Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, Hey, Hey, how's it going. I haven't seen you
all since the last decade. I know that's a bad joke,
but I'm gonna say it anyway. It is January seven,
and it's time for another bit of the best of Nerdificent.
We'll be back next week, but for right now, why
don't you listen to these hits? Yeah, so we are
talking about the Bechdel Test. Why why did y all
(00:30):
decide that you wanted to make a podcast about this? Caitlin? Well,
I suppose it was my idea Bragg, But basically, I
am a huge film buff, to the extent that I
stupidly got two different degrees in film and spent you know,
tens of thousands of dollars on an education and film
(00:52):
and uh yeah, I mean movies. Movies are life for me. Um,
honestly crazy, I mean brave, really really yeah. Everyone started
hashtaging that Caitlin brave. Um. So I love movies and
I wanted to talk about them and kind of reconcile
the fact that a lot of my favorite movies treat
(01:13):
women horribly, or at least the movies that I grew
up with and just had become accustomed to watch some
of those that you discovered like, oh crap, I love
me awful, but I didn't didn't have the representation of
women yet, right, Um, the Big three were like for me,
(01:33):
it was like the like trilogies of Back to the Future,
Indiana Jones, and Star Wars like those were like the
crux of my childhood movie development. Uh. And then just
any I mean most movies since and before those also
not great to women. So I just I wanted to
(01:55):
kind of examine these movies more closely, just any movie
that has had like a big cultural impact and uh,
you know, take a look at them and figure out,
you know, maybe how much media is responsible for the
patriarchy still being a thing. Um. And so yeah, we
just I asked Jamie if she wanted to collaborate with
(02:19):
me on this idea, and she was very down. And
two and a half years later, here we are, Oh
my gosh, it sounds about the same as krilling it
and eventually nerdifficent. I was like, hey, you want to
do this. I was like, yeah, yeah, good idea. And
I had seen like I have not seen a lot
of well now I have when the podcast started, I
(02:41):
had not seen like most of I had also technically
onto film school, but technically I went, but I've majored
in radio, so I had also had to use medium
radio worth it thousands in debt. Uh but yeah, and
(03:05):
I hadn't seen most of the movies that we covered,
and so it was like an uh in real time education.
But I think it helps to get those two different
perspectives from like me, who like is apologetic to a
lot of these movies, and then you're like, oh, I'm
just seeing them for the first time and wow, they're
not good. Yeah that makes sense, Yeah, because you're watching
(03:26):
them with like an air of nostalgia too. Yeah. So
for people that don't know what is the Bechtel test, Oh,
this is our favorite thing to explain to the Bechtel test.
We can get into the history of it, but just
like the version and the way that we use it,
because there's a few different like permutations of it. But
it's a test that is applied to media, usually movies
(03:49):
and TV, in which a movie that passes the Becktel
test has a scene with two female identifying characters who
have names, who talk to each other about something other
than a man for at least two lines of dialogue.
That's our d's our version. There's a bunch of different versions.
They're simpler ones, there's more demanding ones, but that's the
(04:09):
one we use, Okay. Yeah, And it originally started from
Alison Bechdel, right, who wrote in a comic strip that
was Dikes to Watch out for that appeared in nine
and we'll have a link to the actual comics so
y'all can see it. But it was essentially two women
that were trying to go see a movie and had
that same thing where they were saying, I only go
(04:29):
to see a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements,
when it has to have at least two women in
it who talked to each other and about something other
than a man. And then it ends with saying, the
last movie I saw was Alien. Yes, that was like that,
which is funny because that movie barely passes because they're
talking about the alien protocol on the ship or Gina
(04:53):
Monster as very like major sci fi movie as a
vaginal monster because Agina's are scared must but against even
more insulting when you see, like how often people pluck
from black Twitter memes and pluck from the things that
we are saying and use it in their bs and
then uh, and then still have the goal to not
(05:14):
want to hire black people for some BS bar that
we can't reach because even then, ivye have a hard
time letting in black people. And I and when I
say black people mean black people, Africans get in higher
on average, just so they can say they're letting in
black people, but they're letting in Africans. And there goes
a whole another baggage that I can but anyway to
(05:35):
reel it all in that is that I don't barely
scratch the surface of the baggage. But that's what is
up against all of people of color and women, and
that type of stuff isn't carried. And that's generally what
people talk about, just in case someone needs to hear this,
When they mean privilege, that doesn't mean that you didn't
(05:56):
have a hard life. That doesn't mean that you may
not have been poor. But if you were poorn white,
you still have a better chance of getting it Harvard
than a poor and black person. It's just simple facts,
and there's data to back that up. Affirmative action help
no one but white women, straight up. And it's and
it's and that's just why let's just stick to the back.
(06:17):
But I would say to go to end that point
is essentially that is what studios are more willing to
take a risk on, their less willing to take a
risk on filmmakers color of color, and they're less willing
to take a risk on stories from people of color.
And that has been shown throughout these decades and even now,
which is a conversation that we've had in the last
couple of podcasts, we're still dealing with that. I wanted
(06:38):
to ask y'all about some of the films that were
surprising that didn't pass the Bechdel test. Okay, let me
pull up our list. There's I'm never surprised when a
movie does not pass the Bechdel times. I mean sometimes
they like seem to be marketed specifically for women, right,
and there're even some of those don't pass sit. I
(07:00):
think the most famous example of that that we get.
We haven't covered it on the show, but it comes
up all the time is I think it's like a
nine late nineteen thirties movie called The Women and all
female casts. It's like ten women you do not like
your famously, and the way it was market is like
it was like you don't see a man on screen
the whole time, and that is true. It does not
pass the back because they're only talking to talk to
(07:22):
each other. But it's always about it's always about a gotten,
It's always about a man named Steve. They're talking about
Steve the whole movie. It's you know who wrote that?
Let the women? Okay? Written by? Oh, it was written
by It was written by two women. So really uh
(07:42):
really ah job, no no way to no way around it. No,
the thing is for me. I tend to not remember
unless it's like it very handily passes, or it is
very clear that the movie would not pass because it
only has one woman in the entire movie See Raiders
in the Lost Arc, see you Know a New Hope,
(08:05):
that kind of thing. Um. I tend not to really
remember if the movie passes the Bechtel test or not,
just because it's a metric that is useful metric first
starting off point to talk about representation of women in movies.
But that's pretty much all we use it for, is
just like okay, this initiates a larger conversation that we
(08:26):
can talk about a wholesoe of other things. So whether
or not a movie passes Jamie, as you said, like
like The Room, that famously horrible, horrible movie pas Becktel tests,
but like it's still such a piece of and you
know it's fun to watch, but you know, it doesn't
mean anything that that movie passes. And then I think,
like we determine chart here, our our friends are very
(08:49):
studious and update their chart. I would say one that
I found surprising was You've Got Mail because it's a
rom com. Yeah. I didn't think like movies that are
like may right, four Women in theory, and that was
came out like what two decades ago, So yeah, you
think they talked about you know, well, I think, well, no,
(09:10):
I think I think it's probably in her book in
the scenes in the bookstore, you know, because she's talking
about her mom and she's talking about you know what
I mean, Like, I think that's probably how it passed. It.
The whole order of the Rings trilogy does not pass
the Bechtel test, not one of it. It's a ten
hour it doesn't pass. It's crazy. It has every opportunity
and it doesn't. Uh. And then another one we did
(09:31):
recently that I thought, I guess sort of for the
same reason you were saying, Danny about You've Got Mail?
Is five d days of Summer doesn't pass the Bechtel test? Um? Wait,
were you saying that it does pass? It does pass? Yeah,
it does pass. That's why I'm saying I find that
surprising because it's a rom com. You think, like, you know,
because she has that she was yeah, okay, yeah, I
(09:54):
mean rom coms often don't pass. I think we did.
We did an episode about we haven't done, um, you've
got mail yet? But would you do? When Harry met
Sally and sleepless in Seattle, And there are most of those,
there might be like a very quick conversation that just
happens to not be about men. But often in rom coms,
I mean, there's it's it's it's interesting because like, there
(10:15):
are certain genres that almost never pass, like action movies
like often do not pass because there's usually one woman
and she's the love interest. She gets captured, she has
to be saved, like she's everyone's like, oh my god,
she can kick. I mean even if she's allowed to fight.
Usually women aren't allowed to fight. Usually they just or
if you're in Raiders of the Locks arc, your only
(10:37):
weapon can be like a domestic item, like a frying
pan or in Halloween, it's like all domestic items that
that are weapons and oh boy, another one I like this.
This is like a more specific version of the behind
the camera stuff is the Riese Davies test by Katerie Davies.
A movie passes if every department has two or more women, uh,
(11:00):
which is not which which is something that doesn't happen
very much. Only about a third of movies pass this
test because there is such a disproportionate representation behind the
camera as well, which is something that I want to
be better on our show about like paying attention to
of Like it's so rare to see female composers, female editors, photographers, um,
(11:22):
where it's usually where I we're talking about directors, writers
and talent. But there's like, there's so many things that
like when a movie is edited by a woman, they're
probably going to edit out the shot where you know,
probably the male cinematographers a lingering, male gay shot of
a woman in a swimsuit exactly Like yeah, um, there's
(11:45):
another one that is uh, I think lesser known because
it's it's newer, but it's called the Kent Test. It's
from um Clarkesha Kent, and it's there are many different
components to it, so I'll just named kind of the
main one. But it determines whether a film or other
piece of media has provided the audience with adequate representation
(12:06):
of women or feans of color. And then it has
all these different like criteria by which you can like basically,
it's like, I think twelve different things, and if it
scores higher than like a six or an eight or
some number, then it's like, oh, it's doing pretty well.
A lot of movies don't fare very well on this test.
I was gonna say, for if he for your episode
of Black Panther, I'm assuming that that passed the Bechdel test, right,
(12:29):
And I love the fact that Ryan Coogler had Rachel Morrison,
who's his DP and has worked with him on Fruitvale
Station and on Black Panther, So that was that was
a huge thing. That that was pretty cool that he
had a woman behind the scenes um as one of
the head people of his crew. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
then I was pointing, I was pointing this out to
you the other day that George Miller, who made Mad Max,
(12:52):
his wife edited it and he there's this quote where
his wife was like, why do you want me to
edit this movie? Was like, because if I have a
man at did it's gonna look like every other action movie.
And that that's true. Like one of the benefits you
get from having an underrepresented piece to your film is
you're getting a different perspective. I mean, in a good
(13:14):
writer's room, that's why you want different perspective. I was
and probably one of the most diverse writing room a
few weeks ago. And you know we had you know
me uh, you know, the show runner was Indian. You
had uh, we had like two women to two men
who were writing. Uh, and and it was just interesting
(13:34):
to like, you know, have you just hear different things
to the way people say, like, you know, it's it's all.
It's very interesting too to have just the one line
that I always liked to hear in those situations. Uh.
You know when someone speak up and goes, oh, a
woman wouldn't say that, you know, like his because because
(13:57):
I just even from my perspective, whenever you see like
a black person written by a white person, you're like,
no black person in their life would ever say that
today we are covering teen Titans. Actually you are an
expert in these in these kiddos. They're my favorite super team.
(14:18):
When Danny asked me if this was a subject that
I knew anything about or liked, I was super thrilled,
and I was like, how nerdy can I get? Because
they're the best. They were the top selling DC title
for twelve years. What years were those? Uh? Eighty two?
Nine two? It was between them and then the Uncanny
X Men or the top two best selling comics. That's
(14:41):
the New Teen Titans, the Wolfman Perez era that affected
and inspired the TV shows that I think we're gonna
be talking a lot about today. Yeah, but yeah, they're
very important, and they're actually in terms of profitability, DC's
most profitable franchise really, So we like to think about
the Justice League, but to the Justice League have comics, Uh,
(15:02):
Teen Titans have comics as well. There's also Titans Young Justice.
All fall under that same banner. It's all the same
creative teams and all the same characters. So they have
more titles consistently that sell better than Justice League, although
Justice League has more issues. So if you did I
can't do math, and I certainly can't do math for inflation.
Justice League probably wins in the comics. However, we've only
(15:24):
had one Justice League movie and it's arguably a whiff.
It's controversial at best. We've had one animated television show
that's over a decade old. Teen Titans had the original
animated television show Teen Titans Go, which is DC Warner
Animations most successful DC property show that also spun out
on an animal there. Even though I know you're on
(15:47):
this okay trend because this is gonna be my one
like rant and I'm gonna try and keep it at that.
But the reason I stopped you at Teen Titans Go
is a lot of people grew up on the Teen
Titans before that, me included, and loved it. And I
feel like Teen Titans Go got so much hate online
from people out of the age range, like so many
(16:07):
people who grew up on the first team titles like
not my teen Ties, not my teen Titans. And I
get that you want something for you, but just go
ahead and repeat what you just said about Teen Titans Go.
That is the most successful animated show and it's fun
out its own animated movie. So many people try and
push this idea online that they keep pushing this bad
(16:28):
teen Titans go. But if it's it's most profitable, it
seems like it's not as bad as we want to
believe it is. I get you want the serious, you know,
dark teen titans uh that we have, but that time's over.
We had it and we enjoyed it. Now the kids
that the demo that is watching that time slot is
getting something they enjoyed, so layoff. Also what's funny is like,
(16:51):
as much as people hate it that there were some
people online who U saw I was like, yeah, that's good.
That was probably me. I love it, but I'm I'm
not trying to be a trolled. I just like whenever
people people are going to get upset, whenever people take
risks and do like a different take. But I understand
I understand why that doesn't always work to me. I
(17:11):
just like when we're super I like seeing the bizarro world.
I like the opposite, Like I don't always want the
same thing. I like seeing like what if this person
did go off the deep end? And he was like, yes,
go off the deep end. But honestly, that's the true
heart of comics because that's how you get things like
Red Sun, and you get things like you know, old
Man logan like, that's the there. Someone pointed this out
(17:32):
to me a while ago, when I really were it
was reading capes and they're saying they stopped reading capes
because they got too obsessed with cannon and we stopped
doing these one off fun things like All Star Superman
and Superman. Is fun. I mean it's fun in the
sense All Star Superman made me like Superman because I
would Superman and then when I saw it, yeah, yeah, down,
(17:58):
Wait how did you not like Superman? He was doing perfect?
But you like Goku? He's dumb. Goku's dumb, you know
what I'm saying. His flaw is that he has this
childishness about him and that he does put people in
danger because he wants to challenge himself. Superman is just perfect.
He's smart, he's handsome, he is the top of his job,
he gets the girl. He can't do anything wrong. He's
(18:22):
not dumb, you know. Like so he is too perfect.
But I could see where you would think, oh with Goku.
But Goku does have so many flaws that I'm constantly
debating against online. Also, we're not here to talk about Superman,
but when you were, Um, I'm originally from Canada, so
when you're not American, Yeah, Superman is sort of held up.
It's Superman and Captain America held up as like these
(18:44):
bastions of American identity. So for me growing up, I
was like, you can't like Superman. I'm not American, which
is funny because he's like an immigrant. But yeah, but
I hadn't thought about that as a a I mean,
I married a white guy from a farm in Kansas,
so clearly I've come around. But I remember when I
(19:04):
was in the university. I went to the University of Ottawa,
which is Canada's capital city. UM had a really good friend.
He's actually on that YouTube show Wayne now is one
of the twins. I haven't seen it. That's just the
thing that people might know. He had a Superman belt buckle,
and I was like, you're Canadian, you cannot wear that.
We were like getting vites about that. But Superman is
a difficult character for people to come around on, which
(19:25):
is why I think Teen Titans, like I was saying,
was so successful, because they are deeply flawed. Um, Robin
is the best among them, and Dick Grayson as the best.
Robin is a deeply flawed leader, but he grows up
to lead the Justice League. So I know you have
a moment that you talked about on the Daily Zeite guys,
which is really funny. It's so funny because like it
(19:47):
was a moment I totally forgot about but then remembered
when I saw it, and it was it was actually
a pretty cool episode where like, you know, it kind
of uh try to deal with the racism because it
was talking about racism and Starfire's family and he was like, oh,
I definitely know about that. And he was like, oh,
you you know about being judged because of the color
(20:09):
of your skin or because of how you look, and
he was like, yeah, I'm a robot. It's so great
because because it definitely gets so close and I could
definitely be just see the network notek of being like
now I pull that back, just say it's because he's
a robot. Can I ask you, um, what is potentially
(20:31):
an ignorant white person question that you're under no real
otis to answer, But I'd like to ask you, as
an African American person, how do you feel about booya
as a catchphrase? Oh? You know, I didn't care. It
seemed like yeah, yeah, because it seemed like one of
those things like he's saying something cool, but we don't
(20:51):
want to make anything like you know, seems like it's
because he's black, you know, because when he said it
in Justice League, like I was really excited, and then
I saw a bunch of people who I respect and
who I look to for guidance because I was not
a person of color. I don't know, Um, I got
really mad about it, and I was like, oh, I
just thought it was really cool that he said the
(21:12):
cotch for you. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think some
you know, not a diss on them, but some people
are just like hyper sensitive of what one way would
be taken. But I feel like the only way to
have taken that was that it was a call back
to something he always said in Teen Titans, just like
an X Men when he says I'm the Juggernaut bitch,
(21:35):
you know, like it's like I don't to like across
the world, yeah, like to like, you know, take that
in any other way. I you know, I think there's
more to unpass, you know. It's just I don't know,
I don't agree. I don't even agree that you could
really take issue. I don't want to control how anybody
(21:56):
feels about anything. But there I feel like there's a
level too. Now there's there's this social currency to find
the things wrong that are not woke, and it leads
to people just jumping to stuff when they might have like,
even if they didn't like it, be like all right,
that's kind of whack and move on. But now that
you can get likes, retweets and clicks, it kind of
(22:16):
encourages more to kind of lean into something you might
have just let go. Okay, so I'm allowed to like
it good, That's all I care about. So so it's
Jason Todd not as red uh red Hood, but he's
not red Hood right until after the joker beats him
to death of the crowbar and then he gets thrown
on last. So this all takes place before that, I guess,
(22:38):
because because my only gripe with Jason Todd would have
been like if we got f Batman Robin, that kind
of takes the wind out of red Hood sales, right um.
And I like I like it to Grayson, who's like
not as much of a Gali g but also degreason
in my opinion, because it's only just my opinion. I
don't want take anything away from him and likes it.
(22:58):
Um would never say a f Batman. Well, that's the
one Robin who would never like that's adjacent Todd moved
and that was my gright with that. So me and
you are back, even though you want to get rim
because because because I love I love that's your thing.
It's like, you don't like it more for me. I
don't like it more for you. But like Dick Grayson
(23:21):
worships Batman. So when I heard that line, I already
noped out and I was like, and once again, I'm
the same way. I have no qualms with anyone who's
like jamming on it. I will never say not like
the thing you like that. Those words will never come
out of my mouth. And don't take it that way
if you're like liking it and it's like, hey, should
I not like this because it no? Enjoy it? Enjoy
(23:42):
good things. I think Pacific Rim is one of the
most perfect movies ever made, the best. It's It's sorry
it promised me a robot, I mean a monster getting
beat up by a giant robot with a freightership as
a bat And what did I get when I went
in a giant robot b being the monster with the Freightership.
You barely get your promises keptain movies these days, and
(24:04):
I was happy with it. I honestly didn't know that
people didn't like Batman and Robin. I think I've said
that before on this podcast. Yeah, yeah, and I didn't
because I saw it when I was little, and I'm like, oh,
this is it. Literally was like if you're watching as
a kid, It's like a comic book come to life.
It's so colorful, stunt, dumb stunt. You have Uma Thurman
(24:29):
as like may West. You know what you have like Arnold.
I was like, this is so we have um, you know,
Alicia Silverstone who was coming off clueless like I was,
Oh my gosh, it was my jam. I didn't realize
that that was not a good movie. Okay, we're gonna
take a quick break, but I'm hoping you're enjoying the
best of Hopefully you're remembering the things you did last
year while you were listening to these episodes. But let's
(24:52):
take a quick break and then come back to it,
and we're back, y'all. It's almost time for this episode
to end, which means it's almost time for next week,
which means it's almost time for a brand new Neurodificent.
But now let's get back to the hits are Woman
of the Hour, the wonder Woman, the wonder the Woman,
(25:15):
the Myth, the legend, wondrous and a woman. Yeah, she's
um super dope. She is one of the first superheroes
just period, especially the ones that still exists and right now.
Um she She and Captain America debut in the same year,
so about ten ments of parts. So she was and
um also interesting because their colors are the same, yeah,
(25:38):
and there the same pretty similar and then American flag essentially. Yeah,
And it's interesting because they kind of both did come
from a place of challenging society at the moment because
you know, Captain America is very much hate punch Nazi
to yeah, so, and then she also punches Nazis because
that's also a thing that you're supposed to do. But like, um,
(26:00):
you know, Kevin America was very much about, um, you know,
kind of like an immigrant ideal, like rising up for
your country kind of situation. And Wonder Woman is a
feminist ideal, which when you say feminism, you don't think
nineteen forties, but hey, that stuff existed. Then yeah, you
(26:22):
say what I said. So you posted a picture of
the DC Archives and my first thought was like, these
are sex toys because it was a whip. It was
like it that looked like something else, and there was
like but it's so funny because relating back to Professor Marston,
he was that he was into S and M and
they and it was interesting that they had like that.
(26:45):
This was actually brought up that people were accusing him
of having bondage spanking homosexuality like in his comics, which
again this was in the forties, so it's like to me,
it's super dope and like slid that in there. But anyway,
it definitely some of those the original DC Archive like stuff.
I'm like, yeah, I could I see what they were
(27:06):
doing well. And also I think that it seems like
it's really like out of ordinary for that kind of
delicious stuff to be in the books. But if you
actually look at the comics from back then, like the thirties,
even they've got crazy stuff going on. There's a lot
of like female vigilantes that like merk dudes left and right,
and like like we had wor up, we had water propaganda.
(27:30):
But also these men were reading these during like that
we're going to war, you know what I mean. They
were like so in the same way that early pornography,
you know, like they had pen of those magas the
pin up and she looks like a you know to
some extent. Although he definitely kept her, she was definitely
sexualized later. I think her early stages were not as much.
(27:53):
And you can and those and also heard that skirt
in that first episode of that first issue is not
actually skirts pant coats. You can actually clearly seep. Isn't
that funny? They're just flowing breathe. Um, we have I
know this is gonna this is gonna be a three hours.
There's so much uh so. She her official title is
(28:13):
Princess Diana of Themiscira, also known as Paradise Island. Um,
that's what I called it forever because my first comic
was of her, was her original run from Marston and
they called it Paradise Island. Yeah yeah, And that's also why.
And she's a daughter of Apolita. That is also why
I'm a hardcore old school o g that she came
(28:36):
from Clay because that was her original that has been
changed a couple of times. So the nineties are really
weird because there's a lot of like really awesome stories
that were happening during that period with a lot of
off putting art for me, So I know what you mean. Yes,
so we're going to talk about Yeah, we're gonna talk
(28:57):
about Artemis real quick. Um. So, this modern contemporary age,
especially in the nineties this kicks off. The eighties in particular,
was an era of I think a lot of people
will call it more adult storytelling. This is where the
Dark Knight gets that gets to be the Dark Knight,
you know. This is where a lot of comics that
people are saying are the best comics ever made they
(29:18):
get made during this period. Um. And so they're experimenting
more with this stuff. This Jason Todd gets killed, uh
you know, like Superman, Like they actually Superman, Batman, and
Wonder Woman all lose their mantles, all within like two
years of each other. Like this period of like five years.
Everybody gets there, their titles usurped from them for various reasons,
and Wonder Woman is no uh, no exception to this.
(29:41):
So they find this lost tribe of amazons um called
the Bonna mcdal and they are real hardcore and they're
like and so the when they come back to the island,
they're like, Okay, well we weren't here during the contest
of Champions, so we should be able to do the
contes as the champions too. So they take their best
warrior artemis In she actually wins. So Diana is no
(30:01):
longer technically a wonder Woman. This is where if you've
ever seen a picture of her wearing bicycle shorts, this
is where that comes from. All of her iterations are
so like her eighties. There was one in the eighties
and she just looked like she was like in Madonna's
music video or something, you know what I'm talking like.
I think she had a leather jacket. Yeah, that's that's
(30:23):
that's the same one. It's a leather jacket with the
bicycle shorts the top. Yeah, she looks like she's in
a music factor. But specifically, I'm not gonna lie because
the new Wonder Woman that's dropping. Um, I believe we're
not going to get it in twenty nineteen yet, now,
are we? Okay you think? Yeah, Wonder Woman eight four
literally takes place in eighty four, as it says, Um,
(30:45):
So I'm kind of curious if they're going to put
her in. I would love to see Diana in eighties
where yes, she has to be to blend in. I've
seen a couple of like photos from like you know,
the shoot or whatever, and I try not to look
at them very much because I don't like being spoiled
ahead of things too hard, because you already guess what
happens in movies without it. But I just was so
(31:06):
curious about her clothes. There is some shoulder pads happening
in one of the outfits, so yeah, definitely. And I
saw one picture of another person and in the most
eighties track suit, and I can't wait to see it.
So let's talk about the movie. Um, if you can't remember,
did you did we see it together? I don't think
we saw it together because I saw it in a plane. Okay,
(31:30):
never mind, I don't think you're on the theater. Yeah,
if you, what do you What was your takeaway from
seeing her brought to life on in film? Oh? I
loved it, and it was you know, it was so
obvious what the solution was too. And I've talked about
this many times anytime I talked about like what d
(31:52):
C needs to do to blah blah, blah, it's always this,
which is simply like get new voices in there, getting
new director was in there, and like I think Patty
just really just brought a whole new like perspective to
the series. And what she did was she made it
a war story. Like, it wasn't a story about you know,
(32:14):
is she going to like be like being a superhero
or you know, any other like superhero story. It was
a story about like this person dealing with the war
and how that how that treats them and then being
an outsider. So yeah, she was a fish out of water. Um,
that was very well done. One of the things there
were a couple of complaints that people had that I
(32:38):
want to address. Uh. One was this idea that she's
not a feminist because she fell in love with Steve Trevor,
that it's literally not what feminism mean, and that to
me is it's it's such a It just shows how
outdated and singular that those people's view. You know that
(32:58):
she can you can be a mean, you can be
a fully fledged you know. Another thing was that she
wasn't They were like, well, she's clearly not queer. Then
I'm like, but you know, queer, you can sleep with
you can you can do both. So there's a reason
it's called by like you can do both. And it
just so happened that this particular one, you know, and
(33:20):
she fell in love with Steve Trevor. But I I
find it hard pressed to believe that someone that looks
like that would not be exploring on an island where
other women are also equally as hot. It just like listen,
I mean, that's just a woman myself. Listen. And also again,
like if we're talking about like I, I very much
(33:43):
want to loop a lot of what she does into
actual Greek mythology because I do think mostly the better
or the more impactful writers tap into it in the
right way. And if you think about ancient Greece, they
didn't care. Yeah, they were tapping everything you pretty. I've
seen the I've seen the porcelain, I've seen the plates
(34:07):
in the and then with the very detailed tapestries they
are and they there, it's it's part of their thing,
that's what they did. But yeah, the one of a
movie I'm really looking forward to eight four. We somehow
have Steve Trevor back. Yeah, there's would you like to
hear my theories? UM, sure, I guess we're just saying
(34:28):
that this is everybody listening. This is a theory obviously
isn't privy to the script, has not seen it. It
isn't even finished yet. Just somebody that knows wonder woman
that is thinking that this might be how he's there. Yeah,
so I have too. Well, three there's three things. Two
(34:51):
of them are kind of related. So number one, remember
when he was bathing in that pool, that healing pool, girl,
I didn't even remember that. So what was that water?
What did it do? What's going on with that? He
could have survived this whole time. You know he blew
up in an airplane. We don't know what that water
that was like to Smithery. Okay, so that would be
(35:11):
like in Terminator with like the do like all of
the little metal pieces coming back together. That leads to
me my second theory, which is, uh, we were told
all the gods are gone? Are they? Somebody could have
plucked him out of that plane right before it it's floated,
and that he's been off somewhere else in another dimension,
(35:32):
in stasis something something for a very long time. That
could be a thing, right because he still kind of
looks the same and it's the eighties, so and it
seems to me I haven't read a lot of stuff
or whatever. The I think the most the least likely
of the three theories is that he is somehow Steve's
like Great Ransom or whatever. But I think that's not
(35:54):
that doesn't make sense to me because there's nothing that
they set up that just looks exactly just exactly like him, um,
which they do in movies all the time. So whatever.
But like so, so that third theory is like the
least likely one where I'm like, you can kind of
throw that out there and be fine, But it's that
blue glowing water, what does it do? And um, we
already know that Apocalypse has beef with the Amazons and
(36:16):
the gods of old, so it's possible that it wasn't
even a Greek god. It could be one of the
other gods that did it. So like that, like that
could have plucked him out, or that they're still hanging
around because the dark sides will exist, then why doesn't
the other ones have to be there somewhere? Um, And
it could have been interesting if that was like a
last pull of their power at that time. And then
it takes sixty you know, a hundred years or whatever
(36:38):
that for them to like be able to pull him
back into this dimension because nobody's worshiping them except for
like Amazons, so they kind of have to recharge. Maybe
I don't know those are I want to know who
came up with all of these? Did you all just
call you called it real monsters? So that yeah, because
(36:59):
it's like or we just called monsters or whatever like that.
You know, you always you always show folk come from
the theater originally, so in the theater you sort of
just it's not Sweeney Todd, it's Sweeney or whatever. You know,
it's not Oklahoma, it's Holma, or it's not that or
the one that the one theater speak out with here
(37:20):
because you have to say it this way is Scottish Plow.
That's a whole different thing. Scot the Scottish the Scottish play.
When I asked you to be on it, though, I
made sure I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I
made sure I like got all the a's and all
of the exclamation call. I think it's three as two ages.
I think it is still got it. Yeah, with these
amazing actors, I mean the people who started the show
(37:43):
were great uh, um, Charlie Adler, who's one of the
great voice over people of all time. Um, and then uh,
I don't have her name from Christine Christine Kavanaugh. She's
the late Christine Kavanaugh. She was wonderful. A guy named
David eccles, who it was a sound guy at cross
Key Chupa had a really interesting funny voice, so he
was became Crumb, the guy with the eyeballs out. And
(38:06):
but then the guest actors would come in. The casting
director was a woman named Barbara Wright who would just
cast these amazing actors so like people like you would
never expect to show up, like Tim Curry and uh
and people who now like have had big careers later like, um,
this Guyamexander Berkeley. You know Xander Berkeley. He's in the
original term. He's a terminator too. He's the guy who
(38:27):
who was um, John Connor's like step stepfather gets killed
with the like the thing through the face. Yeah, Uh,
that's Sander Berkeley has been in a million things. This
guy named Toby Hass who has been in a million things.
But like big Margot Kidder, the late Margot kid Like,
these people just come through just doing like one voice,
you know, because this woman was a great woman who
(38:50):
like like these people. So I get to sit in
and watch these amazing voice sessions and and the animators
were great. It was just just a really fun experience. Yeah.
So for people that don't, oh, I haven't heard of it.
I don't know how. But the show focuses on three
young monsters. It's its Obelina and Crumb, who attend a
school for monsters under a city dump and learned to
(39:12):
frighten humans. Uh. Many of the episodes revolve around them
making it to the surface in order to perform scares
as class assignments. The series premiered October at eleven am
on Nickelodeon. That's cute. That was a good slot, running
a total of fifty two episodes over four seasons. The
final episode air December six. So, like you were saying,
(39:34):
Charlie Adler voiced it is do you hate do you
have a favorite or like one that I'm like, I
hate to ask this good to ask your favorite monster?
For sure? I mean he was so he was because
he was he was a little bit me too, because
he was like very nervous and anxious and always worried.
And you know, Crumb was the cool one who liked
(39:55):
nothing bothered him, and Obelina was super cool and stylish,
which I wasn't, so uh yeah, definitely. Yeah. I liked
writing for him too. He was fun to write for.
But my first episode, I'm trying to remember. I don't
think I pitched the story. It couldn't have been because
I didn't know anything about it. But it's the one
that people seem to remember the most. Was my first one,
(40:16):
which is where Crumb got a pimple that that came
alive and started talking to him and it was voiced
by Jim Belushi. But I remember writing that having a
good time and that the pimple became more popular than
him and he sang a song, and um yeah, it
was just I was like, oh, I can I can't believe.
Because I grew up as a kid just loving cartoons,
(40:38):
uh specifically Bugs Bunny cartoons. So I would come home
from school every day, and where I lived in New York,
there was a Channel five in New York, which is
show Bugs Bunny from half an hour from like three
o'clock to three thirty. So I come home from school,
turn on the TV half an hour of Bugs Bunny.
But I came became so obsessed about it, Like that's
if if I was doing that show all these years
ago when I was a kid, I'd say I was
(40:59):
nerding out about Chuck Jones because I knew the names
of all that I could recognize the director's style, tell
it Chuck Jones from Frizz Feeling from a Bob Mackimson
from a Frank tash Lyn. Uh, you know, and and
I so so have a chance to work in animation.
Was just im planned on it, but it just really
because of that guy, David Litson, you want to try
(41:20):
and write on this cartoon, and I just ended up
just loving it. I couldn't believe here I was this
kid from Jersey, like you know, in Hollywood, like working
for a cartoon show. It just was a thrill. I
do have to say from it. I think I've told
this story in here. But my mom used to be
teased for her lips. She had big, full lips, and
she they would call her Sandy big lips. Also like
(41:40):
kids were like, couldn't think of a better Yeah, like
you old Sandy big lips. But that was one of
the things because the women in my family have really
full lips, and I remembered that about Oblina, like it
was just so, well, look, we'll take representation wherever we
can get it. And was the thing that I loved
(42:01):
about her having these big, full lips. It just like
reminded me of the women in my family and I
loved that so much. Um. And then when my mom
grew up, everybody was getting them injected to get their
lips like her. So there you go. And then I
was a good representation for people who are growers not showers. Wow,
(42:21):
the joke was right there. I couldn't leave it sitting.
It was right there. David eccles, was the voice of Crumb,
said okay, yeah, I did not know that he voiced
the monster under Chucky's bed in the rug Rats, So
that comes full circle. He was a monster in that world,
and then a monster he was, I'm pretty sure a
(42:43):
guy who just worked in the sound department at class
Key Chupo, and he had a really it was a
funny guy, had interesting voice, and I think maybe he
did that thing in rug Rats. And then when they
came up with the monsters, they said, for you want
to do this too? Yeah, all right, Yeah, I love
just have a weird voice. Yeah. And they did actually
have an official crossover. So in the sixth season of
(43:03):
Rugrats Akasblina and Crumb Crashed, Tommy Chucky, Phil Lill Dill
and Angelica's Spooky Slumber Party, it was called ghost Story
and uh iconic crossover. Yeah them. So we were talking
about at the break, we were talking about the fact
that Nickelodeon is rebooting a bunch of these shows apparently
right there. I think they're do new Rugrats. They're doing
(43:26):
new Hey Arnold. They had a movie for Hey Arnold,
uh that came out last year, and then they also
had Rocko's movie came out Rocko. That's right, So why
not monsters give me a call, call me up, get
the gang back together. There were the writers on that
show were one. I mentioned some of the other guys already,
(43:46):
but Mark Stein was the guy who ran it most
of the time that I was there, and was a
guy named Mark Palmer, Uh, Spencer Greene, Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Just we were the main staff. They're just great, great
people to work with, and we're talented and funny people. Yeah.
And also it was just like such weird. I love
that it embraced the weird grossness, you know, especially because
(44:09):
children love that. But also I think that that might
be why all of these iconic writers that came together
to kind of start in this room. I think that
that's why it resonated with us even now decades later,
that it was just such a it was just doing
something different that I feel like a lot of the
other shows weren't. Let's take a quick break and then
come back to it, and we're back. Let's get back
(44:38):
to the hits. Today we're talking about the Man the Mystery,
James Vond. James Um, so you know, we're going to
do the nitty gritty that I always start with. This
is the first time the nitty gritty is very chunky,
like usually, you know, the nitty grete. We just take
the kind of synopsis of the subject that kind of
(44:59):
launches us in at the discussion. But James Bond isof
it's yeah, yeah, so Phil free to jump in. Commander
James Bond cmg R n VR is a fictional character
created by the British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in
N three. So I guess I was not aware that
(45:21):
he was first in novels before the films. Yeah, now
he was. He he wrote like Ian Fleming wrote like
two or three books that he wrote. Um, I think
Casino Royale and like On Her Majesty's Secret Service and
Dr No in some version of that order, and and
they were kind of like they didn't go anywhere, like
they're just gonna hit the marketplace, and they just kind
(45:41):
of died. And then um, it became like I think
it was John F. Kenny did an interview with Playboy
magazine back in the day, and John F. Kenny was like,
my favorite books are James Bond books. And suddenly became,
oh well, if President screws a Lot really likes these books,
then there must be something going on in there. And
(46:03):
then suddenly, like boom, they became best sellers. Mark, are
you telling me that John F. Kennedy was the first influencer.
I think so. I think I think he tagged up
like this this is a paid post. So have you
read any of the original novel Um, I've read like
(46:23):
five or six of them. Um, they're shorter than the movies.
They are like crazy misogynist, I mean, like that's that
is that is They're very much a product of their
time in that like James Bond loved Jamaica because Ian
Fleming loved Jamaica like he would like he would summer
(46:44):
there or winter there or whenever he can go there.
And so like reading like gold Finger, which is all
set in Jamaica, you're like, oh, like it's kind of yeah.
I mean like you're like that we'll go to the
Bahamas and that's gonna be different. But you know, it's
just like it becomes he's got like a black buddy
(47:04):
who's not really a buddy. He's more like a waiter
slash show for a slash valet, and and every woman
is kind of disposable, you know, and it's it is, uh,
bringing that to the modern era is a challenge, I
think is the And and you see these James Bond
movies as you go, you go back and look at
the Sean Connerys, and they still retain that vestige of
(47:25):
of old school feelings about masculinity and femininity. And then
you get to Daniel Craig and it's like, listen, you're
gonna like have sex with a lady, but it's not
going to be as unfortunate as it had. Yeah, it
seems like as it moved forward in time, it went
from the Bond Girls to the Bond Girl, right, you know,
I mean there there would still be the like does
(47:46):
he have to like sleep with like three women? Like
and there's always like the Bond girl who dies early
to his you know, adventure. I'm really motivated now that
now that I can't even remember who she was, but
she's dead and now revenge must happen. Yeah, And like
the Bond novels especially and then the movies sort of
(48:08):
after the fashion were aspirational. I think to like a
generation of men um for good and for ill, and
like the good of it is like James Bond really
like dressed well and he lived well, and he liked
good food and like it's a weird like Samelier's Guide
to Wine and stuff, like those books are all like
he's super refined and super defeat and super like you know, well,
(48:28):
you wouldn't have the fifty four rothchild before a steake.
My god, what kind of barbarian are you? It was like, dude,
like you're a killer. But but and that's that's sort
of how it helped tie into the Playboy, because Playboy
was also very much like, here's here's the guy that
you kind of want to be, Like, here's how you
should dress, Here's the party you should go to. Here's
the music you should listen to. Here's the books you
(48:49):
should read. Um, here's the women you should want to
consort with. And James Bond fit right into there. It
was like he he was the guy you wanted to be. Um.
That changes over time, you know, and especially the as
the more diverse a audience gets, the less they might
want to just be that guy, you know. And and
(49:11):
James Bond may or may not eventually change with those times,
because there is no good reason why James Bond, if
it's going to be played by a bunch of different actors, yeah,
couldn't also be played by a person of color. Yeah.
I have one quote that I wanted to say. It's
exactly what you said about him being a blunt instrument.
This is from Ian Fleming in The New Yorker from
nineteen sixty two. He said, when I wrote the first
(49:34):
one in nineteen fifty three, I wanted Bond to be
an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happen. I
wanted him to be a blunt instrument. When I was
casting around for a name for my protagonists, I thought,
by god, James Bond is the dullest name I've ever heard.
Funny because now when you hear Bond, James Bond, it's
(49:55):
like a man of mystery, and he's sexy debonair and
it's just like, oh no, this like dole office worker. Yeah,
like he I think that he was in his Jamaica estate,
which is also named Golden Eye because of course it
is um and he had a wall full of books
and one of them was a book on birds, like
bird watching and stuff, written by a guy named James Bond,
and I was like, oh god, if that's not the
(50:17):
most boring person and the most boring man, so boring
dude that's ever been here's my spy. Well, it transforms
so much, it's so interesting that it was like, oh,
just this man that things happened to happen to him,
to him being this force of nature essentially wrecking. He's
a wrecking ball in my opinion, very much so. And
and like those movies and even the stories, there's the
(50:40):
version of those that are very reactionary, right, because like
James Bond is kind of like this global cup who like,
I'm gonna go right or wrong, but the wrong has
to happen before he gets called off his game. So
it's very much like we said, it's like, here's your mission, James,
go do the thing. And then he goes and does
the thing. But it would take a while before the
movies began to make him proactive, before they gave him
(51:01):
missions and drives and revenge and all that stuff that
actually makes for here that you want to be tuning
into over and over again, as opposed to just a
guy waiting for like a case file to fall on
his desk. I guess I gotta go get that bad
guy again, little fail. I'm gonna come and get you.
I'm coming and get you. It's so funny because I
(51:23):
have never seen a single James Bond film Wow, but
I have played many a Golden Eye. And Golden Eye
is special in the sense that it had it normalized
first person shooters. It changed the game literally, and so
you know, it got people well aware of of crappy
(51:44):
hit boxes with odd job. If you chose odd job,
you were a horrible human being. And so like everything
about Golden Eye is so fun and they recently did
a source remaster for PC, so you can grab that
if you're on the PC man Aster race. But you know,
it's super. It was fun. And what kind of sucked
(52:06):
was it was so good, so nostalgic that a Bond
game never was able to survive around there. I think
there was like was it a die? It was either
die another day or um, what is the one that
came out for PS two or PS one Night Fire? Nightfire?
That's what it's saying, James Bond double O seven Night
Fire for PS two. Okay, I think that's what it was.
(52:28):
Then it was it was not great. I just remember
that Golden I was the first party game I'd ever
really played. It was, you know, like it was. It
was a game where somebody had an N sixt before
you go over and always be like five or six
people in that house and for them would be playing
Golden at any given time, and there was and it
was It became a social event in a way that
video games hadn't been for me and before. And there
(52:50):
was always like it. And the screen was divided into
those four boxes, right, and so four people were playing
at once. I'm on a giant screen. There's always one
screen where some person could not figure out how to focus,
like just look straight ahead, Man, I can't do it. Yeah,
that was that was next level. And you know, just
talking about Golden Night, it's crazy to think that in
(53:12):
sixty four launched two of the biggest like multiplayer party games.
Uh not counting Mario Party. But you have Smash Bros.
And you have Golden It's it's crazy to know that
all that came from the n sixty four totally. The
actors that have played James Bond. To me, Pierce Brosnan
was my James Bond because he was who I was
first introduced to and who I grew up with until
(53:32):
Daniel Craig came into the picture. Who do you consider
your James Bond? Good? Um? The first Bond movie I
ever saw was Never Say Never Again. Um, So Sean
Connery is my Bond. Um. I think I've seen more
Roger Moore James Bond movies and seen anybody else, and
that was more contemporary for me, Like I was a
(53:53):
kid of the eighties and he was. He was a
late seventies into like eighty five, eighties six, I think.
But it's kind of always going to be Sean Connery
for me, and even like Never Never Again is when
he's the old Bond, he's war like to pay Bond,
like it's just and it's a remake of another Bond
movie because they're like MGM has the like the lock
on James Bond movies and I have for since the
(54:14):
very beginning. But there was some weird dispute with the
screenwriter of Thunderball and he claimed some rights to it,
and so that's the one movie that if any other
company wants to make, they can remake Thunderball. And so
it was Thunderball and then Never Seen Ever Again, which
is just a remake of Thunderball again. Um. And so
I remember that that was a summer and I was
(54:37):
a bad boy at school and it was just coming
out on HBO, and like I had forged my report card,
like I like the kind of forgery that in junior
high school you're really really good at. So it was like, oh,
I'm gonna make these fs a's because nobody will notice that,
and these ds are gonna be bees because that totally works.
And uh. And I had told my parents like at
(54:57):
length that I really wanted to see this movie movie.
And then when I they caught me in my master forgery.
They were like, you can't do anything for a summer.
So you know Caribbean parents, that's how that goes. Oh yeah,
so so from like June through September, I was locked
in my room. But then like once once I got paroled,
like my dad had videotaped never Say Never again for me,
(55:19):
Like that was his present for me as I completed
my my rounds in in the Big House. And I
remember watching that movie and loving it to death even
though it's not great, Um, but it didn't matter, yeah,
because like this was this was the price. Yeah, that
was your freedom. This is my freedom for like I'm
free given up. The new one, No Time to Die,
(55:41):
is dropping April eight. Um. It's directed by Karrie Fukanaga
and that he co wrote with Scott z Burns and
Phoebe waller Bridge What Flee Bag Herself Indeed, which like
that that in and of itself between Kari Fukanagen and
Phoebe waller Bridge. I'm more excited for this Bond movie
(56:02):
than I've been for a while, because you know, you
can eat as I think you find with like sort
of Black Panther is a different Marvel movie than every
other Marvel movie because the perspective of the people who
get to tell that movie, like Patty Jenkins is wonder Woman.
It's a different superhero movie than every other DC superhero
movie because the lens through which you're telling that story
is different. And so to look at this now fifty
(56:25):
year old franchise and look at it through a lens
through which we've never seen it before, because every other
director of a Bond movie has been a white British dude.
And so now you get a sort of you know,
multi racial you know, like American with a crazy eye,
and it's a crazy flair for this sort of thing.
And then you get a script that's that's co written
(56:46):
by one of these smartest women on the planet, Like
what does what does a James Bond movie from those
people look like? You know, what does it keep? What
does it retain? And how does it innovate and how
does it propel the story forward in a in a
way that we've never seen before to an audience that
might not have responded to Bond before this, you know,
because it is it's an archaic idea, you know, it
(57:07):
is something of it of its own cinematic dinosaur, and
to find a way to put a fresh coat of
paint on it, and to and to roll it off
the assembly line looking like something brand new while still
feeling like something old. I'm all here for that. Yeah,
So we have Lashawna Lynch. She will be playing double
O seven. You will have recognized her from a bunch
of things, but most recently Captain Marvel cannot wait, cannot wait,
(57:30):
I mean, And it's like even even if you've been
burned before, and you know Bond has burned before, it's
clearly it retains. It's its capacity to be like what
was that all about? You know? There are enough pieces
to it. You know. It's like it's like if you
look at at at a car manufacturer that's been making
cars forever, like you know, BMW, Mercedes or whatever. If
(57:52):
you look at like a modern day Mercedes and then
a Mercedes from fifty years ago, they look like cousins.
You know, like there's enough elements to it. There's enough
kind of curves in the bodyline. It's all kind of
work the same, but you've now brought it into You've innovated,
and you've put all kinds of bells and whistles on it,
but it's still that car. And if you can do
that with James Bond and like you know what, like
this was a Rolls Royce from like Night, but like
look at a Rolls Royce today, Like you can still
(58:13):
kind of tell this faster and it's leaner and it
does things better, but it's still it's still a Bond movie. Yeah,
And like, give me that travelog, give me that hero
who does the impossible when nobody else could pull it off.
Like give me these women who now have agency in
a way they've never had before. And give me, you know,
gadgets I've never seen, like just push it and that's it.
(58:34):
Thank you for listening to the best of Nerdificent Part two.
We missed you and I can't wait to see you
all next week. All right, y'all, stay nerdy,