Slums of Beverly Hills with Broey Deschanel

0:00 On the Bechdelcast.

0:02 The questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism, the patriarchy, zeph and best start changing it with the Bechdel.

0:14 Cast, Get a Good get Away, Get a good to the This is the words, right, I'm trying to speak your I'm trying to speak the secret language I know, but I can't speak it.

0:28 It was reminding me of I did you ever watch Zoom on PBS? No, because it's one of the shows you could have watched, So I was curious. Zoom was like this kid's show that actually friend of the show Taylor Garren was on when I was a child. Sure where they would speak they would speak pig Latin. Maybe no, wait, because I can do that, And also like that sounds weird.

0:55 I couldn't understand what they were saying. I really appreciated in their secret language that they're subtitles. There were subtitles. I thought that was like so charming. What is our what is what is our secret langue? I feel like our secret language is like trying to get out of a social situation as a group, but you're usually just like we should go.

1:16 I'm leaving now bye.

1:17 Yeah, you're really good at leaving your room. I'll all be there three hours longer than necessary.

1:23 Thank you so much. I was gonna say our secret language is maybe a dialect of minionies, but.

1:29 Oh my god, yes that is below below below. Oh uh, well, banana is an English word. I guess there's there's so there's so many options for us. How do you feel about I know we have a lot to talk about today, but are you do you want to go see Minions and monsters at midnight? I know that everyone I just wanted to. I was going to text you about this off pod, but everyone did seem upset with me when I brought them to just we all fell asleep. A despicable for at midnight. But I think it's worth a shot.

2:02 It was a midnight screening. Yeah, I'm not gonna say I'm too old for that, but I'm definitely not young enough for it.

2:11 Okay, so you're bowing out, you're bowing out.

2:14 I won't say that. Okay, I'm just gonna be a little wishy washy about committing. At the moment, I'm building my day around it.

2:22 I'm planning the next day so that I can go to bed and sleep till like elevens I can I can really like drink a Celsius and see minions and monsters. Sure, but unfortunately all the minions are men, and that didn't pass the Bechdel test, which brings us to Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.

2:41 My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which is what now, Jamie.

2:52 Well. The Bechdel test is a media metric created by friend of this show Carteonus, Alison Bechdel, originally a one off joke in her comic dex to Watch out For in the eighties to draw attention to the fact that there was never a queer romance between women in movies. It has since been adapted into a more generalized media metric.

3:13 The version we use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for a meaningful exchange of dialogue, and today's movie really kind of puts this to the test. In a really interesting way. But there's also just so much to talk about, because yeah, this is another I think the trend of this year, our tenth year. I don't know what anniversary that is.

3:42 Oh, like is it like gold or there's like also shitty wooden.

3:47 Yeah, if you don't last very I think I've only ever made it to like the paper, the paper, and like the bad ones. Anyways, for our tenure, we've been covering a lot of movies that have been on our requestless for most of those ten years, that for whatever reason, we just haven't covered. And today is one of those movies.

4:06 It is Slums of Beverly Hills, which was released in nineteen ninety eight, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. And we have an incredible returning guest, one of the best.

4:18 I would say, we sure do. She is a YouTuber and video essayist host of Rehash podcast, and you remember her from our episode on Forrest Gump. It's Maya aka Broie da Channel.

4:33 Welcome back. Thank you for having me. I didn't I never thought I'd make it back a second time. Here I am again. Oh my god, I'm so pleased to be here with the both of you.

4:41 You're welcome to come back anytime you want.

4:43 The honor is all ours, truly. Yes, two wildly different nineties movies we've covered.

4:50 You could not be more different, And I can't stop. I couldn't stop thinking about in the run up to those how hilarious it was that this is the movie we we're covering on the techdelcast. It is. It is one of the most complicated movies I've ever seen, so it'll be fun to dissect.

5:05 Yeah. Absolutely, tell us your history, your relationship with this movie.

5:11 Yeah. So I watched this movie for the first time during the pandemic my roommate and my podcast co host, actually Hannah suggested it and we had this like nightly ritual of knitting and eating a treat and watching a movie like almost every night that or six episodes of Love Island. Of course, this night was this movie, and I kind of fell in love with it, and I think on the second watch, I fell a little bit less in love with it, but I still like it a lot. I think I just have a lot of nostalgia for like seventies movies, but I also feel like it also occupies this place of like nineties indie fascination with like pathetic families, like the downwardly mobile imaginary that I find so fun, kind of like Todd Salon's style filmmaking.

5:57 I think it has this kind of like nineties like indie absurdity and like Matt or a Fact tone that I also really like. And every day of my damn life, I'm trying to look like Marrissa Tome in this movie. And you know, God, oh, one day maybe we will. She's hilarious. Yeah, I think I think generally was just struck by how like morally difficult it is of a movie, and like that I couldn't really wrap my head around how I felt about what the characters get up to.

6:20 But yeah, yeah, it was on my favorite movies list for a while and then I kind of like swapped it out over time. But yeah, I'm a big fan of this movie even still nice.

6:31 Yeah, there's lots to unpack, truly. Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with it?

6:38 I had not seen it before. I'd seen another Tomorrow Jenkins movie. I'd seen Savages before, which I believe was her next movie in two thousand and seven. Because I really enjoyed listening to and reading Tomorrow Jenkins interviews and getting ready for this. I think she has a lot of really necessary stuff to say about how difficult it is for women to be otur's. But anyways, i'd seen Savages.

7:06 I don't remember why. I think it was on IFC or something when I was in high school and really enjoyed it. But this has been on my list to watch forever. And I mean casting wise, it's like made for me. The cast in this movie. David chrome Holts, isn't it for crying out loud?

7:25 I mean Bernard the Elf himself.

7:27 One of my most formative crushes. And Kevin Corgan, which indicates the kind of choker that I have, Kevin every I saw a letterbox review for this movie that said every man in this movie deserves at least a fork to the leg, and that is definitely true. Yeah, I really enjoyed this movie. I found it challenging. It's interesting.

7:51 I think, probably because we're in this like ten year space that I think I would have reacted to this movie very differently to it's the beginning of the backdal cast versus now.

8:03 I had the same thought.

8:04 Yeah, I think that there's a period in my life where I would have rejected a lot of what this movie is discussing, however messily, but I think that there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. I like it a lot. There are moments where I think, honestly, the biggest thing that bumped me in this movie that wasn't like super specific in a way we'll talk about is the score in this movie is so funny to me where there's something that I just want to have a word with the composer because there would be a like a crime that would be presented as like or like what is on paper a crime would be presented on screen with I thought like a lot of kind of nuance and lack of like how was I supposed to feel about this? And then like accordion music will start

8:55 to play, and I found it so out oft with what I thought the director was doing. The music was so silly to me. The tuba music following the assault of a minor was really something else, especially when Kevin Corgan was like I assaulted a minor just now, and I'm aware of that, and then tuba music starts playing immediately.

9:18 It's wild.

9:18 It's a generic clusterfug for sure, Like there's like it's it's something's happening on screen, and then the movie's kind of like atmospherically throwing something else at you, and you're.

9:28 Like, it's so yeah, there were so many scenes I had to be like, I have to take that back. But like you're saying, Maya, I think it's like it's a look into both the seventies and the nineties and the sensibilities in both of those decades in a very specific way that I think is going to be interesting to talk about. Caitlin, what's your history?

9:48 I had never seen this movie either. I've known about it for a long time, and I was familiar with what the poster looked like. But I was mistaking Natasha Leone for Brittany Murphy. So I spent my whole she does kind of look like her on the poster. Yeah, not in the movie, but on the poster.

10:10 She looks like Natasha Leone.

10:11 Otherwise Yeah, right, she said her most Natasha Leoni for sure?

10:17 Yeah, Oh is it Leoni?

10:18 Or I don't? Oh no, no, I meant like Leon and then dash, why Leoni?

10:23 I see, I see, I see the flavor, the flavor of Leoni. So I spent many years thinking that a different actor was the star of this movie, and then I was like, oh, it's Natasha Leone and I was excited to watch it. And I similarly found it challenging. Still don't know quite what to make of it. I'm gonna rely heavily on our conversation to process it, but yeah, I can't wait to dive into it.

10:55 I will say this movie keeps you on your toes until the very last second, and I think a lot of that is thematic. But also it's a jump scare. Rita moreno appearance that no one could have seen come that I certainly didn't see coming.

11:12 Wait, who is it? I missed it.

11:14 Rida Morano plays the aunt at the end.

11:17 Oh my god, yeah, the end, Yeah, Rida Morano. She's like the wife of Carl Ryan. Gosh, yeah in the airport lounge.

11:25 Oh my goodness. Yeah, did not catch that?

11:27 Oh my god, were you fright? How did you feel when you saw Rita Morena? Like, what was the feeling that overcame you, Jimmy.

11:33 Oh, ease, comfort, safety.

11:36 It was like a jump, a jump soothe.

11:38 Yes, a jump. It wasn't a scare, it was a sooth yes.

11:43 Yeah. Also, Mino Souvari. Mina Souvari is also in.

11:46 This as a tiny baby Jessica Walter.

11:49 Oh my god, what a cast. And Jessica Walter does the Lucille blue scream and everything.

11:55 Yeah, that's actually how she got her role in Arrest of Development. I'm just making that.

12:01 Up, Yeah, I know. But because when she sees the blood though, that's a lucile scream.

12:07 Yeah, she goes the way that she screams right before she sees Jeane Parmesan. Yeah, when she's like exactly exactly.

12:16 I love the way that the kids are kind of alsome. Just don't think that she's good enough for the dad because she's kind of old. Like when she's talking about metopause and stuff, and I'm like, this dad is a scrub.

12:24 I don't know, I know, it's.

12:26 I think she might be too good for him.

12:27 Yeah, there's so much going on. Yeah, and then you like check the I had to do a quick like birth date check, and you're like, no, Alan Arkin is indeed half a decade older than Jessica Walter's. Let's focus up, let's be serious, let's be real.

12:44 Yeah, I do like when she starts pulling the pads, I'm sorry, we're about to discusses. But when she starts pulling the pads and they're like archaic, ancient pads.

12:53 This movie did something that I kind of forget to do sometimes, which is empathized with my mother, where I think my mom would have been around this age at this time, and you're like, you know she was really in the trenches.

13:08 Oh yeah, Well, the.

13:09 Way I understood it is that the reason she has this very archaic menstrual pad with the belt is because that's what Jessica Walter's character would have used she when she was menstruating. I feel like by the mid to late seventies when this movie takes place, pads had like adhesive bottoms that like stick to your underwear the way they do now. But I think so, but like those are just the pads that Jessica Walter had left over.

13:37 Yeah, it was like a primitive pad. Yeah, yeah, from her like from the ancient times of like nineteen fifty.

13:45 Yes, yeah, yeah.

13:48 Empathize with those older ladies they're going through it. Every time I see one kind of acting of a public I don't know if this is misogynistic, but I'm like, she might be overheating, like let her cooks like she's probably so misalis it's coming from a place.

14:02 Of empty I was like, there's empathy in there.

14:06 Yes, it's within.

14:07 Yes, Yes, Well, why don't we take a quick break and we'll come back for the recap and we're back. Before we dive into the recap, I will provide a content warning. This movie is mostly a comedy and it's tonally light generally, but there are moments of sexual assault and incest.

14:42 Yeah, the tube of music doesn't always know where it's dropping.

14:45 No, it doesn't. Okay, So it is nineteen seventy six. We meet Vivian Abramowitz played by Natasha Leone. She is about to be a freshman in high school. Her dad, who is a single father, Murrie played by Alan Arkin, is taking her shopping for her first ever bra and the experience is very uncomfortable and humiliating for Vivian. And this will be a motif and theme throughout.

15:19 I do like that the Vivie isn't shy about what it's about, because it starts with them talking about her breasts literally behind her back, as if she isn't there, and that is kind of most of the movie as well.

15:34 Yes, and we are about to see a different pair of breasts, because what happens next is we cut to a woman running barefoot along the road at night. We will eventually learn that this is Rita played by Marisa Tome, and we'll find out that she is Marie's niece and Vivian's cousin, but we don't know that quite yet. Anyway, she is trying to hitch a ride to Beverly Hills, and she flashes her breasts to a truck driver to get him to stop and give her a ride. So again the motif is present early on.

16:15 I'm assuming that there are a number of I mean, I know, for Natasha Leo and their body doubles for reasons that we'll discuss, which is that she's wearing prosthetic boobs the whole time. I don't know how I feel about the word breasts. We can talk about it.

16:30 It has always made me feel weird.

16:33 They use them exclusively in the movie, too, Like every time I'm going to say something so much grosser, actually I go to say memory gland every time, like your chest, the chest is discussed, breast is the word it's used, and I actually kept putting it in my notes too, but that's a good flag, right to try and swap that out.

16:54 Or it's like an absence where it's like, oh, she's stacked, and it's like just implied is stacked. I'm sure that this is period accurate, but it was like breasts, I've just always associated more with illness than with boobs, and breasts feel different to me and I and someone can write a doctoral thesis about why that is.

17:16 But and tits feel different than both of those things to me.

17:20 Well, it depends on who's saying it though, right, Yeah.

17:22 Context is important and who's around.

17:25 It's so context dependent. But yeah, breasts, I feel like an old creepy man when I say breasts. I don't like it. But also boobs feels.

17:34 Like kind of juvenile boy, Yeah, kind of like boobs. You know what was well, okay, because this is kind of the theme of the movie. What word were you brought up with? Because I think I was just brought up with boobs.

17:50 My mom said breasts constantly.

17:54 She was always talking about breasts, my god.

17:57 But I was like, I cannot say that word. To this day, I still say boobs or tits or titties. Titties is fun, but boobs is my default. I will talk about my boobs as my boobs.

18:10 I think my mom said boobies, and I don't like that either, really really don't like it.

18:15 That really sounds like a twelve year old boy.

18:18 Yeah, and it was mortifying.

18:19 As a child, like it really is, like I mean. And then I was also I think that, well, this is also relevant, and so I'm just gonna survey the class and you don't need to answer. I did not grow up with the word vagina. I grew up with the term peep area, which was which which I'm like, really like makes my body contract to think of how long I was like your peep area, of course, like, which kind of just felt like something that my mom kind of made up.

18:55 I've never heard that before.

18:57 Yeah, I've never I And imagine my surprise when I learned that this is not a term that.

19:03 Is used peat area. My mom was referred to it as a pummy and I not send shivers on my spine, but in my head I called it a vagina because I thought your butt and your vagina were the same thing.

19:19 And were you wrong? You know you're wrong. Yeah, Their neighbors, their neighbors, their.

19:24 Friends, their friends.

19:26 I don't remember exactly what I called I think I called it my crotch a lot.

19:32 That's very vague. Yeah, sex education is so important. Listeners weigh in in the comments.

19:43 Yes please anyway. So the point is breasts, boobs, tits, whatever you want to call them. They feature heavily in the.

19:55 Movie, and they heavily feature mm hmm.

19:59 Okay, So we cut back to Vivian. Her dad wakes her up in the middle of the night and tells her they're moving like right now, and to gather her things so that they can high tail it out of this apartment. It's clear that Murray is trying to skip out on paying rent. They live in Beverly Hills, but they are not rich, unlike many people who live in that neighborhood, or like the associations with Beverly Hills and wealth.

20:30 They are lower income, working class. Murray is a struggling car salesman, but he wants to keep his kids. Vivian, her younger brother Ricky, and her older brother Ben played by David Crumholtz keep them in Beverly Hills because of the good schools. Now. Before they arrive at their new apartment, they go out to Eat Shout out Sizzler. Strong Sizzler representation in the film, which I wonder if this was before because I associate Sizzler with like a buffet style restaurant.

21:07 This made me want to because because we go to the Olive Garden together and like we should have a Sizzler night.

21:14 So what is Sizzler as someone who is Is this like a West coast it changed?

21:18 I think it's a West coast I think so. I never saw it on the East coast. Yeah, me either. It is a restaurant where you go in from from my recollection because I've been there a few times. Parentheses brag. You can opt to like order a steak or a slab of meat or something like that, and then with that you get the buffet so it's like a salad bar and soup and all that kind of stuff, or you can just do the buffet style without the slab of meat.

21:47 I just did a quick fact check and I think that that was what it was like in the seventies as well, and I think that like with that context, I feel like the comp for it today would be kind of an Olive Garden where where it's I feel like it's a signifier for the lower middle class right where it's like it's not you know, gas station food, it's not drive through food. But it also kind of is, right, like it's an aspirational venue to be consuming what is ultimately kind of cheap food.

22:19 When I was growing up in a working class family, to eat it alive garden was to have a fancy, exact dinner.

22:29 I mean, but that's how they view Sizzler. That's what I mean. It's like for like the lower middle class. I think that that like signifier kind of shifts, but yeah, like I associate it with like in New England, it was like there's this place called like the ninety nine or like Old Country Buffet, and yeah, places that were like it's a sit down meal, it's nice. You know.

22:51 In Toronto we have a place called Mandarin. It's also like it's like a like a buffet, a Chinese restaurant, a chain and similar. It's it's kind of like an outing for the downwardly mobile. Like you wear your nice clothes, you go there and you're like we're at Mandarin tonight, like but it's not like outrageously expensive.

23:06 It's like accessible, right, I think of it as because I think we're all from like somewhat similar like socioeconomic backgrounds of like it's like a report card restaurant or a like yeah, your cousin just got baptized kind of restaurant.

23:22 Totally.

23:23 Yeah. So they go to Sizzler, where Vivian is humiliated once again because her dad is being racist. Her brother Ben is making gross remarks about her appearance and about women's bodies in general, and so is her dad, and so is her dad. He's, you know, he disapproves of what she's wearing. She's wearing this halter top. He tells her to put on the bra he just bought her because she's like spilling out of her top and says all these horrible things about her body. Then Murray calls his rich brother Micky to ask for a loan, and Mickey is like, I can't. My daughter, Rita escaped from a rehab center. And so then we connect the dots that this is the Mursa Tome character we saw earlier.

24:15 And Mickey mentions that he would pay someone if they knew what to do with Rita, and Murray is like, what's that you say? You would pay someone? So Murray hatches a plan. He picks Rita up from jail and now she's going to be staying with Murray and his kids. But they need to show Murray's brother Micky that Rita has a plan for her future so that Mickey will continue to support her financially and basically support the entire family.

24:52 Yeah, that's definitely. He's never in it just to be kind to his niece.

24:56 No, certain, he's a scammer of the nth degree to the Instagram, yes for sure.

25:03 And so Rita and Murray decide that she will go to school to be like a nurse slash medical assistant. Meanwhile, the family has moved into their new apartment in Beverly Hills. There, Vivian meets the next door neighbor, this guy Elliott, played by Kevin Corrigan.

25:25 I love Kevin Corrigan so much. He's such a nasty piece of shit in this movie that which we'll talk about, But I just have always smiling my head off when I see Kevin Corrigan.

25:36 His characters are usually like despicable but also likable in ways I can't entirely explain. I also love his character in the show Community. I don't know if anyone remembers his.

25:51 I remember watching reruns of Grounded for life and being and because he's the scumbag uncle in that show and being like something happening.

26:01 He's so some guy that a girl who's a tween would be so into.

26:07 Yes, and he takes advantage of that from every way you could possibly imagine. But I just I love Kevin Corgan. Okay, yeah, that was not a feminist observation. We can continue.

26:20 It's quite all right. We contain multitudes. Yeah, so anyway, this is Elliott. He is a weed dealer. He's I guess, like kind of an anarchist type. He loves Charles Mayers. He's a poser though. He's such a poser. So they're hanging out. Vivian is still trying to figure out what it is to have breasts, and she asks him if he wants to touch hers, and he really really does, so he touches them. They have a moment in the laundry room, and then she's like, Okay, get away, this is a building thing. We're containing this to the building kind of thing.

27:06 I have a question, Jin, because I was not I was seeing different answers and very vague answers. Maybe intentionally. So we know that Vivian is about to start high school. I've seen her characterize as either fourteen or fifteen. We know that she is firmly a minor, it's stated in the movie. Do we know how old Kevin Corrigan is supposed to be? I know that he's an adult, but like.

27:31 I think it's twenty But I could be wrong because like the actor is like thirty.

27:39 But I didn't know how old he was supposed to be.

27:42 Okay, Wikipedia is telling me twenty something.

27:45 Yeah, that was what I was seeing, and so you're like, Okay, it doesn't make a difference in terms of the power dynamic, but I was having a difficult time tracking how old everyone was supposed to be throughout.

27:58 Yeah, they never make it explicitly clear in the movie.

28:02 Except for Vivian, right, Vivian. I feel like it is the only character in the movie that we definitively know how old she is.

28:08 Which, oh oh, and Murray is sixty five.

28:11 And that Rita is twenty nine. We only know how old women are because that's the only age metric that is actually relevant in this world.

28:19 Yeah, well, yeah, we know, I mean Murray A lot is made of Murray's age of sixty five.

28:25 Yeah, sure he's over the hill.

28:27 But yeah, it's.

28:27 Mostly women and girls, but yeah, okay, So we get the scene where Elliott touches Vivian's breasts in the laundry room, and then there are once again more boobs in the scene directly following that, because Vivian walks in on Rita taking a shower, and we get this shot of Rita's boobs again, and then the two cousins start to reconnect.

28:58 We learn about their secret language that I was attempting to do at the top of the episode, which they did when they were younger. And the thing about Rita being there now is that she offers this feminine presence in Vivian's life that she was lacking before, and it's a nice change of pace from her constantly being around only her dad and brothers. And with all the money that Mickey, Rita's dad is giving the family, the family moves again, this time into a luxury building across the street with better amenities, more space, a swimming pool, etc.

29:41 And the family talks about what this means for them class wise. They're like, are we rich? Are we middle class? You know? They talk about Mickey being a business owner and that's how he has amassed wealth. And then Murray tells a story slash. We get a flashback from when he was a business owner. He owned a restaurant where they served these expensive steaks, and he suspected that one of his employees was stealing steaks and smuggling them out in his pants. So Murray stabbed the guy in the thigh with a fork to confirm his suspicions that there was a steak in his pants. And this is going to be Chekhov's stab in the thigh with a fork.

30:30 Yeah, that calls.

30:34 Then there's a scene where Vivian and Rita are hanging out where Rita is unpacking her stuff and she pulls out a vibrator. Vivian has never seen one before, so they start kind of goofing around with it and tossing it around and dancing, and then Murray walks in and Vivian doesn't know how to turn it off. So it's another humiliating moment that her father's involved in.

31:01 Which is kind of thrilling to know that that particular area of vibrator technology has made stunningly little progress in the ensuing half century since this movie is set where you're like, yes, yeah, it is still kind of difficult to just turn one off and they're loud. There's like this and like laser jet printers, Like how have we not made more progress in these areas? But the scene was so we'll talk about it, but it was. The scene is such a puzzle to me because I find it cathartic and fun and silly in one reading of it, and then very bizarre, like it's so long, they're dancing for so long, and the joy.

31:50 Is centered around a big vibrating Yes.

31:54 It's so weird and that Alan arkin Is there's like I think that honestly, like one of my biggest things with this movie that I felt like, and I say this lovingly, like sometimes characters behave like cartoons and other times they don't. And this was definitely more of a Looney Tune scene where you're like Alan Arkins just standing there for like twenty seconds wordlessly.

32:21 He has basically no reaction.

32:23 Yeah, because that that is like a I don't know, it's like it's more of a ViBe's scene, that.

32:29 Vibes rader.

32:32 Scene that ends in like a protracted Looney Tunes humiliation. It's like it's such a weird little scene.

32:41 It does kind of feel like, oh my god. Not to make this comparison on like a qualitative basis, but like it does feel like when Sam Levinson does these really indulgent musical breaks, like like musical montage breaks and euphoria inter a character just like dancing. She's so confused and she's in this like wood paneled basement and there's music and it goes on for so long because he just didn't know what else to do with the time.

33:06 That he had. So but this is like like, yeah, but.

33:09 This kind of feels like a dead art almost of like the joyful musical break where they're like, the audience needs a bit of levity. Let's just throw this in here.

33:18 And I don't know how.

33:20 Yeah, yeah, how do you guys? How do you like that?

33:23 I mean, it's like there is a world where I would buy into this scene like no one's business. But it's like because at this point in the movie, and arguably kind of threw out the movie, the relationship between viv and Rita is so kind of vague and then all of a sudden, very intense and then over that it's like it feels like this, like this scene almost feels like a climactic like, yes, we're hanging out, we have a vibrator. This is so fun, question mark. I don't know. So there were certain sequences where I was like, where is at where is her head at? Yeah, in this moment, and it.

34:03 Felt like another instance of kind of and I will talk about this, I'm sure, but teaching womanhood and like learning womanhood and rita kind of like bestowing these elements of like female sexuality onto her like newly quote unquote sexual like teenage younger cousin. And I guess I kind of read it like that, like as a triumphant like here's another thing you'll just learned, you know. But then they're being goofy with it, so it's and they're all actually, thank God using it. So you're kind of like, I don't know, Yeah, it's it's all it's a confusing scene.

34:33 It's confusing. Yeah, it's just kind of there.

34:36 Well, I also think that we're conditioned to expect the moment that the dad walks in and oh no, she can't turn off the vibrator, and it's humiliating that he's gonna like have an outburst where he's shaming both Vivian and maybe Rita for having such a device and shaming them for having sexuality and sexual desire and things like that.

35:04 But if that reaction has had, we don't see it on screen.

35:08 No, he just looks like he's buffering there.

35:12 I think, like what I read at the dad throughout the movie much to discuss, Yeah, but was that. I think as the movie goes on, he kind of starts out kind of like on Viv's ass about everything, and then I think the more he kind of spirals out of control and the more he seems kind of exhausted. Midway through when I think he just gets distracted and almost stops being a father, because at the beginning you can kind of see this attempt at being like a single dad where he's like awkwardly trying to kind of like talk to his daughter but like really badly about what it means to be a woman, et cetera. But then as the movie goes on, that relationship just kind of dissipates a little bit, and it seems to me

35:48 like maybe the correlation between his like struggles personal struggles and being a dad.

35:54 I guess, yeah, maybe he also thinks that when Rita shows up, he's like, oh, well, I'm kind of off the hook of having to like definitely teach teach my daughter anything.

36:07 I felt like that and this wasn't like super clear to me on my first viewing, but I'm on my second That is like one of the I think kind of very loaded, trickier through lines in this movie. Is it does seem like that, yeah, that the dad is looking for someone to offload having kids, but also very specifically having a daughter onto. He tries that with Rita, and Rita is a mess. It doesn't work. He tries that with Lucille, it's a mess. Doris, Yeah, but also come up, but also Lucille Blue, Yes, she tries. He tries that with Doris, it doesn't work. And then the end that we'll and we'll talk more about it. But at the end it seems almost like viv resigns herself in a way that's like framed pretty positively that she's

36:56 just going to raise herself and that is okay, and it's an interesting way to And I'm really excited to talk about the ending of the movie because I think there's so many ways to look at it all of which I find quite depressing. But maybe you're supposed to I don't know.

37:12 Oh yeah, I can't wait to talk more about all of that.

37:15 I must just say on this san yes.

37:18 But in the meantime we power on through the recap. So the next thing that happens, speaking of Doris, Murray takes his family to dinner with her. This is a woman he met when he sold her a car. She also lives in a fancy building in Beverly Hills. It seems like he and Doris are kind of dating, but she makes it clear that she only wants a companion.

37:45 She does not want to be touched. She does not want to have sex anything like that, and that's something that Murray is struggling with. They're at dinner, Vivian gets her period and has to sneak off to the bathroom. This is the scene we're talking about where Doris gives her this old timey pad and then Doris discovers blood on her chair, which she had like crosstitched the the upholstery.

38:12 Oh, and she says, oh, Jeane, she goes, And the way older women are characterized in this movie we could talk about as well. But I was delighted to hear Jessica Walters scream regardless of context.

38:27 She's like, there's blood up my chair. So they leave Doris's place. Then Rita reveals to Vivian that she is pregnant from a guy she met in rehab. He does not know this. She is freaking out because she's about to start her nursing program and she has to give a urine sample. But if the school tests her urine, they'll know that she's pregnant and that could jeopardize her future in this training program. So she has Vivian p in a cup for her.

39:05 It's a very older cousin behavior.

39:06 Yes, like this is some hijinks, some fun hijinks.

39:12 Yeah.

39:13 And so when Vivian is doing this and looking for a roll of toilet paper, she finds Rita's vibrator and uses it to masturbate. And I feel like it's implied that she is masturbating for the first time at least with a vibrator, and she loves it. She has the best time. Then there's a scene where Vivian meets a girl in her building. This is the Mina Suvari character who has just gotten a nose job, and she gives Vivian the business card of her cosmetic surgeon and mentions that the surgeon also gave her mother a breast reduction and.

39:59 Stay, it's that And again this is where the movie feels both seventies and nineties and its sensibilities, and also twenty twenties, where she's basically like, big tits are out, big tits are considered trashy and out of style, and I don't know, it's just a very depressing circle is presented in this scene.

40:24 Yet for sure.

40:25 And so Vivian hears about this breast reduction surgery and she's like, hmm, that is very interesting, and so that'll come back later. Then Vivian takes Rita to her first day of nursing school via Elliott giving them a ride, but first Rita wants to pay a visit to the man who got her pregnant, this guy Danny, but he's not home, and then when she finally does get a hold of him on the phone, he finds out she's pregnant and it seems like he will completely bail on her forever. Meanwhile, Elliott is teaching Vivian how to drive and they end up having sex in his car and we'll talk all about this scene. But basically, he's upset when he realizes that she has never had sex before and that he was the one to quote unquote take

41:26 her virginity.

41:27 Yeah, he is the victim here.

41:29 Yes, the sure acts like it. Then they go to pick up Rita, but she's not at the school, so they rush home and find her unconscious and unresponsive, and chaos ensues. When Murray is shouting and insisting that she just needs a cup of coffee. Doris is freaking out. Ricky has called the paramedics and they come bursting in the room. Mickey calls Murray on the phone, saying that he will be flying to La the following day.

42:00 This scene is tonally nuts. This scene is so like every possible emotional interpretation of this scene is presented. David Crumbholds gets into guys and dolls in the middle of it, Like it's just like every tone is happening in this scene.

42:22 True. Yeah, it's only like the havoc of this like claustrophobic family life. Yeah, you're like you're really like, oh you're done. Yeah, it's nuts, You're done with these folks.

42:30 It's yeah, truly it's wild.

42:34 And then the medics revive Rita, and a little later, as she's recovering, she and Murray are kind of consoling each other and he gropes her chest, which Vivian, sorry, there's a loud machine happening now right outside my window the way, and.

42:57 Looked was that someone was like, don't say gropes chests, yelling at you off camera like you were.

43:03 Kind of shy.

43:05 Okay, So he assaults her, which Vivian sees through a crack in the door, and of course we will talk about this as well. We cut to Vivian at the cosmetic surgeon, who the girl in her building had recommended. Vivian resents her breasts and wants to get breast reduction surgery, but then she chickens out and runs out of the doctor's office. Meanwhile, Mickey has arrived. He's played by Carl Reiner.

43:39 He and his wife, who I just learned at the top of this episode is played by Rita Moreno are at a diner with the rest of the family, and Rita is about to make this big entrance to surprise her dad in her nurse's uniform.

43:55 I think they're actually still at the airport. Oh, because I think they're like, they're like musch meet up at the airport. We're not gonna. I don't wanna. I have nothing to do with you.

44:04 This family.

44:05 Yeah, they're like airplanes in the background. I think the windows. I could be wrong.

44:10 No, I think you're right. They don't go to a second location because they Yeah, when this scene ends, as we're about to fight out, they are leaving, like on the tarmac.

44:18 Yeah right, yes, okay. So so Rita is about to make this big entrance in her uniform, but she's in the bathroom freaking out. Vivian comes in and confronts Rita about what happened the night before between her and Vivian's dad, and Vivian is furious at Rita again. We'll talk about how her anger is misplaced, but they eventually reconcile and they go back out to the table. It's a tense meal at the airport diner, and then Murray offers to pay.

44:58 He wants to look good in front of his kids, but Mickey is like, what difference does it make. It's my money. You never learned how to handle your finances or budget or anything like that. I've been paying for you, for your whole life, and you're sixty five, so grow up. And Murray is humiliated, so Vivian stabs her uncle Micky in the thigh with a fork, a callback to the story that Murray told earlier. So Mickey is like, fuck this, and he and his wife and Rita leave and head back to the East Coast. Mickey cuts off Murray financially, So now Murray and Vivian and her brothers have to move out of that expensive building and back into the slums of Beverly Hills. But this time Vivian feels less humiliation and a greater appreciation and fondness for her family

46:01 and their situation.

46:03 The end. I loved the incorporation of the title Wow, thank you, thank you so much.

46:11 Approach a press.

46:12 So let's take another quick break and we'll come back for the discussion and we're back.

46:29 Where to start here, my let's stuck out to you. Where would you like to start? Guests? Privileged, guest burden.

46:37 Well, I broke my thoughts up into themes, so I guess I'll just begin with the first thing theme that really sticks out, but kind of the concept of sexual agency. Yeah, so this movie really reminds me of another movie that's set in the seventies, another movie directed by a woman. Do you guys know Diary of a Teenage Girl?

46:56 Yes, yeah, I know of it.

46:57 I've never seen it.

46:58 Oh, that would be a good to talk about it on sectual cast. Actually, so yeah. It's this twenty fifteen movie by maryel Heller, and it basically is depicting I find it's similar because it's depicting kind of like a sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies and the way that that kind of tipped over into like sexual exploitation of women very much paralleling like the time that it came out, and in twenty fifteen it was like the SlutWalk era and stuff going on.

47:23 Then.

47:23 I feel like both of these movies are capturing this kind of like post sexual revolution eras that were like hyper sexual and like sexually permissive but like sometimes at the expense of women. And Diary of a Teenage Girls about like a fifteen year old girl similarly who has a statutory affair with her mother's boyfriend and it also leaves you very uneasy, but it's more of a drama and this is more of a comedy. But I think the major scene like I was pulling out was just like the idea of a teenage girl grappling with her own sexual agency and like the constant push and pull of navigating, like how much agency you actually have in a world that sees you as prey. Yeah, I was thinking a lot about how Viv doesn't have any like

48:02 positive role models. She kind of has to learn things on her own. But yeah, I don't know. The movie had me thinking a lot about the ways that, like I have never been more sexualized in my life than when I was age fourteen to eighteen, Like I get cat called way less as an adult woman than I did as a teenager, and the ways that kind of like I related so much of this movie with the way that like a girl's like pubescent body is kind of made public when she enters womanhood, Like your body becomes grounds for like anyone to comment on. I remember I had female relatives who would just grab my boobs like yeah and be like oh, like oh they're coming in, you know, yeah, And it wasn't like malicious, but it's

48:37 like why why is my body all of a sudden this like springboard for discourse when like I'm so uncomfortable in it, and I don't know what to make of it. I don't have sexual feelings yet, but like I have a sexual body now, and I think that the movie really tackles that's subject matter in an interesting way. Yeah, and that was a major reason why I liked it. Yeah, but obviously it's like a really difficult topic and like very touchy. Yeah, but yeah, I was thinking I wrote down breasts as a sight of tension.

49:06 Yes, I mean, in so many I totally agree where I feel like one of the things that this movie really does successfully get you too is to understand why by the end of this movie, Vivian is like, I don't want these breasts. I don't want them because they have not only caused her severe discomfort and scrutiny very suddenly in a way that because of how her life is structured and her family structure, she has no real protector from and no one to even contextualize why it's happening.

49:41 She also like the inciting reason that she actually goes is because she sees her cousin I think, in her fourteen year old mind, like sees her cousin suffer as a result of having like boobs whatever it's I hate that we have not settled on a word that doesn't feel weird. But yeah, I totally feel like I think that, like everyone has their version of this too, where I think about because this is like, this is a movie that sort of set at the time of my mom's adolescence.

50:19 The director is my mom's age, and the stories that you know over not until I was an adult was I sort of aware of, like how the way that my mom perceived herself and the way that people perceived her body when she was coming of age like informed a lot of the issues I had, right, but just how this is like very intentionally a period piece because it's drawing directly from Tamorrow Jenkson's experience, and I think does seem to do very well with drawing how people would talk about girls' bodies specifically at this time, but also in a way that feels so familiar where.

51:02 Not much has changed.

51:04 Yeah, I mean, like Maya, I love that you said, like, yeah, your body is like used as a conversation topic and you're not allowed to say anything about it. And I feel like for her dad, it almost seems like he thinks he's being supportive by even acknowledging her body, and by criticizing her body, that's how he feels he's able to like participate in her life in this way that is like so dark and sad, and you can see exactly how I mean. That scene at the sizzler at the beginning was so frustrating, probably because it felt just familiar enough where you could see not just her dad criticizing, like you can't wear that top. I vividly remember being told by any number of family members to put a bra on in a top that made it one hundred

51:58 percent more embarrassing to be where that was so specific and so good. But then but then to see her brother mimic that behavior for the dad's approval. I think that like really hit for like it, because that's the whole David Crumhold's character. And I remember that from like my older boy cousins, like seeing what how other men would act and then projecting that same you know stuff at me and my cousins or whoever else, and then looking to their father for approval. Like I think she like illustrates that cycle really well and doesn't really present a solution for it, because yeah, we haven't figured that out.

52:42 I think like what I do appreciate so much about the Like I it's tricky the way the movie depicts it, and like doesn't always necessarily work. But I do think what I appreciate is, like it really evokes a feeling of disgust, yeah, that you don't know what to do with because there's nothing that can be done in the scene, Like no one's advocating for her because it's like the time and the place right, and so you're kind of like, oh, like you just feel foul watching a lot of it.

53:04 Yeah, Yeah, And I think like doesn't let other women off the like I think whatever the kind of most sanitized version of this story offers, Oh, she just needs a woman in her life, and like if if she talks to a woman, this will be resolved. But I think that this movie does is like open to women being also fucked up and having a lot of like internalized hatred of an acceptance of behaviors, which is so much I think, and like Rita's more lucid, less carteit because there are moments with Rita where I'm like, I have no idea what the hell she's doing, but in her more like grounded moments, it's like, yeah, like Rita is has a lot of internalized acceptance of how she's, how she's been treated, and how she is, how she's

53:59 accepting of being treated in a way that isn't going to be helpful to viv in a way that I don't know, Like it's it's frustrating for the character, but also feels very real, like there is no real off ramp, even when people are trying. I think women try to show up for viv but like, no one is quite able to do it right.

54:25 Vivian having this new presence in her life of this guardian esque, not quite mother figure, but like, you know, a familiar person who she grew up with and who is older and wiser than her, but is, as we're saying, harboring a lot of you know, internalized misogyny and like body image issues. There's all these There are several moments where Rita talks about how fat she thinks she is and how she needs to lose weight, and that's a whole other topic of conversation. But you know, she is not fully equipped to be a parent or like a role model.

55:14 She's Vivian like asking to be a parrot.

55:17 Either, no you know, and then we see Vivian constantly reconciling I have these again, breasts. It's such a It's the same way that I hate the word penis because it just feels so clinical. But it's like, you know, the correct term.

55:36 I like the way that Natasha Leone says it. It sounds casual when she says it.

55:42 It's that raspy voice. Can even do an impression well I'm getting over right now.

55:48 You can do it.

55:51 Someone smoke a cigarette and then try it.

55:53 I'm just gonna sound like gollum if I do it like breasts. But anyway, so Vivian is reconciling all these conflicting feelings about, you know, I'm developing into this adolescent body. I have breasts now. She resents that because she's seen the way that women are so heavily objectified for their physiques and for their breasts. So she resents that, but it seems like she's also trying to figure out how to navigate that, in the sense that, like, my breasts aren't going to go away, So what can I do about this? How can I reclaim some agency? To your point, Maya about like can I sort of like take my power back? And take control of the situation, which we see in that scene in the laundry room when she

56:49 asks Elliott if he wants to touch her breasts and he says yes, and then he starts to unbuckle his pants. She was very clear about do you want to touch my rests? He interprets that, however, as do you want to fuck me right now in the laundry room, and she has to say, like, no, I was clear about what I wanted, and he completely misinterprets it in the way that so many men willfully do in situations like this.

57:22 Well, I don't want to like launch the conversation forward too much, but that was one of the many scenes where I guess I'm trying to figure out how I feel about how this specific issue is landed within this movie. I think the theme is definitely present of like and this is like sort of what we've all been talking about to some extent, of girls like developing bodies and how that affects how men, how everyone, but how specifically men treat them and talk to them, and how objectively to be. In this scene, it is obviously on Kevin kringan character to say no when a child offers themselves sexually.

58:09 We know that Vivian is canonically fourteen years old, and he knows that too, and he's aware of this. That is one of the first things he learns about her, and he says, oh wow, you look older, which is so important, and how he treats her the whole time. What I think is interesting at a number of points in this movie is that we do cannot It's not a question of like, do the characters know what they need to know? They always know what they need to know, and sometimes I feel like plot wise, they get off the hook a little bit. Where do I believe that in nineteen seventy six that the Kevin Corgan character would absolutely get away with this and no one would think anything about it. Yes, but I guess I was like

58:52 kind of bumped and like hah a number of times that like, why is the movie not? The movie doesn't seem to be pushing back on it as much as I was, I guess wanting it too. I agree, because we know at every single step of the way that he knows. But at the end, I don't think that we're meant to dislike him. I don't know, well, and.

59:11 I think this is the ultimate kind of like distinction to me between like when let's say, Diary of a Teenage Girl was made in this because Diary of a Teenage Girl is like very much a drama, Like there are funny elements, but it's like quite tragic and like extremely disturbing as lighthearted as it sometimes maybe, whereas this movie, like tonally yeah, really contrasts with some of its subject matter and really does make you think about what Tamara Jenkins thinks of the subject matter because you can see what she's trying to do. But even and like I don't know if this was gonna come up later, but like thinking of the concept of the male gaze, Like I've seen a lot of people online talk about how

59:46 this movie is like can perpetuates the male gaze. I don't necessarily know if it does, but I do think there are elements of it. Like one of my like the ways that I diagnose a male gaze in a movie is like when the camera like severs ahead of the woman and like isolates different body.

1:00:02 Parts headless women of Hollywood vibe.

1:00:04 Headless women of Hollywood, Yeah, isolates the woman from her personhood and like will isolate the body parts. And this movie does do that obviously, but with the scenes it's because.

1:00:13 Of body doubles too.

1:00:15 For body doubles, but then inadvertently kind of severs the character from the personhood as well. And you're like, hmm, And that's why I think it's so complicated, because there's so many kind of like angles you could look at it from, but I could. I definitely think it lets the male characters off the hook via tone.

1:00:33 Yeah, yeah, like in a way that the seventies would. But I don't understand why the director does. And I was looking for this and I wasn't able to find it. Maybe we'll get it for the twenty or the thirty year, god the thirty year anniversary of this movie, but I wasn't able to find a lot of Tamara Jenkins speaking on this theme specifically, because I would be really curious again because I'm projecting my mom onto her to some degree, as like they were born the same year, and I know that my mom's feelings on what she viewed as like, well, that was the world then, blah blah blah in nineteen ninety eight versus now is wildly different because she watched me grow up and experience a lot of those same things,

1:01:18 and so I would I would just be really curious if her perspective on this has shifted over time. I mean, I'm assuming it has, but I would. I just am like, I want more info on how she thinks about it now, because she was in her thirties when this came out. But like the sexual politics of the nineties, like like you we're saying, Maya, are also really fraught and in terms of like what women and young women are expected to accept and internalize.

1:01:49 Well, it was like the height of like the Nymph you know movie, Oh yeah, Stone like that was that was that like reaching all time peakle like you talk about in Lalite.

1:01:58 I was like, where did I learn that?

1:02:00 I learned it from your podcasts, you see.

1:02:02 Yeah, this is the year. I mean, this is like the year after the the Jeremy Irons Lolita adaptation. Like the nineties is the verse full of this stuff, but very rarely from women, which is why I think I went into this expecting a little more pushback and not quite finding it. And that's not even a criticism of Tamura Jenkins necessarily. It's just like, I just I just want more info.

1:02:28 It is it is emblematic of the attitude of the time. Yeah, and I also think that the movie thinks that that relationship between Vivian and Elliott is quote unquote okay, because it is mostly Vivian behind the steering wheel, determining what's happening, initiating sexual contact, et cetera. Make no mistake, the scene where they have sex in the car is statue tory rape.

1:03:00 Well, it's like also starts that way too, Like the scene is initiated by him shoving weed into her pants, Like it starts as an adult, you know, like assaulting a kid, and then evolves into statutory rape off screen. Yeah, this gets into like Lolita stuff quite a bit, where it's literally fourteen year old girls regardless of like if a fourteen year old initiates or attempts to initiate sex with an adult, the adult says no, like it's just it's just not And I do think that the this is not a murky age difference between the two of us.

1:03:40 We're not talking about a fourteen year old and a sixteen year old or like, you know some of the trickier conversations here where it's like, how do we interpret the letter of the law. This guy is like potentially ten years older than her, you know, and Natasha Leone and Kevin Corgan are for contacts ten years apart in age.

1:03:59 We don't know exactly how old he's supposed to be in the movie, but it's old enough that like it is absolutely on him to say no. And it's just so I don't know, I really struggle with it.

1:04:13 What I've like and I keep bringing up Diary of a teenage Girl, but there's just so many parallels. But like what that movie does is like similar to viv Like that the main character learns sexuality from the older women in her life who have experienced this kind of sexual revolution, like who are hyper sexual maybe kind of embodied some of the misogyny of the time or like absorbed it. And it's like the younger, this like teenage girl not fully understanding what's going on and like trying to seize control of her own sexuality because she's like, well everyone else is liberated, like I can be too.

1:04:42 But in that movie, like it's very much condemning the mother's boyfriend for like allowing this, even though she initiates almost all of it.

1:04:49 Mm hmm.

1:04:50 He like allows her to do so, but in slums of Beverly Hills. Yeah, you can look at it and be like, oh wow, that's really progressive thinking about like the way that it's kind of like taking this lens of viv learning from Rita this type of like hypersexuality, and then being like, Okay, I'm going to also be like this. But then yeah, when when it kind of turns it around and you're supposed to kind of empathize with the guy because she didn't tell them she's a virgin, it's like, ooh, I don't Yeah, I don't know what he was going for there.

1:05:16 The seventies was so close, really truly like and it feels like a weird time capsule of like thinking from the nineties of like women of the nineties reflecting on coming of an age and the seventies. And this is also insanely specific, but it's also like, but that's our moms, and like, I don't know, Yeah, it really stuck with me where I'm sure that like women in their thirties right now are doing the same kind of rationalization in all of these How there's so many movies happening in the early two thousands right now, right where it's like everyone is meditating on their childhood, everyone's meditating on their coming of age and trying to make art that rationalizes it.

1:05:59 And so I don't know, I think, I don't think that this exact story would have come out of sis man, Like it just wouldn't have. And it's so specific and it almost just to me feels like her processing and it again, it just reminds me of how I've heard my mom talk of how I've talked in the past about my own formative sexual experiences, where I give myself more agency than I actually had at the time to be okay with whatever it was, to feel like I was maybe more in control than I was. Because there are moments to me and I know that like everyone is different, everyone has a different background, but there are moments where I feel like the way that Viv is setting boundaries very firmly and clearly felt to me a

1:06:48 little out of step with how fourteen year olds behave. I mean, I don't think fourteen year olds say I'm not looking for anything serious right now, you know what I mean?

1:06:57 Like, right, I think there is it's like an element to it where she's almost like grown up, grown up too quickly because of this like nomadic environment where she kind of has to be like the wife and the daughter because her dad is such a manchild and like a mess. And I think there is that element of it, but no, definitely.

1:07:14 Yeah, well I remember several instances from my teen years and like formative sexual experiences and feelings and things like that where technically I was consenting, but I was only doing that because I felt some coercion, whether it was like directly from someone else or just like peer pressure for societal pressure. So I feel like that's a lot of what Vivian is experiencing, and where it lands in the story, I guess this isn't even where it lands, because she sees Elliott again after this as she's like moving out of that building. But the scene in the car and that ends with him be rating her and saying, you didn't know I'm the victim here. You didn't even think about me. Yeah, has put so much pressure on

1:08:13 is He's saying.

1:08:14 Like you tricked me into assaulting adizing a minor quote unquote right, yeah, which.

1:08:21 Is fourteen year old's a virgin.

1:08:23 Right. He's like, he's so full of shit, And I do feel like the movie knows he's full of shit, but then the tuba music hits, and I like him dissociate because that scene was about to be so like it feels like there are some scenes that ends like five lines of dialogue to soon before I wanted them to, yeah, where that scene ends. Really, I was like, my god, like I'm.

1:08:49 A complicit tuba.

1:08:52 It's the complicit accordion player being like and let's keep it moving, like it felt like truly the studio does accordion coming in at certain moments before I could get the resolution I wanted, because I do think and like this is I'm fully guessing here, but that if the line of dialogue was written down, it feels like it is written that he's supposed to look like a fool in that moment. But then the music in the movie and the remainder of the movie seems to be fighting with that well.

1:09:24 And he's such a loser, like with his like Mansion Manson shirts, and I thought it was so relatable the way he just talks at her about Charles Manson and his music, and like, you know, it's so the movie is like satirizing him. He is such a like kind of guy, but I love what you said about Tamar Jenkin's processing through writing this, Like, I don't know if any of these experiences within this movie are like exactly hers.

1:09:46 I know that she mostly just talked about like the experience of being nomadic, growing up in Beverly Hills with like a lower middle class family.

1:09:52 And having an old dad too, because that's what having an old savage, that's what Savage is about. It's about having a really old dad.

1:09:58 Having an old dad, I said, really, but yeah, she hasn't talked a lot about whether or not these sexual experiences are her own. But I would love to see like a spiritual follow up to it, because I'm all for a movie just kind of representing the culture of its time. But yeah, but yeah, I would also be curious to know what she would say about all of this years later.

1:10:18 Yeah.

1:10:19 Well, and then the other big scene to talk about, or at least one of the other big scenes to talk about, is the scene where Marie assaults his niece and how that's written and what pans out in that scene where you know they're having this tender moment of consoling each other. She's coming around after having overdosed and having to be revived by paramedics. You know, this has been a traumatic day for her already.

1:10:51 Yeah, and a lot of tonal dissonance for us the viewer. Yes, yeah, the whole character of Rita. I felt like we were said between like a lot of comedic beats and then all of a sudden abject tragedy. And then in the next scene she's back to being cookie. Yeah, which is like, I see how that it didn't quite work for me.

1:11:15 I think I understood what she was going for, but it just like it felt a little weird to me. Yeah, but this is this is definitely one of the abject tragedy scenes for sure.

1:11:24 My reparative reading of this scene, like, yeah, I didn't even know how to feel about it. The first time I watched it, I felt complicated and I was I was really intrigued that it was depicted. I do feel undecided about the way that the scene happens. And then it kind of follows up, like the next time we see the dad, he's kind of framed within this empathetic lens of like, you know, a father who's like struggling with emasculation as he like struggles with class and like the kind of correlation between those things, which you know, like I grew up with dad who struggled on occasion financially, and it was it was hard to watch. And so I really really like liked that scene the dinner where the dad's trying to pay. I think it's like a

1:12:02 really interesting depiction of fatherhood. But yeah, I guess am I repairtive reading of this scene would just be like what do we do with the people we love when they do bad things? And I think when she confronts Rita in the bathroom, you're kind of like I could read it like as probably what it was, which is the nineties kind of condemning women for quote unquote seducing men or like driving men mix. Yeah, but I also read it as like Viv trying to kind of reconcile or deal with this like new image of her father that she's just not ready to she's not ready to kind of accept, and taking it out on Rita, taking it out on her cousin. And I do think that the movie really puts us in that position of like

1:12:40 what do we do with this man who like we have kind of come to like as the movie goes on, like he's funny whatever he's he can be a tender father.

1:12:46 Elan Arkin is so likable.

1:12:48 Yeah, Alan Arkan has mad riz so like, yeah, what do we do with this character and the movie? I think in the emasculation scene is kind of letting him off the hook, which I feel complicated about. Yeah, but yeah, it's a tough one.

1:13:03 Yeah, I think for me because I know that that scene specifically is where just having gathered some rough, letterboxed data and going through just how this movie has been talked about over the years, this is the scene where the movie loses a lot of people, I have complicated feelings about it. Similarly, I have a bigger issue with how the movie ends than that plot point being introduced.

1:13:32 I think I think that what's important to me is how the movie deals with the fallout of that. And I thought that felt more. The ending felt so neat, and it felt like in a way that was presented too cleanly. Of like, and now this girl who is still fourteen years old and more fucked up than when she started, and her father has not changed at all.

1:13:56 He's doing exactly what he did at the beginning of the movie. She has now accepted that this is how the world is and now she understands that and she is taking on the role of being the daughter and the mother of this family. And I mean, we're kind of told this in I think, pretty like straightforwardly in the closing like voiceover, that's all, it's all good, baby, it's life's about the journey, and you're just like that was not my takeaway for the last half hour of the movie. I think we're presented with a lot of really complicated things. And now I don't know how I would have felt half a decade ago watching it. Now, I think that, like you're saying, by you, it's not as if it is an option for Viv to abandon

1:14:45 her family. Where the hell is she gonna go? Right? And I think in this time and the time the movie is made, I wasn't like offended or shocked that Viv considered her cousin Rita to be equally culpable, and that Rita it seems like everything about how Rita's life has gone has led her to consider herself culpable as well.

1:15:12 And like the fact that she apologizes to Viv like broke my heart in a way that I think that I don't know and maybe I'm like overthinking it. But I felt like the movie understood that it wasn't Rita's fault. But the way that that scene plays out from there does not reflect how I read the performance. How I read this scene like, to me was like Rita's saying something pretty complicated there, like that line that she says, like, sometimes a person gets so hungry, and she's saying this in another in like Minionise, but she's speaking as she says this, but she says, sometimes a person gets so hungry he might do something not so proud of. I'm sorry you had to see it. I love you? Do you still love me? It's like it makes me so sad.

1:16:09 And I thought it was kind of a sad like, kind of tragic encapsulation of Rita's character as someone who's absorbed kind of the comments around her, Like she is almost I don't want to say cautionary tale because I don't I like Rita, but she is almost like a bit of like what Viv could be like in her future if she kind of like believed the stuff men were saying to her, almost, you know what I mean.

1:16:33 And I feel like that line almost feels like a tragic I don't know a tragic example of that.

1:16:39 Yeah, I mean the scene is it's so hard because I feel like it approaches saying something and then like kind of doesn't end up sticking the landing, because it's like even in that dialogue, Rita is not saying this is my fault. I think she is more saying, like, this is how things are. I'm sorry that you had to see how I believe in how I accept that things are in a way that is like opening her up to this abuse. We know that very likely her uncle is doing this because he feels emasculated and is taking it out by sexually abusing his own niece, and that like none of this is okay, but like this is Vivian's first time encountering this and she has to decide can I accept this? And it weirdly feels like

1:17:27 she decides that she will accept it in a way that I think many women of her generation did, and that was I think what I really made me sad about the end of this, And I hope is like a in process either studio notes being like wrap it up, or is like Tamar Jenkins like processing this in real time, because again, like I think there's a lot of women of my mom's generation who found or like sought empowerment by accepting it and just being like, I'm going to move through the world anyways, in spite of the fact that this is how I will be treated in a way that kind of like lacks you know, collectivity, and you know, but.

1:18:13 It's just so tough, right, I mean that we see Vivian confronting Rita about being assaulted and placing the blame on Rita and not at all blaming her father for his actions. It's reflective of the pervasive attitude of the seventies, of the nineties and largely still today that if a man assaults a woman it was her fault, she was asking for it, whatever. So it's reflective of the attitude, but.

1:18:52 It's not really commenting on it, I guess.

1:18:54 Not commenting on it. And so when we watch this in twenty twenty six, we long for any kind of commentary on it, or for someone for Rita to be like, well, you know, I don't like it didn't have to be this big on the nose moral lesson or anything like that necessarily, but some nuance to to that situation.

1:19:20 But I guess I didn't even need Rita to recognize what was going on. I just, I guess wanted some indication that the movie recognized that what had happened was not either of their faults, because I think that there is something too, like one of the shades of gray in this movie that you don't usually see is that often, because women are socially conditioned to accept this kind of behavior, generationally, they're not able to show up for people that you would think they could exact or that they should, And that, like, that's so clear in Rita and Viv's dynamic is that vivi and has also just been assaulted with a very different dynamic. But we know, based on what we've seen this entire movie, that there's no one in her life

1:20:10 who would be able to recognize that or even talk to her about it in a way that would be constructive for her or like help her whatever it is she needs to process there or around her body. There's just no one there who can help her with it. And we see that because it's like this horrific. That's why I was like, I do feel like that moment where I'm not and I totally understand for any number of reasons that that's the moment in the movie where a lot of people are going to check out. I do think it had narrative importance and that we cut directly from that moment to Viv saying I don't I.

1:20:51 Want to risk reductions anymore.

1:20:53 Yeah, is so clear and intentional that like and is like a very you know, like a kid's conception of like, I want to get rid of quote unquote the problem. I want to get rid of what I'm perceiving makes people treat me poorly and how they didn't treat me a year ago.

1:21:13 I do think the breast reduction is almost the movie's attempt to kind of comment on the situation, because I was thinking about like how it could have done so, and I guess instead of Viv forgiving Rita as she does in the movie, like maybe she could oh have a moment of like, oh no, you know, I actually like understand where you're coming from, or like or have like a change of opinion kind of after Rita says that thing in Pig Latin about hunger. But I do kind of see the breast reduction as the movie commenting on the ways that yeah, like a childlike way to comment on female sexuality. I mean, like I've taken the movie to really the biggest theme I've extracted from it is this idea of like learned womanhood or like compulsorily

1:21:52 compulsory womanhood, and like this, you know, you get to a certain age and you almost have you typically have like an older woman mentor you through being a woman, and that can mean like, oh, learning how to do makeup and like you know, stepping your way into kind of like patriarchal society. And I do think that this movie is very much about that, And I don't know what the ending is necessarily trying to say about it.

1:22:13 I don't think that she steps out of it at all. Yeah, but I do think I did feel that commentary strongly through it. And I guess like that's why I didn't check out at that moment either, because I, to me, it like really piqued my interest. I was intrigued. I also think Marisa Tomei's acting in the scene with the dad is incredible, Like the wins on her face and the amount of like complicated emotions that just like run across it in like a split second is unbelievable. But yeah, no, I feel complicated about the scene but I actually appreciated the movie for attempting to go there. I just think it could Yeah, it could have been a little more explicit for sure about its own yeah feelings about it.

1:22:47 It's so interesting.

1:22:48 I feel like we've talked about this on past episodes. Our episode on The Women is coming to mine. But how so many past generations of women and like mothers or mother figures or just older women teaching younger women how to navigate the world. So many of those conversations and lessons are just like, this is men, this is how men are. Here's how to do your best to navigate it. Because there's a scene in The Women where her mother's just like, well, yeah, all men cheat. Rather than like being like they shouldn't do that and we should hold them accountable, it's more just like, well that's gonna happen. Is here's how to navigate it, or like learn.

1:23:36 How to like don't wear headphones at night, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. My mom, I remember when I was coming up that age, she started being like, don't sit with your legs open like that, because I would sit in my panting with my legs wide open. Because I was a kid and that's all I knew, and I didn't really you know, kids are in some ways genderless in a way, and she would tell me that, and she wouldn't explain why. And so for years I didn't understand why I couldn't sit with my legs open.

1:24:00 And then even when I came of age, she'd be like, don't forget of a beer bottle, like in front of your older family members. Like it just it was just it's so many like learned gender dynamics that you're like, yeah, but why.

1:24:09 Right, And it's like if you ask them, but why. I think this like kind of one of the scarier moments of growing up is realizing that probably your mom doesn't have a very coached answer. It just is. And like that's so much about this movie. Something I think this movie does really well in a way that like, I don't know, I want to rewatch Diary of a Teenage Girl now and we definitely should cover it. So good, it's really good. I love Mary al Hiller, But like, I think something this movie does really well that a lot of movies about coming of age across the gender spectrum don't is like presents a lot of very scary behavior from men that you would see in your everyday life.

1:24:58 And like again, I am gonna take the tuba music and the accordion out of the because that, to me is like this movie's biggest issue as the accordion music. But like creepy neighbor guy who is you know, like who a teenage girl might be attracted to, who will do absolutely nothing to do anything but take advantage of them.

1:25:20 This is a person who we like probably conjure someone to mind for everybody, whether it's a father, uncle, like male relative, usually.

1:25:31 Friend's older brother's friend of always.

1:25:33 It's yeah, I mean, like I feel like and it seems I almost want to like I don't know, I don't I don't know very much about Alan Arkin as a person, but I think it is really cool that he took this part on because it is like intentionally in opposition with what his public image is in a way that I think is like really smart, Like we are socially conditioned to like Alan Arkin, and then he does these horrific things and I think it really does like do a good job of putting you in the character shoes of like, oh I thought he was this person and he's not. What do I do, and I just wish that it was a little murkier at the end of like what do I do, because it felt like, well, I'm gonna do this, you know.

1:26:24 Yeah. I think that's why I love the movie, Like it is a bit of a It lets you sit with discomfort, which I find really fascinating, But then I also find it challenging because it's generically like a romp kind of it's a bit of a sex romp, and that's complicated and that is confusing as a viewer, but it's like it I think it just gets me thinking, which I appreciate about.

1:26:41 It, which is a lot of like seventies movies too, is like sex romps that when you want that are kind of dubious when you watch them back totally. But I also feel like this is and maybe this would be overthinking, but like especially because that assault of Rita happens at the very end of the movie pretty much, very very late and already I mean I didn't know that happened, and I was very taken off guard when it does because to that point, I noted several times of like, this family has very poor physical boundaries with each other, and maybe that's me being a Republican or something.

1:27:20 But I was like, this family is naked around each other so much, so much, I think specifically with Rita, who is like every family has a different level of naked that they are at the house. I get it, like with your siblings, with your family that everyone's it varies, right. I think that that reads a lot differently once we know the kind of guy the father is at the end.

1:27:44 But what bumped me more than anything was Rita returning to this extended family dynamic and just like that cartoony thing. I felt like it undercut a lot of stuff that happens with her later in the movie where I'm just like what world are we in that? Like a thirty year old cousin is like oops, I'm naked in front of everybody all the time. Like that that confused me, Like some early Riada moments.

1:28:13 It's the extended familiness of it that's a little like okay, uh yeah yeah. I think that's like where the farce comes in. Like she does feel like a character out of like a Monty Pipe, like I don't know something something of that era. For sure. It's interesting though maybe the movie is trying to kind of like critique that archetype when it brings it into the more realism element of it at the end, maybe not gracefully, but I'm like, I'm curious to know.

1:28:36 I feel really curious.

1:28:37 Yeah, whether she's introduced as a farce or like a romp character and then ends up being a little more like three dimensional.

1:28:43 Yeah, I don't know, though, I like drilled myself into a hole trying to understand how Rita is characterized at the beginning versus where her character goes at the end, because I'm like, are we supposed to And I do think I was over thinking it, but I was like, are we supposed to think?

1:28:59 Like be?

1:29:00 Because this woman is comfortable enough around her family to be like seen that that is what makes the uncle feel entitled to her later Like I but I just like could not quite make one plus one equal to with her, like with the through line of Rita's behavior, specifically VIVI, I could track almost everyone else I could track, but Rita kind of confused me at different points.

1:29:25 I think it's like the confused line between revolution exploitation, right, Like I think we talk a lot in my podcast about like the twenty fifteen era. I felt like when I was in high school there was like a mini sexual revolution with like that whole SlutWalk era of like yeah, I'm a slut, you know what I mean? And coming of age during that era was really complicated because I feel like that and like the kind of Indie Slea's like Terry Richardson era was this time where women were feeling sexually liberated. They were feeling like, oh, it's socially acceptable now to like have sex. I'm not going to get called a slut or be oustracized socially. But men then on the other side of things really taking advantage

1:29:58 of that and being like, oh, well, per now is my opportunity, you know what I mean, Like, oh, you want to be a slut, Like, let's.

1:30:04 Go, and now they can call themselves feminist while doing it. What a fun period of time that way, Well.

1:30:08 Yeah, exactly, And like in Diary of a Teenage Girl once again bring it up, but like, actually, I don't want to spoil the movie, but yeah, I think that's that's a major element of it as well. Well.

1:30:19 Just going back to how Rita is characterized and the kind of all over the place nature of that when she's first introduced and like running down the highway and flashes the truck driver who's about to run her over and where to believe would have completely plowed into her had she not flashed him. Yeah, but she flashes. She opens up her gown and flashes him. And then when he stops, she's like she's doing this, like oh, she's like making sex mone sounds as she's like running and getting into his truck, and I'm just like, what is what is going on with her?

1:31:03 It's very like she's crazy, right.

1:31:05 And then when she like when well, okay, why does Vivian burst into the bathroom when she thinks that it's her brother in there potentially masturbating in the shower, So she like barges in, it's not her brother, it is her cousin in the shower. But then Rita opens the door and she's just like, boobs, here they are, here are mine?

1:31:29 She Rita does feel like some of my friends sometimes, Like maybe that's why I love her, because I'm like she is just like so some of my some people I know in my life.

1:31:39 Yeah, I always like, I don't know, I'm overthinking because I know that we we're all like kind of projecting our experiences not to her, but I was like, this would make sense to be in maybe a college aged character. It is wild to be that she's twenty nine years old doing this, where like I think of like older cousins who like and also being that older cousin. I was not a rita. I was not really be quite hot enough to be doing what she's doing. But but the whole idea of like having a sort of like younger sibling dynamic of like, oh, I actually have this information and I and like getting to feel like you're the expert in like how to be a person, especially when you're younger, is like kind of narcotic and exciting,

1:32:20 and even if you're often giving kind of like toxic, you know, like here's how you appease the male gaze, which is sort of what she's doing with like, oh, you have a mustache. You gotta get rid of your mustache. And I vividly remember my mom in middle school being like, we need to talk about your mustache. And it's fine, every woman in the family has one, but it's gotta go.

1:32:41 Oh.

1:32:41 I was getting bikini wax age thirteen, like because I was in dance school. Oh oh, you know, yeah, it sucked.

1:32:51 And then and then you have the brother been you know, using an outdated term for intersex people when he finds out that has a mustache that she's bleaching, and just like, yeah, the way that Ben talks about his sister's.

1:33:06 Body is but it's so clearly learned from his dad. Yeah, Like that is almost like because that's why I wish that there was a little more specificity with how old other characters are, because I'm assuming that Ben is an older teenager, which doesn't totally let him off the hook, but like, I think we're very much given the context for why he feels so entitled to be horrible to his sister. It's all he's seen and just like this, and I know that this was like to some extent based on Tamar Jenkins' is like being raised by a sort of single dad like this in a nomadic way that like, it's just such a horror situation to me to be raised by a man who does not really have any desire to understand you or any woman, and

1:33:56 you're surrounded only by other young men who are going to absorb that act like she just has no ally and it's like there is a version. I think there's a version of me that like wants her and her older cousin to form a powerful bond in a way that I think if there's a version of this movie where if they bond more, it pay that, like last Beat is powerful in a different way. But also Rita is twice her age. They're not peers. It makes sense that they're not connecting. There are completely different stages of life, and so it's like viv is given sort of this like maybe tease of maybe this is someone that you can connect with, but ultimately like she can't for all these reasons.

1:34:43 Yeah. Can I also say we haven't mentioned one character, which is the littlest brother, who I've tried to make a tally in my life now of like unprecocious children in movies because it's very few and four between. And I thought this kid did a great job. And that kid's kind of annoying in a good way, like that's little boy. Yeah, And he's just there.

1:35:03 He's mostly just there. He has a few moments in the movie here and there where, for example, he opens the oven and there's a dead cat inside that he's.

1:35:15 And he just holds it up like yeah, hes a chicken. He has a little he has he has some lucidity around the issue of class, which is one of the things I think this movie does really well in a very period specific way of like class is a huge thing in this movie that every character, even I think like the youngest kid bringing it up in this very like matter of fact way felt so real in a way that like, to your point, Maya could have been really precocious. Like I mean, it feels out, but like a little out Abigail, I like always think of Abigail Breslin in most of her early roles when I think of this thing, but that he he brings it up kind of matter of factly and they're all, you know, I think it presents class in this kind of cool

1:36:06 way of like, well, yeah, what the hell do you do? And and that my head immediately is like, well, they're probably hanging out because of like proximity to family and school systems, right, And he literally states that he's like it's it's the school system, that's why. And like it I can understand from Alan Arkins point, however, misguided, and I think like he is flopping as a father and it's not totally his fault, but it is a large part his fault. And I think that murkiness is kind of portrayed really well, but that like what do you do in that situation? You want your kids to have some continuity in their life. But also he is being selfish, like it's so.

1:36:54 And like interpolating his kids into the finances like and not not really protecting them from from anything. Right by way of yeah, class struggle, I guess.

1:37:04 It feels like he's still kind of striving in this like very American way where I don't know, I mean, the kids, it's hard to know, and maybe the kids are just too young to really know, but it's like they want stability more than they want to be in Beverly Hills.

1:37:24 It seems like right totally.

1:37:27 I read an interesting piece about how this movie is in conversation with the effects of gentrification. It's called Gentrification and the Slums of Beverly Hills, but it talks about how even though Beverly Hills is associated with extreme wealth, there has been income diversity within that neighborhood, perhaps more so in the nineteen seventies when this movie is set and present day, but there has been a range of people and families with different economic backgrounds living in Beverly Hills.

1:38:11 But one of the many problems with gentrification is obviously that it tends to eliminate economic diversity within a neighborhood and prices out and displaces people. And so it kind of goes into that. We can link the piece, but.

1:38:26 No, Yeah, one of the earliest thoughts I had when I watched it was that it reminded me of the Florida Project, just by virtue of like the intense income disparity between like these kind of pastel like motels. Obviously, this motel is a different function than the Florida Project, but like the ones in that being juxtaposed to like Disney World or Disney Disney World. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this being juxtaposed to yeah, like the the upper echelons of like La and Yeah, I thought that was interesting.

1:38:53 Yeah. I guess it's just like economic diversity anywhere is kind of flat. And I think that, like people still talk about Los Angeles, New York about this on a whole to this day in a way that is not intentional but kind of ends up serving the interests of the very powerful. Where if you act like economic diversity does not exist. It is almost like a self fulfilling prophecy, and this family is kind of caught in that kind of net where the world kind of wants to refuse that they exist because it's not what we're told this area is supposed to be. And so they're slowly getting edged out and we don't really have a ton of con Oh. The other thing that I saw referenced, but I guess I maybe missed it in my viewings of

1:39:41 the movie is that part of why he's struggling as a car salesman is because there is an it is like a sevent yes oil crisis.

1:39:48 Oh sure, yeah, the oil crisis.

1:39:50 And again the shades of gray that are introduced around class and around the dad. It's not like he is like the worst. He is a lazy asshole, like he is going to work, but he is not. I mean, I think, if anything, he's not like kind of willing to accept that his situation has changed in a way that's harming his family. Like he's in denial that things are changing and that he's and also that he's aging.

1:40:18 And like all that scene with the brothers I thought was really it's the only scene I think you get with just the brothers, and I really liked it where it just made I do wish that again. I'm like, I'm being a Republican, but I'm like, let's put some clothes on these kids. I get it, it's the seventies.

1:40:37 They probably didn't have air conditioning, but let's get some clothes on these children, please.

1:40:42 They're Oh the scene where they're eating tricks.

1:40:44 I'm like, family, come on. But anyways, I grew up at a closed family, so maybe this is just the same.

1:40:51 I have a lot of friends who were definitely looser with the boundaries.

1:40:54 Yes, I was like, my cousins were in a naked family.

1:40:58 Yes they're they're naked family.

1:41:00 Out there, they're a naked family. But it's like, but there days a creep anyways. But the scene with the brothers where the younger brother, Ricky is kind of coming to terms with the fact that he has an old dad, and that is like something that is it's an undercurrent theme in the movie that I know is like related to Tamara Jenkins's life that I just thought was so well done. I had never seen that like shown in such a specific way, and I think it's it was a really sweet moment with the Brothers where the brother where David Cromwell's has to be like, yeah.

1:41:36 Man, that's old as shit.

1:41:38 Yeah, and he's like no, because that means my parent will die, which is like the scariest thing in the world when you're you know, eight, nine, ten. I don't know how old.

1:41:47 I grew up with an old dad, and every day I resent him for deciding to pull me out at forty five or forty six, like come on, come on, man, you're so old. I want all the time in the world with you, sir. But you know, and now he's like a senior citizen. God love him. I hope he doesn't listen to with podcasts my dad. But it definitely there's psychological effects for sure to being a child with an old father. Yeah.

1:42:11 Yeah, I've never seen it done quite in that way where it like wasn't tragic and there wasn't an immediate consequence to it. It wasn't like, oh no, Alan Arkin is dead. Even though it's so hard to not compare this movie just because it is such a sun Dance movie, I was thinking a lot about Little Miss Sunshine when I was watching this movie because it's Alan Arkin in a movie that was like made in a lab to succeed at Sundance in a motel.

1:42:39 He's always in the motel. He's always give and what's gonna happen?

1:42:44 And it's maybe want to rewatch Little Miss Sunshine, which I think is a far a complicated family presented in a far more less complicated way. Like Alan Arkin couldn't be a more different character, but he is in a motel with children a lot.

1:43:03 Yeah, I want to go back to this scene where Vivian is in the cosmetic surgeon's office, and I want to talk about it because we see a shot of the character's bear breasts. Now again, the character is like fourteen or fifteen. Natasha Leone was eighteen or nineteen when this movie was being shot and when it came out and stuff. And also I'm not even sure if those are her breasts that might be a body double.

1:43:40 They're not as far as I know from what I understood. And this like that she's wearing, I mean, they're fake. They're silicone breasts that she's wearing during the movie. Those are not her natural brass and something that I again just is a marker of both times. But I I listened to a few retrospective interviews. To my understanding, the reason that we get those headless women of Hollywood shots is because their body doubles, so like you couldn't reveal Natasha Leone's head in that shot or Marissa Tomaine's head because it's not her, but that Just reading and listening to Natasha Leone and the director talk about this, I was like, Oh my gosh, I am glad that we are living in an era where intimacy coordinators are available,

1:44:30 because there were. Even though Natasha Leone I think was an adult when this was being shot, the way that she talked about it was like it just sounded like it might have been nice to have an intimacy coordinator as an option, just because they're talking about very like indie film running gunning shots. I think one thing that specifically stuck out to me that I heard her talk about in nineteen ninety eight and twenty thirteen that seemed to really stick with her was the vibrator scene and feeling little out of her depth with like not really I mean also probably because it is like a period appropriate prop, but like that she she wasn't really coached on what she was supposed to have been doing. She

1:45:14 felt uncomfortable. Everyone was a little frustrated with her for like not quote unquote doing it right. But also she was like, very recently, she's still a teenager, Like, I don't I wouldn't have known what to how to execute that scene as a teenager, especially with like no guidance. And there were a few anecdotes about the making of this movie that isn't an indictment of the movie, but more just an observation about the time where it was like, yeah, that is a very young actor to put a very big scene, like a sexually charged scene on and not have anyone there to be present for them before, during, or after, and which it sounds like, I mean, in nineteen ninety eight, I'm not at all surprised to hear it.

1:45:58 It didn't sound like Nindashelione was upset about it, but it clearly stuck with her because it came up in almost every interview about this movie that she did across twenty years.

1:46:09 Right, So there's that, And then going back to that scene in the plastic surgeon's office, we see this character's bear breasts and even though the body double was of age, the character is fourteen or fifteen, and we should not be normalizing seeing nudity of a character that is a minor on screen. I've said it before, I'll say it again.

1:46:35 That shot did not need to be there. You can imply it's already implied what the surgeon is doing. We don't need to we don't need to see actual nudity of a child.

1:46:47 So there's a lot of that entirey of a teenage girl. Oh, which is fascinating because it came out almost twenty years later.

1:46:54 Yeah, yeah, So just wanted to point that out.

1:46:57 Yeah, I didn't know what there were a few, especially like I know that it is like capital tees the theme that we're talking about breasts, and there's certain I agree, Like, I don't know. I would not have included that shot if I were tomorrow Jenkins, And I wonder if present day tomorrow Jenkins would include it. I struggle with it when it's like, I don't know, it's like, at what point are you directing a movie that you are assuming bad actors will be consuming Like that's a tough one.

1:47:32 I do wonder that with the portrayal of nudity, is like are you censoring yourself for the safety of any like why are you not doing it? I guess this is my question is like are you not doing it for the safety of the actor. Are you not doing it because you were concerned that a bad faith actor is going to find your movie? Which I think is definitely true here because there were certain scenes I was just looking for commentary on and I was directed to poorn websites. Really yeah, to pour specifically around the scenes of like Kevin Corrigan feeling Natasha leone up and like the more sexually charged scenes of this are definitely present on por in sites, which I found out completely by accident.

1:48:14 And so I think it is like a very it. I don't know. I don't disagree with you, Caitlin, Like I think that it is like I cannot think of a good reason to include it, but it's depressing the reasons that I jump to to why that is.

1:48:28 Yeah, I do think it's a slippery slope when factoring and like like a director having to factor in like the worst faith interpretation or like worst faith audience of their movie. Like I do think that that can go in negative directions or that can be like a massive hindrance to art. Not that I agree that necessarily these boobs should have been in it, these boobs.

1:48:47 But whose boobs.

1:48:49 It's a difficult conversation because you don't know how far that can go in terms of like like every like if your movie's intended for a mass audience, it's like it can become kind of focus groupy or become kind of So, yeah, it's a tough one. That's a that's a difficult question to answer.

1:49:03 I guess Yeah, in the case of this movie, I think it is like not necessary and a lot of the it felt very like of the time, And by that I guess I mean of both times that every opportunity we had to cut to bare breasts we did. And you know, like that's not to say that we don't see I mean we see a lot of like people not wearing clothes in this movie. Again, we appear to be in a naked family, and it's like not like we don't see the boys in this family, you know, presented in like they're not wearing clothes for a lot of the movie. But I also didn't like that.

1:49:41 I also know, definitely not maybe I just really find that depiction to be particularly sexual, Like I think I think.

1:49:48 That's the thing is like it's not sexualized.

1:49:50 That's like, yeah, I think that to me didn't feel inappropriate necessarily or just I feel like a lot of movies around the time has like that's just what kids to me sometimes where it seemed like it's like, you know, they're in a a hot climate. But yeah, no, I agree. I feel like the issue with the Natasha the unboob is that like it feels tacked on because it almost feels like a reveal because the whole movie they've been discussing her boobs, and when the boobs are revealed, it's like, okay, so this is kind of like an unveiling in a way, and that's where it becomes kind of like, eh, like yeah, yeah, it isn't.

1:50:19 Like why yeah, I didn't know what the function of it was even supposed to have been. It just felt a little huh, I don't know, it felt edgy in a way that like, but it's like, I don't want to refer to like depicting breasts as edgy. It shouldn't be viewed that way. But again, it's it's I think that breasts are generally framed in a sexualized way in this movie sometimes, and I think more often than not with commentary. But in the case of this shot that you're talking about, Kaitlin, I don't think that, Like, what is the commentary? It seems like it's just doing it. Yeah.

1:50:53 Yeah, again, this is an underage teenager. To me, there's like no gray area there, Like we just should never see that on screen. Yeah, I agree.

1:51:04 I mean it's like, and I guess what I'm more talking about is like, because we know these are adult actors, what do we do with like implied age versus actor age and how do people internalize that? Like we've talked about this so much on the show. Yeah, I think we all agree that the shot is not necessary. But yeah, it is like a really complicated thing.

1:51:25 Yeah, does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?

1:51:29 I just wrote down Robert Roger Ebert made a comment on this movie that in Beverly Hill's money is not the only currency, and I thought, true, well observed King, well observed class and sex those are the two things that's happening in this movie.

1:51:49 When you accidentally said, Robert, just now, Robert Redford produced this movie because of like the Sun Dance connection. And Tamar Jenkins did she write the script? During this Sun Dance the Lab, Yeah, the Lab Writer's Program.

1:52:04 Yeah. Yeah, so rip Robert Redford, I know, r ip Roger Ebert.

1:52:10 Yeah, an Rip Alan and Carl Reiner and Jessica Walster and so many people gone too soon and I'll just put that in there and Robert anyways, Yes, it's okay. The movie does pass the Bechdel test. Yes, quite a bit.

1:52:30 Wow.

1:52:31 It is mostly between Vivian and Rita, and they're talking about all kinds of stuff. They're talking about their relationship to each other, and they're speaking in multiple languages, passing the Bechdel test.

1:52:43 Yes, And even though there's not a ton of those are the two main characters, and maybe kind of the Jessica Walter character as well, are the main women in the movie. I think that, you know whatever, the Bechdel test is a metric that we've talked about forever that, like the absence of women, I think is very intentional in this movie. I think it is like intended to further leave viv kind of out to see.

1:53:08 I agree. But even so, we have many conversations, yes, between women and girls. Vivian and Reader are talking about vibrators, breasts, tampons, bleaching their mustaches.

1:53:22 Mean a Savari's like, get a breast reduction.

1:53:27 Doris is like, here's an enormous pad.

1:53:31 Now that we're listing off the conversations, it doesn't sound as great, but they happen.

1:53:36 No, I'm like very I was coming into this being like, oh man, my movie's gonna fail. The beck built, but I'm very impressed by it.

1:53:44 Passes doesn't have to be a positive conversation to pass.

1:53:48 Yeah, I'm wow cool.

1:53:50 But what about the nipple scale though, the Bechdel Cast nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lene, Oh god, really tricky. I don't really know what to do here, because it's it is exploring, you know, what it is to be an adolescent girl, lower middle class, adolescent white girl in the LA area in the seventies, existing in a society that is constantly leering at women, objectifying women. Rape culture is abound, and how she grapples with that, and how she tries to again exercise some control over that or try to take some power back.

1:54:37 And so I think the movie is doing really interesting things regarding that. But for other things. As we've talked about. I don't think it's not clear enough where it lands, or there's not quite enough commentary on the situation to my satisfaction. So I think I'll give it a split down the middle two point five nipples, just to make things simple. I'm going to give them all to came Jenkins.

1:55:01 Is it Tamera?

1:55:02 I don't know.

1:55:03 I think it's tomorrow.

1:55:04 It is tomorrow, Tomorrow, wrong, Okay, I got scared tomorrow. Okay, I'm gonna I'm tempted to go three and a half, which maybe feels a little high, but I ugh, I don't know. I'm between a three and a three and a half. I think that there is a lot of stuff in this movie that feels unresolved, but never means spirited and never I feel and again this is me judging by vibes, but I do think that this this movie is searching for something, and maybe it's because it is like a first time filmmaker making a very personal story.

1:55:40 I will say the last scene in this movie, the voiceover, the way that the movie ends, I don't like, and it feels like it's kind of directly fighting with the really complicated themes that the movie is fighting, it's totally dissonant. The character of Rita never quite comes together for me. I feel like Rita and bodies that tonal dissonance pretty squarely for me. But I also think that it's finding these dynamics that I haven't quite seen before. I think, like, the lower middle class is such a weird specific thing that barely even exists now but did at one time, and is this kind of precarious, delusional place to live in that is captured really well in this movie. And the you know, coming of age and to assist women's

1:56:29 body is it is horrifying in a way that I think is also well captured without it becoming you know, probably this premise would be a horror movie now, and I don't. Like I'm very sick of any woman's body and any marginalized body becoming the side of horror, and this movie doesn't do that. It's just presenting like it just feels like shit to be told that you're doing it wrong all the time and also be constantly surprised by your body and have no one to turn to, Like, I think it captures that feeling very well. And yeah, we talked about all of it. I think I'm going to go three. I'm going to go three nips. I'll give one to Tamara Jenkins, one to Natasha Leone, and one to Rita Moreno, why the hell not?

1:57:17 Why the hell not? Maya? How about you?

1:57:21 Okay, maybe I'll deign to go three point five. I think, okay, I'm knocking the one point five off because I think that the movie has themes and plot that can't seem to agree with one another, and that sometimes the plot undermines the intended themes of the film, like you're saying, you're both saying, like it's kind of unresolved, it's searching, and sometimes that can lead to somewhat harmful depictions that the movie seems to be trying to do the opposite of, or trying to say something in the realm of the opposite.

1:57:54 But I do really appreciate, and what's always stuck struck me is where this movie is willing to go. I think it's pretty unprecedented in its depictions of female sexuality and underage sexuality, which is really complicated and really difficult to depict. And I always appreciate when a movie is willing to do something difficult and is willing to make me uncomfortable because that makes me think. And I think we've talked about this for at this point such a long so many hours that it's like, I appreciate one of movies. Yeah, willing to raise questions even though maybe it can't necessarily answer all of them. Sure, I also just I'm a little maybe I have a libertarian film spirit, but I love a movie that I'm like, don't tell

1:58:33 me what to do, don't tell me how to think. And I think I love a movie that doesn't tell me either of those things. And so this movie made us all Republicans and libertarians. This is a Republican libertarian zoom call.

1:58:46 Republicans love to be told how to think. Don't worry, they actually really love.

1:58:50 Yeah, but maybe I do too. Yeah, but I appreciate almost at the movie isn't trying to tell me what to think about what it's portraying, even though I think the ending is a little bit and I don't know, like a definitely like that. Half stars for Marissa Tome, who has my heart and I love her. I think she's so funny and weird in this even if her character is a hot mess.

1:59:12 Yes, well, thank you so much for joining us again. Come back anytime.

1:59:18 Thanks guys of course.

1:59:20 Real quick. Where can people follow you? Check out your stuff? Plug away?

1:59:25 You can find me on YouTube under the channel Broi Dationanel. You can find me on Instagram at Browie Underscore Dationel. I have a podcast called Rehash and I actually wrote a book about Eternal Sunshine at the Spotless Mind, which I've been really bad at promoting because I'm new to that. So yeah, I wrote that. You can find it wherever you get your books or on ig publishing dot com.

1:59:44 That's amazing, Thank you, And you can follow us on Instagram at Bechdel Cast. You can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every single month, always based on an incredible, amazing genius theme. And Jamie and our guest Maya had to leave right before this outro, so it's just me signing off goodbye.

2:00:17 The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by me Jamie Loftus and.

2:00:23 Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann and.

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