of you who have not seen it, it's a, it is technically
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  a sports movie. Maybe, again, not as much on
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  the sports as we would expect. No. But it is
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  about the contrast between a very young player,
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  a pitcher, Nuke LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins,
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  and who is a wild pitcher, doesn't really have
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  a lot of control, and an older sort of kind of
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  has -been player who is mentoring him at the
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  same time that there is a love triangle with
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  the Susan Sarandon character. Who is kind of
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  a sex whisperer for rookie players. Tim Robbins
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  also is not smart. Not smart. And he is very
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  talented. They say you have a million dollar
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  arm, but like not a brain cell in your head.
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  Yes. And so it is apparently Susan Sarandon's
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  job every season to take on a new rookie and
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  teach him the sort of life lessons between sex
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  and baseball and all of these kind of intangibles
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  that a sort of traditional coach cannot offer
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  because she's very wise and she knows more about
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  baseball than anyone. she can simulate things
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  that are in baseball in sex. And so this is like
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  her side hustle. She has, I mean, she said she
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  teaches at a community college and she does some
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  other things, but this is what she does when
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  the baseball season starts. So the love, what
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  I wouldn't necessarily call it a love triangle
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  because she is with Tim Robbins for the majority
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  of the film, although she's very attracted to
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  Kevin Costner. The two of them have a gravitational
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  pull, but it's clear that that would be more
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  like a real relationship, and neither one of
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  them is really prepared for that. And we have
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  then this idea that she is the person who is
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  choosing, and there is a scene that is very explicit
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  about this, that even in a case like this, where
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  she has two possibilities at the beginning of
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  the season, because she does technically consider
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  Kevin Costner's character, but we're... this
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  is something that his character actually brings
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  up and says, well, why are you the one who is
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  doing the choosing? But this is absolutely the
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  way that the film wants it, right? And she even
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  says explicitly that she is an empowered, strong
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  woman who has the ability to make this choice.
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  And apparently every other rookie that she has
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  chosen in X number of years has gone along with
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  it, which I think is something that I'm kind
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  of curious about. That seems odd to me. But anyway,
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  I think where I might disagree with you is. I
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  don't think she's wise at all. And I think we
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  are supposed to think that she's this weird sort
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  of hodgepodge, right? Like she wants to read
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  the Walt Whitman and then she's like, well, okay,
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  here's my Sufi wisdom or whatever, and here are
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  your chakras. And so I actually, and I had never
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  thought this the first time I saw her when it
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  came out. But this time, I mean, obviously we're
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  supposed to like her. She's supposed to be a
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  sympathetic character. But to me, she really
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  is, she's just more explicitly. Wacky I read
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  that now and again that she sees herself right
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  as kind of this like oh, I'm the small -town
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  Intellectual and that's why I'm going to sort
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  of guide you But it's not really her except maybe
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  what I feel like the other players on the team
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  are like Oh Annie knows that right breathe with
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  your eyelids like all these things she says to
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  do that are these like whether they're superstitious
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  or whether they're I don't know, like tricks
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  of the trade, she knows them and that she has
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  this - But they don't work. They might not. They
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  don't work. But they don't work. They don't work.
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  But nonetheless, Tim Robbins takes her advice
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  anyway. And there's also, I mean, there's some
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  interesting things in there with like the amount
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  of finesse you need to like unhook a stocking,
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  which of course Tim Robbins cannot do. Yes. And
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  Kevin Costner can. and that there's a finesse
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  in baseball and that there's a non -thinking
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  and that there's a kind of instinctual habits
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  that manifest with great players that Tim Robbins
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  has to acquire. That he can have the mechanics
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  in terms of his arm, but Kevin Costner is the
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  one who really kind of feels the game in a way
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  that Tim Robbins kind of never will. And I feel
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  like that scene at the end with the bar where
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  Kevin Costner is very drunk, he comes in and
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  tells him like, what's the difference between
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  somebody who has a 325 batting average versus
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  a 278 and kind of, you know, doesn't give him
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  the recognition or the congratulations that he
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  wants for going to the major leagues. But he's
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  also sort of like, you're never really going
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  to get this game anyway. And that there's a magic
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  of the game that only he and Susan Sarandon can
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  share. And that's what brings them together.
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  That's the way I read it, okay? I think that's
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  a generous reading. I think that's a nice reading.
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  One of the things that I would have appreciated
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  because, of course, the advice that they are
• 11:42
  giving him is so different, right? The only thing,
• 11:49
  one thing I like is at the very end, right? When
• 11:50
  someone says, well, you can't breathe out of
• 11:52
  your eyelids, right? Again, this is just bullshit.
• 11:54
  Right, right. It's total bullshit. Sure. But
• 11:55
  the one thing that does, again, work is the garter
• 11:58
  belt. Yes. In terms of saying, well, okay, this
• 12:00
  sort of feels a particular way, right? And the
• 12:02
  whole thing is that I have to stop overthinking.
• 12:04
  Right. And I did, in some ways, I actually would
• 12:06
  have liked it much more. Because watching it
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  again, Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner have
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  very little time together in the film. Right.
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  Right. And I think it actually would have been
• 12:16
  interesting if it was more a contrast between
• 12:19
  the two of them in terms of their mentorship
• 12:23
  of him. Yeah. Right. And that, to me, would have
• 12:26
  made more sense if it's almost more this kind
• 12:27
  of 1940s style, sort of we are competitors, right?
• 12:32
  We're kind of butting heads. Rather, because
• 12:34
  again, one of the things that's strange to me
• 12:36
  in the film is when all of a sudden she's like,
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  oh, well, I want you. And it's like, well, OK.
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  I mean, where does that come from? And I think
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  in a sort of more classic, even like, rom -com
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  -y way of saying like, oh, again, and we talked
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  about this last time, the sort of like, butting
• 12:51
  heads, like, I hate you until I don't. I actually
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  would have liked a little bit more of that. No,
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  I'll disagree with that, because what I loved
• 12:58
  in some ways, and to me... the best part of the
• 13:01
  movie for sure is when they do get together and
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  to see those electric scenes and to see them
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  dancing and to see their chemistry and I just
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  love the last part of the movie and because you've
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  been waiting for it and I do kind of feel like
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  the idea first of all that That Kevin Costner
• 13:23
  is sort of like well, he said he tells him rabbit
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  She's only with you because she can like boss
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  you around and because you're her puppet and
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  and you know She's she doesn't see you as a threat.
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  She doesn't see you as an equal You're never
• 13:36
  gonna be a real romantic partner and all that
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  and she doesn't even want that Yeah, she just
• 13:41
  wants to your have you basically be her like
• 13:43
  boy toy, but he's also Sort of sees it as comical
• 13:47
  in some ways. I mean he is an But even though
• 13:50
  he's really attracted to her and he really wants
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  to sleep with her, he doesn't really see Tim
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  Robbins as an adversary in terms of romantic
• 14:00
  adversary. He sees him as a maybe a younger version
• 14:04
  of himself and in terms of the sport. But you
• 14:08
  don't see them, except for the very first scene
• 14:10
  when they're with Susan Sarandon and they get
• 14:13
  into the fight over who's going to go home with
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  her. That's the only time you ever see them.
• 14:17
  having any kind of confrontation over their feelings
• 14:21
  for Susan Sarandon, in part because Tim Robbins
• 14:24
  probably doesn't have any, even though he's the
• 14:27
  one that's with her, other than a whatever, sexual
• 14:31
  attraction or whatever you want to call their
• 14:33
  relationship. But, but yeah, I mean, I think
• 14:36
  the mentoring is interesting. We don't, we do
• 14:39
  see some of it. We see these, again, vignettes
• 14:43
  and kind of little pieces of vice being offered.
• 14:45
  But I do think that What's interesting about
• 14:48
  it, again, is, as you said before, the lack of
• 14:53
  actual baseball in the movie, there's very little
• 14:56
  baseball. And what you see is like Tim Robbins
• 14:59
  throwing a few pitches and then you find out
• 15:01
  they won. But you don't see a lot of training.
• 15:05
  You don't see a lot of coaching. You don't really
• 15:08
  see, again, baseball, baseball. You do see a
• 15:11
  lot of talking and sex and... you know, conversations
• 15:16
  and drinking and things like that. Which is then,
• 15:20
  I mean, Ron Shelton himself was was an athlete,
• 15:23
  I think. And so, you know, to some extent, it
• 15:25
  might just be right what you know. But then it
• 15:27
  is interesting to say, well, why does this film
• 15:29
  have to have anything to do with baseball? Because,
• 15:32
  of course, but then what becomes interesting
• 15:34
  is that, you know, and thinking about this as
• 15:36
  sort of, you know, in its place in all of the
• 15:39
  things that we want to talk about today. In some
• 15:42
  ways, it's so, especially because I just watched
• 15:43
  The Longest Yard, which we'll talk about. It's
• 15:47
  so strange that she, this woman is being presented
• 15:50
  as the savant of baseball. So she's the savant
• 15:53
  of baseball. She has the gigantic house. She has
• 15:58
  money for it. Who knows? Who knows? She has the
• 16:02
  control and the power in terms of, again, saying
• 16:05
  that she's going to have these sexual relationships
• 16:07
  with men who, again, apparently who always consent,
• 16:10
  even though we see, say, the other guy who says,
• 16:13
  I'm married, right, to Millie, the other young
• 16:15
  woman around, and the super Christian guy who
• 16:18
  won't. sleep with anyone. But nevertheless, everyone's
• 16:21
  consenting to her. And so it is so interesting
• 16:24
  to sort of, I mean, it's so completely to me,
• 16:27
  sort of like 1980s, right? In that over the top,
• 16:30
  right? Like, where's it at? She literally says
• 16:32
  it, right? I'm the powerful woman. Again, I have
• 16:35
  this knowledge of the game. I have a different
• 16:36
  boy every year. I have a knowledge of the game.
• 16:39
  And it's only through sleeping with me that he's
• 16:41
  going to improve his batting average and be better.
• 16:46
  Potentially move on to the show. Right, right.
• 16:47
  And even it is also then interesting to think
• 16:50
  about the end, right? At the end, we have an
• 16:54
  unemployed Kevin Costner who basically has no
• 16:56
  place to go. Well, he does say there's like a
• 16:59
  possibility. There's a possibility of a manager
• 17:00
  job in a year, right? Unemployed. He's unemployed.
• 17:05
  And she's off the boys, as she says, right? I
• 17:09
  mean, she has her community college job, but
• 17:11
  I guess they can just live in this fabulous house
• 17:13
  and like hang out and just like dance and whatever.
• 17:18
  Do whatever. The baths with like a million candles.
• 17:21
  There are a million candles. But again, all of
• 17:23
  that 80s kind of banter. and the performances
• 17:28
  and the dancing. And it just was so retro to
• 17:32
  me. And I just loved it. And I loved seeing that
• 17:35
  again. It gave me the warm and fuzzies to see.
• 17:39
  And again, I can't emphasize enough how handsome
• 17:43
  Kevin Costner looks in this movie. He's gorgeous.
• 17:46
  Gorgeous in this movie. And not only that, but
• 17:47
  he's either in khaki, like a J. Crew outfit,
• 17:50
  or a baseball uniform. And lots of shorts. And
• 17:53
  looks incredible in all of that. Or a shirt off.
• 17:56
  Yes, and he's like licking his nipples. That's
• 17:58
  correct. I mean, this is just there's no bad
• 18:01
  Kevin Costner scene in this movie. He looks great
• 18:05
  from the end. And I mean, the camera work on
• 18:08
  him, like he's tan is his blue eyes are sparkling.
• 18:11
  I mean, he just looks amazing. He looks amazing.
• 18:13
  He does. He looks amazing. And I have to say,
• 18:16
  I mean, to me watching it again, I really did
• 18:20
  see it as the Tim Robbins show. Obviously, I
• 18:23
  didn't think this way at the time, but watching
• 18:25
  it now, you're like, he's a star. And not just
• 18:30
  in this retroactive way of saying it all, like,
• 18:32
  oh, obviously we know what he's been, we talked
• 18:34
  about him with the player last season, but watching
• 18:38
  it and just like, yes, I mean, he is absolutely
• 18:41
  a star. He's a star. In a way that I mean and
• 18:44
  I really do think he just in a sense not quite
• 18:47
  drowns out Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon But
• 18:50
  he I do think he dominates them in that film
• 18:52
  just in terms of sort of what he is doing sort
• 18:55
  of with the and obviously the character is supposed
• 18:57
  to be yes foolish and stupid and I don't know.
• 19:00
  I just think he he's It was better than I expected
• 19:04
  him to be and then I remembered him being I remember
• 19:07
  him being in the film But I just thought he was
• 19:09
  absolutely like again superstar power Yeah, I
• 19:12
  mean, I guess I didn't feel like he'd drawn them
• 19:14
  out, but I definitely felt like he held his own
• 19:16
  with them and that he was doing a lot of really
• 19:19
  interesting things in that movie. And I'm pretty
• 19:22
  sure, although I could be wrong, that Tim Robbins
• 19:24
  himself is a baseball player. I think that Tim
• 19:28
  Robbins was a baseball player and although again
• 19:31
  listeners you can correct me but I think he has
• 19:33
  some kind of athletic background and he's of
• 19:35
  course crazy tall because he's crazy tall and
• 19:37
  I mean again I'm not saying he played for the
• 19:39
  pros but I think that there's a reason why he
• 19:42
  was in this baseball movie and that yeah he the
• 19:47
  role is really interesting but these men sort
• 19:51
  of you know drooling over Susan Sarandon. I mean,
• 19:54
  there's definitely an 80s thing going on there.
• 19:59
  But, you know, the other thing that's interesting
• 20:01
  that I was thinking about is, you know, like,
• 20:05
  it could, even though it does take place in the
• 20:07
  80s, because it's in a small town, because Susan
• 20:10
  Sarandon dresses like she's in the 50s, and because,
• 20:14
  again, they're in this, you know, minor league
• 20:18
  stadium. I mean, there's nothing about it that
• 20:20
  feels modern. Yes. And also the setting is so
• 20:24
  contained. I mean, they're either in like Susan
• 20:26
  Saranda's house or they're like a car or like
• 20:29
  the park or a bar or something like that. They're
• 20:32
  never in like a modern stadium or something like
• 20:36
  that. And it's in the South. And so, you know,
• 20:40
  you kind of get this feeling that even though
• 20:42
  it's the 80s and the sexual vibes are 80s and
• 20:46
  the language is 80s and all of that, it is very
• 20:49
  throwback in terms of this like old fashioned
• 20:52
  mentality and these, you know, these interesting,
• 20:55
  again, retro vibes, not just retro now, but even
• 20:59
  retro for the film. Well, and it's interesting
• 21:01
  you say that, because watching it, I was thinking,
• 21:03
  and I even looked up where Shelton was from,
• 21:06
  because I was like, why is it that every single
• 21:08
  film, and of course, we live in the South, but
• 21:10
  I was like, why is it that every single film
• 21:11
  set in the South basically needs to look like
• 21:14
  it's 1940s, 1950s Mississippi, right? Where I'm
• 21:17
  like, you would never know that was. Durham,
• 21:19
  North Carolina, right? Where I'm like, okay.
• 21:21
  Research Triangle. Yes, you would never know
• 21:23
  it, right? Because it's exactly that. It's as
• 21:25
  if we're in this kind of, you know, we're in
• 21:26
  like Sinners era, right? Like small southern
• 21:29
  towns. No, it feels like that. In deep Mississippi.
• 21:31
  Yes, yes. And everyone has the super thick accents,
• 21:34
  right? Again, this corn pone whole thing. Right.
• 21:37
  And so I was like, OK, is it because Ron Shelton,
• 21:39
  again, as a Californian, was like, oh, this must
• 21:42
  be what it's like in North Carolina or whatever?
• 21:44
  Or is it a conscious choice to have this kind
• 21:46
  of timeless, you know, 1950s quality, sort of
• 21:50
  this golden era of baseball? But that to me actually
• 21:54
  sort of took me out of it. because it did jar
• 21:57
  with the sort of sexual liberation feminism of
• 21:59
  the rest of the women and chaps. And I think
• 22:02
  that, and not just Susan Sarandon, but Millie
• 22:04
  Tam. Yeah, absolutely. It's like the women who
• 22:06
  are in this film are, again, very free with their
• 22:10
  sexuality. They sleep with all the players. They
• 22:13
  see themselves as people who are in control of
• 22:16
  what they do. There's no shame in what they're
• 22:19
  doing. And so it has that, again, those 1980s
• 22:25
  sort of liberation vibes. But it's like, yeah,
• 22:29
  but in Oxford, Mississippi, yeah. But you're
• 22:33
  in Durham. They're in Durham. And you would never
• 22:35
  know. No. You're like, where's the major research
• 22:37
  university around here in the neighborhood? You
• 22:39
  would never know. Two of them, anyway. Two of
• 22:41
  them and... Again, the cars are driving around.
• 22:45
  I mean, he does have that Porsche, which is really
• 22:47
  the only, to me, signal of time that he has a
• 22:50
  911. Because she has, like, what, an ancient
• 22:52
  Carmen Ghia or something? No. I mean, you don't
• 22:54
  see any kind of... The buses look... The clothes.
• 22:59
  I mean, except for Kevin Costner's costuming
• 23:01
  that looks very kind of Ralph Lauren, you know.
• 23:05
  Preppy. Preppy. But everybody else looks like
• 23:09
  they could be in another era. And Tim Robbins,
• 23:12
  too. And Tim Robbins, too. Yeah, with the little
• 23:14
  short sleeve shirts. I mean, it's like those,
• 23:15
  you know, like those Hawaiian shirts with the
• 23:17
  snaps. Like, it's just, it's just interesting.
• 23:21
  It is. It is. And it's very almost like sepia
• 23:23
  -toned. Do you know what I mean? But I will say,
• 23:26
  and this can be a segue to our next topic, Bullderm
• 23:30
  is so striking as a sports film in that there's
• 23:33
  no cataclysmic end of the movie championship
• 23:37
  game. Correct. Right, there's no, you know, super
• 23:40
  like what's going to happen and kind of, you
• 23:43
  know, the crowd is in suspense. Rocky versus
• 23:45
  Apollo. Exactly. Nothing. Nothing. It's like
• 23:48
  they have a winning streak, they lose, they then
• 23:50
  have a little winning streak, they then who knows
• 23:52
  what happens for the rest of it. Well, the main
• 23:54
  question is... If they lose, then Tim Robbins
• 23:58
  will have sex with Susan Sarandon again. And
• 24:00
  that's what you're kind of waiting for, or you're
• 24:02
  waiting to see when is she going to have sex
• 24:04
  with Robin Costner. When is she going to? And
• 24:05
  those things basically happen at pretty much
• 24:07
  the same time. They lose a game anyway. But that
• 24:10
  is a nice segue. And let's talk a little bit
• 24:12
  about The Longest Yard, which not only has an
• 24:17
  end of the film cataclysmic wow game, but I would
• 24:21
  say that it maybe takes up a full hour of the
• 24:24
  film. Not unlike A League of Their Own, which
• 24:27
  I will talk about. But I will say, I have not
• 24:32
  seen The Longest Yard. Christine and I were a
• 24:34
  little crunched on time, although we do have
• 24:36
  four texts today. So I will let her have at it
• 24:41
  with The Longest Yard, which I guess I saw the
• 24:44
  Adam Sandler one at some point, but not the Burt
• 24:48
  Reynolds one. So this is, and I won't go on at
• 24:51
  super great length, but I do think you have to
• 24:53
  watch it. I will. Because much like we discover
• 24:56
  that Porky's is actually about anti -Semitism.
• 24:59
  So is this one? It's not about anti -Semitism,
• 25:02
  but it is, I think it is the perfect kind of
• 25:05
  movie that we originally wanted to do the podcast.
• 25:09
  in that it's a film, again, 1974, it is about
• 25:13
  race, it is about racial integration, it is about
• 25:15
  masculinity, it is about institutional power.
• 25:18
  And like every movie made from, say, 1970 to
• 25:22
  1978, it is fundamentally about the Vietnam War.
• 25:25
  And not explicitly, right? Never mentioned. And
• 25:28
  so the basic, and again, Kevin Costner does look
• 25:31
  beautiful. again in Bull Durham, but this is
• 25:34
  a movie like so many others where you're like,
• 25:36
  this is why Burt Reynolds was like the biggest
• 25:39
  star in the 1970s. So charismatic, right? The
• 25:43
  first thing you see of him is his shirtless chest,
• 25:47
  right? I get this class, much like Kevin Costner
• 25:49
  in Bull Durham, seeing his shirtless chest. Anyway,
• 25:51
  so the basic setup of the film. is that he is
• 25:54
  an ex NFL player who ended his career because
• 25:58
  of point shaving. And I don't know if our listeners
• 26:01
  know what point shaving is, but basically where
• 26:03
  you kind of fix the game, not with a won or loss,
• 26:06
  but in points so that gamblers can basically
• 26:09
  make the spread. So he has then just been sort
• 26:13
  of sailing around doing nothing but drinking
• 26:15
  and he gets himself in jail for 18 months. And
• 26:18
  it's our typical hard ass jail, super evil guards,
• 26:22
  super, super evil warden. And the whole idea
• 26:25
  is that for reasons that I think defy explanation,
• 26:27
  the prison has its own semi -pro football team.
• 26:30
  I do know that. Yes. And so the warden gets Burt
• 26:34
  Reynolds to basically put together a football
• 26:36
  team of inmates. who are then going to play the
• 26:40
  guards. And so this is pretty much what happens,
• 26:43
  but it is so fascinating because again, it fundamentally
• 26:45
  is an allegory for the Vietnam War. And that
• 26:47
  we have, again, the super corrupt institutional
• 26:50
  power. What is really interesting is that the
• 26:53
  warden, and I actually didn't, I don't remember
• 26:55
  who played the warden in the Adam Sandler remake.
• 26:58
  I have almost no recollection other than Chris
• 27:00
  Rock was also in it. But The Warden is played
• 27:03
  by Eddie Albert, who was the star of the weirdo
• 27:09
  sitcom Green Acres with Zsa Zsa Gabor. That is in
• 27:14
  very, very recent sort of cultural past. He played
• 27:16
  this sort of like super nice guy in this ditzy,
• 27:20
  very sort of absurd sitcom. Now, in this film,
• 27:24
  in 1974, he's a super hard ass, again, really
• 27:27
  evil. You know, again, they're beating the prisoners
• 27:29
  all the time. But one of the most interesting
• 27:31
  things about film is that the the black prisoners
• 27:35
  do not want to join the football team and it
• 27:39
  is very much a segregated prison and it is only
• 27:42
  sort of gradually in part because they realize
• 27:45
  they can fight back against the guards but also
• 27:47
  because one character joins the team, that it
• 27:51
  becomes an integrated team. And that is something
• 27:54
  that develops very clearly over the course of
• 27:56
  the film. Much like the U .S. Army, Lauren. The
• 28:00
  message is not unclear. Subtle, right? Yes, much
• 28:04
  like the U .S. Army. sort of the integration
• 28:06
  that happens. They do become kind of one team.
• 28:09
  And so one thing I really liked about the Longest
• 28:12
  Yard, it is a classic, classic 1970s, right?
• 28:15
  We are hearing like super mean language. Everybody
• 28:19
  is saying the word fuck, right? There's literally
• 28:21
  one, no, I'm sorry. two women in the entire film
• 28:25
  for a total of maybe six minutes. One of them
• 28:27
  is Bernadette Peters, by the way. Oh my gosh.
• 28:29
  Yeah. Wow. And she's the warden's secretary.
• 28:31
  But it's really fascinating because it is, again,
• 28:34
  these classic things of sort of honor and masculinity
• 28:39
  and sort of... You don't want to say healthy
• 28:41
  masculinity. It's extremely... violent, right?
• 28:45
  But it's the classic sort of little guys who
• 28:48
  are going up against the evil institutional power.
• 28:51
  And the football game itself is maybe like an
• 28:55
  hour of the film. But it's genuinely thrilling
• 28:57
  because it's also this question of sacrifice,
• 29:01
  sort of what is Burt Reynolds willing to do in
• 29:05
  order to basically sort of instill, as he says,
• 29:08
  kind of confidence and dignity in this team and
• 29:11
  Yeah, I actually really, really enjoyed it. And
• 29:13
  it's definitely a time capsule. Right. And a
• 29:17
  woman gets thrown to the ground and, you know,
• 29:19
  he's driving drunk, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
• 29:23
  The N word is deployed often. Someone is called
• 29:26
  other sort of slurs. Sure. And again, which is
• 29:30
  not to be sort of unexpected for 1974, but it's
• 29:33
  actually done in a very specific way. Right.
• 29:36
  I mean, not in a gratuitous way, sort of in terms
• 29:39
  of talking about kind of the particular background
• 29:41
  of these very, very violent in some cases and
• 29:43
  sort of dangerous people. But it's incredibly
• 29:45
  sympathetic to all of the prisoners. And I mean,
• 29:49
  very much so. And again, I just think it's really
• 29:52
  interesting. Do you think it would be a sign
• 29:54
  in a carceral state class? I think it should
• 29:58
  be. Because, I mean, not to get back to Tim Robbins
• 30:01
  already. OK. But to me, to think about something
• 30:03
  like the Shawshank Redemption. a movie that actually,
• 30:07
  I really did not, it's not that I didn't like
• 30:08
  it, I'm just like, I don't really get it. Or
• 30:10
  what's the other one, the one that he directed?
• 30:13
  Dead Men Walking. Dead Men Walking, yeah, which
• 30:15
  actually I've never seen. Well, I was also thinking
• 30:17
  when I was watching - Didn't he direct Dead Men
• 30:19
  Walking? You know what, I honestly don't - Or
• 30:21
  was it Champagne? No, no. I don't think Champagne
• 30:25
  directed it. I mean, Sean Penn plays the prisoner.
• 30:27
  Sure. I thought Tim Robbins directed the Shawshank.
• 30:30
  Maybe he did. But I could be wrong. I'm sorry,
• 30:33
  Dead Man Walking. But there is a prison vibe
• 30:36
  with Tim Robbins. There is. Well, I was trying
• 30:39
  and I know he wasn't. What is the film where
• 30:41
  like Brad Pitt and everyone else and like they're
• 30:44
  molested in the boys school? You know what I'm
• 30:47
  talking about? Oh, you mean like, oh, what's
• 30:48
  it called? Twonky's? No, no, no, no, no. We're
• 30:51
  like. Kevin Bacon is one of the evil, like, guards
• 30:55
  at the kids' school. See, again, if we had actually,
• 30:58
  like, you know, call -in listeners, someone could...
• 31:00
  Actually, Scott, Scott, you know what this movie
• 31:02
  is. Um... Shit, it's like a one -word title.
• 31:06
  It's about the kids at the boys' school. They're
• 31:08
  brutally, like, molested and abused, and they
• 31:11
  grow up, and they basically, like, one of the
• 31:14
  guards get... Ah! I thought you meant the Toby
• 31:14
  Mawire movie? no with trellis thereon i feel
• 31:17
  like i should just i'm just going to look this
• 31:19
  up yeah look at it no i don't i don't know i
• 31:21
  don't know what again so anyway but it's interesting
• 31:26
  to think about the longest yard really and obviously
• 31:28
  there have been prison movies before and it clearly
• 31:32
  is kind of going back again to that 1960s, 1950s
• 31:35
  prison vibe. But then I think it very much is
• 31:37
  sort of looking ahead in terms of the idea of,
• 31:41
  again, that all institutional power is corrupt
• 31:43
  and it needs to be fought against. And one is
• 31:45
  to try to maintain, again, dignity. But it really,
• 31:48
  as I said, but the football makes sense. And
• 31:51
  the last thing I'll say about it is that at the
• 31:54
  very beginning, the evil warden says, you know,
• 31:56
  football is a game that people love because it
• 31:59
  is American. And this is it, you know, again,
• 32:02
  it's like, you have to be strong, you have to
• 32:04
  practice, you have to have, you know, sort of
• 32:06
  follow the rules. And, but then the game itself
• 32:09
  is this unbelievably brutal, lawless smackdown.
• 32:13
  But nevertheless, that does have referees, including
• 32:15
  a black referee, actually. And so one of the
• 32:18
  things I was thinking, and I don't know if you
• 32:19
  know the answer to this, and obviously it's complicated
• 32:22
  by the fact that the NFL was sort of, right,
• 32:24
  constructed out of other leagues, but I was like,
• 32:26
  who was the first, when did the NFL? I mean,
• 32:29
  obviously we all know when Major League Baseball
• 32:32
  integrated with Jackie Robinson. But I was like,
• 32:34
  I know nothing about sort of the early history
• 32:36
  of black players playing professional football.
• 32:39
  And I'm angry at myself because I meant to look
• 32:42
  that up. Because again, one more time, that is
• 32:44
  the whole, when the black prisoners are first
• 32:47
  approached by Burt Reynolds' character, they're
• 32:49
  playing basketball. and Burt Reynolds says, well,
• 32:52
  do you play football? And a couple of them are
• 32:54
  like, yes, but we're not playing for you. But
• 32:56
  we know from, okay, so two things. So this film
• 32:59
  happens after the Attica Prison Riot, which is
• 33:01
  1971. Oh, okay. Okay. So there's just that, that
• 33:06
  historical touch point. But we also know from
• 33:09
  the O .J. Simpson documentary. That football
• 33:14
  was integrated at the time that O .J. was at
• 33:18
  the University of Southern California. So that's
• 33:22
  in the 60s or late 60s. I think he won the Heisman
• 33:28
  in like 67 or something. Right. And then he goes
• 33:29
  to play for the Bills or maybe had played to
• 33:32
  another team before the Bills. But all of that
• 33:33
  was integrated. So by the mid century, football
• 33:39
  is integrated, I assume, when the schools are
• 33:44
  integrated. Yeah, and that would make sense.
• 33:46
  I mean, college ball and then pro ball, you know,
• 33:50
  as pro ball picks up more steam. But it's just
• 33:53
  interesting that that, again, that particular
• 33:55
  narrative, right, isn't as sort of visible as
• 33:57
  it is in baseball. Right. And it might just be
• 33:59
  right that it is more complicated. But I do.
• 34:02
  But I think that it really is in terms of I think
• 34:04
  it should be shown in a class about the carceral
• 34:07
  state. I do think it's really interesting in
• 34:09
  terms of race relations in the early 1970s. Sure.
• 34:12
  And was just so I'm really good. And again, it's
• 34:14
  Burt Reynolds is a star. Right. And you watch
• 34:16
  it and you think that that I think it was, what,
• 34:18
  a year or two after Deliverance, you know, this
• 34:20
  other sort of snapshot of American masculinity
• 34:23
  in that period. That's interesting. That's an
• 34:25
  interesting pairing. I mean, this is a whole
• 34:27
  different conversation. Yeah, it is. And of course,
• 34:29
  like I'm going to segue 360, 180, however you
• 34:33
  think about it. uh to league of their own right
• 34:36
  but but yeah i mean i think that this this prison
• 34:39
  football interesting metaphor and then rival
• 34:43
  teams and and and and shawshank is about that
• 34:46
  too although yeah you know institution versus
• 34:49
  prisoner institution versus the man um the sort
• 34:53
  of classic david and goliath right saintly prisoners
• 34:56
  who um misunderstood and I mean not all of them
• 35:00
  of course but some of them. Well and that's the
• 35:02
  thing I mean the last thing I'll say about it
• 35:04
  which are actually two things. What's interesting
• 35:05
  is that the prisoners aren't the whole point
• 35:07
  of the prisoners is that he wants the most violent
• 35:10
  ones to be on the team because again they intend
• 35:13
  to basically brutalize the guards and of course
• 35:15
  the guards have been brutalizing them and so
• 35:17
  that's actually interesting because you do sympathize
• 35:19
  you want these these guys to win the game even
• 35:22
  though it's like oh we want the serial killer
• 35:24
  basically but the other thing i understand but
• 35:26
  thinking also about bull Durham you know in that
• 35:27
  distance between 1974 and only like 10 years
• 35:30
  later right this is a hundred percent male environment
• 35:34
  in a totally unapologetic way. And to think about
• 35:37
  the change in such a short period of time. Well,
• 35:39
  also to think about the idea that a woman could
• 35:43
  potentially know more about baseball than a man.
• 35:45
  Yeah. Yeah, it's remarkable. And be sort of sexually
• 35:50
  coaching the team. Yeah. Sleepers. Oh, sleepers.
• 35:55
  Right. Sleepers. Gosh. I could never watch that
• 35:58
  movie again. What a punishment to watch that.
• 36:01
  I forgot it. I forgot it. Oh, don't remember.
• 36:04
  No, but I know what it's about. And Matt Damon's
• 36:08
  in it too, right? Oh, is he? I think all of those
• 36:11
  - Like that whole batch. That whole game. That
• 36:13
  whole like, I don't want to say Harvey Weinstein
• 36:15
  batch because that's like a bad vibe. No, but
• 36:18
  I know, I think they're all in Sleepers. Edward
• 36:21
  Norton. Oh, Billy Crudup. Oh, okay. Jason Patric.
• 36:27
  Okay. Yeah, it's like it's like the Flatliner
• 36:30
  crew. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So well, let's turn
• 36:34
  to a little more upbeat. OK, perhaps perhaps
• 36:38
  in League of Their Own. So I decided to bring
• 36:42
  a League of Their Own into this conversation
• 36:44
  just because we have a lot of masculinity and
• 36:47
  all of our other techs. Not to say that Ted Lasso
• 36:50
  doesn't have any feminine, you know, but but
• 36:52
  again, they're they're heavily masculine. And
• 36:56
  also because we were going with this baseball
• 36:59
  vibe with Bull Durham and, um, and, and baseball
• 37:04
  movies as a sort of a framework for talking about
• 37:06
  other things, right? Which very much is the case
• 37:09
  of a league of their own, which interestingly
• 37:12
  has. the most baseball of any baseball film that
• 37:17
  I have recently seen, or actually I would say
• 37:20
  A League of Throne has more sports being played,
• 37:24
  more scenes of baseball training, auditioning,
• 37:29
  everything, okay, than most sports films that
• 37:32
  I have seen recently. Wait, can I ask a question?
• 37:35
  Does it have more than say Field of Dreams, another
• 37:37
  Kevin Costner baseball film we did not watch?
• 37:39
  I don't remember. Okay. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
• 37:42
  But seeing how that the field isn't built until
• 37:44
  the end and in the League of their own, the fields
• 37:48
  are all there. Again, most of you know League
• 37:52
  of their Own and Netflix turned it into a TV
• 37:55
  show a couple year or two ago or a couple years
• 37:57
  ago, I guess, to continue the story. It's a true
• 38:01
  story, of course, of women's baseball leagues
• 38:04
  that were formed during World War II while men
• 38:07
  were on the fighting front. And really the story
• 38:10
  of these two sisters, Gina Davis and Lori Petty,
• 38:14
  who go off to play for the Rockford Peaches.
• 38:19
  the kinds of friendships they make and the opportunities
• 38:22
  found in the sport. And again, this real feminist
• 38:28
  push for women's work and women's value and having
• 38:33
  their value be recognized externally by the managers,
• 38:37
  the coaches. an initially drunk and a very, very
• 38:42
  reluctant Tom Hanks who is coming back to us
• 38:45
  again from bachelor party. And then this, this
• 38:49
  one is the manager of the, of the peaches who
• 38:52
  at the very beginning is completely uninterested
• 38:56
  out of it. He doesn't even know the game's being
• 38:58
  played. He's just completely inebriated. And
• 39:01
  then when he kind of starts to sober up and sees
• 39:05
  that these women are invested and how much they
• 39:08
  love the game and they make him love the game,
• 39:10
  too. It has a corniness to it that is so endearing
• 39:14
  that it's very, very hard not to watch this movie
• 39:16
  and cry. And I did cry. I cry every time I see
• 39:20
  this, because it is such a joy, first of all,
• 39:24
  to see these incredible, Penny Marshall's directing
• 39:27
  is wonderful. Oh, I forgot now. Okay, she's wonderful.
• 39:29
  I totally forgot she's wonderful. And the baseball
• 39:32
  scenes are so good. And the nice thing about
• 39:35
  A League of Their Own, especially watching it
• 39:38
  now, is that it never tends to be more than it
• 39:41
  is. And in that I'm just saying, it's a historical
• 39:46
  kind of time capsule. shows these newsreels and
• 39:51
  some of them are fake for the movie and some
• 39:53
  of them are real from the time period. But it
• 39:56
  also does a lot with class. It does a lot with
• 40:00
  people coming from different parts of the country.
• 40:02
  It doesn't do as much with race, which the new
• 40:05
  series does in terms of the Negro leagues and
• 40:09
  women in the Negro leagues and things like that.
• 40:11
  But it does a nice job in showing how these women
• 40:15
  with all sorts of differences and all sorts of
• 40:19
  levels of experience and also the expectations
• 40:23
  put on them in terms of being beautiful and being
• 40:26
  all the things but also being these incredible
• 40:28
  players. that they have to face this. And in
• 40:31
  the center of it, again, is the story of these
• 40:33
  two sisters, one, the beautiful, perfect one,
• 40:36
  the Gina Davis character, and then they kind
• 40:38
  of like scrappy, you know, tag along. Tom Boyish.
• 40:42
  Tom Boyish, right. Lori Petty, who follows in
• 40:46
  her sister's footsteps and can only even get
• 40:49
  on the train because Gina Davis agrees that she'll
• 40:52
  only go if Lori Petty comes to. And it turns
• 40:54
  out Lori Petty is a great pitcher and she's talented,
• 40:58
  but she's been and her big sister's footsteps
• 41:00
  but looming over this movie is the war and many
• 41:04
  of these women have husbands that are overseas
• 41:07
  and you know wondering about that and on all
• 41:10
  the other issues of the war and what will happen
• 41:13
  to these women when the war comes when the war
• 41:15
  is over and will they be thrown out of this and
• 41:18
  it turns out that they're not that though these
• 41:21
  these these leaks stick around for for a little
• 41:24
  while and um you know not maybe not the same
• 41:28
  kind of robust enthusiasm as during the war but
• 41:31
  they are they are still around and the Gina Davis
• 41:34
  character which is so interesting because she
• 41:38
  she's very much uninterested in being there you
• 41:42
  know she's wonderful as a fall player and she's
• 41:45
  talented, but she can take it or leave it at
• 41:47
  any moment. She's ready to leave. She's like,
• 41:49
  and especially when her husband comes back from
• 41:51
  the war with her and she's like, bye, like I'm
• 41:53
  leaving. I'm going to go home and go and live
• 41:56
  my life with him, even though it's the they're
• 41:58
  headed to the world, to the championships. And
• 42:01
  she's sort of like, I never wanted to be here.
• 42:03
  And so it's also this this I think commentary
• 42:06
  on talent, but also that she sees her place somewhere
• 42:09
  else. Very ironically, because she is arguably
• 42:13
  the best one in terms of the actual baseball
• 42:16
  talent, but she doesn't want to admit that she
• 42:19
  is this terrific ballplayer and that it's meaningful
• 42:22
  to her. And that's, to me, very interesting in
• 42:24
  the way that all the other women, Madonna, Rosie
• 42:27
  O'Donnell, the other women on the team are like,
• 42:30
  this is my identity. I finally found my people,
• 42:34
  and I finally can play unapologetically, and
• 42:37
  I don't have to make excuses for not being a,
• 42:40
  quote, real woman and all that kind of stuff.
• 42:42
  Whereas Gina Davis is like, again. take it or
• 42:45
  leave it. And she only plays for one year where
• 42:48
  the rest of them come back and play multiple
• 42:50
  years. Okay. And because by the end, so it starts
• 42:54
  out with the flashback with Gina Davis in her
• 43:01
  70s or something at the baseball hall of fame
• 43:04
  when they're inducting this Women's All -American
• 43:07
  Baseball League and and then you know chose the
• 43:10
  story and then at the end when I like the waterworks
• 43:12
  just come you see all these women in their 70s
• 43:15
  coming and seeing each other and You know reuniting
• 43:18
  some of them are not with us anymore and their
• 43:21
  lives have changed and they're all grandmothers
• 43:23
  and things like that, but It it that's when you
• 43:28
  get you find out that she doesn't she really
• 43:29
  doesn't play again She only played that one year
• 43:32
  and there are things again that the series I
• 43:35
  have I didn't watch the whole series faithfully
• 43:38
  on Netflix but it doesn't address lesbianism
• 43:41
  it doesn't address race as explicitly there there's
• 43:45
  a nod there's a nod to segregated you know to
• 43:50
  the to the league being segregated very briefly
• 43:53
  um very very briefly but Overall, it does, you
• 43:58
  know, it does really give you a good sense of
• 44:01
  how that league functioned and the expectations
• 44:04
  put upon these women and the way that they, you
• 44:08
  know, created the community. So this is a dumb
• 44:13
  question. No. Why would you so? OK, well, is
• 44:16
  there so there isn't then the end of the movie
• 44:20
  cataclysmic? There is. You do see like the championship.
• 44:22
  Oh, so the championship game. has Gina Davis
• 44:25
  who decide so when they go to the playoffs Gina
• 44:28
  Davis leaves with her husband and they start
• 44:31
  to drive back to um they're from Oregon okay
• 44:34
  and then she decides to play in the final game
• 44:37
  against her sister who has been drafted or traded
• 44:41
  rather yeah yeah yeah so Lori Petty is now playing
• 44:44
  for the race seat for the race scene bells and
• 44:49
  Gina Davis comes back to play for what was Lori
• 44:53
  Petty's old team, the Rockford Peaches. So the
• 44:55
  last, say, 40, 30 minutes are this World Series
• 45:01
  Championship game with Gina Davis playing in
• 45:04
  it, with her husband watching, and with Tom Hanks
• 45:08
  being like, you came, because he was so disappointed
• 45:10
  that she left. And again, the final play of the
• 45:16
  game is... the collision of Lori Penny and Geena
• 45:21
  Davis into each other and then you see Geena
• 45:23
  Davis drop the ball and you wonder whether she
• 45:26
  did that so that her sister could get the recognition
• 45:29
  that she really wanted because again, Geena Davis
• 45:32
  just kind of doesn't, she doesn't care but that's
• 45:34
  just not her priority or whether that just was
• 45:36
  the way it went. So yes, it is an albiter. And
• 45:41
  you're wondering, again, is Pitting sister against
• 45:43
  sister, also one sister against former teammates.
• 45:46
  And you've gotten to know all of these women
• 45:48
  now very well who are part of the Rockford Peaches.
• 45:52
  And they all have their own backstories and interesting
• 45:56
  things about them and nicknames and stuff like
• 45:59
  that. So yeah. So I also, this of course was
• 46:03
  very much a big deal at the time because Madonna
• 46:06
  was in it. Right. And we do need to talk about
• 46:08
  Madonna at like some other time. I know, I know.
• 46:11
  Because I mean she does occupy a lot of mental
• 46:14
  energy and a lot of cultural space. All the time.
• 46:17
  But I will say that that was actually one, I
• 46:20
  found Madonna to be very distracting in that.
• 46:22
  Interesting. I think she's terrific. Okay. I
• 46:25
  really think she's terrific and the thing that
• 46:28
  I found I guess differently, undistracting. As
• 46:32
  I feel like she does let, I mean, of course,
• 46:34
  you see it's Madonna, right? But it's a brunette
• 46:37
  Madonna. It's a baseball player Madonna. Rosie
• 46:40
  O'Donnell is terrific in A League of Their Own.
• 46:43
  And I'm not a huge Rosie O'Donnell fan, but I
• 46:46
  do really enjoy her in this. And it is important
• 46:49
  to remind everyone that certainly she was an
• 46:52
  actress. Yes, right. And that was the space that
• 46:55
  she occupied, certainly. Yes. And she's terrific.
• 46:58
  And I feel like in a lot of ways, Madonna is...
• 47:03
  given a little bit less oxygen in the film because
• 47:09
  of Rosie O'Donnell. Their sidekicks of each other
• 47:12
  and they kind of go together and you kind of
• 47:15
  forget Madonna's Madonna. At least I did this
• 47:18
  time watching. I mean, she was just, you know,
• 47:21
  again, I know it's Madonna, but Rosie O'Donnell
• 47:24
  is with her in every scene. And also, Gina Davis
• 47:28
  is so much of the movie. Madonna, again, has
• 47:34
  a storyline and I think an important one too,
• 47:38
  but she's also not the sort of just stereotypical
• 47:42
  like, you know, Madonna. I mean, she's also very
• 47:46
  sweet and tender and she's a really good friend
• 47:48
  to Gina Davis. And she's obviously a really good
• 47:51
  friend to Rosie O'Donnell. And she's constantly
• 47:53
  saying like, Rosie O'Donnell is the best player
• 47:55
  on the team. And they're like, again, they're
• 47:57
  like two peas in a pod. And then even at the
• 47:59
  very end, when they're in their 70s, they're
• 48:01
  still besties when they come back. So because
• 48:04
  they are paired together, it feels to me like
• 48:07
  Madonna isn't Madonna, capital M Madonna. It's
• 48:12
  not like a Madonna movie. Although she does have
• 48:14
  a theme song, which, you know, isn't one of my
• 48:17
  favorite Madonna songs. But and it's interesting
• 48:20
  to see like Madonna dialoguing with Tom Hanks.
• 48:24
  Like, you know, you're just kind of like, oh,
• 48:27
  that's interesting. You know. See, by the way,
• 48:30
  of course, if we do end up doing our sort of
• 48:34
  documentary contrafilm episode. Yeah. Remember,
• 48:37
  Kevin Costner appears in Madonna, Truth or Dare
• 48:40
  backstage. Oh, my God. We get something else
• 48:43
  we can talk about later. So let's do a quick
• 48:45
  review before we go on to talk about Ted Lasso
• 48:50
  in our remaining time. So again, our longest
• 48:53
  yard is really sort of unapologetically sort
• 48:57
  of this masculine movie. It is about masculinity.
• 49:00
  It is about, I think. the ways in which sort
• 49:03
  of American power, right, the American government
• 49:05
  is willing to throw certain people, basically
• 49:07
  black and white, and also Native American Latino,
• 49:10
  because the movie is quite, quite diverse, willing
• 49:12
  to throw them into the trash can. And sports
• 49:15
  is a way to reclaim dignity for everybody, as
• 49:20
  well as to basically fight the power and to get
• 49:23
  some degree of social and racial cohesion. This
• 49:25
  is, again, it's not subtle. Right. It's not subtle.
• 49:29
  Right. And I would say legal, they're wrong.
• 49:31
  not the racial part, but has the same message.
• 49:35
  Sport is empowerment. Sport is a space where
• 49:38
  people who have been women who have been marginalized
• 49:41
  can finally recognize and get to the center and
• 49:44
  unite and find each other and all sorts of things
• 49:48
  like that. But then, of course, as we talked
• 49:50
  about a little bit earlier in Bull Durham, it's
• 49:53
  actually not really clear what the sports are
• 49:55
  doing at all. Right? I think that's fair to say.
• 49:58
  I think that's fair to say, sure. And again,
• 49:59
  I think it could have been so many other things,
• 50:01
  right? It could have been an actor at the end
• 50:03
  of his career and a young star, right? Like a
• 50:05
  star is born or something, you know, with still
• 50:08
  Susan Sarandon playing the same kind of role.
• 50:10
  And it's very unclear why that film needs to
• 50:13
  be about sports. But that's what I would argue.
• 50:18
  Right. The model could apply to many things.
• 50:23
  It doesn't have to be baseball. It could have
• 50:26
  been professors. It could have been for me. So
• 50:29
  we're not getting the same sort of over the top
• 50:32
  lesson about sports in terms of psychology or
• 50:36
  sociology for that matter. And so now let's finish
• 50:38
  our time by talking about Ted Lasso. Now, full
• 50:42
  disclosure, I have seen nothing of the most recent
• 50:45
  season. Lauren watched one episode. One episode,
• 50:47
  which might be plenty for me. Plenty. Look, to
• 50:51
  be honest, if I have nothing else to watch and
• 50:54
  I'm just there and I feel like being in a Ted
• 50:58
  Lasso kind of mood, I'll put it on. Maybe. But
• 51:02
  I'm not itching to see the rest after seeing
• 51:05
  the first episode of season four. I was happy
• 51:08
  with the way that season three ended. I felt
• 51:11
  like... Fiend. Done. And now I don't have to
• 51:13
  watch this anymore. And all good. We as a nation
• 51:16
  have been done. Right. Now, Ted Lasso premiered
• 51:19
  during COVID and it brought everyone all the
• 51:22
  happy feels when they were doing their puzzles
• 51:25
  and... Cookies every day. Couldn't go to school
• 51:27
  all in one hour. So it had a particular uplifting
• 51:32
  function that I think we all appreciated with
• 51:35
  this story of this coach from Indiana, yeah?
• 51:41
  No, from Kansas. Kansas, Kansas, I'm sorry. Kansas
• 51:44
  City. Well, Kansas City, but not Kansas City,
• 51:46
  Kansas. Right, right, right. The Kansas side
• 51:48
  of Kansas City, Missouri. The Kansas side of
• 51:49
  Kansas City, right. who goes to the UK to coach
• 51:55
  this football team, these kind of reg tag guys
• 51:59
  who can't get their act together. And he manages
• 52:03
  to bring them together as friends, as teammates,
• 52:07
  with all these hokey kind of slogans and... Home
• 52:12
  spun wisdom. Home spun wisdom and pop culture
• 52:15
  references. Simplicity, positivity. Believe.
• 52:18
  believe and that also the team is owned by a
• 52:21
  woman who has recently been divorced from her
• 52:24
  asshole billionaire husband who owned the team
• 52:27
  and so there's a sense at first that she wants
• 52:29
  to she wants the team to fail just to punish
• 52:31
  him emotionally but then she wants it to succeed
• 52:34
  and they have she and Ted Lasso have this very
• 52:37
  respectful relationship and I will say Lauren
• 52:39
  that I was I was someone who liked the first
• 52:42
  season very much. And then by the end of it,
• 52:45
  I utterly hated the show. I thought it was just
• 52:48
  utter, utter, utter junk. I'm happy to explain
• 52:50
  it like what that is. But the short version,
• 52:53
  and I might have said this to you before, is
• 52:55
  that I think in season, so in season two and
• 52:58
  three, I think fundamentally season two and season
• 53:01
  three. are jason sadekis working out his issues
• 53:06
  about the fact that olivia what's your name Wilde
• 53:10
  dating harry stiles i think seriously i think
• 53:14
  both seasons can be broken down in a very careful
• 53:18
  sort of parallelism way to be about that and
• 53:21
  i think the whole. Rebecca and Sam relationship
• 53:24
  is intended to be an Olivia Wild Harry Styles
• 53:29
  thing where again the older woman who is in a
• 53:32
  position of power over the younger man who's
• 53:36
  you know very attractive and charismatic and
• 53:38
  everything and successful that this basically
• 53:40
  sort of happens and etc etc and obviously the
• 53:43
  whole thing about the ex -wife about Ted's ex
• 53:45
  -wife sure this whole fantasy and I've told you
• 53:48
  before how much this drives me crazy the fantasy
• 53:50
  that even though they're divorced Everyone keeps
• 53:52
  asking Ted, like, oh, when is she coming to live
• 53:54
  in London? Never. Never. Never. Because you're
• 53:57
  divorced. Right. So it's never going to happen.
• 53:59
  Right. No, it's never going to happen. I think
• 54:02
  what I found endearing, and again, if I watched
• 54:05
  it again, I've never watched it more than once.
• 54:08
  I think like everyone else for the first season,
• 54:11
  it was just like happy times, laughing, guys,
• 54:16
  you know, again, the bad news bears that all
• 54:19
  of those cliches coming back. And of course,
• 54:23
  Jamie and he's he's so cute. And Roy Kent was
• 54:27
  appealing in a totally different way. In the
• 54:29
  very beginning, when you meet Roy Kent, you're
• 54:31
  like, oh, he's a star and wonderful character.
• 54:35
  And again, by the way, just to jump in. And of
• 54:36
  course, with Jamie and Roy, We have the exact
• 54:39
  nuke -la -louche like Crash Davis parallelism.
• 54:42
  The older star who's aging out of his fort and
• 54:45
  the young hotshot. Nice. Very nice, Christine.
• 54:48
  So thank you. Thank you. So right, we have that.
• 54:51
  And then we of course have a love triangle. A
• 54:53
  love triangle, yes. With Junotemple who also
• 54:56
  runs through... players, we're told that. Not
• 54:58
  the same way that Susan Sarandis' character does.
• 55:00
  Yes, and who is with Jamie in the beginning and
• 55:03
  then eventually they break up. But a lot of this
• 55:07
  too is about her rising in the industry and her
• 55:12
  new friendship with Hannah Waddington and what
• 55:16
  her name is on the show? Rebecca. Rebecca, right.
• 55:20
  So Keely and Rebecca in the very beginning are
• 55:23
  not equals in any way, but certainly by where
• 55:26
  the end of season three, they're like partners
• 55:29
  and Keely is, I don't know, like running an empire
• 55:34
  or whatever. So there's a lot of kind of girl
• 55:38
  power, girl boss energy at the same time that
• 55:41
  there's also these funny, uh, anecdotal things
• 55:47
  that go with all of the players. They all have
• 55:49
  their little backstory or their or their quirks
• 55:52
  or their niches or their things. And then you
• 55:56
  also have, again, the homespun Ted Lasso with
• 55:58
  his Midwestern wisdom clashing in a way that's
• 56:03
  very funny, at least we thought so at the time,
• 56:06
  with these British players, and they're international
• 56:09
  players too. They're not just British players,
• 56:12
  but they half the time have no idea what he's
• 56:15
  talking about. And there are cultural, there
• 56:18
  are things that are lost in translation, which
• 56:20
  are funny. At least they were in 2020 when maybe
• 56:24
  anything was funny that wasn't like about a mask
• 56:26
  or like hands on. Well, and they were able to
• 56:30
  move on pretty quickly, luckily, from the whole
• 56:31
  like, oh, wait, you drink tea, you know, right,
• 56:34
  call trucks, lorries, because at first, right,
• 56:36
  there was actually there was too much of that.
• 56:38
  Yeah. And they did move on. Right. But but we
• 56:41
  I do one of the things that I think. happened
• 56:43
  i mean you and i both watched crazy ex -girlfriend
• 56:46
  yeah right which was a great great show yes and
• 56:48
  but at one point right they really leaned into
• 56:50
  the whole like rebecca is bipolar she's trying
• 56:53
  to kill herself on a plane right which then of
• 56:56
  course changed the tone radically not not entirely
• 56:59
  and then you know she was always you know sure
• 57:01
  quirky But obviously, Ted Lasso really, really,
• 57:05
  all of a sudden, we went off a cliff. The panic
• 57:08
  attacks, right? I can't coach. I need the therapist.
• 57:11
  The entire team needs the therapist. We're working
• 57:13
  through our mother issues. We're working through
• 57:15
  all of this stuff. It gets dark. Dark. And again,
• 57:19
  that's in one reason why I think. Jason Sudeikis'
• 57:23
  personal life goes off the cliff, and all of
• 57:26
  a sudden, this positivity and simplicity, and
• 57:29
  what was the famous line? You start with what?
• 57:32
  Not suspicion. There's something that he says
• 57:34
  when he's in argument, playing darts with Rupert,
• 57:39
  Rebecca's ex. He says something like, I lead
• 57:42
  with curiosity, not whatever it is, some bullshit
• 57:45
  like that. Anyway, but we have that kind of stuff,
• 57:48
  and then it just... It gets really, the panic
• 57:51
  attacks and... And Beard's girlfriend, right,
• 57:53
  ends up basically being like abusive, right?
• 57:55
  And just all of the stuff where it's like, all
• 57:58
  of this almost like, you know... It gets sideways.
• 58:00
  Sideways. But without sort of this fun sort of
• 58:02
  like dynasty style, you know, like, oh my god,
• 58:06
  hokum. And so it just, again, I will repeat,
• 58:09
  I think that all of that stuff that he was going
• 58:12
  through, we had to see it, you know, was being
• 58:15
  worked out in some way. I didn't want to see
• 58:17
  it worked out in any way. But there were again
• 58:21
  these interesting, when we talk about Nate who
• 58:23
  was an assistant coach in the beginning and then
• 58:26
  we see the trajectory from him being this like
• 58:29
  incredibly kind and supportive coach to then
• 58:32
  becoming this kind of sinister villain who goes
• 58:35
  to work for the enemy, for the opposite team
• 58:38
  and is like a mole and I mean really becomes
• 58:42
  villainized. And that's an interesting turn.
• 58:49
  And the Keeley character too, who again, she's
• 58:52
  with these two men in relationships, and then
• 58:57
  she ends up becoming a lesbian for reasons that
• 59:01
  are curious. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I mean
• 59:07
  for reasons that are curious, and one just wonders
• 59:10
  why that was written in and where it came from.
• 59:15
  like why does this because actually the same
• 59:17
  thing happened with crazy ex -girlfriend right
• 59:19
  where remember josh's ex -girlfriend, the other
• 59:22
  one, right? All of a sudden, she's a lesbian.
• 59:25
  And it's like, okay, there's no indication, right,
• 59:26
  that she in any way has been questioning her
• 59:28
  sexuality. And the same thing with Keely, where
• 59:30
  it's like, okay, if we had some sort of sense,
• 59:32
  right, that like, oh, okay, she's been bisexual,
• 59:35
  she's been questioning, she's just been, you
• 59:36
  know, into different fluid, right, fluid or,
• 59:39
  you know, sort of sexually free thinking. But
• 59:41
  we have none of that. And the idea that this
• 59:43
  is never a plot point with men. Right. Never.
• 59:47
  So obviously we have Colin. But the whole thing
• 59:48
  about Colin is that he's been closeted forever.
• 59:51
  Right. And he's terrified to tell the teammates.
• 59:53
  He's terrified to tell the teammates and he worries
• 59:55
  about cohesion and being rejected. But I do not
• 59:59
  understand why people are still allowed to get
• 1:00:02
  away with the whole, like, oh, this character
• 1:00:04
  who has never been either bisexual or a lesbian,
• 1:00:06
  all of a sudden for plot purposes. Because again,
• 1:00:09
  it never happens with a man. You never have a
• 1:00:11
  random male character who's like, now I'm sleeping
• 1:00:13
  with Doug, and then just goes back to whatever.
• 1:00:17
  It's an end just like that. Right? Right? Yes.
• 1:00:22
  Yes. But without even the sex in the city. Miranda
• 1:00:28
  seeing if she's a lesbian, kissing a woman and
• 1:00:30
  being like, nope, I don't feel anything. Which
• 1:00:33
  you're like, all right, okay. But Keely never,
• 1:00:37
  again, you never see the two of them go to a
• 1:00:39
  club and you see her kiss some women and then
• 1:00:42
  kiss some men and there's nothing. Just all of
• 1:00:44
  a sudden she's a lesbian. And again, I just,
• 1:00:47
  I find it very interesting, but again, especially
• 1:00:50
  shows with male creators who are like, let's
• 1:00:53
  have the ladies now writing, like making out
• 1:00:55
  or whatever. And so to me, that was just, that
• 1:00:57
  was one of the many things that just absolutely
• 1:00:59
  sort of ruined Ted Lasso. And that's saying like,
• 1:01:02
  you just, there's nothing, you've lost the plot
• 1:01:04
  in terms of like, literally, I don't mean like
• 1:01:05
  in terms of being crazy. You've lost what this
• 1:01:08
  show sort of wants to be and what it's about.
• 1:01:11
  And... I have one more complaint to make about
• 1:01:14
  Ted Lasso. Go ahead. Can I complain it? We're
• 1:01:17
  at an hour. Look, make complaints about it. I
• 1:01:19
  mean, again, I really was very satisfied with
• 1:01:22
  the end of Ted Lasso season. three with everything
• 1:01:27
  wrapping up with all the players making peace
• 1:01:31
  with their father. I mean, there's all these
• 1:01:33
  father son issues too, which we haven't talked
• 1:01:35
  about, but there are a lot of family dynamics
• 1:01:38
  with these players that are interesting and different
• 1:01:41
  and internationally different contexts and things
• 1:01:45
  like that. Right. So I was very happy with Ted
• 1:01:48
  eventually leaving, going back to be with his
• 1:01:51
  son. making peace with what had happened with
• 1:01:54
  the team. The team is doing great, right? And
• 1:01:59
  all that. So it lands on all the happy feels.
• 1:02:03
  And then why it had to come back for a four season,
• 1:02:06
  which now is him coaching a women's team, which
• 1:02:08
  again, someone will say, Lauren, how did you
• 1:02:09
  do a league of their own? And now you're not
• 1:02:11
  going to watch this like Ted coaching women.
• 1:02:13
  And I'm just sort of like, because I just don't
• 1:02:16
  really want again, the show has run its course
• 1:02:19
  for me. And it was it was already on my nerves
• 1:02:23
  with what it was. And it really has nothing to
• 1:02:25
  do with women or men or anything like that. It
• 1:02:28
  just has to do with, I don't need to see it anymore.
• 1:02:32
  So go ahead with your last complaint. This is
• 1:02:34
  my last complaint. And in part, this really,
• 1:02:37
  I don't know. This, to me, was also part of the
• 1:02:40
  whole Jason Sudeikis working out the Olivia Wilde
• 1:02:42
  thing. Okay, so if you remember, one of the ways
• 1:02:44
  in which things were sort of tidally wrapped
• 1:02:46
  up at the end of season three was that, what,
• 1:02:48
  there was some, like, revenge plot against Rupert,
• 1:02:52
  the Anthony Head character, R .I .P., that
• 1:02:56
  he was having an affair with, like, a younger,
• 1:02:58
  like, a secretary or something, and so Rebecca
• 1:03:01
  tells his wife... the much younger wife, and
• 1:03:04
  there's that whole thing. And this is presented
• 1:03:07
  to us as this appropriately just and moral takedown
• 1:03:12
  of the immoral Rupert, who has been having an
• 1:03:15
  affair with his secretary or whatever. And so
• 1:03:18
  I was like, okay, why does the show want us to
• 1:03:22
  think that for these reasons, that he's been
• 1:03:25
  having an affair with the secretary and that
• 1:03:27
  he's dating a co -worker, sleeping with a co
• 1:03:30
  -worker. So Rupert's the villain for doing these
• 1:03:32
  things. Rebecca was sleeping with a team, one
• 1:03:39
  of her employees. So Rebecca was sleeping with
• 1:03:41
  one of her employees, which we were supposed
• 1:03:43
  to think was sweet and endearing and good for
• 1:03:47
  her. And also, we know explicitly that the way
• 1:03:49
  she met Rupert, they started an affair when he
• 1:03:53
  was married to his previous wife. And so I was
• 1:03:56
  like, what are the sexual politics of this show?
• 1:03:59
  And again, it's understanding of... gender roles
• 1:04:02
  if the whole idea is like oh well wait a minute
• 1:04:04
  so she does she's sleeping with her employee
• 1:04:08
  and that's Fine. But she's not, but the question
• 1:04:12
  is, is she, but she's not married. But that's,
• 1:04:14
  but that's why, but Rupert was married when she
• 1:04:17
  started sleeping with him. So yes, she is not
• 1:04:19
  married when she is with Sam, but these two separate
• 1:04:22
  things, the adultery and the sleeping with the
• 1:04:26
  employee, Rebecca is guilty of both of those
• 1:04:28
  as well in a slightly different way. But, but
• 1:04:30
  it seemed to me that the show, the show automatically
• 1:04:33
  assumed. Right, because it was leaning into this
• 1:04:36
  whole girl power, feminism, girl boss. We're
• 1:04:39
  supposed to think that this is all great for
• 1:04:40
  her. And I was like, but that doesn't make any
• 1:04:42
  sense. Well, actually, the whole show, I mean,
• 1:04:45
  pretty much any time any woman on that show,
• 1:04:48
  you know, is in a fun relationship or is in a
• 1:04:52
  situation of power or it's applauded. No matter
• 1:04:56
  what the context of it is, any kind of sexual
• 1:05:00
  relationship for the women on that show is applauded.
• 1:05:03
  Yes, that is true. And especially if they are
• 1:05:06
  seen to be in a situation of power, or at least,
• 1:05:10
  again, in the situation with the lesbian relationship,
• 1:05:13
  it was with somebody who was like a jack. Yeah,
• 1:05:17
  who was basically funding the business. Somebody
• 1:05:20
  who was higher up than Kayla. And we were supposed
• 1:05:24
  to feel good about that because she was getting
• 1:05:27
  some, but also because she was empowering herself
• 1:05:31
  with this, like, you know, again, girl boss.
• 1:05:33
  Yes. And by the way, and that she was also then
• 1:05:37
  ensuring continued support for her business.
• 1:05:40
  Right. Right. I mean, that was also the undertone
• 1:05:42
  of that. Right. Which is, again, gross. Right.
• 1:05:46
  But I interrupted you. Go ahead. No. Again, I
• 1:05:48
  think the show was very confused on gender issues.
• 1:05:54
  I think the show really wanted to be about masculinity
• 1:05:58
  and really wanted to be about Ted, you know,
• 1:06:01
  kind of herding together these like straight
• 1:06:05
  cats and, and singing, you know, uh, sound of
• 1:06:09
  music with them and things like that. And then
• 1:06:12
  got off track or was less direct about. the way
• 1:06:19
  that it saw the women on the show. Or it was
• 1:06:21
  just more like, one note. Like, okay, again,
• 1:06:25
  a woman finds a man or a woman and has a relationship
• 1:06:29
  and that's great for them. As long as I treat
• 1:06:31
  them well and things like that. We're not supposed
• 1:06:33
  to be feeling good for Keeley when Jamie is obviously
• 1:06:35
  not treating her well and things like that. But
• 1:06:38
  then she gets over that and then she's like,
• 1:06:41
  okay, I'm gonna rock it out and I'm gonna just
• 1:06:43
  like... I mean, they're just not complicated
• 1:06:46
  characters in any way. I mean, they're just not.
• 1:06:50
  And I actually think Rebecca is a great character.
• 1:06:52
  She is a great character. She's a great character.
• 1:06:54
  But again, there's just in that sort of whole...
• 1:06:56
  And one thing I did think that would have been
• 1:06:58
  really interesting, because obviously they talk
• 1:07:00
  about this idea that... that she wanted to be
• 1:07:02
  a mother, right? And Rupert was just an asshole.
• 1:07:05
  And this is why it's so terrible that the much
• 1:07:06
  younger wife then gets pregnant as a baby. And
• 1:07:10
  that this is something Rebecca is struggling
• 1:07:12
  with about becoming a mother and whether she
• 1:07:14
  can do it on her own. And I actually really liked
• 1:07:17
  that in that that was something complicated.
• 1:07:20
  Whereas again, the whole like, I'm sleeping with
• 1:07:22
  my employee who's like 20 years younger than
• 1:07:25
  I am. That was just like, again. Go for it. And
• 1:07:28
  so I do wonder if both Jason Sudeikis and Bill
• 1:07:32
  Lawrence just really were fundamentally afraid
• 1:07:36
  to confront some of these issues in a more sort
• 1:07:40
  of honest way. That they liked the idea of leaning
• 1:07:42
  into the whole girl power thing. And at the same
• 1:07:45
  time showing us the vulnerability of all of these
• 1:07:47
  men. Especially Ted, who basically becomes a
• 1:07:50
  basket case. And so even though, of course, one
• 1:07:52
  of the reasons he's a basket case is because
• 1:07:54
  of his terrible mother. Right, right. Anyway,
• 1:07:57
  so I guess my summation, I don't know about yours,
• 1:08:01
  my summation would be, again, just thinking about
• 1:08:03
  that crazy distance that we've traveled from,
• 1:08:05
  again, something like the longest yard to then
• 1:08:08
  Ted Lasso, which, again, does that even have
• 1:08:10
  to be about sports? Also, does Ted Lasso have
• 1:08:13
  to be about sports? Could it be about something?
• 1:08:15
  You know, what are we getting? Are we getting
• 1:08:17
  that sense that sports gives social cohesion?
• 1:08:20
  I do feel like the team building and the team
• 1:08:24
  unity and that structure is very, very important
• 1:08:30
  to the show. Does it have to be soccer? No, but.
• 1:08:33
  And then to have all these different personalities
• 1:08:36
  and these different guys coming together. And
• 1:08:38
  the other thing is the guys all like each other.
• 1:08:41
  Yeah. And that's like in the beginning, Jamie's
• 1:08:43
  may be like, you know, he wants to be the big
• 1:08:45
  star. There's some tension there. But that's
• 1:08:47
  kind of resolved fairly quickly. There aren't
• 1:08:50
  people on the team that are like, I don't like
• 1:08:53
  you. And again, when Colin comes out, everyone's
• 1:08:56
  like super supportive. It's awesome. There's
• 1:08:59
  no hint whatsoever that anyone is like being
• 1:09:01
  going to be a jerk about it. Right. Which makes
• 1:09:04
  you also wonder, and I mean, I can understand
• 1:09:06
  why he would be afraid, but with that crowd,
• 1:09:10
  after knowing them for as long, again, it is
• 1:09:13
  something where you feel like this is a super
• 1:09:15
  supportive crowd and you don't have any tension
• 1:09:19
  between players. And so that's another thing,
• 1:09:23
  which I was just sort of like, you never have
• 1:09:25
  somebody come in and like a new player. Although
• 1:09:28
  there was that one guy. There was that one guy,
• 1:09:31
  but he was Zava. But that was like in and out,
• 1:09:34
  right? He was in there, it was like nothing.
• 1:09:36
  And then, and that's, I don't know, it would
• 1:09:38
  have been more interesting if you had a player,
• 1:09:40
  if there were sort of more, right? More, the
• 1:09:43
  big endorsements, the player that's going to
• 1:09:45
  suck all the oxygen from the team, things like,
• 1:09:48
  you know, players who are going to be... Not
• 1:09:51
  equals among the other the other players, right?
• 1:09:54
  Because even the Roy Kent thing gets resolved
• 1:09:56
  fairly quickly Yeah, and if he decides to retire
• 1:09:59
  right now and becomes the broadcaster and then
• 1:10:01
  becomes the assistant coach, right? So we don't
• 1:10:03
  even have that really interesting star is born
• 1:10:05
  sort of tension right between the two of them
• 1:10:07
  Right for very long, right? We also don't have
• 1:10:10
  players that are being treated from other teams
• 1:10:13
  where they would say like oh we used to hate
• 1:10:15
  y 'all Right and and there are no dynamics of
• 1:10:18
  the actual league itself which is interesting.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah. Right. So that's a question about, does
• 1:10:24
  it need to be about sports? Does it need to be
• 1:10:25
  about sports? Could it just be like an office?
• 1:10:27
  Right. Right. Could it be an office if basically
• 1:10:29
  we're just saying this is like a stable group
• 1:10:31
  of people, all of whom are getting along incredibly
• 1:10:34
  well. And Ted has enabled them to, again, come
• 1:10:39
  together as a, you know, a team pursuing some
• 1:10:42
  goal, no matter what it is. So, and they confront,
• 1:10:45
  you know, failure or whatever, or I don't know.
• 1:10:47
  But in all of these films, We have troubled leaders,
• 1:10:52
  troubled mentors who have complicated pasts or
• 1:10:56
  present, who somehow bring people together through
• 1:11:01
  excellent mentoring. Excellent mentoring. These
• 1:11:08
  are all films about excellent mentoring. Maybe
• 1:11:11
  our department should have like a thing about
• 1:11:13
  mentoring. But you know, it's like, right. Whether
• 1:11:17
  you're an alcoholic, whether you're a divorcee,
• 1:11:21
  whether you're having panic attacks, whether
• 1:11:24
  you're in prison, you can become a mentor. And
• 1:11:28
  that's the, I think that's the take. And again,
• 1:11:30
  or somebody like a Gina Davis who is the mentor
• 1:11:35
  when Tom Hanks is, again, so drunk that he can't
• 1:11:38
  stand up. Anyone can be a mentor, again, with
• 1:11:42
  the right initiative. But I also, one thing,
• 1:11:48
  one reason why, again, I really want you to watch
• 1:11:51
  Longest You Are, is that of course, unlike soccer,
• 1:11:53
  unlike baseball, the very fact that it is a contact
• 1:11:57
  sport is at the heart of that film. You cannot
• 1:12:00
  make that film with a different sport. Because
• 1:12:02
  the whole point is what... are the human capacities
• 1:12:06
  both for inflicting violence and then basically
• 1:12:08
  moving through violence. Right. In a way that
• 1:12:10
  where again violence becomes a tool that anyone
• 1:12:13
  can deploy and not just those in institutional
• 1:12:16
  power. And so it is really interesting to think
• 1:12:18
  of like what what is Ted Lasso like if it's like
• 1:12:20
  an American football team right if he's like
• 1:12:22
  doing the Kansas City Chiefs you know or really
• 1:12:24
  are they're like pummeling each other or whatever.
• 1:12:26
  Right. When he used to like I don't know coach
• 1:12:28
  Travis Kelsey or something. Right. No I mean.
• 1:12:31
  As opposed to this again like Super hands off.
• 1:12:35
  But also really clueless. I mean, they embrace
• 1:12:38
  him and they are like, yes, we are down with
• 1:12:42
  this. We are down with the Sound of Music queer
• 1:12:44
  rap on the field. I have to say, that really
• 1:12:48
  was, I mean, I can appreciate that it was sweet,
• 1:12:50
  but to me, that was a really ridiculous moment
• 1:12:52
  when they're all like, we practiced our Sound
• 1:12:53
  of Music. goodbye it just oh my god wait i cannot
• 1:12:57
  believe this is really the last thing okay okay
• 1:12:59
  i cannot believe i forgot this detail go ahead
• 1:13:02
  so i told you the team becomes racially integrated
• 1:13:04
  and really you know okay and again a really realistic
• 1:13:07
  way i mean they the movie sort of makes it work
• 1:13:10
  but when the actual game happens, so there are
• 1:13:13
  spectators who are coming and like most of the
• 1:13:15
  prisoners, but not all of them have been able
• 1:13:17
  to come out and watch the game in the stadium.
• 1:13:19
  Okay, so the team, the prisoners team, they have
• 1:13:22
  cheerleaders. The cheerleaders are basically
• 1:13:25
  six black gay guys who are wearing hot pants,
• 1:13:29
  okay, who are doing full -on pom -pom cheers.
• 1:13:31
  But in addition to that, there are three black
• 1:13:34
  prisoners who are dressed in drag and who first
• 1:13:37
  are singing born free and then singing like this
• 1:13:42
  other song because basically they're the entertainment
• 1:13:44
  and so again you have the cheerleaders like the
• 1:13:46
  prisoner cheerleaders and the prisoner singers
• 1:13:48
  but again it is explicitly explicitly like black
• 1:13:52
  gay prisoners who are performing this and you
• 1:13:55
  see them all the time like they're doing their
• 1:13:56
  routines again they're the You have got to see
• 1:14:01
  it. I am going to watch it. It's unbelievable.
• 1:14:03
  The thing that prevented me was that I watched
• 1:14:06
  Bull Durham on Pluto with commercials and after
• 1:14:09
  watching that I could not watch another movie
• 1:14:11
  on Pluto with commercials like back to back.
• 1:14:14
  But I will go and watch it. And especially now
• 1:14:19
  that you've given me this little nugget of cheerleaders,
• 1:14:24
  which sounds really like it's something to see.
• 1:14:27
  It really was. Especially the singing of Born
• 1:14:29
  Free. I mean, that was pretty, it was pretty
• 1:14:31
  great. So, listeners, I hope that you have enjoyed
• 1:14:34
  our sports episode. And if you have any other
• 1:14:38
  suggestions or things you'd like for us to talk
• 1:14:41
  about, we are... Open to it. We have been watching
• 1:14:44
  a lot of missing people, missing kids, last scene.
• 1:14:51
  I'm watching Slow Horses right now. And I just
• 1:14:54
  started a war with Dominic West and Sienna Miller.
• 1:15:00
  British divorce tabloid thing. Interesting. Okay,
• 1:15:03
  that sounds great. So all kinds of possibilities
• 1:15:06
  for the fall. And until then, Harpies out.