Babe: Pig in the City with James Stout

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start
changing it with the Bechdelcast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Attention Bechtelcast listeners, we are going on tour to celebrate
our 10-year anniversary.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
That's right. It is the 10-year whoops, we didn't dismantle
the patriarchy tour. And we are headed to the Northeast
this October.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
With shows in New York City, ever heard of it?
On October 12th. Baltimore, October 15th. Philadelphia, October 17th. State College,
October 18th. Pittsburgh, October 19th. And Boston, October 21st.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's just going to be a big celebration. I'm so
damn excited.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
You can buy tickets at linktree.com. All of our ticket
links are listed there.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
We will see you there, Northeast, and see you rest
of the U.S. and also Canada very soon.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
See you there.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
That'll do, pod.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
That'll do. Yeah, that's me talking to our podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
That's good. I mean, I'm always feeling that way. I'm like,
that'll do.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
That'll do.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's quite enough pod for today. God, honestly, to have
that line close the movie is borderline insulting after breaking
every bone and farmer hung its body two minutes in.
They're like, let's just bring it back. Have them do
the line. Have them do the line.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
You got to. You got to. Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Welcome to the Bechtelcast. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
The Bechtelcast.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
The Bechtelcast. Voiced by, I think like I could, Babe
is voiced by Tommy Pickles in this one. And you really,
once you realize it's Tommy Pickles, it's very hard to unhear. Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
We're talking about Babe, Pig in the City. We've already
covered Babe on our Matreon. And we're doing Pig in
the City.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Huge.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Huge. We are the Bechtel cast. My name is Caitlin.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
My name is Jamie. And this is our podcast where
we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist
lens and the Bechdel test as a jumping off point
for discussion. But Caitlin, what the hell is that?

Speaker 2 (02:22):
That is a media metric created by friend of the show,
Alison Bechdel. There are many versions of it. The one
that we use is this do two characters of a
marginalized gender. Have names? Do they speak to each other?
And is that conversation about something other than a man
or perhaps a male pig? Maybe. But also pigs don't

(02:46):
have gender.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And I think that these movies have a pretty loose
approach to gender, which I appreciate.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, I'd say so.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
And this movie does, I mean, well, for those of
you listening for the first time, wondering if we spend
the whole show trying to figure out if the movie
passes the Bechdel test, first of all, get a life.
That show would suck. Second of all, this movie does
sort of, I mean, this movie does pass the Bechdel
test and it has like a, one of the, I
don't know, it has a lot of interesting sequel things
going on where people love in a sequel to be like,

(03:20):
now we're going to the city, a classic thing to
do in the second movie.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
We're switching our main character to... There's a lot of
women driving the story this time, which is kind of fun.
Pretty Hoggett-centric first movie. Did we need to break all
of the bones? I can't get over it. Did we
have to break all of the bones in Farmer Hoggett's
body to get... mrs hoggett in the story more meaningfully

(03:44):
i don't know i don't think so i.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Like arthur hoggett but i'm not mad about this he
survives he's fine he was.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Supposed to die he was in the original uh version
of the script george miller was like so minute two
he dies i'm so excited to talk about what george
miller wanted to do with this movie because what he
manages to do anyways is still really fascinating but we
have we've got we've got it just We've just got
to get into it.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yes. We have an incredible guest joining us. He is
an investigative journalist. He's the author of the book Against
the State and the host of the new podcast, Natural Causes.
It's James Stout. Hi.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Welcome.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk
about this film. It was wild.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yes. Truly impossible to predict anything that's going to happen
in this movie at any time.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
What's your relationship, your history with this movie, James?

Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think it parallels my own experiences moving from the
Royal United Kingdom to the United States into a homogenous...
Not so much, but what's my relationship? I loved the
first book called The Sheep Pig in its literary form.
Dick King Smith's books generally were a big hell of

(05:02):
a name to think about. I'd never really put those
two together until I said it out loud. But I
used to love those books when I was a kid.
We had sheep growing up. So I've been around sheep
a lot. Not so much pigs. My mum worked at
an agricultural college and they had pigs. So I'd see
them and, you know, my mum would have to muck
them out and stuff. So I'd smell them. But not
so much time around pigs, I guess. Plenty, plenty of

(05:24):
time around sheep. I used to watch sheepdog trials. Wow.
As you do enjoy a sheepdog trial.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Who doesn't want a good sheepdog trial?

Speaker 3 (05:34):
And when I was... this is me like an old
man on sunday afternoons in the uk there was a
program called one man and his dog uh which i
hope they have like removed the gender limitations from uh
but it it focused on there are definitely women who
do it uh focused on sheepdog trials uh this was
like you know there's four channels on tv and one

(05:56):
of them is uh competitive sheep herding uh so we'd
always watch that and just uh been around a lot
of sheepdogs it was always good to see someone who
was you know shit hot with uh herding sheep so
i've always enjoyed competitive sheepdog games apparently it's a thing
in the u.s too but uh i've i've never.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Witnessed it here i don't know anything about it.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I love an agricultural show so if you like sure
please reach out if you i'd have to when i
was a kid i used to go to the um
their market a lot, like where you could buy the animals,
you know, and I'd save up my money and buy
like different poultry, like different, different types of bird, just
because that was a thing that was interesting to me
when I was a kid. So like going to an
agricultural show and seeing the, uh, you know, where they,

(06:40):
they compete, right. To be like, uh, to be the
best example of the breed, I guess. Uh, it's a
bit problematic when you look into it further, but, uh,
I'd love to see, I'd love to see like a
variety of sheep in one place.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
So.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
It is like agricultural shows are so fascinating because it's like, yes,
they are. There are eerie for the reasons that you
would expect. There's an ominous nature to them. But the
the pageantry, I did not grow up around that. And
my cousins moved to a more rural area and we
went to an agricultural fair. And the like, I don't know,

(07:15):
it was there were teenagers like giving these incredible speeches there.
auctioning off animals. They were like wearing prom dresses. I
was like, this is completely foreign to me. I think
I love it. I need more information. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
The American ones are fascinating because you have that whole,
is it 4-H thing where the kids raise an animal?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Did you guys see this one a couple of years
ago where the kid wanted to keep the animal and
then they sent the cops to seize it?

Speaker 2 (07:43):
No. No.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah. One might argue that that young person received an
education from much more valuable than they would have received
if they'd sold off that animal. But still, absolutely fucking
tragic that they mobilized state violence to take this animal
away from someone who cared about it.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
That is absurd. I mean, that sounds like the third
act of a babe movie. Because the animals are removed
by the Gestapo.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, seriously.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
I don't think it's New York. I think it's many
cities in one. But yeah, the animal control It has
a strong ACAB theme going through the film, actually.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Totally.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Really surprising for me.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, I was really struck by that on this rewatch.
So wait, you were a fan of the book. Is
Babe Pig in the City also adapted from a book,
or is this.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
I don't think so. There's too much happening here for
a book.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
There's not enough plot for it to have been a book.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
So you're a fan of Babe, the book that the
first movie was adapted from. Had you seen Babe, Pig
in the City before?

Speaker 3 (08:54):
I had not. I thought I took this as an opportunity. Uh,
like I'm, I'm not like a big movie watcher, my
free time. I'm just not good at sitting down that long.
So like, uh, But this one had been on my list.
So when we were talking about what to do, I thought,
let's watch Babe 2, Pig in the City.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Incredible. Oh, my gosh. And then, Jamie, what's your relationship
with this?

Speaker 1 (09:14):
I really thought I'd seen this movie. But watching it back,
I don't think– I think this movie would have had
a stronger impression on me if I hadn't seen it.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Difficult.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, I mean, it's whatever.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
I'm old.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
I can handle it. But I have a feeling the
reason I didn't see this when it came out, because
I would have been... like the right age to see it.
But I was famously terrified of movies where it's real
life animals and their mouths are digitally manipulated, but they
don't blink. Kind of really my personal childhood nightmare fuel.

(09:49):
And so I think it makes sense that maybe I
wasn't brought to this movie. Boy, if that makes you uncomfortable,
this is going to be a fascinating watch. No, so
I guess I hadn't seen it before. I consider myself
a fan of the original in spite of it all.
It is like such a beautiful, gentle story. And this

(10:14):
movie is so weird. I don't, I haven't, there's a,
Mickey Rooney plays a character named Fugly the Cloud. Like,
I really could not get my head around what was
going on. In this movie, and I will say it
still does kind of bug me to this day, especially

(10:36):
because in the Babe movies, this movie is both very
loud and very quiet at the same time in a
way that I was like, this is just, it's bizarre
because all of the animals with the scary mouths are very...
soft-spoken like they they speak very gently they're not doing
cartoony voices at all.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Stephen wright voice is one of the chimpanzees like i'm.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Like i i guess why the hell not like i
just really cannot get my head around how i feel
about it i'm excited to figure it out with both
of you um i also found out just a fun
fact if either of you happen to be a tom
waits fan This is his favorite movie. He's said it
many times. Yeah, that he just... Something about it. Something

(11:23):
about it really sticks with him. But this movie was
a kind of a famous flop that did, I think,
like many George Miller sequels, Mad Max Fury Road kind
of being the big, big, big outlier. But like a
lot of George Miller sequels, it was too different from
the original. It was too weird. But I... I appreciate it.

(11:47):
I have no idea how this movie managed to get
a G rating.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
It makes no sense. It should be rated R. It did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
So I'm pretty sure this was my first viewing and
I had a hell of a time. It is a
movie I would describe as unbearably loud and extremely quiet
at the same time. Very few movies like it.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, Caitlin, have you seen this before?

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Really?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh, my God. This is one of my favorite movies.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
What?

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Okay, you and Tom Waits have so much in common.
I've always said that.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Kindred Spirits, me and Tom Waits. Yeah, no, this and
the first Babe movies were huge movies of my childhood. Wow.
They came out, this one came out in 98, so
I was 12, so I was... like on the cusp
of aging out of movies like this, but I was like,

(12:43):
I don't, I don't care. I babe rocks. I love,
I love him. I love his movies.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
I've seen this dozens of times, but not very much
as an adult.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
I mean, I guess that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
I've only seen each of the Babe movies as an adult,
probably a handful of times total. So there was a
lot that I did not remember about this movie, but
I'm so excited to talk about it. There's so much, like,
the allegories you can draw from this movie. This movie's

(13:20):
parallels to Paddington 1... I was thinking that, yeah. I
love this movie. It makes me cry so hard during
the scene when they come in and raid the hotel.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
That is very sad. I feel like they're really putting
a lot of trauma on the pig in this one.
And it is to a narrative end, but I'm like, whew.
We just have five-year-olds going through it.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah. Well, I guess, so, to both of your points of, like,
not expecting what ends up happening in this movie, when
you see this for the first time when you're 12,
you don't really question it. You're just like, oh, of course. Yeah,
babe goes to the city, and then he stays in
a hotel for dogs. The hotel gets raided by animal
ice agents. Like, and he becomes this, like... christ like

(14:12):
figure part way through the movie like of course all
of that happens.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
I know i think i was just i was prepared
for a very different movie and because it's a george
miller movie of course it's like there's a lot more
going on it is a cab it is like critical
of the state in a way that you're kind of
i sort of thought he was gonna like go to
a baseball game um or something um or like go
to school yeah certainly not certainly not.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Oh my gosh So I guess, shall we take a
quick break and then come back for the recap?

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
So I'll give a really quick recap of the first
Babe movie. So Babe is a little pig that gets
rescued from a slaughterhouse. and ends up on the farm
of Arthur and Esme Hoggett. Babe befriends the other animals
on the farm, particularly a sheepdog named Fly, who sort

(15:18):
of becomes his adoptive mother. Man, I missed her in
this movie. I like her. She's only there for a
little glimpse.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
And Fly eventually reveals to Babe that pigs are eaten
by humans and that that's typically all they're considered to
be good for. But then Babe discovers that he has
a knack for sheep herding, though he approaches it differently
than the sheepdogs do because Babe simply politely asks the

(15:47):
sheep to do what he needs them to do, and
they are happy to comply. So Arthur Hoggett is like, whoa.
Maybe I should enter my pig into the sheep dog,
sheep herding competition, which he does. And against all odds,
Babe perfectly herds the sheep and wins the competition. And

(16:11):
then Babe, Pig in the City opens pretty much right
where that movie leaves off.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
And heads into an absolute nightmare scenario.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
I'm so excited to hear you try and summarize this.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Oh, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
The fact that they don't even have a weekend to
sort of bask in the success of the events of
Babe 1.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
No.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Immediately. Chaos ensues.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well, I'll let you take it. But I was like, oh,
my God.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah, no, it's wild. So Babe and Arthur Hoggett, played
by James Cromwell, return home after this victory at the
competition and the community is cheering them on. Babe receives
all of these invitations to participate in various fairs and
other sheep herding competitions. But Arthur just wants a simple,

(16:59):
quiet life on his farm. So he and his wife, Esme,
kind of just ignore those invitations. But then one day,
Babe causes an accident that leaves Arthur badly injured.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
At the bottom of a well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
No, we have to pause there.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
We tossed the human protagonist, Beloved, nominated for an Oscar.
Two minutes into the sequel, he's at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Of the well.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Every bone in his body is broken.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Shattered. Shattered.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
I'm going to quote from a Lit Hub article that
kind of exhaustively explores the production of Babe Pig in
the City that was published in 2024 really quickly. Because
just in the opening sequence, in early drafts of the script,
Farmer Hoggett was actually supposed to die at the bottom
of that well. One of the nosy neighbors was originally
murdered by Esme and Miss Flume as a comeuppance for

(17:55):
being a snitch.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Beyond Dark Punchline. They actually shot, but later cut.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Oh my gosh. So multiple people died in the original
draft of the script.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Okay. Yeah. Incredible.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, no one seems to die in this version.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
It's still pretty brutal, though.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, he goes up and down the well. He doesn't
just fall down the well, right? He goes down, comes up,
gets whacked by a water pump, and then falls down again.
It really goes through it.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
That does kind of feel unique to George Miller, where
it's like a Looney Tunes injury, but then you're shown
the real-life consequences to a Looney Tunes injury.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Where it's like, well, he's not going to be in
the movie because he got like a Wile E. Coyote
style injury.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, right. But now he's in a full body cast.
So this happens. And Babe feels really bad about it.
He feels so guilty. And he wants to redeem himself,
especially after the Hoggett's bills start piling up. and men

(19:03):
from the bank show up, presumably threatening to foreclose on
the farm. So Arthur's wife, Esme Hoggett, played by Magda Subansky,
goes back to those invitations that Babe had received and
decides to accept one for a state fair where they
will receive a generous appearance fee, which could save the farm.

(19:28):
So Esme and Babe board a plane to head to
the fair. But after a mishap at the airport where
a drug sniffing dog inadvertently accuses Babe of smuggling drugs. Already.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
A-Cab includes Snoop the Dog Sniff.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yes so esme gets detained which causes her and babe
to miss their connecting flight and miss the state fair
What's more, it's a few days before the next return
flight home, so now Esme and Babe are stranded in
the titular... city.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
And it really is the city. Like if you're with,
which I kind of like, cause I thought, especially with the,
like the, the drug airport incident, I was like, okay,
this is going to be like a scathing critique of
like American culture specifically, but it's really the city, every,
every city and the state violence and surveillance that comes

(20:33):
with living in most large cities.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah. The production design of this movie I think is awesome. Um,
And when you see like a city scape. there are
structures and buildings and landmarks from like a dozen cities
across the world. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
It's crazy. They got Venice in there. Like they got
like casino Venice in there. That one really hit me hard.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
It, it is fascinating and it's lit. It's lit very,
it kind of reminded me of cats the way that
it's lit, but it's lit.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
There is like a kind of, it's beautiful, but also again,
just feels a little bit ominous. There's like some of
my favorite cities in movies, very few people seem to
be there. It's like the population in the city is 95%
cats and dogs, which is fun.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yes, yes. So Esme and Babe are stuck in the
city and they need a hotel that allows animals. Esme
eventually finds one where she and Babe can stay.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
The hotel manager, played by Mary Steen, has to pretend
like they don't allow animals because of all of these
strict city rules and regulations. But she welcomes them inside
and shows Esme and Babe around. We see that the
hotel is full of a bunch of animals. Doesn't seem

(22:00):
like humans really stay there. It's mostly just animals. Cats
and dogs particularly. And she warns Esme about inspectors who
might come snooping around the hotel, especially because she has
these nosy neighbors who they have to be wary of.

(22:20):
And then Esme steps out to make a phone call.
And while she's gone, a capuchin monkey comes into the
room and steals her suitcase and So Babe runs after
it and ends up in the room of a family
of chimpanzees.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
And at this point, I'm like, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. The
way that the chimpanzees' mouths are moving is not of nature.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah. Honestly, though, for 98, the CGI that they're doing
is pretty good. Absolutely not. For 1998.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Anyway, these chimps are Easy, Zooty, and Bob. Bob is
the one voiced by Stephen Wright. And then there's also
an orangutan there named Thelonious. And these apes are all
pretty dismissive and unkind toward Babe.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
And then their handler comes in, a human man named
Uncle Fugly played by Vicky Rooney.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
What a fascinating choice.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, there are so many names in the world.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Each word of that sentence more interesting than the last
because it's like not just a weird decision to make.
It's also very obviously a very expensive decision to make.
He doesn't really speak and is not in very much
of the movie. I guess because a lot of the
stuff shot was too scary to kids. There was more

(23:55):
Uncle Fugly and people were like, we're not interested.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
And that's wild because what ends up in the movie
is also pretty.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Scary for kids.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Oh my gosh. And also the way Uncle Fugly is characterized,
he only murmurs. You can't really tell what he's saying,
but that's intentional.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
He.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
only seems to eat junk food. He just has like
jars of jelly beans and like ice cream all over
his mouth. And, and also he's a circus clown.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
And like, I guess semi successful.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
I unclear.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
I would say I don't have enough information to know
what uncle Fugly's whole deal is, but don't worry. He
won't be around for long. No.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Um, so he comes in and he locks babe up
in a chest.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Oh, I forgot about this.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah. He like kidnaps babe more or less. And then
Esme comes back to the hotel and discovers that babe
is missing. And uncle Fugly lies and tells her that
he saw a pig leave the hotel a few minutes prior.
So she heads out to search for babe, but she's
a fish out of water in the the city and

(25:08):
accidentally causes this big chaotic ruckus in the middle of
the city and she ends up covered in goo and
then she gets arrested.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
She's covered in goo for the rest.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Of the movie yeah the goo hardens and she has
to deal with that.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah listeners should know that they don't call babe babe
they call babe pig right which which is what leads
to a misunderstanding with the police Oh.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
That's true. She goes out into what seems to be
Venice Beach in LA.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
As opposed to Venice, Venice, which is also there.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
But yeah, Venice Beach. She goes out and starts being like, pig, pig.
And there are cops around. And then there are also
rollerblading goths. or something yeah and they all think that
she is talking to them so that's why this whole

(26:05):
kind of fight breaks out and she gets arrested meanwhile
babe has been roped into the mini traveling circus that
uncle fugly and his apes put on And Babe is
willing to do this because they told him that they
will pay him. And again, he's trying to redeem himself
and save the farm that he knows is in jeopardy.

(26:27):
But Babe's accident-proneness strikes again.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
It's his first day working for Uncle Fugly's circus, Caitlin.
Give him a break. He wasn't signing up for this.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
No, he wasn't. But that's one of the ways that
he's similar to Paddington is that he's a little clumsy
and he's always causing... Big mishaps with his clumsiness. And
so Babe messes up the performance that they're doing in
a hospital. And he causes Uncle Fugly to trip and fall.

(27:00):
The set catches fire and comes crashing down. The sprinklers
are on, like everything is chaos there.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Really quick. So that scene was also, I guess, heavily
edited to get a lot of scarier stuff out of
that sequence. I read somewhere that George Miller's favorite children's
movie is Pinocchio, which I think kind of helps this
sequence make a little more sense because it is pretty
similar to like the scary circus thing, but there used

(27:30):
to be, okay. So I'm quoting from the Lit Hub
article again. Babe nearly got pushed into the fire during
the hospital inferno until that scene was rejigged. He was
also sadistically tricked by the chimps into clambering up a
pyramid of junk and tumbling into the canal, which is
like another Uncle Fugly scene that went away. When the
animals are impounded, there were rabbits smoking cigarettes, hair products

(27:54):
being tested on cats, and all sorts. James Cromwell says,
that's a vivisection laboratory. There were animals with posts drilled
into their skulls and sores, cancers. It was, oh my God. What?

Speaker 2 (28:11):
That is wild. I don't even know what... Can they
respond to that?

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Present it without comment.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
I don't know. What a dark place to go for
a children's movie.

Speaker 4 (28:20):
I know.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Which I guess it's like the dark stuff that remains,
but they may just have had nothing else to cut to.
They only had shots of a rabbit smoking cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Whoa.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
It was the 90s. People did stuff back then.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
I'm now wondering, like, was that early CGI or did
they train a 90s rabbit to smoke cigarettes?

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Well, surprisingly, I think we talked about this in our
first episode on Babe of just like the history of
animals in movies and how.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Did these movies fare?

Speaker 1 (28:52):
With the Humane Society. And both Babe movies are Humane
Society assured. They've got the seal of approval. But that's
also complicated.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yes, which we discuss in quite a bit of detail
in our episode about the first Babe movie. And we'll
touch on that here as well when we get to
the discussion. But yeah, from what I understand, there's a
lot of fake prosthetic animals around. There's CGI. There were

(29:23):
precautions taken to keep animals out of danger. But I
also have some questions.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, there are certain things where it's like, how do
you do that?

Speaker 2 (29:35):
But anyway, the performance at the hospital goes awry. and defeated.
The animals plus Uncle Fugly return to the hotel. And
then kind of randomly, Uncle Fugly is released. carted off
on a stretcher he seems to be lightly dead.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah they do go through the trouble of i'm like
wondering if this was like i kept trying to spot
studio notes i love trying to figure out like what
was changed because they add a little sound of the
what is it like the boop boop boop i'm guessing
that they added that to assure you that he is
not dead But he doesn't come back. So my theory

(30:16):
is he's supposed to be dead. But they were like,
you can't kill Mickey Rooney after one scene.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
No. Also, it would have made more sense if whatever
caused him to have to be taken to the hospital.
happened during that fiasco at the hospital, during the circus thing.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
During the fire at the hospital that he called it.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right, right. But it's an unrelated thing back at the hotel,
which must be like something happened that was cut out
of the movie.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, the Wikipedia page, I think kind of does some
backflips and says it's a food coma, which just suggests
like he ate too many jelly beans at home.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
Like a literal food coma.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
I mean, maybe he's a DKA. Maybe he has diabetes
and we don't know. That's true. So many holes in
the plot here. They went to such graphic detail to
take Farmer Hogget out of the plot earlier and then
Uncle Fugly just drops.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah. Off screen and then we see him get carted
off on a stretcher. It's very bizarre. But the point is,
now there are no humans in the hotel room. Because
the hotel manager woman, she fucked off to somewhere else.
So it's just a bunch of animals. And they're all alone.

(31:36):
Babe has no idea where his human, Esme Hoggett, is.
And he's really hungry. And so are all the other animals.
So the apes go out into the world in search
of food. And Babe follows them. But the apes continue
to be pretty dismissive and deceitful toward Babe. And they

(31:58):
trick him. And Babe ends up face to face with
a couple of vicious guard dogs. that start chasing him
around the city.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Ooh, and then there's like a really powerful moment in
the middle of this scene.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Wait, which part?

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Well, I think the part of this movie I was
most affected by is when Babe turns to the dogs
that are chasing him and says, why? It's like, exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah. This is where things start to get really emotional
for me. So during this chase sequence, this gets the
attention of a bunch of street dogs and cats who
start following the chase that's unfolding. Eventually it's just babe
and the one dog whose chain gets tangled up in something.

(32:51):
And he's now dangling from a bridge and his head
is submerged in water. And even though this dog was
about to kill babe, the little pig is, swims over
and saves the dog's life. He like pushes a little
boat under the dog. And all of the animals witnessed this,

(33:12):
including the crowd of street animals who now revere Babe
as a Christ figure, including the dog who was just
chasing Babe, who declares that whatever the pig says goes.
So Babe invites the group of cold and hungry animals

(33:36):
into the hotel and distributes whatever food they have, which
is just a jar of jelly beans. And so the
animals are, like, kind of fed. Babe also decrees that
cats and dogs have to set aside their differences and
try to get along.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
I like that Babe does accept being elected god himself.
But he's a fair god.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, he dives right into benevolent totalitarianism with gay abandon.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
It's remarkable to see. It's like a platonic philosopher king.
He was ready for it, though. He stepped right into
that role.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
He was. He was like, you do need my small-town wisdom,
you city heathens.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, he really rises to the challenge. And so he's
making different decrees. Then the female chimpanzee, Zutty, reveals that
she is extremely pregnant and then gives birth that night
to twins.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
I have to say, I did not, that whole, that scene,
their mouths are moving and then she reveals she's very pregnant,
which is maybe anti-animal of me, but I was like,
that's gross. And then she kind of goes into, she
quietly goes into labor on screen and And her chimpanzee
husband is kissing her pregnant chimpanzee stomach. And I'm just like,

(34:59):
this is not rated G. I don't know what this means.
Maybe I'm likely the problem here, but I don't want
to see all this. Keep that to yourself. It also just.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Happens out of nowhere. Like, it was not established that
she was pregnant. So you're just like, how?

Speaker 3 (35:15):
She's at work until, like, she's doing physical labor.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
I mean, it is rough. Animal rights abuses, workers, you know,
labor abuses, all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Genuine question. Do chimpanzees look? pregnant like that? Do they
look like pregnant people like that?

Speaker 2 (35:32):
I would imagine so because humans and chimps share 98%
of their DNA. So I feel like they probably get, yeah,
like pregnant bellies. James, do you know? You're our nature expert.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Do you have a pregnant chimpanzee? Growing up, I wasn't
around that many chimpanzees. I mean, other animals, you can
tell when they're pregnant, you know, they need more food
and stuff. Especially when they're getting ready to have their calves.
Or lambs or whatever they're having. I don't know what
a baby chimpanzee is called. A chimpling? I'm making that up.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I like it though. But again, sorry to continue being...
I love animals. Don't get me wrong. But these ones
are scary looking. And she quietly goes into labor in
the middle of a scene.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
No one reacts.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
She's like, yeah, I think... think they're on the way
and then you see talk about fugly to the scariest
looking like.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Those are like puppet chimp babies yes.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
I mean you can tell but they look i think
my my parents made the right call by not bringing
me to see this it they remind me of the
baby from twilight they look like renez me like the big.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Eyes they're pretty creepy looking i'll give you that yeah
but it's it's supposed to be nice that zutty gave
birth and so babe leads all of the animals in
a song which ferdinand the duck overhears i forgot to
mention him earlier.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Oh yeah he's yeah he's the only other carryover animal
from the first one.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Right Yeah, because you see Fly and, oh, I forget
the Hugo Weaving Dog's name.

Speaker 4 (37:18):
Just glad he's there. Just glad there is a Hugo
Weaving Dog. They're in one scene at the very beginning.
They basically encourage Babe to go and try to redeem himself.
But other than that, you don't see most of the animals.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
From the first movie. But Ferdinand the Duck is there.
um he flew to the city he like followed the
the plane that esme and babe were on and so
he has finally made it to the city and he
overhears the song and so he shows up at the
hotel and reunites with babe and everything seems really nice

(37:53):
but the neighbor lady across the way narks on the
hotel she's an And so just then, a group of
officers from the Animal Regulation Authority burst in and start
raiding the place, kidnapping animals to take to the pound.

(38:14):
This is the part that really makes me bawl my
eyes out. And then they try to take Babe away,
but he gets loose so that he can save a
goldfish whose bowl had shattered. And then the inspectors leave

(38:34):
with a truck full of animals that they have abducted.
There's a part where a little dog named Fleelick who
uses an assistive wheel apparatus to help him walk. He
latches onto the truck and gets dragged along beside it

(38:56):
for a while and then he gets flung off And
nearly dies. And he's about to go to like doggy heaven.
But then Babe kind of like.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Calls him back like a god would.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yes. And like rescues Fleelick. And so the two of
them plus Ferdinand the duck set off to try to
save the animals who were just taken away.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
It is interesting that like the heaven that Fleelick goes
to kind of looks like a David Lynch movie a
little bit. it's like a very it looks like the
beginning of blue velvet.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
I could see it yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
It's kind of fun i love i think fleelook is
my favorite new character i love fleelook voiced by adam
goldberg fascinating why not yeah exactly as with all the
voice casting.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Why not at every point in this film why not
is my prevailing like at no point if you if
you like took a note of where you're at and
then went on 10 minutes at no point could you
ever predicted where this shit was going no it's wild absolutely.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Not but i don't mind at least not with this
movie it's beautiful So the animals have been taken away
in a truck. Babe and friends are trying to figure
out where they went. And so Babe uses his nose,
which the drug sniffing dog taught him to do earlier on.

(40:26):
And so Babe kind of sniffs out and like kind
of tracks the animals who were taken away. And so
they eventually.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Babe is always learning new like dog qualities. True. That's
something that's consistent.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yes. But then I remembered that Pigs, at least certain
pigs are like really, they do have a really keen
sense of smell. And then I was reminded of the
movie called Pig that Nicolas Cage is in. Has anyone
seen this?

Speaker 1 (40:53):
I haven't seen it.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
No.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
It is such a bizarre movie. It's a movie about,
so Nicolas Cage has a pig that he uses to
like sniff out truffles. And then he sells the truffles.
to chefs that have like really expensive you know five-star
michelin restaurants whatever in the city the pig gets abducted

(41:19):
and taken to the city so basically this pig is
also about a pig in the city yeah anyway we
love a pig in the city we love a pig
in the city but anyway i think pigs smell well They.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Can smell a truffle.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
They can smell a truffle.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Yeah. That's what we know.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
That's what we know.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
If there are any pig experts as our listeners, let
us know some pig facts, if you would. Please. Anyway,
they eventually arrive at the Pound, Babe, Ferdinand, and Fleelick.
They sneak inside and they release the animals from their cages.
And speaking of getting released, Esme gets released from jail

(42:00):
and and returns to the hotel, only to discover that
Babe and the other animals are not there. But the
hotel manager woman is back, and she's devastated about the
animals missing, and also her uncle Fugly is dead, maybe.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Really lovely scene between the two of them here, I think,
and it totally passes the Bechdel test as well.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Does the lady who owns the hotel have a name?

Speaker 2 (42:27):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Oh, you're right. She does.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Halfway through, I was like, okay, we're good. And then
I was like, but does she have a name? And
then no one referred to her by name from thenceforth.
So I didn't go back and rewatch.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
It's a technicality, from what I can tell, is because
she's credited as Miss Flume.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
We don't get a first name, which I feel like
is a red flag. And we might only know she's
Miss Flume because she is Fugly Flume's niece.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
So that's a good point. Because she's credited as having
a name, but I don't know if we ever hear
it in.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
That's a professional touch that you check the credits. You
didn't think to do that. Right.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
But also on IMDb, she's credited as the landlady. But also,
I think the caveat of the Bechdel test that is like, okay,
is it a named character? That implies like, is it
a character who has like a decent amount of screen time,
who's an important character versus like a tertiary character who's
in one scene and we never learn their name or

(43:31):
never learn anything about them.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
But I do think that like it is a valid
critique to be like, she's in the movie so much
for us not having... A clear first name for her.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
They're having a lot of fun with names. Like, it
wouldn't have been hard here.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, we've got Zooty. We've got Fugly.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Thelonious.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Thelonious. Oh, I love, I like Thelonious a lot.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Fleelick. Right, yeah. Yeah, give her a name. Anyway, she,
whatever her name is, and Esme set off to try
to retrieve the animals. Back at the Pound, the animals
sneak out, make their way through a hospital, perhaps the
same one that had the circus mishap at, not sure,

(44:18):
and then through a restaurant kitchen, which is where Esme
and Miss Flume link up with the animals, and then
chaos ensues as the animals and the kitchen staff And Esme,
who is now wearing Uncle Fugly's clown costume.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
For reasons we can talk about later.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yes. But they all kind of like crash this fancy
banquet that's happening. And they're bouncing around. They're bungeeing around.
A chef is trying to steal Babe to, I think,
cook him food. And eat him or serve him or something.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
At some point in the course of this movie, Babe
has acquired kind of like a punk toupee. He's got
a toupee.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
He's got a spiky collar.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
A spiky collar goes hard.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
But after a lot of Esme saves Babe, and then
they all return to the Hoggett farm, which they were
able to save via the hotel manager, Miss Flume. She

(45:34):
rents out her hotel, which gets turned into a nightclub.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
I think this confirms, for what it's worth, I think
this confirms that Uncle Fugly has passed.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
I don't think he's with us anymore because she leaves
the country.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Right. Because she goes to the farm with them and
she brings all of the animals that were in the
hotel to the farm and lives there with the Hoggetts.
and I guess shares her money with them. I was,
I was like, I don't really understand the dynamic here, but.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
It kind of, it seems like a communal living situation.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
It's nice.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
And then the movie ends with Arthur Hoggett saying the
famous line, that'll do pig.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
That'll do begging in the question. How long was Babe
in the city and how far is this flashback that
his whole, every bone in his body has recovered?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Well, okay. Great question. I didn't even think about that
because they say that the next return flight is a
few days away. So it seems like they're only in.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
But we do flash forward to... It's like she's... We've
had time for the hotel to be sold and stuff. Like,
we could be flashing forward a year.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
They've built a nightclub in there. Right. Okay.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
But I do like that we confirm at the end.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
He's good.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
He's good for Bay Street. Which will tragically not happen.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
No.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Maybe they're still arguing about how many really creepy, scary
things are going to happen. Maybe they made it. It's
just got too much gore.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Oh, my gosh. Well, let's take another quick break and
we'll come back to discuss. And we're back.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
James, is there anything that sticks out to you that you...
How do you want to kick off the discussion? There's
so many things to choose from.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yeah, I don't know. This was a wild one. I
did not expect this at all. I expected like pastoral,
idyllic contrast with city. Didn't get that. As soon as
they arrived in the United States to stay in the casino,
which pretends to be Venice, I knew shit was going
to be weird. I genuinely don't know where to begin.

(47:52):
I enjoyed the anti-police, anti-capital theme. Or the anti-state violence theme,
I should say. I thought that was nice. The animal
inspectors were the bad guys. And the bank.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
And the bank.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
The bank, that's great.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, there's that quote from the narrator that says... Men
with pale faces and soulless eyes show up at the farm.
Such men could only have come from one place, the bank.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
Fun.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yeah, there is a lot of, I don't know. Generally,
this movie falls firmly anti-systems of power in general, which
is great. The ways they choose to do it are
often kind of bad.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Bonkers.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
But I appreciate the sentiment. It is like, yeah, this
movie is so wild where I feel like you get
all of these big comedic set pieces and then you
have to face very real world consequences for these big
comedic set pieces.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah, it switched back and forth from like slapstick to
like hyper real in a very odd way. I want
to know how they waterboarded the dog without.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
So many things that we haven't discussed there really quick.
Cause I forgot to mention it during the recap. There is,
there's just all of these. You can tell so much
of this movie was like cut at some point in
production because there's so many dropped threads that you're like,
what the hell was that? And you just will not
find out. um i think one of my favorites was
at the airport they encounter a man who's half man

(49:23):
half pig question mark yes.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
He becomes a judge later he just okay yes he
does come that's a different guy i think that's.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
A different okay.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
There's just several sharing the same face.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
But he tells people but he's he's like oh i
know a place where you can stay a hotel you
can stay with an animal and then they reveal that
he is i think we're supposed to believe he's part
man part pig but.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Again it just goes away oh did he just have
an affinity for.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Them no perhaps because he slightly resembles a pig with
his kind of like turned up snout i couldn't tell if.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
It was a magical thing if it was like A
vaguely cruel joke. I really couldn't figure it out.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Yeah, I didn't know what was going on there. I
did not expect that when the camera panned around to
do the face reveal. I still don't know how to
feel about it.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
As with so many things where you're like, the intention
is so... impossible to guess at that you're like, I
guess we just have to accept that they, that that
made the final cut.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Right. Cause the same thing happens later that you just
mentioned that the judge who is a different, different character, different,
I think actor who plays him is lenient with Esme.
She's like pleading her case to try to get out
of jail. And she's explaining, Oh, this is my, you know,
this is our pig and I have to go find him. And,
you know, recounting the whole story and, And then the

(50:50):
judge who also looks sort of like a pig is like,
I love pigs.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
I understand.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
You can go. You're released from jail. So yeah, really
bizarre thing. We don't really know what to make of it.
We just don't know. Back to the treatment of animals
and like, how did they, like the dog being waterboarded scene,
the scene where Fleelick is like latched onto the truck
and then it's, he's being dragged along in his wheelchair

(51:23):
like apparatus, which are.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Which are real. I mean, my, my friend's dog, shout
out Bonnie.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Oh, has that same.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some dogs on wheels like that.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Yeah, definitely. So I tried to find some information about
like these stunts, how did they do them? Because to
me it looks quite real and as if they were
using real animals. So I found from the American humane
society's website, Just pulling a quick quote here says, quote,

(51:54):
According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals and the Animal Trainers, no animal was harmed
in the making of this film. Animatronics, prosthetic animals, and
SPFX special effects were used to simulate all scenes which
seemed to place the animal in jeopardy.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Unquote.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
So they were using effects and puppets and stuff, I guess,
I hope.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
I do think so. I mean, I also kind of
struggled to find like clear information about this. What we
know is that there are about 800 animals in the
production of this movie. It does sound like there is like,
you know, the appropriate amount of trainers involved. Again, I'm
just so interested in how this stuff is made, where
I guess in post-production, the editors of this movie have

(52:47):
to edit out in every scene a million clicking sounds
and incentivizing sounds to help the animals behave. So all
of the sound kind of has to be wiped out
of every shot to get the animals to look somewhere,
whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
I read, wait, where is this, that there were certain, okay,
this is again from the Lit Hub article, which is
pretty thorough, but this fact isn't cited, so take it
with a grain of salt. Okay, so the cast included
80 pigeons, 100 pigs, 130 cats, 120 dogs, more than
half of which came from dog shelters around Sydney and

(53:21):
were subsequently rehoused by members of the crew. George Miller
took home a Chihuahua. The half dozen mice who serve
as a Greek chorus kept breeding like crazy. There were
more than a hundred within weeks until their friskier tendencies
were somehow curbed. Again, not sure what that means.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Yeah, what are we talking about here?

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Were they spayed and neutered? Can you even?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
That's a lot of mice.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah. And then no one had the fact that I
was like, oh, I'm interested in the citation here. No
one had any idea whether chimps would get along with
pigs until they gave it a whirl. So there are
like suggestions that like I hope that that's not true.
I hope that the Humane Society wouldn't sign off on.

(54:12):
I don't know. Let's find out. That seems quite dangerous.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
For sure. I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
In this last year, because the Humane Society, they have
come under controversy over the years. And in fact, connecting
it to the Babe Expanded Universe, James Cromwell has renounced
his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Humane Society. of the
u.s because as we talked about in our first babe

(54:38):
episode i guess it's not as relevant here because he's
not really in the movie all his bones are broken
the whole time but that being in the first babe
movie radicalized james cromwell he became a like he is
a he goes hard with his all of his activism
but particularly with his animal activism i think most recently

(54:59):
he got arrested and super gluing his hand to the
counter at Starbucks in protest of like products that were
being used. I believe he is a hardcore activist. He
doesn't fuck around. I admire it quite a bit. Um, yeah,
he's very involved with PETA, which there's plenty of controversy
there as well. But I used to live across the
street from the, the James Cromwell center that, which is

(55:22):
a PETA owned building. But anyways, that that's to say
like with the humane society, grain of salt is, but
they also do good work. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Well, right. Cause as we talked about on our first
babe movie episode in movies that have animals on screen,
you'll often see in the credits something like, no animals
were harmed during the making of this film. The American
Humane Society monitored the production kind of thing. But sometimes

(55:56):
animals will be harmed during productions and sometimes even die.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
And they just use really.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Colorful language to get around admitting that in the credits.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
What do they say?

Speaker 2 (56:10):
They'll say something like... For example, I forget which movie
it was that we talked about on that other episode,
but that animals didn't die while the cameras were rolling,
but they did when a take wasn't being filmed or
something like that. So the language was like, animal activity

(56:30):
was monitored. No animals were harmed during the filming.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Of the movie. Oh, sneaky. Sneaky. I see what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Stuff like that. Okay. And listeners, if you want to
hear more about that, if you're already a matron, great.
If not, you can become a matron and listen to
that episode.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yes, there was I'm pulling up the article we were
talking about at the time. This was published in The
Hollywood Reporter back in 2013. The article is titled Directly.
Animals were harmed. And the movies that are cited in
the investigation are Life of Pi and The Hobbit.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
I worked with the Humane Society earlier this year on
my movie. And I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
It is.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
It's interesting to me, and this is based on my
very limited experience on, I mean, the supervisors themselves were
completely wonderful and very helpful and like could not have
ensured the safety of my cat flea better. But what
I do find interesting and I would want to know
more about is we were talking to them about like, well,

(57:41):
what is your kind of day to day like? And
they're like, oh, well. one day I'm on set at
your house watching your house cat to make sure no
one kicks him or whatever. And then the next day
you're on set with tigers. It just seems like there
is a wide range.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Is this the feline expert or is this person just
operating across the animal kingdom?

Speaker 1 (58:06):
I wish I knew more because I guess I assumed,
and maybe this is true, but just based on the
few folks that we, because we had people from the
humane society on set for, I think four days total.
And it seems like there's, I'm curious how specialized their
work is not to like doubt their credentials, but it
seems like if you, if the same person being dispatched

(58:28):
to make sure my cat is okay, is this also
the person being dispatched to, to see if two tigers
are going to be safe on set? I'm just, I'm
really curious about the inner workings of it. And yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
I'm not sure. Sometimes the big cats and little cats
are more similar. Have you ever seen when they give
a lion catnip and it just uses its shit? Maybe
that's all they do. That person has a bag of catnip.
They have exactly one intervention they can make. It's a
tiger seeing someone. They just sprinkle a little bit of
catnip and hope for the best.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
But again, going back to this movie, there are so
many complex stunts. and like just, I mean, the main cat,
like the protagonist of this movie is an animal. Most
of the main characters are animals. There's so much animal
activity happening. A lot of it involves what seems to
be very dangerous stunts. And I just, I wasn't able

(59:23):
to find it. much information about it except for that
one quote from the humane society's website. But, um, yeah,
I just, Oh, and then also, I mean, I think
you can question the ethics of the use of really
any animal in a movie, which we also talked about
in the first babe episode, but I feel like especially

(59:47):
with great apes, because this movie has chimps and an
orangutan and, And those animals, again, they're like our cousins.
They share 96 to 98% of DNA with humans. They're like,
they're our kin. And then to like have them in
a movie and just make them do stuff. I don't know.

(01:00:09):
I just, I feel really weird about it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
It's weird when it's like. like I've worked with animals, right?
Like my dad's never not had a job where his
dog attends. It's different. I feel like when the, like through,
maybe we could, like if we go back thousands of
years and not selectively breed dogs to herd animals or
to fetch dead animals, that maybe we could allow them
more autonomy. But like when the dog is like, so

(01:00:34):
wired to do that. It's kind of cool to be like, yeah,
you're better at this than me and together we're cooperating
to do a thing that neither of us could do
alone and that's sick. And we're like colleagues and each
of our different strengths makes us stronger as a group.
That's not the case when you're making a chimp dress
up in a clown outfit. Right. It did feel a

(01:00:54):
little gross.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
I know. I truly don't know how to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Because, like you're saying, James, there's such a complicated... like
it goes back to how animals are bred and treated
within society going back hundreds of years before cameras start
rolling on baby pig in the city. But also, I
don't know. I mean, I think about that a lot
where the saying is like, don't work with kids and animals.

(01:01:21):
And it's like, well, maybe because kids and animals should
not be put in the position to be the leads
of movies. Maybe that's like why people feel that way. Um,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I wish that we had more information. I think it's some,
it's like bizarre that we don't in a movie where
you can go five minutes without seeing a person.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Which is amazing. But also, I don't know. I'm, I'm,
I'm curious about it because, because this is the last,
I mean, George Miller, continues to make animal movies, but
they get animated after this. He goes tap dancing penguins
after this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Happy feet. Happy feet too.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Yes. Yeah. I, it's bizarre. But speaking of the humans
that are in this movie, I think it's pretty significant
that Esme Hoggett is the main lead character who is
a human because this is one of the only movies

(01:02:19):
I've ever seen where where the main human character is
a middle-aged fat woman although i will say that the
the character is aged up i think she's meant yeah
she's in her 30s give her a break well the
actor is in her 30s magda subansky the character i

(01:02:40):
think it's aged up to be like fifties. It seems
maybe seems like, yeah, but even so like for this
person to be the human that we are seeing most
predominantly on screen. Now, could you argue that there are
jokes and perhaps whole set pieces that are there at

(01:03:01):
the expense of her body?

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Perhaps?

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
But I also feel like the movie generally takes her
pretty seriously. And yeah, and while there are like other
characters who are unkind to her, I don't think the
movie is especially unkind to her. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
There, I think the moment that really stuck out to me,
they're mostly towards the end. Cause I think it really
is kind of case to case where there's a few,
like when the goo dress cracks or whatever, I'm like,
you know what? I'm going to give that one specifically
a pass because that would be funny if it happened
to any character, I think of any size. But I

(01:03:41):
think the thing that bugged me the most was, um,
her saying like, do you have anything that fits me?
And then she has to wear, you know, fugly the
clowns clothing and, and then there's like the inflation suit
and yeah, that, that, you know, hopefully like, you know,
Magda Sabansky who, I don't know. I mean, I, what
I know about her is she's a queer icon and

(01:04:03):
it seems like a lot of her original comedy characters
kind of play into this. So I'm like, if she's
comfortable with it, I'm not going to, you know, say boo,
but yeah, the, the sort of like climactic set piece
did feel like it was poking fun at her, but
I agree. And that it's like, we, as the audience
are not supposed to, I don't know. It feels like

(01:04:27):
the bar is so fucking low. But I think we're
so like when we're we're looking at a woman who
is not young and is not thin. I think we're
just like never encouraged to empathize with her or root
for her or really think about her. And yeah, that
this this movie actively asks you. And centers her. Again,

(01:04:50):
I don't think we need to break all her husband's
bones for that to happen. But I am glad that
she is the central character in this. And that she,
you know, like, has a ton of agency. She does
kind of win the day at the end. She makes
a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Miss Flume. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Yeah, I think she's a great character.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
I think she gets a much better showing in this
one than the first one, right?

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Yes, for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
The first one, not so great in that regard.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
But there is a little bit of carryover. The other
thing I noticed that felt like a carryover where she is...
She's portrayed as, if I'm remembering correctly, much naggier.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
And I feel like the callback in this one... is
the like no one had ever heard a woman talk
so much in court before or a person talks like
she's yapping yapping yappy like they're definitely playing the hits
but also asking you to like love and empathize this
character it's i don't know right could it be worse

(01:05:52):
question mark i.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Don't know it's nice that the uh the lady who
owns a hotel whose name is maybe miss flume like
I was being like oh will they do a romance
arc for this lady because she lives on her own
with her animals and they didn't and I thought that
was nice she got to just like be happy with
her animal friends in her hotel.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
And again, she is like, to your point, James, she
is like a single eccentric woman who lives with a
bunch of animals and we love her and we're rooting
for her and we empathize with her. There's like, I
don't know, I guess like George Miller's working his way.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
Up to Furiosa.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
He's learning to empathize with women along the way. There's
definitely mistakes here, but like they don't, I guess it's like,
it doesn't feel right. mean-spirited, even though those mistakes are
definitely there. And then we have the, I guess, the
coded genders of the various animal characters, which are, again,

(01:06:56):
this movie is so weird to talk about. Are we
supposed to think the pink poodle, she's a wolf. What's
her deal? What are we supposed to think about her?

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
That one had plot holes for me. Who's grooming and
dyeing this stray poodle?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Because they don't come out like that. I think maybe
there's an ignorance there, but they don't actually pop out
like that. There's quite a lot of effort.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Yeah, definitely some Looney Tunes logic. I wanted to read
a quote.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
From the poodle.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
From a poodle? From the poodle?

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
I'm quoting the poodle here. Wait, where's my... Sorry, let
me find it. But yeah, like she is kind of
portrayed as like Lady of the Night question mark. And
then I like that she does bail on her pit
bull husband and kids. They go out of our way
to let us know that. And you're like, okay. She says, please, sir, please.

(01:07:59):
I know you're different from the others. Those that had
their way with me make their empty promises, but they're
all lies, lies. And you're like, what?

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
And then Babe is like, well, where's your human? And
she's like, my human left me for someone younger and
prettier or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Oh, I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
And so she's supposed to be like a scorned woman.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Yes. And then she gets her revenge, question mark, later by.
I don't know. I've, I've never seen a pit bull
portrayed as a single father before. So, you know, that's
a very specific kind of representation that I guess I'm like,
why the hell not? Yeah. The, the, the, this piece

(01:08:42):
compares the dog to the, the pink poodle to Blanche
Dubois and I see it, but yeah, like I guess
the animals are so broad and cartoony, but I would
say in like pretty, gendered ways and the animals that
tend to get arcs, more or less aggressively gendered arcs,

(01:09:04):
tend to be the male-coded animals.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Because we do have, we have, who's the pregnant chimpanzee? Oh,
my God.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Zooty. Zooty. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Sometimes I'm like, what is our job?

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Okay, Zutty.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Yeah, not Bob, who is the other one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Not Bob, or Easy, I think, is the little brother chimpanzee.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Yeah. They had a theme with the chimpanzees, and then
they diverted for Bob, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
For Bob. It's kind of a classic joke for some reason.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
One, two, Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
But Zutty, I think, Zutty is, she has an arc,
but I think it kind of takes a backseat to
Bob and Thelonious, and she's more defined by The fact
that she's jump scare pregnant.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
She's a mother now. Uh-huh. Yeah. I didn't know what
to make of the apes in this movie because they're
mean to Babe.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
They're closer to humans in that they're exploiting other animals. Right.
I felt like maybe that's what he was going for.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
I mean, again, 98% of the same DNA.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
But don't we have like 96% with a banana or something?
I'm going to be honest here, not my area of expertise.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Let's say yes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
I don't know the percentage, but yeah, it does seem
like they are depicting the apes to have more of
the same behaviors as a human than of the cats
and dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
But the humans, apes, and street animals, I guess, just
to like separate them. are all dealing with living in
a society. They're all dealing with class issues at every level.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
He read George Orwell at some point, right? And he's
trying to do an animal farm thing here where he's
like trying to portray that animals are stronger when they're
in solidarity with one another against people exploiting them as
opposed to like trying to get a little level above
the other animals to exploit the other animals. Maybe I
love George Orwell, so I'm always going to fucking shoehorn.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Could be. But isn't, it's been like 25 years since
I've read Animal Farm, but in that book, isn't it
that the pigs are like the totalitarian?

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
So he's like, I'm not going to do that because
Babe is a sweet little boy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
And then they have an enforcer, like Babe has his enforcer.
Like they have a horse. Babe has his bull terrier. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Right. I wouldn't be surprised. Again, it's like with George Miller,
any answer could be true. They're just a little more.
I know I keep pulling from this Lit Hub piece,
but it is helpful.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
It's wild the access these people have.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
It's like, why does just this one person know? But
just speaking into like the discussion. tonal weirdness, which I
think is why a lot of people love this movie,
is because it is such a tonally weird thing. Both
Siskel and Ebert put this on their best of 1998.
They're like, this is a perfect movie.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
We love it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Although some critics hated it. I feel like this was
kind of more panned than it was praised at the time.
It has become more kind of cult follow-y status in
subsequent years. But But also if you look on Rotten Tomatoes,
for example, the audience score of this movie is only 41%.
So it seems like people by and large don't really
like this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
I can see people being like, I wanted to calm
my eight-year-old down and now they're traumatized because they saw
a dog get waterboarded. Fuck this film. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Well, I do feel like if that's the case, I
feel like it's because people are grading it on a
curve of how comparatively gentle and not chaotic the first
Babe movie is. If you're going back for more Babe,
Babe's there, but the rest is so much kookier. Because

(01:12:53):
I forgot that George Miller did not direct the first
Babe movie. A different director named Chris Noonan. directed the
first one. And I guess George Miller and Chris Noonan
had a massive falling out between the first and the
second movie. George Miller, would you believe this? A famous

(01:13:13):
director is a bit of an egomaniac. And he was like,
I didn't get enough credit for Babe One. Basically, everyone
else seems to disagree. They were like, no, part of
why Babe One worked is because Chris Noonan was so
gentle and not insisting on waterboarding a dog. But George
Miller took over for the second one, kind of barred

(01:13:34):
Chris Noonan from being involved in this one. And that
is how we get a dog getting waterboarded and all
the chaos that is in Babe, Pig in the City.
But I think that it's impossible to separate them, but
they're doing totally different things. I also thought it was
really funny that Babe's original voice, for those of you

(01:13:59):
who watched Rugrats growing up, Babe in the first movie
is voiced by Christine Cavanaugh, who played Chucky Finster in Rugrats.
And then in this one is voiced by E.G. Daly,
who voices Tommy in Rugrats. And I also like that
it's usually, I mean, this is true a lot, I
think specifically in the 90s, but just in animation pre, like,

(01:14:21):
only celebrity casting happening where there's kind of a complete
like disregard of gender with cartoon voices and just voice
acting in general that I really miss because Christine Cavanaugh
also voiced Dexter on Dexter's Lab. Like you'll often have
like adult women voicing young boys and Bart Simpson. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
What is going on with the accents in this film,
by the way? At a point, Esme Hoggett will just
go Scottish.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
And then she breaks out. It's like, I don't know
if it's a thing that can actually happen when you
get a brain injury, but like, you know, there's like
the apocryphal stories of the person who gets a brain
injury and changes their accent, right? Like, what is the
explanation there? Other than like, are they just like, are
they just doing the whole UK? Because a few of
the characters just switch regional accents.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Wait, say more, because I didn't, I guess I wasn't,
I didn't notice that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
This is something that I talked about on the Babe
1 episode, where growing up as a kid, I was like,
all these characters are for sure British. This is the
most British movie ever made. Meanwhile, it's an Australian production,
but no one really has an Australian accent. People have
American accents. There's some English accents. There's Yeah, Esme is

(01:15:42):
Scottish sometimes. I thought she was Scottish the whole time,
but no, does she go in and out of it?

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
Oh, she definitely, her accent, maybe she's doing the class
signaling thing where she suppresses her regional accent when she's
trying to code switch. Oh, sure, sure. It's quite possible.
Maybe there's a more subtle commentary than I'd appreciated there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Yeah, it's actually incredible commentary.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Oh, yeah. Every British person knows what I'm talking about, though,
when you code switch the way you speak, unless you're really,
really posh. but like the, uh, the other regional accents
seem to swing around, like the vowel sounds they make, like,
like they, they're not fixed in one region, which I
would expect. And then I was, I was ready to

(01:16:23):
be angry about being like, Oh, you've done this accent
from here. And like, this, this isn't really what that
landscape's like. Those are the wrong sheep. Uh, like I
was ready. Uh, and I still am like, I still
have the feelings, but it's, uh, It just seemed like
the accents were even more fluid this time. And then
all the animals have like, there's like, Thelonious is from
New York, it seems like.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Snoop the drug sniffing dog is like, I'm walking here.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
NYPD dog.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Then there's like, I feel like, I can't remember what
the bull terrier's accent. Maybe it's Boston. Oh, it is.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
It feels like kind of like working class New England-y
or like northeast of the U.S.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Because they had the option to use a Boston Terrier
for that and they didn't. They didn't. Fascinating choice.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
It's the city of it all. Everyone's from every city
all at once.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
The Hollywood sign pops up at one point. It's almost iconic.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
The Hollywood sign. A bunch of New York buildings. The
Golden Gate Bridge is there. The Sydney Opera House is there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:32):
I didn't see the Opera House. It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
What's the, in Brazil, the big Jesus statue? That's there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Come at me, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yeah, that one.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
The World Trade Center is there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Yeah, there's a lot of 1998 on this movie. Yeah,
I didn't catch the Esme dropping her accent because, yeah,
she's an Australian actress too.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
Yeah, no accounting for it. I always forget that James
Cromwell is not, in fact, British.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
He's not British. I know, that's always confusing to me.
He's American. And then you've got Hugo Weaving, who is Australian,
but I I don't remember if he's doing his Australian
accent or not. You only see him in that one scene.
I'd have to go back and rewatch the first one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
He's a dad dog.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
He's dog daddy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
Adoptive dog father. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
Wow. What an awesome movie, though.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
I truly.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
It is like kind of... It's fun how difficult it
is to talk about because it's really hard to like...
put your finger on what the.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
Hell is going on.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
It's very much running on vibes. One other character that
I just wanted to shout out because, and now knowing
that there was some like gnarlier stuff going on with
the animals, we are introduced to a villain who's pretty
promptly kind of, I didn't know what to make of her.
She's like the lab technician. She doesn't get a name.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
Oh, right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
But she gets a real like villain intro.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
She's the one who's like, coaxing the little chimpanzee with
his like portable radio thing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
Yeah yeah and that's like one of the many villains
we're introduced to is like oh this is the villain
and then a clear villain never appears which is kind
of the way the world works i guess.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
I mean uncle fugly is kind of a villain he's
but he kidnaps babe lies about it and then forces
him into a life of Circus servitude. I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
And then dies of a food coma, apparently.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Dies of jelly beans.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
Very Shakespearean.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
But there was a shot that I kept forgetting to
bring up with Uncle Fugly that I thought showed him
so much empathy. I don't know if it's empathy or
whatever it is, but in the scene with the fire
at the children's hospital... which we just blow past, hope
they're okay. But there's like that closeup on Mickey Rooney

(01:20:00):
and like his makeup is melting off. And I didn't
think he looked scary. I thought it looked really like, wow,
his life is like, he's fine. I thought it was
like a weirdly, like very empathetic shot to hold. It
didn't feel like a villainous shot. It felt like, wow,
this man's life is, is over.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
And then he disappears.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
Maybe this aligns with my, he was reading everything Orwell
wrote theory. I'm thinking about, I'm developing this as we go.
Like he wrote this book called Burmese Days, right? By
like how participating in the oppression of Burmese people, he
also kind of lost part of his soul by participating
in this colonial machine. And he spends like the rest
of his life somewhat reflecting on that, right? Like by

(01:20:42):
being a cog in the evil machine, we lose our
humanity too by dehumanizing other people. Maybe that's what they're
going for. Maybe that's a little bit generous of me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
No, I'm like, I'm in.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
I'm in. Well, speaking of comps to other works, may
I talk about the parallels between Paddington 1 and Babe 2? Please.
Thank you so much. Okay. Both movies involve a disastrous
event that causes a very sweet, polite, clumsy, perhaps naive

(01:21:18):
little animal... to have to leave his home and travel
overseas to a big, unfamiliar city where a lot of
people are cruel to him, but eventually some kind strangers
take him in and give him a safe place to stay,
though hijinks ensues anyway. And then I guess the rest

(01:21:41):
of the plots are different. But there are also moments
in both movies where the animal is in an attic
room looking out of a circular window at a city skyline.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
It's undeniable. It's undeniable.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
Paul King saw Babe, Pig in the City.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
I mean, I think that's actually safe to assume.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Yeah, right. And then he's like, I'm going to kind
of do that except with Paddington Bear. And I also
think that Babe, Chicken Run... And sheep detectives all take
place in the same universe.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
I haven't seen sheep detectives.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
People keep asking me about sheep detectives.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
I haven't heard a bad word about it. I've heard
that our neighbor kid is obsessed with it. He loves
those damn sheep.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
It was pretty fun.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
And Chicken Run, obviously, a sacred text. One of our
best movies.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
History's greatest films.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
Yeah so yeah i guess the the takeaway here is
that the intentions of this movie are often quite confusing
and we don't really know what's happening but i do
think that and we already touched on this but a
clear intention is the like anti-police state anti-oppressive systems stance

(01:23:00):
that this movie takes.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
And i I think, frankly, the anti-city stance, because the
resolution of the story requires a return to nature, basically.
It's interesting. I don't know. I would be very curious
to know how George Miller conceived this movie ending. I
would imagine it's different because in his version, we can't

(01:23:25):
have that'll do pig because Farmer Hoggett is dead. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:30):
Maybe she says it at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
You know, that would have made more sense for this
movie anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
That would have been better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Why does he even say it? He hasn't even been
privy to what Babe has been up to the whole
damn movie.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
There's been there is one line that I was like,
you know what? You know what? Let's tweak it. When
at the at the climax, when she's wearing Mickey Rooney's clothes,
there's too much going on. Sensory overload. But she she
refers to Babe as my husband's pig. I'm like, at
this point.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
That's your pig.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
That's your pig, babe.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Come on.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
That's your pig, babe.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
And that's your pig, comma, his name is Babe.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Not that she knows that, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
Yeah, they don't. He can understand them, but they can't
understand him. It's very tragic.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Oh, I know. That is true.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):
That is how we live our lives as animals, right?
We think we can talk to them, but they can't
talk to us other than with their little noses and
tongues and things.

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
It's true. You're like, wait, what is my animal's name?
Every day does Sunny think, that's ridiculous. That's insulting.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
That's not my name. Quit calling me that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Yeah, my name is Uncle Fugly.

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
That would be an iconic name for a dog. If
you adopt a senior dog.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Uncle Fugly.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
Maybe the Humane Society should start doing it. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Wait, that really did get me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:54):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
Is there anything else that you guys wanted to touch on?
There's so much going on. I think ultimately for me,
it's like this movie makes me feel nostalgic for movies
that were chaotic in this way, where this movie is
kind of like a big fuck you to like structure
and the comfort of children in a way that big

(01:25:20):
budget children's movies rarely are.

Speaker 3 (01:25:22):
It was certainly a choice, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
But I love that about it. I mean, again, I
saw this for the first time when I was 12.
And I think it would be a very different experience
for like a six-year-old or something seeing this. But I
think when you're like an older kid, I appreciated movies then.
And I appreciate movies now as an adult that are
directed toward younger audiences, children, you know, family movies that

(01:25:45):
don't condescend to the children watching them. And I feel
like this movie does not condescend to children at all. Well,
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Okay. And then this is where I'm going to make my...
Because ultimately, like, I think it doesn't condescend to children
because it also doesn't condescend to adults because maybe a
lot of it kind of doesn't totally make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
But I mean, like, I guess what I mean is, well,
it doesn't condescend to anyone, slash it doesn't make sense,
but it also doesn't coddle children in a way that
I think a lot more contemporary children's media coddles.

Speaker 3 (01:26:23):
Yeah, it felt like one of those Fellini films where
you're like, what is the drug that people took in
this time period that one would have to be on
to understand this?

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Yeah, I would like to try it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:32):
Which in the 90s, I guess, is ecstasy and cocaine.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
I guess so, yeah. I do appreciate what this is.
It's a big, weird swing. I like it. And speaking to, Caitlin,
what you were just saying, I am starting to call this,
or I'm going to try to call this, making peace
with the iPad culture. in um in like children's media
where yeah there is like a tameness to a lot

(01:26:56):
to not all but a lot of big children's media
um now that requires kind of like a um conciliatory
like reconciling yourself to systems of power which in toy
story 5 is making peace with the ipad empathizing with
the ipad and babe picking the city that's not what
it's about we're not empathizing with the ipad We're leaving

(01:27:17):
the city and returning to nature.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
That's so true. And speaking of empathy, I guess my
last point is, and we talked about this in the
first Babe episode as well, but the fact that this
movie centers a very sweet, compassionate, gentle male character that
shows empathy toward basically everyone, you know, the dog, the

(01:27:42):
bull terrier that's about to murder him. He's like, He's drowning.
He's going to die if I don't save him.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Everyone except cops and bankers get empathy in this movie,
which feels cool. It feels right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
This movie was not nominated for as many Oscars as
the first Babe movie, but it wasn't nominated for no Oscars.
Peter Gabriel wrote an original song for this movie called
That'll Do that was also written by Randy Newman. Yes. What?

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
I didn't even remember any of this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:28:15):
Is it during the credits?

Speaker 1 (01:28:16):
I think so. But that's just another, you're like, well,
that is a very expensive, weird sentence. But awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Great.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
And then Tom Waits saw all of that and he's like, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:28:28):
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
Let's read the Tom Waits quote. The Tom Waits quote
is really fun. He told The Guardian in 2010, you
know what one of my favorite movies of all time is?
And if I'm at home with my kids and say,
what do you want to see? The big joke is oh, dad,
not Pig in the City, but I love that movie.
I'd see it anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
He loves it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
This movie is co-written by a woman, by Judy Morris,
who also co-wrote and co-directed Happy Feet. So she's... A
frequent collaborator with George Miller Animals Division.

Speaker 2 (01:29:03):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
So I just wanted to point that out as well.
And I think we pointed this out in the first movie.
Also co-edited by a frequent collaborator of George Miller, Margaret Sixel,
who works on everything that he works on. And I
believe she won an Oscar for Mad Max Fury Road
for editing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
So shout out, especially because post-production, there's just not enough editing.
women getting big opportunities like that. So that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
And this movie does pass the Bechdel test, as we said,
especially that scene between Esme and Miss Flume.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
Although I do think, James, you're right to point out
that we have to really, we have to sort of
search for a name in a way that we don't for,
you know, baby monkeys.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:29:52):
Oh, Uncle Fugly.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
Uncle Fugly, who has a name that I couldn't forget
if I wanted to. And I do.

Speaker 3 (01:29:59):
I guess everyone has a choice between no name and
Uncle Fugly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
All the energy was gone from the naming machine once
they hit Uncle Fugly.

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):
Yeah, they hit the jackpot. There's nothing left.

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
I'm spent. I can't. Yeah. But I would still argue
that characters of a marginalized gender who... are significant fixtures
in the story. If they speak to each other about
something other than a man, I'll give that a pass.
And they're just talking about animals.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
And that character certainly has a fully realized arc. She
moves in with the hogget. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
Now, as far as our nipple scale goes, the scale
where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based
on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Um, for
babe pig in the city, you know, I'm just not
too sure. I mean, here's what I'll say. Based on

(01:31:08):
the movie's clear stance of being anti-establishment, anti-bank, anti-state violence, uh,
anti-animal cops, pro-working class, whether that's working class people or
working class animals, parentheses, I'm speaking allegorically here, based on

(01:31:30):
these stances that this movie takes, based on the characters
who we focus on being a male-coded character, a pig,
who is sweet, gentle, compassionate, which are qualities that we
usually do not see in a male character. And then

(01:31:53):
a human woman who is also sweet and compassionate and,
you know, a very determined, active character who, unlike most
women in movies, when a woman is allowed to be
in a movie, typically we see a thin, young, rigid

(01:32:13):
Western beauty standard woman. But Esme Hoggett is a fat,
older character who we are meant to root for and
empathize with, which again is very unusual. So lots of
refreshing representations of characters. Everything else is just sort of like,
what the hell?

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
What the hell?

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
So with all of that in mind, I'm going to
give it I think three nipples.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
That feels right.

Speaker 3 (01:32:41):
Yeah. Three seems reasonable.

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
Thank you so much. And I'm giving them all to babe.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
I think I'll meet you at three. Yeah, I think
that this movie is just doing so many things. I
would be curious what the original conclusion was because I
feel like we're given this whole charcuterie board of things
to consider. And then at the end, we kind of
just go back to where we started. And we start
at the end of the previous movie, basically, by saying,

(01:33:08):
that'll do, pig, that'll do. And in the exact same
way with a character who we haven't seen the whole
time because his whole body was broken and maybe he
was supposed to be dead. We just don't know. But
I really appreciate and enjoyed the chaos. I like that
we're asked to empathize with such a wide array of characters,
although there are some kind of gendered stereotypes along the way.

(01:33:34):
I'll go three nips as well, and I'm giving them
all to Mrs. Hoggett, my good friend Esme.

Speaker 3 (01:33:39):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
She was put in an impossible situation, and she did
about as well as you would think she would.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
James, how about you?

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
Yeah, I think three seems fair. It did some good stuff.
It could do better. I kind of like that it
ended where I would like my little career journey to end,
like a collective living situation on a farm with sheep.
That's what I'm going for. That biased me in its favor.

(01:34:09):
The humans who spoke the most were both women, I think, right?
Like Miss Hoggett and Mrs.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Flynn.

Speaker 3 (01:34:16):
Uh, not a massively racially diverse film, a whole ton
of white people and animals. Uh, yeah, mostly animals to
be fair again. I liked that the character is a
sweet little boy. We assume I think pig like that.
He has empathy and feelings. Like I think, uh, sometimes,

(01:34:37):
you know, like men in cinema, if they are guys
who care about things and they get to be the
butt of all the jokes. So I like that him
being a kind, caring, little empathetic pig wins, even if
he ends up also being a dictator of a small
animal hotel kingdom for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:34:55):
A reluctant dictator, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
These things will happen.

Speaker 3 (01:35:01):
Like what's he called? The Roman general that he bought
back from his cabbage packs to be dictator. Similar.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):
But it does make you wonder because like the other
character like that that comes to mind as far as
like a really sweet, empathetic, polite, male coded character is Paddington.
And that's also an animal. So it's like. can we
see more human men.

Speaker 3 (01:35:24):
Like this on screen? Not an option for us.

Speaker 2 (01:35:29):
We're working on it, I guess. Anyway, sorry, continue.

Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
No, that was my main thing. It would be nice
to see a human male be kind to other things
on a film. I think we could do it if
we really tried.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
I enjoyed seeing it in the form of a pig. Yeah,
I would have liked to see more. I liked the
first film a lot. Like, I just thought it's my
point of reference for, like, that and like when people
ask what my childhood was like i can go to
babe i can go to uh have you seen the
documentary where they chase a cheese down a hill it's
very popular during covid no i have not okay okay

(01:36:04):
wow really yeah big uh okay that's on your schedules
uh cheese rolling that's what it's called yeah it's called
cheese rolling yeah there's a pub called the cheese rollers
and the cheese goes down a very steep hill you
chase it you try and catch it uh people suffer
life-altering injuries because it's very, very steep. That's exactly where
I grew up. So those are the points from which
you can triangulate my childhood, I guess. It has a

(01:36:28):
special place for me, whereas this one doesn't have as
much kind of sense of place, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
But yeah, I think three is good. I enjoyed it.
Would watch again.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
And I'm sure I'd pick up some whole other subtexts
that I haven't... I'm sure you could watch this film
ten times.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
Great one to assign to an undergraduate class.

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
There's so much happening.

Speaker 1 (01:36:49):
A rich text. Someone please write the thesis paper. I
want to understand.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
Maybe that's what that Lit Hub thing was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
True.

Speaker 3 (01:36:59):
Someone had a deep level of access that no one
else did.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
What did they know and when did they know it?
Like the first Babe movie, it starts an interesting conversation
about animal performers and what our responsibility is to them
and how we talk about the how they're treated in
production animals with jobs discussing you know yeah yeah all

(01:37:24):
right well james thank you so much for joining us
and congratulations on the new show tell us a little
more about it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:30):
Yeah thank you uh it's called natural causes it's wherever
podcasts are given away for free it is about going
outside and the politics and practicalities of it so uh
our tagline is going outside it's political but uh we
have talked about cyclospora which is the uh The diarrhea
outbreak currently impacting the Midwest, right? We talked about how

(01:37:51):
maybe mega capitalism is to blame rather than farm workers.
We talked about fire, wildfire, and different approaches to taking
care of each other. I really want to get into
talking about how we can learn to live with fire.
And that involves like listening to indigenous folks rather than
attempting to suppress fire and treating it like we can

(01:38:12):
just wipe it off the landscape. And then this week
we talked about the roadless rule. which is a rule
that impacts thousands, tens of thousands of acres of national
forest that the Trump administration is trying to do away with.
I want to talk more about ag. We talked about
golf and how it's an affront to God. Yes, 100%.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
Love that approach.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
And how the Javelina are leading the charge against golf
and how I'm very proud of them. So if a
touch is going outside, we're going to talk about it
once a week. You can get it for free. And
if you would like to subscribe to it, that would
be great because I want to keep going outside for
work and maybe not spend so much of my life
traveling to places that traumatize me greatly.

Speaker 1 (01:38:53):
And I think that that is, you deserve balance, James.

Speaker 2 (01:38:58):
You do.

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):
I'm trying to find it. I always go outside anyway,
but now I can monetize it, which is great and
also scary.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Don't you love 2026?

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):
Yeah, isn't it cool? Whenever I go camping, now I
take a little fucking voice recorder. Just in case I
hear an animal to use for B-roll. What a cursed existence.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
We have to have Molly Conger on the show too
because anytime you guys are talking, it is just like the.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Most delightful hour.

Speaker 3 (01:39:26):
Molly is wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
I learned a thousand horrible things and I also am
delighted and entertained.

Speaker 3 (01:39:32):
Molly is fantastic. She has her own show called Weird
Little Guys.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
Beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:39:36):
You should listen to that one too.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
And I also want more balance for her too. Well,
thank you so much for joining us, James. This was
such a blast.

Speaker 3 (01:39:45):
Thank you for having me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
And then you can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast.
You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. We're going
on tour.

Speaker 3 (01:39:55):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 (01:39:55):
We will be in the Northeast of the United States
of America. Ever heard of it?

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
We'll be in New York. We'll be in Boston. We'll
be in Pittsburgh. We'll be in State College. We'll be
in Philadelphia. We'll be in Baltimore. I think those are
all the places we will currently be with other regions
and cities that we will be going to later in
the year for our 10-year anniversary.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
Yay.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
If you live in that region, come out and see
a show. They're super fun.

Speaker 2 (01:40:20):
Tickets are at linktree.com. And with that, I mean, that'll do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
That'll do, Pod. That'll do.

Speaker 3 (01:40:30):
Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
The Bechtelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced
by me, Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 2 (01:40:40):
And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by
Sophie Lichterman.

Speaker 1 (01:40:44):
And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?

Speaker 2 (01:40:48):
That's me. And our logo and merch and all of
our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever
heard of her?

Speaker 1 (01:40:55):
Oh, my God. And our theme song, by the way,
was composed by Mike Kaplan.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski. Iconic.

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
And a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Babe: Pig in the City with James Stout