First Cow with Mattie Lubchansky

On this episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Mattie Lubchansky examine First Cow (2019) and *milk* the conversation for all it's worth!

Follow Mattie on IG at @mattielubchansky | check out her website at mattielubchansky.com | buy her book Simplicity at https://bookshop.org/p/books/simplicity-mattie-lubchansky/21997655?ean=9780593701126&next=t&next=t 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephim fast
start changing it with the Bechdel Cast. Jamie and Caitlin here,
we're going on tour in the Midwest covering the Star

(00:21):
Wars prequels. We're gonna just cover all three at once
in one show in fabulous outfits.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
We will be in Indianapolis for Let's Fest on Saturday,
August thirtieth for a matinee show, and then Jamie, you
have a solo show that evening that can't be missed.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Called Jamie Loftus and her Pet Rock Solve the World's Problems,
in which that will happen.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Then we are going to Chicago. You asked, We listened.
We will be at the Den Theater on August thirty first,
do not miss it.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
And then then we will be in Addison, Wisconsin, on Thursday, September.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Fourth, and then finally we will be ending the tour
in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Dudley Riggs Theater on Sunday,
September seventh. So if you have been one of the
many people asking us to come to your town for
the last ten years we're doing it. We would love
to see you. You can get all tickets at Link
Tree slash Bechtel Cast. Exqueeze me, We'll see you there.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Okay, when the cow came on screen, I was like.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's the first cow.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, Like, I've never had a movie watching experience where
the movie shows you so clearly the title of the movie,
but in classic Kelly fashion, has the restraint to not
be like, there's the first cow. Like, and I felt
like I had blue balls, I had narrative blue balls.
But there she was the first cow. There, she was

(01:59):
female for time, we can argue.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
I was really expecting this to be sort of like
a silence of the Lamb situation, where you never see
the lambs on screen, they're only referenced in one line
of dialogue. But this is a movie about the first cow.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
We're not waiting for good out here. The first cow is.
She takes her sweet time, but once she's there, she's there,
and she's not just there. She represents capitalism and the
means of fucking production She's a metaphorical cow.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
A metaphysical, a physical, a metaphorical everything cow.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
She's everything.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Welcome to the Bechdel Cass, the Bechdel Cow.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I don't know the Bechdel cow.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It makes you think, it really does. And this is
our show where we're.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
The first two Bechdel Cows.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh yeah, I'm first, Caitlin Dorante, I'm first, Jamie. This
is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional
feminist lens, using the Bechdel test or the Bechdel cow,
perhaps as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is that?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well? It is a media metric originally created by our
dear friend, friend of the cast, Alison Bechdel. Originally created
as a joke, a lark, a gag in her comic
Thanks to Watch Out for in the eighties, it has
since become a mainstream media metric. There's many versions of
this test. Ours requires the following. Two characters of a

(03:27):
marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something
other than a man. You know, and we've got an
interesting discussion ahead. I can't believe this is our first
Kelly Reichardt movie, and we have an incredible guest today.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
We certainly do. She's a cartoonist and illustrator, the author
of the new graphic novel Simplicity, which is in bookstores now.
It's Maddie Lobchansky.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Welcome, Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
I also when the cow showed up, Lena to my,
my dear wife, and I whispered to her, that's the
first Cow, because you have to.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
It's so satisfying, it's so triumphant.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
She's so beautiful. She flies onto the screen with angel wings.
It's the most beautiful cow in the world.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yes, she really is. And she's been through it, and
she's been through it.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, she's a widow.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I know truly. I was like, I would actually really
love to see the Pixar version of First Cow also
where it's just a deeply traumatized cow who makes friends
with kind of a who's the guy in ratituey because Cookie,
to me has the ratitude guye energy.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Oh sure, Linguiniinguiini.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
He is Cookie and Linguini they like they're on a
similar frequency.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, And then and then later when someone's talking about
this movie, they can be like, you know, you think
it's a kid's movie, but it's really about bovine trauma.
It is bovine generational trauma.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
This movie is fascinating because like on the first watch,
you're like, huh, what is this movie about? And then
the second watch you're like, oh m hmm, it's about food,
sovereignty and capital. Okay, okay, she was cooking because at
first you're like, that's sure was a cow.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Some cow.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Let's get into it, Maddie. What is your history with
this movie?

Speaker 3 (05:15):
So yeah, I love this movie so much. It was
actually my first CALLI record that I saw, and it
was during this movie came out twenty nineteen, I believe,
and during lockdown for COVID and twenty twenty. My partner
is in the WGA. We started getting screeners nice and
I was like, I heard people ranting and raving about
this film. People I know that like movies, and I

(05:36):
was like, I'll force us to watch this. We had
a very elaborate nightly movie viewing in my home during lockdown,
where I got on YouTube. I found like the Regal
roller Coaster and I would turn off all the lights
and I would make popcorn and I would play that
on the screen. To make to put us in a
movie mode.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
You know, I love hearing what people's like simulation of
normalcy was during lockdown, because it's like, that's it. That's
a good one, that's a very comforting move.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I yearned for the Regal Coff mystery of cinemas, and
I had to go there in my mind, and you know,
I go put our phones in the room and watch it,
watch a movie every night. So yeah, we watched this
movie and I just it just fully blew me away
to the point where that year, for my wife's birthday,
I found the cow on cameo. The cow is on

(06:27):
kiss not anymore, howmeo very briefly the cows on Cameo
and I found it, and I bought my wife for
her birthday a birthday message from I believe the cow's
name was Eve, who played the cow Wow, and Eve
picked between two notes like fortunes on the ground.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Wait, that's elaborate.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, it's really elaborate. And while this was happening, you know,
in the very first when they first get to the
fort in the movie, you see that guy kind of
like wander by the camera and he's holding like a
squealing little pig Yeah, that pig wanders into frame and
she goes, oh, they're so and so he's in the
film as well.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Wait were they from the same farm.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, they're like some I think in Oregon or Washington
or British Columbia, I can't quite remember. I have to
like go the video is saved somewhere on my partner's
fin can find it?

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Wow? Please? Yes, that's it's The stars are just like us.
I love when stars are friends.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, they seem to be hanging out all the time.
The frog and the frog, the pig and the cow.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
I also love that she gets that there's no human
on the poster either. Yeah, it's just Eve the cow. Yeah.
This was my second Kelly Reichard movie, two of two.
I feel like she's the kind of director that I know.
I will probably enjoy all of her work, but I
don't want to like mainline it. I feel like it's

(07:47):
it's nice to I watched my first I watched Certain
Women last year, which is terrific, and Lily Gladstone is
in this movie for two seconds, but she is like
unbelievable in Certain Women, so I already knew that I
really like Killie Recard. I also like I also just
generally like learning about her process. She's very thorough and

(08:11):
she's very anti Hollywood, where it seems like she makes
movies when she feels like it. She rarely makes them
outside of Oregon, where she's from and where she lives.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I think she's from Miami, but she.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
She's like been in Oregon forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's
best friends with I think Todd Haynes. Like it's beautiful.
She's just a vibe.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah. She she came into the last year. I think
that she came to the Museum of the Moving Image,
which I go to all the time because its in
my neighborhood, and she did a talkback for Showing Up,
which is a movie that I love. Also, but listening
to her it was like the first good talkback I've
ever been to in my life. It's incredible. She just
her process talk is like amazing, awesome.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
She's like she's both so thorough and like it doesn't
seem to give a fuck about a lot of the
like more I don't know, bullshitty, YadA YadA aspects of filmmaking.
I just I really like her. But this is only
my second movie I've seen of hers and it's really good.
I was really taken by, like, what a simple story
it is that like masks, all of these really complicated themes.

(09:17):
The performances were great. I couldn't stop thinking about Waninguini.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know why. I was
like and I was looking up, like, has anyone else
thought that the guy from First Cow reminds him of Linguini?
And I'm proud to say I think I may have
had an original thought. Wow, thank you, thank you. But
I really really enjoyed this movie. There's so much going on.

(09:39):
I do have some thoughts about it, and I'm excited
to get into it. Yeah. Kaitlyn wints her history was
First Cow.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
I had never seen it before. It was my first
First Cow, first Kelly write Card movie. I knew of
it and I remember it being released. But I was
also kind of confusing this movie with the Power of
the Dog.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Wow. Okay, first of all, misogynist.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Of you, well, I hate women? You hate women with
Bob's Okay. In my defense, both movies have an animal
in the title.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
True similar similar release.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Part of the Dog came out like a yearish later.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
A couple of years apart. Both of them are directed
by women. Both movies are period pieces. So you see
where my head's at.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I hope canceled.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, hadn't seen this movie before, and listeners
of the show will know probably that this is not
really my type of movie. I think there's really interesting
things that the movie does and says. But the movie
made me sleepy. But I'm excited to talk about it.

(10:55):
There's lots to discuss, and let's take a break and
then we'll come back for the recap.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
We're back.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Actually, before we get into it, Maddie, I neglected to
do this at the top of the episode. Let's talk
a little bit about your new book before we talk
about the events of the movie. First.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Cow Yeah, So I was thinking about this movie when
we were talking about picking movies, because I did. The
way the movie is framed to me was so fascinating,
and I didn't I'm loath to say I ripped it
off from my book, but I did. It was very
inspired by it. So yeah. The book takes place in
the far future, like fifty years from now, and America

(11:45):
has like collapsed into various like walled fascist city states
and like an academic from like the New York one
of the city states is sent up to the Catskills
to like do an ethnography of this cold group that's
been living there since the nineteen seventies, and he kind
of falls in love with someone up there, but then

(12:06):
very mysterious things start happening and members of the group
start disappearing in him, and this guy that he's in
love with kind of like trek off into the woods
to figure out what happened. It's a lot of like
very tranquil wood stuff I was thinking about when I
was making the book, and it's about sort of like
both capitalism but also utopian separatism and communal living and

(12:28):
that kind of stuff and the urges that drive people
to sort of make those decisions like leave society and
start a new somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
God, it's I haven't quite finished it yet, but I
started a couple of nights ago and it's so terrific.
I also love your last book, Boys. Weekend is so
like the Range, the Range. It's just you're incredible.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
I'm very excited to keep reading it. And Yeah, I
wanted to ask because it was like, it feels like
this book is in conversation with this movie a bit.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
The book is sort of framed through The first thing
you see is like the spoilers for the first page
of my book. But it's like it's like kids in
a museum and they're talking about like the events of
the book like they've already happened. Right, It's different. It's
much different in the movie. But this idea that like
we're all just sort of like subject to like the

(13:21):
tide of history washing over us at all times, and
having that in mind from the jump. So much of
the book also is about what history is and who
records it, and who's it recorded for, who's it recorded by,
who is in the intended listener or reader of the
history being made, and all that stuff is really important.
I'm always trying to think about that. So I think

(13:42):
a period piece like this is so has a lot
of that in mind as well.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Absolutely nice. Yeah, well, I'm excited for listeners to check
it out as well. Well, let's start talking about first Cow.
It would be nice. Do we know? Is Eve still
with us?

Speaker 3 (13:59):
Eve the Cow?

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
She's not credited on Wikipedia, which seems like it should
be fixed.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
She's credited on IMDb.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Thank god. I think her name is ev Evie okay,
ev the Cow. Yes, she should start a book club
or something like, you should get on her like influencer wave. Yeah,
I would take her. Like if if you put a
few books before her and she sniffed one, I'd be like,
I'll give it a shot.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
According to the GQ profile I found for her name
is she's nicknamed She's nicknamed ev Okay Wow, Okay. So
she was two when they filmed the movie Prodigy. So
I'm like, what is life spain of a cow Jersey Cow?

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I think it's okay, let's check this out.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Really it was like twenty years.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, it was like it's a relatively long life. I
think all things considered, I think they might Yeah, fifteen
to twenty years. So like, okay, like a cat, Yes, great,
I'm glad we were on the same page there First.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Cat, and there's a cat in the movie also there
is Okay, So here is what happens in First Cow.
We open on a woman played by Alia Showcat out
in the woods walking her dog. Some would say that
is the power of the dog.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
And I think our friend would agree. I think this
is also like I haven't seen it, but I know
that one of Kelly Rigar's earlier movies stars Michelle Williams
and a dog he's called Wendy and Lucy. I felt
like it was like a little nod girl and her dog.
It's a Kelly thing. You wouldn't understand, No, I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
But anyway, she and the dog come upon a couple
human skeletons which are kind of like half buried in
the ground, and then Alia showcat like unearthed the rest
of them.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
She looks so excited when she's digging up the skeletons.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
I noted that too.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Something I noticed on this meeting that I had not
noticed last time I watched it, where she's like, wow,
so jazzed about it.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
She's the only character who like doesn't come back, so
it's like, whatever, she worked at this movie for three hours.
Who like her reaction? I was like, Okay, so she
knows she's in the movie first cow Like that's how
she reacts because otherwise an absolutely unhinged reaction to finding
two skeletons, because she has no way of knowing how
recent these skeletons are. They're fairly well preserved.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, this could.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Be from a couple of years ago. This could be
people she knows, This could.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Be I don't know how long it takes for a
body to like fully decompose.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
I mean, not longer than a few years, So this
could be. We don't know. We don't know, but they're
from the early nineteenth century, and it seems like she
knows that based on She's like, oh my god, the
protagonists of First Cow.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
This is awesome, yes, because we flash back to eighteen
twenties Organ territory. So it's wild wild West vibes, It's
Oregon Trail vibes.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Well Smith is there fighting a big spider.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Everyone's dying of dysentery. A man is in the woods
picking mushrooms. This is Otis Figowitz, though he goes.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
By cooking Gueenie.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
I mean both names that are food, I.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Know, I mean and the same sort of like mappy,
you know, like the little hair cut and the little
like I'm just a guy, I don't know, like the vibe.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
I'm coming around on this. Get John Magro to play
Linguini in the live action rather they are a bound
to make right.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
He would be so good.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
So he's traveling with a band of fur trappers, and
they're headed to a place called Fort Tillicum. Cookie is
in charge of finding and cooking them food on their journey,
but this is a difficult task and their food supply
is running low, and they keep getting on Cookie's case
about it. That night, as he's like scavenging for more food,

(18:05):
he meets another traveler, an immigrant from China named King
Lou played by Orian Lee, who is here on this
continent in hopes of finding gold or just like any
kind of prospect, but he hasn't had any luck, and
right now there are some Russian men chasing him because

(18:26):
he may have killed one of their friends.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
He's also crucially nude.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Right buck naked. I love Kinglu so much, like he's
so cool, especially how calmly he presents. Kinglu is a
certified yapper. I really really like him. Where he's he's
always just yapping it up. He presents all information matter
of factly, whether it is like regardless of what. He's like, well, yeah,

(18:55):
I'm being chased, and cause he's like why, He's like, well,
I may have killed someone, and Cookie is like tight, tight, tight,
and it works, and he's like, Okay, I guess come
with me. Where you get the filling where if King
Lou appeared panicked, the events of the movie couldn't happen.
But he's got a very cool head, cool as a cucumber.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, and like compared to the horrible vibe of the trappers,
that the horrible, awful vibe of those terrible men. Yes,
it's like, oh, we got a guy I can chop
it up with. Come sleep in my tent please.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense where Cookie's like, all right,
so maybe he killed a Russian guy, but he seems
like he can hang and I don't know anyone like that,
and that's sort of how they come together.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Also, he killed the Russian guy because the Russian guys
killed his friend. Yeah, but it's implied that his friend
was stealing from them, So you know, it's like a
chicken in the egg kind of thing. Who was the
first person to do something wrong? We don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
They're cut from the same cloth. Yeah, Cookie and King Lou,
And I also feel like Cookie. It just based on
and again it's like we don't get a lot of expository,
like Kelly makes you work for it, But I feel
like Cookie in some ways, like there's something in the
other that Cookie would like to be more like Kinglu
in some ways, and vice versa. They compliment each other

(20:13):
very well.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
So yeah, Cookie finds King Lou. He gives him some
water and lets him sleep at the campsite that night.
The next day, King Lou kind of disappears. Cookie manages
to catch some fish in a net as he's by
the river or I don't even know if Cookie sees this,
but we see a cow being brought to land, the

(20:38):
first cow.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
And we start cheering, Yeah, go crazy, Oh, it's so
good on her, like she's on a raft. Yeah, but
it feels like she's being brought in on like an
ancient Roman litter, Like she's just drifting into frame and
it's incredible.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, it looks like a like a classical painting of
like a like actory preyed in Rome or something. There's
just like, yeah, it's incredible. Yes, I got a big
foam finger. That's his cow, and I'm holding.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
It up waving it around, and the one it indicates
which cow it is, the first?

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Right, we will learn that this is the first cow
in the Oregon Territory, which a rich man from England
named Chief Factor had shipped to this area so that
he could have milk in his tea. Shortly after this,
Cookie arrives at the fort. Then he goes to a

(21:40):
saloon where he encounters King Lou again, who invites Cookie
back to his cabin in the woods for a drink.
This is a funny scene because Cookie is supposed to
be watching a baby while the baby's father is busy
being in a like a bar brawl.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Again, that like the beginning to a totally different movie
about the baby.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I know, I thought the baby was gonna come back. No,
I kept thinking this movie was going to be about
so many different things. Because when they go back to
Kinglo's cabin, I'm like, and they're like drinking, I'm like,
is this gonna become like a Broke Back Mountain type story?

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Because I especially because they were they're skeletons. I mean,
we're let you sort of guess early on, okay, these
are the You're like, yeah, they're they're met laying beside
each other, and you're sort of like, dare I hope?
I know?

Speaker 3 (22:31):
But yeah, And there's a like beautiful little domestic scene
where like you keep seeing Kinglu in the window like
outside doing like man stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Chopping firewood exactly.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
It's like chopping firewood inside Cookies, like tidying up and
hoping he doesn't like notice that he's like sweeping his
house and putting potted flowers on the shelves and stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
They're so complimentary, like it's really lovely. But they're just friends.
It's cool, just friends, guys, they're just friends.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
They should have kissed, but yeah, they're just friends.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
I feel like they didn't not kiss too, because I
feel like Kelly keeps you guessing. You don't know they
didn't kiss.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, they were spiritually kissing.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
We just didn't see them kiss on screen.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
But that house did not have two beds.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, true, because like eventually Cookie just moves in with
King Lou. Anyway, Cookie is supposed to be babysitting this
random stranger's baby and King Lou's like, leave the baby,
it's fine, let's go have a drink. So they're chatting,
and King Lou talks about how this is the land

(23:30):
of opportunity and that he's biding his time until he
can capitalize on some opportunity and hopefully become rich. He's
had different ideas on how to do this, such as
selling beaver oil from beaver glands, but again nothing really
has panned out. Cookie says that he would like to

(23:51):
open a hotel or a bakery someday. And this is
a seed that gets planted in King Lou's and he
keeps talking about a hotel.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
He's a yapper.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Then Cookie sees Chief Factor's cow and tells King Lou
about it. He's like, I'd love some of that milk
to use for baking, and King Lou is like, okay, pitch,
let's go steal milk from the cow. So they do.
They sneak over to Chief Factor's house at night. King

(24:29):
Lou is on the lookout while Cookie milks the cow.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
And he's like also empathizing with the cow, yes, which
is a plot point.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Weirdly, they bond, They bond. They become good friends.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Linguini, I'm telling.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
You Linguini and a rat, Cookie and a cow first rat. Okay.
So they return to the cabin with the milk. The
next day, Cookie makes some biscuits. King Lou is like, yummy, yummy,
we should take these to the fort and sell them.
Cookie is hesitant, but they go for it because Cookie

(25:08):
is kind of a doormat he'll just go along with whatever,
and right away the men at the fort buy all
the biscuits. They're like, hubba, hubba, these are delicious.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
And King Lu sort of preys on their own racism
to avoid describing the ingredients. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, he says, like, oh, it's an ancient Chinese secret
kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah. Meanwhile, it's the first cow.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
It's the milk of the first cow. Yes, that night
they steal more milk from the cow, and the next
day it's much the same, where the biscuits fly off
the shelf. It's almost like these hot cakes are selling
like hotcakes. I was really excited to write that down.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
I was thrilled. I was thrilled. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
So this goes on for like a few weeks, it seems,
where they steal milk at night, use it to bake
tasty treats and sell them at a pretty steep markup.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
They're charging I think the equivalent of at least five
whiskey shots for a biscuit. Yes, which is wild to
think about because I feel like in current dollars during
happy hour, that's still fifty.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Dollars, like two dollars a biscuit. Yeah, and then they
charge we'll get to this part. But Chief Factor comes
around eventually and they charge him double, so he's paying
one hundred dollars a biscuit. The point is they're making
quite a bit of money from this endeavor, which they
hide in a tree because eighteen twenty.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
It's so funny because he's like, we got to put
this in a bank, and they're like, yeah, a bank,
like a tree.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
I honestly the way things are headed right now. I
was like a tree bank. Not the worst idea, not
the worst, not the worst, bring it back.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
So one day Chief Factor played by Toby Jones, one
of my favorite character actors.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
He's so great great.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
He comes by and he buys a biscuit and we're
all wondering if he's going to notice that milk is
one of the ingredients. Milk that would have to come
from his cow because he has the first and only
cow in the region.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
But he doesn't notice it, for I mean, which is
fun because he's, you know, the most powerful colonizer in
the story, and he is not smart. He's a bit
of a dunce yes. And it also I think really again,
like subtly shows like the power of like how nostalgia
is something that can result in you not asking questions.

(27:43):
You should probably ask where. He literally says, this tastes
like London, and it's like, we'll think a little harder
about why that might be. But he's just so like
thrilled to have this taste of his past that he
doesn't ask questions until like forced.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
That's the power of the milk, the power of the cow.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
I was gonna say, I just hate it when I'm
enjoying a Priustine reverie and people use that as an
opportunity to take advantage of me.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
I cannot stand it.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
You're most vulnerable, my most prustian people are.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Anyway. Yeah, Chief Factor loves the biscuit and he asks
Cookie if he can make him a cloth foo tea.
I don't know how to say this claffo tea.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
I google. It's like fruit pizza. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
It's like a set custard with fruit in it. Again,
I was so lucky to be watching this with my wife,
who is a food writer. Helpful yeah, and I just
turned her. I was like, hey, what's it? What's a
claffoo tee?

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Please?

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Thank you. I actually wrote this down because I love
the line so much. He was talking about like a
captain coming by to his house for high tea and
he loves claffootees, but he thinks that, like the Frontier
is too savage, and he just goes, well, the captain
loves a klaffootee and I'd like to humiliate him. You're
like just bitches, like anyone's ever said.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
I okay, possibly queer icon chief Factor.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
I love these queens, Yeah, because I mean.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
The characters keep basically referring to Chief Factor. They're like,
what kind of woman is he? He likes milk in
his tea and he knows about the latest clothing fashion
from France.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
It's complicated because you're like, ultimately he is the colonizer. Yeah,
so it's okay to bully him, but like it. But
also he's being the bully in a very particular way.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Right, yes, yes, anyway, Chief Factor wants to humiliate a
guest of his with a klaffou tee and cookies, Like, sure,
I'll make that. So he makes it and brings it
to Chief Factor's house where he's entertaining this captain as

(30:00):
well as a couple native guests. Lily Gladstone is there
and apparently she is Chief Factor's wife, because her character's name,
according to IMDb is wait for it, chief Factor's.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Wife Kelly There. I mean, yeah, I have some thoughts
that because Lily Gladstone is a Kelly Roger company player.
I guess where she's appeared in a lot of her work.
And that was like, well, we'll get into That was
one of the things where it's like there's a lot
in this movie that's left unsaid and like left for
the viewer to sort of clean on their own. And

(30:35):
she is like the character that I wish there had
been more explicitly said about because it's like, yeah, she's
married a chief factor. What does that mean? What were
the circumstances? Like, you can guess, but you just don't.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
You don't know, We don't know. Also in this scene,
Chief Factor mentions that his cow gives very little milk
and wonders if there's something wrong with her. So they
all take a walk to see the cow, which affectionately
nuzzles Cookie since he milks her every night, and they've
become friends.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
And tells her his little secrets and he's like, I'm sorry,
he's like literally her therapist.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, he's like I'm sorry about your husband and your
child because we learned that originally three cows were supposed
to be brought to the territory. It was a cow
a bowl slash, her husband and their baby, but only
the cow survived the trip. Anyway, the cow nuzzles Cookie

(31:37):
and everyone notices and they're like, hmm, that was kind
of weird. And then that night, Cookie and King Lou
head back to steal more milk from Chief Factors cow
and I'm like, don't do it when they have all
these guests around who could see you, But they do
it anyway. Also, King Lou has been talking about opening

(32:00):
up a hotel in San Francisco using the money that
they've been earning, and their plan is to sell biscuits
for a little while longer and then heads south. So
this is why they need to make another trip to
the cow. But that night, as Cookie is milking the cow,
they are spotted by and I believe this is Chief Factors,

(32:23):
like servant the Chief and the captain chase after Cookie
and King Lou with guns.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
And also spud from Trainspotting.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Is there, Yes, yes he is.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
I still have seen it. I still have seen train
spotting is.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
A huge like, Yeah, the Scottish guy is in Trainspotting
and he's incredible, and I think both both things.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
The Scottish guy would be in Trainspotting and makes a
lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Okay, his name Jamie in real life, this actor's name
is oh, you in Bremner.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
I'm not gonna try it. You don't Wancottish Scottish names.
They're just like, really really challenging for me. They can't.
It's okay, I'm irish, I can't.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Anyway, he is there. He's also the one who tells
the audience about the circumstances of the first cow, so
he's a very important character anyway. Cookie and King Lou
managed to get away for a while, but they get
separated and they're both injured. Cookie ends up in a
stranger's house. Apparently someone found him in the woods and

(33:32):
brought him home to tend to his injury. Meanwhile, King
Lou negotiates with a native man to take him down
river in his canoe. Eventually, Cookie and King Lou both
make it back to their cabin, but it's not safe
for them to stay, so they set off again. Although
Cookie is lightly dying from his head injury, and they're

(33:57):
both being hunted by a young man who we've seen
before at the fort. This is a man who wanted
to buy biscuits, plant.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
And pay off with this guy while except it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
Quite pay off, well, just the fact that he comes back,
like you think the baby's gotta come back.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
I always assumed that it was him that does them
at the end.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
I think it's safe to assume we don't see that
on screen. Basically, this man wanted to buy biscuits, but
the other men would always cut him in line and
he never got a chance to taste the biscuits. And
so now he's possibly going to shoot them over this
biscuit vendetta. Except it's actually that there's like a bounty

(34:38):
on their head and he's like trying to collect on
the bounty. I'm guessing, but we don't see this quite payoff,
because if he does kill them, it doesn't happen on
screen anyway. They stop to rest Cookie and King Lou,
but they both pass out in the same position that
all your show cap finds them in finds the skeletons

(35:01):
in at the beginning of the movie, so presumably they
die shortly after this. Either via the man who wanted biscuits,
or they just die from their injuries were not totally
sure honestly.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
All things considered, I hope it is from the Biscuit
Mand because I think I jumped to like assuming they
died a slower death. I hope that that's not true.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, yeah, See, to me, I felt like I drew
a pretty straight line to that being the Biscuit Boy
m hm, because there's so much in this movie that's
to me about like the various levels of being perceived
as womanly of all these men, like Cookies, like immediately
off the bat, like he's so soft. King Lou also
like clearly doesn't fit in with like this very masculine

(35:43):
society that they're they're living in. Uh. The chief factor
is like again like seen as like effemineate and this
little this little boy is like the Biscuit Boy is.
To me, he's so framed as like a fruity little
guy and everyone, yeah clearly is treating treating him that way.
So like, how what better way to prove yourself to
Spud than to Achilles to kill the other fruits? You know?

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Oh God, It's almost like masculinity is a prison I
wouldn't know anything about that.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Also, very similar themes are explored in the Power of
the Dog, just saying.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Caitlin's desperately trying to backtrack their own mists. All women
look the same to you.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
No, I don't even know who directed the movie. At first,
I was just like, these are the same movie because
they're about animals question Mark anyway.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Anyway, the Power of the Dog is about a mountain.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
But that's the end of the movie. So let's take
another quick break and we'll come back for the discussion.
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
It's Jane camp be It who directed The Power of
the Dog.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
A different woman, but we're talking about first Cat.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, where do we met, Maddie? Where would you like
to start? What jumps out to you about this film?

Speaker 3 (37:09):
I think what sticks out to me so much is
this sort of like the stuff that it's all not
to be like it's like jazz. But there's so much
about this movie that is about I think masculinely and
about colonization that is only really you're seeing white men,
but there's all these like weird little pockets that the
camera lingers, or there's a moment that stays there that

(37:33):
makes you think about it really hard, Like I think
about we were talking about like how Lily Gladstone only
really gets this one second. But then there's like this
long moment where she and I think who was supposed
to be her mother in law or a sister I
can't but like another native woman sit on the couch
and just start having a conversation about what they're wearing. Yeah,
and the camera just stays there for like a long time,
like longer than I think most writers would leave it there,

(37:56):
and it seems so intentional to me. And then yeah,
there's all this stuff about like like what this society
of like mostly men, like hyper capitalist expansionist colonialism, like
what it's doing to the land and the people there,
and there's all this stuff about. Like the line that

(38:17):
will never leave my head about this movie is that
it's something King Lou says early and he says like.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
History isn't here yet, yes, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
And Cookie's like, what do you mean it's old? I
mean the first time you see the cow, it's like, wow,
this beautiful cow is coming in, like here comes civilization,
here comes milk, and this like finally there's food and
all the people are like wow, food finally. But the
first thing you see after you see the cow is
there's like some native women on the shore, like mortar

(38:45):
and pestling some grain right there, like the food ways exist,
it's all there. Yeah, And I think all this, all
these little subtle nods to what's going on, are not
Like there's a lot of movies that would would be like, oh,
like here's me lip service, like like like a Leave
of their own or something where the ball rolls out
of bounds and you see the three black women like

(39:06):
waving from very far away, Like there's a lot of
movies that do that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Or the the I feel like my go to of
like in queer representation is Josh Gadd dancing with a
man at the end of Beauty and the Beast.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Oh is that what they did?

Speaker 2 (39:21):
For three seconds?

Speaker 1 (39:22):
We did it? Yeah, oh god damn it.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
But yeah, I think so much of this is like
it is the point of it, like these these little,
these little gaps.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, I'm really interested to talk about it because it's
like I do agree that like where she lingers is
very intentional, and I know it's like such a part
of her process to leave things on said and then
there's like the yeah, the tendency to focus on white
characters in terms of like who do we know the

(39:52):
most about, which I do think is true of this
I guess with the exception of King Loup, but I don't. Yeah.
I watched this movie twice and and then by the end,
by the end of the second watch, I was like,
I think that, like, ultimately this movie is about like
American capitalism finding it's footing basically, but this this moment
where like indigenous food sovereignty is taking a very particular turn,

(40:17):
and what we see her I would also I was
looking for more I wasn't able to find very much.
But I'm really curious what Indigenous American viewers think about
this movie because I felt as if, like I don't know,
like you don't. It's not like Kelly Reichert's style to
focus on like the peak of violence that comes with colonialism.

(40:41):
She's focusing on this like day to day normalizing of
colonial ideas, and like through the Toby Jones character, I
think it's like, yeah, there's a lot going on with
him where he's treated like he's very effeminate. He's like,
you know, people are teasing him for that, but you're
also like he is unequivocally the colonizer, the person with

(41:03):
the most power.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, I mean the second his day little Tea is
threatened that he sends people to kill them.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
This is all about his like his tea party, Yeah, basically,
And you can tell, like one of the moments that
stuck with me is like the criticism I have because
it's like a big scene where the high Tea is
a big scene in the movie, and you don't know
initially that there's going to be Indigenous people at this part.
He just is like, this is it's going to be

(41:32):
high t We don't know. He's married to Lily Gladstone.
You know, I think it's safe to assume that that
marriage was either forced or one of convenience for the
survival of Lily Gladstone's people. It doesn't seem like it's
a marriage based on love. Which is interesting that like
Lily Gladstone has been cast in that part more than once, right,
because it it isn't it's a different part from Killers

(41:55):
of the Flower Moon, But I was reminded of like
she's put in a similar position, which also by a
white director, right, but that like you see that Toby
Jones's character clearly thinks he's like being a good guy
by welcoming indigenous people into his home and clearly does

(42:16):
not care or doesn't understand that he is bending everyone
in this room to his will, regardless of race. Like
Cookie is also bending to his will, King Lou is
also bending to his will to like maintain what he
perceives as reality because he holds the power. And then

(42:36):
like through our friend miss Evie, he has the means
of production. It's also about means of production. They don't
own the means of production, so it can never sustain.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Ah, I don't know, yeah, my I think big criticism
of the movie is that we are watching white settlers
act colonize the land and claim its resources as their own,
whether it's like the animal pelts that the fur trappers

(43:08):
are taking, or the it seems like there's a mine
like a silver or a gold mine or something whatever,
the minerals, the animals, the food, everything, it's being stolen.
And we see the native characters on screen whose land
is being stolen, but I feel like they're mostly treated

(43:28):
as kind of set dressing. Yeah, for sure, we don't
get any interiority for them.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
At all.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
We barely see them speak. There's that scene where I
don't know if it is Lily Gladstone's sister or friend,
and then she seems to be partnered with the Native
man who is a guest at Chief Factor's house. We
don't know anything about the dynamics, names, name anything, so

(43:57):
could have I mean, the movie's not afraid to like
take some time with scenes and like take some time
to let you in on some information, but it neglects
to do that at the expense of not letting the
audience know anything about the indigenous characters.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
It's felt like a deliberate choice that I couldn't find
any I mean, let me know if others found examples
of her speaking to this point, but it doesn't seem.
And also like from what I can sort of glean
from her larger body of work that she is not
like trying to shy away from indigenous history in Oregon

(44:36):
and like the history of her own community. But and like,
while so many of the themes of this movie tie
back to Indigenous Oregonians, we don't get to know them.
And I'm like, why was that choice made? Because it's
not like she's avoiding the reality of it, So I don't, like, Yeah,
the people that she sort of decides to focus on, Yeah,

(44:57):
I was like why why? And also because we find
out very late in the movie that King Lou has
spent time with indigenous communities enough to have a basic
grip on the language, right, And you're like, okay, so
even with the characters we've chosen to zone in on,
Kinglu has a history in these indigenous communities. Like where,
I don't know, Yeah, I think what everyone think.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Yeah, for me, I think again, this comes back to
the framing of it, where it's like, you do start
thinking about history and what we know and what we
do not know about the past, and we don't know
about the interiority of a lot of these people because
they were wiped out by the other characters in the movie.
And to me anyways, like again, like I don't I
don't think it is an unfair criticism to talk about

(45:41):
this at all, But to me, anyways, it seems like
the interiority for the people is there, but like you're not,
it is happening on the edges. It feels like you've
ever seen big trouble in Little China?

Speaker 2 (45:56):
No, yeah, I don't remember it. Super well.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
But yeah, so like the whole thing is that there's
a movie going on to the background that Kurt Russell
is not aware of. And at the end, they're all like,
what the fuck are you doing here, white guy, Like
get out, like the other movie already happened without you.
And I think there is sort of this like why
why does she keep showing these people like I don't
It didn't strike me so much as as like set

(46:21):
decorations did, like I wanted to know more, and then
you think to yourself, why don't I know more? And
I also think it feels intentional that like King Lou
isn't just another white person, he is also an immigrant
that is not, you know, not a colonizer in the
same way. And yet it shows this like perniciousness of
the idea of getting on side with the colonizers, right

(46:44):
like if you're if you are considered effeminate, you can
get on side by acting macho enough. If you are
not white and people are racist to him, yeah, like
if you're not, if you're not in the club, you
can try to get in the club because look how
nice it is to be there. The older native gentleman
that's over chief factors is like wearing a suit, you know,
to me, so much of it is sort of like, yeah,

(47:06):
this pernicious drive to join in, Yeah, and how how
attractive it can look to people who are who would
be on the outside of otherwise.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Right, And like the conclusion that the story comes to,
which is like, unfortunately, the general result is that if
you exist on the margins of society in any way,
chances are you're gonna get fucked. And because and we
find that out at the very beginning, learning that you know,
in spite of their ingenuity, in spite of their skill,

(47:36):
in spite of all of it, they're still killed.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
And they will be skeletons soon, right.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
And Maddie's speaking to your point, like it's all the
more tragic if they're sort of taken out by this
other character who is aspiring to see more masculine to
succeed in the same system that will probably end up
getting him.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Anyways, Yeah, they're not gonna You can't. You can't not
be cut in the Businese line. If there's no biscuits anymore.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Kids, there's no one you couldn't. I mean, did you
get the recipe at gunpoint? Did you think but also
but also it doesn't matter because he doesn't own the cow.
Like the cow as the means of production is like
fascinating to me. I yeah, I think like it seems
like we're all sort of on the same page with Like,
I think there was room in this movie to include

(48:24):
at least an indigenous character. I know it's a very
like broad like there's not a lot of central focused characters,
even if she's being sparing in the narrative, there was
room for it. And I'm curious if there was any
point in writing the script. I know this was also adapted,
but if there was any point in writing the script
where that was on the table, because it's also like
you've got Lily Gladstone, Like why is she in the

(48:46):
movie for three minutes? Yeah, as far as King lu goes,
I think it's like, uh yeah, the where I sat
with it, it's I don't know, it sounds very like
corny to put it this way and kind of almost
undercuts the movie itself. But like King Lou is sort
of buying into the idea of the American dream being
accessible and finding out that it isn't. And it seems

(49:11):
like I don't know if it's because of Cookies, we
don't really know, like if it's Cookie's experiences in Boston,
if it's because of just like his personality. He seems
sort of less inclined to buy into it, but of
course it's so appealing, and King Lou really believes in
it and has the juice sort of like he has

(49:33):
the ambition, he has the plan, and it works for
a while. I feel like, like as often these kind
of stories go where it's like it works until you
threaten someone too powerful and then you're cast out.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
I think also in terms of like the two central
characters being colonizers or immigrants or whatever. I mean, Cookie figure,
it's obviously a Jewish guy. This is like I think
I believe canonical. He is a like I think at an interview,
Kelly Recard's like, yeah, it's Jewish guy. He's at West.
So he's also like way outside of like he you know,
there's no way his family got to Maryland that long ago.

(50:11):
There weren't a lot of Jews in the early eighteen
hundreds in America. We just weren't here yet. And so
I think I think that's also just an interesting thing
in terms of like, yeah, like that that buy into
the American dream that is so appealing to these people.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
King Lou has a line at one point where he says,
men like us have to make our own way. We
have to take what we can when the taking is good.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Jack Tawson vibes, first of all, true.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, basically the speech that Jack gives as he's eating
caviar and toasting Champagne on the Titanic.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
Lou also gets on a boat in this movie.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
It's true, Okay, so ratituy Titanic. There's a lot. There's
a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Basically, when the cow is on the faery, she's like,
I'm king.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Of the world.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Exact.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
But yeah, it just speaks to like, we've already touched
on the seeds of American capitalism that have been planted
and are very rapidly growing. And you have a ruling
class who you know, owns the mine or owns the

(51:30):
fur company, or you know whatever, and then everyone else
who is either being actively colonized and having their land
and resources stolen, or it's settlers who are trying to,
you know, make it in this landscape, which is very difficult,

(51:51):
if not impossible, because they have to resort to. And
I'm not against stealing from the ruling class, but it's
what they have to do. And then what's the what
there's a story where it's like they steal from the
guy and then feed.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
I feel like it's kind of like a tale as
old as time where it's like stealing from the rich
person and then like feeding this stuff back to them
and then.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
They're robin hooding to themselves.

Speaker 4 (52:22):
There right fight club, where it's like we're stealing like whatever,
the like liposuction materials out of the garbage and making
it into soap to sell back.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
To kind of sweety Todd.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
To sweety Tea. Yeah, does this happen in Fried Green Tomatoes?

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Sure? Yeah, well just the one time, but just.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
In any case. So this is this is what they do,
and it's I mean, I think, a great idea, but
ultimately a doomed endeavor because the you know, the rich
guy finds out that he's being stolen from and is
like kill those motherfuckers and then they die lying next
to each other.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
I keep thinking about the point you're raising about the
means of production. I keep thinking about because I'm such
a visual thinker, which again why I think so much
of the movie to me is like it's so visual
in terms of what it wants you to know, for
such a quiet movie, for such a talking movie, it's
so visual. But I keep thinking about the after they
steal from the cow. The next time you see the cow,
there's like a fence around it that's like so small,

(53:30):
and like that's what that's the only thing they know
how to do. Yeah, right, is make smaller and smaller fences.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Yeah, it's true. I mean I think a lot of it.
And the cow, Evie, I'll say it, she's the most
interesting character in the movie. And like I think, like
as a symbol for a lot of experiences where we
don't really know the circumstances under which Cookie or King
Lou came to the US. We don't know if they
were brought there forcibly, we don't know if they brought

(53:57):
if they went there voluntarily. We don't know if they
went there because they were fleeing something, you know, And
I think that's intentional. I think like the characters like
we're supposed to sort of you know, headcan and what
we think is going on. But the same goes for
Evie the cow, because like I read. There was a
great Pop Matters piece about this by Caitlin Jurgens that

(54:20):
came out around the time that the movie became available
for streaming that sort of illustrates how this movie can
be perceived as something about food sovereignty and how cows,
as I often forget, are an invasive species in America
to some extent, they are not native to the US,
and their arrival in US. In the US, while it

(54:42):
was not the fault of the cows, and I kind
of like that, we get the backstory that the cow
has also endured quite a bit of loss and trauma
in order to be brought here for objectively a silly
reason like if you needed milking your tea that bad.
Don't colonize another continent just to stay where you're from,

(55:04):
but you know the animals.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
So where's the tea from, dude?

Speaker 1 (55:07):
It's like, come on. But like, the animal also suffers
tremendously in order to give a small convenience to a colonizer.
But what the cow also can represent is like sort
of the end of indigenous food sovereignty, which I feel
like is this piece argues that even though it is
not explicitly stated, and even though we do not get

(55:30):
to know the indigenous characters, which again I wish we did,
but that it seems like this marriage could be seen
as indigenous communities trying to deal with colonizers doing stuff
like this, because like food sovereignty is defined, I'm gonna
get in my bag. The twenty nineteen book Indigenous Food

(55:50):
Sovereignty in the United States by Devin A. Mehesua and
Elizabeth Hoover defines food sovereignty as indigenous community retaining complete
control of their food systems, from production to distribution to sustainability.
And of course there are many many threats to this,
but the image of the cow and the milk itself

(56:12):
is a threat to food sovereignty. It is bringing in
something that is not native to the country. It is
an animal that the indigenous community does not have familiarity
with and does not have control over, and that result
in any number of literal or cultural violence that could
lead to stuff like feeling pressured into marrying a colonizer

(56:36):
to preserve the well being of your community, and so like,
I don't know, there's just there's so much more going
on in this movie than you'd think.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Yeah, yeah, and it's subtle and it's there for the
audience's interpretation in a way that feels like to me
at least, And maybe this is just like a personal
preference thing, but I wish there was a little more
commentary on it. They're certainly recognition of it, but I
wish there was just a tad more commentary. I think,

(57:08):
like kind of the most we get is as far
as like explicit dialogue and whatnot. There's a moment where
Spud from Trainspotting is talking to another man. I think
they're at a saloon or something, but one of them says,
this is no place for cows. If it was God

(57:31):
would have put them here, and then I think it's
Spud who replies, then it's no place for white men either.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
I mean, I wrote that down, I feel I mean,
is that to me feels like pretty explicit commentary.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah, yeah, but I don't know. I wish there was
more which we could have gotten again with getting to
know the indigenous characters, who I believe are from the
Chinook nation, but again we don't get that.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
So I do like the friendship between Cookie and King
Lou though.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
I agree it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
It's a friendship between two men who bond over their
struggle to make their way in the world. And they're
both pretty calm, gentle men in this world that rewards
agro behavior and violence. And we see all these scenes

(58:34):
where like the fur trappers are getting into these brawls,
or there's that man with the baby who comes into
the saloon and other men are like taunting him, everyone's
inciting violence around them. And then you have these two
men who we focus on, and then others in the stories,
such as the biscuit boy who just wants biscuits.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
And he never gets his biscuits.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
But the two who we get to know are Cookie
and King Lou and they kind of bond over being
like gentle and not aggressive in a way that I
really appreciate.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
Yeah, it's funny because like so much. Yeah again, maybe
this is me putting my own little interests into the film,
but I think there's a lot of gender in here,
and so much of like what is perceived as feminine
or not fitting in like I mean, hell milk, very
feminine coated liquid. Uh. True, I shouldn't I should have
said it like that, but I did.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
But like to your point, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
But the idea between like like there's another calm guy
in town, and it's my favorite guy we've not talked about,
which is the chrow Man who's played by my dude
Renel Versionoir from De Space nine. My guy Odo.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Oh. I always think of him as like that's a
Robert Oatman guy, but he is a D nine.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Yeah, he's also to me, he's the d Space nine
man and also the chef and the little yes, but
he's like also a calm guy. He's also like living
kind of hermity and like not brawling or doing anything,
and he only it just stares at them. He's just
regarding them with suspicion, which is all he can do
because it is this weird like they puts like when

(01:00:12):
you are a softer gentleman, it is very much like
crabs into bucket hours, like you are trying to basically
not be the low person at all times because you
don't want to be faced with like the maximum eyre
of all the really macho guys. So I think there's
there's so much of that there, I think. So the

(01:00:35):
fact that they have this beautiful friendship I think is
so nice and I'm glad it's not romantic like that
they are just physically gentle with each other and emotionally
gentle with each other without having to be necessarily sexual,
because it could just be like, you know, like it
is possible for men, I think, to experience tenderness, right,

(01:01:02):
Like you know, we had the male lowly and it's
problem solved and we turned all those guys into skeletons.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Yeah. I really loved that scene between them at the end,
even though you're like, oh, they're cooked, they're cooked. Where
they reunite and they just like embrace each other and
they're so happy to see each other and like that
there is just this inherent like they see something in
each other. It's a deep friendship that you're right, Maddie,

(01:01:29):
Like it's I you know, would I have been mad
if they kissed?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
But I also understand like that there's so few representations
of like two protagonists who are men who know how
to be friends, who are affectionate with each other, and
that that can be I mean, just like friendship is
a life saving force in general.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
And that's the quote at the beginning of the movie.
It's something like a bird is the nest a spider
and it's web men friendship as if like we find
home and comfort and community in friendship, right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
And it's like if they haven't, if they hadn't been
able to like handle and that feels like a weird
bird choice, but like they had been able to handle
a friendship like that, I feel like they would have
been dead way sooner.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
To your point, Mattie, this is something we've talked about
on different episodes. I remember it most clearly from our
Lord of the Rings episode, where there is a tendency
to see representations of platonic male friendship on screen and
ascribe a romantic component to it. And I understand that

(01:02:40):
to some extent, but it also sort of erases the
idea that men can just be platonic friends with each
other and have like platonic tenderness with each other, and
we rarely see it on screen. But I do really
appreciate when it is represented because it does exist, and
it can exist, and it doesn't have to be romantic,

(01:03:02):
And there are no implications in this movie that it
is romantic. It's just that people often will ship characters together,
I mean in society, I want to say, but yeah,
I did appreciate the friendship that we see between them.
I also think that there's like a gendered component to

(01:03:25):
the product that Cookie is making, and that his skill
is a skill that women would typically have, especially in
this era, and would be expected to have as far
as like baking, and he's able to make these delicious
baked goods that remind these men of something their mama

(01:03:49):
used to make, which is one of the characters says,
because they are selling them at this fort that seems
to be occupied by mostly there are some women around,
but they're indigenous women that number one the story doesn't
care about, and number two who don't have the recipe

(01:04:11):
for all of these like English biscuits.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
They have, Yeah, they they I think critically, like they
have the nostalgia recipes exactly for these settlers.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Yeah, and that is what lets them earn any amount
of money, which presumably is lost forever in the tree.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
It also speaks of this interesting phenomenon in which cooking
and baking is so seen as like feminized labor until
you're selling it, in which case becomes very masculine society.
And it's this very interesting tension that like there is
a there are all those beautiful little domestic scenes at
Kinglu's house, like when he makes the first biscuit, King

(01:04:54):
Lou is again outside doing something manly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
But he's beating a rug, like beating the rug.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
And he's like gently leaves one of the biscuits on
the like the sale for him. Yeah, I love Conky
and it is this very like it feels very gender.
It feels very but then the second they're selling it,
it's like a cool boy thing to do because you're
making money.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Yeah, but it's still King Lou who's generally doing the
selling like he's though, you know, he's kind of calling
the shots. I liked it. It's like a very subtle moment.
I don't even know if it was intended like this,
but there is like a moment where it seems like
Cookie allows like feels comfortable enough around King Lou to
show that he really cares about cooking too, where where

(01:05:37):
we see him with the like settlers who are very
dismissive and abusive towards him at the beginning, like he
can't say, like I really care about how things take,
you know, like that this is like a passion of his.
But it's like when we see him actually comfortable around someone,
and King Lou is like he's like, we got to
start a business. We got it because that's because he's

(01:05:58):
an ideas guy, right, Like he is a proto capitalist.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Entrepreneur and job creator.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
And then you have like you have Cookie being like,
I don't know, could be sweeter, would be cool if
we had honey, would be cool if we had this stuff.
And it's just like, I just you know, even though
they are endeavoring on what we already know is a
losing battle, they're both comfortable enough to be passionate around
each other, which you know it might not save your life,

(01:06:26):
but it certainly feels better. Yeah, I just there their
dynamic is so gentle and complimentary, and yeah, you can
like feel a real friendship. Going back to UH, there's
an interview that Alyssa Wilkinson did with Kelly Rhikert around
the time this book came out that I know that
we it reminds me a little bit, just in the dynamics,

(01:06:49):
not the movie itself, in the conversation we had around
the Vivich in UH many many months ago. Another movie
that generally I mean, and I think more so than
this movie focuses on white settlers and very much keeps
Indigenous people on the margins of the story. This movie

(01:07:09):
I think does more. Not that that's saying a ton,
but I wanted to talk about because we got I
think something this is shorthand on this podcast at this time,
Robert Eggers being asked like, how did your research indigenous
culture for this movie? And he said, I went to
the library once and I and it was iconic that
he admitted that, I guess. But anyways, go back to

(01:07:32):
our episode about that. But Kelly Redcard was also asked
how she did research specifically for the indigenous language used
in the film. So this movie was my page on
Power of the Dog up. So this movie was It's

(01:07:54):
all happening again. So this movie was co written with
Kelley red and frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond, who is a
white guy from Oregon who has collaborated with her many times.
And it was also based on a story that Jonathan
Raymond wrote. Jonathan Raymond, to his credit, I guess, has

(01:08:14):
written extensively about Oregon and historically also does not shy
away from indigenous history within Oregon. But as we've talked about,
the movie doesn't explicitly address indigenous characters very much. So
I was curious what their research process was, and I
have an answer. Kelly Record is asked, there are people

(01:08:35):
from First Nations throughout this film, and the way the
settlers treat them, which often comes across as ridiculous, is
a big part of the story. How did you go
about researching language and culture? Kelly replies, there's a confederation
of tribes down near Eugene, Oregon. It's called Grand Rendez.
They had just opened this very beautiful museum that was
in an old high school. Jonathan Raymond went down there

(01:08:55):
to do research. They were a little wary about getting
involved with us, as they should be. Eventually, out of
our persistence and Jonathan's persistence, they opened up the library
to us and then ended up hooking us up with
a woman who made the cedar capes and hats worn
in the movie, which was cool because then we then
donated them back to the museum. Then they helped us

(01:09:15):
find someone who spoke the language. It's a jargon, a
mix of languages. The Chinook Wuaha Oriyan who plays Klu
had to learn that, as did James Jones, the Native
American actor who takes them up the river. That was
pretty tricky and I had to edit that language, which
is not really phonetic. Hopefully we didn't slaughter it too much.
Sorry the long que She's then asked, is that language

(01:09:39):
still spoken commonly or is it being preserved? She responds,
there's not that many people left that still speak it,
but those who do are trying to preserve it. We
had some help with learning it. It's a difficult language.
Orian really picked it up. An interesting thing happened one night.
I realized that the whole sound crew, because they were
listening to that language constantly, had come to understand the language.

(01:10:01):
I think it's a bit like Spanguish, where it's a
combination of languages. But the Grand Ronde ended up being
incredibly generous to us, and that's also their canoe in
the film. So on one hand, we have two white
writers composing this story that you know, indigenous characters are
important too, but also generally remain on the sidelines of

(01:10:24):
On the other hand, I do really appreciate when white
filmmakers bother to do their research and actually build connections
and trust within indigenous communities, because so often you get
the eggers treatment of going to the public library one time,
and you know, I think it's still very very open

(01:10:45):
to criticism, but I was at least heartened to learn
that Kelly Riikert and her collaborator did genuinely seem to
do their due diligence, and it also kind of like
doubles down on Well, then, why didn't they do more?
Why didn't they build a character to express this culture
through more?

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
I don't know, especially because this was an adaptation, like
you said, novel by Jonathan Raymond entitled The Half Life,
which has a story that has a much larger scope
than what we see in the movie, where there's like
two timelines oh interest, the story is set in two
different continents, Like it's basically the movie kind of zooms

(01:11:30):
in and focuses on just a small span of time
that happens in the story. And I'm not even sure
the cow is in the book the titular how did?
That's what I understood when I was reading about this,
But I might I might have misunderstood. I'm not totally sure,

(01:11:53):
But either way, I do know that the scope of
the story in the movie is much smaller than the novel.
So the point is many changes were made from the
original source material, so a change that could have also
been made is more focused on the indigenous characters. But

(01:12:15):
I was going to point out that there's an even
worse version of this like approach to research that we
talked about recently, which is the Stephanie Meyer or Myers
whatever approach when we recovered Twilight, because she did basically
no research.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
No, she was strictly on Mormon vibes, drove.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
By the library and looked at Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
So yeah, it is. It is encouraging that these filmmakers
did more research than you might expect.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
But again, I just especially that they had like done
more with it too, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Yeah, I don't. Again, I don't think I disagree with
that read of it, but to me, it feels like
they did I think an interesting job of leaving this
big wide gulf between what you know about it and
how much detail is present, which I think is maybe
on purpose, And you could not like that as a

(01:13:14):
storytelling maneuver. And and that's a that's a very fair
criticism in terms of like what stories we are allowed
to tell and what we see and stuff like that.
So wanting I think wanting more of it is reasonable
and uh fair, But I think it is an intentional
thing to lead this sort of like lacuna of what's
in the story and yeah, because you know, in terms

(01:13:36):
of like the scale or the yeah, like on the
scale of research from instead of like going to library once,
there's going to museum twice, and that's what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
It's true. It's true. It's true because.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
The Brendan caps back, so two times, right?

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
Uh? Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss
about the movie?

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
That's all I had.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
No, we talked about oto.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
We did. We did.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
It's really important to me.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
So does the movie pass the Bechdel test?

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
I don't think so, no, because even if because I
always I mean, this is a whole other sort of
large conversation about the use of subtitles where you know,
I don't speak this variant on Chinookuawa. I think most
people don't because it is a language that is being
actively preserved. The only time we really see women talk

(01:14:33):
to each other is in this exchange. We referenced a
few different times of Lily Gladstone's character, who doesn't have
a name other than wife, talking to another Indigenous woman
who she knows, but we don't know what the relationship is.
Much less than name, and we also don't know what
they're talking about, so no is my I vote.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
No, right, And on top of that, even if we
did know what they were saying, they're just like hey,
but they don't say that much to each other, and
it's mostly just it seems like Lily Gladsmon's character is
gesturing towards like the bead work on the other woman's clothing,
maybe complementing it, We're not sure, but either way, I

(01:15:14):
feel like you could remove this interaction from the movie
and the narrative would not change at all. So it's
not a narratively significant exchange.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
But I will say, for if nothing else, it is
memorable because sure, going back to your point earlier, Maddie,
that it does feel worth mentioning that, even though it
doesn't really it fit into like how we generally analyze
movies on this show, that it does feel like Kelly
Recer does choose moments to linker on characters who we

(01:15:46):
often see on the fringes of movies. And again, it's
not perfect or even necessarily good representation, but it is
it is I think, noticeably different than how we see
indigenous characters in colonial narrative treated where it's like their
humanity isn't disregarded in the same way even through I

(01:16:06):
think like simple interactions like two friends or relatives we
don't know, and that's an issue, but like two people
having a moment of human connection in a way that
I think most often we see indigenous characters treated as stereotypes,
as stock characters, as like not as humans.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
So, yeah, I was gonna present like a fallacious, fun
little argument the cookie is so feminine coded that him
talking to the beautiful cow past the test. But then
I realize they mostly talk about her husband.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Oh that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Well, so never mind.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Well here's some some food for thought, some milk for thought.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
Perhaps a fry cake for thought.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Does it pass the Bechdel test? When a woman finds
the skeletons of two.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Dead men, is the dog a woman?

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
The dog might be a female dog.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Does it count? Does it pass the Bechdel test? When
I watched the movie at home and say first cow
when I see the cow, I think that's the closest
I could get. Is women's anyone? If a marginalized gender
screaming first cow and then the cow saying lou, that's
that's text. That's text. I agree, it's interesting. I mean,

(01:17:21):
in this we've we've encountered this before. A movie with
a titular women character doesn't pass the Bechdel test and
you hate to see it, and you hate to see it.
It's the women all over again?

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
Does the women not? I guess it's you know what
it's all about men. It's the subtitle of the or
the tagline right now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
It's true. Yeah, that was the tagline.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
For the original from the thirsday.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
And they weren't joke. I still really want to cover
that on the show. Maybe that'll be a birthday because
it's a it's a brain breaker, and I will also
say it's an enjoyable movie to watch.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
That movie rips and it real quick. But I have
a fun fact about it, which is that she makes
one joke about Adolf learning it as one of the women.
And I looked it up and it came out three
days before Germany invaded Poland.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Oh my god, my god. And there's some and and
and talk about food for thought. But yeah, no, it's
it doesn't text. It doesn't pass the Bectyl test. But again,
the Vitel test is not the be all adult of
media metrics. It's just what we happen to name Marshall after.
So let's talk about the media metric that that is
the be all and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
All the nipple scale, where we rate the movie zero
to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional
feminist lens. And I just don't really know about this,
because there are some interesting things in the movie is
addressing and commenting on, such as early colonial American capitalism

(01:18:52):
and perceptions of gender and the kind of spectrum of
mass sculinity. And I do appreciate that we are following
characters who are not displaying the typical toxic masculinity of
the time, which was beating the shit out of each

(01:19:13):
other and killing each other.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
What about making biscuits and pulling a scam?

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Make that's feminism, yeah, if you ask me. But the
movies disinterest in giving any interiority to the indigenous characters
who are visibly present on screen but just not given
any of the focus that the settler characters are is disappointing.

(01:19:44):
I think I'll give it two and a half nipples.
I'm not sure why. I don't really know how to
rate this movie, but I do know that one nipple
goes to one utter perhaps say, how yeah goes to

(01:20:05):
ev the Cow. Okay, one nipple I'll give to Kelly Reikhart.
I do want to explore more of her filmography.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
We should cover certain women. I feel like this Certain
Women was unlike First Cow, arguably certain Women was made
for our show.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
Interesting. Maybe we'll do a month on the Matreon that's
the women and search women.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
Let's yeah, it's like the women, let's get versus what
about certain.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
Maybe twentieth century women? I don't know anyway, Yeah, yeah,
uh so Kelly gets one of my nipples and then
my half nipple goes to the four to three aspect ratio,
which was kind of shocking to me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Anyway, I hate Yeah, I'm having trouble with this. I
guess I'll also go two and a half. This movie
is is. It's a tricky one because I think that
my main criticism, even though like I don't know, the
more we do the show, and I guess also just
kind of the older I get, the more I appreciate
movies like this, movies that have restraint, movies that are

(01:21:14):
not stating the themes right, like movies that force I
think rightfully. So the viewer to challenge themselves or not
as the case maybe, But I still think that there's
a thing of like too much restraint, And I really
wish that there had been an Indigenous character that we

(01:21:36):
know something about, Like I don't know. I just don't
think that's like too much to ask. I feel I
feel like it was overly restraint to do all that
research too. And I also think it is a generally
good thing for white filmmakers to do, to both do
their homework and contribute in whatever small way in preserving
language in mainstream cinema, right, Like, I think that that

(01:21:59):
is a powerful thing. Now we have Chiniguala in a
current movie that got COVID, so not hugely wide distribution,
but a movie that is widely available. I think that
that is a generally good thing. But it felt like
a missed opportunity to me that like, if it was
done out of restraint, felt overly so to not give

(01:22:22):
us more insight, because we see a lot of the
factors that are affecting Indigenous people without getting to know
a single person, And that felt like a missed opportunity
for me. But like we've talked about, I think that
the friendship in all of the and also just the
general ideas that King Lou and Cookie represent of these

(01:22:44):
two outsider immigrants trying to make their way in a
world where it is colonial capitalism that is hostile to them.
Which I appreciate that there's like no ifans or butts
of like what ends up getting them. It is. It
is that and all the ideas that come with that,
including Maddie, like you were getting into this idea of

(01:23:07):
hyper masculinity, and like the person who killed them is
like that's likely a huge factor in why they did it. Also,
the biscuits looked good. I'm not a huge like food
cinema person like I I bravely when I watch a
Studio Gibili movie, I'm like, cut to the chase. It's like,

(01:23:27):
I don't I can't eat this. I can't eat this.
It's two d I can't which But but I I
was hungry watching this movie, and that's not nothing. So
I'm going to give this two and a half nipples,
and I'm going to give them all to to my
pal Ev because she really needs as many, you know,
utters as she can. She needs six. We haven't gotten

(01:23:51):
her there. Oh yeah, it's six, right? I actually don't
think I think I think it's four.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
On Jersey Cows, I think it's four.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Speaking as the nipples slash utter expert, I was.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Just googling Jersey Cow and I was looking at them,
and I think it's four.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
Four.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Yeah, okay, then she's actually she's good.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
I also was thinking about, Maddie, how about you? Oh,
how many nipples do I give? I think, you know,
I think I think the critique is very valid. But
on the balance, I love this movie so much and
I kind of think it's a masterpiece. I'll give it.
I'll give it a solid four for for one of

(01:24:27):
each of EV's beautiful nipples.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Nice, lovely.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion.

Speaker 3 (01:24:34):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
Where can people find you online?

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
Where can we get your book? Are you touringing? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
Yeah, so this I believe this is coming out after
my book tour is over. But but you can find
me easily. Maddie. Lobchansky dot com has all the information
for all of my books and where I will be.
And you can get the book Simplicity, which should be
out now. I'm really proud of it. You buy it
and read it. It's really good I think, and you

(01:25:04):
can listen. I have a podcast called No Gods, No
Mayors where I talk about mayors with my two friends.
You can listen to that and No godsnowmares dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
You can find us where we are going to be
on tour at the end of the summer across the Midwest.
We're talking in Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Indianapolis. You can
check out all those dates and grab tickets in our
link tree, and you can join our Matreon Patreon Experience
where for five dollars a month you get two bonus

(01:25:36):
episodes on a theme of either hours or you're choosing,
depending on how we're feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
That month, including an episode on Ratatui.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Yes we did a rat themed month.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Really get Rodent, Tember, redn't.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Timber, which I believe we observed in April, but don't
worry about it. It was just urgent. It was really urgent.
So go over there for my birthday picks this month
pretty thrilling.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
And with that, shall we go milk the first cow
that we see.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
It's like getting lemons off a tree on the street.
You're like, might as well, why not dance there?

Speaker 3 (01:26:19):
As long as there's not a little fencer rapped around
the cow. I think it's fine to do.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Yeah yeah, all right, bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo and merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:26:52):
link tree slash Bechdel Cast