Latest / The Bechdel Cast / First Cow with Mattie Lubchansky

Transcript

First Cow with Mattie Lubchansky · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephim fast
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast. Jamie and Caitlin here,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: we're going on tour in the Midwest covering the Star
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Wars prequels. We're gonna just cover all three at once
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: in one show in fabulous outfits.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: We will be in Indianapolis for Let's Fest on Saturday,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: August thirtieth for a matinee show, and then Jamie, you
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: have a solo show that evening that can't be missed.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Called Jamie Loftus and her Pet Rock Solve the World's Problems,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: in which that will happen.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I can't wait.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Then we are going to Chicago. You asked, We listened.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We will be at the Den Theater on August thirty first,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: do not miss it.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And then then we will be in Addison, Wisconsin, on Thursday, September.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Fourth, and then finally we will be ending the tour
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Dudley Riggs Theater on Sunday,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: September seventh. So if you have been one of the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: many people asking us to come to your town for
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the last ten years we're doing it. We would love
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: to see you. You can get all tickets at Link
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Tree slash Bechtel Cast. Exqueeze me, We'll see you there.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, when the cow came on screen, I was like.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: That's the first cow.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I've never had a movie watching experience where
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the movie shows you so clearly the title of the movie,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: but in classic Kelly fashion, has the restraint to not
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: be like, there's the first cow. Like, and I felt
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: like I had blue balls, I had narrative blue balls.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: But there she was the first cow. There, she was
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: female for time, we can argue.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I was really expecting this to be sort of like
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a silence of the Lamb situation, where you never see
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: the lambs on screen, they're only referenced in one line
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: of dialogue. But this is a movie about the first cow.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We're not waiting for good out here. The first cow is.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: She takes her sweet time, but once she's there, she's there,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: and she's not just there. She represents capitalism and the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: means of fucking production She's a metaphorical cow.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: A metaphysical, a physical, a metaphorical everything cow.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: She's everything.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bechdel Cass, the Bechdel Cow.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know the Bechdel cow.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It makes you think, it really does. And this is
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: our show where we're.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: The first two Bechdel Cows.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm first, Caitlin Dorante, I'm first, Jamie. This
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: feminist lens, using the Bechdel test or the Bechdel cow,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: perhaps as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is that?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Well? It is a media metric originally created by our
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: dear friend, friend of the cast, Alison Bechdel. Originally created
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: as a joke, a lark, a gag in her comic
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Watch Out for in the eighties, it has
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: since become a mainstream media metric. There's many versions of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: this test. Ours requires the following. Two characters of a
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: other than a man. You know, and we've got an
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: interesting discussion ahead. I can't believe this is our first
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Kelly Reichardt movie, and we have an incredible guest today.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: We certainly do. She's a cartoonist and illustrator, the author
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: of the new graphic novel Simplicity, which is in bookstores now.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It's Maddie Lobchansky.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I also when the cow showed up, Lena to my,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: my dear wife, and I whispered to her, that's the
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: first Cow, because you have to.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's so satisfying, it's so triumphant.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: She's so beautiful. She flies onto the screen with angel wings.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: It's the most beautiful cow in the world.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, she really is. And she's been through it, and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: she's been through it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a widow.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I know truly. I was like, I would actually really
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: love to see the Pixar version of First Cow also
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: where it's just a deeply traumatized cow who makes friends
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: with kind of a who's the guy in ratituey because Cookie,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: to me has the ratitude guye energy.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Oh sure, Linguiniinguiini.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: He is Cookie and Linguini they like they're on a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: similar frequency.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And then and then later when someone's talking about
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: this movie, they can be like, you know, you think
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: it's a kid's movie, but it's really about bovine trauma.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: It is bovine generational trauma.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: This movie is fascinating because like on the first watch,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you're like, huh, what is this movie about? And then
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the second watch you're like, oh m hmm, it's about food,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: sovereignty and capital. Okay, okay, she was cooking because at
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: first you're like, that's sure was a cow.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Some cow.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Let's get into it, Maddie. What is your history with
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: this movie?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I love this movie so much. It was
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: actually my first CALLI record that I saw, and it
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: was during this movie came out twenty nineteen, I believe,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: and during lockdown for COVID and twenty twenty. My partner
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: is in the WGA. We started getting screeners nice and
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: I was like, I heard people ranting and raving about
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: this film. People I know that like movies, and I
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: was like, I'll force us to watch this. We had
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: a very elaborate nightly movie viewing in my home during lockdown,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: where I got on YouTube. I found like the Regal
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: roller Coaster and I would turn off all the lights
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: and I would make popcorn and I would play that
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: on the screen. To make to put us in a
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: movie mode.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I love hearing what people's like simulation of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: normalcy was during lockdown, because it's like, that's it. That's
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: a good one, that's a very comforting move.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: I yearned for the Regal Coff mystery of cinemas, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: I had to go there in my mind, and you know,
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I go put our phones in the room and watch it,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: watch a movie every night. So yeah, we watched this
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: movie and I just it just fully blew me away
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: to the point where that year, for my wife's birthday,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I found the cow on cameo. The cow is on
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: kiss not anymore, howmeo very briefly the cows on Cameo
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: and I found it, and I bought my wife for
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: her birthday a birthday message from I believe the cow's
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: name was Eve, who played the cow Wow, and Eve
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: picked between two notes like fortunes on the ground.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Wait, that's elaborate.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really elaborate. And while this was happening, you know,
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: in the very first when they first get to the
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: fort in the movie, you see that guy kind of
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: like wander by the camera and he's holding like a
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: squealing little pig Yeah, that pig wanders into frame and
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: she goes, oh, they're so and so he's in the
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: film as well.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Wait were they from the same farm.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like some I think in Oregon or Washington
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: or British Columbia, I can't quite remember. I have to
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: like go the video is saved somewhere on my partner's
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: fin can find it?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Wow? Please? Yes, that's it's The stars are just like us.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I love when stars are friends.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they seem to be hanging out all the time.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: The frog and the frog, the pig and the cow.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I also love that she gets that there's no human
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: on the poster either. Yeah, it's just Eve the cow. Yeah.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: This was my second Kelly Reichard movie, two of two.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I feel like she's the kind of director that I know.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I will probably enjoy all of her work, but I
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: don't want to like mainline it. I feel like it's
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: it's nice to I watched my first I watched Certain
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Women last year, which is terrific, and Lily Gladstone is
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: in this movie for two seconds, but she is like
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: unbelievable in Certain Women, so I already knew that I
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: really like Killie Recard. I also like I also just
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: generally like learning about her process. She's very thorough and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: she's very anti Hollywood, where it seems like she makes
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: movies when she feels like it. She rarely makes them
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: outside of Oregon, where she's from and where she lives.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I think she's from Miami, but she.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: She's like been in Oregon forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: best friends with I think Todd Haynes. Like it's beautiful.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: She's just a vibe.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. She she came into the last year. I think
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: that she came to the Museum of the Moving Image,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: which I go to all the time because its in
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: my neighborhood, and she did a talkback for Showing Up,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: which is a movie that I love. Also, but listening
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: to her it was like the first good talkback I've
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: ever been to in my life. It's incredible. She just
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: her process talk is like amazing, awesome.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: She's like she's both so thorough and like it doesn't
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: seem to give a fuck about a lot of the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: like more I don't know, bullshitty, YadA YadA aspects of filmmaking.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I just I really like her. But this is only
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: my second movie I've seen of hers and it's really good.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I was really taken by, like, what a simple story
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: it is that like masks, all of these really complicated themes.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: The performances were great. I couldn't stop thinking about Waninguini.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: To be perfectly honest, I don't know why. I was
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: like and I was looking up, like, has anyone else
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: thought that the guy from First Cow reminds him of Linguini?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And I'm proud to say I think I may have
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: had an original thought. Wow, thank you, thank you. But
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I really really enjoyed this movie. There's so much going on.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I do have some thoughts about it, and I'm excited
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to get into it. Yeah. Kaitlyn wints her history was
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: First Cow.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I had never seen it before. It was my first
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: First Cow, first Kelly write Card movie. I knew of
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: it and I remember it being released. But I was
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: also kind of confusing this movie with the Power of
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the Dog.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, first of all, misogynist.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Of you, well, I hate women? You hate women with
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Bob's Okay. In my defense, both movies have an animal
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: in the title.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: True similar similar release.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Part of the Dog came out like a yearish later.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: A couple of years apart. Both of them are directed
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: by women. Both movies are period pieces. So you see
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: where my head's at.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I hope canceled.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, hadn't seen this movie before, and listeners
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: of the show will know probably that this is not
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: really my type of movie. I think there's really interesting
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: things that the movie does and says. But the movie
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: made me sleepy. But I'm excited to talk about it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: There's lots to discuss, and let's take a break and
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: then we'll come back for the recap.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And we're back.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: We're back.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Actually, before we get into it, Maddie, I neglected to
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: do this at the top of the episode. Let's talk
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a little bit about your new book before we talk
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: about the events of the movie. First.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Cow Yeah, So I was thinking about this movie when
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: we were talking about picking movies, because I did. The
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: way the movie is framed to me was so fascinating,
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: and I didn't I'm loath to say I ripped it
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: off from my book, but I did. It was very
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: inspired by it. So yeah. The book takes place in
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: the far future, like fifty years from now, and America
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: has like collapsed into various like walled fascist city states
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: and like an academic from like the New York one
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: of the city states is sent up to the Catskills
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: to like do an ethnography of this cold group that's
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: been living there since the nineteen seventies, and he kind
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: of falls in love with someone up there, but then
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: very mysterious things start happening and members of the group
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: start disappearing in him, and this guy that he's in
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: love with kind of like trek off into the woods
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: to figure out what happened. It's a lot of like
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: very tranquil wood stuff I was thinking about when I
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: was making the book, and it's about sort of like
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: both capitalism but also utopian separatism and communal living and
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff and the urges that drive people
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: to sort of make those decisions like leave society and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: start a new somewhere else.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: God, it's I haven't quite finished it yet, but I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: started a couple of nights ago and it's so terrific.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I also love your last book, Boys. Weekend is so
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like the Range, the Range. It's just you're incredible.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I'm very excited to keep reading it. And Yeah, I
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: wanted to ask because it was like, it feels like
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: this book is in conversation with this movie a bit.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: The book is sort of framed through The first thing
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: you see is like the spoilers for the first page
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: of my book. But it's like it's like kids in
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: a museum and they're talking about like the events of
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: the book like they've already happened. Right, It's different. It's
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: much different in the movie. But this idea that like
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: we're all just sort of like subject to like the
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: tide of history washing over us at all times, and
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: having that in mind from the jump. So much of
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: the book also is about what history is and who
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: records it, and who's it recorded for, who's it recorded by,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: who is in the intended listener or reader of the
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: history being made, and all that stuff is really important.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: I'm always trying to think about that. So I think
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a period piece like this is so has a lot
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: of that in mind as well.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Absolutely nice. Yeah, well, I'm excited for listeners to check
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: it out as well. Well, let's start talking about first Cow.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: It would be nice. Do we know? Is Eve still
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: with us?
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Eve the Cow?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Oh boy.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: She's not credited on Wikipedia, which seems like it should
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: be fixed.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: She's credited on IMDb.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Thank god. I think her name is ev Evie okay,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: ev the Cow. Yes, she should start a book club
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: or something like, you should get on her like influencer wave. Yeah,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I would take her. Like if if you put a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: few books before her and she sniffed one, I'd be like,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I'll give it a shot.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: According to the GQ profile I found for her name
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: is she's nicknamed She's nicknamed ev Okay Wow, Okay. So
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: she was two when they filmed the movie Prodigy. So
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: I'm like, what is life spain of a cow Jersey Cow?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's okay, let's check this out.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Really it was like twenty years.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like it's a relatively long life. I
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: think all things considered, I think they might Yeah, fifteen
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: to twenty years. So like, okay, like a cat, Yes, great,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we were on the same page there First.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Cat, and there's a cat in the movie also there
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: is Okay, So here is what happens in First Cow.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: We open on a woman played by Alia Showcat out
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: in the woods walking her dog. Some would say that
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: is the power of the dog.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And I think our friend would agree. I think this
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: is also like I haven't seen it, but I know
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: that one of Kelly Rigar's earlier movies stars Michelle Williams
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: and a dog he's called Wendy and Lucy. I felt
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: like it was like a little nod girl and her dog.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It's a Kelly thing. You wouldn't understand, No, I wouldn't.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: But anyway, she and the dog come upon a couple
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: human skeletons which are kind of like half buried in
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: the ground, and then Alia showcat like unearthed the rest
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: She looks so excited when she's digging up the skeletons.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I noted that too.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Something I noticed on this meeting that I had not
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: noticed last time I watched it, where she's like, wow,
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: so jazzed about it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: She's the only character who like doesn't come back, so
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: it's like, whatever, she worked at this movie for three hours.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Who like her reaction? I was like, Okay, so she
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: knows she's in the movie first cow Like that's how
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: she reacts because otherwise an absolutely unhinged reaction to finding
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: two skeletons, because she has no way of knowing how
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: recent these skeletons are. They're fairly well preserved.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this could.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Be from a couple of years ago. This could be
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: people she knows, This could.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Be I don't know how long it takes for a
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: body to like fully decompose.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, not longer than a few years, So this
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: could be. We don't know. We don't know, but they're
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: from the early nineteenth century, and it seems like she
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: knows that based on She's like, oh my god, the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: protagonists of First Cow.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: This is awesome, yes, because we flash back to eighteen
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: twenties Organ territory. So it's wild wild West vibes, It's
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Oregon Trail vibes.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Well Smith is there fighting a big spider.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Everyone's dying of dysentery. A man is in the woods
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: picking mushrooms. This is Otis Figowitz, though he goes.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: By cooking Gueenie.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I mean both names that are food, I.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Know, I mean and the same sort of like mappy,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like the little hair cut and the little
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: like I'm just a guy, I don't know, like the vibe.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: I'm coming around on this. Get John Magro to play
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Linguini in the live action rather they are a bound
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: to make right.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: He would be so good.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: So he's traveling with a band of fur trappers, and
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: they're headed to a place called Fort Tillicum. Cookie is
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: in charge of finding and cooking them food on their journey,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: but this is a difficult task and their food supply
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: is running low, and they keep getting on Cookie's case
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: about it. That night, as he's like scavenging for more food,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: he meets another traveler, an immigrant from China named King
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Lou played by Orian Lee, who is here on this
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: continent in hopes of finding gold or just like any
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: kind of prospect, but he hasn't had any luck, and
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: right now there are some Russian men chasing him because
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: he may have killed one of their friends.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: He's also crucially nude.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Right buck naked. I love Kinglu so much, like he's
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: so cool, especially how calmly he presents. Kinglu is a
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: certified yapper. I really really like him. Where he's he's
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: always just yapping it up. He presents all information matter
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of factly, whether it is like regardless of what. He's like, well, yeah,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I'm being chased, and cause he's like why, He's like, well,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: I may have killed someone, and Cookie is like tight, tight, tight,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and it works, and he's like, Okay, I guess come
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: with me. Where you get the filling where if King
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Lou appeared panicked, the events of the movie couldn't happen.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: But he's got a very cool head, cool as a cucumber.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and like compared to the horrible vibe of the trappers,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: that the horrible, awful vibe of those terrible men. Yes,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: it's like, oh, we got a guy I can chop
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: it up with. Come sleep in my tent please.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense where Cookie's like, all right,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: so maybe he killed a Russian guy, but he seems
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like he can hang and I don't know anyone like that,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and that's sort of how they come together.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Also, he killed the Russian guy because the Russian guys
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: killed his friend. Yeah, but it's implied that his friend
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: was stealing from them, So you know, it's like a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: chicken in the egg kind of thing. Who was the
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: first person to do something wrong? We don't know.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: They're cut from the same cloth. Yeah, Cookie and King Lou,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: And I also feel like Cookie. It just based on
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and again it's like we don't get a lot of expository,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: like Kelly makes you work for it, But I feel
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: like Cookie in some ways, like there's something in the
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: other that Cookie would like to be more like Kinglu
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: in some ways, and vice versa. They compliment each other
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: very well.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: So yeah, Cookie finds King Lou. He gives him some
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: water and lets him sleep at the campsite that night.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: The next day, King Lou kind of disappears. Cookie manages
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: to catch some fish in a net as he's by
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the river or I don't even know if Cookie sees this,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: but we see a cow being brought to land, the
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: first cow.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: And we start cheering, Yeah, go crazy, Oh, it's so
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: good on her, like she's on a raft. Yeah, but
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: it feels like she's being brought in on like an
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: ancient Roman litter, Like she's just drifting into frame and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it's incredible.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like a like a classical painting of
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: like a like actory preyed in Rome or something. There's
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: just like, yeah, it's incredible. Yes, I got a big
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: foam finger. That's his cow, and I'm holding.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: It up waving it around, and the one it indicates
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: which cow it is, the first?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Right, we will learn that this is the first cow
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: in the Oregon Territory, which a rich man from England
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: named Chief Factor had shipped to this area so that
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: he could have milk in his tea. Shortly after this,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Cookie arrives at the fort. Then he goes to a
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: saloon where he encounters King Lou again, who invites Cookie
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: back to his cabin in the woods for a drink.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: This is a funny scene because Cookie is supposed to
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: be watching a baby while the baby's father is busy
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: being in a like a bar brawl.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Again, that like the beginning to a totally different movie
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: about the baby.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: I know, I thought the baby was gonna come back. No,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I kept thinking this movie was going to be about
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: so many different things. Because when they go back to
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Kinglo's cabin, I'm like, and they're like drinking, I'm like,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: is this gonna become like a Broke Back Mountain type story?
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Because I especially because they were they're skeletons. I mean,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: we're let you sort of guess early on, okay, these
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: are the You're like, yeah, they're they're met laying beside
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: each other, and you're sort of like, dare I hope?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I know?
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: But yeah, And there's a like beautiful little domestic scene
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: where like you keep seeing Kinglu in the window like
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: outside doing like man stuff.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Chopping firewood exactly.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: It's like chopping firewood inside Cookies, like tidying up and
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: hoping he doesn't like notice that he's like sweeping his
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: house and putting potted flowers on the shelves and stuff.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: They're so complimentary, like it's really lovely. But they're just friends.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It's cool, just friends, guys, they're just friends.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: They should have kissed, but yeah, they're just friends.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like they didn't not kiss too, because I
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: feel like Kelly keeps you guessing. You don't know they
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: didn't kiss.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were spiritually kissing.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: We just didn't see them kiss on screen.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: But that house did not have two beds.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, true, because like eventually Cookie just moves in with
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: King Lou. Anyway, Cookie is supposed to be babysitting this
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: random stranger's baby and King Lou's like, leave the baby,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: it's fine, let's go have a drink. So they're chatting,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: and King Lou talks about how this is the land
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: of opportunity and that he's biding his time until he
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: can capitalize on some opportunity and hopefully become rich. He's
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: had different ideas on how to do this, such as
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: selling beaver oil from beaver glands, but again nothing really
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: has panned out. Cookie says that he would like to
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: open a hotel or a bakery someday. And this is
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: a seed that gets planted in King Lou's and he
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: keeps talking about a hotel.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: He's a yapper.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Then Cookie sees Chief Factor's cow and tells King Lou
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: about it. He's like, I'd love some of that milk
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: to use for baking, and King Lou is like, okay, pitch,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: let's go steal milk from the cow. So they do.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: They sneak over to Chief Factor's house at night. King
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Lou is on the lookout while Cookie milks the cow.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And he's like also empathizing with the cow, yes, which
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: is a plot point.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Weirdly, they bond, They bond. They become good friends.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Linguini, I'm telling.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: You Linguini and a rat, Cookie and a cow first rat. Okay.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: So they return to the cabin with the milk. The
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: next day, Cookie makes some biscuits. King Lou is like, yummy, yummy,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: we should take these to the fort and sell them.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Cookie is hesitant, but they go for it because Cookie
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: is kind of a doormat he'll just go along with whatever,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: and right away the men at the fort buy all
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the biscuits. They're like, hubba, hubba, these are delicious.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And King Lu sort of preys on their own racism
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to avoid describing the ingredients. Yeah.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he says, like, oh, it's an ancient Chinese secret
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: kind of thing.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Meanwhile, it's the first cow.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It's the milk of the first cow. Yes, that night
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: they steal more milk from the cow, and the next
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: day it's much the same, where the biscuits fly off
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: the shelf. It's almost like these hot cakes are selling
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: like hotcakes. I was really excited to write that down.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Anyway.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I was thrilled. I was thrilled. Yeah.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: So this goes on for like a few weeks, it seems,
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: where they steal milk at night, use it to bake
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: tasty treats and sell them at a pretty steep markup.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: They're charging I think the equivalent of at least five
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: whiskey shots for a biscuit. Yes, which is wild to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: think about because I feel like in current dollars during
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: happy hour, that's still fifty.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Dollars, like two dollars a biscuit. Yeah, and then they
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: charge we'll get to this part. But Chief Factor comes
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: around eventually and they charge him double, so he's paying
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: one hundred dollars a biscuit. The point is they're making
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: quite a bit of money from this endeavor, which they
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: hide in a tree because eighteen twenty.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: It's so funny because he's like, we got to put
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: this in a bank, and they're like, yeah, a bank,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: like a tree.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I honestly the way things are headed right now. I
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was like a tree bank. Not the worst idea, not
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the worst, not the worst, bring it back.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: So one day Chief Factor played by Toby Jones, one
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: of my favorite character actors.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: He's so great great.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: He comes by and he buys a biscuit and we're
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: all wondering if he's going to notice that milk is
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: one of the ingredients. Milk that would have to come
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: from his cow because he has the first and only
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: cow in the region.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: But he doesn't notice it, for I mean, which is
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: fun because he's, you know, the most powerful colonizer in
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the story, and he is not smart. He's a bit
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: of a dunce yes. And it also I think really again,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: like subtly shows like the power of like how nostalgia
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: is something that can result in you not asking questions.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: You should probably ask where. He literally says, this tastes
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: like London, and it's like, we'll think a little harder
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: about why that might be. But he's just so like
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: thrilled to have this taste of his past that he
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't ask questions until like forced.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: That's the power of the milk, the power of the cow.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I just hate it when I'm
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: enjoying a Priustine reverie and people use that as an
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: opportunity to take advantage of me.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I cannot stand it.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: You're most vulnerable, my most prustian people are.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Anyway. Yeah, Chief Factor loves the biscuit and he asks
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Cookie if he can make him a cloth foo tea.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to say this claffo tea.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I google. It's like fruit pizza. I don't know.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: It's like a set custard with fruit in it. Again,
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: I was so lucky to be watching this with my wife,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: who is a food writer. Helpful yeah, and I just
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: turned her. I was like, hey, what's it? What's a
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: claffoo tee?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Please?
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you. I actually wrote this down because I love
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: the line so much. He was talking about like a
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: captain coming by to his house for high tea and
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: he loves claffootees, but he thinks that, like the Frontier
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: is too savage, and he just goes, well, the captain
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: loves a klaffootee and I'd like to humiliate him. You're
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: like just bitches, like anyone's ever said.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I okay, possibly queer icon chief Factor.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I love these queens, Yeah, because I mean.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: The characters keep basically referring to Chief Factor. They're like,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: what kind of woman is he? He likes milk in
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: his tea and he knows about the latest clothing fashion
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: from France.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It's complicated because you're like, ultimately he is the colonizer. Yeah,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: so it's okay to bully him, but like it. But
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: also he's being the bully in a very particular way.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Right, yes, yes, anyway, Chief Factor wants to humiliate a
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: guest of his with a klaffou tee and cookies, Like, sure,
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I'll make that. So he makes it and brings it
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: to Chief Factor's house where he's entertaining this captain as
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: well as a couple native guests. Lily Gladstone is there
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and apparently she is Chief Factor's wife, because her character's name,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: according to IMDb is wait for it, chief Factor's.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Wife Kelly There. I mean, yeah, I have some thoughts
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: that because Lily Gladstone is a Kelly Roger company player.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I guess where she's appeared in a lot of her work.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: And that was like, well, we'll get into That was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: one of the things where it's like there's a lot
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: in this movie that's left unsaid and like left for
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the viewer to sort of clean on their own. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: she is like the character that I wish there had
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: been more explicitly said about because it's like, yeah, she's
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: married a chief factor. What does that mean? What were
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the circumstances? Like, you can guess, but you just don't.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: You don't know, We don't know. Also in this scene,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Chief Factor mentions that his cow gives very little milk
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: and wonders if there's something wrong with her. So they
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: all take a walk to see the cow, which affectionately
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: nuzzles Cookie since he milks her every night, and they've
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: become friends.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: And tells her his little secrets and he's like, I'm sorry,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: he's like literally her therapist.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like I'm sorry about your husband and your
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: child because we learned that originally three cows were supposed
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: to be brought to the territory. It was a cow
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: a bowl slash, her husband and their baby, but only
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: the cow survived the trip. Anyway, the cow nuzzles Cookie
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and everyone notices and they're like, hmm, that was kind
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: of weird. And then that night, Cookie and King Lou
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: head back to steal more milk from Chief Factors cow
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, don't do it when they have all
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: these guests around who could see you, But they do
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: it anyway. Also, King Lou has been talking about opening
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: up a hotel in San Francisco using the money that
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: they've been earning, and their plan is to sell biscuits
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: for a little while longer and then heads south. So
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: this is why they need to make another trip to
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: the cow. But that night, as Cookie is milking the cow,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: they are spotted by and I believe this is Chief Factors,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: like servant the Chief and the captain chase after Cookie
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: and King Lou with guns.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: And also spud from Trainspotting.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Is there, Yes, yes he is.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I still have seen it. I still have seen train
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: spotting is.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: A huge like, Yeah, the Scottish guy is in Trainspotting
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: and he's incredible, and I think both both things.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: The Scottish guy would be in Trainspotting and makes a
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: lot of sense.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, his name Jamie in real life, this actor's name
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: is oh, you in Bremner.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna try it. You don't Wancottish Scottish names.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: They're just like, really really challenging for me. They can't.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: It's okay, I'm irish, I can't.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Anyway, he is there. He's also the one who tells
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the audience about the circumstances of the first cow, so
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: he's a very important character anyway. Cookie and King Lou
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: managed to get away for a while, but they get
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: separated and they're both injured. Cookie ends up in a
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: stranger's house. Apparently someone found him in the woods and
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: brought him home to tend to his injury. Meanwhile, King
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Lou negotiates with a native man to take him down
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: river in his canoe. Eventually, Cookie and King Lou both
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: make it back to their cabin, but it's not safe
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: for them to stay, so they set off again. Although
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Cookie is lightly dying from his head injury, and they're
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: both being hunted by a young man who we've seen
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: before at the fort. This is a man who wanted
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: to buy biscuits, plant.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And pay off with this guy while except it doesn't.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: Quite pay off, well, just the fact that he comes back,
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: like you think the baby's gotta come back.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I always assumed that it was him that does them
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: at the end.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: I think it's safe to assume we don't see that
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: on screen. Basically, this man wanted to buy biscuits, but
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the other men would always cut him in line and
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: he never got a chance to taste the biscuits. And
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: so now he's possibly going to shoot them over this
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: biscuit vendetta. Except it's actually that there's like a bounty
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: on their head and he's like trying to collect on
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: the bounty. I'm guessing, but we don't see this quite payoff,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: because if he does kill them, it doesn't happen on
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: screen anyway. They stop to rest Cookie and King Lou,
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: but they both pass out in the same position that
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: all your show cap finds them in finds the skeletons
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: in at the beginning of the movie, so presumably they
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: die shortly after this. Either via the man who wanted biscuits,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: or they just die from their injuries were not totally
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: sure honestly.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: All things considered, I hope it is from the Biscuit
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Mand because I think I jumped to like assuming they
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: died a slower death. I hope that that's not true.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, See, to me, I felt like I drew
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: a pretty straight line to that being the Biscuit Boy
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: m hm, because there's so much in this movie that's
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: to me about like the various levels of being perceived
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: as womanly of all these men, like Cookies, like immediately
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: off the bat, like he's so soft. King Lou also
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: like clearly doesn't fit in with like this very masculine
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: society that they're they're living in. Uh. The chief factor
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: is like again like seen as like effemineate and this
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: little this little boy is like the Biscuit Boy is.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: To me, he's so framed as like a fruity little
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: guy and everyone, yeah clearly is treating treating him that way.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: So like, how what better way to prove yourself to
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Spud than to Achilles to kill the other fruits? You know?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Oh God, It's almost like masculinity is a prison I
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: wouldn't know anything about that.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Also, very similar themes are explored in the Power of
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: the Dog, just saying.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Caitlin's desperately trying to backtrack their own mists. All women
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: look the same to you.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: No, I don't even know who directed the movie. At first,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: I was just like, these are the same movie because
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: they're about animals question Mark anyway.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Anyway, the Power of the Dog is about a mountain.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: But that's the end of the movie. So let's take
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: another quick break and we'll come back for the discussion.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: And we're back.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's Jane camp be It who directed The Power of
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the Dog.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: A different woman, but we're talking about first Cat.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where do we met, Maddie? Where would you like
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: to start? What jumps out to you about this film?
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: I think what sticks out to me so much is
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: this sort of like the stuff that it's all not
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: to be like it's like jazz. But there's so much
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: about this movie that is about I think masculinely and
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: about colonization that is only really you're seeing white men,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: but there's all these like weird little pockets that the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: camera lingers, or there's a moment that stays there that
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: makes you think about it really hard, Like I think
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: about we were talking about like how Lily Gladstone only
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: really gets this one second. But then there's like this
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: long moment where she and I think who was supposed
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: to be her mother in law or a sister I
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: can't but like another native woman sit on the couch
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: and just start having a conversation about what they're wearing. Yeah,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: and the camera just stays there for like a long time,
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: like longer than I think most writers would leave it there,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: and it seems so intentional to me. And then yeah,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: there's all this stuff about like like what this society
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: of like mostly men, like hyper capitalist expansionist colonialism, like
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: what it's doing to the land and the people there,
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: and there's all this stuff about. Like the line that
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: will never leave my head about this movie is that
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: it's something King Lou says early and he says like.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: History isn't here yet, yes, yeah.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: And Cookie's like, what do you mean it's old? I
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: mean the first time you see the cow, it's like, wow,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: this beautiful cow is coming in, like here comes civilization,
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: here comes milk, and this like finally there's food and
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: all the people are like wow, food finally. But the
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: first thing you see after you see the cow is
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: there's like some native women on the shore, like mortar
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: and pestling some grain right there, like the food ways exist,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: it's all there. Yeah, And I think all this, all
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: these little subtle nods to what's going on, are not
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of movies that would would be like, oh,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: like here's me lip service, like like like a Leave
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: of their own or something where the ball rolls out
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: of bounds and you see the three black women like
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: waving from very far away, Like there's a lot of
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: movies that do that kind of stuff.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Or the the I feel like my go to of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: like in queer representation is Josh Gadd dancing with a
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: man at the end of Beauty and the Beast.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: Oh is that what they did?
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: For three seconds?
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: We did it? Yeah, oh god damn it.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I think so much of this is like
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: it is the point of it, like these these little,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: these little gaps.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really interested to talk about it because it's
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: like I do agree that like where she lingers is
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: very intentional, and I know it's like such a part
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of her process to leave things on said and then
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: there's like the yeah, the tendency to focus on white
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: characters in terms of like who do we know the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: most about, which I do think is true of this
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: I guess with the exception of King Loup, but I don't. Yeah.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I watched this movie twice and and then by the end,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: by the end of the second watch, I was like,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I think that, like, ultimately this movie is about like
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: American capitalism finding it's footing basically, but this this moment
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: where like indigenous food sovereignty is taking a very particular turn,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and what we see her I would also I was
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: looking for more I wasn't able to find very much.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: But I'm really curious what Indigenous American viewers think about
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: this movie because I felt as if, like I don't know,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: like you don't. It's not like Kelly Reichert's style to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: focus on like the peak of violence that comes with colonialism.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: She's focusing on this like day to day normalizing of
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: colonial ideas, and like through the Toby Jones character, I
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: think it's like, yeah, there's a lot going on with
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: him where he's treated like he's very effeminate. He's like,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: you know, people are teasing him for that, but you're
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: also like he is unequivocally the colonizer, the person with
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the most power.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the second his day little Tea is
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: threatened that he sends people to kill them.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: This is all about his like his tea party, Yeah, basically,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: And you can tell, like one of the moments that
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: stuck with me is like the criticism I have because
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: it's like a big scene where the high Tea is
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: a big scene in the movie, and you don't know
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: initially that there's going to be Indigenous people at this part.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: He just is like, this is it's going to be
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: high t We don't know. He's married to Lily Gladstone.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it's safe to assume that that
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: marriage was either forced or one of convenience for the
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: survival of Lily Gladstone's people. It doesn't seem like it's
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: a marriage based on love. Which is interesting that like
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Lily Gladstone has been cast in that part more than once, right,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: because it it isn't it's a different part from Killers
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: of the Flower Moon, But I was reminded of like
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: she's put in a similar position, which also by a
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: white director, right, but that like you see that Toby
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Jones's character clearly thinks he's like being a good guy
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: by welcoming indigenous people into his home and clearly does
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: not care or doesn't understand that he is bending everyone
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in this room to his will, regardless of race. Like
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Cookie is also bending to his will, King Lou is
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: also bending to his will to like maintain what he
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: perceives as reality because he holds the power. And then
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: like through our friend miss Evie, he has the means
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of production. It's also about means of production. They don't
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: own the means of production, so it can never sustain.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Ah, I don't know, yeah, my I think big criticism
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: of the movie is that we are watching white settlers
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: act colonize the land and claim its resources as their own,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: whether it's like the animal pelts that the fur trappers
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: are taking, or the it seems like there's a mine
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: like a silver or a gold mine or something whatever,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: the minerals, the animals, the food, everything, it's being stolen.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: And we see the native characters on screen whose land
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: is being stolen, but I feel like they're mostly treated
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: as kind of set dressing. Yeah, for sure, we don't
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: get any interiority for them.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: At all.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: We barely see them speak. There's that scene where I
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: don't know if it is Lily Gladstone's sister or friend,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and then she seems to be partnered with the Native
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: man who is a guest at Chief Factor's house. We
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: don't know anything about the dynamics, names, name anything, so
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: could have I mean, the movie's not afraid to like
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: take some time with scenes and like take some time
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: to let you in on some information, but it neglects
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: to do that at the expense of not letting the
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: audience know anything about the indigenous characters.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: It's felt like a deliberate choice that I couldn't find
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: any I mean, let me know if others found examples
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: of her speaking to this point, but it doesn't seem.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And also like from what I can sort of glean
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: from her larger body of work that she is not
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: like trying to shy away from indigenous history in Oregon
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and like the history of her own community. But and like,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: while so many of the themes of this movie tie
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: back to Indigenous Oregonians, we don't get to know them.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, why was that choice made? Because it's
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: not like she's avoiding the reality of it, So I don't, like, Yeah,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the people that she sort of decides to focus on, Yeah,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I was like why why? And also because we find
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: out very late in the movie that King Lou has
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: spent time with indigenous communities enough to have a basic
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: grip on the language, right, And you're like, okay, so
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: even with the characters we've chosen to zone in on,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Kinglu has a history in these indigenous communities. Like where,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I think what everyone think.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for me, I think again, this comes back to
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: the framing of it, where it's like, you do start
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: thinking about history and what we know and what we
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: do not know about the past, and we don't know
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: about the interiority of a lot of these people because
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: they were wiped out by the other characters in the movie.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: And to me anyways, like again, like I don't I
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: don't think it is an unfair criticism to talk about
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: this at all, But to me, anyways, it seems like
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: the interiority for the people is there, but like you're not,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: it is happening on the edges. It feels like you've
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: ever seen big trouble in Little China?
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, I don't remember it. Super well.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so like the whole thing is that there's
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: a movie going on to the background that Kurt Russell
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: is not aware of. And at the end, they're all like,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: what the fuck are you doing here, white guy, Like
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: get out, like the other movie already happened without you.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: And I think there is sort of this like why
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: why does she keep showing these people like I don't
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: It didn't strike me so much as as like set
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: decorations did, like I wanted to know more, and then
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: you think to yourself, why don't I know more? And
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: I also think it feels intentional that like King Lou
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: isn't just another white person, he is also an immigrant
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: that is not, you know, not a colonizer in the
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: same way. And yet it shows this like perniciousness of
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: the idea of getting on side with the colonizers, right
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: like if you're if you are considered effeminate, you can
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: get on side by acting macho enough. If you are
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: not white and people are racist to him, yeah, like
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: if you're not, if you're not in the club, you
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: can try to get in the club because look how
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: nice it is to be there. The older native gentleman
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: that's over chief factors is like wearing a suit, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: to me, so much of it is sort of like, yeah,
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: this pernicious drive to join in, Yeah, and how how
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: attractive it can look to people who are who would
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: be on the outside of otherwise.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Right, And like the conclusion that the story comes to,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: which is like, unfortunately, the general result is that if
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: you exist on the margins of society in any way,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: chances are you're gonna get fucked. And because and we
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: find that out at the very beginning, learning that you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: in spite of their ingenuity, in spite of their skill,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: in spite of all of it, they're still killed.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: And they will be skeletons soon, right.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And Maddie's speaking to your point, like it's all the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: more tragic if they're sort of taken out by this
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: other character who is aspiring to see more masculine to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: succeed in the same system that will probably end up
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: getting him.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Anyways, Yeah, they're not gonna You can't. You can't not
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: be cut in the Businese line. If there's no biscuits anymore.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Kids, there's no one you couldn't. I mean, did you
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: get the recipe at gunpoint? Did you think but also
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: but also it doesn't matter because he doesn't own the cow.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Like the cow as the means of production is like
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: fascinating to me. I yeah, I think like it seems
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: like we're all sort of on the same page with Like,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I think there was room in this movie to include
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: at least an indigenous character. I know it's a very
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: like broad like there's not a lot of central focused characters,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: even if she's being sparing in the narrative, there was
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: room for it. And I'm curious if there was any
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: point in writing the script. I know this was also adapted,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: but if there was any point in writing the script
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: where that was on the table, because it's also like
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: you've got Lily Gladstone, Like why is she in the
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: movie for three minutes? Yeah, as far as King lu goes,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's like, uh yeah, the where I sat
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: with it, it's I don't know, it sounds very like
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: corny to put it this way and kind of almost
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: undercuts the movie itself. But like King Lou is sort
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: of buying into the idea of the American dream being
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: accessible and finding out that it isn't. And it seems
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: like I don't know if it's because of Cookies, we
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: don't really know, like if it's Cookie's experiences in Boston,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: if it's because of just like his personality. He seems
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: sort of less inclined to buy into it, but of
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: course it's so appealing, and King Lou really believes in
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: it and has the juice sort of like he has
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the ambition, he has the plan, and it works for
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a while. I feel like, like as often these kind
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: of stories go where it's like it works until you
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: threaten someone too powerful and then you're cast out.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: I think also in terms of like the two central
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: characters being colonizers or immigrants or whatever. I mean, Cookie figure,
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: it's obviously a Jewish guy. This is like I think
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: I believe canonical. He is a like I think at an interview,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Kelly Recard's like, yeah, it's Jewish guy. He's at West.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: So he's also like way outside of like he you know,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: there's no way his family got to Maryland that long ago.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: There weren't a lot of Jews in the early eighteen
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: hundreds in America. We just weren't here yet. And so
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: I think I think that's also just an interesting thing
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: in terms of like, yeah, like that that buy into
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: the American dream that is so appealing to these people.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: King Lou has a line at one point where he says,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: men like us have to make our own way. We
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: have to take what we can when the taking is good.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Jack Tawson vibes, first of all, true.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, basically the speech that Jack gives as he's eating
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: caviar and toasting Champagne on the Titanic.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Lou also gets on a boat in this movie.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: It's true, Okay, so ratituy Titanic. There's a lot. There's
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: a lot going on.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Basically, when the cow is on the faery, she's like,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: I'm king.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Of the world.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Exact.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it just speaks to like, we've already touched
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: on the seeds of American capitalism that have been planted
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: and are very rapidly growing. And you have a ruling
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: class who you know, owns the mine or owns the
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: fur company, or you know whatever, and then everyone else
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: who is either being actively colonized and having their land
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: and resources stolen, or it's settlers who are trying to,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: you know, make it in this landscape, which is very difficult,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: if not impossible, because they have to resort to. And
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not against stealing from the ruling class, but it's
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: what they have to do. And then what's the what
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: there's a story where it's like they steal from the
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: guy and then feed.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Whatever.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's kind of like a tale as
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: old as time where it's like stealing from the rich
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: person and then like feeding this stuff back to them
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: and then.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: They're robin hooding to themselves.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: There right fight club, where it's like we're stealing like whatever,
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: the like liposuction materials out of the garbage and making
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: it into soap to sell back.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: To kind of sweety Todd.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: To sweety Tea. Yeah, does this happen in Fried Green Tomatoes?
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah, well just the one time, but just.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: In any case. So this is this is what they do,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: and it's I mean, I think, a great idea, but
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: ultimately a doomed endeavor because the you know, the rich
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: guy finds out that he's being stolen from and is
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: like kill those motherfuckers and then they die lying next
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: to each other.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: I keep thinking about the point you're raising about the
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: means of production. I keep thinking about because I'm such
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: a visual thinker, which again why I think so much
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: of the movie to me is like it's so visual
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: in terms of what it wants you to know, for
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: such a quiet movie, for such a talking movie, it's
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: so visual. But I keep thinking about the after they
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: steal from the cow. The next time you see the cow,
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: there's like a fence around it that's like so small,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: and like that's what that's the only thing they know
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: how to do. Yeah, right, is make smaller and smaller fences.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. I mean I think a lot of it.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: And the cow, Evie, I'll say it, she's the most
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: interesting character in the movie. And like I think, like
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: as a symbol for a lot of experiences where we
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: don't really know the circumstances under which Cookie or King
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Lou came to the US. We don't know if they
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: were brought there forcibly, we don't know if they brought
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: if they went there voluntarily. We don't know if they
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: went there because they were fleeing something, you know, And
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I think that's intentional. I think like the characters like
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: we're supposed to sort of you know, headcan and what
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: we think is going on. But the same goes for
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Evie the cow, because like I read. There was a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: great Pop Matters piece about this by Caitlin Jurgens that
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: came out around the time that the movie became available
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: for streaming that sort of illustrates how this movie can
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: be perceived as something about food sovereignty and how cows,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: as I often forget, are an invasive species in America
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: to some extent, they are not native to the US,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and their arrival in US. In the US, while it
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: was not the fault of the cows, and I kind
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: of like that, we get the backstory that the cow
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: has also endured quite a bit of loss and trauma
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: in order to be brought here for objectively a silly
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: reason like if you needed milking your tea that bad.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Don't colonize another continent just to stay where you're from,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: but you know the animals.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: So where's the tea from, dude?
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: It's like, come on. But like, the animal also suffers
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: tremendously in order to give a small convenience to a colonizer.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: But what the cow also can represent is like sort
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: of the end of indigenous food sovereignty, which I feel
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: like is this piece argues that even though it is
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: not explicitly stated, and even though we do not get
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: to know the indigenous characters, which again I wish we did,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: but that it seems like this marriage could be seen
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: as indigenous communities trying to deal with colonizers doing stuff
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: like this, because like food sovereignty is defined, I'm gonna
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: get in my bag. The twenty nineteen book Indigenous Food
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Sovereignty in the United States by Devin A. Mehesua and
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hoover defines food sovereignty as indigenous community retaining complete
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: control of their food systems, from production to distribution to sustainability.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: And of course there are many many threats to this,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: but the image of the cow and the milk itself
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: is a threat to food sovereignty. It is bringing in
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: something that is not native to the country. It is
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: an animal that the indigenous community does not have familiarity
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: with and does not have control over, and that result
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: in any number of literal or cultural violence that could
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: lead to stuff like feeling pressured into marrying a colonizer
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: to preserve the well being of your community, and so like,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, there's just there's so much more going
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: on in this movie than you'd think.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's subtle and it's there for the
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: audience's interpretation in a way that feels like to me
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: at least, And maybe this is just like a personal
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: preference thing, but I wish there was a little more
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: commentary on it. They're certainly recognition of it, but I
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: wish there was just a tad more commentary. I think,
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: like kind of the most we get is as far
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: as like explicit dialogue and whatnot. There's a moment where
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Spud from Trainspotting is talking to another man. I think
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: they're at a saloon or something, but one of them says,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: this is no place for cows. If it was God
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: would have put them here, and then I think it's
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Spud who replies, then it's no place for white men either.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wrote that down, I feel I mean,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: is that to me feels like pretty explicit commentary.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I don't know. I wish there was
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: more which we could have gotten again with getting to
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: know the indigenous characters, who I believe are from the
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Chinook nation, but again we don't get that.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: So I do like the friendship between Cookie and King
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Lou though.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: I agree it's beautiful.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: It's a friendship between two men who bond over their
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: struggle to make their way in the world. And they're
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: both pretty calm, gentle men in this world that rewards
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: agro behavior and violence. And we see all these scenes
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: where like the fur trappers are getting into these brawls,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: or there's that man with the baby who comes into
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: the saloon and other men are like taunting him, everyone's
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: inciting violence around them. And then you have these two
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: men who we focus on, and then others in the stories,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: such as the biscuit boy who just wants biscuits.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: And he never gets his biscuits.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: But the two who we get to know are Cookie
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: and King Lou and they kind of bond over being
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: like gentle and not aggressive in a way that I
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: really appreciate.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny because like so much. Yeah again, maybe
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: this is me putting my own little interests into the film,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: but I think there's a lot of gender in here,
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: and so much of like what is perceived as feminine
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: or not fitting in like I mean, hell milk, very
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: feminine coated liquid. Uh. True, I shouldn't I should have
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: said it like that, but I did.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: But like to your point, Yeah.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: But the idea between like like there's another calm guy
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: in town, and it's my favorite guy we've not talked about,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: which is the chrow Man who's played by my dude
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: Renel Versionoir from De Space nine. My guy Odo.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Oh. I always think of him as like that's a
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Robert Oatman guy, but he is a D nine.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's also to me, he's the d Space nine
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: man and also the chef and the little yes, but
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: he's like also a calm guy. He's also like living
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: kind of hermity and like not brawling or doing anything,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: and he only it just stares at them. He's just
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: regarding them with suspicion, which is all he can do
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: because it is this weird like they puts like when
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: you are a softer gentleman, it is very much like
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: crabs into bucket hours, like you are trying to basically
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: not be the low person at all times because you
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: don't want to be faced with like the maximum eyre
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: of all the really macho guys. So I think there's
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: there's so much of that there, I think. So the
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: fact that they have this beautiful friendship I think is
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: so nice and I'm glad it's not romantic like that
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: they are just physically gentle with each other and emotionally
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: gentle with each other without having to be necessarily sexual,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: because it could just be like, you know, like it
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: is possible for men, I think, to experience tenderness, right,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Like you know, we had the male lowly and it's
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: problem solved and we turned all those guys into skeletons.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I really loved that scene between them at the end,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: even though you're like, oh, they're cooked, they're cooked. Where
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: they reunite and they just like embrace each other and
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: they're so happy to see each other and like that
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: there is just this inherent like they see something in
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: each other. It's a deep friendship that you're right, Maddie,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Like it's I you know, would I have been mad
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: if they kissed?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: But I also understand like that there's so few representations
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: of like two protagonists who are men who know how
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: to be friends, who are affectionate with each other, and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that that can be I mean, just like friendship is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: a life saving force in general.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: And that's the quote at the beginning of the movie.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: It's something like a bird is the nest a spider
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: and it's web men friendship as if like we find
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: home and comfort and community in friendship, right.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: And it's like if they haven't, if they hadn't been
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: able to like handle and that feels like a weird
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: bird choice, but like they had been able to handle
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: a friendship like that, I feel like they would have
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: been dead way sooner.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: To your point, Mattie, this is something we've talked about
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: on different episodes. I remember it most clearly from our
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings episode, where there is a tendency
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: to see representations of platonic male friendship on screen and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: ascribe a romantic component to it. And I understand that
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: to some extent, but it also sort of erases the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: idea that men can just be platonic friends with each
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: other and have like platonic tenderness with each other, and
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: we rarely see it on screen. But I do really
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: appreciate when it is represented because it does exist, and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: it can exist, and it doesn't have to be romantic,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: And there are no implications in this movie that it
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: is romantic. It's just that people often will ship characters together,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: I mean in society, I want to say, but yeah,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: I did appreciate the friendship that we see between them.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: I also think that there's like a gendered component to
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: the product that Cookie is making, and that his skill
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: is a skill that women would typically have, especially in
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: this era, and would be expected to have as far
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: as like baking, and he's able to make these delicious
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: baked goods that remind these men of something their mama
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: used to make, which is one of the characters says,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: because they are selling them at this fort that seems
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: to be occupied by mostly there are some women around,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: but they're indigenous women that number one the story doesn't
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: care about, and number two who don't have the recipe
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: for all of these like English biscuits.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: They have, Yeah, they they I think critically, like they
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: have the nostalgia recipes exactly for these settlers.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is what lets them earn any amount
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: of money, which presumably is lost forever in the tree.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: It also speaks of this interesting phenomenon in which cooking
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: and baking is so seen as like feminized labor until
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: you're selling it, in which case becomes very masculine society.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: And it's this very interesting tension that like there is
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: a there are all those beautiful little domestic scenes at
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: Kinglu's house, like when he makes the first biscuit, King
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Lou is again outside doing something manly.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: But he's beating a rug, like beating the rug.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: And he's like gently leaves one of the biscuits on
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: the like the sale for him. Yeah, I love Conky
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: and it is this very like it feels very gender.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: It feels very but then the second they're selling it,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: it's like a cool boy thing to do because you're
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: making money.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's still King Lou who's generally doing the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: selling like he's though, you know, he's kind of calling
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: the shots. I liked it. It's like a very subtle moment.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if it was intended like this,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: but there is like a moment where it seems like
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Cookie allows like feels comfortable enough around King Lou to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: show that he really cares about cooking too, where where
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: we see him with the like settlers who are very
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: dismissive and abusive towards him at the beginning, like he
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: can't say, like I really care about how things take,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like that this is like a passion of his.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: But it's like when we see him actually comfortable around someone,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: and King Lou is like he's like, we got to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: start a business. We got it because that's because he's
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: an ideas guy, right, Like he is a proto capitalist.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: Entrepreneur and job creator.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: And then you have like you have Cookie being like,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, could be sweeter, would be cool if
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: we had honey, would be cool if we had this stuff.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: And it's just like, I just you know, even though
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: they are endeavoring on what we already know is a
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: losing battle, they're both comfortable enough to be passionate around
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: each other, which you know it might not save your life,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: but it certainly feels better. Yeah, I just there their
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: dynamic is so gentle and complimentary, and yeah, you can
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: like feel a real friendship. Going back to UH, there's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: an interview that Alyssa Wilkinson did with Kelly Rhikert around
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: the time this book came out that I know that
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: we it reminds me a little bit, just in the dynamics,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: not the movie itself, in the conversation we had around
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the Vivich in UH many many months ago. Another movie
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that generally I mean, and I think more so than
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: this movie focuses on white settlers and very much keeps
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Indigenous people on the margins of the story. This movie
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: I think does more. Not that that's saying a ton,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to talk about because we got I
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: think something this is shorthand on this podcast at this time,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Robert Eggers being asked like, how did your research indigenous
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: culture for this movie? And he said, I went to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the library once and I and it was iconic that
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: he admitted that, I guess. But anyways, go back to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: our episode about that. But Kelly Redcard was also asked
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: how she did research specifically for the indigenous language used
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: in the film. So this movie was my page on
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Power of the Dog up. So this movie was It's
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: all happening again. So this movie was co written with
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Kelley red and frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond, who is a
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: white guy from Oregon who has collaborated with her many times.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: And it was also based on a story that Jonathan
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Raymond wrote. Jonathan Raymond, to his credit, I guess, has
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: written extensively about Oregon and historically also does not shy
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: away from indigenous history within Oregon. But as we've talked about,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: the movie doesn't explicitly address indigenous characters very much. So
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I was curious what their research process was, and I
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: have an answer. Kelly Record is asked, there are people
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: from First Nations throughout this film, and the way the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: settlers treat them, which often comes across as ridiculous, is
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: a big part of the story. How did you go
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: about researching language and culture? Kelly replies, there's a confederation
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: of tribes down near Eugene, Oregon. It's called Grand Rendez.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: They had just opened this very beautiful museum that was
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: in an old high school. Jonathan Raymond went down there
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: to do research. They were a little wary about getting
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: involved with us, as they should be. Eventually, out of
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: our persistence and Jonathan's persistence, they opened up the library
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: to us and then ended up hooking us up with
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: a woman who made the cedar capes and hats worn
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: in the movie, which was cool because then we then
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: donated them back to the museum. Then they helped us
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: find someone who spoke the language. It's a jargon, a
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: mix of languages. The Chinook Wuaha Oriyan who plays Klu
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: had to learn that, as did James Jones, the Native
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: American actor who takes them up the river. That was
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: pretty tricky and I had to edit that language, which
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: is not really phonetic. Hopefully we didn't slaughter it too much.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Sorry the long que She's then asked, is that language
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: still spoken commonly or is it being preserved? She responds,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: there's not that many people left that still speak it,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: but those who do are trying to preserve it. We
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: had some help with learning it. It's a difficult language.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Orian really picked it up. An interesting thing happened one night.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I realized that the whole sound crew, because they were
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: listening to that language constantly, had come to understand the language.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's a bit like Spanguish, where it's a
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: combination of languages. But the Grand Ronde ended up being
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: incredibly generous to us, and that's also their canoe in
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the film. So on one hand, we have two white
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: writers composing this story that you know, indigenous characters are
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: important too, but also generally remain on the sidelines of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, I do really appreciate when white
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: filmmakers bother to do their research and actually build connections
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and trust within indigenous communities, because so often you get
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the eggers treatment of going to the public library one time,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: and you know, I think it's still very very open
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: to criticism, but I was at least heartened to learn
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: that Kelly Riikert and her collaborator did genuinely seem to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: do their due diligence, and it also kind of like
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: doubles down on Well, then, why didn't they do more?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Why didn't they build a character to express this culture
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: through more?
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know, especially because this was an adaptation, like
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: you said, novel by Jonathan Raymond entitled The Half Life,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: which has a story that has a much larger scope
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: than what we see in the movie, where there's like
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: two timelines oh interest, the story is set in two
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: different continents, Like it's basically the movie kind of zooms
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: in and focuses on just a small span of time
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: that happens in the story. And I'm not even sure
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: the cow is in the book the titular how did?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: That's what I understood when I was reading about this,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: But I might I might have misunderstood. I'm not totally sure,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: But either way, I do know that the scope of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: the story in the movie is much smaller than the novel.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: So the point is many changes were made from the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: original source material, so a change that could have also
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: been made is more focused on the indigenous characters. But
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: I was going to point out that there's an even
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: worse version of this like approach to research that we
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: talked about recently, which is the Stephanie Meyer or Myers
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: whatever approach when we recovered Twilight, because she did basically
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: no research.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: No, she was strictly on Mormon vibes, drove.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: By the library and looked at Yeah.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it is. It is encouraging that these filmmakers
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: did more research than you might expect.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: But again, I just especially that they had like done
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: more with it too, you know.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. Again, I don't think I disagree with
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: that read of it, but to me, it feels like
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: they did I think an interesting job of leaving this
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: big wide gulf between what you know about it and
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: how much detail is present, which I think is maybe
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: on purpose, And you could not like that as a
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: storytelling maneuver. And and that's a that's a very fair
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: criticism in terms of like what stories we are allowed
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: to tell and what we see and stuff like that.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: So wanting I think wanting more of it is reasonable
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: and uh fair, But I think it is an intentional
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: thing to lead this sort of like lacuna of what's
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: in the story and yeah, because you know, in terms
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: of like the scale or the yeah, like on the
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: scale of research from instead of like going to library once,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: there's going to museum twice, and that's what they do.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: It's true. It's true. It's true because.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: The Brendan caps back, so two times, right?
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: Uh? Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: about the movie?
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: That's all I had.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: No, we talked about oto.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: We did. We did.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: It's really important to me.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: So does the movie pass the Bechdel test?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think so, no, because even if because I
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: always I mean, this is a whole other sort of
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: large conversation about the use of subtitles where you know,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: I don't speak this variant on Chinookuawa. I think most
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: people don't because it is a language that is being
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: actively preserved. The only time we really see women talk
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: to each other is in this exchange. We referenced a
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: few different times of Lily Gladstone's character, who doesn't have
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: a name other than wife, talking to another Indigenous woman
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: who she knows, but we don't know what the relationship is.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Much less than name, and we also don't know what
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: they're talking about, so no is my I vote.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: No, right, And on top of that, even if we
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: did know what they were saying, they're just like hey,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: but they don't say that much to each other, and
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: it's mostly just it seems like Lily Gladsmon's character is
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: gesturing towards like the bead work on the other woman's clothing,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: maybe complementing it, We're not sure, but either way, I
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: feel like you could remove this interaction from the movie
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: and the narrative would not change at all. So it's
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: not a narratively significant exchange.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: But I will say, for if nothing else, it is
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: memorable because sure, going back to your point earlier, Maddie,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: that it does feel worth mentioning that, even though it
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't really it fit into like how we generally analyze
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: movies on this show, that it does feel like Kelly
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Recer does choose moments to linker on characters who we
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: often see on the fringes of movies. And again, it's
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: not perfect or even necessarily good representation, but it is
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: it is I think, noticeably different than how we see
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: indigenous characters in colonial narrative treated where it's like their
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: humanity isn't disregarded in the same way even through I
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: think like simple interactions like two friends or relatives we
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: don't know, and that's an issue, but like two people
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: having a moment of human connection in a way that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I think most often we see indigenous characters treated as stereotypes,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: as stock characters, as like not as humans.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I was gonna present like a fallacious, fun
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: little argument the cookie is so feminine coded that him
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: talking to the beautiful cow past the test. But then
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: I realize they mostly talk about her husband.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Oh that's true.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: Well, so never mind.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: Well here's some some food for thought, some milk for thought.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: Perhaps a fry cake for thought.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: Does it pass the Bechdel test? When a woman finds
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: the skeletons of two.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: Dead men, is the dog a woman?
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: The dog might be a female dog.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Does it count? Does it pass the Bechdel test? When
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I watched the movie at home and say first cow
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: when I see the cow, I think that's the closest
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I could get. Is women's anyone? If a marginalized gender
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: screaming first cow and then the cow saying lou, that's
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: that's text. That's text. I agree, it's interesting. I mean,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: in this we've we've encountered this before. A movie with
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: a titular women character doesn't pass the Bechdel test and
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: you hate to see it, and you hate to see it.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: It's the women all over again?
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: Does the women not? I guess it's you know what
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: it's all about men. It's the subtitle of the or
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: the tagline right now.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, that was the tagline.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: For the original from the thirsday.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: And they weren't joke. I still really want to cover
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: that on the show. Maybe that'll be a birthday because
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a brain breaker, and I will also
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: say it's an enjoyable movie to watch.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: That movie rips and it real quick. But I have
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: a fun fact about it, which is that she makes
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: one joke about Adolf learning it as one of the women.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: And I looked it up and it came out three
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: days before Germany invaded Poland.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, my god. And there's some and and
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: and talk about food for thought. But yeah, no, it's
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: it doesn't text. It doesn't pass the Bectyl test. But again,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: the Vitel test is not the be all adult of
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: media metrics. It's just what we happen to name Marshall after.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the media metric that that is
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: the be all and.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: All the nipple scale, where we rate the movie zero
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: feminist lens. And I just don't really know about this,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: because there are some interesting things in the movie is
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: addressing and commenting on, such as early colonial American capitalism
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: and perceptions of gender and the kind of spectrum of
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: mass sculinity. And I do appreciate that we are following
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: characters who are not displaying the typical toxic masculinity of
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: the time, which was beating the shit out of each
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: other and killing each other.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: What about making biscuits and pulling a scam?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: Make that's feminism, yeah, if you ask me. But the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: movies disinterest in giving any interiority to the indigenous characters
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: who are visibly present on screen but just not given
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: any of the focus that the settler characters are is disappointing.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: I think I'll give it two and a half nipples.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure why. I don't really know how to
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: rate this movie, but I do know that one nipple
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: goes to one utter perhaps say, how yeah goes to
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: ev the Cow. Okay, one nipple I'll give to Kelly Reikhart.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: I do want to explore more of her filmography.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: We should cover certain women. I feel like this Certain
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Women was unlike First Cow, arguably certain Women was made
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: for our show.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Maybe we'll do a month on the Matreon that's
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: the women and search women.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Let's yeah, it's like the women, let's get versus what
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: about certain.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe twentieth century women? I don't know anyway, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: uh so Kelly gets one of my nipples and then
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: my half nipple goes to the four to three aspect ratio,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: which was kind of shocking to me.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I hate Yeah, I'm having trouble with this. I
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: guess I'll also go two and a half. This movie
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: is is. It's a tricky one because I think that
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: my main criticism, even though like I don't know, the
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: more we do the show, and I guess also just
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: kind of the older I get, the more I appreciate
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: movies like this, movies that have restraint, movies that are
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: not stating the themes right, like movies that force I
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: think rightfully. So the viewer to challenge themselves or not
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: as the case maybe, But I still think that there's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: a thing of like too much restraint, And I really
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: wish that there had been an Indigenous character that we
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: know something about, Like I don't know. I just don't
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: think that's like too much to ask. I feel I
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: feel like it was overly restraint to do all that
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: research too. And I also think it is a generally
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: good thing for white filmmakers to do, to both do
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: their homework and contribute in whatever small way in preserving
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: language in mainstream cinema, right, Like, I think that that
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: is a powerful thing. Now we have Chiniguala in a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: current movie that got COVID, so not hugely wide distribution,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: but a movie that is widely available. I think that
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: that is a generally good thing. But it felt like
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: a missed opportunity to me that like, if it was
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: done out of restraint, felt overly so to not give
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: us more insight, because we see a lot of the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: factors that are affecting Indigenous people without getting to know
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: a single person, And that felt like a missed opportunity
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: for me. But like we've talked about, I think that
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: the friendship in all of the and also just the
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: general ideas that King Lou and Cookie represent of these
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: two outsider immigrants trying to make their way in a
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: world where it is colonial capitalism that is hostile to them.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: Which I appreciate that there's like no ifans or butts
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: of like what ends up getting them. It is. It
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: is that and all the ideas that come with that,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: including Maddie, like you were getting into this idea of
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: hyper masculinity, and like the person who killed them is
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: like that's likely a huge factor in why they did it. Also,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: the biscuits looked good. I'm not a huge like food
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: cinema person like I I bravely when I watch a
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Studio Gibili movie, I'm like, cut to the chase. It's like,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: I don't I can't eat this. I can't eat this.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: It's two d I can't which But but I I
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: was hungry watching this movie, and that's not nothing. So
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give this two and a half nipples,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to give them all to to my
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: pal Ev because she really needs as many, you know,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: utters as she can. She needs six. We haven't gotten
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: her there. Oh yeah, it's six, right? I actually don't
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: think I think I think it's four.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: On Jersey Cows, I think it's four.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: Speaking as the nipples slash utter expert, I was.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: Just googling Jersey Cow and I was looking at them,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: and I think it's four.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: Four.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, then she's actually she's good.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: I also was thinking about, Maddie, how about you? Oh,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: how many nipples do I give? I think, you know,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: I think I think the critique is very valid. But
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: on the balance, I love this movie so much and
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: I kind of think it's a masterpiece. I'll give it.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: I'll give it a solid four for for one of
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: each of EV's beautiful nipples.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Nice, lovely.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: Where can people find you online?
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: Where can we get your book? Are you touringing? Oh?
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this I believe this is coming out after
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: my book tour is over. But but you can find
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: me easily. Maddie. Lobchansky dot com has all the information
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: for all of my books and where I will be.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: And you can get the book Simplicity, which should be
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: out now. I'm really proud of it. You buy it
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: and read it. It's really good I think, and you
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: can listen. I have a podcast called No Gods, No
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: Mayors where I talk about mayors with my two friends.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: You can listen to that and No godsnowmares dot com.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: You can find us where we are going to be
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: on tour at the end of the summer across the Midwest.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: We're talking in Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Indianapolis. You can
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: check out all those dates and grab tickets in our
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: link tree, and you can join our Matreon Patreon Experience
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: where for five dollars a month you get two bonus
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: episodes on a theme of either hours or you're choosing,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: depending on how we're feeling.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: That month, including an episode on Ratatui.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Yes we did a rat themed month.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: Really get Rodent, Tember, redn't.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: Timber, which I believe we observed in April, but don't
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: worry about it. It was just urgent. It was really urgent.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: So go over there for my birthday picks this month
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: pretty thrilling.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: And with that, shall we go milk the first cow
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: that we see.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: It's like getting lemons off a tree on the street.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: You're like, might as well, why not dance there?
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: As long as there's not a little fencer rapped around
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: the cow. I think it's fine to do.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, all right, bye bye.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo and merch
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: link tree slash Bechdel Cast