Feminist Movie Friday: Bottoms

Friend of the show Joey stops by to highlight the 2023 satirical, irreverent film Bottoms and why it is an important (and fun) example of breaking down high school movie tropes all while being queer-centered.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to stepan Never Told You production by Heart Radio,
and today we are so excited to be joined by
friend of the show, Joey. Welcome, Joey.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
We always love having you here. We almost got to
meet you.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
Oh my god, I will I'll give you all the
rundown of that off b clare Okay, to do with
some of the chaos of earlier this month. But yeah,
happy to be honest always.

Speaker 5 (00:51):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
And this is a fun one because this is a
very special feminist movie.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Friday.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
And this was a movie that you suggested a while
back and I was like, yeah, I think we should
talk about that. I'm very excited to talk about it.
Samantha and I had never seen it. It is very recent.
So yes, if you haven't seen it, spoilers going to
be spoiled throughout. Yes, Joey, can you tell us what
are what film are we talking about today?

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Yes, So today we're gonna be talking about the twenty
twenty three movie Bottoms, directed by M. S. Eldman and
starring Rachel Senate and Iowa Debris. No, you know from
the Bear and all that this is one of my
favorite movies, if not my favorite movie. And I'm so

(01:38):
excited to be talking to you guys about this. Before
we started recording, I know, Samantha, you said this was
not what you expected.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
It was gonna be. I definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
When I pitched it too, I was sort of like,
you know what, I'm not gonna say anything about it.
I'm gonna let them watch it and see what the
reactions are.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Like I've seen previews.

Speaker 6 (01:58):
Yeah, I was prepared for some of it, and then
I was like, uh not, no, okay, that that turned
very quickly, like got a level of like, well that
was something different, Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I think that the only thing I knew about it
was Joey. You phrased it. You've explained it in a
way that was like I liked that gay people were
not all good people in it.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
This is my main thing with the movie is I'm like,
it is a it's a and we're going to get
more into this, but it is a It is a
high school movie about where all the characters are queer.
It's not necessarily about coming out or about like how
hard it is to megare or whatever.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
It's just a movie where the characters are queer.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
And like a lot of my high school movies, like
a lot of rom coms, they let the characters be
very messy and very awful at points, and that was
very refreshing, which I'm going to get into I think this. Yeah,
I I personally found it very refreshing to have a
movie where like we had these like very messy queer

(03:01):
characters that were front and center, very messy female and
also like you know, younger queer characters, especially quick content warning.
So this just all kind of talking within the context
of this movie and how this movie deals with stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
We talked a little bit about.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
School shootings and school violence and also sexual assault and
those conversations. So yeah, make sure you're taking care while listening.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
So to introduce this.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
Movie a little bit, I want to talk a little bit.
I'm going to backtrack to a completely different movie that
came out six years ago, and because again, like I
talked about, I think it's important to when we're talking
about this movie, just want to talk about the whole
idea of like quote unquote queer high school movies, which
is like a newer trend in cinema, but like what

(03:53):
has happened with those kind of stories. So yeah, backtracking
to Spring twenty eighteen, I.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Was at the end of my first year of college.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
I was sat in a movie theater in the East
Village in Manhattan, Manhattan to watch a movie that had
just come out called Love Simon, which was a film
that got a lot of hype for being really the
first like big budget high school rom com that was
produced by a major studio that had like a gay
main character. So the movie ended, lights went up. I

(04:26):
was there with a friend of mine who was also queer.
I turned to that friend. She was in tears. A
lot of people around us were in tears, were very emotional,
and I am a liar, so I was sort of like, yeah,
that was great. I loved that. I'm so I'm crying
right now. I didn't really like the movie.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Please tell me you said I'm crying.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
Literally it was what I said, Yeah, I'm sick, and
so I'm not saying this to try to yuck anybody's yum.
I do think like art is very subjective and movies
are very subjective and super storytelling, that's all very subjective.
Everybody has their own emotional reactions to things. But I

(05:15):
remember leaving that movie in twenty eighteen, like I had
kind of just experienced being I feel weird saying like
openly gay, because I feel like it was more of
a like the people that knew knew kind of like
people that needed to know, or if if anybody asked,
I would be honest about it. But like more or
less openly queer in high school. It just like was

(05:36):
not a movie that reflected my experience, and I think,
like later on, I saw a lot of criticism where
people were sort of saying the same thing, And again
I do understand. I think there is a place for
those kind of stories. That being side the movie loves
Simon very much was sort of a like the point
of the movie was really much like, hey, look, straight people,
we're just like you.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
We're normal and pop and.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
You know, gender conforming and live in our upper middle class,
white suburban cookie cutter town and just want to be
like you and everything's great and oh we're just also gay.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
It's very much like respectability politics.

Speaker 7 (06:16):
And again, like I I think, if this is the
kind of movie you watched and you felt seen by that,
that's great and I love that, and I think that's important,
and I also think there is a place for like
these kind of stories, especially like that are marketed towards kids,
and I think that is important.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
But again, that was a movie that I left. I
just remember being like, is this what we're getting now? Like,
is this what queer cinema is going to be? Is
it going to be like so rooted in trying to
appease straight people or like to show them that we're
normal and we're just like them, And like it's going

(06:51):
to be very like sugarcoated kind of stories.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Flash forward now to last August.

Speaker 6 (06:57):
And uh, the.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
Night before my best friend Handa and I had gone
out to Henrietta Hudson, which is a lesbian bar in Manhattan.
Gotta give them a shout.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Out, had a great time, was a little hugover.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
The next day was sat in a Sunday matinee to
go see Bottoms at a nearby indie theater.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
There was a setup in the lobby.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
This theater does like themed kind of setup, so based
on movies that are coming out sometimes, so like they
had a set up for Bottoms that was like modeled
after one of the classrooms. So it was really fun.
We got a lot of fun pictures. The movie started
and then after a one hour and thirty two minutes
fever dream of laughing and cheering. The lights lifted, and

(07:41):
I felt like I finally had the experience that like
the people around me were experiencing when I went to
go see Love Simon, that I was pretending.

Speaker 6 (07:48):
To have.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Because to me, Bottoms is the loud, irreverent, annoying gay
response to the trend of movies like Love Simon that
like very heavily pandered this respectable, straight, liberal gaze. It
is a movie that it reminded me a lot of
BookSmart where It's which is Olivia Wild's debut film in
which that like it really speaks to much like breaking

(08:13):
down a lot of these high school movie tropes. And
it's like I kind of saw it as like, this
is a high school movie for people that were miserable
in high school. So yeah, like I said, it preferred
like the I think one of the strengths of the
movies is in reverting a lot of these typical tropes
asia associated with high school brom comms. It follows the
tradition of other, like earlier queer movies like but I'm

(08:34):
a Cheerleader and using these very like over the top,
very gendered aesthetics to poke fun of the strict expectations
of heteronormative you know, suburban America. And I found this
quote from a review in Roger Ebert dot Com from
Monica Castillo that writes bottoms dropkicks, John Hughes movies on

(08:56):
their ass and lets the girls take charge, not just
as power wallflowers or broody misfits until someone gives them
a makeover.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
They're weirdos. They are the words.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
They have every right to fail, be crass, make crewe jokes,
and shed blood. Selgman and Senate are all in on
the joke right down to the end credits.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Blooper real.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
And so again, like I said, Desmit kind of like
really campy, over the top like satirical tone of this movie.
I felt like it did a better job of reflecting
the way that.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
I felt as a.

Speaker 4 (09:26):
High schooler and also like the kind of story that
I wanted to see compared to like a lot more
recent queer like high school centric media like Love Simon
or Heart Stopper or which again, if these are movies
that you like, I have a lot of friends that
are really into Heart Stopper personally doesn't do it for me,
but like, you know, everybody's got their own taste or like,

(09:47):
you know, a lot of the other stuff that we're
seeing is like queer dramas that are usually about like
conversion camps or something really depressing. Like I was, this
was very like And the thing that I really liked
about the movie, which the director am A Selgman has
spoken about, is the fact that it's like she wanted
to make this movie where the characters just happen to
be queer. That's not like the plot isn't like, oh
my god, this is a drama about coming out or

(10:08):
about your parents tend to get you to a conversion
camp or some other awful.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Kind of traumatic experience.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
It's just about being a high schooler and navigating like
dating and having crushes and.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
All of these things as a high schooler.

Speaker 4 (10:25):
And yeah, the thing that I like is that the
characters are messy like that to me is so much
more interesting than like again, like I'm god love Simon
a lot, but like, uh, like the main character that
movie is so boring, Like I just heat there was
I could not tell you a personality trade he had,
but like I don't know, and like I don't know
about you guys, but like I was a mess at
high school, Like I was.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
A complete idiot.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Like I'm like, this is probably again that is why
I say, I'm like, this is probably more reflective of
who I was and the stories I would have wanted
to see. And you guys just did an episode about
ten Things I Hate About You, which I think is
interesting because that also just happens to be.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
One of my favorite movies.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
And I I think one of the things that I
really love about that movie is the fact that all
of the characters are kind of awful. Like it is
the same thing where it's like, you know, the people
tend to like comedies because the characters are messed up,
not because the characters are perfect. Like those are the
things that we enjoy and we are drawn to and
we relate to, and I think as gay people, we

(11:22):
also deserve to have those kind of characters. So yeah,
now getting to the plot of the movie. So, like
I said, this movie was co created by writer director
Emma Selkman and actor Rachel Sennett. The pair had previously
worked on Shiva Baby, which I still have not seen
but I really want to see, which was an underground

(11:44):
hit kind of at the beginning of the pandemic.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
It was based on a.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
Project that the pair had started working on while they
were students at NYU. They actually also went to NYU
with Iowa Debris, who is the other star of this film,
known for her roles in The Bear.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
She's actually been doing a lot lately.

Speaker 4 (12:03):
She's great, She's she's I'm I love her.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
I'm obsessed with her.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Let's see it.

Speaker 6 (12:08):
And then Rachel said it it's from Bides. She's also
see it out last night. Yeah, but anyway, keep going.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
I actually saw that see Buddies Buddy's Bodies either. Okay,
that's also been on my last time. I have a
lot of goa that.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
You love this movie, but you haven't seen that movie.
You need to see that movie.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
Oh my god, it's like on Netflix or something now too.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
So I've been meaning to see ye need to know,
I know.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
So. According to a Deadline article about this movie, the
duo Quote came up with the idea for the raunchy
teen comedy on a whiteboard, putting down everything we wanted
to see in a movie on the board, from quote
punching to vagina to knitting set senate, which I think
is a great way to start working on a movie.
But yeah, So Bottoms is the story of two best friends,

(13:09):
PJ who's played by Rachel Sennett and Josie who's played
by Io Debris, who had to plan to start a
quote self defense club to get girls to want to
sleep with them in typical buddy comedy fashion. PJ is
this like, very brash, confident character who's often pulling Josie
along into like her crazy schemes, and Josie is the

(13:30):
much more reserved, anxious, more or less the rational one
at the start of the movie at least.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
So the movie primarily serves.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
To satirize the dramatics of often very straight high school movies,
and given to a lot of these movies revolve around
like a big upcoming football game with their high school's
rival team. This is something that the movie also does.
So this whole movie, there's this like ongoing plot in
the background that there's this big upcoming game with the

(13:59):
rival school, Huntington. The school that they go to is
called Rockbridge High School, which I didn't realize until I
was writing this plot. But yeah, so the big rival
school is called Huntington, and so there's all these things
about like, oh my god, we got are growing up
against Huntington. The movie also again given that they're like
starting this like quote unquote self defense club that turns
into like a fight club, it pulls a lot from

(14:21):
David Fincher's nineteen ninety nine film Fight Club, which I
will say is also one of my favorite movies.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
In one day, I'll write an episode.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Defending why I love that movie. But I know it
is like controversial anyways.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
So this movie begins at a.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
Carnival, again a very typical high school movie trope, where
Josi mpj awkwardly try to flirt with their perspective crushes
Isabelle who's played by Havannah Roslou and Brittany who's played
by Kaya Gerber. Isabelle and Brittany are both like popular,
beautiful cheerleaders, and Isabelle is dating the star of their

(14:58):
high school's football team, Jeff, played by Nicholas gallaxyne I
just realized I do not know how to say his
last name, but of red white and Royal blue and
that Anne Hathaway Harry Styles movie that just came out fame.
So after failing to woo their crushes, Josie and PJ

(15:21):
walk away dejected. Josie goes on this like unhinged, beautiful
monologue about how she's never gonna get a girlfriend and
she's gonna have to get married to like this gay
guy at their school and they're gonna become super religious
and apparently IOE improvised that she's brilliant. I'm obsessed with her.
That's one of my favorite parts in the movie. So

(15:41):
as they're leaving, they witness Isabelle storming away from a
pleading Jeff, who apparently she caught flirting with one of
the moms in their town. So PJ is kind of
like egging Josie on, like, oh, you should go talk
to her, and Josie offers Isabella safety ride.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
They're in Josie's car. It's about walks in.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
Jeff stands in front of the car and it's like,
I'm not leaving until Isabelle comes out. Isabelle and PJ
are really like egging Josie on. Josie slightly moves the
car forward and like taps jeff'snee and of course he
like falls over dramatically.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
This kind of leads us.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
To the introduction of like the rest of the football team,
particularly this character Tim, who is Jeff's right hand man
and at least appears to have like a one at
least one sided homoerotic relationship with Jeff, again really leading
into like making fun of a lot of these like
character tropes of high school movies.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
So they all rush.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
To Jeff's aide and the girls driveway in a panic.
So the next day we are at Rockbridge High School
and we really get to see that like these girls.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Are like losers.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
They are there's the double meaning of the film there
at the bottom of the social cys structure or whatever.
There's some graffiti with some choice words on their lockers,
and then we learn two big things. So they walked
to their history class that day, and we find out
that the story of Josie lightly tapping jeffsny and him

(17:14):
falling over has kind of been exaggerated into they like
beat up Jeff. And then so also there's this other
character named Hazel that's sort of like a third wheel
friend with Josie and PJ, and they're ven a misunderstanding.
While they're at the carnival, PJ makes kind of a
sarcastic joke about them maing it Juvy.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Hazel thinks it's serious and.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Tells the whole school that these girls had gone to
Juvie the whole summer. Hazel's played by Ruby Cruz, who
she was in like Willow.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
I never watched it. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
Any use I've it seems like, yeah, but I think
she also plays a queer character in that, which I
was like, that's really cool. She's great. I'm excited to
see her in more things. So everybody, like the whole
school's got of got this.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
New like.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Reverend like weariness of the pair.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
And Jeff walks in and he's got this like full
leg cast on and he's like threatening them. And then
so we also hero for the announcements over the schools
inter com. There's an announcement warning girls about an influx
of violent incidents carried out by the school's rival football team, Huntington,
leading up to this big football game. There's a girl,

(18:29):
an anonymous victim of this violence, who tells them about
how she was walking home from the carnival by herself
and she got punched in the face. And then this
is followed out by announcement, an announcement calling for the
quote ugly untalented gaze to report to the principal's office
that being PJ and Josie, they go there. The school's
principle brates them for committing a crime against Jeff, our

(18:51):
quarterback and the most good looking all American, red blood
and muscular man this town has ever seen. And so
desperate to not gonna expelled and inspired by the earlier
announcement about the influx of violent attacks and girls at
their school, Josie makes up an excuse that the incident
was simply a misunderstanding and that they were practicing for
their self defense club. This gets them off the hook,

(19:14):
and while Josie is ready to just move on and
forget the incident, PJ latched onto this idea that they
should start an all girls fight club and this is
what we'll get girls to fall in love with them,
particularly Isabelle and Brittany. Another one of my favorite scenes
in this movie involves PJ, Josie, and Hazel sitting on
the bleachers concocting me this idea. Hazel again kind of

(19:35):
being you know, the straight man character of this whole
thing is straight man in like a comedy siense not
and there's nothing heterosexual Hazel. She argues that this is
going to be like a great idea because quote, the
school has a serious lack of female solidarity, and it'll
be empowering. Josie doesn't want to do it. PJ is like,

(19:56):
this is going to get girls attention, It's going to
be great. There's another from the scene that I really
love and I think kind of guess all that whole
thing I was talking about before about like, I think
I really loved that this movie lets queer characters be
awful and like kind of be awful in a way
that like straight characters and particularly straight male characters are.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Often allowed to be in these sort of movies.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
Josie says about this whole idea, we can't do this,
we'd be misleading them in PJ responds, guys do that
all the time. That's the point of feminism, to which
Josie responds, that's not the point of feminism. Also, you
don't care about feminism. Your favorite show is Entorage, which, again, yeah,
going back to ten things I Hate about you, Like

(20:35):
the whole kind of premise of the movie is a
similar sort.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Of thing, like misleading the women of the story. Is
it something that like people should do. Is it something
that's being encouraged. No, but it's a fun trope.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
It's a fun way to start the plot, and I
love that this film like allows that story to be queer.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
So the girls proceed to start this club.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
They find a sponsor in their detached history teacher mister
g who's play by Marshaun Lynch, who I did not
know was a football player when I saw this movie,
but apparently he's a football player. He was great, who
we learn is going through a divorce and he agrees
to help the pair because my mom says I need
a hobby.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
They then proceed to start the club.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
PJ steals hazel line about it being about female solidarity
and empowerment and kind of uses that to like try
to get girls to get involved.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
They get to the first meeting and.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
PJ is audibly disappointed that all these girls are ugly
that showed up, and then again proceeds to go on
a very like Tyler Jordan esque monologue about the rules
of the club and how they got to show up
in time and is being very like tough guy, and
then Brittany and Isabelle walk in and totally change his tone.
So then there's this like great montage where BC like

(21:52):
the club really taking off, and we get to kind
of learn a little bit more about like the individual
girls that are in this club.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
They're all very like high school tro kind of characters.
It's it's fun.

Speaker 4 (22:01):
There's one who's kind of like the stoner like skater
girl character. There's this one character, Cella Rebecca, who's kind
of like the hot girl of the school. She's one
of the cheerleaders who There's another girl who's like very Christian.
There's a montage on all the girls fighting each other.
By the way, Charlie xcx co wrote the score, which
is part of why it is so amazing. We see

(22:25):
over this montage Josie really gaining confidence, and we also
see the duo kind of rising in their like social
rank of this high school. We see mister g starting
to talk about feminism in his history class, still sort
of in the satirical tone of the movie. There's a
shot of him writing on the whiteboard feminism.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Who started it?

Speaker 4 (22:46):
Question mark, Hey, Gloria steinem be a man see another woman, which.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
I gotta say is somebody who went to like an
American public high school.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
I that is not far off from like how they
taught us about like the women liberation movement.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Like I was like wait that, like literally it's like
who is glorious? Sign him? Okay, that's enough feminism for today.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
So this also is where we start to get some
conflict as the club is gaining its prominence, and we
see Tim, who again is Jeff's right hand man, noticing
the club kind of gaining more attention. He corners PJ
and Josie and kind of plately threatens them to not
take attention away from the big game. Josie points out,

(23:27):
this is kind of impossible. There's like pictures of Jeff everywhere.
And then also we learn through Hazel's point of view
as she goes home from school one day that her mom,
who she earlier in mention is going through this whole
like post divorce midlife crisis, has been hooking up with Jeff.
Quick note, Jeff is wearing his football uniform. This is

(23:47):
the whole like gender aesthetic. He's wearing his football uniform
for the entire movie. And like when we see him
in the scene, he like runs out and he still
out his shoulder pads on which I again, the costuming
is so good The next day, Hazel tells Josie and
PJ what she saw. Josie proceeds to tell Isabelle, and then,
in another really beautiful sequence, we get to see Isabelle

(24:08):
on a war path as she.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Confronts Jeff in their high school cafeteria.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
Jeff and the football team are seated in front of
a rendition of the creation of Adam, but with Jeff's
face on it.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
We had a football in hand, I must say, and a.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Football in ten.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
Yes, it's I just the set design, the costumes is
everything on this movie so good. The rest of the
fight Club rallies behind her. They're really like a unit.
Now they're going to plan their revenge. Hazel once again
doesn't have the best concept of like scale and tone
it all that suggests they should build a bomb, which

(24:42):
b Ja says, no, we're not going to do that.
But the next day, at night, they're at Jeff's house,
all donning masks and they're egging his house. Isabelle and
Josie are kind of having an intimate moment in the
car alone. It's clear that Isabelle maybe has some feelings
for as well. The pair about to kiss and interrupted

(25:04):
by Hazel blowing up Death's car. I'm gonna get a
little bit more into this later when we discussed kind
of the whole movie, But something that I really like
about the movie is.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Sort of the whole way that it which we'll talk
about more at the end too.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
The whole theme of like violence and how violence is
discussed in the movie was something that relea stood out
to me, I think, especially somebody who like.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Grew up and was in school during.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Like the peak of like school violence and gun violence
and all of this like being in the news.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
And again, I'm.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
Gonna talk a little bit more about this later, Like
I went to a high school where there was a.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Couple of school shooting scares.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
And threats and stuff like that, and I think, just
later on kind of dealing with the sort of processing
some of what I had experienced in high school as
an adult, I think there was sort of a thread
of that in this movie that I think I really appreciated.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
So anyways, Hazel blows up the car, they all drive
away in the panic.

Speaker 4 (26:04):
The next day the club's meeting again, they're all kind
of like, oh, well, you know, it was nice, wh
we all lasted.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
But the club's over.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Now you know, the real fight club was the friends
we made along the way. At this point, we see
Josie now fully committed to the whole grift. She stands
up and tells this really dramatic story about being in Juvie.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
And which again they never want to Juvie.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
That's the whole lie here, their romantic tension between her
and Isabel Rose. Everybody really seems ready to just kind
of move on. PJ, on the other hand, is not.
She really is arguing for them to keep the club going.
Hazel kind of responds something to the extent of like, hey, sorry, PJ,
you didn't get what you wanted from this club, but
the rest of us are. We We got that and

(26:48):
we're ready to move on. They get into an argument.
Hazel points out the fact that she basically ran this
club for them. PJ calls Hazel loser with no friends
and escape for a mom. Hazel runs off crying. We
see a conniving Tim watching this whole interaction go off
and follow Hazel. Then we cut to a scene between
Josie Isabel, who is come over to Josie's house to

(27:10):
work on a homework assignment. There's some awkward flirting between
the two. We get a little bit more of a
backstory into Josie and pj's friendship, their childhood best friends
who grew up with the same babysitter, an older lesbian
name Rhodes, who PJ calls their gay Yoda. The pair
finally kiss, and then we cut to Britney's bedroom where
a PJ and sort of a parallel scene, Pj's over

(27:32):
to help with a homework assignment. There's some awkward flirting,
except when PJ leans into kiss Brittany, she informs her
that she's straight. So the next day there's a big
PEP rally and we see Josie's liding to the bleachers
next to PJ, excited to tell her about the night
with Isabelle. Before they can really talk, the PEP rally starts.

(27:54):
There's a brief performance by the True Leading Squad, which
just entails them dumping a bottle of water on Cella Rebecca,
who's that like hot girl cheer leer character who's part of.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
The fight club.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
Tim runs out announces that you know, before the festivities start,
they're going to have the demonstration from this fight club
that they've been hearing about that's been the big thing
that everybody's been talking about. So they break out Hazel,
who they announced is one of the founders of the club,
who's going to fight the school's top boxer, Tucker, who
is this massive dude they bring out in a cage. Also,

(28:29):
I didn't realize this till like the second time I
watched the movie, but he's in the background of a
bunch of shots in a cage, Like there's just a
a dude in a cage and a bunch of the
background shots in the movies, and then you realize, Oh,
it's the boxer guy that they're going to bring out.
Hazel's sort of like, way, way wait, I thought I
was gonna fight PJ.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
What's going on? He look at her handed to her.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
Tim gets his big villain speech moment where he's like,
I know what you're wondering. How could a girl under
the tutelage of two Juvi trained killers can't even stand.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
Up for herself against the regular old dude.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
The regular old dude of course being this like giant guy,
but again like perfect satirical, like laying out a very
misogynistic like gotcha point of like, oh.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
It's like shouldn't you be able to fight? Like, come on,
are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (29:17):
She held her own for a minute, I will shed
maybe she will win this. Sometimes she didn't.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
She did, and of course, so then he reveals they
did not go to Juvie and they did not start
this club to empower women, but to cheerleaders, and then
he gets the line, what is wrong with you? It
is such a shame. We were really rooting for you girls.

Speaker 5 (29:45):
She can't I think, just going back to the whole
satirical tone of this movie, Like I think, like watching
this as a queer person, where it's like the minute
you as particularly as like a woman or an a
fab queer person, I think expressed the fact that you
have sexual desire or that you whatever, like that is
stigmatized so much, And I think when.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
We talk about like there is a level of like
I think my criticism of a lot of these other
kind of queer movies that have been very sanitized and
very much for a straight audience, like there's a reason
they're very bland and like sexless and whatever, and again
like not every movie has to have like this level
of you know whatever, But like I think there is
a level to which like straight a straight audience is

(30:28):
wanting to accept, like queer characters that do not express
sexual desire, that do not express you know, the fact
that they too are feeling these same feelings that straight
people have.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
So yeah, PJ and Josie are ostracized by the group.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Isabelle confronts Josie and breaks it off with her for
lying to her.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
There's a great line from one of.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
The club members who's the like really christian one who says,
I thought this club was about sisterhood, but it's all
about your own self interest. This is a second wave
all over again.

Speaker 6 (30:57):
Yeah, I love that line line.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
So the rest of your rallier on Hazel Bay leave
PJ and jose alone. Be confronted by a betrayed mister
G says I trusted you too, y'all exploit in my solidarity.
I played the role of an amazing ally, which I get.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Okay, I have.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
I'm pretty I've had that conversation with like male feminists
before so many times, Like I was like, oh my god,
i feel like I'm having deja voo to like the
minute I do so, I like slightly criticize something that
you did or said or whatever, Like, what do you mean,
I'm an amazing ally Like, I don't know that was.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
I love that line so like.

Speaker 6 (31:34):
That's a white feminist characteristic exactly often.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
I love when he crosses through feminism. Char That's such
a good scene.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
It's such a sad.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
Yeah, there's this PJ and Josie get in a fight
over who's fault it was. There's this traumatic montage to
Afrilppian's complicated music choice is perfect hysterical, yeahbously mister g
crossing out feminism. The graffiti on their lockers has been
replaced by Horny Freak number one and Horny Freak number two,

(32:09):
and this montage ends with Josie going to see Rhodes
their gaey Yoda to ask her advice about how to
fix the duo's friendship.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Rhodes doesn't really give her.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
Okay, so Roads by the Way is played by Punky
Johnson ASNL Fantastic. She doesn't really really give her much advice.
It's very much kind of like the just whimsical whatever.
But then she does tell her about this big football
game with hunting them that's coming up. Rhodes reveals that
every year that this happened, so like every twenty years,

(32:39):
there's this big game. The Huntington football team kills a
member of the Rockbridge Falls High School football team, so
Josie realizes that they're gonna kill Jeff and runs to
find kJ so that they can save the day. We're

(33:03):
now on the last scene of the film, which is
the part that I this is the last twenty minutes
are like an insane fever dream. I'm gonna do the
best I can to run through everything that happens.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
This is where I said, wait, what just happened?

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (33:19):
I have made so many people sit down and watch
this movie, and every time it's like, oh, this is great,
Oh wait what? Like? So PJ and Josie race to
the football game, where they find the rest of the
club and plea for their help to stop the game,
pointing out that there's nobody from Huntington on the other side,
which feels like a red flag that something is about

(33:40):
to go wrong. PJ offers a half hearted apology to Hazel,
who accepts. PJ tells her they need a distraction, and
this time Hazel gets to build her bomb, but it
does not go off, so the girls proceed to distraction
Plan two, which is of course yelling at the cheerleaders
to make out.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Understandable. Next step.

Speaker 4 (34:03):
They don't Isabelle and Brittany are so mad at them,
So Hazel and PJ start to make out, which again
another great scene because it leads to a couple of notable.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
Reactions sell her.

Speaker 4 (34:16):
Rebecca sees them and goes, wait, I'm gay.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Brittany says, I'm not. I just like gay porn, and
Jeff says this is nothing like porn. Wait is porn
even real?

Speaker 4 (34:35):
Well?

Speaker 3 (34:35):
This is going on. Josie is off trying to figure
out what's.

Speaker 4 (34:38):
Going on, realizes that Huntington has brought a bunch of
pineapple juice, which earlier in the film, and it has
established that Jeff is deathly allergic to By the way,
as a fellow deathly I have a severe allergy to nuts,
And I was like, love the representation.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Good to note I didn't know those about you.

Speaker 4 (34:59):
The scene where Tim like knocks the pineapple out of
the way. I was watching this with like my roommates,
so they were all like, literally like the day before
there was something where like we were getting some food
and there was something with.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
That, so and they were like, no, Joey, and I
was like, that's you guys. I didn't even see it.
You were like, no, Like I can look at it.
It's fine, I just can't eat it.

Speaker 6 (35:18):
No.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
But anyways, Yeah, so they realized there must be pineapple
juice somewhere in the field that they're gonna use to
kill Jeff. This accumulates in a big fight scene between
the fight club, Isabelle and Brittany, now having joined into help,
They basically killed the whole Huntington football team. At first
kind of by accident, and then just you know, they
end with all the players.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Dead on the field.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
Through this whole thing, Josie heroically saves Jeff by like
carrying him across the field just in time before the
sprinklers go off. Once the rest of the crowd realizes
that the girls saved Jeff's lives, they all cheer. Everybody clapped.
Isabelle and Josie are reunited. Josie apologizes, Isabelle tells her,
you know, you didn't have to start a whole fight

(35:59):
club just to date. You could have just like talked
to me. They kiss. The music swells We've reached the
end of the film. The camera pans out and then
the bomb goes off behind the tree and if we've
reached the end.

Speaker 6 (36:14):
I do like that at one point in which Josie
was like when she says, you don't have to do this,
you know, fight, She's like, well, we'll talk about how
real that really? She's actually trying to be like, no,
I did try to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
That didn't work.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Remember they did terribly beginning to their crushes. Respective it
was real bad.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
It was funny.

Speaker 6 (36:43):
Oh my god, this movie took a hard left for
me and I was like, what's happened?

Speaker 1 (36:48):
What's happening? Did they are they all dead? No one cares? Okay.

Speaker 6 (36:57):
I also love that she was too small to hold
it just fell, My god, was classic. I was like,
that's correct, that is the correct way this would have gone.
So some realistic thing.

Speaker 4 (37:07):
Yeah, Isabelle and Brittany and like their cheerleader uniforms, like
beating up like it was. It was very like Buffy
the Vampire Slayer type like it really was. And again
this is what I say where I think like this
film so brilliantly like satirizes a lot of tropes from
high school movies. I think just taking the that whole
like the seriousness of the like this is the rival

(37:30):
football team, we have the big game that's coming up,
plotline that is in so many movies, and.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Being like, well, what if it literally was life or death.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
And what if it literally ended with like a action.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Movie type battle. I love it. I thought that was great.
So yeah, the end, and then of course really quick
because then they show the.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
Title and then there's a quick like short slean Earlier
on the film, there's a quick like cut way where
I think it's like Jeff like throws something and it
hits this like really goth like emo kid in the
back of the head. He goes, that's it, and then
he writes, I'm bombing the school.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Cut away, They don't go back to it.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
And then at the end of the movie, after the
bomb goes off, they cut to him and he goes, damn,
that was supposed.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
To be my thing. And again I think, like this
is one of those things.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
Where I'm like, there's so many different reactions to like, look, okay,
So I was in like eighth grade when the like
Newtown shooting happened. I had just graduated in high school
when Parkland happened. I was in high school, like during
the where this was like the kind of I do
not think there was a day I went to school

(38:42):
and I was not thinking about, like how would I
get out of here if I needed to, And that
was just something that was so normalized, and I like
I just kind of had to accept that that was
part of my life. And like I have told this
to people in my life that are like a generation
or a couple generations older that are all like, oh
my god, that's horrifying. I'm kind of like, I don't know,
that was just sort of like part of life. And

(39:05):
like when I was a senior, we had a and
we add an attempted school shooting.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
In my high school.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
There was a year after I left there was another
attempt and like luckily nobody died, nobody was hurt, but
it was just something that was so prevalent in my
mind when I was in high school, and I think
like there was something very refreshing about like being able
to have a.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Joke about it in this movie and being able.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
To like almost sort of talk about the fact that
it is such a like insane thing to just have
in the background this whole time.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
So yeah, I don't know, that's that's my thoughts on it.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
I guess that there's other people that maybe you could
have seen that and I'm like, oh, that was like
a poorly carried out joke or whatever, but those that
was my thought, right, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
I think that's definitely a take that at this point,
what else can you do when no one else takes
it seriously? And literally the government doesn't take it seriously,
the politicians, right, these issues have occurred like ever since Columbine,
which was my age, like it just has increased tenfold
if not more, and the fact that nothing's being done,

(40:07):
what else can you do? Like, it's just like at
the exactly point, y'all have made it. Y'all, being the
authority and protectors of what should be of the you know,
the future, have done So we'll just, I guess joke
about it, because there's nothing much the other than crying
for real.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
And I mean, like I've I've seen TV shows take
a route of trying to do a serious plot line
about school violence, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't,
and I think, you know, I don't know, like I
like literally like last year, I remember, like my roommate
was watching some like old CW shows that had been
on when we were in high school, and like they

(40:43):
had a plot line about school shootings, and I just
remember being like like I don't I don't want to
watch this, Like I don't like it a It's like
I was like I was like literally going through and
pointing out the things that they I was like, actually,
they would do this this way or like this.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Is what they do, like there wouldn't. They would be
on the announcements.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Already like yelling at people like I don't know. And
I was like, that's so like weird and surreal and
dystopian that I'm watching this and being like they're dealing
with the school shooting wrong, Like.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
Was it Seventh Heaven?

Speaker 1 (41:10):
It wasn't it was were you watching Heaven? I know?

Speaker 2 (41:14):
But I remember I remember they had a they had
a plot and it made a lot of news.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
Oh it was the Fosters. Yeah, I that was before
my time, but Seventh happened. But I don't like Lee
also did a plot line or.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
They did a school shooting for some reason, like I don't.

Speaker 6 (41:32):
Know, geez, but something they had there was a gun,
like they did like modify but there was nothing.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:40):
Yeah, And also so on the kind of route of
the violence of this film. So there was in an
interview and and that whole ending scene and how like
the ridiculousness of the whole fight scene. For an interview
in La Times, Segulman said about this movie and about
some of the movies that like she had wanted to
see as a teenager. Looking back, I would have love
to have seen more queer female characters. But I also

(42:03):
would have loved to have seen girls beating each other
up and fighting to save the day. And I love
movies like Scott Pilgrim and Kicks and Attack the Block
movies where a bunch of boys are getting together to
be rambunctious and fight and do stuff. And so this
is accumulation of a lot of different movies with young
teen female characters I wish I could have seen. And
I think, like, like, yeah, that last scene really reminded

(42:23):
me a lot of like Scott Pilgrim and like a
lot of these other sort of like comedy movies where
there can be that level of violence, and it's sort
of like Sad Rise in a way where it's like
we're not really gonna like the violence isn't the issue.
The violence is more a way to like talt this
plot line, and yeah, that was fun. Again, Like it
was cool seeing like the cheerleaders like beating people up
and they're in the in thest like really dramatic, like

(42:45):
almost like superhero movie like kind of poses and stuff.

Speaker 6 (42:48):
Again, I told you at the beginning, I told Annie,
I was like, this is the more satirical, funny sketch
version of heathers oh, which was a dark comedy of
what it was, and it was essentially similar conversations without
the actual queer characters, although it was queer coded definitely, definitely,

(43:08):
which I made any watch when I first met.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
Her body Yes, oh my god, wait, okay, that's so.

Speaker 4 (43:14):
I remember showing this from a movie to her friend
and their response was, okay, So this reminds me a
lot of like how like Heather's was in a conversation
with like pretty.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Uh yeah, any know the Brett Peck six think Candle's pretty.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
In pain right, which which I will say, like I
the high school movies that I grew up watching was
a lot of the like John Hughes movies, and those
never spoke to me. I never really liked those movies,
and that was like a lot of the same reasons why,
Like I think I have I have my own criticism
of like Love Simon and Art Stopper and a lot
of these movies that provide a very like idealized version
of high school and so the way that Heather's is

(43:45):
kind of in conversation with those movies is very similar
to like I think what Bottoms is doing to the
sort of contemporary trend of high school movies.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
I also do, Yeah, I Love Heather is good. So
it's just a b where it's like it's a it's
a fun movie, and yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
It's ridiculous, but yeah, this is definitely like the more.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
Funny, lighthearted version of that.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
And then so the other part I think, which I
brought up earlier, marrying this to other kind of queer
movies about queer people in high school that have come
out around the same time. Something that I really liked
about this movie was it didn't revolve around the characters
coming out or coming to terms with their identity. They
were already like when they're introducing the movie, they're established
to be queer. You could have made this movie about

(44:27):
straight people and it would have been essentially the same plot, you.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Know, like it definitely, like the queerness is integral to it.

Speaker 4 (44:31):
It is important, it is a part of the story,
but it's like, it's not a movie about them being gay.
It's a movie about being a high schooler and it
and they also just happened to be gay, which I
felt that was very refreshing because there's so many movies
where like, the queerness is the big issue that we
have to deal with. The queerness wasn't the issue. The
issue was again like the ups and downs of dealing

(44:53):
with coming to terms with your sexuality and none other way.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
In high school.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
There's a line at the beginning of the movie where
Josie says, the school is such a gay and Pja responds,
people don't hate us because we're gay. People hate us
because we're gay, ugly and untalented.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
WHI.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yeah, it's part of the like they're not Nobody doesn't
like them because they're gay. They hate them because they're losers,
which yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
And then the other pics that I.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
Want to talk about is when this movie was marketed
and when it was first like kind of when it
first came out, it was really funny because there was
a brief moment where there was some Twitter controversy over
the tagline, which is a movie about empowering women, especially
the hot ones. And again to that point, some people,
I think, without really looking into what the movie was

(45:39):
about or what it was, like, what the Again, it's
a satire.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
It's supposed to be making fun of these things.

Speaker 4 (45:45):
Like we're very upset about it, and we're sort of like,
oh my god, why that's not feminist if it's that,
and it's like, that's that's the point, that's the point.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
The point is it's making fun of all these things.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
Like there's a million movies out there that are about
guys trying to woo girls that they think are hot,
and like it's supposed to making fun of that and
making fun of a like and kind of make yeah,
like having.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
A messy, horny, like over the top version of that was.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
For the gays too, and like talking about the fact that, like,
sexual desire is not something that straight people only experience,
and it's not something that men only experience. Like I
found having female queer female characters just be so explicit
about what they wanted that was very refreshing and something

(46:31):
that I did think was interesting, Like looking into this
movie a bit more was.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
The director.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
Emma Seldman talked about how it was hard to get
this movie made because of that and because of sort
of the niche or perceived like niche audience is gonna have.
This ended up kind of being like an like a hit,
because I do think, yeah, like there's elements about it
that are universal. But according to Deadline, the film was

(47:01):
taken up by producer Alison Small and landed at Ryan
after numerous productions. Seligman talked about how like, it was
really hard to get this movie made because a lot
of studios turned it down, and then also in another
article about the film in slash Film quote, Siegelman also
said that securing product placement was essentially a non starter,
including those so called progressive corporations, because they were all

(47:25):
too offended by the content of the film. Selgman hasn't
outed any of these cutlass worms, my words, not hers,
but she did say, quote, just think of any liberal
corporation that has a pride float. They were all like, no,
not only will we not do something with you, but
do not put anything of ours in there. It was
really disheartening, and I think as we're having this larger

(47:45):
conversation about how corporations use pride and use queer aesthetics
sometimes as like marketing thing when it can be you know,
nice and respectable and not cause any controversy, and then

(48:06):
are so so quick to pull back as soon as anything,
as soon as there is any backlash from the right,
or as soon as anything is like a little bit
more outside of you know, the kind of heteronormative expectations
that these things they'll have to fall into, or like
toes the line like a little bit more than they want,

(48:28):
They're so quick to just like turn their backs. I
think this is another example of like, yeah, there was
this very like queer film that has really spoken to
a lot of people. The fact that there weren't really
any companies that wanted to be involved with it, I
think that's saying something. And so then the last big
thing I wanted to talk about was like the casting

(48:48):
of this movie, because I think that was very intentional.
And this is another thing that I think I really
loved about this movie. So this is a quote from
Them magazine, which is a UCLA publication.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
The integrity of the casting makes quote the nerd and
the cheerleader take new shape, pushing them beyond the stereotypes
and nostalgic punch lines. When looking to cast the character
of Hazel, played by the ever charming RuBee Cruz, the
casting team was surprised by the new Colors crews brought
to the text.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
This character was a nerd who was also secretly very cool.

Speaker 4 (49:21):
The role suddenly contained a mix of self confidence and
the desire to be part of something larger. In an
interview with Indie Wire, Selgman reflects that when you are
incerting queer characters into these tropes from the teen movie genre,
they will come out differently.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
They can't just copy what has been done. That happened
naturally with Hazel so like.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
And that I think that is something that I've seen
a lot of people's reaction to this movie being like, well,
it didn't make any sense that Hazel was kind of
like the nerd or like the loser character, because like
she's so cool and she's so like beautiful, and it's
like that's kind of part of the point is like
it's playing with these tropes. It's like you you're casting
a like which, yeah, like Ruby Cruz gorgeous, so much

(50:04):
like charm and like I just like such.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
An cool like literally I think I don't know.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
I gain I didn't watch Willow, so Annie you can
speak to this, but I see if like her character
was sort of like very like bad and charming, and
like I was like, okay, cool, Like I like that,
Like we're taking that kind of character, and yeah, when
you are queer in high school, like oftentimes you still
sort of are the outcast, like regardless of how like
cool and chill you are or whatever. Another thing that

(50:30):
I've seen talked about in this film was kind of
how it deals with the whole like black best friend
trope that we see in a lot of like high
school movies and particularly a lot of like high school
movies from like the nineties and early two thousands. When
like we're first introduced to Josie p Day, it kind
of seems like again, like Josie sort of falls into
that trope of being like the black best friend like

(50:52):
sidekick character. When they first see the graffiti on the
lockers Josie's number one and pg's number two. TJ has
a line where she's like, you're the sidekick, not me,
and like, even though at the start of the film,
again like Pj's kind of the one initiating a lot
of the plot of the movie. Josie is the one
that we see ultimately grow as a character, and like

(51:13):
through that kind of ends up being the main character.
I found this medium article about the film, which is
written by Aliya Brunelle Mormont, and when she states quote
subverting the comedy genre, the white best friend PJ assumed
to fail while the black protagonist perseveres in all her glory.
I've seen the same kind of argument about Tim, who's

(51:36):
also kind of introduced as like Jeff's sidekick, but then ultimately,
like through the course of the movie, Jeff is like
a complete airhead, has no idea what's happening in the
entire time, Tim is really the main villain. So something
I think that was really cool that this movie did
is again like taking it is entirely like a movie

(51:56):
about tropes, right.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
And it takes it's with Hazel, with Josie, with PJ,
with Tim.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
It subverts a lot of these tropes on their head
and sees the ways that we can reimagine them in
a queer context.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
And I really love that.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
That gives me a lot of hope for the future
of these types of films and the future of like
queer reimaginings of these genres.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Yes, it's really fun. It's fun to like reimagine tropes
or see them done differently. Yeah, it's refreshing.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
I like it too.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
I want to end on a quote that's also from
that femb magazine article that says, quote, whether it's a
cult classic or not, Bottoms is more than just nostalgic
for the wild time of twenty twenty three. It's emblematic
and dare I say optimistic for a new generation's vision
of filmmaking. The film's disregard for social and cinematic etiquette

(53:00):
rifally encapsulates frustration of today's youth, presenting a story that
is as joyous as it is delightfully uncomfortable, and then
I think gets at kind of my main takeaway from this.
It is such a ridiculous movie. It is like so
much happens, there's so many it is so irreverent, it

(53:20):
is so its own unique thing, and I love that,
and that is what I hope we really see more of,
I think going forward with queer film and like just
film in general.

Speaker 6 (53:31):
So yeah, I mean it's definitely one of those like
very smart, fast, fast talking off pace, like off pace,
like it keeps you going in one way or the other,
whether you get comfortable or not, it jumps to another thing.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
You're like what, oh what? Oh yeah, car bombing was
out of nowhere, like there was ending the house and
you're like the nd oh.

Speaker 6 (53:48):
She's gonna bomb the car. Okay, that's one.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
And then like there's so many games.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yeah, like they're gonna.

Speaker 6 (53:56):
Kill somebody and the like they're literally gonna oh, they're
gonna kill an entire football team. No one seems to care. Cool, Okay,
we got that, we got that, and then everybody makes
out even better, even better, let's go. Like it definitely
hit up all of that with all of the like
again with like the good one liners, whether it was
Ao or Marshall Lynch or like Hazel character, like they

(54:17):
did each line that was so specific to that character
and or to the plot that you were like, what's
that come from? That?

Speaker 1 (54:25):
It's a smart comedy that actually has been like oh,
maybe i'm too old for insances. What's happening? Like half
of that was for me as well, but it was
so good.

Speaker 6 (54:35):
It's like, yeah, look at it is reminiscent of the
times of like whether it was Heather's in the eighties
or Ten Things I Hate About You in the late nineties,
is like it kind of hits into that remember young
like the younger generation or whatever it was at that time,
or smarter than you think, and here's like this is
what's entertaining them, And yeah, if you don't understand, you
don't understand, like the end of story, because like that

(54:57):
level that it's like, yes, oh okay, I love it.
Let's keep making these like hilarious levels of commentary that
also takes a while to figure out.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Yeah, for me, I one of the things I remember,
one of the articles I was reading about this movie
was talking about the fact that something that it does
too is that like a lot of movies that focus
on teenage girls will kind of have like a like
girl power undertone, this movie explicitly is in conversation with

(55:31):
feminism and explicitly has a lot of jokes that have
to do with having some knowledge like feminism and feminist
history and all of that. And it's like, you know,
despite a movie that is about two girls trying to
trick other girls into wanting to sleep with them, is
like a very feminist movie in the way that it
like it is very explicit about the fact that it

(55:53):
is in conversation with a lot of these like overarching
feminist ideas, and like even the joke about like, oh,
let's just the second wave all over again. There's like
another joke about like oh, my uterus belongs to the
government or like like that. Like there's all these like
little quips that it's like you have to kind of
have a little bit more of it, like it goes
beyond the surface level, just like Girl Boss, like girl
power idea. It's like an it requires a little bit

(56:16):
more of an understanding of like what feminism is and
what like the status of women and queer women in
the world right now is.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
And I I love that.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Yeah, it's definitely in the background the whole time too,
Like there's a lot of posters that's like smile more women,
He'll like you. It's very much in that kind of
heteromele gaze of this is your your your part to play,
and so it was it was nice to see characters
that just don't care about that, like no, that's not

(56:49):
my thing, and just a bunch of like conversations around
like the teacher with allies and that and like really
bad flirting in the beginning with the beings in Oh yeah,
oh my gosh, so that was there. That was there,

(57:12):
and then yeah, like there's this whole seed where they're
like trauma, like trauma dumping it.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Oh oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
So yeah, in that way, it is consistent throughout in
a way that's both funny and kind.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Of like yep, yeah, it makes you thing.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
And again, I think like I've also like talked to
people that were like, well, I didn't really like it
because I don't like how casually they just talked about
like sexual assault and.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
And I was like, I get that, that's understandable. Like
I think again, like everybody has different responses to things,
and I think that's an understandable response. I watched it,
and my response was like, Wow, this is really cathartic
to be able to like joke about this in a
way that is not exploitative, you know. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's definitely a movie that is consistently like commenting
on again, like a lot of this stuff that was

(58:08):
very present in my life when I was in high
school and navigating high school as like a queer teenager. Yeah,
I think the movie does a good job of discussing
a lot of that and like a very satirical, over
the top way.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yes, I agree we should come back later and just
talk about our high school experiences because I didn have
moments watching his or was like is that.

Speaker 6 (58:34):
What it's like? Or is this Yes, I feel like
it's throwing it back because the cheerleader like the captain
of the team and the high school cheerleader thing I
thought was so nineties that.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
I was like, oh, is it back? Is that back now?

Speaker 6 (58:55):
Because for a minute, you know how it did the
whole what was that show Hill when it's like it's
not cool to be an athlete anymore to the nerd
And that was like mid two thousands, So I'm like, oh, okay, yeah,
that's about right. Like have we gone back to being
the jock?

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Is the better way?

Speaker 4 (59:12):
I'm like, huh, I don't know, I will say, I
mean like, I don't know, and I like everybody's high
school different and I went to school. I went to
a huge high school too, so it was very like,
I don't know, we didn't have as much as like
the social structure.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
I think just because everybody was kind of doing their
own thing.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
But like that was but that was That's another thing
where I think like this movie does a good job
of like satirizing those films, because like I grew up
watching a lot of the like John Hughes movies and
a lot of like yeah, like the early two thousands
movies that were very much like yeah, the popular kids
are the cheerleaders and the football players.

Speaker 6 (59:43):
And like.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
I think I knew the names of like two cheerleaders
like by high school.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Like it was just kind of like, oh, that's like
another activity people do, Like I don't know, it wasn't
like right, Like I was sort of like, oh.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
This isn't what I was told high school was going
to be like.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
And I feel like this movie doesn't like also kind
of makes fun of that, Like this is the image
that we have in the movies of what high school is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Like what high school?

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
I mean, I knew some game cheerleaders like they were cool.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
I will tell you I related with the football is
everything that was in my town.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
That was everything.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yeah, have you ever seen the faculty? No, it's like
from nineteen ninety nine, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
The nineties.

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
Yeah, Yeah, but it's a horror film kind of okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Nice.

Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
My senior year of high school, our football team lost
every single game, which was really funny.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
We were not a football high school.

Speaker 6 (01:00:40):
We went either a small town. We were a small
town in the South. We were not a high school
football team like football town either, because we sucked, so
no one really cared like you cared because you did things.
That was the only thing to do, and most of
the people in the town was involved. Outside of that,
the band did so much more. The band actually ruled

(01:01:00):
our school more than any other groups, like Homecoming Queen
and all of that, because that was that level.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
They were a force.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
I was in band, My experience was different, but I
believe the Homecoming Queen was from band. She was pretty
good though, I actually liked her. I say that as if.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
There were.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
I meane there were there were this level.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
High school experience aside, God, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
I was a I was a theater kid.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Theater kid.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Yeah, I was a cheerleader in a theater.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
You were a cheerleader. Oh my god, I don't know
should be offended by the like that weirdly makes sense.
This was some thing though, No, because like I know
that no, that is I just I was.

Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
Gonna say, like I feel like I know this is
going back to the whole like cheerleader trope and and
where I was like so many of the people that
I knew that used to be cheerleaders, like we're not
like then grew up and we're not.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Like the preppy like I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Yeah, like I's well, this is why we have to
examine the tropes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
So we have to examine the tropes.

Speaker 4 (01:02:08):
I was a dancer for a really long time too,
so I feel like there was there's an alternate universe
or maybe that was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Me different like eras too different eras well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Clearly, yes, we should come back and talk about this, uh,
because it was. It was a really fun movie. I'm
glad you turned us onto it. I hadn't heard of it,
and I really enjoyed it, and I did I did
make me think about a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
I never heard.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Of it really, so thank you. I remember it was
a big when it came out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Maybe it was just behind the times and some very
specific ways I'm behind the times and other ways I'm
like way ahead. It's bizarre, right, But yes, I really
enjoyed it and thank you so much for coming on
and talking about it and sharing this with us.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
Of course, thank you for having me, thank you for
letting me just talk about this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
So glad you guys liked to Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, we always enjoy having you on. So come back whenever.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
I'll be back soon.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
So where can the good listeners find you?

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
You can find me on Twitter, Instagram at Pat not
prat that's p attn ot pr a t T. I
would also encourage y'all to follow the iHeart Union social medias.
You can find that at iHeart pod Union iHeart and

(01:03:38):
then pop Pod Union all one word.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
That's the Instagram and Twitter and all that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
But yeah, I would recommend you know, if you like
this show, if you like listening to other iHeart podcasts,
you want to support people that are making those podcasts,
check us out, check out the work we're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Yes, absolutely absolutely well until next time, Joey. That was
so fun.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
If you would like to contact us, you can. You
can email us Stepani your mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff. When never told
You we have a tea public store, YouTube page and
a book you can get wherever you get your books.
Thanks as always to our super producer Christine There, Executive Pruce,
to Maya and contrit Joey Hey, thank you, yes, and

(01:04:21):
thanks to you for listening. Stuff Will Never Told You
is prodiction of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
My Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
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