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Independence Day with Lindsay Ellis · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello us, it's us. You're about a year. An episode
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: on Independence Day with Lindsay ellis the one, the only.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: But first a few plugs. Yes, we have a few
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: shows coming up and multiple countries, multiple continents. First, we
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: have our last l a show for a while at
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the Ruby on July thirteenth, recovering Anastasia for my birthday.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I'll be cosplaying as Respude and of course um that's
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: on July thirteenth. Go to backtal coast dot com click
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: on live for tickets there. I'm also doing my show
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: one more time on July twenty at the Lyric Hyperion
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Boss Home Is Girl, if you want to check that
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: out before we leave the country to go to dot
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: dot dot London and Edinburgh. So yeah, you're doing your
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: show bossum Is Girl July July at the Bill Murray.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Tickets are already running loads in London. That's in London.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's the show I'm taking to Edinburgh Fringe Fest called
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Boss Home Is Girl. It is say skewering satire of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: corporate feminism in the vein of Cheryl Samburg, Elizabeth Homes, etcetera.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: It is very fun. I've seen it many times and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'm going to see it more when we are both
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: in Edinburgh. Yeah. I'll then be doing the show every
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: single night at Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Pleasants Baby
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Grand from July thirty one to August. Tickets for that
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: are also on the Becktel Cast website or on my website.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I will be selling tickets at any cost. And then
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: after that run ends, we will be going to London
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for to an evening of two live Becktel casts that
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited. It's our first, it's our first international performance. Sorry, Canada,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: so we'll come. We'll be there soon, Canada, don't you worry.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: But first we'll be in London on September one, two
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: back to back shows. That evening. We are covering Pixars
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Brave and The Favorite, so hopefully that's appropriate. Enjoy it.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: We know that Brave does not take place in London,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: but we've already done Paddington's so with that and we're
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: pretty sure that's the only Listen. We're not covering the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: King speech. You don't want to hear it, we don't
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: want to do it, so we'll be at the Albany. Uh.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Tickets are officially on sale. They can be found at
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: bechtelcast dot com in the live tab and we hope
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to see you there. And then, don't forget I'm doing
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: a couple of stand up shows in Edinburgh as well
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in late August. I'm doing some in London and I'm
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: doing some in Dublin as well, so if you live
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in those parts please check me out. All my stuff
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: will be on my website, Caitlin Dronte dot com. Love
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: it so. Without much further ado, Happy Independence Day episode Yes.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: On the dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: women in them? Are all their discussion just boyfriends and husbands?
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zeth in best start
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: changing it with the beck Del Cast. Good morning. In
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: less than an hour and a half, we will have
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: finished talking about the movie Independence Day, uh and many
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: from around the world will have listened to it, and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: we can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: killing you're such an inspiring leader, really, this is why
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: you keep getting reelected. We will be fighting for our
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: freedom from the patriarchy. Should we win, today will no
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: longer be considered an American holiday, but a day that
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: we were declared in one voice. I'm like in the crowd,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: high on math, ready to tear my shirt off at
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: any moment. So you're a Randy Quaid. We will not
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: a fight. We're going to live on, We're going to survive.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Is really today we celebrate the Bechtel Cast. Welcome to it.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I did so many twists and turns. I
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: really nominate this one for for something anything. Thank you.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: You told me I could do the intro, and that's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I thought would be the best choice. I was just
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: going to be like, I got dental surgery. My mouth hurts,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: mind us too. I know, it's kind of I feel
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: like that's our version of a glow up, is that
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: we are getting our serious dental problems taken care of. Uh,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you know, three years of work and we're finally able
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to see a dentist. Mine, to be fair, mine is
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a group on dentists. But she was very nice and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: she did all the procedures at once, and I feel
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: like my skull is on fire. Oh my goodness, I'm
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: just are you no, it's good anyway, healthy good. I'm
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Caitlin Darante I'm Jamie Lofton, and we talk about movies
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: with our perfect teeth, with our with our now perfect teeth.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So this episode will be flawless. Yes, it's not like
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Bruckheimer flawless. We don't have vineers gigantic veneers protruding three
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: inches out of our head. We examine movies through the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: lens of how they treat and represent women. We use
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the Bectel tests as a jumping off point, and that,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: of course, is the metric invented by cartoonists Alison Bechdel.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That is a test applied to media for our purposes.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It means that there has to be a scene in
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a movie that has two female identifying characters with names
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: to talk about something other than a man for two
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: lines of dialog. Doesn't sound hard, but et cetera. Yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming this isn't your first episode. If it is,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: you know, you can find that in a different episode. Yes,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: so today we're talking about Independence Day. Yeah, and today,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the day this episode comes out is also Independence Day. Yeah, amazing, Yes,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we're recording it, perhaps not on Independence Day. Salivating Independence
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Day is like weird now, Yeah. Yeah, there's like some
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: people that I don't I don't even remember what I did.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I think I was with you last year. But there
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: are some people who were like being real irony bros
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: about it and like, well, I hate that worse than
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: celebrating it. Sincerely, I don't know what a strange time
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: to be alive. It certainly is. And hey, let's introduce
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: our guests. She's a video essayist, she's an author, and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: you remember her from our Phantom of the Opera episode.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Passions were flared. Goodness, it's Lindsay Ellis say thank you
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: for having me to talk about the best movie and
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the history A cinematic masterpiece might be the best piece
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of art. I mean, yes, it is. It's a feminist texts,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it's a piece of art. It's a scholarly text. Yeah,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: so we are talking about Independence Day, Lindsay, what is
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: your history relationship with this movie? That's a good question.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's very like baked into the fabric
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of my d NA, Like it just like fused with
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: me the moment it came out, and we've been one
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: ever since. Like when you mentioned the author part, like
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: when my book comes out next year, you're gonna be like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: that tracks. I just it was kind of one of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: those movies of the nineties where like because for the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: most part, I I don't really experience nostalgia. I'm actually
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a deeply cynical person. But I think like Independence Day
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: is just like where every piece of nostalgia of my
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: brain is funneled because it's such a deeply stupid movie.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But I also argue, I feel like Independence Day raises
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a very interesting philosophic question, which is, can a stupid
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: movie be good? I think we're going to talk about
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: that today. Certainly. Yeah, I think yes, Jamie. What's your history.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of history with this movie.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I do remember that, for some reason, it was the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: our first DVDs in my home were this and Holes.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: This was, for a very long time, the only two
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: DVDs I had. I loved Holes and my parents loved
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Independence Day. And that was simply the way it was.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And those were the two DVDs. So I have seen
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I had seen this movie. I hadn't seen it in
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: like years, but in my head, I'm like, oh, that's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: what my mom and dad would watch right after I
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: finished watching Holes. So like, it's our turn with the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: DVD player, Jamie. Yes, just a really a lot of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: draconian battles over the DVD player. Um. So yeah, this
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: is for me mostly the movie that would come on
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: after Holes Got It. What About You? This came out
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: when I was ten, and I believe I saw it
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: in a drive in movie theater at age ten and
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: then I did not watch it again after that. Ever,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: did you like it? Do you remember? Like I remember
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: liking it? But then Men in Black came out the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: next year and I was like, I like this Will
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Smith alien movie way better than Independence Day. So Men
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: in Black was my ship. I think Men in Black
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: was my Will Smith entry point. That was probably the
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: first time I've ever like seen him. Independence Day was
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: definitely my my Will Smith gateway drug. But Men in
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Black Will Smith was like my Will Smith heroin Like
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: that was the one I really developed a problem for.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: There was a sort of that one to punch. Which
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: is funny because like Will Smith will talk about how
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: he didn't want to be known as the alien guy.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: But like arguably his two most influential movies are different takes,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: like very different takes on you know, conspiracy theory Americana
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and It's funny because neither of neither of these films
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: can decide if the Deep State is bad or not.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: They're like, I guess the will the Deep States there,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: it's do what it's best too vague. Yeah, they're trying
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: slap some cute faces on the deep stays feel about
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the Spiner, Yeah, he's really excited about the lights. Brent Spiner,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: who I was like, oh my god, it's the villain
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: from the Master of Disguise. Yes, well, that is a
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: deep cut data on Star Trek, which is how I
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: think most people did not know that beloved Broadway actor
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Brent Spiner character actor. I did see Independence Day, is
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: it Resurgence or whatever? They saw that. There's different love
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: for that one because it's so ambitious and like just
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: so out of time, because like you know, like because
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I did a video about this, which I'm sure we're
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: going to kind of at least touch on, which is
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: how like Independence Days a movie that could only exist
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in the nineties, and then when you have the sequel
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: that just does not make any sense in like a
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: post nine eleven Alex Jones world, and and so the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: movie they made was just like, well, I guess we're
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: going to invade them, right, didn't For the new one,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: it's basically everyone is back except for Will Smith. Like
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: most people except really recast the President's daughter, which is
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: kind of bewildering because Whitman, Whitman is an actual star.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: They recast her with a hot nobody her, Yeah, her,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and then recast her. Okay, I'll just jump into the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: recap and then we'll go from there. Yeah, let's roll.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: There's This movie is also famously two and a half
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: hours long. It is. It is so long, right, there's
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: nothing compared to the norm today. That's true. I mean,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: but for a first movie, I don't know. It's like
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a short Marvel movie. Very long, that's true. Yeah, So
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: it's July two one, Yes, Act one? Did they tell
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: you exactly where the act breaks are in this movie?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a masterclass in that way. I should
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: teach a class on this movie. Should screenwriting with Roland?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So an extraterrestrial radio signal comes in and everyone's freaking out.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom is there. He's a science guy. It's still again.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I'm totally sure what his specific job is. Well, he's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: a science guy. He's a cable repair he's a cable repairment,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: as his dad jokes, and that's yeah, I think that's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: not quite accurate. I think he's a technician at a
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: cable company, got it, only to become a hacker later on. Yeah,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: well only makes sense. He knows that he knows the fiber,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that's true. He's got a Mac used the same os.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I love the vague techno jargon used to this movie.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: He's like, I put I put a virus into the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: aliens and they're screwed. And everyone's like, oh my god.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Another thing that only works in nineties six. Like, people
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: see the movie Hackers and they're like, sure, Hackers. My
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: favorite part of Hackers is that a lot of the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: cast is wearing crew next wed shirts that say VCR
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Like it's just like, I just love the green ones
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and zeros that like oh yeah, they're like they like coding,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: use their consciousness with the computer because that's how hacking. Yeah. Absolutely, okay.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So um, Randy Quaid is drunk, He's dusting crops. It's Tuesday,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: then playing the type. Then we meet the President of
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the United States played by Bill Pullman. It's President Thomas Whitmore,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and no one's taking him seriously. Because they think he's
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: too young and that he's a whimp. Oh my gosh,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I love that his central issues like I'm too hot,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: No one i'll take me serious. There's a lore behind that,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Like apparently in earlier scripts it was like there was
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: there was like a whole thing about how he tried
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to introduce universal healthcare, because it was like they're very obviously. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: they're very obviously. Like if you go into the Independence
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Day wiki, which I never have, like there's like a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: whole backstory about how like he tried to introduce universal
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: health carried it failed, and then the Republicans regained control
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of Congress and that's why his approval ratings have crashed. Well,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I mean that would be less dumb than I'm too
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: hot and I'm just too cares about. They couldn't fit
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that backstory in, so they're just like he's just too
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: it's not even in the director's cut, too many alien
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: punches to fit in. There's only so much time exactly,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So he's too hot to be president. So he's too hot.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And then his press secretary Connie is relaying a lot
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: of this information to him. She's just like, no one
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: thinks you're cool. Then uh, it turns out the signal
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that's coming in is from this enormous alien mothership that's
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: approaching Earth. And then several huge space crafts break off
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: from the mother ship and then like head towards Moscow,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: New York City, d C, some other major cities around
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the world. I mean just like hover over those cities
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: for a while. They're just hanging out. The presidents like,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I don't care, I'm staying in d C. Okay, They're
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: ominously hovering over like all these major cities. It's probably fine.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: And then canonically this movie is taking place in right,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: so it is also a few months before the election,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: right right, Oh yeah, there's an election coming up. So
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: if you're hot president and people are already like he's
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: too hot, I was like, oh, they would say, pretty
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: boy ran away from conflict. Hot man, must be strong
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for re election, Connie, I gotta stand my ground. I
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: gotta be sexy and here. So then we finally meet
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: will Smith, the genie himself. We finally his character, which
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: is Steve Hiller. Twenty minutes into the movie. They really
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: make you wait. They make you wait. He is military.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: He has to report to his base to deal with
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: these alien spaceships. He thinks there's no danger, but his
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: girlfriend Jasmine is like, I don't feel good about this.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: There is a thing about seeing Vivica a fox in
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: a one floor house that made me want it to
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: be the beginning of kill Bill. Yeah right, She's had
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: better scenes in one flour house indeed. So back in
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: New York, Jeff go bloom. He figures out that the
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: signal that they received was actually a countdown that all
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the spaceships are using, and then when they get to zero,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: they're going to attack. So he and his dad played
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: by planets with satellite satellite system already installed and love
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: an arbitrary countdown in it's like stealing it out. It's
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: like when you steal your neighbor's WiFi. That's just what
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: these aliens are exactly the satellite. That's why they went
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: for the inhabited planet. It's like their version of like,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: it's only three days until the talent show. So then
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblum's character's name is David and his dad played
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: by Jed Hirsch. They drive to d C to tell
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the President, but before like really anything can be done
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: about this countdown news, the aliens start blowing ship up,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: including the iconic White House explosion scene. Um so, then
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the President and his staff they get to safety, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: then Jasmine and her son Dylan get to safety, but
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other people die. Now we're in July
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: three a k a. Act two. Will Smith and his
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: marine buds going for a counter attack against the aliens,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: but the alien ship has his force field and they're
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: fighting back on their own little like fighter ships. And
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Will Smith is the only survivor of the Marines in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: this counter attack, so he goes over right, he goes
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: over to an alien ship that he took down and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: then punches an alien in the face and then he
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: starts dragging this alien back to his base. Meanwhile, in
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the l A area, Jasmine finds the First Lady in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: some rubble Hillary Clinton herself in a pile of dirt
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and red headed Hillary that actor plays the president in
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Battlestar Galactica. So she goes from first Lady to the President.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Thing that didn't happen, And that did not happen. That's unrealistic.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, at least Hillary Clinton doesn't die of internal bleeding,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: so there's that. Yeah, she still got time aliens might
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: arrive tomorrow, might be in a helicop. So then Randy Quaid,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: who is again in this movie, and also it's so important.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: He becomes more important as the which is wild. But
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: he is with his kids somewhere outside of l A.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: They're in a desert. He keeps talking about how aliens
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: had abducted him ten years ago. This is really very
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Randy Quaid like. And Randy Quaid may not have even
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: known it. Yeah, I don't. I don't think Randy Quaid
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: knew this was fiction. I think he started was making
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a documentary and he was just testifying personal experience. Every
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: line of this is improvided. There was a lot more
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: like I think the director's cut in the script. There
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: was a lot more rape jokes, like, oh did the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: aliens rape you? Rust boy? You sure did get raped
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: by those aliens. There's already so much of that quite
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, there's these guys who were bullying him,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: like sexual stuff to you, and it's an odd, odd
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: place to go. So Randy Quaid picks up Will Smith
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and the alien that he's dragging around and who he
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: had punched in the face. He picks him up in
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the desert and then the President and his friends are
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: taken to Area fifty one because there's an alien research
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: facility there and that's also where Will Smith and Randy
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Quaid go. And then the scientists at Area one start
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: to dissect Will Smith's alien. But it's still alive and
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: an alien less vaginal than your average movie aliens. True,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: but it's pretty bad it does they they like slice
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it open and then it like falls open into these
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: like yeah, it gives a big flap. Yeah, there's a
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: scalpul in. I feel like it's somewhereculum in the middle
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: of like from not vaginal at all to like which
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: one is like like Stranger Things Season one, like erupting
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: pussy monster and then which I'm going to confuse the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: alien or aliens one of them has or maybe both have. Yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: so yeah, so this semi vagina alien, it's still alive
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and really are the ranking page for like vaginal inspired
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: alien design. There's a video yeah really like goopy too,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and they like and then you're like this has gone
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: too far, like you have not seen I think it's
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But the Kraken
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: shows up and is like a vagina monster to end
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: all vagina. It just makes me wonder about like alien
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: metabolism that they are always covered in goo, Like even
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: like the Independence Day aliens, they are always kind of
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: have that like low level sheen going on, and it's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: just like maybe they're just sweating. Maybe they're fair sweats
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: there are in the desert like Glossier models, Like they
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: just look kind of wet, just always kind of wet
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: because it's never it's not quite scaly, it's moist. There's
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a moisture going on, a towel off definitely. So this
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: alien uses its telepathic abilities to communicate through this guy,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: doctor Oaken, which is Brent Spiner's character, and the President's like, hey,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: why don't we just like try to co exist peacefully?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And the aliens like no, I want you to die
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: your favorite sceneries, Like can we find a way to coexist?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And then the alien just goes no, and then they're
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: kind of like well as Worth asking was like hey,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: hey I tried, and then he doesn't even go why,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: He's just like Okay, he said no, Okay, some real
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: lemus one on one President hottie. So yeah, then Jeff
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Goldblum is like, no, we can't use nuclear weapons against them,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that this is a horrible idea, and he's right. They try,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work because the shields are still up on
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the alien spaceship. So then Will Smith borrows a helicopter
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and somehow knows exactly where to go to find But
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: why would he think they agreed to meet there, because
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like whenever he leaves, he's like, come to me at
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the base after you go stripping right, And she's like, okay,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: So that's where she's trying to get the whole movies,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: trying to get to the base, and then when she
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: gets there, it's been destroyed by the alien pod. So
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: they meet up and they're like, oh my god, and
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: then a great kiss. There's a kiss and then glit.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: The president is reunited with his wife, but she's bleeding
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: eternally and then she dies. It is now July, fourth,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: act three. Baby, everyone's at their lowest point. It looks hopeless. Yes,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: those alien shields are down because impenetrably, guys, what are
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: we gonna do? We arbitrarily killed one of the women exactly.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: The music swelled. It was very emotional, it was. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: then Jeff Goldblum, he's throwing a fit, and his dad's like, hey,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: get off off this freezing floor before you catch a cold,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and Jeff Goblin's like, that's it. We have to give
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the alien ship a computer virus and then like zeros
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: and once begin to rain into the screen like a screen.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Will I mean, like, my favorite part of this scene
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: is he is drunk, like he is lit when he
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: comes up with the computer virus idea. And I like
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to like my head cannon of this scene because like
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the whole thing like happens over the course of four hours,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: so you don't sober up after four hours. So like
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: he comes up with this idea while he's wasted. He
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: pitches it while he's still drunk. He's still drunk when
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: he gets in the craft with Will Smith, and it's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: only that whenever he goes, oh, I was I thinking
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: that he has sobered up, my head canon, and he's
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: like about to throw up, and it's like, sure, he
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: gets like airsickness, but it's also because he's like he's
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: been drinking the whole movie. So then they figure out
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that they have just they're going to fly this small
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: alien ship that they have into space to the mother
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: ship and infect it with the virus, which will cause
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: all the shields to like retract, and then Will Smith
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is like, I'll do it. They organize the attack, They
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: gather up all the pilots they can, including Randy Quaid
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: by just asking like, Hey, does anyone here know how
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to fly? And he's like and then he's just like
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: but but the best part of that scene is the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: contrivance for why they have enough planes but not enough pilots,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: because there's like a newscast where they're like, yeah, a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: bunch of military people are hiding in the mountains because
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: they're scared. I missed that. Yeah, that's that's that's the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: real Like, that's the the exploitation is just like, our
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: brave troops are actually quite cowardly when which comes to
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: shelve anythos. We'll deal with them later. Honestly, the most
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: of the third act, like the logic behind every decision
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: was very cryptic to me. That's why I'm here, Yeah,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: because like it's one of those really pedantic movies where
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: every time you're like, but why did thing, it's like, ah,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: there was a throwaway line. There was away line because
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I was like, because as I was watching it and
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, I mean it's like you barely have
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: to Like I'm glad that you're able to follow if
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: you're really paying attention, but you barely have to be
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: able to follow. You're just like it's gonna happen. So
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: someone's going to fly into the spaceship and then someone's
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: gonna kiss and then it's over. Two things that need
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: to happen in this movie, and Alien Corpse parts will
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: fall from the sky and the music will swell, and
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and Bill Pullman's on the ground like seemingly forgetting that
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: his wife died less than pretty good. He's got so
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: many people die and then the people who should react
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to that do not react to that. Yeah, like the
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: like the next day, the first scene of Act to
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: July three is like Will Smith and friends like getting
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: cigars and like ready, whoop beat's ass. And it's like
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Jasmine is presumed dead. Ye has is pretty much the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: entire population of l A County. I assume you have family, sir, right, yeah, yeah,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: no one cares. And then when Randy Quaid dies, his
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: son is just like I'm so proud of him. It's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like are you crying? Like why not? I mean that
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was a complicated relationship between father. Yeah, because like most
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of the director's cut is like extension of the Randy
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Quaid plot, and it's like convoluted in because like he
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: like that the son is actually his stepson because Randy
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Quaid married his mother, so the brother is actually a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: half brother. But I think the oldest is just like
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the only stepson. Mother died at some point. I'm pretty
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: sure she's Namive American, and so that's like a whole thing,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: strange amount of details. And so they and then like
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the middle child is has like a medical condition and
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: they spend like a long time trying to find meds
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: for this kid. Yeah, so agonizingly long. A lot of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that state. I mean, like the sick kid is still
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: there and you're just a puke. He does puke. He's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: definitely sick. I'm like, I don't, are we who is he?
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Like whenever those kids, I know that they're like Randy Quaid's.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It's just weird how much this movie is just like
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: people love Randy Quaid and and they're going to root
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: for him no matter what groups say more Quaid, and
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: yet there's no time to develop any of the female characters.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Wild you don't want to die a virgin. I can't
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: wait to talk about that. So then Bill Pullman gives
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: his famous speech. Will Smith and Jeff Goblin fly off
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: into space. They go, They upload the virus to the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: mothership their friends now they're their best friends. The pilots
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: fire at Will at the spacecrafts on Earth. Randy Quaid
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: sacrifices himself to save everyone, and then the boys come
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: back from space and they get the lady folks run
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: into their arms and they beat beat yes, and then
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that is the movie. We've got to take a quick break.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: They'll come right back and we're back. Oh man, Okay,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: where to begin. Well, so, lindsay, you did a video
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: essay on Independence Day versus War of the Worlds, and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: we're kind of just interested on your take on how
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the this movie Independence Day can kind of only exist
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: in the time frame that it came out in and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: just give us a recap, so to speak, of your
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: video if if you wouldn't mind, Well, it's it's interesting
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: because to jump onto another nineties classic, The Matrix. I
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: remember when that movie came out, and part of the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: whole premise of the Matrix is that, like was the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: peak of human civilization before I started declining. And I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: remember at the time thinking that's ridiculous, and in hindsight,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I think there might have been something
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: to that, because the nineties was a weird, kind of
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: uniquely stable time in world history. And I feel like
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: when I put that out, people are like, oh, but
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: this thing, but this other thing is like well in
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the in the Grand Scheme, you know, like it was
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: between the Berlin Wall goes down and and so a
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: result is that the media is um kind of bored
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and really drawn to disaster. And so Independence Day kind
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of fits in like sort of aven diagram of like
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: fascination with aliens that was very rather specifically like aliens
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and like American conspiracy theory, like the three biggest examples
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of that being The X Files, Independence Day, and Men Black,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And it also kind of falls under disaster movies, which
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: neither X Files are in black cars, so it's like
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: too the biggest like genres dated genres of the nineties,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: and both of those things died when nine eleven happened
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: because suddenly conspiracy theories weren't so cute and fun anymore,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and also nobody wanted to watch disaster movies. It's kind
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: of interesting now and how it's like swung way the
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: other way, like all the disasters you see on movies,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and I guess now on television Game of Thrones are
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: like they love Boy, they love they love their nine
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: leveny imagery. Um, so I think it just it takes
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: an approach. Audiences were, of course totally down with at
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the time because it didn't really take this idea of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: international disaster seriously. It's such a fun movie, like you said,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: everyone kind of reacts to this horrible disaster with like
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: ready to kick the tires and light the fires. Big Daddy.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Harry Connick Jr. Drives me fucking crazy and stuff doesn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: crazy with love, crazy with desires. I was supposed to
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: be Matthew Perry original I didn't know this cast, and
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: then I don't know. He's like I gotta go the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: worst character and friend instead of the worst character. In
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Independent Ferry is almost always the worst part, and I
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: like him, but he's the worst part of seventeen again,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the worst part of a lot of stuff, and that's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: why we love him. It's the worst part of the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: movies that star him. The whole nine yards he was
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: on that show that was called go On, but it
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: was stylized so it looked like the name of the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: show was a goon that I got canceled after three episodes.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite Matthew Perry failures. Sure. Sure,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: that's a whole other podcast. So I think so there's
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: a super producer. Sophie is cracking up on this episode.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: She likes Matthew Perry, Shade Perry's pitfalls go On. So
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: when we when we do a sociological study of um
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: uh yeah. So there's an interesting sort of trend going
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: on right now that is is kind of in its twilight.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: But this is this is true like any twenty year cycle,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's like you'll have twenty year cycles
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: that appeal to cirtain certain age groups and thirty year
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: cycles that appeal to others. So that's why there's like
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: an interesting sort of like parallel right now with nineties
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: nostalgia and remix and eighties nostalgia and aesthetic. Like I
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: think the two biggest phraightes nostalgia right now, or it's
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the franchise and Stranger Things, um, but with nineties nostalgia,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it'll be like remakes or reboots of nineties things. And
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: boy does the ones like Men in Black Internationals coming
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: out like or came out already. That was a movie
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that happened. It sure didn't see it. Uh. And Independence
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Day Resurgent came out in two thousand six or SI
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: and Uh, the X Files reboot was also a thing
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: that happened. But I wish we could talk about Ben
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: in Black International and how it did if we had
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the time. It's interesting that, like, you know, Independence Day Resurgence,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: it was too different from the old one because it
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: couldn't piggyback off of the you know, conspiracy theory Americana
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that it was written around. And X Files didn't know
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: what to do with the way conspiracy theories are now
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: part of the culture and how you know, in both
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: movies are extremely um naive. I would honestly say borderline
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I responsible, especially the X Files because Roland Demrick has
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: this really interesting preoccupation with conspiracy theory because I genuinely
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: think he doesn't believe it, but I don't think he
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: understands that a lot of people do. So so yeah,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting. It's sort of like as a
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: as a as a study, like an anthropological case study
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of a time in history that you know, it's just
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: we can't ever go back. Yeah, I mean a lot
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: of the movies we cover on the podcast we you know,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: talk about how they are very much a product of
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the time that they come out in, because you know,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: they will be just ripe with homophobious, sexism, all all
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: manner of problematic things that you know, we in are like,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: oh my god, how was that ever okay? And not
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that it ever was, but you know, culturally we were
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in a different space ten years ago, twenty years ago,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: on and on. But yes, this is this movie is
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: kind of a product of its time in a different
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: way than we normally discuss. But there are still somethings.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: There's plenty to talk. I mean, it is like it's weird,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Like it was like genuinely jarring. As much as I
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: enjoyed this movie, but it's like a little bit jarring
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in some way to see a disaster movie with such
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: like an optimistic tilt, like you don't really ever like
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: there are moments, but you don't really ever see anyone
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: on earth consider that they will lose like well, I mean,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: that's such part of this just this American ness, because
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: it's an American story filtered through the lens of a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: German who was raised very wealthy, so he he is
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the essence of privilege. Which is interesting because like Roland
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Imerick was at the time pretty much the only out
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: gay director, like Brian Singer wasn't out yet, and plus
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: he wasn't really famous yet because you know, usual Suspects
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: had just come out. Double check that, um. But it's
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: it's like going through that filter is very interesting because
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't, I don't know if an American
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: would be shameless enough to make a movie like this,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: but Americans really reacted to it positively in a way
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: that like Roland was never able to Land was never
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: able to recapture that level of success even though he's
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: basically been grandfathered into you can make whatever movie you
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: want until now I think he's finally lost that. But
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: it is like the perfect moment of just like USA
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: U s A. There's so many moments here that I
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: feel like you could show that same clip and put
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: it in a movie from and it would be like
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a jokey thing or a sinister thing to see someone
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: like like a group of mostly white dudes going like USA,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: U s A. That's scary to people now there, like
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: this is like the peak of them, or it would
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: be a very different for a different crowd. Like I
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: could see a really conservative tilting movie do that. But
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I think like this movie because like you know, Roland
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: is liberal Hollywood liberal. But like I think that this
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: movie is made for made for democrats. Let's put it
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: that way. It's a movie for democrats. I got the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Clinton's in office basically, they just they only they don't
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: like him because he's too he's too hot to cool.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: He all but like cool. He puts a saxophone too much,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: he all but pulled out too many times. It was
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, but this movie was seventy five million budget,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: eight hundred seventeen million box office because it's great. It
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: was very success. It was the number I think it
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: was the number one movie of the year. It was
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: one or two. Surprised me. Also, just a stray observation
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: about disaster movies. Before nine eleven their orange. After nine eleven,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: they're blue. Yeah, they're very gray. Yeah, because again like
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: with with Game of Thrones as an example, where we
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: got eleven that color palette never let up until the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: threat was stabbed. But yeah, it's just it's just like
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I think there's something about just like the suppressive palette,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: like the sort of blue gray that before nine eleven
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: was mostly associated with, like you know, holocaust movies, and
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: even after eleven, like there there was something just like
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: this very like Russian work camp, prisoner of war, like
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: we saw that in the like The Pianist had a
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: very blue color palette, even the beginning of X Men,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: first X Men movie. But it's just like it's the
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: blue plus the haze, you know, is like there's so
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: many examples like Avengers, One Man of Steel, a lot
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: of Game of Thrones Endgame kind of did it game
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: was kind of purple. Yeah, like a purple haze. Sanos
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: was there and he was very purple. He just hit
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: her baby. Okay, So let's talk about the women in
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the movie. Schallouive so many his wives, so this is
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: a huge wife that's a speaking of product of its time.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Like think that's another thing that people just didn't really
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: bat an eye at, which is there's no women in
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: leadership positions. There's like none of them contribute anything valuable
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: to the plot. None of them come up with any idea.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I guess the closest is Vividate a fox taking the
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: initiative to drive a truck people anyway, Um, and you know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: that's just something that you would never see in like
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I think even in two thousand five with Four of
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the World, it felt a little off that there that
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the girl child was just so helpless and never like
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: grew or learned anything. Like even even then it felt
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: a little like I was suppresed. There weren't even like
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: any like Mary Sue moments in this movie. I'm like, oh,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: someone's going to be able to like do because you
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: are presented with two female characters that have the illusion
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: of power. You've got the first lady who is like
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: this Hillary Clinton cipher. So it's like, okay, maybe she
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: might be doing something. No, uh, then we have what's
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: her name? The character's name is Connie, the Press secretary,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the Press secretary, and it seems like, oh, she's in
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: a position of power. Perhaps she will impact the plot
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: at some point. But then the twist is she's Jefical
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Bloom's wife. Yes, yes, exactly, because there, yeah, she wanted
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to be a career girl and he was like, but
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I love And then in the end she realizes actually
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: she think he was right now too, She's like, yeah,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I definitely want to talk about that conversation enough. But yeah,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: so we meet. We meet three main female characters in
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: this story, and they are all introduced in the context
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: of them being the romantic partner of one of the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: important male characters. Um, we don't know that Connie is
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: romantic partner until about a half hour in, right, because
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: then we can all breathe a sigh of really, she's
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: not a single woman over thirty. Thank god, we were
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: so worried. Yes, So they all end up being just
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: there to basically further characterize the male characters who they
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: are romantically linked to in some way. Yeah, right, because
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh Connie, Okay, well I didn't even
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: first I didn't. I don't think they name what her
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: job is. So they did pretty early, do they? Okay,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: she goes, I mean it's another one of those like
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of dialogue and a lot of quick,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: quick exchanges and it's very blank and you'll miss it. Someone. Yeah,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: someone does say like, like, you're the press secretary, this
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: is your job? You know? Okay, we we know her job,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: we see that she's a woman in politics. She seems important, right,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: like you said. But then the respect of hot president.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: They have that fun exchange about how he's hot. We
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: can't say it enough. But then as soon as we
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: find out that she is the ex wife of Jeff
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Goldblum's character, she does nothing in the story except for
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: like hold his hand and like look longingly at him.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: He realized the meaning of love. They realized that, you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the world is burning, and you know they should have
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: valued each other. But now they have this second chance
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: because they didn't explode into bull of fire. I don't
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: know if I'm more frustrated by Connie or by the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: first lady, because both of them are just like you
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: start out with, like, you know, at least the feeling
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of like, oh, there's some potential here. They could do something,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And then it's just the male characters in their lives
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: just slowly sapped them of their agency until they either
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: die or retire. Um, there's no government anymore. They don't
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: need a press secretary. They blew up the White House.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Where is there to do government at way? Starting jewelry company,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: start etty store, and she and Jeff called bloom Will,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, build a cable company together. So then
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: pretty early on Will Smith's character and his girlfriend Jasmine
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: are separated physically. Uh, and we kind of waited Jasmine
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: more than I thought we would. I figured, like we
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: would just kind of forget about her, she wouldn't be
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: a character. Yeah, because it's like to give this movie
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: some like small ribbons. You know, Roland likes to I
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: don't know if he's overstating it, but like he he
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: would talk about how he had to fight the studio
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: to get Will Smith cast because, um, you know, Captain
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Hiller is probably you know, the closest thing to a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: main character, and like they really didn't like the idea
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: of a black lead. I'm not surprised, and it was
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: not bankable, and especially combining that with the fact that,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you know, Jasmine probably has more screen time than even Connie,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: so she probably has like she's like the most fleshed
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: out female character in the movie. She probably has the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: most screen time of all the women, so you know,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and it's just like, well, for a woman of color
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: to get a bigg ish part in like, you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the biggest movie of the year, it's like, okay, you're
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you're a gold star, you're one, You're one who And
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: then one of the other main characters is identifiably Jewish
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and that I feel like it's a pretty it looked
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: like a wheel. Yeah, judge her good sport. Yeah, I'm
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: talking about Jeff Golbo. But representation win. Representation win, I
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: mean is like you can there's sort of like the
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: iffy optics of a German Man writing this character, and
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: it's like, sure, sir, where do you stand? Okay, getting
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: back to Jasmine, she is she is, like I mean,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: she's my favorite female character, mostly because we knew more
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: about her and we saw her more than any other
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: female character. We find out that she is a stripper,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: so we find out what her job is. Again, it's
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: like kind of weird optics on that too, where I
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: feel like, you know, like, we get these two rich
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: white ladies in these fancy white lady jobs and then
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the only woman of color is a strip so the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: optics there are, and we contrived a way to get
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: her in her like stripper outfit, her Las Vegas show
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: girl stripper out I was like this club, Yeah, it's
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: like that's like a samba outfit. She even explains how
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: like that is just sort of forced into the movie.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: She was like, I just showed up to work to
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: get my paycheck and they made check, and like it's
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: just like we had to this gratuitous who is who
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: is coming into the strip club on the day of
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the alien invasion? Why is anyone at work? Like whatever?
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Like Mario, who's the guy who owns the club? Mario
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: is still yelling at her. She also did bring her
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: child and her dog to the strip club, but she
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: shouldn't get a sitter. Yeah that' said. Okay, So even
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: though the optics on that are like funky and questionable,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: at least they do not you know, like the they
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: don't use it as an excuse to degrade her. She
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: like advocates for herself when Hillary Clinton's like, oh, I'm sorry,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: you're a sex worker, and She's like, no, I'm not sorry.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: It's like that's how I make Like I make money,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and like I do it for my son, who is
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: worth it, Like yeah, it's there's no like, well, one
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: day I won't have to do this, you know. It's
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: just like, you know, I'm fine with it. It's it's cool.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: They have their sex positive conversation. It ends with Hillary
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Clinton being like, maybe it is cool, hadn't thought of
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: it anyways, internally bleeding to death. Thanks for talking to
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: me in my last moment. Kind of fun that that
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: was her final lesson. She's like, man in life, I
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: should have respected sex workers more. Anyways, I mean, at
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: least it's just like, well, if a woman had to
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: get fridged, at least it's not the woman of color,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that's true. That's like an old star representation win maybe.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: But then we have Harry Connick Jr. Telling Steve Hiller, Oh,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: you're never going to get to fly a spaceship if
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: you marry a stripper because Will Smith is trying to
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: be in NASA, and Harry Connick Jrs. Like, don't marry
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: a stripper? An arbitrary? I know? To me, it makes
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: perfect sense. That makes one million sense to me. Yeah, yeah,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: just like the optics of astronauts are. I actually I
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: just met an astronaut over the weekend. Uh. The people
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: they select to be astronauts have to be perfect on
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: so many levels, Like not only are they like, you know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: incredibly like extroverted and charismatic, they also like all of
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: them have like the perfect nuclear family. So I think
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: it is, yeah, the the you know, because like right
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: now they're prepping up for a crew dragon as SpaceX,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: and you know, whenever they talk to the people who
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: work at SpaceX, they always like whiplicked to play up that, like, well,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to come home to my children. Boy.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I sure do you have children? Boy? And have children?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Please don't blow us up. So yeah, I think I
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: think I think that it's just like as as silly
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: as it is, I think it's like, yeah, that that
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: would absolutely be a concern. Sure. But also Harry Conna
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Junior's character sucks so fucking He's like imitating Jesse Jackson
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: at one point because he has the role normally of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the like goofy black friend who dies. So it's like
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and he's doing that voice. It's like so bizarre. Yeah,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's almost like they that for a
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: black guy Will Smith, and then they reversed the part.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I think Cass Matthew Perry before your Econic right, so
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: like it was always intended for an annoying white guy.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: It's so weird. I don't know Harry Conny Junior's performances
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: we've got to take up. We must take a break
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: from Harry Connick Jr. And then we will come right back.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: We're kind of wrapping up the discussion on Jasmine, where
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: it's like there's a there's a lot, there's pros, there's cons.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: She kicks down the door. She kicks down the door
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: because women went in action movie must kick something. At
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: some point she has she's like, you know, de nearest,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: she's the unburnt. Yeah, we're just kiddy. She manages to
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: survive that closet. It's heat resistant, don't worry, But there
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: is there is like another kind of she is a
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: caretaker and a motherly role. For the majority of the movie,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: we do get to know what her job as we
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: do get to see her talk about herself and advocate
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: for herself, but she is protecting her child. Not to
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: say that she shouldn't, but she is kind of put
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: into that maternal role and then also uh starts to
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: rescue people and then also briefly kind of becomes Hillary
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Clinton's mommy nurse. So I mean, there's nothing like inherently wrong,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Like there's nothing wrong with being a good parent, right,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: But I think one thing you like, I think that's
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: only kind of very recently started to change. Is like
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: when you have action movies and disaster movies, men's narratives
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: tend to be we are here to solve the problem
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and fight the problem. Women's narratives tend to be survival narratives.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: And I think hers is you know, kind of like
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the horror version of that where it's like during the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: you know, disaster, she is the face of humanity who
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: had to endure it, and she then has to survive
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: until she is rescued by Will Smith. Um, so yeah,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you see, you see that a lot like you know,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: like Hunger Games is you know prime like is the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: first one is a survival narrative. An they're like, weird
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: thing about this movie that I don't know. I see
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: a movie like this and I don't expect to see
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: great fathering, but there's pretty much like everyone is a
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: good parent in the movie Hot President and a good parent.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton is a good parent, Vivica A. Fox is
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: a good parent. Will Smith is a great step dad.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Even Randy Quaid, you know, he's doing his best and
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: probably lay off the sauce, but sick kid gets his medicine.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Judd Hirsch is like, don't get off the cold floor,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and he thinks that the idea for the computer virus.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: So it's like like the fathers and the mothers are
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: are parenting equally well, but the you know, fathers get
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: to go off and do cool ship and right, whereas
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the mother. Yeah. So that's that's the my favorite shot
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: of the movie, because I have all of them are.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: My favorite shot of the movie is where after the
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: aliens are beat and you know, Robert Loggi goes, we
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: got him beat Tom, and then he goes, how about
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: our boys? Are they back yet? And then in the
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: background you see vivid a Fox and Connie like step
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: into the frame and be like, yeah, for boys are back.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Just yeah, they're they're completely just sidelined for the I
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: mean whatever act three. Jeff Bull, Yeah, well I do
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: say you better come back right, yeah, because they both
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: say it like in their own and Connie goes, why
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: does it have to be you? Why can't some other
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: like human sacrifice go And then the boys come back
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and then the two women run towards them, and then
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the kids looks not like she's just been through the
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: end of the world. Another thing I want to say
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: about her character is and I'm curious what everyone thinks
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: about this, but she is the only one who seems
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: to voice any concern about the impending alien invasion. She's like,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: I don't feel good about this, and then Will Smith
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: is like, well, they didn't find ninety billion light years
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: just to like kill us all, and it's like, of
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: course they did, Like I mean, they might be asking
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: for help. Maybe could be like it could be like
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: an Octavia Butler's lil It's Browed trilogy where just like
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: we need some genetic diversity. Randy Quaid, you're looking pretty.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: There is a moment during the and this is just
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: like maybe laugh when Will Smith is like leaving um
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: and then there's something, you know, apocalyptic happening in the distance,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: like a fox runs out to him. She's like honey, honey, honey,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: and like doesn't notice the apocalypse until Will Smith says, look,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: how this could you not see it? Yeah? I had
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: someone on because I was like, where is this? Because
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: this is obviously a place and that exists in the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: real world, and so I'm like, you know it is
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: because the magic of Twitter. Someone like within five minutes
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: was like, here's the address. It's in Glendale. What a
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: great gallery in Glendale. So the point is, so Will
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Smith drove from Glendale to Orange County like kind of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the south part of Orange County. I mean it makes
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: sense because Jasmine has to go through downtown l A
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: to get to El Toro. So that's why I mean,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: so it kind of makes sense that she had she
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: works in downtown l A. She had to get her
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: paycheck and then she got talked into work and so
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: she was on her way. But I think, like everybody's
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: like getting out, and I feel like it needs it
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: must needs be remarked. President Hottie is not a good president.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: He is quite bad at the presidenting. Like his first
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: you know, like maybe let's not evacuate the city's like, yeah,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: he's too busy. Why does he fraid he's going to
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: offend the aliens? I think he's secretly like, okay, let's
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: alien nuke the states that don't vote for me. Yeah,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like I have some like and Jeff Goldbloom,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: come on, even if they knu every single alien ship
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: that would not cause nuclear winter? Do you know how
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: many nuclear tests there have been, Jeff Goldbloom, It's been
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: um so anyway, So Jasmine is like, hey, I think
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: there might be something bad. I have a bad feeling
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: about these ominous alien ships that are hovering over every
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: major city in the world. So I'm wondering it is like,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: does that is that kind of playing to the trope
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: of like a woman's intuition kind of thing where like
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: think she's the only person looking at the gigantic doom machine.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, let's be real, like black people do
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: tend to have a better self preservation instinct, so I
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: think it's like speaking to that truth of like all
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the white people are like, you know, they're probably here
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: at a party. But then says that too, and he's
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: like he's a guy, you know. Yeah. I mean it's
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that someone said it, because it is very
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: weird to be like people seem remarkably unconcerned nineties. They're
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: just like, yeah, the aliens are here. I love et.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: So I guess it's good that like we see like
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: the one person who like voices any sort of concern
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: and ends up being right about it is a woman.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, there is Mary, his wife whitmore
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: a k Hillary Clinton and her she's away. Do we
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: know what she's doing. She's away on first Lady business.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: She's like doing first Lady stuff at l A. Right,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: So she's she's away and she's you know, talking to
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: hottie president and he's like, hey, I think, like, babe,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: I think the world might be like ending, so you
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: should come home, and she's like, no, I I have
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: to finish doing this, which is like dumb, but whatever.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: She said no to her husband. Fine, but there is
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: a gold star. But then but then she is later
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: unished for that decision because she dies because she didn't
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: leave when he told her to. She does end up dying,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: and in her with her dying breath and it's just like, oh,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: like all right, with her dying breath. She apologizes to
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: her husband for not coming home when he said she
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: shut up and that you know, if only she had
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: listened to her husband, she would she wouldn't have died,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: an amazing lesson, and her her last word is liar. Yeah,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: like they he's just like kind of one of those
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: things where it's like it is it is difficult to write,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: like in jokey banter between two characters because it's like
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: it's hard to translate, but they're weird like relationship. And
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: joke is he'll like say an obvious lie and she'll
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: go liar. And the first time they do that is
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: when he wakes up and she calls him and he's
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: like he's got his daughter in bed with him, and
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: he's like, I have a confession to make. I'm lying
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: next to a beautiful brunette and I'm like, weird, Yeah,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: it's weird joke to make president your child. Yeah, And
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: she's you know, she's like and there was the other one,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: like he'd say like an obviously and she'd go liar.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: And like the last little in jokey banter they do
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: is him going the doctors think you're gonna be fine,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: a horrible thing to say, you're dying like blood purple
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: song out of her esophagus. And also no one is like,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: no one is worried enough about little May Whitman. Like
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: she gets a hug from her dad. I'm like, doesn't
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I really understand what's going on? Because the next day sleeping, Yeah,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: she's asleep. And now it's the more the July and
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: there's you know, alien arms around fire and we're smiling,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: like the two children. Vivica a Fox's son and May
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Whitman like when they're hiding in the bunker and like
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: it's like I love nineties movies because like children do
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: not act like children where they're just like quietly sitting
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: while chaos us is erupting around the people are screaming.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: And the little boy says to her, are you scared?
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: And she quietly nods and goes and he goes, me too,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: cut carnage outside, liar, And she shakes her head and
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: he goes, liar, like your kids, you're crazy. Can we
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: talk about the conversation between David Levinson a K. Jeff
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Goldbloom and Connie, the Press secretary where they talk about
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the first time they're on screen together. They're talking about
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: a fight that David and the president got into where
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: David punched him in the face because he thought his
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: wife was having an affair with Whitmore so you know
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: it wasn't, but she did later but right or something.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm doing it. I'm presidents in an
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: open marriage. They're cool with it, liar, h. So that's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: a fun thing that happens. And then they have this
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: conversation about her career when they're an area fifty one.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: She is talking about working in the White House and
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: how the president is a good man. Oh yeah, he's
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: he's getting drunk or through them the scene, she's like,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: the president is a good man, and he says he'd
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: better be. You left me for him, or you know
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: your career, and she says, you know, it wasn't just
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: my career. It was the biggest opportunity of my life.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: I wanted my life to make a difference. I wanted
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: my life to mean something. And then he says, and
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I wasn't ambitious enough for you. And then they started
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: talking about him and how smart he is, but how
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: unambitious he is, which he's like just every redditor like
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a secret I'm a secret genius. Or it's just
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: like you know what I could be really like successful,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm a genius. Who's lazy. I'm just lazy.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just too tired. Right, And it's like he refused
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: an underachiever. He apparently refused to correct that problem, and
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: so she left him, like right, well, it's just like
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: he just would not move for hers. What it seems
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: like he just seems comfortable in his rut in New
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: York being a you know, engineer at Comcast or whatever.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: I love that male narrative of just like, well I
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: am smart enough to do something like better, but I'm
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: not going to. But you know I could. I just
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: haven't been presented with the correct opportunity like an alien
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: apocalyptic invasion. Yeah, now's my chance and see babe. But like,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like this could have been a much more
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: interesting conversation about like how he resents her career ambitions
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: because of his like fragile male ego, which is something
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that happens in a lot of you know, hetero couples.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: And then she could like call him out for not
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: respecting her and her agency and all that stuff, which
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: is where it seems like the conversation is headed. But
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: then they just end up talking about what a genius
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: he is, and then it ends with her saying I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: never stopped loving you, and then that's the beginning of
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: their romance. Rekind was enough? Was it? It reminds me
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: of like the like Michael Bay does the mean version
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: of this a lot like Transformers one, which steals a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: lot from Independence Day Um also kind of steals that
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: narrative of like a guy who's like a slacker and
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: useless that you know, given the opportunity, can um rise
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: above and you know, be the successful boy. But I
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: think the thing is like with you know, a character
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: like Sam with Wicky, he is absolutely meant to be
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: like the Cipher, he is the self insert character um.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a reason why the the you know,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: these movies are always written like this, like it is
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: basically you know, meant to appease the way men see themselves.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: You know, that is reflective media, where media reinforces a
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: societal norm. You know, people internalize that, and therefore media
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: is created that you know, is sympathetic to like this
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: particular worldview and back and forth and then like that,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: just the cycle continues. So I think you know that
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: of course, that that that conversation was never ever going
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to challenge him, because it, you know, was meant to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: validate that that self image of I'm just a secret genius,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I'm just lazy. You're the problem because you don't see
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: my secret genius and like you wanted too much for yourself.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: And also just like equating, like it couldn't just be
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: that she wanted a career. It had to have also
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: have been another man. Yeah, he's like, oh, your work
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: for the president, so you must be fucking the president,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: which I mean with Bill Clinton. I mean maybe Jeff
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: gold just not a very good He's not a very
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: good partner. I know. It's jealous of her job and
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: of her being in the same room with other men,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: and like she's like in politics, most of the people
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: she's going to be in the same room with they're
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: gonna be men. Maybe, and he just like he maybe
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: you just knew that about himself. He couldn't deal with it.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: And like the Jeff Goldblum character just kind of speaking
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: to what you're saying about, like reinforcing how men see themselves.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: It I feel like it even goes a step further
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: because it's not just saying like, oh, like there's a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: large amount of men who you know, feel that they
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: are secretly capable of more than the opportunities that they're
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: given and they're angry about it. But in Jeff Goldblum's case,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: they make they also make that true and so everyone
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: around him is like, you are a genius, like because
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: it's like you need to be, you know, presented with
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: extraordinary circumstance in order to realize your potential, and it's
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: as it's a very appealing narrative. And I think it's
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: like it tends to star men because they know tend
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: to need the most validation, but also like I think
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: I think they're you know, male audiences are going to
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: respond a lot more strongly to this idea of like
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: I'm a secret genius than women are. As why you
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: never really see like women characters that are just like
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just a shlub until like until because they, like
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: women have to, they start hyper competent and good at something,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: and then they get more hyper competent. And I was
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: like Captain Marvel or Catanists or every female Marvel character. Yes,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: it's fortunately all men are secret geniuses. You're all very smart.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: The same thing kind of applies to the president, where
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: in the beginning it set up the public thinks that
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: he's a whimp, he's not like the fierce leader that
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Americans thought they elected, and then he redeems himself by
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: going into battle as like a fighter pilot, as a
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: soldier to fight off the alien invaders. So it's like
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: the idea of like a man showing his worth by
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: like being a warrior, a protector, like that's how men.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: That's how men show how awesome they are and that
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: they're not whims. And I mean it probably got him
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: re elected in the upcoming election because he's anymore. I
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: think it's like it immediately descends into fascism, yeah, because
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: you know, there's like alien survivors, there's alien Guantanamo Bay.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: It's you know, and it's very controversial because it's just like, well,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: should we treat them the way they treated us? And
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: then it's like in District what was it? It's like that,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: but worse, like there's torture. They try to hide it.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: It's District nine, just like July five in the World
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: of Independence Day. I feel like if this movie extended
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: to July fifth, Yeah, it would get very dark for
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: quickly because then May Whitman needs to learn that her mother.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Everybody's pushing aliens in the head, right, it's just going
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: to be a disaster. Yeah, But you know, it's funny
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: because like it depended day resurgence. It was It's like, uh,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I guess it took a very humanity after the Black
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Plague approach to rebuilding because everything's great, We've got all
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: this technology, world peace achieved. You know when like you're
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: just like we were built really well, everything's great. Um,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Hong Kong's looking pretty nice. I have I have a
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: question for the table. Do you think yes or no
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: that this movie was approved of and partially funded by
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon. It absolutely was not. It was not I
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: would have guessed though, Yes, I guess that it was.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: And then I did some researches because we've talked like
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: briefly in the Transformers episode and I think also in
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: the Rock of just like movies that were signed off on,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I mean the Transformers, the entire I mean you know, so,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I mean like here's the thing. It's like, yeah, it's
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: it's actually really hard to get numbers on this sort
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: of thing because like for the Pentagon it's classified, and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: for Hollywood they don't have to open their books. So
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: it's like from project to project, you don't know what
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the subsidy looked like, but you can you can tell
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: that it's probably a lot more sizeable if there's actually
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: a tie in ad campaign like Man of Steel had
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: that and Captain Marvel had that. Yeah, Captain Marvel is
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: like one of the more recent movies that it majorly
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: promotes the Air Force um, like, I mean, it goes
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: back to like after Top Gun came out, like Enlistment
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: went way the funk up every Transformers movie, a couple
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Marvel movies, not all of them, like Winter Soldier, Iron
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Man one and two, but not the Avengers because I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: guess the no, they didn't. Actually Avengers got shot down
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: for a pretty similar reason that Independence Day got shot down,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: which was they didn't like the shadowy cabal of the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Powers that Be in the Avengers that were like giving
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: secret orders to Shield. That's what they didn't like. And
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: in the Independence Day they didn't like Area fifty one
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: other thing that they didn't like about Independence Day that
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I found because it's it's I mean again, it is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: hard to find details, but it seems to kind of
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: come down to this one guy, Phil Strub. Until like
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Phil Strub, he does not even his job anymore. He
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: was removed at the end of last year. And oh
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: he was he was there for like the entire eight Yeah,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: he was there for like almost thirty five years. Yeah,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I went in a phil Strub hole. Yeah. Fil Strub
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: is interesting because he's like he's like the shadow man
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: that like no one can get an interview with him.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: He is like so he for for our listeners, he
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: is like the connection between Hollywood and depending on the military,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: like any movie that receives their seal of approval have
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: to go through him directly. And it was like that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: since possibly like it's like the eighties, and it was
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: the eighties, like early eighties, like top Gun was definitely
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: in there all the way up until the end of
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: eighteen and there was never a press release. But he's
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: no longer in that position as someone else had no idea.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: It's confusing, but he so one of the reasons given
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: for Independence Day, and it's like again, he will never
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: state this, but I guess that Will Smith's Navy pilot
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: dating a stripper was a problem for the Pentagon as well.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: You're right, yea, So yeah, so this movie did not
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: get the Pentagon Salver approval and I guess as a result,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: like had to develop effects even better because they didn't
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: have any really assistance, So there was some special effects
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: that so more of the story, Uh, feminist icon the Pentagon,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and I mean this, I feel like this movie does
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: do a fair amount to like normalize sex work and
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: stripping more than a lot of movies we have seen,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: which we'll just have a scene that takes place in
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: a strip club for no reason and then they're just
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: like naked women there as scenery. So at least we
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: don't you know, at least it goes a few steps
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: beyond that. And to roll in Emeric's credit, you can
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: kind of tell the movie wasn't directed by a straight guy, right,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: you know, it's just like he clearly the camera clearly
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: has no just in Jasmine sexually like he like he
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: thinks she's pretty, but like the camera never leers on her,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: like if you can again compared like the obvious comparison
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: being Michael Bay, but like they like there's never any
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: leering shots that are like objectifying or fetishizing, like she's
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: always very human the first time you see her, she's
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: like fully clothed and plaid and has a ponytail, like
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and that the one stripping seems a very very short,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: very show girly Yahd's like the way it's shot is
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: just like you know, like, yeah, I like women, Yes,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: I like yeah, looks good, like just it feels a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: little like I I respect with like I don't really
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: know how to make a woman look sexy because I
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: don't really want that. But like a lesser director probably
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: would have like been like, oh, we're not going to
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: get Penticon money if we leave a stripper narrative in
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: because it could technically be removed from the story and
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: not affect that much, um which you know, does that
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: speak to how much the women affect the blo Yes,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: But it's like I thought it was like cool that
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: he didn't cut it, even though that was one of
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: the reasons given. But she's positive, she's she's here to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: normalize sex work to Hillary Clinton, she showed her a
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: thing or two about a thing or two with your assumptions.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I make good money. I own a house in Glendale. Yeah,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not a ballerina. I'm like, I can't have heard
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: a house in Glenda. Let's say, who can? This is
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: such This is such a like an Americ centric movie
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: for being directed by a German guy because his follow
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: up was The Patriot. Oh yeah, Stroland has an interesting
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: an interesting I think it was The Patriot and it
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: was either Godzilla or The Patriot. Actually think Godzilla was
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: next in The Patriot came after that, right, But yeah,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: he has an interesting filmography. But it's just like all
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: the people in the movie who were like the most capable,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: the ones who were going to figure out how to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: crack this alien problem are all in America and everyone
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: else in the rest of the world was just like
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: sitting around twiddling their thimbs like a bloody time. Best
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: scene ever, he's also the Day After Tomorrow, right, that's
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: him to the other best movie. He loves a disaster,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: loves a disaster because that was when he was like
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: trying because I think that's like her post nine eleven Roland.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, where he's like I'm going to use
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: my you know, disaster movie powers to make money, which, again,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to Roland's credit, he's like one of the few was
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: one of the few people people keeping non franchise films
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: alive because you know, you think of like the biggest
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: grossing movie in being Independence Day. You know that would
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: never happen now ever, ever, ever, But yeah, because like
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you know, back when, so like Day After Tomorrow him
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: trying to like I'm going to make a point and
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make people take this seriously, and I
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: think it probably had the opposite of what a goofy
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: that's like a chillen Hall Emmy Rossa, and it kind
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: of does the same thing with like President Dick Cheney
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: at the end where it's just like he's trying to
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: be sympathetic because the Power that be and give them
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. Loved that where they was
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: like all the Americans like breaking into Mexico on right?
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: Is Dennis Dennis Quaid, isn't that movie? Yes, speaking of
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: a quake, I wanna stay just a little bit about
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Randy Quaid's kids. Yes, Oh, yes, so that we learned
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: in the back story that there's no mom because I
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: feel like all the moms are dead or die in
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: this movie for the most part. Yeah, exactly, because Jeff
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: Goldblum's mom is dead and then the first lady also dies. Um.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: So Randy Quaid has two sons and a daughter. The
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: sons get to talk a lot when we see them,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: you know, they're in the scene there in the foreground,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: whereas like the daughter hardly says anything. She's usually in
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the background. The one scene where she is the focus,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: she is with a boy who is trying to convince
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: her to have sex with him, to lose her virginity
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: with him, and then her brother comes in and He's like,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: come on, we gotta go, and she's like, I'm not
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: going anywhere, and then her brother yanks her away. That
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: happens to her twice too, because Randy Quaid does that
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: to her one of the times where she keeps being
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: like I want to do this, and then someone around
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: her just like no, Sam, what's her name? Wow, it's
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: finally something about into Pennis Day. I don't know. I
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: do not know those character's character's name. I was trying
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: to I like grew wound scenes. I was looking for
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: it because I knew this older sister and Mrs doutfires
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: and yes, because the girl's brother. According to according to IMDb,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: it's her character's name is Alicia. I mean nothing. She
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: she never appeared. I don't think her name is ever mentioned,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: at least in the theatrical cut. I think it might
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: be in the director's cut, because again, like the director's
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: cut is like so much meandering of like you know,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot more of like mcguil being resentful of
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Randy Quaid and fairness. He has a good reason to
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: be resentful, like the Q man, he needs to lay
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: off the sauce. He's not being a very good father.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I just feel like, sure, Randy Quaid does comment at
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the very end and saves the day, but I feel
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: like his storyline should be cut entirely. Have someone else
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: save the day. Have the fucking president's save of the day.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: I don't care, but just like there should be more
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: real estate any quay the president cut the pullman to me,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: anything is worth Hello, boys, I'm back yes, And then
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: that the crowd cheers, Yeah, they're actually uh in preparation
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: for this not really um one of the in the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: distant past episodes of Game of Thrones that left are
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: really bad taste in my mouth. And I had like
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: I had some people over for a watch party, as
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: like we're watching an Independence Day because it's like it's
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: just especially like if you have really you know, a
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: nice like home system, it's like it's just hold like
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: the you know, the effects hold up really well, but
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: it's just like the you know, joyous dumbasstery like of
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: of like you know, Randy Quaid's ca eliminating moment. It
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: always makes me. And then like the music swells and
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: alien body parts of ringing from the sky and it's
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: just so like you know, you say that it is
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: so it's so and it's like I can't think of
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: any other screen moment like that. Where again, it was like,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: if if there was a suicide moment played today, it
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: would be extremely grim, we would, you know, But this
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: is like a blaze of glory moment, Like it's not
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: meant to be sad at all. Like when three children
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: have just lost their fathers. There's three children are I'm
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: so dad, we inherited the RV. It's fine, they're right
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: there now there's just three kids in an RV, which
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: is a series I would watch. I mean, I just
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: think that we should have cut the Randy Quaid subplot
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: and spent more time developing the female characters. I loved.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: Have to say Randy's got to stay, but give Randy's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: daughter more to I say, cut one of Randy's sons.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Don't need, we don't need have her be the puk.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: We actually don't. We can get rid of both so
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: we can make her uh mad at Randy Quaid and sick.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: And then you have a daughter like you're not my father. Yeah,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I kind of like that. It's a
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: boy who's like, you're just wried. I think that's in
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: the director, So movie has got a middle part, You're
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: like ninety six? Yeah. Um. Can we talk briefly about
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: how this movie handles queerness, which is that we see
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Harvey Firestein in the movie The Gay of the Early
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: Nineties played the same character in Uh. Yes, you know.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty stereotypical portrayal of a gay man. H
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: then he dies almost immediately. And then there's another moment
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: where Steve Hiller is at base with Harry Knnick Jr.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Harry picks up the ring that he's going to propose
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: to Jasmine with, So it looks like Harry Connick Jr.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Is like on his knees proposing to well Smith. That's
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: what it looks like. And then and then this other
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: guy walks in and then he sees them. I love
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: that joke, and then he like walks away that He's like,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: you guys, you guys are having a moment. I'm going
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: to leave you to it. I'm glad that you have
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: that interpretation. I interpreted more as like, oh, I don't
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: want any part of this. Let me slowly back away,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: and then I run because I am coming at it
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: from the like knowing Roland Demrick and his background it
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: was just like a being a gay man, be being
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: incredibly naive. That does that context us, yes, because I
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: think like he thinks, like obviously he thinks Harvey Firestein
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: is hilarious. Um, And I don't think he sees it
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: as self deprecating or like as playing into stereotypes. I
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: think he sees it as isn't Harvey fires hilarious? Isn't
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: it funny? When he goes forget my lawyer, like and
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: cracking up. Yeah. Yeah, Like he's like, oh, it's just
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: like the fact that his death is oh crap, you know,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: like again something you wouldn't never ever seen a press
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: like it's like not even played for pathos. It's just like,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: well we lost another one. So strange because like to me,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Harvey Forresting plays way less into queer tropes and more
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: into Jewish tropes. But he he's like calling everybody and
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: he's like you gotta go stay with an Esta, you know.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: And then like he's on the phone with his lawyer.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: He's on the phone with like every you know, every
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: person he hasn't even a remote business relationship. He's like
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: for three an hour, like you can put me through
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: to his house in the Hampton's. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, that didn't that that didn't bother me too much,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: just knowing that it's a queer director and it's like,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: you know, he but also Roland Emrick made, you know,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: he made. I think Roland is very like he's got
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: some weird I know, I think he just like and
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: this is not to excuse it, but I really do
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: think he comes from a place of incredible privilege because
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: he was raised incredibly wealthy. He was like, you know,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: lived in boarding schools his entire childhood, and then he
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: just immediately got a ton of money and started go
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: making movies. So I think he was really insulated from uh,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: you know, the struggles because you know, he doesn't he's
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: not really a part of any community except for the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: community of the incredibly wealthy. So I think he's incredibly
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: detached from any kind of conversation so interesting cultural. There's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: a when I was doing more research on just him
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: in general. One of the first thing that pops up
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: as an interview he did in headline Roland Emeric being
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: gay in Hollywood has been easy just like, Yeah, I
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: think I think that is true because he does he's
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: easy to work with. By all accounts, he stays on budget.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: He doesn't rabble, rouse, he doesn't agitate, he doesn't advocate.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting because Stonewall was a passion project of his,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Like that's basically why he made Independence Day Resurgence was
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: so he could get funding for Stonewall. And you can
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: also and you can really tell just that he has
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: no connection with any queer communities. He just he's he
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: sees it as like, yes, these are my people, but
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: he does not engage with them at all or some
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: and would have been like, buddy, this is a bad
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: another queer person literally any like no, I just think
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: he just he's very isolated and the fact that he
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: just kind of you know, plays the game and it
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to ever occur to him that to ask
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: for rights for anyone but himself. He literally he really
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: has not had a hard time, especially because he had
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: like two big hits right out of the gate and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: he could just write his ticket to make any movie
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: he wanted. Because you know, it's just because like he's
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was out, but he never did any advocacy.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think he considered making Stonewall advocacy. Yeah, alright,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: I love an eccentric rich person. And the other final
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: thoughts about the movie before we wrap up, Um, it's
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: just fun. It's fun. I love it so much. The
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: shot with the dog. I liked that when the dog
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: when the dog, Like, I was like, that's this is
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: a big budget movie because there is a dog doing
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: something heroic. I just I have I have infinite love
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: for Like again, it draws back to the question of
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: can a stupid movie be good because it's because I
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: was thinking about like the uh months ago finale of
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, which was, you know, it was kind
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: of dumb, like and you know, it's just like you
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: have a show like Game of Thrones, which can't be
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: dumb because it was falling from such a like a
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: place of you know, internal consistency and sharp dialogue and
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: you know, character consistency, and then it just kind of
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: got dumb in service of the plot. And for that
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: reason it was not good. But Independence Day is deeply
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: dumb and very naive and like just just you know,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: incredibly like myopic and you know, hypernationalist. I I'm just like,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say I excuse all of it,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: but I think I can I can make a good
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: case for it being a very tight, well made movie
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: in a way that Roland Nemrick has never been able
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: to replicate. So I think that Independence Day gives hope
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: for stupid stories everywhere. I mean, that was a speech
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: as beautiful as you, like, Hey, hey, editor, you need
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: to put Bill Pullman's like powerful music under under my
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: speech about how dumb movies can be good. Actually, and
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: the movie does pass the Bechdel tech. Yeah, a couple
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: of times talking about sex positivity. Even that conversation, Yeah,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: that okame as a surprise to me. Jasmine and her
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: colleague who gets named as Tiffany talk about the welcome
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: party for the Aliens and how Jasmine tells Tiffany that
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: she should not go, even though Tiffany goes and then dies,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and then Jasmine, yeah, the first lady to talk about
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: the conversation starts with her son and then about will Smith,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: but then for a few lines they talk about her. Yeah.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: There's a few tiny exchanges between little May Whitman and
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: her mom too that are just like hi, mommy. But
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: I mean just think there was especially that scene with
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Jasmine and the first lady. You're like, all right, we've
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: got some there's some moves to this, there's some substance here, actually, Presca,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, we may need to go back on this,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: like review this, but I actually think most of Roland's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: movies passed the back testing. I think Godzilla might be
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: the Godzilla and the Patriot might be the two right.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Also though, remember that probably percent of the dialogue is
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: not passing the backest sole minimum another tiny ribbon, A
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: lot of tiny ribbons on this gigantic movie. And then
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: there's like a lot of red pins, like some gold stars,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of red pins. That's why I like, I
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: love movies like this that are like super watchable but
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: deeply flawed. Like that's another reason why I like I
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: love Transformers. Oh seven was that was the only one
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: that was watchable of the group. But it was so
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: like just so much to deconstruct, like you know, the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: mill of Terry and the terrible characters and the way
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: it shot, Like I mean, I could go on your
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: incredible serious serious about that. Let's write the movie on
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: a nipple scale, uh zero to five nipples based on
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: his representation of women. I'm going to give it like
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: a half nipple because even though there are some kind
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: of like pleasant surprises in the movie, like it passing
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: the backde tests. We know what each of the women
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: does for a living, stuff like that. But also they're
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: all just like characterized by the relationships that they have
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: two men. Really, no time is spent developing them as
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: people who are important to the story in any way.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: It's just the women are there because they want to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: kiss the boys. So half nipple and I will give
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: my half nipple too. Is the dog's name, Boo Boomer Boomer,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: I will give it one nipple. Also, Alf for Melena
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: could have been a hottie president. He could have been
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Randy Quaid. He's so yeah, he can do anything, so
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: he can really be us anyone in this movie. But
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it one because sex positive question mark.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: I thought that was like a pleasant thing to see
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: there be even though women have no effect on the
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: plot in the movie whatsoever. If you removed all the
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: women from the movie, it would just be different, thirty
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: minutes shorter. And then they fridged a woman and that's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: just so lazy and boring. But I did like that,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: you know, they went out of their way to uh,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: you know, fully characterize a sex worker in a way
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: that wasn't shamy or shitty, and but then they fridged
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: someone immediately after, lots lots to consider. I'm gonna get
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: give it one nippy and I'm gonna kick it back
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: to Baby May women. All right, Yeah, well, you know what,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: I'm super biased. I'm gonna I'm grading it on a
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: curve because nineties not even too just because I love
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: Jasmine so much. I think it is super curvy. Because
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: when I think of, like, you know, like even a
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: movie like Men in Black with its one woman, you know,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: and like everything else again Jurassic Park with its one
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: woman and another one child woman, which there is a
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Jurassic Park reference whenever Jeff Goldblum at the end when
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: they're trying to fly out of the mothership, he says,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: must go faster, must go faster, which is also what
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park Brave of Him. So yeah, cool. Well, Lindsay,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for being there, for having We
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: love having you every time. What would you like to plug?
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Where can people follow you online? Et cetera. You can
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at the Lindsay Ellis Because I
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: made that account two thousand and eight, but realized I
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: had to live with it forever um and on YouTube.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: My YouTube channel is just my name, and my debut novel,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: which totally has a title, has such a title. St.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Martin's press in hopefully and it does. It does does
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: definitely have whispers of Independence Day. Aliens are involved. Love
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: it good, Yes, read her book when it comes out.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: Watch Lindsay's It'll such a title, so much of a title, incredible.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: I can't even say it. It's just like I don't
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: want to give it that power, and then I don't
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: want to be too successful. And then watch all of
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Lindsay's video essays we have and we like they've informed
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: some of our takes. Yes, indeed, so thanks again. You
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: can follow us at us ever heard of us at
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: bectel cast on the social media platforms that you tend
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: to use, Twitter, Instagram, sometimes Facebook. You can also subscribe
• 1:27:34
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• 1:27:38
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• 1:27:41
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• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: matriotic and give us money. Matriotic, Matriotic. The Matriot directed
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: by Roland emeric all female rebit of the Patriot Matriot. Well,
• 1:27:57
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• 1:28:02
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• 1:28:07
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• 1:28:09
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• 1:28:14
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• 1:28:27
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• 1:28:30
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• 1:28:33
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• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: slash the Bechtel cast. Yes, um and uh until what's
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: our And we will not go quietly into the night.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: We will not vanish without a fight. We will live on.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: I was going to survive. That was way better than
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: my plans. Just started singing America the Beautiful So that
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: was you kicked my ass. Today we celebrate our Independence
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Day a beautiful source. Fine