The Couples discuss one of the biggest upsets in Oscar History where Crash (Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, Michael Peña, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Thandiwe Newton, Ryan Phillippe) won best picture over Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway).
(This episode contains spoilers)
Where to watch Brokeback Mountain?
Starz
Where to watch Crash?
HBO Max
* As of August 2022 in the USA
For more shenanigans, follow us on Instagram @couplescutpodcast or TikTok @couplescutpodcast, Twitter @couplescutpod or send us an e-mail at CouplesCutPodcast@gmail.com
Transcript available on our website: https://CouplesCut.buzzprout.com/
The Couples discuss one of the biggest upsets in Oscar History where Crash (Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, Michael Peña, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Thandiwe Newton, Ryan Phillippe) won best picture over Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway).
(This episode contains spoilers)
Where to watch Brokeback Mountain?
Starz
Where to watch Crash?
HBO Max
* As of August 2022 in the USA
For more shenanigans, follow us on Instagram @couplescutpodcast or TikTok @couplescutpodcast, Twitter @couplescutpod or send us an e-mail at CouplesCutPodcast@gmail.com
Transcript available on our website: https://CouplesCut.buzzprout.com/
Look at me they look at me they
Fish:need some reassurance
Cayleigh:okay he requires a certain level of attention. I don't know what that means. It means he requires he's just told you have attention she literally just
Nate:requires a certain level of attention
Jackie:which you do not have.
Cayleigh:Hello and welcome to couples. A podcast where two couples the goods and the fishes Hi. Give their commentary on a fine pairing movies
Jackie:this serves as your official spoiler warning.
Cayleigh:Welcome. It's couples cut time. This week's rapid fire you're in hell. What movie is on repeat? Mm. Um, I'm Kaylee. Probably some slasher film I don't know off top my head because I don't really see them but some kind of slasher film would be on repeat in hell for me. Cuz I don't like jumpscares I'm not a big fan of that, like subtext of like, if you have premarital sex, you're a whore and you're gonna die. Because we're gonna kill you. That's like, kind of in all of those movies. It's not engaging for me. So whatever the quintessential slasher film is probably like, you know, like Halloween or something,
Nate:not because it's scary, but just because you don't like,
Cayleigh:but I mean, it's like, I don't, it makes it hard for me. I'm home alone a lot. And I that would I can, I'll just randomly get intrusive thoughts. I'll have to go grab something from the basement. And especially if I've been engaging with like scary content. I'll be like, what if I walk down there and there's just someone in the basement? What am I going to do? Or like in the garage all the time? I have to throw something out and I'm home alone. And I'm like, what if I just open the garage door and someone's in there?
Fish:Oh, wait, I put a camera in the garage. Oh, yeah. I don't like that. And then Kaylee said she's never gonna look at it. Because if she ever sees something in there, she's gonna be freaked. Oh, my God.
Cayleigh:the shit out of me.
Fish:It's better to No,
Cayleigh:no, I, I think that we've learned enough that I do better in ignorance.
Nate:I am gonna go with down to you. It's supposed to be a ROM not really a rom com but like, kind of like a romantic serving Sara's in the same, I think vein with Matthew Perry. Some of them are really funny. And then some of them are just done badly. And when they're done badly
Jackie:it is. I can't believe you didn't say Lawrence of Arabia.
Nate:I'm changing my answer. Lawrence of Arabia. The reason is,
Fish:that was quick.
Nate:They're always in the desert supposed to be this big deal. So I fell asleep during the movie. And every time I woke up, it's just a panoramic shot of the sand dunes. And that movie is freaking long. He's gone
Jackie:on France. But how we have to watch this for a movie poster.
Nate:You just you've heard the rant now. So I mean, the best part of the movie is is his buddy who's with him and Lawrence. And he says that a couple times. And that's all I remember from the movie that and the very end.
Fish:That's the best part.
Nate:Sand Dunes, Lawrence and the very end.
Fish:Like the movie Dune,
Nate:the desert planet.
Fish:We watched that movie in high school. That's the last time I saw it. I don't remember hating it. Maybe because it took so many class periods to watch it. It probably took like, okay, yeah, obviously two weeks of class.
Nate:Two weeks of class watching Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, I did not like that movie. And I think we have to watch it again for our movie poster.
Jackie:We do. That's why we come up and
Fish:so watch it together.
Jackie:Experience Nate's hell. Yeah.
Fish:So I just looked up worst movie soundtracks of all time? Because I feel like
Jackie:if the music's bad,
Fish:yeah, like if you're watching the movie. To Infinity
Cayleigh:do you have to keep in mind it should be your personal hell. I like to learn to the Rabia answer better than you originally. Shouldn't be something you haven't actually. But I'm hoping this hasn't emotionally scarred.
Nate:Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah,
Fish:I'm hoping I'm hoping this person memories what I'm saying Oh, okay. And I feel like you can close your eyes, but you can't really close your ears. So you're gonna hear the soundtrack? Forever.
Jackie:What if you can't close your eyes like in Clockwork Orange, which might be my movie. It's to the at the violence and it is too much Normally I don't get super squeamish about violence but yeah, movie gets really rapey and violent. And we the last time we tried watching it for the movie poster, we didn't get very far and we turned it off.
Nate:I think we turned it off after the second rape scene. Oh, wow. We're we're just like, we get it. Right What the movies about? Yeah. And what? You know why it was a big deal when it came out? We don't need to watch that.
Fish:Did you scratch it off?
Jackie:Yeah, we did. Yeah, we candidate I saw it in high school. I've
Nate:seen it too. But it's just like,
Jackie:it was one of those two that people get really pretentious about and, you know, when I saw it in high school, I was like this movie so incredible. And it's so yeah, I didn't like it back then either. So I'll say that instead of my original thought of Rudy.
Cayleigh:It's not gonna come over here.
Fish:We're gonna zoom in to this recording. Are there any movies that I really hate or dislike? darlin help me.
Cayleigh:It's hard to do you like bad movies? No. Oh, you know what? It's gonna be room. Because you're gonna be so frustrated because you're gonna be like, No, I want the room but they're gonna keep playing Oscar winning room.
Jackie:There's no Tommy you're
Cayleigh:gonna be like, No, I meant the room.
Jackie:Like that.
Nate:Yeah, so he's talking to, you know, the nameless imp that's like, pressing play on the VCR because there's no TV player. Yeah.
Fish:It's a little staticky.
Nate:Yeah. You're like, I want the room.
Cayleigh:Partner. This is better. Yeah. Okay, well, that's that's rapidfire
Fish:thanks for helping. You're welcome.
Cayleigh:We can't all be this quick and witty. Well then let's at least
Jackie:be ready. So I mean, I put Brokeback Mountain first and then crash.
Cayleigh:Okay, let's read the plot.
Jackie:Ennis and Jack are hired to herd sheep upon Brokeback Mountain. In the summer of 1963. After a night of drinking Jack makes the move on Ennis and the two end up sleeping together. Ennis insists it's a one time thing but time says otherwise. When the summer is over, Ennis marries his longtime girlfriend and has two daughters. Jack attempts to return to Brokeback Mountain, but is denied because the forman had seen Jack and Ennis together. He moves to Texas and marries a wealthy rodeo rider. After years apart Jack visits Ennis and they rekindle their relationship. Ennis' wife accidentally witnesses the two kissing and eventually divorces in us taking custody of their daughters. Year after year, Jack tries to convince Ennis to run away with him and start a farm. But Ennis is haunted by childhood memories of what his town did to homosexuals. After many fights and reconciliations a postcard is returned to Ennis stating that the recipient Jack is deceased. He calls Jack's wife who says he was killed in an accident. But Ennis imagines a violent incident killing Jack. He visits Jack's parents house in hopes of carrying out Jack's request to have his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but his parents refuse. He returns home with two shirts found in Jack's closet, one belonging to each of them, bloodied by a fight. At home, he hangs them in his closet next to a postcard of Brokeback Mountain and says Jack, I swear.
Fish:What does he swear Swear to me?
Jackie:He swears you're gonna read fish back.
Fish:Brokeback Mountain, released on December 9 2005, and with a budget of around 14 million went on to make over 178 million directed by Ang Lee, based on the short story of the same name by Annie Proulx Screenplay by Diana osanna. And Larry McMurtry starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, Linda Linda card, Nelly Anna Faris, Randy Quaid, David Harbour and more. More and more
Jackie:Cardellini right.
Fish:Linda Cardellini What did I say?
Jackie:Card Delaney?
Fish:McArdle Linda Cardellini she's a pasta
Jackie:so derailing quickly Yeah,
Cayleigh:so who's seen it before?
Nate:Not not not
Jackie:I saw it in the theaters.
Fish:Oh, I had not seen it back in 2005. I don't see any other normally wouldn't
Jackie:see this. Man was that sex intense or what? It was in like a circuit tents like camping.
Fish:Yeah, it was more intense there was more intense to it.
Jackie:I mean, there were multiple tents Cayleigh indulged me.
Cayleigh:So I like to sheep's right off the bat.
Fish:How about how cute Was it when they were first going out on the mountain, and they had to carry like one or two of them. And then he had to tuck one of them. And he's like sack or like, tie it up in a blanket. And that was cute.
Nate:You? Yeah. And there were a ton
Jackie:with 1000.
Nate:So they were taking them out to graze kind of like the summer. Yeah. And it was Randy Quaid, who was playing the the foreman, right. Yeah. Was did he say he sent a bunch of stuff about the forestry department that I didn't really catch and it didn't
Jackie:like they were supposed
Nate:to matter. But
Jackie:oh, at least in the book they mentioned they are legally we're supposed to be staying in like area designated campsites. Okay. And so I think what he was doing was trying to get them to kind of go beyond the law and stay out with the sheep.
Fish:So the people had to stay in a certain place, but the animals couldn't go elsewhere. Okay, but he wanted the
Jackie:animals are fine, but the people were supposed to stay. Yeah, like designated campsites. Okay. So, like Jack wasn't supposed to light fires when he was sleeping with the sheep.
Fish:Yeah, because it was giveaways position. Yeah. You read the book?
Jackie:I read the little short. Yeah, yeah.
Fish:It's recently or
Jackie:recently. Yeah, for this. I was curious. It's very, very similar to how it played out on the screen, which was cool. It was I was actually surprised how much of the dialogue was taken straight from the story that they used in the movie. It's good read. It's quick.
Fish:Since you read it did pretty much all of the short story make into the movie.
Jackie:Pretty much it was pretty accurate. It takes place over 20 years. So it starts when they're both about 19. Yeah, the story is almost identical, they have the same encounters, and keep hitting the mic stand. And it ends exactly the same way, as in the movie. So it ends with him saying, I swear. What's interesting, though, it says Jack, I swear he said that Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.
Fish:Because I read some snippets somewhere that this might be one of the few or only movies that basically went like 100% of the story like needed on screen.
Jackie:And I believe that I told him,
Fish:but this doesn't really exist with any books or, you know, stories that get translated to this. Yeah. Helps
Cayleigh:with how it's a short story. Yeah, totally. Yeah. adaptations of short works like that.
Nate:Yeah. But it's totally I mean, most of most of the conversation around books that have been made in the movies is how does it differ from the book?
Fish:Yeah. And there's no conversation to be had about this. Well, and
Jackie:when I was reading it, too, I was almost waiting for an answer of, you know, you're kind of left questioning was Jack killed by a freak accident? Or was he killed in a violent manner? Right. And this still leaves that question up in the air. Although ad mentions when he visits visits Jack's parents, his dad kind of brings up like he does in the movie, you know, Jack said, You guys we're gonna move out here and then eventually he said he was going to bring another guy out.
Fish:And bits in the coffee cup because he does not approve. Yeah,
Jackie:and he says like most Jack's ideas never comes to pass. And so in the novel, it says in his things, now he knows is the tire iron. So he in his mind has confirmed that Jack was was killed violently. Yeah,
Nate:I didn't catch that. At the end. He spit in the coffee cup because he disapproves.
Fish:Yeah, he spit in the coffee cup and I took that to mean that he's like He doesn't accept that you know?
Jackie:Yeah, he's kind of like knowing looks to me looks
Fish:he's looking like a hard ass and but the mom seems very
Nate:kind Yeah, the mom is very kind and understanding
Jackie:Oh, sorry. Before I move on from the story a lot of the dialogue I was saying they kept it so even that line that I know everyone I'm sure you guys remember everyone just teasing about it and trying hard to quit you are I wish I could. I wish I knew how to quit you that was straight from the story to
Cayleigh:what's interesting is I guess the author had given both Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger signed copies of her short story. And when she wrote it to Jake Gyllenhaal, she signed it like to Jake, but for Heath Ledger's copy she had wrote to Ennis, but it was an accident. Like she just didn't even think of it. And when she realized her mistake, she was gonna go grab another copy and fix it. And then she decided she would keep it that way because to her she felt like Heath Ledger was that character. It was exactly how she pictured him the mannerisms, he embodied that character specifically, like as if her imagination went to screen.
Nate:It's pretty crazy
Jackie:that the just even in the short story that descriptions pretty much work for both of them. And there's some goofy things like Jack's character supposed to have gap tooth, but I think both characters lined up pretty well.
Fish:I guess they had to fight hard to keep the, like the diet, the accent, like the dialogue, the reason in the movie, like the movie producers wanted to kind of make it more Midwestern, because they felt audiences wouldn't be able to understand with like a heavy Western kind of southern Western. That wouldn't
Jackie:seem at all no.
Fish:But thankfully, that didn't happen that
Jackie:How incredible is Heath Ledger iaccent for that. Considering his Australian, whatever he's heard,
Cayleigh:though, is that like Australian South African English accents, like you know, the across the pond accents are like, sped up Southern accents that that a lot of the vowels, vowel noises are similar, so that it's easier to maybe flip between
Fish:those. So it's easy for
Jackie:that why Australians are so into western music confusing.
Cayleigh:I can get that tweeting on I cannot
Nate:speak any less.
Fish:Just to kind of sit some scenes for the time and place. So the movie starts in like 1963 and 1983. Right. Yeah. 20 year span? Yeah, I think they really captured the time, although, you know, most of it is is in the mountains and wilderness. That felt time appropriate. I thought,
Nate:yeah, I didn't realize the movie started in 1963. Until we started watching, I didn't like I thought it was contemporary setting. It makes more sense, especially like the time and the place and the setting and the subject matter. Gives you more of that taboo feeling why it was so frowned upon and so looked down upon by the towns in the society of the area. There's still a big problem with hate crimes. In some of the plains states, Wyoming, Montana, that area Laramie is like a very Laramie, the Matthew Shepard murder. But yeah, I could. It just adds it on adds on to it being in the sixth starting in the 60s.
Fish:I thought this thought was interesting when I saw that. This was mostly filmed in the Canadian Rockies and Alberta.
Nate:Really,
Fish:yeah. And even people who live in like Wyoming in that area, they didn't know that this was this wasn't like their backyard.
Nate:Interesting.
Fish:So did it more for financial reasons. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of infrastructure and things for filming, you know, a good size movie out in the middle of Wyoming or whatever. Yeah. So that's what they did. There. But they, they took a lot of pictures. So the author went around with the director, Ang lee, and Wyoming and all these other surrounding areas. And now they took a lot of photos along the way. And she was showing him places that kind of inspired her because she lived out there, okay, for a while, and then they kind of used those photos and tried to basically find as close to the same similar, you know, looking landscapes in Canada.
Jackie:The scenery is incredible. Yeah, definitely.
Fish:I mean, it's makes me want to go camping. Hiking. Yeah.
Jackie:So with the author, I'm sure this came up when you were researching to that. Recently, she's kind of complained about fanfiction about her works. And so apparently, after the movie came out, a lot of men who would start with I'm not gay, but would send her basically revisions of her story. Yeah,
Fish:like, the story was good, but this is how it'd be better. This is how to be more realistic. This is, since you're a woman writing about guys like this is a story about a guy's perspective. So this is a more realistic version of your story.
Jackie:And essentially, what she chalks up to is a lot of that is super weird. And I imagine that probably happens to people wanted kind of a happier ending, which, yes, understand, of course, you're gonna want a happier ending, and I think everyone here wishes that Ennis Jack could have been together but I can't imagine writing fanfiction and then sending it to the authors say, right. This is how you should have done it. And you've really screwed up the story, your story that you came up with, I think more authors than we realize. But that's so messed up.
Fish:I just I can't imagine. But apparently she was inundated with so much of that for so long. She said that she wishes she had never written the story because it's like, so bothersome for like, really? Yeah,
Nate:wow.
Jackie:Yeah, she says it, a lot of people are missing the point that it's the story is actually about homophobia, it's about social situations. It's about a place and a particular mindset and morality. So that particular mindset doesn't allow for happy gay people, essentially. Yeah, she said, they also just seemed to miss the whole message that so at the end of the short story, too, she writes, If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it. And she says, that just goes over everyone's head. She apparently came up with the idea after noticing a middle aged man in a bar who appeared to be watching the other men in the bar. And so she started to think about what would that look like, you know, in this very kind of traditionally conservative set, or setting where there's cowboys, right? And typical Western? How would someone who is gay manage that?
Cayleigh:It's hard, because I feel like I did see a lot of message boards that are like, so we talk about this a lot from a female perspective of male writers, writing for women. And I do think it sort of works both ways. But also a step further that she's straight. Yeah. So she would never know what it's like. And so I don't know that that means that she can't write that story. And obviously, she did a good enough job, that it's a compelling movie. I just feel like it definitely reads as a movie about homophobia for straight people.
Jackie:Yes.
Cayleigh:So it's, I don't know, it's hard to say I did find it to be a compelling story. But I see where people are coming from and see why maybe people felt a little more emboldened to send her their personal revisions. Less so if they're not of the community. But I could see how people in that community would maybe even at the time, have felt maybe a little misrepresented. And I could see why again, it would be frustrating that even though it certainly mirrors reality, having another movie where gay people can't have happy endings, you know, God forbid. So I don't know. On a reflection standpoint, I could see why this movie, watching it for the first time in today's day, and age isn't as impactful as it would have been watching it back in the early 2000s, when homophobia was so much worse than it is right now in 2022.
Jackie:Yeah, I think back then, if you were, you know, a gay man, especially watching this movie, I think would be depressing and scary. And I don't think I don't think they were the target audience. Like reflecting on it. Now, I think straight people were the target audience for this movie, as a way to say homophobia is bad.
Cayleigh:But then Okay, so here's another thing that I was kind of thinking about. So it definitely reads like a movie for straight people to maybe better understand, you know, why we need to be better about this. But how many people do we think it actually impacted with the message it was going for?
Fish:What if there was what if you're just overthinking? And what if it's just a love story of two people, you know, set and 6070s and 80s?
Cayleigh:I mean, well, that's all it is. That I'm not saying. So I enjoyed the movie. I'm not trying to be like that critical of it. But then it falls into the trope of that. So it this is a literal trope, it's not just Brokeback Mountain doesn't live in a vacuum. There is a trope of gay characters having to die like that. That is a trope in fiction, which is why it probably got pointed out that this is yet another piece of media doing that times because you have the story and then again in the movie,
Jackie:yeah.
Cayleigh:So then if it's purely fiction, and you know, we're going to look at it from that angle, then we can pretty much fully say that it's guilty of that trope, but I like to think that she probably had a bigger thought and a bigger meaning which I appreciate from where she was coming from. But you look at something like shits Creek, where like I personally know people who had their, you know, ignorant opinions changed from watching that show. And I feel like part of why that show was so impactful was because it didn't fall into the tropes, they got their happy ending, we got to watch just a love story to fall in love and live happily ever after. And it's so relatable, and we all want that. We're not making them people want to be miserable, that's fine. But most people want to fall in love and meet their person and live happily ever after. And when you see it just so plain and real. It doesn't matter about the gender, it doesn't matter about the love you recognize love where you see it. And so I have to wonder if, you know,
Jackie:I have to believe this movie did that for people too. Yeah. Because I mean, there is this compelling love story going on. And you see, again, if you don't look at the genders, and you don't look at, yeah, the homophobic aspect of it. It is a love story that has obstacles
Nate:that goes on for 20 years.
Cayleigh:Yes, I hope it did. I just didn't find anything. So I
Jackie:did see something on Reddit that was encouraging of someone who watched it in 2020. And he said he was one of the kids when it came out. Never was gonna see it. He was like 13 Maybe. Then he admitted that, yeah, he made fun of it. He never imagined seeing it, he finally watched it. And it changed his mind. And he realized that he had been homophobic that there were things that, you know, he always wondered, why do they have to have a month? Why? Why do they have to have a parade and he was one of those people is what he's saying in his post. And so it was encouraging how many people even responded to him and said, You know, I agree, I grew up with pretty traditional conservative values and to see two men kissing was alarming at first. And so I have to believe it did have that impact. That's good
Nate:on some people. Yeah, I would say kind of to your point. Kaylee, I think most people probably watched it for entertainment. And it doesn't change the way they are or their mindset.
Cayleigh:I would just imagine that most people who were needing to watch that movie
Jackie:probably did not watch that movie.
Cayleigh:And I think again, maybe just because of the how do I again, I don't know how to put it. It's not casting a wide net. It's very unapologetically. Let's have a very tragic Romeo and Juliet ask. Yeah, love story. But yeah, with a
Fish:$14 million budget, I don't think they're expecting to cast a wide net, because I don't think they expected it to be as well received and well watched as it was, I mean, it's a low budget movie for these, like, big names that are in it. That's pretty darn low budget movie. Yeah. So I feel they, you know, made it to be more of an art piece and to let people just kind of throw it out there and see what happens to it. But I do feel if there was a happy ending, I feel, maybe it would be less impactful or less realistic. Not speaking with, you know, a lot of authority or knowledge in the time or other things, but it seems like it played out in the world that they represented and what seems to be very realistic of the time to be a pretty real story. Yeah. But in terms of the short story, I know Jackie said he read it. So that was originally published in the New Yorker. 1997. Yep. Okay. It's not all that long ago. Not too long before the movie came out. And it actually won the National Magazine Award for Fiction the following year that it was published. That's cool. So it was recognized for being an excellent story.
Cayleigh:I did not expect to see so many familiar faces.
Nate:Neither did I. Yeah. It wasn't
Jackie:quite the cast reel
Cayleigh:of Wait a second. Yeah.
Nate:Starting starting with Randy Quaid. I was just like, because obviously, you know, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are are the leads and then when they show up for work, you know, looking for work, and it's Randy Quaid. I was just like, Okay, I wasn't expecting that one. In a very serious role for him. All I can think of as Christmas vacation shutters full.
Jackie:On then you get Heath Ledger's real life. Girlfriend.
Fish:Yes. So Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, or a pair apparently falling in love on set. Okay, and they actually had a kid before the movie even premiered. And Jake Gyllenhaal was the godfather. Which is pretty cool.
Jackie:Matilda, right.
Fish:So you can really, like the chemistry was was was pretty was real
Nate:there. I also didn't know Anne Hathaway was in us.
Cayleigh:No my did not I forgot. And I guess when she auditioned, before she came in, she like sent a note in, like, pre apologizing for how she was going to be dressed and looking for her audition. And she was auditioning during a break for filming The Princess Diaries too. So she was like in full Princess gear, take care peace at all. And then her agent like, lied by omission about her to Ang Lee, and was like she's a Broadway actress. So like left out that she liked, you know, is a princess films and stuff like that. So, in other words, wasn't, hadn't seen anything that she was in? Are they
Jackie:afraid? Like she wouldn't be taken seriously then? Yeah, okay.
Fish:And she feared that she was able to ride a horse. But she spent the next two weeks taking horseback riding lessons,
Cayleigh:which doesn't make sense. She ride horses and Princess Diaries too. So she was filming that while she auditioned for it. She was already doing horses.
Jackie:That's funny. Their stunts? Like she didn't do any stunts in this movie.
Cayleigh:She did do like extra training because she wanted to do her own stunts. And they were like, Absolutely not. You're not doing your own stunts. So all the horse riding in the rodeo is done by a stunt person. Oh, interesting.
Nate:So then the only time she was still horses just riding back by him and going that okay. Yeah, cuz when, when she took off out of the rodeo stadium, she was flying. The stunt person was flying. Yeah. I'm not surprised. I didn't want to put an actor or actress on the on the horse. You know, you're not doing the insurance company in the studio frown on that big time.
Cayleigh:Exactly.
Jackie:She does such a great job in that last scene where she's on the phone. Yeah, and just being cold.
Nate:And leaving, leaving the what happened to Jack open to interpretation? Because she doesn't give you any indication. I mean, it's because she's so cold. You think that? Like I didn't know that it was supposed to be like, Ennis imagining what happened or if it was like a flash to what really happened in the movie.
Cayleigh:So it's all ambiguous. And the only reason I feel confident saying that is because Anne Hathaway has been asked about that, what is it? Did she know which one she says that she they did the scene with her delivering the message of, you know, a freak accident, and then her delivering the message of hate crime. And that actually, what we saw is not either of those, it's both of them blended together.
Nate:Oh, interesting.
Cayleigh:So it's like bits of the accident and bits of the hate crime are being stitched together together to make one story Wow, from her. So she and she says that she likes that because as the actress now she gets to be like the audience and also be in the dark about it and drama, inclusion. And
Nate:it's, it leaves it open to interpretation, too, because Jack had said that, you know, they could do their marriage by phone. Right? Like it had fallen apart to the point that they were both going through the motions. So she could easily be just unhappy about that. And, you know, have suspicions, I assume, but may or may not know for sure, one way or the other, as opposed to like Michelle Williams with Ennis and, and witnessing, right the kiss. To me the story is written and it was portrayed. So well, like you only see enough of their relationship and Anne Hathaway in the movie. To be ambiguous to not know like to know it wasn't going well, but you don't know enough to make a conclusion or draw a conclusion from that scene. Right?
Fish:I thought it was a little weird when they sent the postcard back. And it just said a stamp of deceased actually rewind that a little bit. And I was like, pause that. Because I've never seen that. And neither were with that. Was that really a thing?
Jackie:Yeah. That you would imagine that it would go to his wife and they wouldn't have deceased?
Fish:Why? It looks like something stamped on like the post office work at the post
Cayleigh:office in the 80s. Yeah, I don't post office in 83.
Fish:I set up to call her okay. We'll get back to you when we get put on speakerphone.
Nate:been recorded. I was gonna say it's probably not something that post office does anymore. No, no.
Cayleigh:It's very insensitive. And but again, we're talking early 80s
Nate:I would imagine if they did it, it probably went much longer than it should. Well, yeah,
Fish:it was like classic A Return to Sender stamp like don't put the wrong stamp on
Nate:to Don't. Don't send another letter. Oh, thank you. You got the wrong
Cayleigh:address how you put this delicately? I don't know that it's that insensitive. Because if you were in the circle enough for it to be like, Oh, fuck, I would hope that you found out sooner before. I don't on the post office for that nobody fucking called this person. And it's actually think polite. I'm pretty sure that my work phone used to belong to someone who is now deceased. And I get all kinds of text messages. Like all kinds where they're like, I've been wished Happy Birthday, been asked to meet up for lunch. And I'm just like
Fish:they're paying, you should say yes. Well,
Cayleigh:I'm just like, if this person the reason I feel like there might be deceased is because I'm just like, if they're alive, and you're asking for a lunch date, I feel like you would know. Yeah. Like, I feel like you would know that like this, that he had a different number, like, Do you ever play? Yeah, multiple times. But at the way I first got the work. When I first got this phone, I would reply, and it'd be like, I'm sorry, you have the wrong number because it would be like, they'd be sending me pictures of like their kids. Oh, geez. Like, oh, so and so's first day of school. Hey, we should meet up soon. And like inviting me out places and stuff. And I want to be like, I don't want them to think that this guy's a douchebag because he's gonna click that I just did. He got a new number or something. But like, the tone of the text message was very, like, I haven't talked to you in a while and I'm trying to reconnect and he was like, he was definitely older. So I don't know, row. But these are the kinds of people that if they got a note that said deceased, or they probably be like, Oh, that's so upsetting, but it would be like, useful for them to know.
Fish:Right? On that stamp. Is there an emoji that looks like that?
Jackie:Just to see
Cayleigh:this very specific instance? Yes, it was
Nate:a yellow it's the goat it's like a yellow ghost with the X smiley with the x's for eyes and like the tongue.
Fish:So yeah, you need to send that back. Maybe you should do some research to find out if it's true first.
Jackie:Yeah, it could be they just change jobs. I mean, your work phone.
Cayleigh:I mean, I don't know if this number I don't think this number belong to another employee at my company. Yeah, that could be because messages. Yeah, I don't think he's in my industry.
Nate:Gotcha. But I digress. You got a lot of messages.
Cayleigh:Oh my god. No, it's so annoying. I almost never use my work phone. People now know that they just need to email me because I'm just like, it's all spam calls and strangers. I got like a booty call on my work phone.
Fish:You didn't tell me that?
Cayleigh:Yeah, I did. I sent it to you because it was hilarious. They called me Poppy. They said, Hey, Poppy, something something last night. And I was like, I have to shut it to paper trail that I shut this down immediately. So I texted back and I was like, wrong number. I don't this is a work line. You have the wrong number. And she's like, Oh my God, that's so embarrassing. They gave me a fake number. And I was like, I'm pretty sure this is a scam. So I blocked it. But yeah, my work phone is a mess. Don't call me.
Fish:What's the number
Jackie:6753091 What's
Fish:the area code?
Jackie:Try to try and drink try
Cayleigh:and ball stamp would be good people.
Fish:Yeah. Another thing that stood out was the the movie scoring the like the teen and it was like it was a lot of actors. I think I think the composer actually played that the like the acoustic guitar parts. And I felt that it was really like haunting and echoed the loneliness that was really forefront throughout the whole film. And that came through with the score. I felt a lot.
Nate:Yep. There was a lot of loneliness, obviously, their story but like just a wide open spaces and nobody's around
Fish:everything that goes on and everything. Yeah.
Cayleigh:So although we had talked earlier a little bit how and again, mostly came from message boards from, you know, people in the community looking at it through today's lens that it falls into some of the tropes, but I do want to talk about some of the things that I thought this movie did really, really well even held up to today's lens. And I think one thing that really struck me was how complex they made the characters and their relation. ship with each other. It wasn't just their game. They're in love. Yeah, like, to the point that I thought it was really interesting that and the beginning of the relationship, I feel like we get a sense that Jack is all in on this and that Ennis is a little bit has the chance. It was kind of like, I perceived it as like he's just taking comfort. Yep. Yeah, he is an actually like
Jackie:in love. He's never even considered this as the impression you get. Yeah, yeah, just
Cayleigh:taking comfort in the situation. But that Jack is in it. But then later, when they're separated, and we see Ennis or illness Jack starting to. And maybe I misunderstood this portion, but like, talking to David harbors character and stuff like that. He doesn't actually like, we don't see him respond to his offer of like, Yeah, we could go to my cabin. But later we do get confirmation that it seems like he did take him up on that offer. But anyway, it seemed like it almost the roles flipped. We get the sense of like, you know, Jack loves Ennis, but is like kind of a kind of a player almost in the sense of like, it even still seemed like even though he says though my marriage can be done by phone, and I still got the sense that he was still like, in it with his wife. Yeah, more so than NS was with his wife. We get that
Nate:machine of a Thanksgiving or whatever with the turkey and the football game.
Cayleigh:Yeah,
Jackie:I don't get that JAXA player, I get that he more he desperately wants that life. Yes. The sense I get. Like you said earlier, he was all in where Ennis was more. You know, he's kind of backing off of it, or
Cayleigh:trying to be clear, but like, yeah, like he's, he's interested in in capturing that lifestyle. Whereas Ennis, I don't think would have ever noticed was in it for Jack specifically as a human on earth not to be in a relationship with another chromatically agree. Because like I say, even another parallel that I thought was interesting was when we get the scene of Ennis having sex with his wife, he flips her over Yeah, yeah. But when Jack and his wife will feed your wife, girl who's hooking up with at the time. Now he's, he's looking at the movies. He seems
Fish:as Where do you Well,
Cayleigh:you know, they're they're
Jackie:right in the face.
Cayleigh:So it just I thought that was another interesting parallel of
Jackie:Yeah, well, there's even so in the story too. They kind of imply that Jack does sleep with a lot of other men trying to go down that path so we see it in the movie when he goes to Mexico that doesn't actually happen in the story. But they have a whole little conversation where they both discussed you know, I ate and I and either and itEnnis actually even asks them you do it with other guys Jack. And the story kind of implies that Jack lies No no, I don't do it with other guys. Oh, wow.
Cayleigh:That's adds an interesting layer. Yeah.
Jackie:And then Ennis talks about this I thought was interesting because it wasn't totally clear in the movie. When they leave each other the first time and NS starts puking you know, kind of violently puking in the story it mentions he doesn't because he thought at first he was sick, but then he realized it was because he was letting jack out of his sights. So I thought that was interesting because in the movie, I thought it was more he was kind of trying to come to terms with what had happened over the summer.
Fish:Yeah, it was it was hard itself.
Jackie:That's so the story made it a little more clear that he was realizing he didn't want to let Jack go. And that moment. May I agree, Kaylee, there's a lot of depth to both characters. And you see even the side characters you see with both wives what's going on in their lives and and you do feel for Ennis wife too.
Cayleigh:Yeah. Which I guess Michelle Williams because she was actually romantically involved with Heath Ledger and I don't I don't know how it was paints her but requested that he's and Jake out of character make out for her so that she could see what it's like to have the man you love. Kiss another man. Interest I thought that was a little
Fish:rather but read that but I thought that she asked that to happen on set so she could like emotionally like,
Cayleigh:Well, yeah, I don't think she was like, Let's drive down to McDonald's, down the street and yeah, She wasn't like standing off side and watching them do their sex scenes that they were already professionally set to do it was, hey, you as a quick method acting situation, Jake and Heath come over here and kiss up Jake up. Yeah. And so then and then they did and then she was like, No, that's not passionate enough for me. And that she like, egged them on to kiss more like ferociously so that she could really pull from those emotions. And I just feel like interesting that it's
Nate:actually, she ended the process into the mood, I guess.
Fish:I thought it was speaking about her, her and her character, I thought her character's arc was not only sad and unfortunate, but you know, she starts out as like, you see, like the tenderness the loving in her eyes. And she's, she's kind of a, her character starts out I want to see a little more. I don't know if I want to say meek, but a little more subservient and more. Just kind of let everything go and not. second guess things much. But then by the end, she kind of gets the it's taken enough time and enough things built up in her to like, tell him off and, and, you know, divorce him and all these things like you can you can kind of see her growth over time. Like she just can't put up with it anymore. But it took it took a while for her character to get there,
Jackie:which definitely works for that time period. Yeah, it
Fish:seems fitting. Oh, we should mention that this is this was preserved by the Library of Congress in 2018. This film. Okay.
Jackie:We should mention that.
Fish:Yes. Because we have been for every other film that's done it.
Cayleigh:And isn't it as of like, 2020 or 2021, with the most recent movie to be added?
Fish:Any movie has been added in the last four years?
Cayleigh:No, I mean, like, I'm,
Jackie:like, 2005 being the most Yeah. Sure.
Cayleigh:I read that, for sure. We'll go with that for now. I don't know if that's still true as of 2022. But, yeah, so I mean, final thoughts. Um, I wonder if there's symbolism in Anne Hathaway's character being more and more and more blonde with each scene that they show her for she just has like a streak. And then she has highlights. And then she has like a darker blonde hair. And then by the phone. She's bleached blonde. Like what's up with that? Is there like a thing? Like there's gotta be something deeper there with that? Is that just how Texas Women? Is that like a Bucky mom thing with with women in Texas?
Fish:You're gonna have to be bond. No, it was it? Was it? Just
Cayleigh:really? I don't know. I really I noticed it.
Nate:Because when did the movie when did the timeline end at three, three? That feels like an 80s. Texas thing?
Fish:Yeah, you just get out of the 70s.
Nate:Thank you. Like
Cayleigh:literally every scene though. There was a little bit more. I don't know why.
Nate:What was the show? Dallas? Yeah. Was on the ad. Yeah. So that's where my, like the image of Texas in the 80s that I have. But it was really funny. I didn't even put that together.
Cayleigh:Just like every scene.
Fish:It seemed like, towards the end the movie, Jake Gyllenhaal his character had more of a Texas drawl. As opposed to just like a Western like a Southwest accident.
Cayleigh:I was also really shocked at the TV scene that her dad listened to him. Yeah. Yeah, not see that coming for a minute. Yeah, I
Fish:think he was maybe deep down a little happy that he like, had some balls to say that because I think he always looked at them as like a wimpy, poor like piece of shit. Yeah.
Nate:Push them around a minimum. Not part of the family. Right? Like you're just here. You gave me a grand son. You know? That's it.
Fish:But yeah, although he's embarrassed. I feel like he's like, deep down. He's like, Okay, this guy's got some balls after all,
Jackie:finally,
Cayleigh:and like a little part of me. At least how I walked away from the movie was was Jake, maybe fibbing to Ennis about the state of his marriage because I don't think we get a scene. The closest we get is Anne Hathaway being like, well, we need you back because you're our best you know, whatever the fuck he does. And again, I wasn't they never get contentious the way that Ennis and his wife now number one and number two we don't really get cold you know? Yeah. Oh, we're not connected at all until the phone call.
Jackie:You even see in that Thanksgiving see? Yeah, she's worked out. Oh,
Cayleigh:my God. Yeah. He's shaping up. Yeah, fixin to be a real
Nate:that's a good call out. I
Fish:mean, but the kids were still pretty young and the Thanksgiving scene right it's true. Like,
Nate:but we get plenty of it with with Ennis
Fish:his home life was way more fucked up I think. Yeah, at least obviously.
Cayleigh:Yeah. Which again is maybe why I walked away with more of a sense of like Ennis fell deeply, madly, truly in love with Jack and that was his person. That was his everything. He was all in that he couldn't even pretend or make nice. Whereas I don't know how much Jack was pretending that I like I I feel like it would be like bisexual erasure, to say that obel Jack couldn't have had a good marriage with his wife or Clinton have even kind of liked his wife because he's gay. You might be by Yeah, maybe he didn't you know, I can't they didn't have a great marriage, obviously. Because in the phone call scene, it certainly didn't seem amazing, but and how good can your marriage be if you're running around everywhere, you know, especially now knowing the novel that it is more explicit that he was engaging with multiple partners, but like, we get hints in the movie. But again, I didn't seem quite as reciprocated, definitely reciprocated to a level that he was like, I want to we should move away. That's the that's the vibe. But the fact that he was making those promises with another guy, I was just
Jackie:gonna say his dad brings up yeah, that he changed names. He was gonna bring a different guy out here. So that's what I'm
Cayleigh:saying. Like,
Fish:I mean, I think after so long, Jack was just getting tired of not having the commitment that he wanted.
Jackie:Yeah, he kept offering up the solution and being shot down.
Cayleigh:I don't say it like negatively. I think Jack was I don't think Jack was like, I'm not trying to slut shame. Um, I'm just thinking he's a romantic and that he,
Nate:you know, had an image in his head of what he wanted. Yeah.
Jackie:He was trying to get a,
Fish:you can get by on one or two high altitude folks here. quote unquote, can? Nobody? Not many? Not many.
Cayleigh:Those are my final thoughts. Thank you.
Fish:So I quite enjoyed the movie. I think it was. I think it was the out of all the movies we've watched so far for the podcast. I think this was, from my point of view or perspective, the best. Yeah, that's
Cayleigh:a bit sad, because we watched it separately, actually. Because a week and I was like, No spoilers, but like, you know, hyped me up or give me give me the skinny. And he said that this is the best movie that we've watched from the,
Fish:from the acting to the storytelling to the score, the music to the scenery, the cinematography, I think everything was pretty much on point. And just told a story that if you if you watch this film, you know, with an open mind, if you need to, or just watch it. If you don't feel something, and it could be anything. There's a million things you could feel by watching this movie. But if you don't feel something, then you gotta check your pulse. To probably dead robots, because you've
Nate:been stamped by the post office. Yes.
Fish:Yeah, this movie will, will make you feel something. Maybe many things.
Jackie:I agree with everything you said. That's a fantastic movie. I hadn't seen it since it came out. And I can't believe how well I remembered it. Because you guys know me. My memory is terrible. So it clearly stuck with me. Like everything that happened I remembered fairly well. I remembered specific scenes and dialogue. Yeah, I agree. It's one of the best movies we've watched so far for the podcast.
Fish:Right up there with Rudy.
Cayleigh:Sure, don't start that by Roadhouse don't start that
Nate:so this is Nate haven't seen it until now I thoroughly enjoyed the movie is really compelling story really well acted. And fish to your point it there's a million different things you could feel from this movie. And yeah, it it checked a lot of boxes for me. And I think it probably between this and Saving Private Ryan would be the two like most will say highbrow movies that we've watched for the podcast and definitely by far like it's on another level to to most of the movies that we've watched for the podcast, but I really enjoyed it. Kind of said I haven't I didn't see it sooner.
Fish:Maybe we'll talk about it the comparison, but I'm glad I saw it later as more older.
Cayleigh:Yeah, do you would have appreciated it in 2005.
Fish:No, not nearly as much as I would now.
Cayleigh:Which is I mean, that's fair. Because even his lecture almost he said that he was hesitant to take the roll because he felt like he wasn't mature enough to do it justice. And I think that's fair. Because I mean, it really was one of the first of its kind to really show this kind of content earnestly. And just honestly, and as it as it was, so I think that's a fair.
Fish:Was it the first major motion picture to start to? Like, guys, a two guy love story, like in a gay relationship?
Cayleigh:I think I think it was this where it's the main where it's the only plot point. Yeah. Yeah. And that it's again, not a allegory for something else yet. It's just a love story about two people at a time that they couldn't be together. Yeah. As far as I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not the authority.
Fish:I think I think I saw that somewhere. But I mean, that's that sounds right. Something as well to be said,
Cayleigh:now we can take a break. And we come back we will talk about crash
Nate:and we're back.
Cayleigh:All right. We're going to look at the movie The Oscar award winning movie, crash
Jackie:into me.
Cayleigh:beam here is the plot.
Fish:No spoilers.
Cayleigh:Detective Walters and his partner arrive at a crime scene and are told that the body of the kid has been found the day before Anthony and Peter cartrack, the district attorney and his wife in an attempt to find the car officers Ryan and Hansen pull over an SUV already knowing it isn't the one that was stolen. They harass and intimidate Cameron and Ryan sexually assaults Cameron's wife Christine Hansen, horrified by Ryan's racism and misogyny asks for a new partner across town Anthony and Peter tried to hijack the SUV belonging to Cameron. They get in a fight and end up being chased by cops. Peter flees well Anthony hides in the passenger seat. Cameron gets out of the car intending to stand up for himself this time, but officer Hansen recognizes him and convinces everyone to stand down. That night, Officer Hansen picks up a hitchhiking Peter who offends Hanson. When he tries to explain why he is laughing by reaching into his pocket and hanson shoots. He leaves the body in the brush and burns the car. The body turns out to be detective Walters brother, whose mother had been begging him to find the movie ends with another car accident and people hurling racial slurs at each other.
Fish:First facts crash released on May 6 2005, and with a budget of around 6.5 million went on to make over 98 million directed and written by Paul Haggis, and starring a lot of people, including Don Cheadle Sandra Bullock, Thandiwe Newton, Tony Danza hold me closer Tony Danza Keith David, Loretta Devine Matt Dillon and Jennifer Esposito. Brendan Fraser
Nate:ludicrous.
Fish:Ludicrous hold on towered there's so many I just lost them all. ludicrous. AKA Chris ludicrous. Bridges. Michael Pena, Ryan, Phillip, and I'm tired. So that's it? A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot a lot. With a budget of around 6.5 million. How the hell did they get all these damn actors on board?
Nate:I don't know. It's a lot of people in the movie. Like
Fish:most actors make more than that per movie like, top Bill act is 1030 40 million a movie.
Jackie:They were all big names back then. Yeah.
Nate:Did you say Brendan Fraser?
Fish:Yes. I liked him in the mommy. Encino Man. Yeah,
Nate:there's been a lot of typical role for him.
Jackie:Trying to try to call him back lately. Right. Brandon Fraser back in.
Fish:Brandon. what somebody said, Brandon.
Jackie:I said Brandon, Brendan. Brendan Fraser.
Fish:Did you guys know that the production of this film was delayed by a week because the director had a hardest. No.
Nate:Funny Paul Haggis directed to
Fish:Yeah, I mean, they recommended him to like find the director but he's like, No, I got this man. Take your skirt. Take your stick and
Jackie:let a direct quote ticker stick
Fish:and that's what I would.
Jackie:So Kaylee at dinner gathered you had a lot of thoughts about this.
Cayleigh:Yeah, um, we're just wait.
Nate:Who
Jackie:had seen this before?
Cayleigh:I had never seen it.
Nate:I saw it when it came out.
Fish:I saw Yeah, in the theaters around Wanna came out?
Jackie:I don't know, if I had seen it or was really good at guessing I'm pretty
Nate:sure Yeah, I'm pretty sure she had seen it because there were a couple. There was one towards the end under the movie where you're like, Ryan,
Jackie:he's definitely gonna shoot.
Nate:He's definitely gonna shoot that one.
Jackie:But that also seems like it was a little predictable.
Nate:That was predictable. This
Cayleigh:movie was like eye rolling ly predictable. Yeah, there
Nate:was something earlier though, that Jackie goes, Oh, yeah. Doesn't he
Jackie:say? Oh, she's gonna, she's gonna, like, get help from the maid.
Nate:No, that was that's predictable to us at the end. But like earlier, you're like, Oh, yeah. And he does this. And I'm like,
Jackie:you know, I've seen I've at least seen the crash scene. But just from
Fish:the whole movie.
Jackie:Yeah. The Well, the famous one where Matt Dillon goes up to her in the car. It was I feel that one I feel like I could have seen just from common knowledge. So I don't know. I don't know if I'd seen this or not and just forgot.
Nate:Yes, a lot of the things are, like, shockingly predictable.
Fish:We'll just like, dive right in.
Cayleigh:It's like an after school. It's like 12 After school specials.
Fish:It feels like a made for TV movie. Yeah. Like, that's what I felt. As I was watching it.
Cayleigh:It's like a 13 year old like, wrote, like, was given an assignment. Right. Okay, class. So we've learned about the impact of racism and prejudice. Now we're going to do creative writing assignment, write a story that exemplifies why prejudice is bad. And then, you know, that's, it's so it's very, like, I'm 12 in this deep.
Nate:Yeah. And it's like, you got 12 different versions of that, for all the stories combined. Yes. If you take all the stories individually, they're the same thing, the movie to me, I know what it was posed to be about, you know, it's supposed to be racism, and how prejudices is bad and look past the surface and stuff. But the ironic piece is, none of these stories go past the surface of any of the characters. And to me, it's more, it's more compelling to watch the movie as an inter twined. You know, 12, or, like, what 12 characters or 25 characters, however many was, and their lives and how they're all intertwined. And they bump into each other through the city than it is as a, you know, meaningful movie about racism.
Cayleigh:Right, which, and that from what I was seeing was like, kind of a popular thing to do at the time, there was other movies that seem saying Go for it. So even that wasn't necessarily like original to this movie. But what I thought was extra rather frustrating was, as we kept adding layers, it almost taught to be just in the environment that we have about the topic of racism, because you would have one person be the victim of prejudice, but then turn around and be prejudiced themselves, it almost made it seem like Well, see, this isn't a systemic problem. This isn't actually there isn't a white, you know, systemic thing going on. Everyone's thought is terrible. Everyone has
Jackie:prejudice. Like, it's like a non ironic version of everyone's a little bit racist from Avenue. Q. Yeah.
Cayleigh:I mean, truly,
Nate:yeah. It's like, Oh, I hate everybody equally. It's the same. Yeah, concept. And it's totally agree. We took the same thing from from the movie.
Jackie:Well, yeah, it puts it as like a personality flaw. Yeah,
Fish:one of the big flaws I saw in the movie with was that this was a very simplified and reductionist view of race relations and racism. There was no subtlety. There was no,
Nate:there's no backstory,
Fish:there was nothing interesting. They use common stereotypes. Like, yeah, they kind of slapped in the face with it,
Jackie:but you should never simplify racism.
Fish:No. So you know, racism is very complicated, of course, in this film, you know, simplifies it and hits you over the head with it, you know, slaps you in the face of it, every person damn near every person in this film, you might have like, they crash into you, they crash this there racism into your and I think one of the problems that this movie can run into is that if the, if the viewer takes the movie, as it is as its face value, it's a problem. Because they make the racism and the prejudice in this movie so overt that you maybe as someone as someone who's maybe an uneducated viewer, who takes this movie at face value, might think, if I don't do any of these things in this movie, so I'm not a racist, right?
Nate:If it's not overt, it's not racism.
Fish:I can't be a racist or prejudiced views because I don't do or say what was done in this movie. Right, right. Yeah, granted, I'm oversimplifying it, but that's one of the big flaws I saw is maybe there was just no subtlety there was no intricacies. There was more intricacies and how their lives were connected, intertwined, then how racism was applied.
Cayleigh:I think also to take it one step further, even if you don't overtly racist person watches this movie, I don't know that they would come away with a message that intent intended to set out with because for instance, we have the that cop character who is overtly matt dillon, overtly racist, completely fucked up, what an asshole. Then we get the sympathetic story of his father, and he cares for his father and his father's this great man. And then
Jackie:it's impossible for a racist person to also have a father they care about,
Cayleigh:right. And then on top of that, he gets this like weird redemption arc, where he saves the woman that he sexually assaulted,
Jackie:they have a meaningful glance.
Cayleigh:Yeah, and they get the sense. So I'm just like, what struck me out about that specific thread is no one in this movie learns anything. So like, not at all, not even we can we can go thread by thread, that guy doesn't learn shit, he saves her. But he doesn't learn that like, oh, he shouldn't have done that, or whatever He tells the partner like, once you've been on this job long enough, you'll understand why I am the way that I am. And sure enough, that character goes on
Jackie:complete 180 Yeah, an hour.
Cayleigh:Yeah, to murder someone because of a you know, preconceived notion, or, you know, and then you picked
Fish:up this fucking dude off the side of the road. I mean,
Nate:right? Yeah. And everything. Like Jackie said, Everything leading up to that as like, his character is going the complete opposite way. And he does a 180. And, you know, from the time he leaves work, to the time he picks him up.
Jackie:Yeah, because this all takes over place over a day.
Cayleigh:Yeah. So just be like in that one little snippet, because you have like, 12 storylines going on that one little snippet. Not only does the prejudice character not learn anything, the non, the closest thing that we get to an anti prejudiced character becomes just like the partner just like the partners that he would. So no lessons are learned here. None. And we're now also given a weird redemption angle for this character who doesn't deserve a redemption. And then another thread that I was like, again, we had an opportunity where we could have had a learning moment, and we actively didn't. So we have the Persian store owner, who is you know, first receives prejudice at the gun store, but then gives prejudice against the locksmith goes, you know, we're gonna fast forward we're gonna look at that big love picture here. So he goes to murder this guy, daughter jumps ahead, whatever and the trigger pulls the trigger who's going to murder this man and his daughter goes home is crying daughter what happened? And the way he explains the story, she tells me that he learned nothing. It's
Fish:a miracle.
Cayleigh:She is my guardian angel. For me,
Nate:which makes yet which makes him I think makes him appear. unnecessarily. unintelligent.
Cayleigh:Well, yeah, that's a great representation. No, no,
Nate:what blanks are, right? Yeah, it's, you know,
Jackie:I think you're supposed to get the impression that he leaves relieved because oh my gosh, I was going to do that. But thank God it didn't happen that way.
Cayleigh:And that's what but we don't get any elaboration we don't get everything else in this movie is slapping us over Yeah, with a giant fish.
Nate:Leave it up to interpretation.
Cayleigh:Well, I guess the viewers that he walked away have like, some, you know, some angel is watching over me. And you know, I was gonna I don't learn that. Oh, this guy has a daughter just like me and is just trying to get by just like me. We don't get that lesson at all. While we get is that Oh, I did a whoopsie Yep. And it's okay. Because Samsung is looking over me. Yeah. So we learned nothing there
Fish:because they made it seem like the daughter like grabbed the bullets and like maybe hid them because she wants her father to think that
Jackie:no, she put blankson. So let's see. It seems like she knowingly bought blank.
Fish:At the very ends.
Cayleigh:I don't think she knows. She's read. I don't know. i She's like, I don't know, bullets. Which one should I have in the eyes of douchebag. And it's like, he's like we got sir Do something and she goes off your red box.
Jackie:got the impression she did that knowing no,
Nate:because the guy even the guy in the shop or the gun salesman even goes, You know what? These are? Just like their bullet. Yeah, their bullets.
Jackie:I guess yeah, maybe I'm putting too much into it. But I thought she did that also knowing that she didn't want her dad to really have the gun. I think my baby I'm really tiny.
Fish:I thought that she did it on purpose too, because I'm guessing she could have read the box from like, it's a big blinks on her. I thought she would have read it. But I thought after he chalks it up, so a miracle. That's when they show her grabbing the bullets from the cash register, because I think she's gonna hide them. That way. He'll never know that there was a blank. That's, yeah, that's what I get out of that. Like she wanted to chalk it up to the miracle as opposed to like, no, it's just a blank.
Cayleigh:Maybe it maybe we aren't giving it too much credit because if she knew it was blanks all along. Then again, they were doing a Classic Game of Thrones, d&d writing duo, Subversion, it doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. We have to subvert expectations. She freaks out when the shop is broken into. And she's all freaked out that oh my god, these guys who are racist against us now have our gun and bullets, which is dangerous, and they're gonna come and kill us. Yeah. Well, if she knew that there were blanks all along, why she freaking out, which again, maybe she didn't know they're blanks all along. And they threw that in there to make sure that we don't know their blank
Fish:user to buy bullets than it is to buy a gun. So somebody stole that gun that was registered to there. Yeah,
Jackie:the gun would be traced back to them.
Cayleigh:I'm just saying it felt very that entire thread, even like I say, the whole as soon as he's talking about his magic cape, I'm like, one of these people is getting shot. Either he's gonna get shot and the daughter is gonna feel guilty of the thing, or she's gonna get shot, because it's going to prove a little bit data. You said, yeah. So one way someone's dying here. And then again, it's just felt like, like the last three episodes of Game of Thrones, like you are subverting expectations at the expense of intelligent story writing
Jackie:over water bottles just sitting out on the side.
Cayleigh:Like just the iral of like, oh, there's nothing in the gun. It didn't actually go off. She's fine.
Nate:Yeah, I took it as that she didn't know, like when she pulled the blanks out of the drawer at the end. Like I took it as her double checking and didn't know.
Cayleigh:Either way, terrible storytelling. And I literally instead of feeling emotional at that scene of like, oh, no, he shot the daughter. Even if he had shot the daughter again. I was already rolling my eyes because of the cloak device that we were given that already gave away the end of this thread. And then again, when no one was actually hit. I was like, somehow this is worse. Yeah. So how this is worth, nobody is dead right now.
Jackie:So let's go to the other ridiculous thing where you know, ludicrous, runs over the guy and then takes him to the hospital. But it's Wait. He's a human trafficker. cashed
Cayleigh:that check. Back Story? No, no, nothing. Again, expectations Whoa.
Nate:And that's where it really like reeks of like, a non ironic version of Avenue Q. Everybody's a little bit racist. It's like this guy. Well, this guy just got run over by a car. He's in the hospital. He's trying to recover and hope Nope, he's a racist to
Fish:did. But was it just to set up like, ludicrous for like some sort of redemption arc?
Cayleigh:For him to just drive? Oh, you know what I know. Other Asian people are let me wrap up. Yeah, one day,
Fish:everybody is better than selling them?
Cayleigh:Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. We're bringing them to the proper authorities, which would be more noble, even though that means that he would also be getting arrested would be a much more impactful story. But no, because he can't sacrifice himself.
Jackie:That's exactly what I was gonna say you
Cayleigh:can't get arrested to that's
Jackie:the other option. The way that I stole this ban and hit the guy, right? Yeah. When I you know, so when ludicrous and Muda. Yeah, when they show up in the beginning, and they start talking about you know, how they're the only black men in the sky like I actually was optimistic.
Cayleigh:Yeah. And then immediately I was like, What
Fish:are we concerned?
Nate:Oh, why are why are we more concerned about this? Is it because we have guns?
Jackie:Yeah, if it had been a satire of some sort, this movie could have been.
Cayleigh:I thought it was your moment.
Jackie:It was not.
Cayleigh:Yeah, unfortunately. Sandra still falling down the stairs.
Fish:Oh my god. Why did that was just so weird
Jackie:so she can hug the main character. You're my best friend.
Cayleigh:She didn't learn anything
Fish:why women need to stay away from staircases. She
Cayleigh:didn't learn anything. All she takes on hardwood was that the only people nicer are the people she pays. Yep.
Fish:She still doesn't realize that.
Nate:I turned to Jackie right before she fell down the stairs. Is her character's name Karen.
Fish:Yeah, she's still didn't realize at the end of the movie that more than likely, the main reason the maid has been nice to her is because she's paying. Yeah, yeah, maybe. Well, the maid realizes she's asshole. She's got to
Cayleigh:make I'm sure the nice person. That's why we're given. That's at least the intention. But again,
Fish:it's not secure. The only bit you're not friends. Yeah.
Cayleigh:It's it's again. It's almost like infantilizing to paint this as like, oh, no, she's such a wonderful person. And she just cares about you know, she's your employee. Yeah. She probably thinks you're a fucking piece of shit, too. She's just nice to your face. She's,
Nate:she's not a horrible person to walk in and crumpled up in a ball at the bottom of the stairs. I'm out. I mean, that's a whole different level.
Jackie:That relationship even has to be some sort of trope, right? Oh, but that seems so common.
Cayleigh:That's what I mean. Just didn't it didn't know.
Jackie:And then what about that scene? I still don't know what to make of it. Where Ryan Philippines character goes and says I want to transfer and then the captain's like, I'm a black cop. Do you know what it took to get me here? Well, I'm not going to help you. Right? I don't know that.
Cayleigh:It definitely was uncomfortable.
Nate:That yeah, that's the closest the movie gets to like systemic racism. I'm having a systemic issue. Yeah. And they, the movie handles it very, very poorly. I
Cayleigh:was gonna say, I don't maybe I mean, I'm not. I am not a city cop. So I cannot speak to what the system was really like, maybe it was the most realistic part of the movie, because I walked away from it being like, wow, they really made this so that they forced him to be cool about it. Basically, that's how I walked away from it that this guy is telling him. I'm gonna punish you if you make a big deal about this. If you go up the chain, and whatever. You know, fuck you.
Jackie:Yeah.
Cayleigh:So,
Nate:and I'm not I'm not gonna fight this battle, because it's the it's not a big enough.
Cayleigh:Right issue.
Jackie:The something about the scene like I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to think so. We've been watching Brooklyn nine, nine again. And they address all of that too, you know, and they address it a lot better than this. I'm trying to think of exactly what in that scene kind of irked me, right.
Fish:Serious because of the 14.
Jackie:That's probably the farting. I hate farting.
Nate:Farting is funny. You can't take a scene serious when they're when they're talking seriously about farting. I mean,
Jackie:actually, that could be part of it that it does.
Fish:Yeah, now we're getting to the bottom.
Jackie:No, it doesn't feel serious when it felt more like a joke. That whole scene felt more like a joke. And that could have been it. I just
Cayleigh:think part of it was that it was not really a coherently structured scene to he strikes out the scene being like, how could it have this gone on with one of my employees and I don't even know about it. And I'm just like, Okay, interesting.
Fish:Kidding. Are you being like a hard ass right now?
Cayleigh:Well, like it yeah, you can't tell these kids all these hard outs. Again, I sort of thought that the farting thing was a joke until he is in his own car. And they, you know, make jokes and dispense. But then he takes it a step further and is like, Okay, do you know how hard it was for me to get here and you're like, so there's like, a lot of points being made. But none of them make sense together and none of it comes to a conclusion that gives if, like, for instance, he had been like, the right if this bothers you, and it's the right thing to do, then you should raise hell about it, but you're gonna lose your job. You're gonna whatever. Yeah, and if he decided to take that course of action, then okay, he's true to himself and he's, you know, sacrificing stuff. And if he doesn't, then we get the vibe that oh, you will he sucks to perhaps without him having to murder someone to do that job. But the fact that it just was like a nonsensical conversation with no point and no lesson and no actual substance for us to walk away from what was the right choice and what was the wrong choice
Jackie:that's symbolic for the movie,
Cayleigh:maybe it feels because that's how I felt I was just like, and it wasn't even like Oh, Well, clearly, it's a complicated thing. And in real life, there wouldn't be a clear cut, whatever, because it is so tricky. But what didn't even feel like that it just felt like the person who wrote it again. I'm 12. And this is deep. Yeah. This is how as a 12 year old, I imagine the dynamic racism is Yes,
Fish:his name is Paul.
Cayleigh:Well, Paul sucks. Sorry, speak with him.
Fish:Send us an email Paul, you know, an email. Another thing that I didn't like was the soundtrack of this film going from like, like a something great score to like, it was all over the place the soundtrack. And it was just bad. Just bad. That
Jackie:was Dave Matthews in the soundtrack.
Fish:It would have been better. It would have helped sort
Jackie:of been around the time they were dumping shit on Chicago, right? Every
Nate:time there's like a story. Crash. Yeah. To me.
Fish:We've been shitting on a lot of stuff. I think rightfully so on this movie. But I thought some of the acting was really good. I like
Nate:I agree.
Fish:I liked Matt Dylan's acting.
Cayleigh:He did make me hate the point. Yeah, I don't. I wouldn't trust him if I
Nate:interrupt too much. Yeah, I don't know why I don't like Matt. Do you have a very punchable face? Yeah, if
Cayleigh:I saw him in the streets, I would I would throw down.
Nate:Anyways, not to like him other than
Fish:him as a person.
Nate:Yeah, I don't. Yeah. Like, I'm like, I don't care for Matt Dillon in a lot of roles, but I don't have a good reason for it. Other than he plays a good asshole. Yeah.
Fish:And but it works well
Cayleigh:on site.
Fish:But I thought he stood out. I thought a lot of the actors actually did well, in what they did.
Jackie:I mean, we like all these people.
Nate:Michael Pena was fantastic. Yeah. And this was one of his I think, first roles.
Cayleigh:He's the only person that doesn't do anything wrong. Yeah. entire movie. I thought that the insurance lady was going to make it out. unscathed as well. Yeah. Very close.
Nate:She gets rear ended and goes off. Yeah. Literally.
Cayleigh:I was telling David. I was like, well, Marvel guy and insurance lady. And then literally, that scene happened and I was like, Marvel guys.
Jackie:But it's a little bit racist.
Fish:To Vance.
Nate:Sandra Bullock did a good job, her characters apparent. I couldn't take Brendan Fraser seriously.
Fish:I didn't like his haircut.
Cayleigh:Again, it felt like an episode of Veep. During his scenes, he's talking to his the whole talk about how like, you know, the race of the people that carjack them and well, that sucks for our image. And can we get a video of me paint a picture of me pinning a medal on someone and
Fish:conversation has happened somewhere sometime. It
Cayleigh:just comes across very like, again, if this movie had been had meant to be a
Jackie:satire,
Cayleigh:yes. If it had meant to be satirical. And that's what it was going for. I think it actually could have been good.
Jackie:Yeah, I agree.
Cayleigh:Yeah. Because those scenes were only so cringe because it wasn't meant to be a satire. It was supposed to be like, This is how white people are behind closed doors when they have power. Yeah. I mean, yes. Probably many for sure. But I think we could have handled it in a way that was a little bit more impactful and a little less easy to remove ourselves from. Yeah.
Nate:And I was trying to think like, outside of Brendan Fraser. I don't think I had a problem with any like, I think the rest of the performances I thought were really good. And Brendan Fraser I just think didn't really fit the role. The shopkeeper I had a problem with more the way the character was written more than the way it was portrayed. Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, and I can't remember her name, but from Westworld. Terrence Howard's wife in the movie. Yeah. All great performances. Don Cheadle is fantastic. From what I can remember, it's more of a it's a more kind of dramatic role that you see a man than usual, like Ocean's 11. And some of the other stuff that he's done is
Fish:warmachine
Nate:warmachine. Yeah. Marvel. No, the
Fish:funny thing is
Nate:Oh, Terrence Howard. And
Fish:they were both. Yeah. But I liked Terrence Howard. version better. Although he wasn't a war machine yet. In the first Iron Man. I was bummed to see that. They didn't bring him back. For more iron men.
Nate:Yeah, cuz did it start? It started with Terrence Howard. Yeah, he wasn't the first one. And then Don Cheadle took over, which I think it was. I think there was a dispute over money, I believe so
Fish:I don't think Marvel just reached out to him. I don't think they Hold them back.
Cayleigh:No, I think there is like a noted like situation that they recasted him over.
Jackie:So I was gonna bring up another scene. The scene where Don Cheadle is character as sleeping with the Jennifer Esposito character.
Fish:This is another his mom calls. Yeah, he's
Jackie:talking to his mom. Oh, hi
Fish:mom, white woman I'm sleeping with a white man or woman right now there's
Nate:this is another one was this 2006 5005 This is just another thing that would be called out today but wasn't thought about at the time. Yeah, continue.
Jackie:Well I so I looked up I remembered Jennifer Esposito, she looks so familiar to me. But she's so she says in there that she's from El Salvador. Right? And what's the record? Rico? I think she's Italian. Oh. Yeah.
Cayleigh:But you know why? None of these characters learned anything at all whatsoever. And you would think that as a viewer, we also would have absolutely nothing to take away from this film as a lesson. But I did learn something from this film. What was it? Never put a St. Christopher in your car? Yep. Yeah, only bad things are gonna happen.
Jackie:That's a good call
Cayleigh:everybody who have seen Christopher on their dashboard.
Jackie:They hit that guy
Cayleigh:really, really bad time.
Nate:Yeah, I learned something else too. Yeah. Listen to your locksmith.
Cayleigh:Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Big time.
Jackie:Yeah, good lesson.
Nate:That's the reason that storyline bothered me so much, is that it's just it's miscommunication. And like aggravatingly it's like he the shopkeeper is more worried about being scammed and everybody trying to screw him over than he is racist. Right? It doesn't matter who it is. He's like, he's like, this is my store. This is not right. This is not right. And it's like, he clearly spoke English, his daughter speak very good English. And she would you know, help. And it's like, listen to if you're not going to listen to everybody else who's telling you hey, you need a new door, or a doorframe, right. Listen to your daughter. You know, because she's clearly concerned about that. About everything that's going on. But that's it's like, yeah, that's that was my takeaway. It's like, okay, get a new lock. And then locksmith says you need a new doorframe. Get a new doorframe.
Cayleigh:And like he did I thought it was so interesting that they took every low hanging fruit to make everybody reactionary in this movie, and I was waiting for the locksmith to then start being prejudice Yes, but then he's like, You know what, it's free don't even don't even pay because I don't care anymore. This is I'm so done. This is so like he was as frustrated as you were and
Nate:to me that is probably the most realistic reaction in the movie. Yeah, somebody's saying you know what? Fine I'm out yeah, I'm you know, I this not worth my time.
Jackie:Because every other character to your point, Kaley, they, they have people that are being racist against them or prejudice, and they're like, Fine, I will be what you made me
Cayleigh:Yeah, like like, it's like every if you were to make like, one of those create your own it's like a it's like a Create Your Own Adventure from hell. Every single opportunity, you have Option A or Option B only. They were only given Option A and Option A is the worst possible way you can react to a situation. Yep. And that was it
Fish:and loudly
Cayleigh:like there was no nice things were
Nate:allowed in the C option is a or a loudly. Yeah, I choose a loud leave.
Cayleigh:Except for the locksmith. He person in this adventure who was given a beach
Jackie:at Barry, why would you only have one person?
Cayleigh:I can't like there's nothing Why is he the only person Yeah. The reasoning again,
Nate:predictable.
Jackie:There is just too likable. It's true.
Nate:Like Ryan, Ryan Philippi. You're like, Oh, he's gonna make it out too. But then you're like, No, it's too predictable. Something's going wrong. And Jackie called it for like the last half of movies like he's gonna shoot somebody,
Jackie:for sure.
Fish:So the director said he wrote the movie to quote, bust liberals who might be politically correct, but blind to their own prejudices, unquote. That's why he made this movie.
Jackie:That was clearly supposed to be this Sandra Bullock character, right?
Fish:It's just this whole movie. Every like person's movie
Cayleigh:I'm just curious as to like, what? Again, I am not I pretty much don't maybe I'm the ignorant one in this situation, but I'm trying to. There was nothing at all nuanced about this, that would uncover some sort of latent biases that we all carry around with us. There was no instance in this movie where I was like, oh, you know what? I feel really called out here.
Nate:Yeah, yeah,
Cayleigh:I don't I'm so fantastically confused about what he's referencing.
Jackie:Especially because every character does fall into a stereotype.
Cayleigh:100%.
Jackie:So what are you what are you trying to
Nate:prove outside of the locksmith? Yeah. Yeah.
Cayleigh:Because the locksmith is our is our straight man there. Are you in comedy, you have kind of the farcical characters who are straight man. Real.
Jackie:You haven't glaring at the camera sometimes? Yeah, really? What is the shit?
Cayleigh:Exactly? Because if anything, one of the biggest critiques that I saw about this movie was how they felt like it was Holly. Like, like liberals talking down to your every day, you know, on an educated person. Being like, see racism is bad, you should do better. Yeah. So it's just interesting to me that he was making it for liberals to do soul searching. I think there was definitely no nuance about this film that would make someone who has an everyone has latent biases. They're not wrong there. They just did a terrible job. Expressing Yeah,
Fish:this film does have one thing that no one can take away with it from it. Guys, and girls, and people. So as Kaylee already mentioned, which we'll talk more about later, this film did win Best Picture. But this is the last best picture film to be released. No, sorry. Let's start over. So this is the last best fix the fuck?
Nate:Start over again.
Fish:One more time. This is the last best picture film to be released on VHS.
Jackie:Wow.
Fish:And the first best picture film to be released on Blu ray. So got the last in the first dammit.
Jackie:Wow.
Nate:That's impressive.
Cayleigh:What's funny is this also I'm not going to go through the specifics. But speaking of it's Oscar win, when you go on the Internet Movie Database, or internet, Internet Movie Database, IMDB page for it. And you go to the trivia so many of the bullet points are like this is the only movie to win. Best Picture but not this award. This is the only movie to win. Best Picture. But less than x amount of Oscars. This is the only movie like all the things that it didn't do that every other best picture has done. Interesting, which is some food What about going back to something that cannot be taken for thought. away from this movie boy that I will throw in?
Fish:Do it.
Jackie:So in a time where even? Or even today, you know, and even recently, there's been a lot of criticism around the Oscars and award shows for lack of diversity. This was a very diverse cast. It was and this was so for 2005 I have to imagine that that was one of the more diverse casts that was nominated for anything.
Cayleigh:The question is how diverse was the production team? The writing team and the director
Jackie:did not look at any of that.
Nate:We know the writer and director were Paul Haggis. Oh, haggis. Yeah.
Fish:That sounds very European.
Jackie:Like oh, my God, what isn't lambs? Stomach lands? Intestine? Yeah,
Fish:those are made of land
Jackie:systems.
Fish:Let me see.
Jackie:I have tried haggis.
Nate:I was waiting for. I was thinking the same thing fishers said that looks
Fish:Canadian.
Jackie:Yeah, I was just honest. Have you looked up his Canadian? Oh, by the way.
Fish:That very wise sexual
Jackie:misconduct allegations in 2017. Also, he was in Scientology.
Cayleigh:He seems like exactly the type of person who is the authority on teaching white liberals how they should handle race relations in our country.
Fish:I guess the actress wore some like protective rubber underwear for that scene.
Jackie:Yeah, that scene as I also did
Nate:is no that was a thing. Glad it is.
Fish:Yeah. Cuz he was like had been there.
Jackie:Yeah. I didn't love her how her whole storyline was handled.
Cayleigh:It was nothing.
Jackie:Again her husband not going through any of like she should be having a lot of emotions from that trauma and trauma. Yeah. And there's no acknowledgement from him. It's all her storyline is just to further the two men's storylines.
Nate:Well, again, I liked the acting portrayal. I mean, they acted the part well, I think it was written very poorly. Kaley, I cut you off.
Cayleigh:You're fine. I just I was confused about their fight. I get that they're implying that she is wealthy in comments for money. And so they're trying to imply that she doesn't understand. Yeah, the level of danger they were in. But again, given everything that's been out lately, that doesn't seem to hold water from my
Nate:perspective, really cold water? back then,
Cayleigh:right. Yeah, I mean,
Fish:anyway, I didn't I thought that was weird. I understand the probably wanted to show it as like, a breaking point for Terrence Terrence Howard's character. Yeah. But it just seemed
Cayleigh:weird that without her behaving that way, it was
Fish:like, Well, I'm just moving on moving on to something different. Like his character arc, like, randomly I just had when I was like, just like, almost suicidal at that point. I mean, I don't know if I really, I mean, I guess he had like a breakdown, and like he had enough but
Nate:seems pretty irrational. It was for somebody in that position.
Fish:I mean, it's hard. You can't put yourself in someone else's shoes or whatever, especially with those circumstances that was represented there. But it just seems odd. At that time at that place, I don't know. I'm just though.
Cayleigh:I just think it would have been enough. Having him having his wife kind of be, you know, not be ignorant to the situation and the realities. And, you know, have it play out exactly how it played out. Only without her like basically blaming her husband, which just seemed odd. And then I would imagine the helplessness of watching your wife get treated that way and get assaulted would be enough to make him right. Break down. Right. You know what I mean? I don't think we needed to add the layer of him being like, oh, at equestrian school. You are jumping horses, you did it and it's just like, and then her putting on an accent and stuff like that. It just felt
Fish:I'm gonna throw something out there. Okay. Is it just me? Doesn't Matt Dillon look look like a young Bruce Campbell?
Jackie:Yeah, it does.
Fish:Like he could he could maybe do and like an Evil Dead remake. And
Jackie:I feel interesting. I don't know that he'd have the same chops.
Cayleigh:I would know him from
Jackie:matt Don. Yeah. I feel like he used to be in a lot. Like he was definitely looking during this time. Yeah. There's Something About Mary.
Fish:Oh, yeah.
Jackie:Crash
Fish:to me.
Nate:Final thoughts. Final
Cayleigh:thoughts? Wow. That's what I got for you. Wow.
Nate:Fish.
Fish:So I think this film started with the idea to do something that was maybe worthwhile or interesting, or maybe somewhat eye opening or somewhat educational. I think that was the original intention. And maybe for some people it was possibly hopefully, but I feel maybe for a lot of people it wasn't and it was just like I mentioned earlier just you just got slapped with a big fat wet noodle and the big fat wet noodle is racism, and you get slapped in the face with it. And
Jackie:graphic
Fish:and and then you said our banana split. And and you just had to go home and take a shower and you didn't learn anything. And you're done.
Nate:Yeah, but you're ruined that bananas
Fish:but yeah, so at the end of the day you wish you didn't do it?
Cayleigh:Is it ruined?
Fish:transformed into something better.
Nate:Let's ask Reddit
Fish:so yeah, didn't like the acting didn't like, oh, I liked some of the I didn't sorry, scratch that. I didn't like some of the acting. I did. Not all of it some of it. I didn't care for anything else though.
Jackie:Yeah, it's hard to I mean, that the point of the movie, that racism is bad. No one can argue with that, that the right. I feel like this would be a movie that I wouldn't think about if we weren't doing this podcast, like then if if it hadn't won an award, and I know we're gonna get into this, I feel like it would just be lost to the Sands of Time. Like, I don't think it would be a big discussion point. People want to be as worked up as we are, about how ridiculous this is, I think it would have been watched and people would have forgotten about it. I think that's what I would have done. If I had ever seen it outside of the podcast.
Cayleigh:I actually, I think that it would have been forgotten about up until recently, where everything is starting to resurface and be discussed. And then I think this would have it would have been like a Buzzfeed article. Remember that time that every ageless celebrity was in a really fucking weird movie that was taught to them, but was actually the most cringe worthy movie about racism ever made? So I think it would have came back.
Jackie:Yeah, that's probably true.
Nate:So I will echo what Jackie and fish said, I think it wanted to be something. I think when he wrote it, he wanted to be something more impactful about racism. And I think he missed the mark. That's pretty clear from all of our other discussion. And honestly, if we weren't analyzing this, I'd be indifferent to it. It it's entertaining to watch to a point. But again, I think it's the interactions between people, not the racism aspect. And it's more written, if you nail that earlier. Kaley, when you said everybody's reaction is, one it's stereotypes. Across the board, everybody is written as a stereotype except for the locksmith. And their reaction to any situation is going to be the worst possible reaction a human being could have
Fish:and allowed one of them
Nate:and the last one, loud and bad. did not hold up for me.
Cayleigh:So we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to pit these movies against one another because we don't do that often. We don't usually go like this movie. Yay, this movie boo. We just kind of talk about the movies and how they were similar but because Award Show aspect of this. I think we are probably going to do a little bit more malicious comparisons or cutlets
Jackie:have no idea which one's gonna win. They don't know. The big
Cayleigh:mystery they don't know. So come back and find out
Nate:and we're back.
Cayleigh:Film. One is an Oscar award winning film. And the other does not
Fish:the other ones. Just wait
Jackie:one is worthy.
Fish:No, no, no, no, no. No. The other one is Oscar award winning two
Cayleigh:staffer. Best Picture? Yeah.
Nate:One is a Best Picture winner. The other is not.
Fish:Well, they both won three Oscars.
Cayleigh:Which ones? So
Fish:let's break it down. Brokeback Mountain won Academy Award for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and original score. Yes, winners on all accounts. Crash won. It was nominated for six and a one three, including Best Picture, original screenplay, and film editing. So apparently, if you win film editing, it's pretty telling that you're going to win Best Picture like most Best Picture. winners win film editing.
Nate:Interesting.
Fish:So once this film one film editing people knew there was going to be a problem and that broke Brokeback was not gonna win. Best practice picture because they won like the Golden Globe. Best Picture.
Nate:Yeah, film. It's interesting because film added I mean, it's kind of a tangent, but I wouldn't think that film editing would be one of the telling ones right? For Best Picture. Apparently it is. Or at least it used to be. Yeah, I don't know if it's just interesting.
Jackie:So it seems like this when was kind of a shock like Jack Nicholson even visibly react. did to it.
Cayleigh:There was a gasp in the room.
Jackie:Yeah, but so he says like, he's like, Well Oh, yeah, right. And we watched that one somewhere else we read we couldn't find the clip but he said what happened?
Nate:Like emails off stage to somebody's like what happened?
Cayleigh:Oh, wow.
Fish:Because there was other solid movies that you're Capote, I think there was Lytro. Spielberg, there was a couple
Cayleigh:other things that always comes up. So you cannot Google the movie Crash and you cannot move the movie. You cannot Google the movie Brokeback Mountain. Without it just being this conversation rehashed over and over
Jackie:Yeah, you cannot move to the Google.
Cayleigh:You cannot move to the Google. It's true. But the follow up is always because I feel like you always forget the other movies involved. Yeah, even the similar argument is the Saving Private Ryan versus the Shakespeare in Love. Everyone always forgets the other movies involved. But yeah, that's always the follow up is like, Okay, if you're gonna, because a lot of people and probably very rightly so assume that the reason Brokeback did not win was because of homophobia. The Oscars were not going to award a movie in 2006, or 2005, which is
Nate:2006
Cayleigh:that had those themes. We were still
Jackie:it wasn't a safe choice.
Cayleigh:No, it was it wasn't the safe choice. There was much outrage about that movie even being nominated. Ah,
Nate:interesting.
Cayleigh:Lots of backlash.
Fish:Another movie that was nominated, which I haven't seen, but apparently is quite good as Good night and good luck.
Nate:Yes. I think Clooney either wrote or directed that one. And I haven't seen it either. But it's supposed to be really good. Actually, I may have seen it.
Cayleigh:So the fact that okay, we get it, if that's your reasoning, why? Okay. There were other movies. Yeah. It does not make any sense why this? Got it at all, but especially over Brokeback Mountain,
Nate:I'm not in tune as much to the award shows. And I know, there's been controversy over like pay to play, basically, and some of the marketing campaigns. Is this one that was a beneficiary of that.
Fish:Yes. So from what I read, crash was heavily heavily marketed by the studio, I think they sent out over 100,000 copies of the movie to
Nate:wow
Fish:members of the academy and, and film critics and just random people,
Cayleigh:which for my understanding was, helped make it even more controversial, other than the fact that it's not a very good movie, and that there was not just quality movie, but kind of groundbreaking movie in the same category. Is that because we're talking this movie didn't qualify for the Oscars, that would have made sense for it. So it didn't. It was old news. It was very old. Like it wasn't no one was talking about it. It wasn't a thing anymore. So the fact that it like got winded at sales, just in time for the Oscars made it extra upsetting. Yeah, for it to win.
Nate:Like it should have been done. It should have been the previous year, right?
Cayleigh:Like it couldn't have been that's why it was this year, it didn't like due to the cut offs of like when films have to be shown in LA by a certain time, it didn't meet that requirement. But that's usually a death sentence for those movies and why you kind of have a lot of movies releasing at certain times so that they'll make sense in their award season categories. So usually a film like this, where it like misses the mark on its year, just barely, thus making it super old news to make it for the one that does qualify for it usually ends up not getting nominated, because there's so many other things that are much more compelling and in you know,
Nate:on top of mind
Fish:in the forefront. Yeah. on the lighter side, the feature documentary winner in 2006 for the Academy Award was March of the Penguins.
Nate:Oh, nice.
Fish:Oh, just to lighten the mood a little bit.
Jackie:I was gonna say a comparison. I have for the two as I think the target audience for both of them was straight white folk. Yeah. Or white you know. I think
Fish:like most films like
Jackie:yeah, no, that's true. That's totally fair. Like I think, in crash, it was an attempt to well, we heard that it was an attempt to get white liberals to say, hey, we're racist to this is bad. Oh, gotcha. And we had kind of talked about it with Brokeback Mountain, too, that this again was an attempt to humanize people that were not necessarily living the same lifestyle as you
Fish:kind of mentioned briefly earlier, but I did see crash I think when it came on maybe in the theaters maybe right soon afterwards. And so too, I was like 18 When these when these phones came out, you know, young and I remember enjoying crash, I thought that it was was fun or interesting and not fun in the sense of a fun movie, but like just how all the stories intertwine. I thought that part was fun. And I thought that it was kind of bold for you know, you don't normally see movies, talk about heavy subjects this straightforward. So for the 18 year old me, I was like, wow, that's, that's interesting. I feel like I feel like if the the members of the academy were all 18 year olds, then like, crashed probably should have won. Yeah. But I didn't see Brokeback Mountain. But I'm glad maybe that I didn't see Brokeback Mountain then, because I don't think it would have nearly would have appreciated nearly as much, you know, 18 year old me would not have found it that interesting or meaningful or deep or whatever. So I'm glad that I was able to rewatch these older, you know, as an adult, 35 years old, me and
Jackie:still me.
Fish:And just found out a lot of meaning. And I really enjoyed Brokeback Mountain. Like I said, that was one of the best films we've watched so far. And then just realized all the problems with crash and the lack of nuance, and cetera, et cetera, everything we've already talked about, which is easier to see and assess, you know, as an adult, and after you've lived a while and, and matured more and
Nate:cetera. I totally agree. I don't think when I saw it the first time I think it was when it came out. So I would have been 20. And I don't, I did not get the new or like, the lack of nuance and stuff beneath that. And I think it's lack of life experience and, and mature perspective and maturity.
Cayleigh:But that makes it more embarrassing that wine to be like my eyebrow, zillion people
Nate:with hopefully life experience.
Cayleigh:They should have been able to appreciate broke back for being a complex story about love and relationship. And seeing how like,
Nate:again, it was lacking. Yeah, like,
Cayleigh:it was just funny that you're like, little I was, you know, 18 20. And I, you know, I didn't notice lack of nuance and you know, thought it was whatever. Again, I'm 12. And this is deep. Like it seemed like a like a high school class project. A rich white suburb, children learning about prejudice and having to write creative writing on
Jackie:it. Not only that, when you're that young, too, and you're hearing this is an award winning movie. I think that has an impact too. And yeah, oh, yeah, this does mean something that maybe I'm missing, right.
Fish:And the other thing was, it was it was pretty, this was on crash for whatever reason was on a lot of critics, like best of the year, either first, second, third, like best movie of the year lists. Like, I know, we mentioned Roger Ebert here and there throughout this podcast, you know,
Cayleigh:has never had a good take on this.
Fish:And this was like, I'm pretty sure I saw this was like one of his This was his top pick of the year for stars best movie of the year list, like at the end of the year, whatever. And, but there was a big clash among critics, like some critics thought like, this was a crappy movie. And some critics thought it was the best damn movie. And there was a big division even among some critics, which was interesting. Pretty much all the critics that did like most film critics, I think, at the time, the ones that did create this very highly or the best movie were like, older white guys. Right.
Jackie:So which are most of the critics?
Fish:Yeah. And from what I saw, some of the members of the academy were quoted by saying that they refused to watch Brokeback Mountain to even like, give it a shot.
Nate:Wow.
Fish:Because just because of its nature of love story between like two guys. Tim Scribner was
Cayleigh:a very, like, famous quote that went around of a guy saying, John Wayne is rolling in his grave right now, this isn't a like, you know, this is an abomination. And like a, like a mark on the Academy to have included the film.
Jackie:That's so disappointing.
Cayleigh:Yeah. So I feel like that's the only reason it last there was like some kind of post mortem poll. And like a lot of people
Jackie:like 2015 Only
Fish:15 The Hollywood Reporter pulled hundreds of Academy members not only about this year, but like there was a handful of years that they asked people to revote. You know, Brokeback Mountain came out on top with the RE polling.
Cayleigh:And it was like not by a small margin. It was like, Yeah,
Nate:overwhelming. Yeah.
Jackie:Which is an interesting practice to see how movies that won held up over time.
Cayleigh:But I think why this one is so Zee controversy, the like, that shouldn't have happened is even compared to other movies that won out in controversial ways. So like, again, the other one that comes up a lot is
Nate:Saving Private Ryan Shakespearean loads. Yeah,
Cayleigh:Shakespeare in Love if we were to have that. I mean, we could have done Shakespeare in Love against crash and then like, which a Shakespeare level would have came out leaps and bounds ahead of
Nate:Shakespearean love was a good movie.
Cayleigh:Yes, it is not better than Saving Private Ryan.
Nate:I totally agree.
Cayleigh:But it's at least logical how it could have possibly won. Yep. This movie doesn't make sense to me.
Nate:No. Brokeback Mountain vs. Crash. Brokeback Mountain is head and shoulders above crash as a better movie.
Cayleigh:I ever eautiful the other movies nominated. But again, how did this one went out over the other four movies? Yeah, there was not a to movie category.
Nate:So there's Capote Munich and what was the other one?
Fish:Good night and good luck or something like that? Yeah,
Nate:I I'm really tempted to go back and watch the other three
Fish:because Philip Seymour Hoffman, won Best Actor in a Leading Role for Capote for Capote. Yeah, it
Nate:was a huge, huge deal when it came out. Yes, performance.
Cayleigh:I am very much pro them creating new categories similar to how you have adapted screenplay and original screenplay. There's been a push lately for adapted performance and original performance. And basically adaptive performance would be for remakes and biopics.
Nate:Okay.
Cayleigh:And I feel like that seems fair, because it seems like people don't grade the performance they grade this video about Yeah, the person that they're reenacting,
Jackie:you're totally right.
Cayleigh:And so many snubs have happened over that. Where again, the performance is some of those performances. Yeah, they do deserve an award but it just it just feels like also such a different type of acting, how well can you imitate somebody and bring them to life versus how well can you understand a character that doesn't exist and make them real? Those are two totally different things. So and I feel like this is totally a year where again, Heath Ledger, the author who created this character said that he made him real you know, she that was an accident calling him by the character's name because it was just so sad ominous for her because he became him that was what listen Hip Hop anonymous so yeah, controversies all around.
Jackie:But I'm gonna
Cayleigh:do like I've been drinking it's because I have been and that it goes for every episode.
Fish:You almost finished your first cider.
Cayleigh:Listen.
Jackie:sigh Dre. Yeah,
Nate:very European. Son today it's a shopI
Cayleigh:but at the end of the day, people I love award shows. And I know that that's not very hip or cool of me. You know, everyone is like nobody even likes these anymore. Nobody watches I do I watch it. I like them religiously.
Jackie:I have a friend who used to go to like there's a theater around here which I'd be interested in where all day they stream the Best Picture nominees. Oh, so you like cooler and the cinema theater and you watch a catheter? I take breaks.
Fish:I think once you're busy, I'm Buddy. Chicago theater that shows all the best animated shorts and I'll just show them all in a row. So it's like maybe 40 minutes or like an hour's worth of interesting short like animations and done that once or twice and that's a good time. You're not there all day. So
Cayleigh:oh, you know what could have been my rapid fire? What is your favorite Oscars or award show moment? But I feel like you guys don't watch award show.
Nate:I haven't recently I used to watch
Fish:not just have to put out as his.
Cayleigh:I mean, we get to see it. That's a first year I didn't watch the Oscars because we didn't have live television and I thought I'd be able to watch it on an ad And I was not able to. And so I didn't get to watch the Oscars last year. And so I missed the slap
Jackie:back to these movies really quick before we totally wrap it up. I think both of them are saying how they're both set out to kind of impact people. Do we think movies can impact people in that way, like change someone who's super conservative, or even a super liberal, totally change of viewpoint.
Nate:I would like to think that, you know, a well done movie or piece of art can change the way that someone thinks or sees the world, I think more realistically, is that it can do a really good job of portraying something that changed the world. Whether that is impactful to other people, or not like a historical event, or, you know, a storyline that changed people in the movie, like, I think he can do really well, that I just, I would like to think he can change people. And a good story. And a really good depiction of a story could change people, but part of me is cynical as well.
Fish:I think with enough exposure, and conversation and representation, that's how progress is made. And a good movie, like this just adds to those things. It's just another stepping stone. And for some people could be a big stepping stone on their way to, you know, seeing their blind sides or self improvement. And for some people could be just a tiny stepping stone, and they might need a lot more
Nate:part of the bigger picture
Fish:maybe improve or change or acknowledge things about themselves or others. So I think, at the very least, it is a stepping stone in the right direction.
Cayleigh:I guess that's Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say. Found a fish power. Um, like, I think it's, I don't even think it's an opinion, it's pretty much indisputable fact, I don't think one movie or one piece of media completely changes the conversation. But I do think it breaks the seal on the conversation and tests the waters for everyone else. And then slowly it starts to seep in, and not to downplay these more impactful pieces of media. I do think that it's once it hits the mainstream, that you actually see people be like, Well, okay, yeah, yeah. You know, once, you know, you have, like, you see, you have Brokeback Mountain that kind of breaks the steel. It says, we're going to talk about it. Yeah, we're going to have the conversation, right. And you keep going along, keep going along. And that kind of starts it and then you get other pieces of media that trickle in. I mean, way back in, you know, before this happened, and on television, and on lighthearted television, you had Ellen, who came out and our show got canceled, but again, it broke the seal,
Fish:you know, willing,
Jackie:I remember watching that episode. I mean,
Cayleigh:you wouldn't have Will and Grace without Ellen. Yep. Coming out and getting her show canceled. Yep. You wouldn't no one would you No.
Jackie:No, no, Ellen was love first. I
Nate:first met her talk show her. Yeah.
Cayleigh:She had she a sitcom
Fish:Yeah. Oh, I never saw that. Yeah, I actually used to
Jackie:watch it with my mom. And I remember that episode. It was a big deal.
Cayleigh:It was a huge deal. And like, so she became a pariah. She didn't have work for a long time. Until, like I say, but it broke the seal that created the conversation. And then it allowed people to be like, how, you know, how do you make it work then? And then we
Jackie:talked to like, we've talked before about how representation is so important. And I think that's a big topic lately is representation matters, we see that it makes a difference, especially for little kids who are watching this and they're able to see themselves more. So I think you're exactly right, that all of that just adds up over time.
Cayleigh:Yeah, I don't think there's ever going to be a piece of media that's like, we fixed it. All everyone's everyone's on board. But like I say, you know, you then have Modern Family, which is a super mainstream, really successful show that went on for a really long time that had been, you know, openly gay couple. Yeah. So
Nate:what are we watching next week?
Cayleigh:Next week, guys. It's community The one of our best episodes to date. Mastery.
Jackie:What is it? I don't remember
Cayleigh:of couples cut
Jackie:don't remember.
Cayleigh:We got a good old twins making adults fall in love with Mary Kate and Ashley is it takes two and Lindsey Lohan's The Parent Trap
Fish:Twinning
Cayleigh:follow us on Instagram at couples cutpodcast and on Twitter at couplescutpod to keep up with our latest updates. If you have a question for us, or a pairing suggestion, send us an email to couplescutpodcast@gmail.com Be sure to follow us wherever you listen. And if you liked what you heard, leave us a review. Thanks for listening