Speaker 1: On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the Bedel Cast. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Darante,
Speaker 1: my name is Jamie Loftus, and it's my birthday episode.
Speaker 1: It's your birthday episode, and so we're celebrating accordingly with
Speaker 1: one of your favorite movies, as is the birthday tradition
Speaker 1: in these your parts. Indeed, if you've never celebrated a
Speaker 1: birthday with us, we get to pick movies for our
Speaker 1: birthday episode. It's that simple. It's that simple. So we're
Speaker 1: doing little Miss Sunshine for my birthday this year. It's
Speaker 1: just the two of us. We're going to have just
Speaker 1: a romp of an episode, fun, flirty conversation about little
Speaker 1: Miss Sunshine. If you're new, first of all, congratulations for
Speaker 1: coming in on a birthday episode. What a treat for you. Seriously,
Speaker 1: the gift you can give yourself. But we are a
Speaker 1: feminist movie podcast that examines popular films using the Bechdel
Speaker 1: test as a jumping off point for discussion about how
Speaker 1: the movie portrays female identifying characters. Jamie, what on earth
Speaker 1: is the Bechtel test? Well, since it's your birthday, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll finally clue in on the little secret. Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 1: The Bechdel test is a media metric invented by cartoonist
Speaker 1: Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace test, that requires
Speaker 1: that a piece of media has the following two female
Speaker 1: identifying characters with names that talk to each other about
Speaker 1: something other than a male identified character for two lines
Speaker 1: of dialogue. Oh my goodness, it doesn't happen enough. What
Speaker 1: in this movie? Or most rude? How dare this? It's
Speaker 1: my birthday? All movies should pass the Bechtel test for
Speaker 1: your birthday. Indiana gents passes the Bechtel test. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just about one day a year. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: that that's the that's the Bechtel test. We pass it
Speaker 1: all the time, every freaking day. In fact, should we
Speaker 1: test it out right now? Should we? Should we pass it? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: Hey Jamie, what what was I expecting that response? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: my name is Caitlin. Thank you for asking. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know Jamie that I have poured
Speaker 1: myself a birthday Margharita. Wow, well it cheers to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much with my little glass of Francia
Speaker 1: over yonder on the zoom call. And I, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken, both my Margharita and your Franzia identify as women. Oh,
Speaker 1: she absolutely does. She can't stop talking about it all
Speaker 1: day long. I'm discussing women's issues with my various glasses
Speaker 1: of Zeah. Did you see that clip? And this I'm
Speaker 1: about to stop passing the Bechtel test, but did you
Speaker 1: see that clip from a recent episode of Rick and
Speaker 1: Morty that a bunch of people sent us. I bravely
Speaker 1: have never seen that show. They do a little Bechtel
Speaker 1: test bit, do they? Yeah? There are some wonderful um
Speaker 1: female writers and allies on that show, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled to hear it. Yeah, it was pretty a funny
Speaker 1: little clip, if I may say, you know, we we
Speaker 1: we hear at the Bechtel cast love a funny little clip.
Speaker 1: My feelings for Rick and Morty are complicated, but that's
Speaker 1: for It's simply not what the podcast is about. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't be happier about it. Yeah, yeah, it's my birthday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta steer the conversation away from Rick and Morty
Speaker 1: and steer different male helmed project. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: Little Miss Sunshine. Um, Jamie, what is your history and
Speaker 1: your relationship with this film? I am honestly so surprised
Speaker 1: that I had never seen this entire movie. But what
Speaker 1: I know, it's right up my alley. If I had
Speaker 1: seen it when it came out, which I was at
Speaker 1: the right age to see it. I truly don't understand
Speaker 1: how I missed this movie when it came out. I
Speaker 1: just never I don't know, I just haven't. I've seen
Speaker 1: clips of it. I basically knew what happened in the movie,
Speaker 1: but I had never seen the whole thing in one setting.
Speaker 1: So it was like truly a pleasure to sit down
Speaker 1: and watch it because it's a great movie. I really
Speaker 1: love it. It's so good. I know. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to also thank your birthday for finally
Speaker 1: bringing the whole of this movie into my life. It
Speaker 1: was I cried so many times during this movie. I
Speaker 1: got real emotional. It was who what a journey? I love?
Speaker 1: What's your what's your history? First? Of all my birthday
Speaker 1: says you're welcome. Um. And secondly, oh, we should do
Speaker 1: a little context I guess, which is that? So on
Speaker 1: the Matreon for Matrons, yes, I did a little poll,
Speaker 1: which I often do because, um, not only do we
Speaker 1: do a regular main feed birthday episode for each of us,
Speaker 1: we also dedicate each of our birthday months. Yes we
Speaker 1: here's the here's the fact. We like our birthdays. Okay,
Speaker 1: we simply like our birthdays and every year we make
Speaker 1: a big fucking deal about it. And that's we're within
Speaker 1: our rights to do. So, that's true. So what I
Speaker 1: did was on the Patreon aka Matreon, I did a
Speaker 1: little poll of a few of my favorite movies that
Speaker 1: we have not yet covered, and I was basically the
Speaker 1: top two most voted on movies we're going to be
Speaker 1: the two that we covered on the Matreon this month,
Speaker 1: and little Miss Sunshine blew the other ones out of
Speaker 1: the fucking water. It really did. And and like we
Speaker 1: sort of we sort of knew that we knew people
Speaker 1: wanted this episode, but that really it was an unprecedented response.
Speaker 1: I think the most overwhelming response in a history of
Speaker 1: the Matreon. I believe so because sometimes there will be
Speaker 1: a pretty even split between like a few movies, but
Speaker 1: a lot of Election two thousand going on in the Matreon.
Speaker 1: But not this time. Not this time, we had a
Speaker 1: clear winner. So we decided, hey, maybe we should move
Speaker 1: this up to the main feed and then do something
Speaker 1: else on the Matron. So that's what we did. So
Speaker 1: this was originally going to be a Matron Patreon episode,
Speaker 1: but I said, hey, it's my birthday. I can do
Speaker 1: what I want. I want to share the joy of
Speaker 1: little Miss Sunshine. I don't want to put this behind
Speaker 1: the pay well. It's available to everyone here, so okay,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the other two birthday movies you chose,
Speaker 1: it's a whole pile of man. It's Monty Python and
Speaker 1: Sean of the Dead. Yes, soups Supsies, listen, it's it's
Speaker 1: these are we're constantly you know. I'm very glad that
Speaker 1: little Miss Sunshine has mosied her way onto the main feed.
Speaker 1: It feels right. Yes. I also realized that those three movies,
Speaker 1: my three birthday picks, are all like journey from point
Speaker 1: A to point B movies, Like it's just all about
Speaker 1: like a quest I love, I love, A good quest
Speaker 1: to me to love it. I feel like quests and romps,
Speaker 1: if done well, go hand in hand. Really absolutely, yes,
Speaker 1: I love it. So that's just me anyway. So my
Speaker 1: history with the movie is it came out when I
Speaker 1: was twenty. I saw it in theaters. When it came out, like,
Speaker 1: I instantly loved it. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: these performances are incredible. I remember thinking that this family
Speaker 1: in the movie was the closest thing to my family
Speaker 1: that I had ever seen on screen. And they aren't
Speaker 1: even that close, but like, it was still the most
Speaker 1: accurate depiction of of my family that I had ever seen.
Speaker 1: I just loved how you know, realistic and genuine all
Speaker 1: the characters felt. I was obsessed with the score. Um.
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of my undergrad film school
Speaker 1: education when the movie came out, and every short film
Speaker 1: I made that year I used songs from this score
Speaker 1: in my student films. Very cool, no way, So this
Speaker 1: is this was one of my boyfriend's favorite movies and
Speaker 1: he I guess that there was am I don't even
Speaker 1: know which comic it was, but there was a comic
Speaker 1: that was using the score from this movie in their show,
Speaker 1: and my boyfriend, like I think was kind of being
Speaker 1: kind of like, you probably haven't heard of this, so
Speaker 1: you know, like, are you having trouble finding it? And
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, it's the score from Little Miss Sunshine.
Speaker 1: I've heard it. And the guy was like mortified because
Speaker 1: he thought he had like galaxy brained everybody and everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: we know what this is. It was a very popular movie. Unrelated.
Speaker 1: I want to see your student films from undergar. You
Speaker 1: don't want to see them place place for my birthday?
Speaker 1: I can wait. Oh okay, all right, I do have
Speaker 1: a few on DVD. I have a few. Um, they're
Speaker 1: so embarrassing I would be mortified. I've got some too,
Speaker 1: we can swap. Okay, all right, let's have a screening party.
Speaker 1: That will probably have to do again from Afar. Okay,
Speaker 1: sorry I interrupted. So you know the music and us
Speaker 1: the music. I was just obsessed with the movie. I
Speaker 1: I loved it. I bought it on DVD as soon
Speaker 1: as it came out. I watched it many many times.
Speaker 1: Absolutely loved it. But it wasn't It's not one that
Speaker 1: I've revisited in recent years. I'm not quite I don't
Speaker 1: know why, because I like It's not that I stopped
Speaker 1: loving it or anything like that. I just I don't
Speaker 1: know Paddington came along. You only have so much real
Speaker 1: estate for favorite right there. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: like I feel like the two thousands were a big
Speaker 1: year for four indie movies, but more so the indie
Speaker 1: movie aesthetic. And this movie is like Cannon. But I
Speaker 1: think I think that why I hadn't I didn't see
Speaker 1: this movie the year it came out was that my
Speaker 1: intro to movies that were sort of indie but kind
Speaker 1: of not was Juno, and so I think this just
Speaker 1: this movie came out a year too soon. Sure, but
Speaker 1: this was like this was like Golden Age, quirky white
Speaker 1: families on a mission to do various things. Two thousand six, Baby,
Speaker 1: we were all there. Should I do the recap and
Speaker 1: we'll go from there. Let's do it, Okay, Caitlin's birthday
Speaker 1: recap of Flow with Sunshine. Okay, so we meet Olive.
Speaker 1: That's Abigail Breslin. So cute. And if you're a listener
Speaker 1: of the podcast, you know that I'm not the biggest
Speaker 1: fan of many child actors, not the actors themselves, but
Speaker 1: their inability to be good actors, the acting style, acting
Speaker 1: let's blame it on the instructors. The acting style can
Speaker 1: be very grading, indeed, but Abigail Breslin is an incredible
Speaker 1: child actor. She's an natural and she's from a family
Speaker 1: of good child actors because her brother Spencer was on
Speaker 1: Even Stevens as Beans. Oh. Another show that I have
Speaker 1: not watched, Ground Floor Shaya. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was actually good, but I know that I watched it great.
Speaker 1: So all of is a seven year old girl who
Speaker 1: loves all things beauty pageants. We meet her dad, Richard
Speaker 1: played by Greg kinnear um. He is a motivational speaker
Speaker 1: with this nine step refused to lose program. He loves winners,
Speaker 1: he hates losers. Then we meet her brother Dwayne. That's
Speaker 1: Paul Dano. Oh boy. We learned that he has taken
Speaker 1: a vow of silence until he gets into the Air
Speaker 1: Force because he wants to fly jets. He's also obsessed
Speaker 1: with Nietzsche. Sure, I mean, you're just like, all right,
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be what a sixteen year old boy
Speaker 1: we all knew a version of the Paul Dano character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I'm thinking of a very specific kid in
Speaker 1: the percaution section. Okay, yeah, could just be the haircut.
Speaker 1: Not sure? Oh sure. Then we meet her grandpa played
Speaker 1: by Alan Arkin. Um. He is a heroin Addict. And
Speaker 1: then we meet her mom, Cheryl. That's Tony Collett, our queen.
Speaker 1: I know, I kind of forgot she was in this movie.
Speaker 1: When I think of this movie, I think Abigail Breslin
Speaker 1: and Alan Arkin and kind of Steve Carrell. So I
Speaker 1: was I I kind of half forgot she was in it,
Speaker 1: and then was thrilled, Oh my gosh, she's she's present.
Speaker 1: She's not as present as she should be, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. Well. I think that I sort of
Speaker 1: forgot she was in it because she doesn't have enough
Speaker 1: good scenes. But yes, um. So anyway, she is picking
Speaker 1: up her brother all of his uncle Frank played by
Speaker 1: Steve Carrell. She's picking him up from the hospital because
Speaker 1: he has just attempted suicide. They sit down to dinner
Speaker 1: together as a family. We realize that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of tension in this family. A lot of the people
Speaker 1: don't really like each other or are only pretending to
Speaker 1: like each other. Things like that, and then Olive listens
Speaker 1: to a message on the answering machine, saying that she
Speaker 1: has been given a spot in the Little Miss Sunshine
Speaker 1: pageant and she is very excited about this. The only
Speaker 1: trouble is that it's in Redondo Beach, California. Ever heard
Speaker 1: of it? And they live in New Mexico. Yes, New
Speaker 1: Mexico is the perfect place for this family. It really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and their house is so I've for some reason bout
Speaker 1: to New Mexico for various reasons many times. Wow, brag,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I've been Albuquerque five or six times.
Speaker 1: I went to a strip club in Albuquerque on my
Speaker 1: road on my road trip when I moved from Boston
Speaker 1: to l A. Albuquerque is in my experience, I mean limited,
Speaker 1: but also weirdly statistically a lot. Uh. It's a weird place.
Speaker 1: It's a weird place where weird things happen. I like
Speaker 1: that they live in Albuquerque, which I guess was not originally.
Speaker 1: This was originally supposed to be from I think Maryland
Speaker 1: to California. And they're like, um, what about Albuquerque. We
Speaker 1: can only afford to get you as far as New Mexico.
Speaker 1: But if it works perfectly, yeah, um my quick little
Speaker 1: because it's my birthday, I can do what I want.
Speaker 1: My quick little anecdote about my time in New Mexico
Speaker 1: was I was traveling across country. My best friend j
Speaker 1: T was my travel companion, and we were just kind
Speaker 1: of walking around the streets of Albuquerque and we happened
Speaker 1: upon this strip club and if you were a couple,
Speaker 1: you got in for free. So j T and I
Speaker 1: pretended to be a couple, and we really know this story.
Speaker 1: This is a good story. Thank you. We really over
Speaker 1: so hold it there. I feel like everyone in that
Speaker 1: position does. We were like, babe, babe, come on, let's
Speaker 1: go to the strip club. And then we were like
Speaker 1: making out with each other. Um, and it was really cool,
Speaker 1: really cool thing, and then we went into really cool.
Speaker 1: Well I'm congratulations, thank you so much. Um. It was,
Speaker 1: I will say weird. Albuquerque was the I think the
Speaker 1: last time I was there was in like the month
Speaker 1: of May, and it was so hot that I never
Speaker 1: want to know what it's like. They're in not May.
Speaker 1: To all our listeners in New Mexico, you're very brave,
Speaker 1: you are. It's simply too hot there. So we have
Speaker 1: to also take into account that every character in this
Speaker 1: film is constantly affected by heat. Stroke, So that just
Speaker 1: the fact that they're making irrational decisions at times, can
Speaker 1: we we can assume that their whole live has been
Speaker 1: at nine degrees and they're driving in this VW bus,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a moment, but I have
Speaker 1: to imagine the air conditioning was either non existent or
Speaker 1: not very good in that vehicle. So so they're sweating
Speaker 1: all over each other. It's it's no wonder things fall apart.
Speaker 1: Don't blame capitalism or the system. I think we can
Speaker 1: just blame the heat of New Mexico. Okay. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: this is the trip they have to make, and the
Speaker 1: pageant is two days away, and based on some specific circumstances,
Speaker 1: they realize that for this trip to work out, for
Speaker 1: them to be able to get all of to the
Speaker 1: pageant on time, the entire family has to go, and
Speaker 1: they are going to go in this old Volkswagen bus.
Speaker 1: So they set off. There's a scene in a diner
Speaker 1: where Olive and her dad talk about ice cream. We
Speaker 1: will discuss that later, an important scene. Then they just
Speaker 1: cover that the clutch in the bus is shot and
Speaker 1: they take it to like a mechanic and they find
Speaker 1: out they can still drive the vehicle as long as
Speaker 1: they get out and push to kind of skip over
Speaker 1: the first gear or two. Um quirky alert, Yeah it's true. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they set off again after having pushed the vehicle,
Speaker 1: but they soon have to pull over again because Richard
Speaker 1: gets a call from someone named Stan Grossman. It's Brian Cranston.
Speaker 1: It's Brian Cranston, as we will soon find out, he's
Speaker 1: the guy who's helping Richard to facilitate this book deal
Speaker 1: on his nine step program. And he learns that the
Speaker 1: deal didn't go through, and everyone's upset about this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and then they accidentally leave without Olive, but then they
Speaker 1: realize it, and then they swing back around and grab
Speaker 1: her in one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
Speaker 1: I remember that scene in the trailer of the movie.
Speaker 1: It's iconic. It does not end up being as big
Speaker 1: of a problem as the trailer would lead you to believe.
Speaker 1: They remember immediately and she is fine. But it is
Speaker 1: a fun scene indeed. Yes. So then that night they
Speaker 1: check into a motel and Richard and Cheryl fight a
Speaker 1: bunch and Richard is like, screwed this, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go fix it. So then he drives to Scott's Dale,
Speaker 1: where he knows Stan Grossman is at the moment and
Speaker 1: confronts him and then we're like, oh my gosh, yeah
Speaker 1: there's Brian Cranston. He's looking really like pretty fucking hot,
Speaker 1: and like in turn, because Brian Cranston like often alters
Speaker 1: himself physically, and you're kind of like, oh, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: kind of like a traditionally hot daddy. That was my
Speaker 1: takeaway from that. Okay, I think he's hot in this movie.
Speaker 1: That's great. Um, I did not have those same feelings.
Speaker 1: I was like, he's scruffy. He's if he wants to
Speaker 1: be scruffy, he can be scruffy, but not I mean
Speaker 1: seeing him, you know, all shaven off in his underwear
Speaker 1: selling drugs or something. I don't know, to watch the shows,
Speaker 1: it's more or less it. Um. So basically nothing gets
Speaker 1: resolved with this confrontation and Richard storms off, and then
Speaker 1: the following morning, Grandpa won't wake up, so they take
Speaker 1: him to the hospital where he is pronounced dead. But
Speaker 1: they can't leave him there, and they can't take him
Speaker 1: with them because the body can't cross state lines without
Speaker 1: a permit, right, So they decided to sneak him out
Speaker 1: of the hospital and head the rest of the way
Speaker 1: to Rodondo Beach with his dead body in their trunk.
Speaker 1: Great scene, hilarious, love it, um, And of course what
Speaker 1: happens next is they get pulled over because that's comedy writing, baby, Um.
Speaker 1: And the cop that pulls them over is Hank from
Speaker 1: Breaking Bad, and we're like, wait a minute, is everyone
Speaker 1: from Breaking Bad in this movie? That's out of my
Speaker 1: breaking bed breadth of knowledge. Well, he wasn't on the poster,
Speaker 1: So if he wasn't on the if he's not the
Speaker 1: two guys on the poster, I don't know who he is. Um.
Speaker 1: That sameness is weird. There is this is like more
Speaker 1: of a writing note or just like not even a
Speaker 1: writing note, but like the props should have been shifted differently.
Speaker 1: In that scene, there's a very clearly a corpse writ
Speaker 1: in front of the police officer and he's like, like,
Speaker 1: it's funny, but the places the props are put, You're
Speaker 1: just like he would see the corpse, he would see
Speaker 1: the corps. It is right there in front of him.
Speaker 1: This is script notes with Jamie. Oh cute. I guess
Speaker 1: the idea is that he's just so horny for porn
Speaker 1: that he doesn't notice the dead body right there in
Speaker 1: front of him. Also, uh, nothing bad happens when white
Speaker 1: guys are pulled over, right, yes, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: a white guy or even like a white person, like
Speaker 1: a white woman as well. Getting getting pulled over is
Speaker 1: more often played for comedy, and when it's a non
Speaker 1: white character that is like not the case as often,
Speaker 1: but like this is a very like it is ha
Speaker 1: ha funny. This man has a court like like Greg Canary.
Speaker 1: You know, even though his family is adorable, they are
Speaker 1: breaking the law. Uh, but you you never really think
Speaker 1: they're going to get like caught. And then it's like
Speaker 1: oh ha ha, the police officer's horny. Bye bye um.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's not even a critique of the
Speaker 1: movie as much as just like kind of a a
Speaker 1: trend that reflects an unfortunate reality because fuck the world. True.
Speaker 1: So anyways, the police officer poses no threat to them, surprised,
Speaker 1: so he lets them go. And now the family is
Speaker 1: only forty five minutes away from their destination, but the
Speaker 1: check in deadline is also in forty five minutes, so
Speaker 1: time is of the essen is here, but they have
Speaker 1: to pull over again because Dwayne has an outburst because
Speaker 1: he finds out that he's color blind and that means
Speaker 1: he will not be able to fly jets. No, Paul Daniel,
Speaker 1: Paul Daniel, you wanted to fly the plane so bad
Speaker 1: the I just need to like make a quick note
Speaker 1: just because I feel like this happens in movies a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, Paul Dano is like kind of a notoriously
Speaker 1: baby faced man. But he is twelve years younger than
Speaker 1: Tony Colette. Yes, and I would like to say I
Speaker 1: object he is not he is technically he's old enough
Speaker 1: to be Greg Kinnear's son. If Greg Kinnear had a
Speaker 1: son when he was twenty one years old, he is
Speaker 1: not old enough to be Tony Collette's son. Um, which
Speaker 1: is you know, I mean, she's she's a community what
Speaker 1: can't she do? But also I was like, wait a second, right,
Speaker 1: this Paul Dano business, You're just like, who do you
Speaker 1: think you're fully? Anyways, we don't know, maybe he's adopted.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Maybe she adopted him when she was
Speaker 1: twelve when oh right that house that makes sense? Well no,
Speaker 1: but if she like was like, maybe she adopted him
Speaker 1: when she was let's full blow Cannon. This if she
Speaker 1: adopted him when she was like twenty five or twenty
Speaker 1: six and he was already like ten years old, like
Speaker 1: if she adopted him when he was like not when
Speaker 1: he was an infant, when he was got older. But
Speaker 1: but that is in no way implied in Cannon. We're
Speaker 1: just there, like Tony Colette was twelve, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're relying on you, assuming that um Paul
Speaker 1: Dana was much younger than he actually is in this movie.
Speaker 1: He looks sixteen in this movie, like I think his
Speaker 1: character is supposed to be like sixteen or fifteen sixteen anyways, Yes,
Speaker 1: So he has an outburst and then another one of
Speaker 1: my favorite scenes follows where they don't know how to
Speaker 1: like comfort him or kind of get back on track
Speaker 1: on this trip. But then all of goes and just
Speaker 1: like puts her little arm around his and then he's
Speaker 1: like angel and then he's like, okay, let's go, because
Speaker 1: moments before this he was like, fuck you guys, you're
Speaker 1: not my family. I hate all of you, your losers.
Speaker 1: Just leave me here. I never want to see you again.
Speaker 1: But then he's like, oh way, all the she's the best.
Speaker 1: It's great. So they get back in the car again.
Speaker 1: They make it to the pageant, just in the nick
Speaker 1: of time. Then Olive prepares for the pageant, and it
Speaker 1: quickly becomes obvious to all of and her family that
Speaker 1: Olive isn't competing at quite the same level as the
Speaker 1: other contestants. And there's a whole conversation to be had
Speaker 1: about pageants and all of that, although the movie does
Speaker 1: not go super deep into it, which I which I
Speaker 1: kind of like, having never seen this movie all the
Speaker 1: way through, was kind of I mean, I guess I
Speaker 1: don't really feel one way or another about that choice,
Speaker 1: but I thought that the movie was going to be
Speaker 1: way more about the pageant than it ended up being.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty brief part. Yeah, it's mostly I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't even get there till the beginning of the
Speaker 1: third act. Um, what a screenwriting master's degree? Does she
Speaker 1: have one? Yes? I'd never bring it up though. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: the pageant isn't really the focus of the story really,
Speaker 1: But they arrive at the pageant, she goes on stage.
Speaker 1: You know, they're doing their you know, talents and things
Speaker 1: like that, and then Dwyane and Richard are like all
Speaker 1: of should not do this. Everyone is going to laugh
Speaker 1: at her, but then Cheryl is like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is what all of wants and we're gonna let her
Speaker 1: do it. We're gonna let her be her. And then
Speaker 1: you're like, I see where they're both coming from and
Speaker 1: now and then I did like the touch of like
Speaker 1: Cheryl does offer her a last minute out, like, don't
Speaker 1: have to do this if you don't want to. So
Speaker 1: it does. It is like clearer that that it's olives
Speaker 1: choice to do it like that, yes, indeed, and she
Speaker 1: does make the choice to go through with it. So
Speaker 1: it's time for all of to perform her talent and
Speaker 1: this is what she had been working on with Grandpa
Speaker 1: kind of in the back story. But we haven't seen
Speaker 1: this routine before. We the audience and the family, no
Speaker 1: one has seen it before. And it turns out to
Speaker 1: be this this as horny as his magazine. It's it's
Speaker 1: this creepy like stripped tease like dance to super Freak
Speaker 1: that Grandpa choreographed, and everyone is horrified, people start leaving.
Speaker 1: Her family is like, oh my god, what's happenings as
Speaker 1: her family? It's it is a funny it's so fun
Speaker 1: because her family is also fully horrified, but they're like,
Speaker 1: we've already, we've come such a long way. Grandpa died,
Speaker 1: we should just just let her do the weird day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just like, fuck it, we're here to support all
Speaker 1: of so can't yell at grandpa about it. He died.
Speaker 1: The pageant people are like, get her off the stage,
Speaker 1: and they're like no, and then like the dad tackles
Speaker 1: the m c of the pageant. Then the whole family
Speaker 1: gets on stage and starts stancing with her, and then
Speaker 1: so rompy. It's a good movie moment. I love it.
Speaker 1: But then we cut to them being reprimanded by like
Speaker 1: the hotel security and they're told that they are never
Speaker 1: allowed to enter all of into another pageant in the
Speaker 1: state of California again. And they're like, that's actually totally
Speaker 1: fine by us, because maybe beauty pageants suck. Uh, And
Speaker 1: then they do one last push to get the car going,
Speaker 1: and then they drive off back home and that's the
Speaker 1: end of the movie. It's fun. It's so fun. Let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and then we'll come right back
Speaker 1: for a birthday discussion in and we're back. Who oh,
Speaker 1: there's so much good stuff to talk about in this movie,
Speaker 1: would it makes sense to talk about the stuff that
Speaker 1: didn't hit for us quite as well to start? Because
Speaker 1: they're there, I feel like we're we're majority love for
Speaker 1: this movie. Yeah, I think that works. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that my one real gripe, if you can call it that.
Speaker 1: But like, if this were like truly, for me, the perfect,
Speaker 1: most perfectest movie to ever exist, you would get a
Speaker 1: more fleshed out specific arc for Tony Collette's character. That
Speaker 1: was like what I felt missing because because it's like there,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so rare to have like a family
Speaker 1: movie where you know deeply who every character is. And
Speaker 1: also everyone in the movie is played by like an
Speaker 1: incredible actor, Like no one has to pick up slack
Speaker 1: for anyone in this cast. It's so good that I
Speaker 1: like felt Tony Kulett not having a full arc, Like
Speaker 1: she's the only character that doesn't have a I mean,
Speaker 1: she does have an arc, but it's related to the
Speaker 1: people in her family. There's not really a piece of
Speaker 1: the story that's that's specific to her or her inner life.
Speaker 1: And I can see, you know, she feels the caretaking
Speaker 1: role in the family. She seems to be the glue
Speaker 1: of the family, trying to keep everyone in check, which
Speaker 1: is a common role for a mother to have. But
Speaker 1: it I mean, that doesn't mean that she doesn't think
Speaker 1: about other things and have other you know, thoughts, goals, ambitions, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is a movie that definitely
Speaker 1: has room for that, where we know exactly what everyone
Speaker 1: else in the family wants or wanted or what their
Speaker 1: struggle is. And it was just like not as clear
Speaker 1: other than keep the family together, right, especially because like
Speaker 1: she is established to be the breadwinner of the family,
Speaker 1: she is supporting them because there's a like a little
Speaker 1: exchange where Richard is like, we can't afford this trip,
Speaker 1: it'll eat into our seed money, and then Cheryl's like,
Speaker 1: well if I had any help bringing it in. So
Speaker 1: we know that she's a working mom. We know that
Speaker 1: she has a job and that she is earning the
Speaker 1: bulk of their income of this family. We never find
Speaker 1: out what her job is. No, we don't, Okay, I
Speaker 1: was making I was like, did I miss that? I
Speaker 1: don't think we find out what she did. We don't
Speaker 1: find out if she likes what she does. It's very
Speaker 1: possible she the job she's breadwinning with she loves she's
Speaker 1: been very sick, but like, we have no idea, We
Speaker 1: have no idea. The best I could get. And then
Speaker 1: this is purely a guess based on a few context clues,
Speaker 1: because when she's picking Frank up from the hospital, we
Speaker 1: can assume that she has left her job because she's
Speaker 1: still wearing a name tag. So she's wearing a name tag,
Speaker 1: and she is dressed in like business casual. So I
Speaker 1: was like, she probably works in like customer service, maybe
Speaker 1: at like a bank or something like that. I was,
Speaker 1: I was even like, maybe she's like a retail manager
Speaker 1: or something like But it's they don't tell us, And
Speaker 1: it seems like this movie went through a lot. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a version of the script or of the movie
Speaker 1: where you do know, But in this yeah, we we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what she does. We don't know what
Speaker 1: her relationship with her job is. We're only given insight
Speaker 1: to her as she relates to her family, which isn't
Speaker 1: true for basically everyone else in the family we know about.
Speaker 1: I mean, in Richard's case, it's all about his job,
Speaker 1: his nine step program, right, And for Paul Dana, we
Speaker 1: know what he wants to do and like we know
Speaker 1: how like he's got this like discipline complex and Ali
Speaker 1: wants the pageant, and you know, like Frank is recovering
Speaker 1: from this like romantic and professional failure. But like we
Speaker 1: just we just don't get that for these the number
Speaker 1: one proof scholar in the United States or is he
Speaker 1: number two? Not more? And it's killing him. We even
Speaker 1: know more. We even know about Grandpa's backstory. You know,
Speaker 1: he was at this he's a veteran. He's a veteran.
Speaker 1: He was at this like retirement home that he got
Speaker 1: kicked a lot of women. He sucks a lot of ladies,
Speaker 1: and he tells everyone that they should also do the
Speaker 1: same thing, and he has an addiction struggle. Like that's
Speaker 1: just yeah, that's I mean five times the amount that
Speaker 1: we know about Tony Colette and he dies halfway through, right,
Speaker 1: she gets more screen time than him, and we still
Speaker 1: know the least amount about her. But then I was like,
Speaker 1: so I kind of cataloged all of that, But then
Speaker 1: I thought about, Okay, yes, her role in the story
Speaker 1: is relegated to, you know, being the mom, and that's
Speaker 1: really all we know about her, whereas the predominantly male cast.
Speaker 1: We know a bunch of stuff about them, Specifically, they're
Speaker 1: like professional pursuits, but they're all kind of their failures
Speaker 1: at it in some way, um whereas she's a really
Speaker 1: really good mom. And I was like, Okay, well that's something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't but even but yeah, I know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that she could be a failure at something. We
Speaker 1: just don't know. Maybe she's maybe she is a huge failure.
Speaker 1: We have no way, and we just haven't let Tony
Speaker 1: Colette be a failure. Let Tony had failed for once
Speaker 1: she came. Yeah, but I don't know. I wonder because
Speaker 1: I mean, Michael, how do you say his latime aren't
Speaker 1: aren't Michael Michael Aren't. I respect his work a lot,
Speaker 1: and I'm a fan of most of it, even cars
Speaker 1: to uh An extremely car. I mean, that's the one
Speaker 1: thing where I kind of struggled to find an excuse
Speaker 1: for him. I feel I feel like that it is
Speaker 1: very possibly And I don't even really mean this as
Speaker 1: a severe criticism of him, but just a writer who
Speaker 1: doesn't have a ton of insight into how an adult
Speaker 1: woman thinks, right, and because he is the soul writer
Speaker 1: of the movie, you just kind of don't get a
Speaker 1: lot more than that, and then kind of I guess
Speaker 1: that same and again this is this is pure speculation,
Speaker 1: but I feel like that same kind of you know,
Speaker 1: soul credited male writer tour type that he sort of
Speaker 1: has become known as. You can sort of trace that
Speaker 1: to the like I was expecting going into this movie
Speaker 1: way more Tony Collette Abigail Breslin one on one or
Speaker 1: like connection than you get. You really don't get a
Speaker 1: lot with the two of them. You get like that
Speaker 1: moment towards the end, but I mean they're all together
Speaker 1: for most of the scenes, but her primary connection with
Speaker 1: an adult characters with her grandfather, not her mother, which
Speaker 1: is fine, you know, that's true of some families, but
Speaker 1: it also kind of stood out to me of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we really don't really know much about the mother daughter
Speaker 1: connection and they're the only two female characters those are.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was like truly like the only thing
Speaker 1: that it's not even I mean, I just I just
Speaker 1: missed it the same. It doesn't cheapen the product, but
Speaker 1: I just missed it. And I was as I was
Speaker 1: watching it this time around with a more kind of
Speaker 1: critical eye, I was trying to figure out who the
Speaker 1: movie frames as the protagonist. To me, it feels like
Speaker 1: there's no one character who is really it feels like
Speaker 1: more the family unit is the protagonist of this film
Speaker 1: rather than any one single character. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have all these different characters in theory contributing equally
Speaker 1: or like being equally important to the story as any
Speaker 1: other one character. So for that to be true of
Speaker 1: this narrative. But then to give especially Cheryl the mom character,
Speaker 1: the least amount of backstory, the least amount of interiority,
Speaker 1: no other thing we know about her besides her being
Speaker 1: you know, the supportive mom character, was just especially frustrating.
Speaker 1: I agree. So a little bit of context corner for
Speaker 1: this movie, um, I mean just the main context for
Speaker 1: the context quarter is just it took a very long
Speaker 1: time for this movie to be made. Um, it took
Speaker 1: a thing about seven years for the story being basically
Speaker 1: done to it coming out because I guess Michael Aren't
Speaker 1: was like at the time he wrote this, he was
Speaker 1: like Matthew Broderick's assistant, Like he had a real glow
Speaker 1: up narrative. Over time, he's a pretty interesting person. Um.
Speaker 1: But all that to say so Originally this movie ended
Speaker 1: up selling to I think it was like Focus Features.
Speaker 1: They sold the script somewhere, but studio interference got it
Speaker 1: just became too much. So the studio executive suggested that
Speaker 1: the protagonist shift to being Greg Kinnear, which is where
Speaker 1: you get that whole thing with him going to Scottsdale
Speaker 1: that originally wasn't there, but it was added. And then
Speaker 1: basically Michael Aren't was kind of a real one and
Speaker 1: was like, if you want to shift the focus to
Speaker 1: be about him, then I'm going to pull the project
Speaker 1: and take it somewhere else. So it's still about the family,
Speaker 1: but there are I mean, I would argue the movie
Speaker 1: leans a little heavy on Richard at times for sure,
Speaker 1: but then it's like it was interesting to learn, like
Speaker 1: why that was, yeah, his arc with the whole I mean,
Speaker 1: there are entire scenes dedicated to just his specific pursuit
Speaker 1: of this like book deal and his you know nine
Speaker 1: and he's always talking about the nine steps and like
Speaker 1: he's he's given a ton of dialogue about it. And
Speaker 1: because he's also kind of like a walking metaphor too,
Speaker 1: for like he's like the walking American dream metaphor character, right,
Speaker 1: which we should make a list of at some point, right,
Speaker 1: so he I would say his subplot is given more
Speaker 1: focused than I think any other subplot like him and
Speaker 1: all of basically get the two most plot impact. Well actually,
Speaker 1: but then it's like Grandpa dies. I don't know, all
Speaker 1: of isn't super the focus until they get to the
Speaker 1: pageant end, right, she she kind of I mean, she's there,
Speaker 1: but she's not involved for kind of stretches, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, it's but there. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: I guess that that's a lot of what the movie
Speaker 1: kind of like. Obviously, failure is a huge focus on
Speaker 1: what this movie tackles, and I think it does it
Speaker 1: like mostly in a pretty cool and like thoughtful way
Speaker 1: of how does failure affect people? And the majority of
Speaker 1: the movie does focus on how does failure affect men?
Speaker 1: And then at the end we sort of you sort
Speaker 1: of get a peek at like because it's made clear
Speaker 1: to the family and all of that, like who she
Speaker 1: is and her body and all these parts of her
Speaker 1: do not conform to the beauty pageant quote unquote rigid
Speaker 1: standard that she has somehow failed as well. And it's
Speaker 1: about this family coming to terms with their various failures,
Speaker 1: and like, what does failure even mean? Who decides whether
Speaker 1: you succeed or whether you fail? Every character sort of
Speaker 1: has a different definition of what it means to be
Speaker 1: quote a winner or a loser, and like, and what
Speaker 1: what is Tony Colletts, don't ask me. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we don't really know because we hear like
Speaker 1: Grandpa's Grandpa's like, you know, losers are just people who
Speaker 1: are so afraid of not winning that they don't even try.
Speaker 1: And he's like, but you're trying, You're gonna But even Grandpa,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's this family feels very real in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And so there are these moments
Speaker 1: where I feel like it's kind of I want to
Speaker 1: give Michael Aren't the benefit of the doubt and say
Speaker 1: it's kind of intentionally done. Of like, it seems like
Speaker 1: Grandpa is the only character that comes in having already
Speaker 1: kind of rejected the system and rejected this this idea
Speaker 1: of what is failure mean? What is success mean? To
Speaker 1: the point where he knows that he has an addiction problem,
Speaker 1: he doesn't care. He's like, I'm living my life, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, like which is a take on addiction that
Speaker 1: is wild uh true. But even he like, it's interesting
Speaker 1: that this movie kind of is pushed along by this
Speaker 1: pageant because you see Grandpa. Even though Grandpa is nice
Speaker 1: guy quote unquote, he also subtly like regulates Olive's body
Speaker 1: and behavior a little bit as well, because during the
Speaker 1: ice cream scene, I thought it was like such a
Speaker 1: I like watched that scene a couple of times just
Speaker 1: to make sure, because there's just so much going on
Speaker 1: in there. But in the ice cream scene, Grandpa is
Speaker 1: one of the driving forces that says like, no, I'll
Speaker 1: have eat ice cream, don't worry, and and his first
Speaker 1: reason for doing so as he says, I like a
Speaker 1: woman with some meat on her bones, which in the
Speaker 1: moment is like, oh, that's sweet, But then it also
Speaker 1: reinforces that men dictate how women should look, and if
Speaker 1: he likes how a woman looks, then how could it
Speaker 1: be wrong? And so it's like there's all these like
Speaker 1: little I don't know, it's really smart because that's that's
Speaker 1: what a grandpa would say. That's what a grandpa trying
Speaker 1: to make you feel better, would say something a little
Speaker 1: fucked up, right, You're just like, well, I see where
Speaker 1: he was going with it that, and it's like simple
Speaker 1: enough for her to understand, because again, she's only seven,
Speaker 1: so you know, there's all these sort of different things
Speaker 1: at play, but I do. Okay, So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the ice cream scene, and I think that
Speaker 1: will just sort of be maybe a part of the
Speaker 1: larger beauty standards. It's one of the scenes. Yes, So
Speaker 1: basically what happens is that they stopped for breakfast, I think,
Speaker 1: at a diner and Olive orders her waffles alamode, adorable, alamode.
Speaker 1: So she's gonna get ice cream. But before the ice
Speaker 1: cream comes, her dad, Richard is like, probably shouldn't have
Speaker 1: ordered ice cream because if you eat it, it's going
Speaker 1: to make you fat, and you should try and stay skinny.
Speaker 1: And then body positivity icon Cheryl all of his mom
Speaker 1: says it's okay to be skinny, and it's okay to
Speaker 1: be fat if that's what you want to be, whatever
Speaker 1: you want, it's okay. And then her dad is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know those Miss America pageant women, are they
Speaker 1: skinny or are they fat? And all of is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're skinny, and he's like, okay, well, it's
Speaker 1: probably because I don't eat a lot of ice cream.
Speaker 1: So this is the beginning of all of feeling really
Speaker 1: bad about herself, her body, her looks, because we see
Speaker 1: a few scenes after this where she asks Grandpa in
Speaker 1: the motel room. She says, you know, am I pretty
Speaker 1: and I wanna I just don't want to be a
Speaker 1: loser because daddy hates losers, and she starts crying and
Speaker 1: and there's that like devastating. That's the scene that was
Speaker 1: like the ice cream tangential scene that like hurt me
Speaker 1: the most because there's so many layers to it. Is
Speaker 1: when she goes to Miss California and it is like,
Speaker 1: do you eat ice cream? And Miss California says yes,
Speaker 1: but you're like no, she doesn't like you're There's so
Speaker 1: many layers to that where that brought to mind for
Speaker 1: me like Instagram Pizza Girl, where it's like a supermodel
Speaker 1: holding a slice of pizza being like, OMG, I love
Speaker 1: pizza so much, I'm literally addicted, which is like a
Speaker 1: larger entertainment trope of oh yeah, we're going to allow
Speaker 1: women to eat junk food as long as it's quirky,
Speaker 1: fun and they still look the way we want them
Speaker 1: to look, which is so that. I mean that scene
Speaker 1: was like triple devastating to me because I'm like, Miss
Speaker 1: California is I think, lying to her, but it's also
Speaker 1: like she seven and it helps. But then you're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, that's that's gonna suck in ten years when
Speaker 1: you find out Miss California was lying to you. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, maybe she does eat ice
Speaker 1: cream sometimes, but then she's also like, but my favorite
Speaker 1: is actually a frozen yogurt. I mean, who got I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the way that beauty pageant winners bodies are policed
Speaker 1: just like so well documented that I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know she eats ice cream. Maybe she has in the
Speaker 1: last year, I don't know, but yeah, that scene in
Speaker 1: the diner, I really it's it's hard to watch in
Speaker 1: a good way, and I like that, like the other
Speaker 1: three members of the family are like, we're not going
Speaker 1: with this, Like, uh, Richard is such a like flaccid patriarch,
Speaker 1: Like he's a failure as a patriarch as well, because
Speaker 1: no one listens to what he says. Everyone thinks he's
Speaker 1: an asshole, but he's in their families, so they deal
Speaker 1: with it. But I I really like the choice that,
Speaker 1: like Richard, I thought, really did think he was saying
Speaker 1: something helpful to his daughter, which I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of those aren't framed that way, and there should
Speaker 1: be in scenes that are like body shamy in that way,
Speaker 1: I feel like it is usually an easier writing choice
Speaker 1: is made where it's just like they're saying this to
Speaker 1: be mean, and they're saying this because they hate you.
Speaker 1: But and it's sometimes a character we don't really know
Speaker 1: that well, it's just like Bully number three, But this
Speaker 1: is like a character that we know, and you can
Speaker 1: tell he believes he is like doing the right thing
Speaker 1: by body shaming and like policing the food of his daughter,
Speaker 1: and he thinks that by policing his daughter's body, she
Speaker 1: will become a winner. And I think that that is
Speaker 1: like something that like real people can see in themselves
Speaker 1: and kind of I would imagine that some people specifically
Speaker 1: like men who make comments like that, because I've gotten
Speaker 1: comments like that before. I feel like, you know, many
Speaker 1: people in general have gotten comments like that before. People
Speaker 1: who make comments like that, I think think they're doing
Speaker 1: you a favor even though they're being a fucking asshole,
Speaker 1: And I've never seen a scene quite like it, where
Speaker 1: like it just ends up making a person who thinks
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing looks stupid and they don't
Speaker 1: get it totally. But then that comes back to, at
Speaker 1: least for me, the Cheryl character, and even in that
Speaker 1: scene when she does have a rebuttal to what Richard says,
Speaker 1: and like Richard's assholary where she's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can be skinny, you can be fat, you can be
Speaker 1: whatever you want to be. It's okay to be whatever
Speaker 1: you want. And so she has that little moment. But
Speaker 1: I feel like in a lot of the scenes where
Speaker 1: Richard is saying something really awful and toxic, which he
Speaker 1: does a lot. For example, he's like, don't apologize. It's
Speaker 1: a sign of weakness. Don't do anything unless you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna win at it. He also equates mental illness
Speaker 1: and suicidal ideation to being a loser and being a quitter. Um,
Speaker 1: so like he's saying all this horrible stuff all the time,
Speaker 1: and I feel like most of the time Cheryl is
Speaker 1: just like Richard stop or Richard not, like she's like
Speaker 1: she doesn't have I want her to have more intelligent
Speaker 1: and thoughtful kind of rebuttals to him, and she just
Speaker 1: isn't given that a lot of the time. I wish
Speaker 1: there was more of that that I kind of understood
Speaker 1: a little more than the not giving her a story thing.
Speaker 1: But I guess that's just like in my head, I
Speaker 1: was just I interpreted that as a her choosing her
Speaker 1: battles thing, because she does push when when she's like
Speaker 1: when his book deal falls through, she fucking gives it
Speaker 1: to him and it's like, you know, you're a failure,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So I sort of saw that as
Speaker 1: her I mean, kind of like playing off of the
Speaker 1: only things we really know about her is she's trying
Speaker 1: to keep the peace in the family and that she's
Speaker 1: kind of choosing her battles with her deeply insecure husband,
Speaker 1: who I'm assuming she loves because I cannot think of
Speaker 1: another reason to be with him. I have a feeling
Speaker 1: they're like on the brink of divorce. Like I hope
Speaker 1: that like six months after like the events of this story,
Speaker 1: they are like getting a divorce and that like all
Speaker 1: of has quit doing pageants. But over I feel like
Speaker 1: I hope for sure that this experience that she's just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do literally anything else. And but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Richard, I think it's a kind of true
Speaker 1: to life too, that it's like Richard definitely grows from
Speaker 1: this experience, and like in the space of a day,
Speaker 1: he has lost his father and his dream, so that
Speaker 1: that is you know, that's hard. But but but I
Speaker 1: like that the movie is kind to him in the
Speaker 1: general sense, but you don't get to feel like that
Speaker 1: he has like learned this great thing. Like you can
Speaker 1: picture this character just complaining about the events of this
Speaker 1: movie for the rest of his life and never really
Speaker 1: learning anything right, which also feels like, you know, people
Speaker 1: that pop up in one's life. We've got to take
Speaker 1: another quick break, but then we'll come right back Richard.
Speaker 1: It was I mean, I think that the movie maybe
Speaker 1: gives him a little bit too much real estate over
Speaker 1: the events of the movie. But I mean he he
Speaker 1: to me seemed like a pretty clear American dream fallacy
Speaker 1: type of character where total context corner. I guess that
Speaker 1: Michael aren't came up with the idea for this story's
Speaker 1: themes in the general sense when he saw a quote
Speaker 1: from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Um I think from the nineties where
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking to a group of teenagers and said,
Speaker 1: if there's one thing in this world I hate, it's losers.
Speaker 1: I despise them. And he kind of thought that that
Speaker 1: quote was gross, which it is, and built out this
Speaker 1: story around it. And I think, you know, Richard is
Speaker 1: the character that could be most clearly traced to that
Speaker 1: quote down to like the first line in the movie.
Speaker 1: And I like, it's you know what, Sometimes you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, we get it, the American dream doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: we get it. But but it is like it is
Speaker 1: kind of cool to see someone so firmly grasped to
Speaker 1: it and understand why, but also still not like him.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that's a really tight, like a
Speaker 1: really like thin line to walk where you don't totally
Speaker 1: hate Richard, but you mostly hate him, and but you
Speaker 1: also know that you're like, Okay, this is a lower
Speaker 1: class family. And the scam, the pyramid scheme of success
Speaker 1: is is really appealing because it gives you the illusion
Speaker 1: of control. It gives you the illusion of upward mobility
Speaker 1: that probably is not actually accessible in most cases because
Speaker 1: of the way that things are lined up. And he
Speaker 1: just has no understanding that the American dream is not
Speaker 1: actually accessible to him, and that it's even less accessible
Speaker 1: to his daughter. Like, he doesn't he just doesn't understand it.
Speaker 1: He's like a bootstraps guy. Yeah, I feel like he
Speaker 1: voted for Gary Johnson. You know, Oh my, that's my headcannon.
Speaker 1: He voted for Gary Johnson. I barely remember who that is.
Speaker 1: He wore khakis and he was a dumbass. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's where I'm pulling from. Yeah, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of those movies where a lot of the characters
Speaker 1: are not people to admire that they have a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, toxic views or issues that make them
Speaker 1: characters that you didn't you might not necessarily want to
Speaker 1: be friends with. But they're still they're written so well,
Speaker 1: they're written so realistically. The nuance that these characters are
Speaker 1: given make it so that you can't help but feel
Speaker 1: compelled by them, even if they're kind of shitty all around.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Grandpa character to like, not a
Speaker 1: great guy. He's not. He's not a good guy. He's
Speaker 1: you get the sense that he's a pretty heavy misogynist, homophobic,
Speaker 1: homophobic stuff Like, yep, he's grandpaing hard, yes, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I would hazard to guests that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have a grandpa like him, like out of touch,
Speaker 1: you know, racist, misogynist grandpa. But grandpa's ninety years old
Speaker 1: and woke. Just kidding. My grandpa's are dead and they
Speaker 1: died when I was five, so I have no idea
Speaker 1: what kind of people they were. Um, but I don't imagine.
Speaker 1: Probably not good. You're like, white grandpa, probably bad views.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's just math. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he he also suck. I mean that that was another
Speaker 1: character where I'm just like, is this movie cutting this
Speaker 1: guy too much? Like like he's not a good guy,
Speaker 1: but but he's Alan Arkin, so you're already like I
Speaker 1: love him. And then he and he and he loves
Speaker 1: his granddaughter, so we're like, yes, I love him, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, but that is kind of the beautiful part
Speaker 1: is every man in this story is narcissistic and self
Speaker 1: involved and fragile in very different ways, which is cool, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's you get a lot of I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different types of fragile masculinity on display here, right,
Speaker 1: And we've barely talked about Frank. Right, So Frank Steve Carrell,
Speaker 1: he's an academic. He's an academic. He has this kind
Speaker 1: of tragic backstory that he is open about. You know,
Speaker 1: he is okay to tell his seven year old niece
Speaker 1: about I was also having an inner battle in that scene.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, that's such a family to family thing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, my family for sure would not have told me.
Speaker 1: But then it's like, I don't know, it's a family
Speaker 1: to family thing. I don't know, right, I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear what what our listeners think. But for me, that
Speaker 1: scene where more or less he comes out to his
Speaker 1: niece by saying, yes, I fell in love with someone
Speaker 1: and I was very much in love with him, and
Speaker 1: all of goes him it was a boy. You fell
Speaker 1: in love with a boy And he's like, yes, I
Speaker 1: did very much. And she's like, oh, that's silly. But
Speaker 1: we don't get the sense that it's she's like hateful
Speaker 1: or anything like that. This is just the first time
Speaker 1: she's heard of a man being in love with another man.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, there's always the debate of like, well,
Speaker 1: how are we going to explain homosexuality to children? They
Speaker 1: are gonna get it right, and it's like turns out
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy, like they totally yeah, I thought it
Speaker 1: was thoughtfully done. And sure kids might not fully understand
Speaker 1: immediately or they might have a reaction like oh that's silly.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least at this time where there's not
Speaker 1: I mean, and this ties to media of like they're
Speaker 1: just is not a lot of queer media for children
Speaker 1: to even introduce, Like if you don't have a queer
Speaker 1: person in your immediate life as a kid, the media
Speaker 1: doesn't do much to educate on it. So right, and
Speaker 1: then like I mean they turn on the TV and
Speaker 1: the motel and like George W. Bush is giving a
Speaker 1: speech and we're like, oh right, this was during the
Speaker 1: Bush presidency. Yeah. I And and another just good writing
Speaker 1: as it pertains to I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: good writing going on with Frank just almost in every
Speaker 1: and and Steve Kroll is so good in this world,
Speaker 1: like he's so good. But the movie does not define
Speaker 1: Frank by his queerness, which I feel like is a
Speaker 1: bad writing choice that has made all the time. And
Speaker 1: it also doesn't explicitly tie his like suicidality to queerness,
Speaker 1: because I feel like there's it is also very common
Speaker 1: to other a queer character and and make that their
Speaker 1: entire arc has to do with their sexuality, and Frank's
Speaker 1: arc really doesn't have much to do with his sexuality.
Speaker 1: It has to do with a failed relationship, and it
Speaker 1: has to do with a professional failure, which I feel
Speaker 1: like it's just it's just like having an in queer
Speaker 1: character who has proceeded to be written like a person,
Speaker 1: which is like what everyone should do. I just I
Speaker 1: was really because in two thousands six you just never
Speaker 1: know what people are. But but it just it is
Speaker 1: like I thought, really, I thought was really well done.
Speaker 1: Of like Frank is not really uthered or defined by
Speaker 1: his sexuality in the way that I feel like a
Speaker 1: lesser two thousand six writer would do for sure for sure,
Speaker 1: And I like the Michael aren't rights different types of
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity or just like male fragility in general clashing
Speaker 1: with each other in such a good way, where like
Speaker 1: the way that Richard and Frank's fragility brushes against each
Speaker 1: other is so like, oh, I see it, like they
Speaker 1: have the same problem and they don't even realize it.
Speaker 1: Where where you know they think like this, other persons
Speaker 1: like such an asshole, and I don't like them, and like,
Speaker 1: I think that like it. It's sort of implied that
Speaker 1: Richard thinks that like Frank is like academic and he's
Speaker 1: just like pretentious, and Frank thinks that Richard is a fraud,
Speaker 1: and they're both kind of right, but it's like boils
Speaker 1: down to they both feel like professional failures, but they
Speaker 1: don't want to admit that to themselves, and therefore we'll
Speaker 1: never talk about it, and therefore they'll hate each other forever.
Speaker 1: And you're just like, oh, it's so I mean with
Speaker 1: people of all genders, where it's just like, oh, their enemies,
Speaker 1: but they don't understand they have the same They should
Speaker 1: just see you. They're pissed and I and I really
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty thoughtfully done how Frank's at
Speaker 1: the beginning of Frank's story is handled as well, where
Speaker 1: he um has tried to take his own life and
Speaker 1: survives and his sister Tony class his sister. Yes, they're
Speaker 1: they're sister and brother. I kept I was like, I
Speaker 1: kept forgetting who was related to but he and so
Speaker 1: so she goes to get him and brings him to
Speaker 1: the house and just the way that just like pulling
Speaker 1: from my own experience, it is kind of like fun
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not funny, but in a way, it
Speaker 1: kind of is. Where it's like when you bring someone
Speaker 1: home who has attempted to take their own life, they
Speaker 1: don't want to like be with you, and they don't
Speaker 1: want to like sit with an open door, and like
Speaker 1: you're like sister's house smells weird and just it's just
Speaker 1: like the whole situation sucks and no one knows how
Speaker 1: to deal with it. And it was not I mean,
Speaker 1: and I'm in no way implying this is funny, but
Speaker 1: just like based on my own experience of coming home
Speaker 1: after something like that and like being left in like
Speaker 1: rooms with the door opened and my dad would kind
Speaker 1: of just walk in and be like like, just like
Speaker 1: no one really knows how to handle And I thought
Speaker 1: that that situation was handled in a way that wasn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it's just like it isn't tragedy porn.
Speaker 1: It's dealt with in a grounded way, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the family is doing their best. They they
Speaker 1: are not equipped to handle this. I also thought it
Speaker 1: was really thoughtful touch how they added in that throw
Speaker 1: a line of dialogue about insurance. Yes, how they said, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd love to keep him longer, but we
Speaker 1: can't because of insurance, which happens in these situations more
Speaker 1: often than not. And yeah, I just thought that that
Speaker 1: whole storyline was dealt with very well. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't get me started on health care, health, insurance,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Listen to Sludge for that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was I was really impressed by at this time
Speaker 1: in cinema history and basically throughout all time, you know,
Speaker 1: mental illness. Mental health was not handled well in most media.
Speaker 1: It was still deeply, deeply stigmatized. Maybe I'm missing something,
Speaker 1: but it didn't feel to me as though anything about
Speaker 1: Frank's mental illness. To me, it felt like there was
Speaker 1: no real stigma that the movie subscribes to maybe certain characters,
Speaker 1: namely who can't deal and doesn't that man needs therapy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just yeah, which, But I feel like he's reflecting like
Speaker 1: the opinion of okay about to get Galaxy brand, the
Speaker 1: opinion of capitalism, Like he's just regurgitating the American dream
Speaker 1: take on struggling with mental illness, which is that it's
Speaker 1: unproductive and therefore for losers it's not serving capitalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and just like
Speaker 1: deal with it exactly. Yeah, so stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was really like, no one knows how
Speaker 1: to handle that situation. No family is going to deal
Speaker 1: with it perfectly, but everyone is trying. I like, I
Speaker 1: really liked that quick scene with Paul Dano and Steve
Speaker 1: Carell where he writes on his notepad like, please don't
Speaker 1: kill yourself because it's again, it's just like the specifics
Speaker 1: of that situation. It's like you can tell Paul, I know,
Speaker 1: was like, I love my uncle and I don't want
Speaker 1: him to die. Also, that would be a very stressful
Speaker 1: thing to happen in my room. Like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's really well done. I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's so rare to see a situation like that. There
Speaker 1: are a number of times in this movie where I
Speaker 1: thought about the royal Ton in Bombs and how much
Speaker 1: better this movie is than The royal Ton in Bombs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because that's another movie that has a long
Speaker 1: opening montage where you meet the whole family and you
Speaker 1: have a character who attempts to take their own life,
Speaker 1: and just I feel like everything that The Royal Town
Speaker 1: of Bombs does well, almost everything, because we still need,
Speaker 1: as we said, more Tony Collette information. Uh but but
Speaker 1: like the reyal Ton of Moms are a huge thing
Speaker 1: with that opening montage was that we only find out
Speaker 1: about the female characters as they relate to the male characters.
Speaker 1: And the way that the suicide plot line was handled
Speaker 1: in that movie was pretty atrocious. And you see similar
Speaker 1: themes pop up in this movie that they that is
Speaker 1: just done far more thoughtfully. And yeah, I agree a
Speaker 1: couple other just kind of quick things that I had.
Speaker 1: Um Well, I guess I want to talk about more
Speaker 1: about just the idea of pageants, beauty pageants, all that
Speaker 1: pageant movies. We have almost all of them pretty more
Speaker 1: or less. We have done Miss Congeniality on the main feed,
Speaker 1: and then let's not forget about Pigentials, which we did
Speaker 1: a few januaries ago and we covered dropped out Gorgeous
Speaker 1: and Dumpling Too great movies. There's a lot of It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it's bizarre because we we don't
Speaker 1: really funk with pageants, but we generally funk with pageant movies, right,
Speaker 1: but only because they're usually making a larger point. Yes,
Speaker 1: And like you already mentioned, the pageant isn't necessarily really
Speaker 1: what this movie is about. It's more about this family
Speaker 1: and the family dynamics and them having to get through
Speaker 1: a bunch of kind of traumatic things that happened to
Speaker 1: several of them over the course of this trip to
Speaker 1: a pageant. And then the story does conclude with all
Speaker 1: of competing and stuff like that, and and then there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of examination of like, well, it's pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up that we have little girls compete in these pageants.
Speaker 1: We are encouraging, like the sexualization of children in in
Speaker 1: these like children pageants. You know, I don't think again,
Speaker 1: the movie goes into great detail about I think it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It doesn't say a ton, but I feel
Speaker 1: like it says enough. Yeah, it's not subtle. It's definitely
Speaker 1: not subtle, but it's not overbearing. It's not like the
Speaker 1: The agenda of this movie isn't too indict or like
Speaker 1: heavily critique pageant culture. There's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: There's like a little sliver of it, especially most notably
Speaker 1: when Dwayne and Richard go to Eryl backstage and they're
Speaker 1: like they basically said, like, we're not in Kansas anymore.
Speaker 1: This is a whole different ballgame, olive, Like everyone is
Speaker 1: going to laugh and ridicule people have like remortgaged their
Speaker 1: house to be here, like yeah, like, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting that they're they're I guess all the
Speaker 1: girls in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant are actual pageant kids. Yes,
Speaker 1: I read that as well, and that they're like I guess,
Speaker 1: And I think this was like a kind of a
Speaker 1: smart thing to do that the pageant parents who came
Speaker 1: with with the girls were asked what do you think
Speaker 1: and they were like, well, it's a little over the top,
Speaker 1: but not too much. And you're like, oh boy, but
Speaker 1: I've but I've also seen toddlers and tierras, So I
Speaker 1: don't ask me why. I got sick once and I
Speaker 1: watched a lot of it. I embarrassingly watched several, many,
Speaker 1: many episodes of Here comes Sonny Boo Boo. So oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot that that was where Honey Boo Boo came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. And I think she was a Tyler's
Speaker 1: and tiarist kids. Well, I'm glad that we at least
Speaker 1: we very rarely have like an overlapping guilty pleasure. That's
Speaker 1: a funny yeah. So bottom line is, like I mean,
Speaker 1: we could have a whole discussion which I think we've
Speaker 1: already had on various episodes of the podcast, just generally
Speaker 1: speaking about like maybe beauty pageants aren't that good because
Speaker 1: you know, there's this emphasis on adhering to Western beauty
Speaker 1: standards and all those problems that we foist upon women
Speaker 1: and young girls like from a very early age, like
Speaker 1: and it's it's the same thing of Richard being like
Speaker 1: you have to be skinny, don't eat ice cream. We
Speaker 1: want you to stay skinny, and like just all these
Speaker 1: all these expectations that we foist upon women and girls
Speaker 1: about like the your beauty is your most important quality
Speaker 1: and let's make a whole industry around exploiting that via
Speaker 1: beauty pageants, and like how fucked up all of that is.
Speaker 1: But then also like feminism says like you can do
Speaker 1: whatever you want. So if you want to compute beauty pageants,
Speaker 1: like if you that there have been like I don't beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's like a very complicated discussion that we've had in
Speaker 1: various capacities. I'm not wholesale condemning them, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, there there are different ways to look at
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not a fan, but I'm like also not
Speaker 1: petitioning to have them shut down. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: this this movie is not, you know, making a new
Speaker 1: point about beauty pageants, but but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: necessarily trying to. And and I think it is kind
Speaker 1: of nice that the movie does firmly come down not
Speaker 1: on the side of it, which is kind of nice
Speaker 1: because that's like a point that like Miss Congeniality doesn't
Speaker 1: get there. She wins, you know, Miss Congeniality, and she's like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this was nice. I think I'll stay hot, you know,
Speaker 1: like that that whole thing. So it's like at least
Speaker 1: little Miss Sunshine, you know, firmly it was like we
Speaker 1: don't funk with this, which is which is refreshing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think like generally, for the time we spend there,
Speaker 1: the points that are made are good ones. There was
Speaker 1: did you see the behind the scenes not that Abigail
Speaker 1: breslin Um wore like a padded suit to play this character.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that is a thing that took place. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I guess that the olive character was described in the
Speaker 1: script as quote Plump and that Abigail Breslin was asked
Speaker 1: to wear a padded suit throughout filming. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: will say I think that that's a bit weird. I
Speaker 1: think that that's weird in general when a woman is
Speaker 1: asked to wear a padded suit that does not have
Speaker 1: to do with like needing to appear pregnant for a role,
Speaker 1: I generally don't like it right that to me, the
Speaker 1: idea is like, if your story calls for a character
Speaker 1: that is plus size, then cast an actor who fits
Speaker 1: that description, Which is not a slight against Abigail Breslin
Speaker 1: in anyway. She's you know, sure every small child doing
Speaker 1: a great job in this movie. But I didn't think
Speaker 1: that that was kind of a you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that would currently happen. Sure so often the
Speaker 1: comments game, I don't love it. Uh, here's another thing
Speaker 1: I didn't love again in this movie, where I do
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to love. Um, it's a very
Speaker 1: white movie, as as per most movies. I think the
Speaker 1: only woman of color we meet is Linda, the bereavement
Speaker 1: liaison or whatever her job title is. To me, she
Speaker 1: felt as though she was presented as a bit of
Speaker 1: a like bitchy obs to goal type because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so her that the character has to sneak
Speaker 1: past to get dead Grandpa out of the hospital, and
Speaker 1: she's kind of presented as an obstacle and things kind
Speaker 1: of there's a conversation between her and Richard that quickly escalates,
Speaker 1: and to me, it's because like he's being unreasonable and
Speaker 1: like trying to beat this like entitled white guy who
Speaker 1: wants to bend the rules and thinks the rules don't
Speaker 1: apply to him, and she's like, no, that's not how
Speaker 1: we do things. There are you know, rules and laws
Speaker 1: we have to abide by. Um. So I'm like on
Speaker 1: her side during that scene, but I think the movie
Speaker 1: frames her a bit more again as an obstacle. I
Speaker 1: agree with that you're saying. I just think that that's
Speaker 1: maybe not to get to the great scene where they
Speaker 1: smuggle a corpse out of the hospital. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's not the best writing in the movie. To like,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's almost a little bit of like, alright,
Speaker 1: we can't just have them take a corpse. We have
Speaker 1: to do something. And so I feel like the way
Speaker 1: that her character acts and I will. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: curious if that part was written with a gender in
Speaker 1: mind when it was done. I could see that part
Speaker 1: being played by almost anybody. But the way that that
Speaker 1: character talks to someone whose father has just died doesn't
Speaker 1: seem very realistic. Where I agree that Richard is being entitled,
Speaker 1: but like, I mean, that's not how people talk to
Speaker 1: someone who just found out that their father overdosed on heroin.
Speaker 1: Like so in general, I was like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think that that scene was in a very grounded movie.
Speaker 1: That that scene and the cops scene, you're just like,
Speaker 1: all right, I don't really, this doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: person who exists, but whatever. Yeah, but I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an extremely white movie. We're spending the whole
Speaker 1: time with this white family and then which just leads
Speaker 1: to the only people of color being you know, in
Speaker 1: very small roles or used you know, in the background,
Speaker 1: where there are some girls of color in the pageant,
Speaker 1: but we don't know who they are, we don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. They're just you know, and there's people
Speaker 1: at the page but it's just background, which is also
Speaker 1: kind of inherent to this like wave of India aesthetic
Speaker 1: movies that came out in the two thousand's. It's all
Speaker 1: about white families, you know. And I think that the
Speaker 1: revelation was that there was acoustic music and that the
Speaker 1: white families weren't always rich. But it wasn't like and
Speaker 1: the movies were too long. Not this one, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them. So it was just kind of like
Speaker 1: that thing we talked about all the time where it's
Speaker 1: like the smallest step out of the norm for a
Speaker 1: comedy and they're like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, the
Speaker 1: white people are they're not millionaires, and we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be like we did it, you know. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: for sure. Oh I'm forgetting about Miss California. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Miss California Frozen Yogurt icon Miss California um is also
Speaker 1: a woman of Color miss icon and Froyo Officion Froyo
Speaker 1: icon um also feminist icon. Kirby the guy who puts
Speaker 1: all of in the system after they were four minutes
Speaker 1: late to register. He was I also think that they
Speaker 1: made the woman, I don't remember the name of the character,
Speaker 1: the woman who ran the pageant. I'm saying pageant official Jenkins.
Speaker 1: She was written full shrew. Uh. There was No, that
Speaker 1: was another character that you're just like, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: I under we only have twenty minutes left, but this
Speaker 1: is a bit, you know. But then to kind of
Speaker 1: contrast that, we get feminist icon stage manager lady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she cracked. She was like, yeah, maybe pageants aren't good. Um,
Speaker 1: one last thing I wanted to just touch on, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I like, this is a thing
Speaker 1: I have fixated on. So the course of the podcast,
Speaker 1: but I'm always noticing women's relationship to cars and driving. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had this too. Yes, So there is believe it
Speaker 1: or not, folks, there's a stereotype out there on the
Speaker 1: streets that women be bad at driving. It comes from me,
Speaker 1: It comes if you. You invented, started it, you started.
Speaker 1: I suck a driver. I not to brag or anything.
Speaker 1: Good driver, but I'm an incredible driver, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and I have at different points in my life made
Speaker 1: a career out of it. Hooters delivery girl. Yes, I
Speaker 1: was a Hooters delivery driver. Anyway, So we see the
Speaker 1: mom not being able to drive these stick shift But okay,
Speaker 1: that didn't super bug me because while the car was broken,
Speaker 1: the car was broken. She's willing to try. We also
Speaker 1: don't see like the version of this stereotype where she
Speaker 1: is like driving super recklessly and like causing like a
Speaker 1: trail of destruction in her path or anything like that,
Speaker 1: because we see that in a few movies where like
Speaker 1: some like this oblivious like a woman is just like
Speaker 1: oblivious when she's behind the wheel of a car and
Speaker 1: it's just and clueless. Not that sharing right right. I
Speaker 1: was like wait what yeah, and clueless? Um we get
Speaker 1: something like that in Cameron Diaz's character in My Best Wedding,
Speaker 1: Like we see this um now and again, So we
Speaker 1: don't see that version of this stereotype. And also like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I tried to learn how to drive
Speaker 1: a stick shift must also could not learn. So I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: it is like one of the few things we learned
Speaker 1: about her character is that she can't drive a stick
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh god, the fact that we have
Speaker 1: to cling to that piece of information. But that also
Speaker 1: I kind of like how that ended up too, where
Speaker 1: like she makes an attempt to drive and the clutch
Speaker 1: isn't working, and like Richard just like, well you just
Speaker 1: go to like press down on the clutch and you
Speaker 1: just got it. Has to be on the floor, and
Speaker 1: she's like, it is on the floor, right, And then
Speaker 1: when they switch and he's trying it, she's like just
Speaker 1: pushed down hard, like she's sort of and then like earlier,
Speaker 1: she's like, you know, I should try I can drive.
Speaker 1: I'll try to drive. I gotta learn. You know you're
Speaker 1: doing it. How hard can it be to Richard, who
Speaker 1: she clearly hates, and I can't wait for them to
Speaker 1: get divorced the end? Yeah, yeah, I just I mean
Speaker 1: more Tony Colette. That's just it's it's that simple, more
Speaker 1: Tony Culette. And we haven't really talked that much about
Speaker 1: Paul Daniel. I like, I don't know, I like his character.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a good expansion on the like
Speaker 1: broody teen boy character in a way that I guess
Speaker 1: this just applies to every character, like every character no
Speaker 1: matter how because it's like to an extent, Dwayne on
Speaker 1: paper sounds a little silly where he is very determined
Speaker 1: to get into the Air Force Academy, and you can
Speaker 1: also sort of see in that way is that his
Speaker 1: dad's logic has affected him of like he is trying
Speaker 1: to be a winner. He doesn't like his dad, but
Speaker 1: it's still you know, parents funk with your head. It's
Speaker 1: just Cannon. I also think I think he's his stepdad.
Speaker 1: I think his step sorry, because Tony Clue had a
Speaker 1: baby when she was twelve and then and then Greg
Speaker 1: Kunner came into her life. But either way, you can
Speaker 1: see that Richard's win or loser mentality has also kind
Speaker 1: of taken seed in a different way with Dwayne, even
Speaker 1: though even though he doesn't like him, that it's just
Speaker 1: such a pervasive mentality and has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with his masculinity. And I just like every character in
Speaker 1: this family is dealt with with like really thoughtful empathy,
Speaker 1: so that things that I feel like a lesser writer
Speaker 1: and lesser movie could easily make that Paul Dano character
Speaker 1: seemed really silly, but it doesn't. I don't know, just
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's true with almost every character of
Speaker 1: like you could make them into a caricature, or you
Speaker 1: could like really give some insight into where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: And it gets to that point where it's like that
Speaker 1: set scene where he finds out he's color blind is devastating.
Speaker 1: It's so it's so sad, and I like that even
Speaker 1: when he basically, Paul Dano gets the thesis statement of
Speaker 1: the movie where he says, like, you know, fuck beauty pageants.
Speaker 1: Life is like one beauty contest after another, which is
Speaker 1: even that Like he's right, and it's the thesis statement
Speaker 1: of the movie. But it's so like teen boy with
Speaker 1: a bowl cut, like he's just like it's such a man,
Speaker 1: this sucks. And then you're just like, oh, shut up,
Speaker 1: like you're right, but shut up. Like it's just so
Speaker 1: well written. I love it. It's such a like a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boy way of saying that. He just
Speaker 1: he says it like he's the first person to have
Speaker 1: ever thought of it, Like it's just funny. Also like
Speaker 1: I don't know if you had this thought, but I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, man, Like if this character like starts
Speaker 1: hanging out with like the wrong group of friends, or
Speaker 1: if he like discovers Reddit he is an insuct, like
Speaker 1: he will become an insult. Yeah he really. I hope that.
Speaker 1: I hope I feel like he like the one like
Speaker 1: the family relationship that I think will improve from this
Speaker 1: movie is that like Frank and Dwayne will become like close. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that Frank will be a good I think
Speaker 1: that they have a lot to learn from each other,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy for them. I hope they go they
Speaker 1: go on a different road trip. Maybe Dwayne will also
Speaker 1: end up studying Proust. He I mean, he's already into Nietzsche. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those guys, you're like that, that's all the same guy
Speaker 1: basically boring old guy as a job. European writers from
Speaker 1: a different century than the one we're in. It seems
Speaker 1: like they make sense as relatives. Yeah, me with do
Speaker 1: you have anything else? I also didn't know. So Michael Aren't,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just he is interesting to me because he's, uh,
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with feminism. This is just
Speaker 1: a like interesting. There is like such a well tracked
Speaker 1: pattern of like screenwriter writing one really well received good
Speaker 1: thing and then being offered Infinity money and they're then
Speaker 1: they're writing blockbusters for the rest of their career. Where
Speaker 1: Michael Aren't wrote Little Miss Sunshine. That was like his
Speaker 1: first major release. It was a huge success and his
Speaker 1: biggest writer writing credits since then Our Toy Story three.
Speaker 1: He was the one that put Woody in the Incinerator.
Speaker 1: He is a credited writer on The Force Awakens, and
Speaker 1: so he's only really done like big movie since then,
Speaker 1: and he'll sometimes rewrite big movies and the Hunger Games,
Speaker 1: Catching Fire hung like really a brave He did some
Speaker 1: work on Brave. Oh wow, how how brave of him.
Speaker 1: He's very in with the Pixar's crew, it would seem,
Speaker 1: and he's done. He the one thing. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: done some indie stuff since then. But it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope that here's Michael Aren't. If you're listening, he's
Speaker 1: our biggest fan. It seems like you have enough money
Speaker 1: for now, and uh, make another fun movie for us
Speaker 1: to watch. Thanks. Yes, Well that brings us to the
Speaker 1: the directors, which This movie was co directed by a woman,
Speaker 1: Valerie Ferris, along with Jonathan Dayton. They are a husband
Speaker 1: wife directing duo. This was their first feature. They had
Speaker 1: made a career of directing I think primarily music videos
Speaker 1: before this. They did that like iconic Smashing Pumpkins Tonight
Speaker 1: Tonight video. They directed a lot of Mr Shell. They're
Speaker 1: they're cool. They did that news show where where I
Speaker 1: mean the prem I didn't watch the show, and the
Speaker 1: premise of it is annoying to me, but maybe it's good.
Speaker 1: The new Netflix show where Paul Rudd is Twins, Oh,
Speaker 1: is not even really on my radar. So that's I
Speaker 1: think that that's fine. I don't know who. You never
Speaker 1: know with these things. Um, but and we've kind of
Speaker 1: touched on this before where it's like, Okay, if a
Speaker 1: woman does get to like write or direct or code
Speaker 1: direct or co write a movie, it's usually because like
Speaker 1: she's a part of like a husband wife writing or
Speaker 1: directing duo. Because I feel like, you know, the system
Speaker 1: is such that no one wants to take a chance
Speaker 1: on just a like one woman. Without a partner as
Speaker 1: your creative partner, it's much less likely that anyone will
Speaker 1: take a chance on you and hire you. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: has been true since the beginning of movies, where like
Speaker 1: some of the first female screenwriters, like they were extremely talented,
Speaker 1: but they were able to get in on the ground
Speaker 1: floor because of a position that their spouse held. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't know what the story is with
Speaker 1: this directing couple. They're great, Like I like their stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe I mean, maybe they don't want to work separately.
Speaker 1: I would be I would be interested to see. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's hard. I mean it's like, yeah, we just
Speaker 1: don't know what her exact input was, but a Valerie
Speaker 1: come on the cast and let us know. She's also
Speaker 1: our biggest fan, and she's our other biggest fans, so
Speaker 1: she's listening, so she's she's everyone involved in this movie listens.
Speaker 1: Paul Danna used to come to the coffee shop that
Speaker 1: I lived near. Oh no way. Yeah, And one time
Speaker 1: Melissa Lozada Aliva, friend of the cast, was staying with
Speaker 1: me and he she was like reading a book because
Speaker 1: she's like that, she's reading a book at the coffee
Speaker 1: shop whatever books, and and then Paul Dana was like,
Speaker 1: that book's good, and she was like he was very exciting.
Speaker 1: And then she ran back to my house and was like,
Speaker 1: Paul Danna read a book. It was really really exciting stuff. Incredible,
Speaker 1: Thank you. But yeah, I think that's all I had.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything else? I think that's everything? Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I um, I really like this movie. But does it
Speaker 1: pass the Betel test? It does, again, not as much
Speaker 1: as you wouldn't necessarily think. I think it goes back
Speaker 1: to the I want a stronger relationship between Olive and
Speaker 1: Cheryl thing, and you do get some tender moments, you know,
Speaker 1: you get that moment when they're in the hospital and
Speaker 1: you know, she gives this whole speech about like we're
Speaker 1: going to have a family meaning and you know, we
Speaker 1: have to stick together and I just love you guys
Speaker 1: so much. And then we get the Dwayne is like
Speaker 1: writes on his little you know, notepad, like go hug mom,
Speaker 1: I know, which is such a sweet older sibling thing
Speaker 1: to do to You're just like, but what I really
Speaker 1: want is more screen time between Olive and Cheryl and
Speaker 1: for that relationship to be explored more, and for Cheryl
Speaker 1: as a character to just be given more of an
Speaker 1: interior life. And because there was room dedicated to all
Speaker 1: the other characters at length. At length, I mean, it
Speaker 1: would have been a real, like, I mean, a super
Speaker 1: issue if we were not getting enough Olive on top
Speaker 1: of that. But it's like, you know, the women in
Speaker 1: this van are already out numbered. Don't short change one
Speaker 1: of them unfortunately. Mean, yeah, I think the Bechtel test
Speaker 1: problem this is this is actually a movie where I
Speaker 1: feel like the Bechdel test is a very useful metric
Speaker 1: to use, which isn't true for it but but for
Speaker 1: this one, I think it is because it just it
Speaker 1: it passes but but not as much as it should
Speaker 1: given who's in it. I think the one the conversation
Speaker 1: that I was really locked onto was um towards the end,
Speaker 1: when Cheryl is like basically gives Alive an out if
Speaker 1: she wants it. She's like, you know, if you sat
Speaker 1: this one out because because she also I think senses
Speaker 1: that Olive is apprehensive about competing, because she is looking
Speaker 1: at the other girls and she's she knows that she
Speaker 1: is she scared. There's that scene where she looks at
Speaker 1: herself in the mirror. She's examining her body. She's wearing
Speaker 1: the swimsuit. Why do we have to have little girls
Speaker 1: parade around in swimsuits to be judged by pageant judges.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying. But anyway, so like Cheryl's like, you know,
Speaker 1: all of if you want to set this one out,
Speaker 1: you can totally do that, but all of us like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm competing. So that whole exchange was one that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed. And shall we rate it on our nipple scale?
Speaker 1: We shall zero to five nipples based on its representation
Speaker 1: of women. Even though I would give this movie like
Speaker 1: I would give it a ten out of ten on
Speaker 1: the rampometer. I would give it like a five out
Speaker 1: of five on just like movies I love. But as
Speaker 1: far as our nipple scale, I would I would go
Speaker 1: down to maybe like it's three and a half or
Speaker 1: maybe like an even like a three point to five
Speaker 1: because even though the female characters we do get to know,
Speaker 1: I really love them. I love Cheryl's character, even though
Speaker 1: we're not given a whole lot of additional information about her,
Speaker 1: just aside from her role in the movie as the mother,
Speaker 1: just especially because like it's clearly established that she has
Speaker 1: a job and we just don't find out what it
Speaker 1: is that we don't know anything about her, and it
Speaker 1: was frustrating. But even so I do, I do love
Speaker 1: her character. I'm so on her side all of the
Speaker 1: all of get it all of the time. Well that
Speaker 1: brings me to all of who I also really love,
Speaker 1: Like she's such a sweet little girl. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: just this is a movie that I guess is about
Speaker 1: a family unit that I think should give more focus
Speaker 1: to the female characters and that relationship between those two
Speaker 1: female characters, so them as individuals and them as a
Speaker 1: like mother daughter dynamic. I would have loved to see
Speaker 1: that explored more but even so, I think I'll go
Speaker 1: with a three point five because it handles a lot
Speaker 1: of other things well, as we've discussed the portrayal of
Speaker 1: mental illness, the fact that we have of a queer character,
Speaker 1: which by my point of view, and again, you know,
Speaker 1: I might be coming in with some blind spots here,
Speaker 1: but it felt to me like that was handled pretty responsibly.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just as a sweet I love a
Speaker 1: dark comedy, you know, I love I love that climactic
Speaker 1: sequence when the entire family gets on stage, which is
Speaker 1: like kind of signifies every character arc that we see,
Speaker 1: even though again Cheryld isn't really given much of an arc.
Speaker 1: All the other the men get to change, but the
Speaker 1: woman stays pretty static throughout, but only because she's already
Speaker 1: such a good mom. I don't know. Three and a
Speaker 1: half nipples, um, I'll give one to Tony Colette, I
Speaker 1: will give one to Abigail Breslin, I will give one
Speaker 1: to the Volkswagen Bus, and I'll give my half nipple.
Speaker 1: I'll give it to Uncle Fry. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: this a three point five as well, for for much
Speaker 1: the same reasons. I feel like there is an opportunity
Speaker 1: for I mean, of all the male relationships we get
Speaker 1: to explore in this movie, whether it be between I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a moment where I was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: every movie is about fathers and sons. When Alan Arkin
Speaker 1: tells Greg Kenear like, I'm proud of you. You tried.
Speaker 1: That's good. You're just like, Okay, I don't really care. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: you find out about that relationship, you find out a
Speaker 1: little bit about, you know, the tension between Richard and Frank,
Speaker 1: you find out about the tension between Dwayne and Richard,
Speaker 1: Like you get a blossoming friendship between Frank and Dwayne,
Speaker 1: and you just there's not that many versions of relationships
Speaker 1: for women to have because there's only two and we
Speaker 1: don't really get it. So that was a little disappointing.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it's just kind of single male writer,
Speaker 1: you know, culture of you know, they're they're writing what
Speaker 1: they know and don't know how to make women talk
Speaker 1: to each other at length, and so they just don't.
Speaker 1: So that was a bummer. But I do I agree that.
Speaker 1: I like that. I mean, Tony Collett can do a
Speaker 1: lot with a little which I think she does, hear uh.
Speaker 1: I like that she is the Breadwinner, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: the frustrating thing is everything I know about her I like,
Speaker 1: and I wish I knew more, and I wish that
Speaker 1: the movie almost had like the confidence it has in
Speaker 1: its male characters to allow her to fail a little
Speaker 1: bit outside of her maternal role. But ultimately it is
Speaker 1: a wonderful movie. A laugh too cried it's great. Olive
Speaker 1: is a wonderful character. I feel like she would be
Speaker 1: our friend as an adult. So I like she. She's
Speaker 1: the best. I also think it's so I mean, it
Speaker 1: is kind of nice to see demonstrated how pervasive beauty
Speaker 1: pageant culture is. Where I feel like sometimes you get
Speaker 1: the idea from media of like, oh, only you know
Speaker 1: young women who have pageant families, or only young women
Speaker 1: who look a certain way are interested in pageant culture,
Speaker 1: but it it is so pervasive that it gets to
Speaker 1: everyone one way or another, and all of you know
Speaker 1: is in by no means a pageant pushing family, and
Speaker 1: she still develops, you know, oh, I want to participate.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's something that you don't really
Speaker 1: see acknowledged a lot. So I liked I like that.
Speaker 1: I like her. I want to know what she's like
Speaker 1: when she's older, and yeah, this is the where's the sequel?
Speaker 1: Where's that? Actually? You know what? I think that that
Speaker 1: sounds good? And then when you would see it, you're like,
Speaker 1: I actually don't want it, like just write a different
Speaker 1: movie maybe, But yeah, I think it's a wonderful movie.
Speaker 1: Three and a half nippies wished that there have been
Speaker 1: more of the female relationship. But I'll give one a
Speaker 1: tiny clip one Abigail Breslin, and one to the lady
Speaker 1: who held Abigail Breslin's hand on the way to the state,
Speaker 1: and then a half nipple to Alfred Molina, who should
Speaker 1: have been in this movie. I wonder what he was
Speaker 1: doing when he was up to I feel like Alfred
Speaker 1: Millina should have been. He would have been. Really I
Speaker 1: will I won't. I won't recast any of the family
Speaker 1: because I feel like it is the perfect cast for
Speaker 1: the family. But maybe if they made Alfred Molina in
Speaker 1: the audience of the pageant as like a really intense
Speaker 1: pageant parent, that would be great. Well, please and thank you,
Speaker 1: let's recut the movie. Let's put him in there. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. He was in the Da Vinci code,
Speaker 1: she thought. But that's not even a good that's a
Speaker 1: bad excuse. That's probably a better paycheck though. Listen, he's
Speaker 1: got children, that's true anyways. But yeah, three and a
Speaker 1: half nipples and in a lovely movie. Happy birthday, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Yeah, I am
Speaker 1: so glad we we finally got around to talking about
Speaker 1: this movie. Oh here's something we can plug. So we're
Speaker 1: you know, our social media Twitter and Instagram. Follow us
Speaker 1: there at Bechtel Cast. My actual birthday is on May seventeen. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm a tourist. Thank you so much. And on my birthday,
Speaker 1: we are going to do just an Instagram live hang
Speaker 1: out the two of us. Yes, it's gonna be fun,
Speaker 1: a chill hang We're going to be encouraging donations to
Speaker 1: your local food bank if you're able to donate, if
Speaker 1: you're in a position to do that, and yeah, come
Speaker 1: hang out with us. That's going to be at two
Speaker 1: pm Pacific time, Sunday, May seventeen. And then in addition
Speaker 1: to that, you can subscribe to our Matreon our may
Speaker 1: tryon getting there's no better time, there's no better month.
Speaker 1: There's literally no better month. And then of course our
Speaker 1: merch can be found on t public dot com slash
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast, where you can get all of your
Speaker 1: merch needs. And I think that'll about do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We cherish you, We hope that you're you're safe and
Speaker 1: doing well, and we'll talk to you soon. We love you.
Speaker 1: We all won the pageants. Oh my gosh, we all
Speaker 1: won little Miss Sunshine. Wow, that was That is what
Speaker 1: I would say. If I actually hadn't wanted the movie,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, um, and then she wins. Yeah, bye
Speaker 1: bye